ABSTRACT
This study of a sonnet by the Chinese poet Feng Zhi 馮至 (1905–93) shows the relationship between the transformation of language, prosody, and landscape conception in modern Chinese poetry. Feng Zhi reinterprets the classical tradition of the poetic scene in the times of the modern rupture between man and nature. He establishes a dialogue between Tao Yuanming, Ouyang Xiu, and Rilke, among others, acknowledging the death of the ancient scene in which the poet could pretend to merge silently within the natural landscape: he builds a new voice to respond to nature's silence. In so doing, he inscribes himself in the Chinese poetic tradition, which sees in the spectacle of nature an ethical call to self-transformation. This reinvention of the self is achieved through the use of an imported poetic form—the sonnet.
