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China Modern Prose
In the
New Culture Movement
(1917-23; see Glossary), literary
writing style was largely replaced by the vernacular in all areas
of literature
(see Nationalism and Communism
, ch. 1). This was
brought about mainly by Lu Xun (1881-1936), China's first major
stylist in vernacular prose (other than the novel), and the
literary reformers Hu Shi (1891-1962) and Chen Duxiu (1880-1942).
The late 1920s and 1930s were years of creativity in Chinese
fiction, and literary journals and societies espousing various
artistic theories proliferated. Among the major writers of the
period were Guo Moruo (1892-1978), a poet, historian, essayist, and
critic; Mao Dun (1896-1981), the first of the novelists to emerge
from the League of Left-Wing Writers and one whose work reflected
the revolutionary struggle and disillusionment of the late 1920s;
and Ba Jin (b. 1904), a novelist whose work was influenced by Ivan
Turgenev and other Russian writers. In the 1930s Ba Jin produced a
trilogy that depicted the struggle of modern youth against the ageold dominance of the Confucian family system. Comparison often is
made between Jia (Family), one of the novels in the trilogy,
and Hong Lou Meng. Another writer of the period was the
gifted satirist and novelist Lao She (1899-1966). Many of these
writers became important as administrators of artistic and literary
policy after 1949. Most of those still alive during the Cultural
Revolution were either purged or forced to submit to public
humiliation
(see The Cultural Revolution Decade, 1966-76
, ch. 1).
The League of Left-Wing Writers was founded in 1930 and
included Lu Xun in its leadership. By 1932 it had adopted the
Soviet doctrine of socialist realism, that is, the insistence that
art must concentrate on contemporary events in a realistic way,
exposing the ills of nonsocialist society and promoting the
glorious future under communism. After 1949 socialist realism,
based on Mao's famous 1942 "Yan'an Talks on Literature and Art,"
became the uniform style of Chinese authors whose works were
published. Conflict, however, soon developed between the government
and the writers. The ability to satirize and expose the evils in
contemporary society that had made writers useful to the Chinese
Communist Party before its accession to power was no longer
welcomed. Even more unwelcome to the party was the persistence
among writers of what was deplored as "petty bourgeois idealism,"
"humanitarianism," and an insistence on freedom to choose subject
matter.
At the time of the Great Leap Forward, the government increased
its insistence on the use of socialist realism and combined with it
so-called revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism
(see The Great Leap Forward, 1958-60
, ch. 1). Authors were permitted to
write about contemporary China, as well as other times during
China's modern period--as long as it was accomplished with the
desired socialist revolutionary realism. Nonetheless, the political
restrictions discouraged many writers. Although authors were
encouraged to write, production of literature fell off to the point
that in 1962 only forty-two novels were published.
During the Cultural Revolution, the repression and intimidation
led by Mao's fourth wife, Jiang Qing, succeeded in drying up all
cultural activity except a few "model" operas and heroic stories.
Although it has since been learned that some writers continued to
produce in secret, during that period no significant literary work
was published.
Data as of July 1987
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