Ai Wu's Ultimate Experience And His Journey To The South

This article takes as its objective Ai Wu's Journey to the South and theultimate experience he had during the end of 20s and beginning of 30s inthe 20th century, and probes into the function and value of ultimateexperiences on the basis of close reading and analysis of the text. Itfurther gives a comment on the achievements of this short story collectionJourney to the South and its characteristics and contradictions ofemotions and cognitive limitations in judgement.The whole article falls into two parts.The first part focuses on the relations between Ai Wu's ultimateexperience and the creative characteristics of Journey to the South. Firstlyit analyzes the five-year long wandering journey and points out that it isone way of experience of life. The article offers a study of theultimateness of the manner, circumstances, feelings of such lifeexperience, pointing out Ai Wu's such wandering activities to be a kind ofultimate experience. It is by such ultimate experience that the writer'shorizon has been broadened so to gather valuable materials for thewriting of the short stories and at the same time provided the necessarypreparations in terms of emotion and cognition. Secondly, Ai Wu's'ultimate experience is an aimless, disinterested life experience, whichenables the author to assimilate himself with the surroundings in a naturalstate and thus cultivates various relations and indispensable feelings with the wanderers in daily life. Therefore, Journey to the South could depicttruthful wandering life with more vivid and straightforward image of thewanderer not found before.The second part studies the relations between ultimate experience andthe achievements and limitations of the work Journey to the South. Firstof all, ultimate experience offers the opportunities for the collection ofshort stories to attach great importance in the representation of real life,thus does great contributions to the development and prosperity ofChinese contemporary literature. However, ultimate experience has alsocaused emotional and cognitive contradictions in the experiencing self sothat the relations between certain plots and characters are not clearlyshown. In the work Journey to the South due to the emotional weakeningof the philosophical thinking, the author's consciously or unconsciouslydefense for emotions reveal his cognitive mistakes. Moreover, as anintellectual person it is impossible for the experiencing Ai Wu to havecomplete identification with the life and thoughts of the wanderers. Thushis work reveals some critical views. However, such criticism is far frombeing thorough since the author expresses a view of idealism with mildand simple judgement in the moral aspect. Meanwhile, ultimateexperience endows the author a naturalist feeling with innocent, simpleinsight and thus rendering Journey to the South less realistic, but moreromantic instead, without sharp conflicts. Conclusion: Ultimate experience endows Ai Wu an unconscious lifeexperience, which is very valuable to creative writing. Although suchexperience does bring some negative influence upon the creation of thework, yet on the whole ultimate experience appears positively significant.It tells us such a truth: without real life experience or truthful feelings,even if the author has great plan for creative writing, even if the authorhas penetrating philosophical thinking, realistic work will become paleand weak. However, ultimate experience is very precious, something tobe encountered only instead of being sought after.