关键词: 奥登, 《战地行纪》, 里尔克, 非政治化, 诗学转型

Abstract: W. H. Auden's journey in China is not merely a commissioned task for a travel book, but a landmark event of his poetic evolution, at the critical time when his earlier leftist beliefs were gravely challenged and he felt obliged to testify the validity of political writing and search for the authentic mission of a poet. During his fatal encounter with the alterity of Chinese culture, Auden's romantic political illusion rapidly evaporated, which consequently resulted in his abandoning political writing and adopting personal existential introspection as a new way of writing humanity and history. In Journey to a War, its “In Time of War” section in particular, Auden, with his artful strategy of “desinicization” and invocation of Rilke's “praise poetics,” put his newly developed “apolitical” artistic persona into its first full expression, which marked not only his consciously response toward such a critical proposition as “what are poets for in a time of upheaval?” but also his first endeavor for a poetic transformation in his later poetry.

Key words: W. H. Auden, Journey to a War, Rilke, apolitical, poetic transformation