introduction:
Mr. Lu Xun and Mr. Guo Ruomo are both prominent figures in the history of modern Chinese literature, although they have never met each other and have not had any direct correspondence, but the folk have always circulated the legend of their pen warfare. In recent years, there have been many articles on the Internet about the dispute between Lu Xun and Guo Moruo, but the place where the writing is all about the individual, which undoubtedly simplifies the complex historical events.
In fact, the Lu Guo controversy is not a simple personal dispute, it began with the creation of the Society's denial of "May Fourth literature" and finally the formation of a united front of "anti-enemy literature". In other words, the two changes in Guo Moruo's attitude toward Lu Xun have factors that are the trend of the times. Therefore, we need to place this public case in the historical process of the change of modern literary trends of thought and analyze it in a more dialectical way.
I. The Beginning of Lu Guo's Pen War: The Struggle Between "Literary Revolution" and "Revolutionary Literature"
On June 1, 1928, Guo Moruo published an article under the pseudonym "Du Quan" entitled "The Remnants of Feudalism on the Literary and Art Front:Criticism of Lu Xun". This article gave Lu Xun three hats: feudal remnants, double counter-revolutionary figures, and unsatisfactory fascists. After that, Lu Xun launched a counterattack in "Today's New Literary Overview" and "A Glimpse of Shanghai Literature and Art", not only calling Guo Moruo's "One Hand" "poor show only fell into trouble, and later finally in the middle of the yuan, the old tune of the harmonious flower candle", but also directly scolded Guo Moruo for "being poisoned by talents + hooligans".
It is worth noting that these two articles of Lu Xun were not written solely to fight back against Guo Moruo personally, but mainly aimed at the literary concepts of the Creation Society and its "literary revolution". For example, in the Compendium of The New Literature of the Present Day, it is stated that the more thorough revolutionary literature advocated by the Creation Society, proletarian literature, is naturally more of a subject. In "A Glimpse of Shanghai Literature and Art", there is a more detailed analysis:
Therefore, the exuberance of this revolutionary literature is on the surface different from that of other countries, not because of the exaltation of the revolution, but because of the setbacks of the revolution; although some of them are also the old business of the old literati who have untied their swords to re-examine their pen and ink, and some of them are the exclusion of a few young people from practical work... But the revolutionary literary movement at that time, according to my opinion, was not well planned and was somewhat wrong.
On the other hand, Guo Moruo, who provoked this dispute, although his previous relationship with Lu Xun was not close, there was no personal grudge. In fact, just half a year before the publication of the article "The Remnants of Feudalism on the Literary and Art Front", Guo Moruo wanted to cooperate with Lu Xun to restore the Creation Weekly. In his memoir " Across the East Sea " , Guo Moruo explained why he was unable to cooperate with Lu Xun in the end:
For the cooperation with Lu Xun, everyone is very cold. At this point, it is up to me to choose my own attitude. I knew very well that if I had insisted on my position, the Creation Society might have split, as was the case.
It is not difficult to see that Guo Moruo attaches more importance to the Creation Society and the friends of the Creation Society, while Lu Xun is only an object of cooperation, a person who may become a comrade-in-arms. Then, why did Lu Xun, who was originally the object of cooperation, suddenly become the target of Guo Moruo's attack? This is actually a choice made by Guo Moruo.
At the beginning of 1928, due to the sudden change of the situation, Shanghai gathered a large number of writers with practical revolutionary experience and radical young people returning from overseas, and under the influence of "Left" ideas, a large-scale literary movement was born. The advocates of this literary movement have clearly put forward the slogan of "revolutionary literature" and have made the "literary revolution" since May Fourth the object of opposition. In the article "From Literary Revolution to Revolutionary Literature", Cheng Fangwu wrote:
But the most unfortunate thing is that these "celebrities" are completely unaware of their times, completely ignorant of their readers, and completely ignorant of their own goods. This is why the New Culture Movement did not last for three or five years as if it were the end of its life. They did not know that the enlightened youth of that time had rejected their drug, and that they should have carried the medicine cage to the stable capitalist countries to beg for food!
As a representative figure of the New Culture Movement, Lu Xun has also become the object of key criticism. Cheng Fangwu, Li Chuli, Feng Naichao, and members of the Sun Society launched a ferocious attack on Lu Xun, and Lu Xun became a person of the old era, an object that needed to be sent. Not to be outdone, Lu Xun responded with the article "My Attitude and Temperament" to "On the Literary Circle in China Now".
Until this time, Guo Moruo was on the sidelines, but it was also time to send it. Because he was the founder and chief of the Creation Society, Cheng Fangwu happened to travel to Japan to meet with Guo Ruomo. At this time, Guo Moruo is actually facing another choice, whether to continue to maintain the attitude of a bystander, or to join the dispute? In the end, Guo Moruo not only joined, but also gave Lu Xun three big hats in black and white. Judging from this behavior of arbitrarily fastening the big hat, it is no wonder that Lu Xun called it a "talented man + rogue".
Ii. The End of Lu Guo's Pen War: The Formation of the United Front of "Anti-Enemy Literature"
On October 19, 1936, Mr. Lu Xun died of illness in Shanghai. After the news reached Japan, Guo Moruo wrote a condolence poem "Masterpiece of the Nation" overnight, and wrote an inscription in the name of himself and his colleagues in the Quality Literature Society: Yurahua of Ordinary Life's Meritorious Deeds, And The Number of Kuangdai Articles A Q - Lu Xun's Mentor for Eternity!
It is worth noting that this is not only a change in Guo Moruo's personal attitude, but a change in the attitude of the entire Quality Literature Society. In addition to Guo Moruo, Xing Tonghua, Ren Baige, Bei'ou, Lin Huanping, Dai Shi, Meng Ke and others of the Quality Literature Society also wrote poems mourning Lu Xun, who were also Lu Xun's opponents. At this time, the question we are facing is not why Guo Moruo personally suddenly changed his attitude, but why did Lu Xun's opponents collectively change their attitude?
We Chinese have always paid attention to the conclusive theory, that is, a person's merits and demerits must wait until he dies before judging. After Lu Xun's death, the Shanghai cultural circles and the public made an evaluation of Lu Xun as a "national soul". Lu Xun's life was a life of struggle for the awakening of the people and national liberation, and he could bear the great title of "national soul". The cultural circles and people of Shanghai know this, and the people of the Quality Culture Society as far away as Japan also know this.
After Lu Xun's death, "salvation literature" can be said to have lost its leader. At this time, whether Lu Xun's friends or enemies, the problems facing everyone are not the factional problems of "national defense literature" and "popular literature of the national revolution," but the question of how to preserve the great legacy left by Lu Xun and how to prevent villains from causing chaos. In the final analysis, the dispute between Lu Xun and the Creation Society and the Quality Literature Society is nothing more than a dispute in some methods and lines, and everyone's basic position and ultimate goal are actually the same. In fact, long before Lu Xun's death, Lu Xun and Guo Moruo had both expressed their intention to reconcile with each other.
In his august 1936 essay "Answering Xu Maoyong and Questioning the Anti-Japanese United Front," Lu Xun wrote:
I endorse the idea of the unity of all literary scholars, of any faction, under the slogan of the Anti-Japanese Resistance ... I very much agree with Mr. Guo Moruo's opinion that "national defense literature and art is the literature of patriotism in a broad sense" and "national defense literature and art is a sign of writers' relations, not a sign of works in principle"... For example, I and Mao Dun and Guo Moruo, or acquaintances, or have not tasted each other, or have not clashed, or have used pen and ink to ridicule each other, but the great battles are all for the same goal, never remember personal grievances day and night.
After seeing Lu Xun's remark that "we must never remember our personal grievances day and night", Guo Moruo also said in "The Review of The Seedlings":
I myself was younger than Mr. Lu Xun, and since I didn't know each other and were far apart, I always speculated about Mr. Lu Xun. Just like this dispute, I did not touch the true meaning of Mr. Ten Thousand Words before I read the Book of Ten Thousand Words. After reading it, I realized that my husband was really a person with a lot of forgiveness, and he "never remembered personal grievances day and night", so I felt the dawn of a solution to the problem.
That is to say, from the perspective of personal emotions, Guo Moruo's change of attitude towards Lu Xun is not what many people call "drastic change", let alone the label of Guo Moruo as a "chameleon". Of course, some of the things that followed are different.
epilogue:
The author does not want to learn from Mr. Guo Moruo as "overturning the case of the ancients". In fact, although the two changes in Guo Moruo's attitude towards Lu Xun were driven by the factors of the situation, and they were also accompanied by the change of collective attitudes, we can still glimpse some characteristics of his personality. For example, his "hooligan" habit of indiscriminately fastening big hats later harmed Shen Congwen, Xiao Qian, and others. I won't say more about that.
bibliography:
lu xun ??????? The Complete Works of Lu Xun. People's Literature Publishing House, 1980 edition
Guo Moruo?????? The Complete Works of Guo Moruo. People's Literature Publishing House, 1992 edition
Qian Liqun (et al.) Thirty Years of Modern Chinese Literature. Peking University Press