Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c15.s2.t12: Wen Yiduo
Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c15.s2.t12
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Wen Yiduo
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Wen Yiduo (闻一多) was a well-known poet, scholar, artist and social activist of utmost integrity of the early 20^th^ century China, who, through his fiery speech focussing on democracy and nationalism, hit hard the repressive Guomindang regime of Jiang Jieshi, and consequently fell to the bullet of an assassin in 1946.
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Born in Huang Gang city of Xi-shui county of Hubei province in 1899, Wen Yiduo joined the Qing Hua school of Beijing in 1912. At a very early age, he proved his mettle as a scholar and poet of inborn ingenuity through the contribution of short literary sketches to Qing Hua Weekly (Qign-hua Zhou-kan清华周刊) in 1916. Further, Wen Yiduo was not simply an arm-chair scholar and poet, but was above all a patriotic personage of the first order. When the May Fourth Movement occurred in 1919, he joined the All China students’ federation, an offshoot of the May Fourth Movement of 1919, as a representative of Qing Hua University and actively took part in all its activities and programmes launched in the course of the nation-wide anti-imperialist agitation. In April 1920, he published his first colloquial literary piece, *A Roaming Student* (Luke shi de xuesheng 旅客式的学生) and in September of the same year, another poem titled *West Bank* （xi-an西岸）in a new style in contrast to the poems of the traditional style. In November 1921, he had taken a pioneering role in establishing the “Qing Hua Literary Society” （qinghua wenxu-she清华文学社）in collaboration with Liang Shiqiu and some other eminent literary figures of his time.
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Wen Yiduo
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In 1922, Wen Yiduo travelled to the United States of America for higher studies like many other young Chinese students of his generation, and joined the Fine Arts Department (mei-shu xue-yuan 美术学院) of Chicago University. In 1923, he brought out the first masterpiece of his poems, *Red Candle* (hong-zhu 红烛). In 1925, he returned to China and successively took up several teaching assignments in Wu Han University, National Shandong university, Qing Hua University and Beijing University, while assuming many administrative responsibilities like Heads of Art and Literature Departments and deans and directors of various faculties of different universities. In 1928, he published the second collection of his poems, *Dead Water* (si-shui 死水) in which the intense patriotic enthusiasm of the poet has been profoundly depicted. In the same year, he joined the *Crescent Moon Society* (Xin-yue-she 新月社), while continuing to write essays on poetry. The literary philosophy that he followed in all his writings was that “art must be made independent of politics,” and thereby, he championed the cause of full freedom for writers and intellectuals to pursue their own ideas and goals in their artistic and literary creative works.
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After 1928, Wen Yiduo wrote very few poems and devoted most of his time to teaching and research on Chinese classics like *Classic of Change* (Yi Jing 易经 or Zhou Yi 周易), *Anthology of Poems* (Shi Jing 诗经), *Zhuang Zi* (庄子) , and *Songs of the South* ( Chu-ci 楚辞), etc. for the last 18 years of his life and published a new research work titled *A New Interpretation of the Classical Works* (gudian xin-yi 古典新义) that reflected his originality in exploring new ideas and thoughts on the study of classical Chinese literature. All those who are interested in the study of classical Chinese literature, Wen Yiduo’s works are highly worthy of careful observation.
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When the anti-Japanese resistance war broke out in 1937, and all the major universities of northern China shifted to Kunming, the capital of Yun-nan province with a new name of the National Southwest Associated University (Xi-nan lian-he daxue 西南联合大学), Wen Yiduo too had to migrate to Kunming along with many other colleagues of Qing Hua University. But, even though he was away from Beijing, the political and cultural centre of China, as a true patriotic national he still continued to keep himself in close touch with all the major political developments of the country. What he then most eagerly and sincerely wanted to see was the formation of a strong united front resistance army between the Nationalist and the Communist party to fight the Japanese aggressors. But, such close cooperation between the two parties could never be forged due to the divisive politics and corruption of the Nationalist Party. Wen Yidyo felt quite disenchanted over such partisan politics of the KMT and joined the “China Democratic League” (zhongguo minzhu tongmeng 中国民主同盟) in 1944 to voice his grievances. The “Democratic Weekly” (minzhu zhoukan 民主周刊) which he published as its Editor, focussed on burning issues of national interest and brought to the limelight the economic corruption and social maladies of the days to create public awareness and consciousness.
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Wen Yiduo had full sympathy for the masses of the Indian people subjected to colonial oppression and supported the Indian independence movement. He held the view that, “Though India was then under colonial oppression and repression, ultimately one day this land will be the land of the Indian people, and it would not be the world of the British people.” Further, in his own research work on comparative aspects of India-China culture, he was of the opinion that Chinese culture has been greatly influenced by the Indian culture and civilisation. When he was pursuing his studies in the United States of America as a student, he had penned an essay, *Indian poetess-Sarojini Naidu*, in which he highly praised Naidu’s spirit of nationalism. Further in 1923, he had also written another article titled *An Assessment of Rabindranath Tagore* focussing on the artistic and poetic talent of the Indian poet.
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It may be noted that the general socio-political atmosphere of Chinese society then had turned out to be quite vicious, despicable and oppressive due to the autocratic regime of the Guo-mindang. The most disappointing moment in his life came when his close friend Li Gongfu, one of the executive members of the China Democratic League, was assassinated in Kun-ming on July 11, 1946. As a crusader of democracy and freedom, Wen Yiduo gave an impassioned speech in the condolence meeting of Li Gonfu on July 15, while openly and stridently denouncing the reactionary government in the strongest possible vitriolic terms, and consequently, it was in the same evening of that fateful day when the poet was returning home after the meeting, that assassins struck him and he was instantly killed, while his son was grievously injured.
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A real and objective assessment of the veteran poet and scholar got inordinately delayed, as alleged, due to the ban imposed on his writings by the Guo-min-dang Government. However, from the viewpoint of an impartial observer, it may be said that such a true and committed intellectual personality like Wen Yiduo to fight for the cause of the people and nation is to be rarely found in 20ᵗʰ century China, who, despite much admonition and threat to the safety and security of his personal life, continued to be vocal in freely giving vent to his most critical views against the authorities. This further clearly demonstrated that he was out-and-out a patriotic, selfless, tough-graded independent minded scholar and revolutionary democratic fighter, with an impeccable character and integrity of the highest standard. All of his creative works are now to found in four volumes, *Collected works of Wen Yiduo* (Wen Yiduo Quan-ji 闻一多全集).
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(*Arttatrana Nayak*)
Linked texts (1)
- 義淨 — Classical Chinese