Wen Yiduo

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Wen Yiduo (born Wen Jiahuo) was a Chinese poet and scholar known for nationalistic poetry. He was born on November 24, 1899, in what is now Xishui County, Hubei Province, and died on September 15, 1946, in Kunming. He studied at Tsinghua University and then went to Chicago in 1922 to study fine arts and literature. While in Chicago, he published his first poetry book, Red Candle. He returned to China in 1925 to teach at a university, and his second poetry book, Dead Water, appeared in 1928. He joined the Crescent Moon Society, wrote essays on poetry, and researched classical Chinese literature.

When the Second Sino-Japanese War began, Wen and other intellectuals moved to Kunming, Yunnan, where he taught at the wartime National Southwestern Associated University. He stopped writing poetry in 1931 and turned to social criticism. He became politically active in 1944 with the China Democratic League. In 1946 he was assassinated by Kuomintang agents after giving a funeral eulogy for his friend Li Gongpu.

Wen Yiduo’s poetry experimented with classical Chinese forms and was influenced by English poets like Keats, Tennyson, and Browning. He sought to revive the spirit of Qu Yuan, an ancient Chinese poet he greatly admired. His Dead Water poems are noted for their musical style and for addressing social injustice. There are monuments to him in Kunming, and he and his wife Gao Zhen are buried at Babaoshan in Beijing. His grandson Wen Liming has donated materials about his life to Yunnan Normal University.