One of the most prominent phenomena in the social and cultural life of twentieth-century China was the movement for "enlightenment"("qimeng"). Born in the wake of the May 4, 1919 movement and the promotion of new literature and education, "enlightenment" became the slogan of the country's ideological and cultural development during the first decades of the new China. However, it is noteworthy that now, after more than half a century, the ideas of "enlightenment" have received a new relevance in the Chinese cultural space and have become the subject of lively controversy. The article analyzes the causes and consequences of this phenomenon and defines new meanings of the concept of "enlightenment "in modern China based on the work of the outstanding writer of" literature of the new period " Wang Anyi.

Keywords: "Chinese Enlightenment", Wang Anyi, "literature of the new period".

CHINESE CONCEPT OF "ENLIGHTENMENT" IN WANG ANYI'S PROSE

Maria V. SEMENYUK

This article discusses the concept of "Enlightenment" in the socio-cultural environment of China's during the twentieth century. Appeared at the beginning of the century as part of the "May Fourth Movement", the idea of "enlightenment" became relevant and discussed again in 80s and 90s. Nowadays the concept is not only restored, but also significantly rethought, which is reflected in a number of literary works. This article analyzes the causes and consequences of this phenomenon, and identifies the new values of the concept of "enlightenment" in contemporary China, based on works by a prominent writer of the so-called "Literature of the New Era" - Wang Anyi.

Keywords: Chinese "Enlightenment", Wang Anyi, "Literature of the New Era".

Despite the fact that after the "cultural revolution", marked by radical campaigns of "retraining" of the Chinese intelligentsia, "enlightenment" is perceived by many as an odious term with an almost negative connotation, a number of researchers, as well as many modern writers in China, refer to it as a positive phenomenon, and look for variants of the modern vision of "enlightenment" in a productive way. A good illustration of this is the work of one woman

Maria V. SEMENYUK, PhD Student, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Lomonosov Moscow State University; E-mail: novembertune@yandex.ru.

Maria SEMENYUK, PhD Applicant, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Lomonosov Moscow State University.

page 105
one of the leading writers of mainland China, Wang Anyi, who wrote a novel called "The Age of Enlightenment" by the author, which received one of the most prestigious literary awards in the country in 2007.

First of all, it is necessary to clarify the very meaning of the term "enlightenment" in the Chinese socio-cultural space. It should be clarified that by using this term, most Chinese authors do not mean to refer to the corresponding phenomenon of world literature and culture. They use this term in its proper meaning, indicating an exclusively Chinese phenomenon.

The very slogan of "enlightenment" was first proclaimed in the period from 1915 to 1917, as part of the movement "for a new culture" ("Xin Wenhua yundong") and the" literary revolution "("Wenxue geming"). The very choice of the term "tsimeng" as the slogan of these movements is noteworthy. Traditional Chinese culture contains a large body of didactic ideas about the "cultural enlightenment" of the people, which, as academician N. I. Konrad noted, are most often recorded in the Chinese language using the polysemous lexeme "wen". "Wen is a word that denotes what refers to the enlightenment carried out by means of writing, i.e., to all types of literature" [Konrad, 1966, p. 88].

Activists of the May 4 movement sought to emphasize a break with the previous tradition, and therefore the much more modern word "tsimeng" was chosen as the slogan, which can be translated as "enlighten the ignorant". Indeed, in the beginning, this movement set itself rather educational goals: educating and enlightening the masses of the illiterate and, in their understanding, ignorant masses, spreading advanced Western science and ideology, overcoming the remnants of the old feudal society. However, as is typical of Chinese culture, the main instrument of enlightenment was not so much any social or administrative activity, but rather literature and art. Thus, "enlightenment" became not only one of the numerous political campaigns of that time, but also a kind of "literary current". It was headed by a number of prominent writers and publicists of that time: Chen Duxiu, Hu Shi, Qian Xuantong, Cai Yuanpei, and later other prominent writers joined them, in particular Ba Jin and Hu Feng. Although they were people of generally different social and artistic views, their literary activity within the movement was subordinated to a common task - "with the help of advanced Western thought and culture, to awaken the mind and consciousness of the people, to improve their spirit" (Chen, 2003, p.270).

Most scholars of twentieth-century Chinese literature and culture agree that the further development of the Qimeng movement was not entirely favorable. In the 1930s, there was a fierce debate about the problem of "mass art", and in this discussion, the "enlighteners" insisted on the importance of the" propaganda "function of literature, and, as the researcher of the Qimeng phenomenon Wang Guangdong notes," the ideas of the movement became much more political." [Wang Guangdong, 2001, p. 237]. At that time, the main task of the enlighteners was to "use a form that is understandable to the masses, to convey the ideas of the revolution to them" [ibid., 2001, p. 237]. The enlightener - enlightened antinomy that follows logically from the ideas of "tsimeng" has acquired a new sharpness, and many artists have become more inclined to recognize their unity with the "enlightened" masses than to deny their (and therefore their) creative potential. The position of the enlighteners began to weaken, and the movement lost many supporters. A number of talented writers of this period, such as Shen Congwen, Li Jiezhen, Xiao Hong, in their work abandoned the idea of "from enlightenment to revolution" and turned to the daily life of the people, outside the context of ideological assessment and revolutionary rhetoric. According to Chen Sihe, a prominent literary scholar and professor at Fudan University, " educators began to have doubts about their own ideas or the results that their implementation might lead to, or perhaps they saw that what they believe in is in Chinese

page 106
this will not lead to the desired results... This not only destroyed their hope, but also raised doubts about themselves, their own position and beliefs" [Chen, 2003, p.161]. Anyway, by the 1940s, the literary intelligentsia, having lost its position as" enlighteners", gradually became the object of ridicule and attacks from the ideologists of the new culture, and after the" liberation "and the creation of the PRC, it also became the object of"re - education". Later, in the decade of the Cultural revolution, when educational institutions across the country were shut down and students and teachers were sent to villages for "retraining," millions of people lost the opportunity to get an education even at the secondary school level, and the idea of "educating" the masses seemed to have absolutely lost any positive significance It is firmly connected in the minds of people with the sad consequences of the" enlightenment " of Kultrev.

However, the 1980s, marked by the" opening-up reforms "and the creation of a new Chinese society freed from the ideological dictates of the" cultural revolution", brought with it a new wave of interest in the ideas of" Qimeng " and led to a reassessment of their significance for Chinese culture and society. The reason for this, first of all, was the need to rethink the status and role of the intelligentsia in the new Chinese society. At this point, in an attempt to understand the ways of developing Chinese culture and literature of the "new period"1, many intellectuals once again turned to the experience of the "May 4 movement". Thus, in the opening speech at the Conference dedicated to the ten years of Development of New Period Literature, held in October 1986, it was announced that" new period literature "was the next deeply significant literary revolution after the" May 4 literary revolution " [Wenxue pinglun (Literary Criticism), 1986, N 6]. This kind of parallel demonstrated an interest in sociocultural phenomena at the beginning of the century, and discussions about the need for" enlightenment " gained a second wind.

Since the 1980s and up to the present, the understanding of the "enlightenment" by literary and cultural scholars in China has often been in line with the polemic about the "national" in literature and society. As part of the search for national identity and the "Chinese spirit", so characteristic of the culture of the "new period", which found itself in an ideological vacuum, many authors began to talk about "folk" ("Mingjian") as the core of values of Chinese literature and culture, not only ancient, but also modern. At the same time, when talking about "folk", we are not talking about folklore or rural culture, but about a kind of alternative culture in relation to the official one. Thus, one of the proponents of the concept of "national", Professor Wang Guangdong, identifies as its main features "emergence in areas that are rather poorly controlled by the state authorities", "close connection with the primitive life principle" and " aesthetic value of freedom and identity "[Wang Guangdong, 2001, p. 233]2, but it denies its direct connection with the rural socio-cultural space (which used to be an integral element of understanding "folk culture"). It is noteworthy that one of the chapters of his research is titled "Enlightenment and the people" and insists on overcoming the antithesis between them: "The relationship between the intelligentsia and the people's spirit consists not in the rejection of the spirit of enlightenment, but in the concretization, practical implementation of the ideology of enlightenment" [ibid., 2001, p. 235]. Thus, modern researchers criticize the outdated opposition: on the one hand, the educational position and social obligations of the intelligentsia, on the other - the "backward" agrarian folk culture. They put forward the thesis that in modern China "folk" is moving into the sphere of mass, dynamically developing culture, including urban culture, and the vector of the new "enlightenment"

1 In China, the surge of interest in literary creativity and its active recovery and development that occurred in the 1980s is commonly referred to as" Xing shiqi wenxue " - "literature of the new period".

2 For the modern concept of Chinese "folk" and the controversy surrounding the term, see, for example: [Chen, 1994; Nan, 1999; Hong, 1993].

page 107
it should not be opposed to this culture, but productive in relation to it. Thus, "enlightenment" in the new Chinese society becomes one of the ways to form new cultural forms.

A vivid example of a new interpretation of the ideas of "Qimeng" can be found, in particular, in the works of the talented Shanghai writer Wang Anyi, who actively addresses the problems of the "lost generation" and its future. Wang Anyi, who is considered by many critics to be one of the most significant figures in the Chinese literary scene in recent decades, belongs to a generation that has been caught in the millstones of the campaign "to go to the mountains and villages for retraining", and in her work she has repeatedly made attempts to artistically rethink this historical period and its consequences. This theme remains relevant to her throughout the entire period of her work: her first novel, published in 1986, was entitled "School Leavers of 1969" 3, and one of her last major works, The Age of Enlightenment (2007), is devoted again to this period.

The image of the so-called Lao sanjie4, young people who were caught in the first wave of repression directed against the "right-wing elements" and faced the actual destruction of their own ideals, occupies a large place in the artistic world of Wang Anyi. The education they received before the "cultural revolution" formed a certain type of thinking, "literate" young people, full of lofty aspirations and semi-utopian ideas, who could not stand the test of the campaign "sending people to the mountains, villages and remote areas for retraining". The actual destruction of the spiritual core, the collapse of ideals and hopes was perceived by young intellectuals as a tragedy, and the feeling of bitterness and hopelessness became the dominant part of their worldview.

A vivid depiction of the tragedy of this generation can be found in one of Wang's most famous novels, the 1990 novel "Uncle's Story". The main character of this work is a certain "Uncle", who in the novel goes from a young intellectual who dreams of" enlightening " the village, to an ordinary village teacher who spends his days teaching in a rural school, having affairs with female students, drinking hot drinks and beating his wife. Later, when the former "right-wing elements" become heroes-martyrs of the "cultural revolution", the Uncle, who is trying in every possible way to leave the village, creatively embellishes the story of his persecution in the village for immoral behavior and the subsequent divorce from his wife, composes a romantic story about his dreams and sufferings and thanks to this manages to gain fame and become a successful writer. Since then, all his efforts have been aimed at maintaining this illusory history and trying to forget the unpleasant reality. "This period of humiliation, when he was treated like a yard dog, like a torn cat, like a small bug, this period destroyed his personality and his future to the ground, became a funeral bell ringing for him.. He could not possibly have allowed this period to exist" [Wang Anyi, 2004, p. 278]. In this way, Wang Anyi paints an image of a generation armed with various ideals and concepts that tragically did not coincide with reality. Having failed to accept the reality of the past, it seeks ways to hide from it, including with the help of literary fiction. "Generally speaking, after learning the painfulness of practice, they began to strive to see the world only as a theory." Despite the formal "success" that has come to the hero, he does not manage to become a part of the new life and understand it, because, hiding from thoughts about the past, the hero is busy with speculative constructions

3, 1969-this is the year when Wang Anyi herself, before she had time to finish school, was sent to Anhui Province with her peers to "study with peasants".

4 Literally, this can be translated as "three senior graduates", as in China it is customary to call students in 1966, 1967 and 1968, who could not finish their studies in school due to the unfolding "cultural revolution"

page 108
and writing new stories about yourself. So, from the conflict of rejection of the tragic reality of the past, the breaking of the inner core, the conflict of "lao sanjie" with the world turns into a conflict with the present. Trying to "stop" the elusive world, turning it into a set of rational phenomena, they are increasingly distancing themselves from reality.

In addition to" Lao sanjie", Wang's works pay much attention to the next" lost generation", to which the writer herself belongs in real historical time. These people, who outwardly experienced and suffered less than their predecessors, inwardly experienced a tragedy, perhaps more terrible. They experienced hunger and "going to the villages for retraining", but the worst wave of repression did not affect them, and they entered a new life young and full of energy. However, their childhood was spent in a chaotic world, in a kind of" melting pot", everything around them was constantly changing, and what seemed eternal and unshakable was, in the end, mercilessly destroyed. That's how they grew up - a generation that didn't have time to form their own beliefs, without personal ideals, without faith in anything, because they saw the destruction of everything and everything. Wang harshly and bitterly characterizes his generation: "We became a generation of people who had nothing, no economic opportunities, no social status, no sufficient health, all our dreams and hopes resulted only in idle conversations" [Wang Anyi, 2007, p.286].

It is this generation that becomes the central object of the image in one of Wang Anyi's last novels, the 2007 novel "The Age of Enlightenment". Its main characters are yesterday's schoolchildren, children of the so-called revolutionary red aristocracy, who, after the closure of schools, were left to themselves and tried to find a place in the world around them. The destruction of not only the social structure as a whole, but also of the family (for example, at the very beginning of the novel, the main character's father gets a label and goes to prison, the children are forced to publicly disown him, and the mother, refusing to do this, commits suicide) turns their life into a kind of "tent camp", where "the family"they can only name the' all-China family of the revolution', i.e. Red Guards like themselves. At the beginning of the novel, we meet young guys "whose communal family life has not given them even the most basic knowledge about the world and human relations. Therefore, absolute dogmatism reigned in their minds" [Wang Anyi, 2007, p. 34].

Instead of any life experience, their minds are filled with various abstract ideologies gleaned from books, and they spend most of their time in philosophical discussions with each other. Thus, in the first part of the novel, the main character Nanchang and his comrade Chen Zhoran discuss the transformation of the socialist model, whether there will be a Third World War and a Fourth International, Marx, Engels, Darwin, nihilists, Trotskyists, revisionism, surplus value, and other important things that they have never encountered before. our lives have never collided. These discussions, as they think, fill the yawning void that suddenly appeared in their lives, as the author notes, " these discussions were very suitable for them, on the one hand, the question did not directly affect them, which means that it was possible to maintain distance and objectivity, and secondly, it did not require them specific actions" [Wang Anyi, 2007, p. 26].

However, calling his novel "The Age of Enlightenment", the author focuses on the process of growing up and educating these children, which takes place, although contrary to historical conditions, but in full accordance with the natural structure of life. Despite the fact that such a variant of the title could definitely have a rather negative reading, and, as one of the researchers of the novel, Professor Zhang Xudong, notes, "this word could inevitably cause some irritation in the circle of writers and critics, and more broadly, in the circle of educated people" [Zhang, 2008], Wang Anyi, having gone through several examples of the novel's In the end, they decided on the "Age of Enlightenment". And indeed, the central object of the novel's image is not only the author's image

page 109
sympathy for the lost youth, alienation from society and the historical process, but also the image of the process of growing up, the gradual knowledge of the real world by the main character. Unlike the hero of the "Uncle's Story", whose tragedy remains unresolved and in the final novel the hero is killed by his own son, the main character of the" Enlightenment Era", the" little general " of the Nanchang Revolution, is depicted in a dynamic positive development.

The novel is based on the interaction of the central character, Nanchang, with a chain of others, with whom he enters into a kind of life "dialogue" and thereby moves to the next stage of understanding the world around him. Thus, the hero's friendship with his main interlocutor in matters of politics and society, the ideological "mentor" Chen Zhoran, ends when the latter, faced with a worldly situation, demonstrates his complete helplessness. Chen, who proclaims various ideas and theories and is verbally interested in real life (for example, he asks Nanchang's poorly educated older sister in detail about her life in the village), disappears from the pages of the novel as soon as he discovers that this same sister has very real feelings for him. This is followed by a string of new "interlocutors" of Nanchang: a young man with tuberculosis, Haiou, whose communication shifts the hero's attention from social phenomena to the phenomena of life in general, to its universal, biological laws: a self-taught artist Ah Ming, who, while not belonging to the "revolutionary masses" at all, has enough determination to go first to a remote village as part of a campaign that Nanchang doesn't have the guts to do, and many others. The same role is played, for example, by a youthful infatuation with a girl from an ordinary Shanghai alley, which opens up for him the world of "middle - class life" that he initially despised, and, finally, one of the novel's climaxes is the story of the hero's connection with the daughter of the "bourgeois element" Jiabao, which ends with the girl's pregnancy and subsequent abortion. At this point, Nanchang, who only knows how to theorize and polemicize, is finally forced to understand what responsibility for actions is, what suffering is - his own and another person's, and in the end he concludes that the world, it turns out, does not consist of different ideas and maxims, but "is divided into those who cause pain and those who to whom it is inflicted" [Wang Anyi, 2007, p. 83].

Also very revealing is one of the central episodes in the novel, when the main characters, a detachment of "little generals of the revolution", under the cover of night come to visit Jiabao's grandfather, a former prominent industrialist. However, the purpose of their visit is not an accusation or a search, they want to talk to him, or rather, they ask him to tell the story of his life. Jiabao's grandfather, the head of a patriarchal capitalist family, is the epitome of reactionary evil for young revolutionaries, but he is interesting to them because they want to learn more about their country's past than just understand it. Thus, the novel emphasizes its central idea - that growing up and learning about the world have a universal value, independent of political doctrines, historical and social situations.

The" enlightenment " of the characters in Wang's novel becomes something very personal, a slow process of spiritual and aesthetic maturation. The need for education and development is depicted almost as a bodily sensation, physiologically: just as a growing organism needs nutrients, so a young creature needs ideas, guidance, and life experience. Moreover, the new "enlightenment" in Wang's novel has nothing to do with book knowledge or literature. This understanding of the" enlightenment " does not follow the old trend of the revolutionary literature of the early twentieth century, but rather in the mainstream of Chinese classical literature. Thus, another researcher of the novel, Professor Luo Gang of the Eastern Pedagogical University, notes the similarity of the structure and themes of the "Enlightenment Era "with classical Chinese novels devoted to the" upbringing "of the hero, in particular with" novels about daredevils", in which the hero, moving from teacher to teacher, acquires knowledge about himself and the world [Lo, 2007].

page 110
Wang Anyi in his work combines the subject and object of enlightenment, which were previously fundamentally separated, and interprets "qimeng"as the knowledge of life not through abstract ideas, but through its realities, even if not always sublime. As Zhang Xudong points out, when talking about the characters in the novel, "they didn't see the dark, hidden, dirty side of life that makes it true." Wang Anyi herself noticed: "If the water is too clean, there will be no fish in it" (Zhang, 2008). The novel "The Age of Enlightenment" becomes a narrative about the new "enlightenment" of the Chinese "lost generation", "the story of how the second generation of the Chinese revolution from the sphere of ideals and concepts found themselves in the sphere of life, how to move from" country "to" society", from ideas to actions, from books to books." in practice, from self-confidence and self-centeredness to come to an understanding of this world and to build an organic and multidimensional interaction with it." [Zhang, 2008].

* * *

Thus, we can trace how in the culture and literature of the " new period "in the process of searching for a new core of national culture and creating a value field, a kind of" return to the past " is observed, but at a qualitatively new level. Thus, contemporary Chinese artists no longer turn to dramatic depictions of the tragic experience of the "cultural revolution" (typical, for example, for the literature of "scars" and "thoughts about the past" of the early 1980s), but rather look for ways to rethink this experience, focusing, among other things, on the socio-cultural phenomena of the beginning of the century. Features of this phenomenon can be found in the works of a number of prominent writers of modern China, in particular in the works of Wang Anyi, He Jianming, Mo Yan and a number of others. The new interest in the ideology of "Qimeng" in the culture and literature of the late XX - early XXI centuries demonstrates a certain readiness of Chinese society to reevaluate not only the previous era, but also its current position, the desire to move away from the old meanings of revolutionary slogans and at the same time ensure their continuity. Thus, the tragedy of the Chinese "lost generation" gets not only awareness in China of the "new period", but also options for resolution.

list of literature

Wang Anyi. Qimeng shidai (The Age of Enlightenment). Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe Publ., 2007.

Wang Anyi. Shushu de gushi (The Story of the Uncle) / / Wang Anyi zhongpian xiaosho xuan (Anthology of Wang Anyi's novels). Shanghai: Shanghai shehuikexueyuan chubanshe, 2004.

Wang Guangdong. Xiangdai, lanman, mingjian (Modern, Romantic, folk). Shanghai, Shanghai Renmin chubanshe Publ., 2001.

Wenxue pinglun (Literary Criticism), 1986, N 6.

Konrad N. I. West and East, Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1966.

Luo Gang, Ni Wenjian, Zhang Xudong, and others "Shay " qi" shay " de meng? Guanyu Wang Anyi "Qimeng shidai de taolun". ("Who "and" whom " enlightens? Discussion of Wang Anyi's novel "The Age of Enlightenment") / / Wenyi Zhengming, 2007, No. 12.

Nan Fan. Minjian de yi (Meaning of "national") / / Wenyi zhengming. 1999. N 3.

Hong Changtai. Tao mingjian qu (In search of the "people's"). Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe Publ., 1993.

Zhang Xudong. Qimeng de jingshen xiangxiangxue-tangtan Wang Anyi "Qimeng shidai" li de xu yu shijai. (A study of "enlightenment" as a psychic phenomenon - about the false and the real in Wang Anyi's novel "The Age of Enlightenment") / / Kaifan shidai. 2008. N 3.

Chen Sihe. Minjian de fuchen (Deep and superficial in the" people's") / / Shanghai wenxue. 1994. N 1.

Chen Sihe. Zhongguo xiandandai wenxue mingpian shiujiang (Fifteen lectures on famous works of modern and contemporary Chinese literature). Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe Publ., 2003.

page 111

Permanent link to this publication: