It Was My Memories that Compelled Me to Write Spring
WITH ZHAO FENGDONG as important lead, I could breathe a sigh of relief. Coming back to where we left off, we can now sort out Ba Jin's fourth letter to Daili. This letter, like the first letter, was on the paper of the Culture Life Company, which was ruled with red vertical lines and printed with red letters in imitation Song Dynasty typeface. However, when compared in detail to the first letter, there were some differences. Like the first letter, the words "Culture Life Company" were printed in red on the letterhead, but it lacked the word "memorandum" , and below it were no checks or lines. More importantly, the address and telephone number printed on both sides of the letter paper and envelope were not identical. The company address printed on the first letter had been "No.20 Kunming Road, De An District, Shanghai" , and the telephone number was "51560" , but the address printed on this letter was "No.436, Fuzhou Road, Shanghai" , and the telephone number was "95913" —the address on the envelope had also changed. In explanation of this, during the period while Ba Jin was in charge of Culture Life Company, he moved house as well as changing his telephone number. The first letter was in April, the fourth letter was in October: the two letters were nearly half a year apart, but they were both from 1936. This change of address may be worth the investigation of experts.
This letter was written vertically in fountain pen and takes up nearly full three pages. Ba Jin wrote:
October 1st
Daili:
It's been three or four weeks since I received your letter. It has taken me up until now to reply, I ask for your forgiveness.
The other day I sent another book, I think you should have received it by now.
Are you busy with homework these days? I suspect you may not have much time to read books which aren't for school. Rudin is a good book, but the commercially available translation is not good, here we have a new translation—after it's been published I'll send you a copy. I translated On the Eve by Turgenev, it's a drama but it's already out of print, and before long I'll publish it in the Culture Life Series. However, the name will be changed to The Night is Not Yet Over, because the Culture Life Company already has another book called On the Eve. When that has happened, I'll send it to you. Zola is a novelist in the French naturalist style, I've read nearly all of his books, but for the most part I don't like any of them, and after reading them once I don't dare to read them again. He writes too cruelly, too coldly, and his pessimistic fatalism scares me (His later works, The Three Cities and The Four Gospels are definitely a different matter). As with Nana, the second time I read them, I felt nauseous.
You read my book Family, you misunderstood my meaning, assuming that Juihui was me. That was a mistake. I can tell you; Family isn't that different to my own family—I certainly grew up in that horrible kind of environment. Some of the characters in Family and Spring are reallife figures but it can't necessarily be said that the events in Family and Spring are real… In each one of my characters, I can see my brothers and sisters. I wished to record the precious memories of the past, and help the people I love to live on in some vague sense in my novels. So that is why I say it was my memories which compelled me to write Spring.
There's no need to worry about what's going to happen to Shu Ying. She is Spring's protagonist, she'll get saved. The ending of Spring is naturally set in a beautiful spring, at that point, Shu Ying's happiness will have just started!
Best wishes,
Jin
In this letter, Ba Jin talks about many literary and creative experi-ences and his writing to intimate and restrained. He first mentions Rudin, "Even recently, I once heard a successful middle-aged man say, these days, he isn't able to re-experience the strong emotion he felt when he first read Rudin." Ba Jin praised this book as "a good book" , also saying that he would send Daili better trans-lation—in the letter, Ba Jin also discussed his retranslation of TheNight is Not Yet Over, originally titled identically to Turgenev's On the Eve. However, this The Night is Not Yet Over was written by Polish anarchist Leopold Kampf. In regard of this, Chen Danchen has already written, "After reading The Night is Not Yet Over, Ba Jin treated it as a treasure and introduced it to his classmates who specialised in foreign literature. They copied it down word by word and rehearsed it several times. They strongly desired to become like Vasili and Anna." In this way, Ba Jin introduced this work to even remote Shanxi.
Ba Jin's Spring also uses an instance where young people act on their own initiative to rehearse The Night is Not Yet Over as part of the plot.
The Culture Life Series, which was mentioned in the letter, was an important work of the Culture Life Company, and its publication was also a great event in the history of modern Chinese publishing. As expressed by researchers such as Li Cunguang and others, from June 1935 to August 1949, there were over fifty categories of books in this series, of which twenty-four categories were published before the war against the Japanese broke out. With the exception of three Chinese works, the rest were internationally famous, covering broad literary styles, and this series was on a par with the Literature Series, which was edited by Ba Jin. Ba Jin had already written a special article to promote this series in Declaration, which was published on September 20, 1935. Ba Jin had invested his own lofty ideals in this series, and even today, we feel moved when we read about it. Ba Jin wrote, "In compiling this series, we see the fruits of a long effort to establish a large scale popular library. To take learning from being the special right of the privileged to present it to tens of thousands of people, so that everyone can derive the benefits of learning at the lowest cost possible." He also expressed, "The spirit of those young people who, under hard circumstances, endured the painful struggle to acquire knowledge should make every good-hearted person shed tears of gratitude, and we carry that spirit with us as we complete our work. Although our capabilities are weak, our ambition is great."
Reflecting on today's publishing market, it's truly difficult to get a good book published. Large quantities of low quality books have flooded the market, and writers and editors are only interested in profit. If you do occasionally encounter a good book, often the price can be surprisingly expensive, and most readers would flinch.
In this letter Ba Jin once again expresses the relationship between his characters in his works in plain terms. I wonder could we, as contemporary authors, be as patient and intimate as Ba Jin in relating to our readers? We are impatient, we think too highly of ourselves, and each of us acts as if he or she were a great person. However, this greatness is nothing more than an act.
Interestingly, when Ba Jin wrote this letter in October 1936, he divulged Spring's ending, which would be completed in March 1938, and this shows that the author held a complete conception of the work. In the letter, Ba Jin had reassured Daili, "There's no need to worry about what's going to happen to "Shu Ying" . She is Spring's protagonist, she'll get saved. The ending of Spring is naturally set in a beautiful Spring, at that point, Shu Ying's happiness will have just started!" After the publication of Spring, and as expected, the conclusion was as follows: Shu Ying finally escapesto Shanghai, writes a letter to her cousin Qin, and, full of confidence and joy towards the future, they declare, "Spring is ours!" . The original concept and the final publication were consistent.
After the third letter, Ba Jin would mention Zola to Daili one more time. In a subsequent letter he would write, "Zola's novels are well-written" , additionally said, "I have seen many of his books … but except one or two works, there are many I simply don't dare to read" . In this letter, he again said of Zola's books, "For the most part I don't like any of them, and after reading them once I don't dare to read them again. He writes too cruelly, too coldly" . Ba Jin considered Zola to be a "naturalist author" , stating, "his pessimistic fatalism scares me" , "As with Nana, the second time I read them (Zola's books), I felt nauseous." However, in China, another scholar considers Zola to be the "father of modern reportage" , but I'm not sure how to evaluate Zola.
Ba Jin's fourth letter was like that. Having written this, I thought of an old friend Xie Yong, who had written the article "Conceptions of the Establishment of Modern Chinese Literature: Historical Materials" . He considered the work of collecting, organising and identifying original historical materials to be of high value, and stressed "the importance of unpublished materials in academic research" . Xie Yong hoped, "to establish a consciousness of original sources pertaining to contemporary literary historical materials" . With such a consciousness, the vision of those looking for historical sources will differ from that of ordinary people. Academic research is fundamentally a game of intellect—and games of intellect are engaging. How can it be engaging? In the end, you find useful materials in places where others may not expect, and it is not dissimilar to the joy of scientific discovery." Xie Yong also enjoys browsing through old bookstores, believing thatthe discovery of direct historical materials is more likely to inspire people than secondhand materials; the former promotes innovation, the latter tends to mirror previous conceptions; the former is fresh and meaningful, the latter is stale and outworn. At the time of the discovery of Ba Jin's seven letters, I had a long chat with Xie, and he displayed just that "spirit of discovery" . Thinking further, it occurred to me that Liang Qichao[8] was also a firm supporter of the "spirit of discovery" …
Returning to our previous topic, at that moment, I discovered a "general manager" of the Shanxi Munitions Factory named Zhao Fengdong. What interesting things will Zhao Fengdong bring to our search? Could he actually be Zhao Daili's father?