Longing For The Returning In The Future

As for Shen Congwen, to write classic literature is to 'reconstruct the nationality', but it is the very anxiety and thinking of the purpose that influenced his novel writing conversely and, in the end, led to its final cessation. Such paradox is the result of a larger conflicting thesis between the writer's understanding of 'nationality reconstruction' on the one hand and the contemporary mainstream ideology on the other. To the writer, the enlightening May Fourth Movement is necessary only if it is free of alien ideas, that is, to be 'enlightening without enlightenment'.Since a long time, the critiques of Shen Congwen's novel A Town on Frontier have been by a logic of binary opposition between lyric and real writing , as a point of departure from which to analyze the relationship in his novels between the expression of emotion and the idea of 'nationality reconstruction'. In the novel, emotion is expressed as a nostalgic pathos to the traditional vernacular rural society, which was autonomously governed by local squires through a reservoir of well-ordered norms. The novel therefore is a response in quite a different way to the 'run away' theme which is common in May Fourth literature, and is at the same time an expectation for the future. And his novel The Long River, which was written later, is a further exploration in this respect.The writer returned hometown in 1934, only to find his 'self too long accustomed to modern urban life, which aroused his historical awareness and realistic anxiousness that political crusade solves no problem but rack havoc, and the only way out for social improvement is through spiritual creation. The coming war against Japanese inspired in him a stronger intention to change reality positively through writing. It is for the writer an exploration into the unknown future, as well as an attempt to create the national spiritual form. Such inspiration, however, was overwhelmed by the mainstream ideology and became impossible. The writer, then deeply disappointed, refrained from any reference in his work to the real word, and turned the idea and passion, which never vanishes, into painful thought.But to the writer, despite his personal failure, which was simply a contingency, literature is still essential in every mind of youths, and it is always possible, at a certain moment, to complete the final returning of value.