The Verse of Shao Xunmei

This is the first English translation of the verse by the forgotten Shanghai poet Shao Xunmei (1906-1968). As a student at Cambridge, young Shao fell under the spell of poets like Gautier, Baudelaire and Verlaine, but above all the Englishman A.C. Swinburne. Back in Shanghai, Shao led a group of Western-influenced writers and artists who wanted to create a new culture for their country. Shao not only combined East and West in his life and art, but also turned his life into his art and vice-versa.

Shao Xunmei was the epitome of a movement in 1930s Shanghai that aimed to reinvigorate the rest of China with a new culture derived from the energies of the European decadence. After the communists seized power, he had to work as a translator, and died during the Cultural Revolution. Today, Shao still stands as a representative of a certain moment when many Chinese artists looked westward for models, and he achieved a unique East-West synthesis in both his life and his art.

Jicheng Sun earned a BA and an MA in English, the latter from Shandong University, where one of his professors was Hal Swindall, who introduced him to Shao Xunmei. Dr. Sun continued to earn a PhD in literary translation from Peking University, and is now an associate professor of English at Shandong Technology University.

Hal Swindall earned a PhD in comparative literature at UC Riverside in 1994. A chapter of his dissertation was on George Moore, and he learned about Shao from a Moore scholar who knew that Shao had translated some of Moore's works. Dr. Swindall has worked as an English professor at various East Asian universities for 20 years.