By Wang Ya-Yi

Translated by Gregory Laslo

Writers bring us stories of all kinds, but every writer has other tales from their life that have never been told or noticed. These stories can help us dive into a writer’s internal world and better understand their works.

For that reason, NMTL is striving to gather the stories of Taiwan’s classical writers. One group of writers, born predominantly  between 1860 and 1910, wrote primarily classical poetry. Through their classical poetry and other historical documents, readers can better understand their representative works, unique styles of writing, the literary movements they participated in, and further grasp their aspirations, their emotions, their opinions and criticisms of society, and their passion and desire to contribute to their nation and its people.

But the long passage of time and the concise, reserved, and restrained style of classical poetry make it difficult for readers to truly get to know the poets themselves through their works alone—their life experiences, personalities, day-to-day language, interests and hobbies, and their interactions with friends and relatives are practically invisible. Fortunately for us, these little details of their lives still survive in the memories of their family members. Many of these relatives are now in their eighties or nineties, and through their recounting, NMTL has been able to uncover and record stories of their parents’ and grandparents’ generations. At the same time, these interviews have led to the discovery of many original manuscripts and historical documents in their possession.

These precious snippets of life have now been brought together in two NMTL publications: Poets in Life: Interviews on Classical Taiwan Poets (2021) and Poets in Profile: Interviews on Classical Taiwan Poets (II) (2024). In the spirit of preserving intangible cultural heritage, NMTL will continue to gather and document the stories of writers. We hope that by working with these families to conduct interviews and create oral records, we can bridge the gap between our modern era and that of long-gone writers, giving readers a more comprehensive understanding of these literary forerunners active over a century ago, and cultivate further interest in classical Taiwan literature.