From Traditional Nostalgia To Transcendental Nostalgia

Nostalgia is an essential concept of the research of Chinese culture. The traditional nostalgia of Chinese farming community stems from running away, and the distance directly causes the separation between man and his home town. The nostalgia that comes out with altering places rises to the kind which is stimulated by the natural scenery in literati’s works, and then they realizes the relation between human and universe, the human nature of return. The author analyzed the causes, way of expression and the trigger of this nostalgia, indicating its feature and profound meaning. The traditional nostalgia originates from running away for intentions like guarding the frontier area, seeking for official post, education, business trip and some civil disorders, with its way of expression being analyzed on the four points of book, earth, tree, and well, its triggers being categorized into time, space, view, and article. It consists of the underline of social ethic feelings, spiritual sustenance, the particular characteristic of poems, the pessimistic aestheticism, the universal spirit and the consciousness of time and life.However, the contemporary nostalgia results from modernism. The improving thoughts which brought linear concept of information, capital and globalization to us has rebuilt people’s concept of time.The fading bound of time has made them live in a boundless area, where people’s identities are so hard to defined, therefore the nostalgia has become a widespread “modern disease”. This research interprets the concept of contemporary nostalgia from political, economic and cultural sights, based on literary, contemporary art creation and architecture sight, in order to analyze it from every aspect.Based on it, the article indicates nine different levels of nostalgia from the insider, returner, successful returner, vagrant, happy-go-lucky person, cosmopolitan, the snail, the Peach Garden in heart, to the fictitious nostalgia.After the reflection of traditional Chinese culture and western theory of nostalgia, the research comes up with a concept named Generalized Nostalgia, or Transcending Nostalgia, which surpasses space and concreteness, trying to apply the idea to art practices.In author’s opinion, there are various multicultural and multinational nostalgia that exist, therefore we can apply the aesthetic view of regardlessness by Zhuangzi to the certain art creation and expression of Generalized nostalgia.After all, as inventive illusionary behavior and reflection of spiritual feelings, the nostalgia itself can be regarded as an exploration of spirit, also a making-up aesthetic world.In the context of globalization and modernization nowadays, the nostalgia ought to have a wider explanation and perspective, instead of stiffly restoring the image of reality.The imagination that nostalgia conceives has to be better involved with history and culture, and let people count the history, knowledge and culture all over the world as their own "hometown".Stepping over one’s own emotion, nostalgia indeed is a common memory of culture, tradition and identity that belongs to all the human beings. It is still a mirror reflecting the reality of society, but no more personal consciousness, being a generalized one.