Every Man is an Island

Feng Zhi (1905-1993) was a distinguished translator and professor of German literature with a deep knowledge of the poetry of Goethe, Novalis and Rilke. Regarded as one of the most refined lyricists and sonnet writers in early modern Chinese literature, Feng Zhi’s mystical poetry manifests a gradual shift from Romanticism to Modernism and addresses some of the most relevant themes that interested Chinese intellectuals at the turn of the twentieth century: individualism, love, poetic transcendenc