Care For Life On The Enlightenment Stance

The most striking feature of the novels of Lu Ling ,as both a spiritual soldier and a novelist, is the care for life in the war context. He inherits the concentration on life from the Enlightenment spirit of May 4th Movement and focuses on the depiction of the peasants and workers who lived a static life at the bottom of the society, .and the intellectuals who were at the top of the torrents at that time. The experience on exile and the spread of western life philosophy in China promote him to turn to the literary creation on the theme of the care for life. Meanwhile, the enlightenment theory of Hu Feng and the influence of the spirit of May 4th Movement represented by Lu Xun encourage him to take the enlightenment stance of new literature during the historical event of anti-Japan war. He, thereafter, took life and enlightenment as the complementary theme of his novels from the realistic context of 1940s and the unfinished historic tasks. Under the stern situation of ethnical war, he chose the strength of life as the shortcut of enlightening the common people. As a potential instinct of seeking existence, warmth and food, and development, the strength of life can be either constructive or extinctive. Lu Ling gradually gave up the "unmodified condition" of life strength and turned to be more concerned with the probe into the social and historic factors which stimulate the burst-out of life strength, in his creation .introspection and exploration about the characters. Among them, there are the primitive revolt of Guo Su-e and the conscious revenge of Zhang Shao-qing. Thus his novels truly revealed a historic picture in which the society was undergoing the transition from the traditional to the modern one and in which the individuals were facing the dilemma-the thirst for liberation to contribute and the restraint of spiritual slavery after missed the protect of the feudal family, ethics and moral, and the regime. He romantically took life strength as the enlightening means to break the bondage of the spiritual slavery and to wake up the subjective life. The writing, called "vigorous assault", breaks away from the inclination of objectiveness and oversimplification but at the same time bears the name of taking risks and goingextremes. As for the main body of enlightenment the intellectual, Lu Ling chose the transcendence of life as their motivation of self-enlightenment. The transcendence of life is the process of individuality realization. Compared with 'Individuality liberation" of May 4th Movement, it stresses the meaning of individuality to individuals. Only a few people can fulfill the true self-enlightenment through spiritual struggle.Jiang Shao-zu in the novel @Sons and daughters of rich man@ never arrive such a height while his younger brother, Jiang Chun-zu, in the painful experience of the conflict between individuality and love, between individuality and collective, insisted on exploring the spiritual field in the way of life transcendence and realized the profound self-enlightenment. The latter image has particular inspiring meaning for Chinese intellectuals. However, Jiang Chun-zu, at last, had nothing to do but resort to a kind of mysterious and religion-like force to breakthrough. It reveals that it is challenging for the commons to enlightenment themselves by adopting life transcendence. Although, as a spiritual soldier, Lu Ling has the weakpoint of going extremes in the exploration of life and enlightenment, on the whole his exploration and reflection is rational, profound and inspiring.