Road to East Asia

On June Fourth when troops were sent in to suppress the protest at Tiananmen Square, Duoduo was leaving Beijing for Europe to attend the 1989 Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam. In London, then Rotterdam, he gave eyewitness accounts of the tragic events back in his homeland, and afterwards stayed on as an exile in the West. He found work first at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. In the fall of 1990, he was sponsored by the Canadian branch of International Pen to become writer-in-residence at Glendon College, York University. Duoduo took up similar positions at Leiden University in 1991, and in Berlin with the German Academic Exchange Service three years later. It is, however, in the Netherlands that Duoduo has reached a large audience.

Among his Dutch admirers is Maghiel van Crevel, who started translating Duoduo's work in 1989, and spent four years in the CNWS Research School at Leiden University to write a book on the poet. It was published in 1996. Language Shattered: Contemporary Chinese Poetry and Duoduo documents the literary movements since the 1950s. Van Crevel, now lecturer at the University of Sydney in Australia, talks about his labor of love in a recent interview with Road to East Asia. Highlights:

Wai:Why is Duoduo so well received in the Netherlands? Bei Dao was at Leiden University too. Was he equally popular?

Van Crevel: After June Fourth and into the early 1990s, Dutch audiences were relatively receptive to literature presented in some connection with the 1989 Protest Movement and its consequences. More generally, literary circuits in Holland are diverse and active, so there is always something to do: public recitals or interviews, journal and book publications, writers-in-residence and so on. The annual Rotterdam festival Poetry International (www.poetry.nl) and its spin-offs are also important in this respect.

The festival has featured many different Chinese authors, including most of the famous exiles. Ma Gaoming, Bei Dao, Shu Ting, Qiongliu, Duoduo, Yang Lian, Gu Cheng, Mang Ke, Wang Jiaxin, Song Lin, Sun Wenbo, Tong Wei, Zhai Yogming, Luo Fu [Lo Fu], Xi Chuan, Yu Jian, Luo Qing [Lo Ch'ing]. I'm listing them from memory, not sure if I haven't forgotten one or two.

Duoduo immediately established rapport with a broad Dutch readership through his columns in the widely read daily NRC Handelsblad; that definitely made a difference. But it wasn't just that: he's also a good performer. He reads well, is cooperative when it comes to answering questions in public, without ever becoming too predictable.

Bei Dao's work has been published in Dutch, both poetry and fiction, and he is probably equally well known, but he has not established the same kind of relationship with Dutch audiences as Duoduo. A matter of style as much as of availability, of being there, I suppose. Duoduo, after all, has by now spent many years in Holland.

Wai: Are Duoduo's columns originally published in Chinese or other languages in Germany and the Netherlands?

Van Crevel: His columns were written in Chinese at the request of a Dutch daily, and translated into Dutch. They were eventually also published in book form, in Holland and later in Germany, too. They haven't been published in Chinese, as far as I know.

Wai: Do you agree with Brian Castro that the Chinese exiles in the West have freshened the air for the new century?

Van Crevel: That depends on whose air it is we are talking about, or rather, whose language. I certainly think contemporary Chinese writers-in-exile have a contribution to make to the socio-cultural and the aesthetic experience, of Chinese and other communities alike. But in order to do so among readers in mainland China, they need to be published there. And in order to do so among readers who don't read Chinese, they need to be translated and published elsewhere. The fulfillment of both conditions--more so than is happening at the moment--requires great efforts. Not just by authors and translators, but also on the part of literary agents who need to rethink canonical ideas about various literatures.

If only language were air, as supranational as air, I mean--then again, one of its essential functions and charms lies in its pluriformity, in that there's so much/many "of it," in its "internal differences" if you will. These misgivings aside, I agree with Brian Castro that these writers have something unique to offer, because they are in the middle of the meeting (or the failure to meet!) of different cultures at this point in time. I tend to think of writers not solely in terms of their "culture" or "nation," but rather in terms of their style, insofar as the two can be disentangled.

Wai: Is post-Tiananmen Chinese exile literature, particularly Duoduo's poetry, an offshoot as mentioned on the back over of your book or the cream of the crop of China's literary output today?

Van Crevel: I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. Part of the "offshoot" could well be part of the cream of the crop. To me, Duoduo's poetry is a case in point, and so is Bei Dao's. An offshoot -- epistemologically speaking--need not be of inferior quality or lesser impact than its source, right? In a sense, and from reading your interviews with Oliver Kramer and Brian Castro I have a feeling that you'd agree with me here. The "offshoot's" peripheral nature harbors incredible potential.

Wai: Do you think Stephen Owen's review (The New Republic, November 19, 1990) of Bei Dao's The August Sleepwalker does justice to the book or the achievement of the exile writers in general?

Van Crevel: I am not sure that one could speak of the achievement of "the" Chinese exiles across the board. They are very different (public) personalities and writers. But be that as it may, I think Owen's article is strange in that it asserts ownership of certain words, phrases etc. for certain groups of people (belonging to a particular cultural tradition, or writing in a particular language).

Owen claims a frequent "fungibility" of Bei Dao's poetic diction, and assumes that essentially monolingual authors (such as Bei Dao definitely was at the time) would know how to write so as to accommodate their prospective translators. Translatability is much, much more complicated than suggested in Owen's review, just like the issue of literary influence with its simultaneous multidirectionality, as pointed out by Michelle Yeh in her rejoinder of Owen in the re-established Jintian.

Wai: Was Duoduo motivated by, in Owen's words, "the international readers desire for local colors" to include Chineseness and politicality in his poetry?

Van Crevel: I am not Duoduo, so I could not tell you. But my guess is that at least, such a claim would be hard to back up with anything like "evidence"--after all, when Duoduo began to write, in the early 1970s, what tangible, even remotely realistic prospects could he have had of entertaining foreign readers?

Wai: Owen also claims that the Chinese readers he has consulted tend be displeased with Bei Dao's shift from politics to "more private concerns." Duoduo seems to have shifted his attention from political issues to personal matters as well. Is he writing increasingly for a Western audience?

Van Crevel: I don't know that there is a correlation between "personal" and "western." While the development toward the personal in his poetry is indeed striking, we should not forget that similar tendencies and trends can be observed in contemporary Chinese poetry written, published, read inside the People's Republic.

Then again, perhaps matters are more complicated. Before too long, it would have become clear to Duoduo and other authors in comparable situations that their best bet for publication for some time to come might be Jintian. Certainly in the early 1990s, Jintian was an important source for translation into Western languages.

Wai: At a 1997 discussion session, Dian Lian said: "Bei Dao's translatability means very different things" to his translator, readers with individual preferences, and those who will always remember the poet as "the voice of non-conformity." (Dian Lian is a degree candidate at the University of Michigan. Both Michelle Yeh and Bei Dao participated in this session, which was chaired by Yi-tsi Mei Feuerwerker.) Do you agree with Dian Li? Can the same comments be made about Duoduo? Does your cultural background have affected your responses to Duoduo's work?

Van Crevel:On the whole, I certainly agree with Dian Li's comments on translatability, and find them reasonably transferable to the case of Duoduo, with one caveat, on socio- political non-conformity. Duoduo was and is much less well known among Chinese students than Bei Dao. Insofar as Duoduo's work is known to them, it is much less directly associated with the partly politically motivated humanism of the most prominent proponents of "Obscure" poetry in the late 1970s: Bei Dao, Shu Ting, and Gu Cheng.

That my cultural--and, for that matter--my personal (insofar as the two are clearly distinguishable) background has affected my response to Duoduo's poetry is beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Wai: American poet laureate emeritus Richard Wilbur believes that art is prompted by art and that writers, past and present, belong to the timeless Republic of Letters. After all, the Imagist Movement, which was influenced by Taoism and the Japanese haiku, has affected the consciousness of most major American writers. Has Duoduo in turn contributed significantly to the culture of his host countries?

Van Crevel: While that is a "big" way of putting it, well, yes. If the primary interpretation of "significantly" need not be "large-scale," but rather something like "culturally meaningful," I would certainly subscribe to that view for Duoduo's presence in Holland.

The first thing that comes to mind about Duoduo's contribution--and the most palpable--would be his columns, which, for a while, made a bit of a splash, and his books, all published by a major commercial publishing house. His contribution to Dutch culture is clear in that reviewers have seldom failed to notice how different his work is from contemporary Dutch poetry (insofar as that can be so generalized); and perhaps also in that people in Holland have consistently been inclined to associate his work with his "story" ("The poet who left China on June Fourth"). This tendency thus re-establishes connections between literature and politics (e.g. freedom of speech) which have become less than self-evident in contemporary Dutch society. Ironically, that might mean that too much politics was read into Duoduo's poems, but still . . .

Wai: Don't you think Duoduo's poem "Marguerite's Travels with Me" is an evocation of the poet's muse?

The protagonist resembles "The self-established tree/That draws all waters toward/Its live formality" in Wilbur's "Looking into History." (The speaker in Duoduo's poem does not only "plunder" Paris, but many other foreign places for his "stolen" pleasures. According to Wilbur, "artists, however, original, respond to other artists in various manner: by borrowing, theft, adaptation, translation, impersonation, parody, and so on.")

Van Crevel: Yes, Marguerite may well be a Muse of sorts. Certainly if we don't limit the stamping grounds of "inspiration"-- and, thus, the scope of Wilbur's statement-- to things like creative writing, but expand them to a broad cultural awareness.

Wai: Poet laureate aside, Richard Wilbur is an elegant translator. According to him, a translator has introduced the English to the genius of another country, provided English with some refreshing techniques, and rendered more articulate that part of him which resembles the works he translates. As a courier between cultures, do you agree with Wilbur?

Van Crevel: I definitely do. The possibility to refresh, enrich, question one's native language as well as (literary) culture and aesthetic experience by "bringing in" other voices, metaphors, ways of listening and talking back is, to me, one of the most rewarding aspects of the trade.

Wai: Why do you have an affinity with Duoduo?

Van Crevel: I have an affinity with Duoduo's poetry. If you don't mind, I am going to answer this one tautologically: I find it beautiful. For the critic, beauty is not a way out (as in cop-out) but a way in. In other words, I started writing on his poetry not because he is Chinese or because he was in exile, but because I dig his poems.

They are, some of them at least, fantastic poems. Translating them was horrendously difficult and even more fun. . . . To quote Adrian Belew's mad scream at the end of the song "Indiscipline," by King Crimson: I like it!

Wai: Duoduo seems to admire Sylvia Plath. Wilbur recognizes Plath's "brilliant negative/In poems free and helpless and unjust." Would you describe Duoduo's poetry in those terms?

Van Crevel: Fits the bill pretty well, I'd say, but--sacrilege--I'd want to replace "helpless" with "angry."

Wai: Cynicism seems to permeate Duoduo's work. Do you see any form of redemption, aside from the occasional happy ending in "Desire," which , as noted by you, is "exceptional within Duoduo's oeuvre."

Van Crevel: In his poetry? No, definitely not. Even though there is no hope, its artistic power--and whatever energies that may yield--lies precisely in its refusal to keep quiet and its insistence to produce aesthetically-motivated denial of meaning.

Wai: Liu Binyan, in his book A Higher Kind of Loyalty, writes: ". . . it is only on the mainland that I am in my element." Could Duoduo be in his element outside China?

Van Crevel: I don't know; you'd have to ask him. In fact, if you did, you might also want to ask him if he could be in his element inside mainland China.

Wai: Your definition of "Chineseness" in Language Shattered is most intriguing. Would someone who has cognitive expertise in things Chinese necessarily "succeed" in understanding that country's culture? In Kazuo Ishiguro's novel A Pale View of Hills, the Japanese protagonist describes her English husband in this way: "Despite all the impressive articles" he has written about Japan, he does not "understand the ways of our culture." Ironically, could someone who is emotionally and spiritually a Chinese but ignorant of the factual details comprehend the meaning of poems such as "There is a class"? After all, class struggle is a widely recognized concept.

Van Crevel: I have no idea what it would mean to be "emotionally and spiritually Chinese," or, for that matter, to be "emotionally and spiritually Australian," or "emotionally and spiritually Dutch." What I mean by Chineseness as a feature of certain poems tabled in Language Shattered is, roughly, to what extent the reader may benefit from bringing to the text socio- cultural, historical knowledge of contemporary China. Calling, in that sense, "There is a class" a Chinese poem is not to say that it could not be understood "outside China"--obviously, in a figurative sense.

Wai: Do Duoduo's allusions to Doctor Zhivago make his poem of the same name non-Chinese? A lot of Chinese, and non-Chinese, children are familiar with world literature, e.g. Oscar Wilde's "The Happy Prince" and some of Shakespeare's plays in translation at an early age. Besides, the novel Doctor Zhivago was made into a movie with subtitles in different languages years ago.

Van Crevel: As I said in Language Shattered, according to my working definition for that project of Chineseness, Doctor Zhivago would indeed be a "Russian/Soviet" poem in that it presupposes historical knowledge of Russia / the Soviet Union. Perhaps it is a "Sino-Russian" poem because what is at issue is really such knowledge as accumulated by a Chinese, in the historical reality of the People's Republic discourse on Russia/the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Obviously, the poem is written in Chinese, by a Chinese author, but that's not what I was trying to get at in that analysis.

Wai: "There is a class" reminds me of Thomas Hardy's depiction of a malevolent or indifferent universe. Doesn't Duoduo's poem reflect and question the age-old belief in the Mandate of Heaven? Even if the current regime provides the backdrop, isn't the hope for a compensatory universe readily understood by all?

Van Crevel: Especially if "The Mandate of Heaven" can be seen to manifest itself concretely--as it would, indeed, in one of the many Chinese traditions--in the Maoist regime of the time when it was written. Yes, why not?

Wai: In his 1996 book Troubadours , Trumpeter, Troubled Makers, Gregory Lee notes that Duoduo resembles Marina Tsvetaeva in her rejection of media-inspired patriotism to construct romantically a beloved homeland. If Duoduo has a poetic vision of China, what is it?

Van Crevel: Again, I may be starting to sound like a scratched record, but I am not Duoduo so I couldn't tell you. As far as there is a "perceptible" poetic vision of China emerging from Duoduo's poetry, my first associations with that place would be those of the desolate, earthy, wind-swept, bleak North. It is not necessarily a Chinese North, or a Northern China, but a "Northern essence" as imagined by those familiar with the Northern hemisphere. The place is inhabited by archetypal presences disrespectful of and oblivious to human "civilization."

What an awfully polysyllabic way to describe something so very non-verbal. Right! Paradoxical as it seems--less so if we look at some of Duoduo's 1990s poems negotiating the "limits of language"--such vision, shaped in verbal art, is to my mind decidedly non-verbal, which is of course not the same thing as "quiet." I'd think of that North as roaring, howling, screeching, anything but quiet.




---

Editors and Writers: Jessica Martin, Brenda Lo, Kevin Hodgson,
Julie Shim, Shelly-Ann Gunness, Derrick Choy, Daniel Sun,
Hilaneh Mahmoudi, Megan Donnelly, Benjamin Bacola, Neena Gill
Founding editor: Isabella Wai
Answers Copyright © 1998 by Maghiel van Crevel Introduction, comments, questions Copyright © 1998 by Isabella Wai
References to this document should be attributed to the appropriate author and fully documented.

---

Return to Homepage

Feedback

We would greatly appreciate your comments. Please click here.