342 chapter nine
As for literary technique, it employs an abundance of associative and
imaginative imagery in a prose-poetic form that strongly recalls Xi
Chuan’s work. In this respect, it also displays kinship with the Elevated
aesthetic.^43
*Poets like Shen Haobo and Yan Jun have more to say than can be
handled within an “autonomous” realm of literature. As such, their
predecessors in modern times range far and wide, from Liang Qichao
in China to Marinetti in Italy, to name but two examples of roughly
a hundred years ago. The work of Liang comes to mind because it
stands at the beginning of modern Chinese literature; that of Mari-
netti, because the texts of Futurism, just like Shen’s and Yan’s, are
driven and defiant if not aggressive, and marked by the phenomenon
of learning and culture ostensibly turning on themselves. Crucially,
both Liang and Marinetti consider art that explicitly positions itself
in relation to its extra-literary surroundings capable of effecting social
change. In fact, especially for Liang but also for Marinetti, the projec-
tion of social change is a point of departure for literature rather than
its possible conclusion.^44
As a common feature of diverse oeuvres in the Chinese avant-garde,
and one that transcends the dichotomies that have led me to identify
the Elevated and Earthly aesthetics, social concern is firmly rooted
in today’s extra-literary realities. In many other places contemporary
poetry tends to function as a buffer against the world outside literature
instead. In China, poetry as the expression of social concern stands
in a long, strong tradition that makes it a self-evident extension of the
poet-official’s involvement in governing the state and actively contrib-
uting to the well-being of society. In spite of modern poets’ declared
dissociation from China’s literary past, this aspect of traditional poet-
ics is one of several factors that inform the work of numerous authors
from the Republican and Maoist periods, and from the early years
of the Reform period—as well as that of younger generations such
as the Lower Body poets, albeit irregularly and in provocative, non-
institutional or indeed anti-institutional fashion.
(^43) Yan Jun 2001: 149-152.
(^44) Martin 1973, Weber 1960: 241-246.