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Title:: Rethinking the Poetic Tendencies of Jiuye Poets and Their Relation with Left-wing Writers

Abstract:: The previous studies on jiuye九叶(literally nine leaves)poets regarded them as a modernist school characterized by their “anti-mainstream” or “anti-traditional” pursuits. The binary view of “mainstream vs. margin” or “tradition vs. modern” adopted by these studies is actually questionable. In fact, the branch of this poetic school identified with the journal shi chuanzao 诗创造(Poetic Creation)shared a lot of continuity and homogeneity with the tradition of modern Chinese poetry, thus having strong “mainstream” and “residual” features. Only in the late 1940s did their poems show some emergent elements. Comparatively, the branch identified with xinan lianda西南联大(Southwest United University)had more heterogeneity than the shi chuangzao branch in the history of modern Chinese poetry. The divergence between jiuye poets and zuoyi 左翼(left wing)writers is not a difference between “modernism” and “realism” in nature; instead, it is a matter of whether or not the writers should follow the principle of putting the masses first and take literature as a means to spread the revolutionary ideas. These two branches of jiuye poets show different levels of emergent elements; however, they were both regarded as “heterodoxes” to left-wing writers and should be “incorporated” by the later. This historical perspective helps us understand how jiuye poets are viewed as a school by others and by themselves.