Yasunari Kawabata tried to embody the traditional beauty of Japan in The Dancer of Izu, and further explored it in Snow Country, paying more attention to the traditional beauty as a spiritual force, that is, the expression of "heart" and the spiritual "lingering beauty". Snow country touches the deepest level of life, and at the same time deepens the "lingering beauty" in spirit. The sorrows of the characters he described and the lingering feelings of this kind of sorrow all have this spiritual value, which determines the behavior patterns of characters such as Komako, and discusses the sorrows of life through it, which shows the writer's mentality of trying to comfort himself in order to be detached to some extent. The writer's plain, natural and interesting aesthetic pursuit is deeply related to his feelings of emptiness and helplessness in life.
"Snow Country" broadens the new road opened by "Dancer of Izu" in art, and forms its own creative personality in content and form. It is the mature symbol and artistic peak of Kawabata Yasunari's creation. His achievements are mainly manifested in two aspects: first, he opened up a new path in art, and Kawabata Yasunari was full of exploration spirit from the beginning of his literary creation. There are both successful experiences and failed attempts in his life's creative path, and he has gone through a tortuous road. At the beginning of writing, most of the works have the nature of traditional private novels, leaving some traces of naturalism, and the mood is relatively low and sad. In the period of neo-sensualism, he totally denied tradition and blindly pursued western modernist literature. No matter the style or content, he seldom found the traditional Japanese temperament, but he did not give up his new pursuit of art, constantly summed up his experience and returned to the exploration of traditional art. If Dancer of Izu is a creative attempt in the exchange of western literature; Then "Snow Country" makes the combination of the two perfect. This is the sublimation of the writer's characteristics and style in The Dancer of Izu, which gives the work a stronger Japanese color. Secondly, since then, Kawabata's creation has formed his own creative personality in both content and form. Most of Kawabata Yasunari's early works show "orphan feelings" and frustration in love, which cannot be said to have formed his own distinctive artistic character. However, through continuous artistic practice and rich creative experience, his artistic talent can be fully exerted and his creative personality can be more prominent and distinct. He is good at depicting the character and fate of lower-class girls with lyrical pen and ink. His lyrical pictures are filled with warm praise for pure love, vague yearning for beautiful love ideals, and undisguised rendering of the impermanence and futility of life. Moreover, the psychological description of the characters is more delicate and rich, showing the writer's passionate creative personality. Although Yasunari Kawabata's style has developed in his later works, it has always been related to the basic characteristics of Izu and the Dancer of Snow Country, and the traditional literary tone of his works has not fundamentally changed.
Kawabata Yasunari wrote "Ancient Capital" (196 1- 1962) out of the realistic pursuit of tradition, and unfolded the sad and joyful story of Chieko and the twin sisters on the custom screen of Kyoto. Kawabata Yasunari, as the dominant idea in his creation of Ancient Capital, touches the natural beauty and traditional beauty of the ancient capital with the help of scenes of life fragments, that is, pursues a Japanese beauty. Therefore, the whole article runs through the description of the scenery, which not only provides an opportunity for the development of the plot, but also creates conditions for the characterization and emotional expression. At the same time, it successfully shaped Qian Baryon and two characters, and described the love relationship between men and women, but its main purpose was not to spread the twists and turns of love between men and women, so it did not develop them into a comedy group, nor did it push them to a tragic separation. Instead, it intertwined the pure feelings and subtle psychology of the characters in Kyoto scenery, diluted the love between men and women, and highlighted its established theme of promoting traditional beauty, natural beauty and human beauty. This is the charm of the ancient capital.
The author's understanding of the social environment of the ancient capital is sober, and his understanding and experience of social and interpersonal relationships are profound, which is a gift of post-war life. Through the emotional estrangement between sisters and lovers, he even caused the pain of human feelings, reflected the existence of social status and family differences, and revealed the opposing reality formed by the differences between the rich and the poor and secular prejudice. The epochal flavor of the works is also reflected in the author's vivid and concise brushwork, which shows the social world under the post-war American occupation, such as the crisis of traditional culture and the loss of the mood of the ancient capital. All these touches were not caused by Kawabata Yasunari's accidental feelings, but were written in the interweaving of post-war sadness and humiliation of American occupation of Japan. At that time, he was as sad as ever after the war and lamented from time to time, but this did not turn into anger and into a critical force, so it could only be a kind of mourning mixed with sadness and disappointment. Perhaps this is the author's consistent and unique way to respond to the times and society. At the same time, the novel also reveals some world-weariness and fatalism, and spares no effort to preach that "luck is short-lived and loneliness is permanent." For Kawabata Yasunari's novel creation, the beauty of nature and humanity expressed in the ancient capital, as well as the maintenance of traditional charm, all have special colors.
"Thousand Cranes" uses symbolic techniques to highlight the objects of tea sets to reflect the psychology of the characters. Kawabata Yasunari tries his best to take this special space as the center and the stage of spiritual activities, so that all the characters gather in the teahouse, which not only plays the role of introducing the characters and facilitating the development of the story, but also takes the tea set as an important medium for the progress of the story and the psychological process of the characters, giving vitality to these static things and bringing lifeless and emotionless tea sets to life. This is a unique artistic creation. If "Thousand Cranes" vaguely and vaguely describes the behaviors of several characters that are almost beyond ethics, then "The Sound of the Mountain" focuses on the psychological imbalance of the characters caused by war trauma, trying to restore the psychological balance through a spirit that is almost contrary to human relations, and to capture the post-war social changes and the psychological imbalance of the people through the changes in the internal structure of a family. Among the characters created by the writer, whether it is my family who believes in me or several characters related to this family, their characters are distorted by the cruelty of the war and the difficult environment after the war. But the writer is only sad, not angry; Just groaning, no resistance. Accurately speaking, he is trying to reflect reality, subconscious reaction and even unconscious action with nothingness and despair. Nevertheless, the work shows the mental numbness and decadence of a generation caused by the war, and it still leaves the shadow of the war. It is difficult to understand the meaning of "mountain sound" without the specific environment of war and post-war.
Generally speaking, the theme of Kawabata Yasunari's two works, Thousand Cranes and Mountain Sound, seems to be to express the conflict between love and morality. He wrote about both the love of nature and the suffering of traditional morality. Unable to resolve this emotional contradiction, he did not use traditional morality to regulate the behavior of characters, but went beyond the framework of traditional morality, sought his own moral standards from moral rebellion to support love, and maintained his love desire with decadent performance. This is probably because writers are often troubled by anxiety in daily life, trying to equate this anxiety in spiritual life with that in sexual desire, which leads to this spiritual debauchery.
These late representative works of Yasunari Kawabata not only show the main theme of human life, but also show the variation of life. That is to say, on the one hand, he deeply digs into the normality and abnormality of human feelings and the complexity of their adaptation to the evolution of human nature, on the other hand, he pursues sensory enjoyment and exaggerates the morbidness, which is more or less decadent. However, as an integral part of Kawabata Yasunari's literature and aesthetics, weaving this decadent injury into the traditional Japanese cultural network of mourning, elegance, metaphysics and desire still has its life connotation and literary significance.
As a pure literature writer, Kawabata Yasunari also found a new way, and wrote some intermediate novels between pure literature and popular literature, reflecting the daily life of Japanese after the war. The stories of Town by the River and Road in the Wind describe the emotional world of men and women in the post-war era and their or their real sadness. "Tokyo Man" tells the story of a family love rift, which reflects the confusion and loneliness of Tokyo people's love after the war. With the local customs and customs of Kyoto as the background, Several Rainbows narrates the love and life sadness of three half-sisters, which are as unreal and beautiful as rainbows, with sad, delicate and vivid brushstrokes, especially showing the great psychological trauma and distorted mentality of my sister because her lover died in the war. With the story of a blind girl seeing the light again as the main line, The Girl's Eyes Open leads to the bumpy fate of blind girls and sisters, reflecting the reality that the upper class suppressed, discriminated against and insulted the civilian class at that time.
Most of these works are set in the post-war background, and there are hidden dissatisfaction with the war and the reality of the American occupation of Japan after the war. For example, Sun Qianyue Xi wrote that the war led to the separation of Chao Jing's family and the death of his son. He also wrote that under the occupation of the US military, the traditional Japanese tea ceremony, traditional textile processing and traditional living habits lost their true essence, lamenting that the Japanese cultural heritage lost its luster and greatly shocked the spiritual world of the Japanese after the war. Faced with this situation, the writer lamented that "it is always not a taste"! A young clerk in the story of a riverside town said: "Japan was defeated and occupied, but the swallows still flew back to nostalgic Japan from the south without any change." Isn't the attitude of the guy from abroad unchanged? " The writer compares people to swallows, and compares people to American occupation troops, which shows that the Japanese homesickness spirit and the attitude of American occupation have not changed. He also skillfully used the plot that Japan still found the "cylon" after the war, indicating that Japan's surface has changed, Japan still exists, and Japan will not perish. From this, he discovered the truth hidden in the depths of Japan under the occupation of the US military, and the ancient culture in Japan is still deeply rooted. From the beginning, Tokyo Man criticized the American atomic bomb policy, especially the policy that the United States dropped an atomic bomb in Japan and invested one billion dollars to build a nuclear base in Okinawa after the war. He also wrote a special lounge for foreigners in Tokyo Station Hotel, with a map of Japan hanging on the wall, but it is stipulated that Japanese are not allowed to enter, while young American soldiers can swagger in with Japanese women in tears, artistically reappearing the image of Japanese mountains and rivers being trampled and Japanese being persecuted. The screenwriter couldn't help but say, "I'm so angry!" Sound.
To sum up, the success of Kawabata Yasunari's literature is mainly manifested in the following three aspects: First, the integration of traditional cultural spirit and modern consciousness shows the spirit of humanistic idealism and the reason and emotion of modern people, and at the same time, deep psychological analysis is introduced to integrate Japanese realism and oriental idealism. The second is the integration of traditional natural description and modern psychological description, using Freud's psychoanalysis and Joyce's stream of consciousness to dig deeply into the characters. The inner world also integrates itself with nature and nature into the stream of consciousness of the characters, thus playing the role of "integrating things with me", thus showing the emotional world of the characters under the guise of nature. The third is the leap-forward integration of traditional neatness and stream of consciousness. According to the principle of modern deep psychology, the scope of association and memory is expanded, and at the same time, it is restrained by the traditional solid, rigorous and neat structure to keep it harmonious. The integration of these three factors deepened the tradition and formed the basic characteristics of its literature.