A General Survey Of Feng Zikai's Prose

Feng Zikai is always well-known for his caricature in the world, but his prose is ignored by people. Through the overall study of Feng Zikai's prose, I consider he should have a fitting fame in the history of Chinese modern prose for the peculiarity of his prose. In the thesis I select his prose written before the year of 1949 as the object of study, trying to rather objectively evaluate him and his prose.As on artist taking up several professions, Feng Zikai embodies in his prose peculiar pursuit into art: the aestheticalization of life means observing and learning every period of life by the artistic mind and attitude. The art of life is a kind of spiritual and poetic life style and attitude of life, which transcend the realistic material gain. Its essence lies in the complete relaxation and freedom of an individual's soul.Feng Zikai's choice contains substantial contents. In my thesis, his early works are mainly summarized as the contemplation of life in the Buddist halo. Since he is deeply influenced by Buddhism, he ponders and explains the problems about time and space through an artistic mind and attitude. He faces all the creatures in the world by the leelings full of humanitarianism and tries to protect human's minds by the childlike innocence after thoroughly understanding the hypocrisy of adults. In a word, his works of this period are tinged with pessimistic coloring and stamped with the vestige of Buddhism. In the thesis I compare Feng Zikai's works^with Bing Xin's, Xu Dishan's, and so on. Through the comparison of their works, the peculiarity of his works is prominent. Not like Bing Xin, who tries to achieve man's love by highly praising the childlike innocence, Feng Zikai understand life is hardship and adults have lost innocent nature, so he tries to acquire freedom from the childlike innocence. He is also not like Xu Dishan, who admits life is hardship and denies the reality of the persistent ideal. Feng Zikai denies the reality and actively pursues the ideal, genuine moral quality, and Great Harmony (an ideal or perfect society) , There are a great changes in his later works . In the troubled times Feng Zikai never gives up his artistic pursuit, and furthermore, expresses his provocative indignant opinions. It reveals more of his character of "Engaged-into-life". Facing with the war, he created his an Eden of his own: "Yuanyuan House" and "Loyal land "in his works. The idealism of these two kinds of homeland mainly shows that they are the rest and peace of the author's spirit and mind. In these places he keeps the artistic pursuit forever and realizes the most natural and free existent state of an individual in the peaceful, stable, and happy ideal society. Feng Zikai is peculiar because he has the aesthetic taste of the classical and harmonious type which is different with the overall aesthetic of the times. Since he is influenced by the thought of Benevolence in Confucianism, the thought of Naturalness in Taoism, and the thought of Seclusivism in Buddhism, he selects the elegant aesthetics type as the keynote of his prose .At the same time, Feng Zikai's works have special aesthetic features. In my thesis, 1talk about it from three aspects, First of all, his prose is filled with a chatting-like atmosphere. He expressed any thought in his mind in a manner of chitchat with friends, which makes his prose have the possibility of talking with the readers and draws close the distance between the author and the readers. Sencond, Feng Zikai's works embody a kind of esthetic taste of" Refined Simplicity". It has a plain and simple language from which we can see he has influenced by the poet Tao Yuanming. His work is full of clear and profound art which makes the plain and temperate and refined. Finally, I discuss many interests of his prose.In a word, Feng Zikai's prose is as natural as his personality. Although at that time under the special circumstance his works were out of keeping with the times, as a peculiar version his works contain a kind of eternal beauty from the aesthetical qua...