1. Ezra Pound, "I Gather the Limbs of Osiris," The New Age 10, no. 6 (Dec. 7, 1911): 130-31. This essay is reprinted in Ezra Pound: Selected Prose 1909-1965 , ed. William Cookson (New York: New Directions, 1975). See p. 23.

2. Fredric Jameson, "Toward Dialectical Criticism," in Marxism and Form (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 311-12.

3. I am fully aware of the fact that I am generalizing. The events summarized here, however, have been well rehearsed in many books on modern China, among them Chow Tse-tsung's The May Fourth Movement (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960). The condensed scenario is done to show the scope of complexity of modern Chinese history, not to account for all the details.

4. Chow Tse-tsung, in his The May Fourth Movement , traces this attitude to Chiang Kai-shek himself (p. 344). He quotes Chiang: "Let us see what the so-called new culture movement . . . means. . . . Does the new culture movement mean the advocacy of the vernacular literature? . . . the piecemeal introduction of Western literature? . . . the demand for individual emancipation and an ignorance of nation and society? . . . the destruction of all discipline and the expansion of individual freedom? . . . the blind worship of foreign countries and indiscriminate introduction and acceptance of foreign civilization? If it does, the new culture we seek is too simple, too cheap and too dangerous!"

5. For example, Liu-shih-nien shih-ko-hsuan (Poetry of the Recent Six Decades), ed. Wang Chih-chien et al. (Taipei, 1973), contains no selections from the Creation Society or the Sun Society, nothing from Wen I-to, Pien Chih-lin, or Ho Ch'i-fang, not to mention Tsang K'o-chia, Ai Ch'ing, and the other proletarian poets.

6. The thaw includes the establishment of the first opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party, in 1986, the lift of the ban on visiting mainland China in 1987, the ending of the thirty-eight years of martial law, and many still evolving changes. These changes have led to a rather busy interflow between Taiwan and mainland China in areas of art, literature, and, above all, commerce.

7. Mao's Yenan Talks, which officialize Chü Ch'iu-pai's literature-for-the-masses thesis, is too well known to need elaboration here. All the essays can be easily located in Mao Tse-tung's On Literature and Art (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1967).

8. See Li Ho-lin, Chung-Kuo Hsin-Wen-hsueh-shih Yen-chiu (Peking: Hsin-chien-she, 1951).

9. These views were expressed by the students of the Lu Hsün Literary Society in Peking University. See the reprint edition of Wang's book, Chung-kuo Hsin-wen hsueh shih-kao (Hong Kong: Po Wen Book-store, 1972), which includes thirteen anti-Wang Yao essays.

10. Wang Hsi-yen, Lun Ah Q ho t'a-ti pei-chu (Shanghai: Hsin-wen-i, 1957), 216-46.

11. J. Prusek, "Basic Problems of the History of Modern Chinese Literature," and C. T. Hsia, "A History of Modern Chinese Fiction," T'oung Pao 49 (1961): 357-404; C. T. Hsia, "On the Scientific Study of Modern Chinese Literature," T'oung Pao 50 (1963): 428-73.

12. C. T. Hsia, "On the Scientific Study of Modern Chinese Literature," 429-30.

13. Ibid.

14. See Liang Tsung-tai, "Symbolism," in his Shih yü Chen (Poetry and Truth) (Shanghai: Shang-wu, 1935), 75-105. Basho: * "Ancient pond/A frog jumps in/splash of water." Lin: "Sparse/shadows/aslant — /water/limpid and shallow; Dark/scent/floating — /moon/atdusk."

15. Li Ch'ang-chih, Yin Chung-kuo ti Wen-i Fu-hsing (Welcome China's Renaissance) (Chungking: Shang-wu, 1944), 14-21.

16. Ibid., 15-16.

17. I fully understand that, to be fair, the Western literary tradition must also be treated in its multiplicity, in its totality. When I isolate here the rationalist tendency for discussion, I do not mean to see it as the only tendency. We can find many countertrends to the principle of domination in the evolution of the Western literary tradition. I highlight this significant tendency here to call attention to its ironic relationship to the Chinese intellectuals.

18. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), 3, 4, 6, 9, 25, 26.

19. Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason (New York: Seabury Press, 1974), 105-7.