On The Lyricism Of The "May 4" Fiction

The formation of writers'(during the periods of May 4th) individual values caused by "the discovery of human beings" in the May 4th New Culture Movement led to the expression of temperaments and "individual statement" in these writers' creation of works, and thus inevitably resulted in "the introversion of novels". In addition, compared with the writers in ancient times, the authors living under that environment learned more about the western background knowledge, especially about the unique taste of western novels and knowledge of psychics. All of these enriched their knowledge and influenced their thinking pattern of production which made them focus more on the revealing of the characters' minds and the expression of the personal emotions rather than the exterior environment and provided a fundamental term for the lyricism of novels. Based on the different ways of emotional expression in the works, the "lyricism" in the novels during this period may probably classified as follows: "the temporary merriness", "gale-and-rainstorm-like call" and "the sorrow owing to indignation". They were expressed in the following ways: directly abreacting, emotion expressing by mental analyzing, implying by recalling past and poetry displaying by creating artistic conception. The lyricism of the May 4th novels pay more attention to the personal mental world and the subjective emotional expression and the exploration of human's internal spirits rather than the secular world and the objective matter exhibition. This phenomenon refreshed the content of novels and contributed a lot to the Chinese literature development by producing many lyric works with substantial literal taste value. However, it was also a pity that some writers' early periods of productions were characterized by the common phenomenon of "excessive lyricism" in that era due to the feature of that time and the writers' creation psychology.