Characteristics and causes of artistic images in Lu Xun's novels

The image of Lu Xun's novels has the characteristics of black and white woodcut, which is ignored by many critics. However, this feature is an important factor that constitutes "profound expression and special format" of Lu Xun's novels. The formation of black and white woodcut modeling features is closely related to Lu Xun's strong black and white woodcut complex. The complex of black-and-white woodcut originated from all Lu Xun's life feelings and artistic pursuits.

For a long time, countless experts and scholars have made multi-level and multi-angle research on the artistic images of Lu Xun's novels, and summed up many characteristics. However, people seem to ignore an extremely remarkable feature, that is, the artistic images in Lu Xun's novels obviously have the strong charm of black and white woodcut. Reading Lu Xun's novels, you will see a simple image, with clear black and white contrast, clear and powerful lines, and emphasis on sketching rather than painting, just as Mr. Lu Xun said when describing the final image of Xianglinsao-as if it were woodcut. The black-and-white woodcut-like modeling effect constitutes the remarkable characteristics of a series of novel images created by Lu Xun, forming the unique style of Lu Xun's novel images.

When people praise Lu Xun's artistic skills, they often assert that he is a brilliant painter, which is good. Lu Xun is an accomplished art connoisseur, collector and theorist, and he can draw a few strokes himself. The question is, what are the characteristics of this talented painter who uses words as pen and ink to describe his image? In other words, what kind of paintings did he draw and how did he shape his image? As long as we know a little about painting, we can draw the conclusion that Lu Xun is a master of black and white woodcut, and those penetrating novel images are all black and white woodcuts portrayed by the master with sharp writing like a meat cleaver.

The most basic language of painting art is color and line. However, the use of colors and lines in black and white woodcut prints has obvious characteristics compared with ordinary paintings. In terms of color, all colors are abandoned, only the simplest black and white is selected, and the colorful colors of the world are implied by the strong contrast between black and white or the coordinated transition between black and white; In the application of line, it uses a knife as a pen to carve various thick lines, thin lines, straight lines and curves with golden stone flavor, outline the image and construct an abstract and expressive space. This way of expression makes the black-and-white woodcut not simulate the surrounding world, but express the artist's feelings and thoughts about the world, giving people a strong visual impact with a concise, generalized and tense image, inspiring people's endless aftertaste and imagination. It is precisely in these characteristics that Lu Xun's novel image and black and white woodcut have the same beauty. The word "description" is used to explain Lu Xun's description of the image of the novel.

Some scholars put forward "color beauty" when analyzing the artistic characteristics of the literary images created by Lu Xun. They believe that Lu Xun made up for the limitations of color painting techniques in his artistic creation, and that Lu Xun's artistic pursuit is to accurately describe the real life picture with specific color words, enhance the image of his works and arouse people's aesthetic pleasure, and cited some examples. Indeed, some specific color words sometimes appear in Lu Xun's novels, such as hometown, social drama, etc., and some of them also carefully depict colorful and gorgeous scenes. However, looking at all Lu Xun's novels, we get the impression that, as a master of art, Lu Xun is best at and most successful in using color to create images. His artistic world with soul intake is composed of the simplest but richest black and white in nature.

Among Lu Xun's novels, Diary of a Madman, True Story of Ah Q, Blessing, Storm, Mourning for the Past, Lonely Man, Medicine, Casting Sword and other works are the most praised, and the characters in them are deeply rooted in people's hearts. It can be said that these indelible artistic images and their activity backgrounds in literary history are almost all composed of black and white. As Lu Xun's first vernacular novel, Diary of a Madman occupies an important position in the history of literature. Through the unique perception of "madman", the novel depicts a picture of the era of "cannibalism" society, and the cold world is full of darkness and evil. At the beginning of the text of the novel, suddenly came a sentence "The moonlight is good tonight", which is amazing. Everything in the real world faded in the beautiful moonlight and became black, white and gray mixed with black and white. With the help of moonlight, the author first renders a bleak and secretive atmosphere, which is a unique visual psychological feeling of madman and a color perception made by the author based on his deep perception and understanding of the world. The whole novel is immersed in such a tone: the tone is black, "it is dark, I don't know whether it is day or night", "the room is full of darkness", and the faces of the characters living in it are all black and blue, which is really hard to see. Above the dark asphalt, there is an eye-catching white dance. In addition to the bleak moonlight, the darkness is even more grim, and there are "white-folded" "cannibal" teeth and "white-hard" yellow croaker eyes. In the dark background, these white faces are positive and small, but they are shocking because of strong contrast and special stimulation. The strong emotion produced by the contrast between black and white makes the novel have a unique effect in profoundly revealing the phenomenon of cannibalism in the dark society.

Compared with Diary of a Madman, the novel Medicine contains more colors. There are dark red on the edge of soldiers' uniforms, gold on the broken plaque on the T-street, green with lotus leaves, bright red of steamed bread with human blood, red and white of broken lanterns, red nicknamed "red eyes" by characters and so on. The appearance of these color words, some are narrative needs, some are small embellishments, and some are eye-catching when painting dragons. You see, in the dark, the description of "holding a bright red steamed bun in one hand, the red drops down bit by bit" is so visually shocking, just like the pressure hitting people's hearts, which makes people think deeply in trembling. However, the emergence of multi-color words has not made medicine a heavy color painting, and the overall tone of medicine is still black and white. The novel starts with the gloomy scene of "Mid-autumn moon goes down, but the sun hasn't come out yet, leaving only a blue sky" and ends with a dark cemetery in Tomb-Sweeping Day, which is extremely cold and has not been dawn for a long time, and constructs a suffocating space-time framework of the dark world. In this gloomy background, all kinds of characters move like ghosts, as if they were in a hell on earth.

Therefore, on the whole, the color tone of Lu Xun's novels is black and white, and Ah Q, Kong Yiji, Sister Xianglin, Hua Laoshuan, Zijun and Wei Hemei stand out in the black and white background. In Juansheng's memory, Zijun will always be "a pale round face with a smile vortex, a pale thin arm, a striped shirt and a dark black skirt." That Wei Julian, "a short and thin man, with a square face, fluffy hair and a thick black man's beard, takes up less than half of his face, and his eyes only glow in black gas." Although he was wrapped in a yellow uniform with Jin Shanshan epaulettes and a wide red stripe after his death, his skinny face was so gloomy under the white curtain of filial piety, and he was always as lonely as a shadow.

Black and white woodcut prints should not only carefully conceive and arrange the relationship between black and white, but also have high requirements for the use of lines. Because only the carved lines can achieve a strong black and white effect and have a meaningful image. Woodcut lines have power that other paintings don't have. The lines carved on the wood with a carving knife are not as smooth as those drawn with brush strokes, but have the flavor of stones with setbacks. Simple and concise structure, strong sense of form and expressive force, with tension different from ordinary painting. Lu Xun knows the samadhi of black and white woodcut. When portraying characters, he moves the pen like a knife, and the knife is straight, fully demonstrating the modeling ability of lines. The images he created are concise and clear, and they are quite beautiful in black and white woodcuts.

When talking about novel creation, Lu Xun thought that "line drawing" should be used. "Sketch" is line modeling. Lu Xun knew the artistic charm of lines. In his novel creation, he clearly demonstrated his grasp and application of the expressive force of lines. The images in his works are like being sketched with a simple pen and then carved with a knife. The sketch is accurate and vivid, and the knife method is dignified and sophisticated. The famous Ah Q only used a few strokes when he appeared, such as "Ah Q is shirtless and languid", "There are many scars on his scalp that I don't know when it started" and "yellow braids" that are often caught. In just a few strokes, the basic outline of Ah Q was highlighted on the spot. With all kinds of "lines" endowed by the author, Lu Xun fully mobilized the expressive force of lines when expressing Ah Q's "lines and shapes". Ah Q's ZTE returned to Wei Zhuang. "He still has a big wallet hanging around his waist, and his belt hangs heavily in a very curved arc." This arc will make Ah Q's proud state leap from the page. In fact, the name given by Mr. Lu Xun to Ah Q is amazing enough. Isn't the q composed of an ellipse and a small curve the most vivid portrayal of the characters?

Kong Yiji's image depicts Lu Xun with more pen and ink, but the basic features of the image are still outlined with a few strokes. "Very tall; His face is blue and white, and there are often some scars between wrinkles. Although he is wearing a gown, he is dirty and torn. It seems that he hasn't washed it for more than ten years. " It is such a tall man, pale and wearing a dirty gown, standing outside the big counter of the hotel drinking. When this tall man is "black and thin, wearing a worn jacket, with his legs crossed, with a cattail bag under him and a straw rope hanging on his shoulder", he becomes a man who is half short and can only be seen when the waiter in the counter stands up and looks out. His complex personality and his miserable life are all displayed in the changes of lines in front of this arc counter, which is unforgettable. Almost all the characters in Lu Xun's novels are made up of lines like knives. A wrinkled old man moistens the soil; Yang Er's sister-in-law, her feet are separated like thin compasses; Sitting dejectedly on the threshold, sucking more than six feet of ivory mouth and 7 pounds's heavy Fei Xiangzhu pipe. , are line carved figures, strong generality, clear outline. Especially Xianglinsao, whose life is coming to an end, has gray hair, a thin yellow face with black, a broken bamboo basket in her hand, and a seam at the lower end is higher than her long pole, especially her eyes occasionally draw her expression. Isn't this a portrait that only a clever black and white woodcutter can paint? The tragic fate of the characters' lives, their expectations and despair, have been condensed and solidified-as if they were woodcuts.

The characters are like this, and the scene descriptions in Lu Xun's novels also exude a strong deliberate taste of lines. At the end of Medicine, there is a winding path in the middle of the gloomy cemetery, just like a clever and bold painter drawing a curve in the center of the picture, dividing the picture into two parts; Layers of steamed bread-like lumps form arcs to fill the picture; Hay stands upright like copper branches; A bare branch is straight, and a crow stands on it. It is against this background of straight lines and curves that two mothers come to pay homage to their son, on the left and right sides of the road. In front of Yu's grave, a red and white wreath suddenly appeared, which became the center of the eye-catching picture. What an authentic black and white woodcut! Careful composition and skillful knife technique set off the charm of lines and black and white just right. The meaning to be revealed and the atmosphere to be rendered in the novel are fully displayed in this vivid description.

Of course, literary works and black-and-white woodcut prints are two different arts after all. It is said that Lu Xun's novel images are black and white woodcuts with rhetorical colors. However, if you have aesthetic experience in appreciating black-and-white woodcut prints, it is not difficult to appreciate the rich black-and-white woodcut implications emanating from those literary images. Since Lu Xun's novels came out, it is no accident that most of the pictures illustrated or adapted from his works are in the form of black and white woodcuts. Those literary images and black and white woodcuts come down in one continuous line in modeling.

The powerful charm of black and white woodcut in the artistic image of Lu Xun's novels will naturally remind people of Lu Xun's love for black and white woodcut prints.

Lu Xun loved art since childhood. When studying in Japan, in order to realize the ideal of mental illness, he gave up studying medicine to study literature and art, and worked as hard as literature in art, especially gaining a deeper understanding of various trendy western art schools. After returning to China, I served as an official in charge of books, natural history and fine arts in the then Ministry of Education, and had more opportunities to contact a large number of fine arts works at all times and at all times. He tirelessly collected picture books all his life and collected a large number of works of various paintings and genres. Lu Xun knows a lot about art, and among all works of art, he likes prints best, especially black and white woodcut prints. Most of his art works are prints, and the art works that have been published and will be published are mainly prints and black and white woodcuts. Mr. Lu Xun is a recognized mentor of the New Woodblock Printmaking Movement in China. In the last ten years of his life, advocating, supporting and cultivating new woodcut art and young woodcut artists is his most important work outside literature. Why does Lu Xun love prints so much, especially black and white woodcut prints? Generally speaking, as an outstanding thinker and revolutionary, it is very natural for Lu Xun to advocate woodcut art which reflects life, shows the convenience of people's struggle and is easy to copy and spread under certain historical conditions, but this should not be the whole explanation of the problem. Lu Xun's love for black and white woodcut has its deep-seated reasons, which makes him more fond of black and white woodcut and makes his literary image have the modeling effect of black and white woodcut.

The artistic nourishment accepted in childhood plays an important role in the formation of a person's aesthetic taste. Lu Xun's love for black and white woodcut is closely related to his early artistic edification. Like all children, Lu Xun liked to look at pictures and draw pictures when he was a child. However, he seems to be more sensitive and fascinated by painting than ordinary children. The earliest painting that entered the eyes of sensitive children was the woodcut New Year pictures with a long tradition in China, which left an indelible impression on Lu Xun. As an adult, he still clearly remembers the contents of the "flower paper" posted in front of the window when he was about 6 years old. Later, the illustrations of woodcut books aroused his keen interest. When the nanny found the picture book Shan Hai Jing, which had teased him for a long time, he was so excited that he "seemed to have met a bolt from the blue and was shocked all over". Black and white woodcut prints gave Lu Xun such a strong aesthetic stimulus in his childhood. In the strong shock, Lu Xun started the album collection activity that he never stopped in his life. Besides appreciating and collecting, Lu Xun also devoted himself to depicting Xiu Xiang's illustrations in some books. He painted a lot and collected several thick books. At the same time, Lu Xun often went to the woodcut workshop and paper printing workshop in Shaoxing City to watch the production process of woodcut prints and deepen his understanding of woodcut prints. In this way, the traditional woodcut portrait moistens the young Lu Xun's soul like rain and dew, giving him the first and deepest art education and the ability to perceive, understand and grasp black and white woodcut prints. The contrast and harmony between black and white, the rhythm and charm of lines are deeply imprinted in the hearts of young Lu Xun, becoming a black and white woodcut complex in his life.

The real artistic aesthetic taste is essentially the embodiment of one's inner spiritual world. Lu Xun's love for black and white woodcut prints is based on his childhood hobby, which is the inevitable choice of his life sentiment and temperament spirit. Among the woodcuts, what Lu Xun appreciates most is the woodcuts newly created by Kolwitz and others. He treasures the original extension of ten woodcut illustrations made by mayfield for the novel Westminster, and his collection of Kolwitz prints is the first in the Far East. The artistic reference he provided for woodcut youth at that time was mainly the works of these artists. These prints create a strong visual effect and spiritual impact with the sharp contrast between black and white and the straightforward and powerful knife method. Just like a beast unwilling to die in a predicament, they will show naked the pain, despair, hesitation and struggle of people living in a society full of contradictions and chaos and threatened by the shadow of war. There is no gorgeous color whitewash, no feminine gesture, but a ruthless exposure of the reality of the dark society and a dripping vent of anger. The picture is full of cold temperament and critical spirit, and also reveals a helpless sadness. These are exactly the same as Lu Xun's spiritual temperament. Lu Xun is a cold and frank person who dares to face reality. The time and space in which he lives is full of endless darkness. Many people feel this darkness, but Lu Xun's feeling of darkness is stronger and deeper than others. He suffered from family changes since childhood, and in the decline from a well-off society to a difficult one, he suffered from the cold world, and his sensitive and stubborn mind was cast a shadow of sadness and loneliness that could not be removed for life. He has been struggling all his life, but he is often hit by open guns and dark arrows from all directions. The sinister environment made him send the canopy to the wall everywhere. He felt that China society at that time was an iron house without windows and darkness. Like a big black dye vat, everything in it is black. How dignified and miserable it is to say that "the wind and rain are like a dark hometown", "the hometown is cold and evil, and the sunny days are long and the nights are long", "the night is heavy" and "there is no wormwood in a thousand faces". The suffocating darkness that some people are used to, numb and even blend in with it, which encourages Lu Xun to think deeply about the nature of the dark society and inspires his total struggle spirit of never giving in and never tolerating. He said: "I often feel that only darkness and nothingness are real. I have to fight these despairs, so there are many extreme voices." So he picked up a pen like a rafter and fought against the darkness. He selected creative themes from the unfortunate in the morbid society, showing the depravity of the upper class and the misfortune of the lower class. He shouted loudly, but at the same time he couldn't get rid of the loneliness and hesitation he couldn't get rid of. Such a life experience, such a state of mind, just resonates with modern woodcarving houses such as Kolwitz on the other side of the world. These are artists who are equally sincere and sensitive, equally concerned about the fate of mankind and equally love the people. They have the same psychological energy in their hearts-hatred of the dark forces and sympathy for the people's misfortune. Obviously, in such a psychological field, it is difficult to create colorful and charming artistic flowers, and only a rough, sad and bleak black and white artistic image composed of rough, hard and twisted lines can be produced. Therefore, although the artistic creation methods of printmakers such as Lu Xun and Kolwitz are different, their artistic images are strikingly similar due to the similarity in spiritual temperament and Lu Xun's fascination with black and white woodcuts formed in his early years. It can be said that Mr. Lu Xun especially likes to create black and white woodcuts, mainly because of the synchronous pursuit of spiritual temperament. It is this spiritual isomorphism that makes Lu Xun's novel image isomorphic to the woodcut image created by Kolwitz and others. The result of their similarity is that they have the same spiritual pursuit and aesthetic choice at the same time and level.

Lu Xun is an artist, and his love for black and white woodcuts is also the necessity of his artistic pursuit. Like many writers and artists at that time, Lu Xun not only had profound traditional culture, but also understood the essence of China's art and was influenced by modern western civilization, thus forming a distinctive personal style and artistic proposition in art. He valued concise, lively, vigorous and simple style of writing and tried to avoid nagging. As long as he can convey his meaning to others, he would rather have nothing. What he pursues is a very general, thrifty and vivid expression of objects, rather than a realistic imitation of them. Black and white woodcut is an art with artistic character appreciated by Lu Xun. Black and white woodcuts are the most concise and subtle. It is only black and white, simple and concise, but never monotonous. It abstracted and sublimated an originally colorful world, and implied infinitely rich colors with the change of black and white, thus widening the distance between art and life. Black and white show a deeper artistic space than color, which is more expressive. The various lines that cause black and white are vividly summarized. Lines with different rhythms, such as straight, thick, long, rigid and soft, not only outline objects, but also directly express emotions, which has a high degree of freedom in artistic expression. The seemingly simple art shows the infinitely rich human life in the most artistic way. These unique ways of expression make black and white woodcut close to life, not stick to the appearance of reality, and create an artistic world with greater capacity and stronger spiritual strength. Are these artistic features of black and white woodcuts exactly the same as the artistic images created in Lu Xun's novels? It should be said that the modeling characteristics of black and white woodcut art are very consistent with Lu Xun's artistic concept, and Lu Xun's preference is natural. From the above analysis, it can be seen that Lu Xun's love for black and white woodcut is a rational choice based on his personal hobbies, which embodies his personality and artistic pursuit and also reflects the requirements of the times. This is the basic starting point for us to understand why Mr. Lu Xun has a special liking for black and white woodcut, and it is also the reason why the artistic images in his novels are rich in distinctive black and white woodcut characteristics. This is of great significance to know and understand the profound expression and special format of Lu Xun's novels.

[attention]

(1) Lu Xun: A Chang and Shan Hai Jing.

(2) Kolwitz (1867 ~ 1954), a German female printmaker and sculptor. Struggle for the cause of human progress all his life, and pay full attention to the problems and experiences of the poor. Printmaking works absorb the artistic skills of expressionism, give full play to the role of black and white, lines and composition, and have a strong sense of form and artistry. Prints were first introduced to China by Lu Xun.

(3) Lu Xun1March 925 18 Letter to Xu Guangping. (Editor Zhai Deyao)