Abstract
The Menglong poetry (Misty Poetry) movement is associated with the inauguration of Chinese literary modernism in the post-Mao era. However, whether Menglong poetry is self-aware modernism or misunderstood romanticism is an unsettled case both in the debate of the 1980s and in later literary criticism.
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Notes
- 1.
Meng Ke’s original translation is “The Moment.” Huang Rui changed it into “Today” from the second issue of Jintian. See“An Interview of Bei Dao,” Nanfang Metropolitan Daily (Nanfang dushi bao) 27 June: 2008. B2.
- 2.
It refers to a long brick wall on Xidan Street, Beijing. In 1978 democratic dissents gave speeches and posted their articles.
- 3.
It refers to the Third Plenum of the Eleventh National Party Congress Central Committee. In this conference Deng set up the policy of Economic Reforms and Openness (Gaige Kaifang).
- 4.
See Deng Xiaoping’s “The Speech in the Fourth Congress of Writers and Artists in 1979” (“Zai zhongguowenxueyishu gongzuozhe disicidaibiaodahui shang de jianghua”). Deng Xiaopingwenxuan, pp. 175–178.
- 5.
Gao was politically exile in 1989 and was the recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature.
- 6.
See Tay’s translation of this poem in Tay (1985). “'Obscure Poetry’: A Controversy in Post-Mao China.” p. 132.
- 7.
See Tay’s translation of this poem in Tay (1985). “'Obscure Poetry’: A Controversy in Post-Mao China.” p. 136.
- 8.
Jiang He claimed that the only subject of all his poems is “people.” See Shikan, 1980: 08, p. 47.
- 9.
See McDougall’s translation in McDougall (1997). The Literature of China in the Twentieth Century. New York: Columbia University. p. 433.
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Yang, M. (2016). A Vision of Modernity: Menglong Poetry from 1978–1983. In: Cao, H., Paltiel, J. (eds) Facing China as a New Global Superpower. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-823-6_14
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