In Chinese literature, much attention is paid to aesthetic comprehension of reality and contemplation. Chinese authors are careful with the details, which helps them to touch significant substances.
Touching issues of morality and self-justification are distinctive features of Chinese literature. “Suspicions of immorality or amorality are hard to dispel in discourses devoted to the delineation and judgment of beauty”, outlines Wai-Yee Li in his Shishuo Xinyu and the Emergence of Aesthetic Self-consciousness in the Chinese tradition. The author calls literature “the vehicle to higher truths” (Zongqi 265).
The works of Lu Xun focus on people’s disunity, desperate loneliness, and helplessness. In his Madman’s Diary, the protagonist is a mad official, afraid to be eaten by people around him.
The author uses methods, peculiar to the whole Chinese literature, such as symbolism, allegory, using parallels. The diary form of this work makes the narration more realistic and sincere. The protagonist’s fears are the metaphor, which shows the author’s perception of the World: in fact, Lu Xun says that within his environment, seeming friendly, a person stays lonely and vulnerable, being a target for the cruel plot. In his narration, Zhao’s dog which gives him “suspicious looks” embodies unspoken evilness and ruthlessness. However, what gives the strongest impression is the narrator’s perception of his brother, ”He’s a man too, so why isn’t he afraid, why is he plotting with others to eat me? Does the force of habit blind a man to what’s wrong?” (Lu 7) By this protagonist’s painful exclamation, the author struggles against the insincere and evil reality, where the close relations do not hinder to eat each other.
It is possible to draw a parallel between Lu’s work and Shishuo Xinyu, deeply analyzed by Wai-Yee li. “The charge of immorality is closely related to anxieties over insincerity. “Wai-Yee talks about “great emphasis on naturalness, freedom, and rejection of pretense” in this work. (Zongqi 266).
An outstanding work of Chinese literature, The Peony Pavilion, also touches on the issue of genuineness and sincerity. To deliver his idea, Tang uses the contrast of outward and spiritual, of high and low diction, which forms a special language of love, unique for the Chinese aesthetics. The center of the play is genuine love, which caused death, but then brought resurrection. Despite its pure and innocent essence, it implies that the character “self-consciously traverses boundaries” and thus, makes the genuineness “a kind of second innocence” (Eifring 249); the images used in the play often have a symbolic message. It is interesting, how the author by means of the protagonist’s words gives an alternative interpretation to the innocent poem:
Guan guan cry the ospreys
On the islet in the river
So delicate the virtuous maiden
A fit mate for our Prince (Tang 25).
Instead of traditional Confucian interpretation about the maiden’s pure intents, a girl discovers young feeling and passion in “waiting for her Prince”, and draws a parallel between “Guan guan” and the notion qing, which means passion.
This fusion of high and low substances reflects the author’s contemplation of the human life of many faces and eagerness to sincerity.
Thus, literature, with numerous figures of speech and composition devices is a strong educational instrument for the author to express his idea and to influence the readers’ values and thoughts. It functions not only through giving information but also by means of symbols and influence on the reader’s perception. However, its strongest weapon is its invulnerability to the course of time: as it is mentioned in The Peony Pavilion (44), “The ancients and the moderns share the same emotions, how can it be otherwise?”
References
Eifring, Halvor, ed. Love and Emotions in Traditional Chinese Literature. Boston: Brill, 2004. Print.
Lu, Xun. The Complete Stories of Lu Xun. Bloomington: Indiana University Press; Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1981. Print.
Tang, Xianzu. The Peony Pavilion. Trans Cyril Birch. 1st ed. Boston: Cheng & Tsui, 1999. Print.
Zongqi, Cai. Chinese Aesthetics: The Ordering of Literature, the Arts, and the Universe in the Six Dynasties. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004. Print.