In 2019, after winning the Nobel Prize, Mo Yan volunteered in front of the Shakespeare statue to complete the transition from novelist to playwright in the second half of his life. 2023, the publication and staging of the play Crocodile witnessed an important point in Mo Yan's transition. Since then, Mo Yan's literary creation began to tilt more toward theater, and a "playwright Mo Yan" transformed from a "novelist" gradually came into the public's view.
In July 2024, after "Crocodile," "Our Jing Ke," and "Farewell My Concubine," Mo Yan's other two dramatic works, "The Brocade Clothes" and "The Fragrance of Wine," were released by Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House-KEY-Can Culture. Among them, "Jin Yi" is Mo Yan won the "Nobel Prize" after five years of hibernation, in 2017 in the publication of the official publication of the first work, marking the beginning of the transition of Mo Yan's creative work, this is the first time to launch a single-volume book. The fragrance of wine" includes "sorghum wine", "sandalwood torture" two plays, is mo yan after thirty years according to his classic novel of the same name re-creation.
The Brocade: The first work after the Nobel Prize, the first original theater play
In 2012, Mo Yan, who won the Nobel Prize, seemed to enter a period of "silence" in his literary creation under the spotlight of the whole world. Until 2017, Mo Yan hibernated for five years to return with an original opera script "Jin Yi" (first published in People's Literature, Issue 9, 2017), which also marked the beginning of an important transformation of his literary creation.
Among the many forms of theater, Mo Yan is fond of "opera". He once confessed, "I grew up watching plays. Opera creation has always been my dream." Opera in Mo Yan's novels have had a lot of performance, for example, he had Shandong Mao cavity of this local opera elements skillfully integrated into the Tanxiang Penalty. Jin Yi is Mo Yan's first time to use opera as a complete carrier to create.
The inspiration for the plot of "The Cock Transforms a Man" in Jin Yi came from a folk legend that his mother told Mo Yan when he was a child. After decades, from listening to his mother's stories when he was a child to the official publication of the single book, "The Brocade Clothes" can be said to be the book of Mo Yan's dream of returning to his beginnings, witnessing his transformation from a storytelling child to a "storyteller".
The Scent of Wine: You can't help but sing along as you read it
The Fragrance of Wine is a collection of two opera scripts, Sorghum Wine and Sandalwood Punishment. Based on Mo Yan's most famous story "Red Sorghum", "Sorghum Wine" creatively rewrites the sad era of "My Grandfather" and "My Grandmother" in the language of popular opera. The story of "Red Sorghum" is based on the story of "My Grandfather" and "My Grandmother".
Thirty years after the story of "Red Sorghum" was first published, Mo Yan chose to retell the unfinished story of those novels with stage, tracing light and rhythm. In "Sorghum Wine", the novel character design and plot direction make the story of "Red Sorghum" take on a new life, and those minor characters who were like shadows in the original novel, such as Liu Luohan and Shan Bianlang, have become dazzling protagonists with personalities, sorrows and joys in the new version. The People's Literature commented, "The new character settings and stories as well as the new way of presenting them allow us to get close to the land, the earth, where red sorghum is planted and grows, starting from the sense of language and rhyme."
The Sandalwood Torture is a full-length novel by Mo Yan. The published opera script, Sandalwood Penalty, on the other hand, is a collaboration between Mo Yan and Li Yuntao, based on Mo Yan's novel of the same name. The work combines the national treasures of "Shandong Maoqiang", "Shandong qinshu" and the art of opera into one, displaying a high degree of linguistic charm.
Why rewrite his classic novel after decades? In Mo Yan's words: although there are numerous adapted versions in front of him, he still hopes to solve some problems about these classic stories himself.
Mo Yan said that these two new books are his own "reading and can not help but sing along". If the pen name "Mo Yan" is initially a kind of "less talk" self-criticism, then these two "singing" written out of the new book, is Mo Yan debut decades, to highly condensed, With the highly condensed and rhythmic language art, Mo Yan has returned to his original intention and starting point of creation - writing according to rhyme, reading by ear, and paying homage to the art of folk opera. The publisher said that with the listing of the two new books "Jin Yi" and "The Scent of Wine", the arrangements and performances of the related theatrical works are also being prepared in full swing.
