Characteristics of avant-garde literature

The artistic feature of "avant-garde" is that it opposes traditional culture and deliberately violates established creative principles and appreciation habits. One-sided pursuit of novelty in artistic form and style; Adhere to art above all else and do not undertake any obligations; Pay attention to exploring the inner world, and describe dreams and mysterious and abstract instantaneous world delicately. Its skills are widely used in suggestion, metaphor, symbol, association, image, synaesthesia, perception and so on, in order to explore the inner mystery of characters and the flow of consciousness, so that irrelevant events form a multi-level structure, which makes it difficult for everyone to understand.

The remarkable characteristics of avant-garde novels are: first, cultural expression is a rebellion and dissolution of the old meaning model, and the writer's creation no longer has a clear theme orientation and social responsibility; Second, it subverts the old concept of truth in literature, on the one hand, it gives up the pursuit of historical truth and historical essence, on the other hand, it gives up the true reflection of reality, and the text only has the function of self-reference; Third, the text is characterized by narrative games, which are more flat and the structure is more scattered and broken. The resolution of the text meaning also leads to the disappearance of the text depth pattern, the characters tend to be symbolic, and their personalities are not profound. They give up the symbolic meaning pattern and usually use parody, irony and other writing strategies. In the middle and late 1980s, young writers such as Ma Yuan, Hong Feng, Yu Hua, Su Tong and Ye appeared in the literary world one after another. They tried the stylistic form of novels in a unique way, and were called "avant-garde" by critics. Undoubtedly, avant-garde literature is an important literary phenomenon in the history of contemporary literature in China. From the initial "avant-garde experimental novels" to the so-called "returning to nature", avant-garde writers have embarked on a meaningful road of literary creation. The Goddess of the Lhasa River published by Ma Yuan 1984 puts narrative above stories for the first time, collages several events with no causal connection, breaks through the paradigm and dilemma of traditional novels focusing on "what to write", and turns to show enthusiasm for the novel narrative technique-"how to write", so avant-garde literature slowly begins. Later, a group of writers followed closely, giving full play to the skills and talents of text experiments and walking freely in the maze of narration. Their creative achievements make avant-garde works a dazzling landscape in the literary world. The avant-garde writer * * * is characterized by metafiction (that is, narrating the narrative itself with narrative discourse itself), paying attention to adjusting the distance between narrative discourse and the story, and pursuing the instability of historical life forms in the story. The personalized characteristics of narrative discourse, such as the setting of narrator's role, the symbolization of story characters, narrative traps, narrative speculation and so on. , making their works look different and swaying. It is this exploration of the narrative space of the text form and its structure that not only won these writers the title of pioneers and the attention of critics, but more importantly, the emergence of avant-garde novels put forward new theoretical propositions for the development direction and future of China's novels.

Literary achievements

"Avant-garde literature has created new novel concepts, narrative methods and language experiences. It is no exaggeration to say that they have rewritten a series of basic propositions of contemporary China novels and the definition of the novel itself."

Stylistic challenge

"Avant-garde text is a challenge to traditional stylistic theories and concepts, because it is neither a stylistic variation nor a stylistic evolution of traditional novel stylistic patterns, but a stylistic deconstruction."

Meaningful form

It is true that avant-garde writers realize their "meaningful forms" about literature with a rebellious and radical attitude. Avant-garde novels, while abandoning all kinds of old narrative conventions, have become pure technical operations, complex narrative experiments-creating alienation effects after pieced together bits and pieces, and so on. , set a complex reading barrier for readers. However, since the language came into being, it has two connotations: form and meaning. Swiss structural linguist Saussure said: "Language can be compared to a piece of paper. Thought is positive, voice is negative. We can't cut the positives without cutting the negatives. Similarly, in language, we can't make the sound leave the thought, nor can we make the thought leave the sound. "

Have fun with language

(3) How to write a novel and what to write are two sides of an inseparable whole, and innovation in form inevitably requires innovation in content. Avant-garde writers have been focusing on "how to write" from the day they first entered the literary world, which will inevitably lead to the carnival of language, which not only makes the creators get the pleasure of language, but also pays a heavy price for the loss of the meaning of the text. ? The change of avant-garde writers' creation-from attaching importance to form to significance-is not a simple return. There are many realistic factors in their works, but the treatment of themes and themes is quite different from the realistic method. If we say that from the very beginning, the avant-garde writers' subversion and deconstruction of traditional literary forms are inherently deficient, which is rooted in the realistic soil where avant-garde literature germinates. After 1970s, in China, with the disappearance of divine aura and the migration of ethnic consciousness to individual consciousness, "man" is not only faced with the challenge of real economic trends, but also impacted by various foreign cultural trends, and the ideals and values that people have always believed in and advocated are inevitably questioned. The external historical situation has provided a new turning point for the history of literature. Coupled with the conscious power of artistic form change that has always existed in the history of literature, the avant-garde has absorbed spiritual energy from existential philosophy and the works of masters such as Borges and embarked on a journey of exploration. They are by no means lacking the traditional practical ability or trying to keep up with the fashion, but an inner spiritual need drives them. The radical gesture made by the avant-garde actually shows by actions that only by subverting the old tradition can we open up a new battlefield, which has its inevitable rationality. In the 1990s, with the reform of economic and political system and the establishment of market economy, China completed the 200-year industrialization process in the West in a short time. Oval industrial expansion makes the society full of ridiculous human feelings, but the spiritual temperament in life is poor and powerless, and external conditions once again provide an opportunity for literature to turn. How to look at ordinary or abnormal life forms and reflect people's real pain and various possibilities of human existence in a more appropriate way has become a problem that avant-garde writers must face. ? Furthermore, the exploration and innovation of art forms show the self-realization and freedom improvement of the creative subject, but the loss of the subject discourse, the disappearance of human nature and the narrative of history make the avant-garde writers lost in the subject spirit. Avant-garde writers play a rebellious game against the deep pattern of social history in the form of narration and win the name of "pioneer" The avant-garde works reveal the lack of center, depth, uncertainty, fragmentation and other styles, which make them show postmodern symptoms. However, the emergence of postmodern narrative theory and its practice in China is not the natural result of the local social and cultural development in China, but the foreign acceptance of China avant-garde writers in the sense of intertextuality. From the works of Borges, Faulkner and Heller, they suddenly realized that the original novel could be written in another way, so to some extent, avant-garde writers first imitated its narrative level. The timely turn of avant-garde literature is not an accidental return, migration or even confluence from postmodernism to modernism. They finally walked out of Borges' territory and "showed the characteristics of China's avant-garde literature as a whole"? ④ The exploration of narrative space has gradually shifted from non-empirical abstraction to adaptation to specific context.

Therefore, the transformation of avant-garde literature after 1990s is due to changes in social life, aesthetic objects and aesthetic feelings, and new adjustment is inevitable. The transformation or spiritual change of avant-garde literature is not only the result of individualization of literary creation, but also the requirement of history. Since this period, with the gradual deepening of exploration, avant-garde writers have tried to get out of the dilemma they set for themselves, make timely adjustments, and re-understand and solve the contradiction between "how to write" and "what to write" in literary creation. In a word, the turn of avant-garde literature is neither to cater to the popularization of the masses nor the decline or retreat of avant-garde spirit, but to keep pace with the times and become a symbol of maturity. The avant-garde spirit of avant-garde literature is far from "ending", and avant-garde writers have been "on the road". ? Taking Yu Hua as an example, his creation can be said to be synchronized with the development of avant-garde literature. Yu Hua's early works "April 3 Incident" and "Things in Smoke" show his deep doubts about man and his ecology and humanity. April 3rd itself is a metaphor and symbol. Smoke shows a more avant-garde posture in the narrative space. Absurd events such as fortune-telling, weddings and funerals were forcibly pieced together, and the names of characters were abandoned and replaced by abstract Arabic numeral symbols. Characters and their personalities are all submerged in the sequence of digital symbols, showing complete disregard for human suffering and cruelty of life, but the rhythm of language operation is smooth and moderate. No matter the "April 3" incident or things like smoke, doubts about people's living environment and living conditions, and thoughts on people's suffering do not directly come from the experience world, but the essential truth that hangs over the world, and the metaphysical theme has been fully revealed. Since Living, Yu Hua has alienated the complicated language experiments and stopped setting reading obstacles for readers. The narrative of the story is simple, simple and straightforward, as if returning to the horizon of realism. However, the artistic contrast before and after the creation does not mean that the avant-garde leaders have returned to the old tradition of realism. In Zhang Qinghua's Literary Subtraction, the difference between Yu Hua's writing before and after is only: "In the early stage, he may pay more attention to making experience close to humanity and philosophy, while in the later stage, he pays more attention to making experience close to history and survival." "Pioneer" is a concept of time with great mobility. As time goes on, people will change. Yesterday's pioneers may become defenders today. Not only did the avant-garde literature accepted by the public lose its avant-garde, but the avant-garde writers suddenly began to write popular literature, and it was nothing new that the anti-institutional literati finally accepted the appeasement of the system. But this book belongs to the nature of historical theory, and its task is to sort out the historical trend of a certain period, just like shooting an airship with a camera and fixing it on a negative for a period of time, it still has its artistic value and historical significance. When we review the Sun column on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, the Wild Grass Poetry Society during the Cultural Revolution, the Baiyangdian Poetry Group and the rise of obscure poetry just after the Cultural Revolution, we will still feel fascinated. At that time, the avant-garde influenced the whole social trend of thought, and the debate around avant-garde literature was actually a struggle between culture and thought. And this kind of cultural and ideological contention is the mission of avant-garde literature.