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The Birth of Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature Yu Gao the Birth of Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature

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The Birth of Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature Yu Gao the Birth of Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature The Birth of Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature Yu Gao The Birth of Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature Revolutions in Language, History, and Culture Yu Gao Zhejiang Normal University Jinhua, China Translated by Guicang Li Wenzhou University Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China ISBN 978-1-137-56529-7 ISBN 978-1-137-55936-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-55936-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017947824 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover design by Ran Shauli Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Nature America Inc. The registered company address is: 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY 10004, U.S.A. FOREWORD Lu Xun, in his “Essay Fifty-Four,” writes thus about the state of Chinese society: It is no other than a peculiar scene of many centuries squeezed together: there co-exist oil lamps and electrical bulbs, wheelbarrows and airplanes, darts and machineguns, ‘no talking of legal principles’ and the Movement of Defending the Constitution, the cannibalistic doctrines and humanitarian- ism, ceremonies for the arrival of a corpse from afar, snake worship, and the advocacy of aesthetic education to replace religions. All these stand side by side in current China. (344) Realistic and predictive for his times, Lu Xun presents an epitome of Chinese society during the period of the May Fourth Movement, and a general picture of twentieth-century Chinese society. The co-existence of things incompatible, as he observes, is analogous to the field of Chinese literature. Comparatively speaking, twentieth-century Chinese literature, from the writings in modern baihua (vernacular) to the modernist literary movement at the end of the century, has spanned the Western literary developmental period of about eight centuries, a period when Western literature broke away from its Latin origins and branched off with national language revolutions up to the postmodern age. All literary schools, move- ments, conceptions and methods that were formulated over this lengthy period in the West simultaneously appeared in the Chinese literary arena. Historically, besides the strong presence of the legacy of the Song Dynasty v vi FOREWORD literary tradition, there co-exist the modern Neo-Confucian School, the School of Modern Urban Romance or the “School of Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies,” the New Marshal Arts School, the Pre-liberation Shanghai School, Revolutionary Literature, and all the modernist schools and styles conceivable. For a time, every ancient and modern type of literature could be found in this Chinese literary “salad bowl.” What we can generalize about twentieth-century Chinese literature is that it remained committed in trying and experimenting with all ancient, modern, Chinese and foreign literary forms, analogous to the manner the legendary Emperor Shennong, who tasted all manner of plants in order to find herbal cures for diseases. Literary experiments on the one hand release creativity, encourage endeavor to make things new, and occasion much reflection. On the other hand, the experiments can hardly be viewed as successful, as Lu Xun likens them to cooking with flint fire: “This looks like we invite the primitives who were unknown to the use of fire to open a joint restaurant. No matter how long and hard we try, we fail to cook anything well-done” (344). It would be an impossible mission to summarize the diverse Chinese litera- ture of that time, although twentieth-century Chinese literature has wit- nessed enormous transformations. Early modern times have called for the birth of giant figures, and accordingly charismatic figures emerged and had an influence in reshaping social systems, conceptions, modes of pro- duction, use of literary languages, literary portrayal delineation and recon- ceptualization of literature itself. That is generally true, but China is particular and exceptional in the sense that the historical and social changes were nothing but tortuous, replete with unexpected twists and undula- tions. The Reform Movement of 1898, the Revolution of 1911, the May Fourth Movement, the Movements of Workers, Peasants and Soldiers, the founding of New China, the separation of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, and the modernist wave at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s—none of these massive social changes have significantly impacted the development and direction of Chinese literature, for every major social and cultural change achieves a sublation (Aufhebung). Metaphorically, twentieth-century Chinese literature moves on like the Yellow River, which, despite its countless turns, flows eastward in an almost straight line. Where is the axis of this literature? The axis cannot be so-called tradition, or so-called modernity, but must, rather, be the source of a new tradition and modernity, which cannot change easily with the times or there would be splits and gaps here and there, from time to time. The source should remain ontologically present, offering inexhaustible FOREWORD vii nutrients for twentieth-century Chinese literature. As a result of such a source, Chinese literature has completed its modern transformation, opening up a new vista that is poles apart from the classical one. The source should remain intact amid rapid social change as it anchors itself in its internal integrity. Only by tracing and finding such a source can we completely understand what happens in future in the flux in the field of literature. The Birth of Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature explores such a his- torical source and locates it in the birth of the modern baihua (the seed form of modern Chinese language), articulates the ontological signifi- cance that baihua has for the formation of modern Chinese literature, and convincingly makes a case that the modern Chinese language essentially determines the general qualities of this literature. The baihua literature during the period of the May Fourth Movement fundamentally changed Chinese literature as a result of the introduction of Western culture, litera- ture, concepts and ideas. However, the realization of this transformation is the result not of the influence of any particular Western literary school but of the general spirit of the era characteristic of pluralism in ideas, thoughts and concepts, which interact and complement each other. The zeitgeist certainly differs from the general character of classical Chinese literature, culture and thought, but what do modern Chinese literature and culture have in common? It is the baihua. Moreover, the frequent social and ideological reforms in the wake of the May Fourth Movement have reshaped modern Chinese literature accordingly. For instance, in mainland China, literature from 1949 up to the 1980s was dominated by the politicizing movements which were marked by ostensible ideological agendas and the advocacy of revolutionary realism, which was intended to streamline and regulate the creation of literary works, whereas Chinese literature in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau progressed with a focus on experimentalism and regionalism. Since the late 1980s, the overwhelming revolutionary realism and socialist realism, and the unification of revolu- tionary realism and revolutionary romanticism on the mainland, have faded as a result of the onslaught of all sorts of modernist and postmod- ernist writing, later known as “Scar Literature” or “the literature of the wounded,” “Roots-seeking Literature,” and the avant-garde. Despite this unwieldy and constant shifting in the field of literature, we still call it modern Chinese literature or new Chinese literature, instead of Western literature or classical Chinese literature. What holds together such a scope and variety of writing? It is again the modern Chinese language. viii FOREWORD As it is inspirationally stated and argued in this monograph, modern Chinese is never a mere medium of expression or a system of signs, but implies worldviews, thought, and modes of thought proper. Cultural questions are all in all language questions. Classical Chinese (wenyan) fails in nature to express new ideas. Gao categorizes Lu Xun’s wenyan works into classical Chinese literature or the literature of the tran- sitional period, which is unique and significant. For instance, such an inspirational essay as Lu Xun’s “The Power of Māra Poetry,” which evokes a change of concepts of literature, if reviewed in the context of wenyan, would likely be considered mediocre in regard to the vigor of style, hence draining it of its real message for change in the traditional system of cul- ture. Otherwise, should we change Lu Xun’s wenyan critical terms into modern Chinese, its power and impact would be felt immediately because modern Chinese is not merely a medium of expression. Language does have such power. Different discourses inherent in different systems of written signs assume different levels of power.
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