|
China Literature in the Post-Mao Period
The arrest of Jiang Qing and the other members of the
Gang of Four (see Glossary)
in 1976, and especially the reforms initiated
at the Third Plenum of the Eleventh National Party Congress Central
Committee in December 1978, led more and more older writers and
some younger writers to take up their pens again. Much of the
literature discussed the serious abuses of power that had taken
place at both the national and the local levels during the Cultural
Revolution. The writers decried the waste of time and talent during
that decade and bemoaned abuses that had held China back. At the
same time, the writers expressed eagerness to make a contribution
to building Chinese society. This literature, often called "the
literature of the wounded," contained some disquieting views of the
party and the political system. Intensely patriotic, these authors
wrote cynically of the political leadership that gave rise to the
extreme chaos and disorder of the Cultural Revolution. Some of them
extended the blame to the entire generation of leaders and to the
political system itself. The political authorities were faced with
a serious problem: how could they encourage writers to criticize
and discredit the abuses of the Cultural Revolution without
allowing that criticism to go beyond what they considered tolerable
limits?
During this period, a large number of novels and short stories
were published; literary magazines from before the Cultural
Revolution were revived, and new ones were added to satisfy the
seemingly insatiable appetite of the reading public. There was a
special interest in foreign works. Linguists were commissioned to
translate recently published foreign literature, often without
carefully considering its interest for the Chinese reader. Literary
magazines specializing in translations of foreign short stories
became very popular, especially among the young.
It is not surprising that such dramatic change brought
objections from some leaders in government and literary and art
circles, who feared it was happening too fast. The first reaction
came in 1980 with calls to combat "bourgeois liberalism," a
campaign that was repeated in 1981. These two difficult periods
were followed by the campaign against spiritual pollution in late
1983, but by 1986 writers were again enjoying greater creative
freedom
(see Policy Toward Intellectuals
, this ch.).
Data as of July 1987
|
