Mao Tse-tung - writer and literary figure:Vanam Jwala Narasimha Rao

Mao 120^th Birth Anniversary falls on 26^th December 2013

Mao Tse-tung - writer and literary figure

Vanam Jwala Narasimha Rao

An enormous new statue of Mao Tse-tung, which stands more than 100ft tall, is ready for unveiling on December 26, 2013 commemorating his 120th Birth Anniversary at Changsha, Mao's hometown. The statue in the central city of Changsha is seated and of a young Mao, aged 32, when he composed a poem about Changsha. The Poem reads as:

"Alone in the autumn cold I scan the river that flows northward, past the Orange Islet and the mountains crimson with the red leaves of the woods....I brought hither hundreds of companions in those turbulent months and years....Do you remember how in mid-stream our boats struck currents and were slowed down by torrents?".

The city is on the east bank of River Hsiang which flows northward into Lake Tung ting. The Orange Islet lies to its west and farther west a range of mountains. The melancholy this poem expresses is unique among Mao's Verse. The landscape depicted and the treasured memories are beautiful and vivid.  

Another poem-verse titled “From the Double Ninth Day, 1929” written on 11 October 1929 by Mao Tse-tung was about the ninth day of the ninth month, the Double Ninth Day. It is a day of feasting and celebration. Mao poems and verses are translated from Chinese to English by Michael Bullock and Jerome Chen. This verse reads as:

“Man, not heaven, ages easily; As the Double Ninth Festival passes year after year; Once more the Festival returns; On the battlefield yellow flowers are singularly fragrant; Once every year the autumn wind smites hard; To paint a scene unlike the spring; Even better than the spring; Is a myriad leagues of frosty sky and waters”

Mao Tse-tung founded the People's Republic of China in 1949. He was also one of the founders of the Chinese Communist party in 1921, and was regarded, along with Karl Marx and Lenin, as one of the three great theorists of Marxian Communism. As a Marxist thinker and the leader of a socialist state, Mao gave theoretical legitimacy to the continuation of class struggle in the socialist and communist stages of development. He stressed the importance of land redistribution for the benefit of the rural peasantry, and his theories have strongly influenced the non-industrialized Third World.

Photo of Mao Statue by Reuters

Mao as a political and military leader and as a rebel is known all over the world. May be not so well known, Mao was also a great writer and literary person. Mao’s contribution to history has changed the world itself. He is regarded as the man who succeeded in giving China a stable polity, putting an end to the long interruption between the fall of the culturistic empire and the rise of the People’s Republic. Mao’s sharp understanding and clever handling of problems and the brilliance of both his words and actions are simply amazing. The way he held Communist Party of China together through its changing fortunes, and the poems he wrote, indicates that he can be a good friend. However, his ruthless struggles against opponents and foes demonstrate his formidable qualities as an enemy. Mao embraced Marxism as early as 1919 at the age of 26 but could become rebellion and take-up arms against the authorities only after another eight years in 1927. For 22 years he fought relentlessly, through the defeat in 1934-35, the Long March, the United Front, the Civil War and to his final victory.

Mao differs from both the self-strengthening leaders and peasant insurgents in the past in that he was a Marxist-Leninist seeking to strengthen his country by the application of Marxist-Leninist doctrines to Chinese conditions. He believed that the only force strong enough to bring about emancipation of China was a Marxist party supported by urban workers and rural peasants but mainly peasants, especially armed peasants. Because he was a Marxist, Mao differed from other Chinese revolutionaries. His revolution, essentially a military one, also had far reaching cultural implications. Mao was a feminist, treating women as the equals of men and expecting them to live up to such treatment. He was fully aware of the value of science, literature and the arts which he believed should serve the people, the laboring people.

Born on 26 December 1893, in a village environment, a year before the Sino-Japanese War followed by number of reforms, uprisings, revolutions, civil wars and movements, Mao could not but be influenced by the trials and failures of those years. His father was a strong peasant but poor and heavily in debt who subsequently improved his fortunes. His mother had strong moral feelings, a readiness to help the less fortunate, and a deep rooted faith in the gods. From his childhood Mao had shown a tendency to be thorough. When Mao was sent to a tutor at the age of seven, reading opened a new world in the child. He developed an interest in books. He however continued to work in his father’s fields. Mao was first married to a girl who was four years elder to him in 1907. The subsequent history and his struggle to liberate China are well known.

Mao Tse-tung, the revolutionary leader, achieved fame as a poet. Mao’s status as a poet might have been enhanced by his eminence as a political figure. His poetic abilities, although they were uneven, are of no mean order and would have secured him a place in contemporary Chinese literature independent of his pre-eminent position in the political sphere. Mao Tse-tung’s poems are classical in construction, their themes are drawn entirely from his experiences and hopes as a militant communist. 

Women and love played no part in Mao’s poems except in one or two. Since his youth Mao was always interested in the nature of men, of human society, of China, the world, and the Universe. He first showed literary promise when he was still a school boy. He however took greater pride in writing prose. In prose Mao was an entirely different man, cool headed, logical, almost devoid of deep feelings. There is something common in his prose and poetry…..an uneven beauty and rural directness.

Another poem titled “From the Second Encirclement” written on May 1931 goes like this:

“On the White Cloud Mountain clouds are about to rise;

Below the White Cloud Mountain there are quickened cries.

Dry wood and hollow trees are joining in the battle.

A forest of rifles press forward

The flying generals descend as if from heaven

The army has covered two hundred miles in fifteen days

Along the grey Kan River and the green Fukien mountains

To sweep away thousands of troops like rolling up a mat

Someone is weeping

Belatedly regretting the strategy of slow advance”

Like all Chinese poetry, his poems, by no means contain a wealth of allusions, some referring to classical literature, others to local topography, others to ancient and modern historical events. (From the book “Mao and Chinese Revolution” by Jerome Chen written in 1966)