The ten years of the "Cultural Revolution" was a very dark period in the history of contemporary Chinese literature. The published literature during the "Cultural Revolution" is generally a kind of "obedience literature".In politics, "emphasize class struggle, highlight line struggle, and highlight struggle with capitalist roaders"; in art, create "anti-trend" heroes based on the "three outstanding" creative formula, or artificially create idols, or illustrate politics, or distort history reality.Such as "Prelude" and other novelettes published in "Zhaoxia" (series), as well as dramas "Battle Boat Platform" and "Flourishing Prosperity", movies "Rupture" and "Joyful Little Lianghe"; long poem "The Battle of Xisha" "Wait.Even some of the better works are unavoidably blatantly preaching, influenced by political trends, and tinged with extreme leftism, such as "Niu Tian Yang" and "The Golden Road".

The "History of Contemporary Chinese Literature" compiled by five universities in Jilin Province in 1983 referred to the ten years of the "Cultural Revolution" as "a dark and depressed period without poetry, novels, prose, and literary criticism."In 1988, 12 colleges and universities in Henan co-edited the "1949-1988 Chinese Contemporary Literary Works Selection" in the preface, saying: "In the ten years of the 'Cultural Revolution', the field of literature and art has become a blank space, of course there is nothing to choose." The introduction to "Contemporary Chinese Literary Trends of Thought" (published by Zhu Zhai in 1987) stated: "In the ten years of the 'Cultural Revolution', it can be said that there was no literary trend of thought, only reactionary political noise under the banner of literature."

They jointly negated the ten years of "obedience literature", but to varying degrees ignored the literary undercurrent of the masses that had been surging under the feudal-fascist cultural dictatorship during the ten years of the "Cultural Revolution".This is the "underground literature" that confronts "obedience literature". Underground literature specifically refers to works that occurred during the "Cultural Revolution" and were created by the people among the people, reflecting the true nature of social life during the "Cultural Revolution".No matter what position the author stands on, which group or faction he belongs to, his works can truly reflect a certain aspect of the life of the "Cultural Revolution", created among the people and popular among the people, this kind of creative activities can be classified as underground literature.

The development of the underground literary movement can be roughly divided into four stages: May 1966-April 1969.This was a period of general turmoil and civil war during the "Cultural Revolution". After the Ninth National Congress of the Party was held in April 1969 and a new party and state leadership was formed, the Red Guards were disbanded and sent to the countryside forcibly.Cadres were transferred to the "May 7th Cadre School".The so-called "rightist group" of the central leadership was expelled from Beijing and sent to the third front.The social order has gradually entered a period of stability and order.During the two years before this movement, the ultra-left Red Guard literary activities were the dominant underground literature.

April 1969-1971 "September 13 Incident".The whole country has entered a period of struggle, criticism and reform.The first underground salon was born, confronting the ultra-left line and cultural dictatorship.The greatest achievement of this period was the production of a batch of critical realism works. 1972-1974. "Cultural Revolution" trough period.In the "Criticism of Lin and Rectification" movement led by Zhou Enlai, the ultra-left line was suppressed, and the whole people started a potential ideological liberation movement.In this specific environment, the "underground literary salon" became active and entered its heyday in 1973.Finally, it led to the birth of a batch of modernist poems.

From 1974 to October 1976, the period of tit-for-tat struggle with the "Gang of Four".The Jiangqing Group carried out a comprehensive encirclement and counter-encirclement campaign against underground literature.Around Chen Yi's death, "Chen Yi's Poems" and a batch of mourning poems and elegy were circulated among the whole people; and some "underground salon" hosts and underground literature authors were arrested and imprisoned; the struggle reached its climax in the Ming'anmen Square Poetry Movement in Bingchen Qing Dynasty . During the "Cultural Revolution", facing the cultural desert created by the fascist cultural dictatorship of the Lin Biao and Jiang Qing cliques, the masses showed unprecedented enthusiasm for literature and art.On the one hand, it is an open literary dictatorship, and on the other hand, it is the unprecedented "freedom" of the "underground literary world".In the underground literary movement, a large number of manuscript poems, novels, and plays were produced.Judging from the existing batch of novels and poems, they broadly and profoundly reflect the social life of the "Cultural Revolution" era, and have reversed and developed in the fields of artistic style, genre and subject matter in the previous seventeen years.Although the Lin Biao and Jiang Qing cliques cruelly encircled and suppressed "underground literature", established literary prisons, and destroyed authors, "the wild fire never burns out, and the spring breeze blows again", and a batch of excellent literature was born on the basis of the spontaneous creation of a wide range of people. work.In the dark age, they are "the twilight of the east, the sounding arrows in the forest, and the sprouts of winter", which enlighten people, cheer loneliness and inspire fighting spirit.Especially the "Fourth Five-Year" poems pushed underground literature to the climax of history and promoted the historical change of society.Such underground literary works have become one of the precious heritages in the history of Chinese literature.Especially its movement itself has left us with rich historical experience of culture, thought, politics and art.

The characteristics of the era of underground literature are extensive mass participation, ideological independence and artistic creativity. Underground literature emerges from the fertile soil of the masses. The cultural confinement and lack of cultural entertainment during the "Cultural Revolution" were unprecedented, and the widespread spontaneous creation of the masses was also unprecedented.The unprecedented enthusiasm shown by the masses of the people for literature and art is the fundamental source of numerous literary works.Regardless of oppression, confiscation, banning, and even criticism and imprisonment, the masses still create in secret, and spread hand-copied literary works through undisclosed channels.This is the most extensive period of folk creative activities in the history of contemporary Chinese literature.

Some excellent underground literary works condense the author's deep thinking, true temperament, and true singing and crying, which are in stark contrast to the false writing style of the "Cultural Revolution".Even some works are infused with the author's blood and life. Underground literature was produced in a special historical and social environment.It was built on the ruins of a culture. The "Cultural Revolution" movement destroyed and wiped out the entire human culture, brutally persecuted writers, and large-scale book burning and banning activities caused the interruption of traditional inheritance.This makes underground literature inherently malnourished. The drastic changes in the political environment of the "Cultural Revolution" made the history of the ten-year underground literary movement full of contradictions, conflicts and twists and turns.Almost every one or two years there will be a political shock in the society, which makes underground literature always stand on the wrong path and is forced to make constant choices.But it is precisely this double dilemma of culture and politics that provides underground literature with a complete "liberation" and strict criticism and selection of previous cultural and political traditions. "Three Reds and One Creation" ("Red Rock", "Red Sun", "Red Flag Spectrum", "The History of Entrepreneurship")'s creative technique of "combining revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism" was abandoned by some authors.By reversing certain "Left" literary traditions of the previous seventeen years, drawing nourishment from classicism, modernism and folk culture, and creatively expressing the real life in which one lives, this turning point is extremely valuable. A new direction for contemporary literature.

As early as eight or nine years before the "Cultural Revolution", certain "Left" propaganda and education created a "Left" sentiment in the whole society, especially the younger generation.This "left" line reached its peak during the "Cultural Revolution". One of the main means of the "Cultural Revolution" is to use highly controlled culture and art, from news media to model plays, from newspaper editorials to Mao Zedong's quotations and other social discourses, to surround the Chinese people at all times, making them lose their ability to think independently. They even lost their individuality, even lost their rationality, and eventually became victims of the "Cultural Revolution" political movement.

The generation of young people who were born together with the Republic were indoctrinated with half-understood concepts and theories of class struggle and line struggle. During the "Cultural Revolution", many of them became violent in language, behaved perversely, and lost their ability to think normally.They generally lack individuality, are completely surrounded and swayed by extreme left discourse, and become puppets manipulated by political careerists. The emergence of independent thinking and independent awareness of the "Cultural Revolution" movement must be preceded by breaking free from the shackles of the "Cultural Revolution" discourse.Through the rebellion against the "Cultural Revolution" discourse, the underground literature movement established its own discourse system and used its own language to communicate among the masses and the educated youth, thereby forming an independent ideology. This is a great contribution of underground literature.

At the beginning of the "Cultural Revolution", when the wave of "Red Guard literature and art" was rising, a kind of independent consciousness and new discourse had already lurked in the ultra-left "Red Guard language". The formation of the "Red Guard Discourse" also led to and promoted the development and maturity of the "Educated Youth Discourse" after the Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 1969.The breakthrough in the discourse of the "Cultural Revolution", the abandonment of the ultra-left vocabulary, and the creation of a new discourse prompted the formation of an independent group of educated youth with internal cohesion.Through underground literature, the youth and the broad masses of the people awakened faster, and finally formed a confrontation with the Jiang Qing group.The confrontation between underground literature and obedience literature is essentially a confrontation between two discourses. This kind of cultural confrontation is expressed in the poetry of educated youth as the sublation of the "political lyric poetry" of the Red Guard period (founded in the first seventeen years), and through the formal revolution of Guo Lusheng and Yiqun, it leans toward modernist poetry.Among the group of educated youth who went to the mountains and went to the countryside, they sought nourishment from the folk soil, explored ways, and updated their vocabulary.Among intellectuals and cadres, efforts were made to replace the words of the "Cultural Revolution" mainly through the traditional style of poetry. The experimentation of underground poetry in form was itself a challenge to the current cultural tyranny of the "Cultural Revolution".In the underground literary salon, the specific language fits the inner feeling of this group.This kind of poetry, which was not difficult for people in the salon at that time, caused an uproar in the poetry world after the "Cultural Revolution", and then obscure poetry became a trend in the 1980s. Since the collection of underground literary works produced during the ten years of the "Cultural Revolution" underground literature is not comprehensive and sufficient, it is inconvenient to make an overall evaluation of its achievements.But judging from the literary works that have been collected and published so far, a number of excellent literary works were indeed born in the ten years of the "Cultural Revolution": The novel "The Second Handshake", the critical realism novel "The Nine Waves", and the poetic novel "Waves"; the fairy tale poems and avant-garde poems inclined to modernist poetry; the old style poems "Gentian Purple Collection", "Zha Luo "Collection"; prose "Abaga's Spring", "Yakan Xili Diary" and so on.Compared with the excellent works of the ten years after the "Cultural Revolution", these works are not inferior in terms of artistic level and depth of ideological understanding.The former had a profound impact on the latter. Of course, we also need to have a clear understanding of underground literature, which has many obvious flaws.It lacks theoretical guidance for a long time and appears quite blind.The works are mixed with good and bad.Under the historical conditions at that time, lack of organization, scattered camps, no relatively unified purpose, coupled with congenital malnutrition, the creation was very random, and it was inevitable to be careless. The purpose of this book is to provide a basic picture of the development of underground literature in the decade of the "Cultural Revolution".Because the research work on underground literature is still in its infancy, the main task of this book is to collect, compile and summarize the materials related to underground literature in the past ten years. This book tries to vividly introduce the social and political background surrounding the underground literary movement, trace and explore the origin of this movement and the reasons behind it.Try to reflect the characteristics and multiple aspects of the movement in different periods historically, and reveal the deep laws in the development process of this movement. In order to give the reader a comprehensive understanding of the movement, some space is devoted to the fringe activities surrounding underground literature. As for the handwritten works during the "Cultural Revolution", because some are original first-hand materials, considering that they are bound to be annihilated if they are not cited, they should be quoted as much as possible.Some published materials also occupy a certain amount of space for the convenience of readers and the comprehensiveness of this book.Considering that some materials are of high value and contain connotations of history, politics, cultural history, and intellectual history, we still try to quote them as much as possible.