2—
"A Literature of Blood and Tears":
May Fourth Theories of Literary Realism
Realism and the Promise of Cultural Transformation
"Sincere, progressive, activist, free, egalitarian, creative, beautiful, good, peaceful, cooperative, industrious, prosperous for all"—with this cumbersome list of adjectives the young intellectual Chen Duxiu
Literature was to play an important role in this transformation, as Chen made clear in another article, where he imagined an "army of the literary revolution" advancing with banners unfurled. On these banners he saw imprinted the literary equivalents of the above lists: "Down with the ornate, obsequious literature of the aristocrats; up with the plain, expressive literature of the people! Down with the stale, ostentatious literature of the classics; up with the fresh, sincere literature of realism! Down with the pedantic, obscure literature of the
recluse; up with the clear, popular literature of society!"[2] In his call for a people's, or national, literature (guomin wenxue
Chen was not the first Chinese intellectual to use the term xieshi (or the synonymous
much of the discussion about fiction in the years to follow, though more often than not the term romanticist
Liang's essay was seminal not only for its introduction of these terms but for its forceful advocacy of literary reform. Like Yan Fu
[5] Liang Qichao, "Xiaoshuo yu qunzhi zhi guanxi," p. 157.
What was original about these arguments was not their apparently exaggerated claims for the power of literature to transform society. The Chinese had always viewed their written heritage, in particular their long philosophical and poetic traditions, as the primary embodiment of their culture, and would-be reformers had frequently ascribed social disintegration to a poor choice of literary models. But in searching for new literary forms to substitute for the offending ones, reformers had traditionally looked to well-established native models and represented their own innovations as the reinstitution of classical manners and customs. Liang and the other late Qing reformers broke this mold by promoting a vernacular rather than classical model and, even more radically, by looking abroad for prototypes. In fact late Qing and early May Fourth thinkers had only a very rough knowledge of Western fiction (Chen Duxiu's list of model writers included such diverse figures as Wilde, Hugo, and Dickens),[8] but they were impressed by how broad an influence fiction exerted over society and by the dynamism they associated generally with Western cultural products.
This dynamism, which was to become one of Chen Duxiu's major themes, had first been observed and analyzed by Yan Fu in his essays of the mid-1890s. While introducing Spencer and Darwin to Chinese readers, Yan Fu had written that whereas the West was forward-looking and welcomed change, China "loves the ancient and despises the new."[9] In 1915, when Chen Duxiu began editing the journal Xin qingnian
[8] Chen Duxiu, "Wenxue geming lun," p. 140.
"power to resist," to move and change.[10] Always given to thinking in dichotomies, Chen Duxiu played heavily on the contrast between East and West in his May Fourth essays, praising the West for its "history of liberation" while lamenting Chinese "ignorance of the function [of revolution] in the improvement of civilization."[11] Chinese timidity was evident not only in political matters but in cultural ones as well, and Chen went on to apply Darwinian notions of evolutionary change to literature. He accepted Liang's division of literature into two schools, the realistic and the idealistic or romanticist, but whereas Liang had found value in both schools, Chen did not give them equal standing. Borrowing freely from contemporary Western accounts of literary history, which portrayed Western literature—and by hegemonic extension, world literature—as having passed from classicism to romanticism to realism in ever-ascending linear progress, he argued the evolutionary superiority of realism.[12] Though classicism and romanticism remained predominant in China, he wrote, it was inevitable that in the future Chinese literature "would move in the direction of realism."[13] As the culmination of a long evolutionary process, realism was for Chen the literary embodiment of the scientific and democratic spirit that he believed characterized the contemporary West. His advocacy of the mode was thus a natural extension of his campaign to rid China of traditional cultural constraints and thereby make way for a general social revolution.
Hu Shi
[13] Chen Duxiu, letter to the editor, Xin qingnian 1, no. 4 (15 December 1915): 2.
Hu Shi went further, examining the actual operation of realism (or what he called Ibsenism) in far more detail than Chen Duxiu had done. Like other progressive intellectuals of the period, Hu was impressed with the influence that literary works such as Ibsen's plays appeared to exert in Western society. In Hu Shi's view this influence resulted above all from Ibsen's refusal to cater to the greatest human weakness, people's inherent reluctance to confront the truth about themselves and their society. Ibsen defies this natural predilection for escapism and bravely discloses the truth; in particular he forces his readers to observe the many ways in which society and the family work to stifle individual conscience. Yet Hu is careful to insist that though Ibsen's work is critical in spirit, it is never purely negative in effect:
Ibsen described actual social and familial conditions in order to move readers, to make us feel how dark and corrupt our families and society are and to make us understand that our families and society must be reformed—this is what is meant by Ibsenism. On the surface, it seems destructive, but in fact it is entirely healthy. . . . Ibsen knows that society's diseases are many and complex and that there is no panacea, so he can only take a blood test, describe the illness, and let each patient seek out his or her own medicine.[15]
Astutely, Hu recognizes that in Ibsen's world the positive effect of realistic description is achieved by polarizing the individual and the social order; progress comes only through the lonely struggles of a few extraordinary people against society. Again Hu applies the disease metaphor, suggesting such individuals play a vital role in society's survival: "The health of the society and the nation depends on a few tenacious, unrelenting white blood cells who battle the wicked and depraved elements of society; only through them is there hope of reform and progress."[16] In recognizing that for Ibsen heroism consists of the courage "forthrightly to attack social corruption," Hu Shi evokes, without explicitly naming it, another important theme of the May Fourth enlightenment, that is, the pursuit of zijue
[16] Ibid., p. 192.
[17] Chen Duxiu first argued the importance of autonomy in 1915. See the discussion in Vera Schwarcz, The Chinese Enlightenment , p. 38.
to denote the state of intellectual and spiritual independence that they wanted to see replace the "slavish" mentality inculcated in the Chinese people by Confucianism. Like Chen's notion of perpetual revolution, zijue was associated positively with the West: only freethinkers, liberated from the strictures of tradition, could produce the kind of cultural criticism that another frequent contributor to New Youth , Luo Jialun
Mao Dun
In December 1920 Mao Dun was given a chance to execute his plan: in that month the Wenxue yanjiu hui
For those who first advocated its adoption in China realism was thus associated with a whole complex of Western ideas and attitudes, especially with notions of cultural dynamism and intellectual autonomy. Nevertheless, a careful reading of the relevant essays by Chen Duxiu, Hu Shi, and Mao Dun reveals certain reservations, or at least hesitations, about the mode, reservations that become significant when viewed in the light of later Chinese reevaluations of the Western influence. Hu Shi, for his part, while expressing admiration for Ibsen's spirit of struggle, appears somewhat reluctant to prescribe his individualistic anarchism for China: "Societies and nations evolve with time, so one cannot definitively point to a certain medicine as a cure-all. . . . Moreover, each society and nation is different: the medicine that's good for Japan may not be appropriate for China."[21] Indeed, Hu Shi was later to actively campaign against individualism,[22] and the ambivalence he displays even in his essay on Ibsenism was characteristic of Chinese discussions of the subject: as Benjamin Schwartz has
[21] Hu Shi, "Yibushengzhuyi," in Zhongguo xin wenxue daxi 1:191.
observed, when Yan Fu introduced the writings of John Stuart Mill in the 1890s, he construed Mill's individualism not as an end in itself but rather as "a means to the advancement of 'the people's virtue and intellect,' and beyond this to the purposes of the state."[23] For Hu Shi, Ibsen's egoism is likewise defensible not for its intrinsic value but for its positive effect on society. Even with his blood metaphors, Hu Shi wavers in assigning a place to the individual who dares to form an independent judgment on society: where in the first passage cited the social rebel is seen as outside the body, drawing blood for the purposes of an objective diagnosis, by the conclusion of the essay Hu Shi has found a new place for the rebel within the body, as a white blood cell fighting for the survival not of the self but of the larger organism.
Similarly, Chen Duxiu and Mao Dun were forced to modify their professed faith in the natural evolution of literary forms as they learned more about current Western trends. In his "Discussion of the History of Modern European Literature," Chen conceded that realism had given way to naturalism in the West, but in a letter to the editor written shortly thereafter, he recommended that Chinese writers continue to take realism as their model because the explicit portrayal of violence and social disorder in naturalism would not be accepted by Chinese readers.[24] Mao Dun, writing somewhat later and with a better knowledge of the current literary scene in the West, recognized that varieties of neoromanticism (a term that embraced for him such diverse movements as expressionism, futurism, and symbolism) had
[23] Benjamin Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power , p. 141. Cf. Chow Tsetsung, The May Fourth Movement , p. 360:
To many young Chinese reformers, emancipation of the individual was as much for the sake of saving the nation as upholding individual rights. The value of individual and independent judgment was indeed appreciated more in the May Fourth period than ever before, yet the individual's duty to society and the nation was also emphasized.
Also cf. Lin Yü-sheng, The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness , pp. 67–68:
The stress placed on the importance of the individual by Ch'en Tu-hsiu [Chen Duxiu] and by iconoclastic intellectuals in general at this time cannot, from our historical perspective, be identified with the Western concept of individual liberty based on an ethical conviction of the worth of the individual, which evolved mainly through a secularization of religious faith, but rather represented an aspect of the revolt on the part of these intellectuals against the traditional suppression of the individual in Chinese societies. . . . When the high tide of iconoclasm ebbed, the May Fourth individualism waned.
[24] Chen Duxiu, letter to the editor, Xin qingnian , p. 2.
supplanted realism; indeed, for a short time in mid-1920 Mao Dun lost his faith in both science and realism and wrote glowingly of the "revolutionary, liberating, and creative spirit" of romanticism.[25] By the time of the association's founding later that year, however, he had come to the conclusion that realism, if no longer at the cutting edge of international literary developments, was nevertheless "good for China at this time in its history."[26] Realism met certain local and, he suspected, temporary needs; in particular, he hoped the practice of realism would encourage writers to systematically examine the broader currents of social history and not use their fiction simply to vent private complaints.
Throughout the period, then, specific Western concepts were initially embraced because of their potential contribution to China's cultural rejuvenation, but they were later subjected to reinterpretation when they appeared not to be entirely suited to this larger goal. These second thoughts suggest that May Fourth thinkers did not entertain Western concepts out of a disembodied intellectual conviction; they saw them as pieces of a developing solution to one overriding question: from what source could China find the strength to free itself from the shackles of tradition and establish a new cultural order? This was above all a question of origins and of will, and in their effort to forge a literary response to it, May Fourth writers turned to Western literature. In doing so, however, they were not looking simply to replace the authority of their own tradition with that of a foreign one; nor were they looking for formal patterns to copy. Most May Fourth critics at one time or other warned against the dangers of imitating other works, whether Western or Chinese. Western literature served Chinese intellectuals primarily as a lever with which they could pry themselves free of their own tradition. It was admired not so much for its specific formal qualities but because in the West individual works, especially works of fiction, appeared to emerge from the fresh and original observations of individuals responding directly to
the stimuli of contemporary social phenomena. May Fourth writers hoped to incorporate into their works a similar authority or essence from outside the traditional province of literature.
The same logic that conditioned the acceptance of such Western ideas as individualism and evolutionism applies to the history of realism and its advocacy in China. Realism was not primarily endorsed by Chinese thinkers for what Westerners associate most closely with it, its mimetic pretense, that is, the simple desire to capture the real world in language. At least in the early years of the New Literature movement, Chinese writers rarely discussed problems of verisimilitude—how the text works to establish an equivalency between itself and the extraliterary world—and little critical attention was given to the technical problems of fictional representation, a preoccupation of such Western realists as Flaubert and James. Instead realism was embraced because it seemed to meet Chinese needs in the urgent present undertaking of cultural transformation by offering a new model of creative generativity and literary reception. Though the thread of both these concerns runs throughout the period under discussion, questions of literary origins generally dominated critical polemics in the 1920s, whereas the issue of literary reception became foremost in the 1930s. In the rest of this chapter, I will take up each of these matters in turn, examining them in the context of the decade in which they received the most discussion.
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.
The Search for a New Audience
The question of the nature of literary invention that had been so intensely discussed in the early years of the May Fourth movement gave way to a new concern in the early 1930s. Particularly after the establishment of the League of Left-Wing Writers, more and more Chinese intellectuals turned their attention to matters of literary consumption:
[92] Marián Gálik, Mao Dun and Literary Criticism , p. 115.
who was the audience for the new literature, and by what mechanism did it influence its readers' lives? Such questions had, of course, not been overlooked by earlier advocates of literary reform; late Qing thinkers like Liang Qichao had originally been impressed by the wide audience that fiction attracted in the West and by its evident power to alter the consciousness of its readers. In describing how literature exerted this power, Liang borrowed from traditional expressive theories: a work of literature, he wrote, influences its readers above all by stirring their emotions. The didactic and expressive functions of literature were thus, in Liang's view, complementary rather than opposing forces. A genuinely popular and social fiction of the kind he advocated should inspire the masses' active participation in the campaign for national restoration—not, however, by preaching at them, but by awakening their instinctive longing for a better world. Later reformers, as we have seen, did not abandon this belief in the social efficacy of fiction (even Lu Xun's darkest expressions of doubt seem to betray his continued susceptibility to it), and the May Fourth movement saw an intensified struggle for literary democratization. In the years that followed much was achieved: scholars began to take an active interest in popular art forms and folklore,[93] and most significantly, the spoken language
But the success of the language reform movement did not result in the expanded audience for fiction that had been anticipated. The reformers soon discovered that the new literature appealed to an even smaller audience than traditional vernacular literature had, and they could not but observe the irony of a literature's seeming closed off from the very people whose needs it purported to address. In the early 1930s Qu Qiubai pointed out that by concurrently promoting baihua and introducing a wide range of Western terminology, Chinese writers had created a new hybrid language that the illiterate masses found just as incomprehensible as classical Chinese
[93] For a full treatment of the folklore movement see Chang-tai Hung, Going to the People .
their propaganda work and through their theoretical expositions of mass literature and the new realism. The results, however, were not immediately encouraging. As we have seen in our discussion of Su Wen, many felt the new prescriptions for literature posed insurmountable difficulties for authors, and even such architects of the new realism as Qu Qiubai recognized that few contemporary works actually met the requirements of theory.
The deteriorating military and political situation of the late 1930s made this situation even more difficult, increasing as it did the pressure on writers to produce literature that would directly benefit the war effort. When the league disbanded in 1936 amid the famous Battle of the Slogans, a new group, the Zhongguo wenyijia xiehui
Formulism
tween Hu Feng
This disagreement about Ah Q may seem innocuous enough, but it in fact reopened some old wounds. One of Qian Xingcun's most bellicose contributions to the Revolutionary Literature debate of 1928 had been an essay entitled "The Bygone Age of Ah Q," in which he had accused Lu Xun of creating in Ah Q a negative model that failed to convey the innate heroism of the Chinese peasantry and indicated no potential for positive change. Zhou Yang intended no such condemnation of Lu Xun, but implicit in his argument was the suggestion that Ah Q may be called typical only of a former and now fading reality, not of a present or future one. In a more general sense Zhou Yang questioned the way in which Hu Feng associated typicality with observation in his description of the creative process. According to Hu Feng, authors must begin their work with the careful scrutiny of real people and events; through such investigation they uncover the historically determined general truths that underlie the existence of people and events and give them meaning. It is these truths that they then com-
[94] The relevant articles of the debate were reprinted in Hu Feng, Miyun qi fengxi xiaoji , pp. 19–62.
[96] Zhou Yang, "Xianshizhuyi shilun," in Wenxue yundong shiliao xuan 2:342.
municate in their writings.[97] Zhou Yang, on the other hand, believed that characters in literature are valued for their individuality, not simply because they represent allegorical types, but he went on to insist that artistic representation of reality should stem from a "subjective honesty" that is ideally guided by a "correct worldview." Zhou Yang's position on this subject is somewhat difficult to assess: he wants both to insist on the uniqueness of all fictional phenomena and to argue the importance of ideological rectitude ("correct worldview") over observation. Although Zhou Yang tries to find a place for self-expression in the creative process with the phrase "subjective honesty," it is clear that in his view an author's subjectivity must first be brought into line with an objectively sanctioned worldview (for which one may here read "Marxism").[98] Hu Feng believed that general truths should not be arrived at theoretically but should be uncovered through observation, that is, that one should move from the specific to the general rather than vice versa. Despite the somewhat equivocal nature of Zhou Yang's position, Hu Feng's view was perceived as the more liberal, for it allowed individual authors a measure of latitude to discover their own worldview through observation.
Hu Feng was attracted to the notion of typicality because it helped resolve for him the apparently conflicting demands of realistic and ideological integrity in fiction. The same concern may be discovered in the articles on formulism, or all-the-same-ism
[98] Zhou Yang had long concerned himself with the dialectics of subjectivity and objectivity. In his 1933 article "Wenxue de zhenshixing" he wrote that authorial subjectivity is always in dialectical conflict with objective reality but insisted that subjectivity is not in the end distinguishable from "class consciousness." He went on to equate "proletarian subjectivity" with "historical objectivity." "Truth in literature" is thus not a matter of artistic technique, nor even of the artist's sincerity (as Ye Shaojun had maintained), but of an author's class standing. That is to say, one can only objectively understand the world if one looks at it through proletarian eyes.
seem to proceed from a formula and thus easily give the impression of being all the same." He blamed this development primarily on the authors' slavish following of political guidelines, which had the effect of curtailing independent thought.[99] Later that year the critic Wang Renshu
In his theoretical essays of the late 1930s Mao Dun sometimes defended the "temporary immaturity" of the new literature,[102] but he clearly agreed with the critics' underlying assessment—that much of the new literature treated contemporary events in an ideologically acceptable, but dry and methodical, manner. In a discussion of the new war literature, Mao Dun observed that works with a military theme, if written without the benefit of observing soldiers in action, for example, were invariably schematic and undifferentiated.[103] The simple
way to remedy this tendency toward formulism, in Mao Dun's opinion, was to recognize the centrality of characterization (rather than theme or plot) in the composition of a story. He wrote of his own fiction:
To my mind, character is the most important element in constructing a short story. In my own experience, I first let a character ripen in my mind, let him or her come alive so that when I close my eyes, it is as though a real human being were before my eyes. Then when I begin writing I discover that I can move right along without laying down my pen—the story simply flows out.[104]
A similar emphasis on characterization can be discovered in the critical writings of many other May Fourth realists during the late 1930s and 1940s. In his debate with Zhou Yang over typicality, Hu Feng had repeatedly underscored the importance of character over events in fiction,[105] and the writers Wu Zuxiang
Although realists continued to explore the problem of characteriza-
[105] See, for example, Hu Feng, "Xianshizhuyi di yi 'xiuzheng,'" p. 307.
tion in fiction, polemical objections to formulism were heard less often after 1938, when late in that year a campaign was launched to criticize literature "not related to the War of Resistance"
The critical, pessimistic nature of satire had in fact been noticed years earlier, during the Revolutionary Literature debate, in connection with Lu Xun's satirical stories.[108] The essayist Lin Yutang
[107] Lan Hai discusses the satire debate in Zhongguo kangzhan wenyi shi , pp. 338–42.
appears in a group, that group is already doomed; certainly writing cannot save it."[110]
Many of Lu Xun's arguments (though not his cynical afterthought) were repeated by critics and authors who spoke in defense of "Mr. Hua Wei." Most vocal of these was Mao Dun, who defended both exposure literature r
The debate that had the most widespread effect on the course of Chinese fiction, however, finally directing it away from May Fourth cosmopolitanism, was over national forms
[111] Mao Dun, "Bayue de ganxiang," p. 766.
the May Fourth demonstrations few had endorsed these arts as relevant to the contemporary struggle. Lu Xun, for example, though a highly erudite and original scholar of traditional vernacular literature, had written in 1927 that since popular literature was formally and ideologically tainted by exposure to the high culture, it was decadent and could not be called a "true people's literature."[114]
In the early 1930s, however, concern about questions of literary reception sparked a movement for the popularization—or what might in the Chinese context more accurately be called the "massification"—of the arts. Yu Dafu first introduced the term dazhong wenyi
With the gradual discrediting of Western fictional models in the late 1920s and 1930s, however, more and more critics came to believe that only a revolution in form could close the gap between the new literature and the masses. Zhou Yang, following the Soviet model, advocated the use of various agitprop small forms, such as sketches, reports, and brief political poems.[116] Others called for a "mass fiction" that would take the crowd itself as both theme and protagonist and heralded Ding Ling's
[114] See Lu Xun, "Geming shidai de wenxue," p. 422.
the most vocal among them, began to suggest that writers reexamine traditional artistic forms to discover the source of their popularity. Oral storytelling, opera, and popular songs, unlike elite Western forms, could win immediate acceptance with the masses and thus could prove useful in forging a truly populist culture.[118] Qu was not suggesting uncritical appropriation of the old forms, however, as the following warning makes clear: "One should avoid the kind of opportunism that would consist of blindly imitating old forms. Here our efforts should be twofold: first, in emulating old forms we should make our own revisions; second, we should forge new forms out of the elements of the old."[119] Lu Xun was one of those persuaded by Qu's argument. In 1934 he wrote an essay in which he acknowledged the need for artists to concern themselves with the interests of the general public and conceded that much could be learned from the old forms. But he reiterated Qu's caution that "when old forms are adopted, certain things must be removed while others must be added, resulting in a new form, a change."[120]
In 1938, however, in the context of the wartime effort to mobilize the masses through the arts, a much more aggressive effort, supported by such Communist party theorists as Zhou Yang, Ai Siqi
totally irrelevant to China and the Chinese people.[121] In discussing the important achievements of modern Chinese fiction since the May Fourth movement, Zhou Yang and Chen Boda calculatedly downplayed the Western impact, emphasizing instead modern fiction's indebtedness to traditional vernacular literature. Their attitude toward Lu Xun, who after his death in 1936 had rapidly been elevated to an unassailable position in the Chinese Communist pantheon, is revealing in this regard: in stark contrast to the Creationists, who had berated Lu Xun for his slavish imitation of bourgeois Western forms, Zhou Yang and Chen Boda now hailed Lu Xun above all as a creator of national forms.[122]
Not surprisingly, May Fourth realists and their sympathizers, while outwardly approving the slogan "National forms," treated it with much caution. They were clearly reluctant to entirely repudiate Western fictional models and resented the theorists' attempts to rewrite the history of modern Chinese literature. Hu Feng insisted (as did Guo Moruo) that Western literature and thought had played a decisive role in the May Fourth period and specifically cited Lu Xun as an example of an author who took his inspiration primarily from foreign literature.[123] Hu went on to warn that by obscuring the true nature of the May Fourth rebellion, advocates of national forms ran the risk of simply catering to the superstitions of the readers rather than educating or challenging them. The end result would, he feared, be the reinstatement of traditional prejudices.[124] Mao Dun shared many of Hu Feng's reservations: he insisted that in the course of its development modern Chinese literature had borrowed from both Chinese and foreign literatures and that to see either influence as exclusive was a mistake.[125] In discussing a slogan frequently used by the national-
[124] For a fuller discussion of Hu Feng's position on the national forms debate see Theodore D. Huters, "Hu Feng and the Critical Legacy of Lu Xun," in Leo Ou-fan Lee, Lu Xun and His Legacy , pp. 143–46.
forms advocates, "New wine in old bottles," he suggested that perhaps only 1 percent of the "old bottles," i.e. traditional literary forms, actually merited study.[126] Moreover, he reiterated Lu Xun's and Qu Qiubai's warnings of the mid-1930s: "When we say 'use,' of course we don't mean unqualified acceptance. At this time we need to do research to discover to what extent old forms may be used and experiment to discover how to make something new of the old."[127] Zhang Tianyi, in an essay specifically devoted to the subject of national forms, recognized a temporary need for the existence of two levels of literature, one "advanced," one "popular," each appealing to a different audience in forms that audience would understand. As literacy spread, however, he expected that the two levels would merge, since ideally literary form should be determined solely by content.[128] But Zhang's two-level view of contemporary literary needs was rejected outright by most advocates of national forms,[129] and his "form follows function" argument was criticized by others as abstruse and theoretical when the times demanded direct cultural intervention in the lives of the people.[130]
In his 1942 "Talks at the Yan'an Forum" Mao Zedong specifically addressed the issue of national forms, as well as the other issues of contention among leftist writers that we have touched on, in the hope of unifying all cultural workers behind a policy of massification. Although his reasoning in the "Talks" is highly dialectical in form, Mao clearly lent his authority to those who had taken positions of ideological rigidity in each of the earlier literary debates. He affirmed the importance of a correct worldview in fiction over the independent
observations of the author; he favored a restricted use of satire that would permit a truly adversarial or caustic tone only in works that targeted the enemies of socialism; and he strongly urged the substitution of popular native forms for the Western models that had been introduced in the May Fourth period. The series of "rectifications" that followed Mao's talks quickly bolstered the authority of his opinions. The intellectual Wang Shiwei
The introduction of realism into China in the early twentieth century was motivated by a profoundly iconoclastic ambition: with it and other tools Chinese intellectuals hoped to completely remake an ancient and highly developed culture. As May Fourth writers were themselves to discover, however, dramatized iconoclastic gestures do not in themselves constitute real change. The cultural field is not so easily molded, and traditional prejudices often govern even the manner in which the appurtenances of tradition are overturned. In elevating fiction to the domain of high culture, May Fourth writers continued to rehearse traditional notions of what constituted that culture,
[133] See the discussion in Merle Goldman, Literary Dissent in Communist China , pp. 42–43.
if only from the necessity of distinguishing their own works from such popular—and, they believed, damaging—genres as "black screen"
Realism, as we have described its operation in the West, is a fundamentally epistemological exercise, which involves testing the capacity of language to capture and communicate the Real. Realism served an indisputable purpose in China as long as it was being used to question the underlying principles of traditional Chinese culture, but once this goal was accomplished, its status became increasingly problematic. As we have seen, writers who adopted realism defined it in terms of its moral and pragmatic limits, whereas the times seemed to call for an activist art that could serve as a tool to unify and organize the Chinese people. These writers did not expect, or desire, that their literature would achieve the purgation of antisocial passions that, I have argued, characterizes its operation. But with the increasing politicization of the literary scene in the late 1920s and 1930s the actual effect on readers of the new literature came under closer scrutiny. The Western literary models Chinese writers had so eagerly adopted, realism in particular, became suspect, their impact now appearing more conformist than radical. Once the limitations of realism were observed, the notion of literature as Kulturkritik came to be understood as a function of individualism and thus as part of a larger ideological webbing that the Chinese associated with the hegemonic intentions of the West. The Western equation of critique with a superior grasp of the Real, independent of the context from which the work emerged and the audience to which it returned, was suppressed, if indeed it may be said to have ever taken a very firm root in China. Critical realism, which had been adopted in China as a tool for revolution, became suspect precisely for its failure to advance the communal ends of that revolution.
Theodore D. Huters has written that "the essence of Lu Xun's critical thought must be sought in the uncertain space left by his avoidance of the pitfalls of system on the one hand and of self-
complacency on the other."[134] Something similar might be said about the many writers who continued to practice critical realism in China in the late 1920s and 1930s. While disabused of the individualistic (and therefore in Chinese eyes self-indulgent) tendencies of some forms of realism, they continued to hope that the mode's emphasis on observation and critique could counterbalance the increasingly presumptuous demands of ideological dogma. In the chapters that follow, we will consider the creative works that emerged from the "uncertain space" occupied by critical realists. In examining the works of individual authors we will address two primary questions, which parallel Chinese preoccupations with the creative origins of literary works and their reception. The first concerns the nature of the self-imaging that accompanies any attempt to give representation to the external world.[135] As I have suggested, the desire to fully describe Chinese society, to make its elements separate and signifiable, obliged Chinese authors to construct a new and independent sense of self. The process of fashioning the self left its traces in the form and style of individual works, which we will work to uncover. The second question we will broach is that of literary transitivity: what imprint does the authors' concern with the utility of their work leave on their fiction? In particular we will explore authorial discovery of and resistance to the consolatory effect of catharsis as it operates in realist fiction.
[134] Theodore D. Huters, "Hu Feng and the Critical Legacy of Lu Xun," p. 130.
[135] Jacques Lacan has observed that the image a child sees of itself in a mirror is the prototype for all objects it later distinguishes in the world. From this notion we may speculate that representation of the external world involves a projection of the ego onto the objects that make up that world. See the discussion in Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror , pp. 46ff.