Shi Jingcun wrote a letter to Yang Yingping, the author of this article, in 1992.
The Troubles of Kumarosh: A Collection of Historical Novels of Shi Ji Cun published in Japan
Shi Jingcun is a famous modern novelist, poet, scholar, translator and editor, publishing the novel collections "Shangyuan Lantern", "General's Bottom Head", "Plum Rainy Night", "Good Woman's Behavior", "Xiaozhen Collection", translating more than 10 million words of foreign literary works, running "First-line Bookstore", "Water Foam Bookstore" and "Donghua Bookstore" with friends, publishing "Lan You", "Ying Luo", "Trackless Train", "New Literature and Art", "Modern", "Literary and Art Landscape", "Literary and Rice Sketches" and other publications. Shi Jingcun's greatest contribution was to make psychoanalytic novels unique in the history of modern Chinese literature, and the magazine he edited became one of the most influential magazines in modern China.
But for this important writer in the new literary history, domestic research did not start early. So much so that Shi Jingcun said in a letter to the author on August 9, 1991 that he was an "unearthed cultural relic" and "did not expect to suddenly become 'popular' in recent years, and he was also quite touched by the curiosity of young people." The earliest and most influential research was Wu Fuhui's "The Return of Chinese Psychological Novels to Realism- Commenting on Chunyang" published in October 1982, No. 6, affirming that "shi jicun novels have no shortage of good articles". This was followed by Yan Jiayan's long essay "On the Novel of the New Sensations of the 1930s", published in the First Issue of Chinese Social Sciences in 1985. In 1987, Qian Liqun and others wrote "Thirty Years of Modern Chinese Literature", which first made Shi Jiecun's name appear in the history of modern Chinese literature, and the book discussed in the section "Haipai Novel" that Shi Jingcun "expresses human nature and the love between men and women by the inner life of man", saying that his psychoanalytic novels were unique in the 1930s and laid his position in the history of modern Chinese literature. In contrast, overseas research on Shi Jingcun is much earlier, especially among scholars in the English-speaking world.
Focus on the modernity factor
There are many research monographs on Shi Jingcun in the English-speaking world, and there are dozens of research papers. The earliest to start Shi Jingcun's research was the scholar Xia Zhiqing's "History of Modern Chinese Novels" published in the United States in 1961, from the introduction of "Modern" magazine to the introduction of Shi Jingcun, and it is believed that the editor-in-chief of the magazine, Shi Jingcun himself, is a famous novelist. Xia Zhiqing commented that Shi Ji existed in novels such as "The General's Bottom Head" and "Shi Xiu", and made Freudian studies of famous historical figures and legendary figures, and believed that under his wise editorial policy, "Modern" magazine had made great contributions to promoting the development of serious literature, revealing the characteristics and status of Shi Jicun's creation.
The American scholar Li Oufan and his high-footed history book Mei have the most influence and depth on Shi Jingcun's research. They made a special trip from the United States to Shanghai to interview Shi Jingcun and got a lot of first-hand information. In 1999, Li Oufan published by Harvard University Press, "Shanghai Modernity: A New Urban Culture in China 1930-1945", devoted more than 50,000 words to Shi Jingcun in the fourth and fifth chapters. The fourth chapter, "Textual Displacement: Literary Modernism Found in Books and Periodicals," begins with Modern magazine and affirms Shi Jingcun's avant-garde and avant-garde, arguing that Shi Jingcun's circle of writers "walks together out of a strong artistic sensibility cultivated by similar educational backgrounds and language majors", and that they are cosmopolitans and more "avant-garde". The fifth chapter provides a comprehensive and meticulous analysis of Shi Jingcun's novel, saying that he "may be the first truly modernist writer in China." Li Oufan believes that "as an original writer, he (Shi Jiecun) is a pioneer, a pioneer, because he dares to go deep into the inner world of complete strangers and boldly look back at the irrational power"; Shi Jicun uses the theories of Freud, Philistines and others and the ideological resources of Western literary works to present "a world that is both realistic and surreal".
After Shi Shumei interviewed Shi Jingcun, in 2001 he published a monograph entitled "The Temptation of Modernity: Modernist Writing in Semi-Colonial China (1917-1937)" (Berkeley: University of California Press), which devoted nearly 30,000 words to Shi Jingcun's novels, believing that he had created a new secondary genre for modernist novels. Shi Shumei also said that the intrinsicity in Chinese literary modernism is closely related to psychoanalysis, and the emotional psychological experience of modern urban men in Shi Jingcun's novels "just embodies the corresponding dimension of psychoanalytic theory."
Wang Yiyan's "Flaneur in the Collection of Shi Jiecun's Short Stories" raises an interesting topic - "Flaneur", which means "urban wanderer" in French. The article argues that the characters in Shi Jingcun's short stories, although similar to the "Flaneur" in French literature, have Chinese characteristics and resonate with the prominent image of the tramp in the Chinese literary tradition. The author further points out that Shi Jingcun's short stories are a model of local modernism, but also bear the imprint of multiple literary traditions. Kim Soon-jin, a university of foreign Chinese Korea, wrote an article entitled "Park Tae-won and Shi Ji-jin's Urban Understanding of Seoul and Shanghai", which also pays attention to the modern urban experience of the writer. Based on the modernist novelists Park Tae-won and Seo Hyun-chun, who worked in Korea and China in the 1930s, the author believes that the two use the urban spaces of Seoul and Shanghai as the background to paint unique urban landscapes.
He has a soft spot for historical fiction
The Japanese scholar Shigeharu Aono has a special love for Shi's historical novels. In 2018, he translated Shi Jingcun's collection of historical novels "The Troubles of Kumarosh", published by a Japanese friend bookstore, and included 6 historical novels including "Kumarosh", "Shogun's Bottom Head", "Shi Xiu", "Princess Ah", "Master Li", and "Master Huangxin". In February 1987, Shigeharu Aono published a paper analyzing Shi's historical novels, "Shi Ji Cun's "Kumarosh—and Its Fictional Process," "exploring the problem of Shi Ji Cun's novels dealing with the relationship between literary fiction and historical frameworks." In his essay "The Methodological Consciousness of Shi Jicun from the Perspective of Historical Fiction", Aono Shigeharu once again discusses related issues: "What I am concerned about is the methodological consciousness or the understanding of fiction that writers show in dealing with 'historical' subjects. He believes that the history of Shi Jingcun never "borrows the past to satirize the present", but "makes a new interpretation of history". He said: "Shi Jicun's historical novels are characterized by the absorption of historical themes while incorporating a large number of detailed psychological descriptions into the works according to psychology. He added Western-style psychological depictions to his narrative-oriented historical stories, and his works can also be called historical psychological novels. The psychology he depicts is modern, yet not only modern people, but also people before and after the modern era can also find this underlying psychology. "This is the theory of knowing the voice.
The Czech scholar Marian Gaulik's essay "The Social and Literary Temperament of Modern Chinese Literature" describes Shi Jingcun's preference for Allen Poe and the influence of his historical novels, arguing that Shi Jicun's "General's Bottom Head" and "Kumarosh" both provide Freudian descriptions of historical and legendary characters. As editor of the magazine Modern, Shi appeared in the English translation to express his interest in modern French literature and surrealism.
American researcher Christopher saw the influence of traditional cultural elements on the creation of Shi Jingcun's novels. Christopher's 2017 edition of The Edge of Modernism: Xu Xi, Anonymous and Chinese Popular Literature in the 1940s, published by the University of Edinburgh Press, focuses on a comparative analysis of how Shi And Mu Shiying blended legend, tradition and mythology into their creations.
Other researchers who focus on Shi Jingcun's historical novels are Elena Sidvigiova's "The Entanglement of Decadence: Love and Celibacy in Shi Jingcun and the Works of France", Zhang Jingyuan's "Psychoanalysis in China: Literary Deformation 1919-1949", William Chikov's "The Foreign Language of Kumarosh: Shi Jingcun's Modernist Historical Novel", and Wang Juan's "Desire, Mutilation, Divinity: The Existential Dilemma in Shi Jingcun's Historical Novels".
Interact with overseas scholars
Shi Jicun has many overseas friends, and Gu Jian's edited and published "Shi Jicun Overseas Books" contains more than 290 letters written by Shi Jingcun to overseas scholars and friends, of which the most frequent and in-depth discussion should be Harvard University professor Li Oufan and Yale University professor Sun Kangyi.
Li Oufan said in the preface to the Chinese edition of "Shanghai Modernity: A New Urban Culture in China 1930-1945" that he heard Xia Zhiqing talk about Shi Jicun in 1979. "Professor Xia Zhiqing reminded me that as early as the 1930s, there was a magazine called "Modern" in Shanghai, and some people wrote novels in a modernist way... Mr. Xia woke up the dreamer with a word. Since then, Li Oufan began to frequently interview Shi Jiucun, and the 9 letters from Shi Jiecun to Li Oufan recorded the details of their interactions in the "Shi Jiecun Overseas Book". In addition, Li Oufan also published "The Pursuit of Modernity", which has a special chapter "Pioneers of Modern Chinese Novels - Shi Jingcun, Mu Shiying, Liu Naou", which compares and analyzes the similarities and differences of the Shanghai New Sensation School.
Sun Kangyi began to associate with Shi Jingcun in 1984, and their interaction began with lexical research. In 1980, in addition to teaching work, Shi Jingcun began to prepare for the establishment of Lexicology. In November 1981, the first series of Lexicology was published by East China Normal University Publishing House, filling the gap in lexical research at that time. In order to enhance the influence of lexicology overseas, Shi Jiecun opened an overseas special number for the journal, and invited Sun Kangyi, a professor of the Department of East Asian Languages at Yale University, to write overseas, and the two have had more than 10 years of correspondence and exchanges. Sun Kangyi collected more than 70 letters from the two men and published them as "From beishan lou to qianxuezhai". In the preface to her monograph "Research on Words and Literature", Sun Kangyi especially thanked Shi Jingcun for his guidance and help to her. Sun Kangyi also wrote articles on Shi Jingcun' essays, "Shi Jingcun's Westward Journey to Escape Poems" and "Shi Jingcun's Poetic Memories: Eighty Poems of Floating Life". Yale University in the United States also regards Shi Jingcun's "Hundred Sayings of Tang Poems" as a Chinese culture textbook for graduate students in the Department of East Asian Languages, which expands the overseas influence of Shi Jingcun's works and makes it a research object for more scholars. It can be seen that overseas research on modern Chinese literature and the study of Shi Jingcun have always accompanied the development of modern Chinese literature.
(The author is a professor at Nanjing Xiaozhuang University)