The Inferno Tango: Gender Politics and Modern Chinese Poetry, 1917-1980 by Liansu Meng A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Comparative Literature) in the University of Michigan 2010 Doctoral Committee: Professor Lydia H. Liu, Co-Chair, Columbia University Associate Professor Santiago Colas, Co-Chair Professor Shuen-fu Lin Associate Professor Zheng Wang © Liansu Meng 2010 To my parents ii Acknowledgments It has been eight years since the inception of this project, and it would not have been possible to complete it without the help and support of many people and organizations. First, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my advisor, Professor Lydia H. Liu. Her constant intellectual guidance, uncompromising criticism and invaluable advice are vital to the shaping of this work as it evolves from an intuition to its current form. I am grateful to Professor Santiago Colas who graciously served as my co-chair and offered unwavering support for my work through all its stages. I am grateful to Professor Shuen-fu Lin not only for kindly lending his expertise in traditional Chinese poetry and philosophy, but also infusing in me a genuine love of life and scholarship. I thank Professor Wang Zheng for her insightful comments on every chapter of my dissertation and helping me through personal difficulties. I am grateful also to Professor Larissa Heinrich for her understanding and encouragement while serving on my committee during her year at Michigan. I would like to extend my thanks to the following institutions at the University of Michigan that generously supported my research with fellowships, awards and teaching assistantships: the Department of Comparative Literature, the Center for Chinese Studies, the English Department, the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, the Rackham School of Graduate Studies, and the Center for the Education of Women. I want to iii particularly thank Tobin Siebers, Yopie Prins, Harris Nancy, Sonia Schmerl and Paula Frank for making it possible for me to work off campus for four years. I am also grateful for Professor Kang-I Sun Chang who welcomed me into the Yale community and introduced me to many friends at Yale. My work has also benefited from the assistance of many archives and libraries both in China and the United States. I wish to thank the staffs at the University of Michigan Library, Yale University Library, Tsinghua University Library, the National Library of China, the Chicago Historical Museum, the Newberry Library, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the University of Chicago Library. I want to especially thank my friends at the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library of Yale University for the many years of hospitality and moral support. Many people offered valuable comments and suggestions on various drafts or chapters of my dissertation: Professors Michel Hockx, Yunte Huang, Xiaobing Tang, Bonnie McDougall, Michelle Yeh, Howard Choy, Nick Kaldis, Jean-jacques Poucel and Carolyn FitzGerald. My special thanks also go to Ying Zhang and Nicholas Theisen, who patiently waded through several drafts of this dissertation, and whose insights and suggestions immeasurably improved the quality of this work. I am also grateful to Jennifer Feeley, Lucas Klein, Sumiao Li, Xiwen Mai, Jing Jiang, Chris Love, Chummei Du, Yurou Zhong, Anatoly Detwyler and Li Zhang for their valuable comments on different parts of this work. A number of people contributed in significant ways to this work during the final stage of its writing. I thank Nicholas Theisen, Michael Kicey, Cindy Crooker, and Donald Brown, for their careful reading and thorough editing of my draft. Their help made the completion of this work a humane experience. iv It would not have been possible to complete this project without the assistance of many poets, writers, scholars and literary activists in China and abroad, who generously offered their time to speak with me and shared valuable materials: Wen Lipeng, Zhang Tongxia, Bei Dao, Mang Ke, Huang Rui, Xu Xiao, Tang Xiaodu, Ouyang Jianghe, Xi Chuan, Lin Mang, Liu Fuchun, Elinor Pearlstein, Zhai Yongming, Zhou Zan, Gan Qi, John Rosenwald, Xie Zhixi, Zhang Songjian, Zhao Yiheng, Chen Li, John Crespi, Wang Jie, Li Nan and Hei Dachun. I owe a special debt to Ao Fuming who welcomed me into his home, patiently guided me through the priceless collection of original materials about Today! and talked with me for numerous hours on the phone. My thanks also extend to Han Shaogong for sharing his stories and kindly hosting my visit to his home in 2006. Chapter two of this dissertation is based on an article I published in a special issue of Today . I am thankful for all who had helped me in the writing of that article, especially for professors Lydia Liu and Li Tuo, who had labored tirelessly to improve the argument, structure, and text of that article. Chapter four first took shape when I presented at the conference titled “Crisis and Detour: 25 Years of Today” at the University of Notre Dame in 2006. I wish to thank the organizers of the conference for providing me with the opportunity to present my research. I have been fortunate to have my husband, Lei, being there for me all through this arduous journey. I would not have finished this dissertation without him. Finally, I dedicate this dissertation to my parents and family in China, who selflessly supported me to pursue an academic career. Their patience, understanding, endurance of my absence, and unfailing financial and moral support are a constant source of courage and inspiration. v Table of Contents Dedication ………………………………………………………………………………..ii Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………iii List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………vii Abstract………………………………………………………………………………….viii Introduction…………………………………………………………………………..……1 Chapter One: The Transnational Production of a Masculine Poetics in Guo Moruo’s The Goddesses ………………………………………………………………………………..22 Chapter Two: Wen Yiduo’s Ecological Turn in Chicago………………………………..71 Chapter Three: Chen Jingrong’s Journey to a Feminist Poetics......................................123 Chapter Four: The Birth of Today! Poets in 1978: Gender Politics and Underground Literature in China……………………………………………………...........................165 Conclusion……………………………………………………………...........................225 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………233 vi List of Figures Figure 1 Front Covers of Today! .......................................................................................168 2 Illustration of Mang Ke’s poem “I am a Poet -- to Bei Dao” ………………….182 3 Illustration in Bei Dao’s The Strange Seashore ………………………………..184 4 Dazhai Iron Girls in the 1970s …………………………………………………187 5 Illustrations of Bei Dao and Mang Ke’s poetry ………………………………..191 6 Mang Ke and a friend in front of No. 76 ………………………………………219 vii ABSTRACT The Inferno Tango: Gender Politics and Modern Chinese Poetry, 1917-1980 by Liansu Meng Co-Chairs: Lydia H. Liu and Santiago Colas This dissertation studies the gender politics of modern Chinese intellectuals through a close examination of the problem of masculinity and the making of modern poetry from the 1910s to the 1980s. My research focuses mainly on Guo Moruo, Wen Yiduo and Chen Jingrong of the early generation and more recent poets such as Bei Dao, Mang Ke and Shu Ting who emerged from the literary activism of Today! in the late 1970s. Combining archival research, close readings and methods from gender and literary history, I analyze the formative moments in the lives of Guo and Wen during their travels abroad in the 1910s and 1920s. I also examine Chen’s encounter with the Anti-Japanese War (1937-1945) and the Chinese Civil War (1945-1949) as well as the underground viii literary activities in the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) as embodied by the Today! poets. Many factors have contributed to the Chinese poets’ construction of their newly gendered subjectivities in times of profound national crisis and transformation. I argue that the masculinity of the poetic canon in modern China was naturalized and perpetuated by the discourses of love, marriage, nationalism, revolution and industrial progress as well as by the indigenous literati tradition. I also show how a small minority of poets including men and women were inspired by Western feminist thoughts on the one hand and Daoist philosophy on the other to develop alternative positions of gender in response. With a sustained focus on gender politics, my study seeks to reinterpret the literary and cultural history of China in the twentieth century. ix Introduction This project sprang from my interest in Jintian (Today! ), the first unofficial literary journal in China since 1949. From its debut on the street walls of major cultural and political institutions in Beijing on December 23, 1978, until it was closed down by the state police at the end of December 1980, the literary activists of Today! published 9 issues of the journal, a series of four books, and three issues of Materials for Internal Circulation . 1 By posting loose pages of the journal on street walls and holding poetry readings in the parks of Beijing as well as by nationwide distribution through the state postal system and various forms of personal sharing, Today! brought to national attention the underground literature and art that emerged during the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and circulated in small elite literary circles in Beijing. Born in 1949, Bei Dao, one of the founders and