Wen Ren-Ping and Sirius Poetry Society: A Case Study of modernist literary movement in the 1970s 论温任平与天狼星诗社 ——1970年代马华文学现代主义运动个案讨论

Abstract

This article focuses on the Malaysian Chinese literary modernist literary movement occurred in the 1970s. The campaign was initiated by the Sirius Poetical Society (天狼星诗社), and its leader is Wen Ren-Ping (温任平). In the context of Malaysian Chinese Literature history, counterattack towards Ma-Hua realism literature constructed by Fang Hsiu facilitated the movement. For a Third World country, the modern literary movement initiated by Sirius Poetry Society comprised two meanings. Firstly, Malaysia was experiencing a new phase of the modernization process in the 1970s, that the focus of country's development gradually shifted from the political movements which focus on uprooting the Malayan Communist Party and left-wing, to economic construction. At that stage, Malay political elite was strongly promoting agenda of constructing Malay hegemony; on the other hand, the local Chinese began their self-adaptive process between the edge and the centers. This literary movement exactly reflected the cultural adaptation process. Secondly, the process of modernization was launched under the 1970’s New Economic Policy (NEP). Capitalization and maintaining market liberalization were the goal of the policy. This process was closely related with another agenda of the Malay political elite, that was attempting to transfer the economic power from the Chinese to Malay, to consolidate the Malay political and economic status. No matter how, in the free market mechanism, the Ma-hua Literature (马华文学) could at least retain a space for development, meanwhile maintained connection with Hong Kong and Taiwan literature. Hence, the Ma-hua modernist literary movement could easily access to the resources from Hong Kong and Taiwan literature. In other words, it was the literature intercourse, not a completely closed system, facilitated the Sirius Poetical Society modernist literary movement. Wen Ren-Ping and the other members of Sirius Poetical Society, in particular, accepted and transformed the Taiwan modernist literature to resist Realism which had been dominating Ma-Hua literature’s mainstream for a long time. This experience shows that localization of modernism is inseparable from the local political and economic context, and also inseparable from the world trend. In this paper, Wen Ren-Ping modernist poetry with Sirius Poetical Society movement will be a case study to discuss the dissemination process of modernism in multicultural and multiracial society, and also in the Third World countries which possessed the characteristics of the democratic authoritative politic.

Keywords: Sirius Poetical Society, Ma-Hua literature, Modernism, Literary Field, Wen Ren-Ping