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二心集

This time, in the "Miscellany" column of The Crescent Moon, Mr. Liang Shiqiu (梁實秋) has also come around to endorsing "dissatisfaction with the status quo." However, he believes that "today's intellectuals (especially those who have long borne the titles of 'pioneer,' 'authority,' or 'vanguard') have a responsibility that goes beyond merely publishing a few sarcastic and sneering essays expressing 'dissatisfaction with the status quo.' They should go one step further and earnestly seek a positive prescription to cure the 'status quo.'"

Why? Because where there is illness, medicine must be prescribed. "The Three Principles of the People is one prescription," says Mr. Liang. "Communism is another prescription, Nationalism yet another, Anarchism another, and Good Government-ism another." Now you "dismiss all these prescriptions as worthless, mock them without mercy.... What sort of mentality is this?"

This mentality is indeed worthy of reproach. But in practice, I have not yet encountered such essays -- where, for example, a single author holds that the Three Principles of the People violate Anglo-American freedoms, that Communists take rubles from Russia, that Nationalism is too narrow, and that Anarchism is too empty.... So Mr. Liang's "Miscellany" has exaggerated the sins of the essays he has read.

In truth, pointing out the deficiencies in the reasoning behind a certain doctrine, or the ills arising therefrom, is perfectly permissible even for someone who does not subscribe to any particular doctrine. It is like being squeezed until the pain is unbearable -- one naturally cries out, without needing first to devise a superior doctrine before being permitted to unclench one's teeth. But naturally, if one can offer a better proposal, that makes for a more respectable showing.

However, I believe that Mr. Liang's "Good Government-ism," which he modestly placed at the end of his list, ought to be placed yet more modestly outside the list altogether. For from the Three Principles of the People through to Anarchism, whatever their nature -- warming or cooling -- at least the prescriptions name actual medicines, such as gypsum or cinnamon bark -- as for whether the effect after taking them is beneficial or harmful, that is a separate question. Only "Good Government-ism" -- this one "prescription" -- lists on the prescription not the name of a medicine, but simply the three large characters "Good Ingredients," together with some long-winded pontificating in the manner of a famous physician. To be sure, no one can say that treating illness should employ bad ingredients; but this prescription is one that not only a physician would shake his head at -- anyone would "dismiss it as worthless." ("Dismiss" contains the character for "praise," meaning "to commend"; using it here is not merely "ungrammatical" but also proves that the author does not know the character -- however, since this is Mr. Liang's original text, I shall leave it as is.)

If this physician, embarrassed into fury, were to bellow: "You mock my Good-Ingredients-ism? Then write your own prescription!" -- that would itself be yet another highly laughable specimen of the "status quo," one that would naturally give rise to essays even without being grounded in any particular doctrine. The reason such essays are inexhaustible is precisely that there are too many specimens of this sort of "status quo."

April 17, 1930.

I

Colonial policy invariably protects and nurtures hooligans. From the eyes of imperialism, only they are the most essential lackeys, the useful hawks and hounds, capable of fulfilling the duties that colonial peoples absolutely must have fulfilled: on the one hand relying on imperialist violence, on the other exploiting the traditional forces of their own country, in order to eliminate "black sheep" and "troublesome weeds" -- those who do not know their place. These hooligans, then, are the darlings of the foreign masters on colonial soil -- no, the darling dogs, whose position, though beneath their master's, is always above that of the other subjugated people. Shanghai naturally could not be an exception to this pattern. Policemen do not join the gangs, and though street peddlers have their own petty capital, if they do not find themselves another hooligan to serve as creditor and pay him exorbitant interest, they can hardly keep their footing. By last year, even in the literary world there appeared "writers" who "acknowledge a godfather" among the gangsters.

But this is merely the most brazen instance. In truth, even those who are not gang members -- many of those they call "literary artists" -- have all along been performing the duties of "darling dogs," though their proclaimed slogans vary: Art for Art's Sake, National Essence-ism, Nationalism, Art for Humanity's sake. But these differences are like the difference between a policeman holding a muzzle-loader or a breech-loader, a Lee-Enfield or a Mauser -- the ultimate purpose is one and the same: to shoot dead those who are anti-imperialist, which is to say anti-government, which is to say "counter-revolutionary," or who merely harbor some grievances.

Among this darling-dog literature, those who beat the drums most energetically are the so-called "Nationalist Literature" faction. Yet compared to the conspicuous meritorious service of detectives, constables, and executioners, they are still considerably inferior. The reason is that they are only barking, not yet biting directly, and moreover they mostly lack the swagger of true hooligans -- they are nothing but floating, drifting corpses. And yet this is precisely the distinctive feature of "Nationalist Literature," the quality by which it maintains its "darling" status.

Pick up one of their journals and look: people who previously paraded under various different banners have actually assembled together. Was this the hand of the "Nationalist" giant that snatched them all up? Not at all. These were corpses that had long been bobbing up and down on the shores of Shanghai, previously scattered here and there, but driven by the wind and waves, they drifted together into one mass, and because each individual corpse was rotting, the collective stench became that much more pungent.

This "barking" and "stench," which have the special quality of carrying rather far, are useful to imperialism -- this is called "serving as the vanguard for the king." Therefore, the literature of floating corpses shall continue to exist alongside the politics of hooligans.

II

But what are the wind and waves mentioned above? They are the small wind and waves stirred up by the rise of the proletariat. Some of those formerly called literary artists were not entirely unconscious of their own decay, and so they deceived themselves and others by using various fine names to cover it up -- calling it lofty detachment, calling it bold abandon (in modern terms, "decadence"). What they painted were nudes, still lifes, death; what they wrote about were moonlit flowers, holy places, insomnia, wine, women. But when the collapse of the old society became ever more apparent, and class struggle grew ever sharper, they also saw their mortal enemy -- the proletariat, which would create a new culture and sweep away all the old filth -- and they realized that they themselves were part of that filth, destined to share the fate of their rulers above them. Thus they inevitably drifted together beneath the banner of "Nationalist Literature" -- raised by the docile subjects of a nation under imperialist domination -- to make one final struggle alongside their masters.

Therefore, although they are a miscellaneous mass of floating corpses, their target is one and the same: like their masters, they use every means to suppress the proletariat in order to prolong their own dying gasps. But since they are, after all, a miscellaneous mass, and many still wear the remnant pelts of their former guises, not a single vivid work has appeared since they issued their manifesto. The manifesto itself is a hodgepodge carelessly thrown together by a small gang of miscellaneous pieces, and need not be taken as evidence.

But in the fifth issue of The Vanguard Monthly, we are given a clear work of art. According to the editor, it is "an actual description of participation in the military campaign against the Yan-Feng forces." That a novel describes military affairs is nothing remarkable; what is remarkable is the state of mind on the battlefield as described by the author, a "young military man." This is a self-portrait of the "Nationalist Literature" writer, well worth quoting at length --

"Every evening, standing beneath the glittering stars, a rifle in hand, listening to the chirping of insects, surrounded by swarms of mosquitoes -- all these things make one think of the French Foreign Legion in the African desert, fighting and shedding blood in battles with the Arabs." (Huang Zhenxia [黃震遐]: "On the Longhai Line")

So it turns out that Chinese warlord civil wars, as seen through the eyes of a "young military man," a "Nationalist Literature" writer, are by no means the driving of fellow countrymen to slaughter one another, but rather a case of foreigners fighting other foreigners. Two countries, two peoples -- and on the battlefield, as soon as night falls, one floats into the fancy that one's skin has turned white, one's nose bridge grown higher, that one has become a warrior of the Latin race, standing in savage Africa. No wonder, then, that the local civilians all around are seen as enemies, to be shot dead one by one. For a Frenchman dealing with Arabs in Africa, from the standpoint of nationalism, there is indeed no need for tenderness. This single passage alone, on the larger scale, explains why Chinese warlords serve as the claws and fangs of imperialism, poisoning and slaughtering the Chinese people -- it is because they fancy themselves the "French Foreign Legion"; on the smaller scale, it explains why Chinese "Nationalist Literature" writers are fundamentally in sympathy only with their foreign masters, and why they nonetheless call themselves "Nationalist" in order to dupe their readers -- it is because they sometimes feel as though they were the Latin race, or the Teutonic race.

III

Mr. Huang Zhenxia writes with such candor that the state of mind he describes must be genuine. However, judging from the knowledge displayed in his novel, there is one point that, though he is not unaware of it, he has intentionally left unsaid -- a small evasion. This is that he vaguely changed "France's Annamese soldiers" to "France's Foreign Legion," thereby distancing himself somewhat from "actual description" and also inviting the confusion discussed in the previous section.

But the author is clever. Having heard "many discussions from his friend Fu Yanchang (傅彥長)," having "undeniably been influenced by him in many respects," and having consulted Chinese and foreign historical records, he then wrote a dramatic poem more closely tied to the theme of "Nationalism." This time he dispensed with the French and wrote "Blood of the Yellow Race" (《黃人之血》, The Vanguard Monthly No. 7).

The story of this dramatic poem is the westward campaign of the yellow race. The commanding general is Batu (拔都), grandson of Genghis Khan -- a genuinely yellow man. What he conquers is Europe, specifically Rus (Russia) -- this is the author's target. The allied army is composed of Han, Tartar, Jurchen, and Khitan soldiers -- this is the author's plan. They win victory after victory, but unfortunately the four peoples fail to understand the importance of "friendship" and "the power of unity," and fall to slaughtering one another, giving the white warriors their opening -- this is the author's allegory, and also his sorrow.

But let us see the ferocity and cruelty of this yellow army --

......

Terror -- boiling oil frying corpses!

Horror -- how ghastly the rotting remains strewn everywhere!

Death seizes the white maidens and embraces them desperately;

Beauties' delicate heads turn into fearsome skulls;

Savages brawl viciously in the old palaces;

The faces of Crusader knights are filled with grief;

Thousand-year coffins release their foul and evil stench;

Iron hooves trample shattered bones, the bellowing of camels becomes a monstrous howl;

God has fled, the Devil cracks his whip of fire in revenge;

The Yellow Peril has come! The Yellow Peril has come!

The warriors of Asia open wide their blood-drinking maws.

This "Yellow Peril" that Kaiser Wilhelm trumpeted in order to promote "Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles" -- this "blood-drinking maw" that "the warriors of Asia open wide" -- our poet directs it at "Rus," that is, at the first state under proletarian dictatorship, as a model for the annihilation of the proletariat -- this is the target of "Nationalist Literature." But because, after all, this is the "Nationalist Literature" of a colonial subject people, the leader our poet reveres is the Mongol Batu, not the Chinese Zhao Gou (趙構); those who "open wide their blood-drinking maws" are "warriors of Asia," not Chinese warriors; and the "friendship" hoped for is friendship under Batu's domination, not equal fellowship between peoples -- this is the brazen essence of so-called "Nationalist Literature," but also the sorrow of the young military author.

IV

Batu is dead; among the yellow peoples of Asia, the only one that can currently be likened to the Mongolia of that era is Japan. Japan's warriors, to be sure, also detest Soviet Russia, but they do not cherish China's warriors either. The constant singing of "Sino-Japanese friendship" is indeed consistent with the advocacy of "friendship," but the facts do not match the rhetoric. From the standpoint of the Chinese "Nationalist Literature" writer, this is felt as personal sorrow, and satirizing it is a natural and unsurprising reaction.

Sure enough, the poet's sorrowful premonition seems to have been confirmed, and things turned out far worse. Just as the "whip of fire" was about to begin burning "Rus," the outcome mirrored Batu's time: Koreans massacred Chinese, and the Japanese "opened wide their blood-drinking maws" and swallowed Manchuria. Could it be that, having never received the tutelage of Mr. Fu Yanchang, they did not understand the importance of "the power of unity," and so regarded China's "warriors" too as Africa's Arabs?!

V

This was indeed a heavy blow. The military author has not yet managed to cry out his brave and manly voice; what we now see, in the newspapers under the "Nationalist" banner, is only the fury and despair of the little warriors. This too is a natural and unsurprising outcome. Ideals and reality are always prone to conflict; the ideal already contains sorrow, and when reality arrives, it naturally brings despair. And so the little warriors want to go to war --

Fight! Make the final resolve!

Kill all our enemies!

Look -- the enemy's guns and cannons are already roaring;

Quick, forward! Let us build a Great Wall with our flesh!

Thunder roars overhead,

Waves howl underfoot,

Hot blood burns in the heart,

We rush toward the front line.

(Su Feng [蘇鳳]: "Battle Song." Published in Republican Daily.)

Go, go to the battlefield!

Our hot blood is boiling,

Our bodies are like madmen,

We shall rust the tips of the bandits' guns with our blood,

We shall plug the mouths of the enemy's cannons with our flesh.

Go, go to the battlefield!

With nothing but our courage,

With nothing but a pure and loving spirit, go and drive the enemy out --

No, go and slaughter the enemy to the last man.

(Gan Yuqing [甘豫慶]: "Go to the Battlefield!" Published in Shenbao.)

Compatriots, awake!

Kick away the heart of the weakling,

Kick away the brain of the weakling.

Look, look, look --

Look, our compatriots' blood is spurting out!

Look, our compatriots' flesh is being sliced open!

Look, our compatriots' corpses are being strung up!

(Shao Guanhua [邵冠華]: "Awake, Compatriots!" Same source.)

In all these poems, it is abundantly clear that the authors know they have no weapons; therefore they can only offer "flesh," "a pure and loving spirit," and "corpses." This is precisely the earlier sorrow of the author of "Blood of the Yellow Race," and the reason he advocated following Marshal Batu and championing "friendship." Weapons are bought from the masters; the proletariat has already become the enemy; if the masters, too, fail to appreciate this loyalty and decide to "chastise" their servants, then truly the only remaining path is death --

We are a newly trained squad,

With steadfast resolve,

With boiling blood,

Come to sweep away the violent villains.

Compatriots, dear compatriots,

Rise quickly and prepare for battle,

Rise quickly and fight --

Death in battle is our only way to live.

(Sha Shan [沙珊]: "Student Army." Same source.)

The heavens howl,

The earth trembles,

Men charge, beasts roar,

Everything in the universe is bellowing -- friends,

Prepare to offer our heads for the enemy to chop off.

(Xu Zhijin [徐之津]: "The Great Death." Same source.)

One group is spirited and vigorous; the other is impassioned and elegiac. Writing such things is harmless enough, but if they truly meant to act on it, they would show themselves woefully ignorant of the true meaning of "Nationalist Literature." Yet they would also, at the same time, have fulfilled the task of "Nationalist Literature."

VI

Has not the poet Huang Zhenxia, author of "Blood of the Yellow Race" -- written in large-font headlines in The Vanguard Monthly -- already told us long ago about his ideal Marshal Batu? This poet, tutored by Mr. Fu Yanchang, having consulted Chinese and foreign historical records, and knowing moreover that "medieval Eastern Europe was a meeting-point of three ideologies" -- could he possibly not know that China in the declining years of the Zhao dynasty was a playground for Mongol rapine? When Marshal Batu's grandfather, Emperor Genghis Khan, invaded China, wherever he went there was rape and plunder of women, burning of houses; and when his soldiers reached Qufu in Shandong and saw the statue of old Master Kong (Confucius), the Mongol troops pointed at it and cursed: "Isn't it you who said 'Even the barbarian lands with their rulers are inferior to the Chinese states without'?" -- and shot an arrow right into its face. This is recorded with tears in the notes of Song writers, just as one sees tearful articles in today's newspapers. The "Rus" that Poet Huang describes -- "Death seizes the white maidens and embraces them desperately" -- all that fine writing was in fact the very scene that appeared in China at the time. But once it came to the grandson's generation, did they not join hands for the "Western Campaign"? Now the Japanese army has "marched east" into Manchuria, which is precisely the first step of the "Western Campaign" dreamed of by the "Nationalist Literature" writers, the opening act of the "warriors of Asia opening wide their blood-drinking maws." Only they must first take a bite in China. For in those days Emperor Genghis Khan, just as he did with "Rus," first turned the Chinese people into slaves and then drove them to fight, and this was not accomplished through "friendship" or by sending invitation cards to cordially request their participation. Therefore, the Shenyang Incident not only does not conflict with "Nationalist Literature" -- it actually realizes their ideal realm. If people fail to understand this true meaning and insist on offering up their heads, thereby reducing the number of "warriors of Asia," that would truly be a pity.

Then does "Nationalist Literature" have no need for all those wailing, lamenting, crying-and-dying refrains? I respectfully reply: they do need them, and they will certainly have them. Otherwise, the policies of non-resistance, humiliating treaties, and surrender of territory would appear all too brazenly obvious in the silence. There must be anguished weeping and furious shouting, fist-shaking and saber-rattling, so that people are confused by all the commotion, moved to tears by the elegies, and their fury is vented by the battle songs. Thus the first step of the "Eastern Campaign" which is really the "Western Campaign" is quietly, imperceptibly taken. In a funeral procession there is mournful weeping and grand military music; the task is to escort the dead into the ground, to use the fanfare to gloss over this "death" and help everyone promptly "forget." The spirited or elegiac articles of present-day "Nationalist Literature" are fulfilling exactly the same task.

But after this, the "Nationalist Literature" writers draw ever closer to their own sorrow. For there is a question looming ever nearer: will the master in the future avoid repeating Marshal Batu's downfall and be willing to trust and treat well his loyal and brave slaves -- no, warriors? This is truly a most vital and terrifying question -- the great pivot upon which turns whether master and slave can "coexist and co-prosper."

History tells us: they cannot. This, as even the "Nationalist Literature" writers themselves already know, will never come to pass. They will only fulfill the duties of pallbearers, forever harboring the sorrow of devotion to their master, until the surging tempest of proletarian revolution rises up to cleanse the mountains and rivers -- only then can they be delivered from this stagnant, base, and putrid fate.

Because The Pioneer called him a "running dog of the capitalists," Mr. Liang Shiqiu (梁實秋) wrote an article in which he claims "I am not angry." First, based on the definition given on page 672 of the second issue of The Pioneer, he decided that "I rather feel I am something like a member of the proletariat"; then he defined "running dog" as "generally speaking, anyone who plays the running dog is trying to please his master in order to gain some favor." This in turn gave rise to his following doubt --

"The Pioneer says I am a running dog of the capitalists. Of which capitalist, or of all capitalists? I do not even know who my master is. If I knew, I would certainly take a few issues of my magazine to present myself before my master and claim credit -- perhaps I might even receive a few gold sovereigns or rubles as reward.... I only know that by laboring without cease, I can earn money to sustain a livelihood. As for how one goes about being a running dog, how one presents oneself at a capitalist's accounts office to collect gold sovereigns, how one goes to the XX Party to collect rubles -- these skills, how could I possibly know?..."

This is precisely the living portrait of "a running dog of the capitalists." All running dogs, though perhaps kept by one particular capitalist, in fact belong to all capitalists. That is why they are docile toward every rich man they encounter and bark furiously at every poor man they meet. Not knowing who its master is -- this is precisely the reason it is docile toward every rich man, and precisely the proof that it belongs to all capitalists. Even if no one keeps it, and it grows scrawny from hunger and becomes a stray dog, it still remains docile toward every rich man and barks at every poor man -- only now it is even less clear about who its master is.

Since Mr. Liang himself recounts how hard he toils, as if he were a "proletarian" (that is, what Mr. Liang previously called "the inferior and defeated"), and since he does not know "who his master is," he belongs to the latter category. To be more precise, a few words should be added: he should be called a "stray" "running dog of the capitalists."

Yet this designation still has some shortcomings. Mr. Liang is, after all, an educated professor, and so he differs from the ordinary kind. He has finally stopped asking "Does literature have class character?" In his essay "Reply to Mr. Lu Xun," he very adroitly slipped in sentences about slogans like "Armed Protection of the Soviet Union" painted on telegraph poles and smashed newspaper office windows; and in the passage quoted above he wrote the phrase "go to the XX Party to collect rubles." Those two deliberately concealed X's are characters that anyone can immediately guess to be "Communist" -- pointing out that anyone who argues "literature has class character" and offends Mr. Liang must be engaged in "protecting the Soviet Union" or "going to collect rubles." This is the same tactic used when Duan Qirui's (段祺瑞) guards shot students and the Morning Post said the students had died for a few rubles; or when my name appeared on the Freedom League roster and the Revolutionary Daily's correspondence section said I had been "bought with gold-glittering rubles." For Mr. Liang, perhaps he considers it a form of "criticism" to sniff out subversives ("academic bandits") for his master; but this occupation is even more degraded than that of the "executioner."

I still remember that during the era of "Kuomintang-Communist cooperation," it was very fashionable to praise the Soviet Union in correspondence and speeches. Things are different now: according to the newspapers, writing slogans on telegraph poles and anything involving the "XX Party" are being pursued with great vigor by the police. In that case, designating one's intellectual opponents as "protecting the Soviet Union" or belonging to the "XX Party" is naturally fashionable and timely, and might even earn "a bit of favor" from one's master. But to say that Mr. Liang intends to gain "favor" or "gold sovereigns" would be unjust -- there is decidedly no such thing. He merely hopes to lend a helping hand in order to overcome the poverty of his "literary criticism." Therefore, from the perspective of "literary criticism," one more adjective must be added above "running dog": "spent."

April 19, 1930.

One

I hear that people in the Crescent Moon monthly circle are saying that their circulation has improved. This is probably true; even someone like me, with very few social connections, has seen the combined issue of Volume Two, Numbers Six and Seven, in the hands of two young friends. Thumbing through it casually, I found that essays disputing "freedom of speech" and fiction made up the bulk of it. Near the tail end, there was an essay by Mr. Liang Shiqiu (梁实秋) entitled "On Mr. Lu Xun's 'Hard Translation,'" asserting that it was "close to dead translation." And since "the trend of dead translation must on no account be encouraged," he quoted three passages of my translation work, as well as what I had written in the postscript to Literature and Criticism: "But because of the translator's insufficient ability and the inherent defects of the Chinese language, upon finishing and reviewing the translation, there are indeed many passages that are obscure or even incomprehensible; and if one were to break down the subordinate clauses, one would lose the tone of the original. For my part, aside from persisting in this kind of hard translation, the only other option is to throw up my hands. The sole remaining hope is that readers will still be willing to press on and read through it with gritted teeth." These words he carefully adorned with circles beside each character, and even added double circles beside the words "hard translation," whereupon he "solemnly" delivered his "criticism": "We have 'pressed on with gritted teeth,' but gained nothing. What difference is there between 'hard translation' and 'dead translation'?"

In the Crescent Moon Society's public statement, although it claimed to have no particular organization, and in its essays seemed to abhor proletarian-style talk of "organization" and "collectives," in truth it was organized — at the very least, the political essays in this issue all "echoed" one another. As for literature, this particular essay was an aftershock of the piece "Does Literature Have Class Character?" written by the same critic and published earlier in the same issue. In that essay there was a passage that read: "…But unfortunately, I cannot understand a single one of these books. …What I find most difficult is the language…reading them is harder than reading a book from heaven.…At present, not a single Chinese person has written an article in language that Chinese people can understand, telling us what the theory of proletarian literature actually is." Circles appear beside the characters too, but for fear of troubling the typesetter, I shall refrain from reproducing them. In short, Mr. Liang considers himself the representative of all Chinese people; since these books are incomprehensible to him, they must be incomprehensible to all Chinese people, and their existence in China should be terminated. Hence his edict: "This trend must on no account be encouraged."

I cannot speak for the views of other translators of these "heavenly books." From my personal perspective, however, things are not so simple. First, Mr. Liang may claim to have "pressed on with gritted teeth," but whether he actually gritted them, and whether he was capable of doing so, remains a question. To claim hardness while in reality being as soft as cotton is precisely a hallmark of the Crescent Moon Society. Second, Mr. Liang may have come to represent all Chinese people, but whether he is truly the most outstanding among the entire nation is also a question. This question can be elucidated from the essay "Does Literature Have Class Character?" It is true that the word "proletariat" need not be transliterated and may well be translated by meaning — there is reason for this. But this critic says: "Actually, if you just look it up in the dictionary, the meaning of this word is not exactly flattering. According to Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, the meaning of 'proletariat' is: 'A citizen of the lowest class who served the state not with property, but only by having children.'…The proletariat is a class that only knows how to have children! (At least, this was the case in Roman times.)" In fact there is no need to quibble over this "respectability." Anyone with a modicum of common sense would surely not mistake the present age for Roman times and regard all modern proletarians as Romans. This is just as when "Chemie" was translated as "shemi-xue" — readers would certainly not confuse it with Egyptian alchemy. Nor would they, confronted with an article written by "Mr. Liang," investigate the etymology and misunderstand it as meaning that a "single-plank bridge" has somehow taken up the pen. Even "looking it up in the dictionary" (Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, no less!) still yields "nothing" — but surely not all Chinese people are quite like this.

Two

But what I find most interesting is that in Mr. Liang's text quoted in the preceding section, there are two places where he uses the word "we," which carries a distinct whiff of "majority" and "collective." Naturally, although the author writes alone, his ideological ilk certainly number more than one, and it is not wrong to speak in terms of "we" — it makes the reader feel more powerful, and no one person bears the responsibility on his shoulders alone. However, when "thought cannot be unified" and "speech should be free," just as with Mr. Liang's critique of the capitalist system, there is a certain "drawback." That is, once there is a "we," there must also be a "they" outside of us. Thus, although the Crescent Moon Society's "we" may consider "the trend of my dead translation one that must on no account be encouraged," there exist other readers who did not find reading it to yield "nothing," and my "hard translation" continues to survive among "them," retaining some distinction from "dead translation."

I myself am one of the Crescent Moon Society's "them," for my translations and what Mr. Liang requires are entirely different in every respect.

The opening of that essay "On Hard Translation" discusses why mistranslation is better than dead translation: "A book could never be entirely mistranslated…even if parts are mistranslated, those errors at least still give you an error. This error may indeed do limitless harm, but at least when you read it, you get a sense of satisfaction." The last two sentences could well be adorned with special marks, but I have never engaged in such antics. My translations were never meant to give readers a "satisfying" experience; rather, they often produce discomfort, and may even cause irritation, disgust, and indignation. For things that will leave one with "a sense of satisfaction" after reading, there are the Crescent Moon Society members' translations and writings: the poetry of Mr. Xu Zhimo (徐志摩), the fiction of Shen Congwen (沈从文) and Ling Shuhua (凌叔华), the causeries of Mr. Chen Xiying (陈西滢, i.e. Chen Yuan 陈源), the criticism of Mr. Liang Shiqiu, the eugenics of Mr. Pan Guangdan (潘光旦), and the humanism of Mr. Babbitt (白璧德).

Therefore, when Mr. Liang goes on to say, "Reading such a book is like reading a map — one must extend a finger to trace the thread and location of the syntax" — to me these words are so much empty talk, the same as not having said them at all. Yes, from my point of view, to read "such a book" is indeed like reading a map: one must extend a finger to find "the thread and location of the syntax." Reading a map may not be as "satisfying" as looking at a painting of "Yang Guifei Emerging from the Bath" or a painting of "Three Friends of Winter," and one may even have to extend a finger (though I suspect this is only Mr. Liang's own problem — people accustomed to reading maps can do it with their eyes alone). But a map is not a dead picture; and thus even if "hard translation" involves the same labor, by the same reasoning it retains some "distinction" from "dead translation." One who knows his ABCs may fancy himself a modern scholar, yet remain utterly unrelated to chemical equations. One who can use an abacus may fancy himself a mathematician, yet still gain nothing from looking at written calculations. In this world, it is by no means the case that being a scholar connects one with all things.

Yet Mr. Liang has concrete examples — he cites three passages of my translation, though acknowledging that "perhaps because they lack context, the meaning cannot be entirely clear." In "Does Literature Have Class Character?," he uses a similar tactic, citing two translated poems and delivering the sweeping verdict: "Perhaps great proletarian literature has not yet appeared; very well then, I am willing to wait, and wait, and wait." These methods are admittedly very "satisfying," but I can take a passage right from the creative work — creative work, mind you! — "Moving House," on page eight, from this very same issue of Crescent Moon monthly —

"Do chicks have ears?"

"I've never seen a chick with ears."

"Then how does it hear me calling it?" She recalled that two days ago Fourth Auntie had told her that ears are for hearing things and eyes are for seeing things.

"Is this egg from a white chicken or a black chicken?" Zhier, seeing that Fourth Auntie had not answered her, stood up, touched the egg, and asked again.

"You can't tell right now; you'll know once it hatches into a chick."

"Elder Sister Waner says chicks can grow into big chickens. Will these chicks also grow into big chickens?"

"Feed them well and they'll grow big. Wasn't this chicken smaller when we first bought it?"

That is quite enough. The "language" is perfectly comprehensible, and there is no need to extend a finger to find threads. But I shall not "wait"; for even from just this passage, it is neither "satisfying," and is moreover scarcely distinguishable from no creation at all.

Finally, Mr. Liang has a rejoinder: "Chinese and foreign languages are different…the difficulty of translation lies precisely here. If the grammar, syntax, and vocabulary of two languages were completely identical, would translation still constitute a task at all?…We might as well rearrange the syntax, taking the reader's comprehension as the first priority, since 'pressing on with gritted teeth' is not a pleasant experience, and moreover 'hard translation' does not necessarily preserve 'the vigorous tone of the original.' If 'hard translation' could still preserve 'the vigorous tone of the original,' that would truly be a miracle — could one then still say that Chinese has 'defects'?" I am certainly not so foolish as to seek a foreign language identical to Chinese, or to hope that "the grammar, syntax, and vocabulary of two languages be completely identical." I merely hold that a national language with complex grammar is better suited to translating foreign texts; languages of related families are also easier to translate between; and this, too, is a form of work. When the Dutch translate German, or when the Russians translate Polish, can one say this is no different from doing no work at all? Japanese is very "different" from European languages, yet they have gradually added new syntactic constructions, making their language, compared to classical Japanese, better suited for translation without losing the vigorous tone of the original. In the beginning, naturally, one had to "trace the thread and location of the syntax," which caused "displeasure" to many, but with tracing and habituation, it has now been assimilated and made their own. Chinese grammar is even less complete than classical Japanese, and yet it too has undergone changes: the Records of the Grand Historian and the Book of Han differ from the Book of Documents; modern vernacular Chinese differs again from the Records and the Han. There have been innovations — for instance, in Tang dynasty Buddhist sutra translations and Yuan dynasty imperial edict translations, many items of "grammar, syntax, and vocabulary" were newly coined; once they came into common use, one no longer needed to extend a finger to understand them. Now "foreign texts" have come along, and many sentences must again be newly minted — to put it bluntly, hard-coined. In my experience, translating this way, rather than breaking things down into several sentences, better preserves the vigorous tone of the original; but because it depends on new coinage, the preexisting Chinese language does have defects. What "miracle"? What "really"? But since it requires "extending a finger" and "pressing on with gritted teeth," for some people it is naturally "not a pleasant experience." However, I have no intention of offering "satisfaction" or "pleasure" to those gentlemen; as long as there remain a certain number of readers who can gain something from it, the joys and sorrows of Mr. Liang Shiqiu and "company," as well as their gaining nothing, are truly "like floating clouds to me."

But Mr. Liang has yet another point that does not require recourse to proletarian literary theory and yet remains quite unclear. He says: "In the works Mr. Lu Xun translated some years ago, such as Kuriyagawa Hakuson's The Symbol of Anguish, the content was not incomprehensible, but his recent translations seem to have changed style." Anyone with a modicum of common sense knows: "Chinese and foreign languages are different," but within a single foreign language, due to different authors' individual styles, the "style" and "thread and location of the syntax" can also be very different. Sentences can be complex or simple, terms can be common or specialized — it is by no means the case that a foreign language always presents a uniform level of accessibility. My translation of The Symbol of Anguish was done the same way as now — following the original word by word, even character by character. That Mr. Liang Shiqiu found it comprehensible was because the original text happened to be accessible, because Mr. Liang Shiqiu is a new Chinese critic, and because the hard-coined syntactic constructions in it had been encountered relatively often. But to a scholar in a remote village who reads only Guwen Guanzhi (Anthology of Classical Prose), would it not be harder to read than a "heavenly book"?

Three

But these "harder than heavenly books" translations of proletarian literary theory have had no small influence on Mr. Liang. That incomprehension should have an influence may seem laughable, but it is true. This critic states in "Does Literature Have Class Character?": "In my present critique of so-called proletarian literary theory, I can only base myself on what little material I am able to understand." This amounts to saying: his knowledge of this theory is therefore extremely incomplete.

But for this transgression, we (including all translators of "heavenly books," hence the "we") can only bear partial responsibility. Part of it must be borne by the author's own muddleheadedness or laziness. About the books of "Lunacharsky, Plekhanov, and the like," I have no knowledge; but as for the three essays "by Bogdanov and the like" and half of Trotsky's Literature and Revolution, English translations certainly exist. There is no "Mr. Lu Xun" in England, so the translations must be quite accessible. Mr. Liang has already demonstrated his patience and courage by "waiting, and waiting, and waiting" for the emergence of great proletarian literature. This time, regarding the theory, why not also wait a moment, find the books, read them, and then speak? Not knowing that something exists and not seeking it is muddleheadedness; knowing it exists and not seeking it is laziness. If one merely sits in silence, that may be "satisfying," but if one then opens one's mouth, one is all too likely to swallow cold air.

For example, take that lofty essay "Does Literature Have Class Character?" — its conclusion is that class character does not exist. To obliterate class character, I think the cleanest approach would be Mr. Wu Zhihui's (吴稚晖) "whatever Marx-Smarx" and some other gentleman's doctrine that "there are no classes in the world." Then all voices would be silenced and the world would be at peace. But Mr. Liang has already been somewhat poisoned by "whatever Marx," having first admitted that in many places today there is a capitalist system, and that under this system there exist proletarians. However, "the proletarians originally had no class consciousness. It was a few leaders, excessively sympathetic and radical in attitude, who instilled this class concept in them," seeking to instigate their solidarity and ignite their desire for struggle. True enough — but I believe that those who instill it do so not out of sympathy but because of a vision for transforming the world. Besides, things that "originally do not exist" cannot be made conscious of, cannot be ignited. That they can become conscious, can be ignited, shows that these things existed all along. And things that existed all along cannot be concealed for long. Just as when Galileo said the earth moves, or Darwin spoke of biological evolution — were they not at first nearly burned at the stake by the religious, or fiercely attacked by conservatives? Yet now people find nothing remarkable about either theory, precisely because the earth does indeed move and organisms do indeed evolve. To acknowledge the existence of something while trying to disguise it as nonexistent requires extraordinary skill.

But Mr. Liang has his own method for eliminating struggle. He believes, as Rousseau said, that "property is the foundation of civilization," and therefore "to attack the system of property is to resist civilization." "If a proletarian has any gumption, he need only work diligently and honestly for a lifetime, and he will inevitably acquire a respectable amount of property. This is the proper method of the struggle of life." I think that although Rousseau lived a hundred and fifty years ago, he could not have believed that all civilization, past and future, was founded on property. (But if one were to say "on economic relations," that would naturally be correct.) Greece and India both had civilizations, and neither was flourishing under a property-based society — he presumably knew this; if he did not, that was his error. As for the "proper" method by which the proletarians should "work diligently and diligently" and climb up into the propertied class — this is the old homily that rich Chinese grandfathers deliver to poor workers when they are in a good mood. In practice, there are still many "proletarians" who are right now "diligently and honestly" trying to climb up one rung. But this is when nobody has yet "instilled the class concept in them." Once it is instilled, they refuse to climb up one by one. As Mr. Liang says, "They are a class now; they must be organized; they are a collective, and so they leap outside the normal track to seize political and economic power, leaping to become the ruling class." But are there still "proletarians" who want to "work diligently and honestly for a lifetime and inevitably acquire a respectable amount of property"? Naturally, there are. But such a person should be counted as a "not-yet-enriched property owner." Mr. Liang's exhortations will be spat out by the proletarians, and he will have to content himself with mutual admiration among the grandfathers.

Then what comes next? Mr. Liang believes there is nothing to worry about, because "this kind of revolutionary phenomenon cannot be permanent. After natural evolution takes its course, the law of survival of the fittest will again prove itself — those of superior intelligence and ability will once more occupy the dominant position, and the proletarians will still be proletarians." But the proletarian class presumably also knows that "anti-civilization forces will sooner or later be conquered by the forces of civilization," and therefore "they wish to establish a so-called 'proletarian culture'…which includes literature and scholarship."

From this point onward, we enter the main topic of literary criticism proper.

Four

Mr. Liang begins by asserting that the error of proletarian literary theory lies "in imposing the shackles of class upon literature." A capitalist and a laborer may differ in certain respects, but they also share common ground: "their human nature [these two characters had double circles in the original] is no different." For example, both experience joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness; both experience love (though "what is spoken of is love itself, not the manner of loving"). "Literature is the art of expressing this most fundamental human nature." These words are contradictory and empty. If civilization is founded on property, and a poor man's "gumption" consists in trying his utmost to climb up to the propertied class, then climbing is the essence of life, the rich man is the supreme being of humanity, and literature need only represent the bourgeoisie — why then be so "excessively sympathetic" as to include the "inferior and defeated" proletarians? Moreover, how exactly is the "itself" of "human nature" expressed? Take, for instance, the chemical property of an element or compound — its combining power — or the physical property of hardness. To demonstrate this power and this degree requires two substances; to try to demonstrate combining power and hardness in their "pure selves" without using any substance is impossible. But the moment you use substances, the phenomenon differs with each substance. Literature cannot express "nature" without using human beings; and the moment human beings are used, and they live in a class society, one cannot escape the class character to which they belong. There is no need to "impose shackles" — it is simply inevitable. Naturally, "joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness are the emotions of man," but a poor man will never know the anguish of losing money on the stock exchange; how would an oil tycoon know the bitterness endured by an old woman picking coal cinders in Beijing? The famine victims in a disaster zone presumably do not grow orchids like the rich man's old grandfather. And Jiao Da of the Jia household does not fall in love with Sister Lin. "O the steam whistle!" "O Lenin!" — these may not constitute proletarian literature; but "O all things!" "O all people!" "Something pleasant has happened, and people are pleased!" — neither is this literature expressing the "itself" of "human nature." If literature expressing the most universal human nature is the highest, then literature expressing the most universal animal nature — nutrition, respiration, locomotion, reproduction — or, minus "locomotion," literature expressing biological nature, must rank even higher. If one says that because we are human, we limit ourselves to expressing human nature — then by the same token, because proletarians are proletarians, they insist on creating proletarian literature.

Next, Mr. Liang argues that an author's class is unrelated to his work. Tolstoy was born into the aristocracy yet sympathized with the poor, while not advocating class struggle. Marx was not a member of the proletarian class. Dr. Johnson, though poor all his life, was nobler in aspiration and manner than the aristocracy. Therefore, in evaluating literature, one should look at the work itself and not implicate the author's class or status. But none of these examples suffice to prove the classlessness of literature. It is precisely because Tolstoy was born into the aristocracy and could not entirely rid himself of old habits that he only sympathized with the poor but did not advocate class struggle. Marx was indeed originally not a member of the proletarian class, but he produced no literary works either; we cannot hypothesize that if he had taken up his pen, what he expressed would necessarily be love-in-itself without manner. As for Dr. Johnson being poor all his life yet nobler in aspiration and manner than royalty — I confess I do not understand the reason, since I know nothing of English literature or his biography. Perhaps he originally wanted to "work diligently and honestly for a lifetime and inevitably acquire a respectable amount of property," and then climb up into the aristocratic class, but in the end was "defeated" and could not even accumulate a respectable amount of property, so he merely put on airs and "satisfied" himself.

Next, Mr. Liang says: "Good works are forever the exclusive possession of the few; the majority are forever stupid and forever have nothing to do with literature." But whether one possesses the ability to appreciate has nothing to do with class, because "the appreciation of literature is a heavenly gift" — that is, even among the proletariat there will be people with this "heavenly gift." By my reasoning, then, a person blessed with this particular "gift," even if too poor to receive education and completely illiterate, could still appreciate the Crescent Moon monthly and serve as evidence that "human nature" and literature "itself" have no class character. But Mr. Liang also knows that proletarians born with this heavenly gift must be few, so he designates another kind of thing (literature?) for them to read: "such as popular theater, movies, detective novels, and the like," because "ordinary workers and peasants need entertainment, and perhaps they need a small amount of artistic entertainment." Seen this way, it would appear that literature does indeed differ according to class. But Mr. Liang says this is determined by the level of one's capacity for appreciation, and the cultivation of this capacity has nothing to do with economics — it is a gift from God, a "heavenly blessing." Therefore, writers should create freely, neither serving as hired hands of royalty and aristocracy, nor submitting to threats from the proletarian class to produce songs of praise. This is not wrong. But in the proletarian literary theory I have read, I have never seen anyone say that a writer of a particular class should not serve the royalty and aristocracy but should submit to threats from the proletarian class to produce songs of praise. What is said is simply that literature has class character; that in a class society, even if a writer considers himself "free" and believes he has transcended class, unconsciously he is still governed by the class consciousness of his own class; and that his creations are simply the culture of no other class. For example, Mr. Liang's essay was originally intended to negate the class character of literature and uphold truth. But by making property the ancestor of civilization and pointing to the poor as the dregs of "inferior defeat," one glance suffices to identify it as the "weapon" of the propertied class's struggle — no, "essay." The proletarian literary theorists' contention that literary theories advocating "all humanity" and "transcending class" are instruments aiding the propertied class finds here a most luminous illustration. As for Mr. Cheng Fangwu (成仿吾) and his ilk — "They will surely be victorious, so let us go guide and console them" — who, having said "let us go," then proceed to "dismiss" the "them" who are not of their own kind — such proletarian men of letters are, needless to say, just as guilty as Mr. Liang of "making it up as they go" when it comes to proletarian literary theory.

Furthermore, what Mr. Liang most detests is the proletarian literary theorists' insistence on treating literature as a weapon of struggle — that is, as propaganda. He "does not object to anyone using literature to achieve other purposes" but "cannot accept that propagandistic writing is literature." I consider this a self-generated worry. As far as the theories I have read are concerned, they merely say that all literature inevitably involves propaganda; nobody has claimed that propagandistic writing alone qualifies as literature. Admittedly, since the year before last, China has indeed produced many poems and stories stuffed with slogans and catchphrases, which their authors took to be proletarian literature. But this was because both content and form lacked proletarian qualities, and without slogans and catchphrases there was no way to signal their "new rising" nature — in actuality, these were not proletarian literature either. This year, the celebrated "proletarian literary critic" Mr. Qian Xingcun (钱杏邨) was still quoting Lunacharsky in the journal The Pioneer, claiming that Lunacharsky valued literature accessible to the masses, thereby suggesting that slogans and catchphrases are not to be dismissed, and defending those works of "revolutionary literature." But I feel that, like Mr. Liang Shiqiu, this is either a deliberate or inadvertent distortion. What Lunacharsky meant by things accessible to the masses was presumably the kind of writing Tolstoy produced in the little booklets he distributed to peasants — language, melodies, and humor that workers and peasants would immediately grasp. One need only note that Demian Bednyi (Демьян Бедный) received the Order of the Red Banner for his poetry, and his poems contain no slogans or catchphrases, to understand this.

Finally, Mr. Liang demands to see the goods. Fair enough — this is the most practical approach. But citing two translated poems as a public exhibition is not right. Crescent Moon itself has published pieces "On the Difficulty of Translation" — how much more so when the translated text is poetry. From what I have seen, Lunacharsky's The Liberated Don Quixote, Fadeyev's The Rout, and Gladkov's Cement — in the eleven years since the Republic, China has produced no works comparable to these. I refer here to writers of the Crescent Moon Society ilk who bask in the residual glow of bourgeois civilization and wholeheartedly defend it. Among the works of self-proclaimed proletarian writers, I can point to no comparable achievements either. But Mr. Qian Xingcun has also argued in defense, saying that a newly risen class will naturally be immature and simplistic in literary skill, and to demand good works from them immediately is "bourgeois" malice. As a statement on behalf of workers and peasants, this is perfectly correct — such an unreasonable demand is like starving and freezing people for a long time, then blaming them for not being as plump as the rich. But the writers in China today are by no means people who have just laid down the plow or the axe; the great majority are educated intellectuals, some already well-known men of letters. Could it be that after overcoming their petty-bourgeois class consciousness, their former literary skill also vanished along with it? That cannot be. The Russian veteran writers Aleksei Tolstoy, Veresaev, and Prishvin continue to produce good work to this day. The reason Chinese writers have slogans without corresponding substance is, I believe, not that they "use literature as a weapon of class struggle," but that they "use class struggle as a weapon of literature." Under the banner of "proletarian literature" have gathered not a few people performing somersaults. Just look at last year's book advertisements — practically every single one was "revolutionary literature" — while critics did nothing but call their apologetics "liquidation" — that is, they let literature sit under the cover of "class struggle," so that literature itself did not need to exert effort, and consequently had little to do with either literature or struggle.

But the momentary phenomenon in China today naturally offers no proof whatsoever against the rise of proletarian literature. Mr. Liang knows this too, which is why at the end he concedes: "If proletarian revolutionary writers insist on calling their propaganda literature proletarian literature, then at least it counts as a new literature, at least a new harvest in the territory of literature. There is no need to shout 'down with bourgeois literature' and fight over literary territory, for the territory of literature is vast, and new things will always find their place." But this sounds like the rhetoric of "Sino-Japanese friendship, coexistence and co-prosperity" — from the perspective of the still-fledgling proletarians, it is a form of deception. Those willing to settle for such "proletarian literature" probably do exist at present, but they are of the same ilk as Mr. Liang's proletarians with "gumption" who seek to climb up into the bourgeoisie — their works are the grumblings of a poor scholar before passing the imperial examinations. From start to finish — through climbing and beyond — none of this is proletarian literature. Proletarian literature is one wing of the struggle to liberate one's own class and all classes by one's own strength; what it demands is the whole, not a corner. To use the world of literary criticism as an analogy: suppose, in the "Palace of Art" of "human nature" (which we must rent temporarily from Mr. Cheng Fangwu), we place two tiger-skin armchairs facing south, seat Mr. Liang Shiqiu and Mr. Qian Xingcun side by side, one holding "Crescent Moon" in his right hand, the other holding "The Sun" in his left — that scene would truly be "labor and capital" vying for beauty.

Five

Here we can circle back to my "hard translation."

By way of conjecture, this is a question that naturally follows: Since proletarian literature emphasizes propaganda, and propaganda must be comprehensible to the majority, then what are these "hard translated" and incomprehensible theoretical "heavenly books" translated for? Isn't it the same as not translating at all?

My answer is: for myself, for the handful of people who style themselves proletarian literary critics, and for a portion of readers who do not seek "satisfaction," who do not fear difficulty, and who want to gain at least some understanding of this theory.

Since the year before last, attacks against me personally have been exceedingly numerous. In practically every periodical one sees the name "Lu Xun," and the tone of the authors, at a rough glance, generally sounds like that of revolutionary men of letters. But after reading a few essays, I gradually felt there was too much empty talk. The scalpel missed the vital points; the bullets struck nothing fatal. Take, for example, the question of what class I belong to — it has yet to be settled; sometimes I am called petty bourgeoisie, sometimes "bourgeoisie," sometimes even elevated to "feudal remnant," and moreover equated with an orangutan (see the "Tokyo correspondence" in Creation Monthly). On one occasion, the color of my teeth was attacked. In a society like this, it is entirely possible for feudal remnants to make a spectacle of themselves. But that a feudal remnant is an orangutan is stated in no "materialist conception of history," nor can one find the argument that yellow teeth are harmful to the proletarian revolution. I then thought: there is too little of such theory available for reference, which is why everyone is somewhat muddled. As for enemies — dissecting them, chewing on them — that is unavoidable in these times. But if one has an anatomy textbook and a cookbook, and follows the procedures, the structure and flavor will at least be somewhat clearer and more palatable. People often compare the revolutionary to Prometheus of myth, who stole fire for mankind and, though tortured by the gods, felt no regret — his magnanimity and perseverance are indeed analogous. But I stole fire from other countries with the original intention of roasting my own flesh, thinking that if the flavor could be made somewhat better, then perhaps those who chew on me would get more benefit, and I would not have wasted my body. The starting point was entirely individualistic, and moreover tinged with petty-bourgeois extravagance, as well as the "revenge" of slowly drawing out a scalpel and plunging it into the heart of the dissector. Mr. Liang says, "They want revenge!" But it is not just "they" — such people are quite numerous among "feudal remnants" too. And yet, I also wish to be of some use to society; what the spectators see in the end is still fire and light. And so the first undertaking was Literary Policy, because it contained the arguments of various schools. Mr. Zheng Boqi (郑伯奇), who now runs a bookshop and publishes plays by Hauptmann and Lady Gregory, was at the time still a revolutionary man of letters. In the periodical Literary Life, which he edited, he mocked my translating of this book, saying I was unwilling to fade into obscurity but had unfortunately been beaten to the punch by others. That translating a single book could make one float up — being a revolutionary man of letters is really too easy; I had no such illusions. A certain tabloid then said my translation of The Theory of Art was a "surrender." Yes, surrender is a common thing in the world. But by that time, Generalissimo Cheng Fangwu had long since crawled out of his Japanese hot spring and moved into a Paris hotel — so to whom here was I offering my allegiance? This year, the story has changed again: in The Pioneer and Modern Fiction, they say it is a "change of direction." I have seen some Japanese magazines apply these four characters to the former Neo-Sensationalist writer Kataoka Teppei, and consider it a complimentary term. In truth, all this confused chatter stems from the same old disease of looking only at labels without even bothering to think. Translating one book about proletarian literature is insufficient to prove one's direction; if it contained distortions, it would on the contrary be harmful. My translations are also meant as an offering to these hasty proletarian literary critics, for they have the obligation not to seek "satisfaction" but to endure hardship and study these theories.

But I am confident there are no deliberate distortions in my translations. When they strike the weaknesses of critics I do not admire, I smile; when they strike my own weaknesses, I endure the pain. But I will absolutely not add or subtract — this too is one reason for my consistent "hard translation." Naturally, someday there will be better translators capable of producing translations that are neither distorted nor "hard" or "dead." At that point my translations will naturally be superseded. I merely wish to fill the gap between "nothing" and "something better."

Yet there is still much paper in the world, while each literary society has few members. Grand ambitions but slender means — they cannot write enough to fill all the paper. And so the critic within each society whose duty is to vanquish enemies and help friends, sweeping away alien species, sees others come to scribble on the paper and heaves a sigh, shaking his head and stamping his feet in unbearable distress. Shanghai's Shenbao goes so far as to call translators of social science "any Tom, Dick, or Harry," such is its fury. Mr. Jiang Guangci (蒋光慈), whose "position in China's new literature is well known to readers," once went to Tokyo to convalesce. Meeting Kurahara Korehito, and hearing that many Japanese translations were terrible, practically harder to read than the originals… he laughed and said: "…Then China's translation world is even more absurd. Recently many Chinese books are translated from Japanese; if the Japanese translator brings in some errors and alterations from a European work, and it is then translated from Japanese into Chinese, won't the work have changed half its face?…" (See The Pioneer.) This too is an expression of deep dissatisfaction with translation, especially retranslation. But whereas Mr. Liang at least names books and their flaws, Mr. Jiang merely smiles sweetly and sweeps everything away — truly far more comprehensive. Kurahara Korehito translated a great deal of literary theory and fiction directly from Russian, and I personally benefited enormously from his work. I hope China will also produce one or two such honest translators from Russian, translating good books in succession — rather than merely cursing themselves "bastard" once and considering that the duty of a revolutionary man of letters has been discharged.

But as things stand now, Mr. Liang Shiqiu will not translate these things; the great man who calls others "Tom, Dick, and Harry" will not translate them either; Mr. Jiang, who has studied Russian, would be the most suitable, but after his convalescence he only produced one book, One Week — and Japan already had two translations of it. China once spoke voluminously of Darwin and Nietzsche, then roundly cursed them during the European War. But to this day there is only one translation of Darwin's works and only half of Nietzsche's; scholars and literary giants who study English and German have had neither the leisure nor the inclination to attend to it, and that's that. So for the time being, I am afraid we shall have to endure the mockery and continue retranslating from Japanese, or take an original text and translate directly while consulting the Japanese translation. I intend to continue doing this, and I hope more people will do the same, to fill a little of the emptiness behind all the lofty and thoroughgoing talk — for we cannot, like Mr. Jiang, find it all "so laughable," nor should we, like Mr. Liang, just "wait, and wait, and wait."

Six

At the beginning, I wrote: "To claim hardness while in reality being as soft as cotton is precisely a hallmark of the Crescent Moon Society." Here I should briefly add a few sentences, which will serve as the conclusion to this essay.

When Crescent Moon first appeared, it advocated a "solemn attitude" — but those who scold shall be scolded in return, and those who mock shall be mocked in return. This is not wrong; it is precisely "using the other's own methods against him," and though it is also a form of "revenge," it is not for oneself. In the advertisement for the combined issue of Volume Two, Numbers Six and Seven, it still says: "We all maintain a 'tolerant' attitude (except that an 'intolerant' attitude is something we cannot tolerate). We all favor steady, rational doctrine." The first two sentences are also not wrong — "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" — consistent with the beginning. But if one follows this broad road to its end, one inevitably arrives at "resisting violence with violence," which is incompatible with the "steadiness" so cherished by the gentlemen of the Crescent Moon Society.

This time, the Crescent Moon Society's "free speech" met with suppression. By the old method, one ought also to suppress the suppressors. But the response that appeared in Crescent Moon was an essay entitled "A Warning to Those Who Suppress Freedom of Speech" — first citing the other side's party doctrine, then citing foreign laws, and finally citing historical examples from East and West, to demonstrate that those who suppress freedom always tend toward their own destruction: a warning delivered out of concern for the other side.

And so, the Crescent Moon Society's "solemn attitude" and "eye for an eye" method, when all is said and done, is applied exclusively to those of comparable or lesser power. But when someone more powerful punches their eyes swollen, they make an exception: they merely raise their hands to cover their own face and cry, "Watch out for your own eyes!\"

Anyone with the slightest awareness knows: the reason students petitioned this time was that Japan had occupied Liaoning and Jilin, the Nanjing government was helpless and could only go begging to the League of Nations, while the League of Nations was in fact in cahoots with Japan. Study, study — yes, students should study, but the big shots and grandees should also refrain from giving away our territory, so that one can actually study in peace. Haven't the newspapers reported that Northeastern University has been scattered, Feng Yong University has been scattered, and the Japanese soldiers shoot on sight anyone who looks like a student? To put down one's satchel and go petition — that is already pitiful in the extreme. Yet the Nationalist government, in a circular telegram to military and political authorities on December 18, heaped upon them the charges of "smashing government offices, blocking transportation, assaulting Central Committee members, commandeering automobiles, beating passersby and public servants, making unauthorized arrests and conducting illegal interrogations, with social order utterly destroyed" — and moreover pointed out the consequence, saying that "friends from friendly nations are astonished beyond words; if this continues, the country will cease to be a country"!

What fine "friends from friendly nations"! The troops of Japanese imperialism forcibly occupied Liaoning and Jilin, shelled government offices — they were not astonished. They blocked railways, bombed passenger trains, detained officials, shot civilians — they were not astonished. Under Kuomintang rule, year after year of civil war, unprecedented floods, parents selling their children to escape poverty, public beheadings, secret massacres, electric torture to extract confessions — they were not astonished either. But when there was a bit of commotion during the students' petition, they were astonished!

What fine "friends from friendly nations" of the Nationalist government! What kind of creatures are they! Even if the charges listed were true, these are things that happen in every single one of those "friendly nations." The prisons they maintain to uphold their "order" have already torn off the mask of their "civilization." What's with their putting on that stinking face of "astonishment"?

But as soon as the "friends from friendly nations" express astonishment, our National Government gets scared: "if this continues, the country will cease to be a country" — as if losing the Three Eastern Provinces only made the Party-State look more like a proper country; as if nobody making a sound about losing the Three Eastern Provinces only made the Party-State look more like a proper country; as if losing the Three Eastern Provinces with only a few students submitting a few "petitions" only made the Party-State look more like a proper country — one that could earn the praise of "friends from friendly nations" and remain a "country" forever.

A few lines of a telegram make it crystal clear: what kind of Party-State this is, and what kind of "friendly nations" these are. The "friendly nations" want our people to submit to slaughter in silence; the slightest "transgression" and they massacre. The Party-State wants us to comply with the wishes of these "friends from friendly nations" — otherwise it will "telegraph all local military and political authorities" to "take emergency measures immediately, and not use the excuse afterward that it was impossible to dissuade them, shifting responsibility."

For the "friends from friendly nations" know well: if Japanese soldiers are "impossible to dissuade," how could students possibly be "impossible to dissuade"? What are the eighteen million a month in military expenditure and the four million in administrative costs being used for, "military and political authorities"?

Just one day after writing this essay, I saw in the December 21 issue of the Shenbao a special telegram from Nanjing: "Zhang Yikuan, a staff member of the Examination Yuan, was widely rumored to have been seized by students the day before and seriously injured. According to Zhang's own account, at the time his rickshaw puller made an error, and he was led by the crowd to National Central University, from which he soon left and returned home, with no injuries whatsoever. As for a certain secretary of the Executive Yuan who was taken to National Central University, he too left at the time, and there was certainly no disappearance." Meanwhile, in the "Education News" column, the confirmed figures of dead and wounded students from this city's schools who had gone to Nanjing to petition were recorded: "China University: two dead, thirty wounded. Fudan: two wounded. Fudan Middle School: ten wounded. East Asia: one missing (female). Shanghai Middle School: one missing, three wounded. Wenshi: one dead, five wounded…" It is thus evident that the students did not, as the government's circular telegram claimed, "utterly destroy social order." Rather, the government was not only still perfectly capable of suppression, but also still perfectly capable of fabrication and massacre. Henceforth, the "friends from friendly nations" need not be "astonished beyond words" — please just come and carve up the country at your leisure.

The phrase "laborer" has been a synonym for "criminal" for a full four years now. Oppression — nobody makes a sound. Massacre — nobody makes a sound. The moment this phrase is mentioned in literature, hordes of "men of letters and learning" and "upright gentlemen" come out to mock and revile it, followed by swarms of their disciples and hangers-on. O laborers, laborers — it seemed you were truly to be downtrodden for all eternity.

But unexpectedly, someone has remembered you again.

Unexpectedly, the imperialist masters found the Party-State's slaughter too slow for their liking, and came to do the job themselves — bombing here, shelling there. Branding "the people" as "reactionary elements" is the Party-State's specialty; but who could have foreseen that the imperialist masters possess the same marvelous trick, labeling the non-resisting, obedient Party-State army as "bandits" and administering a thorough "chastisement"! How unjust, how wrongful — there is indeed something of a lament here about confusing the "obedient" with the "rebellious," burning jade and stone together!

And so, laborers are remembered once more.

And so the affectionate cry of "Dear laborers!" — long unheard — reappears in articles; the wondrous official title of "intellectual laborer" — long unseen — resurfaces in newspapers. Moreover, "feeling the necessity for solidarity," they have organized an "association" and elected as officers Fan Zhongyun (樊仲云), Wang Fuquan (汪馥泉), and a fine host of other newly minted "intellectual laborers."

What "intellect"? What "labor"? What is the purpose of this "solidarity"? Where is the "necessity"? All this we shall set aside for now — the physical laborers without "intellect" can't be bothered with it anyway.

"Dear laborers"! Go out and do it one more time for these noble "intellectual laborers"! So that they can continue sitting in their rooms, "laboring" with their noble "intellect." Even if it fails, what fails is merely "physical strength" — the "intellect" will still be there!

Long live the "intellectual" laborers!

This is a volume in which the translator has selected from nearly a hundred pieces translated over the past ten years those that are not overly specialized and of interest to a general readership, gathering them together in the hope of wider circulation. First, so that one may see the current state of evolutionary theory; second, so that one may glimpse the future destiny of the Chinese people.

Evolutionary theory was introduced to China quite early, as far back as Yan Fu's (严复) translation and exposition of Huxley's Evolution and Ethics. But in the end it left behind nothing more than a vague term; during the era of the Great European War, it was again grossly misunderstood by polemicists, and by now even the very name is moribund. In the meantime, the theory has undergone several shifts: De Vries's mutation theory rose and then declined; Lamarck's theory of environmental influence fell and was then revived. We live and breathe within nature, yet we have generally paid scant attention to the study of such great laws of nature. The two essays at the beginning and end of this book are argued from the standpoint of neo-Lamarckism and offer a general overview, somewhat remedying this deficiency.

But the most important are the last two essays. The gradual southward advance of the desert, the difficulty of sustaining nutrition — these are matters of the utmost importance and immediacy for the Chinese people. If they are not resolved, the result will be extinction. That one may thereby understand why the study of ancient Chinese history is so difficult, and dispel the myth that the Chinese are supremely enduring of hardship — these would be merely secondary gains. When the forests are all felled and the waterways all dried up, a single drop of water in the future will be worth as much as blood. If this can be remembered by the youth of today and tomorrow, then the reward this book will have earned is very great indeed.

Yet natural science has its limits; what it addresses stops here, and the answer it provides is simply water conservation and reforestation. This may at first glance seem exceedingly simple and easy, but in fact it is not so at all. I may cite two passages from Agnes Smedley's Sketches of Chinese Rural Life as evidence—

Thus, such a method of tree protection ultimately only increases the number of people who strip bark and dig up roots, and in fact hastens the advance of the desert. But since this book confines itself to the scope of natural science, it has not addressed this. Following up on the facts discussed by natural science, going one step further to resolve them — that is the province of social science.

May 5, 1930.

Mark Twain needs no lengthy introduction — one need only glance at any history of American literature to know that he was a famous humorist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Not only do his works make one smile, but even his pen name carries a certain whiff of the comical.

His real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835–1910), and he was originally a river pilot. When he began publishing his work, he took the distorted call used in sounding the water depth and made it his pen name. His works were warmly received by his contemporaries, and he was regarded as a master raconteur; but when his posthumous work The Mysterious Stranger was published in 1916, it clearly proved that he had in fact harbored a deeply pessimistic worldview.

Harboring grief while wearing a grin — how did he come to be this way?

We know that America produced Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne (N. Hawthorne), and Walt Whitman (W. Whitman) — none of them were so divided between surface and substance. But all of that was before the Civil War. After it, Whitman was the first to find he could no longer sing, for after the war America had become an industrialist society in which every individual had to be cast in a single mold, and self-assertion was no longer tolerated. If one insisted, one would be persecuted. The concern of writers in this era was no longer how to develop one's individuality, but how to write in a way that people would want to read, so that manuscripts could be sold and fame obtained. Even someone as renowned as William Dean Howells (W. D. Howells) believed that a man of letters could be tolerated by the world only insofar as he provided entertainment. And so some of the less domesticated spirits could no longer hold their ground: some fled abroad, like Henry James; some took to telling jokes — that was Mark Twain.

So his becoming a humorist was a matter of livelihood, and the grief and satire lurking within his humor arose from his refusal to accept such a life. It was because of this small measure of resistance that the children of this new land still say with a smile today: Mark Twain is ours.

Eve's Diary was published in 1906, a work of his later years. Though it is but a small piece, it still reveals weakness through innocence and weaves mockery into narrative, forming a portrait of the American girl of his day — which the author took to be that of all womankind. Yet the smile upon that face is plainly that of a man advanced in years. Fortunately, thanks to the author's consummate craft, this is not immediately apparent, and the work remains vivid and alive. Moreover, the translator has conveyed its spirit faithfully and with an unadorned simplicity, almost making one feel that if Eve had kept her diary in Chinese, it might well have read just this way — all the more reason to give it a look.

Lester Ralph's fifty-odd line illustrations, though soft and delicate, are quite fresh. At first glance, the composition may readily call to mind the works of Ren Weichang (任渭长) from China's late Qing dynasty, but what he depicted were immortals, heroes, and lofty scholars — gaunt and eccentric figures far less healthy than these. Moreover, for Chinese eyes now accustomed to pictures of beauties with slanting eyes and sloping shoulders, these illustrations have a most salutary clarifying effect.

Recorded on the night of September 27, 1931.

Mr. Feng Y. S., through a friend of his, showed me the English translation of Wild Grass and asked me to say a few words. Unfortunately, I do not read English and can only speak for myself. But I hope the translator will not mind that I have done only half of what he wished.

These twenty-odd short pieces, as noted at the end of each, were written in Beijing between 1924 and 1926 and published serially in the periodical Yusi (Thread of Talk). For the most part, they were nothing more than small thoughts jotted down at the moment. Because it was difficult to speak plainly at the time, the phrasing is sometimes quite obscure.

Let me give a few examples. "My Lost Love" was written as a satire on the love-lost poems then in vogue. The first piece of "Revenge" was written out of hatred for the prevalence of bystanders in society. "Hope" was written out of alarm at the apathy of the youth. "Such a Warrior" was inspired by the sight of men of letters and learning aiding the warlords. "Withered Leaf" was written for those who love me and wish to preserve me. After the Duan Qirui (段祺瑞) government fired upon unarmed civilians, I wrote "Amid Pale Bloodstains" — by then I had already gone into hiding elsewhere. During the war between the Fengtian and Zhili cliques of warlords, I wrote "An Awakening" — and after that I could no longer remain in Beijing.

Thus, one might say that these are mostly pallid little flowers growing on the edge of a neglected hell — naturally they will not be beautiful. But this hell, too, was destined to be lost. This was made known to me by the faces and tones of a few heroes who possessed eloquence and ruthless hands, and who had not yet come to power. And so I wrote "The Good Hell That Was Lost."

Later, I stopped writing such things. The times, ever changing, no longer permitted such essays — or even such thoughts — to exist. Perhaps, I think, this is for the better after all. A preface written for the translation should also come to its end here. November 5.

One

Plekhanov (George Valentinovitch Plekhanov) was born in 1857, into a noble family in Tambov Province. From his birth to his coming of age, the history of the Russian revolutionary movement was precisely the period during which the populism advocated by the intelligentsia rose to prominence and then declined. Their initial view held that the Russian masses — that is, the great majority of peasants — had already grasped socialism, and had spiritually become unconscious socialists. Therefore, the mission of the populists was simply to "go to the people," explain their circumstances to them, and guide their resentment toward the landlords and officials, whereupon the peasants would rise up of their own accord and realize a system of free self-governance — that is, an anarchistic form of social organization.

But the peasants hardly listened to the agitation of the populists at all; on the contrary, they harbored dissatisfaction toward these progressive sons of the nobility. The government of Tsar Alexander II subjected them to severe punishments, which ultimately drove a portion of them to turn their gaze away from the peasants and, following the example of the advanced nations of Western Europe, to fight for all the rights enjoyed by the propertied classes. Thus the "Land and Freedom" party split into the "People's Will" party, which engaged in political struggle — though their methods were not those of a general social movement, but rather the solitary combat of individuals against the government, devoting all their energies to terrorism — assassination.

The young Plekhanov, too, presumably began his revolutionary activity under the influence of just such social currents. But at the time of the split, he still held fast to the fundamental views of peasant socialism, opposing terrorism and opposing the attainment of political and civic freedoms. He separately organized the "Black Repartition" party, placing his hopes solely in peasant rebellion. Yet he already held a distinctive view: that the intelligentsia alone, fighting the government in isolation, could hardly succeed in revolution; while the peasants certainly had socialist tendencies, the workers were also of great importance. In his work "The Russian Worker in the Revolutionary Movement," he said that workers were peasants who happened to come to the cities and appeared in the factories. To introduce socialism into the countryside, these peasant-workers were the most suitable intermediaries — because the peasants trusted the words of their fellow workers more than those of the intelligentsia.

Events, in fact, were not far from his predictions. The assassination of Alexander II in 1881, carried out with the full force of the terrorists, failed to rouse the masses; civic freedom was not won. The result was that the capable leaders either died or were imprisoned, and the "People's Will" party was nearly annihilated. Even Plekhanov and others, who did not belong to this party but leaned toward workers' socialism, were ultimately suppressed by the government and had no choice but to flee abroad.

It was at this time that he came into close contact with the Western European labor movement and began studying the works of Marx.

The name of Marx had long been known in Russia; the first volume of "Capital" had a translation earlier than in other countries; and many members of the "People's Will" party were personally acquainted with him and exchanged correspondence. Yet the thought of Marx, to whom they paid their fullest respects, remained for them merely pure "theory" — inapplicable, they believed, to Russian reality, having nothing to do with Russia, since there was no capitalism in Russia, and Russian socialism would emerge not from the factories but from the countryside. Plekhanov, however, had already begun to harbor doubts about the countryside even while reflecting on the labor movement in St. Petersburg. His thorough mastery of Marxist literature through the original texts only deepened these doubts. He then collected all the statistical materials available at the time and used genuinely Marxist methodology to study them, ultimately becoming convinced that capitalism truly held sway over Russia. In 1884, he published the book entitled "Our Differences," which was the celebrated work that exposed the errors of populism and demonstrated the validity of Marxism. In this book, he showed that the peasants, as the masses, could no longer serve as the pillar of socialism. In Russia at that time, urban industry was developing and the capitalist system was taking shape. What necessarily arose alongside this was the enemy of capitalism — the proletariat that would annihilate capitalism. Therefore, in Russia as in Western Europe, the proletariat was the class most significant for political transformation. By virtue of their circumstances, they already possessed greater aptitude for resolute and organized revolution than any other class, and moreover, as the skirmishers of the coming Russian revolution, they were the most suitable class of all.

From this point on, Plekhanov not only became a great thinker in his own right, but also served as the pioneer of Russian Marxism and the teacher and guide of the awakened workers.

Two

But Plekhanov's distinguished services to the proletariat lay mostly in the theoretical writings he published; his own political opinions, however, were not free from frequent vacillation.

In 1889, at the first International Congress of Socialists held in Paris, Plekhanov declared from the podium: "The Russian revolutionary movement can only triumph through the workers' movement; there is no other solution." At the time, even many renowned European socialists were entirely opposed to this statement; but before long, his achievements became evident. In writing, there was "The Development of the Monist View of History" (or simply "The Monist View of History"), published in 1895, which fought against the populists in the philosophical domain to defend materialism, and the entire era of Marxism received its education from this work, understanding through it the foundations of militant materialism. Later scholars naturally subjected it to critical examination, but Shvinov remarked: "It would be far better work to explain and elucidate this most noteworthy book for the people of the new era." The following year, as a matter of fact, as a result of his disciples' struggle against the populists, a great strike of thirty thousand spinning-mill workers erupted in St. Petersburg, marking a new epoch in Russian history. The revolutionary value of the Russian proletariat was now recognized by all, and the Fourth International Congress of Socialists held in London at that time expressed great astonishment and welcomed it warmly.

Yet Plekhanov was, after all, a theoretician. Lenin did not begin his activities until the end of the nineteenth century; he was also younger, and between the two men there naturally arose an unspoken division of labor. Where Plekhanov excelled was in theory, and against enemies he took charge of philosophical polemics. Lenin, from his earliest writings onward, devoted himself to social and political problems, and to the organization of the party and the working class. The newspaper they edited and published at this time, in a form of mutual reliance, was Iskra ("The Spark"). Among its contributors there were, to be sure, some impure elements, but at the time the paper served an important function: it aroused a certain stratum of workers and revolutionaries, and shook the populist intelligentsia.

Especially important was both the literary and practical activity. At that time (1900–1901), revolutionaries were all accustomed to hiding in their own small circles, lacking a national perspective; they did not realize that achievements could only be made through a national perspective, had no precise calculations, and did not consider how much force would be needed to achieve what results. In such times, the idea of attempting a centrally organized party — an all-Russian political organization uniting the entire proletariat — was novel and difficult to carry out. Yet Iskra not only expounded this idea in its editorials but also organized the "Iskra" group, with one hundred to one hundred and fifty prominent revolutionaries of the time forming the "Iskra" faction, joining this group to put into practice the plans that Plekhanov had developed in literary form in the newspaper.

But by 1903, the Russian Marxists split into the Bolsheviks (majority faction) and the Mensheviks (minority faction). Lenin was the leader of the former; Plekhanov of the latter. From then on, the two men alternately parted and reunited: during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, when Plekhanov hoped for the Tsar's defeat, and during the party's time of suffering from 1907 to 1909, he stood united with Lenin. The latter period was especially notable — a large portion of the Bolshevik forces had already been forced to flee abroad; everywhere there was demoralization, everywhere there were spies; everyone watched everyone else, everyone feared everyone else, everyone suspected everyone else. In literature, pornographic works flourished, and "Sanin" appeared at this time. This mood invaded all revolutionary circles. Party members scattered into tiny groups; the Menshevik liquidators had already begun singing the Bolsheviks' funeral dirge. At this moment, it was Plekhanov — despite being himself an authority of the Mensheviks — who thundered that liquidationism must be crushed, supporting the Bolsheviks and offering courageous assistance in various newspapers and in the Duma. Other factions of the Mensheviks then mocked him as "having become in his old age a singer of the basement."

The newspaper that attempted the revival of revolution and was newly organized was Zvezda ("The Star"), which began printing in 1910. Both Plekhanov and Lenin contributed from abroad, making it an organ of cooperation between the two factions, which necessarily could not clearly state its political line. But as this newspaper became more closely linked to the political movement, it gradually lost its character of partnership. Plekhanov's faction finally disappeared entirely, and the newspaper became purely a militant organ of the Bolsheviks. In 1912, the two factions again co-founded the daily Pravda ("Truth"), but as events unfolded, Plekhanov's faction was again entirely excluded within an extremely short period, meeting the same fate as with Zvezda.

When the Great European War broke out, Plekhanov took German imperialism to be the most dangerous enemy of European civilization and the working class. Like the leaders of the Second International, he adopted a patriotic stance and, for the sake of fighting the most detestable Germany, did not hesitate to cooperate and compromise with the bourgeoisie and government of his own country. After the February Revolution of 1917, he returned to Russia and organized a group of socialist patriots called "Yedinstvo" ("Unity"). But the revolutionary sensibility of Plekhanov, father of the Russian proletariat, no longer had the power to move Russia's workers. After the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, he was almost entirely forgotten by Workers' and Peasants' Russia, and finally died in solitude on May 30, 1918, in Finland, which was then under German military occupation. It is said that in his delirious mutterings on his deathbed, he raised a question: "Does the working class perceive my activities?"

Three

After his death, an article appeared in Inprekol (Volume 8, No. 54) entitled "G.V. Plekhanov and the Proletarian Movement," which concisely evaluated the merits and failings of his entire life —

"...In truth, Plekhanov had reason to harbor such doubts. Why? Because the younger working class knew him as a patriotic socialist, as a Menshevik party member, as a follower of imperialism, as a man who advocated compromise between the revolutionary workers and Milyukov, the leader of the bourgeoisie in Russia. Because the path of the working class and the path of Plekhanov had decisively diverged.

Yet we do not hesitate in the slightest to count Plekhanov among the greatest teachers of the Russian working class — no, of the international working class.

How can one say such a thing? During the decisive class battles, was Plekhanov not on the other side of the barricade? Yes, that is indeed so. Yet his activities long before these decisive battles — his theoretical labors — constitute the most precious things in Plekhanov's legacy.

The struggle for a correct class-based worldview is, among all the forms of class warfare, one of the most important. Through his theoretical labors, Plekhanov trained many worker-revolutionaries across several generations. Through this, he also performed outstanding service for the political autonomy of the Russian working class.

Plekhanov's great achievement lay, first and foremost, in his struggle against the 'People's Will' party — that is, against that clique of intelligentsia who, in the 1870s, believed that Russia's development was following a special path, namely a non-capitalist one. In the decades after the 1870s, the magnificent development of capitalism in Russia — how it demonstrated the error of the People's Will members' views, and the correctness of Plekhanov's!

The group 'for the Emancipation of Labor,' formed by Plekhanov in 1884 (the program of the Workers' Emancipation Group was precisely the first manifesto of the workers' party in Russia, and also a direct answer to the wavering of the workers between 1878 and 1879.

He said —

'Only the most rapid possible formation of a workers' party is the sole means of resolving all the economic and political contradictions that currently exist in Russia.'

In 1889, at the International Socialist Party Congress held in Paris, Plekhanov declared: 'The revolutionary movement in Russia can only achieve victory through the revolutionary workers' movement. We have no other solution, nor shall we ever have one.'

This famous statement of Plekhanov's was by no means accidental. With his great genius, Plekhanov championed the sovereignty of the proletariat in the bourgeois-populist revolution for decades, while at the same time expounding the idea that the liberal propertied classes, in their struggle against the autocracy, would cravenly become traitors and vacillating entities of the utmost kind.

Plekhanov, together with Lenin, was the founding leader of Iskra.

The great organizational work that Iskra accomplished in the struggle to create a party organization in Russia is widely known.

The Plekhanov of the period from 1903 to 1917 underwent several great vacillations, always deviating from revolutionary Marxism and moving toward the Mensheviks. What were the questions that primarily caused him to deviate from revolutionary Marxism?

First, an insufficient appreciation of the revolutionary potential of the peasant stratum.

In his struggle against the harmful aspects of the People's Will members, Plekhanov failed to see the various revolutionary strivings of the peasant stratum.

Second, the question of the state. He did not understand the essence of bourgeois-populist nationalism — that is, he did not understand the necessity, in any case, of smashing the bourgeois state apparatus.

Finally, he did not understand the question of imperialism as the final stage of capitalism, nor the nature of imperialist war. In short — Plekhanov had weaknesses precisely where Lenin had strengths. He could not become a 'Marxist of the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution.' Therefore, his Marxism as a whole came to its conclusion. Plekhanov thus became, step by step, as Rosa Luxemburg put it, a 'respectable fossil.'

The builder of Marxism in Russia, Plekhanov, was by no means merely a mediator of the economics, historiography, and philosophy of Marx and Engels. He touched upon all these domains and contributed outstanding original work of his own.

In making the Russian workers and intelligentsia truly understand that Marxism is the highest scientific achievement in the entire history of human thought — in this, Plekhanov played a powerful role. It is above all Plekhanov's various theoretical studies that, in his ideological legacy, are without doubt the most precious things. Lenin once rightly and repeatedly urged young people to study Plekhanov's books. — 'Without studying this (Plekhanov's philosophical exposition), no one will ever become a conscious, genuine communist. Because this is the most outstanding work in all the international Marxist literature.' — So said Lenin."

Four

Plekhanov also laid the foundations of Marxist art theory. Although his art theory has not yet been able to form a fully imposing system, the works he left behind, containing both method and results, are worthy not merely as objects of later research but may justly be called classical documents for the establishment of Marxist art theory and sociological aesthetics.

The three epistolary essays presented here are but fragments — mere scales and claws — of his writings in this vein.

The first essay, "On Art," begins by posing the question "What is art?", corrects Tolstoy's definition, and determines the essential quality of art to be the concrete, figurative expression of feelings and ideas. It then proceeds to demonstrate that art is also a social phenomenon, and that in examining it one must adopt the standpoint of historical materialism, while criticizing the idealist views of history that diverge from this (Saint-Simon, Comte, Hegel), and introducing Darwin's materialist views on the aesthetic taste of living creatures, which stand in contrast to these. Here he hypothetically presents the opponent's proposal to explore the origin of aesthetic feeling through biology, and then quotes Darwin's own words to show that "the concept of beauty... varies greatly among the various races of mankind, and even differs among the various nations within the same race." The meaning of this is that "in civilized man, such feelings are linked in a chain with all kinds of complex ideas and thoughts." That is to say, "the aesthetic feelings of civilized man... are clearly determined by various social causes."

Thus one must "proceed from biology to sociology" — from the Darwinian domain of studying humanity as a "species" to the study of the historical destiny of this species. If we speak only of art, then the possibility of the existence of human aesthetic feeling (the concept of species) is enhanced by those conditions that move it toward reality (the historical concept). These conditions are, naturally, the stage of development of the productive forces of the given society. But here Plekhanov, treating this as the important question of artistic production, elucidated in what form the contradictions between productive forces and relations of production, and the contradictions between classes, act upon art; and how the art of a society standing upon given relations of production takes its own particular form and differs from the art of other societies. Using Darwin's phrase "the principle of antithesis," he adduced abundant examples to illustrate the relationship between social conditions and the forms of aesthetic feeling; and also the relationship between social productive technology and the laws of rhythm, harmony, and symmetry; and further criticized the development of modern French art theory (Staël, Guizot, Taine).

It is among primitive peoples that productive technology and ways of life are most intimately reflected in artistic phenomena. Plekhanov sought to take on the difficult problems of Marxist art theory by elucidating the art of such primitive peoples. The second essay, "The Art of Primitive Peoples," first draws on the firsthand accounts of anthropologists and travelers, citing as examples the lives, hunting, agriculture, and distribution of goods among the Bushmen, Vedda, Indians, and other peoples, to prove that primitive hunting peoples were indeed communistic associations, and to show the unreliability of Bücher's claims. The third essay, "Once More on the Art of Primitive Peoples," critiques the error of those who maintain that the play instinct precedes labor, and uses abundant empirical evidence and rigorous logic to demonstrate the fundamental materialist-historical thesis that the production of useful objects (labor) precedes artistic production. In greater detail, what Plekhanov demonstrated is that social man initially regards things and phenomena from a utilitarian standpoint, and only later shifts to an aesthetic standpoint. In everything that human beings consider beautiful, there is that which is useful to them — that which holds significance in the struggle for existence against nature and against other social beings. Utility is recognized through reason, but beauty is recognized through intuitive faculties. While enjoying beauty, one hardly thinks of utility at all; yet utility can be discovered through scientific analysis. The distinctive quality of aesthetic enjoyment thus lies in its immediacy; yet if utility does not lie at the root of aesthetic pleasure, the thing will not seem beautiful at all. It is not that man exists for beauty, but that beauty exists for man. — This conclusion is Plekhanov's introduction into art of the social, racial, and class-based utilitarian view that idealist historians find so utterly abhorrent.

Looking at the conclusion of the third essay, Plekhanov was preparing to discuss next whether the old-fashioned classifications in ethnography are consistent with reality. But this was never written, and here too we can only consider it finished.

Five

The edition on which this book is based is the Japanese translation by Tonomura Shirō. A translation by Mr. Lin Bai had already been made previously, and it might not have been necessary to translate it again; however, since the catalog of the series had long been decided, there was no choice but to undertake this labor that verges on redundancy. During the translation, I also frequently consulted Lin's translation, adopting some terms that were better than those in the Japanese version; at times the sentence structure was also somewhat influenced by it. Moreover, having a predecessor's example to learn from spared me repeatedly from mistranslation — for which I should express my fullest gratitude.

Of the four sections of this preface, apart from the third section which comes entirely from translation, the rest is compiled from Shvinov's "History of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party," Yamauchi Fūsuke's "History of the Russian Revolutionary Movement," and "Plekhanov and Art" from the appendix of "The Proletarian Art Curriculum." Hastily put together under pressure of time, errors are certainly inevitable; it can only be considered a rough introduction. As for the most essential matters concerning art in general, these have not been touched upon here — because Valifson's "Plekhanov and the Question of Art" had already been appended to "The Literary Debates of Soviet Russia" (one of the "Weiming Series"), and before long Leshniov's "On Literary Criticism" and Yakovlev's "On Plekhanov" (both part of this same series) will be published, some concise, some comprehensive, and decidedly beyond the translator's ability to match even to a fraction. Therefore it is better to say nothing, and to hope that readers will study their writings on their own.

The final essay is translated from the Japanese translation by Kurahara Korehito of "Art in Class Society," which had previously been published in the magazine "Spring Tide Monthly." It contains Plekhanov's own account of his views on literature and art, and can serve as a mutual corroboration of the first essay in this book; thus it is also appended at the end of the volume.

But upon self-examination, this translation is once again a "hard translation." My ability goes only this far, and the reader must still extend a finger to trace the thread, as when reading a map — for this I am truly deeply sorry.

On the night of May 8, 1930, Lu Xun finished proofreading and recorded this at his residence in Zhabei, Shanghai.

After Japan occupied the three northeastern provinces, the manifestations in the Shanghai area were labeled in the newspapers as occurring "amid the national crisis." In this "national crisis," it was as if someone had stirred a long-stagnant pond with a stick: all kinds of old sediment and new sediment came tumbling up, turning somersaults to the surface, spinning around to seize the opportunity to display their own existence.

Those who now professed confidence in their ability to fight wanted to drill with Western rifles that had long been forgotten; but there were also those who even now did not wish to speak of going to fight. These, following the example of the German Empire during the Great War in Europe, opted for "intellectual mobilization" to fulfill their duties as "members of the nation." Some went to consult the "Tang History" and declared that Japan's ancient name was "Wo-nu" (dwarf slaves); others went to rummage through dictionaries and said that "Wo" meant small in stature; some recalled Wen Tianxiang, Yue Fei, Lin Zexu — but naturally, the most vigorous were those of the new literary world.

Let me first mention something else, which is called the situation "amid the peace proclamations." Amid such proclamations, "Mr. Hu Zhantang" had arrived in Shanghai and reportedly admonished the youth, teaching them to cultivate "strength" and not waste "energy." And lo, a miracle cure appeared. The next day an advertisement appeared in the paper: "Mr. Hu Hanmin says that in our foreign policy toward Japan, we should establish a firm principle, and he exhorts the youth to cultivate strength and not let their spirits flag. Cultivating strength means building a strong body; flagging spirits means pessimism. To build a strong body and banish pessimism, one must first let one's heart blossom with joy and have a great laugh." But what was this treasure? It was an old American film, a slapstick comedy about exploration designed to give the petty urbanite a laugh: "Africa Speaks" (lit. "Two In-Laws Tour Africa").

As for the real "stimulant amid the national crisis," that was the "patriotic song and dance performance," which described itself as "the vitality of the national character, the essence of the song-and-dance world, spurring our compatriots onward, to achieve final victory." Does anyone happen to know who these star performers of instant miraculous effect were? They were: Wang Renmei, Xue Lingxian, Li Lili.

And yet, at last, "the Shanghai literary world achieved great unity." The magazine "Caoye" (Vol. 6, No. 7) recorded the grand occasion thus: "The literary colleagues of Shanghai, who ordinarily have very little contact, during this grave period, besides individually participating in the work of other organizations, had Xie Liuyi, Zhu Yingpeng, and Xu Weinan take the initiative to... convene a meeting for discussion. On the afternoon of October 6 at three o'clock, they had gradually gathered at the East Asia Restaurant... partaking briefly of tea and pastries, they immediately began discussion, with much elaboration... and finally settled on the name: Shanghai Literary World National Salvation Society."

What they "elaborated" we have no way of knowing yet. Judging only by the methods before our eyes, it was: first watch "Two In-Laws Tour Africa" to cultivate strength; then watch the "patriotic song and dance performance" for stimulation; then read "Selected Japanese Essays" and "Three Artists Speak on Art" while partaking briefly of tea and pastries, and elaborating. And then — China would be saved.

It won't do. I'm afraid that not even literary youths, let alone literary toddlers, would believe this. There's no help for it — one must add two more bits of good news from elsewhere, published by the "Shenbao," presided over by today's patriotic literary figures. On October 5, in the "Free Talk" column, Miss Ye Hua wrote: "A nation without solutions — how can it have a government with solutions? The League of Nations is hopeless.... At this critical juncture, the entire nation should each establish their resolve, each do what they can, each express their views. Though I am without talent, I humbly propose the question of war dogs for the nation's consideration.... Among all dogs, the German police dog is the most competent. I strongly advocate that our country select this breed for combat..."

On the 25th of the same month, also in the "Free Talk" column, "Su Min writes from Hankou": "The other day I wrote to my Shanghai friend Mr. Wang Zhongliang, mentioning my illness and my regret at being unable to enlist in the volunteer army. Mr. Wang... actually sent me a packet of medicine, saying it was 'Yijincao' produced by Peisheng Pharmaceutical Company, effective for treating tuberculosis and coughing blood, worth a try.... I immediately tried taking it, and indeed my cough stopped. After a fortnight, my strength gradually returned. I then thought... should the nation face a crisis one day, I must join the ranks and fulfill the great ambition of my life. 'Destroying the enemy before breakfast' — the day is not far off...."

So even invalids can immediately become soldiers, and police dogs will also help in the patriotic cause. Under the guidance of the patriotic literary figures, things are truly looking up — they are about to "destroy the enemy before breakfast." Unfortunately, not even literary youths, let alone literary toddlers, would fail to notice that reading section by section, even what is not explicitly labeled "advertisement" amounts to nothing more than new advertisements for selling old goods, all trying to squeeze more profit into their own hands while riding the wave of the "national crisis" or "peace proclamations."

Because they want this, they must all seize the moment to float to the surface — movie stars are among them, literary figures too, police dogs too, patent medicines too... And because they ride the wave, floating up is especially effortless. But because what floats up is sediment, and sediment is, after all, nothing but sediment, this very floating has only made their true nature all the more apparent, and their ultimate fate is still to sink right back down.

October 29.

— How can creative writing be made good?

Dear Editor,

The question in your letter is one that should be put to American writers and Shanghai professors — their minds are full of "fiction curricula" and "how to write fiction." Although I have written some twenty-odd short stories, I have never had any "preconceived theories," just as although I can speak Chinese, I cannot write an "Introduction to Chinese Grammar." However, since your kind request is hard to refuse, I shall jot down a few trifles from my own experience —

One: Pay attention to all manner of things, observe more, and do not rush to write after seeing only a little.

Two: When you cannot write, do not force yourself to write.

Three: Do not base your model on any single definite person; when you have seen enough, you combine them. Four: After finishing, read through at least twice, and ruthlessly delete any words, sentences, or paragraphs that could be there or not, without the slightest regret. Better to compress material fit for a novel into a sketch than to stretch sketch material into a novel.

Five: Read foreign short stories — almost exclusively works from Eastern and Northern Europe. Also read Japanese works.

Six: Do not invent adjectives and the like that no one but yourself can understand.

Seven: Do not believe in the sort of things found in "how to write fiction" manuals.

Eight: Do not believe the sort of things said by China's so-called "critics," but rather read the reviews of reliable foreign critics.

This is all I can say for now. With this reply, I wish you editorial well-being!

December 27.

— The meaning of Japan's occupation of the three northeastern provinces

On one hand, this is Japanese imperialism "punishing" its servant — the Chinese warlords — which is also to say "punishing" the Chinese people, since the Chinese people are in turn the slaves of the warlords. On the other hand, it is the opening move of an attack on the Soviet Union — the first step of a strategy to ensure that the world's toiling masses shall suffer the misery of slavery forever.

September 21.

"Suppose a middle school student stands before you, sir, in this extraordinary time besieged by domestic troubles and foreign aggression — what words would you say to him, as a guiding principle for his efforts?"

Dear Editor,

Please allow me to turn the question back to you: Do we currently have freedom of speech? If you say "no," then I trust you will not blame me for remaining silent. If, however, under the pretext of "a middle school student standing before you," you insist on compelling me to say something, then I say: The first step is to strive for freedom of speech.

Many things have already been discussed in great detail by others, so I need not say more. I believe that at present, it is very easy for a "left-wing" writer to become a "right-wing" writer. Why? First, if one has no contact with actual social struggle and merely sits behind glass windows writing essays and studying problems, then no matter how fierce or "left" one may be, it is easily done; but the moment one touches reality, one will instantly shatter. Shut up in a room, it is easiest to talk grandly about thoroughgoing principles, yet also easiest to "turn right." In the West, those called "salon socialists" refer to precisely this. A "salon" is a drawing room: sitting in a drawing room discussing socialism is very elegant, very fashionable — but one has no intention of putting it into practice. Such socialists are utterly unreliable. Moreover, in the present day, a writer or artist who does not carry at least a touch of broadly conceived socialist thought — that is to say, one who declares that the working masses deserve to be slaves, deserve to be slaughtered, deserve to be exploited — such a writer or artist barely exists anymore, except perhaps Mussolini — but Mussolini has never written literary works. (Of course, such writers cannot be said to be entirely nonexistent; for example, the literary figures of China's Crescent Moon School, and the aforementioned D'Annunzio, said to be Mussolini's favorite, are cases in point.)

Second, if one does not understand the actual conditions of revolution, one easily turns "right-wing." Revolution is painful; it inevitably contains admixtures of filth and blood, and is by no means as interesting or as perfect as poets imagine. Revolution is, above all, a matter of reality, requiring all manner of base and tedious work — by no means as romantic as poets imagine. Revolution naturally involves destruction, but it requires construction even more; destruction is exhilarating, but construction is tedious work. Therefore, those who harbor romantic illusions about revolution easily become disappointed the moment they approach it, the moment it proceeds. I hear that the Russian poet Yesenin (叶遂宁) was also at first very enthusiastic about the October Revolution. At the time he cried out: "Long live the revolution in heaven and on earth!" and also said: "I am a Bolshevik!" Yet when post-revolutionary reality turned out to be nothing at all like what he had imagined, he ultimately sank into disillusionment and decadence. Yesenin later committed suicide, and I hear that this disillusionment was one of the causes. Pilnyak (畢力涅克) and Ehrenburg (爱伦堡) are further examples. In our own Xinhai Revolution there were similar cases. At that time, many literati — for instance, those belonging to the "Southern Society" — were for the most part very revolutionary at first. But they harbored a fantasy: they imagined that once the Manchus were driven out, everything would revert to the "ceremonial majesty of Han officials" — everyone wearing wide-sleeved robes, tall caps and broad sashes, striding grandly through the streets. Who knew that after the Manchu emperor was driven out and the Republic was established, the situation would be entirely different? And so they became disillusioned; some even became reactionaries against the new movements. But if we too do not understand the actual conditions of revolution, we will easily end up the same as them.

Furthermore, the notion that a poet or writer stands above all other people, that his work is nobler than all other work, is also an incorrect idea. Take, for example, how Heine once believed that the poet was the most noble of beings, and God the most just: after death the poet would go before God, sit around Him, and God would offer him sweets. Nowadays, of course, no one believes in God offering sweets. But the notion that a poet or writer who now labors for the revolution of the working masses will, when the revolution succeeds, certainly be richly rewarded by the working class, given special treatment — invited to ride in first-class carriages, eat first-class meals — or that workers will come bearing buttered bread to present to him, saying "Our poet, please partake!" — this too is incorrect, because in reality no such thing would happen. I'm afraid that at that time things will be even harder than now: not only will there be no buttered bread, there may not even be black bread — the situation in Russia in the first year or two after the revolution is a case in point. If one does not understand this, one also easily turns "right-wing." In fact, the working masses, so long as they are not of the sort that Liang Shiqiu (梁实秋) calls "those with prospects," will certainly not hold intellectuals in any special esteem — as in the translation I did of "The Rout," where Mechik (美谛克, from the intelligentsia) is actually constantly mocked by the miners. Needless to say, intellectuals have their own work to do and should not be particularly looked down upon; yet the working class has no obligation to make special exceptions and give preferential treatment to poets or writers.

Now let me say a few words about what we should pay attention to henceforth.

First, the struggle against the old society and old forces must be resolute, persistent, unceasing, and focused on real strength. The foundations of the old society are in truth extremely solid; the new movement cannot shake them without even greater force. Moreover, the old society has its own effective methods of making the new forces compromise — though it itself never compromises. In China too there have been many new movements, but each time the new has been unable to prevail over the old. The reason is generally that the new side lacks a resolute and broad-ranging objective; its demands are too modest, too easily satisfied. Take the vernacular language movement, for example: at first the old society resisted with all its might, but before long it permitted the vernacular to exist, granting it a pitiful little corner — in the margins of newspapers and such places, one could now see articles written in the vernacular. This was because in the eyes of the old society, the new thing was nothing special, nothing fearsome, and so they let it exist; and the new side was satisfied, thinking the vernacular had won the right to exist. Or take the proletarian literature movement of the past year or two: much the same thing happened. The old society also permitted proletarian literature, because proletarian literature posed no real threat. On the contrary, they too took up proletarian literature, using it as decoration — as if placing a rough bowl used by a worker alongside the many antique porcelain pieces in a drawing room were rather novel. And the proletarian writers? They already had a little position in the literary world, their manuscripts already sold — no need to struggle further. Critics were singing songs of triumph: "Proletarian literature is victorious!" But apart from individual victories, how much had proletarian literature actually won, even on its own terms? Moreover, proletarian literature is one wing of the proletarian liberation struggle; it grows as the proletariat's social power grows. When the proletariat's social position is very low and proletarian literature's literary position is very high, this only proves that proletarian writers have left the proletariat and returned to the old society.

Second, I believe the front should be broadened. In the year before last and last year, there were literary battles, but the scope was truly too small. All old literature and old thought went unnoticed by the new school, and the result was that in one little corner, new writers fought other new writers, while the old school could sit comfortably on the sidelines and watch.

Third, we should produce large numbers of new fighters. Because at present our ranks are truly too thin. Consider: we have quite a few magazines, and no small number of single-volume books are published, yet the authors are always the same handful of people, and so the content cannot help being meager. One person does not specialize: dabbling here a bit, dabbling there a bit — translating, and also writing fiction, and also doing criticism, and also writing poetry — how can any of it be done well? This is all because there are too few people. If there were more, then translators could specialize in translation, creative writers in creation, critics in criticism; when engaging the enemy, the military force would be formidable and victory would come more easily. On this point, I can mention one thing in passing. When the Creation Society and the Sun Society attacked me the year before last, their forces were truly feeble. Eventually even I found it somewhat tedious — pointless to counter-attack — because I came to see that the enemy army was performing "the empty city stratagem." At that time my opponents were devoted to bluster and neglected the recruitment and training of troops. There were of course many articles attacking me, but one glance was enough to see they were all under pseudonyms, and the same few lines of abuse were repeated over and over. I waited then for someone who could wield the rifle of Marxist criticism to come take aim at me, but such a person never appeared. For my part, I had always paid attention to the cultivation of new young fighters, and had organized several literary groups, though with little effect. But we must henceforth attend to this.

We urgently need to produce large numbers of new fighters, but at the same time, those already on the literary front must be "tenacious." What I mean by "tenacious" is that they must not adopt the approach of the "stepping-stone brick" used in the old examination system. The eight-legged essay of the Qing dynasty was originally a tool for "entering the academy" and becoming an official: as long as one could write the "introduction, development, turn, and conclusion," and thereby pass as a "xiucai" or "juren," one could throw away the eight-legged essay and never use it again for the rest of one's life — hence the term "stepping-stone brick": like using a brick to knock at a door — once you've knocked your way in, the brick can be tossed aside, no need to carry it around. This approach is still used by many people today. We often see someone publish one or two collections of poetry or fiction, and then they vanish forever. Where did they go? Having published a book or two, gained a bit of fame — small or great — secured a professorship or some other position, their success achieved and their name established, there is no longer any need to write poetry or fiction, and so they vanish forever. This is why China has nothing to show for itself in either literature or science. Yet we are meant to produce something, because it is useful to us. (Lunacharsky even advocated preserving Russian peasant art, because it could be produced and sold to foreigners, contributing to the economy. I believe that if we have something in literature or science worth presenting to others, this would even help in the political movement to free ourselves from imperialist oppression.) But to achieve cultural results, tenacity is essential.

Finally, I believe that a united front requires a common objective as its necessary condition. I recall having once heard something like this: "The reactionaries already have a united front, and we still haven't united!" In truth, they don't actually have a deliberate united front; it is merely that because their objectives are the same, their actions are consistent, and from our perspective it appears to be a united front. That our front cannot be unified proves that our objectives are not consistent — that some are only for small cliques, or indeed only for individuals. If everyone's objective is the working and peasant masses, then naturally the front will be unified as well.

If one were to say that every large revolutionary army must have all its soldiers possess a perfectly correct and clear consciousness before it can be called a true revolutionary army — otherwise it is not worth a sneer — this argument, at first glance, appears perfectly proper and thorough. However, it poses an impossible demand, amounts to empty high-flown talk, and is a sweet poison that harms the revolution.

Just as, under the domination of imperialism, it is never possible to train every member of the masses to possess "love of humanity" and then, beaming with smiles, clasping hands, transform the world into a "Great Harmony" — so too, under the very forces that revolutionaries resist, it is never possible through speech or action to bring correct consciousness to the great majority. Therefore, when any revolutionary force rises up, the soldiers are for the most part united only in the single idea of resisting the status quo; their agreement is roughly the same, but their ultimate goals diverge enormously. Some fight for society, some for a small clique, some for a lover, some for themselves, and some simply to commit suicide. Yet the revolutionary army is still able to advance. For on the road of the march, facing the enemy, a bullet fired by an individualist is just as lethal as one fired by a collectivist; and when any soldier is killed or wounded, the reduction in fighting strength is equal in either case. But naturally, because ultimate goals differ, during the advance there are always some who drop out, some who desert, some who become demoralized, and some who turn traitor. Yet so long as this does not impede the march, the further along they go, the more this force becomes a pure and elite fighting force.

I previously wrote a preface for Ye Yongzhen's (叶永蓁) A Tiny Decade (小小十年), arguing that the author had already exerted some effort for society — and this was precisely my point. The protagonist of the book had, after all, been to the front lines, served as a sentry (even though he was never even taught how to fire a rifle), which was far more substantial than those great literary figures who merely clasped their knees and sang laments, or gripped their pens and sighed with indignation. To demand that all soldiers of today be warriors with correct consciousness and a firmness harder than steel is not only a utopian fantasy but an unreasonable demand that defies all logic.

But later, in the Shenbao (申报), I came across an even harsher and more "thorough" critique: because the protagonist's motivation for enlisting was for his own sake, it was deeply disapproved of. The Shenbao is a newspaper that most seeks peace and least encourages revolution, which at first glance seems rather incongruous. What I wish to point out here is that the seemingly thorough revolutionary is in reality an extremely un-revolutionary, or harmfully anti-revolutionary, individualistic commentator — so that the soul of the critique and the body of the newspaper are perfectly matched after all.

The first type is the decadent. Because he has no fixed ideals and no strength, he sinks into the pursuit of momentary pleasure; when that fixed pleasure begins to bore him, he constantly seeks new stimulation, and this stimulation must be increasingly intense before he feels any satisfaction. Revolution is simply one of the decadent's new stimuli — just as a glutton, sated with rich food, his palate jaded, his stomach weakened, must resort to pepper and chili so that a few beads of sweat appear on his brow, enabling him to wash down another half bowl of rice. In revolutionary literature, he demands the thoroughly, completely revolutionary kind; the moment there appears any reflection of the era's defects, he wrinkles his brow and declares it not worth a sneer. Being detached from reality doesn't matter — so long as it feels exhilarating. The Frenchman Baudelaire, as everyone knows, was a decadent poet, yet he welcomed the revolution — until the revolution threatened to interfere with his decadent life, at which point he came to despise it. Thus the paper revolutionary on the eve of revolution — and a most thorough, most fiery revolutionary at that — can, when revolution actually comes, tear off his former mask — his unconscious mask. This historical example is one that ought to be presented also to those "revolutionary literary figures" of the Cheng Fangwu (成仿吾) type, who, at the slightest prick of a small nail or the gain of a small position (or a small sum of money), scurry east to Tokyo or west to Paris.

The other type — I still cannot quite fix a name for him. In short, he is a person utterly without fixed views, who consequently feels that nothing in the world is right and nothing about himself is wrong, and who ultimately concludes that the present state of affairs is best. When he speaks as a critic, he casually snatches up whatever tool is at hand to refute whatever is opposed to it. When refuting the theory of mutual aid, he uses the theory of the struggle for existence; when refuting the struggle for existence, he uses mutual aid. When opposing pacifism, he invokes class struggle; when opposing struggle, he advocates the love of humanity. If his opponent is an idealist, his position is materialism; but when debating a materialist, he transforms into an idealist. In short, he is the sort of person who measures Russian versts with an English foot-rule, then measures meters with a French foot-rule, and finds that nothing matches. Because nothing else matches, he forever considers himself to be "holding fast to the golden mean," forever achieving self-satisfaction. Following the guidance of such critics, one concludes that anything incomplete or defective is unacceptable. But what person or thing today can be perfectly complete and without any defect? For the sake of total safety, the only option is to do nothing at all. Yet doing nothing at all is itself a great error. In short, the way of being human is extraordinarily difficult — and as for being a revolutionary, that goes without saying.

The critic of the Shenbao, though he demands a thoroughly revolutionary protagonist in A Tiny Decade, heaps venomous mockery upon translations of social science. Therefore his soul belongs to this latter type, tinged slightly with the decadent's boredom with life, wanting to eat a bit of chili to stimulate the appetite.

The great champion of the "smooth but unfaithful" school of translation, Mr. Zhao Jingshen (赵景深), has not in fact translated any major works of late. For the most part he has merely been introducing "News from Foreign Literary Circles" to us in the Short Story Monthly. This is naturally something to be grateful for. Whether these news items are translated, or whether the introducer has gone out personally to inquire and research them, we have no way of knowing. Even if they are translations, he generally does not indicate his sources, so we have no way to verify. Naturally, for Mr. Zhao, champion of "smooth but unfaithful" translation, none of this need concern him — if there is some "unfaithfulness," it is only a consistent carrying-out of his principles. However, I have still encountered some puzzling difficulties.

In the February issue of the Short Story Monthly, Mr. Zhao informed us of "Recent News of New Mass Writers," one item stating: "Gropper has completed the illustrated story of the circus, Alay Oop." This is extremely "smooth," but when one actually sees the picture book, it is not entirely about the circus. Borrowing an English dictionary and looking up the two lines of English beneath the title — "Life and Love Among the Acrobats Told Entirely in Pictures" — one discovers that it is not a story about "the circus" at all, but about "circus performers." Put this way, naturally, it becomes somewhat "unsmooth." But since the content is what it is, there is no help for it. It must be "acrobats" — only then can there be "Love." By the November issue of the Short Story Monthly, Mr. Zhao informed us again that "Seghers has completed a tetralogy," and moreover "even the last volume, The Half-Man, Half-Ox Monster (Der Zentaur), has already been published this year." This one word "Der" is enough to make one's eyes go blank, for this is German, and if one wants to look it up in a dictionary, apart from Tongji University there is almost nowhere to borrow one — who would dare harbor any second thoughts? Yet the noun that follows, though it would have been better left unwritten, once written becomes a baffling puzzle. The word is probably derived from Greek, and can also be found in English dictionaries. We often see it used as subject matter in paintings: the upper body is human, the lower body is that of a horse — not an ox. Oxen and horses are both mammals, and for the sake of "smoothness" it may not matter much to confuse them, but after all, horses are odd-toed ungulates and oxen are even-toed ungulates — there is some difference, and they had better be distinguished. There is no need, when it comes to "the very last volume," to suddenly throw in an "ox."

After this bout of "ox"-ification, I am reminded of Mr. Zhao's famous "Milk Road." This looks very much like a literal or "hard" translation, but in fact it is not — the "ox" has been inserted for no reason whatsoever. This story needs no dictionary; it can be seen in paintings too. It goes like this: in Greek mythology, the great god Zeus was a deity rather fond of women. Once he descended to the mortal world and sired a boy with a certain lady. As fate would have it, Madame Zeus happened to be a goddess of considerable jealousy. When she found out, after banging the table and stamping her feet (?) in a great rage, she had the child brought up to heaven, looking for an opportunity to do away with him. But the child was innocent; knowing nothing, he once happened upon Madame Zeus's nipple and gave it a suck. The startled Madame gave him a push, and he tumbled down to the mortal world — not only was he unharmed, he later became a hero. But Madame Zeus's milk, from that one suck, spurted out and scattered across the sky, becoming the Milky Way — that is, the "Milk Road" — no, actually the "Divine Milk Road." But white people call all "milk" simply "Milk," and since we are accustomed to the words on canned cow's milk, an occasional mistranslation is, yes, nothing to wonder at.

But for a personage of great authority on translation, to go dizzy at the sight of a horse and become infatuated with oxen, producing translations that are "ox-heads that don't match horse-mouths" — this may serve as a small topic of conversation. Merely as a small topic of conversation for others, and an opportunity to learn a bit of Greek mythology — for Mr. Zhao's maxim, "Rather smooth and unfaithful than faithful and unsmooth," it remains quite unscathed. This is what one might call: "Long live garbled translation!"

On the Edition of "The Poetic Tale of Tripitaka's Journey to Fetch the Scriptures" — Letter to the Editors of the Zhongxuesheng Magazine at the Kaiming Bookstore:

I do not know whether this letter can be appended for publication in Zhongxuesheng. The matter is as follows —

In the New Year issue of Zhongxuesheng, Mr. Zheng Zhenduo's (郑振铎) essay "Song Dynasty Storytellers' Scripts" contains the following passage concerning "The Poetic Tale of Tripitaka's Journey to Fetch the Scriptures" (唐三藏取经诗话): "The date of this storyteller's script is unknown, but Mr. Wang Guowei (王国维) has determined, based on the words 'Printed by the Zhang Family of Zhongwazi' at the end of the book, that it is a Song dynasty printing — a statement that is quite credible. Therefore this storyteller's script must naturally also be a product of the Song dynasty. Some have raised doubts, however. But if we read the Yuan dynasty dramatist Wu Changling's (吴昌龄) Journey to the West zaju play, we will know that this primitive tale of the scripture-fetching journey must have originated well before Wu's Journey to the West play. In other words, it must be from the Song dynasty, which preceded the Yuan. And the words 'Zhongwazi' happen to confirm that this is a product of the Southern Song capital Lin'an, leaving no room for doubt."

When I previously wrote A Brief History of Chinese Fiction, I raised the possibility that this book was a Yuan dynasty printing, which greatly displeased its collector, Mr. Tokutomi Soho (德富苏峰), who wrote a refutation. I also offered a brief rejoinder, which was later collected in a volume of miscellaneous essays. Therefore the "some" in Mr. Zheng Zhenduo's essay actually refers to "Lu Xun" (鲁迅) — within the act of spitting upon me, there is still concealed the kind intention of covering my shame on my behalf, for which I am both deeply ashamed and grateful. But I believe that while textual research should not be absurd, neither should it be rigidly conservative. Many things in this world can be clarified by common sense alone. Book collectors wish their editions to be as ancient as possible; historians do not. Therefore, with old books, one should not determine the date by missing strokes in taboo characters — just as loyalists to the old dynasty may still leave the last stroke off the character "Xuan" (玄), yet the present is certainly the Republic of China. Nor should one determine the date solely by place names — just as I was born in Shaoxing, yet I am by no means a person of the Southern Song, since many place names do not change with dynasties. Nor should one determine the date merely by the elegance or crudeness of the writing, since whether the author was a literatus or a commoner makes a great difference to the work.

Therefore, in the absence of positive, definitive evidence, The Poetic Tale of Tripitaka's Journey to Fetch the Scriptures may still be suspected of being a Yuan dynasty printing. Take, for example, the very same "Mr. Wang Guowei" whom Mr. Zheng Zhenduo cites: he wrote a separate work, A Study of Ancient Printed Editions from Zhejiang, in two volumes, with a preface dated the eleventh year of the Republic [1922], collected in the second series of his posthumous works. In the upper volume, under the heading "Hangzhou Prefecture Printings," in the section for "Miscellaneous Editions of the Xin and Yuan Periods," the following two titles are included:

"Jingben Popular Fiction" and "The Poetic Tale of Tripitaka's Great Tang Journey to Fetch the Scriptures," in three volumes. This not only identifies The Poetic Tale as a Yuan dynasty printing, but even classifies Popular Fiction as a Yuan edition as well. Although A Study of Ancient Editions from Zhejiang is by no means an obscure book, the young readers of Zhongxuesheng are not specialists in literary history and probably have not had the leisure to peruse it. Therefore I am sending it to your esteemed journal, hoping you will publish it — first, to contribute a small addition to general knowledge, and second, to demonstrate that a single document and isolated proof are hardly sufficient to "definitively" establish a historical fact, and that there will always be "some room for doubt."

With my compliments, and wishing you

good health.

Lu Xun, respectfully. The night of January 19th.

The Incoming Letter

Dear Comrade:

The publication of your translation of The Rout is, of course, an event of great significance in the literary life of China. To translate the masterworks of world proletarian revolutionary literature and systematically introduce them to Chinese readers (especially those of the Soviet Union, because they can present to readers the "heroes" of the great October Revolution, the Civil War, and the Five-Year Plan through concrete images, through the illumination of art) — this is one of the important tasks of Chinese proletarian writers. Although at present it is almost entirely the efforts of you personally and Comrade Z alone who are doing this work, who can say that this is a private matter?! Who?! The publication of The Rout, The Iron Flood, and others should be recognized as the responsibility of all Chinese revolutionary writers. Every soldier on the revolutionary literary front, every revolutionary reader, should celebrate this victory — even though it is still only a small victory.

Your translation is indeed extremely faithful. The phrase "absolutely no deception of the reader" is by no means an advertisement! This also demonstrates that a sincere, passionate person fighting for the light cannot help but be painstaking and responsible. Twentieth-century dandies and Europeanized gentlemen may use "the least effort to obtain the greatest" fame; but unless such persons undergo a thorough transformation to their very bones, they will forever remain mere lapdogs of the salon. The current flood of slapdash translations — if not the work of this class of people, then the speculation of certain book merchants. Your efforts — I and everyone else hope that such efforts will become collective — should continue, should expand, should deepen. Therefore I am perhaps, like you yourself, looking at this copy of The Rout with extraordinary emotion: I love it as I love my own children. This love of ours will surely help us, increase our energy, and expand our small enterprise.

Translation — beyond introducing the content of the original to Chinese readers — has another very important function: that of helping us create a new, modern Chinese language. The Chinese language (written characters) is so impoverished that even everyday objects are nameless. The Chinese language has practically not yet fully emerged from the stage of so-called "gesture language" — ordinary daily conversation can still hardly do without "hand-gesture pantomime." Naturally, almost no adjectives, verbs, or prepositions exist for expressing fine distinctions and complex relationships. The vestiges of patriarchal feudal medievalism still tightly bind the living language of the Chinese people (not just the workers and peasants!). Under these circumstances, creating a new language is an exceedingly weighty task. The advanced countries of Europe completed this task generally two to five hundred years ago. Even historically more backward Russia accomplished a considerable conclusion of its "Church Slavonic" some one hundred and fifty to sixty years ago. There, it was the bourgeois Renaissance and Enlightenment movements that did this work — for example, Russia's Lomonosov... Pushkin. The Chinese bourgeoisie, however, lacks this capacity. To be sure, China's Europeanized gentry-merchants, such as Hu Shizhi (胡适之) and his ilk, initiated this movement. But the results of this movement are equivalent to its political master. Therefore, the proletariat must continue to thoroughly complete this task and lead this movement. Translation can indeed help us create many new words, new syntactical structures, a rich vocabulary, and fine, precise, correct expression. Therefore, since we are engaged in the struggle to create the modern new language of China, our demands on translation cannot but be: absolute correctness and absolute Chinese vernacular. This is to introduce the language of new culture to the masses. Yan Jidao's (严几道) translations go without saying. He was:

"Translation must be faithful, elegant, and intelligible; The writing must be of the Xia, Yin, and Zhou dynasties."

In truth, he used one word, "elegant," to cancel out both "faithful" and "intelligible." Recently the Commercial Press has reprinted "Yan's Famous Translations" — I do not know what they are "up to"! This is simply making fun of the Chinese masses and youth. How can classical literary Chinese translate "faithfully"? For present and future mass readers, how can it be "intelligible"? Now Zhao Jingshen (赵景深) and his ilk come along with a new demand:

"Better wrong but smooth, Than awkward yet merely faithful!"

Old Mr. Zhao's position is really of the same stripe as those who tell Western stories in the City God Temple. This means: having understood (?) foreign languages oneself, having read some books and periodicals, one casually picks up a pen and scribbles a few sentences of so-called smooth Chinese. This is clearly and openly bullying Chinese readers, opening one's mouth wide to babble fantastic overseas tales. First, his so-called "smoothness," since it is a "smoothness" that would rather be a bit "wrong," is naturally a method that panders to China's lower-level language while obliterating the original meaning. This does not create a new language but rather strives to preserve the level of language of Chinese savages, striving to obstruct its development. Second, since he would rather be a bit "wrong," this means obscuring the reader, preventing the reader from knowing the author's original meaning. Therefore I say: Zhao Jingshen's position is a policy of keeping the people ignorant, a scholastic despotism that monopolizes knowledge — and this is not the slightest exaggeration. Furthermore, third, he is evidently hinting at opposition to proletarian literature (what a pitiable "special running dog"!). His opposition to proletarian literature is a veiled attack on certain translations of theoretical works and creative translations in proletarian literature. These are the words of an enemy of proletarian literature.

However, among Chinese-language proletarian literary books, there are indeed many translations that are not "smooth." This is our own weakness, and the enemy exploits this weakness to attack. The road to our victory naturally requires not only meeting the enemy head-on and striking their forces, but also further disciplining our own ranks. The courage of our self-criticism can often disarm the enemy. Now, regarding the so-called translation debate, our comrades have put forward this conclusion: "Translation absolutely does not permit error. But sometimes, depending on the nature of the translated content, in order to preserve the spirit of the original, a certain degree of unsmoothness may be tolerated."

This is merely a "defensive tactic." But Plekhanov says: the dialectical materialist should know how to "turn defense into offense." First, of course, we must first explain that what we understand by "smooth" is different from what Zhao Jingshen and others mean. Second, what we demand is: absolute correctness and absolute vernacular. By absolute vernacular, I mean that which can be understood when read aloud. Third, we acknowledge that up to now, proletarian literary translations have not yet achieved this level; we must continue to work hard. Fourth, we expose Zhao Jingshen's and others' own translations, pointing out that what they consider "smooth" translations are in fact a bastard offspring of Liang Qichao (梁启超) and Hu Shizhi mating — half-classical, half-vernacular, half-dead, half-alive language that is still not "smooth" for the masses.

Here, speaking of your recently published The Rout, one can say: it has achieved "correctness" but has not yet achieved "absolute vernacular."

To use absolute vernacular in translation does not mean one cannot "preserve the spirit of the original." Certainly, this is very difficult and demands great effort. But we must be absolutely unafraid of difficulty and strive to overcome all difficulties.

Speaking generally, not only in translation but in one's own works as well — today's literary figures, philosophers, political commentators, and all ordinary people who wish to express the new relationships, new phenomena, new things, and new concepts that already exist in Chinese society must practically all become "Cangjie" — that is, they must create new words and new syntactic structures every day. The demands of practical life are such. Did we not, in early 1925, coin the word "strike" (罢工) for the masses at Xiaoshadu in Shanghai? And "guerrilla unit," "guerrilla warfare," "right deviation," "left deviation," "tailism," even ordinary words like "unite" (团结), "resolute" (坚决), "waver" (动摇), and so on and so forth... These innumerable new words have gradually been absorbed into the spoken language of the masses, and even those not yet fully absorbed already have the possibility of being absorbed. As for new syntactic structures, comparatively speaking these are somewhat more difficult, but in spoken language, syntax has already undergone great changes and great progress. One need only compare the language of our own speeches with the dialogue in old novels to see this. Yet these new words and syntactic structures, created unconsciously and naturally, inevitably follow the grammatical rules of Chinese vernacular. Any new words or new syntactic structures in "vernacular writing" that violate these rules — that is, those that cannot be spoken aloud — are naturally eliminated and cannot survive.

Therefore, on the question of what is "smooth," one should say: true vernacular is truly fluent modern Chinese. The vernacular spoken of here is of course not limited to the vernacular of "household trivia" — it means: from ordinary people's everyday conversation to the spoken vernacular of university professors' lectures. Chinese people now discuss philosophy, science, art... and clearly already have a spoken vernacular for this. Is this not so? If this is the case, then what is written on paper (the written word) should be this vernacular, only organized more tightly and neatly. Although such writing is still incomprehensible to many of the masses who can barely read, because such language is also still unintelligible to the general illiterate masses when heard — nevertheless, first, this situation pertains only to the content of the writing, not to the writing itself; therefore, second, such writing already possesses life — it already has the possibility of being absorbed by the masses. It is living language.

Therefore, if written vernacular does not observe the grammatical rules of Chinese spoken vernacular, if it does not create new rules building upon the existing rules of Chinese spoken vernacular, it will very easily drift toward so-called "unsmoothness." This is the result of completely ignoring the speech habits of ordinary masses when creating new words and new syntactic structures, while using classical Chinese as the base. Writing produced in this way is inherently dead language. Therefore, I feel that on this question we must have the courage of self-criticism; we should launch a new struggle. What do you think?

My view is this: translation should introduce the original meaning of the source text completely and correctly to the Chinese reader, so that the concept the Chinese reader receives equals the concept that English, Russian, Japanese, German, French... readers derive from the original. Such literal translation should be written in the vernacular that Chinese people can actually speak aloud. To preserve the spirit of the original, there is no need to tolerate "some degree of unsmoothness." On the contrary, tolerating "some degree of unsmoothness" (that is, not using the spoken vernacular) will, to some extent, lose the spirit of the original.

Of course, in works of art, the demands on language are even more exacting, requiring even more refinement than ordinary essays. Here there are various people's different tones, different vocabularies, different cadences, different emotions... and this is not limited to dialogue. Here, to cope with the impoverished Chinese spoken vernacular is even more difficult than translating theoretical works of philosophy, science... But these difficulties only add to the weight of our task; they do not in any way cancel this task of ours.

Now, please allow me to raise a few questions about your translation of The Rout. I have not yet been able to read it all the way through; I have only read a very few passages against the original. Here, I will simply compare against the original passages quoted in Friche's preface. (I follow the order of the preface, numbering as I go; I will not re-quote your translation — please look up the passages by number in the book yourself. There are some errors in the translation of the preface, which I will not discuss here.)

(1) "When all is reckoned up, it is still because in his heart there is a kind of — 'longing for a new, excellent, strong, and compassionate person, a longing so great that no other desire can compare.'" More precisely:

"When all is reckoned up, it is still because in his heart — 'he longs for a kind of new, excellent, strong, and compassionate person, a longing so great that no other desire can compare.'"

(2) "At such times, the vast majority of hundreds of millions of people still cannot help but live this sort of primitive, pitiful life, this sort of life so tedious that there is not the slightest meaning to it — how can one speak of any new, excellent person?"

(3) "In this world, what he loved most was always himself — he loved his own snow-white, filthy, powerless hands; he loved his own sighing and moaning voice; he loved his own suffering, his own conduct — even those most detestable acts."

(4) "'So this is how it ends, everything returns to the old way, as if nothing had ever happened,' — Varya thought — 'again the old road, still the same entanglements — everything heading to that same place... But, my God, how joyless this is!'"

(5) "He himself had never known such anguish, this was a melancholy, weary, old-man's anguish — he thought with such anguish: he was already twenty-seven years old, every minute of the past could never come back again, could never be relived in a different way, and in the future, it seemed, there was nothing good either... (This passage has errors in your translation, and is also particularly 'unsmooth.') Now Morozka felt that in his entire life, with all his strength, he had only been striving to get onto such a road — a road that appeared to him straight, clear, and upright, the kind of road that people like Levinson, Baklanov, and Tubeev walked; yet it seemed as if someone were preventing him from getting onto this road. And because he could never imagine that this enemy was within his own heart, when he thought about his suffering being caused by the baseness of people in general, he felt a peculiar mixture of satisfaction and sorrow."

(6) "He knew only one thing — work. Therefore, such an upright person — one cannot help but trust him, cannot help but obey him."

(7) "At first, he was very unwilling to think about these thoughts concerning this aspect of his life; however, gradually he became engrossed and actually wrote two sheets of paper... On these two sheets, there were actually many words of a kind — no one would have imagined that Levinson could know such words." (In this passage, your translation has several subordinate clauses more than the Russian original. Perhaps you have quoted a nearby but different sentence? Or perhaps you have filled in the ellipses that Friche left as dots?)

(8) "These long-suffering, faithful people were close to him, closer than everything else, even closer than he was to himself."

(9) "...Silently, with still-moist eyes, he looked at those people on the distant threshing floor — these people, whom he must quickly turn into his own close companions, like those eighteen, like the one who, silent, walked behind him." (Here, in the last sentence, your translation has an error.) Please check these translations against the Japanese and German versions; whether they are correct literal translations can be determined by comparison. My translations, apart from some inversions and repetitions of subjects, verbs, and objects according to the syntax and rhetoric of Chinese vernacular, are otherwise entirely literal translations.

Here, let me give one example: passage (8) — "...even closer than he was to himself." Every letter of this phrase is identical to the Russian. At the same time, when spoken aloud, the tone and spirit of the original are fully conveyed. But your translation — "closer than to himself, closer than to others" — contains an error (perhaps the error is in the Japanese or German version). The error lies in: (1) dropping the phrase "even" (甚至于); (2) using the grammar of classical Chinese, which makes it impossible to express the tone of the sentence.

All these things I say so ungraciously, as if praising myself. To the vulgar, this is naturally "rude." But we are such intimate people — people who are intimate even before we have met. This feeling makes me speak to you as I speak to myself, as if consulting with myself.

Furthermore, there is one more example, a relatively important one, not merely about translation method. This is the question of "the new... person" in passage (1).

The subject of The Rout is the birth of a new person. Here, the Russian word that Friche and Fadeyev himself use is an ordinary "person" in the singular. Not only is it not "humankind," it is not even the plural of "person." The meaning refers to a new type of person, a new "type" — the elegant translation being "typical" — that is being produced in the process of revolution, civil war... This is visible throughout the entirety of The Rout. Now, your translation reads "humankind." Levinson longs for a new... humankind. This could be misunderstood as referring to an entirely different theme — as if it were a general longing for socialist society as a whole. But in fact, the "new person" of The Rout is an urgent task of the current struggle: to create, to temper, to transform in the process of struggle a new type of person, a type different from Morozka, Mechik... and others. This is a person of the present, one of several people, people who form the backbone among the masses — not humankind in general, not humankind in the abstract. Precisely some people among the masses, leaders, the forebears of a new whole humankind.

This point is worth singling out for discussion. Naturally, the error in the translation is merely an error in a single word: "person" is one word, "humankind" is another. The entire book is still before us, and your afterword quite correctly grasps the theme of The Rout. But translation must be precise, and one should weigh every single word.

The publication of The Rout remains a memorable event. I congratulate you. I hope you will consider my views, and on the question of translation, and on the general question of linguistic revolution, launch a new struggle.

J. K.

December 5, 1931.

The Reply

Dear Comrade J. K.:

After reading your letter about translation, I was extremely pleased. Ever since last year's flood of translations, many people have furrowed their brows and sighed, and some have even made sarcastic remarks. I too am someone who occasionally translates books, and by rights should have said a few words, yet to this day I have not opened my mouth. "Insistent prattling" may be a courageous act, but what I practice is the old saying: "To speak to those who should not be spoken to is to waste one's words." Moreover, those who have come forth are mostly paper men and paper horses — to use a more familiar expression, "ghost soldiers" — against whom there is truly no way to launch a head-on attack. Take Professor Old Mr. Zhao Jingshen as an example: on one hand he specializes in attacking translations of scientific literary theory as incomprehensible, and in mocking the anonymity of oppressed writers; on the other hand he puts on a great show of compassion, saying he fears the masses won't understand such translations — as though he were the one who spends every day devising plans for the masses, while other translators come along to disrupt his formations. This is exactly like those servants of the rich in Europe and America who, after the Russian Revolution, went to take a look, came back shaking their heads and wrinkling their faces, and wrote articles lamenting how the workers and peasants were still suffering, still hungry, filling pages with misery — as though they alone were the ones who truly wished that with one somersault the workers and peasants would all live in palaces, eat banquets, and lounge in easy chairs. Who would have thought they were still suffering? So Russia is no good, revolution is bad, oh dear oh dear, how detestable! Facing such funeral faces, what can you say to them? If you find them disagreeable, I think all you need do is lightly poke your finger through one hole in that paper-and-paste frame.

Old Mr. Zhao, in discussing translation, dragged in Yan Youling (严又陵) and pleaded his case on his behalf, which consequently earned the latter a scolding in your letter. But in my view, this is unjust — between Old Mr. Yan and Old Mr. Zhao there is the difference between a tiger and a dog. The most obvious example: in order to translate, Yan Youling once studied the methods used in the Han, Jin, and Six Dynasties periods for translating Buddhist scriptures, while Old Mr. Zhao, who claims Yan Youling as his soul mate beyond the grave, has never read the books Yan Youling actually translated. Now Yan's translations have all been published, and though they may not hold much significance, the effort he put into them can be examined. As I recall, the most laborious to translate, and also the most laborious to read, were Mill's System of Logic and the author's preface to On Liberty — the latter was later somehow renamed The Boundary of Rights, and even the title became hard to fathom. The easiest to understand is naturally On Evolution, which positively reeks of the Tongcheng school style; even the tonal balance of each character is carefully attended to. Read it aloud, nodding and swaying, and indeed the rhythm is sonorous — enough to move the old Tongcheng-school master Wu Rulun (吴汝纶), who could not help exclaiming that it "could stand comparison with the masters of the Zhou and Qin periods." Yet Yan Youling himself knew that this overly "intelligible" style of translation was wrong, which is why he did not call it a "translation" but wrote "Hou Guan Yan Fu conveys the gist" (侯官严复达旨); and after holding forth on "faithfulness, intelligibility, and elegance" in his preface, he concluded with the declaration: "The Dharma Master Shi said, 'Those who imitate me will come to grief.' Many will come after me — be sure not to use this book as a pretext!" It is as though forty years ago he had already anticipated that an Old Mr. Zhao would come along to falsely claim kinship with him, and his hair was already standing on end. For this alone, I must say that the two great masters Yan and Zhao truly differ as tiger from dog and cannot be mentioned in the same breath.

Then why did he resort to this trick? The answer is: in those days, returned students were not as grand as they are today. Society generally regarded Westerners as only capable of making machines — especially clocks — and returned students as only able to speak "foreign devil" language, and therefore not qualified as "gentlemen scholars." So he produced his sonorous prose, sonorous enough that Wu Rulun agreed to write a preface for him. With that preface, other business came flooding in, and so there appeared his Logic, his Spirit of Laws, his Wealth of Nations, and so on. But his later translations clearly valued "faithfulness" above "intelligibility and elegance."

His translation work is in fact a miniature of the history of sutra translation in the Han and Tang dynasties. China's translation of Buddhist scriptures: in the late Han, it was plain and straightforward — he did not follow that model. In the Six Dynasties, it was truly "intelligible" and "elegant" — his On Evolution was modeled on this. In the Tang, the emphasis was on "faithfulness," and at first glance it seems almost incomprehensible — this is like his later translations. A simple specimen of the sutra-translation tradition can be found in the three translation editions of The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana, compiled and printed by the Jinling Scriptural Press — also a mortal enemy of Old Mr. Zhao.

But I think our translation work cannot be so simple. First, we must decide for what kind of readers among the masses we are translating. Roughly dividing these masses: Category A, those who have received considerable education; Category B, those who can barely read; Category C, those who know hardly any characters. Category C falls outside the scope of "readers" — enlightening them is the task of pictures, lectures, theater, and cinema, and need not be discussed here. But even for Categories A and B, the same books cannot serve both; each should have appropriate reading materials provided. For Category B, translations are not yet suitable — at least adaptations are needed, and original works are best, provided these originals do not merely cater to readers' tastes, content that they are popular and widely read. As for translations intended for Category A readers, whatever the subject, I still advocate "rather faithful than smooth" to this day. Naturally, this "unsmoothness" absolutely does not mean translating "kneel" as "kneel upon one's knees" or "Milky Way" as "Milk Road"; rather, it means that one need not gulp the text down like tea-soaked rice in a few mouthfuls, but must exert some effort to chew. Here arises a question: why not make it completely Chinese, saving the reader trouble? If it is this hard to understand, how can it still be called translation? My answer is: this too is a translation. Such a translation not only imports new content but also imports new modes of expression. Chinese writing and speech are in truth far too imprecise. The secret of good writing is to avoid familiar characters and delete empty words — and that is a good essay. When speaking, too, one constantly fails to convey one's meaning — this is because the language is insufficient, which is why teachers lecturing must also rely on chalk. This imprecision of grammar is proof of imprecision of thought — in other words, the brain is somewhat muddled. If one forever uses muddled language, even if when reading it flows glibly, in the end what one gets is still a muddled impression. To cure this malady, I think one can only gradually endure some hardship, stuffing in alien sentence structures — old ones, those from other provinces, foreign ones — which can later be claimed as one's own. This is not an idle fantasy. The distant example is Japan, where Europeanized syntax is perfectly commonplace in their writing, vastly different from the era when Liang Qichao wrote his Method of Reading Japanese in Chinese. The near example is just what your letter mentions: in 1925, the word "strike" (罢工) was coined for the masses. Though this word had never existed before, the masses have all come to understand it.

I further believe that even books translated for Category B readers should frequently include some new words and new syntax, though naturally not too many — just enough that when readers occasionally encounter one, with a moment's thought or a question they can understand it. Only thus can the language of the masses be enriched.

A book that absolutely everyone can understand does not exist today. Only the Buddhist swastika "卍" is, according to its adherents, "comprehensible to all" — but unfortunately it is also "understood differently by each." Even mathematics or chemistry textbooks — are there not many "technical terms" in them that Old Mr. Zhao does not understand, which Old Mr. Zhao does not bring up, remembering Yan Youling all too well? Speaking of translating literature, if one takes Category A readers as the audience, I too advocate literal translation. My own translation method is: for example, "Behind the mountain the sun went down" — though unsmooth, I would never change it to "The sun sets behind the mountain's shadow" (日落山阴), because the original makes the mountain the subject, and changing it shifts the focus to the sun. Even in original writing, I think the author must make such distinctions. On one hand, import as much as possible; on the other, digest and absorb as much as possible. What is usable gets passed down; the dregs are left behind in the past. Therefore, tolerating "some unsmoothness" in the present cannot really be called "defense" — it is actually a kind of "offense." The language on the lips of the people today is, indeed, all "smooth," but the linguistic raw material gathered from the people's speech must also ultimately be smooth. That is why I, too, am one who advocates tolerating "unsmoothness."

But this situation will naturally not last forever. Part of it will transition from "unsmooth" to "smooth"; another part, because it remains "unsmooth" to the end, will be eliminated, kicked aside. The most crucial thing here is our own critical judgment. As for the translation examples cited in your letter, I can acknowledge that they are more "intelligible" than my translations, and I can also infer that they are more "faithful." For both translator and reader, this is of great benefit. However, these can only be understood by Category A readers and are too abstruse for Category B readers. This further demonstrates that it is now necessary to distinguish various reader strata and to have various kinds of translations.

As for the method of translating for Category B readers, I have not thought it through carefully and cannot say much at the moment. But looking at the big picture, at present it is still not possible to merge with spoken language — the local dialects of various places — and can only become a special kind of vernacular, or one limited to a particular region. The latter type — readers outside that region cannot understand it. To achieve wider distribution, one must inevitably use the former type, but this consequently becomes a special vernacular as well, with more classical-language elements creeping in. I am opposed to using dialect too narrowly limited to one place. For example, the expressions "don't make a fuss" (别闹) and "don't say that" (别说) commonly seen in novels — if I had never been to Beijing, I would certainly interpret them as meaning "make a fuss elsewhere" or "say it elsewhere," which is indeed far less easy to understand than the more literary "do not" (不要). Such spoken language that is alive only in one place, unless absolutely necessary, should also be avoided. Then there are the stylistic conventions of chapter-division novels — even if they look familiar, they need not all be adopted. For example, "Lin Chong laughed and said: 'So, you recognize me'" versus "'So, you recognize me' — Lin Chong said with a laugh." Though the latter example may look somewhat foreign, in fact when we talk we often use this pattern — it sounds "familiar to the ear." But Chinese people read novels with their eyes, so it is still the former example that feels "familiar to the eye"; encountering the latter style in a book feels unfamiliar instead. There is no help for it; for now one can only adopt the storytelling style while removing its glibness, listen to idle chat while removing its rambling, broadly gather the people's spoken language while preserving those words and phrases that comparatively most people can understand, and produce a "neither-fish-nor-fowl" vernacular. This vernacular must be alive, and the reason it is alive is that some of it is taken from the lips of the living masses, and some of it is meant to be injected into the living masses.

In closing, I am very grateful for the two examples you cited at the end of your letter. First, I translated "...even closer than he was to himself" as "closer than to himself, closer than to others" — this is a literal translation of the phrasing in the Japanese and German versions. This is probably because their grammar does not have a word like "even" (甚至于) that can simply and precisely express this tone; after several roundabout turns, it became this clumsy. Second, translating "the new... person" with "person" (人) rendered as "humankind" (人类) — that is my error, an error resulting from over-interpretation. When Levinson sees the people on the threshing floor, wanting to transform them into fighters for the current struggle, I understood that quite clearly. But when he silently muses on "the new... person," it also made me muse for a long time: (1) The original word for "person" — in the Japanese translation it is "ningen" (人間), and in the German translation "Mensch," both singular but sometimes also interpretable as "people"; (2) his wanting "a new, excellent, strong, compassionate person" right now — the hope seems too extravagant, too abstract. I then considered his background — the son of a merchant, an intellectual — and from this surmised that his fighting was for a classless society after class struggle. So I took the person he was thinking of in the present moment and, following my own subjective error, transported him to the future, turning him moreover into "people" — humankind. Before you pointed this out, I even thought my interpretation was quite brilliant. This is something that must be promptly declared and corrected for the reader.

In sum, this year we have at last placed this monument of a novel before the readers here. The translation and printing went through considerable hardships, which have now faded from memory, but I truly do, as your letter says, love it like my own child, and from it I think of the child's children. There is also The Iron Flood, which I also love greatly. These two novels, though roughly made, are by no means sloppily made. Their iron characters and bloody battles are indeed enough to make the so-called "belles-lettres" that depict melancholy, sickly young scholars and coquettish beauties fade into utter nothingness before them. However, I share your view that this is only a small victory, and therefore I very much hope that more people will join forces to introduce more works. Within at least the next three years, we should have eight to ten monumental literary works about the Civil War era and the construction era, plus translations of several representative works that, though often called proletarian literature, still inevitably contain petty-bourgeois bias (like Barbusse) or Christian-socialist bias (like Sinclair), accompanied by analysis and rigorous criticism, explaining what is good and what is bad, for the purpose of comparison and reference. Then not only will the readers' understanding become clearer day by day, but new creative writers will also have gained correct models.

Lu Xun

December 28, 1931.

Correspondence on the Subject Matter of Fiction (Together with the Letters of Y and T)

L. S., Sir:

The impulse to trouble you so presumptuously with our concerns has been suppressed for a long time, but a man of your kind, as we envision you, would probably not be indifferent to the inquiries of two earnest young people. After several rounds of such deliberation, we have finally ventured to express to you our hesitation and indecision regarding literature — especially regarding the short story.

We have written several short stories by hand, and the subject matter we have chosen falls into two categories: one focuses on the petty-bourgeois youth with whom we are familiar, using satirical artistic technique to expose the weaknesses — both manifest and latent — that this class displays in the present age; the other focuses on the lower-class people with whom we are familiar — lower-class people outside the direct impact zone of the great currents of the present age — and depicts in our creative work the intense desire for survival and the dim stirrings of resistance under the heavy pressure of life. We do not know whether works of such content can, in the present age, claim to have any meaningful contribution. We were at first hesitant, and then, upon picking up our pens, we hesitated again. We must ask you to give us some guidance, for we do not wish our literary efforts to become, in the face of the present age, a waste of energy and utterly meaningless.

We are determined, in this era, to devote our energies to meaningful literature, thereby expressing what assistance and contribution we should offer. We are not the sort of writers you have described — those who, upon gaining a small reputation, take themselves elsewhere. Therefore, if you are willing to give us guidance at this moment, that guidance will influence us for life. Although we have also read the creative works of various proletarian writers, we are unwilling to take some fictional character and, with a single flip, have him turn revolutionary. We prefer to seize a few familiar models and depict them truly and faithfully — but whether this inclination is appropriate, we have no certainty. So, after thinking it over again and again, we can only presumptuously impose upon you.

With best wishes for

your well-being!

Ts-c. Y. and Y-f. T., November 29th.

Reply

Y and T, Sirs:

After receiving your letter, before I could reply I came down with influenza — my head heavy, my eyes swollen, unable to write a single character. These past few days I have finally recovered somewhat, and only now do I write this reply. We are in the same city, yet I have dragged things out for a month — for which I am extremely sorry.

What you two ask about is the question of the material taken up and employed when writing short stories. And the standpoint from which the authors write, as your letter states, is the standpoint of the petty bourgeoisie. If one were a combative proletarian, then whatever one described, whatever material one used — so long as what was written could become a work of art — it would certainly be of meaningful contribution to both the present and the future. Why? Because the author himself is a fighter.

But you two are not of that class, which is why, before putting pen to paper, the kind of doubt you describe in your letter arose. I think that for the present age, this still has meaning. However, if this disposition persists forever unchanged, it would not be appropriate.

The literary works of other classes are, for the most part, irrelevant to the proletariat in active combat. If the petty bourgeoisie is not truly in solidarity with the proletariat, then its hatred or satire of its own class, from the proletarian point of view, is exactly like a rather clever and capable young master despising the good-for-nothing sons in his own family — a family affair, no concern of outsiders, and far from affecting any profit or loss. Take for example the Frenchman Courteline (戈兼), who loathed the bourgeoisie, yet was himself through and through a bourgeois writer. If one writes about the lower classes (I believe they are never "outside the direct impact zone of the great currents of the present age"), the so-called objectivity is really just the cold gaze from an upper floor; the so-called sympathy is merely empty almsgiving — of no help to the proletariat. And later, things become even harder to predict. For example, another Frenchman, Baudelaire, at the start of the Paris Commune still felt admiration and support, but when the movement grew powerful enough to threaten his own way of life, he turned reactionary. Yet as far as present-day China is concerned, I believe the two types of subject matter you mention still have reason to exist. As for the first type: only someone of the same class can know it intimately, and to attack it, to tear off its mask, must be more powerful when done by someone familiar with the situation than by an outsider. As for the second type: living conditions change with the times, and later authors may not have the chance to witness them. To record them in real time is at the very least to create a document of this era. Therefore, for both the present and the future, there is still meaning. However, even if one is "familiar" with something, that does not necessarily mean one is "correct." To extract the meaningful points and highlight them, making that meaning all the more distinct and amplified — that is the task of the correct critic.

Therefore, I think you two can each take up whatever subject matter you are currently able to write about and begin writing. But you must be strict in selecting your material and dig deep. You must not take some trivial, meaningless incident and pad it out into a story, congratulating yourselves on your prolific output. Writing in this way, at a certain point, I expect you will feel that you have written it all out — although the human types represented by such subject matter may still linger as residue even decades hence, those who come to depict and portray them then will be different authors with a different perspective. But you are both young people moving forward, with the aspiration to assist and contribute to the age, and at that time you will surely be able to gradually overcome your own life and consciousness and discover a new path.

In sum, my view is this: write whatever you are currently able to write, without chasing fashion, and certainly without forcibly fabricating some abruptly-transformed revolutionary hero and calling it "revolutionary literature." But neither should you rest comfortably on this alone, making no progress, until you sink into oblivion — which would also mean the extinction of your assistance and contribution to the age.

In reply, with best wishes for your well-being.

L. S.

December 25th.

— Written for the American New Masses

At present, in China, the proletarian revolutionary literary movement is in fact the only literary movement. For this is a sprout in the wilderness; apart from it, China has absolutely no other literature. Those so-called "literary figures" belonging to the ruling class have long since rotted to the point where they cannot produce even so-called "art for art's sake" or "decadent" works. What now comes to suppress left-wing literature is nothing but slander, oppression, imprisonment, and murder; and those who stand against left-wing writers are nothing but thugs, detectives, running dogs, and executioners.

This point has already been proven perfectly clearly by the facts of the last two years. The year before last, when the literary theories of Plekhanov and Lunacharsky were first introduced into China, they initially aroused the indignation of a disciple of Mr. Irving Babbitt — a keen-sensed "scholar" who held that literature was not something belonging to the proletariat. If proletarians wished to create or appreciate literature, they ought first to toil and save money and climb up into the bourgeoisie, rather than come barging into this garden in their rags, creating a ruckus. He also fabricated rumors, claiming that those who advocated proletarian literature in China were receiving rubles from Soviet Russia. This method was not entirely without effect: many Shanghai newspaper reporters would frequently concoct false reports, sometimes even publishing the exact amount of rubles. But clear-headed readers did not believe it, because compared with such paper news, they more tangibly observed in reality that the only things shipped from imperialist countries were guns and cannons for slaughtering the proletariat.

The bureaucrats of the ruling class, a bit slower on the uptake than the scholars, by last year were also intensifying their repression. Banning periodicals, banning books — not only those with slightly revolutionary content, but even those with red lettering on the cover, or by Russian authors: Serafimovich, Ivanov, and Ognev go without saying, but even some stories by Chekhov and Andreyev were placed on the banned list. Thus bookstores found it safest to publish arithmetic textbooks and fairy tales — Mr. Cat and Miss Rose chatting together, praising how lovely spring is — because even the translations of fairy tales by the sort of Erzmolin had already been banned, so one could only do one's best to praise spring. But now a certain general has gotten angry, declaring that it is an affront to human dignity for animals to be able to speak and moreover to be addressed as "Mr."

Mere prohibition is not a fundamental solution, and so this year five left-wing writers disappeared. When their families made inquiries, they learned the writers were at the Garrison Command — but were not allowed to visit. Half a month later, upon inquiring again, they were told the writers had been "liberated" — this being the mocking term for "execution" — while in all of Shanghai's Chinese and foreign-language newspapers, there was absolutely no report. Next came the closure of bookstores that had published or distributed new books — at times as many as five in a single day — though now some have reopened one after another, and we do not know how this came about. Judging by the bookstores' advertisements, they are doing their best to print English-Chinese bilingual editions — things like works by Robert Stevenson and Oscar Wilde.

Yet the ruling class is not without positive construction in the realm of literature. On one hand, they have driven out the original owners and clerks of several bookstores and secretly replaced them with their own obedient confederates. But this immediately failed. Because the place was full of running dogs, the bookstore resembled a forbidding government office — and in China, government offices are the thing the people most fear and most detest, so naturally no one went. The only ones who liked to drop in were a few idle running dogs on a stroll. How could this possibly make business boom? But there is another side: writing articles and publishing magazines to replace the banned left-wing periodicals — to date, nearly ten titles. Yet this too has failed. The greatest obstacle is that the sponsors of these "literary" enterprises are a Shanghai municipal government commissioner and a detective squad chief of the Garrison Command, whose reputations for "liberation" far exceed their reputations for "creation." If they were to write a "Manual of Slaughter" or "The Art of Detection," there would probably be readers, but unfortunately they have taken it into their heads to paint pictures and compose poetry. This is really as if America's Henry Ford, instead of talking about automobiles, were to start singing to everyone — it would only cause extreme astonishment.

When nobody comes to the bureaucrats' bookstore and nobody reads their publications, the remedy is to coerce writers who are already well-known but not clearly left-leaning to contribute articles, helping their publications circulate. The result is that only one or two muddleheaded writers have fallen for the trick; the majority have to this day not put pen to paper, and one has even been scared into hiding somewhere unknown.

At present, the most prized "literary figures" on their side are a few who, when the left-wing literary movement began and was not yet being persecuted, when it was supported by revolutionary youth, called themselves left-wing — but who have now crawled over to the other side of the blade, turned around, and begun to harm left-wing writers. Why are they so prized? Because they once were left-wing. Thus several of their publications still have covers partly in bright red — but the illustrations of workers and peasants have been replaced by Aubrey Beardsley's drawings of figures who all look like invalids.

Under such circumstances, those readers who have always enjoyed old-fashioned bandit novels and new-fashioned erotic novels do not feel the least inconvenience. But the more progressive young people find there is nothing to read. They have no choice but to look at books with plenty of empty talk and very little content — the kind that is not likely to be banned — to temporarily quench their thirst, because they know that rather than buying the government-made emetic poison, it is better to drink from an empty cup — at the very least, one will not be harmed. But a great many revolutionary young people, no matter what, are still extremely enthusiastically demanding, supporting, and developing left-wing literature.

Therefore, apart from the government-run and running-dog-run publications, the periodicals of other bookstores still cannot help but find various methods to slip in a few comparatively radical works. They too know that selling nothing but empty cups is a business that cannot last long. Left-wing literature has the revolutionary reading masses to support it. The "future" belongs to this side.

In this way, left-wing literature continues to grow. But naturally, it grows like a sprout crushed under a great stone — growing in twists and turns.

What is regrettable is that among left-wing writers there are as yet no writers of worker or peasant origin. For one thing, workers and peasants have historically only been oppressed and exploited, without the slightest opportunity for education; for another, China's ideographic — by now they have long since changed to the point where they no longer even resemble what they depict — square block characters mean that even a peasant or worker who has studied for ten years still cannot freely write out his own opinions. This state of affairs greatly delights the "literary figures" who wield the knife. They reckon that anyone educated enough to be able to write essays must be at least petty bourgeois; a petty bourgeois ought to cling to his own petty assets; if instead he inclines toward the proletariat, it must be "hypocrisy." Only the petty-bourgeois writers who oppose proletarian literature are acting from a "true" heart. "True" is better than "false," and therefore their slander, oppression, imprisonment, and murder of left-wing writers constitute a superior form of literature.

But this "superior literature" wielded with the knife has, in fact, proven that left-wing writers share the very same fate as the proletariat that is likewise being oppressed and slaughtered. Left-wing literature is now suffering its Passion alongside the proletariat, and in the future it will naturally also rise together with the proletariat. Mere killing, after all, is not literature — and by this they have also declared themselves to possess nothing at all.

In the space of these several years, the celebrated personages who have thrown themselves body and soul into attacking "hard translation" have already spanned three generations: first came the founding patriarch, Professor Liang Shiqiu (梁實秋); next came the disciple, Professor Zhao Jingshen (趙景深); and most recently the disciple's disciple, the university student Yang Jinhao (楊晉豪). But of these three generations, it must be said that Professor Zhao's position was the most clear-cut and thoroughgoing, the essence of which was: "Rather smooth and unfaithful than faithful and unsmooth."

This maxim, though somewhat peculiar, does have an effect on readers.

For a "faithful but unsmooth" translation is immediately felt to be laborious, and readers who pick up a book merely to rest their minds will naturally come to admire Professor Zhao Jingshen's maxim. As for "smooth but unfaithful" translations, however—unless one checks them against the original, one cannot even tell where the "unfaithfulness" lies. And how many readers in China ever check against the original? Here one must already know more than the translator before one can detect the errors and identify where the "unfaithfulness" resides. Otherwise, one can only swallow it all in a muddle.

My own knowledge of science is very limited, and I don't have many foreign books, so I can only read translations—but lately I have been running into puzzling passages more and more often. Let me just cite a few examples at random. In Mr. Zhou Taixuan's (周太玄) "Brief Account of Biology" in the Wanyou Wenku series, there is this sentence:

"Recently, the two gentlemen Niel and Ehle, regarding wheat..."

As far as I know, there is a famous Swedish biologist named Nilsson-Ehle who tested the heredity of wheat, but he is one person with two surnames, and should properly be translated as "Nilsson-Ehle." To call him "two gentlemen" with an "and" inserted is smooth enough, but it makes me strongly suspect these are two different people. This is a minor matter, of course—though if we are to discuss biology, even such small details should not be overlooked—but let us be vague about it for now.

In the March issue of this year's Fiction Monthly, in Mr. Feng Housheng's (馮厚生) translation of "The Old Man," there is also this sentence:

"His typhoid fever developed into a severe case of influenza..."

This too is very "smooth," but as far as I know, influenza is not more severe than typhoid, and moreover one is a respiratory disease while the other is a digestive disease—no matter how you "develop," you cannot cross from one to the other. It would have to be a "cold" or "chill" for the development to make sense. But a novel is not a "Brief Account of Biology," so let us be vague about this too. This time, let us look at a peculiar experiment instead.

This experiment appears in the translation of E.G. Conklin's "Heredity and Environment" by He Dingjie (何定傑) and Zhang Zhiyao (張誌耀). The translation reads: "...They first extracted the medullary crystalline body from rabbit eyes, injected it into poultry, and waited until a 'substitute crystalline substance' was generated in the poultry's eyes, sufficient to see through this foreign protein essence, then extracted the poultry's blood serum and injected it into pregnant female rabbits. The female rabbits, after this injection, often could not bear it, and many died; however, their eyes or crystalline bodies showed no discernible damage, and the eggs stored in their ovaries likewise showed no special damage, for among the young rabbits they subsequently bore, none was born with defective eyes."

This passage also seems fairly "smooth" and comprehensible. But upon closer reflection, one cannot help becoming confused. First, what is a "medullary crystalline body"? The crystalline lens has no distinction between medulla and cortex. Second, what is a "substitute crystalline substance"? Third, what does it mean to "see through foreign protein"? I do not have the original text to check against, and was quite distressed, but after much thought I concluded it should probably be retranslated as follows: "They first took the crystalline lens from rabbit eyes, prepared it into a liquid form (for injection), and injected it into poultry, waiting until the poultry developed a reaction to this foreign protein (i.e., the liquefied crystalline lens) and produced an 'anti-crystalline substance' (i.e., a substance that resists the liquefied crystalline lens). They then extracted the blood serum and injected it into pregnant female rabbits..."

The above are merely a few examples picked up at random; beyond these, as circumstances change, there are not a few I have forgotten, and many I simply did not notice naturally slipped past, or were perhaps stored erroneously in my brain just as they were. But from these few examples alone, we can already determine that a translation that is "faithful but unsmooth" is at worst merely incomprehensible—think a bit and you may understand it—whereas a translation that is "smooth but unfaithful" leads one into error, and no amount of thinking will make it comprehensible. If you think you have understood it, then you have precisely entered into a blind alley.

Rou Shi (柔石), original name Pingfu (平復), surname Zhao (趙), was born in 1901 in Shimendou, Ninghai County, Taizhou Prefecture, Zhejiang Province. For several generations before him, the family had been scholars, but by his father's time the family could no longer sustain itself and had to engage in petty commerce, so it was not until the age of ten that he was able to enter primary school. In 1917 he went to Hangzhou and enrolled in the First Normal School; at the same time, as a member of Hangzhou's Morning Light Society, he took part in the New Literature movement. After graduation, he served as a primary school teacher in Cixi and other places, while also engaging in creative writing. He had a collection of short stories, "The Madman," published in Ningbo—this was the beginning of Rou Shi's published works. In 1923 he went to Beijing and became an auditing student at Peking University.

After returning to his hometown, in the spring of 1925, he became the chief administrator of Zhenhai Middle School and vigorously resisted the oppression of the Northern Warlords. In the autumn, he began coughing blood, yet still did his utmost to help the youth of Ninghai, founding Ninghai Middle School. By the following year, he had managed to raise funds and construct school buildings; at the same time he served as director of the Bureau of Education, reforming the county's entire educational system.

In April 1928, a rural uprising broke out. After its failure, reaction swept everywhere, everything even slightly progressive was destroyed, Ninghai Middle School was dissolved, and Rou Shi fled alone to Shanghai, where he took up residence and devoted himself to the study of literature and art. In December he became the editor of Threads of Talk (Yusi), and together with friends established the Morning Flowers Society. In addition to his own creative work, he devoted himself to introducing foreign literature and art, especially the literature and prints of Northern and Eastern Europe. They published twenty issues of the Morning Flowers weekly, twelve issues of the ten-day periodical, and five volumes of "Art Garden: Morning Flowers." Later, because the distributors refused to pay for the books, they could no longer sustain the enterprise and had to cease publication.

In the spring of 1930, the Freedom Movement Alliance was launched, and Rou Shi was one of its founders. Not long after, when the League of Left-Wing Writers was established, he was also one of its founding members and devoted himself entirely to the proletarian literary movement. He was first elected to the Executive Committee, then appointed Standing Committee Member and Chief of the Editorial Department. In May, as a representative of the Left-Wing League, he participated in the National Congress of Soviet Districts, after which he wrote the essay "A Great Impression."

On January 17, 1931, he was arrested. Transferred from the patrol station through a special tribunal to the Longhua Garrison Command, on the evening of February 7 he was secretly executed by firing squad, his body struck by ten bullets.

Rou Shi left behind two sons and one daughter, all young children. His literary achievements include the verse drama "The Comedy of Humankind" (unpublished), the novels "Death of the Old Era," "Three Sisters," "February," and "Hope," and translations including Lunacharsky's "Faust and the City," Gorky's "The Artamanovs' Business," and "A Collection of Danish Short Stories," among others.

The literature of Shanghai's past began with the Shenbao newspaper. To speak of the Shenbao, one must trace back more than sixty years, but of those matters I know nothing. What I can recall is from thirty years ago, when the Shenbao was still printed on Chinese bamboo paper, single-sided, and those who wrote for it were mostly "men of talent" who had drifted in from elsewhere.

The literate class of that time could roughly be divided into two types: the "gentleman" and the "man of talent." The gentleman read only the Four Books and Five Classics, wrote eight-legged essays, and was exceedingly proper. The man of talent, however, also read novels on the side—for instance, "Dream of the Red Chamber"—and also composed old and new-style verse of the sort useless in the imperial examinations. That is to say, the man of talent read "Dream of the Red Chamber" openly—but whether the gentleman also read it in secret, that I have no way of knowing. With the coming of the foreign concessions in Shanghai—then called "the foreign field" or "the barbarian field," and later, by those afraid of giving offense, often written with a different character—some of these men of talent came running to Shanghai, for the man of talent was broad-minded and went everywhere; the gentleman, on the other hand, felt a certain distaste for foreign things, and moreover was pursuing the proper path to official rank, so he would never go gallivanting about recklessly. When Confucius said, "If the Way does not prevail, I shall take a raft and float out to sea," from the perspective of the men of talent, this showed a touch of the man-of-talent temperament, and so the gentleman's conduct was called "pedantic" by the men of talent.

The man of talent was, by nature, sentimental and sickly, apt to rage at cockcrows and grieve at moonlight. Upon arriving in Shanghai, he also encountered the courtesan. When he went whoring, he could gather ten or twenty young girls together in one place, and it all looked rather like "Dream of the Red Chamber," so he felt himself to be a sort of Jia Baoyu; he was the man of talent, and the courtesans were of course the beauties, and so the "beauty-and-talent" novels were born. Their content was mostly this: only the man of talent could pity these beauties fallen into the dust; only the beauty could recognize the talent passed over by the world; after enduring a thousand hardships and ten thousand sufferings, they would at last become a perfect match, or else both ascend to immortality.

They also helped the Shenbao printing house publish and sell various Ming and Qing essay collections, and they themselves formed literary societies and put out lantern riddles; those whose entries were selected received these books as prizes, so their circulation was very wide. There were also large works such as "The Scholars," "The Western Voyage of the Grand Eunuch San Bao," "The Gratifying Record," and others. Even now, at used-book stalls, we sometimes see small volumes with "Printed by the Shanghai Shenbao Printing House in Imitation Movable Type" on the first page—those are precisely these.

The beauty-and-talent novels flourished for quite a few years, and then the next generation of men of talent gradually changed their thinking. They discovered that the beauties had not become courtesans because they "thirsted for talent," but only for money. But it was wrong for the beauties to want the man of talent's money, so the men of talent devised various clever methods of subduing the courtesans—not only avoiding their traps but even taking advantage of them. Novels describing these various stratagems appeared and were very popular in society, for they could be read as textbooks for the art of whoring. The protagonists of these books were no longer "talent plus fool," but heroes who had won victories over the courtesans—they were "talent plus rogue."

Before this, a pictorial magazine had already appeared, called the Dianshizhai Pictorial, with Wu Youru (吳友如) as its chief artist. He drew everything—immortals, personages, domestic and foreign news—but he was quite unclear about foreign matters. For example, when drawing a warship, it was a merchantman with field artillery laid out on the deck; when drawing a duel, two officers in full dress were hacking at each other with long swords in a drawing room, sending flower vases crashing to the floor. Yet his drawings of "madams beating prostitutes" and "ruffians extorting money" were truly excellent—this, I believe, was because he had seen far too much of it; even today, in Shanghai, we still often see faces exactly like those he drew. The influence of this pictorial was very great at the time, circulating in every province, and was considered the eyes and ears of those who wanted to know about "current affairs"—a term that in those days was equivalent to what is now called "modern learning." A few years ago it was reprinted under the title "The Ink Treasures of Wu Youru," and its subsequent influence was truly formidable. To say nothing of the illustrations in novels, even in the illustrations of textbooks one often saw that the children drawn were mostly wearing their caps askew, with squinting eyes, faces full of horizontal flesh, and an air of ruffianry. In our own day, the new rogue artist is Mr. Ye Lingfeng (葉靈鳳), whose drawings are pilfered from the Englishman Aubrey Beardsley. Beardsley belonged to the "art for art's sake" school, and his drawings were deeply influenced by the Japanese "ukiyo-e" (浮世繪). Although ukiyo-e was folk art, it mostly depicted courtesans and actors—plump bodies, squinting eyes—erotic eyes. However, Beardsley's figures were thin, because he was a Decadent. Decadents are mostly gaunt and despondent, a bit ashamed before robust women, and therefore disliking them. Our Mr. Ye's new squinting-eye art joins perfectly with Wu Youru's old squinting-eye art, and ought naturally to flourish for quite a few years. But he didn't only draw rogues; for a period he also drew the proletariat, though his workers too had squinting eyes and were stretching out fists of extraordinary size. But I believe that proletarian art should be realist, depicting workers as they actually look, without needing to make fists bigger than heads.

Chinese cinema today is still very much under the influence of this "talent plus rogue" formula. The heroes in films, the "good people" heroes, are all slippery and oily, just like the crafty young men who have lived too long in Shanghai and know all about "extortion," "skimming the oil," and "chasing skirts." After watching, one is left feeling that if one wishes to be a hero or a good person nowadays, one must also be a rogue.

The talent-plus-rogue novels, however, also gradually declined. The reasons, I believe, were twofold: first, it was always the same old tune—courtesans wanting money, clients using tricks—which could not go on forever; second, they were written in Suzhou dialect, using words like "ni" for "I," "nai" for "you," "a-shi" for "is it so?"—and aside from old Shanghai hands and people from Jiangsu and Zhejiang, nobody could understand them.

Yet the talent-plus-beauty genre did produce one novel that caused a sensation at the time: "The Story of Joan" (Joan Haste by H.R. Haggard), translated from English. But there was only the first half. The translator said the original had been found at a used-book stall and was superb, but sadly the second volume could not be found—there was nothing to be done. Sure enough, this deeply stirred the tender hearts of the talent-and-beauty set, and it was very widely circulated. Later it even moved Mr. Lin Qinnan (林琴南), who translated the complete work, still under the title "The Story of Joan." But at the same time, the earlier translator furiously denounced him, saying he should not have translated the whole thing, thereby lowering Joan's value and causing displeasure to the readers. Only then did people learn that the reason only half had previously existed was not that the original was incomplete, but that it recorded Joan's having had an illegitimate child, and the translator had deliberately omitted it. In truth, such a not-very-long book would hardly have been published in two volumes even abroad. But from this alone, one can already see what the Chinese view of marriage was at that time.

Then a new round of talent-plus-beauty novels became popular, but this time the beauties were respectable young ladies who fell in love with the men of talent, inseparable from each other, like a pair of butterflies or a pair of mandarin ducks beneath the willows and among the flowers. Sometimes, however, because of a stern father, or because of cruel fate, there might even be a tragic ending, and they no longer all became immortals—this, it must be said, was truly a great advance. By the time Mr. Tianxu Wosheng (天虛我生)—who has now gone into manufacturing face-and-teeth powder—published the monthly magazine "Eyebrow Language" (Meiyu), this "mandarin-duck-and-butterfly" style of literature had reached its zenith. Later, although "Eyebrow Language" was banned, its influence did not wane, and it was not until "New Youth" (Xin Qingnian) gained ascendancy that it finally received a blow. At that time, the introduction of Ibsen's plays and the appearance of Hu Shizhi's (胡適之) "The Greatest Event in Life" in a different form, though not intentionally, nonetheless caused the marriage question—the very lifeblood of the mandarin-duck-and-butterfly school—to run off Nora-like.

After this came the appearance of the Creation Society, the new men-of-talent school. The Creation Society venerated innate genius, practiced art for art's sake, focused exclusively on the self, esteemed original creation, despised translation, and especially loathed retranslation. It stood in opposition to the Literary Research Association in Shanghai at the same time. On its very first advertising flyer, it declared that someone was "monopolizing" the literary world—this referred to the Literary Research Association. The Literary Research Association, however, was precisely the opposite: it advocated art for life's sake, both creating and also valuing translation, and devoted attention to introducing the literature of oppressed peoples—all small nations whose languages nobody understood, and therefore almost all of it was retranslated. Moreover, because they had once rallied in support of "New Youth," new enmities were heaped upon old, and so the Literary Research Association was now attacked from three sides. One side was the Creation Society: since theirs was the art of genius, the art-for-life Literary Research Association was naturally guilty of meddling, and had a certain vulgarity; moreover, they considered it incompetent, so that if a single translation error was discovered, they might even write a long monograph about it. A second side was the gentleman's school of those who had studied in America; they believed that literature was exclusively for the enjoyment of lords and ladies, and so the only proper characters, apart from lords and ladies, were men of letters, scholars, artists, professors, and young ladies—people who could say "Yes" and "No"—for that was the dignity of the gentleman. At that time Mr. Wu Mi (吳宓) had published articles saying he truly could not understand why some people insisted on describing lower-class society. The third side was the mandarin-duck-and-butterfly school I mentioned earlier. I do not know what methods they used, but they eventually got the bookshop owners to replace the editor of Fiction Monthly, who was a member of the Literary Research Association, and even put out "Fiction World" to propagate their writings. This publication only ceased last year.

The Creation Society's battle, on the surface, was victorious. Many of their works happened to accord with the sentiments of the self-proclaimed men of talent of the time, and with the help of their publishers, their influence grew formidable. Once their influence was formidable, one saw even great commercial houses like the Commercial Press publishing translations and works by Creation Society members—that is to say, by Mr. Guo Moruo (郭沫若) and Mr. Zhang Ziping (張資平). From that point on, as I recall, the Creation Society also stopped scrutinizing the Commercial Press's publications for translation errors and writing monographs about them. In these respects, I think, there was also something of the talent-plus-rogue formula. Yet "New Shanghai" was after all no match for "Old Shanghai." Amid their songs of triumph, the Creation Society members finally realized that they had become mere commodities for their own publishers; all their efforts, in the eyes of the boss, were nothing more than the winking of the paper mannequin in the optician's large display window—merely to "attract customers." When they attempted to publish independently, the boss hit them with a lawsuit, and though they did eventually become independent—announcing that all their books had been thoroughly revised, reprinted, and freshly launched—the old boss continued forever using the old plates, simply printing and selling, and every year held some anniversary great bargain sale.

Being a commodity was no longer tenable, and independence offered no way to survive. The natural destination for the Creation Society members was Guangdong, the rather more promising "cradle of revolution." In Guangdong, the term "revolutionary literature" thus appeared, though there were no actual works; in Shanghai, the term did not even exist yet.

It was not until the year before last that the banner of "revolutionary literature" truly flourished. Those advocating it were several founding members of the Creation Society who had returned from the "cradle of revolution," along with a number of new recruits. The reason revolutionary literature flourished was, naturally, that social conditions had created such a demand among the masses and the youth. When the Northern Expedition was launched from Guangdong, the active young people all rushed to practical work, and at that time there was no notable revolutionary literary movement. Only when the political environment suddenly changed, when the revolution suffered a setback, when class divisions became starkly clear, when the Kuomintang under the banner of "Party purification" slaughtered Communists and revolutionary masses on a grand scale, and when the surviving youth found themselves once again under oppression—only then did revolutionary literature in Shanghai develop vigorous activity. Thus, on the surface, this flourishing of revolutionary literature differed from other countries: it arose not from the surging of revolution, but from the frustration of revolution. Although among them were some old literati who had hung up their commanding swords and returned to the old trade of the pen, and some young people who had been squeezed out of practical work and could only make a living this way, because there was indeed a genuine social foundation, there were among the new recruits some who were very solid and correct. But the revolutionary literary movement of that time, in my opinion, had not been well planned and contained quite a few errors. For example, first, without conducting a careful analysis of Chinese society, they mechanically applied methods that could only be used under a Soviet regime. Second, they—especially Mr. Cheng Fangwu (成仿吾)—made the general public understand revolution as something terrifying, assuming an extremely leftist and ferocious countenance, as though once revolution came, all non-revolutionaries would have to die, so that people could only regard revolution with terror. In reality, revolution does not teach people to die but teaches people to live. This attitude of wanting people to "know what revolution means," caring only about the pleasure of one's own pronouncements, was also poisoned by the talent-plus-rogue formula.

Those who become radical quickly also become moderate quickly, and even decadent quickly. If they happen to be men of letters, they always have some justification for their changes, citing chapter and verse. For instance, when they want help from others, they invoke Kropotkin's theory of mutual aid; when they want to fight others, they invoke Darwin's theory of the struggle for survival. In all ages, anyone who has no fixed theory, whose changes in position cannot be traced, and who at any moment seizes upon the theories of any school as weapons—such a person may be called a rogue. Take the rogue of Shanghai: seeing a country man and woman walking down the road, he says, "Hey! The way you two are carrying on—that's an offense against public morals! You've broken the law!" He is using Chinese law. But if he sees a countryman urinating by the roadside, he says, "Hey! That's not permitted—you've broken the law—you should be hauled off to the police station!" This time he is using foreign law. But in the end it has nothing to do with law one way or another; once he has squeezed a few coins out of them, the matter is settled.

In China, last year's "revolutionary literary figures" were quite different from the year before. This was partly due to changed circumstances, but some of the "revolutionary literary figures" themselves harbored a disease they were prone to contract. "Revolution" and "literature" were connected tenuously, like two boats drawn close together: one was "revolution," the other "literature," with each of the author's feet planted on one. When conditions were favorable, the author pressed down harder on the revolution boat, clearly a revolutionary; when revolution was suppressed, he pressed down harder on the literature boat—he was nothing but a man of letters after all. Thus, those who the year before had advocated the most radical positions, insisting that all non-revolutionary literature should be swept away, last year were recalling the story of how Lenin liked to read the works of Goncharov (J.A. Gontcharov), and found that non-revolutionary literature had quite profound significance after all. And then there was the most thoroughgoing of revolutionary literary figures, Mr. Ye Lingfeng (葉靈鳳), who had depicted revolutionaries so thoroughly that he had them use my "Call to Arms" (Na Han) to wipe their backsides every time they went to the toilet—yet now, inexplicably, he was trailing along behind the so-called nationalist literary figures.

A similar example is Mr. Xiang Peiliang (向培良). When the revolution was gradually surging upward, he was very revolutionary; earlier, he had even said that young people should not only howl but should bare their wolf fangs. This was not bad in itself, but one should be careful, because the wolf is the ancestor of the dog, and once tamed, it will turn into a dog. Mr. Xiang Peiliang is now promoting a "human" art; he opposes the existence of class-based art, and instead divides humanity into good people and bad people—his art is a weapon in the "struggle between good and bad." Dogs, too, divide people into two kinds: their master and his kind are good people, while the poor and beggars are bad people in their eyes—bark at them or bite them. This is not the worst, though, for at least there is still a bit of wildness left. If they transform once more into a lapdog, pretending not to meddle in other people's affairs while actually serving the master faithfully, then they are just like the present-day celebrities who claim to have nothing to do with worldly matters and practice art for art's sake—fit only to ornament a university lecture hall.

Such somersaulting petty bourgeois, even when they are playing the revolutionary literary figure and writing revolutionary literature, are most likely to distort the revolution in their writing; and a distorted portrait is harmful to revolution, so their defection is not in the least to be regretted. When the revolutionary literary movement was in its ascendancy, many petty-bourgeois literary figures suddenly "transformed," and the concept of "sudden mutation" was used to explain this phenomenon. But we know that a so-called sudden mutation means that when A is changing into B, and several conditions are already in place but one is missing, then when that one condition appears, A suddenly becomes B. Take the freezing of water: the temperature must reach zero, and at the same time there must be a vibration in the air; without this, even at zero degrees the water still will not freeze—only when the air vibrates does it suddenly mutate into ice. So what looks like a sudden mutation on the outside is in fact nothing sudden at all. If the necessary conditions are absent, then even if someone claims to have mutated, in reality nothing has changed—and so some petty-bourgeois revolutionary literary figures who claimed one fine evening to have suddenly mutated soon enough suddenly mutated right back again.

Last year, the formation of the League of Left-Wing Writers in Shanghai was an important event. For by this time, the theories of Plekhanov (蒲力汗諾夫), Lunacharsky (盧那卡爾斯基), and others had been imported, enabling everyone to sharpen each other's thinking and become more solid and powerful. But precisely because they had become more solid and powerful, they suffered oppression and persecution of a severity rarely seen in the world, ancient or modern. And this oppression and persecution promptly exposed the true colors of those so-called revolutionary literary figures who had thought left-wing literature was about to steal the limelight and that writers were going to eat buttered bread offered up by laborers: some wrote letters of repentance, others turned around and attacked the Left-Wing League, to show that their insight had advanced yet another step this year. Although this was not a direct action of the Left-Wing League itself, it was a kind of cleansing—these authors, whether they changed or not, could never write anything good.

But can the existing left-wing writers produce good proletarian literature? I think that too is very difficult. This is because the current left-wing writers are still all intellectuals—the intelligentsia—and it is very hard for them to write about the reality of revolution. The Japanese Kuriyagawa Hakuson (廚川白村, H. Kuriyakawa) once raised a question: Must a writer have personally experienced what he describes? He answered: No, because the writer can observe and empathize. Thus, to write about theft, one need not personally steal; to write about adultery, one need not personally commit adultery. But I believe this is because the writer has grown up in the old society, is familiar with its conditions, and is accustomed to its characters—and so he can empathize. But regarding the conditions and characters of the proletariat, with which he has never had any connection, he will be helpless, or will produce erroneous depictions. Therefore, a revolutionary literary figure must, at the very least, share his life with the revolution, or deeply feel the pulse of the revolution. (The recent slogan of the Left-Wing League—"the proletarianization of the writer"—is a very correct understanding of this point.)

In present-day Chinese society, what one can most readily hope to see emerge is the rebellious, exposing, or protesting work of the petty bourgeoisie in revolt. Because they have grown up within this very class that is perishing, they understand it profoundly and hate it greatly, and the knife they thrust into it is the most deadly and forceful. Admittedly, some works that look revolutionary are not really trying to overthrow their own class or the bourgeoisie; rather, they hate and despair at their class's inability to reform itself, its inability to hold its position a little longer. From the proletarian point of view, this is no more than "brothers quarreling within the wall"—both sides are equally the enemy. Yet the result can still become a bubble in the tide of revolution. For such works, I believe there is really no need to call them proletarian literature, nor need the authors, for the sake of their future reputation, call themselves proletarian writers.

However, even works that merely attack the old society, if they do not clearly perceive the defects or see through to the root of the disease, can be harmful to revolution. But unfortunately, present-day writers—even revolutionary writers and critics—are often unable or unwilling to face current society squarely and know its inner workings, especially the inner workings of those they consider the enemy. Let me give one example at random: in the former "Lenin Youth," there was an article reviewing the Chinese literary scene that divided it into three schools. First was the Creation Society, as the proletarian literary school, discussed at great length; second was the Yusi (Threads of Talk) group, as the petty-bourgeois literary school, discussed much more briefly; and third was the Crescent Moon Society, as the bourgeois literary school, discussed even more briefly—less than a page. This plainly shows that the more this young critic considered a group to be the enemy, the less he had to say about it—that is, the less carefully he had examined it. Naturally, when reading, if we read something by the opposition, it is never as comfortable, invigorating, or beneficial as reading something by our own side. But if one is a fighter, I believe one must dissect the enemy before one's eyes even more thoroughly, in order to understand revolution and the enemy alike. The same applies to writing literary works: one should know not only the reality of revolution, but must also have deep knowledge of the enemy's situation and the present state of affairs from every angle, and only then determine the future course of revolution. Only by knowing the old clearly, seeing the new, understanding the past, and inferring the future can our literature have hope of development. This, I think, is something that writers under present conditions can accomplish, so long as they make the effort.

At present, as I have said, literature and art are suffering rarely-seen oppression and persecution, and a state of widespread famine has appeared. Not only revolutionary literature, but even works with the slightest tinge of discontent; not only works that criticize the present state of affairs, but even those that attack longstanding abuses—all are liable to be persecuted. This situation plainly demonstrates that the revolution of the ruling class up to now has been nothing more than a fight over an old chair. When pushing it over, the chair seems hateful enough, but once seized, it becomes a treasure—and at the same time one realizes that one is of one piece with the "old." More than twenty years ago, everyone said that Zhu Yuanzhang (朱元璋, the founder of the Ming dynasty) was a nationalist revolutionary, but in truth he was nothing of the kind: after becoming emperor, he honored the Mongol dynasty as "the Great Yuan" and killed Han Chinese even more savagely than the Mongols had. A slave who becomes master will never abolish the title of "lord"; his posturing is probably even more excessive, and more laughable, than his former master's. This is just like the Shanghai workers who, having scraped together a few coins and opened a small factory, treat their workers with a cruelty that is absolutely extreme.

In an old collection of anecdotal fiction—I have forgotten the title—there is a story about a military officer in the Ming dynasty who ordered a storyteller to tell him a tale. The storyteller told him about Tan Daoji (檀道濟)—a general of the Jin dynasty. When the story was finished, the officer ordered that the storyteller be given a beating. When asked why, he said: "Since he told me the story of Tan Daoji, he will certainly go tell Tan Daoji about me." Today's rulers have become just as neurasthenic as this officer—they are afraid of everything—and so in the publishing world they have installed rogues even more advanced than before, people you cannot recognize as rogues in form but who employ even more ruthless rogue methods: advertising, slander, intimidation; there are even some literary figures who have taken rogues as their patrons in order to secure safety and profit. Therefore, revolutionary literary figures must not only watch for the enemy in front of them, but must also guard against the turncoat spies on their own side—compared with straightforward literary struggle, this is far more exhausting, and it inevitably affects the literature itself.

Although Shanghai today still publishes a great heap of so-called literary magazines, in reality they amount to nothing. What the commercially-minded bookshops put out, fearful of getting into trouble, consists of the most innocuous articles possible, such as: "The mandate may certainly not go unrevolutioned, yet neither should it be revolutioned too much"—the distinguishing feature being that from beginning to end, reading it is exactly equivalent to not reading it. As for the official publications, or those that curry favor with officialdom, their authors are a motley rabble whose sole common purpose is to rake in a few cents of manuscript fees—"The Literature of the Victorian Era in England," "On Sinclair Lewis Winning the Nobel Prize"—they themselves do not believe the opinions they publish, nor do they value the articles they write. And so, I say, the literary magazines published in Shanghai today all amount to nothing; revolutionary literature has been suppressed, and the literary magazines published by the suppressors contain no literature worth seeing either. But does the ruling class truly have no literature? It does, only not of this kind—rather, it is their telegrams, their proclamations, their news reports, their "nationalist" literature, and the verdicts of their judges. A few days ago, for example, the Shenbao reported the case of a woman who sued her husband for forcing her into sodomy and beating her until her skin was bruised. The judge's verdict stated that there was no explicit provision in the law forbidding a husband from sodomizing his wife, and that bruised skin did not constitute impairment of physiological function, and therefore the suit could not be sustained. Now it is the husband who is suing his wife for "false accusation." I know nothing of the law, but I have studied a little physiology, and I know that when skin is beaten until it bruises, the physiological function of the lungs, liver, or intestines may indeed not be impaired, but the physiological function of the skin at the bruised area has certainly been impaired. In present-day China, though one encounters such things constantly and they are considered nothing remarkable, I believe that this alone can already give us a very clear picture of one aspect of society—more so than an ordinary novel or long poem.

Besides what I have discussed above, there is the so-called nationalist literature, and the martial-arts fiction that has been making a stir for quite some time now, which also deserves detailed dissection. But time has run out, and this will have to wait for another occasion. Let us stop here for today.

Appendix: Text as Originally Published

The literature of Shanghai's past began in the Shenbao period, and those who wrote were all men of talent. The literate class of that time could be roughly divided into two types: the gentleman and the man of talent. The gentleman read only the Four Books and Five Classics and the eight-legged essay, while the man of talent also read "Dream of the Red Chamber" beyond these. This is to say: the man of talent read "Dream of the Red Chamber" openly, while whether the gentleman actually read it in private remains unknown. Once Shanghai existed, the men of talent all came to Shanghai, for the man of talent is broad-minded and adapts anywhere; the gentleman, however, found foreign things somewhat "distasteful." Once the man of talent arrived in Shanghai's concessions, he encountered the courtesan. Ten or twenty young courtesans gathered together looked rather like "Dream of the Red Chamber." The patron compared himself to Jia Baoyu; he was the man of talent, so the courtesans were the beauties, and thus the beauty-and-talent novels were born. The content was mostly: only the man of talent appreciated these despised beauties; after enduring a thousand obstacles and ten thousand obstructions, they finally made a beautiful match—and such writing flourished for several years.

Later, in practice, they discovered that the beauties were only after money, and since it was wrong for beauties to want the man of talent's money, the man of talent devised methods of subduing the courtesans—not only not falling for their tricks but even putting them in their place. Books describing these various stratagems then appeared. In them were heroes who ultimately triumphed; the hero's composition was talent plus rogue. Such books also flourished for several years. At the same time appeared a pictorial, drawn by Wu Youru, depicting mostly madams beating prostitutes and ruffians extorting money. This pictorial had great influence, circulating in every province, and its legacy persists to this day: one often sees in textbook illustrations that the children drawn all have squinting eyes, faces full of horizontal flesh, and an air of ruffianry. In our time, the new rogue artist is Mr. Ye Lingfeng; Ye Lingfeng's drawings are derived from the English Beardsley, whose art belongs to the art-for-art's-sake school and comes from the Japanese ukiyo-e. Ukiyo-e mostly depicted courtesans and actors from the common folk—plump bodies, squinting eyes—so-called erotic eyes. However, Beardsley's figures are thin, because he was a Decadent; Decadents are all gaunt and despondent, a bit unable to handle plump women, and thus disliking them. As for Ye Lingfeng, he did not only draw rogues; for a period he also drew the proletariat—his workers also had squinting eyes and were stretching out particularly large fists. But I believe that proletarian art should be realist: workers as they actually look, without needing to make fists bigger than heads.

Chinese cinema today is still under the influence of this rogue style; the heroes in films are all slippery and oily, the same as the crafty young men who have lived too long in Shanghai and know how to "extort." It seems intended to make people believe that all good people must be rogues. The talent-plus-rogue novels gradually declined; the reason being that people in the interior could not understand them: "nai" for "you," "a-shi" for "is it so?" and the like. As for the talent-plus-beauty genre, there was one remarkable book: "The Story of Joan," introduced from abroad. In fact, only half of "Joan" had been translated, with the excuse that it was complete. This book was later taken up by Lin Qinnan, who translated it in full, and at the same time was furiously denounced by the earlier translator, who said he should not have translated the whole thing and thus lowered the value of the original. Only then did people learn that the reason only half had been translated before was that Joan remarried in the second half. This also reveals the marriage situation in China at the time. This type of mandarin-duck-and-butterfly novel was not struck a blow until the appearance of "New Youth," along with Hu Shizhi's "The Greatest Event in Life" in another form.

Afterward came the appearance of the new-talent Creation Society school. The Creation School was one of genius: art for art's sake, standing in opposition to the Literary Research Association in Shanghai at the same time. The Literary Research Association was art for life, and mostly spoke from the standpoint of the oppressed. It was simultaneously attacked from three sides: one side was the Creation Society—since the Creation School was the art of genius, the art-for-life Literary Research Association was inevitably somewhat "vulgar." Another side was the gentleman's school of those educated in America: in the gentleman's view, art should have nothing to do with the lower classes; art was only for lords and ladies to appreciate—saying "Yes" and "No," for instance—that was the gentleman's dignity. The third side was the mandarin-duck-and-butterfly school mentioned earlier; as for the mandarin-duck-and-butterfly school's "Fiction World," it only ceased publication last year.

Two years ago, revolutionary literature arose; it arose naturally because the masses and the youth had such a demand. When the expedition departed from Guangdong, the young people all rushed to practical work; at that time there was not yet any revolutionary literary movement. Only after the political environment changed and the revolution was frustrated did revolutionary literature in Shanghai become strongly demanded. However, the revolutionary literary movement of that time, in my opinion, had several errors in method and theory. First, they applied methods of movement that could only be used under a Soviet regime, and these methods were inappropriate given China's circumstances in every respect. Second, they made the general public understand revolution as something terribly frightening—an extremely left-leaning, ferocious countenance. As though once revolution came, all non-revolutionaries would have to die, making people regard revolution with terror. In reality, revolution does not teach people to die but teaches people to live. This attitude of deliberately making people "know what revolution means" was also poisoned by the talent-plus-rogue formula.

Whether by old logic or new, anyone who has no fixed theory but seizes upon theories as weapons may be called a rogue. By analogy: a Shanghai rogue sees a country man and woman walking down the road and says, "Hey! The way you two are carrying on—that's an offense against morality! You've broken the law!" And the result is that he squeezes some money out of them and the matter is settled. Furthermore, people in colonies frequently suffer similar oppression and humiliation. In China, last year's revolutionary literary figures were somewhat different from the year before. The year before they were Lenin; last year they just wanted art. Their two feet stood on two boats: one boat was revolution, the other was art. When revolution rose, they pressed firmly on the revolution boat; once revolution was suppressed, they ran to the art boat. This can equally explain why the most thoroughgoing revolutionary literary figure, Mr. Ye Lingfeng, has now inexplicably become a nationalist literary figure. As for why I keep picking on Ye Lingfeng—it is because I have a bit of a personal grudge with him: previously, Ye Lingfeng had been so thoroughly revolutionary that every time he went to the toilet he used my "Call to Arms" for wiping. A similar example is Mr. Xiang Peiliang. Xiang Peiliang was formerly my student, and now I must call him "student." At the height of revolutionary fervor, he once said that young people should not only shout but should also bite. Some criticized this as being rather like a wolf. And I too think the criticism is quite apt. However, the wolf is the ancestor of the dog; once tamed, the wolf will turn into a dog. Xiang Peiliang is now promoting a human art; he opposes the existence of class-based art. But according to him, humanity is also divided into good people and bad people. And similarly, dogs divide people into two kinds: the master who feeds them is of course a good person, while other poor people and beggars are bad people in their eyes. Such somersaulting petty bourgeois easily distort revolution when they write it; distorted, it is harmful to revolution, so their defection is not in the least to be regretted.

Petty-bourgeois revolutionary figures are fond of citing the theory of sudden mutation. As for sudden mutation, as we probably all already know, it means that when A is changing into B and all conditions are met except one, the moment that one condition appears, A becomes B. By analogy: the conditions for water to freeze require that the temperature be some degrees below zero, and at the same time there must be air vibration. If the air does not vibrate, even at some degrees below zero the water will not freeze. Thus, petty-bourgeois revolutionary figures who claim one fine evening to have suddenly mutated will soon suddenly mutate right back again.

The literature of the ruling class certainly cannot be written. But writing good proletarian literature is also not necessarily possible; this is because for intellectuals to write about the reality of revolution is very difficult. In Europe there seems to be such a question: must a literary figure who wants to write about theft have personally been a thief? I believe that actually being a thief may not be necessary, but the writer must live in a society with many incidents of theft, constantly hearing, seeing, and paying attention to the environment surrounding him. A revolutionary literary figure must have grown up in a society undergoing revolution. And the rebellious petty bourgeoisie, facing the perishing class they understand best, harbors great hatred, and the knife thrust into it is the most deadly and powerful. Attacking the old society is the same as advancing; there is no need, for the sake of reputation, to call oneself a proletarian writer. If one does not clearly perceive the defects of the old society and see through its diseases, that is equally harmful to revolution—and present-day Chinese revolutionary writers generally do not know the enemy's inner workings well. For instance, in the former "Lenin Youth," the Chinese literary world was divided into three schools: first, the Creation Society, as revolutionary; second, the Crescent Moon School, as counter-revolutionary; then the Yusi school, as the non-revolutionary petty bourgeoisie. In terms of discussion, the revolutionary Creation Society was discussed at especial length, the Yusi school at comparatively less, while the reactionary Crescent Moon School was discussed extraordinarily briefly. But I believe that in understanding revolution and the enemy, we would rather dissect our enemy more. Similarly, to write about revolution one must understand revolution's relationships, must deeply know the history of the past and the current situation from every angle, and only then project the future of revolution. Projecting the future is not prophecy, for prophecy is mere fantasy. Only by knowing the old, seeing the new, understanding the past, and inferring the future can our development have hope.

At present, literature and art are suffering oppression and persecution, and a widespread famine has appeared. Although great heaps of magazines are published, reading them is equivalent to not reading them, because their contents are all hollow. Yet even if hollow, we must still read, and we must discern the causes and reality of that hollowness. Revolution can be compared to someone beating an empty chair; when someone occupies the chair, he will suspect people are beating him. I recall an anecdote: in the Ming dynasty, a blind man told a military officer the story of the Jin dynasty officer Tan Daoji; the officer suddenly wanted to beat him, saying the blind man was cursing him. Today, the rulers are equally over-sensitive. Therefore, in the publishing world they have also installed rogues more advanced than before—people you cannot recognize as rogues in form, yet who employ even more ruthless rogue methods: advertising, intimidation, or even literary figures who have taken rogues as patrons. Thus, the new literary figure must pay even closer attention to the enemy in front and to betrayal within his own ranks. In struggle, using theory alone as a weapon is quite laborious; we must know more about the rulers' reality. The current situation in Shanghai—the strange proclamations, news reports, and judicial verdicts in the Shenbao—these are all the rulers' literature. For instance, a recent Shenbao item: a lawyer's wife sued her husband for beating her, and the verdict stated that a bruise does not constitute an injury, because it does not impair physiological function—it is merely a matter of morality. In physiology, we know that a bruise already indicates that the muscles have sustained damage. From this, we learn about the rulers' law and morality, so articles of this kind are not only good for idle amusement but also beneficial to our creative work. Let us stop here for today.

Shanghai's modern young gentlemen, when they wish to court modern young ladies, must first take the initial step: following them relentlessly—the technical term is "ding shao" (tailing). "Ding" means to stick fast like a nail and be impossible to dislodge; "shao" means the tail end, the rear. Rendered into classical Chinese, it might be expressed as "to follow stealthily on one's heels." According to tailing experts, the second step is "striking up conversation"; even if the lady scolds you, that is already quite promising, because once she scolds, there is an exchange of words, and so this too becomes the beginning of "striking up conversation." I always assumed this was a phenomenon peculiar to the modern foreign concessions, but upon reading the "Collection from Among the Flowers" (Huajianji), I discovered that such things already existed in the Tang dynasty. There one finds ten poems by Zhang Mi (張泌) to the tune of "Washing Brook Silk" (Huan Xi Sha), the ninth of which reads:

At dusk I follow her fragrant carriage into the imperial city, The east wind lightly lifts her embroidered curtain aside, She slowly turns her coquettish eyes, a smile brimming bright.

No word has yet been passed—what stratagem might do? Nothing for it but to feign drunkenness and follow along, Faintly one seems to hear: "What a brazen rogue!"

This is clearly identical with the modern method of tailing. If one were to translate it into vernacular verse, it might go something like this:

At night the rickshaw races down the road, The east wind blows the Indian silk blouse open wide, Revealing a nice plump leg, eyes tossing flirtatious glances with a giddy smile.

No way to strike up conversation—what's to be done? Nothing for it but to swagger along, smooth-talking, and keep on tailing, One seems to hear a scolding: "Drop dead, you scoundrel!"

But I suspect that in ancient texts, even earlier examples might be found, and I dearly hope that erudite scholars will enlighten me, for this would be of the utmost use to anyone engaged in research on the "history of tailing."

Judging from the general situation (we cannot obtain reliable statistics here), since last year the readership of creative fiction bearing the label "revolutionary" has been declining, and the trend in publishing has already shifted toward the social sciences. One cannot but call this a good sign. At first, young readers, bewitched by the incantations of advertisement-style criticism, believed that reading "revolutionary" creative works would show them a way forward—that both they themselves and society could be saved. And so they grabbed whatever came to hand and swallowed it in great gulps, only to find that much of it was not nourishment at all, but sour wine in new bags, rotten meat in red wrapping paper—the result being an itching in the chest, as if about to vomit.

Having suffered this bitter lesson, to turn instead to the fundamental, the substantive social sciences for a cure is, naturally, a proper step forward.

However, largely because of market demand, translations and works on the social sciences have now surged forth in swarms and clouds, and books of some value are jumbled together with utterly worthless ones on the bookstalls; readers who have just begun seeking accurate knowledge are already confused. Yet the new critics keep their mouths shut, while those who pass for critics seize the opportunity to dismiss everything with a single stroke: "Every Tom, Dick, and Harry."

At this point, what we need is still just a few solid, clear-minded critics who truly understand the social sciences and their literary theory.

Critics have existed in China for quite some time now. Within every literary group, there is generally a complete set of literary personages. At minimum: one poet, one novelist, and one critic who dutifully promotes the glory and achievements of his own group. All these groups proclaim their commitment to reform, claiming to be on the offensive against the old fortress, yet before they are even halfway there, they break into mutual brawling right beneath the walls of the old fortress, grappling until everyone is exhausted, and only then letting go—for since it was merely "grappling," there are no serious wounds, only panting for breath. As they pant, each side considers itself the victor and sings songs of triumph. The old fortress needs no garrison at all; those inside need only fold their arms, look down, and watch the comedy that these new enemies perform among themselves. The fortress says nothing, but it has won.

In these two years, although there has been no exceptionally brilliant creative work, from what I have seen among published volumes, Li Shouzhang's (李守章) "People on the March," Tai Jingnong's (臺靜農) "Son of the Earth," the first half of Ye Yongqin's (葉永秦) "A Small Decade," Rou Shi's (柔石) "February" and "Death of the Old Era," Wei Jinzhi's (魏金枝) "An Autobiography in Seven Letters," and Liu Yimeng's (劉一夢) "After Losing My Job" are, after all, outstanding works. Unfortunately, our famous critic Mr. Liang Shiqiu (梁實秋) is still echoing Mr. Chen Xiying (陳西瀅), which we may set aside here; Mr. Cheng Fangwu (成仿吾), having fondly recalled the past glory of the Creation Society, transformed himself overnight into "Shi Housheng" and then vanished like a shooting star; and Mr. Qian Xingcun (錢杏邨) has lately done nothing but wrestle with Mao Dun (茅盾) on the pages of The Pioneer, interleaving Kurahara Korehito passage after passage. In such a busy or deserted battlefield, the works of every author outside these literary cliques are either "dispatched" or silently killed off.

This time, the reading public's turn toward the social sciences is a good and proper turning point; it is beneficial not only in other respects but can also spur literature onto the correct, progressive path. Yet amid the chaos of output and the cold sneers of bystanders, it is all too easy for this to wither, and so what we need first of all is still—a few solid, clear-minded critics who truly understand the social sciences and their literary theory.

People whose bodies and spirits have already hardened will obstruct even the most trivial reform, ostensibly fearing inconvenience to themselves, but in reality fearing disadvantage to their interests. Yet the pretexts they put forward always manage to appear supremely fair-minded and dignified. This year's prohibition of the lunar calendar is, to be sure, a trifling matter of no great consequence, yet the merchants naturally wail as if the sky were falling. Nor is that all: even the unemployed drifters and company clerks of Shanghai frequently heave great sighs of indignation, some saying it is terribly inconvenient for the farmers' plowing, others that it is terribly inconvenient for sailors waiting for the tides. They suddenly find themselves thinking of the peasants in the countryside and the boatmen on the seas, with whom they have long had nothing to do. This truly looks like something approaching universal love.

As soon as the twenty-third of the twelfth month by the lunar calendar arrives, firecrackers begin popping everywhere. I asked a shop clerk: "This year you can still celebrate the old calendar New Year—does that mean next year you will definitely celebrate the new calendar New Year?" The reply was: "Next year is next year; we'll see about it when next year comes." He did not in the least believe he would be compelled to celebrate the solar New Year next year. Yet on the calendar, the lunar dates have indeed been deleted, leaving only the solar terms. Meanwhile, in the newspapers, an advertisement has appeared for "A 120-Year Combined Lunar-Solar Calendar." Splendid—they have already prepared the lunar calendar for the time of their great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren: one hundred and twenty years!

Though Mr. Liang Shiqiu (梁實秋) and his ilk greatly dislike the majority, the power of the majority is great and vital. Those who aspire to reform, if they do not deeply understand the hearts of the people and find ways to guide, improve, and advance them, then no matter how lofty their treatises or grand their theories—romantic or classical—these will have nothing to do with the people, and will merely amount to a few men in their studies admiring one another and congratulating themselves. If ever a "government of good men" should issue reform decrees, before long the people will have dragged things right back onto the old track.

True revolutionaries have their own distinctive insight. Take Mr. Ulyanov (烏略諾夫), for example: he included "customs" and "habits" within the concept of "culture," and moreover considered reforming these to be extremely difficult. I believe that if these are not reformed, then the revolution amounts to nothing—like a tower built on sand, collapsing in an instant. China's earliest anti-Manchu revolution was easily supported precisely because its slogan was "Restore the old order"—that is, "return to antiquity"—which readily won the approval of a conservative populace. But when afterward there was none of the prosperous era that historical precedent prescribes at the founding of a new dynasty, and people had lost their queues for nothing, there was widespread discontent.

Subsequent, more progressive reforms failed one after another—one ounce of reform met with ten pounds of reaction. As in the example above: one year's calendar prohibits the lunar dates, and in return comes a combined lunar-solar calendar spanning one hundred and twenty years.

Such a combined calendar will certainly find many welcoming it, because it is supported by customs and habits, and therefore has the backing of customs and habits behind it. The same applies to other matters: unless one penetrates deeply into the great mass of the people, studies and dissects their customs and habits, distinguishes the good from the bad, establishes standards for what to preserve and what to abolish, and carefully selects the methods of implementation for both preservation and abolition—then no matter what reform is attempted, it will be crushed by the rock of habit, or else merely float on the surface for a time.

This is no longer the time to sit in one's study, book in hand, and hold forth on religion, law, literature, art, and the like. Even if one wishes to discuss such matters, one must first understand customs and habits, and moreover possess the courage and tenacity to face their dark side squarely. For without seeing clearly, reform is impossible. To merely shout about the brightness of the future is to deceive one's own complacent self and one's complacent audience.

In Shanghai, making printing blocks is more convenient than elsewhere, and the quality also seems somewhat better. This is why the Sunday supplements and pictorial magazines of various daily newspapers, as well as the whatever-monthly pictorials of various bookstores, are produced here with more vigor than anywhere else. In these pictorials, apart from row upon row of commemorative photographs of distinguished gentlemen seated at the opening or closing ceremonies of this or that conference, there must invariably also be "ladies."

Why must the fair visages of these "ladies" be introduced to society? We need only look at the captions to understand. For example:

"Miss A, Queen of B Girls' School, fond of music."

"Miss C, outstanding student of D Girls' School, loves raising Pekingese dogs."

"Miss E, formerly enrolled at F University, the fifth daughter of Mr. G."

Then look at their attire: in spring it is all the latest fashion, tight-fitting with narrow sleeves; by summer, the trouser legs and sleeves have both been cut away, and they sit by the seaside—this is called "sea bathing," and since the weather is hot, it is perfectly appropriate; come autumn, the weather turns cool, but then, as it happens, the Japanese army invaded the Three Eastern Provinces, and so the pictorials suddenly featured ladies in white nurses' uniforms or in military dress shouldering rifles.

This is something that can delight readers, for it is rich in theatrical quality. China has always loved putting on shows. On the stages in the countryside, one often sees a pair of couplets hanging: on one side, "The stage is a little world," and on the other, "The world is a great stage." When performances are staged, since it is the countryside and they don't yet have pieces like "Emperor Qianlong Tours the South," what they usually put on is "Princess Shuangyang Pursues Di" or "Xue Rengui's Marriage Match," and the female warriors in these plays are called "lady generals" by the audience. With pheasant feathers in her headdress and twin swords in her hands (or a long spear with points at both ends), as soon as she steps onto the stage, the audience watches with even greater enthusiasm. They know perfectly well it is all just play-acting, yet they watch with even greater enthusiasm all the same.

Soldiers who trained for many years, at the sound of a single drumbeat, suddenly all became devotees of non-resistance. And so literary gentlemen and scholars from distant parts began holding forth about such legendary classical tales as "beggars slaying the enemy," "butchers dying for righteousness," and "remarkable women saving the nation"—hoping that at the sound of a single gong, some unexpected character would appear to "bring glory to the country." And at the same time, illustrations of these legends duly appeared in the pictorials. But at least they had not yet invoked the single streak of white light from a sword-immortal, so one could still consider it relatively grounded.

But let there be no misunderstanding. I am not saying that "ladies" should all be shut up in their embroidery chambers. I am merely saying that when gallant troops lay down their arms and misses take up rifles instead, it is rich in theatrical quality—that is all.

There are also facts to prove it. First, no one has ever seen a photograph of a nursing corps from the Japanese "punitive army against China." Second, there are no lady generals in the Japanese military. Yet they have certainly taken action. This is because the Japanese keep doing things as doing things and play-acting as play-acting, and never mix the two up.

It is precisely those Japanese just mentioned who, when they write articles discussing the national character of the Chinese, often include an item called "skilled at propaganda." But looking at their explanation, the word "propaganda" here does not seem to mean the ordinary "Propaganda"—rather, it means "lying to the outside world."

There is indeed a shadow of truth in this characterization. For example: the education funds have been spent entirely, yet they still have to open a few schools to keep up appearances; nine-tenths of the people in the nation are illiterate, yet they must invite a few holders of doctorates to go and lecture to Westerners on China's spiritual civilization; even now, people are tortured at will, beheaded at will, and yet they always manage to prop up a few Western-style "model prisons" for foreigners to inspect. Moreover, generals who are far from the front lines insist on sending grandiose telegrams declaring they wish to "lead the vanguard for the nation." And young gentlemen students who won't even attend their physical exercise classes insist on donning military uniforms and proclaiming they will "destroy the enemy before breakfast."

However, behind all of this there is still at least a shadow of substance: there are still a few schools, a few doctorates, a few model prisons, a few telegrams, a few sets of military uniforms. So to call it "lying" is not quite right. What I would call it is "putting on a show."

But this universal show-putting is actually worse than real theater. Real theater lasts only a moment; when the actors finish the play, they return to their normal state. Yang Xiaolou (杨小楼) performs "Going to the Feast Alone with a Single Blade," and Mei Lanfang (梅兰芳) performs "Daiyu Burying the Flowers"—they are Guan Yunchang and Lin Daiyu only while on stage, and once they step off, they become ordinary people again. So there is no great harm in it. But if, after performing their roles once, they were to carry around the Green Dragon Crescent Blade or the hoe forever after, calling themselves Lord Guan or Sister Lin, singing in their strange stage voices without cease, well then, one could really only conclude they had gone delirious with fever.

Unfortunately, since "the world is a great stage," those who are able to put on a universal show rarely find an occasion to step offstage. For instance, when Miss Yang Manhua (杨缦华) used her own natural, unbound feet to kick to pieces the Belgian women's notion that "Chinese women bind their feet"—to save face, to employ a stratagem to extricate herself—that is still quite forgivable. But in my view, it should have stopped right there. Now she has gone home to her residence, written it up into an essay, which is the equivalent of going backstage but still refusing to put down the Green Dragon Crescent Blade. And then she sent that essay to China's Shenbao for publication—which is virtually carrying the Green Dragon Crescent Blade and singing all the way home! Does the author truly forget that Chinese women once bound their feet, and that even now there are still some in the process of binding them? Or does she believe that all Chinese have already hypnotized themselves into thinking that every woman in the nation has put on high-heeled leather shoes?

This is merely one example; there are plenty more of the same kind. But I fear it won't be long before dawn breaks.

Nowadays there are people who fancy themselves greatly insightful, going around saying "art for humanity." But art of this kind simply does not exist in our present society. Just look: even those who speak of "art for humanity" have already divided humanity into right and wrong, or good and bad, and have set about barking at those they deem wrong or bad.

Therefore, art in the present age will inevitably, on the one hand, meet with contempt, cold indifference, and persecution, while on the other hand gaining sympathy, support, and advocacy.

The Yiba Art Society will not escape this pattern either. For within this old society, it is new, young, and progressive.

In China of late, there have really been no artists to speak of. Those who style themselves "artists" owe their fame not so much to their art as to their personal histories and the titles of their works—deliberately making them sound alluring, ethereal, bizarre, or profoundly imposing. Through a combination of deception and intimidation, they make people feel that here is something quite extraordinary. But the age moves forward without ceasing. Now works by new, young, nameless artists stand here before us, and with clear consciousness and steadfast effort, amid the wilderness of tangled undergrowth, vigorous new shoots are emerging, growing visibly stronger day by day.

Naturally, these shoots are still very small. But precisely because they are small, our hope lies on this side.

My words, too, are addressed only to this side—as above.

May 22, 1931.

On August 31 of this year, in the "Free Talk" column of the Shenbao, I came across another installment of "Miss Yang Manhua's Miscellaneous Impressions from Her European Travels," signed "Jiping." One passage in it struck me as highly entertaining, and I reproduce it here verbatim: "...One day we went to a village in Belgium. Many women competed to come look at my feet. I raised my foot and showed it to them. Only then were their curious doubts put to rest. One woman said, 'We have never seen Chinese people before either.

But ever since we were little, we have heard that the Chinese have tails (i.e., queues), that they all take concubines, and that the women all have small feet, walking with a swaying, tottering gait. Now we realize these claims are untrue. Please forgive our misconceptions.' There was also one person who fancied herself well-acquainted with East Asian affairs. With a mocking attitude she said, 'China's warlords are so tyrannical. Everywhere there are soldiers and bandits. The people live a life of hell.' She said a whole pile of such specious remarks. I said, 'Such hearsay is entirely without foundation.' A certain gentleman traveling with us also replied with a rather comical remark: 'How could the likes of you possibly understand the Great Republic of China, a nation with a history of several thousand years? Once our revolution succeeds, we will simply have to take a microscope to examine your Belgium!' And with that, everyone laughed and dispersed."

Our Miss Yang, though she conquered the Belgian women with her honorable feet and brought glory to the nation, nevertheless harbors two "misconceptions" of her own. First, we Chinese did indeed once have tails (i.e., queues), did bind feet, and did take concubines—and are still taking them now. Second, Miss Yang's feet cannot represent the feet of all Chinese women, just as female students studying abroad cannot represent all Chinese women. Most students abroad come from wealthy families or are sent by the government, precisely in order to bring future glory to their families or their nation. How can impoverished women who receive no education be mentioned in the same breath? Therefore, even at present, there are in fact still quite a number of women with bound feet who "walk with a swaying, tottering gait."

As for hardship, that scarcely needs much discussion. One need only look at the same Shenbao to find how many "appeals for peace" in the form of telegrams and communiqués, how many advertisements soliciting emergency relief donations, how many reports of mutinies and kidnappings there are. The young gentlemen and ladies studying abroad may be too far away to claim knowledge of these things, but since they are capable of thinking about microscopes, can they not also think about telescopes? Besides, why should telescopes even be necessary? In the very same "Miscellaneous Impressions from Miss Yang Manhua's European Travels," she goes on to say:

"...It is said that the poverty of our embassies and consulates did not begin just today. However, in recent years the situation has been going from bad to worse. For instance, on our National Day or other major commemorative occasions, protocol requires entertaining foreign guests and holding grand celebrations. The idea is to celebrate the flourishing fortune of our nation

and at the same time strengthen ties with friendly nations. In the past, embassies and consulates invariably prepared lavish banquets to entertain distinguished guests. But last year, due to strained finances, they switched to tea receptions. Judging from the present situation, I fear that in the future even tea receptions may become impossible. Among nations, the one that pays the most attention to face in international affairs is Japan. Their government would rather make especially severe cuts to administrative expenditures, but for the funding of embassies and consulates abroad, they are most generous. On this point alone, we already come off poorly by comparison."

Embassies and consulates represent their home country. As Miss Yang herself says, they are meant to "celebrate the flourishing fortune of our nation." Yet they are experiencing a "trend from bad to worse." Mencius said, "If the common people do not have enough, how can the ruler have enough?" From this, one can well imagine what kind of life the people are living. And yet the women of little Belgium are, in the end, simple souls, and they did finally ask for forgiveness. If they truly "knew the citizens of the Great Republic of China with its history of several thousand years" and their often incurable disease of deceiving themselves and others, now that would really be a loss of face.

If things are like this, then what is to be done? I think all we can do is what they did—"laugh and disperse."

The appearance of this kind of "smooth" translation dates back quite a long time already, and since it involves great literary figures and great theorists of translation, nobody deigns to pay attention to it. But because I happened upon this item while leafing through the manuscript of my collected "Compendium of Model Translations in the Smooth Style," I shall bring it up once more.

Now then, this particular item appeared in the Shibao on August 3 of the nineteenth year of the Republic of China, under a headline in the largest typeface reading "Needle Piercing Both Hands...," and the article read as follows:

"A Chinese merchant who had been captured by the Communist Party and ransomed with money, having fled Changsha, arrived yesterday in Hankou seeking refuge with two attendants. The master and servants alike were dripping with blood. He told his friends: 'In Changsha there are spies working for the Communist Party, so a large number of the propertied class were arrested on the morning of the 29th. We were seized on the night of the 28th. They pierced our hands with needles and weighed us on a scale.' As he spoke, he held out his two hands and unwound the cloth to show the holes where they had been pierced, still dripping with blood. ...(Dentsu telegram from Hankou, August 2)"

This is, naturally, "smooth"—though if one pauses to think for even a moment, certain points may seem somewhat dubious. For example: first, the master being of the propertied class, of course he would be "dripping with blood," but his two servants were presumably poor men—why should they also be "dripping with blood"? Second, what was the purpose of "piercing hands with needles and weighing them on a scale"—were they perhaps determining criminal charges by weight? However, despite all this, the passage remains "smooth," because in society, the actions of the Communist Party have always been described as bizarre and outlandish; moreover, anyone who has ever read the "Jade Calendar" knows that in one of the courts of the Ten Kings of Hell, there is a method of weighing sinners on a celestial balance. So "weighing them on a scale" is not particularly surprising either. Only the fact that for the weighing they used not a scale hook but a "needle" seems somewhat peculiar. Fortunately, on the same day, I happened to see the same Dentsu telegram in a Japanese-language newspaper, the Shanghai Nippo, and only then did I understand: it was because the translator of the Shibao, refusing to be constrained by "hard translation" and insisting on being "smooth," had become somewhat lacking in "faithfulness."

If one were to translate it a bit more "faithfully, though not smoothly," it should roughly read as follows: "...The master and servants related their experiences, colored by terror and blood, to the local Chinese, saying: 'In the Communist army there are those familiar with the situation in Changsha... We were arrested at midnight on the 28th. When dragged away, holes were pierced in our wrists, and wire was threaded through them, stringing several people or several dozen people together in a line.' As he spoke, he showed them his hands wrapped in blood-soaked strips of cloth..."

Only then does it become clear that it was not "the master and servants" themselves who were "dripping with blood," but rather their "account of their experiences." The two servants, in fact, had not a single hole in their hands. The thing used to pierce the hands, though written in Japanese as "needle-metal" (harigane), must be translated as "wire"—not "needle"; needles are for sewing clothes. As for "weighing them on a scale"—there is not even a shadow of that.

Our "friendly nation's" good friends are most fond of propagating bizarre tales about China, especially concerning the "Communist Party." Four years ago, they talked about "nude parades" as if they were absolutely real, and Chinese people followed along, repeating the story for months. The truth is that it is the police who thread wire through the hands of colonial revolutionaries and lead them away in chains—this is the practice of so-called "civilized" peoples. The Chinese do not yet know this method, and wire is not a product of an agrarian society. From the Tang to the Song dynasties, due to superstition, there was indeed a practice of threading iron chains through the collarbones of "sorcerers" to prevent them from transforming, but this has long been abandoned, and hardly anyone knows of it anymore. The people of civilized nations take their own civilized methods and foist them upon China, not realizing that the Chinese are not yet so civilized—even the translators in Shanghai do not understand it. They stubbornly refuse to use wire for the threading and simply follow the method used in the Halls of King Yama, "weighing" the prisoners and being done with it.

The rumor-makers and those who help spread rumors have all revealed their true colors at once.

Mr. Zhang Ziping (张资平) is said to be the "most progressive" of "proletarian writers." While you are all still "germinating," still "breaking ground," he has already begun to harvest. This is what progress means—striding forward at a run, leaving everyone else in his dust. But if you were to follow his tracks, you would see him running straight into the "Lequn Bookstore."

Mr. Zhang Ziping was formerly a writer of love-triangle novels, and in his works, women's sexual desire is even harder to restrain than men's—the woman comes seeking the man; the hussy, oh the hussy, she deserves to suffer! This is naturally not proletarian fiction. But once the author changes direction, then "when one man attains the Way, even his chickens and dogs ascend to heaven"—how much more so the mortal remains of an immortal! The Collected Works of Zhang Ziping still merit reading, you see. This is harvest, do you understand?

And there is yet more harvest! The Shenbao reports that this year, the students of Daxia University have respectfully invited "Mr. Zhang Ziping, so worshipped by the youth" to teach "the study of the novel." According to old Chinese custom, the English teacher invariably ends up teaching foreign history, and the Chinese literature teacher invariably ends up teaching ethics—so how much more natural that the novel-writing teacher should have a belly full of "novel studies"! If he couldn't, how could he have produced novels in the first place? Can we be sure that Homer had no "Method of Epic Composition," or that Shakespeare had no "General Introduction to Dramatic Studies"?

Alas, from now on everyone will know how to triangle and how to love—you fancy a woman, do you? But most pitiable are those young people who are not in Shanghai and can only "worship from afar," unable to enroll at the master's door, and who cannot attend in person these magnificent "novel studies" lectures. I shall now distill the essence of the Collected Works of Zhang Ziping and his "novel studies" and present them below, offered from afar to these devotees of worship as a kind of "quenching one's thirst by gazing at plums." And that is—

February 22.

It has long been the custom in China that when an emperor feels secure on his throne or when he is on the verge of losing it, he invariably tries to cozy up to men of letters. When secure, it is called "laying down arms and cultivating the arts" — a bit of window dressing. When in trouble, it is because he suddenly believes they truly possess the great Way to "govern the state and bring peace to the world," and wants to consult them once more. To put it bluntly, it is what the novel Dream of the Red Chamber calls "desperately trying any doctor when the illness is grave."

When "Emperor Xuantong" had abdicated and was sitting around in boredom, our Dr. Hu Shizhi (胡适之) once performed precisely this kind of service. After the visit — curiously enough — people first wanted to know how they had addressed each other. The Doctor replied:

"He called me 'Sir,' and I called him 'Your Majesty.'"

At the time, it seems they did not discuss any grand affairs of state, for this "Majesty" subsequently only composed a few doggerel poems in the vernacular, remained bored as ever, and ended up being evicted from the Golden Throne Hall. Now, however, he is apparently on the rise again — rumor has it he intends to go to the Three Eastern Provinces to be emperor once more. Meanwhile, in Shanghai, the news is that "Chiang Summons Hu Shizhi and Ding Wenjiang (丁文江)": "Special telegram from Nanjing: Ding Wenjiang and Hu Shi have come to the capital for an audience with Chiang. Their visit was made at Chiang's summons, to be consulted on the general situation..." (Shenbao, October 14). This time, no one asks how they addressed each other.

Why? Because everyone already knows — this time it is: "I called him 'Chairman'..."!

Liu Wendian (刘文典), President of Anhui University, was locked up for quite a few days because he refused to say "Chairman," and was released on bail only with great difficulty. An old fellow provincial, a former colleague — the Doctor certainly knew all about it. And so: "I called him 'Chairman'"!

Nor does anyone ask what was "consulted."

Why? Because that too is already known — it was "the general situation." Moreover, this "general situation" involves none of the troublesome debates between "one-party rule by the Kuomintang" and "British-style freedom," nor the tedious arguments between "knowing is difficult, acting is easy" and "knowing is easy, acting is difficult." And so the Doctor came forth.

Dr. Luo Longji (罗隆基) of the "Crescent Moon" school declared: "Fundamentally reorganize the government... a government that accommodates talents from across the nation representing all political views... Political opinions can be sacrificed, should be sacrificed." ("The Shenyang Incident.")

Talents representing all political views, forming a government, and then sacrificing their political views — such a "government" is truly miraculous. Yet that the advocate of "knowing is difficult, acting is easy" should actually "consult" with someone who holds that "knowing is difficult, and acting is no easier" — that, at least, is an omen of things to come.

China's proletarian revolutionary literature was born at the juncture of today and tomorrow. It grew under slander and oppression, and finally, in the deepest darkness, its first chapter was written in the blood of our comrades.

Our toiling masses have always suffered nothing but the most violent oppression and exploitation. They never received even the charity of basic literacy education, and could only endure in silence as they were butchered and annihilated. The forbiddingly complex pictographic script further denied them any opportunity for self-study. When the intellectually awakened youth became conscious of their vanguard mission, they were the first to raise the battle cry. This battle cry terrified the rulers just as much as the rebellious shouts of the toiling masses themselves. The running-dog literati promptly launched their attack en masse — some fabricating rumors, others personally acting as informers — yet all of it done in the dark, all anonymously, proving only that they themselves were creatures of darkness.

The rulers also knew that their running-dog literati could not withstand proletarian revolutionary literature. And so, on one hand, they banned books and periodicals, shut down bookstores, promulgated vicious publication laws, and put writers on wanted lists. On the other hand, they resorted to the ultimate measure: arresting and imprisoning left-wing writers, secretly executing them — executions that to this day have never been publicly announced. This proves on one side that they are creatures of darkness hurtling toward extinction, and on the other, it confirms the strength of China's proletarian revolutionary literary camp. For as the biographical sketches enumerate, the ages, the courage, and above all the achievements in the daily works of our several murdered comrades are more than enough to silence the entire pack of running dogs and stop them from barking. Yet our comrades have been assassinated — this is naturally a considerable loss for proletarian revolutionary literature, and a source of great grief for us. But proletarian revolutionary literature continues to grow, for it belongs to the vast revolutionary toiling masses. As long as the masses exist for one more day, as long as they grow stronger for one more day, proletarian revolutionary literature will grow for one more day. The blood of our comrades has proven that proletarian revolutionary literature and the revolutionary toiling masses suffer the same oppression, endure the same slaughter, wage the same struggle, and share the same fate — it is the literature of the revolutionary toiling masses.

Now, the warlords' reports already state that even sixty-year-old women have been "infected by heretical doctrines," and the Settlement police constantly subject even elementary school children to searches. Apart from the guns and cannons they have obtained from imperialism and their few running dogs, they have nothing left — all they have are enemies old and young — not to mention the youth. And all these enemies of theirs stand on our side.

We now commemorate our fallen warriors with the utmost grief and remembrance. This is also to engrave in memory the first page in the history of China's proletarian revolutionary literature — a page recorded in the blood of our comrades, forever exposing the enemy's base savagery and inspiring our unceasing struggle.

At the end of the sixteenth century, the Spanish writer Cervantes (西万提斯) composed a great novel called Don Quixote. It tells of this Mr. Quixote who had read so many tales of chivalry that he lost his wits and insisted on emulating the knights-errant of old. Clad in a suit of battered armor, astride a scrawny nag, with a single squire in tow, he wandered hither and thither, intent on slaying demons, subduing monsters, stamping out tyranny, and succoring the weak. But alas, his times were no longer so quaintly antique. And so he made himself the butt of endless jokes, suffered blow after blow, was finally taken in by a great hoax, sustained a serious injury, limped home in utter ignominy, and died in his own bed — only on his deathbed realizing that he was merely an ordinary man and by no means any great knight-errant.

This literary allusion was quite popular in China last year, and the notable who received this posthumous epithet seemed none too pleased about it. But in truth, this kind of bookworm was a Spanish bookworm. In China, where people have always loved to preach the "Doctrine of the Mean," such a creature could never exist. When Spaniards fall in love, they go serenade the lady beneath her window every night. When they believe in the old faith, they burn and slaughter heretics. When they make revolution, they smash the churches and kick out the king. But our Chinese men of letters — don't they always claim the woman seduced them first? Don't they say all religions come from the same source? Don't they advocate preserving temple properties? And after the revolution, wasn't Xuantong still permitted to play emperor in the palace for years on end?

I recall that newspapers once reported a few shop-boys who had become so besotted with novels about swordsmen and immortals that they suddenly wanted to go to Mount Wudang to study the Way. Now that was rather similar to Don Quixote. But thereafter, not a word of follow-up appeared — whether they too performed wondrous exploits, or simply went back home before long. Judging by the old rule of the "Doctrine of the Mean," the most likely outcome is that they went home.

The next Chinese-style "Don Quixote" to appear was the "Youth Volunteer Corps to Aid Ma." They were not soldiers, yet they insisted on going to the battlefield. The government wanted to appeal to the League of Nations, but they insisted on taking matters into their own hands. The government forbade them to go, but they insisted on going. China now has at least some railways, but they insisted on walking every step of the way. The north is cold, but they insisted on wearing only padded jackets. In warfare, weapons are of paramount importance, but they insisted on emphasizing spirit alone. All of this is indeed very "Don Quixote." And yet, since they are Chinese "Don Quixotes," there are differences: he was alone, they are a whole corps; he was sent off with mockery, they were sent off with cheers; he was met with astonishment, while they too were met with cheers; he was quartered in the depths of the mountains, they were quartered in the town of Zhenru; he tilted at windmills in a flour mill, they amused themselves with combs in Changzhou and, lo and behold, encountered beautiful women — what luck! (See the December "Free Talk" column of the Shenbao.) The difference in suffering and pleasure between them is just so — alas!

True enough, there are far too many novels from all ages and lands. In them one finds "carrying one's own coffin to battle," "cutting off a finger as a pledge," "weeping at the court of Qin," "swearing oaths to Heaven." From constant exposure to such tales, it is indeed hard to avoid people who haul coffins about, chop off fingers, weep at the Mausoleum of Sun Yat-sen, and swear oaths of departure. Yet when Dr. Hu Shizhi (胡适之) was preaching the Literary Revolution during the May Fourth Movement, he already insisted on "not using classical allusions." Now, in the realm of action, it seems even more fitting to do without them.

Novels dealing with twentieth-century warfare — the slightly older ones include Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, Leng's War; the newer ones include Serafimovich's The Iron Flood and Fadeyev's The Rout — contain nothing like this "Youth Corps." And that is precisely why they actually fought.

Of all the so-called critical writings directed at us over the past year and a half, the one I find most suffocatingly comical is a piece by Mr. Chang Yansheng (常燕生) in a monthly called Long Night, where, putting on a fair-minded face, he pronounced that my works would have at least ten years of life left in them. I recall that a few years ago, when Kuangbiao ceased publication, this same Mr. Chang Yansheng also published a piece whose gist was: Kuangbiao attacked Lu Xun, and now no publisher is willing to print it — who knows (!) whether Lu Xun didn't collude with the bookshop owners to suppress it? This was followed by effusive praise of the magnanimity of the Beiyang warlords. I still have some memory, so behind this latest fair-minded face I can still dimly make out the brand of that earlier essay. At the same time, I am reminded of Professor Chen Yuan's (陈源) method of criticism: first cite a few merits, to demonstrate impartiality, then follow up with a long catalogue of grave offenses — grave offenses arrived at through impartial deliberation. Offsetting merit against sin, at the end of the day, the verdict is always "academic bandit," fit to have his head displayed on a pole beneath the banner of the "upright gentlemen." Thus my experience is: denunciation may do no harm, but praise is terrifying — at times it is perilous in the extreme. All the more so when this Mr. Chang Yansheng reeks from head to toe of the five-colored flag. Even if he genuinely wished to grant my work immortality, to me it would feel rather like Emperor Xuantong suddenly being seized by imperial pleasure and graciously bestowing upon me the posthumous title of "Wenzhong." In the midst of my suffocating amusement, I can only tremble in awe, tip my hat, bow deeply, and respectfully decline the honor.

But in another issue of the same Long Night, there appeared an essay by Mr. Liu Dajie (刘大杰) — these essays, it seems, were not included in The Chinese Literary Debate — which I read through to the end with genuine gratitude. Perhaps this is precisely because, as the author himself says, we have never known each other and there is no personal grudge between us. What I found most beneficial, however, was that the author devised a plan for me: in the midst of such encirclement from all sides, I should lay down my pen, go abroad for a while; and he offered the well-meant counsel that leaving a few blank pages in the story of one's life is not really so important. That leaving a few blank pages in a mere individual's life story, or even having the whole book be blank, or indeed having the whole book smeared black, will not cause the earth to explode — this I had long known. The unexpected benefit I gained this time was that, after thirty years of vaguely sensing something without being able to articulate the concise guiding principles for writing classical prose and being a good person, I suddenly grasped the reins.

The formula is: To write classical prose and be a good person, one must write a great deal and still end up with nothing more than a blank page.

Our old teachers who taught us composition never imparted anything like Ma's Grammar or Methods of Essay Writing. Day in, day out, it was only: read, write, read, write. If you wrote badly, you read more and wrote more. But they never said where the faults lay, or how one ought to write. A dark alley — you groped your way through entirely on your own, and whether you made it through or not, everyone left it up to fate. But occasionally — and truly it was "occasionally" and one "didn't know how" — the red corrections on one's essay would grow fewer, while the passages left untouched, and even marked with dense circles of approval, would multiply. The student would then be overjoyed and would write in just this way — truly one didn't know why oneself, it was simply "in just this way" — and keep at it. After years and months, the teacher would no longer revise your essays but merely append comments at the end such as "well-read and well-written, neither rambling nor truncated." At that point, you could be considered "accomplished." — Naturally, if the eminent critic Mr. Liang Shiqiu (梁实秋) were asked, he would probably say it was not accomplished at all. But I am speaking of common convention, so let me follow convention for now.

In this kind of essay, the thesis naturally must be clear; what opinion you hold is of secondary importance. For example, suppose one were writing an essay on "A Craftsman Who Wishes to Do Good Work Must First Sharpen His Tools." One could argue from the affirmative, elaborating that "if the tools are not sharp, the work will not be good" — that would be fine. Or one could argue from the negative, insisting that "skill comes first for a craftsman; if skill is not mastered, then even with sharp tools the work will not be good" — that would also be perfectly fine. Even regarding the emperor: one could say "His Majesty the Son of Heaven is sagely and enlightened, and the minister's crime deserves death" — that would be fine. Or one could say the emperor is no good and should be killed with a single stroke — that too would be fine, for our Master Mencius said beforehand: "I have heard of the execution of the tyrant Zhou, but I have not heard of the regicide of a sovereign." We, as disciples of the sages, hold precisely this view. But in any case, from beginning to end, layer by layer, one must make one's argument clear: is it that His Majesty is sagely and enlightened, or that he deserves one stroke of the blade? Or, if one approves of neither, one may declare at the end: "Though his tyranny was extreme, there remains the bond between ruler and minister; the gentleman does not go to excess; I humbly suggest banishing him to the borderlands would suffice." Such a method of writing would probably not be disapproved of by the teacher either, for the "Doctrine of the Mean" is also one of the teachings of our ancient sages.

However, the above pertains to the late Qing dynasty. Had it been the early Qing, and someone gone and informed on you, you might well have been "exterminated to the ninth degree of kinship" — even proposing "banishment to the borderlands" would not do. At such times, they would not bother discussing Mencius or Confucius with you. Now the revolution has just succeeded, and the situation is probably similar to the founding days of the Qing dynasty. (Unfinished)

This is a small portion of "Night Notes, No. 5." "Night Notes" was something I began in 1927, intending to jot down occasional thoughts by lamplight and collect them in a volume. That year I published two pieces. After arriving in Shanghai, moved by the savagery of the massacres, I wrote another piece and a half, titled "Atrocities," in which I first discussed such things as the crucifixion of Christians by the Japanese shogunate and the cruelty of the Russian tsar toward revolutionaries. But before long, I encountered a wave of fierce denunciation of humanitarianism, and I used this as an excuse to be lazy and stopped writing. By now even the manuscript has disappeared.

Then, the year before last, Rou Shi (柔石) was about to take up a position as editor of a magazine at a bookshop and asked me to write something casual, something not too headache-inducing to read. That night I again thought of doing "Night Notes" and settled on this title. The general idea was to argue that in China, both writing prose and being a good person must have ancient precedent, yet one must not copy entire passages wholesale; rather, one must patch things together from all directions so that the seams don't show — only then is it considered the height of perfection. So I wrote at great length, yet it still amounted to nothing — and critics would call it a fine essay, or pronounce its author a fine person. The root cause of the utter lack of progress in everything in society lies right here. I didn't finish that night and went to bed. The next day Rou Shi came to visit, and I showed him what I had written. He furrowed his brow, thinking it was a bit too verbose and worrying it would take up too much space. So I agreed with him to translate a short piece instead, and set this aside.

Now more than a year has passed since Rou Shi's murder, and I chanced upon this manuscript among my scattered papers — the grief is truly unbearable. I wanted to complete the full text, but in the end I could not do it. The moment I set pen to paper, my thoughts immediately wandered to other things. What the ancients called "both the man and his instrument are gone" — I suppose this is what it looks like. For now, I simply append this half-essay here as a memorial to Rou Shi.

Recorded on the night of April 26, 1932.

Lu Xun Complete Works/en/Erxinji

Contents

二心集

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Appendix: Text as Originally Published

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