Chapter 16 Chapter Five: The Self-Searching of "Pioneering Literature"

Western modernist literature existed in the 1960s and 1970s, and it was based on modern western philosophy and modern psychology.From the perspective of literary paradigm, there is no essential difference between modernism and traditional realism and its contemporary realism, because its focus is still "people".Before the emergence of realistic literature, the focus of literature was "gods". For example, ancient Greek myths and epics focused on the world of "gods" and heroes. Such literature is magical and entertaining, and it points to The other side of the world.The question of "man" was raised after the Renaissance, but "god" and the world beyond are still at work.After the eighteenth century, "man" really became the center of the world. The "man" discovered in this period is a rational person. In the literary world, the nature of "man" is rational.However, after the outbreak of the two world wars, the proliferation of Western sexuality and a series of serious consequences, people discovered the illusion and unreliability of rational "human beings". The essence is not rational, but irrational.Under such a background, modernist trends of thought emerged, such as symbolism, expressionism, stream of consciousness and so on.By the end of the 20th century, people discovered that the existence of the "human" essence, whether rational or irrational, was questionable. The truth is still the truth of the irrational level of "human being" in modernism. Literature began to clearly publicize its fictional and textual characteristics, and the deconstruction of everything became one of the characteristics of literature, and the postmodernism trend of thought emerged.In the 1980s, modernism and postmodernism almost rushed into China, and they played an important role in the formation of Chinese modernist literary thought.

The spread of Western modernism in China has gone through a tortuous process. Although it has experienced ups and downs in China, it runs through the development of Chinese literature in the 20th century and continues to deepen and advance.Generally speaking, there are three periods in which modernist literary thoughts had a greater impact on Chinese literature in the 20th century: the first was the "May 4th" Literary Revolution, the second was the 1930s and 1940s, and the third was the 1980s. Modern Chinese literature has been influenced by modernist literary trends since its birth. In January 1917, Hu Shi published the article "Suggestions on Literary Reform" in "New Youth", Volume 2, No. 5, the main front of the "May 4th" Literary Revolution, which was also influenced by modernist literature. Articles that shake the literary world are regarded as a sign of the emergence of modern literature in the country.In fact, before that in 1915, Chen Duxiu published "A History of Modern European Literature and Art" in the third volume of "New Youth" (then called "Youth Magazine"), introducing Western symbolist literature.Since then, the giants of modern literature have also actively borrowed modernism in their creations.Modernism is not only a creative method in modern Chinese literature, it also includes a discovery of "human beings", which are more individual people. In emphasizing the individual value of human beings, "May Fourth ’ The pioneers of the literary revolution showed striking unanimity.Zhou Zuoren pointed out in March 1919 that both content and form of literature are important, "In the literary revolution, literary reform is the first step, and ideological reform is the second step, but it is more important than the first step." (1) The second step he refers to is "human literature".And this "human literature" is humanitarian literature.Zhou Zuoren summed up the essence of his "human literature" as "a kind of individualism and humanism". (2) Lu Xun also put forward the idea of ​​"struggling with material things and Zhang Lingming, and allowing individuals to rule out the masses". It is obvious that members of the Creation Society, such as Guo Moruo and Yu Dafu, emphasized self-expression and self-display.The individual person occupies a very important position in the hearts of the pioneers of the "May 4th" Literary Revolution. Modernism played a vital role in the discovery of "human" here, and the "human" here is mainly the awakening of individual human beings.

In the 1930s and 1940s, due to the needs of the actual struggle, modernist literature was neglected, but its trend of thought did not disappear. The influence of the modernist trend of thought on literature at that time was mainly reflected in the literature itself. Literary research, translation and creative practice.During this period, modernist literary thought was not the mainstream, but its spread and influence became more and more profound. In the soil of Chinese literature, not only modernist works, but also modernist literary schools, such as the Modern School of Poetry , New Sensation School, Chinese New Poetry School, etc.However, in the next thirty years from the founding of New China to the end of the 1970s, due to the emphasis on the social function of literature in mainland China and the literary tone of the whole society that focused on praise, modernist literature was regarded as a part of Western bourgeois literature. Decaying and decadent literature and art have been unanimously criticized.This kind of criticism under high political pressure played the role of propagating and disseminating modernism in some respects, and the modernist literature of this period was running underground like underground fire. The underground creation during the "Cultural Revolution" is a typical example. illustration.

In the 1980s, China opened its doors again, and various Western schools of thought and philosophical and literary thoughts flooded in again.The modernist literature and postmodernist literature of the 20th century in the West have exerted a wide and profound influence on Chinese literature in the new period and after.Nietzsche, Freud, Kafka, Sartre and others are all thinkers and philosophers who have greatly influenced literature in the new era.The influence of Woolf, Proust, Joyce, Beckett and other writers on the literature of the new period is also obvious.Their excavation of the new field of human consciousness, the revelation of human alienation, is another new discovery of "human", which coincides with the concept of looking for "human" at the beginning of the new era. China in the 1980s His literature draws lessons from Western modernist literature, and under the contrast of foreign cultures, he thinks about the problem of "human being" again.

To be precise, in the ten years from the end of the 1970s to the end of the 1980s, the dissemination and acceptance of modernist literary thoughts in China experienced a process from shallow to deep. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, China once again started cultural exchanges with the world, and Western modern philosophy, modern psychology, modern literary theory and modernist literary works began to enter China.Due to the influence of social and political factors before the 1980s, the translation and dissemination of Western modernist literature was not popular in China, and the domestic understanding of Western modernist literature was relatively lacking. The translation of Western modernist literature in the new era Jie first popularized it as a kind of knowledge.Judging from the materials currently available, Zhu Hong's "Introduction to the Drama of the Absurd" (3) and "Review of the Drama of the Absurd" (4) published in 1978 are two translations of Western modernist literature earlier since the new era. Introduction article. At the turn of summer and autumn in 1978, researchers from the Institute of Foreign Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences held a symposium to study the re-evaluation of modernist literature.Their opinions at the meeting were unanimous, and they believed that Western modernist literature should be evaluated with a scientific attitude of seeking truth from facts. Although this was a small symposium, its role at that time was very important. At the end of 1978, the Institute of Foreign Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences held a national foreign literature research work planning meeting in Guangzhou. Although some people at the meeting emphasized that the reactionary literature and revisionist literature of the modern bourgeoisie should be criticized and studied, and they should be turned into opposites. Textbooks, (5) However, Liu Mingjiu put forward a different point of view at the meeting. He believed that there were indeed reactionary and decadent content in modern and contemporary Western literature, but there were many valuable things in it.And for example, Kafka, Sartre and others, the most important figures of modernism, have inherited the tradition of bourgeois democracy and humanism, are progressive to a certain extent, and have many merits in art.The method of realistic creation cannot be regarded as the only method of literary and artistic creation.Modern creative methods such as stream of consciousness, symbolism, and expressionism also have some desirable factors. (6) From today's perspective, these views of Liu Mingjiu are no longer surprising, but in China in the late 1970s, such views were very cutting-edge and required a lot of courage. At that time, they had the significance of creating a new generation.Since then, some magazines began to consciously publish papers on the study of Western modernist literature, such as "Literary Studies", "World Literature", "Foreign Literature and Art", "Yilin", "Research on Literary Theory", "Foreign Literature Studies", "Contemporary Foreign Literature", etc.These earliest articles at the beginning of the new era were often aimed at popularizing and introducing knowledge. Although some later articles began to discuss the nature of modernist literature, they were only limited to the field of foreign literature research. ", "Reflective Literature" occupies the main position of Chinese literature, so the scope of influence of Western modernist literature at the beginning of the new era is not very wide, but it lifted the veil of modernism for Chinese people, allowing Chinese people to see a new literary space.The authors of these articles were generally those who specialized in the study of foreign literature, and it was during this period that they stood out: Yuan Kejia, Liu Mingjiu, Zhu Hong, Tang Yongkuan, Chen Kun, Dong Hengxun, Gao Xingjian, Feng Hanjin, etc.

From then on, text translations and theoretical introductions of Western modernist literature appeared in China at the same time, and they began to gradually exert influence in China. The works of Sartre published in the first issue of "Contemporary Foreign Literature" in 1980 were works that entered the readers' field of vision earlier. (7) It was related to the trend of postmodernism that was popular in the West at that time. The earliest foreign modern and contemporary literature introduced to China was absurdist drama. In addition, the Chinese literary circles at that time generally lacked the awareness of clearly distinguishing modernism and postmodernism. Therefore, Chinese literature in the new period was influenced by Western modernism and postmodernism almost at the same time, so that today some people think that Western postmodernism entered China earlier than modernism.In any case, we must admit the fact that Chinese literature in the new era has been influenced by Western modernism and postmodernism literary trends at the same time.In just two years or so, absurd dramas, symbolic poetry, stream-of-consciousness novels, expressionism, existentialism, surrealism, French new novels, the Beat Generation, black humor, and magical reality entered China. Doctrine etc.The works of representative writers of Western modernism have also poured into China: O'Neill's plays "Emperor Jones", "The Hairy Ape" and "Out of the Sky", novels by Camus, novels by Kafka, novels by Joyce, novels by Faulkner Novels, Hemingway's novel "The Snows of Kilimanjaro", Ionesco's play "The Bald Showgirl", Beckett's play "Waiting for Godot", etc.

The "Selected Works of Foreign Modernists" edited by Yuan Kejia, Dong Hengxun, Zheng Kelu and others had a great influence on the literature of the new era. This set of books consists of four volumes and eight volumes. It began in 1980 and was not fully published until 1985.This set of books includes ten western literary genres: late symbolism, expressionism, futurism, stream of consciousness, surrealism, existentialism, absurd literature, beat generation, etc. This set of books is based on genres and times. It is the weft, and there are brief introductions of each genre and biographies of major authors of each genre.There is a preface written by Yuan Kejia at the beginning of the volume, which comprehensively and systematically discusses the social background of the emergence and development of Western modernist literature, the philosophical foundation of ideological origin, ideological and artistic characteristics, history, and its significance to us.The appendix of the book was also written by Yuan Kejia, entitled "Western Modern Literature as I Know It".The first edition of this set of books sold 150,000 copies, which influenced many people at that time. Later, those who actively participated in the debate on modernist issues and those who actively tried to create modernist literature mostly understood modernism from this set of books. Yes, objectively speaking, this set of books has played a great role in popularizing modernist literature.This set of books has its positive side, but there are also some problems: one is that Yuan Kejia, influenced by the political climate of the time at that time, made a classification of Western modernist writers, put political labels on the writers, and classified them as Divided into "Left", "Right", and "Centre", and emphasized their "bourgeois nature".The second is to collectively refer to Western modernism and postmodernism as modernist literature, which has led to confusion and difficulty in grasping the two in Chinese new-era literature for a long time.

In addition, various research works on the translation and introduction of modern Western literature have been published, such as "Sartre Research" selected and edited by Liu Mingjiu, "Selected Works of European and American Modernists" selected and edited by Luo Jiashan, "Research on Western Modernist Literature" by Chen Kun, and "Study of Western Modernist Literature" by Tang Yongkuan. "Contemporary American Short Stories Collection", "Preliminary Exploration of Modern Fiction Techniques" by Gao Xingjian, "Faulkner Commentary Collection" and "Hemingway Commentary Collection" by Li Wenjun and others, "Thirty Lectures on European and American Modernist Literature" by Shi Zhaoxian and others.In the new era, more than 6,000 kinds of foreign books have been translated and published in my country, and many publishing houses have also published series and libraries, all of which have had a relatively wide impact.Such as: "Foreign Literature and Art Theory Series", "Aesthetics Translation Series", "Foreign Literature Research Materials Series", "Western Philosophy Schools Series", "Modern Foreign Literature and Art Theory Translation Series", "Modern Western Academic Library", "Twentieth Century library", etc.Among them, Gao Xingjian's "A Preliminary Exploration of Modern Fiction Techniques" has attracted widespread attention. (8)

Gao Xingjian was born as a foreign language learner. He has in-depth research on French literature, and France is also one of the important sources of modern literature.Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Valéry, Proust, Gide, Sartre, Camus, Beckett, Ionesco, Robbe Grier, Simon and other writers , thinkers make the various fields of French modernism literature and postmodernism literature form a huge influence in the world.French literature was a favorable point for Gao Xingjian to enter modernist literature, which enabled Gao Xingjian to recognize the essential characteristics of modernist literature earlier than his contemporaries.In the book, Gao Xingjian specifically introduced modernist literary genres such as symbolism, stream of consciousness, and drama of the absurd, and analyzed the development of modern novels from different angles. Instead of techniques such as abstraction, the book emphasizes the epochal nature of modernist literature.We can find that although Gao Xingjian's book seems to discuss "modern novel techniques", it actually has a polemical nature of declaring a position.He did not confine modernism to the realm of so-called techniques, but regarded it as the goal pursued by contemporary Chinese literature.In the book, he pointed out that the realism represented by Balzac has become classical, and the romanticism represented by Hugo, which depicts the environment in detail, is not the goal pursued by the times.In this book, Gao Xingjian puts forward his own view on literature, which is to emphasize that literature should reveal the contradictions in modern society and explore people's hearts.As soon as this book was published, it aroused the debate about modernist literature in the new era.Since the appearance of this book was in line with the enthusiasm for change and innovation in the literary world at that time, it received a warm response from the creative world. His views are compelling and their impact unprecedented.Mr. Ye Junjian wrote a preface to this book. His preface emphasized the contemporary and rationality of modernist literature at that time from the perspective of social development, and pointed out that mastering the trend and dynamics of contemporary world literature and communicating with world literature, Furthermore, participating in the activities of world literature is also an aspect that cannot be ignored in all aspects of "modernization".Wang Meng, Feng Jicai, Liu Xinwu, Li Tuo and others were delighted to see this book, and expressed their views on modernist literature on the publication of this book.Wang Meng said that this book "discusses some practical and fresh aspects of novel techniques, uses some new language, and brings some new ideas and new ideas." (9) Feng Jicai said, "In the current situation where few people have set foot in the field of 'modern novels', it seems that in the empty and lonely sky, a beautiful kite is suddenly released, how happy it is!" (10 ) He also said that "modernism" is not a scourge, there is no need to be afraid, it appeared in response to the needs of society and the times.However, when we look back at Feng Jicai’s creations today, we will find that his works rarely show the obvious characteristics of modernist literature. The unified political climate is alienated. At this time, what literature needs most is to get out of alienation and find itself.It was under such circumstances that modernist literary thought entered China, so it was recognized by many famous writers in China at that time, but the premise of these writers’ acceptance of modernist literature was based on national culture. They thought, “We can , Drawing on many technical factors in Western modernist novels, creating a modern novel that is completely different from Western modernist novels.” (11)

Almost at the same time, the articles of the two Chinese writers aroused the real attention of the theoretical circles to modernist literature.In the "Postscript" of her novel, the female writer Dai Houying directly expressed her doubts about the long-standing mainstream view of literature and art and her favor for modernist literature.The realist approach is "by no means the only approach, or even the best approach," she says. "I absorbed some expression methods of 'stream of consciousness', such as writing about the characters' feelings, hallucinations, associations and dreams. I think this is closer to people's real psychological state." (12) Although Dai Houying's modernist features are not very obvious, her "Postscript" attracted criticism from many people at the time due to the lack of strict writing and other reasons. (13) In the first issue of "Foreign Literature Research" in 1982, the writer Xu Chi's "Modernization and Modernism" article was published. This article triggered the first systematic and concentrated debate on modernism in the 1980s .Xu Chi linked modernist literature with my country's modernization drive, and believed that it was an indispensable spiritual and cultural product in a modern society. "We will realize the four modernizations of socialism, and at that time there will be literature and art of our modernist thoughts and feelings."Can be regarded as the central argument of this article.We can fully understand Xu Chi's desire for China's modernization transformation, but there are some problems and even some contradictions in the expression of his article.For example, he added the modifiers "our" and "Marxist" before modernism, showing excessive passion and insufficient rationality.Although Xu Chi's article has many deficiencies, it regards modernism as a trend of thought of the times, and his self-contradiction is actually an indirect basis for modernist literature to find the rationality of politics.After this article was published, newspapers and periodicals across the country published hundreds of articles arguing about it. The topic of the debate was "whether or not modernism" should be the Chinese literature at that time.In the debate, the number of articles against Xu Chi outnumbered those in support, and due to various reasons, the party against the modernists in this debate had the upper hand.At that time, people often treated everything with a dualistic thinking mode. Once a new trend of thought emerged, it was immediately incorporated into the mode. The opposite of modernism was realism, and realism represented socialist literature and the mainstream ideology. , then modernism has become a representative of capitalist literature, which is opposed to the mainstream ideology. This has brought this academic debate into a political direction. A literary debate with profound cultural significance." (14)

Afterwards, China began to "eliminate spiritual pollution", and from the end of 1983, the debate on modernist literature gradually fell silent.However, the translation and introduction of modernist literature has been going on silently, and the publishing houses in this period are still publishing Chinese translations of classic Western modernist and postmodernist literature.Against such a background, more and more Chinese writers and poets accepted modernism conceptually, regarded it as the most contemporary trend of thought in world literature at that time, and took it as their pursuit goal.As a result, around 1985, a creative trend called "85 New Wave" appeared by the critics.A group of new writers quickly appeared in the literary world. They took the western modernist literary thought as the main background and had a relatively in-depth understanding of western literature in the 20th century.Their works obviously have traces of learning and imitating Western modernist literary writers, and their works have a strong modernist color.This is very different from the realistic works that people in the literary world have been used to before. After their appearance, they immediately had a great impact on literary creation, especially novel creation, so they are called "fiction explosion".Their names include: Ma Yuan, Can Xue, Mo Yan, Yu Hua, Sun Ganlu, Ge Fei, Su Tong, A Cheng, Liu Suola, Xu Xing, Chen Cun, etc.Most of their works published around 1985 have distinct modernist literary features, such as "The Temptation of Gangdise" by Ma Yuan, "Old Floating Clouds" by Can Xue, "Brown Birds" by Ge Fei, Sun Ganlu's "I Am a Juvenile Wine Jar", Su Tong's "Escape in 1934", etc.This group of writers established their literary status precisely because of a series of works with modernist literary characteristics.At the same time, their literary works aroused the attention of some literary theories and literary criticism issues in the literary world at that time. These cultural hot topics related to modernist literary thoughts played a certain role in the spread and acceptance of modernist literature in China, such as In the mid-1980s, there were "aesthetic craze", "psychological craze", "cultural craze", "new method craze" and "new concept craze". Compared with previous literary trends, works with modernist literary tendencies use brand-new artistic techniques, such as metaphor, stream of consciousness, absurdity, psychoanalysis, deformation, etc., often expressing the writer's exploration of the irrational level of human beings and the ultimate This puts forward new requirements for literary criticism.The previous mainstream of literature was realism literature, corresponding to it was realism theory.Literary sociological criticism has occupied the critical field for a long time, and it is difficult to use it to standardize and evaluate modernist literary works, and its possibility is even doubtful.Therefore, in the mid-1980s, literary criticism theories corresponding to modernist literature also poured into China. The theoretical critics in our country showed a positive attitude towards new critical theories and methods, and they quickly accepted the modernist literature. Related new methods are widely used, such as psychoanalysis, formalism, new criticism, archetypal criticism, structuralism, phenomenology, reception aesthetics, etc., which form the "method craze" in the field of theoretical criticism in the new era of literature.The earliest "hot" in this "method craze" was psychoanalysis.Freud attracted the attention of Chinese people in the early 1980s, and "Ego and Id", etc. entered China. By the mid-1980s, there was an upsurge of research and discussion on Freud. A large number of research translations and books have been published. (15) Literary theory critics have used psychoanalysis theory to analyze and explain the psychological depth of characters in some modern and contemporary literary works in our country.Structuralist critical theory following psychoanalysis, represented by Piaget's (16), entered China in the 1980s. One of the important functions of this theory's widespread spread in China is the independence of literature. of emphasis.The New Criticism played an important role in impacting the traditional literary concepts and the "society-historical" traditional literary criticism mode in the Chinese literary trend of thought in the 1980s because of its close connection with modernism.It can be seen that by the mid-1980s, modernist literary thought had been widely disseminated and developed in China, mainly manifested in two aspects: literary creation practice and literary theory criticism.In the late 1980s and 1990s, the trend of modernism in Chinese literature was gradually replaced by postmodernism, and literary criticism was influenced by deconstruction, new historicism and postcolonialism.