The aesthetic pleasure in literary appreciation, as a spiritual pleasure and not a physiological sensation, is rooted in the human's social need—communion. In the aesthetic heaven and earth of literature, infinitely rich relations are established between the human and the aesthetic object; the human unfolds himself in his full richness and, on the whole, merges with the object. Thereupon, the relation of human and aesthetic object also transforms from the “subject—object” relation into the “subject—subject” relation, that is, the “I—Thou” relation of which Martin Buber speaks, realizing aesthetic communion in an ideal way, and thereby obtaining a spiritual pleasure distinct from any physiological sensation.
1. Everyday Communion · Aesthetic Communion
Literary appreciation begins from the aesthetic communion of human and work; any other aesthetic discovery, aesthetic construction, or aesthetic pleasure arises out of aesthetic communion. It is precisely in this sense that the aesthetician Kagan says that art's communicative function is “the condition for realizing all the other functions of art,” “the most important and most conspicuous manifestation of art's social activity.” [1] Here Kagan by no means exaggerates the role of communion; on the contrary, he depreciates it, regarding communion merely as a function, albeit the foremost function. In fact, aesthetic communion is not only the condition for realizing the various literary functions; it is also the very ground of literature's existence. Apart from aesthetic communion, literature would be a string of meaningless sounds or a heap of lifeless letters, no longer the human's aesthetic object. Only when the literary text enters the reader's reading process, only in the process of mutual communion and mutual action with the reader, can it extricate itself from lifeless physical existence and become a living, meaningful literary work.
Literature's aesthetic communion is, moreover, a communion of an ideal mode. The human, as social existence, can by no means leave communion. “Without communion there can be no human society. Communion in human society is both the way several individuals combine and, at the same time, the way these individuals themselves develop.” [2] It is precisely through communion that complex, diverse relations are established between human and human, that human society thereby comes to form and, through changes in the basic mode of communion, displays the features of different stages of social development; and the individual, likewise, only in the process of communion continually realizes self-construction and makes himself develop. It may be said that “communion is the silent companion of human history, and at the same time the silent companion in people's everyday activity and everyday contact.” [3] Paul Tillich, from the more fundamental level of individual existence, reveals the necessity of communion: “The ‘self,’ once it leaves participation in the activity of the world, is an empty shell, and is only a kind of possibility. Because it is alive, it must act; but for each action it must again begin from the beginning, for action must put the actor into the object of his action. Action provides it with content, but it is also precisely because of this that it limits its freedom to make itself into whatever kind of person.” [4] Here Tillich points out the duality of communion: any individual life cannot do without communion with the world, for the feature of individual life is activity; so long as life is active, it is inevitably swept into the world and communes with the world, constructing itself in communion. On the other hand, the individual, in the process of communing with the world, can only occupy a determined position. The given historical conditions, the given cultural environment, the given social relations all fundamentally determine the individual's communion behavior, thereby limiting the individual's many possibilities of development and depriving the individual of independence, so that communion becomes unfree communion. Heidegger calls this “fallenness,” “thrownness.” Sartre says: “Others are hell.”
In Heidegger's view, in his everyday existence the human cannot but deal with others and cannot but deal with other things. This is what the human's nature decrees, what the human cannot escape; it is simply humankind's “original sin.” It is precisely in dealing with others and other things—that is, in the process of communing with the world—that the human falls into the encirclement of public opinion and the public's mode of existence; the self inevitably dissolves into the public and becomes an “average.” The independent “I myself” no longer exists. The human becomes “others,” “the they,” becomes “a neutral thing.” Here the human has neither choice nor responsibility, still less any so-called freedom. Here, “everyone is the other, and no one is himself.” [5] The human is at last pulled away from the root of existence and loses his authentic state, “falling into the groundless state and the nothingness of inauthentic everyday life.” [6] This is “fallenness,” the tragedy that the human's being thrown into the world necessarily leads to, the “original sin” long fated for the human.
Sartre's view of the human is obviously more pessimistic than Heidegger's. He stresses the human's absolute freedom: “Freedom is the freedom of choice, and not the freedom of not choosing. Not to choose is in fact to choose not to choose.” [7] That is to say, the human always has many possibilities; he must, facing all manner of situations, make his own decisions and choices at the moment, and bear the responsibility for them. Yet the human's freedom in turn leads to a forever-existing conflict between human and human. For as an individual existence, the human cannot leave others. Only by having others does the human become an individual. The human's essence is realized in others' gaze and evaluation, in communion with others. Without others, the human is nothing, and cannot even form self-consciousness. The human reflects himself out of the mirror that is others. But once the human is under others' gaze and evaluation, he loses his subjectivity and is alienated into the object of others. He can only exist as an “object,” even to the point of living only for others' gaze and evaluation, living in obedience to others' gaze and evaluation. To recover his own freedom, he must shed the status of object and make others the object; and this constitutes the permanent conflict between human and human. This conflict exists even within the joy of the two sexes. Sexual love always craves the fusion of both sides into one, that is, becoming a whole. But as a whole of love, it permits only one freedom, and so, to prove oneself loved, one must take abandoning one's own freedom as the price; while to maintain each side's freedom will inevitably lead to conflict between the two parties of love. The human's free nature decrees that love implies conflict, that to be loved equals to lose freedom, equals to suffer. “The human's reality cannot escape this dilemma: either to transcend others or to be transcended by others.” [8] Plainly, when Sartre, with a sense of the heroic, talks of freedom, he has already clearly realized the human's real existence, and especially the unfreedom of communion between human and human. The reason he pushes freedom to the extreme is that within his heart he cannot shed the shadow of unfreedom. “The human is condemned to freedom.” This sentence not only expresses Sartre's longing for and faith in freedom; does it not also reveal his apprehension of the human's tragic fate, and the helplessness and melancholy born of it? Sartre's heroic sense is in fact interwoven with a deep tragic sense; his optimism is in fact a forced smile.
Setting aside what, after all, the role of real communion is for individual development, this point is certain: on one hand, the human cannot leave communion—from the moment of his birth the human is thrown into the world, into communion with people and with the world; communion is the long-fated destiny of the human's being human. And on the other hand, real communion is necessarily limited and unfree.
It is precisely in literature's aesthetic communion that the human both realizes his communicative nature and need not abandon his own freedom. Literary communion is free communion, ideal communion. For the communion in literary appreciation is not a direct communion between reader and author, but the communion of the reader with the aesthetic object he himself re-creates. In this communion the human always creates in the identity of a free subject, and at the same time, in the identity of a free subject, communes with the aesthetic object he has created, thereby fully unfolding and developing his own sensuous existence. Because the aesthetic object he creates is originally an illusory world, when the human throws himself into it he need not fear being alienated into an object by others' gaze; and because the aesthetic object is an illusory world, although the human has created it, he does not possess it. The human possesses nothing, yet stands in relation with the object. In the aesthetic, the human always creates and communes in a free way; and it is precisely this free way that makes the object undergo a fundamental change: the aesthetic object in fact no longer exists as an “object”; it turns instead into a free subject. This is the free communion between free subject and free subject, that is, Martin Buber's “I—Thou” relation. They are both different two and at the same time one body; and in harmonious communion the human fully enjoys true freedom and experiences a heartfelt spiritual pleasure.
In I and Thou, Buber makes a penetrating analysis of the “I—Thou” relation: “If I, as my ‘Thou,’ face the human and utter to him the primal word ‘I—Thou,’ then he is no longer a thing among things, no longer a thing constituted by things.” “He is not ‘he’ or ‘she,’ not a finite thing standing in mutual relation with other ‘he’ or ‘she,’ not a point-instant in the world-network, not an essence describable by experience, not a bundle of named attributes, but a ‘Thou’ without waiting and without limit, purely without direction, a ‘Thou’ brimming over the vast sky. This by no means signifies that nothing exists but him. It signifies, rather, that all things dwell within his brilliant radiance.” [9]
The “I—Thou” relation differs from the “I—He” relation. In the “I—He” relation, he has been alienated into an object, alienated into a thing; and thereupon, between I and he, the gulf of subject and object is set up. The “I—Thou” relation is also not the relation of “I” and “Thou.” “I” and “Thou” are in fact the mechanical combination after the “I—Thou” has been dissolved; “I” has separated out from the “I—Thou” relation, and thereupon “Thou” also becomes an object, becomes a thing, becomes an it. Only in the “I—Thou” relation is “I” myself and “Thou” also yourself, while at the same time I and Thou mutually constitute an integral, indivisible relation. This is precisely the supreme aesthetic realm of “not knowing whether I am the butterfly, or the butterfly is me.” In this aesthetic communion unfolded in the “I—Thou” way, I contemplate with concentrated spirit and experience with intoxicated heart, while I again exist within the contemplated, experienced aesthetic world, dwelling in its brilliant radiance. What I contemplate and experience is not the object's form or content, words or meaning, but the indivisible aesthetic world itself. Here, every possessive desire rests; every obstructing intermediary collapses; I and the aesthetic world directly meet and face each other. Here, I and Thou mutually stimulate each other; I open to you my whole richness, and you open to me your whole richness; and between I and you a comprehensive communion and exchange is realized.
Ducasse says: “Aesthetic contemplation is to take a wholly open attitude toward the appearance of a certain thing. ‘My’ attention is concentrated upon the object of aesthetic contemplation, and the inner world has long since cleared out a field, ready at any moment to receive the emotional value of that object.” [10] I am wholly open to the object, and at the same time make the object wholly open to me, making the object transform into “Thou.” When my whole bodily and mental existence is thrown wholly into ideal communion, that soul-shaking, self-melting aesthetic pleasure quietly descends.
2. Ideal Communion, or Ideal World?
Communion is the destiny born with the human. The human can no more leave communion than he can abandon activity. Once communion is abandoned, the human's activity in fact stops, and life too comes to an end. Communion is not only the nature of the human as a social being; it is simply the human's instinctive need.
The hermit-style life of ancient China is a “withdrawal” that yet does not abandon communion; it is a kind of selective communion. It escapes the more unfree, alien communion of officialdom and chooses the relatively free communion amid mountains and rivers, forests and groves, rivers and lakes, grass and wilds. “Choosing a secluded dwelling that suits the feeling for the wild, all the year round neither seeing off nor welcoming any guest; sometimes going straight up to the lonely peak, and under the moon parting the clouds with a single laugh.” (Li Ao) To live freely and at ease in great nature, unfolding an unfettered communion with nature—this is an ideal life longed for by the literati weary of officialdom. By it the human can escape the dangers that lurk in officialdom and shed the elaborate, hypocritical etiquette that suppresses and distorts human nature. Yet reclusion cannot fundamentally clear away contradiction; it merely, in relation to the extremely unfree communion of officialdom—in relation to that alien communion of “serving as an official a year or two, and then one's bearing grows worldly-smooth, one's speech low and roundabout, with no more the air of the mountains and the wilds” [11]—lets the human momentarily obtain a relaxation just released from heavy pressure. In fact, it has merely re-entered the normal, and by no means free, real communion.
The “porcupine-style” communion of the English gentleman is likewise a kind of reconciling way—that is, not no-communion, but the adoption of a distanced communion, seeking to be compatible at once with communion and with one's own independence. Likewise, the “porcupine-style” also always cannot reconcile the two and make both sides of communion mutually satisfied.
In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius writes: “The human seeks for himself a place of shelter, building houses in the fields, by the sea, on high mountains... But this is wholly only a very ordinary external sign for humankind. And the human, within his own authority, can at any time choose to retreat into himself to seek shelter. For when he meets with a setback, there is no place that can make him feel more tranquil and free than retreating into his own soul.” [12] To halt social communion and retreat into the inner heart—its result can only be loneliness. Yet even in loneliness the human does not abandon all communion. The human cannot endure the thorough loneliness without any communion whatsoever. Loneliness drives the human to take refuge in God, so that he may commune with the illusory image his own heart has created; loneliness spins out for the human the daydream, so that he has an illusory world in which he can freely live and freely commune—and this is precisely the creation of the writer, the poet. It should be said that the creation of the writer, the poet, first creates for himself an illusory world in which he can freely commune—the work—and only then communes with others through his own work.
Flaubert writes in a letter to Louise Colet: “What I live is a kind of life that on the surface has lost all joy, monotonous and tasteless. The only thing that supports me to live on is the long-lasting passion of that groaning sound my inner heart emits—forever unquiet, yet sometimes powerless. I love my own work with an intense, abnormal love, just as a suffering monk loves that coarse woolen hairshirt stuck upon his body. Every time I feel an inner emptiness and cannot find suitable words to express my thought, every time I, after writing several pages in a row, am sure I have not written a single decent sentence, I am like a person who has lost his reason, lying upon the sofa, sunk into inner pain.” [13] To commune with the world one's own heart gestates becomes for the writer, the poet, an extremely important—even the only—spiritual consolation. Because the writer, the poet, experiences from it the deepest pleasure, he is willing to abandon real communion for its sake.
Shen Congwen once said, self-mockingly: “To live in a society where person jostles against person, where most people gnaw chaff and swallow dregs, is painful enough; how much more when sometimes even this close-to-the-ground mediocre life becomes unattainable—some people are often cast off and rejected by society, and life can really have only a little memory, or can make only a little pitiable daydream.” [14] Likewise, for the reader, literary creation becomes his own rather than the author's daydream. He lives within this dreamlike illusory realm, communing with the dream-illusory world. Whether for author or for reader, the world in the work is no longer the in-itself world, but the world closely related to me; it, like me, enjoys humanity and subjectivity: “The brook, having no feeling, seems to have feeling; entering the mountains three days, I get to walk along with it.” (Wen Tingyun) “In the rain a hundred grasses rot in autumn, yet below the steps the cassia-senna keeps its bright color... The scholar in the hall, vainly white-headed, facing the wind thrice sniffs its fragrance and weeps.” (Du Fu) The originally lifeless is, in literature, endowed with life; the originally feelingless is, in literature, endowed with human feeling. Thereupon, the myriad things of the world I can all commune and converse with, share sorrow and joy with, heart printed upon heart. “I see the green mountains as so charming, and I reckon the green mountains see me as much the same.” (Xin Qiji) In literature's aesthetic communion, I do not possess the other side, nor do I submit to the other side. All existing things have transformed into “Thou,” transformed into the Thou in the “I—Thou” relation, and all communion becomes ideal communion. It is just as Jin Shengtan says in “Yu-ting Wen-guan”: “The human looks at the flower, the flower looks at the human. The human looks at the flower, the human goes into the flower; the flower looks at the human, the flower comes into the human.” [15]
Literature only provides the human with ideal communion; it does not provide an ideal world. The fact is precisely that the world in literary works is seldom so ideal and perfect as Peach Blossom Spring or Utopia; on the contrary, it is often full of deficiency, and even has tragedy more numerous and more fearful than reality. Whether it be Wu Jingzi's “Scholars,” Li Boyuan's “Officialdom,” Balzac's “Human [Comedy],” or Cao Xueqin's “Grand View Garden” or Zola's “Ladies' Paradise,” nowhere can we find a real piece of happy land; fundamentally, they are all “miserable worlds.” Here there is the struggle and mutual oppression between human and human; here there are tears, death, and disaster... The world that literature creates is by no means an ideal world. Yet even in a miserable world, can we not freely commune with the figures of the work and shed tears of sympathy for them? Likewise, even toward a hateful object, we can at will mock him and curse him, yet are spared direct conflict with him, and on the spiritual plane maintain the autonomous freedom of both sides. Literature precisely provides the human with an ideal mode of communion; and aesthetic pleasure, to a great degree, comes from this ideal communion, and depends on the degree to which the human's nature of pursuing free communion is satisfied. Whether the content of the work is sad or happy does not matter; the degree of sadness or happiness of the narrated story also does not matter; what matters is in what way the work issues its summons to the reader—how it rolls the human into communion with the world of the work. Therefore people always tend to appraise a work by whether it is vivid and by the magnitude of its attractive force, and not by whether the world it provides is perfect. The vividness and attractive force of the work's world derive from the personification of the world of objects. Only a fully personified world is a world that can freely commune with the human, that can appear before the human in the identity of the “Thou” of the “I—Thou” relation, and is fully vivid, sufficient to arouse aesthetic pleasure.
3. Aesthetic Communion and Spiritual Pleasure
The need for communion is closely linked with eros; it may be said that eros is the root of the need for communion. Eros impels the communion between the two sexes and makes humankind multiply. Just as the family is the cell of society, the communion between the two sexes impelled by eros to a certain degree constitutes the basis of social communion. Yet, once sexual communion expands into social communion, the latter transcends the former and possesses an independent character and meaning, and this creates a qualitative distinction between the need for communion and eros: eros still belongs to biological instinct, while communion becomes a social “instinct”; what the satisfaction of eros obtains is physiological sensation, while what the satisfaction of the need for communion obtains is spiritual pleasure. Because literature's aesthetic pleasure derives from aesthetic communion, it must necessarily be spiritual and social.
But in Freud's view, literary creation is the writer's “daydream,” arising because the human's sexual instinct is suppressed and cannot be released; thereupon one cannot but disguise it in the transformed mode of the daydream, and thereby relieve inner tension, obtain a substitute satisfaction, and produce pleasure. The reader's pleasure in reading literary works is “because the writer makes us enjoy from the work our own daydream, without having to blame ourselves or feel shame.” [16] In short, the pleasure of literary appreciation can, in the end, only be reduced to eros, that is, to the satisfaction of the sexual instinct.
Vygotsky discards Freud's one-sided theoretical view that stresses the sexual instinct, and instead attributes aesthetic pleasure to the discharge and consumption of nervous energy. He holds: “Art, in its direct effect, violates the principle of the economy of force; in the constitution of artistic form it precisely follows the opposite principle. Our aesthetic response first reveals itself to us in the reverse direction of destroying rather than preserving our nervous energy, exploding like a burst, and not like a penny-pinching, haggling economy.” The more nervous energy is discharged and consumed, “the more art makes the human feel soul-stirred,” and the more intense the aesthetic pleasure. [17] Although Vygotsky disagrees with Freud's view, he likewise probes the root of aesthetic pleasure from the physiological side, and this inevitably downgrades aesthetic spiritual pleasure into a physiological sensation.
The aesthetic pleasure in the process of literary appreciation is the experience of complex, multiple components; it naturally contains physiological sensation, but it is first of all an experience of ideal aesthetic communion—the experience of aesthetic communion born of this experience, and the spiritual pleasure born of this experience. Physiological sensation is only a low-level experience; it can by no means substitute for aesthetic pleasure. Aesthetic pleasure, as spiritual pleasure, can only be the result of spirit communing and colliding with spirit. Even in communing with nature, only when nature is dyed by the human's emotion and penetrated by the human's spirit, and so becomes a spiritual object, can it arouse the human's aesthetic pleasure.
Although aesthetic communion is linked with eros, in essence it transcends the eros that is individual instinct and becomes a special human social activity, embodying the social need within the human person. Therefore aesthetic communion is not only individual but possesses sociality. Within the individual feature of aesthetic communion there is sedimented and contained the social feature. The commonality of aesthetic taste between individual and individual, the common criterion of the aesthetic judgment of a specific era, a specific people, a specific society, is precisely the product derived from aesthetic communion.
Escarpit says: “To read a book as an original-creation work, and not as a practical tool aimed at satisfying some need, requires the reader to go to another person's home, to seek help from another person, and thereby to get to step out from his own home.” [18] The reader's stepping out of “his own home” and entering “another person's home” is in fact the carrying-out of aesthetic communion. Communion makes the human's aesthetic taste and aesthetic ability merge and integrate, makes the individual abandon his own narrowness and one-sidedness and enter a higher-level spiritual communion; therefore, “when we ‘appreciate’ an artwork, we, like its author, are raised to the level of species-essence.” [19] Of course, as has been pointed out above, the reader here is not directly communing with the author, but, through communion with the world of the work, indirectly reaches the author. The world of the work is the intermediary of the spiritual communion between reader and author. When the writer creates for himself a world in which he can dwell and commune, he has already shed his own limitation and the constraint of all manner of desires, and with aesthetic creation raises himself to the level of species-essence and displays species-essence within the work; the reader, appreciating the work and fully enjoying it, must likewise raise himself to a realm able to commune and converse with the work, and through communion further deepens his own species-essence. This is precisely what Gadamer called the “fusion of horizons”—or, more precisely, the “fusion of souls.” Whether the subconscious and consciousness, or reason and emotion, all are reshaped in aesthetic communion. And aesthetic pleasure is precisely the precious gift humankind obtains in this aesthetic communion, in this process of the fusion and elevation of souls.