ISSN:
0305-7410
Source:
Cambridge Journals Digital Archives
Topics:
Linguistics and Literary Studies
,
History
,
Political Science
,
Sociology
,
Economics
Notes:
The Great Leap Forward has not only been measured by the claimed increases of grain and steel production by so many million tons. Peking boasts too that the Leap produced, in 1958 alone, millions and millions of poems and songs. These products, both in themselves as art and in their way and manner of accomplishment, should reveal a picture of how the mental life, or, more precisely, how the mental as well as physical energy, of the nation is being vigorously mobilised, organised and directed. For, as much of the steel was, regardless of its quality, produced in “backyard furnaces,” so are myriads of these poems and songs, regardless of their aesthetics, made by farm teams in the fields, workers in the factories, and labourers building roads or bridges. The people are goaded and urged, instructed and inspired by tireless party cadres who exhort all social and racial groups that, among other purposes, there has to be a new epoch of poetry production to celebrate the new era in Chinese history.
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0305741000026205
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