Zhen Zou Mu Xin: A Double Recluse outside the Tower of Chinese Literature Mu Xin: A Double Recluse outside the Tower of Chinese Literature Inaugural-Dissertation Zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der Philosophischen Fakultät der Rheinischen Friedrich – Wilhelms – Universität Bonn vorgelegt von Zhen Zou aus Tsingtau Bonn 2014 Die Prüfungskommission : 1) Prof. Dr. Peter Schwieger, Institut für Orient – und Asienwissenschaften ( Vorsitzender ) 2) Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Kubin, Institut für Orient – und Asienwissenschaften ( Betreuer und Gutachter ) 3) Prof. Dr. Ralph Kauz, Institut für Orient – und Asienwissenschaften ( Gutachter ) 4) Prof. Dr. Harald Meyer, Institut für Orient – und Asienwissenschaften ( weiteres prüfungsberechtigtes Mitglied ) Tag der mündlichen Prüfung : 19. 08. 2014 3 Contents Introduction ………………………………………………………………………… 5 Chapter 1 The Setting …………………………………………………………… 13 1.1. The Binary Opposition of Tradition and Modernity ……………………… 15 1.2. The Three Ruptures of Chinese Culture in the 20th Century ……………… 19 Chapter 2 Literature and Memories …………………………………………… 31 2.1. Mao Dun Library ………………………………………………………… 33 2.2. The Postwar Carnival ……………………………………………………… 44 2.3. The Destroyed Manuscripts ……………………………………………… 57 2.4. Prison Notes………………………………………………………………… 66 2.5. Literary Memoirs ………………………………………………………… 71 2.6. The Accomplished Self-perfection ………………………………………… 93 Chapter 3 Literature and Times ………………………………………………… 97 3.1. The Second Level of Significance ………………………………………… 98 3.1.1. The Aesthetics of ‘Withering’ ………………………………………… 98 3.1.2. ‘I’ and the ‘Other’ …………………………………………………… 108 3.2. The Style of Mu Xin ……………………………………………………… 113 3.2.1. Cross-genre Writing ………………………………………………… 115 3.2.2. Poetry and Philosophy ……………………………………………… 129 3.2.3. Individual and Times ………………………………………………… 133 3.3 The Two Features of Mu Xin’s Literary Language ……………………… 136 Chapter 4 Literature and Diaspora …………………………………………… 145 4.1. The Semantic Reconstruction of ‘ Diaspora’……………………………… 146 4.2. The Self-diaspora in Literary Homeland………………………………… 152 4.3. Wanderers With Roots …………………………………………………… 167 4.3.1. The Perception of the Universe ……………………………………… 169 4 4.3.2. The Theory of Non-truth …………………………………………… 178 4.3.3. The Aesthetic Wisdom ……………………………………………… 181 4.3.4. The Turn of Pessimism ……………………………………………… 186 Chapter 5 Literature and Reception …………………………………………… 193 5.1. The Publication and Reception of Mu Xin’s Works ……………………… 194 5.1.1. The Overseas Period ………………………………………………… 194 5.1.2. The Period of Mainland China ……………………………………… 200 5.2. The Reason of the Phenomenon of Publication ………………………… 209 5.3. Perception of Readers and The Historical Position ……………………… 214 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………… 220 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………… 224 5 Introduction Mu Xin 木心 (1927-2011) is a man of letters, difficult to be classified, in the history of Chinese literature in the 20th century. Whether from the aspect of his real life or from that of his literary style, he is a real recluse. Because of this, he became an important writer ignored by our times. And that is why I would like to make a study of him and his literature. Mu Xin was born on 14th February, 1927, in a wealthy family of industrial and commercial landlord class in Wuzhen (乌镇)，a small town in Zhejiang (浙江) province. His real name is Sun Pu 孙璞 and his courtesy name is Yangzhong 仰中. He graduated from Shanghai Art College in 1948. He worked as arts and crafts designer in Shanghai Arts and Crafts Institute from 1950s to 1970s. He wrote poems, fictions, dramas, prose, essays and treatises in the 1950s and 1960s after work. Those unpublished handwritten manuscripts were bound in 20 thick volumes and were confiscated and destroyed at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Between the mid-1950s and the whole period of the Cultural Revolution, Mu Xin underwent illegal imprisonment three times. He moved to New York in 1982 after the Cultural Revolution and began to continue his writing career. He published his works in Chinese newspapers issued in New York and Taiwan. From 1986 to 1999, the presses of Taiwan successively published Mu Xin’s 12 books, such as: the collection of prose Sanwen yiji 散文一集, Qiongmeika suixianglu 琼美卡随想录, Jixing panduan 即兴判断, the collection of short stories Wensha muyuan 温莎墓园, and the poetry anthologies Xibanya sankeshu 西班牙三棵树, Balong 巴珑, Wo fenfen de qingyu 我纷纷的情欲. From 1989 to 1994, Mu Xin gave a course on the history of world literature to some Chinese artists living in New York. In 2006, for the first time 6 a book of Mu Xin was published by Guangxi Normal University press in mainland China, where Mu Xin began to be known in his native land. In the same year, he was invited by his hometown Wuzhen to settle down there. At that time he was already 79 years old. In 2011, the English version of his collection of short stories An Empty Room was published in America. In that autumn, he was hospitalized in the hospital in Tongxiang (桐乡) because of his lung infection and died on 21st December. It is hard to introduce Mu Xin to a reader who never heard of him. This difficulty lies in that Mu Xin, as a man of letters, is difficult to be classified —— both from the aspect of his writing career and his works. Mu Xin doesn’t belong to any stage of the history of Chinese modern and contemporary literature. His writing career began in the 1940s. However he had never published his works in his early life in mainland China and all his unpublished manuscripts written in that period had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. This is the first part of his writing career. It is in New York in the 1980s and 1990s that Mu Xin resumed his intensive writing. During this period he attained the belated literary reputation overseas. And until in 2006, when he was 79 years old, he had began to be known in his native land, in mainland China. The writing career of Mu Xin spanned more than 60 years. Both from the aspects of time and space, there is no literary writer in mainland China being on the same level with Mu Xin in these more than 60 years. In addition, Mu Xin’s writing doesn’t belong to any literary school and fashion in post-liberation China and he stands voluntarily outside his own era. His writing is not within the discourse system dominant in mainland China after 1949 and entirely distinct from the mainstream literature in today’s China. There is no ‘our discourse’ in Mu Xin’s works. His literary language, i.e. the written vernacular Chinese, is very pure and old –fashioned and considered as the authentic and traditional Chinese without pollution. Chen Danqing 陈丹青, a contemporary artist, a freelance writer as well as a public intellectual in mainland China, recognised Mu Xin as the only literary writer in our era who completely linked up the tradition of classical Chinese and that of the May Fourth 7 new literature.1 When his works were published in mainland China, the readers there took him for a writer from Taiwan. And when his works were published in Taiwan in early 1980s, Mu Xin was taken for a rediscovered old writer of the May Fourth era. Hence Liang Wendao 梁文道, a columnist and a public intellectual in Hong Kong, considered Mu Xin as an outsider. He commented, “ He (Mu Xin) is so distinct that no one can know his derivation and era from his works.”2 On the other hand, Mu Xin’s writing is very modern. “ The characteristics of his thoughts and his art style belong to Western modernism and are related closely to the most profound humanistic thoughts, such as deconstructive philosophy.”3 He was the one who was not in the cultural gap resulting from the red regime in China after 1949. Besides the Chinese classical culture, as far as Mu Xin’s concerned, the worldwide literary prospect is also not interrupted. From 1949 to the end of the Cultural Revolution, the introduction and translation of European and American Literature nearly broke off. In this cultural blockade of the red regime, the only thing Mu Xin accompanied himself with was his literary reading in his early life, and he never stopped longing for the literary prospect outside the iron curtain. Early in the 1940s, Mu Xin had already known new literary fashions in Europe, such as Stream of consciousness, Imagism, Surrealism. However he could only talk about those things in secret with his friends, and imitate the writing style of Stream of consciousness secretly. During the late period of the Cultural Revolution, there were underground Chinese translations of Postwar literature spreading, such as Black Humor and Beat Generation. Of course, Mu Xin didn’t allow him to miss those versions. After settling down in New York, he retrieved the obstructed Western modern literary prospect through their Chinese translation by Taiwan scholars and writers, and he linked up the Western modern literary prospect to his literary reading in his early life. The Chinese literati from free China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, were all surprised that Mu Xin was 1 Chen Danqing 陈丹青, “Wo de shizun Mu Xin xiansheng 我的师尊木心先生,” in Li Jing 李静, and Sun Yu 孙郁, eds., Du Mu Xin 读木心 (Beijing: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2008 ), p.11. 2 Liang Wendao 梁文道, “Wenxue, juwairen de huiyi 文学，局外人的回忆,” in Wenxue huiyilu 文学回忆录 (Beijing: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2012 ), p.Ⅺ. 3 Tongming Jun Liu, “ Mu Xin fengge de yiyi 木心风格的意义,” in Du Mu Xin, p.21. 8 so familiar with Western modernism. The era of Mu Xin was accompanied with intensive cultural ruptures. However he had always tried his best to put himself in the worldwide literary prospect. Mu Xin is an oddity of Chinese mainstream literature and became the isolated case since the emergence of May Fourth new literature. He is an important writer ignored by our times. Because he is a double recluse. The first significance of recluse for Mu Xin lies in his real life and his destiny.