Literature is "the art of language." This means not only that language is the carrier of literature but also that everything in a literary work—whether content or form—is displayed by way of language; language is the ontological body of literature. The most magical thing about language is that it sets up the intricate relational model between human and world and embodies the aggregate of objective relations. The so-called distinction between literary content and form, the aesthetic characteristics of literature, and the connections between a work and various external factors are, in essence, ways of viewing language from different angles and of using language in different ways. It is for this reason that the locality of literature is manifested not only in the dialect and colloquialisms that appear on the surface of the page but also bears on the relation of human and world—on how the human perceives the world, knows the world, and imagines the world.
Language Embodies the Aggregate of Objective Relations
Cassirer regarded symbolic activity as the fundamental feature distinguishing the human from other organisms and called the human a "symbolic animal," and among all signs, language holds a special position. Saussure and Benveniste both pointed out that language is a symbolic system possessing duality. "Language is a special symbolic system composed of two planes. On one hand, it is a physical fact: it is produced with the aid of the vocal organs and perceived with the aid of the auditory organs. This material aspect of it can be observed, described, and recorded. On the other hand, it is also a non-material structure, the communication of the signified, which substitutes for the event or experience through a 'recall' of it. This is language, a two-sided unity." (1) Language is an extremely magical symbolic system, possessing the duality constituted by the "concept / sound-image": on one hand, language is connected with inner psychology and the neuronal connective structure, yet is not identical with psychology and the neuronal connective structure, and, because it contains external factors, is in rupture with the body; on the other hand, through the sound-image belonging to a certain social system of differentiation, it is connected with things, yet is not equal to the thing itself, being only a substitute for the thing, with a rupture existing between it and the thing. This special structural mode of language—both inner and outer, both connected and split—makes it the mediation between human and world, dissolving the chaotic, unified relation of human and world and reconstructing it into the "objective relation." Therefore, at the moment language is born, when the human takes language into himself as his own "second nature" and it becomes the human's "innate nature," the originally fused relation of human and world is decomposed and reshaped into an objective relation. From this point, the myriad things become the human's object, and the world enters the realm of clarity. Human consciousness is born at the same time, for consciousness is always consciousness of an object: whether the object is real or fictional, consciousness is always generated together with the object and can exist only in the state of the objective relation (Husserl). As Bakhtin says: "The single consciousness is itself filled with signs. Consciousness becomes consciousness only when it is filled with ideological (resp. corresponding) semiotic content, and only in the process of social interaction." (2) Alva Noë points out: "No brain-scanning technology can reveal the essence of conscious activity, because the essence of consciousness does not occur inside the brain." (3) Detached from the relation of human and world, detached from society and language, one cannot crack the riddle of consciousness, and the human too will lose the very ground of his being human.
Berger and Luckmann offer an interpretation from the angle of the "detachability" of language. They hold that language is rooted in the innate capacity of the human organs of vocal expression, but vocalizing behavior is still not yet language. Only when the expressiveness of sound is detached from the subjective state of the "here and now" does language become possible. It is precisely this "detachability" of language that endows it with the capacity for "objectification" and goes on to construct the reality of everyday life. "The more common objectifications of everyday life are maintained primarily by linguistic signification; everyday life is in fact a kind of linguistic life shared by me and others." (4) The "objectification" capacity of language—that is, the capacity to establish objective relations—reconstructs the world into an objectified phenomenal world and at the same time constructs the human's consciousness, making the human grow into a subject. Among these, the key link is this: the vocalizing behavior that carries individual bodily experience leaps up into a sound-image possessed of socially-shared meaning, separates from the individual body, and enters social communication—and language is born, becoming a symbolic system with the function of differentiation. Language is connected with yet split from the human's body, connected with yet split from the world of things; it becomes the mediation between human and world, the bridge for constructing the objective relation. The objectifying capacity of language establishes various connections among things, which together compose the ever-changing aggregate of objective relations. Because language contains the model of objective relations between human and world, it thereby provides the human with the basic framework for perceiving and knowing the world.
The birth of language is an enormous leap. Once the human takes the world and the myriad things as objects of consciousness, he can perceive, abstract, analyze, infer, and know the object. "We recognize that, rather than coming to have a concept of something because we have noticed that sort of thing, to have the ability to notice a sort of thing is already to have the concept of that sort of thing." (5) Moreover, this dualistic symbolic structure of language can bring the unknown, the un-experienceable, into the known, familiar experience, greatly expanding the human's cognitive horizon and unfolding the production of knowledge; at the same time it pays a price, for language, as mediation, cannot but conceal the "thing itself," and what the human faces is the "phenomenal world" constructed through language, no longer the "real world," because "the real" lies outside the representational system (John Searle), much like what Laozi and Zhuangzi call the "Dao." The objective relation constructed by language endows the human with purposiveness, remolding the survival-instinct activity of the organism into the human's conscious, purposive practice—and so cultural creation begins. Language tears open a fissure between human and world, and thereby reflection becomes possible; the human's reason, individuality, and subjectivity are founded on the basis of self-reflection and self-knowledge. "It distinguishes the conduct of the human with reflective intelligence from the action of lower animals; and the mechanism that makes this possible is language." (6) The fissure caused by language's relative independence is precisely the condition for the human's gaining transcendence: the human is at last liberated from the finitude of the body, liberated from the intricate natural relations, casts off necessity and enjoys the freedom of choice, and wins the metaphysical dimension of spirit—while at the same time, helplessly, this causes the split of body and soul (spirit). One may say that the duality of language is the root of all dualistic thought. The fissure that language tears open is precisely the human's space of thinking and space of cultural creation, and the way of healing the fissure between the two determines the mode of cognition, the mode of thinking, and the style of cultural creation. From this point, the human no longer adapts to the world through biological evolution but, through cultural creation, heals the fissure with the world. If experience is a kind of historical sedimentation that cannot but possess conservatism, then language, because of its relative independence, endows the human with transcendence, letting the human open toward the past, the future, and the ideal realm—and so creative imagination becomes possible.
"Meaning does not exist without language, and language means that two selves are involved in a joint or shared undertaking." (7) Language is the contract between human and human, the fruit of intersubjectivity; it is precisely through language that humans communicate and identify with one another, thereby gathering into a community and forming human society. As for institutions—the core element of human civilization—they are, as John Searle says, constructed by declarative speech-acts. (8) Institutions not only construct the various forms of social organization but at the same time discipline human behavior and propel the evolution of human civilization; yet, conversely, they also repress the human's unconscious (bodily experience) and instinct, producing what Freud calls "civilization and its discontents." The birth of language is the ground of the human's becoming human. Language, as the most foundational "institution" of human society, is the premise that generates all other institutions. Language bears on every aspect of human growth and cultural production; the mode of language prescribes not only the mode of thinking but also influences the mode of life. The human's capacity to use linguistic signs continually remolds the instinct of the organism and reshapes a brand-new human nature.
Literature: The Aesthetic Transformation of Language
Laozi and Zhuangzi knew well the limitation of language, holding that language cannot speak the natural Dao. Not only language: other signs or images, too, cannot escape this limitation. "The Dao cannot be heard; what is heard is not it. The Dao cannot be seen; what is seen is not it. The Dao cannot be spoken; what is spoken is not it. Do you know that what gives form to forms is itself formless? The Dao ought not to be named." (9) In any case, language, as a conceptual mediation, can only construct the phenomenal world while concealing the real world, blocking the path toward the natural Dao.
Likewise, Plato too recognized this feature of language. He said: "Wherever we can call many things by the same name, I take it that we always assume them to have a single form or idea." (10) In the West, Plato was the first to point out that the word (name) is not equal to the thing itself, that a fissure exists between it and the thing, and that the connection between them is an invisible, unknowable "form" or "idea" that only the "divine" can understand. The fissure Plato tore open became the space of thinking for later generations, from which various philosophical thoughts sprouted and grew, becoming footnotes to Plato's thought. Peirce proposed the "unlimited semiosis" of the sign, pointing out that the sign is only a substitute for some thing—"this sign stands for something, that is, stands for its object"—and therefore, between the sign and the thing, an interpretant is needed, and "the interpretant ceaselessly becomes a (new) sign, and so on ad infinitum." (11) That is to say, although the interpretation of the sign points to some thing, it can never reach the thing itself or heal this fissure; it is only the unlimited process of the sign's ceaseless substitution. Derrida inherited Peirce's semiotic thought and, more extremely, bracketed the "thing itself." In his view, the word is like a letter without an address, never able to reach the thing, able only to substitute one representation for another in unlimited "différance," leaving behind only the trace of meaning. "The trace of which we speak is neither natural… nor cultural, neither physical nor psychical, neither biological nor spiritual." (12) The unlimited traces generated by the différance of linguistic meaning can never reach the real world and the natural Dao; the world is concealed. "Language can express what a thing is only on the premise of negation. The naming of a thing, the moment it subsumes the thing under the kind that contains it, erases the empirical existence of the thing, reducing the thing into an unlimited series. In order to represent the essence of the thing, language abolishes the existence of the thing. In short, the word conveys the thing to us and at the same time separates from the thing's singularity, reducing the thing to an abstract concept." (13)
Yet literature and art precisely need to enter the real world, to deal directly with living life, and thereby to experience the natural Dao. Clive Bell proposed the view that art is "significant form," holding that this "significance" comes from "something that hides behind the appearance of things and endows different things with different significance—and this something is ultimate reality itself." (14) That is to say, although literature and art cannot do without language and form, they must also cross over language and form, cross over any mediation, and come face to face directly with "ultimate reality itself." This unsayable "significance" is, in essence, bodily experience in the unconscious state; it is rooted in the bodily lived experience generated by the body's dealing directly with the real world. Once bodily experience is absent, significance (that is, what Benjamin calls "aura") vanishes, and form degenerates into a "world picture," even a "mechanical reproduction," and is no longer artistic form. Heidegger puts it more clearly: poetry should lead the human back to the earth, let the world be unconcealed, let truth appear, and realize the gathering of earth, sky, mortals, and divinities. Then, how can literature, as "the art of language," reach the "thing itself," unconceal the world, and experience the natural Dao?
In fact, as early as China's Wei, Jin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties, the "debate on words and meaning" gave an answer. In A General Outline of the Laozi, Wang Bi inherited Laozi-Zhuangzi thought and held that the Dao not only cannot be spoken but cannot be given form in image(Xiang), and should be grasped by the "Great Image"(Daxiang) and the "Great Sound"(Dayin). Then the relation between word and Dao, image(Xiang) and Great Image(Daxiang), sound(Yin) and Great Sound(Dayin)—that is, the relation of the formed and the formless—becomes a problem that must be thought through, directly bearing on whether the classics can transmit the Dao. The debate on words and meaning, and the debate on form and spirit, arose precisely with respect to this problem of the transmission of the classics. Wang Bi says: "A name must have that which it distinguishes; an appellation must have that from which it derives. Where there is distinction, there is non-inclusiveness; where there is derivation, there is incompleteness. The non-inclusive greatly departs from the true; the incomplete cannot serve to name—this can be drawn out and made clear." By the same logic, "a shape must have that which it distinguishes; a sound must have that to which it belongs. Therefore an image(Xiang) that takes shape is not the Great Image(Daxiang); a tone that makes sound(Yin) is not the Great Sound(Dayin)." How, then, to resolve the problem of the relation between image(Xiang) and Great Image(Daxiang), sound(Yin) and Great Sound(Dayin)? Wang Bi goes on to say: "Then: if the four images(Xiang) do not take shape, the Great Image(Daxiang) cannot be made manifest; if the five tones do not sound(Yin), the Great Sound(Dayin) cannot arrive. When the four images(Xiang) take shape yet things have no master imposed upon them, the Great Image(Daxiang) is made manifest; when the five tones sound(Yin) yet the mind has nowhere it must go, the Great Sound(Dayin) arrives." (15) That is to say, one must both rely on the formed image and the sounding tone and yet not be confined to image and sound, not use them to name or refer to the "thing"; in between there must pass a process of flux and transformation—that is, by image(Xiang) and sound(Yin) to summon the Great Image(Daxiang) and the Great Sound(Dayin), and so to reach the natural Dao. Differing somewhat from Wang Bi's view, Liu Xie held that language bears on the natural Dao: "When mind is born, speech is established; when speech is established, pattern shines forth—this is the Dao of nature." He also said: "The Dao, through the sages, hands down its pattern; the sages, through the pattern, illuminate the Dao." (16) Yet Liu Xie did not simply equate language with the Dao; rather, he held that literary diction should have both the manifest (xiu) and the latent (yin), and especially esteemed the "latent": "The latent is the doubled import beyond the text… As a mode, the latent generates meaning beyond the words; a secret resonance reaches sideways, a hidden coloring emerges in secret—like the interchanging lines of the trigrams that transform into the four images, like the river that hides pearls and jade within it. Thus the interchanging substance and shifting lines transform into the four images; the pearls and jade hidden in the water make the ripples on the surface round or square." (16) The so-called "latent" means not stating or depicting directly in plain language but using language to hint and entice—just as the trigram-lines hint at the "mandate of Heaven"—pursuing the meaning beyond words and thereby entering the realm of attaining the Dao. Although these analyses were not aimed solely at literature in the modern sense, they in fact pointed out the path for the aesthetic transformation of literary language. From this angle, "imagery" (Yixiang) is the fruit of these reflections. Strictly speaking, the so-called "imagery"(Yixiang) is, in essence, entering the "wordless realm" from "words," summoning the "Great Image"(Daxiang) from the "image"(Xiang)—that is, "image–Great Image"(Xiang-Daxiang)—the two being in a tension-relation and converting into each other, making sensation, cognition, and bodily lived experience act in concert, and thereby grasping the wordless, formless natural Dao. "Imagery" means the tension and conversion-relation jointly constituted by image(Xiang) and Great Image(Daxiang)—that is, "image–Great Image"(Xiang-Daxiang)—ultimately leading to the natural Dao. Only through this flux, transformation, and interaction can literature and art, with the aid of word and image, summon the formless Great Image, lead the human into the experiential relation of thing-and-self-as-one, and directly grasp reality and the natural Dao. "Imagery" is both image(Xiang) and formless Great Image(Daxiang); it becomes the key to the aesthetic transformation of literary language and the root of Chinese aesthetic thought.
Heidegger, deeply influenced by ancient Chinese thought, gave an interpretation of how language turns from concealment to unconcealment. Heidegger abolishes the established duty of language and restores its originariness. Language no longer self-righteously states facts and depicts events—such language can only brutally seize the thing and conceal the thing; language should, with a humble attitude and a free posture, invite and summon the thing, letting the thing appear of itself in its authentic face. "The word, the word that once was the word, has hidden itself from the former appearance of the gods. What was the word once? In Saying itself, the nearing of the god came to pass." (17) In the originary word, human and god are infinitely intimate, and earth, sky, divinities, and mortals all gather anew. This is the state of the unity of Heaven and humanity, of thing-and-self-as-one; it is the renewed arrival of authentic being. It is precisely in this nearness that the thing itself, as authentic being, and the human himself, both appear of themselves and gather. Then how can one return to this state? Only through the fictional realm of literature and art—an "other-world," as Marcuse calls it. It is precisely in this imagined possible world that all real repression is removed, everyday behavior is transformed into free action, the body exists in the real world in a "naked" way, life-force is fully unfolded, and one finally enters the realm of attaining the Dao. So Heidegger says: "The more purely the work itself enters into the openness of beings opened up by itself (the openness of self-opening), the more purely it transports us into this openness and at the same time transports us out of the realm of the ordinary. To submit to this transport means to transform our accustomed ties to world and to earth, and henceforth to restrain our usual doing and prizing, knowing and looking, in order to stay within the truth that is happening in the work." (18) In literary activity, language undergoes a metamorphosis: when it sheds the everyday duty of referring to the real object, in order to construct an imagined possible world and to attract and summon originary experience, it itself radiates dazzling brilliance and abundant life-force. "The only language that 'saves' the thing is literary language… In ordinary language, the word is separated from the thing, and language is far from the thing; but in literary language, the word is kneaded into a new thing, dwelling far beyond the nothingness it was meant to accompany. Literature receives the thing from the thing's source, all the way to the end of the thing's destiny." (13) Language is no longer confined to depicting everyday things but receives a new mission: to create an aesthetic world, and thereby to let the semiotic potential of language and the bodily experience of the human be released to the fullest. This is both literary language's salvation of the thing and language's self-redemption.
The Chinese Language and the National Characteristics of Literature
Language is closely related to human cognition; the mode of language determines the mode of cognition. Although bodily experience lays the foundation of the speech-act and influences the mode of language, language, as the establisher of the objective relation between human and world, ultimately determines the mode of cognition—and among these, the mother tongue has fundamental significance. "From the very beginning, I was already a person taught in knowledge by the language of a particular group, and this group-language I acquired by entering into the culture prevailing in the place where I grew up, in that particular historical period. This is the matrix of all my intellectual activity. In this matrix I later discovered my problems and sought the words to solve them. All the modifications I have since made to those original words continue to be incorporated into my prior system of belief." (19) The mother tongue acquired in childhood lays the foundation for mental development.
Foucault interpreted the episteme (the order of knowledge) mainly from the angle of linguistic evolution. He pointed out that between word and thing there exist both a natural relation (motivation) and a conventional relation (arbitrariness); as a medium of communication, for the convenience of use, the word continually evolves toward abstraction: the natural relation gradually weakens, while the conventional relation tends to take the dominant position. This is not only the evolution of language itself but at the same time determines the change in the relation of human and thing and the order of thing and thing, determines the change of the episteme. Until the end of the sixteenth century, the natural relation still occupied an important position, rooted in the resemblance between word and thing, and the episteme inevitably gave weight to resemblance. By the Classical period, the natural relation had weakened, the fissure between word and thing grew ever larger, and representation stood out from the fissure; and so the identity and difference of representation with representation produced a new episteme. By the modern period, this relation changed again, and people began to discover that what truly determines the relation of word and thing is the hidden "organizational structure"—and this led to the appearance of the modern episteme. This modern transformation Foucault points out means that human cognition no longer stays at surface phenomena but tries to probe the hidden essence and law behind phenomena. This became the embryo and driving force of modern scientific thinking. From another angle, the weakening of the natural relation strengthened the independence of language; from this point, the human could stand independently outside nature to observe and study nature, stand outside himself to reflect on and critique experience, and raise experience into scientific cognition.
The object Foucault analyzes is the phonetic-script languages of Europe. Phonetic script, after all, has a close connection of mutual influence with spoken language; over time, changes in spoken language cannot but bring about changes in written script, thereby leading to linguistic evolution. Differing from phonetic script, the ideographic script of the Han people possesses a distinctive duality: on one hand, ideographic script maintains an inseverable natural connection with the world of things; on the other, because it is hard to master, possessed only by a small group, and often used to record major events—being the root of canonical meaning and the beginning of kingly governance—it was sanctified, and from the very start separated written script from everyday spoken language. The "Benjing" chapter of the Huainanzi says: "In olden times, when Cangjie made writing, Heaven rained millet and the ghosts wailed at night." (20) Compared with phonetic script, the distance between ideographic script and spoken language is greater, and it does not easily change with changes in spoken language. Qian Daxin's "Preface to the Shuowen Jiezi" says: "Xu Shuzhong said: 'When Cangjie first made writing, he depicted forms according to category; hence they were called wen (graphs). Later, form and sound enriched each other, and these were called zi (characters).' Graphs and characters do not change through the ages, but sounds change from time to time; the people of the five regions do not understand one another's speech." (21) Especially the Qin dynasty's unification of the script effectively stabilized the form of written script. After the Qin seal script, although the clerical and regular scripts and the various styles underwent change, they still had their inner continuity and stability. The Sui dynasty's establishment of the imperial examination system further compelled literati to take the study and inheritance of the classics and of written script as their occupation. Even though local dialects differed, and even through changes of dynasty, written script always took the "six categories of characters" (liushu) as its norm. The Chinese language possesses an inner stability; although there is a division into archaic, middle, and early-modern periods, on the whole, until the New Culture Movement, it still remained in the Classical period, and for this reason it impeded the modern transformation of the episteme. The "six categories of characters" provided a guarantee for the natural relation between word and thing, slowed the evolution of language itself, and effectively maintained cultural transmission—yet weakened the reflective function of language. Whether abstraction, analysis, inference, or reflection, all must be built on the distance between word and thing, on the relative independence of language. At the same time, the human's individuality and subjectivity, and the logical character of language itself, also require critical reflection as a premise.
Yet this Classical-type language and episteme precisely provided the conditions and distinctiveness for literary-aesthetic creation. On one hand, the natural relation between word and thing kept this language from falling into the realm of pure speculation; it still maintained abundant bodily experience and preserved what Vico calls "poetic wisdom," providing convenience for the aesthetic transformation of language, so that ancient China naturally became a "land of poetry." If the strict logical character of phonetic script is like a chain binding the human imagination, ideographic script enjoys a relatively free power of combination, and the great abundance of bi and xing (comparison and evocation) is itself the bud of imagination. "The first poets had to name things with the most concrete sensory images, and this sensory image is the source of synecdoche (a part for the whole or the whole for a part) and metonymy." (22) On the other hand, the split of writing and speech made literati deeply feel that "writing does not fully convey speech, and speech does not fully convey meaning," and turn instead to concentrate on how to attain meaning and embody the Dao outside language, pursuing the flavor beyond words, the import beyond meaning, the spirit beyond form, and going on to create imagery. The self-awareness of this artistic pursuit is what Western literature lacks. (23) At the same time, it also destined ancient Chinese literature not to excel in fictional narrative and even deliberately to debase the status of fictional narrative, (24)(25) because narrative imitation can only be far from the Dao. These unsayable, invisible Dao, meaning, vital force, spirit, and resonance can exist only in the tension between word and word, sentence and sentence, in the tension of the "illicit marriage" (Goodman) of comparison and evocation, at the moment of the conversion of the relation between human and language. In the crevices constituted by these tensions, deep bodily experience seethes, life-vitality bursts forth, and unlimited resonance is bred. As Ye Weilian (Wai-lim Yip) says, in classical Chinese literature, "poetry, through suggestion, brings forth something like a sound in the air, a color within an image, the moon in water, a reflection in a mirror. That is to say, the use of language in poetry becomes active to such a degree that we no longer notice the existence of language, and a wordless realm wells up out of language." (26)
Correspondingly, the national characteristics of literary criticism are also rooted here. When literature takes attaining meaning and embodying the Dao as its aim and stresses the image beyond images, the resonance beyond resonance, the import beyond flavor, then these can neither be analyzed nor caught in the net of words, nor placed before one's brows and lashes. Literati, knowing well this distinctiveness of ancient Chinese literature, deliberately kept a theoretical silence. Apart from giving weight to philological glossing and annotation and to repeated recitation and impressionistic commentary, they almost gave up constructing grand theoretical systems. One might even say that the Dao, meaning, vital force, spirit, and resonance should not themselves be regarded as "categories" in the Western sense; one cannot make of them a determinate interpretation or definition. This removes the cornerstone of constructing a theoretical system. As for the style of a work, it is mainly likened to the bearing and grace of a person, using the modes of bodily behavior to figure the work's appearance and connecting it with a person's virtue. This mode of criticism is not a defect; it is precisely built on a profound comprehension of the fundamental features of ancient Chinese literature and hits the true meaning of literature.
Although Plato too recognized that a fissure exists between word and thing and proposed an invisible, unknowable idea, he did not, like Laozi and Zhuangzi, hold this fissure hard to heal; on the contrary, he stressed bridging literature and art with the thing through "imitation," holding that literature and art are an "imitation of the imitation" of the idea. One may say that the theory of imitation long influenced Western literary-artistic creation; from the Homeric epics onward, narrative works always occupied an important stage in Western literature. Since one can reach the idea through the imitation of the imitation, literature and art are then an "object" that can be spoken and analyzed. In their eyes, the world and the myriad things, and even the literary work, are the human's object, products constructed through language. All important basic concepts can be crowned as theoretical "categories" and, on this basis, used to construct theoretical systems, so that in the ceaseless process of reflection and critique, endless variations appear. Differences among different peoples' languages and notions of language determine differences of episteme, determine differences of literary notion and literary characteristic, and differences of critical form.
Dialect and the Locality of Literature
The national characteristics of language and script constrain the evolution of the episteme and stamp a distinct national imprint on the form of literature. But this does not mean that the classical literature of the Han people developed only along the path of the official written language; it inevitably received the important influence of folk spoken language, the shaping of local dialect as mother tongue. "All these forms of verbal interaction are especially closely connected with the conditions of the social environment and especially sensitively reflect every fluctuation of the social atmosphere." (2) Before the Qin unified the six states, the languages of the various feudal states were not unified; there existed the phenomenon of "speech differing in sound, script differing in form." "After the Five Emperors, the styles were altered and made different. In the age of the six states, the script differed in form." (26) In the Book of Songs, no small number of poems were gathered from the folk, coming from the hands of commoners, serfs, soldiers, and corvée laborers. Lu Xun says: "The 'Airs' (Feng) are the love-poems of the lanes and alleys." He also says: "The diction of the 'Airs of the States' is rather plain, and the expression of feeling is all the more distinct." (27) Although they passed through the arrangement and rewriting of collectors and compilers, the poems of different regions still preserved different local features. "The poems produced in each region possess their own different artistic features and language styles, distinguishable at a glance with a little comparison." (28) What the various states transmitted each followed local custom, and there existed the distinction of "elegant and correct" versus "the airs of Zheng and Wei."
As for the Chu Ci, it is all the more singularly splendid. The state of Chu lay in the land of the southern Man, where the Chu sounds and shamanic customs prevailed, and the Chu people were called "the shrike-tongued people of the south." "In olden times, in the towns of southern Ying in the state of Chu, between the Yuan and Xiang rivers, the custom was to believe in ghosts and be fond of sacrifices; their sacrifices must make song, music, drums, and dance to please the gods." (29) Even Qu Yuan's name bears the imprint of shamanic culture. Qu Yuan's given name was "Zhengze," and "he also took his style-name to be 'Lingjun.' Ling originally is the shaman who serves the gods—'the Chu people called the shaman ling-zi.' Jun is an ancient rhyme-word, originally referring to harmonious, well-tuned musical sound. Music in antiquity was the most primitive-religious thing, and the song-and-dance-able spirit-shaman, by means of the melody of music, transmitted the messages between human and god, attaining the effect of communion between Heaven and humanity." (30) In Qu Yuan's age, the language and culture of the Chu land and the orthodox written language and cultural classics continually communicated and collided; it was precisely in the collision and fusion of different languages and cultures that Qu Yuan, with his extraordinary talent, could write the bizarre and marvelous imagination, the gold-and-jade substance, the eternal masterpiece that "may contend with the sun and moon for brilliance"—so that Liu Xie sighed: "Its vital force overrides the ancients; its diction cuts to the present; its startling splendor is matchless—hard for any to equal." (16) Qu Yuan's "Heavenly Questions" (Tianwen) is precisely the product of the collision of the Chu sounds and shamanic customs and primitive thinking with the orthodox written language and rational thinking. The Chu-land culture deeply steeped Qu Yuan, who was born and grew there, and stamped on him a bone-deep love. "Receiving its mandate it does not move, born in the southern land; deep-rooted and hard to transplant, all the more single in its will." ("In Praise of the Orange Tree") Without familiarity with and deep love of the Chu sounds and shamanic customs, there would be no such brilliant, marvelous myth and imagination; likewise, without rational thinking, it would be impossible to raise doubts about all this, and there would be no "Heavenly Questions."
Fundamentally, language means a way of knowing the world; without communication and collision between different languages, there is no transformation of the mode of cognition, and the human grows accustomed to the cultural environment in which he is situated, seeing without seeing and losing sensitivity. People have formed a fixed "frame" for perceiving the environment, and everything is silently transformed into unquestionable "common sense." Only through friction and collision with the new perspective that a different language brings will new discoveries and new feelings well up from the habitual. Bakhtin held: "If any people knew only its own mother tongue, if for it speech coincided with the mother tongue of its life, if no puzzling foreign speech or foreign vocabulary entered its field of vision, then such a people would at no time create philosophical verses like these." (2) Qu Yuan, on one hand, "wrote in the Chu language, made the Chu sounds, recorded the Chu land, and named the Chu things," (35) and on the other was a literatus familiar with many regional languages and cultures; (36) even though his poems everywhere embody Qu Yuan's attachment to his native soil and his own passion, the poet seems already to stand at the boundary of the local culture, in the position of the "other," using another kind of eye to scrutinize and reflect on the culture he is familiar with and loves; the frustration of his personal ideals all the more strengthened this reflection, thereby igniting profound thought and the flame of poetic feeling. Therefore, taking one's stand at the boundary of local language and culture is often an important condition for creating masterpieces.
Surveying the history of Chinese literature, the important new turns in literature are almost all related to the penetration of orthodox culture by heterogeneous local factors, related to the tension-relation between writing (the orthodox written language) and speech (folk dialect). For example, the yuefu contained the ballads of Zhao, Dai, Qin, and Chu; Hu Yinglin's Shisou says: "Only the Han yuefu songs and ballads, gathered from the lanes, not derived from literary polishing, are plain yet not vulgar, shallow yet able to be deep, near yet able to be far—the utmost literature under Heaven, which nothing surpasses." (31) Likewise, the five-character verse in the yuefu poems arose from the folk current; Xiao Difei argues: "The five-character form originally came from folk songs and ballads, not from the compositions of literati." "At that time the four-character form was worn out and unfit for use; though one composed in it, it was hard to make fine, and following the trend of the moment, on one hand they decried the yuefu as 'the sounds of Zheng and Wei,' and on the other could not but steal the yuefu form to make five-character poems." (32) It is precisely because the yuefu came from the folk—originally the ballads of the streets and lanes—that one could thereby "observe the customs and know what is generous and what is mean." The change from four characters to five characters is not only a change in the number of characters but a change in the mode of perception and thinking; it draws closer to the folk and is more local. Wang Yi says: "The scope of the yuefu is broad: as for the two Han, the Wei and Jin, the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the Sui and Tang—its duration is long and its forms are many; as for tracing its origin, distinguishing its kinds, and explicating its titles—its affairs are complex and its sources broad." (33) The forms and kinds of the yuefu system are numerous, deriving from diachronic flux, and at the same time cannot but change with differences of regional space. Speaking of the rise of the slow ci (manci) and the new turn of Northern Song ci, Wang Yi cites the Nenggaizhai Manlu: "Since the Southern Tang, ci had only the short xiaoling. The slow ci arose in the reign of Emperor Renzong; the Central Plains rested from war, the capital Bianjing was prosperous, and singing-stages and dancing-pavilions vied in wagering new tunes. Liu Yong (Qiqing), frustrated and at loose ends, lingered in the pleasure-quarters and gathered up all the vulgar, colloquial speech, editing it into ci so that performers could sing them; for a time they moved all who heard, spreading in every direction. Afterward Su Dongpo, Qin Shaoyou, Huang Tingjian, and their fellows successively composed, and the slow ci then flourished." (33) Language is an invisible social filter. These "new sounds" arising from the lanes and alleys cannot but be mixed with local slang and dyed with a distinct local color.
The "transformation texts" (bianwen) arose as a tool of Buddhist propagation; in order to attract audiences and expand transmission, their narrative technique grew ever more skilled and complete, their narrative content ever richer, and they went beyond the Buddhist scope. With their wide dissemination and evolution, they migrated to many forms of narrative literature and had a profound influence on popular literature. In A History of Chinese Popular Literature, Zheng Zhenduo says: "When the bianwen in fact vanished from sight, it was in the age of Emperor Zhenzong of the Song… But although the name 'bianwen' no longer existed, although her body had died and she could no longer be chanted in the temples, she transformed her body into the baojuan, the zhugongdiao, the guci, the tanci, the shuojing, the canqing, the jiangshi, the xiaoshuo, chanted in the entertainment quarters, leaving behind the most important traces in the later development of popular literature." (34) When the bianwen transformed itself into various literary and artistic forms and was transmitted, it increasingly fused with local factors, because the bianwen and the various popular literatures were mainly orally transmitted, directly facing ordinary audiences, and, less restricted by the text, could not but accept local and folk factors; and the communication and interaction between court and folk, the elegant and the vulgar, in turn let local factors be absorbed into elegant literature, and even let local forms be directly remolded and reshaped into elegant literature. Locality always invades the texture of literature with tenacious vitality, influencing the form of literature by means of local language. Speaking of the Yuan sanqu, Zheng Zhenduo says: "They are absolutely not crude, vulgar folk tunes; they are not from the hands of those without literary cultivation. Among them are very many masterpieces of the finest lyric poets. They are jade that has been polished, gold that has been sifted. A portion of them, perhaps, is not so harmonious with vulgar taste, not so first-rate; yet the majority go deep into the folk, somewhat like the Song-dynasty saying that 'wherever there is well-water to drink, there is no one who does not sing Liu's ci.'" (34) In his "Preface to A First Collection of Guangzhou Children's Songs," Gu Jiegang says: "The folk literature and art of Guangdong, because of the distinctiveness of the dialect, form a developmental system of their own. The drama has Cantonese opera, the song-words have Cantonese ou (ballad); folk authors and literati authors worked together and accomplished no small number of works." These works of folk-and-literati cooperation possess distinct Guangdong local features. Some folk literary-artistic forms, again, were remolded by literati and entered the literary world, spreading widely. "The zhuzhici was originally the folk song of Ba and Yu; after Liu Yuxi and his fellows imitated it, it became an important form in the literary world." And "ballads can walk; they float from Jiangsu across the South Sea to Guangdong, and also cross the East Sea from Guangdong to Jiangsu." (37) Ōki Yasushi says: "Through rural towns, the ballads of the city also spread to the countryside. The communication between city and countryside is not one-directional but mutual." (38) Therefore, the local factors of literature are continually flowing and shifting; they not only coexist and interact with elegant literature but continually migrate and spread. Literature changes by the transmission of language; language too changes by the communication of literature.
In What Is Literature?, Sartre cites the fiction-writing of the Black writer Richard Wright, holding that he had to face two different reader groups: the Black group he himself belonged to and the white group sympathetic to the plight of Black people. He shared a common life-circle with Black people—common cultural background, common experience, language, and common consciousness and feeling; but white people were different, still estranged from the life-experience, language, and psychology of Black people. In writing, Wright could not but face a "simultaneous double demand": "Every word points to two backgrounds; two forces are applied at once to each sentence, endowing his narrative with incomparable tension." (39) He had to transcend his own original life-circle and language habits, consciously master two cultures and languages, adopt the "simultaneous double demand," and re-cast and forge language, so that his work could be accepted by different reader groups. What we need to point out further is precisely this: because Wright was not confined to the Black life-circle and was familiar with two cultures and languages, he could gain a unique depth of thought, reveal the mystery hidden deep at the bottom of Black life, and move a broader readership with local characteristics. But for postcolonial literary writers, their homeland once changed "masters," their language was forcibly replaced, and so the gap between local experience and linguistic expression was highlighted; they could not but remold the colonizer's language by means of "re-placing" and "appropriation," mixing local factors into the colonizer's language. "Once the word is soaked in new life, it can set out on a new journey." (39)
Under the literati's ceaseless use and polishing, written words become ever more refined and ever more distant from actual life, losing expressiveness and vitality, gradually degenerating into "set phrases" and "monologue," no longer rooted in the soil of life and withering by degrees—even, as Derrida says, with meaning continually deferred, yet still drifting rootlessly, unable to find its home of existence. Dialect, by contrast, directly participates in everyday life, is rooted in everyday life, and becomes a constituent part of everyday behavior, brimming with the moist breath of life. Literature ought continually to absorb and integrate folk discourse and make the most apt expression. Speaking of the feature of discourse as an ideological sign, Bakhtin says: "One must realize that discourse truly functions only in all of people's mutual influence and intercourse: the cooperation of labor, ideological communication, chance life-intercourse, mutual political relations, and so on. In discourse are realized the countless ideological connections that permeate all aspects of social intercourse." (2) For literary language to keep its own vitality and infectious power, it should be rooted in the rich soil of life and absorb and adapt living local language. Lin Jinlan's "Aidengqiao" (Low-Stool Bridge) series of fiction is good at adapting his hometown dialect and possesses a kind of "strange flavor." On this, Wang Zengqi comments: "Every dialect has a special expressive power, a special beauty. This beauty cannot be replaced by another dialect, still less by 'Putonghua' (standard Mandarin). 'Putonghua' is the greatest common divisor of language; it has no character." (40)
With respect to aesthetic-creative activity, Bakhtin proposed "empathy" and "exteriority." He says: "One important (but not the only) aspect of aesthetic contemplation is empathy toward the contemplated individual object—that is, observing from within the object, placing oneself within it. What always follows empathy is objectification—that is, the contemplator places the individual grasped through empathy outside himself, separates the individual from himself, and returns to himself. Only this consciousness of the contemplator's return to himself can, from the position the contemplator occupies, endow the individual caught through empathy with aesthetic form, making it a unified, complete individual possessed of distinctive character." (41) This is precisely what Wang Guowei calls "entering into it, and emerging from it": on one hand, aesthetic contemplation is not mere observation from a purely external standpoint but must throw itself into society, go deep into the lower strata, and experience in person, in order to comprehend life itself; on the other hand, it needs to stand on the standpoint of exteriority, to look with another consciousness and eye, and only in the intersection of different languages and cultures, in mutual dialogue and collision, is it possible to make profound discoveries and catch the truth—because only by crossing through the crevices between different languages can one glimpse the real world and the natural Dao. At the same time, only by adopting the standpoint of exteriority can one endow experience with aesthetic form, organize it into a complete artistic image, and generate aesthetic value and meaning. Therefore, when we stress the locality of literature, this is not equivalent to mastering only the dialect as mother tongue and local customs, but stresses being familiar at the same time with the dialect and with another, even several, languages. Different languages endow us with different ways of seeing and ways of thinking; only in the interaction of inner and outer relations, in the crisscrossing and clashing of different languages and thoughts, do we enjoy a keener, more profound vision and, in dialogue and collision, generate the sparks of poetry.