The main struggle of speech at Yan' an forum on literature and art

One of the main methods of struggle in literary and art circles is literary criticism. Literary criticism should be developed. In the past, we did not do enough work in this area. Comrades were right to point out this. Literary criticism is a complex issue, which needs a lot of special research. I will only focus on a basic criterion of criticism here. In addition, I would like to say a few words about some individual questions and some incorrect views raised by some comrades.

there are two criteria for literary criticism, one is political and the other is artistic. According to political standards, everything that is conducive to anti-Japanese and unity, encourages the masses to work with one heart and one mind, opposes retrogression and promotes progress is good; And everything that is not conducive to anti-Japanese and unity, encourages the masses to alienate themselves from Germany, opposes progress and pulls people backwards is bad. What is good or bad here depends on motivation (subjective desire) or effect (social practice)? Idealists emphasize that motivation denies effect, while mechanical materialists emphasize that effect denies motivation. Contrary to the two, we are unitarians of the motivation and effect of dialectical materialism. Motivation for the public and the effect of being welcomed by the public are inseparable, and they must be unified. It is not good to be motivated by individuals and narrow groups, and it is not good to be motivated by the public without being welcomed by the public and beneficial to the public. The test of a writer's subjective desire, that is, whether his motivation is correct or not, is not to look at his declaration, but to look at the effects of his actions (mainly works) in the public. Social practice and its effect are the criteria for testing subjective desire or motivation. Our literary criticism should not be sectarian. Under the principle of unity and resistance to Japan, we should allow the existence of literary and artistic works with various political attitudes. However, our criticism is principled, and we must strictly criticize and refute all literary and artistic works that contain anti-national, anti-science, anti-mass and anti-* * * views; Because these so-called literature and art, their motives and their effects, all undermine unity and resistance to Japan. According to artistic standards, everything with high artistry is good or better; What is less artistic is bad or worse. This difference, of course, also depends on social effects. There are almost no writers and artists who don't think their works are beautiful, and our criticism should also allow free competition of all kinds of works of art; However, it is absolutely necessary to give correct criticism according to the standards of art science, so that the lower-level art can be gradually improved into a higher-level art, and the art that is not suitable for the requirements of the mass struggle can be changed into the art that is suitable for the requirements of the mass struggle.

it is both a political standard and an artistic standard. what is the relationship between them? Politics is not equal to art, and the general view of the world is not equal to the method of artistic creation and artistic criticism. We deny not only the abstract and absolutely unchangeable political standards, but also the abstract and absolutely unchangeable artistic standards. Every class in every class society has different political standards and different artistic standards. However, any class in any class society always puts political standards first and artistic standards second. The bourgeoisie always rejects proletarian literary and artistic works, no matter how high their artistic achievements are. For literary and artistic works of the past era, the proletariat must first check their attitudes towards the people and whether they have progressive significance in history, and adopt different attitudes respectively. Some things that are fundamentally reactionary in politics may also have some artistry. The more reactionary and artistic a work is, the more it can poison the people and the more it should be rejected. The common feature of literature and art of all the exploiting classes in the declining period is the contradiction between their reactionary political content and their artistic forms. Our demand is the unity of politics and art, the unity of content and form, the unity of revolutionary political content and the perfect art form as far as possible. Works of art lacking artistry, no matter how politically advanced, have no power. Therefore, we oppose both works of art with wrong political views and the so-called "slogan-style" tendency with correct political views and no artistic power. We should fight on two fronts on the issue of literature and art.

these two tendencies exist in the minds of many of our comrades. Many comrades tend to neglect art, so we should pay attention to the improvement of art. But now it's more of a problem. I think it's still political. Some comrades lack basic political common sense, so they have all kinds of confused ideas. Let me give some examples of Yan 'an.

"theory of human nature". Is there such a thing as human nature? Of course there is. But there is only concrete humanity, not abstract humanity. In class society, there is only humanity with class nature, and there is no super-class humanity. We advocate the humanity of the proletariat and the people, while the landlord class bourgeoisie advocates the humanity of the landlord class bourgeoisie, but they don't say this verbally, but they say it is the only humanity. The human nature advocated by some petty-bourgeois intellectuals is also divorced from or opposed to the masses of the people. Their so-called human nature is essentially bourgeois individualism, so in their eyes, the human nature of the proletariat is incompatible with human nature. The "theory of human nature" advocated by some people in Yan 'an as the basis of the so-called literary theory is just like this, which is completely wrong.

"The basic starting point of literature and art is love, which is the love of human beings." Love can be the starting point, but there is also a basic starting point. Love is a thing of ideas and a product of objective practice. We don't start from ideas at all, but from objective practice. Our intellectuals-born literary and art workers love the proletariat because society makes them feel the same fate as the proletariat. We hate Japanese imperialism because it oppresses us. There is no love for no reason, and there is no hate for no reason. As for the so-called "human love", there has never been such a unified love since human beings divided into classes. All the ruling classes in the past liked to advocate this thing, and many so-called saints and sages also liked to advocate this thing, but no one really implemented it because it was impossible to implement it in a class society. True human love will exist, and that is after the world has eliminated classes. Class divides the society into many pairs of three-dimensional. After the class was eliminated, there was the whole human love at that time, but it has not yet. We can't love the enemy, we can't love the ugly phenomenon of society, and our purpose is to destroy these things. This is people's common sense. Is there anything that our literary and art workers don't understand?

"literary and artistic works have always been written with equal emphasis on light and darkness, half to half." There are many confused ideas here. Literary and artistic works are not always like this. Many petty-bourgeois writers have never found the light, and their works only expose the darkness, which is called "exposed literature", and they are simply dedicated to promoting pessimism and world-weariness. On the contrary, the literature of the Soviet Union during the socialist construction period was mainly about writing light. They also write about shortcomings in their work and negative characters, but this description can only serve as a foil to the whole light, not the so-called "half-on-half". Bourgeois writers and artists in the reactionary period described the revolutionary masses as thugs and themselves as sacred, and the so-called light and darkness were reversed. Only truly revolutionary writers and artists can correctly solve the problems of praise and exposure. All the dark forces that endanger the people must be exposed, and all the revolutionary struggles of the people must be praised. This is the basic task of revolutionary writers and artists.

"The task of literature and art is to expose." This statement, like the previous one, is an opinion lacking historical and scientific knowledge. Literature and art never lie in exposure, as I have said before. For revolutionary writers and artists, only the aggressors, exploiters, oppressors and their bad influence among the people can be exposed, but not the people. The people also have shortcomings, which should be overcome by criticism and self-criticism among the people, and such criticism and self-criticism is also one of the most important tasks of literature and art. But this should not be said to be "exposing the people." For the people, it is basically a question of educating and improving them. Only counter-revolutionary writers and artists can describe the people as "born stupid" and the revolutionary masses as "autocratic thugs".

"It's still the age of essays, but also Lu Xun's brushwork." Lu Xun was under the rule of the dark forces and had no freedom of speech, so he was completely right to fight in the form of cynical essays. We also need to sharply laugh at fascism, reactionaries in China and everything that harms the people. However, in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region and the anti-Japanese base areas behind enemy lines, which give full democracy and freedom to revolutionary writers and artists, the form of essays should not be simply the same as that of Lu Xun. We can speak out, not obscure twists and turns, making it difficult for the people to understand. If not for the enemy of the people, but for the people themselves, then Lu Xun in the "essay era" never laughed at and attacked the revolutionary people and revolutionary political parties, and the writing of essays was completely different from that of the enemy. We need to criticize the shortcomings of the people, as we have said before, but we must really stand on the people's side and speak with enthusiasm for protecting and educating the people. If you treat comrades as enemies, you will put yourself on the enemy's side. Do we abolish satire? No, irony is always needed. But there are several ironies: some are against the enemy, some are against the allies, and some are against their own team, with different attitudes. We are not generally opposed to satire, but the indiscriminate use of satire must be abolished.

"I don't sing praises; Those who praise the light may not be great in their works, and those who portray the dark may not be small in their works. " If you are a bourgeois writer and artist, you will not praise the proletariat but the bourgeoisie; You are a proletarian writer and artist, so you don't sing praises to the bourgeoisie, but to the proletariat and the working people: the two must be one of them. Isn't it a fact in the history of literature and art that those who praise the light of the bourgeoisie are not necessarily great, those who portray the darkness of the bourgeoisie are not necessarily small, those who praise the light of the proletariat are not necessarily great, and those who portray the so-called "darkness" of the proletariat are necessarily small? Why not sing praises to the people, the creator of the history of the human world? Why shouldn't the proletariat, the * * * production party, new democracy and socialism be praised? There are also people who have no enthusiasm for the people's cause, and look on coldly at the battles and victories of the proletariat and its vanguard. They are only interested in himself or a few characters in the small group he runs. Of course, such petty-bourgeois individualists are unwilling to praise the merits of the revolutionary people and inspire their struggle courage and confidence in victory. Such people are just moths in the revolutionary ranks, and the revolutionary people really don't need such "singers".

"It's not a matter of position; The position is right, the heart is good, which means knowing, but the performance is not good, and the result has played a bad role. " I have already talked about the dialectical materialism view of motivation and effect. Now I want to ask: is the effect problem a position problem? A person does things only by motivation, regardless of the effect, which means that a doctor only cares about prescribing drugs, and he doesn't care how many patients die. Another example is a party that only issues declarations, regardless of whether it is implemented or not. Is this position also correct? Is this kind of heart also good? Of course, mistakes may occur if we consider the effect afterwards, but it has been proved that the effect is bad. Is it good to do it as usual? When we judge a party and a doctor, we should look at the practice and the effect. The same is true of judging a writer. True kindness must take effect into account, sum up experience and study methods, which is called expression in creation. To be truly kind, you must have a sincere self-criticism of the shortcomings and mistakes in your work and be determined to correct them. * * * the self-criticism method of the producers is adopted in this way. Only this kind of position is the correct position. At the same time, only in this serious and responsible practice process can we understand what the correct position is step by step and master the correct position step by step. If you don't move in this direction in practice, you just think you know, but you don't know.

"To advocate studying Marxism is to repeat the mistakes of dialectical materialism, which will hinder the creative mood." Studying Marxism requires us to observe the world, society, literature and art from the viewpoints of dialectical materialism and historical materialism, not to write philosophical lectures in literary and artistic works. Marxism can only include but not replace realism in literary and artistic creation, just as it can only include but not replace atomism and electron theory in physical science. The empty and dry dogmatic formula is to destroy the creative mood, but it not only destroys the creative mood, but also destroys Marxism first. The dogmatic "Marxism" is not Marxism, but anti-Marxism. Then, won't Marxism destroy the creative mood? To destroy, it is determined to destroy the feudal, bourgeois, petty bourgeois, liberal, individualistic, nihilistic, artistic for the sake of art, aristocratic, decadent, pessimistic and other non-people and non-proletariat creative emotions. Should these feelings be destroyed for proletarian writers and artists? I think we should completely destroy them, and at the same time, we can build new things.