Born at the critical moment of China's emergence into the modern world, Feng Zhi (1905–93), the founder of German Studies at Peking University and creator of the Chinese sonnet, was confronted with the three thousand year history of his home culture, where he felt himself ‘in exile’. Inspired by his examination of Western literature and philosophy, Feng Zhi transformed the ancient legend of Wu Zixu – a spectacular story of revenge – into his novel Wu Zixu (1946), a modern lyrical allegory of the wartime ‘lost’ generation's search for its home. Crystalizing attitudes of the 1940s Chinese avant-garde towards the transmitted canon and promoting the view that a historically desired ‘Chinese Renaissance’ depends upon a blending of Eastern and Western concepts, Feng Zhi's work leads the way to a literary (counter) revolution.
