Hardy and Chinese New Poetry

Abstract

AbstractThomas Hardy is one of the Western writers who influenced early 20th‐century Chinese literary pioneers, especially following the birth of China's New Culture Movement in 1919. His poetic technique played a great role in changing and enriching Chinese poetry, largely between the Chinese New Poetry Movement and the 1950s. From the debut of the New Poetry Movement, Chinese poets were drawn to Hardy's poetic style, imagery and pattern beauty, taking him as a model and believing that his poetry would inject new blood into traditional Chinese literature. Chinese New Poetry representatives, such as Xu Zhimo, Wen Yiduo, Guo Moruo and Aiqing, to mention but a few, are greatly indebted to Hardy in their style, art and thought. They tried their best to follow Hardy and put forward as norms of the New Poetry “three beauties” of his poetic principles, namely musical beauty, painting beauty and architectural beauty, that conform to the unity of form and content.