China and the West

[Mansfield, Katherine]. Mansifei'erde duan pian xiao shuo ji [ID D30020].
Tang Baoxin schreibt im Vorwort : "… Katherine Mansfield's stories are much loved not because of any prominent figures in them, but because she is able to depict her ordinary characters and their setting with a sensitive brush. Her writing is like traditional Chinese realistic painting, neat and clear, but never dull and static like some sketches of still life. Characters under her pen are vivid and impressive, alive with human feelings and emotions. Her stories are all about minor occurrences in daily life, most of which are not noticed by other people. She notices them, however, and turns them into interesting stories, attracting, then gradually involving, the reader's attention. She is basically a realist in her approach towards writing, and in her simple writing she proves herself to be a compassionate writer of moral integrity who attacks evils in real life and expresses love and hatred accordingly. With remorseless irony she lays bare the hypocrisy and shallowness of the leisured class and their men of letters, giving a vividly detailed description of their absurd and meaningless lives and of the emptiness of their spiritual world… The main themes of Mansfield's stories are the life of the middle-class in New Zealand, human relationships, and, in particular, the psychology of women and children. Characters in her stories are completely different from each other in their ways of thinking and behaving, which, however good or bad, kind or cruel, are true to life… She is skilled at conveying her life experience and her thoughts and feelings through her characters… She exhibited her talent for creative expression in the course of representing the past. Some stories are written from the perspective of girls in their adolescence… Although her characters originate in real life, they are not identical with real persons. She cut and trimmed raw materials taken from actual life. Sometimes she exaggerated aspects of the original, and sometimes she constructed a single character out of two real persons… Mansfield spared no effort in perfecting her writing techniques. She believed that a genuine style came from attention to technique, and required total commitment if it was to be achieved. In her letters she spoke of the hard work that was involved in writing some of her stories… She has been praised for the beauty of her language. She not only paid attention to the length of her sentences, but also to the prosody of every word, so as to suit them to different places, occasions and characters… Some people say that Mansfield's greatest achievement is her invention of a new genre of story writing. She revealed a talent for sensitive characterization and accurate recording of dialogue, as well as for constructing plots which unfolded gradually…"