The Investigation Of Zhimo Xu’s Aesthetic Practice

Zhimo Xu (1896-1931), whose given name is "Zhangxu", was born in Xiashi, Haining, Zhejiang province. Followed his father’s wish, Zhimo Xu left for American to study banking, politics, and economy first in Clark University and then in Columbia University in1918. He went to the United Kingdom, where he contacted many literature ideologies, and started his career on literature. Zhimo Xu took the literature ideologies and theories, which he learned when he studied in the west countries, back to China and put all these into practice. What Zhimo Xu has done in this practice enlarged modern Chinese literature’s contents. Thus, he held a high reputation in this field.The Aesthetic Artistic ideology still had an impact on the literature and art when Zhimo Xu came to the United Kingdom. He studied Aestheticism theory from Gautier, Swinburne, Pater, Wilde, Baudelaire, and Allan Poe. He admired Keats, Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth, Hardy, and Mansfield. Zhimo Xu touched the Aesthetic blood and cells in these celebrated persons. He gradually realized, appreciated and finally accepted the Aesthetic Artistic ideology through the communications with these famous litterateur and artists via spirits and face-to-face and put into practice in life, literature, and teaching.Currently, many researches on the life activities, events, literature compositions, translations, and the influence of Romanticism of Zhimo Xu have been published. However, there is little research on the relationship between Aestheticism and Zhimo Xu himself and his activities. Here, this paper investigates Zhimo Xu’s life, literature, and teaching practice from the angle of Aestheticism through text readings, theoretical statements, compared studies, and qualified thinking. Chapter I focus on the findings of Aesthetic marks and components in his marriage and love as well as daily communications with his friends via the investigations of his stories with Youyi Zhang, Huiyin Lin, and Xiaoman Lu. Thereby, Zhimo Xu’s Aesthetic Artistic concept "life is art" will be shown in this process. Chapter Ⅱ studies Aesthetic key points and discusses the practice of Aesthetic Artistic ideology in Zhimo Xu’s poem, essay and novel by means of the overall reading and careful investigations and appreciations on the selected literature works. Chapter Ⅲ presents Zhimo Xu’s Aesthetic teaching practice by recognizing and reading in depth of his lecture notes, which including Aesthetic essence, and pursuing the word recordings, which were taken by his students, of his teaching.