Fantasy's End

Mu Dan is regarded as the pioneer of modern Chinese poetry, having left behind fewer than 160 poems in his lifetime. "He possessed a spiritual agony that imbued even his most ordinary ideas with profound weight and solemnity." His translations of works by Pushkin, Shelley, Byron, Auden, and others deeply influenced generations of readers.
This book, using extensive documentation, recounts the tumultuous life of the poet Mu Dan/translator Zha Liangzheng during an era of profound change.
There are few poets like Mu Dan who, in a relatively short life, left behind such memorable, even proud, footprints—as a student, he hiked across Hunan, Guizhou, and Yunnan provinces, reading and tearing out pages of an English-Chinese dictionary along the way until he reached Kunming's Southwest Associated University; at 25, as part of the Chinese Expeditionary Force, he participated in the Anti-Japanese War on the Yunnan-Burma front, enduring severe life-and-death trials; in 1952, gratified by the founding of New China, he resolutely returned to his homeland after earning an American degree—not to mention his sufficient poetic works that demonstrate the fervent patriotism of a Chinese intellectual for his country and people... The creativity of his poetic output, his masterful command and proficiency in at least English and Russian, as a poet and translator, he was a genius who never had the chance to fully display, or rather, was not allowed to display, his talents. Even a comet burns brightly before disappearing; Mu Dan was not like that. He was a star consistently obscured by dark clouds. We only glimpse the radiant glow occasionally peeking through the thick clouds, and from that, we feel his boundless brilliance. —Xie Mian
But the true enigma of Mu Dan is this: on the one hand, he was most adept at expressing the tormented yet tormenting emotions of Chinese intellectuals, while on the other hand, his best qualities were entirely un-Chinese. Where other Chinese poets were vague and light as feathers, he was direct, almost pounding the table as he spoke. Amidst widespread superficiality, the richness of his organization and associations was almost offensive to others. —Wang Zuoliang

2025-02-01

上海文艺出版社

Arts and Culture eons

654

9787532190461