Wen Yiduo

Wen Yiduo Poems

Wen Yiduo Biography

Wen Yiduo (born. 24 November 1899 – 15 July 1946) was a Chinese poet and scholar. Wen was born "Wén Jiāhuá" on 24 November 1899 in Xishui County, Hubei. After receiving a traditional education he went on to continue studying at the Tsinghua University. In 1922, he traveled to the United States to study fine arts and literature at the Art Institute of Chicago. It was during this time that his first collection of poetry, Hongzhu ( "Red Candle"), was published. In 1925, he traveled back to China and took a university teaching post. In 1928, his second collection, Sishui ( "Dead Water"), was published. His poetry is influenced by Western models. In the same year he joined the Crescent Moon Society and wrote essays on poetry, mostly stressing that poetry should have "formal properties". He also began to publish the results of his classical Chinese literature research. At the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, he and many other intellectuals from northeastern China migrated to Kunming, Yunnan. There he was able to continue to teach, this time in the wartime National Southwestern Associated University. He became politically active in 1944 in support of the China Democratic League. His outspoken nature led to his assassination by secret agents of the Kuomintang, right after eulogizing his friend Li Gongpu's life at Li's funeral in 1946. A monument to Wen can be found at the Yunnan Normal University campus in Kunming, as can a large statue. A small memorial to him, including a wall portrait painted from a famous picture of him smoking his pipe is found in a walkway by his former home (the site is now part of an elementary school) in the Green Lake area of Kunming. He and his wife, Gao Zhen, are buried at the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery in Beijing.)

The Best Poem Of Wen Yiduo

Perhaps

Perhaps you have wept and wept, and can weep no more.
Perhaps. Perhaps you ought to sleep a bit;
then don't let the night hawk cough, the frogs
croak, or the bats fly.

Don't let the sunlight open the curtain onto your eyes.
Don't let a cool breeze brush your eyebrows.
Ah, no one will be able to startle you awake:
I will open an umbrella of dark pines to shelter your sleep.

Perhaps you hear earthworms digging in the mud,
or listen to the root hairs of small grasses sucking up water.
Perhaps this music you are listening to is lovelier
than the swearing and cursing noises of men.

Then close your eyelids, and shut them tight.
I will let you sleep, I will let you sleep.
I will cover you lightly, lightly with yellow earth.
I will slowly, slowly let the ashes of paper money fly.

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