-Appreciation of Shen Congwen's Border Town from many angles
Abstract: Shen Congwen is a writer with unique style and great influence in the history of modern literature in China. In Border Town, he used poetic language to show the magical, beautiful, natural and harmonious scenery and peculiar folk customs of western Hunan. At the same time, Border Town also embodies Shen Congwen's aesthetic thought, which contains Shen Congwen's pursuit of human beauty, so it can better explain the artistic characteristics of Shen Congwen's creation.
Keywords: artistic conception, lyricism, simplicity, vividness and vivid psychological description.
Shen Congwen's "Border Town" has a beautiful, quiet and simple atmosphere, and has a idyllic and pure picture of life like a peach blossom garden. He used objective scenery to express his subjective feelings concretely, thus creating a harmonious and unified artistic realm. Reading Shen Congwen's Border Town always shows admiration for the lovely people living in Xiangxi. Because the author injects his own feelings into the scenery and characters in Border Town, the scenery and characters we see in the works are not dead or static, but moving and beating, which can make people feel the rhythm of life. I can have this effect because.
First of all, Shen Congwen's novels pursue an artistic beauty.
Shen Congwen achieved the goal of creating beautiful artistic conception by combining scenes. I remember Zhu Guangqian, a famous aesthete, once said, "Scenes should be harmonious and fit, feelings can be called landscapes, and landscapes can also convey feelings. This is the realm of poetry. " Therefore, what Shen Congwen describes in his works is love with pastoral factors, not "a pool of blood and a handful of tears". He likes to show human suffering with a smile. Moreover, when describing such subjects, he started from the pantheism thought of "the unity of man and nature", deliberately downplayed the plot and expressed the beauty of nature with a light prose style. For example, "Border Town" has made a detailed description of the diaojiao building on the shore of Youshui, the trestle and rope crossing of the tea cave, the bamboo raft and the white tower of Bixi, and carefully sketched out a landscape map of Xiangxi; This paper introduces the wedding ceremony in rural areas of western Hunan, dragon boat race on the Dragon Boat Festival, catching ducks, eating zongzi and finding relatives, and carefully depicts a genre painting in western Hunan. In addition, Shen Congwen likes to express it in a gentle style when describing, creating a unique aesthetic mood and brewing a fresh and far-reaching pastoral mood in his novels. However, this pastoral sentiment corresponds to an ideal life style. In the real society, this simple beauty of human nature is disappearing day by day. Therefore, while singing these pastoral songs, there is a trace of melancholy and a trace of hidden pain, which makes its gentle and peaceful pastoral songs mixed with a touch of sadness and sadness.
Artistic conception is the product of the combination of reality and reality, which is born out of images and contains a lingering charm that is difficult to chew, so that readers can appreciate the deeper emotional meaning of the author through images. Zong Baihua once stated: "Artists use their hearts to map everything, express mountains and rivers, and make statements. What he shows is that the director's life perception blends with the natural scenery he manages, achieving kite flying and diving, lively and delicate, and profound spiritual realm; This spiritual realm is the' artistic conception' that constitutes art. Artistic conception is not the natural presentation of a single plane, but the deep creation of a realm. There are three layers: the description of intuitive feelings, the exchange of active life, and the enlightenment to the highest spiritual realm. " Yes, Shen Congwen's pursuit of artistic conception beauty is not simply to reproduce the beauty of Xiangxi and let readers roam the "Peach Blossom Garden". Of course, this is also one of the reasons, but the most important thing is that he said, "I want to express a' life form', a form that is' beautiful, healthy, natural and not against human nature'." In order to achieve this goal, Shen Congwen pays attention to shaping a paradise as beautiful as a fairyland on earth and creating an idealized countryside. Therefore, the author outlined this novel and unique Border Town with poetic language and elegant images.
Secondly, pay attention to the emotional input of the creative subject and pursue the lyricism of the novel.
Shen Congwen attaches great importance to the role of the subject's emotion in creation, and thinks that "anyone who really engages in literature must understand that' five senses in one' is not empty talk" and that writers should "get used to emotional gymnastics" .3 Shen Congwen's novels often put the subject's emotion directly into people's images and objects, making them have distinct emotional colors; Or by recalling "dreams" and symbolizing twists and turns to express the subject's emotional evaluation, a strong lyricism can be brewed. The characters and environment in Border Town are idealized, which shows that Shen Congwen shoulders the ideal propaganda and highlights the lyricism of the novel. In order to strengthen lyricism and remember dreams, Shen Congwen's novels also make good use of symbols.
Border Town is a novel, but it is also a lyric poem, which expresses the beauty and goodness of human nature. Shen Congwen insisted on writing Border Town as a "pure poem", mainly out of the subjective poetry of homesickness, and tried to condense it into a "poem". The beauty of Chadong Border Town is a poem praising Xiangxi and nature.
The old boatman's confusion about Cui Cui's choice of husband is a touching family poem. Cui Cui's love for Nuo is a hazy love poem ... and Shen Congwen's Border Town is composed of these beautiful and moving poems, which constitutes a "pure poem" with strong lyricism.
"Border Town" is well-structured and natural. The works take Nuosong and Tianbao's love for Cui Cui as the classics, and the old boatman's concern and matchmaking for his granddaughter's marriage as the latitude, which vividly changes the waves and rhythmically pushes the story forward. At the same time, the love entanglement between Cui Cui and Nuosong and Tianbao is the bright line, and the trouble that Wang Tuan always wants to make as a son-in-law is the dark line. In this way, the interweaving of warp and weft and the combination of light and shade perfectly unify the simplicity and complexity of the novel plot. These ups and downs are not dominated by lyricism, but to rekindle young people's self-esteem and self-confidence and rebuild national morality.
The image of Cui Cui embodies Shen Congwen's ideals of "love" and "beauty", and Cui Cui is the crystallization of love. Her birth is legendary, which is the crystallization of her mother's love with a soldier in Chadong. When she came into this world, she was an angel and a spirit of love. The green mountains and green waters in the tea cave gave her crystal clear eyes, and also cultivated her clever character of "naive and lively, like small animals everywhere"
Cui Cui's "love" and "beauty" are gradually manifested through her love stories. Cui Cui's love for Nuo is pure, natural and sincere, without any impurities. It's just a girl's love for the opposite sex in Seeds of Love, so beautiful and simple. The first time I saw Nuo was when I watched Longchuan race in a small town. I didn't feel much. It was not until Raul sent someone to take her home that I realized that the person I met was Raul, the owner of Shunshun's boat. At this time, her love seeds sprouted in the air. Two years later, during the Dragon Boat Festival, Cui Cui and his grandfather went to the city to watch the dragon boat. When they were sent away again, they showed their self-awareness, self-esteem and self-love for love. But Tianbao died, Nuo was sent away, and Grandpa died, and suddenly he seemed to "grow up". She bravely accepted the unfortunate fate, silently waiting for the return of promise, where "love" and "beauty" are more brilliant. At the end of the novel, the figure of Cui Cui standing by the green water under the White Pagoda of Bixi looks so lonely, but at the same time it looks so great.
Third, concise and lively language style.
Shen Congwen's novel language has a unique style, that is, "simple style, concise sentence pattern, prominent trunk, less ostentation, no extravagance, simple and thick, simple and vivid". His novels rarely use function words such as "de" and "le", and the classical Chinese is concise and lively. Shen Congwen himself said that "the workshop pays attention to the organizational beauty of words", so Shen Congwen is called "the magician of words".
At first glance, Shen Congwen's words are not gorgeous as if they have no characteristics, but if you carefully taste them, you will find that his words are full of tenderness and warmth, and you will feel the spring breeze after reading them. His writing style is not gorgeous, but quiet and elegant. Fresh and far away, there is a touch of melancholy and sadness. Shen Congwen wrote about Xiangxi, and no one else had touched it, so he saw the mystery in simplicity.
Shen Congwen can sketch a lively and playful Cui Cui, a simple and simple old boatman, generous and smooth with a few simple strokes ... Don't look at these simple strokes, but you should have skills behind them. If there is no profound skill, the characters will be simple, monotonous and not full, but the characters written by Shen Congwen are real people, which shows Shen Congwen's profound language skills.
"Border Town" describes a passage by Cui Cui: "Cui Cui grew up in a windy day, which made her skin dark, set off green mountains and green waters, and her eyes were crystal clear. Nature has nurtured her and educated her. She is innocent and lively, just like a small animal that can be seen everywhere. People are so cute, just like the yellow deer on the mountain, never want to be cruel, never worry, never get angry ... "Cui Cui here is so clear and beautiful, and just a few words clearly shape the image of an innocent girl who is innocent and lively, vividly showing the beauty and health of Cui Cui.
Moreover, Shen Congwen's language has a strong local flavor. Shen Congwen witnessed the impact of modern civilization on male-dominated villages, the collapse of rural social system and the decline of people's ethics, which made Shen Congwen feel sad and worried. Therefore, with his childhood memories and nostalgia for his hometown, Shen Congwen used an idyllic style to put "the life and death of the country and the smell of earth on the paper", and his fresh and simple style of writing was integrated into the literature of the 1930s, which also made his novels have a strong local color.
Generally speaking, Border Town shows the artistic features of Shen Congwen's creation to a certain extent, and shows his exploration of the beauty of human nature. On the other hand, he also opened a window for us to understand the enthusiasm of Xiangxi people, the simplicity of folk customs, and another sound life form. More importantly, he left us spiritual comfort in the modern city full of temptations, which can help us to alleviate the pain and anxiety in our hearts a little. From this point of view, we should thank him for leaving us the last pastoral with his unique artistic style.