Nobel Literature Prize Nominee WANG Meng Came to GDUFS

On the sunny afternoon of September 26th, WANG Meng, the celebrated nominee of Nobel Literature Prize, gave a lecture—the Internal Literature—in the Lecture Hall of the Faculty of Chinese Language and Culture at GDUFS. A great many people were attracted by this lecture and arrived at the hall early; even some students from other universities cameespeciallyto the university to watchthe lecture.

As a famous author and scholar in China, WANG Meng produced a lot of works both reflecting on last century’s Chinese politics and expressing his own idealism. Furthermore, he experienced a rough period during his teenage yearswhen he was a young Bolshevik and during the CulturalRevolution, which also helped his composition in his later life.

Wearing a near white shirt, WANG Meng seemed quite energetic despite being 82 years old. He used a series of interestingand vivid examples to represent his understanding about literature’s definition, function and significance inour lives on the lecture in a humorous manner. For example, to express literature’s profound influence on love, WANG Meng analysed the reasons of the unsuccessful courtship display of A Q——a well-known tragic character in LU Xun’s work. As WANG Meng said, if A Q had a more gentle and polite temperament like XU Zhimo, who is a noble poet in China, and recited a poem to WU Ma, hisloved one, when he expressed his love to her, he would be more probable to succeed instead of scaring WU Ma away.

What’s more, when WANG Meng mentioned that literature world is quite idealistic since it filtrates everything which may make us feel uncomfortableand keeps the happiness back, he took the spring in literature works as an example, which is always warm, vigorous and happy without the disturbancefrom death and suffering. At this point, his humor showed up again when he referred to a well-known Japanese author. WANG Meng said that Haruki Murakami’s success in literature possibly benefited from his name, which has a word meaning spring in Chinese. “If Haruki Murakami changed his name to Cunshang Yushouxi (which means toilet in Japanese), he may not be so successful.”said by WANG Meng with a witty smile.

          In spite of his humor, WANG Meng also impressed us a great deal with his profound analysis and understanding of literature. In his standpoint, literature is a reflection of the whole world, and itself is also a humanized world-- which connects closely to the real world, but is much more pure, deeper and more flexible. Also, WANG Meng stated that literature is just a by-product of human-being-- it is imprudent for someone to pursuit literature only all over his or her life, which means literature shouldn’t be the center of one’s world. “However, ” WANG Meng smiled, “we can’t deny literature is really a charming activity. It is so beautiful and so enchanting. A person who loves literature is happy, of course, this person himself is also lovely.”

At the end of his lecture, WANG Meng expressed, “I still want to be a Chinese in nextmylife, even if I can just recite and declaim ancient Chinese poetry.”With his love to literature study, WANG Meng must be more successful in this field in the future. GDUFS is sincerely expecting that he will return here again when he is 92 or even 102 to again share his ideasabout literature.