Chinese Modernism 现代主义 or 新感觉派 (1930s)

1. Chinese Modernism 现代主义 or 新感觉派(1930s)

2. Interrelated terms • “Modernism” not to be confused with • modernization: technological progress, with emphasis on materiality of this progress • modernity: the cultural values that underlay this technological and economic advance; science, positivism, free enterprise, progress, humanism, individualism • postmodernism: new cultural dominant to emerge after WWII; a product of late capitalism, consumer economy, and the rise of information technology • Modernism defined: cultural movement existing in an reinforcing (according to some) or antagonist (according to others) relationship with the base of modernization and the values of modernity

3. Western modernism • Broad cultural movement (1890-1930), radical questioning of the past, its cultural values and assumptions • Includes a host of sub-movements: symbolism, dadaism, futurism, imagism, cubism, impressionism, expressionism, etc., which apply to particular arts or sometimes across the arts • intellectual progenitors: Marx, Darwin, Freud, Nietzsche, Einstein, etc. • Social-historical factors: WWI and the breakdown of shared community, human progress, “civilization”; capitalism and industrial acceleration • Technological factors: trains, telegraph-telephone, photography-cinema, etc. and changing perceptions of time and space “The art consequent on the dis-establishing of communal reality and conventional notions of causality, on the destruction of traditional notions of the wholeness of individual character, on the linguistic chaos that ensues when public notions of language have been discredited and when all realities have become subjective fictions”—Bradbury/MacFarlane, Modernism

4. Characteristics of Modernism La Danse, by Matisse (1910) • Aesthetic self-consciousness • Non-representational, non-conventional • Bleakness, darkness, anxiety, alienation • The breakdown of humanist bourgeois view of the subject • primitivism Above: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon by Pablo Picasso (1907); below: Dada artist Ribemont-Dessaignes’ “Silence” (1915) Right: Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893)

5. Reception of modernism in China • Avant-garde/modernism literature from the West known to May Fourth • introduced through journals like Short Story Monthly, Oriental Miscellany, etc. • As a whole, though, avant-garde or modernist forms did not capture their imagination in the way that realism and romanticism did because • China lacked the historical development of capitalism to react against • Literature served primarily the interest of modernity and not to critique it • Western modernism’s view of the “autonomy” of art from life at odds with Chinese modernity’s view of the function of art (social, ethical, didactic, revolutionary)

6. Modernism as a self-conscious movement in China • Two groups of writers associated with Chinese modernism: • Xiandai 现代(Les Contemporains) group, or the New Sensationist or New-Perceptionist 新感覺派 • Connected with the journal Xiandai (1932-34) • Liu Na’ou 劉呐鷗, Ye Lingfeng 葉靈鳳, Shi Zhecun 施蟄存, Mu Shiying 穆時英 • Symbolist poetry movement: • Poets like Li Jinfa 李金發 and Dai Wangshu 戴望舒 • Influenced by French modernists such as Mallarmé and Verlaine Pang Xunqin (庞薰琴) “Son of the Earth” (1934)

7. Silently she moves closer Moves closer and casts A sigh-like glance She glides by Like a dream Hazy and confused like a dream As in a dream she glides past Like a lilac spray, This girl glides past beside me; She silently moves away, moves away Up to the broken-down bamboo fence, To the end of the rainy alley. In the rain's sad song, Her color vanishes Her fragrance diffuses, Even her Sigh-like glance, Lilac-like discontent Vanish. Rainy Alley (雨巷) by Dai Wangshu Holding up an oil-paper umbrella, I loiter aimlessly in the long, long And lonely rainy alley, I hope to encounter A lilac-like girl Nursing her resentment A lilac-like color she has A lilac-like fragrance, A lilac-like sadness, Melancholy in the rain, Sorrowful and uncertain; She loiters aimlessly in this lonely rainy alley Holding up an oil-paper umbrella Just like me And just like me Walks silently, Apathetic, sad and disconsolate Holding up an oil-paper umbrella, alone Aimlessly walking in the long, long And lonely rainy alley, I wish for A lilac-like girl Nursing her resentment glide by.

8. Modernism in China: The Japanese influence “I am a rather straightforward and sincere person; there is nothing I won’t say openly for all to hear. I am unwilling, as so many today are, to adorn my true face with some progressive pigment, or to pass my days in hypocrisy shouting hypocritical slogans, or to manipulate the psychology of the masses, political maneuvering, self-propaganda, and the like to maintain a position once held in the past or raise up my personal prestige. I feel this is base and narrow-minded behavior and I won’t do it. If I am called backward, a fence sitter, a peeled radish, whatever it be, at least I can stand on top of the world and should out loud: ‘I am true to myself and to others.’” (Mu Shiying, “Preface to Public Cemetery”) • influences of the Japanese Neo-Perceptionist School （新感觉派） • tended toward the apolitical, outside of prescribed policies of either left or right

9. Shanghai: urban space for Chinese modernism • for a century (from 1843 to 1943) Shanghai was a treaty-port of divided territories: a “semicolonial” city with foreign concessions and a cosmopolitan flavor • by the beginning of the twentieth century the Shanghai concessions already had the "infrastructure" of a modern city and provided rich material culture: dance halls, cinemas, nightclubs, department stores, skyscrapers, racetracks, automobiles, stylish clothes, etc. • The seductive and repellent sides of the city

11. Shi Zhecun施蛰存 (1905-2003) • born in Hangzhou but grew up in Shanghai • studied in Zhejiang University (1921), Shanghai University (1922), and Zhendan University (1926); began writing in the universities; influenced by Guo Moruo and Mao Dun • editor of Shuimo Book Store and editor of Xiandai (Les Contemporaines)(see right) • Spent the remainder of his life teaching English and Chinese literature at various universities • wrote over fifty stories and a few poems and essays. Most famous ones include “Shangyuan Lantern” (1930), “The General’s Head” (1932), “One Evening in the Rainy Season” (1933), etc.

12. “One Evening in the Rainy Season” 梅雨之夕 (1933) Japanese artist Suzuki Harunobu’s (1725-70) woodblock print