Persistence And Insistence In Changes

In the history of literature at all times and in all over the world, rewriting of “stories” hasbecome a tradition. Many writers like reinterpreting “stories” with obvious and iconic thoughtand emotional tendency such as ancient books, tales of legendia and folktales in differentkinds of newly organized stories. Lu Xun and Liu Yichang were specialists. Due to differenttimes and space, if “new story organization” subject creation is considered as a continuousprocess, their creation becomes two “points” in this process. This paper attempts toinvestigate the characteristics and trend of “new story organization” subject in the creationand development and factors influencing this trend through comparative study on these two“points” and thus summarizes rules with universality.This paper defines and classifies “new organization” in introduction and briefly describesits main body; then makes discussions in four parts of the main body and attempts tosummarize rules with universality manifested.I. New story organization in perilous city-realistic context produced by new storyorganization of Lu Xun and Liu Yichang. Lu Xun’s Old Tales Retold manifested his consistentstand of writing, i.e. paying attention to and participating in social reality positively andattempting to establish a new culture on the basis of specific value judgment of old culture,which was closely related to the perilous political environment at his times. While he lived inthe municipal commercial background, his situation, way of thinking and writing changedunconsciously. The strong municipal experience and a host of demons dancing in riotousrevelry were manifested in the Old Tales Retold. Different from the double political andcommercial attack that Lu Xun was subject to, in the Hong Kong society where Liu Yichanglived, commercial factors beat all. It required the creation of writers to follow the market trendclosely. Liu Yichang knew the development path of Hong Kong literature and had a strongsense of mission and responsibility for preserving and extending serious literature. Therefore,he conducted serious literary creation depending on his pen for a living for decades. His “newstory organization” was a great achievement of serious literary creation in such a perilousenvironment.II.“It is difficult to be peaceful”-feeling of tension in Lu Xun and Liu Yichang’s “newstory organization”. New story organization of Lu Xun and Liu Yichang are not texts withsingle significance. Their creation contains ambivalence, which is called as “feeling of tension” existing in the motivation of creation. Due to different backgrounds of creation, LuXun’s “feeling of tension” is manifested as the conflict between the utilitarian demand forsocial reform and the demand for personal emotional expression and sustenance, while LiuYichang’s “feeling of tension” is manifested as the mediation between “elegance” and“secularity”.III.“using anecdotes of the past to allude to the present” and “endowing the new with theold”-different strategies of subject intervention in Lu Xun’s and Liu Yichang’s “new storyorganization”.“New story organization” of Lu Xun and Liu Yichang manifests strong subjectintervention, but they have different rewriting strategies. The greatest difference is manifestedin the spatial form of text: Lu Xun adopted the method of using characters and achievementsin “previous” ancient tales of legendia and classical documents to allude to the current realsituation, while Liu Yichang endowed stories with a new life by placing the psychology ofmodern people into ancient people in the way of theme variation and technique exploration.IV. New stories of “wandering soldiers” and “wise urchin”-different humanistic feelingsin “new story organization” of Lu Xun and Liu Yichang. Due to the strong sense ofresponsibility for “life and social reform” and enlightenment intention, Lu Xun manifested astrong genius awareness in the Old Tales Retold. Meanwhile, he sought for the path of reformin folk culture. During the struggle and wandering, a sense of tragedy and destiny arosespontaneously.“New story organization” of Liu Yichang manifested a sense of absorbing anyand every essence of traditional Chinese culture and western modernism. A wise, calm,amiable and naughty old writer stood out markedly. He admired the beauty of characterswrote by him and made the hard creation life easy with the attitude of game.After discussion of Lu Xun and Liu Yichang’s realistic circumstances, feeling of tensionin creation, different strategies for subject intervention and different emotional experience andcultural personalities contained, we can make a research conclusion similar to “the history oftheme”. Lu Xun’s Old Tales Retold and Liu Yichang’s “new story organization” worksmanifest the process of Chinese writers from “universal responsibility” to “personal integrity”.In different time and space, they had different cultural personalities and emotional experience,but shared a changeless sincerity and expectation for literature and humanistic care handeddown from age to age.