Research on absurd literature

Franz Kafka (1July 3, 883-1June 3, 924) was a German novelist in the 20th century. The writing style is clear and imaginative, and fable style is often used. The meaning behind it is different, and there is no (or never) conclusion for the time being. This unique technique made all kinds of writing schools in the 20th century regard him as a pioneer.

Kafka was born in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic (then Austria-Hungary), to a Jewish businessman's family. He is the eldest son of the family and has three sisters (and two younger brothers who died young). I like literature and drama since I was a child. /kloc-entered Prague University at the age of 0/8. I studied chemistry and literature at first, and then I studied law and got my doctorate. Work in an insurance company after graduation. He was engaged many times, but never married. 4 1 year-old died of tuberculosis.

From 65438 to 0904, Kafka began to publish novels, and his early works were influenced by expressionism. 19 12 one night, he wrote a short story "the trial" overnight, and established his own unique style. Before his death, * * * published seven singles and collections of novels. After his death, Braud, a good friend, broke his last words, sorted out his last manuscript, published three novels (not finalized), and wrote a biography for him.

Critics of later generations often overemphasize the dark side of Kafka's works and ignore its bright and interesting places. Milan Kundera tried to correct this in the Old Testament. In fact, according to Braud's memory, Kafka likes to read his own works in front of his friends, and he can't help laughing when he reads proud paragraphs.

Kafka is an amateur writer who writes in German, and his nationality belongs to Austria-Hungary. Together with French writer Marcel Proust and Irish writer James Joyce, he is called the pioneer and master of western modernist literature. Kafka struggled in obscurity and loneliness before his death. With the passage of time, his value has been gradually recognized by people, and his works have caused shocks around the world, and Kafka fever has formed around the world, which lasted for a long time.

Kafka's works in his life are few, but they have a far-reaching influence on later literature. Auden, an American poet, said, "His relationship with our times is similar to that of Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe recently." Kafka's novels reveal an absurd and irrational scene, and personal, melancholy and lonely emotions use symbolic means. Many modernist literary schools in later generations, such as "Absurd Drama" and "New Novel" in France, all originated from Kafka.

Kafka was born into a Jewish merchant family in Prague. His father is rude and autocratic, and he is indifferent to his son's study and life. Just occasionally scold him. He tried to train his son into a strong and dry young man, but it backfired. Kafka always had an indelible fear of his father. The sensitive, timid character and withdrawn, melancholy temperament developed from this make Kafka's book a spiritual portrayal of the capitalist society of that era: alienation, loneliness and crisis, absurdity and fear.

In Kafka's Metamorphosis, due to the heavy physical and mental oppression, people lose their essence and become inhuman. Another short story, The Hungry Artist, describes that the manager kept the hunger strikers in an iron cage for 40 days. By the end of the performance, the hunger strikers were skinny and could not support themselves. Later, he was hired by a circus to guard his cage at the intersection near the animal farm so that tourists could see him by the way when they went to see wild animals. However, people forgot to change the date card, and the hunger strikers went on hunger strike indefinitely and finally starved to death. The hungry artists here have actually been alienated into animals.

Other novels reveal the absurdity and irrationality of the real world, such as The Trial and The Country Doctor. Here, realistic and unrealistic factors are intertwined. Through these absurd details and mysterious fog, it means that human beings are suffering from very serious diseases, which have made the body hopeless. There are some diseases in human society that doctors can't cure, and all the doctors here end up homeless.

Kafka's novels "America" and "The Cave in the Ground" reveal the difficulties and puzzles in human real life. "Trial", "Exile" and "When the Great Wall of Wan Li was Built" reveal the cruelty and decay of the modern state machine. The novel Castle can be said to be a continuation of The Trial. Not only does the protagonist's experience continue, but the main essence is also in the same strain. In the short story When the Great Wall of Wan Li was Built, it was written that the people of China were driven to build the Great Wall with no practical value. They don't even know which emperor is in power. They just learned about the battle many years ago, as if it were news. "The emperor is surrounded by a group of capable courtiers of unknown origin who cover up their dangerous intentions as attendants and friends." "Those harem concubines are arrogant and extravagant, hooking up with traitors, ambitious, insatiable, reckless, and vicious as usual." He also wrote a sentence expressing democratic thoughts: "In my opinion, it is precisely the question about the empire that should be asked to the people, because they are the last pillar of the empire."

Yuhua

brief introduction

Yu Hua, a native of Haiyan, Zhejiang Province, 1960 was born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, and later moved to Haiyan County with his parents. After graduating from high school, Yu Hua became a dentist because her parents were doctors. After five years, he gave up medicine and joined the county cultural center and Jiaxing Federation of Literary and Art Circles. Since then, he has formed an indissoluble bond with his own creation. Yu Hua studied in a postgraduate class jointly organized by Lu Xun College of Literature in Beijing and Chinese Department of Beijing Normal University. Yu Hua began to publish novels on 1984. He is a representative figure of avant-garde novels with the same fame as Ye and Su Tong. He is the author of a collection of short stories: Going Out at Eighteen, Things in Smoke, Novels, Living, Shouting in the Drizzle and Trembling.

Since Yu Hua published his debut novel "Going Out at Eighteen", he has caused a lot of shock and concern in the literary world and readers with his highly experimental works, and he has thus become a representative of China's avant-garde novels.

In fact, Yu Hua is not a prolific writer. His works, including short stories, novellas and novels, add up to no more than 800,000 words. He is famous for his exquisiteness. Most of his works are true and hard-written. Pure and meticulous narration breaks the daily language order, organizes a self-sufficient discourse system, and on this basis, constructs a strange, grotesque, secret and cruel text world and a text truth independent of the outside world. Yu Hua once said to himself: "I feel that all my creations are trying to be closer to reality. This truth of mine is not the truth in life. I think life is actually unreal, and life is a mixture of truth and falsehood. "

"To Be Alive" is a work of Yu Hua's changing style. In the narrative aspect, he gave up the avant-garde brushwork and moved towards the narrative way of traditional novels. But structurally, he can still give readers a sense of drama and imagination.

Main work

Stars, going out at the age of 18, April 3rd Incident, 1986, mistakes by the river, a reality, bloody plum blossoms, Sisyphus, smoke, classical love, teenagers at dusk, cries in drizzle, being alive, and Xu San.

blog

/m/yuhua

Absurd novel

The school of absurd art originated in the west. A novel that satirizes reality with bizarre stories. After the Second World War, people wandered and pondered over the ruins of the war, and discussed the problems of human society and human existence, resulting in existentialism philosophy. It is also found that the society in which human beings live and human existence itself are full of absurdity, so absurd art is produced through artistic forms. First drama, and then spread to all kinds of arts.

China's absurd novels are not the same as western absurd novels, but the product of the specific social and historical environment in China. When the main trend of "scar literature" and "reflective literature" passed, absurd novels gradually attracted people's attention. One of the most important aspects is to reveal the absurdity of social life (especially the Cultural Revolution and its sequelae) by absurd means, which can reach a certain artistic depth and make the "reflective novel" develop to a new ideological height. Secondly, under the influence of western absurd art, China writers also think about the absurdity of human existence in the form of absurd novels. Thirdly, with the rapid development of China's reform and opening up and urban civilization, a new generation of writers in China also reflected the contradiction and absurd existence between modern people and society with absurd novels. In addition, under the direct influence of magic realism, some writers in China also reflected the absurd cultural consciousness in the region and primitive thinking through magic realism.

Judging from the relationship between content and form, the absurd techniques of China's absurd novels can also be seen in the following forms. One is to write absurd things in reality by realistic means, and its content (people and things) is absurd in itself. The second is to describe grotesque things that do not exist in reality, and its content itself is virtual absurdity. Thirdly, in the basic realistic content, it contains the treatment of local absurdity, and its form contains absurd factors. There are also some works that write absurd things in an absurd way, and the absurdity of content and form is integrated.

On the whole, the revelation of absurd reality in contemporary China's absurd novels often contains some spirit of criticizing reality, which reflects China writers' reflection on social reality in the form of absurd art. In terms of artistic composition, it is more the infiltration of stream of consciousness.

Absurd novels are only one aspect of the literary experiments of many contemporary writers in China, and no writer group regards absurd novels as their main creative art.

Yu Hua: Absurdity will become the mainstream of domestic literature.

A few days ago, the novel brothers seminar was held in Fudan University. That night, novelist Yu Hua gave a lecture entitled "Literature is not a castle in the air" to Fudan students. In view of the fact that Brothers was repeatedly criticized as "too absurd and divorced from reality", he responded with the whole lecture and joked: "I have heard too many criticisms. Today, there are people in Fudan who say good things. I am really flattered. " In order to control the flow of people on site, the lecture is "admission by ticket". Yu Hua's humorous speech made the students lucky enough to get several "standing tickets" that stopped for two hours.

Talking about "brothers"

The absurdity of reality transcends literature.

Yu Hua regards Yasunari Kawabata as a literary enlightenment teacher and worships the absurd Marquez the most.

He believes that some people criticize the novel Brothers for being too absurd and divorced from reality because they don't have enough insight into the absurdity in real life. "This year, people like Sister Furong have an appearance fee. The spice girls of Chinese studies went to the Confucius Temple to seduce Confucius, and they also called it' promoting Chinese studies' ... Aren't these extremely absurd events all in our newspapers and become hot news? " Compared with these absurd realities, the absurdity of Brothers is simply dwarfed. Yu Hua revealed that his friends who taught in Tsinghua School of Management told him after watching Brothers that 80% or 90% of the bosses who went to Tsinghua to study EMBA were very similar to Li Guangtou. "It sounds legendary, but it is a reality."

Yu Hua said that Li Guangtou and Song Chao are brothers. He prefers Li Guangtou because this unique figure has never been shaped. Among many works such as Living, Xu Sanguan Selling Blood, Brothers and so on, his favorite is Brothers. He pretended to be a parent and said with emotion, "These are my children. But one is always bullied by others outside. Can I not hurt him more? "

The absurd life has just begun.

Yu Hua revealed that before and after writing Brothers, he heard many absurd stories about marriage and divorce in real life. "After the publication of Brothers, someone posted a news report on my blog. The content is that in order to get more compensation, farmers in a development zone have created countless marriage incidents that use policies. It is said that an 80-year-old woman was taken to the Civil Affairs Bureau for settlement and divorce three times by local young men in their twenties. After a middle-aged couple divorced, the husband never wanted to remarry his wife, because it was his long-cherished wish for many years ... "

Yu Hua believes that China people have the talent to create absurdity. For example, he heard that when a Chinese mother immigrated to Sweden, in order to bring her adult son, she even issued a certificate of fake marriage between mother and son. "We in China can always find ways to exploit loopholes, even in an absurd way." He predicted, "China's absurdity has just begun. If this absurd contemporary life continues for another 50 years, then the' absurd school' will definitely become the mainstream of our literature. "

Talking about literature

Literature comes from subtle details.

In Yu Hua's view, what kind of reality produces what kind of literature, and literature is like grass growing in the soil of reality. "We often read a lot of news reports, and one or two details brought by reporters outside the narrative can often become the source of literature." Yu Hua remembers that he once saw a news about the collision of two trucks. "The reporter added a note at the end of the news, writing that countless sparrows on trees on both sides of the road were knocked down to the ground by a loud noise, or were unconscious or died. This stroke aroused readers' infinite reverie and entered the door of literature. In the same example, a reporter described a report that a woman jumped from the 20th floor and broke her jeans. It was that detail that touched the readers and was also a wonderful literary pen. "

Recall the past with a sad face

Wang Anyi, a famous writer, asked Yu Hua three times that night if Brothers was his attempt to reconcile with reality: "You once said that you wrote Living because of your tense relationship with real life." However, Yu Hua believes that Brothers may not be as intense as Living, but it represents "another way for me to express my tension with reality".

Under Wang Anyi's questioning again, Yu Hua said that if we want to talk about reconciliation, looking back 20 years later, "I would rather reconcile with the reality in the 1980s". At that time, he was still studying at Lu Xun College of Literature and often went to Zhu Wei's home with Mo Yan and other friends to watch various videos and movies ... Looking back on that era, Yu Hua's tone was full of nostalgia.

"After 20 years can be reconciled, it's just a time difference. Does it mean that you will make up with today in 20 years? " Wang Anyi is obviously adamant, while Yu Hua reveals a trace of sadness. "When everything is in the past, conflict will also become a harmonious memory. More importantly, the tension in the 1980s closely linked the fate of writers of different styles. Now that everyone is scattered and writing their own books, there are few opportunities to talk about literature all night. "

Say "alive"

"Why are novels not like movies?"

The film "Alive" directed by Zhang Yimou and adapted from Yu Hua's novel of the same name has been filmed for 13 years. Recalling the first time I saw this film, Yu Hua still remembers it vividly. "I still watched the premiere with more than 800 people at the Beijing Film Studio. At that time, I felt very disappointed after reading it. I immediately called Zhang Yimou and said that this movie need not be called "Living" because I strongly felt that the movie was nothing like my novel. "

But since then, many countries have invited Yu Hua to visit abroad because of this film. In this regard, he said: "You know, it is very expensive to invite Zhang Yimou, so they are happy to invite me to be the original author, which is cheap."

Every time I go abroad, the organizer will organize the screening of the movie "Alive", and Yu Hua will accompany me to watch it for more than 20 times. "I was bored with it, but in the end, I found a miracle. I actually asked myself more than once:' Why is my novel not like this movie?'

Speaking of the experience of going abroad, Yu Hua also talked about his unique "chaos aesthetics": "Amsterdam is my favorite European city. There are countless bicycles in this city. These cars are stacked in the garage, and many bicycles are locked on the side of the road. It's too messy to be' beautiful'. "

(Reporter/Gan Yanyan)