Mu Dan

Author

1918 – 1977

54

Who was Mu Dan?

Mu Dan was one of the most important poets of 20th century China. Born Zha Liangzheng in Tianjin, he attended Tsinghua University at the age of 17, and graduated from National Southwestern Associated University in 1940. After serving as an assistant lecturer of English at his alma mater for two years, he joined the Chinese Expedition Force for Burma in an effort to aid the British troops there to fight off the Japanese. After World War II, he went to the University of Chicago, where he eventually earned a master's degree in English literature. He is in the same family with the famous novelist Louis Cha.

Most of his poems were written during late 1930s and 1940s. His poetry, which is characterized by impassioned speculation, abstract sensuality, and occasionally, restrained irony, is the foremost example of Chinese new vernacular verse absorbing modern Western techniques. Indeed, Mu Dan was a professed admirer of W. H. Auden, W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot. He studied their poetry at Southwest Associated University under William Empson, himself a leading modernist poet. On the other hand, the patriotism and the compassion for the suffering and needy in his poetry fall easily in line with a great tradition in Chinese poetry.

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Born
Apr 5, 1918
Tianjin
Education
  • University of Chicago
  • Tsinghua University
  • National Southwestern Associated University
Employment
  • Tsinghua University
Died
Feb 26, 1977

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

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