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Multiplicity in Uniformity: Poetry and the Great Leap Forward

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

S. H. Chen
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Extract

The Great Leap Forward has not only been measured by the claimed increases of grain and steel production by so many million tons. Peking boasts too that the Leap produced, in 1958 alone, millions and millions of poems and songs. These products, both in themselves as art and in their way and manner of accomplishment, should reveal a picture of how the mental life, or, more precisely, how the mental as well as physical energy, of the nation is being vigorously mobilised, organised and directed. For, as much of the steel was, regardless of its quality, produced in “backyard furnaces,” so are myriads of these poems and songs, regardless of their aesthetics, made by farm teams in the fields, workers in the factories, and labourers building roads or bridges. The people are goaded and urged, instructed and inspired by tireless party cadres who exhort all social and racial groups that, among other purposes, there has to be a new epoch of poetry production to celebrate the new era in Chinese history.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 3 , September 1960 , pp. 1 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1960

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References

1 This apparently refers to Marx's ideas in Critique of Political Economy, though citations in Mr. Chou's article are from a Chinese version: Marxism and Literature.

2 See a sample tirade in Wen-hsueh P'ing-lun, No. 1, 1959, pp. 67–83.Google Scholar

3 Polemics, though not violent, have already been set off by this article. In Wen-yi Pao, No. 4, 1959Google Scholar, Chang Huai-chin is raising objections which in no way, however, reflect on the enthusiasm for the Great Leap in poetry production.

4 English translation by Waley, Arthur, entitled The Book of Songs (London: Allen and Unwin, 1937).Google Scholar

5 Wen-yi Pao, No. 2, 1959, p. 10.Google Scholar

6 Min-chien Wen-hsueh, 04, 1958.Google Scholar

7 This is kua tiao-tzu, a local slang, possibly gaining new glamour on account of the new movement. It literally means “hoist the tune,” indicating, we suspect, its being hung up high for public notice, as well as picked for preservation.

8 Here, ch'in jen, refers to the “graduates,” i.e., the visiting cadres. Kinship terms occupy a prominent position in the diction of the new folk poetry. See discussion to follow.

9 Being the Chinese folk concept of Godhead in heaven.

10 Included in Hung-ch'i ke-yao, ed. by Mo-jo, Kuo and Yang, Chou, 1958.Google Scholar

11 See Chung-Kuo Ke-yao Tzu-liao, Second Series, II, “Sung Ke” or “Songs of Praise” Section. Ed. by Ch'u Ch'iu-po Literary Society, Chinese Department, University of Peking.

12 Chung-Kuo Ch'ing-nien Pao, 04 16, 1958.Google Scholar

13 In Hai Yen Sung (Peking: 1958).Google Scholar

14 All quotation marks are as in the original.

15 Chia, Tien, Lun Kung-ch'an Chu-yi Feng-ke (Peking: 1958).Google Scholar

16 Several poets during the past tew years showed promising talent in long narrative poetry, which we lack space to discuss here. In any case, the impact of the multitudes of folk poems seems to be the most engrossing phenomenon today.