Haiku for China? Zhou Zuoren's Interest in Modern Japanese Poetry

This talk will explore the influence modern Japanese poetry exerted on Zhou Zuoren, one of the most significant Chinese writers, critics, and translators of the first part of the twentieth century, as well as its impact on modern Chinese culture as mediated through Zhou

This talk will explore the influence modern Japanese poetry exerted on Zhou Zuoren, one of the most significant Chinese writers, critics, and translators of the first part of the twentieth century, as well as its impact on modern Chinese culture as mediated through Zhou. By analyzing Zhou’s translation activities, his critical essays on modern Japanese poetry, and his own Japanese-language verse, this talk seeks to comment on the importance of Japan’s modern poetry on the development of certain aspects central to Chinese modernity, namely vernacularization and the making of a new Chinese poetic voice. Focusing mainly on two distinct genres, Japanese free verse poetry and the Japanese short lyric, haiku and tanka in particular, this talk explores the liberating effects translation and linguistic migration had on Zhou and comments on the degree to which Zhou understood modern Japanese poetry to be conducive to modern poetic sensibilities.

Event Contact: ccs@berkeley.edu, 510-643-6321