Chinese literature

The literary tradition of China is not of the most ancient of the world. It is overcome in thousands of years by the literary traditions of the Near East and Egypt. Nevertheless it is possible to affirm that it is the tradition that it can presume of major continuity along the history.

The first literary testimonies, or at least considered literary in China, are the inscriptions found in the shells of turtle used to foresee during the dynasty Shang (XVIth to XIth century B.C.) and the prayers recorded in the bronzes sacrificiales of the same dynasty. In these inscriptions there appear already the primitive Chinese characters, which with his varieties and evolutions they will keep on using even nowadays.

The Chinese literature includes an amazing genres variety, many of which are not usually considered to be literary works in Occident. A good sample of the same ones, and the form in which they must be used can be had by the reading of the book "The Heart of the Literature and the Chiselling of Dragons", an ambitious work of literary criticism written by Liu Xue than in the Vth century of our age that allows us to appear to the complex literary world of the ancient China.

The most ancient poems of China are contained in the Book of the Singings (Shi Jing), an anthology of the popular ballads of the diverse regions of China. It is possible that the most ancient of them have been composed before the XIth century B.C. In any case his broadcast was oral until the VIth century BC. His varied subject-matter reflects with an impressive beauty the life of the Chinese people in those distant times: The step of the stations, the wars with the barbarians, the love and the lack of affection, the good and bad government, the correct way of realizing certain rituals, everything has capacity in the Book of the Singings.

Another work that precedes the classic period of the first splendor of the Chinese literature is the Ist Ching (or I Free of the Changes). His origin gets lost in the legend in such a way that his essentials assume to the mythical hero Fuxi, and his development to Duke Wen, father of the first emperor of the dynasty Zhou. One of the most hermetic works of the literary history. It seems that in the beginning it was composed like a guide to interpret the ancient oracles, although posteriomente it is developing like a work that relating the reality of the man and the cosmos in a certain moment, can indicate a way of reflection before each of the events that appear in our existence.

The development of the Chinese literature accompanies that of his society. It is for it that soon it moves away from the magic and from the poetry, to center on the politics and the human relations, especially in the correct way of governing that it could lead to the exaggeration of the kingdom. For the fragments that many centuries have come to us across written works of history later, from the VIth century a political and philosophical effervescence happens in China without precedents. In the middle of this movement there arise numerous and important thinkers, who propose new concepts on the life, the power, the education and the good government. China is an ideas bubbling, the schools compete between themselves, each of them thinks about how to put into practice his theories and reach the reputation in the shade of some king. Of many of the brilliant philosophers who inhabited China during those years only there has stayed some fragment, several phrases, or the reflex of his ideas in the refutations of the works that have come to us.

Nevertheless, which more it influences they have had in the later development of the ideas in China have been:

Confucio, with his Four Books and his disciple Mencio, in whose works the nostalgia is distilled by the past nobilities, and they propose the return to the absolute real power, of a just and strong dynasty, and the establishment of a society ruled by the harmony between the leader and governed, father and son, husband and woman, teacher and disciple, and between the friends.

Lao Tse, with the Taoteking, and his disciple Zhuang Zi, they support theories opposite to those of Confucio. They propose a return to the nature, a weak power in the government, and the abandonment of the politics and the government for concentrate in the extract of the proper human nature.

Mo Di, which works are gathered in called Mozi (I free of the teacher Mo), it expresses that the wishes of the common people, like small owner, only he hopes that the benevolence should reign and the people could live in peace. He does not believe in the need for the luxuries but in persons' communities living through simple lives. Han Fei, on the contrary, is the principal representative of the legalistic school. The propone that the laws should apply to all equally, and he considers the establishment of a constitutional state to be a requisite so that the country should advance.

In the South, in the basin of the Yangtze, a particular poetical tradition is generated a few years later, of sweet songs with varied topics, between the authors of this epoch the poet Qu Yuan stands out with proper light, (IIIrd century B.C.) author of numerous poems, although the reputation has come to him only for one: Lisao, which it is possible to translate like "The lamentation", in which it cries for the bad government of the kingdom. On having seen that the decline was inevitable, he committed suicide being thrown to a river. His death is commemorated nowadays in the Festival of the Ship of the Dragon, which celebrates in 5 day of 5 lunar month.

The historian Sima Qian (140-100 B.C.) is different of the figures of the literature. The first historian as such, gathers in his Historical Records the news on the ancient dynasties. His information fits to the reality, and even informations that till not long ago were considered fantastic, archaeological discoveries reveal them like certifications. Nevertheless his influence goes much further of merely literary, since to the sacralizar a linear history that connects from the beginning of the world up to the reigning dynasty, helps like nobody to forge the mentality of the Chinese people. The belief in a big country, focus of the culture, surrounded with the barbarian states, finds in Abyss Qian one of his principal props.

While Abyss Qian and other attorneys they were forging the one that would be a traditional Chinese culture, an important number of singings and poetry, studied with beauty for Anne Birrell, reflect still a world full of coloring that refuses to integrate in the rigid imperial forms.

The dynasty Tang is the century of the poetry, it could not be less in an epoch where the arts bloom as never. 2.000 poets Tang preserve more than 50.000 poems of the most famous. And in China all the children memorize in the school "300 poems Tang", which are a continuous appointment for thinkers and politicians. More emphasized of between them they are: Wang Wei (701-761), praising to the nature. Li Bai (701-770), with works of big social content, and Du Fu (712-770)), with a penetrating knowledge of the society of the epoch. A little later are Han Yu (768-824) and Bai Juyi (772-846).

The Dynasty Song, he makes use of these magnificent decadent parentheses of his capital status in Hangzhou, to produce big poets, like your Dongpo (1036-1101), that became a mayor of this city. It is also during these years when they begin taking form the legends of Mister Bao, a judge that he exercised in Kaifeng when this city was the imperial capital, famous person for his integrity and sagacity. For obtaining justice of the leaders, the wishes of the common people turned his life into legend and to the already famous cases solved during his career more and more cases were adding without much ado limit to themselves that the popular imagination wanted to put him.

During the dynasty Yuan the literary genre that blooms is the theater, some of them say that the Mongols who were governing China in those years, simple nations, were looking for more vulgar entertainments, like that they were providing dramas and operettas to them. In these years they emphasize the dramas of Guan Huanqing, denouncing topics as universal as the development of the poor, the injustice, and the abuses of the powerful ones. There are years also during which there are growing the works that were taking form in the following centuries, by means of legends, stories and traditions.

It is during the dynasty Ming when many of the legends and traditions that were circulating between the people of fragmentary form, they take definitive form, as it is the case of A Shore of the Water, written by Shi Naian, which describes the rural rebellion of Liang Shanpo against the dynasty Song. Or the Romance of Three Kingdoms, of Luo Guanzhong narrates the history of the China of the IIIrd century, when after the collapse of the dynasty They Have it split into three kingdoms in continuous war. And perhaps more important, the Peregrination on the West, of Wu Cheng'en, which describes the peregrination of the monk Xuanzang to the India in search of the books Buddhists and the adventures that happen to him.

In the dynasty Qing the authors satirize a society with the germ of the decline in his interior. As the Strange Stories of Liaozhai de Pu Songli (1640-1715), or The attorneys of Wu Jingzi, which questions the effectiveness of the system of examinations used to award the positions of the administration of the state, and especially the Sleep of the Red Pavilion, of Cao Xueqin and Gao E. Cao, the most charismatic work of China, his personages, still belonging to the upper class, are victims of their own contradictions. His tragedy, it is described by such mastery, his descriptions of the persons, of the ambiences, are so beautiful that his work has turned into paradigm of the beauty. In pronounced contrast with the sweet romanticism that is distilled on every page of this one works, the Jinpingmei, considered the excellent classic work of the Chinese erotic literature, the unjust society of the epoch limits herself to describing of realistic form.

In the XXth century, Lu Xun, with his magisterial Newspaper of a Madman, who describes as nobody the contradictions of the Chinese society of beginning of century; and Ba Jin, whose romantic novelizes Spring in Autumn describes the tragic love story to us between a couple lost between the traditional culture of China and the new ideas that come from Occident. Mao Dun, author of Midnight, on the entreguerras Shanghai, they have been the most extolled, well-read and released authors. Lao She, Bing Xin, Xu Zhi Mo they are different of the authors who have marked this century.

In the last years China has turned out to be wrapped in a maelstrom in all the levels. There has been a topics effervescence and you form till then forbidden. Between the authors who have stood out it is possible to mention Wang Shuo or Yu Wei.

To reward with the Nobel Prize of Literature Gao Xinjiang, whose magnificent novel The Mountain of the Soul has been translated to tens languages, it has served to extract to the Chinese literature of his traditional isolation and to popularize it between the readership of the whole planet. In such a way that, being still still a stranger, it begins having a good number of the reading faithful.

A curious aspect of the contemporary Chinese literature within reach of the western reader is the difference that is taking place between the Chinese writers who triumph in their own country, and those who do it abroad. And although part of this strange difference can stem from the censoring (it is inexcusable that no work of Gao Xinjiang has published in China yet), there is not doubt that the interests of the big publishing groups it has created a Chinese consumption literature for Occident (as formerly a few chinas destined for the exportation were created) in that the topics in some occasions look like appellants.

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