Poetry
Selected Poems from The Goddesses
女神
Guo Moruo · 1921
Synopsis
The collection, presented as a set of dramatic poems and poems, opens with a prefatory piece followed by three parts; the first brings together three short pieces in verse, including La Renaissance de la déesse. In Le Nirvana du phénix, a pair of phoenixes gathers fragrant wood, immolates itself and is reborn from the flames, an image of a China that dies in order to be reborn, according to a course at the University of Macerata. In Le Chien céleste, the poet cries out that he is a dog of the sky and extols without restraint the liberation of the self.
Context
The collection appeared in August 1921 in Shanghai, from Taidong, and brought together poems written in Japan from 1918 onwards. It breaks with classical prosody: lines and stanzas of free length, rhymes without rule, repetitions and foreign words taken from Whitman, who, the author said, had driven him mad with poetry. Wen Yiduo judged in 1923 that only his poetry deserved to be called new, and Britannica sees in it the first stone of the new verse in China. The book has never stopped being reissued, and the author revised it in 1928. Selections from it appeared in English in 1958 and in French in 1960.
Who it is for
About fifty poems in free verse and three short verse plays, in a tone that is often declamatory.
Prizes and reception
Qian Xingcun called it in 1931 the only true collection of the new poetry; it is regarded as its founding act.
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