Sorrows And Joys Of The Secular Life

In the history of modern literature,Lao She's “earthly world” is special.For all his life,he had been writing about the ordinary,vulgar,and trivial “earthly” life,using his sad tone to tell the vicissitudes of the “earthly world”.In this art up “earthly world”,Lao She devoted the creation passion of his entire life,and his concern for the fate of the individuals and future of the country and its people.There are a lot of writers who focus on the details of life and care for the worldly side.The difference of Lao She lies in that,“the earthly world” is not only his source of inspiration and the social level he consciously showed when he initially started writing,as the opposite of metaphysics,the “earthly world” is also the scope of physics that he cannot avoid when he created a literary work.The tone of his novels is always pessimistic and sad,showing the vicissitudes of the “earthly world”,showing the past and present of the “earthly world”,thus being difficult to build the future.For the entry point of “earthly world”,besides long novels,it also needs to be supported by medium-length and short novels of Lao She.Lao She wrote a large number of medium-length and short novels in his life.And in comparison with the long novels,the medium-length and short novels are evenly distributed along Lao She's writing life.Meanwhile,in forms of literature,medium-length and short novels can better embody Lao She's conscious pursuit of form and skills and the expression and thinking on singular themes.Therefore,this thesis regards “earthly world” as the entry point,analyzes the internal narration structure of Lao She's medium-length and short novels of different stages,meanwhile,it connects the external time background,writer experience and the literary trends of that time to analyze the overall theme of the medium-length and short novels of different stages.While it combing the historical changes,it horizontally concludes the similarities of the works of different ages,thus grasping the sequence of Lao She's creation and the in-depth source of his style.Lao She's medium-length and short novel creation is divided into 3 stages: 1921-1933,1934-1938,and 1943-1949.The main body of this thesis is divided into 3 parts,which separately narrates the above stages.In the first stage,Lao She mainly used symbolic not imitative methods to build the “earthly world”.He used implicative method to express his sad feelings of dissatisfaction and have-no-alternative;in the second stage,Lao She adopted more flexible narration strategies,the vertical and horizontal narration method makes the “earthly” mellower.In the multi-dimensional narration,he directly showed his pessimistic feelings and the anguish of contradiction and hesitation.And the keynote of his novels becomes heavier and more depressed;in the final stage of Lao She's medium-length and short novel creation,his few works contain the implication of “repetition”—the several plot modes have appeared in the works of the previous two stages for many times.The joy and sorrow of the “earthly world” presents modeled tendency and the implication of fatalism.The “repetition” of the plot mode is the art up expression of the fact that Lao She is deeply trapped in contradiction and cannot find the outlet after repeated appreciation.While the difference of the “repetition” is,the early stage contradiction and struggle have become certain pessimism;the “abundant pain” has become the powerless sad complaints.In the circulation of the “repetition”,Lao She's novel can only show the joy and sorrow of the “earthly” level,but cannot build the vision of the future;he himself also cannot jump out of the “earthly world” scope to think about the outlet of metaphysics—this is the origin of Lao She's sad aesthetic style.For a long time,the urgent and turbulent originating environment of China's modern literature and its close relationship with the reality during the development process make the literary review regards pessimistic and negative implication of literary works as their shortcomings and defects.But what makes Lao She's creation full of tension is the part which is regarded as “insufficient” and “deficient”.As an expressioner of “earthly world”,his contradiction in thinking is the making of his unique style.For all his life,Lao She has been immersed in the “earthly world” contradiction and cannot resist it,finds it difficult to think about the future from a macroscopical angle,and cannot find the comfort of metaphysics.But the pessimism and sad complaints resulted therefrom become the making of Lao She's unique style.Pessimism and sad complaints are the embodiment of Lao She's personality and ideological complexity in literary creation,they are the artistic style of the “writer” Lao She,and are the unique aesthetic connotation of Lao She's literature world.