Transcending The Deep Gap Between Urban And Rural Areas, Bring An Upward Longing For Life

Shen Congwen's creation of Xiangxi(West Hunan) novel has been receiving general concern from people, and his urban novel, in many researchers'opinion, only acts as a foil or footnote. In fact, it was the urban life that brought Shen Congwen the strongest feelings and impact, and his urban novel is a penetration point through which we can know and wholly understand his creative tendency and values. Urban literature refers to the literature whose expressing objective is urban life. Shen Congwen's urban novel belongs to such a category, the works, which use the lives in big metropolises, medium and small-sized cities as the expressing objective, are all categorized into this type.1. Creative opportunity of urban novel: spatial environmental background and cultural mentality backgroundShen Congwen's urban novel creation has its profound cultural mentality and urban spatial backgrounds, mainly showing in the following four aspects: 1.The choice of leaving the hometown to town—from Xiangxi to Beijing. The particular life experience in Xianxi and the edification from Xiangxi culture made Shen Congwen possess, due to the spatial span, the possibility of the native soil culture colliding with the urban culture, and this choice of leaving his hometown to town was an abnormal long trip. 2. Adversity in urban life—facing the survival crisis. The urban life caused great mental pressure and impact on Shen Congwen, however, now that he had chosen leaving his hometown, thus he had no route for retreat, and must bring out the courage and endurance of Xiangxi people to stand up to the urban life. 3. The strong impact from the urban literature—the forming of the cultural inferiority. During Shen Congwen's contact and collision with the urban life, the urban culture strongly impacted his soul, the cultural inferiority and anxiety of reality made him feel uneasy and disharmonious. 4. Standing opposite the urban culture—the re-picked cultural confidence. Shen Congwen might stand opposite the urban culture, weighing everything about urban life, with the particular criteria and yardsticks of a"countryman". 2. The life period of urban novel creationMainly includes four stages, as follows:Initial stage: Intuitive impression and depression releasing in Beijing (1923--1927). The urban novel creation in this period was basically about the mixed feelings and complaints of the lonely people lacking warmth of the world.Development stage: The establishment of the realism and cultural standpoint in Shanghai (1928--1931). After eight years of experiences of urban life, Shen Congwen began to roundly reflect on everything of urban life, gradually getting rid of the infantility in his creations at the initial stage, showing the style of realism. He pointed the brunt of his sarcasm to the upper reaches of society, meanwhile, establishing his own cultural standpoint with the help of the dialogues in his works between the countrymen and urban people.Mature stage: Works in Qingdao and Beijing (1931--1938)—the deep life made by the sea. The natural environment and humanistic environment in Qingdao made Shen Congwen have a stable mentality to carry out literary creation. He used his urban experiences and subtle mind and wise brain under the cultural backgrounds'conflicts, enriching his urban novel creation. It was, in his life, the period when he had the strongest working ability as well as comparatively mature works. During the period of 1933—1938, Shen Congwen created a series of urban novels in Beijing, laying special emphasis on the reflection upon the political situation of that time.Stagnation stage: Works in Kunming (1938--1948)—the embarrassment of having no road. At this stage, he began to suspect the real situation and the literature tendency. He had been trying to find a road connecting the ideal with the reality, but in the end, he sadly found the likelihood was quite slim, having no choice but to lay his pen, which was the helplessness of a generation of intellectuals'under the development of era and the turbulent political situation.3. The anti-urban culture emotional tendency in the urban novel literary styleShen Congwen's urban novel exists not only as the opposite of Xiangxi novel. In a large number of urban novel literary styles, Shen Congwen expressed his complicated emotional tendency towards the urban culture, that is, the resolute anti-urban cultural inclination was obvious. But what can't be neglected is: the reflection on the progressive aspect of urban cultural will also snugly turn up in the literary style of urban novel. It shows that while building up a evil world, the urban novel paid more attention to how the urban people carry out"restructuring of the life"in terms of the personality, i.e how to fill dynamic and positive cultural factors in the urban culture so as to realize the restructuring intention of the real life. And the tendency of this complicated feeling was mainly embodied in the following three aspects:First,"image in the mirror"—resolute anti-urban culture feelingsThe urban civilization disease is a hypocritical and stiff mixture of the modern civilization and the feudal culture, the complex morality and the etiquette and discipline in urban culture retrained the born nature of the human being. The gentleman class in the upper reaches of society was catabolized"dressed and hatted"class. The money-based interest relationship began to infiltrate into people's dirty and hypocritical relations, and the urban people, in order to satisfy their private benefits, lost their criteria of being human and the least conscience and morality. With the mentality of individualism, people's conducts were imprinted with selfishness, there being an extremely obvious gap between"you"and"me", and people became self-oriented, emotions became fragile, heavenliness became vulgar. The degeneration of the urban life force, the hypocritical morality and the inhospitality of interpersonal relationship got criticized.Second, helplessness of"going into town"and"leaving the hometown"—mild ruthlessnessDuring the intercourse between the urban people and their urban counterpart, two types of cultures met in the space of urban area and countryside. After the urban culture failed to revamp the native soil, it became a grave topic how the native soil culture provides the urban culture positive factors. Through the two modes,"going into town---returning the hometown"and"leaving the hometown---returning town", Shen Congwn's mild ruthlessness towards the urban culture was shown. The mode of"going into town---returning the hometown"displayed the urban culture's failure to revamp the native soil, and meanwhile, we can see Shen Congwen's attitude towards the other side of the urban culture."Leaving the hometown---returning town"was that the urban people chose to go to the countryside taking in fresher cultural nutrition, curing the pain and hurt brought by the urban civilization, meanwhile pointing out the side effect of the native soil culture.Third, the struggle that transcends the mire—choice of the urban femalesThese females were the level-minded group who had seen the deep-rooted diseases of urban civilization, however from the manners and methods they chose to confront, also, the urban civilization's persecution on the females could be seen. Through the description of those females struggling in the urban mire, Shen Congwen on the one hand expressed the brilliance of human nature in urban area, on the other, expressed the dirt and the bad of the space where the suffered females lived.4. Reflection on the cultural value of the urban novel creationThe value of Shen Congwen's urban novel creation is particular. With the perspective and aesthetic eyesight of a"countryman", he saw the morbidity of urban culture, and he hoped that the simplicity, masculinity and ferity of Xiangxi culture can bring the diseased urban culture fresh factors so as to realize the restructuring of the country and the nation. In fact, it was in the background of the Xiangxi culture that Shen Congwen realized his reflection on and transcending the urban culture. The fundamental value of Shen Congwen's novel, transcending the value system of the Chinese traditional culture(oriental civilization) and the value system of Western civilization, with the primitive purity of the Miao ethnic minority as its core, exactly lies in putting forward for the mankind the third cultural value system---natural and pure human nature culture, also he set forth in his works the truth, kindness and beauty of this new culture as well as the beautiful society created by this culture, still Shen Congwen strongly thirsted for that China and the world could abandon the inhumane Chinese traditional culture and the freaky and abnormal Western culture values, and establish this new cultural belief or religious faith, bringing the lives, human nature and Nature on the earth in harmony and well-being.Conclusion: the limitation of Shen Congwen's urban novel creationShen Congwen's perspective on the urban culture made him succeed, however, also has the limitation in text technique and deficiency in historical reason. The deficiency in historical reason made him unable to see his own way out, or, we can say, even though he had found the bright way out in his own opinion, but at that time which only was an unrealistic Utopia-style dream which couldn't be realized. The limitation in text technique, referring to the discussable feeling of text reading, mainly lies in that, in Shen Congwen's urban novels, there are quite a number of sections and chapters showing the intervention of the writer's shadow, making the urban novel creation lack of the proper distance in partial sections, producing the strain on the readers.