Studies On Luxun's Experience And Writing About Darkness

"Darkness" is a concept constructed by the Enlightenment intellectuals in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China with reference to the Western Renaissance. In the historical context of late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China, Luxun became the representative expressing darkness experience for his sharp, profound, rich and diverse writing about darkness. Either from his own writing or from the process of research about Lunxun and his works, "darkness" is an important concept concerning the interpretation of Luxun's spiritual world and literary world.Firstly, the dissertation is dedicated to the clarification of some concepts. With darkness as the core concept which can reveal Luxun's life, thinking, aesthetic idea and artistic characteristics, the dissertation aims to trace the occurring process of darkness experience from the perspective of external historical context and the writer's inner subjective spirit; it also aims to clarify the multiple connotations of Luxun's darkness experience which shares the same name with the time and is different from as well as consistent with the time, thus deepening our understanding about Luxun's spiritual structure.Secondly, the dissertation makes effort to construct a special research system about Lunxun's darkness writing from the aspects of Luxun's representative themes of his related works, image construction and irony strategy. By means of close reading of his representative words and analysis of the concrete and classical phenomenon within the ecology of the politics, culture and literature in the early Republic of China, it also tries to discuss through what aesthetic mechanism Lunxun's darkness experience has become an important content in modern Chinese literature that remains new though having being discussed often. Meanwhile, the dissertation attempts to reveal Lunxun's unique disposition and spirit, multi-dimensional spiritual tendency and his all-embracing aesthetic taste.Though the syllabic words "dark" and "darkness" occurred one after another in ancient Chinese, their semantic meanings do not have complete commensurability, with "dark" referring only to natural phenomenon of insufficient light. Referring to the naming and criticism of "the dark middle ages" given by the European Renaissance Movement, the intellectuals in the Late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China have found and endowed critical connotations at the level of sociology to darkness, and they have made darkness one of the catchwords in the New Culture Movement by means of spreading it newspapers and journals. National imagination with reference to western Enlightenment is condensed in the expression "going from darkness to brightness". At the level of sociology that is of the same name with the time, Luxun accepted and frequently used the word "darkness", and because of his attention to the integrity of human beings, he also further explored individuals' inner darkness experiences which include individuals' inner irrational world, and the imagination of ghost and death in folk culture. Therefore, for Lunxun the word "darkness" condensed at the levels of sociology, psychology and folklore has become a concept which is more inclusive than the concept of "Enlightenment". The incompatibility of different views of time makes Luxun's darkness presents paradox that is difficult to overcome.As precipitation of significance, theme is the profound and consistent view towards life embodied in the whole work. "Memorial", "revenge" and "ghosts" are the three representative themes in Luxun's darkness writing. When revolution has gradually been constructed as a dominant political culture related to freedom, liberation and new life, Luxun has revealed the duality of revolutionary progress through commemorating the passed away revolutionaries, thus reflecting the fate of the three types of intellectuals from different political domains. The profound historical feelings and the memorial art of "writing because of pain" in Lunxun's works had special function that challenged the power field.In the theme of "revenge" is reflected Lunxun's anxiety about the cultural homogeneity shared by himself and the tradition which could not be avoided and his attempt to overcome it. On the basis of combining Chinese and foreign literary spirit of revenge, the novel Sword narrates symbolically the inner secret in Lunxun's psychological personality of the self, the ego, and the super ego and his perception of the creation system and constraint system in the traditional culture. As the most important folk belief, the worship of "Ghost" in the linear narrative structure was oppressed and denied in the modern idea of Enlightenment history. Lunxun in his lifelong writing of various genres never forgets the existence of ghosts, it is so not only because of his aesthetic taste for literature, but also because of his distinguished reflection on the transformation and shift of thinking and cultural idea, and the view of enlightenment history.Via the semiotic system of image, metaphor and symbol, the image construction of Lunxun's darkness writing condensed and deformed artistically the phenomenon in reality, and reformed and organized a set of discourse with diverse meanings and themes, thus making readers to comprehend again their living conditions in defamiliarized images and experiences. With regard to the numerous fragments of darkness occurring in the second differentiation among the groups of the mid-1920s intellectuals, metaphorized essay writing has become Luxun's most favorite and convenient criticism weapon. Animal metaphors such as "lapdog", "sheep" and "evil bird" and other animal metaphors fully embody the characteristics of "sharp", "lively, and "peeping one spot and seeing whole picture" of Luxun's darkness writing. Through his acceptance of the artistic theory of symbolism proposed by Kuriyagawa Hakuson, in "Wild Grass" Luxun finally found an artistic device matching the inner darkness experience, hence making the symbols and images for example "the dead fire" that had been attempted earlier become rich and meaningful from thin. As a specific image that expressed Luxun's darkness experience," night" projected his ideological change in different stages.Irony is the major rhetoric in Lunxun's writing of darkness experience. The basis of modern irony is the fundamental contradiction that is obviously insoluble, and what irony demonstrates is the dialogue and resistance between two topics in profound narrative sense and it is increasingly related to rhetorical devices. A series of various meta-contradictions that constitute his art of irony are reflected collectively in his first piece of preface for his writing "Preface to Call to Arms":memory and oblivion, loneliness and cries, novels and articles. A series of conflicts such as past and present, tradition and reform, the right way and the different way, for others and for oneself, concealing and showing stemming from the conflicts are also represented in it. Parody in Lu Xun's essay and unreliable narration in his novel were not only pioneered modern rhetorical strategies,but also a witty expression about his dark experience.Luxun's darkness writing has reached unprecedented depth in terms of social criticism and self-analysis. His strong spiritual stand and quite creative art form are rich legacy he has left to modern literature. This writer of great wisdom and courage has illuminated with his darkness writing the way for numerous successors hankering for and pursuing brightness.