Difficult choice

Author: Zhao Yuan / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2001-01-01
Features: The "Library" primarily selects the most original and forward-looking outstanding works from academic books published by this press, while also appropriately including some academic works that, though not originally published by this press, closely align with its publishing style. The "Library" will be published in installments. Each book will be accompanied by an academic preface written by experts and scholars, providing a specific analysis and objective evaluation of its content. Academic research and cultural dissemination require strong support from society and the persistent efforts of dedicated individuals. We hope that this publishing endeavor will receive enthusiastic support and assistance from the reading public, academia, and the publishing industry. Let us join hands in fostering an academic atmosphere and spreading cultural knowledge.
The "Library" primarily selects the most original and forward-looking outstanding works from academic books published by this press, while also appropriately including some academic works that, though not originally published by this press, closely align with its publishing style. The "Library" will be published in installments. Each book will be accompanied by an academic preface written by experts and scholars, providing a specific analysis and objective evaluation of its content. Academic research and cultural dissemination require strong support from society and the persistent efforts of dedicated individuals. We hope that this publishing endeavor will receive enthusiastic support and assistance from the reading public, academia, and the publishing industry. Let us join hands in fostering an academic atmosphere and spreading cultural knowledge.
Post-Revolutionary Chinese society itself was a huge contradiction. A person "could live by it, but could also die by it," "not death, but life"—how often had modern Chinese intellectuals encountered such a "great era" and such contradictory living conditions? Of course, it must be acknowledged that post-Revolutionary China's literary world did not produce the "greatest writers and artists," nor did it produce China's own Pushkin or Dostoevsky. However, this does not change the following fact: successful novels about intellectuals written after the Revolution were also produced under the impact of "an inner storm reflecting an external storm." They emerged in an era when "the thing called the soul" was split into two or several parts. They were the joint consequences of the sharp intensification of social contradictions and the sharp intensification of human spiritual contradictions. Moreover, from this point onward, in the long process of discovering contradictions, new literary images and new creative contradictions were continuously produced. Thus, it can be said without exaggeration that it was from the special contradictory phenomena of modern Chinese history that the unique character of modern Chinese literature and modern fiction emerged, as well as the basic characteristics of the creation of intellectual images in modern fiction—the grasp of era contradictions through the character contradictions of individuals, the embodiment of characters as "historical people" and their connection to the past and future, that is, the position of modern intellectuals in the historical chain, and the embodiment of characters as "social people" and their relationship to the other parts of society, that is, the position of modern intellectuals in the overall society they lived in.
Therefore, when you hear authors in their creative discussions from that time confessing the suffering caused by "contradictions," you need not feel excessive pity for them. Without Mao Dun's intense inner conflict in 1927 on Mount Guling, there would have been no Erosion; although the success of Erosion was due to "contradictions," its shortcomings were also due to "contradictions." It cannot be imagined that if the contradictions in Ba Jin had suddenly disappeared one morning, there would still have been the Ba Jin of modern literary history, or his works marked by a distinct personal imprint! In a certain sense, his literary achievements depended precisely on those "contradictions," no matter how painful he expressed them. Even works of lower quality were no exception. Lu Xun found the "meaning" of the book in the characters and the author's contradictions in Ten Years of Small Life (by Ye Yongzhen). He also discovered the value of Lu Xun's novel February with the same critical eye. The consequences of historical events often exceeded the expectations of those involved. When mass killings were taking place all over the southern half of China, who could have imagined that the tragedy of history would instead lead to the general maturation of literature? The discovery of "contradictions" even affected the literary style of the entire period. When people discussed the decline of the "May Fourth" romanticism after the Revolution, they inevitably attributed it to changes in the era's life, the deliberate avoidance of theory (accompanied by one-sidedness), and the variations in the life experiences and psychological states of writers. These were undoubtedly conditions, and important ones at that, but the following conditions should not be ignored: writers suddenly found life to be more complex, and the simple lyrical forms they had long used were like clothes that had become too small due to the growth of the human body. They needed to find novel forms and styles that could accommodate the complex impressions and feelings of life. Thus, on the one hand, there was the prosperity of long novels mentioned above; on the other hand, there was a demand for precise realism, and this demand was clearly focused on this point: writing about people, writing about characters. The lost ones. The vacillators. The avengers.
If we are not satisfied with pointing out the general characteristics of "contradiction" and "complexity" as the general features of the image creation of this period's novels—both in content and in the author's way of thinking—and instead grasp the psychological state of the authors at the time of creation through their works, then you will find it easier to capture the general extremity of the authors' psychological states during that period. What you see is the distinctness of the images, the intensity of individuality, the clearly outlined contours (often omitting the intermediate parts), and images with clear light and shadow (lacking finer layers). Characters are clearly distinguished from one another, and their "essence" is obvious. The ambiguity of life and the vagueness of character are excluded from literature. The most representative examples naturally include Mao Dun. The trilogy Erosion is the starting point of Mao Dun's novelistic style—in this starting point, almost all the important features or germs of Mao Dun's artistic personality are included: clear images, strong tones, broad pictures, and each person as a "representative." It should also be mentioned that Ba Jin. When writing the characters in Destruction, Rebirth, and the Love Trilogy, he usually employed the principle of contrast, with characters placed at two poles (or multiple poles). The contrast between them was so clear that it was almost impossible to see "discrepancies," "crossings," or "overlaps." It is more likely that life was not originally like this, but that the authors saw it this way. This was creation in a state of passion. Lu Xun once believed that creative work in a state of passion would kill "poetic beauty." Wen Yiduo, on the other hand, once mentioned that he often wrote poems when his feelings had passed, after impressions and emotions had been refined by time. In his view, such poems could avoid being "excessively revealing." However, it can be argued that the unique poetic charm of passion could also lead to unique creation. Not only should image types (including aesthetic types of images) and image essence (including aesthetic essence) be diverse, but creative states (aesthetic psychology, emotional states, etc.) should also be diverse—the latter is precisely the subjective basis for the former diversity. Before and after this period, intellectual images were rarely as distinct and vivid as during this time. Post-Revolutionary novelists thought about life in powerful passion and in extreme psychological states, and "passion" and "psychological states" entered literary characters in their respective ways. The extremity of this mindset was not, as imagined, incompatible with the contradictions of life and cognition. Contradictory, yet extreme—such similar thinking characteristics are rare? On the one hand, there was an unprecedentedly complicated understanding of the world and vision of knowledge; on the other hand, there was the extremity of thinking—which inevitably created a special aesthetic effect. For example: as individuals, characters, compared to the characters in May Fourth novels (in general works), exhibited complexity in their social essence and aesthetic characteristics, contradiction within their own individuality, while the world picture (mainly composed of relationships between characters and characters' relationships with the environment) was simple. This "extremity" (of mindset) and "simplicity" (of image) could not but limit the novelists' further exploration and expression of the complexity and contradictions of life. This situation was demonstrated by the three types of images introduced by the novel world around the time of the Revolution: the lost ones, the vacillators, and the avengers. These were character types created by the Revolution, and the "confusion" and "revenge impulse" among them belonged to the universal spiritual reactions of intellectuals at the very moment of the Revolution's failure. The confusion was so intense that it was not something anyone could encounter. The spiritual shock of the Revolution's failure to intellectuals was more intense than that of the May Fourth New Culture Movement. The demand for anti-feudal democracy had accumulated over a long period. Even the May Fourth Movement had its own process from gradual progress to a stormy advance. But it was only in the year between the Northern Expedition's declaration in 1926 and the "April 12th" coup in 1927 that it could truly be described as "a mixture of laughter and tears," "something to sing about and weep over," and "a performance of all the changes in human affairs" (Mao Dun, Erosion·Pursuit). Chinese intellectuals, even from their personal experiences, could anticipate the resistance and backlash of the feudal conservatives against the New Culture. But their limited political experience was not enough to deal with the sudden turn of events that occurred around the "April 12th" coup. Resentment, confusion, vacillation, and a revenge impulse controlled a considerable number of intellectuals. Mao Dun's trilogy Erosion captured the momentary confusion of youth after the Revolution's failure and vividly depicted the important spiritual reaction of intellectuals at the turning point of history. "Confusion," however, was not a unique spiritual phenomenon of the post-Revolutionary era. During the May Fourth period and slightly later, there were the confusion and the confused ones of that period. From Wang Tongzhao's The Bell, Zhang Wentian's Journey, to later works like Lu Yin's The Wind and the Snow, Manli, Sacrifices of the Times, and The Confession of Lan Tian, as well as Ding Ling's Meng Ke, The Diary of Lady Sha Fei, and Summer Vacation, all expressed confusion about the popular of the May Fourth period and the "New Thought" (mostly limited to the ideas of "freedom of love" and "individual liberation"). The confusion was filled with the heavy sense of disillusionment of idealists who had hit a wall. The confusion of the lost ones in Erosion differs from that of the May Fourth novel characters in some fundamental aspects. Here, the confusion is more fundamental: the future and destiny of China after the Revolution, the path of intellectuals after the Revolution; thus, it can only be the confusion of intellectuals after the Revolution. In Erosion·Pursuit, the brand-new copy of Whether China? (meaning "Where is China Heading?") on the bookshelf of the young Zhang Manqing makes the origin and nature of the confusion clear beyond doubt.