This paper examines the translational work of Guo Moruo, a prominent Chinese poet, who, like his peers in the New Culture Movement, turned to translation at the moment of national and personal crisis. It applies a psychoanalytic reading to Guo Moruo's translation of Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard and reveals how the poet/translator uses the medium of the original text to release his own repressed desires and unfulfilled wishes.