It’s In His Nature To Love The Mountains And Hills

Shen Congwen is the classic writer recognized in the history of modern literature,in his early education, the nature and China traditional culture are not only his mentorand his friend. Throughout Shen Congwen’s life experience and writing course, theauthor found that Shen Congwen consciously inherited the China classical tradition ofnatural aesthetics, namely the beauty of nature is a combination of the humankind andthe nature. Shen Congwen’s complex background of society and culture made himinherit the tradition of natural aesthetics, and also show different perspectives. Withthe maturing of Shen Congwen’s thought and writing, he endowed the beauty ofnature to many forms and multiple levels of meaning.This study attempts to tidy comprehensively up the natural aesthetics about hiswritings through perspective of the aesthetic relations between Shen Congwen andthe nature, and to restore complexity and richness of the beauty of nature as the objectthat the writer viewed. The harmonious nature, symbolic nature and divine nature arethree different aspects of Shen Congwen’s the natural aesthetics, the three aspects arenot independent each other but fused to each other. Symbolic nature and divine naturemust be harmonious nature, the harmony is the first object which Shen Congwenviewed, the beauty of natural mountains and rivers and the beauty of natural humanityare the earliest aesthetics enjoyment to which Shen Congwen gave the readers.Symbolic nature and divine nature are involved in mysterious experiences about theharmonious beauty of the nature which Shen Congwen viewed. The former tends torational experiences, the latter tends to the divine experiences. Behind ShenCongwen’s the natural aesthetics it implies deep writing motivation. In this article,several aspects are demonstrated including the natural mountains and rivers in westHunan, the witch Chu culture in JingMiao, the spirit of China classical poem andpaintings, civilization of urban material. Searching for complex elements of writingthat impacted the natural aesthetics in the cultural background about Shen Congwenas a traditional literati and modern writer, and revealing unique values of the natural aesthetics about Shen Congwen’s creation in modern literature, one is thephilosophical significance of the beauty on life, the other is the value in the history ofmodern literature, namely Shen Congwen tried to explore the literary creation road ofreconstructing the national spirit by the natural aesthetics.