Engels pointed out: "According to historical materialism, the decisive factor of historical process is the production and reproduction of real life in the final analysis." [6] Human material productive labor is the most basic practical activity, which determines the occurrence and development of other activities. "People's understanding mainly depends on material production activities, and gradually understand natural phenomena, natural laws and the relationship between man and nature; Moreover, through production activities, we have gradually realized a certain relationship between people in various degrees. All this knowledge cannot be obtained without production activities. " [7]
The establishment of historical materialism has opened up new ideas, raised new problems and pointed out new directions for the study of the genesis of literary activities. Marx and Engels pointed out: "The first premise of all human history is undoubtedly the existence of living people. Therefore, the first thing to be confirmed is the physical organization of these individuals and the resulting natural relationship between individuals and others. " [8] The origin of prehistoric art is based on the appearance of primitive humans. According to the latest research results of archaeology, there are four key stages in human prehistory: the first stage is the origin of human system (primitive man) itself, and apes have become bipedal species, about 7 million years ago; The second stage is that the bipedal species multiply into many different species, about 7-2 million years; The third stage is marked by the expansion of the brain, which is the signal of the emergence of Homo sapiens and gradually develops into Homo sapiens; The fourth stage is the origin of modern people, with language, consciousness, artistic imagination and tool making. [9] In the process of the emergence of modern human beings, material production and labor practice played a key role. "Labor creates man himself." [10] "First, labor, then language and labor together, become the two main driving forces. Under their influence, the ape brain gradually transited to the human brain; Although the latter is very similar to the former, it is much bigger and more perfect. " [1 1] In the process of labor practice, the humanization of nature and the objectification of human essential strength not only create basic conditions for human survival, but also transform themselves in practice. "Labor begins with making tools." [12] Due to the development and perfection of hands, vocal organs and brain, primitive people can not only engage in hunting and animal husbandry, but also engage in agriculture. After agriculture, they have spinning, weaving, metallurgy, pottery making and sailing. "With the development of commerce and handicrafts, art and science finally appeared" [13] "So Raphael's paintings, Thorvaldsen's sculptures and Paganini's music were created like magic." [ 14]
The occurrence of prehistoric art goes hand in hand with the generation of primitive people's thinking, ideas, consciousness and language, and is closely related to the extremely arduous labor and production practice in prehistoric times. Marx and Engels pointed out: "The emergence of ideas, concepts and consciousness is initially directly intertwined with people's material activities, material exchanges with people and the language of real life. People's imagination, thinking and spiritual communication are also the direct products of people's material actions here. " [15] In Anthropological Notes on Morgan's Ancient Society, Engels put forward and discussed in principle a series of problems about the occurrence and origin of literary and artistic activities in his works, such as Family, Private Ownership and the Origin of the State, Dialectics of Nature and German Ideology, which co-authored with Marx and Engels, and pointed out the direction for further research by successors. These problems mainly include:
First of all, clearly point out the research object of literary activity genesis. Marx and Engels attached great importance to The Ancient Society published by Morgan 1877. Marx carefully took a lot of notes and prepared to write a monograph on ancient society, but failed to do so. Later, Engels wrote The Origin of Family, Private Ownership and State. Engels pointed out in the preface of the book 1 edition: "Morgan's great achievement lies in his discovery and restoration of this prehistoric foundation of our literary history in its main features, and in the blood clan group of North American Indians, he found a key to solving extremely important riddles in the history of ancient Greece, Rome and Germany." [16] The occurrence and origin of human literary and artistic activities is actually an unsolved mystery in the ancient history of the world. Therefore, the study of human prehistory and its various aspects (including prehistory art) has become the basis for studying the occurrence and origin of literary activities. Although Marx and Engels did not make a special study of human prehistoric art before their death, their views in Anthropology Notes inspired future generations. The Origin of Art, published by the famous German art historian Gross in 1894, discusses and demonstrates in detail the emergence, formation and development of primitive art and the relationship between artistic activities and social, economic and spiritual life. "He was the first to collect evidence from the field of art" [17] supported Marx and Engels' view, thus establishing that the research object of the origin of art should be prehistoric in theory and practice.
Second, the development of thinking and the occurrence of aesthetic consciousness. Vico made a special study on the characteristics of human primitive thinking in New Science. He thinks that primitive people's thinking is "poetic wisdom". They have no reasoning ability, but they are full of exuberant feelings and life imagination. Marx and Engels further explained the occurrence and development of human thinking in the historical materialism. Marx pointed out: "The thinking process itself is produced under certain conditions, and it is a natural process in itself, so the thinking that can really be understood can only remain unchanged forever, but it gradually shows differences with the maturity of development (including the maturity of thinking organs). Everything else is nonsense. " [18] Engels also pointed out: "The most essential and closest foundation of human thinking is the changes in nature caused by human beings, not just the nature itself; Human intelligence develops according to how people learn to change nature. " [19] The development of human thinking is also a historical process. When reading Morgan's Ancient Society, Marx noticed that the imagination of primitive people had developed greatly in the barbaric stage of prehistoric history. He said: "The great talent of imagination, which has contributed greatly to human progress, has created oral literature such as myths, stories and legends and has become a powerful stimulus for mankind." [20] It is also in the practice of productive labor that in the process of learning how to change nature and make nature serve its own survival and development, those "subjective and perceptual richness of people, that is, the ears that feel music and the eyes that feel the form, in short, those feelings that can feel people's happiness and confirm that they are the essential strength of people can either develop or produce." [2 1] In the process of working in front of primitive people, I realized what Mr. Lu Xun said: "Yu Hang! Yu Hang! " When the rhythm is pleasant, when they are excited by the sunrise in the east and the rainbow after the rain, and when they are particularly happy to hear the beautiful, undulating and strong chirping of orioles and larks, their aesthetic consciousness begins to sprout.
Third, the emergence of language and the origin of primitive literary activities. Marx and Engels not only discussed the role of productive labor practice in the process of people's own formation from the practical point of view, but also clearly pointed out that language, as the carrier of literary activities, is also "produced by labor and labor together." This explanation is correct and can be proved by comparing animals. Animals, even highly developed animals, need little information from each other, so they can communicate without syllable language. In the natural state, no animal will feel that it is a defect to be unable to speak or understand human language. "[22] People are social animals that can make tools. Man is a real existence in social life. "Language is the home of existence." [23] In German Ideology, Marx and Engels particularly emphasized the inseparability of language and consciousness, pointing out that people had no "pure" consciousness from the beginning, and "spirit" was unlucky from the beginning and was "entangled" by materials. Matter is represented here as vibrating air layer and sound, in short, language. "Language and consciousness have the same long history; Language is a consciousness of seeking truth from facts, which exists not only for others, but also for oneself. Language, like consciousness, is only produced because of necessity and the urgent need to communicate with others. " [24] (emphasis added) The emergence of language is an important prerequisite for the primitive early people to carry out literary activities. The production of language and aesthetic consciousness can be said to be synchronous. As Heidegger said, "Language itself is poetry in essence. ..... To be exact, poetry occurs in language, because language protects the original essence of poetry. " [25] Marx paid great attention to the emergence of language and the occurrence of primitive literature in Anthropology Notes. In the low stage of human ignorance, he called it "human childhood" and "language with clear syllables" has begun to appear. It reached the advanced stage of barbarism, that is, "from smelting iron ore and using iron tools to inventing pinyin letters and writing works in words." [26] It took a long time. As early as the lower stage of barbarism, "pictures and words seem to have appeared for the first time in this period;" If it had been produced earlier, it would have made great progress at this time. The interrelated series of inventions in this respect are as follows: (1) sign language or personal sign language; Pictures, words or ideographs; (3) hieroglyphs or agreed symbols; (4) hieroglyphics with phonetic characters or phonetic symbols according to certain usage; (5) Pinyin letters or writing sounds. " [27] The process of the occurrence and formation of this language and writing is actually the process of the early literary activities of primitive people, and the two go hand in hand. Engels summarized the origin of primitive art through the study of Morgan's Ancient Society as follows: "Savage era is a period of learning how to manage animal husbandry and agriculture, and how to increase the production of natural products through human activities. Civilization era is a period of learning to further process natural products, and it is a real industrial and artistic period. [28] From Marx and Engels' exposition on the occurrence, formation and emergence of written works and art in primitive national languages, the occurrence of human literary activities should generally be in the long historical process of the transition from barbarism to civilization as Morgan said.
Although Marx and Engels did not leave academic monographs on the origin of art and the occurrence of literary activities to future generations, we can get great enlightenment from these related viewpoints and discourses. These viewpoints and expositions of Marx and Engels undoubtedly opened up a new situation for the study of the genesis of literary activities.
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After Marx and Engels, plekhanov made new contributions to the study of the genesis of literary activities. He used historical materialism to study primitive art in many aspects, critically absorbed Gross's research results, and clearly put forward the view that art originated from labor when answering the question of which comes first, labor or game. Plekhanov (1856- 19 18) was the first Russian Marxist theorist, aesthetician and literary theorist. His Letters Without Addresses [1899- 1900] is the first academic monograph to study the occurrence and origin of literary and artistic activities with historical materialism. It is commendable that plekhanov did not read Marx 1844' s Manuscripts of Economic Philosophy, Notes on Anthropology, Engels' Family, Private Ownership and the Origin of the Country, the Role of Labor in the Transformation from Ape to Man, and Marx and Engels' German Ideology. Through his own research, he reached many views consistent with Marx and Engels on the origin of literature and art. Plekhanov's special contributions to the genetic research of literary and artistic activities are as follows:
First, the revolution of research methods. In the field of world art history research, plekhanov was the first theorist who consciously applied the principle of historical materialism founded by Marx to the study of primitive art. In the first letter of A Letter Without an Address, he wrote: "Here I say unequivocally that I observe art from the perspective of historical materialism, just like observing all social phenomena." [29] plekhanov creatively expounded historical materialism. He said: "From now on, criticism (more precisely, the scientific theory of aesthetics) can only develop on the basis of historical materialism." [30] For the principle of historical materialism, he made a concrete exposition and put forward the famous theory of "five levels" of social structure, namely: ① productivity; (2) Economic relations restricted by productive forces; (3) a social and political system that has grown up on a certain economic "foundation"; (4) The psychology of people in society is partly determined by the economy and partly by all social and political systems that have grown up in the economy; ⑤ Various ideological systems that reflect this psychological feature. [3 1] He regards "social psychology" as the intermediary between art and social life, and thinks that it is not enough to know only the history of a nation's thought and art, and further study of social psychology is needed. Without studying social psychology, it is impossible to explain art history with historical materialism. Plekhanov used historical materialism to comprehensively investigate the different theories of western anthropologists, archaeologists and art historians about the occurrence and origin of literary and artistic activities, criticized the idealism and metaphysics in them, and absorbed valuable contents. Plekhanov spoke highly of Darwin's outstanding contribution, but at the same time criticized Darwin's biological viewpoint in the study of the genesis of literary activities. According to Darwinists, aesthetic feeling is shared by human beings and animals, and the occurrence of human aesthetic consciousness develops from animals. [32] plekhanov believed that Darwin regarded the origin of human beings as the origin of species. The focus of historical materialism research "just begins at the end of Darwin's research field." Their work can't take the place of what Darwinists gave us. Similarly, Darwinists' most brilliant discoveries can not replace their research, but only prepare the foundation for them. "[33] Platts believes that the origin of aesthetic feeling cannot be explained from a biological point of view, but should be explained from a sociological point of view centered on productive labor practice. The ability of animals to distinguish color, light and rhythm is only a "possibility" to develop into beauty, not reality. The generation of people's aesthetic feeling is precisely many objective conditions for people's survival. "It depends on the conditions of their education, life and action. Human nature endows him with aesthetic taste and ideas. The conditions around him determine how this possibility becomes a reality; These situations show that people in a certain society (that is, a certain society, a certain nation, a certain class) have these rather than other aesthetic tastes and concepts. "[34] Animals can't have many aesthetic conditions such as productivity and production relations created by productive labor, so the possibility of their feelings about color, sound and rhythm can't become the same reality as people.
Second, the establishment of "labor theory". On the basis of studying Gross's The Origin of Art, plekhanov put forward a "labor theory" which is different from "game theory" and "witchcraft theory" by using historical materialism. In Gross's place, people have noticed that the study of the origin of art is linked with the mode of production of primitive people. He said: "production is really the lifeblood of all so-called cultural forms; It gives the most profound and irresistible influence to other cultural factors ... We can say with certainty that the mode of production is the most basic cultural phenomenon, compared with which all other cultural phenomena are only derivative and secondary. " [35] However, Gross's view of art history is often binary. When talking about the conditions of artistic activities, he regards the "artistic impulse" proposed by the advocates of "game theory" as the "primary condition" of artistic activities. Gross finally stopped at the door of historical materialism. It was on the basis of Gross's problem that plekhanov put forward the thought of "labor theory". He believes that "solving the relationship between labor and games-or in other words, games and labor-is extremely important for clarifying the origin of art" [36] He draws lessons from the psychologist Wilhelm Wundt's view that "games are the product of labor" and further points out: "I firmly believe that if we don't grasp the following view, then we know nothing about the history of primitive art: labor precedes art. In short, people initially observed it from the utilitarian point of view. [37] After studying the historical conditions of various primitive arts, plekhanov pointed out that in primitive society, people were forced to work because of the needs of life, and people gradually regarded the actual use of their own strength as a kind of happiness in labor. "The game is because of the happy impulse to experience the actual use of power again. [38] The aesthetic taste of our ancestors always developed with the development of production. Therefore, no matter here or there, aesthetic taste can always be an accurate symbol of productivity. " [39]
Academic circles do not fully agree with the reasons of plekhanov's "labor theory". Some scholars have questioned his ancestors' view that things should be viewed from the utilitarian angle first, and then from the aesthetic angle. I think this is only half the problem. For example, when primitive people made production tools, their creative activities. It shows duality: first, it is aware of the actual purpose of its activities, and second, it is unaware of the beauty of its activities, and that the tools it makes already contain the factors that are created according to the "law of beauty". Therefore, the beauty felt by later generations from primitive tools is only a potential form and an inevitable unconscious expression for primitive people who make tools. "This is the particularity of the problem and its essence." [40] For this key issue, plekhanov did not give a theoretical explanation.
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After all, the "labor theory" put forward by plekhanov by using historical materialism to study primitive art is groundbreaking, so it has a wide influence in the world. Lu Xun's acceptance of Marxism in China began with the translation of Platts' On Art (that is, letters without addresses). Lu Xun believes that plekhanov "dug the first one in the field of literature and art with the shovel of Marxism." [4 1] He said: "Plekhanov also laid the foundation of Marxist art theory. Although his artistic theory has not yet formed a system, the methods and achievements contained in his works are not only the objects of future generations' research, but also the classic documents for establishing Marxist artistic theory and sociological aesthetics. " [42] In the past, when talking about the origin and occurrence of literature and art, Pu's "labor theory" was widely circulated, while Lu Xun was only cited as "! Yu Hang! " To prove the correctness of "labor theory". In fact, Lu Xun's research on the genesis of literary activities not only inherits and draws lessons from plekhanov's methods and viewpoints, but also critically absorbs valuable elements in the theories of "game", "witchcraft" and "religion" and lev tolstoy's theory of conveying emotional experience, and closely combines the reality of the occurrence and development of literature and art in China, and puts forward a new viewpoint on the genesis of literary activities with China characteristics. Lu Xun's works mainly involve A Brief History of China's Novels, Historical Changes of China's Novels, Outline of China's Literary History, Talking about Foreign Languages, Preface to Artistic Translation, etc. Based on Lu Xun's point of view, his thoughts on the occurrence and origin of literary activities can be summarized as "labor-religion (witchcraft)-leisure". What best represents his point of view is the following passage:
I think, in the order of literary and artistic works, I'm afraid poetry comes first and novels come last. Poetry originated from labor and religion. First, because at work, you can forget your hard work while singing, so you just start from screaming until you give play to your thoughts and feelings and have a natural rhyme; Secondly, because primitive people gradually worshipped gods because of fear, they praised their prestige and merits, which became the origin of poetry. As for novels, I thought they started from rest. When people are working, they entertain themselves with songs and forget their hard work. When they have a rest, they also need to find something to entertain themselves. This kind of thing is telling stories to each other, and this kind of storytelling is the origin of the novel. -so poetry is verse, which happened during labor; Fiction is prose, which takes place between classes. [43]
Regarding the "labor theory", Lu Xun's important supplement is that literature and art originated from labor, and labor should be conditional and not excessive, which leads to the "labor-leisure" theory. He said: "Although labor is the source of literature and art, there are conditions: just don't overdo it." All kinds of poems will only appear when you are comfortable with your work and rest, or when you feel a little tired. When I have a little spare time, I will talk about novels. If you work too much, have little rest, and have no room for recovery from fatigue, you can't sleep, eat, let alone literature and art. "[44] The second reason for the origin of Lu Xun's poetry is religion, which mainly refers to witchcraft. He believes that "China originally believed in ghosts and gods, but ghosts and gods were isolated from people. Because people want to communicate with ghosts and gods, witches come out. "