Form and Transformation in Modern Chinese Poetry and Poetics The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Skerratt, Brian Phillips. 2013. Form and Transformation in Modern Chinese Poetry and Poetics. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:11181112 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA ©2013 Brian Skerratt All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: David Wang Brian Skerratt Form and Transform ation in M odern Chinese Poetry and Poetics Abstract Hu Shi began the modern Chinese New Poetry movement by calling for the liberation of poetic form s, but w hat constitutes “form ” and how best to approach its liberation have rem ained di6cu lt issu es, as th e apparen t m aterial, objective reality of literary form is show n to be deeply em bedded both culturally and historically. ⌧is d issertation presents $ve movem ents of the dialectic between form and history, each illustrated by case stu d ies d raw n fro m th e th eo ry an d p ractice o f m o d ern C h in ese p o etry: $rst, th e h igh ly political and self-contradictory dem and for linguistic transparency; second, the discourse su rro u n d in g p o etic o b scu rity an d altern ative ap p ro ach es to th e q u estio n o f “m ean in g”; th ird , a theory of poetry based on its m usicality and a reading practice that em phasizes sam eness over di9erence; four, poetry’s status as “untranslatable” as against Chinese poetry’s reputation as “already translated”; and $fth, the im plications of an “iconic” view of poetic language. By read in g a selectio n o f p o ets an d sch o o ls th ro u gh th e len s o f th eir ap p ro ach es to fo rm , I allo w th e rad ical d i9eren ce w ith in th e trad itio n to eclip se th e m o re fam iliar co n trast o f m o d ern Chinese poetry with its foreign and pre-modern others. My dissertation represents a preliminary step tow ards a historically-inform ed form alism in the study of modern Chinese lite ra tu re . iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements v Chapter 1: Transparency An Introduction 1 Chapter 2: Obscurity Menglong: A M o d e rn H isto ry 46 Chapter 3: Musicality Zhu Guangqian and the Rhythm of New Poetry 99 Chapter 4: Translatability “Poetry is Poetry”: ⌧e U ntranslatable and the A lready-Translated 142 Chapter 5: Iconicity ⌧e Analog Poet: Hsia Yü E n te rs th e D ig ita l A g e 188 Conclusion: Poetry and Praxis 243 Bibliography 249 iv Acknowledgements It says so m eth in g ab o u t m y p erso n ality th at an ack n o w led g em en ts sectio n , to m e, can be nothing other than a list of the people I am most terri$ed of disappointing–people whose generosity and kindness I feel so unworthy of having received that no work of sch o larsh ip , least o f all an y th at I am cap ab le o f w ritin g, co u ld b egin to erase th at d eb t. S o it is w ith sin c e re h u m ility th a t I $rst acknow ledge the perpetual support of m y advisor, D avid Wang. Somehow it was always at the darkest moments of the process that I would crawl out from under m y rock and into W ang laoshi’s o6ce, o n ly to $n d th at h e w as n o t o n ly still invested in m e and m y project, but that he w as even brim m ing w ith ideas and suggestions for im provem ents and extensions to the w ork I had been ready to discard just m om ents before. To have him put his faith in me when I did not always share that faith was and is a suprem ely hum bling experience, and so it is to him that I dedicate this dissertation. I also w ish to th an k th o se oth er teach ers w h o su p p o rted , en co u raged , an d in Iu en ced me during my years working on this Ph.D. In terms of unIagging faith, the only one to rival Professor W ang would be his primary school classm ate, M ichelle Yeh, without whom this project would never have begun, let alone $nished. No one has challenged me intellectually more than Stephen Owen, whom I would also like to thank for helping to advise this dissertation. I pro$ted greatly from my interactions, in and out of the classroom , with Eileen Chow, Wilt Idema, Wai-Yee Li, Xiaofei Tian, Sarah Allen, Zeb Raft, Matthew Fraleigh, Daniel Albright, Despina Kakoudaki, Christopher Johnson, Michel Hockx, Lucas Klein, Hu Siao-chen, M ei Chia-ling, and Ann H uss. Before I cam e to H arvard, I was inspired by the teach in g o f C raig D w o rk in , M ich ael G o lsto n , S h an g W ei, B ru ce R o b b in s, an d S eiich i Makino. I want to thank the entire sta9 of EALC, especially Jim Zigo, Susan Kashiwa, Denise Oberdan, and Gus Espada; the sta9 of the Harvard-Yenching Library; and the sta9 of the B ok C enter for T eaching and L earning, especially E llen Sarkisian and V irginia M aurer. It is fair to say th at I h ave learn ed even m o re, acad em ically an d p erso n ally, fro m m y classm ates and friends at H arvard and elsew here than I have from m y illustrious professors and advisors. Above all, I w ish to thank tw o dear friends and brilliant hum ans, W ill H edberg and A riel Fox, w ho truly understand m e best. I am also grateful for the help and support of my dissertation group-mates, who read my work when it was least well-formed: Jie Li, Ying Qian, Angie Lai, Andrew Rodekohr, Erin Schlumpf, John Kim, Satoru Hashimoto, Tarryn Chun, and Casey Lee. Special thanks are due to May-yi Shaw and Nic Testerman, who were th ere fo r m e in th e $n al stretch , w h en I m o st n eed ed su p p o rt. For their love and friendship, I want to thank Rob and M olly M orris, Ana Olenina, Alexis Schulman, Barbara Geoghegan, Andrea and Cat Pien, Katie Carmody, Tracy Hwang, Laura Bohn, Erin Kappeler, Zack Stinson, Dan Iglesia, Lulu Hansen, Ren-Yuan Li, Jon Schlesinger, Rob W ard, Heidi Steinberg, and M ay Yang. Last, I want to thank my dear mother and father, Andrea and William; my grandmother Rose-Marie; my aunt Kathy; my sister L au ra an d b ro th er-in -law S h ah eed ; an d m y b eau tifu l n iece Z o ey. v ⌧e landlord says: “⌧e hardest thing is starting.” ⌧e landlord also says: “Even harder is $nishing.” 房東說：‘最難的是開始’ 房東又說：‘更難的是結束’ Hsia Yü ⇥, “✏e M usic and the Steps” ⇤⌅⇧⌃ vi Chapter 1 Transparency An Introduction Form and Chinese Modernity In D ecem b er o f 1 9 5 3 , B ian Z h ilin 卞之琳 (1 9 1 0 -2 0 0 0 ) p resen ted a talk en titled “⌧e R hythm of C hanting (Song) and the R hythm of Speech (R ecitation)” 哼唱型節奏 （吟調）和說話型節奏（誦調）at a panel on the problem of poetic form . In his talk, Bian discusses two lines of poetry he had noticed in a recent issue of Popular Poetry 大眾詩 歌 celebrating the 1949 R evolution: 革命大成功，百姓坐朝廷 Geming | da chenggong,/ baixing | zuo chaoting. ⌧e revolution has greatly succeeded, ⌧e people sit in the court.1 Bian points out the irony that this ode to the revolutionary founding of new China unw ittingly and out of habit reproduces the metrical structure of classical pentasyllabic verse (wuyan ju 五言句), w h ere each lin e co n sists o f a g ro u p o f tw o syllab les fo llo w ed b y a g ro u p of three. H ow could som eone celebrate the $nal liberation of the Chinese people in a verse form handed dow n by generations of aristocratic, C onfucian literati? B ian suggests revising 1 Bian Zhilin 卞之琳, “ H e n g c h a n g x in g jie zo u (y in d ia o ) h e sh u o h u a x in g jie zo u (so n g d ia o )” 哼唱型節奏 （吟調）和說話型節奏（誦調）, Zhongguo xiandai shilun 中國現代詩論, e d .