Abstract
Leo Tolstoy is a renowned Russian realist writer with a global acclaim. Between 1908 to 1911, democracy, liberalism and the emerging Marxist criticism in Soviet Russia focused on re-evaluation of Tolstoy, creating a controversial situation in the Russian cultural sphere. During this period, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's “On Tolstoy” clarified the source of the controversy and left a far-reaching impact, becoming a classic text of Marxist literary criticism. With commentaries on Tolstoy introduced in China and culminating in the centenary of Tolstoy's birth in 1928, Tolstoy became a frequently discussed topic. This article sheds light on the Soviet Russian resources for Chinese commentaries on Tolstoy, exploring how the Chinese reception of Tolstoy went through the stages of translation, citation and discussion, ultimately developing characteristics of literary theory. These discussions are significant for studying Chinese leftist literary theory in its early stages and examining the construction of the theoretical system of Chinese leftist literature from the perspective of the history of literary theory.
Keywords
Soviet Russian resources;commentaries on Tolstoy;Marxist literary theory;leftist literature
First Page
69
Last Page
80
Recommended Citation
Qin, Changqi. 2023. "Translation and Reconstruction: Soviet Russian Resources and the Chinese Leftist Literary Theory in Its Early Stage: An Examination of the Chinese Reception of “Commentaries on Tolstoy” around 1930." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 43, (3): pp.69-80. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol43/iss3/8
