Anticipatory Self-Martyrdom: The Image of Christ’s Crucifixion in Ai Qing’s Poetry

Many of modern China’s most famous writers invoked the figure of Jesus Christ and the New Testament story of his death in their creative works. Among those captivated by the archetypal martyr story of Western culture was the renowned leftist poet Ai Qing (1910–1996), though this aspect of his work has gone largely unacknowledged and unrecognized. What value did the figure of Jesus Christ and the story of his death have for writers like Ai Qing, who were by and large not religious believers and looked unfavorably on institutional Christianity? Through a case study analysis of Ai Qing’s employment of crucifixion symbolism and imagery in his early poetry and theoretical writing, this article argues that Ai Qing used the figure of Jesus and the story of his martyrdom to ruminate on the state of the Chinese nation and to express his own aspirations and anxieties about his role as an intellectual in a time of national tumult. In this way, the article uncovers religious and transcultural influences on modern Chinese martyr discourses and the important role they played in shaping modern Chinese writers’ perception of their world and themselves.