Hu Feng (1903-), Marxist literary critic, essayist, and poet. Because of his independent approach to Marxism and his affirmation that the artist is entitled to an individual vision of truth, he was singled out for attack in the 1955 campaign for ideological purity, which was led by Chou Yang (q.v.;.
Although Hu Feng's father was an unskilled laborer in a Hupeh village, he managed to earn enough money to send his son to school. Hu learned little about Chinese culture, but he responded quickly to the Western ideas which were affecting China at the time. W hile at a school in Nanking in 1923-25 he joined the Communist Youth League, participated in the May Thirtieth Movement of 1925, and joined the revolutionary movement which was developing in the south. It appears, however, that he never became a member of the Chinese Communist party. During this period, he also began to write poetry.
In 1928 Hu went to Japan, where he wrote essays expressing his active interest in political and social developments. He was expelled from Japan in 1933 for participating in a leftist demonstration. After returning to Shanghai in 1934, he began to work as a professional writer and editor and joined the League of Left-W'ing Writers, led by Lu Hsün (Chou Shu-jen, q.v.). Hu Feng soon became one of Lu Hsün's leading disciples.
At this time Hu defined his political and aesthetic ideas more precisely. Although a Marxist, he did not conform to Communist party doctrine; rather, he attempted to fuse certain Marxist beliefs with his own ideas about literary creativity. According to orthodox Communist theory, environment determines realism in art. Hu believed that a writer achieved realism by combining emotional intensity and spontaneity, which he called the "subjective struggling spirit," with objective reality, which he frequently equated with the demands of the people for a livelihood and a democratic government. In assimilating objective reality into his consciousness, a writer moved closer to Marxism.
Although Hu used his concept of the "subjective struggling spirit" to explain the individual personality and the creative process, he used Marxist dialectic to explain social and political trends. Nevertheless, his contentions that a person may adopt a political ideology through his own experience without coercion and that party discipline should control a writer's political life but not his creativity were bound to bring him into conflict with party officials.
Hu's unorthodox beliefs and the backing of Lu Hsün and a devoted coterie gradually brought him prominence in left-wing literary circles in Shanghai. Even at this time, his group contended with more orthodox factions in a struggle for preeminence which came to be motivated as much by personal antagonisms as by aesthetic differences. Hu fought his most vehement battle's with Chou Yang (q.v.), a close associate of Mao Tse-tung. According to Chou, politics and ideology were the foremost concern of literature; Hu believed that they were secondary to literary value. This basic conflict underlay all of Hu's controversies with more orthodox Communist writers. In the factional squabbles of the 1930's Hu was charged with unorthodoxy and subversion. A major subject of debate was the problem of "typical characters" in literary creation. Chou held that literary characters should be representative of certain groups; in the period of national liberation, writers should create types of national heroes and national traitors. Hu believed that characters should have universal characteristics, but should not be stereotypes. Throughout his controversies with more orthodox Communist writers, both sides quoted Soviet literary critics in citing the theoretical bases of their arguments. Because no authoritative interpretation had been formulated to support Chou Yang's views, Hu's more analytical arguments triumphed. During these debates Chou tried to win Lu Hsün to his side, but Lu Hsün supported Hu. This development marked the beginning of a rivalry between Hu Feng and Chou Yang for superiority in left-wing literary circles in China.
A far more caustic debate between the two antagonists took place in July 1937. At the outset of the Sino-Japanese war, "Literature for National Defense" took the place of proletarian literature in left-wing circles. The shift coincided with the formation of the united front {see Chiang Kai-shek) against the Japanese. One group of leftist writers, however, suggested the slogan "People's Literature for the National Revolutionary Struggle." The leader of the Communist literary movement was Chou Yang, with Hsü Mo-yung as his deputy, and the leader of the leftist writers was Lu Hsün, with Hu Feng as his chief aide. Chou published essays calling for a united literary front, and "Literature for National Defense." After several articles had been published on the subject, Hu came forth with an article entitled "What Do the Masses Want from Literature?" in which he formally proposed the slogan "People's Literature for the National Revolutionary Struggle" and attacked Chou.
At this juncture, Hsü Mo-yung wrote to Lu Hsim and warned him that Hu Feng and his group were carrying on divisive activities arising from their own selfish ambitions. He accused them of extreme sectarianism and controversial theories. Lu Hsün replied that it was he who had requested Hu to propose the slogan. Lu Hsün looked upon these accusations as a challenge to Hu and others who had not joined the Writers' Association, which was being organized by Chou Yang to advance the concept of "Literature for National Defense." Such accusations were expected to provoke retaliation, thus creating a pretext for charging Hu and others with the crime of being "traitors to the united front." Lu Hsün further stated that various people had informed him that Hu was a traitor sent by the Nationalists to sabotage the Chinese Communist party. Lu Hsün insisted that Hu had never opposed the united front. The disputes subsided when Chou and his associates followed Mao Tse-tung to the Communist areas in Yenan; Hu and his followers remained in Nationalist-controlled territory. They helped to prepare for the eventual triumph of the Chinese Communist party, although their writings continued to be unorthodox.
Mao Tse-tung's Yenan talks of 1942, which set forth the doctrine that literature must be an instrument of political utility, aroused Hu Feng and his group to a concerted campaign of opposition. Because they were safe from direct Communist pressure, they were able to insist on independent aesthetic values and to criticize Communist literary theory in public. In January 1945 Hu established a magazine, Hsi-wang [hope], as a sounding board for his ideas and a weapon with which to fight the opposing faction. A colleague's article, "On Subjectivism," in the first issue, provoked a literary controversy which raged for nine years. Hu was investigated by the Chinese Communist party, which attempted to interfere with the publishing of his journal. Nonetheless, he was able to preserve a degree of independence in the period before the Communists came to power.
From 1949 to 1951 Hu Feng's expression of the proper political sentiments overbalanced his remarks on literature, and his poetry lauded Mao Tse-tung in superhuman terms. He did not condemn the political leadership, although he charged those responsible for literary policy with distorting the leadership's program. He sought to break the literary monopoly of his old enemies and to gain party sanction for his own literary ideas. Hu no longer was allowed to debate freely, nor was he equal to his opponents. Because he was still influential in literary circles and praised for his revolutionary activities, he was appointed to the councils of two writers associations. However, he was given no real authority. Doctrinal interpretation of literature continued to be the province of Chou Yang, then deputy chairman of the All-China Federation of Writers and Artists. Although Hu's posts were nominal, they indicated that the Communists still wanted his cooperation. Hu's plan seems to have been to comply with party directives so that he could gain a position in the Communist party hierarchy which would enable him to influence the content of such directives.
During the ideological remolding movement begun in 1951 Chou Yang engineered formal attacks on Hu and his colleagues. Although the attempts to reform Hu's thinking failed, he was not condemned beyond reprieve. By the beginning of 1954 Hu's position in Communist party circles had improved. He was made a representative to the National People's Congress and was appointed to the editorial board of Jen-min wen-hsueh [people's literature], an important party literary magazine. At that point, he apparently assumed that his position had risen to the point where an open struggle could result in victory.
In July 1954 Hu Feng presented a report to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party in which he blamed the failure of literary development on the literary authorities. He hoped to weaken their control by setting forth his criticisms of their policies. Hu expressed opposition to Marxist indoctrination of writers and suggested that writers would come closer to true Communism if they accepted his principle that the "subjective struggling spirit" relates itself to objective reality and if they participated in the practical daily problems of the people. He opposed the idea that writers should draw their material solely from the concerns of peasants, workers, and soldiers. Literature, he held, should not merely portray certain classes, but should describe the daily struggles of all men. He denounced thought reform imposed from without on the grounds that it kept writers and artists from being in touch with the realities of daily life. Hu believed that each writer should reform his own thoughts. He rejected the evaluation of literature according to its subject matter, and he objected to making the literary form of the past the national literary standard. Having set forth the causes of artistic stagnation, Hu went on to present a program designed to eliminate rigid controls over writers and to create an atmosphere conducive to the production of valid literary works. He proposed the creation of several writers organizations which would edit their own publications. Free competition in creative work, he asserted, would lead to ever high standards and achievements. In Hu's opinion, his report merely demanded a greater degree of freedom for writers to develop their individual talents within the Communist system.
Since no action was taken against him after the presentation of his report, Hu believed that the time had come to ask for party sanction of his theories. At a meeting in November 1954 he again outlined his view of literature and then openly accused the literary authorities of the same charges that had been brought against him: sectarianism, distortion of Marxism, and surrender to bourgeois thought. The rapidity with which the emphasis of the meeting suddenly switched to an attack on Hu seemed to indicate that he had been invited to participate in the meeting so that others could attack him.
The intensity and the nation-wide scope of the subsequent campaign may be explained by examining Communist internal policy at the end of 1954. As the Chinese Communists moved into a period of intensive socialist reorganization of society and the economy, it became imperative for them to combat all heterodoxy. One of the chief forces behind the drive for ideological purity was Hu's old enemy Chou Yang, who attempted to make Hu Feng a symbol of heterodoxy. Although the campaign was not free from personal vindictiveness, it must be consideixd as another phase in the continuing program of thought reform in the People's Republic of China. The 1955 campaign was different from the previous attacks on Hu; he now was regarded not as a deviationist guilty of "subjectivism, emotionalism and aestheticism," but as a counterrevolutionary leader. However, thoiTgh the charge that he disagreed with official literary-political rulings could be substantiated,' there was no evidence to show that his ideas were anti-Marxist in principle or that he intended to subvert political authority.
The campaign reached a climax on 13 May 1955, when Hu's published self-criticism was rejected as being false. Although he had begged his followers to break away from him, most of them resisted the campaign against their old master. On 18 July 1955 Hu was arrested and imprisoned. The campaign did not end with his arrest, but became broader in scope and more intense, proving that it had a function beyond neutralizing a single disturbing influence. After the inauguration in 1 956 of the period of the "Hundred Flowers," many of Hu Feng's views, as previously presented in his report to the Central Committee, were supported openly by several intellectuals. Opinions which had been denounced as heresy a year earlier were publicly debated. Such terms as "vulgar sociology" and "mechanized literature," coined by Hu to describe China's current literature, were used by Communist leaders. Not only Hu's ideas but also his example of defiance of the Communist authorities inspired many of those who expressed disagreement with the regime at this time. Among them, his name became a symbol of protest against control of intellectual and artistic activity. There were reports of student meetings at which speakers declared that history would judge Hu as a hero of the age, and there was a movement to demand a reexamination of the charges against him. Several writers who had published sharp criticisms of Hu now insisted that Chinese culture would have been less backward if some of his reforms had been accepted. However, when the party launched its anti-rightist drive in the latter half of 1957, discussion of Hu's ideas and praise for his courage was silenced. Those who had voiced beliefs similar to Hu's were rebuked and were branded as supporters of Hu.
