Wu Mi's Conversations

Author: Wu Mi, compiled by Wu Xuezhao
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2005-01-01
Features: My father self-edited the Wu Mi Poetry Collection in 1934 (later published by Shanghai Zhonghua Book Company in May 1935). At the end of the volume, he compiled many articles he wrote on the principles, art, content, and form of poetry. These essays, which discuss the universal principles of all poetry, were mostly selected from the Xueheng magazine he edited in the 1920s and 1930s and the literary supplement of Dagongbao in Tianjin. He compiled these articles at the end of the volume to make them correspond with his poems, creating a mutual reflection. Therefore, in my father’s view, the appendix at the end of the Wu Mi Poetry Collection was an integral part of the collection, inseparable from it. For this re-edition of the Wu Mi Poetry Collection, due to the inclusion of many poems written after 1934 and collaborative works by his teachers, friends, and students, the volume has significantly increased in size. As a result, the original essays on poetry appended to the Collection had to be removed and compiled separately as Wu Mi on Poetry, to be published alongside the Wu Mi Poetry Collection. This was done out of necessity, and we sincerely hope for the readers’ understanding. Wu Mi on Poetry is organized in the same order as the original appendix to the Collection, with additional readings and lecture notes by my father written after 1934, all sourced from his manuscripts and diaries. Through these, we can see my father’s consistent views and principles on poetry over the years, which he has always upheld without change. My father was deeply passionate about reading, writing, and studying poetry throughout his life, and his writings on poetry were far more extensive than those included in this collection. According to his remaining texts and a note written by a student, the complete lecture notes for his course Comparative Study of Chinese and Western Poetry at Tsinghua University, his annotations on the Shen’an Zhai Poetry Collection (a four-volume edition) for his cousin Chen Tao (Bolan), his detailed annotations and critiques of modern famous poets’ works in Chaoke Lu, as well as numerous collections of poetry by his teachers, friends, and students, were all taken by a student who graduated from the Chinese Department of Southwest Normal College in 1965 (formerly a teacher at Chengdu No. 10 Middle School and an editor at Bashu Book Company) under the guise of borrowing and temporary. To this day, he refuses to return them, preventing my father’s life’s work and ideas from being shared with the world. This is truly a regrettable and outrageous situation! Wu Xuezhao, February 2004, Beijing