The novel I am a Cat established Natsume Sosiqi's position in the history of literature. The novel uses humorous, ironic and funny techniques, with the help of a cat's vision, hearing and feeling, and takes the daily life of the protagonist's middle school teacher Misa Zhenzi as the main line, interspersed with the contradiction between neighbor capitalist Jintian's attempt to marry a woman and plotting to retaliate against Misa Zhenzi, mocking the empty spiritual life of intellectuals in Meiji era and their arrogance but inaction; Dissatisfied with reality, but unable to resist; Mediocre and boring, it devalues the character of secular contradiction and lashes the snobbish, vulgar and cruel nature of bourgeois figures such as Jintian and their accomplices. This novel is ingenious in conception, exaggerated in description, flexible in structure and distinctive in artistic features.
The material of Brothers is taken from the writer's bumpy experience of leaving Beijing to teach in other places. It tells the story of a simple and upright little brother who ran into a wall everywhere in a rural middle school and was wronged everywhere. The language of the novel is humorous, the description technique is exaggerated and funny, and the characters are distinct and prominent. Boarding is an attempt of the author's romanticism. The story of a young painter who went to nature to find a pure and beautiful world far from reality and beyond society.
Saburo describes a rural youth, Saburo Nana Ogawa, who comes to Tokyo and is shocked by modern civilization and modern women. Then continue the theme of love tragedy of Saburo. The novel portrays a rebellious but indecisive intellectual Dai Zhu, denounces the so-called chivalrous morality that goes against natural feelings, and reveals the progressive consciousness of resisting secular ethics. The door is the end of the trilogy of love tragedy. The hero Nonaka Sosuke and his friend's girlfriend Amy fall in love and combine, leading to social exclusion. They lived in seclusion in a house without sunlight. On the one hand, they tasted the sweetness of sincerity, on the other hand, they realized the bitterness of others and fell into a dilemma. This is a human tragedy in which free and sincere love is not tolerated by society, and it is also a portrayal of intellectuals' pursuit of personal happiness and their inability to get rid of the shackles of moral norms.
The trilogy "Vernal Equinox", "Pedestrian" and "Heart" focuses on depicting the suspicious and world-weary psychology of intellectuals. It is light and shade that reflects the author's later creative thoughts. The novel describes the subtle relationship between Tsuda and Ayan with delicate and vivid psychology, exposes people's selfish, depressed and hopeless mentality, and warns people to get rid of selfishness and conform to God's will.
Natsume Sasaki wrote two literary theory works, a large number of haiku, hundreds of China poems, a large number of essays and letters in his life, but his greatest contribution in literature was to set up a monument to critical realism literature with dozens of novels and a large number of short stories, which gave profound enlightenment to later writers.
Akutagawa Ryunosuke 1892 was born in Tokyo. He was a disciple of Natsume, a great writer in his later years, and was the most important representative writer of the "new trend of thought" in Japan in the early 20th century. He combined the literary features of neo-realism, neo-intellectualism and neo-technicalism, representing the highest achievement of Japanese literature at that time. Akutagawa also developed the literary type of Japanese short stories to the extreme, at the same time, he borrowed and absorbed the structural style of western modern novels, strengthened the fiction of Japanese modern novels, broke the single negative realistic creation mode of "private novels" and established the unique creation method and literary status in Japanese modern literature.
Historical novels beyond history
As far as novel style is concerned, Akutagawa is especially good at a special type of historical novel similar to Edo and Meiji period. Nose, an early masterpiece, was published in New Trend of Thought magazine and was highly praised by Natsume Sosky. Nose's creative feature is to recreate a story in Volume 28 of the Japanese classic story "Ancient and Modern" and a similar story in "The Story of Uji" in simple language. Akutagawa's outstanding works are mostly short stories, including the famous Rashomon. Rashomon is also a historical novel of the same type, and its original source is Story of the Past and Present. However, according to Nobunobuyoshi Xixiang, a Japanese literary historian, the original description of Story of the Past and Present is very simple, showing a primitive color without any ideological ostentation. In other words, Story of the Past and Present only describes the human behavior of "thieves stealing" and is a simple description of "existence". There is no meaning and truth in this, and there is no will to explore and doubt. This is just a naked empty scene.
Therefore, in such classic works, the elements of human nature have been stripped off, as if there were no people, and people only became an ignorant "object image." -This is the original appearance of the original historical allusions. Perhaps it can be said that this is also the reason why Akutagawa rewrote historical allusions. According to the aforementioned literary historians, Akutagawa must add human knowledge and logic to such existence. In fact, Akutagawa's historical novels do have special literary significance. Because in his similar works, almost all of them have a specific theme that they are highly concerned about-exploring relatively abstract conceptual problems through vivid story description. Take the aforementioned masterpiece Rashomon as an example. It is an important work of Akutagawa when he was twenty-three years old. The novel is set in the twilight of Kyoto at the end of heian period, and the protagonist is a servant sheltered from the rain under Rashomon. The servants were fired, cornered, and at a loss in their helpless fate-they either starved to death or became thieves, and had no choice. He climbed upstairs to take shelter from the rain, only to find an old woman crouching among the dead bodies on the ground, pulling out the dead man's hair. The old woman lives on dead people's hair and sells it as a wig. Her reason is that if not, she will starve to death. She said that if these dead people were still alive, so would they. The servant listened to the old woman's words, stripped her clothes in handfuls, kicked her among the dead, and soon disappeared into the dark night. This is the basic clue of the novel Rashomon. Akutagawa's description is natural and vivid, full of suspense, but what is particularly important here is the abstract concept or question that Akutagawa wants to explore in the story-whether the servant and the thief's old woman are in the same situation or reason for survival, or whether they are free from secular moral norms?
Ryunosuke Akutagawa only asks questions in his works, but does not give standard answers. In his eyes, that is not the task of literature. At the beginning of the publication of Rashomon, it did not cause much response. With the passage of time, people's evaluation of it is getting higher and higher. Similarly, The Map of Hell is also Akutagawa's very important masterpiece of historical novels. The hero of the novel is Liang Xiu, a painter who has superb skills and is admired by people. Under the command of Daigong Horikawa, who had been in power for a period of time, Liang Xiu devoted himself to drawing the painting "Map of Hell". But the central picture of the young woman burning betel nut velvet car is difficult for the painter to conceive. At the same time, the novel writes that the Grand Duke is infatuated with Liang Xiu's daughter, but he desperately wants to possess it, but he can't succeed after all, so the Grand Duke has ulterior motives to promise Liang Xiu to give him a woman to burn wool cars. So, on the betel nut wool car in the villa that day, it was the beautiful daughter wearing Hanfu who was locked by the chain. In the face of her daughter's painful spasm in the sea of fire, it is amazing that in front of the beautiful show staring at the tragedy, it seems that "the glory of the law in a trance" emerges. On the contrary, Mr Horikawa gasped in pain. Liang Xiu finished this famous painting as he wished and hanged himself. The description of the novel is also thrilling and interlocking. In the final analysis, Ryunosuke Akutagawa described the confrontation between power and art through this extreme human tragedy. To this end, "Hell Map" is also known as Akutagawa's declaration of "the supremacy of art". In the reader's view, it is still very important that the author's consistent concept or artistic exploration is contained in his works-is the artistic supremacism of painter Liang Xiu, who would rather kiss her daughter than burn her, too ruthless or cruel? Or, what is the basis and reason of "art supremacism"?
From Japan to the forefront of the world
As a novelist, Ryunosuke Akutagawa's particularly important creative career lasted only over ten years (19 16- 1927). However, the influence of Akutagawa's literature is powerful and extensive. Judging from the creative tendency, Akutagawa hates the faithful confession of naturalistic literature. Because of this, his literature started, and he chose the past world that had nothing to do with his "self" life. The nose mentioned earlier, Rashomon, the map of hell, etc. , together with Dry Wild Copy, Lonely Hell, Loyalty and Righteousness, Death of Christians and Samadhi, etc. Almost all of them are historical novels with similar characteristics. Comparatively speaking, an important feature of Akutagawa's historical novels is that Mori Yoshiro's historical novels respect historical facts, while Ryunosuke Akutagawa freely interprets history with his own modern rational spirit, or describes realistic themes under the cloak of history. Therefore, some people think that Ryunosuke Akutagawa's historical novels are not real historical novels, but what Luacs called "historical modernization" or "historical camouflage".
Undoubtedly, Ryunosuke Akutagawa's literary concept or temperament has also been influenced by Mori Yoshiro and Sosuke Natsume, and his real life is also pure, and everything revolves around literature. I am also very familiar with the culture and art of Japan, China and the West, and have a deep understanding and attainments in Japanese literature and art, including chorus, haiku, modern poetry, ancient art and drama. Therefore, Akutagawa is also known as the last literary master in Japan who is rich in oriental scholars. Most of these comments are traditional generalities.
Finally, another criticism may be more convincing-in the book The Origin of Modern Literature by Noguchi Yong, a famous contemporary Japanese literary critic, the important Akutagawa literature is also mentioned. He said it was interesting that some anti-literary ambitions ("private novels") contributed to the formation of "pure literature" in Japan. However, Japanese "private novel" writers are not fully aware of "the skill of penetrating the law" or beyond the theoretical significance, and there is no need to be so conscious. On the contrary, only Ryunosuke Akutagawa, who began to hate structural writing in his later years, clearly realized this. It is not Akutagawa's sensitivity to the trend of Japanese literature after World War I, nor his conscious creation of such works ("private novels"). Importantly, Akutagawa compared the trend of Western Europe with Japan's "private novel works".
Ryunosuke Akutagawa made "private novel works" as a form to the forefront of the world in a meaningful way.
This evaluation is really interesting and unique. Tang Gu also said that "private novel" writers could not understand this perspective (Akutagawa's), and Junichiro Tanizaki (aesthetician) did not realize it. In the concept of "private novel" writers, they think they are describing "self" naturally, which is consistent with the practice of western European writers. Actually, it's not. According to Taniguchi, what Ryunosuke Akutagawa saw was not the problem of confession and fiction, but the problem of installation form in private novels. Akutagawa Ryunosuke's observation base point is a view without center, fragments and many relationships. These comments by Taguchi seem a little hard to understand, but they also prove the significance of Akutagawa literature to modern Japanese literature.
1927 On July 24th, Ryunosuke Akutagawa committed suicide by taking sleeping pills in his apartment. He died at the age of 35. It is generally believed that "Akutagawa's suicide" is closely related to the social and cultural patterns or conditions at that time. Under the literary situation of the rapid rise of proletarian literature at that time, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, who pursued "the supremacy of art", felt intense turmoil and anxiety of the times (in his own words, "trance anxiety"). His overly sensitive nerves also made him doubt the artistic value of his novels. He found that his literary friends Kan Kikuchi and Kumi Masao began to flee to the territory of popular novels, but Akutagawa, who was too lofty, was unable to follow suit. He once expressed his inner anguish-"What I expect is that neither the proletariat nor the bourgeoisie should lose their spiritual freedom". Of course, "Akutagawa suicide" also has health and life reasons. But in any case, "Akutagawa's death" had a great impact on Japanese society and literature at that time. Japanese literary circles call it "the second Kitamura Tougu" and regard "Akutagawa's death" as an important historical event-the initial symbol of modern Japanese literary history.