III. Value Orientation and Meaning Inquiry: The Ultimate Concern of Literature

Literature realizes the realization, revelation, critique and transcendence of the extreme survival of human beings because it creates a unique world. Literature realizes its unique critical and transcendental functions through setting, inquiring, and seeking values, meanings, and ideals of life, society, and the universe.

Value orientation and meaning inquiry become the fundamental basis for literature to criticize and transcend reality.

Value orientation: the aspiration, affirmation, and glorification of a certain value ideal that cares for the survival of human beings.

Meaning inquiry: the inquiry of the meaning of the existence of life.

Throughout the ages, literature and art, as well as other forms of human spiritual life, such as philosophy and religion, have set up many value goals for human beings, and have become the most basic value basis for human spiritual life.

For example: truth, goodness, beauty, love, tolerance, justice, generosity, friendliness and so on.

Take Shen Congwen as an example. Border Town is a typical expression of the ideals of beauty and love. Long Zhu" and "Small Scene under the Moon", poetic tone, passionate praise.

Shen Congwen here, "love" and "beauty" are interrelated.

"Love" is a kind of pure, sincere, spiritual and physical harmony of emotions: "beauty" in addition to natural scenery, but also refers to this between lovers as well as between people pure, simple and sincere emotions.

"Love" is made more "love" by "beauty", and "beauty" is made more "love" by "love". The "love" has become more "beautiful" because of the "beauty", and the "beauty" has become more "beautiful" because of the "love".

It is through the celebration of love and beauty that Shen realized the critique and transcendence of human relations in the real society, especially in the urban life, which is tainted by power and wealth.

Shen Congwen: transcending "worldly love, hate, sorrow and happiness," he writes "the history of my own heart and dreams," and thus explores "the value and meaning of life. By seeking a "new religion of beauty and love, to stir up the enthusiasm of the younger generation to be a human being, .... The future of mankind tomorrow, upward reasonable all design", and thus "produce a solemn feeling, the national reconstruction of the country, so as not to become a ten empty words!

"Love" and "beauty", in Shen Congwen's literary creation and the concept of literature, as the highest value goal, the value of the ideal and exist.

Shen Congwen's literary creation: the establishment, praise and glorification of the two value goals of "love" and "beauty".

Hugo and Tolstoy: great writers who were both steeped in and y influenced by the Western Christian spiritual tradition. In their works, the spirit of love, which comes from Christianity, becomes the ideal of value that the writers try to celebrate.

The main character of Les Misérables, Jean Valjean, despite being infected with vices due to unfair treatment, firmly embarks on the path of "love" to turn evil into good under the inspiration of the bishop, Miriam, and saves the people around him with his tolerant mind and generous "love". With tolerance and love, Valjean saves the people around him: the police officer Javert, the lonely little girl Cosette, and the young man Marius. In the end, Jean Valjean is rewarded and leaves this world in the light of love and goes to heaven.

What Hugo is telling his readers here is that only through the forgiving and generous "love" and goodness that Christianity promotes can those struggling in this cruel and tragic world be saved.

Tolstoy's "Resurrection". The resurrection of Maslova and Nekhludov is ultimately due to the love.

Tolstoy advocated the use of religion to resist the brutal violence of the real world, and its ultimate value is based on the Christian religion of tolerance, the great "love".

Beauty and love, as well as conscience, justice, and truth, are values that literature generally aspires to and celebrates. These values have been repeated over and over again, hundreds of times.

Because of these value ideals, their connotations are sought by inquiry.

Because of these value ideals, the connotation of the inquiry seeks. In other words, the literary criticism of reality and beyond, often also means a meaning of life, the root of the life of the re-questioning.

This inquiry may or may not lead to results.

What is beauty? What is love? What is truth? What is justice?

These questions are ultimately nothing more than asking: What is a human being? What is the value and meaning of life? What is the foundation of human existence?

These questions have focused on the most radical things of human beings, and these questions and their answers are the "ultimate concern" of life. These questions and their answers are the "ultimate concern" of life. Literature's questioning of the value and meaning of life is also literature's ultimate concern for human beings.

"Ultimate" means "metaphysical", "abstract", "universal", and "eternal". "Eternal" and other characteristics. Great works of literature always reveal and reflect on human universality through the depiction of specific realities, such as fate, death, love, truth, beauty, goodness and so on, and ultimately the value and meaning of human life. ."

It is precisely because of the dimension of "ultimate concern" that literature has transcended the specific historical limitations of time and space, and has gained universal significance, as well as eternal life.

In fact, through the dimension of ultimate concern, literature focuses on the question of human value and significance, and at a higher level asks the question of "knowing yourself" because the search for human value and significance is the complete and ultimate understanding of human beings.