On the wilderness, a poet is shouting at the top of his lungs: Western Modernist Literary Studies

Author: Ma Xiaozhao
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-07-01
Features: This book is divided into two parts. The first part is a study of Western modernist literary trends, focusing on exploring the historical and psychological roots, aesthetic tendencies, and literary artistic experiments of the most representative literary trends in Western modernism from the perspective of modern human cultural genesis. The second part is a study of several theoretical issues in Western modernist literature, further elaborating from the perspective of modern human cultural genesis the typical theoretical thoughts, aesthetic pursuits, and artistic innovations of Western modernist literature. The specific entry point of this research on Western modernist literature mainly manifests in two aspects: , starting from the cultural phenomenon of the historical rationalist cultural tradition in the West for over a thousand years and the non-historical rationalist cultural trend since the late 19th century intersecting and breaking, to analyze the cultural psychological roots and value consciousness of Western modernist literature; second, starting from the aesthetic phenomenon of the dominant classical aesthetic tradition in the West for over a thousand years and the modern aesthetic innovation since the late 19th century colliding and permeating, to interpret the aesthetic pursuits, artistic practices, and value consciousness of Western modernist literature. Excerpt: Western literature has been playing the role of complementing historical rationality with value rationality in the spiritual realm since its birth in ancient Greece. Therefore, we can express Jesus' words in the Bible, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's," as "Rationality belongs to history, and sensibility belongs to literature." At the same time, in the long river of rationalist cultural thought in the West, because literature has always taken the historical view expressed by Greek mythology and the Bible as its starting point, it has always relied on historical rationality as its support when fulfilling its value rationality function; or, it has always relied on historical progress as the stage for its practical activities. On this stage of literary practice supported by historical progress, Western literature has simultaneously performed aesthetic freedom observation rooted in the rationalist tradition of Olympus and aesthetic freedom immersion rooted in the passionate tradition of Orpheus. Aesthetic freedom observation and aesthetic freedom immersion have gradually evolved into Greek humanistic cultural spirit and Hebraic humanistic cultural spirit traditions through the philosophical theories of Socrates and Plato, who merged "knowledge and virtue" into one, and Aristotle, who believed that "seeking knowledge and pleasure" comes from nature, as well as the divine radiance of Plotinus. Therefore, in the binary opposition and contradiction of rationality and sensibility, history and ethics, reality and ideal, the essence of Western literature is either to achieve the symbol of "understanding necessity" and "transcending necessity" in the spiritual freedom through an aesthetic way of recognizing the eternal opposition and contradiction between the two, or to transcend the ruthless opposition and contradiction between the two. After Western literature was nurtured from mythology, it has always relied on theology and philosophy to fulfill its mission of interpreting the historical and social significance of society and the moral ideals of life. Therefore, the ancient Greeks believed that poets were the recipients of the Muse's favor, singing and chanting, while medieval people replaced the Muse with God, viewing literature as a symbolic allegory for interpreting God's will. In the 17th century, Descartes, with "I think, therefore I am," took human rational thinking as the essence of human nature, thereby extending literature from God and the divine to the rational thinking of humans activated by the great changes in society. The Romantic intellectual and cultural movement at the beginning of the 19th century further regarded poetry and literature as closely related to human natural emotions and subjective spiritual freedom. Mystical deities, gods, and rationality began to transform into the creative freedom of the human mind. German classical philosophy, represented by Kant, explained theoretically that the essence of literary art lies in bridging the gap between necessity and freedom, rationality and sensibility, thereby achieving the spiritual freedom of humanity. Kant said, "Properly speaking, people can only call the products produced through freedom, that is, the actions based on reason through one's intention, art." Hegel believed that the essence and purpose of literary art is the aesthetic observation and representation of the universal spiritual freedom embodied in individual life images. Therefore, Western literature has always played the role of Hermes within the framework of rationalist values, helping people dispel their spiritual confusion and their complex emotions through aesthetic freedom. As a result, in the traditional sense of the West, "poetry" has always been closely intertwined with "thought," and "thought" in the traditional sense has always been interwoven with traditional "knowledge." Traditional "knowledge" has always been closely linked with "logic" that can be guaranteed by divinity or rationality, or with "facts" that can be verified by experience and life. Therefore, traditional Western "poetry" and literature have always used transparent, coherent language discourse to convey clear and lucid ideological connotations. As Heidegger pointed out, traditional Westerners' "thought" has always been on the logical, which is no different from being in a state of "rootless drifting." He believed that beneath the logical, there is something deeper and more authentic. This deeper and more authentic root is the "thought" of modern people, and also the "poetry" of modern people. The value-oriented turn of modern Western philosophy and literature since the late 19th century, along with the shift in values and the focus on language symbols, finally shook the framework of rationalist values, pushing traditional historical rationality and value rationality to merge at a deeper, more authentic root. In the development of Western philosophy, the common practice is to broadly summarize the entire Western philosophy from ancient Greece to the 20th century into three stages: metaphysics (before the 1st century), epistemology (after the 17th century), and the linguistic turn (after the late 19th century). The development of Western literature has also been influenced by these changes, undergoing subtle transformations accordingly. I believe that the linguistic turn is ultimately just a shift in human cognitive methodology, or a paradigm revolution and axis shift within the field of epistemology. The real philosophical direction shift behind the linguistic turn, or the real philosophical direction shift that transcends the scope of epistemology and forms a corresponding nature with the metaphysical and epistemological stages, is the value-oriented turn. The linguistic turn is actually one of the epistemological responses driven by the value-oriented turn in Western philosophy, although this response is so huge that it almost covers the voice of the value-oriented turn itself, but if we listen carefully, we can still discern the echoes of the value-oriented turn in modern Western philosophy and feel the wonderful harmony between poetry and literature, thought and philosophy, which have also undergone a value-oriented turn. The original purpose of Western philosophy was to explore metaphysical issues such as the origin of the world and the occurrence of humanity. Later, it focused on epistemological issues such as how humans understand the world and life. Then, it turned to value-oriented issues such as ethics and life views. The value-oriented turn in modern Western philosophy began in the late 19th century with humanistic philosophy. Schopenhauer's philosophy is fundamentally about the freedom of humans and the meaning of life, among other ethical issues. Nietzsche sought to establish a "practical philosophy" to study life and moral behavior. Bergson demanded that intuition guide people to pursue the other world. Existentialists believed that their philosophy was primarily a metaphysics closely related to ethics. The founder of the Freiburg school of neo-Kantianism, Windelband, explicitly proposed the concept of value theory. He said, "Philosophy can never be divorced from the concept of value; it is always strongly and clearly influenced by the concept of value. Philosophy is general value theory." Croce, a neo-Hegelian, believed that there could be no objective theory of historical development, only subjective evaluations of historical events. He declared, "All true history is the history of the present." Therefore, Croce acknowledged that his philosophy had the same task as religion. The positivist Comte believed that the fundamental guarantee of knowledge lies in its usefulness to humans. Pragmatists repeatedly emphasized that their philosophy is a philosophy of action, a practical philosophy. Neo-Thomism openly stated that their ethics is "revealed ethics." The literary value-oriented turn first changed the traditional free symbolic tradition of literature. The free symbol of understanding necessity and the free symbol of transcending necessity were replaced by a new value-oriented meaning. This change was particularly evident in the mainstream modernist literature of the 20th century in the West, where it caused waves of turmoil. In fact, in the literary world of the so-called "Lost Generation" writers Hemingway and Fitzgerald at the beginning of the 20th century, these new waves of literary value-oriented meaning had already begun to ripple. Hemingway's hard-boiled characters, such as Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea, who remain optimistic and composed in the face of failure, are undoubtedly solitary free singers in this new literary value-oriented meaning. The protagonist in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, who unwaveringly dedicates his youth and life to pursuing the lost "golden girl" dream, is undoubtedly a great literary value-oriented meaning solitary free hero. Their only choice in the face of life's victory or failure is to remain steadfast in their subjective spiritual realm, always smiling sweetly, chasing the wonderful dream. This subjective spiritual meaning of freedom has foretold the emergence of the "Sisyphus" spirit formally named by Camus. Representative works of Symbolist literature, such as John Keats' The Rider by the Sea, continue the optimistic and fatalistic spirit of the solitary free heroes in the "Lost Generation" through the unfortunate fate of several generations with the sea and their optimistic attitude toward fate. Existentialist literature has further directly expressed the complete turn of Western literary value-oriented pursuit through its unique artistic conception. It openly turns the meaning of life from the epistemological pursuit of nihilistic absurdity to the value-oriented confrontation with nihilistic absurdity. For example, Sartre's existentialist literature, with the warning "existence precedes essence," calls on people to break free from the constraints of institutional culture and the "hell of others," and to give the world and life value and meaning through their own free choices. The Nouveau Roman movement, through the dissolution of traditional literary purposes, content, and value meanings, threw off the metaphysical human-centeredism from the front door of epistemology, and then, through the construction of new literary purposes, content, and value meanings of the text, picked up the human-centeredism of ordinary life from the back door of value theory. Therefore, the Nouveau Roman movement and existentialist literature are, returning the truly value-rational literature to value rationality. They have even extended Sartre's literary meaning setting of "I write, therefore I am," and further given the countless worlds and the masses an infinite freedom and value creation with "I read, therefore I am." The value-oriented turn has also brought about a shift in value concepts. The contradictions in human social history can be generally summarized as a series of binary opposites: class-individual, necessity-accident, future-present, essence-phenomenon, universal-particular, etc. Traditional Western value concepts have always naturally taken the first item in the binary opposites as the basis for thinking about the value of history and life. The essence of this can be summarized as: history is the history of human progress, it contains undeniable necessity and eternal to the future, and it has the right to sacrifice the accidental and individual present for the necessary and collective future. The value-oriented turn in modern Western philosophy has brought about a shift in value concepts, aiming to subvert the traditional specifications of the binary opposites. Many representatives of voluntarism have shifted the focus of philosophical attention to the life will of humans. Bergson's so-called life impetus creation refers to the creation of individual life will. Existentialism focuses on the "existence" of the individual. Positivism limits human knowledge and science to the realm of phenomena (experience). Machism......