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…he knew How to make madness beauty… George Gordon Byron A poet is someone who''s been struck by lightning at least once. A great poet has been struck about seventeen times. Seamus Heaney …at the secret heart of madness…we discover, finally, the hidden perfection of a language. Michel Foucault In both English and Chinese, the word poetry has positive connotations in daily parlance. Besides its primary meaning of that which pertains to or characterizes poetry, another definition of poetic is “elevated or sublime,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary; “imaginative and creative,” according to the Webster’s New World Dictionary; and “characterized by romantic imagery,” according to the on-line dictionary WordNet. One may describe a film as poetic or a dancer as poetry in motion, and Chopin is acknowledged worldwide as “the Poet of the Piano” for his romantic music. Similarly, in Chinese the word poetic commonly appears in such expressions as “poetic flair or sentiment” (shi yi) and “like a painting, like a poem” (ru shi ru hua), which can be used to describe a landscape, an ambiance, or a lifestyle. A student of mine from Taiwan bears the name “poetic and sunny” (shi qing), and, much to my amusement, Professor Hong Shuling at the National Taiwan University recently told me that one of her students had exactly the same name. I have yet to find an American whose first name is Poetry! The broader connotations of the words poetic or poetry as beauty, lyricism, and imagination leads us further to consider one of its cognates, “poet.” In modern Chinese, shiren not only refers to someone who writes poetry but also takes on subtle adjectival colorings related to behavior or personality traits. For example, one may complement a person as “poet-like” for being sensitive, genuine, imaginative, idealistic, or romantic. A Google search in Chinese shows that the term poet is used to describe rock-and-roll stars as well as politicians, and a new film series on Mao Zedong is titled “Mao Zedong the Poet,” although the contents of the films are not limited to Mao’s accomplishment as a poet in the traditional style. On the other hand, shiren also suggests a range of qualities that may not be so positive. Being “like a poet” can intimate that a person is temperamental, melancholy, unrealistic, egocentric, or eccentric. In contrast to the complimentary attributes mentioned earlier, describing someone as poet-like may imply jest, criticism, or derision. There exists, then, a paradox when it comes to the popular perception of the poet, in whom both positive and negative qualities coexist. This is nowhere more clearly seen than in the image of the poet as ‘mad genius’, in whom superb creativity exists alongside eccentricity or even insanity. Granted, the connection between genius and madness is not exclusively or even primarily applied to the poet; in the West “the mad scientist” is probably just as prevalent, if not more so, in pop culture. However, in literature, it is the poet more than the fiction writer, the playwright, or the non-fiction prose writer that carries this association. The closest parallel to the poet is the artist (yishujia), a word that is more inclusive and shares many of the qualities ascribed to the poet. In a way the poet can be seen as the artist par excellence. The ‘mad poet’ not only has a long history in the West going back to ancient Greece but has also become a powerful stereotype in the Western imagination. As a paradox, it has been associated with divine inspiration as well as demonic possession; with robust imagination as well as crazed ravings; with prophecy as well as pathology. Plato wanted to banish the poet from his Republic because the poet, possessed by the divine spirit, trespasses the bounds of reason and his impassioned words are likely to lead the audience astray. Although Aristotle defends poetry by arguing for its superiority to philosophy and history in combining universal truth and concrete experience, he nevertheless sees poetic genius as containing “a strain of madness” (Adams 1971: 58). The paradoxical image is so powerful in Europe that during the Renaissance, “to dub a poet ‘mad’ was, in the conventions of the age, to pay him a compliment” (Porter 2002: 66). In Romanticism, the mad poet reached the apex of fame and was inseparable from the Romantic zeitgeist (Burwick 1996). The pendulum swings to the other end as the Romantic ideal of “the heroic, healthy genius” gave way to the fin de siècle association of poetic genius with mental disturbance, vices, and decadence (Porter 2002: 81). The topic has continued to attract much attention in the modern period. In more general terms, Freud postulated an explicit connection between neurosis and artistic creativity. "The artist," he said, "is an incipient introvert who is not far from being a neurotic. He is impelled by too powerful instinctive needs" (Freud 1920: 326). I realize that in evoking the notion of mad genius, I am opening a Pandora’s Box. Although madness and genius are common words, they are at best imprecise and highly contested. How do we define madness and genius? Are they relative or absolute terms? Do they designate a process or an outcome? Are they context-dependent and culture-specific? Are they genetically determined or socially constructed? There is a long history of studies of both concepts, by philosophers, psychologists, neurobiologists, sociologists, and legal scholars (the last with regard to the insanity plea, for instance); and they continue to generate new approaches and findings. Despite the absence of universal, trans-historical distinction between sanity and insanity, and between genius and ordinariness, what is important for the present discussion is that, however they are defined, underscoring both madness and genius there is a sense of boundary and its transgression or transcendence. In each case, they are measured against a certain bar (such as reality recognition, emotional stability or rational choice for diagnosing “madness”; and evaluating IQ, originality, or problem-solving skills for “genius”), and when someone goes over the bar he or she is considered mad or genius. Colloquial expressions about madness, such as out of touch and overboard, often imply a notion of boundary. Transgression would not be meaningful and noteworthy without boundary. In “Creativity and Genius: A Systems Perspective,” Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi advances the thesis that genius is neither a purely intra-psychic process nor a purely social attribution with an objective basis. Instead, he approaches genius as “a phenomenon that is constructed through an interaction between producer and audience. Creativity is not the product of single individuals, but of social systems making judgements [sic] about individuals’ products“ (1998: 41). The systems he refers to encompass a cultural domain (a system of cultural rules) and a social field (social organization of the domain). I believe that the systems approach aptly applies to madness too. In this paper, I argue that the image of the mad poet in the Chinese tradition derives from iconoclastic work and eccentric behavior vis-à-vis literary conventions and social norms. Another implication of a systems approach is that the image of the mad poet may be a response, conscious or unconscious, to specific social and cultural constraints; as such, madness may be a strategy for negotiation with those constraints. Thus, in my discussion I am also mindful of the self-representation, self-imagining, and myth-making on the part of the poet. After all, the subject of my study is not so much the medical reality of how madness and genius are interrelated as the society''s perception of the poet and how such perception is created, circulated, popularized, and perpetuated. Further, such perception most definitely includes self-perception with regard to the poet and strongly suggests a cyclical relation of mutual reinforcement: how poets see and represent themselves helps to shape the society''s view of them, which in turn reinforces their self-perception and self-representation. Thus, the poet as mad genius reveals the social and cultural structures within which poets find themselves and must operate. The ensuing discussion hopes to demonstrate that the motif of the mad poet is a key to understanding the dynamics of modern Chinese poetry from its rise in the early twentieth century to the present. By employing the mad poet heuristically, this preliminary study also touches on the distinction between the classical and the modern poetic tradition. I argue that the mad poet provides a prism through which the nature of poetry writing, the function of poetry and the role of the poet may be revealed. “Kuang”’ in the Chinese Poetic Tradition Although traditional China does not exactly have an equivalent of “the mad poet,” the rich lore revolving around poets offers some interesting analogues. Anecdotes of poets’ eccentric or outlandish behavior abound and are often recorded in commentaries on poetry known as shihua or official and unofficial histories. Some of these anecdotes have assumed an aura of myth and have been cherished by Chinese readers for centuries. For example, there is the legendary link between drinking and poetry writing in the case of Li Bo (701-62), who allegedly not only wrote some of his greatest poems while drunk, but he was drowned while trying to catch the moon in the water. A mirror image of his canonical status as the “Banished Immortal,” Li’s poetry is bold in imagery and diction, magnanimous in tone, and transcendental in vision. Another popular legend is the late Tang poet Li He (791-817). A child prodigy who had won fame in the capital at the age of seven, the sickly Li would roam about on a donkey followed by a boy servant. When inspiration struck him, he would scribble down the lines and throw them in an old and torn brocade pouch that he carried with him on his daily outing. According to the brief biography written by the poet Li Shangyin (813?-58?), when Li He’s mother saw the many poems her son had written, she cried out: “Are you, my son, not going to stop till you have thrown up your heart!” (Li 1998:13) Li’s frail health and eventual death at the age of twenty-six bear out his mother’s dismay at his obsessive pursuit of poetry. It is well known that poetry plays an important role in traditional China. This is supported by several facts. To begin with: In Confucianism, poetry is a cornerstone of moral and cultural education, as sanctified by Confucius himself. The moral import of poetry was firmly established by the exegetical tradition of the Classic of Poetry (Shijing) beginning in the Western Han period. Second: From the seventh century to the early twentieth century, poetry was an integral part of the civil service examination system and hence a skill valued and cultivated by all who desired a career in public service. We may even say that all civil officials (including many emperors) were poets, and the great majority of important poets held official offices at one time or another in their lives. Finally: Throughout Chinese history, poetry was a “companionable art, for private and social use” (Owen 1990: 295). For the educated, poetry was the most common form of addressing family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, even strangers and historical figures. Because of its sanctified social and cultural functions, poetry has always been popular and privileged at the same time. It is the first of the three "sister arts," followed by calligraphy and painting. Poetry is considered the loftiest mode of writing in China, along with historiography and philosophy. To this day, the Chinese still refer to theirs as “a nation of poets” (shi de minzu). Hence, there is no contradiction between the integral role of poetry in society and culture on the one hand, and the singular distinction that poetry and great poets enjoy on the other hand. True, being a poet is typically part of the multifarious identity of a Chinese literatus, which means that he is, more often than not, also an essayist, calligrapher, painter or musician, and scholar-official; but once he is recognized as a great poet, he life becomes a topic of public interest. A poet like Li Bo or Li He may very well enjoy the status of a cultural icon. The interest in poets also owes something to the definition of poetry in Chinese literary criticism. Beginning with the Han commentaries on the Classic of Poetry, poetry is usually defined as yan zhi, which means “to articulate what is in the mind intensely.” From the second century onward, there has developed a prominent tradition of poetics that draws an explicit connection between poetic style and the poet’s personality, correlating in a profound way stylistic qualities with personal ones: “Throughout the Chinese literary tradition…readers identified the style or manner of the text with the personality of its author…The powerful intuition of personality in style was a historical fact and a deeply held value” (Owen 1992: 63). James J.Y. Liu pointed out that this tradition consists of various "expressive theories" that are "primarily focused on the relation between the writer and the literary work" (Liu 1975: 67). Abstract terms such as qi (breath, vital force), fenggu (literally, “air and bone,” suggestive of character), shenyun (spiritual rhythm, intuitive harmony) and xingling (purity, spirituality) have been used at one time or another to designate superb styles and aesthetic qualities that ultimately depend on the personality and spiritual depth of the poet. Whether "personal" refers to "an individual mode of perception and expression" or to "one''s personal emotions and nature," a distinction that Liu makes (Liu 1975: 45), the emphasis on the correspondence and resonance between a poet''s work and his/her personality is undeniably strong. This view is summed up in the age-old maxim "wen ru qi ren" ("like person like writing"), meaning that writing is a truthful, even if involuntary and unintended, reflection of the author. “Poetry is seen as a means to know others and to make oneself known to others”; “you are interested in the poem because you care about the person” (Owen 1990: 296). Consequently, it is in poetry far more than in fiction or drama (both of which, incidentally, occupy a far lower status in traditional China) that the poet''s temperament, personality, and character play an important, even decisive role. Poetry as a personal expression at the deepest level is sometimes used as a valid way to judge the poet''s character, and vice versa. Finally, the belief in an organic connection between poetry and personality is probably reinforced by the dominance of the lyric in the Chinese tradition. Compared to narrative or dramatic poetry, the lyric is a more personal expression; it is definitely perceived as more spontaneous and more rooted in personal emotions and experience than other genres, despite the multiple public functions that poetry performed in traditional China and that the use of persona is not uncommon in Chinese poetry. Because the lyric is by definition spontaneous, it is also seen as more dependent on natural talent or individual genius. The fact that Li He was a child prodigy is the norm rather than an exception among Chinese poets. Great poetry is ultimately unlearnable and remains more or less a mystery in its origin and creation. This view is best illustrated by Li Bo, who is considered the greatest "natural" poetic genius in contrast with Du Fu (712-70), the supreme craftsman (Varsano 2003). The mad poet is not an isolated phenomenon in China. Li Bo’s drinking ties him to an older tradition of poets, such as Ruan Ji (210-63) and Tao Qian (365-427), who withdrew from politics to live the life of their choice and express their defiance against convention through drinking, reclusion, and poetry. One of the “Seven Sages of Bamboo Grove” (zhulin qi xian), Ruan is a legendary eccentric. For example, he often went drinking at the wine shop in the neighborhood, and when drunk he would lie down in bed next to the young wife of the shop-owner. To everyone’s disbelief, the owner did not even raise an eyebrow because he knew Ruan to be a man of pure intention. Another story tells of a beauty in Ruan’s hometown who passed away at an early age. When Ruan heard the news, he went to the funeral and cried his heart out, even though he had never met her. Then he simply took off without saying a word. As for Tao Qian, it is well known that he quit his government job to return to his hometown to farm. Despite the hardship of farming, he celebrated his return to Nature—the natural world as well as the untainted innate nature—in poetry. He also created the greatest tale of the Chinese utopia, Peach Blossom Spring. Tao did not play music, but he had a qin zither with no strings. When friends came over for a drink, he would “play” the stringless zither. As he became inebriated, he would dismiss them: “I am drunk and feel sleepy. You may go now.” Both Ruan and Tao sought spiritual freedom and were truthful to their nature. They were also both influenced by Daoism, of which one of the founding philosophers, Zhuangzi (369-298 BCE), is himself famous for eccentric behavior and unconventional speech. Li He is a different type of the mad poet in that his behavior is not politically or socially motivated as far as we can tell; nor is his poetry notably influenced by Daoism. Li may be seen as modern in his single-minded pursuit of poetry and the fact that he literally died for poetry, as his mother’s anxious words suggested. This notion of the mad poet as a martyr of poetry is virtually absent in traditional China but will become an important motif in modern Chinese poetry. The closest Chinese equivalent of the notion of madness is kuang, a word that denotes wild, arrogant, or mad. Kuang was probably first discussed in original Confucianism. In the Zilu chapter of the Analects of Confucius, the Sage famously contrasts kuang with juan: Confucius said: “If [one] cannot be with those who tread the Middle Path, he must [befriend] the ‘kuang’ and the ‘juan’! The ‘kuang’ go steadily forward; the ‘juan’ choose to not act.” Kuang and juan are presented here as two different but equally acceptable ways of preserving integrity: The former acts on principle whereas the latter refuses to act on principle. Although Confucius advocated the Golden Mean, he approved what might be seen like unorthodox or wild behavior when it was based on a refusal to yield to unjust forces. In his book-length study (1995), Zhang Jiemo considers kuang a Confucian virtue that is manifest in a long line of thinkers and poets: beginning with Mencius and the poet Qu Yuan, through the Tang poet and statesman Han Yu, to Wang Yangming, Li Zhi, Liang Qichao, Gong Zizhen and so on of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. He also identifies another character type in Chinese culture which he calls yi—spiritual freedom, reclusion—of which Zhuangzi, Ruan Ji, and Tao Qian are prominent representatives. Although Zhang sees kuang and yi as related, he draws a distinction between them by emphasizing the moral-philosophical import of kuang and the artistic expressiveness of yi. While I find Zhang’s study helpful, I take issue with his classification of kuang as Confucian and yi as Daoist. (Chan Buddhism is classified as both kuang and yi.) To adhere to Confucius’s original definition of kuang seems to me too narrow and ignores the fact that it is widely used to describe Daoist thinkers and writers as well. For example, there is a famous passage in the Analects on a “wild man of Chu” (Chu kuang) named Jieyu: The wild man of Chu sang as he crossed path with Confucius: “Phoenix, oh phoenix, why is your virtue so weak? That which has passed cannot be retrieved; that which is to come can still be mended. Stop, stop now! In this day and age, it is dangerous to hold office.” Confucius dismounted and intended to talk to him. The man quickly got away, and Confucius never got to speak with him. An almost identical passage is found in Zhuangzi. Obviously, the Wild Man of Chu is a prototype of the Daoist recluse who distrusts all human intervention, whether it is political action or moral philosophy. One of the incarnations of the Daoist recluse is the fisherman who appears frequently in Chinese literature. In the Songs of Chu (Chuci), the fisherman advises the despondent Qu Yuan (339-278 BC) to transcend the world of good and evil so as to find peace of mind. Similarly, the History of the Southern Dynasties (volume 75, biography no. 65) records the encounter between Sun Mian, the magistrate of Xunyang during the reign of Emperor Ming of Song in the fifth century, and a fisherman who referred to himself as “a wild man of mountains and sea who knows nothing about worldly affairs and distinguishes no lowliness and poverty [from nobility and wealth]” (Poetry of the Qin, Han, Wei-Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties 1983: 1327). It is far from my intention to give a historical overview of kuang in Chinese letters. What I wish to point out is that although it originated in Confucianism, the word kuang is used broadly to refer to unconventional, iconoclastic, and eccentric behavior, regardless of whether the person so described is Confucian, Daoist, or Chan Buddhist. Further, not only are certain poets and thinkers known to be kuang, but some of them use this word to describe themselves, such as Wang Yangming (1472-1529) and Li Zhi (1527-1602) of the Ming Dynasty, as Zhang Jiemo points out. In my view, the Chinese kuang comes close to the mad poet in the Western tradition. Both notions presuppose an oppositional relation between the poet-intellectual and the political and cultural establishment. Both notions also operate in a paradoxical fashion. Just as the mad poet in the West speaks divine truth, so the kuang in the Chinese tradition symbolizes freedom and wisdom. Thus, despite their status of being outsiders, they embody the true spirit of the era. However, there is also an important difference. Although both the mad poet and the kuang are nonconformists, the notion of divine possession that underlies the Western image is largely absent in the Chinese tradition. To be kuang may be indicative of personality, moral character, or philosophical leaning, but it is not the result of divine possession nor does it derive from superhuman faculty. A kuang poet like Ruan Ji or Li Bo flaunts social convention but is not a conduit of supernatural power. In his insightful overview of the Chinese lyric tradition, Stephen Owen points out that the sense of beauty that we find in Chinese poetry is not one based on “mystery” but rather “on the balance and order of the relationship between humans and the natural or spiritual world” (Owen 1990: 298). By implication, there is a difference in the way China and the West view the poet as well. The mad poet in Western culture is ultimately related to the mysterious power of poetry, whereas the kuang poet, like poetry itself as conceived in China, is decidedly human. The Mad Poet and Chinese Romanticism It is this distinction, I believe, that separates classical from modern Chinese poetry. As I have discussed elsewhere, the Literary Revolution of 1917 that brought modern poetry into being has made it both possible and necessary for modern poets to rethink the fundamental issues of poetry: What is poetry? To whom does the poet speak? Why poetry? The modernity of twentieth-century vernacular poetry is more than a transformation of the poetic medium, form, and contents, however radical and remarkable it may be. What is modern about modern poetry is also the fact that it opens up new ways of thinking about poetry and poetry writing. It is a fact that the development of modern Chinese literature from the late nineteenth century onward owes much to the translations of world literature from the West and Japan. Almost all the pioneers of modern Chinese poetry were translators as well as poets: Hu Shi (1891-1962), Liu Bannong (1891-1934), Lu Xun (1881-1936), Xu Zhimo (1896-1931), Guo Moruo (1892-1978), Zong Baihua (1897-1986), Wen Yiduo (1899-1946), Li Jinfa (1900-76), Liang Zongdai (1903-83), Zhu Xiang (1904-33), Dai Wangshu (1905-50), Feng Zhi (1905-96), Chen Jingrong (1917-89); and the list goes on and on. Even when a poet does not translate, he or she is without exception an avid reader of literature in translation and comes under the influence of world poetry in varying degrees. In their rethinking of poetry and poetry writing, Chinese poets find an invaluable resource in foreign traditions. As early as 1908, Lu Xun published the essay titled "The Power of Mara Poetry" (“Moluo shi li shuo”). Mara is the Sanskrit for Satan, and Lu uses it to describe the Romantic hero, especially Byron (1788-1824) and Shelley (1792-1822), who champion freedom and independence against the social and political establishment. Lu compares Byron’s life to “raging waves and fierce winds that swept away all hypocrisy and corrupt custom” and refers to Shelley, another Byronic hero, as kuang (Lu 1948 v. 1: 214). The influence of European Romanticism on Chinese writers in the early twentieth century cannot be underestimated. As Leo Ou-fan Lee demonstrates in his pioneering study, Chinese writers from the late Qing to the early Republican era were heavily influenced by the Romantics and were rightly termed “the Romantic generation”. "The result was…the picture of a melancholy genius whose thoughts were too unique and whose sensitivities were too acute to be wholly understood by his age—a posture that many self-styled men of letters were later to adopt eagerly" (Lee 1973: 63-65). The misunderstood, melancholy genius is epitomized by Werther. Goethe’s (1749-1832) The Sorrows of Young Werther portrays the eponymous protagonist who shoots himself after falling hopelessly in love with a married woman. The publication of the novel in 1774 “immediately stimulated a rash of suicides among the youths of Europe” (Simonton 1994: 299). There was “a sad reciprocity between fiction and fact—as in the fashion of young men dressing in blue and yellow and the epidemic of suicides…extended to the poets and artists themselves, who often seemed incapable of escaping the mold into which they had been cast” (Burwick 1996: 12). Immensely popular in China first in the 1920s-30s, later in Taiwan in the 1970s, and in mainland China today, the novel has influenced several generations of Chinese youth. A variation of “the Werther effect” (Simonton 1994: 299) may be seen in the notable number of suicides of Chinese poets in the twentieth century. Although it is difficult to pinpoint a single reason for those suicides, the fact remains that in traditional China suicide was almost always motivated by moral precepts and political circumstances. But this began to change dramatically in the modern period. In his recent study, David Der-wei Wang identifies “a poetics of suicide” (Wang 2004: 260) in twentieth-century China, represented by the poets Wang Guowei (1877-1927), Chen Sanli (1853-1937), and Zhu Xiang (1904-33) in the early decades, and Wen Jie (1923-71), Shi Mingzheng (1935-88), and Gu Cheng (1956-93) in the latter part of the century. In each of the latter cases, Wang discusses at length the relation between literary representations and the real-life trials and tribulations of the poets. Wen was “an anachronistic Chinese Werther” (Wang 2004:231). Shi was a self-proclaimed devil who “flirted with extremes”; “throughout his career he never ceased to play alternately the Byronic hero and the Dickensian ne’er-do-well” (Wang 2004: 241). And Gu was “a late-twentieth-century Werther [who] comes back from his fictional suicide to murder his beloved before committing a second, ‘real’ suicide” (Wang 2004: 260). Devilism is not only celebrated in Shi MIngzheng’s poetry but also characterizes the later work of Gu Cheng’s in which the image of ghost plays a conspicuous role. Together with the suicide of Haizi (1964-89) in spring 1989, followed by those of Fang Xiang (?-1990), Ge Mai (1967-91), Xu Chi (1914-96), and others that were reported by the mass media in the ensuing years, these acts of self-destruction suggest a form of violence—as much textual as physical—unseen in China’s past. Wang’s references to Werther and Satan are revealing in that they evoke the two sides of the mad poet in the Romantic tradition: sensitivity existing alongside fury. As Frederick Burwick states, “During the romantic period, the century-old notion of furor poeticus was reinterpreted as a revolutionary and liberating madness that could free the imagination from the ‘restraint of conformity’” (1996: 2). Underscoring the imported images of the Romantic hero is a destructive force that breaks all conventions in order to create something new. As such it embodies the historical moment that gave rise to the Literary Revolution (wenxue geming) in 1917. The Literary Revolution advocated a new poetry written in the modern vernacular, in non-traditional forms, and free from other time-honored conventions. It was driven by a general disenchantment among young intellectuals with the received tradition. This discontent, at the deepest and most fundamental level, is the impetus that was behind the poetry revolution and has led to unprecedented poetic experimentation both in theory and in practice. While poets rebel against tradition by exploring a new poetic medium and new modes of artistic expression, they are faced at the same time with radical changes in the social and cultural milieu. The extrinsic forces that revolutionized Chinese poetry, I submit, stem from the dramatic transformation of the role of poetry as a cultural form in the twentieth century. Elsewhere I have described this unprecedented shift as the marginalization of poetry as a result of the loss of poetry''s traditional prestige and its social relevance in modern China. Even in the literary arena, poetry has taken a back seat to modern fiction, which was elevated in the late Qing and early Republican period as an effective means of educating and modernizing the nation (Yeh 1990; Yeh 1994). Poetry has been transformed from a social and cultural activity of the educated into a modern art form practiced by a group of writers specifically known as poets. Arguably for the first time in Chinese history, poets embraced poetry as autonomous and self-sufficient. Although theories of pure poetry and art for art''s sake were outside the mainstream in the tumultuous Republican period, in postwar Taiwan and, still later, post-Mao China, they did gain wider currency. The concept of the autonomy of art is largely derived from the Symbolist-Modernist tradition of the West. Major poets in French, English, German, Spanish, etc. are read avidly, in translation or in the original, by Chinese poets throughout the twentieth century. In terms of the formation of a new poetic, probably no one has exerted a more significant influence than Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926). Rilke was first introduced to Chinese readers in 1931; his poetry and prose began to be translated throughout the 1930s and 1940s by such leading poets as Bian Zhilin (1910-2000), Feng Zhi (1905-93), Wu Xinghua (1921-66), and Chen Jingrong (1917-89). According to Zhang Songjian, the Chinese translations tended to focus on Rilke’s middle period, which served as a counterbalance to Chinese Romanticism while avoiding the overly obscure work of his late period (Zhang 2004). More than T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) or W. H. Auden (1907-73), both of whom were also widely translated at the time, Rilke helped shape Chinese poets’ understanding of and attitude to poetry. “To a large extent,” as the poet-critic Zang Di (b. 1964) says, “it was through Rilke’s eyes that Chinese poets saw for the first time…the modern prospect of New Poetry. They used Rilke’s eyes to reflect on themselves and thus became aware of possible paths to completing the modernity of New Poetry” (1996:2). After 1949, Rilke continued to be a major influence on poets in Taiwan, as translated by Fang Si (b. 1925) and Fang Xin (b. 1939) in the 1950s, and by Li Kuixian (b. 1937) in the 1960s and 1970s. In mainland China, two comprehensive collections of Rilke have appeared since the 1990s. In his introduction to the 1996 collection, the editor Zang Di reaffirms the profound sense of identity that several generations of Chinese poets have found with Rilke. One of Rilke’s works that are familiar to Chinese poets is “Letters to a Young Poet.” In it, Rilke advised his correspondent not to look outside for approval: "There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write?" (Rilke 1993: 23-24) "If…one feels one could live without writing, then one shouldn''t write at all" (ibid: 27). The letter continues to talk about what to write. Advising against writing love poems, of which there already exists a glorious abundance, Rilke suggests that the young poet pay attention to everyday life, to small things that reveal the depth of being to the poet in solitude: "Your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance" (ibid: 25-26). The life and work of Rilke provides modern Chinese poets with an enduring paradigm that cannot be more different from classical Chinese poetry. Poetry is now viewed as the essence of the poet''s innermost being and the raison d''être of his or her existence. It is the intensity of this identification that sustains the poet in a life of solitude by choice. Poetry is elevated to an ontological and spiritual height more than ever before. For modern Chinese poets, the new poetic finds concrete expressions in the images of the God/Goddess of Poetry (shi shen) and the Muse (Mousi). If for Western literature the Muse has become an outdated allusion, for Chinese poets it embodies a new way of conceptualizing and imagining poetry. As early as 1922, Liu Bannong wrote a poem titled "Goddess of Poetry": Goddess of Poetry! Do you allow me to be a poet? With what do you write your poetry? Use my blood, Use my tears. On what do you write it? On scarlet petals, But flowers are falling in aging spring. On silvery moonlight, But the moon is setting amid crying crows On the water, Water flows by incessantly On the clouds, Clouds float away endlessly. Then use my tears, write on my teardrops; Use my blood, write on my blood cells. O! Lad, The door of the poet opens to your knocking The mound of the poet offers you rest in peace. (Liu 1978: 75-76) There is no deity of poetry in traditional China. The closest parallel we can find is Wen Chang dijun (Wen Chang the earth king), who is treated as the God of Literature in Chinese folklore (Werner 1994:103-05). To be more precise, Wen Chang is the patron of literati who study for the civil service examination. To this day, Wen Chang is worshipped in mainland China and Taiwan by students who are preparing for the college entrance exams. Wen Chang, however, has never been identified with poetry itself; nor has he figured prominently in traditional poetic discourses. Thus, when Liu begins the poem with an apostrophe to the Goddess of Poetry, Chinese readers are introduced for the first time to a European convention of invoking the Muse or the Divine for inspiration. This becomes more obvious as the poem proceeds. Also in contrast to the Chinese tradition, the poet in Liu’s poem dismisses nature, represented by such images as flowers and moonlight, rivers and clouds, as the ultimate source of inspiration; nature is subject to decay and is thus unreliable. Instead, the poet offers his tears and blood, his body and soul, to the Goddess as the vessel into which poetry will flow freely. At the end of the poem, the Goddess answers the poet''s prayer by receiving him into the sacred temple of poetry where he will find rest and peace. The figure of the Goddess of Poetry has found numerous echoes in modern Chinese poetry throughout the twentieth century. The image is interchangeable with the Muse but sometimes is also identified with the Goddess of Beauty or Aphrodite. Sometimes the expression “soul of poetry” (shi hun) is used to convey a similar idea. Ai Qing (1910-96), for example, remarks in On Poetry (Shi lun): “Our Muse drives a three-wheeled chariot of pure gold, galloping in the wilderness of life. / The three wheels are…Truth, Goodness, Beauty” (1953: 123). Comparing the poet to the Prometheus of language, he declares: Every poet has his Muse— Whitman and his Muse walk leisurely among the crowd in industrialized America… Mayakovsky and his Muse welcome the arrival of ‘Sixteen Years’ with slogans and protests… Yesenin’s Muse riding on a sled chases after the sickle moon… Verhaeren’s Muse wanders on the plains of les Flamand, rushes in and out of city banks, stock exchange, business bureaus, rolling across clamorous night streets like a rock… (Ai Qing 1953: 204) (责任编辑：admin) |