The Influence of China Traditional Culture on China Art

Culture is one of the hot topics in current academic circles, involving history and reality, Chinese and foreign, classical and modern, global and local, government and folk, elite and public, and many other aspects. Many times, it has caused various discussions or arguments for no reason. These discussions are beneficial to the development of China culture, but there is a gap to be filled: the current level of China culture. Within a specific culture, there are always several different cultural levels, which are combined into a whole that is opposite to each other and mutually * * *. Sorting out these cultural levels and investigating their specific relations are conducive to the overall development of this culture, especially to the construction of its basic value system. So, as far as the basic composition of China culture is concerned, what are the levels of our culture? What is the relationship between them? The question is raised. Here, I don't intend to talk about the cultural level in general, but to analyze it from the cultural level of literary texts, that is, to provide specific imagination models and cases for revealing the universal cultural level through the cultural level of literature. Because literature is the most expressive form of imagination in culture, it can fully undertake the task of infiltrating the universal cultural level.

First, culture and its level

There have always been many definitions of culture. Here, only the definition of German philosopher Ernst Cassirer (1874- 1945) is adopted: culture is the field where human beings create and use symbols, including mythology, religion, language, art, history and science, and it mainly involves the significance of human existence (note). In other words, culture is the symbolic ideographic system of human beings, and human beings express the meaning of life through their own symbolic system. Culture is a historical concept, and each nation and its specific historical period have their own unique cultural circumstances. A culture in a certain period should be a combination (not necessarily a unified whole) that accommodates multiple levels and forms complex relationships with each other. As far as the present situation of China is concerned, this multi-cultural combination often has four levels or forms (note: I once divided aesthetic culture into mainstream culture, elite culture and popular culture (see "From Enlightenment to Communication, Literary Competition" 1994 No.5), and later realized that the existence of folk culture can not be ignored. ): dominant culture, elegant culture, popular culture and folk culture. From the perspective of cultural value, there is no difference between the four levels. The key is to look at the specific cultural process or the cultural works themselves. Every level may produce excellent or inferior works, whether it is dominant culture and elegant culture, or popular culture and folk culture. The above four cultural levels are often infiltrated or manifested in specific literary texts, which is the cultural level of literary texts. Specifically, these four cultural levels may coexist in the same text at the same time, which requires us to carefully distinguish the existence and relationship of various cultural levels in the text; But it is more likely that one of them will occupy a relatively dominant position in the text, which makes it possible for us to divide the cultural aspects of literary texts: dominant cultural texts, elegant cultural texts, popular cultural texts and folk cultural texts.

1. dominant culture

The dominant cultural text refers to the cultural form that reflects the needs of group integration, order stability or ethical harmony in a specific era. One of the main characteristics of this cultural text is enlightenment, that is, directly or indirectly conveying the social norms formulated by the ruling group for education, integration or influence on the public. The ruling group of each era will consciously write or produce such texts, and strongly encourage literati writers who originally belonged to elegant culture to participate in this writing work aimed at consolidating the ruling norms, and then spread and popularize it by administrative means, so as to more effectively use the unique aesthetic appeal of literature to achieve the purpose of educating the public. Since Dong Zhongshu, a Confucian in the Han Dynasty, put forward the idea of "ousting a hundred schools of thought and respecting Confucianism alone", the control or domination of literature by the ruling group has gained clear legitimacy, thus showing the history that literature was guided by the ruling culture. It should be noted that the dominant cultural text does not necessarily need to be direct or even naked, but can hide enlightenment in the appealing aesthetic expression. Zhuge Liang's pre-model and post-model are typical of classical dominant culture. First of all, the former model stated the "critical" situation of Shu, expressed the loyalty of "chasing the adventures of the former emperor and reporting to your majesty", and put forward a series of policies for social integration and national stability, such as "opening imperial edicts" and "being close to sages and being far from villains". Then, he frankly expressed his loyalty to the king, and issued a clank oath of "setting the Central Plains in the north" and "reviving the Han Dynasty", thus almost perfectly expressing a courtier's loyalty and dedication to repay his master's kindness. Finally, he made an oath in "After Graduation"-"I will do my best until I die; As for failure and directness, I can't see it. " Here, the goals pursued by mainstream culture, such as group integration, order stability and ethical harmony, as well as personal loyalty and gratitude, have been concentrated.

As far as contemporary is concerned, the film "Life and Death Choice" (200 1) can also be said to be the representative text of contemporary leading culture. It tells the story of "fighting corruption and promoting honesty" which is widely concerned by the public in China today. The protagonist Li Gaocheng, the mayor of Haizhou, came back from studying in the Central Party School for one year, and was immediately involved in the collective petition storm of Zhongyang Textile Factory workers, which triggered a major corruption case in which he was also involved. Li Gaocheng is faced with a "life-and-death choice": should he hand himself over to a clean government or let it be corrupt? As a key figure, his self-choice has indeed become the key to the progress of the incident: only by making the right choice can the success of a clean government be guaranteed. With the assistance of Yang Cheng, deputy secretary of the municipal party committee, and with the support of Wan, secretary of the provincial party committee, after short and hard thinking, he overcame himself, made the right choice, stepped forward and defeated the "corrupt collective" headed by Guo Zhongyao, thus digging out his backstage deputy secretary of the provincial party committee and winning the anti-corruption struggle. This film clearly reflects the requirements of today's mainstream culture for social group integration and order stability. In the cultural tradition of China, the dominant culture has always played an important role such as group integration, and it still does. However, the dominant culture also needs to be constantly updated and developed to reflect the essence of * *, so that its authority is not mandatory but convincing.

2. Elegant culture

Elegant culture, sometimes called "elite culture", refers to a cultural text that mainly expresses intellectuals' individual rational meditation, social criticism or aesthetic exploration. This kind of text often starts from the individual standpoint and perspective of intellectuals or literati, and carries out unique form changes, conveying rational meditation on social life and critical observation on social problems in this new form. This cultural text has three main characteristics: formal innovation, social criticism and personalized pursuit.

First, form innovation. Elegant cultural texts are always good at summarizing the formal conventions of predecessors, absorbing resources from real life and folk cultural traditions and creating new original forms. Therefore, in elegant cultural texts, the characteristics of formal innovation are often particularly prominent. For example, people are used to saying "I come and go gently" in daily life, but the poet Xu Zhimo disrupted this daily language order in Farewell to Cambridge (1928), saying: "I go gently, just as I come gently, I wave goodbye to the clouds in the western sky gently." Put the adverbial "gently" in front, say "go" first, then "come", and make an exception and repeat it three times. What is the significance of this innovative form? Let's feel the whole poem completely, and pay special attention to the "light sadness" of Zhimo style:

I left quietly/as I came gently; /I waved gently,/saying goodbye to the clouds in the western sky. //The golden willow by the river/is the bride in the sunset; /Beautiful shadows in the waves,/rippling in my heart. //the green grass on the soft mud,/oily swaying at the bottom of the water; /In the gentle waves of He Kanghe,/I would like to be a water plant. //That pool under the shade of elm is not a clear spring, but a rainbow in the sky/broken in floating algae/with a rainbow-like dream. //dreaming? Hold up a long pole,/Wander in greener grass,/Full of splendid boats,/Sing in splendor. //But I can't play songs,/Silence is a farewell flute; /Summer insects are also silent for me,/Silence is Cambridge tonight! //I left quietly,/just as I came quietly; /I waved my sleeve./I didn't take a cloud with me.

In the following sections, we should pay attention to the use of words in tune with "light" to express soft and charming things, such as "golden willow", "bride", "beautiful shadow in the waves", "soft mud" and "water grass", and there are three repetitions of "quiet" at the end, which has an echo effect from beginning to end. This makes the whole poem "gently" and "quietly" echo, brings the overall innovation in language form, and makes the ordinary daily expression suddenly gain novel and unique significance. I call this language form "light still body". Readers can gain a novel meaning experience because of Zhimo's silent style. In the history of literature and culture, it is easy to ignore the common saying that "I came and went gently", but it is possible to remember the unique silent style of Zhimo forever. In fact, "Cambridge" here may be certain for the poet himself, but it may be infinitely rich and uncertain for the reader. Every reader may have his own "Cambridge" that he will always miss. They filled the unique form of "light sadness" with their own living experience, thus forming a deep inner voice. This may be one of the reasons why this poem has been circulated for a long time.