Literary Reconstruction And Rebirth Of The Nationality And State

Chinese literature which is the sum of nation-state literature of successive dynasties is a complicated existence, whose property, composition, signifier and signified changes in different contexts. This is especially prominent in the twentieth century. Influenced by multiple literary trends in the world, Chinese literature experienced repeated comprehensive reconstructions in the twentieth century, formed obvious era characteristic and phase feature, different literary schools, theoretical claims and creative practices, and resulted in diverse phenomena and multifarious interpretations. Literature of all phases is interrelated but totally different, compete with each other and commonly create brilliant.Nation-states all have their own specific literary claims and artistic standard, which forms the subjectivity of nation-state literature. The modern literature which is a modern Chinese nation-state literature, was related and interacted with the nation-state construction and formed distinct feature during the process of modernization, around the literary subjectivity there are many relevant theoretical explanation and discussion, such as the new and the old, the tradition and the modern, the public and the elite, the nationalization and the globalization, China and the West etc., however, that didn’t cut to the chase due to multiple reasons and the literary subjectivity was long ignored. This paper which is the Part one of the article--<<Literary reconstruction and rebirth of the nationality and state—the Chinese literary trends and criticism of subjectivity in the twentieth century>>(600,000words together), through connecting with the Chinese people’s struggling process for nation-state freedom and liberation in the first half of the twentieth century, combined the literary reconstruction history and literary development trait from modern perspective, and discussed the modern literature’s emergence, evolution and choice of development directions under the influence of multiple literary trends. Based on these results, the literary essence and historical trends were summarized, the merit and meaning of modern literary reconstruction were evaluated, the flaw and insufficiency were analyzed, and the thesis of making the modern literature as the subjectivity of Chinese new nation-state literature was proposed, also preliminary explanation and demonstration were given.In the first chapter, by scanning the ancient culture, the spirit of thousands of Chinese feudal rule is penetrated from the relationship between autocracy and cultural domination. The nation-state culture is the sum of its practical and creative spiritual achievements. Since the implement of imperial examination system in Sui dynasty, the Civil service system was established, and the feudal state ruled the country using culture, which resulted in cultural nationalization. Traditional culture, taking Confucianism as representative, which viewed the "home","state" and "the world" as a whole."Harmony between man and nature","rule the country with morality and filial piety","the three cardinal guides and the five constant virtues" and other moral ethic values, which were high consistent with feudal state rule requirements and formed the basic of the feudal state ideology and regime construction. Chinese ancient culture has the tradition of "Confucian orthodoxy", which formed the practice of making officials as teachers, using paper to preach, respecting the tradition and valuing literary inheritance, at that time the influential litterateurs were mostly famous statesmen, thinkers or militarists. As the confounding of "culture" and "literature" in ancient China, it was traditionally to make "literature" the main carrier and core content of the cultural thoughts, so literary styles and functions were differentiated rigidly. Each literary style had rigorous artistic standard, therefore space for creativity and innovative was small, and expression was severely limited. The "poetry" and "composition" which emphasized wording and phrasing were viewed as authentic literature and were highly respected; however, novel and drama were recognized as unauthentic literature, they were difficulty admitted to literary palace. In the process of modernization, traditional literature was imprisoned by feudalism, which gradually went to the dead end due to lacking of innovation. Unauthentic literature such as novel and drama, on the contrary, obtained better development, but were not accepted by the public. As a consequence, both the country and literature gradually lost vitality, and went into the decline stage. In the second chapter, the new literary change which caused by pre-modern literary trends and social revolution is elaborated. Pre-modern literature which is not only the natural continuation and development of the ancient literature, but also the embryo and harbinger of the modern literature, is a non-ignorable stage in the literary reconstruction process. Since the opium war, China had suffered more than one hundred years’aggression and plunder from Eastern and Western powers, with the policy of seclusion being broken, China was in peril. So the ideology of "administration and pragmatism" became the leading ideological trend, which led to a series of changes in social life and culture. Pre-modern poetry carried on the patriotic tradition of ancient culture, warmly praised the just war against the external aggression and revealed the invaders’cruel, which was obvious different from the pure literary style of the Ming and Qing dynasties’ poetry, and played a lead role in the social revolution. But for its serious formalization shackles, this transformation was difficult to turn to modernization, so the center of literature was increasingly transferred from poetry to "literature circle" and "novel circle". In the late Qing and early Republic period, influenced by the western ideology and culture, some excellent scholars vigorously promoted the westernization and reforming movement, seeking for the way to save the country and its people by multiple means, but all ended in failure. Then they began to reflect deep on the traditional literature, and started to promote new literature to renew public mind, enlighten the mass and renovate social morale. It achieved unexpected success. In the early twentieth century, the newspaper industry was developing rapidly in China. Due to the abolishing of the imperial examination system, the civil service system was lax, and the intellectuals’channel into the country management system was blocked, they were excluded from the system, hence only through writing articles and editing newspapers could they participate in political affairs, propagate modern culture and gain discourse power. Then all factious rushed into the literary circle, interpreted literature from different angle of politic stand, ideological and cultural idea, which promoted new literature to serve for the advancing of society and politic. They dreamed of a bright future for the country. Literary theories and practice began to orient to modernization, its function of idea spread was highlighted, which largely corrected the trend of pure literature rooted from the Ming and Qing dynasties and created important foreshadowing for the new literary reconstruction. However, some problems such as making rational state on literature and ignoring its artistic characteristics were also brought about.In the third chapter, that original literary reconstruction boosted by modern ideology and culture is discussed. The<<Literary Revolution Theories>>(wrote by Chen Du-xiu) and <<Attempting Discussions of Literary Reforms>>(wrote by Hu Shi) which applied literature as entry point, negated the subjectivity of old literary from innovation of the literary thought, content, language forms and modes of transmission, objects, etc., combined literary revolution with society transformation, shaping of new national spirit and modern cultural construction, called for construction of new literature, raised ideological trend of literary revolution, determined the developing orientation of modern culture, became the harbinger of social revolution and revealed the utmost importance of literature. At the time of May Fourth Movement, the modern literature which viewed the western literature as authentic, advocated science, democracy and rational spirit, called on human’s freedom and emancipation, valued the innovation of literary surface such as language, format, theme etc., employed understood vernacular to write to reflect the real life, to reveal social contradictions, and to arouse revolution enthusiasm. That rise of trend of humanism occurred. All literary schools discussed the relationships between literature, life and art, and tried to reconstruct new literary styles, content and form to meet the requirements of modern times. It shifted from the ancient Confucian and literati gallery literature to the literature of criticism and soldiers’literature, from emotion to narration. Realism and correction became the basic requirements of the literary creation activities, and therefore the new literature acquired modern characteristics in this way, and formed a distinctive different subjectivity compared with that of the ancient literature. Because the original new literary reconstruction was absolutely against the tradition, and aimed at introduction of western ideology and modes, there were kinds of extreme and biased cognitions and operations existing, and inevitably caused the origin being covered and the inheritance being split, consequently, it brought about the tradition of politicalizing and simplifying, and generated the divergence and opposition between the nationalization and westernization, the country and the world, resulted in severe shortage of national literary subjectivity, produced a series of problems which needed to be remedied in the following development.In the fourth chapter, it is focused on that as nation-state crisis deepened and modern ideology and theories were continuously introduced, modern Chinese nation-state consciousness was gradually shaped, national self-esteem and cultural consciousness, self-confidence were increasingly improved, the modern literature became mature day by day and began to pursue the subjectivity of the nation-state literature. As a lot of preparations both in theoretical and creative practice were needed in the modern literary reconstruction, so the process was doomed to be long and winding. The modern literature which interacted with multiple literary and artistic ideas in the world, propagated the humanitarian, advocated personality liberation, expressed new ideas, portrayed new characters, created new artistic conceptions, extended the scope of arts and aesthetics, and also made much explorative practice. In the process of modernization, China was fiercely opposed to the West, and the modern civilization and capitalism was implanted forcedly, so the whole Chinese community was full of alien and forced feeling, and the scholars launched into criticism in multiple dimensions. Influenced by the world left-wing literary trends, the new literature returned to ration after the initial enthusiasm, began to get rid of the footsteps of western literature, practiced the theory of "Chinese-style Westernization" in literature, sublated the "European tendency" of the May fourth movement period, and criticized the West and capitalist systematically. It was transferred to approve the Soviet Russian literature and pursue the form and content of the nation-state from fusing multiple concepts of Japan, the Western, the Soviet Russia etc., which resulted in fierce arguments in both literary theories and practices, such as the retro style vs the progress style, the national, folk forms vs the Europeanization, globalization, the proletarian literature, art vs the bourgeois literature, art etc.. Modern literary communities began to spring up, the splitting literary schools were opposite to each other, each school was pursuing for its own particular literary tenets and opinions, thus, there were different factions emerging, and each faction fiercely fought for the literary interpretation right and discourse power. The modern political parties developed rapidly and began to actively participate in literature, which caused literature twisting with politics and made it objectively difficult to clearly distinguish literature and politic. The literary mainstream persistently retained its democratic and national standpoints even in harsh environments and changed from revolutionary literature to left-wing literature. And realism was thought as the orthodox of May Fourth literature for its distinctive characteristics of opposing to tradition and rich in passionate and romance.In the fifth chapter, it discusses that as the modern literature developed and shaped in the environment of war, the wartime system of literature was formed, in which parties’and political literary and artistic policies played an important role. The parties and government standardized and guided literary creation to meet different demands of the time. The modern literature which was suffered with the pulling of multiple political parties and not based on unified national will, its development was dominated by modern political parties. After the outbreak of Anti-Japanese War and the establishment of anti-Japanese national united front, the whole country got united to fight against the foreign invaders, and then appeared some hope on the state unity and national liberation. The concepts of "national literature","domestic literature","national form" and "popularization" were raised both by the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and literary development was standardized. All literary schools tended to rally around the flag of "resistance against Japan and save the nation from extinction". Literature which was changed to cater to the nation and the public, valued the research and conversion of traditional literature, began to focus on the great battle of "anti-imperialist and save the nation from extinction", that provided rich national and traditional resource for literary reconstruction, caused a new literary creation trend and added literature with more obvious feature of united nation-state. Progressive writers joined in the nation-state dependence and liberation movement and passionately depicted the national awakening, struggling and their ideal heroes, which contributed much to the formation of national literary form and content. Then literature which advocated collective consciousness and rejected, criticized personal will, rapidly developed to form the literature of nation-state. The pursuit of the literary subjectivity came into a new stage. At the same time, standardized by the wartime system, literature of revealing, satirizing and criticizing were much or less criticized and abandoned both in national and liberated areas, critical literature and literary criticism were shrinking day by day, the diversifying developing situation of modern literature was languishing, and the situation that only one single literature style existed began to appear.Restricted by the social reality of the time, the modern literature was accompanied by complex phenomenon, endless theoretical debate, and various creative practices. There were multiple literary trends, theories and factions existing. It had made great achievements and also generated some shortcomings and problems. It cannot be neglected that literature is ever changing. The modern literature which was adapted to the requirements of Chinese modern social revolution and closely related with the national struggling for independence and liberation, knocked down the old literature based on the self-renew function of the pre-modern literature. Starting from revolution of language form, through systematically introducing foreign literary theories and studying, borrowing the foreign literary ideology and art styles it expressed individuality and reflected the modernization process of the country, and therefore acquired modern characteristics in values, ways of thinking, aesthetic taste, etc., and gained literary subjectivity which was different form the ancient literature. At the same time, through focusing on the social reality, developing in the way of nationalization and popularization, describing the collective and individual living condition of the nation-state and writing the suffering and struggling of the people, the new literature formed strong ethnic characteristics and national identities, and made profound reform and reconstruction of traditional literature. It realized the great transformation from the old literature to the new literature, from the scholar literature to the public literature, from the community literature to the party, class literature, and finally to the nation-state literature. It completed the reconstruction from ancient literature to modern literature, acquired its literary subjectivity that differed from the western literature and subsequently, became the unique one in the world literature.It was the first and foremost time of Chinese literary reconstruction in the twentieth century that changed from the old literature to the new literature, which generated a profound tradition. In the process, the modern literature completed an overall update in ideology, theory, content and form, and separated from the culture day by day. It began to operate as an independent discipline, which largely influenced and standardized the subsequent multiple literary reconstructions and was thought as the footstone of Chinese literary development in the twentieth century.