Introduced through poetry translation or not? Recontextualizing avant-garde nature of Chinese new poetry from the perspective of cosmopolitanism

Abstract

Translation could function as an act of epistemological force of intrusion into the domestic poetic paradigm amid cross-cultural encounter. Chinese New Poetry at the early 20th century featuring Chinese national avant-garde spirit, worked a poetic paradigm shift against classical Chinese poetry, which was in alignment with Chinese Vernacular Movement and the May Fourth New Literature Movement. The inheritance of the traditional Chinese cultural treasure combined with the appropriated forms of foreign poems in creating Chinese New Poetry has contributed to promoting Chinese vernacular language from the periphery to the centre in China’s society then. The paper offers a re-examination of the critical role of the translations of foreign poems in promoting Chinese New Poetry in the early 20th century. It argues that Chinese New Poetry is a hybridized poetic genre with avant-garde spirit encapsulated in the globalization process, challenging the traditional conceptualization of Chinese poetry and reenergizing Chinese poetic prosperity. The intense interactions with the cultural foreignness via the translational activities have helped Chinese New Poetry towards a direction of modernity and openness. By drawing on the cosmopolitanism perspective, the paper relates the dialectic relationship between poetry translation with the genesis of Chinese New Poetry to the wider context of world literature.

Keywords

• Chinese new poetry
• translational activities
• cosmopolitanism
• avant-garde spirit
• Chinese literary and cultural identities