Creation Society
Chinese modern literary group. It was founded in Shanghai in June 1921 by Guo Moruo, Cheng Fangwu, Yu Dafu, Zhang Ziping, Tian Han, Zheng Boqi and others who had returned from studying in Japan. The early Creation Society opposed feudal culture and retro thinking, advocated genius, advocated self-expression and personality liberation, and emphasized that literature should be loyal to one's "inner requirements". This was the core proposition of its literary and artistic thought, showing the tendency of romanticism and aestheticism. . Guo Moruo's collection of poems "The Goddess", Yu Dafu's novel "The Sinking" and Guo Moruo's translation "The Sorrows of Young Werther" (Goethe) are the most influential works of the society. With its unique literary ideas and sharp-edged literary activities, it has become a new force in the new literature after the May Fourth Movement, especially among literary youths. During the First Civil Revolutionary War, most of the main members of the Creation Society were inclined toward revolution or engaged in practical revolutionary work. Subsequently, it showed a trend of "changing direction" and was joined by the younger generation of radical thinkers such as Li Chuli, Feng Naichao, Peng Kang, Zhu Jingwo, who had recently returned from Japan, and it developed into the later creation society. The Late Creation Society and the Sun Society vigorously advocated proletarian revolutionary literature. In early 1928, articles such as "The Hero Tree" by Guo Moruo, "From Literary Revolution to Revolutionary Literature" by Cheng Fangwu, "Art and Social Life" by Feng Naichao, and "How to Build Revolutionary Literature" by Li Chuli required literature to adapt to the revolution. The needs of the situation require writers to acquire proletarian consciousness for the masses of workers and peasants; however, they make extreme criticisms of post-May 4th literature and writers such as Lu Xun as representatives of bourgeois petty-bourgeois consciousness. This gave rise to the debate about "revolutionary literature". In February 1929, the Creation Society was closed down by the Kuomintang government.
In the early period, the publications sponsored by Creation Society included "Creation" quarterly magazine, "Creation Weekly", "Creation Day" (supplement of "China News"), and "Flood" fortnightly; later publications mainly included "Creation Monthly" ", "Cultural Criticism", "Quicksand" bimonthly, "Thought" monthly, "New Trends of Thought" monthly, etc. In addition to literature, the later publications of the Creation Society paid more attention to the research and publicity of Marxist theory and social science issues. After the establishment of the Creation Society, it edited and published the Creation Society series of books. It mainly published poems, novels, dramas, essays, theories and translations by its members. In the past ten years, it has published more than 60 titles.