Xia Kejun
True poetry begins in the "reverse" posture, even in the moment of "non-poetry", not anti-poetry, but non-poetic poetry, because when poetry wants to tell the truth, he has to speak in "another language". For the writing of modern Chinese poetry, another language is especially needed, through another language that seems to be non-poetic, to bring the Chinese language to a poetic meaning that has never been seen before.
Poetry writing is to use another kind of word in Chinese to witness. Poetry is a testimony, a mission shared by poetry since Auschwitz. The Chinese poet who has the most painful expression of this mission, and the poet who has taken this painful long journey to detour through the West, with silence and the exile of language as the only weapon, to bring Chinese poetry to a new future, with a reverse wandering posture, is Wang Jiaxin. Reading this "Future Memory - Selected Poems of Wang Jiaxin in the Past Forty Years" (published by Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House in 2021), we have to follow the poet's forty-year-long "reverse journey", whether it is words or experiences, starting from a foreign land and going to a foreign land, but opening up the future.
This is not only because Wang Jiaxin is an excellent translator of Western poetry, especially Celan poetry, but also from Wang Jiaxin's testimony to an era, starting from the "Reverse" written in 1991, marking that Chinese poetry will open another path, that is, exile in Chinese, exile in Chinese, sliding back and forth on the cliff of words, so adventurous exile, establishing the character of modern Chinese poetry, no longer a narrative of the nation-state, no longer a burden of cultural history. And only the individual heart and the words of poetry bear witness to the hardships of exile.
The exile of this language unfolded in two directions: on the one hand, to foreign countries, Wang Jiaxin was the representative poet of that generation who insisted on poetry writing innovation and spoke with Western masters in translation, but Wang Jiaxin was particularly thorough in the double defamiliarization of the poet's own experience and words, and was particularly sensitive to the danger of traveling back and forth on the language boundary or the analysis test of speech (shibboleth), marking the border line with each line of poetry and establishing a "blood connection"; on the other hand, it was toward the domestic. Exile in one's own mother tongue is a bitter journey of the heart, the wounds of the individual and the frustration of the times, with a poetic narrative to be double overcome, only poetic witness can open the future memory of poetry in the uninsured pessimism, and the snow that has been delayed to fall to the next life is brighter and more silent.
The Radiance of Ashes
[de] Paul Zelan / Wang Jiaxin translation
Guangxi Normal University Press
2021
Narrative Poetry Without Heroes
[Russian] Anna Akhmatova / Wang Jiaxin translation
Flower City Press
2018
Starting from "Reverse", just as Celan's "Backlight" opens the "fifth season" that belongs only to poetry, this is the experience of "impossible", perhaps literary writing with modernity, all come from the experience of this impossibility, which is a testimony of divinity and transcendence after God's retreat, so Wang Jiaxin wants to open up a dimension in Chinese poetry that has never existed before:
From the path of obstruction and never arriving, from darkness and death, from shame and judgment, from old age and purgatory, from impossible poverty and the unstoppable collapse of the times...
For those who first read the "Reverse" group of poems, especially for those of us who are young, the nothingness and pessimism of an era have been overcome by poetry, and Wang Jiaxin, with the Ulysses spirit of poetic heroism, has also begun his own difficult turning points and "swimming cliffs".
Reverse writing is poetry, but it is also a phrased "non-poetry"—this is the reflective and meta-poetic nature that Chinese poetry absolutely lacks.
The aphorisms of its aphorisms, the compressed time and space, the simplicity of epitaphs, the wisdom of reversals, the momentary pauses of dramatic action, or the "insertion words" with unbreakable light and shadow, or "a horizon with a general nature", or an extension left by a long breakwater in poetry. These sentences, tempered by loneliness and perseverance, break time in the inner volume, between too many omissions and too many words, the abyss is illuminated more brightly, the slope of words retracts the momentum of the decline in the steepness, and even with the humble interpretation of the side notes and the accurate fixation of the side knocks...
But it's definitely poetry, it's just not divided, or it just needs to be rearranged, it's poetry within poetry, it's poetry about poetry, it's real meta-poetry writing. Here, it needs to be simply pointed out that this is different from Zhang Zao's "yuan poem", but more tragic sense of reflection and darkness penetration, that is, to "repeated desperate pruning sounds, instead of all crisp birdsong" ("October Poem"), to find another kind of poetry in such an order, to enter the barbaric darkness and threat, in the darkened mirror, to point the stubborn head to the first light of the dawn, no matter how weak this light, but never indulge in the mirror's self-intoxication and illusion fascination.
Undoubtedly, such a phrase writing, along with Celan's Backlight and Charles's "fragments", comes from the same spiritual bloodline, that is, in highly condensed sentences, to take the unhealed hidden wounds and the great pain that is about to come, with extreme restraint and calm thinking, with the speed and accelerated pace of the traveler, through the horizon of ordinary life, and to the sudden pause in music, listening to the delayed falling snow all over the world. And its marginal humility with "side notes", and an extraordinary sensitivity of translators and critics to words, brings a kind of "non-poetic" penetrating power and reversal paradox to Chinese poetry, which is the dimension that Chinese classical poetry and modern poetry lack in the foundation, without the intensity of this reflection and reflection, Chinese poetry can only be a show off of youth talents and skills, but it cannot reach the late state of the soul.
Wang Jiaxin would return to this state of writing from time to time, followed by "Words" from 1992-1993, "Swimming Cliffs" from 1993 to 1994, "Winter Poems" from 1999, "Darkening Mirror" from 2000, "Poems of Marginal Notes" from 2016-2017 and "The Lantern of Diogenis - Dedicated to Mandelstam" in 2018, these poems, although divided, can actually disperse culture, of course, there are some, such as "Ode to The Cold Mountain", "This Street" and "Under the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain". Wait, maybe one day these poems can be collected separately, allowing us to see the wisest and deepest part of Wang Jiaxin's poetry. Every few years or so, the poet has to return to this inverse angle of bystandering and meta-poetry, re-examine the state of poetry, examine the situation of his own life and the times, without this deep reflection, poetry cannot move towards autonomy and maturity, or even towards the state of late life. Many poets' writing stops or lacks depth because of the lack of this decisive posture. I would even like to say that this reverse posture of determination may even come from the solitary thoroughness of Chu culture, and at the same time, from a tenacious temperament that Wang Jiaxin acquired from Russian literature: "looking back from the direction of death"—Mandelstam's life is a life that has been gradually deprived, and poetry writing, but regaining the experience of life that has never been lived, comes from the future, through the remnants of translation, through the response of future poets, to regain the power of poetry itself, no matter how late it is. It will surely be confirmed in future poetry. Perhaps, among contemporary Chinese poets, no one has a more direct and explicit expression of faith than Wang Jiaxin's dignity and autonomous power in expressing the poem itself.
You can say that this is a temperament shared by poets or literati born in the 1950s, who have a bone-deep identification with the tension between Russian literature and politics, and even with "destiny", and for Wang Jiaxin, from Pasternak to "Varegino Narrative Song", from Akhmatova to Tsvetaeva, from Mandelstam to Brodsky, Russian poetry and music have a national narrative, and the new poetry of the Wang family, from adolescence to the present, has a narrative. A poetic heroism, but what kind of narrative is this? We still lack deep thinking about this.
Wang Jiaxin
Here, I am just beginning to try to interpret it. First of all, this is not a storytelling narrative, it has the direction of some kind of event, but it does not enter the historical logic of the narrative, but a soulful reflection and rhetorical question, facing the dangerous and high-hanging attention, entering the steep pierced darkness, and breathing another air in this era. Secondly, it is not the narrative insertion of the dramatic dialogue of Chinese poetry in the 1990s, many poets through Elliot-style quotations, bring a master-like tone and a distant tone to the inner life of the individual, in the inner loneliness does not reconcile with the times, but for Wang Jiaxin, his eyes either turn to the crisis of the times, or compete with the master in translation, still not indulging in or overcoming any narcissistic impulse. Third, it is not the narrative and political irony of the nation-state, Kitajima's poetry has always been in the anxiety of this allegorical meaning, that is, there is a danger of being glued to the wings of freedom by the political spider, and the new narrative poetry of the Wang family with individual emotional reflection and historical fate responsibility narrative is a kind of poetic passion of the sandwich, with the distinct tone and purity of the individual, the purity of eternal childhood. In the end, this is not narrative poetry, but a chain of responses in historical time, to respond to the failure of the poem itself in a poetic way. The paradox of modern Chinese narrative poetry is that once it enters the hymn of the nation-state, political speculation can only lead to the incurable nature of poetry; and once it enters the inner narrative of the individual, it will lead to disconnection from the times and fall into the abyss of individual nothingness. In the face of this double failure, what is the way out? Wang's new writing offers some sort of way out. The poetic aesthetics of modernity is, of course, an Adorno-esque aesthetic of failure or a poetics of darkness, but it is necessary to find light in this darkness, even if it is like "a star on a winter night, the brighter and colder" ("You Come Out for a Walk in the Evening"), even if you are more familiar with the knowledge of darkness, but you must also write, even on a cold wilderness winter night, or in the belly of a churning filthy fish, and such writing is that only one poem can respond to another.
The paradox of this poetry is that the poet has to "resist" the urge to burst into tears and respond in a poetic way to an era without poetry, and of course the poet is fully aware of this crisis, and he tries to overcome this anxiety that will be overwhelmed by the sense of nothingness in several ways:
First, to maintain poetic vigilance with the difficulty and depth of translation, which is why he wants to translate Yeats, Celan and Mandelstam, from the foreign land of language, the poetic experience is shuttled into Chinese through translation, maintaining the possibility of Chinese poetry, but this is neither sinicizing the language of others, nor just alienating Chinese, but maintaining the poetic complete strangeness, just like Celan's interruption of words, in Wang Jiaxin's case, it is the interruption of sentences, "from one to another". Words and sentences are in a difficult transition state, and they need to be constantly turned, and in such a statement expression, it is to break the symmetry and let the words grow out of the pain of interruption, which brings about an absolutely strange experience, which is the principle of rewriting that he borrowed from Mandelstam:
He spent his whole life waiting for a Japanese man
Translate him into Turkish,
And deeply penetrated into his soul...
But such a moment has not come.
Moments like this, if any,
Also missed forever.
- The Lantern of Diogenes (2018)
Translation, is the encounter, is in the missed and impossible encounter, in the unexpected future, in the future memory, in the trembling of another language, penetrating into the soul of the future, this surprised multiple mutations, newly discovered by the Wang family, will stimulate great theoretical after-effects.
The second is to visit the former homes of those great writers, and the new family will visit the graves of Western masters in the wanderings abroad, and literature comes from survival, from capturing the last gaze of the masters, starting from the end, and holding back the sadness and continuing the fire of darkness. "Holding back" is the tragic ethics of the new heroism, in the face of endless frustration and irreparable wounds, poetry does not have the right to directly express anger and sadness, let alone vent desires with the decadent emotions of individual nihilism, but can only "hold back". It is only in the self-chewing of the enduring inner torment that bitterness can be dissolved, which is a poetic ethic:
Let me hold back
Resist the blows of flying snow and black mud
Endure the loneliness that lasts longer
Even endure death – when it wants you to be liberated
- Poems (1992)
This is also the three interruptions of modern Chinese: to endure the blowing of flying snow and sludge, to endure the unbearable loneliness, and even to endure death, which is the impossibility of liberation, this is the impossibility of death, but it is necessary to digest the snow and loneliness in the horror of death.
Third, it is the tenacity of being alone in the wanderings of the individual, the firmness of exile in the language, the future memory of being homeless and waiting only through poetic writing:
Where is your home?
You hold back your tears and go into exile in your own language.
- "The Reverse" (1991)
It was in the beginning and farewell of the music that Rachmaninoff endured the pain of the exiles and turned Tchaikovsky's lament into a ubiquitous spiritual sparkle...
- Words (1993)
The fourth is the poet's daily life experience in Chinese mainland. In the face of the paradox of life failure and poetic success mentioned by Zhang Zao, how to transform it? This has always been an irreconcilable paradox between contemporary Chinese poetry and everyday life, of course, Jiaxin's poetry is not lacking in irony, and the sharpness of "Poems of Marginal Notes" is different from the direction, in that it is full of repetitive wits, for example, why 1948 instead of 2048? It's up to Big Brother to decide. For us, perhaps 2048 is more utopian reactionary and realistic.
Fifth, this is a memory from the future, a new writing, once again fundamentally different from other Chinese poets, but to open up an impossible dimension, a gift from the future, from the experience of the rest of life, to hold back the trembling of the wider world from the future:
If the light at dusk is too intense, hold back; otherwise it will be enough to disintegrate the rest of one's life.
The wind and sand of the northern country, the smog of the Central Plains,
We've all been through that much, but right now
Let me hold back the trembling in my heart.
We also have a wider world
Available for looking up.
- "First Arrival at Shimei Bay" (2018)
Many poets' writing is still experienced in the experience of individual experience, the experience of the times, and even the fictional ability of imagery, but Jiaxin's writing is faced with the impossibility of poetry, which is especially reflected in the poems he wrote "Snow", perhaps this is the ingenious gift brought about by the "hospitality of snow" in Celan's poetry.
Memories of the Future: Selected Poems of the New 40 Years of the Wang Family
Wang Jiaxin
Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House
Tarkovsky's Tree
Writers Press
2013
Home's newly written snow poems, from the tears of my childhood grandmother, to the tears of my grandmother, or not yet growing up, the tears of my grandmother flow from the tears of "I", tears are the poetic wealth of the family, which is an expression of the rare heterogeneous experience in Chinese poetry: snow, not the snow that has fallen, but the snow that has disappeared in the air before it has fallen, and the new writing of the family has been in a state that has long disappeared and the pain is continuous, letting the snow melt the cold of the words themselves.
If a rain can fall for many years after a person dies, that snow, the more massive snow, of course.
It is only that time will darken, and this darkening experience brings the new poetry of the family to a mirror of "later age", and only this darkened mirror with years of preparation can modify the poet's face and bring it to the future. Future memory, which is the secret of poetry towards later age, is the secret of time, and man not only has the memory or memory of the past, but even the historical external technique of the third memory, perpetuating the memory after death, but, in Benjamin's case, he tried to discover the possibility of a future memory.
Modern Chinese poetry, if we take age as the way of life induction, since the 1980s, there have been three stages, from obscure poetry to the third generation of poets, which is the youth of poetry, and the writing at the time of 1990-1998 is the self-consciousness of writing in the middle age; after that, there is repetition and regression. As we enter 2019, Chinese poetry has entered its late years.
It is almost impossible for Western literary theory to associate poetry with age, and the scale of poetry in the later years, not only in the later years, but in the beginning, must be reversed, must bid farewell to the times, must move towards the memory of the future. And there are not many poets who have gone through these three stages and persisted to the present, especially those who have entered the state of mind of the late years, and Jiaxin is one. When we read this selection of Wang Jiaxin's poems from "Memories of the Future", this is a testimony to the future era: "I would rather return as a wanderer, if/that also happens to be a twilight hour." ”
I have always wanted to discuss it from scratch just about the "late words" in my new poems, because it is too early to make a general comment on the poet's entire poetry writing, this collection of poems is not the whole picture of the poet, and the newer works and future works are more exciting. Countless late words, late arrival or late ripening, night or old age, in the mirror that darkens again, the late arrival of the snow will become a reminder of fate, let the memory start again.
Wang Jiaxin's writing, with its multiple identities, meets foreign masters in the struggle of translation in the lonely wandering, meets the past self in the constant reversal, in order to save the disgraced youth and the times, and faces the shadow of the times to lead to the late arrival of hope, to miss the conversation, to open the memory of the future, to regain the purest lips of the youth, to enter the immortal memory between the afterlife and the previous life.
A Nation Of Waiting and Uselessness
Xia Kejun
Peking University Publishing Company
2017
"Nothing more and more"
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