The Imaginations Of China In German Expressionistic Novels

German expressionist novels have long posed difficulties for non-German-speaking researchers because of their length,pioneering ideas and language that breaks with traditional grammar and syntax.In addition to the three difficulties mentioned above,the’Chinese’ novels of Expressionism are also complicated by their distorted or mutated Chinese cultural elements,literary texts and philosophical ideas,which also create enormous difficulties for native German-speaking researchers.These have therefore not been systematically studied.This is perhaps also the reason why the expressionist novel as a study object has enjoyed less attention than expressionist poetry and drama.This thesis therefore aims to explore the similarities and differences between these selected Chinese themes or elements,and to further explore their relevance to the expressionist movements that dominate the direction of modern and even postmodern art in the West,by uncovering,collating,summarising and analysing the existing German-language expressionist ’Chinese’novels.Based on a review of existing domestic and international research,this thesis first clarifies the Chinese fever in the German-speaking world from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century.It is well known that the German-speaking area did not have direct contact with China until the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century,when it relied on the maritime powers of France,England and the Netherlands for the "secondary products" of Chinese knowledge.The Chinese fever that emerged in the German-speaking world at the turn of the century was distinctly different from the obsession with Confucianism during the Enlightenment,and even more so from the obsession with objects during the "Chinoiserie" period.In the European context,the completion of the Industrial Revolution,the spiral of Eurocentrism,and the gradual decline of the Chinese Empire combined with the external forces of the Opium Wars led to the rise of the ’Yellow Peril’ in the West.But it is in this context that,in the face of the plight of the vanishing pastoral,the fate of man as a subordinate to technology and the holocaust caused by the efficient war machine as a result of rapid modernisation,intellectuals in the German-speaking world,represented by Richard Wilhelm,Carl Jung,Martin Buber,Hermann Keyserling and the Expressionists,still chose to place their hopes for the physical and spiritual survival of humanity in Chinese culture,and in particular in the Taoist philosophy of the idea "Wu-wei".The Chinese sensibility within Expressionist literature is particularly strong compared to other subject areas or genres.The number or weight of writers dedicated to the processing and creation of Chinese elements,as well as the quantity and importance of the final product,is one of the major historical events in the history of Sino-German literary exchange at the turn of the century.In view of the lack of research on Expressionism in China,this thesis will clarify the scope of the concept of Expressionism and its most salient features and theoretical approaches before embarking on a specific study,followed by a general introduction to the works of Expressionist literature in poetry and drama as they relate to China,in order to give the reader an overall picture of the relationship between Expressionist literature and China.Following this work,this thesis proposes to divide the thirty-seven Expressionist "China" novels published in the twenty-first year into three categories: China as a subject of creation,China as a copy of imitation and China as an allegorical setting.This is represented by Alfred D?blin’s "Die Drei Sprünge des Wang-lun",which is known as the "first Expressionist novel",Albert Ehrenstein’s "R?uber und Soldaten",a parody of Chinese novel "Shui Hu Zhuan",as well as "Der Chinese" by the father of Hungarian Futurism Desider Kosztolány,"Die chinesische Mauer" by the great Austrian satirist Karl Kraus and "Der Wetterprophet" by Paul Scheerbart,author of "Glasarchitektur",a masterpiece of German Expressionist architectural aesthetics.Finally,focusing on the representative works mentioned above,this thesis will synthesize thirty-seven expressionist novels dealing with China and dissect the connections between the motivations of the expressionist novelists’ choice of China and the expressionist trend.In this regard,three perspectives can be summarised in general: firstly,Chinese cultural or philosophical thought is seen as a weapon to criticise modern Western civilisation,and the authors are often knowledgeable about certain specific areas of Chinese knowledge.This rebellious stance is also closely linked to Expressionism’s own anti-authoritarian,anti-instrumentalist,anti-urbanisation and anti-bureaucratic orientation.The second is the perception of China as a utopia of escape from reality.The novels that fall under this subheading often speak of China but are intended to be about their own country,and the authors rarely have more than a superficial impression of China,which is often an idealised fog.This last perspective arises from the strong emphasis on spirituality within Expressionism,for which Chinese culture was equated with spiritual culture,as opposed to the materialistic supremacy of the twentieth-century Western.These three perspectives are intertwined,distinct and intrinsically linked,and,in terms of intellectual history,are both a continuation of previous Western views of China and a breakthrough for new generations.In the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries,in contrast to the West,where material civilization in China was on the decline,the Chinese spiritual civilization was cited by the German-speaking intelligentsia as an important resource for self-help,showing that the so-called "national power",which was more oriented towards economic,military and political indicators,was not a decisive indicator of the value of a civilization.In fact,the Chinese imagination in the Expressionist movement was not confined to the literary sphere either.The Chinese element was accompanied by a theoretical approach to art that was dominated by the ’Gesamtkunstwerk’ and penetrated into the fields of music,painting,architecture,dance and design.This phenomenon is clearly broader than the subject of this paper,and there is undoubtedly more scope for research,and whether the use of Chinese elements is motivated by Western needs or imagination,China is a developed civilization that has long been used by Europe for self-reflection,and indeed for ’building self-identity’.