徐遲的一生，和現代派有不解之緣。建國後他雖然出版過《戰爭和平進步》等詩集，但其藝術性遠沒有他年輕時寫的現代派詩膾炙人口。這位「思想進步，藝術退步」的詩人，到了新時期來了一場突變，在《外國文學研究》上大聲呼喚現代派的出現與中國文學的現代化，其代表作〈現代化與現代派〉，涉及到中國文學的發展該不該容納現代主義以及可不可能產生現代派等一系列重要的前沿理論問題。由於觀點尖銳，為主流話語所不容，在清除精神汙染運動中成為重點抨擊的對象。他後來以跳樓方式告別人世，與這種長期受壓抑的苦悶心情有某種內在的聯繫。

Xu Chi was closely related to modernism all his life. Although after 1949 he published a collection of his poetry "War, Peace and Progress", these poems proved less popular and artistically less mature than the poems he composed at his youth. The poet, known as "politically progressive but artistically retrogressive", had a sudden change of his view of art since the end of the 1970s. In the journal of "Foreign Literature Studies", Xu Chi wrote to call for the coming of modernism and modernization of Chinese literature. His masterpiece, "Modernization and Modernism", deals with a series of forward theoretical issues concerning the tolerance and the possibility of modernism in China. He was thus not accepted by the mainstream discourse for his sharp ideas and was severely attacked during the movement of purging spiritual pollution. Later, he had to commit suicide to leave this world, where he had been so long spiritually repressed and suffocated by an innate desperate gloominess.