A Chronicle of New Chinese Poetry in a Hundred Years
Qinghua Zhang, Editor-in-Chief
Publisher: Shandong Literature and Art Publishing House
Publication date: January 2022
In January 2022, Zhang Qinghua, professor of the College of Literature of Beijing Normal University and executive director of the International Writing Center, edited the "Chronicle of Chinese New Poetry in a Hundred Years" (all ten volumes), published by Shandong Literature and Art Publishing House. "Chronicle" takes the time span of about ten years as a volume, depicting the magnificent process of the new Chinese poetry of the past hundred years from the end of Qingping and the vastness of the Gathering of The Wind and Clouds, including more than 1,200 poets and more than 3,000 new Chinese poems. Through large-scale data collection, examination, hooking, sorting and arranging, the "chronicle" is arranged in order of the time of writing or first publication, so as to form a geographical atlas of Chinese new poetry with relatively complete appearance and relatively rich content, and to strive to approach the academic example of the real development of new poetry in the past century, and present the richness and diversity of new poetry creation. The standards of poetry in each volume of the "Centennial Chronicle of Chinese New Poetry" are unified, and the selected content and number one are still old, with the original publication as the base, the author's revision, proofreading, and editing the selected version as the collation survey, and the different versions of the poem with larger changes are footnoted and explained in the form of "editor's note". The preface to each volume of the "Chronicle" is written by the editor-in-chief of the sub-volume, and the poet's biography is attached at the end of each volume in the order of the poetry catalog, and the format of the whole collection is unified, and the general preface of the whole collection made by the editor-in-chief is also written.
The total prologue of the collection, "Experiment and Choice, Variation and Interaction", starts from the six issues of "Writing Resources and External Influences" of the New Poetry of the Past Century, "Symbolism, Modernity and the Regeneration of the Internal Dynamics of the New Poetry", "History and Hyperhistory, Limitation and Transcendence", "Margins and Undercurrents, The Roundabouts and Continuations of Modernity", "Equality and Elite, Centennial Separation and Interaction", "Classicization, Boundary Experiment, and Conclusion", and fully explores the momentum and internal mechanism of change in the new poetry over the past hundred years. The following is an excerpt from the first part of the general sequence.
Experimentation and Choice, Variation and Interaction: Six Questions of a Century of New Poetry
Text/Zhang Qinghua
"The wind rises at the end of the green ping", which is Chinese ancient thinking; and in the modern sense, the storm in the Caribbean Sea is said to be due to the flapping of the wings of a butterfly. Although the two formulations are close, the former is clearly mystical or metaphysical thinking, while the latter is based on scientific speculation.
Around 1916, the earliest prototypes of new poetry appeared. In Hu Shi's "Attempt Collection" published by the Shanghai Yadong Library in 1920, the age marked at the end of the first, second, and fifth songs of the opening chapter is "a certain day in a certain month of five years", that is, a certain time in 1916. The third and fourth poems are not timed, but according to the chronological order of this book, it is roughly inferred that these two poems were also written in 1916. From this we can probably conclude that the so-called "new poetry" was born at the earliest time. Hu Shi once said that before 1910, he also tried to write poetry for many years, and when he studied in the United States, he and Ren Hongjun (ShuYong), Mei Guangdi (Xiaozhuang) and others still had many singing works, but they were probably not considered "new poems", although they were relatively "white", but there was no breakthrough in form.
Looking at the first part of the "Attempt Collection", of the fourteen songs I saw, only the fifth poem, "Mr. Huang Keqiang's Lamentations", was considered to be a collection of scattered sentences, and the other articles were basically five words and seven words, and occasionally saw the smooth slip of the four words, and some chapters such as the "Hundred Character Order" were considered to be vulgar long and short sentences. Whether the "new poem" was "born" or not is still difficult to say. However, with the publication of Four Of Hu Shi's "Pigeons", "Rickshaw Puller", "One Thought", and "Jing Bu Migration" in 1918, as well as three poems by Shen Yinmo and two poems by Liu Bannong, no one denied the birth of "new poems" anymore. If this is the case, then the time of the birth of the "new poem" should be 1918.
Good or bad is naturally another matter. In the "Self-Introduction" of the "Attempt Collection", Hu Shi tirelessly recorded the criticism and ridicule of his poems, all of which brought out the different views between him and Ren and Mei Zhuyou, and "spoiled" the earliest source of his "Literary Reform Discussion" was a passage in his letter to Zhu Jingnong on August 19, 1916, the so-called "eight things" such as "no canon". I will not make any further references that have been done before me, but will continue with the opening words that the new poem was not born out of a spectacular and great revolution, but from the likes and dislikes and tastes of individuals in a small circle; its text is not a great and astonishing work, but a small attempt with "destructiveness". Even my best friend ridiculed it as "like listening to the lotus flowers fall as a child", "the result of the experiment is a complete failure", "sincerely hope not to plagiarize" foreign "worthless new trends to coax the People of China". [1]
What is the "end of Qingping"? However, the singing remuneration and stimulation of three or two private friends gave birth to the germ of a new genre, which led to a century-long poetry revolution, which can be regarded as a clear proof. However, this is not vivid enough, and there is a better reason - readers have always overlooked that in this "Self-Introduction", Hu Shi opened the door to explain an interesting thing, that is, why he began to write poetry. According to appropriateness, he began to "do vernacular writing" from "six years before the Republic of China era", that is, in 1906, and began to read ancient poems in the second year, that is, in 1907, and he had the initial impulse to write poetry, which was due to such a reason that ordinary people could not say:
In the second year (Ding Wei), I went out of school to recuperate due to beriberi. When I was sick, I read ancient poems every day, from Su Wu and Li Ling to Yuan Haoqing, reading ancient poems alone, not legal poems. I also wrote a few poems that year... I used to write poetry a lot, and by the time I went to The United States, I had already written more than two hundred poems. [2]
The author reminds you that there is nothing else, but the origin of Mr. Shizhi's poems, because of "beriberi". From Foucault's point of view, this is a way of looking at history; if we look at it from the perspective of Chinese ancient thinking, it is an accident that originated from "unprovoked", the so-called "from the end of Qingping".
But is there no necessity in this accident? If the old poems are "eternal sorrows" that stop at the tall and unprovoked, then the new poems are the "beriberi" that starts from the short, poor and itchy heart. Isn't there some kind of allegory, some kind of "allegory of modernity" and logic?
Finally found an interesting starting point for the "hundred years of new poetry". The historical transformation caused by Hu Shi is all-round and full of information. The path, method, nature, and fate of the new poem is right—though we may also be vaguely worried about whether he later went to the United States to study and did not bring this incurable beriberi disease to his classmates and friends in a foreign country.
I. Writing Resources and External Influences: The Two Degrees of Growth of "Vernacular" and "New Moon"
"Authoritarian" sitting on the top of a mountain,
Commanding a group of iron cables to lock slaves to open mines for him...
The initial attempt was doubtful, and the taste of vernacular poetry arising from "beriberi" could not "revel in the pleasure of his appreciation with man", but only "with the courage of man to create boldly". [3] It is clear that even those who benefit from the new winds brought about by Hu Shi's boldness are reluctant to acknowledge the value of his efforts. But if we hold a historical attitude, we should not underestimate the value of the work done by Shen Yinmo, Liu Bannong, Kang Baiqing, Yu Pingbo, Zhou Zuoren, and so on. In fact, there are works like "Authoritarianism" in the "Trial Collection", in which the image of "authoritarianism" is accidentally and poetically personified, sitting on the top of a mountain and driving a group of chained slaves. "He said, 'Who of you dares to be stubborn?' / I'm going to do whatever you want! Is this inadvertently and also a manifestation of the quality of poetry? The poem later states in its own notes: "On the night of The eleventh day of June of the eighth year... Chen Duxiu was arrested in Beijing; after midnight, a newspaper office called to say that there was a general strike in Tokyo, Japan. The amount of information in this poem is clearly large, not only expressing anger and blindness toward the rulers, but more importantly, revealing the usual metaphorical and symbolic brushwork of "modern poetry". Although there are few such brilliant strokes in "Try Collection", they are not nothing.
This raises the question of the earliest critical "starting point" of new poetry. Someone emphasized the significance of the Zhou brothers, Zhu Ziqing said: "Only the Lu Xun brothers have completely got rid of the old shackles, and the Zhou Qiming clan simply does not use rhyme." They went elsewhere on the Europeanization route. [4] This is very crucial, he enlightens us that although Hu Shi and others belong to the Liuyang school, their writing inspiration is mainly from the influence of traditional ancient poetry, which is born from forms such as "Lefu", so its revolutionary nature as a new poem is still relatively conservative; while Zhou Zuoren's "Little River" is written from symbolism and is influenced from the West.
This is a very important idea, from which we can delve into the internal relationship between the birth of new poetry and Chinese and foreign resources, especially foreign resources. This actually constituted the key road problem in the beginning of the new poem.
Obviously, the earliest batch of new poetry writers were mainly from a group of writers who stayed in the United States and Japan: Hu Shi and Kang Baiqing stayed in the United States; Shen Yinmo, Guo Moruo and the Zhou brothers stayed in Japan; Liu Bannong first stayed in England and then changed to France, but he was not influenced by French poetry at that time. If we make a more arbitrary judgment, it is that these earliest writers, still in the hesitation of the choice of form, have not yet found a more ideal "poetry method". In fact, the way of writing, including "Little River", is basically a "description" of prose culture. Although Kang Baiqing has long noticed the "difference between poetry and prose" in his long essay "I See at the Bottom of New Poetry", and has also emphasized that the "quality of poetry" is the "main sentiment", in fact, this does not constitute true "exclusivity", even if the vernacular poets realize that "the imaginary mood of emotions and the portrayal of music are written out"[5], the texture of their works is still difficult to get out of the prose. The essence lies in the obsolescence and lack of his thinking and imagination. Therefore, by the autumn of 1919, when Guo Moruo began to publish a large number of works in the "Current Affairs New Newspaper And Xuelan", the new poems were still in the bud of a "qingping end", and the "wind" did not really blow.
How to evaluate the early vernacular poems, including guo Moruo, is not the intention of this article. This issue is a matter of opinion, and it is difficult to reach a conclusion. One of the problems I would like to raise is that the rapid development of new poetry in the 1920s was mainly based on two important sources of influence, or rather, two different background resources, which led to the emergence of two distinctly different aesthetic tastes and orientations in new poetry, and this division almost influenced and determined the next path of new poetry. These two sources, one is the Anglo-American lineage, Shangcheng Hu Shi, followed by Wen Yiduo, who returned from staying in the United States (1925), and Xu Zhimo, who returned to the United States and returned to Britain (1922), who constituted the main lineup of the "Crescent Moon Faction"; the other was Li Jinfa, who returned from studying in France later (1925), Wang Duqing, who stayed in France after staying in France (1925), and Ai Qing (who returned to China in 1932) and Dai Wangshu (who returned to China in 1935), etc., which formed the "Symbolism-Modernism" line. Sandwiched in the middle is a group of people who stay in Japan, and Mu Mutian, who stayed in Japan, although he was closely related to the Creation Society, but his main focus was French literature, so he was more in line with Symbolist poetry. As for the core members of the Creation Society, Guo Moruo, Cheng Fangwu, Yu Dafu, Tian Han, etc., basically belong to the romantic line, except for the later Feng Naichao, who showed a tendency toward symbolism, the others were basically not affected by modernism.
These three camps, or three cultural communities, reflect different pursuits because of differences in study abroad backgrounds, influences, cultural identities, and artistic tastes, and manifest as aesthetic flows with obvious differences, thus constituting an important source and driving force for the development of new poetry.
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About the Author
Zhang Qinghua
Zhang Qinghua, a native of Boxing County, Shandong Province, Doctor of Literature, Professor of the College of Literature of Beijing Normal University, Doctoral Supervisor, Jiang Scholar Distinguished Professor of the Ministry of Education, Executive Director of the International Writing Center of Beijing Normal University, Director of the Research Center for Contemporary Literary Creation and Criticism, And Famous Teacher of Beijing Normal University. He is also the vice president of the Chinese Contemporary Literature Research Association, the deputy director of the Poetry Committee of the Chinese Writers Association, and the executive deputy director of the Academic Committee of the Chinese Poetry Society. He has published 15 academic works such as "On the Trend of Thought in Contemporary Chinese Avant-garde Literature", "Notes on Heidelberg", "Remembering a Shy Wolf", "Hidden Carnival", "The Garden of Formalism", "A Nightingale of the Last Era", "Six Interpretations of Spring Dreams", "Notes in the Mirror" and many other poetry collections and prose essay collections. He has won the 2010 Critic of the Year Award, the October Poetry Award, the Chen Ziang Poetry Award, the ChangYao Poetry Award, and many others. He has lectured at the University of Heidelberg in Germany and the University of Zurich in Switzerland.