China (mainland) contemporary writers' acceptance and reaction to Kafka is obviously inseparable from China's translation and introduction of Kafka in foreign literature, because it is usually impossible for China writers to read Kafka's original works. However, China's translation and introduction of Kafka was relatively late, and the sporadic introduction of Kafka before liberation was not enough to attract the attention and attention of writers. It was not until 1966 that novels such as The Trial translated by Li Wenjun and Cao Yong were published by Writers Publishing House, including Kafka's six novels: The Trial, Metamorphosis, Exile, Country Doctor, Reporting to the Academy of Sciences and The Trial. However, at that time, this collection of novels was distributed internally as a "negative textbook" and only a few professionals had the opportunity to see it. I'm afraid writers in China seldom get a chance to read this translation. At the beginning of 1979, World Literature magazine published The Metamorphosis translated by Li Wenjun, and published Kafka and His Works signed by Fang Ding and Shi Wen. Kafka and his works made their first public appearance in China. Then, at the beginning of 198 1, four short stories of Kafka were published in foreign literature: Trial, Country Doctor, Before the Law and Rogue Group. Subsequently, Kafka's Ghost quickly spread all over the country and appeared in various literary and artistic publications. Because "in Kafka's place, people can't get the * * * that other writers have, that is, they can't find the clearly visible inheritance relationship in literature", [1], Kafka initially caused more surprise and confusion than recognition and acceptance in the minds of China writers. But for a few writers who dare to explore and take risks, his influence is profound and lasting. Through these writers, Kafka finally took root in China, and now more and more writers regard Kafka as a "bosom friend".

First, "opened another world"

China writer Xu Xing once said: "Modernism is not formalism, but a way of life. The truly detached person is actually the most painful person. Kafka's life itself is a work of art, and what kind of work to write is determined by lifestyle and doomed. " [2] Indeed, Kafka's life and writing are unique and cannot be imitated. Kafka, the eccentric and explorer of modern western art, entered the world with pain, embraced his lover with despair, touched the truth with fear, and crowned himself with destruction ... He is the only "spiritual nude" in the modern world, and his unique lifestyle determines his creation, and his creation has completed himself. In this sense, Xu Xing expressed the essence of Kafka's life and creation in one sentence.

Kafka's life can't be imitated, but his works can be used for reference. Indeed, Kafka has greatly influenced the creation of many contemporary writers in China.

1999 New Century Publishing House published a series of 10 short stories that influenced me, among which Mo Yan, Yu Hua and Pipi all chose a Kafka novel. Pippi said that those good novels "will accompany you through all kinds of times." Every time I read it, whether it is sunny afternoon or rainy evening, I will have an exchange with them, focusing on life and death, love and hate. ”[3](P 1)

"I got great enjoyment and benefits from them in those years, and I got them again today." [3](P 1) One of these good novels is Kafka's Exile. Pippi wrote a bachelor's thesis about Kafka in college, so she did some research on Kafka. When she was reading in exile, she "experienced many reading feelings, such as calmness, nervousness, terror, thinking and admiration, although its length was too short for this." [3](P 12)

Among the 10 short stories that influenced Yu Hua, Kafka's Exile is also among them. Yu Hua said: "I chose Exile because Kafka has the clearest narrative scale. I mean, where is the fulcrum of the writer's narrative ... "In Exile clearly shows the spreading branches and leaves in Kafka's narrative. In the detailed description of the killing machine, the writer expresses the same accurate sense of reality as Balzac, and this sense of reality is also in the story. In fact, all his works are like this, but people are more easily attracted by the absurdity of architecture, thus ignoring the practicality of building materials. ”[4](P5)

Facing Kafka's works, Yu Hua said, "I am like a timid child, holding their skirts carefully, imitating their steps and walking slowly in the long river of time." This is a warm and complicated journey. They took me away and left me alone. When I came back, I realized that they had been with me. " [4](P 1 1) Yu Hua talked about Kafka many times in other places. 1990, Yu Hua wrote in an article entitled "Kawabata Yasunari and Kafka's Legacy" that "1986 excited him". [5] In this year, he read Kafka's "Country Doctor", which "surprised me ... made me feel that writers are free in front of form. Kafka liberated me. A set of writing rules that I established in more than three years turned into a pile of garbage overnight. " [5] He believes that the appearance of Kafka is a "miracle" in the history of literature. [5] Kafka's unusually keen thinking and his easy touch on human suffering left a deep impression on Yu Hua. There is such a passage in the novel, which describes that when the doctor looked at the patient's condition, he found a palm-sized wound on the right side of the patient's body near the hip:

Rose red, with many black spots, dark in the depth, shallow around, like soft particles, uneven congestion, opening like an open-pit coal mine. This is a situation from a distance, and it is more serious when viewed from a close distance. Who will encounter this without screaming? There are many insect pupae as big as my little finger, purple bodies and blood stains in the depths of the wound. They are crawling towards the light with small white heads and countless calves. Poor boy, you are hopeless. I found your huge wound, and this flower on you made you die. ①

Yu Hua was shocked after reading it. This calm and objective description of the bloody facts, especially the use of "flowers" to describe the wound, opened Yu Hua's eyes. His 18-year-old trip was written after reading Kafka's Country Doctor. Therefore, we can say that Kafka finished Yu Hua's famous work. In the novella 1986, Yu Hua's self-mutilation scene of middle school teachers is even more shocking: "He shouted' Oh!' Then put the hacksaw under the nose, and the sawtooth is aimed at the nose. Lips as black as arms, trembling, as if laughing. Then his arm swung vigorously, and every time he swung, he shouted desperately,' Oh!' The hacksaw began to cut in, and the blood began to ooze ... He gasped, raised the hacksaw again, held it in front of his eyes, and watched it carefully in the sun. Then he stretched out his nails, which were surprisingly red, to dig the bone chips embedded in the sawtooth, which were soaked with blood and glowed red in the sun. [6] (p151-152) In this bloody and cruel "death narrative", Yu Hua pushed the extremely indifferent and absolutely detached narrative style to the extreme.

1999, Yu Hua published an article entitled "Kafka and K" in Reading magazine, which specifically discussed the relationship between Kafka and K in Castle. Yu Hua said: "People are troubled by inner anxiety and are at a loss when reading. In Kafka's works, there is no literary export that people are used to, or there is no other export. People can only stay, even though this place is not heaven at all, but more like hell. " [1] (p46) Facing Kafka's works, including his letters and diaries, Yu Hua "stayed" and studied and realized them carefully. He said: "Kafka's life experience is not terrible loneliness, but the embarrassment of an outsider. This is a deeper loneliness. He is not only incompatible with all the people in this world, but also with himself. " [1](P39) As for Kafka's narrative techniques, Yu Hua is even more impressed: "Kafka's description is so detailed and accurate", "full of beauty" and "narration is like the call of an abyss". When talking about the relationship between Kafka's diary and novels, Yu Hua added: "Kafka's diary is like some novel fragments that have lost contact, and his novel Castle is like K's endless diary." [1](P40) With his sensitivity and profundity as a writer, Yu Hua quickly captured what he needed from Kafka.

In the 10 novels that influenced Mo Yan, Mo Yan also mentioned Kafka's The Country Doctor. Mo Yan believes that a good novel should have a unique tone. This unique tone "refers not only to the language, but also to the unique atmosphere created by all factors such as the type of story he is used to choosing, the way he handles the story, the form he uses when telling the story". [7](P2) Kafka's The Country Doctor is such a novel. This is "the most typical fantastic novel". Maybe he wrote one of his dreams. Most of his works are like dreams. Everyone dreams, but he is probably the only one who can write a novel like a dream. [7](P7) Mo Yan felt Kafka's unique tone, and also used it for reference and performance in his novels.

Zong Pu started studying Kafka earlier, in the mid-1960s. She originally read Kafka to criticize him, but she found that Kafka "opened another world" in front of her, which surprised her. She said, "What I get from him is an abstract or principled influence. I am surprised that novels can be written like this. I understand that literature is creation. What is creation? That is to create an unprecedented world, and literature begins with your pen. And its absurd change is absolutely true. During the Cultural Revolution, didn't many people wake up and become ghosts? " . [8] Her novel Who am I? "Writing the Alienation Modality of People Changing into Snakes during the Cultural Revolution", "Meng was scared like Victoria's Secret and threw himself on the ground at the same time, turning into two bugs ... Victoria's Secret crawled with difficulty, like a real bug, first shrank back, arched his back, then stretched forward, and finally bypassed a rockery. Meng obviously climbs faster than her. She can't see him and looks up from time to time. " [9](P38) This writing is obviously influenced by Kafka's Metamorphosis. But at the end of Zong Pu's novels, the protagonist publicly expresses her wish that I am a human being after all, which is what distinguishes her from Kafka. In Kafka's view, alienation is a kind of world outlook, which has always existed. In Zong Pu's view, alienation is only a temporary phenomenon, a product of a specific historical period, such as the Cultural Revolution. In Kafka's view, deformation is both form and content. In Zong Pu's view, deformation is only a form, not a content. In Kafka's view, narration is calm and objective, and the author stays out of the story and stares at it coldly, while in Zong Pu's view, it is a narrative discussion, in which the author is in a rage. Finally, the author even stood up and said: "However, as long as it is in the real spring,' people' will always return to their own land. In other words, only when' people' return to their own land will there be real spring. " [9](P6 1) This frank discussion is no longer like writing a novel. Zong Pu said that her works can be divided into two categories, one can be called "representation technique" and the other is "introspection technique". The latter "writes the essence through the shell of reality, which is absurd and out of proportion, but it seems to be praying for God ... Kafka's Metamorphosis and Castle are all impossible things in reality, but they are so accurate in spirit. He is amazing, novels can be written like this, and sometimes it is necessary to peel off superficial phenomena, which also inspires me. " [10] It can be seen that Zong Pu's "Vipassana" obviously originated from Kafka, but Zong Pu did not want to complete the absurd deformation. Although all the characters in her works have become "snakes", in the end, human nature has the upper hand. Another novel of Zong Pu, Dwelling House, is simply a Kafka allegorical novel. In the novel, the protagonist has a snail's hard shell on his back, and he crawls like a snail. But unlike Kafka, Zong Pu has a strong social and political consciousness, which she shows directly whenever she has the chance.

The situation of Jiang Zidan is somewhat similar to that of Zong Pu. 1983 After reading the works of Kafka and other writers, she tried to write an absurd novel. The novel "all the details are true and credible (at least on the surface), and not a word is puzzling, but there is an absurd core in the bones, wrapped in some sinister truth." [1 1] It was under the guidance of this thought that she created short stories Black, Blue, It rained that day and novella Circle. Many readers couldn't understand these novels at that time, but she didn't regret her choice. She said, "I don't think it is terrible for a writer to choose the wrong goal." The terrible thing is that there is no goal at all. " [ 1 1]

Ge Fei also likes Kafka very much and has studied Kafka. He once made a comparative analysis between Lu Xun and Kafka. He said: "Both Lu Xun and Kafka accumulated the power to penetrate this desperate barrier from their own desperate situations, but the unpredictability and suspension of' hope' did not lead them to sink into nothingness. In the most negative and pessimistic sense, they are all victims, all victims. It is this purgatory-like suffering process that provides a sign for mankind to cross the unbearable dark realm. " [12] "Like Kafka, Lu Xun deeply felt the unreality of existence, that is, the sense of absurdity. Both of them have encountered difficulties in speaking, and the cultural premise of speaking and writing is not the same, but their respective ways of speaking are quite intended to deny and disintegrate the established language system. " [12] Kafka's sense of absurdity, the difficulty of speech, the denial and disintegration of the established language system may have some influence on Ge Fei's creation, although this influence may be completed through Lu Xun.

There is a description in Gefei's novel The Edge, which reminds people of Kafka's Country Doctor. There is a doctor named Zhong Yuelou in the novel. "He often has a casual smile on his face, even when playing with the dead on the operating table." [13] (p169) It is written in the novel that once a doctor operated on a seriously injured person, he didn't seem to notice that the injured person was shaking and twitching in pain at all. While doing what he should do according to certain fixed procedures, he told the narrator of the novel "I" with relish how to seduce a woman: (1) Zhong Yuelou put a pair of tweezers into the wound and tried to take out the warhead, which almost succeeded several times, but every time he was about to take it out, he slipped in like a loach. Zhong Yuelou raised his sleeves, wiped the sweat on his face and gasped.

"When a woman is weak, you can lift her skirt and touch her. As long as you are patient, women will eventually fail. "

Zhong Yuelou said to himself, and the nurse standing by seemed to have been impatient for a long time. She reminded Zhong Yuelou that the wounded soldier lying on the incense table might have died.

Zhong Yuelou ignored her, but turned his attention to the door.

……

"I think he is really dead." Zhong Yuelou said. [ 13]( 170)

The wounded died, and the half moon building looked unmoved. An objective, indifferent and simple word "say" makes us know nothing about the emotional state of Zhongyue Building.

Second, the castle leading to the soul

Can Xue is an independent and unique female writer in China, who is known as "Kafka of China". Some critics wrote, "If the nightmarish images in the works such as Old Cloud, Skylight and Cabin on the Mountain in the 1980s still keep a certain distance from Kafka's realistic and accurate description of absurd things, then in the more restrained, skillful and rational novels created in the 1990s, we vaguely feel that [14]/kl. The extremely personal voice contained in Can Xue's works has always made many readers sigh, and the cold, abnormal and nightmare world she wrote has always been difficult to understand and accept. In the vast China, she seems to lack a bosom friend. However, she found Kafka in a very distant country and took it as a bosom friend. Then, a miracle happened. It is breathtaking that a China female writer at the end of 20th century and an Austrian male writer at the beginning of 20th century meet and talk in the depths of their souls.

For more than half a century, Kafka's comments and writings have been overwhelming. Existentialism believes that Kafka saw the pain and loneliness of pursuing freedom for the first time. The absurd found the "anti-hero" they needed in Kafka; What the black humor school saw from Kafka was gloomy tone and sarcasm; Surrealism sees Freud's psychoanalysis and "super-physical feeling"; Expressionism sees dreams and intuition; Luacs just thought that Kafka showed the essence of social and class struggle ... but Can Xue almost put all these comments aside and understood Kafka as a writer, or rather, a novelist. In Can Xue's view, Kafka is the purest artist, not a moralist, religionist, psychologist, historian and social critic. All his works are just a process of constantly in-depth investigation and investigation of the author's inner soul.

In this way, can Xue seems to have caught Kafka's most essential thing at once. Indeed, writing is everything in Kafka's life. Without writing, Kafka's life would be colorless and meaningless. Kafka said: "I can easily see my concentration on writing." When my body clearly shows that writing is the most effective direction in essence, everything goes to it, leaving all the ability to get pleasure in sex, eating and drinking, philosophical thinking, and especially music. I have shrunk in these aspects. ""I write, so I exist. He is not a writer, but a person who regards writing as the only way of life and the only means to resist death. "[16] Only words can prove the existence of Kafka. Kafka rejected friendship, love, marriage and family in order to write. He chose the loneliness he feared. Kafka is probably the loneliest writer in the world, and his novels show the loneliness of modern people. So Kafka's own life and creation are integrated here, and he has become the most inactive person in his life and the most successful person in his creation.

Can Xue deeply shares Kafka's lifestyle and purpose. She wrote in an article entitled "Dance of the Dark Soul":

It is this way of writing that intensifies the opposition of contradictory parts in my character, and it is difficult to get peace in my heart. I can't clearly understand the nature of inner excitement. I only know one thing: I can't live without writing. Out of greedy nature, I don't want to give up all the highlights (vanity, material enjoyment, emotion, etc.) in my life. ), but writing is the only way to make the bright spot a real bright spot; In writing, all the highlights in life are eclipsed and meaningless. [ 17](P 1 1)

This passage is exactly the same as Kafka, but different from Kafka: Can Xue did not exclude her husband, son and family. Can Xue's loneliness is more of a kind of soul loneliness. In real life, she is much luckier than Kafka.

For Kafka's three famous novels, Can Xue began her interpretation from this angle. Can Xue believes that "Litigation" describes a process of soul struggling, struggling and awakening. "The morning when K was arrested was the beginning of his inner introspection." "Unprecedented introspection began in this strange form, and the world became strange. A new idea gradually slaughtered his behavior, forcing him to give up everything he had and reshape himself. " [15](P85) So, what is a castle? It seems to be a kind of nothingness, an abstract place, a phantom, and no one can tell what it is. Strangely, it really exists and dominates all the daily life in the village, and it embodies its pure and irreversible will in everyone in the village. K is full of doubts and uncertainties about himself, but his belief in the castle is unshakable. "[15](P 192) It turns out that the castle is the purpose of life and the ideal light, and it exists in our hearts." America "actually means that artists are weaned mentally." If a person comes into this world, he will never grow up and develop his own world, but can only be a parasite. "[ 15](P38)

As for some of Kafka's short stories, in Can Xue's view, "When the Great Wall of China was Built" symbolizes "the living method of artists"; "Report to an Academy of Sciences" records "the course of ape-like artists overcoming ape-like nature and realizing self-consciousness"; The old teachers among rural teachers embody "artistic conscience"; The young couple described "the structure of the poet's soul"; Underground caves show the artist's double fear of escaping from existence and vanity.

Can Xue seems to interpret and describe Kafka's works in a unique and novel way, which makes readers wonder whether she interprets Kafka here or constructs Kafka in her own mind, besides being surprised by her keenness, wit and personality. Or is the real Kafka actually equal to Kafka in her heart? Is she reading a novel or writing a novel? I think, no matter what the original intention of Can Xue is, one thing is certain, that is, with the interpretation of Can Xue, Kafka will have more and more "bosom friends" in China, not less.