Organizer and Chair: Yi-tsi Mei Feuerwerker, University of Michigan
Discussant: Bei Dao, University of California, Davis
Widely considered to be China's foremost contemporary poet and frequently mentioned as potential nominee for a Nobel prize in literature, Bei Dao has been living in exile since June, 1989, due to the alleged influence of his poetry on the Student Democracy Movement. His success outside China-New Directions will be publishing the sixth volume of English translations of his poems-has led some to ask whether his poetry is "Chinese" or "translatable world poetry." (An emerging question as Chinese literature "modernizes" or is produced in diaspora.) Each of the three papers takes a different approach to issues of language, culture, and identity in Bei Dao's poetry, while exploring their broader implications. Professor Yeh examines them against the context of modern Chinese poetry, itself with an identity crisis in its departure from tradition and engagement in Western inspired experimentation. Dian Li, degree candidate at Michigan, who worked closely with Bei Dao during his year as University visiting scholar, considers translation and translatability, both as a source of the poetry and the diverse ways of reading it. Ouyang Jianghe, critic and fellow poet, explores language transformation in Bei Dao's poetry since his exile from perspectives of history and the poet's ontological position vis-à-vis poetry. A unique feature of the panel is that its subject-the poet himself-will participate as discussant to respond to both his critics and the audience.
Cultural Identity and Modern Chinese Poetry: The Case of Bei Dao
Michelle Yeh, University of California, Davis
This paper examines the critical responses to Bei Dao's poetry of the 1970s-80s with regard to its alleged lack of Chinese identity. By placing Bei Dao's poetry in two contexts; his oeuvre to date on the one hand, and modern Chinese poetry on the other, this author hopes to reveal the complexity and dynamic of the issue of cultural identity. Rather than arguing for or against the Chineseness of Bei Dao's poetry, I will try to understand why the issue is raised repeatedly in the history of modern Chinese poetry by posing this question: To what extent is the issue inseparable from the prestige of the genre in the Chinese literary tradition, the identity crisis in the modern era, and the experimental thrust of modern Chinese poetry? A preliminary exploration of possible answers to the question provides a point of departure for further study of the significant issue of cultural identity and modern Chinese poetry.
Through the Prism: Translation and Translatability of Bei Dao's Poetry
Dian Li, University of Michigan
There is a bold suggestion that Bei Dao's translatability is symptomatic of the fact that his poetry is a "World Poetry" and thus lacks grounding in China's history. Now Bei Dao's reputation in the West has been on the rise and his works continue to be translated in many Western languages. It is time to treat the lingering questions regarding Bei Dao's translatability seriously and to conceptualize it in the context of modern Chinese poetry, which is, in a large sense, a history of rejuvenation through the translation of Western poetry. The immediate origin of the poet's translatability resides, the paper suggests, in a literary language called the "translation style" in the late 1960s, which served as a protest against the language of authority in Mao's China.
In between Bei Dao's reading of translated poetry and writing poetry to be translated, translation remains a twice-filtered process of idealized interpretation. When we say Bei Dao's poetry translates well into English, it is precisely because it has been translated with all its gaps, errors, and ambiguities. Furthermore, one always reads translations with a mirror image of one's own culture. Thus, Bei Dao's translatability means very different things to his translator, who is responsible for bringing Bei Dao to an English audience, to a scholar of classical Chinese poetry, who can rarely overcome a professional preference, and to a Chinese student, whose memory of Bei Dao is forever the voice of non-conformity.
Word and Soul: Language Transformation in Bei Dao's Recent Writing
Ouyang Jianghe, Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences
The change that has taken place in Bei Dao's writing since his exile to the West centers on his language, a change that can be summarized by the question of his "Chineseness" or the linguistic markers that distinguish him from his former self and others. This question can be looked at from two perspectives. One consists of the historical limitations including aesthetic traditions and social-linguistic changes of which the poet is an indispensable part. The other is the poet's ontological position vis-à-vis poetry, a position that has been conceptualized as "writing at the degree zero." The tension between these perspectives is evident in Bei Dao's shift from an objective and instrumental language to a personal and subjective one. Bei Dao's "Chineseness" is also linked with the resources for his writing. We must go beyond merely listing social and political references, as the general criticism of Bei Dao in the West tends to do, and instead examine the hidden cultural resources that inform his every poem. The phenomenon of "Chineseness" is encoded in the poet's introspective experience and autobiography, or in other words, the problem of the word is no different from the crisis of humankind. Bei Dao presents his well-structured musing on the problem of post-modern humanity through his meticulous attention to language and its forms. Thus, the question of "Chineseness" in Bei Dao's recent writing is both that of language and of soul.