大萧条、杂志年与幽默小品文关系再勘——兼论经济危机时代文学范式的转换

A Re-examination of the Relationship between the Great Depression,the Year of Periodicals and Humorous Essays with a Discussion on the Transformation of Literary Paradigms in the Era of Economic Crisis

1933年至1935年的“杂志年”的背后,是1929年全球性大萧条在中国延宕性显现的结果,其影响源头有三:读者购买力降低、失业率提高与进口纸关税上涨。杂志年中幽默与小品的“合股”,在作家主体与受众视野间形成了一个偏差:如若没有穿越下行周期的经济基础,幽默恐怕没有灵机天成的意义,小品文与中心性自我,也只能沦为大萧条下的逃避、释放与消遣心理。幽默小品文以边缘自居,源于大萧条带来的范式转换:“理性经济人”为代表的个体理性主义遭遇挑战,经济恐慌与混乱取代了抽象秩序,主张静观、理性的思想与文学潮流在世界范围内均成为隐流。

There are some disputes about the Year of Periodicals in the 1930s as regards the starting time and the number of publications.However,most of the researchers attribute the cause of the Year of Periodicals to the decline in readers purchasing power and the“recession”of the natural law of periodic panic.In fact,the so-called“recession”reflected the delayed impact of the global Great Depression in 1929 on China and as a result the birth of the Year of Periodicals from 1933 to 1935.The Great Depression had at least three aspects of effect on journal ecology and literary production:the decline in national purchasing power;the increase in unemployment rate which made it difficult for teachers,clerks and other reading groups to support reading consumption;and the increase in tariffs on imported paper such as woodfree printing paper.The spread of the world's depression mood in the 1930s,which was characterized by cherishing leisure,self-ridicule and escaping reality,largely contributed to the prosperity of cultural industries,such as humorous essays,comedy films and dramas that portrayed life far from reality.The“cooperation”of humor and essays in the Year of Periodicals,and their excellent commercial performance were largely because humorous essays met people's needs for shelter and entertainment in the Great Depression.However,there was a misplacement between Lin Yutang's“humor-leisure”and reality.This misplacement implies the deviation between the author s ideal and the readers' vision:in a downward cycle of economic depression,if there is no economic foundation that can cross the cycle,humor may not have the meaning of being spontaneous,generous and tranquil,and can only play the role of helping modern people escape the pain of life with a forced smile;while leisure and the central self that arises from it can only retain their original meaning in a group that has free disposal of non-productive time.The reason why humorous essays regarded themselves as marginal was due to the change of the mainstream values of the Great Depression era.The Great Depression is a multiple repudiation of classicism,liberalism,as well as the spirit of meditation and instrumental rationality that they symbolize.Individual rationalism represented by the“rational economic man”encountered challenges.Economic panic and chaos replaced abstract order.The intellectual and literary trends advocating contemplation and rationality had become hidden currents of the period.In this context,humorous essays could neither return to ancient Greece,which promoted rationality,meditation and logos-ism,nor could it return to the aesthetic life of the Ming Dynasty,which integrated morality and desire and had obvious self-sufficient private leisure.So humorous essays could only consider themselves marginal,while the Left-wing Camp discovered another type of leisure“found in the blood”in the essays of the late Ming Dynasty.After all,meditation and contemplation outside of the world cannot recreate free and rational individuals with the detached and contemplative Apollonian spirit in ancient Greece.