Bei Dao (1949- ) - pseudonym of Zhao Zhengkai
Chinese poet, who became in the 1970s the poetic voice of his generation. Bei Dao's education was interrupted by the Cultural Revolution. He was a political activist but later lost his enthusiasm, and started to write as an alternative to his early actions. His central themes are the pressures of a conformist society, disillusionment, and sense of rootlessness.
After braving the music of the air raid alarm
I hang my shadow on the hat-stand
take off the dog's eyes
(which I use for escape)
remove my false teeth (these final words)
and close my astute and experienced pocket watch
(that garrisoned heart)
The hours fall in the water one after the other
in my dreams like depth bombs
they explode
(from 'Coming Home at Night' in Old Snow, 1991)
Zhao Zhenkai (Bei Dao) was born in Beijing. His father was a professional administrator and his mother a doctor. As a child Bei Dao received good education at the Fourth Middle School. At the age of seventeen, he joined the Cultural Revolution, which interrupted his formal education. He was briefly a Red Guard and "reeducated" in the country. From 1969 to 1980 he was a construction worker. In the early 1970s Bei Dao started to write under several pseudonyms poems which probed the boundaries of the official literature of his time. Literally Bei Dao means North Island - the name was given to him by friends because he is from the north and something of a loner.
In 1976 Bei Dao's poetry gained recognition especially among the Democracy Movement. His most famous poem, "Huida," declared that "I don't believe the sky is blue." Bei Dao expressed a growing desire for freedom and disappointment of unfilled expectations. He cofounded with Mang Ke an unofficial literary magazine Jintian (Today), which gathered around it other young poets and dissidents. It was published between 1978 and 1980. At this time Bei Dao's work made a clear break from the official, orthodox expression. Hostile critics considered it nihilistic. Bei Dao used elusive imagery and linguistic ambiguity - "Life. The sun rises too," he wrote giving the officials much trouble to conclude, is he criticizing Mao Zedong (often referred as "the red sun in our hearts") or not. He also attempted to resolve the problem of the gulf between spoken and written Chinese in experimental poems. The "misty school of poetry" was attacked in the press, when its representatives arose from the underground, and in 1980 the magazine was banned. Their mentality was strange to their critics, but at the bottom it was a question, was the Chinese reality behind words "obscure" or their writings.
Bei Dao gained first international acclaim with the poem 'Answer,' which was published in the official poetry journal Shi Kan (Poetry Monthly) in 1980. 'I don't believe the sky is blue; / I don't believe in thunder's echoes; / I don't believe that dreams are false; / I don't believe that death has no revenge." (from 'The Answer') Bei Dao's tone was defiant and especially the last lines from 'Notes on the Coty of the Sun,' have been often quoted as representing the disillusionment of his generation.
Peace
At the emperor's tomb
a rusting musket sprouts a fresh green twig
to make a crutch for some crippled veteran.
Motherland
Wrought on an old bronze shield, she leans
in a dusty corner of he museum.
Life
A net.
(from 'Notes in the City of the Sun')
In the early 1980s Bei Dao worked at the Foreign Languages Press in Beijing. He was the key target in the government's Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign, but in 1983 he managed to meet secretly the American poet Allen Ginsberg, who had came to China as part of a group of American authors. Bei Dao soo realized that Ginsberg did not know much about contemporary Chinese poetry. He was mostly interested in Bei Dao's dissident status and recommended that he should translate Gregory Corso's (1930-2001) poems into Chinese. Later they met several times, among others in South Korea, where Ginsberg upset high officials with his questions about Korea's human rights. "At the banquet, the highest of officials and lowliest of interns pushed their way into photos with him. Allen always dragged me along, despite my protests. I had never seen him as angry as when one of the officials, seeing that I was sharing in Allen's limelight, showed me out of the way. Allen stomped his feet and exploded. "You son of a bitch! Don't you fucking know he's a friend of mine - a Chinese poet!?" (from Blue House, 2000)
In 1983 Bei Dao's poems were published in the East Asia Papers series of the Cornell University East Asia Program and in Renditions 19/20 in Hong Kong by The Chinese University Press. Poems also appeared in the Bulletin of Concerned Asinan Scholars (1984) and in Contemporary Chinese Literature, edited by Michael Duke (1985). When the political situation changed in the mid-1980s, Bei Dao started to travel in Europe and in the Unites States, often with his wife, the painter Shao Fei, and their daughter, Tiantian. Although political control of the public debate showed some signs of relaxation, his poetry turned more pessimistic, culminating in the nightmarish "Bai ri meng" (1986). Bei Dao shi xuan (1986, The August Sleepwalker), a collection of poems written between 1970 and 1886, was received with enthusiam, but the work was soon banned by the authorities. After a year in England, followed by a tour in the United States, Bei Dao returned to China in the late 1988. "I watch the process of apples spoiling," he said.
Writing in free verse, Bei Dao is best known for intensely compressed images and cryptic style. It leaves the reader to supply the nuances in the empty spaces between the lines. His search for a new poetry has drawn on classical Chinese poetic grammar, modernist poetry, and influences from Western literature. Mirrors, the sky, different seasons and clocks appear often in the imagery - the sky could be 'doomsday-purple,' 'scoop-shaped,' 'absolute,' or a vast 'five-year-old sky.' The poet's efforts 'to pass through the mirror / have not succeeded,' 'we are born from the mirror,' and 'the window makes a frame for the sky.'
The novella Bodong (Waves) made Bei Dao one of the prominent figures in Chinese modernist fiction. The stories in the book about the "lost generation" of the Cultural Revolution are seemingly disjointed. Bei Dao uses multiple narrators and interior monologue, breaking away from the traditional ways of expression. "As long as one's thought are spoken and written down, they'll form another life, they won't perish with the flesh," thinks Wang Qi in 'In the Ruins.' Waves was followed by shorter prose pieces dealing with contemporay subjects, such as the gulf between the official truth and reality.
"Not gods but the children
amid the clashing of helmets
say their prayers
mothers breed light
darkness breeds mothers
the stone rolls, the clock runs backwards
the eclipse of the sun has already take place"
(from 'Requiem,' written for the victims of June Fourth)
In 1989 Bei Dao signed a letter with 33 intellectuals to the NPC and the Central Committee, which led to a petition campaign that called for the release of political prisoners, among them the democratic activist Wei Jingsheng. When the demonstration in Tiananmen Square was suppressed in the massacre of June 4, Bei Dao was in Berlin. Some of his poems were circulated by students during the democracy movement in 1989, and he was accused of helping to incite the events in the Square. On the banners had been his lines from the 1970s: "I will not kneel on the ground, / Allowing the executioners to look tall, / The better to obstruct the wind of freedom".
Bei Dao decided to stay in exile. Also his friends Duo Duo, Yang Lian, and Gu Cheng chose exile - Gu Cheng's wife was killed and he committed suicide. With former contributors he reestablished Jintian, one of the forums for Chinese writers abroad. All the poems in the bilingual collection Old Snow, published in 1991 by New Directions Books, were written post-Tiananmen Square, traumatic watershed in Bei Dao's life.
After teaching in Sweden, where his acquaintances included the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer, Bei Dao moved to Denmark and Germany, and eventually settled in the U.S., becoming a resident at the University of Michigan. He has said: "On the one hand poetry is useless. It can't change the world materially. On the other hand it is a basic part of human existence." A collection of Bei Dao's short stories, 13, rue du bonheur (1999), was translated into French by Chantal Chen-Andro.
For further reading: The Chinese Poetry of Bei Dao, 1978-2000: Resistance And Exile by Dian Li (2006); Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, vol. 1., ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999); The Literature of China in the Twentieth Century by B.S. McDougall and K. Louie (1997); World Authors 1985-90, ed. by Vineta Colby (1995); Contemporary World Writers, ed. by Tracy Chevalier (1993): Modern Chinese Poetry by M. Yeh (1991); Literary Exile in the 20th Century, ed. by M. Tucker (1991); Contemporary Chinese Literature, ed. by H. Martin (1986) - In Finnish: Suomeksi Bei Daon runoja on julkaistu mm. Pertti Seppälän kääntämänä teoksessa Maailman runosydän (1998), toim. Hannu Tarmio ja Janne Tarmio.
SELECTED WORKS:
* Taiyang cheng zhaji, 1978
* Huida, 1979
* Notes from the City of the Sun, 1983 (trans. by Bonnie S. McDougall)
* Bodong, 1985 - Waves: Stories (trans. by Susette Ternent Cooke)
* Gui lai di mo sheng ren, 1986
* Bei Dao shi xuan, 1986 - The August Sleepwalker (trans. by Bonnie S. McDougallrev. ed. 1990)
* translator: Bei-ou Xiandai shi xuan, 1987 (contemporary Scandinavian poetry)
* Bei Dao shi ji, 1988
* Old Snow, 1991 (trans. by Bonnie S. McDougall and Chen Maiping)
* Forms of Distance, 1994 (trans. by David Hinton)
* Lan fang zi, 1998 - Blue House (trans. by Ted Huters, Fengying Ming)
* Unlock: Poems, 2000 (trans. by Eliot Weinberger, Iona Man-Cheong )
* At the Sky's Edge: Poems 1991-1996, 2001 (bilingual edition of Forms of Distance; Landscape Over Zero, trans. by David Hinton)
* Wu ye zhi men, 2002 - Midnight's Gate: Essays, 2005 (ed. by Christopher Mattison, trans. by Matthew Fryslie)
* Chuan yue chou hen de hei an, 2005
poets.org
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Zhao Zhenkai was born on August 2, 1949 in Beijing. His pseudonym Bei Dao literally means "North Island," and was suggested by a friend as a reference to the poet's provenance from Northern China as well as his typical solitude.
Dao was one of the foremost poets of the Misty School, and his early poems were a source of inspiration during the April Fifth Democracy Movement of 1976, a peaceful demonstration in Tiananmen Square. He has been in exile from his native China since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989.
His books of poetry include Unlock (2000); At the Sky's Edge: Poems 1991-1996 (1996), for which David Hinton won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from The Academy of American Poets; Landscape Over Zero (1995); Forms of Distance (1994); Old Snow (1991); and The August Sleepwalker (1990). His work has been translated into over 25 languages.
He is also the author of short stories and essays. In 1978 he and colleague Mang Ke founded the underground literary magazine Jintian (Today), which ceased publication under police order. In 1990 the magazine was revived, and Bei Dao serves as the Editor-in-Chief.
In his foreword to At the Sky's Edge, Michael Palmer writes: "Anointed as an icon on the Democracy Wall and as the voice of a generation by the events of Tiananmen Square in 1989, and thereby also fated to exile, Bei Dao has followed a path of resistance that abjures overt political rhetoric while simultaneously keeping faith with his passionate belief in social reform and freedom of the creative imagination."
His awards and honors include the Aragana Poetry Prize from the International Festival of Poetry in Casablanca, Morocco, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has been a candidate several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and was elected an honorary member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters. At the request of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, he traveled to Palestine as part of a delegation for the International Parliament of Writers.
Bei Dao was a Stanford Presidential lecturer and has taught at the University of California at Davis, the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, and Beloit College in Wisconsin. In 2006, Bei Dao was allowed to move back to China.
Singtao News
北島接受星島日報記者黃偉江先生訪問全文
Interview in English by Singtao reporter David Huang
Bei Dao (pseudonym of Zhao Zhenkai), one of the most renown living poets, will be giving a reading of his recent work at the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco. His oeuvre has been translated into 25 languages, awarded various literary prizes and numerously nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature.
The Chinese poet’s life has been a striking dance of strenuous situational circumstance and unyielding creative spirit. Born in the pivotal year of 1949, the poet’s youth was marked by devotion to the state ideology. In fact, in unison with his generation, he became a member of the infamous Red Guards, and following the Cultural Revolution, was sent to be “reeducated” in the countryside. The 11 years he spent doing labor in the countryside have been definitive, fostering the sense of disillusion and alienation that seeps through his work. Bei Dao first gained recognition through his participation with the Misty poets, who collaboratively published the progressive literary magazine ‘Today”. Following the Tiananmen Square protests the magazine and the movement was banned, and Bei Dao was forced into exile. The poet has since been living and publishing abroad, taking residence in Germany, Sweden, Norway and settling in USA, where has been lecturing in various universities.
The poets words have developed as a response to his personal crisis, and through the interplay of symbols, perspective and metaphor his words have created a parallel of truth and humanity. His poetry engages the reader’s imagination on all levels, enveloping the subconscious between the words, and consuming the conscious with the word. and In 2006 Bei Dao was finally given permission to return to China, and his reading in the CCC will be the last he will give while in exile. The reading will be both in English and Chinese.
7月29日 （周日）下午2：00， 舊金山中華文化中心將有幸邀請到著名詩人北島進行詩誦會（中英文），免費入場，$5 建議捐贈， 座位有限，請從速報名並提早到達。
“北島是一代中國青年的精神領袖。他早期的詩歌中具有強烈的懷疑和叛逆精神，在他的詩歌中，人們見到的是一個內心充滿痛苦和不安，熱血激昂，具有社 會責任感和正義感，正在努力擺脫黑暗，四處尋找光明的青年形像。面對中國七十年代“文革”前後紛亂荒誕的社會現實，他有時感覺到苦悶和迷惘，“一切都是命 運/一切都是煙雲《一切》”，在他的成名代表作《回答》中，他寫出了充滿激憤唾棄和理想追尋的響亮詩句──“卑鄙是卑鄙者的通行證，高尚是高尚者的墓誌 銘。”這兩句詩和另一位朦朧詩代表詩人顧城的“黑夜給了我黑色的眼睛/我卻用它來尋找光明”兩句成為了一代青年人的精神寫真。直到今天，這四行詩還是在中 國當代青年中傳誦最廣，影響最大的新詩名句。” 節選自張祈的“ 歡迎你，詩人北島！”一文。
结局或开始—献给遇罗克 (節選）
我，站在这里
代替另一个被杀害的人
为了每当太阳升起
让沉重的影子象道路
穿过整个国土
…
必须承认
在死亡白色的寒光中
我，战栗了
谁愿意做陨石
或受难者冰冷的塑像
看着不熄的青春之火
在别人的手中传递
即使鸽子落到肩上
也感不到体温和呼吸
它们梳理一番羽毛
又匆匆飞去
我是人
我需要爱
我渴望在情人的眼睛里
度过每个宁静的黄昏
在摇篮的晃动中
等待着儿子第一声呼唤
在草地和落叶上
在每一道真挚的目光上
我写下生活的诗
这普普通通的愿望
如今成了做人的全部代价
…
Excerpt from ‘Dedication to Yu Luoke”
…I write poems of life
This universal longing
Has now become the whole cost of being a man…
Here I stand
Replacing another, who has been murdered
I have no other choice
And where I fall
Another will stand
A wind rests on my shoulders
Stars glimmer in the wind
Perhaps one day
The sun will become a withered wreath
To hang before
The growing forest of gravestones
Of each unsubmitting fighter
Black crows the night’s tatters
Flock thick around (tr. Bonnie McDougall)
Excerpt from Quiet and Tremble
you are drawing yourself
being born–light’s rising
turning the paper-night
madness that you released
is quiet cast by truth
pride shines as if internal wounds
darken all the words
Bei Dao Interview en
Bei Dao Interview by David Huang (Singtao USA)
Q=Question from reporter A=Answer from Bei Dao
Q: You once said this about American poetry: “Poetry has become the middle-class’ dessert, it’s a game of the brain, it has nothing to do with the heart.” However, a lot of contemporary poetry is intergraded into rap music, and has become very popular among the younger generation. What do you think about that phenomenon? With consideration of this trend, where lies “the game of the heart”?
A: I know very little about rap music. Generally speaking, poetry and music are two different things. Occasionally their spheres intersect, as with the case of Bob Dylan, who is both a singer and an important poet.
The main difference between poetry and song is its medium. Poetry is about language, songs are about melody. Rap music is more about language, but this type of language is more outward, spontaneous, current and kind of critical; poetry is completely different, it’s inward, hidden and private, most of time above or outside of reality.
Q. Poet or poetry, which is more interesting?
A:It’s hard to use the word “interesting” about poet or poetry. I am afraid this standard is irrelevant in the examination of something inherently subjective.
Q: Your early poetry seems to be more rebellious and angry, your recent prose and poetry are more vicissitudinous and peaceful. Is creativity something very personal? Is it necessary to communicate?
A: Based on the structure of creative writing, the substance of poetry and prose is different from each other, and is hard to make a comparison. Literature certainly needs communication, and poetry and prose are two different ways to convey an idea. While one may be a bridge, the other could be a road.
Q: You once said, “I drift around with nothing, Chinese is my only luggage”. The Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco strives to explore the issue of cultural assimilation and culture identity under the background of globalization and migration. Having drifted outside of China for many years, what kind of impact does being in exile have on your thinking and writing? Does it change your conception of territory, borders and homeland? And finally, how do you view the “World citizen”generation, which your daughter is a part of?
A: You combined the two sentences I said into one, which is kind of dangerous. In terms of cultural assimilation and identity, it is a constant changing concept following the continual expansion of horizon. We are the generation of exile. We were sent to the countryside as teenagers, went far away and flew high, since then, home is no longer home. Later on we went further, too far to go back home, even no longer wanting to go back home. Incidentally, this coincided with the trend of worldwide migration. After these many years of drifting, I went from homeless to feeling the world is my home. It seems to be some kind of destiny. My daughter inherited my destiny of drifting, crossing through multiple cultures, and thus she has a vision that is different from her peers. I worried about her when she was young, and now I am really proud of her. Because she has grown strong wings, that will enable her to balance the danger in flying.
Q: You mentioned you like the American jazz music, and long for the America in the 30’s. What are you listening to currently? What do you long for now?
A: I still like jazz, but I don’t listen to it as much as I used to. Now I mainly listen to classical music, especially solo. It’s like a dialogue between two hearts.
Q: You mentioned many poets in your new books, and it seems that you have established a friendship that is above language. For an art form like poetry, can we establish a communication above language?
A: Friendship is friendship. Poetry must be translated, this is the dilemma the human being has as described in the collapse of Babel tower in the Bible.
Q: Does China still need poetry? What kind of poetry do we need for China nowadays?
A: As long as there is human being, we need poetry. Poetry is the spirit of a nation (ethnic group). Without it, we became walking soulless corpses. Regretfully, we are failing in our own humanity. I don’t expect everyone to read and understand poetry, but they should at least understand the importance of poetry in the ethnic spirit.
Q: Facing commercialization of everything, what kind of role should the poet play?
A: Poet should always be a poet, this is a life calling and a profession. If you ask poet to be a business man and vice versa, it’s a huge mess.
Q: After 20 year, the readers in China have transformed quite a bit, maybe you can share your views on the matter?
A: Time changes, so do the readers. Sadly, the commercialization and the internet generates a class of predominantly tasteless writers and tasteless readers. A good writer will not follow the readers.
Q: You lived in seven countries in four years, moved 15 times, you said “I am grateful to all the turmoil these years, it takes me away from the center, the turbulence (of China), and lets my life really calm down.” After all these years, what did you gain? What did you lose?
A: Without the turmoil and drifting, it’s hard to imagine that I can still be myself in China’s turbulence. I probably don’t have the composure. Looking at many of my peers in China, I feel really fortunate. I feel like I’ve been to the sky’s edge, and took a very tough road. But I first needed to conquer myself.
Q: If time goes back to 1989, what would be your choice?
A: Of course what happened in 1989 is unfortunate. But in the long run, it was the incident that caused many people to flee their homes, which is not necessarily bad for the Chinese culture. Our ancient nation needs someone to be “away from home”, suffer a little, be punished a little, so that then they can gain some new understanding. I am very lucky to be one of them. To a certain extent, it’s a historical crusade, but the intention of the crusade is not to conquer the enemy, but for the person to conquer him/herself.
Standford
IN HIS OWN WORDS (Interviews with Bei Dao)
(Compiled by Adán Griego, co-editor of the Presidential Lectures Web Site)
Excerpted from:
Gleichmann, Gabi. "An Interview With Bei Dao." Modern Chinese Literature. Vol. 9, 1996. Pp 387-393.
G: Is poetry a way of understanding the world, understanding reality? Is that what poetry means to you?
B: I see a connection between poetry and rebellion. Rebellion is a major theme of my generation. But I believe rebellion begins at the personal level, for instance, my rebellion against my father. Poetry is a form of rebellion against the decades of chaos in China
……
G: Who are some of the poets who have influenced your poetry?
B: I still remember how, on first reading the Chinese translation of Garcia Lorca in the 1970s, I was struck by his unique imagery and impeccable music. Poets of my generation (who were still underground at the time) tried to imitate him but eventually we gave up when we realized he was inimitable. There were of course other poets in the ‘Generation of 1927,’ such as Rafael Alberti, Vicente Aleixandre and Antonio Machado. They form what I call ‘the golden chain of Spanish poetry.’ At the beginning of this golden chain, we should add the Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo. Though he did not belong to the ‘Generation of 1927,’ in spirit they were closely related. We feel the power of mystery in his Trilce, which, published in the same year as T.S.Elliot’s The Waste Land, has long been considered a classic of modernist poetry.
This links of the golden chain in German poetry seem to me far less close than those I have found in Spanish poetry. There seems to be no ‘blood relation’ between my favorite German-speaking poets: Georg Trakl, Maria Rilke, and Paul Celan. Trakl and Rilke belong to the same generation, but the extremism of Trakl and the generous receptivity of Rilke create a sharp contrast…. Russian poetry, especially Romantic poetry of the 19th century, has always had a special significance for Chinese poets. Due to strict control over a long period of time, however, we were unable to read any modernist Russian poetry until the 1980s. Boris Pasternk, Osip Mandestam, and Gennandi Ajgi (Pasternak’s student) form a golden chain of pain and misery in Russian poetry.
In order to make a living, I started doing translations in the mid 1980s. My reading of modern Swedish poetry revealed to me the golden chain in Swedish Poetry: Gunnar Ekelof, Eric Lindergren, and Tomas Transtromer.
…….
Of all the poets I mentioned earlier, I like Celan best because I think there is a deep affinity between him and myself in the way he combines the sense of pain with language experiments. He transforms his experience in the concentration camps into a language of pain. That is very similar to what I am trying to do. Many poets separate their experience from the language they use in poetry, but in the case of Celan there is a fusion, a convergence of experience and experimental language.
……..
G: Let’s change the topic. Exile gives you freedom, I am not romanticizing exile. As a child I experienced exile when I left Hungary and moved to Sweden. I think exile gives you freedom but solitude is the price you pay….
B: Though some writers would not admit it, I think there is a positive side to exile…. If exile is an endless journey, then it’s a journey through emptiness. It gives you new understanding abut emptiness.
……
G: ..exile has done something to your work…
B: …I thing exile has given me many opportunities to face the heart of darkness, which every human being must face. … This path leading to the heart of darkness, some people may refuse to take it, some may give up half-way through. It has given me the courage to go on.
Diane Wei Liang
The hero of our times
Many years ago when I was at university, I read poems by the great contemporary Chinese poet Bei Dao. I had managed to get hold of a copy of his collected work, bought off someone who was associated with the underground printing shop.
Bei Dao's poetry was banned, but almost every student in China was reading or desperately wanting to read it. His voice was the conscience of the nation.
Then came the spring of 1989. We marched onto the streets of Beijing and into Tiananmen Square carrying Bei Dao's poems on our banners. His words seemed to speak to and for all of us, we took them on without hesitation or knowing that they would one day bring its author a life-long exile from his country. On June 4th, the army arrived. Tiananmen Square was cleared, students scattered. Time went on, some of us began new lives in foreign lands, China changed. Through the years Bei Dao's poetry remained with me, as a marking and a memory of a time, perhaps in the same way that Allan Ginsberg's work meant so much for the 1950's and 60's generation of young Americans.
We all have certain notions about our heroes, some of which have more to do with our high expectations than with reality. When I finally met Bei Dao at Sydney Writer's Festival last year, the reality was overwhelming but not at all disappointing. He was gentle and at the same time penetrating, just like the poetry, and reluctant, to almost a degree of discomfort, about his stature as the man who had inspired a generation.
I hosted a party for Bei Dao at my house when he was in London recently. When I called to invite my friends, I tried to think of a description that best suited him – Bob Dylan came to mind. There might be many things that we respect in a writer: their work (Bei Dao has been repeatedly short-listed for the Nobel Prize for literature), their intellect, wit or kindness. For me, Bei Dao stands for truthfulness. His reluctance to be labelled in any political terms, which would have certainly brought him more attention, is admirable. He is an artist who desires to speak what's in his heart and only that, and because of it, he'd always be my hero.
Diane Wei Liang, author
M v Crevel
Bei Dao
(China, 1949)
 Bei Dao began writing poetry in the early 1970s. He is seen as the figurehead of the first generation of poets in the People’s Republic of China to free themselves from the orthodoxy of state-controlled literature. In 1989, Bei Dao was accused of helping to incite the student revolt in Tiananmen Square, and forced into exile. |
He now lives in the United States. In 1994, when he tried to revisit Beijing, he was refused access to his native country and language.
Since then he has continued to write his slender, self-assured poems, about love and death, of course, and the characteristic, enigmatic scenes he encounters – but also about exile, a theme that seamlessly links up with his earlier work. Even though Bei Dao does not adhere to strict metre, rhyme patterns or tonal contrasts, his recent work is at times classical Chinese in style: lapidary, with direct juxtaposition of images and very little noise in between. This minimalism in form corresponds to a minimalism in content. The poems are strongly associative – owing, in considerable measure, to the flexibility of Chinese grammar, which offers ample scope for ambiguity – and sometimes succeed in staying afloat as wholes made up of more or less separate components, without settling. The question of qhether this condition is a reflection of the poet’s life need not obscure our literary experience of the work.
The Australian Sinologist Simon Patton, echoing the words of other reviewers of hermetic poetry, has said about Bei Dao’s work: “The text compels attention, while it defies understanding.” It is an essential feature of Bei Dao’s poetic art, which has by now won worldwide recognition. His work has been widely translated; collections translated into English include At the Sky’s Edge: Poems 1991–1996 (2001) and Midnight’s Gate (2005).
Since then he has continued to write his slender, self-assured poems, about love and death, of course, and the characteristic, enigmatic scenes he encounters – but also about exile, a theme that seamlessly links up with his earlier work. Even though Bei Dao does not adhere to strict metre, rhyme patterns or tonal contrasts, his recent work is at times classical Chinese in style: lapidary, with direct juxtaposition of images and very little noise in between. This minimalism in form corresponds to a minimalism in content. The poems are strongly associative – owing, in considerable measure, to the flexibility of Chinese grammar, which offers ample scope for ambiguity – and sometimes succeed in staying afloat as wholes made up of more or less separate components, without settling. The question of qhether this condition is a reflection of the poet’s life need not obscure our literary experience of the work.
The Australian Sinologist Simon Patton, echoing the words of other reviewers of hermetic poetry, has said about Bei Dao’s work: “The text compels attention, while it defies understanding.” It is an essential feature of Bei Dao’s poetic art, which has by now won worldwide recognition. His work has been widely translated; collections translated into English include At the Sky’s Edge: Poems 1991–1996 (2001) and Midnight’s Gate (2005).
Alison Granucci
Bei Dao
Chinese Poet, Story Writer & Essayist
“Like reading Chekhov or Turgenev reflected in a porcelain bowl.” —The London Times
“Bei Dao's writing provides ample evidence of the written word's potential to effect political change...Few living writers possess a voice as elegant as that heard in Unlock.” —Andrew Ervin, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Born in Beijing in 1949, Bei Dao is one of the most gifted writers in modern China. He became, in the 1970s, the poetic voice of his generation and has gained international acclaim over the last decades for his haunting interior poetic landscapes; his poetry is translated and published in some twenty-five languages around the world. 1n 1978, he co-founded the first unofficial literary journal since 1949 called Today (Jintian), which became a prominent forum for “Misty Poets,” a group derided by the Communist literary establishment for their “obscure” language and departure from socialist realism. Since 1987, Bei Dao has lived and taught in England, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, France, and the United States. His work translated into thirty languages, including six poetry volumes in English: The Rose of Time (2009), Unlock (2000), Landscape Over Zero (1996), Forms of Distance (1994), Old Snow (1992), The August Sleepwalker (1990), the collection of stories Waves (1990), the collections of essays Midnight's Gate (2005), and Blue House (2000). He won numerous awards, including Jeanette Schocken Literary Prize from Bremerhaven, Germany (2005), International Poetry Argana Award from the House of Poetry in Morocco (2002), Tucholsky Prize from Swedish PEN (1990). He is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Bei Dao is seen as the figurehead of the first generation of poets in the People's Republic of China to free themselves from the orthodoxy of state-controlled literature. In 1989, he was accused of helping to incite the student revolt in Tienanmen Square: On the banners in the square had been his lines from the 1970s: "I will not kneel on the ground, / Allowing the executioners to look tall, / The better to obstruct the wind of freedom." Bei Dao was forced into exile. He, along with other exiled writers and artists, has found a voice in a renewed version of Jintian, which was re-launched in Stockholm in 1990 and became one of the influential forums for Chinese writers abroad.
Widely treasured by those who participated in China's democracy movement, Bei Dao's poetry is marked by the effort to reveal the nature of the self, to identify both public and private wounds, to trust in instinctive perceptions, and to reach out to other afflicted souls. It depicts the intimacy of passion, love, and friendship in a society where trust can literally be a matter of life and death. The Australian Sinologist Simon Patton, echoing the words of other reviewers of hermetic poetry, said about Bei Dao's work: "The text compels attention, while it defies understanding." It is an essential feature of Bei Dao's poetic art, which has by now won worldwide recognition. Bei Dao lives and teaches in Hong Kong.
About THE ROSE OF TIME (2009)
The Rose of Time: New & Selected Poems presents a glowing selection of poetry by contemporary China’s most celebrated poet, Bei Dao. From his earliest work, Bei Dao developed a wholly original poetic language composed of mysterious and arresting images tuned to a distinctive musical key. This collection spans Bei Dao’s entire writing life, from his first book to appear in English, The August Sleepwalker, published a year after the Tiananmen tragedy, to the increasingly interior and complex poems of Landscape Over Zero and Unlock, to new never-before-published work. This bilingual edition also includes a prefatory note by the poet, and a brief afterword by the editor Eliot Weinberger. A must-read book from a seminal poet who has been translated into over thirty languages.
About MIDNIGHT'S GATE (2005)
In Midnight's Gate, Bei Dao redefines the essay form with the same elliptical precision of his poetry, but with an openness and humor that complements the complexity of his poems. The twenty essays of Midnight's Gate form a travelogue of a poet who has lived in some seven countries since his exile from China in 1989. The work carries us from Palestine to Sacramento. At one point we are led into a basement in Paris for a production of Gorky's Lower Depths; the next moment we are in the mountains of China where Bei Dao worked for eleven years as a concrete mixer and ironworker. The subjective experience deepens and multiplies in these essays, filled with the stories of ordinary Chinese immigrants, as well as those of literary, artistic, and political figures. And it all coheres with a poet's observations, meditations, and memories.
Chinese Poet, Story Writer & Essayist
“Like reading Chekhov or Turgenev reflected in a porcelain bowl.” —The London Times
“Bei Dao's writing provides ample evidence of the written word's potential to effect political change...Few living writers possess a voice as elegant as that heard in Unlock.” —Andrew Ervin, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Born in Beijing in 1949, Bei Dao is one of the most gifted writers in modern China. He became, in the 1970s, the poetic voice of his generation and has gained international acclaim over the last decades for his haunting interior poetic landscapes; his poetry is translated and published in some twenty-five languages around the world. 1n 1978, he co-founded the first unofficial literary journal since 1949 called Today (Jintian), which became a prominent forum for “Misty Poets,” a group derided by the Communist literary establishment for their “obscure” language and departure from socialist realism. Since 1987, Bei Dao has lived and taught in England, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, France, and the United States. His work translated into thirty languages, including six poetry volumes in English: The Rose of Time (2009), Unlock (2000), Landscape Over Zero (1996), Forms of Distance (1994), Old Snow (1992), The August Sleepwalker (1990), the collection of stories Waves (1990), the collections of essays Midnight's Gate (2005), and Blue House (2000). He won numerous awards, including Jeanette Schocken Literary Prize from Bremerhaven, Germany (2005), International Poetry Argana Award from the House of Poetry in Morocco (2002), Tucholsky Prize from Swedish PEN (1990). He is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Bei Dao is seen as the figurehead of the first generation of poets in the People's Republic of China to free themselves from the orthodoxy of state-controlled literature. In 1989, he was accused of helping to incite the student revolt in Tienanmen Square: On the banners in the square had been his lines from the 1970s: "I will not kneel on the ground, / Allowing the executioners to look tall, / The better to obstruct the wind of freedom." Bei Dao was forced into exile. He, along with other exiled writers and artists, has found a voice in a renewed version of Jintian, which was re-launched in Stockholm in 1990 and became one of the influential forums for Chinese writers abroad.
Widely treasured by those who participated in China's democracy movement, Bei Dao's poetry is marked by the effort to reveal the nature of the self, to identify both public and private wounds, to trust in instinctive perceptions, and to reach out to other afflicted souls. It depicts the intimacy of passion, love, and friendship in a society where trust can literally be a matter of life and death. The Australian Sinologist Simon Patton, echoing the words of other reviewers of hermetic poetry, said about Bei Dao's work: "The text compels attention, while it defies understanding." It is an essential feature of Bei Dao's poetic art, which has by now won worldwide recognition. Bei Dao lives and teaches in Hong Kong.
About THE ROSE OF TIME (2009)
The Rose of Time: New & Selected Poems presents a glowing selection of poetry by contemporary China’s most celebrated poet, Bei Dao. From his earliest work, Bei Dao developed a wholly original poetic language composed of mysterious and arresting images tuned to a distinctive musical key. This collection spans Bei Dao’s entire writing life, from his first book to appear in English, The August Sleepwalker, published a year after the Tiananmen tragedy, to the increasingly interior and complex poems of Landscape Over Zero and Unlock, to new never-before-published work. This bilingual edition also includes a prefatory note by the poet, and a brief afterword by the editor Eliot Weinberger. A must-read book from a seminal poet who has been translated into over thirty languages.
About MIDNIGHT'S GATE (2005)
In Midnight's Gate, Bei Dao redefines the essay form with the same elliptical precision of his poetry, but with an openness and humor that complements the complexity of his poems. The twenty essays of Midnight's Gate form a travelogue of a poet who has lived in some seven countries since his exile from China in 1989. The work carries us from Palestine to Sacramento. At one point we are led into a basement in Paris for a production of Gorky's Lower Depths; the next moment we are in the mountains of China where Bei Dao worked for eleven years as a concrete mixer and ironworker. The subjective experience deepens and multiplies in these essays, filled with the stories of ordinary Chinese immigrants, as well as those of literary, artistic, and political figures. And it all coheres with a poet's observations, meditations, and memories.
NYSWI
Bei Dao is one of several pseudonyms employed in the past by the poet and writer Zhao Zhenkai to conceal his identity from the Chinese authorities. "Bei Dao" means "North Island," and was chosen arbitrarily for the poet by a journalist colleague. It has no significance for its owner , beyond the fact that it is the name by which he is known to the rest of the world.
One of China's most celebrated poets-in-exile, Bei Dao served as a member of the Red Guard during Chairman Mao's infamous Cultural Revolution. In 1969, however, he was sent into the countryside for "re-education "-- seven years of forced labor in the construction trade. During this time, Bei Dao became disaffected with the Chinese political system, helped to organize dissident reading circles, and began writing poetry and short stories. He distributed his work illegally, and helped to found one of China's most influential-- though short-lived-- underground literary journals, "Jintian" ("Today").
At the Sky's Edge
During a period of cultural openness in the 1980's, Bei Dao's identity became known, and he became more of a public figure as an outspoken critic of the government and society. When students took over Tiananmen Square in 1989, they recited his poetry as chants and emblazoned it on banners, notably the lines,
"I will not kneel on the ground
Allowing the executioners to look tall"
Away in Berlin for a literary conference during the political crisis, Bei Dao was not allowed to return to his wife and child in China (they were reunited six years later). He has lived since that time in Europe and the U.S.
Written in a pioneering modernist style, Bei Dao's short stories tell of lives destroyed or rendered absurd by the Cultural Revolution. Published in Chinese as "Bodong" (Hong Kong, 1985), and in English translation as Waves (1987, ISBN 0-8112-1134-7), the stories established Bei Dao as one of China's leading literary figures. Historian Jonathan Spence, writing in the "New York Times Book Review," called the stories in "Waves," "almost unbearably poignant."
As a poet, Bei Dao is one of the inventors of "misty poetry ," an obscure, surrealistic, modernist mode of expression that was originally designed to foil Communist Party censorship. His collections in English translation include "Notes from the City of the Sun" (1983), "The August Sleepwalker" (1988, New Directions, ISBN 0-8112-1132-0), "Old Snow" (1991, ISBN 0-8112-1183-5), "Forms of Distance" (1995), and "Landscape Over Zero" (1996). His most recent collection, "Unlock" (2000, New Directions, ISBN 0-8112-1447-8), is composed of forty-nine new poems written in the United States.
He lives with his daughter in Davis, California.
"To categorize Bei Dao as merely an exile or disssident is to miss the point. Bei Dao is simply a poet. There's no greater threat to totalitarianism than individuality, and few living writers possess a voice as elegant as that heard in Unlock." - Andrew Ervin, Philadelphia Inquirer
One of China's most celebrated poets-in-exile, Bei Dao served as a member of the Red Guard during Chairman Mao's infamous Cultural Revolution. In 1969, however, he was sent into the countryside for "re-education "-- seven years of forced labor in the construction trade. During this time, Bei Dao became disaffected with the Chinese political system, helped to organize dissident reading circles, and began writing poetry and short stories. He distributed his work illegally, and helped to found one of China's most influential-- though short-lived-- underground literary journals, "Jintian" ("Today").
At the Sky's Edge
During a period of cultural openness in the 1980's, Bei Dao's identity became known, and he became more of a public figure as an outspoken critic of the government and society. When students took over Tiananmen Square in 1989, they recited his poetry as chants and emblazoned it on banners, notably the lines,
"I will not kneel on the ground
Allowing the executioners to look tall"
Away in Berlin for a literary conference during the political crisis, Bei Dao was not allowed to return to his wife and child in China (they were reunited six years later). He has lived since that time in Europe and the U.S.
Written in a pioneering modernist style, Bei Dao's short stories tell of lives destroyed or rendered absurd by the Cultural Revolution. Published in Chinese as "Bodong" (Hong Kong, 1985), and in English translation as Waves (1987, ISBN 0-8112-1134-7), the stories established Bei Dao as one of China's leading literary figures. Historian Jonathan Spence, writing in the "New York Times Book Review," called the stories in "Waves," "almost unbearably poignant."
As a poet, Bei Dao is one of the inventors of "misty poetry ," an obscure, surrealistic, modernist mode of expression that was originally designed to foil Communist Party censorship. His collections in English translation include "Notes from the City of the Sun" (1983), "The August Sleepwalker" (1988, New Directions, ISBN 0-8112-1132-0), "Old Snow" (1991, ISBN 0-8112-1183-5), "Forms of Distance" (1995), and "Landscape Over Zero" (1996). His most recent collection, "Unlock" (2000, New Directions, ISBN 0-8112-1447-8), is composed of forty-nine new poems written in the United States.
He lives with his daughter in Davis, California.
"To categorize Bei Dao as merely an exile or disssident is to miss the point. Bei Dao is simply a poet. There's no greater threat to totalitarianism than individuality, and few living writers possess a voice as elegant as that heard in Unlock." - Andrew Ervin, Philadelphia Inquirer
Haun Saussy
Bei Dao and his Audiences
by Haun Saussy
The concept of "totalitarianism" and its intellectual concomitant, "brainwashing," have undergone a well-deserved cutting down to size in the last few years. 1 It is probably impossible to achieve a totally controlled society; "totalitarianism" served both its proponents and its antagonists as an enabling myth. Nonetheless, there are some pretty oppressive societies out there. I invite you to look back to mainland Chinese publications from the latter half of the 1970s for a sense of the monotony and fear that can be instilled in a population through such measures as mass campaigns of denunciation, the reduction of acceptable stage performances to a handful of Model Revolutionary Operas, and the patterning of permitted speech to variations on a few dozen quotations from the Little Red Book of the ever-correct, ever-glorious leader.
On April 5, 1976, an unforeseen event took place. Thousands of people converged on Tiananmen Square to mourn the death a few months before of Zhou Enlai, the one Politburo member who, it was thought, had tried to moderate Mao’s policies of instant collectivization and class war. Police chased the mourners off the square and punished them with surprising brutality. Zhao Zhenkai, whom we know as Bei Dao, was working as an electrician outside of the capital at the time, and this incident spurred him to write the poem which, for better or worse, is his most frequently reprinted work in the Chinese-speaking world, "Huida" ("The Answer" or "An Answer").
By 1978, however, a feeling of interregnum was in the air. Almost immediately after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, his designated successor, Hua Guofeng, arrested Mao’s widow and some of her close associates. This small group, labeled the "Gang of Four," would carry the blame for all the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Over the next two years, in keeping with the back-and-forth of internal party conflicts, the official press successively condemned Mao’s policies, rehabilitated people who had been sent to labor camps for "rightist deviation" and "revisionism," and encouraged people to voice their discontents by putting up wall posters in public places. One such public place, a brick wall near the Xidan bus stop in downtown Beijing, became known as "Democracy Wall," and people gathered to copy into notebooks or read into tape recorders the amazingly blunt criticisms posted there. With very little outside stimulus, it seemed that China was about to enter an age of unprecedented political change.
One manifestation of the 1978 period of uncertainty was Wei Jingsheng’s essay "Democracy, the Fifth Modernization." Another was a small magazine of poetry and fiction, printed in blurry characters on rough brownish paper, bilingually entitled Jintian / Today. Inevitably, the most adventurous call thus far to refashion Chinese society "with no gods or emperors" and the first independent literary magazine shared some intellectual bearings.2 They were products of the same loosening of central control. Wei Jingsheng’s group and the circle around Today shared at least one prominent member as well—the poet Mang Ke.
That first number of Today contained several pieces by our guest, using various pseudonyms—a time-honored tactic of the editors of small magazines. "Huida," "The Answer," appeared under the signature "Bei Dao," which unlike the other bylines in the magazine was hand-written next to the poem’s title. I have often wondered what that hand-written byline meant. Was the poem originally intended to appear anonymously? Dated "April, 1976"—a clear reminder of the first Tiananmen protests and their suppression—it opens rather gnomically with these lines:
Debasement is the passport of the base,
Nobility is the epitaph of the noble.
Look at the gold-plated sky
Filled with the drifting rippled reflections of the dead.
The Ice Age is over,
Why then are there ice peaks everywhere?
The Cape of Good Horn has already been discovered,
Why then do a thousand sails compete on a Dead Sea?3
The speaker’s sense of standing at a critical point in history is obvious. The opening lines have the deceptive appearance of a dirge or epitaph, but quickly veer to marking the poem’s present, the age after the Ice Age. Claiming the purpose of transmitting "condemned voices" "before the trial occurs," the poem’s speaker announces:
I’ll tell you, world,
I do not believe!
If a thousand challengers already lie under your feet,
Count me number one thousand and one.
I do not believe that the sky is blue;
I do not believe in the echoes of thunder;
I do not believe that dreams are false;
I do not believe that death brings no recompense.
…
The new departure and the sparkling Dipper
Are patching together a sky with nothing to hide.
It is a five thousand years’ pictogram,
It is the gaze in the eyes of people yet to come.
It is hard to over-estimate the meaning of these lines in the China of 1978. The speaker’s refusal to "believe" takes on cosmological dimensions, as even the sky stands revealed as an artificial, "gold-plated," ultimate limit. Now it may seem that this is a lot to claim for one person’s decision about what to stop believing in; isn’t there something immodest and exaggerated about all this?4 The poem made a much less histrionic impression on the readers of its own time and place. Bei Dao’s poem suggests a social order in which people can decline to believe that the sky is blue, or that dreams are false, and that won’t be the end of the world. But being a good citizen in modern China requires one to believe, actively, in a number of things, and to demonstrate belief by participating in rituals such as the study session, the "expression of attitudes," the public condemnation and the self-criticism.
Poems have careers of their own. When thousands of people memorize and repeat a poem, that indicates, not simply that it was a good poem to begin with, but that it serves them as a means of grasping experience. And some poems are handles for grasping a number of experiences: that depends partly on the poem, partly on the experiences. The confrontation between protesters and police in 1976 was not, as you know, a one-time affair. Interestingly, the published discussions of the poem within China insist, with the usual combination of overwrought phraseology and deadening repetition, that "The Answer" is about the corrupt society created by the Gang of Four—that is its sole and exclusive subject.5 Readers, however, refuse to let that one occasion exhaust its significance. Repression is an ongoing thing; the poem updates itself periodically, like a floating marker on the surface of events.
Today’s editorial committee stated, in their first number, that "history has finally given us the chance to release the songs buried in our hearts for the past ten years, without ever again incurring fearsome punishment for doing so. … Our generation will have to establish the meaning of each individual’s life and deepen people’s understanding of the meaning of freedom. The renewal of our country’s age-old culture must re-establish the position of the Chinese nation among the nations of the world. Our art must reflect these profoundly inscribed characteristics."6 These remarks suggest that a definitive corner had been turned in 1978, that the departure of the Gang of Four had brought the end of cultural dictatorship and would permit a rethinking of everything since the founding of the People’s Republic. Events would quickly prove them wrong: the ideological vacillation at the top was resolved when Deng Xiaoping took control of the party apparatus the following year. Deng had used popular unrest to dislodge his opponents, but had no intention of letting it go on once he was in the commanding role. Democracy Wall was painted over and not allowed to resume; those who had advocated dismantling the one-party system, like Wei Jingsheng, were arrested as traitors in foreign employ and put through broadly publicized show trials; Today magazine was closed down and its back stocks confiscated. What doomed Today was surely not so much the poetry, fiction and criticism it published as the public interest it had awakened, and the fact that both it and its public could act in such visible independence from the official literary world.
After the closing of Today, the Today poets began publishing in established journals, which only spread the Today style. From a manifesto by one of the poets in the movement came a label: the new poetry was henceforth discussed and debated as menglong shi, "misty" or "obscure" poetry. The early 1980s saw a controversy about the new poetry, which frustrated readers’ expectations that poetry should be memorable, easy to understand, and regular in form.7 The public discussions of Misty Poetry coincided with, and were among the occasions for, the 1983-84 official campaign to stamp out "spiritual pollution" in the form of imported ideas. With its obvious debts to foreign writers such as Lorca, Aleixandre, Mandelstam, Whitman, Eliot, and so on, not to mention its tacit departures from a didactic, top-down cultural style, Misty Poetry was a designated target.8 But the campaigns faded away inconclusively, leaving new poetry more prominent than before.
As Ouyang Jianghe observes in her introduction to the Taiwan edition of Landscape Over Zero, American readers have a bad habit of seeing politics everywhere in Bei Dao’s work, of reading it exclusively as a cleverly coded statement about opposition and reform in China. It is a way of reading that comforts our ignorance. The poetry stands only to gain from being freed from that obsession. Certainly, politics is everywhere in China, like the air, but a closer look at Bei Dao’s work shows how unlikely he is to qualify as a full-time "political poet." Today sought, not to abolish official culture, but to carve out a habitat where alternatives to it might develop. The politicization of Misty Poetry, to the degree that that occurred, was the doing of the officious bureaucrats who created the "spiritual pollution" campaign. In the later 1980s, Bei Dao sympathized with and participated in various groups attempting to reframe the discourse about civil rights—circulating petitions in favor of freeing Wei Jingsheng, for example, in a prelude to the mass demonstrations of April and June 1989. His actual work on behalf of these groups, though meritorious, was doubtless unnecessary to secure him a place on the list of suspicious characters, since another poem from his earlier period had already escaped from its cage in a book and become public property through endless citation. "I’m no hero," says the speaker of this poem, "Xuan gao" or "Proclamation"; "In a time without heroes / I just wanted to be a human being. /…/ I will not kneel on the ground / Allowing the executioners to look tall / The better to obscure the wind of freedom."9 These lines appeared on banners carried by student groups into Tiananmen Square during the popular movement of April and June, 1989; they were even recited, somewhat inappropriately if you ask me, by the student leader Chai Ling on her successful escape from China.
Bei Dao spent the spring and summer of 1989 in Europe and there had the news of the bloody repression of the student movement. Knowing that if he did return home he would almost surely face imprisonment, he chose to stay abroad. Attempting to return to visit his family in 1994, he was detained at the airport, questioned for hours about his links to Today and overseas democratic movements, and finally sent back to the United States. It is an odd kind of compliment, to be told that you are incompatible with the safety and stability of 1.4 billion people, and all because of some marks you’ve made on paper.
by Haun Saussy
The concept of "totalitarianism" and its intellectual concomitant, "brainwashing," have undergone a well-deserved cutting down to size in the last few years. 1 It is probably impossible to achieve a totally controlled society; "totalitarianism" served both its proponents and its antagonists as an enabling myth. Nonetheless, there are some pretty oppressive societies out there. I invite you to look back to mainland Chinese publications from the latter half of the 1970s for a sense of the monotony and fear that can be instilled in a population through such measures as mass campaigns of denunciation, the reduction of acceptable stage performances to a handful of Model Revolutionary Operas, and the patterning of permitted speech to variations on a few dozen quotations from the Little Red Book of the ever-correct, ever-glorious leader.
On April 5, 1976, an unforeseen event took place. Thousands of people converged on Tiananmen Square to mourn the death a few months before of Zhou Enlai, the one Politburo member who, it was thought, had tried to moderate Mao’s policies of instant collectivization and class war. Police chased the mourners off the square and punished them with surprising brutality. Zhao Zhenkai, whom we know as Bei Dao, was working as an electrician outside of the capital at the time, and this incident spurred him to write the poem which, for better or worse, is his most frequently reprinted work in the Chinese-speaking world, "Huida" ("The Answer" or "An Answer").
By 1978, however, a feeling of interregnum was in the air. Almost immediately after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, his designated successor, Hua Guofeng, arrested Mao’s widow and some of her close associates. This small group, labeled the "Gang of Four," would carry the blame for all the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Over the next two years, in keeping with the back-and-forth of internal party conflicts, the official press successively condemned Mao’s policies, rehabilitated people who had been sent to labor camps for "rightist deviation" and "revisionism," and encouraged people to voice their discontents by putting up wall posters in public places. One such public place, a brick wall near the Xidan bus stop in downtown Beijing, became known as "Democracy Wall," and people gathered to copy into notebooks or read into tape recorders the amazingly blunt criticisms posted there. With very little outside stimulus, it seemed that China was about to enter an age of unprecedented political change.
One manifestation of the 1978 period of uncertainty was Wei Jingsheng’s essay "Democracy, the Fifth Modernization." Another was a small magazine of poetry and fiction, printed in blurry characters on rough brownish paper, bilingually entitled Jintian / Today. Inevitably, the most adventurous call thus far to refashion Chinese society "with no gods or emperors" and the first independent literary magazine shared some intellectual bearings.2 They were products of the same loosening of central control. Wei Jingsheng’s group and the circle around Today shared at least one prominent member as well—the poet Mang Ke.
That first number of Today contained several pieces by our guest, using various pseudonyms—a time-honored tactic of the editors of small magazines. "Huida," "The Answer," appeared under the signature "Bei Dao," which unlike the other bylines in the magazine was hand-written next to the poem’s title. I have often wondered what that hand-written byline meant. Was the poem originally intended to appear anonymously? Dated "April, 1976"—a clear reminder of the first Tiananmen protests and their suppression—it opens rather gnomically with these lines:
Debasement is the passport of the base,
Nobility is the epitaph of the noble.
Look at the gold-plated sky
Filled with the drifting rippled reflections of the dead.
The Ice Age is over,
Why then are there ice peaks everywhere?
The Cape of Good Horn has already been discovered,
Why then do a thousand sails compete on a Dead Sea?3
The speaker’s sense of standing at a critical point in history is obvious. The opening lines have the deceptive appearance of a dirge or epitaph, but quickly veer to marking the poem’s present, the age after the Ice Age. Claiming the purpose of transmitting "condemned voices" "before the trial occurs," the poem’s speaker announces:
I’ll tell you, world,
I do not believe!
If a thousand challengers already lie under your feet,
Count me number one thousand and one.
I do not believe that the sky is blue;
I do not believe in the echoes of thunder;
I do not believe that dreams are false;
I do not believe that death brings no recompense.
…
The new departure and the sparkling Dipper
Are patching together a sky with nothing to hide.
It is a five thousand years’ pictogram,
It is the gaze in the eyes of people yet to come.
It is hard to over-estimate the meaning of these lines in the China of 1978. The speaker’s refusal to "believe" takes on cosmological dimensions, as even the sky stands revealed as an artificial, "gold-plated," ultimate limit. Now it may seem that this is a lot to claim for one person’s decision about what to stop believing in; isn’t there something immodest and exaggerated about all this?4 The poem made a much less histrionic impression on the readers of its own time and place. Bei Dao’s poem suggests a social order in which people can decline to believe that the sky is blue, or that dreams are false, and that won’t be the end of the world. But being a good citizen in modern China requires one to believe, actively, in a number of things, and to demonstrate belief by participating in rituals such as the study session, the "expression of attitudes," the public condemnation and the self-criticism.
Poems have careers of their own. When thousands of people memorize and repeat a poem, that indicates, not simply that it was a good poem to begin with, but that it serves them as a means of grasping experience. And some poems are handles for grasping a number of experiences: that depends partly on the poem, partly on the experiences. The confrontation between protesters and police in 1976 was not, as you know, a one-time affair. Interestingly, the published discussions of the poem within China insist, with the usual combination of overwrought phraseology and deadening repetition, that "The Answer" is about the corrupt society created by the Gang of Four—that is its sole and exclusive subject.5 Readers, however, refuse to let that one occasion exhaust its significance. Repression is an ongoing thing; the poem updates itself periodically, like a floating marker on the surface of events.
Today’s editorial committee stated, in their first number, that "history has finally given us the chance to release the songs buried in our hearts for the past ten years, without ever again incurring fearsome punishment for doing so. … Our generation will have to establish the meaning of each individual’s life and deepen people’s understanding of the meaning of freedom. The renewal of our country’s age-old culture must re-establish the position of the Chinese nation among the nations of the world. Our art must reflect these profoundly inscribed characteristics."6 These remarks suggest that a definitive corner had been turned in 1978, that the departure of the Gang of Four had brought the end of cultural dictatorship and would permit a rethinking of everything since the founding of the People’s Republic. Events would quickly prove them wrong: the ideological vacillation at the top was resolved when Deng Xiaoping took control of the party apparatus the following year. Deng had used popular unrest to dislodge his opponents, but had no intention of letting it go on once he was in the commanding role. Democracy Wall was painted over and not allowed to resume; those who had advocated dismantling the one-party system, like Wei Jingsheng, were arrested as traitors in foreign employ and put through broadly publicized show trials; Today magazine was closed down and its back stocks confiscated. What doomed Today was surely not so much the poetry, fiction and criticism it published as the public interest it had awakened, and the fact that both it and its public could act in such visible independence from the official literary world.
After the closing of Today, the Today poets began publishing in established journals, which only spread the Today style. From a manifesto by one of the poets in the movement came a label: the new poetry was henceforth discussed and debated as menglong shi, "misty" or "obscure" poetry. The early 1980s saw a controversy about the new poetry, which frustrated readers’ expectations that poetry should be memorable, easy to understand, and regular in form.7 The public discussions of Misty Poetry coincided with, and were among the occasions for, the 1983-84 official campaign to stamp out "spiritual pollution" in the form of imported ideas. With its obvious debts to foreign writers such as Lorca, Aleixandre, Mandelstam, Whitman, Eliot, and so on, not to mention its tacit departures from a didactic, top-down cultural style, Misty Poetry was a designated target.8 But the campaigns faded away inconclusively, leaving new poetry more prominent than before.
As Ouyang Jianghe observes in her introduction to the Taiwan edition of Landscape Over Zero, American readers have a bad habit of seeing politics everywhere in Bei Dao’s work, of reading it exclusively as a cleverly coded statement about opposition and reform in China. It is a way of reading that comforts our ignorance. The poetry stands only to gain from being freed from that obsession. Certainly, politics is everywhere in China, like the air, but a closer look at Bei Dao’s work shows how unlikely he is to qualify as a full-time "political poet." Today sought, not to abolish official culture, but to carve out a habitat where alternatives to it might develop. The politicization of Misty Poetry, to the degree that that occurred, was the doing of the officious bureaucrats who created the "spiritual pollution" campaign. In the later 1980s, Bei Dao sympathized with and participated in various groups attempting to reframe the discourse about civil rights—circulating petitions in favor of freeing Wei Jingsheng, for example, in a prelude to the mass demonstrations of April and June 1989. His actual work on behalf of these groups, though meritorious, was doubtless unnecessary to secure him a place on the list of suspicious characters, since another poem from his earlier period had already escaped from its cage in a book and become public property through endless citation. "I’m no hero," says the speaker of this poem, "Xuan gao" or "Proclamation"; "In a time without heroes / I just wanted to be a human being. /…/ I will not kneel on the ground / Allowing the executioners to look tall / The better to obscure the wind of freedom."9 These lines appeared on banners carried by student groups into Tiananmen Square during the popular movement of April and June, 1989; they were even recited, somewhat inappropriately if you ask me, by the student leader Chai Ling on her successful escape from China.
Bei Dao spent the spring and summer of 1989 in Europe and there had the news of the bloody repression of the student movement. Knowing that if he did return home he would almost surely face imprisonment, he chose to stay abroad. Attempting to return to visit his family in 1994, he was detained at the airport, questioned for hours about his links to Today and overseas democratic movements, and finally sent back to the United States. It is an odd kind of compliment, to be told that you are incompatible with the safety and stability of 1.4 billion people, and all because of some marks you’ve made on paper.
Publish Post
Dian Li
The Chinese Poetry of Bei Dao, 1978-2000:
Resistance and Exile
By Dian Li
Reviewed by Paul Manfredi
For those involved in modern Chinese poetry in the English-speaking world, both as authors and as readers, Dian Li's new book on Bei Dao is something of an event. Indeed, the willingness to devote an entire monograph to a single author--that is to say the kind of in-depth treatment simply not possible in more thematically or formally oriented studies--is a positive development in Cultural Studies more generally. This is not to suggest that such a work is unprecedented, even in the more narrow sphere of modern Chinese poetry studies--Maghiel van Crevel's Language Shattered (1996), Gregory Lee's Dai Wangshu: The Life and Poetry of a Chinese Modernist (1989), Lloyd Haft's Pien Chih-lin: A Study in Modern Chinese Poetry (1983), and Dominic Cheng's Feng Chih (1979), all demonstrate that single author studies can be major contributions to the field. But as this list of books and their dates of publication show, such studies are few and far between and their numbers are in decline. In this sense, Dian Li's work marks an important development or, more accurately, a notable return.
In many respects, Li's study of Bei Dao should also be considered an improvement on previous approaches to discussing single poets from modern or contemporary China. The most obvious improvement, or at least qualitative advance in terms of the academic conversation about this poetry, is that Li's writing posits a new horizon of expectation, so to speak, anticipating in his audience a higher level of understanding of modern Chinese poetry than was often the case with earlier studies. This book shows us that writing about modern Chinese poetry no longer needs to begin at the very beginning, with a rundown of what is meant by "modern" in the Chinese context from Hu Shi on. Moreover, terms relevant to the contemporary field, such as "Misty Poetry," no longer need to be glossed, this despite the fact that "misty" is neither a terribly good translation for the Chinese word menglong, nor an accurate description of what the poetry is. Li nonetheless uses "Misty Poetry" as a now conventionalized term, which is to say a term that has more or less beaten out competitors in the game of literary/cultural nomenclature. The point of this observation is less the correctness of "Misty Poetry" as a gloss for menglong shi than the fact that it no longer much matters how one puts it in English, as Li's readership can now be expected to know what the term refers to.
Less positive departures from earlier works on modern Chinese poets, though, are also in evidence--for instance, the relative absence of the type of biographical material Gregory Lee provides in his study of Dai Wangshu. This is not to say that writing about Bei Dao's life experiences and writing about Dai Wangshu's is the same order of business. In fact, addressing Bei Dao's biography, as Dian Li does to some degree in the "Epilogue," is a complicated matter, a fact clearly in evidence in the following sentence:
The phantom threat posed by Bei Dao's marginal political activities--past and at the present--may be no more than an excuse to persecute Bei Dao as the face of a poetry that the government never liked and still has trouble tolerating even though it knows very well that any harm it inflicts on Bei Dao the person only enhances the poetry that he represents. (128)
When Dian Li does address Bei Dao in these terms, the important connection between Bei Dao the poet and Bei Dao the political figure is very judiciously handled. Given this, Li's book would have benefited from a more extended analysis in this regard, even if the summary judgment is that Bei Dao's poetry should indeed occupy a space remote from political ramifications.
Also largely absent in Li's study is the use of theoretical language--despite Malmquist's observation in the preface about the book's "sharp tools of modern and post-modern literary criticism." In lieu of theory, Dian Li charts his own course, providing close readings for a large number of poems, and addressing certain themes at some length and from different perspectives. One of these themes is the issue of the opacity of Bei Dao's poetry. This discussion is natural and necessary to an analysis of Bei Dao's poetry, but is somewhat lacking in context. To begin with, the concern about readability is very old in China. Although his poetry has been interpreted in biographical (and, more recently, in nationalist terms), Qu Yuan was an esoteric writer whose language is dense, difficult, and complex. In contrast to that charitable treatment of Quan Yu, Li He, whose language is notoriously difficult, suffered his own exile on the periphery of the literary canon (e.g., his poetry is not included in the 300 Tang Poems). Although Dian Li does in several places introduce discussion of the Chinese literary heritage, a more thorough documentation of classical Chinese precedents would have helped readers better situate Bei Dao within Chinese literary history, thereby reminding us that the readability of poetry and its social implications is a very old subject in the Chinese context.
More problematic with regard to the discussion of Bei Dao's impenetrability is the way Li skips over the modern era. For while premodern literary antecedents like Li He, Li Shangyin, and Qu Yuan are important markers in establishing the parameters of acceptable metaphorical language, the modern era, from the early twentieth century on, repeatedly redefines those parameters. An important part of this redefinition in the modern era stems from the fact that modern poetry is, in Dian Li's own words, "in large measure born of translation practice." This is not only true of Bei Dao's work, but also of all the work in the mode "new poetry" (xinshi) since the early twentieth century. Hu Shi's "unbound bound feet," for instance, are disfigured as much by their adoption of non-Chinese language literary forms as they are by the continuing influence of the Chinese poetic tradition. How much more the poetry of Li Jinfa, for instance, a poet whose small body of work is often criticized in terms quite similar to those used by detractors of Bei Dao's poetry. By exploring, even briefly, the significance of translation in the works of Bei Dao's modern (particularly modernist) predecessors, Li could have more fully contextualized Bei Dao's poetic challenge to the Chinese language.
The absence of twentieth-century precedents aside, Li's focus on translation as "a powerful medium of legitimization" (101) is on the mark. After reviewing Meir Sternberg's schematization of three types of translation, which aim at various degrees of accommodation between source and target language, Li ventures into Bei Dao's rewriting of some traditional Chinese idioms. This example of Bei Dao's use of language, where the poet takes firmly established semantic connections such as can be found in Chinese idioms and inverts them, or causes them to unravel in various ways, well elucidates his style more broadly, a style invested in pushing language beyond its limits. Bei Dao's true difficulty, in other words, lies in the sheer content of information packed into his poems, whether it be in references to fixed expressions, allusions to other texts, or appropriations of other literatures.
What Dian Li's discussion of difficulty and translation makes clear is the degree to which a critique of Bei Dao's inscrutability (and "over-reliance" on translated/translatable expression) misses the point. There may be, as Li argues, points in Bei Dao's poems that travel easily from Chinese to other languages, but there are just as many occasions when the cost, either in what is lost or what is perforce added, is notable. In other words, the instances of untranslatables, a feature we would expect from classical poetry or even other modern writing considered closer to a linguistic "Chineseness," are in fact often in evidence in the case of Bei Dao's poetry. To translate, then, is in some sense to lose something essential to the poetry itself. Regardless, Li's description of the translation of contemporary Chinese poetry is compelling, and he wisely acknowledges the transformative role of the translation process itself. The goal, as Li describes it, is for the critic to offer "critical scrutiny" to ensure that the course of translating Bei Dao and other contemporary poets remains charted somewhere between the poles of "pure difference [and] unmediated similarity" (112). Moreover, because Bei Dao's project is a kind of rewriting of Chinese literary expression itself, the constant argument over what Bei Dao means, and concomitant explication du texte that such discussion entails, might actually lead to the rewritings to which Bei Dao aspires.
The picture of Bei Dao that arises from Dian Li's work is of a serious poet who has been misread in a variety of ways, largely due to the critical imposition of extraneous issues--e.g., the feasibility of "world poetry"--that are largely off mark with respect to Bei Dao's intentions as an artist. Li could have taken his book in these directions to, say, present a larger argument for a new way of reading contemporary Chinese poetry, an aesthetic form that occupies an important space in global discourse and that does need not to be justified on comparative terms. For in the context of China's rise to power, poetry presents a compelling counterpoint to dominant narratives of China's development and (post)-modernization--e.g., the shift towards market economics, cutting-edge green technology, etc. That is to say, despite its marginal status in Chinese culture (and Western sinology), the poetry of Bei Dao and many other Chinese poets comprises a substantial archive of alternative and often discordant voices midst the almost daily chorus of celebration--or notoriety--of China in the global media. Dian Li could have explored these questions and more, but he chooses not to. Instead, he opts to focus deeply on Bei Dao's poetry, providing explication uncomplicated by wider themes, implications, or applications of the poet's work. As such, it is yet a highly successful and welcome work.
Resistance and Exile
By Dian Li
Reviewed by Paul Manfredi
For those involved in modern Chinese poetry in the English-speaking world, both as authors and as readers, Dian Li's new book on Bei Dao is something of an event. Indeed, the willingness to devote an entire monograph to a single author--that is to say the kind of in-depth treatment simply not possible in more thematically or formally oriented studies--is a positive development in Cultural Studies more generally. This is not to suggest that such a work is unprecedented, even in the more narrow sphere of modern Chinese poetry studies--Maghiel van Crevel's Language Shattered (1996), Gregory Lee's Dai Wangshu: The Life and Poetry of a Chinese Modernist (1989), Lloyd Haft's Pien Chih-lin: A Study in Modern Chinese Poetry (1983), and Dominic Cheng's Feng Chih (1979), all demonstrate that single author studies can be major contributions to the field. But as this list of books and their dates of publication show, such studies are few and far between and their numbers are in decline. In this sense, Dian Li's work marks an important development or, more accurately, a notable return.
In many respects, Li's study of Bei Dao should also be considered an improvement on previous approaches to discussing single poets from modern or contemporary China. The most obvious improvement, or at least qualitative advance in terms of the academic conversation about this poetry, is that Li's writing posits a new horizon of expectation, so to speak, anticipating in his audience a higher level of understanding of modern Chinese poetry than was often the case with earlier studies. This book shows us that writing about modern Chinese poetry no longer needs to begin at the very beginning, with a rundown of what is meant by "modern" in the Chinese context from Hu Shi on. Moreover, terms relevant to the contemporary field, such as "Misty Poetry," no longer need to be glossed, this despite the fact that "misty" is neither a terribly good translation for the Chinese word menglong, nor an accurate description of what the poetry is. Li nonetheless uses "Misty Poetry" as a now conventionalized term, which is to say a term that has more or less beaten out competitors in the game of literary/cultural nomenclature. The point of this observation is less the correctness of "Misty Poetry" as a gloss for menglong shi than the fact that it no longer much matters how one puts it in English, as Li's readership can now be expected to know what the term refers to.
Less positive departures from earlier works on modern Chinese poets, though, are also in evidence--for instance, the relative absence of the type of biographical material Gregory Lee provides in his study of Dai Wangshu. This is not to say that writing about Bei Dao's life experiences and writing about Dai Wangshu's is the same order of business. In fact, addressing Bei Dao's biography, as Dian Li does to some degree in the "Epilogue," is a complicated matter, a fact clearly in evidence in the following sentence:
The phantom threat posed by Bei Dao's marginal political activities--past and at the present--may be no more than an excuse to persecute Bei Dao as the face of a poetry that the government never liked and still has trouble tolerating even though it knows very well that any harm it inflicts on Bei Dao the person only enhances the poetry that he represents. (128)
When Dian Li does address Bei Dao in these terms, the important connection between Bei Dao the poet and Bei Dao the political figure is very judiciously handled. Given this, Li's book would have benefited from a more extended analysis in this regard, even if the summary judgment is that Bei Dao's poetry should indeed occupy a space remote from political ramifications.
Also largely absent in Li's study is the use of theoretical language--despite Malmquist's observation in the preface about the book's "sharp tools of modern and post-modern literary criticism." In lieu of theory, Dian Li charts his own course, providing close readings for a large number of poems, and addressing certain themes at some length and from different perspectives. One of these themes is the issue of the opacity of Bei Dao's poetry. This discussion is natural and necessary to an analysis of Bei Dao's poetry, but is somewhat lacking in context. To begin with, the concern about readability is very old in China. Although his poetry has been interpreted in biographical (and, more recently, in nationalist terms), Qu Yuan was an esoteric writer whose language is dense, difficult, and complex. In contrast to that charitable treatment of Quan Yu, Li He, whose language is notoriously difficult, suffered his own exile on the periphery of the literary canon (e.g., his poetry is not included in the 300 Tang Poems). Although Dian Li does in several places introduce discussion of the Chinese literary heritage, a more thorough documentation of classical Chinese precedents would have helped readers better situate Bei Dao within Chinese literary history, thereby reminding us that the readability of poetry and its social implications is a very old subject in the Chinese context.
More problematic with regard to the discussion of Bei Dao's impenetrability is the way Li skips over the modern era. For while premodern literary antecedents like Li He, Li Shangyin, and Qu Yuan are important markers in establishing the parameters of acceptable metaphorical language, the modern era, from the early twentieth century on, repeatedly redefines those parameters. An important part of this redefinition in the modern era stems from the fact that modern poetry is, in Dian Li's own words, "in large measure born of translation practice." This is not only true of Bei Dao's work, but also of all the work in the mode "new poetry" (xinshi) since the early twentieth century. Hu Shi's "unbound bound feet," for instance, are disfigured as much by their adoption of non-Chinese language literary forms as they are by the continuing influence of the Chinese poetic tradition. How much more the poetry of Li Jinfa, for instance, a poet whose small body of work is often criticized in terms quite similar to those used by detractors of Bei Dao's poetry. By exploring, even briefly, the significance of translation in the works of Bei Dao's modern (particularly modernist) predecessors, Li could have more fully contextualized Bei Dao's poetic challenge to the Chinese language.
The absence of twentieth-century precedents aside, Li's focus on translation as "a powerful medium of legitimization" (101) is on the mark. After reviewing Meir Sternberg's schematization of three types of translation, which aim at various degrees of accommodation between source and target language, Li ventures into Bei Dao's rewriting of some traditional Chinese idioms. This example of Bei Dao's use of language, where the poet takes firmly established semantic connections such as can be found in Chinese idioms and inverts them, or causes them to unravel in various ways, well elucidates his style more broadly, a style invested in pushing language beyond its limits. Bei Dao's true difficulty, in other words, lies in the sheer content of information packed into his poems, whether it be in references to fixed expressions, allusions to other texts, or appropriations of other literatures.
What Dian Li's discussion of difficulty and translation makes clear is the degree to which a critique of Bei Dao's inscrutability (and "over-reliance" on translated/translatable expression) misses the point. There may be, as Li argues, points in Bei Dao's poems that travel easily from Chinese to other languages, but there are just as many occasions when the cost, either in what is lost or what is perforce added, is notable. In other words, the instances of untranslatables, a feature we would expect from classical poetry or even other modern writing considered closer to a linguistic "Chineseness," are in fact often in evidence in the case of Bei Dao's poetry. To translate, then, is in some sense to lose something essential to the poetry itself. Regardless, Li's description of the translation of contemporary Chinese poetry is compelling, and he wisely acknowledges the transformative role of the translation process itself. The goal, as Li describes it, is for the critic to offer "critical scrutiny" to ensure that the course of translating Bei Dao and other contemporary poets remains charted somewhere between the poles of "pure difference [and] unmediated similarity" (112). Moreover, because Bei Dao's project is a kind of rewriting of Chinese literary expression itself, the constant argument over what Bei Dao means, and concomitant explication du texte that such discussion entails, might actually lead to the rewritings to which Bei Dao aspires.
The picture of Bei Dao that arises from Dian Li's work is of a serious poet who has been misread in a variety of ways, largely due to the critical imposition of extraneous issues--e.g., the feasibility of "world poetry"--that are largely off mark with respect to Bei Dao's intentions as an artist. Li could have taken his book in these directions to, say, present a larger argument for a new way of reading contemporary Chinese poetry, an aesthetic form that occupies an important space in global discourse and that does need not to be justified on comparative terms. For in the context of China's rise to power, poetry presents a compelling counterpoint to dominant narratives of China's development and (post)-modernization--e.g., the shift towards market economics, cutting-edge green technology, etc. That is to say, despite its marginal status in Chinese culture (and Western sinology), the poetry of Bei Dao and many other Chinese poets comprises a substantial archive of alternative and often discordant voices midst the almost daily chorus of celebration--or notoriety--of China in the global media. Dian Li could have explored these questions and more, but he chooses not to. Instead, he opts to focus deeply on Bei Dao's poetry, providing explication uncomplicated by wider themes, implications, or applications of the poet's work. As such, it is yet a highly successful and welcome work.
Portfolio
A Bei Dao Portfolio
by Clayton Eshleman
A Note on Translating Bei Dao
Bei Dao’s interaction with Clayton Eshleman and his wife Caryl begins in 1992, when Eliot Weinberger wrote to ask if he would nominate Bei Dao for the semester-long MacAndless Chair in the Humanities at Eastern Michigan University. Bei Dao had been living in Scandinavia since his exile from China in 1989 -- when democracy and workers’ rights activists shouted his poems at the Tiananmen Square demonstrations -- and was unhappy there, so Weinberger wanted to help him try the US. Clayton nominated him for the Chair, and he was offered the position to come in the fall of 1993. After his arrival, Clayton helped him settle in at the house of a friend, while Caryl worked with the head of EMU’s English Department to sort his immigration papers and apply for a Green Card. In 1994 Bei Dao moved from Ypsilanti to share an apartment with a Chinese friend in Ann Arbor, staying on for a couple years before moving to California, where he had accepted a one-year position in East Asian Languages & Cultures at UC Davis.
Reading Bei Dao’s poetry in translation from the 1980s and ’90s, Clayton’s first reactions were of puzzlement. At times the writing struck him as imaginative and acute, while at other times it seemed flat, presented in something approximating pidgin English. After reading Bei Dao’s Unlock (New Directions, 2000), translated by Eliot Weinberger and Iona Man-Cheong, which he liked very much, Clayton realized that his limited response to such books as Forms of Distance and Landscape Over Zero (both published by New Directions in 1994 and 1996) probably had to do with the translations by David Hinton (and, in the latter book, Yanbing Chen).
A long review of these three poetry collections, along with a book of Bei Dao’s essays titled Blue House (translated by Ted Huters and Feng-ying Ming, Zephyr, 2000), was Lucas Klein’s first publication. While the review was positive, Lucas’s first feelings reading Bei Dao echo Clayton’s ambivalence. Both drawn to and thwarted by the hermeticism of Bei Dao’s lines, Lucas wrote, “While many readers will find themselves sliding across his poetry, when his poetry catches them his hold is strong,” which seems like a generalization of his personal frustration and desire in the face of the lyrics.
Lucas first met Bei Dao on Halloween, 2003, in a hotel in Manhattan’s Chinatown, following a public conversation between Bei Dao and Eliot Weinberger at Poets House the night before. Bei Dao’s soft-spoken sincerity and unassuming manner -- nearly the opposite of how some have caricatured him, as a careerist writing for international glory -- pressed against Lucas’s earlier reading of his poems, and he guessed that his poetic mysteriousness might come from a personal shyness. Clayton and Caryl were also present at that meeting -- the first time Lucas had met them -- and Lucas was able to glean some of what Bei Dao had written about them in Blue House.
Lucas’s research in the years since has mostly focused on medieval Chinese, but modern and contemporary Chinese poetry has also maintained its hold. Coming upon trajectories and techniques written under, or at times against, Bei Dao’s influence -- which has stayed strong despite the difficulty, for much of the past twenty years, of finding Bei Dao’s writing in China -- Lucas still found Bei Dao’s style opaque, even obscure. When Clayton contacted him for help in looking into Bei Dao’s poetry in advance of his introduction to his Naropa reading this summer, Lucas took the opportunity to look into the writing at a level deeper than he’d allowed himself previously. He came to feel that his sense of Bei Dao had too often been obscured by his hasty readings of the Chinese and, like Clayton, on an over-reliance on the English translations -- too often, Lucas felt, he had read the available translations with the aim of checking for mistakes, rather than to comprehend their interpretation of Bei Dao’s poetic vision. Working on the new translations with Clayton, after receiving permission to translate and publish from the author, with the necessary result of looking closely at Bei Dao’s Chinese, has shown Lucas that, for instance, by avoiding punctuation and playing with enjambment, lineation, and phrase-pacing, Bei Dao often creates splits in his meaning. Trying to recreate some of that ambiguity, David Hinton’s translations generally treat each line as its own clause; the result, Lucas says, is overly disjunctive poetry, and that when the stanza, rather than the line, can be heard as Bei Dao’s usual unit of poetic composition, the ambiguity but also the fluidity can emerge more fully through English translation.
The point, for neither Clayton nor for Lucas, is to supplant, or replace, earlier translations. Rather, since each translation enacts its own reading, these translations present an alternative to Hinton’s vision, and to his performance of that vision. As their long history with Bei Dao can attest, Clayton and Lucas see manifold meanings in Bei Dao’s writing, and believe that he deserves to be read as often, and as deeply, as possible.
In the selection of poems presented here, "Sower" is from Forms of Distance (New Directions, 1994, translated by David Hinton). The other three poems are from Landscape Over Zero (New Directions, 1996, translated by David Hinton and Yambing Chen). Both collections are bilingual.
-- Clayton Eshleman and Lucas Klein, August 2009
The Landscape at Degree Zero
It is the sparrow hawk who teaches song to swim
it is the song that retraces the earliest airs
We exchange fragments of delight
and enter the family from different routes
It is the father who has confirmed the dark
it is the dark that leads to the classics’ lightning
The door of weeping shuts with a thud
leaving the echo to pursue its wail
It is the pen that flowers within despair
it is the flower that resists necessity’s path
It is love’s beam that awakes
to brighten the landscape at degree zero
Sower
A sower walks into the hall
it’s war out there, he says
you are wallowing in vapidity
shirking your duty to warn of the danger
I am come in the name of the fields
it’s war out there
I leave the hall
all around scenes of the harvest
I start to design the war
to perform death
The crops I torch
flare up like wolf signals
One thought is driving me crazy:
he is sowing seeds onto marble
Untitled
A hundred thousand windows shimmer
these sooth-sayers
are between yesterday and the sea
Oh the joys of getting lost
A bridge becomes reality
spanning public rays of light
while the secret voyage touching
yesterday’s rose provides
a dilemma for each sheet of paper
a dawn for each of my mother’s tears
The Border
The storm turns toward the future of the north
the roots of the sick wail underground
the sun’s propeller
compels the bees to change into light
chains of envoys
scatter seeds into wind-snatching ears
Streams remembered
will never end
sounds stolen
have become the border
At the border there is no hope
a book
gulps down a wing
and then inside the solid ice of language
are the atoning brothers
for which you struggle
by Clayton Eshleman
A Note on Translating Bei Dao
Bei Dao’s interaction with Clayton Eshleman and his wife Caryl begins in 1992, when Eliot Weinberger wrote to ask if he would nominate Bei Dao for the semester-long MacAndless Chair in the Humanities at Eastern Michigan University. Bei Dao had been living in Scandinavia since his exile from China in 1989 -- when democracy and workers’ rights activists shouted his poems at the Tiananmen Square demonstrations -- and was unhappy there, so Weinberger wanted to help him try the US. Clayton nominated him for the Chair, and he was offered the position to come in the fall of 1993. After his arrival, Clayton helped him settle in at the house of a friend, while Caryl worked with the head of EMU’s English Department to sort his immigration papers and apply for a Green Card. In 1994 Bei Dao moved from Ypsilanti to share an apartment with a Chinese friend in Ann Arbor, staying on for a couple years before moving to California, where he had accepted a one-year position in East Asian Languages & Cultures at UC Davis.
Reading Bei Dao’s poetry in translation from the 1980s and ’90s, Clayton’s first reactions were of puzzlement. At times the writing struck him as imaginative and acute, while at other times it seemed flat, presented in something approximating pidgin English. After reading Bei Dao’s Unlock (New Directions, 2000), translated by Eliot Weinberger and Iona Man-Cheong, which he liked very much, Clayton realized that his limited response to such books as Forms of Distance and Landscape Over Zero (both published by New Directions in 1994 and 1996) probably had to do with the translations by David Hinton (and, in the latter book, Yanbing Chen).
A long review of these three poetry collections, along with a book of Bei Dao’s essays titled Blue House (translated by Ted Huters and Feng-ying Ming, Zephyr, 2000), was Lucas Klein’s first publication. While the review was positive, Lucas’s first feelings reading Bei Dao echo Clayton’s ambivalence. Both drawn to and thwarted by the hermeticism of Bei Dao’s lines, Lucas wrote, “While many readers will find themselves sliding across his poetry, when his poetry catches them his hold is strong,” which seems like a generalization of his personal frustration and desire in the face of the lyrics.
Lucas first met Bei Dao on Halloween, 2003, in a hotel in Manhattan’s Chinatown, following a public conversation between Bei Dao and Eliot Weinberger at Poets House the night before. Bei Dao’s soft-spoken sincerity and unassuming manner -- nearly the opposite of how some have caricatured him, as a careerist writing for international glory -- pressed against Lucas’s earlier reading of his poems, and he guessed that his poetic mysteriousness might come from a personal shyness. Clayton and Caryl were also present at that meeting -- the first time Lucas had met them -- and Lucas was able to glean some of what Bei Dao had written about them in Blue House.
Lucas’s research in the years since has mostly focused on medieval Chinese, but modern and contemporary Chinese poetry has also maintained its hold. Coming upon trajectories and techniques written under, or at times against, Bei Dao’s influence -- which has stayed strong despite the difficulty, for much of the past twenty years, of finding Bei Dao’s writing in China -- Lucas still found Bei Dao’s style opaque, even obscure. When Clayton contacted him for help in looking into Bei Dao’s poetry in advance of his introduction to his Naropa reading this summer, Lucas took the opportunity to look into the writing at a level deeper than he’d allowed himself previously. He came to feel that his sense of Bei Dao had too often been obscured by his hasty readings of the Chinese and, like Clayton, on an over-reliance on the English translations -- too often, Lucas felt, he had read the available translations with the aim of checking for mistakes, rather than to comprehend their interpretation of Bei Dao’s poetic vision. Working on the new translations with Clayton, after receiving permission to translate and publish from the author, with the necessary result of looking closely at Bei Dao’s Chinese, has shown Lucas that, for instance, by avoiding punctuation and playing with enjambment, lineation, and phrase-pacing, Bei Dao often creates splits in his meaning. Trying to recreate some of that ambiguity, David Hinton’s translations generally treat each line as its own clause; the result, Lucas says, is overly disjunctive poetry, and that when the stanza, rather than the line, can be heard as Bei Dao’s usual unit of poetic composition, the ambiguity but also the fluidity can emerge more fully through English translation.
The point, for neither Clayton nor for Lucas, is to supplant, or replace, earlier translations. Rather, since each translation enacts its own reading, these translations present an alternative to Hinton’s vision, and to his performance of that vision. As their long history with Bei Dao can attest, Clayton and Lucas see manifold meanings in Bei Dao’s writing, and believe that he deserves to be read as often, and as deeply, as possible.
In the selection of poems presented here, "Sower" is from Forms of Distance (New Directions, 1994, translated by David Hinton). The other three poems are from Landscape Over Zero (New Directions, 1996, translated by David Hinton and Yambing Chen). Both collections are bilingual.
-- Clayton Eshleman and Lucas Klein, August 2009
The Landscape at Degree Zero
It is the sparrow hawk who teaches song to swim
it is the song that retraces the earliest airs
We exchange fragments of delight
and enter the family from different routes
It is the father who has confirmed the dark
it is the dark that leads to the classics’ lightning
The door of weeping shuts with a thud
leaving the echo to pursue its wail
It is the pen that flowers within despair
it is the flower that resists necessity’s path
It is love’s beam that awakes
to brighten the landscape at degree zero
Sower
A sower walks into the hall
it’s war out there, he says
you are wallowing in vapidity
shirking your duty to warn of the danger
I am come in the name of the fields
it’s war out there
I leave the hall
all around scenes of the harvest
I start to design the war
to perform death
The crops I torch
flare up like wolf signals
One thought is driving me crazy:
he is sowing seeds onto marble
Untitled
A hundred thousand windows shimmer
these sooth-sayers
are between yesterday and the sea
Oh the joys of getting lost
A bridge becomes reality
spanning public rays of light
while the secret voyage touching
yesterday’s rose provides
a dilemma for each sheet of paper
a dawn for each of my mother’s tears
The Border
The storm turns toward the future of the north
the roots of the sick wail underground
the sun’s propeller
compels the bees to change into light
chains of envoys
scatter seeds into wind-snatching ears
Streams remembered
will never end
sounds stolen
have become the border
At the border there is no hope
a book
gulps down a wing
and then inside the solid ice of language
are the atoning brothers
for which you struggle
HKU
Prof. Bei Dao
General Information
Title: Professor of Humanities
Telephone: (852) 3163 4392
Fax: (852) 2994 3105
E-mail: ceas@cuhk.edu.hk
Address: Centre for East Asian Studies
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Shatin , NT, Hong Kong
Biography
Prof. Bei Dao is the penname of Zhao Zhenkai, the most distinguished poet of his generation and considered by many to be one of the major writers of modern China. Born in 1949, he began writing poetry and fiction during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), and by its end he had already achieved fame as an underground writer. During the late 1970s and 1980s, his poetry was published in a large range of literary magazines in China and began to attract attention abroad. His poetry has now been translated into over thirty languages, including English translations of his poems in Unlock (2000), Landscape Over Zero (1996), Forms of Distance (1994), Old Snow (1992), and The August Sleepwalker (1990), his stories in Waves (1985), and his essays in Midnight’s Gate (2005) and Blue House (2000). His most recent collection of essays on poetry, entitled Rose of Time, was published by Oxford Press University in Hong Kong in 2005.
From his earliest work, Bei Dao has developed a new language for poetry, seeking love, truth and the strength to pierce the darkness against a background full of violence and falsehood. Bei Dao’s achievements have been recognized by his election as honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Other awards and honours include the Aragana Poetry Prize from the International Festival of Poetry in Casablanca, Morocco, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Swedish PEN Tucholsky Prize, and the Jeanette Schocken Literary Prize in Germany.
詩人慈林簡評北島
作者：詩人慈林 于 2009-07-24 15:24:38.0 發表
北島後期詩作已成壞榜樣
----簡評中國當代十大詩人(北島篇)
北島簡介:
北島，1949年出生，本名趙振開，曾用筆名：北島，石默。祖籍浙江湖州，生於北京。1978年同詩人芒克創辦民間詩歌刊物《今天》。1990年旅居美國，現任教于加利福尼亞州戴維斯大學。曾獲得諾貝爾文學獎提名。
代表作;(略)
慈林簡評:
北島前期的詩作我很熟悉,1988年我赴美時,攜帶的唯一一本詩集就是北島最早的詩集,油印的<<陌生的海灘>>.
文革結束後哪幾年,以北島為首的朦朧詩派平地掘起,火了一把.老實說,以當時的政治文化背景而言.那批朦朧詩作是很不錯的,迎合了當時剛從文化專制枷鎖解脫民眾的心態,而激起巨大的反響及深切的共鳴.隨著朦朧詩取得巨大成功,北島自然也成了著名的詩人.
我認為,[朦朧詩]是文革特殊時期的特殊產物,是在嚴厲文化專制下,不得不用曲筆迂迴地表達自己情感的一種特殊手法.[朦朧詩]的美不是一種常態美,而是一種病態美,畸形美,帶有很深的政治烙印.文革結束後,社會日趨正常,詩作無需再以曲筆表達,應恢復常態,恢復傳統.
可惜的是,北島沒有認識到這點,反而變本加厲,越寫越朦朧,朦朧至晦澀,晦澀至如看天書.
淡淡的朦朧,很美,朦朧下去,朦成漆黑一團,什麼都看不見,何美之有?
北島前期的詩,如上述兩首代表作,淡淡的朦朧,我看得明白,很好.但後期的詩,尤其出國以後的詩,,朦成漆黑一團,我看不明白,亦不懂欣賞.
請看北島這首<開鎖>:
開 鎖
我夢見我在喝酒
杯子是空的
有人在公園讀報
誰說服他到老至天邊
吞下光芒？
燈籠在死者的夜校
變成清涼的茶
當記憶斜坡通向
夜空，人們淚水渾濁
說謊——在關鍵詞義
滑向劊子手一邊
滑向我：空房子
一扇窗戶打開
象高音C穿透沉默
大地與羅盤轉動
對著口令
破曉！
(摘自北島詩集<<開鎖>>,1999年出版)
看這首詩,我沒感覺,我看不懂，不知所云.
有人就看得很懂，而且看上去很美。此高人，張棗也。
張棗為北島的這本<<開鎖>>作序兼詩評,在我看來同樣是一篇奇文，文章洋洋灑灑，頭頭是道，可惜我也看不懂。
我真懷疑是否我已退化，再三聚精會神全神貫注一絲不茍一字不漏定睛拜讀，結果還是敗陣下來。這一來我便懷疑是否張棗的文章有問題了。
奇文共欣賞，疑義相與析
下面我就將張棗對〈開鎖〉這首詩的詩評前二段一字不漏地抄錄如下：
這首詩五節中共有三節（一、四、五節）都在表明說話者是設置在室內的。這個室內是寫作的場地，同時也隱喻命名前的空白狀態，因而它沒被賜予物性而是「空的」，這被第四節的「空房子」一詞更清晰地指明。這個大空裏還套著一個小空：空杯子。而我中也套著另一個我：被夢見的我。「我夢見我在……」，主體的分裂不僅是現代人悲涼的日常感受，也是現代詩學的一個經典原理。單獨「喝酒」是對憂鬱的暗示，而憂鬱也是詩歌之源。「詩」與「酒」本有意指的互涉。第一節寫下這樣一個內容：我在寫。而我寫的內容是什麼？我在寫空白。這一節引入全詩的原詩動機。
那麼，什麼是空白？空白是詞，是空白之詞，是廢詞、失效之詞、被消費之詞、暴力之詞，是遮敝真實（the real）的非命名之詞。北島在詩中將空白之詞感受成兩類：被消費之詞（第三節）。「讀報」是現代人典型的消費行為，消費的對像是詞。報紙將現實（？）日復一日循回再造，用僅拷貝實事世界的詞和聲稱客觀的調式不與人的內心，靈魂的成長和生存之謎發生任何關係。這樣的詞能教導誰去親近宇宙呢（……「到天邊/ 吞下光芒」）？第二類是暴力之詞（第四節）。在強權語境中，真理（「關鍵詞義」）顯得只是站在「劊子手」一邊。弱者的言詞無法再現現實（「撒謊」）。
…………
張棗的評很長,我懶得抄下去,抄也白抄,我相信無人會看,天書也.
作詩寫評到了這種地步,不是走火入魔,是什麼?
北島走不出這[朦朧]的泥潭,很多朦朧派名人也走不出,仍在[朦朧]的泥潭打滾混日子.仍身居高位,把握著詩壇的話語權,至使[朦朧詩]至今仍是詩壇主流.
結果又如何?在[朦朧]的烏雲籠罩下,二十多年來,詩壇每況愈下,一片凋零,詩人不但風光不再,連基本生存也大成問題.
醉俠孫慶東給我的信中寫道:“2008年大約是詩人的不幸之年，我所知道的詩人裏，就有幾位陷入了各種各樣的生活危機。我也參與了一點微薄的援助，但這一年的大事太多，詩人似乎已經從社會的收藏夾裏被刪除了。”
詩壇凋敗到如斯地步,詩人沉淪到如斯地步,誰之過?朦朧晦澀之風是最大殺手.擺在讀者面的都是<開鎖>這類貨色,讀者已用腳來投票,已逃之夭夭.
沒有了讀者,等於失去了衣食父母,詩人焉能不餓肚皮?
最後.我為北島的詩作一小結,概括起來,就是:一大成就,三不足,一大缺陷.
一大成就,就是初期[朦朧詩]的成功,大家有目共睹,不必再說.
不足之一,是北島的好詩太少,不過五六首,且帶有很深的政治烙印,不具普世之美,恐難以傳世.
不足之二,北島詩作偏重政治性,偏重人生、靈魂、命運等[厚重]題材,而大眾化的題材寫得少,如愛情、親情、友情、鄉情.而後者正是大眾樂見的傳統詩材.
不足之三,詩作數量過少,近十年基本不寫詩了.這顯然不夠敬業樂業.巨星邁克.傑克遜臨死前一天,還在舞臺苦練.許多真正的大詩人名詩人,終生不離謬思半步.而北島簿有名聲就歇菜躺倒吃老本,不足成典範.
一大缺陷就是後期凈寫<開鎖>這類天書作品,根本在忽悠廣大的讀者們,成了現代版[國王的新衣],除了張棗等近臣看上去很美外,平民百姓看十遍也是大眼瞪小眼,看不出個啥名堂來.
<開鎖>這類作品正是害詩人沒飯吃的兇手之一,是致詩園凋敗的毒草,必須堅決剷除之.任之生長,詩園都被毒草霸佔了,詩壇的春天不會來臨.
所以評價北島,我認為不可高估.被評為[中國當代十大詩人]已有些過,如北島憑這小小成績去敲諾貝爾文學獎的門,那可是一個笑話了.
請朋友思考:
1, 你認同我對北島的評價嗎?
2, <開鎖>這樣的詩,你看得懂嗎?
3, 對北島被諾貝爾文學獎提名,你看法如何?
北島後期詩作已成壞榜樣
----簡評中國當代十大詩人(北島篇)
北島簡介:
北島，1949年出生，本名趙振開，曾用筆名：北島，石默。祖籍浙江湖州，生於北京。1978年同詩人芒克創辦民間詩歌刊物《今天》。1990年旅居美國，現任教于加利福尼亞州戴維斯大學。曾獲得諾貝爾文學獎提名。
代表作;(略)
慈林簡評:
北島前期的詩作我很熟悉,1988年我赴美時,攜帶的唯一一本詩集就是北島最早的詩集,油印的<<陌生的海灘>>.
文革結束後哪幾年,以北島為首的朦朧詩派平地掘起,火了一把.老實說,以當時的政治文化背景而言.那批朦朧詩作是很不錯的,迎合了當時剛從文化專制枷鎖解脫民眾的心態,而激起巨大的反響及深切的共鳴.隨著朦朧詩取得巨大成功,北島自然也成了著名的詩人.
我認為,[朦朧詩]是文革特殊時期的特殊產物,是在嚴厲文化專制下,不得不用曲筆迂迴地表達自己情感的一種特殊手法.[朦朧詩]的美不是一種常態美,而是一種病態美,畸形美,帶有很深的政治烙印.文革結束後,社會日趨正常,詩作無需再以曲筆表達,應恢復常態,恢復傳統.
可惜的是,北島沒有認識到這點,反而變本加厲,越寫越朦朧,朦朧至晦澀,晦澀至如看天書.
淡淡的朦朧,很美,朦朧下去,朦成漆黑一團,什麼都看不見,何美之有?
北島前期的詩,如上述兩首代表作,淡淡的朦朧,我看得明白,很好.但後期的詩,尤其出國以後的詩,,朦成漆黑一團,我看不明白,亦不懂欣賞.
請看北島這首<開鎖>:
開 鎖
我夢見我在喝酒
杯子是空的
有人在公園讀報
誰說服他到老至天邊
吞下光芒？
燈籠在死者的夜校
變成清涼的茶
當記憶斜坡通向
夜空，人們淚水渾濁
說謊——在關鍵詞義
滑向劊子手一邊
滑向我：空房子
一扇窗戶打開
象高音C穿透沉默
大地與羅盤轉動
對著口令
破曉！
(摘自北島詩集<<開鎖>>,1999年出版)
看這首詩,我沒感覺,我看不懂，不知所云.
有人就看得很懂，而且看上去很美。此高人，張棗也。
張棗為北島的這本<<開鎖>>作序兼詩評,在我看來同樣是一篇奇文，文章洋洋灑灑，頭頭是道，可惜我也看不懂。
我真懷疑是否我已退化，再三聚精會神全神貫注一絲不茍一字不漏定睛拜讀，結果還是敗陣下來。這一來我便懷疑是否張棗的文章有問題了。
奇文共欣賞，疑義相與析
下面我就將張棗對〈開鎖〉這首詩的詩評前二段一字不漏地抄錄如下：
這首詩五節中共有三節（一、四、五節）都在表明說話者是設置在室內的。這個室內是寫作的場地，同時也隱喻命名前的空白狀態，因而它沒被賜予物性而是「空的」，這被第四節的「空房子」一詞更清晰地指明。這個大空裏還套著一個小空：空杯子。而我中也套著另一個我：被夢見的我。「我夢見我在……」，主體的分裂不僅是現代人悲涼的日常感受，也是現代詩學的一個經典原理。單獨「喝酒」是對憂鬱的暗示，而憂鬱也是詩歌之源。「詩」與「酒」本有意指的互涉。第一節寫下這樣一個內容：我在寫。而我寫的內容是什麼？我在寫空白。這一節引入全詩的原詩動機。
那麼，什麼是空白？空白是詞，是空白之詞，是廢詞、失效之詞、被消費之詞、暴力之詞，是遮敝真實（the real）的非命名之詞。北島在詩中將空白之詞感受成兩類：被消費之詞（第三節）。「讀報」是現代人典型的消費行為，消費的對像是詞。報紙將現實（？）日復一日循回再造，用僅拷貝實事世界的詞和聲稱客觀的調式不與人的內心，靈魂的成長和生存之謎發生任何關係。這樣的詞能教導誰去親近宇宙呢（……「到天邊/ 吞下光芒」）？第二類是暴力之詞（第四節）。在強權語境中，真理（「關鍵詞義」）顯得只是站在「劊子手」一邊。弱者的言詞無法再現現實（「撒謊」）。
…………
張棗的評很長,我懶得抄下去,抄也白抄,我相信無人會看,天書也.
作詩寫評到了這種地步,不是走火入魔,是什麼?
北島走不出這[朦朧]的泥潭,很多朦朧派名人也走不出,仍在[朦朧]的泥潭打滾混日子.仍身居高位,把握著詩壇的話語權,至使[朦朧詩]至今仍是詩壇主流.
結果又如何?在[朦朧]的烏雲籠罩下,二十多年來,詩壇每況愈下,一片凋零,詩人不但風光不再,連基本生存也大成問題.
醉俠孫慶東給我的信中寫道:“2008年大約是詩人的不幸之年，我所知道的詩人裏，就有幾位陷入了各種各樣的生活危機。我也參與了一點微薄的援助，但這一年的大事太多，詩人似乎已經從社會的收藏夾裏被刪除了。”
詩壇凋敗到如斯地步,詩人沉淪到如斯地步,誰之過?朦朧晦澀之風是最大殺手.擺在讀者面的都是<開鎖>這類貨色,讀者已用腳來投票,已逃之夭夭.
沒有了讀者,等於失去了衣食父母,詩人焉能不餓肚皮?
最後.我為北島的詩作一小結,概括起來,就是:一大成就,三不足,一大缺陷.
一大成就,就是初期[朦朧詩]的成功,大家有目共睹,不必再說.
不足之一,是北島的好詩太少,不過五六首,且帶有很深的政治烙印,不具普世之美,恐難以傳世.
不足之二,北島詩作偏重政治性,偏重人生、靈魂、命運等[厚重]題材,而大眾化的題材寫得少,如愛情、親情、友情、鄉情.而後者正是大眾樂見的傳統詩材.
不足之三,詩作數量過少,近十年基本不寫詩了.這顯然不夠敬業樂業.巨星邁克.傑克遜臨死前一天,還在舞臺苦練.許多真正的大詩人名詩人,終生不離謬思半步.而北島簿有名聲就歇菜躺倒吃老本,不足成典範.
一大缺陷就是後期凈寫<開鎖>這類天書作品,根本在忽悠廣大的讀者們,成了現代版[國王的新衣],除了張棗等近臣看上去很美外,平民百姓看十遍也是大眼瞪小眼,看不出個啥名堂來.
<開鎖>這類作品正是害詩人沒飯吃的兇手之一,是致詩園凋敗的毒草,必須堅決剷除之.任之生長,詩園都被毒草霸佔了,詩壇的春天不會來臨.
所以評價北島,我認為不可高估.被評為[中國當代十大詩人]已有些過,如北島憑這小小成績去敲諾貝爾文學獎的門,那可是一個笑話了.
請朋友思考:
1, 你認同我對北島的評價嗎?
2, <開鎖>這樣的詩,你看得懂嗎?
3, 對北島被諾貝爾文學獎提名,你看法如何?
諾貝爾文學獎餘波
諾貝爾文學獎餘波盪漾....... 北島，為什麼不是你？
【劉佳玲/特稿 】
北島說過，「如今我能和眾多同胞一起到天涯海角，結識別的土地和居民，特別是和我一樣從事寫作的人，實在是一種幸運。生活如此，命運如此。」2000年諾貝爾文學獎得主於台北時間12日晚上7點左右公佈，最後文學獎的得主頒給了出身於中國大陸，後來旅居法國的華人作家高行健，面對高行健的得獎，中國大陸的內部也引發許多爭議。為什麼不是巴金？為什麼不是北島？
北島說過，「如今我能和眾多同胞一起到天涯海角，結識別的土地和居民，特別是和我一樣從事寫作的人，實在是一種幸運。生活如此，命運如此。」2000年諾貝爾文學獎得主於台北時間12日晚上7點左右公佈，最後文學獎的得主頒給了出身於中國大陸，後來旅居法國的華人作家高行健，面對高行健的得獎，中國大陸的內部也引發許多爭議。為什麼不是巴金？為什麼不是北島？ 為什麼不是北島？ 在華人地區，北島每年都是諾貝爾文學獎得主被寄予最高厚望的人選之一。頒獎前，《瑞典日報》評論家推舉出最有希望得獎的非歐洲文學家中，唯一的華人人選即是北島。 為什麼不是北島？ 北島之所以成為諾貝爾文學獎中最熱門的華人作家人選，除了其作品本身成就獲得肯定之外，和諾貝爾獎本身的提名機制，也有很大的關係。諾貝爾文學獎的提名人選是由瑞典學院的院士或過去諾貝爾文學獎的得主所提名，而在瑞典學院中，唯一懂得漢語又勤譯華人作家作品的馬悅然教授，最喜歡北島、高行健和李銳的作品。其中，他和北島認識得比較早，馬悅然曾對學者劉再復說，北島創造了一種全新的語言，是前人沒有的。馬悅然對北島的作品，欣賞備至，他翻譯過北島的全部詩作。最近，更是積極翻譯本島的新詩作《探索》。 既然如此，為什麼諾貝爾文學獎得主不是51歲的北島，而是60歲的高行健？馬悅然只公開地表示，諾貝爾文學獎只能給一個人。而為《靈山》寫過序言的文學評論家馬森則判斷，若是北島得獎，瑞典學院可能會「有負海峽兩岸更資深的詩人」。(《自由時報》，10月20日〈自由副刊〉) 北島，原名趙振開，1949年出生於北京，16歲時，適逢文化大革命，1969年高中畢業後當建築工人，1974年，完成了第一篇小說《波動》，之後當過建築工人，1978年創辦文學雜誌《今天》，其中所編選的作品，對於當時文革後的自由風氣有推波助瀾的效果。1980年，《今天》停刊。 北島也是大陸「朦朧詩」的代表作家，其詩、小說、散文等作品，被譯成20多種文字，廣為國際文學界所肯定。1989年流亡海外後，在歐美多所大學擔任過教職、駐校作家。更獲瑞典筆會文學獎、美國西部筆會中心自由寫作獎和古根漢姆獎學金。被美國藝術文學院選為終身榮譽院士。 「朦朧詩」是80年代大陸最重要的文學現象之一。從1977年北島的〈回答〉發表在《詩刊》後，一批年輕詩人如顧城、舒婷、江河、楊煉、梁小斌等，如同雨後春筍相繼出現。他們對附庸政治、窒息心靈的文學傳統進行反省與反抗，並從西方近代各種文學流派裡汲取營養，大膽地從事人的價值的探索與追求，在短短的幾年內便創造出了一個令人眼花瞭亂的新局面。 所謂「朦朧詩」，根據清大中語系教授呂正惠的說法，「『朦朧』一詞，顧名思義，是說這些詩人的作品，『朦朦朧朧，意思不清楚』、『有點古怪』；這本來具有貶抑的意味，但流傳既廣，約定俗成，一般也就拿來稱呼這一群詩人了」。在矇朧詩剛出現時，大陸一般讀者的看法其實類似台灣對現代詩的批判。所以簡單的說，朦朧詩就是八O年代出現於大陸的現代詩(《北島詩集》序，新地出版社，1988)。他們師法西洋文學家如英國的艾略特和奧登等人的象徵寫法，回歸個人主義。 呂正惠指出，在大陸現代派作家中，以最不妥協的態度來表達他們對文革之後，中共集體主義的懷疑與批判的，就屬朦朧派詩人，而代表者正是北島。他的名作〈回答〉可以看作是這種態度的最直接宣言：(《北島詩集》，新地出版社，1988) 告訴你吧，世界，我──不──相──信！縱使你腳下有一千名挑戰者，那就把我算做第一千零一名。 我不相信天是藍的；我不相信雷的回聲；我不相信夢是假的；我不相信死無報應。 北島說過，「詩人應該通過作品建立一個自己的世界，這是一個真誠而獨特的世界，正義和人性的世界」，北島的作品往往從簡單的文字中，發出對世界最有力量的批判。作品〈太陽城札記〉是另一例： 生命太陽也上升了 愛情恬靜。燕群飛過荒蕪的處女地老樹倒下了，嘎然一聲空中飄落著鹹澀的雨 自由飄撕碎的紙屑 孩子容納整個海洋的圖畫疊成了一隻白鶴 姑娘顫動的虹採集飛鳥的花翎 青春紅波浪浸透孤獨的槳 藝術億萬個輝煌的太陽顯現在打碎的鏡子上 人民月亮被撕成閃光的麥粒播在誠實的天空和土地 勞動手，圍攏地球 命運孩子隨意敲打著欄杆欄杆隨意敲打著夜晚 信仰羊群溢出綠色的窪地牧童吹起單調的短笛 和平在帝王死去的地方那枝老槍抽枝、發芽成了殘廢者的拐杖 祖國她被鑄在青銅的盾牌上靠著博物館發黑的板牆 生活網 北島的詩風格，從早期利用疊句，直接的表達出義憤填膺的情緒，逐漸改變成利用象徵的手法，呈現出反覆思辨的深沉自省，如詩作〈另一種傳說〉(「死去的英雄被人遺忘/他們寂寞，他們/在人海裡穿行/他們的憤怒只能點燃/一隻男人手中的煙」)，還有晚期流亡海外後的豁達開闊。作品《午夜歌手》，收 錄 了北島自 1972年到1994年的作品，可以充分領會到北島作品風格的轉變，《零度以上的風景》則是收錄1993年到1996的作品，在異鄉的北島，看似幽默苦澀的筆調中，批判的氣味不減，更有一種豁達的心境。 在紀念詩刊《今天》20週年的文章中，北島曾敘述自己當年在當建築工人的景況。在建築工地，與數十人同住在工棚裡，用草帽製成的檯燈，讀書寫作，後來更因為自己的要求，建立一間暗室，在厚重窗簾的阻隔下，小小的暗室即成為他的「書房」，在那段期間，他除了寫詩，更完成了一篇中篇小說；而在這樣的環境下，北島於是寫到，「寫作是一種禁止的遊戲，甚至要冒生命危險，而是越是禁止的越有吸引力」。 在作品《藍房子》中，北島透過散文描述自己與美國詩人艾倫‧金斯堡之間的情誼，且戲稱詩人為「垮掉的一代」，文中提到艾倫自拍的相片，北島說道，「他想藉此看清自己嗎？或看清自己的消失？」而在詩作〈青年詩人的肖像〉中，北島也這樣的說道，「那從袖口出的靈感/沒完沒了，你/日夜穿行在長長的句子和 /胡同裡，你/生下來就老了/儘管雄心照舊沿著 /禿頂的邊緣生長/摘下假牙，你/更像個孩子」。 對於詩的堅持，似乎成為北島一種無法異動的情操，至於是否得到諾貝爾文學獎的青睞，似乎不是最重要的。 (10/12/2000，博客來)
【劉佳玲/特稿 】
北島說過，「如今我能和眾多同胞一起到天涯海角，結識別的土地和居民，特別是和我一樣從事寫作的人，實在是一種幸運。生活如此，命運如此。」2000年諾貝爾文學獎得主於台北時間12日晚上7點左右公佈，最後文學獎的得主頒給了出身於中國大陸，後來旅居法國的華人作家高行健，面對高行健的得獎，中國大陸的內部也引發許多爭議。為什麼不是巴金？為什麼不是北島？
北島說過，「如今我能和眾多同胞一起到天涯海角，結識別的土地和居民，特別是和我一樣從事寫作的人，實在是一種幸運。生活如此，命運如此。」2000年諾貝爾文學獎得主於台北時間12日晚上7點左右公佈，最後文學獎的得主頒給了出身於中國大陸，後來旅居法國的華人作家高行健，面對高行健的得獎，中國大陸的內部也引發許多爭議。為什麼不是巴金？為什麼不是北島？ 為什麼不是北島？ 在華人地區，北島每年都是諾貝爾文學獎得主被寄予最高厚望的人選之一。頒獎前，《瑞典日報》評論家推舉出最有希望得獎的非歐洲文學家中，唯一的華人人選即是北島。 為什麼不是北島？ 北島之所以成為諾貝爾文學獎中最熱門的華人作家人選，除了其作品本身成就獲得肯定之外，和諾貝爾獎本身的提名機制，也有很大的關係。諾貝爾文學獎的提名人選是由瑞典學院的院士或過去諾貝爾文學獎的得主所提名，而在瑞典學院中，唯一懂得漢語又勤譯華人作家作品的馬悅然教授，最喜歡北島、高行健和李銳的作品。其中，他和北島認識得比較早，馬悅然曾對學者劉再復說，北島創造了一種全新的語言，是前人沒有的。馬悅然對北島的作品，欣賞備至，他翻譯過北島的全部詩作。最近，更是積極翻譯本島的新詩作《探索》。 既然如此，為什麼諾貝爾文學獎得主不是51歲的北島，而是60歲的高行健？馬悅然只公開地表示，諾貝爾文學獎只能給一個人。而為《靈山》寫過序言的文學評論家馬森則判斷，若是北島得獎，瑞典學院可能會「有負海峽兩岸更資深的詩人」。(《自由時報》，10月20日〈自由副刊〉) 北島，原名趙振開，1949年出生於北京，16歲時，適逢文化大革命，1969年高中畢業後當建築工人，1974年，完成了第一篇小說《波動》，之後當過建築工人，1978年創辦文學雜誌《今天》，其中所編選的作品，對於當時文革後的自由風氣有推波助瀾的效果。1980年，《今天》停刊。 北島也是大陸「朦朧詩」的代表作家，其詩、小說、散文等作品，被譯成20多種文字，廣為國際文學界所肯定。1989年流亡海外後，在歐美多所大學擔任過教職、駐校作家。更獲瑞典筆會文學獎、美國西部筆會中心自由寫作獎和古根漢姆獎學金。被美國藝術文學院選為終身榮譽院士。 「朦朧詩」是80年代大陸最重要的文學現象之一。從1977年北島的〈回答〉發表在《詩刊》後，一批年輕詩人如顧城、舒婷、江河、楊煉、梁小斌等，如同雨後春筍相繼出現。他們對附庸政治、窒息心靈的文學傳統進行反省與反抗，並從西方近代各種文學流派裡汲取營養，大膽地從事人的價值的探索與追求，在短短的幾年內便創造出了一個令人眼花瞭亂的新局面。 所謂「朦朧詩」，根據清大中語系教授呂正惠的說法，「『朦朧』一詞，顧名思義，是說這些詩人的作品，『朦朦朧朧，意思不清楚』、『有點古怪』；這本來具有貶抑的意味，但流傳既廣，約定俗成，一般也就拿來稱呼這一群詩人了」。在矇朧詩剛出現時，大陸一般讀者的看法其實類似台灣對現代詩的批判。所以簡單的說，朦朧詩就是八O年代出現於大陸的現代詩(《北島詩集》序，新地出版社，1988)。他們師法西洋文學家如英國的艾略特和奧登等人的象徵寫法，回歸個人主義。 呂正惠指出，在大陸現代派作家中，以最不妥協的態度來表達他們對文革之後，中共集體主義的懷疑與批判的，就屬朦朧派詩人，而代表者正是北島。他的名作〈回答〉可以看作是這種態度的最直接宣言：(《北島詩集》，新地出版社，1988) 告訴你吧，世界，我──不──相──信！縱使你腳下有一千名挑戰者，那就把我算做第一千零一名。 我不相信天是藍的；我不相信雷的回聲；我不相信夢是假的；我不相信死無報應。 北島說過，「詩人應該通過作品建立一個自己的世界，這是一個真誠而獨特的世界，正義和人性的世界」，北島的作品往往從簡單的文字中，發出對世界最有力量的批判。作品〈太陽城札記〉是另一例： 生命太陽也上升了 愛情恬靜。燕群飛過荒蕪的處女地老樹倒下了，嘎然一聲空中飄落著鹹澀的雨 自由飄撕碎的紙屑 孩子容納整個海洋的圖畫疊成了一隻白鶴 姑娘顫動的虹採集飛鳥的花翎 青春紅波浪浸透孤獨的槳 藝術億萬個輝煌的太陽顯現在打碎的鏡子上 人民月亮被撕成閃光的麥粒播在誠實的天空和土地 勞動手，圍攏地球 命運孩子隨意敲打著欄杆欄杆隨意敲打著夜晚 信仰羊群溢出綠色的窪地牧童吹起單調的短笛 和平在帝王死去的地方那枝老槍抽枝、發芽成了殘廢者的拐杖 祖國她被鑄在青銅的盾牌上靠著博物館發黑的板牆 生活網 北島的詩風格，從早期利用疊句，直接的表達出義憤填膺的情緒，逐漸改變成利用象徵的手法，呈現出反覆思辨的深沉自省，如詩作〈另一種傳說〉(「死去的英雄被人遺忘/他們寂寞，他們/在人海裡穿行/他們的憤怒只能點燃/一隻男人手中的煙」)，還有晚期流亡海外後的豁達開闊。作品《午夜歌手》，收 錄 了北島自 1972年到1994年的作品，可以充分領會到北島作品風格的轉變，《零度以上的風景》則是收錄1993年到1996的作品，在異鄉的北島，看似幽默苦澀的筆調中，批判的氣味不減，更有一種豁達的心境。 在紀念詩刊《今天》20週年的文章中，北島曾敘述自己當年在當建築工人的景況。在建築工地，與數十人同住在工棚裡，用草帽製成的檯燈，讀書寫作，後來更因為自己的要求，建立一間暗室，在厚重窗簾的阻隔下，小小的暗室即成為他的「書房」，在那段期間，他除了寫詩，更完成了一篇中篇小說；而在這樣的環境下，北島於是寫到，「寫作是一種禁止的遊戲，甚至要冒生命危險，而是越是禁止的越有吸引力」。 在作品《藍房子》中，北島透過散文描述自己與美國詩人艾倫‧金斯堡之間的情誼，且戲稱詩人為「垮掉的一代」，文中提到艾倫自拍的相片，北島說道，「他想藉此看清自己嗎？或看清自己的消失？」而在詩作〈青年詩人的肖像〉中，北島也這樣的說道，「那從袖口出的靈感/沒完沒了，你/日夜穿行在長長的句子和 /胡同裡，你/生下來就老了/儘管雄心照舊沿著 /禿頂的邊緣生長/摘下假牙，你/更像個孩子」。 對於詩的堅持，似乎成為北島一種無法異動的情操，至於是否得到諾貝爾文學獎的青睞，似乎不是最重要的。 (10/12/2000，博客來)
中國詩人北島
北島（1949年8月2日－），原名趙振開，中國當代詩人，為朦朧詩代表人物之一。先後獲瑞典筆會文學獎、美國西部筆會中心自由寫作獎、古根海姆獎學金等，並被選為美國藝術文學院終身榮譽院士。
生平
北島祖籍中國浙江湖州，1949年生於當時的北平（即北京）。畢業於北京四中。1969年當建築工人，後作過翻譯，並短期在《新觀察》雜誌作過編輯。1970年開始寫作，1978年與芒克等人創辦《今天》雜誌。北島因在六四民運中的特殊作用，不被中國政府見容，於1989年移居國外，曾一度旅居瑞典等七個國家，他在世界上多個國家進行創作，尋找機會朗讀自己的詩歌。1994年曾經返回中國，在北京入境時被扣留，遣送回美國，曾任教於加利福尼亞大學戴維斯分校，還曾是史丹福大學、加利福尼亞大學伯克萊分校、香港中文大學客座教授。2001年10月回國為父奔喪，2002年宣佈退出「中國人權」。
2007年，北島收到香港中文大學的聘書。8月，北島正式搬到香港，與其家人團聚，結束其近20年的歐美各國漂泊式生活[1]。
1990年在北島的主持下《今天》文學雜誌在挪威復刊，至今仍在世界各地發行，其網路版和論壇（www.jintian.net）也享譽世界各地漢語文學圈。
出版的詩集有：《陌生的海灘》（1978年）、《北島詩選》（1986年）、《在天涯》（1993年）、《午夜歌手》（1995年）、《零度以上的風景線》（1996年）、《開鎖》（1999年），其他作品有：《波動》及英譯本（1984年）、《歸來的陌生人》（1987年）、《藍房子》（1999年），散文集《失敗之書》（2004年），散文集《青燈》(2008年1月)。北島的作品已被譯成二十多種文字出版。代表作包括作於1976年天安門「四五運動」期間的《回答》，其中的「卑鄙是卑鄙者的通行證，高尚是高尚者的墓志銘」已經成為中國新詩名句。在美國，其作品由 Zephyr Press 出版。曾多次獲諾貝爾文學獎提名，是當今影響最大，也最受國際承認的中國詩人。
文學意見
德國漢學家魯道夫·瓦格納（Rudolf G. Wagner）認為北島在1980年代後期出國後所寫的詩沒有長進，「基本上重複原來的意象，新的發展很少。北島沒有前進，許多中國作家也都是這樣重復自己。」
而德國另一漢學家顧彬（Wolfgang Kubin）對北島卻極為推崇，在其文章和多次訪談中對北島的人格道義，詩歌和散文都讚譽有加。
Bei Dao (simplified Chinese: 北岛; traditional Chinese: 北島; pinyin: Běi Dǎo; literally "Northern Island", born August 2, 1949) is the pseudonym of Chinese poet Zhao Zhenkai (趙振開). He was born in Beijing, his pseudonym was chosen because he came from the north and because of his preference for solitude[1]. Bei Dao is the most notable representative of the Misty Poets, a group of Chinese poets who reacted against the restrictions of the Cultural Revolution[2].
As a teenager, Bei Dao was a member of the Red Guards, the enthusiastic followers of Mao Zedong who enforced the dictates of the Cultural Revolution, often through violent means. He had misgivings about the Revolution and was "re-educated" as a construction worker the next eleven years.
Bei Dao and Mang Ke founded the magazine Jintian ("Today"); the central publication of the Misty Poets which was published from 1978 until 1980, when it was banned. The work of the Misty Poets and Bei Dao in particular were an inspiration to pro-democracy movements in China. Most notable was his poem "Huida" ("The Answer") which was written during the 1976 Tiananmen demonstrations in which he participated. The poem was taken up as a defiant anthem of the pro-democracy movement and appeared on posters during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. During the 1989 protests and subsequent shootings, Bei Dao was at a literary conference in Berlin and was not allowed to return to China[3]. (Three other leading Misty Poets, Gu Cheng, Duo Duo, and Yang Lian, were also exiled). His then wife, Shao Fei, and their daughter were not allowed to leave China to join him for another six years.
Since 1987, Bei Dao has lived and taught in England, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, France, and the United States. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages, including five poetry volumes in English [4] along with the collection of stories Waves (1990) and the essay collections Blue House (2000) and Midnight's Gate (2005). Bei Dao continued his work in exile.
He has won numerous awards, including Tucholsky Prize from Swedish PEN, International Poetry Argana Award from the House of Poetry in Morocco and the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. He is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Jintian was resurrected in Stockholm in 1990 as a forum for expatriate Chinese writers. He has taught and lectured at a number of schools, most recently the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, as well as the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and Beloit College in Wisconsin, and is currently Professor of Humanities in the Center for East Asian Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has been repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
生平
北島祖籍中國浙江湖州，1949年生於當時的北平（即北京）。畢業於北京四中。1969年當建築工人，後作過翻譯，並短期在《新觀察》雜誌作過編輯。1970年開始寫作，1978年與芒克等人創辦《今天》雜誌。北島因在六四民運中的特殊作用，不被中國政府見容，於1989年移居國外，曾一度旅居瑞典等七個國家，他在世界上多個國家進行創作，尋找機會朗讀自己的詩歌。1994年曾經返回中國，在北京入境時被扣留，遣送回美國，曾任教於加利福尼亞大學戴維斯分校，還曾是史丹福大學、加利福尼亞大學伯克萊分校、香港中文大學客座教授。2001年10月回國為父奔喪，2002年宣佈退出「中國人權」。
2007年，北島收到香港中文大學的聘書。8月，北島正式搬到香港，與其家人團聚，結束其近20年的歐美各國漂泊式生活[1]。
1990年在北島的主持下《今天》文學雜誌在挪威復刊，至今仍在世界各地發行，其網路版和論壇（www.jintian.net）也享譽世界各地漢語文學圈。
出版的詩集有：《陌生的海灘》（1978年）、《北島詩選》（1986年）、《在天涯》（1993年）、《午夜歌手》（1995年）、《零度以上的風景線》（1996年）、《開鎖》（1999年），其他作品有：《波動》及英譯本（1984年）、《歸來的陌生人》（1987年）、《藍房子》（1999年），散文集《失敗之書》（2004年），散文集《青燈》(2008年1月)。北島的作品已被譯成二十多種文字出版。代表作包括作於1976年天安門「四五運動」期間的《回答》，其中的「卑鄙是卑鄙者的通行證，高尚是高尚者的墓志銘」已經成為中國新詩名句。在美國，其作品由 Zephyr Press 出版。曾多次獲諾貝爾文學獎提名，是當今影響最大，也最受國際承認的中國詩人。
文學意見
德國漢學家魯道夫·瓦格納（Rudolf G. Wagner）認為北島在1980年代後期出國後所寫的詩沒有長進，「基本上重複原來的意象，新的發展很少。北島沒有前進，許多中國作家也都是這樣重復自己。」
而德國另一漢學家顧彬（Wolfgang Kubin）對北島卻極為推崇，在其文章和多次訪談中對北島的人格道義，詩歌和散文都讚譽有加。
Bei Dao (simplified Chinese: 北岛; traditional Chinese: 北島; pinyin: Běi Dǎo; literally "Northern Island", born August 2, 1949) is the pseudonym of Chinese poet Zhao Zhenkai (趙振開). He was born in Beijing, his pseudonym was chosen because he came from the north and because of his preference for solitude[1]. Bei Dao is the most notable representative of the Misty Poets, a group of Chinese poets who reacted against the restrictions of the Cultural Revolution[2].
As a teenager, Bei Dao was a member of the Red Guards, the enthusiastic followers of Mao Zedong who enforced the dictates of the Cultural Revolution, often through violent means. He had misgivings about the Revolution and was "re-educated" as a construction worker the next eleven years.
Bei Dao and Mang Ke founded the magazine Jintian ("Today"); the central publication of the Misty Poets which was published from 1978 until 1980, when it was banned. The work of the Misty Poets and Bei Dao in particular were an inspiration to pro-democracy movements in China. Most notable was his poem "Huida" ("The Answer") which was written during the 1976 Tiananmen demonstrations in which he participated. The poem was taken up as a defiant anthem of the pro-democracy movement and appeared on posters during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. During the 1989 protests and subsequent shootings, Bei Dao was at a literary conference in Berlin and was not allowed to return to China[3]. (Three other leading Misty Poets, Gu Cheng, Duo Duo, and Yang Lian, were also exiled). His then wife, Shao Fei, and their daughter were not allowed to leave China to join him for another six years.
Since 1987, Bei Dao has lived and taught in England, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, France, and the United States. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages, including five poetry volumes in English [4] along with the collection of stories Waves (1990) and the essay collections Blue House (2000) and Midnight's Gate (2005). Bei Dao continued his work in exile.
He has won numerous awards, including Tucholsky Prize from Swedish PEN, International Poetry Argana Award from the House of Poetry in Morocco and the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. He is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Jintian was resurrected in Stockholm in 1990 as a forum for expatriate Chinese writers. He has taught and lectured at a number of schools, most recently the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, as well as the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and Beloit College in Wisconsin, and is currently Professor of Humanities in the Center for East Asian Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has been repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
北島
北島，原名趙振開，祖籍浙江湖州，生於北京。1969年當建築工人，後在某公司工作。八十年代末移居國外。
北島的詩歌創作開始於十年文革後期，反映了從迷惘到覺醒的一代青年的心聲，十年動亂的荒誕現實，造成了詩人獨特的“冷抒情”的方式——出奇的冷靜和深刻的思辨性。他在冷靜的觀察中，發現了“那從蠅眼中分裂的世界”如何造成人的價值的全面崩潰、人性的扭曲和異化。他想“通過作品建立一個自己的世界，這是一個真誠而獨特的世界，正直的世界，正義和人性的世界。”在這個世界中，北島建立了自己的“理性法庭”，以理性和人性為準繩，重新確定人的價值，恢復人的本性；悼念烈士，審判劊子手；嘲諷怪異和異化的世界，反思歷史和現實；呼喚人性的富貴，尋找“生命的湖”和“紅帆船”。
清醒的思辨與直覺思維產生的隱喻、象徵意象相結合，是北島詩顯著的藝術特徵，具有高度概括力的悖論式警句，造成了北島詩獨有的振聾發聵的藝術力量。著有詩集《太陽城札記》、《北島顧城詩選》、《北島詩選》等。
北島的詩集《北島詩選》曾獲1988年中國作家協會第三屆優秀詩集獎。北島在詩創作中對於詩的形式和表現方法作了一些嘗試，關於這個問題，他在為《上海文學》“百家詩會”寫的一段《談詩》的文字中有所說明：“詩歌面臨著形式的危機，許多陳舊的表現手段已經遠不夠用了，隱喻、象徵、通感，改變視角和透視關係，打破時空秩序等手法為我們提供了新的前景。我試圖把電影蒙太奇的手法引入自己的詩中，造成意象的撞擊和迅速轉換，激發人們的想像力來填補大幅度跳躍留下的空白。另外，我還十分注重詩歌的容納量、潛意識和瞬間感受的捕捉。”這些話大致說出了他當時在詩歌藝術方面的追求。
在這方面，他也取得了一些成績。他的詩常以意象拼貼為主要手法。據他說他在寫作時先寫下任何涌現在腦海中的詩行，而後將它們大刪大拾，再剪裁拼貼成一首詩。所以他的詩有雕塑的凝聚，時間是在藝術的空間中運行的。他的詩裏的意象體現了龐德所說：意像是感情和理智在瞬間結合成的複合體。他的詩不是流體，而是作者內心的岩層，由各種意象積成的地層。這地層中的意象化石在得到適度的安排時，給人的思考創造了盤旋的空間，但有時過密，過於擁擠；而意象的過度密集沒有能增加藝術空間，僅起阻塞空間的後果。北島的詩離開了直敘衷腸的浪漫主義，獲得非個性的冷調。
《日子》這首詩的寫法，就大致上是電影蒙太奇的手法，意象在這裡圍繞著“日子”這個標題迅速轉換，不同的鏡頭又都指向一個共同的生存狀態，看來作者想說這樣的日子還沒有找到自己的意義。但是，開頭和結句告訴讀者，這種日子有自己的秘密，而且有自己的過去。《太陽城札記》都是一些短詩、小詩，其中像《愛情》這樣的詩，也是一組鏡頭，詩中的景物是描寫，也是隱喻，然而整首詩不晦澀，清新可讀。既寫出了愛情的恬靜氣氛，也暗示了鹹澀的感覺；荒蕪的處女地渴望愛情，老樹倒下也許象徵過時的規矩的被拋棄。
《藝術》的意思似乎是想說，在藝術這塊領域，統一的太陽已被打碎，藝術的統一性不復存在，而這，是後現代主義的觀點。《生活》一詩曾經引起爭議。一位老詩人曾經批評這首詩，他說問題不在於是否可以說生活是網，而在於要說明生活為什麼是網，生活怎樣成為網的。正好這位老詩人過去也寫過“生活是網 ”這樣的意思，我們不妨舉出來請讀者加以比較。
這位老詩人在1940年寫的一首長詩裏這樣寫道：“今天以前，我看這世界/隨時都好像要翻過來/什麼都好像要突然沒有了似的/一個日子帶給我一次悸動/生活是一張空虛的網/張開著要把我捕捉”。或許可以這樣說：北島的詩重意象，而這位老詩人的詩重“怎樣”；北島詩的含義由讀者讀出來，而這位老詩人的詩的含義，詩人則要作更多的界定。
《回答》一首是北島流傳很廣的詩，這首詩在藝術上其實是有毛病的，甚至可以說詩味不多，有些類如格言。台灣一位著名詩人曾經指出過這一點，他說這不是北島最好的詩，很奇怪為什麼如此流行。這詩對“文化大革命”中某些社會現象提出了尖銳批評，引起不少人共鳴；但是，如果根據這些消極現象就不再信任什麼了，恐怕也不足為訓。
《一切》也顯得有些消極，“一切都是命運”，只有在表白生存的無奈狀況時才是可以理解的；否則，如果把這句話拿來宣傳宿命論，或者說如果詩人在宿命論的含義上寫出這行詩，那就未免消極了。正因為這樣，北島的詩友舒婷寫了《這也是一切》來作回答：“不，不是一切/都像你說的那樣！”“希望，而且為它鬥爭，/請把這一切放在你的肩上。”（藍棣之）
北島的詩歌創作開始於十年文革後期，反映了從迷惘到覺醒的一代青年的心聲，十年動亂的荒誕現實，造成了詩人獨特的“冷抒情”的方式——出奇的冷靜和深刻的思辨性。他在冷靜的觀察中，發現了“那從蠅眼中分裂的世界”如何造成人的價值的全面崩潰、人性的扭曲和異化。他想“通過作品建立一個自己的世界，這是一個真誠而獨特的世界，正直的世界，正義和人性的世界。”在這個世界中，北島建立了自己的“理性法庭”，以理性和人性為準繩，重新確定人的價值，恢復人的本性；悼念烈士，審判劊子手；嘲諷怪異和異化的世界，反思歷史和現實；呼喚人性的富貴，尋找“生命的湖”和“紅帆船”。
清醒的思辨與直覺思維產生的隱喻、象徵意象相結合，是北島詩顯著的藝術特徵，具有高度概括力的悖論式警句，造成了北島詩獨有的振聾發聵的藝術力量。著有詩集《太陽城札記》、《北島顧城詩選》、《北島詩選》等。
北島的詩集《北島詩選》曾獲1988年中國作家協會第三屆優秀詩集獎。北島在詩創作中對於詩的形式和表現方法作了一些嘗試，關於這個問題，他在為《上海文學》“百家詩會”寫的一段《談詩》的文字中有所說明：“詩歌面臨著形式的危機，許多陳舊的表現手段已經遠不夠用了，隱喻、象徵、通感，改變視角和透視關係，打破時空秩序等手法為我們提供了新的前景。我試圖把電影蒙太奇的手法引入自己的詩中，造成意象的撞擊和迅速轉換，激發人們的想像力來填補大幅度跳躍留下的空白。另外，我還十分注重詩歌的容納量、潛意識和瞬間感受的捕捉。”這些話大致說出了他當時在詩歌藝術方面的追求。
在這方面，他也取得了一些成績。他的詩常以意象拼貼為主要手法。據他說他在寫作時先寫下任何涌現在腦海中的詩行，而後將它們大刪大拾，再剪裁拼貼成一首詩。所以他的詩有雕塑的凝聚，時間是在藝術的空間中運行的。他的詩裏的意象體現了龐德所說：意像是感情和理智在瞬間結合成的複合體。他的詩不是流體，而是作者內心的岩層，由各種意象積成的地層。這地層中的意象化石在得到適度的安排時，給人的思考創造了盤旋的空間，但有時過密，過於擁擠；而意象的過度密集沒有能增加藝術空間，僅起阻塞空間的後果。北島的詩離開了直敘衷腸的浪漫主義，獲得非個性的冷調。
《日子》這首詩的寫法，就大致上是電影蒙太奇的手法，意象在這裡圍繞著“日子”這個標題迅速轉換，不同的鏡頭又都指向一個共同的生存狀態，看來作者想說這樣的日子還沒有找到自己的意義。但是，開頭和結句告訴讀者，這種日子有自己的秘密，而且有自己的過去。《太陽城札記》都是一些短詩、小詩，其中像《愛情》這樣的詩，也是一組鏡頭，詩中的景物是描寫，也是隱喻，然而整首詩不晦澀，清新可讀。既寫出了愛情的恬靜氣氛，也暗示了鹹澀的感覺；荒蕪的處女地渴望愛情，老樹倒下也許象徵過時的規矩的被拋棄。
《藝術》的意思似乎是想說，在藝術這塊領域，統一的太陽已被打碎，藝術的統一性不復存在，而這，是後現代主義的觀點。《生活》一詩曾經引起爭議。一位老詩人曾經批評這首詩，他說問題不在於是否可以說生活是網，而在於要說明生活為什麼是網，生活怎樣成為網的。正好這位老詩人過去也寫過“生活是網 ”這樣的意思，我們不妨舉出來請讀者加以比較。
這位老詩人在1940年寫的一首長詩裏這樣寫道：“今天以前，我看這世界/隨時都好像要翻過來/什麼都好像要突然沒有了似的/一個日子帶給我一次悸動/生活是一張空虛的網/張開著要把我捕捉”。或許可以這樣說：北島的詩重意象，而這位老詩人的詩重“怎樣”；北島詩的含義由讀者讀出來，而這位老詩人的詩的含義，詩人則要作更多的界定。
《回答》一首是北島流傳很廣的詩，這首詩在藝術上其實是有毛病的，甚至可以說詩味不多，有些類如格言。台灣一位著名詩人曾經指出過這一點，他說這不是北島最好的詩，很奇怪為什麼如此流行。這詩對“文化大革命”中某些社會現象提出了尖銳批評，引起不少人共鳴；但是，如果根據這些消極現象就不再信任什麼了，恐怕也不足為訓。
《一切》也顯得有些消極，“一切都是命運”，只有在表白生存的無奈狀況時才是可以理解的；否則，如果把這句話拿來宣傳宿命論，或者說如果詩人在宿命論的含義上寫出這行詩，那就未免消極了。正因為這樣，北島的詩友舒婷寫了《這也是一切》來作回答：“不，不是一切/都像你說的那樣！”“希望，而且為它鬥爭，/請把這一切放在你的肩上。”（藍棣之）
北島
北島
原名: 趙振開
出生: 1949年8月2日 (1949-08-02) （60歲）
中國北平
職業: 詩人、作家
國籍: 中華人民共和國 中國
創作時期: 1970年至今
文學運動: 朦朧派
代表作 《北島詩選》（1986年）
《零度以上的風景線》（1996年）
《開鎖》（1999年）
配偶 邵飛
甘琦（2003—）
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