The evolution of Xiao Hong’s creative work

Abstract

The article examines the short stories of Xiao Hong (萧红), a Chinese writer little known in Russia but widely known in her homeland. Reviewing publications on Xiao Hong, the authors note that most critical responses focus primarily on the content of her works, while the formal features of Xiao Hong’s prose have received less attention. Turning to the analysis of her stylistic originality, the authors trace the poetic evolution of Xiao Hong’s artistic language and clarify the criteria of periodization: the degree of external conflict, the nature of social problematics, the type of imagery and the way psychological states are conveyed. The early stories of 1933 are considered as socially oriented realist prose with naturalistic detail and heightened expressiveness. The works of the second half of the 1930s are characterized by a weakening of direct accusatory rhetoric, an increasing role of subtext and a more objective psychological manner. In the stories of 1940–1941, impressionistic imagery and lyrical organization of the narrative come to the fore. The authors show that Xiao Hong’s later works, if one may speak of early and late periods in the career of a writer who lived only thirty years, are marked by a more complex artistic structure. Some of Xiao Hong’s short stories have been translated into Russian by the authors of the article for the first time.

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