introduce “new diction” <=and “new perspectives” >境and to
revive “ancient styles” @ABin poetry. As a result of the first two goals,
new words such as “parliament” and “telegram” and new concepts such
as the revolution of Earth and time zones were incorporated into poetry.
These innovations reflected the influx of new knowledge and the
rapidly changing culture as a result of China’s extensive contact, vol-
untary or involuntary, with the rest of the world, particularly Japan,
Europe, and the United States. Part of a tripartite program that also
included fiction and prose, Liang’s poetry revolution was inseparable
from his vision of political and social reform at the time. However,
despite the new diction and new concepts, it did not challenge the
classical paradigm of poetry. In fact, it was very much a continuation
of the Confucian tradition, which viewed poetry as a significant
educational tool and sociopolitical vehicle.
Thus, the Revolution in the Poetry Domain advocated by Liang
Qichao at the turn of the twentieth century had little success for two
reasons. First, by advocating “ancient styles,” it did not go beyond the
neoclassicist or revivalist model in Classical Poetry, where change was
to be effected by reviving a certain school or style in a past era, and
still operated exclusively within the traditional frame of reference. The
second, and more important, reason is that the new poetry that Liang
envisioned was constrained by traditional forms, with prescribed
structures, prosody, and tonal patterns. The Poetry Revolution turned
out to be an ephemeral event, remembered more for its historic
significance than for memorable poetry.
A true revolution in poetry would have to wait until 1917.
Discontent with the earlier attempt to revolutionize the genre, Hu Shi
called for the use of the modern vernacular as the poetic medium, on
the one hand, and a “great emancipation of the poetic form”
C大DE, on the other. In practice, the modernity of Modern
Chinese Poetry is manifest first and foremost in two things: language
and form.
Since the late nineteenth century, there had been a continuing
movement to promote the modern vernacular as the written medium,
and progressive newspapers and journals had begun using the
vernacular alongside Classical Chinese. What was new about Hu Shi’s
Literary Revolution is the constructed binary opposition between
Classical and Vernacular Chinese. From a historical point of view, it
was obviously a gross exaggeration to call Classical Chinese a “dead”
language, but such construction aided Hu’s agenda of nationalizing
the vernacular and promoting New Poetry. In truth, the language of
Modern Poetry is a hybrid or polyglot; it contains Classical Chinese,Modern Chinese Poetry 179781403976079ts03.qxp:Layout 1 11/9/07 11:08 AM Page 17