ABSTRACT
Anna Seghers and Qian Zhongshu have fairly different approaches to the ever-growing interactions between China and the West in the modernist era and the highly politicized global situations during World War II. While Seghers understands literature as a political means to achieve the high ideals of international communism, Qian's satirical style creates distance from all kinds of political positions. While Seghers's novel features heightened polarizations and emotionality, Qian's cosmopolitan perversity critiques Western imperialism, Chinese self-colonization, and the aporia of intellectuals in the age of warfare. Seghers joined the German Communist Party in 1928. In her epistolary discussion with Georg Lukacs, Seghers insists that the task of anti-fascist art and literature lies in transporting works of art back to reality in order to render the unconscious perception of reality into a conscious gestalt with a clear future direction. Seghers's politicized aesthetic effort, however, runs the risk of stereotyping class struggle and ignoring China's cultural traditions and differences.
