Chapter 23 1978 "Tiananmen Poems"

Genre: Poetry Author: Edited by the "Tong Huaizhou" Group of the Chinese Teaching and Research Office of Beijing International Studies University Publisher: People's Literature Publishing House Published: December 1978 The Hungarian poet Petofi said in "Letter to Alani": "If the people play a ruling role in poetry, then the day when the people will rule in politics will be closer." This sentence is also appropriate. It refers to the Tiananmen Poetry Movement, which took place in Tiananmen Square during the Qingming Festival in Bingchen—the April 5th Movement that shocked China and foreign countries to commemorate Premier Zhou Enlai and oppose the "Gang of Four".

On January 8, 1976, Zhou Enlai passed away. Before Qingming on April 5, the general public in Beijing spontaneously gathered in Tiananmen Square to mourn Premier Zhou and express their anger against the perverse actions of the "Gang of Four". "Angry produces poets", and poetry has become the main form of expression of this revolutionary movement.On the day of Qingming, millions of people gathered in Tiananmen Square, a sea of ​​wreaths, a sea of ​​poetry, a sea of ​​grief and anger.People posted their written poems, elegiac couplets and articles on lampposts in squares and guardrails of monuments, and hung them among pines and cypresses. Poems such as "If I want to be sad and hear ghosts screaming, I cry and laugh. I shed tears to sacrifice to heroes, raise my eyebrows and draw my sword out of its sheath" and other poems were recited, copied and quoted for a while.There are also praises for these poems: "Poetry flowers are sprinkled in front of the monument, / Poetry magazines will not be published. / / Mo Dao's rumors are written in every piece, this is the flower in the hearts of the people." ) On April 8, the "People's Daily" under the control of the "Gang of Four" published an editorial titled "The Counter-Revolutionary Political Incident in Tiananmen Square", officially defining the Tiananmen Incident as a "counter-revolutionary incident."The poems posted and copied in the square were accused of being "reactionary poems" and "outright counter-revolutionary agitation".In the following months, the writing, copying, and preservation of these poems were investigated, and some people were persecuted, convicted, and imprisoned.

In October 1976, the "Gang of Four" was arrested and the "Cultural Revolution" came to an end. On January 8, 1977, on the first anniversary of the death of Premier Zhou Enlai, sixteen teachers from the Chinese Teaching and Research Section of Beijing International Studies University under the pseudonym "Tong Huaizhou" mimeographed "Tiananmen Revolutionary Poems" and posted it on Tiananmen Square. It has aroused widespread response and support from the society.Immediately, in the name of the "Tong Huaizhou" group of the Chinese teaching and research section of Beijing International Studies University, they selected more than 1,500 works from a large number of collected works and compiled them into "Tiananmen Revolutionary Poems" and "Tiananmen Revolutionary Poems" (Part 1, Continuation), "One Hundred Poems of Tiananmen", "Three Hundred Poems of Tiananmen", "Documentary of the "Fourth Five-Year" Movement" and "Picture Album of Tiananmen Movement". In December 1978, on the basis of the original and sequel editions of "Anthology of Tiananmen Revolutionary Poems", People's Literature Publishing House published "Tiananmen Poetry Copy", which was inscribed by Hua Guofeng, then chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. "Shichao" contains more than 600 poems and essays.The book is divided into three volumes: the first volume contains ancient poems, words, songs, elegiac couplets, etc.; the second volume contains new style poems;In the preface of the book it says:

These poems condensing the blood and tears of the revolutionary people all come from the deep cry of the authors' souls, so they have strong combat effectiveness and artistic appeal.The revolutionary masses became more and more motivated when they saw it, and the enemy was terrified and restless when they saw it. They really played a huge role in "unifying the people, educating the people, attacking the enemy, and destroying the enemy".Many of these works have reached a very high level in terms of ideological and artistic quality, and they will surely occupy a glorious page in the history of Chinese or world literature.

Judging from the measurement standard of art, although these poems are not "reached a very high level" of artistry as the compiler said.However, in "Tiananmen Poems", it is the collective creative behavior of millions of people and the collective will and emotion contained in it. Behind these works lies a powerful "dynamic field" - the power of the people. Every poem in "Shi Chao" is not the voice of a certain person. The actual writer of each work and the actual voice of each voice is the huge group of "people".Lu Xun said in "Literature in the Revolutionary Era": "Some nations stop crying because it is useless to complain, and they become a silent nation, and gradually become more and more decadent... As for the nation that is full of resistance and strength, Because it was useless to complain, he woke up, and changed from mourning to roaring. As soon as roaring literature appears, resistance will come soon." ("Only Collection") The anxiety and indignation smoldering in the hearts of the people were finally expressed in poetry at this moment way exploded.

While determining the significance of the era of "Tiananmen Poems", we have to think about the complexity of history itself.The narrative of history is not unitary but pluralistic, not linear but double-linear.When history narrates itself, it will conceal some "meaning" intentionally or unintentionally.Therefore, when the narrative of literary history ignores other "Tiananmen poems" intentionally or unintentionally, history itself may be harmed.For example, in 1976, when the Tiananmen Poetry Movement was classified as a "counter-revolutionary incident," the "mainstream" "Poetry Magazine" played an active role in responding to the political trend.In the May issue, not only the full text of "two resolutions" was reposted, namely "Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China Concerning the Appointment of Comrade Hua Guofeng as First Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of "Resolution" (both according to the news from Xinhua News Agency on April 7, 1976), the original version published the Tiananmen Square speech of Wu De, the first secretary of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee at the time, and a group of poems distributed for the victory in the suppression of the "counter-revolutionary movement".Among them, for the poem "Two Resolutions in Hands", the editor also added a special note for the author: "The author of this poem has won personal second-class merit in smashing the counter-revolutionary political incident in Tiananmen Square", in order to achieve the purpose of his propaganda.Also published in the same issue were Tian Jian's "Writing by the Jinshui Bridge" and Zang Kejia's "Workers, Peasants, Soldiers and Iron Fists Hold High", "Condemning Deng Xiaoping" and other poems.Tian Jian continued his poetic tradition of combat style: "Thousands of miles of Shenzhou thunder, / Beat the evil wind that overturns the case. / / The Kunpeng spreads its wings nine times, / The fluffy bird shrank and mourned. / / A 'Naji' scandal, / Tried to perform successfully. / / Solemn In front of Tiananmen Square, / Do not allow monsters to run amok! / / The dictatorship of the proletariat - / The east wind sweeps the remaining clouds. / / Two resolutions are announced - / The red sun spurts and the east rises. / / The golden water waves are surging, / Victory does not forget the struggle. / / Looking forward to the Beidou, / The high road continues to climb.” Zang Kejia’s poems present a completely opposite position to Tiananmen’s poems at that time: “Criticism of Deng is like a hurricane, / The enemy is impatient. / In front of Tiananmen Square during the Qingming Festival, / In broad daylight Ghosts and ghosts. / / Rumors, crooked poems, black leaflets, / The red and white are confused. / Great spring is black and smoky, / Daytime arson and poisonous flames are high.”

This issue of "Poetry Magazine" and other voices standing against the "Tiananmen Poetry Movement" and "fighting against the right-leaning overturning the verdict" were not mentioned in the subsequent literary history, thus obscuring people's understanding of another aspect of that complicated era. perspective.Long Yangzhi believed in "The Tiananmen Poetry Movement in Narration" [Journal of Jianghan University (Humanities Edition), No. 2, 2007] that these poems continued the old path of "Cultural Revolution" criticism, from the perspective of literary history See, their significance lies in providing another intertextual text, and can reveal the inner source of the oppression of one way of speaking on another way of speaking.

On November 15, 1978, the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China held an enlarged meeting of the Standing Committee. At the meeting, it was announced that the broad masses of the people went to Tiananmen Square to mourn the beloved Premier Zhou on the Qingming Festival in 1976, and angrily denounced the "Gang of Four", which was a completely revolutionary action. On April 5, 1979, "People's Daily" published an editorial on the third anniversary of the Tiananmen Poetry Movement: "The Fourth Five-Year Movement was a broad-based democratic movement. Under the pressure of the 'Gang of Four', the masses did not have the freedom to discuss politics, so they used wreaths, poems If there is no place to confide, it will be gathered at the place where Premier Zhou is mourned; no one will organize, but it is so well organized; there is no unified voice, but it is so unanimous. People are in such places, using This special way of fighting, exercising democratic rights, propagating the truth, upholding justice, and attacking the enemy is really proud!"

In November of the same year, Zhou Yang, then chairman of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, also said when talking about the Tiananmen Poetry Movement: "History is ruthless, but also full of drama. The 'Gang of Four' usurped the party and seized power first on the front of literature and art, and the people used literature and art. The heavy hammer sounded the death knell of their downfall." ("Continuing the Past and Opening Up the Future, Prospering Literature and Art in the New Era of Socialism—Report at the Fourth Congress of Chinese Literary and Art Workers on November 1, 1979", People's Daily November 20, 1979)

In the history of new Chinese literature, the Tiananmen Poetry Movement has always been regarded as an important dividing point in contemporary literature, and has been endowed with the significance of ending an "old period" or opening a "new period".Since the 1980s, the "Tiananmen Poetry Movement" began to enter the narrative of literary history, such as "The First Draft of Chinese Contemporary Literary History" edited by Guo Zhigang and others (People's Literature Publishing House, 1981), "China History of Contemporary Literature (Fujian People's Publishing House, 1985), "History of Contemporary Chinese Literary Thought" edited by Zhu Zhai, Institute of Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (People's Literature Publishing House, 1987), "History of Contemporary Chinese Literature" by Hong Zicheng (Beijing University Press, 1999) etc.In the "History of Contemporary Chinese Literature" jointly compiled by 22 colleges and universities, it is concluded that: "In the Tiananmen Square protest movement, poetry was the bomb and the banner of the revolution, the main weapon used by the people to fight the 'Gang of Four'.  … In the history of China, the masses of the people used poetry as a weapon to directly participate in the political struggle and participate in the great struggle to determine the destiny of China. This is unique. In the history of Chinese literature, the role of poetry in fighting, inspiring, and even in uniting the masses has been brought into full play. This is sufficient, and this is the only phenomenon in the 'April 5' Movement."

Among the numerous narratives of literary history, most of them affirm or highlight the ideological value of the "Tiananmen Poetry Movement", but the artistic evaluation of its poetry is not high. The main reason is that the political factors of Tiananmen poetry are too strong.Zhang Qinghua's article "On the Historical Tradition and Periodization of Contemporary Poetry" ("Journal of Tai'an Teachers College", No. 3, 2002) is representative. He said: In the history of literature, the "Tiananmen Poetry Movement" that broke out on Qingming Festival in 1976 was usually used as the starting point for the change of contemporary poetry.But it now appears that this argument has been less convincing.Because the "Tiananmen Poetry Movement" is first of all a political movement against the "Gang of Four" and a conscious reflection of the public on the disaster of the Cultural Revolution, rather than a pure poetry and literature movement; secondly, the poetry adopted by the "Tiananmen Poetry Movement" The form is mainly the "revival" of ancient poetry in our country. The reason why everyone adopts the old form is because this way is easy to spread and communicate, and it is easy to produce the so-called "prosperity, observation, group, and resentment". There are obvious inconsistencies between it and the development direction of contemporary poetry; third, although many works in "Tiananmen Poetry" express hatred for cultural tyranny and strong appeals for democratic progress, they also have obvious upward pressure. The ideological traces of this era, such as the mourning of Zhou Enlai, also more or less contain the emotional factors of the personality cult of the Cultural Revolution.From these aspects, "Tiananmen Poetry" did not really start a new era of poetry, and some new ideological factors it contained were not fully developed.For these reasons, a deeper historical exploration is warranted to consider the starting point of change in contemporary poetry. The Tiananmen Poetry Movement that occurred in 1976 was not a purely literary movement, in which political factors played a huge role.However, it is an undeniable fact that it is precisely because of the darkness of society and politics and the oppression of powerful power that led to the people's resistance, thus changing the political and ideological structure. Literature, as a mirror of society, cannot stay out of it. When examining the value of Tiananmen poetry Political factors cannot be separated, and the value of the Tiananmen Poetry Movement cannot be avoided when talking about the history of contemporary Chinese literature.Chen Sihe believes that there are two types of literary writers in the new era: from the late 1950s and the late 1970s; the source of new era literature is the drama "In the Silent Place", "Flowers Replayed" and the folk poems on Tiananmen Square—" Copy of Tiananmen Poems. ("Chen Sihe's Selected Works", Guangxi Normal University Press, 1997) Forty years passed in the blink of an eye.The Tiananmen Poetry Movement has become a drop in the ocean of historical memory, and only one copy of "Tiananmen Poems" still keeps us alert, silently telling a history that should not be forgotten. (Written by Wang Juchuan) Tong Huaizhou: "Tiananmen Poems", People's Literature Publishing House, 1978 Edition Editing Group of Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences: "Revolutionary Poems", China Youth Publishing House, 1979 edition Zhang Taozhou: "The Paradox and Fit of Historical Transformation——The Poetic Significance of the "Fourth Five-Year" Poetry Movement", "The Poetic Space of Modern Chinese", Peking University Press, 2005 Edition Wu Shanzeng: "Re-discussion on the position of "Fourth Five-Year" Tiananmen Poems in the history of literature", "Nanjing Social Sciences", Issue 10, 2004 Long Yangzhi: "Tiananmen Poetry Movement in Narration", "Jianghan University Journal" 2007 No. 1