Playing with Liquid Fire

Reading Chinese Dagong Verse Through Classical Poetry Tradition and Vice Versa

Abstract

This article traces multiple connections between contemporary Chinese rural migrant workers’ poetry (dagong shige) and the classical poetry tradition. In part one, the author investigates explicit allusions to traditional poetry in the form and content of workers’ poems, asking how and why dagong poets actively seek connection with the literary past and strive to remap it onto the psychological and social-political matrices of their own existence. Emphasis is placed on the communitarian aspect of poetry on the one hand and its transcendental qualities on the other. Self-inscription into poetry tradition is discussed as a powerful manifestation of workers’ full-fledged participation in the cultural, intellectual, and spiritual heritage of the nation and of humankind at large. Part two focuses on less tangible structural resonances between classical poetry and rural migrants’ verse, construing the latter as a natural continuation of what is deemed the “lyric-toward-the-epic” tradition of Chinese poetry as distinct from the “epic-toward-the-lyrical” Western tradition. Rereading the classical poetry tradition through dagong poetry, the article hopes to demonstrate the literary-critical and literary-philosophical potential of migrant workers’ artistic output in understanding (Chinese) poetry and as a factor that may contribute to a possible paradigm shift in its vast universe.

本文旨在探究當代中國農民工詩歌（打工詩歌）與中國古典詩歌傳統之間的多重關聯。在第一部分，作者考察了農民工詩歌在結構和主題上是否存在對傳統詩歌的直接暗示。通過論述詩歌的社群特點和超驗屬性，文章探討了打工詩人如何一方面有意識地延續文學傳統，同時又基於自身的心理和社會政治環境，對這一傳統進行新的詮釋和重構。打工詩人通過將自身融入詩歌傳統，展現了他們在傳承中國乃至全球文化、知識和精神遺產方面的參與意識。文章第二部分側重於古典詩歌與打工詩之間草蛇灰線的結構關聯。打工詩歌被視為中國詩歌"從抒情走向敘事"傳統的自然延續，這與西方的“從敘事走向抒情”形成鮮明對比。本文通過打工詩歌重拾古典詩歌傳統，旨在展示農民工藝術創作在文學批評和文學哲學方面的內在潛力，並探討這些作品如何有助於在更廣闊領域中實現潛在的範式轉變。