Probing the Boundaries: Language Exploration in Contemporary Chinese Poetry

Abstract

The paper focuses on describing different language techniques exploited in contemporary Chinese poetry of both “intellectual” ( zhishifenzi ) and “popular” ( minjian ) camps. Six works are analyzed in-depth to show the textual mechanics behind contemporary poets’ paratexts and their linguistic exploration. Both the “intellectuals” and “popular” poets share a vision of poetic text as a “sublimation” of the ordinary, however in actual practice they rely on the notion of a deviant textual substance that constitutes the very core of the poetic. Their pursuit for metalinguistic reflection leads contemporary poets to a fusion type of text blending the linguistic phenomena of traditional Chinese verse and Western modernism’s linguistic experimentation. They borrow traditional techniques such as parallelism, elliptical constructions, and nontrivial semantic links created through language phonographics to create connections with classical images and the tradition of 20th century Chinese “new poetry” while simultaneously accommodating Western ideas about language.