The Hu Feng Group: The Genealogy of a Literary School

Kirk A. Denton

(Prepared for Urban Cultural Institutions of Early Twentieth Century China Symposium, The Ohio State University, April 13, 2002)

The Hu Feng group raises several interesting questions about the formation, interaction, and identity of cultural institutions in Republican China. In this talk, which is a distillation of much longer essay, I will address three main issues: (1) the historiographical problem of dealing with the politically motivated representations of this group in the PRC, both the Maoist representation of the group as a “clique” (jituan) and the post-Mao ressurection of the group as a literary school (pai); (2) If the Hu Feng group, as a historical phenomenon, does not fit either of these representations, what was it, how did it function, and in what ways did its “members” cohere as a group? (3) finally, what was the “position,” in Bourdieu’s sense of the word, of this group in the contemporary literary field during the war years and post-war years?

Representations

Hu Feng was a leftist literary critic who gained notereity in the literary field in the 1930s through his work in the League of Left-wing Writers and through his association with Lu Xun. However, Hu tangled with more dogmatic elements within the League, and was eventually forced out. At this point, although still very much a commited leftist, Hu Feng became a “professional writer” and began to forge a position in the literary field that was quasi-independent of the Party. He did this primarily through publication of literary journals―July (Qiyue; 1937-41) and Hope (Xiwang; 1945-46) being the most important―and book series (also using the name July). In the mid-1940s, in the wake of the Yan’an Rectification campaign, Hu Feng was attacked by party critics for promoting “subjectivism” (zhuguan zhuyi), which to them was idealist and sought a dynamic role for the subject in social transformation that conflicted with official materialist ideology and the primacy of the Party in historical transformation. After the revolution, in 1955, there was a massive state-run campaign against Hu Feng and the group of young writers he promoted in his literary journals and publication series. Hu Feng and his group were vilified as bourgeois individualists and counterrevolutionaries (FIG. 2). They were made into a “clique” (jituan), a term with very negative sectarian connotations in the Maoist rhetoric (FIG. 3). Its members were arrested and became persona non grata in the cultural world. The media was filled with articles and cartoons attacking Hu Feng’s theory, the realization of that theory in the creative practice of his associates, and their subversive political behavior. Although as many as 2000 may have come under criticism, according to official documents of the People’s Highest Inspectorate only 100 were either arrested or “isolated” for self-reflection. By 1956, the Hu Feng “clique” was thought to be composed of 78 members, of whom 23 were the core.

The Hu Feng group is the only “school” or “society” from the Republican period to have been the object of a full-fledged national campaign after 1949. The problem that the Hu Feng campaign poses to the literary historian, which I suppose is one that we all face: how to sift through the legacy of the Maoist construction of the Hu Feng “clique” to get at something like a historical reality of the Hu Feng group. In order to better attack the group as a whole, party ideologues whitewashed literary complexity and reduced all the writers and works they wrote to manifestations of Hu Feng’s “reactionary” literary thought. In other words, a jituan was fabricated by the CCP so as to establish a clear political other the state needed for its ideological legitimacy.

To compound the representational problems encountered in dealing with this group is the post-Mao rehabilitation of the Hu Feng group. There were three key players in this rehabitilation, all of whom had agendas. First, members of the group itself (those who had survived) and their relatives wrote memoirs, autobiographies, and memorials, published correspondence, and republished literary works―a quite impressive effort to restore the tarnished political and literary reputations of Hu Feng and his group. Second, post-Mao literary scholars sought to resurrect a truer Hu Feng from beneath the shadow of Maoist representations, but in the process they constructed a precursor to a position they sought to forge for themselves in the contemporary literary field: an alternative to the dogmatic and repressive cultural politics of the Cultural Revolution, whose origins they often traced back to Mao Zedong’s “Yan’an Talks.” Post-Mao interest in Hu Feng’s theory was a way for intellectuals and critics to “rewrite” literary history, to demonstrate that the party’s vision of literary history had dogmatically excluded all but the most tendentious forms of literature. Hu Feng offered them an alternative voice to party dogmatism, its　 “mechanical determinism” (jixie juedinglun), its prioritizing of ideology in the creative method, and its control over writers. Moreover, Hu Feng was a critic who cared about “subjectivity,” which was a hot topic in liteary circles in the mid 1980s precisely when this rehabiliation was occurring. In short, Hu Feng became China’s Lukacs, heroically resisting dogmatic Party cultural policies. In some respects, of course, this representation of Hu Feng rings true, but like the Maoist representation it simplifies and whitewashes the complexity of Hu Feng’s literary thought, downplaying its important resonances with mainstream Maoist views of literature and overemphasizing Hu Feng’s oppositional stance toward the Party and its cultural policy.

The third player involved in the rehabilitation of Hu Feng was the state itself. The Hu Feng rehabilitation took place primarily in the conservative state-run journal Xin wenxue shiliao. By the late 1980s, a younger generation of cultural critics was beginning to write in a much more subversive, antisocialist mode. The state’s interest in Hu Feng may well mark a conservative reaction to the truly radical theories that were starting to be popular among young scholars in China. Hu Feng represented for the party a symbolic embodiment of its new cultural policy: a perfect blend of humanist concern for the self into a Marxist socially-engaged framework that prioritizes realism―a way to hold onto Marxism in the face of the anti-Marxist onslaught in the cultural realm of the late 1980s.

The rehabilitation of Hu Feng and his group was as enmeshed in the cultural politics of the post-Mao period as the anti-Hu Feng campaign had been in the mid 1950s. Both the Maoist and the post-Mao positions on Hu Feng needed to emphasize the cohesion of the group and the unity of their position to bolster their appropriation of Hu Feng. The question remains, Can we look beneath these politicized representations and arrive at a more historically accurate view of this group’s collectivity?

Collective Identity

If the Hu Feng group was not a jituan, then what was it? How did it forge a collective identity and assert that identity into the literary field?　 The Hu Feng group shows us a mode of collective interaction that was different from a formally organized society, but a form of networking that was,　 I believe, very prevalent in the Republican period. In what follows, I will look only at a few of the important means through which the group cohered and through which it asserted that collective identity publicly.

　　　　　 Hu Feng as Mentor Figure

Whereas Chinese literary historians generally call this group the July school (Qiyue pai), after the journal July, I see Hu Feng himself as the charismatic figure holding the disparate members of this group together. This notion of a cultural group as unified through the personality and prestige of a mentor figure was not uncommon in the Republican period and may be, moreover, an important legacy from premodern literary groups (FIG. 4).

Hu Feng spent a great deal of time fostering younger talent. He did this by commenting on submitted manuscripts, exchanging letters that included critiques of literary texts, and through book reviews and literary criticism. He saw his journals as forums for the publication of young, unknown writers and prided himself in not publishing the work of established writers (you’ll hear much more about this phenomenon later this afternoon from Michel Hockx). By fostering young talent, he could more easily shape the literary identity of his publications, and by making reputations for these unknown writers, he could instill in them a strong sense of loyalty.

One of the ways that Hu Feng attracted around him a group of younger writers was through a self-consciousness association with Lu Xun. During their days in the League of Left-Wing Writers, Lu Xun and Hu Feng had worked closely together. The close relationship between the two had to do with a shared view of literature centering on critical realism, common interests in Japanese literature and Marxist literary theory, but it was also a direct product of their mutual sense of persecution by party leaders in the League, particularly Zhou Yang (Kuskowski-Pieroni 1987: 167-179).

From the moment Lu Xun died in 1936, Hu Feng sought to portray himself as the upholder of the Lu Xun spirit. He did this sincerely, out of a true faith in his mentor’s greatness, but also clearly to gain for himself “symbolic capital” (Shu Yunzhong 2000: 36-41). To have been connected with the father of modern Chinese literature was a tremendous source of prestige for Hu Feng, and it helped catapult him to national fame. Hu took advantage of and promoted this symbolic capital in many ways. He was, for one, a member of Lu Xun’s funeral committee and a pallbearer during the funeral (FIG. 5). This potently symbolic act helped establish him as an heir to Lu Xun, the “soul of China.” Hu was involved in the publication of the Japanese edition of Lu Xun’s complete works, as well as the later Chinese edition. As Lu Xun had, Hu Feng supported the wood block print movement by sponsoring exhibitions and publishing prints in his journals. Throughout his life, Hu wrote innumerable essays on Lu Xun (Hu Feng 1985), unequivocally supporting him and his literary vision. On anniversaries of Lu Xun’s death, Hu Feng invariably gave commemorative speeches or published a commemorative article (FIG. 6). Lu Xun represented many things to Hu Feng, but foremost among them are an enlightenment role for literature and critical realism―a literature that does not give in to political pressure and that unstintingly exposes darkness wherever it might be found.

In the journals themselves, there are frequent references to Lu Xun. The cover of the first issue of the bimonthly edition of July has photographs of Lu Xun and of his gravesite, and the title itself is in Lu Xun’s calligraphy (FIG. 5). Hu Feng continued this public alignment with Lu Xun in Hope. On the cover of the final issue of the journal (vol. 2, no. 4; 1946), for example, is a sketch of Lu Xun by Meng Ke entitled “Lu Xun and a Certain Number of his Enemies,” which, given the attacks the journal was suffering at the hands of Party critics at the time, must be seen as an offensive gesture on Hu Feng’s part against his own “enemies.” In this same issue, there are several articles on Lu Xun, as well as six letters written by Lu Xun to Hu Feng in which Lu Xun rails against party dogmatism. At the end of the issue appears a song written for Lu Xun entitled “Because of You, New China is Maturing” (Youyu ni, xin Zhongguo zai chengzhang), with lyrics by Hu Feng. Clearly, Hu Feng was using the prestige of Lu Xun to defend himself and his journal against the Party attack against “subjectivism” that was going on at the time.

There is certainly reason to believe that many of Hu’s young protégés were originally attracted to Hu Feng and his journals because they saw him as the heir to Lu Xun. With Hu Feng as their teacher, these young writers could see themselves as heirs to the Lu Xun tradition of critical realism and the May Fourth ideal of intellectual autonomy. Indeed, Hu Feng quite deliberately passed on the mantle of Lu Xun to his own disciples, particularly Lu Ling.

　　　　　 Journals and Literary Series

As was the case for most literary groups in Republican China, journals were the public face of the Hu Feng group, and it was primarily through the journals that a collective identity was presented to readers and a position was asserted in the literary field. Although Hu Feng was involved in producing and editing literary journals before the war, it was with his publication of July that he really emerged on the literary scene. Hu established July to fill the “cultural wasteland” of the early war years with new literary voices. In 1939, Hu wrote: “But I myself could not go on singing. Because I suddenly came to the thought that this great war ought to be able to produce, on a broad scale, new voices, but this meant first having to destroy the ‘statusism’ (diweizhuyi) and the ‘philistinism’ (shikuaizhuyi) of the literary scene, so I founded the journal July,” with the former term directed at established writers and the latter commercial writers (1999: 1: 73). Hu Feng saw the founding of July as an almost religious duty both to the battlefield and the literary field.

In its early issues, the journal published writers associated with Lu Xun (Xiao Hong, Duanmu Hongliang, Xiao Jun, Cao Bai, etc.), using the association with Lu Xun as a way to gain a foothold in the literary field. As the journal matured, it began to take on a character of its own and shed its relation to the Lu Xun writers. Most prominent were war reportage and poetry, but Hu insisted July be a “general literary journal,” so it also included fiction, prose, literary criticism, the occasional short play, translations, and woodblock prints. Leading reportage contributors included Cao Bai, A Long, and Qiu Dongping; in poetry Ai Qing, Tian Jian, and Sun Dian were important figures. Woodblock prints by Li Hua (FIG. 6), Li Qun, and Wo Cha (FIG. 7) were regular features that helped define the avant-garde cultural attitude of the journal. The journal flourished even more in Chongqing, although printing difficulties kept it from being published regularly every month. Hu Feng recognized a difference between the function of the journal when it was resurrected in 1939 and at its original inception. In the first Chongqing issue, Hu’s “Editorial notes” (Bianwan xiaoji) no longer see the journal as a “lone voice in a cultural wasteland,” as he had in 1937, but begins to define the journal’s role vis à vis other journals (1999: 2: 681). In 1941, as GMD pressure against leftist cultural figures was being stepped up as a product of the New Fourth Army Incident, the journal was forced to close and Hu had to flee Chongqing for Hong Kong and then Guilin. He had aspirations of resurrecting the journal in Guilin, but they never materialized.

Collective identity was forged through a variety of means in the pages of July.

(1) Although theory was not prioritized in the journal, Hu Feng’s presence as the theoretical voice of these journals was apparent. Hu Feng did not want his journals to be forums for literary critics or theorists, and these types of writings occupy a relatively minor place in their pages. Yet, some of Hu’s important theoretical articles appeared in these journals, perhaps the most well known and controversial being his essay about the subjective fighting spirit and its role in literary creation in the first issue of Hope (1999: 3: 185-91). The presence of Hu’s theoretical writings as the teacher figure in the group, it is safe to conclude, established a clear theoretical position for the journals in the literary field.

(2) July and Hope are filled with various texts in the name of the journal, the editor, or the July society. Especially in the Chongqing years, Hu Feng appended to many issues of his journals “pre-publication remarks” (paiyin qian xiaoji) and “post-editorial remarks” (bianhou xiaoji or bianhou ji). These remarks reveal a self-consciousness about the journals, their purpose, and their place in the literary field. In one issue of July, Hu elaborates on the “critical” function for literature he championed his entire life: “I feel that heaven is fine, but it still has to be built on the ruins of hell, or at least its building and the complete destruction of hell must occur simultaneously. If we had the greatness of Dante to lead us out of hell and up to heaven, we would of course be most grateful, otherwise it would be best to let someone who has traveled to hell sing out his cursing songs” (1999: 2: 686). Editorial remarks sometimes introduce the works of writers appearing in that particular issue. Hu frequently discusses these texts through the prism of his own literary theory, using such terms as “subjectivism,” “the writer’s struggling spirit,” and “flesh and blood reality.” In this way, Hu makes the literary practice of others conform to his own vision. For example, he spends a good deal of space in one issue’s editorial remarks explaining the translation and the content of Lukács’ essay “Narration and Description,” which appeared in that issue. Lukács’ piece clearly resonates with Hu’s own distaste for literature driven by ideology and for naturalism, and it is clear that he is identifying with this foreign master. Hu Feng’s editorial remarks are often chatty in tone, complaining, for instance, about the mundane problems of putting out a publication in the difficult conditions of wartime China.

Hu Feng wrote other texts in the name of the July society that set out the goals for July. His “We Are Willing to Mature with our Readers” (Yuan he duzhe yitong chengzhang” (Qiyue 1, no. 1; Hu Feng 1999: 2: 498-99), a kind of early manifesto for July, claims an important role for writing in the war period and stresses the duality of the age, at once heroic and dirty, implying that literature’s function continued to be to expose the darkness of the age. July and Hope contain announcements in the name of the society. An announcement for a July society-sponsored exhibition of woodblock prints, for example, appears in the first issue of the bimonthly July. “July postcards” (Qiyue mingxingpian) appear frequently. These “postcards” express editorial opinions, but they were also used by Hu as a way of communicating directly with submitters, whose addresses often changed and with whom conventional letter communication was difficult during the war years.　 In one issue (vol. 2, no. 5, zong 11), for example, after explaining to authors why most would not be receiving royalties, Hu addresses by name a manuscript submitter and explains his reasons for rejecting his manuscript. In publicly drawing attention to this basic editorial decision, Hu Feng was demonstrating the journal’s position. Letters to the editor were also occasionally published. These letters generally contained positive appraisals of writing published in the journals. The number of pieces of a self-referential nature in the journal (e.g., texts in the name of the society, July postcards, letters from associates congratulating the journal on publication, letters to the editor) would indicate that Hu Feng was attempting to create a community of editor, writers, and readers with a cultural identity shared through the journal.

　(3) Table Talks (zuotanhui) were a forum for writers to express themselves, but they also served the function of identifying those writers with the journal. The Table Talks were established as a substitute for an editorial board [which Duanmu Hongliang proposed and Hu Feng supported, but which never materialized (Mei Zhi 1998: 371)]. One table talk, entitled “Present Literary Activities and July” (vol. 1, no. 7) showed a particularly strong sense of collective identity. A good part of the discussion centers on the issue of whether July is a “collegial journal” (tongren zazhi) or not. By the war period, this term was associated with a kind of sectarianism and ivory-towerism that didn’t mesh with the united front ethos.

Hu Feng opens the discussion by explaining what he means by the term “collegial journal”:

What I mean by a collegial journal is that we have a set editorial attitude and that the basic group of contributors tends toward the same views, which would make it different from the many journals of the leading institutions that enlist the services of writers from all over the place. . . .

But he goes on to say that

July is not a journal monopolized by a small group; on the contrary, it exerts itself by uniting and appealing to writers who in their tendencies resonate [with ours], exerts itself by finding new writers (for example, writers who at first didn’t write for us are now writing, like Qiu Dongping, Ai Qing, etc.). This is a question of guiding principle and direction. I often explain it, in conversation with others, with the term “a semi-collegial journal.” (1999: 5: 347)

In the first issue we put out in Hankou, we announced that we were “willing to mature” with our readers in the war, and that we hoped our readers would participate in our work. However, in order to maintain an essential attitude (jiben de taidu), we first didn’t invite writers to participate who had creative attitudes different from our own. .　 .　 . Therefore, July absolutely did not try to attract manuscripts of famous writers. . . . But a small minority has not monopolized July. First, it has been completely open to submitters and many new writers have appeared in its pages. Second, the basic group of contributors has come and gone and often fluctuated. (1999: 5: 352)

We can see Hu Feng here struggling to uphold the position of his journal without making it look sectarian. Another participant in the Table Talk was Feng Naichao, whose position is even clearer than that of Hu Feng: “July is struggling against the biases that seek to cancel out literature. This is right. . . . A group of us once talked to Hu Feng on this subject; we said that July should become a leading journal in the literary movement of the war period, [but] since he saw July as a journal of colleagues, he said that it couldn’t [take on this responsibility]. But in reality not only is it possible, it should do this” (Hu Feng 1999: 5: 342).]

Another participant in the Table Talk, Feng Naichao, portrays the journal as offering an alternate to “officially sponsored” (guanban de) journals (Hu Feng 1999: 5: 304). This independent quality is something that Hu strove for, in a very self-conscious way, throughout his editorial career. From early on, he promoted small, independent journals and even continued to advocate for them after liberation in his 1954 “Report to the Central Committee,” in which he favored the organization of several writers’ groups each in control of their own independent publishing houses. Hu Feng allowed that editors may be appointed by CCP, but argued strongly that they should be given absolute authority in editorial matters (1999: 6: 408-11).

(4) Hu Feng was an ardent supporter of the work of his protégés. He wrote numerous prefaces and postfaces to and reviews of their work, thus associating himself with it and promoting it publicly. Although in his letters to submitters he could be quite critical, in these reviews and prefaces, he was generally laudatory. Hu Feng predicts in his preface to Lu Ling’s long novel Caizhu de ernümen (Children of the rich), for example, that “time will prove that the publication of Children of the Rich is a great event in the history of modern Chinese literature” (1999: 3: 263). Moreover, to increase the readership of these prefaces Hu Feng sometimes first published them in literary journals and newspaper supplements not under his control [for example, his preface to Lu Ling’s Hungry Guo Su’e was first published in Yecao]. Group writers also wrote laudatory reviews of works of other Hu Feng writers in Hu Feng journals. For example, A Long wrote in glowing terms of Lu Li’s poetry and Shu Wu wrote on his friend Lu Ling. Modern literary societies had from the beginning exhibited this type of incestuous behavior, and clearly the Hu Feng group was no exception. Writers of the group supported each other’s work and in the process contributed to their own sense of cohesion and identity as a group and to the perception of that cohesion from the outside. Hu Feng may also have promoted the work of his group in more concrete ways. As a member of a committee chosen in the spring of 1940 to select a novel to win a special NALR sponsored literary prize, Hu may have pushed for Ah Long’s novel Nanjing.

Apart from his journals, Hu Feng edited a series of books under the July name [Qiyue shicong, Qiyue wencong, and Qiyue xincong] that published a remarkable 40 books by writers who had or would publish in his journals. From the above description of the diverse publishing activities of Hu Feng and his group, we see that Hu Feng attached tremendous importance to editing, publishing, and the fostering of young literary talent and saw these activities as the means through which to assert his vision of literature. Although Hu Feng writers were by no means excluded from publishing in “official” journals, like Kangzhan wenyi during the war or Renmin wenxue after liberation, their presence in these journals was relatively slight. Some of these writers were able to publish occasionally in non-Hu Feng journals, but it is striking how much the publication of their writing was tied to Hu Feng. The vast majority of Lu Ling’s fiction, for example, was published in Hu Feng journals or by publishing houses associated with Hu Feng. This may have been out of a sense of loyalty on Lu Ling’s part, but it also indicates a certain common practice in Chinese literary societies: writers were often published in journals because of personal connections. It is not that Hu Feng only published the work of a static group of close friends and associates, for the group was constantly changing and Hu prided himself on discovering and fostering new talent. At the same time, though, the publication of a relatively consistent core of writers, who shared stylistic and creative characteristics, seems to have given the group a coherent identity within the literary field

Position in the Literary Field

In his work on the literary field in Republican China, Michel Hockx has made use of Bourdieu’s notion of the triangular structure of the literary field at any give time. That is, literary positions are forge through a “double disavowal” of two other positions. When new groups emerge on the literary field, they often do so by taking an “avant-garde” position attacking the literary establishment. Hu Feng’s journal July was founded, in part, as an “independent” avant-garde journal without political affiliation, but it was also very clearly a leftist journal that sought to support the war effort. One might say that Hu Feng’s “double disavowal” was directed at CCP-controlled literature, on the one hand, and the neo-traditionalism and commercialism that characterized literature on the political right.

What makes this triangular structure different from that of the May Fourth period is the direct involvement of political parties (Communist intervention and Nationalist censorship). Hu Feng’s dilemma as a critic and editor was to negotiate between these two forces. This positioning between Yan’an culture and Nationalist culture became even clearer in the mid-1940s with the establishment of Hope. Its publication was a response to cultural politics of the left in Chongqing, a direct product, I believe, of Hu Feng’s displeasure with the advent of the Rectification campaign in Chongqing and the attempt to impose on writers the “Yan’an Talks” as sole correct literary dogma. The Rectification campaign began in Yan’an in 1942 with the purpose of killing dissent within party ranks and cultural circles and “rectifying” the thought of writers and intellectuals who had strayed down the liberal path. By the fall of 1942, the rectification had spread to Chongqing, and the “Yan’an Talks” were disseminated among intellectuals on the left by 1943. By mid 1943, Hu Feng was feeling the pressure of the rectification. At the same time, Hu struggled, against censors and the prevailing neo-traditional cultural ethos of wartime Chongqing, to publish work that was progressive and avant-garde (in the political sense), but that did not cave into the demands of a political ideology. He struggles, moreover, to find a role for the subject (zhuguan) against the threat posed by Yan’an Marxist determinism and Nationalist neo-traditionalism.　

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