By Cao Shui

The Internet Accelerates The Formation Of The Era Of World Literature: From Western Centrism To Eastern And Western Polycentrism.

The Flower Of The Rotating Tower Of Babel Goes East To Persia, India, China, And East To Judea, Egypt, Greece

(Speech At The 3rd Boao International Poetry Festival Forum)

In the era of Internet and globalization, the “World Literature” put forward by the great German poet Goethe in 1827 is accelerating. Poets all over the world are becoming a whole. In reality, the performance is the “World Poetry Movement”. It was founded by Fernando Rendon, an outstanding Colombian poet and President of Medellin International Poetry Festival, and poets from all over the world at Medellin poetry festival in 2011. They issued the Manifesto Of the World Poetry Movement, which aims to make the world a whole through poetry. In 2017, I joined World Poetry Movement through the Turkish poet Nurduran Duman, and communicated with more than 100 famous poets all over the world through E-mail. We formed a poetic school of “World Poetry Movement” through writing, translation, publication and discussion. This year, Han Qingcheng founded World Poetry magazine. I was also invited as the deputy editor in chief of English version. Through World Poetry, I invited dozens of influential poets from all over the world. As the purpose of the World Poetry said, “let world poetry enter China and let Chinese poetry go to the world”. I am also widely involved in the international poetry circle. The Flowers of the Empire published this year in Italy has won four international awards: the Apollo Dionysus Poetry Award of the 8th International Academy of Contemporary Poetry and Art in Rome, the 27th International Poetry Award of Squid Bone in Italy, the 8th Giovanni Bertacchi International Poetry Award in Italy, The Silver Medal of the 2021 Toronto International Poetry Art Festival. My translation of Russian poet Vadim Terekhin’s poetry collection Transparent Time won the 12th Golden Knight award in Russia, which is the highest award for translation. To integrate into world literature, like domestic literature, we should write, comment, publish and win awards together with them. The most important thing is that the content and form of the works are truly integrated into the world literary circles.

Today’s world is not China in the Han and Tang Dynasties, but the Earth in the era of globalization. Chinese culture is only an integral part of world civilization, which we have to accept and deal with. Today’s civilization is developed from the seven civilizations that used to lie across the Eurasian continent, from Babylon to Persia, India, China to the East, and Judea, Egypt, Greece to the West. Only by tracing back to this root vein can we integrate into the whole world civilization, then integrate ancient and modern civilizations, integrate occidental and oriental civilizations, integrate mysterious and secular civilizations, create a unique civilization, and re-lead the world civilization. Eastern and Western civilizations are like seesaws. Chinese civilization once led the world civilization in the feudal era, but we have to admit that now western civilization has become the mainstream of global civilization. Chinese poets should be able to write the whole world, so that we can press the seesaw of world civilization to the East again. At present, western centralism is widely distributed in the world, and some people in China want to counter with Oriental centralism. In fact, it is a diversified world. I prefer the cosmopolitanism of eastern and Western polycentrism.

In 2018, I initiated the “Dispute of Cao Shui and Yi Sha”, which was caused by my article “99% Of China’s Modern Poetry Is Garbage, And Yi Sha Is Garbage In Garbage“. Therefore, our Great-Poetics school has had a debate with Yi Sha’s Post-Oral Poetry school for three years. Now, although it seems extreme, it is also my concern about the repeated general involution in China. If we want to surpass western culture, we must first understand western culture. For a simple example, many people now study western translated poetry and write modern poetry. The rhyme of Western poetry causes stumbling sentences. Many poets actually follow the standard and regard it as the first thing to speak unclear words. People who know a western language know that those poets are clear and fluent in the western context, I found that Chinese poet Haizi’s poetry goes beyond this kind of sentence break, so I must make my poetry meet the requirement that a sentence or a meaning should be finished in a line of poetry.

This is just an example. I once thought about Chinese poetry systematically. Not long ago, I participated in the academic questionnaire of the National Social Science Fund Project “Research On Innovative Poetic Style Of Contemporary Chinese Poetry” hosted by Shanghai critic Tie Wu. Here I share Cao Shui Asked Ten Questions About Chinese Poetry with you:

1. Do you realize that the modern Chinese poetry world has fallen into the mire of repeated involution? How to get out?
2. Do you realize that the history of poetry is divided into epic in the first stage, metrical poetry in the second stage and free poetry in the third stage? Have you read the Indian Epics, Homer Epics, Gilgamesh and the world’s major epics?
3. Are you aware of the break from ancient metrical poetry to modern Chinese? How to integrate ancient and modern cultures in poetry?
4. Are you aware of the modern significance of poetry in major Western languages? How to combine western and eastern cultures in poetry?
5. Do you know a major Western or Eastern foreign language? Do you know that the broken sentences in translation are caused by the rhyme of literal translation of Western poetry?
6. Are you aware of the relationship between content and form in poetry? How can we integrate the two?
7. Do you realize that besides Chinese and Western civilizations, there are also vast Babylonian, Jewish, Egyptian, Indian and Persian civilizations? Have you read their poems?
8. Do you know how the discourse power of poetry is formed? How do you think we can break the “hegemony of poetry” and make Chinese modern poetry brilliant?
9. Do you know the “Dispute of Cao Shui and Yi Sha” during 2018-2020? Which do you think is more meaningful, the Great-Poeticism advocated by Cao Shui or the Post-Colloquial poetry of Yi Sha? Can it open up a new path for the centennial Chinese modern poetry?
10. Do you think Great-Poetics can lead modern Chinese poetry out of the quagmire? Do you understand its core proposition of “Integration Of Ancient And Modern Cultures”, “Integration Of Western And Eastern Cultures”, “Integration Of Mysterious And Secular Cultures”, “Integration Of Masculinist And Feminism Cultures”, “Write According To The Shape Of Things”And “Integration Of Sound And Meaning In Languages”?

Finally, I tell a story about the Tower of Babel. At first, mankind wanted to build a tower to the heaven, the Tower of Babel. After God knew it, he was afraid to affect his authority, so he disturbed the human language. Therefore, people stopped the construction because they could not communicate, and dispersed around the world to form different nations. This is a metaphor, which is recorded in the Bible, and there are similar myths in China’s Taiping Guangji. The biggest enlightenment of this story to me is that when you open up the gap between languages, the Tower of Babel will naturally form. If we can exchange ideas in English, Chinese, French, Russian, Spanish and Arabic, the Tower of Babel will be rebuilt. This is also my enlightenment in the process of learning English. Why do I emphasize the need to learn a foreign language? Only in this way can you look backward the meaning of your mother tongue again. This is also the implied meaning of Tower of Babel, so my another name is the Lord of Tower of Babel. The dream of rebuilding Tower of Babel may take 500 years to realize, but we can reach the highest secret we pursue through the integration of literary writing. Finally, I would like to emphasize once again that today is an era of globalization. We live on the planet of a global village. As Chinese poets, using the language from the Galaxy, we should be able to write the world!