The Lyrical in Epic Time: Modern Chinese Intellectuals and Artists Through the 1949 Crisis

5. I have particularly in mind the two themes, qimeng 啓蒙 (enlightenment) and jiuwang 救亡 (national salvation), invoked by Li Zehou in the 1980s. These became arguably the most popular motifs underlying the intellectual debate over the nature of Chinese modernity at the time. See Li Zehou, “Qimeng yu jiuwang de shuangchong bianzou” 啓蒙與救亡的雙重變奏 (Dual variation of enlightenment and national salvation), in Zhongguo xiandai xixiang shilun 中國現代思想史論 (A history of modern Chinese thought) (Beijing: Dongfeng chubanshe, 1987), 7–50.

6. Yü-sheng Lin, Crisis of Chinese Consciousness: Radical Traditionalism in the May Fourth Era (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978), chapter 1.

7. I am inspired by the “weak thought” Gianni Vattimo develops in The End of Modernity, trans. Jon R. Snyder (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988). For an account of Vattimo’s concept, see Snyder’s introduction: “the infinite interpretability of reality is what allows us to speak of the ‘weakening’ of metaphysical Being and truth. In making his apology for nihilism’s dissolution … Vattimo contends that the experience of infinite interpretability has led to ‘the weakening of the cogent force of reality’ because it has made ‘all that is given by [metaphysics] as real, necessary, peremptory and true’ into simply another interpretive possibility among a plethora of such possibilities” (xxii). For Vattimo’s interpretation of Heidegger’s “weak ontology,” from which he derives his concept of “weak thought,” see 85–86.

8. Ban Wang, The Sublime Figure of History: Aesthetics and Politics in Twentieth-Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997).

9. Despite their disciplinary training, many critics and scholars in modern Chinese literature are actually not willing to settle for their profession if “literature” means only belles-lettres, fictional constructs, and above all, an inquiry into the representation of feeling and affection. They are eager to cross boundaries and engage in “real” issues in history and politics. When “critique,” “intervention,” “tactic,” and “agency” become buzzwords of the field, or when postcolonial studies, empire studies, and bio-politics are commanding the general interest, we tend to overlook the vigor and vitality of literature as an imaginary construct of and figural engagement with the real. These projects take “criticism” or “politics” as a task that assumes an a priori theoretical or moral superiority.

10. See, for example, Paul Pickowicz’s discussion in Marxist Literary Thought in China: The Influence of Ch’ü Ch’iu-pai (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 15–16, 39–42.

11. See, for example, Chunchou Zhang and C. Edwin Vaughan, Mao Zedong as Poet and Revolutionary Leader: Social and Historical Perspectives (New York: Lexington Books, 2002). Mao Zedong indicated his favorable impression of the Songs of the South during his young days; as late as 1958, he wrote about his passion for the classic. In 1959, he even ordered to have a collection of annotations of the Songs of the South edited and circulated at the Lu Shan Meeting. See Chen Jin 陳晉, Mao Zedong zhihu 毛澤東之魂 (The soul of Mao Zedong) (Changchun: Jilin renmin chubanshe, 1993), 103–105; also see Qian Liqun 錢理群, Mao Zedong shidai he hou Mao Zedong shidai 毛澤東時代和後毛澤東時代 (The Mao era and the post-Mao era) (Taipei: Lingking, 2012), vol., 1, 184.

12. I am thinking of Mao’s works such as “Dielianhua: da Li Shuyi” 蝶戀花：答李淑一 (The butterflies lingering over flowers, a reply to Li Shuyi, 1957); “Yi qin’e: Loushan guan” 憶秦娥：婁山關 (Recalling maiden Qin, the pass of mountain Lou, 1935); “Song wenshen” 送瘟神 (Sending the god of plague off, 1958). See Zhang and Vaughan, Mao Zedong as Poet.

13. I am borrowing the term from Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural, trans. Robert Richardson and Anne O’Byrne (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000).

14. Li Zehou, “Qimeng yu jiuwang de shuangchong bianzou,” 7–50.

15. Li Zehou, “Meixue sijiang” 美學四講 (Four talks on aesthetics), in Meixue sanshu 美學三書 (Three books on aesthetics) (Hefei: Anhui wenyi chubanshe, 1999), 531–535. Liu Kang, Aesthetics and Marxism: Chinese Aesthetic Marxists and Their Western Contemporaries (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 163–180.

16. Li Zehou, “Lunshiyong lixing yu yuegan wenhua” 論實用理性與樂感文化 (On pragmatic rationality and the culture of happiness, 2004), and “Qing benti, liangzhong daode yuliming” 情本體、兩種道德與立命 (The being of feeling: two kinds of moralities and views on life, 2006), in Renlei xue lishi benti lun (Historical ontology of anthropology) 人類學歷史本體論 (Tianjin: Tianjin shehui kexueyuan, 2008), 203–252; 255–280. Liu Kang translates qingbenti into “ontology of psychology”; see, for instance, 173. I have translated benti as “original substance” in light of Wei-ming Tu’s translation; see his article, “Profound Learning, Personal Knowledge, and Poetic Vision,” in Lin Shuen-fu and Stephen Owen, eds., The Vitality of the Lyric Voice: Shih Poetry from the Late Han to the T’ang (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 7.

17. The “great debate over aesthetics” or meixue dabianlun 美學大辯論 happened between 1956 and 1964. The debate involved three parties: Zhu Guangqian, follower of Crocean aesthetics; Cai Yi, promoter of dogmatic Marxist-Leninist aesthetics; and Li Zehou. Li disagreed with Zhu’s idealist inclination while opposing Cai’s Marxist doctrinism; instead he proposed to understand the sensibility of beauty as resulting from the “sedimentation” of human engagement with the objective world along with the passage of time. He called attention to the factor of human agency in turning nature into culture as well as the factor of human sensibilities, which give forms to the flux of nature. For more discussion about the debate, see, for instance, Liu Kang, Aesthetics and Marxism, 122–133; Zhang Qiqun 章啓群, Bainian zhongguo meixue shilue 百年中國美學史略 (A general history of Chinese aesthetics of the past century) (Beijing: Beijing University Press, 2005), chapters 6–8. Also see Qian Niansun 錢念孫, Zhu Guangqian 朱光潛 (Zhu Guanqian) (Beijing: Wenjin chubanshe, 2005), 177–199. For a critical summary of Li Zehou’s thought, see Wei-lien Chong, “Combining Marx with Kant: The Philosophical Anthropology of Li Zehou,” Philosophy East and West 49, no. 2 (1999): 120–149; for a study of Cai Yi’s aesthetics, see Peter Button, Configurations of the Real in Chinese Literary and Aesthetic Modernity (Leiden: Brill, 2009), chapter 4.

18. For a comprehensive study of Li Zehou’s impact on the rethinking of modern Chinese literary history, see Zhang Weidong 張偉棟, Li Zehou yu zhongguo xiandai wenxueshi de chongxie 李澤厚與中國現代文學史的重寫 (Li Zehou and the rewriting of modern Chinese literary history) (Nanchang: Jiangxi renmin chubanshe, 2012).

19. Li Zehou, “Lunshiyong lixing yu yuegan wenhua,” 38–54. See Liu Kang, Aesthetics and Marxism, 175.

20. See, for instance, Liu Kang, Aesthetics and Marxism, 163–174. Gu Xin argues that Li’s three-pronged theoretical approach to aesthetics ends up being subsumed by a Hegelian vision of subjectivity, in “Subjectivity, Modernity, and Chinese Hegelian Marxism: A Study of Li Zehou’s Philosophical Ideas from a Comparative Perspective,” Philosophy East and West 46, no. 2 (1996): 205–245. Also see Li’s comment in “Subjectivity and ‘Subjectality’: A Response,” Philosophy East and West 49, no. 2 (1999): 174–183.

21. First proposed by the Chinese government under the Hu Jintao–Wen Jiabao Administration at the 2005 National People’s Congress, a Harmonious Society projects a social, economic, and cultural vision that is said to be the goal of Chinese Socialist development. The term hexie (harmonious) nevertheless smacks of the Confucian connotation, which seeks to achieve societal harmony through the mutual implication of li (ritual) and yue (music).

22. Hsia notices in Chinese writers a unique inclination, that is, while they share with their Western colleagues a general disgust with the consequences of modern civilization, Chinese writers are occupied by their national crisis in such a way that they are unable, or unwilling, to expand the moral and political relevance of the fate of the Chinese people to “the state of man in the modern world.” At their best, Hsia argues, Chinese writers are compelled to display in their works a high moral integrity rarely found among contemporary Western writers, but the price they pay for such an “obsession with China” is “a certain patriotic provinciality and a naiveté of faith with regard to better conditions elsewhere.” C. T. Hsia, “Obsession with China: The Moral Burden of Modern Chinese Literature,” appendix 1 of A History of Modern Chinese Fiction (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), 533–554.

23. Rey Chow, Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).

24. Jing Tsu, Failure, Nationalism, and Literature: The Making of Modern Chinese Identity, 1895–1937 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005).

25. Marston Anderson, The Limits of Realism: Chinese Fiction in the Revolutionary Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), chapter 3; Eugenia Lean, Public Passions: The Trial of Shi Jianqiao and the Rise of Popular Sympathy in Republican China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).

26. Haiyan Lee, Revolution of the Heart: A Genealogy of Love in China, 1900–1950 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006). For further references to the polemics of “heart/mind” and Chinese intellectual modernity, see Gao Yuanbao 郜元寶, Lu Xun Liujiang 魯迅六講 (Six lectures on Lu Xun) (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2007); Liu Jihui (Joyce Liu) 劉紀蕙, Xinzhi tuopu: 1895 shijian houde lunli chonggou 心之拓樸：1895 事件後的倫理重構 (The topology of psyche: the post-1895 reconstruction of ethics) (Taipei: Xinren chubanshe, 2011).

27. Gloria Davies, Worrying About China: The Language of Chinese Critical Inquiry (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2009).

28. Ban Wang, The Sublime Figure of History, 1. It should be noted that Ban Wang has much revised his thesis in recent years, and thinks favorably of the sublime in select historical and political contexts.

29. The complex literary thought of Zhang Taiyan has been under-studied in the Sinological world. Notable studies in Chinese in recent years include Chen Xuehu 陳雪虎, Wen de zaiqueren: Zhang Taiyan wenlun chutan “文”的再確認: 章太炎文論初探 (A reappraisal of “wen”: an initial investigation of Zhang Taiyan’s literary criticism), chapter 5; Zhang Chunxiang 張春香, Zhang Taiyan zhuti daodexing yanjiu 章太炎主體道德性研究 (A study of Zhang Taiyan’s concept of moralistic subjectivity) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 2007), chapters 2–3; Wang Hui 汪暉, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang dexingqi 現代中國思想的興起 (The rise of modern Chinese thought) (Beijing: Sanlian chubanshe, 2003), vol. 3, chapter 10. For a recent study of Zhang Taiyan in English, see Viren Murthy, The Political Philosophy of Zhang Taiyan: The Resistance of Consciousness (Leiden: Brill, 2011).

30. See my discussion in chapter 1.

31. For my discussion of Hu Lancheng’s philosophy of the “vagabond,” see chapter 6.

32. The term was coined by Wang Zengqi 汪曾祺 (1920–1997), Shen’s student at Southwest Associated University during the Sino-Japanese War; see “Shen Congwen xianshen zai xinanlianda” 沈從文先生在西南聯大 (Mr. Shen Congwen at Southwest Associated University), in Wang Zengqi zixuanji 汪曾祺自選集 (A collection of essays by Wang Zengqi) (Guilin: Lijiang chubanshe, 1987), 104. Wang primarily describes Shen’s interest in premodern artifacts during wartime, which unexpectedly anticipated his career change to art history. In a broader context, Shen Congwen envisages modern Chinese (nativist) subjectivity by relating it to the Chu shamanistic tradition; he highlights the esoteric and unknown layer of human subjectivity, as opposed to the May Fourth paradigm, which takes subjectivity as an autonomous agency informed by enlightenment and inner resources. See, for instance, Zhou Renzheng 周仁政, Wushi renwen: Shen Congwen yu wuchu wenhua 巫觋人文：沈從文與巫楚文化 (Shamanistic humanities: Shen Congwen and the Chu culture of shamanism) (Changsha: Yuelu shudian, 2005), particularly chapters 2–3.

33. For a recent study of Lu Xun’s dialogical relationship with the Chinese tradition, see Eileen Cheng, Literary Remains: Death, Trauma, and Lu Xun’s Refusal to Mourn (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2013), particularly chapter 2.

34. For a more recent study of Zhu Guanqian’s aesthetics from a comparative perspective, see Xia Zhongyi 夏中義, Zhu Guangqian meixue shibian 朱光潛美學十辯 (Zhu Guangqian’s aesthetics: ten arguments) (Beijing: Shangwu yinshugua, 2012).

35. For a recent comparative criticism of Zong Baihua’s “Chinese aesthetics” in terms of Kantian and Hegelian philosophy, see Tang Yonghua 湯擁華, Zong Baihua yu “zhongguo meixue” de kungjing (The predicament of Zong Baihua’s “Chinese aesthetics”) (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2010).

36. Li Changzhi 李長之, Lu Xun pipan 魯迅批判 (A critique of Lu Xun) (Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 2003), 49–51.

37. See Liu Wei 劉偉, Riben shijiao yu zhongguo xiandai wenxue yanjiu: yi Takeuchi Yoshimi, Itō Toramaru, Kiyama Hideo weizhongxi 日本視角與中國現代文學研究：以竹内好、伊藤虎丸、木山英雄为中心 (Japanese perspectives of modern Chinese literary studies: Takeuchi Yoshimi, Itō Toramaru, Kiyama, Hideo) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 2010), chapters 1–2.

38. See Gao Yuanbao’s 郜元寶 analysis of Lu Xun’s indebtedness to the xinxue 心學, or the learning of mind/heart, in Lu Xun liujiang, particularly chapters 1 and 2; Kirk Denton’s genealogical discussion of Hu Feng’s and his disciple Lu Ling’s literary and political agenda in terms of Mencian thought, in The Problematic of Self in Modern Chinese Literature: Hu Feng and Lu Ling (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), chapters 1–3.

39. Ai Qing 艾青, Shilun 詩論 (Treatise on poetry) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1980), 57. In the essay “Shi de sanbu” 詩的散步 (Excursion of poetry), Ai Qing argues for the importance of poetry by referring to Bai Juyi’s statement “Poetry is that which is rooted in feeling, sprouting in language, flowering in sound, and fruiting in meaning.” Bai’s quote “詩者，根情苗言，華聲，實義” is from “Yu Yuanjiu shu” 與元九書 (Letter to Yuan Zhen), in Bai Juyi ji jianjiao 白居易集箋校 (Works of Bai juyi with annotations) (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2003), vol. 5, 2790.

40. Xu Chi 徐遲， “Zuguosong xu” “祖國頌”序 (Preface to “ode to my mother country,” 1959), quoted from Yan Jiayan 嚴家炎, ed., Ershi shiji zhongguo wenxueshi (History of modern Chinese literature of the twentieth century) (Beijing: Gaodeng jiaoyu chubanshe, 2010), vol. 3, 40. The author of the chapter in which the quote appears is Wang Guangming 王光明.

1. Huang Zongxi, 黄宗羲, “Shiwang erhou shizuo” 史亡而後詩作, “Wan Lüan xiansheng shixu” 萬履安先生詩序 (Preface to the poetry of Mr. Wan Lüan), in Nanleiji zhuanzhangji 南雷集·撰杖集 (Collection of works by Mr. Nanlei [Huang Zongxi]; compendium of works in honor of the venerable) (Hangzhou: Zhejiang guji chubanshe, 1985–1994), vol. 10, 47. My quote of Huang’s statement slightly alters its original meaning, which highlights more the innate power of poetry in manifesting history and the bilateral ties between poetry and historiography. See below for more discussion of the intricate relationships between poetry and history from a modern perspective. “History” or shi in premodern Chinese discourse has multiple meanings, including at least “historian,” “historical record,” and “historical event.” See Wai-yee Li’s discussion, in Wilt Idema, Wai-yee Li, and Ellen Widmer, eds., Trauma and Transcendence in Early Qing Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Asia Center East Asian Monographs, 2006), 75–100.

2. There have been debates as to whether the quote was directly from Mallarmé. The earliest source is Arthur Symons’ discussion in 1899; see The Symbolist Movement in Literature (New York: Dutton, 1919), 66. Walter Jost’s Rhetorical Investigations: Studies in Ordinary Language Criticism (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004) also uses this reference. Some believe that it was “mistakenly ascribed” to Mallarmé by Symons; see Edgar Wind, Art and Anarchy (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1985), 126. I want to acknowledge Dr. Xiaobin Yang’s assistance in locating these references.

3. For recent inquiries into the history and generic traits of lyric, see, for instance, David Lindley, “Lyric,” in Martin Coyle, Peter Garside, et al., eds., Encyclopedia of Literature and Criticism (London: Routledge, 1990), 188–198; Douglas Lane Patey, “‘Aesthetics’ and the Rise of Lyric in the Eighteenth Century,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 33, no. 3 (1993): 587–608; Scott Brewster, Lyric (London: Routledge, 2009), 43–111.

4. For a recent, comprehensive study of Chinese selfhood in conceptual and historical terms, see, for instance, Zhang Shiying 張世英, Zhongxi wenhua yu ziwo 中西文化與自我 (Selfhood and Chinese and Western civilizations) (Beijing: Renmin chuban she, 2011). The author tries to negotiate a genealogy of Chinese selfhood in dialogue with the Hegelian concept of subjectivity that informs the rise of modern Western selfhood. For a general study of Chinese concepts of individualism, see, for instance, Donald Munro, ed., Individualism and Holism: Studies in Confucian and Taoist Values (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1985). For discussions on the changes and continuities of the concept of selfhood in modern times, see Yu Ying-shih 余英時, “Zhongguo jindai geren guannian de gaibian” 中國近代個人觀念的改變 (The transformation of the concept of individualism in early modern China), in Xu Jilin 許紀霖, ed., Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de hexin guannian 中國現代思想的核心觀念 (Core concepts of modern Chinese thought) (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2011), 197–205; Xu Jilin, “Dawo de xiaojie: xiandai Zhongguo geren zhuyi sichao de bianqian” 大我的消解: 現代中國個人主義思潮的變遷 (The dissolving of the greater self: the changes of individualism in modern Chinese thought), in Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de hexin guannian, 209–236.

5. See, for instance, Paul Allen Miller’s discussion in Lyric Texts and Lyric Consciousness: The Birth of a Genre from Archaic Greece to Augustan Rome (London: Routledge, 1994). Miller highlights an introverted inclination as a clue to lyrical consciousness. Other investigations of the genre include Chaviva Hošek and Patricia Parker, eds., Lyric Poetry: Beyond New Criticism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985); Mark Jeffreys, ed., New Definitions of Lyric: Theory, Technology, and Culture (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998); Anne Janowitz, Lyric and Labour in the Romantic Tradition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Thomas A. DuBois, Lyric, Meaning, and Audience in the Oral Tradition of Northern Europe (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006); Steve Newman, Ballad Collection, Lyric, and the Canon: The Call of the Popular from the Restoration to the New Criticism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007); Jacob Blevins, ed., Dialogism and Lyric Self-fashioning: Bakhtin and the Voices of a Genre (Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 2008). I acknowledge Leonard Chan’s and Zhang Songjian’s advice on the scholarship on lyricism in recent years. For recent studies of Chinese lyricism in a modern context, see, for example, Ke Qingming (Ko Ch’ing-ming)柯慶明 and Xiao Chi 蕭馳, eds., Zhongguo shuqing chuantong de zaifaxian: yige xiandai xueshu sichao de lunwen xuanji 中國抒情傳統的再發現: 一個現代學術思潮的論文選集 (Rediscovering the Chinese lyrical tradition: a critical anthology of a modern intellectual trend) (Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, 2009); David Der-wei Wang 王德威, Xiandai shuqing chuantong silun 現代抒情傳統四論 (Modern Chinese lyrical tradition: four essays) (Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, 2011); Chen Guoqiu 陳國球 (K. K. Leonard Chan) and David Der-wei Wang 王德威, eds., Shuqing zhi xiandaixing 抒情之現代性 (The modernity of lyricism) (Beijing: Sanlian chubanshe, 2015).

6. Insofar as shuqing is most often related to the core of Chinese poetic bearings, one must bear in mind that the Chinese concept of poetry or shi 詩 originated with a very different episteme from its Western counterpart. Stephen Owen points out that, “If we translate [shi] as ‘poem,’ it is merely for the sake of convenience. [Shi] is not a ‘poem’; [shi] is not a ‘thing made’ in the same way one makes a bed or a painting or a shoe. A [shi] can be worked on, polished, and crafted; but that has nothing to do with what a [shi] fundamentally ‘is.’ … Perhaps the greatest consequence lies in the question of control: if we take a text to be a ‘poem,’ a ‘made’ text, then it is the object of its maker’s will; it is not the person himself but rather something he has ‘made.’ Since the Romantic period many writers of the lyric have tried to move toward a ‘poetry’ like [shi]; but when they write about poetry, their concerns show their marks of struggle with the ancient notion of poetry as something ‘made’—we read of masks, personae, distance, artistic control.” In the Chinese context, shi is “what was in the mind of the person.… What is this ‘inside’ that we find in [shi]? It is zhi [志 zhih], traditionally defined as ‘that to which the mind goes.’” See Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought (Cambridge, Mass: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1992), 27–28.

7. Charles Taylor has noted that the modern notion of emotional subjectivity originated with the Enlightenment. This modern “human agent” bears three characteristics: inwardness or the idea that the individual has a self; the affirmation of ordinary life; the expressive notion of “nature” as an inner moral source. See Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), ix–x. For Taylor, the Romantic movement consolidated the expressive model of self, giving “a central and positive place to sentiment”; “it is through our feelings that we get to the deepest moral and, indeed, cosmic truths” (371). The way Taylor regards feeling as the motor of the modern consciousness of subjectivity can be complemented by a series of dialogical voices. To name a few, Peter Gay points out that the tension arising from the subjectivity’s rational and sensory faculties generates the multiple dimensions of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (New York: Norton, 1977), vol. 1, 3. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno take issue with the paradox that insofar as it promises rationality and individual subjectivity, the Enlightenment has resulted in the regression of civilization to the mythical stage, with subjectivity’s loss of capacity to feel. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightnment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 1. Also see Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradiction of Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1978), xxiii–xxiv. For a recent reflection on the dialectic relationship between poetry and revolution, see Martin Puchner, Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-gardes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), Introduction. Puchner argues that the manifesto, a unique genre made popular by Marx’s Communist Manifesto, helps enact revolution because it “represents and produces the fantasies, hopes, aspirations, and shortcomings of modernity” (7). “The modern revolution must somehow invite the future, come up with phrases, forms, and genres that ‘derives’ their ‘poetry’ from this future” (1).

8. I have in mind, for example, Jaroslav Průšek’s invocation of “the epic” to register the Zeitgeist of the time. See my discussion in the following pages.

9. Jonathan Arac, “Afterword: Lyric Poetry and the Bounds of New Criticism,” in Hošek and Parker, eds., Lyric Poetry, 353. Also see Pauline Yu’s critical inquiry into the dualism of mimetic versus metaphysical motivations of Western poetic (lyrical) articulation, in The Reading of Imagery in the Chinese Poetic Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 13–16.

10. In his comparative overview of Chinese and Western poetics, Stephen Owen notes that the “poiêma, the literary ‘thing made,’ becomes tertiary and disturbing in the Platonic scheme of things. The counterpart of ‘making’ … in most Chinese literary thought is ‘manifestation’: everything that is inner—the nature of a person or the principles which inform the world—has an innate tendency to become outward and manifest.” See Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought, 21. In her observation of the epistemological foundation of Chinese poetry, Pauline Yu notices the metaphysical and mimetic motivations in Western poetic discourse, as opposed to its Chinese counterpart, “assumed to invoke a network of pre-existing correspondences—between poet and world and among clusters of images” (37). Wai-lim Yip further suggests “secret echoes and complementary correspondences” (mixiang pangtong 密響旁通) underlying Chinese poetic culture. Wai-lim Yip, Diffusion of Distances: Dialogue Between Chinese and Western Poetics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), chapter 5.

11. See, for instance, Stephen Prickett, England and the French Revolution (London: Macmillan Education, 1989); Richard Bourke, Romantic Discourse and Political Modernity (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993); Marilyn Butler, Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981). For a comparative study of the political motivations of Chinese and English romantic movements, see Zhang Xuchun 張旭春, Zhengzhi de shenmeihua yu shengmei de zhengzhihua 政治的審美化與審美的政治化：現代性視野中的中英浪漫主義思潮 (Politicization of aesthetics and aestheticization of politics: Chinese and British romantic thoughts in modern perspective) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2004).

12. Lu Xun, preface to Huagai ji xubian 華蓋集續編小引 (Inauspicious star), in Lu Xun quanji 魯迅全集 (Complete works of Lu Xun) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2005), vol. 3, 183. Qu Yuan, Jiuzhang 九章 (Nine pieces), “Xi song” 惜誦 (Grieving I make my plaint), in Hong xingzu 洪興祖, Chuci Buzhu 楚辭補注 (Annotated Songs of the South) (Taipei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1981), 202.

13. Lu Xun, preface to Xiandai zhongguo wenxue daxi xiaoshuo erji 現代中國文學大系:小説二集 (Compendium of modern Chinese literature, the second volume of fiction), ed. Zhao Jiabi 趙家璧 (Shanghai: Liangyou tushu gongsi, 1935), vol. 5, 4.

14. I am referring to the film Confucius made by Fei Fu in 1940, which was recently recovered and restored. For more, see Wong Ain-ling 黃愛玲, ed., Fei Mu dianying kong fuzi 費穆電影孔夫子 (Fei Mu’s Confucius) (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2010).

15. See my discussion in chapter 5.

16. For a succinct introduction to one of the golden moments of the Six Dynasties period, the Liang dynasty, see Xiaofei Tian, Beacon Fire and the Shooting Star: The Literary Culture of the Liang (502–557) (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard East Asian Monograph Series, 2007). For an evaluation of the literary accomplishments of the late Ming in a comparative context of the late Ming versus the late Qing, see David Der-wei Wang and Shang Wei, eds., Dynastic Crisis and Cultural Innovation: From the Late Ming to the Late Qing and Beyond (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard East Asian Monograph Series, 2005).

17. Zong Baihua finished the book in 1948, but for various reasons it was not published till the 1980s, as part of Meixue yu yijing 美學與意境 (Aesthetics and mental vista) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1987).

18. Tang Junyi 唐君毅， Shengming cunzai yu xinling jingjie 生命存在與心靈境界 (The existence of life and the vista of life), in Tang Junyi quanji 唐君毅全集 (Complete works of Tang Junyi), vol. 22, 7. See also Tang Junyi, preface to Rensheng zhi tiyan 人生之體驗 (The experience of life): “I have always felt agitated by a tender feeling in writing … such that I cannot but feeling compassionate for and adoring of life.” Tang Junyi quanji, vol. 1, 11.

19. Xu Fuguan 徐復觀， Zhongguo yishu jingshen 中國藝術精神 (The artistic spirit of China) (Taipei: Xuesheng shuju, 1965). For more discussion of Xu’s aesthetic thought, see Zhang Qixiang 章啓群, Bainian zhongguo meixueshilue 百年中國美學史略 (A brief history of Chinese aesthetics of the twentieth century) (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2005), 183–212; Wang Shouxue 王守雪, Renxin yu wenxue: Xu Fuguan wenxue sixiang yanjiu 人心與文學：徐復觀文學思想研究 (Mind and literature: a study of Xu Fuguan’s literary thought) (Zhengzhou: Zhengzhou daxue chubanshe, 2005).

20. Tsu-lin Mei and Yu-kung Kao, “Tu Fu’s ‘Autumn Meditations’: An Exercise in Linguistic Criticism,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 28 (1968): 44–80.

21. See my discussion in the coda. Kao’s essays on Chinese aesthetics are mostly included in Zhongguo meidian yuwenxue yanjiu 中國美典與文學研究 (Chinese aesthetics and literary studies) (Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, 2004).

22. Qu Yuan, Jiu Zhang 九章 (Nine pieces), “Xi song” 惜誦 (Grieving I make my plaint), in Hong xingzu, Chuci Buzhu, 202; David Hawkes translates the lines as “Grieving I make my plaint, to give my sorrows rein,/To vent my wrath and tell my pent-up thoughts.” The Songs of the South: An Ancient Chinese Anthology of Poems by Qu Yuan and Other Poets, trans., annotated, and introduced by David Hawkes (New York: Penguin, 1985), 156. I thank Professor Wai-yee Li for the translation used here.

23. Qu Yuan, “Ai Shi Ming” 哀時命 (Alas that my lot was not cast), Chuci Buzhu, 439; in Hawkes, The Songs of the South, 267.

24. According to Wang Yi’s 王逸 Chuci zhangju buzhu 楚辭章句補注 (Exegesis of the Songs of the South) and Zhu Xi’s 朱熹 Chuci jizhu 楚辭集注 (Compendium of annotations of Songs of the South), 抒 is interchangeable with 舒 or 紓. Jiang Liangfu 姜亮夫 in Chuci tonggu 楚辭通故 (A comprehensive study of the Songs of the South) (Jinan: Qilu shushe, 198) contends that zhu may have not been used until after the Wei-Jin era. 抒 refers to die 渫 (release, relieve, pour) or yi 挹 (draw). When used in the context of shuqing 抒情, shu indicates emission/outpouring of feeling (qing 情) or its consequence. Shuqing may entertain a therapeutic connotation; according to Jiang Liangfu, Wang Yi’s 王逸 annotation to the “Jiuzhang” quote in discussion indicates that the poetic subjectivity, though suffering from ailment and fatigue, intends to compose the poem so as to release his stored wrath and discontent.

25. “Zhu refers to the control device of a water container … Du Yu 杜預 annotates it in terms of ‘relieving that which is inherent in the mind’ … Wenxuan 文選 refers zhu to ‘expressing emotions’ [抒情素]; ‘expressing feelings and conveying satire’ [抒下情，而通諷諭]”; Chuci Buzhu, 202.

26. Xushen 許慎, “zhu is that which holds the woof to weave with” (“杼，”機之持緯者); it refers to loom or suo 梭. Shuowen jiezi 說文解字 (Analysis of graphs and explanation of characters) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1992), 123.

27. Zhuang Ji, “Ai Shi Ming” 哀時命 (Alas that my lot was not cast), in Hawkes, The Songs of the South, 263; Chuci Buzhu, 428. See Yang Ru-bin’s 楊儒賓 succinct article on Qu Yuan and the genesis of Chinese lyricism, “Qu Yuan weishenme shuqing” (Why does Qu Yuan write lyrics?), Taida zhongwen xuebao 台大中文學報 (Bulletin of the Department of Chinese Literature, National Taiwan University), 40 (2013): 103–144.

28. Chen Bohai 陳伯海, “Shi qingzhi” 釋情志 (An exegesis of feeling and intent), in Zhongguo shixue zhi xiandaiguan 中國詩學之現代觀 (Chinese poetics: a modern perspective) (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2006), 71. See Bao Qinggang’s extensive discussion of the etymology of qing in Wang Yueqing 王月清, Bao Qinggang 暴慶剛, and Guan Guoxing 管國興, Zhongguo zhexue guanjianci 中國哲學關鍵詞 (Keywords of Chinese philosophy) (Nanjing: Nanjing daxue chubanshe, 2011), 62–72.

29. For instance, Zuozhuan 左傳, “Zhuanggong shinian” 莊公十年，”大小之獄，所不能差，必以情” (In both small and large legal cases, even when I am unable to investigate thoroughly, I am sure to rely on the actual circumstances), in Chunqiu zuozhuan zhengyi 春秋左傳正義 (Taipei: Taiwan guji chuban youxiangongsi, 2001), 275.

30. “《呂氏春秋》又有〈情欲〉專章。性者，生之質；情者，人之欲也” (Inborn nature is the essence of life; feeling/emotion is the desire of humanity), in Ershisi shi. Hanshu 二十四史‧漢書 (Twenty-four historiographies; book of the Han), “Dong Zhongshu zhuan” 董仲書傳 (Biography of Dong Zhongshu) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1997), 638.

31. Liji 禮記, “Liyu”禮運, “何謂人情？喜、怒、哀、懼、愛、惡、欲，七者弗學而能”; in Sun Xidan 孫希旦, Liji jijie 禮記集解 (Annotations of Book of Rites) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1989), 606; English translation based on James Legge, Li Chi, Book of Rites (reprint, New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1967), vol. 1, 379, and quoted from Martin Huang, Desire and Fictional Narrative in Late Imperial China (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001), 25. I acknowledge my indebtedness to Huang’s discussion.

32. Xunzi 荀子, “Zhengming” 正名 (Rectifying names), “正名性者天之就也，情者性之質也” (Nature is what heaven endows one with, feelings/emotions are the substance of nature), in Wang Xianqian 王先謙, Xunzi jijie 荀子集解 (Annotations of Xunzi), Xinbian Zhuzi jicheng 新編諸子集成 (Compendium of the works by the masters of ancient China, a new edition) (Taipei: Shijie shuju, 1974), vol. 2, 284; cf. John Knoblock’s translation, Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988, 1990, 1994), vol. 3, 136.

33. See Huang, Desire and Fictional Narrative in Late Imperial China, 25, particularly note 13.

34. See Bao Qinggang’s extensive discussion in Zhongguo zhexue guanjianci, 62–72. See Zhu Xi’s 朱熹 (1130–1200) famous comparison of xing with the tranquility of still water and qing with the flow of running water in Zhu Xi 朱熹, Zhuzi quanshu 朱子語類 (Dictum of Zhuxi), ed. Li Jingde 黎靖德 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1989), juan 5, 93–94. “The mind is comparable to water, xing is comparable to the tranquility of still water, qing is comparable to the flow of the water, and yu is comparable to its waves.” Wingtsit Chan, trans. and comp., A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 631. Qing enjoyed a less important place in Song-Yuan criticism than in that of either the preceding periods or the Ming and Qing. According to Siu-kit Wong, this might result partly from the prevalence of Neo-Confucianism. Siu-kit Wong, Ch’ing in Chinese Literary Criticism, Ph.D. diss., Oxford University, 1969, 77–80.

35. The late Ming celebration of qing is arguably best represented by Tang Xianzu 湯顯祖 (1550–1616) and fellow literati. In response to the moralistic interpretation of shiyanzhi, Tang argues that “intent is feeling” (志也者, 情也). Tang Xianzu 湯顯祖, “Dong xieyuan xixiang tici” 董解元〈西厢〉题辞 (Foreword to master Tong’s Western Chamber romance), Tang Xiangzu ji 湯顯祖集 (Works of Tang Xianzu) (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1978), vol. 2, 1502. While valorizing the innate, primordial power of qing, Tang and his contemporaries also recapitulated its multiple connotations. Thus there were a wide range of approaches to the meaning, function, and consequence of qing in the following centuries. For instance, Wang Fuzhi 王夫之 (1619–1692) contemplates the “fusion of feeling and scene”; Huang Zongxi differentiates zhongqing 眾情 (public feeling) and yiqing 一情 (individual feeling). See Huang Zongxi, “Zhu Renyuan muzhiming” 朱人遠墓誌銘 (Epigraph of Zhu Renyuan), Nanleiji 南雷集, Huang Zongxi quanji 黃宗羲全集 (Complete works of Huang Zongxi) (Hangzhou: Zhejiang guji chubanshe, 2012), vol. 10, 470. The dialectics of qing is most compellingly described when Cao Xueqin (1724–1763) ponders the paradox of qing and qing buqing 情不情 (feeling nonfeeling) in The Story of the Stone. See Wai-yee Li’s study, Enchantment and Disenchantment: Love and Illusion in Chinese Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993) 203–211.

36. See my discussion in Fin-de-siècle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction 1849–1911 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 36–37. The late Qing reappraisal of qing started with Gong Zizhen 龔自珍 (1792–1841), who challenged the historical and intellectual strictures of qing (youqing 宥情); Gong Zizhen, “Youqing” 龔自珍, “Youqing” 宥情 (Stricture of qing), in Gong Zizhen quanji 龔自珍全集 (Complete works of Gong Zizhen) (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubashe, 1999), 89–90. Liu E 劉鶚 (1857–1909) yearns for a nationhood nurtured on the cosmology of qing. See Liu E’s preface to Lao Can youji 老殘遊記 (The travels of Lao Can) (Taipei: Linking, 1978), 1.

37. Guodian chumu zhujian 郭店楚墓竹簡 (Bamboo slips from the Chu tombs in Guodian) (Beijing: Beijing wenwu chubanshe, 1998), 139. Professor Li Feng of Columbia University suggested the following translation of the famous lines: “The Way begins with emotion, and emotion is given birth by nature. Its beginning is close to emotion, and its end is close to righteousness. The one who knows emotion is able to exit it, and the one who knows righteousness is able to enter it” (道始於情，情生於性，始者近情，終者近義。知情者能出之，知義者能入之). Matthias L. Richter translates 道始於情，情生於性 as “The Way proceeds from the Actual Inner Condition; the Actual Condition is generated by Disposition.” He thus highlights the other important implication of qing as that which arises from the circumstantial context. See Richter’s “How Manuscripts Reflect the Process of Text Accretion: The Case of Xing zi ming chu 性自命出 and Xing qing lun 性情論,” unpublished paper presented at Columbia University’s Early China Seminar, February 14, 2011.

38. Wang Zhenfu 王振復, Zhongguo meixueshi xinzhu 中國美學史新著 (A new history of Chinese aesthetics) (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2009), 68–75, particularly 74–75. Li Zehou, Shiyong lixing yu legan wenhua 實用理性與樂感文化 (Practical rationality and the culture of pleasure) (Beijing: Sanlian chubanshe, 2008), 55–56.

39. See, for instance, Lunyu 論語 (The Analects), “Zilu” 子路, “When those [above] love trustworthiness, none of the common people will dare be insincere” (上好信則民莫敢不用情), trans. D. C. Lau (New York: Penguin, 1979), 119. Mencius: “As far as what is genuinely in him is concerned, a man is capable of becoming good” (乃若其情，則可以為善矣). Here qing refers to something innate and genuine. “Gaozi zhangju shang,” Mengzi zhushu 孟子注疏 (Annotated Mencius) (Taipei: Taiwan guji chuban youxiangongsi, 2001), 354. I am using D. C. Lau’s translation, in Mencius (New York: Penguin, 1970), 163. Wai-yee Li translates the line as “If one considers qing (essential nature), then there is the ability to do good.” But one can argue that “essential nature” also implies the spontaneous impulse for goodness, because Mencius goes on to argue about the “four beginnings” of human nature.

40. Zhouyi xici shang diqi 周易‧繫辭上第七: “To formulate hexagrams so as to comprehend thoroughly truth and falsehood” (設卦以盡情僞); in his annotation, Kong Yingda 孔穎達 indicates, “Qing means truth and wei falsehood.” See Li Xueqin 李學勤, ed., Zhouyi zhengyi 周易正義 (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1999), 291, 321. Also see Chen Bohai, “Shi qingzhi,” 71; and Bao Qinggang’s extensive discussion of the etymology of qing in Zhongguo zhexue guanjianci, 62–72. For discussions in English, see A. C. Graham, Studies in Chinese Philosophy and Philosophical Literature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), 59–66, and Wai-yee Li’s extensive footnote 34 in Enchantment and Disenchantment: Love and Illusion in Chinese Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 61–62.

41. A. C. Graham, “The Meaning of Ch’ing,” appendix to “The Background of the Mencian Theory of Human Nature,” Studies in Chinese Philosophy and Philosophical Literature 59–64.

42. Chad Hansen, “Qing (Emotion) in Pre-Buddhist Chinese Thought,” in Joel Marks and Roger T. Ames, eds., Emotions in Asian Thought: A Dialogue in Comparative Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 181–211, particularly 200–202.

43. Anthony Yu, Rereading the Stone: Desire and the Making of Fiction in Dream of the Red Chamber (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 57. For the dialogue between Graham and Hanson, also see Martin W. Huang’s succinct summary in Desire and Fictional Narrative in Late Imperial China (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001), chapter 2, especially 31–35.

44. Gong Pengcheng, “Cong Lüshi chunqiu dao Wenxin diaolong: Ziran qigan yu shuqing ziwo” 從呂氏春秋到文心雕龍：自然氣感與抒情自我 (From Lüshi chunqiu to Literary Mind and Carving the Dragon: cosmic ether and literary selfhood), in Ke Qingming and Xiao Chi, eds., Zhongguo shuqing chuantong de zaifaxian, vol. 2, 679–708.

45. Ling-hon Lam argues that qing takes on the semantic dimension we are more familiar with when it implies an inner force propelled by either psychic motivations or sensory faculties, and an expressive need that manifests itself in bodily or artistically performative forms. See From Dreamscapes to Theatricality: The Spatiality of Emotion in Early Modern China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Asia Center East Asian Monographs, forthcoming).

46. “The poem articulates what is on the mind intently; song makes language last long” (詩言志，歌咏言), Shangshu 尚書, “shundian” 舜典 (Canon of Shun); Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought, 26. Also see Owen’s translation and discussion of the “Great Preface,” 39–43; Zhengxuan shipuxu 鄭玄詩譜序 Maoshi zhengyi 毛詩正義, (Taipei: Xinwenfeng chuban youxiangongsi, 2001), 10.

47. See, for example, Chen Bohai’s succinct analysis in “Shi qingzhi,” 70–92. See Leonard Chan, “Chen Shih-hsiang lun Zhongguo wenxue: tongwang chusqing chuantong zhilu” 陳世驤論中國文學: 通往抒情傳統之路 (Chen Shih-hsiang on Chinese literature: a path to the lyrical tradition), Hanxue yanjiu 漢學研究 (Sinological studies) 29 (2011), 2:234. Chen Shih-hsiang translates qingzhi 情志 as “emotive purposiveness.”

48. Pauline Yu, The Reading of Imagery in the Chinese Poetic Tradition, 12.

49. See Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought, 131. For a general discussion of the rise of Chinese literary theories, see James Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), particularly chapters 3 and 5, where Liu discusses the link between emotion and expressivity and aesthetics.

50. Chen Bohai, “Shi qingzhi,” 75.

51. Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought, 80. See also Siu-kit Wong, Ch’ing in Chinese Literary Criticism, 25–33.

52. Owen’s translation and interpretation in Readings in Chinese Literary Thought, 150, 151.

53. Zhu Ziqing 朱自清, “Shiyanzhi bian” 詩言志辨 (A study of poetry is that which expresses what is on the mind), in Zhu Ziqing quanji 朱自清全集 (Complete works of Zhu Ziqing) (Nanjing: Jiangsu jiaoyu chubanshe, 1996), vol. 6, 172.

54. See Cheng Yu-yu’s 鄭毓瑜 analysis in Yinpi lianlei: wenxue yanjiu de guanjianci 引譬連類：文學研究的關鍵詞 (Analogues evocation and categorical association: a study of a literary keyword) (Taipei: Linking, 2012).

55. Leonard Chan, “Shuqing yu chuantong: Shuqing zhi xiandaixing daolun” 抒情與傳統：抒情之現代性導論 (Introduction to the modernity of lyricism), unpublished paper, 9.

56. Cheng Yu-yu, Yinpi lianlei.

57. Chan, “Shuqing yu chuantong,” 9.

59. See Zhang Hui 張暉, Zhongguo shishi chuantong 中國詩史傳統 (The tradition of poetry as history in China) (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2012). Leonard Chan, “Shuqing yu chuantong,” has also pointed out that in the Tang dynasty, Lu Huai 盧懷 authored Shuqing ji 抒情集 (Accounts of lyrical expressions). The book is no longer extant, but judging by its title, it is a collection of narratives and poems in relation to memorable events. As is the case of Meng Qi’s Benshi shi 本事詩 (Poetry that illuminates actual events), Shuqing ji is a collection stressing affection as expressed by the poetic inculcation of historical experiences.

60. Zhang Hui, Zhongguo shishi chuantong, 14–15.

61. Stephen Owen, Traditional Chinese Poetry and Poetics: Omen of the World (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 21. Also, as James Liu describes, “a poet does not take an experience as the ‘content’ of his point and pour it in to a ‘form’; he is prompted by some experience, be it an emotion, a thought, or an event, to write and while he is searching for the right words, the right pattern of sounds and sequence of images, the original experience is transformed into something new—the poem.” James Liu, The Art of Chinese Poetry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 96.

62. Owen, Traditional Chinese Poetry and Poetics, 15.

63. Huang Zongxi; see note 1. As Zhang Hui cautions, nevertheless, the early Qing also witnessed a philological and evidential turn of the notion of shishi; that is, poets and scholars tended to treat poetry merely as a testimony to or even factual account of historical experience. “Zhongguo shishi chuantong” 中國詩史傳統 (The tradition of poetry as history in China), Dushu 讀書 (Reading) 9 (2012): 151–158.

64. Before Huang Zongxi’s time, “poet-historian” had been attributed primarily to Du Fu. As Gong Pengcheng suggests, Huang should be credited for adding a generic dimension to the definition. Since Huang’s comment, “poet-historian” has been taken to mean that poetry has the capacity to complement, correct, and even replace history. Gong Pengcheng, “Shishi guannian de fazhan” 詩史觀念的發展 (The development of the concept of poet-historian), in Shishi bense yu miaowu 詩史本色與妙悟 (The true nature and esoteric enlightenment of the “poet-historian”) (Taipei: Xuesheng shuju, 1993), 66.

65. Lawrence C. H. Yim, The Poet-Historian Qian Qianyi (New York: Routledge, 2009), 27. See Zhang Hui, “Zhongguo shishi chuantong,” 164–176.

66. See Cheng Yu-yu’s 鄭毓瑜 analysis in Yinpi lianlei, which can be compared with Owen’s: “if literature (wen) is the entelechy of a previously unrealized pattern, and if the written word (wen) is not a sign but a schematization, then there can be no competition for dominance. Each level of wen, that of the world and that of poem is valid only in its correlative realm; and the poem, the final outward form, is a stage of fullness.” Owen, Traditional Chinese Poetry and Poetics, 21.

67. Xiao Chi 蕭馳, Xuanzhi yu shixing 玄智與詩興 (Metaphysical wisdom and poetic evocation) (Taipei: Lianjing chuban gongsi, 2011), chapter 1.

68. Zhu Guangqian, “Zhongguo shi heyi zoushang lü de lu” 中國詩何以走上律的路 (Why Chinese poetry took the path of regulated verse), in Shilun 詩論 (Treatise on poetry), in Zhu Guangqian quanji 朱光潛全集 (Complete works of Zhu Guangqian) (Hefei: Anhui jiaoyu chubanshe, 1987), vol. 3, chapters 11–12. Yu-kung Kao, “The Aesthetics of Regulated Verse,” in Shuen-fu Lin and Stephen Owen, eds., The Vitality of Lyric Voice: Shih Poetry from the Late Han to the T’ang (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 332–384. Xiao Chi, Zhongguo shuqing chuantong 中國抒情傳統 (Chinese lyrical tradition) (Taipei: Yunchen chubanshe, 1999), 1–36.

69. Shih-hsiang Chen, “On Chinese Lyrical Tradition” (opening address to panel on comparative literature, AAS Meeting, 1971), Tamkang Review 2, no. 3 (October 1971–April 1972): 18.

75. This tradition can be illustrated at least by the following works: Ko Ch’ingming 柯慶明， Zhongguo wenxue de meigan 中國文學的美感 (The aesthetic sensibility of Chinese literature) (Taipei: Ryefield, 2000); Lü Cheng-hui 呂正惠, Shuqing chuantong yu zhengzhi xianshi 抒情傳統與政治現實 (Lyrical tradition and political reality) (Taipei: Daan chubanshe,1989); Cheung Suk-Hong 張淑香, Shuqing chuantong de xingsi yu tansuo 抒情傳統的省思與探索 (The lyrical tradition: reflections and explorations) (Taipei: Daan chubanshe, 1992); Ts’ai Ying-chun 蔡英俊, Bixing wuse yu qingjing jiaorong 比興物色與情景交融 (Evocation, compassion, and the fusion of affection and the scenery) (Taipei: Daan chubanshe, 1988); Cheng Yu-yu, Liuchao qingjing meixue zonglun 六朝情境美學綜論 (A comprehensive study of the aesthetics of qing and jing of the Six Dynasties) (Taipei: Xuesheng shuju, 1996); Liao Tung-liang 廖棟梁, Shipi 詩品 (Tastes of poetry) (Taipei: Jingeng chuban, 1986); Yan kunyang 顏崑陽, Liuchao wenxue guannian conglun 六朝文學觀念叢論 (Literary thoughts of the Six Dynasties) (Taipei: Cheng-chung shuju, 1993). Works by Chen Guoqiu of Hong Kong and Xiao Chi of Singapore are mostly published in Taiwan too.

76. Chen Shih-hsiang, “In Search of the Beginning of Chinese Literary Criticism,” University of California Publications in Semitic Philology, Semitic and Oriental Studies Presented to William Popper 11 (1951): 45–63.

77. Chen, “In Search of the Beginning of Chinese Literary Criticism,” 50. Chen traces the origin of Chinese poetry to ancient tribal rituals that combines dance, song, and poetic utterances.

78. Ibid. As Leonard Chan points out, next to Wen Yiduo, scholars such as Zhu Ziqing 朱自清 and Yang Shuda 楊樹達 also discussed the etymological origins of shi in the Republican era. Chan, “Chen Shih-hsiang on Chinese Literature,” 233.

81. Chen Shih-hsiang, “The Shih-ching: Its Generic Significance in Chinese Literary History and Poetics,” Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica 39, no. 1 (1969): 371–413. I am using the version in Cyril Birch, ed., Studies in Chinese Literary Genres (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 8–41.

84. Ibid., 24. With this assumption, Chen postulates a very long and much older tradition behind the composition of the Classic of Poetry. He concludes that although its poems sound like “folk songs,” they are refined expressions based on both formulaic conventions (such as “incremental repetitions”) and spontaneous emotional outburst.

88. Chen Shih-hsiang, “The Genesis of Poetic Time: The Greatness of Ch’ü Yuan [Qu Yuan], Studied with a New Critical Approach,” Tsing-hua Journal of Chinese Studies 10, no. 1 (1973): 6.

94. Chen Shih-hsiang, “To Circumvent ‘The Design of Eightfold Array,’ ” Tsing-hua Journal of Chinese Studies 7, no. 1 (1968): 26–51. This article is based on Chen’s lecture in Chinese given at National Taiwan University in 1958.

96. See Leonard Chan’s detailed study in “Chen Shih-hsiang lun zhongguo wenxue: tongwang shuqing chuantong zhilu,” 227, note 5. Chan derives his discovery from Shen Congwen’s account of attending the poetry recital gathering hosted by Zhu Guangqian in the 1930s. Chen Shih-hsiang was a frequent participant.

97. Chen was Acton’s student for two years and they even shared the same house for a period (1933–1935).

98. Richards’s theories, such as the organic form of poetry, critical modulation of psychological faculties, and formal schemata of sensuous impulses, quickly became a golden mean among his Chinese admirers. When Li Anzhai 李安宅 took the steps of Richards’s Meaning of Meaning and published Yiyixue 意義學 (A theory of meaning) in 1934, New Criticism left its first indigenous imprint in China. The trend kept going strong in the following years, as demonstrated by Wu Shichang’s 吳世昌 application of close reading to classical Chinese poetry, Zhou Xuliang’s claim 周煦良 that poetry is not a revelation but a “sensuous embodiment” of truth, and Qian Zhongshu’s 錢鍾書 study of the layered construct of communication. Chen Shih-hsiang clearly echoes Richards when stating in a 1937 essay that poetry is a “unique mastery of language … a total harmony of tonality, color, mood, imagery, and concept.” Chen Shih-hsiang, “Duiyu shikan de yijian” 對於詩刊的意見 (Opinions on poetry) in Dagongbao 大公報 (L’impartial) (December 6, 1935). Chen’s penchant for the formalist vein of criticism was to be enforced later by his interest in critics such as Richard Blackmur and Northrop Frye.

99. For decades, Zhu Guanqian has been criticized for promoting Idealist philosophy and aesthetics at a time when China was in need of revolution and materialism. Recent studies, however, have pointed out the complex, circuitous route through which Zhu came to terms with his thought and his time. For a recent, comprehensive analysis, see Xia Zhongyi, Zhu Guangqian meixue shibian 朱光潛美學十辯 (Zhu guangqian’s aesthetics: ten arguments) (Beijing: Shangwu yinshu guan, 2012).

100. Bonnie McDougall, “The View from the Leaning Tower: Zhu Guangqian on Aesthetics and Society in the Nineteen-twenties and Thirties,” in Göran Malmqvist, ed., Modern Chinese Literature and Its Social Context (Nobel Symposium, No. 32; Stockholm: Nobel House, 1975), 98.

101. For a recent analysis of Zhu Guanqian’s poetics, see Brian Skerratt, “Form and Transformation in Modern Chinese Poetry and Poetics,” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2013.

102. Chen Shih-hsiang, “Jinri de shi” 今日的詩 (Poetry today), Xinshi 新詩 (New poetry) 2, no. 2 (1937): 144–145. Special thanks to Professor Mei Chia-ling for calling my attention to the poem.

103. Chen Shih-hsiang, Literature as Light Against Darkness, National Peking University Semi-Centennial Papres, No. 11 College of Arts (Peiping [Beijing]: National Peking University Press, 1948).

104. See Chen Shi-shiang, “Introduction,” Essay on Literature Written by the Third-Century Chinese Poet Lu Chi (Portland, Maine: The Anthoensen Press, 1953), iv. This is a revised edition based on Chen’s 1948 translation. My argument benefits from Leonard Chan’s essay, which calls attention to the fact that Chen took issue with the dating of “Essay.”

105. Chen, Essay on Literature, ix.

106. Instead of “essay,” Owen translates fu as poetic exposition in Readings in Chinese Literary Thought.

107. Quoted from Chen, Essay on Literature, 14.

108. Ibid. Fate sets in as a dark footnote to Lu Ji’s treatise on the tension between literature and history. Lu Ji’s ascent in officialdom after the coup of 300 A.D. proved to be a prelude to his final downfall. He was put to death on the charge of high treason three years after the coup as well as his accomplishment of the “Essay on Literature.”

109. Here I am using Owen’s translation in Readings in Chinese Literary Thought to highlight the imagery of light. For succinct analysis of the imagery of light at both conceptual and imagistic levels in medieval China, see Xiaofei Tian, Beacon Fire and Shooting Star: The Literary Culture of the Liang (502–557) (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Asia Center, 2007), particularly chapters 5 and 6.

110. Quoted from Chen, Essay on Literature, 20.

115. Shen Congwen, “Chouxiang de shuqing” 抽象的抒情 (Abstract lyricism), in Shen Congwen quanji 沈從文全集 (Complete works of Shen Congwen; hereafter SCQJ) (Taiyuan: Beiyue wenyi chubanshe, 2009), vol. 16, 527.

117. Liu Xie’s Wenxindiaolong has a chapter on zhiyin. Owen translates the term as “the one who knows the tone,” Readings in Chinese Literary Thought, 286–287.

118. Walter Benjamin, “Central Park,” Selected Writings, vol. 4: 1938–1940, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006), 185.

119. For more discussion of Shen Congwen as Chinese nativist, see David Der-wei Wang, Fictional Realism: Mao Dun, Lao She, Shen Congwen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), chapters 6, 7.

120. Guo Moruo 郭沫若, “Chi fandong wenyi” 斥反動文藝 (Debunking reactionary literature), Dazong wenyi congkan 大衆文藝叢刊 (Literature for the masses) 1 (March 1, 1948). Veteran leftists Shao Quanlin 邵荃麟 and Feng Naichao 馮乃超 also published essays attacking Shen in the same issue.

121. There are multiple explanations of Shen Congwen’s “decision” in the wake of the founding of the New China. Despite his newly assigned position at the National Museum of History, he strove to stay within the literary field and tried to write a few new essays and stories. But given the increasingly tightened circumstances, Shen found almost no chance for independent creativity, let alone publication. See, for instance, Qian Liqun 錢理群, “Yijiu sijiu nianhou de Shen Congwen” 一九四九年後的沈從文 (Shen Congwen after 1949), in David Der-wei Wang, Chen Sihe, and Xu Zidong, eds., Yijiu sijiu yihou 一九四九以後 (After 1949), 107–165.

122. See Qian Liqun’s discussion, “Yijiu sijiu nianhou de Shen Congwen,” 107–147.

123. This project, like many others, did not come to fruition.

124. The fact that “Abstract Lyricism” remained an unfinished piece of “literature hidden in the drawer” (chouti lide wenxue 抽屜裏的文學) for many years and surfaced only in the postsocialist time, and that it can reach only readers of a different generation, makes the essay itself a case of “lyrical archaeology.”

125. Shen Congwen, “Chouxiang de shuqing,” 535.

126. Shen Congwen, “Chouxiang de shuqing,” 527. See Qian Liqun’s discussion in “Yijiu sijiu yihou de Shen Congwen,” 130–149.

127. Shen Congwen, “Yonh changshi po chuantong mixin” 用常識破傳統迷信 (To do away with traditional superstition by means of commonsensical knowledge), in SCQJ, vol. 27, 229; “Wo weisheme qiangdiao ziliao gongzuo” 我為什麽強調資料工作 (Why I stressed material work), SCQJ, vol. 27, 184. Shen wrote these essays during the Cultural Revolution and therefore may mean to assert the “political correctness” of his research. Still, he was wryly using Maoist discourse to serve his own definition of materialism.

128. Shen Congwen, “Wo weishenme gao wenwu zhidu” 我為什麽搞文物制度 (Why I worked on art history and cultural institutional history), in SCQJ, vol. 27, 194.

129. Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought, 277. Se 色 was the word chosen by Liu Xie to translate the Sanskrit rûpa, appearances that causes delusion and desire. It “is not only surface appearance, it also implies a sensuous, at times sensual allure.”

130. Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought, 277.

131. Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought, 279–280. Owen comments, “There the human mind is thrown into the world of physical things, is stirred and shaken by that world because the human being, too, is part of the physical universe. But ‘the poets’ seem to give themselves over to this universal process, both ‘moving’ with things and ‘sketching’ them.” In her study of the two key concepts related to wu, ganwu 感物 and wuse 物色, Zhang Jing points out that while the former emphasizes the poetic subjectivity’s reaction to the ephemerality of the world, the latter directs attention to the subjectivity’s “phenomenological” interaction with the fleeting impression of the world. Hence the genesis of a more active poetic sensibility. The impact of the Buddhist notion of se leaves a remarkable imprint on the changing notion of wu. Zhang Jing 張靜, “Wuse: yige zhangxian zhongguo shuqing chuantong fazhan de lilun gainian” 物色：一個彰顯中國抒情傳統發展的理論概念 (Wuse: a theoretical concept that illuminates the development of Chinese lyrical tradition), Taida wenshizhe xuebao 臺大文史哲學報 (National Taiwan University Bulletin in literature, history, and philosophy) 67 (2007): 39–62.

132. Shen Congwen, “Zhuxu” 燭虛 (candle extinguished), SCQJ, vol. 12, 39. Shen makes similar references in other contexts, such as “shengming shuojin cuoshang” 生命受盡挫傷 (A life saturated with traumatic experience), “Sanwen xuanyi” 散文選譯序 (Preface to translations of select essays; retitled “Xiangxi sanji xu” 湘西散記序 [Preface to random notes on West Huan]), SCQJ, vol. 16, 387–394.

133. Shen Congwen, preface to Xiangxing sanji 湘行散記序 (Notes on a trip to Hunan), SCQJ, vol. 16, 394.

134. Shen Congwen, “Shuiyun” 水雲 (Water cloud), SCQJ, vol. 12, 115, 125, 127.

135. For instance, Border Town relates a perfect romance corrupted by misunderstanding and procrastination; Changhe 長河 (Long river, 1947) reads like an anticipatory elegy of Shen’s hometown region amid modern atrocities.

136. The Analects, “Yanghuo” 陽貨: “The Master said, ‘Why is it none of you, my young friends, study the Odes? An apt quotation from the Odes may serve to stimulate the imagination, to show one’s breeding, to smooth over difficulties in a group and to give expression to complaints.’” D. C. Lau’s translation (New York: Penguin, 1979), 145.

137. Nevertheless, there has been a steady discourse regarding the polemics of yuan; the late Ming particularly saw the rise of yuan poetics in conjunction with the poets’ loyalist mentality. Of the studies of the poetics of yuan in recent decades, the most acclaimed is perhaps Qian Zhongshu’s 錢鍾書 treatise “Shi keyi yuan” 詩可以怨 (Poetry that is capable of expressing discontent) in Qizhuiji 七綴集 (A collection of seven patchworks), (Beijing: sanlian chubanse, 2002); see particularly 116. See also Xu Zifang 徐子方, Qianzai gufen: zhongguo beiyuan wenxuede shengming toushi 千載孤憤: 中國悲怨文學的生命透視 (Eternal loneliness and wrath: a critical inquiry into Chinese literature of sorrow and discontent) (Nanjing: Jiangsu jiaoyu chubanshe, 2001); Chueng Suk-hong Cheung, “Lunshi keyi yuan” 論詩可以怨 (On poetry that can express discontent), in 抒情傳統的省思與探討 (Critical reflections on the lyrical tradition), 3–40. For the Ming Loyalists’ renewed engagement with the poetics of discontent, see Xie Minyang 謝明陽， Ming yimin de yuan qun shixue jingshen: cong Juelang Daosheng dao Fang Yizhi Qian Chengzhi 明遺民的”怨”“群”詩學精神：從覺浪道盛到方以智、錢澄之 (Ming loyalists’ poetics of discontent and solidarity: from Juelang daosheng to Fang Yizhi and Qian Chengzhi) (Taipei: Daan chubanshe, 2004), particularly chapters 2, 3.

138. Hu Xiaoming 胡曉明, “Cong shiyanzhi dao saoyanzhi” 從詩言志到騷言志 (From poetry that expresses what is intently on the mind to the Songs of the South that expresses what is intently on the mind), Shi yu wenhua xinling 詩與文化心靈 (Poetry and cultural mind) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2006), 35–41. The term was first coined by Rao Zongyi 饒宗頤; see Rao Zongyi, Chengxin luncui 澄心論萃 (Critical treatise of a crystal heart), ed. Hu Xiaoming (Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 1996). For a recent study of xing, see, for instance, Peng Feng 彭鋒, Shi keyi xing: gudai zongjiao, lunli, zhexue, yuyishu de meixue quanshi 詩可以興：古代宗教，倫理，哲學，與藝術的美學詮釋 (Poetry that is able to evoke: an aesthetic interpretation in ancient Chinese religion, ethics, philosophy, and the arts) (Hefei: Anhui jiaoyu chubanshe, 2003).

139. Li Zehou, Huaxia meixue 華夏美學 (Chinese aesthetics), in Meixue sanshu, 331–370.

141. See Liao Tung-liang’s 廖棟樑 succinct analysis in Lunli, lishi, yishu: gudai chucixue de jiangou (Ethics, history, and arts: a construction of premodern Chuci studies) 倫理，歷史，藝術：古代楚辭學的建構 (Taipei: Liren shuju, 2008), particularly chapter 2; Li Zehou, Huaxia meixue 華夏美學 (Chinese aesthetics), in Meixue sanshu, chapter 4; Xia Zhifang, 夏之放 Lun kuailei: wenxue lilun yuanwenti yanjiu 論塊壘：文學理論元問題研究 (On emotive capacity: a study of an ontological issue of literary criticism) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 2007), 27–32. In the Confucian tradition, while the expression of yuan points to the poet’s discontent with reality, it is presumably directed to an implied addressee (the ruler) and couched in a rhetorical context of benevolence and propriety. As Xia Zhifang indicates, yuan of the Confucian tradition may resonate with that of the Songs of South tradition, but the former places emphasis on its social and ethical implication while the latter stresses the individual subjectivity’s responses to internal and external stimuli. Li Zehou holds a similar view and even considers the emotive power generated from the Songs of the South as the origin of a distinctive aesthetic tradition in premodern China. Also see Hu Xiaoming, “Cong shiyanzhi dao saoyanzhi,” 35–41. There are many studies on the poetics of yuan, the most acclaimed in recent years perhaps being Qian Zhongshu’s treatise “Shi keyi yuan” 詩可以怨 (Poetry that is capable of expressing discontent) in Qizhuiji.

Shen Congwen’s lyricism is equally traceable to the poetics of the Six Dynasties era. What Shen Congwen contributed to this discovery is his reinterpretation of the notion of wuse 物色 (The sensuous color of physical things). Wuse, or feeling the appearances of the world, leads the poetic subjectivity to realize the changeability of the world. Shen Congwen’s invocation of yuan brings to mind particularly what Yoshikawa Kōjirō calls “the pathos arising from the passage of time and transience of human attachments” (tuiyi de beiai 推移的悲哀). Above all, Shen reminds us of his indebtedness to the discourse of qing as developed by the medieval literati, such as Lu Ji’s “He moves along with the four seasons and sighs at their passing on” (遵四時以嘆逝，瞻萬物而思紛), Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought, 89; Liu Xie’s “All sensuous colors of physical things call to one another, and how amid all this may man find stillness?” (物色相召，任誰獲安); “by these things our affections are shifted, and from our affections language comes” (情以物遷，辭以情發), Owen, Readings, 277, 278. By emphasizing the individual subjectivity’s interaction with the world and beyond as well as the emotive consequences emerging therefrom, this discursive tradition is markedly different from the Confucian discourse.

142. See my discussion in Fictional Realism in Twentieth-Century China, 277–281.

143. Shen Congwen, “Sange nanren he yige nüren” 三個男人和一個女人 (Three men and one woman), trans. Kai-yu Hsu, in Modern Chinese Stories and Novellas, ed. C. T. Hsia, Joseph Lau and Leo Ou-fan Li (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), 265.

144. Shen Congwen, “Kanhonglu” 看虹錄 (Gazing at a rainbow), SCQJ, vol. 10, 341. I am using Jeffery Kinkley’s translation, Imperfect Paradise (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995), 480.

145. Shen Congwen, “Zhuxu” 燭虛 (Candle extinguished), SCQJ, vol. 12, 26.

146. Shen Congwen, “Shuiyun” 水雲 (Water cloud), SCQJ, vol. 12, 106–107.

147. Shen Congwen, “Xiaoshuo chuongzuo” 小説創作 (On fiction writing), SCQJ, vol 12, 25.

148. Shen Congwen, “Shuiyun,” SCQJ, vol. 12, 115, 127, 129.

149. Shen Congwen, “Duanpian xiaoshuo,” SCQJ, vol. 16, 502.

150. Shen Congwen, “Shengming” 生命 (Life), SCQJ, vol. 12, 43.

151. Peng Xiaoyong 彭曉勇, Shen Congwen yu dushu 沈從文與讀書 (Shen Congwen and his reading) (Taipei: Funu yu shenghuo, 2001), 178–179.

152. Shen Congwen, “Xue lishi de difang” 學歷史的地方 (A place to learn history), Congwen zi zhuan 從文自傳 (Congwen’s autobiography), SCQJ, vol. 13, 356. Also see Ling Yu 凌宇, Cong biancheng zouxiang shijie 從邊城走向世界 (From border town to the world) (Changsha: Yuelu shushe, 2006), 163; Peng Xiaoyong, Shen Congwen yu dushu, 178.

153. Painting, as Shen writes, “links the world of the living and that of the dead, thus harmonizing life. Painting is an indispensable part of culture, because it more efficiently preserves the form of life of bygone ages” (italics mine). Shen, “Du Zhan Ziqian youchuntu” 讀展子謙游春圖 (On Zhan Ziqian’s “Spring Excursion”), SCQJ, vol. 31, 107.

154. Incidentally, Shen Congwen’s search for lyrical abstractions paralleled the leftist advocacy for minzu xingshi 民族形式 or national form. On November 25, 1938, Mao Zedong called for a “national form,” endowed with “refreshing, lively Chinese styles and airs that are palatable to the tastes and ears of the common folks of China” (“Lun Xinjieduan” 論新階段 [On the new stage (of revolution)]). Insofar as he was envisaging a matrix for renewing traditional arts, Shen’s search was not entirely incompatible with the leftist campaign for the national form. But there is a stark difference in his methodology and goal. Shen contends that artworks need not be prescribed by hegemonic rule; rather, they are registers of the flux of creative minds at a given moment. The more profound difference is that Shen’s historical view is premised on an awareness of the inevitable decomposition of civilization—a symptom of inborn traumatism—while the leftist vision upholds the positive thrust of utopian volitionism.

155. For more information about Průšek’s experience in China during 1932–1934, see his memoir My Sister China, trans. Ivan Vomáčka (Boston: Cheng & Tsui, 2002).

156. Průšek was appointed Director of the Oriental Institute of the newly founded Czechoslovak Academy of Science in 1952, a position he held till the Russian invasion in 1968. In this capacity, he not only revitalized the Prague school of Sinological studies but also proved himself one of the most original critics of Chinese literature. Of recent studies on Průšek’s academic career and scholarship, Leonard Chan has contributed the most. I am indebted to Chan’s discoveries and arguments. For Průšek’s early activities, for instance, see Chan, “Wenxue piping yu wenxue kexue: Xia Zhiqig yu Prusek de wenxueshi bianlun” 文學批評”與”文學科學”—夏志清與普實克的”文學史”辯論 (Literary criticism and literary science: C. T. Hsia and Průšek’s debate on literary history), in David Der-wei Wang 王德威, ed., Zhongguo xiandai xiaoshuo de shiyuxue 中國現代小說的史與學 (The history and scholarship of modern Chinese fiction) (Taipei: Lingking, 2010), 66. For a detailed description of Průšek’s career, see Augustin Palát, “Jaroslav Průšek Sexagenarian,” in Archív Oirentální 34 (1966): 481–493; Milena Doleželová-Velingerová, ed., Jaroslav Průšek, 1906–2006: Remembered by Friends (Prague: Dharma Gaia, 2006).

157. Jaroslav Průšek, “Subjectivism and Individualism in Modern Chinese Literature,” in The Lyrical and the Epic: Studies of Modern Chinese Literature, ed. Leo Ou-fan Lee (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), 1.

158. In this sense, Průšek actually echoes Karl Marx’s view regarding the uneven development of literature and historical progression.

159. Jaroslav Průšek, “Some Marginal Notes on the Poems of Po Chu-i,” Chinese History and Literature: Collection of Studies (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1970), 76.

160. Průšek, “Outlines of Chinese Literature,” New Orient 5 (1966): 113–114. This lyrical bent is predetermined by the linguistic structures of Chinese. As he describes in “Outlines of Chinese Literature,” the Chinese language tends to form “rhythmical sections” with “similar grammatical structures”; and a Chinese sentence comprises a series of isolated, independent word-concepts, which results in the grasping of phenomena as “static units and in a weakening of the feeling for dynamics.” He thus concludes that these tendencies lead to a lyrical perception of reality; “they go well with lyrical poetry rather than with epic.” See Leonard Chan’s analysis in “The Conception of Chinese Lyricism: Průšek’s Reading of Chinese Literary Tradition,” in Paths Toward Modernity: Conference to Mark the Centenary of Jaroslav Průšek, ed. Olga Lomová (Prague: The Karolinum Press, 2008), 22–23.

161. Průšek, Chinese History and Literature, 76–77.

162. Průšek, “Subjectivism and Individualism in Modern Chinese Literature,” 9–10.

163. Průšek, Chinese History and Literature, 76–77.

164. Leonard Chan should be credited for teasing out the multiple threads of Průšek’s relationship with Czech Romanticism, particularly the Orientalist vein. “The Conception of Chinese Lyricism,” 28–31. Chan notes particularly Průšek’s tendency to blend his notion of romanticism and lyricism with modernist avant-gardism. Also see Chan, “Ruhe liaojie hanxuejia, yi Pushike weili”如何瞭解漢學家:以普實克為例 (How one understands Sinologists: Průšek as an example), Zhongguo wenzhe yanjiu tongxun 中國文哲研究通訊 (Bulletin of the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica) 17, no. 4 (2007): 108. See Galin Tihanov, “Why Did Modern Literary Theory Originate in Central and Eastern Europe?” Common Knowledge 10, no. 1 (2004): 61–68.

165. Průšek, “Some Marginal Notes on the Poems of Po Chu-i,” 78.

167. Průšek, “Outlines of Chinese Literature,” 145. Průšek nominates lüshi 律詩 or the regulated verse as “the genre that demonstrates the essential but rare link—or rather tension—between the creative subject and the milieu to which the poet reacts”; thus a competent poet is able to extract from his lyrical expressions an “unusual realism” that enables him to bring together the word and the world, exteriority and exteriority. See Leonard Chan’s discussion in “The Conception of Chinese Lyricism,” 21–22.

168. Průšek, “Outlines of Chinese Literature,” 145.

170. Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov,” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1969).

171. Jaroslav Průšek, “Urban Centers: The Cradle of Popular Fiction,” in Studies in Chinese Literary Genres, ed. Cyril Birch (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 281.

172. Jaroslav Průšek, “The Realist and Lyric Elements in the Chinese Medieval Story,” Archív Orientální 32 (1964): 14. Also see Chan’s discussion in “The Conception of Lyricism,” 21–22.

173. See Leonard Chan, “Ruhe liaojie hanxuejia, yi Pushike weili,” 108. Particularly Průšek’s admiration for Karel Hynek Mácha (1810–1836), whose lyrical poetry is related to the rise of Czech nationalism as well as the modern revival of Czech poeticism.

174. Chan, “Ruhe liaojie hanxuejia: yi Pushike weili,” 108.

175. He not only had given lectures twice in the circle but also shared common theoretical grounds with key members, such as Jan Mukařovský and Felix Vodicka. See Chan, “The Conception of Lyricism,” 28–31; Chen, “Wenxue piping yu wenxue kexue,” 68–73.

176. See Chen, “The Conception of Lyricism,” 30.

177. Roman Jakobson, in his work Noveishaya russkaya poeziya (1921; Recent Russian poetry), declares that it is “literariness” that makes a given work a literary work. In other words, literariness is a feature that distinguishes literature from other human creations and is made of certain artistic techniques, or devices (priemy), employed in literary works.

178. See Márián Gálik’s vivid description of Průšek’s enthusiasm about the victory of revolution, in Gálik, Jieke he Siluofake hanxue yanjiu 捷克和斯洛伐克漢學研究 (Sinological Studies in the Czech Republic and Slovenia), trans. and ed. Yan Chunde 閻純德 and Wu Zhiliang 吳志良 (Beijing: Xueyuan chubanshe, 2009), chapter 4.

179. Georg Lukács, The Theory of the Novel, trans. Anna Bostock (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972), particularly 112–113.

180. Georg Lukács, Soul and Form, trans. Anna Bostock (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1974), 104; David Miles, “Portrait of the Marxist as a Young Hegelian: Lukács’ Theory of the Novel,” PMLA 94, no. 1 (Jan. 1979): 26. As Miles notes, Lukacs’s contemplation of the lyrical and the novel predates Ralph Freedman’s The Lyrical Novel (1963).

181. Průšek, “Subjectivism and Individualism in Modern Chinese Literature,” 3.

182. Walter Benjamin, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire,” in Illuminations, 163.

184. Theodor Adorno, “On Lyric Poetry and Society,” in Notes to Literature, ed. Rolf Tidemann, trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 45.

186. Thus, Adorno’s famous statement, “After Auschwitz, it is no longer possible to write poems,” must also invite a double reading. Theodor W. Adorno, “After Auschwitz,” in Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York: Seabury, 1973), 362; also see 191; Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, trans. E. F. N. Jephcott (London: New Left Books, 1974), 245.

187. I am borrowing Jean-Luc Nancy’s terminology in Being Singular Plural. A more in-depth comparative critique of the two critics’ views of social and individual subjectivity, of course, is in order.

188. See, for instance, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger and the Politics of Poetry, trans. Jeff Fort (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2007).

189. See, for instance, Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 166–186; “Literary History and Literary Modernity,” 142–165.

190. Paul de Man, “Lyric and Modernity,” in Blindness and Insight, 166–186; “Literary History and Literary Modernity,” 142–165. For a comment on de Man’s poetics, see Carrie Noland, Poetry at Stake: Lyric Aesthetics and the Challenge of Technology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), particularly 264. I find Noland’s comparative study of Adorno’s and de Man’s poetics illuminating; Noland argues that both Adorno and de Man acknowledge the despair of the moment of recognition that pure lyric subjectivity is illusory. Adorno’s lyric substance is material but invisible, an effect of figurative language, just as de Man’s lyric “irrealization” is. Noland argues that de Man leaves us in a “binary opposition, trapped between mystification and despair, while Adorno offers a way out via the “infinite veils and allegories the subject spins” (85). However, de Man’s notion that the modern lyric enables “the metamorphosis of one object into a number of other symbolic referents” seems to echo the idea of transformation rather than entrapment via figurative language (“Lyric and Modernity,” 179).

191. De Man, “Lyric and Modernity,” 185.

192. See Anson Rabinbach, In the Shadow of Catastrophe: German Intellectuals Between Apocalypse and Enlightenment (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), chapter 3.

193. See Dieter Freundlieb, “Paul de Man’s Postwar Criticism: The Pre-Deconstructionist Phase,” Neophilologus 81, no. 2 (1997): 165–186. Also see Frank Lentricchia’s chapter-long critique of de Man in After the New Criticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).

194. Cleanth Brooks, The Well-wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry (New York: Mariner Books, 1956), chapter 11. This chapter is followed by two appendices: “Criticism, History, and Critical Relativism” and “The Problem of Belief.”

195. Průšek, “Basic Problems of the History of Modern Chinese Literature,” and C. T. Hsia, “A History of Modern Chinese Fiction,” in The Lyrical and the Epic, 203.

196. C. T. Hsia, “On the ‘Scientific Method’ of Studying Modern Chinese Literature: A Reply to Professor Průšek,” in The Lyrical and the Epic, 231–266.

1. Shen Congwen, Shen Congwen quanji 沈從文全集 (Complete works of Shen Congwen; hereafter SCQJ) (Taiyuan: Beijue wenyi chubanshe, 2009), vol. 19, 317. For a detailed account of Shen Congwen’s experience in the fifties, see Zhang Xinying 張新穎, “Cong geren kunjing tiren lishi chuantong zhong de youqing: jieshi Shen Congwen tugai qijian de yifeng jiashu” 從個人困境體認歷史傳統中的有情：解釋沈從文土改期間的一封家書 (To understand the meaning of feeling in historical tradition from the personal predicament: on a family letter by Shen Congwen during land reform), in Zhang Xinying, ed., Yiqiang rouqing liubujin 一腔柔情流不盡: 復旦師生論沈從文 (Endlessly flows the flux of feeling: essays on Shen Congwen by the faculty and students of Fudan University) (Hefei: Anhui jiaoyu chubanshe, 2008), 259–276.

2. Shigong could refer to actions, accomplishments, and feats.

5. Ibid., 318–319.

6. Shen was also trying to come to terms with his new assignment as a researcher in the Museum of National History, which had literally put his vocation up to 1949, literature, into the past. Therefore, although rendered in an intimate and casual epistolary form, his letter amounts to a personal manifesto against his time.

8. Ibid., 318. Shen hints that the new history in the making is one that streamlines temporality and regulates individuality and valorizes the “feat” over anything else. He discerns signs of the problem in school textbooks, and asks what kind of history will come into existence if the learners fail even to “narrate humans and events … individual specificities, and characters and feelings.”

9. Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1969), 256.

10. Ibid., 250–261. See Peter Osborne’s interpretation in The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant-Garde (London: Verso, 1995), 113. “Benjamin’s aim was to refigure the interruptive temporality of modernity as the standpoint of redemption and thereby to perform a dialectical redemption of the destruction of the tradition by the new; to turn Neuzeit into Jetztzeit, new time into now time.” Moreover, “Rather than constructing a linear unidirectional series of successive instants (Aristotle’s ‘before/now or then/after’) or a three-dimensional temporal spectrum (Husserl’s ‘past/present/future’), Benjamin’s dialectical images are constellations of the ‘then’ and the ‘now’, which, in the hermetic enclosure of their internal relations, mirror the structure of history as a whole, viewed from the standpoint of its end. As such, they are not so much allegorical in their semantic structure, as of the nature of theological symbols: images of redemption. Each image, in its totalized if temporary self-sufficiency, reflects the structure of the yet-to-be-completed whole; each image thus carries within it the perspective of redemption” (145).

11. Stephen Owen, Remembrances: The Experience of the Past in Classical Chinese Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986).

12. Even then, the accessibility of the letter in print does not guarantee that readers of this generation will understand it.

13. See my discussion in Fin-de-siècle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849–1911 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), chapter 1. See also Cai Zongqi’s discussion in “The Rethinking of Emotion: The Transformation of Traditional Literary Criticism in the Late Qing Era,” Monumenta Serica 45 (1997): 63–100.

14. See C. T. Hsia’s discussion in “Yan Fu and Liang Ch’i-ch’ao as Advocates of New Fiction,” in Adele Austin Rickett, ed., Chinese Approaches to Literature from Confucius to Liang Ch’i-ch’ao (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 222–257; also see my discussion in Fin-de-siècle Splendor, 36.

15. Liang Qichao’s self description in Qingdai xueshu gailun qi ershiwu 清代學術概論 (A general discussion of the of the Qing dynasty), section 25, Yinbingshi heji 飲冰室合集 (Comprehensive works of ice-drinking studio) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1989), vol. 8, 62. See Xia Xiaohong’s 夏曉虹 extensive discussion of Liang Qichao’s literary theory based on qing, Yuedu Liang Qichao 閲讀梁啟超 (Reading Liang Qichao) (Beijing: Sanlian shudian 2005), 170–178.

16. See my discussion in Fin-de-siècle Splendor, 37.

17. Liu E, The Travels of Lao Can, trans. Harold Shadick (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 1–2.

18. See Leo Ou-fan Lee’s discussion in The Romantic Generation of Modern Chinese Writers (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1973), 44–45; also see Rey Chow, Women and Chinese Modernity (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990), 121–127.

19. Wang, Fin-de-siècle Splendor, 36–42.

20. Lu Xun 魯迅, “Wenhua pianzhi lun” 文化偏至論 (On cultural aberrations), in Lu Xun quanji 魯迅全集 (Complete works of Lu Xun; hereafter LXQJ) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2005), vol. 1, 49. The essay was first published in the magazine Henan 河南 in 1907.

21. Ibid., 54. See Kirk Denton’s discussion of Lu Xun as a forerunner in exploring modern Chinese subjectivity in The Problematic of Self in Modern Chinese Literature: Hu Feng and Lu Ling (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 44–45.

22. Wang Guowei 王國维, “Renjian shihao zhiyan jiu” 人間嗜好之研究 (A study of human attachment), in Jingan wenji 靜庵文集 (Works of Wang Guowei) (Shenyang: Liaoning jiaoyu chubanshe, 1997), 148.

23. Wang Guowei 王國维, “Yingguo dashiren Baiyilong xiaozhuan” 英國大詩人白衣龍[拜倫]小傳 (A short biography of the great British poet Byron), in Wang Guowei wenji 王國維文集 (Works of Wang Guowei) (Beijing: Zhongguo wenshi chubanshe, 1997), vol. 3, 398.

24. Lu Xun, “Wenhua pianzhi lun,” LXQJ, vol. 1, 52.

25. “Moluo shilishuo” 摩羅詩力說 (On the theory of Mara poetry), LXQJ, vol. 1, 69. Kirk Denton, ed. Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893–1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 102.

26. Kirk Denton, ed., Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893–1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 102–103.

28. “朝發韌于蒼梧兮，夕余至于縣圃；慾少留此靈瑣兮，日忽忽其將暮。吾令羲和弭節兮，望崦嵫而勿迫；路漫漫其修遠兮，吾將上下而求索.” Preface to Nahan 呐喊 (Call to arms), LXQJ, vol. 2, 3. Qu Yuan 屈原, Lisao 離騷 (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1973), 12. Qu Yuan, et al., The Songs of the South: An Anthology of Ancient Chinese Poems by Qu Yuan and Other Poets, trans. David Hawkes (New York: Penguin, 1985), 73.

29. Lu Xun, “Han wenxueshi gangyao” 漢文學史綱要 (Outline of the literary history of the Han dynasty), in LXQJ, vol. 9, 431.

30. Lu Xun, “Weijin fengdu jiwenzhang yu yaojijiu zhiguanxi” 魏晉風度及文章與葯及酒之關係 (On the manners and literary expressions and their relationship to alcohol and drugs), LXQJ, vol. 3, 523–539; see Chen Pingyuan’s 陳平原 analysis, in Zhongguo xiandai xueshu zhijianli 中國現代學術之建立 (The founding of modern Chinese academic studies) (Bejing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1998), chapter 8.

31. See, for instance, Ye Jiaying’s 葉嘉瑩 discussion, Wang Guowei jiqi wenxue piping 王國維及其文學批評 (Wang Guowei and his literary criticism) (Taipei: Yuanliu chubanshe, 1983), 313.

32. Wang Guowei, Renjian cihua 人間詞話 (Remarks on song lyrics and the human condition) (Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe, 1981), 21.

33. I am referring to Xiao Chi’s notion. See his discussion in Zhongguo shuqing chuantong 中國抒情傳統 (Chinese lyrical tradition) (Taipei: Yunchen chuban gongsi, 1999), 121.

34. Pan Zhichang 潘知常, Wang Guowei 王國維 (Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 2005), chapters 3, 5.

35. Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀, “Wenxue geminglun” 文學革命論 (On literary revolution), Duxiu wencun xuan 獨秀文存選 (Select works of Chen Dunxiu) (Guiyang: Guizhou jiaoyu chubanshe, 2005), 80.

36. See Zhang Xuchun, 張旭春. Zhengzhi de shenmeihua yu shenmei de zhengzhihua 政治的審美化與審美的政治化：現代性視野中的中英浪漫主義思潮 (Politicization of aesthetics and aestheticization of politics: Chinese and British romantic thought in modern perspective) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2004), chapter 8.

37. See Zhang Songjian’s succinct discussion in Shuqing zhuyi yu zhongguo xiandai shixue 抒情主義與中國現代史學 (Lyricism and modern Chinese poetics) (Beijing: Bejing daxue chubanshe, 2012), chapter 1. Zhang points out that the Chinese phrase shuqing zhuyi contains a strong ideological implication; “lyricism” cannot fully bring forth its contentious dimension.

38. Xu Zhimo’s life was closely related to three women: his first wife, Zhang Youyi (1900–1988); his first love, Li Huiyin (1904–1955); and his amorous second wife, Lu Xiaoman (1903–1965). Xu Zhimo once said that in his first twenty years, he knew nothing about poetry. He started to write poems after he met Lin Huiyin while studying in England. For Lin, Xu abandoned his first wife, only to suffer from a tremendous loss when Lin decided to marry Liang Sicheng, son of Liang Qichao. In 1926, Xu fell in love with the socialite Lu Xiaoman, who then was married. The two carried on a sensational affair during the twenties, and their tempestuous relationship after marriage may have indirectly led to Xu’s untimely death in 1931.

39. Liang Qichao’s criticism is quoted by Hu Shi his essay “Daonian zhimo” 悼念志摩 (In memory of Zhimo), in Qin Xianci 秦賢次, ed., Yunyou: Xu Zhimo huainianji 雲遊：徐志摩懷念集 (Wandering afar: a collection of writings in memory of Xu Zhimo) (Taipei: Lanting chubanshe, 1986), 5.

40. Guo Moruo, “Lun jiezou” 論節奏 (On rhythm), in Guo Moruo quanjie 郭沫若全集 (Complete works of Guo Moruo) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1990), vol. 15, 353.

41. Guo Moruo, “Xuelai de shi xiao xu” 雪萊的詩小序 (Brief preface to Shelley’s poetry), Chuangzao jikan 創造季刊 (Creation quarterly) 1, no. 4 (1923); quoted from Zhang Xuchun 張旭春, Zhengzhi de shenmeihua yu shenmei de zhengzhihua: xiandaixing shiye zhong de zhong ying langman zhuyi sichao 政治的審美化與審美的政治化：現代性視野中的中英浪漫主義思潮 (Politicization of aesthetics and aestheticization of politics: Chinese and British romantic thought in modern perspective) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2004), 288.

42. Liang Shiqiu 梁實秋, Langman de yu gudian de 浪漫的與古典的 (The romantic and the classical) (Beijing: Renmin wexue chubanshe, 1983), 14.

43. As Zhang Songjia observes, zhuyi (ism) is a politically provocative term in the 1920s; see his discussion in Shuqing zhuyi yu zhongguo xiandai shixue 抒情主義與中國現代詩學 (Lyricism and modern Chinese poetics) (Beijing: Bejing daxue chubanshe, 2012), 3, 4–7.

45. Leo Lee has a comprehensive summary of romanticism in early modern China in The Romantic Generation of Modern Chinese Writers.

46. In Denton’s words, “ontological dualism, the notion that the living human is cut off from the transcendent, stands behind and ultimately motivates the mimetic desire to represent nature in the Western literary tradition. The Chinese view of literature, on the other hand, arises out of a monistic cosmology that sees the immanence of the divine (tian) or the Dao in the concrete world, as well as in the self. This gives rise to a view of literature as integrated with the world and fully able to manifest or embody that world.… In some reconstructions of traditional views of literature, China lacks not only a concept of mimesis but also one of pure self-expression.… Given the legacy of this organic cosmology, the reception of romanticism was also problematic for May Fourth writers and intellectuals.” The Problematic of Self, 104–105.

47. See, for instance, Chen Pingyuan’s discussion in Zhongguo xiandai xueshu zhijianli, chapter 8. Also see my discussion of Tai Jingnong in chapter 8.

48. Zhou Zuoren’s and Lin Yutang’s reception of late Ming poetics and stylistics has been widely discussed by scholars. For a recent study, see Mao Fuguo 毛夫國 Xiandai wenxueshi shangde wanming wenxue sichao lunzheng 現代文學史上的晚明文學思潮論争 (Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2011).

49. See Zhang Jieyu’s 張潔宇 discussion in Huangyuanshang de dingxiang: sanshi niandai qianxian shiren shige yanjiu 荒原上的丁香：三十年代前綫詩人詩歌研究 (Lilacs on the waste land: the poetry of the avant-garde poets of 1930s China) (Beijing: Renmin daxue chubanshe, 2003), chapter 3.

50. For more study of tradition as an intellectual, cultural, and political practice, see, for instance, Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

51. Lu Xun (Lu Hsun), Wild Grass, trans. Gladys and Xianyi Yang (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1974), 18.

53. For a succinct analysis of Wang Guowei’s will, see, for example, Ye Jiaying, Wang Guowei jiqi wenxue piping, chapter 2.

54. Chen Yinke 陳寅恪, “Haining Wang xiansheng zhi beiming” 海寧王先生之碑銘 (Epitaph in commemoration of Mr. Wang Guowei), in Qinghua jiushinian meiwenxuan 清華九十年美文選 (Select prose on Tsinghua University) (Beijing: Tsinghua daxue chubanshe, 2001), 208.

55. Again, I am referring to Xiao Chi’s definition of “arch-lyrical occasion.”

56. Zhang Xuchun, Zhengzhi de shenmeihua, 281–291.

57. See Wang Furen 王富仁, “Shenmei zhuiqiu de wuluan yu shicuo” 審美追求的瞀亂與失措 (The confusion and disorientation of Guo Moruo’s aesthetic pursuit), in Li Yi 李怡 and Cai Zhen 蔡震, eds., Guo Moruo pingshuo jiushinian 郭沫若評説九十年 (A critique of Guo Moruo: the past nine decades) (Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2010), 151–157.

58. Guo Moruo was profoundly influenced by the thought of Zhuangzi. See “Shipipan shu: houji” 十批判書後記 (Afterwords to ten critiques), in Guo Moruo quanji (History), vol. 2, 464, 480. For Guo’s indebtedness to Zhuangzi and Wang Yangming, see “Chuangzao shinian xupian” 創造十年續篇 (Sequel to a decade of creation), Moruo wenji, vol. 7, 56; also see “Wang Yangming lizan” 王陽明禮贊 (In praise of Wang Yangming), in Guo Moruo quanji (History), vol. 3, 289. See Wei Hongshan 魏紅珊, Guo Moruo meixue sixiang yanjiu 郭沫若美學思想研究 (A study of Guo Moruo’s aesthetic thought) (Chengdu: Bashu shushe, 2005), chapter 3, particularly 55–67.

59. See Chen Guanghong’s 陳廣宏 succinct analysis of Gong Zizhen’s influence on modern Chinese writers and intellectuals in “Gong Zizhen yu zhonguo shuqing wenxue de qianxiandai zhuanxing” 龔自珍與中國抒情文學的前現代轉型 (Gong Zizhen and the transformation of Chinese lyrical literature in the early modern era), in Wenxueshi de wenhua xushi: zhongguo wenxue yanbian lunji 文學史的文化敍事：中國文學演變論集 (The cultural narrative of literary history: Chinese literary transformations) (Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe, 2012), 231–252.

60. Liang Qichao 梁啟超, “Quwei jiaoyu yujiaoyu quwei” 趣味教育與教育趣味 (Education of taste and educating taste), in Liang Qichao quanji 梁啟超全集 (Complete works of Liang Qichao) (Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 1999), vol. 7, 3963; “Xuewen zhi quwei” 學問之趣味 (The fun of scholarship), Liang Qichao quanji, vol. 7, 4013. It should be noted that Liang alternately uses the terms quwei and xingwei 興味.

61. Liang Qichao, “Wanqing liangdajia shichao tici” 晚清兩大家詩鈔題辭 (Remarks on the collection of two great late Qing poets), in Liang Qichao quanji, vol. 9, 4927.

62. Liang Qichao, “Zhibuke erwei zhuyi yuweier buyou zhuyi” 知不可而為主義與為而不有主義 (The conviction of continued engagement regardless of anticipated failure and the conviction of continued engagement without any claim to credit), in Liang Qichao quanji, vol. 6, 3411.

63. Fang Hongmei 方紅梅, Liang Qichao quwei lun 梁啟超趣味論 (A study of Liang Qichao’s theory of taste) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2009), 102–115. Ke Qingming 柯慶明, Xiandai zhongguo wenxue piping shulu (A treatise of modern Chinese literary criticism) (Taipei: Daan chubanshe, 2005), 234.

64. Liang Qichao, “Wanqing liangdajia shichao tici.”

65. Liang Qichao, “Yanjiu wenhuashi de jige zhongyao wenti” 研究文化史的幾個重要問題 (A few important questions in the study of cultural history), in Liang Qichao quanji, vol. 7, 4154. See Ke Qingming’s discussion in Xiandai zhongguo wenxue piping shulu, 230–235.

66. I would like to thank Professors Zongqi Cai and Wai-yee Li for assistance in translating the couplet.

67. Zhu Guangqian, “Shuo ‘quzhong renbujian, jiangshang shufengqing,’ da Xia Mianzun xiansheng” 說曲終人不見，江上數峰青—-答夏丏尊先生〉 (On “The tune ended, but nowhere was the player seen; above the river, a few peaks loomed lush green,”: a reply to Mr. Xia Mianzun), Zhongxuesheng zazhi 中學生雜誌 (Middle school students) 60 (1935); see Zhu Guangqian quanji 朱光潛全集 (Complete works of Zhu Guangqian) (Hefei: Anhui jiaoyu chubanshe, 1993), vol. 3, 396. I am using John Minford’s translation in Joseph Lau and John Minford, Classical Chinese Literature: An Anthology of Translations (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 492.

68. Lu Xun, “Tiweiding cao 7” 題未定草 7 (Notes without titles 7), LXQJ, vol. 6, 30; trans. John Minford and Joseph Lau, Classical Chinese Literature: An Anthology of Translations (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2000), 492.

69. Hu Xiaoming 胡曉明, “Zhenshi de xiandaixing” 真詩的現代性 (The modernity of genuine poetry), in Shi yu wenhua xinling 詩與文化心靈 (Poetry and cultural mind) (Shanghai: Huadong shifan daxue chubanshe, 2006), 428–437.

70. Bonnie McDougall, “The View from the Leaning Tower: Zhu Guangqian on Aesthetics and Society in the Nineteen-twenties and Thirties,” in Modern Chinese Literature and Its Social Context, ed. Göran Malmqvist; Nobel Symposium, No. 32 (Stockholm: Nobel House, 1975), 86–91.

71. For our concern, it is particularly interesting to observe how Zhu Guangqian’s and Lu Xun’s engagement with a modern lyrical subjectivity helped open up Chinese “lyrical tradition.” The case in point is Tao Qian. For Zhu Guangqian, Tao Qian is the paragon of serenity, as he is able to transcend worldly attachment and attain a self-contained, lyrical plenitude. Quite to the contrary, for Lu Xun, it is Tao Qian’s indignation and melancholia when brought to face the mystery and challenge of life that informs his poetic world. In any event, the debate drives home the polemic nature of the lyrical discourse in the 1930s.

72. Liang Zongdai 梁宗岱, “Xiangzheng zhuyi” 象徵主義 (Symbolism), in Shi yu zhen 詩與真 (Poetry and truth) (Beijing: Zhongyang bianyi chubanshe, 2006), 87.

74. Liang Zongdai, “Tanshi” 談詩 (On poetry) in Liang Zongdai wenji II pinglun juan 梁宗岱文集 (Works of Liang Zongdai) (Beijing: Zhongyang bianyi chubanshe, 2006), vol. 2, 85.

76. Liang Zongdai, “Shi yu zhen,” 71. Liu Xie, Wenxin diaolong “興者，起也。……起情者，依微以擬議.” Wenxin diaolong jiaozhu, 文心雕龍校注 (Annotated Wenxin dialogue) (Taipei: Heluo tushu chubanshe, 1976), 240.

77. Liang Zongdai, “Tanshi,” 71.

79. Stephen Owen, ed., Readings in Chinese Literary Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1992), 257–258. Also see Chen Taisheng’s 陳太勝 comment, in Xiangzheng zhuyi yu zhongguo xiandai shixue 象徵主義與中國現代詩學 (Symbolism and Chinese modernist poetics) (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2005), chapter 4.

80. Jiang Guangci, “Shiyue geming yu eluosi wenxue” 詩學革命與俄羅斯文學 (October revolution and Russia literature), in Jiang Guangci wenji 蔣光慈文集 (Works of Jiang Guangci), vol. 4 (Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 1988), 68. For the tension within Jiang Guangci’s revolutionary poetics and revolutionary engagement, see my discussion in The Monster That Is History: History, and Fictional Writing in Modern China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), chapter 3.

81. Qu Qiubai 瞿秋白, “Yishu yu rensheng” 藝術與人生 (Art and life, 1923), Qu Qiubai wenji 瞿秋白文集 (Works of Qu Qiubai) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1985), vol. 1 (literature edition), 309.

82. Qu Qiubai, “Wenyi de ziyou he wenxuejia de buziyou” 文藝的自由和文學家的不自由 (The freedom of art and the lack of freedom of literati), in Qu Qiubai wenji, vol. 3 (literature edition), 67. “Generally speaking, literature and art are nothing but provocation and propaganda, either intentionally or unintentionally. Literature and art are an eternal and omnipresent phonograph. The stake is which class is the phonograph is made for, and whether it is well made or not.”

83. Paul Pickowicz, Marxist Literary Thought in China: The Influence of Ch’ü Ch’iu-pai (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981). Because of his conflicting personalities, T. A. Hsia calls Qu a “tender-hearted” revolutionary; see The Gate of Darkness: Studies on the Leftist Literary Movement in China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968), chapter 1. Also see Nick Knight, Marxist Philosophy in China: From Qu Qiubai to Mao Zedong, 1923–1945 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2005), 29–52.

84. Ellen Widmer, “Qu Qiubai and Russian Literature,” in Merle Goldman, ed., Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1985), chapter 5.

85. For a detailed description of Qu Qiubai and his early reflection of and on the poetics of yuan, see Fu Xiuhai Shidai midu de fengfu yu tongku 時代覓渡的豐富與痛苦：瞿秋白文藝思想研究 (The gain and pain on an epochal journey: a study of Qu Qiubai’s literary thought) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 2011), chapter 1, particularly 27–28.

86. Zhong Rong 鍾嶸 (ca. 468–518), Shipin 詩品 (Classification of poetry); “Shipin xu” 詩品序 (Preface to Classification of Poetry), in Shipin jianzhu 詩品箋注 (Classification of Poetry with annotations) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 2009), 28.

87. “Shidaxu” 詩大序 (The Great Preface), in Maoshi zhengyi 《毛詩正義》 (The Mao exegetical tradition of the Classic of Poetry) (Taipei: Xinwenfeng chuban youxiangongsi, 2001), 40; translated in Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought, 52.

88. Qu Qiubai, Duoyu de hua 多餘的話 (Superfluous words), in Qu Qiubai wenji, vol. 7 (political theory edition), 702.

89. Ibid., 694. The quote is from “Shuli” 黍離 (The ruined capital), in Xu Yuanchong, trans., Book of Poetry (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2012), 74.

90. Xie Zhixi 解志熙, “Fengzhi yu Ai Qing de shi” 馮至與艾青的詩 (Poetry of Feng Zhi and Ai Qing), in Yan Jiayan 嚴家炎, ed., Erishi shiji zhongguo wenxueshi 二十世紀中國文學史 (A history of twentieth-century Chinese literature) (Beijing: Gaodeng jiaoyu chubanshe, 2010), vol. 2, 208. In his critique of Ai Qing’s famous poem “Dayanhe” 大堰河, Du Heng 杜衡 describes Ai Qing as “a violent revolutionary on the one hand, and a self indulgent esthete on the other.” Du Heng’s critique appeared in 1937, quoted from Xie Zhixi, Fengzhi yu Ai Qing de shi,” 208.

91. Xie Zhixi, “Fengzhi yu Ai Qing de shi,” 206.

92. Ai Qing, “Chuihaozhe” 吹號者 (The bugler), in Xie Mian 謝冕, ed., Zhongguo xinshi zongxi 中國新詩總系, 1937–1949 (Compendium of modern Chinese poetry, 1937–1949), volume ed. Wu Xiaodong 吳曉東 (Beijing: Renmin wenuxue chubanshe, 2009), 59.

93. Ai Qing finished Shilu 詩論 (Treatise on poetry) between 1938 and 1939; this refers to the first draft of Ai Qing’s endeavor.

94. The 1941 edition of Shilun comprises other writings from the late thirties and early forties: Shide sanwen mei 詩與散文美 (The prosaic beauty of poetry), Shi yu xuanchuan 詩與宣傳 (Poetry and propaganda), Shi yu shidai 詩與時代 (Poetry and its time), Shiren lun 詩人論 (On the poet).

95. See Lan Huazeng’s 藍華增 discussion in “Ai Qing, Zhu Guangqian, Shilun bijiao” 艾青、朱光潛《詩論》比較 (A comparative study of Ai Qing’s and Zhu Guangqian’s Treatise on Poetry), Zhongguo xiandai wenxue yanjiu congkan 中國現代文學研究叢刊 (Journal of modern Chinese literary studies) 2 (1987): 136–143.

96. Ai Qing 艾青, Shilun xiudingben 詩論修訂本 (Treatise on Poetry, a revised edition) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1995), 12.

101. Shilun was first published in 1942; a revised edition was published in 1947, with three additional chapters.

102. Zhu Guanqian, Shilun 詩論 (Treatise on poetry) (Hefei: Anhui jiaoyu chubanshe, 1997), 100.

103. Ai Qing, Shilun, 62–63.

104. Lan Huazeng, “Ai Qing, Zhu Guangqian, Shilun bijiao,” 135.

105. Ai Qing, “Shi de sanbu” 詩的散步 (Excursion of poetry), in Shilun, 57.

106. Xu Chi, “Shuqing de fangzhu” 抒情的放逐 (Exiling lyricism), literary supplement, Xingdao ribao 星島日報 (Xingdao daily), May 13, 1939. See Zhang Songjian’s discussion in Shuqing zhuyi, chapter 2, particularly 82–87. Also see Leonard Chan 陳國球, “Fangzhu shuqing: cong Xu Chi de shuqinglun shuoqi” 放逐抒情：從徐遲的抒情論說起 (Lyricism in exile: Xu Chi and his critics), Qinghua zhongwen xuebao 清華中文學報 (Tsinghua bulletin of Chinese literature), 8 (2012): 229–261.

107. T. S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” in The Sacred Wood (Mineola, N.Y.: Courier Dover, 1997), 28.

108. See Zhang Songjian’s analysis in de zaichufa, zhongguo sishi niandai xiandaizhuyi shichao xintan 現代詩的再出發：中國四十年代現代主義詩潮新探 (The resurgence of modernist poetry: a new study of Chinese modernist poetry in the 1940s) (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2009), 134–142. Ouwaiou 鷗外鷗 recommends that a poet should “reject feeling,” while Hu Mingshu, with Guo Moruo as his target, criticizes the flooding of sentimentalism as the major shortcoming of modern Chinese poetry during the wartime.

109. Hu Feng, “Jintian, women de zhongxin wenti shishenme? Qiyi, guanyu chuangzuo yu shenghuo de xiaogan” 今天，我們的中心問題是什麽？其一，關於創作與生活的小感 (What is our top priority issue today? First, a few thoughts about creation and life), Qiyu 七月, 5, no. 1 (1940), included in Minzu zhanzheng yu wenyi xingge 民族戰爭與文藝性格 (Nationalist war and literary character) (Chongqing: Nantian, 1945), 120–121. Quoted from Hu Feng quanji (Complete works of Hu Feng) (Wuhan: Hubei renmin chubanshe, 1999), vol. 2, 612–614. See Wang Lili’s 王麗麗 discussion, in Zai wenyi yu yishi xingtai zhijian: Hu Feng yanjiu 在文藝與意識形態之間: 胡風研究 (Between literature and ideology: a study of Hu Feng) (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2003), chapter 1, particularly 62–72.

110. I am using Yunzhong Shu’s translation, Buglers on the Home Front: The Wartime Practice of the Qiyue (July) School (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), 24. Whereas the Lakeside Poets (Feng Xuefeng, Wang Jingzhi, Ying Xueren) are a group of young poets after the model of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, and Leigh Hunt, Wang Tongzhao demonstrates in his realist fiction an understated melancholy in a Chekhovian manner.

111. Critics have pointed out Hu Feng was introduced to Trotsky’s literary theory most likely through Lu Xun, whose interpretation of Blok is largely based on Trotsky’s. See Wang Fanxi 王凡西, “Hu Feng yizhu duhougan” 胡風遺著讀後感 (Thoughts on the posthumous publications of Hu Feng), http://www.marxists.org/chinese/0/marxist.org-chinese-wong-99.htm. Wang (1907–2002) was an active Trotskyite forced into exile overseas after 1949. Hu would have agreed with Trotsky’s statement: “Blok is not one of us; but is walking toward us. And he fell on his way to us. But his emotional agitation bought about something most important to our time. His poem … will last forever.” Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, ed. William Keach, trans. Rose Stunsky (Chicago: Haymarket, 2005), 111. Trotsky’s book was later translated by 惠泉 (pen name of Wang Fanxi) as Wenxue yu geming 文學與革命. See my discussion in “Youqing de lishi: shuqing chuantong yu zhongguo xiandaixing” 有情的歷史: 抒情傳統與中國現代性 (A history with feeling: lyrical tradition and Chinese literary modernity), Zhongguo wenzhe yanjiu jikan 中國文哲研究集刊 (Bulletin of Chinese literary and philosophical studies) 33 (2008): 125.

112. Wang Lili, Zai wenyi yu yishi xingtai zhijian, chapter 1, particularly 29–47.

113. Hu Feng, preface to Ji’e de Guo Su’e 飢餓的郭素娥 (Hungry Guo Su’e), in Yang Yi 楊義 et al., eds., Lu Ling yanjiu ziliao 路翎研究資料 (Research materials on Lu Ling) (Beijing: Shiyue wenyi chubanshe, 1993), 60.

114. Hu Feng, “Qingchun di shi” 青春底诗 (Poetry of youth); this is a preface to Lu Ling’s 路翎 Caizhu di ernümen 财主底兒女們 (Children of the rich), in Luling yanjiu ziliao 路翎研究資料 (Research materials of Lu Ling) (Beijing: Zhishi chanquan chubanshe, 2010), 74.

115. Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, ed. William Keach, trans. Rose Stunsky (Chicago: Haymarket, 2005), 144.

116. Hu Feng made his statement in response to Hu Mingshu, editor of Shi 詩 (Poetry) in 1942; Hu Feng, “Guanyu shide xingxianghua” 關於詩的形象化 (On the imagistic projection of poetry), in Hu Feng quanji, vol. 3, 84. Hu Feng is casting a modest self-portrait here, as he had published poems since the twenties.

117. Hu Feng, “Guanyu shiren, guanyu dieryi de shiren” 關於詩人，關於第二義的詩人 (On the poet, and the poet of the secondary category), in Hu Feng quanji, vol. 3, 73–76.

119. In his study of Hu Feng’s poetics, Kirk Denton reminds us of Hu’s intricate relationship with premodern Chinese intellectual history. The Problematic of Self, 23, 39–40, 69–70. See also Stephen Owen’s discussion of the interplay between poetic personality and poetical manifestation in ancient literary thought, in Chinese Literary Theory, chapter 1.

120. Hu Feng, “Guanyu shiren, guanyu dieryi de shiren,” in Hu Feng quanji, vol. 3, 76.

121. Feng Zhi, “Lierke—wei shizhounian erzuo” 里爾克——為十周年而作 (Rilke—in memory of the tenth anniversary of his passing away), Feng Zhi quanji 馮至全集 (Complete works of Feng Zhi, the authorial selections) (Beijing: Shoudu shifan daxue chubanshe, 1999), vol. 4, 84–85; I am using Zhang Songjian’s unpublished translation with modifications.

123. See my discussion in chapter 3.

124. Du Fu, “Leyouyuan ge” 樂遊園歌 (Song of Leyou Garden), in Chouzhaoao 仇兆鰲, ed., Dushi xiangzhu 杜詩詳注 (Du Fu’s poetry with complete annotations) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979), vol. 2, 103.

125. Du Fu Zhuan 杜甫傳 (Biography of Du Fu) was published in 1952.

126. Tang Shi “Huai Mudan” 懷穆旦 (Remembering Mu Dan), in Jiuye shiren: Zhongguo xinshi de zhongxing 九葉詩人：中國新詩的中興 (Nine leaves poets: the modern Chinese poetry) (Shanghai: Shanghai jiaoyu chubanshe, 2003), 93; also see Chen Taisheng, Xiangzheng zhuyi yu zhongguo xiandai shixue, 202–207, particularly 203.

127. Mu Dan 穆旦, “Weilaoxin ji: cong yumu ji shuoqi” 慰勞信集: 從魚目集說起 (From the collection of fish eyes to the collection of comfort letters: a critique), in Mudan shiwenji 穆旦詩文集 (Mu Dan: poetry and prose) (Beijing: renmin wenxue chubanshe, 2006), 54. See Sun Yushi 孫玉石, “Mu Dan: tujin xinshi xiandaixing de tanxianzhe” 穆旦突進新詩現代性的探險者 (Mu Dan: the explorer venturing into the modernist domain of new poetry), in Zhongguo xiandai shixue luncong 中國現代詩學論叢 (Critique of modern Chinese poetics) (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2010), 512–518; Zhang Songjian’s discussion, in Xiandaishi de zaichufa, 138–139.

129. Ibid. Accordingly, in the words of Wang Zuoliang 王佐良, one of the Nine Leaves poets, Mu Dan is the lyricist “who best combines the metaphysical and the sensuous in his works.” Quoted from Zhang Songjian, Xiandaishi de zaichufa, 151. Tang Shi holds a similar view, in “Boqiuzhe Mudan” 搏求者穆旦 (Mu Dan the fighting searcher), in Xin yidu ji 新意度集 (New collection of contemplations) (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1989), 91.

130. Mu Dan, in reading Ai Qing’s poetry collection Ta sizai dierci 他死在第二次 (He died the second time, 1940) was pleased to claim that Ai Qing had developed a new lyricism; see Zhang Songjian’s discussion in Xiandaishi de zaichufa, 139.

131. Mu Dan, “Senlin zhimei” 森林之魅 (Phantom in the forest), in Mu Dan zixuanji 穆旦自選集 (Works of Mu Dan, authorial selections) (Tianjin: Tianjin renmin chubanshe, 2012), 129–131. See Chen Taisheng, Xiangzheng zhuyi yu zhongguo xiandai shixue, chapter 7.

132. Chen Taisheng, Xiangzheng zhuyi yu zhongguo xiandai shixue, 206. Also see Ma Yongbo 馬永波, Jiuye shipai yu xifang xiandai zhuyi 九葉詩派與西方現代主義 (The Nine Leaves school and Western modernism) (Shanghai: Dongfang chuban zhongxin, 2010), 176–187.

133. Yuan Kejia 袁可嘉, Lun xinshi xiandai hua 論新詩現代化 (On the modernization of new poetry)) (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1988).

134. See Zhang Songjian, Xiandaishi de zaichufa, 185–191; Ma Yongbo, Jiuye shipai yu xifang xiandai zhuyi, 176–186.

135. Yuan Kejia 袁可嘉, “Shi yu minzhu” 詩與民主 (Poetry and democracy), “Ren de wenxue yu renmin de wenxue” 人的文學與人民的文學 (“Literature of the person” versus “literature of the people”); both appeared in the literary supplement of Dagongbao in 1948. See Zhang Songjian, Xiandaishi de zaichufa, 175–177.

136. For a discussion of Zhou Zuoren and the possible reasons for his treason, see, for instance, Susan Daruvala, Zhou Zuoren and an Alternative Chinese Response to Modernity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000).

137. Hu Lancheng, “Zhongguo wenming yu shijie wenyi fuxing” 中國文明與世界文藝復興 (Chinese civilization and world civilization), in Luanshi wentan 亂世文談 (Literary treatise in a chaotic time) (Hong Kong: Tiandi tushu, 2007), 201.

140. With a passage from the chapter “Qingcai” 情采 (The affections and coloration) of Wenxin Diaolong, “If even lesser things like plants and trees depend on circumstance (of ‘the affection’) and substance (or ‘fruit’), it is all the more so in works of literature, whose very basis is transmission of that upon which the mind is intent. If the words contradict that upon which the mind is intent, what is to be proved by writing?” Stephen Owen comments, “The assumption of authenticity was central to the ‘Great Preface’ of the Book of Songs: the Songs are involuntary expressions of how people really felt. On the other hand the writings of the rhetorician … were often described in terms of deception, with the implicit presumption that the person who leads others astray himself knows better. Here the question of authenticity versus writing as a value in itself is clearly formulated: in the case of the Book [Classic] of Songs, the poems follows from prior emotion [qing] and the reader discovers the real emotion in the text.” Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought, 243–244.

141. Xie Mian 謝冕, “Weile yige mengxiang” 爲了一個夢想 (For the sake of a dream), in Bainian zhongguo xinshi shilun: zhongguo xinshi zongxi daoyanji 百年中國新詩史論：中國新詩總系導言集 (A centennial review of modern Chinese poetry: a collection of the prefaces to the compendium of modern Chinese poetry) (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2010), 169–185; Hong Zicheng 洪子誠, Zhongguo dangdai wenxueshi 中國當代文學史 (A history of contemporary Chinese literature) (Beijing: Beijng daxue chubanshe, 1999), 74; Li Yang 李揚, Kangzheng suming zhilu: shehui zhuyi xianshi zhuyi yanjiu, 1942–1976 抗爭宿命之路：社會主義現實主義研究 1942–1976 (Changchun: Shidai wenyi chubanshe, 1993), 145–254; Wang Guangming 王光明, “Wuliushi niandai de shige, sanwen, yujuzuo” 五六十年代的詩歌，散文，與劇作 (Poetry, prose, and drama in the 1950s and 1960s), in Yan Jiayan 嚴家炎, ed., Ershi shiji zhongguo wenxueshi 二十世紀中國文學史 (History of modern Chinese literature of the twentieth century) (Beijing: Gaodeng jiaoyu chubanshe, 2010), vol. 3, chapter 22, particularly section 4.

142. Shixuan 詩選 (Poetry anthology) anthologizes poems produced between 1953 and 1956; Yuan wrote this preface in 1956; quoted from Xie Mian, “Weile yige mengxiang,” in Bainian zhongguo xinshi shilue, 174; also see Wang Guangming’s discussion in Yan Jiayan, ed., Ershi shiji zhongguo wenxueshi, vol. 3, 24–25.

143. He Jingzhi’s 賀敬之 comment made as late as the end of the Cultural Revolution; quoted from Xie Mian, “Weile yige mengxiang,” 174.

144. Eighteen of Mao’s classical-style poems were featured in the inaugural issue of Shikan 詩刊 (Poetry), a poetry journal founded in response to Mao’s “hundred flowers” movement. See Xie Mian, in Bainian zhongguo xinshi shilue, “Weile yige mengxiang,” 178 note 3.

145. The New Folksong Movement was launched in April 1958. It resulted in hundreds of thousands of new folksongs allegedly spontaneously created by Chinese people; it culminated in the publication of Hongqi geyao 紅旗歌謠 (Red banner ballad), coedited by Guo Moruo and Zhou Yang, in September 1959. See Xie Mian, “Weile yige mengxiang,” 182–184; Wang Guangming, in Yan Jiayan, ed., Ershi shiji zhongguo wenxueshi, vol.3, 42–43. Both He Qifang and Feng Zhi understandably supported the New Folksong Movement. See He Qifang, “Zaitan shige xingshi wenti” 再談詩歌形式問題 (A second discussion of the problem of the form of poetry), in He Qifang quanji, vol. 5, 139–180; Feng Zhi, “Xinshi de xingshi wenti” 新詩的形式問題 (The problem of form of new poetry), in Feng Zhi quanji 馮至全集 (Complete works of Feng Zhi) (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 1999), vol. 6, 325–333.

146. For a summary of the new poetry campaign in the context of revolutionary realism and the revolutionary romanticism movement, see Wang Guangming, in Yan Jiayan, ed., Ershi shiji zhongguo wenxueshi, vol. 3, 27–41.

147. Zhou Yang, “Xinminge kaituole shige de xindaolu” 新民歌開拓了詩歌的新道路 (New folksong opens the new path of poetry), in Xinshige fazhan wenti 新詩歌發展問題 (Issues on the development of new poetry) (Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe, 1959), vol. 1, 13.

148. Feng Zhi, “Mantan xinshi de nuli fangxiang” 漫談新詩的努力方向 (A random talk on the direction of new poetry), Wenyibao 文藝報 9 (1958); quoted from Xie Mian’s summary of the new poetry campaign in the context of the revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism movement; see Wang Guangming, in Yan Jiayan, ed., Ershi shiji zhongguo wenxueshi, vol. 3, 27–41. 謝冕, “weile yige mengixang,” 166.