Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c10.s2.t4: Guo Moruo
Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c10.s2.t4
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Guo Moruo
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Guo Moruo (1892-1978) was a well-known writer, poet, scholar, playwright, archaeologist, social activist and historian of the 20ᵗʰ century China who rose to the prominent position in the leadership hierarchy of the CPC in becoming the President of the Chinese Academic of Sciences in 1949 and continued to adorn this post till his death in 1978.
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Guo Moruo, the eighth child of his parents, was born in a landlord family living in the small town of Sha-wan (located on the Dadu river) near the prefecture level city of Le Shan of Sichuan province in November 1892. In the early phase of his life he received a traditional education of acquiring mastery over the Chinese classics under the tutelage of Guo Huanzhang, a private tutor with an aim to appear in the imperial civil service examination. However, after the educational reform in China, he was quite fortunate to avail the opportunity of going through new subjects of contemporary relevance when he went to study in the provincial capital of Cheng-du in February 1910. After about four years of stay there in Cheng-du, he went to Japan in January 1914 and after a year of preparatory course in Tokyo, he entered the sixth Higher School in Okayama. In 1918, he joined the Medical School of Kyushu Imperial University of Fukuoka. But, he was hardly interested in medicine. His real interest lay in the studies of foreign language and literature, especially, the works of Spinoza, Goethe, Walt Whitman and the Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore. In Japan, after thus being exposed to new forms of literature, he reached to the conclusion that western literature was superior to classical literature and folk tradition of China. Such conviction propelled him to translate lots of foreign literary works into Chinese, and published them in *New Journal on Current Affairs* (*Shi-shi Xinbao*), so as to acquaint his countrymen with the developing trend of the new socio-political-literary thoughts of the modern world. It is during this period of his stay in Japan, Guo Moruo brought out an anthology of his poems titled 'the Goddesses' (nu-shen女神) in 1921, that distinctly reflected his outlook of romanticism.
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*Guo Moruo*
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Guo Moruo, (first from the left), delivering a speech at the founding meeting of the Chinese Journalists' Association on March 20, 1938
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While in Japan, Guo Moruo came in contact with the Japanese Marxist Kawakami, and it may be said that both the doctrine of Marxism and the May Fourth new literature movement had a pronounced effect on his future course of thinking and action. From this time onwards, he changed himself from being a liberal democrat to a committed Marxist. In 1921, Guo Moruo, along with other patriotic writers like Yu Dafu and Cheng Fengwu formed the "Creation Society' with an avowed objective of promoting new vernacular literature in China. They brought out two periodicals, the “Creation Quarterly (Chuang-zao Ji-kan创造季刊) and the “Creation weekly” (chuang-zao zhoubao创造周报), both of which initially aimed at propagating western romanticism and individualism to varying extent, while upholding the prime motto of “art for art sake” in their literary pursuits. However, after the May 30^th Incident of Shanghai in 1925, and the consequent nation-wide anti-imperialist agitation, the main focus and orientation of the magazines shifted towards the growth of proletarian revolutionary literature.
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In 1923, Guo Moruo returned to China and joined the Kuo-min-tang (Nationalist Party) as political commissar while participating in the Northern Expedition of Jiang Jieshi. But when the rising peasant and workers movement in Jiang-xi and An-hui was crushed in March 1927, and the Communist Party members were subjected to severe persecution and suppression by Jiang Jieshi and his party, Guo Moruo felt disillusioned with the KMT policies. He left the KMT and joined the Chinese Communist Party. He actively participated in the Nan-chang uprising of August 1927, but after its dismal failure, Guo Moruo fled to Japan where he continued to prolong his stay for about 10 years, and devoted all his precious time in scholarly works till the outbreak of the anti-Japanese Resistance War of 1937, when again, he returned to China.
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As a devoted scholar of exceptional talent and ability, Guo Moruo's academic output during this period of 10 years has proved to be excellent and extraordinarily fruitful. Among his most illustrious scholarly works of this period were - *Inscriptions on Oracle Bones and Bronze Vessels* and *Study of the Ancient Chinese Society* etc in which he tried to demonstrate the slave nature of the Chinese society. All his academic works have been compiled into *Guo Moruo Quanji* (*Collected Works of Guo Moruo*) in 38 volumes, which were found to have been divided into three parts such as literature, history and archaeology.
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Guo Moruo was an ardent admirer and lover of Rabindranath Tagore's poems during the time when he was pursuing higher studies in Japan as a student. However, on the eve of Tagore's visit to China, in view of the changing socio-economic–political conditions and fierce ideological debate then raging in China; Guo Moruo without mincing words, is reported to have vividly showed his cynicism and scepticism about the message that the Indian poet was likely to convey to the Chinese people and youth when the latter would visit China. But, even then, Guo Moruo continued to have high regards and appreciation for Tagore's poems.
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In 1966, Guo Moruo was attacked by the Red Guards during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and severely humiliated. He passed away in 1978 due to old age.
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(*Arttatrana Nayak*)