BIAN ZHILIN

born Dec. 8, 1910, Hai-men, Kiangsu province, China Wade-Giles romanization Pien Chih-lin Chinese poet and translator especially noted for his highly evocative poetry. Bian left home to attend the university in Peking (Beijing) in the early 1930s. There he met Western-educated poets Hs Chih-mo and Wen I-to and became familiar with such poets as T.S. Eliot and the French Symbolists. Bian's first volume of poetry, San-ch'iu ts'ao (1933; Leaves of Three Autumns), contains verses filled with the melancholy and despair then prevalent among Chinese youth. His second work, entitled Ymu chi (1935; Fish Eyes Collection), is divided into five sections, mostly by order of composition. Han-yan chi (1936; The Han Garden Collection), which Bian compiled, also contains the work of He Ch'i-fang and Li Kuang-t'ien. His own contribution, once again in five parts, consists of 34 poems, many of which are included in later anthologies. Shih-nien shih-ts'ao (1942; Poems of a Decade) is an edition intended to represent the author's best work. It includes verse from the three earlier volumes, a section of poems that had not been published in book form, and a group of works originally published in 1940 as Wei-lao hsin-chi (Letters of Comfort). He published little original poetry thereafter, concentrating instead on translations, notably a verse translation of William Shakespeare's Hamlet.