On Wang Meng's Cultural Personality

The intellectual's cultural personality has become a hot issue in the study of culture and ideology recently. Taking Wang Meng, a well-known contemporary writer, as a typical case, this article explores and analyzes the full structure and connotation of Weng Meng's cultural personality in many ways, unfolding the unique and complex nature of Wang Meng's role in contemporary Chinese literary history, so as to provide a reference in building up the cultural personality of Chinese intellectuals in our time.This article assumes that Wang Meng's connection with politics occupies a dominant part and becomes a core in the structure of his personality. Wang Meng is a writer not to be ignored in the study of the relationship between politics and literature when we review both the history of contemporary Chinese literature and the spiritual distillation of Chinese intellectuals in the 20th century. He arrived at his spiritual home in the political belief after a protracted and frustrated life. Politics has unusually and greatly impacted his literary activities by both helping shape his unique literary creation style, and, at same time, by impairing the profoundness and scope of his works when revealing human nature.Wang Meng's historic affection in traditional culture forms another significant aspect of his cultural personality. The combination of Confucianism creams, such as being actively engaged in secular life, concerning one's country and people and taking political affairs as one's own responsibility, and the communist ideals leads to his characteristic sense of anxiety and suffering and a strong desire for social and political participation. He highlighted and exhibited the traditional Confucianism spirits in his literary viewpoints and creative experience, and, accordingly shaped his own literary concepts. He also absorbed some positive thoughts from Zhuangism, and tried to set up a mechanism in mentally overstepping the real life.As a writer in the specific historic period, Wang Meng's cultural personality is also widely influenced by foreign culture, especially by former Soviet culture. As a key emotional knot, Soviet culture recorded Wang Meng's revolutionary career andglories in his life, reflected the cultural ordeals and spiritual anxiety of Chinese intellectuals in a century-long period. Being influenced by Soviet culture is also a process of his enriching and overstepping Soviet literature. In 80's of the last century, facing the challenge of the foreign cultures, Wang Meng first made an attempt in using modernism in his literary creation, marking his pioneering posture in overstepping the foreign cultures.Experiencing a life full of frustration and ordeals, Wang Meng, with his unique wisdom, highlighted a spectacular personality that combines Chinese traditional cultural spirits and modern concepts. He has continually widened his life horizon through an abundant life experience and a thorough understanding of humor. He calls for tolerance, mediocre and diversification, revealing his wide view and breadth of mind. However, his obsession in mediocre in his late works impaired and withered his personality to some extent.Going beyond viewing Wang Meng's literary life as a mere writer's one, this article explores Wang Meng's abundant lifestyle and unique significance exhibited by his multiple identities as thinker, cultural official, social activist and revolutionalist, so as to make a new judgment on his cultural personality and to initiate a further profound study on Wang Meng.