Wang Meng (author)

Wang Meng (Chinese王蒙, Pinyin Wang Meng, born 1934 in Beijing) is a Chinese writer.

Biography

As the son of a professor of philosophy, he grew up under the rule of the Japanese occupation. At the middle school, barely thirteen, his political involvement began with his joining the New Democratic Youth League, a forerunner of the Communist Youth League. After Beijing was occupied by the troops of the Red Army in 1948, he went as secretary for the district youth organization in a first office.

At 19, started his first literary creation phase, his debut work, a novel titled Long Live the youth, is about the student life, but was not published until 1979. Publik were stories of him for the first time in 1955 with Xiao Dour, subsequently in the same year Spring Festival and the newcomer to the Organization Department, in which he deals critically with the shortcomings of the organization system. He succeeded though, to make a name for the releases, but they should shortly give rise to criticism by officials as the Hundred Flowers Movement (1956 ) took a turn and in the Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957 ) resulted. So he disappeared at age 24, discredited as a rightist, at a labor camp not far from Beijing.

In 1961 he was rehabilitated for a short time up to a certain degree, and entrusted with teaching at the College of Education of Beijing, however, the prohibition of literary activity remained, and a year later there was another one exile to Ili Autonomous Region of the Kazakhs in Xinjiang on the border with the Soviet Union.

There he was to spend the next 16 years, but he did not sit idly but learned the Uighur language to eventually translate stories. Own works he wrote at this time only two.

After the Cultural Revolution in China, there was an opening, and at the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee in December 1978 a new political and economic policy was taken. During this time, walked quickly to the zeitgeist and the values ​​consciousness.

As a result of the decisions of the plenary Wang Meng was rehabilitated. He returned to Beijing and was back down fully to his literary work. Perhaps encouraged by a Writers' Congress in September 1979, where the new line of literature should be determined, he wrote the short story The Eye of Night (1979 ), in which he rehabilitated the privileges addiction squad criticized.

In addition to the critique of the social circumstances in this short story Wang Meng admits to have found inspiration in the shaping of the techniques of the modern European novel, namely the Stream of Consciousness. He is variously regarded as a pioneer in this respect; he was the first and most famous Chinese writer, who had begun to experiment after the Cultural Revolution with Western influences. In China the 80s Wang Meng initiated experiments a trend and connected so that the debate over modernism in Chinese literature.

After a first stay abroad 1980, Wang Meng a year later a member of the Council of the Chinese Writers' Association, again a year later Vice President of the Chinese PEN Centre and also a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. Since 1983, he occupied the post of chief editor of the magazine folk literature. 1985, Wang Meng guest of West Berlin festival Horizonte Festival of World Cultures ( No.3, 1985). In his delegation also traveled the poet Bei Dao, the future Nobel Prize winner Gao Xingjian as well as the writer Zhang Jie to Berlin.

As Minister of Culture (1986 to 1989) he made a reputation as a liberal patron of the arts and literature. As the only minister he refused after the June events 1989, to condemn the democracy movement of students as a counter-revolution and was shortly afterwards replaced by a hardliner. In a subsequent campaign, which was held under the guise of literary criticism, this successor would further damage him. Wang Meng was however successful in court before it.

Wang Meng was after 1990 for a few months a guest of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Heinrich -Böll -Haus in Langenbroich.

Bibliography

Stories

  • Xiao Dour, 1955
  • Spring Festival, 1956
  • The newcomer to the Organization Department, 1956
  • Night Rain, 1962
  • Eyes, 1962
  • The most valuable 1978
  • The Eye of the Night, 1979
  • The Grateful Heart, 1979
  • Butterfly, 1980
  • Voices of Spring, 1980
  • The kite string, 1980
  • Andante Cantabile, 1981

Novel

  • Long live the youth. 1953
  • Rare gift folly. ( Frauenfeld 1994 ÜBS. Ulrich Kautz )
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