The Profound FENG Zhi and the Broad AI Qing:Two Case Studies Concerning Two Main Chinese Modern Poets

In this paper, the author discusses the poetry creations of FENG Zhi and AI Qing during the period of modern time (1919—1949) and their respective importance in Chinese modern literary history. The author considers that FENG Zhi and AI Qing promoted Chinese modern poetry to its maturity by their profound and broad creations. FENG Zhi's writing, from his 1920's young lyric creation to 1940's existentialism meditation style composition, were unique in his time. He added factors of modernity to Chinese tradition of “shiyanzhi”(诗言志poetry as a mean to express one's thought and emotion). His Sonnet Collection, most of the all, perfectly combining profound meditation with exquisite art skill, heightened Chinese modern poetry to the level of comparable to all greatest Chinese and foreign classical poetical works. AI Qing's writing within the ten years around the breakout of Anti-Japanese war, figured out a whole figure of poetical ‘Modern China'. It was a poetical expression of one hard hundred years of growing up process of China from the huge and deep crisis, and the historical process of the build up of an independent modern national state through national liberation and people revolution. They were not epic, but with epical importance more than an epic. Fairy to say, they were monumental works in Chinese poetry history after the great poet DU Fu (712—770) which were of classical importance.