Differences of Self-consciousness between Chinese and Western Literature

Self-awareness is an individual's understanding and attitude towards himself, and a conscious understanding of his value as the subject of historical and social activities. Self-awareness pushes human beings to constantly create the world, transform society and transform nature, so as to gain self-identity in the development of the objective world, as Mao Zedong pointed out, "The purpose of human beings is to realize themselves. Those who realize themselves, that is, their physical and mental abilities are fully developed, are called the highest. "

No matter which nation's literature, it is inseparable from the performance of self-awareness. Hegel, an idealistic aesthetician, emphasized that literature should emphasize "this one", and materialist aestheticians also emphasized that literature should realize the unity of individuality and * * * *. Then, "self-awareness" can not only reflect a nation's * * * characteristics, psychological and cultural characteristics, ethical and moral characteristics, but also show the writer's personal self-awareness, confirm the living value of the living individual in the cultural circle he represents, and reflect his own creative style and aesthetic ideal. From the self-consciousness shown in the development of Chinese and western literature, we can see the influence of the characteristics of cultural psychology on literature under different traditional backgrounds. The difference of self-consciousness is the difference of cultural tradition and national character.

Studying the different forms and connotations of self-consciousness in literature has certain enlightenment for studying the differences between Chinese and western literature in subject content and even expression forms, especially for us to understand and study the mutual reference, mutual exclusion and mutual blending of Chinese and western literature.

Social self and independent self

The self-consciousness expressed in China's literature is not an isolated self, but a self in various relationships. It reflects the relationship between self and society (family, clan, etc.). ), ethical relationship or the relationship between all things in the natural universe. Self-consciousness obviously embodies the characteristics of group consciousness. The confirmation of self-worth is carried out in various relations, and the concept of self-development embodies sociality, that is, it is consistent with the needs of society and helps to maintain the balance of various social relations. The process of self-realization is to realize the harmony between man and nature, man and society, and man and man, and to assimilate oneself into the social background. As emphasized in Confucius' works, the relationship between "I" and "I". Confucius put forward in the Analects that "if you want to stand, you can stand, and if you want to reach, you can reach people." Emphasizing the relationship between self and self mainly emphasizes that the development of self-consciousness is not independent, but depends on various relationships. "Self" is to satisfy one's own desires and behaviors. The "ego" refers to the whole society and the whole human being in which the ego lives. The self-consciousness of China literature from the very beginning is that the self should obey the self, so that the self can be valuable and develop. Theoretically, China literature emphasizes that writers should have a sense of social responsibility and self-concept. From the Book of Songs, it is put forward that "poetry expresses ambition, and songs are chanting", or Confucius's "poetry can be exciting, observable, collective and resentful. Your story is far away from you and you know more about the names of birds, animals and plants. " Both (The Analects of Confucius) and "Wen Yi Zai Dao" attach importance to the social function of literature. The writer's self-consciousness is the externalization of national consciousness and group consciousness, and the self is integrated into himself, and the consciousness of worrying about the country and the people runs through literary works. The development of individual spirit can not be separated from the social utility of "managing the family, governing the country and leveling the world" In the Book of Songs, "Wang Yu promoted his teacher, cultivated my spear and hated his son." (The Book of Songs Without Clothes) Qu Yuan's Li Sao and Chen Ziang's Li Sao in the Tang Dynasty said that "saints are selfish and worry about Yuanyuan." The confession of the relationship between self and self, as well as the poems of Du Fu, Li Bai and Bai Juyi in the Tang Dynasty, which reflect the social situation and are sympathetic to the people's feelings, all reflect the writer's heavy sense of social responsibility. Du Fu's thoughts and feelings of "living in a huge building, sheltering the poor in the world" ("Cottage Broken by Autumn Wind") and worrying about the country and the people are still "news" in this distant West Railway Station! The north has been recovered! At first, I couldn't stop crying on my coat "("Wen Jun accepts Henan and Hebei "), and the blending of personal feelings and patriotic feelings is linked with the country and the people. Bai Juyi also put forward that literature is "for the monarch, for the minister, and for the thing" (Preface to New Yuefu). A large number of patriotic poets, such as Xin Qiji, Lu You and Yue Fei, appeared in the Song Dynasty, which unified the individual survival value with the country and the people. Fan Zhongyan's "worrying about the world first, and enjoying the world later" is the best interpretation of the relationship between the ego and the ego.

In the tradition of western literature, self-consciousness emphasizes the independent self from the beginning, and "personal struggle" has become the consistent theme of western literature. Western literature shows the conflict between self-consciousness and many social relations, emphasizing not the unity of self and self, but advocating self, which is the basis of individual existence value. The purpose of personal struggle is to make the ego admit the value of the ego.

In the Greek mythology and heroic epic originated from western literature, although the gods and heroes represent the collective consciousness of tribal clan interests, individualism has begun to appear in self-consciousness, and the struggle and killing between heroes are also mixed with many personal factors. In the Trojan War described in Heriat, Achilles competed with Agamemnon for a female prisoner in order to protect his own interests and honor, which eventually led to the defeat of the Greek army. The beginning of the epic also points out that "the anger of Achilles is my theme". In western literature, self-awareness is strongly manifested in the sacredness of personal feelings, and even personal interests transcend self. Greek literature advocates personal power, personal heroes decide the fate of clans and tribes, and the light of mankind depends on Prometheus to steal fire. Self-awareness is also reflected in individual's strong desire for material possession and enjoyment of nature. Odysseus, the hero of Odysseus, returned home and fought against the enemies who violated his wife and property, which showed that personal property was inviolable.

Self-awareness highlights personal value, so in order to reflect the difference between self and others, extraordinary actions and extraordinary strength constitute the coexistence of heroism and individualism in western literature.

The two sources of western literature are Greek and Roman literature, which emphasize reality and material enjoyment. The second is Christianity, which emphasizes spirit and morality. Self-awareness in literature is reflected in one's enjoyment and pursuit of material things, and the other's spiritual pursuit and moral characteristics. From the beginning, western literature emphasized the dual significance of material and spirit in self-consciousness. Neither of these two meanings has left the theme of personal struggle. From Heriat, in which the individual decides the clan's fate, to Hamlet's personal revenge, justice or romain rolland's self-consciousness of putting personal responsibility before social responsibility, all of them regard self-interest as the experience of testing self-strength, and the most important thing is to obtain self-certification. Hemingway's love for life in Santiago and Jack London is not a result, but a process of overcoming oneself and confirming their own values in the struggle with nature. The "lost generation" regards the heavy social responsibility as the grave of self-destruction, and worries more about me than about the country and people.

Because western literature emphasizes the independent self, which depends on itself and conflicts with other social relations, it eventually leads to the loss of self, and the independent self becomes a lonely self, and then loses itself. This is obviously different from the proposition of self-adaptation and social responsibility in China's literature.

Normative self and free self

If China's literature emphasizes the relationship between social responsibility and self, then the self must be standardized, reflecting a strong moral consciousness. Literary works also shape the normative self and the perfect self. Therefore, Confucius advocated "righteousness is the highest", Mencius put forward "giving up one's life for righteousness", and Dong Zhongshu emphasized "protecting friendship and not seeking benefits". When an individual's self-consciousness collides with society, it relies on self-restraint and observing social moral norms to "self-deny". Individual's material desires and emotional needs must obey certain moral norms, and then develop from pursuing perfect self to criticizing and reflecting on self. Mencius said, "I save myself three times a day", emphasizing that "cultivating people" should cultivate self-cultivation, and the goal of pursuing perfect self-ideal is to be a saint and be a great saint. "See Si Qi, see introspection". In China's literary works, there are a series of images and writers who pursue the perfection of personality. Self-awareness embodies the perfection and nobility of personality.

Qu Yuan's self-consciousness in a series of works, such as Li Sao and Songs of the South, shows perfect self and lofty self. "I can't change my mind and do as the Romans do, but I will be sad, eventually." (1) His disciple Song Yu also embodies the personality charm of "the sky is high and the air is clear, and the water is clear" (2). Sima Qian's evaluation of Qu Yuan in Biography of Qu Yuan and Jia Sheng is: "Qu Ping took the right path, tried his best to serve the monarch and spent his whole life. Believe and see doubt, be loyal and slander, can you have no complaints? ..... His words are implicit, his ambition is pure, his actions are mean, his words are small, and his meaning is big, so we can see his meaning from a distance. Its ambition is pure, so it is called fragrant; It's cheap, so it's hard to die. In muddy mud, cicadas slough in filth, wandering outside the dust, and can't get the love of the world. Chewing mud without me, pushing this ambition, although winning glory with the sun and the moon. " 〔③〕

Qu Yuan shaped himself with his own poems. In China's literary works, many accomplished poets pay attention to self-expression. Yongmei, written by Lu You in Song Dynasty, "smells as good as ever, although it has been mashed into mud and ground into ashes". The value of self-existence is reflected by its noble character. Li Qingzhao's quatrain "Life is a great man, death is a ghost hero", and Yu Qian's Lyric for Lime in Ming Dynasty "Stay naive in the world", and the writer's self-image is integrated with the image of poetry. In A Dream of Red Mansions, Cao Xueqin embodies the moral character of "coming and going cleanly, it is better to be trapped in a ditch" in Lin Daiyu, which embodies the writer's personality ideal.

Western literature also pays attention to self-design, but the premise is to ensure the absolute freedom of the self and oppose all kinds of constraints imposed on the self by society. Self-awareness is reflected in the rebellion against social traditions and moral and religious forces. Although West Renye Fang emphasized the role of morality and religion in self-regulation, the power of morality and religion in self-consciousness was not enough, because it emphasized the freedom of self. In ancient Greek literature, the theme is the struggle between man and fate, and the tragedy of fate embodies the conflict between self-consciousness and society and nature. "King Oedipus" puts forward that "everyone is equal before God, regardless of rank". In aristophanes's comedy Birds, a utopian ideal of equality in a country without oppression and slavery is constructed. In order to reflect the existence of self, it is required that self-desire can be satisfied to the greatest extent both materially and spiritually. The Renaissance demanded the liberation of individuality, which stated that "everyone can get rich" and "wealth is a remarkable sign that God cares for a person". (4) The liberation of personality requires not only political, legal and religious protection of individual freedom and enterprising rights, but also material possession of individuals. Romantic literature movement also takes self as the banner. The most prominent manifestation of self-awareness is to demand the free development of spirit and emphasize the importance of personal feelings. The difference between people lies in the freedom of mind. In romantic literary works, personal feelings and imagination are placed in a high position, lyric poetry has made great achievements, and novels and dramas also attach great importance to lyricism. The self-consciousness of western writers is based on denying reality and emphasizing self-subjectivity. The expression of self-emotion, whether enthusiastic or sad, positive or negative, pays attention to exploring one's inner world, and one's joy and anxiety are the true expression of the inner world. The young Werther described by Goethe is the true expression of the mind. The hero in Byron's Travels of Childe Harold indulges himself in nature and lets his feelings vent freely, all of which embody the ideal of pursuing self-freedom. As long as his mind is free, escaping from reality becomes a way. On this basis, British Huxiang poets reflect on themselves from the freedom of nature, stay away from reality and make themselves still exist.

Western literature respects the free self, so it criticizes all kinds of things that hinder self-development in its works, such as feudal kingship, racial inequality, rich and poor levels, and various religious shackles. The writer's task is to sweep away the old world and establish an ideal kingdom suitable for self-free survival and development.

Eternal self and extended self

There is another aspect of self-consciousness embodied in China's literature, that is, to pursue eternal self and ensure the existence of self-spirit, we must escape from the realistic relationship of various regulations. The existence of self can not be judged by secular values. The freedom of self is divorced from reality, transcends social utility, pursues the aesthetic realm of life, pays attention to the spiritual needs of individuals, and takes the freedom of individual spirit as the highest realm of self-existence. In order to prevent yourself from "losing your virginity to things" and "losing your virginity to vulgarity", the literary phenomenon represented by Zhuangzi's "Happy Travel" has a far-reaching influence in the development of China literature.

Through a carefree life, Zhuangzi completely abandoned the external dependence of social relations, utilitarian relations and natural relations, and got rid of all the shackles in the world. In the theory of everything, "ride the sun and the moon in the clouds, but travel around the world, life and death remain the same, but what will happen?" Meaningless, but beyond the dirt. In this way, only by getting rid of the oppression of natural and social alien forces can we truly save ourselves and not be fooled by fate. I want to save myself, I don't want to possess and enjoy the material world, and I don't want to pursue the perfection of sages' personality, but I don't have to care too much about the differences of everything in the world. I can wait for everything, so I won't worry about living, be afraid of death, be proud of being proficient and be depressed about being poor. As Zhuangzi said, "Everything is the same ... what things look at, but what they lack. If they lose their feet, they will still be left behind (Zhuangzi de Chongfu). This is the best way for me to stay eternal in the ever-changing foreign world.

The self-consciousness represented by Zhuangzi constitutes another realm of China literature. Writers pursue individual spiritual freedom, abandon material desires and indulge themselves. Tao Yuanming's awakening of self-consciousness also went through a complicated process. When he first entered the DPRK as an official, he linked self-awareness with fame and fortune. But when he found that the officialdom was turbulent, the world was cold, self-polluted and self-distressed, that is, the crisis of losing himself, he resigned for the people, stayed away from the secular, and found himself in the process of accompanying nature. Self-liberation in the environment of "building a house is based on human feelings, and there is no car and horse, so I ask if you can, and your heart is far from me". Self-expression is "picking chrysanthemums under the east fence and seeing Nanshan leisurely". Bold poets represented by Su Shi and Xin Qiji in Song Dynasty also sought a kind of "self-balance" in their poems, replacing the sense of loss in the real world with spiritual comfort. To pursue eternal self is to transcend reality. Su Shi's "river of no return, waves scouring romantic figures through the ages" is not only a historical necessity, but also a self-adaptation to the laws of nature, so it is an enlightenment that "the world is like a dream, and a bottle is still on the moon". The pursuit of eternal self has branded China's literary works with Zen. The "ethereal" realm of poetry, represented by the poet Wang Wei in the Tang Dynasty, is the externalization of self-consciousness in artistic style, and individuals can get eternal harmony in the infinite universe.

Westerners pursue themselves and never leave the real world and the objective material world they occupy, so they can't get the confirmation of their own value. Because the ego is always "aware of itself through the object, without the object, people will have nothing" [6]. Therefore, in order to express self-awareness, it is to expand oneself in all fields of nature and human life. Conquering nature and society, the self-consciousness with the theme of competition and expansion runs through western literature. From Prometheus stealing fire from human beings in the original Greek mythology to Adam eating forbidden fruit against God's will in the Bible, all these reflect the strong desire of westerners to explore the material world. The short life of medieval church literature is due to the limitation of self-improvement in the material world and self-expansion in the spiritual world. The Renaissance movement put forward that "man is the essence of the universe and the spirit of all things is long." Emphasize people's subjective initiative, people's wisdom and people's physical creativity. Whitman, an American poet, believes that human beings can create life, nature, equality, democracy and friendship. Romain rolland also emphasized the great role of ego in changing the world in his works. He believes that if an individual wants to develop, he must expand himself and surpass the experience of his ancestors. "In the depths of my consciousness, in my narrow mind, there is a sacred me, an absolute self. Only the ego exists, and this ego is romain rolland. In every feeling he has. However, the ego transcends him, not just him, but exists outside him. The ego is everyone around him, the universe of soul and body. In my endless and constantly moving moment, I dress up in various shapes and constantly evolve. " 〔⑦〕

The emphasis on self eventually leads to betrayal of religious consciousness and rationality. Religion restricts the expression of self-consciousness with a series of rules and regulations. Rational consciousness is a means to arrange order for utilitarian purposes, a tool to realize instinct, desire and will, and cannot fully represent people's free will, so Nietzsche declared that God is dead. Nietzsche believes that "a living body must first vent its power-life itself is the will of power-self-preservation is one of its indirect and usual results" [8]. Therefore, the ideal of self-awareness is to be a person who fully embodies the will of life and has the ability to create everything. The purpose of Nietzsche's "life will" and "superman philosophy" is to confirm freedom, to confirm individuals, to confirm people's real life, and to awaken people's freedom and self-awareness.

Too much emphasis on self, trying to get rid of self from other social relations (ethics, religion, law), emphasizing that self must be able to possess strongly in material, satisfy desires, and be able to dominate others and even the universe in spirit. Self-awareness based on individualism makes the self fall into an isolated situation. Western modernist literature in the 20th century reflected the process of losing self-consciousness. Eliot's The Waste Land shows that man is irrational and it is difficult to exist without religion. Then Kafka's Metamorphosis lost both body and spirit. Western modernist literature has constructed a world without self. Therefore, seeking self has become a proposition of modernist literature. Will this self, which is divorced from social tradition, be lost, causing anxiety among western writers, and some writers also try to explore the basis on which self-consciousness depends. Sartre, an existentialist writer, reveals in disgust that the final result of the development of individualism is completely divorced from the real world. "I live alone, completely alone, and I will never talk to anyone; I don't accept anything and I don't give anything. " [pet-name ruby] Sartre thinks that all existence is accidental, so is life, and there is no basis. Only through the disgust of the subject can we affirm our existence. The final result of self-consciousness in western literature is that people can do nothing about themselves and self-consciousness loses any function. In Beckett's Waiting for Godot, the ego has neither active consciousness nor expanding consciousness, and can only consume life in helpless waiting and prove the existence of life in boring waiting. This is obviously different from China's literature, which consciously depends on multiple relationships, so it won't lose itself.

The development of China's literary self-consciousness has undergone two major changes. In the Ming Dynasty, Li Zhi put forward "the right and wrong of opposing Confucius" [⑩], and he pointed out that "a husband has his own use and cannot learn Confucius. If we must be satisfied with Confucius, then there will be no Confucius before the ages, and in the end it will not be a person? " (1) (1) reflects the criticism of self-consciousness in traditional literature, emphasizing that self-consciousness should be awakened by self-judgment and self-knowledge. In literary theory, Li Zhi put forward the theory of childlike innocence, asking writers to create their own thoughts and styles. "Why did poetry choose ancient times and why did it choose pre-Qin? In the Six Dynasties, it became a modern style and a legend. It has become a courtyard, a zaju, a Western Chamber song, a water margin and a career today. It's all ancient and modern, and it's impossible. " (1) (2) Therefore, since the Ming Dynasty, China literature has also experienced a stylistic revolution contrary to the poetic tradition at that time, marked by the prosperity of operas and novels. The self-consciousness of the novel Jin Ping Mei shows strong immorality.

The second change was the May 4th New Culture Movement, which also criticized the traditional self-consciousness in literature, opposed extending the self into an abstract moral incarnation, and liberated the self from social relations. Lu Xun's Diary of a Madman accused feudal ethics of devouring itself. Blessing also puts forward many social relations, such as the suppression of self by divine right, clan right and husband right. Ba Jin's "Home" embodies that self-liberation must first be separated from family relations. Guo Moruo's Nirvana of the Phoenix shows a strong desire to remold himself.

The awakening of self-consciousness during the May 4th Movement was influenced by the West. Literature pays attention to the freedom of personal feelings and emphasizes the role of self in transforming the old world. However, it does not praise the extreme individualism of western literature, nor does it make the self fall into a lonely and helpless situation and lose itself. Although the old order collapsed, the individual's sense of responsibility to society has not been lost. The "sense of hardship" runs through the New Culture Movement, and the writer's self-consciousness is still manifested as the painful self in the sinking of Yu Dafu, not entirely because his material desires are not satisfied, but because he has left his hometown, lost his self-reliant social relations and failed to realize his heavy sense of social responsibility.

After the May 4th Movement, western literature had a great influence on China literature, but the self-consciousness of western literature did not completely penetrate into China literature. In the process of contemporary development, the differences between Chinese and western literature are still obvious, and how to learn from western literature is still a proposition to be studied.

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