HSU CHIH-MO

born 1896, Hsia-shih, Chekiang province, China died Nov. 19, 1931, Tsinan, Shantung province Pinyin Xu Zhimo, pseudonym (Wade-Giles) Nan-hu, or Shih-che, original name Hs Yu-sen free-thinking Chinese poet who strove to loosen Chinese poetry from its traditional forms and to reshape it under the influences of Western poetry and the vernacular Chinese language. After receiving a classical Chinese education at Peking University, Hs Chih-mo went to the United States in 1918 to study economics and political science. Finding life there intolerable, he went to England in 1920 to study at the University of Cambridge, where he became fascinated with English Romantic poetry and decided upon a literary career. Returning to China in 1922, Hs Chih-mo began writing poems and essays in the vernacular style. He fell under the influence of the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore while serving as interpreter for him during a lecture tour of China. The foreign literature to which Hs Chih-mo had been exposed served to shape his own poetry and establish him as a leader in the modern poetry movement in China. He served as an editor of the literary supplement of the Ch'en pao (Morning Post) and as a professor at various universities. In 1928 he helped organize the Hsin-yeh shu-tien (Crescent Moon Book Company), which published a literary journal featuring Western literature. He was killed in a plane crash. In addition to four collections of verse, Hs Chih-mo produced several volumes of translations from many languages.