Transcultural Studies, 8 (2012), 171-185.

ROBERT IRVING

STRUGGLE BETWEEN ‘HUMANITY’ AND ‘PARTY SPIRIT’ IN MAOIST CHINA—THE CASE OF DENGKE AND

From humble beginnings, Chen Dengke developed into a writer of some prominence in China. As illiterate peasant soldier was taught to read and write by Party cadres during the 1940s and in 1950 was chosen to study at the Central Literary Study Institute, where he came under the tutelage of the Stalin prize-winning writer and literary doyen Ding Ling. The 1950s mark a period of literary education for Chen Dengke, which saw a marked development in his writing as he experimented with different narrative techniques and subject matter. The official responses to his experimentation illustrate the operation of the Chinese paradigm of the socialist realist aesthetics during this period.1 The 1950s can also be regarded as a period of political education for Chen. An examination of the way in which his naïveté was shattered by the 1957 Anti- Rightist Campaign holds wider relevance for the dilemma faced by writers, both in terms of intellectual output and human relationships, as their sense of humanity (renxing 人性) came into conflict with Party spirit (dangxing 党性). The latter mandated for Party members, just as did partiinost for their Soviet counterparts, blind obedience to the Party above all. We shall see that despite being compelled to criticize his teacher Ding Ling, Chen Dengke maintained the close relationship in the post- period, giving credence to Thomas Gold’s thesis that political movements gave rise to ritualistic behavior and surface acquiescence to the comradeship ethics while friendships endured.2 To examining these factors, and Chen’s own attitude to what he wrote and how he was influenced by the political climate, it is necessary to examine his own contemporary and later writings on this period. Chen’s narration, as a reconstruction of his life and a reflection on it, represents on the one hand a perception determined by the “truth of the present.”3 Such autobiographical

1. The evolving Chinese socialist realist aesthetics, initially based on the definitions of socialist realism put forward at the first Soviet Writers’ Congress in 1934 in Moscow, was determined by successive pronouncements from above, such as ’s Report at the First National Congress of Literary and Art Workers (1949) at which Mao Zedong’s “Talks at the ’an Conference on Literature and Art” were officially established as the foundation of national literary policy after the founding of the PRC. The socialist realist aesthetics was also cross-fertilized from below through the experience and cultural background of writers. Subsequent policy statements built on, clarified or emphasized various aspects of the content of the ‘Talks’ and invariably coincided with developments on the political front. 2. Thomas B. Gold, “After Comradeship: Personal Relations in China since the Cultural Revolution,” The China Quarterly, 104 (December 1985): 657–675. 3. In the sense that biography is a shaping of the past as seen from the author’s present position, Laura Marcus writes of autobiographical ‘truth’ as being the “truth of the present—that

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writings, which Party members were required to produce from time to time,4 have been described by Igal Halfin in the Soviet context as “testimony to the author’s Communist world outlook.”5 They cannot therefore be regarded as unfettered personal reflections: the Chinese writers, like their Soviet counterparts, were subject to similar constraints. Halfin writes that under Stalin authors were required “to present a cogent claim to have reached the light of communism, and then successfully to uphold this claim in the face of possible counter-narratives. . . Details could be pruned, embellished or ignored in order to fit the author into the Communist literary conventions and write him into the Soviet order.”6 In the same way, in examining Chen’s life writings, one must always be mindful of the dynamic ideological paradigm to which he was required to conform in narrating his own “progress.”7

The Institute Period Whilst a communist guerrilla fighting in the 1946–1949 Civil War, Chen published his first novel only four years after learning to read: it was a war novel, Sister (1947). After the publication of his second novel, Living Hell, also a war novel, late in 1950, he was assigned to study at the Central Literary Study Institute at the recommendation of the famous writer Shuli. Following the establishment of the Communist government in 1949, it was official Party policy to foster writers of a worker-peasant background who came from the former revolutionary base areas. The Party’s stated aim in doing so was to improve the educational level and writing skills of such writers in order to form them into the future dominant force in the Chinese literary world. This policy also imposed a certain uniformity on literary production. To this end, the Institute was set up under the auspices of the Chinese Writers’ Association at the suggestion of Zhou Enlai and others. Literary commissar Zhou Yang and others were involved in its concrete planning, with Ding Ling installed as director.8

is the author/person writing in the present—rather than that of the past.” Laura Marcus, Auto/biographical Discourses: Theory, Criticism, Practice (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1994), p. 261. 4. Ezra F. Vogel, “From Friendship to Comradeship: The Change in Personal relations in Communist China,” The China Quarterly, 21 (January–March 1965):49. 5. Igal Halfin, Terror in My Soul: Communist Autobiographies on Trial (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard Univ. Press, 2003), p. 43. 6. Ibid., p. 19. Halfin writes in the context of autobiographies written both by applicants for Party membership and by Party members demonstrating their worthiness. 7. The life writings of Chen under discussion include articles written in the 1950s describing his early literary progress, an article written in 1957 in defense of writers’ freedom and a subsequent self-criticism. These will be examined against three retrospective articles written between 1979 and 1981. Reference will also be made to a 1981 interview by the author with Chen and to a number of creative works that Chen wrote during this period. 8. Gu 古华, “Yidai geming zuojia de beiju— Kang xiansheng’ 一代革命作家 的 悲剧—— 忆 康 濯 先 生 [“The Tragedy of a Generation of Revolutionary Writers: Remembering Mr Kang Zhuo”], Zhengming 《争鸣》6 (1991), p. 70. Gu Hua, author of the well-received novel Furong zhen 《芙蓉镇》, provides valuable background to this period in this fascinating article on the late veteran writer Kang Zhuo, another former student of the Institute who later became an executive editor of Wenyi . The full article is carried in three successive issues of Zhengming: 5 (1991): 68–73; 6 (1991): 69–73; 7 (1991): 48–53.

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