Today, I took time out of my busy work to read and made some notes to read these sporadic hours.
This book was written in May 1996, dating back to May 100. It was the year after the defeat of the Sino-Japanese War in 1894, and in May of the 21st year of Guangxu, 1895, treaty of shimonoseki was signed, which was the past of the spring when compatriots were separated and the nation was sad.
Modern China is full of such sadness, and literature constantly describes and conveys such sadness. This is the background of the development of China literature in the past century. Therefore, worry is its eternal theme, and sadness is its basic emotion.
In recent years, a series of internal and external troubles have made China's conscientious poets and writers willing to take this as a starting point. As a result, literature, which should make people relax, has become heavy because of the extraordinary burden of duty-bound and unrelenting.
From Liang Qichao's "To be a person with a new national character, you must first write novels with a new national character" to Lu Xun's "Why should you write novels" for "enlightenment" and "improvement of this life", China literature consciously refused to rest and be happy. Heavy literature breathes in heavy reality. Over time, China's orthodox literary concept lost its broadness and gradually became exclusive and exclusive. In this way, China literature is embarrassed between literature and non-literature, pure literature and pan-literature, the edifying function of literature and wider aesthetic pleasure.
The background of China literature in the past century is a vast gray.
In the 1980s, there was so much agitation, so much confusion, so much repetition, so many declarations, and those things that were declared as "truth" often disappeared as soon as they were born. This era is reminiscent of high-speed Mercedes-Benz trains, which are fast and unstable.
This is an era of liberation, and almost everyone feels relaxed both mentally and physically. There are too many contents, too many stories and too many feelings in this era, which seems to be unbearable and accommodating in history books. Like a messy draft, it contains all kinds of clues, but it is not a refreshing story at all.
The opening of economy affects the opening of ideas, which greatly activates literary creation. It should be said that apart from ideological differences, the strangeness, distance and misunderstanding caused by history in China's literature are shrinking.
The author has a sense of loss of language when summing up such an era, and it takes a lot of thought to name this book, using names such as "extension" and "turning point". "Extension" refers to the inheritance of literary themes a century ago in the 1980s, and "turning point" refers to a revolution in literary thoughts before the 1980s ... Throughout the history of China literature in the past century, literature in the 1980s completed its mission between extension and turning point and became an important part of the grand narrative of the century theme.
First, go to the city.
In 1980s, Lu Yao's life was an exciting moment.
The novel spares no effort to tell the story of Gao Jialin's passion for the city, which is due to the significance of the "city" to Gao Jialin, a designated group and even an era.
Imagination's grasp of the city and its breakthrough in urban imagination appeared in a large area in the early 1980s, which showed the spirit of the times of China's historic transition to the city. The works of this period, such as Descendants of Luban, Oh, Xiang Xue Hai, and Wooden House Covered with Ivy, embody such a spirit.
When the city becomes the object of lyricism, it also becomes the source of passion. Various images of the city, various details of urban life, have become emotional catalysts for a time. As a result, the city is abstracted as an ideal, and the city itself is promoted to a great significance, thus providing a steady stream of lyrical power for "city poetry".
Ji Hongzhen once took "the conflict between civilization and ignorance" as the theme, and summarized the literature in the new period that lasted until the mid-1980s. If this generalization model is still a bit big, then it might as well be concretized as "the conflict between cities and villages" This substitution has a classic basis, that is, after deeply analyzing human history, Marx once made an assertion: "The biggest division of labor between material labor and spiritual labor is the separation of urban and rural areas. The opposition between urban and rural areas began with the transition from barbarism to civilization, from tribe to country, from local limitation to nation. It runs through the history of all civilizations and continues until now. " According to this conclusion, the modernization movement of China's reform and opening up in the early 1980s just complied with the requirements of this "transition", or the modern continuation of this "transition" in a backward third country. This continuation is a migration from rural areas to cities, and also a turning point from civilization to ignorance. From this, we can easily understand that behind the "urban poetry" of China literature in the early 1980s, there is a kind of "realized historical content".
Second, manage our roots.
1985 is a year of ideological explosion and artistic revolution, from literature to art, music, movies and so on. Almost all types of art present a novel and brilliant face.
From the literary world, the wave of "root-seeking literature" is in full swing, and both criticism and creation have tacitly played the banner of "root-seeking". While a number of representative works such as Dad, Xiao Bao Zhuang, Lao Bangzi Pub and Ancient Boat show their achievements, critics have pushed the root-seeking system to a broader and far-reaching "cultural" vision. At the same time, trendy novels marked by Liu Suola's You Have No Choice, Chencun's Variations Without Themes and Liu Xihong's You Can't Change Me have emerged in succession, causing heated discussions.
When we look back at the changing times and pass through piles of literary texts that still exude warmth, we should not forget that there was such a meeting.1The "Hangzhou Party" in February 1984 became the opening ceremony of a far-reaching literary movement.
This meeting is called the North-South Dialogue. By grasping and discussing the literary creation and theoretical situation of the North and the South, I hope to find a "pulse change" that combines the views of the North and the South and presents under the common motif of literature in the new period. Everyone is talking about culture, especially aesthetic culture. It is these opinions that gradually drew closer, and later they were written and expanded into a series of grand theories of "root-seeking literature".
1985 "root-seeking literature", which sprang up suddenly in the new wave, has played a great role in integrating the literary trend of thought in the 1980s. Whether it is the theme of the Cultural Revolution or the anti-rightist theme, whether it is urban literature or rural chronicles, whether it is the memory of educated youth or the imagination of reform, these restless literary hotspots have finally found a quiet and profound riverbed under the broad proposition of culture.
However, the "root-seeking literature" at that time still had the characteristics of disorder and impetuousness peculiar to the ideological trend in the 1980s.
If we "build" the literary map at that time on a sand table, then almost everything we see is under the banner of "root-seeking literature". Through the red dust of the city, we look at the poor hometown in a pretentious way, try to recall the cultural accumulation that the hometown is not poor, and imagine the brilliant prospect of "root-seeking literature"
In this way, "root-seeking literature" has pulled us out of the old textbooks of literary concepts and rekindled our almost exaggerated interest in literature and even culture.
Third, visit the rural areas of China.
Can the countryside really be gone forever? When we read a number of works such as My Distant Qingping Bay, This is a magical land and South Bank, we were surprised to find that the countryside and the youth spent in it were so beautiful and charming. Almost all the city dwellers who returned to the city were infected with deep homesickness and looked at each other affectionately across the distant time and space. As an educated youth who goes to the countryside, he may never dream that he will re-enter the countryside as a writer.
In fact, under the strong impetus of the wave of root-seeking literature, the attachment and even worship to the countryside has not weakened, but has been strengthened again and again. By Mo Yan's Red Sorghum, the red sorghum in rural areas is more vigorous, vast and endless. It has become a symbol of urban people's desire, indicating instinctive needs and vast land. It is a mixture of indescribable or straightforward imagination such as sex, violence and revolution. It satisfies the strong and almost morbid homesickness of the "country people" who have entered the city, satisfies the secret impulse of the younger generation to resist the norms, and resolves the general tension of intellectuals who have not yet entered the market in the economic tide. The "red sorghum" in rural areas has therefore become a "hallucinogen" in the era of passion.
In the early 1980s, after returning to the city, this group of intellectuals in shock, after a short respite and repair, began to write about the past and the past rural years.
Fourth, the literary imagination of the nation-state.
Before 1980s, the literature in the new period was mainly scar literature. Since 1980s, the "bitter wind and rain" in scar literature has gradually subsided, while the infiltration of national feelings in literature has not stopped, but has intensified. It's just that the tragic national memory has turned into a happy national imagination. A big background of the change of writing style is that the whole country has entered the period of modernization.
Judging from the large number of literary articles that appeared in the early 1980s, there is a high and romantic idealism passion. It is from the imagination of modern nation-state that the foundation and motivation of lyricism are obtained. In fact, the romantic national imagination popular in the early 1980s is not unique to this era. It has been running through the literary activities of this modern nation since its independence and liberation, and the outbreak of national imagination will print a romantic movement.
In the mid-1980s, when Ke Yunlu's novel "New Star" spread all over the streets, this remarkable Ke Yunlu became incredible in twenty years, from a "Li Xiangnan" struggling reformer to an oriental wizard who said he was mysterious and strange. Then, from the perspective of the decline of reform literature, does it prove the disappearance of national imagination and the disintegration of national logic? Actually, it's not. From 1982, the "epic" turn of the new poetry tide began, and from 1984, the root-seeking novels flourished. We can still feel the modern national spirit contained in it, but the country's writing style has been greatly improved. This change lies in that the "state" as a "modern" narrative has turned to a "national" narrative. If we borrow the word "nation-state", then the discourse of the nation-state in the early stage emphasizes a nationality, and the nation-state in the later stage emphasizes a nationality.
After 1982, the concept of epic gradually strengthened. This poetic-oriented, epic form of nation-state imagination has reached its peak in novels, such as Wang Anyi's The Small Bag is Strong, Zhang Wei's The Ancient Boat, Zheng Yi's The Old Well and so on, all of which attempt to construct a "grand narrative" of a modern nation-state. Behind all these narratives, it is not only out of exaggerated "cultural" interests and repeatedly criticized "traditional" interests, but out of an overall ideology, which is the "modernization" requirement of the nation-state.
The myth of subjectivity of verb (abbreviation of verb)
Looking back on the complicated and ever-changing literary thoughts in the 1980s, if we want to find a relatively stable and mainstream "ideology", we should consider it as a subjective thought, that is, a set of narratives with human words as the core.
In China literature in the 20th century, especially in contemporary China literature, human discourse may be the most common discourse.
If "human literature" is a classic statement about literature in the history of modern literature, Gorky's famous saying "literature is human studies" has been quoted almost everywhere at any time and has become a typical form of human discourse.
When humanitarian discourse rises, people always become the foothold of values, and the declaration and writing of "people" become the basic form of humanitarian discourse. When humanitarian discourse returned to the literary world around 1980s, it was also full of humanity and human love.
In China, the rise of novels is closely related to the development of civil commercial society, but China's novels rarely reach the prosperity and development trend of European novels in history, just as China rarely forms a strong civil society like Europe.
The subjectivity of literature is first embodied in the subjectivity of the author. This subjectivity is achieved through internalization and lyric, and the lyric ability related to it becomes the core issue. It is precisely at this point that intellectuals have their own historical advantages, which are manifested in the knowledge tradition of "knowing themselves" in the West and the suffering character of "sorrowing for life" and "worrying about Li Yuan" in the East, so the emergence of humanitarian discourse is closely related to the rise of intellectual power.
Looking at literature from a psychological perspective, literary works must be the crystallization of writers' practical activities, life activities and psychological activities. The quality of literary works is always determined by the depth and breadth of a writer's mind. The reflection of literature and art is subjective and personalized for different people. It reflects the social life reflected by the writer's mind, full of the writer's life breath, and is a spiritual social life. Social life can only be artistic if it is psychological, and the world of literature and art is the world of psychology.
The most fundamental motive force of literature is emotion. By fully affirming the emotional value in the spiritual subject, the most fundamental characteristics of literature and art are revealed.
In the 1980s, the excessive admiration for the myth of subjectivity led to a certain aversion and reaction to humanism in later literary thoughts, as did the third generation of poetry and avant-garde novels. As far as novels are concerned, the result of the "crisis" of "people" is that the characters no longer become the fixed center of the works, as Yu Hua said, "I don't think the status enjoyed by the characters in the works is more important than rivers, sunshine, streets and houses. I think people, like sunshine, rivers and streets, are just props in the works. " But the crisis of mankind does not mean the end of mankind. Literature implies that it is a symbol of human existence in the world. Yu Hua, who tries to cancel the central position of characters in his works, also thinks that "a real novel should be full of symbols, that is, symbols of our way of living in the world, symbols of our understanding of the world and symbols of our expansion of world communication."
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