Chapter 14 Section 3 Different representations of the image of intellectuals in contemporary texts

Since the publication of Mao Zedong's "Speech", contemporary Chinese literature has entered a literary stage in which workers, peasants and soldiers are the characters, and the image of intellectuals has always been a supporting role that has been transformed.Even in the new era, novels with rural themes still dominate, and the so-called realistic literature mainly refers to this kind of literature.Until the mid-to-late 1990s, novels with urban themes gradually gained the upper hand, and intellectual themes gradually became an important content for writers to write.However, generally speaking, whether it is compared with Chinese classical novels or world literature, novels on intellectual subjects have not yet achieved shocking results, nor have a very complete image of intellectuals appeared.

In July 1979, "The Second Handshake" was finally published.This book was identified as a "reactionary novel" during the "Cultural Revolution", and it was circulated secretly in at least six different versions of manuscripts during the "Cultural Revolution". The Forgotten Novel is the first novel depicting the image of intellectuals in the new era.The older generation of scientists such as Ding Jieqiong and Su Guanlan had no way to serve the country in old China, so they had to live in a foreign country. After the founding of New China, they returned resolutely and devoted themselves to the scientific cause of the motherland.The main reason why the novel does not have much artistic achievement is that its "description of modern Chinese history and the road of intellectuals did not deviate from the narrative framework established after the 1950s." (25) Obviously, the intellectuals in the novel lack The independent thinking spirit and critical consciousness only cater to a mainstream political discourse, which is the limitation of the novel.

In the early 1980s, no matter from novels, reportage or poetry, in fact, a character image was created, that is, the image of reflective intellectuals.From the scar literature starting from "The Class Teacher" to the root-seeking literature, from the free poetry starting from "Today" to the hazy poetry after representing the mainstream poetry discourse, they all present an era of painful reflection, interrogation, criticism and even anger from different aspects. image of intellectuals. In these descriptions, the poet Bei Dao portrays the image of a lyrical protagonist in his unique poetic form.This image was also the highest image at the time.Generally speaking, only novels or prose or narrative poems can describe vivid characters, but in fact, lyric poems can also describe vivid and profound characters.What the former presents is a flesh and blood character image mainly external, while what the latter presents to readers is a textured internal character image that removes all details and exterior.For different readers, the grasp of the two characters is also different.Some people need a complete character from a novel, but some people can get a deeper character in poetry.Such as the image of the hesitant, worried and angry intellectuals in Qu Yuan's "Li Sao".This kind of character image is simple and mainly based on emotion, but it is profound, pure and more touching.

Among the novels in the 1980s, the novels that profoundly remind intellectuals of their rational life are Zhang Xianliang's series.Although Zhang Yonglin, the protagonist of the novel, lived under the harsh labor reform and dictatorship, not only lost his sexual ability, but also suffered alienation in his mind, but he was still thinking unremittingly.At the beginning of the novel, it is revealed that this is the voice of an intellectual: "Soak three times in clear water, three times in bloody water, and three times in lye." A. Tolstoy used this in the inscription of the second part of "The Course of Suffering" "1918". These words vividly illustrate the arduousness of ideological remolding of old intellectuals.Of course, he was referring to the bourgeois intellectuals from the Tsarist Russia era.

However, these words should be admitted to be enlightening for me and my peers who have accepted feudal culture and bourgeois culture alive.So, I came up with an idea: I want to write a book.This "one book" will describe a young man who was born in a bourgeois family and even had hazy bourgeois humanitarian and democratic ideas. After a "course of suffering", he finally became a believer in Marxism. This "one book" is generally titled "Apocalypse of the Materialists".Rather, it is not "one", but nine "series novels" under this general title. (26)

From this introduction, it can be seen that Zhang Xianliang wanted to portray a materialist intellectual.Yes, throughout the novel, the protagonist Zhang Yonglin is constantly discussing and dissecting himself and society.This is rare throughout the literature of the 1980s, showing the depth of an intellectual. In the prose creation throughout the 1980s, the old writer Ba Jin portrayed the image of a repentant intellectual in Caprice.This is extremely rare. Although Ba Jin's confession is limited to "telling the truth" and lacks sufficient rational depth, this kind of confession consciousness is extremely precious in the entire modern and contemporary literature.In Chinese classical culture, "wisdom" and "strategy" have always been the morals that Chinese people talk about, but there is extremely little reflection on culture.Cultural reflection comes from the spirit of enlightenment that began in the twentieth century.We can see the awakening of "I" in Lu Xun's novels.This awakening can also be regarded as a kind of cultural confession, a reflection on the five thousand years of classical spirit.In "Scar Literature" and "Root-seeking Literature", the protagonist always has a certain degree of repentance, which can also be said to be a spirit of reflection, but Ba Jin's " Random thoughts".

If Bei Dao, Zhang Xianliang, and Ba Jin present us an image of intellectuals that is close to and consistent with mainstream discourse, especially mainstream political discourse, what they defend is still the spirit of enlightenment and collective beliefs since the May Fourth Movement. If the interrogation, reflection, and confession are still under the grand themes of "the motherland", "the people" and "materialism", then Haizi has created for us a story that contradicts, suffers, and finally separates from these grand themes, and finally in The image of the liberal intellectual trudging alone and hopelessly in a cultural desert.

After reflection, root-seeking and repentance, Haizi is no longer satisfied with these. His world has surpassed the times, politics and culture.He wants to create a kind of Chinese epic and find a new kind of spiritual support for the Chinese.In the long poem "Legend——Dedicated to the people who work hard for the epic on the land of China", he wrote: "In the faint distance, there is our source, the roc bird and the white light of the fishy sun... Facing this A sky that has been silent for thousands of years, we don't answer, but live. This is an honest, long life... But now I can't. Those folk themes have popped up in my dreams countless times. To testify to your survival, It is his duty, the conscience of poetry...to make all men the contemporaries of all, living and dead...The epic is a lucid object...as it is often said--from Let's start here."

In "Motherland, or Dream as a Horse", the poet is also facing a grand theme, but his singing is different from the previous poets: "I am willing to start everything from the beginning / Like the poet who regards dreams as horses ／I would also like to sit in prison. ／My career is to be the life of the sun／From ancient times to the present——"Day"—he is incomparably brilliant/Extremely bright/Same as all poets who use dreams as horses/ At last I was carried by the gods of the twilight into the immortal sun." Haizi once said in his article that he is not satisfied with being a poet, what he wants to do is a philosopher, a greatness who can bring new visions to human belief.Therefore, Haizi is different from other poets. He shouts, angers, and even sings of himself alone on the high ground of reason.

So, the poet went deeper and deeper. In the long poem "The Sun", the poet said through the mouth of the master of ceremonies (blind poet): "After many years, I dreamed that I was king in hell" "I have come to the end of mankind / I still love. Though I love fire/Not the ashes of man/I love the devil's fire the fire of the sun/For innocent human maidens or princes/All I despise or all hate'.Poets are contradictory and painful.The poet said again through the mouth of the Sun King: "I took everything from you. / I granted the request of the kings. I pardoned their death. / I reduced you all to subjects. / I decided to spend my life alone ’” The poet’s trek is solitary, hopeless.

When the poet Haizi committed suicide after completing these poems, the lyrical protagonists portrayed in these poems lived.If what we see in Qu Yuan's poems is a desperate lyric hero who asks the sky for the ultimate value, then in Haizi's poems, we see another lyric hero who is tortured by the ultimate value and is desperate and determined.From this we can see how the free intellectuals broke out alone and desperately when the collective belief was in crisis. Old beliefs are in crisis, and new beliefs cannot be established. Therefore, intellectuals have entered a kingdom of nothingness, and their spirit has collapsed. In other words, intellectuals have truly entered the critical point of rationality.This is the enlightenment given to us by literature since the 1990s.The establishment of market economy made intellectuals struggle and break through the conflict between spirit and desire.During this period, what has been criticized by everyone for a while may really be worth re-examining like a ruin. Obviously, the title of the book aims to describe the pain, struggle, pursuit, and escape of a group of intellectuals headed by Zhuang Zhidie in the cultural ruins at the end of the century, so as to imply the loss of intellectual spirit.This book, regarded by the author as "the only book that can calm one's soul", was ridiculed and even banned by the entire literary world as soon as it appeared.The encounter actually shows the embarrassment and loneliness of free intellectuals.In fact, when the entire intellectual group is singing praises for the collapsing spiritual edifice or stealing the truth, only Jia Pingwa is calm and passive, which just shows his position and spirit of a free intellectual.Radar analyzed in "The Struggle of the Soul——Analysis and Criticism of "Abandoned Capital"": "Zhuang Zhidie's actions are really not worthy of a lesson, and there are many dedicated and firm believers and martyrs who are not non-existent. Zhuang Zhidie looks so weak and pitiful compared to intellectuals of the intellectual type.” "However, even so, Zhuang Zhidie's depression and decadence are not without profound meaning." "The general characteristics of Zhuang Zhidie's mental state can be described as 'splashing'. This 'splashing' contains three layers of content, one The first is social troubles, the second is existential troubles, and the third is metaphysical troubles, and the core problem is the constant loss of authenticity and sorrow.” (27) When we examine Zhuang Zhidie from the perspective of Chinese traditional cultural spirit, we will find that he neither belongs to the Confucian spirit of being aggressive and courageous, nor has he truly reached the peaceful state of Taoism, which is forgetting both things and oneself, tranquility and far-reaching.He is somewhere in between.His pain, struggle, desire, etc. all show that he is a secular intellectual who has not found spiritual refuge.He is neither an elite intellectual nor a true free intellectual, nor is he a mass intellectual or intellectual.He is an ever-changing image of an intellectual.He yearns for the position and realm of free intellectuals, but he does not forget the glory and commitment of spiritual intellectuals, and at the same time, he does not lack the desire-oriented tendency of popular intellectuals.It is in this sense that it can be said that Zhuang Zhidie not only represents the collapse of the intellectual spirit, but also represents the looming emergence of the free intellectual spirit. Similarly, Yan Zhenzhong's Chi Dawei is also a betrayal of the intellectual spirit.Chi Dawei has evolved from an aloof old-fashioned intellectual to a modern bureaucrat, and his story frame may not exceed the Lian-style struggle model: Julien longs for the upper class and Chi Dawei yearns for the center of power. The characters do not have the same psychological structure. essential difference. (28) Chi Dawei is a typical example of the degeneration of an elite intellectual to a mass intellectual. Whether it is Zhang Kangkang's "Zuo Nu" or Zhang Zhe's "Peaches and Plums", they are actually written by some popular intellectuals. , is still an image of an intellectual swayed by desire, fame and fortune, whose essence is secular.The life she wanted and herself, the series of women's sports she carried out were nothing more than to publicize his desire.Similarly, most of the doctoral supervisors and professors in "Peach and Plum" are secular intellectuals who are blinded by profit, and rarely have a spiritual standpoint. Since the 1990s, urban-themed literature has occupied the mainstream discourse, and many writers have begun to extend their pens to the small citizens and intellectual groups living in the city. As a result, a large number of novels depicting the image of intellectuals appeared, but almost all of them portrayed the survival, pain, struggle and blind obedience of mass intellectuals.Body writing, lustful writing, feminist writing, neo-realist novels and even avant-garde novels all participated in such a movement of popular intellectual writing without exception.It seems that in the eyes of writers, elite intellectuals and free intellectuals no longer exist, and "people" and "intellectuals" are also desired.Especially under the influence of popular psychology and fashion culture, the image of elite intellectuals and liberal intellectuals in the past has become a truly pathological person, "superfluous person" and "outsider" in this era, and is ridiculed by others. Since the 1990s, there have been endless discussions on the nature and externalization of intellectuals. These discussions are mostly concentrated in the circles of criticism and thought, but there are still very few creations that highlight the image of intellectuals in the entire literary creation.Among these creations, Shi Tiesheng's can be regarded as a masterpiece. When analyzing this novel, it must be connected with Shi Tiesheng's previous prose.They are related by blood.It looks like a novel, but it looks like an autobiography, but no matter what, it is still a diary that talks to the soul.The novel "Retreat" does not emphasize reality, but focuses on an impression of life; it does not pay attention to the truth in memory, but the truth in impression; Different origins and destinations of souls.Shi Tiesheng said: "I yearn for this kind of writing - when all the wisdom and confusion of the day have dissipated, the night wants me to see the world with another eye." Reading Shi Tiesheng's novels and prose, there is a unique feeling, he can take you to a peaceful world and dialogue with the soul, which is becoming more and more precious in contemporary times.In his works, Shi Tiesheng created for us an image of an intellectual who is one with himself: thinking alone, pursuing goodness, truth, and philosophy and religion.The protagonist is full of rational colors, feelings of confession and feelings of gratitude.