The Study Of Shen Congwen's Creative Mentality

Writers are a sensitive group of intellectuals,all the external things through the internalization of their emotional thinking,the study of the mentality of writers can explore the history projected to the spiritual track.Shen Congwen,a modern writer,is a man of many contradictions.There are many imbalances between his latent emotion and realistic behavior,literary theory and practice,etc,which lead to his life struggle to meet and overcome the crisis,and his soul produces "rich pains".However,the study of Shen Congwen from the the perspective of psychology and spiritual science is still relatively weak,and the remarkable achievements are concentrated in the fields of culture,aesthetics,history and society,etc,while the research on his mentality is scattered and not systematic.In view of this,this thesis will take Shen Congwen's creation mentality as a core research object,and examine it on the whole.Literature as the writer's spirit carrier,can reflect the writer's inner world,also can open the era of the soul.So this thesis main research path is from the works of Shen Congwen"content and form" to view his creation mentality,trying to reach into the underlying dimension of his inner world,and explore his journey and spiritual conflict,thinking in the turmoil of the 20th century,how do liberal intellectuals stick to the individual personality and deal with the relationship between the individual and age,some reflections are formed in the past research conclusion.On the basis of the detailed reading,this thesis makes a comprehensive analysis of Shen Congwen's creative mentality by using biographical criticism,psychological analysis and social and the social historical criticism.Art is rooted in and satisfies people's psychological needs.When people have needs,they will transform into corresponding motivations and desires and take actions to satisfy them.Humanistic psychologist Maslow divided people's needs into physiological,security,belonging and love,self-esteem,self-fulfillment,five levels,but the progressive relationship between them is relative,because in reality,people have the variety of needs at the same time,just at different times,some need is able to get the first dominate people's behavior as "advantage need".After the lower level of human needs are satisfied to some extent,the higher level of needs will appear.The needs that have been satisfied do not disappear,but are maintained in a potential way.If the environment changes and people suffering setbacks,they will appear again.Shen Congwen's life was faced with a variety of needs,which existed at the same time and for a long time.The changes of internal and external causes maked them constitute a level of comparative advantage,and the same need was also different in different stages of life.Based on Shen Congwen's needs of love,self-esteem and self-realization,the author selects three aspects of love,identity and literary ideal in the "content" of his works to investigate his creation mentality,which have both commonness and individuality.The abstract,madness and synthesis writing in "form"correspond to them respectively,and show their independent characteristics.Finally,from the "content and form",this paper comprehensively discusses his mentality behind abandoning writing and changing career.The first chapter discusses Shen Congwen as a "love writer's" hidden feelings.Emotional attribution and the need for love was one of the basic needs of human beings.Shen Congwen also once said that "sexual relationship" was the basic driving force of literature and art.The discussion on sexual relationship ran through his literary career.The "sexual distress" in early novels was closely related to the inferiority brought about by life hardship,especially economic oppression.It also touched on the issue of "the morality of sex",the conflict between men's self-perceived redemption of women,lust and rationality/morality were the two most prominent aspects.Shen Congwen also expressed his dissatisfaction with civilization based on the demand of "sexual instinct".He praised the free and savage primitive passion of SiGou,WuMing,Baizi etc in the countryside.Although he also revealed its own destruction,he was more dissatisfied with the "hypocrisy" made by the sexual morality of civilization.The sexual constraint of civilization sometimes led to the deprivation of the physical satisfaction and the spiritual disappointment of the urban people,leading to the negative instinct played a greater role in their body.In fact,he used his dissatisfaction with civilization to sublimate his frustration in the city into a kind of foreign cultural self-confidence,reflecting an exaggerated psychological state Shen Congwen's description of love in the 1940s,"Seeing the rainbow picking the stars",was the result of his inability to balance the marriage reality and love imagination.His emotional anguish in marriage could be seen from the two "female Quixote" in fiction and reality.The second chapter analyzes the embarrassed mentality of Shen Congwen's identity.Although his need for love was frustrated,but partly satisfied,Shen Congwen's need for self-esteem began to take advantage.For him who left Xiangxi for Beijing to seek survival,his need for self-esteem was embodied in the hope that he could gain identity in the city.As a local literary youth with modern knowledge,wisdom and ideals,Shen Congwen yearned for the city of knowledge,education and culture,so he left Xiangxi for Beijing.When he finally gained a foothold in the city after setbacks,he backed off emotionally,repeatedly calling himself a "countryman".The reason behind this was that his psychology of Inferiority and arrogance were intertwined.The "countryman" position was his survival and narrative strategy,which had cracks in the urban-rural antagonism and the Miao-Han antagonism.Urban experience not only brought Shen congwen wound,but also endowed him with rationality.The wound made him see the degeneration of the city when he looked at the urban people from the perspective of the "countryman".Rationality made him realize the tragedy of Xiangxi when he looked at it with the attitude of an intellectual.He felt alienated from both environments and had a crisis of identity."Not willing to go back" let him wander in the edge of the city,"unable to go back" let him wander in the edge of Xiangxi,in both worlds he was regarded as the "outsider",became a"marginal people" of "non-city non-township","half city half township",this"intermediate sorrow" staying with all his life.The third chapter discusses the utilitarian mentality of Shen Congwen's literary ideal.The embarrassment of identity troubled Shen Congwen,but he subconsciously inclined to the role of "urban people" and "enlightened people".After the 1930s,with his emergence in the literary world,his need for self-fulfillment,that is,his desire for self-play and accompolishment,became strong,and he wanted to realize his self-value and social value through literary ideals.The first level of utilitarianism mentioned in this chapter refers to "the affirmation of personal interests by daily experience",which is based on the purpose or goal pursued by individuals.On the personal level,Shen Congwen actively sought the literary value of himself.In the early 1930s,he affirmed the significance of his works from the poetry criticism,and found his position in the literary world from the novel criticism.In the middle period,the publication of "Congwen's novels selections" was an initiative he took for the status of literary history.On the second level,utilitarianism refers to literature written to express the life of society and nation.Shen Congwen was walking the road of"literary saving the nation",in Xiangxi romantic novels depicting the reality and the myths and legends,contained his sense of "adoring force",reflected his advocation to realize the ideal of national reconstruction by stimulating the will and vitality of the people.It was also an important meeting point between him and the members of the"war state policy school" on the core cultural concepts.Shen Congwen's literary ideas and social ideals were interlinked.Because since the childhood he saw numerous killings,he hated political opposition power,to use literature as a "weapon" to reform the country,the only "tool" to promote human peace,advocating "experts governing the country",opposing political interference in literature,literary subordinate political,claiming literature encourage and assist politics.He thought that the effectiveness of the literary thought at least and political good behavior to the purpose of the quiet,even beyond the latter.Shen congwen's way of participating in history was not understood and accepted.After the founding of the People's Republic of China,he realized that the ideal of transforming the nation and society through literature was just a "Quixotic fantasy".The fourth chapter analyzes the relationship between Shen Congwen's writing form and his mentality.The content and form of literary works are closely related.Shen Congwen's abstraction,madness and synthesis writing were "contents that have become forms",which were connected with his love and desire entanglements,identity embarrassment and literary ideals.The entanglements of emotional life in the late 1930s,the negativity brought by the war to the Chinese people,and the misunderstanding of literature and people all prompted him to rethink new forms of expression and turn to nothingness for the confusion of abstract writing.In "Seeing the rainbow picking the stars",he willed love from fluctuates daily,fixed in abstract form to become eternal,in a seemingly obscure ambiguous condition pouring out his pent-up frustrations,also with a new test to resist and transcend the existing relationship,trying to break the dominant regular consciousness and everyday experience.Shen Congwen's identity of distress also related to "the factors of crazy",he often talked about himrself in others' eyes,often seen as "mental disorder".In his literature conception,the highest record in the world was caused by the crazy people,he also used writing experience when it came to mind was close to crazy words will be under the condition of life,such a view was similar to "madness and civilization"relationship.Many characters in Shen Congwen's novels had mad experience,and the madness writing was integrated into his life experience,and also reflected his confused state of mind when he cognized himself.Synthesis writing was Shen Congwen's continuous attempts and breakthroughs in literary form,which reflected his literary ideal,trying to "knead travel essays and novel stories into one" and creating "a new form of modern novel",after the Anti-Japanese War.However,various internal and external contradictions resulted in the "unfinished" state of the products such as the "Long River","The Chronicle ofYunLu","The snow and the fine",etc,which revealed his confusion about the form exploration and social and historical development.The fifth chapter analyzes Shen Congwen's literary adversity of internal and external difficulties.After the 1930s,Shen Congwen was troubled by the depression of love and desire,the loss of ideals and the failure of literary forms,which eventually led him into the literary adversity of internal and external difficulties.During the period of Kunming,in the face of national anxiety,human relations disputes,emotional distress,creative expression of anxiety,Shen Congwen became more and more lonely and silent.Under the combined action of the times and personal pressure,Shen Congwen gave out the miserable and depressed voice of intellectuals' "not knowing to shout to whom" in the period of Anti-Japanese War.After returning to Beiping in the late summer of 1946,he tried to get out of his boredom and revive himself.He published more essays on current politics,showing his enthusiasm and responsibility for participating in national construction,and continued to live up to his literary ideals.In October 1946,after publishing a long self-argumentative essay"Learning from reality',he began to be constantly criticized by people from the democratic league,the left-wing,non-party and so on,and fell into repression again.In 1948,the leaders of the left-wing literary circle realized that in the critical period of social transition,the principle of literary was subservient to politics should be adhered to,and Shen Congwen was included in the list of "reactionary writers" who were resolutely attacked and completely eliminated.Unable to get rid of the "sense of persecution" caused by the fear of power,Shen Congwen's mental condition deteriorated rapidly in early 1949,and he chose to commit suicide on March 28.After 1940s,Shen Congwen had been trapped by expressing anxiety,to find suitable form of written stories,in his view,the research of cultural relics and literature creation was mutual,he again found in the study of cultural relics continue lyrical way of life,sticking to the spirit of creativity.Giving up writing for the research of cultural relics was his "health choice" not "passive withdrawal".From the analysis of Shen Congwen's creation mentality,he had contradictions in his love,ego,ideals and writing forms exploration hovering lust and morality,civilization and brute force,divine and the secular,"countryman" and the city,aesthetic and utilitarian,etc,mental structure presenting the abstract and concrete,infinite and finite,absolute and relative complexity,freedom and necessity,etc.He found a balance between affirmation,negation,negation of negation and transition,but the inherent characteristics of his personality prevented him from realizing the integration of self and the world,so he experienced the alien nature in absolute loneliness,and the inner tension and fever of life once led him to death.He was "in"but "not of either world,the intersection,the critical state that made him beyond the two worlds,this was his spiritual uniqueness.All his life,Shen Congwen tried to transform the vitality into the spirit of creative enthusiasm,adhere to the spirit of freedom as the soul of the individual personality,in the creation of life itself and the value of survival of the spiritual conflict,struggle,pain,has become an important spiritual resource in the 20th century Chinese modern literature.Starting from the creation mentality of Shen Congwen,this thesis is a study of the writer's personal psychological history and an attempt to make an individual case from the perspective of "psychological literary history".