Lu Xun's Conscious Of The Soul And Modernity In His Art Thought

soul-consciousness and modernity as well as their relation with art contained in Lu Xun's ideasare the most important mental phenominon in Chinese modem art history.Despite he gave nosystematic explanation on this,it scattered in each of his text,thus forming a metaphoric"front idea".This thesis is based on the"new explanations"on Lu Xun's ideas,taking his texts as a metaphoricconstruction as a whole.From all of his texts,the fragments,feelings,narration and ideas ofsoul-consciousness are sought out.The"execution field"for making blood bun in his short novel"theMedicine"is regarded as a metaphoric space occurred in Chinese modernity,and the concept of"execution field modernity"is perceived."Execution field modernity"concept comes from comparison between the two textual contextsof"execution field"in Lu Xun's short novel"Medicine"and the"market"in the preface ofNietzsche's"Thus Spoke Zarathustra"(translated by Lu Xun).The preface of Nietzsche's"ThusSpoke Zarathustra"discribed the complain from a"superman"to the audience's applause for aropewalker in the air,because in his eyes this showed the vulgarity and nihilism of the public aftercapitalism,and was the start of 19^th century European"modern marketing stage".However,the story in"the Medicine"took place before market capitalism prevail in China,whenthe revolutionists and the imperial power were fighting against each for space and the final decisiveplace is the"execution field".The paper takes the execution field for making the blood bun as a coresite for relating all social stratums in the late Qing dynasty,and in this site,murdered revolutionists,executing soldiers,surrounding people,and the intellectual Lun Xun who was hypothetically aroundwere all present.Such an execution field doesn't differ much from the political execution constructionin Chinese history,and because of the appearance of revolutionists and intellectuals,thisexecution field takes on sense of modernity.Lu Xun's feelings and thoughts on this execution field made it a modernity consciousness in realmeaning.He had two confusions in the crowd's by-wathing of the scene:the first one was why thewatching crowd didn't feel any pain and watched it as if it was a play,which meant the people had nosoul or their soul was numb.The second one was the crowd didn't seem to bother who was beingkilled,and they would go to watch as long as there were people executed,which meant they have nosense of politics.In the prose"the Weed"published in the 20s,Lu Xun expressed a feeling of"reality turning hell",and he discussed on the physical abuse and control in Chinese political history.This thesis seperatesLu Xun's feelings and comments on soul,hell,ghosts,blood,corpse,and abuse to look at them as ametaphoric system and Lu Xun's"front idea",whose core is the idea of"the modernity of executionfield."Taking this concept as a narrating main line,from the"execution field"of the revolutionist,tothe"execution field"within the revolution,and from the"execution field"of body slaughter to theone in ideology,the thesis tries to analyse the ideological"execution field"he experienced in themid-thirties,and the modernity in his artistic ideas in different stages,as well as the problems he faced. From the mis-interpretation on modern western ideological concepts and ideas,and the Cinization ofthe western concepts on Russion ideas,the national perspectives of Lu Xun is analysed,along withthe difference between his modernity conciousness and that of the European modernity.Also thelimitation of Lu Xun's ideas,the western thinkers negelected by him and their theories,such asLucacs'"materialization"theory,(?)'s theory of evilness of revolution,and the absolutisticRussian neo-religious phylosophy.Lu Xun's idea and its relation to art stress on the explanation and analysis on the referencese ofthree visual levels:"visualised"thinking perspective and metaphor,public vision and public graphicvision,and pure art work images.The study of the thesis focuses on four aspects:one,from Lu Xun's"partial belief"on images to analyse the"new society"vision and"new man"image in Russian woodcarving imges and their influences to the social ideal and the in-favor of Russia attitude;the second,from Lu Xun's experience of watching"Mu Lian"play(a traditional play of South China) to analysethe spiritual root of favoring sybolism;the third,Lu Xun's ideas on western modern art such asExpressionism,Symbolism,Cubism,and the critism on Formalism;the fourth,Lu Xun's thoughts onpublic visual culture from nationality perspective,such as social photography,"Dian ShizhaiPictorial",folksy illustrated carvings.The modernity characteristics of Lu Xun's ideas lie in his constant referential country system,and the deep influence of sacrifice offering culture to his spirits and conciousness,which lasted for hiswhole life.His urban modernity was not groundless and his political position was left-wing Populismbut not Communism.The realistic meaning of Lu Xun's"execution field"exists in:the presentspiritual reality in China is of"execution field modernity"has not gone yet while"market modernity"has arrived.Contemporary art could only produce profound art when it could reflect the spiritualreality of two modernities.