Vladimir A. Meskin

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.

The underlying thesis of this article is related to the assertion that Confucianism, the oldest philosophical school in China, which emerged in 551–479 B.C., has influenced and still influences the social and spiritual life of the country, particularly its literature, for centuries. The authors examine in detail how the main Confucian paradigms of ‘Ren’, ‘Li’, and ‘Zhong yong’ are refracted in Chinese literature of the past and present centuries. A brief interpretation of these paradigms is given. Particular attention is paid to the fact that the postulates of this doctrine are flexible, which makes it possible to draw from it various inferences necessary for a certain historical stage and for literary writers to follow the prescriptions of these inferences.