History - Writers' Attitudes and Sense of Responsibility

Chapter 2 Summary:

In short, when the term intertextuality was defined by Kristeva, it was also the time when researchers could expand the connotation of the concept of text. From here, no text is truly isolated, alone in a world, as an absolute creation: every text is influenced by cultural texts, and also contains more or less ideological structures and power expressed through different forms of discourse in society. Approaching intertextuality is to trace the network of social discourses at many levels, in which this text can be a potential for another text and vice versa. Tracing that network of symbols depends on the capacity and purpose of the reader. Intertextuality is like "a mosaic of quotations", so when reflecting its functions on a massive issue like Mo Yan's works, it is not easy. However, with the increasingly solid and popular intertextual theory system, along with Mo Yan's source of creative inspiration as a solid foundation, writers can find the depths in Mo Yan's novels, which we will present in the next chapter.

Chapter 3

INTERTEXTRITUALITY IN MO YAN'S NOVELS FROM THEMES, CHARACTERS AND SYMBOLS

3.1. Theme - the transformation between texts

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The theory of intertextuality accepts the mutual relationship of texts to prove that in artistic creation there is always reference to other texts, before and after it. It is this mutual reference that creates the literary tradition. The great British writer of Indian origin Salman Rushdie affirmed: "no story is born naturally, new stories are born from old stories - new is new in the combination" and thanks to that, "old stories will once again become fresh" [122, p.294]. For example, Mo Yan's Treasure of Life recreates a turbulent modern historical period of China through the generations of the Shangguan family, similar to the way G. Marquez recreates the history of Colombia through the village of Macondo with the generations of the Buendía family in One Hundred Years of Solitude , which Mo Yan himself acknowledged as greatly inspired by the Colombian author. From the way of exploiting the topic and writing style, readers can expand their association with the work Beauty is a pain by writer Eka Kurniawan, or Orphaned Land by Co Vien later... In that influence, later writers can innovate or do things differently, completely depending on the creative personality of that writer.

3.1.1. Homeland – journey of artistic creation

Directing his pen to a field that had been exploited by many people, Mo Yan bravely “used his pen like a cold scalpel to expose the boils” (Lu Xun) of the realistic picture of 20th century China. When writing about reality, Mo Yan described the complicated relationships in rural life - Northeast Gaomi. This is a familiar and popular topic in Chinese literature, as well as world literature. Many writers have succeeded in writing about the vast, harsh reality of war such as War and Peace by Leopold, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway, Quiet Flows the Don, The Fate of Man by Sholokhov, Romance of the Three Kingdoms by La Guanzhong... The unique and consistent principles and creative stance have created a Mo Yan with no small influence on the Chinese and world literary scene. In exploiting the topic, we recognize that Mo Yan's novels have a long history and a homeland rich in tradition, which is fertile ground for the writer to nurture, cultivate, and reap sweet fruit to reach the world.

When Western literature flooded into China, Mo Yan had the opportunity to absorb, learn, and be influenced by many great writers in the world. William Faulkner, the first writer who made Mo Yan realize: “After reading Folkner, I suddenly realized that novels can also talk nonsense like that, and that small stories that happened in the countryside can also be properly written into novels. His York Nafantafa County made me understand that a writer can not only fictionalize characters and stories, but also fictionalize geography…. Inspired by his York Nafantafa County, I boldly put my Northeast Gaomi County on paper. Folkner's York Nafantafa County is completely fictional, while my Northeast Gaomi County is real” [85, pp.89-90]. Since then, Gaomi has become a "territory" in Mo Yan's works, becoming a miniature China.

The land of Yoknapatawpha (Mississippi state, Southern United States) with the charming and fierce town of Jefferson appears in most of W. Faulkner's novels: The Sound and the Fury (1929 ), As I Lay Dying ( 1930), Sanctuary ( 1931), August Sun (1932)... The land of political, ethnic, cultural conflicts, with all elements: heroes/villains; noble/vile; good/bad; good/evil has encapsulated in it all the misfortunes that swirl people around, making them miserable. Along with the history of Yoknapatawpha are families with complicated relationships that have lasted for many generations (the Compson, Snopes, Sartoris families). In the constant collision between light and darkness, these families have gone from being rich and proud to being poor, depraved, and collapsing and dying. The impression of the harsh, haunting "promised land" of W. Faulkner inspired stories about the clans, families, and people of the Northeast Gaomi region to return to Mo Yan's works. The foundation was formed, and the idea of building Northeast Gaomi into a massive castle, Mo Yan learned from the magical realism writing style of the Colombian writer - G. Marquez. With sentences as powerful as the waves of the Atlantic Ocean, Marquez turned his homeland Colombia into a land of legends instead of a land famous for growing and trading opium. The place name Macondo suddenly appeared before the author's eyes when he saw the name of a banana plantation, it "attracted my attention from the first trips with my grandfather, but only when I became an adult did I discover that I liked it because it sounded so poetic" [139, p.35]. Since then, the village of Macondo has appeared in Marquez's works such as Monologues Watching the Rain by

Isabel in the village of Macondo, The Sea of Lost Times, The Funeral of the Great Mother, The Colonel is Waiting for a Letter... Especially in One Hundred Years of Solitude, Macondo is associated with a village that disappeared along with the extinction of the Hundred Years of Solitude family due to the cursed sin of incest. The seven generations of the Buendía family symbolize the opening, development, prosperity and extinction of mankind. Macondo village was drawn into the wonders brought about by the progress of science and technology, then swept away by the political whirlwind to finally be erased from the lonely world of writer Marquez.

Yoknapatawpha County and Macondo Village are artistic spaces with intertextual characteristics that return many times in Faulkner's works. Marquez "beats in unison with the heart of Gaomi" in Mo Yan's work. The writer tirelessly exploited the "torn sack" of the Northeast Gaomi village, stirring people's hearts with sobs and obsessions from poverty, slovenliness, cruelty, to debauchery, freedom, and desire for love. That has made "a piece of land the size of the palm of the hand and the people and stories of that small land" "an indispensable part of the world, the events that happened there are a small part of world history" [89, p.238]. Existing in Gaomi is the love of "my grandfather", "my grandmother", of the most beautiful and harsh customs, the upheavals, crimes, and the most cruel things that are exposed most realistically and also most legendary. Under his pen, Gaomi sparkles with a miniature image of Chinese society. The consciousness of repaying the motherland exists strongly in Mo Yan, he never leaves the land under his feet. All the bitterness and hardship of countless lives, fates, souls, spirits, and tragic sorrows of people all take place under the Gaomi sky: “in the middle of summer: sometimes dark clouds roll, sometimes deep blue” [84, p.12], in the middle of “the vast fields, barley rolls in golden waves” [84, p.32]… Gaomi is not only beautiful, magical but also too harsh “in the coldest days of winter, heavy snow falls, blocking the entrance, crushing the branches in the garden” [84, p.122], “when the sun is half hidden in the clouds, the other half of the sunlight is extremely harsh (…) the yellow sun is as bright as fire” [84, p.76-77]. People had to fight against harsh customs, when “my grandmother was not yet six years old when she started binding her feet, binding them tighter each day” [83, p.81]; cruel struggles, mutual purges “my hands were tied, a death sentence tag hung around my neck” [94, p.19] and people were tempted by fame, power and money, masks, painful tragedies. All were struggling in the struggle between love and power.

power, fame and conscience. In Gaomi, there are also the most heroic and instinctive people, namely Tu Chiem Ngao, Ton Binh, Tu Ma Kho... In each of these identities, beauty and ugliness, nobility and baseness exist together. They love intensely and have intense desires: "In the early summer of 1983, in the dense locust forest that few people frequent in Sa Tu village, Pastor Maloa respectfully knelt beside his mother who had just recovered from her wounds, his red hands groping all over her body, his red lips muttering something, his blue eyes the same color as the sky looking through the leaves. He whispered, his voice broken..." [84, pp.762-763]. They also had moments of extreme pain: “Truong Ro threw the cake on the ground, Kieu Ky Sa rushed forward to grab it, when her two hands held the cake and stuffed it into her mouth, before she could stand up straight, Truong Ro reached behind her and lifted her skirt, pulling down her dirty pink panties down to her ankles… She was like a dog stealing food, despite her butt being severely battered, she still tried to endure the pain and swallow the cake, then tried to swallow a few more. Again, perhaps the joy of getting food was stronger than the pain of being raped, so she hurriedly ate it all…” [84, p.574]. Through each character’s fate, the writer generalized a turbulent period of modern history of China. Just like that, the fierce things passed before the readers’ eyes, both real and dreamlike. That was also Mo Yan’s deep and unbreakable fate with this “bloody land”!

In reality, there is a real-life Northeast Gaomi, specifically located on the vast map of China. That is the hometown of Gaomi of the writer Mo Yan in the 21st century: the east is next to Jiao County, the south borders Zhucheng, the west borders Anqiu across the Weihe River, the north borders Changyi, adjacent to Pingdu City, located on the vast Changwei Plain and connected to the Jiaodong Peninsula with undulating mountain ranges, a bright pearl of the main Jiaoji railway. That fertile land is the origin of the great Confucian and Taoist doctrines of Confucius, Mencius, and Mohism, and is the land of martial arts of the heroes of Liangshan Marsh in Water Margin (Shi Nai'an). The land filled with the spirit of a ghost story is also the hometown of Pu Songling. Looking at Mo Yan's novel as a whole, this real-life area has been strangely transformed, taking on the appearance of a ghost story "full of magical stories". Mo Yan brought all the joys and sorrows, the happiness and suffering of many people to that land.

If the transformation of themes is a tradition of literature, then the "keyword" homeland has evoked a network of works about diverse countrysides with many volumes.

different places. Not only Mo Yan has built for himself a creative field in the style of "returning to the homeland". Almost every writer has his own "homeland". Cao Xueqin has Dream of the Red Chamber with the Grand View Garden, the red tower and purple pavilion, both splendid and luxurious, but also gloomy and quiet. Covered by a layer of solemn carpet, it cannot conceal the decay that has led to the irreparable decline of the upper class living in Jia's mansion. More broadly, Dream of the Red Chamber is a vast realistic picture of Chinese feudal society on the path of decline. Lu Xun has the countryside of Lu Zhen with many perverse concepts and constraints, where readers see the shame of many characters: AQ, Tuong Lam, Khong At Ky..., behind them is a cold and cruel society that makes us shudder. Like Jia Ping Ao for his hometown Cangzhou, Mo Yan for Gaomi County, Yan Lianke also realized that “homeland is the world of a writer. The place where a writer is born and grows up has a great influence on him”, so he succeeded in bringing the land of his hometown Balou Mountains to the world. “Balou Mountains” has formed an important artistic space, appearing in a series of Yan Lianke’s most representative works: Nien Nguyet Nhat , Nang Kim Lien in Tay Mon Town ; Kien Nganh Nhu Thuy ; Thu Hoat ; Dinh Trang Mong ; Phong Nha Tung … Yan Lianke’s world of Balou has deep roots in Lao Tzu’s concept of the model of “tieu quoc qua dan” (small country with few people). People live in a “natural way”. Therefore, the former Chua villages ( Phong Nha Tung ), Thu Hoat villages ( Thu Hoat )... are all located on the other side of Ba Lau mountain range, isolated from modern society, gathering people living a rustic life, peaceful like a paradise. But Diem Lien Khoa always "threw" into the tranquility of this forgotten historical place the collisions with the outside world. People are uprooted from their identity, give rise to countless desires, lose paradise and fall into tragedy. Or in Vietnamese literature, festivals, village churches, village pagodas, along with cultural traditions, simple and honest people... of Dai Hoang's hometown (Ly Nhan district, Ha Nam) are the materials that create the humanistic writings of writer Nam Cao (1917-1951). The prototype of Dai Hoang's hometown was entrusted by the writer to become a confined, poor, deadlocked Vu Dai village, which became a typical, representative image of the Vietnamese countryside in the semi-colonial feudal society before the August Revolution in 1945. The old Hac ( Old Hac ), Chi Pheo, Thi No ( Chi Pheo ), Ho ( Excessive Life ), Thu ( Song Mort ), Dien ( Bright Moon))… are all “struggling”, living a miserable, tragic life in the “far away” village.

prefecture, far from the province, population no more than two thousand". A Nguyen Ngoc Tu from his homeland of Ca Mau Cape opened up a vast space of the Mekong Delta's rivers and waters with "endless fields". In the desolate context of the Mekong Delta's watery rice fields, there are still people struggling, drifting listlessly because of the burden of making a living...

In the consciousness of returning to the roots, almost every writer realizes that the homeland is his own world. For that reason, they try to turn the countryside into their own "territory" to sow literary seeds. The same goes for Mo Yan. Gaomi in Mo Yan's novels is no longer a desolate plain, a small village with nothing special, but it becomes a version of both China and the world. With this nature, all types of people, all activities, all real or unreal scenes are legally naturalized into the "holy land" of Gaomi. Writer Mo Yan once confided, "... What comes to my mind is all the situation of my homeland. In fact, at the same time I am trying to leave my homeland, I am also gradually moving closer to my homeland unconsciously" [186]. Readers can easily recognize the strong scent of the homeland, and the deep, undying love between Mo Yan and the "bloodland" of Northeast Gaomi village. This relationship therefore opens up a parallel relationship with other writers. Coming from different cultures, writers have picked up ideas and patterns from different texts, consciously or unconsciously, naturally creating new texts with different meanings.

3.1.2. History - attitude and sense of responsibility of writers

Exploiting the historical theme, Mo Yan looks at history from the present with new senses and perceptions: reopening wounds, looking at it and having strong reflections. History, tradition go hand in hand with the reality of life, along with gender, love and overlapping relationships are the ways that the writer exploits to form in his novel genre a complex, cyclical, non-linear, illogical, very "chaotic" structure, without beginning or end.

“Opening China” welcomed a new wind from the world. The reform has transformed literature with a broader and more open view of perception. Looking back at the ups and downs that literature has gone through: the anti-rightist period in 1957, the ten years of the “Cultural Revolution” (1966 – 1976) and the literature of the reform and opening up period (since the 90s). Especially after the Cultural Revolution, many “new era” literatures have appeared. We can mention the literature of wounds, reflective literature, reform literature, radical literature, avant-garde literature, etc. Writers who write about these

their own pain, the wounds of their nation. They expressed their attitudes towards the historical issues they witnessed and experienced, to look back, stand up and move on. Liu Xinyu, “the commander of wound literature” [55, p.259], was brave and dared to declare war first in the struggle between revolutionary realism and the toxic realism of the “Gang of Four” after crushing the counter-revolutionary Jiang Qing clique. The head teacher is the image of “ten years of turmoil”, the school is full of “wounds”, heavily damaged, and the most painful is “in the hearts of people - the profession is destroyed” [55, p.262]. Through the image of the character Tong Bao Qi, Liu Xinyu wanted to cry out: “Save the children buried by the “Gang of Four”!” [55, p.262]. Along with rekindling those wounds, we must mention Lu Xinhua’s Wound (1978). The work reflects the serious danger when people suffer from “internal mental injuries” and calls for “healing wounds”. Thieu Hoa, for nine years, had to carry so much humiliation and so many wounds, so that when it ended, her wounds were still bleeding. From a political perspective, the short story The Wound was the first voice to completely deny the Cultural Revolution. Only then did people truly understand that they had indeed experienced a great disaster, living with evil and vile people and events, so they had to fight against and eliminate everything they had suffered before. Similarly, Phu Dung Town (1981) by Co Hoa is the fate of Tan Thu Dien, a music teacher who was labeled a “rightist” in 1957, and Ho Ngoc Am was accused of being a “new rich farmer” in the “Four Fights” movement. They were classified as category 5 elements, “people below human beings”, and were denounced over and over again countless times. It was not until the spring of 1979 that their wrongful convictions were corrected, they were exonerated, restored as HUMANS, etc. Truong Hien Luong never forgot the dark past that intellectuals like him had to go through: that was the period of the Cultural Revolution. He recorded that dark past truthfully, frankly, and clearly: After 1958, after the “communization”, in addition to the law, all kinds of regimes and regulations were added, they filled all the gaps of rural life in an unprecedentedly harsh way. The author rewrote his own story of living, thinking, and struggling with himself under the so-called cultural regime in Soul and Body, Half a Man is a Woman… And Linh Son is a novel whose theme is the traces of two traumas in Cao Hanh Kien’s life: the terrors of the Cultural Revolution and the misdiagnosis of cancer. The author has made a journey in his lonely self to find his ego and soul.

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