Here I analyze the phenomenon of a politically subversive message (“Down with Li Peng”) embedded, unseen by the editor, in a very traditional, nationalistic poem in the People’s Daily. In addition to discussing the literary/political ironies of this situation and the linguistic/literary/pragmatic issues involved in translation—I’ve translated the poem into English, attempting to keep the hidden “acrostic”—I reflect on the broader question of the relation between literary sensitivity (traste) and political sensitivity (acuteness, “correctness”). People are, after all, members of a linguistic community and culture before they are members of a political state.

acrostic, subversive, chauvinism, embedded, taste, irony, primal, political, sensitivity, correctness