Perspectives On Life's Being

In the history of Chinese modern literature, Shen Congwen and Zhang Ailing were two writers greatly disputed. While enjoying great reputation in the 1930s and 1940s, they were constantly enveloped by various comments. After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, they disappeared together in the history of Chinese literature and came to light again in the 1980s, being the focus of the public's attention once more. Based on the above-mentioned, their literary destinies were similarly indirect and fluctuant. However, there was not any relation between their literary origins. That is not only the gap between the time of their being famous is rather far, but also their personal experiences, literary pursuits and the style and features of their works are approximately widely different. Therefore, few people compared them ago. Whereas, after having excluded our subjective prejudices and interferences and while inquiring the deep meaning of their works through the surface forms which are quite different, we will find many internal relations between them. Shen Congwen and Zhang Ailing have displayed many identities of their emphatic writing of the subject of humanity, their profound attention to individual beings and their self-identity with life's tragedy. At the same time, they presented their respective uniqueness. Moreover, the similarity of their literary destinies has unfolded deeply the commonality and inevitability of their writing gestures, aesthetic pursuits and cultural choices. It is no other than from these aspects that the paper has compared these two writers and has explored the value and significance of their persistence in individual writing.