The Existence Of Symbol

In Chinese literary circles in 1980s and 1990s,with their vivid art characteristics and rich meanings, extensive atcention was focused upon Yu Hua'novels. Regardless of his pioneer writings in 1980s or his folk ones in 1990s, Yu Hua insisted on his literary ideals and spiritual continuity. His spiritual expleration of human'existence ran through both his early and later novel creation as its internal subject. From the analysis of the images in Yu Hua'novels, this essay aims to analyse the three typical images lunatic, fool and farther so as to explore his artistic development and the profound meanings in his novels. In his pioneer writings in 1980s , Yua Hua adopted a pioneer narrative policy of image symbolization to depict images. At the beginning of this period, Yu Hua grasped "desire"which is human instinct to depict the images as the symbols of desire, forming the metaphor of human alienation and existence. In his folk writings in 1990s, he got widely involved in the folk to return his images back to the land, depicting "living", the existence desire which is primitive, simple and powerful. The images in his novels were still spiritual and illustrative symbols that he explored of human existence.The image in incr Yu Hua'novels are aloways in the situation of either good or evil because of his narractive policy of image symbolization. Without any changes and development, the individual characters stay still. The images are the ones with single characters. However, these single characters are not the typicalized ones in traditional novels but in a "simple" situation. In 1980s, his images embodied extreme human evil. The irrational image lunatic who sank into instinctive desire was typical in his period. He showed the desperation of humanity by his depicting vilence and death so as to reveal the absurd situation of huamn existence. In 1990, Yu Hua adopted a policy of poetic narration. The simple good was shown when he depicted the simple ones in the folk. The suffering image father in the folk was typical in this period. The possibility to save human existence was shown in the exploration of the good-natured humanity in the folk. The confused image fool ran through these two stages. The image fool showed more completely the incredible desperation of ugly humanity with its own holy simplicity, while showing Yu Hua'ideals of essential humanity. That the fool wandered and exiled himself showed a desperation of keeping watch while showing Yu Hua'contradition in his exploration of human existence. The images in such a simple situation, which were the symbols and codes for Yu Hua to explain the world and express his artistic ideas, contain highly symbolic meanings. Therefore, Yu Hua'novels are the allegories of "living" and the existence of symbol. Form the strat, Yu Hua'novels probed deeply into human spiritual world, kinds of human existence and human's spiritual essence. In 1980s, the author indifferently and cruelly showed us the beastliness existing in human'mind, revealing the twisted humanity long conered by ration and apparent reanlity. In 1980s, after the author revealled the irrational existence and experienced the subversion in the decoding stage, he walked into the re-coding stage to rebuild human ideals, atempting to probe into human'spiritual essence and be accessible to essential existence. The reason why Yu Hua can constantly keep his vivid art characteristics and moving artistic power is that he never give up making a detailed inquiry about human spiritual menings and retrospecting to them. The unremitting exploration of human existence shows an author'value and significance.