The Returned Poets (Simplified Chinese: 归来的诗人 or 复出的诗人; Traditional Chinese: 歸來的詩人 or 復出的詩人; pinyin: guīlái dè shīrén or fùchū dè shīrén) are a group of Chinese poets who were marginalized or expelled from literary circle in the 1950s and the early 1960s due to political reasons and returned after the Cultural Revolution. In other definitions, poets who stopped writing and publishing during the Cultural Revolution and returned after that can also be generally considered as "returned." However, the term only refers to those who were expelled before the Cultural Revolution, according to the mainstream opinions from Chinese literary scholars. The Returned Poets and their works signified a strong desire, not only to repair the damage caused by the politicization of poetry, but also revive and reconstruct the contemporary Chinese poetic paradigm.
The Gang of Four was overthrown in 1976 and The Cultural Revolution ended after the shift of power in the Communist Party of China (CPC). Deng Xiaoping came into power in 1978 and a series of political rehabilitation (平反冤假错案) also started at the same year. As a result, poets, alone with other types of rightist and the Educated Youth (知识青年), returned and regain their right to write and publish their poems.
The Returned Poets were so named because most of their poems published after the Cultural Revolution were coincidentally relevant to the concept of return returned, either literally or metaphorically. For instance, the first album published by Ai Qing (艾青) after his return, was literally named as The Song of Return (归来的歌). Liu Shahe (流沙河) wrote a poem called Return (归来). Liang Nan (梁南) had one of his poem titled The Time of Return (归来的时刻).
List of Returned Poets
The Returned Poets can be divided into three subgroups. The first subgroup is the Poetry School of July (七月诗派), who were arrested because of the Counter-Revolution Case of Hu Feng (胡风反革命集团案) in 1955. Poets in this subgroup are: Hu Feng (胡风), Liu Banjiu (刘半九), Niu Han (牛汉), Zeng Zhuo (曾卓), Ji Fang (冀汸), Peng Yanjiao (彭燕郊), Lu Li (鲁藜), Luo Luo (罗洛), etc.
The second subgroup includes those who were categorized as rightist during the Anti-Rightist Campaign (反右运动) in 1957. They are: Ai Qing (艾青), Gong Liu (公刘), Liu Shahe (流沙河), Liang Nan (梁南), Lin Xi (林希), Zhao Kai (赵恺), Chang Yao (昌耀), Bai Hua (白桦), Shao Yanxiang (邵燕祥), Zhou Liangpei (周良沛), Hu Zhao (胡昭), etc.
The last subgroup includes those who were influenced by the western modernism and kept a distance from the proletarian literature. They are: Mu Dan (穆旦), Du Yunxie (杜运夔), Yuan kejia (袁可嘉), Zheng Min (郑敏), Xin Di (辛迪), Chen Jingrong (陈敬容), Tang Qi (唐祈), Tang Shi (唐湜), Hang Yuehe (杭约赫), etc.
In addition, Cai Qijiao (蔡其矫), who were politically criticized during the 1950s and the 1960s, is also considered as a returned poet.
Historical background
Art Characteristics and Works
The first poetic characteristic of the Returned Poets is that their poems were autobiographical, especially at the beginning of this new era, roughly from 1978 to the early 1980s. With the expectation of a new era, they considered their return as both in real social life and cultural world. The narrator, created by Liu Shahe (流沙河) in his Return (归来), represented a very common poetic subject in this period. The long and suffering journey of this return referred to more than 20-year unjustified treatment. This mixing of joy, sentimentality, and proud became the emotional core of their poems.The second characteristic is that their poems were both individual and historical reflection. Returned Poets identified themselves as the witness of history, thus they thought they should be socially and culturally responsible. On one hand, they reflected their individual experience and the historical trauma; on the other hand, they were also critical on a broader level and try to find the historical and social reason for a national tragedy. Returned Poets were always in a tension with the Chinese history, like what Gong Liu (公刘) showed in his poem Reflection (沉思):The theme of "reflection on history" became a motley face among the Returned Poets. It can be: joyful or sad, love or hate, sticking to the belief or feeling lost to the future, the illusion of poetic hero or the sentimentality of suffering and losing. It is from this demand of new emotional expression that the Returned Poets went into different directions and developed their poetic skills in the new era.