A common characteristic of the so-called Chinese writers since the new period is that they abandon the false personality disguised by political slogans and moral preaching in the past for a long period of time, and strive to discover themselves and their true selves from their own hearts, and strive to truly and sincerely express their true feelings and feelings. Tracing the entire literary history of the new period, we can clearly see such a difficult path of continuous exploration and excavation into the depths of the writer's own soul: from the indignant accusation of "scar literature" to the calm inward turn of "reflective literature", from the confusion of the unique lyrical spirit of "hazy poetry" to the long-distance primitive return of "root-seeking literature", from the irritability of modernism and avant-garde **, to the enlightenment of the game life style of "ruffian literature" and the "ordinary heart" of "new realism". They are all different stages of the writer's mental journey in the new period, and these stages are generally deeper and deeper than the other, and the later they go, the more clearly the writer's inner soul is revealed.
It can be seen that the general pattern of the above process is always: restlessness - calm - restlessness again - return to calm, and so on. Of course, there is also intellectual calmness in the restlessness of emotions, and there is also inner resentment or distress in deep reflection; In this kind of polar oscillation of emotion and reason, more and more the two poles are connected or penetrated: emotion has become an idealized and even theoretical, unattainable "pure feeling", and reason has become a kind of crooked reason, "ruffian", and rebellious psychology distorted by reality, which is instead a way of venting people's natural emotions. The tracing of the writer's self-personality to such a mutually penetrating and complementary structure of emotion is reason, and reason is emotion, which is the result of more than ten years of painstaking exploration by Chinese writers in the new era.
Let's look at Jia Pingwa first. Of the three, Jia Pingwa is the writer with the most local flavor and depth of traditional culture and history, and his early works (Shangzhou series) have been featured in this style and have made a name for themselves in the Chinese literary scene. However, when he was dissatisfied with this, and reflected that he had "shattered everything he had built up with decades of struggle", and wanted to "calm my broken soul" "in the misery of life", he lost his former quiet, timeless, and eloquent style, and became flustered and hasty; When he made up his mind to find himself and grasp his soul through writing, what he saw was the loss of his self (lost soul); In other words, he found that the self that he thought was complete and self-sufficient was just an illusion, and his true self was actually ** - he no longer knew whether he was Zhuang Zhou or a butterfly.
In reality, "Zhuang Zhidie" is cynical, has long lost all idealistic moral creed, and is willing to act as a maggot on this decaying ethical system, seeking cracks and "breaks" in this closed entity, in order to maintain the last bit of primitive vitality that has not yet been suffocated. The ideal or dreamy Zhuang Zhidie has a unique genius that transforms decay into magic, which can turn the naked ruffian and animalistic nature after removing all moral veils into such elegance and warmth, and even make it show a natural purity and beauty. Of course, this kind of beauty is by no means spiritual, but a kind of worship and attachment of a spiritual person to the flesh, which is the spirit giving up its higher purpose and returning to the home of the body, in other words, the decadence and sinking of the spirit.
When the spirit is unable to see the light of heaven above its head and to guide itself to the blissful state of the gods, the only thing that can make the soul "safe" seems to be to sink into the body. And this sinking is so pleasant, so sweet, without guilt and fear of transgressing the laws of heaven, because spiritual materialism knows that there is no God, and there is no soul after death. Life is like a passerby, like a maggot, and like a dream. And the most real fantasy is the dream of maggots, and only the dreams of maggots make maggots seem to be not just maggots, but have "culture", and become the way of heaven and nature.
It can be seen that ideal and reality, spirit and body, fantasy and maggots are not the same thing after all. Although the worship of the flesh by the spirit is not "spiritual", it is "spiritual" after all, that is, a kind of "culture", otherwise Zhuang Zhidie would be no different from those ignorant hooligans. Zhuang Zhidie does not disdain the bestial behavior of ordinary ** people, he commits adultery with a pure sincerity, he is chic and level. He is watery and can empathize with other places at any time, but he is loyal and dedicated every time. He wants all the wonderful women in the world, but only to bless them with his innocence and selflessness, so he does not seem "individualistic" at all; But in the end, while he raised these ordinary women from the level of rudeness to the level of "innocence", and thus "created" them, he also destroyed them, because he made their ruffians explode and swell uncontrollably at the height of innocence, and he did not have the "ruffian" power of the emperor to possess them unconditionally and control them.
So, although none of these women resented him when they were destroyed, but worshipped him even more, he became more and more perplexed by the question: "Am I a good man?" This is actually the writer's self-questioning. To be good, to be a good person, and to do so not to be willing to succumb to the hypocrisy of the world; But the world is full of hypocrisy, so he tries to find the flaws in reality in order to reveal the truth; However, the most real and real thing is the animal nature of human beings**, ruffian", no matter how you beautify it, "culture" it, and praise it against the contrast of hypocrisy and morality, it is still just blind ruffianism. But isn't this ruffian exactly what people finally seek out of innocence and "to be good", after going through hardships and missing several times (such as the first love of Zhuang Zhidie and Jing Xueyin)? Although "lewdness" and "promiscuous lewdness" are "different in meaning", after all, "lewdness is the same" (see the fifth chapter of "Dream of Red Mansions").
Especially, when Jia Baoyu's "Dream of Red Mansions" was shattered, Zhuang Zhidie could no longer take dreams as reality. But dreams have always haunted him, making him think that there is a "true self" there, different from what he actually did. He is depraved, but his "true self" is intact; He is fornicatory, but he is chaste in fantasy; He is a ruffian, but what he pays is true love; He didn't know who he was, whether he was good or evil, because he was two people. He has no strength, he does not dare, and he is not even willing to get rid of this chaotic state of double self, because he feels intoxicated and "comfortable" in this chaos, because to make him clear about his self is tantamount to asking him to face the ugly reality and give up all self-deception, or to ask him to completely do something earth-shattering according to his "ideals", even if it is like the emperor who openly has a group of wives and concubines. But he could not be thorough, he had neither the ability nor the guts, and could only secretly carry out his animal functions as a man, and only make himself a man in fantasy. In fact, he didn't live like a man at all, not even like a person.
Look at Gu Cheng again. As one of the main generals of modernist poets, Gu Cheng and Jia Pingwa form a stark contrast: one is floating on the cusp of the hustle and bustle at the end of the century, and the other is sinking under the dark and suffocating water; One is to "look for light" with "black eyes" wide open, and the other is to seek "breaking" in accordance with the "natural flow of life". Heraclitus said, "The way that rises and the way that goes down are the same way." Gu Cheng, with his extremely European thoughts and jumping tone, expresses the same inner conflict as Jia Pingwa's plainness and simplicity. In "Ying'er", Gu Cheng described his triangular relationship with Remy and Ying'er as extremely harmonious and beautiful, so innocent that the innocent girl fell and the experienced people were numb. He said what Jia Pingwa wanted to say but didn't dare to say: "Monogamy was created by Catholicism, and it has made China miserable." ”
Gu Cheng's pursuit is not broken, but fulfillment, but this fulfillment is first reflected in the sisterly heart-to-heart relationship between his two wives, Remy and Ying'er, and in the blending relationship between himself as the center and two or more "water-made" girls as the object of lewd pleasure (fish playing in the water). He failed to see that the monogamy practiced in the West so far was not the result of a certain sect or national legal system, but was based on the independence of female personality and the independence of general personality. The "miracle" of polygamy he created is just the product of the extreme lack of personality of Chinese women, who can only be played with and regulated by men like "water". He thought that as long as he was "innocent", he could condescendingly demand a woman's pure information answer as a "khan" or emperor; Unlike Jia Pingwa, he didn't realize how "ruffian" this request was, how insulting and destructive it was, but he always thought he was a delicate and clear "good person", and things were messed up by "others": Ying'er didn't understand him, the world was too sinister, and the "heaven" he designed was not tolerated by the world.
But what is more thorough than Jia Pingwa is that he actually found a land in a foreign country where it was possible to realize his "ideals", and set out to establish his ideal kingdom on the spot; And when this kingdom is destroyed by "others", he does not hesitate to use the most barbaric and ruffian means (axes and ropes!). ended the lives of those he could control (Remy and himself): he was more idealistic and practical than Jia Pingwa.
People are often appalled at how a poet so emotional, delicate, sincere and sensitive could kill the innocent wife he still loves in this way. In fact, Gu Cheng is not as honest and sincere as Jia Pingwa in his works, but more in a dreamy vision to look at himself, beautify himself, and appreciate himself. He only showed his beautiful and innocent side, but concealed the brute ruffian in his nature, and severed the essential connection between this ruffian and innocence. Gu Cheng's innocence is not based on the humane principle of respecting people and respecting the freedom of others, but on his own natural nature, that is, the ruffian nature that is not enlightened or even opposes all education, so this innocence has a kind of ruffian coercion towards others and the object of the almsgiving.
And the more innocent it is, the more this compulsion becomes; The more idealized it is, the more it will not be allowed to be tarnished in the slightest, otherwise it will be completely destroyed in an inhuman, bestial way. This kind of innocence is unprincipled, and therefore also ruffian, because ruffian is unprincipled and nonsense. Innocence abolishes all boundaries between you and me, so suicide also has such an unreasonable ruffian: if I die, I want you to die with me, because you are me, I die, how can you still live? The seemingly contradictory, conflicting, grotesque and insoluble combination of innocence and ruffianism is the dual structure of Gu Cheng's personality; The latter is hidden, and only emerges when he kills his wife, but it is not that there are no signs in the former, but the reader is confused by innocence and cannot see the essence of the ruffian.
In the end, Wang Shuo is not only different from Jia Pingwa's plain and heavy, but also different from Gu Cheng's extraordinary, but full of wit and ruffianism in the market. But in the same way, in addition to being vulgar, he often shows, or ultimately shows the innocence of his heart. Wang Shuo's riffraff are not real ruffians, but some feints and "verbal revolutionaries". They are witty, to the point, to the point, to criticize hypocrisy, to flaunt the lowly, and to make a series of ridiculous pranks, but unlike ordinary hooliganism, in fact, they are just to vent their dissatisfaction, and they are expressing their soul and revealing their sincerity in a very targeted way. However, just as Gu Cheng was not aware of his ruffianism, Wang Shuo was also unaware of the innocence in his bones (or maybe he pretended to be unconscious so as not to "drop the price"?). ）
He cynically plays with literature, and dares to play anything in literature, but he can't figure out why he "can't play" when he comes to love, so he writes so many cute, pitiful, pathetic and lamentable innocent girls (stewardess Ah Mei, Liu Huifang, Du Mei, etc.), as well as their love affair with the male protagonist who can live or die ("Addicted to Death"). While Wang Shuo has skillfully turned his works into "vulgar and elegant" and revealed the inner world of the ruffians, his readers and critics are still staring at the superficial "ruffianism", calling it "ruffian literature" in general, and even thinking that even innocence is just a money-making trick for him to fool readers and earn cheap tears. Almost no one sees the intrinsic connection between ruffians and innocence. People don't want to think about why Wang Shuo really wants to blindly ruffian and "code words" to make money, so why don't he concoct those yellowbooks that are faster and more labor-saving. But there can be no real "yellow goods" in Wang Shuo's works, at least in terms of writing, which are not as straightforward as Jia Pingwa and Gu Cheng.
He relied on an emotion to move people and resonate with them. The most touching thing he writes is the innocent and persistent love like a child, unlike Qiong Yao and Wang Guozhen, the "Prince Charming" in these loves are all rogue in the streets and alleys, and make up all kinds of bizarre and bizarre plots. But in any case, only love can make the author truly "addicted", can he stop talking and ridiculing, and can he reveal his true face and true feelings. Only from this perspective can we also thoroughly understand the real inner world of the ruffians in Wang Shuo's paintings, and see the innocence, childlike innocence and sincerity from the appearance of the ruffians, and from the bottom of the innocence, childlike innocence and sincerity, we can see the ruffian nature of wanting to die or even threaten death.
Compared with the hypocrisy of everyday upbringing, this natural ruffian is of course more innocent and frank: "I'm just a little vulgar!" "I'm a hooligan, who am I afraid of? Wang Shuo does not see anything other than hypocritical education and natural ruffianism, such as whether there is a natural nature that destroys hypocrisy or transcends ruffianism. Therefore, he can't jump out of the polar cultural model of hypocrisy and ruffian: when he flaunts the ruffian, promotes the ruffian, and praises the ruffian as true innocence, instead of just doing nothing like an ordinary hooligan ruffian, he happens to fall into hypocrisy; And when he deliberately used innocence as a ridiculous hypocritical teasing, and wrote Liu Huifang as a "fool on the road of the New Long March" to fool the audience, he was really ruffian.
In short, innocence and ruffian are the dual personality structures of Chinese writers in the new period of self-reflection. In addition to the above three typical representatives, other writers also express this structure as long as they reflect deeply, such as Zhang Xianliang's "Greening Tree" and "Half of a Man is a Woman", which is nothing more than a person can only achieve true innocence when he is truly ruffian. Chinese literati have always had a tradition of "talents and hooligans", but this involves the psychology of traditional Chinese culture and the so-called "national character", which is no longer beyond the depth of this article.
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