Lee blonde in his youth. Photo/Courtesy of respondents
"Resurrected" Li Jinfa: Bringing Symbolism Back to China
Reporter/Qiu Guangyu
Published in China News Weekly on April 5, 2021, Issue 990
In April 2016, Chen Xiaoxia, a teacher at Yibin College, received a request from her university teacher, Professor Chen Houcheng of Sichuan University, hoping that she would take over the follow-up compilation of the Complete Poems of Li Jinfa and the collection of Li Jinfa's writings.
Chen Xiaoxia finished her undergraduate and master's degrees in the department of Chinese of Sichuan University, has long studied modern Chinese literature, is quite familiar with Li Jinfa's poetry, and she will also explain Li Jinfa's poetry to students in class. Usually, during the enlightenment stage, she would choose the "Tenderness" suitable for the young people of the beginning of the love dou to explain, and she could also recite the sentences casually: "I / The conqueror of all / Broke the shield and spear." ”
But for the public, the name Li Jinfa is still unfamiliar. The poet, educator, sculptor and diplomat, whose original name was Lee Kwon-hing, died in the United States as early as 1976. From the time of the publication of the first collection of poems, "Light Rain", in 1925, when it became famous in the poetry world, Li Jinfa and his poetry were constantly faced with misunderstanding, criticism and controversy. He moved to the United States after the founding of new China, and almost no more poetry appeared.
In the literary and artistic trends of the 1980s, Li Jinfa's poetry was once again recalled by posterity and discovered new connotations. As the first descendant of "symbolist" poetry in China, he not only influenced the "modernist" poets of the same period, but also influenced the "obscure poetry" of the 1980s, and even Lu Xun's prose poetry collection "Wild Grass" is closely related to Li Jinfa's poetry.
In December 2020, through the efforts of Chen Houcheng, Li Weijiang, Chen Xiaoxia and others, the 700,000-word, more than 1,000-page "Complete Compilation of Li Jinfa's Poems" was officially published on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of Li Jinfa's birth, bringing the work of this misunderstood and cold-treated poet to light.
The "poetry monster" who worked hard
Most people's first reaction to Li Jinfa's poetry is "difficult to understand", even those who have received literary training. Chen Xiaoxia recalls that in compiling the Complete Poems of Li Jinfa, she had to face a large number of French, German, English, Italian vocabulary in the manuscript, and even Japanese, Latin and Slavic. In addition, Li Jinfa's poems also have a large number of ancient texts and strange characters, which are like puzzle words, which make her spend a lot of time to inquire, consult relevant scholars, and sometimes use a magnifying glass to confirm some words from the books of the Republic of China, and also learn to skillfully identify traditional characters.
Everything goes back to the poet's childhood. Born in 1900 in a rural family in Meizhou, Guangdong Province, Li Jinfa's father and brother were engaged in business in Mauritius, and their tutors were strict, because the family needed a reader, he finished high school and went to Hong Kong to study for a period of time. In Li Jinfa's mixed reading experience, there are allusions learned in the old-fashioned private school of childhood, there are the popular "Mandarin Duck Butterfly School" novels, and there is also a certain english foundation. In 1919, when Li Jinfa went to Shanghai to continue his studies, he joined the sixth batch of work-study in France, and there were many celebrities who went to France, including Li Lisan, Xu Teli and Wang Ruofei, who later became well-known figures in the Communist Party, and his compatriots, classmates of the Paris Academy of Fine Arts, and painter Lin Fengmian, who arrived in France a few months later.
Because he liked stone statues, Li Jinfa chose sculpture as his specialty. The most widely circulated pen name, "Blonde", also originated from the dream of an exotic blonde who took him on a journey. Outside of his studies, literature and Western music gradually attracted Li Jinfa. He read heavily the poetry and works of the "Decadent" and "Symbolist" poets and the works of the Romantics. Symbolism was popular in Paris, France at the end of the 19th century, represented by Baudelaire, Verlaine, Blue Wave and others, and the exhaustive depiction of ugly things, hazy hints and musicality are the prominent features of these poems. Lee Jinfa once described himself as "composing poems under the influence of Bauttlee (i.e., Baudelaire) and Verlen", and this reading interest continued until his later years. When he arrived in the United States, he would also pick up Baudelaire's "The Flower of Evil" and read it.
"Light Rain", the first edition of Beixin Bookstore in 1925.
Li Jinfa believes that his only character advantage is "extremely willing to work hard", which is true for sculpture and poetry creation. In 1923, Li Jinfa, who was studying in Berlin, Germany, compiled the poems he had created in the past into two original poetry collections, "Light Rain" and "Diners and Murderous Years", and sent the poems to Zhou Zuoren in China, which was praised by Zhou Zuoren. At the end of 1924 he wrote a collection of poems, Songs for Happiness. In February 1925, Li Jinfa's "Abandoned Women" was published in the magazine "Yusi", and in November of that year, the poetry collection "Light Rain" was edited and published by Zhou Zuoren, and the poetry collection advertised: "Its genre, style, and mood are different from the current popular poems, and they are unique works in the poetry world." And in the collection of poems "Light Rain", the first poem to the point is the famous "Abandoned Woman": "The hidden worries of the abandoned woman are piled up on the action / The fire of the sunset cannot turn the boredom of time into ashes, fly from the smoke / Long dye in the feather of the crow / Will perch on the stone of the tsunami, and listen to the song of the boat." "The mixed style of literature and white gave a shock to the literary circle of popular vernacular poetry at that time.
In the 1920s, when vernacular literature and vernacular poetry were vigorously promoted, Li Jinfa, who lived abroad for a long time, was not inspired by the atmosphere of the "literary revolution" in China, so although he brought new ideas and unique works, he could not completely integrate into the torrent of the times. Since the day Li Jinfa ascended to the literary scene, the voice of the literary circles criticizing his poetry as "difficult to understand" has been very loud, for example, Hu Shi, who personally created the vernacular poems in the "Trial Collection", called Li Jinfa's poetry "stupid mystery", which is actually a criticism. Liang Shiqiu accused him of "imitating a part of degenerate foreign literature", and the left-wing poet Pu Feng criticized his poems as "indispensable to a few 'zi' words in each piece".
The second half of his life when he no longer writes poetry
There are still people who are willing to develop the value of Lee's blonde poetry. In 1935, Zhu Ziqing pointed out in "Introduction to the New Department of Chinese Literature, Poetry and Poetry" that Li Jinfa was the first to bring the literary technique of symbolism to China: "What he wants to express is not meaning, but feeling or emotion; it is as if a string of large and small red, red, green and green beads, but he hides that string, you have to wear it yourself." This is how the French symbolic poet used it, and Li was the first to introduce it to Chinese poetry. Many people complain that they can't understand it, but many people are imitating it. He also pointed out that Li Jinfa's poetry is imaginative, but may have caused dyslexia due to the rush to create new languages.
After returning to China in 1925, Li Jinfa was engaged in sculpture, compilation and education, and at the invitation of Cai Yuanpei, he served as the secretary of the secretariat of the University of the Republic of China, taught at the National West Lake Art Institute and the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, went to various places to make bronze statues of celebrities, and was also invited to Song Qingling's home. Despite his contacts with many celebrities, Li Jinfa still maintained an unsociable personality, and most of the people inside did not know each other after joining the "Literary Research Society". However, Li Jinfa had sincere patriotic feelings, and after the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, he publicly wrote an article accusing Zhou Zuoren, who had promoted him, of "literati having no deeds", and also wrote a large number of poems with a positive style of "singing for the War of Resistance" and published them in the media.
From 1941 onwards, Li Jinfa, who had difficulty making a living, stopped publishing poetry, and in order to pursue the preferential treatment of expatriates, he joined the then "European Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs", and in 1945 he was sent to Iran to take office, later as first secretary of the embassy in Iran, and two years later became chargé d'affaires at the embassy in Iraq. In 1951, Li Jinfa, who was not satisfied with his work, decided to move his family to the United States. When he arrived in the United States, he first ran a farm to raise chickens, and then did a clothing business, but he was unsuccessful, and finally returned to his industry to work in a carving company. In fact, after he published "Song for Happiness" at the age of 26, Li Jinfa's career as a symbolist poet basically ended. In his later recollections, he recalled that he felt that the era of Symbolism had passed, that he "could not find a correct path, that he felt that he was self-deceitful," and that the pressures of life had worn away his inspiration. In his later years, his essays published in magazines in Hong Kong and Malaysia were mostly reminiscences, and when he was older, he didn't even bother to write essays.
"Song for Happiness", the first edition of the Commercial Press in 1926.
After the founding of New China, Li Jinfa's poetry, which had served the Nationalist government, almost disappeared on the mainland, and only in some literary textbooks was denounced as "counter-current" because of the style of learning from the West. His works were only privately popular in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the only time they appeared was when he accidentally played a "target" in the controversy caused by Taiwanese "modernist" poets in the 1950s: in 1959, Su Xuelin, who had commented on Li Jinfa's poetry in the mainland, suddenly criticized Li Jinfa's poetry as "the ghost of symbolic poetry", and spread countless disciples and grandchildren in Taiwan. For all this, Li Jinfa, who was overseas, did not respond, but in 1973, in the "Twenty Questions of Mr. Huang Xian" written to the Taiwanese poet Yan Xian, he mentioned that others said that his poems could not be understood, and he did not care, only thinking that they were shallow.
It was re-excavated after the "80s"
After the reform and opening up, the "modern school" that has been suppressed since the "May Fourth" has resurfaced, the new poetry school, including "obscure poetry", has continued to emerge, the expansion of academic research space has provided an opportunity for Li Jinfa's poetry to reappear, and some well-known scholars have worked hard to "discover" Li Jinfa.
In 1945, Li Jinfa (first from left), a diplomat, was photographed in Iran with his wife Liang Zhiyin, eldest son Li Mingxin, and second son Li Meng. Photo/Courtesy of respondents
When Studying Lu Xun's Wild Grass, Sun Yushi, a professor at Peking University, felt that the articles in "Wild Grass" might have some use for symbolism, and the poet who must pay attention to the study of Chinese symbolism was Li Jinfa. Since September 1981, Sun Yushi has been offering a course on "Li Jinfa and the Study of Early Symbolist Poetry" for students, hoping that more people will understand the connotations in poetry. In 1990, he used a chapter in his book Introduction to Modern Chinese Poetry (1917-1938) to appreciate The Abandoned Woman, arguing that Li Jinfa's work compensated for the "novelty and complexity of imagery" at the beginning of the birth of new poetry. In addition, Xie Mian, a professor at Peking University, in his 1993 book The Sun of the New Century: The Tide of Chinese Poetry in the Twentieth Century, argued that Li Jinfa's "more prominent contribution is to openly and courageously introduce Western sentiments and exotic artistic methods into the newly self-reliant Chinese new poetry."
At this stage, people found that Li Jinfa's poetry had not been published in the mainland for more than 30 years. As the first city to hold the "Chinese Poetry Festival" in 1986, Chengdu has naturally become an important town for the publication and dissemination of poetry. Zhou Yi, director of the Chief Editorial Office of Sichuan Literature and Art Publishing House, introduced that in 1987, the Sichuan Literature and Art Publishing House, which had just been established for more than two years, exhausted all the materials they could collect and published "Li Jinfa's Poetry Collection", which can be said to be the "thickest and most complete book" of Li Jinfa's poetry works published in China at that time, with more than 800 pages, and the content of today's "Li Jinfa Poetry Complete Compilation" is also partially based on this book.
When Chen Houcheng, a professor at Sichuan University, began to contact Li Jinfa's poetry when he studied the topic of "Chinese Literature in the 20th Century and Western Modernist Thought" around 1985, he also felt that Li Jinfa was an indispensable poet in the history of New Chinese poetry. Since then, Chen has begun to accumulate information on Li Jinfa and has made contact with other scholars and relatives of Li Jinfa in the United States and his hometown. In 1995, Chen Houcheng's biography of Li Jinfa, "The Smile on the Lips of Death- A Biography of Li Jinfa", was published, which is still one of the most detailed materials for studying Li Jin's peaceful works.
In the 1990s, Chen Houcheng and Li Weijiang, a professor at Sun Yat-sen University and a researcher of Cantonese writers, came up with the idea of co-editing the Complete Compilation of Li Jinfa's Poems and anthologies. In October 2000, Meizhou, Guangdong Province, held the "100th Anniversary of the Birth of Lin Fengmian and Li Jinfa and Academic Seminar", at which Li Jinfa was confirmed to be the first person to introduce French Symbolist poetry, and because Symbolism was the first genre in modernist literary thought, Li Jinfa was also known as "the pioneer of Chinese modernist poetry". The second month after the conference, Professor Li Weijiang died of illness, and the research work on Li Jinfa was transferred to his daughter Li Tao.
During that period, some publishing houses constantly expressed their interest in the Complete Compilation of Li Jinfa's Poems, but due to the need for self-financing, Li Tao and Chen Houcheng both went abroad to settle down, and the publication of this set of books was still not carried out. Until 2016, Chen Houcheng decided to entrust all the materials of the "Complete Compilation of Li Jinfa's Poems" collected by him and Li Weijiang, as well as the compilation of future poetry collections and anthologies, to Chen Xiaoxia, a student living in Sichuan. In 2017, Sichuan Literature and Art Publishing House decided to publish "The Complete Compilation of Li Jinfa's Poems" on the basis of the 1987 edition of "Li Jinfa's Collected Poems" and existing research materials, and Zhou Yi, director of the editor-in-chief office of Sichuan Literature and Art Publishing House, contacted Chen Houcheng, who was in the United States, and learned that he had a full power of attorney for the publication of Li Jinfa's works, and finally decided on the matter.
The Complete Poems of Li Jinfa. Photo: Sichuan Literature and Art Publishing House
Because of the teacher's entrustment, since 2016, Chen Xiaoxia has been in the study with this pile of materials related to Li Jinfa day and night. She remembers that when she first brought the information back to Yibin, several suitcases were full and one trolley case was broken.
Today, 52-year-old Chen Xiaoxia still loves poetry as much as she did when she was young, and she can also write poetry herself. Although the poems of Li Jinfa that she spoke about in class were still somewhat obscure to eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds, she thought that even if the students could only read one fragment of it, it would be better than not feeling anything. She uses her favorite Li Blonde's "Feeling" to explain the complex and subtle feelings of life expressed in symbolist poetry: "'Like a stump of leaves splashing blood on our feet / Life is the smile on the lips of the god of death.'" We may have all had this experience, but you may not have this feeling of life: life and death are interdependent, as if there is life in the red leaves, like human blood vessels I really like such verses. ”