Abstract
Lao She’s novel Cat Country, published in 1932, was one of the greatest satirical allegories in world literature, which nearly helped the author win the Nobel Prize for Literature in the year 1966. This essay tries to point out that the novel is a full-scale exposition of the then cultural and political darkness. It forewarns the numb national people that the whole civilization would soon be destroyed, or rather self-destroyed, even without any foreign invasion. Most of the “national flaws” which led to the complete destruction of Cat Country still persist, to different degrees, in the current Chinese society. The future of our community is contingent on whether we could face and get rid of those “weaknesses.” But to begin with, the national people have to be awakened to the sordid reality that they have been indulging in for centuries. The essay concludes that Cat Country still bears with it the penetrating satirical power even in the contemporary world, 75 years after its first publication, for the novel has exposed many despicable defects in human nature, which could not be confined to only one single era, or one particular culture.
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Notes
The author mainly cites the Lyell translation with some changes in diction whenever I think necessary. In the essay, this novel is abbreviated as CC with page number like this: (CC, p. 15) and Collected Works of Lao She is abbreviated as CW in the essay with volume number and page number(s) like this: (CW, Vol. 16, p. 186).
See Wang (1951, p. 231), Yi (1955, p. 272), Sun et al. (1957, p. 461), Tang (1979, p. 175), Liu (1957) and its revised version (Vol. 1), Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe (1979, p. 362), Nine Colleges Compiling Group (1979, p. 294), Lin (1980), Fourteen Colleges Compiling Group (1981, p. 351), Tang (1984).
See Beijing ribao (Beijing Daily), December 12th, 13th, 30th, and 31th, 1969.
These papers were: Gan Hailan, “Some Problems about Cat Country”; Chen Zhenwen, “How to Review Lao She’s Cat Country”; Xu Wendou, “Some Problems about Cat Country” and Zhang Guixing, “Re-evaluating Lao She’s Cat Country.” The number of papers on Cat Country equaled to articles on another novel Camel Xiangzi and was the largest number on a single work at the conference. See Zeng (1987, pp. 95–97).
In contrast, writers or intellectuals having studied in Japan were by far more radical, both in literature and in politics, for example, Lu Xun, Guo Moruo, and other members belonging to Chuangzao She (Creative Literary Society). Also see Song (1988, p. 53).
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Sheng, A. A cultural critique in the age of darkness: reinterpreting Lao She’s allegorical novel Cat Country . Neohelicon 37, 373–390 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-009-0033-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-009-0033-1