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'''Guo Moruo''' the Chinese poet, historian, archaeologist and statesman of letters (1892-1978) who was one of the founders of modern Chinese poetry and a leading scholar of ancient China. His career combined avant-garde verse, pioneering research on the oracle bones and bronze inscriptions, and a prominent place in the cultural life of the People's Republic.

== Early Life and Study in Japan ==
Guo Moruo was born Guo Kaizhen on 16 November 1892 in Leshan, in Sichuan province, into a family of merchants and scholars. He was a gifted student of classical learning, but in 1914 he went to Japan to study medicine, first at Okayama and then at Kyushu Imperial University, and it was abroad that his literary vocation took shape. In Japan he read widely in Western literature, particularly the poetry of Goethe, Heine and Whitman, whose expansive free verse and celebration of nature and the self deeply impressed him.

He also fell in love and married a Japanese woman, and the tension between his private happiness and his national feeling left a lasting mark on his writing. His early poems, written in a fever of inspiration, broke with classical forms and with the often sentimental verse of the May Fourth period. They spoke in a bold, cosmic voice of nature, creation and revolt, and they announced a new conception of the poet as a force rather than a decorator.

== The Goddesses and Modern Poetry ==
In 1921 Guo Moruo published The Goddesses, a collection that many regard as the founding work of modern Chinese poetry. Its poems, written in unrhymed and irregular lines, invoke the sun, the sea, the earth and the creative self, and they celebrate a spirit of rebellion and renewal that matched the temper of the age. The title poem imagines the poet as a new goddess creating the world, and the collection as a whole fused the influence of Whitman and Goethe with Chinese imagery and feeling.

Its energy and its freedom from convention made it revolutionary, and it inspired a generation of young poets to write in the vernacular. He followed it with further collections and with poetic dramas, and he helped to found the Creation Society, a literary group that championed romantic individualism before many of its members turned toward revolutionary politics. His early poetry remains the part of his work most admired for its sheer force.

== History, Archaeology and Scholarship ==
When his interests turned to politics and scholarship, Guo Moruo applied himself to the study of ancient China with remarkable energy. He was among the first to use the newly discovered oracle bones of the Shang dynasty as historical documents, deciphering their inscriptions and using them to reconstruct the earliest dynastic history. His research on the bronze inscriptions and on the chronology of the Zhou and Shang kings was pioneering and is still cited.

He combined archaeology, philology and the classical texts in a way that opened new paths for Chinese historians and made him a founder of modern Chinese prehistory and ancient history. His historical and philosophical essays, and his studies of such figures as Qu Yuan, re-examined the Chinese past in the light of new evidence and new questions. Though some of his conclusions were later contested, his methods and his range gave him a permanent place in the development of Chinese humanities.

== Politics, War and Public Office ==
From the mid-1920s Guo Moruo was drawn to revolutionary politics, and he joined the Nationalist movement and later aligned himself with the Communist side. He took part in the Northern Expedition and fled to Japan after the split of 1927, where he lived for a decade in exile, devoting himself to scholarship to avoid arrest. He returned to China after the outbreak of war with Japan in 1937 and became a leading figure in the cultural resistance.

He wrote patriotic historical plays and poems, and his residence in Chongqing became a centre of literary activity for the anti-Japanese cause. After 1949 he held many high offices, including the presidency of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and leading positions in cultural and literary organisations. He became one of the most visible spokesmen for cultural policy, and his career in public life was at times in tension with his scholarly independence.

== Legacy and Controversy ==
Guo Moruo's later years were marked by the political campaigns of his time, and his willingness to conform to changing political lines has been criticised by later observers, even as his early poetry and his scholarship remain highly valued. His conduct during the Cultural Revolution in particular has been the subject of debate. He died in Beijing on 12 June 1978, at a time when the political climate was beginning to change.

His request that his ashes be scattered over the fields stood as a modest final gesture from a man who had once written in a cosmic voice. He is remembered above all as a founder of modern Chinese poetry and as a pioneer of scientific archaeology and ancient history in China. The Goddesses gave Chinese verse a new freedom, and his use of the oracle bones helped to establish the disciplines on which later scholars of early China would build.

== See also ==
* The Goddesses
* Oracle bones
* Creation Society
* Chinese Academy of Sciences

== References ==

<ref name="r1">Guo Moruo, The Goddesses, Taidong Book Bureau, 1921.</ref>
<ref name="r2">Guo Moruo, Studies of Ancient Chinese Society, Xiandai Book Company, 1929.</ref>
<ref name="r3">David Tod Roy, Kuo Mo-jo: The Early Years, Harvard University Press, 1971.</ref>
<ref name="r4">Xiaobing Tang, Chinese Modern: The Heroic and the Quotidian, Duke University Press, 2000.</ref>

<references />

[[Category:Literature]]
[[Category:Poetry]]
[[Category:Contemporary China]]

Guo Moruo - Revision history

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