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The cruelty of death is to break the hearts of the living. On the evening of July 13, 2018, I was surprised to see Aki Ayu in the WeChat group saying that Yi Lei was gone. I hurried to ask if the message was accurate, and he showed a WeChat message and told me that he had set up a temporary spiritual hall in his bookstore. Ah Yu, a young poet from Guizhou who now lives in Songzhuang in Tongzhou District, opens a small bookstore selling poetry collections. His residence was not far from Elay's studio, and he usually came and went more, and occasionally received some care and help from her. I can't help but believe that this is true. Subsequently, I transferred her three representative poems "Self-Portrait", "Thought" and "Desperate Hope" in the circle of friends to commemorate it. Later, someone said that she had been contacted by her family, which was a piece of false information. So, in the depths of despair, I secretly had a glimmer of hope, hoping that it was really a prank by someone who did not know the importance. A few times when I woke up in the middle of the night, I eagerly looked at my phone, hoping for new news that Elay was still alive and well, and that she was free and happy to play in Iceland as originally planned. But in the morning, this bit of luck was shattered by the official release of the "Poetry Journal" public account, cover news and Tencent news.
It is truly incredible, as just over a decade ago, at the opening ceremony of the "Return of Spirituality – China's First Touring Exhibition of Contemporary Poets' Paintings" on June 30, Elaine and I met once. The works on display in this exhibition include calligraphy and paintings by Duoduo, Munch, Lu Lu, Song Lin, Ma Li, Ouyang Jianghe, and Xichuan. Somewhat surprisingly, Elei was not included in the group of the exhibition, and I don't know why, perhaps the organizers no longer regard her as a poet, but as a simple artist. That day, I met a lot of long-lost old friends at the scene, and it was there that I met Elaine, but unfortunately, due to the large number of guests and the audience, the whole hall was noisy, and I and she only briefly exchanged a few greetings, and there was no more time to communicate. At that time, she also introduced me to a friend named Fu Guodong, who said that she was running a magazine "Han Poetry Circle" and asked me to support me more in the future. As everyone knows, the chance encounter became the eternal trick, and this turned out to be the last side of me and her. Ele has always been low-key, and that day she didn't even speak at the seminar before the opening ceremony. Today, I look back on the scene and feel as if she had come to say goodbye to many old friends, kind and gentle, as graceful, calm and quiet as usual.
Ele's reputation as a poet was established in the mid-to-late 1980s. In 1987, the 1st and 2nd issues of People's Literature published her group of poems, "The Bedroom of a Single Woman", which caused widespread controversy because of its boldness in expression and the avant-garde of consciousness, and its supporters believed that they expressed healthy humanity and were extremely innovative in their artistic techniques; opponents took the moral high ground to deny them and judged them to be obscene. In November of the same year, her collection of poems of the same name, "The Bedroom of a Single Woman," was published by Lijiang Publishing House. The collection of poems, which includes most of her previous love poems, has won the sympathy of many readers for expressing the dilemmas and pains of human nature and striking feminine consciousness.
From September 1991 to June 1994, I studied with Mr. Lu Yaodong at Wuhan University for a doctorate in the direction of the history of new Chinese poetry, and finally my graduation thesis was selected as "Modernist Poetry in Twentieth Century China", and the third section of chapter 5 discussed the "female confessional poetry" that swept the Chinese poetry scene like a black whirlwind in the late 1980s, and the first poet involved was Yi Lei. In my paper, I made this comment about her work:
"The initial awakening of Elei's female consciousness manifested itself as a kind of 'breakout performance'. And those things that were once familiar have always excluded 'I', 'I' am just struggling in vain, and humiliation is like a 'red letter' imprinted in the depths of the soul. ...... The pursuit of real natural forms can be said to be a creed that Yi Lei, as a woman, keeps in her creation. This drove her to trust emotions too much, using an 'emotional' way of writing, to explore the poetry of the expansion of the theme of love over and over again. Freud's doctrine had a great influence on Eli's creative turn, she worshipped the 'original self', 'violently impacted the ego and the superego', and let the free eruption of feelings express irrational passion romantically. ”
Virginia Wolfe once wrote an essay, "A Room of Your Own," which used the "house" as a symbol to metaphors for the independent personality of women. To a certain extent, Elei's "The Bedroom of a Single Woman" also has such a liberating meaning, looking forward to restoring healthy nature, dismantling the male center while establishing a female independent personality to achieve human freedom and creation. Elei's work seems to be able to turn 1986 as a turning point, of which "Huangguoshu Waterfall" and "Single Woman's Bedroom" are representative of these two periods, which mark the poet's bumpy road from a traditional woman to a self-reliant woman in the new era.
Chinese poets have an indissoluble relationship with Russia, and Elei has developed a special fondness for Russian literature since childhood, especially pushkin's poetry. In Elay's view, Russian literature as some kind of fresh blood once injected into its own veins. In the 1990s, Elay went to Russia, where, unlike many gold diggers who made her fortune in business, retained a love of poetry and art, spending a lot of time visiting museums and galleries while others were busy buying and shipping. At the same time, out of love, she purchased a large number of Russian oil paintings. The vast majority of Elei's oil painting collection is realist, and in today's so-called "postmodern" where even modernism is despised as a thing of the past, her choice is undoubtedly a bit out of place, but this inopportune contains respect for craftsmanship and time. On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Pushkin's birth in 1999, she also helped Zuo Zhenguan, an overseas Chinese in Russia, publish a monograph on Pushkin, "Pushkin's Love World". In addition, she actively planned the translation and publication of works by Russian Silver Age writers.
My first meeting with Eli was in 2005 or 2006. At the prior arrangement of her friend Mao Xiupu, I made a special trip to visit her and visit the Katyusha Art Museum. Mao Xiupu is a professional writer of the Qingdao Municipal Federation of Literature and Literature, born in ballet, and used to be in the Railway Corps, and Yi Lei belonged to the same system of comrades-in-arms, and they met each other because of writing at an early age. It is said that at a literary pen meeting of the railway soldiers, Mao Xiupu was sent back to his original unit in advance because of alcoholism, and it was Yi Lei who was responsible for escorting him. What is even more ironic is that on the way to the repatriation, just after the train left the platform, Mao Xiupu took out a bottle of liquor from his ass pocket, and he did not know where he got it, and drank it again along the way. In addition to good wine, Mao Xiupu's mouth is not covered by friends.
That day, Mao Xiupu and I arrived in Tianjin by train. Wang Jiaxin drove by himself, and there were two people in the car, one was his girlfriend (now wife) Hu Min, and the other was a young girl, if I remember correctly, it seemed to be Cui Xiuwen. Ele warmly received the visiting friends, and the guests and hosts chatted together about their favorite Pushkin, Leviathan, Shishkin and the Silver Age. That day, Mao Xiupu was still talking so out of tune. At the dinner table, he actually said in front of everyone with the strength of wine: "Yi Lei has become beautiful and temperamental, and she used to look ugly." "If you change someone else, I'm afraid you'll be annoyed on the spot." But Elei only smiled shallowly and said nothing, as if the other party was a child who would never grow up. After dinner, Wang Jiaxin and the others returned to Beijing. My original plan was to rush home on the same day. Unexpectedly, Mao Xiupu's nature of good wine did not change, and he was drunk again, and he actually lay there with drunken strength. When Yi Lei saw this posture, she had to discuss with me, hoping that I could change my plan. I had no choice but to accompany the unconscious Mao Xiupu to stay at the Katyusha Art Museum for an extra night. Soon after, this drunkard was awarded the Russian-Chinese Friendship Medal for composing the group poem "Elegy of the "Kursk"", and became a "poetry ambassador" between China and Russia. The next day, Mao Xiupu and I took our respective trains home. For a long time after that, I didn't see Elaine again.
In October 2015, at the opening ceremony of the Shi Wei Painting Exhibition at the Shangshang International Art Museum. Guan Ju and I met the long-lost Iray. After the ceremony, our group was invited to her rented studio. Her studio is highly erected with a large dining table, a piece in one corner for the bedroom, and the rest for the dining room and reception room. After taking a seat, she carefully filled the silver ear soup and invited everyone to drink. We admired her collection of paintings and her own works as we drank. Most of Elei's own paintings are darker, and several of them are dead leaves. It may also be related to her state of mind. Due to the large number of people, most of the conversations that day were common topics. Remember that she seemed to have expressed doubts about marriage at the time, although she believed in the existence of love. I understand this very well, and it must have something to do with some unpleasant emotional experiences she has had. When it was time to eat, she discouraged us from eating outside the restaurant, thinking that the sanitary conditions there were not good. Then she began to cook her own hand-wrapped dumplings. I remember that there were Zhang Hou, Xing Hao, Ah Yu, and a few friends who were not familiar with the rent in Songzhuang that I did not know well. It is important to know that it is not easy to feed the stomachs of these seven or eight people. In hindsight, I learned that such things happen a lot.
Elei's low profile and seriousness can also be proved by one thing. In 1997, Chunfeng Literature and Art Publishing House published a set of "Chinese Women's Poetry Library", in the form of each poetry collection compiled by a famous critic and prefaced by a more comprehensive display of his creative achievements. The library includes the works of the more influential female poets at that time, such as Wang Xiaoni, Fu Tianlin, Tang Yaping, Hainan, Lanlan, Lin Xue and others. Considering Elei's influence in the poetry world, the curators also included her on the list and invited the famous critic Chen Chao to complete the work. I remember that Chen Chao also made some preparations for this at that time, but in the end she was rejected by Yi Lei, because she felt that she did not have any new works. From this, we can also see that as a poet, Elay cherishes her feathers and cherishes her readers. Chen Chao passed away on October 30, 2014 in a decisive way, and now she has suddenly bid farewell to the world, thinking that they should be able to reunite in heaven and talk about poetry together.
Ele's original travel plan was to travel to 100 countries, with Iceland being the 61st. As a Nordic island country, Iceland is also the birthplace of the world-famous cultural genre "Saga" in addition to its beautiful scenery. It belongs to a kind of medieval heroic epic, and love and adventure are its important themes. Ele wrote in the poem that she was going to die in the water, where she stopped walking, and it can be said that she accidentally found a suitable place for the soul to live. As a single woman, Elei took away her own loneliness in the world, as she wrote in the poem of the "free" and "independent" "list":
She is three-dimensional and flat
She gives you nothing you can't accept
She can't belong to anyone
She is me in the mirror
Divide the whole world by two
The remaining singular
A free-moving independent list
A creative spiritual entity
Yes, she was gone, but left us with love and kindness.
2018.7.14