Looking through Zhou Zuoren's prose collection, we can easily find that his prose is based on random materials, and he can write whatever he wants, such as flies and lice, drinking tea, talking about ghosts, commenting on the present, playing with antiques and so on. , the content is complicated. It is easy to ignore the profound connotation in his prose by seemingly random choice and creation. In fact, although Zhou Zuoren's prose does not seek to express strange themes, he attaches great importance to expressing what he calls "common sense". Zhou Zuoren has an explanation for "common sense": common sense, separately, is nothing more than human feelings and physics. The former can be said to be sound morality, and the latter is correct wisdom, which together can be called wisdom. Zhou Zuoren's prose has both human feelings and wisdom, or both. From this perspective, a large part of his prose is such a "wisdom article". Famous articles such as Drinking Tea, Wu Pengchuan, Talking about Wine, Hometown Wild Vegetables, etc. are all ordinary things. Ordinary life has another kind of interest and philosophy in it. The so-called "the meaning of drunkenness is not in wine, but in mountains and rivers." This breakthrough in drawing materials not only broke the old law of "writing carries Tao", but also adapted to the needs of the development of essays themselves.
In Zhou Zuoren's view, life and writing are both pastimes, both of which contain elements of self-entertainment, and "music" is an indispensable element. But for art, "fun" is by no means a simple word game, but should be integrated into nature and life, with a life situation full of aftertaste and lasting chewing.
The most important achievement of Zhou Zuoren's life in creation is the creation of prose sketches. Since the May 4th Movement, the achievements of essays in China's new literature are almost above novels, operas and poems, which are inseparable from Zhou Zuoren's contribution. In the early days of the New Literature Movement, Zhou Zuoren, together with Lu Xun, Xie Bingxin and Zhu Ziqing, watered the early spring flowers of modern vernacular prose with hard work and "elements of narrative reasoning and lyricism", which convincingly declared the literary revolution. The victory in the field of prose creation established the position of prose as a style in the history of modern literature development in China, and had a far-reaching impact on the prose creation of later generations.
What's more worth mentioning is that Zhou Zuoren has a historical position that can't be ignored in the history of modern prose development in China, which is inseparable from his outstanding artistic achievements ... The main achievement of Zhou Zuoren's prose art is that he created a unique and mature prose artistic style-a peaceful and diluted style. This style is unique in China's modern prose garden, and its influence is unique in China's modern prose history. The artistic styles of Zhou Zuoren's prose mainly include: elegant and free-flowing writing, peaceful and tranquil lyrical features, humorous interests of Zhuang and Xu, and free language expression.
In a word, Zhou Zuoren is the earliest advocate and pioneer of modern prose, and it is not an exaggeration to call him "the first great man in the history of modern literature in China who managed prose wholeheartedly and made outstanding achievements". Zhou Zuoren broadened the creative horizon of China's modern prose. He wrote his prose into a "sketch" that can be tasted and pondered: instead of pointing out the main idea, he turned the article into a process of taste, not a result. Prose, as a style, has developed more maturely and concisely in his hands, which can be said to be a great contribution to prose and promoted the development of modern prose in China.