Let me give you Mr. Ge Fei’s definition first:
Chinese modern novels, which are directly influenced by Western modernist trends of thought, have gone through the following three stages of development in the new era:< /p>
1. The "pseudo-modernist" period (1979-1981)
As early as the 1920s and 1930s, influenced by the trend of Western modernism (Freud's psychoanalytic theory , stream of consciousness, symbolism), Chinese literature has seen experimental works that explore literary forms and writing techniques, represented by "new sensory novels" and "modernist poetry." Representative writers and poets include Liu Naou, Mu Shiying, Shi Zhecun, Dai Wangshu, Li Jinfa, Bian Zhilin, etc. The works of these writers either have the characteristics of modernism in the form, rhythm, and techniques of the novels, focusing on capturing novel feelings to express the urban scenery in the eyes and ears of the writer; or they are influenced by Freud's sexual psychology. More emphasis on psychological analysis; or use hazy images and implicit language to suggest and express feelings and sentiments... However, due to social and historical reasons, they only exist as a genre of modern Chinese literature and have not produced greater Impact. The prosperity of the modernist literary creative trend in the Chinese literary world in the early 1980s was not a simple return of the modernist literary trend around the 1920s and 1930s, but the product of the influx of Western modernist thought after the reform and opening up.
The influence of Western modernist thought on contemporary Chinese literature first appeared in the poetry world. The "Misty Poetry" of Gu Cheng, Bei Dao, Shu Ting and others formed a powerful literary trend in the Chinese literary world in the late 1970s and early 1980s, launching an unprecedented impact on the concept of traditional literature. "Self" also made people start to think about the proposition of "people", and literature began to return to literature itself. Although "Misty Poetry" cannot be regarded as modernist literature, its spirit of doubt, its many creative techniques, and its sense of absurdity echo the spirit of Western modernism.
While the theoretical circle is setting off an upsurge in introducing Western modernist theories, novelists can’t wait to apply these newly introduced theories into creative practice. Wang Meng, who has always been regarded as the eldest brother in the literary world, consciously broke through the writing methods of traditional novels in his creation after returning to the world, and boldly absorbed and borrowed some expression techniques from Western modernist novels. From the beginning of 1978 to the first half of 1985, he published 19 short and medium-length novels full of exploratory spirit, including "The Eyes of the Night", "Buli", "The Sound of Spring", "Kite Streamers" and "Dream of the Sea" , "Butterfly" and other works are obviously influenced by Western modernist trends of thought, especially the "stream of consciousness", and their forms reflect characteristics that are very different from traditional literature. At the same time, a group of old writers like Wang Meng who were active in the literary world in the 1950s also joined the exploration camp. Ru Zhijuan's "The Wrong Editing Story" uses a combination of movie montage shots to expand the capacity of the work, giving the content a three-dimensional feel. Through dreams, it breaks through the limitations of time and space and gives people a new feeling; Zong Pu's Works such as "Who Am I", "Dwelling in a Dwelling", and "Head in the Quagmire" focus on using surrealist techniques such as absurd history, absurd reality, absurd environment, and even the depiction of absurd thoughts and feelings to explore intellectuals. The complex spiritual world. In addition, the novels "Love Can't Be Forgotten" by Zhang Jie and "Minus Ten Years" by Chen Rong also borrowed the writing techniques of modernist novels intentionally or unintentionally.
With the vigorous development of creative practice, theoretical discussions and debates about modernist literature are also out of control. Representative articles that emerged during this period include: "The Rise of New Aesthetic Principles" by Sun Shaozhen, "A Preliminary Exploration of Modern Novel Techniques" by Gao Xingjian, "Modernization and Modernism" by Xu Chi, "The Rising Group of Poems" by Xu Jingya, etc. These controversial and exploratory articles, together with the translation and introduction works at that time, formed a powerful theoretical system that influenced the modernist literary creation in China in the new era.
Although the exploratory works of the early 1980s began to break with traditional narrative methods and structural methods in form, and used subjective psychological awareness processes to arrange narrative time and space, on the whole, they did not It touches on the deep aesthetic concepts, creative concepts and creative models of Chinese writers. The so-called "modernism" only uses modernist artistic techniques and techniques such as symbolism, deformation, and stream of consciousness. Its works as a whole are still "social realism literature" full of social responsibility and critical spirit. Its purpose is to express the writer's feelings about various Cognition and opinions on social issues, that is, the description of subjective consciousness, serves to reflect objective reality. The theme of the work is the concern about social reality issues, not the concern about "individual life" expressed by Western modernism. Therefore, In fact, their creation is still a continuation of traditional realist literary creation. Because of this, their creations are called "Oriental stream of consciousness" or "psychological realism", and some people call them "pseudo-modernism".
However, the creations of writers during this period provided rich experience for the creations of later writers and cultivated a group of readers and commentators with an affinity for modernism. Their works are the first achievements of Chinese literature in the 1980s under the influence of Western modernism.
2. The prosperous period of avant-garde novels: (1985-1988)
As more and more Western modernist trends are translated and introduced into China, modernism and postmodernism Marxist literary works, such as psychoanalytic novels, stream of consciousness, magical realism, new novels, as well as theoretical formalism, narratology, structuralism, existentialism, etc., became a hot topic of concern and debate in the mid-1980s. Western modern literary concepts also began to take root in people's hearts. Stimulated by Western modernist trends of thought, China's avant-garde novel creation showed a "blowout" trend after 1985.
The earliest "blowout" was the two novels published in 1985: "You Have No Choice" by Liu Sola and "Variations on No Theme" by Xu Xing. "You Have No Choice" uses a "musical" structure and "black humor" language, and a seemingly absurd plot to show the rigid teaching methods of a certain music school that strangle the students' souls; "Variations without a Theme" By connecting psychological fragments and life fragments "without a theme", through the self-narration of a young man who voluntarily dropped out of college and settled down to be a "doing nothing" hotel waiter, it shows the lonely and confused living conditions of the younger generation. Compared with "pseudo-modernist" works such as Wang Meng and Zong Pu, these two works have gone beyond the level of formal exploration and integrated the spirit of modernism into the works. They are more mature in ideology, literary spirit and expression techniques, and are more mature in ideology, literary spirit and expression techniques. It has the characteristics of modernism. Because of this, critics believe that China's modernist literature is entering a period of prosperity under the influence of Western modernist trends of thought. "You Have No Choice" is also known as "the first successful Chinese modernist literary work" and "a condensation of the 'emotional history' of a generation."
Following Liu Sola and Xu Xing, a number of writers such as Ma Yuan, Hong Feng, Ge Fei, Can Xue, Yu Hua, Sun Ganlu, Mo Yan, Su Tong, Tashi Dawa, and Beicun entered the literary world and began to The dance of avant-garde literature. China's avant-garde literature inherently bears traces of the influence of modern literature. For example, Mo Yan compared Marquez and Faulkner to "two hot blast furnaces" and considered them to be the writers who had the greatest influence on him; Yu Hua highly praised Kafka and Kawabata Yasunari, and his novels are also full of new ideas. There are traces of novels and Robbe-Grillet; Can Xue's works are full of Kafka's shadow; the works of Ge Fei and Sun Ganlu are deeply influenced by Borges... Of course, their exploration is not pure. Imitation also reflects strong individuality and local characteristics. For example, Ma Yuan, Ge Fei and others are different from Borges's fascination with the pure fantasy world, and bring a traditional Eastern focus on "phenomenon". It does not pay attention to the difference between "real" and "illusion" and uses both real and illusory colors; Sun Ganlu's poetic exploration is also based on and focuses on exploring the poetic function of modern Chinese, etc.
In terms of reforming "form", Ma Yuan is undoubtedly a representative figure of the narrative revolution. His creation "The Goddess of the Lhasa River" puts narrative above story for the first time, and puts several incidents into context. Events that are not causally linked are collaged together. In his novels such as "The Temptation of Gangdise", "Sailboats in the Western Sea", "Fiction", "The Master", and "Walls Covered with Weird Patterns", he used meta-narrative techniques to break the "illusion of reality" in the novels "After that, Ma Yuan further confused the boundaries between reality and fiction. Ma Yuan's narrative exploration led to the formation of the famous "Ma Yuan's narrative trap", and in a unique way solved the problems caused by the familiar realism techniques before Real hallucination became the object of imitation for later writers and the starting point for experiments in novels.
The worlds in Can Xue's novels such as "The Cabin on the Mountain" are all deformed. Her characters all have a certain kind of "neurosis", lack of communication and trust between each other, and there is a " The psychology of "self-abuse" and "other-abuse". Her novels use an accumulation of ugly images to highlight the oppression of people by the external world, raising a personal feeling to the level of an allegory about people's living conditions.
Ge Fei’s novel creation has been devoted to the construction of narrative mazes from the very beginning. He uses the disorder of the characters’ inner consciousness to construct a coil-like maze-there are entanglements, collisions, and Diffusion and short-circuiting of consciousness. For example, his short story "Brown Birds" used the "narrative gap" technique for the first time to narrate a story that seems both true and illusory. It breaks the pursuit of "authenticity" in traditional literature and reveals modern people's doubts about the real nature of "existence".
3. Silent period (1989 to present)
In the early 1990s, because the works of avant-garde writers placed too much emphasis on form and neglected content, they gradually lost market among readers. As a result, avant-garde writers The intensity of exploration has been reduced one after another, and the narrative style of the works has adopted a method that is more acceptable to general readers. Some have even been combined with commercial culture, and the works have been transformed into other fields of novels. However, the exploration of Chinese avant-garde novels did not stop there. In the 1990s, there were still a group of writers who insisted on the lonely position of "avant-garde", such as Han Dong, Zhu Wen, Hai Nan, Hei Hai, etc. They still continue the avant-garde dance of Chinese literature with their own creations.
Although the prosperity period of Chinese avant-garde novels was short-lived, from the perspective of literary history, it broke the monopoly of traditional realism mode and mainstream ideology, and ended an era of novels controlled by political authority. Chinese novel creation has since shown a diversified trend; in addition, the exploration results achieved by pioneer writers, such as time and space dislocation, zero-degree emotional narration, narrative traps, etc., have also been appropriately and skillfully used by writers in the 1990s As a result, Chinese literature has been injected with new factors, presenting a more colorful scene.
In my personal opinion, I will give you three sentences, hoping to inspire you
First, contemporary Chinese literature has been deeply influenced by foreign literature, especially after 1978, but this This kind of influence is imitation, and the direct result is that it "comes and goes quickly", such as avant-garde novels, Marquez's sentence structure, etc.
Second, modernism cannot exist in China. This is the end of Western classical philosophy, and we are the end of the Cultural Revolution’s personality cult and irrationality. Although both appear to be subversion of tradition, , but the East does not equal the West, especially in philosophy.
Third, whether modernist novels really constitute the characteristics of modernism remains to be analyzed.