Abstract
Scream Weekly was a literature journal jointly founded by Mao Dun and Ba Jin on August 25, 1937, in Shanghai, which was renamed “Beacon” immediately after the publication of the first two issues. The journal was issued in Guangzhou starting with the 13th issue and was discontinued on October 11, 1938. In its duration of publication, the journal was published every seven and ten days successively due to the war. As the journal sold well, it went through a second edition in Chongqing simultaneously for a time.
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Notes
- 1.
In the whole “Battle of Wusong”, the “Defense Battle of Dachang”, which took place on October 26, 1937, was particularly damaging, where the deputy regimental commander of the 524th regiment, Division the 88th Xie Jinyuan led “800 heroes to defend the ‘Four Banks Warehouse’ to the last”. The battle was one of the most sublime and influential examples of warfare in all of Asia and the Pacific at that time, and the heroic act of Nationalist soldiers shocked the international media. After the outbreak of the battle, Shanghai Evening Post & Mercury in English editorialized that “we witnessed heroic spirit of Chinese soldiers in Zhabei and were impressed deeply. Chinese soldiers fought courageously without parallel, and they will be immortal.” News Chronicle, located in London, also pointed out “the achievement of Chinese soldiers resisting the Japanese invaders in Shanghai is in fact one of the most valiant records in history.” In 1941, international anti-Fascist star Xie Jinyuan was assassinated by Japanese agents. After the killing, Xie Jinyuan was posthumously awarded the rank of Army Infantry Major General by the National Government.
- 2.
- 3.
“Prospectus”, Scream, 1937.8.25(1).
- 4.
Of course, the “left-leaning” thought trend emerged because of the war and showed the origin relation between Scream and “left-wing literature”, but it had greater significance in cultivating new literature writers and works in mainland China. It is worth noting that the journal also had some direct contacts with the CCP organization. For example, there was a report writing entitled “Travel East from Longhai” published as the 17th issue under the signature of “Yi He”, which was the pen name of Yang Zhongkang , an official in charge of culture in the New Fourth Army killed by Japanese troops in 1945.
- 5.
Per the research of Wang Tongzhao , Poshek Fu believed that the “writer groups of Scream (Beacon)” were “groups of liberal humanists who saw that the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression was for justice, which is in line with the ‘May Fourth’ tradition, as the ultimate goal of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression is to realize freedom and liberation” and “the ultimate goal of the current war is to provoke Japanese people to overthrow the military dictatorship.” From a historical perspective, this view is the same as that held by Fu [8].
- 6.
In the eyes of Jerome B. Grieder , humanitarian intellectuals are “left-leaning”, of course, on the position of the National Government, these intellectuals were suspected of “pro-Communists”, for example, Li Gongpu , Wen Yiduo and many others were assassinated by the National Government, but after 1949, these humanitarian intellectuals like Luo Longji , Ba Jin , Chu Anping and other writers were considered “right-leaning” by the CCP and were cast as rightists or subjected to the cruel persecution in the “Cultural Revolution”, even including Herman C.E. Liu ’s widow Liuwang Liming. It was a tragic fact that humanitarian intellectuals were in a dilemma when they were considered “rightists in the eyes of the left and leftists in the eyes of the right”, but it showed their independence in thoughts, politics and social criticism.
- 7.
“Notice”. Beacon, 1938.5.1(13).
- 8.
“Restoration Message”. Beacon, 1938.5.1(13).
- 9.
Wang Shiwei was executed in the Rectification Campaign in Yan’an. Nie Gannu was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Anti-Rightist Movement. Wang Renshu and Xiao Jun suffered varying degrees of persecution in the Cultural Revolution. From the broad sense of literary forms, Yao Wenyuan may be considered a successor of Lu Xun in writing essays, although he also met a bad end.
- 10.
The early theory founder of “left-leaning literature” was Guo Moruo , who published an article “Revolution and Literature” in Creation Monthly in May 1926, asserting “the name literature covers two different concepts: revolutionary literature and counter-revolutionary literature”, “literature is revolutionary all the time and real literature is only one type of revolutionary literature”. In this “revolutionary literature” controversy, some revolutionary writers often tended to take a class perspective simply and placed most other writers at the opposite end with complete negation. Feng Naichao, one of the main initiators of the controversy, published an article “Art and Social Life” in the first issue of Cultural Criticism on January 15, 1928, showing an “ultra-left” emotion of sweeping aside all opposite factions and “no other revolutionary but me”. The article denounced Ye Shengtao as “one of the most typical misanthropists of the Chinese Republic, for his writings always present in a gray mood. The ‘sorrow of disillusionment’” “does not prefer for revolution”, criticized Lu Xun , “often overlooked life from a restaurant’s window care-freely with drunken eyes”, “only reflecting the sorrow of laggards during the social change.” Out of pure motives of revolution, some “revolutionary literature” critics neglected or completely shunned the inherent art functions of literature. Instead, they just emphasized the use of the literature as a tool for political and class struggles. Wang Duqing said “writers for each class are its spokesmen, and the literature of each class is the weapon with which they protect themselves…. Our literature is the battle field of our revolution and writers and soldiers, pens and mortars can be said to be complementary to each other.” The “League of Leftist Writers”, after its establishment, still dominated literary activities based on “instrumentalism” and further developed the denial of literary nature. The “League of Leftist Writers” was a literary group, but it “became a second CCP” as Zhou Yang recalled in his later years. The leadership of the “League of Leftist Writers” at the time did not allocate significant energy to literary and artistic activities but maintained keen interest in organizing demonstrations, gathering and writing slogans, distributing leaflets, agitating strikes in factories and other radical political activities. On the contrary, those enthusiastic about publishing articles in newspapers and journals were often denounced as “workists”, and those who wanted to write were criticized as “writerists” and were considered “right-leaning”. Yang [10].
- 11.
The most famous work was Total Retreat by Ge Qin , to which Lu Xun wrote a foreword saying that “characters in the book were not heroes” [11]; Tofu Sister, by another female writer Yang Zhihua (pen-name was Wenjun, 1901–1973), was another “resistance literary” piece coming from left-wing literature but advocated pan-humanity. Yang was the second wife of CCP leader Qu Qiubai , and her Tofu Sister was read by Lu Xun, who “finished proofreading work in the afternoon, including correction of wrongly written characters in both regular and cursive scripts, and then sent it back in paper wrap.” Chen [12].
- 12.
Wei et al. [14]. In addition, Wang Ruoshui also supported “revolutionary humanism”, which should be based on the principles of firmly safeguarding peace and opposing wars, but if the war we launched was revolutionary and just, its purpose was to liberate the people and save the nation, with the final aim of wiping out all wars and achieving a lasting peace [15].
- 13.
Mao Dun ’s wife Kong Dezhi and Ba Jin ’s wife Xiao Shan were both killed in the “Cultural Revolution”.
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Han, S.H. (2018). Humanitarian Literature Journals and Scream (Beacon) . In: Literature Journals in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression in China (1931-1938). Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6448-7_5
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