Vacillation And Persistence Of Shen Congwen's Literary Ideal

Xiangxi is the cradle of Shen Congwen's life and creation.The publication of Border Town marks the formation of "Xiangxi world" in Shen Congwen's literary system,and embodies the core meaning of Shen Congwen's literary thoughts.Shen Congwen revised Border Town at several important points in his life.This paper attempts to restore the historical scene of revision and republication of each edition through the correction of the first edition,the Kaiming edition,the revised version and the anthology edition,discusses the emotional change and ideological struggle implied in Shen Congwen's revision of Border Town,and explores the "constant" and "change" of Shen Congwen's literary ideal in the longitudinal extension of history.The revision of Border Town reflects the differences of mood and literary thoughts of the author in different social and historical environments.Compared with the original version,the the Kaiming edition is modified in language expression,environment description and image selection,which further deepens the thought of the text and brings higher aesthetic value.In this period of Kaiming,Shen Congwen continued his consistent literary views,put forward the aesthetic proposition of "beauty in life",advocated the exploration of life with "sentience",explored the existence form of ideal life from the aesthetic perspective,and found the divinity from it,that is,the love derived from "beauty".At the same time,taking "personnel" as a parallel track,it advocates highlighting the ideal life form in the chaos of personnel environment.At this stage,Shen Congwen's revision of folio can be regarded as the maturity of his literary creation.Compared with the the Kaiming edition,the revised version is revised in the aspects of language style,plot development,characterization,etc.,aiming to follow the new literary paradigm,close to the new era context and public reading orientation.At the same time,it cannot be ignored that behind these "external forms",some modifications continue the tradition of exploring rational existence and merging personnel and poetic environment in this enlightened period,implying ShenCongwen's consciousness of constantly pulling himself back to his established literary creation track.Although he modified the "external expression" of the novel to some extent,the literary concept of "sentient beings" has not completely dissipated.He vacillates between literary policy and his own literary ideal.Compared with the other three editions,on the basis of restoring the language style of the novel,the anthology edition takes the the Kaiming edition as the main body and retains the revised contents in the the Kaiming edition to enhance the aesthetic value and ideological implication.In this period,even though his thoughts still had some traces of discipline,he tried to return to the true self of the enlightened period with a modest and prudent attitude in the noisy voices.Shen Congwen separated from literature several times in the long river of his life.The consolation is that the Complete Works of Shen Congwen included the Kaiming edition of Border Town and other works that were lost due to irresistible factors.With the joint efforts of his relatives and friends who understand him,he has completed his "broken" dream about literature.