The Position and Pursuits of Intellectuals (Research by the Literature Research Association)

Author: Shi Shuping
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: Although there is a slogan of "For Life" serving as a guiding principle, the overall style within the Literature Research Society is diverse and rich. The major writers, whether in their literary views or creative works, exhibit distinct personal characteristics, many of which are detached from the banner of "For Life" as a form of realism. The overall creative style of the major writers is gentle and refined, reflecting the general tendency of the Literature Research Society in their rich personalities. This style was inherited and continued by a group of young members of the Literature Research Society, represented by Jiangzhe writers such as Ye Shengtao, Zhu Ziqing, Liu Yanling, Feng Zikai, Xia Guanzun, and Yu Pingbo. They added a fresh and ethereal touch to the gentle style, which later came to be known as the "Baima Lake School" literary style. This group of Literature Research Society members occupied a very important position in the literary scene of the 1930s and even became the main impression for later generations to understand the style of the Literature Research Society. However, the creative style of the Literature Research Society was not solely gentle; it also included some rebels. For example, writers like Lu Yin, Wang Yiren, Xu Yuno, and Zhu Xiang belonged to the passionate category. Unlike most "stationary-type" intellectuals of the Literature Research Society, these writers had no fixed jobs and lived in poverty and hardship, facing numerous hardships. They ultimately died young. They belonged to the wandering type of intellectuals, closer to the lower strata of life, and were more sensitive to the harsh side of life than other intellectuals with fixed jobs. They were more likely to voice sorrow in the midst of suffering, and thus their works were filled with romantic passion, bursting with the fire of life. They were the outliers within the Literature Research Society, their style far from gentle, and closer to that of the Creation Society. Lu Yin was a rebellious and unrestrained female writer. Moreover, although Lu Yin also gained recognition in literature with "problem novels," her style was completely different from Bing Xin's gentle and refined demeanor. Her works reflected the life struggles of women from the petty bourgeoisie. Bing Xin had "love" and salvation for the world, while Lu Yin, lacking a loving childhood, was full of doubt and hostility toward the world. Her two marriages, which she scorned as worldly, made her more aware of the inescapable of women in that era. Lu Yin was "a woman swept up by the 'May Fourth' wave and awakened from feudalism." Her rebellious nature and skeptical spirit made her closer to the spirit of the time among the "May Fourth daughters" who ran away from home. As a result, she endured more spiritual suffering and tragically died in May 1934 due to childbirth complications. Her suffering in life and the tragic outcome of her death seemed to symbolize the price modern women had to pay for their awakening. If in the May Fourth New Literature, Yu Dafu was a bold and straightforward male writer who openly expressed the suffering of love and sex, then Lu Yin was one of the earliest female writers to explore the suffering of love and sex. Although her novels were also labeled as "problem novels," discussing philosophical questions like "What is life?"; and her struggles with the "problem of life" were "dressed in the clothes of love," the best example is her "Seaside Friends." However, it is clear that Mao Dun's summary still centered on the theme of "For Life." If we set aside this assumed creative purpose, we might see Lu Yin more clearly. The characteristic of her novels is that she mixed the suffering of love and sex with her "philosophical illness," and there was no issue of who was wearing whose clothes between life and love. The suffering of survival was intertwined with the suffering of sex. In other words, the suffering of sex was an important aspect of the suffering of survival. Lu Yin wrote about the ambiguous attitude of the awakening women of the May Fourth generation toward sex in a romantic and emotional way, an indescribable and unspeakable suffering of love caught between reason and emotion. Representative works include "Seaside Friends," "The Diary of Li Shi," and "The Sorrow of Or." Whether in terms of the subject matter and expression of her novels or the experiences and fate of the writer, Lu Yin was an outlier in the Literature Research Society. Her novels were a romantic, decadent, and rebellious style, completely different from the gentle style of the Literature Research Society, and were quite controversial at the time. Zhu Xiang was a strange figure in the Literature Research Society, where his rebellious nature and elegance were miraculously combined. His rebellious nature referred to his personality, while his elegance referred to his creative style. The two were contradictory yet harmoniously combined into a talented poet. Zhu Xiang's rebellious nature was evident in his life experiences. During his time at Tsinghua University, someone was hired to teach at Tsinghua, but Zhu Xiang declared, "I might as well teach him, he can't teach me?" and ultimately ruined the other man's job opportunity. Zhu Xiang was so poor during his studies that he didn't even have money to eat, yet he still funded the irregular literary journal "New Literature" with his own money, publishing his translations and creations, but it was forced to stop after only two issues due to financial reasons. When he was about to graduate from Tsinghua, he strongly resented the rigid and pretentious rule that required him to report for breakfast or be considered absent, and he deliberately rebelled against it, ultimately being expelled. In August 1927, Zhu Xiang went to the United States to study at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. His strong sense of national pride and rebellious nature made him feel like a "lost in a flock," and he angrily left Lawrence University when the French textbook called Chinese people "monkeys." In January 1928, he transferred to the University of Chicago, but the following year, he transferred to Ohio University when a professor suspected he hadn't returned borrowed books, unable to bear the humiliation. In September 1929, Zhu Xiang returned to China early to support his family and taught at institutions such as Wuhan University and Anhui University. Due to frequent unpaid salaries, his living conditions grew increasingly difficult. When his child was less than a year old, he died of starvation because he had no milk to feed him. The poet's innocent fantasies about life were completely shattered by the harsh reality. In 1932, because the Anhui University administration changed the name of the "English Department of Literature" to the "English Department of Literature" due to a mere one-character difference, the honest and rebellious poet angrily resigned from his position. In the following year and a half, he drifted from place to place, earning a living by writing, and ultimately took his own life by jumping into a river due to poverty, illness, and mental exhaustion at the age of 29. Zhu Xiang's personality combined the pride of traditional Chinese scholars and romance, but it was completely out of sync with the real world, making his life a tragedy. Strangely enough, his poetry was full of elegant beauty, neither a furious and radical critique of reality nor a praise in harmony with the times, but rather "free from restlessness, desire, and the slightly exaggerated dazzling brilliance" of composure and elegance. For example, in "The Little River," unlike Zhou Zuoren's companion poem that contained a struggle against life, it interwove the beauty of rhythm with a very composed writing style. Works like "The Lotus-Picking Song" and "The Lullaby" show that Zhu Xiang's poetry drew on the soul of traditional Chinese ci poetry in form, with a strong sense of music and soft, warm content, holding an important place in the history of the development of Chinese new poetry. "In the writing of poetry, what is meant is that new poetry should not be separated from old poetry, only using a broader rhyme and line structure, and only referring to forms like the sonnet or other poetic forms, but using pure Chinese emotions to handle the words within the scope of traditional Chinese poetry, and writing his own poetry. The characteristics of Zhu Xiang's poetry lie here," "The author's calmness and subtlety place his poetry in a position of classical and luxurious achievement, far from the entire literary interest." Such a form and aesthetic made Zhu Xiang's poetry somewhat lonely in his time, but looking back, one would discover the distant charm in his beautiful and elegant poetry. And his exploration of poetic meter and rhyme in his poetry made another important contribution to the history of the development of new poetry. P201-203