Bei Dao, Trans. Mc Dougall, Bonnie S
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The Aqgut Sleepwalker Introduces the, remarkable poetry of ChIna', foremost JOIIoger poet. Rei Dao, one ofthe most~ iUKI ,COIlti-omslil writ:en to ~ from the _lve .llPheavaJs of modem China. His poetry~ - and crItidIes - the confuct. 01 the "cuIt;unI moIutfon" oI'the late sixties iUKI early sevalties. HI,s dlltllusioD with the destr:udi..of thole times has made him III outIIder, one ofa~ of mt4!QP'OUftd poets wbo~· III aItematlve literature to ~ the ortlwdoxlei ofthe entire, post·l9t9 period. SudI poetry CAnnOt ..wid l:IeIng'engaged,.ifouIy, by the absence of ~t where it Is expected; like the other to<aIIed"obscure"poetI,OOlsexperinJental•.subjectIve,1ipoJitic:aJ, and reInains UlICOIIIprOOu,mg In his allellance to the ~lIe vames whicb his poetry' adWnces iUKI~. BonnIe s.' McDouIaIl preaents Bel Dao'. collected poems In ~, vivid tr"lIIIIlaIioiu; prefaced with III accOunt 'of bis ·work which both $ell I: In its Cbinae context IIld eumlnes ,its wider Interest and appeal. Bel Daowas born In PeIciIqIln 1949. After the CWturaI RewlutIon, WhIch Interrupted bii forinaI ed~; he' ~ the ftterary .~ r-, with the poet *'Ke. bJ~tye.ari, he, baa ·traWllW widely and gtllea'~,poetrj iQdmgs In EurOPe. HIs, ~bof.io,a waw.i~publisbedfnEbgfindIn 1987•.oW;Dg' '1987-800 spent a year .!n'EDgIand at Durbaia UDlverd:y with hIS ..thepainterSbaOFei,·~ t¥rdaughter. The-, !he In P~. BoaaIe S. Md)oagaII teadla ChInese at the U~ of OslO. Sbtedled,tntroduaidand~tbeEnglilhedl:loGrlW_ and_coatributedailitalutide:s.OnBeiDlo~'workto~'~ sUeb.Modem Chinese Iitenltifre. She lived for 'sevmJ years'iIi PeIdDI. ISBN 0 85646 210 I FISHER ltBSBARCH c-rfly IUdJanI HoIlIlI PaInI:bIC and des..b)' Shao Pel 'fY) 895.11 P377 by Bet DaD Dei Dao lot Sff, POBYn The August Notes from the City of the Sun. 1983 translatrd bylJolJJJJe s. Mc.Dou,raU Sleepwalker SHOlT STOIISS Waves. 1987 t:ransIatrd by IJonDle s. McDougall aDd SUsette Tement Cooke TRANSLATED AND INTRODUCED BY Bonnie·S. McDougall Anvil Press Poetry \<i~~ ~rtf ., . Pub.l1shed in 1938 Contents by AnVIl Press Poetry Ltd 69 King George Street London SElO 8PX CopyrJsbt @ Be! Dao 1988 INTRODUC.TION 19 Translations and introduCtion@ Bonnie S. McDougan'l988 TRANSLATOR'S NOTE/15 ThIs book Is published . With finandal assistance from The Arts CouncJl of Great Brttaln Set in RaleIgh Hello. Balhua Mountain 119 by Calvert's Press. London RaInbow Flower 120 Printed and bound in BngIand I Go into the Rain Mist 121 by The Camelot Press pIc. Southampton True I 22 Bdtisb Libraty Catalogulng In PubllcatJon Data Smiles. SnOwflakes. Tears 123 Cruel Hope I i4 010. lid. 1949 Song of Migrating Birds 129 . The August sleepwalker: poems. RD: Zhao Zbenbl l. Title It McDouplI. -A Day I 30 BoDDJe So. 1941- Ill. Shi Xuan. BDgbsb Notes from the City of the Sun I 31 895.1T5 The Answer 133 ISBN ().85646-2OI).a Let'sGo/34 ISBNQ.85646-21o.1 Pbk All I 35 Street Comer 136 Recollect1on 137 The Unfamtl1ar Beach 138 A Bouquet 140 My Transparent Grief 141 Yes. Yesterday 142 Acknowledgements The Island I 43 Porty-one oft:besepoems were Indudedin Notesfmm theOtyoftheSUll The Witness 146 edited and translated by Bonnie S. MCDougall (1983. revised 1984), pub. The Bank/47 Iished a& number 34 in the East AsIa Papers series of the Cornen Univer Dusk: Dlngllatan I 48 sity Bast Asia Program. Nine poems ("A Toast". "You Walt for Me In the Rain", "The Host". "Bancour turns a drop of water muddy...". "For Many Years". "Random Thoughts·, "Notes in the Rain", "The window on the ClIft" and "The 11 August Sleepwalker") were &rst published In ReDd/tlolls 19120 ll983), repdnted as Trees OD theMount.aln. both published by The Chinese tlnl Rainy Night 151 I ' verslty Press. Bong Kong. Sleep. Valley 152 Fourteen poems appeared In the Bulletin ofConcerned AsIan scholars 153 IMIBerthoud. Colorado 1984) and In Contemporary Chinese Lfterat:u.re, Boat Ticket ed. Michael Duke lM.E. Sharpe: Armonk, NY and London, 1985). StretCh out your hands to me... /55 We thank the editors and publishers {or releasfng copyrfght materJal The Orange Is Ripe 156 for this edition. The Red Sailboat 157 4'sr Introduction Bel Dao (North Island) Is the pen-name of Zhao Zhenkai. one of the most gifted and controversial writers to emerge from the mas ·slve political and sodal upheavals of twentleth-century Ch1na Born In Peking in August 1949, he was just two months old when the People's Republic of china was fortnally Inaugurated. His father was an adminIStrative cadre In one of the non-communiSt parties that existed as a nominal opposition In the fifties and sIX ties, and his mother was a nurse. later a doctor. The family was originally from the region of Shanghai and the lower Yangtse River valley. a centre of both traditional Chinese clv1lizatlon and a new modernizing culture under heavy Western Influence. Bel Dao's family background rtfiects this double heritage. and his poetry and bction Incorporate both traditions In a natural har mony which suggests that the recondliatlon of the two poses no special problemto him. The central force shaping Bel Dao's poetry has been his complex reaction to the pressures of a brutalized. confOrmist and corrUpt sOCiety; In Peking, the centre of govern ment and hence also the centre of the country's hierarchtca1mtel ),ectual and cultural elite. from childhood on he has been familiar with Its Byzantine system of rewards and punl.shments. Bel Dao was educated at one of the country's top secondary schools. attended by the offspring of china's ruling class. and in the normal course of events would presumably have taken his place among them as a loyal benefiCIary of the system. Normality. in the Chinese sOCiety of the fifties and early sIXties, was however a fragile and unstable thing. and the Cultural Revolution which smashed all the old rules In late 1965 also brought to an end that expectation of continued cooperation between Party and Intellec tual elite. In his last year at secondary school. Bel Dao (like moSt of his generation andsodal class at the time) grasped theoppor tunity to form a new, younger and more vigorous elite as a member o!~e R~.Qu.anr'i:novement Eventually disillUSioned'· (agatn like many others) "wlth..the violence and fac;tionalism within the movement and Its manipulation from above. Bel Dao abandoned direct polit1cal actton and repudiated his former allegiance to authority. In the early seventies. when the violence of the Cultural Revolution had abated but its destructiveness to no~ $odalllfe still continued. he became an outsider, rejecting ~r' curmJtiorms ofpolitical and SOCIal power and asserting his Indt· ~l~ poetry both being approved models of a broadly similar viduality In an apolitical mode that was ultimately subverme. kind. The "rediScovery of the Chinese past need not have been an adverse factor In the development of new forms for vernacular I poetry. but the crushing weight of the literary-political establ1sh ment was Inevitably Inhibiting. and the ~experlments" of the To .lief Dao. the world that extsted around"hIm and in his memory fifttes were mechanlcal and conventionaL The new writers of the when he began to write was. In Nletz&che's words. "false. cruel seventies therefore picked up the threads from tlle"thlrties' ~J;l"4" contradictory. mtsleading, senseless". To make sense of that real· forties. Unlike their predeCessors. however. they did not so much Ity. claimed Nietzsche. "We need lies In order to live", It may seem try tQ.j4a..P.t..w~stern vers~. !o.~Jnto. Ch1;l~se but" so~h~ to fu;t~ perverse to characteriZe Bel Dao'$ poetry as "lies" when it Is man new formal devices within the aeneral catego~ of "free verse". Ifestly more truthful than any of the writing that has setved as lit· ThiS was chle8ya matter cifthearrangementof ideas"or'biiagery erature In China since 1949, Nevertheless. to a contemporary rather than patterns of rhyme or rhythm. though length of line. Chinese reader. the officlallitenture was as "real" an aspect of enjambement arid length of verse also'"came under attention. extstence as the SOCiety that produced it. and to protest against Instead. their experiments centred on various kinds of oblique. that reality. It was necessary to discover or invent an alternative oneiric Imagery and ellipttc:.al syntax. The results. to some West reality In an alternative literature. For reasons of both psycholog ern and Chinese eyes. strongly resemble twentleth-century mod· Ical and political necessity. the new literature was obJJged to be em1st poetry In the West. and these poets were In fact acquaInted "false". with Western modem1sm. Less obviously. because of the dtffe· Bel Dao and his fellow undelground poets" of the "~tfes rent structure of modem written Chinese. this poetry was also created an alternative literature to chaltenBethe orthodoxy ofthe sImllar in composition to classIcal Chinese verse. Conventional enttre post-l949 period. In Jan&uaie. Imagery. syntax. and struc but dispensable grammatical forms and punctuation disappear t,ure. their poetry Is htghly orfgfnal and obViously experimental between intensely compressed Images: subject. tense and number Scarcely less strtklng is the subjective and intimate voice of the are elusive: transitions are unclear: order and logic are supplied by love poetry and phJlosopbtcal verse. But even more slgnlficant. In the reader. The language itself Is transparent enough. but there .lief Dao's case partfcularly, is the plunse into the irrational. In are spaces between the words and the lines whOse lmplidt mean what was not only an extraordinary act of moral courage in the ings are more profound tban the denotative or COIinotative mean c1rCUmstance8 of the time.