China and the West

An, Qi. Shi lun Bailun shi ge zhong de pan ni xing ge [D D26470].
An Qi schreibt : "Childe Harold exiles himself because he is sick of the voluptuous dissipation of the nobles. He finds expression of his protest against the society he loathes in nothing more than dissipation and the beauty of nature. Conrad revolts against the ugly society with piratical acts of murder and arson and Manfred with his pessimistic world-weariness. What about Cain ? The one who supports him against God is the daemon. No doubt, God and his world order should be challenged and negated, but the daemon is a daemon after all ; he is not the force to liberate the people. The daemon is only God who has lost his office or power. Don Juan's rebellion against the society of the time was a series of dissolute acts. In Don Juan and other works, Byron fights evil with evil. If these works give his reader the impression that they are 'an eulogy of vice', that is truly what they are."

Chu Chih-yu : An Qi's arguments reflect a typical dialectic materialism with 'Chinese characteristics'. He rised again (like Elistratove and Du Bingzheng) the issue of 'the rebellious character of Byronic heroes'. He sought explanation for Byron's rebellious spirit in the class and national conflicts of European society, but he did not mention Byron's 'spiritual connection' with the English workers' movement. He wanted to describe Byron as a 'radical bourgeois democrat', who did not belong to the proletarian camp. He noted some personal reasons : Byron's disillusion and anger with English society as ruled by the nobles and the church, and his dissipated life. In his view, English society made use of Byron's separation as an excuse to attack his private style and forced him to leave England for political reasons ; and this political persecution pushed Byron into a more dissipated life and a stronger rebellion. An Qi recognized Byron's influence on the European democratic intellectuals and the progressive role he had played in Chinese literary history. The value of Byronic heroes consists only in their adding to our knowledge of feudalism and capitalism.
He tried to accdentuate is to the effect that 'Byron's self-centred, absolute freedom is not only visionary but, after the maturing proletariat showed their power, could turn to the opposite of the proletarian revolutionary movement'.