Reading response

Regarding literature between the May Fourth and the outbreak of Second Sino-Japanese war, there are several features referred to Romanticism in literature—both in literary works and the author’s personalities and personal life. The symptoms of romanticism seem to be embodied in the writing of (autobiographical) romance in early twentieth century China, according to Prof. Leo Lee’s and Prof. Wang’s comments. The depression of sex and the depression of the nation are always among the most important issues in the literary text and the biographical context. Sexual depression and national depression intertwine in the literary writings and convey the confusion of the generation whom Leo Lee generalized as the generation of Romanticism. While Yu Dafu’s “Sinking” related his sinking in the sexual indulgence to the decadent of his homeland, Bai Wei’s “Fight out the ghost tower” displays a ghost tower dominated by the landlord Rongsheng’s longing for women’s body, and fight out the ghost tower is will liberate both the bodies of the women and the nation. The sexual desire and depression, sometimes deprivation dominated the pursuit of the social and national renovation in the literary works of the generation of the Romanticism. While the sexual depression becomes the national depression, or the disasters of the nation are analogized as the sexual depression, the emancipation of the nation will be lead to the extreme pole of the emancipation of the sex.

Some notes

I agree with Ting on her suspect on Professor Leo Lee’s statement of the relationship between the “Romanic heritage” and “modernity.” I feel that his “modernity” doesn’t focus on its technological meaning as well as the “rationalization and disenchantment” from Weber’s theory. He draws more attention to the development of self/ the individual in Chinese culture and society, which coincides with European Romanism to some point. As for Chinese modernity, as Professor Leo Lee said somewhere else, the most important aspects are the change of the concept of time, the formation of public space (according to the rise of print capital) and the emergence of nation (imagined community). But Chinese modernity does not merely derive from the western pattern; instead, it connotes a series of collisions between Chinese culture and western concepts at the turn of last century. Professor Lee tracing Chinese modernity back to the Six Dynasty in terms of subjective sentiment of Chinese literati therefore suggests his effort of seeking its Chinese origin.

I see many of you focus on Professor Lee’s book, so I try to do some reading of BAi Wei’s play in the following paragraphs.

It is noted that Bai Wei’s Fight Out of the Ghost Tower (1928) has to be rewritten because Xiang Peiliang grabbed the first edition of the play and refused to return it to her. To rewrite a literary work from nothing for the writer, as we can imagine, may be more difficult than the first time that it’s written. The reason is not only because the writer’s passions and inspirations for the literary creation may have been exhausted at the first time, but also because that it may take more energy to recollect the original plots and rearrange them according to the writer’s (fragmentary) memories, though the first version can never be retrieved just as we cannot step twice into the same river. During the rewriting process, other elements such as some unexpected incident, the traumatic experience of the author and so on may also be added to the difficulty.

Insofar as Bai Wei is concerned, under her worst health condition as well as the continuous strikes in personal life in 1927, she was still willing to take the difficulty and rewrite the play. The reason therefore may not only consist in her preference of the play and its plots. Her experiences in the real life during one year from 1926 to 1927 may constitute another drive for her second writing. In other words, Bai may have contextualized herself, in some way, between the lines of Fight. In reading the images of women in this play, some facts about the writer herself need to be kept in mind: firstly, Bai met Yang Sao again in Hangzhou in 1927 after Yang left Japan two years ago; secondly, to Bai the rejoicing of the reunion quickly turned into nightmares because of Yang’s continuous betrayals, and finally ended up at the ceremony of their marriage because Yang didn’t even show up; thirdly, she couldn’t resist the appeal of staying with Yang though they broke up in words. Those facts in all can be traced somewhat in the characteristics of the women protagonists in Fight: fainthearted, envious of other woman, fear of commitment (the woman revolutionary Xiao Sen hesitates to tell Yue Lin her real identity, and reveals their relationship only at the cost of her daughter’s life) as well as anxiety of independence (After Yue Ling is raped by her foster father, she “chooses” to live with him under his strong will, which indicates at once her mania and potential/ subconscious dependence as a woman). At the end of the play, after Yuelin shot Hu Rongsheng to death, the dying girl exulted at the overthrow of the ghost tower and the regaining of her life. Very ironically, the final symbolic rebirth of Yue Lin appears only at the cost the death of her physical body. If we take a close look at Yue Lin’s final words, Bai actually put a quotation mark on the word “birth” which, though cannot be told from the performance of the play, may imply her own suspects about the possibility of rebirth (emancipation) of woman in such a cannibal/ patriarchal society.

Other than her own romance, the April 12th incident in 1927 and its sequent impact may serve as footage to Bai’s depression of the revolution.

Many critics has indicated the striking resemblance between Bai Wei’s Fright Out of the Ghost Tower and Cao Yu’s Thunderstorm (1934) in terms of their similar setting, character and even dramatic conflicts. Most of them laud Thunderstorm more for its comparatively complicated description of character and reflection of the social conflicts. But here I would like to point out two features of Bai’s Fright compared with Thunderstorm. One is the image of man in the play from the perspective of a woman writer (p.s. Bai is obviously more relentless in her descriptions of the male characters), and the other is the unbalance between its main dramatic conflicts—the social conflicts indeed yield to the ethical conflicts, which may serve as a reason for the eclipse of the play.

I have to run now, because I have been 15 minutes late for another class. :)

RALLY TODAY!!

There will be an anti sexism protest today at 3pm in front of the science centre/loker where the second round of meetings betweent he faculty and Larry Summers will take place. I will be speaking at some point, so come out and support the cause and be my cheerleaders please!!

SR65

Commnet-week 3

When interpreting the “Chinese pathologist” Lu Xun, both T.A. Hsia and Leo Lee indicated Lu Xun’s personal pathos, rather than the social pathos in Chinese society in Wild Grass. It seems that both of the researchers’ discontents with the literary canon established or made up by the literary historians in Communist China, which follow the opinion of Chairman Mao and assert the revolutionary aspect of his works. Both of them link up his gloomy psyche to the modernity. However, I would pay more attention to the literary tradition in Weijin period which are mentioned in Leo Lee’s book but only a few reference. Just like Xi kang or other Weijin writers whom Lu Xun worked with for a long period, Lu Xun himself probably felt the turmoil of the Republican period was a “ran shi” in which people cannot find an exit.

Lu Xun: Conscience Bites

Response Paper Week 3: Conscience Bites

In Wild Grass (or Weeds) Lu Xun explores the colorings and valences of the prose-poem genre, creating Kafka-esque snippets ranging from visceral symbolic nightmares, or visions (as in the case of “Si Hou/After Death” or “Fuchou/Revenge” and its more religious sequel) contemplations that bring us back to the very heart of the writer’s art, poems and polemics. These pieces are pithy, at times delicious, painful and ragged. The use of the prose poem allows the writing to sit precariously on the edge between Lu Xun’s bitter and deadly essay writing and his satirical but craft-conscious short stories and novellas. The format also formally bridges the gap between the traditional elements and motifs in Lu Xun’s writings and his own condemnation of the past, a tension that has proved to be rich in creative power for this writer. Ye Cao portrays a man alienated from society by a complex mesh of choice and necessity…a traveler, a writer in the dark of night. These are pieces packed with passion and meaning, both political and emotional, outlining the ragged shape of the wounds that Lu Xun must lick and tend in private.

Lu Xun’s “modernity”, or lack of same is often debated. The fact is that a neat dividing line between modern and classical simply doesn’t exist in the creative milieu in which he wrote even as it was expounded. In “Xin Qingnian” or “Yu Si” among others we see articles that are “wenyanwen-ish” (M.Hockx and B.Fuehrer’s phrase, god love ‘em), with Hu Shi’s article on the merits of baihua being a good example. Lu Xun is a product of his time and his education and he will no better completely escape his place in the on-looking crowd than his protagonist in Kuangren Riji actually succeeded in crushing an ancient account book.
In Lu Xun’s letters, as quoted in The Gate of Darkness we see his repeated struggle to balance his political conscience and consciousness, one that could not readily be fit into the mold of the Communist exercises of the day with some kind of self preservation, and thus to balance his often conflicting urges to speak and remain silent. He writes of not wanting to write anymore, not being able to write anymore, and advises others that it is better to act than write, better not to write at all, perhaps. Whether we view this as a symptom of his bitterness and personal disgust or a moment of the feelings of philosophical futility that engulfed the man who saw himself as awake in an iron house of sleeping bodies, or perhaps a combination of the two, it must be acknowledged that this tensions between knowing, writing, and saying is ever present in Lu Xun’s work; he advises us all to embrace the beauty of nothingness in our lives even as we hoist our javelin in the contradiction of peaceful combat and to reply to it all with an echoing “HAhaha Heee hee”.

Within the pages of YeCao he exploits and describes this self same tension: the form as I have described above is pithy, short, even for Lu Xun, a master of brevity. They are vision-like, they are not in the business of playing extensively with language or sound, in short they are often about silent moments: death, writing in the middle of the night, contemplating the changing seasons, reading a stone tablet, and their form and length are built for maximum impact. The inability to speak or move, muteness, unknowing, and nothingness especially are all major themes in these works. Perhaps this is reflective of the political quandary in which Lu Xun found himself at the time. I is treated in a variety of different ways, as empowering and beautiful, as simply blank and hollow, as bitter, or impotent, or futile. Since nothingness, choosing of speech, acknowledgement of knowledge or forgetfulness are all aspects of the discursive process in Lu Xun’s work it can easily be said that these are also the basic parameters of his politics of writing as well as his politics of silence. Such a complex, nuanced and changeable view stands in sharp contrast with the edicts of Mao’s talks at Yan’an that take literature as a tool to be used, formed and directed in certain ways and not others, even as Lu Xun’s political fervor overlaps with that of the CCP. While I think it is interesting and important to examine the personal correspondance of Lu Xun on this score, the question of how Lu Xun “really” felt about the CCP is liable to be consistently fraught with difficulties while he remains canonized in the red heavens. There is always going to be someone who want to reveal that he was secretly a democrat or an anarchist, or even a capitalist, a traditionalist or a fake. I think the answer to these questions in the terms that it is important that we know them as scholars of literature rather than biographers or historians in large part lies in his writing, and its creative context. Whether we believe that Lu Xun should be the smiling father of modern Chinese literature, or whether he, this strange tubercular king should be toppled from his throne it must be admitted that no one quite writes like Lu Xun, because no one quite thinks like Lu Xun, Which is perhaps one of the reasons that his brilliance is tamed, reified and officially gloried in, and also one of the reasons he still remains an unlikely communist hero, despite his love of the masses…an oddly placed jigsaw piece whose muse is tension.

response

In Professor Leo Lee’s article, he tries to seek the Lu Xun’s “modernity” from both traditional Chinese literature and some western works. But “modernity” in Lee’s usage, as in his other works, its connotation is not very clear. Insofar as Lu Xun’s works are concerned, Lee lauds their “modernity” in terms of the new techniques of expressions and the intention of iconoclastic thrust, which are named “creative writing” and “sense of originality” in Lee’s own words. But I argue that the “modernity” in general not only can be interpreted from the novelty of the form, but also needs an investigation of its content (such as its technological elements) and philosophical meanings. In other words, the “modernity” doesn’t equal to novelty (or creativity) and counter-tradition in the form. Instead, it has other standards, which urge our interpretations of the literary works to a more complicated extent. Also, the difference between the “western modernity” and “Chinese modernity”, and the characteristic of Lu Xun’s “modernity” need to be noticed.

Haosheng's response, for easy viewing and appreciation

Here is my two cents: I do feel Leo Lee’s approach to his study of Lu Xun, to a certain degree, reveals the impact of both Prusek and T.A. Hsia/C.T. Hsia. For example, when dealing with Lu Xun as a truly Chinese modern writer, Lee examined Lu Xun’s “modern” signification by contextualizing Lu Xun’s case in the whole Chinese literary tradition, from classical to modern period, just as Prusek did. By emphasizing how Lu Xun indulged himself in ancient time and classical works during his silent period from 1909 to 1918, Lu Xun’s research on history of classical fiction and on Ji Kang’s selection, and Lu Xun’s practice of classical-style poetry, Lee convincingly argued that people cannot fully and profoundly understand the modern characteristic of Lu Xun without examining his relation to classical literary tradition. Using Prusek’s key word “lyrical”, Lee pointed out that Lu Xun is a truly modern writer not because he appeared as one of the most radical iconoclasts among the May Fourth generation, but because he effectively obtained nutrition from classical tradition as important source of culture re-construction for modern China, sophistically transformed traditional factors into new artistic form in serving the author’s modern emotion, anxiety, and desire, and eventually, successfully created a modern “lyrical poetics” through his writing. Not like T.A. Hsia, who emphasized the complete separation of traditional and modern, and treated traditional culture’s attraction towards Lu Xun as a gate of darkness that Lu Xun had to fight against (p152), Lee found elements in tradition more positive to Lu Xun's intellectual development and literary creation.

T.A. Hsia’s influence can be clearly figured out when Lee probed the dark side of Lu Xun’s “inner self”. Both Hsia and Lee were seeking Lu Xun’s tragic complexity. As Hsia described Lu Xun as an egotist opposed to Partyist, Lee also paid attention to the stereotype of the contrast between particular individual and the mediocrity in Lu Xun’s fictions. Here Lee did not appreciate Prusek’s concept of collective subjectivity as the highest criteria, for him it is nothing else but the intense internal contradiction and anxiety, even the unconquered decadent feeling in Lu Xun’s troubled psyche should take credit for making Lu Xun a distinguished “modernist".
As for T.A. Hsia’s book, I was not surprised to find the author’s anti-communist political stand, but I was surprised to find that Hsia gave Rou Shi’s work a quite bad evaluation, which does not seem fair to me. It seems to me that in Rou Shi’s case, Hsia’s political prejudice misguided his judgment.

Lee's Comment...now for all to see easily and at a glance

Week 3: Literary Deathmatch: Symbolism vs Allegory

For some time I was confused by the title of this week’s readings. Generally I think of “canon-making” (always discontented) as being a narrowing or expanding of the body of texts (and writers) which scholars refer back to, like, all the time in the course of a day’s work. Under that impulse, then, last week’s readings would seem more relevant; Lu Xun being pretty much as canonical as you can get without hurting yourself. Unless of course the argument is about which of his literary works ought to be canonical reading. But that’s not what either Hsia or LL are interested in, at least directly. Rather I think they are interested in outlining/carving out the characteristics of a canonical text (or canonical author), which is, put very simply, that it yields up readings inexhaustibly. That’s one of the main reasons why Mandarin Ducks and Commie prop don’t make the list. Symbol and allegory fit into that scheme because the text is placed between author and context. Or maybe vice-versa. The point is that these three things inform each other. A text or something in a text can have symbolic AND allegorical meaning. If you believe text and author are the same, then you are guilty of a Intentional Fallacy. If you believe text and context are the same, then you’re just not cut out for literature. Symbolism then is a straight line connecting sign and referent whereas allegory is rupture of that nicety. Thank the heavens for all that, too, because otherwise what the ##%& would grad students in the pomo age write about? As a side point, allegory, for some reason, generally seems to point toward context, whereas symbolism seems to point toward the author. Perhaps it is a western prejudice that must see the individual as the master of himself. Perhaps we can thank Neitzche for that. If anyone has differing points of view I’d like to hear it.

It seems evident that the canonicity of Nahan will eventually lead to its own ejection from the canon. Why? Because no one will remain content with Nahan. LL’s impulse for example is to look into LX’s “lesser pieces” such as his academic work, his prose poems (Yecao), his letters, medical records, etc. These all enhance context. But as documents in their own they right invariably lead far, far away from the canon. Which is of course a good thing. There is no canon, and there never has been, and the only people who care are those who want to enslave you.

Canonicity demands precedent! Precedent means genealogy! It turns out that China’s modernization project was actually a long annotation of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Groves Collected Works. Thus should we not amend all the textbooks to say: “May Fourth reformers rejected a certain strain of Chinese tradition, namely Confucianism”? Or would we have to qualify that as “authoritarian Confucianism”? Or maybe they weren’t rejecting anything at all, except their own lack of authority. Which reminds me of a very troubling assumption that LL makes, namely that the Wei-Jin literature which Lu Xun found to be inspiring (not just technical material) during his years of study has some kind of content that is divorced from and pre-existant of LX’s discovery of it. I.e. LX “discovered” the iconoclastic Wei-Jin literature and – bang-o! – we get May 4th iconoclasm. This is troubling to me. LL is not quite that simple, but he leaves out other and more interesting possibility that LX, already steeped in the zeitgeist of reform and collapse and whatever, equipped with the vocabulary of reform and collapse and whatever, read (misread?) the Wei-Jin works as allegory of his time. The cultural-spiritual approach. Is Lu Xun the new Confucius?

Why did we read Yecao? To judge for ourselves LL’s claim that they are symbolic of LX’s personal struggles and not love-letters to the goth chick next door. And why did we read Rou Shi? To interrogate Hsia’s claim of literary genealogy. “Attack Hu, attack Feng, then you must attack Lu Xun!” Otherwise you are a shameless communist propagandeur devoid of critical thinking skills and probably saddled with poor fashion sense. (this is me joking in case there are sensitive communists in the audience beside myself). I liked Rou Shi’s somewhat-odd story. It refused to end on the note of abject sorrow which I was half-expecting. I mean it’s without redemption, but, for once, no one starves to death and only two babies die (none during the actual time period covered by the story). But do we read Rou Shi like we’d read a story from the great master Lu Xun? This is my central question, this is my date tree. And why do we fail to impute Rou Shi’s story with allegorical meaning? Why is it just “a story” as opposed to “the story of China” or even “the story of Rou Shi, Communist martyr”? Because Rou Shi has not been canonized by anyone famous? (Cut to famous literary critic addressing audience at AAS: “I hereby canonize Rou Shi as the greatest undiscovered master of all time!”) Do I read him differently now? This is my other tree it is also a date tree. Someone recently told me they always thought of LX as “a really good journalist.” For some reason I feel this is an important statement. If the canon is (hold your breath) a simulacrum (of a sort) then I, as a critic, have got to interrogate my reasons for making certain assumptions. Although, if I only did that I probably wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning.

Critics get out of bed in the morning to re-write literary history every time they pick up a book or power up the laptop, Hsia and LL were both consciously operating under this political impulse. The canon is key to pulling that off (just like I must argue that creating “a field” of study, such as “modern Chinese literature” is key to maintaining hegemony). Originally there was nothing, no canon, but enough people walked that way to wear a path in the literary wilderness. I will rewrite Lu Xun as a frustrated television scriptwriter who could never crack into Hollywood. I will rewrite Lu Xun as a stand-up comedian who knows everything you are thinking before you even think it. I will rewrite Lu Xun as the fame-thirsty Tuberculosis Artist who is in town for one night only. I will rewrite Lu Xun as the Allegorical Other of a tired grad student who very desperately wants to go to bed. I will rewrite Lu Xun as a writer truly deserving of Mao’s unqualified praise. Why? Because it can be done.

POSTING

It has come to my attention that I need to say something about posting...for the convenience of prof. Wang, I will say that Yang Haosheng's response paper is hidden in the 3rd comment to the above post. Normally if you do this by accident, I will copy your response paper from the comment section and paste it into a new post which will be identified as having my signature, but will bear the name of the original author in the title and body of the text so as to avoid confusion. Everybody should be creating a new post when they put on their responses, so that they are all easily seen by Prof. Wang, and so that we can all share ideas easily. In order to post, you should click on your own name in the members list, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on "home" this will take you to something called the "Dashboad" where you will see the name of the blog and the option to put on a "new post". Please click on this and then write in your response or cut and paste a piece you have written. Please indicate somewhere in your post title which week you are responding to, or identify by subject...i.e.: "Week three", "The Canon and its Discontents", "Lu Xun" etc.

ok, happy hunting.

best,

SR65

Blog name

so we have had a number of different suggestions for tabled for the name of this blog:

"Wangster" was quite funny...like Friendster, only different?

"Voices from the Iron House" was too morose

"One China" was tabled by a certain contraversial soul

my best suggestion is: "Polemic Picnic" which has the benefit of giving us an excuse to have a picnic at the end of term.

any and all suggestions welcome...I just kept it simple for the moment.

Also please note...I put a few useful links on the side there...any other ideas, please let me know!