On Feng Zicai's Philosophy Of Life In His Prose Creativity

It has been proved to be facts that Feng Zikai's prose creation wascontinued all his life and his essays maintained a powerful vitalitythroughout different historical cases. Prose creation, as a unique writingstyle, usually represents the author's inner world, so does Feng Zikai'sessays which is closely related to his philosophy of life resulted from hisspecial comprehension of art, religion and life.This thesis contains three chapters. Chapter one mainly deals withFeng Zikai's philosophy of life which was his understanding of life. Fengdivided life into three realm: matter realm, art realm and religion realm,among them the latter two are what he pursued in the life realm whichcan took into the forms of "Beauty of Triviality", "Beauty of Plainness"and "Beauty of Simpleness" and "Beauty of Completeness" in his essays.Chapter two focuses on the connotations of the art realm of Feng Zikai'sprose creation. There are three levels in it: first of all, Feng regarded artand life to be in one; from this perspective he viewed his own life as anartwork and daily life a process of creating art, and treated the daily lifewith an artistic attitude, this can be found in his "Beauty of triviality".Secondly, Feng thought that art should be close to the public's life of anddedicated to them. He claimed that art should be popular with not farfrom the public. This point can be proved and sensed in his essaysthrough the plainess, affinity and sincerity. Lastly, Feng argued that art,dedicated to the public, was meaningful and real beauty according to hisunderstanding of art. This contributed to the third connotation of Feng'spursuit of the life and art realm by his understanding that art and itsessence are independent; this can also be viewed from the "Beauty ofpoetry" in his essays. Chapter three copes with Feng's comprehension ofthe religion which also has two meanings: one is Feng thought life is uncertain and illusory from his religious view. Therefore he posed apassive attitude toward life and thought life is vanity; what's more, Fengtreated fame and wealth as nothing but wished to gain spititural freedombeyond the mundane chains from his "beauty of Plainness". The other is,life in the real world is philistine, he then created a spiritual home in hisreligious beliefs hoping it to be an "exit from the earthly life" andtranscended from the life in the real world, this point can be found in hislate works with the "Beauty of Completeness".Feng Zikai's life philosophy is instructive and enacts great influenceon the intellectuals in the modem world, that is, he offered them not onlya spiritual home but also a way to appreciate life.