The Chinese May Fourth Generation and the Irish Literary Revival: Writers and Fighters: Writers and Fighters (Asia-Pacific and Literature in English) [1st ed. 2023] 9819952689, 9789819952687

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ASIA-PACIFIC AND LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

The Chinese May Fourth Generation and the Irish Literary Revival: Writers and Fighters Simone O’Malley-Sutton

Asia-Pacific and Literature in English

Series Editors Shun-liang Chao, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan Steve Clark, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan Tristanne Connolly, St. Jerome’s University, Waterloo, ON, Canada Alex Watson, Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan Laurence Williams, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan

The Palgrave Asia-Pacific and Literature in English series presents exciting and innovative academic research on Asia-Pacific interactions with Anglophone literary tradition. Focusing on works from the voyages of Captain Cook to the early twentieth century, it also considers previous encounters in the early modern period, as well as reception history continuing to the present day. Encompassing China, Japan, Southeast Asia, India, and Australasia, monographs and essay collections in this series display the complexity, richness and global influence of Asia-Pacific responses to English literature, focusing on works in English but also considering those from other linguistic traditions. The series addresses the imperial and colonial origins of English language and literature in the region, and highlights other forms of reciprocal encounter, circulation, and mutual transformation, as part of an interdependent global history.

Simone O’Malley-Sutton

The Chinese May Fourth Generation and the Irish Literary Revival: Writers and Fighters

Simone O’Malley-Sutton University College Cork Cork, Ireland

ISSN 2524-7638 ISSN 2524-7646 (electronic) Asia-Pacific and Literature in English ISBN 978-981-99-5268-7 ISBN 978-981-99-5269-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5269-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Courtesy of JABEL/CPC Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

For my parents Virginia O’Malley and Brian O’Malley

“There will be such a fighter! … He does not rely on armour made of ox-hide or of scrap-iron. He has nothing but himself, and for weapon nothing but the javelin hurled by barbarians … Above their heads hang all sorts of flags and banners, embroidered with all manner of titles: philanthropist, scholar, writer, elder, youth, dilettante, gentleman … Beneath are all sorts of surcoats, embroidered with all manner of fine names, scholarship, morality, national culture, public opinion, logic, justice, oriental civilization … But he raises his javelin!” December 14, 1925. Such a Fighter! By Lu Xun in Wild Grass. “Shaw hated all British Imperialism, so did I, Shaw rejected the Christian beliefs, so did I, Shaw saw through the romantic idea of Irish Nationalism, so did I; Shaw was a fighter; and he knew I was one too, ...Shaw called Jim Larkin “the greatest Irishman since Parnell,” and Shaw knew how I had fought for the workers with Jim; Shaw was deeply interested in the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army and its long and terrible march from Kiangsi in the south to Shensi in the north, wondering if they could do it, and if they did, what effect it would have upon the whole of China, so was I, though I’m sure St. J [Reference to Shaw as the writer of St. Joan] never even heard of it till the Red Army eventually broke through in Manchuria, and finally, won China for Communism; Shaw had a deep affection for Lady Gregory, so had I...” Seán O’Casey in a letter to Ronald Ayling, November 3, 1957.

Acknowledgements

I would especially like to thank my parents, to whom this book is dedicated, for their never-ending support. My mother, Virginia O’Malley for her superlative support, for being my best friend and such a wonderful, joyous role model who took in my grandparents and cared for them for twenty-one years in our home, alongside her joie de vivre and elan, and her love of literature. And my father, Brian O’Malley for the legacy of his fascination with history and all his kind and generous support. I particularly wish to thank my mentor for all things Chinese, Prof. Michel Hockx for his gentlemanly ways, scholarship, erudition, patience, humility, and always kind support, for generously introducing me to his family, Helen and Dylan, for including me in so many family meals when I was a poor student, and for always answering his emails on time. This project could not have been completed without Prof. Hockx’s incredible generosity, kindness, and many extra hours of patient revisions and thoughtful comments. Likewise, this project could not have been completed without the kind encouragement and support of Prof. Declan Kiberd, who thoughtfully guided me on many aspects of the Irish Revival. Prof. Kiberd is also beloved by all his students for his gentle and humble kindness, his impressive modesty alongside his great erudition, and the way that his words in class are so eminently quotable. This project also benefitted from the far-sighted vision of Prof. Christopher Fox, who set up the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at Notre Dame University, Indiana, and the Murphy Irish Fellowship. This

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

vision, and the Murphy Irish Fellowship that I was awarded, allowed me to attend Notre Dame from 2016 to 2018, in order to access databases of Chinese-language periodicals from the 1920s and 1930s that provided the basis for my doctorate, this book and my comparative work on the Irish Revival and the Chinese May Fourth generation. I would also like to thank Prof. Fox and Mr. William M. Murphy, (my fellow Corkonian), for generously sponsoring my fellowship for an unprecedented second year at Notre Dame. I hope they are both pleased with the result of their generous support, this book that promotes the global legacy of the Irish Revival—the worlding of Irish literature, and the many fascinating Transnational, Postcolonial, Modernist, and Gendered literary connections between Revivalist Ireland and the inspirational Chinese May Fourth generation, alongside how this process was reciprocal in nature. There are many others I would like to thank, including my dear late Supervisor, Prof. Jackie Sheehan, former Head of the Asian School at University College Cork, who sadly passed away before my doctorate and this book was completed—Jackie, I still miss your wicked wit and wonderful wisdom. Your students will never forget your many kindnesses. Also, kind thanks go to many others at my beloved UCC, including my Supervisors Dr. Constantin Holzer, Prof. Alex Davis, and especially Dr. Carlotta Sparvoli, who generously provided Trojan work to help me to get my doctorate properly presented. Also, I would like to thank Dr. Qin Lei, and my friends Wang Lu and Yen-Chi Wu, for their kind assistance with the translation of certain traditional Chinese passages, whenever my Pleco dictionary rebelled. I would also like to thank Prof. Jerusha McCormack and Prof. Seán Golden for all their encouragement, and Prof. P. J. Mathews for his helpful insights and kind support of my comparative work. And the staff at the National Library of Ireland, who repeatedly went out of their way to kindly assist me in locating photographs of Irish Revivalists, including James Harte, Barbara Bonini, Glenn Dunne, Berni Metcalfe, and especially Gerry Kavanagh for pointing out to me the photo of Maud Gonne and Subhas Chandra Bose for inclusion in this book. Also, I would like to thank Minh Chung, Samantha Sherbourne, and the entire imaging services team at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, for all their kind assistance in helping me in the middle of the Corona pandemic, to secure photocopies and permissions to use in this book. And I would like to thank Shivaun O’Casey, daughter of Seán O’Casey, for graciously granting me

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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permission to use a photograph of her father in this book and for showing such interest in my book. I would also particularly like to thank the editors at Palgrave MacMillan for all their incredible support, especially Connie Yue Li for all her patience, guidance, and generous assistance to this first-time writer. I would also like to thank my dear friends Ji Hyea Hwang and Yuh Jhung Hwang for all their insights on the literary links between Ireland and Korea, and especially Shotaro Yamauchi for his insights on the literary links between Ireland and Japan, and for kindly assisting me to locate photographs of the Chinese May Fourth generation for use in this book, when I had almost given up hope. There are many others who selflessly gave their time and encouragement to this book, too many to number, especially all those at my beloved Notre Dame—home of the Fighting Irish. People like Lionel Jensen and Susan Blum, who generously included me and gave me my first experience of Thanksgiving at their home. I would like to also thank the writers of the Irish Revival and the Chinese May Fourth generation for their inspiring lives and wonderful literary productions, and for never giving up hope, even when it seemed no way forward was possible, in other words for being—Writers and Fighters.

Contents

1

2

Introduction—Why Compare the Irish Renaissance with the Chinese Renaissance? The Irish Literary Revival The Chinese May Fourth Movement Irish Historical Revisionism: We Are All Post-Revisionists Now Postcolonial Modernism Methods Sources Chapter Summaries Yeats and Lu Xun: Postcolonised Modernists? Lu Xun’s Early Life and Work William Butler Yeats’s Early Life and Work Public Role Commonalities and Divergences Traditional Influences Postcolonised Writers and Fighters? The Story of Ah Q The Theme of Violence Language Modernism A Madman’s Diary—Modernist Experimentation with Cannibalism A Poetic Comparison

1 5 6 15 23 25 27 28 37 40 42 44 46 47 49 50 51 53 54 56 57 xvii

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CONTENTS

3

How Lu Xun Translated Yeats and the Irish Revival Conclusion

4

Yeats’s Reception in China: How Chinese May Fourth Writers Translated Yeats and the Irish Revival Xiaoshuo Yuebao Chenbao Fukan Wenxue Xunkan Supplement to the Shishi Shixin Bao Wenxue Wenxue Zhoubao Poetry Xiandai Minguo Ribao Bei Xin Shi Lin Lu Xun’s Critical Writings—From Political to Literary Reform Yeats’s Critical Writings: Mutual Exchange Between East and West Wenyi Yuebao Wenyi Yuekan Dongfang Zazhi Interim Conclusion The North-China Daily News The English Student The Legacy Ziyou Tan Conclusion

5

Tempests in Tenements and Teahouses: A Comparison of Irish Revivalist Seán O’Casey’s Trilogy of Plays with Lao She’s Teahouse Early Life Revolution Plot Summaries The Teahouse Plot Brechtian Alienation—Postcolonised Modernists Hiding in Disguise? Language Urban Poverty

77 85 91 92 108 109 112 115 117 117 118 119 120 120 122 123 124 126 129 129 132 133 136 136

147 149 151 151 154 154 156 157

CONTENTS

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O’Casey’s Reception in China English-Language Accounts of O’Casey in China O’Casey’s Reciprocal Interest in China Conclusion

158 161 167 179

Spreading the News Lady Gregory’s Plays Made It All the Way to China! a Gendered Comparison of “Founding Mothers” Lady Gregory in Revivalist Ireland and Qiu Jin in China Lady Gregory’s Reception in China Lady Gregory’s Rising of the Moon in China The Plot A New Chinese Setting Lady Gregory and Reciprocal Asian Encounters Spatiality Language Erasure of Female Writers Lady Gregory as Feminist Lady Gregory’s Portrayal in China Lady Gregory and Qiu Jin Qiu Jin’s Body: Text or Palimpsest? Conclusion

187 190 197 198 200 202 204 205 207 208 209 210 212 221

How Was the New Woman Constructed in Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China? A Comparison of Socialist and Feminist Writers Ding Ling and Eva Gore-Booth Ding Ling Postponement of Women’s Rights The Body as Problem Postcolonial Modernist Readings Eva Gore-Booth Socialism Eva Gore-Booth’s Poetry Reaches China Pacifism Gore-Booth’s Irish Feminism inspires British Feminism Modernism Female Agency Conclusion

231 232 235 236 237 240 244 246 248 249 250 251 254

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CONTENTS

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Irish Revivalist J. M. Synge and Chinese May Fourth Playwright Cao Yu: ‘Boys’ Who ‘Play’ in the Postcolonised Wilderness ? John Millington Synge’s Early Life Cao Yu’s Early Life Postcolonial Comparisons Nanda Banyuekan A Postcolonial Reading of Cao Yu’s the Wilderness Synge in English-Language Sources in China Synge in Chinese-Language Periodicals Autumn Wilderness Postcolonial Imaginings Modernism Gender Postcolonial Readings of Synge Wenyi Yuekan Language Chinese-Language Newspaper Accounts of Synge Reciprocal Links Between Synge and Asia Conclusion

9

Did Ye Ever Hear of the Christmas Rising by Liu Bannong? Receptions of the 1916 Irish Easter Rising in Republican Era China Liu Bannong Xin Qingnian / New Youth American Republicanism and Vanity Fair Reciprocal Exchange Divergence Dongfang Zazhi Liu’s Anti-Imperial Reading of Easter 1916 Plunkett and Transcendence MacDonagh and Language Patrick Pearse English-Language Newspaper Accounts of Easter 1916 in China Conclusion

263 264 264 266 268 269 271 273 276 278 279 280 282 285 286 288 291 292

299 301 304 305 305 309 310 311 314 316 318 320 333

CONTENTS

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Conclusion: Transnational Connections—Was Postcolonised Modernist Ireland a More Relatable Postcolonised Model for Chinese May Fourth Intellectuals? Postcolonialism Modernism Reciprocal Exchange and Mutual Encounter Socialism Gender Language Easter 1916 Postcolonial and Modernist

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339 341 344 346 347 347 348 349 350

Appendix—Translations of Archival Research

353

Glossary

373

Bibliography

387

Index

417

Abbreviations of Chinese-Language Periodicals and English-Language Newspapers

BX BL CY CBFK CG DFZZ DSYK FNPL GJ GC GMZB HJDYK JLG JS JBFK MDF MGRBJ MGSQ

NDBYK NFGZ NJDXB

Bei Xin 北新 (New North) Benliu 奔流 (Torrent) Cao Ye 草野 (Wild Grass) Chenbao Fukan 晨報副刊 (Morning News Supplement) Chenguang 晨光 (Morning Light) Dongfang Zazhi 東方雜志 (Oriental magazine/Eastern Miscellany) Dushu Yuekan 讀書月刊 (Monthly Reader) Funü Pinglun 婦女評論 (Women’s Critic) Gaijin 改進 (Improvement) Guancha 觀察 (Observation) Guomin Zhoubao 國閩週報 (National Weekly) Hujiang Daxue Yuekan 滬江大學月刊 (Hujiang University Monthly) Jinling Guang 金陵光 (Golden Light or Nanjing Light) Jin Sha 金沙 (Golden Sands) Jingbao Fukan 京報副刊 (Beijing News Supplement) Mingdeng Daosheng Feichang Shiqi Hekan 明燈道聲非常時期合刊 (Joint Special Issue of The Beacon and The Sound of the Word) Minguo Ribao Juewu 民國日報覺悟 (Republic of China Daily News Awake) Minguo shiqi qikan quanwen shujuku (1911-1949) 民国时期期刊 全文数据库 (Chinese Republican era periodical full-text database 1911–1949) Nanda Banyuekan 南大半月刊 (Nanjing University Semi-Monthly) Nanfeng Guangzhou 南風廣州 (Guangzhou Southwind) Nanjing Daxue Xuebao 南京大学学报 (Nanjing University Journal) xxiii

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ABBREVIATIONS OF CHINESE-LANGUAGE PERIODICALS …

NQNYK QFYK QHZK QNJ QNJB QY QGBK SHAI SHU SHI SH SJWX SLSYK SYCWY TCP TIT TNCDN TNCH WQQK WMBYK WCYK WFXP WHXF WX WXXK WXZB WYYB WYYK WY XD XDDMJ XDWX XDXJ XSYB XQN XS XSD XZG XQWY

Nü Qingnian Yuekan 女青年月刊 (Female Youth Monthly) Qianfeng Yuekan 前鋒月刊 (Forward Monthly) Qinghua Zhoukan 清華週刊 (Tsinghua Weekly) Qingnian Jie 青年界 (Youth World) Qingnian Jinbu 青年進步 (Youth Progress) Qiu Ye 秋野 (Autumn Wilderness) Quanguo Baokan Suoyin 全国报刊索引 (National Newspaper Index) Shanghai 上海 (Shanghai) Shanhu 珊瑚 (Coral) Shi 詩 (Poetry) Shihou 獅吼 (Sphinx) Shijie Wenxue 世界文學 (World Literature) Shi Lin shuang yuekan 詩林雙月刊 (Poetry Forest Bi-Monthly) Shi Yu Chao Wenyi 時與潮文藝 (Time versus Tide Literature and Art) The China Press The Irish Times The North-China Daily News The North-China Herald Wan Qing qikan quanwen shujuku (1833–1911) 晚清期刊全文数据 库 (Late Qing dynasty periodical full-text database 1833–1911) Weiming Banyuekan Beiping 未名半月刊(北平) (Unnamed semi-monthly [Beiping]) Wen Chao Yuekan 文潮月刊 (Text and Tide Monthly) Wen Fan Xiaopin 文飯小品 (Textual Sketches) Wenhua Xianfen 文化先鋒 (Culture Pioneer) Wenxue 文學 (Literature) Wenxue Xunkan 文學旬刊 (Literature Supplement) Wenxue Zhoubao 文學週報 (Literature Weekly) Wenyi Yuebao 文藝月報 (Literary Monthly) Wenyi Yuekan 文藝月刊 (Literary Monthly) Wuye 午夜 (Midnight) Xiandai 現代 (Modern/Les Contemporains) Xiandai Dumuju 現代獨幕劇 (Modern One-Act Plays) (book) Xiandai Wenxue 現代文學 (Modern Culture) Xiandai Xiju 現代戲劇 (Modern Drama) Xiaoshuo Yuebao 小說月報 (Short Story Monthly) Xin Qingnian 新青年 (New Youth) Xin Shi 新詩 (New Poetry) Xin Shidai 新時代 (New Era) Xin Zhongguo 新中國 (New China) Xingqi Wenyi 星期文藝 (Arts Weekly)

ABBREVIATIONS OF CHINESE-LANGUAGE PERIODICALS …

XYWX YL YWZZ YYZK YW YHNK ZDXS ZGNB ZHBYK ZXS ZYT

Xiyang Wenxue 西洋文學 (Western Literature) Yaolan 搖籃 (Cradle) Yingwen Zazhi 英文雜志 (The English Student) Yingyu Zhoukan 英語週刊) (The English Weekly) Yiwen 譯文 (Translations) Yuehan Niankan 約翰年刊 (John’s Annual) Zheda Xuesheng 浙大學生 (Zhejiang University Student) Zhongguo Nübao 中國女報 (Chinese Women’s Newspaper) Zhonghua Yingyu Banyuekan 中華英語半月刊 (The Chinese English Half-Monthly) Zhong Xuesheng 中學生 (Middle School Student) Ziyou Tan 自由譚 (Freedom Speech)

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List of Figures

Fig. 1.1

Fig. 1.2

The Chinese May Fourth incident on May 4th 1919, involved Chinese students in Beijing who protested with banners the decision at Versailles to hand over German concessions in Shandong to the Japanese, despite Chinese support of the Allies during WWI. This gave birth to an anti-imperial, anticolonial cultural, political and literary movement that also fought for women’s rights, reform and use of the vernacular language. Courtesy of JABEL/CPC Photo Yeats’s muse Irish Republican Maud Gonne McBride helped to set up the Indian Irish Independence League (IIIL) in 1932. Pictured in this fascinating photograph are members who gathered to honour Indian independence leader Subhas Chandra Bose’s visit to Ireland in 1936, including Maud Gonne, Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington (widow of executed pacifist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington), Nora Connolly (daughter of Irish rebel leader James Connolly executed in Easter 1916), and Charlotte Despard, an Irish suffragist and socialist who supported Indian independence. This photograph establishes Hiberno-Indian anticolonial movements were linked in this transnational exchange, and Irish women activists played a leading role in these solidarities

7

14

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xxviii Fig. 2.1

Fig. 2.2

Fig. 5.1

Fig. 5.2

Fig. 5.3

Fig. 5.4

Fig. 5.5

Fig. 5.6

LIST OF FIGURES

Lu Xun the father of modern Chinese literature, is known for his satirical style, but is not as well-known globally as he deserves to be for his contributions of Chinese versions of postcolonial and modernist literature. Courtesy of JABEL/CPC Photo William Butler Yeats one of the leaders of the Irish Revival, is also known as a global leader of postcolonial and modernist writing. Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland Irish Revivalist dramatist Seán O’Casey with Ria Mooney who played Rosie Redmond at the first performance of his play The Plough and the Stars, signed by O’Casey on 21/ 6/1926. Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland Lao She a prolific modern Chinese writer who became famous for his use of the vernacular in his novels and plays such as Teahouse. Courtesy of JABEL/CPC Photo Lao She stayed here at the Waverly Hotel in Howth, when he visited Ireland for a week in August 1928. Lao She read Irish modernist writers Yeats and Joyce at this time as a model for his own versions of Chinese anticolonial and modernist writings. Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland Mr. Hu. Ting-I the second secretary at the Office of the Chargé d’Affaires of the People’s Republic of China in London, wrote to O’Casey on October 31, 1957 to thank O’Casey for his letter praising the Chinese play The Long March and the poem “Ashma”. Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland Mr. Hu Ting-I the second secretary at the Office of the Chargé d’Affaires of the People’s Republic of China in London, wrote to O’Casey on February 28, 1958 to thank O’Casey for his book on theatre The Green Crow and promises to send O’Casey a book on Peking Opera. Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland Mr. Jack Dribbon, secretary of the Britain-China Friendship Association wrote to O’Casey on March 11, 1958 to ask O’Casey to pen an oration to celebrate the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. O’Casey wrote on the letter “Declined. No Poet. Incapable of writing well on such a vast subject”. Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland

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150

150

160

176

177

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 6.1

Fig. 6.2

Fig. 6.3

Fig. 7.1

Fig. 7.2

Fig. 8.1

Fig. 8.2

Qiu Jin, pictured here holding a sword—was China’s first feminist, a rebel leader, poet and mother of two, who was beheaded at thirty-two by the Qing Empire in 1907. Courtesy of CPC Photo Lady Augusta Gregory was a significant leader at the forefront of the Irish Revival, a dramatist, folklorist and one of the founders of the Abbey Theatre. Lady Gregory provided much of the money, mentorship to younger male Revivalists and revolutionary literary ideas that made the Irish Revival possible, although her unique legacy was largely written out of male-centred accounts of the Irish Revival. Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland Qiu Jin wearing men’s clothes and an endearing grin in Japan. I read Qiu Jin’s feminist gesture as a palimpsest, or an attempt to re-write a new narrative, replacing the old, on how to be both modern and a New Chinese Woman. Courtesy of JABEL/CPC Photo Ding Ling’s life as a modern Chinese writer exemplifies that she was caught between tensions on how to be both a Chinese feminist and a Chinese socialist. Courtesy of JABEL/CPC Photo The literary, feminist, socialist and pacificist legacy of Irish Revivalist Eva Gore-Booth has largely been downplayed in relation to that of her more militant, Irish Republican sister Constance Markiewicz. Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland John Millington Synge’s Irish Revivalist plays provided innovative alternative models of anticolonial and modernist play with language that influenced other writers from all over the world, including May Fourth China and other parts of Asia. By permission of the Board of Trinity College Dublin, portrait of John Millington Synge by Chancellor TCD MS 4367/2 Cao Yu was the foundational dramatist for the Chinese May Fourth generation, and was influenced by J. M. Synge’s Irish Revivalist plays. Courtesy of JABEL/CPC Photo

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189

213

232

241

265

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 9.1

Figs. 9.2

Liu Bannong was a Chinese May Fourth writer, who read the anticolonial lessons of the Irish Easter Rising of 1916 and applied these to rally his contemporaries to fight for the failing Chinese Republic, established after the Qing fell in 1911. Courtesy of JABEL/CPC Photo a, b Liu Bannong’s article in New Youth underlined the anticolonial lessons of the Irish Easter Rising of 1916 for his Chinese audience, and included translations of patriotic poetry by Irish rebel leaders Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh and Joseph Plunkett. Liu’s article unusually featured two photographs, one of Pearse, and one of MacDonagh. Courtesy of the Bodleian libraries, the University of Oxford, Shelfmark P210 XQN, pp. 141–148

301

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List of Tables

Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 4.3 Table 4.4 Table 5.1 Table 5.2

Table 6.1 Table 8.1

Chinese archival sources on criticism and photos of Yeats Chinese archival sources on short stories and folklore by Yeats Chinese archival sources on poetry by Yeats Chinese archival sources on plays by Yeats English-language archival sources on Seán O’Casey in China Chinese-language, Japanese-language and Korean-language archival sources on Seán O’Casey in Asia Chinese archival sources on Lady Gregory Chinese archival sources on J. M. Synge

93 99 101 104 161

173 194 272

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction—Why Compare the Irish Renaissance with the Chinese Renaissance?

This book elucidates links between Irish Revival Literature (1900–1922) and the Chinese May Fourth cultural and political movement (1915– 1927). Within the framework of Postcolonial and Modernist studies, this study provides a comparative analysis of works by five pairs of modern writers from Ireland and China. Thus, I compare W. B. Yeats (1865–1939) vs Lu Xun (1881–1936), Seán O’Casey (1880–1964) vs Lao She (1899–1966), Lady Gregory (1852–1932) vs Qiu Jin (1875– 1907), Eva Gore-Booth (1870–1926) vs Ding Ling (1904–1986), and finally, John Millington Synge (1871–1909) vs Cao Yu (1910–1996). This comparative research is based upon archive consultation, drawing upon a consistent number of Chinese primary sources. This work sheds new light on the reception, within the May Fourth cultural and political movement, of the authors above, analyses how Irish Revivalist literature was reshaped in the Chinese context and explicates the various cultural and political implications of these reciprocal processes. Yet, why compare the revolutionary Chinese May Fourth generation with the Irish Literary Revival? As my Comparative Timeline demonstrates, there are many historical parallels between nineteenth-century China and Ireland. In the 1840s, British colonial policies largely caused both the Opium Wars with China and the Irish Potato Famine. Likewise, the Qing’s poor governance caused the Taiping Rebellion peasant wars

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. O’Malley-Sutton, The Chinese May Fourth Generation and the Irish Literary Revival: Writers and Fighters, Asia-Pacific and Literature in English, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5269-4_1

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(1850s–1860s) in China, just as the Land War (1870s–1890s) raged in Ireland over the perceived need for redistribution of land from landlord to tenant. The anticolonial proto-nationalist Boxer Rebellion (1899– 1901) in China arose during the same period that witnessed increased anticolonial nationalist demand for Home Rule in Ireland. Accordingly, the imperial British government continued to put their own politicaleconomic interests first, above the interests of colonised peoples in Ireland and China who lived under British imperialism. This forms the context for any comparative assessment of how writers in Ireland and China attempted to construct their version of a modern postcolonised identity. As Irish Studies takes a turn from the Transatlantic towards the Transnational (or global), it becomes increasingly important to highlight literary links between Ireland and post(semi)colonised locations in China and Asia. As Declan Kiberd and P. J. Mathews point out, Revivalist Ireland became a model for other colonised peoples, “a test-case of the modern – whose leaders sought ‘alternative modernities’ beyond the reach of imperial systems”.1 The Irish were the first English-speaking people in the twentieth-century to decolonise from the British Empire, and others looked to how they could emulate this. According to Eóin Flannery, the father of Postcolonial Studies, Edward Said, corroborates Declan Kiberd’s reading of Ireland as in the vanguard of pioneering decolonising movements that influenced other subsequent anticolonial movements worldwide.2 According to Flannery, the Irish provided a utopian countermodernity to that of imperial modernity and Said laments that Irish people fail to sufficiently realise the enormity of this global anticolonial legacy. My book intends to address this undervalued legacy more deeply, by providing concrete examples of how the Irish Literary Revival influenced writers of the Chinese May Fourth era. Thus my project assesses the global reach of the Irish Revival. I further examine how this process was one of mutual exchange and reciprocal encounter, since Irish Revivalists were also influenced by China and the East. My project makes new innovative readings of these two early twentiethcentury Irish and Chinese modern literature movements, as both Postcolonial and Modernist, thereby adjusting our picture of both. Scholarship has provided fascinating accounts on the links between the Irish Revival (or Renaissance) and similar revolutionary modern literature Renaissance movements in Asia and elsewhere. Maureen O’Connor and Joseph Lennon examined how the Irish Renaissance influenced the Indian Renaissance movement.3 Lee Jenkins outlined how the Irish Renaissance

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INTRODUCTION—WHY COMPARE THE IRISH …

3

influenced the Harlem Renaissance.4 For example, Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes wrote The local and regional can become universal. Seán O’Casey’s Irishmen are an example. So I would say to young negro writers, do not be afraid of yourselves. You are the world.5

Similarly, Caribbean poet Derek Walcott explained how Irish writers had anticolonial significance for him, in an interview with Edward Hirsch in 1929. Walcott commented I’ve always found some kind of intimacy with the Irish poets because one realized that they were also colonials with the same kind of problem that existed in the Caribbean. They were the n[word]s of Britain. Now, with all of that, to have those outstanding achievements of genius, whether by Joyce, or Yeats, or Beckett, illustrated that one could come out of a depressed, deprived, oppressed situation, and be defiant and creative at the same time.6 [Please note I altered Walcott’s original word for the n-word as I did not feel comfortable using the original form].

Yuh Jhung Hwang underscores that the Irish Renaissance influenced the Korean Renaissance, as modern Korean dramatists founded their national theatre on Korean versions of Irish Revivalist Synge’s dramaturgy, with a Korean mother, a dead son, and a colonised landscape surrounded by the sea.7 However, to date, the Irish Literary Revival or Renaissance has not been compared in a comprehensive manner with the Chinese May Fourth modern literary movement. Hence, this book compares how the Irish Revival influenced the Chinese May Fourth generation and how this process was reciprocal in nature. I expand upon Lydia Liu’s argument that modern Chinese writers were agentic in these translingual exchanges and reciprocal encounters, which go from West to East and East to West.8 When I compare the Irish Literary Revival with the Chinese May Fourth literary movement, I do not argue that they are exactly the same. I am aware there are points of convergence and divergence, since Irish Revivalists looked to the ancient past to re-invent a future Ireland different from the one proposed by imperial Britain, whereas the Chinese May Fourth generation determined to uproot the traditional Confucian Chinese past as part of their modernising project to ‘save the nation’ by ‘jiu guo 救國 (national restoration)’. Ying-shih Yu notes that May Fourth writers selected western values and ideas that resonated with concepts

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from their own past traditions.9 I argue that the vital connection between both modern literature movements was the peasantry, as Chinese May Fourth writers aimed at motivating illiterate peasants to political action, but no literature existed at that time centred on Chinese peasants. As Irish Revivalism focused on plays about peasants and their folkloric short stories and legends, Chinese May Fourth writers used Irish Revivalist literature as a model of how to write modern literature about peasants, to thereby attract Chinese peasants to anticolonial political action. I argue that the Chinese were interested in Irish Revivalist re-tooling of folktales not for their folksy charm or nostalgia, but for how Revivalism shaped a new futurity for postcolonised Irish modernity by focusing on the local, rather than the imperial metropole. In addition to their pursuit of modernity, I specifically compare how the Irish Renaissance and the Chinese Renaissance promoted the language of the common people. Only the living language of the people, the vernacular, could open the doors to literacy for the millions of illiterate Chinese peasants the May Fourth project sought to liberate. Chinese writers further identified Irish Revivalist use of Hiberno-English as a literary language of resistance to argue for anti-imperial Sinification of the vernacular which had become increasingly westernised. Hence, Chinese writers looked to the living language to revive the literary language, and rid the vernacular of westernisation. In terms of Irish Revivalism the vernacular refers to the use of Hiberno-English (a local version of English that was heavily influenced by the grammar and syntax of the ancient Irish language). Therefore, I do not compare the Irish Gaelic language with Classical Chinese (the elitist language of the imperial bureaucracy), but examine instead how both modern literature movements promoted the use of the common vernacular as an alternative route to modernity. As Gang Zhou explains, Hu Shi (the initial advocate for written vernacular Chinese) proclaimed the May Fourth movement as the Chinese Renaissance, specifically because of its promotion of the vernacular language, which replicated the role of the vernacular in the European Renaissance.10 Zhou reads this as the triumph of “modernist ideology” and argues convincingly that this repositioning facilitates comparison of the Chinese Renaissance with other Renaissance movements (including the Irish Renaissance) as part of World Comparative Literature, rather than merely being a national phenomenon. Zhou notes other modern Asian Renaissance movements in India and Arab lands utilised the past to revive

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their ancient culture, but that the Chinese Renaissance, uniquely, did not.11 As a Comparativist I can foresee potential pitfalls to my comparison of these two modern early twentieth-century literary Renaissance movements in China and Ireland. I intend to identify those concerns, address them as valid, and then move on to my comparison. In relation to Asian Studies, I need firstly to define what I mean by the Chinese May Fourth generation, modernity versus modernism in a Chinese context, why I use the paradigm of Postcolonialism when the Chinese were only ever semicolonial, and why I read Lao She as left-leaning and as part of that May Fourth generation. I need to explain why I advance Postcolonised and Modernist readings of literature produced by Lu Xun, Lao She, Qiu Jin, Ding Ling, Cao Yu and Liu Bannong. I also need to address why I include feminist writer Qiu Jin within this broader discussion of that radical Chinese generation, even though she died before the 1919 May Fourth incident. Regarding Irish Studies, I need firstly to define why I place Ireland within the Postcolonial canon, how I define Modernism and why I read Modernism within Irish Revivalist literature. I further need to define what I mean by Postcolonial Modernism, and why I believe these two overlapping paradigms or lenses are found within the writings of Irish Revivalism and Chinese May Fourth writers. I argue that both literary movements experiment with modern literary genres, in what I term ‘postcolonised peripheries’. I also need to address why I made these five pairings of Irish and Chinese writers, and not other pairings.

The Irish Literary Revival The Irish Literary Revival (or Irish Renaissance) was a modern Irish literary movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century, led by writers William Butler Yeats, Lady Augusta Gregory and John Millington Synge. This modern literature movement was a revival in that the writers re-tooled the culture of ancient Ireland, to form a modern postcolonised identity for the Irish, one that mixed the old with the new. This cultural and literary movement took place alongside, influenced, and was in conversation with, the concomitant Irish political independence movement. The Irish Literary Revival movement founded literary societies, theatres and journals to promote their goal of re-imagining a new

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Ireland, one that did not turn to colonial Britain for literary models, subject matter, style or muses.

The Chinese May Fourth Movement The Chinese May Fourth incident took place on May 4th 1919, when Chinese students and others took to the streets of Beijing to protest the Allied decision at Versailles, to hand over the Chinese province of Shandong to the Japanese. The Chinese had been assured if they joined the Allied war effort during WWI, German concessions in Shandong would be returned to the Chinese. Yet, Rana Mitter notes the Allies duplicitously promised the Japanese a similar arrangement, and did in fact, (with the agreement of Beijing’s warlord government), hand these German concessions over to Japan, after WWI at the Versailles Peace Conference.12 Famously, this gave birth to the modern Chinese May Fourth anti-imperialist, anticolonial cultural, political and literary movement, which also fought for literary and cultural reform, women’s rights and use of the vernacular Chinese language (Fig. 1.1). In contrast to Irish Revivalists, the Chinese May Fourth generation of writers iconoclastically rejected their ancient feudal Confucian past, and instead sought to imagine a New China based on western models of literature, science and democracy. Hence, Chinese May Fourth writers looked to western literature for models on how to modernise China, to avoid total cultural colonisation by attempting to control the process. The Chinese May Fourth generation also founded literary societies, theatres and journals to promote their modernising project for China. Literary critics and historians differ on whether to use the broader term the Chinese May Fourth generation, or the Republican era (1912–1949), in reference to this period of Chinese history.13 Rana Mitter refers to the New Culture movement (1915–1925), which preceded and reached its high tide in the May Fourth movement (1917–1923), [collectively] as the May Fourth generation or era. 14 Accordingly, throughout this book my practice is, when reference is made to the Chinese May Fourth generation of writers, this includes all writers of the Republican era including Lao She and Ding Ling, who are not traditionally included within the definition of May Fourth writers. I adopt this broader position because Chinese writers who witnessed the events of May 4th 1919, were inspired to create and write a new modern literature for China during the decades that followed,

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Fig. 1.1 The Chinese May Fourth incident on May 4th 1919, involved Chinese students in Beijing who protested with banners the decision at Versailles to hand over German concessions in Shandong to the Japanese, despite Chinese support of the Allies during WWI. This gave birth to an anti-imperial, anticolonial cultural, political and literary movement that also fought for women’s rights, reform and use of the vernacular language. Courtesy of JABEL/CPC Photo

especially during the 1920s and 1930s, and even later during the 1940s and 1950s. Recent scholarship includes Ying-shih Yu’s claims that May Fourth was neither an Enlightenment nor a Renaissance, though as Yu details May Fourth leader Hu Shi promoted his idea of May Fourth as the Chinese Renaissance in a lecture he gave at Trinity College Dublin in 1926, and the influential May Fourth student journal New Tide was originally subtitled in English as “The Renaissance”.15 In Remembering May Fourth The Movement and its Centennial Legacy (2020) Gloria Davies repositions May Fourth “as affect”, noting that May Fourth writers deliberately used emotionally-charged words to elicit a reaction. Famously, Chen Duxiu coined the phrase “Messrs. Science and Democracy” and used these two “foreign gentleman” to embody cold intellectual concepts as a way to charm and engage readers.16 If May Fourth was the moment modern China began, then this book, [by seeking to rescue China’s Renaissance from the dualisms of right versus left], challenges recent scholarship and complicates competing official narratives from Beijing and

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Taiwan on the protean meanings of May Fourth. Davies concludes that elegiac remembrances of the openness to intellectual debate of the May Fourth era have not yet been entirely displaced. Likewise, Josephine ChiuDuke observes that May Fourth ideals of liberal democracy endured in a continuous unbroken line within the memory of modern Chinese intellectuals, especially in Taiwan.17 Chih-p’ing Chou and Yung-chen Chiang assert that Hu Shi’s legacy was promoted by Nationalists and banned by Communists who sought to decouple Hu Shi’s liberal influence from the powerful May Fourth legacy; whereas leftist writer Lu Xun was co-opted as a cultural “saint” by Communists.18 Nonetheless, Hu Shi’s repeated reading of May Fourth as a Chinese Renaissance, that led to political change and foregrounded individualism is irrefutably a larger part of the contested May Fourth legacy that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) conveniently elides. Both Ban Wang and Todd Foley offer evocative ecocritical readings of May Fourth literature that critique anthropocentric modernity, and seek to decentre humans from literary discourse.19 Chien-hsin Tsai reads Ding Ling’s works and the May Fourth project as “literary bombs”, according to sound theory.20 Chih-p’ing Chou states the vernacular was only one option debated by May Fourth thinkers, and the utopian promotion of western-centric Esperanto as a universal language to replace Chinese characters stalled, as cultural elites failed to include ordinary citizens.21 Gina Elia and Victor Mair conclude that Hu Shi, with missionary zeal, envisioned language reform and use of the vernacular as ways to make his May Fourth philosophy or new “religion” accessible to a wider audience of converts.22 To see how other recent scholarship repositions May Fourth as Counter-Enlightenment, and as cultural, literary and intellectual history, see books edited by Hsiao-yen Peng and David Der-wei Wang.23 I do not argue that the Irish Revival was the only western literary influence on the Chinese May Fourth generation of writers and fighters. Clearly, the Chinese May Fourth generation turned to different western schools of literature for their modernisation project. Hence there were rival cliques of Chinese writers who favoured Japanese literature, or Anglophone literature, or French, German or Russian literature, because they had studied and lived in those lands. Leading Chinese May Fourth writer Lu Xun preferred Japanese literature, as he had lived and studied in Japan and could translate from Japanese. Thus Lu Xun learned in part about Irish Revivalist Yeats from an original Japanese article which

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he translated into Chinese. However, Chinese writer Lao She lived and worked in London and favoured Anglophone literary examples of western literature. Others of the eclectic Chinese May Fourth generation favoured Russian literary models, due to their increasing interest in socialism. Hence, mine is not an exclusionary approach. Much research has already outlined how the Chinese May Fourth generation were influenced by Russian or British or American writers. However, there is a gap or lacuna within scholarship on how the Irish Literary Revival specifically influenced the Chinese May Fourth generation and how this process was reciprocal in nature. My book intends to fill that gap, thereby adjusting our picture of both literary movements as postcolonial and modernist. The Chinese May Fourth generation of translators and writers discerned unique resonances and valences for their own semicolonial condition, within the postcolonised literature of the Irish Revival. As Irene Eber illustrates, the Chinese May Fourth generation turned to ‘the literature of oppressed peoples’, and sought models of modernity in the Irish, Polish, Jewish and Harlem Renaissance movements.24 Unlike literatures produced in the imperial centres of Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the U.S., Irish Revivalist literature provided an alternative route to the modern for that radical Chinese May Fourth generation, one that was not suffused with the assumptions and discourses about race that permeated literatures produced in the imperial centres. Irish Revivalist literature spoke to the Chinese May Fourth generation from a more relatable position as a similarly postcolonised people, and with the voice of the colonised, rather than with the voice of western imperial authority. Yet, how did Irish Revivalist literature influence the Chinese May Fourth generation? How was this process reciprocal in nature, since China and Asia also influenced Irish Revivalists? How does gender and the issue of class complicate a comparison of the Irish Revival with the Chinese May Fourth movement? Finally, how can Postcolonial and Modernist readings be discerned within the literatures of Irish Revivalism and the Chinese May Fourth generation? My theoretical framework revolves around the twin lenses or paradigms of Postcolonialism and Modernism. Edward Said defines study of the Postcolonial as research into “a great worldwide pattern of imperial culture and a historical experience of resistance against empire”.25 Traditionally, postcolonial literature is defined as post-WWII literature, produced after and in reaction to western colonisation. Postcolonial Studies is a hotly contested area, with debates raging about precisely

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when, where and how the ‘Post-’ aspect after colonisation applies. The consensus in the field is that ‘post-colonial’ (with a hyphen), signifies a period that comes chronologically ‘after’ colonialism. ‘Postcolonial’ on the other hand, signals the persisting impact of colonisation across time periods and geographical regions. Since I compare texts in Ireland and China from before, during and after the moment of colonisation, I believe (as does Jahan Ramazani) that postcolonial is the best form to use, since the ongoing effects of colonisation continue to the present day. I use the term postcolonised for Irish Revivalists and post(semi)colonised for the Chinese May Fourth generation. A related problem is that the term ‘post’ only implies literatures produced after the moment of independence. And postcolonial implies looking back upon and reflecting upon one’s colonial position. This would necessarily remove many of the African greats of postcolonial literature from the canon, since much of their literature was written before, during and after the moment of independence, often in reflection back upon the colonial condition. As Jahan Ramazani points out, this is unnecessary and counterproductive.26 My working definition of Postcolonialism is that adopted by Jahan Ramazani, who concludes that all such valid questions can be overcome by a definition of the Postcolonial as literatures written “against the discourses of colonization”.27 This means that works by Yeats written before, during and after the moment of Irish political independence from colonial Britain, can all be included within a study of the Postcolonial. I use a similar model for post(semi)colonial Chinese May Fourth writers, to establish grounds for my comparison. Regarding postcolonial links between Ireland and China, as Seán Golden has established, Irish nationalist Sinn Féin literature was translated and promulgated by Chinese nationalists. Also George Russell’s agricultural co-operatives provided a model for communist agrarian reforms in China. Moreover, Mao Zedong praised Irish rebel leader Michael Collins’s tactics, and appreciated the role of art in mobilising the Irish people, prior to the Easter Rising.28 However, in relation to China and the Postcolonial, a much more complicated situation arises. China was only ever semicolonial and was not colonised in the sense India was by Britain, or Korea was by Japan. A semi-colony is a country that is officially an independent sovereign nation, but is in reality very dependent upon and dominated by one or several other imperialist countries. For example, Chinese people were not forced en masse to learn a foreign language by one colonising power.

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However, it could be argued in a sense China was triply colonised. Firstly, the Manchurians of the Qing Empire were perceived as foreign rulers by the Han Chinese; secondly, the Eight-Nation Alliance of Imperial Powers including Austria-Hungary, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the U.S. sought to carve up China for themselves during the early twentieth-century; and thirdly, Japanese attempts to invade China before and during WWII were all attempts at colonisation. Since both Irish Revivalists and the Chinese May Fourth generation were anti-imperial writers “against the discourses of empire”, I argue it is appropriate to utilise the frame of Postcolonial studies to compare both modern literature movements. Hence, I apply the lens of Postcolonialism to Chinese May Fourth literature. For example, I read the “Sendai incident” as the original postcolonial move in Chinese May Fourth writer Lu Xun’s life. Lu Xun studied medicine in Sendai, Japan, and one day after class students were shown a slideshow that included the beheading of a Chinese man by Japanese forces. What shocked Lu Xun most deeply about this image, were the surrounding Chinese faces that grinned when their fellow countryman was beheaded by the Japanese. Immediately Lu Xun decided to change the course of his life and become a writer, instead of becoming a doctor. Lu Xun chose to promote a modern Chinese literature movement, because he recognised his fellow countrymen more urgently needed a doctor for the soul.29 Lu Xun realised the Chinese had succumbed to colonising depictions of themselves and had internalised these images of themselves as other. I read this as Lu Xun’s rejection of colonising Japanese interpretations on what it meant to be Chinese, as Lu Xun sought a postcolonised space in modern literature. Lu Xun decided the Chinese had become culturally colonised by both Japan and the West, and needed to decolonise in their thinking. Lu Xun reacted by radically changing the course of his life, and dedicated his life to the establishment of a viable modern Chinese identity through literature, one capable of dealing with foreign impositions on what it meant to be Chinese and modern. Far away in Ireland, Yeats was engaged upon a similar project: how to establish a distinct Irish identity in literature by Hibernicising the English language of the coloniser, thereby subverting attempts by the colonising British to define the terms of Irish identity. The genius of the Chinese May Fourth generation was that in order to avoid total colonisation by the West and Japan, they adapted

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various western literary models. The Chinese literati aimed to selectively modernise China to ‘save the nation’ from complete colonisation. I read this sophisticated nuanced postcolonial move, as one that seeks to move beyond the encircling, delimiting, colonising definitions on what it meant to be Chinese and modern. The nationalist Guomindang (GMD) party criticised modernising Chinese May Fourth writers for failing to return to the Chinese classical past for models on the essence of traditional Chinese Confucianism. May Fourth writers were accused of being too westerncentric or Occidentalist, or even of promoting the coloniser’s project in China. However, although May Fourth intellectuals looked to the west for inspiration, I argue their intentions were Sino-centric, since China lay at the centre of their modernising project. However, scholars such as Liam Kennedy assert it is problematic to place Ireland and Irish literature within the postcolonial canon, because according to his definition Ireland is a prosperous First World country. (This is a reductive essentialising term we no longer use).30 David Lloyd counters that Kennedy omits the vital factor of emigration from his analysis.31 Millions of Irish people were forced to emigrate on ‘coffin ships’ during and after the Irish Famine (1845–1849), the greatest disaster in nineteenth-century western Europe. (See Peter O’Neill’s The Black and Green Atlantic: Cross-Currents of the African and Irish diasporas for comparisons between the African transatlantic middle passage of enslaved peoples, and the Irish transatlantic passage as slaves, servants, migrants and political exiles).32 Therefore, Kennedy ignores the equivalent of four hundred million people would have to emigrate from India, in order to form an equivalent comparison with Ireland’s postcolonised prosperity. Even today vast numbers of Irish schoolchildren routinely expect to emigrate for employment away from the land of their birth, parents, friends and culture, in a way that is not routinely expected of children who grow up in the imperial centres of Britain or the U.S. This slow violence of emigration forms part of the present day postcolonised reality in Ireland. Liam Kennedy also argues Ireland cannot be considered postcolonial because many Irishmen served the British Empire. However, Barry Crosbie demonstrates that many of these Irish soldiers and civil servants were simultaneously subversive to the British Empire.33 Indian newspapers frequently complained that Irish Roman Catholic soldiers and civil servants took the side of the landless Hindu majority against the Mughal landlords. This contrasted with Irish Protestant servants of empire who

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sided with the rulers. Crosbie explains that Irishman Anthony MacDonnell was responsible for putting the Hindi language on an equal footing with Urdu within British law courts. Another Irishman, C. J. O’Donnell, intervened in issues of land reform, landlord abuse and famine in Bengal during the 1870s and 1880s. This complicates simplistic assumptions that everyone in the service of empire uniformly shared imperialist beliefs. Moreover, such dissenting Irish servants of empire were often demoted for their anticolonial sympathies with the indigenous peoples of India.34 On June 28, 1920 a regiment of Irish soldiers in the British Army named the Connaught Rangers mutinied in India and demanded the British withdraw from Ireland, claiming “we were doing in India what the British forces were doing in Ireland”.35 Irishman James Joseph Daly was executed for leading this mutiny, sixty-one soldiers were tried and fourteen were sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment. Also in the 1920s, Irish nationalists supported the Indian independence movement with finances, weapons and printing presses from the Friends of Irish Freedom in the U.S.36 Michael Silvestri underscores Bengali revolutionaries returned the favour, styled themselves the Indian Republican Army and restaged the Irish Easter Rising in April 1930 by attacking a police armoury in the eastern port city of Chittagong.37 Likewise, Kate O’Malley examines Indo-Irish political links, and notes radical Indian nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose was influenced by Ireland’s De Valera. Bose asserted “no country has ever achieved independence without bloodshed, [I] recommend India to follow the Irish example”.38 Jawaharlal Nehru wrote in 1907 of the Sinn Féin movement in Ireland and strategically linked this to Indian anticolonial movements. Female Irish Republican Maud Gonne McBride (Yeats’s muse) also helped to set up the Indian Irish Independence League (IIIL) in 1932.39 O’Malley reports the Irish Free State gave Indian communist Brajesh Singh a passport, when British intelligence attempted to block his European tour. British officials at the India office reported “it might be serious if Indian suspects took to going to Dublin for their passports”. O’Malley concludes “an anticolonial Indo-Irish nexus clearly existed in the 1920s and 1930s”.40 Therefore, Indian and Bengali nationalists evidently believed Ireland, Irish literature and the Irish independence movement could all serve as alternative models of modernity for their own independence movements (Fig. 1.2). According to Marjorie Howes, Ireland meets most of the traditional definitions of colonisation, including the loss of indigenous land and

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Fig. 1.2 Yeats’s muse Irish Republican Maud Gonne McBride helped to set up the Indian Irish Independence League (IIIL) in 1932. Pictured in this fascinating photograph are members who gathered to honour Indian independence leader Subhas Chandra Bose’s visit to Ireland in 1936, including Maud Gonne, Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington (widow of executed pacifist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington), Nora Connolly (daughter of Irish rebel leader James Connolly executed in Easter 1916), and Charlotte Despard, an Irish suffragist and socialist who supported Indian independence. This photograph establishes Hiberno-Indian anticolonial movements were linked in this transnational exchange, and Irish women activists played a leading role in these solidarities

language, amidst attempts at political, religious, linguistic and cultural control and colonisation.41 Moreover, Edward Said argued Ireland does belong in the postcolonial canon because Ireland became the original laboratory of empire, as earlier centuries of colonial experiment in Ireland were later applied by colonial British forces to colonised lands in Africa, Asia and the Americas.42 However, some critics suggest Ireland should not be compared with other postcolonised sites, because the Irish experience of colonisation was

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different from the experiences of other colonised peoples. Joe Cleary refutes this exclusionary and uniform model of global colonisation, which would preclude most comparative work. Cleary asserts it is both possible and productive to form comparisons with other contested sites of colonisation, especially because the history of Ireland is the history of colonisation, in all its many forms.43

Irish Historical Revisionism: We Are All Post-Revisionists Now In 1986, Irish historian Roy Foster proclaimed: “We are all Revisionists now”.44 This claim arose in the context of the violent ‘Troubles’ in the North of Ireland (1969–1998), because Irish Republican violence in the North was perceived to threaten the stability and legitimacy of the Southern state. Hence, a small group of Southern Irish historians, literary critics, politicians and journalists attempted to revise the nation’s understanding of Irish history in order to question the historical legitimacy of violent opposition to British rule in Ireland. All scholars revise (small r), but this school of Revisionists (large R) was criticised for making the very mistake they accused Irish Republicans of, namely ‘inventing’ an imagined Irish history that never existed, based on their present-day political interests. Seamus Deane underlined in the Field Day anthology, that this school merely replaced similarly flawed versions of Irish history and the earlier propaganda of nationalist/republican myth with a new invented Revisionist mythology. Deane asserts that “The rebuke came from groups equally anxious to assert some other position against nationalism – unionism, liberalism, internationalism”… that under the “pretence to ‘objectivity’” merely became in effect, “the defence of authority, understood as the status quo”.45

Opponents accused Revisionists of wishing to retain the status quo, which benefitted them, rather than seeking change in the form of a United Ireland. Although Revisionists claimed scientific objectivity, it is difficult to examine Irish nationalist violence in a vacuum, without any acknowledgment of earlier British colonial violence as a variable or contributing factor. Diarmaid Ferriter notes, many scholars took refuge from these tiresome ‘parochial’ debates by turning to economic, social, feminist and

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cultural histories; as international historiography turned to Comparative Studies and Gender Studies. Hence, a new generation chose to remember what actually happened, rather than what Revisionists “thought could … or … should have happened”.46 Postcolonial Studies also facilitated a turn away from the national obsession on the connection with Britain, and placed Ireland in a more appropriate global context. As we are all PostRevisionists now, this book continues the tradition of revising Irish history by placing Ireland in the broader transnational context of comparison with other postcolonised peoples and their literatures. John Regan identifies another potential problem regarding Ireland and the postcolonial. Regan explains Irish Revisionist historians rewrote foundational historical Irish events including the 1916 Easter Rising with the Easter rebels as founding fathers, to bolster the legitimacy of the Southern Irish State, while simultaneously disavowing any potential support for republican violence in Northern Ireland. This statist view began what I term the ‘difficult dance’ of Revisionism. This complicated revisiting means, as Brendan Bradshaw pointed out, many Irish Revisionist historians were guilty of ‘evasion’ or ‘normalization’ “in their approaches to the trauma of Anglo-Irish relations from the early modern period onwards”.47 Many Revisionists contend that the Irish could have won their freedom from colonial Britain through exclusively constitutional means, and could simply have voted themselves free, and that Britain would have conceded this over time. However, the instances of colonial powers conceding any form of autonomy to colonised peoples without protracted violence is rare in historical terms. This reading ignores the fact that the Irish repeatedly voted democratically to break the connection with Britain in various ways, including voting three times for Irish self-government under Home Rule (1886, 1893 and 1912), which was passed by the British House of Commons, but was repeatedly denied or delayed by the House of Lords. In reaction, the Easter Rebels proclaimed an Irish Republic in 1916, and Sinn Féin, the party that stood for this Irish Republic won a landslide in December 1918. Britain’s reaction was not to grant a democratically elected Irish Republic, but instead to partition Ireland in 1920, based on the fact that approximately 20 per cent of the Irish population (mostly Northern Irish Protestant Unionist settlers) wished to remain in the Union.48 Diarmaid Ferriter underscores that Irish delegates signed the final Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921) under the direct threat of renewed war [not democracy] from British Prime Minister Lloyd George.49 While Irish

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Revisionist debates might seem a necessary stage in Irish historiography, Alvin Jackson writes … it is also arguable that counter-revisionism represents a post-modernist assault on the enlightenment verities of Irish mainstream history. In this interpretation revisionism is a liberal construction, and therefore as flawed and dangerous as other constructionist readings. Indeed, just as some crusading post-modernists have seen the Holocaust as a bloody and perverted expression of the Enlightenment, so some ’green’ postmodernists have seen ’enlightened’ revisionists apologizing for what is occasionally described as the Irish Holocaust - the Great Famine of 1845-51.50

This propensity for Revisionists to minimise the effects of colonial British violence, including any role it played in the Irish Famine, arose from perceptions the Irish nationalist narrative could potentially benefit one political party—Sinn Féin. This is illustrated by comments made by Irish minister Avril Doyle in Australia in 1996 during commemorations of the Irish Famine by the diaspora. A member of the centre-right Fine Gael party, (Ireland’s parliament has no far right representation) minister Avril Doyle proclaimed to shocked Irish-Australian audience members that the Irish Famine was a “shared experience” between the British and Irish peoples. Audience members later asked if this meant “rape was also a shared experience”.51 These comments further indicate the growing gulf between the nationalist Irish public (and diaspora) and proponents of Revisionism on interpretations of Irish history. I avoid these heated debates on Postcolonialism by referring to Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China as postcolonised, which no one contests. To avoid the cumbersome phrase the Post(semi)colonial Chinese writers, I use the term postcolonised. The reader should take this as acknowledgment of the uniquely semicolonial condition of Chinese May Fourth writers. In All the Difference in the World: Postcoloniality and the Ends of Comparison (2007), Natalie Melas asserts that comparative literature was exclusionary and Eurocentric in the past, and mere inclusion is an insufficient response to Eurocentrism. However, Melas posits that comparison does not need to be abandoned if grounds for comparison can be established without suggesting equivalence in every aspect.52 Transnational Studies transcend the merely political and address global historical

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literary links without the heated political debates surrounding Postcolonial Studies. Conversely, Postcolonial Studies underscore the violent colonial exploitative background to these same international literary connections, as part of an ethical approach to the damage wrought by colonisation, rather than simply sidestepping this difficult issue as transnationalism does. To be silent on contested political issues is also to take a political stance, and students of Postcolonial Studies argue that silence on these issues can be a form of violence to unheard colonised voices that were written out of history, and that just because one can never fully address these violent colonial legacies does not mean one should not attempt works of retrieval as part of an ethical approach. I use both methodological paradigms throughout this book, though these terms are not interchangeable. Regarding the definition of Modernism Alex Davis asks. What, when and where was Modernism? Is modernism a period or a paradigm, an era or a style? Is modernism solely the product of metropolitan modernity, or equally of local, even peripheral, spatialities? … Does modernism mark a moment of avant-garde rupture with its late nineteenth-century poetic antecedents, or a reinflection and continuation of their preoccupations? Is Pound’s famous injunction, to ‘Make it new!’ a revolutionary or a reactionary call to arms?53

Scholars argue Modernism is all of the above, and my working definition of Modernism is: 1. A radical break with the past 2. Seeks new forms or genres of literature 3. Experiments with language and 4. Often re-words traditional mythic forms. According to this reading, I contend Chinese May Fourth literature fulfills these requirements and can be read as modernist or experimental, and as in reaction to the modern postcolonised condition. I argue in Chapter 2 Lu Xun’s Wild Grass prose poetry experiments in a modernist sense with genre and form. I further read Lu Xun’s short story “Diary of a Madman” as a modernist exploration on themes of psychology. In this short story Lu Xun experiments with and re-works the traditional trope of cannibalism in Chinese literature. I detect this is modernist play with

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traditional myths, (although myth often reflects earlier historical events). In Chapter 5 I detect modernist Brechtian alienation of an official worldview in Lao She’s play Teahouse, since onstage banners grow in size and increase in number with each successive Act and subversively proclaim “Do Not Discuss Affairs of State”. In Chapter 8, I discern elements of modernism in Cao Yu’s plays, and read The Wilderness as a non-realistic play exploring psychology in an experimental modernist sense. I do not argue Chinese May Fourth literature is exclusively modernist. As Marston Anderson notes much of the literature produced during this era exhibits The Limits of Realism (1990).54 My point is once the Chinese May Fourth generation discovered the limits of realism to effect societal change in a semicolonial condition, they moved on to more experimental forms of literature which display many modernist elements. As demonstrated in my list of abbreviations of journals, Chinese May Fourth era journals called for a New Youth, New Tides, New Poetry, New China, New Society, New Era, New North and the Modern. I read their urgent need to ‘make it new’ as a modernist impulse. Xiaobing Tang, Ming Dong Gu and Shu-mei Shih all agree with this reading, since they too detect elements of modernism within Chinese May Fourth literature.55 Shu-mei Shih’s insightful book The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China 1917–1937 (2001) argues one can detect modernism and postcolonialism within Chinese May Fourth literature, as do I. I suggest our rigid separation of modernism and modernity within the field of Chinese Studies is problematic and deserves to be re-examined, just as Irish Studies recently broke down dichotomies between the Irish Revival and Modernism. When I began this project, I discovered scholars generally do not accept modernism existed in China until the post-Mao era after 1976, although exceptions are made for Mu Shiying in 1930s urban Shanghai. This is because modernism is accepted as a critique of the modern condition, the very condition the Chinese May Fourth generation urgently pursued. The argument is if May Fourth writers were modernist, they would have to self-reflexively critique modernity, the very goal they reached for. Modernism is of course, a western term. Modernism implies looking back upon and reacting to the modern, and specifically urban western condition produced by the Industrial Revolution. Lingchei Letty Chen explains the difference between the pursuit of modernity and modernism in a Chinese context, and questions whether we need to find a new ontology for modern China.56 Since China did not experience the

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Industrial Revolution, the argument is the necessary material conditions of a modernised, urban China did not exist, thus writers could not write in reaction to this new modernity, critiquing and thereby creating modernism. According to Chen, modernism is a creative critique of modernity, or the modern condition, while simultaneously a part of modernity. The only exceptions for modernism in China during this period are made for 1930s Shanghai and “Xin Ganjue pai 新感觉派 New Sensationalist” writers like Mu Shiying, who experimented with syncopated jazz rhythms in his writings.57 According to westernised standards, 1930s Shanghai is deemed sufficiently urbanised to fit the necessary conditions for a modernist reaction to the modern condition. Yet, this exclusion is not applied to Irish writers like Yeats, even though traditionally scholars agreed the Industrial Revolution largely bypassed Ireland, with notable exceptions of shipbuilding and linen in the North. Andy Bielenberg’s detailed book on Ireland and the Industrial Revolution (2009) identifies two reasons for this: competition from colonial Britain’s industries for local Irish industries, alongside the fact that Ireland lacked the raw resources of coal, iron and steel that permitted an Industrial Revolution in Britain and wider Europe.58 Yet, Irish writers like Yeats are accepted as part of the modernist canon, because their postcolonised condition created the need for literary experimentation with the modern condition. I contend the fact that the industrial revolution bypassed Ireland and China to a large degree, did not prevent postcolonised versions of literary modernism from arising in both lands. Significantly, to argue otherwise ignores the semicolonial position of China in relation to western modernism, and constructs unnecessary Eurocentric standards for modernism. In light of New Modernist Studies, it is important to include other modernisms from the peripheries. According to such essentialist definitions only white, Irish/European, male writers could ever be modernist, since only Europe experienced the Industrial Revolution, and could pose a writerly reaction to its cold, scientific alienating methods. Since many parts of Asia did not experience an Industrial Revolution, this rigid definition precludes even the possibility of alternative modernisms arising in Asia. However, we do not need to apply European constructs in exactly the same way to an Asian context, without allowances for local conditions. As Dipesh Chakrabarty proclaimed, we can de-centre or Provincialize Europe within our methods and approaches to literature.59

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Although Modernism arose primarily in the West as a caustic commentary on industrial modernity, I argue alternative modernisms arose in Asia that took different forms. The modern world was formed to a large extent by the twin colonising forces of colonialism and capitalism. Scholars term this Colonial (or Imperial) Modernity and Capitalist Modernity. Modern Chinese writers had to contend with the very modern imposition of western imperialism, and I contend this motivated the May Fourth search for a postcolonised identity and resulted in modernist experimentation with language and literary form within their writings. Irish writers who are accepted as modernist were also inspired by the search for an adequate postcolonised condition. In other words, the need to find a postcolonised identity, directly links to the modernist need to ‘make it new’. For example, why did most of the greats of Modernism hail from the postcolonised peripheries, including Irish writers Yeats, Joyce and Beckett? Are the Postcolonial and the Modernist condition truly imbricated or linked, in that the forces of colonisation create the urgent need for a new modern identity? I suggest scholars of Chinese Studies have yet to fully address this part of the modernist equation, alongside the paradigm that modernism does not pertain to Republican era China because the Industrial Revolution bypassed China. The Industrial Revolution largely bypassed Ireland, but no one would argue Ireland did not produce modernist writers. Recent scholarship in Ireland broke down similar boundary walls and false dichotomies between Irish Revivalism and Modernism. Ronán McDonald explains traditional definitions of Irish Revivalism and Modernism as mutually exclusive were overturned, as new sources of recovered literatures by women, diaries, letters and new theoretical paradigms tore down these artificial categories as overly simplistic.60 Gregory Castle asserts Yeats’s modernism is rooted in, and continuous with Irish Revivalism.61 I detect modernism within the change of narrative voices in Yeats’s folkloric short stories, alongside his modernist experimentation with Asian forms of Noh theatre. I also discern modernist Brechtian alienation effects that alienate an official worldview within Revivalist Seán O’Casey’s trilogy of plays. I contend the shadowy Figure in the Window in O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars cannot be read as strictly realist; but alienates audiences in a Brechtian manner from nationalism’s official worldview. Frederick Lapisardi contends Eva Gore-Booth’s Revivalist drama is modernist, despite her use of archaic language and ancient settings, since

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her plays focus on very modern pacifist themes that are a reaction to, and a reflection upon, the modern postcolonised condition and the violence of WWI.62 Gore-Booth’s dramas were so non-realistic the Abbey theatre did not stage them, because of difficulty in presenting a fog turning into a person. Anthony Roche discovers influences from Irish Revivalist Lady Gregory’s bare theatrical imaginary in Irish modernist Beckett’s “spare, non-naturalistic liminal spaces”.63 I contend Irish Revivalism’s experiment with Hiberno-English as a literary language, led by Lady Gregory and advanced by other male Revivalists demonstrates another form of modernist intent, one that links the postcolonial condition with modernist experimentation. Barry McCrea also discerns Revivalist J. M. Synge’s invention of a language no one spoke in real life was an authentic modernist project, one that aligns with modernist suspicions about the reliability of signifier and signified in language.64 Therefore, just like Irish Modernists, I argue modern Chinese writers imagined a type of Postcolonised Modernism, a condition that could adequately cope with the shock of modernity and modernisation, one that resulted from the modernity produced by colonisation, rather than industrialisation. Tang Xiaobing calls for “a modernism of the subaltern subject… a remapping and reimagining of the imaginary world space”, and a new categorisation for Chinese May Fourth literature.65 Although Tang describes Chinese May Fourth writers as subaltern, this term usually refers to small social groups on the fringes of history, and is not used for published writers, however oppressed they are. The subject matter or protagonists of Chinese and Irish writers may have been subalternised groups of impoverished, illiterate peasants in rural China or western Ireland. However, Chinese and Irish writers were part of an educated elite with access to political and cultural power, leisure and travel, and are not themselves termed subaltern, even if the people they wrote about were. However, Tang Xiaobing is correct that we should remap the imaginary world space, opening the New Modernist canon to previously excluded groups from the peripheries in Asia, and elsewhere. My reading expands upon arguments by Jahan Ramazani and others, who call for a New Modernist canon to include writers from the peripheries.66 I argue we need to redefine what we mean by Asian, and specifically Chinese modernisms, and be more open to the concept that modernist experimentation with language and literary form appears within Chinese Renaissance literature. I contend to exclude Chinese May Fourth writers from the New Modernist canon, or to assign them a

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cold place outside the western-centric Modernist canon, means we reinscribe patriarchal, Eurocentric and hierarchical constructs. I do not accept only white, Irish/European male writers Yeats, Joyce and Beckett experiment with modern literature in a modernist sense. This aligns with calls by Susan Stanford Friedman to widen the New Modernist canon with new global, transnational Planetary Modernisms that include writers from the peripheries in Asia, Africa and elsewhere.67 I use the Post(semi)colonial condition of China as a way into their modernist literature, just as occurs in Irish Revivalism. I use the international reputation of accepted Irish Modernist writers like Yeats, to open the door to the club of modernism for Chinese May Fourth writers, who read, translated and applied modernist Irish literature.

Postcolonial Modernism Jahan Ramazani explains Postcolonialism and Modernism are imbricated, or overlap. Traditionally Modernism is defined as innovative, experimental writing developed in early twentieth-century Europe around WWI. Postcolonial literature is typically described as post-WWII “imaginative works written in the shadow and aftermath of Western colonialism”.68 Ramazani discerns a type of Postcolonial Modernist literature that links both lenses, without collapsing either category. Ramazani argues the urgent modernist need to ‘make it new’ in literature, is partly created by the urgent anticolonial need to create a modern new identity through literature, that can cope with colonial modernity. I contend Irish Revivalists and Chinese Renaissance writers found Colonial Modernity and Capitalist Modernity problematic. I argue both modern literature movements sought solutions to this dilemma within forms of Post(semi)colonial Modernism, through experimentation with language and literary form in a postcolonised setting. Accordingly, Postcolonial Modernism is the paradigm I apply in my comparison of the Chinese and Irish Renaissance movements, since I detect both elements within these modern literatures. To be part of Postcolonial literature, one must reflect back upon the postcolonial condition; and to be Modernist one must reflect back upon, and be in reaction to, the modern condition. I propose the modern condition Irish and Chinese writers reacted to and reflected upon, was their postcolonised condition. Thus I read these literatures as Postcolonial Modernism, in that both sets of writers experiment with vernacular language and literary

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form. I propose this as one way out of our constructed dilemma on how to apply western-centric definitions of Modernism, to semicolonial lands like China. I do not claim this is the only possible reading of May Fourth literature. However, I present this lens of Postcolonial Modernism, as an additional way to read Chinese Renaissance literature. This allows modern Chinese writers to be read according to their own localised conditions, rather than imposing external definitions on them, that do not so readily apply. Joe Cleary asks why so many of the greats of modernism emerge from the Irish postcolonised peripheries.69 Do we miss out on important elements in the impetus behind Modernism, if we leave out the significant contribution of the Postcolonial? I conclude in my final chapter, part of the problem is modern Irish writers are co-opted as European modernists, or as British modernists, which would have shocked them. Universities in the United States routinely offer courses on “British Modernism”, that focus exclusively on Irish writers W. B. Yeats, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. Such conflation ignores that Yeats produced a modern Irish theatre, not a British one, to form a modern Irish postcolonised identity. Yeats wanted Irish plays written by Irish writers for Irish audiences. Yeats’s stated aim was to “show that Ireland was not the home of buffoonery or easy sentiment, but the home of any ancient idealism”.70 Similarly, James Joyce’s modernist experimentation was motivated by the need to “go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race”.71 Clearly, Joyce did not refer here to the British race. Samuel Beckett when asked whether he was an English writer famously retorted ‘au contraire’, because he turned to writing in French to escape the colonial implications of the English language for an Irish modernist writer.72 This cultural appropriation is deeply problematic, as it skews our perception of where and when Modernism occurs. Modernism is invariably presented as an exclusively British and American phenomenon that takes place in the imperial metropolitan centres, rather than emanating largely from the postcolonised peripheries. If we imagine Modernism emanates predominantly from the western imperial cosmopolitan centres, and not from the colonised peripheries, we miss the point of what ‘casting a cold eye’ on colonial modernity meant for the Irish, and I would argue, Chinese postcolonial modernists. Of course there are British and American modernists like Virginia Woolf and Ezra Pound. But the greats of Irish modernism are forced to fit an artificial British mould that fails to

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align with their revolutionary intentions. I argue this misreading significantly and unnecessarily reduces the vital impact of the postcolonised contribution to Modernism, and deserves to be re-examined. I propose we use the Postcolonial to destabilise the Modernist canon. This issue of modernism versus modernity is also increasingly debated, reframed and re-imagined within Comparative Asian Studies, particularly regarding postcoloniality. Edward Said underscored the institutional colonial biases inherent to our fields and disciplines.73 Hence the study of literature, history, language, philosophy, politics, psychology and other areas, originated in convictions the imperial West is Best, and multiple disciplinary definitions are saturated with these essentialised assumptions. Therefore, Irish Modernists are repeatedly appropriated as British, and Chinese writers are kept out of the exclusively western Modernist canon. My book intends to re-examine the implications of these related issues.

Methods My methods are comparative, interdisciplinary and based upon current debates within Comparative World literature. This includes Pascale Casanova’s insights on how dominant western literary powers impose value upon writers from the peripheries.74 I contend Irish Revivalist and Chinese May Fourth writers from the peripheries are excluded unnecessarily from the Postcolonial and Modernist canons, and I argue for their inclusion. My research methodologies include comparative textual literary analysis, archival research, postcolonial methodology, feminist critique and a blend of biographical research and historical reflection. I both compare plays and poetry by Irish and Chinese writers, in order to contextualise my comparison, and then examine the translation and reception of Irish Revivalist literature in China within this context. My varied methods address issues raised by Asian Studies, Irish Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Modernist Studies, Gender Studies, Transnational Studies and Comparative Studies. Comparativists at international conferences frequently discuss in confabulated whispers how the English department is swallowing up their discipline, as tenured jobs disappear. However, I contend Comparativists provide something unique for scholarship, because they are interdisciplinary and work from original language source materials, not secondhand translations. For example, when I learned female Revivalist Lady

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Gregory’s literary legacy was written out of history, my mind immediately went to a comparable situation in China, where female writer Chen Hengzhe’s literary legacy was similarly erased. Therefore, Comparativists are interdisciplinary and global or transnational in their approach to literature, and provide transnational links that would not occur to scholars who work within one discipline, usually linked to a national or regional literature. Significantly, Edward Said the originator of Postcolonial Studies, worked in Comparative Literature, and thus was able to rise above the merely national in his detection of global colonial patterns. Said’s insight on the global nature of colonial practices within the structures and institutions of academia was a paradigm shift that changed the conversation in other disciplines, and demonstrates Comparative Literature is still relevant. Similarly, Michael Malouf contends Casanova’s reading of Irish literature as emblematic of how power travels between the centre and periphery could create a new comparative mandate within Irish Postcolonial studies.75 Malouf highlights Japanese translations of Irish Revivalism played a role in developing Japanese Modernism, yet also circled back to influence Irish Revivalism and Irish modernism. Malouf further reads Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart as destabilising or defamiliarising Yeats and Irish national identity, rather than consecrating the Eurocentric centre. Malouf uses Comparative Literature to detect a type of ‘travelling Irishness’—based on the way Irish ideas of nationalism or literary forms are appropriated in various contexts. My book follows this model and assesses how Chinese readings of Irish Revivalism played a role in developing Chinese modernism, alongside how this process was reciprocal in nature, as Asian and Chinese influences circled back to influence Irish Revivalism and Irish modernism. As our world becomes increasingly globalised, interdisciplinary comparative studies like this book become important resources on what can unite us, in our politically divided world. For those unfamiliar with either the Irish or Chinese historical contexts, I recommend a perusal of the Glossary before reading this book, to set the scene for the comparison that follows.

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Sources The evidence for my arguments is based upon dozens of Chineselanguage articles from original archival primary sources. My other primary sources include literature produced by both Irish Revivalists and Chinese Renaissance writers. Although many Chinese writers translated articles from original western sources, they invariably put their own imprint on these translations, including explanations, inclusions and exclusions. Some are long critical articles, others are simple translations or brief commentaries. All these articles deserve to be examined as literary productions and not simply as copies of the original western sources. Since many articles were written in a mix of traditional and simplified Chinese characters, my practice throughout this book was to use traditional Chinese characters in reference to primary source journal articles, and not to change the original traditional titles. However, I use simplified characters for later events in Chinese history after the introduction of simplified characters, or when I quote directly from another author’s book. I based my conclusions upon research in three Chinese-language databases. These databases only include journals, and did not permit me to read books on Irish Revivalism published in the May Fourth era. I accessed archival materials found in the Wan Qing Qikan quanwen shujuku (1833–1911) 晚清期刊全文数据库 (Late Qing dynasty periodical full-text database 1833–1911) and the Minguo shiqi qikan quanwen shujuku (1911–1949) 民国时期期刊全文数据库 (Chinese Republican era periodical full-text database 1911–1949) alongside the Quanguo Baokan Suoyin 全国报刊索引 (National Newspaper Index). These databases include around ten million texts in approximately twenty thousand different kinds of journals and periodicals, published between 1911 and 1949. This archival evidence guided me to change the structure of my research. At first, I did not plan to include a chapter on the Chinese reception of Irish Revivalist Synge, as I was unaware of any evidence for this. However, my research uncovered various articles about Synge and his plays within Chinese-language May Fourth journals. Therefore I changed and included a new chapter on Synge within this book. Conversely, I found too much material on Irish Revivalist Yeats and had to create three separate chapters, to deal with the volume of material on the reception of Yeats in China. Thus research guided my conclusions. I first translated

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Chinese-language May Fourth articles, to assess what Chinese Renaissance translators perceived and applied from the Irish Renaissance. I also emphasise this process was one of mutual encounter and reciprocal exchange between East and West, that forms part of our shared global history.

Chapter Summaries In Chapter 2 I compare Irish Revivalist Yeats with Chinese May Fourth writer Lu Xun, as both writers led the two modern literature movements I compare. In Chapter 3 I discover Lu Xun translated a Japanese article about Yeats and Irish Revivalism for his Chinese May Fourth audience. And I make postcolonial and modernist readings of writings by Yeats and Lu Xun, which I term Postcolonial Modernist. In Chapter 4 I examine the reception of Irish Revivalist Yeats and his criticism, poetry, folkloric short stories and drama in periodicals and journals of the Chinese May Fourth era. In Chapter 5 I compare the life and works of Irish Revivalist socialist dramatist Seán O’Casey with those of left-leaning Chinese dramatist Lao She. I discover O’Casey’s plays made it all the way to China, and Lao She visited Ireland during August 1928. I detect modernist Brechtian alienation of an official worldview within Seán O’Casey’s trilogy of plays and Lao She’s play Teahouse. Thus I read O’Casey and Lao She as ‘modernists hiding in disguise’. In Chapter 6 I examine how gender complicates my comparison by addressing the ‘founding mothers’ of these two modern literature movements. Thus I compare Irish Revivalist female writer Lady Gregory with Chinese female writer Qiu Jin, China’s first feminist. Although Qiu Jin died in 1907 before the May Fourth incident, I argue her call for the rights of women animated the zeitgeist of the Chinese May Fourth generation, and had she lived, she would have remained part of that generation. I also re-cast Lady Gregory as an implicit feminist (even if she did not claim this), and assert it was her money, her mentorship of younger male Revivalists, her house and her revolutionary ideas on Hiberno-English as a literary language that made the Irish Revival possible. Yet, Gregory is routinely described as the woman ‘behind’ Irish Revivalism, rather than the woman who led it from the front.

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I further discover Lady Gregory’s plays The Rising of the Moon and Spreading the News took on new transnational and postcolonial meanings, when performed by Chinese peasants throughout China during the 1930s, as part of China’s anti-Japanese imperialism. I examine whether academia simply ‘clapped to death’ these women, as Qiu Jin’s fate was poignantly described by Lu Xun. In Chapters 6 and 7, I argue female writers in Ireland and China were required by predominantly masculinist nationalist discourses to indefinitely postpone their struggle for women’s rights, to first establish freedom for the nation. I compare how themes of gender, postcolonialism, language and modernism all collided globally to form the New Woman during the early twentieth-century. In Chapter 7 I compare Irish Revivalist feminist and socialist writer Eva Gore-Booth with Chinese feminist and socialist writer Ding Ling. Although both writers were not co-eval, they both were first-wave feminists whose literary legacies were elided. I further discover Irish Revivalist Eva Gore-Booth’s poetry made it all the way to China. Eva Gore-Booth and her inspiring legacy for women’s rights and labour rights were written out of predominantly masculinist accounts of Irish Revivalism. I compare how Chinese feminist and socialist writer Ding Ling’s first-wave feminism was decried by Chinese second-wave feminists, just as her literary legacy was elided. Themes of erasure link how all four female writers I compare in Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China, were written out of ‘his-story’. In Chapter 8 I compare Irish Revivalist dramatist J. M. Synge to Chinese dramatist Cao Yu, as foundational dramatists of the two literary movements I examine. Both playwrights helped to establish modern national theatres in their respective lands. I further read their works as postcolonial and modernist. I examine the reception of Revivalist Synge by Cao Yu and within Chinese May Fourth journals. I underscore how Chinese May Fourth translators explicitly link Synge’s use of language as resistance and hybridity, to their own utilisation of the vernacular Chinese baihua to mobilise the masses to action. In Chapter 9 I elucidate patriotic poetry by the 1916 Irish Easter Rising leaders Pearse, Plunkett and MacDonagh was translated by Chinese May Fourth writer Liu Bannong, in the influential New Youth journal, to bolster the failing Chinese Republic established in 1911. I further compare how the colonial British gaze constructed both the Irish and

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Chinese as other, and as in need of imperial guidance, through a comparison of English-language accounts within newspapers published in China for an ex-patriate audience. I took the title for my book “Writers and Fighters ” from the title of Chinese May Fourth writer Lu Xun’s prose-poem “Such a Fighter”, because this encapsulates my main argument.76 I use the term “fighter” figuratively throughout, as both sets of anticolonial writers in Ireland and China struggled to achieve independence as an existential, societal and political end through their literary activities. However, many writers considered in this book fought both literally and metaphorically for causes they believed in. Lu Xun urged his students towards revolution and then vacillated over the resultant carnage. Female Chinese writer Qiu Jin literally led a revolution against the Qing Empire and was beheaded as a result. Eva Gore-Booth described herself as a pacifist, a nationalist, and a socialist feminist, yet supported her Irish republican sister Constance in the physical Irish fight for freedom. Yeats joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood briefly, and Lady Gregory supported Asian anti-imperial movements in Egypt and elsewhere. In Chapter 9, I propose that Synge’s plays depict the barren postcolonised condition of the Aran islanders and implicitly call for some form of revolt against “the hated English jurisdiction”. Arguably, Seán O’Casey was the greatest fighter of them all, as he openly advocated for both literary and literal revolution leading to global socialism. Yet, O’Casey’s plays focus instead on those who literally pay the price for revolutionary words. This often contradictory struggle on whether to be a writer or a fighter, or both, encapsulates the modern postcolonial dilemma encountered by all these writers, and their shifting attitudes towards anticolonial violence as resistance to earlier colonial violence. I contend the writers and fighters of Irish Revivalism and the Chinese May Fourth generation urgently sought new forms of modernist literary experimentation with genre and form, because they had to fight to escape the reality of their post(semi)colonial condition, and I read this as Postcolonial Modernism. Hence, I read Irish Revivalists and the Chinese May Fourth generation as writers of modernism and fighters against the postcolonial condition. Yet for my opening chapter why did I choose to compare Irish Revivalist Yeats and Chinese Renaissance writer Lu Xun? Was Chinese May Fourth writer Lu Xun aware of Irish Revivalist Yeats? Can their writings be read as Postcolonial and Modernist? Chapter 2 answers these questions.

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Notes 1. Declan Kiberd and P. J. Mathews, Handbook of the Irish Revival—an Anthology of Irish Cultural and Political Writings 1891–1922 (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), 240. 2. Eóin Flannery, Ireland and Postcolonial Studies: Theory, Discourse, Utopia (London: Palgrave and Macmillan, 2009), 19, 20. See Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland: the Literature of the Modern Nation (London: Vintage, 1995). 3. Maureen O’Connor, Ireland and India: Colonies, Culture and Empire, eds. Tadhg Foley and Maureen O’Connor (Dublin, Portland, Oregon: Irish Academic Press, 2006). Joseph Lennon, “‘Where East and West are One’: James Cousins and Postcolonial Aesthetics”, in India and Ireland: Colonies, Culture and Empire, eds. Tadhg Foley and Maureen O’Connor (Dublin, Portland, Oregon: Irish Academic Press, 2006), 81–94. Joseph Lennon, “Irish Orientalism an Overview”, in Ireland and Postcolonial Theory, eds. Clare Carroll and Patricia King (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 129–157, 209–219. 4. Lee Jenkins, “‘Black Murphy’: Claude McKay and Ireland”, Irish University Review 33, no. 2 (Autumn–Winter, 2003): 279–290. 5. Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, 221. 6. Edward Hirsch, “Interview with Derek Walcott”, Contemporary Literary 20, no. 3 (1979): 288. 7. Yuh Jhung Hwang, “A Mad Mother and Her Dead Son: the Impact of the Irish Theatre on Modern Korean Theatre”, Literature Compass 9/8 (2012): 560–569. 8. Lydia H. Liu, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity—China, 1900–1937 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1995). 9. Ying-shih Yu, “Neither Renaissance nor Enlightenment: a Historian’s Reflections on the May Fourth movement”, in The Appropriation of Cultural Capital: China’s May Fourth Project eds. Milena DoleželováVelingerová and Oldˇrich Král (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2001), 311. 10. Gang Zhou, “Chinese Renaissance, Other Renaissances”, in Remembering May Fourth The Movement and its Centennial Legacy eds. Carlos Yu-Kai Lin and Victor H. Mair (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 95. 11. Ibid., 97, 103–110. 12. Rana Mitter, A Bitter Revolution: China’s Struggle with the Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 3–5, 37. 13. Michel Hockx, “What’s in a Date? May Fourth in Modern Chinese Literary History”, Paths Towards Modernity: Conference to Mark the Centenary of Jaroslav Prusek (Prague: The Karolinum Press, 2008): 291–306.

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14. 15. 16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

Michel Hockx, “Is There A May Fourth literature? A Reply to Wang Xiaoming”, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 11 (1999): 40–52. Rana Mitter, A Bitter Revolution, 5, 6, 19. Ying-shih Yu, “Neither Renaissance nor Enlightenment”, 300. Gloria Davies, “May Fourth as Affect”, in Remembering May Fourth The Movement and its Centennial Legacy eds. Carlos Yu-Kai Lin and Victor H. Mair (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 30, 38, 42–49. Josephine Chiu-Duke, “The May Fourth Liberal Legacy in Chan Koonchung’s Jianfeng Ernian”, in Remembering May Fourth The Movement and its Centennial Legacy eds. Carlos Yu-Kai Lin and Victor H. Mair (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 56. Chih-p’ing Chou, “Two Versions of Modern Chinese History: a Reassessment of Hu Shi and Lu Xun”, in Remembering May Fourth The Movement and its Centennial Legacy eds. Carlos Yu-Kai Lin and Victor H. Mair (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 75–94. Yung-chen Chiang, “Hu Shi and the May Fourth legacy”, in Remembering May Fourth The Movement and its Centennial Legacy eds. Carlos Yu-Kai Lin and Victor H. Mair (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 113–136. Ban Wang, “Nature and Critique of Modernity in Shen Congwen: an Eco-critical Reading”, in Remembering May Fourth The Movement and its Centennial Legacy eds. Carlos Yu-Kai Lin and Victor H. Mair (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 159–182. Todd Foley, “A New Vision of Life in Xiao Hong’s The Field of Life and Death”, in Remembering May Fourth The Movement and its Centennial Legacy eds. Carlos Yu-Kai Lin and Victor H. Mair (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 183–206. Chien-hsin Tsai, “Literary Bombs: A Sketch of the May Fourth generation and Bomb as Metaphor”, in Remembering May Fourth The Movement and its Centennial Legacy eds. Carlos Yu-Kai Lin and Victor H. Mair (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 227–246. Chih-p’ing Chou, “Utopian Language: from Esperanto to the Abolishment of Chinese Characters”, in Remembering May Fourth The Movement and its Centennial Legacy eds. Carlos Yu-Kai Lin and Victor H. Mair (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 247–264. Gina Elia and Victor H. Mair, “The Immortality of Words: Hu Shi’s Language Reform and His Reflection on Religion”, in Remembering May Fourth The Movement and its Centennial Legacy eds. Carlos Yu-Kai Lin and Victor H. Mair (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 265–282. David Der-wei Wang, “May Fourth @ 100: Culture, Thought, History (五 四@100: 文化, 思想, 歷史)”, edited by David Der-wei Wang (Taipei: Lianjing, 2019). See Hsiao-yen Peng, “Dialectics between Affect and Reason: The May Fourth Counter-Enlightenment (唯情與理性的辯證: 五四的反 啟蒙)”, (Taipei: Lianjing, 2019).

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24. Irene Eber, Voices from Afar: Modern Chinese Writers on Oppressed Peoples and their Literature (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1980). 25. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Vintage, 1994), xii. 26. Jahan Ramazani, The Hybrid Muse (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 21–48. 27. Ibid., 23. 28. Seán Golden, “Commemorating the Anonymous: British imperialist discourse in China and its backlash among the Irish”, Irish Journal of Asian Studies, 2 (2016): 27. See Seán Golden, “Popular literature in the People’s Republic”, The Crane Bag: A Journal of Irish Studies 8, no. 2 (1984): 169–174. For other literary links between Ireland and China see Jerusha McCormack, “Ireland Through a Chinese Mirror”, in China and the Irish ed. Jerusha McCormack (Dublin: New Island, 2009), 1–13. 29. Lu Xun, Call to Arms and Wandering: Gems of Modern Chinese Literature (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2014), 5. 30. Liam Kennedy, “Modern Ireland: Post-Colonial Society or Post-Colonial Pretensions?”, The Irish Review, 13 (Dec. 1, 1992): 107–121. 31. David Lloyd, “After History Historicism and Irish Postcolonial Studies”, in Ireland and Postcolonial Theory eds. Clare Carroll and Patricia King (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2003), 53–56. 32. Peter O’Neill, The Black and Green Atlantic: Cross-Currents of the African and Irish Diasporas eds. Peter O’Neill and David Lloyd (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 33. Barry Crosbie, Irish Imperial Networks—Migration, Social Communication and Exchange in Nineteenth-Century India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 99, 100, 205–228. 34. Ibid., 228–246. 35. Thomas Bartlett, “The Connaught Rangers Mutiny India, July 1920”, History Ireland 1, no. 6 (1998): 3. 36. Michael Silvestri, Ireland and India Nationalism, Empire and Memory (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009), 13–45. See Michael Silvestri, “‘315 millions of India with Ireland to the last’: Irish and Indian nationalists in North America”, in Ireland and India: Colonies, Culture and Empire, eds. Tadhg Foley and Maureen O’Connor (Dublin, Portland, Oregon: Irish Academic Press, 2006), 244–255. 37. Michael Silvestri, Ireland and India Nationalism, 46. 38. Kate O’Malley, “Ireland, India and empire: Indo-Irish separatist political links and perceived threats to the British Empire”, in Ireland and India: Colonies, Culture and Empire, eds. Tadhg Foley and Maureen O’Connor (Dublin, Portland, Oregon: Irish Academic Press, 2006), 226. See Kate O’Malley, Ireland, India and Empire—Indo-Irish radical connections, 1919–1964 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008). 39. Kate O’Malley, “Ireland, India and empire”, 227.

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40. Ibid., 230, 231. 41. Marjorie Howes, “Yeats and the Postcolonial”, in The Cambridge Companion to W. B. Yeats eds. Marjorie Howes and John Kelly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 206–225. 42. Edward Said, “Afterword—Reflections on Ireland and Postcolonialism”, in Ireland and Postcolonial Theory eds. Clare Carroll and Patricia King (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2003), 177–185. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, 18, 226. 43. Joe Cleary, “Misplaced Ideas? Locating and Dislocating Ireland in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies”, in Ireland and Postcolonial Theory eds. Clare Carroll and Patricia King (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2003), 29, 30, 44. See pages 16–45. 44. Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 (New York: Overlook Press, 2005), 22–23, 750. 45. Seamus Deane, The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing ed. Seamus Deane (Derry: Field Day Press, 1991), xxii. 46. Ferriter, Transformation of Ireland, 747–751. 47. John Regan, “Southern Irish Nationalism as a Historical Problem”, The Historical Journal 50, no. 1 (2007): 197, 198. 48. Ferriter, Transformation of Ireland, 749. 49. Ibid., 193–194. 50. Alvin Jackson, Ireland 1798–1998: War, Peace and Beyond (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 4. 51. Tim Pat Coogan, Wherever Green is Worn: The Story of the Irish Diaspora (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 378. 52. Natalie Melas, All the Difference in the World: Postcoloniality and the Ends of Comparison (California: Stanford University Press, 2007). 53. Alex Davis, A History of Modernist Poetry eds. Alex Davis and Lee Jenkins (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 1. 54. Marston Anderson, The Limits of Realism: Chinese Fiction in the Revolutionary Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). 55. Shu-mei Shih, The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, 1917–1937 (Berkeley: University of California, 2001). Tang Xiaobing, “Lu Xun’s ‘Diary of a Madman’ and a Chinese Modernism”, PMLA 107, no. 5 (October 1992): 1222–1234. Ming Dong Gu, “Lu Xun and Modernism/Postmodernism”, Modern Language Quarterly 69, no. 1 (March 2008): 29–44. 56. Lingchei Letty Chen, “Reading Between Chinese Modernism and Modernity: A Methodological Reflection”, Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) 24 (2002): 175–188. 57. Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930–1945 (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999).

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58. Andy Bielenberg, Ireland and the Industrial Revolution: The Impact of the Industrial Revolution on Irish Industry, 1801–1922 (London: Routledge, 2009), 174, 175. 59. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2007). 60. Ronán McDonald, “The Irish Revival and Modernism”, in The Cambridge Companion to Irish Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 51–62. 61. Gregory Castle, “Yeats, Modernism and the Irish Revival”, in A History of Modernist Poetry eds. Alex Davis and Lee Jenkins (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 205. See Gregory Castle, Modernism and the Celtic Revival (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 62. Frederick Lapisardi, The Plays of Eva Gore-Booth (California: Edward Mellen University Press, 1991), v, vi. 63. Anthony Roche, “Re-Working ‘The Workhouse Ward’: McDonagh, Beckett and Gregory”, Irish University Review 34, no. 1 (2004): 171– 184. 64. Barry McCrea, “Style and Idiom”, in The Cambridge Companion to Irish Modernism ed. Joe Cleary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014): 67–70. 65. Tang Xiaobing, “Lu Xun’s ‘Diary of a Madman’ and a Chinese Modernism”, PMLA 107, no. 5 (October 1992): 1224. 66. Jahan Ramazani, “Modernist Inflections, Postcolonial Directions”, in A History of Modernist Poetry eds. Alex Davis and Lee Jenkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 459–478. 67. Susan Stanford Friedman, Planetary Modernisms: Provocations on Modernity Across Time (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015). 68. Jahan Ramazani, “Modernist Inflections, Postcolonial Directions”, 459, 460. 69. Joe Cleary, The Cambridge Companion to Irish Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 1–20. 70. Augusta Gregory, Our Irish Theatre (New York: Capricorn Books, 1965), 9. Phillip L. Marcus, Yeats and the Beginning of the Irish Renaissance 2nd Edition (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1987), 278, 279. 71. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man (London: Signet Classics, 2006), 253. 72. Fintan O’Toole, The Lie of the Land Irish Identities (London: Verso, 1997), xvi. 73. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979), 41, 50. 74. Pascale Casanova, The World Republic of Letters, translated by Malcom DeBevoise (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2004).

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75. Michael Malouf, “Problems with Paradigms: Irish Comparativism and Casanova’s World Republic of Letters”, New Hibernia Review 17, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 48–66. See page 62. 76. Lu Xun, “Such a Fighter”, Wild Grass (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1974), 57, 58.

CHAPTER 2

Yeats and Lu Xun: Postcolonised Modernists?

How did the revolutionary Chinese May Fourth generation of writers led by Lu Xun, read Yeats a leading Irish Revivalist? Did the Chinese Renaissance read Yeats and the Irish Renaissance as Postcolonised and Modernist, and as an alternative model of modernity for their own antiimperial generation? How do Postcolonised and Modernist readings of Lu Xun open innovative ways to engage with the radical Chinese May Fourth legacy? I compare Irish Revivalist William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) with Lu Xun 鲁迅 (1881–1936), because both are the founding fathers and principal leaders of the two modern literature movements this book examines. Moreover, Lu Xun was aware of the revolutionary impact of the Irish Renaissance on world literature and wrote a Chinese article on the implications of Yeats and the Irish Revival for his Chinese May Fourth audience. I examine Lu Xun’s account of Yeats in depth in Chapter 3. Yeats has often been appropriated as an example of British or European Modernism. However, Edward Said countered with a paradigm shift that presented Yeats instead as a decolonial writer, one who attempts to write themselves free.1 Declan Kiberd’s Inventing Ireland in (1995) reclaimed Irish writers for the Postcolonial canon, and similarly re-positioned Yeats as a Postcolonial Irish Revivalist, rather than an exclusively European Modernist.2 According to Eóin Flannery, the Irish provided a Utopian

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. O’Malley-Sutton, The Chinese May Fourth Generation and the Irish Literary Revival: Writers and Fighters, Asia-Pacific and Literature in English, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5269-4_2

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counter-modernity to that of imperial modernity for other colonised peoples across the globe.3 Flannery notes Edward Said lamented that the Irish do not fully appreciate the value of this global postcolonial legacy, and how their pioneering decolonising literature influenced other anticolonial literary and independence movements worldwide.4 I propose Modernist and Postcolonial readings of Yeats’s civil war poetry and of Lu Xun’s prose poetry collection Wild Grass . According to Jahan Ramazani, Postcolonialism and Modernism are imbricated or overlap, since the Postcolonised condition unleashed the urgent need for Modernist experimentation to ‘make it new’.5 This creates a type of Postcolonial Modernism, and I examine how this lens affects our reading of modern writers from the postcolonised peripheries. I argue we should broaden the New Modernist and Postcolonial canons to include not just white, Irish and European male writers like Yeats, but also Chinese May Fourth writers like Lu Xun from the so-called ‘peripheries’. Archival evidence establishes reciprocal literary exchanges and mutual encounters between Revivalist Ireland and the Chinese Renaissance. Since the colonised cannot return to an idealised pre-colonial past, nor can they imagine an entirely decolonised future, the need arose for hybrid models based on experimentation with how to be both postcolonised and modern. I submit that the postcolonised condition (in Ireland and in semicolonial China) created this urgent need to ‘make it new’. Therefore, I detect a type of Postcolonial Modernism within the writings of Yeats and Lu Xun. Ireland’s postcolonised position is contested. Historians agree Britain colonised Ireland from the early modern period onwards, yet revisionist scholars like Liam Kennedy dispute whether Ireland and Irish literature can be termed postcolonial, since Irish nationalists joined the British Army and participated in the civil service of empire, and because Ireland is part of the supposed ‘First World’.6 Marjorie Howes assesses both sides and concludes that Ireland meets the criteria of colonisation, as the indigenous population lost their lands and were distinguished from the ruling colonial classes by religion; the British colonial authorities attempted to eradicate the native Irish language; and the difference of native Irish culture from British culture became a rallying point for the Irish anticolonial project.7 Tahrir Hamdi asserts Said was correct to position Yeats as a decolonising writer, due to postcolonial similarities between the Irish Renaissance and the Arab Renaissance. Hamdi argues for the centrality of culture to the project of resistance, since a nation must first imagine itself

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as independent, before it can embody this.8 Likewise, Elleke Boehmer discerns rich postcolonial links between the Irish and Indian Renaissance movements and Yeats and Bengali writer Rabindranath Tagore.9 Gayatri Spivak states It is of course correct to view Yeats as a certain kind of Irish nationalist. But Yeats also wanted from the first to make Irish art and literature discover affinities abroad and free themselves from too confining a self-concept. A European idiom for Ireland, the Irish folk and international Spiritism, Irish poetry and French Symbolism, the Irish poet and Homer, the Irish National Theatre and certain noble plays of Japan were his slogan.10

Similarly, Jahan Ramazani presents Yeats as transnational and postcolonial.11 Sebastian Veg outlines three main receptions of Lu Xun: firstly, official readings of him as a revolutionary Marxist fighter; secondly, alternative psychological Modernist readings of Lu Xun—(mostly from Taiwan where his literature was banned as Communist) and thirdly; Sun Yushi of Peking University and others re-cast Lu Xun as a humanist.12 Modern day political needs intrude whenever history and literature are discussed. I contend scholars are too hasty in consigning Irish Renaissance and Chinese Renaissance writers a cold place outside the Postcolonial Modernist discussion. Scholars similarly assign neat demarcations on the West colonising the East, without allowing for Japanese colonisation in Asia, and colonisation within Europe. This ignores how the Irish anticolonial struggle established an alternative postcolonised model of modernity for Asian Chinese, Indian and Arab Renaissance movements to the model of modernity provided by the imperial centre. Another objection is that Ireland and China cannot be compared because they were not colonised in the same way. Joe Cleary counters that this rigid insistence on uniformity of all colonial experience would render any comparative postcolonial work practically impossible.13 I contend one can compare and contrast postcolonial works by Yeats and Lu Xun, without demanding similarity in every aspect. Revivalist Yeats envisioned Irish decolonisation through literature. I detect a corresponding antiimperialism in Lu Xun’s works, although both writers approach postcolonial modernity through routes that diverge and converge. Accordingly, in chapter one I compare the early life and works of Yeats and Lu Xun; how both artists learned to be public writers; how both addressed the fraught

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question of violence in anticolonial settings; and how their writings can be read as Postcolonial and Modernist.

Lu Xun’s Early Life and Work Lu Xun 鲁迅 (Zhou Shuren) was born into a landlord family in Shaoxing, Zhejiang on September 25, 1881 and named Zhou Zhangshou.14 Lu Xun adopted his mother’s maiden name Lu as part of his pen name. Lu Xun’s father Zhou Boyi was involved in a scandal in 1893 when he failed the Qing imperial provincial examinations and attempted to bribe an official. Lu Xun’s father descended into opium abuse when his own father, Lu Xun’s grandfather, was implicated and sentenced to beheading for the crime perpetrated by his son. Only bribery prevented this and Lu Xun’s father succumbed to ill health and disgrace. Lu Xun recounted how as a young boy he was sent to purchase the exorbitant ineffective cures prescribed by traditional Chinese doctors for his father. This led to Lu Xun’s determination to study Western medicine to save his people from such abuse (Fig. 2.1). However, Lu Xun experienced a Joycean epiphany during his studies in Sendai, Japan. Japanese mentors presented a slideshow to the young Chinese medical students. One slide showed a young Chinese man beheaded by the Japanese, while Chinese spectators looked on and grinned.15 This incident of abject colonial subjugation shocked Lu Xun to his core and changed the course of his life. Lu Xun determined the Chinese people more urgently needed a doctor for the soul, and decided to become a modern Chinese writer instead. I read this as Lu Xun’s version of anticolonial resistance, since he sought to move beyond encircling imperial Japanese versions of modern Chineseness. According to my reading, Lu Xun made a postcolonial move beyond colonial Japanese interpretations that circumscribed and delimited Chinese national character as abject and weak. Instead Lu Xun sought to establish through literature the urgent need for an invigorated modern New China. Secondly, Lu Xun demonstrated against Qing imperial rule over the Han Chinese by cutting his queue, a long braid that symbolised affiliation with Qing rule.16 A third example of postcoloniality was the May Fourth decision to utilise western literature as a tool to modernise China. This would paradoxically ‘save’ China from colonising Western incursion by re-tooling western literature, science and democracy. The ingenious Chinese May

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Fig. 2.1 Lu Xun the father of modern Chinese literature, is known for his satirical style, but is not as well-known globally as he deserves to be for his contributions of Chinese versions of postcolonial and modernist literature. Courtesy of JABEL/ CPC Photo

Fourth plan was to reverse the process of total western colonisation, and instead selectively utilise western literature as a model on how to write a modern version of Chineseness. I read Lu Xun’s writings as attempts to create a postcolonial vision of a viable modern Chinese identity, as China struggled to become part of the modern world, while facing colonial threats from East and West. I argue that to overlook this seminal postcolonial impetus for Lu Xun’s writings, ignores how his semicolonised condition created his vital need to become a modern Chinese writer. Therefore, I detect a direct link between Lu Xun’s postcolonised position and the experimental modernist elements in his writings.

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William Butler Yeats’s Early Life and Work Likewise, on a different side of the globe, a young Irish writer was also highly influenced by the postcolonised condition of his country, and became a leading Irish Revivalist and Irish Modernist. William Butler Yeats was born on September 13, 1865 in Dublin, and spent his childhood in Sligo in western Ireland, where he became fascinated by Irish legends. Yeats was educated in London, and recalled feeling homesick in his Autobiographies (Fig. 2.2). Yeats later met Lady Gregory who invited him to join her in collecting folklore from local Irish people near her home in western Ireland. (Lu Xun also became a collector of traditional Chinese art and stone rubbings). Lady Gregory and Yeats joined forces and led the Irish Literary Revival, or Irish Renaissance, that looked to Ireland’s ancient past to form a modern Irish postcolonised identity. Although British Modernism culturally misappropriates Yeats, his stated aim was to awaken or revive a separate postcolonised national Irish identity through a modern twist on ancient literature, a literature written for and by Irish people. Yeats outlined his postcolonial vision for cultural nationalism in the Samhain journal.17 In his Autobiographies Yeats recalls he was beaten by English schoolchildren for being Irish, and that he failed to identify with English victories.18 I read Yeats and Lu Xun as postcolonial writers, because I think not to do so misses the postcolonised motivations that unleashed their creative drives. I further read these postcolonial energies as linked to Yeats’s and Lu Xun’s modernist urge to ‘make it new’. Hence, I also read Yeats and Lu Xun as modernist writers, in that the modern condition they reflect back upon is the modern postcolonised condition, rather than the urban western conditions produced by the Industrial Revolution. Significantly, Yeats makes similar postcolonial moves to those of Lu Xun. Yeats chose not to associate himself with the colonial ambitions of his Protestant class, but deliberately sided with nationalist and predominantly Catholic Ireland; just as Lu Xun turned his back on his family’s landlord class. Yeats turns from the colonial outlook of his Anglo-Irish class, to create a hybridised Irish postcolonised identity based on ancient Irish literature. Noting early Asian influences on his life, Yeats recalls the Chinese pictures on rice paper and the Indian walking stick that belonged to his grandfather and came to Yeats after his death. Yeats claims to remember no picture other than this Chinese one.19 This indicates Yeats came from

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Fig. 2.2 William Butler Yeats one of the leaders of the Irish Revival, is also known as a global leader of postcolonial and modernist writing. Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland

an Anglo-Irish Protestant family that benefitted from colonial British maritime trade, including in the East. Yet, Yeats emphasises his family’s Celtic Cornish roots and that the Butler side of his family were Normans who came to Ireland in the twelfth-century.20 Yeats also utilised Hiberno-English as a literary tool to denote a nascent hybrid Irish identity. For example, his linguistic construction “my father heard me my lessons”, appears in his Autobiographies.21 This is a type of

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English language that is heavily influenced by the syntax and grammar of the Irish language. Yet, Yeats was not an Irish speaker. Hence, I argue Yeats’s struggle to come to terms with his Anglo-Irish roots, resulted in Modernist literature that experiments with language in a postcolonial manner. Yeats’s “Village Ghosts” in The Celtic Twilight emerged from his Mother’s conversations with a servant about tales Yeats believed Homer might have told.22 Just as Lu Xun looked to western models to authenticate his modernising Chinese Renaissance project, Yeats here invokes the classical European past to validate his modern Irish Renaissance project. Yeats claimed the Irish Revivalist project aimed to produce “a national literature”, one that went beyond categories like Catholic or Protestant into the pre-Christian, pagan past and touched the well-spring of ‘Irishness’.23 The existential crisis that faced Protestant Ireland, as predominantly Catholic nationalists regained power, motivated Anglo-Irish writers like Yeats to seek a new postcolonised space to accommodate both identities. Yeats sounds a deliberately Postcolonial Modernist note throughout the construction of his Autobiographies. This title is notably plural because Yeats retrospectively re-wrote and re-constructed his modern Irish identity, and tried on different masks in his quest for an adequate Postcolonial Modernist condition, both as an artist and for the Irish nation. Lu Xun embarked upon a similar Postcolonial Modernist quest to Yeats. Yeats also considered how to ‘invent’ a postcolonised modern national identity, as the Irish faced an existential crisis over the potential loss of their ancient language and culture. Lu Xun’s Chinese May Fourth modernising project was further complicated by the fact that the very western concepts of Reason and Progress they so eagerly pursued, were, as Marjorie Howes notes, “thoroughly implicated in and dependent upon Imperialism”.24 Therefore, it was difficult for either modernising project, in Revivalist Ireland or May Fourth China, not to fall into the trap of re-inscribing the imperial hierarchies and vocabularies they sought to subvert.

Public Role Both Yeats and Lu Xun served in government posts after anticolonial revolution. Yeats was appointed to the first Irish Senate in 1922, and was re-appointed for a second term in 1925.25 Lu Xun received a position at the National Ministry for Education in February 1912, after the 1911 Xinhai Revolution ended Qing imperial rule in China. Therefore,

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Lu Xun lived in Beijing from 1912–1926. Lu Xun was appointed Assistant Secretary and was on the committee that oversaw renovation of the Beijing library, establishment of the Natural History Museum, and establishment of the Libraries of Popular Literature. Lu Xun was the censor who decided which literature could be included in these popular education libraries.26 Yeats was involved in similar projects in Ireland as part of his public role, and assisted in the establishment of the Abbey Theatre in 1904, the world’s first repertory theatre. In the preface to his Call to Arms Lu Xun depicted the dilemma he faced as a modern intellectual versus his expected public role: Imagine an iron house without windows, absolutely indestructible, with many people fast asleep inside who will shortly die of suffocation. But you know that since they will die in their sleep, they will not feel the pain of death. Now if you cry aloud to wake a few of the lighter sleepers, making those unfortunate few suffer the agony of irrevocable death, do you think you are doing them a good turn?27

Hence, Lu Xun agonised over whether to ‘wake’ the sleeping Chinese masses psychologically, culturally and politically to this anticolonial battle of ideas and to a postcolonised modern reality that was far from ideal. Yet Carolyn Brown notes, Lu Xun does hope, he does write.28 Yeats employed similar imagery regarding iron doors and sleep, when describing the ancient Celtic [Irish] tribe of Danu in his Uncollected Prose. In this prose piece, Yeats asserts it was the Celtic people’s great charge to remember ancient things forgotten by the modern industrialised world: It has been the Celt’s great charge to remember it with ancient things, among forgetful peoples; and it may be his charge to speak of it and of ancient sanctities to peoples who have only new things. It was perhaps for this that the Roman went by him afar off, and that the Englishman is beating in vain upon his doors and wondering how doors of dreams can be so greatly harder than doors of iron; and that his days pass among grey stones and grey clouds and grey seas; among things too faint and seemingly frail to awaken him from the sleep, in which the ancient peoples dreamed the world and the glory of it, and were content to dream.29

Yeats also wishes to rouse modern people from their ‘sleep’, as does Lu Xun. Yeats also uses iron doors to depict the modern condition from which there is little possibility of escape, as Lu Xun did. According to

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Yeats, modern peoples try in vain to beat upon the doors of the dreams of ancient peoples, but they only encounter iron doors depicting how the modern condition prevents their entry. Although in different semicolonial settings, both Yeats and Lu Xun present their encounters with the modern world as forms of postcolonial and modernist reflection upon, and reaction to, imperial and capitalist modernity. Yeats detects a way out of this modern postcolonised dilemma and presents the revivifying postcolonial vision of Irish Revivalism as an alternative, counter-utopian route to the modern for the Chinese and other semicolonial peoples.

Commonalities and Divergences Although both Yeats and Lu Xun came from significantly different backgrounds, both lived during revolutionary anticolonial times. Both were born into families of the ruling class; both were keenly aware of the indigenous traditions which informed their work and of the public role expected of them. However, Lu Xun, although well versed in classical Chinese studies, portrayed traditional Chinese culture as a form of cannibalisation. I read this as a Modernist impulse to play with myth, since cannibalism was a trope in Chinese literature. Whereas Yeats looked to the ancient Irish past to form a better Irish futurity, Lu Xun as part of the iconoclastic Chinese May Fourth generation rejected the Chinese past, and was cosmopolitan in modernising Chinese intellectual thought. Their attitude to the past was one area where Irish Revivalists and Chinese May Fourth writers diverged. Whereas Yeats adopted a Romantic viewpoint in reaction to the cold scientific tenets of the Industrial Revolution; Lu Xun favoured a scientific approach to literature and fought against superstition. However, Eileen Cheng detects a lifelong interest in ghosts and the supernatural within Lu Xun’s works.30 Similarly, Yeats claimed in his Autobiographies that his nightly visits to a sea cave formerly inhabited by a man evicted during the Famine, led to the community’s belief that Macrom had returned.31 Yeats here attempts to literally become part of the postcolonised Irish landscape; and is clearly conscious of the ‘ghosts’ of evicted tenants in the background of Irish history. Yeats’s lifelong interest in the supernatural and the transcendent are well-documented by Ellmann (1958) and Foster (2003).32 However, Yeats and Lu Xun also diverge as both attempted different routes to modernity. Whereas Lu Xun’s cure for society’s ills calls for

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individual freedom from societal demands; conversely Yeats envisioned a Unity of Being and a Unity of Culture, whereby individual, culture and society were all in harmony. This establishes a Modernist note of Postcoloniality, as this Yeatsian quest for unity indicates the schisms within his own hybrid identity, embodying the religious, cultural and political divisions in Revivalist Ireland. Yeats’s poem “Among School Children” depicts Yeats’s search for unity and famously concludes: “How can we know the dancer from the dance?”33 This poem portrays rising expectations that end in uncertainty. These blockages or aporia indicate Yeatsian uncertainty on how to achieve a viable Modernist or Postcolonial identity amidst the reality of imperial modernity. Regarding their similarities, Lu Xun was interested like Yeats in the spiritual condition of his people, and of humankind in general. Both writers also used Symbolism throughout their works. For Lu Xun and Yeats, the important thing was not the materialist, but the spiritual and psychological condition of the nation. Both Yeats and Lu Xun favoured passion over tepid emotions, however, Lu Xun would have dismissed Yeatsian appeals to the transcendent. Lu Xun was almost romantic in his fascination with individualism; Yeats also had a romantic streak and believed in passionate individualism. This individualism led Lu Xun into conflict with a political milieu that demanded the individual should be subjugated to the communal. Lu Xun disagreed with the League of Left-Wing Writers’ descent into propaganda, even though he was titular head since its formation in 1930 in Shanghai.34 Yeats fought similar battles for artistic freedom against the demands of the Irish nationalist community, of which he was simultaneously a part, and yet outside of as commentator and critic. Moreover, Yeats stood up against the Abbey riots that greeted Revivalist plays by Synge and O’Casey, and famously declared the audience “had disgraced themselves again”.35 Lu Xun occupied a similar Postcolonial Modernist space in May Fourth China, to Yeats in Revivalist Ireland, regarding his public role and commitment to artistic integrity over political expediency.

Traditional Influences Similar themes engaged Yeats and Lu Xun, who collected ancient traditions and transformed these into a viable modern postcolonised literature. Lu Xun’s radical May Fourth generation educated the Chinese poor and women to gain them the franchise. Similarly, Thomas Davis inspired Yeats,

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and educated the Irish populace with romantic histories, ballads and political essays, that opposed the official British state version. Thus a new constituency developed due to increased literacy in Ireland and China. John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman assess late Qing male literacy rates at 30% to 45%, while female literacy was between 2 to 10%. Elementary school enrolment in China rose from one million in 1907, to 6.6 million in 1922, while middle school enrolment rose from 31,000 to 183,000. However, Fairbank and Goldman describe these as “abysmally small figures for a country teeming with 400 million people”.36 Similarly, in postcolonised Ireland in 1914, a departmental committee on agricultural credit noted in some districts, 75% of the population was illiterate.37 French Enlightenment writers influenced Thomas Davis, who greatly influenced Yeats. Vera Schwarcz terms May Fourth the Chinese version of the Enlightenment.38 The French Enlightenment led to a reaction from German Romanticism, a rejection of universalising cosmopolitanism, and an emphasis instead on the Volk Geist or spirit of the local people. Both movements influenced Yeats to collect Irish peasant folklore. Lu Xun also collected ancient Chinese traditional art, literature and stone rubbings, as Lu Xun’s former residence that houses the Beijing Lu Xun museum attests. In China, the Manchu Qing dynasty appropriated Han cultural beliefs including the concept that Tian 天 (heaven) mandated the next Emperor, to gain the consent of the colonised Han population.39 In Ireland Yeats, (although not a member of the Ascendancy) became disillusioned that his own Protestant class failed to fully engage with ancient Irish cultural legacies. Poet Samuel Ferguson argued the Ascendancy class should assimilate Irish cultural features, to preserve Protestant colonial power in Ireland. Yet, Yeats disentangled himself from his class interests, just as Lu Xun rejected the traditional Chinese landlord class his family nominally belonged to, until falling on hard times. I read another postcolonial move in Lu Xun’s rejection of his own Han cultural traditions, because the Manchu appropriated these symbols, rituals and Confucian ideals as methods of imposing Qing rule. This meant Lu Xun could not access his own ancient cultural traditions, in ways that Yeats could, although the ancient Celtic traditions Yeats appropriated, were not from the traditions of his Protestant class. Significantly, if the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy listened to Thomas Davis and Samuel Ferguson and appropriated ancient Irish legends, language and culture to buttress

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Anglo-Irish colonial rule, these would have been unavailable to Yeats as a radical form of self-invention. Similarly rich resources were lost to Lu Xun as a basis for possible reform, hence Lu Xun could only ‘cannibalise’ his ancient past, to liberate himself from it. Moreover, the influence of their respective fathers indelibly marked works by Yeats and Lu Xun. Yeats’s Autobiographies portray how his artist father John Butler Yeats’s pre-Raphaelitism influenced William Butler Yeats’s Romanticism. Lu Xun was also deeply affected by his father, particularly his decline into ill health. Lu Xun developed an aversion to Chinese traditional medicine, when this failed to prevent his father’s death from opium addiction. This directly links Lu Xun’s personal experiences to British colonial practices in China, during the 1840s Opium Wars.

Postcolonised Writers and Fighters? During the 1840s Opium Wars, the British smuggled Opium into China to ensure the balance of trade went in Britain’s favour, and reversed earlier trade deficits.40 The British took opium grown in British India at reduced transportation costs, and sold it illegally in China for profit. The Chinese realised they now imported more than they exported, as money in the form of silver flowed out of China resulting in a trade deficit. When the Chinese understandably banned this opium trade, the British refused and started the Opium Wars. These wars forced the Chinese to accept British products and disadvantageous treaties, that for example, allowed Britain a foothold in Hong Kong. The resultant epidemic of opium addiction was catastrophic to Chinese society and influenced Lu Xun directly through the death of his father. Simultaneously, the colonial British presided over the 1840s Irish Great Famine [as my Comparative Timeline outlines]. It is no coincidence that the Chinese and Irish were depicted as ‘other’, within discourses in expatriate British colonial newspapers and literature, during this time period. The colonial British gaze repeatedly depicted the Irish as dehumanised simian apes in notorious cartoons for the British Punch magazine, Charles Kingsley called the Irish “white chimpanzees”, and The Times newspaper ridiculed the Irish anticolonial project.41 The semicolonial Chinese were encircled by similar colonising constructions within British ex-patriate newspapers published in China. This postcolonised reality necessitated modernist experimentation for writers Yeats and Lu Xun, to ‘make it new’ and discover a postcolonised space through modernist experimentation.

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The Story of Ah Q In “The Story of Ah Q” Lu Xun described the ‘sleeping’ Chinese postcolonised mindset in this episodic novella, published in 1922. The adventures of hapless Chinese peasant Ah Q is famous for his ‘spiritual victories’, and capacity for extreme self-delusion when humiliated. Ah Q is eager to join the 1911 Xinhai anti-imperial Revolution to remove the Qing, but sleeps out and misses his opportunity. Ah Q is sentenced to death and scapegoated for looting revolutionaries. Hence Lu Xun satirically perceives the Chinese ‘missed’ their chance of true anticolonial revolution in 1911, because they ‘slept’. Much of Lu Xun’s writing is set just before and during the 1911 Revolution, and therefore describes how the Han were colonised by the Manchu.42 Han people were not forced to use the Manchu language, but other markers of Manchu colonialism included the long queue or plait/ braid Han men were forced to wear. Eva Shan Chou details in 1903 Lu Xun cut off his own queue as a student in Japan, as a sign of Han resistance against imperial Qing rule.43 Lu Xun also depicts his character Ah Q cutting off his queue, which I read as an anticolonial impulse. Modernists note the English letter Q used to translate Lu Xun’s short story visually represents how a man wearing a Manchu queue looks from the side. I read this as an instance of Lu Xun playing with form in the Modernist sense. I read Lu Xun’s actions in cutting off his queue as another postcolonial move, one that seeks to move beyond imperial depictions of Chineseness. Therefore, I detect a Postcolonial Modernist reading of Lu Xun’s story of Ah Q. Lu Xun’s May Fourth generation lived through a bourgeois nationalist revolution in 1911, that descended into anarchy. That Chinese generation turned to a proletarian revolution and socialism instead.44 Yet the spirit of Lu Xun’s anticolonial critique lives on, as it is still a form of insult in China to accuse anyone of Ah Qism or feudal beliefs. How did Yeats in Revivalist Ireland and Lu Xun in May Fourth China, deal with the problematic theme of anticolonial violence, in their attempts to form a Postcolonised Modernist space in literature?

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The Theme of Violence The Empire Writes Back (1989) was heralded as a foundational work for postcolonial studies. Elleke Boehmer states that this book underrepresents resistance in later Postcolonial theory.45 Resistance to colonial imperialism links works by Yeats and Lu Xun, since both writers sought a postcolonised modern identity for their respective embattled nations. Therefore, I read the lives of Yeats and Lu Xun as a type of postcolonial practice. Although the original colonising process was violent, it was difficult for writers in postcolonised lands to address the perceived need for anticolonial violence. Yeats and Lu Xun often called for revolutionary change, but both writers recoiled when confronted with the violent results for the individual in a postcolonised setting. Lu Xun was ideologically left-leaning, although he never joined the Chinese Communist Party. Conversely, Yeats adopted many political ‘masks’, was originally a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, remained a lifelong nationalist and even flirted briefly with fascism.46 Yet how did both anti-imperial writers deal with the fraught question of violence? Erez Manela describes The Wilsonian Moment (2007) and posits if anticolonial movements in China, Korea, Egypt and India during WWI were dealt with according to American President Woodrow Wilson’s promises, the crises of anticolonial nationalism could have been averted.47 Manela argues disillusionment with Wilson’s unfulfilled promise on selfdetermination, led to renewed nationalism throughout the colonised world, which re-appropriated Wilsonian vocabulary and concepts to challenge the existing order. Similarly, I contend that Lu Xun in China re-appropriated imperial western literary methods for his anticolonial project. So too Yeats in Revivalist Ireland utilised the language of the coloniser to decolonise, by re-tooling Hiberno-English as a literary language. I suggest Manela should add the anticolonial Irish project alongside the four anticolonial Asian nationalist movements. What other parallels emerge between Ireland and China during this period? The Chinese May Fourth movement Manela discusses, emerged at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919. During WWI China was induced to assist the Allies by promises that German-held concessions in Shandong would be returned to China. 140,000 Chinese served as non-combatants and even buried corpses in the Allied trenches of WWI.48 Rana Mitter

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explains the Allies duplicitously offered the Japanese a similar arrangement, and handed over German territories in China to Japan at Versailles. Revolt ensued on the streets of Beijing on May 4th 1919, as students protested their acquiescent Beijing warlord government.49 This May Fourth movement fostered the May Fourth generation that included Lu Xun. That generation urgently promoted the need for a modern, and I would argue decolonised Chinese sense of self through literature, culture and politics. Some of Lu Xun’s students marched during May Fourth and Lu Xun was torn over whether to approve the decolonising revolution he argued for, or despair over the loss of life this entailed. Lu Xun’s prose poetry collection Wild Grass outlines his reaction to the violent Warlord Years in China, 1916–1928. This preoccupation with the politics of violence, resistance and the inevitable costs incurred also dominated Yeats’s work, and became a theme of his later poetry. Simultaneously, a similar situation developed in Ireland, where the Irish Home Rule bill was three times passed by the Commons but denied or delayed by the House of Lords.50 Similar to Chinese frustrations, the threat of conscription in 1916 compounded Irish political fears. In his famous Easter 1916 poem, Yeats interrogates how too long a sacrifice makes a ‘stone’ of the heart. 51 In poems “Nineteen hundred and Nineteen” and “Meditations in Time of Civil War” Yeats struggles with the hard facts of colonial violence, and how State-sanctioned violence frequently gets a pass.52 Yeats penned “Nineteen hundred and Nineteen” to decry colonial violence by the British state in Ireland, during the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921). Yeats writes Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare Rides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery Can leave the mother, murdered at her door To crawl in her own blood, and go scot-free.53

This was a real-life incident in Kiltartan, that Lady Gregory reported to Yeats. On November 1, 1920 Ellen Quinn who was seven months pregnant, was shot in the stomach in front of her farmhouse by a passing British police patrol in a lorry, as she held her nine-month old baby. She died in a pool of her own blood, in her husband’s arms. Outraged, Lady Gregory wrote lists of similar atrocities by the British Black and Tans to The Nation newspaper, to make English people aware of what was done in Ireland in their name.54

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Yeats’s poem questions State-sanctioned violence, and forms part of Yeats’s anguished response to the violence of WWI and the Anglo-Irish War of Independence (1919–1921). Violence during the Irish Civil War (1922–1923) was a theme of Yeats’s later collection The Tower. Like Lu Xun, Yeats lived through his own existential crisis and breakdown of the moral order in Irish society from 1919–1923. Significantly, the Yeatsian vision of history as circling gyres is similar to traditional Chinese non-linear readings of history. Thus Yeats’s worldview and reading of history was influenced by Eastern and Chinese models. In his poem “Leda and The Swan”, Yeats begins on the German front and expands to violence on the global stage.55 However feminist critique underlines that the girl’s violent rape is noted almost casually, as if less important than developments on the violent world stage. An Indian visitor asked Yeats in 1937 for a message to the subcontinent. Yeats dramatically grabbed a Japanese sword and replied “Conflict. More conflict”.56 Yeats’s prescient words depicted Lu Xun’s situation, as the Japanese invaded China for a second time in 1937. According to Gloria Davies, Lu Xun mocked his Marxist peers for their revolutionary literature, which he termed a confusion of guns with words.57 During bombing by the nationalist Guomindang (GMD) Lu Xun sarcastically commented a little red dog was killed, but the politics of the little red dog were yet to be ascertained. After Lu Xun’s death in 1936, Mao Zedong co-opted Lu Xun in 1942 into the cause of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the ensuing political violence.58 Lu Xun was appropriated as a left-wing writer whose works could be used for propaganda. However, once writing descended into propaganda, Lu Xun unlike Mao simply stopped writing. Ironically, both Yeats and Lu Xun were posthumously appropriated by governments eager to buttress their own political agendas, even though both artists openly questioned state-sanctioned violence.

Language Lu Xun and his contemporaries employed a hybridised form of the coloniser’s language to shake off colonial mentality. This language was Europeanised ouhua baihua 歐化白話—a form of vernacular Chinese heavily indebted to the structure and lexicon of European languages.59 Semicolonisation in China meant no single coloniser had the power to institute its language as the language of the colonised elite. Therefore,

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semicolonial China differs from Ireland, Korea and India as Chinese May Fourth writers seldom used English or Japanese. As my Introduction argued, Lu Xun paradoxically utilised western language and literature to prevent total Western colonisation of China. This mirrors how Yeats approached a similar dilemma in postcolonised Ireland. Yeats re-tooled the English language of the coloniser, to establish Hiberno-English as a literary language of resistance. However, both writers realised colonial language structures limit what you can express and thus what you believe. Yeats struggled with how to ‘translate’ Irish speech and thought patterns into English, thereby inventing a modern postcolonised form of expression for the emerging hybrid Irish nation. Lu Xun similarly struggled to pen one of the first modern Chinese novels in the vernacular. This simplified Chinese script was not limited to an esoteric few, as was the complicated traditional script. But if their semicolonial condition meant Yeats and Lu Xun can be read as postcolonised writers, can they also be read as Modernist?

Modernism Although Marston Anderson positions May Fourth writers as Realists, Xiaobing Tang and Ming Dong Gu disagree and re-position Lu Xun as a Modernist.60 Seán Golden explains that “free verse, written in the vernacular, replaced classical poetry” during the May Fourth era, as new literary forms including the novel and short story replaced forms perceived as reactionary.61 I contend their breaking away from old forms of literature and their invention of new modern genres and forms means Chinese Renaissance writers like Lu Xun can be read as Modernist. Frederic Jameson explains only western modernist literature is accepted as canonical; unnecessarily excluding Asian writers like Lu Xun from the Modernist canon.62 Significantly, Shu-mei Shih detects Modernism within semicolonial China, and interprets Lu Xun’s version of modernity as (1) The abolition of cultural syncretism (those who could not entirely forsake Chinese tradition or wholeheartedly accept Western culture) and (2) a critique of Western Orientalism which sought to preserve traditional China as an exoticism.63 Accordingly, I argue for the inclusion of Lu Xun’s work as a neglected literature of Modernism, or a form of Postcolonial Modernism, since his work is both anti-imperial in content and experimental in form. The counter-argument is May Fourth literature cannot be Modernist

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because China missed the Industrial Revolution, and the physical conditions required for modernity are not present in China during this period. Since Modernism requires a reflection back upon, and reaction to the evils of the modern condition, which is read as exclusively western, according to this definition Chinese May Fourth literature cannot be Modernist. I contend these Eurocentric definitions ignore that modernity in early twentieth-century China involved a type of Post(semi)colonised modernity. Joe Cleary notes regarding Ireland’s incomplete transition to modernity, many scholars completely ignored the role of empire in Ireland’s delayed development.64 Lu Xun’s China similarly missed many aspects of High Modernism, and did not exclusively appeal to a highly specialised esoteric audience, as May Fourth writers aimed to move the masses to action. I argue we should search for Chinese Modernism through the lens of the Postcolonial condition, since this constituted the ‘modern’ condition or reality that Chinese May Fourth writers wrote against. The Industrial Revolution largely bypassed Ireland, but that does not prevent scholars from categorising Irish Revivalist Yeats as Modernist. This is because Irish Revivalists wrote against the modern postcolonised condition. My contention is if we examine Chinese Renaissance writers with a similar lens, we can discover elements of Postcolonial Modernism within their writings. I posit that Postcolonial Modernism formed part of the Chinese answer to the twin evils of Colonial and Capitalist Modernity, just as it did for Irish Revivalism. Therefore, Irish Revivalism provided an alternative route to the modern, and spoke to a new Chinese May Fourth readership from a similarly postcolonised position, by circumventing discourses on race and colonisation that permeated literatures emanating from the imperial centre. Marston Anderson claimed Chinese May Fourth writers discovered the Limits of Realism to effect societal change. I contend aspects of Postcolonial Modernism replaced Realism for anti-imperial Chinese May Fourth writers, who experimented with language and form in a postcolonised setting.65 I assert Chinese May Fourth ‘writers and fighters’ display underlying Modernist techniques, attitudes and intentions, but I relate this to their post(semi)colonised condition which created their urgent need to ‘make it new’. Susan Stanford Friedman’s Planetary Modernisms offers a more inclusive approach to such liminal temporalities and peripheries occupied by what I read as Postcolonial Modernist Ireland and

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China.66 My reading argues for a form of Postcolonial Modernism in Irish and Chinese Renaissance literatures, since both movements were anti-imperial and experimental.

A Madman’s Diary---Modernist Experimentation with Cannibalism Lu Xun’s famous short story “A Madman’s Diary” is Modernist and experimental throughout, until the very last line which didactically proclaims “Save the Children!”67 This short story is modelled on Gogol’s Diary of a Madman and depicts an eponymous madman who perceives the ‘truth’ that cannibalism occurs in his village and in the Confucian classics. This short story takes the form of diary entries by the madman, now apparently cured, who reads “chi ren 吃人 (eat people)” between the lines of humanist Confucian classics. The ominous sentence “they must have learned this from their parents” is an indictment of Chinese filial piety. Lu Xun seeks to turn semicolonial Chinese life, into real postcolonial change rather than stasis, and the madman image contributes to a Modernist sense of chaos. An experimental modernist take on new literary forms, Lu Xun’s “A Madman’s Diary” published in 1918, was reputedly the first Chinese short story in the vernacular, although that credit should go to female writer Chen Hengzhe. Lu Xun’s depiction of a madman who is convinced that those around him practice cannibalism, became a powerful metaphor for the existential crisis facing May Fourth intellectuals. I contend Lu Xun’s play with Chinese myths of cannibalism strikes a modernist note, since myth is based on historical facts which become legend. Eileen Cheng explains actual cannibalism occurred in China in 1907, when Qiu Jin’s cousin rebel leader Xu Xilin was executed by the Qing and soldiers ate his heart and liver.68 Frederic Jameson claims eastern literatures often allegorise the destiny of the private individual with that of their embattled society.69 Jameson detects a modernist Freudian attempt at reconstruction through the process of paranoia within Lu Xun’s text. Thus Lu Xun presents a world in which the Chinese must devour one another to survive in the postcolonised modern order. This is a particularly powerful metaphor in a culture where people greeted each other with the question chi le ma 吃 了吗 which means have you eaten.

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Rather than become a Social Realist, Lu Xun blended Realism with experimental forms of Modernism. Yeats also was not Realist, but was defined by Harold Bloom as a belated Romantic, and became a canonical Modernist poet. However, scholars Edna Longley and Chris Baldick contest whether Yeats was Modernist. For Longley Modernism “acquired” Yeats in the 1960s, “in a job lot from Symbolism without at once realising the implications”.70 Chris Baldick asserts “Yeats’s work is too various and ambiguous to be dragooned under any critical label, especially ‘symbolism’ or ‘modernism’ without severe distortion”.71 However, I concur with recent scholarship by Ronán McDonald and Gregory Castle who re-position Irish Revivalism as part of Irish Modernism.72 Gregory Castle asserts “Yeats’s modernism is rooted in and continuous with Revival”.73 Joe Cleary also reads the Irish and American Renaissance movements as Modernist, because both revolt against colonisation and unleash anticolonial energies.74 Alex Davis notes “the opposition revivalism/modernism is a reductive and erroneous binary opposition with which to examine the response made by certain writers to the example of Yeats”.75 I further contend New Modernist Studies should include not only Irish Revivalist Yeats but Chinese Renaissance writers like Lu Xun, as part of Postcolonial Modernism. According to my Modernist reading, Chinese May Fourth writers make a radical break with the past, experiment with new forms of literature and language and re-invent myths; as Lu Xun did regarding the mythic trope of Chinese cannibalism

A Poetic Comparison I read both Yeats and Lu Xun as re-writing, re-imagining or re-inventing their ancient nations into modern Postcolonial Modernist versions. How did Yeats and Lu Xun respond when faced with existential crises and descent into civil war and anarchy, in postcolonised Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China? I next examine how the fragmentation, chaos and anarchy during the Warlord Years in China (1916–1928) and the contemporaneous Irish Civil War (1922–1923), found expression for Yeats and Lu Xun in similar Modernist themes of despair and postcolonial struggle. Accordingly, I compare Lu Xun’s prose poetry Yecao 野草 (Wild Grass) collection, with Yeatsian Civil War poetry produced during the Irish Civil War, as Lu Xun and Yeats attempt to de/recolonise the literary spheres of production. Wild Grass is a collection of twenty-three prose poems

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penned by Lu Xun from 1924–1927 in Beijing, during the Warlord Years in China (1916–1928). Wild Grass was written in the context of the Northern Expedition against the warlords and the Chinese Nationalist turn against the Communists in April 1927.76 China was semicolonised in the 1920s, although foreign concessions existed in major cities like Shanghai. Lu Xun sought to reinvigorate himself and fellow intellectuals, during this time of disappointment with the results of the Chinese May Fourth movement. Ban Wang notes Lu Xun discovers “hope in despair” within Wild Grass , a collection filled with anxiety and despair as dark forces are vaguely glimpsed through metaphor.77 Lu Xun was a banner holder for the May Fourth movement until this point, but from 1923 he started to question whether a radical break with the past had worked to forge a new Chinese public. After this sojourning period from 1928 onwards, Lu Xun turned to zawen 雜文—a new genre of satirical essays, that he compared to “daggers and javelins”. In Revivalist Ireland, Yeats also descended into despair as he introspectively questioned his part in the complicated relationship between art, politics, violence and the formation of a New Ireland. Just as the 1916 Easter Rising ushered in political revolution in Ireland, 1916 in China witnessed the death of dictator Yuan Shikai, which led to China’s collapse into anarchy under localised military cliques with no centralised government.78 Lu Xun’s prose poetry produced during this time also had a less centralised form or authority, thereby reproducing the chaos and anarchy of this period. I do not claim all times of civil war produce similarly fragmented writings; since Milton’s Paradise Lost was not fragmented in form although penned during the English civil war. I contend because Yeats and Lu Xun experienced postcolonised chaos and civil war, they found it difficult to discover a form of literature to adequately express their ambivalent attitudes towards postcolonial violence. I argue their postcolonised surroundings created the need for both writers to experiment with form or genre, resulting in modernist experimentation. For Lu Xun this became the fragmented prose poetry of Wild Grass , and for Yeats this became his modernist poetry that proclaimed the centre cannot hold. Therefore, I perceive a link between Yeats’s and Lu Xun’s search for a suitably fragmented modernist form to identify the paradoxes of their postcolonised settings. And I read this as evidence of Postcolonial Modernism within their writings.

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Nick Admussen outlines Wild Grass contains a short-scripted drama, a satirical poem in rhymed heptasyllabics, an allegorical parable, a Baudelairean satire, a memoir-like piece of prose, several dream narratives and the full text of someone else’s poem.79 One could argue this egalitarian relationship to form, whether high or low, evidences an early form of Modernism. In Admussen’s evocative phrase “here art is growing wild”.80 Admussen claims Lu Xun innovatively turned sanwen shi 散文詩 (prose poetry) into “a new music for Chinese language” in Wild Grass , by “reengineering a classical term to do the work of modernity … for the baihuawen practice of recombining classical characters to make new … words”.81 Lu Xun had to be careful about his subject matter and went on the run, during this politically sensitive time when May Fourth ideals were in full retreat. Although the Chinese state was unstable, it was still possible to fall out of favour politically by writing against warlord policies. During such politically charged times literature becomes significantly more important as a site of resistance. Writers often hide their non-conformism by altering the form of their writing, or by hiding their meaning through metaphor. Spanish writers under Franco’s fascist rule often depicted a family with two fighting sons, as an irreproachable metaphor for the Spanish Civil War. This means the writer cannot be deemed a fighter against the state, and produces a more ambiguous overdetermined type of literature, that is more literary. Simultaneously, in Revivalist Ireland Yeats faced his own existential crisis. Yeats confronted the paradoxical power of words and literature to incite others to political action and the concomitant lack of power for a person of letters. Yeatsian poetry embodies this dilemma, and regarding Easter 1916 Yeats agonised “Did that play of mine send out Certain men the English shot?”82 … “All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born. …Too long a sacrifice Can make a stone of the heart”.83

However, Yeats’s other poems “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen” and “Meditations in Time of Civil War” in his collection The Tower, portray how colonial State violence remains uninterrogated. Xiaoshuo Yuebao

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小說月報 (Short Story Magazine) one of the foremost modern Chinese journals, published an article in 1928 on Yeats and his poetic collection The Tower. Since Lu Xun contributed articles to XSYB, Lu Xun likely read this. [Please see Chapters Two and Three on May Fourth translations of works by Yeats]. This article was entitled “Modern literary chats: Yeats’s Tower” and was translated by Zhao Jingshen 趙景深.84 [Please see Appendix A for my translation]. Zhao describes Yeatsian attempts to grapple with differences between the physical sensate world and the spiritual world which remains beyond our grasp. Zhao claims the Yeatsian world is eternal, and references Yeats’s poem “Nineteen hundred and Nineteen” to portray how Irish people compete to kill each other. Significantly in 1928 the Chinese were enduring the chaos of the Warlord Years (1916–1928). 85 Thus Irish and Yeatsian struggles for coherence during the Irish Civil War resonated with semicolonial Chinese May Fourth intellectuals, who were similarly emerging from a descent into anarchy. In “Nineteen hundred and Nineteen” Yeats writes When Loie Fuller’s Chinese dancers enwound A shining web, a floating ribbon of cloth, It seemed that a dragon of air Had fallen among dancers, had whirled them round Or hurried them off on its own furious path; So the Platonic Year Whirls out new right and wrong.86

This reveals China and the East reciprocally influenced the West, as is evident throughout Yeats’s poetry. Loie Fuller was an American dancer, who performed a dragon dance painted by French painter Toulouse Lautrec, and her performance was witnessed by Irishman Yeats. Yeats links this dragon dance to the Platonic Year, where all planets return to their original location, thus emphasising the protean nature of art. Yeats inferred their artistry made it seem that a Chinese dragon commanded their actions. But the dancers created this dragon through the medium of dance. This interplay between free will and inevitability means Yeats claims we are all agents of historical change. Yeats allows the tension that the dancers create history, but they are also in a sense created by the historical moment, which limits individual agency.

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Throughout his life Yeats sought a Unity of Being and a Unity of Culture, whereby individual, culture and society all functioned in harmony. Likewise, Lu Xun claimed “I seek a unified life to obey” in his poem “Self-Mockery”.87 Leo Ou-fan Lee explains Lu Xun ironises the original meaning of political unity after a dynastic conquest. Unlike other modernists Yeats and Lu Xun were masters of the traditional form, which they proceeded to subvert. In Yeats’s poem “Meditations in Time of Civil War” the form becomes revealing. Yeats does not allow this poem to follow a narrative structure, as if no longer appropriate for a world divided and shifting. This poem elucidates Yeats’s concern the Anglo-Irish ancestral houses will wither, violence will become commonplace and accepted, and violence unhitched from culture will inevitably lead to a breakdown of the Yeatsian ideal. Yeats wrote We are closed in, and the key is turned On our uncertainty; somewhere A man is killed, or a house burned, Yet no clear fact to be discerned.88

The form of this poem examines the anarchy present within Irish society at that time. The lines loose the rhythmic shape we associate with Yeats, depicting the descent into chaos through literary means. As Yeats commented in “The Second Coming” in 1919, “Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold”.89 Correspondingly, on a different side of the globe another founding father of modern literature, Lu Xun faced similar dilemmas about the production of literature in a semicolonial setting. The resultant mix of poetry and prose in Wild Grass well illustrates the anarchic times Lu Xun lived in, his fragmented mindset and his postcolonised search for modernist meaning. Leo Ou-fan Lee states Chinese academics overemphasise Lu Xun as a fighter, rather than as a writer.90 Lu Xun claimed he wrote “because at the time it was difficult to speak outright [thus] I sometimes had to use rather ambiguous language”.91 Lu Xun stated this in the 1931 introduction to an English-language translation of Wild Grass ; presumably distributed by left-wing organisations in the west to support the Communist cause. By 1931 Lu Xun had converted to Communism and led the League of LeftWing Writers, so he was less free to discuss the aesthetic aspects of his writing. Lu Xun expressly stated his purpose was to hide his political intent in ambiguous language, thus it is difficult to argue Wild Grass

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is non-political, or for its purely literary intent. Although Nicholas Kaldis does not discover a political allegory in Wild Grass, he does allow for Lu Xun’s political reading, alongside his own literary reading.92 Lu Xun’s foreword to Wild Grass illuminates he chose this title because he believed himself like the wild grass, with no deep roots or flowers. Lu Xun adds unlike a lofty tree, wild grass is trampled and mown down until it decays.93 Lu Xun claims to love his wild grass; but detests the ground that breeds it. I read this as Lu Xun’s subtle critique of the postcolonised Chinese situation. According to Admussen, Sun Yushi reads Lu Xun as rootless and disconnected from a sympathetic reader.94 Admussen asserts Wild Grass succeeds as both poetry and prose, combining a poetically overdetermined construction in emotive language, while simultaneously functioning as prose by persuading, narrating and communicating.95 This was necessitated by a regime that categorised descriptive prose as politically problematic, but viewed self-expressive poetry as acceptable. Lu Xun’s innovative response combined the best features of both, creating a new tradition and genre, which I read as a Postcolonial Modernist move. T. A. Hsia comments Lu Xun’s prose poetry was “like molten metal that fails to find a mould”, and locates the nightmarish dreamlike nature of Wild Grass .96 This depicts the shock of misplaced reality that engulfed Lu Xun during the Warlord era. Hsia notes Wild Grass was penned during the same decade as modernist Irish writer Joyce’s Ulysses and Eliot’s Waste land. This links Wild Grass to a psychological exploration of the subconscious that formed part of western Modernism.97 Charles Alber reads Wild Grass as a series of trapped binaries including death and life; darkness and light; past and future; despair and hope.98 A postmodern approach could deconstruct such seeming ‘aporia’ or blockages and impasses, and challenge any one ultimate meaning for Lu Xun’s text. Lu Xun’s “Autumn Night” is set during an autumnal night in his courtyard. The plants “shivering in the cold night air dream of the coming of spring … of the poet who tells them autumn will come and winter will come, yet spring will follow”.99 Undertones hint of a coming political thaw, as date trees “nurse their wounds made in their bark by the sticks which beat down the dates”. Lu Xun presents the bluer and bluer sky “eager to escape from the world of men”. Driven by maniacal laughing to his room, Lu Xun realises he was the one laughing, which links to his modernist psychological explorations in Diary of a Madman. Lu Xun describes insects that “recklessly dash themselves against the pane” and fall into the chimney flames. Lu Xun’s modernist concern

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was that idealistic self-sacrifice by revolutionary individuals in semicolonial China was in vain. Lu Xun recounts these insects as adorable, pathetic and green, and lights a cigarette “paying silent homage before the lamp to these green and exquisite heroes”. Lu Xun paints the inoffensive insects as green or everlasting. Evidently, Lu Xun hid any revolutionary Postcolonial Modernist intent, through the metaphor of insignificant insects that cannot pose a threat to the Chinese state, and links himself to the scholarly class who have the time, leisure and resources to smoke and philosophise.100 Yeatsian poetry is replete with similar references to the Anglo-Irish lifestyle of big houses and leisure. Yeats was not part of the Irish ascendancy, but like Synge, he was concerned about the eventual decline of that class. Although May Fourth writers like Lu Xun debated whether a literary educated elite should lead the peasant population towards revolution; Yeats favoured this approach. Modernist literature rejects an omniscient narrator, presents a stream of consciousness as the preferred narrative form, and was influenced by the growth of psychoanalysis. Leo Ou-fan Lee notes Wild Grass shifts the narrator’s viewpoint to that of a dog in “The Dog’s Retort”.101 Lu Xun further changes the narrator in “The Last Good Hell” from an implied narrator in a dream, to a Byronic devil in the Miltonian tradition. I read Lu Xun’s protean use of different narrators as further evidence of Modernist intent in Wild Grass . In contrast, in “The Shadow’s Leave Taking” Lu Xun depicts his own shadow as leaving him. The shadow tires of wandering between dawn and dusk in a perpetually liminal space. This portrays Lu Xun’s disillusion with the failure of the 1911 Xinhai Revolution to bring expected postcolonial social, cultural and political change to China. However, Lu Xun detects “there is something I dislike in your future golden world; I do not want to go there”.102 Facing this existential crisis, Lu Xun pens his inclination to “go far away alone to a darkness from which not only will you be excluded, but other shadows too … That world will be wholly mine”. Lu Xun experienced a psychological distancing from his postcolonised world, and sought to create an alternative decolonised space in experimental modernist prose poetry. Lu Xun’s dislocation also resulted from falling out with his younger brother writer Zhou Zuoren (1885–1967); possibly over an affair with his brother’s wife, a Japanese woman. Personal family circumstances also contributed to Irish Revivalist Yeats’s despair. Yeats repeatedly asked his

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muse Maud Gonne to marry him and suffered unrequited love when she refused. Yeats’s poem “Easter 1916” which ostensibly honoured the fallen rebels, was also an attempt to establish Yeats’s credentials as an Irish Republican and convince Maud Gonne to marry him. When Maud Gonne again refused, Yeats proposed to her daughter Iseult and was similarly rebuffed. Three weeks later, Yeats finally married Georgie Hyde-Lees on October 20, 1917 when he was fifty-two and Georgie was twentyfive.103 Thus chaos reigned in Yeats’s and Lu Xun’s personal lives and was also evident in the fractured form of their writings, penned in a time of postcolonised political chaos. His prose poem “The Beggars” encapsulates Lu Xun’s rejection of all other forms of ‘begging’ literature that pleads for a cause, as insincere. Lu Xun’s search for the correct form in which to present his modernist concerns is present throughout Wild Grass ; a collection of poems, prose and drama. I read this experimentation with literary form and genre as further evidence of modernism within Lu Xun’s Wild Grass . “Revenge” was penned in 1924 because of Lu Xun’s disgust at bystanders in semicolonial Chinese society. Yeats’s poem “September 1913” depicts similar frustration at bourgeois bystanders in postcolonised Irish society.104 In this poem, Yeats depicts bourgeois shopkeepers who ‘fumble in a greasy till’ and cannot appreciate patriotic self-sacrifice, but deride Irish patriots as ‘maddened’ by ‘some woman’s yellow hair’. Yeats concludes They weighed so lightly what they gave Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone It’s with O’Leary in the grave.105

Yeats’s sarcastic tone is amplified by this poem’s ABAB rhyming scheme. For Owen McGee, Yeats presented a romantic Irish nationalism, symbolised by his old Fenian mentor John O’Leary, that was secularised and rose above petty divisions between Catholic nationalism and Protestant Unionism.106 The postcolonial vision Yeats imagined for Ireland, was a romantic Ireland that allowed space for colonised and coloniser. However, Yeats feared this non-sectarian romantic Irish vision was dead and gone, with O’Leary in the grave. Similarly, Lu Xun investigates modernist and religious resonances in “Revenge II”, and delineates Christ was crucified after being mocked, beaten and spit upon.107 Leo Ou-fan Lee reads this as a sermon on the

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true intellectual meaning of Christ’s passion, since Lu Xun reads Christ as a type of Nietzschean ‘superman’.108 According to Florence Chien, “under the influence of Nietzsche, Lu Xun, at least in his twenties, put faith in the superior few, the supermen, not in the masses”.109 Lu Xun and Yeats were influenced by Nietzschean concepts of ‘supermen’, an elite few to lead the masses, and were criticised for these elitist approaches. Lu Xun emphasises that Christ refuses myrrh to ease his pain, calling out to God asking why he has been forsaken. Lu Xun distinguishes between those who crucify the Son of God and those who kill the Son of Man, and asserts those who kill the Son of Man are more reprehensible. In a Christological sense Lu Xun suffers for intellectual freedom and refuses all comfort; but castigates those who forsake common human compassion. Nick Admussen discovers in Lu Xun’s prose poetry the traditional effect of Chinese yongge 永歌.110 This extended the song in time through rhyme and rhythm, linking to the reader’s experience. Yeats attempted a similar effect in his poetry, encouraging readers to linger with the text and experience a spiritual connection with the sounds and words. Yeats helped to form the Rhymers’ Club in London in the 1890s, and told a Dublin audience in 1893 a poet should labour at “rhythm and cadence, form and style”.111 Lu Xun penned “Hope” on New Year’s Day in 1925. This prose poem explains Lu Xun “took this shield of hope to withstand the invasion of the dark night in the emptiness”.112 Lu Xun decries the passivity of young people, and hints at a modernist search for meaning amidst despair. In “The Kite” Lu Xun recounts he destroyed his younger brother’s kite, without understanding western concepts that play is a child’s best occupation. One can read Wild Grass as Lu Xun’s attempt to fly a kite; and test different forms of modernist literature, to see whether these fragmented recollections ‘fly’ or have any literary impact. Lu Xun concludes “but clearly all about me winter reigns, and is even now offering me its utmost rigour and coldness”.113 Poignantly, after Lu Xun died in 1936, his brother Zhou Zuoren collaborated with the Japanese.114 If Lu Xun had presciently known this, one can imagine him destroying this new type of apologist literature flown by his brother. With modernist intent, “The Good Story” reminds readers the rendition of a perfect world, is itself an act of fiction.115 “Snow” is an evocation of snow North and South of the Yangtze, that pictures Lu Xun’s past youth and depicts Lu Xun as alienated in a modernist sense. Yeats’s later poems display similar preoccupations with aging and death. Yeats once

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lamented “all life weighed in the scales of my own life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens”.116 Continuing his modernist experimentation with form, Lu Xun’s prose poem “The Passer-by” is a short play.117 A passer-by meets an old man and a girl but does not know where he came from or where he is going; apt descriptions for semicolonial Chinese society. This passer-by can be read as a nomadic worker, or revolutionary, thus Seán Golden does not read this as an absurdist play. However, the old man ominously states there are graves ahead. I contend this portrays prescient Beckettian sentiments on the need to go on. According to my reading, Lu Xun’s presentation on the meaningless of life emphasises western concepts of Modernism, linked to the postcolonised Chinese condition. “The Dog’s Retort” contains a surreal dream where a barking dog talks to Lu Xun, in response to an insult.118 This work ridicules one of Lu Xun’s critics, as the dog cannot tell the difference between high and low, masters and slaves. This encapsulates the dilemma Lu Xun faced in a postcolonised society that no longer valued his status as a Chinese intellectual. “Tremors of Degradation” depicts the older generation driven out into the wilds, because they raised the younger generation, instead of allowing them to starve to death.119 I read the wordless half-human, half-animal cry emitted by the old lady in the boundless waste as mirroring Lu Xun’s postcolonised inability to adequately document what was happening to his homeland. Yet the conclusion presents a note of futurity, as the old lady’s wordless cry is swallowed up in silence, but her tremors set waves whirling like a cyclone to sweep headlong across the illimitable waste land. Here Lu Xun hints at a future seismic change in Chinese society, which echoes the Modernist sentiment one can ‘make it new’. In “On Expressing an Opinion” Lu Xun asserts if someone predicts a new-born baby will be a rich official one is approved; but if one tells the unavoidable truth this baby will die, one is beaten by the family.120 Thus, Lu Xun claims telling the truth about semicolonial Chinese society would not be well received. Instead Lu Xun ironically advises one should merely report “Just look at this child! Oho! Hehe!”. In “After Death” Lu Xun imagines himself dead by the roadside. I read this prose poem as a modernist probing of the psychological conditions surrounding Chinese Renaissance writers.121 Lu Xun speculates if death is simply paralysis while sensation exists, this would amount to torture. For Lu Xun, inability to interrogate the post(semi)colonial Chinese condition amounted to a type of living death, as if buried alive. This ironic piece

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notes the dead man has nowhere to publish an article, and depicts Lu Xun alive in a nailed up coffin. Asphyxia is Lu Xun’s apt metaphor for the claustrophobic semicolonial conditions endured by Chinese writers during the Warlord Years. When an onlooker tries to give him a traditional book, the ‘corpse’ replies angrily he has no use for Ming dynasty editions. “Can’t you see what condition I am in?” cries the corpse; which portrays Lu Xun’s frustration with his post(semi)colonial reality. A talking corpse is anything but realist, but evidences Lu Xun’s modernist quest for meaning in a postcolonised setting. Lu Xun’s “Such a Fighter” depicts the fighter with nothing but himself; and for weapon only the javelin hurled by barbarians.122 Lu Xun claims his weapon kills without bloodshed. This writer may be a fighter but is deemed a criminal for killing the philanthropists. Defiantly, Lu Xun concludes “but he raises his javelin!” I partly took my title for this book, Writers and Fighters, from Lu Xun’s prose poem, because it encapsulates my main argument. I contend that the Chinese May Fourth and Irish Revivalist writers and fighters both urgently sought new forms of Modernist literary experimentation, to escape the reality of their post(semi)colonial condition, and I read this as a form of Postcolonial Modernism. Hence Yeats and Lu Xun are fighters against the postcolonial condition, and writers of modernism. In “The Wise Man, The Fool and The Slave” Lu Xun underlines the problematic nature of such a project, in Republican era China.123 The poor are so oppressed, they complain to their master the ‘fool’ breaks down the walls of their simple home, to let in the light. According to my reading, Lu Xun questions whether he is a ‘fool’ for attempting to help people, who appear incapable of helping themselves due to their colonised condition. Lu Xun wrote “The Blighted Leaf” for friends who hid him during civil war, and penned “Amid Pale Bloodstains” after the 1926 March Eighteenth incident, when northern warlord Duan Qirui ordered police to fire on unarmed Chinese student protestors in Beijing.124 This demonstration against warlords, and imperial threats from the Japanese, British and Americans, was a postcolonial move that demanded an end to all unequal treaties with foreign powers.125 Just as Yeats immortalised Irish patriots executed by the British state during 1916; Lu Xun similarly interrogates Chinese state violence. This prose poem was subtitled—In memory of some who are dead, some who lie and some yet unborn. One of Lu

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Xun’s female students died during this incident, which caused Lu Xun to question the revolution he called for. Lu Xun’s literature can be read as postcolonial, because threats of colonisation by the West and Japan were real during this period. This is complicated by the fact that a Chinese warlord ordered Chinese police to shoot Chinese protestors, something not uncommon in postcolonised lands. Forty-seven were killed and two hundred injured, on what Lu Xun called the darkest day in the history of the Republic of China. Provocatively, Lu Xun asserts at present the creator is still a weakling. In secret, he causes heaven and earth to change but dares not destroy this world … In secret, he causes humankind to suffer pain, but dares not let them remember it forever … using time to dilute pain and bloodstains.126

Lu Xun claims that a rebellious fighter arises from humankind who remembers all the unending agony. For Lu Xun the artistic role encompassed recording stories of those whom history chose to forget. Hence, Lu Xun’s distress over semicolonial realities in China, motivated his search for greater meaning within alternative forms of experimental modernist literature. Aptly, his final prose poem “The Awakening” is Lu Xun’s account of periodicals produced by young Chinese writers during 1924– 1925. Lu Xun awakes with a start, and realises his cigarette smoke rises “like tiny specks of cloud in the summer sky, to be slowly transformed into indefinable shapes”.127 Accordingly, the final line in Wild Grass ends on a positive note of futurity—summer is yet to come. This emphasises the lack of formal definition or shape within Lu Xun’s modernist prose poetry project, which was conceived during the warlord years and given birth to during wartime. If prose poems were too short to be xiaopin essays, Admussen notes this displays May Fourth disregard for categorisation, since Lu Xun had to ‘fold’ one form into the other, “to hint at the prose through the poetry”.128 Thus, prose poetry is subversive in its very form, and couches anticolonial revolution in an acceptable form of half-poetry, half-prose. Lu Xun’s spiritual legacy discovered a poignant resonance during the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, when poet Liu Zaifu used Lu Xun’s “A Madman’s Diary” to plead “jiu jiu haizi 救救孩子 (save the children)” trapped in Tiananmen Square, which included his own child Liu Janmei.129 The

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spiritual aspects of Lu Xun’s search for a modernist meaning echo Yeats’s lifelong quest for spiritual meaning in another postcolonised periphery. Yeats and Lu Xun penned similarly disillusioned epitaphs. Yeats’s epitaph, concludes “Under Ben Bulben” with the lines Cast a cold eye On life, on death. Horseman pass by!130

Lu Xun’s famous poem “Self-Mockery” contained remarkably similar sentiments later immortalised by Mao that read eyes askance, I cast a cold glance at the thousand pointing fingers.131

In Wild Grass Lu Xun similarly cast a cold eye on the tumultuous times he lived through. Moreover, Lu Xun’s 1925 “Epitaph” ironically proclaims contracted a chill while singing and roistering; saw an abyss in heaven. In all eyes saw nothing; in hopelessness found salvation.132

In another link to the cannibalism of his earlier modernist “Diary of a Madman”, Lu Xun’s “Epitaph” concludes “I tore out my heart to eat it, wanting to know its true taste”.133 According to my reading, this line encapsulates Wild Grass as Lu Xun’s attempt to consume his own experience as subject matter for his modernist experiment with prose poetry. I conclude Lu Xun was a Postcolonial Modernist, because he experimented with new modernist forms of literature to make a radical break with the post(semi)colonial Chinese past. And I conclude Yeats experimented with modernist literature, to break from the problematic postcolonised Irish past; thereby re-imagining a New Ireland. I contend this impetus for modernist experimentation was more often motivated by an existential crisis in the postcolonised peripheries, rather than originating in the imperial centre. And I read this modernist experiment as aligned with the urgent need to de/recolonise the literary space. Hence the urgent need for Yeats in Revivalist Ireland, and Lu Xun in May Fourth

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China to ‘make it new’, to reshape old myths and old forms into alternative modern shapes that convey the full struggle to be modern in a postcolonised setting. Yet was Chinese Renaissance writer Lu Xun aware of Yeats’s Irish Revivalist decolonising project? How did Lu Xun apply lessons from Irish Revivalism for his Chinese May Fourth readership? Chapter two examines a Chinese article by Lu Xun about Yeats and Irish Revivalism, translated from the original Japanese for his Chinese May Fourth audience.

Notes 1. Edward Said, “Yeats and Decolonisation”, in Nationalism Colonialism and Literature (Minnesota: Minnesota University Press, 1990), 69–95. 2. Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland: the Literature of the Modern Nation (London: Vintage, 1995). 3. Eóin Flannery, “Ireland, Empire and Utopia: Irish Postcolonial Criticism and the Utopian impulse”, Textual Practice 24, no. 3 (2010): 453–481. 4. Eóin Flannery, Ireland and Postcolonial Studies: Theory, Discourse, Utopia (London: Palgrave and Macmillan, 2009), 19, 20. 5. Jahan Ramazani, “Modernist Inflections, Postcolonial Directions”, in A History of Modernist Poetry eds. Alex Davis and Lee Jenkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 459–478. 6. Liam Kennedy, “Modern Ireland: Post-Colonial Society or Post-Colonial Pretensions?”, The Irish Review, 13 (Dec 1, 1992): 116, 117. 7. Marjorie Howes, “Yeats and the Postcolonial”, in The Cambridge Companion to W. B. Yeats eds. Marjorie Howes and John Kelly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 206–210. 8. Tahrir Hamdi, “Yeats, Said and Decolonisation”, Journal of Postcolonial Writing 51, no. 2 (2015): 220–232. 9. Elleke Boehmer, Empire, the National, and the Postcolonial, 1890–1920: Resistance in Interaction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 10. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Some Theoretical Aspects of Yeats’s Prose”, Journal of Modern Literature 4, no. 3 (February 1975): 684. 11. Jahan Ramazani, The Hybrid Muse (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 21. 12. Sebastian Veg, “New Readings of Lu Xun: Critic of Modernity and reinventor of heterodoxy”, China Perspectives 3 (2014): 49. 13. Joe Cleary, “Misplaced Ideas? Locating and Dislocating Ireland in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies”, in Ireland and Postcolonial Theory eds. Clare Carroll and Patricia King (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2003), 29.

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14. For biographical information on Lu Xun’s early life please see Kirk Denton, Autobiographical resources on Lu Xun in the Modern Chinese Literature and Culture website (March 2002). https://u.osu.edu/ mclc/online-series/lu-xun/. 15. Lu Xun, Call to Arms and Wandering: Gems of Modern Chinese Literature (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2014), 1–22. 16. Shu-mei Shih, The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, 1917–1937 (Berkeley: University of California, 2001), 76–78. 17. Bernard McKenna, “Yeats, Samhain, and the aesthetics of cultural nationalism: ‘a supreme moment in the life of a nation’”, Irish Studies Review, 18, no. 4 (2010): 401–419. 18. William Butler Yeats, Autobiographies (London: Macmillan, 1926), 40, 43. 19. Ibid., 7, 11. 20. Ibid., 23. 21. Ibid., 34. 22. Ibid., 75. 23. Ibid., 126. 24. Marjorie Howes, “Yeats and the Postcolonial”, 209. 25. Roy Foster, W. B. Yeats: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 228–239. 26. See Kirk Denton, Autobiographical resources on Lu Xun in the Modern Chinese Literature and Culture website (March 2002). https://u.osu. edu/mclc/online-series/lu-xun/. 27. Lu Xun, Call to Arms, 5–7. 28. Carolyn T. Brown, “The Paradigm of the Iron House: Shouting and Silence in Lu Hsün’s Short Stories”, Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) 6, no 1/2 (July 1984): 101–103. 29. William Butler Yeats, “The Tribe of Danu”, Uncollected Prose by W. B. Yeats: Reviews, Articles and Other Miscellaneous Prose Vol. 2 eds. John. P. Frayne, Colton Johnson and Michael Yeats (London: Macmillan, 1975), 69. 30. Sebastian Veg, “New Readings of Lu Xun”, 55. 31. Yeats, Autobiographies, 77. 32. Richard Ellmann, Yeats the Man and the Masks (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1958). Roy Foster, W. B. Yeats: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 33. William Butler Yeats, Yeats’s Poems ed. Norman Jeffares (London: Macmillan, 1989), 323. 34. John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, China A New History (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2006), 360.

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35. “Abbey Theatre Uproar: Impassioned Speech by Mr. Yeats: Actors Fight with Angry Republicans”, TNCDN March 29, 1926, 11. 36. Fairbank and Goldman, China A New History, 261. 37. Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 (New York: Overlook Press, 2005), 71. 38. Vera Schwarcz, The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919 (California: UC Berkeley, 1990), 242. 39. Elizabeth Perry, Challenging the Mandate of Heaven: Social Protest and State Power in China (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2002), iv, 4. 40. Fairbank and Goldman, China A New History, 195–197. 41. April Schultz, “The Black Mammy and the Irish Bridget: Domestic Service and the Representation of Race 1830–1930”, Éire-Ireland 48, no. 3/4 (Fall/Winter 2013): 176–212. See Peter Gray, “Punch and the Great Famine”, History Ireland 2, no. 1 The Famine (summer 1993). https://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-centuryhistory/punch-and-the-great-famine-by-peter-gray/. 42. Fairbank and Goldman, China A New History, 144. 43. Eva Shan Chou, “‘A Story About Hair’: A Curious Mirror of Lu Xun’s pre-Republican Years”, The Journal of Asian Studies 66, no. 2 (2007): 421–459. 44. Fairbank and Goldman, China A New History, 272, 273. 45. Elleke Boehmer, “Revisiting Resistance: Postcolonial Practice and the Antecedents of Theory”, and “The Empire Writes Back: Postcolonial Studies Ascendant” in The Oxford Handbook of Postcolonial Studies ed. Graham Huggan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, September 2013), 2, 6. 46. Marjorie Howes, “Yeats and the Postcolonial”, 212. 47. Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment—Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), xi. 48. Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1990), 275, 276. Rana Mitter, A Bitter Revolution: China’s Struggle with the Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 103. 49. Rana Mitter, Bitter Revolution, 5. 50. Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland, 114. 51. Yeats, Yeats’s Poems, 287. 52. Ibid., 308–314. 53. Ibid., 314. 54. Brian Murphy, “Some Reflections on the Writing of Irish History”, The Embers of Revisionism Critiquing Creationist Irish History ed. Niall Meehan (Cork: Aubane Historical Society, 2017), 34. Murphy quotes a different poem by Yeats “Reprisals”.

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55. Yeats, Yeats’s Poems, 322. 56. Michael Wood, Yeats and Violence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 8. 57. Gloria Davies, Lu Xun’s Revolution: Writing in a Time of Violence (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2013), 5. 58. Florence Chien, “Lu Xun’s Six Essays in Defence of Bernard Shaw”, Shaw 12 (1992): 59. 59. Edward M. Gunn, Rewriting Chinese: Style and Innovation in TwentiethCentury Chinese Prose (California: Stanford University Press, 1991). 60. Marston Anderson, The Limits of Realism: Chinese fiction in the Revolutionary Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). Tang Xiaobing, “Lu Xun’s ‘Diary of a Madman’ and a Chinese Modernism”, PMLA 107, no. 5 (October 1992): 1222–1234. Ming Dong Gu, “Lu Xun and Modernism/Postmodernism”, Modern Language Quarterly 69, no. 1 (March 2008): 29–44. 61. Seán Golden, “Commemorating the Anonymous: British imperialist discourse in China and its backlash among the Irish”, Irish Journal of Asian Studies, 2 (2016): 27. 62. Frederick Jameson, “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism”, Social Text 15 (Autumn 1986): 65–88. 63. Shu-mei Shih, The Lure of the Modern, 84. 64. Joe Cleary, “Misplaced Ideas?”, 16–45. 65. Marston Anderson, The Limits of Realism, 1–27. 66. Susan Stanford Friedman, Planetary Modernisms: Provocations on Modernity Across Time (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015). 67. Lu Xun, “A Madman’s Diary”, in The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature Second Edition eds. Joseph S. M. Lau and Howard Goldblatt (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 16. 68. Eileen J. Cheng, Literary Remains: Death, Trauma and Lu Xun’s Refusal to Mourn (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i, 2013), 81. See Arif Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 89. 69. Frederick Jameson, “Third World Literature”, 69, 70. 70. Edna Longley, Yeats and Modern Poetry, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 39. 71. Chris Baldick, 1910–1940 The Modern Movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 84. 72. Ronán McDonald, “The Irish Revival and Modernism”, in The Cambridge Companion to Irish Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 51–62. 73. Gregory Castle, “Yeats, Modernism and the Irish Revival”, in A History of Modernist Poetry eds. Alex Davis and Lee Jenkins (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 205.

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74. Joe Cleary, The Cambridge Companion to Irish Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 12. 75. Alex Davis, “Irish Poetic Modernisms: A Reappraisal”, Critical Survey 8, no. 2 (1996): 186. 76. Fairbank and Goldman, China A New History, 284. 77. Ban Wang, Illuminations From the Past: Trauma, Memory and History in Modern China (California: Stanford University Press, 2004), 51. 78. Fairbank and Goldman, China A New History, 250–254. 79. Nick Admussen, Twentieth-Century Chinese Prose Poetry (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2012), 95. 80. Ibid. 81. Nick Admussen, “A Music for Baihua: Lu Xun’s Wild Grass and ‘A Good Story’”, Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Review (CLEAR) 31 (2009): 2, 4. 82. William Butler Yeats, “Man and the Echo”, The Yeats Reader A Portable Compendium of Poetry, Drama and Prose ed. Richard J. Finneran (New York: Scribner, 2002), 148. 83. Ibid., 76–78. 84. Zhao Jingshen 趙景深, “Xiandai Wentan Zahua: Xiazhi de Ta 現代文壇 雜話:夏芝的塔 (Modern Literary Chats: Yeats’s Tower)”, XSYB 19, no. 7 (1928): 117. 85. Fairbank and Goldman, China A New History, 260. 86. Yeats, The Yeats Reader, 98. 87. Leo Ou-fan Lee, Lu Xun and his Legacy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 22, 23. 88. Yeats, The Yeats Reader, 95. 89. Ibid., 80. 90. Leo Ou-fan Lee, Lu Xun and his Legacy, 3. 91. Lu Xun, Wild Grass (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1974), preface. 92. Nicholas Kaldis, The Chinese Prose Poem—A Study of Lu Xun’s Wild Grass (New York: Cambria Press, 2014). 93. Lu Xun, Wild Grass, 3, 4. 94. Nick Admussen, Twentieth-Century Chinese Prose Poetry, 98. 95. Ibid. 96. Leo Ou-fan Lee, Lu Xun and his Legacy, 13, 14. 97. Ibid. 98. Ibid. 99. Lu Xun, Wild Grass, 5–7. 100. Charles Laughlin, “The Legacy of Leisure and Modern Chinese Culture”, in The Literature of Leisure and Chinese Modernity (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008), 24–45. 101. Leo Ou-fan Lee, Lu Xun and his Legacy, 15. 102. Lu Xun, Wild Grass, 8–9.

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103. 104. 105. 106.

107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114.

115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133.

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Roy Foster, Yeats: A Life, 95. Yeats, The Yeats Reader, 44, 45. Ibid. Owen McGee, “Yeats, O’Leary and Romantic Ireland”, History Ireland 2, no. 15 (March/April 2007). https://www.historyireland.com/20thcentury-contemporary-history/yeats-oleary-and-romantic-ireland/. Lu Xun, Wild Grass, 16, 17. Leo Ou-fan Lee, Lu Xun and his Legacy, 16. Florence Chien, “Lu Xun’s Six Essays”, 59. Nick Admussen, Twentieth-Century Chinese Prose Poetry, 9, 10. Yeats, Autobiographies, 205. Lu Xun, Wild Grass, 18–20. Lu Xun, Wild Grass, 23–25. Jon Eugene von Kowallis, “Lu Xun on our Minds: The Post-Socialist Reappraisal; Chou, Memory, Violence, Queues: Lu Xun Interprets China; Davies, Lu Xun’s Revolution: Writing in a Time of Violence; Cheng, Literary Remains: Death, Trauma and Lu Xun’s Refusal to Mourn”, The Journal of Asian Studies 73, no. 3 (August 2014): 583. Leo Ou-fan Lee, Lu Xun and his Legacy, 17. Yeats, Autobiographies, 132. Lu Xun, Wild Grass, 29–36. Ibid., 40. Ibid., 46–49. Ibid., 50, 51. Ibid., 52–56. Ibid., 57, 58. Ibid., 59–61. Ibid., 64, 65. Fairbank and Goldman, China A New History, 282, 283. Lu Xun, Wild Grass, 64, 65. Ibid., 66–68. Nick Admussen, Twentieth-Century Chinese Prose Poetry, 94, 97. Ibid., 148. Yeats, The Yeats Reader, 144. Leo Ou-fan Lee, Lu Xun and his Legacy, 22. Gloria Davies, Lu Xun’s Revolution, 270. Ibid., 272.

CHAPTER 3

How Lu Xun Translated Yeats and the Irish Revival

Lu Xun was aware of Yeats’s work, and published an article on Yeats and Irish Revivalism translated into Chinese from the original Japanese source. Lu Xun’s article entitled “Ai’erlan Wenxue Zhihuigu 愛爾蘭文學 之回顧 (Review of Irish Literature)” was published in 1929 in a journal Lu Xun edited in Shanghai entitled Benliu 奔流 (Torrent).1 Evidently Lu Xun perceived resonances between the Irish Revivalist and Chinese May Fourth projects, as his article presents Irish Revivalism as an alternative model of decolonisation literature for his Chinese May Fourth audience. Therefore, this is a transnational example of Irish literary nationalism mediated into Japanese nationalism and then into Chinese nationalism. I agree with Chen Shu 陈恕 that Yonejir¯o Noguchi 野口米次郎 (1875– 1947) was the likely author of the original Japanese article about Yeats and Irish Revivalism, that Lu Xun translated for his Chinese May Fourth readership.2 Significantly, Noguchi was known by Lu Xun in the East, and Yeats in the West.3 Noguchi was based in New York from 1900–1904, and was a cultural intermediary who translated East to West, and West to East.4 Noguchi met Yeats when he sailed from New York to London.5 Moreover, Noguchi contributed a weekly column to the Japan Times, and penned an article entitled “Mr. Yeats and the No” on November 3, 1907, which encouraged Irish Revivalist Yeats to learn from Japanese Noh drama. Noguchi wrote

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. O’Malley-Sutton, The Chinese May Fourth Generation and the Irish Literary Revival: Writers and Fighters, Asia-Pacific and Literature in English, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5269-4_3

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I quite agree with Mr. William Butler Yeats that a drama has not to wait on its audience…I think, as Mr. Yeats once wrote, that the modern stage in the West as in Japan, has been degenerating for some time. He has been attempting to reform and strengthen the Western stage through his own little plays which are built on Irish legend or history; and so far, in his own way, he is successful. I feel happy to think that he would find his own ideal in our No performance, if he should see and study it. Our No is sacred, and it is poetry itself…And again Mr. Yeats says: “Above all, for one imagines as one pleases when the eyes are closed, it (the ideal Irish theatre) will be a theatre of speech; the speech of the countryside, the eloquence of poets, of rhythm of style, of proud, living, unwasted words”…I think that I can apply such language to our No without much alteration; the No performance of speech, though it may not be the “speech of the countryside,” appeals to the ear with such a “proud, living, unwasted rhythm of song.” And it has such a simplicity in effect of plot and arrangement as Mr. Yeats dreams of simplicity of art and of feeling; the No is the noblest kind of poem.6

Yeats obliged, studied Japanese Noh translations with Ezra Pound and produced his first Noh style play At the Hawk’s Well in 1916. Noguchi responded with another approving article in the Japan Times on December 2, 1917, which was reprinted in Noguchi’s later work The Spirit of Japanese Poetry.7 Yoshinobu Hakutani details Yeats’s turn from science and realism in the Victorian age, towards “the world of myths and legends”. Yeats wrote “with the help of these plays…I have invented a form of drama, distinguished, indirect and symbolic, and having no need of mob or press to pay its way – an aristocratic form”.8 Hakutani explains Noguchi gave a lecture at Oxford in 1914, but Yeats first met Noguchi in 1903. Noguchi recorded this in a letter to his first wife Leonie Gilmour, and wrote I made many a nice young, lovely, kind friend among literary genius (attention!) W. B. Yeats or Laurence Binyon, Moore and Bridges. They are so good; they invite me almost everyday.9

On June 27, 1921 Yeats wrote to Noguchi in Japan Dear Noguchi, Though I have been so long in writing your “Hiroshige” has given me the greatest pleasure. I take more and more pleasure from oriental art; find more and more that it accords with what I aim at in my own work. The European painter of the last two or three hundred

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years grown strange to me as I grow older, begins to speak as with a foreign tongue. When a Japanese, or Mogul, or Chinese painter seems to say “Have I not drawn a beautiful scene”, one agrees at once, but when a modern European painter says so one does not agree so quickly, if at all. All your painters are simple, like the writers of Scottish ballads or the inventors of Irish stories…I would be simple myself but I do not know how. I am always turning over pages like those you have sent me, hoping that in my old age I may discover how…A form of beauty scarcely lasts a generation with us, but it lasts with you for centuries. You no more want to change it than a pious man wants to change the Lord’s Prayer, or the Crucifix on the wall [blurred] at least not unless we have infected you with our egotism. I wish I had found my way to your country a year ago and were still there, for my own remains un[blurred] as I dreaded that it would. I have not seen Galway for a long time now for I am warned that it is no place for wife and child. Yours sincerely, Yeats.10

Yeats states he could not return to Galway, because of postcolonised violence during the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921). Japanese Noh drama appealed to Yeats because it rose from spiritual philosophical roots in Shinto religious rites and Buddhism. 11 Yeats and Noguchi used masks to express profound legendary emotions, and Yeats’s play At the Hawk’s Well estranges audiences from realism. Hakutani explains Noh theatre utilises ghosts, and in Yeats’s play The Dreaming of the Bones (1919) the two lovers Diarmuid and Dervorgilla who brought Norman invaders to Ireland are portrayed as spirits. Thus, “after seven centuries [they] consummate their love by an Irish revolutionary taking the role of a noh priest”.12 Yeatsian dualism on life and death, body and soul, man and spirit, good and evil also link to Japanese Noh drama. Hakutani notes Yeats was “eager to adapt an image that unifies the play or an action that foreshadow the outcome”; and utilised this Noh technique in his play about Cuchulainn The Only Jealousy of Emer.13 The Noh stage is simplified to bare essentials, and Yeats suggested that dance movements by Noh principles focus attention on rhythm. At the climax of At the Hawk’s Well the hawk dances to draw the young away and lure the old to sleep. Hakutani links this to Yeats’s poem “Among School Children” which asks O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?14

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Thus, Yeats was highly influenced by Asian Noh theatre in the structure, technique and style of his drama and poetry. Yeats sought “their ideal of beauty, unlike that of Greece and like that of pictures from Japan and China”.15 However, this Hiberno-Asian reciprocal encounter expanded to include the Chinese Renaissance. Lu Xun selected Noguchi’s Japanese article on Yeats and Irish Revivalism, to introduce a specifically Irish version of modernity to Chinese May Fourth readers. Lu Xun attended University in Japan and spoke Japanese. Hence Lu Xun’s own nascent version of modernity was influenced by how the Japanese nation successfully modernised without becoming entirely westernised.16 Perhaps Noguchi’s article convinced Lu Xun that Irish Revivalism provided a more appropriate postcolonised model of modernity for China, as this model had been ‘vetted’ by a respected Asian source from a land that had also experienced western imperialism. Noguchi attended Keio University in Tokyo, and the Chinese article I translated refers to Irish Revivalist James Cousins as a primary source for recollections on Yeats and Revivalism. Significantly, Lu Xun’s article notes that Revivalist Cousins stayed for a year in Keio, where he met the author of the original Japanese article.17 Gauri Viswanathan and Joseph Lennon explain how James Cousins turned from Irish Revivalism in 1915, to live in India with his wife Margaret Cousins (a friend of Eva Gore-Booth).18 Margaret Cousins was a feminist hunger striker, who penned the music for the 1919 Indian national anthem, was the first female magistrate in India in 1922, and became president of the All-India Women’s Conference in 1936.19 Significantly, James Cousins taught in Keio University in Japan for a year (where he met Noguchi and their conversations became the basis for this article). Much of Noguchi’s Japanese article is based upon James Cousins’s book New Ways in English Literature, especially chapter four on the Irish Renaissance.20 In the preface, Cousins explains he was invited to Keio University in Japan because of this book. Viswanathan states Cousins met Noguchi in Japan, and others “all trying to find a pan-Asian alternative to the incursions of Western civilization”.21 Joseph Lennon elucidates that “Irish authors played a different role by being the first British colony to forge their own literary tradition in resistance to Empire, critiquing English forms and developing hybrid Irish ones”, providing a map for a postcolonised perspective.22 Eóin Flannery asserts the Irish provided an alternative, postcolonised and counter-utopian route to the modern.23 I argue Lu Xun and the

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Chinese Renaissance did not need to go exclusively through literatures produced by imperial centres in Britain and the United States; but could locate an alternative postcolonised route to the modern within the Irish Renaissance. This book provides one concrete example of that reciprocal process of mutual encounter between Irish Revivalism and Asian anti-imperial literatures. I contend that Irish Revivalists provided a more relatable postcolonised voice for semicolonial Chinese Renaissance translators like Lu Xun. The Irish experience of colonisation and cultural decolonisation, spoke to the semicolonial Chinese intellectuals and their existential crisis. I read Irish Revivalist literature as providing resonances and valences for the postcolonised Chinese situation; that literatures produced by colonising powers in Britain, France, Germany, Russia and elsewhere could never provide. Furthermore, Lu Xun recognised resonances in Irish Revivalism that linked to his own precarious position as an anti-imperial Chinese intellectual, during a time of tumultuous transition. Chen Shu states that Lu Xun’s library included “Irish Style” by Noguchi, “The Joyce-Centred Literary Movement” by Japan’s Haruyama Takeo and “Shaw’s Talks”.24 Wang Hongzhi highlights Lu Xun’s belief that translations should be rendered difficult for the reader as a philosophical exercise.25 Lu Xun’s translation of Noguchi’s Japanese article on Irish Revivalism demonstrates this. One could read Lu Xun’s difficult translation as a type of modernist Alienation Effect, (as I read elements of Lao She’s play Teahouse in chapter five). Lu Xun’s Chinese translation starts by stating that the Irish Literature Movement began two decades ago and “left a bright rainbow in English poetry that has disappeared”.26 [See Appendix B for my translation of Lu Xun’s Chinese article]. Lu Xun corrects his translation to mark 1923 as the year Yeats won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Lu Xun claims the literary careers of Yeats and A. E. (George Russell) are ended, but their works alongside French Symbolism will be forever important to world literature. Noguchi states it is winter, his study has a fire and a portrait of Yeats which makes him sentimental, and Lu Xun includes this. Introducing a postcolonial note, Lu Xun claims he cannot separate Ireland and India, as both are under the British hammer. This evidences the postcolonial experiences of Revivalist Cousins in India contributed to the original Japanese article. Lu Xun’s article claims that Irish and Indian

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citizens who ‘lost’ their motherland only have two choices; extreme optimism or pessimism. Noguchi/Lu Xun position A. E. as an optimist, and Yeats as a pessimist. These Yeatsian fears appear in his 1919 poem “The Second Coming” Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.27

Noguchi/Lu Xun claim that the Irish do not have a native language or history. Possibly Lu Xun’s intent was to convey the loss of the native Irish language and culture which motivated Irish Revivalism. Lu Xun emphasises that writers such as Yeats, who lack access to the native Irish language, create their own suitable expressions from English. This linguistic challenge resonated with Lu Xun as ancient classical Chinese was esoteric and beyond the reach of the majority of the Chinese population, who needed literacy to become politically radicalised. Accordingly, May Fourth writers devised a modern version of Chinese based upon the vernacular. Although Lu Xun reputedly wrote the first Chinese short story in the vernacular, in fact female writer Chen Hengzhe 陈衡哲 (Sophia Chen) did so.28 Similarly, male Revivalists benefitted from Lady Gregory’s use of localised hybrid forms of English and Irish, that she named Kiltartanese. Gregory’s original move meant Revivalists could enlist Hiberno-English as a postcolonised literary language of hybridity and resistance. Lu Xun explains Irish Revivalists turned to their old poetry and literary heritage, to create a new literature from the old. Lu Xun diverged from Yeats on this, as the iconoclastic May Fourth movement argued one cannot create a new literature based upon the old, but must discover new forms and start again. The Chinese May Fourth generation believed old Chinese literary forms had failed them and must be re-made, impulses I read as modernist. However, Lu Xun notes approvingly that looking to their ancient past for inspiration increased Irish patriotism. According to Lu Xun, the radical Irish Literature movement destroyed the old literary culture that dominated the spirit of the citizens. May Fourth writers often attacked semicolonial Chinese national character

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as weak and in urgent need of change. I read Lu Xun’s unusual positioning of Irish Revivalism as a movement that “destroyed the old”, as revealing his need for an alternative postcolonised model of western literature. Lu Xun’s move mirrors calls by Douglas Hyde on the necessity to “de-Anglicise” the Irish nation politically, linguistically and culturally.29 Evidently, Japanese and Chinese intellectuals interpreted Irish Revivalism for their own literary nationalisms, according to the context of their post(semi)colonial condition. However, Lu Xun differentiates Irish Revivalism from a similar British movement, as both have differing objectives. Lu Xun underscores that new British poets struggled to remove themselves from corrupted Victorian literary forms, thereby emphasising the need for forms not based on coloniality. Noguchi quotes his friend James Cousins (1873–1956) a Protestant Irish Revivalist poet and playwright, who knew Yeats and Tagore, and worked for a year in Keio University in Tokyo, as Professor of English literature. Cousins like Yeats, believed in shared sensibilities between the Celtic and Oriental peoples, as a form of anticolonial resistance against British imperialism.30 The next section illuminates Cousins’s influence on Noguchi, as Lu Xun’s translated article foregrounds the Protestant nature of Irish Revivalism, noting that thirty people associated with this movement were Protestant. This reading omits Irish Protestants sought to co-opt and lead Irish nationalism to secure a leading position for themselves in the inevitable New Ireland. Emphasis on a vanguard appealed to Lu Xun, since an educated elite attempted to lead Irish Revivalist society in a new direction, rather like the Chinese May Fourth project. Moreover, Lu Xun underscores the Irish and British were born to be different, as young Irish poets regard aesthetics as their religion, but have difficulty relating aesthetics to patriotism. For Noguchi and Lu Xun, Yeats and Irish Revivalism function as a model of anticolonial modern literature. Lu Xun links the contradictory nature of the Irish to Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, who uses paradox to great effect. Irish socialist dramatist Shaw visited Shanghai in 1933, where he met socialist Lu Xun at the home of Sun Yatsen’s widow.31 Lu Xun’s translated article asserts that Irish literature is easier to understand in Japanese, and that echoes exist between both nations due to deep spirituality and ancient culture. Noguchi links Ireland to Asia in his original article, and laments there is no Japanese Yeats or Shaw. Lu Xun who

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was highly influenced by Japanese modernity, discovered that these postcolonial connections between Ireland and Asia presented a model of East/ West collaboration that suited Lu Xun’s cosmopolitan purposes. Lu Xun claims two types of poets exist in Ireland—those who pen poetry with patriotism, and those who follow Yeats’s example by “strolling on the air with light gauze clothes”. This references Yeats’s poem “He Wishes For The Cloths of Heaven” and perhaps the fact that Yeats and Cousins fell out.32 Lu Xun/Noguchi contrast patriotic poets who seek happiness on earth with the second group, who like Yeats find heaven from their idealism. Lu Xun/Noguchi celebrate Irish character as fascinating and joyful and conclude that Irish literature was born from nationalism. Thus Lu Xun strategically aligns Irish Revivalist Yeats with May Fourth goals. Lu Xun/Noguchi claim that Irish history and law were written by poets, and that Irish poets understood nature one thousand years before Wordsworth. Like all myths, there is a factual basis to these extravagant claims, but these myths are used in a particular way by Noguchi in Japan and Lu Xun in China, to provide alternative anticolonial models for modern Asian literary movements. Lu Xun records Cousins’s claim “the Irish Literature movement is not just a revival, and the real spirit of English poetry was lost due to colonial expansion”. This reading of Revivalist Yeats by Noguchi in Japan and Lu Xun in May Fourth China, elucidates my central argument that Irish Revivalism provided an alternative model of modern western literature for other anticolonial literary movements in Asia. According to Noguchi and Lu Xun’s reading, Yeats and Irish Revivalism encapsulate something English literature lost, significantly due to colonial expansion. Irishman Cousins, Japanese Noguchi and Chinese Lu Xun collaborate in this transnational exchange to form a postcolonised version of Irish literature as an alternative counter-utopian worldview for similar anti-imperial literary movements in Asia. In a coded reference to colonial censorship, Lu Xun explains Irish poets adopted a coded form of signifiers, in their search for poetic and political independence. This references eighteenth-century Aisling or Dream Vision poems, that depicted Ireland as a woman who laments the colonised Irish state and predicts imminent reversal of their fortunes. Lu Xun presents Samuel Ferguson as the instigator of the Irish Literature movement but admits this movement originated with Yeats. Lu Xun points out Yeats developed new forms of literature in the book of the epic poem “The Wanderings of Usheen”. Regarding the transcendent spiritual

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nature of Yeatsian poetry, both Noguchi and Lu Xun claim “Yeats finds a deep spiritual world through the half-opened door”. Although Lu Xun allows that Yeats wrote dramas, he concludes Yeats is not a dramatist, rather his life was a dramatic role. Lu Xun/Noguchi differentiate Yeats from Irish writer A. E. (George Russell), who is labelled a mere Realist. The provenance of the original Japanese article translated by Lu Xun becomes clear, when the Japanese author explains he invited Irish Revivalist James Cousins to Qingyishu College in Japan, to lecture on poetry. Noguchi notes Douglas Hyde described Cousins as “a person with a southern spirit and a northern body”, and explains Cousins lives in India. Finally, Lu Xun/Noguchi list O’Sullivan, James Stephens, Padraic Colum, Joseph Campbell and Ella Young as revolutionary members of the Irish Literature movement.

Conclusion Archival evidence establishes that Lu Xun knew about Irish Revivalist Yeats, and translated Postcolonial and Modernist lessons on Irish Revivalism from Japanese, for his Chinese May Fourth readership. This provides another concrete example of the global influence and transnational reach of Irish Revivalism. Irish Revivalism provided one alternative model of resistance to Imperial Modernity for the Chinese May Fourth generation. The Postcolonial Modernism of Irish Revivalism spoke to the Chinese from a similarly postcolonised position; circumventing complicating presuppositions and dialogues about race that permeated literatures produced in the imperial west. If Irish Revivalists could attempt to decolonise through literature, then Lu Xun underscores these implications for his Chinese May Fourth audience who similarly struggled to cope with postcolonial modernity. According to my reading, the problem was the Irish and Chinese did not simply have to modernise; they were also expected to accept colonial modernity or the version of modernity created by the twin colonising forces of capitalism and colonialism as the only acceptable route to becoming modern. The modern industrial world was produced to a large extent by colonisation and the capitalist needs of empire. Hence to successfully modernise meant one had to accept colonisation as necessary in a certain sense. I read this as problematising the encounter with modernity for formerly colonised or semicolonised peoples, including Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China.

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However, Irish Revivalism provided a different route to the modern, in that it avoided, rerouted or resisted many colonial and imperial assumptions present in Eurocentric literatures and discourses. The Irish were white, western and European, but crucially, had also experienced colonisation, and thus were a postcolonised voice that could converse with the Chinese on a more equal footing; and not necessarily in paternalistic, essentialising or reifying ways as other Western literatures frequently did. Irish literature questioned the presumptions of colonial modernity, and provided linguistic strategies of hybridity and resistance as alternative models for Chinese intellectuals to agentically appropriate and ‘make new’ in this translingual exchange. As Joseph Lennon explains in Irish Orientalism “the connection between the Oriental and the Celtic is the perpetual exception to European modernity, it is a continual sign of the borders that modern civilization requires”.33 Due to this exceptionalism, I conclude that Irish Revivalist literature, (alongside Polish and Hungarian literatures), presented an alternative space for Chinese Renaissance writers to imagine Postcolonial and Modernist versions of how to be both Chinese and modern. Much of our intellectual frameworks and theoretical paradigms are conditioned by the needs of empire, and one risks simply re-inscribing colonial hierarchies if an emphasis is not put on how these processes were reciprocal in nature. Dipesh Chakrabarty questioned how one could provincialize Europe, if the theoretical paradigms we use to investigate literature and culture emanate from a Eurocentric background.34 That is precisely the dilemma the Chinese May Fourth generation faced. I argue Irish Revivalism provided another way for Chinese writers to approach the modern; one not implicated in quite the same way in the discourses of Empire as other western literatures were. However, I do not present this exchange as a simple influence study, or ignore mutual encounters where Irish Revivalism was reciprocally influenced by Asian literatures. I am also aware of possible Orientalist approaches by Irish Revivalists, including Yeats and Cousins. Moreover, I intend to de-centre Europe, by arguing for the inclusion of Chinese writers within the new Postcolonial and Modernist canons. This situation is further complicated by the fact that Irish and Chinese intellectuals also faced a type of Colonial Capitalism. The only possible version of modernity put forward by the imperial west, was largely produced by the twin colonising forces of Colonialism and Capitalism working together. Jahan Ramazani asserts the Postcolonial and Modernist

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impulses of the early twentieth-century are imbricated, or overlap in their Postcolonial need to ‘make it new’.35 Ramazani further reads Postcolonial Modernism as one response to the twin evils of Colonial Modernity and Capitalist Modernity.36 I conclude Irish and Chinese writers sought a type of Postcolonial Modernism to overcome Colonial Capitalism and Colonial Modernity. This opened an agentic postcolonised space based on the urgent need to ‘make it new’, as Postcolonial Modernist literature moved beyond delimiting colonising definitions by others, on what it meant to be Irish and modern, or Chinese and modern. Thus in his mediation of the Japanese version of Irish nationalism into Chinese nationalism, Lu Xun selects and underscores points that coincide with goals and aspirations of the Chinese May Fourth movement, on the need to create a postcolonised Chinese version of modernity. In another example of reciprocal Asian influence, I discovered that Yeats received a book of modern Korean poetry from Zong In Sob in 1936, three years before Yeats died. Zong In Sob was a Korean critic of English literature, who taught at Yonsei University and was a visiting professor at the University of London from 1950–1956.37 Yeats wrote to Zong In Sob on September 3, 1936 Dear Mr. Jung, I thank you very much for showing me your volume of translations from modern Korean poets. I do not think you should have any difficulty in finding a publisher. I notice a delightful little poem of your own about a girl, a comb, and a ring. Yours, W. B. Yeats.38

For further information on how modern Korean writers appropriated Yeats’s “Lake Isle of Inisfree” as an anticolonial model, see Sejeong Han’s article.39 Evidently, modern Korean writers also perceived resonances between their postcolonised situation and Revivalist Ireland. This forms another mutual encounter and transnational link between Ireland and Asia, that shapes our shared global history. Yet was Lu Xun’s article on Yeats the only example of how the Chinese Renaissance ‘translated’ Irish Revivalism? Do the archives indicate other Chinese May Fourth writers and journals appropriated Irish Revivalist Yeats as an alternative model of postcolonised modernity? Chapter 4 answers these questions.

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Notes 1. Lu Xun, “Ai’erlan Wenxue Zhihuigu 愛爾蘭文學之回顧 (Review of Irish Literature)”, Benliu 奔流 (Torrent) 2, no. 2 (1929): 163–176. 2. Chen Shu 陈恕, “Ai’erlan Wenxue Zai Zhongguo—Shiji Huimou 爱尔兰 文学在中国-世纪回眸 (Irish Literature in China—Looking Back Through the Century)”, Waiguo Wenxue 外国文学 (Foreign Literature) 4 (July 2011): 39. 3. Yoshinobu Hakutani, East–West Literary Imagination: Cultural Exchange From Yeats to Morrison (Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2017). 4. Robert A. Lee, “Reviewed Work(s): Princes, Peasants, and Other Polish Selves: Ethnicity in American Literature by Thomas S. Gladsky; Selected English Writings of Yone Noguchi: An East–West Literary Assimilation. Vol. 2. Prose by Yoshinobu Hakutani and Yone Noguchi”, The Yearbook of English Studies 25 Non-Standard English’s and the New Media Special Number (1995): 340. 5. Susan Napier, “Reviewed Work(s): Selected English Writings of Yone Noguchi: An East–West Literary Assimilation. Vol. 1. Poetry by Yoshinobu Hakutani and Yone Noguchi”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies University of London 54, no. 3 (1991): 627–628. 6. Yonejir¯ o Noguchi 野口米次郎, “Mr. Yeats and the No”, The Japan Times, November 3, 1907, 6. 7. Yoshinobu Hakutani, Selected English Writings of Yone Noguchi: An East–West Literary Assimilation Volume 2 Prose (London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1992), 13–16. 8. Ibid., 13. 9. Ibid., 14. 10. Ibid., 14, 15. 11. Ibid., 16. 12. Ibid., 18. 13. Ibid., 19. 14. Ibid., 21, 25. 15. Ibid., 22. 16. Shu-mei Shih, The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, 1917–1937 (Berkeley: University of California, 2001), 76–78. 17. Lu Xun, “Review of Irish Literature”, 163, 176. I am grateful to my dear friend Shotaro Yamauchi, who located for me Noguchi’s original Japanese-language article on Yeats and Irish Revivalism. This confirms my thesis that Noguchi was the original author of the Japanese article Lu Xun translated into Chinese. Yonejir¯o Noguchi 野口米次郎, “A Reminiscence of Irish Literature (愛蘭文學の回顧)”, Works of Yone Noguchi Vol. 2 (ヨネ・ノグチ著作集.第2編) (Tokyo, Kaizosha (改造社), 1925), 201–215. James Cousins (カズンズ) is mentioned on pages 203, 204.

3

18.

19.

20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28.

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See also Yonejir¯ o Noguchi 野口米次郎, “A Reminiscence of Irish Literature (愛蘭文學の回顧)”, The Lyricism of Ireland (愛蘭情調), (Tokyo, 第 一書房, 1926). Shotaro Yamauchi researches reciprocal influences between Yeats and Japanese writers. See Shotaro Yamauchi, “Yeats and Shotaro Oshima: What Was “Yeats’s Japan’?”, Journal of Irish Studies 34 (2019): 70–75. Shotaro Yamauchi, “Yeats and Yonejiro Noguchi: Mutual Influences between Ireland and Japan”, Journal of Irish Studies 32 (2017): 37. Joseph Lennon, “’Where East and West are One’: James Cousins and Postcolonial Aesthetics”, in India and Ireland: Colonies, Culture and Empire, eds. Tadhg Foley and Maureen O’Connor (Dublin, Portland, Oregon: Irish Academic Press, 2006), 81–94. James and Margaret Cousins, “We Two Together—Worlds Within Worlds”, in Handbook of the Irish Revival —an Anthology of Irish Cultural and Political Writings 1891–1922 eds. Declan Kiberd and P. J. Mathews (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), 221. James and Margaret Cousins, We Two Together, (Madras: Ganesh & Co., 1950), 407. James Cousins, New Ways in English Literature (Madras: The Cambridge Press, Ganesh & Co., 1917), 40–85. Gauri Viswanathan, “Spirituality, Internationalism and Decolonization James Cousins, the ‘Irish Poet from India’”, in Ireland and Postcolonial Theory-with an Afterword by Edward Said, eds. Clare Carroll and Patricia King (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 162. Joseph Lennon, Irish Orientalism: A Literary and Intellectual History (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2004), 375. Eóin Flannery, “Ireland, Empire and Utopia: Irish Postcolonial Criticism and the Utopian impulse”, Textual Practice 24, no. 3 (2010): 453, 454. Chen Shu 陈恕, “Irish Literature in China”, 40. Wang Hongzhi, 王宏志, “能够容忍多少的不顺? -论鲁迅的 ‘硬译’ 理论 (How Much Awkwardness Can You Tolerate? On Lu Xun’s ‘Hard Translation’ Theory), Lu Xun Yanjiu Yuekan 鲁迅研究月刊一九九八年第九期 (Lu Xun Research Monthly) 9 (1998): 39–50. Lu Xun, “Review of Irish Literature”, 163–176. Yeats, The Yeats Reader, 80. Michel Hockx, “Mad Women and Mad Men: Intraliterary Contact in Early Republican Literature”, Autumn Floods: Essays in Honour of Marián Gálik (1998): 308. Douglas Hyde, “The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland”, in Handbook of the Irish Revival—an Anthology of Irish Cultural and Political Writings 1891–1922 eds. Declan Kiberd and P. J. Mathews (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), 42–45.

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30. Joseph Lennon, “Irish Orientalism—an Overview”, in Ireland and Postcolonial Theory, eds. Clare Carroll and Patricia King (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 138. 31. Florence Chien, “Lu Xun’s Six Essays in Defence of Bernard Shaw”, Shaw 12 (1992): 57–60. 32. Yeats, The Yeats Reader, 29. 33. Joseph Lennon, Irish Orientalism, 374. 34. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2007), 5, 27, 28. 35. Jahan Ramazani, “Modernist Inflections, Postcolonial Directions”, in A History of Modernist Poetry, eds. Alex Davis and Lee Jenkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 459, 460. 36. Ibid., 475. 37. I am grateful to my dear friend Ji Hyea Hwang for this background information on Zong In Sob. 38. W. B. Yeats, letter to Zong In Sob, September 3, 1936. The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats Unpublished Letters (1905–1939), ed. John Kelly, Oxford University Press, (Charlottesville, Virginia: Intelex Corporation, 2002). I believe the book in question was later published by Zong In Sob, An Anthology of Modern Poems in Korea (Seoul: 1948), 3. 39. Sejeong Han, “식민지 조선문인들의 “The Lake Isle of Inisfree”, 수용과 전유 - 김억,김영랑,한흑구,정인섭을 중심으로”, The Yeats Journal of Korea 31, no. 57 (December 2018): 321–344.

CHAPTER 4

Yeats’s Reception in China: How Chinese May Fourth Writers Translated Yeats and the Irish Revival

In Chapter 3, I established the reciprocal transnational literary exchange between Yeats in Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China. Yet does a perusal of Chinese-language archives demonstrate how Yeats and Irish Revivalism were ‘translated’ by the Chinese Renaissance? Like Lu Xun in Chapter 3, did other May Fourth translators appropriate Yeats and Irish Revivalism as alternative models of Postcolonised Modernism and modernity, for their semicolonial setting? How did different May Fourth translators and journals present Irish Revivalist Yeats, in differing time periods and for various Chinese audiences? I propose to answer these questions through an examination of Chinese-language periodicals, journals and newspapers produced in Republican era China.1 This includes the influential journals Xiaoshuo Yuebao, Chenbao Fukan, Wenxue Xunkan as a literary supplement to the Shishi Shixin Bao and Dongfang Zazhi; all published accounts of the semicolonial Chinese encounter with modernity. I further examine May Fourth critical readings of Yeatsian folkloric short stories, poetry and drama in Wenxue, Xiandai and The English Student . My consultation of Chinese archival sources are schematised in Tables 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4. Significantly, more articles about Yeats appear in the Chinese archives than other Irish writers James Joyce or Oscar Wilde, and more than any other

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. O’Malley-Sutton, The Chinese May Fourth Generation and the Irish Literary Revival: Writers and Fighters, Asia-Pacific and Literature in English, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5269-4_4

91

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Revivalists, possibly because of his Nobel Prize. Therefore, Yeats’s reception in a Chinese May Fourth setting necessitated an entirely separate chapter. I conclude with English-language newspaper accounts on Yeats and Irish Revivalism, published for an ex-patriate audience in China.

Xiaoshuo Yuebao Xiaoshuo Yuebao 小說月報 (Short Story/Fiction Monthly) the most influential Chinese May Fourth journal was published monthly in Beijing by Beijing Commercial Press, and ran from 1910 until 1931.2 Zheng Zhenduo was editor and famous May Fourth writers including Lu Xun, Ye Shengtao, Bing Xin, Xu Zhimo, Zhu Ziqing, Shen Congwen and Shi Zhecun contributed to this periodical. Debut works by Lao She, Ding Ling and Ba Jin were first published by this journal, as was Mao Dun’s first novel. XSYB was the longest-lived purely literary publication in modern Chinese literature and was the most powerful publishing institution at that time. Significantly, works by Irish Revivalist Yeats were frequently translated in this highly influential Chinese periodical. But who was translating, and why? Wang Tongzhao 王統照 (1897–1957) was particularly fascinated by Yeats’s Celtic Twilight, and translated several short stories from Yeats’s Irish folkloric collection into Chinese. XSYB published “An Enduring Heart” translated by Wang Jiansan (another name for Wang Tongzhao) from Yeats’s Celtic Twilight, as early as 1921.3 Gregory Castle elucidates in Modernism and the Celtic Revival (2001) how Irish Revivalism utilised anthropology to combat British imperialism, while remaining dependent upon the methods and cultural political discourses they sought to undermine.4 Anti-imperial Chinese intellectuals similarly sought to give folklore a modern application. Aoife Assumpta Hart outlines connections between the Celtic Revival and Japanese modernism, and how Yeatsian Irish folklore created a space for transcendence, ancestral recall and the local in a rapidly centralising society.5 “An Enduring Heart” foregrounds themes of unrequited love, a subject that intrigued Yeats and the iconoclastic May Fourth generation. Chinese Renaissance intellectuals advocated free choice of marriage partners, rather than outdated Confucian models and traditionally arranged marriages. When modern young Chinese women could not marry the person they loved, some even killed themselves, because of this clash between traditional expectations and modern subjectivity.6 These tensions

4

YEATS’S RECEPTION IN CHINA: HOW CHINESE MAY …

93

Table 4.1 Chinese archival sources on criticism and photos of Yeats Year

References

Title

Author

1929

BL Vol. 2–2: 163–176

Lu Xun鲁迅

1923

DFZZ Vol. 20–24: 1

1924

DFZZ Vol. 21–22: 24–42

1924

DFZZ Vol. 21–7: 88–106

1932

DFZZ Vol. 29–6: 14

1935

DFZZ Vol. 32–17: 1

1930

DSYK Vol. 1–1: 234–235

1939

GJ Vol. 1–2: 85–87, 92

“Ai’erlan Wenxue Zhihuigu 愛爾蘭文學之回顧 (Review of Irish Literature)” from Japanese article by Yonejir¯ o Noguchi [see Appendix B] “Zuijin zhi Ai’erlan最近之 愛爾蘭 (Recently in Ireland)” “Xiazhi Shengping jiqi zuopin夏芝生平及其作品 (Yeats’s Life and Works)” “Jieshao Ai’erlan shiren Xiazhi 介紹愛爾蘭詩人夏芝 (Introducing Irish Poet Yeats)” “Wenyi lan: Xiazhi Xiaobona zuzhi wenxue hui 文藝欄:夏芝蕭伯納組織文學 會 (Literary column: Yeats and Shaw organise a literary association)” “Wenxuejia jinying: Ai’erlan shiren Xiazhi qishi sui, zuijin Ai’erlan xueshu jie ceng zai Dubolin wei shiren zhushou 文學家近影:愛爾蘭 詩人夏芝七十歲,最近愛爾蘭 學術界曾在杜伯林為詩人祝 壽 (Recent photo of the writer: Irish poet Yeats is seventy years old, and the Irish academic community recently celebrated the poet’s birthday in Dublin)” “Yingguo wentan lingxun 英國文壇零訊 (Bits of news from the English literary world)” “Xiazhi de Weida 夏芝的偉 大 (The Greatness of Yeats)”

Anonymous Wang Tongzhao 王統照 Barnette D. Conlan transl. Yu Zhi愈之 Xu Diaofu 徐調孚

Anonymous

Anonymous

Ge Lun 哥侖

(continued)

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S. O’MALLEY-SUTTON

Table 4.1 (continued) Year

References

1945

GJ Vol. 11–1: 16–18

1939

1931

1924

1934

1927

1923 1943

1946

1923

Title

“Cong Xiazhi shuo dao minzu wenhua 從夏芝說到 民族文化 (Talking about National Culture from Yeats)” MDF April: 21–24 “Xiyang zuojia xiaozhuan: Ai’erlan shiren Xiazhi 西洋 作家小傳:愛爾蘭詩人夏芝 (Western writer’s biography: Irish poet Yeats)” QFYK Vol. 1–5: 7–8 “Zuijin de shijie wentan: Xiazhi yu Xiaobona 最近的 世界文壇:夏芝與蕭伯納 (The recent world literary scene: Yeats and Shaw)” QHZK Vol. 12: 32 “Wenxue: Jieshao Ai’erlan shiren Xiazhi: Barnette D. Conlan 文學:介紹愛爾蘭詩 人夏芝 Barnette D. Conlan (Literature: Introducing Irish poet Yeats: Barnette D. Conlan)” QNJ Vol. 5–3: 1 “Ai’erlan Xiazhi de Shiji 愛 爾蘭夏芝的詩集 (Irish Yeats’s poetry collection)”. Photo of Yeats SHAI Vol. 3–2: “Hewei ‘Shumin de Shige?’ 192–203 何谓“庶民的诗歌? (What is Popular Poetry? From Ideas of Good and Evil by Yeats)” SHI Vol. 2–2: 24–30 “Xiazhi de Shi 夏芝的詩 (Yeatsian Poetry)” SYCWY Vol. 1–3: “Zuihou de Shuoshuren 最 20–22 後的說書人 (W. B. Yeats The Last Gleeman)” WHXF Vol. 6–7: “Taige’er yu Xiazhi de juli 14–16 泰戈爾與夏芝的距離 (The distance between Tagore and Yeats)” WX Vol. 99: 1 “Xiazhi he Ai’erlan de Wenyi Fuxing Yundong 夏 芝和愛爾蘭的文藝復興運動 (Yeats and the Irish Literary Renaissance movement)”

Author Ming Sen 明森

De Ming 德明

Wang Tiran 汪倜然

Liu Sheng 柳生

Anonymous

Wei Zhaoji 魏肇基

Wang Tongzhao 王統照 Zhu Guangqian 朱光潜 Jian Xingyu蒋星煜

Zhong Yun 仲雲

(continued)

4

YEATS’S RECEPTION IN CHINA: HOW CHINESE MAY …

95

Table 4.1 (continued) Year

References

Title

Author

1935

WX Vol. 4–1: 157

Anonymous

1935

WX Vol. 5–3: 594–595

1935

WX Vol. 5–6: 949

1936

WX Vol. 7–3: 502

1921

WXXK Vol. 20: 1–2

1924

WXXK Vol. 22: 1–2

1924

WXXK Vol. 22: 2–3

1934

WYYB Vol. 1–2: 107–115 WYYK Vol. 2–1: 13–21 WYYK Vol. 3–7: 853–857

“Ai’erlan shiren Xiazhi zuijin 愛爾蘭詩人夏芝最近 (Irish poet Yeats recently)” “Shijie wentan zhanwang Ai’erlan wenxuejia Xiazhi qishi shouchen 世界文壇展 望:愛爾蘭文學家夏芝七十壽 辰 (Prospects of world literature: Irish literary writer Yeats’s seventieth birthday)” “Ai’erlan bihui jiang chu: Xiazhi lun 愛爾蘭筆會將出 夏芝論 (Irish Literary Society publishes treatise on Yeats)” “Xiazhi de huiyilu 夏芝的回 憶錄 (Yeatsian Autobiographies )” “Ai’erlan shiren Xiazhi 愛爾 蘭詩人夏芝 (Irish poet Yeats)” “Xiazhi sixiang de yiban 夏 之思想的一斑 (Thoughts of Yeats on a number of things)” “Xiazhi Ai’erlan Wenyi Fuxing de Shi 夏芝愛爾蘭 文藝復興的詩 (Yeats’s Irish Literary Renaissance poetry)” “Shiren Xiazhi 詩人夏芝 (Yeats the Poet)” “Xiazhi 夏芝 (Yeats)” “Haiwai wenyi qingbao: Yige Ai’erlan Wenxuehui 海 外文藝情報:一個愛爾蘭文學 會 (Overseas Literary Information: An Irish Literary Society)”

Anonymous

1931 1933

Zhong Chi仲持

Anonymous

Anonymous Teng Gu 滕固 Wang Tongzhao 王統照

Anonymous

Jin Suxi 金素兮 Fei Jianzhao 费鉴照

(continued)

96

S. O’MALLEY-SUTTON

Table 4.1 (continued) Year

References

Title

Author

1932

XD Vol. 1–1: 1

Anonymous

1930

XDWX Vol. 1–6: 201

1931

XQWY Vol. 5: 1–2

1937

XS Vol. 4: 71

1923

XSYB Vol. 14–9: 9–10

1923

XSYB Vol. 14–9: 71–75

1923

XSYB Vol. 14–12: 6

“Ai’erlan xiandai shiren Xiazhi xiang [zhaopian] 愛 爾蘭現代詩人夏芝像:[照片] (Modern Irish poet Yeats [photo])” “Zuijin de shijie wentan: AE yu Xiazhi 最近的世界文 壇:AE與夏芝 (Recent world literary scene: A.E. and Yeats)” “Ai’erlan xiancu shiren Xiazhi de shige lun ji qi jingyan tan 愛爾蘭現存詩人 夏芝的詩歌論及其經驗談 (Poetic Theory and its Experience by extant Irish poet Yeats)” “Jieke Xiazhi AE huaxiang [huatu] 傑克·夏芝:AE畫像[ 畫圖] (Jack Yeats A. E. portrait [painting])” “Ba niao yi xi shangle huangjin…Taige’er Xiazhi 把鳥翼繫上了黃金……”太 戈爾 夏芝 (The bird’s wing is tied to gold…Tagore Yeats)” A quote from Tagore’s poem “Stray Birds” “Xiazhi de Taige’er guan: Taige’er Jiatanjilijixu 夏芝的 太戈爾觀:太戈爾迦檀吉利集 序 (Yeats’s opinion of Tagore: Tagore’s Gitanjali)” “Yi jiu er san nian de Nuobei’er jiangjinzhe Xiazhi 一九二三年得諾貝爾獎金者 夏芝 (1923 Nobel Prize winner Yeats [photo])”

Yang Changxi杨昌溪

Yang Changxi 杨昌溪

Anonymous

Anonymous

Gao Zi 高滋

Anonymous

(continued)

4

YEATS’S RECEPTION IN CHINA: HOW CHINESE MAY …

97

Table 4.1 (continued) Year

References

Title

Author

1923

XSYB Vol. 14–12: 8

Anonymous

1923

XSYB Vol. 14–12: 115–126 (1–12)

1923

XSYB Vol. 14–12: 127–129

1923

XSYB Vol. 14–12: 130

1928

XSYB Vol. 19–7: 117 (904)

1929

XSYB Vol. 20–7: 9

1924

YWZZ Vol. 10–8: 570–581

“Yi suiyue ru pangda de heise de niu jiantaguo zheige shijie, shangdi shi mu zai tamen houmian qu ce zhe yutou juan er wo ze bei tamen zouguo de zu tale – weilian xiazhi 一歲月 如龐大的黑色的牛踐踏過這 個世界, 上帝是牧在他們後 面驅策著 語頭, 卷 而我則被 他們走過的足踏了—威廉·夏 芝 (Quotation from Yeats’s play The Countess Cathleen: “The years like great black oxen tread the world, / And God the herdsman goads them on behind, / And I am broken by their passing feet”)” “Yi jiu er san nian de Nuobei’er jiangjinzhe Xiazhi pingzhuan 一九二三年得諾 貝爾獎金者夏芝評傳 (Commentary on 1923 Nobel Prize winner Yeats)” “Xiazhi zhuzuo nian biao 夏芝著作年表 (Yeats’s Working Chronology)” “Xiazhi de zhuanji ji guanyu tade piping lunwen 夏芝的傳記及關於他的批評 論文 (Yeats’s biography and his criticism)” “Xiandai wentan zahua: Xiazhi de ‘Ta’ 現代文壇雜 話:夏芝的‘塔’ (Modern literary chats: Yeats’s ‘Tower’)” [see Appendix A] “Xiandai Yingguo shiren xiang 現代英國詩人像 (Images of modern English poets)” “William Butler Yeats”

Xi di 西諦 penname for Zheng Zhenduo 鄭振鐸

Anonymous Jizhe 记者(reporter)

Zhao Jingshen 趙景深

Anonymous

Barnette. D. Conlan

(continued)

98

S. O’MALLEY-SUTTON

Table 4.1 (continued) Year

References

Title

Author

1924

YWZZ Vol. 10–9: 676–682 ZXS Vol. 57: 131–134 (5–8)

“William Butler Yeats” (continued) “Ai’erlan shiren Xiazhi qishi sui 愛爾蘭詩人夏芝七十歲 (Irish poet Yeats is seventy years old)” “Shi sheng Xiazhi 詩聖夏芝 (Yeats the Saint of Poetry)”

Barnette. D. Conlan

1935

1939

ZYT 6: 2

Zhong Zu 仲足

Anonymous

became a trope in modern Chinese literature; see my discussion of gender in Cao Yu’s Thunderstorm in Chapter 8. Yeats’s “Enduring Heart” asserts “nobody ever marries the woman he loves”.7 The implication was if modern individuals do not marry for love, they cannot realise personal fulfillment. Evidently, Wang Tongzhao selected Yeats’s folkloric tale for translation in XSYB, because this resonated with his Chinese audience who were torn between semicoloniality and a yearning to modernise. Once Yeats won the Nobel Prize in 1923, Chinese intellectuals became more interested in modern Yeatsian poetry, drama and criticism as a model of postcolonised modernity. In 1923 XSYB published an article on Yeatsian Biography and Criticism, as a guide for Chinese readers of English-language books on the Irish Renaissance.8 This establishes which English books were available as primary sources for May Fourth translators, and is useful for researchers, as May Fourth writers in their rush to modernise, frequently forgot to provide their sources. Zheng Zhenduo, the Beijing editor since 1920, possibly wrote this anonymous piece, since he was one of the few who listed sources. This article lists eight books including: (1) W. B. Yeats by Jeth Bithell published in Paris in 1913 (this refers to British translator Jethro Bithell). (2) Contemporary Irish Drama by Ernest A. Boyd published in Boston in 1917. (3) Ireland’s Literary Renaissance by Ernest A. Boyd published in 1916 in Dublin (the first literary-critical account of Irish Revivalism). (4) Our Irish Theatre by Lady A. Gregory published in New York in 1913 (this autobiographical account is incorrectly dated 1917). (5) W. B. Yeats by J. M. Hone published in Dublin in 1915 (again incorrectly dated, this should be 1916). (6) W. B. Yeats and the Irish Literary Revival by Horatio S. Krans published in New York in 1904 (this should be 1905).

4

YEATS’S RECEPTION IN CHINA: HOW CHINESE MAY …

99

Table 4.2 Chinese archival sources on short stories and folklore by Yeats Year

References

Title

Author

1921

XSYB Vol. 12–1: 83–84

1922

CG Vol. 1–2: 1–2

1923

CBFK Vol. 12: 73–75

Wang Jiansan王劍三 penname for Wang Tongzhao 王統照 Wang Tongzhao 王 統照 Wang Tongzhao 王 統照

1924

WX Vol. 105: 1

1924

WX Vol. 105: 1

1924

WX Vol. 105: 1

1924

WXXK Vol. 25: 1

1924

WXXK Vol. 30: 2

1924

WXXK Vol. 40: 1–2

1925/6

WXZB Vol. 237: 554–556

“Ren xin 忍心 (An Enduring Heart by Yeats from Celtic Twilight )” “Zhanzheng 戰爭 (War by Yeats from Celtic Twilight )” “Wu daode de mengjing 無 道德的夢境 (Dreams that have no moral by Yeats from Celtic Twilight )” “Gu Zhen 古鎭 (The Old Town by Yeats from Celtic Twilight )” “Shengyin 聲音 (A Voice by Yeats from Celtic Twilight )” “San ge aobaolun ren yu xiemo 三個奧薄倫人與邪魔 (The Three O’Byrnes and the Evil Faeries by Yeats from Celtic Twilight )” “Weiguang ji xuan yi: Qi Shengwu 微光集选譯: 奇生 物 (Celtic Twilight collections: ‘Miraculous Creatures’ by Yeats)” “Huangjin Shidai 黃金時代 (The Golden Age by Yeats from Celtic Twilight )” “Yinmi de qiangwei xuanyi 隱秘的薔薇選譯 (The Secret Rose selection by Yeats)” “Xiazhi de Minjian Gushi de fenlei fa 夏芝的民間故事 的分類法 (Classification of Yeatsian Folktales)”

Wang Tongzhao 王 統照 Wang Tongzhao 王 統照 Wang Tongzhao 王 統照

Wang Tongzhao 王 統照

Wang Tongzhao 王 統照 Ye Wei 葉維 Zhao Jingshen 趙景 深

(continued)

100

S. O’MALLEY-SUTTON

Table 4.2 (continued) Year

References

Title

Author

1931

NFGZ Vol. 5–1: 1–13

1941

XYWX Vol 9: 273–277

“Ai’erlan gushi liang pian Cheng Zhaomin 程 (ying) Xiazhi 愛爾蘭故事兩 肇民 篇(英)夏芝 (Two Irish tales (in English) by Yeats) The Priest’s Soul by Lady Wilde and The Story of the Little Bird by T. Crofton Croker from Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasanty edited by W. B. Yeats” “Shuguang xuanze: Ai’erlan Guo Rui 郭蕊 minjian gushi ji 曙光(選擇) 愛爾蘭民間故事集 (Celtic Twilight: Irish Folktale Collection by Yeats)”

(7) W. B. Yeats a Critical Study by Forrest Reid, published in London in 1915. (8) W. B. Yeats a Literary Study by C. L. Wrenn published in London in 1920. The author explains these are the best books on Yeats so far, but apologises as more will likely be published in the future. In 1923 XSYB published an article on Yeatsian biography by Xi di 西諦, a penname for Zheng Zhenduo 郑振铎 (1898–1958).9 Modern Chinese writers frequently used pennames to avoid censorship and punishment.10 Zheng Zhenduo as editor of Xiaoshuo Yuebao during the 1920s promoted the vernacular through editorial decisions. Zheng travelled to London and Paris (1927–1928) and understood modern literary trends. This twelve-page article provides a detailed account of the Irish Renaissance for Zheng’s Chinese Renaissance audience and explains Yeats stood by Synge. Zheng presents Standish O’Grady as instigator of this Irish literature movement, and notes Yeats self-reflexively examined his role as a writer. This was compelling for Chinese Renaissance intellectuals, who debated whether they should be writers or fighters leading the movement. Zheng outlines Yeats’s early life in London, his publications in the Dublin University Review, his influence on English literary circles and his critical essays in Per Amica Silentia Lunae (1917). In Per Amica (Through Friendly Silences of the Moon), Yeats aligns western Christianity with Asian Buddhism, and Indian and Japanese poetic thought

4

YEATS’S RECEPTION IN CHINA: HOW CHINESE MAY …

101

Table 4.3 Chinese archival sources on poetry by Yeats Year

References

1926

BX Vol. 12: 21

1928 1930

1922

1947

1930

1941

1921

Title

“Yinjiu ge 飲酒歌 (A Drinking Song by Yeats)” BX Vol. 2–24: 2514 “Yinjiu ge 飲酒歌 (A Drinking Song by Yeats)” CY Vol. 2–9: 77 “Dao Shalou huayuan qu 到 沙露花園去 (Down by the Sally Gardens by Yeats)” CG Vol. 1–1: 153 “Ying li shi hu de dao 莺裏 詩湖的島 (The Lake Isle of Inisfree by Yeats)” GC Vol. 2–23: 22 “Du Ni, Aiqing de Mimi, Lao Mu zhi ge 都尼愛情的 秘密,老母之歌 (The Fiddler of Dooney, The Secret of Love and Song of the Old Mother by Yeats)” HJDYK Vol. 14–1: “Wenyi: Jieyi Xiazhi de ‘Wei 28–29 Cong Zhi Feng’ 文藝:節譯 夏芝的葦叢之風 (Literary: Translating Yeats’s Wind Among the Reeds – The Host of the Air)” JS Vol. 1–3: 28 “Yin ni si fu li hu dao 茵尼 斯弗利湖島 (The Lake Isle of Inisfree by Yeats)” MGRBJ Vol. 9–20: 2 “Jiu zhi ge 酒之歌 (A Drinking Song by Yeats)”

1933

QNJ Vol. 4–2: 130

1934

QNJ Vol. 5–3: 1

1935

QNJ Vol. 8–1: 219

1933

SHU Vol. 2–6: 1

1937

SLSYK Vol. 2–1: 22

“Xue li yuan pang 雪莉園旁 (Down by the Sally Gardens by Yeats)” “Ai’erlan Xiazhi de Shijin 愛 爾蘭夏芝的詩集 (Irish Yeats’s poetry collection)” “Yin fu li hu dao 因弗裏湖 島 (The Lake Isle of Inisfree by Yeats)” “Hu Zhong de yin ni se fu li xiao dao 湖中的音尼斯弗 利小島 (The Lake Isle of Inisfree by Yeats)” “Yin jiu ge 飲酒歌 (A Drinking Song by Yeats)”

Author Zhong Yun 仲雲 Huang Yeqing 黄野清 Anonymous Wu Jianchan 伍劍禪 Anonymous

Peng Shanzhang 彭善 彰

Jia Guangtao 贾光涛 Japanese poet Makoto Sang¯u 山宮允 (1890–1967) Lin Yijin 林疑今 Anonymous Zhu Xiang 朱湘 Qin Sun 琴荪

Li Ziwen 李子温

(continued)

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S. O’MALLEY-SUTTON

Table 4.3 (continued) Year

References

Title

Author

1948

WCYK Vol. 6–1: 2270–2271

Yu Kangyong 俞亢詠

1935

WFXP Vol. 5: 75

1929 1924

WMBYK Vol. 2–3: 96 WX Vol. 109: 1

1924

WXXK Vol. 44: 4

1934

WYYB Vol. 1–2: 121–124

1934

WYYK Vol. 2: 36

1932

XD Vol. 1–1: 23

1932

XD Vol. 1–1: 24

1932

XD Vol. 1–1: 25–26

“Xiazhi Shi Chao 夏芝詩抄 (Yeatsian Poetry Collection – When You are Old and Inisfree by Yeats)” “Laoren lin shui 老人臨水 (The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water by Yeats)” “Shen Shi 深誓 (A Deep-Sworn Vow by Yeats)” “Lao Mama de ge 老媽媽的 歌 (The Song of the Old Mother by Yeats)” “Bai Niao 白鳥 (The White Birds by Yeats)” “Xiazhi ballad liang zhang: Lie Huzhe, Mo’er Maqi 夏 芝 BALLAD 兩章:獵狐者,魔 爾媽琪 (Two Ballads by Yeats: The Ballad of the Foxhunter and The Ballad of Moll Magee)” “Shi Xuan: Xian qun Xiazhi Yuanzhu 詩選仙羣夏芝原著 (Poetry selection: The Hosting of the Sidhe by Yeats)” “Xiazhi Shi Chao: Mu Ye Zhi Diao Fen 夏芝詩抄:木 葉之調雰 (Yeatsian poetry collection: The Falling of the Leaves)” “Xiazhi Shi Chao: Shui zhong xiao dao 夏芝詩抄:水 中小島 (Yeatsian poetry collection: To An Isle in the Water)” “Xiazhi Shi Chao: Yin ni si fu li zhi hu zhou 夏芝詩抄: 茵尼思弗梨之湖洲 (Yeatsian poetry collection: The Lake Isle of Inisfree)”

An Yi 安簃

Ji Ye 霁野 Zhao Jingshen 趙景深 Ye Wei 葉維 Lin Qin 林擒 and Kang Naxin 康納馨

Liu Xingfan 劉杏帆

An Yi 安簃

An Yi 安簃

An Yi安簃

(continued)

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Table 4.3 (continued) Year

References

Title

Author

1932

XD Vol. 1–1: 26

An Yi 安簃

1932

XD Vol. 1–1: 26

1932

XD Vol. 1–1: 26

1932

XD Vol. 1–1: 27

1931

XSD Vol. 6: 11

1936

YHNK: 297

1936

ZDXS 1st issue: 8

1936

ZDXS 1st issue: 18

“Xiazhi Shi Chao: Ta xiwangzhe Tianyi 夏芝詩抄: 他希望著天衣 (Yeatsian poetry collection: He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven)” “Xiazhi Shi Chao: Lian zhi bei’ai 夏芝詩抄:戀之悲哀 (Yeatsian poetry collection: The Sorrow of Love)” “Xiazhi Shi Chao: Jiu zhi ge 夏芝詩抄:酒之歌 (Yeatsian poetry collection: A Drinking Song)” “Xiazhi Shi Chao: Ke’er hushang zhi ye fu 夏芝詩抄: 柯爾湖上之野凫 (Yeatsian poetry collection: The Wild Swans at Coole)” “Dao Sha lu huayuan qu 到 沙露花園去 (Down by the Sally Gardens by Yeats)” “Jiang jin jiu, Jing nu 將進 酒,靜女 (A Drinking Song and Maid Quiet by Yeats)” “Hu dao yi yi si fei lie 湖島 伊義思菲列 (The Lake Isle of Inisfree by Yeats)” “Hu dao yi yi si fei lie 湖島 伊義思菲列 (The Lake Isle of Inisfree by Yeats)”

An Yi 安簃

An Yi 安簃

An Yi 安簃

Shao Guanhua 邵冠華 Anonymous Fu Bianyan 附弁言 Jiang Rongxi 姜容熙

with Celtic Irish folklore, in his search for a philosophy of the creative process. Yeats foregrounds ancient Asian and Irish sources on an equal stage, asserting “I have always sought to bring my mind close to the thoughts of Indian and Japanese poets, old women in Connaught…”.11 Zheng positions Yeats as a true pioneer of the most important ideal of modern poetry and underlines Yeats’s transnational significance for Chinese readers. Zheng emphasises Yeatsian indebtedness to Asian philosophical literary constructs from India, Japan and China. This underscores

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Table 4.4 Chinese archival sources on plays by Yeats Year

References

Title

Author

1924

DFZZ Vol. 21–7: 131–139

Fang Xin 芳信 penname for Mao Dun 茅盾

1924

SH Vol. 4: 1–8

1924

YWZZ Vol. 10–10: 747–752

1925

YWZZ Vol. 10–11: 818–826

1925

JBFK Vol. 117: 3–6

1925

JBFK Vol. 118: 4–5

1925

JBFK Vol. 119: 4–7

1925

JBFK Vol. 120: 2–5

1925

JLG Vol. 14–1: 79–88

1928

QNJB Vol. 117: 91–101

1934

WYYK Vol. 1 Initial Issue:40–46

1935

WYYK Vol. 2–4: 34–42

“Jiasilun ni Huoliheng 加 絲倫尼霍立亨 (Cathleen ni Houlihan by Yeats)” “Xin zui zhi xiang 心醉之 鄕 (未完) (The Land of Heart’s Desire by Yeats Unfinished)” “Shalou 沙漏 (Contemporary One-Act Plays: The Hourglass by Yeats)” “Shalou 沙漏 (Contemporary One-Act Plays: The Hourglass by Yeats) continued” “Xin yu zhi guotu 心欲之 國土 (The Land of Heart’s Desire by Yeats) – part I” “Xin yu zhi guotu 心欲之 國土 (The Land of Heart’s Desire by Yeats) – part II” “Xin yu zhi guotu 心欲之 國土 (The Land of Heart’s Desire by Yeats) – part III” “Xin yu zhi guotu心欲之 國土 (The Land of Heart’s Desire by Yeats) – part IV” “Di lou 滴漏 (The Hourglass by Yeats)” “Xin Yu de Guotu 心欲的 國土 (The Land of Heart’s Desire by Yeats)” “Xiju: Lao Fu 戲劇老婦 (Drama: Cathleen ni Houlihan by Yeats)” “Sha Zhong: Sanwen ban 沙鐘散文版 (The Hourglass Prose Version by Yeats)”

Teng Gu 滕固

Su Chaolung [Zhaolong] 蘇兆龍 Su Chaolung [Zhaolong] 蘇兆龍 Bo Shi 卜士 Bo Shi 卜士 Bo Shi 卜士

Bo Shi卜士

Shi Wu釋吾 Zhu Weizhi 朱维之 Liu Xingfan 劉杏帆 Ying Zi 瓔子

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May Fourth translators ‘read’ Yeats and Irish Revivalism, as influenced by Asian concepts and constructs, which circle back to influence China. However, Zheng asserts Yeats ‘cannot escape history’. Yeats was appropriated by Chinese Renaissance translators in specific ways, to perform specific work for Chinese audiences. Zheng outlines Yeatsian indebtedness to English Romantic poetry, but explains Yeatsian poetry is not a British style and is not a simulation. Zheng interrogates these postcolonised significances for modern Chinese intellectuals. The younger Yeats was influenced by Romantic English poet Shelley, but Zheng ‘translates’ how Yeats utilises the poetry of the coloniser, to create a separate decolonised modern Irish literature. The implication is Chinese intellectuals can model themselves on Yeats, and similarly use western literature to modernise China. The stakes of the claims underpinning the specific type of work Yeats accomplishes for his Chinese May Fourth audience, include the implicit sense there is no shame in borrowing from the imperial centre, to successfully decolonise the peripheries. I contend Irish Revivalism retained postcolonised significances for Chinese May Fourth readers not present in western literatures produced in Britain, France, Germany and elsewhere, who were colonisers rather than colonised. Postcolonised and Modernist applications, something unique to Irish Revivalism resonated with the Chinese Renaissance. Zheng adds Yeats was influenced by Ferguson, and Yeats’s portrayal of mythical Celtic leader Oisín demonstrate the Irish spirit. Zheng argues Yeats’s use of Celtic myth was not for its own sake, but is inspirational like Greek or Roman myth. Zheng reads Yeats’s Wind Among the Reeds and Celtic Twilight as attempts to create “a poetry of the common people”. This claim resonated with May Fourth literati, who also created a modern literature based upon the masses, to move common people to act against their semicolonial condition. Zheng presents Yeats’s dramas as influencing his poetry and the Irish National Theatre, and dates Yeats’s play The Countess Cathleen from 1892. This verse drama play is set during a famine in Ireland. The idealistic Countess sells her soul to the devil to save her tenants from starvation, and is posthumously redeemed and ascends to heaven for her altruism. Susan Cannon Harris’s gendered reading demonstrates a female authority figure who saves the Irish nation troubled male-centric nationalist versions of heroism.12 Yeats’s play The Countess Cathleen held additional resonances for his Chinese May Fourth readership, who debated

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the contested role of landlords in semicolonial China. Yeats’s construction of a landlord class who sacrificed themselves for the peasantry seemed appealing yet unlikely to Chinese peasant audiences. However, individuals like Peng Pai (1896–1929), a wealthy Chinese landlord who burned the deeds to his property and led the Peasant Movement in Guangdong, exemplified Yeats’s idealised landlord class, as in Peng’s torture and martyrdom.13 Zheng also discusses The Hourglass (1903) a play by Yeats and Lady Gregory. The actors in this morality play include a wise man, a fool, some pupils, an angel, the wise man’s wife and two children.14 The wise man teaches his pupils not to believe in invisible worlds. An angel informs him he will die within the hour and cannot spend years in purgatory before going to heaven, unless he finds someone who believes in heaven before the last sand runs from the hourglass. Only Teigne the fool believes in the fire that punishes and purifies. The wise man begs the fool to pray for a sign to convince and save his pupils, and promptly dies. Clearly, Revivalist Yeats rejected the modern industrialised world that detects nothing of value in the unseen transcendent ancient legacies of postcolonised peoples for imperial modernity. Evidently Yeats’s Hourglass is based upon Lady Wilde’s folktale “The Priest’s Soul”. I discovered a 1931 Chinese translation of Lady Wilde’s folktale, and T. Crofton Croker’s folktale “The Story of the Little Bird” in Nanfeng Guangzhou 南風廣州 (Guangzhou Southwind)15 [see Table 4.4]. These folktales were from Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry edited by Yeats.16 Lady Wilde’s folktale explains great schools of learning in ancient Ireland were famous worldwide. But one boy becomes a priest and denies he has a soul because he cannot see it, until an angel warns him he will go to hell unless he finds one person to believe in the unseen. This Yeatsian insistence on the transcendent, or what cannot be perceived with the senses, was at odds with the scientific May Fourth focus. Hence, Irish Revivalist Yeats provided a different route or approach to modernity for Chinese translators, one that prioritised the local and originated in the postcolonial condition of Revivalist Ireland. Chen Shu presents Mao Dun’s translation of Yeats’s Hourglass as one of the earliest Chinese translations of Yeats.17 Mao Dun also examined Yeats’s biography for Chinese readers. Zheng Zhenduo foregrounds how Lady Gregory collaborated with Yeats in writing plays. The gendered implications of Gregory’s mentorship role percolated down for a new

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Chinese Renaissance readership, as the New Woman emerged in a global context. However, Zheng critiques Yeatsian drama and asserts On Baile’s Strand lacks dramatic elements. In this play set in ancient Ireland, King Conchobar forces the unaware hero Cuchulainn to fight and kill his own son.18 Cuchulainn learns the truth and mad with despair runs out to fight the sea. Declan Kiberd describes Yeats’s problem with this plot as “a familiar one in societies moving to an independent phase: how to contain those violent forces that once secured the integrity of the nation and now, if left uncurbed, threaten its peace?”19 Yeats’s Baile can be read comparatively with Lu Xun’s Diary of a Madman, as both works explore contested loyalties between feudal ties to family and society. Revivalist Yeats invented a National Theatre by fusing elements of the ancient Irish past with modern drama, and Chinese Renaissance writers inferred one could borrow from traditional tropes without becoming beholden to them. Moreover, once one Chinese scholar translated Irish Revivalist plays, it became easier to produce different versions. Zheng Zhenduo examines Yeats’s play Deirdre and explains elements of Yeatsian drama do not appear onstage, but are implied. Zheng reads Yeats’s Per Amica as an example of mysticism, alongside Yeats’s critical essay collection entitled Ideas of Good and Evil. Zheng emphasises Yeats’s conception of a modern national theatre for art, not for commerce, and foregrounds how Yeats laid the foundation for the Irish version of the Renaissance. This was noteworthy for the May Fourth generation who became the Chinese version of the Renaissance, since Zheng explains Yeats determined the right to survival of an Irish version of modern literature and art. Zheng implied his modern Chinese readership need not invoke colonising depictions of themselves constructed by the West and Japan, but could instead like Irish Revivalists, forge their own identity through the construction of their own modern literature. Zheng explains Yeats discovered a style that led to the creation of an Irish National Theatre, and a small non-popular theatre sufficed at the start. Zheng ends as a diligent editor with sources from accounts of the Irish Renaissance by E. A. Boyd. According to my reading, Zheng’s detailed account of Yeatsian poetry, drama, folktales and literary criticism presents Postcolonised and Modernist readings of the Irish Revival for Chinese readers. Hence Irish

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Revivalism provided a substitute, and I would argue, a similarly postcolonised model for the Chinese Renaissance, on how to construct a modern Chinese identity through literature, in a semicolonial setting. Additional Hiberno-Asian transnational literary exchanges and mutual encounters appear in Xiaoshuo Yuebao in a 1923 article on Yeats and Asian writer Tagore.20 This underlines how Yeats benefitted daily from lines in Bengali writer Rabindranath Tagore’s poem “The Stray Birds”. A different XSYB article by Gao Zi in 1923, presents a detailed account of “Yeats’s View of Tagore”.21 Evidently, Chinese Renaissance writers asserted inspiration did not go one way, but also flowed from East to West. Yeats is frequently compared to Tagore within Chinese-language periodicals of this period, because Yeats and Tagore were friends, and this presented another Asian perspective to examine Irish Revivalism from. Barry Crosbie notes the first staging outside of India of Tagore’s play Dak Ghar (The Post Office), was a performance at the Abbey in Dublin in May 1913, a benefit performance for Patrick Pearse’s St. Enda’s College.22 Therefore, other nascent Asian Renaissance movements in India, influenced the Irish Renaissance as a form of mutual encounter and circular literary exchange.

Chenbao Fukan Chenbao Fukan 晨報副刊: 文學旬刊 (Morning News supplement) was another highly influential Chinese newspaper supplement published in Beijing (1918–1928). Xiaoqun Xu explains CBFK was a transnational site for the consumption and production of nationalism and cosmopolitanism that sought to place China in the colonial world order.23 CBFK ’s audience consisted of Professors, teachers and students. Lu Xun, his brother Zhou Zuoren, Hu Shi and Xu Zhimo were contributors. In 1923, Wang Tongzhao translated Yeats’s “Dreams That Have No Moral” from the Celtic Twilight, for the fifth anniversary of the Morning News supplement.24 In this fairy-tale Yeats describes the delight of the poor in rambling, moralless tales.25 Mary Helen Thuente explains Yeats did not include many fairy-tales in his collections, because he insufficiently understood the Irish language.26 For Chinese Renaissance translators eager to attack the Confucian moral order, this Yeatsian tale transcended any need to provide a traditional moral for each tale; and instead sought to order society based upon the masses and the vernacular.

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Wenxue Xunkan Supplement to the Shishi Shixin Bao Wenxue Xunkan 文學旬刊 (Literature Supplement) was a literary supplement to the Shishi Shixin Bao, another influential newspaper published in Shanghai (1921–1925). Zheng Zhenduo and Zhao Jingshen were editors of WXXK. Chinese literary societies often created and contributed to such periodical supplements to support their modernising project. As early as 1921, WXXK published an account on Yeats by Teng Gu 滕 固, with partial translations of his poems “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” and “The Lake Isle of Inisfree”.27 Teng Gu (Ruoqu) (1901– 1941) knew Creation Society founders Guo Moruo and Zhang Ziping, and published in Creation Quarterly. Teng Gu also published a 1924 unfinished version of Yeats’s play The Land of Heart’s Desire in the journal Sphinx [see Table 4.4]. Michel Hockx explains Teng Gu was later active in the nationalist Guomindang (GMD) government.28 Yeats’s romantic poem “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” reads Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths, Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.29

Teng Gu’s article contains a quote in English “Where There is Nothing There is God”. Yeats’s play Where There is Nothing (1903), was rewritten by Lady Gregory as The Unicorn From the Stars (1907) at Yeats’s request.30 In Yeats’s play protagonist country gentleman Paul Ruttledge abandons the inauthentic life of his class, exchanges clothes with a tinker and leaves his lands to his brother. Ruttledge joins a monastery and preaches a new religion opposed to all civilisation, and recommends destruction of all laws, cities and churches. Ruttledge is killed as a heretic by an enraged mob.31 The parallels of Yeats’s Irish Revivalist play were clear for the Chinese Renaissance. Chinese May Fourth writers similarly tore down an old civilisation to create a new belief system; yet expected opposition to modernisation.

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In 1924, WXXK published an article on Yeatsian poetry and Irish Revivalism. This article terms the Irish Literary Revival as “Ai’erlan Wenxue Fuxing 愛爾蘭文藝復興”, sometimes “yundong 運動 (movement)” was added.32 WXXK discusses Yeats’s poetry, his Celtic Twilights, The Wanderings of Oisín, links to A. E. and influences from Blake and Shelley. The author links Yeats and Revivalism to the Irish Literary Society established in Southwark, London (1891–1893). Michel Hockx explains various Chinese literary societies and literary networks were also behind the formation of these modern Chinese-language journals.33 Wang Tongzhao translated “Miraculous Creatures” from Yeats’s Celtic Twilight for WXXK in 1924.34 Wang translates Celtic Twilight as the 微光集選譯 (low light collection). This transcendent short tale describes strange creatures common in lakes, set there in old times to watch over the gates of wisdom. Yeats asserts “He thinks that if we sent our spirits down into the water we would make them of one substance with strange moods of ecstasy and power, and go out it may be to the conquest of the world”.35 I suggest that underlying tensions about the westerncentric nature of the modernising cosmopolitan Chinese May Fourth project meant Wang Tongzhao selected instead the local in Yeats’s Celtic Twilight. Moreover, Wang Tongzhao chose Irish folkloric tales by Yeats because this attracted Chinese peasant audiences. The ambitious Chinese May Fourth project sought to awaken, modernise and liberate the Chinese masses. Wang perceived abstract intellectual debates did not routinely appeal to the Chinese masses. I argue Wang used Irish Yeatsian folklore as a point of entry, to entice illiterate Chinese peasants into intellectual May Fourth debates. Wang Tongzhao translated another folkloric tale “The Golden Age” from Yeats’s Celtic Twilight for WXXK in 1924.36 The protagonist who may or not be Yeats, witnesses a man playing a fiddle on a Sligo train. Yeats imagines this as a lament for the Golden Age; as the once perfect world is no longer. The song says to Yeats in this world the beautiful are not clever, the clever are not beautiful, and the best of our moments are marred by vulgarity. Yeats wishes those immortals still alive in the Golden Age could die, so we might be happy in this world, but concludes we must weep instead until the eternal gates open.37 I detect Chinese Renaissance writers yearn for something to transcend the material world, while they simultaneously enact a more scientific enlightenment approach to

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literature. It is revealing that Yeats’s anti-scientific Celtic Twilight folktales resonated with a Chinese generation dedicated to “Mr. Science” and “Mr. Democracy” as advocated by Chen Duxiu founder of the influential Xin Qingnian 新青年 (New Youth) journal. Yet, one can adopt a scientific approach to folklore collection. Edward Said posited that academic disciplines and fields adopt a colonial mindset and assign narratives to indigenous peoples through anthropological, literary, historical or archaeological approaches.38 Although Yeats is accused of approaching indigenous Irish folklore with a colonial gaze, Yeats’s utilisation of Irish folklore foregrounds an alternative way towards the modern for the Chinese Renaissance, one rooted in the local. Edward Hirsch notes this colonising process renders Yeats a remote alienated spectator of the landscape.39 But Yeats also becomes a character within these folkloric stories, which indicates modernist experimentation with the narrator’s role. Yeats aligns his own subjectivity and credibility with belief in the supernatural, and performs the dual role of creator/protagonist. This positions Yeats not in opposition to indigenous peoples, but in alignment with them as anticolonial collaborator. Wang Tongzhao penned a critical article for WXXK in 1924, entitled “Thoughts of Yeats on a number of things”.40 Wang critically examines Yeats’s philosophy of poetry in Ideas of Good and Evil, The Celtic Twilight, The Secret Rose, The Wind Among the Reeds and The Wanderings of Oisín. Wang discusses Yeats’s poems “The Stolen Child” and “When You are Old”, and how Oxford poetry lecturer Matthew Arnold influenced Yeats in his essentialised construction of the Celtic race. Just as Arnold categorised the Irish as an essentially passionate people whose refusal to accept “the despotism of fact” rendered them unsuitable for self-government; the Chinese May Fourth generation were surrounded by orientalising constructions that deemed them in need of imperial guidance.41 Irish Revivalism circumvented the imperial centre for Chinese Renaissance collaborators, as Yeats and May Fourth writers experimented with modernist form in a peripheral postcolonised setting. This 1924 WXXK article is followed by an article on Yeats’s Irish Renaissance poetry.42 The author discusses Yeats’s relationships with A. E. and Synge, and Yeats’s play The Countess Cathleen. Temporality is a factor since Yeats won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923, and this issue of WXXK published two articles on Irish Revivalist Yeats on the front pages. Ye Wei 葉維 translated Yeats’s romantic poem on unrequited love

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“The White Birds” for WXXK in 1924.43 Yeats penned this after Maud Gonne again refused to marry him, when she claimed she would rather be a seagull than any other bird. This formed part of The Rose collection (1893), and depicts Yeats’s wish they could both become white birds and escape to Tír na n-Óg, a mythical land where mortals live as long as the fairies.44 Yeats’s yearning to escape their social and political circumstances, held valence for Chinese May Fourth readers who also negotiated postcolonial categories based on love and the New Woman. Ye Wei 葉維 wrote on Yeats’s “The Secret Rose Selection” for WXXK in 1924.45 Ye Wei explains Celtic terms including the Irish name for fairies; the Sidhe. The Secret Rose is Yeats’s collection of short stories that almost becomes prose poetry. For Yeats the secret rose was symbolic of a remote ideal of perfection in love and beauty, and the incorruptibility of the transcendent.46 Yeats explains to A. E. in the preface he penned this collection with no definite plan, and with one subject “the war of spiritual with natural order”. Yeats claimed “if a writer wishes to interest a certain people among whom he has grown up, or fancies he has a duty towards them, he may choose for the symbols of his art their legends”.47 Accordingly, Yeats turned to the ancient Irish past to decolonise the national identity through literature. This Irish Revivalist postcolonial move intrigued the Chinese Renaissance generation, because their modernising project was critiqued as western-centric by Chinese Nationalists who wished to retain national essence. Therefore, translations of Irish Revivalist local folklore presented a different way out of the Chinese semicolonial dilemma. I argue the Chinese May Fourth project is mis-read as exclusively western-centric Occidentalism, although their intentions were Sino-centric and focused on ‘saving’ the Chinese nation. Irish Revivalists are not read as Anglo-centric because they re-tooled Hiberno-English as a literary weapon against total colonisation.

Wenxue Wenxue文學 (Literature) was a monthly periodical published in Shanghai (1933–1937). Editors Zheng Zhenduo and Mao Dun were members of the Shanghai Literature Club, and Lu Xun and Ding Ling also published in this periodical. In 1923, Wenxue published an article by Zhong Yun 仲雲 on Yeats and the Irish Literary Renaissance movement.48 Zhong reviewed Irish Revivalism under three headings: short stories, drama and

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poetry. Significantly, editors and writers of Wenxue selected Yeats’s postcolonial and strategic use of Celtic folklore, as the most pertinent modern literary model for May Fourth readers. In 1924 Wenxue published Wang Tongzhao’s translation of “The Old Town” from Yeats’s Celtic Twilight.49 Yeats’s “The Old Town” describes an old town burned down ‘in Cromwell’s day’—an anticolonial reference to Oliver Cromwell who led an infamous British parliamentary invasion of Ireland (1649–1650).50 Cromwell is admired in Britain for his part in the establishment of an English Republic and the execution of King Charles I. However, in Ireland he is held responsible for the perceived ethnic cleansing of Catholics, as his burned earth policies forced the Irish ‘to hell or to Connaught’. Under Cromwell’s generals, policies of deliberate land burning accounted for the majority of 600,000 deaths out of a total Irish population of 1,400,000. Cromwell’s generals also sent an estimated 40,000 Irish people as indentured servants to the Caribbean, most of whom were worked to death.51 Yeats ends on a postcolonial note, imagining those from earlier times follow us from the ruins of The Old Town. Edward Hirsch explains Yeats’s Celtic Twilight is neither a collection of short stories or fiction, nor a book of simple folk and fairy tales, but rather an attempt to fuse both traditions to create a specifically Anglo-Irish tradition.52 This hybridised modernist experimentation with form intrigued May Fourth translators like Wang Tongzhao, who hoped to similarly re-invent modern Chinese literature. Wenxue’s 1924 issue also published Wang’s translations of “A Voice” and “The Three O’Byrnes and the Evil Faeries”, all from Yeats Celtic Twilight.53 In “The Three O’Byrnes”, Yeats references the spiritual fairy realm and claims it is no wonder if “we try and pilfer the treasures of that other kingdom”.54 Appeals to the transcendent resonated with Chinese May Fourth readers in a semicolonial society that rapidly lost touch with its traditional roots, due to preference for western science and modernisation. In “A Voice” Yeats describes awakening to a spiritual vision of a lovely girl linked to ancient Irish and Greek myth.55 Amanda Bryan detects Yeats’s use of mystical elements discovers new answers on how to decolonise through mysticism. For Bryan, Yeats links Irish folklore to global folklores, transcending national postcolonial binaries and creating a new global transnational consciousness of Irish nationhood.56 The Chinese Renaissance also pursued this model of transnational and

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postcolonised modernity, as modernist experimentation permitted postcolonised peoples from the peripheries space to construct their own version of modernity. Yeatsian experimentation with folklore and the spiritual or transcendent, was not a simple appeal to folksy charm, but instead provided an alternative decolonised space for Chinese Renaissance writers to experiment on how to be modern and postcolonised. However, gender complicates the modern postcolonised condition. Editor Zhao Jingshen 趙景深, translated Yeats’s poem “The Song of the Old Mother” for Wenxue in 1924.57 I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow. And then I must scrub, and bake, and sweep, Till stars are beginning to blink and peep; But the young lie long and dream in their bed Of the matching of ribbons, the blue and the red, And their day goes over in idleness, And they sigh if the wind but lift up a tress. While I must work, because I am old And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold.58

Intersectionalities of gender and ageism collide in Zhao’s choice of poem. The Chinese May Fourth generation fought for women’s rights, particularly for aging widows who fended for themselves in feudal China. However, male Chinese intellectuals delimited modern constructions of femininity, which resulted in the re-inscription of traditional hierarchies. Jin Feng asserts that male Chinese writers explored, negotiated and claimed their own emerging identity, through appropriation of the construction of a gender-neutral New Woman.59 Although May Fourth writers called forth a New Youth and despaired of reforming older traditional generations; Zhao’s poignant choice of poem indicates modern Chinese writers were aware it was difficult to create a space for the old, among the modernising projects of the young. Zhao possibly hoped to entice older Chinese generations to read about their modernising project in Wenxue, by acknowledging the needs of older women, who doubted the May Fourth project would materially change their post(semi)colonial reality. By the 1930s tastes changed and brief Wenxue commentaries discuss Yeatsian theory. In 1935 Wenxue published a brief discussion of Yeatsian critical theory that references Ernest Boyd, Joseph Hone and Daniel

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Corkery.60 In 1935 Wenxue printed another short commentary on Irish Revivalist Yeats, that discusses Yeats’s play The King of the Great Clock Tower and the Abbey riots.61 Richard Cave explains Yeats penned this play according to Japanese Noh theatre and included dance scenes specifically designed for Ninette de Valois.62 Ninette de Valois (1898–2001) was an Irish-born ballet dancer and teacher, who danced with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Paris and established the British Royal Ballet and the Abbey Theatre School of Ballet in Ireland. This article references Shaw’s postcolonial feminist book The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God. In 1935 a Wenxue article by Zhong Chi 仲持 notes Yeats’s seventieth birthday and prospects for world literature.63 Finally, in 1936 Wenxue published an article on Yeats’s autobiographies.64 This lists English names for sections of Yeats’s autobiographies for Wenxue’s Chinese readership, since Yeats’s construction of Dramatis Personae in postcolonised Ireland remained relevant for their comparative modernisation project.

Wenxue Zhoubao Wenxue Zhoubao 文學周報 (Literary Weekly) was published weekly in Shanghai (1925–1929). This weekly publication was edited by Zheng Zhenduo, was associated with the Literary Research Society, and was published by Shanghai Kaiming Bookstore.65 This journal debated with the Creation Society whether art should be ‘for art’s sake’. WXZB published anti-imperial articles and a 1925 article by Zhao Jingshen on Irish Revivalist Yeats’s folktales.66 Zhao Jingshen 趙景深 (1902–1985) taught at various schools and was editor at Kaiming Bookstore and other publishing houses. Zhao edited WXZB from 1927 to 1929 and published on theatre with anecdotal pieces on modern Chinese writers.67 Zhao’s article is based upon Yeats’s Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (1888) and references folklore collections by Irish writers Hyde and Croker and medieval Welsh historian Giraldus Cambrensis.68 Zhao includes Irish folkloric terms such as: changelings (sickly children left behind when fairies steal children), the Merrow (mermaid or merman), leprechaun (mischievous fairy shoemakers), Clurichaun (mischievous fairies who haunt breweries), Far Darrig (tiny fairy shoemakers clothed in red), the Pooka (an animal spirit), Banshee (a female ghost who wails to announce imminent death), Tír na n-Óg (land of eternal youth) and Oisín (a mythological Celtic hero). Zhao explains

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that despite frustration, the Chinese May Fourth movement researches how to motivate people. Zhao concludes folklore is one way to study national psychology, but asserts Yeats’s texts are difficult to understand and do not clearly connect to ordinary people. Evidently, not everything translates easily from Revivalist Ireland to May Fourth China. Translation of ancient Irish terms posed difficulties for May Fourth translators who already worked in English, and found it difficult to simultaneously translate two foreign mediums. Yet Zhao argued that Yeats’s Irish Revivalist folkloric collections were worthy of translation as a way to preserve the national spirit, something that aligned with May Fourth aspirations. Table 4.1 demonstrates the extent and variety of articles on Yeats and Irish Revivalism presented by May Fourth translators as models of postcolonised modernity for Chinese audiences. Due to the volume of articles on the reception of Yeats in China, I created four separate tables, based on translations of criticism on Yeats, folkloric short stories, poetry and drama. Table 4.1 groups these primary source materials according to journal rather than chronologically. This permits comparisons on which Chineselanguage journals published what type of articles about Irish Revivalist Yeats, when and by which Chinese writers and for whom. [See the first pages of this book for a full list of abbreviations of journal titles.] Table 4.2 is chronological and demonstrates Wang Tongzhao was the earliest and most prolific Chinese translator of and commentator upon, Irish Revivalist Yeats’s folkloric short stories. Wenxue and Wenxue Xunkan were the main journals to publish translations of Yeats’s folkloric Celtic Twilight for Chinese Renaissance audiences. Another journal Chenguang 晨光 (Morning Light) published Wang Tongzhao’s translation of Yeats’s folkloric Celtic Twilight short story “War” as early as 1922.69 Chenguang was published semi-monthly (1922–1924) in Beijing, and focused on educating Chinese peasants. Therefore, Irish Revivalist Yeats’s folkloric collections aligned with the modernising goals of May Fourth journals that sought to mobilise the Chinese peasantry. In “War” (1902), Yeats discusses with a soldier’s widow the prospects for war between postcolonised Ireland and colonial England.70 The widow states “The people here don’t mind the war coming. They could not be worse than they are. They may as well die soldierly before God”. She admits it would be “a hard thing to see children tossed about on bayonets”.71 This reminds Yeats of Fenian battles, armed Irish republicans who sought to establish Irish independence from the 1860s on. They discuss the mythological Battle of the Black Pig, which seems to

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the widow a battle between Ireland and England, but which Yeats reads as a metaphor for an “Armageddon which shall quench all things in the Ancestral Darkness again”. Yeats’s apocalyptic postcolonial vision depicts a time when the transcendent or spiritual overtakes what Sineád Garrigan Mattar terms “the ‘sad soliloquies’ of the materialist British empire”.72 Mattar links this Yeatsian quest to his fascination with Eastern mysticism and his staunch anti-materialist understanding of the world.73 I read Yeats as seeking this re-enchantment of the material world, as a way out of the modern postcolonised Irish dilemma. I contend the Irish Revivalist project utilised peasant folklore as an alternative to the voice of western imperial authority; thereby establishing a different approach to the modern for Yeats’s Chinese May Fourth readership in another post(semi)colonial periphery.

Poetry Whereas Yeats penned folklore, poetry, criticism and plays for Revivalist Ireland; Lu Xun wrote short stories, critical essays and modern poetry for Chinese Renaissance audiences. Which Yeatsian poems were published in Chinese May Fourth journals read by Lu Xun?

Xiandai The Xiandai 現代 (Modern/Les Contemporains) journal was published monthly in Shanghai (1932–1935). Shi Zhecun founded Xiandai which was associated with the Chinese left-wing writers’ association. As the name implies, this literary journal advocated Modernism and included works by Lu Xun, Qu Qiubai, Mao Dun, Guo Moruo, Lao She and Ba Jin. An Yi 安簃 translated seven poems by Yeats for Xiandai in 1932 including “The Falling of the Leaves”, “To an Isle in the Water”, “The Lake Isle of Inisfree”, “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”, “The Sorrow of Love”, “A Drinking Song”, and “The Wild Swans at Coole”.74 This article included a photo of modern Irish poet Yeats. Hence, Irish Revivalist Yeats also became available as a poetic resource for Lu Xun and the Chinese May Fourth generation. An Yi’s choice of Yeatsian poetry focuses on themes of unrequited romantic love and temporality. In “The Lake Isle of Inisfree” Yeats stands “on the pavements grey”, in the modern imperial metropole London, yet “always night and day” hears the lake water lapping at Inisfree in western

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Ireland; he hears it “in the deep heart’s core”.75 Whereas Irish Revivalist Yeats rejected modern urban life that emanated from Industrial Revolution and re-imagined rural utopias; Chinese Renaissance writers sought the modernity and western scientific industrialisation that Yeats repudiated. However, many Chinese May Fourth intellectuals studied abroad and recognised Yeats’s homesickness in imperial London, and tensions on the urban rural divide. Yeats’s refocus on the postcolonised Irish landscape opens a potential literary space to escape imperial modernity and the modern metropolis. By shifting the colonial gaze from a colonised landscape to that of an alternative imagined utopian space, Irish Revivalist Yeats offered another way for Chinese Renaissance writers to approach modernity, and re-imagine their own post(semi)colonial condition by drawing from the local.

Minguo Ribao One of the earliest Chinese translations of Yeatsian poetry appears in Minguo Ribao, which published Yeats’s “A Drinking Song” in 1921.76 Minguo Ribao Juewu 民國日報覺悟 (Republic of China’s Daily News— Awakening) was a supplement to the Republic of China Daily News published in Shanghai (1919–1931). Shao Lizi was editor and this Minguo Ribao journal as one of the four main supplements of the New Culture movement provides research on nationalist Guomindang (GMD) propaganda during this period. Apparently Yeats’s Irish cultural nationalist stage resonated with Chinese intellectuals behind this journal. Hence Yeats could be alternately appropriated by Chinese nationalist and/or communist writers for differing audiences. Yeats’s “A Drinking Song” reads Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That’s all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die. I lift the glass to my mouth, I look at you, and I sigh.77

This Chinese version of Yeats’s “A Drinking Song” was translated from a Japanese version by Makoto Sang¯ u 山宮允 (1890–1967), a famous Japanese poet and English scholar who introduced Irish studies to Japan.

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As early as 1914, after the Meiji Restoration and the beginning of Japanese modernisation, Makoto Sang¯ u, Yone Noguchi and others explicitly linked Yeats’s Symbolism to Japanese culture. Makoto Sang¯u visited Ireland to interview Yeats in Dublin, on August 3, 1926.78 Although some scholars read Yeats as imperialist towards Japan, Yeats encouraged modern Japanese writers towards anti-imperialism, to reject imperial western models and instead seek native Japanese models for inspiration. Ironically, Japanese writers like Noguchi urged Yeats to learn from ancient Japanese models, yet when Yeats urged Japanese writers to do likewise, many resisted his advice in their rush to modernise which they misread as westernise. Anti-imperialist Yeats feared loss of the Irish ancient language and culture from British colonisation, and feared Asian nations would suffer similarly if they westernised too much. Thus Yeats urged Japanese writers not to self-orientalise by reading themselves exclusively through western eyes. I discern Yeats’s anti-imperial reading of Japan came through the lens of anticolonial Irish experience. Accordingly, Yeats and Irish Revivalism became an alternative model of modernity to imperial modernity for modern Asian literature movements in Japan and China that similarly negotiated with a colonial past.

Bei Xin Bei Xin 北新 (New North) was published semi-monthly in Shanghai (1926–1930) to review new literature and published Lu Xun’s “The True Story of Ah Q”. Bei Xin also published Zhong Yun’s 仲雲 translation of Yeats’s “A Drinking Song” in 1926.79 Bei Xin printed Huang Yeqing’s 黄 野清 version of Yeats’s “A Drinking Song” in 1928.80 William Carpenter notes Yeats’s The Green Helmet poetry collection including “A Drinking Song” illustrates Yeats’s formation of his version of the Irish Renaissance. Yeats modelled his poetry on European Renaissance literature that constructed a unity of thinking and feeling, or intellect and emotion, through models of cosmic order and musical harmony.81 Thus Yeats’s mythic Renaissance vision of a Unity of Being presented an ideal of unity between individual and society for the Chinese May Fourth generation. To discover how modern Chinese critics read Yeats through a Chinese lens, see also Fu Hao’s book A Commentary on the Selected Poems of W. B. Yeats with Chinese Translations (2021), and his two critical notes on Chinese elements in Yeats’s poetry.82

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Shi Lin The Shi Lin Shuang Yuekan 詩林雙月刊 (Poetry Forest Bi-Monthly) journal published another version of Yeats’s “A Drinking Song” by Li Ziwen 李子温 in 1937.83 Shi Lin focused on poetry and was published bi-monthly by Shilin Press in Shanghai (1936–1937). Shi Lin also printed an article on “Mr. Lu Xun”. Therefore, articles about Irish Revivalist Yeats and Chinese May Fourth writer Lu Xun regularly appear within the same Chinese-language periodicals of the May Fourth era, as Table 4.3 demonstrates. Photographs of Yeats were printed in China ranging from youth to old age. A painting by Jack Yeats [W. B. Yeats’s brother] of Irish writer A. E. was in the 1937 New Poetry journal, and a Jack Yeats painting of the races entitled “At the Start” 起赛 appears in 1921.84

Lu Xun’s Critical Writings---From Political to Literary Reform Irish Revivalist Yeats and Chinese Renaissance writer Lu Xun differed stylistically, since Yeats adopted a romantic tone at the start of his career but Lu Xun was ironic throughout. However, Seán Golden detects humour, irony, satire, zen and joy within Yeats’s writings. Golden proposes Yeats’s sense of gaiety in his poem “Lapis Lazuli” was informed by the response of Chinese sages to catastrophic world events.85 Both Yeats and Lu Xun were incisive critics, and their influential critical writings raise similar questions on how political milieus mitigate against individual artistry. Marston Anderson underscores Lu Xun and May Fourth writers produced a new literature, born of a ‘cultural emergency’. Lu Xun claimed this new Chinese literature “did not arise in the high tide of revolution but developed because of a setback in revolution”.86 Similarly, Yeats asserted the Irish turned to literature to effect change, after disappointment over Parnell’s political failure in 1891. Joseph Valente states “in his Nobel Prize lecture, ‘The Irish Dramatic Movement’ Yeats famously located the origins of the Irish Revival in the fall of Parnell and the collapse of the constitutional politics for which he stood”.87 The Chinese attempted most forms of government in a few decades from the Qing Empire in the early-twentieth century; to a Republic in 1911; to anarchy during the Warlord Years when that Republic collapsed;

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to a corrupted democracy under the nationalist Guomindang (GMD) from 1928; and finally, full socialism under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1949.88 Demoralised by the litany of failed political reforms, Chinese intellectuals like Lu Xun turned instead to literary reform (just as Irish Revivalists did). One could also list failed Irish rebellions that led to an equally contentious Irish Free State in 1922. Historians debate whether Irish rebellions in 1641, 1798, 1803, 1848, 1867 and 1916 should be included in one list, since all had differing goals, groups and leaders. However all Irish uprisings aimed for greater autonomy from colonial Britain. Hence disillusion also forged a new literature in Ireland, one that utilised energies unleashed by the newly educated Catholic middle-classes. Revolution often results when educated youth have few employment opportunities, and the May Fourth era and Irish Revivalism captured this impetus. Once the Chinese imperial exams were abolished in 1905, it became difficult for educated middle-class sons to gain employment and automatic entry to positions of cultural prestige.89 Educated Chinese intellectuals who found no place in the Qing civil service instead produced anti-imperial literature, to regain their lost prestige by turning to western Enlightenment modes. Similarly in Ireland, sons of the Protestant gentry witnessed the simultaneous decline of their automatic access to cultural and political power, and the rise of the Catholic middle-class. The resultant tensions produced experimental Postcolonial Modernist literature in Ireland that formed a modern identity from such fragments. Vivian Mercier ironically noted the Irish Revival was necessary to employ the secularised sons of Irish country rectors.90 Lu Xun acerbically defined Chinese literature this way And everyone interprets these terms as he pleases. To write a good deal about yourself is expressionism. To write largely about others is realism. To write poems on a girl’s leg is romanticism. To ban poems on a girl’s leg is classicism.91

Lu Xun identifies the Chinese Renaissance missed some of Modernism’s critical approaches, in their rush to modernise. As traditional Chinese cultural values were encoded in the very forms of Chinese language and literature, it was necessary for May Fourth writers to invent an entirely new form of vernacular writing, and experiment in a Modernist sense.92 Realism was associated with the bourgeoisie in the West, but meant

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something different to modern Chinese writers who wanted to reach all classes. Chinese writer Ding Ling was accused of insufficient realism in her portrayal of Chinese landlords, but Lu Xun fought against this dictatorship of ‘isms’ and berated the League of left-wing writers which he ostensibly led.93 Yeats too fought domination by one ideology, as both unionism and nationalism were monovocal. Yeats generally supported the underdog, and when Irish Protestantism was ascendant, Yeats fought against the interests of his own class (as did Lu Xun) and sided with the Catholic peasantry. Conversely, once the Irish Free State was established in 1922 and positions reversed, Senator Yeats adopted the Protestant position on issues like divorce.94 Perhaps it is overly simplistic to define Yeats as a fascist aristocratic snob, since he rejected fascism once he realised all this entailed, and adopted conflicting positions over a lifetime.95 Yet can Yeats be accused of orientalism towards Asia? Or does Yeats posit literary links between Asia and Irish Revivalism as a reciprocal encounter of mutual exchange?

Yeats’s Critical Writings: Mutual Exchange Between East and West Yeatsian critical writings reveal his worldview valued East and West equally, as original sites of ancient culture. In Ideas of Good and Evil and his essay on Shelley Yeats paints the East in a positive light, and lists the “ministering spirits” of Intellectual Beauty as “the Devas of the East, and the elemental spirits of medieval Europe, and the Sidhe of ancient Ireland”.96 In A Vision Yeats asserts that Hegel identified Asia with nature and civilisation as an escape from nature.97 This lack of Eurocentrism meant Yeats was egalitarian in his approach to Eastern influences, and his play The Death of Cuchulainn (1939) was influenced by Japanese Noh theatre, as this reciprocal exchange of ideas circled from East to West and West to East.98 Western scholars accuse Yeats of orientalism by essentialising and exoticising the Orient, and for falling out with Bengali writer Rabindranath Tagore.99 Critics read Yeats’s approach to India as cultural appropriation. However, Indian scholars do not read Yeats this way; but discover instead an egalitarian Yeats who places East and West on an equal plane. According to Soumen Chatterjee, Yeats went beyond the orientalist discourse and did not depict the East as inferior, but presented

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the East as capable of healing the Occidental West from “the malady of materialism”.100 Yeats read the Orient as a space not yet subverted by modernisation and colonisation; as a place of supreme culture. Chatterjee reads Yeats’s introduction to Tagore’s Gitanjali as evidence that Yeats challenged myths on Oriental inferiority by linking the East with exotic parts of the Western past. Yeats placed East and West in a global transnational context and did not present binaries or depict the Orient as ‘other’. Joseph Lennon states Yeats “saw these cultures as having the same cultural roots”.101 In “Ireland and the Arts” Yeats opined “we who care deeply about the arts find ourselves the priesthood of an almost forgotten faith, and we must, I think, if we would win the people again, take upon ourselves the method and the fervour of a priesthood”.102 Yeats’s artistic mission matches Lu Xun’s May Fourth secularised vocation to win the people again. In “The Symbolism of Poetry” Yeats proclaims this means rhythm’s purpose “is to prolong the moment of contemplation…which is the one moment of creation…to keep us in that state of real trance, in which the mind liberated from the pressure of the will is unfolded in symbols”.103 Hence, Yeats constructed poems so the reader had time to meditate on symbolic meanings. Yet, Yeats’s comment “how can the arts overcome the slow dying of men’s hearts that we call the progress of the world”, would sound strange to Lu Xun who sought Chinese modernisation and progress.104 Poignantly, May Fourth writers remained unaware that western intellectuals doubted Kantian ideals of progress after WWI. Whereas Yeats turned from the scientific Industrial age to a more spiritual outlook, Lu Xun kept faith in scientific progress for China.

Wenyi Yuebao Wenyi Yuebao 文藝月報 (Literary Monthly) was a monthly journal published by Zhongzhou Art and Culture Society in Kaifeng (the Song dynasty capital) Henan (1934–1935). In 1934 WYYB published an article on Yeats by Jin Suxi 金素兮.105 The same issue published Yeats’s poems “The ballad of the Foxhunter” and “The ballad of Moll Magee”, translated by Lin Qin 林擒 and Kang Naxin 康納馨.106 Jin Suxi’s critical article explains that Chesterton claims Yeats as the greatest modern ‘British’ poet and Arthur Symons called Yeats a genius. Jin discusses Yeats’s Celtic mysticism in his poem “The Madness of King

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Goll”, as the old King heard the Superman’s voice howling in the wind and surging water. Jin underlines how Yeats created a modern Irish national spirit through modern poetry based on ancient folk songs and stories, yet also turned to the Asian legends of India for subjects. Jin presents Yeats’s poem “The Rose of the World”, as different to Shelley or Spencer. Jin asserts readers were shocked by Yeats’s poem “The Wanderings of Oisín”, but claims Yeatsian epic poetry is reminiscent of Greek Homer. Jin contends the Irish have a poetic character, and Yeats established a national Irish character in his unique blend of ancient and modern styles. Jin emphasises Yeats’s turn to ordinary people to create poems like “The ballad of Father Gilligan”. Jin explicitly links Irish Revivalist Yeats’s use of folk songs to the popularity of folk songs for the Shanghai New Poetry school. Jin links Yeats to Blake and quotes Yeats’s poems “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” and “The Wild Swans at Coole”. Jin concludes Yeats was the greatest influence on Irish literature, and links Yeats’s elegy for O’Leary to Romantic Ireland, now dead and gone according to his poem “September 1913”. Accordingly, Irish Revivalist Yeats presented an innovative modernity for the Chinese Renaissance, one that was both postcolonised and modern, yet looked to external influences while retaining ancient cultural elements.

Wenyi Yuekan Wenyi Yuekan 文藝月刊 (Literary Monthly) was published monthly in Nanjing (1930–1941), and published articles on Revivalists Yeats and Synge. WYYK published articles on nationalism and international literary news for the nationalist Guomindang (GMD) party Central Propaganda department. In 1934, WYYK published Liu Xingfan’s 劉杏帆 translation of Yeats’s nationalist play Cathleen ni Houlihan, which calls indigenous peoples to right the violent wrongs perpetrated by the coloniser.107 Fei Jianzhao’s 费鉴照 1931 WYYK article on Yeatsian plays, included criticism on The Player Queen.108 A picture of a provocatively posed modern Chinese woman with a western bobbed hairstyle is presented in western clothing and shoes, as she leans upon a jar of scrolls. Susan Bazargan explains Yeats’s Player Queen opens as two old men envision the dawn of a new day, but ends with the Player Queen Decima usurping monarchical power.109 Fei’s article includes a verse from the Player Queen, where Decima sings of her mother weeping “because she had dreamt that I was born to wear a crown”. Evidently, nationalist

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Chinese intellectuals discovered resonances in Yeats’s Irish Revivalist play that had valence for their own violent revolutionary situation, but failed to perceive the irony that this could also become a critique of how the nationalist GMD usurped power in China. Fei’s article contains English versions of Yeats’s poems “A Coat”, “The Wild Swans at Coole”, “Running to Paradise”, “The Magi”, “The Scholars”, and the final lines of “The Dawn”. Fei concludes Yeatsian poems are prose poetry by literary arrangement, and compares their exquisite music to streams flowing from a river. Thus, Chinese writers read Yeats’s modernist experimentation with form as worthy of emulation. “The Scholars” reads Bald heads forgetful of their sins, Old, learned, respectable bald heads Edit and annotate the lines The young men, tossing on their beds, Rhymed out in love’s despair To flatter beauty’s ignorant ear. All shuffle there; all cough in ink; All wear the carpet with their shoes; All think what other people think; All know the man their neighbour knows, Lord, what would they say Did their Catullus walk that way?110

Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the late Roman Republic who wrote about his personal life instead of classical heroes. Yeats’s poem challenges traditional hierarchical patriarchal order, which appealed to anti-Confucian Chinese Renaissance readers. One can imagine Lu Xun’s reaction to Yeats’s contrast of the worldviews of older scholars and younger men. In “A Coat” Yeats makes his song a coat from old mythologies, only to discover fools “wore it in the world’s eyes, as though they had wrought it”. Yeats concludes it is better to walk naked, which May Fourth translators could identify with as onlookers similarly misunderstood their modernising mission. Fei’s quotation from “Running to Paradise” outlines “poor men have grown to be rich men, and rich men grown to be poor again”. Yeats warns a society must prepare to face adversity or suffer collapse, which reverberated with May Fourth readers intent on modernising semicolonised China.

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Yeats’s assertion “I would be – for no knowledge is worth a straw – ignorant and wanton as the dawn”, resonated with Fei’s May Fourth readers who rejected classical Chinese wisdom. Yeats’s poem “The Magi” invokes a modernist version of the nativity where the visiting wise men find a rebirth of the world order, “hoping to find once more…the uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor”.111 This modernist yearning for a new world order and a cyclical passing away of the old, was shared by Irish Revivalist Yeats and his Chinese Renaissance readers as the postcolonised peripheries urgently needed to ‘make it new’. In 1933 WYYK published an article on Yeats and the Irish Literary Society.112 WYYK printed Liu Xingfan’s 劉杏帆 1934 article with Yeats’s poem “The Hosting of the Sidhe”.113 In 1935 WYYK published Yeats’s play The Hourglass translated by Ying Zi 瓔子.114 Thus, Irish Revivalist Yeats was appropriated by nationalist and leftist Chinese intellectuals for different needs and eras. Yet how did May Fourth China receive Yeats’s Irish Revivalist plays?

Dongfang Zazhi Dongfang Zazhi 東方雜志 (Oriental Magazine/Eastern Miscellany) a celebrated periodical published in Shanghai and Chongqing (1904– 1948), was printed by the Commercial Press. Lu Xun, Liang Qichao, educator Cai Yuanpei and Chen Duxiu (co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party) contributed to this highly influential journal published through the late Qing era, the 1911 Revolution, the May Fourth era and the resistance war against Japan. One of the oldest journals in China, DFZZ records the trajectory of modern literature in China. In 1923, DFZZ featured a picture of Yeats as Irish Nobel Prize winner, next to a photograph of Irish Senate members including senator Yeats in the newly independent Ireland.115 Similarly, Lu Xun worked at the National Ministry for Education from February 1912, after the 1911 Xinhai Revolution ended imperial Qing rule in China. DFZZ established this visual reference for Chinese May Fourth readers unfamiliar with modern literary and political developments in Ireland, to emphasise links between political and literary reform. DFZZ highlighted Irish political developments more than other Chinese May Fourth periodicals. Another DFZZ issue in 1924, contains an introduction to Yeats by Barnette D. Conlan, translated by Yu Zhi 愈之.116 [Conlan was an Irish author who wrote “In Praise of Music” as introduction to a 1913 book by

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Canudo entitled Music as a Religion of the Future, published in London by Foulin]. I discovered the same article in English within The English Student , also in 1924.117 This English version of the original Chineselanguage article explains Mr. Conlan is an Irish poet of note, and a friend of Yeats and A. E. He has written this article especially with a view to introducing the works of the great Irish poet and dramatist to Oriental readers, sending it through a Chinese friend of his Mr. Hsieh Kuan-Sheng to our “Eastern Miscellany” (東方雜志)”. The article has since been translated and published in no. 7 Vol. XXI of that magazine. We must acknowledge our indebtedness to Mr. Conlan and his Chinese friend for printing the original article here. Our readers are also referred to a previous article, written by Mr. Tseu Yih Zan, that appeared in No. 5 Vol. VII of this magazine, for biographical and other information. The Editor.118

Hence the provenance of this YWZZ article on Yeats explicitly links Irish writer Conlan to Chinese intellectuals, who asked Conlan to write an article introducing Irish Revivalist Yeats to Chinese Renaissance readers. Therefore, Irish writers actively participate in this worlding of Irish literature, and create this transnational literary link between Ireland and China to expand the global legacy of Irish Revivalism. These related articles in Dongfang and Conlan’s YWZZ article both focus on criticism of Yeatsian drama. Conlan asserts only Ireland has as ancient a mythology as Greece, and notes Yeats wishes to reform theatre and writes for people outside the middle-class. Conlan makes special claims for Ireland regarding race to establish Hiberno-Asian anticolonial solidarities. Conlan claims Ireland has always been remarkable for its strong spiritual ideals. The race has continued pure to a great extent for untold centuries, much as India has, and we still find the Irish peasant gifted with a rich and poetic imagination and strong visionary powers…Like another Irish poet A. E….for him also it is a sacred land.119

Conlan links the sphere of existence all visionaries believed in, to the Sacred Mountains or Himalayas. Conlan analyses the modernist psychological underpinnings in Yeats’s verse drama The Shadowy Waters. Regarding Yeats’s play The Land of Heart’s Desire, Conlan alleges “the Sidhe [Irish fairies] are a race of supernatural beings such as we might expect to meet only in the writings of Tchuang-tze [Zhuangzi] and

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resemble perhaps those who go by the name of [Japanese] Sennin”. Yeats’s play depicts young bride Maire Bruin who is stolen away by fairies on her wedding day. Conlan declares Yeats had no sympathy at any time with Christian doctrine, perhaps to reassure his Chinese audience regarding the role Christianity purportedly played in the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864)—the world’s bloodiest civil war.120 Conlan contends Yeats’s play The King’s Threshold portrays a king who failed to pay attention to poets, and therefore lost his kingdom and his subjects. This Yeatsian call for rulers to listen to the literati would please Conlan’s May Fourth readership, who sought to ‘save the nation’.121 In this play Yeats transfers the crown from the king to the poet. Joseph Lennon explains the hunger strike in Yeats’s play The King’s Threshold (1904) influenced suffragette hunger striker Marion Wallace Dunlop in 1909, and the suffragettes encouraged later Irish and Indian anticolonial nationalists to view hunger strike as an ethical mode of resistance.122 Conlan explains Yeats’s Cathleen ni Houlihan, an old woman who wanders the roads of Ireland, was symbolic of colonial injustices in Ireland. Conlan links this play to the 1798 French Revolution, which resonated with Chinese readers. Conlan emphasises “[Cathleen] goes round from home to home to urge the people to redress the wrong done to their country”, in an unsubtle attempt to link Cathleen ni Houlihan directly to Chinese Renaissance aims. Conlan notes Yeats and Maeterlinck try to bring to life onstage the delicate shadowy world of the mind, but concludes neither succeeded because the world is so constituted that only everyday realities hold its attention. Irish Revivalism’s anticolonialism and Yeats’s modernism both spoke to Chinese May Fourth readers of Dongfang and The English Student . In a 1924 Dongfang article Wang Tongzhao 王統照 turns from Celtic folklore to criticism in “Yeats’s Life and Works”.123 In 1924, Dongfang published Fang Xin’s 芳信 translation of Yeats’s play Cathleen ni Houlihan.124 Chen Shu and Linda Pui-Ling Wong explain Fang Xin was a penname for Mao Dun 茅盾.125 A 1932 Dongfang article by Xu Diaofu 徐調孚 links Yeats to Irish dramatist Shaw and organisation of the Irish Literary Society.126 A final Dongfang article in 1935 displays a picture of Yeats celebrating his seventieth birthday.127 Therefore, various critical articles by and about Yeats, and translations of his Revivalist poetry and plays, were available to the Chinese Renaissance.

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Interim Conclusion Irene Eber asserts that Mao Dun read the Irish, Polish, Jewish and Harlem Renaissance movements as “literature of oppressed peoples”, with emphasis on the local to avoid essentialised readings of the past.128 In the 1920s Chinese intellectuals promoted national revolution and ethnic identity or minzu 民族. In the 1930s exigencies demanded Chinese intellectual emphasis on renmin 人民 (citizenship).129 As Chinese intellectuals became leftist, they critiqued Irish Revivalism for provincialism. Hence there were fewer articles on Irish Revivalist Yeats in the 1930s, and fewer critical accounts than in the 1920s. But articles on Seán O’Casey, Seán O’Faolain and Liam O’Flaherty do appear in the 1930s. Seán O’Faolain’s satirical short story “Sullivan’s Trousers” was written against Irish economic policies under Irish leader De Valera, and was translated into Chinese in 1936 by Hsu Tien-hung.130 O’Faolain’s antiisolationist story outlines how Sullivan removes his trousers, dons a kilt and establishes a primitive community who erect a monument to Sullivan. When Sullivan reappears in trousers, the mob remove them for him and he flees in this warning against turning from technological progress. Chinese translation became more difficult in a technological sense after 1932, when the Japanese bombed Shanghai and the Commercial Press (which launched Dongfang Zazhi and Xiaoshuo Yuebao).131 After the war Chinese Communists took power in 1949, and translation focused on ideologically acceptable Irish Revivalists like socialist Seán O’Casey, during the 1950s and 1960s.132 Yet how were Yeats and Irish Revivalism portrayed in English-language newspapers published in China for predominantly ex-patriate audiences?

The North-China Daily News The archives of the inspirational Chinese May Fourth era confirm Chinese intellectuals were well-informed about Yeats and Irish Revivalism. However, English-language newspapers published for an ex-patriate audience in China, including The North-China Daily News (TNCDN) also published articles on Irish Revivalist Yeats. TNCDN was a highly influential English-language newspaper published in Shanghai from 1850 that was read throughout China and was for a time the official record of the British Consulate. British ex-patriates and Chinese intellectuals like Lu Xun could read this paper, although May Fourth writers preferred

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Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. Although not a primary source of information for Chinese intellectuals, my own research demonstrates that prominent May Fourth leader Hu Shi wrote in to complain about anti-Chinese attitudes in the ex-patriate English-language newspaper The North-China Herald.133 Therefore, Chinese intellectuals could utilise these English-language newspapers for background information. In 1926, TNCDN published a detailed account of the Abbey riots for its ex-patriate audience in China.134 This article entitled “Abbey Theatre Uproar: Impassioned Speech by Mr. Yeats: Actors fight with Angry Republicans” described Yeats as a ‘well-known’ poet and dramatist. However, this article displays colonial anti-Irish attitudes, and overemphasises the violent riots when one considers pervasive violence in China during the Warlord Years (1916–1928).135 The earliest TNCDN Yeatsian reference was in 1914, which depicts Yeats’s Ghost Stories as unhappy spirits wishing for a suit of clothes.136 In 1919, The China Press (TCP) published “Mr. W. B. Yeats and the Human Family”, originally penned by Yeats for The Irish Statesman.137 Yeats writes the family, all classes and nations are held together not by logic, but by historical association. Yeats asserts modern writers are slight and shadowy in comparison to Shakespeare, Cervantes and Dante, because they lack a sense of the transcendent, or spiritual. Ex-patriate soldier, merchant and missionary readers of The China Press would approve Yeats’s reading as supporting their Christian worldview linked to the colonial project. However, Yeats would disavow such a selective construction, as this newspaper does not promote Yeats’s Irish cultural nationalist worldview. Another article printed beneath pictures the British government patiently appeasing the rebellious ungovernable Irish. This article entitled “What’s the Idea?” by a British contributor in a Japanese-owned newspaper asserts that Ireland was always the open sore of the British Empire and terms Ireland “that unhappy land”. The inference is not that the Irish are unhappy due to colonisation, but because they refuse every political solution the British offer them to remain within the Empire. The exasperated tone proclaims the British are ‘compelled’ to occupy Ireland with a military force of 60,000, thus martial law is necessary. The author claims “such a condition of things right at the heart of the British Empire in these enlightened days is a reversion to the Middle Ages”, without clarifying why only Irish political violence is a return to medieval times. The author asks “What then is the British government to do?”, concluding

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the government must come to the ‘rescue’ of the intransigent Irish who agree upon nothing. If Chinese intellectuals Lu Xun or Hu Shi read similar reviews of Irish affairs in English-language newspapers printed in China, they would identify the British colonial gaze constructed both the Irish and the Chinese as needing imperial guidance. I argue Irish Revivalism presented an alternative route to the modern for the Chinese Renaissance, one that bypassed racialised assumptions about colonial modernity that pervaded literatures produced in the imperial centre. Irish writers did not look to The Times or Punch magazine as primary sources, yet were aware these sources depicted Irish people as simian apes during the Irish Famine.138 Similarly, I contend Chinese intellectuals utilised ex-patriate newspapers published in China, as background sources on the colonial gaze. In 1920 TNCDN and The North-China Herald (TNCH) noted Yeats’s expected visit to Japan (although Yeats never visited Japan).139 TNCH was a weekly summary of TNCDN articles. In 1924 TNCDN printed a lecture on Yeats by Beijing’s Prof. Chase.140 Chase terms Yeats’s Land of Heart’s Desire “that wonderful country where beauty has no ebb, decay or flood”, and surprisingly calls Yeats ‘a simple Irish lad’. Chase asserts he was instrumental in arranging Yeats’s American trip, and claims he met Yeats and English writer Hardy in London. Chase explains Yeats approved the education of daughters as America’s contribution to the world, as boy’s education was prioritised in England, and references the Dublin Magazine and new Irish Revivalist writers. In 1934, TNCDN stated any play by Yeats is a notable event, and references Yeats’s new play The King of the Great Clock Tower.141 TNCDN published a 1935 account of Yeats’s seventieth birthday and his plays The Pot of Broth, The Hourglass and The Player Queen.142 The original interview by Hubert Griffith in The Observer, describes Yeats as one of the most distinguished living poets and dramatists, and explains Yeats turned The Player Queen into a comedy after giving it to Ezra Pound. In 1939 TNCH published Yeats’s obituary, describing ‘Professor’ Yeats as leader of the Irish Literary Renaissance, who preached for minority rights.143 This obituary asserts Abbey theatre growth in the face of financial difficulties was a torch to every aspiring theatre worldwide, a symbol of courage and faith to all lands. A final TNCDN article in 1948 notes Yeats’s reburial in Ireland.144 Three years after Lu Xun died, TNCH noted Yeats’s death in 1939.145 This article portrays Yeats as chief interpreter of Celtic myth and leader

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of the Irish Renaissance as a senator, a landowner, a family man who absentmindedly dropped sugar in the tobacco jar. Significantly, this article links Yeats’s fight for minority rights to the Abbey battles, concludes Yeats’s Abbey theatre legacy became a symbol of faith and courage to all lands and establishes another transnational literary link between Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China.

The English Student The Yingwen Zazhi 英文雜志 (The English Student) magazine was a monthly periodical published by the Commercial Press in Shanghai (1915–1927), for educational purposes to provide English-speaking students with a strong understanding of English. The content included English exercises and essays. Michael Gibbs Hill explains The English Student (英文雜志) and The English Weekly (英語週刊) were widely circulated magazines for English-language learners published in association with the Commercial Press’s correspondence schools.146 These magazines blended useful information with a sense of cosmopolitan identity and the gospel of self-improvement, and were used by the Beiyang government who recognised the pressing need for foreign language education and modernisation of the Chinese education system. In 1924, Yeats’s oneact play The Hourglass was translated in instalments by Su Chaolung [Zhaolong] 蘇兆龍 for The English Student .147 Su Chaolung (or Yuequ) was an active contributor to English-language magazines published in China.148 Therefore, Yeats was part of the English curriculum for students in Republican era China. Earlier in 1921, The English Student published an article by Tseu Yih Zan [Zhou Yueran] 周越然 on Yeats as a famous living Irish poet.149 Zhou narrates the Irish Renaissance as one of the most important literary movements of that time and recommends every Chinese literary student should know its history. Zhou notes Douglas Hyde’s clarion call for the Irish to stop running to England for books, literature, music, games, fashions and ideas, so the future Irish develop along Irish lines. Unsurprisingly, these resonant valences carry directly from the Irish Renaissance to the Chinese Renaissance, as May Fourth writers attempt a similar project. Thus Yeats’s Irish Revivalism was one strand of western influence on the May Fourth era. Table 4.4 demonstrates three Yeatsian plays, Cathleen ni Houlihan, The Land of Heart’s Desire and The Hourglass were the focus for Chinese

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translation in the celebrated Dongfang Zazhi and English Student periodicals, published in Shanghai. Wenyi Yuekan was published in Nanjing, as was Jinling Guang 金陵光 (Golden Light), and both periodicals printed versions of Yeats’s Hourglass. However, other sources included Jingbao Fukan, a daily newspaper supplement published in Beijing (1924–1926). Lu Xun contributed to this Beijing supplement and could read Yeats’s play The Land of Heart’s Desire. Shihou 獅吼 (Sphinx) journal also published Yeats’s Land of Heart’s Desire, translated by Teng Gu in Shanghai. Qingnian Jinbu 青年進步 (Youth Progress) published a later version of Land of Heart’s Desire. Evidently, various groups in China appropriated Irish Revivalist Yeatsian drama, during different time periods and in protean ways for differing May Fourth audiences.

The Legacy Lu Xun is the father of modern Chinese literature due to his experimentation with the Chinese vernacular, which I read as a modernist impulse in a postcolonised setting. Similarly, Irish Revivalist Yeats is a foremost figure of twentieth-century literature as part of the postcolonial and modernist canons. This is due in part to Yeats’s experimentation with Hiberno-English as a hybrid language of postcolonial resistance to colonial modernity. I contend the postcolonised Irish condition created the impetus for Yeats’s modernist experimentation with literary form and language. Irish Revivalism sought a way out of imperial and capitalist modernity, and played with language and literature in a modernist sense in a postcolonised periphery. I read Yeatsian Revivalist literature as a type of Postcolonial Modernism and conclude Chinese Renaissance writers like Lu Xun made similar postcolonial and modernist moves within their writings. In both cases in Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China, a female writer created the original postcolonial linguistic space in a peripheral postcolonised setting. Lady Gregory invented the use of HibernoEnglish, a literary language in English based upon the grammar, syntax and rhythms of the Irish language. This experimental linguistic manoeuvre was later appropriated by male Irish Revivalists Yeats and Synge. Similarly, female writer Chen Hengzhe penned the first modern short story in vernacular Chinese, although Lu Xun receives this accolade.150

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Yeats’s legacy encompasses his role as one of the founders of the world’s first national repertory theatre, which I read as a postcolonial modernist experiment. Similar attempts to establish a national theatre in the imperial centres of Britain and America failed. The British placed lords of the realm on the board, and the Americans placed billionaires rather than artists on their board.151 Significantly only in Ireland, a site of postcolonial ambition, did this modernist experimentation come to fruition. I detect energies unleashed by decolonisation forces in Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China produced a similar impetus towards modernism. I conclude that Yeats and Lu Xun can be read as Postcolonial Modernists, since the very act of definition required to discover a viable place in the modern world, was necessitated by the earlier experience of colonisation and loss of identity. Both writers were put forward for the Nobel Prize for literature, which demonstrates their contribution to world literature. Yeats won this award in 1923 according to the Nobel committee “for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation”.152 Clearly, the Nobel committee references Yeats’s postcolonial legacy to the Irish and not the British nation. This raises questions about World Literature as a system, since Pascale Casanova’s book The World Republic of Letters (2004) asserts that literatures from the peripheries struggle for recognition, and either remove all local references, or exalt these as Yeats did.153 Casanova exposes an emerging regime of inequalities for minor languages and literatures which are always subject to invisible hierarchies that favour, value, produce and circulate predominant Eurocentric nations and literatures. Casanova frames sites of publication and translation as literary annexation, since peripheral literatures are from the ‘periphery’, which constructs the imperial West as centre. One could alternatively read Yeats’s Nobel Prize as a condescending gesture towards the ‘quaint’ Irish, who provide a postcolonial ‘other’ to which the imperial European centre can compare itself. By stating Yeats was awarded this prize precisely because his writings were not universal, the Nobel committee in a sense exoticises and marginalises Irish Revivalism. Lu Xun faced similar constricting complications in his semicolonial setting, but was not awarded this accolade in 1927. Swedish Academy member Sven Hedin suggested to Professor Liu Bannong at Beijing University that Lu Xun deserved to be put forward for the Nobel Prize. Although the first Chinese writer considered for this honour, Lu Xun claimed he would not have accepted this recognition, and asserted

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concerning the Nobel riches, Liang Qichao isn’t suitable and neither am I. There’s still hard work to be done before this money can be won. There are so many writers in the world better than I, yet they are unable to win…What gives me an unfair advantage is the fact that I am Chinese and helped by the word China…it would be laughable. I feel China doesn’t yet have anyone who can win the Nobel Prize, in fact, and Sweden had best take no notice of us. If the yellow skinned people were given preferential consideration, it would only encourage the egotism of the Chinese, convincing them they really were equal to the great foreign writers. The result would be terrible…If I won this thing and stopped writing I would be doing people a disservice, if I continued writing [after winning] perhaps it would just be Hanlin literature,154 totally worthless. Carrying on as of old, obscure and impoverished, is the best way.155

This fascinating insight into Lu Xun’s postcolonised mentality demonstrates his internalisation of orientalist stereotypes. Lu Xun asserts his right to be an individual writer, rather than a representative of the entire Chinese nation. Julia Lovell explains Lu Xun had converted to communism and did not want his acceptance of a Nobel Prize to validate the hated nationalist Guomindang (GMD) government.156 Yet, Lu Xun’s potential nomination became mythic and a controversial national debate. The fact Yeats and Lu Xun were considered for this award, underscores their enduring legacy for national and world literature. Moreover, their legacies endure as works by Yeats and Lu Xun form part of the national curricula in Ireland and China.157 Modern Irish and Chinese governments appropriate these writers to legitimise the origins of their respective states. Hence, Yeats is co-opted by the Irish state and Lu Xun by the Chinese state, which reduces both to nationalist propaganda, and ignores the nuance of their modernising projects. Quotes such as “fumble in a greasy till” from Yeats’s poem “September 1913” form part of the national Irish discourse; just as Lu Xun’s Ah Q spirit still denotes feudal mentality in China. Hence Yeats and Lu Xun, both collectors of traditional culture and folklore, have now become part of that folklore themselves, an appropriate final legacy for two writers who sought innovative forms of Postcolonial and Modernist identity for their respective nations.

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Ziyou Tan The Ziyou Tan 自由谭 (Freedom Speech) journal published an article (in the month Yeats died in 1939) entitled 詩聖夏芝, that claimed Yeats as the “Saint of poetry”158 (Chinese Communists also appropriated Lu Xun as a cultural ‘saint’). This monthly periodical published in Shanghai (1938–1939) analysed anti-Japanese propaganda activities by the Chinese public. A cartoon in this article depicts a group of Chinese workers with sickles, and a banner proclaiming the communist slogan “ziligengsheng 自力更生 (self-reliance)”, as Japanese soldiers brandishing swords encircle them. Therefore, by the year of his death in 1939, Irish Revivalist Yeats was still appropriated by Chinese intellectuals for anti-imperial purposes. Hence, even in death Yeats became a transnational secularised ‘saint of poetry’. This reading allowed the Chinese Renaissance to raise their antiJapanese struggle to a spiritual transcendent plane, while linking them to anticolonial Renaissances worldwide.

Conclusion In conclusion, Yeats’s Irish Revivalist literature resonated with the Chinese May Fourth generation, who discovered valences for their own semicolonial condition and modernist quest, in Yeats’s writings. Yeats’s Revivalism was appropriated in protean ways, for distinct Chinese socialist and nationalist audiences throughout the May Fourth era. I discern Chinese Renaissance “writers and fighters” utilised Irish Revivalism to agentically re-imagine their own cultural and political modernisation. Significantly, this transnational exchange was one of reciprocal encounter and mutual exchange, as Yeats was deeply influenced by the East. The impact of Irish imaginaries on another side of the globe should not be underestimated, as this misreads the full global transnational reach of Irish Revivalism in Asia. I detect Postcolonial Modernist elements in writings by Lu Xun in May Fourth China, and Yeats in Revivalist Ireland. I contend much of the impetus for modernist literary experimentation arises from the postcolonial condition. Hence, I propose an additional way to read the encounter of postcolonised peoples with modernity, is through the lens of the postcolonial condition. This opens up innovative ways to read literatures produced in the colonised peripheries as both postcolonial and modernist. I conclude the modern condition

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Irish and Chinese writers reacted to and reflected upon, was their postcolonised condition, and so I read their literatures as a type of postcolonial modernism. Although not the only western literature translated by the Chinese Renaissance, I conclude Irish Revivalism presented an alternative to literatures of imperial modernity and circumvented narratives and racialised assumptions pervasive in literatures produced in the imperial centre. I contend Yeats’s Irish Revivalism, spoke to Chinese translators from a similarly colonised perspective. Therefore, Irish Revivalism presented an alternative, unique and different route to the modern for the Chinese May Fourth generation; one that literatures produced in the imperial centres of Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the United States could never envision, as they never experienced colonisation. My reading reveals the anti-imperial Irish and Chinese shared the struggle to modernise in the early twentieth-century. This underlines how the traumatic experience of colonisation prevented both nations from successfully reaching full modernity once nominally decolonised, which disappointed Yeats and Lu Xun. It is as if the ‘sleepers’ in Lu Xun’s Iron House manage to escape, yet psychologically return to the mentally colonised confines that have become ‘home’ for them. Similarly, Yeats’s dream of a Unity of Being for individual and society remains unrealised, in an Ireland reeling from the yet-to-be-fully assessed effects of colonisation. Works by Irish Revivalist Yeats and Chinese May Fourth writer Lu Xun demonstrate intellectuals who live in postcolonised societies, are forced to write themselves back into a history others wrote or invented for them. I discern growing experimentation with literary form and language in Yeats’s and Lu Xun’s writings, and read this as a form of modernism necessitated by a postcolonised setting, or Postcolonial Modernism. However, both Yeats and Lu Xun increasingly despaired of the very revolutions they called for. How does disillusionment with the postcolonised modernist condition manifest itself in writings by other Irish Revivalist and Chinese May Fourth writers? And how were other Irish Revivalist writers and fighters received by the Chinese Renaissance? My next chapter addresses how class complicates the reception of Irish Revivalism in May Fourth China. In Chapter 5, I examine the reception of Irish Revivalist socialist writer Seán O’Casey and his plays in China. I further compare Revivalist Seán O’Casey and Lao She in May Fourth China as left-leaning dramatists, and assess postcolonial and modernist

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readings of their writings since both writers attempt to give a voice to the voiceless, as revolution rages outside their door.

Notes 1. All background information on who edited these journals, where and when they were published, and who the likely audience was, is provided by resource centres on three databases I researched. These include: the Wan Qing qikan quanwen shujuku (1833–1911) 晚清期刊全文数 据库 (Late Qing dynasty periodical full-text database 1833–1911), the Minguo shiqi qikan quanwen shujuku (1911–1949) 民国时期期刊全文 数据库 (Republican era periodical full-text database 1911–1949), and the Quanguo Baokan Suoyin 全国报刊索引 (National Newspaper Index). 2. Ibid. 3. Wang Tongzhao 王統照, penname Wang Jiansan 王劍三, “Ren xin 忍 心 (An Enduring Heart by Yeats from Celtic Twilight )”, XSYB 12, no. 1 (1921): 83–84. See on pennames Michel Hockx, Questions of Style Literary Societies and Literary Journals in Modern China 1911–1937 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 261. 4. Gregory Castle, Modernism and the Celtic Revival (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 5. Aoife Assumpta Hart, Ancestral Recall – The Celtic Revival and Japanese Modernism (Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press, 2016), 11. 6. Bryna Goodman, The Suicide of Miss Xi: Democracy and Disenchantment in the Chinese Republic (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2021). 7. William Butler Yeats, The Celtic Twilight (London: A. H. Bullen, 1902), 58. 8. Jizhe 记者 (reporter), “Xiazhi de zhuanji ji guanyu tade piping lunwen 夏芝的傳記及關於他的批評論文 (Yeats’s biography and his criticism)”, XSYB 14, no. 12 (1923): 130. 9. Zheng Zhenduo 鄭振鐸, penname Xi di 西諦, “Yi jiu er san nian de Nuobei’er jiangjinzhe Xiazhi pingzhuan 一九二三年得諾貝爾獎金者夏 芝評傳 (Commentary on 1923 Nobel Prize winner Yeats)”, XSYB 14, no. 12 (1923): 115–126 (1–12). See Michel Hockx, Questions of Style, 261. 10. Ping Wang, “The Inner Workings of Lu Xun’s Mind: Behind the Author’s Pen-Names”, Frontiers of Literary Studies in China 7, no. 3 (September 2013): 480. 11. William Butler Yeats, Per Amica Silentia Lunae (New York: Macmillan, 1918), 51, 52. 12. Susan Cannon Harris, Gender and Modern Irish Drama (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 24, 25.

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13. James Sheridan, “Book Review of P’eng Pai and the Hai-Lu-Feng Soviet by Fernando Galbiati”, The American Historical Review 91, no. 2 (April 1986): 446. See Fernando Galbiati, P’eng Pai and the Hai-Lu-Feng Soviet (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), 1–20. 14. William Butler Yeats, The Plays Vol. II eds. David and Rosalind Clark (New York: Scribner, 2001), 95–108. 15. Cheng Zhaomin 程肇民, “Ai’erlan gushi liang pian (ying) Xiazhi 愛爾 蘭故事兩篇(英)夏芝 (Two Irish tales [in English] by Yeats) The Priest’s Soul by Lady Wilde and The Story of the Little Bird by T. Crofton Croker from Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasanty edited by W. B. Yeats”, NFGZ 5, no. 1 (1931): 1–13. 16. William Butler Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (London: Walter Scott Ltd., 1888). 17. Chen Shu 陈恕, “Ai’erlan Wenxue Zai Zhongguo – Shiji Huimou 爱 尔兰文学在中国-世纪回眸 (Irish Literature in China – Looking Back Through the Century)”, Waiguo Wenxue 外国文学 (Foreign Literature) 4 (July 2011): 39. 18. William Butler Yeats, The Plays, 151–176. 19. Declan Kiberd, “On Baile’s Strand: W. B. Yeats’s National Epic”, The Princeton University Library Chronicle 68, no. 1–2 (2007): 263. 20. “Ba niao yi xi shangle huangjin…Taige’er Xiazhi 把鳥翼繫上了黃 金……”太戈爾 夏芝 (The bird’s wing is tied to gold…Tagore Yeats)” A quote from Tagore’s poem “Stray Birds”, XSYB 14, no. 9 (1923): 9–10. 21. Gao Zi 高滋, “Xiazhi de Taige’er guan: Taige’er Jiatanjilijixu 夏芝的 太戈爾觀: 太戈爾迦檀吉利集序 (Yeats’s Opinion of Tagore: Tagore’s Gitanjali)”, XSYB 14, no. 9 (1923): 71–75. 22. Barry Crosbie, Irish Imperial Networks – Migration, Social Communication and Exchange in Nineteenth-Century India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 247. 23. Xu Xiaoqun, Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and Individualism in Modern China – The Chenbao Fukan and the New Culture Era 1918– 1925 (Lanham: Lexington, 2014), 1–10. See also Xu Xiaoqun, “Placing China in the Colonial World Order: Travelogues in the Chenbao Fukan, 1921–1926”, Twentieth Century China 39, no. 1 (January 2014): 69–89. 24. Wang Tongzhao 王統照, “Wu daode de mengjing 無道德的夢境 (Dreams that have no moral by Yeats from Celtic Twilight )”, Chenbao Fukan Wu Zhounian Jinian Zengkan 晨报副刊五周年纪念增刊 (Memorial Supplement for the fifth anniversary of Morning News) 12 (1923): 73–75. 25. William Butler Yeats, Celtic Twilight, 208–230.

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26. Mary Helen Thuente, W. B. Yeats and Irish Folklore (Dublin: Ottawa, 1980), 122. 27. Teng Gu 滕固, “Ai’erlan shiren Xiazhi 愛爾蘭詩人夏芝 (Irish poet Yeats)”, WXXK 20 (1921): 1–2. 28. Michel Hockx, Questions of Style, 266. 29. William Butler Yeats, “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”, The Yeats Reader a Portable Compendium of Poetry, Drama and Prose ed. Richard J. Finneran (New York: Scribner, 2002), 29. 30. William Butler Yeats, Where There Is Nothing (New York: Macmillan, 1903). See Patricia Ann McFate and William E. Doherty, “W. B. Yeats’s “Where There Is Nothing” Theme and Symbolism”, Irish University Review 2, no. 2 (1972): 149. 31. Ibid., 151. 32. “Xiazhi Ai’erlan Wenyi Fuxing de Shi 夏芝愛爾蘭文藝復興的詩 (Yeats’s Irish Literary Renaissance poetry)”, WXXK 22 (1924): 2–3. 33. Michel Hockx, Questions of Style, 1–20. 34. Wang Tongzhao 王統照, “Weiguang ji xuan yi: Qi Shengwu 微光集选譯: 奇生物 (Celtic Twilight Collections: ‘Miraculous Creatures’ by Yeats)”, WXXK 25 (1924): 1. 35. William Butler Yeats, Celtic Twilight, 109. 36. Wang Tongzhao 王統照, “Huangjin Shidai 黃金時代 (The Golden Age by Yeats from Celtic Twilight )”, WWXK 30 (1924): 2. 37. William Butler Yeats, Celtic Twilight, 173, 174. 38. Edward Said, “Orientalism” and “Culture and Imperialism”, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism 2nd Edition ed. Vincent Leitch (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2010), 1866, 1877. 39. Edward Hirsch, “Coming out into the Light: W. B. Yeats’s The Celtic Twilight (1893, 1902)”, Journal of the Folklore Institute 18, no. 1 (1981): 8, 9. 40. Wang Tongzhao 王統照, “Xiazhi sixiang de yiban 夏之思想的一斑 (Thoughts of Yeats on a Number of Things)”, WXXK 22 (1924): 1–2. 41. Matthew Arnold, On the Study of Celtic Literature (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1867), 155. 42. “Xiazhi Ai’erlan Wenyi Fuxing de Shi 夏芝愛爾蘭文藝復興的詩 (Yeats’s Irish Literary Renaissance poetry)”, WXXK 22 (1924): 2–3. 43. Ye Wei 葉維, “Bai Niao 白鳥 (The White Birds by Yeats)”, WXXK 44 (1924): 4. 44. William Butler Yeats, “The White Birds”, The Yeats Reader, 15. 45. Ye Wei 葉維, “Yinmi de qiangwei xuanyi 隱秘的薔薇選譯 (The Secret Rose selection by Yeats)”, WXXK 40 (1924): 1–2. 46. Rachel V. Billigheimer, “The Rose of Ireland in the Early Poems of W. B. Yeats: Eternity Is in the Glitter on the Beetle’s Wing”, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 91, no. 363 (Autumn 2002): 276–283.

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47. William Butler Yeats, The Secret Rose (London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1897), preface. 48. Zhong Yun 仲雲, “Xiazhi he Ai’erlan de Wenyi Fuxing Yundong 夏 芝和愛爾蘭的文藝復興運動 (Yeats and the Irish Literary Renaissance movement)”, WX 99 (1923): 1. 49. Wang Tongzhao 王統照, “Gu Zhen 古鎭 (The Old Town by Yeats from Celtic Twilight )”, WX 105 (1924): 1. 50. William Butler Yeats, Celtic Twilight, 137–139. 51. John Kenyon and Jane Ohlmeyer, The Civil Wars: A Military History of England, Scotland and Ireland 1638–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), xx, 86, 98, 278. See Sean O’Callaghan, To Hell or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland (Dublin: Brandon The O’Brien Press, 2000), 86. 52. Edward Hirsch, “W. B. Yeats’s The Celtic Twilight ”, 1–22. 53. Wang Tongzhao 王統照, “San ge aobaolun ren yu xiemo 三個奧薄 倫人與邪魔 (The Three O’Byrnes and the Evil Faeries by Yeats from Celtic Twilight )”, and “Shengyin 聲音 (A Voice by Yeats from Celtic Twilight )”, WX 105 (1924): 1. 54. William Butler Yeats, Celtic Twilight, 145–147. 55. Ibid., 115, 116. 56. Amanda Bryan, “Decolonisation and Mysticism in William Butler Yeats’s The Celtic Twilight and The Secret Rose”, Irish Studies Review 23, no. 1 (2015): 68–89. 57. Zhao Jingshen 趙景深, “Lao Mama de ge 老媽媽的歌 (The Song of the Old Mother by Yeats)”, WX 109 (1924): 1. 58. William Butler Yeats, “Song of the Old Mother”, Yeats’s Poems ed. A. Norman Jeffares (London: Macmillan, 1989), 94. 59. Jin Feng, “The New Woman in Early Twentieth Century Chinese Fiction”, Comparative Literature and Culture 6, Issue 4, no. 5 (December 2004): 1–10. 60. “Ai’erlan bihui jiang chu: Xiazhi lun 愛爾蘭筆會將出夏芝論 (Irish Literary Society publishes treatise on Yeats)”, WX 5, no. 6 (1935): 949. 61. “Ai’erlan shiren Xiazhi zuijin 愛爾蘭詩人夏芝最近 (Irish poet Yeats recently)”, WX 4, no. 1 (1935): 157. 62. Richard Allen Cave, W. B. Yeats The King of the Great Clock Tower and A Full Moon in March Manuscript Materials ed. Richard Allen Cave (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2007). See Nicholas Grene, Book Review The Yeats Annual 18 “The Living Stream: Essays in Memory of A. Norman Jeffares” ed. Warwick Gould (2013): 331–334. 63. Zhong Chi 仲持, “Shijie wentan zhanwang Ai’erlan wenxuejia Xiazhi qishi shouchen 世界文壇展望: 愛爾蘭文學家夏芝七十壽辰 (Prospects of World Literature: Irish Literary Writer Yeats’s Seventieth Birthday)”, WX 5, no. 3 (1935): 594–595.

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64. “Xiazhi de huiyilu 夏芝的回憶錄 (Yeatsian Autobiographies )”, WX 7, no. 3 (1936): 502. 65. Michel Hockx, Questions of Style, 47. 66. Zhao Jingshen 趙景深, “Xiazhi de Minjian Gushi de fenlei fa 夏芝的民間 故事的分類法 (Classification of Yeatsian Folktales)”, WXZB 237 (1925/ 6): 554–556. 67. Michel Hockx, Questions of Style, 269. 68. William Butler Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (London: Walter Scott Ltd., 1888). 69. Wang Tongzhao 王統照, “Zhanzheng 戰爭 (War by Yeats from Celtic Twilight )”, CG 1, no. 2 (1922): 1–2. 70. William Butler Yeats, Celtic Twilight, 183. 71. Ibid. 72. Sineád Garrigan Mattar, “Yeats, Fairies and the New Animism”, New Literary History 43, no. 1 (2012): 148. 73. Ibid., 137. 74. An Yi 安簃, “Xiazhi Shi Chao: Mu Ye Zhi Diao Fen 夏芝詩抄: 木葉 之調雰 (Yeatsian Poetry Collection: The Falling of the Leaves)”, “Shui zhong xiao dao 水中小島 (To An Isle in the Water)”, “Yin ni si fu li zhi hu zhou 茵尼思弗梨之湖洲 (The Lake Isle of Inisfree)”, “Ta xiwangzhe Tianyi 他希望著天衣 (He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven)”, “Lian zhi bei’ai 戀之悲哀 (The Sorrow of Love)”, “Jiu zhi ge 酒之歌 (A Drinking Song)”, “Ke’er hushang zhi ye fu 柯爾湖上之野凫 (The Wild Swans at Coole)”, XD 1, no. 1 (1932): 23–27. 75. William Butler Yeats, Yeats Reader, 14. 76. Makoto Sang¯ u 山宮允 (1890–1967), “Jiu zhi ge 酒之歌 (A Drinking Song by Yeats)”, MGRBJ 9, no. 20 (1921): 2. 77. William Butler Yeats, Yeats Reader, 38. 78. Toshi Fumoroto, “A Search for a National Identity: Three Phases of Yeats Studies in Japan”, in Tumult of Images: Essays on W. B. Yeats and Politics eds. Peter Liebregts and Peter van de Kamp Proceedings of Leiden IASAIL Conference Vol. 3 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995), 204–206. 79. Zhong Yun 仲雲, “Yinjiu ge 飲酒歌 (A Drinking Song by Yeats)”, BX 12 (1926): 21. 80. Huang Yeqing 黄野清, “Yinjiu ge 飲酒歌 (A Drinking Song by Yeats)”, BX 2, no. 24 (1928): 2514. 81. William M. Carpenter, “The “Green Helmet” Poems and Yeats’s Myth of the Renaissance”, Modern Philology 67, no. 1 (August 1969): 50–59. 82. Fu Hao, A Commentary on the Selected Poems of W. B. Yeats with Chinese Translation (Shanghai: Shanghai waiyu jiaoyu chubanshe, 2021). Fu Hao, “Who Is the Queen?”, Notes and Queries 69, no. 1 (March 2022): 51–52. Fu Hao, “Who Is the Lord of Chou?”, Notes and Queries 69, no. 1 (March 2022): 52–53.

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83. Li Ziwen 李子温, “Yin jiu ge 飲酒歌 (A Drinking Song by Yeats)”, SLSYK 2, no. 1 (1937): 22. 84. “Jieke Xiazhi AE: huaxiang huatu 傑克夏芝 AE 畫像畫圖 (Jack Yeats: A Portrait of A.E.)”, XS 4 (1937): 71. 85. Seán Golden, “W. B. Yeats and Laughter: Wit and Humour, Irony and Satire, Zen and Joy”, Yeats Studies The Bulletin of the Yeats Society of Japan 50 (2019): 22. See also Seán Golden (ed.), Yeats and Asia. Overviews and Case Studies (Cork: Cork University Press, 2020). 86. Marston Anderson, The Limits of Realism: Chinese fiction in the Revolutionary Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 2. 87. Joseph Valente, The Myth of Manliness in Irish National Culture, 1880– 1922 (Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2011), 63. 88. Marston Anderson, Limits of Realism, 2, 30. John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, China A New History (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2006), 250–345. 89. Fairbank and Goldman, China A New History, 93–95. 90. Vivian Mercier, “Evangelical Protestantism and the Irish Literary Revival”, in Modern Irish Literature: Sources and Founders (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 5. 91. Marston Anderson, Limits of Realism, 1. 92. Ibid., 20. 93. Fairbank and Goldman, China A New History, 360. 94. Marjorie Howes, “Yeats and the Postcolonial”, in The Cambridge Companion to W. B. Yeats eds. Marjorie Howes and John Kelly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 211. 95. Michael North, The Political Aesthetic of Yeats, Eliot and Pound (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 73. 96. William Butler Yeats, “The Philosophy of Shelley’s Poetry”, in Ideas of Good and Evil (London: Chapman and Hall, 1908), 84. 97. Marjorie Howes, “Yeats and the Postcolonial”, 210. 98. William Butler Yeats, Yeats Reader, 267–277. 99. Soumik Banerjee, “‘Cast a Cold Eye’: Re-Visiting Tagore-Yeats Relationship”, The Golden Line: A Magazine of English Literature 1, no. 3 (2015): 18–20. 100. Soumen Chatterjee, “Beyond the Orientalist Discourse: A Reading of Yeats’s ‘Introduction’ to Tagore’s Gitanjali”, The Golden Line: A Magazine of English Literature 1, no. 3 (2015): 15–17. 101. Joseph Lennon, “Irish Orientalism an Overview”, in Ireland and Postcolonial Theory, eds. Clare Carroll and Patricia King (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 152. 102. William Butler Yeats, Yeats Reader, 382. 103. Ibid., 378. 104. Ibid., 381.

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105. Jin Suxi 金素兮, “Shiren Xiazhi 詩人夏芝 (Yeats the Poet)”, WYYB 1, no. 2 (1934): 107–115. 106. Lin Qin 林擒 and Kang Naxin 康納馨, “Xiazhi ballad liang zhang: Lie Huzhe, Mo’er Maqi 夏芝 BALLAD 兩章: 獵狐者, 魔爾媽琪 (Two Ballads by Yeats: The Ballad of the Foxhunter and The Ballad of Moll Magee)”, WYYB 1, no. 2 (1934): 121–124. 107. Liu Xingfan 劉杏帆, “Xiju: Lao Fu 戲劇老婦 (Drama: Cathleen ni Houlihan by Yeats)”, WYYK 1 Initial Issue (1934): 40–46. 108. Fei Jianzhao 费鉴照, “Xiazhi 夏芝 (Yeats)”, WYYK 2, no. 1 (1931): 13–21. 109. Susan Bazargan, “Postmodernist Yeats: Figura and Simulacrum in The Player Queen”, Irish University Review 30, no. 2 (2000): 221. 110. William Butler Yeats, “The Scholars”, Yeats Reader, 62. 111. William Butler Yeats, “The Magi”, Yeats Reader, 53. 112. “Haiwai wenyi qingbao: Yige Ai’erlan Wenxuehui 海外文藝情報:一個愛 爾蘭文學會 (Overseas Literary Information: An Irish Literary Society)”, WYYK 3, no. 7 (1933): 853–857. 113. Liu Xingfan 劉杏帆, “Shi Xuan: Xian qun Xiazhi Yuanzhu 詩選仙羣夏 芝原著 (Poetry Selection: The Hosting of the Sidhe by Yeats)”, WYYK 2 (1934): 36. 114. Ying Zi 瓔子, “Sha Zhong: Sanwen ban 沙鐘散文版 (The Hourglass Prose Version by Yeats)”, WYYK 2, no. 4 (1935): 34–42. 115. “Zuijin zhi Ai’erlan 最近之愛爾蘭 (Recently in Ireland)”, DFZZ 20, no. 24 (1923): 1. 116. Barnette D. Conlan translation by Yu Zhi 愈之, “Jieshao Ai’erlan shiren Xiazhi 介紹愛爾蘭詩人夏芝 (Introducing Irish Poet Yeats)”, DFZZ 21, no. 7 (1924): 88–106. 117. Barnette D. Conlan, “W. B. Yeats”, YWZZ 10, no. 8 (1924): 570–581. 118. Ibid., 570. 119. Ibid., 572. 120. Fairbank and Goldman, China A New History, 206–211. 121. Ibid., 268. 122. Joseph Lennon, “Fasting for the Public: Irish and Indian sources of Marion Wallace Dunlop’s 1909 hunger strike”, Enemies of Empire: New Perspectives on Imperialism, Literature and Historiography (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007), 19–39. 123. Wang Tongzhao 王統照, “Xiazhi Shengping jiqi zuopin 夏芝生平及其作 品 (Yeats’s Life and Works)”, DFZZ 21, no. 22 (1924): 24–42. 124. Mao Dun 茅盾, penname Fang Xin 芳信, “Jiasilun ni Huoliheng 加絲 倫尼霍立亨 (Cathleen ni Houlihan by Yeats)”, DFZZ 21, no. 7 (1924): 131–139. 125. Chen Shu 陈恕, “Irish Literature in China”, 38, 39. Linda Pui-Ling Wong, “The Reception of W. B. Yeats in Modern China”, in Irelands in

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126.

127.

128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133.

134. 135. 136. 137. 138.

139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145.

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the Asia–Pacific eds. Peter Kuch and Julie-Ann Robson (Gerard’s Cross: Colin Smythe Ltd., 2003), 441. Xu Diaofu 徐調孚, “Wenyi lan: Xiazhi Xiaobona zuzhi wenxue hui 文藝 欄:夏芝蕭伯納組織文學會 (Literary Column: Yeats and Shaw Organise a Literary Association)”, DFZZ 29, no. 6 (1932): 14. “Wenxuejia jinying: Ai’erlan shiren Xiazhi qishi sui, zuijin Ai’erlan xueshu jie ceng zai Dubolin wei shiren zhushou 文學家近影:愛爾蘭詩人夏芝 七十歲,最近愛爾蘭學術界曾在杜伯林為詩人祝壽 (Recent Photo of the Writer: Irish Poet Yeats Is Seventy Years Old, and the Irish Academic Community Recently Celebrated the Poet’s Birthday in Dublin)”, DFZZ 32, no. 17 (1935): 1. Irene Eber, Voices from Afar: Modern Chinese Writers on Oppressed Peoples and Their Literature (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1980), 37–41. Ibid., 41, 63. Hsu Tien-hung, “Suliwen ti kuzi (Sullivan’s Trousers)”, Yiwen 譯文 (Translations) 1, no. 5 (1936): 969–992. Fairbank and Goldman, China A New History, 263. Irene Eber, Voices from Afar, 76–79. This evidence was in background information on The North-China Herald in Chinese-language resource centres on the databases I researched. “Abbey Theatre Uproar: Impassioned Speech by Mr. Yeats: Actors Fight with Angry Republicans”, TNCDN March 29, 1926, 11. Fairbank and Goldman, China A New History, 260. “Mr. Yeats’s Ghost Stories: Unhappy Spirits Wish for a Suit of Cloths”, TNCDN May 14, 1914, 5. William Butler Yeats, “Mr. W. B. Yeats and the Human Family”, The China Press October 25, 1919, 8. April Schultz, “The Black Mammy and the Irish Bridget: Domestic Service and the Representation of Race, 1830–1930”, Éire-Ireland 48, no. 3/4 (Fall/Winter 2013): 176–212. See Peter Gray, “Punch and the Great Famine”, History Ireland 2, no. 1 The Famine (Summer 1993). https://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-centuryhistory/punch-and-the-great-famine-by-peter-gray/. “From Day to Day”, TNCDN February 13, 1920, 12. See TNCH February 14, 1920, 408. “Prof. Chase’s Lecture on W. B. Yeats”, TNCDN March 29, 1924, 17. “From Day to Day”, TNCDN July 10, 1934, 6. “Mr. W. B. Yeats in London”, TNCDN December 2, 1935, 8. “Obituary – Mr. William Butler Yeats”, TNCH February 8, 1939, 258. “From Day to Day”, TNCDN September 13, 1948, 3. “Obituary – Mr. William Butler Yeats”, TNCH February 8, 1939, 258.

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146. Michael Gibbs Hill, “Between English and Guoyu: The English Student, English Weekly, and the Commercial Press’s Correspondence Schools”, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 23, no. 2 (Fall 2011): 100–145. 147. Su Chaolung [Zhaolong] 蘇兆龍, “Shalou 沙漏 (Contemporary One-Act Plays: The Hourglass by Yeats)”, YWZZ 10, no. 10 (1924): 747–752 and YWZZ 10, no. 11 (1925): 818–826. 148. Michel Hockx, Questions of Style, 272. 149. Tseu Yih Zan [Zhou Yueran] 周越然, “Lives of Great Writers – William Butler Yeats”, YWZZ 7, no. 5 (1921): 324–326. 150. Michel Hockx, “Mad Women and Mad Men: Intraliterary Contact in Early Republican Literature”, Autumn Floods: Essays in Honour of Marián Gálik (1998): 308. 151. John Kelly, “Yeats’s ‘Pirate Oath’: Bucaneering and Mutineering on the Good Ship ‘Abbey Theatre’”, Seminar September 16, 2016 (Indiana: Keough-Naughton Institute, Notre Dame University, 2016). 152. Hugh Linehan, “WB Yeats’s Nobel Medal Donated to National Library”, The Irish Times April 28, 2016. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/ wb-yeats-s-nobel-medal-donated-to-national-library-1.2628194. 153. Pascale Casanova, The World Republic of Letters, translated by Malcom DeBevoise (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2004). 154. Hanlin 翰林 literature refers to the imperial academy or government literature. 155. Julia Lovell, The Politics of Cultural Capital: China’s Quest for a Nobel Prize in Literature (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i, 2006), 83. 156. Ibid., 84. 157. Jon Eugene von Kowallis, “Lu Xun on Our Minds: The Post-Socialist Reappraisal; Chou, Memory, Violence, Queues: Lu Xun Interprets China; Davies, Lu Xun’s Revolution: Writing in a Time of Violence; Cheng, Literary Remains: Death, Trauma and Lu Xun’s Refusal to Mourn”, The Journal of Asian Studies 73, no. 3 (August 2014): 586. See Sebastian Veg, “New Readings of Lu Xun: Critic of Modernity and Re-inventor of Heterodoxy”, China Perspectives 3 (2014): 56. 158. “Shi sheng Xiazhi 詩聖夏芝 (Yeats the Saint of Poetry)”, ZYT 6 (1939): 2.

CHAPTER 5

Tempests in Tenements and Teahouses: A Comparison of Irish Revivalist Seán O’Casey’s Trilogy of Plays with Lao She’s Teahouse

If Yeats and Lu Xun ended up disillusioned with political and literary revolution after incomplete revolutions in Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China, how is my comparison complicated by class and socialist struggle? I paired my next Irish Revivalist, socialist dramatist Seán O’Casey (1880– 1964) with Chinese dramatist Lao She 老舍 (1899–1966), because both playwrights examine class and socialism in their plays. In chapter 5 I examine transnational literary links formed by Lao She’s interest in anticolonial modernist Irish literature. I also demonstrate the global reach of Irish Revivalism, and the worlding of Irish literature, since the archives establish that O’Casey’s Irish Revivalist plays reached China. I discover O’Casey’s reciprocal interest in China and the march of Chinese socialism, through a perusal of his letters. Finally, I assess if both writers were ‘modernists hiding in disguise’, by analysing subterranean modernist Brechtian alienation effects throughout their plays. But why compare these two dramatists, and not another pair? Some scholars place Lao She outside the group of Chinese May Fourth writers, but Lao She asserted that May Fourth directly influenced him to become a writer.1 Moreover, Lao She was from the same revolutionary generation of May Fourth writers. Wu Tien-wei disagrees with Ranbir Vohra that

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. O’Malley-Sutton, The Chinese May Fourth Generation and the Irish Literary Revival: Writers and Fighters, Asia-Pacific and Literature in English, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5269-4_5

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Lao She was leftist or that Lao She’s anti-Guomindang (GMD) stance proves this.2 Theodore Huters explains the difficulty in ascribing western terms like modernism to Chinese writers like Lao She, as scholars avoid categorising modern Chinese writers as leftist, “to wrest modern Chinese literary realism from the grip of the tired Marxist paradigm imposed by Mao”.3 This establishes Lao She’s contradictory political alignments and makes him suitable for comparison with Irish Revivalist Seán O’Casey, who also had protean political alignments. I examine Lao She in light of these left-leaning contradictions and in comparison with Irish socialist O’Casey, because I noted numerous similarities in their political and literary struggle to place art ahead of politics. Neither Lao She nor Seán O’Casey ever joined the Communist Party, neither found a political home. Both playwrights were simultaneously outside of and yet aligned with, and sometimes even in opposition to modern political and literary movements in their respective lands. In Yeats’s evocative phrase both dramatists could ‘cast a cold eye’ on society, as postcolonised outsiders. O’Casey was an Irish Protestant, but committed the cardinal sin of being poor, and Lao She was another enigma—a Manchu (and Protestant) writer in Han-dominated Chinese society after the 1911 Xinhai Revolution.4 Lao She became a Protestant Christian in Beijing in 1922 but lost interest after his return from London (1924–1929) to China.5 Both dramatists wrote about the urban poor, and utilised the common vernacular and comedy. Both gave a voice to the voiceless as revolution raged outside their door, and experienced revolution during their youth.6 Both playwrights lost their father early in life, and experienced hardship during childhood. This meant both could use affect to write movingly about the urban poor as trapped in slums, yet capable of poetry. O’Casey is accepted as a socialist, yet Lao She is not viewed by modern scholars as left-leaning, as his literature fails to promote a proletarian hero. Carles Prado-Fonts explains C. T. Hsia accepted Lao She’s neutrality finally succumbed to leftist pressure.7 I contend Lao She displayed leftleaning inclinations throughout his life: firstly by voluntarily moving back to support the new China under Communist rule from 1949; secondly within his plays including Dragon Beard Ditch (1951) which celebrated the new Communist regime’s achievements; and thirdly as a leading member of the literary establishment under Communist rule. Lao She was respected during the 1950s, but criticised during the 1960s Cultural Revolution.8

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Lao She was elected leader of The All-China Resistance Association of Writers and Artists (中华全国文艺界抗敌协会) in March 1938, precisely because he remained neutral during ideological debates.9 Yet, Lao She was also named People’s Artist in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to reward the socialist propagandism of Dragon Beard Ditch, and was the only artist to receive this title.10 This socialist veneer provided political cover for Lao She to experiment with literature other than socialist realism. I contend idealistic leftist elements remain subterraneously hidden deep within Lao She’s works, and I develop this by comparing Lao She with Irish socialist dramatist O’Casey. Tragically, both playwrights ended up alienated from societies they sought to assist, as they put onstage the aporia or impasses they encountered in life. I first compare the early lives of O’Casey and Lao She, then assess how both writers address fraught questions on political violence in their plays. I analyse O’Casey’s trilogy of plays alongside Lao She’s play Teahouse, which although written in 1957, details pivotal revolutionary times in Chinese history in all three acts. Lao She’s second act in Teahouse investigates contemporaneous events during the revolutionary May Fourth era, and is comparable with O’Casey’s Irish trilogy of revolutionary-inspired themes.

Early Life Seán O’Casey (1880–1964) was born into an Irish Protestant shabbily genteel family in Dublin that fell into poverty. O’Casey was a selfeducated autodidact who experienced eyesight problems and hunger in childhood, and lost his father at the age of six, which left behind a family of thirteen (Fig. 5.1).11 Similarly, Lao She (1899–1966) was born as Shu Qingchun 舒慶春 into a Manchu family in Beijing, that enjoyed higher status under Qing Manchu rule in China. Lao She lost his father Shu Yongshou during a street battle with the Eight Power Allied Forces during the 1901 Boxer Rebellion. Lao She’s father was badly burned, and one-year-old Lao She was only spared when hidden in a trunk (Fig. 5.2).12 After the 1911 Xinhai Revolution overthrew the Qing, Manchu people fell from grace, (as the Protestant Ascendancy simultaneously lost power in Ireland). Manchu people took lowly positions as rickshaw-pullers in the newly Handominated China, and Carles Prado-Fonts and Lao She’s son Shu Yi note these characters people Lao She’s writings.13

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Fig. 5.1 Irish Revivalist dramatist Seán O’Casey with Ria Mooney who played Rosie Redmond at the first performance of his play The Plough and the Stars , signed by O’Casey on 21/6/1926. Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland

Fig. 5.2 Lao She a prolific modern Chinese writer who became famous for his use of the vernacular in his novels and plays such as Teahouse. Courtesy of JABEL/CPC Photo

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Revolution Both writers were part of a minority group, whether religiously/politically in O’Casey’s case, or ethnically/politically in Lao She’s case. Lao She set the first act of his play Teahouse in the aftermath of the failed 1898 Hundred Days’ Reform Movement, the year Lao She was born.14 Empress Dowager Cixi initially favoured reform, but retook control from her nephew the Guangxu Emperor, to placate reactionary conservative elements in the Qing court.15 Chinese intellectual Tan Sitong (1865– 1898) was executed as part of the reform movement, and Lao She references this in Teahouse.16 Tan’s failed reform efforts to reform and save the failing Qing Empire led to the conviction that violent revolution was necessary. Similarly, failed attempts to reform British rule in Ireland included land reform, and three different Home Rule bills repeatedly passed by the Commons, and stymied by the House of Lords. Failure to reform also led to Irish rebellion, and the establishment of an Irish Republic.17 Although some depicted Irish Protestants as foreign interlopers, (as the Manchu were increasingly depicted in China), O’Casey joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood, socialist James Connolly’s Citizen Army, and the Gaelic League which promoted the Irish language.18 Similarly, Lao She was Manchu, part of the ethnic group whose Qing elite had dominated the native Han Chinese since 1644.19 Chinese nationalist anti-Qing martyr Zou Rong infamously decried Manchu rule over Han people in exclusively racialised terms.20 Lao She was highly influenced by the 1919 Chinese May Fourth movement, just as O’Casey was by the 1916 Irish Rising (which he refused to join claiming it did not go far enough).21 O’Casey’s trilogy of plays reject all ‘isms’, and Lao She’s Teahouse also ends on disillusion with revolution.

Plot Summaries Seán O’Casey penned The Shadow of a Gunman (1923) set during the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921), Juno and the Paycock (1924) set during the Irish Civil War (1922–1923), and The Plough and the Stars (1926) set during the Easter Rising (1916). O’Casey’s play The Plough interrogates the 1916 Easter Rising and was restaged by the Abbey for the 2016 centenary commemorations in Ireland.

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Shadow of a Gunman (1923) depicts poet Donal Davoren who is mistaken for an IRA gunman on the run by his tenement neighbours.22 Donal is thus the ‘shadow of a gunman’ but does not refuse his false notoriety, as this wins him admiration from attractive Minnie Powell. Donal’s roommate disillusioned nationalist Seamus Shields’s friend Maguire hides bombs in their apartment, before being killed. Donal and Seamus only discover the bombs when Auxiliaries [British soldiers] raid the tenement. Minnie hides the bag, but is arrested and killed trying to escape. This play is read as an ironic gendered commentary on masculinist Irish nationalist pretentions to heroism, as female character Minnie saves the ‘shadows of gunmen’. Christopher Murray reads Davoren as a modernist anti-hero.23 I read O’Casey’s trilogy as modernist Brechtian alienation of the official nationalist worldview, and a call to return to the true underlying ideals of Irish nationalism and socialism. Seamus Deane asserts all O’Casey’s gunmen are shadows, as the rebels are not permitted onstage.24 Declan Kiberd reads Donal as symbolic of O’Casey’s role as a man of letters, rather than a man of action during Easter 1916.25 As Minnie encourages Davoren “it’s time to give up the writing, an’ take to the gun”.26 I read O’Casey as questioning his role as a modernist writer (rather than a postcolonial fighter) in the violent Irish Revolution, and its effect on ordinary citizens. Juno and the Paycock (1924) is set in the Dublin tenements during the Irish Civil War (1922–1923).27 Jack Boyle (the pretentious peacock or paycock) drinks with his friend Joxer rather than work. His longsuffering wife is the eponymous Juno (based on the Greek goddess protector of women and the nation). Their son Johnny lost an arm in the Easter Rising, and their daughter Mary is a socialist on strike. Mary’s English fiancé Charlie Bentham informs the family of an inheritance, but Boyle spends the money before they secure it. Their celebrations are dampened by the funeral procession of their neighbour Mrs. Tancred’s murdered son. Boyle discovers Bentham drafted the will incorrectly, so it is worthless. Bentham abandons pregnant Mary and her ex-boyfriend Irish socialist Gerry Devine also fails Mary. Boyle declares his establishment of an independent Republic.28 Two Irish Republican soldiers execute Johnny, for giving information that led to the murder of Mrs. Tancred’s son. Juno leaves Boyle and takes Mary to raise the baby together. Boyle drunkenly looks at the stars and proclaims “All the world’s in a state of chassis [chaos]”.

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The legacy can be read as national allegory for the promised prosperity of the Irish Republic rescinded by the misleading paper (or Treaty) written by the British. Bentham depicts British withdrawal from Ireland, as personified by Mary. Yet, O’Casey critiques his own socialist stance, since Irish socialist Gerry Devine also abandons Mary. Susan Cannon Harris notes O’Casey’s gender construction foregrounds the suffering of the mother, rather than the son’s sacrifice.29 Ireland’s colonial history resulted in literary depictions of Ireland as female, and sexual intercourse became a metaphor for the violent initial conquest and the “unchosen and intimate contact” between coloniser and colonised.30 However, this gender critique can be further complicated by asking why O’Casey’s female characters continually sacrifice themselves. Conversely, O’Casey’s male characters like Boyle are delusional comic figures, who cannot resolve Irish issues by posturing or witty rhetoric. The Plough and the Stars (1926) centres on Nora and Jack Clitheroe during the 1916 Easter Rising.31 Jack is a member of the socialist Irish Citizen Army who joined nationalists during the Easter Rising. The next scene in an Irish public house, presents the nationalist tricolour flag beside the Irish labour flag The Plough and the Stars. A mysterious Figure at the Window utters words from speeches by Easter Rising leader Patrick Pearse, but does not appear onstage. The second act portrays Bessie who supports the Union with Britain, and mocks Irish nationalists. Irish rebels engage in their ‘glorious loss’ and Nora pleads with Jack to leave the Rising. Jack ignores Nora’s pleas and she gives birth to a stillborn child [a depiction of the stillborn Irish Republic]. In the final scene, Jack is shot, Nora loses her mind and a local girl dies of tuberculosis. Bessie is shot in the back by the British soldiers she supported, which depicts the betrayal felt by predominantly Protestant Unionists after British withdrawal from Ireland. The Rising results in death for hundreds of ordinary citizens. O’Casey’s trilogy does not deal with Irish historical events in chronological order. O’Casey first examines the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921) which came after the 1916 Easter Rising, and then interrogates the Irish Civil War (1922–1923) before concluding with a play on the seminal events of the 1916 Easter Rising. Christopher Murray contends O’Casey worked back “to find the roots of the disorder”.32 Hence, O’Casey works back into contested questions about nationalism, imperialism and socialism in Revivalist Ireland. Lao She similarly investigates imperialism, nationalism and socialism in his famous play Teahouse.

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The Teahouse Plot Teahouse (1957) is a three-act play, set in a Beijing Teahouse called “Yu Tai”, from 1898 until the eve of 1949 revolution.33 This play is a cultural commentary on changes in China during the early twentiethcentury, as depicted through the lives of Teahouse customers. The first act investigates imperialism under the dying Qing dynasty, the second act interrogates nationalism after the failing 1912 Republic, and the third act hints at a new socialist dawn left open to audience interpretation. Wang Lifa, owner of the Teahouse, struggles to pay off all sides and finally takes his own life in the final act. Significantly, Chinese Communist party censors censored this ending for a time, because it failed to depict a socialist utopia.34 Although containing sixty characters, and encompassing fifty years from revolution in 1898 to the 1949 Republic, Teahouse ostensibly rejects any discussion of political affairs. Throughout Teahouse progressively larger and more numerous signs on the wall ominously proclaim “Mo Tan Guo Shi 莫谈国事 (Do Not Discuss Affairs of State)”.35

Brechtian Alienation---Postcolonised Modernists Hiding in Disguise? German socialist dramatist Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) formulated his alienation effect theory in 1935, after he witnessed Chinese actor Mei Lanfang perform in Moscow.36 For Brecht, the performer should alienate the audience into imagining alternative worldviews to those presented onstage. Brecht reminded the audience they were in a theatre by using banners onstage, and encouraged actors to play the part in a way that would not invite the audience to identify with characters, or reaffirm the Aristotelian status quo. I do not claim plays by O’Casey and Lao She are exclusively Brechtian. However, I detect subterranean elements of modernist alienation effect within their plays. I present an expanded reading of Brechtian alienation, as alienation of an accepted official political worldview. Thus, Irish nationalists were sufficiently alienated by O’Casey’s play The Plough that they rioted and walked out. Similarly, Chinese Communist censors were sufficiently alienated by Lao She’s play Teahouse that they banned the final act as insufficiently socialist.37

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I contend O’Casey’s ghostly Figure at the Window in The Plough, who is heard onstage speaking from speeches by Patrick Pearse but never appears, cannot be taken as strictly Realist. Prostitute Rosie Redmond’s association with discussions in the public house about the Easter rebels’ cause, further alienated Irish nationalists. Rosie Redmond’s nomenclature may be a coded reference to moderate nationalist leader John Redmond, and O’Casey’s view that Redmond had in effect prostituted Ireland. This resulted in further Abbey riots, amidst complaints this play was as insufficiently nationalist as Synge’s Playboy. Christopher Murray and Nicholas Grene agree The Covey’s caustic commentary on the Proclamation of the Irish Republic in The Plough, can be read as Brechtian alienation or distancing effects.38 However, I contend O’Casey’s use of alienation extends further throughout his trilogy to the distancing or estrangement of the official worldview of Irish nationalism. I read the Abbey riots as O’Casey’s effective modernist Brechtian alienation of Irish nationalism’s portrayal of the 1916 leaders as heroic and masculinist. According to my reading, Irish Revivalists O’Casey (and Synge) anticipate certain elements of Brechtian Alienation Effect theory, since both distance and render as strange, the official political worldview of Irish nationalist audiences, to the point many in the audience walked out. Significantly, I read this not as O’Casey’s alienation from the original utopian ideals of Irish nationalism, socialism and the Republic, but his alienation from their manifest failure to properly enact the full potential of these worthy goals. Therefore O’Casey interrogates imperial and capitalist modernity and finds both lacking. I conclude O’Casey’s plays are modernist in the sense they reflect back upon and react to, the modern postcolonised Irish condition. O’Casey experiments in a modernist sense with vernacular language to discover alternative linguistic ways out of the modern Irish postcolonised dilemma. Both O’Casey and Lao She fail to fully accommodate fractured modernity within their dramaturgy. I also detect subtle modernist Brechtian Alienation Effects within Lao She’s Teahouse. These include Lao She’s subversive banner that ostensibly prohibits, yet thereby encourages, discussion of state affairs, alongside his portrayal of characters like Tan Sitong to subtly alienate the official political Chinese Communist worldview. One customer notes Tan must have committed a crime, or why else would he be sentenced to death.39 I argue this alienates audiences from perceived abuses of power by any Chinese state. I read Lao She’s repeated use of successively larger and more numerous banners in each act, as

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Brechtian alienation or distancing of the official worldview, that provoked audiences to discuss political affairs in the context of the 1957 AntiRightist campaign. The fact that Chinese Communist censors banned the final act of Teahouse, strengthens my argument that Lao She succeeded in estranging or alienating the official Chinese Communist party outlook. Yet, I conclude not that Lao She was against socialism, but that his play Teahouse addresses how modern semicolonial Chinese society remained alienated from the utopian May Fourth socialist ideals that Lao She returned to China to support. Hence, I read Lao She’s Teahouse as a call to return to those radical May Fourth roots. Rather than pigeonhole O’Casey and Lao She as Realists, I discern elements of modernism and linguistic experimentation in their plays. My reading repositions Lao She as part of the generation influenced by May Fourth, as left-leaning, and as a Modernist writer who experimented with the vernacular. Lao She’s iconoclastic tendencies originate in May Fourth anti-Confucianism and depict the drive to modernise as the impetus for modern Chinese literature in an anti-imperial setting.

Language Both O’Casey and Lao She became famous for local vernacular dialect. Rana Mitter claims presenting the spoken vernacular in written form was one of the greatest May Fourth achievements.40 Declan Kiberd presents O’Casey as “heir to Synge” whose rich language creates a spacious imaginative world albeit in cramped urban settings.41 Similarly, Lao She used Beijing vernacular to effect a revolutionary theatrical change. Lao She turned from writing novels to plays, because drama was more accessible and did not require literacy. Lao She’s Manchu friend Ying Ruocheng, whose maternal grandmother was related to the Last Emperor Puyi notes that Lao She’s Beijing vernacular rendered Teahouse “almost untranslatable”.42 Ying acted in Teahouse and produced the first English translation of Teahouse to tour the West in the 1980s. P. J. Mathews explains the Irish language question linked to class consciousness in Revivalist Ireland. When the Gaelic League attempted to introduce the Irish language for examination at tertiary level, Unionist academic Mahaffy declared the Irish language taught by Douglas Hyde was “baboon Irish”.43 Imported colonial Victorian snobbishness, resulted in the Irish middle-class desire not to be associated with the colloquial language of the urban poor. Irish nationalist audiences misread how

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O’Casey and Synge portrayed Irish people in a more authentic linguistic setting. Bourgeois Irish theatre-goers were outraged that Synge’s and O’Casey’s Irish characters failed to conform to the submissive respectable peasant types approved by colonial cultural powers centred in Britain. These misreadings on how to present the Irish linguistically onstage led to the infamous Abbey riots.44 The Chinese May Fourth generation were similarly convulsed by the language question. The need to mobilise the illiterate Chinese peasant population to cultural and political change, galvanised the May Fourth generation to use the vernacular baihua 白話 or common speech, rather than elitist esoteric classical Chinese. In 1917, philosophy student Hu Shi at Columbia University published an article on “A Tentative Proposal for Literary Reform” in Xin Qingnian 新青年 (New Youth).45 A resultant flood of journal articles, debates and essays followed in the common vernacular. During this era, scholars opened night schools for janitors and established the first schools for girls, to wake the sleeping Chinese masses.46 Lao She’s heavy use of local Beijing vernacular throughout Teahouse replicates this move and indicates the May Fourth origins of his celebration of the mundane and the vernacular. I read Lao She’s experimentation with vernacular language as a modernist impulse to discover a new idiom for post(semi)colonial China.

Urban Poverty Idyllic rural utopias are not found in plays by Lao She and O’Casey. Unlike Revivalists Yeats, Gregory and Synge, O’Casey uniquely depicts Dublin’s urban poor, rather than rural Irish peasants. Kiberd describes O’Casey as a working-class realist who seldom permits the rebels to appear onstage “suggesting the irrelevance of their lofty ideals to the actual needs of the urban poor”.47 Lao She similarly foregrounds the hardships of Beijing’s urban poor, and recreates a forgotten world. Britt Towery comments one can almost taste jiaozi dumplings when reading Lao She’s works.48 Yiu-nam Leung reads Lao She’s edible descriptions as depictions of meaningless routine.49 I read this as Lao She’s celebration of the mundane in a modernist sense. Hu King underlines Lao She’s poignant experiences of humiliation and poverty in urban London, as he often pretended to have a dinner appointment to appease the hostel maid, and concluded “poor people are looked down upon no matter where they go”.50

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Declan Kiberd explains O’Casey’s and Synge’s characters atone for their frugal barren surroundings by rich language.51 Lao She also depicts Beijing’s urban poor as verbally subversive, whether the Qing, the nationalists or the communists hold power. Lao She was accused during the Cultural Revolution of secretly longing for the Manchu or nationalist past.52 In Act Two of Teahouse, Second Elder Song laments “When you think about it, maybe the Great Qing empire wasn’t so good, but I’ve gone hungry from the day this Republic of China began”.53 Similarly, in The Shadow O’Casey’s character Davoren claims “There’s plenty of men can’t sleep in peace at night now unless they know that they have shot somebody”. Seamus responds “I wish to God it was all over. The country is gone mad”.54 Both Lao She and O’Casey question how revolution benefits ordinary citizens in anticolonial urban settings. Diarmaid Ferriter explains by 1926 800,000 Irish people lived in the infamous Dublin urban slums. In 1911, 66% of Dublin’s working-class population of 128,000 resided in substandard housing, while 118,000 Dublin poor crammed into 5,000 tenement houses.55 Even the slum collapses of September 1923 appear to prove O’Casey’s contention these were vaults hiding the dead, or the real ‘hidden Ireland’. The urban Irish poor were contained politically and physically in urban slums, and alienated from wider society. O’Casey was one of thirteen children, eight of whom died in childhood, living beside slums worse than Calcutta.56 In Lao She’s Teahouse characters are also politically and culturally trapped in the confined urban space of the Teahouse, as Beijing is convulsed by revolution and counter revolution. Yet the ideal of communal heroism remains. Female character prostitute Ding Bao is empathetic towards landlord Wang Lifa whose troubles cause him to take his own life. Tragically this reminds us Lao She took his own life during the Cultural Revolution, and drowned in Taiping lake, part of the urban Beijing setting meticulously depicted in his plays. Lao She’s supposed crime was to “discuss state affairs” in his plays, which led to his persecution and death.57

O’Casey’s Reception in China Significantly for the global reach of Irish Revivalism, O’Casey’s plays made it all the way to China—Juno and the Paycock played to sold-out theatre halls in Shanghai, in 1936.58 By this time Lao She was back in China, though not in Shanghai and could have read about O’Casey’s sold-out

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play in Shanghai. Lao She resided in London (1924–1929) and could read of the infamous Abbey riots that greeted O’Casey’s 1926 play The Plough and the Stars .59 Chen Shu explains famed Chinese director Zhang Min changed the title of O’Casey’s play from Juno and the Paycock to “Zui Sheng Meng Si” or 醉生梦死, which approximately translates as “living drunkenly dreaming of death”.60 Zhang Min’s title accurately captures the spirit of O’Casey’s Juno. A more literary translation might read “Living in drunkenness, dying in dreams” or “drunken young man dreaming of death”. Irish literature was introduced to China by literature pioneers Lu Xun, Guo Moruo and Mao Dun, who all translated and praised Irish literature as modern literature penned in an anticolonial setting.61 A second literary link between Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China was formed when Lao She visited Ireland for a week in August 1928. Anne Witchard explains Lao She stayed at the Waverly Hotel in Howth; a place frequented by Yeats, whose works Lao She was reading at the time (Fig. 5.3).62 Witchard imagines Lao She gazing across Howth Bay, at the Martello Towers depicted by James Joyce in his modernist tome Ulysses. Witchard claims Lao She created his own form of Chinese Modernism, from his knowledge of Irish Modernist writers Yeats and Joyce, according to the needs of his post(semi)colonial Chinese context. Lao She’s 1929 novel Mr. Ma and Son delineates how a Chinese father and son encounter anti-Chinese colonial discrimination in London. Lao She read the anticolonial nature of Joyce’s Ulysses as a model for his own work Er Ma 二马. Just as the wanderings of Joyce’s Irish/Jewish protagonist Bloom around Dublin constructed a postcolonised modernist Irish identity, Lao She sought to construct a modernist Chinese consciousness, in a globalised transnational context. Coincidentally, The Irish Times newspaper archives demonstrate O’Casey’s play Juno and the Paycock was staged at the Abbey theatre a few days before Lao She arrived in Dublin.63 Accordingly, it is possible that Lao She read reviews about O’Casey’s ever-popular play in Irish newspapers during his visit to Ireland from August 25 to September 3, 1928. A third connection is that Lao She’s fellow Manchu friend, Ying Ruocheng 英若诚 translated O’Casey’s works with famed theatre critic Wang Zuoliang 王佐良. Wang Zuoliang first translated works by O’Casey into Chinese, including sections from O’Casey’s autobiography. Wang also wrote on “The achievements of O’Casey”.64 Hence, Lao She likely

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Fig. 5.3 Lao She stayed here at the Waverly Hotel in Howth, when he visited Ireland for a week in August 1928. Lao She read Irish modernist writers Yeats and Joyce at this time as a model for his own versions of Chinese anticolonial and modernist writings. Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland

knew O’Casey’s work in the 1950s before he penned Teahouse, and after his friend Ying assisted in translating O’Casey’s works into Chinese. A fourth literary link between O’Casey and China are the numerous English-language accounts of O’Casey’s life and works in The NorthChina Daily News (TNCDN). This English-language newspaper published in Shanghai from 1850 catered to British ex-patriate readers. However, modern Chinese writers like Lao She could read this newspaper as a background resource. May Fourth intellectual Hu Shi wrote to another ex-patriate newspaper The North-China Herald (TNCH) to complain of anti-Chinese bias.65 Although Chinese May Fourth writers looked to Vanity Fair and The New Yorker as primary sources, these TNCDN accounts of O’Casey’s life and works published in China demonstrate the international exposure of O’Casey and the global reach

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of Irish Revivalism. Chinese May Fourth intellectuals like Lao She who were fluent in English could access such English-language accounts, as voracious readers and modernisers.

English-Language Accounts of O’Casey in China See Table 5.1. English-language newspaper accounts published in China position O’Casey as a socialist writer living among the poor. TNCDN December 22, 1926 located an account of O’Casey’s humble beginnings on the Table 5.1 English-language archival sources on Seán O’Casey in China Year

References

Title

Author

1924

TNCDN May 15, 1924: 16 TNCH February 28, 1925: 374 TNCDN March 29, 1926: 11

“Juno and the Paycock”

Hubert Griffith in The Observer Anonymous

1925 1926

1926

1926

1926

1926 1928 1930

1934

“The Book Page Notes and News” “Abbey Theatre Uproar: Impassioned Speech by Mr. Yeats: Actors Fight with Angry Republicans” TNCDN April 8, 1926; 11 “Seán O’Casey Goes to Town – Dramatist Who Was On The Dole” TNCDN July 1, 1926: 17 “A Serio-Comic Irish Drama – Juno and the Paycock” TNCDN July 15, 1926: “Five Weeks in London 11 – Big Ben the Butler: In the Tate Gallery: The Whirligig” TNCDN December 22, “Summary of the Day’s 1926: 1 News” TNCDN September 5, “The Book Page Notes 1928: 5 and News” TNCDN March 27, 1930: “Pictures From Home 9 Screens – American Manner or German Brooding Atmosphere Not in Juno and the Paycock” TNCDN April 1, 1934: 7 “Sunday Cinemas”

Anonymous

Anonymous

Anonymous

Seán O’Casey in The Daily News

Anonymous Anonymous Anonymous

Seán O’Casey in Time and Tide

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front page.66 O’Casey is termed “the Irish dock labourer, who wrote the now famous play “Juno and the Paycock””. Thus, English-language readers of TNCDN in China, knew about Juno as early as 1926, which demonstrates the global reach of Irish Revivalism. O’Casey claims “I met the characters of my plays in the streets of Dublin, working with me, starving with me, looking for a job with me”, which would resonate with Chinese writer Lao She, who discovered characters in a similar fashion. O’Casey underscores he often waited an hour and a half for dole money, and started by writing humorous short stories for a journal run by the Gaelic League. O’Casey explains he joined a drama club and volunteered to write a play that was returned for being “too real”. O’Casey next sent his play to the Abbey and they also returned it, but with an encouraging letter. This Shanghai newspaper recounts two later plays were returned, but the Abbey theatre typed up O’Casey’s play at their expense (kindly arranged by Lady Gregory).67 O’Casey concludes “Oh I wasn’t living. I was starving”. Irish socialist O’Casey’s struggle to bring revolution to the stage had import for Chinese intellectuals who perused TNCDN . This article states O’Casey “is only one of many modern writers of distinction who have raised themselves from humble circumstances”, and links O’Casey to Irish dramatist Fabian gradualist George Bernard Shaw, who also started as a clerk. Irish socialist Shaw visited China in 1933 and met Lu Xun at the home of Sun Yatsen’s widow Song Qinling.68 Lu Xun later noted how short he felt standing next to Shaw as he defended Shaw from detractors. [The Beijing May Fourth Museum in the original Beida 北大 site for Peking University, where the May Fourth student movement was launched, inaccurately labels Shaw as English rather than Irish]. TNCDN March 29, 1926 describes the infamous Abbey riots that greeted O’Casey’s play The Plough and the Stars .69 This account entitled—“Abbey Theatre Uproar: Impassioned Speech by Mr. Yeats: Actors fight with Angry Republicans”, adopts a colonial tone throughout to emphasise slapstick depictions of Irish violence during the Abbey riots. This article reads “It is possible now to give a description of the extraordinary uproar at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. There was real fighting—a vicious exchange of sharp blows—when a crowd of Republicans entered a violent protest against references in Mr. Seán O’Casey’s new play ‘The Plough and the Stars’ to the 1916 insurrection”. Spectators cried bring out “O’Casey the coward”, and Mrs. Sheehy-Skeffington gave a speech claiming the Irish Free State government subsidised the Abbey to malign

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Pearse and Connolly [executed 1916 rebel leaders]. Amid the din actors made heroic efforts to continue, but when Rosie Redmond (a prostitute) came on, angry voices demanded to ‘put that woman off’. In the third act, twenty women rushed from the pit to the stalls, and two reached the stage for the general mêlée. The invading women were thrown back bodily into the orchestra, and a man trying to pull down the curtains was hit by an actor. Certain sections of the audience called for the play to go on, but others retorted “Ask O’Casey to remove that scene and we will willingly look at the play. It is a disgrace in a Catholic country”. Altercations between actors and audience continued with punches, and different groups in the audience fought amongst themselves. Next “Senator W. B. Yeats, the well-known poet and dramatist, who is a director of the theatre, came forward to a torrent of boos and hisses”, to famously proclaim I thought you had got tired of this. It commenced fifteen years ago. You have disgraced yourselves again. Is this to be an ever-recurring celebration of the arrival of Irish genius? Once more you have rocked the cradle of genius. The news of this will go from country to country. You have once more rocked the cradle of a reputation. The fame of O’Casey is born tonight. This is apotheosis.70

Evidently, O’Casey looked up ‘apotheosis’ in a dictionary to reassure himself once home.71 Yeats retired to competing cries of “We want the play” and “Up the Republic”. Women in the audience sang the Soldier’s Song [Irish national anthem] as the police arrived. Mrs. SheehySkeffington identified herself as an Easter 1916 widow and asserted “it is no wonder that you do not remember the men of Easter Week, because none of you fought on either side. This play is going soon to London to be advertised there because it belies Ireland. All you need do now is sing ‘God Save the King’”. The article concludes last night’s outbreak recalls the riot produced by Synge’s Play-boy of the Western World in 1907, when the Abbey theatre was virtually wrecked. Therefore, the Abbey riots and distinctive Irish politics and dramatists associated with them, were well publicised in China. Moreover, the commentator’s colonial tone and portrayal of the colonised fighting Irish, would resonate with anti-imperial Chinese intellectuals who read TNCDN English-language account of the Abbey riots printed in China.

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Although the Abbey riots were violent, TNCDN article overemphasises the ‘violent’ and ungovernable anticolonial Irish, particularly in the context of recent violence during Ireland’s anti-imperial struggle, and the anarchic Warlord Years in China from 1916 to 1928.72 Lao She lived in London during the Abbey riots, and would have read of this significant development in world theatre. If Chinese Renaissance intellectuals like Lao She read accounts of the Abbey riots in English-language newspapers published in China, their semicolonial Chinese experience meant they would recognise the British imperial gaze and condescending tone. TNCDN on July 15, 1926 features an article penned by O’Casey for The Daily News entitled “Five weeks in London”.73 O’Casey indicates his preference for East over West, and claims paintings by British artists Turner, Landseer and the pre-Raphaelites make one think “of the simplicity and elegant loveliness of a Japanese print”. [O’Casey’s letters explain he read about Japanese painting in James Cousins’ book New Japan].74 In a postcolonial move O’Casey refers to the Hugh Lane controversy over pictures destined for Irish galleries that ended up in London. Lady Gregory’s nephew Hugh Lane died on the Lusitania in 1915. Lane’s will bequeathed his collection to London, but an unwitnessed later codicil bequeathed it to Dublin, which led to controversy over ownership. O’Casey writes Sauntering into the room holding the French pictures given by Hugh Lane to Dublin, one felt the surge of hot blood, gazing upon these joys of colour and line raped from Dublin, proving the truth of Holy Scripture that ‘from him that hath not will be taken away even that which he hath’. How long shall these Anglo-Pharaohs harden their hearts, so that they will not let these pictures go, go back to Dublin?

When local Irish authorities mishandled Hugh Lane’s generous offer and the paintings went to London instead of Dublin, scandal ensued in Ireland.75 O’Casey ends on a Marxist note “profit and loss, thy name is London”. Lao She would concur with O’Casey’s anticolonial reading, after his experiences as a colonial Chinese subject in the imperial London metropole. TNCDN on July 1, 1926 details the “Serio-Comic Irish Drama Juno and the Paycock” and its New York staging.76 This author declares the Irish dialect used throughout Juno has almost become synonymous

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with burlesque and vaudeville. This analysis obfuscates the Abbey theatre move away from stereotypical stage-Irishness. The article describes the Englishman who abandons pregnant Mary as ‘elegant’, and this colonial British gaze would resonate with Chinese intellectual readers who faced similar constructions. This article asserts Juno has “the old Irish trick of making the villain an Englishman”, yet ignores that English music hall comedies did precisely the same to the Irish. The author concludes Juno is not a technically skilled play, but displays subtlety, tenderness and dignity. TNCDN on May 15, 1924 outlines Hubert Griffith of The Observer was invited by Cork playwright Lennox Robinson to see Juno at the Abbey in Dublin. Griffith claims Juno was one of the best plays he had ever seen.77 Griffith writes “he approached the Abbey a little in the spirit of Shaw’s Elderly Gentleman consulting the oracle in Galway”.78 Griffith observes walking the ruined Dublin streets “sets an Englishman thinking with some intensity of the last few years of political history in Ireland”, as he was “anxious to see how Ireland, as expressed in the play at the Abbey, wrote its own comment on these affairs”. Griffith asserts that dragging a young disabled man from a room to be shot may seem grotesque to English audiences, but recent Irish history shows this is not unjustified. Griffith concludes O’Casey is modern in the way his play is constructed, which would interest modern Chinese intellectual readers who sought new literary forms from abroad, to reform their own cultural modes. The North-China Herald (TNCH) was a similar English-language newspaper published every Saturday in Shanghai, as the weekly edition of The North-China Daily News (TNCDN). This newspaper also promoted the official British state interpretation of global events for an Englishspeaking audience in China, and published accounts on Irish Revivalist O’Casey. TNCH on February 28, 1925 states that O’Casey’s plays Juno and Shadow of a Gunman will be published by Macmillan, and were extraordinary successes at the Abbey, Dublin.79 O’Casey is depicted as a “self-educated labourer”, due to O’Casey’s “conviction that the salvation of the world will come through manual workers possessing the souls of artists”. The author notes “this might sound like insipid idealism if it weren’t for the fact that O’Casey practices what he preaches. His plays which might be described as uproariously funny tragedies – deal with Dublin tenement life during the recent struggles”. If Lao She perused any of these ex-patriate reviews in China, (or reviews of O’Casey’s drama in London or Dublin), he would have learned of Revivalist O’Casey’s influence on world theatre.

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TNCDN on April 8, 1926 proclaims “Seán O’Casey Goes to Town – Dramatist Who Was On the Dole”. Thus O’Casey, an “out of work Dublin labourer three years ago, who is now one of the foremost dramatists of the day”, inspired readers in China to motivate the masses.80 The book page section of TNCDN on September 5, 1928 declares “two years ago, the Dublin playwright went to London, bought a dress suit and married Eileen Carey, the actress”.81 This article notes the birth of O’Casey’s son, and that his new play The Silver Tassie will be produced in London. Roland Rollins and Llewellyn Rabby assert O’Casey’s Tassie was a non-representational Expressionist drama, that juxtaposed and fused remnants of Christian myth to register the shock engendered in Europe after WWI. O’Casey’s Tassie became a “drama of distortion”, arising out of despair at the “individual’s inability to alter Collective History”, a modern Passion Play and a “non-naturalist protest play”.82 When Yeats refused to stage the Tassie at the Abbey, he claimed O’Casey could not write about WWI trenches having never been in them. O’Casey famously retorted he knew someone who wrote a poem about Tír na n-Óg who never took a header in the Land of Youth. TNCDN presents O’Casey’s Tassie as a tragi-comedy of the Great War, and notes it “is to be published at once by Macmillan”. However, colonial anti-Irish attitudes pervade this article which asserts “the most deliciously comic scenes in the play” involve “two ancient Irish cronies, Simon and Sylvester, [and] their first attempt to use a telephone”. O’Casey’s overtly anti-imperial message in the Tassie, an interrogation of British participation in the bloodbath of WWI, is here diluted to mere slapstick renditions of the Irish as ‘other’. In TNCDN of March 27, 1930 the tone changes on Juno.83 The Hitchcock film version of O’Casey’s Juno is derided as old, outdated and insufficiently modern, although the film’s use of native Irish dialect is praised. TNCDN blames the dramatist rather than the filmmaker, which may indicate changing attitudes amongst readers who lived under the nationalist Guomindang (GMD) government, yet looked westward for cultural developments. A final TNCDN article on April 1, 1934 reprints O’Casey’s article from Time and Tide—a London journal O’Casey contributed to as a drama critic.84 O’Casey argues “the Cinema is the manna in the workers wilderness, but they are gathering too much of it and it is turning to poison”. By now the Chinese political scene had changed. The nationalists were ostensibly still in charge from 1927 to 1948, but the communists controlled large areas of the hinterland.85

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O’Casey’s Reciprocal Interest in China A fifth literary link between O’Casey and China was formed on October 26, 1957 (the same year Lao She penned Teahouse). Chen Shu relates Seán O’Casey wrote a 1957 letter to the journal Wenyi Bao 文艺报 (Literary Daily), to congratulate them on the successful play Wan Shui Qian Shan 万水千山 (Ten thousand Waters and Thousands of Mountains).86 O’Casey saw this Chinese play that celebrates the Long March of the Red Army in China—a feat that matches the mythic symbolic status of Easter 1916. The Long March in China occurred from October 1934 to October 1935, when the Communist Red Army retreated from the South to the Northwest, to evade the nationalist Guomindang (GMD) army. Incredibly, approximately 100,000 Communists travelled on foot for 9000 kilometres over the worst terrain in China, and only 1 in 10 finished this epic journey.87 This incident attained mythic status and contributed to Communist popularity in China. O’Casey recorded he followed the struggle of the Red Army in China, within the scope permitted by news coverage. This demonstrates interest in literature and politics did not only go one way from West to East, but also from East to West. Irish Revivalist O’Casey admits to being influenced by the Chinese socialist struggle. Since Lao She’s contemporaries and friends translated O’Casey’s works, Lao She likely knew of O’Casey’s interest in the Chinese socialist cause, as part of the international socialist coterie. I discovered further evidence of O’Casey’s reciprocal interest in China in collections of his letters from 1910 to 1964, from the marvellous four volumes edited by David Krause. O’Casey wrote to student Robert Ayling who became a critic, on November 3, 1957 Shaw hated all British imperialism, so did I, Shaw rejected the Christian beliefs, so did I, Shaw saw through the romantic idea of Irish Nationalism, so did I; Shaw was a fighter; and he knew I was one too, …Shaw called Jim Larkin “the greatest Irishman since Parnell,” and Shaw knew how I had fought for the workers with Jim; Shaw was deeply interested in the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army and its long and terrible march from Kiangsi in the south to Shensi in the north, wondering if they could do it, and if they did, what effect it would have upon the whole of China, so was I, though I am sure St. J [reference to Shaw as author of St. Joan] never even heard of it till the Red Army eventually broke through

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in Manchuria, and finally, won China for Communism; Shaw had a deep affection for Lady Gregory, so had I…88

O’Casey’s letter to theatre actor and director Paul Shyre on December 24, 1959 explains the interest he and fellow Irish playwright Shaw took in the Chinese socialist struggle. He writes About Shaw…he took a deep interest in the Chinese Army that Chiang Kay Shek tried so hard to destroy, and which made the stupendous march from the South of China to the North, evading Shek’s army…He and I wondered what would happened to it, and wished it well. Of course, it became the army that destroyed Chiang Kay Shek.89

In a letter to the British left-wing weekly journal Time and Tide on March 5, 1938 O’Casey references the infamous 1925 May Thirtieth incident in China, when rebutting comments by British contributor Sigma. The May Thirtieth Movement 五卅運動 was a labour anti-imperialist movement in Republican era China. The British Shanghai Municipal Police opened fire on unarmed student protestors in Shanghai on May 30, 1925, which led to international outcry. O’Casey links May Thirtieth to the colonial behaviour of the British Black and Tans in Ireland. The Black and Tans were British WWI veterans of trench warfare, unleashed by British Prime Minister Lloyd George on Ireland in the wake of Irish rebellion. These British forces committed atrocities with impunity including extrajudicial murders, rape, torture and also burned Cork city. Significantly, Revivalist O’Casey positions Ireland and China on an equal footing, as anticolonial peoples who experienced similar brutality from colonial British police forces. O’Casey notes Sigma opined that “the wrongdoing of an English policeman (is he a godlike being?) in Shanghai is worth a hundred executions in Spain or Russia”. [O’Casey counters] “Well, in Russia it is Russians who execute Russians, and (as Shaw said in another case) who has a better right to cut a Russian’s throat than another Russian? And what’s the English policeman doing in Shanghai? Wouldn’t it be funny to see a Chinese policeman ordering the English about in Piccadilly? Love of country would start beating in Sigma’s breast then. The English policeman has as much right in Shanghai as a Black and Tan has in the City of Cork”. [O’Casey encourages Sigma to learn about Communism and Christianity].90

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Evidently, O’Casey perceived resonances between his own anticolonial Irish situation and the semicolonial Chinese May Fourth era. O’Casey strategically used such comparisons to bolster his own anticolonial socialist arguments, and simultaneously demonstrated solidarity with the oppressed semicolonial Chinese. This illustrates my central argument; Irish Revivalists provided a relatable alternative postcolonised worldview for their Chinese contemporaries; something writers from the non-colonised West could never aspire to. Examples of O’Casey’s reciprocal interest in China’s socialist struggle abound. On September 17, 1937 O’Casey wrote to Harvard writer Horace Reynolds about the growing nationalist Welsh movement. O’Casey strategically utilises the example of China’s Red Army against Japan, to underline for fellow Celtic Welsh nationalists that “Communism isn’t against Nationality, but will always help”.91 O’Casey wrote to Harold Macmillan, (who became British Prime Minister) on September 9, 1938 that the Comintern (an international organisation that advocated world communism) did not fail in China and other lands. Unlike Macmillan’s contemporaries, O’Casey counters he does not believe revolution is made by blazing guns, and though this may be an important part of the revolution, this is not “The Revolution”. O’Casey concludes true revolution requires that all people use their intelligence for the good of all. Macmillan termed O’Casey in his memoirs “a Communist…a truly Christian nature, one of the kindest and most genuine men that I have known. He and Ronald Knox – in their very different ways – were saintly men”.92 On March 1, 1939 Irish writer Oliver St. John Gogarty reviewed O’Casey’s autobiography and claimed the dramatist should not have unlocked his heart. Gogarty argues for decorum and asserts “to that one-third of the world’s population which is in China decorum is religion”. Gogarty declares O’Casey demonstrates genius, but he should not experiment mixing poetry and prose, as this “makes a kind of slum”. O’Casey penned an acerbic riposte to The Observer newspaper, but the editor refused to publish his response which references China, questions whether Gogarty is alive, and points out most of the world is smashing such decorum into smithereens. O’Casey retorts “And he dumps China in front of our faces mind you! Hasn’t he heard from China lately? That lovely decorum that is, as Dr. Gogarty says, a religion has landed China into a pretty mess. The Eight Army will do more for China than its religiodium decorum”.93 Hence, O’Casey’s iconoclastic approach to the

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traditional Chinese Confucian order aligned with the radical Chinese May Fourth worldview. In February 1942, O’Casey wrote to Harvard writer Harold Reynolds. O’Casey opined if they’d seen the value of China – as the Soviet Union did – they’d have had a three million well-armed Chinese force battering their way through the Japanese Hordes. They ought to move heaven and earth, after the Soviet Union, to give the Chinese what they need, for a victorious China would mean the end of Japan; just as a Soviet Union victory would mean the end of Hitler.94

O’Casey’s February 16, 1942 letter to Cornelius McElroy asserts “China and India, together, mean an army of 5 millions of men, but they’re afraid to trust the Indians, and don’t want China to become too strong either”.95 O’Casey’s March 2, 1942 letter to Jack Carney at NYU library proclaimed I do hope either (or both) the Russians or Chinese will save the world. Christ knows either civilization would be better than the one we have.96

O’Casey’s socialist worldview influenced his Sino-centrism, although his views provide a refreshing change from prevailing westernised Eurocentric views. If Yeats can be accused of cultural appropriation of Eastern artforms, then O’Casey appropriated Chinese socialism to advance his worldview on the need for global socialism. O’Casey also corresponded with a woman named Miss Sheila, whose Irish father was a British Army major killed fighting in India. David Krause states O’Casey wrote to Miss Sheila in July 1955, about her encounter with an Irish priest who was sent to India. Miss Sheila took a vow of chastity on advice from a London priest and was shocked by the Irish priest’s accounts of India and his inability to ‘civilise’ the Indian peoples. O’Casey responded Your priest who wrote about India must have been a particularly ignorant fellow…It is comical to hear of a Maynooth-taught lad, raw in experience, going out to civilise the Indians! They could teach him something about the grace of civilization, if he had but the humility to hear what they say, see what they do. Just think what we might be like if we had an Irish Nehru associated with an Irish Gandhi.97

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Irish Revivalist O’Casey identified with the plight of colonised Asian peoples, as his letter to the Totnes Times in Devon on November 28, 1942 proves. O’Casey outlines the history of armies and explains for an army to become ‘A People’s Army’, “It had to be used first to add to the wealth of England’s industrial lords by conquest of land and exploitation of peoples, forcing cotton into India, and opium into China, and drink everywhere”.98 O’Casey’s June 14, 1948 letter to Peter Hughes also asserts both world wars, though evil, gave birth to two fine things; the Soviet Union and the spread of a labour movement over Europe alongside “the awaking of the people of China – the Red Star has grown a lot bigger”.99 Evidently, O’Casey perceived China and the Soviet Union as the vanguard of global socialism, and claimed these positive developments would bring urgently needed change to the West. O’Casey’s letter to the Totnes Times on November 5, 1949 claims that Christian missionaries in South East Asia copy educational textbooks created by the Communists “who so swiftly change an illiterate community into a literary one”. O’Casey notes if the Chinese Red Army was a thousand miles away, these same Christian hearts were not stirred to educate the illiterate poor.100 O’Casey’s April 3, 1950 letter to American Communist writer Howard Fast depicts Christ as “wearing a Chinese blouse now”, since “[Alexander] Bloc put Jesus at the head of the Red Guard”.101 Thus, O’Casey transfigures his Communist cause into a Christological saviour, and hope for the advance of communism globally underpins his philosophy. O’Casey sometimes received irate letters that denounced his godless socialism. O’Casey replied to Donnchadh Doyle on May 15, 1950 “You see – or don’t see – that these miserable ones are breaking their bonds. They have broken them in the USSR…in China…and, maybe, for all you say, they will break them even in Eirinn [Irish-language name for Ireland]”.102 O’Casey’s November 28, 1950 letter to Mort and Irma Lustig declares Korea will ruin McArthur, and England will retreat from any tussle with China. O’Casey concludes “The world is with Peace and us”.103 O’Casey’s own experience as an anticolonial Irish writer tempered his views on Asian nations, so he does not automatically side with Western powers, but positions himself in solidarity with anticolonial Asian nations. O’Casey’s April, 1950 letter to Dr. John V. Simcox examines a journalistic book by Brogan on China’s nationalist leader Chiang KaiShek. O’Casey pejoratively refers to Chiang Kai-Shek as a “ruffian on a high horse, backed by the wealth of the USA”, “a galoot” and

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“the peanut”.104 O’Casey’s clear preference for a socialist outcome to the Chinese Civil War demonstrates his solidarities lay with Chinese Communists, not with Chinese nationalists. Regarding his play The Star Turns Red O’Casey claimed in a June 27, 1953 letter to Gordon Rogoff this “was a prophetic play…what it implied has come to life in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Roumania, Poland and China”.105 Table 5.2 demonstrates Zhu Yan translated this play into Chinese in 1959, completing the circle O’Casey implied in his letter. Irene Eber states that O’Casey’s socialist play The Star Turns Red (1940) was printed by Chinese journal Shijie Wenxue 世界文學 (World Literature) in 1959. This play depicts the most severe strike in Irish industrial history, the 1913 workers’ strike (or Dublin lockout) led by James Larkin, that was opposed by the Catholic clergy. O’Casey’s play was translated by Chu-Yen 竹衍 [Zhu Yan] and praised by critic Wang Tso-liang 王佐良 [Zuoliang].106 Continuing his theme of Hiberno-Sino solidarity, O’Casey wrote to J. J. O’Leary, director of Cahill’s Printing Works in Dublin and friend of actor Barry Fitzgerald on February 14, 1957 Now I leave you in the throes of your election. I see if I remember right Dev [Eamon de Valera Taoiseach and leader of Ireland] mentioned about some meeting of the great powers, USA, France, Britain, the USSR and – Nationalist China! A nation about as big and as important as Ireland’s Eye [a small uninhabited island off the Dublin coast]. Why the hell doesn’t Dev or Costello do an original and sensible act for once and (if they won’t recognise the USSR) admit the Republic of China on to their list of friends? What a fine thing it would be to see the red flag with its five gold stars flying beside the green one with the gold harp in its centre.107

O’Casey’s October 14, 1958 letter to Walter Starkie (1894–1976) an Abbey theatre director (1927–1942) claims “I have many friends in the USA, in many other Countries, including China & USSR; but damn a one in Ireland”.108 O’Casey’s reciprocal interest in China is poignant, since O’Casey’s twenty-one-year-old son Niall died of leukaemia in 1956.109 A perusal of O’Casey’s letters evidences his reciprocal support for the Chinese socialist struggle. However, which works by Revivalist O’Casey were translated, when, by whom and for which Asian audiences? Ji Hyea Hwang elucidates that Seán O’Casey’s Irish Revivalist trilogy influenced

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Table 5.2 Chinese-language, Japanese-language and Korean-language archival sources on Seán O’Casey in Asia Year

References

Title

Author

1928

Jushi No Kage in Shinko Bungaku Zenshu Vol. II (Tokyo: Heibon-sha, 1928): 363–431 Juno To Kujaku in Sekai Gikyoku Zenshu Vol. 9 (Tokyo: Sekai Gikyoku Zenshu Kankokai, 1928): 523–592 Limited edition published by the Sino-British Cultural Association? Anthology Highlights of Modern Literature ed. Francis Brown (Seoul: 1950s)

Japanese translation of The Shadow of a Gunman by O’Casey

Translation by Ken’ichi Yarita

Japanese translation of Juno and the Paycock by O’Casey

Translation by Takaoki Katsuta and Michio Miura

Chinese translation of Juno and the Paycock by O’Casey

Anonymous

Korean translations of two articles by O’Casey “Always the Plough and Stars” and “Bernard Shaw: Appreciation of a Fighting Idealist” Chinese translation of I Knock at the Door by O’Casey

Seán O’Casey – Korean translators unknown

1928

March 1945 1950s

1958

Feb and March 1959

March 1962

1968

Feb 1968

Nov 1969

Wo Qiao Men (Peking: People’s Literature Publishing House, 1958): 1–327 Xing Xing Bian Hong Le 星星變紅了. Peking. Shijie Wenxue 世界文學 (World Literature) 2 (1959): 80–113

Translation by Chung Sung-fan

Chinese translation of The Star Translation by Turns Red by O’Casey Chu-Yen [Zhu Yan] 竹衍and Ying Jo-cheng [Ying Ruocheng] 英 若诚 Kaixidi Taitai Xiujia Qu Chinese translation of “Mrs. Translation by Liao Shijie Wenxue 世界文 Casside Takes a Holiday” from Chao Lo-jui 學 (World Literature) Inishfallen, Fare Thee Well by (March 1962) O’Casey Niwatori in Konnichi No Japanese translation of Translation by Eibei Engeki Vol. I Cock-A-Doodle-Dandy by Takashi (Tokyo; Hakusui-sha, O’Casey Sugawara 1968): 245–326 Kojin in Shingeki (Tokyo: Japanese translation of Purple Translation by Shingeki, 1968): 78–143 Dust by O’Casey Yushi Odashima Suki To Hoshi (Tokyo: Japanese translation of The Translation by Teatro, 1969) Plough and the Stars by Hiroko O’Casey Watanabe

(continued)

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Table 5.2 (continued) Year

References

Title

Author

1970

Oukaixi Xiju Juanji (Taipei: Ching Sheng Publishing Company, 1970)

Taiwanese translation of Juno and the Paycock and Purple Dust by O’Casey

1971

Sogekihei No Kage in Gendai Sekai Engeki Vol. I (Tokyo: Hakusui-sha, 1971): 7–58

Japanese translation of The Shadow of a Gunman by O’Casey

Anonymous translations sponsored by Tamkang College of Arts and Sciences Translation by Yushi Odashima

112

the establishment of a national theatre in colonial Korea. Korean dramatist Yu Ch’i-jin’s 1930s Nongchon trilogy emulated O’Casey’s role in establishing a modern Irish national theatre in a postcolonial setting. Yu explains “while drafting my plays, I always thought of Sean O’Casey, the outraged man of Ireland, and tried my best to become a writer such as he”.110 O’Casey’s play Juno sufficiently alienated Japanese censors in colonial Korea and they banned Juno as anticolonial.111 Significantly, O’Casey’s Irish Revivalist plays influenced the establishment of decolonisation literature and a national postcolonised modern Korean theatre, creating further Asian transcolonial solidarities with Revivalist Ireland. Table 5.2 demonstrates that works by Irish Revivalist O’Casey were translated in Japan as early as the 1920s, and in Korea by the 1930s. However, Chinese translation of O’Casey’s works came later during the 1950s and 1960s, once Communists took power in 1949 and O’Casey’s works became useful for the socialist cause. I discovered in March 1945, O’Casey was asked by the Sino-British Cultural Association in London for permission to translate and publish his play Juno and the Paycock. Ronald Ayling and Michael Durkan explain that author and publisher agreed to this, a small fee was paid and a limited edition may well have been printed. However, Ayling and Durkan were unable to check this or any other Chinese publications of works by O’Casey prior to the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949.113

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Letters written to and by O’Casey further demonstrate his reciprocal interest in China. The second secretary at the Office of the Chargé d’Affaires of the People’s Republic of China in London, Mr. Hu Ting-I wrote to O’Casey on October 31, 1957 to thank O’Casey for his letter praising the Chinese play The Long March and the poem “Ashma” (Fig. 5.4). Hu Ting-I offered to forward O’Casey’s praise to the Chinese writers and wrote on February 17, 1958 to ask O’Casey’s opinion on British theatre, which Hu Ting-I was studying. Hu questioned O’Casey’s views on the effect of commercialisation on British theatre, and asks O’Casey to recommend some good plays. Hu modestly writes O’Casey need not reply if busy, but is delighted when O’Casey does. On February 28, 1958 Hu writes to thank O’Casey profusely for responding to Hu’s questions on the state of British theatre, even when busy (Fig. 5.5). Hu is delighted to receive a copy of O’Casey’s book The Green Crow [on modern theatre trends] and looks forward to reading this book and keeping it as a souvenir. Hu promises to send O’Casey a book on Peking Opera and hopes this will interest O’Casey.114 An unusual letter on March 11, 1958 from Mr. Jack Dribbon secretary of the Britain-China Friendship Association, formed another link between O’Casey and China (Fig. 5.6). Dribbon asks O’Casey to pen a special oration celebrating the foundation of the Chinese People’s Republic on October 1, 1949 to be read by an actor “with a fine voice” at their annual public celebration. Dribbon writes the Association would be grateful if O’Casey could pen an oration lasting between five to seven minutes in praise of China’s rich achievements since 1949. Dribbon emphasises that O’Casey should outline the useful nature of China, and the significance of ‘her’ liberation for the oppressed peoples of the world. Dribbon acknowledges while China is of special significance as an example to Asia, countries other than China are not strictly in their province, and thus advises O’Casey not to be too contentious. Dribbon allows this may be a rather tall order, as his letter insufficiently explains exactly what they had in mind, but hopes O’Casey will let them know what he thinks. Dribbon offers a member of the committee can meet O’Casey to discuss this in detail. O’Casey declined. However, Dribbon wrote another letter on August 21, 1959 thanking O’Casey for his kind donation and inviting O’Casey to meet Chinese artistes.115 Finally, O’Casey quoted a Chinese proverb on the title page of his last autobiographical book Sunset and Evening Star, published by Macmillan in London, in 1954. This reads

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Fig. 5.4 Mr. Hu. Ting-I the second secretary at the Office of the Chargé d’Affaires of the People’s Republic of China in London, wrote to O’Casey on October 31, 1957 to thank O’Casey for his letter praising the Chinese play The Long March and the poem “Ashma”. Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland

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Fig. 5.5 Mr. Hu Ting-I the second secretary at the Office of the Chargé d’Affaires of the People’s Republic of China in London, wrote to O’Casey on February 28, 1958 to thank O’Casey for his book on theatre The Green Crow and promises to send O’Casey a book on Peking Opera. Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland

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Fig. 5.6 Mr. Jack Dribbon, secretary of the Britain-China Friendship Association wrote to O’Casey on March 11, 1958 to ask O’Casey to pen an oration to celebrate the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. O’Casey wrote on the letter “Declined. No Poet. Incapable of writing well on such a vast subject”. Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland

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You cannot prevent the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you can prevent them building nests in your hair.116

O’Casey discovered this Chinese proverb in a Christmas card from Eric and Doris Leach. O’Casey wrote to Doris Leach on December 21, 1953 explaining “I am using the Chinese proverb as a quotation on the top of my next and (last) biographical book Sunset and Evening Star”. Thus, to the end of his life O’Casey still thought of China and global socialism.

Conclusion In conclusion, all five connections form transnational anticolonial literary links between Irish Revivalist O’Casey and China. The reception of O’Casey’s works in China demonstrate Chinese Renaissance writers like Lao She, took inspiration from revolutionary Irish models to decolonise through literature and drama, particularly regarding the global socialist struggle. Firstly, O’Casey’s play Juno played to packed theatres in Shanghai in 1936. Secondly, Lao She visited Ireland in August 1928 for a week and read Modernist and Revivalist Irish writers. Thirdly, Lao She’s close friend Ying Ruocheng, who acted in and translated Teahouse, also translated O’Casey’s works into Chinese during the 1950s. Hence Lao She likely knew of O’Casey’s works before he penned Teahouse. Fourthly, Englishlanguage accounts on O’Casey’s life and works were published in The North-China Daily News in Shanghai, which demonstrates the global scope of O’Casey’s Irish Revivalist works. Finally, the fifth link includes various letters by O’Casey demonstrating genuine support for the Chinese socialist struggle. These evidence the reciprocal nature of this mutual encounter and exchange of revolutionary ideas about literature between East and West. In summation, whereas Revivalist Yeats looked to China and the East to revivify literature and art in exclusively cultural and artistic terms, O’Casey appropriated China and the East in political terms, to bolster his arguments for global socialism. Irene Eber explains the Chinese May Fourth generation translated works by Irish Revivalists Yeats, Lady Gregory and Synge during the 1920s and 1930s for anticolonial purposes. Significantly, Revivalist Seán O’Casey’s works were translated as ideologically acceptable once Chinese Communists took power during the 1950s

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and 1960s.117 Therefore, different Revivalist writers became useful to Chinese intellectuals, during different eras, and for differing purposes. According to my reading, Lao She and O’Casey’s modernist experimentation with vernacular language and theatre, arose from their postcolonised settings. Both left-leaning playwrights, O’Casey in Revivalist Ireland and Lao She in May Fourth China, never found a political home and ended up alienated from society in a modernist Brechtian manner, as they attempted to give a voice to the voiceless as revolution raged outside their door. I have examined the reception of Irish Revivalists Yeats and O’Casey in May Fourth China, and in comparison with Chinese Renaissance writers. I next examine how gender complicates this narrative, by comparing leading Irish Revivalist Lady Gregory with China’s first feminist, female writer Qiu Jin. Can Lady Gregory also be read as feminist? Did Gregory’s Irish Revivalist plays make it all the way to May Fourth China? Do erasures of female writers’ literary legacies demonstrate how the New Woman was constructed in Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China? Chapter 6 answers these questions.

Notes 1. Conversation with Prof. Fei Hsien Wang at Indiana University, June 2017. See Michel Hockx, “What’s in a Date? May Fourth in Modern Chinese Literary History”, Paths Towards Modernity: Conference to Mark the Centenary of Jaroslav Prusek (Prague: The Karolinum Press, 2008): 291–306. 2. Wu Tien-Wei, “Review of Lao She and the Chinese Revolution by Ranbir Vohra”, American Historical Review (April 1976): 432, 433. 3. Theodore Huters, “Review of Fictional Realism in Twentieth-Century China: Mao Dun, Lao She, Shen Congwen by David Derwei Wang”, MLQ 5, no. 1 (March 1994): 120–123. 4. Robert A. Bickers, “New Light on Lao She, London, and the London Missionary Society, 1921–1929”, Modern Chinese Literature 8, no. 1– 2 (Spring-Fall 1994): 21–39. Yu Shiao-ling, “Politics and Theatre in the PRC: Fifty Years of Teahouse on the Chinese Stage”, Asian Theatre Journal 30, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 90–121. 5. Britt Towery, “The Contribution of Lao She to the Three-Self Principle and the Protestant Churches of China”, Missiology: An International Review Vol. XXII, no. 1 (January 1994): 90. 6. Nicholas Grene, The Politics of Irish Drama – Plays in Context from Boucicault to Friel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 134.

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7. Carles Prado-Fonts, “The Anxiety of Fiction: Reexamining Lao She’s Early Novels”, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 26, no. 2 (Fall 2014): 178. 8. J. R. LeMaster, “Lao She’s Children Talk About Their Father”, Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas 32 (2001): 5–8. 9. Charles Laughlin, “The All-China Resistance Association of Writers and Artists”, Literary Societies of Republican China eds. Kirk Denton and Michel Hockx (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2008), 379. Bonnie McDougall and Kam Louie, The Literature of China in the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 210. 10. Walter J. and Ruth Meserve, “Lao Sheh: From People’s Artist to ‘An Enemy of the People’”, Comparative Drama 8, no. 2 (Summer 1974): 145, 146. 11. Nicholas Grene, Politics of Irish Drama, 111–113. Tom Buggy, “Seán O’Casey’s Dublin”, O’Casey Annual 1 ed. Robert Lowery (1982): 89– 96. 12. Anne Witchard, Lao She in London (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012), 9, 10. 13. Carles Prado-Fonts, “Beneath Two Red Banners: Lao She as a Manchu Writer in China”, in Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader eds. Shu-mei Shih, Chien-hsin Tsai and Brian Bernards (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 353–363. Shu Yi, “The Hidden Manchu Literature in Lao She’s Writings”, Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 2, no. 1 (July 1998): 133–138. 14. Anne Witchard, Lao She in London, 13. 15. John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, China A New History (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2006), 229–242. 16. Lao She, Teahouse and Camel Xiangzi: Gems of modern Chinese Literature translated by John Howard Gibbon and Shi Xiaojing (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2014), 18, 19. 17. Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 (New York: Overlook Press, 2005), 114. 18. Nicholas Grene, Politics of Irish Drama, 128. 19. Fairbank and Goldman, China a New History, 143, 144. 20. Jonathan Spence, The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and their Revolution (New York: Viking Press, 1981), 80. 21. Christopher Murray, “‘The Choice of Lives’: O’Casey versus Synge”, Journal of Irish Studies 17 Japan and Ireland (2002): 72–87. 22. Seán O’Casey, Seán O’Casey Three Dublin Plays. The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, The Plough and the Stars, introduced by Christopher Murray (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1998), 1–62. 23. Christopher Murray, “O’Casey versus Synge”, 81.

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24. Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, 218, 228. Christopher Murray, “O’Casey Versus Synge”, 72. 25. Ibid., 226. 26. Seán O’Casey, Three Dublin Plays, 16. 27. Ibid., 63–148. 28. Ibid., 89. 29. Susan Cannon Harris, Gender and Modern Irish Drama (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 171. 30. Ibid., 19. 31. Seán O’Casey, Three Dublin Plays, 149–229. 32. Christopher Murray, “O’Casey Versus Synge”, 83. 33. Lao She, Teahouse, 3–82. 34. Yu Shiao-ling, “Fifty Years of Teahouse”, 93, 99, 106–108, 114. 35. Lao She, Teahouse, 8, 25, 47. 36. Ronnie Bai, “Dances with Mei Lanfang: Brecht and the Alienation Effect”, Comparative Drama 32, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 389. 37. Yu Shiao-ling, “Fifty Years of Teahouse”, 93, 99, 106–108, 114. 38. Nicholas Grene, Politics of Irish Drama, 142. Christopher Murray, “O’Casey Versus Synge”, 85. 39. Lao She, Teahouse, 19. 40. Rana Mitter, A Bitter Revolution: China’s Struggle with the Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 77. 41. Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation (London: Vintage, 1995), 219. 42. Ying Ruocheng and Claire Conceison, Voices Carry: Behind Bars and Backstage During China’s Revolution and Reform (Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009), 138, 139. 43. P. J. Mathews, Revival: The Abbey Theatre, Sinn Féin, the Gaelic League and the Co-operative Movement Vol. 12 Field Day Critical Conditions Series (Cork and Notre Dame: Cork UP/Notre Dame University Press, 2003), 35–38. 44. Christopher Murray, “O’Casey Versus Synge”, 73–75. 45. Fairbank and Goldman, China a New History, 266. 46. Jonathan Spence, Gate of Heavenly Peace, 16, 51, 123. 47. Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, 218, 228. 48. Britt Towery, “Lao She and…the Protestant Churches”, 90. 49. Yiu-nam Leung, “Lao She and the Philosophy of Food”, Tamkang Review: A Quarterly of Comparative Studies Between Chinese and Foreign Literatures 23, no. 1–4 (1992): 803. 50. Hu King, “Lao She in England”, translated by Cecilia Y. L. Tsim. Renditions: A Chinese-English Translation Magazine 10 (Autumn 1978): 50. 51. Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, 219.

5

52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

58. 59. 60.

61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78.

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Yu Shiao-ling, “Fifty Years of Teahouse”, 93, 99, 106–108, 114. Lao She, Teahouse, 33. Seán O’Casey, Three Dublin Plays, 39. Diarmaid Ferriter, Transformation of Ireland, 51, 52, 319. Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, 219. Virginia Anderson, “Teahouse by Lao She, Lin Zhaohua and Jiao Juyin”, Theatre Journal 58, no. 3 (October 2006): 504–506. Rey Chow, “Fateful Attachments: On Collecting, Fidelity and Lao She”, Critical Inquiry 28 (Autumn 2001): 303. Patrick Smyth, “An Irishman’s Diary”, The Irish Times April 28, 2003. https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-irishman-s-diary-1.357154. Anne Witchard, Lao She in London, 1–20, 83. Chen Shu 陈恕, “Ai’erlan Wenxue Zai Zhongguo – Shiji Huimou 爱 尔兰文学在中国-世纪回眸 (Irish Literature in China – Looking Back Through the Century)”, Waiguo Wenxue 外国文学 (Foreign Literature) 4 (July 2011): 42. Ibid., 38. Anne Witchard, Lao She in London, 1–20, 83. “Abbey Theatre Juno and the Paycock”, The Irish Times August 21, 1928, 4. Chen Shu, “Irish Literature in China”, 42. This evidence was in background information on The North-China Herald in Chinese-language resource centres on the databases I researched. “Summary of the Day’s News”, TNCDN December 22, 1926, 1. Seán O’Casey, The Letters of Seán O’Casey, 1910–1941 Vol. 1 ed. David Krause (London: Cassell and Collier Macmillan, 1975), 95. Florence Chien, “Lu Xun’s Six Essays in Defence of Bernard Shaw”, Shaw 12 (1992): 57–60. “Abbey Theatre Uproar: Impassioned Speech by Mr. Yeats: Actors Fight with Angry Republicans”, TNCDN March 29, 1926, 11. Ibid. Christopher Murray, “O’Casey Versus Synge”, 73. Fairbank and Goldman, China a New History, 260. Seán O’Casey, “Five Weeks in London”, TNCDN July 15, 1926, 11. Seán O’Casey, The Letters of Seán O’Casey, 1910–1941 Vol. 1, 380–383. Diarmaid Ferriter, Transformation of Ireland, 97. “A Serio-Comic Irish Drama Juno and the Paycock”, TNCDN July 1, 1926, 17. Hubert Griffith, “Juno and the Paycock”, TNCDN May 15, 1924, 16. This refers to George Bernard’s Shaw’s “Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman” which was part of his five-part series Back to Methuselah. This play, although not Brechtian, was extremely anti-realist.

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79. “The Book Page Notes and News”, TNCH February 28, 1925, 374. 80. “Seán O’Casey Goes to Town – Dramatist Who Was on The Dole”, TNCDN April 8, 1926, 11. 81. “The Book Page Notes and News”, TNCDN September 5, 1928, 5. 82. Roland G. Rollins and Llewellyn Rabby, “The Silver Tassie: The PostWorld-War-I Legacy”, Modern Drama 22, no. 2 (Summer 1979): 126, 134. 83. “Pictures From Home Screens – American Manner or German Brooding Atmosphere Not in Juno and the Paycock”, TNCDN March 27, 1930, 9. 84. Seán O’Casey, “Sunday Cinemas”, TNCDN April 1, 1934, 7. 85. Fairbank and Goldman, China a New History, 284. 86. Chen Shu, “Irish Literature in China”, 42. 87. Fairbank and Goldman, China a New History, 305. 88. Seán O’Casey, The Letters of Seán O’Casey, 1955–1958 Vol. 1II ed. David Krause (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1989), 485–490. 89. Seán O’Casey, The Letters of Seán O’Casey, 1959–1964 Vol. 1V ed. David Krause (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1992), 85. 90. Seán O’Casey, The Letters of Seán O’Casey, 1910–1941 Vol. 1 ed. David Krause (London: Cassell and Collier Macmillan, 1975), 704, 705. 91. Ibid., 681. 92. Ibid., 736. See footnotes for Macmillan’s tributes. 93. Ibid., 782–785. 94. Seán O’Casey, The Letters of Seán O’Casey, 1942–1954 Vol. 1I ed. David Krause (New York: Macmillan, 1980), 14. 95. Ibid., 16. 96. Ibid., 22. 97. David Krause, “We Cannot Always Suffer Ecstasy”, “The Letters of Seán O’Casey”, The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 15, no. 2 (December 1989): 40, 41. 98. Seán O’Casey, The Letters of Seán O’Casey, 1942–1954 Vol. 1I, 100. 99. Ibid., 543. 100. Ibid., 642. 101. Ibid., 705. 102. Ibid., 711. 103. Ibid., 755, 756. 104. Ibid., 702. 105. Ibid., 976. 106. Irene Eber, Voices from Afar: Modern Chinese Writers on Oppressed Peoples and Their Literature (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1980), 69, 77–81.

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107. 108. 109. 110. 111.

112.

113. 114.

115.

116. 117.

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Seán O’Casey, The Letters of Seán O’Casey, 1955–1958 Vol. 1II, 390. Ibid., 637. Ibid., xi. Ji Hyea Hwang, “Domesticity in the Trilogies of Sean O’Casey and Yu Ch’i-jin”, Ilha do Desterro 73, no. 2 (Mai/ago 2020): 112. Nam-Seok Kim, “A Study on the Change of Performance System in Gegyesuryeonguho and the 10th Regular Performance Method”, Korean Culture Research 88 (2020): 363–399. See Ronald Ayling and Michael J. Durkan, Seán O’Casey – A Bibliography (London: Macmillan, 1978), 96, 98, 278, 290, 291 for references to Chinese, Japanese and Korean translations of works by O’Casey. Ibid., 278. Hu Ting-I, second secretary at the Office of the Chargé d’Affaires of the People’s Republic of China in London, letters to Seán O’Casey, October 31, 1957, February 17, 1958 and February 28, 1958. See National Library of Ireland, MS 37, 982. Jack Dribbon, secretary of the Britain-China Friendship Association, letters to Seán O’Casey, March 11, 1958 and August 21, 1959. See National Library of Ireland, MS 37, 982. Ronald Ayling and Michael J. Durkan, Seán O’Casey – A Bibliography, 96, 98. Irene Eber, Voices from Afar, 69, 77–81.

CHAPTER 6

Spreading the News Lady Gregory’s Plays Made It All the Way to China! a Gendered Comparison of “Founding Mothers” Lady Gregory in Revivalist Ireland and Qiu Jin in China

In 1907, female Chinese Revolutionary leader Qiu Jin 秋瑾 (1875– 1907), China’s first Feminist, a poet, rebel leader and mother of two, was beheaded at thirty-two as the Qing Empire lay dying (Fig. 6.1). On another side of the globe, Lady Augusta Gregory (1852–1932) was a leading Irish Revivalist (although scholars push her to the background); a dramatist, folklorist and co-founder of the Abbey theatre, the world’s first repertory theatre (Fig. 6.2). A comparison of both female writers reveals erasure and elision of their literary legacies as ‘Founding Mothers’ of the two modern literature movements I compare. Yet legitimate objections can be raised to my comparison. For example, if Qiu Jin died before the 1919 May Fourth incident, how was she part of the Chinese May Fourth generation? I contend although Qiu Jin was not part of the May Fourth movement, or the related (and conflated) New Culture movement, her calls for women’s rights animated the zeitgeist of that revolutionary Chinese May Fourth generation. Hence, Qiu Jin was present for the May Fourth generation as a Founding Mother of literary nationalism, and a national feminist martyr. Qiu Jin knew Lu Xun and had she lived, she would have remained part of that radical

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. O’Malley-Sutton, The Chinese May Fourth Generation and the Irish Literary Revival: Writers and Fighters, Asia-Pacific and Literature in English, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5269-4_6

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Fig. 6.1 Qiu Jin, pictured here holding a sword—was China’s first feminist, a rebel leader, poet and mother of two, who was beheaded at thirty-two by the Qing Empire in 1907. Courtesy of CPC Photo

generation. Yun Zhu also perceives links between May Fourth and Qiu Jin, and analyses how intertwining discourses on female subjectivity and modern nationhood link the late Qing and May Fourth eras, especially regarding new definitions of sisterhood not limited to biology.1 Accordingly, Qiu Jin was a liminal figure who bridged both eras and inspired the May Fourth generation, especially regarding their shared desire for women’s rights, and the fight against imperialism. Sun Yatsen appropriated Qiu Jin’s recent revolutionary and feminist legacies throughout the May Fourth era. I read Qiu Jin as present in spirit for the May Fourth generation as an inspiring co-eval fellow revolutionary, although absent in the flesh. Qiu Jin’s contemporary aims on nationalism and feminism continued to inform May Fourth debates. I compare Qiu Jin in this broader postcolonised gendered context with another founding mother; Lady Gregory in Revivalist Ireland, whose works also inspired May Fourth writers.

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Fig. 6.2 Lady Augusta Gregory was a significant leader at the forefront of the Irish Revival, a dramatist, folklorist and one of the founders of the Abbey Theatre. Lady Gregory provided much of the money, mentorship to younger male Revivalists and revolutionary literary ideas that made the Irish Revival possible, although her unique legacy was largely written out of male-centred accounts of the Irish Revival. Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland

Moreover, Gregory’s literary legacy faced subsequent erasure and elision, as did that of Qiu Jin, who is mostly depicted as a revolutionary feminist fighter rather than as a writer. Significantly, Lady Gregory was beloved by her male contemporaries, who wrote of her with deep fondness and affection. I wish to offer this as a corrective to the exclusively male gaze which unrelentingly presents Lady Gregory as a cold aloof unapproachable figure, an older woman of a different class, therefore supposedly outside the realms of male desire. My comparison of why this misreading happened to both women writers reveals how masculinist nationalist discourses open spaces for discussion on women’s rights, and then co-opt, encircle and limit those liberating discussions. Hence the need for national liberation is routinely put first, ahead of the individual rights of women, which are then shelved in perpetuity.

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I re-cast Lady Gregory as an implicit feminist, (although she did not claim this and scholarship has been slow to do so). I argue Gregory created an agentic space for female writers in her life and writings. Even if Gregory was not perceived as a New Woman, I contend her works promoted an urgent need for the New Woman, as Revivalist Ireland envisioned radical new roles for women artists and leaders. Anne Fogarty asserts the New Woman created by Revivalists like Gregory produced the conditions that made Modernism possible, and argues this feminocentrism challenged simplified notions on home, identity and belonging.2 My Intersectional approach reveals related constructions of Gender, Race, Age, Class and Religion contribute to erasures of Lady Gregory in Ireland, and Qiu Jin in China. The term ‘New Woman’ was coined by Irish feminist writer Sarah Grand [née Frances Clarke] (1854–1943) in 1893.3 This feminist ideal promoted debate on women’s education, suffrage (the right to vote) and autonomy. Chapter six examines how the New Woman was conceptualised differently in Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China, during the early twentieth-century first wave of feminism. Nationalist revolutions open a liminal space for female subjectivity, yet New Women subjectivities in Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China were circumscribed by the problematising interplay of ostensibly discrete categories on Gender, Age, Race and Class. I compare Lady Gregory and Qiu Jin, educated ladies of privilege according to Edward Said’s definitions of the Postcolonial, and examine Qiu Jin through Susan Bordo’s theories on the “body as text”. I assess their public role, their views on motherhood and their transnational legacy to feminism, postcolonialism and class. Tani Barlow questions whether western feminism can represent all women, without becoming another tool of western imperialism.4 Hence, it is important to examine how divergent constructions of the New Woman travel across cultures, as Chinese feminist writers borrow western concepts to create agentic spaces for themselves.

Lady Gregory’s Reception in China Archival research demonstrates that Lady Gregory’s Irish Revivalist plays made it all the way to China. Irene Eber explains Irish Revivalist works by Gregory, Yeats and Synge were translated throughout China during the 1920s and 1930s as ‘the literature of oppressed peoples’. Irish Revivalist

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socialist writer O’Casey’s plays performed a different type of work and resonated with Chinese intellectuals during Communist rule in the 1950s and 1960s.5 Eber claims open ridicule of British law is at its best in Lady Gregory’s play Spreading the News , translated by Mao Dun in 1924 for the Commercial Press in Shanghai.6 This comedy is set in rural Ireland, as an English magistrate inspects a fair and eager village gossip leads to a man’s false arrest for a murder that never happened. A deaf old woman mishears the comment “laying out a sheet on the hedge”, interprets this as “laying out a sheet for the dead”, and concludes someone was murdered. English translations of this play depend upon the rhyming phonics of the terms hedge and dead. However, Chinese use of homophones would assist Mao Dun’s translation. If Irene Eber is correct and Mao Dun translated Gregory’s play Spreading the News as “Shi hu”, then perhaps Mao Dun utilised the characters 市虎 (city tiger) regarding how a repeated lie becomes accepted truth.7 Mao’s title aligns thematically with Gregory’s play and portrays the damage of unchecked gossip. Gregory’s Spreading the News also references anticolonial Asia, since the English magistrate mentions ‘a convict in the Andaman islands who could not escape my system’.8 The archives demonstrate that most Gregory plays including The Jackdaw and Hyacinth Halvey were translated in different Chinese May Fourth journals by Chinese intellectuals, although Mao Dun features prominently. Gregory’s Hyacinth Halvey was translated by Shen YenPing [Shen Yanbing] 沈雁冰 (courtesy name for Shen Yongxi also known as Mao Dun), for the foundational Chinese May Fourth New Youth journal.9 Hyacinth Halvey is a comedy about a man who seeks a dishonourable reputation, to avoid giving a cultural speech at the village festival. Try as he might, he only succeeds in drawing praise and admiration. Irene Eber claims that Funü Pinglun 婦女評論 (Women’s Critic) published a 1922 translation of Lady Gregory’s The Travelling Man by Shen Yen-Ping, an alias for Mao Dun.10 I discovered an unfinished translation of The Travelling Man by Fang Xin 芳信 in the 1925 Guomin Zhoubao 國閩週報 (National Weekly).11 Chen Shu and Linda Pui-ling Wong explain that Fang Xin, like Shen Yen-Ping, was another penname for Mao Dun.12 Guomin Zhoubao was published weekly in Shanghai and Tianjin (1924–1937). A Mystery Play, The Travelling Man depicts a woman treated kindly by a stranger after she was turned out to wander the roads. Every year at Samhain [November 1] she lays out food in hopes

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he will return. But when the Travelling Man comes dressed as a tramp, she fails to recognise him and sends him away. In the last lines, the Traveller ‘walks on water’, and the woman recognises the stranger as the King of the World. The Christological references underscore how once one attains economic security it is easty to forget the plight of the poor. This may account for the popularity of Gregory’s play during the economically turbulent May Fourth era. Likewise, Gregory’s play The Gaol Gate was translated in 1925 in weekly instalments by Su Chaolung [Zhaolong] 蘇兆龍 for Yingyu Zhoukan 英語週刊 (The English Weekly).13 For Anne Fogarty feminist concerns on silence, suppression and heroism abound in The Gaol Gate in which two illiterate women, Mary Cushin and her daughter-in-law Mary Cahel, are summoned to the jail gate where son and husband, Denis Cahel, was hanged.14 Su Chaolung also translated Gregory’s The Travelling Man in 1925 for the intermediate grades in Yingwen Zazhi 英文雜志 (The English Student), which was published monthly in Shanghai (1915– 1927).15 Hence, Irish Revivalist Lady Gregory’s plays were in the Beiyang government school curriculum in Republican era China, when the need for student education in English was urgent. In 1929, Gregory’s play The Workhouse Ward was translated by Zhu Rangcheng 朱穰丞 for Xiandai Xiju 現代戲劇 (Modern Drama).16 This play encapsulates the ancient Irish proverb “Is fearr an t-imreas ná an tuaigneas”; it is better to argue than be lonely. The plot portrays two old men arguing in a workhouse. One is offered a comfortable home with his sister, but refuses when she does not take in his ‘friend’, or arguing companion. Gregory’s anticolonial Irish Revivalist play The Rising of the Moon was the most popular translation choice for the Chinese Renaissance. 1920 was the earliest translation of Gregory’s Rising of the Moon translated by Ch’eng Tz’u-min [Cheng Cimin] 程次敏 for the influential Chenbao Fukan 晨報副刊 (Morning Post Supplement).17 I discovered another 1920 version of The Rising of the Moon translated by Wang Xiaoyin 王小 隱 in Xin Zhongguo 新中國 (New China).18 Qinghua Zhoukan 清華週刊 (Tsinghua Weekly) published in Beijing, printed a 1927 version of Gregory’s Rising of the Moon by Li Jianwu 李健吾.19 In 1931 Wang Xuehao 王學浩 translated Rising of the Moon for a periodical published monthly in Shanghai entitled Nü Qingnian Yuekan 女青年月刊 (Female Youth Monthly).20 Chao Ding 朝鼎 translated Gregory’s Rising of the Moon in

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Yaolan 摇篮 (Cradle) in 1933, and an unfinished version by Sha Jin 莎金 appears in Wuye 午夜 (Midnight) in 1936 (Table 6.1).21 Patterns emerge from my archival table on Chinese reception of Lady Gregory’s Irish Revivalist works. Gregory’s works were translated into Chinese as early as 1920, although 1922 and 1925 were particularly rich years. Other patterns reveal which journals published what by Gregory, who did this translation work, when and where. Mao Dun was the most prolific translator of Gregory’s work, and he translated for several different journals. However, these articles are direct translations of Lady Gregory’s plays. Significantly from a feminist perspective, I could not find Chinese critical readings devoted to a study of Lady Gregory alone. Although Gregory’s work was often discussed by Mao Dun and others, this was in articles written about the entire Irish Revivalist project. Lady Gregory was linked to Yeats and Synge in articles directly translated from English sources, but did not receive as much direct critical attention from Chinese scholars, as male Irish Revivalists did. Significantly, the Women’s Critic journal foregrounded Lady Gregory as a female dramatist, and her play The Gaol Gate—a dialogue of two women centred on female experiences of injustice.22 Gregory’s play The Travelling Man also presents a female protagonist as old traditions are replaced by new consumerism. Gregory’s play The Jackdaw similarly centres on a woman who appears in court and sells her jackdaw bird to a stranger to pay her £10 debt. This stranger is revealed as her estranged brother from South Africa who wished to spare her feelings. Saving face is extremely important in Asian culture, and would resonate with Chinese audiences. Mao Dun chose to translate all three plays by Lady Gregory for a Chinese woman’s journal, which indicates the transnational feminist role Gregory’s literature exemplified in China, during this time of tumultuous societal change in 1922.23 Regarding language, the title for Gregory’s Rising of the Moon is translated as moonrise, the moon has risen, or the moon rises in the East, according to the Chinese translator’s literary skill. Titles for Gregory’s other plays The Workhouse Ward, The Gaol Gate and The Travelling Man all vary according to the level of literariness desired by Chinese translators. Gregory’s first (and most) translated work in China was the Rising of the Moon in the celebrated Chenbao Fukan journal in 1920. Another less scholarly 1920 version appears in New China. Student translator Wang Xiaoyin explains that students were advised to perform Gregory’s play for

CBFK Vol. 9: 24–26

XZG Vol. 2–1: 147–155

XQN Vol. 9–5: 1–27

FNPL Vol. 30 (Mar 1 1922), Vol. 31 (Mar 8 1922) FNPL Vol. 34 (Mar 29 1922), Vol. 35 (Apr 5 1922), Vol. 36 (Apr 12 1922), Vol. 37 (Apr 19 1922), Vol. 44 (Jun 7 1922) FNPL Vol. 65 (Nov 1 1922), Vol. 66 (Nov 8 1922) XDDMJ: 69–102

1920

1920

1921

1922

1924

1922

1922

References

“Yumen 獄門 (The Gaol Gate by Lady Gregory)” “Shi hu市虎? (Spreading the News by Lady Gregory)”. See Irene Eber, Voices from Afar, 48, 93, 126

Ch’eng Tz’u-min [Cheng Cimin] 程次 敏 Wang Xiaoyin 王小隱

“Ming Yue Shang Sheng 明月上升 (The Rising of the Moon by Lady Gregory)” “Yue Shang 月上 (The Rising of the Moon by Lady Gregory)” “Haiqinghefo 海青赫佛 (Hyacinth Halvey by Lady Gregory)” “Lüxing Ren 旅行人 (The Travelling Man by Lady Gregory)” “Wuya 烏鴉 (The Jackdaw by Lady Gregory)” Mao Dun 茅盾 Yen-Ping [Shen Mao Dun 茅盾 Yen-Ping [Shen

penname for Shen Yanbing] 沈雁冰 penname for Shen Yanbing] 沈雁冰

Mao Dun 茅盾penname for Shen Yen-Ping [Shen Yanbing] 沈雁冰 Mao Dun 茅盾 penname for Shen Yen-Ping [Shen Yanbing] 沈雁冰 Mao Dun 茅盾 penname for Shen Yen-Ping [Shen Yanbing] 沈雁冰

Author

Title

Chinese archival sources on Lady Gregory

Year

Table 6.1

194 S. O’MALLEY-SUTTON

GMZB Vol. 2–48: 40–42

YYZK Vol. 518: 348, Vol. 519: 369, Vol. 520: 388, Vol. 521: 410, Vol. 522: 427, Vol. 523: 447, Vol. 524: 468, Vol. 525: 488, Vol. 526: 507, Vol. 527: 530, Vol. 528: 547, Vol. 530: 588, Vol. 531: 607 YWZZ Vol. 11–6: 541–550

QHZK Vol. 27–12: 637–648

XDXJ Vol. 1–1: 93–108

NQNYK Vol. 10–5: 61–70

1925

1925

1927

1929

1931

1925

References

Year

Wang Xuehao 王學浩

Zhu Rangcheng 朱穰丞

(continued)

Su Chaolung [Zhaolong] 蘇兆龍

“Lüke 旅客 (The Travelling Man by Lady Gregory)” “Yueliang de sheng qi 月亮的升起 (The Rising of the Moon by Lady Gregory)” “Pinmin xiyi suo zhi bingfang 貧民習藝 所之病房 (The Workhouse Ward by Lady Gregory)” “Mingyue dongsheng 明月東升 (The Rising of the Moon by Lady Gregory)”

Li Jianwu 李健吾

Fang Xin 芳信 penname for Mao Dun 茅盾 or Shen Yen-Ping [Shen Yanbing] 沈雁冰 Su Chaolung [Zhaolong] 蘇兆龍

“Youli de ren 游历的人 (The Travelling Man by Lady Gregory)” “Yumen 獄門 (The Gaol Gate by Lady Gregory)”

Author

Title

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195

References

YL Vol. 2–1: 103–112

WY Vol. 1: 12–13, Vol. 2: 17–20

NJDXB 4 (1985): 26–30

1933

1936

1936

(continued)

Year

Table 6.1

Chao Ding 朝鼎

“Yueliang shengqi le 月亮升起了 (The Rising of the Moon by Lady Gregory)” “Yueliang shengqi lai 月亮升起来 (The Rising of the Moon by Lady Gregory)” “Xiju dazhonghua zhi shiyan 喜劇大眾 化之實驗 (Experiment in the Popularisation of Comedy)”. Cf. Gu Wenxun 顧文蘍, “Shilun Xiju dazhonghua zhi shiyan 試論喜劇大眾化 之實驗 (On Experiment in the Popularisation of Comedy)”, NJDXB 4 (1985): 26–30 Xiong Foxi 熊佛西

Sha Jin 莎金

Author

Title

196 S. O’MALLEY-SUTTON

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the New Year by the class Professor as it was one act and only required four actors. However, disappointment ensued when this did not happen. Wang admits the translation contains mistakes, but notes moments of comprehension on the subtleties of Gregory’s play and how all need to exchange societal places. Conversely, Mao Dun translated Gregory’s play Hyacinth Halvey in the prestigious New Youth journal in 1921. Gregory’s Hyacinth depicts a man seeking a dishonourable reputation to avoid giving a cultural speech at the village festival, who only succeeds in drawing praise and admiration. Gregory’s comedic portrayal neatly defined a dilemma for highly literate New Youth readers. May Fourth literati were acutely aware of potential landmines in their self-assigned role as leaders of a new cultural movement, that sought to move the illiterate masses to action. Thus, Gregory’s plays perform a different type of work in new Chinese contexts, dependent upon who does the translation work, where, when and for whom.

Lady Gregory’s Rising of the Moon in China Significantly, Gregory’s works were translated by intellectuals in Shanghai and Beijing, yet performed by Chinese peasants throughout the countryside.24 Renowned Chinese dramatist Xiong Foxi 熊佛西 or Huanong (1900–1965) who studied in the U.S., outlines that he directed peasant actors to perform Gregory’s plays throughout rural China.25 Bernd Eberstein explains Gregory’s plays The Rising of the Moon and Spreading the News were performed by Chinese peasant actors led by director Xiong Foxi, throughout China [italics mine] during the 1920s and 1930s.26 Translation of Lady Gregory’s works meant Chinese intellectuals and peasants internalised that an elderly woman could write plays. Why did Irish Revivalist plays penned by an elderly Anglo-Irish lady transcend geographical, linguistic, gender and class barriers, in this transcultural exchange of ideals between Ireland and China? How did an anticolonial play by an upper-class Anglo-Irish lady resonate with Chinese peasant actors and audiences throughout China, yet also with Chinese intellectuals in university campuses? I propose that Irish Revivalist anticolonial ideals were portable and transfer to a new Chinese May Fourth context, because Lady Gregory wrote about the peasant classes.

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The Plot Lady Gregory’s The Rising of the Moon an anticolonial play on AngloIrish relations, was first produced by the Irish National Theatre on March 9, 1907 (the same year Chinese rebel Qiu Jin was beheaded). Set on a moonlit night, three Irish police officers paid by colonial British authorities paste wanted posters for an escaped political prisoner, that proclaim “Dark hair, dark eyes, smooth face, height five feet five”. The sergeant comments “There’s not much to take hold of in that”.27 The police are convinced the Irish rebel will escape by sea, and send away ragged ballad singer Jimmy Walsh who claims to know the rebel. The ragged man sings a nationalistic ballad about legendary Irish female revolutionary leader Granuaile, or Grace O’Malley, as the sergeant reminisces about singing patriotic Irish songs when young. The ragged man points out perhaps the man you watch for used to sit on the wall singing the same songs, and maybe the sergeant played as a boy with the man he is to arrest. The ragged man claims if those boys told you their plan to free the country perhaps you would join them, and you would be in trouble. The ballad singer asserts “I am thinking it was the people you were with and not the Law when you were a young man”, and reveals he is the man the sergeant seeks. Stricken by his patriotic conscience, the sergeant hides the rebel and assists his escape by sea. The rebel thanks his ‘comrade’ and concludes “Maybe I’ll be able to do as much for you when the small rise up and the big fall down…when we all change places at the Rising of the Moon”. Gregory’s play centres on wanted notices for an escaped Irish rebel. I discovered a similar wanted notice in the Police Gazette (The Hue and Cry), from January 26, 1866, framed in a public house in Kenmare, County Kerry, Ireland. This proclamation issued by the Lord Lieutenant General and General Governor of Ireland offered one thousand pounds reward for an arrest, and three hundred pounds to anyone with information about James Stephens, an escaped prisoner from Richmond prison accused of treason. James Stephens (1825–1901) was a Fenian (an Irish Republican organisation), and a founding member of the related Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). Gregory’s fellow Revivalist William Butler Yeats also was a member of the IRB for a time. The unsuccessful 1867 Fenian rising, planted the seeds for the 1916 Easter Rising. Stephens’s description in the Hue and Cry reads

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about forty-two years of age; five feet seven inches high; stout make; broad high shoulders; very tight active appearance; fair hair; bald all round top of head; wore all his beard; which is sandy; slightly tinged with grey; rather long under the chin; but slight around the jaw approaching the ears; broad forehead; tender eyes; which defect seems to be constitutional; and has a peculiar habit of closing the left eye when speaking; high cheek bones; and rather good looking countenance; hands and feet remarkably small and well formed; and he generally dressed in black clothes.28

Lady Gregory may well have reflected this type of wanted poster for her plot in Rising of the Moon. I note similarities between Gregory’s Rising of the Moon plot, and incidents in James Stephens’s life. Stephens died in Ireland in 1901, and Gregory’s Rising of the Moon was first performed in 1907. Gregory’s play and protagonist may be loosely based on Stephens’s life, or other Irish rebels. Like in Gregory’s Rising of the Moon, a friendly prison warder helped rebel James Stephens to escape from prison.29 In Gregory’s finale the prisoner escapes by boat across the sea, just as James Stephens escaped to France after his prison break. The use of patriotic songs are central throughout Gregory’s Rising of the Moon, and function as the deus ex machina that converts the sergeant to the rebel cause. This mirrors Fenian techniques of printing patriotic songs to rouse the Irish public to rebellion against colonial Britain. In 1866, when wanted notices for Stephens were pasted throughout Ireland, Lady Gregory was fourteen and her Anglo-Irish family favoured Union with Britain. However, by the 1880s Gregory’s travels throughout Asia and living with her husband in Egypt, India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) changed her worldview so radically that she became an Irish cultural nationalist. I propose that Gregory’s postcolonised reading of Irish history, and her anticolonial play Rising of the Moon, were in part made possible by Lady Gregory’s encounters with emergent Asian nationalist movements. Gregory’s sojourns in Asia allowed her the space to discover her own nascent postcolonised vision of Ireland. Hence, Lady Gregory’s Revivalist plays were all influenced by the political and cultural awakening she experienced while living in Asia. Yet, when Gregory’s plays later circled back to influence Asian writers, how were her anticolonial Irish Revivalist plays received by new Chinese Renaissance readers?

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A New Chinese Setting Which transnational and postcolonial resonances appear in Gregory’s Rising of the Moon in a new Chinese Renaissance setting? Did Gregory’s Irish plays resonate with the semicolonial experiences of the Chinese May Fourth generation? I contend five highlights resonated for Chinese intellectual and peasant audiences that translated and performed Gregory’s anticolonial Rising of the Moon. (1) The symbolic rising of the moon denotes a political awakening. (2) Gregory’s play is easy to stage due to the simple setting and plot, and includes appeals to patriotism, humour and affect. (3) Use of vernacular Hiberno-English; (“whist” for éist or listen) was Lady Gregory’s legacy to the theatrical world—the revolutionary use of vernacular onstage, later appropriated by male Revivalists Yeats, Synge and O’Casey, and imitated worldwide. (4) Folk ballads appealed to Chinese peasant audiences and intellectuals who collected them. (5) Gregory’s anticolonial play elevates those at the bottom of society, and asserts these people will soon rise up. This revolutionary ideal resonated with Chinese May Fourth goals and aspirations. Anticolonial valences in Gregory’s play carried over to the Chinese context, because of the real threat of Japanese invasion during the 1930s. Chen Shu notes the patriotic message of Gregory’s play appealed when staged on Chinese university campuses using the “Mountain River” set.30 Use of traditional set pieces familiar to Chinese audiences, created networks between intellectuals who translated Gregory’s plays and Chinese peasants who enacted them. Bonnie McDougall and Kam Louie explain Xiong Foxi and others founded the People’s Dramatic Society in Shanghai in 1921, alongside the Literary Research Association’s Mao Dun and Zheng Zhenduo. This society published the monthly journal Drama to print original and translated scripts. In 1925 Xiong Foxi persuaded the Beijing Arts Academy to add a drama department to train actors and directors, which he ran until 1932.31 I conclude that Chinese audiences perceived traditional Mountain River sets for Gregory’s Rising of the Moon as significant, in the context of imminent Japanese invasion. Chinese Renaissance writers selected drama as a vehicle to politically awaken the illiterate peasant classes. Significantly, the vaunted PQ or ‘Peasant Quality’ of Irish Revivalist theatre rendered Gregory’s play especially translatable or portable for Chinese audiences. I argue Gregory’s plays performed a particular type of work for May

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Fourth intellectuals, by foregrounding patriotic calls to action during an existential crisis. Chinese translators perceived productions of Gregory’s Revivalist plays could unite Chinese intellectuals with the working-class on the urgent need for patriotic unity in the face of Japanese imperialism. I focus on two Chinese-language versions of Gregory’s Rising of the Moon, translated in 1920 by Wang Xiaoyin 王小隱 for Xin Zhongguo 新中國 (New China), and in 1933 by Chao Ding 朝鼎 for Yaolan 摇篮 (Cradle).32 Firstly, Wang Xiaoyin’s 1920 version lays characters out vertically rather than horizontally. One important literary exchange between China and the West, was the introduction of western forms of punctuation and layout.33 Lydia Liu’s book The Clash of Empires (2004) highlights how language was a tool for Empire and colonisation.34 Secondly, Wang’s title “Yue Shang 月上 (Moonrise)” is not grammatically accurate. Thirdly, Wang presents no list of characters for Gregory’s play. Fourthly, Wang’s student translation is simplistic and not as literary as Chao’s 1933 translation. Conversely, Chao Ding’s 1933 version of Gregory’s Rising of the Moon is printed across the page from left to right in the western manner, which breaks with traditional Chinese modes of print. Secondly, Chao’s more literary title “Yueliang Shengqi le 月亮升起了 (The Moon has Risen)” is closer to the grammatical tense of Gregory’s original. Thirdly, Chao’s version includes a list of renwu 人物 (characters) which establishes this as a play. Fourthly, Chao utilises a literary device where zhèr 這兒 (here) signifies the Northern Chinese dialect used in Beijing. Thus Chao uses erhua 兒化 a phonological process that adds the ér 兒 sound to syllables in spoken Mandarin Chinese, to reflect a Northern dialect. Traditionally the Southern dialect was associated with more literary forms. I read Chao’s attempt to emphasise the colloquial northern vernacular as conveying distinctive colloquial Hiberno-English dialects in Gregory’s original anticolonial play. Similar examples appear in translations of Gregory’s play in Yingyu Zhoukan 英語週刊) (The English Weekly), which published HibernoEnglish versions of Gregory’s plays beside Chinese translations on the same page. Su Chaolung [Zhaolong] 蘇兆龍 translated Gregory’s play The Gaol Gate for The English Weekly in instalments in 1925. Su’s translations contain comprehensive dictionary entries at the bottom of the page, which translate Hiberno-English phrases first into Standard English, and then into Chinese. Su translates Gregory’s phrase “terrible” as “very”, and “them that belong to her” becomes “her own children”. Likewise, “and

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we driven” becomes “we have been driven”, “is the man after saying” becomes “has the man said”, and “do be” becomes “are really”. One difficult passage reads Oh Denis my heart is broken you to have died with the hard word upon you! My grief you to be alone now that spent so many nights in company! What way will I be going back through Gort and through Kilbecanty? The people will not be coming out keening you…35

Evidently, the Chinese Renaissance generation perceived the pain-staking effort of translating Hiberno-English plays was a worthy investment, as each page explains Su Chaolung “translated and explained” these. The article also references footnotes in Seven Short Plays a book of Gregory’s plays that was advertised in a 1915 China Press article.36 Gregory invented this re-writing of English using the rhythms of Irish grammar, syntax and vocabulary to circumvent problems for Irish writers writing in the English language. Male Revivalists Yeats, Synge and O’Casey appropriated Gregory’s revolutionary idea in their own writings. This Irish Revivalist postcolonial move interested Chinese intellectuals, who forged a similar linguistic mission to write in Chinese vernacular baihua 白話 instead of esoteric classical Chinese, to fully engage the peasant classes. This demonstrates that Chinese translators were well-read and acutely aware of the original tone in these transnational literary exchanges. In 1936, another translation of Gregory’s Rising of the Moon remained incomplete in the Wuye 午夜 (Midnight) periodical.37 This version switches back to traditional Chinese classical character structures and vertical layout. Thus transcultural exchange changes the original literary production, as translators select what to include and leave out in new settings. Or editors could simply have run out of money as often occurred during this period.

Lady Gregory and Reciprocal Asian Encounters Lady Gregory was a pivotal leader (although scholarship pushes her to the background) of the Irish Renaissance. However, Lady Gregory was greatly influenced by living in Asia, in another reciprocal encounter of mutual exchange between Irish Revivalism and Asia. As an Anglo-Irish Protestant, Gregory was a convert to Irish cultural nationalism. Declan

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Kiberd traced Gregory’s political conversion to anticolonialism as influenced by her Asian travels as she lived in Egypt, India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) with her husband, Governor of Ceylon.38 On their Asian travels Lady Gregory discovered her own inclination towards Irish cultural nationalism, although these aspirations conflicted with her upbringing and class. In Egypt, Lady Gregory had an affair with Wilfrid Scawen Blunt an anti-imperial Englishman who was jailed in 1888 for supporting anti-imperial Irish causes. This connection influenced Gregory to support the Egyptian nationalist Urabi revolt39 led by Arabi Bey.40 Lady Gregory penned her earliest work under her own name entitled “Arabi and His Household” as a pamphlet in 1882, (originally a letter to The Times ) to support Egypt’s first nationalist movement. Hence, Lady Gregory’s Asian experiences directly influenced her postcolonial turn from soft Unionism and the politics of her class, towards anti-imperial Irish cultural nationalism. Edward Said investigated in Orientalism (1979) and Culture and Imperialism (1994) how literature promotes the colonial gaze, as the disciplines we work in including history, literature, archaeology, political science, linguistics or anthropology originated from a colonial mindset. Thus biases against the colonised ‘other’ remain in the structures of the field.41 Said elucidated such disciplines serve the interests of European imperialism and areas designated as ‘peripheries’ define the colonial ‘centre’. Accordingly, parts of Asia were redefined as the ‘Far East’, because Europe was the presumed centre.42 Significantly, Said identified Ireland as the ‘practice ground’ for the British Empire, which went on to colonise Asia, Africa and the Americas.43 Said did not deem everything within literature as consolidating empire. Although Said identified the Postcolonial paradigm or lens, he was critiqued for humanist belief in individual will (rather than social forces) and inattention to gender. I build on Said’s critical interventions by investigating the emergence of nascent feminist ideologies in anticolonial early twentieth-century settings. In the Foucauldian sense, questions arise on whose authority decides how we approach literature. Said asserts that these processes reveal the coloniser’s psychology, as the colonised are defined as ‘other’ to achieve a definition of selfhood for the coloniser. Lady Gregory recognised colonial intellectual discourses on Ireland and Asia were part of the problem, as these discourses participated in the conquest and containment of colonised peoples, as her experiences living in Ireland and Asia confirmed.

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Accordingly, Lady Gregory turned against the interests of her own colonial class, and instead gave voice to the subaltern in her works. Yet, Lady Gregory was also partially complicit, since her literature, like Yeats, often constructed the aristocratic class as ‘saviour’ to a grateful peasantry. Yet Gregory also attempted to reverse colonial assumptions on native backwardness, or the inability of colonised peoples to be independent. Such assumptions led to accepted legal rights for the coloniser that were denied to the colonised, including extraterritoriality in China.44 Gregory complicates anticolonial assertions against native backwardness, by inserting her own role as aristocratic ‘saviour’ in her writings. According to Said’s humanist Postcolonial reading Lady Gregory was an agentic postcolonised individual whose works present a site of resistance to colonial construction. Or she can be read as an individual determined by her upper-class economic base in the Marxian sense. Alternatively, Mary Lou Kohfeldt reads Lady Gregory in the Freudian psychological sense, as rejected by her mother and turning to Ireland for substitute.45

Spatiality Said lived in the East and West and embodied the postcolonial hybridity he articulated. I argue Lady Gregory occupies a similar space. By throwing off positivistic definitions on what it meant to be Irish, a woman, upperclass and old, Gregory sought an individual space of freedom as a female writer, while re-writing Ireland and the nation. Both female writers considered in this chapter attempt similar constructions, and achieve personal liberation through literature by outlining the need for national liberation. Frederick Jameson explains this process often turns supposedly third world literatures into national allegory that positions the anticolonial nation as female.46 Said’s attention to spatial locations and politicisation of the domestic sphere, links to how Gregory utilised her husband’s ancestral home Coole Park as a site for anticolonial literary discussion. Like Fanny in Austen’s Mansfield Park Lady Gregory did not directly inherit her own space or stately home but had to fight a male relative to keep it.47 In Said’s term, Gregory “recolonised” her own stately home, ignoring the prescribed gender roles for women. Women writers have a different reading of the nation, as they experience colonisation in a double sense, as a woman and a person from the colonies. Gregory’s recolonisation of the space of her home as a site of resistance to imperial modernity, mirrored Revivalist

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strategies to reverse subordination of the colony in Ireland, to the imperial metropole in London. The establishment of the Abbey theatre in Dublin replicated this move and relocated the literary sphere to the site of anticolonial resistance.

Language Classical forms of the Chinese language were deemed inadequate for political and cultural revolution by the Chinese Renaissance, and did not contain the modernised words necessary to depict the revolution May Fourth intellectuals envisaged. Instead, the Chinese literati turned to the vernacular baihua or common speech, bringing the written and spoken language closer together. Standardisation of pronunciation meant that slogans on May Fourth banners powerfully linked speeches by Chinese student intellectuals with characters painted on their banners, and led to what I term the “democratisation of language” for the Chinese masses. This need to reunite modern Chinese speech and writing, was also the need for a standardised national language. Debates raged in China on whether the classical or vernacular should dominate, in this search for a modern national language. This occurred in the context of discussions on what the standard national language should be for various European states. Thus, a complicated mix of the introduction of print culture, education, nationalism and the state collided, as states worldwide switched from the classical to the vernacular during this period. This process of contentious debates culminated in the nationalist Guomindang (GMD) government’s decision, that vernacular spoken in Beijing would be the standard version of Guoyu 國語 (national language) taught in new schools throughout China.48 Irish Revivalists intent upon a cultural and literary revolution that would lead to political revolution, were also convulsed by the language question, as language became weaponised as a tool of reform. Irish nationalism questioned whether one could legitimately claim to be an Irish writer, when writing exclusively in the confines of the coloniser’s English language. Finally Lady Gregory solved this thorny problem, by appropriating the English spoken by her Kiltartan neighbours that was richly indebted to Irish syntax and grammar. Lady Gregory coined the neologism Kiltartanese and produced Kiltartanese versions of Irish myths, including Cuchulainn of Muirthemne (1902) and Gods and Fighting Men

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(1904). In his introduction to the former, Yeats claimed this as the best book from Ireland in his time, which Joyce later parodied in the Scylla and Charybdis chapter of Ulysses. Notwithstanding Lady Gregory’s hugely important global legacy and paradigm-shifting intervention in the language question, her role was consistently downplayed. Gregory’s revolutionary contribution to world literature and drama of putting the vernacular onstage is often reduced to a mere historical footnote. Male Irish Revivalists Yeats, Synge and O’Casey adopted Gregory’s original linguistic move and they receive the plaudits instead of Gregory for this revolutionary concept that influenced other Renaissance movements worldwide. Gregory’s paradigm—shift of using the vernacular onstage became part of the global transnational reach of Irish Revivalism. Harlem Renaissance leaders James Weldon Johnson and Alain Locke were inspired by Irish Revivalism’s use of the vernacular and local dialect. Johnson declared similarly liberatory works could be produced using the local Harlem ghetto vernacular, and other African American dialects.49 I contend that Lady Gregory still does not receive full recognition for her contributions that revolutionised postcolonial world literature. Decades later, Kenyan Ngugi Wa Thiong’o and his co-authors, faced a similar decolonisation struggle regarding language and literature.50 Ngugi argued in 1968 for the “Abolition of the English Department” and asserted that English departments founded in Africa under British imperialism, should change to “Departments of Literature” that focus on indigenous languages and literatures.51 This mirrored Lady Gregory’s Irish Renaissance strategies decades earlier, during Ireland’s decolonisation struggle. Ngugi (like many Irish Revivalists) changed his name from the anglicised version, to assert the centrality of local experience and culture. Whereas Ngugi wrote in his native Kikuyu, his fellow author Liyong used English to reach a wider audience. Likewise, Irish Revivalism’s debate on whether an Irish writer should write in English, was elegantly solved by Lady Gregory’s intervention of a hybrid form of Hiberno-English. Thus, Ngugi, knowingly or not, replicated decolonisation strategies that Lady Gregory initiated decades earlier in Revivalist Ireland. Certainly, Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe’s 1950s anticolonial novel Things Fall Apart, took its name from Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming.” I conclude that Lady Gregory’s transnational literary legacy and her conception of the vernacular onstage were elided because she

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was a female writer, since her fellow male Revivalists did not experience such elision.

Erasure of Female Writers Lucy McDiarmid established that Lady Gregory did most of the writing for Cathleen ni Houlihan which Gregory co-authored in 1902 with Yeats. Many Irish rebels claimed this play inspired them to join the 1916 Easter Rising.52 Gender presents as a factor that overrides race or class in the elision of Lady Gregory’s legacy, since her position as member of the educated Anglo-Irish upper-class did not prevent male appropriation of her literary legacy. This gendered repositioning of Lady Gregory’s relevance did not occur to fellow Irish Protestant writers Swift or Yeats, who came from a similar class and racial background, but did not share the same gendered or age identity. I detect intersectional factors like ageism and sexism contributed to Lady Gregory’s erasure. Similarly, in May Fourth China Chen Hengzhe 陈衡哲 (Sophia Chen) penned the first short story in vernacular Chinese, although male writer Lu Xun is invariably accorded this achievement.53 This means New Women writers in different parts of the globe faced similar elisions, demonstrating a discernible global pattern. Lady Gregory in Ireland and Qiu Jin in China, are remembered for contributions to literary nationalism, but significantly their literary achievements are downplayed. Mary Lou Kohfeldt can describe Lady Gregory as the “Woman Behind [italics mine] the Irish Renaissance”, rather than the woman who led the Irish Renaissance from the front.54 I counter that without Lady Gregory’s mentorship younger male Irish Revivalists Yeats and O’Casey, would have found it difficult to become professional writers. In an article reprinted in The North-China Daily News O’Casey recounts his entire literary career was due to timely encouragement by Lady Gregory, who printed O’Casey’s rejected Abbey plays at her own cost.55 The 2004 Irish University Review published a special edition on Lady Gregory that noted her literary legacy is strangely absent from the predominantly masculinist Irish Revivalist canon. Anne Fogarty asserts this persistent erasure or demotion of female voices is problematic due to anxieties surrounding Lady Gregory’s “unaccommodated colonial past” as an Anglo-Irish writer. The spectre of class division is inherent in the fact she is called “Lady” Gregory, which distances her in social

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status from bourgeois and proletariat readers.56 Through intersections of gender, class and age, Lady Gregory was elided by Revivalist scholarship, and paradoxically became both a foundational authority figure for Irish Revivalism, and a maternal presence forever relegated to a position decentred from carefully constructed Irish Revivalist narratives. Eglantina Remport notes how Lady Gregory’s contemporaries highly praised her, yet her artistic vision is now subordinated to that of Yeats within academia.57 Yet Gregory played a role in these constructions, and frequently praised Yeats as a better writer. Was this a remnant of her religious and class upbringing, or was this true, or does a third more nuanced possibility exist? Certainly, Gregory’s pivotal role in Irish Revivalism was reconstructed by male contemporaries (and rivals) after her death, as George Moore infamously lampooned her in Hail and Farewell (1911). The Irish University Review Special Issue (2004) provides various historiographical approaches to Lady Gregory. I use these approaches to interrogate Qiu Jin, another New Woman who simultaneously constructed her own celebrity and subjectivity. James Pethica positions Gregory as Yeats’s collaborator, and not merely as mentor.58 Lucy McDiarmid explains how Gregory used “table talk” to advance and annex her male allies/rivals.59 Sineád Garrigan Mattar coined the term “colonial nationalism” to explain Gregory’s political transformation during her Asian encounters with British imperialism in Egypt and India, which influenced her turn from Unionism to Irish nationalism.60

Lady Gregory as Feminist Declan Kiberd links Gregory’s affair with English anti-imperialist Wilfrid Scawen Blunt with themes of female agency, and personal and colonial betrayal of the patriarchy in Gregory’s play Grania.61 I argue this demonstrates Gregory’s nascent feminism, since Grania depicts a younger woman (like Lady Gregory) betrothed to an older man, who elopes with his younger rival. This can also be read as Gregory’s elopement with younger Irish nationalist elements, while forsaking her older earlier attachments to Unionism. Hence, Gregory staked claims for her own developing independent subjectivity as a modern woman, through her life and works. Although Lady Gregory in Hugh Lane’s biography admitted to “listening cautiously” to a woman arguing for women’s rights,62 Patricia Lysaght states that Gregory included more female folklore sources.63

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This illuminates tensions underlying Gregory’s feminist tendencies. Colm Tóibín alludes to Gregory’s ability to simultaneously inhabit two ideologies, as landlady and nationalist.64 Anthony Roche discovers Gregory’s influence in Beckett’s modernist “spare, non-naturalistic liminal spaces”.65 Michael McAteer explains that Gregory’s redactions of Irish legends could not dislodge patriarchal earlier renditions.66 Richard Cave compares tragedies by Yeats and Gregory to demonstrate how Gregory creates space for the tragic heroine’s desires, which male writers omit.67 Perhaps our failure to ‘read’ Gregory as an implicit feminist leads academia to erase valuable parts of her legacy.

Lady Gregory’s Portrayal in China An English-language newspaper The China Press published in China for an ex-patriate audience notes in its 1915 article on Gregory that admirers of Lady Gregory’s work will find in “Seven Short Plays” her plays Spreading the News , Hyacinth Halvey, The Rising of the Moon, The Jackdaw, The Workhouse Ward, The Travelling Man, The Gaol Gate. The volume also contains music for the songs in the plays, notes explaining the conception of the plays and the casts of players in the original productions. The plays were written at various times during the period 1903–1909.68

It is noteworthy that this list of Gregory’s plays replicates exactly those translated into Chinese during the May Fourth era, although Gregory wrote other plays. This partly explains why Chao Ding’s 1933 version of Gregory’s Rising of the Moon was so faithful to the original. Chinese translators were unfamiliar with the spirit of Irish songs without such background notes, and this article illuminates the mechanics behind these literary exchanges. Pierre Bourdieu explained that translators usually access literature deemed high culture according to an imposed hierarchy, and included in anthologies.69 Therefore, canonisation plays a role in what is available for translators in transnational literary exchanges. The North-China Daily News published an obituary for Lady Gregory in 1932 for its combined ex-patriate and Chinese intellectual audiences.70 This article entitled “Lady Gregory, Noted Playwright, Dies” notes that Gregory was a female dramatist, director of the well-known Abbey theatre, and concludes that Gregory died in Galway at the age of 80. Just one year later, Chao Ding translated Gregory’s play The

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Rising of the Moon into Chinese, enabling Chinese peasants throughout China to stage Gregory’s anticolonial Irish Revivalist play during the 1930s. Xiong Foxi’s account Xiju dazhonghua zhi shiyan 喜劇大眾化之 實驗 (Experiment in the Popularisation of Comedy) outlines how Xiong directed a Chinese theatre group that toured rural Dingxian in Hebei, and often staged Gregory’s Rising of the Moon.71 Bernd Eberstein asserts that Gregory’s one-act plays were often performed throughout China in those years. As Asian and Irish Studies ‘go global’, it is exciting to discover such transnational postcolonial literary exchanges between Ireland and China. How postcolonised peripheries in the East and West connected through literature in their search for a viable postcolonised modernity, remains understudied. Newspapers published in China provide historical context, and elucidate how surprising reciprocal literary exchanges between Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China were possible. Chinese translators were provided the proper notes, music scores and historical background of Irish Revivalist plays that imagined a New Ireland, and influenced May Fourth’s New China.

Lady Gregory and Qiu Jin Lady Gregory’s anticolonial plays influenced the May Fourth generation, just as Qiu Jin’s feminist patriotic poetry did. Like Lady Gregory, Qiu Jin is presented as an inferior writer compared to male contemporaries as part of the genderising project of male peers. Both female writers were appropriated by modern literature movements in postcolonised peripheries. Paige Reynolds investigates Lady Gregory’s trips to America as ways to re-invent her subjectivity through celebrity.72 Likewise, Qiu Jin moved to the imperial Japanese metropole to re-invent herself and attain a new subjectivity, as photos of Qiu Jin wearing male attire attest.73 Cathy Leeney discerns how the New Woman is espoused throughout Gregory’s works, as Grania’s ending is a literal and symbolic “walk-out” on traditional theatrical tropes.74 In China, Qiu Jin staged her own literal and symbolic “walking-out” of confining traditional gender roles, painfully unbound her feet, left her two children and fled to Japan to become a revolutionary New Woman poet. Dawn Duncan perceives Gregory’s work as a Jungian reworking of the archetypal journey or hero quest.75 Qiu Jin invaded similarly masculinist territory, penning praise poems to her Mother to subvert this traditionally male Confucian convention, thereby redefining Freudian oedipal relationships.76

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In summation, Lady Gregory’s feminist exploration of the emerging New Woman forms part of Revivalism’s Modernism, despite contrarian conservative elements of her writings that appear deceptively realist at first. I ask why similarly revolutionary female writers in Republican China, like Qiu Jin and Ding Ling, are excluded from the Eurocentric Modernist canon, although they too experimented with modern literary forms exploring nascent female subjectivity. Ronán McDonald explains how traditional definitions of Irish Revivalism and Modernism as mutually exclusive are breaking down, as new sources in recovered literature by women, diaries, letters and new theoretical paradigms tear down simplistic artificial categories.77 Postcolonialism, Transnationalism and Intersectionality intervene as alternative paradigms to interrogate boundaries unnecessarily imposed upon different constructions of the New Woman, in the East and West. Anne Fogarty asserts we can thus hope to re-invent ourselves and our relationship to our colonial past.78 Yet, how was Qiu Jin like Irish Revivalist Lady Gregory, in her foundational role as an anti-imperial female “writer and fighter”? Qiu Jin 秋瑾 (1875–1907) was a Chinese Revolutionary leader, China’s First Feminist, a poet and mother of two who was beheaded at the age of thirty-two in 1907, as the Qing empire lay dying. Like Lady Gregory in Revivalist Ireland, Qiu Jin was retrospectively positioned as ‘Founding Mother’ of the Chinese nation state. Mary Backus Rankin suggests the women’s movement pre-1911 in China was elitist, but also radical, because it paved the way for the feminist May Fourth movement.79 Lady Gregory wrote for the new Irish state, and Qiu Jin died as a martyr for the new Chinese state. I argue the literary legacies of Qiu Jin and Lady Gregory were erased in a similar manner. Academia neglected Lady Gregory’s feminist legacy but depicted Qiu Jin exclusively as a feminist nationalist, thereby devaluing her literary legacy. Both Gregory and Qiu Jin participated in anticolonial literary movements, and de/recolonised predominantly masculinist nationalist spaces in literature for nationhood and female selfhood. Therefore, both female writers fought to create spaces to express female subjectivity, both in their lives and literatures. I contend that Gregory was positioned as the Woman Behind [italics mine] the Revival, rather than the Woman Who Led the Irish Revival From the Front; although Gregory’s mentorship of younger male Revivalists Yeats, Synge and O’Casey made Irish Revivalism possible. This would not happen to an older Anglo-Irish male, but intersections of age, gender,

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religion and class intervened to deny Gregory her full legacy.80 I compare this to Founding Mother Qiu Jin, who was underrated as a writer and primarily utilised as a nationalist martyr. Joan Judge explains that the hermeneutics of historical change meant new roles for women emerged in China at this time, as Chinese New Women now became female students, virtuous westernised heroines or mothers of citizens who were simultaneously valorised and repudiated.81 Yet New Women writers faced unique challenges from the emergence of the modern nation state, as these limiting strategies were not applied in the same manner to male writers of this period. I ask why women writers remain devalued by predominantly male academics, who favour works by their male contemporaries, and conclude that writings by Qiu Jin and Gregory should be used in national classroom settings, just as works by Lu Xun and Yeats are. Frederick Jameson posits that postcolonial fiction often works as national allegory and applies this to Lu Xun’s “Diary of a Madman”.82 However, gender scholars problematise simple allegories of the nation as female. Tani Barlow questions how universal genderised readings of Chinese female writers are, since western academics bring preconceptions on what constitutes the feminine in literature, which makes no allowance for the local.83 I assess where Gregory’s and Qiu Jin’s constructions of the female converge and diverge, particularly on embodiment, although Gregory did undergo a painful mastectomy in 1923.

Qiu Jin’s Body: Text or Palimpsest? Lingzhen Wang asks why Qiu Jin’s individual struggles with embodiment and personal desire remain largely ignored by academia.84 I propose Susan Bordo’s theories on “the body as text” elucidate Qiu Jin’s form of Chinese feminism regarding problems of embodiment.85 Rey Chow posits that Chinese feminism is persistently presented as an ‘ethnic supplement’ to feminism, which is normalised as a western concept.86 Western theories can be applied to Qiu Jin, as long as divergences with western feminism are specified, because this replicates postcolonial moves that Qiu Jin made in her own life. I read Qiu Jin as palimpsestically inscribing on her body a counter narrative, to prevailing masculinist discourses on the production of literature. Qiu Jin literalised her body as a text by unbinding her traditionally bound feet and wearing men’s clothes, to rewrite possibilities for New Womanhood (Fig. 6.3). Footbinding originated when tenth-century

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Emperor Li Yu of the Southern Tang asked concubine Yao Niang to bind her feet and delicately dance on a six-foot tall golden lotus, which links to footbinding’s association with eroticism in Chinese culture. I read Qiu Jin’s moves as a palimpsest—which traditionally meant writing that was partially or completely erased from a manuscript to make room for another text. I interpret Qiu Jin as erasing traditional Chinese constructions of womanhood and reinscribing a new more vibrant feminist version on the manuscript/parchment of her own body, by unbinding her feet and wearing clothes traditionally reserved for the male gender. Yet does this problematically undermine her argument if Qiu Jin had to wear male clothes to achieve female agency? Or is this another Foucauldian dilemma, as revolutionary discourses take place within the terms and vocabulary already set by the patriarchy, which co-opt and preclude real revolution?

Fig. 6.3 Qiu Jin wearing men’s clothes and an endearing grin in Japan. I read Qiu Jin’s feminist gesture as a palimpsest, or an attempt to re-write a new narrative, replacing the old, on how to be both modern and a New Chinese Woman. Courtesy of JABEL/ CPC Photo

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Susan Bordo’s book Unbearable Weight (1993) theoretically defines the body as a “text” with a narrative inscribed upon it.87 This paradigm explains why Chinese feminist Qiu Jin rebelled against pressure to shape herself to fit conventions of proper deportment established by Confucian society. During the last days of the Qing Empire these social norms began to die out, resulting in what Bordo terms a “reopening of the public arena to women”.88 The impossibility of achieving what Bordo terms “the elusive feminine ideal” found a riposte in Qiu Jin’s decisions to unbind her feet and dress in male attire, as a subversive protest against conditions for women in Chinese society. Accordingly, female bodies in particular change to ‘fit’ the political cultural circumstances they are in. I argue that Qiu Jin presented to the world the female body that best ‘narrated’ the newfound political and cultural freedoms that women in early twentieth-century China were about to appropriate. Thus, by dressing as a man Qiu Jin represented the feminine zeitgeist of her time. Bordo asserts that twentieth-century women culturally receive contradictory double messages; that modern women should all be one slender ideal, and yet simultaneously manage to be their own woman.89 This resonates with Qiu Jin’s experience of similar tensions throughout her short life. Joan Judge notes how Qiu Jin “rejected the past and present unlettered and crippled identity of Chinese women”.90 Qiu Jin confronted traditional Chinese ideals of womanhood, as one who is literally and metaphorically crippled and circumscribed in the contracted female world. But Qiu Jin was also pulled in the direction of nascent western idealisations of women as strong individualised subjects who attained political power. Faced with seemingly incompatible inconsistencies, Qiu Jin fled China for the imperial metropole of Tokyo in Japan, leaving her marriage and two small children. Conversely, modern male Chinese revolutionary writers did not routinely face such heartrending choices. Dorothy Ko questions western interpretations of Qiu Jin’s unbinding of her traditionally bound feet, and whether this automatically resulted in the individual sexual realisation of the female subject. In Cinderella’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding (2007) Ko counters there were many types of footbinding in China, hence contested meanings for footbinding present in each period from the tenth-century, as footbinding was practiced by elite women to secure a prestigious marriage.91 Ko points out similarl constrictions for western women’s bodies idealised the ‘constricted waists’ or cosets of the nineteenth—century, and caused

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women to faint and be condemned as hysterical.92 Ko demystifies footbinding, explaining that elite Chinese mothers felt duty-bound to inflict the pain of footbinding on their young daughters. Girls as young as three had toes daily bent back under their foot’s sole, until the bones gradually broke by being bound in place. However, it was also incredibly painful to unbind one’s feet and learn to walk anew. Qiu Jin’s poem textualises the moment she palimpsestically inscribed her life’s new narrative on her body as a text, as blood and tears stain her handkerchief as she courageously unbound her feet. Qiu Jin’s poem marks this pivotal moment in the literal construction of the New Woman Sun and moon have no light left, earth is dark Our women’s world is sunk so deep, who can help us? Jewellery sold to pay this trip across the seas Cut off from my family I leave my native land. Unbinding my feet I clean out a thousand years of poison With heated heart arouse all women’s spirits. Alas, this delicate kerchief here Is half stained with blood, and half with tears.93

Qiu Jin’s text embodied in her life and body, produced a counter narrative to the masculinist domain on the production of literature. Read according to national allegory, Qiu Jin depicts China as a frail woman hobbling on the international stage, unable to compete with the ‘big boys’ of western imperialism, who tears off the bindings that impede her advancement. The Chinese May Fourth project eliminated footbinding as a feudal practice, and discerned links between the need to liberate individual Chinese women and the nation. Feminist theorist Susan Bordo asserts that women’s bodies typify the discourses of the age. Women went to the extremes of hysteria, agoraphobia or anorexia to literalise the idealised extremes demanded by society.94 Bordo reads these extreme reactions as modes of resistance against networks of power that circumscribe women’s actions. If nineteenth-century women literally embodied hysteria as a hyper realisation of dominant discourses on ‘fragile’ Victorian women, then Qiu Jin embodied a hyper feminisation of growing cultural and political power for early twentieth-century New Women.95 This modern New Woman metaphorically clothed herself in the traditional garb of men to claim

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her right to define who she is. However, tensions underlying this project reveal that simply swopping men’s clothes for those of women, does not a free New Woman make. The extremes of the musculatured Maoist Iron Girls later exemplified this in the 1960s, as posters throughout China portrayed an erasure of femininity or masculinisation of femininity, rather than gender equality.96 As Chinese male writers selected how to depict the modern New Women, a male version of femininity resulted rather than a version rooted in female agency. Amy Dooling explains this led to male domination of female ideology.97 Ironically, supposedly male values like self-control and self-discipline were embodied in China by females with bound feet. One can only imagine the excruciating self-discipline required for a female child of six to undergo daily rituals of painful humiliation associated with footbinding, and for the mothers expected to perform this ‘wifely duty’. Yet Chinese females were not perceived as brave or ‘manly’ for undergoing this painful procedure, night after night, morning after morning, throughout their lives. Extreme self-control was required for the child not to rip off the cloth bands and release her aching feet. Qiu Jin courageously challenged this tradition by unbinding her own feet as an adult, as it was extremely painful to walk on newly unbound feet. Through this embodiment of female agency, Qiu Jin ‘performed’ an act of subversion in Judith Butler’s terms. Qiu Jin hoped this would become the new reality for two hundred million Chinese women, whom she awakened in ‘A Respectful Proclamation to China’s two hundred million women comrades’ (1904). This reads We, the two hundred million women of China, are the most unfairly treated objects on the earth…Before many years have passed, without anyone bothering to ask if it’s right or wrong, they take out a pair of snow-white bands and bind them around our feet, tightening them with strips of white cotton; even when we go to bed at night we are not allowed to loosen them the least bit, with the result that the flesh peels away and the bones buckle under. The sole purpose of all this is just to ensure that our relatives, friends and neighbours will say: ‘At the so-and-so’s the girls have small feet’. Not only that, when it comes to the time to pick a son-inlaw, they rely on the advice of a couple of shameless matchmakers, caring only that the man’s family has some money or influence…When it is time to get married and move to the new house, they hire the bride a sedan chair all decked out with multi-coloured embroidery, but sitting shut up inside it one can barely breathe.98

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Qiu Jin published a feminist journal in 1906 entitled Zhongguo Nübao 中國女報 (Chinese Women’s Newspaper).99 This journal established Chinese versions of the New Woman, although cut short by Qiu Jin’s martyrdom. ZGNB discussed heroines, educational news and nursing tutorials to prepare Chinese women for financial independence.100 Qiu Jin’s dilemmas also troubled female Irish Revivalists. How could one define, embody, write or perform the New Woman if in the Foucauldian sense, the only terms of discourse or vocabularies available were those already defined by men and weighted with predominantly masculine meanings. If Qiu Jin dressed as a man to proclaim her freedom as a woman, did this undercut her message? Are androgyny or parody the only options available to women writers seeking sites of resistance? Bordo adroitly states that “to reshape one’s body into a man’s body is not to put on male power and privilege”.101 Even Qiu Jin’s decision to leave her children is problematic as an example of female power. Traditionally if Chinese marriages ended in divorce, children stayed with the Father’s family due to patrilineal values. Thus, it was more difficult for Chinese women to return and claim their children, than for Chinese males. How much did it cost Qiu Jin as a mother to embrace her agency as a woman? We do not know, as she rarely references her children in her writings, and focuses on the national need for revolution. Yan Haiping relates how Qiu Jin’s legacy and imaginary were appropriated as myth to construct nationalist Chinese history.102 Within this erasure of motherhood, Qiu Jin embodies contradictions forced upon modern female individuals who define their own subjectivity. In a Marxian sense, this exemplifies the superstructure that surrounds each individual and influences him/her culturally and educationally from birth. Marx asserts the economic base an individual inherits at birth, determines to a large extent any socio-economic opportunities for that individual. Thus, Qiu Jin could sell her jewellery and flee to Japan, but Chinese women of another class with less access to education and opportunities abroad could not. Bordo explains that extreme or hyper literal inscriptions of femininity manifested as hysteria in the nineteenth-century and agoraphobia or anorexia in the twentieth-century.103 Women took the dominant discourse of the age on femininity, and took this to its natural extreme of thinness for example, to embody the violence of society’s unattainable standards for women. In Qiu Jin’s time, such extremes were embodied in painful Chinese footbinding. The logic of the age dictated that

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Chinese women vied to demonstrate willingness to limit themselves to the domestic sphere, embodying the virtuous filial Confucian wife. Taken to this extreme, the cruel practice of Chinese footbinding appears through the lens of Bordo’s theory as a cry for help. It is as if Chinese women embodied through footbinding, the final logic of violence and pathology of the warped discussions on femininity in traditional China. By embodying the violence of Confucian values attributed to true femininity, footbinding literalised women’s pain and alienation from Chinese society. The response from Chinese society took one thousand years, although class played a role as footbinding was practiced by Chinese elites. However this is also problematic, as silently suffering painful footbinding colludes with and reinscribes the patriarchal Confucian order. Linguistically, Chinese women remained unable to articulate the pain of their social condition, because no words or socially accepted norms existed to adequately document their predicament. In a Freudian sense, this fetishisation of the female bound foot indicates the power of the male gaze, and foregrounds the observation of women as body parts, rather than a totality of body, feelings and intellect. Bordo posits that agoraphobia was a ‘strike’ against the renunciations demanded of housewives. I propose that Qiu Jin’s decision to abandon the role of housewife can be read as an alternative subversion, which further complicates the choices open to feminism.104 By exchanging self—sacrifice for the nation rather than self-sacrifice for the home, Qiu Jin achieved a sacrifice that was still subtly acceptable in a Confucian sense, which partly explains the longevity of her legend in China. Just as anorexics battle for value and power in a society that makes them feel powerless, refusing help from those who focus on the body instead of this psychic battle; so too Qiu Jin struggled to assist upper-class Chinese women with bound feet, who were undervalued and difficult to rouse. Bordo states that a willingness to challenge rules that limit femininity, does not necessarily change the rules which remain in place.105 Qiu Jin further sought to change culturally mediated interpretations of the female body, by opening a girl’s school to train girls in martial arts and revolutionary ideologies.106 I read this as Qiu Jin’s reply to the reduced mobility of Chinese women with bound feet, who could now be ‘read’ as active warriors. The pain experienced by Chinese women with bound feet also reduced their ability to enjoy sexuality. Bordo argues that Victorian women were expected to eat daintily, to encourage the limitation of all appetites.107 I contend that patriarchal values achieved something similar in China, by

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limiting the appetites of Chinese women in all spheres of life. Qiu Jin rejected this unreachable Chinese feminine ideal through a different form of feminist praxis. I argue that Qiu Jin inscribed a counter narrative on her own body, to the predominantly masculinist discourses in her day. Thus, Qiu Jin opened an alternative site of resistance for all Chinese male and female writers after her, since true feminism liberates all oppressed groups, including men. Hu Ying describes in her eponymous book Burying Autumn (2016) how Qiu Jin’s lifelong female friends and allies, Wu Zhiying and Xu Zihua, struggled to bury Qiu Jin’s body in a manner appropriate to her celebrity.108 The Qing state ordered Qiu Jin’s body repeatedly disinterred, moved and reburied, due to fears that Qiu Jin’s final resting site could become a focus of nationalist martyrdom and rebellion. Hence, Qiu Jin’s corpse embodied another inconvenient truth about female subjectivity in China, as her body had nine different burials. Even in death Qiu Jin’s body literally became a site open for reinterpretation and performed its own narrative. Qiu Jin palimpsestically re-wrote the narrative of the New Woman in China and inscribed on her body as text a new way to be a modern woman. Qiu Jin achieved this by unbinding her traditionally bound feet, simultaneously peeling back accretions of layers of inherited tradition on Chinese femininity. Footbinding was traditionally interpreted as a uniquely Chinese femininity, by men who constructed Chinese femininity in a socially determined and literally limiting way, designed to maximise male authority and power and concurrently devalue female agency. I read Qiu Jin’s unbinding of her feet as a postcolonial move beyond narrow traditional interpretations of Chinese femininity. Qiu Jin staked claims to do with subjectivity, female agency, modernity and self versus state, with important ramifications for the May Fourth generation she inspired and would have belonged to had she lived. C. T. Hsia observes that Chinese May Fourth writers were limited by a nationalistic “obsession with China”, rather than global concern for universal good.109 This applies to Qiu Jin, who constructed a Chinese version of the New Woman specifically concerned with the status of two hundred million members of her sex in China, who were written out of political power. Thus Qiu Jin was not focused on forging a globalised universal version of the New Woman. Yet Qiu Jin would conceivably not be against such a global project. However, Qiu Jin’s focus was how western methods could help China, rather than how China could help the

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west. Conversely, Chinese versions of the New Woman project implicitly impacted similar attempts in other parts of the world. Therefore, it becomes difficult to untangle the Derridean threads of New Women constructions throughout the globe, without allowing that each new construction impacted other constructions worldwide. Amy Dooling argues that hierarchical gender patterns grafted onto Chinese Communist objectives, paradoxically resulted in male domination of feminist ideology as male Chinese writers assumed the right to speak on behalf of Chinese New Women.110 Dooling explains that Qiu Jin utillsed the written form to liberate illiterate people, by using popular oral poetic narrative forms like ‘tanci’.111 Qiu Jin composed revolutionary texts in traditional genres, which I read as a modernist repurposing of traditional forms.112 Yet, Qiu Jin performed her most radical act by encouraging Chinese women to imagine themselves differently, where no space existed previously for this construction. Wendy Larson notes Charlotte Beahan claims that Qiu Jin was unique because she depicted women’s rights as a worthwhile objective, not simply as part of the national question.113 Qiu Jin proclaimed the need for women’s education, independence and a women’s militia, and her dedication to women’s physical education was a direct riposte to traditional Confucian values, which circumscribed women as physically weak. Hence, Qiu Jin set up Datong Physical Education School in her native Shaoxing to train women militarily.114 In summation, Qiu Jin’s last words “Autumn wind, autumn rain, fills me with melancholy” became her legacy memorised by Chinese schoolchildren. If one looks backwards through the lens of temporality, Qiu Jin’s words acquire a Derridean playfulness or wordplay, since Autumn is a pun on the character Qiu 秋 in her name. Jacques Derrida was born in Algeria two decades after Qiu Jin’s demise, but was also a doubly colonised subject. Young Derrida was excluded from Algerian schools for being Jewish and not French enough, and later from North African Arab and Berber society for being too French.115 Qiu Jin experienced similar dilemmas as she redefined her own subjectivity as both decolonised female and decolonised nationalist. Within Chinese semicolonisation from the Qing and western imperial powers, Qiu Jin negotiated intersectional choices open to her, through radically new constructions of gender, race and class. Both Qiu Jin and Derrida make postcolonial moves, by self—definition through playful wordplay, opening up linguistically polyvalent sites for de/recolonisation.

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Even after death, Qiu Jin’s body became part of the revolutionary narrative. Hu Ying states in Burying Autumn that Qiu Jin was moved after death by her friends Wu Zhiying and Xu Zihua, from the domestic sphere of the private and familial, to the public sphere of the national, when Sun Yatsen needed to consolidate the nation around a heroic local martyr.116 Qiu Jin’s execution sparked outrage in 1907 and increased sympathy for the nationalist Chinese cause, just as execution of the 1916 Easter rebels resulted in a similar outpouring of Irish nationalist outrage and literature, including Yeats’s Revivalist poem to mark Easter 1916.

Conclusion In conclusion, Qiu Jin literally erased evidence of her double colonisation as woman and Chinese semicolonial subject. I read Qiu Jin’s act of unbinding her traditionally bound feet as a palimpsest, a re-writing of her life as a New Woman on the manuscript of her body. Qiu Jin usurped male authority by literally wearing male clothes, although this embodies underlying contradictions and co-option of the Chinese New Woman. Qiu Jin’s literary praise of her Mother also upends hierarchical traditional Confucian literary roles, by reappropriating the overwhelmingly masculinist production of literature. Significantly, embodiment presented particular problems for Chinese New Women, and is one point of divergence from female Irish Revivalists, who did not have to confront problems of female embodiment in quite the same way. Qing authorities attempted to bodily erase Qiu Jin’s legacy by reburying her nine times to prevent this new iteration of rebellious Chinese female selfhood. I conclude that Qiu Jin’s legacy as China’s First Feminist and nationalist martyr was overemphasised as her literary legacy was concurrently devalued, in a way that did not routinely happen to male Chinese writers. Similarly, I conclude that Lady Gregory’s legacy became the Woman Behind the Irish Revival, rather than the Woman Who Led the Irish Revival From the Front, since Gregory’s money, house, ideas and mentorship of younger male Revivalists made the Irish Revival possible. Anne Fogarty concludes this is partly because her title ‘Lady’ isolated her from readers of another class. I detect deeper intersectionalities on Lady Gregory’s age, race and gender that undermined the value ascribed to her legacy. I deduce how Gregory’s Chinese Renaissance readership internalised that an elderly lady could pen a revolutionary play, and a landlady could

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write about peasant uprisings. Significantly, I conclude this influence was reciprocal, since Lady Gregory’s identification with nascent Asian nationalist movements was pivotal in influencing her turn towards Irish cultural nationalism. This means it was only possible for Lady Gregory to pen plays on peasant uprisings in Revivalist Ireland, because her life in Asia opened up exciting new literary and political possibilities and alternative postcolonised worldviews. One can only speculate how Irish Revivalism may have taken an alternative route, had it not been for the transformative influence of Asian anti-imperial experience on pivotal Irish Revivalist leader Lady Gregory. Lu Xun poignantly concluded that Qiu Jin was “clapped to death”, and academia has similarly clapped Lady Gregory’s legacy to death.117 I conclude the erasure of the literary legacies of both women ‘writers and fighters’ exemplifies the need for scholarship to recover Gregory’s and Qiu Jin’s feminist literary legacies.118 Mutually supporting intersectionalities present Gregory as a leading, yet shadowy figure routinely pushed to the background of Irish Revivalism and feminism. I contend both moves are unnecessary. Although Qiu Jin was China’s first feminist and an anti-imperial martyr, this is used to subtly undermine Qiu Jin’s literary legacy. Themes of erasure connect my comparative study of women writers in Revivalist Ireland and Republican era China. Even after death, Lady Gregory and Qiu Jin are condemned to fight for recognition of their literary prowess, in a way not demanded of male writers of the same period. Academia footnotes Lady Gregory as Yeats’s ‘friend’, rather than as his mentor. Revivalist Seán O’Casey penned forty letters to his confidante Lady Gregory and was twice invited to visit her at Coole. O’Casey credited Lady Gregory with saving his career, as Gregory had his plays typed up at her own expense and encouraged O’Casey to continue with characterisation when the Abbey twice refused them. Lady Gregory also forwarded to O’Casey all documents on the Abbey’s refusal to stage O’Casey’s Silver Tassie, this meant O’Casey could publicise his version of events in British newspapers and save his career.119 O’Casey openly wrote of his affection for Lady Gregory in a letter to critic Ronald Ayling on November 3, 1957 that mentions fellow Irish socialist George Bernard Shaw. O’Casey explains “Shaw had a deep affection for Lady Gregory, so had I”.120 It is something of this legacy of warmth and love for Gregory that I seek to recover, to undercut modern constructions of Lady

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Gregory as a cold distant figure, constructions that would seem unrecognisable to her contemporaries, who remembered Lady Gregory with deep abiding warmth affection and gratitude. In chapter six, I examined gendered postcolonial complications for Lady Gregory’s literary legacy, as a female Irish Revivalist, and Chinese May Fourth reception of her works. I compared Lady Gregory’s performance of the New Woman’s role with Chinese feminist writer Qiu Jin, another ‘Founding Mother’. In chapter seven I examine my fourth Irish Revivalist, another New Woman writer, Eva Gore-Booth and highlight how her Irish Revivalist poetry made it all the way to China. I continue my theme on the gendered erasures of female writers, by comparing socialist and feminist writers Eva Gore-Booth and Ding Ling.

Notes 1. Yun Zhu, Imagining Sisterhood in Modern Chinese Texts, 1890–1937 (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2017), ix. 2. Anne Fogarty, “Women and Modernism”, The Cambridge Companion to Irish Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 147– 160. 3. Iveta Jusová, The New Woman and the Empire (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2005), 183. 4. Tani E. Barlow, I Myself Am A Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), 12. 5. Irene Eber, Voices from Afar: Modern Chinese Writers on Oppressed Peoples and their Literature (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1980), 39, 69. 6. Ibid, 48, 93, 126. 7. Ibid. Mao Dun 茅盾 penname for Shen Yen-Ping [Shen Yanbing] 沈 雁冰, “Shi hu 市虎? (Spreading the News by Lady Gregory)”, XDDMJ (1924): 69–102. 8. Augusta Gregory, Spreading the News/The Rising of the Moon/The Poorhouse (Dublin: Maunsel, 1906), 21. 9. Mao Dun 茅盾 penname for Shen Yen-Ping [Shen Yanbing] 沈雁冰, “Haiqinghefo 海青赫佛 (Hyacinth Halvey by Lady Gregory)”, XQN 9, no. 5 (1921): 1–27. Eber, Voices from Afar, 123. 10. Mao Dun 茅盾 penname for Shen Yen-Ping [Shen Yanbing] 沈雁冰, “Lüxing Ren 旅行人 (The Travelling Man by Lady Gregory)”, FNPL 30 (March 1 1922), 31 (March 8 1922). Eber, Voices from Afar, 124. 11. Mao Dun 茅盾 penname Fang Xin 芳信, “Youli de ren 游历的人 (The Travelling Man by Lady Gregory)”, GMZB 2, no. 48 (1925): 40–42. 12. Chen Shu 陈恕, “Ai’erlan Wenxue Zai Zhongguo – Shiji Huimou 爱 尔兰文学在中国-世纪回眸 (Irish Literature in China – Looking Back

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13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

18. 19. 20. 21.

22.

23.

24. 25.

26.

Through the Century)”, Waiguo Wenxue 外国文学 (Foreign Literature) 4 (July 2011): 38–46. Linda Pui-Ling Wong, “The Reception of W. B. Yeats in Modern China”, in Irelands in the Asia–Pacific eds. Peter Kuch and Julie-Ann Robson (Gerard’s Cross: Colin Smythe Ltd., 2003), 441. Su Chaolung [Zhaolong] 蘇兆龍, “Yumen 獄門 (The Gaol Gate by Lady Gregory)”, YYZK 518 (1925): 348, [See Volumes 518–531] 519: 369, 520: 388, 521: 410, 522: 427, 523: 447, 524: 468, 525: 488, 526: 507, 527: 530, 528: 547, 530: 588, 531: 607. Anne Fogarty, “Women and Modernism”, 154, 155. Augusta Gregory, Seven Short Plays (Dublin: Maunsel, 1912), 181–208. Su Chaolung [Zhaolong] 蘇兆龍, “Lüke旅客 (The Travelling Man by Lady Gregory)”, YWZZ 11, no. 6 (1925): 541–550. Zhu Rangcheng 朱穰丞, “Pinmin xiyi suo zhi bingfang貧民習藝所之病 房 (The Workhouse Ward by Lady Gregory)”, XDXJ 1, no. 1 (1929): 93–108. Ch’eng Tz’u-min [Cheng Cimin] 程次敏, “Ming Yue Shang Sheng明 月上升 (The Rising of the Moon by Lady Gregory)”, CBFK 9 (1920): 24–26. Eber, Voices from Afar, 122. Wang Xiaoyin 王小隱, “Yue Shang月上 (The Rising of the Moon by Lady Gregory)”, XZG 2, no. 1 (1920): 147–155. Li Jianwu 李健吾, “Yueliang de sheng qi月亮的升起 (The Rising of the Moon by Lady Gregory)”, QHZK 27, no. 12 (1927): 637–648. Wang Xuehao 王學浩, “Mingyue dongsheng明月東升 (The Rising of the Moon by Lady Gregory)”, NQNYK 10, no. 5 (1931): 61–70. Chao Ding 朝鼎, “Yueliang shengqi le月亮升起了 (The Rising of the Moon by Lady Gregory)”, YL 2, no. 1 (1933): 103–112. Sha Jin 莎 金, “Yueliang shengqi lai月亮升起来 (The Rising of the Moon by Lady Gregory)”, WY 1 (1936): 12–13, 2 (1936): 17–20. Mao Dun 茅盾 penname for Shen Yen-Ping [Shen Yanbing] 沈雁冰, “Yumen獄門 (The Gaol Gate by Lady Gregory)”, FNPL 65 (Nov 1 1922), 66 (Nov 8 1922). Mao Dun 茅盾 penname for Shen Yen-Ping [Shen Yanbing] 沈雁冰, “Wuya烏鴉 (The Jackdaw by Lady Gregory)”, FNPL 34 (Mar 29 1922), 35 (April 15 1922), 36 (April 12 1922), 37 (April 19 1922), 44 (June 7 1922). Bernd Eberstein, A Selective Guide to Chinese Literature 1900–1949 Volume IV The Drama ed. Bernd Eberstein (Leiden: Brill, 1990), 38. Xiong Foxi熊佛西, “Xiju dazhonghua zhi shiyan 喜劇大眾化之實驗 (Experiment in the Popularisation of Comedy)” (1936). Cf. Gu Wenxun 顧文蘍, “Shilun Xiju dazhonghua zhi shiyan 試論喜劇大眾化之實驗 (On Experiment in the Popularisation of Comedy)”, NJDXB 4 (1985): 26–30. Bernd Eberstein, Guide to Chinese Literature, 38.

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27. Gregory, Seven Short Plays, 83–95. 28. Thomas A. Larcom, “Proclamation”, The Police Gazette – Hue and Cry, January 26, 1866. 29. Desmond Ryan, The Fenian Chief: A Biography of James Stephens (Dublin and Sydney: Gill and Son, 1967), 215, 216. 30. Chen Shu, “Irish Literature in China”, 38–46. 31. Bonnie McDougall and Kam Louie, The Literature of China in the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 157. 32. Wang Xiaoyin 王小隱, “Yue Shang月上 (The Rising of the Moon by Lady Gregory)”, XZG 2, no. 1 (1920): 147–155. Chao Ding 朝鼎, “Yueliang shengqi le月亮升起了 (The Rising of the Moon by Lady Gregory)”, YL 2, no. 1 (1933): 103–112. 33. Lydia H. Liu, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity – China, 1900–1937 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1995), 17. 34. Lydia H. Liu, Clash of Empires – The Invention of China in Modern World Making (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2004). 35. Su Chaolung [Zhaolong] 蘇兆龍, “Yumen獄門 (The Gaol Gate by Lady Gregory)”, YYZK 527 (1925): 530. 36. “Two Books of the Play”, TCP December 16, 1915, 4. 37. Sha Jin 莎金, “Yueliang shengqi lai月亮升起来 (The Rising of the Moon by Lady Gregory)”, WY 1 (1936): 12–13, 2 (1936): 17–20. 38. Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland: the Literature of the Modern Nation (London: Vintage, 1995), 83–99. 39. The 1879 Egyptian nationalist revolt against the oppressive Khedive regime and European domination of Egypt. 40. Colin Smythe, “The Gregorys and Egypt, 1855–56 and 1881–82”, Literary Inter-Relations: Ireland, Egypt and the Far East, ed. Mary Massoud (Gerards Cross: Colin Smythe Ltd., 1996), 147–153. 41. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979). Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Vintage, 1994). 42. Edward Said, “Orientalism” and “Culture and Imperialism”, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism 2nd edition ed. Vincent Leitch (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2010), 1866–1904. 43. Ibid, 1888. 44. Extraterritoriality was the state of exemption from local law, thus if a foreigner committed rape, theft or murder against a Chinese citizen, s/he could not be tried by Chinese courts but was tried by foreign British, American, French or German courts in foreign concessions like Shanghai. This led to abuse of Chinese citizens by foreigners who knew Chinese courts could not try them up to WWII. John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, China A New History (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2006), 203, 204.

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45. Mary Lou Kohfeldt, Lady Gregory – The Woman Behind the Irish Renaissance (New York: Atheneum, 1985), 4, 5. 46. Frederick Jameson, “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism”, Social Text 15 (Autumn 1986): 65–88. 47. Said, Norton, 1895, 1896. 48. Fairbank and Goldman, China, 266. Lydia H. Liu, Translingual Practice, 1–10, 41. 49. Lee Jenkins, “‘Black Murphy’: Claude McKay and Ireland”, Irish University Review 33, no. 2 (2003): 279–290. 50. Terry Eagleton explains, English language and literature became part of the administration of the British Empire in Africa and India. During the Victorian era English arose as a discipline, to foster appreciation for culture in the less educated classes who did not know Greek and Latin. But this became intertwined with English nationalism during WWI and loss of the colonies, hence the subject was entitled “English” rather than “Literature”. Many Irish writers were subsumed through this process of cultural appropriation and educational colonisation. Terry Eagleton, “The Rise of English” in Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 2140–2146. 51. Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, “On the Abolition of the English Department”, in Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 1992–2000. 52. Lucy McDiarmid, “Lady Gregory, Wilfrid Blunt, and London Table Talk”, Irish University Review 34, no. 1 (2004): 67–80. 53. Michel Hockx, “Mad Women and Mad Men: Intraliterary Contact in Early Republican Literature”, Autumn Floods: Essays in Honour of Marián Gálik (1998): 307–319. 54. Mary Lou Kohfeldt, Lady Gregory – The Woman Behind the Irish Renaissance, frontispiece. 55. “Seán O’Casey Goes to Town”, TNCDN April 8, 1926, 11. 56. Anne Fogarty, “Introduction”, Special Edition – Lady Gregory Irish University Review 34, no. 1 (2004): viii-xiv. 57. Eglantina Remport, “‘I usually first see a play as a picture’: Lady Gregory and the Visual Arts”, Irish University Review 34, no. 1 (2004): 42–45. 58. James Pethica, Lady Gregory’s Diaries 1892–1902 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), xxv. 59. Lucy McDiarmid, “Lady Gregory… Table Talk”, 67–80. 60. Sineád Garrigan Mattar, “‘Wage For Each People Her Hand Has Destroyed’: Lady Gregory’s Colonial Nationalism”, Irish University Review 34, no. 1 (2004): 49–66. 61. Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, 83–95. 62. Maureen Waters, “Lady Gregory’s ‘Grania’: A Feminist Voice”, Irish University Review 25, no. 1 (1995): 11–24.

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63. Patricia Lysaght, “Perspectives on Narrative Communication and Gender: Lady Augusta Gregory’s Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland (1920)”, Fabula 39 (1998): 256–276. 64. Colm Tóibín, Lady Gregory’s Toothbrush (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2002), 120. 65. Anthony Roche, “Re-Working “The Workhouse Ward”: McDonagh, Beckett and Gregory”, Irish University Review 34, no. 1 (2004): 171–184. Anne Fogarty, “Introduction”, xi. 66. Michael McAteer, “Kindness in Your Unkindness: Lady Gregory and History”, Irish University Review 34, no. 1 (2004): 94–108. 67. Richard Allen Cave, “Revaluations: Representations of Women in the Tragedies of Gregory and Yeats”, Irish University Review 34, no. 1 (2004): 122–132. 68. “Two books of the Play”, TCP December 16, 1915, 4. 69. Pierre Bourdieu, “Distinction” and “The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field”, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism 2nd edition ed. Vincent Leitch (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2010), 1660–1680. 70. “Lady Gregory Noted Playwright Dies”, TNCDN May 26, 1932, 5. 71. Xiong Foxi熊佛西, “Xiju dazhonghua zhi shiyan”, 62. Cf. Gu Wenxun 顧文蘍, “Shilun Xiju dazhonghua zhi shiyan試論喜劇大眾化之實驗 (On Experiment in the Popularisation of Comedy)”, NJDXB 4 (1985): 26– 30. 72. Paige Reynolds, “The Making of a Celebrity: Lady Gregory and the Abbey’s First American Tour”, Irish University Review 34, no. 1 (2004): 81–93. 73. Hu Ying, Burying Autumn: Poetry, Friendship and Loss (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2016), 121. 74. Cathy Leeney, “The New Woman in a New Ireland?: ‘Grania’ after Naturalism”, Irish University Review 34, no. 1 (2004): 157–170. 75. Dawn Duncan, ‘Lady Gregory and the Feminine Journey: “The Gaol Gate, Grania”, and “The Story Brought by Brigit”’, Irish University Review 34, no. 1 (2004): 133–143. 76. Hu Ying, Burying Autumn, 110. 77. Ronán McDonald, “The Irish Revival and Modernism”, in The Cambridge Companion to Irish Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 51–62. 78. Fogarty, “Introduction”, xiii. 79. Mary Backus Rankin, “The Emergence of Women at the End of the Ch’ing: The Case of Ch’iu Chin”, in Women in Chinese Society ed. M. Wolf and R. Witke (Stanford: SUP, 1975), 39–66. 80. Irish male Revivalist Edward Martyn (1859–1923) also played a pivotal role in founding modern Irish theatre, introduced Lady Gregory and

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81. 82. 83. 84.

85.

86.

87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96.

97. 98. 99. 100. 101.

Yeats, and financially supported The Irish Literary Theatre. Martyn parted with Gregory and Yeats and died in 1923, and was not present for the 1920s and 1930s. I contend Lady Gregory’s contributions go beyond money, as her paradigm-shifting ideas on language were appropriated by male peers. Joan Judge, The precious raft of history: the past, the West, and the woman question in China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 72. Frederick Jameson, “Third World Literature”, 65–88. Tani E. Barlow, I Myself Am A Woman, 2. Wang Lingzhen, Personal Matters: Women’s Autobiographical Practice in Twentieth Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 28. Susan Bordo, “Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body”, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism 2nd edition ed. Vincent Leitch (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2010), 2240–2254. Rey Chow, “On Chineseness As A Theoretical Problem”, Boundary 2, 25, no. 3 Modern Chinese Literary and Cultural Studies in the Age of Theory: Reimagining a Field (1998): 1–24. Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). Bordo, Norton, 2241. Ibid. Joan Judge, The precious raft of history, 216. Dorothy Ko, Cinderella’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 1–6. Ibid, 2. Jonathan Spence, The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and their Revolution (New York: Viking Press, 1981), 85. Bordo, Norton, 2243. Ibid. Yang Wenqi and Yan Fei, “The annihilation of femininity in Mao’s China: Gender inequality of sent-down youth during the Cultural Revolution”, China Information 31, no. 1 (2017): 63–83. Amy Dooling, Women’s Literary Feminism in Twentieth Century China (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 3. Ibid, 52. Wendy Larson, Women and Writing in Modern China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 51. Qiu Jin, Zhongguo Nübao 中國女報 (Chinese Women’s Newspaper) (1906): 1–64. Bordo, Norton, 2250.

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102. Yan Haiping, Chinese Women Writers and the Feminist Imagination 1905–1948 (New York: Routledge, 2006), 68. 103. Bordo, Norton, 2243, 2244. 104. Ibid, 2244, 2245. 105. Ibid, 2252. 106. Larson, Women and Writing, 112. 107. Bordo, Norton, 2254. 108. Hu Ying, Burying Autumn, 307. 109. C. T. Hsia, A History of Modern Chinese Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 533, 656. 110. Dooling, Literary Feminism, 27. 111. Ibid, 51. 112. Wilt Ideama and Beata Grant, The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2004), 765–808. 113. Larson, Women and Writing, 29. 114. Ibid, 51, 112. 115. Jacques Derrida, “Of Grammatology”, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism 2nd edition ed. Vincent Leitch (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2010), 1680–1697. 116. Hu Ying, Burying Autumn, 291. 117. Craig Calhoun, Neither Gods nor Emperors: Students and the Struggle for Democracy in China (California: Berkeley, 1997), 183. 118. Lee Gong-Way, “Critiques of Ch’iu Chin: A Radical Feminist and National Revolutionary (1875–1907)”, Chinese Culture: A Quarterly Review 32, no. 2 (1991): 57–66. 119. David Krause, A Self-Portrait of the Artist as a Man: Seán O’Casey’s Letters (Dublin: Dolmen Press, 1968), 26. 120. Seán O’Casey letter to Ronald Ayling, November 3, 1957. Seán O’Casey, The Letters of Seán O’Casey, 1955–1958 Vol. 1II ed. David Krause (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1989), 485–487.

CHAPTER 7

How Was the New Woman Constructed in Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China? A Comparison of Socialist and Feminist Writers Ding Ling and Eva Gore-Booth

If Lu Xun concluded Qiu Jin was “clapped to death”, how did Chinese female writers continue to establish the New Woman in China? Chapter seven compares feminist socialists Chinese May Fourth female writer Ding Ling 丁玲 (1904–1986) and Irish Revivalist Eva Gore-Booth (1870– 1926), an Irish New Woman. In chapters six and seven, I compare how the modern New Woman was constructed differently in the postcolonised peripheries as overwhelmingly masculinist nationalist discourses required female writers in Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China to postpone women’s rights and first establish freedom for the nation. I compare challenges faced by Irish and Chinese female writers, who constructed their version of the New Woman through their lives and literatures. Although both women writers are not co-eval (as Ding Ling lived longer), I compare Eva Gore-Booth and Ding Ling as “writers and fighters” despite chronological differences, because both were first-wave feminist socialists. The first wave of feminism—focused on the vote, education and opportunities for women, lasted longer in China. Secondwave feminism—focused on gender equality and rights, arose in the West in the 1960s; but arrived in post-Mao China in the 1980s. I compare how Eva Gore-Booth and Ding Ling as first-wave feminists, whose works and

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. O’Malley-Sutton, The Chinese May Fourth Generation and the Irish Literary Revival: Writers and Fighters, Asia-Pacific and Literature in English, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5269-4_7

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activism carved out a new role for women during the 1920s, constructed postcolonised peripheral New Women in divergent political and socioeconomic settings in Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China, in a global transnational setting.

Ding Ling For over two decades Chinese female writer Ding Ling’s 丁玲 (1904– 1986) writings were banned in China, her name went unmentioned and no one knew if she was still alive (Fig. 7.1). Ding Ling’s life provides a fascinating narrative on how the construction of the New Woman often ran aground in China, when confronted with the perceived need for a collective, rather than an individualised modern identity. Ding Ling’s widowed mother Yu Manzhen attended an academy for female students and passed on a love of learning, nationalism and women’s rights to her daughter.2 Ding Ling subsequently attended the first female academies in China and admired revolutionary feminist martyr Qiu Jin. Anarchist Ding Ling naturally questioned male authority, as she was not raised in traditional Chinese feminine self-abnegation. Paradoxically, Jiang Bingzhi born in Hunan in 1904 (pseudonym Ding Ling), was arrested by both the nationalist Guomindang and the Communists, dared to disagree with Mao over art’s political role during the

Fig. 7.1 Ding Ling’s life as a modern Chinese writer exemplifies that she was caught between tensions on how to be both a Chinese feminist and a Chinese socialist. Courtesy of JABEL/ CPC Photo

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Yan’an years, was exiled to reform through labour in 1958, and rehabilitated by the CCP in 1979. Ding Ling’s construction of the socialist Chinese New Woman exemplifies the inherent tensions of her May Fourth project. Ding Ling was a complicated figure who criticised others and was criticised herself during the Cultural Revolution.3 Ding Ling’s widowed mother raised an independent educated thinker, ‘inspiring and conspiring’ with her daughter to radically break with the Chinese past in Yi-tsi Mei Feuerwerker’s evocative phrase.4 However, Ding Ling was daughter of a once prosperous gentrified family with opportunities available to her class. By age sixteen in 1920, Ding Ling was already a feminist iconoclast who cut her hair, refused an arranged marriage, demanded coeducation with boys, taught in a night school for the poor, and was a published author. Ding Ling’s eclectic precocious achievements are similar to another feminist socialist, Irish Revivalist Eva Gore-Booth who also favoured nationalism, vegetarianism and pacificism. Both female writers constructed a new ontology or way of being for women. In 1928 Ding Ling published Miss Sophie’s Diary, which presents the difficulty of an independent life for modern Chinese women in a post-revolutionary, post-Confucian society.5 Sophie’s Diary describes the contradictory sexual impulses of the tubercular Sophie, who loves an unattainable man. Tani Barlow notes the name Sophie reflects Sophia Perovskaya, a Russian noblewoman executed beside her revolutionary peasant lover.6 Although Sophie’s Diary was initially well received, Ding Ling was later attacked during Chinese Communist rule because her book depicted an individualised, urban, bourgeoise, female subjectivity as worthy of portrayal, rather than the heroic peasant demanded by socialist realism. Lu Xun questioned where Ibsen’s Nora could go in China, and concluded that she could only return to the family home, become a prostitute or die.7 Ding Ling’s literature provided an alternative answer on where such Chinese Nora’s could go in semicolonial China. Chien-hsin Tsai reads Ding Ling’s works and the May Fourth project as “literary bombs”, using “bomb” as a metaphor according to sound theory. Tsai elucidates how May Fourth writers often used militaristic terms like bomb, fighters, revolution, war and explosion, as pens became “guns” in their promotion of the Chinese vernacular as a new literary “weapon”.8 Lu Xun commented that the excessive use of western punctuation and exclamation marks by young Chinese poets meant they should be charged with “illegal possession of arms”. Chen Duxiu, Cai

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Yuanpei and Hu Shi all had friends who were Chinese suicide-bombers or wrote poems commemorating them. Chinese recitation poets used personification to proclaim “Ha! I am a bomb!” during the resistance war against Japan, as the auditory repetition of public performance detonated this explosive literary device. Contemporaries note how Ding Ling’s incendiary literary reinvention of the role of women stupefied readers, “like a bomb dropped on this society”. Tsai emphasises that the May Fourth generation lived in constant bombardment and used this “bomb metaphor” to urge for reconstruction.9 In Beijing University Ding Ling was taught by Lu Xun, read the Xin Qingnian 新青年 (New Youth) journal, and met poet Hu Yepin with whom she had a child. Hu Yepin and twenty-three other socialist writers were executed by the nationalist Guomindang in 1931, and Ding Ling attained celebrity as the ‘widow’ of one of the Five Martyrs. Ding Ling’s baby was two months old when Hu Yepin was executed.10 Ding Ling left her baby with her mother and returned to Shanghai to hide and write for the League of Left-Wing Writers. She began a novel on her mother’s life, but was kidnapped by the nationalist Guomindang in 1933. Ironically, eulogies extolled Ding Ling who was presumed executed by the Guomindang. Ding Ling was under house arrest for three years, and gave birth to a daughter. In September 1936 Ding Ling escaped to the Communist Bao’an stronghold in Shaanxi where Mao Zedong penned two poems celebrating her.11 Ding Ling literally brought art to rural areas and travelled with the troops performing plays and songs that urged unity against Japan. (Chapter six established that during the 1930s Lady Gregory’s anticolonial Irish Revivalist plays were also performed in these rural Chinese areas). Significantly, in 1942 at the isolated wartime Communist Yan’an base, Ding Ling rejected Mao Zedong’s subordination of art and literature to politics. This brave move cost Ding Ling, whose writings hinted that revolutionary Communism failed to live up to feminism.12 Controversially, Ding Ling’s self-criticism included denunciation of Wang Shiwei, a writer who also criticised Mao and disappeared and was later pronounced dead. A chastened Ding Ling checked her depictions of feminine subjectivity, and was awarded a Stalin prize in 1951 for her novel on land reform, The Sun Shines on the Sanggan River.13 Ding Ling was vice-chairperson of the All-China Union of Literary Workers from 1949, edited journals, and led the Literature Bureau of the Propaganda Department, a party position. However, this did not prevent Ding Ling’s exile

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for two decade after the 1957 Anti—Rightist anti-intellectual campaign during the Hundred Flowers period when Mao called for open criticism of the Communist Party. Ding Ling was deemed insufficiently penitent for supposed crimes like immorality, possessing a superiority complex and looking down on the peasant masses. Ding Ling was removed from the Party, lost all rights as a citizen in 1958, and her works were banned.14 During the Cultural Revolution Ding Ling was beaten, abused, locked in a cow shed for ten months and survived five years of solitary confinement in Qincheng prison. She discovered in 1975 her husband Chen Ming had been just one cell away.15 Ding Ling was rehabilitated in 1979 after Mao’s death in 1976, under Deng Xiaoping’s reformist leadership. Yet, Ding Ling was called ‘Old Shameful’ by Chinese second-wave feminists, because she defended the Communist Party that persecuted her. She died seven years after her rehabilitation in 1986.16 Feuerwerker observes that Ding Ling never perceived opposition between literature and the Communist Party political line.17 This complicates western-centric interpretations and simple dichotomies between artistic freedom and political repression, or feminist iconoclasm. Paradoxically, Ding Ling continued to believe in the Communist Party that persecuted her artistic license. Conversely, feminist New Woman writer Eva Gore-Booth in Revivalist Ireland was not criticised for insufficient focus on socialism.

Postponement of Women’s Rights In China the urgent question of women’s rights bifurcated in 1922, and was shelved when the right and the left joined Chiang Kaishek’s 1927 Northern Expedition to end warlord rule in China.18 Similarly, in Revivalist Ireland in 1922, the promise of women’s rights was also bypassed in favour of establishing a patriarchal nationalist State. Ironically, the Irish Free State provided pensions in 1932/1934 for the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921) veterans, yet female veterans (like Margaret Skinnider thrice-shot during Easter 1916) were repeatedly refused a pension on the grounds that soldiers were male by definition.19 Even Eva Gore-Booth’s sister, Constance Markiewicz an active leader in Easter 1916, died penniless without support from the State she fought to create. In China it was difficult to ‘emancipate’ women from abusive Confucian family ties, because this placed women at the mercy of local male cadre members and their agendas. Also, Revivalists Eva Gore-Booth and Lady

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Gregory, who wrote on the Irish New Woman were themselves from the colonial class. Similarly, May Fourth writer Ding Ling’s construction of the modern Chinese woman was problematised by concepts borrowed from the west, which included imperial cultural assumptions.

The Body as Problem Wendy Larson addresses additional problems on constructions of the Chinese New Woman. Traditional Chinese characters circumscribed women bodily in the text, as physically weak characters. Larson argues that Chinese New Women writers ignored the body altogether or deemed it too large an obstacle to circumvent. Thus Ding Ling’s Miss Sophie had TB yet focused on an intellectualised love, rather than bodily consummation.20 Traditional Chinese society never envisaged western notions of self versus society. May Fourth writers had to invent new words conveying modern concepts to audiences used to Confucian reciprocal relationships, where father was to son, as monarch was to minister and husband was to wife. Also the west defined gender biologically, not relationally. Female Chinese writers like Ding Ling faced unique challenges on embodiment, unlike western first-wave feminists. However, Irish women activists also encountered difficulties regarding male attitudes towards the female body, when attempting to bodily partake in revolution during Easter 1916. Many male rebels prevented women from joining the fight, despite the fact that Eva Gore-Booth’s sister Constance Markiewicz was an active leader in Easter 1916. Lucy McDiarmid illustrates how Irish women activists literally had to break glass windows to enter the General Post Office during the 1916 Easter Rising, in order to bodily participate in Ireland’s revolution.21 Despite similar encircling misperceptions on what Chinese women could do, Ding Ling refused to sacrifice her revolutionary literary aspirations, despite persecution from the right and the left.22 In May Fourth China and Revivalist Ireland, the production of the New Woman and revolutionary feminist literature had to wait, as political events took centre stage. Jin Feng explains how male Chinese writers explored and negotiated their own emerging identity as modern intellectuals, by appropriating the construction of a gender-neutral New Woman.23 Thus, Chinese male writers envisioned a male version of the Chinese New Woman; someone open to free love, yet willing to subordinate her intellectualism to patriarchal nationalist socialism. Moreover, appropriation of feminist subaltern

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voices furthered a western feminist agenda. Tani Barlow explains it became impossible for Chinese writers like Ding Ling to sustain imported western versions of the New Woman.24

Postcolonial Modernist Readings Irish Revivalism re-imagined or re-invented postcolonised Ireland during the early twentieth-century, brokering a new hybrid identity. I contend that Chinese May Fourth writers like Ding Ling re-imagined or re-invented a hybrid Chinese postcolonised modern identity.25 Ding Ling centred the “woman problem” in this modern discourse. Ding Ling’s generation felt betrayed by the handover of Shandong to Japan after Versailles in 1919, and turned against the Chinese ancien régime. Revivalist Lady Gregory and her Anglo—Irish protégés also turned against their own class interests, as that class terminally declined in Ireland. Just as the Chinese Renaissance identified with the West more than their own traditional heritage, so too Anglo-Irish writers Lady Gregory and Eva Gore-Booth sought a liberatory new identity, by identification with an indigenous Irish tradition not originally theirs. Ding Ling’s Miss Sophie was influenced by French Flaubert, while Lady Gregory’s plays were inspired by indigenous Celtic Irish folklore. Moreover, Postcolonial and Modernist elements also present in Ding Ling’s writings. Ka F. Wong reads Ding Ling’s version of modernity in Sophie as ‘colonial fantasy’, since Sophie’s object of desire Ling Jishi is the “personification of the West and masculinity in contrast to the Chineseness and femininity of [Sophie]”.26 However, Ling Jishi is not western, but an ethnic Chinese businessman from British colonial Singapore, who depicts the twin evils of Colonial Modernity and Capitalist Modernity. Wong describes Ling as a colonised westernised Chinese businessman, who falls between China and the West. Wong asserts that the problem for Ding Ling’s Chinese May Fourth generation was modernisation “always means Westernization and comes in the form of colonization”. Wong concludes the ‘Western discourse of modernity privileges only one form of subjectivity—a masculine and colonial kind that is affirmed by a feminised “other”’.27 Likewise, I read these complicated tensions as evidence of Ding Ling’s semicolonial condition, and discover similar anxieties inherent to the May Fourth project in Cao Yu’s postcolonised Wilderness

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in chapter eight. I contend that the Postcolonial Modernist lens opens innovative readings of Ding Ling’s writings. Realist western authors often claimed to have ‘discovered’ original source materials, like diaries or letters to base their fictional narratives upon. Likewise, Ding Ling’s Miss Sophie’s Diary purports to portray realism. However, Marston Anderson points out that realism can never adequately capture reality since it is mimesis, or a copied version of reality.28 I contend the style and narration of Miss Sophie is an interior monologue or stream of consciousness, that focuses on the psychological immediacy of the female protagonist and I detect these Modernist elements in Ding Ling’s writings. Hence, I read Ding Ling’s descriptions of Sophie’s mundane daily life in quotidian detail, as further evidence of Modernist introspection. Chinese Renaissance writers like Ding Ling encouraged readers to confuse protagonist and author. Likewise, Irish Revivalist plays present a benevolent female landlady who sacrifices herself for her tenantry. To cope with the shock of the modern, radical generations in the decolonising peripheries in Ireland and China, formed groups devoted to politicised literary debate. Lady Gregory had ‘table talk’ at Coole Park, where she mentored, advanced and rivalled her younger male protégés. Ding Ling joined May Fourth literary groups that translated western literature, as models for their own writing. The (1937–1947) CCP project based in the isolated border Yan’an region was an effective locus for effecting radical ideological, cultural and political change in China. At this communist base disenchanted writers and political activists like Ding Ling gathered in a political experiment to carry out socialist government in the locality. Like in the Irish Renaissance, the rustification of art transformed peasant folklore into new literary forms. Theatre was a logical vehicle to educate the illiterate Chinese masses, as you do not need to read to watch a play. Ding Ling toured the front with a service-group theatre during 1942 to advance the communist cause and wrote her short story “When I was in Xia Village” at this time.29 Not allowing a crisis to go to waste, CCP writers produced propaganda to suggest the social crisis started by war with Japan, offered a moment for personal and collective transformation. Ding Ling’s female protagonist Zhenzhen is rescued by the Communist Party, but is sent away to treat the venereal disease she contracted when spying on the Japanese.

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Frederic Jameson claims stories from the peripheries function as feminised “national allegory”.30 Yet, Ding Ling writes that the villagers do not ‘read’ female protagonist Zhenzhen’s rape as Japan raping China, but instead blame the girl for shaming her father. Zhenzhen’s name ‘double purity’ links to Lu Xun’s attack on the cult of chastity in New Youth in July 1918. This Confucian cult decreed that a raped woman should kill herself to prevent her family loosing face, and a widow should not remarry, but should be honoured for piously starving to death.31 Was Zhenzhen a woman who lost her chastity as the villagers read her, or a hero as the communists read her? Ding Ling’s bold decision to let the girl speak for herself had ominous implications for Ding Ling’s own later political exile. Ding Ling concludes in Zhenzhen’s words the Party is not paramount as “a person’s life is not just for one’s father or mother”.32 Louise Edwards concludes that seventy years of exegeses or interpretation of “Xia Village” meant that female chastity became a currency or commodity, to validate the moral virtue of the PRC and the CCP.33 Originally Chinese critics claimed Zhenzhen as a heroic resistance fighter. This was repudiated during the 1957 Anti-Rightist campaign, when Chinese critics claimed the CCP never allowed Chinese women to be used in this degrading way. Today Zhenzhen is re-read as emblematic of the narrative Japan ‘raped’ China. Edwards explains that “female chastity became a synecdoche [a part that stands in for the whole] for good government”.34 Ding Ling asked in “Thoughts on March 8” on International Women’s Day in 1942, “When will it no longer be necessary to attach special weight to the word ‘woman’?”.35 In conclusion, after exile for two decades and rehabilitation under Deng Xiaoping, Ding Ling refused to blame the Communist Party for years of mistreatment, earning the name “Old Shameful” before her death in 1986.36 Tani Barlow reads Ding Ling as a first-wave feminist who was ‘lost in translation’, when second-wave feminists could not reconcile Ding Ling’s refusal to blame the Communist Party that imprisoned her. As Ding Ling concluded in “Thoughts on March 8”, “women are incapable of transcending the age they live in”.37 Was Ding Ling’s life a rebuttal of Marxism as she rose above her circumstances to become a modern Chinese New Woman? Or did her life confirm the Marxist view that an individual cannot escape the superstructure surrounding one at birth? I conclude that Ding Ling, like her character Miss Sophie, was ultimately unable to escape the constricting gendered realities of Colonial Modernity. If the construction of the New Woman frequently ran

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aground in May Fourth China, how did the comparative New Woman fare in Revivalist Ireland?

Eva Gore-Booth Another first-wave feminist, Eva Gore-Booth (1870–1926) was born into an educated gentry family in Ireland. Ding Ling’s mother Yu Manzhen formed solidarities with Xiang Jingyu, just as Eva Gore-Booth formed a relationship with Esther Roper, a working-class socialist from Manchester.38 Ding Ling’s novel Mother (1933) celebrated her mother’s growing political consciousness as a wealthy gentry woman during the 1911 Revolution, and depicts male gentry members ‘cutting off their queues’, long plaits demonstrating obedience to Qing rule, just as Ding Ling’s uncles did in real life. Gore-Booth sisters Eva and Constance in similar fashion, metaphorically cut off their queues or relationship to the old Anglo-Irish aristocratic order, by taking up feminist, nationalist and republican causes in Revivalist Ireland (Fig. 7.2). Sonja Tiernan notes a December 1896 Vanity Fair article from the Lissadell collection, demonstrates the sexist attitudes these two revolutionary sisters encountered and encapsulates the male-centric environment facing constructions of the Irish New Woman The New Woman is still with us and shows herself where least expected. In the far-away regions of County Sligo, among the wives and daughters of the farmers fishermen, the three pretty daughters of Sir Henry Gore-Booth are creating a little excitement (not to say amusement) for the emancipation of their sex. Miss Gore-Booth and her sisters, supported by a few devoted yokels, have been holding a few meetings in connection with the Woman’s Suffrage (or, shall I say, ‘The Revolt of the Daughters?’) movement. Their speeches are eloquent, (un)conventional and (non)convincing. They are given to striking out a line for themselves, in more sense than one; and public oratory is their newest toy. The sisters make a pretty picture on the platform; but it is not women of their type who need to assert themselves over Man & Co., However, it amuses them – and others and I doubt if the tyrant has much to fear from their little arrows.39

This infantilising account dripping with derision mocks attempts by Eva and Constance to liberate women of all classes and defines their serious intent as play. Patrick Quigley outlines in Sisters Against Empire (2016) how “one fought with a pen, the other with a sword”.40 In

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Fig. 7.2 The literary, feminist, socialist and pacificist legacy of Irish Revivalist Eva Gore-Booth has largely been downplayed in relation to that of her more militant, Irish Republican sister Constance Markiewicz. Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland

Revivalist Ireland, Lady Gregory and the Gore-Booth sisters provided anticolonial locations in their stately homes for a revivifying project similar to the anti-imperial Chinese May Fourth project. The Irish Revivalist project transformed Irish folklore, syntax and culture into resources for a new type of literature to re-invent postcolonised Ireland. However, these

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comparative Irish and Chinese Renaissance projects were led by upperclass artists to empower a different class of people, which led to unseen bias. Just as Ding Ling rejected her Chinese gentry past, so too Eva GoreBooth rejected her Anglo-Irish aristocratic heritage, choosing instead to live with and work for the poor. Eva Gore-Booth’s causes included a cornucopia of women’s rights, pacifism, nationalism, labour rights and vegetarianism.41 Maureen O’Connor’s article underscores Eva’s vegetarianism and notes that Eva’s friend Margaret Cousins (wife of James) went on hunger strike for women’s rights.42 Eva also knew writer Edward Carpenter, whose poem “And This Thing Cries for Empire”, compares Irish and Indian colonisation and reads This Thing from all her smoky cities and slums, her idiot clubs and drawing-rooms and her brokers’ dens Cries out to give her blessings to the world! And even while she cries Stand Ireland and India at her doors In rags and famine These are her blessings of Empire! Ireland (dear Sister-isle, so near at hand, so fertile, once so prosperous), Rack-rented, drained, her wealth by absentees in London wasted, her people with deep curses emigrating; India the same her life-blood sucked but worse: Perhaps in twenty years five hundred millions sterling, from her famished myriads, Taken to feed the luxury of Britain, Taken, without return – While Britain wonders with a pious pretence of innocence Why famine follows the flag.43

O’Connor explains that Carpenter, like Irishman Oscar Wilde, critiqued imperialist masculinity as responsible for many ills of the modern world.44 Wilde responded as editor of The Woman’s World to an inquiry about vegetarianism that “it is strange that the most violent republicans that I know are all vegetarians. Brussels sprouts seem to make people bloodthirsty”.45 Yet, Irish Revivalist Eva perceived no apparent contradiction between her sister Constance’s violent Republicanism, and Eva’s pacificism, nationalism, socialism, feminism and vegetarianism, which she

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negotiated in a nuanced manner. Eva Gore-Booth like Lady Gregory was also written out of male-centric accounts of Irish Revivalism, and depicted as Constance’s less interesting sister, or as Yeats’s minor muse. Both sisters were memorialised by Yeats’s poem “In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz” which reads The light of evening, Lissadell, Great windows open to the south, Two girls in silk kimonos, both Beautiful, one a gazelle.46

Yeats references Asian kimonos demonstrating the west formed its modern identity through appropriation and re-fashioning of eastern influences, and “made it new” by constructing a version of modernity built upon consumption of eastern resources. Pierre Bourdieu theorised the structure and institutions of any artistic field produce certain possibilities. Hence, the upper-class backgrounds of the Gore-Booth sisters and Lady Gregory, opened up possibilities and artistic spaces for them that were unattainable for middle or working-class female Irish Revivalists. Bourdieu states there exists “a social hierarchy of consumers. This predisposes tastes to function as markers of ‘class’”.47 Thus mentors, critics and publishing opportunities available to upper-class female Irish Revivalists remained beyond the reach of poorer contemporaries. One could postulate that the ‘habitus’ of the literary field of production prioritised literary productions from the upper-class, who alone had the resources, leisure and time. However, Eva Gore-Booth used her advantages to promote the needs of other classes. Both first-wave feminist socialist writers Eva Gore-Booth and Ding Ling engaged with their readers, rather than propagate dry propaganda. Gore-Booth’s style personalised, individualised and feminised the subjects she wrote about. Moreover, Ding Ling and Eva Gore-Booth lived lives that proclaimed women’s rights. Ding Ling went to rural China to learn from the peasants and Gore-Booth chose to work as a pit-brow lass in Northern England.48 Gore-Booth agitated for labour rights for barmaids, flower-sellers and circus performers overlooked by male-centric labour movements. Gore-Booth fought for women’s economic and political rights, and penned literature that foregrounded unique challenges faced by women. Ding Ling did likewise in Miss Sophie’s Diary as literature

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became a vehicle for the transnational postcolonial construction of the New Woman. However, Gore-Booth radically linked women’s suffrage with trade unionism, and fought curtailment of women’s employment. Ding Ling similarly took a courageous stand against Mao over art at Yan’an in 1942 and staked a claim for a space deemed feminised, that is the domestic, personal and individual space in literature. Eva Gore-Booth fought for women to enter the workspace and receive equal pay, and Ding Ling fought for women’s right to write on female subjectivity, creating a feminised space in the masculinist literary domain.

Socialism Eva Gore-Booth internalised the Marxian maxim that the Superstructure (the educational, intellectual, cultural institutions and ideologies built upon an economic base) determine the opportunities for individuals born into Capitalist society. Marx explained that “Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life”, as it is difficult for individuals to escape their socio-economic conditions.49 Like Gore-Booth, German philosopher Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) was appalled by the conditions of Manchester’s working-poor, due to ‘progress’ and Industrial Revolution. Engels also had a wealthy background, but exposed the iniquitous conditions of the working-class with his life partner, another radical Irishwoman Mary Burns. Engels met Burns when researching his book The Conditions of the Working-class in England (1845), as Ireland was simultaneously wracked by the Famine.50 Eva Gore-Booth used her education and social status to benefit the downtrodden, especially working-class women outside the privileged structures of Capitalist society. Gore-Booth understood that female working-class individuals were ‘alienated’ from the fruits of their labour in specific ways, and could not control their salaries or work conditions. In her political writings, Gore-Booth illuminated the irony of “turning women out of their work for their own good”, and poineds out that male trade unions in Glasgow sent a letter of thanks, when barmaids were turned out of work in that city.51 Socialist Brecht underscored we are all ‘alienated’ from life, and inhabit roles and scripts others wrote for us. Hence, working-class women accepted less pay than male counterparts, and read this and sexual harassment as ‘normal’. Eva Gore-Booth perceived this construction could be altered or re-written, just as she

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consistently challenged what was ‘normal’ in her own life, forming a partnership with Esther Roper. Socialists like Eva Gore-Booth believed Socialist Revolution was imminent due to class struggle and Capitalism would collapse due to internal tensions. Gore-Booth died before the disillusion of the 1930s, when it became clear that Communist Revolution was not coming in the west. Socialist writers had to explain this contradiction, especially in Capitalist societies where oppression was most evident, and counterargued that people in Capitalist societies were duped by the intellectual world into believing these conditions were permanent and could not be changed. Hence, individuals blamed themselves in a type of ‘false consciousness’. Accordingly, socialist intellectuals merely postponed Communist Revolution until all understood Capitalist oppression, and for writers like Brecht, literature became an educational means to hasten the Revolution. However, Ding Ling experienced and lived through the promised Communist Revolution in China, in a society that practiced total communism, and personally witnessed the problematic nature of such a goal, once achieved. Marx’s concept of dialectical materialism, which argues that all change in reality results from constant conflict arising from oppositions inherent in all ideas, movements and events resulted in a changed but not improved reality for Ding Ling and others in Communist China. Marx asserted in The Communist Manifesto in 1848 that world literature arose from bourgeois Capitalist expansion to new lands and markets, which explicitly links Marxist ideology to the Postcolonial condition. Marx argued that the colonial capitalist project colonised Chinese markets, (which explains the popularity of his theories in China) and stated that The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate.52

Marx references the Opium Wars (1839–42) (1856–60), when the British smuggled opium into China to ensure the balance of trade went in Britain’s favour, to reverse earlier trade deficits. Marx argued an increasingly globalised world meant one could

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for slave-trade read labour-market, for Kentucky and Virginia, Ireland and the agricultural districts of England, Scotland and Wales, for Africa, Germany.53

Marxist theories that class and colonial interests operate through cultural forms influenced Eva Gore-Booth in Revivalist Ireland and Ding Ling in May Fourth China. Gore-Booth’s sister Constance Markiewicz was a leader of the 1916 Irish Easter Rising, which Vladimir Lenin argued had disproved opponents of self-determination. Lenin asserted the 1916 Rising proved the energies of oppressed nations were not sapped by imperialism, and still had a role to play in anticolonial movements as nationalist aspirations would not lead to nothing.54 Lenin’s socialist reading of Easter 1916 was that “the centuries-old Irish national movement” exposed imperialism was in crisis, and near its logical end. Lenin claimed the Irish blow to British imperialism within Europe [italics mine] “is a hundred times more significant politically than a blow of equal force delivered in Asia or in Africa”.55 Lenin also claimed the Irish misfortune was that they rose prematurely, before socialist revolution could mature in Europe. Thus in Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China, socialist revolution was put on hold, while nationalists and socialists joined to first free their country from imperialism.

Eva Gore-Booth’s Poetry Reaches China Research in the archives of The North-China Daily News (TNCDN) an English-language newspaper, demonstrates a poem by Irish Revivalist Eva Gore-Booth was published in China, in 1922.56 This newspaper was published in Shanghai and perused by British ex-patriates of the May Fourth era. Eva Gore-Booth’s poem published in TNCDN was entitled “The Little Waves of Breffny”, and appeared in page six of the Woman’s Page on October 4, 1922. Gore-Booth’s poem is surrounded by advertisements that illuminate the constricting environment for Chinese New Women like Ding Ling, during the May Fourth era. Although this newspaper was for English ex-patriate audiences in China, my own research demonstrates that May Fourth leader Hu Shi wrote in to complain of anti-Chinese attitudes in The North-China Herald (TNCH).57 Ding Ling moved to Shanghai in 1922 to escape an arranged marriage.58 Therefore, The North-China Daily News was part of the westernised milieu surrounding Ding Ling in Shanghai, although not

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necessarily one of her primary sources. Ding Ling was eighteen in 1922 and penned Miss Sophie’s Diary in 1927. The editorial choice to include Eva Gore-Booth’s poem in TNCDN functions as irrefutable evidence that women could be poets. I read the positioning of Gore-Booth’s poem as an editorial decision to undercut misogynistic claims by Reverend Knight on the same page. Reverend Knight asserts that women could not be poets, yet TNCDN Woman’s Page editor undercuts this by literally placing an Irish female poet and her poetry above Reverend Knight. The editor notably demotes Reverend Knight to Mr. Knight throughout the remainder of the article. Norman W. Baxter took Reverend Knight’s misogynistic views entitled “Women Excluded from Ministry” from “Transcript”. The article’s militaristic vocabulary declares that The first shot of the war was fired by Rev. Basil Bourchier, a noted war chaplain, who…declared ‘women are not capable of the practice of holy orders’…[Rev. Knight asserts] The influence of men in many other forms of life shows the male sex all along has been more intellectual…on the whole his conduct is regulated by reason. The female sex, on the other hand, is always keen and now is guided by emotion rather than intellect…And woman, who is a creature of emotion, can never be capable of entrance into holy orders. Critics may say that some women are more intellectual than some men, but woman is not more intellectual than man. We cannot take risks…The male sex has always been the spiritual sex, all great painters, musicians, sculptors, poets and scientists have been of the male sex. So have all great prophets and founders of religions. Spirituality is of the male. I am afraid critics mistake emotionalism for spirituality.59

Evidently, these male critics ignore that such arguments are redundant, circular reasoning. One cannot argue that women are incapable of religious and artistic roles simply because women were historically excluded from such roles in the past. Regarding spatiality, newspaper and periodical scholars would note how Gore-Booth’s poem is doubly feminised. Firstly, Gore-Booth’s poem is located in the Woman’s Pages. Secondly, her poem is separated from the main masculinist arguments and fenced off in a separate box. I did not notice any difference in the typescripts used to further feminise this poem, or spatially differentiate it. I contend this editorial decision to include Irish Revivalist Eva Gore-Booth’s poem in this 1922 issue of TNCDN , functions as a rebuttal to misogynistic arguments presented on the same page, and proves conclusively that women

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can be poets. Hence, Eva Gore-Booth’s feminist labour credentials were sufficiently established in Irish Revivalism, that they were printed in an article for women in a different Chinese con-text. Heated western debates on the New Woman spilled over to influence contemporaneous political literary environments in May Fourth China. TNCDN articles and advertisements on the same page as GoreBooth’s poem illustrate Ding Ling’s confining environment in Shanghai in 1922. Various articles debate whether women should be permitted to bob their hair, discuss voting rights for Burmese women, and argue facetiously that shorter kimonos would enrich Japan. Another tonguein-cheek article by Norman W. Baxter on the same page argues why ‘we’ oppose pockets for women. Baxter (who later wrote for The Washington Post ) effectively mirrors baseless arguments against female suffrage, during this first wave of feminism. This article entitled “Why We Oppose Pockets For Women—As the Antis Would Put It” states because pockets are not a natural right. Because the great majority of women do not want pockets. If they did, they would have them. Because whenever women have had pockets they have not used them.60

These related articles on TNCDN Woman’s Page well illustrate the suffocating environment and circular reasoning encountered by fighters for women’s rights in semicolonial China. These articles further demonstrate how male writers and editors willingly supported the fight for women’s rights, as men significantly used their platform to give voice to women’s causes.

Pacifism Unlike Chinese feminists Ding Ling and Qiu Jin, Irish Revivalist Eva Gore-Booth was a pacifist and diverged from radical feminists on the role of violence in the emancipation of women and the nation. Whereas Ding Ling criticised other writers during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Eva Gore-Booth fought for the reprieve of Roger Casement’s death sentence, for his role in Easter 1916.61 Hence, construction of the New Woman during the early twentieth-century produced convergence and divergence due to individual choices by female writers, and socio-economic conditions in Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China.

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Although Gore-Booth was pacifist, which was controversial at that time, conversely she was “quick to support militancy when her sister was condemned to death for her part in the Irish Nationalist Easter Rising of 1916”.62 Gore-Booth’s play The Death of Fionavar included the final three acts of The Triumph of Maeve: A Romance—a play published eleven years earlier.63 In this play, ancient Irish High Queen Maeve symbolises the struggle between war and peace. Marian Eide creatively posits GoreBooth’s play Maeve as Eva and Constance’s “1916 ‘conversation’ about the means to Irish independence [which] appears logically through verse and illustration in their collaborative volume titled The Death of Fionavar from The Triumph of Maeve”.64 Eide reads Maeve as a ‘coded conversation’ on the ethical politics of insurgency, between republican Constance and pacifist Eva. Significantly, Gore-Booth’s socialist, feminist and nationalist ideologies did not contradict her pacifist vegetarian ideologies, but complemented her overarching approaches to all forms of injustice.

Gore-Booth’s Irish Feminism inspires British Feminism Eva Gore-Booth found feminist solidarity with her partner Esther Roper, just as Qiu Jin was helped by her female friends Wu Zhiying and Xu Zihua. Thus female solidarity formed a bulwark against patriarchal structures during first-wave feminism. Eva Gore-Booth established the Sligo branch of the Irish Women’s Suffrage and Local Government Association and was Secretary in 1896.65 British reforms influenced the movement for women’s rights in Ireland although groups interested in class and gender clashed over who should be enfranchised first. Militant suffragettes are overemphasised in historical accounts, whereas constitutional suffragettes like Eva Gore-Booth are historically overlooked.66 Significantly, Eva Gore-Booth mentored the British Parkhurst feminists by forming women’s trade unions in Northern England.67 Yet, Irish Revivalist Eva Gore-Booth was written out of the founding history of British feminism and labour rights. Although from an upper-class AngloIrish family, Gore-Booth moved to working-class Manchester in 1897, in a postcolonial move implying stakes to do with national identity, female identity and class identity. Non-white, non-middle-class women struggled during the 1980s to tell their feminist story, yet Gore-Booth detected similar disparities in her day, as the early stages of female suffrage extended the vote to property-owners, and disadvantaged working-class women.

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Modernism Critics do not read Gore-Booth’s plays as Modernist, due to their archaic language and ancient settings.68 Frederick Lapisardi counters that GoreBooth’s plays interrogate very modern themes on early twentieth-century anti-war militancy, and only the action takes place during ancient times.69 Gore-Booth’s dramas were so ahead of their time in modernist experimentation, that the Abbey theatre claimed it was unable to represent a crow flying across the stage, or a fog turning into a person and did not stage them. Maeve begins on an experimental note, as the female protagonist prepares to invade Tír na n-Óg [a mythological Irish utopia where no one grows old or dies]. Female character Nera asserts “Yea, there is neither law nor hatred there / But all things live at peace for their own praise”.70 Declan Kiberd and P. J. Mathews note female Irish Revivalists exemplified alternative versions of modernity and “discover in the example of Maeve and Deirdre empowering precursors to their own liberation from the restrictions of the modern world”.71 I further contend that Eva Gore-Booth’s plays are Modernist and Postcolonial, in the sense they react to and reflect back upon, both the violence of the postcolonised condition and the modern violence of world war. Moreover, Gore-Booth’s modern construction of feminism is evident in Maeve’s male character Fergus, who asserts Being a man, I shall rule in the end Let it not grieve thee that I being a man, Am greater, for no warrior soul could bend To a woman’s rule since the world began.72

Gore-Booth’s stage instructions direct “There is a deep murmur of anger among the warriors of Maeve’s bodyguard. They press around Fergus”.73 Conversely, Maeve perceptively states By the Gods it is willed That foolish men should dream a dream of pride And wrath, yea, and that every man should build The city of his dreams. The world is wide For such as thee, oh Fergus, go thy ways.74

Gore-Booth portrays men as disloyal in Fergus’s case as Maeve saved his life, or as greedy for gold and violence since a woman warrior avers

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“Lo, I will serve thee as men serve for gold”.75 Significantly, Gore-Booth depicts in the world of this play that only a man can build a city of his dreams. The world in Gore-Booth’s Maeve is “wide for such as thee”, underscoring Gore-Booth’s experience as an Irish New Woman doubly colonised subject.

Female Agency Although Yeats benefitted from the largesse of the Gore-Booth sisters at Lissadell, his 1927 poem “In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz” praises their generosity, yet disparages their joint legacies. Regarding Eva, Yeats devalues her female agency declaring I know not what the younger dreams Some vague Utopia – and she seems When withered old and skeleton gaunt An image of such politics.76

Yeats’s description reifies Eva and her vibrant political vision as old and anachronistic, as Yeats evinces chagrin that these ladies accomplished more with their activist sword, than he as a man of letters. This obsession with the female body and constructions of feminine beauty that plagued female Chinese Renaissance writers and became an obstacle to embodiment of female characters in prose, here becomes similarly problematic for Irish Revivalist Yeats. It seems irrelevant if Eva looked physically gaunt, when she achieved many life-long goals including women’s suffrage and increased labour rights. Yet, Yeats’s summation on Eva’s legacy focused on her physical appearance, rather than the sisters’ rich enduring contributions to Revivalist Ireland. Although Yeats underlines the withered nature of the politics Eva espoused, it is revealing that he selects a metaphor centred on the female body. It is debatable whether Eva’s politics withered on the vine, since these bore rich fruit in the form of female suffrage and greater labour rights. Possibly Yeats refers to other aspects of Eva’s political vision, as Eva’s gender-bending views published in the journal Urania now seem prescient and ahead of the zeitgeist.77 Yeats opines on Constance The older is condemned to death Pardoned, drags out lonely years

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Conspiring among the ignorant.78

There is a lot to unpack here, since Yeats’s class obsession clearly impinges on his lack of admiration for Constance in later years; no longer clad in an eastern silk kimono, gazing out the window of the great house at Lissadell and in a position to assist the young Yeats. One could question if Constance was lonely in old age, why Yeats did not assist her more. However, it is also true that Constance gave away her wealth, chose to die with the poor, and was refused a State Funeral by the Irish Free State she helped to create because she supported the Republican side during the Irish Civil War (1922–1923).79 Yet, Yeats derides the working and middle-classes Constance fought for as “ignorant”, because they do not concur with Yeatsian assumptions on the aristocracy. Yeats was not a member of the aristocracy, and neither was Abbey dramatist O’Casey who came from the class Yeats disparages. The language of these verses is so loaded it is difficult to reverse them, and imagine a female Revivalist penning such starkly negative lines on the legacy of male Revivalists like Yeats. Similarly, George Moore lampooned Lady Gregory’s legacy in Hail and Farewell (1911), which became our ‘reading’ of Gregory. Like the Chinese Renaissance, male writers in Revivalist Ireland construct a problematic male version of the nascent New Woman and limit female Irish Revivalist legacies with male-centric views. Laura Mulvey foregrounded the ubiquitous ‘male gaze’ in literature presumes readers as male, and this extends to Yeats’s use of the female muse.80 Concurrent feminist and antifeminist readings of Yeats depend upon which poems one selects. Yeats concludes his elegiac poem on the Gore-Booth sisters by reminiscing on Lissadell’s golden days, rather than assist them ‘when they are old’, as they supported him when he was young. Yeats’s poetry collection The Wind Among the Reeds (1899) includes “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”. Yeats’s poem depicts the male poet laying his poems or his dreams, beneath his female beloved’s feet. She is urged to ‘tread softly because you tread on my dreams’.81 GoreBooth’s play Maeve (1902) rejects Yeats’s male-centric formulation of love as female harpist Nera claims As thou art more than music, for thy sake Oh Maeve, I have cast all my dreams aside…82

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Maeve resolutely responds in a manner redolent of Maud Gonne’s rejection of Yeats Take back thy dreams, let not thy heart break For a lost song and one vain hour of pride.83

In Gore-Booth’s play The Death of Fionavar, a druidess prophesies Maeve’s daughter Fionavar will die. Maeve in tragic Greek mode seeks to prevent the inevitable, by preventing her daughter from taking part in the battle. Unfortunately, Fionavar dies of shock after witnessing war’s carnage.84 Maeve learns peace is better than war by Aristotelian reversal. Eva Gore-Booth’s unique embodiment of the Irish New Woman accommodated conflicting subjectivities and included de/recolonisation of masculinist modes of resistance. She dedicated the 1916 republished volume to the 1916 Rising dead, “the many who died for freedom and the one who died for peace”. This references fellow pacificist feminist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, who prevented looting during Easter 1916 but was infamously shot by British officer Bowen-Colthurst. Colthurst was later court martialled, found guilty of murder and declared insane, yet retired from service with half pay.85 This version of The Death of Fionavar commemorates the dead of 1916 and reads Poets, Utopians, bravest of the brave Pearse and MacDonagh, Plunkett, Connolly Dreamers turned fighters but to find a grave Glad for the dream’s austerity to die. And my own sister, through wild hours of pain Whilst murderous bombs were blotting out the stars Little I thought to see you smile again As I did yesterday through prison bars.86

America’s New York Times questions Eva’s pacifist play paradoxically illustrated by armed rebel Constance and why87 the pages of this most passionately pacific work should be made by so convinced and so practical a direct actionist as Countess Markiewicz, the woman with the sword, [italics mine] who with her little band of fighting men helped hold the streets of Dublin for days and nights against the British machine guns.88

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Constance Markiewicz is described as ‘the woman with the sword’, which is precisely how Chinese female rebel Qiu Jin presented herself in pictures holding a long sword. Qiu Jin’s grave includes a stele inscription that terms her ‘the swordswoman of mirror lake’.89 New Women worldwide literally took up this phallic symbol of masculine violence and de/ recolonised this site as feminist resistance against masculinist discourses. America’s New York Times has an undertone of admiration for Constance and concedes the Irishwoman with her ‘sword’, held out the mighty British Army with their machine guns for days. Similarly, Eva GoreBooth’s poem “In Praise of Liberty” equates individual liberty with national liberty a silken robe, a ragged vest For prince or beggar, fool or knave I know that Liberty is best And no man sadder than a slave.90

All four women writers I compare could have chosen a life of ease. Yet, Eva Gore-Booth rejected her upper-class background with its eastern ‘silken robes’. In differing temporalities in Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China, all four female “writers and fighters” constructed unique versions of the New Woman. Qiu Jin was declared China’s Joan of Arc, and Eva Gore-Booth’s poem “Joan of Arc” contrasts indolence, safety, a glorious name…[with] but she whose spirit was strong in the strife Has gained the guerdon [reward] that was her due.91

Conclusion First-wave feminism continued in China until Deng Xiaoping’s reform era (after Mao’s 1976 death). Ding Ling lived longer than the GoreBooths, but remained a first-wave feminist long after that wave had broken on western shores. Hence one can compare Ding Ling with the Irish Revivalist Gore-Booths and Lady Gregory as first-wave feminists. The second and third waves of feminism followed in the west during the 1960s and 1980s, and sought not just the vote but equality and racial diversity. Perhaps Ding Ling’s feminist intent was ‘mistranslated’ as ‘Old Shameful’ in the 1980s for failing to have fully westernised expectations of

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feminism; in the sense of not understanding second and third-wave feminism.92 Ding Ling appeared anachronistic, out of time and place in 1980s China, as new women writers and fighters for women’s rights became impatient with Ding Ling’s devotion to Communism. Eva Gore-Booth’s efforts towards women’s suffrage were aided by reform of the British electoral system, which affected Ireland’s fight for independence. In 1918, British women over thirty who met certain qualifications were granted the right to vote, ostensibly in recognition of women’s service during WWI. Having achieved her lifelong goal of women’s suffrage, Eva Gore-Booth turned to campaigning for Irish independence and peace.93 Ireland voted in December 1918 and elected her sister now married to Polish Count Markiewicz, as the first woman elected to Westminster and the first woman in the world appointed to a cabinet post as labour minister in history. Although historians inaccurately accord this honour to British Lady Astor in 1920, the Dáil or Irish Parliament that elected Constance Markiewicz and Sinn Féin to power in 1918 still governs Ireland to this day. Hence, groundwork laid by Irish Revivalist Eva Gore-Booth for women’s suffrage directly benefitted her sister Constance, who was elected to Sinn Féin’s Irish republican government. One can only wonder what the condescending author of Vanity Fair’s 1896 article just two decades earlier, would make of the rapid transformation of women’s rights. Indeed, it seems the ‘tyrant’ had much to fear from the ‘little arrows’ of the Gore-Booth sisters. Although Constance has a deserved place in Irish history for her many firsts for women; her sister Eva GoreBooth laid the groundwork for women’s rights in Ireland and Britain. Therefore, trojan retrieval work by Sonja Tiernan reasserts Eva GoreBooth’s rightful place, as more than a minor Irish Revivalist figure of first-wave feminism. Tiernan also disproved that only one of Gore-Booth’s plays was produced onstage. Accordingly, themes of erasure connect the four women writers selected as case studies for this book. On the first state visit of an Irish President to Britain, President Michael D. Higgins highlighted Eva Gore-Booth’s influence on British feminism and the British labour movement. It is implausible that Gore-Booth’s wide array of interests resulted in her erasure, since similarly complex male figures like James Connolly were not subject to similar elision. Eva Gore-Booth transnationally rose above the merely local or national and argued for women’s rights worldwide. Irish Revivalists Lady Gregory and the Gore-Booths reappropriated the Anglo-Irish Big House, originally a

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site of English rule, and de/recolonised their ancestral homes as sites of resistance for Irish literary nationalism. Thus sites of hybridity, resistance and modernist experimentation, located in the postcolonised peripheries, rather than the imperial metropole. Lu Xun concluded Qiu Jin was effectively “clapped to death”.94 Academia also clapped Qiu Jin to death, by overemphasising her nationalist credentials as China’s first feminist and downplaying her literary legacy. Qiu Jin’s loyal friends Wu Zhiying and Xu Zihua were erased by nationalist Chinese historical accounts, so too Irish nationalist narratives elided Eva Gore-Booth’s legacies in favour of her militant sister Constance. Unquestioned associations of masculinity with violence ensured that women who took up arms like Qiu Jin and Constance Markiewicz, were foregrounded in ways that elided alternative pacifism by other New Women writers. This effectively masculinises feminist revolutionaries, rendering the status quo and patriarchal system safe from subversion. Patriarchal systems ostensibly encourage rebellion only to coopt these gestures later, to contain feminist alternatives and render them incapable of producing real change in the system. Contrary to Marxist theory, Irish Revivalists Lady Gregory and the Gore-Booths, and Qiu Jin and Ding Ling in Republican China, partially escaped the gendered and class superstructures surrounding them. Just as Qiu Jin’s literary legacy was marginalised in China by those eager to praise her martial feminist achievements, so too Eva GoreBooth’s literary legacy was placed firmly in the background of the Irish Renaissance, while Constance’s martial contributions became part of the legend of how Irish independence was won. Sonja Tiernan aptly concludes “Eva did not adopt a military uniform or carry arms; she was far more radical than that”.95 Paradoxically, Ding Ling remained caught in the Foucauldian sense between first, second and third-wave constructions of feminism that collided globally. Although all four women writers diverged in significant ways, particularly regarding embodiment for Chinese New Women; the unique legacies of these four first-wave feminist writers were erased by male peers. Maureen O’Connor concludes that Eva Gore-Booth was a charming, intelligent and talented Irishwoman “most of us did not know we could claim”.96 I contend that scholarship should reclaim the incredible hidden legacies of these postcolonised modernist feminist writers who were written out of his-story, and create space for women writers just as they remarkably did throughout their lives.

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I have established that Irish Revivalist literature by Yeats, Seán O’Casey, Lady Gregory and Eva Gore-Booth created transnational, postcolonised, modernist and feminist literary links between the Irish and Chinese Renaissances. But how were our fifth and final Irish Revivalist J. M. Synge’s plays received by the Chinese Renaissance? Did Synge’s works provide alternative versions of postcolonised modernity and linguistic models of hybridity, resistance and decolonisation for the Chinese May Fourth generation? Chapter eight compares Synge’s reception in China with Chinese May Fourth dramatist Cao Yu, as both foundational dramatists helped to establish a modern national theatre in the postcolonised peripheries. How can Irish Revivalist Synge and Chinese May Fourth dramatist Cao Yu be read as Postcolonial and Modernist? Chapter eight seven examines whether Synge and Cao Yu were ‘boys’ who engage in modernist ‘play’ in the postcolonised ‘wilderness’.

Notes 1. Yi-tsi Feuerwerker, Ding Ling’s Fiction Ideology and Narrative in Modern Chinese Literature (Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1982), 1. 2. Charles Alber, Enduring the Revolution: Ding Ling and the Politics of Literature in Guomindang China (Connecticut: Praeger, 2002), 7. 3. Charles Alber, Embracing the Lie: Ding Ling and the Politics of Literature in the People’s Republic of China (Connecticut: Praeger, 2004), 287. 4. Yi-tsi Feuerwerker, Ding Ling’s Fiction, 4. 5. Ding Ling, Miss Sophie’s Diary and other stories translated by W.J.F. Jenner (Beijing: Panda Books, 1985). 6. Tani Barlow, I Myself Am A Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), 26. 7. Kirk A. Denton and Eileen J. Cheng, Jottings Under Lamplight: Lu Xun (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2017), 255–257. 8. Chien-hsin Tsai, “Literary Bombs: A Sketch of the May Fourth generation and Bomb as Metaphor”, in Remembering May Fourth The Movement and its Centennial Legacy eds. Carlos Yu-Kai Lin and Victor H. Mair (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 227–246. 9. Ibid. 10. Feuerwerker, Ding Ling’s Fiction, 7. 11. Ibid., 8–10. 12. Tani Barlow, I Myself , 34, 35. 13. Feuerwerker, Ding Ling’s Fiction, 10. 14. Tani Barlow, I Myself , 43.

258 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37.

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Ibid., 44. Barlow, I Myself , 44. Feuerwerker, Ding Ling’s Fiction, 15. Barlow, I Myself , 23–25. Marie Coleman, “Compensating Irish Female Revolutionaries, 1916– 1923”, Women’s History Review 26, no. 6 (2017): 915–934. Skinnider eventually received a pension. Michael Keane, Project Archivist, “Introduction to the Release of the Brigade Activity Files Series 1”, The Military Service (1916–1923) Pensions Collection The Brigade Activity Reports (Ireland: Defence Forces Printing Press, 2018), 13. Wendy Larson, Women and Writing in Modern China (California: Stanford University Press, 1998), 91, 92. Lucy McDiarmid, At Home in the Revolution: What Women Said and Did in 1916 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2015). Feuerwerker, Ding Ling’s Fiction, 147. Jin Feng, “The New Woman in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction”, Comparative Literature and Culture 6, issue 4, no. 5 (2004): 2–10. Barlow, I Myself , 2. Jahan Ramazani, The Hybrid Muse (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 6. Ka F. Wong, “Modernity, Sexuality, and Colonial Fantasy in Ding Ling’s “Miss Sophia Diary” (1928)”, Studies on Asia 4, issue 4, no. 2 (2014): 131–133, 139. Ibid. Marston Anderson, The Limits of Realism: Chinese Fiction in the Revolutionary Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). Ding Ling, “When I Was In Xia Village”, translated by Gary J. Bjorge in The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature eds. Joseph S. M. Lau and Howard Goldblatt (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 132–146. Frederick Jameson, “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism”, Social Text 15 (Autumn 1986): 65–88. Madeleine Chu, “Lu Xun’s Women Characters”, Journal of Chinese Studies 1, no. 1 (Feb 1984): 29–33. Ding Ling, “Xia Village”, 146. Louise Edwards, “Women Sex-Spies: Chastity, National Dignity, Legitimate Government and Ding Ling’s ‘When I was in Xia Village’”, The China Quarterly 212 (December 2012): 1059–1078. Ibid., 1066. Barlow, I Myself , 317. Ibid, 44. Ibid, 319.

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38. Sonja Tiernan, “Challenging Presumptions of Heterosexuality: Eva GoreBooth, a Biographical Case Study”, Historical Reflections 37, no. 2 (2011): 58, 59. 39. Sonja Tiernan, The Political Writings of Eva Gore-Booth (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015) frontispiece. 40. Patrick Quigley, Sisters Against the Empire Countess Constance Markiewicz and Eva Gore-Booth, 1916–17 (Dublin: The Liffey Press, 2016), 1–3. 41. Sonja Tiernan, Eva Gore-Booth: An Image of Such Politics (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012). 42. Maureen O’Connor, “Vegetable Love; The Syncretic Nation in the Writings of Margaret Cousins and Eva Gore-Booth”, Journal of Irish Studies 28 (2013): 18–33. 43. Ibid, 19. 44. Ibid, 18, 19. 45. Ibid, 18. 46. William Butler Yeats, “In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz”, The Yeats Reader A Portable Compendium of Poetry, Drama and Prose ed. Richard J. Finneran (New York: Scribner, 2002), 109, 110. 47. Pierre Bourdieu, “Distinction” and “The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field”, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism 2nd edition ed. Vincent Leitch (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2010), 1660–1680. 48. Maureen O’Connor, Book Review of Eva Gore-Booth: An Image of Such Politics by Sonja Tiernan, New Hibernia Review 17, no. 4 (2013): 145– 147. 49. Karl Marx, “The German Ideology”, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism 2nd edition ed. Vincent Leitch (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2010), 655, 656. 50. Mike Dash, “How Friedrich Engels’ Radical Lover Helped Him Father Socialism”, Smithsonian (August 1, 2013) https://www.smithsonianmag. com/history/how-friedrich-engels-radical-lover-helped-him-father-social ism-21415560/. 51. Tiernan, Political Writings, 15, 16. 52. Karl Marx, “The Communist Manifesto”, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism 2nd edition ed. Vincent Leitch (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2010), 657–660. 53. Karl Marx, “The Working Day”, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism 2nd edition ed. Vincent Leitch (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2010), 673. 54. Vladimir Lenin, “The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up”, Sbornik Sotsial-Demokrata 1, no. 22 (Moscow: 1916): 320–360. 55. Ibid.

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56. Eva Gore-Booth, “The Little Waves of Breffny”, TNCDN October 4, 1922, 6. 57. This evidence was in background information on The North-China Herald in Chinese-language resource centres on the databases I researched. 58. Alber, Enduring the Revolution, 27. 59. Norman W. Baxter, “Women Excluded From Ministry”, TNCDN October 4, 1922, 6. 60. Norman W. Baxter, “Why We Oppose Pockets For Women – As The Antis Would Put It”, TNCDN October 4, 1922, 6. 61. Carla King, “The Other Sister”, Irish Literary Supplement (Spring 2014): 18. 62. Tiernan, Political Writings, 4. 63. Tiernan, An Image of Such Politics, 181. 64. Marian Eide, “Maeve’s Legacy: Constance Markiewicz, Eva Gore-Booth, and the Easter Rising”, Éire-Ireland 51, no. 3 and 4 (2016): 80, 81. 65. Tiernan, Political Writings, 9. 66. Ibid. 67. Deirdre Clancy, “Labour Lives No. 6: Eva Gore-Booth”, Saothar Irish Labour History Society 29 (2004): 79–81. Sonja Tiernan, “Engagements Dissolved: Eva Gore-Booth, Urania and the radical Challenge to Marriage”, in Tribades, Tommies and Transgressives: Histories of Sexualities Vol. 1 eds. Mary McAuliffe and Sonja Tiernan (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), 129. 68. Frederick Lapisardi, The Plays of Eva Gore-Booth (California: Edward Mellen University Press, 1999), v, vi. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid, 3. 71. Declan Kiberd and P. J. Mathews, Handbook of the Irish Revival – an Anthology of Irish Cultural and Political Writings 1891–1922 (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), 384. 72. Lapisardi, Plays of Eva Gore-Booth, 36. 73. Ibid. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid, 38, 39. 76. Yeats, “In Memory”, Yeats Reader, 109, 110. 77. Sonja Tiernan, “Engagements Dissolved: Eva Gore-Booth, Urania and the radical Challenge to Marriage”, 128–144. 78. Yeats, “In Memory”, Yeats Reader, 109, 110. 79. Nicola Depuis, Mná na hÉireann: Women Who Shaped Ireland (Dublin: Mercier, 2009), 171. 80. Laura Mulvaney, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism 2nd edition ed. Vincent Leitch (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2010), 2084–2095.

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81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88.

89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96.

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Yeats, “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”, Yeats Reader, 29. Lapisardi, Plays of Eva Gore-Booth, 40. Ibid. Marian Eide, “Maeve’s Legacy: Constance Markiewicz, Eva Gore-Booth, and the Easter Rising”, 89. Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 (New York: Overlook Press, 2005), 176. Marian Eide, “Maeve’s Legacy”, 86. Tiernan, An Image of Such Politics, 181, 182. “Irish Rebel Illustrates Nonresistance Play; Countess Markiewicz, in Jail for Life for Her Part in Dublin Uprising, Makes Mystic Drawings for Sister’s Poetic Drama”, The New York Times September 10, 1916, 2. Hu Ying, Burying Autumn, 2. Eva Gore-Booth, Poems by Eva Gore-Booth (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1898), 4. Ibid, 20. Barlow, I Myself , 44. Tiernan, Political Writings, 14. Craig Calhoun, Neither Gods nor Emperors: Students and the Struggle for Democracy in China (California: Berkeley, 1997), 183. Tiernan, Political Writings, 2. Maureen O’Connor, Book Review of An Image of Such Politics, 147.

CHAPTER 8

Irish Revivalist J. M. Synge and Chinese May Fourth Playwright Cao Yu: ‘Boys’ Who ‘Play’ in the Postcolonised Wilderness ?

Throughout this book, I attempted to answer my fundamental research question on how the Chinese May Fourth generation of “writers and fighters” read Irish Revivalism, as a reciprocal process of mutual encounter. I have examined May Fourth reception of Irish Revivalist works by Yeats, O’Casey, Lady Gregory and Eva Gore-Booth. Initially, I did not include a chapter on John Millington Synge, and was unaware of literary links between Synge and China. However, extensive archival research directed me to include a chapter on how Synge’s Revivalist works were received, translated and critically commented upon by the Chinese Renaissance. Firstly, I compare Irish Revivalist J. M. Synge with Chinese May Fourth dramatist Cao Yu. Yet, why compare these two dramatists and not two others? I compare Synge and Cao Yu because both playwrights were foundational to the establishment of modern national theatre in postcolonised lands.1 Bonnie McDougall and Louie Kam explain Cao Yu read plays by Irish Revivalists Synge and Gregory, and “particularly admired Shaw, Lady

Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5269-4_8.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. O’Malley-Sutton, The Chinese May Fourth Generation and the Irish Literary Revival: Writers and Fighters, Asia-Pacific and Literature in English, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5269-4_8

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Gregory, Synge and Wilde”.2 Thus, I examine themes in plays by Synge and Cao Yu, on links between the postcolonial condition and modernist experimentation, or Postcolonial Modernism. Secondly, I highlight Synge’s works reached May Fourth China, and changed on reception in a Chinese context. Who translated Synge’s Irish Revivalist plays, when and for whom, and in which Chinese May Fourth journals? Do anticolonial resonances and transnational links provide innovative new readings on the global reach of Irish Revivalism? How does Synge’s modernist use of language translate for Chinese Renaissance readers? Finally, are these reciprocal encounters of mutual exchange between Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China?

John Millington Synge’s Early Life J. M. Synge (1871–1909) was born in Dublin as the youngest son of eight in a Protestant gentry family. Synge’s father was buried on his son’s first birthday. Synge studied music, became fluent in the Irish language and travelled throughout Europe (Fig. 8.1).3 Synge’s literature is rarely read as postcolonial, although Declan Kiberd and Nicholas Grene participated in this reclamation.4 To discover subterranean anticolonial impulses one must dig deeper in Synge’s works, as Synge is ostensibly concerned with the fate of a community, and not with the fate of the nation.5 Similarly, Cao Yu’s anti-imperial May Fourth works, are rarely read as postcolonial. Irene Eber examines how Marián Gálik analysed foreign elements in Cao Yu’s literature, and interliterary dialogue between Cao Yu’s works and Western literature.6 Eugene Eoyang claims that Gálik’s work inspires Comparativists, and does not diminish Chinese literature by its “genetic” relationship with Western literature.7 Joseph Lau terms Cao Yu the “reluctant disciple” of Chekov and O’Neill.8 I read literary moves by Cao Yu and Synge as postcolonial and modernist, as both writers play with language and form in modern postcolonised settings. However, how does Cao Yu’s biography compare with Synge’s?

Cao Yu’s Early Life Cao Yu 曹禺 (1910–1996) was born as Wan Jiabao in Hubei, and became one of the most important Chinese playwrights of the twentieth-century.9 Cao Yu played Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House at Nankai secondary school, taught at Tianjin Normal College for Women, took part in political protests including the 1925 May Thirtieth demonstrations and lived

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Fig. 8.1 John Millington Synge’s Irish Revivalist plays provided innovative alternative models of anticolonial and modernist play with language that influenced other writers from all over the world, including May Fourth China and other parts of Asia. By permission of the Board of Trinity College Dublin, portrait of John Millington Synge by Chancellor TCD MS 4367/2

in France for two years from 1931 (Fig. 8.2).10 Cao Yu was founding member and first president of the Beijing People’s Art Theatre and worked with Ying Ruocheng.11 Ying, the famous actor and director (who in chapter five translated Irish Revivalist O’Casey’s works) became China’s

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Fig. 8.2 Cao Yu was the foundational dramatist for the Chinese May Fourth generation, and was influenced by J. M. Synge’s Irish Revivalist plays. Courtesy of JABEL/CPC Photo

Vice-Minister of Culture. Cao Yu attended Tsinghua University, and read two hundred western works including Synge’s plays.12

Postcolonial Comparisons Revivalist Synge was praised for foreign French and European theatrical influences, yet Cao Yu was criticised for looking westward in his creation of modern Chinese drama.13 I argue this is a misreading of Cao Yu who invented modern Chinese dramaturgy by taking western literary models and creating a hybrid mix of styles and form. I read Cao Yu’s postcolonised moves as similar to moves performed by Irish Revivalism. Both the Irish and Chinese Renaissance movements created a genuinely modern postcolonised theatrical form. I disagree that Cao Yu simply “transplanted the European stage to China”.14 Cao Yu did introduce western theatre to China, but to dismiss his innovations as derivative misses his original contributions to modern Chinese theatre. I refute the colonising Eurocentric readings of the Chinese May Fourth project, which I argue was Sino-centric in focus. I contend Chinese Renaissance writers made sophisticated and nuanced postcolonised interpretations of what it meant to be modern and Chinese in a semicolonial setting, and rejected colonising interpretations surrounding them.

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Irene Eber states that Chinese May Fourth writers became interested in Irish Revivalist Synge, because they faced similar problems in creating a new national literature. Eber outlines how Irish Revivalism’s focus on the peasantry, and portrayal of the oppression of smaller peoples by Imperial Powers appealed to Chinese intellectuals.15 “The literature of oppressed peoples” became a trope for Chinese intellectuals who looked to Irish, Polish, Hungarian, Harlem and Jewish Renaissance movements as models to cope with post(semi)colonised modernity.16 Revivalist Synge’s exposition of peasant life attracted Chinese Renaissance translators eager to create similar literary accounts of the lives of Chinese peasants; something that did not exist at that time.17 Eber states that unlike Gregory’s mischievous peasants, Synge’s peasant characters are individuals with complex interpersonal relationships. Hence, Synge’s Irish peasant protagonists (unlike their Polish counterparts) do not merely struggle to survive, but dare to dream of and reach for a better existence.18 Chen Shu details how Irish Revivalism influenced Chinese May Fourth pioneers.19 Creation Society member Guo Moruo translated Synge’s plays into Chinese vernacular in The Collection of John Synge’s Plays published by the Commercial Press in Shanghai in 1926.20 Guo translated Synge’s plays Deirdre of the Sorrows ; The Playboy of the Western World; The Tinker’s Wedding ; The Well of the Saints ; Riders to the Sea and The Shadow of the Glen.21 Aixue Wang’s A Comparison of the Dramatic Work of Cao Yu and J. M. Synge (1999) explains that Cao Yu’s play Leiyu 雷雨 (Thunderstorm) interrogates patriarchal Chinese society using an absent protagonist, which Cao Yu learned from Synge’s Riders to the Sea.22 Wang compares spatial relations in Cao Yu’s Yuanye 原野 (The Wilderness) with Synge’s In the Shadow of the Glen, as both plays foreground female protagonists moving from masculine patriarchy into undefined utopian idylls. Wang contrasts the concept of family in Cao Yu’s Beijingren 北京人 (Peking Man) and Synge’s Playboy of the Western World. Edward Gunn also examines the family in Cao Yu’s Peking Man.23 Wang concludes on a humorous imagined conversation between Synge and Cao Yu, with Foucauldian implications.24 Aixue Wang explains Mao Dun praised Irish Revivalism’s use of folklore, and urged Chinese May Fourth writers to replicate this and pen their own national drama, and not just translate foreign plays.25 Lydia Liu’s book Translingual Practice (1995) asserts that the Chinese Renaissance did not simply adopt Western literary ideals, but translated and applied these in a new con-text, producing new meanings for these works

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in a global transnational setting.26 I read May Fourth impulses as postcolonial, as they move beyond colonising, delimiting and orientalising versions of modern Chinese identity. Which Chinese May Fourth periodicals alerted readers to Irish Revivalist Synge’s alternative model of postcolonised modernity?

Nanda Banyuekan The Nanda Banyuekan 南大半月刊 (Nanjing University Semi-Monthly) journal published a photograph of Synge alongside photographs of Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and J. M. Barrie in the 1933 edition.27 This Chinese periodical inaccurately terms Synge a modern English/British dramatist in the title 英國近代戲劇家. Ironically, no one on the page is in fact English; three are Irish dramatists and Barrie was Scottish. However, such lapses occur because English literature culturally appropriates and claims all literatures written in the English language. I found Chinese archival sources usually correctly identify Irish writers. The next pages contain a longer article by Zhou Shoumin 周壽民 which identifies Synge as Irish in the first line.28 Nanda Banyuekan was published half-monthly by Nankai University Press in Tianjin (1933– 1936) on politics, literature and campus news. Known as Nankai University Weekly, Nanda Weekly (and the article on Synge) was published in Cao Yu’s Tianjin hometown, a Treaty Port captured by the anti-foreigner Boxer Rebellion in 1900, (mistakenly named due to their proficiency in martial arts) and retaken by the European Eight Nation Alliance.29 Cannons used by the British at the infamous Boxer battle of Dagu Forts near Tianjin in 1900, are now located at Collins’s Barracks military museum in Cork, Ireland. Cao Yu lived in Tianjin during his youth, and before Nanda Weekly’s 1933 article on Synge had moved to Tsinghua University in Beijing.30 The Qing government set up Tsinghua University in 1908, funded by Boxer indemnities repaid to China by the U.S. Congress after the Boxer Rebellion to train Chinese scholars in the U.S.31 Cao Yu penned his first play Thunderstorm on the corrupt traditional Zhou family, during his final year at Tsinghua University in 1934. Lewis Robinson examines Cao Yu’s motivations behind Thunderstorm.32 Cao Yu’s Thunderstorm was published in 1934 in Wenxue Jikan 文學季刊 (Literary Quarterly) edited by Zheng Zhenduo.33 Thunderstorm is a psychological drama on the doomed Confucian family and patriarch Zhou Puyuan, whose moral

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delinquency leads to the eponymous ‘thunderstorm’ and family destruction.34 Just as Synge’s Revivalist plays sparked the Abbey riots in Ireland, the Nationalist GMD often banned Cao Yu’s Thunderstorm in the pre-war years.35 Cao Yu wrote as Imperial Japan invaded China in 1937, and in Revivalist Ireland Synge resisted how colonial Britain circumscribed Irish depictions of themselves onstage. I read plays by Synge and Cao Yu as attempts to form modern postcolonised identities for peoples routinely depicted as other by external colonising forces. But how are Synge and Cao Yu ‘boys’ who engage in modernist ‘play’ in the postcolonised ‘wilderness’?

A Postcolonial Reading of Cao Yu’s the Wilderness The Wilderness was not set in Cao Yu’s usual urban setting, but a rural setting, like Synge’s Irish Revivalist plays. Wilderness protagonist Chouhu breaks from prison to return to his village for revenge on local tyrant Jiao Yanwang; who buried Chouhu’s father alive, took the familial lands, sold Chouhu’s younger sister into prostitution, and took Chouhu’s beloved Jinzi as his daughter-in-law.36 When Chouhu returns, Jiao Yanwang is dead, but Chouhu kills Jiao’s son Daxing, to reclaim his bride-to-be Jinzi. Chouhu is chased by detectives into a forest, becomes deranged by visions of his dead sister and remains in the forest, never to return home. This play is traditionally read as anti-feudal, and McDougall and Kam note The Wilderness underscores how “the disadvantaged in an unjust society can never achieve justice by conventional means”.37 I discern additional postcolonial readings of The Wilderness. I read Chouhu’s confused wanderings, as a metaphor for the confusion and fears experienced by May Fourth intellectuals, who wandered around in their own semicolonial ‘wilderness’; seeking redemption after iconoclastically destroying the traditional Chinese past. I interpret Cao Yu’s Wilderness as articulating the deep psychological fears and complicated anxieties underpinning the Chinese May Fourth modernising project. I contend these demonstrate typical fears encountered by postcolonised societies, and link this to similar anxieties perceptible in Synge’s anticolonial Irish Revivalist plays. According to my reading, Synge’s plays also depict a postcolonised ‘wilderness’ and futile attempts by peasants to change their surroundings, despite rich linguistic dexterity. I

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read psychological preoccupations in Cao Yu’s Wilderness as a type of Modernism, as the supernatural fantastical elements of the plot are a type of Expressionism, and Chinese leftist critics did not welcome this anti-Realism.38 Although Cao Yu’s Wilderness ostensibly addresses the local Chinese lord, I detect deeper subterranean fears in this play, and questions on what comes next after the semicolonial Chinese past is killed and buried. According to my postcolonial reading, Cao Yu’s Wilderness articulates deeply felt fears about how to cope with a semicolonial past, as one cannot go back to a utopian idyllic pre-colonial past where the Qing, the Japanese and the West have not influenced China; but neither can one successfully move forward into a fully decolonised futurity. It is as if Chinese intellectuals like Cao Yu, feared they were doomed to wander in a permanent present in ‘the wilderness’,—a spatiality partly created by colonising capitalist forces, that precluded any entirely Chinese solution to these modern dilemmas. Chinese May Fourth writers were acutely aware that they utilised Western models to modernise China and move beyond their semicolonised past. That radical May Fourth generation were aware of the pitfalls inherent to this approach, as this laid them open to the charge they were self-orientalising. I read Cao Yu’s metaphor of The Wilderness as his articulation of deeply seated fears and underlying tensions on the viability of the Chinese May Fourth project. Just as Lu Xun questioned the wisdom of awakening the sleeping Chinese masses to their suffering; Cao Yu questions whether one can bury the semicolonial Chinese past, if you literally and metaphorically cannot get out of the forest of western-imposed ideals. This typical postcolonial dilemma means the attempt to successfully decolonise leaves one in a space best described as a ‘wilderness’, since you cannot imagine a future entirely free of the effects of colonisation, but neither can you return to a time when you were not colonised. Jahan Ramazani suggests such peoples discover the only viable solution to their dilemma is to adopt a form of hybridity, derived from the mixed culture of the coloniser and colonised.39 Irish Revivalists used the English language in a hybrid Hibernicised form, and Synge’s creative modernist play with language is termed “Synge-song”. In a similar postcolonised move, I argue Chinese Renaissance intellectuals moved beyond imperial threats from the West and Japan, by borrowing the clothes of western Realism and Modernism.

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Cao Yu expresses throughout The Wilderness that this decolonising device may not free the semicolonial Chinese people sufficiently. Cao Yu’s play borrows from Western drama, yet his protagonist Chouhu fails to fulfill his desire and never marries Jinzi.40 It is as if Cao Yu expresses and interrogates the underlying tensions of his Chinese May Fourth generation. Cao Yu fear is that simply killing the tyrants of Chinese colonial history will not inevitably lead to an idyllic postcolonised futurity. According to my postcolonial reading, Cao Yu asks if the May Fourth project raises unforeseen complications for the semicolonial Chinese, who wander among a forest of Western ideals of self-fulfillment transplanted onto foreign soil. Yet, how did Cao Yu’s Chinese Renaissance generation receive Synge’s Irish Revivalist plays which grappled with similar themes? Synge was assigned a phonetic name Xin Ge 辛格 by Chinese intellectuals (although the first character for hard toil or labour is apt for Synge). Other Chinese May Fourth translators called Synge “Xin e 辛 額”, as Ye Chongzhi 葉崇智 did in a 1926 article in CBFK, or “Xin ji 辛基” as Zhou Shoumin 周壽民 did in NDBYK in 1933. Table 8.1 demonstrates patterns on which Chinese May Fourth journals published on Synge, when, where and for and by whom. The English Student , Chenbao Fukan and Qiu Ye were the earliest Chinese-language periodical sources on Synge during the 1920s, and were published in Shanghai. However, Nanda Banyuekan and Wenyi Yuekan were published in Nanjing during the 1930s. WYYK promoted nationalist propaganda for the Guomindang (GMD). Accordingly, Synge’s Irish Revivalist literature performs different types of work for different Chinese audiences of students, nationalists and socialists. The content ranges from criticism to translations of Synge’s poetry and pictures of Synge. Zhonghua Yingyu Banyuekan focused in 1946 on Synge’s unique use of language. In contrast to Lady Gregory’s reception in China which focused on translation of her plays and critical reception as part of the greater Revivalist project; works by Irish Revivalist males Synge and Yeats received individual critical commentary in China.

Synge in English-Language Sources in China The North-China Daily News (TNCDN) details how news of western receptions of Synge’s Playboy reached an ex-patriate audience in China by 1915. This reads

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Table 8.1 Chinese archival sources on J. M. Synge Year

References

Title

Author

1921 1926

YWZZ Vol. 7–6: 401–404 CBFK Vol. 2: 2–3

Tseu Yih Zan [Zhou Yueran] 周越然 Ye Chongzhi 葉崇智

1928

CBFK Vol. 1–20: 27

1928

QY Vol. 2–3: 253–274

1933

NDBYK Vol. 8/9: 1

1933

NDBYK Vol. 8/9: 2–11 WYYK Vol. 11–2: 1–20

“Lives of Great Writers – John Millington Synge” “Xin e 辛額 J. M. Synge (1871–1909)” “Shi: Dong: Zai yige dacheng li zhiyou yidian qian 詩:冬在一個大城裡只有一點 錢 (Poetry: Winter: Only a little money in a big city by Synge, J. M.)” “Ai’erlan Xijujia Xinge 愛爾 蘭戲劇家辛格 (Irish Dramatist Synge)” “Yingguo Jindai Xijujia 英國 近代戲劇家 (English Modern Dramatists) photograph of J. M. Synge” “Xin ji 辛基 (J. M. Synge)”

1937

1946

ZHBYK Vol. 5–2: 11–12

“Yuehan Xinge Xiju de Ticai 約翰辛格戲劇的題材 (The theme of John Synge’s Plays)” “20th Century British Authors: J. M. Synge (1871–1909)”

Yun Zi 雲子

Chen Xiangbing 陳 翔冰 Anonymous

Zhou Shoumin 周壽 民 Shi Ling 石靈

Anonymous

Ireland now has a Playboy of the Southern World who is a great deal more attractive than the Western whom Synge immortalized. All County Cork is going wild over Sergeant Michael O’Leary V.C. now on a brief visit to his home. In fact, he says he must get back to the trenches for a rest cure. But it was ever so with Ireland and the Irish. They love a brave man.41

This needs to be unpacked, since this highly-influential English-language newspaper published in Shanghai from 1850 for ex-patriates in China, was for a time the British Consulate mouthpiece. Significantly, the Irish are praised only when fighting for British imperialism. In contrast, Synge’s Western Playboy is constructed as inferior, because this depicts an independent ancient Irishness that cannot be contained as other. Chapter nine exposes how this newspaper did not praise the Irish for loving a brave

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man, just one year later in 1916 when Irish rebels fought against colonial British rule. Another 1917 TNCDN article reported that Synge’s Shadow of the Glen was performed in China, at that evening’s meeting of the Union Church Literary and Social Guild.42 In 1924, TNCDN reviewed Synge’s Shadow of the Glen, originally written by Hubert Griffith in The Observer.43 Griffith explains Synge’s play of action differs from a music hall sketch, as a one-act play does not depend upon audience expectations, or theatre praxis conventions, and states the quality of the play and not the audience, determines if this succeeds with a music hall audience. Griffith claims “A play written for an ordinary theatre taxes and tortures the brain of a music-hall audience up to the breaking-point”. Griffith outlines when the curtain goes up on Synge’s Shadow of the Glen Miss Maire O’Neill is alone on the stage taking a teapot off the hob (except for a corpse under the winding sheet). Yet Griffith notes how Synge’s play held audience attention and the actors received total silence at the Coliseum, until Synge made them laugh. Griffith concludes this tested if Miss Maire O’Neill could broaden her acting method, while retaining natural grace and charm. Griffith describes O’Neill as one of the finest quietest actresses in the world, and contrasts her with William J. Rea and Fred O’Donovan as harsh powerful stage personalities, although admirably cast. English-language and Chinese-language accounts on Synge’s Irish Revivalist plays in China, demonstrate Irish Revivalist drama was re-cast in China. This opened exciting new possibilities for the Chinese May Fourth generation to stage their own vernacular drama. Modern Chinese drama did not centre on the imperial metropole, but raised similar questions to postcolonised Irish Revivalists on the peasantry, language and gender, as Chinese Renaissance translators adapt Synge’s Irish Renaissance plays for semicolonial China.

Synge in Chinese-Language Periodicals Tseu Yih Zan [Zhou Yueran] 周越然 penned a 1921 account on Synge for semicolonial Chinese audiences in The English Student .44 This was part of The Lives of Great Writers series, which printed an article on Yeats discussed in chapter four. The English Student published by the Commercial Press in Shanghai primarily served an educational function.45 This 1921 article was published during the Warlord Era, with no stable government in China, as the nationalist Guomindang (GMD) took power

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in 1927.46 Therefore, Irish Revivalist Synge’s works were part of the curriculum for students of English, when China’s 1912 Republic eroded into warlord rivalries. Tseu states “In countries where the imagination of the people, and the language they use, is rich and living, it is possible for a writer to be rich and copious in his words, and at the same time to give the reality, which is the root of all poetry, in a comprehensive and natural form”. Tseu explains that Synge is a great writer like Yeats, and was from an AngloIrish family and educated at Trinity. Tseu notes not much is known of Synge due to his “brief span of life”. Tseu explains Synge’s music scholarship links his musicality to his ability “to master the note of every person he met”. Tseu claims that Synge was “a person of terrible temper”… “irony was the common chord in his composition” and “he never forgave men and women for their folly”. Misreading Synge’s humour, Tseu earnestly explains that the lady in Synge’s poem “The Curse” must have felt awkward when reading this poem, subtitled ‘To a sister of an enemy of the author’s who disapproved of “The Playboy”. This reads Lord, confound this surly sister, Blight her brow with blotch and blister, Cramp her larynx, lung, and liver, In her guts a galling give her. Let her live to earn her dinners In Mountjoy [a jail] with seedy sinners: Lord, this judgment quickly bring, And I’m your servant, J. M. Synge.47

Comedy often did not translate from Revivalist Ireland to May Fourth China, and was ‘lost in translation’. Declan Kiberd notes that Synge appropriated the role of the traditional Gaelic poets, who penned caustic poetry against the colonial system that removed their patronage, as Synge simultaneously punctures Revivalist pretensions to absolute authenticity.48 Tseu explains that Synge’s poems are unimportant compared to his plays, and makes the bold claim that “Irish drama was a thing practically unknown before him”. This signals the importance of Irish Revivalist drama as a model of modernity for Chinese intellectual audiences. Tseu outlines other Irish dramatists Yeats, Douglas Hyde and George Moore existed before Synge. However, Tseu asserts their plays did not succeed,

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and declares a new force arrived in 1903 with Synge’s first one-act play In the Shadow of the Glen. Tseu states how Yeats discovered Synge in Paris in 1899 writing literary criticism in French and English, and encouraged Synge to go to the primitive people in Ireland to become an original creative writer. Tseu explains that Synge only penned six plays and outlines each for Chinese readers. Tseu asserts In the Shadow of the Glen is an impressive drama set in a cabin in a lonely glen, with characters including a woman oppressed by loneliness, an unfeeling husband who feigns death, and two visitors. Tseu presents Synge’s play Riders to the Sea as the story of old mother Maurya whose five sons were lost at sea, and whose last son Bartley was in a miserable condition. Tseu proclaims that Synge’s other plays The Tinker’s Wedding and The Well of the Saints are nothing but frank ridicule of the Irish peasantry. This is Tseu’s reading of controversial Revivalist postcolonial depictions of Irish peasants [Tseu’s reading may be influenced by his source materials, as Qiu Ye printed comprehensive lists on the earliest English-language books on Irish Revivalism available to Chinese Renaissance translators]. Tseu quotes Synge who claims that country people possess great humour, and do not mind being laughed at without malice. Tseu comments that “In spite of what Synge says, his picture of the Irish peasantry is neither complimentary nor sympathetic”, and adds that these plays were not produced. Tseu describes Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World as a humorous play about a boy who dreads his father for tying him to the soil. Themes on land issues resonated with Chinese May Fourth readers, who attempted to undo feudal Confucian ties to family and society.49 Tseu states that the boy meets Pegeen who becomes his sweetheart. However, Tseu criticises Synge’s conception of the play as “too wide”. Tseu explains that Synge’s play Deirdre of the Sorrows is about a beautiful young woman who loosens the knot of life to accompany her slain young lover. Synge’s construction of gender in Deirdre had immediate valence for Tseu’s young Chinese May Fourth readers, since many women of that generation tragically killed themselves rather than accept an arranged marriage to an older man.50 Tseu comments that opinions differ on which Synge play is best, but adds that Synge’s characters “contain the basal elements of human nature”. Tseu concludes that Synge dramatised primal hope, fear, sorrow and the loneliness of life, yet rhythm is not lost in Synge’s plays penned in prose. Tseu praises Synge, placing him among the first rank of modern dramatists and proclaims that Synge is in many ways “the Shakespeare

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after Shakespeare”. Hence, Irish Revivalist Synge was part of the English curriculum for semicolonial Chinese students during the Warlord Years.

Autumn Wilderness Qiu Ye 秋野 (Autumn Wilderness) published a 1928 article on Irish Revivalist Synge by Chen Xiangbing 陳翔冰.51 [See Table 8.1. See Appendix C in my online e-book for my English translation]. Qiu Ye was a monthly periodical published by Wang Jingzhi for Jinan University Qiutun Club in Shanghai (1927–1928) that introduced literary criticism to Chinese intellectuals. The ‘Wilderness’ title of this journal links to chapter eights title. I contend Chinese Renaissance writers found themselves in an arid cultural intellectual postcolonised wilderness, which they re-invigorated by transplanting western ideas. Since the Chinese were culturally appropriated by the West, it seems an apt solution for Chinese May Fourth writers to similarly appropriate from western culture. Chinese writers transplanted western ideas to the Chinese intellectual environment, to test which ideas thrived in a semicolonial setting. In Qiu Ye (Autumn Wilderness) Chen explains how Standish O’Grady and Irish Revivalism rekindled the flame of imagination in young Irish poets, and their ancient heroic stories although not reliable history, vividly depict the spirit of the race. Chen outlines these influences trickled slowly like streams that converge into a river and became the foundation of Irish literature. Chen positions Yeats as the most famous Irish writer, but admits that each young Irish writer was different and possessed their own spirit. Chen divides Irish literature into three different fields (1) Prose (2) Poetry and (3) Drama. Chen asserts that drama was the greatest Irish literary achievement and lists Irish dramatists A.E. (George Russell), Boyle, Joseph Campbell, Padraic Colum, Lord Dunsany, St. John Ervine, George Fitzmaurice, Lady Gregory, Thomas MacDonagh, Edward Martyn, George Moore, T. C. Murray, Seumas O’Kelly, Lennox Robinson, J. M. Synge and W. B. Yeats [Furen 夫人 for Lady Gregory does not imply a title in Chinese]. Chen states their goal was to prevent Irish theatre from becoming commercial, which echoes calls by Yeats. Chen states that Martyn instigated this movement but there is no Irish atmosphere in Martyn’s works. Chen argues that the real Irish Renaissance occurred in the early twentieth-century, between (1) the Irish Literary Theatre and (2) the Abbey Theatre or Irish national theatre.

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Chen here differentiates between the founding of the Irish Literary Theatre (1899–1901), and the Abbey Theatre in 1904.52 Chen references performances of Yeats’s play The Countess Cathleen from 1899, Martyn’s plays The Heather Field and Maeve, Moore’s The Bending of the Bough and female Irish Revivalist Alice Milligan’s play The Last Feast of the Fianna [Milligan’s name is transliterated as meili yan 美麗 顏 or beautiful face]. Chen explains Yeats and Moore co-wrote Diarmuid and Grania in 1901, and states that Dr. Hyde wrote his play Casadh an tSúgáin (The Twisting of the Rope) entirely in the Celtic language. Chen describes seven plays during this period, but claims only one was in ‘tu hua’ 土話 [a politically incorrect reference to the dialects of primitive peoples]. Chen underlines how Martyn and Moore withdrew from the movement, as their works lacked a sense of local place and leaned towards Ibsen. Chen repeats Yeats’s famous declaration in the 1901 Samhain theatrical journal that Irish people would perform Irish theatre written for and by Irish people. Chen asserts this literary movement had great impact and gathered force like a river meeting the sublime green ocean, as the world recognised the fame of Irish literature. Although Synge was a new member, Chen claims that Synge’s achievements were greater than the others as Synge became the central figure in Irish drama. Chen allows that Yeats was the main intellectual behind this movement, although Yeatsian poetry is better known. Chen concludes that Lady Gregory and A. E. did well, however the Irish Drama movement is known for expression of the people’s spirit and their ancient histories. Chen divides the Irish Drama movement into three categories (1) Ancestral histories (2) peasant life in the present and (3) Satirical drama. Chen emphasises that Lady Gregory’s plays were based upon popular anecdotal histories, she used realism to depict the spirit of the Irish nation with vitality and she collaborated with Dr. Hyde to research the Celtic Irish language, ballad folksongs and legends. Chen explains that A. E.’s real name was George Russell, and he had a real faith in mysticism compared to Yeats, who only used mysticism to express emotion and give free rein to the imagination. Chen contrasts Yeats with Synge, who occupied a higher position in Revivalism due to his use of plain language to describe Irish characters and customs. Chen quotes Synge’s preface to The Playboy which claims he heard every word used in his plays spoken by the islanders, except for one or two words he heard from sellers of songs in Dublin, and words he used when he was

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too little to read a newspaper. Chen includes Synge’s travelogue account of the Aran Islands, and explains that stories in Synge’s plays originate there and were modified to become the canon everyone esteems.

Postcolonial Imaginings Significantly for my central argument, Chen emphasises that the Irish Revivalist movement reimagined their history to separate themselves from Britain and stand out in the world [This anticolonial reading appears in the final lines of Synge’s Playboy where Michael declares “it is the will of God that all should guard their little cabins from the treachery of law”].53 Like my underlying thesis, Chen contends that this Irish literature movement holds the same meaning as our Chinese movement [italics mine]. Chen claims the Irish Renaissance, just like China’s Renaissance movement, aims to liberate the people from Classicism and decreed the founding of the vernacular, although he admits the Irish awoke much earlier. I read this as Chen’s postcolonial move to directly link the Irish Revivalist movement to what he terms our own “wu si yundong 五四 運動 (May Fourth movement)”. Chen asserts that Irish Revivalists just like China’s May Fourth, attacked Classicism to establish baihuawen 白 話文 (vernacular literature). Hence, I do not impose external arguments on semicolonial Chinese May Fourth intellectuals, as they promote the same anticolonial readings of Irish Revivalism, throughout the Chinese archival periodicals I researched. Chen insists that Irish Revivalism is just like ‘our’ Chinese May Fourth movement, as the Irish similarly established a vernacular language of the people, to revive an old language and national literature. Chen notes Continental anti-Realism influenced Irish drama, as everyone tired of Ibsen. Chen gives Synge’s biography and explains that Ireland would have lost a great talent, if Yeats had not convinced Synge to return to Ireland after discovering a lonely Synge drifting on the Continent. Chen asserts this was not just Synge’s personal achievement, as Synge became Ireland’s national shining light. Chen explains how Yeats was talent-hunting for the Irish Revival in Paris, and urged Synge to return to Ireland to represent a bigger picture-a life nobody had yet represented. In an amusing misspelling, Chen claims Synge lived for six weeks in the ‘Iran islands’, and Synge vividly brought to life what the Aran

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islanders taught him. Chen lists Synge’s works and contrasts Synge’s seriousness in real life, with his richly vibrant dramatic words. Chen states that Synge was rational, rarely smiled and avoided debates on religion, politics and literary movements. Poignantly, Chen claims that Yeats was Synge’s only friend, and that Synge rarely read works by contemporaries. Chen terms Synge’s Playboy of the Western World as the story of a man who dares to do what others will not. Chen declares that one sincere motivation for this play may have been to fight the British police, but notes how Synge romanticises this. Chen gives a sophisticated postcolonised reading of why the Irish islanders in Synge’s Playboy take in Christy Mahon who reputedly murdered his father, since tribal allegiances dictate that they protect him from the colonial British police. Chen asserts that Synge’s Aran Islands explains why Irish islanders protect this man accused of patricide and directly quotes the English version of Synge’s account It seems partly due to the association between justice and the hated English jurisdiction, but more directly to the primitive feeling of these people, who are never criminals yet always capable of crime, that a man will not do wrong unless he is under the influence of a passion which is as irresponsible as a storm of the sea.54

According to Chen’s anticolonial reading of Irish Revivalist Synge, Irish islanders protect a murderer to rebel against the hated jurisdiction of colonial British law. For Chen this represents the Irish anticolonial mentality. It is noteworthy that Chen discovers potential anticolonial resonances in Synge’s Playboy. Irish critics generally preclude nationalism as an influence in Synge’s Playboy, and note instead how Synge’s play caused Irish nationalists to riot at the Abbey. Yet, Chinese May Fourth writer Chen does detect an anticolonial reading of Synge from an Asian Renaissance perspective. Hence, Chen outlines Synge’s talents and examples from Synge’s Irish Revivalist plays specifically to rouse his semicolonial Chinese audience to national revival.

Modernism I argue that Modernism is evident in Irish Revivalist literature and Declan Kiberd detects Modernism rather than Romanticism, in Synge’s view of nature.55 Chen states that Synge died tragically before Deirdre of

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the Sorrows was finished, but Lady Gregory’s talents ensured the play was published and rehearsed [Synge’s fiancé Molly Allgood and Yeats completed the play].56 Declan Kiberd explains that Synge wrote Deirdre to be spoken aloud by Molly Allgood, as an Abbey obituary after his death.57 Chen likens Synge’s sorrowful words in Deirdre to an old Chinese poem on silkworms that make silk until death, implying that Synge produced beautiful things until his last moment. Chen details three occasions when Molly Allgood frightened Synge with premonitions of his death. Once Molly envisioned Synge’s flesh falling from his face to reveal his skull. Then she dreamed Synge lay in a coffin. In her third dream, Molly saw Synge waving to her from a boat, she wanted to run to him, but could not. Chen emphasises Synge’s words were gathered from the masses and honed by poetic imagination. These three non-realistic incidents are exemplary of modernist intent and psychological exploration in Irish Revivalist accounts of Synge which evidently resonated with Chinese May Fourth writers, in their search for a modern postcolonised Chinese identity. However, does Synge’s portrayal of gender complicate this Postcolonial Modernist project for China’s Renaissance?

Gender Regarding gender, Chen explains that Synge’s Irish Revivalist play The Shadow of the Glen is identical to real life stories Synge heard, but the play’s ending differs from the original where the old man struck the couple with a stick. Chen describes the plot and apparent resurrection of old Dan Burke who pretends to be dead, to discover if his young wife Nora loves their young neighbour Michael, as a visiting tramp observes. Aligning Synge with May Fourth preoccupations on women’s rights, Chen asserts that Synge’s sympathies lie with the young woman Nora, who was forced to marry an old man she does not love, with no way out other than live in the wilderness with the tramp. Lu Xun’s talk at Beijing Women’s Normal College on December 26, 1923 asked where a woman like Ibsen’s Nora could go if she walked out of the traditional Chinese home. Lu Xun concluded that such a woman could return home, become a prostitute or die, and used this to argue for women’s education and empowerment.58 Similarly, Chen dismisses “the old man who pants like a goat” in Synge’s Shadow, and foregrounds Nora’s dilemma as the tramp volunteers to take Nora and make a new life or “xin tiandi 新天地

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(new heavens and new earth)”. Chen records the tramp’s description of the lyrical birds Nora will hear in their New World, and inserts the names of Chinese birds like larks, Asian cranes and the huamei 畫眉 thrush for Chinese readers in this transcultural exchange. Synge and O’Casey repeatedly undermined gender implications for masculinist romantic Irish nationalism. In Synge’s Playboy Pegeen’s search for an active masculine hero is ostensibly fulfilled by Christy Mahon, when she believes he murdered his father. Once Pegeen discovers her mistake she laments in the final lines “Oh my grief, I’ve lost him surely. I’ve lost the only Playboy of the Western World”.59 The Oedipal conflicts in Synge’s Irish Revivalist play appealed to the iconoclastic Chinese May Fourth generation, who detested Confucian filial ties between fathers and sons. Louie Kam notes the construction of Chinese masculinities, framed this debate in modern Chinese society as to whether a masculine man should be wen or wu (writer or fighter).60 Chen notes how Synge’s play depicts Irishwomen as admiring manly men of action. These unresolved underlying tensions meant that male Chinese May Fourth writers became men of letters, or men of action, or both. Cao Yu’s plays address similar gender issues. Cao Yu’s 1934 play Thunderstorm was the first time real life was portrayed onstage in China, and is now the most performed play in China.61 Wan Ning explains how Cao Yu invented Chinese realist drama and foregrounded female protagonists because he sympathised with them.62 The impending thunderstorm portrays emotional storms in modern female subjectivities and the imminent cataclysm that ends traditional patriarchal Chinese society. Leftist writers detect inequality between social classes in Cao Yu’s plays. I read these inequalities as part of the Postcolonised Modernist condition, complicated by gender. Thunderstorm’s three female characters symbolise different classes; Shiping demonstrates tradition, Sifeng embodies hope for future generations, and educated Fanyi represents the New Woman promoted by the Chinese Renaissance.63 Yet, a Marxist reading does not explain their fates, as the lives of all three end badly regardless of class. My Postcolonial Modernist reading of his depiction of Chinese gender roles underscores how colonising Qing, Japanese and Western constructions of gender and Chineseness influenced Cao Yu. Female characters Sifeng and Fanyi, who best embody modern May Fourth New Women and choose who to love, fare no better than fatalistic traditional Shiping. I argue that Cao Yu’s Thunderstorm illuminates the need for an alternative Postcolonised

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Modernist condition, where modern semicolonial Chinese women are not controlled by patriarchal males. Synge’s Irish Revivalist plays embody similar gendered dilemmas for Pegeen in Playboy and Nora in Shadow. Both female characters choose a mate, but are confounded by the postcolonised condition surrounding them. I discern that vibrant young Nora is only required to marry old landowner Dan Burke, because waves of colonising invasions displaced indigenous peoples onto ever poorer and smaller plots of land. Many nineteenth-century Irish people were unable to marry and joined the priests or nuns because they could never own land in postcolonised Ireland or support a family. And Ireland’s arranged marriages, like Nora’s, focused exclusively on expanding land ownership for survival, and not on individual happiness. Diarmaid Ferriter states that by 1911 in Ireland, 27% of men and 25% of women in the age range 45–54 never wed.64 Ferriter quotes Robert Lynd who concluded that Ireland is largely a country of late marriages and of few marriages. Emigration has drained the country to an unnatural degree of the young men and women of marrying age, and those who remain are…frequently unable to marry until the exuberance of life has gone out of them.65

Ferriter outlines that Ireland was demographically unique, as farm labourers born at the turn of the century retained the lowest marriage rate for any social class, and 50% were unmarried still by 1950.66 However, similar arrangements were not routinely forced on young people in neighbouring colonial Britain. Appropriation of Irish lands by colonial Britain and the related impoverishment of indigenous Irish peoples directly impacted who could marry, and when. Synge’s Revivalist female protagonists are also denied the space to imagine marriages based on anything other than practicality, due to their postcolonised condition.

Postcolonial Readings of Synge Declan Kiberd reads Playboy as a “monstrous spectacle of deformed colonial life”, as rioters finished the play for Synge in 1907, demonstrating its central point as Christy is denied identity/freedom by his father’s misrule.67 I detect subterranean postcolonial discourses in Synge’s

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Revivalist dramas on why the islanders are impoverished. Pegeen’s resignation in marrying Shawn Keogh, is Synge’s furtive anticolonial commentary on Ireland’s forced union with Britain. Pegeen imagines freedom with rebellious Christy Mahon a male she envisions will take manly action to free himself from domineering patriarchalism, depicting Irish nationalism’s role. However Pegeen is disappointed in Christy and the messianic pretensions she thrust upon him. Kiberd discerns in Playboy’s three acts Frantz Fanon’s decolonisation dialectic, on the three stages of colonisation, nationalism and liberation.68 I read Pegeen’s lament that she has “lost the only Playboy of the Western World” as dramatically rendering Irish nationalism’s later despair at not realising the dream of a fully independent decolonised Ireland. I argue that Synge’s 1907 Playboy was ahead of the zeitgeist, and presents prescient articulations and inherent underlying tensions as the Irish “play” at being a new “boy” on the Western stage of nationhood. It is as if Irish nationalism glimpsed through Irish Revivalist literature the possibility of creating their own Postcolonised Modernist state, but lost this. This space meant the Irish could invent new norms, independent of colonising British interpretations on how to be modern and Irish. For Alex Davis “Synge’s primitivism is the product of the modernity he disavows”.69 I contend that Synge disavowed imperial modernity as his plays play with an alternative postcolonised modernity. Irish visionaries ‘lost’ sight of this decolonised vision, as the brutal realities of Ireland’s impoverished postcolonial condition meant that the Irish could not return to a pre-colonial past—nor could they imagine a fully independent future. Irish poet Austin Clarke’s poem “The Lost Heifer” captures this moment of disillusion experienced by Irish nationalism, and describes “the last honey by the water that no hive can find”, portraying the illusory freedom promised, yet never fully attained by the Irish Free State. The poet is left with nothing of his postcolonial vision but “the mist becoming rain”.70 I discern Pegeen’s lament as a dramatic rendition of the forlorn hopes of Irish nationalism; which was as wildly and imaginatively articulated as Pegeen’s vision of the latent potentiality of her union with her version of the Playboy. According to my reading, both Synge and Cao Yu present gendered Postcolonial and Modernist complications in their plays, and express similar anxieties about modern postcolonised nationhood that urgently needed articulation. In Autumn Wilderness Chen translates Synge’s play Riders to the Sea as “People who ride horses to the Sea”. Chen outlines the plot as old widow

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Maurya looses a husband and four sons to the sea, looses two remaining sons to the sea and is left with two daughters. Chen concludes “Oh well. They all returned to the sea and I have nothing left, yet the sea cannot revenge me anymore”. Synge’s version ends as Maurya asserts that the sea can do no more to her; Chen alters this and personifies the sea’s vengeful character as part of the postcolonised landscape. Chen sighs proclaiming that this tragedy is sad to the bone and causes everyone to empathise deeply with the old widow. Lu Xun and the Chinese May Fourth generation attacked the Confucian order which demanded that old Chinese widows in order to remain virtuous, should starve by the roadside rather than remarry.71 Hence, the gendered plight of Synge’s widow Maurya resonated with Chen’s semicolonial Chinese May Fourth readership. Chen explains that Synge’s play The Well of the Saints depicts a married couple of old blind beggars Martin and Mary Doul, who receive the gift of sight when the Saint (or priest) pours water from the holy well on their eyes [Doul is an anglicised version of the Irish word ‘dall’ for blindness]. Both see only their ugliness and that of the world. When their vision is again lost, the Saint offers to cure them but they refuse and seek kinder neighbours down South. According to my Postcolonial Modernist reading, Synge here questions theatre’s role, as our self-delusion blindly insists on perceiving beauty in a world where ugliness reigns. Synge foregrounds modernist psychological issues in this play, and Lu Xun debated similar questions on whether to wake the sleepers in his Iron House. Chen reads Synge’s Irish Revivalist play as promoting a natural non-materialistic life similar to Eastern ways of life, yet laments that people like Synge’s beggars exist in the Chinese countryside, but nobody makes Guomin Wenxue 國民文 學 (Chinese national literature) shine. Thus, Chen detects an alternative model to imperial modernity in postcolonised Irish Revivalist literature that produces literature focused on the peasantry and the local rather than the imperial centre. Chen states that Synge’s play The Tinker’s Wedding is not very good. However, Mary Burke notes in The Cambridge Companion to Synge (2009) that this play depicts minorities in a pre-lapsarian state, who reject the entwined complications of religion and capitalism.72 According to my research, Chen’s detailed Chinese article on Irish Revivalist Synge in Autumn Wilderness in 1928, was sourced from Ernest A. Boyd’s account of The Contemporary Drama of Ireland in 1917.73 Boyd’s account published by Little and Brown in Boston focused on Edward Martyn,

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and makes very similar arguments to Chen Xiangbing. Unusually, Chen dutifully notes his sources at the end of his article, and lists Boyd’s account alongside The Cambridge History of English Literature volume XIV pages 329–330, Yeats’s account of The Death of Synge, Synge’s plays, Synge’s travelogue The Aran Islands , and Guo Moruo’s translations of Synge’s plays. Accordingly, Chinese May Fourth writers were well sourced on Irish Revivalism, and read prodigiously in English. Significantly, Chen applies lessons from Irish Revivalism for Chinese readers, emphasising whatever aligns with the May Fourth project and omitting things that do not. For Chen, Irish Revivalism depicts counterutopian narratives of Postcolonial Modernism to imperial modernity. Chen reads Synge’s Irish Revivalist plays as different ways to approach modernity in a postcolonised setting, one based on the local postcolonised periphery rather than the imperial centre. Remarkably, Chen’s article does not simply translate Boyd’s article, but references the Chinese May Fourth movement which did not appear in Boyd’s original. Chen sides with Irish Revivalism on the Abbey riots and claims that audiences misunderstood and believed Synge demeaned Irishwomen, and thus condemned Synge’s immoral portrayal of the Playboy who killed his father. Chen concludes that Synge created a national literature to reveal the spirit of the Irish nation to the world, and adds Synge’s poetic words flowed like springs and touched people’s hearts, thereby creating masterpieces of modern world literature.

Wenyi Yuekan Wenyi Yuekan 文藝月刊 (Literary Monthly) published a 1937 article entitled “The Theme of John Synge’s Plays” by Shi Ling 石靈.74 Coincidentally, 1937 was the year Cao Yu penned The Wilderness, as the Second Sino-Japanese War began. WYYK was published monthly in Nanjing by the China Art Club (1930–1941) for the nationalist Guomindang Propaganda Department. WYYK printed translations of famous works, international literary news and articles on nationalism. Synge would be amused to discover he was used to promote Chinese nationalism, as Abbey rioters accused his works of insufficient Irish nationalism.75 Shi Ling is positive about Irish Revivalism’s portrayal of women by Synge, Lady Gregory and Yeats, but admits the difficulty of portraying reality. Shi Ling asserts that Irish Revivalism portrayed a reality focused on

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the past, but Yeats’s works point to futurity. Chinese May Fourth intellectuals diverged from Irish Revivalism on this issue and did not view their ancient past as a literary resource. Lin Yusheng explains how May Fourth anti-Confucianism led to iconoclastic anti-traditionalism, although Chinese intellectuals often retooled Confucian concepts.76 Significantly, Shi Ling lists primary sources available to Chinese May Fourth writers, including a collection of Irish Revivalist Synge’s plays produced by John W. Luce and company in Boston in 1902. Also cited are translations from Petrarch, Villon and Synge’s Aran Islands published in Leipzig by Bernhard Tanchnitz in 1926. Shi Ling references Ernest Boyd’s Contemporary Drama of Ireland from Boston, and Irish Plays and Playwrights by Cornelius Weygandt published by Houghton Mifflin company in Boston and New York. Shi Ling cites The Irish Drama by Andrew E. Malone published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1929 in New York, and Maurice Bourgeois’s book on J. M. Synge. This establishes conclusively that transnational revolutionary literary ideas circled the globe from Irish Revivalism to continental Europe and the U.S. and on to China, forging our shared global history.

Language The anonymous author of Zhonghua Yingyu Banyuekan 中華英語半月 刊 (The Chinese English Half-Monthly) in 1946 proposes that Synge’s unique use of language and isolation was for dramatic purposes to create an idiom free of the music-hall ‘brogue’ [accent].77 The title incorrectly identifies Synge as British, but the text accurately terms Synge as Irish. Localised Irish terms are translated into Chinese in footnotes. The author claims that Yeats found Synge ‘rotting’ and ‘dying of thirst at the fountain-head of art’ in Paris, yet discerned enough in the wreckage to attempt salvage. Hence, due to Yeats’s gift for influencing people to bring out the best in themselves, Synge was driven ‘back to Ireland’ to help the new movement establish a Celtic Revival in the arts, as Synge carried out his ‘poet-imposed duties’. Synge sojourned in Europe and ‘listened to the storms that were blowing across literary Europe’. But Yeats ‘turned him from this to a specific purpose…to study the Anglo-Irish idiom at first hand, amongst the natives of the western isles and the Atlantic coast’. This article demonstrates Eurocentric bias and claims this ‘brought the light of European vision into the rather dubious Celtic twilight, which even Lady Gregory’s vigour and Yeats’ genius could not dispel’.

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This article states that ‘the lovely dialect which the Gaelic larynx and temperament have made out of the English language was used by Synge with that artistic skill which hides its own devices’. Hence, ‘the dialogue of his little plays seemed to run quite naively off the tongues of his characters, characters generalized and typical of the primitive fisher-folk and peasants who in real life actually did speak in poetic metaphor’. The author compares Synge’s skillful manipulation of ‘this native richness of phrase’ to Gogol’s Russian peasant stories. Declan Kiberd argues that Irish Revivalism utilised the rich language of the poor, who psychologically compensated for their barren postcolonised surroundings by creating a more spacious imaginative world.78 Barry McCrea asserts that Synge invented a form of language no one spoke in real life, and reads this “elaborate inauthenticity” as an authentic Modernist project, aligned with Modernist suspicions about the reliability of signifier and signified in language.79 McCrea contends that Synge and O’Casey possessed no native idiom, and were free to create their own, based on the ‘low’ vernacular they turned into high art. Accordingly, Irish Revivalist attempts to de/recolonise spaces, genres and languages, furthered Chinese modernisation projects in another postcolonised setting. Chinese intellectuals created new words for the projects they envisioned that originated in English and European languages, were mediated through Japanese and formed entirely new meanings in a semicolonial Chinese context. I read Chinese Renaissance linguistic moves as postcolonised and modernist, since they agentically proclaim new ways to be modern and Chinese. This article also critiques Irish Revivalism and contends that Synge’s European training ‘directed his attitude toward the self-conscious Celtic Movement, and also toward the appalling insularity of the outlook of the people about whom he was writing’. This phrase deserves to be unpacked, as this Chinese writer uses Synge’s pro-European stance to promote European models as appropriate for Chinese writers similarly confronting the ‘appalling insularity’ of their readers. China’s May Fourth generation feared their insular traditional national worldview weakened them, and reimagined Chinese identity through western literary models. Accordingly, Irish Revivalist Synge’s linguistical manoeuvres perform a particular type of work for the semicolonial Chinese Renaissance and model alternative modernities. The author explains Synge’s Playboy ‘brought both the religious and nationalist prejudices of the Irish public down on the Abbey theatre’,

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yet Yeats stood firm ‘autocratic, aloof and fearless’. The author states the controversy and the Abbey survived, but Synge prematurely died from tuberculosis [actually Hodgkin’s disease] in 1909 at the height of his newly discovered power. This article concludes that Irish theatre lost by Synge’s death, as no one since has done what he was capable of doing— pointing to a perfect blend of realism and symbolism. Whereas other dramatists are drawn to one of these techniques, Synge achieved a ‘happy poetic unity’ in his tragedies and comedies of peasant life in The Aran Isles, and was well-equipped for the specialised job ‘far-seeing Yeats had beckoned upon him’. I contend that the Chinese Renaissance utilised Synge and Irish Revivalism to bolster their own stances on vernacular language and the need to modernise based upon European models. The implication was that if Irish Revivalism successfully utilised European models, semicolonial Chinese intellectuals were not anti-Chinese for applying similar strategies.

Chinese-Language Newspaper Accounts of Synge The influential Chenbao Fukan 晨報副刊 (Morning News Supplement) published an article in the drama section on Synge by Ye Chongzhi 葉 崇智 in 1926.80 Chenbao Fukan was published in Beijing (1918–1928) and printed articles by leading May Fourth writers Xu Zhimo, Bing Xin, Yu Dafu and Zhou Zuoren (Lu Xun’s younger brother). CBFK focused on art, science and ideological revolution. Chinese writers often used pennames during this tumultuous period to avoid government censors. Lu Xun had over one hundred pennames, even more than Voltaire, thus it is difficult to ascertain who each penname represents.81 This CBFK article on Synge concludes that Western Realism has its own agenda, as a difference exists between portraying reality and Realism. Ye explains that gender and religious issues are usually perceived through the lens of social problems, hence the need for a scientific scalpel to dissect real daily life to expose the existing ugly situation. Ye explains for the last thirty years, the Celtic Literary Revival expressed aspects of real life using drama, poetry and novels, but primarily through drama. Ye presents Synge’s new Irish drama and explains that half the Irish people are peasants. Striking an anticolonial note of solidarity, Ye asserts that the English kept the Irish down for over one hundred years, yet they continued to be strong. Ye presents Yeats, Lady Gregory, Hyde and George Russell

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as writers who know their national history and use ancestral beliefs and cultural awareness to reinvent their old Gaelic culture. Ye underscores similarities in Irish and Chinese anticolonial sentiment, as both faced imperial incursions by the British. Ye also unites contemporaneous Irish and Chinese literary movements on the collection of peasant folklore. I contend that Ye establishes Irish Revivalism as an alternative postcolonised modernist model for the Chinese Renaissance to emulate. This bolsters my thesis that Chinese intellectuals did not just seek modernity, but sought modernisation in a uniquely Chinese semicolonised sense. I argue that China’s May Fourth generation rejected colonising interpretations of modern Chinese identity, and established instead a Postcolonised Modernist identity influenced by more relatable Irish Revivalist models. Ye references Synge and the Abbey and divides Irish cultural themes into three fields (1) ancestors (2) the simple lives of present-day peasants (3) and satire. Ye presents Synge’s biography and explains that Synge was born in Dublin in 1871, attended Trinity College and became a significant Irish Revivalist. Ye declares Synge’s Playboy Realist in technique, but notes that unlike Symbolism Synge delved deeply into the lives of ordinary people. Ye states that Realism was influential recently in China due to the May Fourth movement. Adopting a Sinocentric tone, Ye asserts that China’s national history and customs are richer than Ireland’s. However, Ye admits the portrayal of simple peasant life is at a fledgling state in Chinese literature, compared to Irish Revivalism. Supporting my underlying argument, Ye directs Chinese writers to pay more attention to dialect like Irish Revivalist Synge. Ye claims that one should live with the people to become sympathetic to local indigenous folklores, and asserts that Chinese writers will only be able to arouse people’s national spirit to promote New Youth’s values of democracy and youth, by emulating Synge. Yet argues that Chinese writers should model themselves on Irish Revivalist Synge, by promoting local dialects to oppose westernisation of the Chinese vernacular. This evidences Chinese May Fourth anticolonial intent, as Ye declares Irish Revivalist Synge used Gaelic linguistics to establish a new postcolonised identity with HibernoEnglish as a literary language. Ye proposes the Chinese can similarly use local dialects to sinicize the Chinese vernacular, which was increasingly westernised. Thus, Ye translated Irish Revivalist postcolonial linguistical moves on hybridity and resistance, into the need for a new localised Chinese vernacular for the Chinese Renaissance.

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CBFK published Synge’s poem “Winter” in 1928, translated by Yun Zi 雲子.82 This poem subtitled ‘Only a little money in a big city’ reads There’s snow in every street Where I go up and down, And there’s no woman man or dog That knows me in the town. I know each shop, and all These Jews and Russian Poles, For I go walking night and noon To spare my sack of coals.83

CBFK’s 1928 audience understood such privations, as untold millions died in the Chinese Republican era, as factions competed for dominance. Lao She similarly delayed feeding coins to his heater in 1920s imperial London and named the heater “vampire”.84 1928 was a dividing line for Republican era China (1912–1949). Chinese Communists allied with the Nationalist Guomindang in 1924 to fight the Warlords during the Northern Expedition, or First United Front.85 On April 12, 1927 Chiang Kaishek infamously approved a violent purge of Communists in the Shanghai massacre, to consolidate power for his nationalist party.86 Thousands of Communists were executed throughout China and Chinese writers turned leftist in sympathy. Hence, Irish Revivalism became exemplary of how to unify China around the formation of a modern national literature, in a time of national existential crisis. Beijing University salaries remained unpaid during this period and writers like Lu Xun moved to Shanghai, which became a publishing centre.87 The perceived need to unify left and right was encapsulated by establishment of the League of Left-Wing Writers in Shanghai in 1930.88 By 1937 Chinese writers turned to a more nationalistic outlook due to Japanese invasion, and the Second United Front (1937–1941) suspended the Chinese Civil War.89 Thus, Irish Revivalism was appropriated for different purposes during different decades in Republican era China. Irish Revivalism was used to promote anticolonialism; at other times to promote national unity; and later to promote a Chinese vernacular based upon the local. And evidently Synge’s Revivalism resonated with both Chinese nationalist and socialist audiences.

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Reciprocal Links Between Synge and Asia Yuh Jhung Hwang identifies how the Irish Renaissance also influenced the Korean Renaissance.90 Anticolonial Korean dramatists founded a modern national theatre based on Korean versions of Synge’s Irish Revivalist plays, with a Korean mother, a dead son and a colonised landscape surrounded by the sea. Reciprocal links and mutual encounters between Synge and May Fourth China also form part of our shared global history. Firstly, John Millington Synge had a brother Samuel who was a medical missionary in China.91 Secondly, J. M. Synge wrote an article entitled “Erris” on the oppressed districts for the Manchester Guardian on July 8, 1905 where he sketched with Jack Yeats (brother of W. B. Yeats) a description of a Chinese man in Belmullet, County Mayo in western Ireland, followed around by a “wondering crowd”.92 Thirdly, Synge’s medical missionary brother Samuel wrote the book Letters to my Daughter for his daughter Edith, published in 1931 by Dublin’s Talbot Press.93 In this book Samuel Synge discusses his brother J. M. Synge’s account of the Chinese man in Mayo, and explains this likely depicted a domestic worker of a family friend who also lived in China. Giulia Bruna’s account of Synge’s Irish Revivalist travel writings notes the Chinese man stood in the middle of the picture, wearing traditional light blue clothes and a long queue, holding a baby in his arms with ‘glory’ on the child’s hat, and another boy beside him. The caption on this picture reads “Chinaman in Belmullet”.94 Therefore, J. M. Synge had direct personal, familial connections with China through his brother, although we do not know the name of the Chinese man Synge and Jack Yeats sketched in the wilds of Mayo, Ireland in 1905. Fourthly, J. M. Synge directly references Chinese anti-imperial outrage in his eyewitness account of the authorities’ eviction of islanders in The Aran Islands . This appears a few pages before the paragraph Chen Xiangbing quoted in Autumn Wilderness on the hated colonial English jurisdiction of law in Ireland. Chen may have discerned Irish Revivalist Synge detected clear comparisons between semicolonial China and anticolonial Revivalist Ireland. Synge explains the hearth of the home became a symbol to evicted Aran islanders in their postcolonised wilderness of something not easy to understand in “more civilised places”.95

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The outrage to a tomb in China probably gives no greater shock to the Chinese than the outrage to a hearth in Inishmaan gives to the people.96

This demonstrates that Irish Revivalist Synge was aware of colonial outrages against the Chinese and directly linked this to the anticolonial experience of evicted Aran islanders in Revivalist Ireland. Synge’s medical missionary brother Samuel may have told Synge of similarly harsh experiences for the Chinese under threat of British and western imperial invasion. This means that Irish Revivalist Synge sensed implicit transnational postcolonial connections between the experiences of peoples in the postcolonised peripheries of semicolonial China and Revivalist Ireland, just as Chen Xiangbing later did in his account of Synge for a Chinese May Fourth audience in Autumn Wilderness.

Conclusion I entitled this chapter ‘boys’ who ‘play’ in the ‘postcolonised Wilderness ’. I conclude that the wildernesses depicted onstage by Synge in Revivalist Ireland and Cao Yu in May Fourth China, arise from their colonised surroundings. I detect a link between Synge’s Revivalist linguistic modernist experimentation and Ireland’s postcolonised condition. Significantly, Chinese May Fourth writers also read Irish Revivalist Synge this way, and used his strategies of linguistic hybridity and anticolonial resistance as alternative models to address their own modern postcolonised dilemma. Therefore, I discern both postcolonial and modernist readings of Irish Revivalist Synge, and of Chinese May Fourth dramatist Cao Yu. Cao Yu’s Thunderstorm presents conflicting formations of modern Chinese female subjectivity, and the difficulty of negotiating the modern condition mediated through a semicolonial setting. I read Cao Yu’s Wilderness as articulating underlying May Fourth anxieties and tensions on the viability of their modernising project. I read the confused wanderings of Cao Yu’s protagonist Chouhu, as a metaphor for the Chinese May Fourth generation who seek to bury the Chinese past, yet paradoxically cannot escape the forest of western-imposed ideals. I discern similar themes and anxieties underlying Synge’s Irish Revivalist plays, which also depict a postcolonised space or wilderness. The Irish became the ‘boy’ who ‘played’ on the western stage of nationhood, and Pegeen’s wild lament over the loss of her playboy articulates similar anxieties in an Irish postcolonial setting. Gregory Castle posits that Irish Revivalism was

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caught between a past it forsakes and a future beholden to that past.97 I perceive similar tensions inherent to the Chinese May Fourth modernising project, and link their need for modernist experimentation with language, gender and genre to their post(semi)colonial condition. In summation, Irish Revivalists like Synge provided the Chinese Renaissance with alternative visions of modernity to imperial modernity. This unique perspective provided by Irish Revivalist literature ‘spoke’ to the Chinese from a similarly postcolonised position, in a way that literatures produced in the imperial centres could never do. Hence, the Postcolonial Modernist experimentation of Irish Revivalism presented another route to the modern for the Chinese Renaissance; one that circumvented assumptions on race and empire that saturated literatures produced in Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the U.S. I read this form of postcolonised Irish modernism as the aspect that proved most resonant for Chinese May Fourth writers and fighters. Hence, I read the modernist experimentation of China’s May Fourth generation and Irish Revivalists through the lens of their postcolonised condition. I conclude that Irish Revivalists and Chinese Renaissance writers reacted to, and reflected back upon their own postcolonised condition, and experimented with language, gender and genre in a postcolonised modernist sense. Yet how did that radical Chinese May Fourth generation read the events of Ireland’s anticolonial 1916 Easter Rising? Chapter nine examines how Liu Bannong and others presented Easter 1916 as a way to bolster the failing Chinese Republic, as revolutionary modern ideas about literature and politics circled the colonised globe.

Notes 1. Jonathan Noble, “Cao Yu and Thunderstorm”, Columbia Companion to Modern East Asian Literatures eds. Joshua Mostow and Kirk. A. Denton (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 446–451. 2. Bonnie McDougall and Kam Louie, The Literature of China in the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 184. 3. P. J. Mathews, The Cambridge Companion to J. M. Synge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), xii, xiii, 5. 4. Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation (London: Vintage, 1995), 166–168. Nicholas Grene, “Post-Colonial Interpretations: The Case of the Playboy”, in Irelands in the Asia–Pacific eds. Peter Kuch and Julie-Ann Robson (Gerard’s Cross: Colin Smythe Ltd., 2003), 147–158. Nicholas Grene, The Politics of Irish Drama – Plays

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5.

6.

7.

8.

9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23.

in Context from Boucicault to Friel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 77. P. J. Mathews, “Traveling Home J. M. Synge and the Politics of Place”, Synge & Edwardian Ireland eds. Brian Cliff and Nicholas Grene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 172–185. Marián Gálik, “Ts’ao Yu’s Thunderstorm: Creative Confrontation with Euripides, Racine, Ibsen and Galsworthy”, Milestones in Sino-Western Literary Confrontation (1898–1979) (Weisbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1986), 101–122. Irene Eber, “Book Review Milestones in Sino-Western Literary Confrontation (1898–1979)”, Asiatische Forschungen 98 ed. Marián Gálik Monumenta Serica 37 (1986–1987): 402–404. Eugene Eoyang, “Book Review Milestones in Sino-Western Literary Confrontation (1898–1979) Asiatische Forschungen 98 ed. Marián Gálik”, Journal of Asian History 21, no. 1 (1987): 98–99. Joseph Lau, Ts’ao Yu: The Reluctant Disciple of Chekhov and O’Neil: A Study in Literary Influence (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1970), 1–96. Noble, “Cao Yu and Thunderstorm”, 450. McDougall and Kam, Literature of China, 177, 184. Chen Nan, “Cao Yu’s classic Peking Man returns to capital”, China Daily, January 29, 2018. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201801/29/ WS5a6e63fda3106e7dcc1373cb.html. Aixue Wang, A Comparison of the Dramatic Work of Cao Yu and J. M. Synge (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1999), 1–20. Ibid. McDougall and Kam, Literature of China, 28. Irene Eber, “Chinese Views of Anglo-Irish Writers and Their Works in the 1920s”, Modern Chinese Literature and its Social Context ed. Goran Malmqvist (Stockholm: Nobel Symposium Committee, 1975), 47. Irene Eber, Voices from Afar: Modern Chinese Writers on Oppressed Peoples and their Literature (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1980), ix–xxiv. Ibid., 40, 50. Ibid. Chen Shu 陈恕, “Ai’erlan Wenxue Zai Zhongguo – Shiji Huimou 爱尔兰 文学在中国-世纪回眸 (Irish Literature in China – Looking Back Through the Century)”, Waiguo Wenxue 外国文学 (Foreign Literature) 4 (July 2011): 38–46. Guo Moruo, The Collection of John Synge’s Plays (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1926). Eber, Voices from Afar, 95, 128. Aixue Wang, Cao Yu and Synge, 20–242. Edward Gunn, “Cao Yu’s Peking Man and Literary Evocations of the Family in Republican China”, Republican China 16, no. 1 (1990): 73–88.

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24. Wang, Cao Yu and Synge, xx, 20. 25. Ibid., 10–20. 26. Lydia H. Liu, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity – China, 1900–1937 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1995). 27. “Yingguo Jindai Xijujia英國近代戲劇家 (English Modern Dramatists) Photograph of J. M. Synge”, NDBYK 8/9 (1933): 1. 28. Zhou Shoumin周壽民, “Xin ji辛基 (J. M. Synge)”, NDBYK 8/9 (1933): 2–11. 29. John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, China A New History (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2006), 230–232. 30. McDougall and Kam, Literature of China, 157. 31. Fairbank and Goldman, China a New History, 265. 32. Lewis Robinson, “On the Sources and Motives Behind Ts’ao Yu’s Thunderstorm: A Qualitative Analysis”, Tamkang Review 16 (1983): 177–192. 33. Chen Xiaomei, Acting the Right Part: Political Theatre and Popular Drama in Contemporary China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002), 389. 34. McDougall and Kam, Literature of China, 178. 35. Ibid., 179. 36. Cao Yu, The Wilderness translated by Christopher C. Rand and Joseph S. M. Lau (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1980), 1–201. 37. McDougall and Kam, Literature of China, 180. 38. Ibid. 39. Jahan Ramazani, The Hybrid Muse (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 21–48. 40. Cao Yu, Wilderness, 201. 41. “From Day to Day”, TNCDN August 9, 1915, 10. 42. “From Day to Day”, TNCDN March 14, 1917, 10. 43. Hubert Griffith, “The Shadow of the Glen – A One-act Play of Action by J. M. Synge”, TNCDN October 3, 1924, 14. 44. Tseu Yih Zan [Zhou Yueran] 周越然, “Lives of Great Writers – John Millington Synge”, YWZZ 7, no. 6 (1921): 401–404. 45. Michael Gibbs Hill, “Between English and Guoyu: The English Student, English Weekly, and the Commercial Press’s Correspondence Schools”, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 23, no. 2 (Fall 2011): 100–145. 46. Fairbank and Goldman, China a New History, 297. 47. J. M. Synge, Poems and Translations by J. M. Synge (Dublin: Irish University Press, 1909), viii. 48. Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, 171, 187. 49. Fairbank and Goldman, China a New History, 18, 19, 184. 50. Ibid., 232.

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51. Chen Xiangbing陳翔冰, “Ai’erlan Xijujia Xinge愛爾蘭戲劇家辛格 (Irish Dramatist Synge)”, QY 2, no. 3 (1928): 253–274. 52. Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 (New York: Overlook Press, 2005), 30, 94. 53. J. M. Synge, The Playboy of the Western World (Dublin: Mercier Press, 1974), 67. 54. J. M. Synge, “The Aran Islands (1907)”, in The Complete Works of J. M. Synge–Plays, Prose and Poetry ed. Aidan Arrowsmith (London: Wordsworth editions ltd., 2008), 350. 55. Declan Kiberd, “Deirdre of the Sorrows”, in The Cambridge Companion to J. M. Synge ed. P. J. Mathews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 70. 56. Ibid., 72. 57. Ibid., 71. 58. Kirk A. Denton and Eileen J. Cheng, Jottings Under Lamplight: Lu Xun (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2017), 255–257. 59. Synge, Playboy, 68. 60. Louie Kam, Theorising Chinese Masculinity: Society and Gender in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 61. McDougall and Kam, Literature of China, 177. 62. Wan Ning, “Desire and Desperation: An Analysis of the Female Characters in Cao Yu’s Play The Thunderstorm”, in Images of Women in Chinese Literature Vol. 1 ed. Li Yu-ning (Indianapolis: University of Indianapolis Press, 1994), 173, 174. 63. Ibid., 174. 64. Diarmaid Ferriter, Transforming Ireland, 44–46. 65. Ibid. 66. Ibid. 67. Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, 167–180. 68. Ibid., 184, 185. 69. Alex Davis, “Learning to be Brutal: Synge, Decadence, and the Modern Movement”, New Hibernia Review/Irish Éireannach Nua 14, no. 3 (2010): 41. 70. Seán Lucy, “The Poetry of Austin Clarke”, The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 9, no. 1 (1983): 8. 71. Xu Jian, “Retrieving the Working Body in Modern Chinese Fiction: The Question of the Ethical in Representation”, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 16, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 115–152. 72. Mary Burke, ‘Tinkers’: Synge and the Cultural History of the Irish Traveller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 41–51. 73. Ernest A. Boyd, The Contemporary Drama of Ireland (Boston: Little and Brown, 1917).

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74. Shi Ling石靈, “Yuehan Xinge Xiju de Ticai約翰辛格戲劇的題材 (The theme of John Synge’s Plays)”, WYYK 11, no. 2 (1937): 1–20. 75. Christopher Murray, “‘The Choice of Lives’: O’Casey Versus Synge”, Journal of Irish Studies 17 Japan and Ireland (2002): 72–87. 76. Lin Yusheng, The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness: Radical Antitraditionalism in the May Fourth era (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979). 77. “20th Century British Authors: J. M. Synge (1871–1909)”, ZHBYK 5, no. 2 (1946): 11–12. 78. Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, 219. 79. Barry McCrea, “Style and Idiom”, in The Cambridge Companion to Irish Modernism ed. Joe Cleary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 63–73. 80. Ye Chongzhi葉崇智, “Xin e 辛額 J. M. Synge (1871–1909)”, CBFK 2 (1926): 2–3. I am grateful to Dr. Lei Qin for assistance in translation. 81. Ping Wang, “The Inner Workings of Lu Xun’s Mind: Behind the Author’s Pen-Names”, Frontiers of Literary Studies in China 7, no. 3 (September 2013): 459–482. 82. Yun Zi雲子, “Shi: Dong: Zai yige dacheng li zhiyou yidian qian詩:冬在一 個大城裡只有一點錢 (Poetry: Winter: Only a Little Money in a Big City by Synge, J. M.)”, CBFK 1, no. 20 (1928): 27. 83. J. M. Synge, “Winter”, Poems and Translations by J. M. Synge (Dublin: Irish University Press, 1909), 36, 37. 84. Anne Witchard, Lao She in London (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012), 1, 2. 85. Fairbank and Goldman, A History of China, 279. 86. Ibid., 284. 87. Ibid., 313. 88. Ibid., 360. 89. Ibid., 316. 90. Yuh Jhung Hwang, “A Mad Mother and Her Dead Son: the Impact of the Irish Theatre on Modern Korean Theatre”, Literature Compass 9/8 (2012): 560–569. 91. Anne Saddlemyer, Letters to Molly John Millington Synge to Máire O’Neill 1906–1909 ed. Anne Saddlemyer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 4. 92. J. M. Synge, “Erris”, Manchester Guardian July 8, 1905. 93. Samuel Synge, Letters to My Daughter (Dublin: Talbot Press, 1931). 94. Giulia Bruna, J. M. Synge and Travel Writing of the Irish Revival (New York: Syracuse, 2017), 98, 99. 95. J. M. Synge, “The Aran Islands (1907)”, in The Complete Works of J. M. Synge–Plays, Prose and Poetry ed. Aidan Arrowsmith (London: Wordsworth editions ltd., 2008), 345.

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96. Ibid. 97. Gregory Castle, “Irish Revivalism: Critical Trends and New Directions”, Literature Compass 8/5 (2011): 293.

CHAPTER 9

Did Ye Ever Hear of the Christmas Rising by Liu Bannong? Receptions of the 1916 Irish Easter Rising in Republican Era China

In October 1916, young Chinese May Fourth writer Liu Bannong 劉 半農 (1891–1934) despaired as the nascent Chinese Republic, recently established after the fall of the Qing Empire during the 1911 Xinhai Revolution, began to fail. Former Qing General Yuan Shikai assisted the removal of the last Qing Emperor, became the second President of the Republic of China and then violated the expectations of that new Chinese Republic by attempting to become Emperor on January 1, 1916. In this context, Liu and fellow “writers and fighters” turned from disillusion with failed political revolution to potential literary revolution. Something similar occurred in Ireland in this period, when Irish Literary Revivalists turned from the failed political reform after Parnell and according to Declan Kiberd, ‘re-invented Ireland’ by attempting political reform through cultural and literary reform.1 Liu Bannong penned an article in the influential New Youth journal and selected the 1916 Irish Easter Rising as a revolutionary literary model for his Chinese readers. I discern that Liu translated patriotic poetry by Irish rebel leaders Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh and Joseph Plunkett to rouse fellow intellectuals to reinvigorate and bolster the failing Chinese Republic. In his haste to present an anti-imperial model of Irish patriotic poetry, Liu mistakenly termed this the ‘Christmas Rising’, rather than the Easter Rising. As Irish and Asian Studies turn transnational, what

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. O’Malley-Sutton, The Chinese May Fourth Generation and the Irish Literary Revival: Writers and Fighters, Asia-Pacific and Literature in English, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5269-4_9

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reciprocal literary exchanges between Ireland and Asia does this establish for our shared global history? Significantly for Irish Postcolonial Studies, Easter 1916’s patriotic poetry influenced similar anticolonial literary movements as far away as China and Asia. Eóin Flannery states that Edward Said lamented how the Irish undervalue their global anticolonial influence on similar struggles worldwide.2 Chapter nine provides concrete examples of that rich anticolonial Irish literary legacy. I am aware of the need to self-reflexively investigate my own literary approaches, and wish to ‘de-centre Europe’, as Dipesh Chakrabarty calls for.3 Thus, I read Liu’s account of Easter 1916 according to his semicolonial Chinese context. I contend that Liu takes accepted facts on the Easter Rising and reconstructs these to reinvigorate his peers’ support for the failing Chinese Republic. Liu translates the Irish experience of Easter 1916 for new Chinese May Fourth audiences, constructing innovative transnational readings of the Rising. The Easter Rising took on new transnational postcolonial meanings in a different Chinese context, and this allows us to look anew at a defamiliarised Irish historical event. Coincidentally, both Ireland and the People’s Republic of China formed Republics in the same year, 1949. Commemorative centennial projects for China’s May Fourth in 2019, and the Irish decade of commemorations (2012–2022) allows both Republics to re-examine their historical origins, and makes my comparative work timely. Significantly, the poetry and not just the bullets of Easter 1916 resonated for Liu and his Chinese May Fourth readership. Liu’s article entitled “Ai’erlan Aiguo Shiren 愛爾蘭愛國詩人 (Irish Patriotic Poets)” was published in the leading New Youth journal in October 1, 1916.4 It is revealing what Liu emphasised and omitted and why. Evidently, of the eclectic group that coalesced to form the 1916 Rising including: nationalist Irish Volunteers; the Socialist Irish Citizen Army; revolutionary republican Fenians; and feminist Cumann na mBan (a female version of the Volunteers); Irish cultural nationalism appealed to May Fourth New Youth readers, and not necessarily James Connolly’s militant socialism, or Clarke and McDermott’s Fenian revolutionary ideology. Significantly, Liu adopts the Irish romantic nationalist version of Easter 1916, rather than official British state-sponsored versions. Thus, Liu sensed resonances between his own precarious position as a Chinese intellectual in a floundering Republic, and Ireland’s anti-imperial struggle in Easter 1916.

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Liu Bannong Chinese writer Liu Bannong 劉半農 (1891–1934) from Jiangsu, was a May Fourth contributor to the prestigious New Youth journal (Fig. 9.1). Liu suggested the creation of a separate character for the spoken word ‘ta’ to refer to female persons, 她 rather than 他. This demonstrates Liu’s sympathies for women’s rights, who were rendered invisible or written out under the all-encompassing male ‘ta’ in traditional Chinese script.5 Liu lived in London, attended University College London to study English phonetics in 1920, and became aware of the developing anticolonial Irish struggle against British rule.6 Liu pioneered the art of photography in China, which explains his unusual decision to include two photographs of Patrick Pearse and Thomas MacDonagh in his 1916 article (Figs. 9.2a, b). Pearse typically struck a sideways pose concealing his left side for portraits, and was embarrassed by the squint in his left eye. As very few New Youth articles contain photographs, Liu’s strategic use of these photographs helped to identify these largely unknown Irish patriotic poets for a new Chinese readership, through a modern visual medium. Hence, the development of modern new technologies contributed to this translingual exchange between Ireland and China. Liu experienced revolution and participated five years earlier in the 1911 Xinhai Revolution that ended Qing rule in China. Thus, Liu was deeply invested in the success and viability of the recently established Chinese Republic. For Liu, the 1916 Irish rebels appealed as fellow

Fig. 9.1 Liu Bannong was a Chinese May Fourth writer, who read the anticolonial lessons of the Irish Easter Rising of 1916 and applied these to rally his contemporaries to fight for the failing Chinese Republic, established after the Qing fell in 1911. Courtesy of JABEL/CPC Photo

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Figs. 9.2a, b Liu Bannong’s article in New Youth underlined the anticolonial lessons of the Irish Easter Rising of 1916 for his Chinese audience, and included translations of patriotic poetry by Irish rebel leaders Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh and Joseph Plunkett. Liu’s article unusually featured two photographs, one of Pearse, and one of MacDonagh. Courtesy of the Bodleian libraries, the University of Oxford, Shelfmark P210 XQN, pp. 141–148

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revolutionary anti-imperialists, and Liu’s article underscores lessons from Easter 1916 for Chinese intellectual audiences. Anti-Confucian Chinese Renaissance writers like Liu, paradoxically expressed their iconoclasm in Confucian language. 7 Similarly, Irish writer James Joyce was perceived as anti-Catholic, yet produced literature rich in religious Catholic imagery. Thus Liu is a product of his times as he attempts to throw off shackles from the Qing, Confucianism and foreign imperialism as these threateningly encircle China. According to my reading, Liu’s New Youth article ‘translates’ Ireland’s Easter 1916 and discovers valences or meanings that transfer to his semicolonial Chinese audience.

Xin Qingnian / New Youth The radical Xin Qingnian 新青年 (New Youth) journal founded by editor Chen Duxiu in 1915, opposed Yuan Shikai’s imperial ambitions and called for an eponymous ‘New Youth’. Chen co-founded the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1921. Chinese intellectual Liu, facing descent into the anarchic Warlord Years (1916–1928) and colonisation by Japan and Western Imperial Powers, looked westward for models of anti-imperial literary nationalism. Although New Youth only had a circulation of approximately 1000–3000, more readers in higher education passed articles between teachers and students and wrote in to newspapers. Hence, New Youth’s prime readers were influential members of Chinese society, who experienced a historical moment when radical change was briefly possible as the State was weak. New Youth became increasingly Marxist after the 1917 Russian Revolution, and became the official journal of the CCP in June 1923. Chinese intellectuals came late to Marxism (Marx was translated into Chinese in the 1860s) as emphasis on conflict between social classes dismayed them. Cultural nationalism seemed more inclusive to Liu as something young Chinese of all classes could get behind, maximising support for the cause. The CCP clearly are directly linked to this May Fourth journal, but theirs is not the only valid claim, since an eclectic mix of socialists, anarchists, liberals, democrats and feminists contributed to and read New Youth. Just as the Easter Rising legacy is contested in Ireland by various groups, so too China’s May Fourth legacy is contested by conflicting cliques and reimagined every decade.8 Significantly, the Chinese May Fourth generation9 chose smaller, colonised oppressed western lands like Ireland, Poland and Hungary as

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successful examples of decolonisation literature to emulate, according to Irene Eber.10 Liu’s article about the Irish Rising’s patriotic poetry resonated or had portable valences for Chinese May Fourth readers, who despaired over the failure to reform after the 1911 Xinhai Revolution. Eber outlines Irish, Polish, Jewish and Harlem Renaissance movements of the early twentieth-century influenced the Chinese May Fourth generation, collectively deemed the Chinese version of the Renaissance.11

American Republicanism and Vanity Fair Liu’s primary source appears to be Frederick James Gregg’s Vanity Fair article published earlier in August 1916, entitled “A Revolt that Failed and Succeeded”.12 Gregg’s article includes the same poems and photos as Liu’s article. Frederick James Gregg (d. 1928) frequently contributed to Vanity Fair and was an art critic for the New York Sun. Gregg helped to introduce mainstream America to Europe’s modern art masters Picasso, Matisse and Duchamp as publicity chairman for the 1913 Armory Show.13 Therefore, Irish literary nationalism was mediated into an American version of literary nationalism and finally into Chinese literary nationalism. For other sources available to Chinese writers on 1916, see Jerusha McCormack’s account of how Chinese May Fourth poet Guo Moruo wrote a poem to honour the hunger strike, and subsequent death of Cork’s Lord Mayor Terence McSwiney.14

Reciprocal Exchange I further discovered this transnational exchange did not go one way, but included the Irish in America who supported China’s anti-imperial struggle in their newsletter the “Friends of Irish Freedom” (NLFOIF ).15 The “Friends of Ireland” an Irish American republican organisation was founded at the third Irish Race Convention in New York (March 4–5, 1916) for Irish political interests in America to assist Ireland’s fight for independence. This Irish American newsletter presented China’s anti-imperial struggle against western imperialism in sympathetic terms similarly describing Ireland’s fight against British colonialism. This Irish American newsletter explicitly links the Irish and Chinese anticolonial struggle against Britain, and mocks Mr. Strachey editor of the London Spectator for suggesting in 1921, that America must assist Britain with the “vast catalogue of the cares” of Empire, stretching from

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Ireland to Palestine and India to China.16 The NLFOIF ironically notes that Strachey argues the American Republic should march shoulder to shoulder with tyranny, when liberty dares to breathe along the lines of the far-flung empire, yet suffering subjects of that empire that went to war for the freedom of small nations, should not themselves be free. In May 1921, the NLFOIF directly links Ireland’s anticolonial struggle with China’s asserting The spirit of the administration of justice by England cannot be found in the English Opium War on China, which took Hong Kong from China and while preying upon China’s weakness used this opium traffic for personal profit and at the same time brutalized and enslaved India…“English justice” as applied to Ireland is a tragic farce.17

In November 1921, the NLFOIF displays a sophisticated understanding of Asian affairs and claims that “England traded the freedom of the Koreans and the Chinese for similar claims in the Far East, but the odium of these aggressions by both nations clung only to Japan”.18 The November 1921 NLFOIF demonstrates Irish American solidarity with the Chinese stating Meanwhile China holds the field. Her latest presentation of her case is a masterly indictment of British domination and exploitation in the Far East. She shows how England fought a war to force the Chinese to allow the importation of British opium, from which the Chinese rulers were endeavoring to save their people, and then, as reparation for the cost of the war, seized Chinese territory and took over control of Chinese finances. This control of Chinese finances England retains to the present time, China is weak because England denies to China fiscal autonomy. Not only does England, as the largest foreign interest in China, hold China’s purse-strings, but this control is exercised with the object of forcing further concessions advantageous to British interests…But the Chinese rightly demand complete fiscal freedom, and no interference with provincial government.19

Although Liu Bannong’s 1916 Easter Rising article was penned before these articles, during the Irish War of Independence the Irish in America read the Chinese situation through the lens of their own experience of British colonisation. The Irish American editor of the NLFOIF utilises

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China’s anticolonial experiences to call for disentanglement of the AngloAmerican special relationship and full Irish independence from colonial Britain. The NLFOIF reads the semicolonial Chinese situation exclusively through the lens of Irish and American republicanism and establishes transnational solidarities based on anticolonial struggles circling the globe. This newsletter encourages Americans to remember how they also broke from colonial Britain, as the Irish and Chinese hope to. In December 1921 the NLFOIF proclaims the Four-Power Treaty is a “gentleman’s agreement” “between Great Britain and Japan, to rob China, with the United States the look-out guarding the premises while the plunderers get in their fine work”.20 In January 1922 the NLFOIF terms the Four-Power Treaty between Britain, America, France and Japan as “an agreement to respect each other’s possessions, making a ‘rogue’s paradise’ of the Pacific, wherein any rogue may do as he likes, provided that he can take care of the other rogues at the same time”.21 By February 1922, the NLFOIF declares that “Japan has not yet been able to get everything that is loose in China”, and notes that Politicus of the Washington Times refers to the gentlemen gathered around the Washington conference table as “an aggregation of Santa Clauses from London, Paris and Tokyo to make unselfish sacrifices in favor of the poor Chinese”.22 This article laments “One Thief at a Time” “should be enough for any country”.23 The Irish American editor of the NLFOIF opines in February 1922 that “China’s point of view, while it did not prevail at the Washington conference, will continue to stalk about in national relations after the fashion of Banquo’s ghost”.24 [In Shakespeare’s play Macbeth Banquo’s ghost appears in the banquet scene to symbolise Macbeth’s tormented conscience after killing the rightful king. Significantly, Banquo literally takes Macbeth’s seat. The Irish American editor of the NLFOIF hints that the semicolonial Chinese will return to torment their tormentors and take their seat at the table]. The NLFOIF in September 1922 claims Great Britain has forfeited the confidence and respect of the world, by her complete failure to govern her people in a civilized manner. That she is both selfish and greedy, is proved by her history, in her treatment of America, Ireland, Africa, Spain, Egypt, Persia, India, China – and now she would calmly repudiate her obligations to the United States.25

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This demonstrates the republican sympathies of the Irish American editor, who unites America’s cause with other anticolonial struggles in former colonies of the British Empire. However, throughout this newsletter, the editor fears that America will unite instead with colonial Britain, betraying their own republican roots. Each newsletter ends poignantly requesting the reader – “Don’t throw this away. Pass it along to a friend”. This demonstrates how the editor of the NLFOIF was acutely aware of the dominant Anglo-American special relationship, and how difficult it was for semicolonial voices to break through to this alliance. In February 1922, the NLFOIF outlines that England does not even suggest the return of Shanghai or Hong Kong ports of first-rate importance; or a word about any intention on her part of returning the enormously rich province of Tibet, seized without any warrant save that of the robber.26

The same page of the NLFOIF links anticolonial struggles worldwide and proclaims that “England can well afford to pay the small price entailed in turning over to Ireland, Egypt and India, temporarily, some measure of self-government, if she is thereby enabled to lull America into a sense of false security”.27 This indicates at least for the Irish American republican leadership of the NLFOIF, the Chinese semicolonial struggle was sympathetically read through the lens of Irish and American colonial experiences of British rule. However, not all the Irish in America were as supportive of Chinese struggles. Barry McCarron elucidates how impoverished Irish workers in western America contributed to the push for the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.28 This Act prohibited immigration by Chinese labourers, and was the first law enacted to prevent a specific ethnic group from immigrating to the U.S. Unfortunately, this reflects the sad history of racial division prevalent throughout American labour history, where the overarching capitalist society pitted one impoverished group against another impoverished group, to force down the price of wages. Conversely, the Irish were more likely to intermarry with Chinese during this period, establishing nuanced webs of conflict and solidarity for Sino-Hiberno relations in the U.S.29 Having established at least some Irish in America were in solidarity with the semicolonial Chinese, did May Fourth writer Liu Bannong diverge from Vanity Fair’s American republican reading of Easter 1916?

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Divergence Liu’s article sourced from Gregg’s American Vanity Fair article is original as Liu selects points that bolster his views and omits details that do not. Liu adds explanations for Chinese readers on spirituality in Plunkett’s poetry and argues that Easter 1916’s revolutionary spirit is relevant to China. When Chinese writers translated original articles on Ireland they inevitably include their own exegesis, which can be assessed as separate literary productions. Lydia Liu’s Translingual Practice (1995) posits these processes demonstrate agentic choices by Chinese writers who form new meanings for western (and Irish) literature in Chinese contexts.30 Although Marxism later dominated New Youth, significantly Liu’s account of Easter 1916 does not select literature by renowned Irish socialist James Connolly, also executed by the British as a 1916 leader. Yet, Gregg’s Vanity Fair article does discuss Connolly and Irish socialist labour leader Larkin. Connolly was not a noted poet and did not align with Liu’s theme of explicitly linking cultural revolution to political revolution.31 Instead, the romantic literary nationalism of Pearse, Plunkett and MacDonagh suited Liu’s needs in 1916 China, before the 1917 Russian Revolution and after the 1911 Xinhai Revolution’s failed reforms. It is revealing that Liu chose not to highlight a socialist or feminist reading of Easter 1916, but selected romantic Irish nationalism for Chinese readers. I contend that Liu increased Pearse’s cultural literary rather than political stature, in order to underscore the urgent need for Chinese intellectual audiences to link literary reform with political reform. Thus Liu’s reading promotes the need for a similar revolutionary spirit in China, as Liu appreciated the role culture plays in revolution and foregrounded this connection. Chinese May Fourth intellectuals broadly accepted the rebels’ version of Irish history rather than official British state-sanctioned versions, probably because British Imperial might similarly threatened the Chinese during the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901). In the second section of this chapter, I examine widely differing accounts of Easter 1916 in Englishlanguage newspapers published for an ex-patriate audience in China. These conflicting accounts penned by Irish nationalists, Irish unionists and Englishmen apparently stationed in China for the needs of Britain’s Empire, outline how the colonial British gaze constructed the Irish and Chinese as in need of imperial guidance.

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Although Liu’s peers preferred Vanity Fair and The New Yorker as primary sources, my research in three Chinese-language databases demonstrates that prominent May Fourth leader Hu Shi wrote in to complain of anti-Chinese attitudes in The North-China Herald.32 Chen Li states that another Chinese journal Eastern Miscellany had eight hundred references to Ireland, peaking in 1920.33 I discovered in three Chinese-language databases eight thousand references to Irish literature and political events during my doctoral archival research.

Dongfang Zazhi In contrast to Anglo-centrism in English-language newspapers published in China, the influential periodical Dongfang Zazhi 東方雜志 (Oriental magazine/Eastern Miscellany) published an account on the Easter Rising in 1916 entitled “Ai’erlan panluan zhi zhenxiang 愛爾蘭叛亂之真相 (The Truth About Ireland’s Rebellion)”.34 This title implies the truth about the Easter Rising cannot be discovered in official accounts in pro-British newspapers published in China. Hence, Chinese nationalist commentators reject official British accounts on 1916, and align themselves instead with Irish nationalist accounts. This demonstrates that nationalist resistance, particularly anti-imperial struggle, was of most significance for Chinese intellectuals of this period who faced similar existential crises. DFZZ claims the Irish nationalist army defended Liberty Hall from the Rising’s first day. A photograph of four Irish Volunteers guarding the roof of Liberty Hall in 1916 provides a visual aid for Chinese readers unfamiliar with developments in Ireland. British Prime Minister Gladstone is credited with introducing the Home Rule bill to solve the domestic Irish problem. DFZZ explains that after WWI’s outbreak, the British House of Lords opposed the Irish Home Rule bill for the third time, and Edward Carson leader of Ulster opposition to Home Rule summoned a strong army. His opposite, Irish Nationalist leader John Redmond then summoned a nationalist army to fight Carson’s. DFZZ emphasises the Irish situation was precarious but when European war broke out, all sides perceived Germany as an enemy and internal conflict subsided. Carson and Redmond supported the British government and DFZZ notes this strange phenomenon meant that both agreed to postpone Home Rule until after the war. DFZZ further asserts that Ireland and England were incompatible, but united to fight Germany as different Irish parties established a truce to

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fight for Britain. DFZZ notes by the end of WWI the Irish problem remained unresolved, as “England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity”. DFZZ claims that public opinion in Ireland favours ending internal conflict and agrees to fight with the English against their common enemy, and declares every fact after the war indicates this. However, DFZZ admits even though Irish public opinion is so inclined, bad feelings generated by centuries of history cannot be easily wiped away by European war, and fierce opponents to this approach, although a minority, could not be ignored. DFZZ concludes that after the war Britain should pay more attention to Irish feelings. Liu likely read this DFZZ account on Easter 1916, as he similarly positions Irish rebels in a sympathetic light.

Liu’s Anti-Imperial Reading of Easter 1916 Liu’s New Youth article locates Ireland geographically for Chinese readers and underlines that the Irish originally were independent from Britain. Liu asserts the heroic Irish people during the past seven hundred years raised several revolutionary armies that were defeated. This references the Irish Proclamation that proclaimed an Irish Republic in 1916, declaring “in every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty, six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms”.35 Liu notes though newspapers called the Irish rebels ‘renegades’ they cannot be judged as successful or failures. Liu imitates Gregg’s Vanity Fair article which constituted Easter 1916 as a nuanced mix of short-term failure and longer-term success, and was entitled “A Revolt that Failed – Some Results of the Irish Insurrection Which May Have Succeeded After All”. This romantic nationalist reading of Easter 1916 can be read as an astute critique of the inherent bias in official pro-British accounts. This means the 1916 Easter Rising was not ‘lost in translation’ for Chinese intellectuals, at least regarding its anticolonial intentions. Rana Mitter explains that ex-patriate newspaper editorials in China on the later May Fourth 1919 incident, also conveyed the voice of British settlers rather than the Chinese protestors.36 Official state-sanctioned versions of newsworthy historical events often become the dominant interpretation of events, and colonised peoples remain marginalised in such constructed narratives. Of course the Irish nationalist narrative is also a construction, but it is revealing how this version is the one Liu selected. In contrast to British media, Gregg’s

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American Vanity Fair article on 1916 contained pro-Irish rebel sentiment and influence from Irish America. I conclude if Liu based his article on pro-British accounts published in English newspapers in China, his resulting article on 1916 would have been noticeably different in viewpoint and tone. This reveals that Liu identified with the postcolonised ‘literature of the oppressed’, a trope in modern Chinese literature. Accordingly, Liu’s article emphasised an anti-imperial Irish nationalist reading of Easter 1916 for semicolonial Chinese readers. Liu’s sophisticated grasp of the complex Irish political scene is impressive. Liu explains the Irish nationalists compromised during WWI, to fight a common enemy with the British. This refers to the enlistment of 200,000 Irish nationalists and unionists in the British army during WWI. Liu explains this ‘strange’ Irish behaviour as a way to save their strength, and cultivate potential future revolution. This links Gregg’s American interpretation of Easter 1916 and Liu’s underlying project on the need to cultivate a similar revolutionary spirit in China. Evidently repeated delays for Irish Home Rule and the proclamation of an Irish Republic in Easter 1916 presented anti-imperial models that spoke to Chinese readers. A comparable situation to Ireland developed three years later in China’s May Fourth 1919 incident. Just as Irish nationalists under John Redmond believed in assurances of Irish Home Rule if they supported Britain during WWI, so too the Chinese believed German concessions in Shandong, China would be returned if they supported the Allies during WWI.37 Conversely, Irish unionists under Carson believed they could indefinitely prevent Irish Home Rule, if they supported Britain during WWI. Just as Irish nationalists and unionists believed assurances of contradictory results on Irish Home Rule, the Allies duplicitously promised the Chinese and Japanese opposing results on German concessions in China during WWI. Clearly, one side would be disappointed with such polarised expectations. The Allies made a similarly impossible arrangement and (with the agreement of Beijing’s warlord government), handed German concessions in Shandong to Japan after WWI at the Versailles Peace Conference. Famously, this resulted in student street protests in Beijing on May 4th, 1919 and gave birth to the Chinese May Fourth movement to ‘save the nation’.38 These historical developments were still ahead, yet semicolonial Chinese like Liu Bannong presciently sensed the implicit resonance of the Irish situation with their precarious position in 1916.

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Gregg’s original Vanity Fair article explains Sinn Féin were the ‘language party’ that promoted the Irish language, and secretly took control of a section of the Irish Volunteers although not represented in Parliament. [Sinn Féin’s later resounding electoral success in December 1918 that established their mandate had not yet occurred]. Liu presents the Irish Volunteers as the basis for future Irish revolution and foregrounds how the Sinn Féin or ‘us for ourselves’ party led this movement for Irish independence.39 Liu incorrectly dates the 1916 Easter Rising as the Christmas Rising. The Irish rebels chose this timing as rich Christian imagery on death, sacrifice and rebirth exemplified the messianic blood sacrifice that Pearse intended. Perhaps Liu conflated this with the timing of Chinese New Year which occurs in springtime, and mistakenly termed 1916 the ‘Christmas Rising’. Yet Liu correctly identifies the Irish rebels included Volunteers led by Pearse and MacDonagh to proclaim an independent Irish Republic in 1916. In lyrical prose, Liu asserts that due to the 1916 Irish rebels’ lack of experience and support “the god of failure was laughing at them from the beginning of the sounds of the drums of war”. This encapsulates Liu’s version of Gregg’s Vanity Fair article, which demonstrates sympathy for the rebels’ cause and portrays them as romantic figures of a lost cause. Gregg’s Vanity Fair article proclaimed that “Political romanticists are always in the laps of the gods”40 and It may be well to remark that a revolution is nothing in the world but a rebellion which has become respectable through being successful. But it is the lost cause – military or political – that has the fine air of romance, and often simply because it is a lost cause. We all of us have a sneaking schoolboy regard for insurrection, no matter what our reverence may be for the pillars of society.41

Such sentiments appealed to Vanity Fair’s American audience who had also achieved independence from Britain. Gregg and Liu write with specific audiences and political moods in mind and this shapes their tones and inclusions. Liu captures Gregg’s spirit of American republicanism, adds his interpretation on the Irish republican quest, and uses both to bolster his own failing Chinese republic. Liu states that the Irish rebels were disbanded and their leaders were tried by a military court, but omits that the military courts were held in

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secret and ordered the execution of fifteen rebel leaders in nine days. This turned Irish public opinion to sympathy for the Irish rebels, as Vanity Fair notes. Liu asserts of all who died, the world would regret the deaths of three people in particular: Pearse; MacDonagh; and Plunkett. Liu makes the unusual claim these three were leaders of the Irish literary world, although this would have been news to Pearse and Plunkett and would have shocked Yeats, Lady Gregory and Synge of the Irish Literary Revival. Liu conflates two different contemporaneous movements in Ireland; the Literary Revival led by Yeats, Lady Gregory and Synge, and the Irish Language movement led by Douglas Hyde and Pearse. Both movements promoted Irish independence but disagreed whether to use the Irish language or the English language of the coloniser. I read Liu’s repeated promotion of Pearse as the most significant Irish writer (over more famous Irish writers like Yeats), as Liu’s attempt to emphasise the need for further political, military and cultural revolution in China. Since Pearse was both a writer and a fighter, unlike Yeats, Liu encourages fellow Chinese intellectuals to fight for their failing Chinese Republic, and not just write about it.

Plunkett and Transcendence Leaving no potential avenue for revolution unexplored, Liu uses the transcendent nature of Plunkett’s poetry to lift the rebels’ aims to a more spiritual plane. Liu translated Plunkett’s poems “The Spark” and “I see his blood upon the Rose”, and emphasised their spirituality. All the poems Liu translated in New Youth were ones Gregg’s Vanity Fair article published. Gregg’s poetic choices aligned with inclinations towards emancipatory cultural nationalism. Gregg’s reading of 1916 performs a different kind of work for Liu’s Chinese nationalism. The first poem establishes Plunkett ‘used to’ count his battle as won. This use of the habitual past tense is from the Irish ‘gnáthchaite’, the most frequently used tense in spoken Irish and past tense of the more common present continuous (which has no equivalent in English). In the second stanza Plunkett links spiritual emancipation to political liberty and ‘the dawning of the day’, lifting the political labours of the rebels to a transcendent level. Plunkett’s allusion to heaven resonates with ancient Chinese classical ideals on Tian 天 (Heaven) directing the rise and fall of dynasties. Plunkett uses the word ‘shame’ regarding Ireland’s colonisation, and this had valence for Liu as the Chinese termed their encounters with the

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Imperial West the ‘century of humiliation’. This began with the 1840s Opium Wars and continued as the weakened Qing ceded Treaty Ports and other concessions to western powers. Foreigners often fail to comprehend how Mao Zedong and creation of the PRC in 1949 are hailed by many Chinese as the official end to that hated ‘century of humiliation’. Stanza five warns ‘No more shall I spare blood’. Romantic nationalist literature often emphasises the need to die for one’s country, yet elides this may involve killing other people. However, the international context included global militarisation during WWI and the concomitant promotion of patriotism. The concept of ‘beauty’ in dying for one’s country was not unique to Irish or Chinese nationalists, but was promoted also by colonial empires during WWI, resulting in millions of unnecessary deaths. As Yeats observed “too long a sacrifice / Can make a stone of the heart”.42 During the 2016 centennary state commemoration of the 1916 Easter Rising, President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins suggested there “has been a great deal of critical reassessment of aspects of the Rising and, in particular, of the myths of redemptive violence that were at the heart, not just of Irish nationalism, but also of imperial nationalism”.43 While Irish nationalist violence had been criticised, President Higgins noted “the supremacist and militarist imperialism” of Britain during the same period had not been reviewed “with the same fault-finding edge”. One can similarly question what the long century of continuous revolution achieved in China. John Regan identifies similar methodological problems in state-centred Irish historiography. Southern Irish nationalism rewrote Irish historical events like Easter 1916, to legitimise the southern Irish state, simultaneously denying support to republican violence in the North. Thus following the northern crisis’s emergence in the late 1960s, the Republic’s governments required a revised Irish history that could reconcile the State’s violent revolutionary origins with its counterinsurgency against militaristrepublicanism.44

Hence Easter 1916 was revisited and reread by Irish Revisionist historians almost exclusively through the prism of republican violence in Northern Ireland. Brendan Bradshaw argued this meant that Irish Revisionist historians were often guilty of ‘evasion’ and ‘normalization’ “in

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their approaches to the trauma of Anglo-Irish relations from the early modern period onwards”.45 Yet, original Irish cultural nationalist constructions of Easter 1916 were appropriated by the patriotic Chinese May Fourth generation to bolster their own failing Republic. Liu assessed that Irish nationalism and Easter 1916 were exemplary for semicolonial China, as the Irish created literary forms to invent a modern postcolonised identity to cope with the shock of imperial modernity. Chinese May Fourth writer Liu raises the Irish rebels to a transcendent plane, in order to similarly elevate his compatriots’ revolutionary intentions. For Plunkett’s second poem “I see his blood upon the Rose” Liu adds notes to explain unfamiliar Christian aspects of Plunkett’s poetry to Chinese readers. Liu states the rose is used by western writers to convey beauty and the blood of Jesus. Plunkett’s poem makes connections between sacrifice for a good cause and Jesus’ sacrifice to redeem the world. This elevation of Irish revolutionary motivations to a spiritual transcendent plane appealed to Chinese intellectuals who were in the process of uprooting their own spiritual Confucian foundations. Plunkett’s second stanza states “I see His face in every flower” and presents a ‘pathetic fallacy’ where the legitimate nature of incoming rule is seemingly proclaimed by natural elements like birds and thunder. This ancient poetic technique portrays the natural world as approving the forthcoming change in rulership. This replicates Chinese concepts on the traditional mandate of heaven that underpinned the legitimacy of rule by an Emperor, that was replaced by the establishment of the 1912 Chinese Republic.

MacDonagh and Language Liu foregrounds MacDonagh’s anti-imperial revolutionary use of language as a weapon. Hotly contested language debates in Ireland and China in this period meant that language became weaponised. New Youth was published in Chinese baihua 白話 vernacular from May 1918, volume 4, number 5, and played a pivotal role in what I term the “democratisation of the Chinese language” by ceasing to use elitist esoteric classical Chinese accessible to very few. Liu’s 1916 article was written in a mix of classical and vernacular, typical of that era. The Chinese script is the same, but vocabulary and grammar were mixed with imported western and hybridised forms. Traditional Chinese script ran vertically from top

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to bottom of the page rather than across the page in western fashion. Chinese intellectuals experimented with print media and printed horizontally in articles, but most books used the vertical script until the Communists in 1949 adopted western horizontal scripts and calendars. Michel Hockx explains how Liu engaged in self-cleansing at this time, and changed styles from being a Shanghai ‘journalist-littérateur’ to become a Beijing ‘literary intellectual’; part of a group with ties to government and education that promoted literature as a socially-relevant, non-commercial, intellectual activity. 46 Hockx notes how Liu’s contributions to New Youth often included English originals, which indicates an awareness of Chinese audiences that could read English.47 Significantly, Liu uses the Chinese term “Minzhuguo 民主國 (democratic nation)” rather than “Gonghe 共和 (republic)” to linguistically describe Irish Republicans. I read Liu’s conflation of ‘nationalist’ and ‘republican’ as understandable, as the term for the 1912 Republic of China (ROC) contained the characters “Zhonghua Minguo 中華民國”. All Irish Republicans were Nationalist, but not all Nationalists were Republicans. Conversely, both Chinese Nationalists and Socialists were also Republicans, as Republican era China (1912–1949) included the rise of Socialism. Liu claims that due to other’s lack of familiarity with the Irish language, MacDonagh used English as an intermediary to allow the world to learn of the unique Irish spirit. Liu states “although he [MacDonagh] hated English people, he did not hate English words”. Liu may have been unaware that many Irish rebels including Pearse had English relatives, and what Irish rebels ‘hated’ was colonial British rule. This is Liu’s explanation as to why some rebels wrote in Irish, and others wrote in English to reach global transnational audiences. Linking language to politics, Liu terms Sinn Féin the ‘language party’, to underscore their national promotion of the Irish language. Pearse, Plunkett and MacDonagh strategically used Irish-language versions of their names to resist British imperialism. Liu was aware in the Asian context, how this linguistic strategy was paralleled in colonial Korea. Japan annexed Korea in 1910, which led to the March 1st 1919 patriotic protest movement, where Koreans protested issues like being forced to use Japanese names.48 Susan Townsend notes that Japanese Professor Yanaihara Tadao (1893–1961) of Tokyo Imperial University published a 1927 essay on Ireland, to directly compare colonial Britain’s treatment of Ireland to Japan’s colonial cultural subjugation of Korea.49 Townsend explains whereas British and Japanese newspapers

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remained silent on these issues, British newspapers in East Asia often warned Korea could go the way of Ireland, and become an insoluble Japanese problem.50 Liu translated MacDonagh’s poem “Of a Poet Patriot” which presciently prophesied “his deeds the echoes fill / when the dawn is come”. Pearse also believed the poetic ‘deed’ of the 1916 Rising would be remembered by Ireland and the world. Marx claimed that all revolutions take place as theatre, and Declan Kiberd reads the Rising as theatre, with a world audience.51

Patrick Pearse Turning to educational reform, Liu states that Patrick Pearse founded his own revolutionary school St. Enda’s, and presents Pearse as the most famous of the three poets in his article. Education was a pivotal issue for idealistic May Fourth student readers of New Youth, who established schools for girls and night schools for illiterate janitors, to modernise China. 52 Liu translates Pearse’s poem “Ideal” and explains that Pearse did not gather gold, but thought it enough to have a child remember his name. Pearse’s comment is remarkably similar to sentiments expressed during former Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai’s funeral in 1976 that read He left no inheritance, he had no children, he had no grave, he left no remains. His ashes were scattered over the mountains and rivers of our land. It seems he left us nothing, but he will live forever in our hearts. The whole land is his, he has hundreds of millions of children and grandchildren, and all China’s soil is his tomb. So he left us everything. Who is he? He is our Premier!53

Nationalism provides a coherent linear narrative, but was recently critically revised in Ireland and China. Thus modern critics may have difficulty understanding how Chinese nationalists like Liu found the 1916 Irish Rising resonant for their semicolonial predicament. However, Pearse’s refusal of pecuniary gain held particular valence for May Fourth Chinese, who witnessed corrupt officials like President Yuan Shikai appropriate China’s wealth. Yuan asked Japan for financial aid which led to the exploitative Twenty-One Demands on January 8, 1915 that sought Japanese economic and political dominance of China.54 Liu’s Chinese New Youth readers were acutely aware that avaricious leaders posed

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dangers to their fragile Republic. Liu records Pearse’s final letter to his mother the night before his execution and terms this a masterpiece of quotidian detail. This reads My dear mother, even at this upsetting time, I still want to meet you so much…Farewell my dearest mother…I have accepted everything, but I always feel sad when I remember you…I feel grateful that the way of death is like this, God forgive me. My death is brave and meaningful, it’s for the freedom of Ireland, and it’s the best way that I could wish.

This poignant tone contrasts with the fraught relationships between New Youth readers and their parents. The traditional Chinese Confucian family was attacked, as New Youth readers freed themselves from arranged marriages, filial duties to fathers, ministers and the Emperor.55 Liu concludes “I think although the Democratic Republic of Ireland existed for just one day, it encouraged people to fight for Ireland”. Irish historians would insist the Irish Republic lasted for a week and is embodied in the Irish Dáil (Parliament). Clearly, Liu’s larger intention was to rouse his peers to reach for the similarly unfulfilled promise of China’s Republic. In summation, it is revealing that Liu’s generation read Irish anticolonialism and highlighted the romantic Irish nationalist version, rather than official British state versions, or even the socialist version. I contend that the similarly colonised position of Irish writers in English-language newspapers published in China during this period, presented an alternative route to modernity for Chinese writers. Eóin Flannery asserts the Irish provided a counter-utopian version of postcolonised modernity, an alternative to imperial modernity.56 I also conclude that Irish literature provided alternatives to imperial modernity for Chinese writers like Liu, bypassing Eurocentric narratives on race and empire pervasive in literatures from the imperial centre. According to my reading, postcolonised Ireland presented a different model for the radical semicolonial Chinese May Fourth generation on how to be modern and ‘save the nation’. Significantly, this alternative version of postcolonised modernity did not automatically assume the Irish or Chinese were ‘other’. I contend this alternative re-imagining of a postcolonised community as modern was unique to the postcolonised Irish situation, and literatures emanating from western imperial centres in Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the U.S. could never provide this

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unconventional vision. Thus Irish literature became new in a different transnational Chinese context, and this reciprocal anticolonial process established mutual encounters that shape our shared global history. For Liu, translating Easter 1916 was a way to buttress his failing Chinese Republic. That peoples as ostensibly different as the Chinese and Irish could discern resonances in their respective anti-imperial struggles, points a possible way forward for our divided times, and unites rather than divides us. One can only speculate how Pearse, Plunkett and MacDonagh would appreciate how Easter 1916 and their patriotic poetry inspired ‘writers and fighters’ as far away as China to turn from despair to hope. As Pearse asked in his poem “The Fool” “O wise men, riddle me this: what if the dream come true?”.57

English-Language Newspaper Accounts of Easter 1916 in China Conversely, this final section of chapter nine examines widely differing accounts of Easter 1916 in English-language newspapers published for ex-patriate audiences in China. These were accounts by Irish nationalists, Irish unionists and Englishmen, apparently stationed in China to support Britain’s Empire. Irish unionists favoured maintaining the Union between Britain and Ireland, and Irish nationalists favoured greater Irish autonomy. These conflicting sources on Easter 1916 were also available to Chinese May Fourth writers like Liu Bannong, in The North-China Daily News (TNCDN) and The North-China Herald (TNCH). I contend that Chinese-language periodicals of this period presented Easter 1916 from a Rebel-centric viewpoint, as this aligned with May Fourth antiimperialism. Chinese translators read anticolonial solidarities into their interpretation of Easter 1916, and used this to reinforce their deteriorating Republic. Therefore, Chinese translators retool the meaning of Ireland’s Easter 1916 in Chinese-language periodicals, and consistently present anti-imperial Irish rebels as similarly postcolonised, and thus more relatable to their semicolonial Chinese audiences. In contrast, ex-patriate English-language newspapers published in China present a radically different version of Easter 1916, one that promotes the official British worldview and portrays the Irish (and Chinese) exclusively through the colonial gaze. The North-China Daily News (TNCDN) was an influential English-language newspaper published in Shanghai from 1850, that was read throughout China and was for

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a time, the official record of the British Consulate. The North-China Herald (TNCH) was published every Saturday in Shanghai as the weekly edition of The North-China Daily News. Though such newspapers were not primary sources for Chinese intellectuals, my research demonstrates that May Fourth leader Hu Shi wrote in to complain of anti-Chinese attitudes in The North-China Herald.58 TNCDN published many articles on Ireland and set the stage with “Redmond and the Duty of Ireland” on January 6, 1916.59 This explains that Irish politician John Redmond assisted Britain to recruit Irish soldiers, as it was in the “highest interest of Ireland to help to bring the war to a speedy and victorious end”. The article notes Ireland emerged from a long period of industrial stagnation and poverty but fails to note that British colonisation played any role. The author claims Ireland at any rate never broke a treaty, and concludes with (Loud Cheers) for 100,000 soldiers sent from Ireland. TNCDN printed “The Trouble in Ireland – Sir Roger Casement’s Treacherous Plot – The Traitor in the Tower” on April 29, 1916.60 Readers were directed by editorial inclusions such as (Loud Cheers), which denoted cheers of approval by British Members of Parliament for local Irish assistance to Britain in fighting Irish rebels. Anglo-Irish Roger Casement, from the British Foreign Office, became internationally famous for his work on colonial human rights abuses in the Congo and Peru. Casement’s turn from Empire to Irish nationalism, meant that one of their own class turned on the British. Casement was hung, rather than executed by firing squad, for his role in the importation of German arms into Ireland during the 1916 Rising.61 This article concludes the 1916 Rising was an “ignominious failure”. Another title on the same page entitled “Nationalist detestation of the Rebels” reminds ex-patriate readers in China where their allegiances should lie. This asserts “an overwhelming majority of the people of Ireland expressed detestation and horror at the proceedings of the rebels”. Yet this same article oxymoronically states martial law was subsequently proclaimed throughout Ireland. If the Irish detested the 1916 rebels, why was martial law deemed necessary countrywide? Significantly, this same page had an article on travel in northwestern China that makes similar essentialising claims declaring that “the Chinese woman sits on her kang, nursing bound feet, chronic indigestion and a violent temper”. This weak attempt at national allegory seeks to feminise and delimit national Chinese character, asserting “Among the Turki, as

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among the Chinese, women are not rated as highly important or highly intelligent beings, but throughout the Orient they contrive to assert themselves in every phase of public and private life”. Lest we misunderstand this as a critique of Chinese gender roles, the commentator complains “Chinese officials are subjected to…vitriolic criticism of their ladies…and that whatever she wants she gets, and whatever meets with her disapproval is condemned with screams of rage, torrents of the most violent language and threats of suicide”. I read this construction of a doubly colonised subject embodied by the Chinese woman as a projection, that typifies colonial fears the Chinese will not remain sufficiently acquiescent for the semicolonial project to succeed in China. This construction of Chinese women would not resonate with male May Fourth writers like Lu Xun who sought to educate and enfranchise Chinese New Women. This article mocks threats of suicide that were tragically carried out by young Chinese women of this era, when arranged marriages clashed with modern selfhood. I discern that Chinese intellectuals who perused these newspapers discovered similarly colonising depictions of the Irish and Chinese. TNCDN proclaimed on May 4, 1916 “Sinn Fein mutiny collapsed – Ireland herself again”.62 This notable feminisation of Ireland and China, demonstrates ex-patriate editors often deployed national allegory. To discerning Chinese readers, such literary devices present the Irish and Chinese as feminised colonial subjects, which was in a sense to be doubly colonised, to limit resistance. A fascinating article on the same page congratulates Britain’s government for crushing Sinn Féin’s mutiny, admits the rebels deserve to be shot, yet advises clemency for the 1916 prisoners. Conversely, TNCH published “The Sinn Fein Revolt – What it Has Done for Ireland” “By a Nationalist” on May 13, 1916.63 (This reprinted an earlier TNCDN article printed on May 12, 1916 page 7, published next to an article on Yuan Shikai’s monarchical ambitions). This article was probably by an Irish nationalist in the British Army stationed in China, and the tone contrasts sharply with earlier articles. The author asserts much can be regretted about the recent Sinn Féin outbreak in Dublin, but “by one of those curious paradoxes that seem inseparable from all things Irish, there is even greater cause for gratification and pride”. The author assumes the Irish rebels were fooled by an elaborate German scheme, and claims that even a small section of Irish people would participate in such an atrocious plot would cause all Irishmen to

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hang their heads in shame, were it not for the sterling loyalty displayed by the Ulster and Nationalist volunteers, the Irish people as a whole, and Irishmen throughout the globe, who expressed their indignation in no mild terms. Having established his loyal credentials for ex-patriate readers, the author asserts that Easter 1916 provided Ireland with “A Chance for a Statesman” as Ireland’s occupation by Britain was “A Costly Failure”. The commentator argues “in the manly offer of the Nationalist volunteers to disarm if the Ulstermen do likewise, we have the seeds of a final solution to the Irish question”, adding “Without in the least wishing to re-open old wounds, the question may well be asked whether the Dublin outbreak does not finally prove the English method of governing Ireland to be utterly wrong”. The author blames Dublin Castle officials [the seat of British rule in Ireland 1204–1922] who did nothing to prevent the outbreak, as “officials provided under that system neither understand nor sympathize with the people of the country”. The nationalist reads “this last ignominious collapse of English officialdom in Ireland as the strongest argument in favor of permitting the Irish to govern themselves in their own peculiar way, just as we have permitted Australia, Canada and South Africa”, and adds “whatever mistakes an Irish Government might make, it could hardly do worse”. The author debunks the “less reputable rags of Fleet Street” on Irish disloyalty, as Irish soldiers are in every European battlefield. Although some reportedly threw horse dung at the 1916 Easter rebels, international and popular opinion rapidly turned in favour of the rebels when the British executed the Rising leaders and ensured their martyrdom.64 This fascinating article in an English newspaper from China demonstrates the process by which Irish nationalists turned towards the rebel cause, and provides a counter narrative to the editor’s overwhelmingly pro-British viewpoint. TNCH supplement on the same date May 13, 1916 gave a different account of the “Sinn Fein Revolt”.65 This states that Pearse, Clarke and MacDonagh were court-martialled and shot, and that women implicated in the rebellion were being considered. Eva Gore-Booth’s sister Constance was infuriated when due to her gender, she was not executed with male Rising leaders. The article explains that Augustine Birrell the Chief Secretary for Ireland resigned, and emphasises the unanimity of Ireland was preserved as “this was no Irish rebellion. (Cheers)”. According to this news source, Birrell was frequently interrupted by

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nationalist Laurence Ginnell, who shouted against “the Government’s Hunnish conduct in shooting the rebels”. This article claims that Major-General Sir John Maxwell issued an order thanking his troops for splendid behaviour under the trying conditions of street fighting. In fact, the historical record shows that in North King Street fifteen innocent civilians were killed, including a civilian father and son who were bayonetted to death by British troops.66 Pacifist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington was summarily executed by British officer Captain Bowen-Colthurst, and the majority of innocent civilians and infants were found to have been shot by British arms and heavy artillery.67 Almost five hundred died during Easter 1916, half were civilians and two and a half thousand were injured.68 Fearghal McGarry and John Dorney argue that although civilian deaths occur in urban warfare and the rebels bear some responsibility for starting the Rising, the majority of deaths in 1916 occurred due to Britain’s indiscriminate use of heavy artillery in an urban setting.69 Regarding this TNCDN admits on May 15, 1916 that “it was impossible to separate the insurgents from the population”.70 This same page published letters to the editor. A certain Shandon wrote on May 12, 1916 from Shanghai to congratulate the editor on the “Nationalist” article, which he is convinced should have the approval of nearly every Irishman. Shandon asserts “there must be something wrong in the Government of Ireland when people of wealth, rank and fashion like Sir Roger Casement, Count and Countess Plunkett, Countess Markievicz, Pearse” and other “University Professors and businessmen become revolutionists. Such people have nothing to gain and everything to lose by rebellion, the upper classes everywhere have a horror of violence and disorder. No matter how we differ from these misguided fools we must recognize facts”. Shandon asks when, if ever, Ireland will receive self-government like South Africa. This section contains a disclaimer by the editor for any views published. Another letter to the editor by W. H. Burke in Shanghai on May 12, 1916 congratulates “your conservative paper” for its publication of the article “By a Nationalist”. Burke claims he is a loyal British subject and agrees with most of the Nationalist’s article, but does not agree there was any real collusion between Germany and the rebels, because most of the leaders of the revolt are of British stock, and are titled persons of high educational attainment. Burke states “this revolt might have been

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expected” as Home Rule was “dangled” before Irish eyes and then withdrawn. Burke asks “what could one expect under the circumstances, especially from a people who never lay prone under injustice, fancied or real?” Burke displays an astute reading of the Irish situation, as “the crux of the whole matter is that Redmond’s party believes that Britain will keep its Home Rule promise; the other party had the reverse view, thinks it is a hoax and is desperate in consequence”. Burke concludes the rebellion is deplorable, “but time alone can tell whether the Redmondites or the Sinn Feiners have gauged British intentions correctly”. Both letters to the editor focus on class issues to validate the underlying reasons for the Rising, as rebellion by the upper classes would appeal more to ex-patriate readers of TNCDN . And both commentators argue for Irish self-government. Conversely, TNCH on May 27, 1916 published “The Sinn Fein Revolt – Home Rule for Ireland”, which claims “it is stated that the Nationalists are prepared to exclude nearly the whole of Ulster, provided Home Rule is immediately conferred on the rest of Ireland”.71 This seems incompatible with the fact that the Irish Civil War (1922–1923) was later fought partly over the partition of Ireland, since this was not inevitable or settled as the article implies. Sinn Féin’s position was that an Irish Republic was established by the 1916 Easter Rising, and Home Rule was no longer their goal. The same page refers to the Buckingham Palace conference, which broke down before the war, and failed to agree Ulster should be excluded from Home Rule, which contradicts the first article. This same page quotes Sir Matthew Nathan late Under-Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who claimed that only eleven thousand out of one hundred and eighty thousand Nationalist Volunteers “supported the disloyal propaganda”. However, Sir Nathan conveniently omits that the Rising was cancelled once discovered by Volunteer leader Eoin MacNeill, on Saturday April 22, 1916. MacNeill cancelled the Rising orders and sent word to commanders countrywide to stand down, as he discovered the Irish Republican Brotherhood had infiltrated his Irish Volunteers and had prepared an actual Rising against Britain, without his knowledge.72 The ensuing confusion meant thousands willing to rise believed they were ordered to stand down, hence the Rising mostly occurred in Dublin, not throughout Ireland as planned. TNCH admits that British officials in Ireland knew in advance of the Rising, but feared to intervene and provoke the people, and miscalculated rebel intent. The article concedes threats of conscription swelled

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rebel ranks, but advises against arming the Irish Volunteers [although proBritish Ulster Volunteers were permitted to arm]. Another article “Mr. Birrell’s Evidence” states Birrell claimed that if Home Rule was not passed there would have been revolt in Ireland and America, and notes the very prejudicial effect of the Ulster movement. TNCDN on May 29, 1916 printed “The Settlement of Ireland – Mr. Asquith on Present Opportunities”.73 This article claims “the overwhelming evidence [was] that the great bulk of the Irish nation was not in sympathy with the rebellion”, yet contradictorily declares the need for martial law throughout Ireland in the next sentence. Clearly martial law was unnecessary if the British believed the Irish populace did not support the rebels. This oxymoronic position highlights underlying tensions prevalent in different colonial official narratives at this time. The same page states The Times claims the best chance for order in China was retention of President Yuan Shikai. Hence, these ex-patriate newspapers construct official narratives on semicolonial China and Ireland exclusively according to the British colonial gaze. TNCDN on June 30, 1916 published “The Problem of Ireland – Difficulties of a Settlement”.74 This claims “an acute ministerial crisis is brewing on the subject of Ireland” and reports the Daily Telegraph states “the Irish situation is very gloomy”. This article reports H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught will be the first Royal representative to self-governing Ireland, demonstrating a measure of Irish self-rule was expected. However, an article on the same page “Learning or the Family?” demonstrates colonial genderised assumptions by Anglo-centric editors about modern Chinese women in particular. This asserts that the bluestocking of China is threatened with the same disabilities considered the inevitable fate of Western bluestockings. [Bluestocking refers to eighteenth-century English women whose aspirations to learning were deemed inappropriate]. The article claims that Chinese men are shy of marrying educated girls, and educated women are no less reluctant because they dread “the dominance of that dreadful personage the Chinese mother-in-law”. The article approves of subtle changes in the appearance of Chinese female students from western influence, and concludes if Shanghai becomes “a city of old maids” it will be their own fault. Although modern Chinese intellectuals iconoclastically removed the old Confucian order, and raged against the lack of women’s rights and education, criticism of one’s own semicolonial culture is more difficult to accept when it emanates from the imperial centre. This establishes

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that modern Chinese intellectuals who read English encountered similarly colonising depictions of the Irish and the Chinese within these ex-patriate newspapers. I contend this tone of unrelenting condescension partly explains why Chinese translators portray Easter 1916 positively, as a riposte to British imperial condescension. TNCDN presents a different version of events on July 5, 1916 in “Ireland and the Irish – Some Wholesome Home Truths”.75 The title implies this was probably from a Unionist commentator stationed by the British in China. This article states “A correspondent gives expression to some views on the Irish question in a recent issue of the Morning Post”, meaning this was probably a reprint of a Morning Post article. The author claims if the 1916 Irish Rebellion enlightens the English, Welsh and Scottish on the true nature of Irish character and how not to deal with it, as exemplified by Mr. Birrell’s inaction, then even the blood of soldiers killed in Dublin was not shed in vain. This article asserts “the Irish race is, when undiluted with Anglo-Saxon blood, a weak, ignorant, lazy, emotional race, quite incapable of loyalty even to its own chiefs or leaders, and it has been so for centuries”. To bolster this extraordinary claim of Darwinian racial inferiority, the author selects an Italian ambassador who visited Ireland during Queen Elizabeth’s reign as “an impartial observer”. Edward Said underscored how Ireland became “a history, geography, culture, and population written and represented by what the British and many of their European and American counterparts said about them”76 This Unionist writer urges readers “to read Miss Edgeworth’s account of Irish ingratitude” and declares that the Irish murdered the English in Charles I’s reign. There is a lot to unpack here, as this Unionist commentator fails to explain why the Irish should be grateful for colonisation, and fails to historicise Irish uprisings under Charles I. Both sides committed sectarian murders in the 1640 s, a bloody era of Irish history that originated in British plantations in Ireland. Although Protestants in Ireland inaccurately claimed 200,000 of their fellows were murdered by Irish Catholics, Jane Ohlmeyer and John Kenyon demonstrate the figure was approximately 4,000 deaths.77 The indigenous Irish Catholic population endured a ‘burned earth’ policy during Cromwellian times, which accounts for the majority of 600,000 deaths from a total Irish population of 1,400,000. Moreover, 40,000 Irish people were sent as indentured servants to the Caribbean, where most were worked to death.78

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The Unionist contributor claims the Irish “have no stability or loyalty” and although they love their chiefs or masters, they will turn and murder them “at the instigation of some charlatan, with the gift of the gab”. He contends that “Civilisation, education, and above all, mixing with other races might have improved the Irish but for many years their priests and political leaders have carefully kept them ignorant, have fostered racial animosity”, and extorted money from them, by playing on their hatred of England and “on the best trait in their character, the love of their land”. The Unionist commentator urges miscegenation to improve the Irish, whom he claims exhibit “racial animosity” without any trace of self-reflexive irony. This Unionist (possibly Protestant) writer promotes religious animosity and old colonial stereotypes that depict the Irish as unstable. Postcolonial Studies established how the coloniser must first invent narratives about native peoples needing to be colonised for their own good, in order to establish the perceived rightfulness of any colonising project. Chinese intellectuals who perused these ex-patriate accounts would recognise strategies of ‘othering’ non-Anglo peoples, similar to western colonising constructions of Chinese identity. Clearly, this Unionist writer was unhappy with developments in Ireland during 1916, and complains of “Petting [or Rewarding] Disloyalty”. According to his reading, the Irish murder, maim cattle, terrorise helpless women, boycott, lie and perjure themselves, only if the victim is Anglo-Saxon or a loyalist. Hence the law does not exist, juries are afraid to convict and Ireland is in a state of anarchy, “not because England interfered, but because she did not”. The word “boycott” is revealing, as this term originated in Ireland during the Land War. In 1880 Captain Charles Boycott, an agent for an absentee landlord in Ballinrobe, County Mayo was socially and commercially ostracised by tenants, whom he had evicted when they failed to pay his exorbitant rents.79 This anticolonial resistance strategy became part of the English language, and signified solidarity and resistance among any oppressed colonised class. The Unionist commentator further opines that the Irish language only possesses sentimental interest and was resuscitated “not because of its beauty or interest, but because it serves to emphasise the difference of race”. Controversially, this Unionist writer posits that “Ireland has been more spoilt than any other part of Great Britain, disloyal Ireland I mean”. It is difficult to ascertain what this means, as he fails to address why the Great Famine (1845–1949) devastated Ireland predominantly, and no other areas governed by Britain.

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He continues “Loyal Ulster has received the usual snubs and unfriendly insinuations that Liberal statesmen mete out to those who are friends of this country”. Insecurities over recent Irish developments emerge in his assertion “though the Protestants in Ulster only armed and drilled in self-defence, though they have served in our armies at the front, though they have never disturbed the peace in any way…Mr. Birrell speaks of these men and the rebels as if they were pretty much the same thing, and I suppose he would have rejoiced if he had been able to break the Ulstermen’s resolve not to be drawn into any fight with Nationalists”. This rewrites accepted historical facts in the Irish context. A less prejudicial account would accept that the Ulster Unionists armed first, and covenanted in 1912 to resist by force of arms any form of democratically mandated Irish Home Rule. The Irish Nationalist Volunteers armed in reaction to this threat in 1913.80 Therefore, it would be difficult for Irish historians to contort this into Unionist determination not to be drawn into a fight with Nationalists, when they covenanted to do precisely that. Continuing his theme of grievance, he describes “the disloyal part of the population” who object to rent and the natural consequence of not doing so, eviction. He protests that the Government gave them land to spoil by farming in primitive Irish ways. Underlying colonial tensions on who retains rights to the land are resolved by internalised constructions of settler racial superiority. Thus the Irish serve as a foil for the construction of Ulster Unionist identity as stable, modern, loyal and hardworking, as he declares that “Land was forcibly taken from its lawful owners and handed to the ignorant to misuse”. It seems redundant to note that Britain’s Empire forcibly took Irish land from its lawful indigenous owners before giving the land to the settlers. Yet this account argues that only settlers experience illegal land grabs. This narrative that purports to teach “a few home truths to the Irish” utilises stereotypes on Irish drinking, and claims that “English gold has been lavished on Ireland”, but fails to explain why postcolonised Ireland remains impoverished. Racial animus emerges when this contributor proclaims the greatest crime is that Ireland, which ‘belongs’ to the King of England, is exempt from compulsory service. He declares that all the noblest, best and useful scientific, intellectual men, sturdy farmers and professional soldiers are sent to the trenches to “leave only the worst behind”. He further asserts the Irish are worthy only of dying for an Empire that is not theirs and deems them ‘worst’. This contributor concedes he “may seem bitter against the Irish”, but rejects that the Duke of Wellington and Lord

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Kitchener are Irish because they were born in Ireland. He concludes the untravelled pure-blooded Irishman is the most unsatisfactory citizen of this great Empire, but if he is half English, Scotch, Canadian or Australian he becomes one of the finest people in the world, as a mix of imagination and wit with stability. This commentator surprisingly calls for miscegenation, to “mix the races, import the Irish into England and vice versa”. Rather than demonstrate a genuine desire to mix racially with the Irish, this reads as an attempt to forestall the inevitable decline of his section of the population. Quixotically, he states “in the meantime even the pure Irish can be vastly improved by a course of Army training”. This commentator proposes to impose conscription in Ireland and send the 1916 rebels to English regiments at the front, in order to resolve racial animosity. He claims paradoxically to have met no Irish soldiers who harboured hostility towards England; yet claims their “imaginary grievances against England” were invented by spiritual political masters and are dispelled by reality. This contributor adds “in his humble opinion”, the only solution to the Irish ‘problem’ is to conscript all Irishmen to the British Army, and eradicate all traces of the Irish race by subsuming it within the supposedly racially superior Saxon race. Colonisers typically fear miscegenation, but this contributor conversely envisaged interracial marriage as a way to weaken Irish identity and complete the colonial project in Ireland. Finally, thos Unionist contributor asserts that the Irish should be treated like a horse by its master, “Treat the Irish as you would one of their own fine hunters…give it a good gallop across country, and it enjoys itself and learns to behave and obey its master”. This reification of the Irish into dehumanised essentialised characteristics illustrates how colonial attitudes surrounded the Irish throughout this period. Yet the editor of TNCDN deemed this article acceptable for publication in his ex-patriate newspaper. Although these attitudes may be deemed excessive by modern audiences, to a large extent, they accurately describe the colonising depictions of the Irish during that era. The Chinese faced similar dilemmas on how to respond to western and imperial Japanese constructions of Chinese stereotypes during this period. And both sets of stereotypes are discernible in ex-patriate English-language newspapers published in China, throughout this era. TNCH of July 15, 1916 printed “The Settlement of Ireland – Mr. George’s Plan Accepted”.81 This declares that protection for Unionists in the South and West of Ireland was agreed in Lloyd George’s Irish

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proposals. Mr. Asquith reports the exclusion of six Ulster counties as the main provision for the proposed Irish settlement. The plan calls for Nationalist members of the House of Commons to continue to vote in London, after the Dublin Parliament was established. Mr. Asquith emphasises the union of Ireland could only be brought about with free assent of the excluded area. The proposed new system included a prohibition on carrying arms, no amnesty, a garrison to be kept in Ireland, and a new Chief of the Irish Constabulary—a soldier who knew all parties. The article falsely concludes Sinn Féin is waning, which demonstrates the editor’s Anglo-centric worldview. TNCDN on August 24, 1925 published a letter to the editor by “An tSean Bhocht” [Irish for Poor Old] resident in Shanghai.82 [This corruption of An Sean Bean Bhocht means poor old woman in Irish, and references Yeats’s Cathleen ni Houlihan, an old woman personifying Ireland who needs young men to fight for her liberty from colonial rule]. This Irish Nationalist writer critiques the editor for the “Tit for Tat” article, which was in “the very worst of taste”. He claims this “succeeded in arousing the ire of other than Maev” [Maeve was Queen of Connacht in Ulster’s mythological cycle]. The letter states it is difficult to believe this amused English readers, but it annoyed many Irishmen, and continues “We Irish are perhaps, over-sensitive and take offence at what other races would ignore. Things unimportant in themselves lead to bitterness where highly strung temperaments are concerned. God knows our troubles have been too recently put to sleep for us to permit them to be lightly brought to life again”. This Irish Nationalist was possibly stationed by the British Empire in Shanghai, and self-orientalises the Irish as ‘highly strung’ and ‘over-sensitive’. Postcolonial Studies explain how colonised peoples internalise colonising stereotypes externally imposed by the imperial centre, and often cannot move beyond these limiting constructs. Yet this Nationalist commentator criticises racial bias in ex-patriate newspapers in China, since “the Morning Post is notorious in its spitefulness towards all whose vision is not limited to the range of its own”. He admonishes that “Irishmen at home pay little attention to its inane cackle. Here in Shanghai however the British community is not so large that it can afford to have any racial ill-feeling”. He questions editorial policy, and advises “surely it is not good policy for a paper to offend any section of its readers, however small”. He concludes “I would like to ask Maev to take the following as her motto: “Do chum gloire Dé

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agus onora na h-Éireann” and not to worry her head about one Bodach Sasanach” [“For the glory of God and the honour of Ireland” do not worry about one “boorish Englishman”]. This coded use of the Irish language as an esoteric weapon against imperialism, meant that ex-patriate editors in China, unfamiliar with Irish, could not decode this resistance to British rule. As chapters six and eight demonstrate, Chinese intellectuals ‘translated’ Revivalist Hiberno-English, as decolonising models of hybridity for semicolonial Chinese writers who used vernacular baihua 白 話. Significantly, the same page references the infamous 1925 May Thirtieth incident, when British Shanghai municipal police opened fire on peaceful Chinese protestors, sparking national and international outrage.83 This letter rejects suggestions by student protestors that Nanking road be renamed ‘May 30, Blood Street’ to honour the dead. The letter counters it should be renamed ‘Everson Road’ to honour the police officer who did his duty. The letter asserts the police officer prevented enormous destruction of property in Shanghai’s Settlement, revealing that hierarchical British colonial attitudes construct property as of greater value than the lives of Chinese student protestors and the rights they marched and died for. Just as the infamous 1925 May Thirtieth incident involved British Shanghai municipal police firing on unarmed Chinese civilians, Ireland’s original Bloody Sunday in 1920 also involved colonial British forces firing on unarmed Irish civilians. Bloody Sunday occurred during the Irish War of Independence on November 21, 1920 as a reprisal for rebel leader Michael Collins’ pre-emptive assassination of British spies sent to assassinate him. British police and military forces fired from an armoured car into a crowd of unarmed spectators at a Gaelic football match in Croke park, killing fourteen (including one player on the field, two children and a woman) and wounding sixty.84 Both incidents are similar to the Indian Amritsar massacre on April 13, 1919 when Brigadier General Reginald Dyer ordered troops of the British Indian army to fire shots into an unarmed crowd of ten thousand Indian peaceful protestors, officially killing three hundred and seventy-nine people and wounding many.85 In all three instances, colonial British powers used local troops to fire on their own people. Thus discernible transnational patterns emerge of colonial British forces shooting at unarmed protestors in India, Ireland and China who sought independence. I contend the way these atrocities were

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presented by ex-patriate newspapers published in China reveals how colonial Britain’s gaze constructed the Irish and Asian peoples as different from the imperial centre.

Conclusion In conclusion, English-language accounts of the 1916 Irish Easter Rising published in ex-patriate newspapers in China, foreground the painful dilemmas faced by China’s Renaissance. The May Fourth generation wanted to modernise Chinese by looking to the West, yet were constantly bombarded by colonial stereotypes in imperial western literature that depicted the Chinese (and the Irish) as essentialised, exoticised and ‘other’. The very western imperial literatures that Chinese intellectuals perused for inspiration, circumscribed and delimited how to be both Chinese and modern, according to the twin western goals of colonial capitalism. I contend that Revivalism and Easter 1916 provided alternative routes to modernity and intriguing literary ways out of their postcolonised predicament for Chinese writers. The Irish, although white and western, had also experienced colonisation by a western imperial power. Yet, Irish writers discovered a way to re-define themselves in a postcolonised situation, by experimenting with modern literature and language. I conclude that Irish Revivalism’s alternative take on how to be modern and create a new postcolonised identity through literature, bypassed imperial modernity’s racialised assumptions, so prevalent in literatures produced in the imperial centre. Accordingly, Irish Revivalist (and Polish, Jewish and Hungarian) literatures offered a uniquely postcolonised alternative vision of modernity for the Chinese Renaissance. This unconventional route to the modern was one that literatures produced in imperial Britain, France, Germany and the U.S. could never put forward. Irish Revivalist literature spoke to the Chinese in a more relatable, similarly postcolonised voice, as both occupied a space as colonised other, and not as the voice of imperial authority. As I demonstrate throughout this book, this process went both ways, as Irish Revivalists Yeats, O’Casey, Lady Gregory, and Synge were also influenced by Chinese and Asian encounters with modernity, thereby establishing how mutual encounters and reciprocal exchanges shaped our shared global history.

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What overall conclusions emerge from my comparison of how the Chinese May Fourth generation ‘translated’ 1916 and the Irish Literary Revival? What innovative transnational, gendered or postcolonial modernist readings does my comparison of the Irish and Chinese Renaissance movements invite? Did these reciprocal links establish our shared global literary heritage? Finally, how do mutual encounters between the Irish and Chinese Renaissance movements point a way forward for our troubled times? My conclusion addresses these questions

Notes 1. Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland: the Literature of the Modern Nation (London: Vintage, 1995). 2. Eóin Flannery, Ireland and Postcolonial Studies: Theory, Discourse, Utopia (London: Palgrave and MacMillan, 2009), 19, 20. 3. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2007). 4. Liu Bannong 劉半農, “Ai’erlan Aiguo Shiren 愛爾蘭愛國詩人 (Irish Patriotic Poets)”, XQN 2, no. 2 (Oct 1916): 141–148. I am grateful for Wang Lu’s assistance in translating certain passages. 5. Michel Hockx, Questions of Style Literary Societies and Literary Journals in Modern China 1911–1937 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 172. 6. Michel Hockx, Questions of Style, 158–159. 7. Lin Yusheng, The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness: Radical Antitraditionalism in the May Fourth era (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), ix, x, xi. 8. Xu Jilin, “Historical Memories of May Fourth”, China Heritage Quarterly 17 (June 2009) edition on “The May Fourth Spirit, then and now”. Originally published in New Ghosts, Old Dreams: Chinese Rebel Voices eds. Geremie Barmé and Linda Jaivin (New York: Times Books, 1992), 340–350. 9. This chapter refers to the May Fourth generation although the May Fourth incident did not take place until 1919, three years after Liu’s article. Historians differ on whether to use the term Republican era, or May Fourth era favoured by literary critics. My practice is to refer to the broader May Fourth generation including Liu Bannong. See Michel Hockx, “What’s in a Date? May Fourth in Modern Chinese Literary History”, Paths Towards Modernity (Prague: The Karolinum Press, 2008): 291–306. 10. Irene Eber, Voices from Afar: Modern Chinese Writers on Oppressed Peoples and their Literature (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1980), 1–10. 11. Ibid.

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12. Frederick James Gregg, “A Revolt that Failed and Succeeded”, Vanity Fair 6 (August 1916): 27–28, 94. 13. Graydon Carter, Bohemians, Bootleggers, Flappers and Swells the Best of early Vanity Fair (New York: Penguin Press, 2014), 417. 14. Jerusha McCormack, “Staging the Revolution: Guo Moruo and Terence MacSwiney”, in The Irish and China: Encounters and Exchanges, ed. Jerusha McCormack (Dublin: New Island, 2019), 56–78. 15. News Letter of the Friends of Irish Freedom (NLFOIF), National Bureau of Information, Washington, Vol. III no. 22 (November 26, 1921): 3– 6. Thanks to Andrew Newby in Finland for links on Irish America and China. 16. (NLFOIF), National Bureau of Information, Washington, Vol. II no. 22 (November 21, 1921): 5. 17. (NLFOIF), National Bureau of Information, Washington, Vol. II no. 45 (May 7, 1921): 2. 18. (NLFOIF), National Bureau of Information, Washington, Vol. III no. 22 (November 26, 1921): 4. 19. (NLFOIF), National Bureau of Information, Washington, Vol. III no. 23 (December 2, 1921): 3. 20. (NLFOIF), National Bureau of Information, Washington, Vol. III no. 27 (December 31, 1921): 2. 21. (NLFOIF), National Bureau of Information, Washington, Vol. III no. 29 (January 14, 1922): 5. 22. (NLFOIF), National Bureau of Information, Washington, Vol. III no. 33 (February 11, 1922): 3. 23. Ibid., 6. 24. (NLFOIF), National Bureau of Information, Washington, Vol. III no. 34 (February 18, 1922): 6. 25. (NLFOIF), National Bureau of Information, Washington, Vol. IV no. 13 (September 23, 1922): 4. 26. (NLFOIF), National Bureau of Information, Washington, Vol. III no. 35 (February 25, 1922): 4. 27. Ibid. 28. Barry McCarron, “The Global Irish and Chinese: Migration, Exclusion and Foreign Relations Among Empires, 1784–1904” (PhD. Thesis, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 2016), 33–152. 29. Ibid. 30. Lydia H. Liu, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity—China, 1900–1937 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1995). 31. Peter Berresford Ellis, James Connolly: Selected Writings (London: Pluto Press, 1997), 48, 49. Although Connolly did pen some verses his songs for the labour movement became better known.

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32. Evidence from The North-China Herald in Chinese-language resource centres on databases I researched. 33. Chen Li, “An Emerging Field: Irish Studies in China”, in The Irish and China: Encounters and Exchanges, ed. Jerusha McCormack (Dublin: New Island, 2019), 114. 34. “Ai’erlan panluan zhi zhenxiang 愛爾蘭叛亂之真相 (The Truth About Ireland’s Rebellion)”, DFZZ 13, no. 8 (1916): 54. 35. Patrick Pearse and James Connolly, “The Proclamation of the Irish Republic”, in Handbook of the Irish Revival: An Anthology of Irish Cultural and Political Writing, eds. Declan Kiberd and P. J. Mathews (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), 104–105. This refers to the 1641, 1798, 1803, 1848, 1867 and 1916 Irish rebellions. 36. Rana Mitter, A Bitter Revolution: China’s Struggle with the Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 10. 37. Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 (New York: Overlook Press, 2005), 114–119. 38. John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, China A New History (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2006), 275, 276. 39. P. J. Mathews, Revival: The Abbey Theatre, Sinn Féin, the Gaelic League and the Co-operative Movement Vol. 12 Field Day Critical Conditions Series. (Cork and Notre Dame: Cork UP/ Notre Dame University Press, 2003), 1–4. 40. Frederick James Gregg, “A Revolt that Failed and Succeeded”, Vanity Fair 6 (August 1916): 94. 41. Ibid., 27. 42. William Butler Yeats, “Easter 1916”, in The Yeats Reader A Portable Compendium of Poetry, Drama and Prose ed. Richard J. Finneran (New York: Scribner, 2002), 76–78. 43. Michael D. Higgins, “Michael D. Higgins issues ‘imperial triumphalism’ call in Easter Rising Speech”, The Daily Mail, March 29, 2016. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-3512062/Eas ter-Rising-centenary-commemorations-continue.html. 44. John Regan, “Southern Irish Nationalism as a Historical Problem”, The Historical Journal 50, no. 1 (2007): 198. 45. Ibid., 197. 46. Michel Hockx, Questions of Style, 159. 47. Ibid., 167. 48. Michael Hechter, Alien Rule and its Discontents (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 90. 49. Susan Townsend, “Yanaihara Tadao and the Irish question: a comparative analysis of the Irish and Korean questions, 1919–1936”, Irish Historical Studies xxx no. 118 (Nov 1996): 195–205. 50. Ibid., 197.

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51. Declan Kiberd, The Irish Writer and the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 169. 52. Jonathan Spence, The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and their Revolution (New York: Viking Press, 1981), 16, 51, 123. 53. Roger Garside, Coming Alive: China After Mao (London: Andre Deutsch, 1981), 117. 54. Jonathan Spence, Gate of Heavenly Peace, 81, 96, 97. 55. Julia Kristeva, “On the Women of China”, Signs 1, no. 1 (Autumn 1975): 57–81. 56. Eóin Flannery, “Ireland, Empire and Utopia: Irish Postcolonial Criticism and the Utopian impulse”, Textual Practice 24, no. 3 (2010): 460. 57. Patrick Pearse, “The Fool”, in Collected Works of Padraic H. Pearse: Plays, Stories, Poems (Dublin: The Phoenix Publishing Co., 1924), 336. 58. Evidence from The North-China Herald in Chinese-language resource centres on databases I researched. 59. “Mr. Redmond on the Duty of Ireland”, TNCDN January 6, 1916, 8. 60. “The Trouble in Ireland—Sir Roger Casement’s Treacherous Plot—The Traitor in the Tower”, TNCDN April 29, 1916, 7. 61. Diarmaid Ferriter, Transformation of Ireland, 156. 62. “Sinn Fein Mutiny Collapsed—Ireland Herself Again”, TNCDN May 4, 1916, 7. 63. “The Sinn Fein Revolt—What it has Done for Ireland—A Great Opportunity. By a Nationalist”, TNCH May 13, 1916, 357–358. See TNCDN May 12, 1916, 7. 64. Diarmaid Ferriter, Transformation of Ireland, 149–153. 65. “The Sinn Fein Revolt—Resignation of Secretary for Ireland”, TNCH May 13, 1916, 55. 66. John Dorney, “Whose Fault were the Civilian Casualties in 1916?” The Irish Times March 26, 2016. https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/ 1916/the-victims/whose-fault-were-the-civilian-casualties-in-1916-345 63888.html. 67. Diarmaid Ferriter, Transformation of Ireland, 176. 68. Ibid., 147. 69. John Dorney, “Whose Fault were the Civilian Casualties in 1916?” The Irish Times March 26, 2016. 70. “The Sinn Fein Revolt—Commission of Inquiry”, TNCDN May 15, 1916, 4. 71. “The Sinn Fein Revolt—Home Rule for Ireland”, TNCH May 27, 1916, 76. 72. Diarmaid Ferriter, Transformation of Ireland, 140. 73. “The Settlement of Ireland—Mr. Asquith on Present Opportunities”, TNCDN May 29, 1916, 7.

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74. “The Problem of Ireland—Difficulties of a Settlement”, TNCDN June 30, 1916, 7. 75. “Ireland and the Irish—Some Wholesome Home Truths”, TNCDN July 5, 1916, 11. 76. Edward Said, “Afterword—Reflections on Ireland and Postcolonialism”, in Ireland and Postcolonial Theory-with an Afterword by Edward Said, eds. Clare Carroll and Patricia King (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 178. 77. John Kenyon and Jane Ohlmeyer, The Civil Wars: A Military History of England, Scotland and Ireland 1638–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 278. 78. Ibid., xx, 86, 98, 278. 79. Joyce Marlow, Captain Boycott and the Irish (USA: Saturday Review Press, 1973), 133–142. 80. Diarmaid Ferriter, Transformation of Ireland, 114–128. 81. “The Settlement of Ireland—Mr. George’s Plan Accepted”, TNCH July 15, 1916, 21. 82. An tSean Bhocht, “Tit for Tat”, TNCDN August 24, 1925, 4. 83. Ao Guangxu, “Nationalism and the May Thirtieth Movement: an analysis of the Northern intelligentsia”, Journal of Modern Chinese History 1, no. 2 (December 2007): 219–237. 84. Tim Carey and Marcus de Búrca, “Bloody Sunday 1920: New Evidence”, History Ireland 2, no. 11 (Summer 2003). https://www.historyireland. com/20th-century-contemporary-history/bloody-sunday-1920-new-evi dence/. 85. Nigel Collett, The Butcher of Amritsar: Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer (London: Hambledon and London, 2006), 263. See Wallace Cross, “The Butcher of Amritsar: Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer Reviews of New Books”, History 34, no. 2 (2006): 61.

CHAPTER 10

Conclusion: Transnational Connections—Was Postcolonised Modernist Ireland a More Relatable Postcolonised Model for Chinese May Fourth Intellectuals?

In conclusion, I read the Chinese May Fourth generation and Irish Literary Revivalists as Postcolonial Modernists; or writers of Modernism and fighters against the Post(semi)colonial condition. I conclude this investigation of sources opens new exciting innovative transnational readings of Chinese and Irish Renaissance literatures; as Postcolonial and Modernist, adjusting our picture of both. This demonstrates the global reach of Irish Revivalism, and highlights transnational literary links between East and West, as part of our shared global heritage. Forays by Irish Revivalist Yeats into the transcendent realm in his Irish folkloric tales provided a psychologically decolonised space for formerly colonised peoples, such as Chinese May Fourth writers, to experiment with in a modernist sense. Yeats’s emphasis on the local shifted May Fourth writers away from the exclusively western imperial metropolitan gaze, towards more inclusive alternative postcolonised modernities similarly centred on their locale. I conclude Chinese Renaissance writers did not simply translate Yeats’s Irish folkloric tales, they provided alternative models of experimental postcolonised modernities that played with narrator and genre, so that a new Chinese readership could reimagine themselves. This translation of Irish Revivalist folklore was

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. O’Malley-Sutton, The Chinese May Fourth Generation and the Irish Literary Revival: Writers and Fighters, Asia-Pacific and Literature in English, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5269-4_10

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a vital resource to entice illiterate Chinese peasants towards May Fourth literary, cultural and social revolution and the implied political revolution. Chinese Renaissance writers focused on three Yeatsian plays—Cathleen ni Houlihan, The Land of Heart’s Desire and The Hourglass. These Irish Revivalist plays proclaimed anticolonial readings of the Irish situation, included appeals to the transcendent spiritual realm beyond the semicolonial realities of postcolonised audiences, and foregrounded the pivotal role of teachers and intellectuals in discovering another world or way out of the modern postcolonial dilemma. May Fourth translators used Yeatsian poetry as a way to raise their own anti-imperial struggles to a transcendent spiritual plane, simultaneously linked to other anticolonial struggles worldwide. May Fourth writers appropriated Yeatsian criticism as alternative ways to interrogate their own approaches to modernity in a semicolonial setting. I conclude Yeats’s Irish Revivalist writings presented May Fourth writers with alternative critiques of western imperial modernity and capitalist modernity, and foregrounded the voice of the colonised, rather than the voice of western imperial modernity. Irish Revivalism was appropriated for different purposes during different decades in Republican era China, and used to promote anticolonial ideals; national unity; and a Chinese vernacular firmly based upon the local. Irish Revivalist Synge resonated for different Chinese nationalist and socialist audiences, in different eras, dependent upon their political needs. Anticolonial writings by Irish Revivalists Yeats, Lady Gregory and Synge were models of decolonisation literature for Chinese intellectuals during the 1920s, as ‘literature of oppressed peoples’. However, Republican era China (1911–1949) was divided by significant events. When the nationalist Guomindang executed thousands of Communists in Shanghai in 1927, Chinese intellectuals turned leftist, and critiqued Irish Revivalism as parochial. But in 1937 the fight against Japan necessitated a Second United Front. In the 1930s Chinese intellectuals emphasised unifying national elements in Irish Revivalism, to promote national unity. Thus translation of Irish Revivalism became difficult in the 1930s, as the Japanese bombed important sites and networks of cultural production, including Shanghai’s Commercial Press in 1932. Chinese nationalists and communists emphasised competing readings of Irish Revivalism, and selected different poems, dramas, folkloric short stories or critical writings to bolster these readings. Chinese nationalists portrayed Yeats’s Irish Revivalism as Romantic nationalism; whereas leftist Chinese intellectuals underscored anti-imperialism in Irish Revivalism, to

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argue for Chinese resistance to imperial Japanese invasion. Plays by and accounts of Irish Revivalists Yeats, Lady Gregory and Synge appear in school textbooks in Republican era China, when the Beiyang government discerned the need to modernise Chinese education. And Chinese writers used Synge’s dramas to raise the vernacular language issues that similarly convulsed May Fourth China during the 1920s and 1930s. Significantly, socialist O’Casey’s Irish Revivalist plays were more often translated during the 1950s and 1960s, once the Chinese Communists took power in 1949. One writes about China mostly for English-speaking academic audiences, but I do not present this comparative study as a mere influence study. I read these literary “transactions” in terms set by the Chinese writers, foregrounding which aspects of Irish Revivalism May Fourth translators selected or omitted as relevant to their semicolonial context. This book concludes that semicolonial Chinese Renaissance intellectuals utilised Irish Revivalism for anticolonial purposes and audiences. This impacts Irish Studies, as the ‘worlding of Irish literature’ and the global transnational reach of Irish Revivalism is a field only beginning to be explored, particularly regarding China and Asia. Moreover, this book reaches beyond Asian and Irish Studies to the circulation of revolutionary anticolonial, modernist and feminist ideals across the globe, thereby broadening the stakes of my argument. Literature was the first vehicle for this global conversation on revolutionary ideas that changed once transplanted in a new environment. My introduction posed five questions on how postcolonialism, modernism, socialism, gender and language link the two modern literature movements I compare. I now present a summation of my findings according to archival data.

Postcolonialism Evidently, Chinese Renaissance intellectuals read the Irish Renaissance differently during different time periods, and emphasised anti-imperial narratives to unify all Chinese classes in patriotism against external imperial aggression. The pivotal link between Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China was the illiterate peasantry, whom Chinese intellectuals sought to move to anti-imperial action. Anticolonial Irish Revivalist literature focused on Irish peasants and presented innovative ways to draw Chinese peasants to the May Fourth’s anti-imperial project. Clearly Irish Revivalist literature changed upon reception in a new Chinese May Fourth

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setting. Revivalist plays by Yeats, Lady Gregory and O’Casey that called the Irish to cultural and political action against British colonisation, were transmuted into plays to unify all Chinese classes against Japanese and western imperialism. Therefore, valences resonate from postcolonised Ireland and speak to the semicolonial Chinese, in ways that modern literatures emanating from western imperial centres in America, Britain, France, Germany and Russia could not. China’s May Fourth generation used modern Irish literature to perform particular types of work, in line with their Postcolonial Modernist impulses. I contend Lu Xun’s postcolonial moves de/recolonise the prose poetry sphere of production, a poetic space that originated in the west with Baudelaire. This poetic space was recolonised by Lu Xun to imagine a New China, glimpses of which appear throughout Wild Grass . Lu Xun innovatively imagines a postcolonised community that resists succumbing to abuses of power depicted in Wild Grass, and instead foregrounds something stubbornly Chinese that continues to grow, despite inhospitable surroundings, reassuring us “Spring will follow”. Accordingly, I conclude the fragmentation and chaos engendered by the anarchic Chinese Warlord Years (1916–1928) and the contemporaneous Irish Civil War (1922–1923), found similar expression in Lu Xun’s Wild Grass and in Yeats’s Civil War poetry. Both Yeats and Lu Xun grappled with concurrent existential crises in Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China, as they attempted to de/recolonise the literary spheres of production in postcolonised peripheries. I contend the Chinese May Fourth generation specifically selected anticolonial Irish Revivalism, to underscore the urgent need to similarly free China from colonising interpretations imposed by the Qing, the West and imperial Japan. Hence, Chinese translators adapted western literary forms and remade these in a modern Chinese context. This sophisticated Postcolonial Modernist move, as Chinese Renaissance writers identified Irish Renaissance experimentation with literature and language meant that new decolonising literary models like Hiberno-English that were presented as alternative counter-utopian versions of postcolonised modernity. Evidence from Chinese-language journals led me to conclude that Chinese translators borrow from western and Irish literature in subversive ways, to resist totalising interpretations of modern Chinese identity imposed externally by western and Japanese imperialism. I read these

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agentic acts of self-definition by May Fourth intellectuals, as Postcolonial and Modernist moves beyond colonising definitions of modern Chineseness. Evidently, in Irish Revivalist literature, China’s May Fourth discovered a similarly postcolonised voice that more adequately addressed their modern semicolonial existential crisis, than literatures from the western imperial centre. Similarities reverberate from the postcolonised Irish and speak to the semicolonial Chinese, in ways modern literatures from the imperial centres in America, Britain, France, German and Russia could never achieve. By not descending into reifying, essentialising or universalising positions on the Irish or Chinese, my purpose throughout was to allow narratives on Chinese appropriation of Irish Revivalism to unfold according to the terms of the translingual discursive practices set by the Chinese themselves. In other words, Irish Revivalism took on different meanings for the Chinese Renaissance, than it held for the Irish. Comparison of these complementary readings, presents postcolonial literary links of reciprocity and mutual exchange between Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China. Therefore, specifically the anticolonialism of Irish Revivalism held appeal for anti-imperial Chinese Renaissance writers and fighters. I do not externally impose this reading, as numerous Chinese intellectuals of this era explicitly highlight this anticolonial reading in their commentaries. May Fourth writers repeatedly present the Irish Renaissance as exemplary of postcolonised modernity for Chinese readers, specifically due to its anti-imperialism, something imperial western literatures could never provide. May Fourth writers select Irish texts to underscore how smaller, oppressed western peoples in Ireland, Hungary and Poland modernised through literature, implying that the Chinese can similarly cope with the shock of imperial modernity. The fact that the Irish and other oppressed peoples re-imagined a futurity beyond colonising interpretations from the western imperial centre, presented the Chinese Renaissance writers with new hope. May Fourth intellectuals concluded they could perform similar Postcolonial and experimental Modernist literary moves, in order to establish a modern Chinese identity based on agentic Chinese self-definition, rather than submit to external imperial definitions.

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Modernism I conclude that the Chinese Renaissance translated the Irish Renaissance for varying audiences in different eras, principally as an alternative model of postcolonised modernity. Evidently, anticolonial Irish Revivalism foregrounded other postcolonised routes to modernity for China’s May Fourth, thereby challenging imperial capitalist models of modernity. I read this experimentation with language, genre, narrator and form as evidence of Modernism in Irish and Chinese Renaissance literatures. Chinese May Fourth writers read Irish Revivalist and modernist writers, and I detect Modernist elements in their own experimental literature. Hence, Lu Xun’s Wild Grass , Lao She’s Teahouse and Cao Yu’s The Wilderness all display Modernist elements that reach beyond Realism. Furthermore, Ding Ling’s and Qiu Jin’s experimental creations of New Women, aligns with modernist incursions into the psychological. In addition, I read the Abbey riots as O’Casey’s effective modernist Brechtian alienation of Irish nationalism’s portrayal of the 1916 leaders as heroic and masculinist. According to my reading, Irish Revivalists O’Casey (and Synge) anticipate elements of Brechtian Alienation Effect theory, as they both distance and render as strange the official political worldview of Irish nationalist audiences, to the point that audience members walked out. I read this not as O’Casey’s alienation from the original utopian ideals of Irish nationalism, socialism and the Republic, but rather his alienation from the manifest failure to enact the full potential of these worthy goals. Therefore, O’Casey interrogates imperialist and capitalist modernity and finds both lacking. I conclude that O’Casey’s plays are modernist since they reflect on and react to, the modern postcolonised Irish condition. Thus, O’Casey experiments in a modernist sense with the vernacular to discover alternative linguistic ways out of the modern Irish postcolonised dilemma. I further detect subtle modernist Brechtian Alienation Effects in Lao She’s play Teahouse. Lao She subversively uses a banner to ostensibly prohibit while in fact encouraging discussion of state affairs. His characters also subtly alienate the official Chinese communist worldview. Teahouse illuminates how semicolonial modern Chinese society remains alienated from the original utopian ideals of socialism that Lao She returned to China to support. Lao She’s Teahouse in effect calls for a return to those radical May Fourth roots. Rather than pigeon-hole

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O’Casey and Lao She as realists, I discern modernist linguistic experimentation in their plays. Moreover, I conclude that Lao She was a left-leaning May Fourth writer who produced more than mere Socialist Realist literature. My introduction asks why most Modernist literary experimentation arose in the postcolonised Irish peripheries, and not the imperial metropolitan centre. Why do the greats of Modernism Joyce, Yeats and Beckett all originate in postcolonised Ireland? Can the Postcolonial destabilise the Modernist canon? Did the Modernist urge to ‘make it new’ arise from the need to forge a new identity, post-colonisation? Does this mean western British writers who never experienced colonisation, did not feel the same urgent need to discover new forms, new modes, new registers, and new ontologies of being? What does this mean for University courses that inaccurately proclaim the study of “British Modernism”, but only include Irish writers Joyce, Yeats and Beckett on the curriculum? Do we miss the import behind the rush to modernise for those who came from the postcolonised peripheries? These questions deserve to be researched further, as my book raises these issues but could not exclusively deal with them. I conclude this appropriation of a minority culture is deeply problematic, as it undermines our understanding of the postcolonial contribution to modernism and misdirects our gaze from the postcolonised peripheries towards the colonial imperial centre. Scholars refrain from presenting Bengali writer Tagore as Indian, yet Irish writers are frequently misrepresented as British in order to bolster British cultural power within academia. Arguably, English writers did not feel the same urgent need to establish a new modern English or British national identity, as the British Empire was the most powerful colonising force at the time. The English as colonisers, rather than colonised, benefitted from their position on the world stage and the status quo. Hence, my main argument throughout this book is that the anticolonial Irish Renaissance was portable for the Chinese Renaissance, precisely because it was not British, or emanating from western imperialism. Irish, Polish and Hungarian writers spoke to the Chinese May Fourth generation with the more relatable voice of the colonised, rather than with the voice of western imperial authority. My overall conclusion is that Irish Revivalism provided the revolutionary Chinese Renaissance with a more suitable language of postcolonised consciousness, hybridity and resistance, one that engaged with alternative

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discourses on race and empire in order to circumvent imperial modernity. To mislabel Irish literature as British, causes us to overlook such anti-imperial resonances for other anticolonial peoples. I conclude the postcolonised origins of Modernism need to be re-examined, in the light of this archival evidence.

Reciprocal Exchange and Mutual Encounter Significantly, China and Asia also influenced Irish Revivalists; resulting in mutual encounters and reciprocal exchanges that shape our shared global history. Evidently, this exchange of revolutionary ideas did not only go from West to East, but also from East to West. Irish Revivalists Yeats and O’Casey knew of the Chinese struggle for national independence from western colonisation, and Lady Gregory and Synge also formed deep personal connections with Asia. Whereas Yeats looked to China and the East to revivify art in exclusively cultural artistic terms, O’Casey appropriated China and the East in political terms to bolster his arguments for global socialism. Significantly, Lady Gregory’s entire worldview was changed by living in Asia, as her encounter with nascent Asian independent movements led to her eventual turn towards Irish cultural nationalism. Since Lady Gregory was one of the main leaders, funders, and mentors of Irish Revivalism, one can only speculate that without her Asian awakening, Irish Revivalism may not have taken the same form, or may not have taken place in the same way without Lady Gregory’s guidance, money and mentorship. These transformative literary links between the Chinese May Fourth generation and Irish Revivalists form a bond of transnational anticolonial solidarity, that traversed the globe from east to west, and back again. Moreover, these shared literary connections and common anticolonial struggles in the past, point to alternative ways forward for our divided world. If peoples as ostensibly different as the Chinese and Irish could discover resonances or valences in each other’s anticolonial struggles, then perhaps there is hope for us today. Hence, the stakes of this mutual literary exchange hold valuable lessons for politically divided peoples today, on how to discern mutual commonalities between their own struggles and those of other peoples, leading to greater understanding and co-operation. That is the lesson I discern from how the Chinese May

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Fourth generation ‘read’ Irish Revivalism as relevant to their own semicolonial condition, by focusing on what united, rather than on what divided them.

Socialism Irish Revivalist socialist dramatist Seán O’Casey and Chinese dramatist Lao She successfully alienated official political worldviews, within their plays. I conclude that both O’Casey and Lao She yearned for the potential offered by socialism, as modern postcolonised societies became alienated from their original utopian ideals. Hence, I read O’Casey’s trilogy, not as alienation from the original utopian ideals of Irish nationalism, socialism and the Republic, but as his alienation from the manifest failure to properly enact the full potential of these worthy goals. According to my reading, O’Casey does not argue to abandon Irish socialism or nationalism, but instead pointedly questions what these have achieved for ordinary Irish citizens surrounded by violence, who experience no measurable improvement in circumstance. In effect, O’Casey asserts the need not to become obsessed with ideologies and forget the people they intend to liberate. Similarly, I read Lao She’s play Teahouse as concluding that the Chinese socialist vision has become alienated from its original utopian May Fourth ideals. Questions raised by both dramatists remain relevant, in societies that are still alienated in a Brechtian manner from the original utopian goals of their Postcolonised and Modernist beginnings.

Gender Gender and women’s rights further complicate my comparative reading of China’s May Fourth and Irish Revivalism. Lu Xun concluded that China’s first feminist Qiu Jin was effectively “clapped to death”. Academia also clapped Qiu Jin to death by overemphasising her nationalist credentials as China’s first feminist, while simultaneously erasing her literary legacy. Similarly, Irish Revivalist Lady Gregory’s literary legacy and pivotal role as an Irish Revivalist leader were also downplayed and firmly placed in the background by scholars. Moreover, the literary and activist legacies of Irish Revivalist Eva Gore-Booth were also largely written out of predominantly masculinist accounts of Irish Revivalism, until Sonja Tiernan’s recent scholarship foregrounded her truly revolutionary role.

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This elision of female Irish Revivalists and modern Chinese female writers of the May Fourth era is partly due to intersections on gender, race, age and class. I reclaimed and re-cast Lady Gregory as an implicit feminist, as she created a new modernist feminist role for Irish women in both her literature and her life. I discern similar elisions of the literary feminist legacies of Chinese female writer Ding Ling, who was mis-read by second-wave feminists as insufficiently feminist by western standards. Hence, the global New Woman was constructed in divergent ways by women writers in the west and east; through the global collision of postcolonialism, modernism, language and gender during the early twentieth-century. In summation, nationalist discourses opened liminal experimental spaces for women’s rights and female writers in Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China, but these predominantly masculinist discourses circumscribed and indefinitely postponed women’s rights, to first attain national freedom. Academia was complicit in this erasure and elision of the literary legacies of the four New Women writers I compare. I conclude retrieval work is needed on these hidden feminist legacies, which were invariably written out of his-story.

Language In conclusion, Irish Revivalism’s creation of Hiberno-English as a literary language of hybridity and resistance, became another anticolonial model that the Chinese May Fourth generation transformed into a type of translingual practice. Decolonising use of the vernacular onstage by Irish Revivalists Lady Gregory, Synge and O’Casey, became for the Chinese Renaissance an alternative model of modernity arising in a postcolonised periphery. Chinese May Fourth journals emphasise how modern Chinese writers should likewise promote the Chinese vernacular baihua 白話. My archival research in May Fourth periodicals demonstrates that Chinese Renaissance writers selected aspects of the Irish Renaissance as relevant and portable for their cultural needs. It is noteworthy that Chinese May Fourth writers foreground Irish Revivalist use of the vernacular as a linguistic model of hybridity, resistance and decolonisation. However, this anticolonial Revivalist linguistic strategy was unique to the Irish postcolonised situation, as western imperial literatures could never articulate this type of alternative modern vision for the semicolonial Chinese.

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Lydia Liu explains the Chinese Renaissance faced traumatic choices after violent encounters with western imperialism. Liu’s Translingual Practice (1995) asks what happens when words, categories or discourses ‘travel’ from one language to another, and asserts Said’s ‘Traveling Theory’ on literary exchanges needs to be historicised and decolonised. My thesis expands upon this argument and foregrounds how May Fourth writers had agency in discarding traditional literary forms and language in favour of western models. Moreover, I contend that Chinese translators of Irish Revivalism did not simply import ideas, but made significant agentic choices on what to translate, when, where and for whom. Thus Chinese Renaissance writers re-wrote Irish Renaissance use of language as an anticolonial weapon for different Chinese audiences and timeframes, and for differing political and literary purposes.

Easter 1916 Significantly, the May Fourth reading of the 1916 Irish Easter Rising foregrounds the painful dilemma faced by that modernising Chinese generation. Chinese ‘writers and fighters’ looked westward to modernise China, yet paradoxically were consistently confronted with colonial stereotypes in those same western literatures that essentialised, exoticised and othered the Chinese (and Irish) according to the colonial gaze. Ironically, the very western imperial literatures Chinese intellectuals perused for inspiration, circumscribed definitions of modern Chinese identity, according to the twin western goals of colonisation and capitalism. Conversely, I conclude that Irish Revivalism and Easter 1916 provided something different for Chinese intellectuals, promising unconventional routes to modernity and intriguing literary ways out of their postcolonised predicament. The Irish, although white, western, and colonised, found ways to re-define themselves in a postcolonised situation, through experimentation with modern literature and language. Irish Revivalism’s alternative take on how to create a modern postcolonised identity through literature, bypassed many racialised assumptions on race made by imperial and capitalist modernity, prevalent in literatures from the imperial centre. Evidently, the Irish (and Polish and Hungarian) literatures offered uniquely different postcolonised visions of modernity for the Chinese Renaissance. Moreover, this substitute route to modernity was one that modern literatures in Britain, France, Germany and the U.S. could never envision. Hence, I conclude that Irish Revivalism spoke to the Chinese in

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a more relatable, similarly anticolonial voice, as both occupied a space as colonised other, rather than the voice of imperial authority.

Postcolonial and Modernist Finally, I discern linked Postcolonial and Modernist readings in Irish and Chinese Renaissance works. My book concludes that Postcolonial Modernism was the solution modern Irish and Chinese writers sought for the crisis brought on by the twin colonising forces of Colonial Capitalism and Colonial Modernity. I argue in line with New Modernist studies for a Postcolonial Modernist reading of the Irish and Chinese Renaissances, unlike Eurocentric, masculinist and hierarchical Canonical Modernism. Thus, I propose we should use the postcolonial as a method to interrogate the modernisms of Irish Revivalism and China’s May Fourth movement. John Regan asserts that Irish historiography and literary criticism were conditioned to establish the authority of the Southern Irish Republic and reject Northern Irish Republican violence. Thus, romantic Irish nationalist history was rewritten to retrospectively establish legitimacy exclusively for the Southern State. I read this as the effective Brechtian alienation of the Irish nationalist narrative, which is yet to be replaced by more inclusive versions. I conclude that the postcolonised realities in Ireland and China are yet to be fully addressed. However, locating both Ireland and China in a global comparative context avoids both propaganda and politically motivated Revisionism. Hence, my position is that I am revising Irish Revisionism, by placing the Irish Renaissance in a more appropriate global comparative context with other Renaissance literary movements in Asia and beyond. A western expression purporting to be an ancient Chinese proverb enigmatically proclaims ‘May you not live in interesting times’. However, the Chinese May Fourth generation of ‘writers and fighters’, and their contemporaries the Irish Revivalists, had little choice but to live in interesting times, due to their postcolonised setting. I conclude that both sets of writers experimented with modern literature in order to find a way out of their post(semi)colonial condition. As we conclude the centenary commemorations for China’s May Fourth in 2019, and the decade of commemorations for Irish independence (2012–2022), I hope this study proves a fitting epitaph to their inspiring idealism. My research throughout this book, honours all those Writers of Modernism, and

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Fighters against the Postcolonial condition, who laboured in Revivalist Ireland and May Fourth China, to envision a new modernity or futurity worthy of all postcolonised peoples, and who wrote about these imaginaries, and were willing to fight for them.

Appendix---Translations of Archival Research

Appendix A: Modern Literary Chats: Yeats’s ‘Tower’ (Zhao Jingshen 1928) This section provides my English translation of the Chinese-language article by Zhao Jingshen 趙景深, “ Xiandai Wentan Zahua: Xiazhi de Ta 現代文壇雜話:夏芝的塔 (Modern literary chats: Yeats’s Tower)”, Xiaoshuo Yuebao 小說月報 (Short Story Monthly) 19, no.7 (1928): 117. 現代文壇雜話:夏芝的“塔”

“Modern literary chats: Yeats’s The Tower”

些不可解了倘若一定還要稱讚夏芝大約只能 Some things cannot be resolved, even 說他與原始人一樣 依舊保持著純樸農民的 supposing if, you still most certainly 心情 would have to praise Yeats, as probably you can only say he has still preserved in himself the same pure peasant heart you find in native peoples 夏芝的「塔 Yeats’s “The Tower” (continued)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. O’Malley-Sutton, The Chinese May Fourth Generation and the Irish Literary Revival: Writers and Fighters, Asia-Pacific and Literature in English, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5269-4

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(continued) 現代文壇雜話:夏芝的“塔”

“Modern literary chats: Yeats’s The Tower”

上期我曾提到夏芝的塔現在該已經出版他的 作風和題目 雖與早年所作不同但神秘的色 彩依舊佈滿了全普不過他的夢和 幻想是有 邊際的使人能感到人生的經驗看了他的作品 彷彿現實 在咬啦我們的心寫實是其實幻想 却是更大的與實他雖逃避到另一世界其實仍 是我們地上的世界他的世界是永存的不能遗 忘的 在這本詩集裏夏芝闡明得最清楚美麗 和青春不是屬於肉體 的而是屬於靈魂的肉 體的衰老無法可想但心却可以永遠不老還有 沈思一九一九等詩苦憶到愛爾蘭互相殘殺的 競爭他悲 哀的唱道「我們從各望到春從春 望到及等到滿離開了花又以為冬天是最好的 呀此後沒有好的了春不再來了—血兒疑結了 只 想到那墳嘉裏去了

In the last issue, I mentioned Yeats’s “Tower” has already now published his style and his subject themes. Although this work is different from his early years, yet the mystical characteristics are still full of popularity. However, his dreams and his fantasies are of limited experience that cause people to sense life’s experiences and to make his literary works seem as if they were reality. Our heart is really a fantasy, but it is bigger and truer, even though he escapes to another world. One world, in fact, is still our world on earth. His world is eternal and unforgettable. In this collection of poems, Yeats expounds most clearly that beauty and youth do not belong to flesh but are belonging to the spirit. The aging of the body cannot be imagined but the heart can yet stay forever young. There are also contemplative poems such as “Nineteen hundred and nineteen” and I recollect the bitterness of Ireland’s mutual competition to murder one another causes him to sing a sorrowful lament [The translator ends quoting Yeats’s poem “The Wheel”] “Through winter-time we call on spring, And through the spring on summer call, And when abounding hedges ring Declare that winter’s best of all; And after that there’s nothing good Because the spring-time has not come – Nor know what disturbs our blood Is but its longing for the tomb”

Appendix B: Review of Irish Literature (Lu Xun 1929) This section provides my English translation of the Chinese-language article by Lu Xun, “Ai’erlan Wenxue zhi Huigu 愛爾蘭文學之回顧 (Review of Irish literature)”, Benliu 奔流 (Torrent) 2, no. 2 (1929): 163–176. This translation forms the basis for Chapter 3 of this book.

APPENDIX—TRANSLATIONS OF ARCHIVAL RESEARCH

愛爾蘭文學之回顧 日本 野口米次郎 作 鲁迅 譯

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Review of Irish Literature Translated from Yonejir¯ o Noguchi’s original Japanese article by Lu Xun

倘是開了的花, 時候一到, 就要凋零的罷。 我 在文學上, 也看見這傷心的自然法則。二十幾 年前開始在英詩界的太空, 大大地橫畫了彩 虹的所謂愛爾蘭文學運動, 現在也消泯無迹 了。 昨年 (譯者案: 1923) Yeats得了諾貝爾獎 金, 但這事, 在我的耳朵裏, 卻響作吊唁他們 一派的文學運動的挽歌。 A.E. (George Russell) 和Yeats一同, 被推舉為愛爾蘭自由 國的最高顧問的事, 說起來, 也不過是一座 墓碑。他們的文學底事業, 是天命盡矣; 然而 他們的工作, 則一定將和法蘭西的象征運動 一同, 在世界文學史上占有永遠的篇幅。我現 在就要來尋究其遺蹤。時節是萬籁無聲的冬季 。 我的書齋裏的火是冷冷的。挂在書齋裏 的Yeats的肖像也岑寂。遙想于他, 轉多傷心之 感了

Every flower withers after blossoming for a time. I have witnessed this sad natural law in literature. The Irish Literature Movement, which started two decades ago and left a bright rainbow in English poetry, has all but disappeared now. Last year (translator notes: 1923), Yeats won the Nobel Prize, but this sounded to me like an elegy for their literature movement. A.E. (George Russell) and Yeats together were elected as the highest advisors for the Irish Free State, actually this was no more than a tombstone. Their literary career was their destiny; however, their work will certainly occupy an important position in world literary history forever and will be named alongside the French Symbolism Movement. I will now seek its trace remains. It is the season of winter when silence reigns supreme. The fire in my study has gone cold. The portrait of Yeats hanging in my study is also silent. Reminiscing about him turns me to feeling even sadder 我不能將愛爾蘭和印度分開了來設想。那都 I cannot imagine Ireland and India 是受著英國的鐵錘底的統治, 在那下面不能 separately. Both countries are under the 動彈的國度。他們兩國民, 是所謂亡國之民, hammer of British rule and cannot move 只好成為極端的樂天家, 或則悲觀論者。就愛 from under this. Both sets of citizens lost 爾蘭文學來看, A.E.代表前者, Yeats是屬于 national independence, and had to 後者的。 我在這裏, 只要文學底地來講一講愛 become extreme optimists, or pessimistic 爾蘭, 印度的事情, 則以俟異日 critics. As far as Irish literature is concerned, A.E. George Russell represents the former and Yeats belongs to the latter. As I am here, we only need the literary basis to discuss Ireland. But as for India, I will discuss that another day (continued)

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(continued) 愛爾蘭文學之回顧 日本 野口米次郎 作 鲁迅 譯

Review of Irish Literature Translated from Yonejir¯ o Noguchi’s original Japanese article by Lu Xun

讀者首先必須知道在愛爾蘭人, 是沒有國語, 沒有歷史, 加以沒有國家這一個根本底事實, 還必須知道愛爾蘭的青年 (二十幾年前的青 年, 在現在, 也是入了斑白的老境了) ……他 們是抱著三個的決心, 文學底地覺醒了的。三 個的決心云者, 是什麽呢?第一, 是沒有國語 的他們, 就從近便的英文, 來造出適于自己 的目的的表現的樣式。第二, 是回到過去的詩 歌去, 讓精神底王國之存在。 第三, 是他們在 從新發現了的文學底遺産上, 放下自己的新 文學的根柢去。這些三個的決心, 精神底地, 是極其悲壯的。于是這文學運動, 便負著如火 的熱烈的愛國心的背景, 而取了驚人地美麗 的攻擊的態度了

Readers must first know Irish people had no national language, no history, and the basic fact they had no country, they also must know young Irish people, (the youth of more than twenty years ago, are now also entering grizzled old age) …They adopted three resolutions, to awaken a literary base. What were these three resolutions? The first was, as they did not have their own national language, they will use English from convenience, to create their own suitable language for their own purposes of expressing their own style/form. The second was to return to the poetry of the past and allow a spiritual kingdom to exist. Thirdly, they put down the roots of their new literature on their newly discovered literary heritage. These three resolutions, and the spiritual base, were extremely solemn and stirring. Consequently, this literary movement, with a background of fiery ardent patriotism, adopted an astonishingly beautiful attitude of attack (continued)

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Review of Irish Literature Translated from Yonejir¯ o Noguchi’s original Japanese article by Lu Xun

所謂愛爾蘭文學運動者, 是襲擊的文學。在國 內, 是用了文學底新教之力, 以破壞傳統底 地主宰著國民之心的正教派底文化, 在國外, 是使人認知愛爾蘭之存在的愛國底行為。 世 間的輕率的人, 每將這愛爾蘭文學運動和同 時興起的英國的新詩運動相並論, 但這二者, 出發之點是兩樣的。 決不是可以混同的事。 除 了都是出現于同時代的運動之外, 毫無什麽 關系。英國的新詩運動, 是覺醒于新的詩的音 律, 以自覺之力, 發現了前人未發現的詩境, 而要從限制自己有時且腐化自己的維多利亞 女皇朝文學的惡影響, 救出自己來。一言以蔽 之, 則英國的新詩運動, 主點是在對于凡俗 主義的自己的防禦。 即使這運動 (倘若可以稱 為運動) 也有攻擊的矛頭之所向, 那也不過 是為“自己防禦”而發的。將這和愛爾蘭文學 運動相比較, 是那因之而起的精神, 全然不同 。 我的朋友而現居印度的使人James Cousins, 這樣地說著, “宗教底地, 稱為基督教新教徒, 文學底地, 則稱為異端者, 也稱為抗議者 的Protestant的工作, 即始于Protest之點。 我 的文學底工作, 也從這裏出發的。 我二十三歲 的時候, 在倫敦的Crystal Palace偶然看見了 冷罵愛爾蘭人的滑稽畫。 我憤怒了, 我于是回 國, 決心于反對英國蘭人之前, 應該向自己 的國人作文學底挑戰。我謝了一篇叫做“你們 應該愛Protestant的神而憎一切加特力教徒” 的文章。 自己是為愛國心所燃燒了, 但這之 前, 卻不得不嫌惡本國人。被認為直接關系于 所謂愛爾蘭文學運動的三十人的幾乎全部, 不妨說, 都是新教徒。而且所以起了這個新運 動的動機, 也不妨說, 三十人大略都一樣。 就 是, 是反愛爾蘭, 是新教徒的少數者的工作”

The so-called Irish Literature Movement is a literature of surprise attacks. Within the country, they use the power of Protestantism in literature, to destroy the traditional orthodox base of culture that dominates the hearts of the people. In foreign countries, it is their patriotic behavior that makes people recognise the existence of Ireland. Rash people of the world always compare and discuss this Irish Literary Movement and the simultaneously emerging New British Poetry movement, but for both, the starting point is different. This is not something that can be confused. Except that both movements appeared at the same time, they are not in the least connected. The British New Poetry movement awakened to the rhythm of the New Poetry, became aware of the power to discover a poetic environment former peoples did not and saved oneself from the restrictions to the self and the sometimes corrupting evil influence of Victorian literature. To sum up in a word, the main point of the New British Poetry movement, was its own defence against vulgarism. Even if this movement, (even supposing it can be called a movement), also has a point of attack, it is also only for the sake of self-defense. Comparing this with the Irish Literary Movement, and the spirit that arises from it, is entirely different. My friend who now resides in India, James Cousins, puts it this way—“On religious grounds, those called new Christian disciples Protestants are the literary base, known as heretics, and protest is also known as the (continued)

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(continued) 愛爾蘭文學之回顧 日本 野口米次郎 作 鲁迅 譯

Review of Irish Literature Translated from Yonejir¯ o Noguchi’s original Japanese article by Lu Xun Protestant’s work, beginning at the start with a point of protest”. My literary work also started from here. When I was twenty-three, in London’s Crystal Palace I by chance saw coldly mocking cartoons of the Irish. I was furious and returned to my home country determined that before opposing British people, I should challenge the literary culture of my own fellow countrymen. I was grateful for an article called “You should love the Protestant God and hate all other especially strong believers”. I was burning with a patriotic heart, but before that, I had to detest the native people. Of all the thirty people believed to be directly connected to the so-called Irish Literary Movement, it may well be said they are almost all Protestants. Furthermore, because of the motivation that gave rise to this new movement, it might as well be said, the thirty people are briefly the same. That is, that it is against Ireland, and is the work of a few Protestants” (continued)

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(continued) 愛爾蘭文學之回顧 日本 野口米次郎 作 鲁迅 譯

Review of Irish Literature Translated from Yonejir¯ o Noguchi’s original Japanese article by Lu Xun

數年以前, 在日本, “歸萬葉去”[1]這句話, 被聽取為有著意義的宣言。究竟有多少歌人, 能夠在古代的詩歌精神中, 發現了真實的靈 感呢?歸于古代的事, 不但在日本人為必要, 無論那一國的新文學, 都必須知道古代的人 民的文化和天才, 和近代的時代精神有怎樣 的關系, 而從這處所來培養真生命的。愛爾蘭 的青年詩人, 將文學的出發點放在這裏, 正 是聰明的事。英國的新詩運動, 也以自然的行 為, 而是認了這一點的時候, 英國的詩壇和 愛爾蘭的文學界便有了密接的關系了。Yeats 之稱贊Blake, Francis Thomson之于Shelley 發現了新意義, 都是出于自然的事, 而在英 國詩壇, 也如上述的Blake和Shelley一樣, 同 時研究起Vaughan和Herbert來。所以, 以出發 的精神而論, 英格蘭愛爾蘭兩國的新文學, 是不同的; 但也該注意之點, 是漸漸攜手, 同 來主張英語詩的複活底生命了。然而無論到 那裏, 愛爾蘭人綜合英格蘭人是先天底地不 同的魂的所有者。他們不像英國人那樣, 要以 文學來救人類的靈魂。英國的使人, 即使怎樣 地取了無關于宗教的態度, 也總有被拘之處。 不能像愛爾蘭的青年詩人一般, 天真地, 宿 命底地, 以美為宗教。也不能將美和愛國心相 聯系, 而來歌吟。 英國人一到詩詠愛國心的時 候, 他們總是不自然的。理論底的。過去不遠, 英國的Tennyson, 也曾和宗教底疑惑爭鬥了 。 Browning雖然超絕了宗教底疑惑, 卻被拘 于自己的信仰。和他們相反, 愛爾蘭的文學 者, 是不疑宗教, 至于令人以為是無宗教似的 。 簡短地說, 是他們漠不關心于宗教。更真實 地說, 是他們雖然是宗教底, 而不為此所囚 的不可思議的人民。 委實不疑宗教, 所以他們 是自然的。漠不關心于宗教, 所以他們是天真 的。 雖然是宗教底而決不為此所囚, 所以他們 是宿命底的。

Several years ago, in Japan, the slogan “Everything roots from Man’y¯ osh¯ u ” was heard as a meaningful declaration. Actually, how many people can find real inspiration in the spirit of ancient poetry? Things belonging to ancient times are thought of as necessary not only in Japan, but regardless of the new culture of that country, all need to know the culture and talents of ancient people and how this connects to the spirit of modern times, and from this place develop true life. It truly was an intelligent thing for the young poets of Ireland to locate the starting point of literature here. The British New Poetry movement also used natural behaviour, but once this point was recognised, the British poetry circles and the Irish Literary world then had a close connection. Yeats praised Blake, and Francis Thomson discovered new meanings in Shelley, it all arose from nature, and in British poetry circles, just like aforementioned Blake and Shelley, Vaughan and Herbert were also studied at the same time. Therefore, in discussing the spirit of departure, the new literature in the two countries England and Ireland is different, but it should also be noted, they gradually joined hands to advocate the revival of English poetry. Even so, regardless of where they go, the Irish are integrated as a group together and the English people inherently all have separate souls or are individuals. They are not like the English in that way, they do not need literature to come to save humankind’s soul. For English poets/ historians, even if they took a (continued)

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[1] 萬葉集二十卷, 是日本古代詩歌代表作 的選集, 內含長短歌四千余首, 作者五 百余人。 ——譯者

Review of Irish Literature Translated from Yonejir¯ o Noguchi’s original Japanese article by Lu Xun non-religious attitude, it was always constrained. They are unable to be like the young Irish poets, innocent, fatalistic, who take beauty as their religion. Nor can we link beauty with patriotism and come recite a poem. When the English arrive to chant patriotic poetry, they are always unnatural, theoretically. Not far off in the past, England’s Tennyson also once struggled with religious doubts. Although Browning transcended religious doubts, yet he was constrained by his own beliefs. In contrast to them, Irish literary scholars do not doubt religion, as if to cause people to misunderstand them as non-religious. To state it succinctly, they are indifferent to religion. To put it more truthfully, although they are religious, they are not a people imprisoned by the unbelievable. As there really is no doubt about religion, therefore, they are natural. Indifferent to religion, therefore they are innocent. Although they are basically religious, they are not imprisoned by it, and therefore, they are fatalistic Footnote [1] The twenty volume Man’y¯ osh¯ u collection is an anthology of representative works of ancient Japanese poetry, containing over four thousand short and long poems and more than five hundred authors -Translator (continued)

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Review of Irish Literature Translated from Yonejir¯ o Noguchi’s original Japanese article by Lu Xun

我聽到過這樣的事情, 在愛爾蘭的山中, 會 有失少孩子的事, 當此之際, 警官便先拾枯 枝, 點起火來, 做成篝火, 于是口誦警辭, 而 後從事于搜索失掉的孩子。從這一個瑣話來 推想, 也就可以明白愛爾蘭人是怎樣地迷信 底了。然而又從這迷信無害于他們的信仰之 點來一想, 即又知道愛爾蘭人的心理狀態, 是特別的, 就是矛盾。這矛盾, 總緊盯著無論 怎樣的愛爾蘭人。從Bernard Shaw起, 到在美 國鄉下做使女的無名的姑娘止, 都帶著矛盾 的性質。 從信仰上的矛盾而論, 我想, 日本人 是也不下于愛爾蘭人的。 近代的日本人, 恰如 近代的愛爾蘭人一樣, 是無宗教的罷, 但日 本人的大多數, 又如愛爾蘭人的大多數一樣, 是宗教底。日本人大多數的宗教底信仰, 並不 為各種迷信所削弱, 換了話來說, 就是信仰 迷信, 而皆有力的。更進一步說, 也就是日本 人的個性, 是無論怎樣的宗教底信仰或迷信, 均不能加以傷害的不可思議的人民。 假使這 一點可以說偉大, 那就應該說, 愛爾蘭人也 如日本人一般的偉大。從雖是別國的文學, 而 在日本, 愛爾蘭文學的被理解卻很易, 共鳴 者也很多這地方看來, 豈不是就因為日本人 和愛爾蘭人, 性質上有什麽相通之處之所致 麽?至少, 有著矛盾的國民性這一點, 他們兩 國民是相類似的。倘以文學底地, 日本不及愛 爾蘭, 那就只在日本沒有Shaw和Yeats這一點 上。 這是遺憾的, 但我有一位遺憾者, 還有一 件事。這非他……是日本人的心理狀態, 不如 愛爾蘭人的深。愛爾蘭人, 至少, 啊愛爾蘭的 青年文學者, 他們的生命, 是不僅受五官所 主宰的

I have heard of such things, in the mountains of Ireland, that a few children go missing, at that time, the police officers first collect withered branches, light a fire and make a bonfire, recite a warning and then engage in searching for the lost children. From this type of trivial supposition we can carefully consider, and can also understand how the Irish people are superstitious. Even though this superstition is harmless to their beliefs, this point brings one to think moreover, and know the psychological condition of the Irish people, is special and contradictory. This contradiction is always closely held aloft, regardless of what type of Irish person. From George Bernard Shaw, down to the anonymous girl who works as a maid in the American countryside, all carry a contradictory nature. In terms of discussing contradictions in beliefs, I think, the Japanese are no less than the Irish. Modern Japanese people, just like modern Irish people, are non-religious, but the majority of Japanese people, just like the majority of Irish people, are religious. The religious beliefs of most Japanese people are not at all weakened by different kinds of superstitions, in other words, superstitious beliefs are all powerful. Progressing further, the individual character of the Japanese people, as unbelieving citizens, cannot be harmed by no matter what kind of religious belief or superstition. If this point can be said to be great, then it should be said Irish people are as great as the Japanese people. Although it is (continued)

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他們住在五官以上的大的精神底世界中, 還 覺醒于大的生命裏。 概念底地說, 則他們是認 識了永遠性的存在, 他們的眼, 無論何時, 何 地, 都能將外部和內部, 合一起來, 而看見內 面底精神, 從外面底物質産生出來的那秘密。 他們的詩歌, 可以說, 是出于永遠性的認識的 。 這愛爾蘭人的特質, 從古代以來, 就顯現在 他們的哲學上, 詩歌上。這特質, 外面底地, 是廣的, 但內面底地, 卻含蓄, 因而是夢想底 地。 外面底地, 是平面底, 而在內面底地, 卻 有著立體底的深

Review of Irish Literature Translated from Yonejir¯ o Noguchi’s original Japanese article by Lu Xun literature from another country, in Japan, Irish literature is yet very easy to understand, and many places of resonance can be seen, is this not because the Irish and Japanese people share so many similarities in nature? At the very least, both nationalities are similar, in their contradictory national characters. Supposing if, on literary grounds Japan is inferior to Ireland, that is only because on this point Japan does not possess a Shaw or a Yeats. This is regrettable, but I have a regret about still one more thing. This is not about him…but that the psychological condition of the Japanese people, is not as deep as that of the Irish people. Irish people, at least, the young Irish writers, their lives are not merely dominated by the five senses They live in a big spiritual world above the five senses and awaken to a greater life. Speaking conceptually, they know the nature of eternal existence, their eyes, no matter when or where, can bring together the exterior and the interior, and they can see the inner spirit, the secret produced from outside materiality. It can be said their poetry stems from the nature of eternal knowledge. The traits of the Irish people, since ancient times, appear in their philosophy and their poetry. These traits, on the exterior, are broad, but on the interior base are veiled, consequently they are based on dreams. The exterior is flat at the base, while the interior has deep depth (continued)

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Review of Irish Literature Translated from Yonejir¯ o Noguchi’s original Japanese article by Lu Xun

在愛爾蘭, 有兩種的詩人。其一, 是外面底地 運用愛國心以作詩, 而主張國民主義。和這相 反, 別的詩人, 則想如Yeats的仙女模樣, 披輕 紗的衣裳, 以柔足在雲間輕行。前者主張地上 的樂國, 必須是愛爾蘭, 而後者則想在那理 想境中發現天國。他們兩人, 是如此不同的, 然而在愛爾蘭人, 卻將他們兩面都看得很自 然, 毫不以為奇怪。先前已經說過, 是矛盾的 人們, 所以在別國人是不可能的事物, 在他 們, 是可能的。也可以說, 他們的特質, 是在 使矛盾不僅以矛盾終。他們將矛盾和矛盾結 合, 使成自然……這是他們的有趣之處。我自 己是看重這特質, 個人底地, 也將他們作為 朋友的。 而且非個人底地, 是對于愛爾蘭有非 常的興味的。其實, 在他們, 固然有無責任的 不可靠的處所, 但除他們之外, 卻再也尋不 出那麽愉快的人們了

In Ireland, there are two types of poets. The first type uses exterior patriotism to make poetry, and to advocate nationalism. And contrary to this, other poets want the appearance as if of Yeats’s fairies, draping light gauze clothing and walking with soft feet lightly among the clouds. The former advocate an earthly paradise, that must be in Ireland, while the latter think they will discover a heavenly kingdom in that ideal environment. Both types of people are so different, however, in Irish people one can yet see both sides very naturally, not at all mistaking this as strange. As I already said before, they are a contradictory people, therefore what is impossible for people in other countries, is possible, for them. It can also be said their traits, make contradictions and do not only end in contradiction. They combine contradictions, causing them to become natural…this is what makes them interesting. I personally value this trait, individually, and also take them as friends. Furthermore, the basis of being impersonal, is of great interest regarding Ireland. In fact, among them, admittedly you find irresponsible places, that are not reliable, but apart from that, yet I can never find such happy people (continued)

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Review of Irish Literature Translated from Yonejir¯ o Noguchi’s original Japanese article by Lu Xun

就從上文所敘的國民性, 産生了所謂的愛爾 蘭文學。 歷史底地來一想, 愛爾蘭的文化, 是 經數世紀, 和詩的精神相聯系的。 恰如日本古 代的萬葉人, 是詩歌的人一樣, 愛爾蘭人也 是詩的人。據愛爾蘭人所記的話, 則王是詩 人, 戴著歌的王冠; 法律是詩人所作, 歷史也 是詩人所寫的。千年以前, 在愛爾蘭要做國民 軍之一人, 相傳倘不是約有詩集十二本的姓 名, 便不能做。英國人還沒有知道詩的平仄是 怎樣的東西的時候, 愛爾蘭人卻已有二百種 以上的詩形了。在英國, 百年以前, Wordsworth才發現了自然之為何物, 而愛爾 蘭人則已發現之于千年以前。到十九世紀, 英 國乃強迫他們, 令用英語為一般國語, 但他 們的真精神, 卻回到他們的古代精神去, 成 了他們的愛國熱猛烈地燃燒起來的結果了

Thus, from the national character recounted above, the so-called Irish literature emerged. From a historical basis, Irish culture has been linked to the spirit of poetry for several centuries. Just like the Man Yo people in ancient Japan were poets, the Irish people are also poets. According to the ancient Irish accounts, the standard was that the king was a poet, wearing a poetic crown, the law was the work of poets, and history was also written by poets. Thousands of years ago in Ireland, if someone wanted to be a member of the national military, according to legend if you did not have the poetry collections of the twelve famous books, you could not at all do so. When the British still did not know what the tones in classic poetry were, the Irish people yet had more than two hundred different forms of poetry. In Britain, Wordsworth was only able to discover the meaning of nature one hundred years ago, although the Irish had discovered this one thousand years earlier. In the nineteenth-century, the English forced them to use the English language as the common national language, but their true spirit still returned back to their ancient spirit and became the result of their patriotic fervour rising up and burning fiercely (continued)

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Review of Irish Literature Translated from Yonejir¯ o Noguchi’s original Japanese article by Lu Xun

Cousins說, “所謂文學運動者, 並非複活運動 。 在愛爾蘭, 毫無使他複活的東西。所以叫做 複活運動的文學, 是獃話。英國受了法國革命 的影響, 而入工業時代, 自此又作殖民地擴 張時代, 英國文學也從而非常膨脹了, 但英 詩的真精神, 卻已經失掉。收拾起英國所失的 詩歌的生命, 而發現了自己的, 是愛爾蘭文 學者。”這樣一聽, 稱愛爾蘭文學運動為複活 運動, 誠然也不得其當的, 但也有種種含有 興味的諸形相, 作為文學的國體底表現。當英 國的盎格魯·諾爾曼文化侵入愛爾蘭, 將破壞 其向來的文化的初期時代, 愛爾蘭的詩人即 也曾大作了愛爾蘭之詩, 詠歡了自由。在那時 代, 是畏憚公表自己的真名姓, 都用匿名, 否 則是雅號的。這文學底習慣, 經久繼續, 給近 代詩人們以一種神秘之感。到十九世紀, 而愛 爾蘭人的反英政治運動, 成為議會的爭鬥, 極其顯露了。在文學上, 他們也做了Ballad和 所謂Song, 以用于政治底地。這理智底傾向, 便損傷了他們的純的古代精神, 他們的散文 底的行為, 至于危及他們的崇高的幻想了, 但在這樣愚昧無趣味的時代, 提文學而起的 偉大的愛爾蘭人, 是Ferguson。 那人, 是在今 日之所謂文學運動以前, 覺醒于文學運動的 最初的詩人。要歷史底地, 來論今日的文學運 動, 大概是總得以這人開始的罷

Cousins says: “The so-called literary movement, was really not a revival movement. In Ireland, there is nothing that would cause a revival of things. Therefore, calling this a revival movement of culture is foolish talk. Britain was influenced by the French Revolution, and entered the Industrial Age, and since then has been in an era of colonial expansion, British literature thus also expanded greatly, but the true spirit of English poetry was already lost. It was Irish writers who picked up the life of poetry that was lost in Britain and discovered themselves”. Listening to this, calling the Irish literature movement a revival movement, is really not appropriate, but this also possesses various forms all of interest, that serve as the expression of national literature. When the British Anglo-Norman culture invaded Ireland and destroyed the culture of earlier eras up to then, the Irish poets once more broke out and wrote Irish poetry that happily chanted freedom. During that era, due to fear of publicly using one’s own true name, they all used anonymous names, or else a pseudonym. This literary habit continued for a long time and gave modern poets a type of feeling of mystery. By the nineteenth-century, the Irish anti-British political movement, became a parliamentary struggle, and extremely apparent. In literature, they also used ballads and so-called songs for political grounds. This intellectual tendency caused damage to their pure ancient spirit, and their dealings with prose, endangered their lofty illusions, but in this ignorant and tasteless age, the great Irish person who raised literature up was Ferguson. That man was the initial poet who awakened the literature movement, before the so-called literature movement of today. If one wants a historical basis, to come and discuss today’s literature movement, it probably generally started with this person (continued)

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Review of Irish Literature Translated from Yonejir¯ o Noguchi’s original Japanese article by Lu Xun

然而在新的意義上, 開愛爾蘭文學, 而且使 之長成者, 非他。 就是Yeats。這是不能不說, 以 他于千八百八十九年所出的“遊辛的漂泊”一 書, 開了新運動之幕的。我雖然讀作“遊辛”, 但愛爾蘭人也許有另外的讀法。因為近便沒 有可以質問的愛爾蘭人, 姑且作為“遊辛的漂 泊”罷。 [1]在這書裏, 詩人Yeats則于古的愛爾 蘭傳說中, 加進了新的個性去。 不但聽見Yeats 一人的聲音, 從這書, 也可以聽見愛爾蘭人 這人種的聲音。這聲音, 是從內面底地有著深 的根柢的愛爾蘭人的心裏所沁出來的。

However, in a new sense, Irish literature was begun, and matured, not by him. It was Yeats who did so. This cannot be left unsaid, with his book published in 1889 “The Wanderings of Oisín” he raised the curtain on a new movement. Although I pronounce it Usheen/You Xin, Irish people probably have another way of reading it. Because there are no Irish people nearby to question, I will tentatively make it “The Wanderings of Oisín”. (1) In this book, the poet Yeats adds new personality into the ancient Irish legends. Not only can you hear the voice of Yeats alone from this book, you also can hear the voice of the Irish people. This voice seeps out from the interior, based on the deep roots of the Irish people’s hearts [1] Yeats的敘事詩, 英文名“The Footnote [1]: The English name of Wanderings of Usheen(or Oisin)”, 也 Yeats’s narrative poem, “The Wanderings 有讀作“烏辛”的, 但也未必定確。——譯 of Usheen (or Oisin)”, is also 者 pronounced Wu Xin, but this is not necessarily authentic – Translator (continued)

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Review of Irish Literature Translated from Yonejir¯ o Noguchi’s original Japanese article by Lu Xun

Yeats是世所希有的幻想家。 作為幻想家的他, 是建造了美的殿堂, 而在這灰色的空氣中, 靜靜地執行著美麗的詩的儀式的司儀者。 內 面的神秘世界, 為他半啓了那門。 而他就從那 半啓的門, 凝眺了橫在遠方的廣而深的靈的 世界。他負著使命, 那就是暗示美的使命。 然 而他有著太多的美的言語, 這在他, 是至于 成為犯罪的藝術家。 他從大地和空中和水中 所造成的美的夢, 永遠放著白色的光輝, 但 這就如嵌彩玻璃 (staind glass) 一般, 缺少現 實味。美雖是美, 而是現于夢中的美, 好像是 居于我們和內面底精神底中間。但我們並不 覺得為這所妨礙。他所寫的美的詩, 是有可敬 的色彩和構圖的, 但言其實, 卻有Yeats自己, 為此所賣的傾向。他的作品中, 有許多戲劇, 然而他終于不是劇作家。 他不過是將自己扮 作戲劇的獨白者(monologist)

Yeats is a rare visionary of this world. As a visionary, he constructed palaces of beauty, and in this obscure grey atmosphere, he quietly performed the rites of beautiful poetry as master of ceremonies. The mysterious inner world, half opened that door for him. And from that half-opened door, he concentrated and gazed across into the distance, at the wide and deeply spiritual world. He bore a mission, and that mission suggested beauty. However, he has far too many beautiful words, and this becomes an offense or crime for him as an artist. He created beautiful dreams from the earth, the air, and the water, forever radiating white brilliance, but this is like embedded colourful glass (stained glass), lacking a sense of reality. Although beauty is beautiful, yet it is the beauty that appears in a dream and occupies a position between us and the inner spirit. But we do not feel hampered by this. The beautiful poems he wrote, are respectable in colour and composition, but to speak truthfully, Yeats himself inclines to sell out this. Among his works, there are many plays, however in the end he is not a playwright. He is only a monologist who himself pretends to play the part in a drama (continued)

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(continued) 愛爾蘭文學之回顧 日本 野口米次郎 作 鲁迅 譯

Review of Irish Literature Translated from Yonejir¯ o Noguchi’s original Japanese article by Lu Xun

我現在從Yeats到A.E.去, 而看見全然不同的 世界。在這裏, 並無在Yeats的世界裏所聽到那 樣的音樂。Cousins曾比A.E.于日本房屋的紙 扉。 這意思, 是說, 一開扉, 詩的光線便從左 右躍然並入了。A.E.和Yeats相反, 是現實家。 不, 是從成為現實的詳細, 來造那稱為理想 的虛僞的世界的靈的詩人。作為表現的文學 者, 則可以說, 外面底地, 雖以節約為主, 而 內面底地, 確是言語的浪費者。 他的詩, 雖是 文學底, 也決非由理論而來, 乃是體驗的告 白, 但他的哲學, 卻因為無視靈境, 所以就如 前所說, 成為極端的樂天家了。這文學底悲 劇, 也許並不在Yeats之成為夢想家或悲觀論 者的悲劇以上, 但與A.E.之為大詩人, 卻有 著缺少什麽之感。使愛爾蘭人說起來, 他是現 存的最大的詩人, 有一而無二的, 但我們于 他, 卻有對于泰戈爾的同樣的不滿。他雖然尊 重現實, 而在所寫出了的作品上, 卻加以否定 。 那邊的Yeats, 則以免歌詠美的夢, 而又不能 忘卻現實, 因而那夢, 也不過是橫在晝夜之 間的黃昏了。然而我可以毫不躊躇地說, 我從 他們倆, 是受了大大的感銘的。我敬畏著他們

I now go from Yeats to A. E. [George Russell] and see a completely different world. Here, one is definitely not in Yeats’s world hearing that type of music. Cousins in the past compared A. E. to the paper doors in Japanese houses. This means to say, open the door, and the poetic ray of light then simultaneously enters from left to right. A. E. contrary to Yeats, is a realist. No, it is the mysterious divine poet creates from the details that become reality, that called the ideal of the hypocritical world. As a writer of expression, it can be said, outwardly, although economical in the main, inwardly it truly is a waste of words. His poetry, although it is based on literature, by no means comes from theory, and is a public notice of learning from experience, but his philosophy, because it disregards the spiritual realm, as I said before, becomes extremely optimistic. This literary tragedy may not be above the tragedy of Yeats’s becoming a dreamer or a pessimistic critic, but with A. E. although he is a great poet, yet his works lack certain feeling. This causes Irish people to say, he is the greatest poet in existence, that he is unique, but we have similar dissatisfaction with him that we have regarding Tagore. Although he respects reality, he denies it in the literary works he has written. That side of Yeats avoids singing eternally beautiful dreams, but cannot forget reality, consequently that dream, also is only a twilight between day and night. However, I can say without hesitation, I am grateful to them both. I revere them (continued)

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(continued) 愛爾蘭文學之回顧 日本 野口米次郎 作 鲁迅 譯

Review of Irish Literature Translated from Yonejir¯ o Noguchi’s original Japanese article by Lu Xun

以A.E.和Yeats為中心, 又由他們的有力的獎 勵和鼓舞, 而有許多青年文學者出現, 于是 舉起愛爾蘭文學運動的旗子來了。可以將這 些人們, 約略地大別為A.E.派和Yeats派, 也 正是自然的事罷。前者趨向外面而凝眺內心, 後者則歌愛國而說永遠。 我的朋友Cousins, 就年齡而言, 也應該論在A.E.和Yeats之後的, 他戟多類似A.E.之處

With A. E. and Yeats at the centre, and due to their powerful encouragement and inspiration, several young literary writers appeared, hence the banner of the Irish Literature Movement was raised aloft. It is also a natural thing, that we can approximately classify these people into the A. E. faction, and the Yeats faction. The former tend to focus on the exterior and gaze into the inner heart, while the latter sing of patriotism and speak of forever. My friend Cousins, as far as age is concerned, should also be discussed after A. E. and Yeats. He has more similarities to A. E (continued)

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(continued) 愛爾蘭文學之回顧 日本 野口米次郎 作 鲁迅 譯

Review of Irish Literature Translated from Yonejir¯ o Noguchi’s original Japanese article by Lu Xun

Cousins是數年以前, 我曾招致他到日本, 在 慶應義塾大學講過詩, 那姓名, 在日本是並 非不識的了。因為他寄寓日本, 不過七八個 月, 所以未能文學底地, 造成他和日本的關系 。 但我想, 個人底地記得他的日本人, 大約總 有多少罷。Douglas Hyde評他為“宿在北方之 體裏的南方之魂”, 怕未必有更恰當的評語了 。 Cousins的“北方之體”主張起自己來, 他便 成為理想家, 而他的“南方之魂”一活動, 他 便成為抒情詩人了。 以Yeats為中心的一派, 從 最初即以“多疑之眼”睨視著他的, 這不久成 為事實, 他現居印度, 和Anne Besant夫人一 同, 成為神智論 (Theosophy) 的詩人而活動 著。 他久和最初的朋友離開了。他的理論底感 會, 使他不成為單是言辭的畫家。 對于詩的形 式的他的尊重, 也是使他離開所謂閃而底 (Celtic) 的感情的原因。 這一點, 就是使他和 印度人相結, 而且在印度大高聲價的理由罷

A few years ago, I recruited Cousins to come to Japan, to teach poetry at Keio University, that name is not unknown in Japan. Because he resided temporarily in Japan, for only seven or eight months, therefore he was unable to establish a literary basis for creating a connection between him and Japan. But I think, there will probably always be a number of individual Japanese people who personally remember him. Douglas Hyde commented he was “a Southern soul living in a Northern body”, I am afraid there may not be a more appropriate judgement. Cousins’ “Northern body” advocated for himself to rise up, he then became an idealist, and the activities of his “Southern soul” meant he then became a lyrical poet. The group centred on Yeats, initially approached and looked askance at him regarding him with a “distrustful eye”, before long this became a fact, he now lives in India, and together with madame Annie Besant, became a Theosophist poet and activist. His earliest long-time friends left. The theoretical basis of his feelings causes him not to become a mere painter of words. His respect for poetic form, was also the reason that caused his departure from the so-called Celtic sensibilities. This point is precisely what caused him to connect with Indian people, and moreover, is the reason why they speak loudly of his value in India (continued)

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(continued) 愛爾蘭文學之回顧 日本 野口米次郎 作 鲁迅 譯

Review of Irish Literature Translated from Yonejir¯ o Noguchi’s original Japanese article by Lu Xun

和Cousins同顯于文壇的青年, 有O’Sullivan 和James Stephens。O’Sullivan在古典底愛爾 蘭的傳統中, 發現了靈示, Stephens則將神奇 的銳氣, 注入于革命底文學精神中。這以後, 作為後輩的詩人, 則有Padraic Colum 和Joseph Kampbell。又有叫作E.Young的詩 人。 但我的這文, 是並不以批評他們的作品為 目的的。 我所作為目的者, 只要論了A.E. 和Yeats就很夠。 倘若這文能夠說了在文學上 的愛爾蘭的特質, 那麽, 我就算是大獲酬報, 不勝欣喜了. -譯自“愛蘭情調”

The young people who appeared together in literary circles with Cousins, were O’Sullivan, and James Stephens. O’Sullivan discovered spiritual inspiration in ancient classical Irish tradition, and Stephens took mystical spirit and infused this into the revolutionary literary spirit. After this, Padraic Colum and Joseph Campbell were poets of the younger generation. There is also a poet called E. Young. But the purpose of my article was not at all intended to criticise their work. My aim has only been to discuss A. E. and Yeats, and that is enough. If this article can speak of the special qualities of Irish literature, I then am granted a great reward, and am overwhelmed with joy. Translated from “Irish sentiment”

Glossary

Abbey Riots riots caused by Irish audiences at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in protest at Synge’s play The Playboy of the Western World in 1907. Further riots occurred in reaction to Seán O’Casey’s play The Plough and The Stars in 1926, which led Yeats to declare Irish audiences had “disgraced themselves again”. Act of Union in 1800 united the parliaments of Britain and Ireland. This was a reaction to the 1798 rebellion by the United Irishmen, who sought to break the connection with England, and end the ascendancy of the Anglo-Irish Protestant minority. The original vote for the Union was defeated by 109 to 104, but the British induced the predominantly Protestant Irish House of Commons to vote again and bribed them with offers of peerages. AE Irish nationalist and mystical writer George Russell, (1867–1935) who promoted the use of co-operatives in Ireland and used the pseudonym Æ to signify man’s lifelong quest. Anglo-Irish the social class of English Protestants in Ireland. The Protestant Ascendancy refers to the political, economic, and social domination of Ireland by a minority of Protestant landowners, from the seventeenth to the twentieth-century. Anti-Rightist campaign (1957–1959) sought to purge alleged “rightists” who secretly favoured capitalism, within the Chinese Communist

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. O’Malley-Sutton, The Chinese May Fourth Generation and the Irish Literary Revival: Writers and Fighters, Asia-Pacific and Literature in English, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5269-4

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Party. This was a reaction against the Hundred Flowers campaign which encouraged criticism of the Chinese government. Auxiliaries a British paramilitary unit of the Royal Irish Constabulary during the Irish War of Independence. The Auxiliaries were the officer class, returned from WWI, unlike the Black and Tans, who were soldiers who had fought in the WWI trenches. Baihuawen 白話文 written vernacular Chinese. Beiyang Government government of the Republic of China based in Beijing between 1912 and 1928. The name derives from the Beiyang Army, which dominated its politics with the rise of Yuan Shikai, a general of the Qing dynasty. After Yuan’s death the army fractured into competing factions. Black and Tans describes the uniforms of British forces including constables recruited into the Royal Irish Constabulary as reinforcements during the Irish War of Independence. The majority were soldiers who had fought in the trenches of WWI. They gained a reputation for police brutality, extra-judicial killings, rape, and for burning Cork city. Boundary Commission, Irish met during 1924–25 to redraw the proposed border between the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland after the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. Southern Irish nationalists expected to receive Northern counties Armagh, Derry, Fermanagh, and Tyrone, with nationalist majority populations, but were disappointed when six Northern counties remained under British rule. Capitalist modernity how much of the modern world was produced by the forces of capitalism. Carson, Edward (1854–1935) an Irish Unionist politician and barrister. Under Carson’s leadership the Irish Unionists lost three-quarters of the island to Irish independence but secured the northern six counties to remain in the Union with Britain. Carson was dismayed about the partition of Ireland and also cross-examined his fellow Trinity alumnus Oscar Wilde, which resulted in jail and ruin for Wilde. Casement , Roger (1864–1916) an Anglo-Irish diplomat for the British Foreign Office, and humanitarian who exposed colonial human rights abuses in Africa and South America. The British hanged Casement for his role in the 1916 Easter Rising. CCP the Chinese Communist Party. Celtic The Celts were a collection of Indo-European peoples defined by their use of the Celtic language and other cultural similarities based in

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western Europe in pre-Roman times. These include the Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, and Breton peoples but not the English. Century of Humiliation (1839–1949) when the weakened Qing dynasty was forced to sign Unequal Treaties that conceded Treaty ports for trade to foreign imperial powers. Chaniye 查尼業 could refer to French writer Andre Chénier, whose works were read by Synge. My thanks to Catherine Wilsdon for her assistance. Coffin ships were used to transport people from Ireland during the Great Famine and were so-named due to the high number of emigrants who died on them. Colonial Capitalism how the twin colonising forces of colonisation and capitalism working together produced the modern world, to a large extent. Colonial gaze how the colonial agenda seeks to legitimise and maintain power by constructing colonial subjects as other, uncivilised, and in need of colonial guidance, while simultaneously depicting the coloniser as civilised. Colonial [or Imperial] modernity how much of the modern world was produced by the forces of colonialism. Colonialism when the country at the centre of empire sends its citizens to live in other countries of the empire, with the aim of strengthening its control of colonised peoples. See imperialism, for difference. Commercial Press a Chinese publishing company based in Shanghai from 1897 that launched many influential journals including Dongfang Zazhi and Xiaoshuo Yuebao. Comparative literature the study of literature without borders, that seeks to study literature beyond national boundaries and focuses on reading foreign texts in their original form. Concessions a group of concessions within late imperial China and during the Republic of China (1911–1949) in Shanghai and other places that were governed and occupied by foreign powers and are associated with colonialism. Cosmopolitanism the concept that all human beings can, or should be, members of a single community. Counter-utopian an alternative approach to seek a utopian or better society. According to Eóin Flannery, colonial expansion seeks to present a utopian narrative about improving society, yet simultaneously

376

GLOSSARY

produces utopian counter-narratives of anticolonial resistance that offer alternative ways to improve society. Cuchulain an Irish mythological hero. Cultural Revolution a sociopolitical movement from 1966–1976 in China, launched by Mao Zedong to supposedly purge capitalist and traditional elements of society, through elimination of old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas. Cumann na mBan an Irish republican women’s paramilitary organisation formed on April 2, 1914 in Dublin that became an auxiliary of the Irish Volunteers . Many women worked as Red Cross nurses, couriers, and some used arms during the 1916 Easter Rising. Dáil Éireann the parliament of Ireland, formed in 1919. Decolonisation in literature is the process of revealing and dismantling colonial power including hidden aspects of institutional and cultural forces that maintain colonial power and remain after political independence. Hence nationalist resistance to such structures is often couched in the terms and vocabularies of the colonial systems they rebel against. Deus ex machina an unexpected power or event that saves a seemingly hopeless situation, especially as a contrived plot device in a play or novel. Dialectical materialism the Marxist theory that political and historical events result from the conflict of social forces and are interpretable as a series of contradictions and their solutions. Druidess a female member of the ancient order of pre-Christian Celtic high-ranking religious leaders or priests who were also legal authorities. Dublin lockout the worker’s strike of 1913, about the right to unionise. The largest industrial action in Irish history, from August 1913 to January 1914. Starving workers eventually had to give in and pledge not to join a union. Easter Rising of 1916 a week-long armed insurrection against British colonial rule in Ireland that took place during Easter week, April 1916. The Easter rebels proclaimed an Irish Republic and public opinion turned in their favour, when British authorities executed sixteen of the Rising leaders. Eight nation alliance a multinational military coalition set up in 1900, that included 45,000 troops from Austria-Hungary, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the United States. The alliance

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claimed to intervene in the Boxer Rebellion to protect their own citizens but stayed to loot and pillage Beijing for over a year, including the historic Summer Palace. Eirinn the romantic Hiberno-English name for Ireland. Essentialism the view that categories of people, or different ethnic groups possess intrinsically different characteristic natures or dispositions. An essentialist viewpoint would hold that men are essentially leaders and women are essentially carers. Eurocentrism a biased worldview centered on western civilisation, that favours the west over non-western civilisations. Exegesis the critical interpretation of literary texts. Fabian Society a British socialist organisation dedicated to the advancement of socialism by gradual reform within democracies, rather than by revolutionary overthrow. Famine, Irish The Great Irish Famine (1845–1849) was the greatest disaster of nineteenth-century western Europe. This was a period of mass starvation, disease and forced emigration in Ireland, which caused Ireland’s population to fall by 25%. The effects of the potato blight were worsened by the colonial economic policies of the British government. Ireland never recovered the same population of nine million, due to continuous emigration during following decades. Fenians an umbrella term for the Fenian Brotherhood and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), fraternal organisations dedicated to the establishment of an independent Irish Republic in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. First United Front the 1924 alliance between the nationalist Guomindang and the Communists to end warlord rule in China. Together they formed the Revolutionary Army and set out on the Northern Expedition in 1926. Both sides aimed to use each other, and Chiang Kaishek purged the Communists in 1927 in the Shanghai Massacre. First wave feminism late nineteenth and early twentieth-century movements that sought the right for women to vote. Second wave feminism in the 1960s and 1970s in the west sought additional social and legal rights for women, including equal pay. Third wave feminism in the 1990s highlighted how class and race affected gender, and argued white middle-class western feminism was not the only type of feminist experience.

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GLOSSARY

Gaelic League an organisation established in 1893 by Eoin MacNeill and others to promote use of the Irish Gaelic language and culture to counter British colonisation. Granuaile Grace O’Malley (1530–1603) female leader of the O’Malley clan in the west of Ireland, who supported insurgence by Irish lords against English rule in Ireland. A famous figure in Irish folklore, when her sons were imprisoned by Sir Richard Bingham in 1593, she sailed up the Thames to parley in Latin with Queen Elizabeth I. Musicians, novelists and playwrights depict O’Malley as a personification of Ireland. Great Leap Forward an economic and social campaign led by the Chinese Communist Party from 1958–1962, that included agrarian reform and backyard steel production to rival the West. The resulting famine caused an estimated 30 million to 55 million deaths, the largest famine numerically, in history, although the Irish famine affected a larger percentage of the population. Guomindang (GMD) 國民黨 [or Kuomintang—KMT] the nationalist party of China. Guoyu 國語 (national language) a standardised version of the Chinese language based on the Northern dialect. Gyres ever-widening spirals, as in giant circular ocean currents. Han Chinese the dominant ethnic group in China. Hermeneutics the field of study of interpretation of literary texts. See exegesis. Hiberno-English a literary language devised by Lady Gregory that utilised the grammar and syntax of the Irish language based on the way English was spoken in Ireland, thereby constructing a hybrid language of postcolonial resistance. Home Rule when the powers of governance are decentralised to the colonised state by a colonial government that still retains colonial control in important areas. Homophones when two or more words have the same pronunciation but different meanings. Humanism the belief that human needs and values are more important than religious beliefs. This arose from the Renaissance turn from medieval belief in the centrality of God to a human-centred approach, as depicted by Michelangelo’s David and the Sistine chapel.

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Hundred Days Reform a failed national, cultural, political, and educational reform movement from June 11 to September 22, 1898 undertaken by Emperor Guangxu in late Qing dynasty China. It failed due to powerful conservative opponents led by Empress Dowager Cixi, his aunt. Hundred Flowers campaign 百花齐放 took place in 1956 in China when the Communist Party encouraged citizens to openly express their opinions of the communist regime. Named after Mao Zedong’s call to let “a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend”, the resultant deluge of criticism led to the Anti-Rightist campaign. Hyde, Douglas an Irish academic Irish-language scholar, a leading figure in the Gaelic Revival and the first President of Ireland from 1938 to 1945. Iconoclast a person who attacks or criticises cherished beliefs or institutions. Imperial metropole the homeland or central territory of a colonial empire. For example, the metropole of the British Empire was Britain. Imperial modernity see Colonial modernity. Imperialism when one country extends its rule over other countries, controlling those countries either politically or economically. See colonialism, for difference. Indian Irish Independence League (IIIL) established in 1932 by Maud Gonne and others to work to secure complete independence for Ireland and India from British imperial rule. Interior monologue see stream of consciousness. Intersectionality the interconnected nature of social categorisations such as race, class, and gender and how these create overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination. Irish Citizen Army a paramilitary group of trade union volunteers established by James Larkin and James Connolly in Dublin in 1913, to defend demonstrating workers from the police. This group also took part in the 1916 Easter Rising. Irish Civil War (1922–1923) was fought by two opposing sides of Irish people; those for and against the Anglo-Irish Treaty (December 1921) between Britain and Ireland. The Treaty established partial Irish independence and an Irish Free State on three quarters of the island but was denounced as a betrayal of the Irish Republic proclaimed

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in 1916 by Irish Republicans, who continued to fight for full Irish independence. Irish Free State the independent Irish State established in 1922 under the Anglo-Irish treaty of December 1921, which ended the Irish War of Independence. It comprised 26 of the 32 counties of Ireland and excluded the 6 counties of Northern Ireland. Irish Republican Army a name used by various paramilitary organisations in Ireland during the twentieth-century, who believe all of Ireland should be an independent Republic. Irish Republican Brotherhood a secret oath-bound fraternal organisation dedicated to the establishment of an independent democratic republic in Ireland between 1858 and 1924. Irish Volunteers an Irish military organisation formed in 1913 in response to the formation of the Ulster Volunteers who vowed to fight by force of arms the democratic imposition of Home Rule throughout Ireland. The Volunteers split over the threat of conscription into the British Army during WWI and were later infiltrated by the Irish Republican Brotherhood who secretly planned the Easter Rising of 1916. Irish War of Independence (1919–1921) a guerrilla war of independence fought by the Irish Republican Army against colonial British forces. Kang a brick platform built across one side or end of a room in a house, in Northern China or Manchuria, warmed by a fire beneath and used for sleeping. Land War, Irish a period of agrarian agitation in rural Ireland (1870s1890s). The Irish National Land League sought to secure fair rent and fixity of tenure for tenant farmers, and ultimately peasant ownership of the land they worked. Liberty Hall headquarters of the Irish Citizen Army and a soup-kitchen during the Dublin Lockout of 1913, run by Constance Markiewicz and Maud Gonne, Yeats’s muse. Liminal a transitional threshold or the initial stage of a process. Literary Nationalism the attempt to define the nation through literature. Manchu a people originally living in Manchuria, who formed the last imperial Qing 大清 dynasty of China (1644–1912). March First Movement a Korean peaceful public protest against imperial Japanese rule in Korea, on March 1, 1919. Yu Gwansun (1902–1920)

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a young girl who was an organiser was tortured by the Japanese and died in jail at the age of seventeen. Martello Towers round defensive forts built on coastlands across the British Empire during the nineteenth-century. In Ulysses , Joyce recolonises a Martello tower as a postcolonised space for his fictional character Stephen Dedalus to inhabit. Maxwell, John Sir (1859–1929) the British Army officer who controversially ordered the execution of leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising. Maxwell dealt with the rebellion according to martial law and ordered trials without defence counsel, or jury and in secret. McSwiney, Terence (1879–1920) an Irish playwright, republican politician, and Sinn Féin mayor of Cork who was arrested by the British government and imprisoned in Brixton Prison in 1920. He went on hunger strike and died seventy-four days later which led to international outcry. McSwiney influenced many Indians, including Gandhi. Modernism traditionally innovative, experimental writing developed in early twentieth-century Europe around the time of WWI. Mulvey, Laura theorised in literature and art, the male gaze depicts women only from the male perspective as sexualised objects of desire, never as subjects in their own right. Thus, artists tend to presume their audience is uniformly male and write accordingly. Nationalism the belief that a shared culture, history, language, ethnicity, religion, and territory means a people or nation should govern itself since the nation is the only rightful source of political power or sovereignty. Noh drama traditional Japanese theatrical form. Unlike Western narrative drama, Noh performers use their visual appearances and movements to suggest the essence of their tale rather than enact it. Northern Expedition the military campaign launched in 1926 by the nationalist Guomindang allied with Communists in the Revolutionary Army against the Beiyang government and other regional warlords, to reunify China which was divided by warlord rule. Northern Irish Troubles the ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland (1969 to 1998). Unionists wanted Northern Ireland to remain in the Union with Britain, Nationalists wanted a United Ireland, separate from the U.K. O’Grady, Standish James (1846–1928) an Irish author and historian whose presentation of ancient Irish mythology as rivalling the tales

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of Homeric Greece, greatly influenced Irish Revivalist attempts to establish a modern Irish identity. Orangemen a secret society formed in the North of Ireland in 1795, dedicated to the maintenance and political ascendancy of Protestantism, and named for William of Orange. Orientalism Edward Said defined Orientalism as the system of thought that dominates western perceptions of the east. This process allowed the west to present itself as the centre and the east as exoticised other. Overdetermined containing multiple possible meanings. Partition of Ireland the British government partitioned the island of Ireland in 1920, even though Sinn F éin who argued for complete Irish independence won 73 of Ireland’s 105 seats, in December 1918. Pit-brow lass female surface workers at British collieries, who picked out stones from the coal after it was hauled to the brow or surface. In 1842 women and children under ten were banned from working underground in coalmines because so many had died and drowned while working underground. Plunkett , Joseph Mary (1887–1916) a wealthy Irish republican poet, journalist and revolutionary leader who was executed by the British for his role in the 1916 Easter Rising. Plunkett who had TB married his fiancé Grace Gifford a few hours before he faced execution by firing squad at the age of 28. Grace’s sister Muriel married his best friend, Thomas MacDonagh. Postcolonial literature is typically post-WWII imaginative works written in the shadow and aftermath of Western colonialism, but includes works penned before, during and after the moment of independence, or literature against the discourses of empire. Postcolonial Modernism experimental modern literature written in reaction to the modern postcolonised condition. PQ Peasant Quality, a portrayal of the authentic lives of Irish peasants that Irish Revivalist dramatists sought to depict onstage. Nationalists critiqued the PQ aspects of Revivalist drama for refusing to uniformly proclaim the nobility of the Irish peasantry. PRC the People’s Republic of China, established in 1949 under the Communists. Qing the Qing dynasty ruled China after removing the Ming dynasty in 1644. The Qing were a Manchu people who ruled over the Han majority in China until 1911.

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Queue a hairstyle worn by Manchu people, and later required for male subjects of the Qing dynasty in China. Hair on top of the scalp was grown long and braided, while the front portion of the head was shaved. Reform era reform of the Chinese economy led by Deng Xiaoping after the death of Mao in 1976. This led to a version of capitalism with “Chinese characteristics”. Republican era from (1912–1949) in China. Resonance the quality of having an intensity of emotion or richness of expression that evokes or reinforces a sympathetic response. Second Sino-Japanese War a military conflict between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan from 1937 (or the invasion of Manchuria in 1931), to September 1945. The Chinese call this Zhongguo Kangri Zhanzheng 中国抗日战爭 (The War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression). Ten to twenty-five million Chinese civillians and four million military personnel died, and even biological warfare was used. Second United Front the Chinese nationalist Guomindang and Chinese Communists formed a second alliance to resist Japanese invasion of China from 1936. Thus, the Chinese Civil War between nationalists and communists was suspended between 1937–1941. Shanghai massacre the violent suppression of Chinese Communists in Shanghai on April 12, 1927 by the military forces of nationalist Guomindang leader Chiang Kaishek. Followed by a wide-scale purge of Communists in China. Communists viewed this as another betrayal as both sides had united during the First United Front to end warlord rule in China. Shock of Modernity the idea that modern peoples experienced shell shock and trauma due to the rapid development of the modern world and technological advances after the Industrial Revolution and the rush to modernise. Sinn Féin the “ourselves alone” Irish Republican party founded by Arthur Griffith in 1905. Sinn Féin is a left-wing party (no far-right party has elected representatives in Ireland) that seeks a United Ireland, to promote the Irish language and to break the Union with Britain. Statist a reading of history that centers the State or governmental official narratives, and sidelines accounts by women, the working-class and other groups.

384

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Stream of consciousness a modernist technique of narration developed by James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, that attempts to depict the multitude of thoughts and feelings that pass through the mind of a narrator, also termed interior monologue. Taiping Rebellion was waged in China from 1850 to 1864, between the established Manchu-led Qing dynasty and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom under Hong Xiuquan, the self-proclaimed brother of Jesus Christ. The bloodiest civil war in history, an estimated thirty million died. Treaty Ports port cities in China that were opened to foreign trade by “unequal treaties ” with Western powers. Also took place in Japan and Korea, and the British only returned the treaty ports in Ireland in 1938, long after the Irish Free State was set up in 1922. Trope a commonly recurring literary device or motif in creative works. Unequal Treaties the Chinese view of treaties signed between the failing Qing dynasty and various Western powers, Russia, and Imperial Japan during the late nineteenth-century. These treaties were forced on the Chinese after military defeat or by threat of foreign invasion and granted concession areas of trade to foreign powers in Shanghai, Hong Kong and other treaty ports. The Chinese refer to this as the hated ‘Century of Humiliation’ (1839–1949). Ulster one of the four provinces of Ireland, located in the North. Traditionally included nine counties, six of these now constitute Northern Ireland, the other three remain part of the Irish Republic. Ulster Volunteers a Unionist protestant militia formed in 1912 in the North of Ireland who vowed to prevent by force of arms any domestic government or Home Rule although the vast majority of the population of Ireland had voted for this. Ulster Volunteers were not prevented from importing arms into Ireland, although the British did try to prevent the Irish Volunteers from doing so. Unionism in Ireland is a political tradition on the island that professes loyalty to the Act of Union between Britain and Ireland (1800), and to the British Crown and constitution. Valence the attraction or aversion an individual feels towards a specific event or object. Vernacular the language or dialect spoken by ordinary people in a country or region. World literature study of all the world’s national literatures and their circulation beyond their country of origin. Traditionally, this only

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referred to western European literatures, nowadays this includes global literatures in an international context. Zui Sheng Meng Si 醉生梦死 roughly translates as [living drunkenly dreaming of death] or “Living in Drunkenness Dying in Dreams”. Chinese title for Seán O’Casey’s play Juno and the Paycock.

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Index

A Abbey Riots, 47, 115, 130, 155, 157, 159, 162–164, 269, 285, 344, 373 Achebe, Chinua, 26, 206 Admussen, Nick, 59, 62, 65, 68 Alienation, 19, 21, 28, 147, 152, 154–156, 218, 344, 347, 350 Allgood, Molly, 280 America, 134, 210, 305–308 Anderson, Marston, 19, 54, 55, 120, 238 Anti-Rightist Campaign, 1957, 156, 239, 373, 379 Arabi Bey, 203 Aran Islands, 278, 279, 285, 286, 291 B Baihua, 29, 53, 157, 202, 205, 316, 332, 348. See also Language, democratisation of Banner, 7, 19, 58, 136, 154, 155, 205, 344, 369

Barlow, Tani, 190, 212, 233, 237, 239 Beckett, Samuel, 3, 21–24, 209, 345 Beida University, 162 Beijing, 6, 7, 45, 48, 52, 58, 67, 92, 98, 108, 116, 131, 133, 148, 149, 156–158, 192, 197, 201, 205, 268, 288, 312, 317 Beiyang, government, 132, 192, 341, 374 Belmullet, Mayo, 291 Black and Tans, 52, 168, 374 Blood, 52, 164, 215, 313, 316, 327 Bloody Sunday, 332 Bluestocking, 326 Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen, 203, 208 Body as Problem, 236 Qiu Jin, 221 Bordo, Susan, 190, 212, 214, 215, 217, 218 Boundary Commission, 374 Bound feet, 212, 214, 216, 218, 219, 221, 321 Bourdieu, Pierre, 209, 243

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. O’Malley-Sutton, The Chinese May Fourth Generation and the Irish Literary Revival: Writers and Fighters, Asia-Pacific and Literature in English, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5269-4

417

418

INDEX

Boxer Rebellion, 2, 149, 268, 309, 377 Boycott, 328 Brecht, Bertolt, 19, 21, 28, 147, 152, 154–156, 180, 244, 245, 344, 347, 350

C Cannibalism, 18, 46, 56, 57, 69 Cao Yu, 293 Thunderstorm, 98, 268, 269, 281, 292 Wilderness, The, 19, 237, 257 Carson, Edward, 310, 312, 374 Casanova, Pascale, 25, 26, 134 Casement, Sir Roger, 248, 321, 324, 374 Castle, Gregory, 21, 57, 92, 292 Catholic Cromwell, ethnic cleanse, 113, 327 Joyce imagery, 304 Opposed 1913 strike, 172 Celtic, 45, 48, 83, 86, 105, 111–113, 123, 128, 131, 286 language, 277 people, 45, 83, 374 spirituality, 83, 247, 309, 314 Welsh nationalists, 169 Celtic Revival, 92, 286 Chenbao Fukan, 91, 108, 139, 192, 193, 271, 288 Chen, Hengzhe, 26, 56, 82, 133, 207 Chen, Shu, 77, 81, 106, 128, 159, 167, 191, 200, 267 Women, Easter 1916, 235, 236 Chiang, Kai-Shek, 168, 171, 235, 290, 383 China Press, The, 130, 202, 209 Chinese Communist Party, 8, 51, 53, 121, 126, 154, 156, 304, 374, 378

Chinese May Fourth, 1–6, 8–12, 18, 19, 22, 23, 25, 28–30, 37, 54 Chow, Rey, 212 Christ, 64, 65, 170, 171, 384 Christmas card, 179 Christmas Rising, 299, 313 Civil War, Chinese, 172, 290, 383 Civil War, Irish, 53, 57, 60, 151–153, 252, 325, 342, 379 Civil War, Spanish, 59 Clapped to death, 29, 222, 231, 256, 347 Cleary, Joe, 15, 24, 39, 55, 57 Collins, Michael, 10, 268, 332 Comedy, 131, 148, 191, 274 Commemoration, 17, 151, 300, 315, 350 Confucian, 3, 6, 48, 56, 92, 108, 170, 210, 214, 218, 220, 221, 235, 236, 239, 268, 275, 281, 284, 286, 304, 316, 319, 326 Conlan, Barnette, D., 126–128 Connolly, James, 14, 151, 163, 255, 300, 309, 379 Coole Park, 204, 238 Cousins, James, 85, 164, 362 Cousins, Margaret, 80, 242 Cromwell, Oliver, 113 Cultural Revolution, 148, 158, 205, 233, 235, 248, 309, 314, 376

D Databases, 27, 310 Davies, Gloria, 7, 8, 53 Davis, Alex, 18, 57, 283 De Valois, Ninette, 115 Ding Ling, 1, 5, 6, 8, 29, 92, 112, 122, 211, 223, 257 Dongfang Zazhi, 91, 126, 129, 133, 310, 375 Dribbon, Jack, 175

INDEX

E Easter Rising 1916, 10, 13, 16, 29, 58, 151–153, 198, 207, 236, 246, 249, 293, 334 Eber, Irene, 9, 129, 172, 179, 190, 191, 194, 264, 267, 305 Eberstein, Bernd, 197, 210 Education, 44, 45, 126, 131, 132, 190, 192, 205, 217, 220, 231, 244, 280, 304, 317, 318, 326, 328, 341 Egypt, 30, 51, 199, 203, 208, 307, 308 Engels, Friedrich, 244 English Student, The, 91, 127, 128, 132, 133, 192, 271, 273 Erasure, 29, 180, 187, 189, 190, 207, 216, 217, 222, 223, 255, 348 Eurocentric, 17, 20, 23, 26, 55, 86, 134, 170, 266, 286, 319, 350

F Famine, Bengal, 13 Famine, Chinese, 377, 378 Famine, Irish, 12, 17, 131, 377, 378 Fenians, 300, 377 Ferriter, Diarmaid, 15, 16, 158, 282 First United Front, 290, 377, 383 Flannery, Eóin, 2, 37, 80, 300, 319, 375 Fogarty, Anne, 190, 192, 207, 211, 221 Folklore, 42, 48, 92, 99, 103, 110–117, 128, 135, 208, 237, 238, 241, 267, 289, 339, 378 Foucauldian, 203, 213, 217, 256, 267 Freudian, 56, 204, 210, 218 Friedman, Susan Stanford, 23, 55 Friends of Irish Freedom, 13, 305

419

G George, Lloyd, 16, 168, 330 Golden, Seán, 10, 54, 66, 120 Gonne, Maud, 13, 14, 64, 112, 253, 379, 380 Gore-Booth, Eva, 1, 21, 29, 30, 80, 223, 257, 323, 347 inspired British feminists, 249 Maeve and Death of Fionavar, 249–252 pacifism, 242, 248, 256 pit-brow lass, 243 Poetry reached China, 248 Vanity Fair, 240 vegetarianism, 242 Gregg, Frederick James, 305, 309, 311, 313, 314 Gregory, Lady Augusta, 223 affectionately remembered, 207, 223 Co-wrote Cathleen Ní Houlihan, 207 feminism, implicit, 28, 190, 209, 348 Front of Irish Revival, 1, 2, 187, 190, 192, 193, 197, 199, 200, 202, 205, 206, 208, 210, 211, 221, 223, 340 Hiberno-English, invented usage, 4, 22, 28, 133 plays performed by Chinese peasants, 197, 200, 210 reciprocal encounters with Asia, 2, 3, 80, 122, 136, 202, 222, 346 Rising of the Moon, 192, 193, 203 Spreading the News , 191, 197, 209 Griffith, Hubert, 131, 161, 165, 273 Guomindang (GMD), 12, 53, 109, 118, 121, 124, 135, 148, 166, 167, 205, 232, 234, 271, 273, 340, 378

420

INDEX

Guo, Moruo, 109, 117, 159, 267, 285, 305 H Hakutani, Yoshinobu, 78, 79 Han, 11, 40, 48, 50, 87, 148, 149, 151, 378, 382 Harris, Susan Cannon, 105, 153 Hiberno-English, 4, 22, 28, 43, 51, 54, 82, 112, 133, 200–202, 206, 289, 332, 342, 348, 377, 378 Hockx, Michel, 109, 110, 317 Home Rule, 2, 16, 151, 310, 312, 325, 326, 329, 378, 380, 384 Hundred Flowers Campaign, 235, 374, 379 Hungary, 172, 304, 343 Hu, Shi, 4, 7, 8, 108, 130, 131, 157, 160, 234, 246, 310, 321 Hu, Ting-I, 175, 176 Hyde, Douglas, 83, 85, 115, 132, 156, 274, 277, 288, 314, 370, 379 I Illiteracy, 4, 22, 48, 110, 157, 171, 192, 197, 200, 220, 238, 318, 340, 341 India, 4, 10, 12, 13, 51, 54, 80, 81, 85, 103, 108, 122, 127, 170, 171, 199, 203, 208, 306–308, 332, 355, 357, 370, 379 Amritsar, 332 Bose, Subhas Chandra, 13, 14 Connaught Rangers, 13 Indian Irish Independence League (IIIL), 13 Industrial Revolution, 19–21, 42, 46, 55, 118, 244, 383 Intersectional, 114, 190, 207, 211, 220–222, 379

Irish Republican Brotherhood, 30, 51, 151, 198, 325, 377, 380 Irish War of Independence, 52, 79, 151, 153, 235, 306, 332, 374, 380 Iron, 20, 45, 46 J Janitors, 157, 318 Japan, 6, 8, 10, 11, 39, 40, 50, 68, 78, 80, 84, 85, 103, 107, 118, 119, 126, 131, 169, 210, 213, 214, 217, 234, 237–239, 248, 269, 270, 304, 307, 312, 317, 318, 340, 342, 359, 362, 364, 370, 383, 384 Joyce, James, 3, 21, 23, 24, 62, 91, 159, 160, 206, 304, 345, 381, 384 K Kang, 321, 380 Kiberd, Declan, 2, 37, 107, 152, 156–158, 203, 208, 250, 264, 274, 279, 280, 282, 283, 287, 299, 318 Kimono, 243, 248, 252 Korea, 10, 51, 54, 171, 174, 317, 318, 384 annexed by Japan, 317 compared to Ireland, 87, 174, 289, 311 O’Casey, “outraged man of Ireland”, 174 Synge influenced Korean Renaissance, 3, 291 Krause, David, 167, 170 L Landlord, 2, 12, 13, 40, 42, 48, 106, 122, 158, 328

INDEX

Lane, Hugh, 164, 208 Language. See Baihua; Hiberno-English; Vernacular democratisation of, 205, 316 Irish language movement, 38, 44, 82, 108, 133, 151, 156, 264, 277, 313, 314, 317, 328, 332, 378, 383 MacDonagh, 318 O’Casey/Lao She, 156, 157 Synge-song, 270 weaponised, 205, 316, 332, 349 Lao, She, 180 Do Not Discuss Affairs of State, 19, 154 Howth, visit, 159 Teahouse censored, 156 Larkin, Jim, 167 League of Left-Wing Writers, 47, 53, 61, 122, 234, 290 Lee, Leo Ou-Fan, 61, 63, 64 Lennon, Joseph, 2, 80, 86, 123, 128 hunger strikes, suffragette, 128 Lissadell, 240, 251, 252 Liu, Bannong, 5, 29 Easter 1916, 334 Female character ‘ta’, 301 suggested Lu Xun for Nobel, 134 Liu, Lydia, H., 3, 201, 267, 309, 349 London, 9, 42, 65, 77, 100, 110, 117, 118, 127, 131, 148, 157, 159, 163–166, 170, 174–177, 205, 242, 290, 301, 307, 331, 358 Long March, The, 167, 175 Lost Heifer, The, 283 Lu, Xun, 37–70 Ah Q, 50, 119, 135 cannibalism, 18, 46, 56, 57, 69 censorship, 84, 100, 288 cult of chastity, 239 Ibsen’s Nora, 233, 280

421

Iron House, 45, 137, 284 Madman’s Diary, 56, 68 Sendai, 11, 40 Shaw, G.B., 83, 115, 128, 162, 168, 222, 268, 361 Wild Grass , 18, 38, 52, 57–59, 61–65, 68, 69, 342, 344 Yeats article, 85 M MacDonagh, Thomas, 29, 276, 299, 301, 302, 309, 313, 314, 317, 318, 320, 323, 382 language, 318 Maeve, 249, 250, 252, 253, 277 Makoto, Sang¯ u, 118 Malouf, Michael, 26 Manchester Guardian Chinaman in Mayo, 291 Manchu, 48, 50, 148, 149, 151, 156, 158, 159, 380, 382, 383 Mao, Dun, 92, 112, 117, 128, 129, 159, 191, 193, 197, 200, 267 Lady Gregory, 190 literature of oppressed peoples, 190, 267, 340 Penname Fang Xin, 128, 191 Yeats, 106 Mao, Zedong, 10, 53, 234, 376, 379 Ended ‘Century of Humiliation’, 315, 375, 384 Praised Irish leader Michael Collins, 10 March Eighteenth, 1926, 67 Markiewicz, Constance, 235, 236, 241, 246, 254–256, 380 died penniless, 235 Easter 1916, leader, 235, 236, 246, 312 First Cabinet Post for Women, 255 Marriage, 92, 214, 217, 233, 246, 275, 282, 319, 322, 330

422

INDEX

Martial Law, 130, 321, 326, 381 Marx, Karl, 39, 53, 148, 164, 204, 217, 239, 244, 245, 281, 304, 309, 318 Mathews, P.J., 2, 156, 250 May Thirtieth, 1925, 168, 264, 332 McDonald, Ronán, 21, 57, 211 Mei, Lanfang, 154 Melas, Natalie, 17 Milligan, Alice, 277 Miscegenation, 328, 330

N Nanjing, 124, 133, 271, 285 New Woman, 29, 107, 112, 114, 180, 190, 208, 210, 211, 215–217, 219–221, 223, 231, 232, 235–237, 239, 240, 244, 248, 251–254, 281, 348 New Youth, 29, 111, 114, 191, 197, 234, 239, 289, 299–302, 304, 309, 311, 314, 316–319 Ngugi, Wa Thiong’o, 206 Noguchi, Yonejir¯ o, 77–85, 119, 355–371 Noh theatre, 21, 79, 80, 115 North China Daily News, The background source for Chinese, 321 Easter 1916, 316 Eva Gore-Booth, 244 O’Casey, 161 Synge, 264, 266, 267 Yeats, 126–128 North China Herald, The, 130, 131, 160, 165, 246, 310, 320, 321 Hu Shi complained, 130, 246, 310 Northern Expedition, 58, 235, 290, 377, 381 North King Street, 324

O O’Casey, Seán, 180 Figure in the Window, 21 Harlem Renaissance, 3, 9 Juno Shanghai, 151, 152, 158, 159, 162, 164–166, 174, 179 Korean Renaissance, 3, 291 Plough and the Stars , 21, 109, 150, 151, 153, 159, 162, 373 Shadow of a Gunman, 151, 152, 165 Silver Tassie, 166, 222 O’Faolain, Seán, 129 O’Flaherty, Liam, 129 Old Shameful, 235, 239, 254 O’Malley, Grace, 198, 378 Opium Wars, 1, 49, 245, 306, 315

P Palimpsest, 212, 213, 221 Pearse, Patrick, 29, 108, 155, 163, 314 education, 318 Figure in the Window, 153, 155 final letter to mother, 319 Liu claims leader of Irish literary world, 314 Peasants, 4, 22, 29, 110, 116, 157, 197, 200, 210, 243, 267, 269, 275, 287–289, 340, 341, 382 Lady Gregory’s works, 197, 204, 210 PQ Peasant Quality, 200, 382 Synge, 257, 264–267, 271, 273–275 Plunkett, Joseph, 29, 299, 302, 309, 314, 316, 317, 320, 324, 382 Poland, 172, 304, 343 Poster, 198, 199, 216. See also Banner PRC People’s Republic of China, 149, 239, 315, 382

INDEX

President Michael D. Higgins, 255, 315 Proclamation, 155, 198, 311, 312 Protestant, 12, 42–44, 48, 83, 121, 122, 148, 149, 151, 202, 207, 264, 327, 328, 357, 358, 373, 382 Q Qing, 1, 40, 44, 48, 50, 56, 121, 126, 151, 154, 158, 188, 219–221, 240, 268, 270, 281, 301, 304, 315, 342, 374, 375, 379, 380, 382, 384 Qiu Jin, 1, 5, 28, 30, 56, 180, 223, 231, 232, 248, 249, 254, 256, 344, 347 clapped to death, 29, 222, 231, 256, 347 education for women, 217, 220 poetry, 187, 210, 211 reburied nine times, 221 Respectful Proclamation, 216 unbound feet, 210, 215, 216 Zhongguo N¯ ubao, 217 R Ramazani, Jahan, 10, 22, 23, 38, 39, 86, 87, 270 Rape, 17, 53, 168, 239, 374 Red Guards, 171 Redmond, John, 155, 310, 312, 321, 325 Regan, John, 16, 315, 350 Religion, 8, 38, 83, 109, 169, 212, 247, 279, 284, 360, 381 Renaissance, Chinese, 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 22–24, 27, 28, 30, 37–39, 44, 54–57, 66, 70, 80, 81, 86, 87, 91, 92, 100, 105, 107–114, 116–118, 120, 121, 124–128,

423

131–133, 136, 137, 164, 179, 180, 192, 199, 200, 202, 205, 221, 237, 238, 242, 251, 252, 257, 263, 264, 266, 267, 270, 271, 273, 275, 276, 281, 287–289, 293, 304, 333, 334, 339–345, 348–350 Renaissance, Europe, 4, 44, 119 Renaissance, Harlem, 3, 9, 129, 206, 267, 305 Renaissance, Indian, 2, 39 Renaissance, Irish, 2–5, 23, 28, 37–39, 42, 44, 80, 81, 98, 100, 107, 108, 111, 119, 132, 202, 206, 207, 238, 256, 273, 276, 278, 291, 339, 341–345, 348–350 Renaissance, Jewish, Polish, Hungarian, 9, 129, 267, 305, 333 Renaissance, Korean, 3, 291 Republic, Chinese, 29, 293, 299–301, 313, 314, 316, 320 Republic, Irish, 13, 15, 16, 30, 51, 64, 116, 151–153, 155, 198, 241, 255, 311–313, 317, 319, 325, 350 Russell, A.E. George, 81, 85, 276, 277, 288, 355, 368, 373 Russia, 9, 11, 81, 137, 293, 319, 342, 343, 376, 384 S Said, Edward, 2, 9, 14, 25, 26, 37, 38, 111, 190, 203, 204, 300, 327, 349, 382 Samhain, 42, 191, 277 Second United Front, 290, 340, 383 Sendai Incident, Lu Xun, 11, 40 Shaw, George Bernard, 83, 115, 128, 162, 167, 168, 222, 263, 268, 361, 362

424

INDEX

Sheehy-Skeffington, Francis, 14, 253, 324 Shih, Shu-mei, 19, 54 Sinn Féin, 10, 13, 16, 17, 255, 313, 317, 322, 325, 331, 381–383 Skinnider, Margaret, 235 Slums, 148, 158 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 39 Stephens, James, 85, 198, 199. See also Fenians Su, Chaolung, 132, 192, 201, 202 Suicide, 234, 322 Superstructure, 217, 239, 244, 256 Synge, John Millington, 1, 5, 22, 27, 29, 30, 47, 63, 100, 111, 124, 133, 157, 158, 163, 179, 190, 193, 200, 202, 206, 211, 257, 293 Chinaman in Mayo 1905, 291 Deirdre of the Sorrows , 267, 275, 280 Korean Renaissance, influence, 3, 291 Playboy, 155, 267, 271, 272, 275, 277–279, 281–283, 285, 287, 289 poetry, 271, 274 Riders to the Sea, 267, 275, 283 Samuel Synge in China, 291 Shadow of the Glen, 267, 273, 275, 280 Synge-song , 270 Tinker’s Wedding , 267, 275, 284 Well of the Saints , 267, 275, 284 T Tagore, Rabindranath, 39, 83, 108, 122, 123, 345, 368 Taiping Rebellion, 1, 128, 384 Tan Sitong, 151, 155 The Irish Times , 159 Tiananmen, 68

Tian (heaven), 48, 314 Tianjin, 191, 268 Tiernan, Sonja, 240, 255, 256, 347 Treaty Ports, 268, 315, 375, 384 Tsinghua, 192, 266, 268

U Ulster, 310, 323, 325, 326, 329, 331, 384 Unionism, 15, 64, 122, 203, 208, 244, 384

V Vanity Fair, 130, 160, 240, 255, 305, 308–314 Vernacular, 4, 6, 8, 23, 29, 53, 54, 56, 82, 100, 108, 121, 133, 148, 150, 155–157, 180, 200–202, 205–207, 233, 267, 273, 278, 287–290, 316, 332, 340, 341, 344, 348, 374, 384. See also Baihua; Hiberno-English Versailles, 6, 7, 52, 237 Volunteers, 280, 300, 310, 313, 323, 325, 326, 329, 376, 379, 380, 384

W Wang, Shiwei, 234 Wang, Tongzhao, 92, 98, 108, 110, 111, 113, 116, 128 Warlord, 6, 52, 57–60, 62, 67, 68, 120, 130, 164, 235, 273, 274, 276, 290, 304, 312, 342, 377, 381, 383 Wenxue, 91, 112–116 Wenxue Xunkan, 91, 109, 116 Wilde, Lady, 106 Wilde, Oscar, 91, 242, 268, 374 Witchard, Anne, 159

INDEX

X Xiandai, 91, 117 Xiaoshuo Yuebao, 59, 91, 92, 100, 108, 129, 353, 375 Xinhai Revolution 1911, 44, 63, 126, 148, 149, 299, 301, 305, 309 Xin Qingnian, 111, 157, 234, 304. See also New Youth Xiong, Foxi, 197, 200, 210 Xu, Xilin, Qiu Jin’s cousin cannibalism, 56 Y Yan’an, 233, 234, 238, 244 Yeats, William Butler, 37–70 critical writings, 120, 122 ‘disgraced yourselves again’, 40, 47, 163, 373 folklore, 42, 48, 92, 99, 103, 110–117, 128, 135, 208, 237, 238, 241, 267, 289, 339

425

Lu Xun’s article on Yeats, 87 plays, 104, 124, 126, 128, 132 poetry, 117–120 Ying, Ruocheng, 156, 159, 179, 265 Yu, Shiao-ling, 180, 182, 183 Teahouse censored, 149–151, 153, 154 Z Zheng, Zhenduo, 92, 98, 100, 103, 105–107, 109, 112, 115, 200, 268 Zhou, Enlai, 318 Zhou, Zuoren, Lu Xun’s younger brother, 63, 65, 108, 288 Zong In Sob, 87 Zui Sheng Meng Si Chinese title for Seán O’Casey’s play Juno, 158, 159 Living in Drunkenness Dying in Dreams, 159