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As an important element of Lu Yin's (1899-1934) literature, the discussions of “Affection” is usually overlaid in the study of her mournful literary style, the theme of marriage and love in May Fourth, and also covered by gender study with integrated approach of cultural criticism. For Lu Yin, a writer who mainly composes novels, “Affection” replaces events and plots, becomes the main contents and driving force of her narratives. Even more, “Affection” is indeed the core of her metaphysical speculation and cosmic consciousness. But “Affection” itself has not yet been built as the theoretical center of Lu Yin literature studies. In the context of May Fourth's affectional enlightenment, “Affection” extends an important aspect of Lu Yin's literature, that is “the consciousness of spirituality”. “Affection” and “consciousness” are both related to issues of subject and noumenon, while “spirituality” organizes the different levels in between as a transcendental wholeness. This thesis takes “Affection” and “the consciousness of spirituality” as the dual axis to interpret the movement of Lu Yin's literary universe from the perspectives of history, culture, philosophy, science and consciousness.
Let's first approach the connotation of “Affection” in Lu Yin's literature from the perspectives of history and culture. Not only was the May Fourth New Culture Movement itself driven by emotion rather than rationality, but the context of Life-philosophy and Affectional- philosophy (wéi qíng thesis) under the emotional enlightenment was also intertextual with Lu Yin's literature. From Lu Yin's fetish of Life-philosophy, we find her concern and longing for spiritual transcendental wholeness. Then, from Lu Yin's essays of literary writing, we find that Lu Yin takes “Affection” as the axis of the ontology of literary activities, and also finds the ideological feeling of the Affectional- philosophy in Lu Yin's literature, as well as the alienated negation of Hegel’s Spiritual philosophy. We further integrate the Affectional- philosophy, Spiritual philosophy, and Quantum philosophy into the framework, “self (holo) – movement” of rheomode, so as to interpret the “metaphysical wisdom” journey of Lu Yin’s affectional literature. At last, we use the theory of The Spectrum of Consciousness to observe how Lu Yin takes “Affection” as the driving force to sublate the alienations and divisions of different levels of consciousness in various genres, and try leading to the absolute harmony within noumenon.
What do we mean “Affection” ? “Affection” is not only chemical reactions of the current of nerves, nor is it only a possibility of ontology. Through the resonance and expansion of “Affection” and “spirituality” in Lu Yin’s literature, we enter the gap between Matter and “Spirit”, we go through a dialectical process beyond time, return to the realm of inconceivable nothingness.
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