EACS-2016. Book of Abstracts

Modern Literature 21st Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies 56 to the Leftist intellectuals in Europe, especially in France, has been overlooked, thus making it a miss- ing chapter in the study of Chinese modernist literature. Chinese modernists mainly Shi Zhecun, Dai Wangshu and Ye Lingfeng translated a great number of literary and political writings by French left- ist intellectuals, such as Romain Rolland, André Gide, Henri Barbusse, Paul Vaillant-Couturier, Louis Aragon and André Malraux, in order to introduce diverse perspectives on Marxist literary theories and Russian-Soviet literature to the highly politicalized literary community in China in the 1930s and 1940s. They also translated relevant studies conducted by authors from the Francophone intellectual communi- ties of Geneva and Brussels, including those considered to be unorthodox leftists. It is in this particular historical context that Dai Wangshu’s Chinese translation of the Russian émigré critic, Benjamin Goriély’s Les Poètes dans la révolution russe, published in various forms in 5 stages between 1934 and 1941, carries its significance. From a transcultural perspective, this paper aims at investigating the discussion on Russian-Soviet literature in Les Poètes dans la révolution russe by putting emphasis on the develop- ment of leftist cultural movements in Russia, France, Belgium and China. It will also examine how Dai Wangshu introduced the Russian-Soviet literature and literary theories to China from the point of view of the Francophone leftist intellectuals in the historical context of the period of the League of Left-wing Writers and the Second Sino-Japanese War. Lee Hoi Lam (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University) Obsession with China under the Japanese Occupation: The Article of Zhou Zuoren Found in Hong Kong and Its Literary Reaction during the SecondWorldWar Key words: Obsession with China, Zhou Zuoren, Japanese Occupation, Hong Kong, Chinese intel- lectuals Starting with the discussion on the newly discovered article, “Worry to the Live and Sympathy for the chaotic: Let’s Progress toward the Construction!” ( 〈憂生憫亂，往建設去〉 ) by Zhou Zuoren in Hong Kong Nippō (1909–1945) during the Sino-Japanese war, my paper studies the literary responses to Zhou’s articles among the Chinese intellectuals in Hong Kong. I stress the importance of Lee Chi Man, who worked for the Japanese-controlled media and applied writing strategies to conceal his resistance to Japanese colonization in his works. Hong Kong Nippō and South China Daily News (1930–1945) were two major newspapers in Hong Kong under Japanese occupation during the period of World War II. Researchers, such as Lo Wai-leun and Chan Chi-tak, review and investigate the above-mentioned newspapers via its journalistic nature. This paper, however, attempts to provide another viewpoint by looking at the individual producers of the text, piecing together the discussions triggered by the article, in order to demonstrate possibilities of self-expression of Chinese intellectuals obsessed with China in wartime Hong Kong. Liao Hsien-hao Sebastian (National Taiwan University) Improvised Unknown Anger and Occupied Empty Dreams: Radicalization of Contemporary Poetry in Taiwan Key words: contemporary poetry, Chinese poetry, Taiwan poetry, Xia Yu, Hong Hong The poets Hong Hong and Xia Yu are renowned for their postmodernist tendencies, which include among other things a highly playful imagination and bold formal experiments that relentlessly decenter logocentric structures often by means of tapping the radical aesthetic potential of the Chinese language. In their postmodern-inflected poetry, although politics has been part and parcel of their overall concern, it remains on the macro-level and rarely touches upon concrete social issues. But in recent years, one witnesses a tendency in their poetry toward adopting themes related to radical political ideas and even actions while letting go of their previous intense attention to language. Hong Hong, long admired for the mellow ambi- ence of his poetry, published a book entitled Improvised Bombs, which is written in a relatively crude and straightforward language. Xia Yu, almost the epitome of postmodern aleatory writing and macro-politics,