The Significance of Chen Sihe's Academic Thought
A person who cares about the 20th century China literature research and the living conditions of contemporary intellectuals, whether you agree with him or oppose him, will probably notice Chen Sihe's work and achievements in this academic field. His rigorous academic style and enthusiastic exploration spirit provide new ideas for people to study the history of literature. In particular, his contemporary position and sense of mission in undertaking the current cultural construction in the study of literary history always make his academic research cross the barrier of phenomena and enter the deep layer of social, historical, cultural and literary existence, reflecting some characteristics of this generation of intellectuals' academic pursuit and personality strength.
Chen Sihe is not a scholar hiding in his study. From the proposal of1985 "20th century literature" to the proposal of 1988 "rewriting the history of literature" to the discussion of 1994 "thinking about humanistic spirit", Chen Sihe is an active responder and participant, but these academic hotspots constitute one of the concepts of "20th century literature". In his interpretation of "rewriting the history of literature", he emphasized "skepticism", and after several years of exploration, he put forward a set of literary history construction based on "folk" theory; In the discussion of "Thinking about Humanistic Spirit", he has always used his own ideas and language to express his thoughts on the changes in the value orientation and historical destiny of intellectuals in the 20th century, obviously surpassing the position of the enlighteners and trying to explore the new wit of intellectuals in contemporary cultural construction. Closely related to these three aspects are his self-contained "holistic view" and "skeptical spirit" research methods: the so-called "holistic view" means that he always grasps and inspects the research object in the context of literary history; The so-called "skeptical spirit" refers to his understanding of the established academic thinking and framework. Academic conclusions are always deeply doubted, reflected, questioned and denied by reverse thinking, so as to seek new ideas in the process of breakthrough. It is by using "holistic view" and "deep doubt" that he completed his thinking on the above three aspects. Therefore, discussing Chen Sihe's academic thoughts and research methods is not only helpful for us to understand the unique significance of his academic thoughts, but also of great significance for the further development of literary research and the reconstruction of intellectuals' spirit in the 20th century. In this paper, we will focus on Chen Sihe's academic thoughts on the study of literary history.
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After the "Cultural Revolution", a new generation of scholars in China felt the urgency of changing their previous ideas and literary concepts in the trend of ideological emancipation. They are eager to create and establish a new literary concept and cultural concept, which is reflected in the study of the history of modern literature in China, and found a certain point of convergence in the connection between the May 4th New Literature and the literature in the new period. In their work of reflecting and evaluating the May 4th New Literature Tradition, they injected fresh and vivid vitality into China's cultural construction in the new period. Every time they explain the new cultural tradition, they are linked with their thinking about contemporary literature and culture. Therefore, the history of literature in the past presents a new look in their works, and this new interpretation in turn acts on contemporary literature and culture, which constitutes an extremely important spiritual resource for contemporary humanities.
When a new cultural concept and literary concept are born, it is bound to be accompanied by a revolution in new academic research methods, because only new research methods can undertake and express new ideas and passions. It is in this historical background that a "method fever" arose in the literary and art circles and academic circles at that time, and various methods came one after another: cybernetics, system theory, information theory and other research methods attracted people's extensive attention. People try to use these new research methods to break through the established thinking mode and win a broad space for literary research. The significance of this exploration can not be ignored, but because most of these new methods are moved from abroad, they lack realistic pertinence and cannot compete with traditional thinking methods and vulgar sociological methods. Especially when these new research methods are used to study China literature, dogmatism and simplification tendency are exposed completely, which is the main reason why the "method fever" is silent in a short time. However, in the field of China's 20th century literature research, Chen Sihe's "holism" research method is an effective, practical and creative research method, and its research results are embodied in Ba Jin's research and the book "China New Literature Holism". In Chen Sihe's view, the history of modern literature in China has never been a past text, but an unfinished open discipline. As people in the history of literature, facing the contemporary reality, we can all look for spiritual strength from the history of literature flowing from us. As he said: "Since the 20th century, China literature has formed an open whole in time and space, but it is an organic whole. The phenomenon of each period of its development has the reasons of the literature of the previous period, and also gave birth to the literature of the later period, which is similar to the social politics of modern China. In the constant exchange of external factors such as economy, ideological trend and cultural psychology. We should adjust our laws, adapt to this exchange with the changes and development of our laws, and seek a balanced corresponding position. Just because it is open, the whole will change with the changes of various factors in modern society. Every moment, new elements will infiltrate its running track, and once any new elements are added to the whole, they will be included in the organic structure of the whole, which will lead to a re-evaluation of a series of elements within the whole. " (Introduction to China's New Literature Holism) The significance of this new literature holism put forward by Chen Sihe lies in that it not only breaks the simple way of thinking attached to political ideas in the past, but also changes the picture of literary history described by people in the past, providing a new perspective for some unresolved academic issues, and also brings a passionate and exploratory concept of literary history, which is an innovation in the research framework of the whole literary history. It is by using this research method of "Holism" that Chen Sihe made a deep study on the issues such as the relationship between new literature and Chinese and foreign literature, the relationship between various factors in new literature, the role and significance of folk cultural forms in new literature, and the relationship between literature in the new period and the May 4th literary tradition, and put forward fresh, unique and profound opinions, bringing modern ideas closely related to cultural construction and literary development in the new period. For example, his exposition of modernism in China's 20th century literature. When modernist literary factors appeared in the literature of the new period, it caused a heated debate in the literary world. They affirm the praises and deny the critics, but they lack solid theoretical analysis and literary history judgment. Chen Sihe placed this contemporary literary phenomenon in the overall connection of the whole 20th century literature, analyzed the way, characteristics and significance of the May 4th literature accepting western modernism, and then analyzed the fate of modernist literary factors in the development of new literature, pointing out that the connection between modernism and China new literature was due to its obvious modern consciousness, especially the anti-social and anti-traditional characteristics of modernism in the May 4th period, which attracted the attention of modern writers in China. However, due to the lack of a solid cultural background in the development of China's modernist literature, it did not last long before it became weak. If modernist literature wants to have a far-reaching impact, it must be integrated with the national culture of China, and modernism should be integrated into the national culture. The creation of Lu Xun and Guo Moruo is an example. In the 1930s and 1940s after the May 4th Movement, modernist literary factors could not play more roles because the relationship between foreign culture and national culture was not properly handled (the appearance of this phenomenon was of course related to the political, economic and cultural background at that time). Chen Sihe put forward the above problems of modernist literature from the overall connection of China literature in the 20th century, which undoubtedly gave an accurate theoretical explanation of the modernism of China literature in the new period, and also pointed out that the modernism of China literature in the new period can only have lasting vitality if it is integrated with national culture. This theoretical analysis not only explains the significance, value and development direction of modernism in China's literature in the new period, but also reevaluates modernism in the 1920s, thus expanding the research space of the new literary history. From this, we can also see the important practical significance of Chen Sihe's "holism" research method in the 20th century literature research.
To sum up, we can see that the main feature of Chen Sihe's "holism" research method is a two-way comparative analysis process from now to the past and from the past to the present, which is based on the contemporary era and aims to expand the space of literary history and seek and enrich humanistic spiritual resources.
With the further development of China literature in the 20th century, this "holistic view" research method shows its great strength and vitality. After entering the 1990s, great changes have taken place in the existing forms of literature, and writers' writing positions and artistic expressions seem to have more and more individual characteristics, that is, writers are increasingly divorced from a world of "* * * homonyms" and strive to build their own writing space. Chen Sihe sensitively grasped this change, and put forward the issue of anonymity and * * * names from the overall connection of China literature in the 20th century, trying to grasp the changes and development of the whole 20th century literature with anonymity and * * * names. He said: "When the era contains a major and unified theme, the material for intellectuals to think and explore problems comes from the theme of the era, and individual independence is concealed under the theme of the era. We might as well call this state * * * name; In this state, cultural work and literary creation have become derivatives of the name * * *. When the era enters a relatively stable, open and pluralistic society, people's spiritual life is increasingly rich, and the major and unified theme of the times often can't keep up with the spiritual trend of the nation, so the cultural state of diversified values and survival will appear. Both cultural work and literary creation reflect some themes of the times, but neither can reach a' * * * status', which we call nameless. Unknown is not without themes, but with multiple themes. " From this theoretical point of view, Chen Sihe thinks that the literature in 1930s and 1990s is "nameless", while the literature in May 4th and 1980s can be called "nameless". Although he thinks that the literature in the 1990s has not completely entered the "nameless state", but has found similar factors in some literary creation phenomena, his description of the literature in the 1930s provides a frame of reference for us to understand the 1990s. He thinks that the literature in 1930s is in a nameless state, which mainly has the following characteristics: the real namelessness came into being in the era of "Wang Gang solving problems" as Zhou Zuoren said, but China probably couldn't do it in the 1930s or other times after that, which means that intellectuals' understanding of social development has been shaken. Intellectuals in a "nameless state" face the society as individuals, and they still have the right of independent thoughts and personal positions, which also includes the right of individuals to choose certain ideological positions. Because there is no common theme of the times in the nameless state, literary creation cannot be successful because of external social themes, so the creation will tilt towards the ontology of language art. What are the characteristics of literature in the 1930 s and 1990 s? Chen Sihe provides a frame of reference for us to understand the literature in the 1990s from the overall thinking of China literature in the 20th century. This kind of thinking not only gives us a new understanding of the literature in the 1990s, but also gives us a new evaluation of the literature in the 1930s, which provides new vitality for the further study of literature. Here, we see the role of "holism" research method in the 20th century China literature research, which is a practical and effective research method in today's literature research.
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The research method of "holistic view" not only embodies the contemporary characteristics of "history" and the bold and passionate spirit of exploration, but also embodies the pursuit of "unique discourse", expressing a unique understanding of literary history with unique discourse and angle, thus forming its own unique view of literary history.
The content of literature in the 20th century is extremely extensive and complex, with both history and reality. Enlightenment and national salvation, the social responsibility and aesthetic function of literature, the traditional reasonable value and individual freedom, the trend of modern culture and the influence of western culture are not simple corresponding relations, but full of contradictions, with rational and irrational collisions. Facing the complicated literature of the 20th century, Chen Sihe's bold exploration spirit has always been based on the principle of seeking truth from facts. He "deconstructs" the previously established academic viewpoints in the "holistic" connection of various literary related issues, and restores the historical truth distorted by prejudice. He put forward some viewpoints with profound academic significance, such as "Enlightenment Literature" and "Literary Enlightenment", "Human Repentance" and "Confessor", "Modernism" and "Realism Fighting Spirit" in China's New Literature. In particular, he put the above problems in the whole development process of literature in the 20th century and analyzed them in the connection of various social and cultural trends of thought. Here, we should pay full attention to the "cosmopolitan" characteristics of Chen Sihe's "holism" research method and grasp the overall relationship among various factors in new literature. Starting from the new factors in contemporary culture and literature, he pursues the development process of literature in the whole 20th century. His analysis of every specific issue is related to the world cultural trend of thought and the cultural characteristics under the specific background of the times. It was in this connection that he saw the variation of western culture and literary thoughts that entered China's new literature, and the significance of this variation. In view of the unique characteristics of modern cultural trend of thought, political trend of thought and literary trend of thought in the process of variation, Chen Sihe's understanding of "new literary tradition" is different from others, showing unique ideological personality and unique discourse expression.
(1) transcends the shackles of the enlightenment tradition and proposes a return to literary ontology. The whole 20th century literature is closely related to "enlightenment", and the May 4th New Literature is the crystallization of ideological enlightenment. It is precisely for this reason that in the ideological emancipation trend in the 1980s, many scholars put forward the viewpoints of "returning to the May 4th Movement" and "returning to Lu Xun". This ideological passion calling for "return" is of great significance to the development of social thought. It not only actively continues the "enlightenment tradition" of contemporary new literature, but also reconnects the interrupted "enlightenment tradition". As a thinker with strong times, Chen Sihe also paid full attention to the significance of "Enlightenment Tradition" in contemporary social and cultural life, but he also clearly realized that simply emphasizing "Enlightenment Literature" might neglect the construction of literary ontology. From this, he gave a new explanation of "enlightenment", which he thought should contain two meanings: the first meaning is that new literature adapts to the needs of enlightenment with the change of style (for example, spreading new ideas in vernacular Chinese), and undertakes the ideological enlightenment work in the new cultural movement by means of literature; The second meaning is the stylistic revolution process of new literature, which constructs a new aesthetic spirit with vernacular Chinese and redefines what literature is in the modern sense. The former is called "enlightenment literature" and the latter is called "literary enlightenment". Looking back on the contemporary version of the history of modern literature and the study of modern literature in the early 1980s, we can see that "literary enlightenment" is relatively neglected, which in itself leads to the neglect of literature itself, which is obviously not conducive to the development of literature itself. Chen Sihe put forward the coexistence of two kinds of enlightenment in the May 4th period, and then analyzed the significance of the two kinds of enlightenment in the development of new literature, and analyzed their mutual development and even decline. He believes that "enlightenment literature" and "literary enlightenment" are isomorphic and become an important content of the new literary tradition. The unique significance of Chen Sihe's view lies in that he liberated people's aesthetic spirit and literary noumenon from the established "enlightenment tradition", emphasized that it was a side of the enlightenment tradition he understood, and demonstrated its significance from the development of new literature. From a historical perspective, he enriched the spiritual connotation of new literature. From a realistic point of view, he reminds people not to ignore the construction of literary ontology when they are carrying out social enlightenment. Objectively speaking, this view has promoted the development of China literature in the new period. The colorful artistic expressions brought about by the "style craze" after the mid-1980s are related to the advocacy of "literary noumenon" by a group of scholars and critics, among which Chen Sihe's voice cannot be ignored.
(2) Beyond the opposition between westernization and tradition, re-evaluate the significance of tradition. The relationship between western culture and China's traditional culture has always been a noticeable and important issue in the development of culture and literature in this century. The May 4th New Culture Movement carried out a new cultural reconstruction with a fierce anti-propaganda attitude. In 1985, the writer Acheng thought that the May 4th Movement had undeniable progressive significance in social change, but he adopted an all-round nihilistic attitude towards national culture. The China society has been in turmoil, which made the fracture of national culture continue to this day, so he advocated finding the root of national culture. At the same time, there are some views that China's cultural tradition is an obstacle to the overall progress and development of society, and they advocate transforming China's culture with western culture and fully accepting western cultural concepts. It is against this background that Chen Sihe wrote the article "China New Literature's Understanding of Cultural Tradition and Its Evolution". On the basis of fully affirming the anti-traditional significance of May 4th literature, he thinks that people's understanding of tradition has been restricted by two ways of thinking since May 4th: ① Based on the principle of social evolution, he thinks that western culture is superior to China culture, and China must transform China culture with western culture in order to develop; ② In the mechanical comparison between Chinese and Western cultures, it is concluded that China is inferior to the West in material, but spiritual civilization is the best conclusion in the world. These two modes of thinking are simple and one-sided. The former ignores the difference between "cultural form" and "social form", while the latter separates the dialectical relationship between "material civilization and spiritual civilization". Therefore, beyond the above two modes of thinking, evaluating the tradition at a higher theoretical level not only involves the evaluation of the whole new literature, but also is a meaningful and practical theoretical proposition at that time. After systematically sorting out people's attitudes towards "tradition" in the development of new literature, Chen Sihe put forward the viewpoint that "the highest form of culture is the form of beauty". From the perspective of literary noumenon and aesthetic form, he believes that literature in the new period has gained a brand-new knowledge and understanding of national culture on the basis of the modern consciousness of the world formed by scientific development in the 20th century, and has consciously transformed it into a learning form, which is unprecedented since the May 4th Movement. It is on this basis that Chen Sihe surpassed the viewpoint of denying tradition from the perspective of historical evolution and denying western material civilization from the perspective of "spiritual superiority", that is, he surpassed the opposition between "Westernization" and "tradition", found the basic yardstick of reevaluating tradition in "beauty" and literary ontology, and gained a new understanding of tradition. Judging from the current literary creation practice, this actually involves the important issue of how to "create" the literature of the nation. Literature in the new period has gone through more than ten years, but how many literary works can really have modern consciousness and national individuality? This view of Chen Sihe will give us due inspiration.
(3) Beyond both ends of modernism and realism, the new literary tradition contains the spirit of modernism and realism. Taking the spirit of modernism as the tradition of new literature is a topic neglected by researchers. This is the result of not fully understanding the characteristics, cultural background and extensive worldwide connections of the May 4th literature. After analyzing the characteristics of the "repentance consciousness" of traditional intellectuals in China, Chen Sihe put forward two different repentance consciousness in modern social thoughts: one is the "repentance aristocrat" represented by Tolstoy and others; The other is the humiliation of "human desire" represented by Dostoevsky. Tolstoy's confession of "man's desire" opened the precedent for later European modernism to understand man. It is worth noting that this understanding did not lead people to despair of themselves, but in a more realistic situation, they realized the true colors of people and re-established their own values and status. This is why there is still a surging torrent of human nature under the bubble of decadent spiritual phenomena in modern western society. Under the special historical and cultural background of the great intersection of Chinese and western cultures, the strong consciousness of "human repentance" of western modernism has great appeal to the new literature writers in the May 4th period. With this sense of humiliation, we have clearly realized not only the limitations and values of human beings, but also the anti-feudal goals. As Chen Sihe wrote when analyzing Lu Xun's Diary of a Madman: "He (referring to Lu Xun) broke through the ignorance of China people in self-knowledge with a loud cry and made people see their own face and soul." For the first time, Diary of a Madman questioned all the moral values of human beings deeply, and issued a soul-stirring cry of how human beings should get rid of the animal instinct left over by primitive ancestors to adapt to the requirements of modern civilization. The madman's deep sorrow for "cannibalism" reflects people's deep remorse for their evil deeds. This is an understanding of "human original sin" based on evolution theory, which is deeply branded with modern consciousness. Here, we can see that the remorse consciousness of western modernism is closely related to the "realistic fighting spirit" of modern intellectuals in China. The so-called "realistic fighting spirit" is the writer's fighting attitude of "nervously criticizing the social status quo and enthusiastically intervening in contemporary life". The integration of the two makes modern writers pay more attention to reality and people themselves, which has rich connotation and strength. "Realistic fighting spirit" is the tradition of China's new literature, and it is also the basic spirit of the realistic literary tradition of new literature. Among the differences between realism and modernism, Chen Sihe found the connection between them from the special background of China's new literature, and pointed out that the spirit of modernism and realism are both important contents in China's new literature tradition, which is of great significance for us to fully understand the spiritual resources of the new literature tradition.
From the above discussion, we can see that Chen Sihe's research method of "holism" and his understanding of the new literary tradition have unique ideological personality. This kind of personality is his core strength, which still has influence in the current literary development.
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Chen Si and Wang Xiaoming put forward the proposition of "rewriting the history of literature" in 1988. This proposition reflects a strong spirit of doubt. Judging from the significance of specific research methods, skepticism is a falsification, that is, breaking some established concepts and returning the research object to its true colors. This spirit of doubt and falsification has always been an important feature of Chen Sihe's academic research. From the study of Ba Jin, every academic research topic of his embodies the courage and passion of "falsification", which is isomorphic with his "holistic view" research method and becomes the main personality of his academic research.
"Rewriting the history of literature" is a falsification. In the process of "rewriting", the freedom spirit, imagination space and ideological passion of the research subject have been fully reflected, which is reflected in Chen Sihe's academic research, that is, the new thinking of Ba Jin's research and the proposal of "folk" theory. In the study of Ba Jin, Chen Sihe put forward many opinions with wide influence, especially in 1994, he proposed to change the thinking of Ba Jin's study, and thought that Ba Jin's study should not be satisfied with the so-called mainstream mode of the times (such as talking about Ba Jin's patriotism, anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism, etc.). ), we should not stay in the sense of "square intellectuals" to talk about personality strength, but should return to Ba Jin himself and his era. Therefore, Chen Sihe thought that the significance of Ba Jin in 1930s was not that his ideological works showed us an enlightening fighting passion, but that he showed us a variety of possible choices and attempts of a modern intellectual on the fate of China. At the same time, it also shows the painful and complicated mentality of modern intellectuals when their value orientation changes from "square" to "post". This view naturally contains a contemporary scholar's current thinking, and more importantly, it reflects a contemporary scholar's suspicion of "falsification", which has been more fully reflected in Chen Sihe's academic research on reinterpreting the history of China literature since the Anti-Japanese War with "folk" theory.
Chen Sihe reorganized the history of China literature since the Anti-Japanese War into three parts: the discourse of political rights, folk culture and the elite consciousness of intellectuals. This change of academic research angle, on the one hand, broadens the theoretical horizon and provides a new field for the study of literary history; On the other hand, it also potentially reflects the recognition of the elite consciousness of intellectuals to folk cultural forms in today's era, and obtains more realistic and broad thinking space in the recognition.
The concept of "folk" put forward by Chen Sihe refers to the realistic cultural space that appeared in the history of China literature in the 20th century, survived and developed in its own way, and gave birth to a certain picture of literary history. There are mainly two meanings: the first is the literary creation vision of observing life, expressing life and describing life according to the dimension of people's comfortable lifestyle, that is, the way of village culture from traditional rural areas in China and the way of secular culture from modern economic society; Second, although the writer speaks from the traditional standpoint of intellectuals, what he shows is the comfortable life state and aesthetic taste of the people. Because the writers noticed the existence of folk objects and adopted a new way of equal dialogue, these literary creations were full of folk meanings. When Chen Sihe embarks from such an academic standpoint, the discourse of political rights, the elite consciousness of intellectuals and the folk cultural forms permeate each other. When describing the evolution of the history of literature in the specific relationship of confrontation, we can see that the history of literature is no longer a unitary scene in which folk cultural forms and elite cultural consciousness are brought into people's political rights discourse under the guidance of political ideology, but has become rich and colorful, many established conclusions have been changed and many forgotten literary phenomena have been rediscovered. For example: the tragedy of Zhao Shuli's novels. As a manifestation of folk culture, Zhao Shuli was recognized by political rights and attached importance to "classicality", but he was rejected because of his "folk" characteristics that could be fully recognized by politics and fell into the anguish of creation. As one of the representatives, Zhao Shuli provides an important theoretical perspective for us to understand the literary creation since the 1940s. Another example is the "folk invisible structure" in the 1950' s, and the model operas and novels in the new period remind us that "folk form" will not easily disappear from literary creation, which constitutes an extremely important clue to the development of literature, and the significance of "folk" in the history of literature is highlighted here.
Chen Sihe's "folk" theory, in my shallow understanding, mainly includes the following contents: (1) is the objective existence space of the folk, including the folk lifestyle and folk spirit accumulated into objective existence; (2) It is the folk spirit of the subject of literary creation. There is a difference between these two spirits. The former is not observed by the "intellectual mind", so it has a relatively weak and free aesthetic style controlled by state power. The unique folk spirit is related to the elite consciousness of intellectuals (even if the writer sinks into folk culture, the individual spirit may be difficult to fully integrate), so its value orientation is clear and its aesthetic characteristics also have individual characteristics, which is also the reason for the different styles of writers' works expressing folk life. In order to distinguish these two spirits, we call the latter "human feelings". From the practice of literary creation since the 1940s, all the connections and confrontations among folk culture, ideology of political rights and elite consciousness of intellectuals are expressed through the writer's "human feelings", which, as an intermediary link between folk culture and the completion of literary works, brings together the pain of choice, depressed anguish and happiness of identification. Chen Sihe made a wonderful explanation of this in The Cocked Storm. So, what kind of content does "human feelings" include? The first is the recognition of folk life and folk spirit, that is, Chen Sihe said to understand, express and describe life in the way of folk culture; Secondly, the attention to the process of human existence and the concern and understanding of specific forms of existence are the writer's unique thinking personality for the spirit of folk life, and also the spiritual height that his works may reach. Since the Anti-Japanese War, writers have felt some kind of creative repression, which is the result of this level being forcibly absorbed into their own discourse system by political rights discourse.
Chen Sihe's "folk" theory means full respect for people's individuality and creative individuality. Because "folk" is relatively free and broad, when a writer returns to folk, he returns to freedom. His choice and expression are determined by his unique understanding of life. It is here that we see that this theory will have an impact on the literature at the turn of the century and even the literary creation in the next century, which indicates the attractive prospect of the development of literary history. After entering the 1990s, writers were unable to fully express their inner spirit with the support of political ideology in the face of the loss of enlightenment discourse and the impact of commodity economy, and they also lost their tacit understanding to some extent in the 1980s. I'm afraid this situation will exist for a long time. Then, the writer's creation is likely to go to the folk, or speak from the standpoint of traditional intellectuals, but it shows the living state and aesthetic taste of folk self-existence; Or with the help of the content of folk culture, transform the elite consciousness of intellectuals and express their emotional world; Or integrate yourself into the people, observe life in the way of folk culture, and create.