A Survey of Soviet Studies on Chinese Literature (1961-1978): Introduction and Bibliography

Abstract

As in the United States, the critical study of Chinese literature in the Soviet Union blossomed and grew in the 'sixties. It was during the early part of this decade that Soviet work on Eastern literature developed its own particular approaches, and scholars began exploring what they saw as the main problems in the field. Prior to the revolution, the methodology used in the study of Chinese literature in Russia was largely philological and descriptive in nature. study of literature was not clearly differentiated in relation to the study of religion, philosophy, and other aspects of the spiritual culture, and oriental literature was not considered in the context of world literature. Several factors helped change this situation by the 'sixties. Some of these were 1) the influential studies and teaching of the scholars M. Alekseev (1881-1951), considered the founder of modem Soviet sinology, and N. I. Konrad (1891-1970), 2) Marxist thought and methodology, and 3) the greater specialization in the field of literature within oriental studies and the growth of oriental studies themselves. In the preface to his study of Ssu-k'ung T'u's poetry, Alekseev defined the aim of his work and the direction he thought the study of Chinese literature should take: The present work has in view to assist a cessation of the amateurish attitude toward the study of Chinese poetry and the replacement of it by a more scientific one. A monograph, exhausting a subject in all its complexity, is that very way by which the contemporary Sinologist must direct himself in order to incorporate the study of the poetry of China into the study, immeasurably more advanced than it, of the poetry of other countries of the East and then into the study of world poetry.' A prominent Soviet scholar of Chinese literature, N. T. Fedorenko, explaining the importance of his work, found most significant for the direction of Soviet studies of Chinese literature his ability to reveal the connection between the movement of artistic creation and social development in China, and the mutual dependence of literary history and the whole course of the material and spiritual culture of the Chinese people.2 Thus, Alekseev's work introduced into the study of Chinese literature the important tasks of incorporating Chinese literature into world literature, applying the same rigorous methods of research to it as to European literatures, and examining literature in relation to social development. N. I. Konrad is another significant figure who influenced the course of the ' M. Alekseev, Kitajskaja poema o poete. Stansy Sykun Tu (A Chinese poem about the poet. Verses of Ssuk'ung T'u), (Petersburg, 1916), p. iii. Translation by Francis Woodman Cleaves in HJAS, 10 (1947), p. 49. 2 N. T. Fedorenko, V. M. Alekseev on the Chinese Poet, Artist, and Calligrapher, Problemy issledovanija