On The Tragedy Consciousness In Wang Guowei’s Ren Jian Ci

Wang Guowei was the famous modern sholar in our country who also enjoyed the great reputation among the world. He was an academic giant as well as a master in Chinese literature, making a great achievement in literature, philisophy, aesthetics and other fields. As one of the most renowed scholars in modern China, he was the first creator who made an analysis of Chinese classical literature by using the points of view of western literature, philosophy and aesthetics. In his great work, Renjian Ci, he molded a world full of pains and sufferings, which reflects the writer’s tragedy consciousness. Mr. Wang had a deep understanding about the pains and sufferings in life, which was closely related to his outlook on life, his value system, his education and his own life experience. The work, Renjian Ci, was not a sudden idea but a collection of his lyrics composed during the17years from1904to1920.This paper mainly studies the relationship between his life experience and his tragedy thoughts, focusing on the origins and the froms of expression of the work as well as exploring the literary value of the tragedy consciousness in the book. The paper includes three parts. The first part will discuss the process how the writer composed Renjian Ci, linked with the different experiences he experienced. The book can be divided into three sections, each of which has its special characteristics. The second part will firstly aim at explaining the definition of tragedy, its development and its three types which are the tragedy of hero, the tagedy of family and the tragedy of the fate. Then, this part will subsequently discuss about the causes of Wang’s tragedy consciousness. On one hand, it derives from the writer’s pessimistic character influenced by the life experience that he encountered the fall of his country and the loss of his family during his youth. On the other hand, it resulted from the mutual effects of the modern Western philosophy, especially Schopenhauer’s philosophy and the Chinese traditional Taoist negative thoughts. Besides, it originates from the special charcteristic of this style of writing, which is to cananize sadness. The third part will comment on the forms of expression about the tragedy consciousness in Renjian Ci and its significance, in the lights of the tragic ideas implied by the title of the lyrics book, the tragic color shown by the created images, its emotional connotation and the tragedy tendency in the female images. Generally speaking, Wang Guowei skillfully combines Schopenhauer’s pessimistic philosophy with his deep thinking about the painful life, which ultimately endows his lyrics with the tragic philosophy as well as the profound intension.