The Significance Space Of CanXue’ Literary Works

There is no getting away from the Can Xue phenomenon in the contemporary Chineseliterary history. The obscurity of her novels has greatly confounded the readers who havebeen used to tracking down the meaning in the cause-effect literary narrative andclearly-intentioned plot development. The outlandish representation, grotesque characters,nightmarish atmosphere, the internal fracture in time development as well as the intersectionof space have distinctly marked her novels as such unique creation that they can never bemistaken in recognition, and also exerted aesthetical impact on her readers and researchers.All these naturally account for the fact that she has become an interesting and unavoidablefigure to the researchers of contemporary literary study. Since the publication of her firstnovel in the1980s, the study on Can Xue has always been hand in hand with her literarycreation.This study has not only launched the popular trend to read the writer, but also broughtabout a profound revolution in the ideology of the literary circle. This dissertation firstlyattempts to explore the literary significance of the emergence of Can Xue’s works in the lightof the debate on her among the literary critics shortly after the release of her books. In1986and1987, the short story The Bull set off debates on realistic literature to question itsconnotation, creating an opportunity for the later opening-up of Chinese literature andtheoretical reflection, which is deemed as one aspect of her literary importance. Anotherfocus of the debates is on the aim and value of literature. What is the standard of excellence?Is it alright to take the writer’s class attitude or political position as the standard, or with aneye to the work to see if it has demonstrated ideas and thoughts compatible with the lawsgoverning the development of human society and history, or in terms of social influence totake the number of readers and unanimous evaluation as the judging principle? Questions assuch finally got straightened out. To place the publication of and debate on Can Xue’s worksin the context of literary history is such an approach as challenges traditional literary conceptsand reveals a fact that these debates, instead of simply contending ideas, release an importantsignal from the theoretical circle of the internal literary revolution to inform people that thechange has already taken place.Chinese literature in the1980s was in dire need of profound changes to regain itssubjectivity instead of only serving political interests so as to accentuate the value and artisticquality of literature. Literary creation also seeks to change from the upheld realistic model todiversified representations, and the exploration into and delineation of human nature hastaken on more depth and subtlety. All these press hard for nourishments from the worldliterature. The opening-up of China has witnessed the influx of various literary trends andschools as well as the infusion of nutrition in literary creation. The broad assimilation of modern realistic literature from the West has in a way breathed new life into contemporaryChinese literature, which encouraged many new writers to try novel writing techniques toostrange to Chinese readers to be accepted. Can Xue is one of them, whose novels areextremely shocking and hardly acceptable. Though the critical circle keeps up with Can Xuein the response to the change, they are more inclined to see the new literary phenomenonfrom the old perspective, demonstrating a hysteresis quality. It is not until the1990s thatliterary criticism and the writing of literary history finally converge with modern literarycriticism in the West. It is from this newly established critical perspective that a properevaluation of Can Xue’s works has formed.The works being obviously characteristic of western modernism, Can Xue makes nosecret of her adherence to it and her reference and development in terms of the writingtechniques. However, her “modernism” is free from the confinement in the late period ofcapitalism. She categorizes as modernist writers those who make his mission therepresentation of the introspection and spiritual world of humanity. As a result, classic writerslike Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, etc., who have never been classified as modernists havebecome modernist writers in Can Xue’s understanding. She learned creative thought fromthese writers, while writing techniques from writers such as Borges, Calvino, and Kafka inparticular, with whom she indeed shares some similarities. To her, Kafka’s creation is closelyrelated to the soul. Every realistic stroke is a symbolic representation of the soul. In order tocrystallize the elusive spiritual world, Can Xue has fully drawn upon the western modernismrepresented by Kafka in composing thoughts and artistic expressions. First, Can Xue adopts atranscending view of literature and art, establishes a literature of “human nature” inphenomenological terms, discards the sociological judgment of the right and wrong, good andevil in human personality, and directs the writing toward the core of human nature. Theultimate expression of the core is “reason”, also called “nous” or “logos”. Nous embodies theprimal power, when active, splitting the self in the souls. Can Xue’s novels describe such splitselves. The conflicting and complicated relationship between people in her works is a goodcase in point. Hence, she interprets Kafka’s works as an artistic expression of thecontradictory movement between nous and logos. The call on the soul and the interrogationof the “Way” on life in The Castle has transformed into a rude visit paid by an unexpectedvisitor, and a battle against hidden enemies. Enlightened by Kafka’s ideas, she has created aseries of works featuring the struggles and efforts of people on their way to an unchangeablegoal. The whole movement process of life is a process full of clashes and transformationbetween breakthroughs and indulgence. Whether the destination is clear or not cannotdissolve the persistent belief in life; ordeals and challenges will activate the will to life andarouse the happiness of life.Apart from the profound influence of western modernism, that of Chinese literature hasalways loomed in Can Xue’s works, strong though concealed. Ancient Chinese literature is primarily concerned with the secular life with the holy mission of conveying truth. Althoughthe May4thMovement has brought the classic age to an end and widely spread westernlearning, our literary tradition has not been cut off, but instead, got preserved and continuedin excellent creations. Meanwhile, modern literature in China has developed a new tradition,with humanism as the mainstream. Some contemporary writers once boldly claimed that theywere mainly influenced by western literature, yet in the end had to acknowledge the decisiveinfluence of modern Chinese literary tradition represented by Lu Xun. An analysis of theinterweaving elements in Can Xue’s works will reveal that the thing that is fundamental stillcomes from native literary traditions. The lyrical tradition and the wu-chu culture originatingin Hunan permeate the lines, constituting the absurd, mysterious and irrational feature of herworks. Also, the discourse of revenge typical of Lu Xun’s style is carried over in her writing.Her language which transcends both time and space can also be traced back to Lu Xun’swriting. On the other hand, her reconstruction of the Chinese literary tradition is stillnoticeable, mainly shown in her literary creation, which turns to the inner spiritual worldinstead of the outer physical world, to the self instead of the others, to the conflict andstruggle between the split selves instead of the contradiction and confrontation between manand man, man and environment.Filthy, abound in Can Xue’s novels. The world is dirty and corrupted; the characters ugly,malicious and insidious; human relationship twisted and abnormal. Such a generous descriptionof the dirty and ugly has resulted in polarized evaluation: one with disgust or even hatred, theother praise and appreciation. Nevertheless, whether she seeks to fulfill an aesthetic end bypresenting such a dirty world, ugly human nature and reversed ethics has already become animportant issue in research now. This dissertation, by reviewing the notion of beauty andugliness in ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign arts, discovers that the ugly things and evilpersons in ancient Chinese art mostly serve for moral and ethical judgment, whileChuang-Tzu’s proposition that naturalness and crudeness just turn ugliness into beauty adds adialectic vein to the notion. In the western as early as at Lessing’s time, ugliness was highlyvalued, as a foil to beauty, though. But till Hugo’s time, ugliness had evolved as an essentialelement existing in parallel to beauty, and devoid of evil connotations. Later the irrationalphilosophy not only changed people’s judgment on their own nature, but went on to reinterpretthe notion of “human nature as evil” as an expression of free will. Baudelaire’s The Flowers ofEvil has brought the creation of ugly images to its perfection. His attempt to turn ugliness intobeauty stood as a sublimation practice of beauty in aesthetical history.Several ideas prevail in the analysis of the ugly images in Can Xue’s books. One ideasuggests what Can Xue has done is no more than a realistic rendition of the real world as it iswithout any glossing over a falsely beautiful life. Another idea holds Can Xue’s preoccupationwith filth and ugliness stems from her subjective understanding of the world as a filthy and uglyplace. A third opinion believes the ugly images should be comprehended, in relation to Can Xue’s life philosophy, as the product of a pessimistic and despairing outlook on life. Forinstance, the recurring “quasi-plot” design in her novels, that is, the character repeats trying thesame thing but in vain, indicating futile attempts in life, fully embodies her pessimism anddespair about the world and mankind. A fourth voice argues that Can Xue’s obsession with thefilthy and ugly is none other than an attempt to inherit and transform the modernistic expressivetechniques in the West. In spite of those mentioned above, this dissertation dwells on the ideathat the fact that Can Xue takes the dirty things and ugly human nature as a primal urgeindispensable to human life is dictated by her representation of human souls. Filth and uglinessare important conditions for life and its development. The life born in blood houses a pure heart.Filth and ugliness, instead of merely being the primal urge of life, is also the fundamentaldriving force in social development. She starts to reinterpret the classics in the light of thiscreed. By adopting a new approach to the relationship between the Devil and Faust in Goethe’smasterpiece Faust, she proves again that the sin of Mephistopheles is an essential attribute infostering Faust’s capacity for good. It is for the same reason that Can Xue begun to describedirty and evil characters in her novels, as on one hand they are, in themselves, the true ofhumanity, providing a stage for the show of human spirit; on the other hand, in terms of itsrelation to the others, they form a huge force to push people onward. Her creative thoughts assuch emerge from her philosophical thinking on the contradictory movement between theprimal force nous and the force to shape nous, namely logos.Can Xue is a prolific writer. The book most representative of her achievement should beThe Frontier. This dissertation has done a case study of The Frontier and elaborated on howthe writer innovates her language and how she achieves objectification of self-consciousnessthrough objective description. Like the other books of Can Xue, The Frontier does not tellstories happening in the real world, but unravels the self hidden in the body, which will getshown in the process of objectifying self-consciousness into exterior demonstrations such asobjects, scenes, and stories. Here, the traditional function of language to accurately reflect theworld no longer takes effect; in its place a genuine and pure literary language system isestablished to present the infinite richness of the inner spiritual world. She breaks away fromthe accepted correspondence between the signified and signifier to replace the originalconcrete signified with an image that is metaphorical, suggestive and symbolic so as to betterrender one’s spiritual world. In this way, the silent self gets evident in the signifier, that is,dysfunctional symbols cut off from the original signified.The study of Can Xue is a fairly huge project. Limited by space, this dissertation justfocuses on a few aspects in discussion and analysis in the hope of gaining an in-depthunderstanding of her works and the value of the writer.