Literary spirit is always the most important portion of the value of literary classics. For Chinese contemporary literature, tragic spirit and critical spirit derived from the former has formed a kind of core of the spirit of Chinese literature since the May-4th Movement. The deepening of tragic spirit indicates the height that classics of Chinese modern literature has attained. A review of literature on either side of the straits taken as part of the 1950-1960 Chinese literature shows that it is just this tragic and critical spirit that continues to sustain the line of construction of literary classics in softening the contradictions between literature and politics and between tradition and modernity.

literary classics; literary spirit; the 1950-1960 Chinese literature