Paying tribute to a poetry legend

Fluent in English and Russian, he is known for his translations of Western classics, including Russian poetry by Alexander Pushkin and those by British poets like Percy Bysshe Shelley, George Gordon Byron and John Keats. His exposure to Western poets helped shape his modernist style.

The era marked the start of the poet's legendary status, as the national crisis was deepening in the 1930s. The Beast, a poem written in 1937, was a metaphor for a resilient and vigorous China during the war of anti-Japanese aggression and the word "beast" a symbol of primitive life force.

On the 1,500-kilometer journey from Changsha to Kunming, Mu Dan had the opportunity to interact closely with ordinary people, an experience that inspired him to write a series of poems. As a result, he came to understand more of his home and its people, coining lines such as "we are walking the path our beloved ancestors walked", and "how free and vast the road of China is…"

In 1940, at the age of 22, he wrote Meigui Zhi Ge (Song of the Rose) at a time when he was full of energy and passion. Since the framework of classical poetry imposed constraints on someone with "too many emotions that cannot be expressed, a heart filled with molten lava", he decided to break through the "mountains and rivers of ancient poetry".

Later, during battles in Myanmar, he saw comrades die and lived through months of deprivation and danger that led to him writing of the famous modernist poem Senlin Zhi Mei (The Charm of the Forest).

Mu Dan's life was one of suffering and legend, a tale of roses and iron blood. His written recollections of the brutality of war, and his compassion for humanity and China, echo repeatedly in his 1941 poem Zanmei (Praise), which exclaims:"A nation has risen".

For Zou, Mu Dan's contributions to modern Chinese poetry are immense. His work is often considered a beacon of hope, offering light in times of darkness. His use of language and poetic forms laid the foundation for modern Chinese poetry.

Zou says that Mu Dan's poems, both long and short, are creatively structured and convey the tone of an era. His work transformed traditional poetic language, opting for modern Chinese that avoided cliches and embraced innovation.

"If we consider an era as a container, Mu Dan: Xinsheng De Yeli illustrates the container that produced a modern poet such as Mu Dan," says Zhang Juan, director of the Chinese department at Southeast University.

"War and travel, the introduction of Western modernism to China, and the complex realities and human experiences of the time shaped the historical experience of the 1940s, driving the creation of a language for modern poetry and rational lyricism.

"Mu Dan dedicated his life to language, and the book is a tribute to him and to the nation, which, despite its many hardships, remains resilient," she says.