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Reviewed by:
  • Chinese Poetic Modernisms ed. by Paul Manfredi and Christopher Lupke
  • C. T. Au
Paul Manfredi and Christopher Lupke, editors. Chinese Poetic Modernisms. Leiden: Brill, 2019. 403 p.

There is a saying that a good book has no ending, and Chinese Poetic Modernisms definitely falls under this category. This long-awaited ambitious project undertakes "the daunting task of examining Chinese poetic modernisms in different periods and locales" (7). Most of those ambitions are, in the end, fulfilled.

The concept of Chinese modernisms has long been indistinctly present. In books focusing on modern Chinese literature, more often than not Taiwanese modernism, Hong Kong modernism, and Macanese modernism are treated separately from that of mainland China. The editors pledge to bring the concept to light through fourteen essays, divided into four sections that help delineate varied trajectories of modernist poetic trends.

By following the book's logical structure, readers first become familiar with the major features of Chinese modernism that emerged mainly during the republican period. For example, Lan Dizhi's essay provides a comprehensive overview of the development of Chinese modernist poetry. The discussion revolves around the literary arts journal Xiandai, tracing its roots back to Li Jinfa and his contemporaries in the 1920s and tracking the trend's evolution through the 1940s (the Nine Leaves school, Jiuyepai) and identifying modernist characteristics such as "anti-lyricism," "anti-improvisation," and "anti-logical" (29). Modernist poets were eager to "advocate 'modern feeling' and 'pure poetry'" (32). Lan sheds light on two more characteristics embedded in Chinese modernisms from the outset. For one thing, modernist poets were under the influence of various Western sources, though in a complicated manner; for another, classical Chinese poetry played a significant role in their works. Contributors explore these intricate relationships. To name only a few Western influences: Li Jinfa was influenced by French Symbolism, Dai Wangshu by Spanish modernism (Lan 21-37), Feng Zhi by Rainer Maria Rilke (Geraldine Fiss 38-56), Yuan Kejia by T. S. Eliot (Yanhong Zhu 57-81), and Wen Yiduo's little poems by Shakespearean sonnets (Dian Li 82-106). Lan concludes that, as far as "acquisition of literary elements from both Chinese and [End Page 238] Western traditions" is concerned, these poets adopted a comparative literature approach which allowed them to absorb "the strengths and carefully eschewing the weaknesses of each tradition" (37). Lan's views, to various extents, are echoed by other contributors, not only in this section, but also elsewhere in the book.

Expanding upon the apparent comprehensiveness of Lan's account of the first and third moments, the emergence of the Xiandai modernist group and the Nine Leaves school, Michelle Yeh's, Chen Fangming's (132-52), and Ruan Meihui's (153-80) discussions widen the geographic range and time frame, focusing on, but not limited to, postwar Taiwanese modernist poetry. Yeh identifies "six distinct moments when modernism is embraced as a literary paradigm" (108). While the formation of Le Moulin Poetry Society (Fengche Shishe) (1935-1936), which advocated Surrealism, is considered the second moment of modernism, the Modernist school (Xiandaipai) and the Epoch Poetry Society (Chuangshiji Shishe) arose in the 1950s as the fourth moment. Ruan's and Chen's essays, respectively, help elaborate these two moments. The fifth moment refers to the Modernist movement in Hong Kong in 1956, when Ma Lang published the journal Wenyi Xinchao (New Trends in Literature and Arts). Finally, the modernist poetry that emerged in post-Mao China is considered the sixth moment. Interestingly enough, Yeh's major concern does not lie in any one of these moments. By examining Xia Yu's poetry, Yeh seems to imply that there is one more moment–a seventh–in Chinese modernisms, which suggests that modernism is still an active force from the 1980s onward in Taiwan (111).

At the outset, Chinese modernisms are an outgrowth of comparative studies. The fact that Dai Wangshu had translated Paul Van Tieghem's On Comparative Literature (1931) reminds us of the significance of the mutual relationships of different literatures. To varying degrees, most contributors in sections 1 and 2 have embraced the concept of "influence study." The emphasis in section 3, however, lies elsewhere; factual connection between...

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