The Backstory of History: A Self-Selected Collection by Jia Zhifang

Author: Editor-in-Chief: Ji Xianlin
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 1998-10-01
Features: Excerpt: This small book is mostly composed of short essays I wrote between 1936 and 1947. Through various upheavals, the articles collected here would have been lost if it weren’t for the help of several enthusiastic friends. Now, it’s a miracle that we’ve managed to compile this book, and I must be grateful for the value of friendship, especially for Brother Qiao, Brother Liu, Brother Sun, and Minjun. I’m an accidental writer; although this interest has greatly strengthened and encouraged me in life, it has also brought me greater frustration and sorrow in this era. I often reflect on Andrei Bely’s words: “For a dying person to live through their works is a sad thing.” Although I have no ambitions to become a literary saint, in the true sense of a strict life path and the personal choices dictated by the times, this work can be seen as an ‘escape,’ and yet this tragic ‘escape’ is still difficult to avoid! It’s like the dull phase of foreign wars, where a friend I deeply respect kept urging and encouraging me to write something, as if it were a ‘plaything of sorrow.’ This mood of gaining something in the face of helplessness made me deeply moved to tears! At that time, I was in an old-style military unit, unable even to let out a sigh like a wolf. I was filled with the dark and simple emotions of a soldier, faith in the bayonet. Time flies—I was ‘ill’ for nearly a year, though still in an environment that wasn’t fully recovered. But thanks to the encouragement of my loving friends, I compiled this small book. “There is no voice in the height of battle,” as a former soldier, I understand this principle. So, while I couldn’t help but feel a sense of sorrow, I thought, what is this small book after all? The idea of naming it “A Plaything of Sorrow” came from this feeling of apology and silence in my heart; but some friends said it wasn’t suitable, even though we live in a faded life, we cannot lose our color as human beings; we should have some vitality. So, let’s call it “Heat,” I had to smile silently and agree. But, “A Plaything of Sorrow,” I want to shout and call it out loud in my heart.
Postscript in late autumn of 1948: The postscript for this academic collection compiled by Mr. Jia was to bring together the fruits of Mr. Jia’s many years of academic activities, allowing them to be fully reflected in this work, while also providing a practical convenience for us to read his articles. This topic has been discussed among us, the “disciples and grand-disciples” who have recently been close to Mr. Jia, more than once. Since Mr. Jia’s return to prominence, various works and collections have been published, including some like Post-War Literary Remains—Collected Prefaces and Postfaces by Jia Zhifang, which reflect Mr. Jia’s achievements in a certain field. However, perhaps precisely because of this, the absence of a systematic collection of Mr. Jia’s academic achievements in different periods and fields has especially left us unsatisfied in our reading and understanding. Originally, in the mid-1980s, a publisher in Mr. Jia’s hometown had a plan to publish a multi-volume collected works of Mr. Jia, and Professor Chen Sihe, who was then Mr. Jia’s assistant, had already compiled the first two volumes. But for some reason, the manuscript was shelved in the publisher for years, and the plan to publish the collection was ultimately canceled, replaced by a thin, small-volume “Selected Works” with a print run of only 1,000 copies. Of course, this didn’t matter much to Mr. Jia himself, so although it was just a small consolation, he still expressed his sincere gratitude to the individuals involved and the “home publisher” for their “generous hospitality” in the postscript of that book with a cheerful and capable attitude. But as readers who had expectations, we couldn’t help but feel a sense of injustice when this opportunity to do something meaningful was lost again, especially when certain petty voices buzzed around us like flies. So, when Shandong Education Press came to Mr. Jia to invite him to compile a self-selected collection, Mr. Jia hesitated because he was already publishing two recent works, fearing repetition in content. I was one of those who strongly encouraged him to accept the invitation. My reason was that since Shandong was inviting him to compile a part of the “Century Academic and Literary Series,” with an obvious focus on academia and a very broad limitation on length, we could fully compile it into a “summary of Mr. Jia’s academic activities.” Perhaps my bold words worked—Mr. Jia not only accepted the publisher’s invitation but also entrusted me with the task of co-editing this Self-Selected Collection. Naturally, I couldn’t just talk in vain; under Mr. Jia’s close attention and detailed guidance, I had to approach this task with high standards and strict requirements, “treating it as a serious academic pursuit.” Looking back after completing it, I’m quite pleased with a few aspects myself. First, in terms of material acquisition, we’ve unearthed and collected a batch of original documents that have never been included in any collection before, which can alleviate Mr. Jia’s concerns about repetition in content. These documents were written relatively close together: the first was in the early 1950s, before Mr. Jia was imprisoned, when he published some topical essays,, and reviews of foreign writers in newspapers and magazines. We’ve selected some representative pieces from this period and included them in the fifth section of this book, “Return and Transcendence.” The second was in the early 1980s, after Mr. Jia’s rehabilitation and return to prominence, when he worked in the archives and was invited to serve as an editor for two large series of reference books, Comprehensive Materials on the History of Modern Chinese Literature and Research Materials on Contemporary Chinese Literature, organized by the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He later served as the responsible editor for several of these reference books, leaving behind a batch of valuable documents that have never been publicly released. According to our current understanding, serving as an editor in a collaborative book project should only be a honorary role, with no real responsibilities. But no, the few long articles we unearthed from this period, which were likely used to guide the specific editorial responsibilities of the responsible editors, prove that Mr. Jia was deeply involved and even “asked very thoroughly,” clearly treating it as a “serious academic pursuit.” This kind of pure “discovery” in “materials” also shook me deeply. I think its significance should far exceed the few specific materials themselves and lies more in making us understand that when we conduct in-depth research on modern and contemporary Chinese literature and the relationship between Chinese and foreign literature on the basis of rectifying chaos in the 1980s, those seemingly easily accessible “basic literature” collections are not inherently meant to exist in any particular form, but are clearly a “civilizational achievement” worthy of our greatest appreciation. Behind those yellowing pages of silent dark text, how much effort, life, cries, and struggles of scholars like Mr. Jia and archivists have been condensed and locked away, most of which have been unrevealed or long forgotten. In October 1990, Mr. Jia accepted an invitation from his alma mater, Tokyo Japan University, to visit Japan as a visiting scholar for a month, accompanied by his wife. During this time, he gave lectures on topics such as My History with Hu Feng, My and Sociology, and On Hu Feng’s Literary Thought at several universities. Most of these lecture drafts had not been published in China before, and we have included them all here. On the other hand, my design for the format of this book was fully approved by Mr. Jia, which is also a matter that made me quite pleased. The idea is actually very simple: based on the original intention of compiling a “summary of academic works,” we strive to fully reflect and embody Mr. Jia’s academic achievements and contributions in terms of both activity periods and fields. For this purpose, I first divided the materials by discipline and compiled Mr. Jia’s academic achievements in the main fields of modern literature, comparative literature, and foreign literature (including other miscellaneous studies) into three sections: “Starting with Cleaning Up the Disaster Zone,” “Openness and Exchange,” and “Return and Transcendence” (the third to fifth sections of the book). Then, we aimed to collect comprehensively and select on a comprehensive basis, with the selection criteria naturally determined by Mr. Jia himself.
Moreover, Mr. Jia was never a scholar who shut himself away in his study, only “reading dead books by the south window.” Instead, he had a dual cultural identity as both a writer and a scholar, and with a life full of hardships, his own life experiences, social interactions, thoughts, actions, and academic journey were in themselves a significant “study.” Many of his viewpoints and insights expressed in a theoretical form often had the background and subtext of his own experiences and perceptions in real life. Therefore, to truly “understand” Mr. Jia’s scholarship, one must also understand his character. For this reason, I specifically compiled his “self-narrative” (Speaking of Myself) and “memorial essays” (The Experience of History is Worthy of Attention, including miscellaneous essays on historical themes) and placed them before the three sections of academic essays as the first and second sections of the book, hoping to give readers a sense of gradual progression, from emotional immersion to rational reflection. As an appendix, a collection of ten essays titled “Mr. Jia in the Eyes of Others” was included, which was my own initiative and decision. There have been many accounts of Mr. Jia’s scholarship and character, and now I have selected a few of them, using others’ words to indirectly express my own understanding of Mr. Jia. Whether praised or criticized, we are all truly respectful of Mr. Jia himself.
Finally, the title of this book was determined as The Back of History. Initially, it was mostly to conform to the naming format of the publisher. They insisted on adding a “poetic” main title above the subtitle “Self-Selected Collection.” This made Mr. Jia quite troubled for a few days. Later, this phrase was chosen, not because of its “poetry,” but mainly because it was a topic that Mr. Jia often brought up at his dinner table and in his study after drinking, a topic we had grown accustomed to and had deeply ingrained in our minds, as if “there were ghosts in our thoughts,” with thoughts and people easily coming to mind and hard to get rid of. As for its meaning, in his memoir In Prison and Outside Prison, Mr. Jia said a famous line that could serve as a footnote: “The things that are richer and more real than official history and government records” are likely to be found only “behind history.”
Assisting Mr. Jia in compiling this Self-Selected Collection gave me a strong sense of gratitude and joy. To preserve this joy for longer, I’d like to share it now. During the compilation process, many teachers and friends, including Professor Chen Sihe, Professor Xie Tianzhen, Brother Yan Feng, Brother Song Binghui, Brother Zhang Xinying, and Ms. Jia Ying, the daughter of Mr. Jia, all participated in giving opinions or providing practical help. I am grateful to them all.
Zhang Yesong
November 21, 1997
At the “Hut in the Southern District”