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Title |
Regeneration and Annihilation: A Preliminary Study of Left-Wing Poetry in Early Postwar Taiwan |
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Author |
Chang, Shih-Chin |
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Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Language and Creative Writing, National Taipei University of Education |
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Abstract |
In the 1930s, left-wing political movements in Taiwan were suppressed by the colonial authorities, rendering sustained political activism impossible. As a result, cultural production and literary creation became new arenas for left-wing intellectuals. Left-wing literature thus emerged, and left-wing poetry came to occupy a visible position within the literary field. However, from the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War to the end of World War II, the wartime censorship regime left virtually no space for the survival of left-wing thought. After 1949, when the Nationalist government retreated to Taiwan, left-wing ideas were likewise excluded under anti-communist cultural policies. What has received relatively little attention in previous scholarship is the interstitial period of the early postwar years (1945-1949). During this brief interval, left-wing poetry reappeared in Taiwan in significant quantity alongside the resurgence of left-wing intellectual currents — what this article terms the "regeneration" of left-wing poetry. The postwar "regeneration" of Taiwanese left-wing poetry can be broadly understood through three trajectories: first, the continuation of the left-wing poetic tradition established during the Japanese colonial period; second, the extension of the transnational networks of East Asian left-wing poetry formed before the war; and third, the emergence of a new generation of poets who developed postwar social critiques in response to new political, social, and economic conditions. Drawing on largely unexamined primary materials from the early postwar period, this article offers a preliminary exploration of how these poems inherited prewar Taiwanese or East Asian left-wing poetic lineages, and how they reflected postwar Taiwanese social realities while articulating visions of critique and reform. Under the shadow of the February 28 Incident and the White Terror, as left-wing writers — regardless of provincial background or generational affiliation — were imprisoned or forced to leave Taiwan, left-wing poetry that spoke from the standpoint of socially marginalized groups, sharply criticized social injustices, sought to eliminate inequality, and attempted to challenge the existing order was no longer tolerated, effectively marking its "annihilation." |
