当代文学经典应该如何重写

创作层面经典重写与理论（文学史）层面经典重写是互为表里的文学现象,前者为当代文学研究提供了一种新的思考角度和方式。《车厢峡》《黑夜孩魂》《半夜鸡叫》分别对《李自成》《创业史》《半夜鸡叫》三部经典文学作品进行了颠覆性、延续性、戏仿式的重写。在文化转型背景下探讨重写文本与前文本之间的互文关系,把握近二三十年来当代作家的创作心态、艺术追求和历史局限,察悉人性叙述的可能性、有效性、有限性,对推进当下文学创作和研究自有其独特的意义。当然,经典重写不能简单化和极端化,在如何重写的问题上,需有正确的历史观和辩证思维。

How to Rewrite Contemporary Literary Classics: A Case Study of Chexiang Gorge, A Child's Soul in the Depth of Night, and The Cock Crows at Midnight

The rewriting of classics is a practice in which theoretical analysis interacts with the retelling of old stories. Such interaction provides a new angle for interpreting contemporary literature of China. The rewritings of classics which were mostly limited within speculative remarks in the 1980s and the 1990s did not reveal its butterfly effect in the realm of literary works. Based on this, it is significant to compare three rewriting texts, namely Li Feng’s Chexiang Gorge, Kou Hui’s A Child’s Soul in the Depth of Night, and Ge Fei’s The Cock Crows at Midnight, with their “pre-texts”, namely Yao Xueyin’s Li Zicheng, Liu Qing’s History of Entrepreneurship and Gao Yubao’s The Cock Crows at Midnight.Chexiang Gorge published by Li Feng in Harvest is claimed to be a “subversive” writing of a peasant hero Li Zicheng who was previously represented in the first volume of Yao Xueyin’s Li Zicheng. The so-called “subversion” writing means to “dismantle” the original narrative of class and motive power, and replace it with an expression of extreme self and extreme humanity that despises the “living life”. Distinguished from Yao Xueyin’s idealistic and essentialized narrative of history, Li Feng absorbed visions of history from the “new historicism” and “dehumanization”. By “subverting” in his “avant-garde writing” of peasant heroes constructed by Yao Xueyin, he regarded human desires and selfishness as the whole of human beings and history, which results in the lack of richness and depth of the characters in his work.Kou Hui’s A Child’s Soul in the Depth of Night is a short story rewritten from Liu Qing’s History of Entrepreneurship. As far as its deep connotation is concerned, it can be called a “continuous” rewriting of “adherence to tradition”. Following Liu Qing’s artistic logic and according to the demanding of subject, the novel focuses on the family, rewriting the ideological, psychological and emotional content that was hidden by the politicized perspective and the role of the characters in continuity. The “continuation” here refers to the “extension” of the rewritten object and creative tradition on the one hand, and the “persistence” on the other. The author not only discovered the “traditional latent structure” that was neglected in the 1949-1966 Chinese literature, but also provided an important consideration for how to carry out creative transformation and innovative development now.By absorbing and transforming a great number of folk resources, Gao Yubao creates his novel The Cock Crows at Midnight which is based on the historical figure Zhou Chunfu, whereas Ge Fei’s rewriting of this story presents a parody which returns to the folk. By re-organizing folk elements, especially imitation and comicality which co-work as the core forms of folk art, he overturns the rigid class-narrative of the story. With a stance on the folk, Ge Fei’s rewriting not only makes a resonance in style with its pre-text, but also deconstructs the gap between the two texts, achieving the aesthetic effects of irony and humor and the narrative direction manifested in anti-form and anti-essence. The rewriting of classics seems to be a “breaking” behavior, yet it reflects the richness of creative resources and the plasticity of inner quality. The original work and the rewritten text form an interlocking and non-repetitive “art chain”, namely a “circular interpretation” or “eternal historicalization” in Fredric Jameson’s sense. Of course, the rewriting of classics undoubtedly cannot be simplified or polarized. It is necessary to have a correct historical outlook and dialectical thinking on how to rewrite and what principles should be followed.