In the history of modern literature in China, Zhang Ailing is a legendary writer. She appeared like a comet in the Shanghai literary world in the early 1940s, and reached the peak of literary creation as soon as she entered the literary world. During the period of 1943- 1945, she basically completed all her representative works. At that time, the civic class was attracted by the legendary stories she wrote and rushed to buy and read; Literary predecessors, regardless of praise or criticism, have shown extraordinary attention to the author; More than 20 literary journals with different tendencies, tastes and categories, such as Vientiane, Magazine, Bitter Bamboo, Spring and Autumn Annals and Heaven and Earth, all contributed articles and published books to her. For a time, Zhang Ailing became famous for her works. 1949 after the liberation of the mainland, her writing gradually became dull. 1952 After she moved to Hong Kong, her novels became worse, and then she disappeared in the mainland. However, it has been hot overseas, which not only has a large number of "fans", but also affects a group of young and middle-aged writers who have grown up in Taiwan Province and Hongkong. After 1980s, with the diversification of people's aesthetic concepts, China began to pay attention to and study her again. As a result, Zhang Ailing's name, where she once shone, once again attracted attention. Xia Zhiqing has a good summary of Zhang Ailing: "On the one hand, we see meaningful satire, on the other hand, we see depressed sadness. The ingenious combination of these two attributes gives these novels a sense of desolation. " Everything about Zhang Ailing is based on this background. The author thinks that the double marginal identity is an important factor in the desolation of Zhang Ailing's novels.
First, the edge of living conditions.
Zhang Ailing grew up in Shanghai Concession, studied in Hong Kong and experienced the Hong Kong War. In 1930s and 1940s, Shanghai and Hongkong were the areas with the highest degree of colonization in China, where the most decadent feudal ethics and the most developed capitalist material civilization coexisted. It is not only the window of China's modernization, but also the place where China's traditional civilization and western modern civilization oppose, compete and merge, and it is also the place where Chinese and western cultures collide and meet. Her innate aristocratic atmosphere and isolated living environment separated her from the public, and later her embarrassing life brought her close to the public; The life and education of the aristocratic clan infiltrated her and abandoned her, but the freedom of street life could not fully accommodate her-she had always been a marginal person. This involuntary living situation makes her approach the noumenon of life prematurely and gives her a unique feeling between the two. This marginal position makes her observe life both internally and externally, which not only deeply understands its taste, but also is easy to be detached. On the one hand, she faces up to the vulgarity of life, longs to blend in with ordinary citizens and agrees with their persistence and persistence in survival; On the other hand, she clearly appreciates the tragedy contained in this secular life, especially in troubled times, women with weak nature often inevitably fall into the trap of this life and feel the sadness of fate in extremely embarrassing situations. Accordingly, in her creation, her perspective also presents a unique posture. While enjoying life all her life, she takes a cold-eyed and condescending attitude towards all kinds of noises and everything outside, neither blindly following nor completely denying it. All China is in the bonfire of the war of resistance. Only middle-class intellectuals like Zhang Ailing, who are economically independent and have personal "freedom" in enemy-occupied cities, as sober observers, will have doubts and panic about life when they look back at the big communities where they often go. Her novels describe the dark and cold side of impetuous and noisy urban life, the change of the world, the desolation of life and the "wall" that people can never cross.
It was that specific era and the specific geographical environment of isolated Shanghai that made Zhang Ailing. As Ling Ke wrote in "Farewell to Zhang Ailing": "The literary revolution in the May 4th era-anti-imperialist and anti-feudal; The revolutionary literature in 1930s-class struggle; During the Anti-Japanese War-sharing weal and woe, resisting Japan and saving the country, of course, is the mainstream. Coupled with being regarded as outrageous and deviant, it is not only tolerated by the mainstream, but also attracts readers' attention. ..... In the vast literary world, there is no room for an Zhang Ailing at any stage; The fall of Shanghai gave her a chance. " [2]37 Because Shanghai was occupied by the Japanese army, it was impossible to produce revolutionary literature or anti-Japanese war literature, leaving a few literati to write something romantic or unrelated to the war. And Zhang Ailing herself said: "She is not good at writing social themes, and her style is not sensational." In this particular period and special environment, Zhang Ailing found the opportunity to show a trivial, mediocre, desolate and desperate life. Taking the changing society as the background of her life and characters, she described the changing life of people in that society, the subtle relationship between people and the changes of people's hearts in the process of change. Unlike those writers with strong political consciousness, she doesn't put her life and characters in the struggle between ethnic contradictions and class contradictions. She faces the world. Moreover, it does not emphasize life, does not emphasize the flight of life, and only focuses on the desolation and ups and downs of life. As she said, "Life is cruel. I always feel infinite pain when I see our shrinking and timid wishes. " "If my most commonly used word is desolation, it is because there is such a threat of desolation in my ideological background." [2]46 There is no hero in her works, no great cause or great change. The plain life described by her works is surging with the "living" foundation of this era-war and change, which is changing people's destiny. Therefore, her whole creation is also filled with desolation.
Second, the background of marginal culture and education
Not only in the life situation, Zhang Ailing is a completely marginalized person, but also in the cultural education she has received.
First of all, the early family atmosphere and the rich influence of China culture made her inherit the tradition of taking sadness as beauty in classical literature in aesthetic taste and style.
At the same time, more importantly, she inherited the traditional cultural personality of China literati. Her novels are full of worries about the living conditions and prospects of ordinary people, especially ordinary women in troubled times. This deep and distant sense of tragedy is a character of China literati and the accumulation of traditional culture in Zhang Ailing's consciousness.
Secondly, she was influenced by the British and American turmoil, so she not only discovered the great sorrow of China people's religion when she looked at the world, but also metaphysically thought about this taste from the perspective of an outsider. This enabled her to inherit the traditional culture of China and escape from the shackles of China's traditional vision. With the calmness of an outsider and her picky habits, she calmly observed the individual lives of conservative figures in the changing times in the interweaving of Chinese and Western cultures. As a descendant of a declining family who has received western education, but can only wander at the door of western culture, in the embarrassment of the gap between Chinese and western cultures, her indifference and picky, her sensitive and precocious personality have made her gain more understanding and sobriety from the tragic sense of life. This kind of experience is projected to the literary world, and Zhang Ailing's examination of life is more about looking on coldly than judging the value orientation. Liu Zhirong and others once said: "For writers like Zhang Ailing, from the beginning, they will inevitably encounter' double disillusionment': on the one hand, local cultural traditions no longer allow them to believe; On the other hand, foreign western modern civilization has also shown the fate of decline. " [3] At the beginning of the 20th century, the rational thoughts of western enlightenment had a strong impact on the moralization and aesthetic self-sufficiency order of China's social life. However, science and religion in the modern western spirit are also in crisis, and at the same time, the western tradition of religious redemption cannot penetrate into the hearts of China people who lack religious consciousness. The spiritual plate of traditional culture based on China people is in a state of fracture and drift. But he failed, and no matter where he was, he couldn't find the person he was looking for, so Zhang Ailing had to return to aesthetics. The ancient literati sent their feelings to the mountains and rivers, and she chose to send her feelings to the details of daily life, although deep down, she still missed the glamorous and neat order of China, in which "a civil servant wrote to secure the world, and a military commander mounted a horse and decided to be a Kun".
At the same time, in Zhang Ailing's thoughts, she never pinned her hope of salvation on social revolution or some ideology. The heaviness, progress and great changes of the times have brought great psychological pressure to the writer's backwardness and caused a strong sense of desolation in her works. Those sons in the roaring era, the strong ones in life, will not feel this desolation. Therefore, in Zhang Ailing's literary world, she can't find the sublime, shocking, heroic and worrying that contemporary writers pay attention to. Political movements, social conflicts, and optimism or despair about the future in the era of the alternation of old and new cultures seem to be the themes she tries to avoid. In her novels, there is neither the grandeur of political struggle nor the joys and sorrows of life and death, but the small emotions of small people and the plain enjoyment of ordinary people are the true colors of her life. Because life has the most common joys and sorrows, and there is the eternity of life and humanity. With the affection of men and women, she interprets what she understands as "the usual echo of life" Therefore, Zhang Ailing often ends with desolation, because "tragic is a kind of completion, desolation is a kind of enlightenment" [2]44. Enlightenment literature has gone out of pastime and entered real sadness.
Therefore, the nothingness in her novels is particularly naked and desolate. In the hopeless situation, she can only attach the meaning of existence to the brief physical pleasure here and now, and to the material that can be touched and grasped. Therefore, her novels are full of material and tireless details. In the trivial life of ordinary people, she skillfully combines her own experience of life with her extraordinary examination, depicts it with rich colors, depicts it with complexity, and displays it with delicate and bitter pen and ink, embellishing her dusty life journey towards nothingness. In the hustle and bustle of prosperity, she hints at the coming of the time limit everywhere, reminding people of the sadness after prosperity and the great sorrow after joy, so that we can slowly appreciate the sadness of life background in the winding and secluded exploration guided by her. Therefore, reading Zhang Ailing has multiple feelings: her works contain the unique charm of China characters, both the gorgeous beauty of the countryside and the bleak sadness of the west wind and autumn frost; It not only embodies the story of popular literature, but also integrates the modernity of western literature, which promotes the survival dilemma of human beings and reveals the essence of pessimism in life. While fully feeling, Zhang Ailing explained the "desolation" in her eyes with a marginal mentality. There are many wonderful flowers in this unsuitable land.