20th Century Chinese Poetry Classics

Author: Wang Furén, Editor-in-Chief, Compiled by the Department of Chinese, Beijing Normal University
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: Chinese New Poetry, strictly speaking, is Chinese modern vernacular poetry. I call it Chinese "modern" vernacular poetry because it differs from ancient Chinese vernacular poetry. After the May Fourth Movement, Hu Shi wrote a book titled "History of Vernacular Literature" to explain that the vernacular literature he advocated was not baseless. According to his view, Chinese culture, from its inception, has been dominated by vernacular literature, which has been the mainstream of Chinese literary development for thousands of years, and almost all valuable literary works were vernacular works. Chinese New Poetry has a completely different characteristic from both ancient Chinese poetry tradition and Western poetry tradition. This characteristic appears absurd on the surface, namely that it was not pioneered by a great poet but by a person who was not a poet. Hu Shi was such a non-poet who became a great poet. It can be said that any modern poetry enthusiast could write a better New Poetry than Hu Shi's, but so far, no outstanding Chinese New Poetry poet has made a greater contribution to Chinese New Poetry than Hu Shi.