The Search for New Literary Origins
In the introduction we observed the importance of expressive conceptions of literature in traditional Chinese criticism. Given the virulent iconoclasm of much May Fourth thinking, to discover that such theories continued to exert a powerful influence over Chinese literature in the early twentieth century is perhaps surprising. May Fourth intellectuals, as vocal as they were in their opposition to didactic and classicist strains in the critical legacy, never repudiated the notion that literature was above all the articulation of deep human emotions. The familiar Chinese definition of poetry as "the expression of the heart's intent," first recorded in the Book of Documents and ubiquitous in later criticism, was cited approvingly by writers as diverse as Guo
Moruo
[28] Lu Xun, "Moluo shi li shuo," p. 100.
nounced themselves spokespeople for the masses. Their works continued to display the same heroics of the self, but a self now viewed above all as the progenitor of the coming social revolution.[30]
That we find approving references to traditional expressive theories in the works of writers now classified as realists may seem doubly surprising, but realists too sought a new origin for their literature in the extraliterary world; they too hoped their fiction would speak with the voice of living individuals, that it would be "intimately connected with life."[31] Moreover, May Fourth realists hoped to appropriate for fiction some of the respectability traditionally accorded the expressive art of poetry. If the new fiction was to play an important role in cultural transformation, as they earnestly hoped it would, it must do more than merely amuse or preach; it must engage the affective life of its audience at the deepest level. Only in this way could it be distinguished from traditional didactic fiction and from popular romantic and satirical genres, which the intellectuals belittled as trivial and scandalmongering. The critic Zheng Zhenduo, in the context of a vehement attack on a popular form of satirical fiction that the literary reformers had dubbed castigatory fiction
[The writer of fiction] must offer up his own passion, his very viscera. Sometimes he will show a heart overflowing with sympathy for the characters he has created, sometimes he will treat them with the cool attitude of the observer. But he will not go beyond observation to mock, revile, and curse them. . . .
We Chinese have always enjoyed discussing others' secrets. We are pitiless. We scoff, we deride, we curse everyone and everything. Castigatory fiction simply caters to its audience, encouraging them in their bad habits and bad attitudes. If we want China to move forward, it we want
[31] Ye Shaojun, "Wenyi tan," pp. 33–34.
the Chinese people to become sympathetic, sincere and earnest, we must first rid ourselves of this kind of castigatory fiction.[32]
In passages like these, Zheng associates the expressive potential of the new literature with the inculcation of ethical values, specifically pity
The writer, like other mortals, is a mere grain floating in a boundless sea, but the scope of his observation is inexhaustibly large; everything that he comes across is material for his observation. The writer's perception, his spirit's vision, turns in all directions, a candle shining round about. Not only is his sight as far-reaching as a telescope and as observant of detail as a microscope but it also delves into the heart of things, into their inner being. There is no optical tool that can be compared to it.[34]
It is only after extended observation that the writer, "having entered into the heart of things and experienced their force of life, involuntarily develops a powerful need to express [what he has experienced]." Understood in full, then, the creative process constitutes self-
[33] Ye Shaojun, "Wenyi tan," p. 23.
[34] Ibid., p. 18.
cultivation
The similarity between Ye's observation
Ye Shaojun's overt (if unacknowledged) indebtedness to neo-
[35] Ibid., p. 32.
[36] Ibid., p. 32.
[37] Ibid., p. 50.
[38] Ibid., p. 8.
Confucian thought make him—in his role as a literary theorist, at least—something of an anomaly among members of the Association for Literary Studies; certainly his conception of literary inspiration, with its emphasis on self-cultivation and the virtues of pity and sincerity, seems remote from a Western understanding of realism. Yet his preoccupation with the morality of observation—with the ethical questions raised by the social research that all writers of fiction practice—was not unique to him. It may in fact be found even in the theoretical writings of an outspoken advocate of scientific realism like Mao Dun. Indeed, Mao Dun's critical writings of the period 1920–27 are not the unambiguous defense of realism many have thought them. Doubts about aspects of the mode surface repeatedly, particularly in discussions of naturalism, a doctrine Mao Dun began actively propagating in late 1921, drew away from increasingly after 1923, and finally compared negatively with realism in 1927. Mao Dun's gradual disavowal of naturalism was in part a response to mounting criticism of his views by the Creation Society, but it also had its source in his deep-rooted ambivalence about the objectivity naturalism required of its practitioners. As early as 1920 Mao Dun had observed what he called the "excessive" emphasis on objectivity in some kinds of realism, an emphasis that he feared could prove "destructive." He wrote:
Critical spirit is an advantage of realism, but it is also its imperfection. Realism analyzes thoroughly all social problems and endeavors with all its force to lay open their darker aspects. To use intelligible language in this way to awaken the masses is not bad, but merely to criticize without interpreting can cause melancholy and deep sorrow, and these can lead to despondency.[39]
Even as he campaigned for naturalism in 1921 and 1922 (a period in which he does not seem to have distinguished it clearly from realism), Mao Dun conceded its dangers: an untempered objectivity may lead to a mechanistic view of life, to a determinism that ultimately encourages both author and reader to disengage themselves from society and from life.[40] In fact, as Marián Gálik has observed, Mao Dun not only "failed to follow Zola's naturalistic criticism in its most lucid
form" but also implicitly refuted naturalism's underlying philosophical premises.[41] In responding to a critic of naturalism, he wrote: "My present opinion, that we should adopt naturalism, does not mean that we should follow it in everything. Perhaps the naturalistic worldview is not entirely appropriate for Chinese youth, but what I want us to take from naturalism is not its worldview but the power of its techniques."[42] Naturalistic techniques encompassed, of course, the objective observation so fundamental to realism, but Mao Dun insists that observation must be tempered by the "imagination" of the author, who constantly analyzes and synthesizes the raw data he or she encounters.[43] As the decade wore on, Mao Dun began to differentiate realism and naturalism, conveniently ascribing to the latter the destructive properties he feared (such as unfeeling objectivity, pessimism, and determinism). In 1927 he expressed his preference for the realism of Tolstoy, who "made fiction out of his life experiences," over the naturalism of Zola, who "experienced life in order to make fiction."[44]
Even when he was most strenuously advocating naturalism, Mao Dun insisted that a successful literary work conveys not just the author's observations but the author's personality
[41] Marián Gálik, Mao Tun and Literary Criticism , p. 80.
[42] Mao Dun, letter to the editor, Xiaoshuo yuebao 13, no. 6 (10 June 1922): 3.
for self-expression in his theory of literature. But although both realists and romanticists shared a view of literature as self-expression, they came to disagree sharply on their definition of the self and on the range and quality of the feelings whose literary expression they sanctioned. Whereas the romanticists celebrated the self's affirmative characteristics and its generative powers, for realists the particularity of an author's viewpoint was not in itself enough to justify a composition. Realists refused to don the mantle of personal artistic genius in which the romanticists wrapped themselves and insisted that the personal emotions expressed in a work of art must first be mediated through concern for others. For example, Ye Shaojun, by emphasizing pity in his early literary theory, ensures that his description of the creative process, while allowing for the spontaneity of artistic expression, incorporates a sense of the self's relation to others. That is to say, the literary self, as Ye describes it, is at heart a social construct; unlike the idlike creative platform of the romanticists, it is a bounded ego, subject to and defined by powerful social and moral constraints. Mao Dun similarly insists that the author's personality as expressed in a literary work must be understood in a social context.[46]
There is, then, in the writings of early May Fourth realists a double sense of fiction as a field for self-expression and for the exploration of constraining influences on the self. For realists the new fiction could authorize itself only through authors' rigorous moral efforts to purge their consciousness of all modes of self-involvement that might inhibit their capacity for social engagement. The curious blend of liberation and constraint that resulted from this formulation was given metaphorical expression in the repeated call by Zheng Zhenduo, Mao Dun, and others for "a literature of blood and tears":[47] the new fiction was to possess the palpable reality of fluids exuded by the body. But significantly the fluids to which the expression refers are released only when the body is physically wounded (blood) or when the spirit is bruised by empathy (tears). The metaphor would seem to suggest that self-expression becomes possible only within a context of injury or loss.
[46] See Mao Dun, Xiyang wenxue tonglun , p. 14.
These assumptions about the self and its literary expression are apparent not only in the literary theory of the 1920s but in the period's creative writing as well; in the next chapter, under the heading "moral impediments to realism," we will examine their effect on the fictional works of Lu Xun and Ye Shaojun. I have chosen the word impediment advisedly, not wishing it to imply a value judgment (as though flawed Chinese works were to be measured against a consummate Western model); indeed, I will argue that the mediation of these ethical preoccupations with the formal demands of realism characterizes the originality—and in Lu Xun's case, the genius—of certain works of modern Chinese fiction. But in the eyes of at least some of the period's critics, overemphasis on self-expression did in fact impair the creativity of less talented writers and therefore did function as an impediment (in a fully negative sense) to the development of the new literature. In many cases desire to exhibit sincerity led authors to overuse poorly digested autobiographical materials, while an eagerness to demonstrate pity made them add large dollops of sentimentality. By the mid-1920s some critics were already voicing objections to the highly personal, emotional quality of May Fourth writings and calling for a maturer, more objective fiction. Gan Ren
narrative models.[50] But these achievements were hard earned, both for the aesthetic and moral reasons we have discussed (indeed, as we shall see in chapter 3, even Mao Dun found it difficult to escape the subjectivity he felt marred earlier May Fourth fiction) and for political reasons—the atmosphere for experimentation became increasingly difficult after 1927, when the Creation and Sun societies initiated a virulent attack on the realists.
The critical exchange that followed this attack, now known as the Revolutionary Literature debate, was in many ways a watershed in modern Chinese literary history: an examination of the documents relating to it reveals the nascent formulation of almost all the ideas that were to dominate leftist literary polemics in the years that followed. The debate must be understood at least in part as a consequence of the abortive revolution of 1927, which ended in July when the Nationalist party broke its alliance with the Chinese Communist party and expelled its officers from Wuhan. This followed on the heels of the April massacre in Shanghai, when the Nationalists had slain tens of thousands of suspected Communist sympathizers. These events temporarily shattered China's left wing, and in the months that followed the survivors debated intensely what had gone wrong; factional divisions deepened, and mutual recriminations inevitably resulted. On the cultural front a profound rift had already existed, as we have observed, between the Creation Society and writers affiliated with the Association for Literary Studies. Much had changed, however, since the early 1920s, when the two groups had disagreed over the slogans "Art for life's sake" and "Art for art's sake." As early as 1923 Guo Moruo, the guiding force behind the Creation Society, had abandoned what the realists called his "ivory tower" view of literature and had started promoting a new view of art as "revolutionary propaganda."[51]
[50] Prusek[*] takes Yu Dafu as representative of the "lyrical" tendencies and Mao Dun as representative of the "epic" tendencies that together characterize modern Chinese literature. See "Mao Tun and Yü Ta-fu," in Prusek, The Lyrical and the Epic , pp. 121–77.
In the journals the society subsequently established, such as Hongshui
The Creation Society and the Sun Society were themselves rivals, each group claiming it was the first to have advocated revolutionary literature in China and each vying for a position of leadership.[53] But in their theoretical pronouncements the two groups were not far apart: both were committed above all to the notion of class warfare. Yu Dafu had introduced the idea of "class struggle in literature" in May 1923,[54] but it was not aggressively applied to a review of the new literature until 1928. By that time the concept of proletarian realism was being discussed in the Soviet Union, and Qian Xingcun
treme left.[55] In his view proletarian realism
The members of the Creation and Sun societies were not content with general attacks on realism, however, and proceeded to denounce by name several of the best-known authors of the 1920s. In particular Lu Xun, Mao Dun, Ye Shaojun, and the now renegade Creationist Yu Dafu were admonished, in part for their continued focus on the problems of intellectuals and the middle class, in part for failing to offer a
[58] Li Chuli, "Zenyangde jianshe geming wenxue," pp. 15–17.
positive message of hope to the workers and peasants. Theorists from the Sun Society (especially Qian Xingcun) were the most vocal in their attacks on individual authors. Qian accused Lu Xun not only of blindness to the class base of literature but of a failure to show a sense of historical change in his fiction. Lu Xun's work, he wrote, was obsessed with the past and stagnant; it offered at best an "empty pity" for the downtrodden. Literature should do more than simply describe life—it should create new life, that is, actively propel society into the future. While grudgingly conceding that Lu Xun had made contributions in the area of fictional technique, he insisted the contributions were achieved at the expense of "political ideas."[59] Qian similarly censured Mao Dun's work for its exclusive focus on the dark side of life, for its retrospective tone, and for its failure to communicate a sense of the future.[60] In Qian's view, Mao Dun was obsessed with out-of-date literary forms and failed to recognize the necessity of inventing new forms to give expression to the concerns of a new age.[61]
The Creationists' criticisms were most passionately refuted not by the writers they singled out but by theorists and critics associated with two other literary organizations, both of which had been established to encourage greater "freedom of thought" in literary matters: the Xinyue she
[61] See Qian Xingcun, "Zhongguo xinxing wenxue zhong de jige juti de wenti," Geming wenxue lunzheng ziliao xuanbian 2:945.
the latter group, Gan Ren and Han Shihang
life. "When writers express themselves, they give voice to modern society, to modern trends of thought, to all aspects of modernity!" Though an artistic work may appear "purposeless" and egocentric, it can in fact serve as a guiding light for society at large.[66]
Significantly Mao Dun, Lu Xun, and most of the other writers singled out for criticism by the Creation and Sun societies did not join forces with Gan Ren and Han Shihang to champion an independent role for the artist in modern society. As we have seen, many of them had at one time or other publicly expressed misgivings about the pessimistic and deterministic tendencies of realist fiction, so the allegations now directed against their own work may have resonated too deeply with their own doubts to permit a spirited defense. Mao Dun's major contribution to the Revolutionary Literature debate, for example, the two essays "From Guling to Tokyo" and "On Reading Ni Huanzhi ," though moving and elegantly written, constitute a lame defense of realism. Among other matters they address Qian Xingcun's scathing estimation of Mao Dun's trilogy Eclipse as containing "nothing but the sick and bewildered attitudes" of young intellectuals.[67] In his own defense Mao Dun suggests that his trilogy is in some sense more faithful to the times than the "sloganeering" literature of the romanticists-turned-revolutionaries, but he does not defend realist techniques of objective observation or argue the closer equivalence of realist fiction to the extraliterary world. Rather, he pleads the greater sincerity of his own literary effort. He implies that he foresaw criticisms like those of Qian Xingcun: "I knew that if I had written more bravely, more positively, my work would have been better received. But it seemed shameful to sit in my study writing brave things . . . so I elected to express freely my sense of disillusionment."[68] Through this formulation, Mao Dun defends his personal candor but also, of course, implies a profound doubt about the social efficacy of his fiction and indeed of all writing produced during a revolutionary period. What seems to irk Mao Dun about the Creationists is not so much their ideological
[67] Qian Xingcun had made this accusation in the article "Cong Dongjing hui dao Wuhan," in Fu Zhiying, Mao Dun pingzhuan , pp. 264–65.
[68] Mao Dun, "Cong Guling dao Dongjing," in Tang Jinhai et al., Mao Dun zhuanji , p. 334.
stance, nor their denigration of his and his colleagues' artistic efforts, but their refusal to concede their own limitations, to acknowledge for themselves the "shame" of the study. He pointedly reminds the Creationists that it was they who, by preaching "art for art's sake" in the early 1920s, had most egregiously hindered Chinese literature from engaging social issues.[69] Writers dubbed bourgeois realists, he suggests, at least recognize the true nature of their class background and reject the fantasy that one can override one's personal history and become one of the masses by simply spouting slogans. Moreover, realists at least know who constitute their audience and do not pretend to be addressing the illiterate masses in books whose circulation will never extend beyond the middle class.
The terms of Mao Dun's defense thus conceded crucial elements of the critique that had been launched against him. In fact his receptivity to some of the Creationists' ideas was evident as early as 1925, when he composed an essay on proletarian art espousing the notion of class struggle in literature; Marián Gálik has suggested (with perhaps a degree of exaggeration) that from that point on, "the literary platform ceases for him to be a universal and national one . . . but turns into a class platform."[70] A similar change seems to have occurred in Lu Xun's thinking around then, and several of his essays from the years 1925–27 seem to foreshadow the themes of the Revolutionary Literature debate. Most striking in this regard is his famous talk "Literature in a Revolutionary Period," which was delivered at the Huangpu Military Academy on 8 April, 1927, several months before the most strident of the Creationists' essays were published (and, one notes, just four days before the Shanghai massacre). On reading it, one is left with the impression that Lu Xun had already internalized much of the criticism that was to be directed against him. Referring to his small output of short stories, Lu Xun goes far beyond his critics in depreciating them and even denies that he should be accorded the title "author." The "complaining" about social conditions in his and similar works, he declares, is finally powerless: the strong "do not talk—they kill." At the same time, however, Lu Xun refuses to accept the arrogant claim of the Creationists that their own works constitute a truer contribution to the revolution. In fact, Lu Xun turns the Creationists' own
[69] Mao Dun, "Du Ni Huanzhi ," in Mao Dun, Mao Dun wenyi zalun ji , p. 284.
[70] Marián Gálik, Mao Tun and Literary Criticism , p. 90.
arguments against them by calling into question the role of literature itself in a revolutionary period. Evoking the traditional expressive view of literature (but without crediting its origins in the Chinese tradition), Lu Xun argues that writing should "flow naturally from the heart with no regard for consequences"; only writing produced in this way by the common people themselves could constitute a true revolutionary literature. The works of intellectuals who choose to style themselves the people's representatives "lack vigor" and merely "voice the sentiments of onlookers." China has no people's literature because the people remain illiterate; their true emotions are expressed through revolutionary actions rather than words. "During a great revolution, literature disappears and there is silence."[71]
Mao Dun and Lu Xun both clearly resented the Creation and Sun societies for assuming that they alone fathomed the inner truths of radical literary theory. After all, both writers had labored conscientiously for years to introduce progressive literary opinion (including Marxist and Soviet perspectives) from the West—Mao Dun through his work at the Short Story Magazine and Lu Xun through, among other things, his editorship of a series of translations, the Weiming congshu
which the new literature found itself. Indeed, they felt about the creative efforts of the Creation and Sun societies (which were rather sparse to begin with) much as their opponents felt about theirs: they were superfluous verbiage, the product of mere onlookers of the revolution, of no measurable use to the present struggle. As the debate progressed, the accusations traded between the two factions began to take on an oddly specular quality for, despite their mutal disregard, both sides shared a common set of standards in which questions of literary origins and the utility of literature held pride of place. In the minds of both parties a literary work could justify itself only by the purity of its affective origins or by its salutary effect on the revolutionary cause as a whole. And by that standard, the new literature—like the revolution it was to have succored—had failed.
By the end of the 1920s, in the face of increased Nationalist persecution and the impending Japanese invasion, leftist intellectuals recognized the need to turn away from internal squabbles and concentrate their energies on outside opponents. Indeed, at its Sixth Party Congress in 1928 the Chinese Communist party resolved to consolidate all revolutionary forces in a new "united front from below." In 1930 members of the various factions of leftist literati met to create an institutional expression of this united front in the Zuoyi zuojia lianmeng
[74] The most thorough history of the league in English is Anthony James Kane's dissertation, The League of Left-Wing Writers and Chinese Literary Policy . The appearance of harmony cultivated by the league in fact concealed fierce internal discord, which finally erupted in the famous "two slogans" debate upon the league's disbanding. For accounts of the league's internal conflicts see Tsi-an Hsia, "Lu Hsün and the Dissolution of the League of Leftist Writers," in Hsia's Gates of Darkness , and Maruyama Noboru, "The Appraisal of the Literature of the Thirties in the People's Republic of China: Aspects of the Ideological Background to Contemporary Chinese Literature," in Wolfgang Kubin and Rudolf G. Wagner, Essays in Modern Chinese Literature .
restraint was inevitable, since the league, though committed to an appearance of unity, constituted a rather unstable alliance of factions and since league members continued to hold different views on practical aesthetic matters. As Mao Dun observes, in selecting a name for the association the organizers specifically chose the term left-wing writers rather than proletarian writers to indicate that the left had "purged itself of the errors of the proletarian literature movement of the last two years."[76] Nevertheless, the platform specifically states: "We will do all we can to promote the production of proletarian art."[77] Such compromises were necessary to the league's establishment and continued functioning, a fact that is nowhere more obvious than in the many new definitions of realism that emerged in the early years of its existence.
Qu Qiubai
[76] Mao Dun, "Guanyu 'Zuolian,'" p. 151.
[77] "Zhongguo zuoyi zuojia lianmeng de lilun gangling," p. 167. It is clear from Mao Dun's memoirs that "left extremists" had the upper hand in the league during its early years. Mao Dun records his irritation when he learned that his old friends from the Association for Literary Studies Zheng Zhenduo and Ye Shaojun were not invited to join the league, and his impatience with the attitude of many league members, who valued "organizational" and propaganda work more than the literary endeavors of practicing authors. During the first months of the league's existence Mao Dun even pretended to be ill much of the time to avoid being enlisted in the league's political busywork—thus allowing time for his own writing. See Mao Dun, Wo zouguo de daolu 2:55–58.
So too in his writings about realism did Qu take an intermediate position. While he was attracted to the "materialist" underpinnings of realism, he shared the romanticists' reservations about the excessive scientism and determinism of naturalism. He recommended that writers start from a base of realism but work to introduce more positive, forward-looking elements into their fiction; he hoped in this way to remedy realism's passivity and negativity without entirely abandoning the model of critical independence that it assumed.[79]
Qu's views on realism must be understood in the context of his critique of the European influence that had dominated Chinese culture in the 1920s. As he saw it, realism and romanticism both had dubious aspects as they were practiced in the West; he wanted to extract the positive qualities from them in order to delineate a new literary mode more appropriate to China's needs. This notion of conjoining realism and romanticism became an oft-repeated theme of leftist literary theory in the 1930s. Zhou Yang
[79] Ibid., pp. 128ff.
that in many cases had been the bywords of opposing sides in the Revolutionary Literature debate. According to the formula, literature was to reflect and describe reality but also to direct and propel reality.[82] Literature was to be the subjective expression of the masses' class interest but was also to be an active force in organizing the masses and in systematizing their worldview.[83] Literature was to stand at the level of the masses but was at the same time to raise their cultural level.[84] Literature was to constitute the author's objective observation of and research into reality but only from the perspective of a correct worldview, specifically that of the workers and peasants.[85]
That such authors as Lu Xun and Mao Dun felt themselves in general agreement with the league's approach to literature, if not with the theorists' specific definitions of realism, is evident from their active participation in the debate over third-category
an article that passionately made the case for a liberal view of art and of the artist's role in society; it was imperative, he wrote, to distinguish true literary efforts from propaganda and to allow artists the freedom to seek out their own "spiritual adventures." He also argued, however, that literature should play a designated role in society, that of "exposing social evils and corruption."[86] Literature should thus serve as a kind of disinterested Kulturkritik , but for it to do so the authors had to distance themselves from the political arena. In December 1931 Hu Qiuyuan and several sympathizers founded a journal entitled Wenhua pinglun
The league perceived Hu's attack as a serious threat, in part because Hu bolstered his arguments with quotes from Plekhanov and other Marxist theorists but also because his criticisms raised crucial questions about the legacy of the May Fourth movement. Hu's position amounted to a vigorous defense of precisely those strains of May Fourth thought that theorists within the league, such as Qu Qiubai, wished to put to rest. While Qu still recognized the value of some aspects of the May Fourth legacy (specifically its antifeudalism, anti-imperialism, scientism, and nationalism), he impugned the individualism and uncritical infatuation with the West that had also characterized it. These he saw as evidence of the movement's essentially bourgeois values, which could only inhibit the development of a true proletarian revolution in China.[87] Qu wrote that Hu Qiuyuan, by denying the class basis of literature, undervalued art's capacity to exert a direct and positive influence over society. Hu's position, therefore, was
another example of sterile bystanderism
The debate between Hu Qiuyuan and the league was considerably broadened when the brilliant prose stylist Su Wen published an account of it in his highly influential journal, Les contemporaines . Although Su Wen was later to be forced into an unwilling association with Hu, in the beginning he rejected both sides of the debate, which he saw as a sterile exchange between "academic" and "partisan" Marxists. Su Wen took the side of practicing authors against the theorists, pointing out the impossibility of producing literature according to the league's dictates. The "proletarian literary culture" that the league promoted was far too rudimentary to offer viable creative models, and Chinese authors, as members of the petty bourgeoisie, were by definition incapable of producing proletarian literature. "At the present time, it is fortunate to be blind and wise to fall silent."[89] He proposed a "way out" of this dilemma: writers should recognize their identity as members of a "third category" and pursue the truth rather than political rectitude in their fiction. They should write for posterity, for those future readers who would be capable of appreciating the true value of literature.
Intriguingly, Su Wen's arguments repeated many of Lu Xun's own observations about the difficulty of writing in a revolutionary period, but with a difference. Whereas Lu Xun, in his address at the Huangpu Military Academy, had cynically advised silence for all but the true proletarian writer, Su Wen was above all concerned with keeping writers productive. Although Lu Xun's own patronage of young writers from diverse class backgrounds suggests that his recommendation of silence was a rhetorical exaggeration, it vividly communicated his refusal to give art (or the concerns of artists) priority over life. That he
saw third-category literature as a dangerous inversion of priorities is clear from his comments on the debate:
To live in a class society yet to be a writer who transcends classes, to live in a time of wars yet to leave the battlefield and stand alone, to live in the present yet to write for the future—this is sheer fantasy. . . . To try to be such a person is like trying to raise yourself from the ground by tugging at your own hair—it can't be done.[90]
Lu Xun in fact denies the possibility of a third category. The literary despotism of which Hu Qiuyuan and Su Wen accused the league could thus be dismissed as imaginary: their criticisms simply exposed a personal refusal to accept the class nature of literature.
In a 1933 book of essays related to the third category Su Wen declared an end to the debate, reporting that the league, through Lu Xun, had conceded its sometimes mechanical approach to literary theory. But some members of the league, especially the theorist Zhou Yang, refused to let the matter lie. Through sporadic attacks Zhou succeeded in turning the squabble to the league's benefit and in the process further polarized Chinese writers along strictly defined political lines.[91] ("Ally or enemy" went the slogan that the league borrowed from the All-Russian Association of Proletarian Writers, or RAPP.)[92] The equation of literature with a truly independent social critique was never again to be argued so baldly. The question of the origins of literature had found a new answer: literature was still understood as the "expression of the heart's intent," but that heart was now defined by class rather than individual interests.