Parallel Processes in the Language of Modern and Contemporary Russian and Chinese Poetry Edited by Natalia Azarova and Yulia Dreyzis Institute of Linguistics, RAS Moscow 2019 Table of Contents Modern Poetry Magazines in China (Interaction of Official and Informal Discourse) (Azarova N., Dreyzis Yu.) ................................................................................................................................ 3 Poem Titles in Contemporary Chinese Poetry in their Projection on Russian Poetry (Azarova N., Dreyzis Yu.) ................................................................................................................................... 13 Translating Contemporary Russian and Chinese Poetry: Practice of Poet-to-Poet Translation (Bochaver S.) ................................................................................................................................. 18 Challenging the Boundary between Essayism and Verse in Contemporary Russian Poetry (Feshchenko V.) ............................................................................................................................. 28 WORD. LETTER. IMAGE. On the Visual in Poetry (Grauz T.) ................................................. 38 Contemporary Dramatized Poetry in China. The Case of Yu Jian (Kuznetsova Yu.) ................. 105 Language System and Linguistic Creativity in Modern Russian Poetry: Syntax (Sidorova M., Lipgart A.) ................................................................................................................................... 114 Chinese Character Poetics and Contemporary Chinese Poetry——From William Yip to Xia Yu (Tang Juan) ................................................................................................................................. 149 Colorful Patterns of Chinese Poetry (Tugulova O.) .................................................................... 178 A Critique of the Aesthetics of “Xing” in the Book of Songs and its Correspondence to Contemporary Poetry——A Case Study of Xia Yu's Poetry Language (Weng Wenxian) ......... 184 Modelling of Art Space in Modern Russian Poetry Written under the Influence of Chinese Culture (in poetry of Natalia Azarova, Alexander Skidan, Nikolay Zvyagintsev, and Alexey Alexandrov) (Zeifert E.) .............................................................................................................. 212 Jouis-sens: The Linguistic Strategy in Zang Di’s Poetry/ Poetics (Yang Xiaobin) ..................... 236 2 Modern Poetry Magazines in China (Interaction of Official and Informal Discourse)1 The paradox of Russian literary life is a space that is almost free from the magazines specializing exclusively in poetry. Traditional “thick” magazines have been legitimizing the subordinate position of poetry in relation to prose for more than two centuries now, which began with the famous speech of Dostoevsky on the anniversary of Pushkin. There are very few purely poetic magazines in Russia: Air, Arion, PROSŌDIA, POet Magazine. Air, for example, focuses on the broadest coverage of the spectrum of Russian poets in its projection on the international context, while Arion tries to follow the traditional algorithm preprogrammed by the Union of Writers of Russia. In this regard, it seems interesting to compare the situation with poetry magazines in Russia and China, where since the end of the Cultural Revolution the flowering of poetic publishing projects scarcely has any analogues. When describing Chinese poetic and literary magazines, they are usually subdivided into the official, the unofficial and the underground2. The official ones are created by government structures of various levels, the unofficial ones are open editions funded by private capital (often by the poets themselves), and underground samizdat are small-circulation, uncensored journals that are distributed among like-minded people. It is curious that already here the triple model appears instead of the adamant opposition of “authorized” – “unauthorized” that we are accustomed to (or samizdat / underground – official). Not only magazines, but also poetry itself in China is described in terms of official, semi- official and unofficial. Among those who create modern texts, there are authors who adhere to state-sanctioned literary policy. This policy in general preserves the line that Mao Zedong laid down in 1942 in his famous Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art, which placed literature and art in subjection to political ideology (although today's control is incomparable with that of the 1940-1970s). The origins of unofficial Chinese poetry lie in the literary underground, whose first, isolated manifestations date back to the late 1950s-early 1960s. On a somewhat larger scale, the underground declares itself during the Cultural Revolution, when the political and ideological 1 The research was rendered possible by the RSHF (RFBR) grant 16-24-10001. 2 See Van Crevel M. Unofficial Poetry Journals from the People’s Republic of China: A Research Note and an Annotated Bibliography // MCLC Resource Center Publication. 2007. http://u.osu.edu/mclc/online- series/vancrevel2/. Yeh M. Contemporary Chinese Poetry Scenes // Chicago Review. 1993. Vol. 39. № 3/4. P. 279– 283. 3 restrictions on literature and art were the most stringent. It was then that the first spaces of unofficial poetry were formed, including literary salons3. Before the era of reforms in 1978, the metaphor of the underground can be interpreted literally: the underground is “secret”, “under-ground”, “illegal”. Poets show their poems only to the closest friends, sometimes the texts are destroyed immediately after reading. The underground community neglects any official authority; it builds its own hierarchy. Underground poetry continued to exist in the era of reforms. The underground in the near- literary, institutional sense became part of unofficial poetry. Nevertheless, today in China underground often means not politically engaged texts but aesthetic-oriented poetry, different from the aesthetics of the mass reader. In this sense, the term “underground” partially overlaps with the term “unofficial poetry”. In the 1980s, some important authors began to appear in the official press, and the structure of poetic space grew more complicated, but the gradation of semi-official poetry – unofficial poetry generally persists. The perception of the term “avant-garde” also proves to be important for understanding of the context of Chinese poetry magazines. In China, it is interpreted differently than in contemporary Western discourse. Avant-garde poetry in China includes a very large set of texts with different poetics that do not fit within the framework of official poetry. In the first years after the Cultural Revolution, the poetics of the avant-garde was determined ex negativo: with the active dissociation from subjects, images, poetic form and linguistic characteristics that appeared in products of state-sanctioned orthodoxy. However, since the mid-1980s, the avant-garde has finally eclipsed the official poetry and has become greatly differentiated. Today the term “avant-garde” partially overlaps with the term “unofficial poetry”. With all the vagueness of the meanings of both terms, “avant-garde” is understood primarily as an aesthetic category, and “unofficial poetry” as an institutional one, while the expression “unofficial magazine” is much more common than “avant-garde magazine”. Unlike the Russian “thick” magazines, “official” Chinese magazines do not imply a certain aesthetic position or a system of aesthetic prohibitions and restrictions. It is precisely the official magazines that are the least homogeneous, or rather, the most heterogeneous. As Boris Dubin points out, in Russia “old ‘thick’ magazines, created back in Soviet times, were reduced in circulation and functions to ‘small literary reviews’”4. In China, unofficial magazines are much 3 Sunken Temple: A snapshot of the dead tradition of underground Chinese poetry of the 70s of the XX century 沉沦 的圣殿：中国二十世纪 70 年代地下诗歌遗照 / Ed. by Liao Yiwu 廖奕武. Urümqi 乌鲁木齐: Xinjiang Qingshaonian 新疆青少年, 1999. 4 Dubin B.V. Farewell to the book // Dubin B.V. Essays on the Sociology of Culture. Moscow, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie Publ. 2017. P. 836. 4 more homogeneous precisely because of the explicated aesthetic position and the more significant role of criticism. Editors of official magazines select texts primarily based on institutional affiliation or take into account a certain significant status (whether the authors are members of the Writers' Union, China Federation of Literary and Art Circles (CFLAC), etc.). In addition, there are thematic limitations (including censorship) and, finally, the political beliefs and political activity of the authors, including those residing abroad, are taken into account. World and public fame is significant for publication only in official journals. It is interesting that today almost every major poet is published in magazines and books that are official in the institutional sense, that is, are officially registered publications with impressum for library catalogues, they have a fixed price on them, as is customary in China, etc. In the 21st century, one can be published in official magazines (or have membership in official institutions such as national and local Writers' Unions) and still get recognition in China and beyond as an aesthetically unofficial poet. Yu Jian 于坚 and Xi Chuan 西川, some of the best-known first-line poets, undoubtedly