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  • The Literary Mind and the Carving of Modernities
  • David Der-Wei Wang (bio)

Classical-style poetry constitutes one of the most contested topics in the millennial reappraisal of modern Chinese literature. Ever since the May Fourth era, modern Chinese literature has built on the paradigm that highlights vernacular articulation, Western-style genres, a progressive agenda predicated on revolution and enlightenment, and an “order to mimesis” in the name of realism. Above all, “modern” is invoked to celebrate whatever is deemed iconoclastic and “new.” By way of contrast, classical-style poetry appears to be a perfect counterexample. Its adherence to nonvernacular discourse, its exercise of formulism, and its penchant for archaic motifs and imagery are all said to betray its reactionary nature.

Hindsight, however, calls attention to the fact that classical-style poetry continued to thrive throughout the twentieth century regardless of the predominant existence of New Literature. Although it was adopted by the conservatives to demonstrate their nostalgia, it was also celebrated among radical antitraditionalists from Lu Xun 魯迅 (1881–1936) to Mao Zedong 毛澤東 (1893–1976). Classical-style poetry represents as much a token of cultural “necrophilia,” in Yu Dafu’s 郁達夫 (1896–1945) terminology, as a signal of political avant-gardism. More intriguingly, at select moments of historical crisis, classical-style poetry appeared to best address the “structure of feeling”1 of the time, thus displaying its provocative power more than any form of New Literature.

The complex implications of modern classical-style Chinese poetry have yet to be carefully studied. Indeed, the genre prods one to rethink the multiple [End Page 203] strains in the genesis and development of Chinese literary modernization. It calls attention to issues ranging from the mutual implications between tradition and modernity to the politics of cultural axiology and the “plotting” of history and temporality. More important, through reading classical-style poetry in the new century, we are compelled to contemplate again the condition of “newness” underlying modern Chinese literary culture.

This special issue seeks to look into the multifarious dimensions of classical-style poetry and, by extension, classical-style prose and poetics in modern times. In eleven articles, it touches on a spectrum of themes such as the reinterpretation of classical literary thought, the fashioning of literary subjectivities, the politics of archaism, and the classicist intervention with history. Although the contributors each demonstrate a distinct theoretical training and methodological choice, they share the conviction that classical-style poetry is a dynamic genre capable of engaging the decadent and the progressive as well as the lyrical and the epic that are inherent in modern literary sensibilities. At their most polemical, the contributors ask whether the modern literature we consider here is the least modern of all Chinese modernities, if not the most conventional of all modern Chinese conventionalities.

For readers who are not familiar with the historical context in which classical-style Chinese poetry “became modern,” a brief genealogical description is in order. First, we have to keep in mind that poetry (shi 詩) in traditional Chinese literary culture means more than a literary genre as defined by Western academia. Rather, it refers to a much broader domain of articulations, as a knowledge system, a pedagogical institution, a social habitus, and above all the quintessential form of civilization. This tradition of poetry started to show signs of disintegration in the late Qing 清 (1644–1911) era, when the dynasty was faced with incessant challenges from within and without the Middle Kingdom. Gong Zizhen 龔自珍 (1792–1841) has often been regarded as the poet who anticipated the breakdown of the ancient poetic culture. Gong’s poetry is best characterized by an anxiety about historical crisis, a melancholy subjectivity, and an apocalyptic vision. Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929), the leading literary reformer at the turn of the twentieth century, has described how he was once captivated by the “electrifying effect” (ruo shoudian ran 若受電然)2 of Gong Zizhen’s poetry. Indeed, Gong’s lasting impact was found in works by classical-style poetry practitioners from Lu Xun to Liu Yazi 柳亞子 (1887–1958) and Guo Moruo 郭沫若 (1892–1978), and from Wang Jingwei 汪精衛 (1883–1944) to Mao Zedong.

Late Qing poetry after Gong’s time can be divided into three schools, all of which in...

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