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The Literary World of Mao Tse-tung*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Extract

Poetry and politics are rare companions in the competitive world of practical affairs today. In Moscow, Nikita Khrushchev, with peasant shrewdness, is addicted to Russian proverbs to enliven his rhetoric; but there are few indications that he is sympathetic with the creative writer and none that he himself will rank with Pushkin in the annals of his nation's literature. In Washington, the appearance of Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy's inauguration in January 1961 was an event at once exceptional and gratifying to admirers of Frost's artistic integrity; the elderly poet's advice to the young president of the United States to stress the Irish and underplay the Harvard hi his background may yet have enduring significance. Only in Peking, however, do we find a world leader who combines distinctive political abilities and literary talents. Indeed the juxtaposition of strategic and artistic instincts hi Mao Tse-tung is so unusual in the post-Churchillian world that the case merits more than passing note.

Type
Special Survey of Chinese Communist Literature
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1963

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References

1 For concise and lucid appraisal, see Meyer, Alfred G., Marxism: the Unity of Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Harvard Un. Press, 1954)Google Scholar andd Leninism (Cambridge: Harvard Un. Press, 1957).Google Scholar See also Wilson, Edmund, “Marxism and Literature,” in The Triple Thinkers (London: John Leumann, 1952), pp. 188202.Google Scholar Originally published in 1938, this remains a perceptive essay by a distinguished literary critic who has also read Marx thoughtfully.

2 Of the large literature available on the subject, see especially the recent books by Yarmolinsky, Avrahin, Literature under Communism: the Literary Policy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from the end of World War II to the Death of Stalin (Bloomington: Indiana Un. Press, Russian and East European Series, Vol. 20, 1960)Google Scholar, and Swayze, Harold, Political Control of Literature in the USSR, 1946–1959 (Cambridge: Harvard Un. Press, 1962).CrossRefGoogle Scholar A classic account written from inside the movement is Trotsky, Leon, Literature and Revolution (New York: Russell & Russell, 1957).Google Scholar Originally published in 1924, this volume remains a brilliant short analysis, charged with Trotsky's usual polemical gusto, of the problems confronting Russian authors during the early period after the Bolshevik revolution.

3 See the revealing examination of Soviet literary doctrine offered by an unknown writer. Tertz, Abram (pseudonym), On Socialist Realism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1960), pp. 2425Google Scholar, with an introduction by Czeslaw Milosz. Milosz himself has discussed the relationship between political responsibility and artistic creativity in The Captive Mind (New York: Vintage Books, 1955)Google Scholar, a brilliant volume confirming the fact that it is simpler to write about the intellectual under Communism than to be one.

4 See Swayze, , op. cit., p. 17.Google Scholar

5 A convenient summary of Mao's views is given in Mao Tse-tung on Art and Literature (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1960), translated from the Chinese text published by the People's Literature Publishing House in December 1958. Arranged chronologically, most of the contents are taken from the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, with some additions of more recent materials.

6 The most extended study of the movement, based on wide research in contemporary sources, is Chow, Tse-tsung, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China (Cambridge: Harvard Un. Press, 1960).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 See Tse-tung, Mao, Selected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1955), Vol. III (19391941), pp. 145146.Google Scholar The following quotations are taken from this translation of On New Democracy, p. 145Google Scholaret seq. The Chinese text is found in Mao Tse-tung hsuan-chi (Peking: Jen-min Ch'u-pan-she, 1952), Vol. II, pp. 655704.Google Scholar

8 Ibid. p. 144.

9 See Mills, Harriet C., “Lu Hsün and the Communist Party,” The China Quarterly, No. 4, 1012 1960, pp. 1727.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 See Tse-tung, Mao, Selected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1956), Vol. IV (19411945), pp. 6393.Google Scholar The Chinese text is found in Mao Tse-tung Hsuan-chi (Peking: Jen-min Ch'u-pan-she, 1953), Vol. III, pp. 849880.Google Scholar

11 See Birch, Cyril, “Fiction of the Yenan Period,” The China Quarterly, No. 4, 1012 1960, pp. 111CrossRefGoogle Scholar, followed by Birch's translation of the short story “Mai-chi” (“The Sale of a Hen”), pp. 1216.Google Scholar

12 Of the top-ranking literary figures, only Lao She, who was in the United States at the time, was absent when the new government was established in October 1949. He returned to China slightly later, toward the end of 1949, and has remained in Peking. See Birch, Cyril, “Lao She: The Humourist in his Humour,” The China Quarterly, No. 8, 1012 1961, pp. 4562.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 See Serruys, Father Paul L.-M., Survey of the Chinese Language Reform and the Anti-Uliteracy Movement in Communist China (Berkeley: University of California, Center for Chinese Studies, Studies in Chinese Communist Terminology, No. 8, 02 1962).Google Scholar

14 See The People's New Literature (Peking: Cultural Press, 1950)Google Scholar, for English translations of four reports given at the first Congress of the All-China Federation of Literary and Art Circles in July 1949. Reports are by Chou En-lai, Kuo Mo-jo, Mao Tun and Chou Yang, and the pamphlet has a foreword by Emi Siao.

15 For an appraisal of the Soviet Writers' Union, see Swayze, op. cit., Chap. 6, “Bureaucratic Controls and Literary Production,” pp. 224258.Google Scholar

16 Some guidance is provided by Houn, Franklin W., To Change a Nation: Propaganda and Indoctrination in Communist China (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1961).Google Scholar See especially Chap. 3, “The Printed Word and the Dogma,” pp. 91154.Google Scholar

17 A useful index guide to the contents of Jen-nun Wen-hsueh is given in Aiura, Takashi, “Jimmin bungaku sodai shosetsu, sambun, ho-koku ichiranhyo,” Journal of Osaka University of Foreign Studies, 1961, No. 9, pp. 93145.Google Scholar Prepared in the Chinese literature seminar, this guide lists 947 items included in Jen-nun Wen-hsueh during the period from October 1949 to November 1959, arranged by year and month with summary of contents.

Samples of three short novels, translated from PL (issues of October through December 1961), are given in China News Analysis (Hong Kong), No. 414, 03 30, 1962.Google Scholar

18 The most informed brief introduction to this controversial subject is Mills, Harriet C., “Thought Reform: Ideological Remoulding in China,” The Atlantic, special issue on China, 01 1959, pp. 7177.Google Scholar More extended first-hand accounts and academic studies include the following: Chen, Theodore H. E., Thought Reform of the Chinese Intellectuals (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Un. Press, 1960)Google Scholar; Ford, Robert, Wind between the Worlds (New York: David McKay, 1957)Google Scholar; Lifton, Robert Jay, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: a Study of “Brainwashing” in China (New York: Norton, 1961)Google Scholar; Allyn, and Rickett, Adele, Prisoners of Liberation (New York: Cameron Associates, 1957)Google Scholar; and Schein, Edgar H. et al. , Coercive Persuasion: A Socio-Psychological Analysis of the “Brainwashing” of American Civilian Prisoners by the Chinese Communists (New York: Norton, 1961).Google Scholar

19 See Compton, Boyd, Mao's China: Party Reform Documents, 1942–44 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1952).Google Scholar Compton provides a solid introduction, followed by translation of twenty-two documents used in “study” and discussion groups in the Communist areas during the cheng-feng campaign. A slightly revised group of documents is given in Cheng-feng Wen-hsien (Peking: Hsin-hua Shu-tien, 05 1950).Google Scholar

20 in addition to the summary provided by Franklin Houn, W., op. cit., pp. 130–40Google Scholar, see also Chan, Shau-wing, “Literature in Communist China,” Problems of Communism, VII, No. 1 (0102 1958), pp. 4451Google Scholar, and Birch, Cyril, “The Dragon and the Pen,” Soviet Survey, special China issue, No. 14 (0406 1958), pp. 2226.Google Scholar

21 I am indebted to Professor David Hawkes of Oxford University for background information on Yü P'ing-po.

22 Ting-yi, Lu, Let a Hundred Flowers Blossom, a Hundred Schools of Thought Contend (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1958).Google Scholar The speech was given in Peking on May 26, 1956, and published originally in the People's Daily of 06 13, 1956.Google Scholar

23 One sample may suffice to indicate the style of the discourse. Chou Yang, in denouncing the errant behaviour of Ting Ling and Ch'en Ch'i-hsia, summarised the official line: “Instead of remoulding themselves in the spirit of collectivism, they want to remould the Party and the revolution according to their individualist outlook.” See Yang, Chou, A Great Debate on the Literary Front (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1958), p. 13.Google Scholar

24 See Mohan, Lin, Raise Higher the Banner of Mao Tse-tung's Thought on Art and Literature (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1961).Google Scholar

25 See the special article on translations into Chinese from Western languages in The Times literary Supplement, 09 21, 1962, p. 741.Google Scholar

26 See Schwartz, Benjamin, “The Intelligentsia in Communist China,”Google ScholarDaedalus issue on “The Russian Intelligentsia,” Summer 1960, pp. 604621.Google Scholar

27 A list of translations of foreign works into Chinese up to March 1929 is given in Ching-lu, Chang (ed.), Chung-kuo Hsien-tai Ch'u-pan Shih-liao (Peking: Chung-hua Shu-chu, 1954), Vol. I, pp. 271323.Google Scholar Russian authors and their works are given on pp. 277–287. Another list in the same work gives the names of Soviet authors available in Chinese translation up to May 1930, ibid. Vol. II, p. 280 et seq. Ahnest all important writers of the Soviet period are represented.

28 See Ulam, Adam B., The Unfinished Revolution: an Essay on the Sources of Influence of Marxism and Communism (New York: Random House, 1960).Google Scholar

29 See Li, Tien-yi, “Continuity and Change in Modern Chinese Literature,” The AnnalsGoogle Scholar of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 321, January 1959, pp. 90–99.

30 Howe, Irving, Politics and the Novel (New York: Horizon Press, 1957)Google Scholar is a provocative study of some aspects of this subject. The volume has chapters on Stendhal, Dosto-yevsky, Conrad, Turgenev and Henry James; a section on American novelists (“The Politics of Isolation”) commenting on Hawthorne (The Blithedale Romance), Adams, Henry (Democracy)Google Scholar and James, Henry (The Bostonians)Google Scholar; and an appraisal of several distinctively twentieth-century writers: Malraux, Silone, Koestler and Orwell. Lowenthal, Leo, Literature and the Image of Man: Sociological Studies of the European Drama and Novel, 1600–1900 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957)Google Scholar, is a thoughtful study of the changing image of man in relation to society as revealed in some of the major literary works of the Western world during the past three centuries.

31 See Balazs, E., “L'histoire comme guide de la pratique bureaucratique,” in Beasley, W. G. and Pulleyblank, E. G. (eds.), Historians of China and Japan (London: Oxford Un. Press, 1961), pp. 7894.Google Scholar

32 Mr. Yong-sang Ng has prepared this translation. Peking's (Acial English version appears in Mao Tse-tung: Nineteen Poems (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1958), p. 22Google Scholar, and is also quoted on page 65 below.

33 Aware of this stubborn fact, Mao has suggested that it is inadvisable to encourage young people to write verse in the classical style “because these forms would cramp their thought and are also difficult to master.” See his January 1957 letter to Tsang K'o-chia, then editor of the magazine Poetry, included in Mao Tse-tung on Art and Literature, op. cit., pp. 135136.Google Scholar See abo Ho, Ping-ti, “Two Major Poems by Mao Tse-tung: a Commentary, with Translations,” Queen's Quarterly (Kingston, Ontario, Canada), LXV, 2, Summer 1958, pp. 251262.Google Scholar Robert Payne has a chapter on “The Poetry of Mao Tse-tung” in his revised biography, Portrait of a Revolutionary: Mao Tse-tung (New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1961), pp. 230248.Google Scholar