Gregor Benton - Poets of the Chinese Revolution

Chen Duxiu

Zheng Chaolin

Chen Yi

Mao Zedong

Edited by Gregor Benton and Feng Chongyi
Translated by Gregor Benton

First published by Verso 2019

Translation Gregor Benton 2019

Collection Gregor Benton and Feng Chongyi 2019

All rights reserved

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted

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Verso

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ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-468-4

ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-470-73 (UK EBK)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-471-4 (US EBK)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Benton, Gregor, editor, translator. I Feng, Chongyi, 1961 editor. I Container of (expression): Chen, Duxiu, 18791942. Poems. English. Selections. I Container of (expression): Zheng, Chaolin, 1901Poems. English. Selections. I Container of (expression): Chen, Yi, 19011972. Poems. English. Selections. I Container of (expression): Mao, Zedong, 18931976. Poems. English. Selections.

Title: Poets of the Chinese revolution : Chen Duxiu, Zheng Chaolin, Chen Yi, Mao Zedong / edited by Gregor Benton and Feng Chongyi ; translated by Gregor Benton.

Description: London ; Brooklyn, NY : Verso, 2019. Identifiers: LCCN 20180421751 ISBN 9781788734691 I ISBN 9781788734714 (US Ebook) I ISBN 9781788734707 (UK Ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Revolutionary poetry, ChineseTranslations into English. I Chinese poetry20th centuryTranslations into English.

Classification: LCC PL2658.E3 P65 2019 I DDC 895.1/1520803581dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018042175

Typeset in Sabon and Fang Song by Biblichor Ltd, Edinburgh

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY

Contents

In 1993, Zheng Chaolin sent Gregor Benton his small book of prison poems, which had just been published by Hunan Peoples Press. Chaolins comrade Wang Fanxi, in exile in Leeds and Bentons long-time friend and collaborator, was keen to see the book translated into English. In 2015, several years after retiring, Benton set about this work. At first, he collaborated closely with his Japanese friend Nagahori Yuzo, an expert on Lu Xun and, like Benton, on Chinese Trotskyism. Nagahori helped translate and explicate more than a score of poems, but then stepped down from the role, due to ill health, after which Benton completed the translation by himself. Feng Chongyi, Professor of Chinese History at Nankai University and Bentons close friend for many years, also a friend of Wang Fanxi, stepped up to replace Nagahori. On Versos advice, the book was extended to include poems by Chen Duxiu, Chen Yi and Mao Zedong. Benton translated Maos and Chen Duxius poems, with Fengs help, and extracted his earlier translations of Chen Yis guerrilla poems from an appendix to his book Mountain Fires (Berkeley 1992). Benton and Feng collaborated on the analysis and annotation of the poems by Chen Duxiu, Mao and Chen Yi.

Drinking tea with Marx on the Red Terrace on Copper Coloured Mountain in the Pure Land, in the centenary year of May Fourth and the seventieth year of the Revolution, four poets point their cups earthwards in a celestial salute to Verso for bringing out this book. The true heirs of the poets, and of the May Fourth movement and the Revolution they set going, are the young dissenters now jailed for supporting workers pickets in the south the book is dedicated to them and the strikers, as present-day incarnations of the rebel spirit of the Revolution, now old and ailing but here immortalised. We are grateful to Verso for agreeing to print the poems in facing-page English and Chinese with diacriticised Pinyin, accompanied by same-page commentary and annotation a complex and technically taxing arrangement even in the age of digital typography, kept readable by Versos skilled compositing. As a result, Chinese speakers and learners can read the original poems and admire their formal and technical properties. Our thanks, therefore, to everyone at Verso, in particular Tariq Ali, Sebastian Budgen, Duncan Ranslem, Lorna Scott Fox, Emilie Bickerton, and Catherine Smiles. Others (apart from Nagahori and Feng) who helped Benton with difficult points in the translation of Zheng Chaolins poems and in other ways include (in alphabetical order) Rebecca Urai Ayon, Lam Chi Leung, Shen Yuanfang, Vincent Sung, and Xue Feng. Again, many thanks to all these people.

Spring and Autumn period (771476 BCE)

Zhou (ca. 1050256 BCE)

Warring States period (475221 BCE)

Qin (221206 BCE)

Han (206 BCE220 CE)

Three Kingdoms (220c. 265)

Six Dynasties (220589)

Sui (581618)

Tang (618906)

Five Dynasties (907960)

Song (9601279)

Northern Song (9601127)

Southern Song (11271279)

Yuan (12711368)

Ming (13681644)

Qing (Manchus) (16441912)

Republic of China (19121949)

Peoples Republic of China (1949)

Bai Juyi (772846), Tang poet and official.

Cen Shen (715770), Tang poet.

Chen Yuyi (10901139), Song poet.

Chen Zhu (12141297), Song poet.

Chen Ziang (661702), Tang poet.

Du Fu (712770), Tang poet.

Du Mu (803852), Tang poet.

Feng Yanji (born 903), Southern Tang poet and politician.

Gao Guoding (dates unknown), Ming or Qing poet.

Ge Hong (284364), Eastern Jin Dynasty Daoist scholar and chemist.

Genghis Khan (11621227), founder of the Mongol Empire.

Gong Zizhen (17921841), Qing poet, calligrapher and intellectual.

Guo Moruo (18921978), modern Chinese scholar and poet.

Han Wu (15787 BCE), an emperor of the Han Dynasty.

Han Yu (768824), Tang poet and official.

Hong Sheng (16451704), Qing poet.

Huang Tingjian (10451105), Song poet.

Jia Dao (779843), Tang poet.

Jiang Kui (11551209), Song poet.

Jiang Yan (444505), Southern and Northern Dynasties poet.

Kangxi (16541722), an emperor of the Qing Dynasty.

Li Bai (701762), Tang poet.

Li He (790816), Tang poet.

Li Qingzhao (10841155), a woman poet.

Li Qunyu (813860), Tang poet.

Li Shangyin (813858), Tang poet.

Li Yu (937978), Southern Tang poet.

Li Yuan (565635), founder of the Tang Dynasty.

Li Zhiyi (10381117), Song poet.

Li Zhongyuan, twelfth-century Song poet.

Linshuan Shanren (dates unknown), a Qing writer.

Liu Bang (256195 BCE), founder of the Han Dynasty.

Liu Ling (221300), Daoist poet and famous tippler.

Liu Yixi (772842), Tang poet.

Liu Yong (9871053), Song poet.

Lu You (11251209), Southern Song poet.

Liu Zongyuan (773819), Tang scholar and poet.

Qin Guan (10491100), Song writer and poet.

Qin Shi Huangdi (259221 BCE), first emperor of the Qin Dynasty.

Qu Dajun (16301696), late-Ming early-Qing scholar and poet.

Qu Yuan (c. 340278 BCE), poet of Warring States period.

Shen Quanqi (656729), Tang poet.

Sima Xiangru (179117 BCE), writer and favourite at the court of Emperor Wu.

Song Taizu (927976), founding emperor of the Song Dynasty.

Song Yu (c. 298c. 222 BCE), poet of the Warring States period.