What about Mo Yan's works?

Sandalwood Punishment is one of Mo Yan's representative works, published in 2008, which has aroused heated discussion in the literary world. Based on the historical background of 1900, when the Germans built the Ji Jiao Railway in Shandong, Yuan Shikai suppressed the Boxer Rebellion in Shandong, Eight-Nation Alliance captured Beijing, and Cixi fled in a panic, the novel tells the story of a shuddering, appalling torture and soul-stirring event in the northeast of Gaomi.

Content introduction editing

Sandalwood Punishment is a novel with wonderful structure. With 1900 as the historical background, the German army built the Ji Jiao Railway in Shandong, Yuan Shikai suppressed the Boxer Rebellion in Shandong, Eight-Nation Alliance captured Beijing, and Cixi fled hastily, the vivid dragon vividly told a story that happened in "Gaomi Northeast Township" with swaying brushstrokes, great compassion and profound thoughts. This paper focuses on the feud between the heroine Mei Niang and her father michel platini and her father-in-law. The main characters in the novel are: Zhao, an old and crazy fool who kills people without blinking an eye, Qian, a high-ranking official who pleads for the people, a dissolute and filial daughter, a die-hard hero and a true man. Their five main characters interweave with each other in the full text, which makes the full text full and vivid, makes the image of the folk characters in the northeast township of Gaomi jump to the page, and shows the readers the real scene of China being occupied by foreign powers in the early 20th century. [ 1]

The Creation Background of Sandalwood Punishment

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According to Gaomi County Records, in 1897, Germany forced the Qing government to conclude the lease treaty of Jiaoao. In order to bring Shandong into its sphere of influence as soon as possible and plunder its rich mineral resources, railway survey and road sign planting began in September 1898. /kloc-in the winter of 0/899, Ji Jiao railway survey was extended to Li Hao area in the west of gaomi city. In the process of exploration and planting, the Germans bought farmland at low prices and forced farmers to move graves, which was strongly opposed by farmers along the route. In particular, Xixiang is low-lying, with rivers in the north and south, which blocks the waterway of railway construction and floods the fields, causing endless harm. /kloc-in the autumn of 0/899, the construction of Ji Jiao Railway started from Qingxi, and soon it reached the high-density border, railways and trains. Completely unfamiliar things aroused the fear of the local people. Ignorance of western civilization led to rumors that once the train came, there would be no crops around for more than ten miles. The fear of trains, coupled with the brutal demolition by the Germans, led to an anti-German railway demolition tide in Gaomi.

1October 22nd, 1899, 165438+ Sun Wen held a press conference in Shengjiazhuang. Under its organization, the anti-German team expanded rapidly, and the trend spread to 108 village. Every village has a leader. They "grind gunpowder, sting Rinrin every day, and gather people to perform artillery. Every family has a broken pot instead of a gun. " 1900 65438+12, Sun Wen, Li Jinbang and others led more than 200 people, carrying flags and guns, to Hangjiabao area and demolished five railway bunks. In 1 1, Sun Wen, Li Jinbang and other places. More than 3,000 armed men were assembled in Zhangjiadazhuang, and the soldiers were divided into three roads, which once again stopped the road construction in Hangjiabu area. The Qing soldiers who were protecting the road were outnumbered, so they immediately protected the Germans and fled back to Gaomi County.

On April 9 of the same year, thousands of anti-German people blocked roads from the north of Shengjiazhuang, burned several dens and prepared to attack the city. Later, Sun Wen led the masses to fortify the Liugou River and defeated the attacking Qing army. Then, the Qing soldiers and foreign guns under the command of German consultants participated in the war, and the masses fought bloody resistance. Due to heavy casualties, the struggle fell into a low ebb. Sun Wenzang is in Shengjiazhuang and Wangjiazhuang. Later, because of the traitor's betrayal, he was arrested on the morning of May 3.

On July 2nd 1900, more than 3,000 anti-German people gathered at the Liugou River to continue to block roads, prepare to attack the city and rescue Sun Wen. Hu, an upright official, saw that the people were in an overwhelming mood and was unstoppable, so he killed Dashiqiao north outside the east gate of the city.

When Sun Wen was killed, the Qing court ordered that the body should not be collected. Regardless of personal safety, Lao Juren Mountain personally went to the funeral, transported his coffin, collected the body and gave a eulogy. The throne said: "The imperial court signed a contract with the Germans to build the Ji Jiao Railway, and the soldiers were in danger, and the people were in dire straits. As a farmer, Mr. Wang is unpretentious and can't bear to sit still. " Mindful of Du Shui's disturbing people, endangering people's livelihood, accommodating the masses, taking the liberty to resist, pulling firewood and burning the nest shop, the turbulent atmosphere caused a sudden acoustic shock. "

Sun Wen was killed for resisting Germany and became a national hero in Gaomi people's mind. A bloody man left and a steam train came. The white steam disappeared, and the story of Sun Wen spread all over the Ji Jiao Railway. Born in the northeast of Gaomi, Mo Yan heard the story of Sun Wen's anti-Japanese war from the old population at an early age. In the postscript of his novel Sandalwood Punishment (also a drama of the same name written by Mo Yan in his early days), as early as the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, Sun Wen's anti-German story had been put on the stage by many Qiang Mao artists. Qiang Mao Opera is a local opera that spreads in Gaomi and Jiaozhou, and its singing is sad. "Especially Dan Jiao's singing is like the crying of oppressed women." Mo Yan has been a fan of Qiang Mao since childhood. In his childhood hometown, he often played a small role and went on stage as a walk-on. The story of Sun Wen's rebellion against morality is like a seed buried in his heart. In 2007, Mo Yan wrote Sandalwood Punishment, which is full of deep memories. [2]

Theme of the work

Sandalwood Punishment is a novel painstakingly honed by the author. In this exquisite structure and rich language, it truly reproduces a civil anti-colonial struggle in Shandong Peninsula in the late Qing Dynasty. Sun Bing, a folk artist who led the anti-colonial struggle, was finally sentenced to sandalwood punishment. With the theme of "torture", the works show many thrilling events in the political decline of China Dynasty, including the Reform Movement of 1898, the Boxer Rebellion, extortion by foreign colonialists and so on. Around the implementation of sandalwood punishment, the novel vividly shows the cruelty and inhumanity of the struggle between feudal kingship and power, highlights the historical mechanism of autocratic power acting on individuals, and reflects the black soil and dark law on which authoritarian power depends. Compared with the writing of sound, the author's way of intervening in modern history is unique. In the fragmented modern writing with deconstruction as its function, we insist that folk writing comes down in one continuous line and complements each other.

The narrative time and space of Sandalwood Punishment is set at 1900, a historical moment full of internal and external troubles. Taking the heaviest events in modern history, such as the Reform Movement of 1898, the Boxer Rebellion, Eight-Nation Alliance's invasion and German colonization of Shandong, as the story background, Sun Bing's anti-German as the clue, cat cavity play as the soundtrack, six major punishments as the plot and carnival language as the rhythm.

The story of sandalwood punishment is not complicated. It takes Mei Niang, the heroine who sells donkey meat, as the axis, which leads her father to become a cat-cavity leader, an anti-German righteous man, her male father, an executioner who once executed in the punishments department, her michel platini, a Gaomi magistrate Jim who has a close relationship with her, and her husband Zhao who appeared as a butcher. Finally, the father-in-law was executed by his father-in-law, the son-in-law was sent to his father-in-law, the daughter's lover was the witness of the arrest, and her father was sent to the guillotine. The daughter's husband is the executioner's assistant, who can torture her life and death, but the daughter is helpless. The plot is complicated, the characters are entangled, and the climax is repeated. The author puts forward "reading with ears", which is exactly: the voice behind the scenes comes first before the big play. The novel "Phoenix Head" tells the story of four protagonists except Sun Bing, and the characters and relationships are brought out together. Moreover, each language has its own identity characteristics, which is very appropriate for the event of "pig belly". Sun Bing built a big stage for the appearance and interpretation of life with Qian, Tan Sitong, Liu Guangdi, and a series of non-kitsch figures before the big festival in the late Qing Dynasty, and reappeared as a hero, combining that cruelty with ruthlessness. It was not until the end of the torture that "Leopard Tail" joined Sun Bing to tell a play, corresponding to the four heroines with crested crests. All kinds of people are condensed into five categories here-cold-blooded Zhao Jia, helpless Mei Niang, rebellious Sun Bing, helpless Xiao Jia, powerless magistrate of a county, everyone inside and outside the system, all of whom are nobody, but they depict the collapse of the Qing Dynasty. [5]

At a deeper level, the author adds sadistic emotion and masochistic pleasure, and the relationship between the sadistic obsession of the executioner Zhao Jia and the rebel leader Sun Bing is thought-provoking. Perhaps this is the root of the people, the unconsciousness in consciousness, and even everyone is afraid of themselves, and corruption is so genetic that there is no cure. Mo Yan, who touched it, smelled blood. What is the temporal and spatial relationship between this consanguinity and Jiangshan and history? What kind of personality link does the background color of killing inject into this time and space? It is more important for the world for a writer to find clues to the continuation of history in specific events and to torture human conscience in social anatomy than for him to break a folk road between the masses and pioneers and find a discourse road for China's modern Chinese writing.

In the novel Sandalwood Punishment, the carrier of folk life forms is firstly Sun Bing's wild life consciousness, which is the embodiment of folk culture and folk forms. Sun Bing, the successor of the play, is the spokesman and master of cat cavity, a folk art form. He has been acting all his life for more than 30 years, and finally he has reached the realm of combining drama with me. Sun Bing and the cat cavity are integrated, and the cat cavity is the expression of Sun Bing's life form. Just like Mei Niang said, "Dad, you've been singing for half your life, and you're telling other people's stories. This time, you are sure to enter the play, play and play, and finally it becomes a play. Sun Bing's whole life process is a cat's mouth in his own view. His emotions, joys and sorrows, joys and sorrows, and even the end of his life in Sandalwood Punishment are all a life drama with a beginning and an end. Cat cavity is a metaphor for its independent life form and a carrier of its personality. In Sun Bing's rough and difficult life, there were a series of bitter cat voices: hysterical "crying when his wife and children were humiliated and killed", excited "talking at the altar" when he resisted, and sad "cats often cry" when he was punished by sandalwood. Sandalwood punishment is the highest point and end point of Sun Bing's life. His life and death are the same, but he chose to die when he could, in order to play sandalwood punishment well. In the cruel and long sandalwood punishment, his sense of life has been the greatest publicity. Cat cavity is the external artistic expression of collective unconsciousness of local writers in northeast Gaomi, which seems to be a vivid and mysterious ancient sacrificial song. Sun Bing's Cat Cavity is an outstanding representative of this kind of collective unconsciousness. His original passion with personality and vitality from the depths of the northeast countryside is the essence of folk life consciousness. [6]

Sandalwood punishment is like the cat's voice can't enter the glorious hall to perform on the same stage as Italian opera and Russian ballet, and this novel is unlikely to be appreciated by readers who love western literature and art, just as the cat cavity can only perform for the working people in the square, my novel can only be read by readers who are more friendly to folk culture. "

Sandalwood punishment is progressing step by step in spirit. There has always been an upward poetic clue in it, just like a piece of music, with a complete movement in front. Until Sun Bing's execution and death, a sharp and gorgeous movement suddenly appeared in the music, which pushed the whole music to a climax and came to an abrupt end. Sandalwood Punishment achieved this effect in narrative, ending with the strongest sound of the whole novel and the death of Sun Bing, leaving only the lingering sound of Sandalwood Punishment lingering in readers' hearts for a long time. [7]

Here, Mo Yan's rejection of a language is linked to his confidence in the language he chooses. He doesn't deny that he used verse, opera and white words extensively. He does not shy away from paying attention to the dramatic effect, but pays more attention to smooth, simple, exaggerated and gorgeous narration. He admits that personal writing inherits the folk rap art that used to be the basis of the novel, but it actually means drawing latitude and longitude, although it is not so straightforward. However, there is no way to restrain his dissatisfaction with the increasingly assimilated literary concept. However, this person does not work as a teacher. He observes life in a low-key way, puts his own understanding into other people's experience, and can keep his frank attitude in the frenzied hot season or cold and lonely time. Although there are some affectations and exaggerations, he never loses honesty at the bottom line. Mo Yan made no secret of his vigilance against the invasion of western powerful languages by eastern languages under the background of globalization. For the "evolution" of language, Mo Yan chose to retire and go to the folk, and at this time he became "back to the folk". Because of this choice, he realized that "today, the novel, originally a folk art, has gradually become an elegant expression in the temple."

The novel has created a large number of vivid characters, such as Sun Bing, the head of the troupe with romantic temperament, Jim, the magistrate in Gaomi with a sense of justice, Zhao Jia, the executioner who retired from the lobby of punishments, their daughter, adopted daughter and daughter-in-law, and Yuan Shikai, a cruel and cunning politician.

In Sandalwood Punishment, besides the eerie temple life, it also depicts another vibrant folk life form. Folk is another living space opposite the temple. Folk life form is another life ideology independent of the mainstream life form of temples, which is rooted in the soil of folk culture form. The form of folk culture is "produced in the field where the state power control is relatively weak, and it preserves a relatively free and lively form, which can truly express the face of civil social life and the emotional world of the lower class." "Freedom is its most basic aesthetic style. Folk tradition refers to the process in which the primitive vitality of human beings tightly embraces life itself, from which it shows his love and hate for life and his pursuit of life desire, which can not be adjusted by any moral preaching and constrained by any political regulations. Even some abstract concepts such as civilization, progress and beauty cannot be summarized at will. " Therefore, folk life forms are full of primitive vitality consciousness and embody a natural, tragic and powerful life aesthetics. [6]

Sandalwood punishment artistic technique

Sandalwood Punishment takes the traditional punishment as the main line and the cat cavity of folk drama as the main form, and tells readers a history of modern Jiaodong people's resistance to German powers in fluent language. This novel is a reaction to magical realism and western modernist novels, and also a pleasant challenge to popular historical novels. The whole book has the appeal of both elegance and popularity in folk literature and the vividness of telling stories from people. The author tells a complicated story with the flamboyant structural mode of "crested-pig's belly-leopard's tail", which is sometimes creepy and sometimes tender. From the perspective of narrative techniques, each section is a character's self-report, which requires the author's brush strokes to constantly jump on each character, and must be natural and inseparable.

In the streaky part of the novel Sandalwood Punishment, the omniscient narrative perspective is adopted to directly tell the readers stories and some facts, such as the background of the characters, the cause and effect of the incident, the environmental atmosphere and so on. All of them are introduced by general language, while in Phoenix Head and Leopard Tail, the relationship between the main characters and the story is introduced from a limited narrative perspective, so that the main characters can stand up one by one and tell the ins and outs of the events they know, so that each character can form a narrative sequence respectively. Each narrative sequence is an inseparable part of the novel. However, due to the limitation of limiting narrative perspective, what each character sees and does will give readers a trance and confused aesthetic taste. The use of this limited narrative perspective is varied. Sometimes the perspectives of different characters are used alternately, and sometimes the perspectives of characters (including the external feelings and internal feelings of characters) are inserted into the narrator's perspective, thus forming a narrative effect of free conversion and flexibility of "scattered perspectives". Mo Yan described the same event from different narrative perspectives, adding several branches outside the main line, forming a complex narrative structure. Pure objective narrative (external focus narrative) is a mixture of omniscient narrative and restricted narrative. Sandalwood punishment embodies another creative idea. The overall structure of sandalwood punishment is designed into three parts: phoenix head, pig belly and leopard tail. The layout skills of this novel are quite China folk customs. "Phoenix head, pig belly and leopard tail" is a "six-character formula" put forward by Qiao Mengfu, a drama writer in Yuan Dynasty, when talking about the composition of Yuefu. The beginning should be beautiful, the middle should be mighty, the knot should be loud, the beginning and the end should be particularly expensive, and there should be fresh meaning. This sentence skillfully uses figurative rhetoric, arranges the structure of Yuefu into three parts: the beginning, the main body and the end, and advocates that the beginning should be as beautiful and moving as the phoenix head. The "subject" should be as full and full as a fat pig's stomach, with ups and downs; The "ending" should be as powerful and unforgettable as the tail of a cheetah. Qiao Mengfu's "six-character formula" is widely used in drama creation, but it also has guiding significance in novel structure design. Famous novels in Ming and Qing dynasties often meet the requirements of "crested pig belly and leopard tail" in content and form structure. The beginning of sandalwood punishment is indeed as amazing as the head of a phoenix: "That morning, my father-in-law never dreamed that within seven days, he would die at my hands, better than an old dog who was loyal to his duties. It never occurred to me that a woman could kill her father-in-law with her sword. What I didn't expect was that this grandfather who seemed to fall from the sky six months ago was really a murderer without blinking an eye. This opening technique can be called a brick and a jade, and three suspense have aroused readers' appetite and aroused their strong desire to continue reading. Subsequently, the main characters appeared for the second time, and the story gradually became clear. Sun Meiniang's provocative and bold image of folk women also stands out. The behavior and personality characteristics of her four heroes, her father-in-law, michel platini (lover) Jim and her husband Zhao Jony J, and their relationship with their mother are also clearly outlined. The pork belly part of Sandalwood Punishment has a large capacity, which can almost become a novella independently. This part systematically and completely tells the story of Sun Bing's anti-German, and solves the questions formed by the readers in the phoenix head part. The leopard tail part of sandalwood punishment is also quite wonderful. It describes Sun Bing's punishment layer by layer, vividly describes the performances of various people, profoundly depicts the tough guy image of the fallen hero, and shows the fighting spirit of the villagers in Gaomi Northeast Township who uphold justice and are not afraid of power, especially at the end of the novel: "The play is over. It embodies Sun Bing, a veteran artist who loves and is fascinated by drama, who regards drama as his life and integrates himself into it. At the same time, it also exposed a feudal official and a German aggressor who regarded torture as a performance and ignored human life. The novel sandalwood punishment skillfully and creatively uses the stream of consciousness of western modernist performance art to construct the novel with a leap of consciousness activities. For example, in the ninth chapter of Masterpiece, Zhao Jia stood on the execution ground, his eyes and feelings triggered a stream of consciousness, and introduced the origin and ending of the year-end award to readers. [8]

The theme of punishment and anti-morality chosen in Sandalwood Punishment is heavy. Historical novels like this once flourished in the literary market. Their text structure runs through the whole line, and they are all "eight immortals crossing the sea and showing their magical powers". The novel has a refreshing good performance: the structure of the novel, seemingly simple, is actually rich in wisdom; The marquez-style beginning and calm ending of the novel do have the meaning of crown and leopard tail; In this paper, the technique of connecting the preceding with the following in the form of stream of consciousness seems to be "getting something for nothing", but in fact it has four or two thousand pounds of ingenuity, which can be called "great ingenuity" and ingenuity. Mo Yan's characteristic of taking root in the local country and writing about the common people is also vulgar, with the clumsiness and stupidity of the people in Lower Liba, but this clumsiness is actually a kind of "cleverness" and an "elegance" painted with national colors, which can compete with Chun Xue and advance into the world literature hall. The words "elephant is invisible, but clumsy" can still summarize the artistic structure of Mo Yan's Sandalwood Punishment. This paper expounds from three aspects: narrative perspective, traditional novel structure and western stream of consciousness. The flexible transformation of narrative angle (which was put forward by Percy lubbock, called "narrative posture" by Zvetan todorov and "focus adjustment" by Gergenet) refers to the grammatical person and perspective relationship between the narrator and the characters in the novel. [8]

Sandalwood Punishment is full of violent and bloody aesthetic color in the writing of China's modern history, which takes ugliness as beauty and turns beauty into ugliness. If we don't grasp the vulgar form of life, we will inevitably show the essence of vulgar taste. Once the support of real folk ideals is lost, this description will easily degenerate into the author's self-indulgence of sensory stimulation, thus losing the humanistic significance of identifying with the people. In this book, the author focuses on a figure who has gone away with history-the executioner, and the two cruelest punishments-the year of the year and the sandalwood punishment, all of which are presented with extremely exciting violence, showing a strange reading cognition and audio-visual compound experience that is harmonious with the whole work. Fundamentally speaking, this tendency reflects the innate vulgar cultural form of the folk world. In Sandalwood Punishment, this tendency is shocking because of its cat-like folk charm, grand historical narrative and tragic and sonorous characters' fate, which embodies the humanistic care contained in the work and finally constructs a folk survey of China's modern history.

Sandalwood punishment is a work that is difficult to talk about in the conventional sense. Both the writing method and the story plot are secretly challenging the increasingly rigid mechanism of the existing literary theory. Its pioneer blade is dull, rusty and hard to see. The repetition of words and the lack of language are probably the important reasons for the downfall of pioneers. Repeated stories, similar histories, similar scenes, types of characters, and philosophical thinking behind them are all vague and familiar. [5]

reference data

1. Analysis of Characters in Sandalwood Punishment Feng Xueyan

2. The Qingdao element in Mo Yan's Sandalwood Punishment-Ji Jiao Railway. China Ocean Network [reference date 20 15-07-5]

3. mo Yan Sandalwood punishment [M]. Wuhan: Changjiang Literature and Art Publishing House, 20 10.

4. Sandalwood punishment, the old and new in the late Qing Dynasty. Reading by Sina [citation date: 20 15-07-6]

5. Sandalwood punishment: deeply involved in modern history and analyzing national roots. Huaxia Jingwei [reference date 20 15-07-5]