Quietly now I leave the CamAs mute as I arrived;Waving sleeve so slight, lest skyof cloudspeck be deprived. Written on the occasion of his second and last trip to Cambridge, Xu Zhimo’s “Second Farewell to Cambridge” has become emblematic of modernist Chinese poetry. Xu (1897–1931) was one of the most prominent literary figures of China’s New Culture Movement, which sought to free Chinese thought through an emancipation of literature from classical strictures. Xu first entered King’s College, Cambridge, in 1922, where he was enraptured with Romantic poetry and literature. Upon…
