China and the West

Xuan, Ming. Shashibiya gong si he Zhuyishi [ID D28968].
The presentation of Ulysses and James Joyce to the readers of Xian dai is indicative of the then prevailing attitude towards modernism. Joyce is characterized as a stern Irishman, who has long lived a life of poverty on the continent while writing his novel, driven by artistic principles. In Xuan Ming's view, the main characteristic of Ulysses, apart from its frightful length, is its use of interior monologue. He points out that Joyce declared this was not his own invention, and that it could already be found in Shakespeare's Hamlet. He states that although Edouard Dujardin liked to use his method, Joyce was the first writer who used interior monologue as his main technique. Xuan Ming then describes his own reading experience : "When you read Ulysses, you can hardly distinguish between things that happen in the external world and what happen inside". He only mentions interior monologue to describe Joyce's literary technique, and only briefly he gives his own impression as a reader, whereas he makes no mention at all of the novel's most striking characteristics, i.e. the author's explicit effort to give a truthful rendering of the meanderings of his characters' thoughts, in keeping with the latest discoveries of the period in the field of psychology. The term stream of consciousness is altogether absent from Xuan Ming's account.