Notes on Sun City: Modern Chinese Poetry from 1919 to 1984
The Fourteen Elements
Feng Zhi was once praised by Lu Xun as "China's most outstanding lyric poet". Born in Zhuozhou, Hebei in 1905, he founded the Shenzhong Society with friends in 1925, published his first collection of poems "The Song of Yesterday" in 1927, and published the poetry collection "Journey to the North and Others" in 1929. His "Collection of Fourteen Elements", which he created in the 1930s and 1940s, perfectly internalized the Western poetic style of the fourteenth line and became a model of new grammatical poetry since May Fourth. Feng Zhi was also a pioneer in the translation and study of German literature, and many famous works by Goethe, Heine, Rilke and others were translated by him, and his study of German literature also inspired the mathematicians. Feng Zhi not only left his name in the annals of history in China, but also gained high recognition and admiration in Germany for his dual identities as a scholar and poet.
"Guided tour" of German literature
In 1985, the German suhrkamp publishing house published a collection of essays edited by the German sinologist Gu Bin, "Contemporary Chinese Literature", in which Gu Bin pointed out in the preface: In Germany, people know very little about Chinese literature. Modern and contemporary literature, in particular, is rarely studied even in academia. Fortunately, with the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the Federal Republic of Germany in October 1972 and the increasingly frequent economic and cultural exchanges between the two, more and more German scholars began to focus on Chinese modern and contemporary literature.
In contrast, German literature is a household name in China, and the works of poets and writers such as Goethe, Schiller, Heine, and Rilke, such as "The Troubles of Young Werther", "Faust", and "Germany, a Fairy Tale of Winter", have profoundly influenced generations of Chinese. The reason for this is inseparable from the vigorous translation of Chinese writers and scholars, and Feng Zhi is one of the veritable pioneers.
Feng Zhi's relationship with German literature probably dates back to the early 1920s. In 1987, Feng Zhi recalled his initial relationship with German literature: "I read with great enthusiasm the novel translated by Guo Moruo, "The Troubles of Young Werther", one of the founders of new Chinese poetry. From 1923 to 1927, Feng Zhi studied in the German Department of Peking University. In 1928, his translation of the German poet Heine's Travels in the Harz Mountains was published. From 1930 onwards, Feng studied German literature, philosophy and art history in Heidelberg and Berlin, germany, and received his doctorate at the University of Heidelberg in 1935. In the decades after returning to China, Feng Zhi devoted all his energy to the translation and research of German literature. In 1938 he translated rilke's Ten Letters to a Young Poet, in 1956 he translated and published Selected Poems of Heine, in 1958 he edited A Brief History of German Literature, in 1978 he translated and published Heine's long poem "Germany, a Fairy Tale of Winter", and in 1986 published the academic monograph "On Goethe".
In 2020, the Complete Translations of Feng Zhi was published by Century Wenjing, which completely collects the translation results of Feng Zhi, including the poems of Poets such as Goethe, Hölderlin, Heine, Nietzsche, Georg, Rilke, Brecht, as well as works such as "A Brief Book of Aesthetic Education", "The Learning Era of Vilian Meister", "Goethe's Chronology", "Distant Songs" and other works. This four-volume collection of translated essays is a precious gift that Feng Zhi left to the world.
In addition to translation studies, Feng Zhi also played a great role in the teaching of German literature and sino-German cultural exchanges. After returning from Heidelberg in the 1930s, Feng zhi has taught at Tongji University, Southwest Union University and Peking University, spreading German culture to more young students. During his work at the Institute of Foreign Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, he participated in many academic and cultural exchange activities held abroad.
Feng Zhi's translation and study of German literature has projected a touch of exotic brilliance to Chinese local literature, and German scholars and readers have also been able to glimpse the style of new Chinese poetry through his poetry.
Freestyle poem "The Best Representative"
In Germany, Feng Zhi's status as a translator and scholar was so dazzling that he was sometimes obscured as a poet. Overseas researchers have lamented more than once that compared with the large number of literary research and translation results, Feng Zhi, as a poet, seems to have much less literary creation. However, although he left few poems, they were all excellent works, especially the Fourteen Elements. Because the motifs of the "Fourteen Elements" often echo the works of Goethe, Rilke and other poets, such as the discussion of the transformation of death and rebirth, German scholars and ordinary readers are more likely to resonate, so the German translation of Feng Zhi's poetry also focuses on the "Fourteen Elements".
In 1985, Gu Bin published a collection of translated poems, Notes on Sun City: Modern Chinese Poetry from 1919 to 1984, which included the works of 16 modern Chinese poets, including Feng Zhi. The collection of poems selects 18 works from Feng Zhi's "Fourteen Elements", which is the earliest German translation of Feng Zhi's poetry that I have seen. Among them, the 13th song of the 14th Sonnet directly takes "Goethe" as the title, with "All things are enjoying your famous saying / It breaks the meaning of all life: 'death and change'!" At the end, this is a familiar topic for German readers.
Overseas researchers emphasize that Feng Zhi's sonnets can be called the most perfect example of "Westernized" (with the help of Western asanas) of grammatical poetry. In the preface to Contemporary Chinese Literature, Feng Zhi's position in the history of modern Chinese poetry is also highly praised. It is mentioned that the biggest challenge in the creation of vernacular literature in the early days of May Fourth came from poetry, especially in the field of Gelug poetry, and it can even be said that there were few achievements. If Xu Zhimo and Wen Yiduo gave a new form to the free body, then between 1911 and 1949, the best representative of this form was Feng Zhi's sonnet. Twenty years later, in the 2005 book "Chinese Literature in the Twentieth Century" (K.G. Sauer Publishing Company) in the 7th volume of the History of Chinese Literature, Gu Bin still adheres to the same view.
In 1987, after Feng Zhi won the Art Prize of the International Exchange Center of the Federal Republic of Germany, Sukamp Publishing House published the complete "Fourteen Elements", entitled "Feng Zhi: Fourteen Elements", in addition to 27 German translations, with the original text of the Chinese. The translation is currently in the collections of several German universities and state libraries, such as the Munich University Central Library, the Bavarian State Library, the Free University Library of Berlin, the Berlin State Library, the University Library of Hamburg, and the German State Library in Leipzig.
Due to the formal use of the 14-line font in Feng Zhi's "Collection of Fourteen Elements", many scholars in China, Europe and the United States have emphasized the influence of Rilke's sonnets on it. But Goatkoei Lang-Tan, a sinologist from Heidelberg, pointed out Goethe's influence on the content of this group of poems. In his essay "The Traditional Structure of Chinese Grammatical Poetry and the Collision of East and West" (Asia, No. 20, 1986), he points out that the idea of death and change in Goethe's poetry, death and the rebirth of the illusion of death, almost runs through the theme of the Fourteen Elements. At the same time, Feng Zhi's understanding of Goethe's "death and change" also incorporates the philosophies of traditional Chinese philosophies such as Taoism and Zen Buddhism, thus giving poetry a strong metaphorical color.
The two articles "Give My Narrow Heart a Big Universe: Feng Zhi's Sonnets" and "The Path of Philosophy: Feng Zhi's Sonnets" are Gu Bin's interpretation and evaluation of Feng Zhi's "Fourteen Sonnets". In addition to Goethe's influence on Feng Zhi, Gu Bin also quotes the Czech sinologist Márian Gálik, that Feng Zhi's sonnets also reflect the shadow of the philosopher Carl Jaspers's theory of communication. When Feng Zhi was studying in Heidelberg, he listened to IELTS Bales' lessons. Of course, the most important point of the article is Gu Bin's own opinion: Lu Xun is also an important factor influencing the creation of Feng Zhi's sonnets. With the title of "Road", Gu Bin listed the 17th poem in the "Fourteen Elements Collection", "The Path of the Wilderness", in which the poem "How many nameless pedestrians walk / Step out of these lively roads" two sentences, reminiscent of the famous saying in Lu Xun's prose "Hometown": "In fact, there is no road on the ground, and the more people walk, the more people will become the road." Gu Bin pointed out that Lu Xun combines the concept of "hope" with the formation of the road here, while Feng Zhi shifts his center of gravity slightly in the first subsection, shifting the focus from the formation of the road to the emergence of life on the road.
In addition to the most prestigious "Fourteen Elements", Feng Zhi's "Journey to the North and Others" group of poems (Shen Zhongshe, 1929) was also translated into German and published in Orientierung magazine (Orientierung) No. 1, 1990. For this group of Feng Zhi's early poems, the translator Barbara Hoster notes the modern consciousness revealed in it, especially the subject of self-expression and the lyricism of urban experience: while the city is constantly modernizing, the aimlessness, depression, and helplessness that people ensue in it are experiences that have never appeared in traditional Chinese literature. It can be said that Feng Zhi's creation has broadened the expression of Chinese literary experience.
Award-winning contributions to cultural exchanges
Feng Zhi has made outstanding contributions to Sino-German cultural exchanges, and he has been repeatedly honored by different Academic Organizations and governments in Germany.
In 1983, Feng Zhi was awarded the Goethe Medal. In 1985, Feng Zhi won the "Brothers Grimm Literature Award". In 1987, the Federal Center for International Exchange of Germany awarded this year's Art Prize to Feng Zhi for his outstanding contribution to Sino-German cultural exchanges, and Feng Zhi was the first Asian to receive this award. The award speech said: "As a researcher of Goethe and a translator of Heine, Rilke and Nietzsche, he made the German classics well known in China; the history of German thought can be understood and accepted in China, and Feng Zhi made immeasurable contributions to this." The cultural bridge between China and Germany, built by generations, was consolidated through his literary work. In December of the same year, the then German ambassador to China, Han Peide, in the name of German Federal President Richard Weizsäcker, awarded Feng Zhi the "Grand Cross" in recognition of his outstanding merits in Sino-German cultural exchanges, reflecting the German government's recognition of Feng Zhi's contribution.
In 1988, Feng Zhi also received the "Friedrich Miyldov Prize for Foreign German Studies" in recognition of his contribution to the promotion of German literature teaching in Chinese universities and to the deepening of Sino-German literary ties. In his acceptance speech, the sinologist Rolf Trauzettel reviewed Feng Zhi's research and creation in various periods. He points out that Goethe offered Feng Zhi a possibility of reconciliation in the conflict between the old and new literature, "literature as a carrier and self-expression"; and Rilke's "poetry as experience" gave him a deeper understanding of literary creation, not to mention the influence of his sonnets on Feng Zhi's poetic creation. In addition, Tao Dewen also noticed that Feng Zhi did not completely detach himself from the soil of traditional Chinese culture, and his "Biography of Du Fu" is a reiteration of his literary roots.
On the one hand, as a pioneer in the translation of German literature in China, Feng Zhi was respected by the German academic community and the government for his outstanding contributions. On the other hand, due to its unique understanding and exquisite combination of Chinese and Western cultures, the Fourteen Elements has become an outstanding representative of modern Chinese grammatical poetry, which has aroused in-depth analysis and discussion among German sinologists. All in all, the scholar and the poet are Feng Zhi's dual identities, and the light he radiates shines in Goethe's hometown.
(The author is a PhD student at the Faculty of Sinology, University of Munich)