"Literature Of Life's Artistic School"

Living in the modern environment of literary theory where instrumentalism and aestheticism coexisted, the literature view of Zhou Zuoren, an enlightenment thinker and a writer, was an attempt to merge both doctrines in that of"literature of life's artistic school". It reflected steadfast anti-feudal, enlightenment thinking, while firmly guarding the aesthetic nature of literature. The author of this essay believes that Zhou Zuoren's"literature of life's artistic school"is literature of human characterized by humanitarianism and the spirit of science, as well as that of autonomy and the spirit of aristocracy.Conforming to the demand by his specific time in history for the enlightenment function of literature, Zhou Zuoren advocated literature of human. The humanitarian component of that was started from Darwin's theory of evolution, and formed through merging humanitarianism in the way of universal fraternity with individualism, sublating the theory of Nietzsche, abandoning the belief of any so-called"universal truth", adding more of the return to the tradition, and the nourishing by Greek and Japanese love of natural beauty. The emphasis on the spirit of science was reflected in Zhou Zuoren as the demand for sincerity and truth in literature. His"sincerity"meant seriousness and earnestness. His"truth", in the subjective sense, required true feelings in a composition. In the objective sense, the requirement of his"truth"had two parts, one being seeking truth from facts, i.e., complying with"Wuli", and the other being complying with humanity, i.e.,"Renqing"."Wuli-Renqing"was precisely one of the two major standards Zhou Zuoren used to critique literature, i.e.,"common sense".Zhou Zuoren was seeking the road to the autonomy of literature, driven by his conscious pursuit of the aesthetic nature of literature. Throughout his lifetime, however, he was not able to truly solve the conflict between the instrumentalist theory and the autonomic theory of literature. Because of that, his pursuit of the autonomy of literature appeared to be unusually full of frustration. The aesthetic nature of literature is transcendence. Transcendence, in Zhou Zuoren's writings, was more often referred to as aristocrat. The spirit of aristocracy that Zhou Zuoren was pursuing manifested as his insistence on literature being impractical but having long-term merits. In other words, literature lacked the power to incite or the functionto instruct, but had humanistic concerns. In the meantime, Zhou Zuoren consistently pursued the delight of literature (one of the two major standards Zhou Zuoren used to critique literature), i.e., the use of poetic literary language to express the light and implicit delightfulness"reminiscent of olive or radish".