Tian Han's Salomé Complex and The Discourses of Sentiment in Hurricane: The Life of Tian Han

Abstract:Unlike the usual form of main melody biographical plays, Tian Qinxin's Hurricane is a postmodern psychobiography, which focuses on Tian Han's inner life and romantic relationships through a pastiche of monologues, dialogues, choruses, and fragmented plays-within-a-play. Employing Tian Han's Salomé complex as a controlling narrative, it presents two significant turns in his life under the influence of "Saloméan" women. In Tian Qinxin's rendering, Tian Han's Salomé complex comes to encompass not only romantic love but also patriotic passion. By both contextualizing and correlating Tian Han's romantic love and patriotic love through different discourses of sentiment, Hurricane conveys the main melody message via an unusually artistic form, while contributing to the canonization of Tian Han in contemporary China.