ИСТИНА

This article uses textual and paratextual analysis to dissect works of contemporary Chinese poetry. It investigates the theoretical rationale behind contemporary poets’ paratexts and their relation to the poets’ linguistic exploration. The analysis reveals a paradox in contemporary Chinese verse: while contemporary “intellectual” and minjian poets have a shared vision of poetic verse as a “sublimation” of the ordinary, in practice they are increasingly aware that poetic language is itself a kind of deviation; it is a parade of abnormalities, even as it aspires to let the ordinary rule. Chinese authors thus see themselves both as continuators of Chinese aesthetical and philosophical traditions as well as heirs of Western philosophy and Western modernism’s linguistic experimentation.