(1905–1950)
Born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, Dai Wangshu attended Shanghai University in 1923 and began publishing poetry in 1926. Politically active as a student, he also blazed a trail for Chinese poetry through his own work and by translating French symbolists, such as Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine. His poem “Rainy Alley” (1927), in particular, with its mellifluous musicality and melancholic ambience, is credited with turning a new page in the annals of the new verse, winning him the title of “the poet of the rainy alley.” In 1932 he went to study in France but was expelled in 1935 for supporting the Spanish left. Returning to China, he continued to be active both in literature and left-wing politics. In 1938 the Japanese occupation of Shanghai forced him to flee to Hong Kong, where he did anti-Japanese propaganda work and edited literary supplements for newspapers. He died of asthma on February 28, 1950, only a few months after being assigned a position in the new government of the People’s Republic.
Holding up an oil-paper umbrella, alone
I loiter aimlessly in the long, long
and lonely rainy alley,
I hope to encounter
a lilac-like girl
nursing her resentment.
A lilac-like color she has
a lilac-like fragrance,
a lilac-like sadness,
melancholy in the rain,
sorrowful and uncertain;
She loiters aimlessly in this lonely rainy alley,
holding up an oil-paper umbrella
just like me,
and just like me
walks silently,
apathetic, sad and disconsolate.
Silently she moves closer,
moves closer and casts
a sigh-like glance,
she glides by
like a dream
hazy and confused like a dream.
As in a dream she glides past
like a lilac spray,
this girl glides past beside me;
she silently moves away, moves away,
up to the broken-down bamboo fence,
to the end of the rainy alley.
In the rain’s sad song,
her color vanishes,
her fragrance diffuses,
even her
sigh-like glance,
lilac-like discontent
vanish.
Holding up an oil-paper umbrella, alone
aimlessly walking in the long, long
and lonely rainy alley,
I wish for
a lilac-like girl
nursing her resentment to glide by.
I think therefore I am a butterfly . . .
The soft call of a flower ten thousand years later,
Has passed through the dreamless, unwaking mist,
To make my multicolored wings vibrate.
—March 14, 1937
(Translated by Gregory Lee)