This study will examine three works of Chinese literature in terms of the ways in which different writers depict the notion of "individualism" or the individual. The three works are Mao Zedong's "Talks at the Yan'an Conference on Literature and Art,"
Wang Meng's "A Young Man Arrives at the Organization Department," and Bei Dao's "An Artist's Life." Mao's speech is thoroughly anti-individualistic. Meng's story is far more individualistic, but its lightly satirical focus on an artist's troubles with the Chinese bureaucracy hardly produces a counter-revolutionary glorification of individualism. Dao's poem is the most purely individualistic and experimental of the three, and the most free of any concern with ideology, whether treated reverently (as with Mao) or satirically (as with Meng).
Individualism is a threat to Mao and the Marxist ideology. The community and its order and cohesion are the foremost concern of Mao. Yet he realizes that artists are by nature individuals, so he must offer some rationale to such artists in order to use their talents for the development of communism. He does not want to crush their creativity, but to knead it into bread for Marxist propaganda. As much as Mao might try to appear to be saying that he honors the individuality of artists, he clearly means to direct artists' activity away from individual concerns and toward the expression of Marxist ideology:
Comrades! I have invited you to this conference today for the purpose of exchanging opinions with you on the correct relationship between work in literature and art and revolutionary work in general. . . . The audience for works of literature and art here consists of workers, peasants, and soldiers, together with their cadres in the Party, the government, and the army (Zedong 57; 59-60).
It is impossible to imagine Mao ever approving the publication of such works as Dao's with its sole focus being the consciousness of the individual, esp...