United States to study at the University of Wisconsin and earned a
master’s degree in East Asian Studies in 1977. Ya returned to Taiwan
where he taught Chinese literature part-time at Furen Catholic
University.
From the 1960s onward Ya Xian became one of the leading figures
in the development of literature and literary institutions in Taiwan.
His editorial career began in 1969 when he became head of the China
Young Writers Association 青 協會, a government-affiliated
organ for promoting young creative writers, and helped lead the
organization away from anticommunist literary policies and toward
the creation of literature for literature’s sake. In 1977, Ya Xian became
the editor of the literary supplement of the United Daily News"合報,
advancing to become the associate chief editor of the paper. He was
instrumental in promoting through contests the writing of new works
of literature by emerging artists, the results of which he edited and
published. He founded and served as head of Unitas"合文&, what
would become one of the most respected journals of modern and
contemporary literary studies published in Taiwan. In 1999, he retired
from his editorial posts; he now divides his time between Taiwan and
Vancouver, Canada.
No discussion of Ya Xian’s literary endeavors would be complete
without mention of his role as literary historian. From the early 1950s
through the lifting of martial law in 1987, the government banned the
publication of works by almost all prewar Chinese writers, particularly
those who had not followed the GMD to Taiwan. In 1966, in the pages
of Epoch Poetry, Ya wrote essays discussing the lives and work of the
poets Fei Ming '((1910–1967), Zhu Xiang 朱*(1904–1933), and
Wang Duqing 獨,(1898–1940). In this first series of essays, Ya
specifically chose poets whose artistic and political stances did not go
against GMD policies. Beginning in 1972, Ya wrote a series of short
essays introducing poets such as Xin Di
-(b. 1912), Li Jinfa ./0
(1900–1976), Liu Dabai 劉大3(1880–1932) and longer analytical
essays on Dai Wangshu 戴5舒(1905–1950), Liu Bannong 劉78
(1891–1934), and Kang Baiqing93:(1896–1945), which included
selections of their poetry. The longer essays on Dai and Liu became the
introductions for book-length collections of each authors’ works that
Ya published in 1977 and 1982. In the preface to his landmark Studies
in Modern Chinese Poetry;研=, which collects all of his
essays on pre-1949 poetry, Ya notes that he began writing these articles
so that younger writers in Taiwan would have access to the lives,
thought, and some of the works of pioneer Chinese poets of the first
half of the twentieth century (see Ya 1981a: i).
Capturing War in the Poetry of Ya Xian 49