Mourning Does not Become Beiju: Forging a Tragic Spirit of Heroic Resistance in 1920s Chinese Intellectual Discourse and Dramaturgy

The concepts of tragedy and the tragic reached the shores of China’s intellectual arena at the turn of the twentieth century within the context of the New Culture and the May Fourth Movements and as a result of a systematic study of Western literature and critical theory, where tragedy had generally been considered the most sublime of all literary genres and the tragic was viewed as integral to the human condition, especially from the nineteenth century. Tragedy captured the imagination of several Chinese intellectuals and playwrights who, from the 1920s onwards, attempted to create their own tragic works (beiju 悲剧) with a view of forging a modern Chinese tragic spirit. But what are the characteristics of this “tragic” spirit, and how does it compare to “Western” ideas of tragedy? Moreover, does it add something new to the ongoing debates on the relationship between tragedy and modernity? The Chinese intellectuals’ early conceptualisation(s) of this genre in terms of content, structure and social function will be appraised as part of a comprehensive, transnational discourse that seeks to incorporate beiju within the broader realm of tragic theory. Particularly, by scrutinising the links between beiju and Aristotelian tragedy, it will be argued that the idea of beiju may be said to reconcile the two apparently antagonistic categories of tragedy and modernity in a way that prefigures Brecht’s epic theatre. Additionally, through an analysis of the tragic conflict underlying three tragic texts written in the 1920s by three different Chinese authors (Tian Han 田汉, Ouyang Yuqian 欧阳予倩 and Bai Wei 白薇), it will be shown that the spirit of beiju (literally “sorrowful play”) is not based on the celebration of mourning, as suggested by term’s implicit reference to Trauerspiel (literally “mourning play”), but rather consists in actively opposing evil and adversity through acts of heroic resistance that wipe out the protagonist’s initial grief, thus providing the audience with valuable models to learn from.