The Influence Of The Religious Spirit To The Creation Of Shi Tiesheng

Shi Tiesheng is a very distinctive figure in Chinese contemporary literature. He constantly contemplated theology and affirmed people pursued their religious beliefs through rational reflection in the domain of spirit. His unique life experience turned his interests from philosophy to religion, but his thoughts were not limited to some one creed. Instead, he advocated the unique critical theology and liberal theology whose main body is modern Christianity and Buddhism and which also absorb the essence of the other religions. His literary work was just conducted on the basis of it. He pursued the way to save souls by extracting religious spirits as the personal beliefs on the basis of creative work.This paper consists of the following parts:Introduction mainly introduces the contemporary research of Shi Tiesheng's works in China and its significance for religious studies. Presently, the study on Shi Tiesheng's works mainly focus on: views on the destiny, which confirms his outlook on life and values based on the influences of his special destiny and misery; the study of his works, which analyzes the values of aesthetics and poetics by his novels, prose and jottings; the study of his outlook on religions, which evaluates his religious tendency by his religious understanding and speculating expressed in his works. Among the influences of religion on Chinese contemporary literatures, Shi Tiesheng's writings were indispensible. Over the years, the researchers have studied his creative origins, the religious spirit and its influences on his writing, inadequately. This paper denies Shi Tiesheng is a religious disciple, but a religious thinker, which the purpose of his thinking is to open his horizon and to construct his beliefs. In his thinking, he refines the religious spirit as his the source of his belief and writing. The paper studies its influences on his writing style further.The first part of this paper presents the religious culture's source of religious spirit in Shi Tiesheng's works. Religions, as the important cultural and spiritual phenomena of human beings, share a lot of common characters with literature such as historical origins, mode of thinking, and mental effects. They interact with each other, and now religions have become the unexhausted source of literary creation. Since the 1980s, more and more writers have absorbed the Christianity into their works. Also, the influence of Buddhism on literary creation demonstrates an obvious recurrence trend. In the contemporary literary arena, the writers communicate with the readers how to withstand the mechanics and the material gain of the modern life with the wisdom of Buddhism, based on their own reflections on the Buddhism. Therefore, this phenomenon has played an important part in constructing national spirits, surpassing the pure reading. The writer Shi Tiesheng is the research target of this paper. The writer Shi Tiesheng is the research target of this paper. His works were greatly influenced by religions and full of Buddhist and Christian coloring. Many people group his works into religious literature.The second part is concerned with religious spirit, which tries to explore Shi Tiesheng's understanding and expression of religious spirit. Because of illness Shi Tiesheng became disabled when he was young. The misfortune made him begin to doubt and contemplate destiny. Through the ultimate inquiry into existence significance of human beings, Shi Tiesheng looked for the answers and way out in religions, and found a way to save human beings from spiritual dilemmas.The third part talks about the influence of religious spirit on Shi Tiesheng's works---retreat. Religious spirit is the starting point of Shi Tiesheng's creation. In his works the pursuit of religious spirit is represented by retreat from content to form. In terms of tense, his most works are recollections. The characters and plots are fabricated as logical reasoning. The characters without names, bouncing time and space, both display the typical feature of retreat. He even employed symbolic means to describe love, just like a picture or a kind of feeling. His new work"My trip to Ding-Yi"also combines virtual"I"and real"Ding-Yi", and tries to pursue the source and destiny of life. His techniques become freer. He didn't care about the plot and order of narration. His work is just a soul's fictitious spiritual trip.In the end, the paper surveys Shi Tiesheng's religious spirit once again. He is very pious to write, just like a religious believer. He tried to pursue the ultimate freedom of life in the form of retreat. The social significance of his works is to start a new life trip with religious spirit, to open a door to the dreaming world for the modern people who lose themselves and thus achieve self-salvation.