Over the past four decades of development since the reform and opening up, Chinese literature has forged distinctive features. Paying attention to society and reality, it has reflected the achievements of socialist construction in its own unique way. However, in this process, there is one phenomenon that remains to be addressed: The literature today overly focuses on the misery and misfortunes in reality; it lacks due poetic and romantic sentiments in some sense. Some of the works cling too much to the gloomy colors of reality, making hardship and sadness the main tune in today’s literary narratives. Beautiful love, sincere friendships, pleasant childhoods, warm memories and romantic futures have seemingly become rare in current writing.

The imitation theory, reflection theory and mirror theory in literature all emphasize that literature should pay attention to reality. However, the textual analyses of classical works both home and abroad throughout history show that literature should have two wings: One is idealistic and romantic and the other is realistic. The sights of writers should not merely be anchored to the ground without looking up at the stars above. The reflection of real life and the expression of romantic feelings never run counter to each other. It is because of this that romanticism, as a writing principle, has always been parallel with realism. As a literary school of thought, it has been handed down through today. It can be said that romanticism is also an indispensable link in literary history.

It is undeniable that today’s real life is less than satisfactory in some respects. It is also beyond reproach to say that literature reflects real life and depicts the problems and shortages in life. However, literature after all is not a mechanical copy of reality. This is analogous to the difference between art and photography. No matter how accurate and subtle a camera presents reality, it is incomparable with an outstanding painting, or in other words, it could never replace an excellent painting. To true painters, painting aims not only to vividly portray things, but also to demonstrate a kind of attitude toward life, society and objects. For literature, what is more important is the conveyance of the author’s attitude rather than the vivid portrayal of reality. The value of literature lies in that it originates from life but differs from life.

More than 2,000 years ago, Aristotle said that “the poet’s function is to describe, not the thing that has happened, but a kind of thing that might happen, i.e. what is possible as being probable or necessary.” This means that true literature not only copies real life but also offers a type of ideal, faith, confidence and support.

In modern Chinese writer Lu Xun’s work “Medicine,” a tragedy is depicted, but at the end of the story he writes, “There was a ring of red and white flowers around the pointed, round top of the tomb.”The description adds a bright shade to this tragic tale, imparting hope to readers.

Literature should not just portray what is trivial, helpless, miserable or unfortunate, which only makes people downcast. Instead, it needs to provide a sample for life and an exemplary character for those living in real life, which aims to strengthen people’s sense of happiness, gain and security. This is also the reason that romanticism has put forward the principle that “life imitates literature.” In a certain sense, “life imitates literature” carries more significance than “literature imitates life.” As Chinese writer and literary critic Lei Da points out, “The current works lack neither the courage to face up to existence, nor the ability to reveal reality’s negative side. However, there is clearly a lack of enthusiasm for life and of a longing for a better future, as well as of encouragement and guidance for readers.”

Indeed, those works that deliver only negative moods and their side-effects to readers are psychologically “calcium deficient.” If what is seen from literature is just misfortune, distress, anxiety and grief, the significance and value of such literature would be single-faceted.

Talking about his experience in writing the work The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoyevsky said that “the main tenet of novels should be to portray an absolutely good person. There is no more difficult thing than this, especially at present times. For all writers, including those from Russia and even Europe at large, if they want to depict absolute beauty, they will always find themselves impotent and helpless. Because this is an incredibly tough task.”

However, only an “incredibly tough” task is a worthy, higher challenge for writers.

 

Zhang Kuizhi and Qi Yuan are respectively from the College of Humanities of Heilongjiang University and the University of Sanya.

(edited by BAI LE)