Exotic Construction of an Ancient Oriental Sappho: On Rexroth’s Creative Translation of Li Ch’ing-Chao’s Ci-Poems and its Influences

In her article “Exotic Construction of an Ancient Oriental Sappho: On Rexroth’s Creative Translation of Li Ch’ing-Chao’s Ci-Poems and its Influences,” Yuqun Fu discusses Li Ch’ing-Chao’s Ci-poems and her identity as a woman intellect in the patriarchal and feudal Song Dynasty of China. Due to Kenneth Rexroth’s feminist perspective and Sappho complex as well as his own pursuit to excel in the hipster stylistics of the newly prospering Beat writers, Rexroth turns to the Eastern women poets to fuel his own cause, especially in his idiosyncratic way of interpreting and translating Li Ch’ing-Chao. His translation focuses on gender identity and displays the manipulation of a mainstream culture to a nonmainstream culture. He misinterprets some frequent images and narrations in Li’s poems by singling out some love poems and supplementing some sexual implications and hence shapes the peculiar imagery of a heterogeneous ancient Chinese woman figure with the bold and unveiled expression of her own bodily desires and feminist emancipation with the mysterious veil of ancient Oriental mysticism. His translation of Li has profound influences on his own poetry in terms of themes and writing techniques. In addition, his version of Li has influenced some of his peers and subsequent translators, some Beat writers, and contemporary writers in the U.S.