lucius malfoy was here
and mussolini
discussing world peace.
plaintive white peacocks
declaring before all and sundry
their most abject humility.
we could be much greater
but for now we are modest.
you can see bellatrix and josephine
in the paintings
or in the tapestries
if you look close enough.
everything in harry potter
has been petrified
in the book of this island.
that’s why it’s so popular.
don’t worry they also grow mandrakes.
MW July 2016
ISOLA BELLA II
today you can see
every house in the distance
every face
of a mountain
we had storms for two days.
every flag in the distance
looks like a red flag on the island
island of beauty
rather small kings
and mussolini
well, for a conference
conference of stresa
now there’ s a red flag on the island
maybe they’ll burn it
hopefully not.
vernunft ist jetzt ein brauner bodensatz
das recht geht dem volk aus
das war immer schon so
das recht gehört denen die sichs richten können
in allen parteien
wer ist schuld wenn
der braune bodensatz präsident wird
jeder der haider cool fand
helmut zilk
jeder der nachgemacht hat
löschnak cap und so weiter
nicht nur die schwarzen
jeder der inseriert hat
in österreich das gratis aufliegt
im großen schmierblatt
dem unser kanzler sein amt verdankt
als er mit seinem vorgänger
auf einmal arschgeküsst hat
der fischer sagt auch nichts
wär doch schön irgendwie
könnt sich der handke für die republik
gegen die blauen staatsfeinde
so engagieren wie für milosevic
österreich ist ein schlechter witz
MW Mai 2016
STIMME DER VERNUNFT (2)
ist die vernunft
der im parlament
herbeigestimmte notstand
der beiden parteien
für die zehn prozent noch zu viel sind?
die stimme der vernunft ist leise,
hat freud gesagt.
und ich vergess es
auch immer wieder.
MW Mai 2016
STIMME DER VERNUNFT (3)
es war die stimme des intellekts
die stimme des intellekts ist leise
hat freud gesagt
jedenfalls stimmt es
das dreiste grinsen
auf den plakaten
ist wohl genau das gegenteil
in beiden fällen
die lust am für-blöd-verkaufen
das fahnenschwenken
wer den antifaschistischen konsens
in der verfassung
in frage stellt
gehört ins gefängnis
nicht ins parlament
oder in die hofburg
angst und schrecken
ist eine partei
ihr führer heißt
angst und schrecken
die partei verbreitet
angst und schrecken
das war nicht immer so
aber heute ist die partei
angst und schrecken
manche finden das gut
sie nennen sich
protestwähler
MW April 2016
TERROR AND FEAR
strache means
terror and fear
terror and fear
is a party in austria
this party spreads fear
some people like that
they call themselves
protest voters
they know they are spreading fear
In the same night
in Berlin
I was at two events with Chinese writers.
The female writer who lived in London
gave me a stronger impression
than the male writer who stayed in America.
Her English pronunciation was better, more resonant;
also before at the event with the male writer
I was very thirsty
so I was distracted.
When the female writer was up on the stage
I had drunk enough water,
had been to the bathroom.
Under the light,
from the side she frowned at the moderator.
A grimace like
a Hollywood star doing a fierce ugly Asian.
It was really confusing,
like she was seeing her psychiatrist
at the literature festival.
As she screwed up her face
I really wanted to ask her: Are you happy?
Maybe it was
that special
feeling for form
reminding me of my former self.
At a lit fest in Norway, I had a crowd of high school kids;
when it was over,
I saluted the packed mass in the dark,
like a Young Pioneer.
ich war in einer funktion hier
als demonstrant
und als konzertgeher
am tag der befreiung
dürfen die rechten
nicht mehr marschieren
am abend spielen symphoniker
noch nicht so lang
unfertig, verloren
vom heldenplatz sieht man den flakturm.
so endet simon winders danubia
das beste buch über europa
und über österreich
sie wollten ihn kleiden
ein flakturm in italienischem marmor
weiß nicht ob das stimmt. aus dem inneren tor
bevor du hinauskommst, siehst du den turm
wenn du aufblickst, vielleicht auf dem fahrrad. jedenfalls auf der straße.
nicht wenn du auf dem platz bist. war winder auf dem balkon?
er hat leider recht. am turm erkennt man uns.
ebenso hässlich wie mao in peking
hoch auf dem turm hoch über dem platz.
nur viel viel schlimmer.
hässlich ist alles was toleriert wird
oder nur übersehen
obwohl es terror repräsentiert.
der platz ist ok. kinder spielen.
der platz ist verloren. wie tiananmen.
ball der verbindungen. rechte studenten.
gebt ihnen allen ganz schnelle wagen. einsame landstraßen.
die polizei darf alles absperren. die ganze innenstadt.
jedenfalls wo protestiert werden könnte.
einkesseln. jagen. mitnehmen. anklagen.
landfriedensbruch. auch wenn li peng kommt.
kroch hitler aus den ruinen von habsburg?
welche ruinen? besuchszeiten sind
alles ist wunderbar renoviert
das völkerkundemuseum
heißt jetzt irgendwie anders. etwas von welt.
der glanze heldenplatz zirka.
ein schöner workshop am lcb
das schöne ist des schrecklichen anfang
wann heißt zehntausend der zehntausendsee
klingt wie bergen-belsen
das lcb liegt wunderschön
ein märchenschloss
gruppe 47
pack die badehose
so viele seen in österreich
berlin ist ein grünes idyllisches dorf
ingeborg bachmann hat hier gewohnt
an diesem see in dieser villa
die nachkriegsgruppe hat hier getagt
worauf kommt es an auf die geschichte
auf die gestade die bäume das blau
die wannsee-konferenz
zehntausend kann man als hakenkreuz schreiben
weiß nicht warum es zehntausend heißt
hier war mein vater mit mir im segelboot
sagt tong yali als kleines kind
war sie schon in deutschland
deutschland das de-land das dao-de-dsching
der weg und die tugend
wie viele seen in österreich
irgendwo in den alpen
gruppe 47
aichinger, bachmann, celan
das schöne ist des schrecklichen anfang
Glaubst du, du bist eine Intellektuelle?
Glaubst du, du bist eine Existenzialistin?
Glaubst du, du magst Zhajiang-Nudeln?
Glaubst du, du sammelst Antiquitäten?
Glaubst du, du gehst mit der Zeit?
Glaubst du, du bist vorwärts gekommen?
Glaubst du, du hast deine Ideale verwirklicht?
Glaubst du, du liebst dein Land?
Glaubst, du liebst die Wahrheit?
Glaubst du, du wagst es, die Wahrheit zu sagen?
Glaubst du, du fürchtest keine Vergeltung?
Glaubst du, du bist eine gute Schriftstellerin?
Glaubst, du bist eine Dichterin?
Glaubst du, du bist eine gute Mutter?
Glaubst du, du bist ein guter Vater?
Glaubst du, du hast schon mal geliebt?
Glaubst du, du hast Anstand?
Glaubst du, Microblogging bringt China voran?
Frage, Frage, Fragezeichen
Glaubst du, man sollte sie anbeten?
Glaubst du, du bist ein Fangirl?
Glaubst du, es gibt Sachen, die darf man nicht sagen?
Glaubst du, manche Leute darf man nicht provozieren?
Glaubst du, deine Romane sind deine Memoiren?
Glaubst du, du bist begabt?
Glaubst du, deine Dinge werden bleiben?
Glaubst du, du hast ein Geheimnis?
Glaubst du, du hast ein großes Herz?
Glaubst du, du bist jedem gerecht geworden?
Glaubst du, du hast Verantwortung übernommen?
Glaubst du, du hast nach den Regeln gehandelt?
Glaubst du, du findest keine Scham in deinem Herzen?
Glaubst du, du hältst dich für unfehlbar?
Glaubst du, du möchtest dich rächen?
Glaubst du, du fürchtest den Tod?
Glaubst du, du kannst sie um den Finger wickeln?
Glaubst du, du wirst ihnen lästig?
Glaubst du, du hast noch ein Morgen?
Glaubst du, du bist schon zurückgeblieben?
Glaubst du, du bist allein?
Glaubst du, was du da schreibst, ist ein Gedicht?
Der Mensch macht einen verrückt
Lass sie sich doch
selber fragen
2012
Übersetzt von Cornelia Travnicek und Martin Winter im Jänner 2015
untertags bilder schießen
und nachts schlaflos sein
im traum mit einem feind
von liebe sprechen
mit einem spion
mit jemandem gleichen geschlechts
zusammen mit dem, der mich streichelt
zusammen mit dem, der mich grapscht
in einem traum da kann kein großes feuer sein
kein schwerer schnee
gefühle besprechen, menschen morden
manchmal stolpert das herz, manchmal bricht‘s
kleider in schreienden farben tragen
schäumender überschwang
und heißes blut
2012
Übersetzt von Cornelia Travnicek & Martin Winter im Jänner 2015
Chun Sue
DREAMING OF LIVING INSIDE A DREAM
taking pictures by day
then sleepless at night
in a dream with a foe
talking love
with a spy
talking love
in a dream, same-sex love
in a dream with the one who caressed me
in a dream with the one who harassed me
talking love, can’t be no big fire
can’t be no great snow
in a dream, making love, shoot to kill
panicking, heart-broken
showing colourful clothes
going round gushing feelings
or gushing blood
2012
Tr. MW, 2014-2015
Chun Sue MORGENS ÜBER DIE CHANG‘AN-STRASSE
Mein kleiner Bruder sagt: Vater, wir sind auf der Chang’an
schau sie dir gut an
Das ist genau die Chang‘an, die du über zwanzig Jahre lang gegangen bist
Ich sitze beim Vater, beim kleinen Bruder
Fast beginn ich zu weinen
Jetzt erst weiß ich
warum ich diese Straße des ewigen Friedens mag
Langsam, langsam fährt das Auto am Militärmuseum vorbei
an den roten Mauern von Zhongnanhai
am Xinhuamen
Papa ist klein jetzt, er ist eine Urne
die steht zwischen uns
die braucht nicht viel Platz
Das Auto fährt am Tian’anmen vorbei
und ich sehe
wie er auf dem Platz steht
und uns zusieht, wie wir vorbei fahren
Wie soll ich nur über dich schreiben
Du Sohn eines Bauern
Auch ich bin in einem Dorf geboren
Auch ich bin das Kind eines Bauern
Ich lege für dich eine Nacht lang Armeelieder auf
schluchzend und schreiend –
das mag ich auch.
2012
Übersetzt von Cornelia Travnicek & Martin Winter im Jänner 2015
I n-need t-to b-b-break out
f-f-from y-y-your s-sp-pout-ting s-song
b-break o-out o-of y-your h-house
m-m-my sh-shoot-t-ting t-t-tongue
m-m-mach-chine g-g-gunn f-fire
it feels so good
i-in m-m-my s-st-tut-t-ter-ring l-life
the-there a-are n-no g-ghosts
ju-just l-llook at-t m-my f-face
I d-d-don’t c-care!
1991
Tr. MW, 2015
Yi Sha 《结结巴巴》 ST-STO-TO-TT-TERN
m-mein st-sto-to-tt-ternd-der m-mund
b-b-behind-dderter schschlund
b-b-bei-sst- s-ich wund
an m-meinem r-rasenden hirn
und m-meine b-beine –
euer t-trief-fend-der,
schschimmliger schschleim
m-meine l-lunge
i-ist m-müd’ und hin
i-ich w-will r-r-aus
aus eurem g-gross-a-artiggen rh-rhythmus
a-aus eurem h-haus
m-m-meine
sch-schp-prache
m-masch-schinengewehr-s-salven
es tut so gut
in m-meinem st-stott-ttoterndem r-reim
auf m-mein l-leben g-gibt es k-keine l-leich-chen
s-s-seht m-mich a-an
m-m-mir i-ist all-les g-gleich!
1991
Übersetzt von MW im April 2013
<結結巴巴>
結結巴巴我的嘴
二二二等殘廢
咬不住我狂狂狂奔的思維
還有我的腿
你們四處流流流淌的口水
散著霉味
我我我的肺
多麼勞累
我要突突突圍
你們莫莫莫名其妙
的節奏
急待突圍
我我我的
我的機槍點點點射般
的語言
充滿快慰
結結巴巴我的命
我的命裡沒沒沒有鬼
你們瞧瞧瞧我
一臉無所謂
1991
Photos and videos by Beate Maria Wörz
Yi Sha 《精神病患者》 GEISTESKRANKE
theoretisch
weiß ich nicht
wie es sich äußert
wenn eine geisteskrankheit ausbricht
ich hab nur gesehen
in diesem land
in dieser stadt
wenn ein geisteskranker loslegt
streckt er den arm hoch und bricht aus
in parolen
der revolution
theoretically
I don’t know
how it should be
when a mental patient
suffers an outbreak
but what I have seen
in this country
in this city –
a mental patient suffers an outbreak:
up goes his arm
out come the slogans of revolution
1994
Tr. MW, 2013-2014
Photos and videos by Beate Maria Wörz
Yi Sha 《我想杀人》 ICH MÖCHTE JEMANDEN UMBRINGEN
ich fühle mich etwas komisch
ich will jemanden töten
oh! das war letztes jahr
herbst kroch über das laub
zwanzig todeskandidaten
am flussufer nördlich der stadt
“peng! peng!”
einer wurde aufgeschnitten
in der folgenden operation
erhielten WIR eine niere
I am feeling a little strange
– I want to kill someone
Oh! It was last year
autumn crept over the leaves
twenty death candidates lined up
at the river north of the city
„Peng! peng!“
One of them was cut open
and in the following operation
We got a kidney
1994
Tr. MW, 2015
Yi Sha 《9/11心理报告》 9/11 AUF DER COUCH
erste sekunde mund offen scheunentor
zweite sekunde stumm wie ein holzhuhn
dritte sekunde das ist nicht wahr
vierte sekunde kein zweifel mehr da
fünfte sekunde das brennt nicht schlecht
sechste sekunde geschieht ihnen recht
siebte sekunde das ist die rache
achte sekunde sie verstehen ihre sache
neunte sekunde die sind sehr fromm
zehnte sekunde bis ich drauf komm
meine schwester
wohnt in new york
wo ist das telefon
bitte ein ferngespräch
komme nicht durch
spring zum computer
bitte ins internet
email ans mädl
zitternde finger
wo sind die tasten
mädl, schwester!
lebst du noch?
in sorge, dein bruder!
2001
Übersetzt 2013 von Martin Winter
Yi Sha 9.11 REPORT FROM THE COUCH
Ist second: mouth barn-door open
2nd second: wooden-chicken stiff
3rd second: couldn’t believe it
4th second: it must be true
5th second: what a great fire
6th second: well they deserve it
7th second: this is retribution
8th second: these buggers have guts
9th second: must be their religion
10th second: before I realize
my own little sister
lives in new york
I need a telephone
long distance call!
can’t get a connection!
I go storming for a computer
where is the internet
typing out characters
writing an email
shaky fingers
“sister, sister!
are you alive?
your elder brother is worried sick!”
in einem roman von wolf haas
über die missionarsstellung
zieht der erzähler
über das wort t-kreuzung her
die t-kreuzung gebe es gar nicht
das sei ein amerikanismus
ich habe einen vorschlag:
teebeutelkreuzung
Am liebsten würde ich ein ganzes Heft gestalten. Das Cover. Malala gewinnt den Friedensnobelpreis. Apple Daily in Hongkong. Malalas Kopf, rundherum alles Chinesisch.
“Ich möchte weder Rache an den Taliban, noch an irgendeiner anderen Organisation. Ich möchte meine Stimme nur dafür erheben, dass jedes Kind ein Recht auf Unterricht hat. Mein Traum ist, dass alle Kinder, auch die Söhne und Töchter der Terroristen und Radikalen, in die Schule gehen können und Bildung bekommen. Ein Kind, ein Lehrer, ein Buch, ein Stift – kann die Welt verändern.” Hat sie das wirklich gesagt? Ich habe mir ihre Rede angeschaut, auf Youtube. Englisch, Urdu, Pashto. Auf der Bühne mit ihrer Familie. Ihr Bruder, ihre Eltern. Der Bruder wird neidisch sein. Sie bemüht sich sehr um Harmonie, ist wirklich froh, dass auch jemand aus Indien gewonnen hat, der für Kinderrechte einsteht.
Dieses Cover. Nur das Bild. Foto: Apple Daily. Das ist auch schon ein Hinweis auf die Proteste in Hongkong von August bis Dezember 2014. In den USA gab es auch Proteste, für Bürgerrechte, in der Nachfolge von Martin Luther King. Und in Österreich meldet wenigstens das Gratisblatt “Österreich” wieder einmal, dass Strache als Neo-Nazi im Gefängnis war. Strache heißt Furcht und Schrecken. Graz heißt Stadt. Eine wichtige Stadt für die Literatur. Eine gar nicht so heimliche Hauptstadt, zu manchen Zeiten. Für den Schrecken. Für die Literatur, etwas später. Yi Sha 伊沙, der am 17. März in Graz seine Texte vorstellt, die in manchem an Ernst Jandl erinnern, kommt aus Xi’an 西安. Hauptstadt schon vor über 2000 Jahren. Terrakottakrieger. Tang-Gedichte. Von daher kommt Gustav Mahlers Lied von der Erde.
Eine wilde Mischung. Sich der Gewalt stellen. Respekt geben, zeigen, und damit auch fordern. Haben sie das gemeinsam? Yang Lian 楊煉, ein großer Dichter, aktiv und engagiert seit den 1970er Jahren. Liu Zhenyun 刘震云, bis vor zwei Jahren vielleicht bekannter als Mo Yan, auf jeden Fall unterhaltsamer. Richard Claydermann und die Trommeln in den Bergen. Klingt vielleicht eskapistisch. Aber Liu Zhenyun geht es um Aufarbeitung, und um Respekt für die kleinen Leute. Er kommt aus einem armen Dorf und ging zur Armee, um schreiben zu können – wie auch Mo Yan 莫言 und manche andere.
Respekt zeigen, und damit einfordern. Zheng Xiaoqiong 郑小琼 tritt auch am 17. März in Graz auf. Ihre Texte kommen aus den Fabriken in Dongguan. Das ist im Perlflussdelta, nicht weit von Kanton 広州, Hongkong 香港 und Shenzhen 深圳. Xu Lizhi 许立志 sprang in Shenzhen in seinen Tod. Bei Foxconn 富士康, wo sich schon viele Arbeiter und Arbeiterinnen umgebracht haben. Foxconn fertigt Computer und Telefone für Apple. Xu Lizhi war ein sehr begabter Dichter. Bei Zheng Xiaoqiong kommen viele Kolleginnen vor, die nicht mehr am Leben sind. Oft wegen Unfällen. Viele sind auch verschwunden.
Respekt zeigen, und Hoffnung geben. Wie Malala. Viele Frauen sind in diesem Dossier, verglichen mit anderen Kunstsammlungen, nicht nur chinesischen. Fünf Frauen, von elf Autorinnen. Zwei mit Prosatexten. Zheng Xiaoqiong hat sehr gute Reportagen geschrieben, leider habe ich bis zum Redaktionsschluss noch keine fertig übersetzt. Aber von Zheng Xiaoqiong kommt bald ein Buch in Österreich heraus, mit Reportagen und Gedichten. Bei FabrikTransit. Und in Wien gibt es am 20 März am Ostasieninstitut der Universität Wien einen Workshop mit Zheng Xiaoqiong, auf der Grundlage von einer Reportage und anderen Texten. Und eine Lesung gibt es, veranstaltet vom Institut für Sprachkunst der Universität für Angewandte Kunst.
Hao Jingfangs 郝景芳 Science-Fiction-Geschichte ist der längste Text in diesem Dossier. Widerstand. Wie ist Widerstand möglich, wenn aller Widerstand gegen den Staat längst gebrochen wurde?
Kaufen Sie das Heft, lesen Sie, wie es geht. Oder lesen Sie von Ma Lans 马兰 ”Doppeluterus“, und unerklärlichen Spuren im Schnee. Von Liu Xias 刘霞 Charlotte Salomon. Soll noch einer sagen, chinesische Literatur sei nur über China. Alle Beiträge reden über Respekt, und über Rechte. Sehr allgemein.
anyone who is for
masters of war
what should u do with them?
I’d rather not
give him a prize.
MW 2015/1
KUBIN
anyone who is for
the chinese government
against ai weiwei
anyone who pretends
no-one gets disappeared
there is justice in china
what should u do with them?
I’d start with naming one.
the night they announced
the lu xun literature prize
my mobile phone rang
it was the ningxia muslim poet
shan yongzhen. he said:
“only if you are never considered
for the biggest official prize,
you can become
a great poet in china.
tonight my first candidate
would have been chang yao
(who died in 2000)
the second one I thought of
was you, brother yi!”
hearing these words
brother yi stammered
didn’t know what to say
would have liked to hang up
brother shan said:
“so you don’t want to
discuss this topic
in any way?”
I said:
“yes, yes ….”
he didn’t know
what I was doing
I didn’t want to discuss any topic
I was watching a porn flick
on my computer
there was this great
piece of ass from thailand
in front of my eyes
on august 23rd 1931
sholohov and pasternak
sat down together for breakfast
at moscow airport
before bording a plane bound for kiev
to watch the soviet soccer team
they were invited
70 years ago in the soviet union
the official writer’s association chairman
and a dubious poet
the only time they went out together
it was all in the name of soccer
70 years later in china
one week ago
I had the same experience
2001
Tr. MW, June 2014
Yi Sha
MEMOIREN
am 23. august 1931
saßen scholochow und pasternak
am moskauer flughafen
im kaffeehaus zusammen beim frühstück
dann stiegen sie in ein flugzeug nach kiew
dort spielte das sowjetische team
sie waren beide eingeladen
vor 70 jahren in der sowjetunion
der präsident des autorenverbandes und ein dichter der grauzone
auf dieser einen gemeinsamen reise
und nur für den fußball
siebzig jahre später in china
vor einer woche
hatte ich die gleiche erfahrung
du you think you are an existentialist?
do you think you like to eat zha jiang mian?
do you think you are collecting antiques?
do you think you are following fashion?
do you think you have improved since you started?
do you think you have fulfilled your ideals?
do you think you’re a patriot?
do you think you love the truth?
do you think you dare to say it?
do you think you don’t fear retribution?
do you think you’re a good writer?
do you think you’re a poet?
do you think you’re a good mother?
do you think you’re a good father?
do you think you have loved?
do you think you are moral?
do you think microblogging makes China improve?
question mark mark mark
do you think they are prophets?
do you think you’re a groupie?
do you think there are things you don’t talk about?
do you think there are people you cannot offend?
do you think this novel is your autobiography?
do you think you have talent?
do you think your stuff is going to last?
do you think you have secrets?
do you think you have a big heart?
do you think you are fair to everyone?
do you think you’re responsible?
do you think you play by the rules?
do you think you have nothing to be ashamed of?
do you think you are self-important?
do you think you want revenge?
do you think you are scared of dying?
do you think you make people like you?
do you think you make people hate you?
do you think you have a future?
do you think you are falling behind?
do you think you are lonely?
do you think you are writing a poem?
this girl makes you crazy
let her go on babbling
asking herself
Tr. MW, June 2014
Chun Sue DREAMING OF LIVING INSIDE A DREAM
Tr. MW, June 2014
Published in EPIPHANY magazine, fall 2014. Go on, look for this great Chinese Dream! I spent October 2014 at Vermont Studio Center with Yi Sha, editor of the daily New Century Poetry series 新世纪诗典. Chun Sue is one of the most well-known figures within this huge independent circle of poets.
Chun Sue MORNING, AVENUE OF ETERNAL PEACE
Little Brother says: dad, Avenue of Eternal Peace
take a good look
This is the road you walked for over 20 years
I am sitting with Papa and Little Brother
I am almost crying
Finally I know
why I like the Avenue of Eternal Peace
Slowly the car passes the Military Museum
and the red walls of Zhongnanhai
and Xinhua Gate
Papa is small now he fits in an ash box
sitting between us
doesn’t take up much space
We pass the Gate of Heavenly Peace
and I see him
He stands on the square
watching us while we’re passing
Why was it so hard to write about you
You’re the son of a peasant
I was born in a village
I am also the child of a peasant
I put on army songs for you all night
Crying my heart out —
I like all that too.
The Globe and Mail article quoted by Paul Manfredi is well informed and sympathetic. But it doesn’t spell out any concrete reasons for Ai Weiwei’s singular status. Ai Weiwei’s status, even after his imprisonment, is that of a “princeling”. It seems to be easier to get rid of Bo Xilai. Bo’s father was one of the “eight immortals” of the Communist Party. Ai Weiwei’s father Ai Qing was a persecuted Communist writer, persecuted under Communist rule since the 1940s. Persecuted before, that’s where he got his name. Most of his colleagues denounced each other. Among famous writers, few seem to have been as obstinate as Ai Qing. He was banished to an army town in Xinjiang, a huge city today. There he cleaned toilets, together with little Weiwei. But after Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1978, Ai Qing became an icon. Unlike Bo Xilai and his henchmen, Ai Weiwei did not build labor camps and organ-harvested Falungong-followers. Before he was arrested, Global Times had published many sympathetic articles about his civil rights activism. And even after his abduction and imprisonment at an unknown location, Ai Weiwei gets to keep his comparatively huge house and grounds and most of his fortune. If he was persecuted too much, the main reason for Ai Weiwei’s status would come out too clearly: It would be awkward to discuss his father’s fate in detail. Cultural policy since the 1940s is no secret to anybody in and around the arts in China. But still. Maybe it would come out too clearly how control over art and literature and everything connected to culture was deemed even more important than in other Socialist countries. How idealism had been betrayed again and again, most effectively with broad domestic and international participation in economic growth after 1989. Ai Weiwei is very different from his father Ai Qing in many aspects, as well from his older brother Ai Xuan, who is also a well-known artist in China. But like his father, Ai Weiwei remains an icon of idealism. It would be awkward and politically dangerous to challenge such icons too much and thus revive ideals in a big way.
The Globe and Mail article quoted by Paul Manfredi gives convincing evidence of Ai Weiwei’s civil disobedience and civil rights engagement. Another good recent piece on Ai Weiwei, his imprisonment in 2011 and comparable phenomena elsewhere around the world is a TED-talk by An Xiao Mina.
under mao zedong
we had starry nights
we had vast starry skies
people lifting their heads
one summer night
it was father and i
father told me
about the universe
about a cosmonaut
yuri gagarin
flying in space
my mouth stood open
like a barn door
thank you, father
my heavenly father
in a dark corner
of north korea
measuring 9,600,000
square kilometers
among hundreds of millions
malnourished blockheads
i was the smartest
did not see the future
but i saw space
Concentrating on private impressions and conversations in published poems is self-evident for many, maybe for most people who read, write, translate, edit such stuff. But China, and also Taiwan to a certain extent, have put into question art, books, beauty, skills, traditions, language- anything had to serve the Party, and what the Party couldn’t use could not exist. Capitalism does it too, everything that doesn’t pay, that we can’t finance, cannot remain. They get along splendidly, finance and centralized state, Mao and the Mammon. That’s how the modern world was developed.
“Beneath our feet, we couldn’t see through dust and ash, rank growth of old. Father holding his iron staff, asking me: ‘Are you afraid?’ Oh, I raised my head, Orion sparkling right in the middle, space reverberations sounding from eons– falling silently, are those meteors, one blue whiplash after the other?” 流星記事, Meteor Account, or Meteor Accounts, by Zhu Fengming 祝凤鸣 (Oct. 1996). Nick Kaldis just showed me his translation of Meteor Account, from a dozen Chinese poems in the magazine Dirty Goat (#24 February 2011).The quote above is in my own translation, I couldn’t resist. Rank growth of old – 古蟒 or 古莽? Nick Kaldis thinks there might be a misprint. (“古蟒 would refer to a snake known from fossil remains, the Paleopython, while 古莽 refers to rank grass.”). 祝凤鸣,男,1964年生于安徽宿松县… Zhu Fengming (born 1964) is a geologist from Anhui.
《流星記事》
祝鳳鳴
有一次,丘崗夜色正濃,二月還未清醒,
我踏著回家的羊腸小徑,在山坡
白花花的梨樹下,碰見鄰村
淒涼的赤腳醫生,面孔平和。
“剛從李灣回來,那個孩子怕是不行了。”
他說,藥箱在右肩閃著棗紅的微光。
路邊的灌叢越來越黑,細沙嗖嗖——
我們站在風中,談起宅基,柳樹,輪轉的風水。
陰陽和天體在交割,無盡的秘密,使人聲變冷,
“……生死由命。”這時,藍光一閃
話語聲中,一群流星靜靜地布滿天空﹔
還有一次,我和父親走在冬月下
曠野的一切彷彿在錫箔中顫抖。
腳下是隱形的塵土和古蟒的灰燼。
父親拿著鐵棒,問我:“你怕不怕?”
哦,我抬起頭來,獵戶星座在中天閃耀,
空中傳來千秋的微響——
那無聲垂落的,是流星,還是一道道藍色的鞭影?
The existence of space. Of God(s). Yin-yang, fengshui. Existence of wonder. Or the other way, wonder of existence. Outside the Party. Very much among the common people on the other hand, in the countryside, barefoot doctors, and so on, in the rest of Zhu Fengming’s poem.
Yes, 蟒 (mang3) may be a misprint for the homophonous character 莽 (mang3). 古莽之國, the ancient uncultured state. The Book of Liezi. 古莽之國,出《列子周穆王第三》,屬迺古三國。三國者何也?古莽之國、中央之國、阜落之國也。蓋處天地之外、神話之中,事未可徵,史未可考。古莽之地,陰陽不交,寒暑不辨;民不衣不食而多眠,五旬一覺,而以夢為真,真為妄也。(Wikipedia)
Space, spaceflight. A great achievement. “Sister killed her baby ’cause she couldn’t afford to feed it we are sending people to the moon.” Prince, Sign o’ the Times. Really, I think they should have written more about this in the international papers. Yes, it worked, no-one died, Wang Yaping 王亞平 teaching from space, tens of millions watching and listening to her. A great leap, a giant leap, really. Responsibility, great responsibility. How many things could go wrong, in space, for the nation. Planning everything, the very opposite of wu wei. That’s how the famine came. No space for real wondering. Everything organized, all propaganda, all of the nation. They are planning, they have begun to move hundreds of millions more to the cities. Destroying small farms, villages, settlements, temples. Like they destroyed the ancient cities.
They should write about spaceflight, every time. I have to get back to my daughter. Show her the videos from Shenzhou 10.
Yi Sha’s poem is from 2003, from the beginning of these missions 10 years ago.
What is Chinese literature about? Exile, inner exile. Inside China, banished. Happened to many poets through the ages, including the most famous. Or voluntary exile, to be somewhere else, not among the people. 别有天地非人間。Teaching Latin in a high school in Vienna, a friend of our uses Du Fu 杜甫. Du Fu, Brecht, Theodor Kramer, Guido Zernatto. She teaches Latin, so exile comes from Ovid. Epistulaes ex ponto. From Casablanca. No, it’s that port city on the Black Sea, in Romania. Constantza. Like Tristan Tzara. Z or S? Whatever. Du Fu. They use an old edition from the 1930s. Brought into verse by H. Not just translated, not directly. That’s how they used to do it. Gustav Mahler’s 馬勒 Song of the Earth 大地之歌 came from Li Bai 李白 (Li Tai-po), Wang Wei 王維 and Meng Haoran 孟浩然, through many versions in different languages in between. Mahler wrote the final versions to fit his music. Two poems by different poets merged into one, at the end. No, that Du Fu edition is very accurate, from the feel of it. Two great volumes, large and thick. Not rhymed. But rather formal. Not luosuo 羅嗦. No superfluos words. Hardly. Again, from the feel of it, I haven’t checked, just listened and read. Listened, our friends read well. Very down-to-earth, daily details. Ants, chicken. Fencing in chicken, thinking about it. A reference to the times, the circumstances. Suddenly becoming political, as our friend says. Towards the end. A moral at the end, maybe more in this German version than in Chinese. Circumstances, Du Fu’s circumstances. He always complains, says our friend. Very down-to-earth, very daily life. Strife, poverty, famine. Starving on the streets. We have a master’s thesis on Tang Poetry social critique in Vienna, from 1990. Anna Maria Eigner. Bai Juyi 白居易, many different poets. Li Shangyin 李商隐 wrote a lot about poverty in the countryside. Not in is most famous poems, unfortunately.
Daddy, who is this?
He is called Li Bifeng. I just translated a poem by him. He is in prison. They are all in prison. This one is a writer, too.
Why is he in prison?
He took part in protests, demonstrations. Demonstration, you remember what that is? Yes, we were in one together this year.
Where is this?
This is in China.
What else did he do?
He organized strikes. Do you know what strikes are?
No.
Strikes are when workers in a factory say they won’t work, all of them. To get better pay. To get insurance, you know what that is? When you are sick, to get money from insurance so you can get a doctor, go to hospital.
Daddy, are there any places with no government?
Good question. There are some places where women are in charge. They own the land, they run things. Used to. Sometimes still do. Places in China.
Well, they should. Women are important. Women bear children.
I don’t know if there are any places with no government. There are some places with not many people at all. Deserts, mountains.
he jumped from the top of the building
peng!
he was dead
it wasn’t like he had seen it
on tv
on tv
the contractor who owed migrant workers
when he heard someone would jump
right away he came out with his pay
but this time
no-one held him back
that’s how he died
peng!
In the summer of 1992, in a vegetable garden on the roof of a shed housing inmates of the Sichuan Province Prison # 1, I spent three days alone with the old prisoner Zhang Fafu, who had been transferred to this prison at Nanchong from forced labor at a coal mine. Our task was to build a wall out of plastic parts and wire at the side where the roof garden faced the bathing pool, to prevent other prisoners from secretly watching the women taking their baths down below. I got this assignment at that time because my sentence was short, I was working at the kiosk of my unit and wasn’t considered a common criminal. So the cadre chose that old prisoner from the coal mine and me.
From the second day on he told me everything about himself. From his talking, I could feel the jolts in his soul. He had attended high school before Liberation in 1949, he loved reading and understood a lot of things; he even liked poetry. He asked me so often until I had no choice but to give him one of the poems I had written. A few days later, I was transferred. After I arrived at Prison # 3, someone from # 1 came to go over my accounts. That’s when I heard something happened to Zhang Fafu. He had taken the plastic parts from our wall, tied them to is arms and jumped from a building. He wasn’t dead, but he became a vegetable.
I don’t know if he read my poem. Later, when I was released from Prison # 3 upon completion of my sentence, I stuffed the original manuscript of this poem into a bamboo flute I had got from Liao Yiwu, and blocked the hole at the bottom with soap. This way I got to take the poem with me. All these years, whenever I think of Zhang Fafu, I think of our plastic wall. It’s not the same as the wall in my poem, but now I cannot separate the poem from Zhang Fafu.
Tr. MW, 2013
Translator’s note: Li Bifeng’s NOTE and the following poem (http://wp.me/PczcX-zk) are part of his novel Wings In The Sky (天空中的翅膀). One chapter is available on the LIBIFENG2012 WordPress site. The main characters are an old prisoner, a bird and a woman who lives in a shed not far from the prison with her daughter. The plot is rather interesting.
What is Chinese literature about? What is art about, in any medium, time or place? The reading for the imprisoned underground poet and activist Li Bifeng on June 3rd, 2013 in Vienna will include works by a diverse range of authors. Li Bifeng has become known through his association with Liao Yiwu, the exiled poet and documentary writer, now in Berlin. On his own, judging from his available work and his literary impact in China, even in dissident circles, Li Bifeng would not have become famous. This doesn’t mean he is not worth reading. But he has had little opportunity to find an audience, and not everything that is available online now is as compelling as Liao Yiwu’s signature poem Massacre, or any other famous piece of writing in Chinese. Actually, none of the works by Li Bifeng I have read up to now sound very dissident at all. They are “just art”, so to speak. He could have published them, as a different person.
What other texts will be read at Vienna University on June 3rd?
On May 3rd, 2013, we had a very interesting workshop and discussion at Vienna University’s East Asia Institute, on literature in Korea, China and Japan. It was initiated by Lena Springer, who invited Zhang Chengjue 張成覺, expert on the year 1957 and the so-called Anti-Rightists-Campaign in China. Zhang and Springer were inspired by Lu Xun expert Qian Liqun from Peking University, who called for research on the late 1950s in China across disciplines. The workshop in Vienna was about censorship, political changes, publishing conditions and (self-)perceptions of artistic quality. Professor Schirmer told us about a debate in South Korea 45 years ago, in 1968. A big-wig critic who became culture minister later published an essay, lamenting the lame state of Korean literature. A poet responded and said he had poems that could not be published, and his friends also had literature that could not be published because it would be considered dangerous, unstable, unsettling. 不穩。The critic said he didn’t understand. Surely good art would be independent of politics and would only need imagination and talent? Not so, the poet replied. Art is potentially unsettling, if it is powerful art at all. The critic didn’t get it again. Sounded very much like Prof. Kubin and his friends in China. Also like Taiwan 30 years ago, of course.
By calling for a worldwide reading on 4 June 2013 for the Chinese underground poet, Li Bifeng, the international literature festival berlin is demanding that the Chinese government release him from prison.
The poet and campaigner for democracy, Li Bifeng, wrote a report in 1998 about a courageous group of textile workers who blockaded a Chinese motorway and sent a video recording of it to foreign human rights organisations. In 1989, after he had been involved in the protest on Tiananmen Square and on the run for six months, Li Bifeng was captured and sentenced to twelve years imprisonment for ³economic crimes². In November 2012, the 48-year-old was sentenced to another 12 years, with no good reason, without evidence and despite worldwide protests. The authorities
suspect him of having helped his friend, the author Liao Yiwu and holder of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade 2012, to escape to Germany in 2011.
In the short phases in which Li Bifeng has been able to write, he has written numerous poems, prose texts and plays as well as a novel. On the anniversary of the massacre on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, which took place on 4 June 1989, the Peter-Weiss Foundation for Art and Politics e.V. and the international literature festival berlin have initiated a
worldwide reading for Li Bifeng.
Appeal, texts by and about Li Bifeng: www.worldwide-reading.com, http://libifeng2012.wordpress.com
Some new translations into English and German
Painting by Sara Bernal (untitled, mixed media, 2013)
ANGST AND FEAR
– for Ernst Jandl
FEAR
fear. fear.
fear is. fear.
fear is a. fear.
fear is a bad. fear.
fear is a bad advisor. fear.
fear is a bad advisor, you. fear.
fear is a bad advisor, you lock. fear.
fear is a bad advisor, you lock yourself. fear.
fear is a bad advisor, you lock yourself in. fear.
fear is a bad advisor, you lock yourself in a. fear.
fear is a bad advisor, you lock yourself in a cage. fear.
fear is a bad advisor, you lock yourself in a cage and. fear.
fear is a bad advisor, you lock yourself in a cage and cannot. fear.
fear is a bad advisor, you lock yourself in a cage and cannot even. fear.
fear is a bad advisor, you lock yourself in a cage and cannot even pee. fear.
fear. fear.
fear is. fear.
fear is a. fear.
fear is a bad. fear.
fear is a bad advisor. fear.
fear is a bad advisor in. fear.
fear is a bad advisor in a. fear.
fear is a bad advisor in a tight. fear.
fear is a bad advisor in a tight dress in. fear.
fear is a bad advisor in a tight dress in a. fear.
fear is a bad advisor in a tight dress in a tight. fear.
fear is a bad advisor in a tight dress in a tight cage. fear.
fear is a bad advisor in a tight dress in a tight cage and. fear.
fear is a bad advisor in a tight dress in a tight cage and cannot. fear.
fear is a bad advisor in a tight dress in a tight cage and cannot even. fear.
fear is a bad advisor in a tight dress in a tight cage and cannot even pee. fear.
MW April 2013
ANGST
angst. angst.
angst ist. angst.
angst ist ein. angst.
angst ist ein schlechter. angst.
angst ist ein schlechter rat. angst.
angst ist ein schlechter ratgeber. angst.
angst ist ein schlechter ratgeber, du. angst.
angst ist ein schlechter ratgeber, du sperrst. angst.
angst ist ein schlechter ratgeber, du sperrst dich. angst.
angst ist ein schlechter ratgeber, du sperrst dich in. angst.
angst ist ein schlechter ratgeber, du sperrst dich in einen. angst.
angst ist ein schlechter ratgeber, du sperrst dich in einen engen. angst.
angst ist ein schlechter ratgeber, du sperrst dich in einen engen käfig. angst.
angst ist ein schlechter ratgeber, du sperrst dich in einen engen käfig ein. angst.
angst ist ein schlechter ratgeber, du sperrst dich in einen engen käfig ein und. angst.
angst ist ein schlechter ratgeber, du sperrst dich in einen engen käfig ein und kannst. angst.
angst ist ein schlechter ratgeber, du sperrst dich in einen engen käfig ein und kannst nicht. angst.
angst ist ein schlechter ratgeber, du sperrst dich in einen engen käfig ein und kannst nicht einmal. angst.
angst ist ein schlechter ratgeber, du sperrst dich in einen engen käfig ein und kannst nicht einmal pinkeln. angst.
MW April 2013
ANGST
angst. angst.
angst ist. angst.
angst ist eine. angst.
angst ist eine schlechte. angst.
angst ist eine schlechte ratgeberin. angst.
angst ist eine schlechte ratgeberin in. angst.
angst ist eine schlechte ratgeberin in einem. angst.
angst ist eine schlechte ratgeberin in einem engen. angst.
angst ist eine schlechte ratgeberin in einem engen kleid in. angst.
angst ist eine schlechte ratgeberin in einem engen kleid in einem. angst.
angst ist eine schlechte ratgeberin in einem engen kleid in einem engen. angst.
angst ist eine schlechte ratgeberin in einem engen kleid in einem engen käfig. angst.
angst ist eine schlechte ratgeberin in einem engen kleid in einem engen käfig und. angst.
angst ist eine schlechte ratgeberin in einem engen kleid in einem engen käfig und kann. angst.
angst ist eine schlechte ratgeberin in einem engen kleid in einem engen käfig und kann nicht. angst.
angst ist eine schlechte ratgeberin in einem engen kleid in einem engen käfig und kann nicht einmal. angst.
angst ist eine schlechte ratgeberin in einem engen kleid in einem engen käfig und kann nicht einmal pinkeln. angst.
gut und böse, deutsch und china,
wenn es doch so einfach wär.
manchmal ist es wirklich einfach.
light is china. deutsch ist schwer.
dissonanz ist gut und wichtig,
harmonie ist selten echt.
deshalb ist das allermeiste,
was kubin sagt, falsch und schlecht.
denn er sagt ja stets dasselbe,
wenn man in die zeitung schaut.
in der forschung ist es anders.
was sich in der forschung staut,
was in vielen tausend jahren
dissonant war oder schön
ist halt nicht sehr kompatibel,
sieht man in die medien.
wer ist harmoniebedürftig,
wer ist forscher, dissident,
wer ist dichter, wer ist denker,
wer ist stiller, und wer rennt,
wer ist renitent und fuchtelt,
drängt sich stets ins rampenlicht,
ob in china oder deutschland,
wer ist prächtig, wer ein wicht?
gut und böse, deutsch und china,
wenn es doch so einfach wär.
manchmal ist es wirklich einfach.
blue is china. deutsch ist schwer.
廖亦武本來不想流亡。在中國沒工夫學德語,現在也許都沒工夫。寫作、關心李必豐、當大國敵人很費心。
Die Faszination der Wirtschaft, des Exotischen, der Kunst, der Literatur, der Wanderarbeiterinnen, der Bürger- und Menschenrechte. Die Faszination China/ Lenovo als Big Blue Chip/ Ai Weiwei/ Liu Xiaobo/ Liao Yiwu. Gao Xingjian, Liu Xiaobo, Mo Yan (und Liao Yiwu). Exil und Sprache, Dokumentation und Fiktion, Sprache(n) der unteren Schichten, der Kader, der SchriftstellerInnen drinnen und draußen. Ein mediensüchtiger Professor, der die Sinologie in die Klatschspalte der Nachrichten zerrt. Ein großer Forscher, Vermittler und eifriger Übersetzer als aufdringliche, absurd-komische Fußnote. Schweden und Norwegen sind für die heutige chinesische Literatur viel, viel wichtiger als Deutschland. Als Österreicher stört mich das naturgemäß ganz und gar nicht. Obwohl Deutschland durch die Popularität von Ai Weiwei und Liao Yiwu, in letzter Zeit wegen der Präsenz von und wegen des Preises für Liao Yiwu doch auch nicht unwichtig dasteht. Österreich und die Schweiz kommen sowieso nicht vor. Die Schriftstellerin Yu Luojin 遇罗锦 hat eine Zeitlang in Wien gewohnt, die Dichterin Shu Ting 舒婷 hat in Wien meine Frau und mich miteinander bekannt gemacht. Sheng Xue 盛雪 ist in Kanada. Und Hofmannsthal liegt in Wien begraben. Idol mancher, auch eines bekannten Sinologen. Großer Dichter, vor und im ersten Weltkrieg und nachher agitatatorisch zwischen Österreich und Deutschland gespalten. Von Stefan Zweig gepriesen, der Avantgarde hasste und faschistische Marschgruppen erst einmal faszinierend diszipliniert und schneidig fand, bevor er draufkam, wofür und wogegen sie waren. Avantgarde, Futurismus, Faschismus, Formalismus, Shklovski und Trotzki, Suprematismus, Stalinismus, Surrealismus, Pop-Art, Maoismus. Trakl, Rilke, Bei Dao, Ingeborg Bachmann, Paul Celan, Ernst Jandl, Erich Fried, Mira Lobe, Christine Nöstlinger, Elfriede Gerstl, Rosa Pock, Friederike Mayröcker, Marlen Haushofer, Christine Lavant, Hilde Spiel, Elfriede Jelinek, Robert Schindel, Maja Haderlap, Esther Dischereit, Josef Winkler. Lichtungen. Lichtblau.
Time To Say No! is an initiative inspired by Malala Yousafzai. There is a presentation in Brazil today. Yesterday there was a press conference and poetry reading in Vienna, organized by Austrian PEN. Time to Say No! is about rights. Education and dignity, which means not to be violated, are basic rights of all human beings. We heard female writers from Kenya, Sudan, Iran, India, Bulgaria, a wonderful male voice from former Yugoslavia, Austrian voices: Philo Ikonya, Ishraga Hamid, Sarita Jemanani, Boško Tomašević, Dorothea Nürnberg…. And two poems from China. The first one was “YOUR RED LIPS, A WORDLESS HOLE” 你空洞無聲的欲言紅唇 by Sheng Xue 盛雪, English translation by Maiping Chen and Brenda Vellino, German translation by Angelika Burgsteiner. The second poem from China was Lily’s Story 丽丽传 by Zhao Siyun 赵思云. The book Time To Say No, edited by Philo Inkonya and Helmuth Niederle, also contains poems by Ana Schoretits, Chantelle Tiong 张依蘋, Hong Ying 虹影, Reet Kudu, Wu Runsheng 吴润生 and many, many others.
I also wrote a blog post about Mo Yan and ideology in early December, after the school massacre in Connecticut.
Liao Yiwu 廖亦武 is going to visit Sweden this month (March 2013). He wrote another open letter to Göran Malmqvist. I have copied it here, along with a recent speech he held in Hamburg. In the open letter, Liao mentions a new song by the Chinese punk group Pangu 盤古.
Chat with an old friend in Beijing who works in Chinese media. Thursday, Feb. 28, 2013 7:50 am GMT
hello dear
bonjour. 早上好。
how are you ??
還可以
你好嗎?
空氣很臭嗎?
feeling nauseated, pollution is above maximum level again 855 right now
他們兩會喘氣一點也好
disgusting
+o(
you know the article i translated a few days ago to tackle the pollution? they want to forbid the barbecues !!
*^o)
like 羊肉串?
dui !!
太可笑
可悲
the state of the air is the state of the art of ruling the country. we had a guy from shanghai here at the university yesterday, there is a un conference on middle east in the city, and he is a chinese expert on jews in china and relations to middle east. very pragmatic, realist guy, sounds like some of his israeli friends. we don’t want another libya chaos, so we veto.
😐
but who are they defending in the security council? sudan was massacring their own people. China supports any regime that suppresses their own population by military means.
yeaah, so now it is too late for the international community to shine, and the ones who help in Syria are the radical islamist, Al qaida etc..
exactly.
when the war will be over, do we really want an other country ruled by Al Qaida, because china did not want chaos ? such short term vision lets not forget the dearest firend poutine such a nice guy to help his economy by boosting the weapons and jets industry
yes. the chinese love to cooperate on weapons with israel and do all sorts of research. he likes to talk about such things. but nobody asked tough questions. stephane hessel died two days ago in france, wasn’t it? the old guy who survived the nazis and inspired recent civil movements. it’s not easy. arab spring was risky. doesn’t look good now, on the whole.
yes, he passed away, just learned about it a few minutes ago, i just cried watching the news
every revolution takes time, the french one lasted more than 20 years to really settle down
the name arab spring comes from prague spring 1968. there are always risks with popular movements for democracy from the bottom up. participation, human rights, civil rights, civil society.
but the good thing in the chaos in egypt and algeria and tunisia, is that now, people know they can make a difference, and wont take bullshit and abuse like sheep
so, all those who just had personal ambitions are aware that they too can be put down by civilians if they don t act according with the will of the people.
yes. two and a half years ago it looked like mubarak and gaddafi etc. would rule forever.
it will take time, but in the end, we, the basic people all want the same: quiet, freedom, work, and education for the kids
it was more convenient for everybody to support the status quo.
for us, china, eu, diplomats….
you are right. to be left in peace by the government, to have basic rights and freedom, to have work, and education for the kids. in tibetan. in mongolian. in uighur. etc. not very difficult.
it’s very disgusting. the poem is from last october. it didn’t look as if she would get justice. remarkably well-written report in the newspaper when you follow the link., very detailed.
my chinese is too bad to understand the original text, but i will have some of my colleagues help me understand. I am getting ready for the NPA and CCPPC. 3 weeks with no day of for this occasion.
at austrian PEN-club they have a special activity Time To Say No. Started after Malala was shot in Pakistan. I am helping them with Chinese texts. http://www.penclub.at/
One Chinese writer who lives in Canada sent a much more horrible poem than Lily’s Story. Very good poem, too. Her name is Sheng Xue 盛雪. I can send it to you, if you like. Women’s day on March 8 is a good occasion to pay attention to the real world.
yes, please, it is always good to make people aware of these facts
too many people with power still think they can get away from their acts, thank god internet is there so nobody forgets
i can’t stand that these murderous pigs can get away with it !!
i am not for violence, but sometimes i think …
:@
please send it around, if you like.
i will
the english translation is not bad. but the original is even better.
or worse, of course.
i passed them around
what are your colleagues saying? Maybe they know some of the names in the poem by Sheng Xue. I didn’t know the names, but it sounds very real.
i did not hear anything from my colleagues
i guess many chinese just prefer to ignore that kind of things
like the ostrich digging its head in the sand
at least one or two of the names in the poem by Sheng Xue would get results even in English at Google or Baidu. Lily’s Story was reported in China. Even in newspapers, though not very big.
i think the more they hear about this kind of things, the more rebellious they will be towards those jerks
yes. but it isn’t big news every day. the pollution is. that’s the good thing about it. easy to say for me when I don’t smell it right now.
sie haben den baum vorm fenster gefällt
ich weiss nicht warum
er liegt noch herum
sie standen beisammen im hof und sprachen
von polizei und so sachen
ich fragte nicht nach
wir sind nachbarn im anderen haus
es geht uns nichts an
es war nur der baum
unlängst haben sie sträucher gerodet
da ist eine gesprungen
und eine weile liegengeblieben
hat man dann erfahren
sie haben den baum vorm fenster gefällt
es steht noch ein kleiner gestutzter
und bald kommt der efeu der wilde wein
und was rotes das klettert
und noch weisse sträucher
der baum war alt
er hat halt geblüht
von uns aus gesehen das schönste im hof
jetzt gibt es mehr licht
man sieht in der richtung die serbische kirche
und weniger nester vielleicht
Happy year of the snake! How are you doing? I have just finished translating an essay on bonsais in jail. From Chinese into German. Spring in a Prison Cell, by Shi Mingde (Shih Ming-te) 施明德, written in August 1989. He was Taiwan’s Liu Xiaobo. Released in the early 1990s, after 25 years in jail. Nearly executed in 1980 after organizing the Formosa protests. Arrested again in 1997, campaigning for direct presidential elections. Organized protests against corruption in 2006.
His older brother Shi Mingzheng died in a hunger strike in August 1988.
If you feel like it, please tell me how you like the following poem. Or the translation. Shorter words are easier to fit in a rhythm.
Have a good year!
Martin
Shi Mingzheng (1982)
BIRDS OF PASSAGE
Yes, we are September birds, arriving
on this western pacific island, panting;
marveling at the island’s beauty;
riding the breeze, changing into the foam, soaring over Green Island’s blue skies
We have wings to adore.
We don’t need passports or border controls.
We don’t have professions or housing,
picking grain anywhere, sleeping where we can rest.
We don’t have jails, no informing and framing,
no scaffolds or labor camps, no exploitation.
We eat what we find, at most we have children exploiting their parents.
We don’t have assassinations.
And so we don’t have police and informers.
We don’t have thugs performing as agents.
We have the freedom you people are craving, but if you catch us
We end up on sticks for your peace-loving teeth.
《新诗典》以本诗为天下苍生祈福! //@老纪微波:抄送@长安伊沙
Zhan Che Chanting sutras, blossoms opening
– stopping by the shrine of the Le Sheng Old People’s Home
[to be demolished]
100 year old banyan tree stretching its roots
sunlight in the wind tipping millions of leaves
some kind of music comes from these instruments
from strings and keys
from hairs and tongues
lepers kneeling before Buddha statues
wrists without hands
wrists that had knives tied to them for cutting vegetables
wrists, mallets tied to them beating wooden fish
– wooden fish swimming in sounds of bells
sounds of bells swimming in rain
those fish without noses
bats with no eyes
earthworms with no hands or feet
by the sound of those wooden fish
growing into whatever they planted
osmanthus smiles magnolia
scents through their four elements six roots of desire
through their five sensory organs in forms of flowers
scents drawing in sutra chanting
in the unseen world –
from their deformed hands feet noses lips
growing twigs and leaves
osmanthus blossoms magnolia smiles
smiling bodhisattvas
in scents of sandalwood and flowers
lighting lanters to walk through the night
but they will be banished by rigid laws
this cultural heritage for all mankind fits into
colonial history public health human rights
they are helpless in this official-commercial structure
but they will take to the streets kneeling and praying
with their deformed blood-swollen hands and feet
kneeling praying entreating towering authorities
bringing their muttering whispering groaning
flower scents and chanting sutras
drip into memory drop in the rain
der mond ist ungeheuer oben.
der drache ist bald nicht mehr da.
am spielplatz sehen wir noch den mond.
es war ein schoener nachmittag
mit kleinem bob im belvedere.
der schnee ist jetzt schon laenger da.
die rampe bei den stufen rechts
wenn man hinaufgeht. leo fuhr
auf maias kleinem leichtem bob
vom schiurlaub in kaernten noch.
es war ein schoener ruhiger platz
und niemand stoerte sich an uns.
und eine mexikanerin.
der erste schnee, ganz frisch in wien
mit ihrem freund. der kann gut deutsch
er wohnt auch hier. sie fragten uns
und leo liess sie einmal fahren
und sogar beide je einmal.
der mond ist ungeheuer oben
ein bisschen hoeher als im herbst.
der letzte mond im drachenjahr
das fruehlingsfest ist heuer spaet
es kommt am zehnten februar
der mond ist ungeheuer oben
ein bisschen hoeher als im herbst.
das drachenjahr war ganz ok
mehr wasser als beim letzten mal
es rannte damals jiang zemin
mit fackel in die neue zeit
auf dem milleniumsmonument
jetzt gibt es schon den xi jinping
viel wichtiger: es gibt mo yan
man ahnte beides lang davor
beim letzten mal wars gao xingjian
das war im letzten drachenjahr
recht lang ists her. 12 jahre frueher
da war ich in taiwan
die 80er jahre
das letzte jahr vor 89
hat da shen congwen noch gelebt?
der haett es auch noch fast gekriegt
in stockholm, aus des koenigs hand
fuer literatur aus den vierziger jahren
und dreissiger jahren. vor 49.
jetzt gibts in deutschland liao yiwu
aus taiwan kamen lai hsiangyin
und chen kohua unlaengst nach wien
in taiwan ist viel hoffnung da
in china ist die luft recht dick
der mond ist ungeheuer oben
ein bisschen hoeher als im herbst
das drachenjahr war ganz ok
mehr wasser als beim letzten mal
in peking wars sogar zuviel
im juli, mit ertrunkenen.
zum abschluss wurde es sehr kalt
am ende kam ein schlimmer smog.
war es ein gutes drachenjahr?
ich weiss es nicht. wir sind in wien
in wien gibts haeupl weiterhin
und bundesheer. an seinem platz
und wenigstens nicht fuer den krieg.
der mond ist ungeheuer oben
den fluechtlingen ist ziemlich kalt
vor 20 jahren: lichtermeer
ich war in china. doch davor
nach 89 bald danach
war ich in wien. da war der loeschnak an der macht.
der cap war auch schon funktionaer.
das boot war voll. das sagte wer.
es gab die plakate
gesetze statt hetze
als auslaenderhetze.
das als das das statt war
das wollte ich kleben
auf alle plakate. in einer nacht.
ein bisschen wie bei ai weiwei.
ich hatte nicht genuegend freunde.
dann kam der krieg. jugoslawienkriege.
und ich war in shanghai.
dann war ich zivildiener, lehrer
fuer fluechtlinge aus bosnien.
doch nur weil ich wollte.
der grissemann hat nichts getan.
vielleicht aber spaeter.
es gibt nichts gutes. man tut es.
von kaestner. wie war das?
dann ging ich nach wuhan.
und spaeter nach chongqing.
dazwischen war rumaenien.
wir lernten und lehrten.
wir kamen nach peking.
und jackie ging zum militaer.
militaer in der botschaft.
und alles ganz friedlich.
und ich uebersetzte
dann waren schon die kinder da.
der mond ist ungeheuer oben
ein bisschen hoeher als im herbst
der letzte mond im drachenjahr.
ich muss jetzt endlich schlafen gehen.
Yi Sha became well-known in the 1990s for acerbic remarks on other poets. He has been widely criticized himself. Spring is a time of hope. The Chinese moon year begins with Spring Festival, the biggest holiday of the year. Typically for Yi Sha, this poem sounds rather mundane, laconic and depressing, dashing most expectations connected with poetry. The line “For suicides tomorrow morning” is a little truncated in my German version that was printed in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (see image). “Für die Selbstmörder von morgen” makes a better rhythm than “Für die Selbstmörder von morgen früh”. In English I wasn’t tempted to leave out the morning. But you could say “dear god/for suicides in the morning/ let it snow once more.” In German there is something like a rhyme within the first two lines. When I was prepared/ To stride into spring/ it snowed again. Does it sound better this way in English too? You decide.
Why did I pick this particular poem? I didn’t pick it for publication. Andreas Breitenstein at NZZ (Neue Zürcher Zeitung) likes to print poems whenever he can wrangle a little space in any particular day’s edition. They have to be short. I had translated another poem by Yi Sha about snowfall in 2008. Mr. Breitenstein liked it, but it was too long. So I looked through Yi Sha’s collection Niao Chuang 尿床 (Wetting the bed), published in Taiwan in 2009. It’s a very nice edition. Huang Liang 黃梁, a critic in Taiwan, has brought out two ten-volume Series of Mainland Avantgarde Poetry 大陸先鋒詩叢, in 1999 and 2009. A great resource. I just picked some of the shortest poems in there.
Thank you, 20th century
We all grew up some time with you
I was born and grew up too
In your arms I feel at home
In your last year
You are generous
To set me free
One hundred years
Two world wars
Cold war east-west
Countless other wars and conflicts
I don’t have much experience
I carried my gun
Two years military service
Thank heavens
I stayed alive
One hundred years
One economic depression
America’s streets full of beggars
Some nations went hungry
Russia and China adopted
Communism
I have only shallow experience
When I was small
There was no rice
But there were dried sweet potatoes
Thank you
I didn’t stay hungry
Although malnourished
There was political tragedy
Military dictators
Even governing through terror
Countless people
Went to jail
Wailing was heard on
The earth’s every corner
I have limited experience
Held and carried
Flags and banners
Walked in streets
Of silent protests
There was art in various ways
Dadaists and surrealists
Stream of consciousness, expressionism
Existentialism, postmodernism
Baffling and shouting, collapsing
Suicide and going crazy
I don’t have much experience
Still at my desk
With simple words
Writing my poems
I went to Grandpa’s grave
One hundred years of graves and mounds
Thousands and millions
Buried simply
Left in the 20th century
Wrongs and grievances abroad
I don’t know much and beg your pardon
I went through this time
And stayed alive
20th century
I don’t count as your victim
Listen, century
I’m not qualified
To raise my voice
In blame
But begging your pardon
At night when the Milky Way blazes
Raising my head
I often think of
Flying away
Tr. Martin Winter, Jan. 2013
With help from Khinhuann Li 李勤岸
My favourite comments on Mo Yan in the last few months are in the article by Liu Jianmei (刘剑梅), published in FT Chinese on Dec. 11 and posted on the MCLC list on Dec. 19. The title asks something like ‘Does literature still work like a shining light?’ Maybe my translation is not too bright. Should literature be a shining lantern? That’s one of the questions in Liu’s article. Literature and art were thought of as relevant to society and the nation in the 1980s. Liu talks about different approaches and relationships of life and art. Mo Yan deserves careful reading, just like Yan Lianke and Lu Xun. Nothing more or less. Liu uses “Save the cildren”, the last line from Lu Xun’s Diary of a Madman, for a close look into Mo‘s works as well as Yan Lianke’s latest novel Four Books (not published in Mainland China). The main characters of Republic Of Wine and Frogs are unable to save the children, like Lu Xun’s narrator. Republic of Wine features cannibalism and a riotous carnival of language. It’s my favorite among Mo Yan’s novels, along with The Garlic Ballads.
What is art? What is it for? A little more than 100 years ago now, the Dadaists (in voluntary exile in Switzerland and other places) concocted a virtual antidote to the First World War. Words, ordinary and exalted speech, had lost any meaning in the collective carnage. Not much later, Hu Shi, Zhou Zuoren, Lu Xun etc. attempted to change the Chinese language, in written form and on stage. Yomi Braester shows in Witness Against History how Lu Xun’s most famous passages retain ambiguities that belie any straight nationalist reading, even if the author himself would have read them that way. I like the crazed language of the Madman. Republic of Wine, more experimental than any other works by Mo (to my knowledge), goes into that direction. In Bei Dao’s Rose of Time (Shijian de meigui), a collection of essays that appeared in Shouhuo (Harvest) magazine in the early 2000s, when Bei slowly became acceptable in China again, he writes about Pasternak and Mandelstam. In his youth, Pasternak praised Stalin. Later he tried to extricate other writers from the Gulag, with mixed success. Mandelstam believed in Communism all the way to his death in a labor camp. Bei Dao doesn’t say that. But the chapter on Pasternak invokes Russian Formalism and Structuralism that grew out of the abortive 1905 revolution. Art makes reality appear strange and different, enabling the spectator to perceive it more clearly. And the flag of art is always different from the flag on the citadel.
Republic of Wine is wilder than the real Mo Yan on the Nobel stage. When the real Mo (sounds funny, doesn’t it? The real NO, or the real NOT, like NOT A WORD), when the real Mo Yan talked about his mother, I was moved. It sounded like my grandmother in rural Austria around 1920. Sometimes she couldn’t go to school in winter because she had no shoes. But Mo Yan also said his mother was afraid he would “leave the collective” with his storytelling. Qunti 群体, the masses, the collective, could that be called an example of Mao wenti or Mao-ti, Mao-Speak in this usage? Actually not, qunti 群體 is an older word, could have been used by Li Dazho and other founders of the Chinese Communist Party, before Mao, Prof. Weigelin told me recently here in Vienna. She was right, I encountered qunti in another text I liked very much, was it by Yu Hua? Anyway, I was rather baffled when Perry Link related how a mother would tell her child on the bus to “jianchi 堅持”, to hold it until the driver could stop and let the child out to go to take a leak. Would “jianchi” really sound strange outside of Mainland China? But the discussions about Mao-style are still relevant – Mo Yan is an establishment figure nowadays, and generates critique of China’s established system in general.
I was a little surprised when Chinese critics of Mo Yan talked about the carnivalesque language in his novels. As if you had to be careful not to lose yourself in there. I did think of Mikhail Bakhtin and his concept of carnival in Dostoyevsky’s novels when I read Republic of Wine. But as far as I remember, Bakhtin had defended language and storytelling that would sound strange and crazy, as opposed to Socialist Realism. So when was Mo Yan’s writing first associated with carnival? Maybe in the 1980s? And how did this association evolve?
A few days after the recent massacre in a primary school in Connecticut, Ross Douthat in the New York Times talked about Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. Although Dostoyevsky was a Christian, Douthat says, the senseless cruelty against children in the novel is just cruelly senseless, there is no “rhetorical justification of God’s goodness”. You have to look at the behaviour of characters who show “Christian love” to find any counterpoint. Below this op-ed, there are 121 reader’s comments, all within one day. Many say they want to talk about guns, not literature.
What is literature for? Why is there a Nobel for literature, but not for music or fine art? Or films? Nobels make for debate. Very much debate, in this case. Great.
Ich kann nicht hinein, auch wenn das Zimmer nicht versperrt ist
Auf der Treppe
Denk’ ich an einen weggegebenen Drachen
An eins, an das zweite
Kind dass ich abtreiben musste
Ich kann nur hinunter gehen
Auf dem Fluss treiben eisige Blasen
Über das Wasser schweben die
Jahre, ich gehe schneller
mein körper wie wasser sich erstreckt
klar, auf eine gewisse distanz zum netz
der wind wie eine hohe saite
sammelt licht, leert es auf deine faltigen wangen
ich sinke
und geb meine ruhigen tage dafuer
anstecken, abbrennen, fliegen können
in klang und takt, der fluss behält das ziel im blick
Hong Ying 1996-01-04
MW Übers. 2005-2012
_______________________________________________________________
wer dort geht am ersten ort, der heimat
das ufer der anlegestelle gegenüber
die steinernen häuser
das geheimnis der begierde, mehr als dreissig jahre
besungen
den namen, durchgemacht hat er
den sommer der freiheit
hab ich mir vorgestellt jetzt zu
schreiben, beginn bei der kindheit verletzung
eingeschlossen den goldenen tiger in deinen armen stimmt er mit ein
der strenge winter ist zu ende
vermeide mich
vermeide den wohnort, beginn bei der aussprache
scharf, ich sehe hin und lache
hell: ich tippe mit dem finger, und der regen stürzt herunter
ist das ein mensch dort
bloss vor meinen augen? erst verfault, dann wachsen
keime. salzige zungen
rufen nach mir, sie kommen aus jeglichen ecken gerannt
suchen mich, sie wollen mich
hier, das ist der ort des ziels
ganz gerade hängt das feuer, brennt bis an des wassers grund
in einer wendung, wagenrad trägt allein
diese zeit
kreuz längen und breiten dring in die wolken über dem grab
zieh herunter
azaleen blühen
verschlingen den regen
schreien: ich brauche dich hier
Mo Yan’s Nobel lecture is worth seeing and hearing. The link above doesn’t work in China. Tried to post it on Weibo 微博, didn’t work either. Nobelprize.org is still banned in China, it seems. The video of Mo Yan’s speech is of course accessible on many websites in China. What is also accessible, to my surprise, is a video of Gao Xingjian’s Nobel lecture, 12 years ago. One Weibo user made this comment:
对莫言的指责,不尽赞同。但与高行健相比,莫言的差距不是一点点。结局是一个不能回国、只能在海外流浪,而另一个可以继续做作协副主席,备受当下世人追捧。相对于莫言的获奖演说,高行健2000年演说,恐怕更堪称是中文世界的骄傲。
“I don’t agree with Mo Yan’s critics. But if you compare him to Gao Xingjian, there is a huge difference. In the end, one of them can never return to his home country, the other one can keep his job at the Writer’s Association and be celebrated. Comparing the two Nobel speeches, Gao Xingjian’s could be the one more deserving of pride in the Chinese-speaking world.” Hard to translate, because it’s very good and rather literary Chinese.
Thanks to Charles Laughlin for his eloquent and far-reaching defense of literature. A defense, at least a deeper discussion of art and literature, is what has been missing from the debate. We’ve had apologies of Mo Yan 莫言, or the Nobel prize 諾貝爾獎. From himself, in his storied speech. From commentators, including me. I said debate in China is the best thing, perhaps the only thing, that comes from this prize. But what kind of debate? And why? Shouldn’t we be glad about the attention for Chinese literature, and for literature in China? Isn’t it enough to read more, and read more carefully?
Nick Kaldis has observed that Anna Sun’s article was the first attempt to debate Mo Yan and the current situation of Chinese literature in literary terms. Charles has pointed out the crucial flaws. The concept of Mao-speak or Mao-ti 毛體 came up in the 1980s in the context of a renaissance of culture, writing, philosophy, debate- everything that had been missing in the Mao-aftermath. Charles has emphasized that new literature in the 1980s, like the fiction of Yu Luojin 遇羅錦, Dai Houying 戴厚英, Zhang Wei 張煒, Zheng Yi 鄭義, Zhang Jie 張潔, A Cheng 阿城, Wang Anyi 王安憶, Liu Suola 劉索拉, Zhang Xianliang 張賢亮, Han Shaogong 韓少功, Jia Pingwa 賈平凹, Can Xue 殘雪, Ma Yuan 馬原, Yu Hua 余華, Ge Fei 格非 and many others, along with the critical writing, philosophy etc. around it, was supposed to overcome the effects of Mao-speak. Charles has also shown how Anna Sun’s view deliberately blocked out major portions of Chinese literature in many centuries, including the last 100 years.
But let us go back to the 1980s. In hindsight, it was very naive to believe that art and literature could renew the nation. What nation? What kind of nation, stemming from which revolution? It’s very easy and futile now to say all the hope of renewal was naive. The hope ended in 1989, and has been ending ever since, in the selling off of land 地, air 空氣, culture 文化, heritage 傳統, water 水, people 人 – with steadily worsening consequences. On the other hand, art and literature are still involved in an ongoing renewal, with very interesting results.
The only flaw in Charles’ essay, from my point of view, is what I’ve said before, too many times perhaps. I believe that ideology isn’t harmless. Questions involving ideology and philosophy aren’t harmless. At least they were thought of as relevant in the 1980s. Copying Mao’s seminal 1942 speech on literature and art in 2012 is just a ritual, yes. But what do Mao Zedong, the “Yan’an Talks” 延安講話, the involved concepts and the furious critique of ritual obeisance signify in the first place?
Are they all more important than reading more art 藝術? Maybe not. Still, how about a little theory 理論? What is ideology 意識形態? Lacan’s 拉岡 answer, according to Žižek 齊澤克, comes down to emptiness 空虛. No, this is not about Buddhism 佛教. Ideology is what people hold on to in their hearts and minds, in order to belong. To belong to a group. To have an answer, the hope of an answer, a meaning. Do you need to know what your ideology is all about, where it came from, what it involves? Not really. It’s there. Like the believe that everyone is entitled to buy automatic weapons. Every citizen.
In the 1980s, such questions, or more intelligent ones than I can elaborate here, there and anywhere, were asked a lot. A very, very big hope was involved. That’s where Liu Xiaobo 劉曉波 comes from. That’s where Wang Shuo 王朔 comes from. That’s where Yu Hua 余華 comes from. With some writer’s, it’s not always obvious where they come from. Liu Zhenyun 劉震云 and Feng Xiaogang 馮小剛, who are known for lively comedies, with sometimes well-hidden serious issues, have just released “1942”, a film about famine 飢荒. Man-made famine, mostly. And campaigns. Campaigns to unite the nation, to beat intruding foreigners.
It is rather obvious where Gao Xingjian 高行健 comes from, when you hear him speak. Some Weibo 微博 users did that last weekend, for a comparison in Nobel literature speeches 諾貝爾文學演講. Gao’s Nobel speech was available, copied on Chinese servers, which had not been policed very severely in this case, apparently. Gao Xingjian’s Mandarin has a southern accent. He is not hard to understand, but it’s not the kind of Mandarin Mo Yan commands, rather effortlessly, it seems. Mo Yan is the Writer’s Association’s 作家協會 vice chairman 副主席. The chairwoman is Tie Ning 鐵凝. I like her stories, they are very much about memory. But I haven’t heard her speak in public. Don’t know if a shining, booming Mandarin like Mo Yan’s is the standard at official cultural associations these days.
Is it obvious where Mo Yan comes from? Everybody knows where he comes from, we know his aunt, father, wife and brother, as far as they have been interviewed and compared to how they might appear in his novels. That’s what Mo Yan said in his speech. Is that all we need to know? Mo Yan spoke about is mother. It was very moving, at least to me. It’s a great text, that speech. Censorship-resistant. Available in six or seven languages on the official website. Which is blocked 被阻擋 in China, of course.
Gao Xingjian and Mo Yan are very different in their language. Everyone who has read Soul Mountain 靈山 and One Man’s Bible 一個人的聖經 in the original knows that. Mo Yan and Gao Xingjian are very different in their attempts to overcome Mao-ti. Both have written great novels, in my experience. Both stay away from day-to-day political issues and debates. But Gao Xingjian emigrated in order to write and paint in peace, comparatively. Mo Yan worked on his spoken Mandarin. Ok, that was unfair, I don’t know how he sounded in the 1980s. His novels from back then are great, especially The Garlic Ballads. Liu Xiaobo liked Red Sorghum 紅高粱, because it was very sexy, in the 1980s. I like The Garlic Ballads 天堂蒜薹之歌, and The Republic of Wine 酒国. Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out 生死疲勞 and Big Breasts And Wide Hips 丰乳肥臀 are fascinating, too. All stories about more or less recent decades. Sandalwood Death 檀香刑 is a 19th-century-story. Sex, gore and folklore. Very well done. And maybe as moving as Mo Yan’s words about his mother.
Yu Hua’s first novel Cry In The Drizzle 在細雨中呼喊 has a guy running amok in China’s 1970s. The hero’s father, if I remember correctly. Gao Xingjian’s Nobel made many exiled and self-exiled writers and other culture workers think about their paths. Maybe the prize was for all of them, in a way. Is Mo Yan’s prize, in a symbolic way, a reward for everyone in China? Depends on your ideology.
(Sorry, I am not sure where exactly Žižek 齊澤克 published what I’ve related above. Maybe in Has Someone Said Totalitarianism?)
There is Zhang Xinying’s 张新颖 fine anthology 中國新詩 from 2000 (in Chinese), incl. 2 interesting poems by Zhou Zuoren 周作人. Zhang has close to 100 poets and up to 10 poems from each of them. If you cover the last 30 or 40 years, it would have to be rather thick to include at least ten or twenty examples each from 食指、芒克、多多、楊煉、于堅、韓東、西川、伊沙等等,to mention only a few older living males.
My favorite contemporary anthology is 黃梁’s 大陸先鋒詩叢. 10 volumes came out in 1998/1999 – Bai Hua 柏华、Zhu Wen 朱文、Meng Lang 孟浪 etc. 等等. Another 10 came out in 2009, incl. Tibet’s poetess and dissident blogger Woeser 唯色, migrant worker poetess Zheng Xiaoqiong 郑小琼(鄭小瓊), and a few more not-so-well-known poets like Pang Pei 庞培(born 1962).
The new 300-poems-anthology is Chinese-English, but it seems the English versions will all be done by Chinese translators. Some translators could be native speakers of English, and/or writing poetry in English. But it does look like an inner-Chinese project, so to speak. The Chinese Issue of The Drunken Boat from 2006 provides a very broad spectrum in the categories minorities, gender and localities in Asia and beyond. Xi Chuan is prominently featured. The 2008 China issue of The Atlantic Review also has an interesting mixture and beautiful poems, incl. Xi Chuan. But these two anthologies are all in English. In my earlier blog post on this topic of anthologies I have written about the advantages of starting from women writers and minorities. That was in Chinese, sorry.
Huang Liang is operating in Taiwan, but he still had some trouble with Mainland authorities about meeting and publishing Woeser 唯色. The 300 modern poems anthology includes the blind folk singer Zhou Yunpeng 周云蓬, who is also in the 10/19/12 New Statesman issue curated by Ai Weiwei, along with Zuoxiao Zuzhou 左小祖咒. On the other hand, compiler Diablo 野鬼 (Zhao Siyun 赵思云 is not the editor) told me they could never include Li Qin’an’s 李勤安 When Martial Law Was Lifted 解嚴以後, because with books you have to worry much more about (self-)censorship than online. I think When Martial Law Was Lifted 解嚴以後 is a landmark poem in any sense. I like Xi Chuan’s poetry very much, but on the whole now and then it needs to be complemented with something more explicitly political. Actually you could say the same about Hsia Yu 夏宇, maybe. Anyway, Li Qin’an 李勤安 still sounds relevant in Taiwan today, according to some of my friends there. On the Mainland, the role(s) of poetry are more acutely questioned, also by Zhao Siyun 赵思云 and Diablo 野鬼 (Zhang Zhi 张智), for example. See Diablo 野鬼’s “非诗” and Zhao Siyun’s Lili’s Story 丽丽传.
The situation is maddening for every serious literature critic who cannot acknowledge the encroachment of such a hyper-prize-situation on their territory. On the other hand, this is the perfect opportunity to see, and maybe even acknowledge, the impossible challenge of writing a balanced political or literature and art history of the last 100 years, or even 20 or 30. You could see the huge discrepancy between the international relevance of China and its surroundings and the impossibility for Chinese Studies (and Taiwan Studies etc.) of doing it justice in research, of reacting in adequate or satisfying ways. Actually, Anna Schonberg has found a convincing personal way of talking about Mo Yan’s work and the current debate. Goenawan Mohamad has written an article on Mo Yan and Yu Hua, seen from Indonesia. And Yang Jisheng’s investigation of the Great Leap famine is spawning documentary work in villages in the way of writing “people’s histories” in the People’s Republic. Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the US came out in 1979. China is catching up. There is Yang Xianhui, and there is 1942, a new film centered on famine, after the story Remember 1942 Liu Zhenyun wrote in 1992. But how relevant is literature on the whole?
Li Bai, China’s most famous poet, has been constructed as a would-be useful patriotic official in a recent play. I remember one or two other political readings of his poems. The political role of all literature and art that the CCP ostensibly demanded led to, or enforced overwhelmingly political reading of everything. Now Mo Yan cannot escape political criticism because he is a CCP official. He has written great literature. But because he got this larger-than-anything-even-China-in-a-way-prize, on one hand he can finally be a public intellectual, let his conscience speak and speak out for a return to reason in Chinese-Japanese relations and for a release of Liu Xiaobo, both taboo topics. A voice of reason after “street protests” against Japan (?), somehow evoking both Cultural Revolution and Fascism. Tolerated and stoked by a system in the midst of a supposedly tightly choreographed leadership transition. Leaders of the Bo Xilai generation installed. They’re different, of course.
Yang Jisheng in the international media is the perfect contrast, or antidote, to the 18th Party Congress spectacle. Another good contrast is running a detailed article on the One Child policy, like Die Zeit did. Speaking of family planning, Mo Yan’s Frogs is coming out soon in English and German. Granta magazine has an excerpt online.
Mo Yan spoke out, but he still was attacked because he didn’t speak out before, which is kind of unfair, because it would mean every writer has to be like Liao Yiwu, every artist like Ai Weiwei etc. The Nobel prize is very unique, because it entails so much international attention. And so especially societies with a huge inferiority complex, stemming at least in part from a rather recently constructed nation (as in Turkey) have to turn the recipient into an anointed emblem. The only alternative is to deny, like in Gao Xingjian’s case, that he/she belongs at all to the country he/she comes from and the language he/she wrote most of his/her works in, as Anne Sytske Keijser and Maghiel van Crevel have pointed out in a recent article in “De Groene Amsterdammer” (10/17/2012). In today’s China, for a virtual, fleeting audience online, you can show you are not part of this official face. Up to a point, that is. No mentioning of other recent Chinese Nobel laureates. But you can criticize Mo Yan, no matter if you have read his fiction or not. So anyone interested in freedom of speech has to be thankful to the Nobel prize and to Mo Yan for all the national and international attention they have generated. Mo Yan has chosen to speak out, so he should be respected. You can speak about your own impression of his work, as you should, according to Kant, if the question is “whether it is beautiful” (Critique of Judgement, Book 1). Or you can speak about your personal relationship with him and his work, as Howard Goldblatt has done. But you can also write about Mo Yan in a political light, which is what everybody has done, including me. Reading “Republic of Wine”, for example, both in Chinese and in translation, is much more rewarding.
The debate after Mo Yan won the Nobel is about debate. How much debate is allowed? How does debate get allowed or possible at all? It’s obedience vs. disobedience. What Charles Laughlin said on the MCLC list sounds like this: Demanding outspokenness from Mo Yan now is the same as demanding, in effect, obedience to the Party line in 1942. This is how it sounds like, not only to me, I am afraid. Obedience and disobedience are thus blurred. One-party systems enforce obedience and silence. Draconically, as the 8-year sentence on Oct.31 in Kunming of a young father of an unborn child for talking about a multi-party-system online shows. Multi-party systems include and tolerate traditions of disobedience. In some countries, civil disobedience is highly valued- think of Thoreau and Ghandi. Doesn’t mean these places are always better in every area and aspect.
It was great. Lai Hsiangyin 賴香吟 read part of her story about a member of a former underground movement who has to confront his own weakness when his divorced wife needs his attention. I read Julia Buddeberg’s translation. Chen Kohua 陳克華 read three poems. First came Nothing 無, very Buddhist. Then a couple of last things. The last café 最後的咖啡館. The last motel 最後的汽車旅館. Very Taiwanese kind of motel dive. Secrete details, medical details, scientific details included in all three poems. Questions and answers. Audience members asked a few questions, and we had an interesting discussion. How and why did Ms. Lai write the story? What comes first, life or politics? And so on. Students, immigrants, veterans maybe, of Taiwan politics. Chinese Studies, East Asian Studies Institute, Vienna University 維也納大學東亞文化系. Austrian PEN. Two days in Vienna. Two nights. 維也納卌八小時左右。Arriving, getting lost on the airport. Translator’s fault. Translator’s idea, the whole thing. Not lucrative. I am sorry. Not smooth. Interesting, yes. Freezing. Exhausting. Fun. Fruitful, hopefully. Thanks very much! To the organizers. Thank you! Everyone who helped us. But above all 賴香吟、陳克華多謝!辛苦你們!Liebe. Liebe und Erinnerung. 愛和記憶。Love and memory. 賴香吟小說的主要題材。維也納很適合你們。柏林也是。柏林比較像現在的台北,相當開放、國際化的。柏林非常重視記憶。維也納的過去其實比柏林可怕,因為沒有柏林那麼公開的重視記憶。
So we had Q&A. Then the encore. We had Vienna in the café, in my translation. Apocalypse. Pouring coffee, to the last. Tabori. Hitler and Freud. Is there a Freud statue? There is his private clinic. Oh well. Statues of Strauss, Beethoven. Vivaldi, very recent. With his orphan students, all girls. Musicians, composers. When Aids broke out in Taiwan, the government forbade intercourse with foreigners. As well as doing it from behind. That’s how Chen Kohua thought of the poem. As a medical man. And risk group member. No intercourse with foreigners, no sex from behind, and we’ll be fine. Right. That’s where the quotation marks in the title come from. Freud and Jelinek. Dreams of Vienna. Love and memory.
陳克華 今生
我清楚看見你由前生向我走近
走入我的來世
再走入來世的來世
可是我只有現在。每當我
無夢地醒來
便擔心要永久地錯過
錯過你,啊–
我想走回到錯誤發生的那一瞬
將畫面停格
讓時間靜止:
你永遠是起身離去的姿勢。
我永遠伸手向你。
1985
Chen Kohua
DIESES LEBEN
Du näherst dich aus meinem früheren Leben.
Ich seh’ dich ganz klar, du gehst in meine Zukunft.
In die Zukunft der Zukunft.
Aber ich hab’ nur die Gegenwart. Wenn ich
traumlos aufwache,
hab’ ich jedesmal die Sorge,
dass ich dich verpasse, für immer —
Ich möchte zurück in den Augenblick des Fehlers,
den Film anhalten,
die Zeit und das Bild:
Für immer stehst du auf, um zu gehen.
Ich streck’ dabei die Arme aus.
I want to thank Charles Laughlin for his recent posts on the MCLC list and on Facebook. His conclusion included these words: “Mo Yan’s critics are expecting the same of him that Mao Zedong would have: the political subservience of writers and their responsibility to serve as the political conscience of the nation”. Now I have written another blog post about this. 罗老师多谢!
Mo Yan’s 莫言 situation is ironic, as Charles Laughlin says. But serving “as the political conscience of the nation” is not the same as “political subservience”. It is rather the opposite. As we know, Murakami Haruki 村上春树 and his colleagues can be “the political conscience” of Japan, making “politically progressive gestures”, but Chinese writers in China, because of “political subservience” cannot be “the political conscience of the nation”, except obliquely in their fiction, poetry etc. Or in the first few days after they win a Nobel.
Along with Charles and many other people I am very glad that after Mo Yan was announced as a Nobel winner, he finally felt up to, or forced to open his mouth as a public intellectual, in contrast to the meaning of his pen name. Now he can be a public figure, like Murakami in Japan, not just an ambivalent functionary and a reclusive writer. Or can he? Is he going to say anything more on China-Japan relations or political prisoners? Is he going to mention Liu Xiaobo 刘晓波 in Stockholm? He will certainly be asked about other Chinese Nobel winners. That’s the nature of this particular prize, whether you like it or not.
Murakami and his colleagues can “serve” as public intellectuals, when their conscience tells them to do something additional to their writing. The irony is that under CCP 中国共产党 rule, there are no public intellectuals in China. There are occasional trouble-makers and commentators, like Ai Weiwei 艾未未 and Murong Xuecun 慕容雪村, Yu Hua 余华 and Wang Shuo 王朔. But can any of them speak their mind in public at length about Sino-Japanese relations or other sensitive topics? Apart from these writers and artists, there are professors like Cui Weiping 崔卫平, who issued the call to turn back to reason in Sino-Japanese relations, which got censored on Sina Weibo 新浪微波. She has often been prevented from traveling abroad. And there are some civil rights lawyers, who sometimes disappear.
Murakami and his colleagues can “serve as the political conscience” of Japanese society in and out of their books. Mo Yan has to be very circumspect with his topics. The Garlic Ballads was censored and supressed for a while. Mao’s “Talks” 讲话 at the “Yan’an Forum” 延安文艺座谈会 helped to make sure writers and artists could not speak their conscience. Vague documents like this have played an important role as instruments of obedience inforcement in one-party societies, as Anne Sytske Keijser and Maghiel van Crevel have shown in a recent article in “De Groene Amsterdammer” (10/17/2012). Mo Yan knows about this dilemma. His comments after he won the Nobel, and even some comments before, suggest he cannot find hand-copying and displaying Chairman quotes quite as harmless as Charles. That would be the difference between working with political realities in China and teaching about them in the US. The conditions of these political realities are still determined by largely the same factors as decades ago. As Keijser and Van Crevel put it, Mao’s “Talks” and other directives are up on the shelf, routinely mentioned in speeches by present leaders, and ready to be enforced again as needed. Yes, Mo Yan and his colleagues fought successfully for enough freedom to write great literature. Isn’t that enough? Not outside the realm of fiction, unfortunately. The cultural achievements of the 1980s couldn’t prevent the 1989 crackdown and everything that stays vague and threatening in theory and practice today.
Mo Yan writes “stupendous” novels, as Charles Laughlin says. Yes, he does. His development as a writer was influenced by the threat of starvation, the brutality in the name of revolution, and by the ideology. Yes, including the Yan’an “Talks”, as Charles shows. Now, Charles says, “China’s writers are receiving much-deserved international recognition simply because they are devoting their souls wholly to literary art.” Yes, they do. Liao Yiwu’s 廖亦武 speech in Frankfurt was in Sichuan dialect 四川方言. The text is available on the Internet. Try to find a video not dubbed into German. The German translation was fine, it just wasn’t dialect or even colloquial German. And it didn’t sound half as humble as Liao himself did. Politics made him into the writer, musician, poet and activist he is now. And his temper, his foolhardiness, as he readily admits. Not a hero, as Jonathan Stalling suggested. The German Book Trade’s Peace Prize has often been awarded to writers such as Orhan Pamuk.
The irony is that in theory, as taught by Charles, “Mao Zedong would have” reminded writers of their “responsibility to serve as the political conscience of the nation.” In practice, he silenced them. Virtually all, in time. So there would be no political conscience. That’s what Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four is about. Words like “Ministry of Truth” 真理部 are very well-known in China. 1984 is a vision of the closed world of a one-party state. Some moments of life in other societies can feel just as eerie, like a progressive college professor who turns into a cult leader, as in Murakami’s 1Q84, or, even more so, the perfectly cultured killer with secret roots in Korea. But on the whole, Japan in the 1980’s, evocatively and masterfully portrayed, is not ironic enough for connecting to Orwell’s 1984. I guess Taiwan under martial law 台灣戒嚴, in 1984, could have just made it.
Hu Ping 胡平, elected as independent candidate in Beijing’s Haidian district towards the end of the brief Beijing Spring over 30 years ago, recently circulated an excerpt from Mo’s “Life and Death Are Wearing me Out” (Shengsi pilao 生死疲勞). The novel was already well-known before the Nobel. A land owner who had his head blown off in the land reform in 1950 is born again as a farm animal several times, most famously as a donkey. In this excerpt, the donkey/landlord laments his unreasonable and unnecessarily bloody execution, until the guy who shot him tells him he acted with expressive backing from local and provincial authorities, to make sure the revolution was irreversible. So was it “a matter of historical necessity”? I don’t know what Hu Ping meant by circulating the email that somehow ended up forwarded in my inbox, because I don’t follow Chinese exile communications very closely. To me, the excerpt sounds just as absurd, evocative, tragic and yes, “stupendous”, as Mo Yan’s novels usually do. And thus rather close to Orwell’s 1984, or Wang Xiaobo’s 王小波 2015, in a way. I don’t think most readers would think that the author wants to commend, recommend or even excuse such acts of brutality.
There is another irony. Gao Xingjian 高行健 was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 2000 even though, or maybe because, he did not and does not make himself available for political comments. Gao emigrated to France in the late 1980s and rescinded his Party membership in 1989, and it doesn’t seem he wants to come to terms with the powers that be in China in his lifetime. But on the whole, Gao has made about as many explicit political comments in the last 20 years as Yang Mu 楊木.
Chinese writing in 2012 is very complex. At least there is “much-deserved international recognition”, finally. Yu Hua’s essays “China In 10 Words” 《十個詞彙里的中國》 were serialized in the New York Times 紐約時報, among other international papers. And now Yang Mu, Mo Yan and Liao Yiwu appear together in headlines, also in the New York Times. What more could we wish for?
I like both Mo Yan’s 莫言 and Murakami Haruki’s 村上春樹 novels. But 1Q84 left me disappointed, although it’s brilliantly written. Great evocation of ordinary lives and neighborhoods. But not very much connection to Orwell. No prison. The two lovers escape at a terrible price. Maybe I sort of hoped neither Mo Yan nor Murakami would get it. Although I think they’re both great writers. Murakami deserves great credit for his political candor, both in some of his novels and otherwise. He recently spoke out for a return to reason in Chinese-Japanese relations. After Mo Yan got the Nobel, he also said something in this direction. Mo Yan has never made political comments before. Now he can do it. So maybe it is a good thing that he got the prize.
Making handwritten copies of the speech that was the reference point for decades of repression in literature is an absurd, shameful act.
On the other hand, Mo Yan’s novels could be called an important continuation of the magical realism tradition. The realism of The Garlic Ballads clearly shows the helplessness of peasants and ordinary people in the 1980s. The Republic of Wine is a fantastically powerful indictment of official corruption. Some other novels have broader historic scope. The stories take place in many different periods, under CCP rule as well as before and even in the 19th century. But they are all fantastic tales of familiar people in villages and small towns. Ma Lan’s 馬蘭 How We Killed a Glove 我們如何殺一隻手套 employs different techniques, but when you are in the middle of reading you also realize the details refer to massacres and tragedies that seem very fantastic in hindsight but which are actually quite familiar still for many people even now. So I have great respect for Mo Yan 莫言 and Tie Ning 鐵凝, even though they chair the Chinese Writer’s Association. They don’t even have Party members in their stories, as far as I recall. There are no chairmen or even higher functionaries at all in recent Chinese literature. There are no vindications of official policy, in contrast to the 1950s and 1960s. As to the Yan’an Talks or Yan’an Forum 延安文藝座談會, it was not really a discussion with different voices being respected. Maghiel van Crevel 克雷 has put the whole context together in his book on Duo Duo 多多 in 1995, on the basis of Bonnie McDougall etc. The Chairman had remarkable rhetoric skill, but it can’t be separated from the context of writers disappearing, getting imprisoned and killed, not to speak of other people, right then and there in 1942, on the grounds of what Mao was saying. It’s not the kind of literary theory you can discuss on its own. Socialist realism with its many facets and developments in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, GDR etc. is certainly worth a great deal of attention and discussion, but it is always very directly connected with politics. In some countries, like the former Soviet Union and China, this connection was compounded by dictators considered as intellectuals. Marxism, Socialism and Communism were taboo in the US for a long time. This kind of repression is still quite visible in the propaganda against Obama, who isn’t really leftist at all. And because of this, literary and social theory have a very strong and special status in US academia. Infatuation with China and/or what was perceived as its politics is an additional factor, also in other countries. When I look at the social and political context of literature in China, I prefer Yu Hua 余華 to Mo Yan. But it’s not that simple. Mo Yan is a soldier, joining the PLA was the only way for him to become a writer. He has done and is doing what is possible in his position, and deserves respect.
My name is Lili Wu
Nine years old
born in North Zhufeng, Tongshi;
Pingyi County, Linyi City district.
When I was very small
My parents were divorced.
I went to live with Mama and Grandma.
Now I am in 3rd grade at South Fuwan primary school.
I like English.
Got 80% in my last exam.
The math teacher is nice to me.
The ethics teacher is nice to me.
But
I haven’t gone to school for 4 months.
On May 30 this year
During Chinese lesson with our class advisor
Vice-principal Jiang Feng
Called me to the music classroom,
Principal Wang Jiasheng was there, too.
They gave me sweet pills
And took off my pants.
Wang Jiasheng put his weewee into my little hole
When Wang Jiasheng came out
Jiang Feng went in
They told me
Not to tell Mama
Otherwise they wouldn’t let me go to school here
And they would kill me and my mom.
They told me many times.
(Then I must have fainted.
Hearing screams
Class advisor Chen Yongxiang came running.
She pulled up my pants.
Then someone lifted me up
Put me in Wang Jiasheng’s car
And brought me to the clinic on the right side of the gate.
My classmate Xiao Wen wrote all this down on paper.
She said
Other kids saw it too.
On that day
I should have been home at twelve
When I came home at 1:30 p.m
Tottering left and right all the way to our door
Grandma had been waiting on the corner for a long time.
When I was home I wanted to throw up
Didn’t want to eat
Mama wasn’t home
She was at the county hospital visiting a relative
Didn’t come home till the evening
My face, hands and feet were all white
That evening
A nice teacher called Mama
Told her I had been raped by Wang Jiasheng and Jiang Feng
I liked going to school before
Now I don’t dare to go
When school is mentioned I break out in sobs
I am afraid
I took a rest at home for a month
On July 2nd, Mama went with me
To the Pingyi County People’s Hospital for a checkup
The medical record was written a follows
Patient complains of small bleeding in vagina
Accompanied by discharge for over one month.
Recent medical history:
Complains of vaginal pain, red spots, much discharge,
feels like another person forced in his sexual organ
Physical examination:
Normal vulva development
Hymen opening greatly slackened
Old fissures at #3, #8
No other …(I cannot read the writing)
Initial diagnosis:
Hymen ruptured, slackened
Actually
From last winter
I had been bleeding
One day I came home in the evening
There was blood on my legs
I wiped it off with paper
Mama has also helped me wipe it
Last winter
Wang Jiasheng and Jiang Feng
Put their cocks into my little hole several times
After school
I felt dizzy, sick, burning
Mama didn’t know then
She took me to the clinic to get some cold medicine
All winter
I got shots, took pills
Mama went to the police
People’s Police Uncles from the criminal police
Went to Xiao Wen’s home several times
So her folks complained at our house
They said Xiao Wen was frightened
And would hardly dare to go to school
So Xiao Wen said her testimony was instigated by my mom
The teacher who had called my mom that evening
Also denied it
The doctor at the clinic said first I was brought in unconscious
But then they said I came in with the principal and two classmates for checkups and shots
Reporters from the province came to our village
They interviewed six children on their way home from school
Five said they didn’t know anything
Another girl
Did not say a word
Our class advisor said
She took a bribe from my mom
She said my mom made her give false testimony
She said I was in class all day as always
She never pulled up my pants
Over one month later
I had another checkup at Pingyi County People’s Hospital
The results were the same
On Sept. 19th, 2012
Wang Jiasheng declared online
The whole affair was all defamation
Jiang Feng also declared
It was a frame-up, made up
To attain some unspeakable purpose
The Pingyi police
Said conditions were not fulfilled
For prosecution
Chen Kohua und Lai Hsiangyin sind im Oktober zu Gast im Literarischen Colloquium Berlin. Außerdem werden sie an der Universität Heidelberg aus ihren Werken lesen.
Chen Kohua und Lai Hsiangyin treten am 29. Oktober um 20 Uhr im Hörsaal SIN 1, Ostasieninstitut Universität Wien auf. (Campus Altes AKH, Hof 2, Eingang 2.3)
Übersetzung: Martin Winter
Eine Veranstaltung des Österreichischen P.E.N. – Clubs
300 Modern Chinese Poems (Chinese-English) 汉英对照版《中国新诗300首》
Zhao Siyun 赵思运, who was introduced on the MCLC list by Michael Day a while ago with a poem called June 5th 六月五日, has a list of authors and poems on his Blog, for a Chinese-English anthology of over 300 modern Chinese poems 中国新诗300首. Compiled by an institution called International Poetry Translation and Research Centre, IPTRC. Very welcoming, diverse and expansive. Including writers from Taiwan, and many young voices. Liao Yiwu 廖亦武 is included, though not with his most representative work, probably. Lü Yuan 绿原 is there, he did a Chinese-German anthology, introducing Yu Jian 于坚 in 1990, rather early. Bei Dao 北岛 was included in there, but with a comparatively insignificant poem. He is better represented in this new effort, although I miss the mosquito. It’s very hard to include one or two significant poems from an author who is obviously politically significant.
Interesting to compare this with other anthologies, in Chinese and other languages. Zhongguo Xin Shi 中国新诗 (Fudan UP 2000), ed. Zhang Xinying 张新颖, has two poems by Zhou Zuoren 周作人, one against unnecessary water dams and a drinking song, both very impressive. Zhou Zuoren has not made it onto the IPTRC list. Of course it’s rather easy to come up with some of your favorites who are not represented, compared to shifting through many thousand poems and coming up with such a list. Huang Xiang 黄翔 is included, despite his dissident status, but he is already in Zhongguo Xin Shi 中国新诗. As usual, I am looking at newer people first, although I only recognize two from those born in 1970 or later. Zhou Yunpeng 周云蓬 is there, the blind folk singer. But not Cui Jian 崔健. Woeser 唯色 is there, which is great! But in general there are hardly any poets from minority nations in China.
Ha Jin 哈金 is missing, but he writes in English. Gao Xingjian 高行健 does not appear, but is mostly known for fiction and drama. So who else hasn’t made it? Yang Ze 楊澤、Hsiang Yang 向陽、Hung Hung 鴻鴻、Mai Mang 麦芒 (Huang Yibing 黄亦兵), who sometimes writes in English and teaches at Connecticut (there is another Mai Mang 麦芒 in China, known for one-liners).
On with the non-list: Sun Wenbo 孙文波、Li Nan 李南、Yang Jian 杨键、Zhu Wen 朱文、Yin Lichuan 尹丽川、Zheng Xiaoqiong 郑小琼、Ma Lan 马兰、Hong Ying 虹影、Pang Pei 庞培、Che Qianzi 车前子、Yan Jun 顏峻. I would have included Yan Jun’s 反对 Against All Organized Deception (translated by Maghiel van Crevel) and Ma Lan’s 事故和理由 The accident and the reason, maybe even combined with 仿佛 As If. And How We Kill a Glove 我们如何杀一只手套, if it wouldn’t be too long. Hong Ying’s 饥饿 Hunger, also written abroad. And one of Zheng Xiaoqiong’s 郑小琼 new female migrant worker’s portraits.
I have been reading a great anthology of Lithuanian poetry in the last few days. And there are beautiful anthologies of recent Chinese poetry in English, like the online treasure in the Spring/Summer 2006 issue of thedrunkenboat.com, edited by Inara Cedrins, or the Atlanta Review China issue. Without any Chinese characters, unfortunately. But these are important collections, with some great translations. The Drunken Boat collection is very diverse, including minority people in China, extra sections on Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore, as well as very much else from abroad. Even half of the non-minority nation poets in China who are in The Drunken Boat are not in the IPTRC 300. The Antlanta Review China collection, edited by George O’Connell, contains some of the best Chinese poetry I’ve read in translation anywhere in any language. And there is a good volume in English of Che Qianzi’s 车前子 poems and some of his friends, with a note in the back that the Chinese text can be found in some university library. Oh well. Many contemporary poets from China, including some world-famous ones, are not easily found in China. This has been going on for decades. Anyway, there is not enough modernity, not enough experiment in Chinese literature in general, especially in China. So it would be great to include some people like Che Qianzi 车前子 in any anthology. There is also not enough performance, that’s where Yan Jun 颜峻 and other sound and music stuff would come in.
The Lithuanian anthology mentioned above is from Poetry Salzburg Press. I love the long hallucinating love poem Bird in Freedom by Vytautas Bložė, written while imprisoned and “treated” in a Soviet psychiatric hospital. And the song-like evocations of Vilnius’ old city and the empty Jewish ghetto by Judita Vaičiūnaitė. The translations of these poems and many others by Laima Sruoginis are hauntingly beautiful. Much of the identity of the Baltic countries is built on songs, a great foundation for poetry.
Daniele Kowalsky showed me a very interesting interview with Jonathan Campbell in the L.A. Review of Books. Jonathan Campbell talks with Jeffrey Wasserstrom about 盤古 Pangu,崔健 Cui Jian,無聊軍隊 Wuliao Jundui and other details of rock music and punk in China.
Unfortunately, I can’t agree with Jonathan that yaogun 摇滚 (Chinese rock music) could galvanize China like Pussy Riot seems to have galvanized opposition in Russia. Cui Jian 崔建 did have some very memorable moments, and people in China do remember them, and they will tell you readily about the parts before 1989, mostly. But those moments in 1989 were so painful in the end that no one knows if there will ever be a similar broad-based protest movement again. 1989 brought hope in Europe. Risk, very risky change, and some very ugly violence in Romania. But overall there was hope, and whatever came out of it, 1989 is generally remembered as a year of wonder. In China it’s a trauma. A wound that is usually covered up, but even China is very much connected to the world nowadays, and the world knows. And there are much deeper and older traumata, which can be accessed and shared via 1989. So in that way, there is hope. Connected to underground music. Like the kind that Liao Yiwu’s 廖亦武 music comes from.
There are parallels, certainly. Parallels between Pussy Riot and Ai Weiwei 艾未未, in the pornography. Parallels in the way of some Ai Weiwei news or other embarrassing news everyone gets to know about, and the dark stuff below. The disappearances, the longer ones, see Gao Zhisheng 高智晟. And the corpses. I learned about the late attorney Sergei Magnitsky via Pussy Riot. He died in jail in 2009, and among people concerned with Russia he is as famous as Gao is in and outside China, which means not so many people want to talk about him or even admit they’ve heard of cases like that. Of course, there are corpses under the carpets in every country. Only China is the oldest 5000 year old one, of course.
Aug. 22
2 years for singing in church. Perfectly absurd. Punk music, controversial art. Public space and religion. Russia, Africa, China. What is art? Depends where you are, what you are, who you are, who is with you. What you believe.
One week ago I read two books. A few months before I got to know a poet. Still haven’t seen her. A Jewish poet in Germany, soon to be teaching in Vienna. Esther Dischereit.
Last month I finally got around to pick up a book that contains many poems I translated. Freedom of writing. Writers in prison. A beautiful anthology, edited by Helmuth Niederle, currently head of Austrian PEN.
Connections. Connected to China. Punk music isn’t all that subversive, not in a big way, usually. What if musicians insult the government on stage. Well, I’ve been to about 300 concerts in China, said Yan Jun. Sometimes someone was screaming something in that direction. But they aren’t big stars. They can be ignored.
Christa Wolf. Stadt der Engel. The Overcoat of Dr. Freud. Long and convoluted. Gems in there. How she was loyal to the Party in 1953. And insisted on protest against Party policy. How and what they hoped in 1989. How and what Germany was and is.
Aug. 21
2 years for singing in church. And many more arrested. It does sound more like China than Russia, doesn’t it? The case of Li Wangyang李旺陽 (李汪洋) comes to mind. Li Wangyang died around June 4th 2012 in police care after being released from over 20 years of jail. He was a labor activist in the 1989 protests that ended with the massacre on June 4th in Beijing. Li Wangyang supposedly killed himself, but the police report was disputed in China and in Hong Kong, where tens of thousands of people protested. Li’s relatives and friends are still being persecuted. One has been formally arrested and accused of revealing state secrets, because he photographed Li’s body.
Parallels between Russia and China were drawn in media comments after the verdict in Moscow. One comment wondered whether Russia is trying to emulate China, where the word civil society is banned on the Internet. China has had economic success for decades. People put up with authoritarian one-party rule there, the comment said. But it won’t work in Russia, because the economy depends on natural resources, not on industry. The comment contained the old misunderstanding that in China, government policy and enforced stability have caused economic success. Beijing wants the world to think that, of course. However, the prominent law and economy professors Qin Hui 秦暉 and He Weifang 賀衛方 have been saying for years that the economic miracle of the 1980s depended on a consensus to move away from the Cultural Revolution, as well as on investment from Taiwan, Hong Kong and overseas. After 1989, there has been no comparable social consensus. After 1989, the social drawbacks and the gap between rich and poor may have grown faster than the economy. But the middle class has also grown. Regional protests are frequent but limited. Or the other way ’round. The Internet remains vibrant. With Weibo microblogs inside the Great Firewall, and very much Chinese going on outside. Not because the government initiates it. They let it happen. The economy, the art, the internet. Even protests, when they are against Japan, and/or not too big. And they profit. The oligarchy is the Party.
Religion and more or less independent art have been growing in China, about as much as the social conflicts. Art brings huge profits, so they let it happen. In Russia, Pussy Riot have succeeded in connecting independent art, oppositional politics and religion in a highly visible way. Art, political activism and religion are voluble factors, so much that societies where everyday news has been fixated on finance for at least four years now could almost grow jealous.
Pussy Riot were not mentioned in our church on Sunday, as far as I could tell. I had to look after the children. But the preacher drew on her experiences from jail work. She championed the rights of refugees and was a prominent anti-governmental figure in Austria in the 1990s. Direct relevance for religion in Austrian politics is rare. We had Catholic Austro-Fascism in the 1930s, paving the way for Hitler. Some Protestant Nazis as well. After the Holocaust, religion in Austria has a somewhat undead quality. A bit like traditional opera in China, which is rallying, hopefully.
For international discussion about the relevance of underground art, music and religion, China has Liao Yiwu 廖亦武. And Russia has Pussy Riot.
Photo by Vincent Yu/AP
Aug. 17
Worldwide empathy for Pussy Riot is great. The trial in Moscow ends today, so I don’t know yet if three women have to remain in jail for years after singing in a church. There was a lot of worldwide attention last year as Ai Weiwei 艾未未 was abducted and detained by Chinese state security. He was released and voted most influential artist worldwide. I have seen graffiti in support of Pussy Riot here in Vienna in the last few days. One at newly renovated Geology Institute. Not very nice. And there was some kind of happening at the Vienna Russian Orthodox church, I heard. Church authorities not amused. Well, hopefully worldwide support can help enough this time. Quite recently, many political prisoners in China have been sentenced to more than 10 years. There was a lot of attention abroad in one case. And a Nobel.
Austria is a nice place, generally. Sometimes it’s uglier than Germany. Generally uglier, in terms of police abusing, even killing people, always getting away with it. Have been reading Vienna Review and Poetry Salzburg Review in the last few days. News and poetry. Many of our friends here in Vienna are not from Austria. Coming from abroad often provides a clearer perspective.
Aug. 14
Read two good books. Not in Chinese. Ok, in Chinese I’m reading poetry. And other books, not enough. Anyway. Cornelia Travnicek and Manfred Nowak. Both in German. Non-Fiction and Fiction. No connection. Like Liao Yiwu 廖亦武, Bei Ling 貝嶺 and that Berlin novel, what was it called? Plan D. Ok, there was a connection. Taipei Bookfair 台北國際書展. Ok or not, no connection. A novel. Punks in Austria. Young and female. Male protagonists dead or dying. Ok, not all of them. Anyway, good novel. Vienna, occupied, death, youth, love, society, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s. 2012 exhibition at Wien Museum. Empathy. And the other book? Torture. Human Rights, UN, Austria, torture in Austria (see this newspaper report, also in German), Moldavia, Equatorial-Guinea or how do you call that country, Uruguay and so on. Neglect. Conditions of/for empathy. Ok, so both books are about empathy. Good. And in German. Oh well, maybe some people who read this read German. Or they’ll get translated. The books, not you. Manfred Nowak’s books and other written sources are available in several other languages than German. You can get some very useful stuff in English for free here.
you get off and drink with me
and i ask you where you’re riding
you have not been satisfied
turn to southern border mountains
and i won’t ask you again
clouds are streaming without end.
I don’t think Murong Xuecun exaggerates, like one commentator suggested on the MCLC list. Yes, you could encompass many alarming, saddening, embarrassing stories in one speech in other places than China, and people do it all the time, naming names, practices, products. The difference is that in China you will be silenced more swiftly and harshly. Yes, there are exceptions.
Does Mo Yan revel in cruelty like Dan Brown? Does Yu Hua make better use of the cruel parts in his novels? Ok, I’m an interested party, I can’t really say. Would be interesting to analyze in detail. Mo Yan’s novels are great works, at least those I have read, he has written a lot. Deep, cathartic, even accusing use of cruel events and structures. I love Yu Hua’s tone. And I associate Liu Zhenyun in Remember 1942, and Murong Xuecun’s Sky and Autumn speech.
We had Jeremiah in church today, along with that story where a guy goes abroad and gives his gold and silver to his servants. The ones that receive more trade with it, and when their lord comes back, they can give him double. The one who received very little buries it, and when the lord comes back, he digs it out and says, I know you are a harsh governor and reap where you haven’t sown, so I was afraid to lose what you gave me, and kept it double safe. His colleagues get to join the big party, and are rewarded with great posts. He is cast out into the darkness, which is filled with howling and chattering teeth. It’s a horrible story. Yes, it’s a parable, and if you have very little reason for faith, you should still risk it and try to make more, because if you bury it deep in your heart you might lose the little trust you had and received and be cast out into the darkness. But if you are the one who has reason to be afraid, how can you trust your lords? The ones who have more and get more have it easy. Even if they lose everything, they are often rewarded – those powerful managers and functionaries. And if there are enough of those who are cast out, and they get organized, maybe some bishops or other lords might dangle from lamp posts. A Hussite reading, said my wife. Yeah, maybe. No shortage of horrible stories in Chinese literature, like in the Bible.
Jeremiah is even worse, it’s a much bigger story, infinitely more horrible. And there is a detail, not in the Jeremiah parts used in church today, but in the songs in exile. By the rivers of Babylon, where we sat down, where we wept when we remembered Zion. And in the end the singer wishes, or the singers wish they will one day brutally kill the children of the oppressors. That’s the detail in Murong Xuecun’s speech I was thinking about.
The calling of Jeremiah, where he says he’s too young, and God says he has to go and obey, and open his mouth, and God will put His words into his mouth, and he will be set above nations and kingdoms, so he can pluck out and demolish, ruin and destroy, as well as plant and build. The preacher said she thought of parting and setting off to other posts, and how the Marschallin in Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s and Richard Strauss’ Rosenkavalier sings of what she will have to give up. What a horrible comparison! There is nothing light in Jeremiah. There are no waltzes. Ok, Rivers of Babylon, yes. But with Jeremiah, if you have to mention Austrian writers, Franz Werfel would be much more apt. Werfel was Jewish and used Jeremiah, a lot. Ok, she did mention, much too briefly how nobody would heed Jeremiah, and that it’s actually the most terrible story.
Anyway, when I heard Jeremiah, I thought of Bob Dylan. Masters of War. “How much do I know, to talk out of turn? You might say that I’m young; you might say I’m unlearned. But there is one thing I know, though I’m younger than you, it’s that Jesus would never forgive what you do. […] And I’ll watch while you’re lowered onto your deathbed, and I’ll stand on your grave and make sure that you’re dead.” I don’t know if Dylan thought of Nixon and Kissinger explicitly, when he wrote this song. America’s Vietnam War was raging, and I think the song came out when Nixon and Kissinger where in power. Anyway, there is that Monty Python song about Kissinger. Very explicit. Dylan and Monty Python would not be able to sing these songs in China on stage today, to say nothing about what Chinese artists can do. No, Murong Xuecun doesn’t exaggerate.
x and y
x was cruel
butt is sore
y was able
and suave.
both loved culture
both destroyed
hundred million
butts are cold
MW March 2007
Yes, I thought of Mao and Nixon, and their sidekicks. But x and y could stand for many people, and could be mentioned anywhere, at least today. Almost anywhere, probably. Anyway, it’s about smoking, you know. Littering. OK, enough for today.
I like Murong Xuecun‘s recent essay (or speech) The Water in Autumn And The Unending Sky very much. He quotes Lu Xun, very aptly. All the quotations are apt, within the text, of course. This kind of essay very easily gets misunderstood as a mere pamphlet. It is a pamphlet. It is meant as a very sharp critique. But just like Lu Xun’s non-fiction pieces, this one is also meant to be read and listened to very carefully.
The Republican era in the decades before 1949 was roundly condemned for its society and government by many writers. Its downfall was expected, and there was so much contempt, in retrospective, that it seemed the new era after 1949 had to be something better, simply because the war and the state of China before had been such disasters. The Chinese writers and commentators of the Late Qing and Republican eras very often understood themselves as patriots, especially in their most acerbic writings. Lu Xun is the most famous example.
I’m not interested in whether Murong Xuecun could write as well or could become as famous as some Republican writers. He is one among many present writers who are publicly critical of the PRC government. Many of the most critical ones are mostly or permanently abroad. I don’t know if Murong Xuecun can continue to live mostly in China. He is certainly more consequent than Han Han, for example. I don’t know what exactly has driven Murong Xuecun to non-fiction. Seems it has been a gradual process.
The present state and the more or less contemporary history of the PRC have been described and inscribed very starkly by many writers ever since the late 1970s, basically by almost everybody in the world of letters, whether or not they still go through the motions of hand-copying Mao’s totalitarian directives in 2012, as some of the most famous have done.
The Republican era was roundly condemned, in fiction and non-fiction. On the other hand, some people see it as an era of freedom, in retrospect. Both could be justified, it seems. Liu Zhenyun, who could be seen as just another member of the establishment and as a non-serious TV- and popular movie-collaborator, is actually very eager to mention the famine of around 1960 in his works. Remember 1942, Liu’s non-fiction story from 1992, has just been filmed. The story is about remembering a local famine that occurred in 1942. It was a terrible year around the globe. The Holocaust in Europe was coming into full swing. War was raging in many places. Total war was going to be proclaimed. 1942 is a year that has received a lot of historical attention. But the context of Chiang Kaishek’s and his government’s decisions about the famine in Henan is not very widely discussed. Liu Zhenyun manages to combine the Republican era and the PRC in a piece of stunning critique of both. The PRC part is mostly implied, but it works. I don’t know how or if this works in the film as well. Anyway the film, wherever it will be shown, will make some people want to dig out the text.
Liu Zhenyun, Murong Xuecun and Yu Hua have something in common in their tone. They are very close to the common people, aside from some stylistic differences. Yu Hua has only recently become well known for his non-fiction, which is not published in the PRC, but available on the internet. Maybe Murong Xuecun will turn to fiction again, and maybe he will continue to live in Mainland China. Doesn’t look like it at the moment, but it seems more feasible than, say, Liao Yiwu returning to China.
Murong Xuecun, Liu Zhenyun and Yu Hua are very conversational in their non-fiction. These pieces are written for popular appeal. They could be seen as very patriotic, in a way. Many very popular works in other languages are patriotic, like Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. Non-fiction in Chinese won’t become quite as world-famous, but it has come a long way in the last few years.
Murong Xuecun‘s text is a speech held in Hong Kong. There is a lot of classical Chinese at the end, although it is still very clear. The fragile heart sounds very 19th century to a Western reader. To me, at least. But so what? It’s not Wordsworth or Blake or one of the Shelleys, but it’s going in that direction. There have always been many kinds of writing at one particular time.
Mittwoch der sechste Juni 2012, 19:30, Hörsaal Sinologie 1, Ostasieninstitut der Univ. Wien, Campus Altes AKH, Hof 2, Eingang 2.
Liu Hong 柳红 liest das Gedicht “Drachenabend, Tian’anmen“ von Ziyou 子尤.
橫穿長城的頭顱
Vorstellung der Nummer 62 des Literaturmagazins “Wienzeile”. Mit Texten von Hsia Yü 夏宇, Yan Jun 顏峻, Hung Hung 鴻鴻, Zheng Xiaoqiong 鄭小瓊, Yu Jian 于堅, Ma Lan 馬蘭, Qi Ge 七格, Wu Yinning 吳音寧, Lin Weifu 林維甫, Tong Yali 彤雅立, Pang Pei 厖培, Liao Yiwu 廖亦武 und vielen anderen. Grafik und Bilder von Yang Jinsong 楊勁松, Chen Xi 陳熹, Emy Ya 葉宛玲, Ursula Wolte und anderen mehr.
Es lesen Helmut Opletal (ehem. ORF-Korrespondent in China, lehrt an der Uni Wien), Ingrid Fischer-Schreiber (ars electronica Linz, Sinologin und Übersetzerin http://yingeli.net), Liu Hong , Zhu Jiaming 朱嘉明, Angelika Burgsteiner, Bettina Müller, Martin Winter und andere. Dazu gibt es Sichuan Guokui 四川鍋盔 und andere Erfrischungen.
时间:6月6日晚7:30
地点:汉学系第1教室
作者:Ziyou 子尤, Hsia Yü 夏宇, Yan Jun 顏峻, Hung Hung 鴻鴻,
Zheng Xiaoqiong 鄭小瓊, Yu Jian 于堅, Ma Lan 馬蘭,
Qi Ge 七格, Wu Yinning 吳音寧, Lin Weifu 林維甫, Tong Yali 彤雅立,
Die Nummer 62 des Literaturmagazins “Wienzeile” ist gedruckt! Mit Texten von Hsia Yü 夏宇, Yan Jun 顏峻, Hung Hung 鴻鴻, Zheng Xiaoqiong 鄭小瓊, Yu Jian 于堅, Ma Lan 馬蘭, Qi Ge 七格, Wu Yinning 吳音寧, Lin Weifu 林維甫, Tong Yali 彤雅立, Pang Pei 厖培, Liao Yiwu 廖亦武 und vielen anderen. Dazu gibt es Grafik und Bilder von Yang Jinsong 楊勁松, Chen Xi 陳熹, Emy Ya 葉宛玲, Ursula Wolte und anderen mehr.
Wu Yinning 吳音寧, Hsia Yü 夏宇, Hung Hung 鴻鴻 und mehrere andere SchriftstellerInnen und KünstlerInnen in dieser Nummer sind aus Taiwan. Gedichte von Wu Yining gibt es auch hier. Zwei der sieben Gedichte, die ich von ihr übersetzt habe, zitieren taiwanische Rockmusik. Eines ist über einen Kanalarbeiter. Die lokalen Details in Verbindung mit Wu Yinnings starkem sozialen Engagement machen die Faszination aller ihrer Texte aus. Sie war z.B. 2001 in Chiapas in Mexico und berichtete von der zapatistischen Revolte.
Wir haben Texte über Wahlen und Demokratie, 1979 – zur Zeit der Demokratiemauer – und heute. Helmut Opletal, langjähriger Rundfunk- und Fernsehkorrespondent, berichtet von den politischen Verhältnissen im Peking der Demokratiemauer und zieht Vergleiche mit aktuellen Ereignissen. Wir haben Han Hans 韓寒 Essay über Demokratie, übersetzt von Ingrid Fischer-Schreiber. Das ist einer von drei Texten – über Revolution, Demokratie und über Freiheit- die Ende Dezember 2011 herauskamen, gerade als wieder einige Dissidenten zu hohen Freiheitsstrafen verurteilt wurden. Han Hans Texte wurden weltweit heftig diskutiert, unter anderem im Zusammenhang mit 100 Jahre Chinesische Revolution/ Abdankung des letzten Kaisers 1911/1912, auch bei einer großen Konferenz an der Universität Wien Anfang dieses Jahres. Wir haben einen Text des Computer- und Internetexperten Hu Yong 胡泳, ebenfalls übersetzt von Ingrid Fischer-Schreiber 殷歌麗, Kuratorin der Ars Electronica in Linz, Übersetzerin zahlreicher chinesischer Artikel und Bücher aus politisch-sozialen und wissenschaftlich-technischen Bereichen. Nicht zuletzt enthält diese Sonderausgabe einen Vergleich zweier hochbrisanter politischer Texte, der Charta 77 aus der damaligen Tschechoslowakei und der chinesischen Charta 08, erstellt von einer Politologin und Sinologin aus Tschechien.
Das Cover ist von Linda Bilda, einer Künstlerin aus Wien. Innerhalb der Redaktion war es von Anfang an umstritten. Aber eine wichtige chinesische Schriftstellerin, die in dieser Ausgabe vertreten ist, findet es gut, gerade auch wegen der Gewalt. Heutiges China, sagt sie.
Ein weiterer Punkt, der zuletzt heftig diskutiert wurde, war die Inkludierung von Texten von und über Wanderarbeiterinnen in China. Im September letzten Jahres war hier in Wien eine große Konferenz über Arbeitskonflikte in China. Vorträge und Berichte gibt es online auf den Konferenzwebseiten und bei Transform! . Eine der Vortragenden war Astrid Lipinsky vom Ostasieninstitut der Univ. Wien, die schon 2008 in der Zeitschrift Frauensolidarität über Arbeitsmigrantinnen, ihre Sprache und ihr Schreiben berichtet hat. In der Wienzeile haben wir den ersten Teil eines langen Gedichtes von Zheng Xiaoqiong 鄭小瓊. Sie ist Arbeitsmigrantin in Dongguan 東莞 und hat neben ihrer Fabrikarbeit seit ungefähr 10 Jahren viele literarische Texte veröffentlicht, die nicht nur auf dem chinesischen Festland, sondern auch in Taiwan und darüber hinaus bekannt und geschätzt sind. Für Hung Hung 鴻鴻, Regisseur und Schriftsteller in Taipeh, erinnern manche Gedichte von Zheng Xiaoqiong an “Akte 0” von Yu Jian 于堅, einem der renommiertesten chinesischen Dichter, der ebenfalls in dieser “Wienzeile” vertreten ist.
Mit dem Kopf durch die Chinesische Mauer – 橫穿長城的頭顱。Der chinesische Titel stammt von Liu Jixin 劉紀新 aus Peking. Liu Jixin unterrichtet klassisches und modernes Chinesisch am Ostasieninstitut der Universität Wien. Im jetzigen gesprochenen und geschriebenen Chinesisch sind klassische Wendungen durchaus häufig, und auch heute sind Bildung, Erziehung und Sprache in vielen Aspekten brisante Themen. Liu Jixin hat einen kleinen, recht subjektiven Artikel über Schulen in Wien und in Peking geschrieben. Die in Peking tätige Architektin Chen Ing-tse 陳穎澤 aus Taiwan schreibt über Lang- und Kurzzeichen in der chinesischen Schrift. Sie hat eine sehr prononcierte Meinung. 100 Jahre nach den ersten Ansätzen der Sprachreform, die eine enorme Kluft zwischen gesprochener und geschriebener allgemeiner Verkehrssprache und eine hohe Schriftunkundigen-Rate beseitigen wollte, gibt es auch auf dem Gebiet der Sprachen und Schriften im chinesischen Sprachraum viele aktuelle Konflikte.
Josef Goldberger interviewt eine chinesische Absolventin eines Studiums in Wien.
Wer erinnert sich noch an 1990? “Keine Mauern mehr” hieß der österreichische Beitrag zum Eurovisions-Songcontest. Leider begannen noch im selben Jahr die Jugoslawien-Kriege der 1990er Jahre, die 1999 auch China berührten, mit dem NATO-Bombardement der chinesischen Botschaft in Belgrad. Diese “Wienzeile” enthält eine Erzählung von Tamara Kesic, die 1990 in Kroatien spielt. Außerdem haben wir weitere literarische Beiträge von deutschsprachigen Autoren, etwa Gedichte von Isa Breier und einen Text von Thomas Losch.
Die Wienzeile 62 wird am 17. Mai im Venster 99 in Wien mit einer Multimedia-Lesung präsentiert (siehe Plakat). Der Dichter und Musiker Yan Jun 顏峻 tritt live auf. Die Zeitschrift ist bei der Redaktion, im Sekretariat der Abteilung Sinologie des Ostasieninstituts an der Univ. Wien und auch bei mir (Martin Winter) erhältlich.
Wienzeile, a literature magazine coming out in Vienna, Austria, with entries in Chinese, English and German. Lots of new literature by Hsia Yü 夏宇、Yan Jun 顏峻、Hung Hung 鴻鴻、Zheng Xiaoqiong 鄭小瓊、Yu Jian 于堅、Ma Lan 馬蘭、Qi Ge 七格、Wu Yinning 吳音寧、Lin Weifu 林維甫、Tong Yali 彤雅立、 Pang Pei 龐培、Liao Yiwu 廖亦武 and many others.
Art work and photos by Linda Bilda, Yang Jinsong 楊勁松, Chen Xi 陳熹, Emy Ya 葉宛玲 and others.
Articles by Han Han 韓寒 and Hu Yong 胡泳. And an article comparing Charter 08 to Charter 77, written by Helena Nejedla, Czech Republic. If you get hungry while reading, we have a recipe for 四川鍋盔.
Simon Urban’s Plan D appeared in August 2011, Bei Ling’s Ausgewiesen has come out in March 2012. Both are tied to my experiences in Taiwan, in different ways. Simon Urban is a young German author. He is not from the East, the former GDR, and there seems to be nothing in his biography to make him destined for writing a novel on history. And yet he belongs to a continuing thread of history in German literature, told in various forms, often through family stories. Female authors tell family stories, and there are many immigrants writing in German. Their writings are often set in the regions where they come from, and many tell histories of families. History is a topic that just doesn’t seem to go away in Germany and Austria. Nobel prize laureates Elfriede Jelinek and Herta Müller both write about painful topics from the recent histories of their countries. Herta Müller is from Romania. She is a Romanian author writing in German, mostly about Romanian contemporary history. And she’s living in Germany, for historical reasons. Elfriede Jelinek writes on Austria’s contemporary history, through her plays and novels. She writes in a very special language, a language that unmasks the thoughtless style of the media and contemporary discourse throughout Austrian society. One of her plays is called Winterreise, evoking Schubert, in her own special way. Another play relives a murderous party in the small town of Rechnitz in 1944.
Simon Urban’s novel is a thriller. It is the story of an East German police officer who has to find the murderer of a mysterious man, hanged near the Berlin Wall. The wall still exists, the GDR still exists, in 2011. Agents and counter-agents, state security and the Energy Ministry. Don’t trust anyone. Including your colleagues from the West. It’s a thick book, bursting with very evocative descriptions of situations in Berlin inside a frustrated policeman’s mind. Often funny, as well as haunting.
Simon Urban attended a creative writing academy in Leipzig. One of his teachers was the Austrian Writer Josef Haslinger, who also became famous through writing a thriller. It’s about a terrorist coup at the Opera Ball, related to Austrian contemporary history, of course. But Mr. Haslinger was not supportive of Mr. Urban’s project. “The GDR is deader than dead”, he used to say. Mr. Urban has proven him wrong. Plan D will come out in English in early 2013.
Bei Ling’s memoir begins in 2009, the year he got famous in Germany. He was invited as an exiled Chinese writer to speak at a panel at the China-focus Frankfurt book fair, then asked not to attend, along with Dai Qing, a veteran female writer and environment activist in Beijing. Both of them gate-crashed Frankfurt, with German media support. The book then jumps back to 1979 and the Beijing Democracy Wall. Activism and literature are inseparable for Bei Ling. He gives a very personal account of the 1980’s underground poetry scene, and goes on through his years in the US and his friendship with Susan Sontag, who helps him out when he is imprisoned for printing an illegal literature journal in Beijing.
Suhrkamp deserves credit for recognizing some of Bei Ling’s potential. They certainly helped to make him known in Germany. The translation of “Ausgewiesen” is good. Most of the book reads very similar to Bei Ling’s essays in the FAZ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) and in Der Spiegel. The empathy, the little details, the very personal atmosphere. Bei Ling can make you feel as if you were there with him in Beijing in the early 1980s. Maybe you know some of the names, like all the famous Misty Poets. But nobody has told it in such an intimate way, not even Bei Dao, in his fascinating recollections. When “Ausgewiesen” came out in March, the FAZ carried the first review. It was dominated by the complaint that Bei Ling didn’t include much, much more about all these fascinating topics. That’s the fault of his editors at Suhrkamp, of course. The original manuscript was easily twice as long. I’ve seen it. And like other publishers, they don’t have an editor who reads Chinese. Maybe you know Jung Chang, who wrote Wild Swans. I am pretty sure Bei Ling mentions her, but in the German text she becomes a man called Zhang Rong. Hu Ping, editor of Beijing Spring and one of the oldest Chinese exiles in New York, becomes Hu Pingzheng.
Plan D is a rather thick book. Well edited, nothing important peeled away. Simon Urban is a maniac for detailed descriptions, and you always feel these locations in action. Urban succeeds in creating a Berlin that can feel at least as real as the one you know. It is all there, this is how it could have turned out. How it is, behind the surface, at many places.
So how are these books related to Taiwan? Simon Urban was at the 2012 Taipei book fair. His book was very well received, and many people asked questions. They have a real life Communist country to deal with, which is related to them in various ways. Bei Ling runs a small press in Taiwan called Tendency, which grew out of the literature journal with the same name. They print works by Havel and Celan, among others. Taiwan is a place that accommodates many different ventures and makes many things possible. A long tradition of immigration, everything thrown together. They had a one-party dictatorship themselves, and an economic miracle too. But since 1987 they have an ongoing process of democratization, including recognition of their own history, their various ethnicities and so on. It makes one think of recent history and present times in parts of Europe and elsewhere. These are the connections, between the late Vaclav Havel and a fictional Undead GDR, between Paul Celan, exile and reckoning with the past, between poetry and stories of spies.
Addendum: Exiled Chinese writers, like Ma Jian and Bei Ling, have protested against official China monopolizing the China focus at the London book fair this spring. Click here for press coverage in Dutch, English and German.
6 on the beach near the northern tip of the island in the danube at vienna, march 20, 2012
island
the danube flows
vienna starts
somewhere downstream.
the island goes
a couple miles
or maybe four.
they have an ice-cream stand today
with buttermilk and radio.
i came to see the cherry trees.
they’re fast asleep.
they need another month or so.
in april we may still have snow.
the cherry trees are from japan.
i went there 19 years ago.
it was before i knew my wife.
i went by boat.
it took two days.
and almost everyone was sick
except the crew.
a boat from china to japan
in january, in ’93.
the plum trees bloomed among the snow.
in february, when i was there.
it’s nice and warm.
the danube flows.
a month ago the cherry trees
and rhododendrons were in bloom
in taiwan, just a month ago.
it was quite warm. we even swam
in mountain streams.
and austria had lots of snow.
today they read for liu xiaobo
they have a day for poetry
when spring begins, from the un
the 18th was for prisoners
in china and america.
for prisoners of politcs.
they have a day for everyone.
the danube flows.
i brought my son to therapy.
he goes to school. there’s progress now.
he speaks much more.
our daughter doesn’t read a lot
but on the whole we’re doing fine.
the danube flows.
this city is a crying shame.
they say it’s very beautiful.
a neonazi gets a third,
a little less.
a rightist. just like hungary.
a little bit more affluent.
How are poetry and music combined? What differences and what similarities are there within and between China and Taiwan in today’s relationships of music and poetry?
Yan Jun (Lanzhou/ Beijing) has become well known since 2003, both for his sound projects and for his poems. Yan Jun wrote about parts of the music scene in China in 2010. His article is collected in the book Culturescapes China (Basel 2010), with other representative texts on recent music and literature.
Some of Yan Jun’s poems are related to political events and concerns. All poetry is political, he once said, which may evoke discussions about art and politics in general, by Adorno and others. On the other hand, Yan Jun has tried to maintain a stance that avoids direct confrontation with the government and negotiates a largely underground breathing space for art and music.
Singers, musicians and poets, artists in general have to organize themselves and work in a way that gets noticed, without going to jail. The ones that do become dissidents and end up imprisoned or in exile are a small minority. Some are more concerned with politics than with art. Others, like Liao Yiwu, have made experiences that have linked their art and their concerns for society in a way that makes it hard for them to continue working, publishing and living in China. Liao Yiwu is a famous example. His approaches to poetry and music are inextricably linked to his experiences at the bottom of society in China. Liao Yiwu left China last year and currently lives on a scholarship in Berlin. He visited Taiwan in January and February 2012. I was fortunate to witness two of his performances in Taipei and Tainan. It was exciting to witness how fast people in Taiwan were able to connect with Liao Yiwu. In Tainan, the reading was at a university, introduced by professors teaching Taiwanese and Hakka, not Mandarin Chinese. The dynamics of music, history, language and poetry were very remarkable.
At the end of Liao Yiwu’s reading in Taipei, he asked Lo Sirong to sing a traditional song in Hakka, a lullaby sung by a working mother, sung mostly to placate herself, perhaps. Lo Sirong is part of a mostly female network of poets and musicians who collaborate on different projects in Taiwan and beyond. One recent project is Fullmoon (Sleepless in moonlight), a six-edition online poetry-sound magazine organized by Tong Yali. In Spring 2012, I translated seven poems by Wu Yining, a Taiwanese reporter, local activist and poetess. She first came to prominence in 2001, reporting from an uprising in Mexico. Wu Yinning quotes rock songs sung in Taiwanese, among other sources.
Singing in different languages, and the use of different languages in general are well integrated in today’s Taiwanese society. There is a general consensus on the protection of cultural diversity. But although Mandarin is no longer the only official language, social and economic conditions nevertheless serve to favor its use.
Cooperation with singers/ songwriters from Mainland China is increasing; there were many concerts by Mainland singers/ songwriters in Taiwan in February 2012. These artists were introduced in the magazine POTS (Weekly supplement Nr. 699, Feb. 24 – March 4, 2012, p. 14/15)
The famous Taiwanese poetessHsia Yü (Xia Yu) is also famous for her song lyrics, published under pseudonyms. There is a history of pop, rock and DJ culture in Beijing behind Yan Jun’s sound projects, and there is a history of pop songs from Taiwan and Hong Kong since the end of the 1970s that has influenced Mainland China. People who were young at the beginning of the 1980s remember the pop songs of Teresa Teng (Deng Lijun). After the Cultural Revolution, such songs supplanted the Maoist propaganda – they were subversive because they were not political at all. Hou Dejian, who ran away from Taiwan to Mainland China, became the most important cultural figure in the 1989 Beijing Tian’anmen protests that ended with the June 4th massacre in the city. Other artists also performed on Tian’anmen Square, most notably “Rock Music Godfather” Cui Jian. But Hou Dejian was actually crucial to the outcome of the protests. He galvanized the protests in the last few days, along with Liu Xiaobo, Zhou Duo and Gao Xin. And because of his popularity, because even the soldiers knew his songs, Hou Dejian was able to help negotiating the retreat of thousands of students from the square in the early hours of June 4th.
Poetry and music, in traditional forms, such as opera, and in present projects, show the differences and similarities between more official and more informal settings and occasions. Present-day connections between poetry and music in China and in Taiwan enable informal and spontaneous social connections.
The sun is up above the clouds.
It is a national holiday,
the saddest day in Taiwan’s year.
I’m sad I have to leave this place.
We had a month, and it was great.
We went around for literature.
I have 100 business cards
and many books and magazines
and work for months and maybe years
and hopes of contracts and so on.
And we have lots of memories
of friendly people, rain and sun,
of Kinmen, Gaoxiong and Tainan,
of readings, talks and interviews,
of temples, tours and wonderment.
It is a national holiday,
the saddest day in Taiwan’s year.
The sun is up above the clouds.
I’m sad I have to leave this place.
“My father made me stand on a table when I was small, and recite ancient classical Chinese. I could only climb down after I was able to recite the whole thing by heart. I was only 3 or four years old, maybe. I hated my father.” This is how 廖亦武 Liao Yiwu began to talk to the students and teachers of 國立成功大學 National Ch’engkung University in 台南 Tainan, after he played a wooden flute, a very basic instrument he had learned in prison. Very basic sounds, mute and suppressed at times. Loss and regret. No uplifting fable. “I am not going to tell you very much about the time when I went into prison. You would have no way to understand everything. I was like any young person. I didn’t want to listen to anybody from older generations. And I had gone through 文革 the Cultural Revolution, when my parents couldn’t take care of me. For me, classical Chinese belonged into the rubbish bin, along with many other things. My father was 84 years old when he died”, Liao Yiwu said. Or was it 88 years? Only a few hours of dialogue and open exchange between father and son, in all those years.
Dialogue and open exchange. Between 四川 Sichuan and 台南 Tainan. Between Taiwan and China. Between languages and experiences. Feeling lost, between clashing dialects, conflicting histories. Feeling rooted, at the bottom of society.
On the podium, scholars of 台灣閩南語文學 Taiwanese literature sat along with Liao Yiwu. They spoke in Taiwanese. One professor recited a poem by a high school student. Before Dawn, or something like that. About the massacre from 1947, February 28th. I didn’t understand the words. But you could understand the feeling. The answer is very simple, he said, when a 客家 Hakka student asked what she should do, because the words and songs of her grandmother would die with her. There were too few people who could still speak with her in 客家話 Hakka, she was afraid her mother tongue, her grandmother’s words would become extinct. The answer is very simple, the professor said very gently. He spoke mostly in Taiwanese, so I didn’t understand it all. But he said you just have to study, you can even major in Hakka now. It’s not easy, but there is a common effort.
It was very simple, Liao Yiwu said, when people asked him how he fled from China. I went to 雲南 Yunnan province, bordering Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Tibet. I had made lots of interviews there many years before, with people at the bottom of society. You turn off your mobile. You could also bring extra mobile phones. You get lost in small towns. And then one day I was across the border in 越南 Vietnam, very wobbly on my legs. There was a small train, like in China at the beginning of the 1980s. I knew such trains from drifting around China when I was young. In Vietnam, I was afraid of a lot of things, getting on the train, of simple things to eat. But I could communicate by writing numbers on a piece of paper. 500, wrote the innkeeper. 100, I wrote below. And so on. Finally I was in 河內 Hanoi, in a simple inn. And then I went on-line and contacted my friends and family in China. When I got on the plane to Poland, I was still afraid. The year before, military police in full military gear had come and taken me out of the plane in 成都 Chengdu. But then I realized, although this was a Socialist country, I was in the capital of another country, not in China. And the plane took off.
The lecture hall was full. I sat on the floor in the aisles, like many others. It was a very welcoming atmosphere. “We have a few books to give away for students asking questions in the second part of the lecture.” What is 流浪 liulang? What is 流亡 liuwang? What is 旅行 lüxing? These three words sound rather similar in Chinese. This was another professor speaking. He had studied in Russia. He was from a Taiwanese faculty in 台中 Taichung, but at this occasion, to clarify this question, he spoke in Mandarin. What is drifting about? What is exile? What is traveling? When you are drifting around, you don’t know where you are coming from, and you don’t know where you’re going. When you are going into exile, you know where you are coming from, but you don’t know where you are going, where they will let you stay. When you are traveling, you know where you come from, and you know where you’re going. Very simple differences. But what about us here in Taiwan? 我們是否知道自己從哪裡來,到哪裡去? Do we know where we are coming from, and where we are going? In the 1960s and 1970s, many writers and intellectuals in Taiwan were in prison. It was very hard, but you knew what you were fighting for. Just like the writers and lawyers in China, they know they are fighting for freedom. Now in Taiwan we are very free, in comparison. But we can still be marginalized.
One of the professors was my landlord from 1988 to 1990 in Taipei. He is the chairman of the Taiwanese PEN. In 1988 he was a doctoral candidate in history, and a stage decorator. We hadn’t seen each other or heard from each other for 22 years.
haus der patriotischen frauen
(unter japanischer herrschaft)
fuer Tong Yali
ein baum, ein hof,
der wind, die stadt.
es ist ein warmer wintertag.
in tainan ist es immer warm.
die stadt der tempel, der kultur;
die erste stadt: erinnerung.
MW 22. Februar 2012
彤雅立
記憶旅車
車子駛進了記憶
雪天里繾綣的石頭
海平面沒有風
巨浪在海底洄流
車子駛進從前的風
旋進黑色漩渦
《月照無眠》,二零一二年, 台北南方家園出版社,一三一頁
Tong Yali
erinnerung, wagen
der wagen faehrt los.
steine, in schnee eingerollt.
kein wind auf dem meer.
wogen tuermen sich darunter.
der wagen faehrt in den frueheren wind,
in den dunklen strudel.
Aus dem Gedichtband Schlaflos im Mondlicht (Yue zhao wu mian), Nanfang Jiayuan -Homeward Publishing, Taipei 2011, S. 131. MW Uebers. Febr. 2012
Tainan, city of temples. Temples everywhere, many lanes, full of flowers, blossoms, improvised housing, ancient and dated, broken and new. Squares in front of temples for breakfast stands, temple fairs, opera, evening barbecue. Temples complete with public toilets. The main Catholic church of the city is a beautiful traditional temple from 1960. Right across from the temple grounds dedicated to Koxinga, a Chinese-Japanese pirate’s son who fled from the mainland, drove out the Dutch and established the first Chinese kingdom on Taiwan, all in one year, he died rather young. And there is an Earth God’s temple next to the Catholic church. There was a wagon on the square in front of the church, with a few rows of plastic chairs. Very gaudy colors on the wagon, Taiwanese opera. A female warrior with a huge sword, ancient costumes. Tomorrow is the Earth God’s birthday, the church custodian said. Happy birthday! He was in his element, explaining the rich Tainan heritage. Sometimes people come and kneel on the steps of the church, he said, and only then they ask me which important god of the city is housed inside this magnificent temple. And when I tell them this is the Catholic church, they say sorry, we prayed at the wrong place, we didn’t know. Your prayers are very welcome, the custodian replies, and beckons them inside, like he did with us. They had been eating lunch, he and a woman, his wife maybe. Their little chamber next to the door was open. We had looked at the statue first, climbing over stoves and vats with food and cooking utensils, in preparation for the Earth God’s birthday. Mary looks very graceful in a simple and elegant robe, very Chinese, holding her naked baby Jesus. On the mosaic over the main altar inside they look more regal. But it is a very welcoming church. A traditional temple, I-Ching octagon tower with glass windows, couplets left and right written on columns, and boards, wooden and stone. An incense censer in front of the main altar. And an altar on one side for ancestor worship. “Oh, it’s from the 1970s, I didn’t know”, my friend said when we opened the gate, encouraged by the Earth God’s cooks, and looked at the statue more closely. Yes, she has traditional looks, like from the Qing Dynasty, but she is comparatively new, from the times of martial law. White Terror was still practiced on Taiwan when the church was built in 1960. Today, Tainan remembers founding fathers of its modern history inside the Japanese-era house of the Patriotic Women’s Association. These founding fathers of Tainan’s modern era are Japanese and British. Father of water taps and sewage, father of dams and canals, and so on. There is also one guy form the 16th century, sent from China. ”The soldiers who came from China after 1945 and took over from the Japanese didn’t even know houses with running water, they didn’t know taps!” That’s what a poet and scholar told me at the Taipei Book Fair, full of Taiwanese pride.
The last Japanese mayor of Tainan restored the main temples and historic sites. He prevented the Japanese troops from requisitioning and melting the huge bell from Kaiyuan Temple, which is still rung on important holidays. One of the main signs of the Confucius Temple, when you enter the temple grounds, was written by him. The temple grounds are sprawling, open and welcoming. Only the innermost part of the temple is guarded, and the entrance fee is 25 NT, 65 Euro Cents maybe. The city hall and seat of the provincial government from Japanese times is the Taiwan Literature Museum now, very modern and welcoming inside, lots of audio and other impressive installations, beautiful children’s rooms, extensive library, very accessible. This place was our destination when we came down from Taipei and Kaohsiung, an important stop in our one-month stay on Taiwan as translators into German.
I went to a great reading/ concert/ political happening by Liao Yiwu in Taipei tonight. It was organized by Wang Dan’s New School for Democracy. First time Liao performed his legendary poem Massacre from the night before June 4th, 1989 in public for a Chinese-speaking audience. Very memorable experience. People wept and remembered the White Terror and the Feb. 28, 1947 massacre in Taiwan. The case of Zhu Yufu, who got 7 years for a poem in China, was mentioned several times. Liao Yiwu was asked for his opinions about the controversy around the boss of the Want Want conglomerate and media czar (China Times etc.) who recently denied there was a major massacre in 1989. Liao Yiwu reaffirmed the answer he had given at Taipei International Book Fair. He just said he wasn’t very interested what some merchant would have to say. They would say anything to please Beijing, and unfortunately they would get away with it very easily. Liao was also very critical of the book fair. Glossy and haphazard in many ways, that was his impression. No dignity for authors, no thorough organisation of readings. Well, I must say I liked all the events I saw or participated in. The show girls and the people walking around advertising discounts did not give the impression of a very cultured event, rather like some market selling everything aside from books, just like Liao said. But they certainly did have some well organized readings, and international highlights in French and German, for example. Anyway, Liao Yiwu’s performance tonight was a very exceptional event. I think they recorded it, and I heard it was broadcasted live on the Internet. Don’t know where exactly. Liao was asked what he thought about the relation of literature and politics. He spoke about reading Orwell’s 1984 in jail, and talked about the parts leading up to the end of the novel, how Winston is broken with the use of a rat and made to rat out his girlfriend, and how he loves Big Brother as he is taken away to be shot. Perfect example for his own aesthetics, Liao said. He still supports people doing ‘pure literature’, goes to poetry readings about the Full Moon Sound Magazine (http://fullmoonsoundmagazine.tumblr.com/) and stuff like that. He was not interested in politics until 1989, he said. The Hakka songstress Luo Sirong sung a very poignant lullaby at the end. This part would not have been forbidden in China. Liao’s performance was so intense it made you vary of police barging in. But the most precious thing was the whole event together, the songs and the music, the talks and discussions. The strong interaction made it all very special and rare.
Qing Dynasty school in Qionglin, Kinmen. Photo: 蔡亦菱
viele, viele, viele farben
muschelsplitter, alte flaschen
ewigkeiten in spiralen
gelber sand und viel geschichte
in granaten, in den menschen
tunnel und gemuesemesser
aus granaten fuer jahrzehnte
fuer den frieden, fuer besucher
viele, viele, viele voegel
fliegen untertags aufs festland
kehren heim und ueberwintern
women kin-men kaiser-candy
我們金門一條根
Lantern festival was today, or now it’s yesterday, Mon. 6th, 2012. All the best and many happy moons to all we love!
2 recent poems
vienna’s flat
frankfurt a mat
above the clouds.
a sea of wool.
flying is cool.
somewhere there’s a big bird
or another plane.
then we dive
through the mist
and arrive.
frankfurt is long.
i like hong kong.
MW Jan. 29/30, 2012
grosze rosa azaleen
schmetterlinge, blaetter fallen
geigenklaenge, bass, klavier
zeit der groszen stoerungen
endlich sonne ueber taipei
flohmarkt, festival der kuenste
blaetter wachsen in den himmel
Ni hao, hope this finds you well. We are fine, the kids are in school. The new issue of the magazine Wienzeile has come out in Vienna, with a few of my poems. Die Zeitschrift Wienzeile ist gerade erschienen, inkl. einer Doppelseite mit Gedichten von mir. In den letzten Monaten sind Übersetzungen von mir in vielen Zeitungen und Zeitschriften in Hongkong, Deutschland, in der Schweiz und in Österreich erschienen, inkl. FAZ, Die Zeit, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, South China Morning Post, Lichtungen, Dianmo. Am Montag, 17.10 um 13 Uhr war ich im Radio. (39:08-49:08)
Am Freitag 21. Oktober 19:30 war die Lesung. 10月21日有朗誦會,請看圖。保重,有空請跟我們聯絡一下!
There is a China issue planned for spring. Could be titled Die Chinesische Mauer. Please start thinking of contributions!
the streets around our house in this old part of vienna have grass growing in the pavement between the cobbles. the grass is there, even though the cars drive on it every day. there was a lot of rain lately, so the air is good, you can smell the trees in the park and in the backyards. and there are weeds growing on the sidewalks. my daughter picks up chestnuts and makes them into necklaces and animals, at home and in kindergarten.
Liebe Freunde,
Ai Weiwei_Martin Winter
(Basler Zeitung Di., 27. Juli 2011)
Ai Weiweis Gedicht "Wir sprechen uns später" ist in der aktuellen Ausgabe der Zeit (7.-14. Juli). Kam am Donnerstag
heraus, nach China kommt die aktuelle Ausgabe immer erst am Montag, wenn sie kommt. Dann kostet sie 120 Volkstaler,
dreimal so viel wie in Deutschland. Die Übersetzung ist von Angelika Burgsteiner und mir. In den Tagen nach Ai Weiweis
Freilassung war dazu ein Artikel von Bei Ling, den ich übersetzt habe, in der FAZ, in der Presse und auf derstandard.at.
Das Gedicht erschien 1987 in der von Yan Li herausgegebenen chinesischsprachigen Zeitschrift Yi Hang (oder Yi Xing, d.h.
Eine Zeile/ Eine Gruppe) in New York. Ai Weiwei erinnert sich an das Gedicht, weil es das einzige ist, das er je geschrieben
hat, sagt er.
Zeit_2011_7.Juli_AiWeiwei
Wir haben Ai Weiwei am Freitag in der Früh besucht. Er wirkte noch ziemlich mitgenommen. Ich bekam den Eindruck, er wurde
eher zu von der Staatssicherheit vermuteten politischen Hintergründen von alten Fotos aus New York befragt als zu steuerlichen
Vorwürfen gegen ihn. Aber wir haben nicht viel gefragt. Für die Aktionen zu seiner Unterstützung war er sehr dankbar, obwohl
er bei manchen Sachen auch etwas skeptisch ist. Die aktuelle Ausstellung in Winterthur kommt bald nach Graz, und die Sache in
Bregenz fängt auch in diesem Monat an. Aber er kann ja leider nirgends selbst hinfahren. Manche Projekte, die er vorher begonnen
hat, scheinen ihm jetzt fast fremd geworden zu sein. Er möchte gerne gastfreundlich sein und frei reden wir früher. Aber wie er
selbst sagt, jetzt geht es ihm eben wie vielen anderen, und eher wie vielen gewöhnlichen Leuten, die auch nicht zuviel
den Mund aufmachen dürfen. Als Wegzehrung für den Rückweg haben wir ein paar Sonnenblumenkerne mitbekommen.
Herzliche Grüße, mw
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/07/liao-yiwu-leaves-china.htmlSilence of the dissidentsThe Ancient Roots of Chinese Liberalism台灣自由時報副刊全版刊〈草泥馬時代的艾未未〉文,照竟也全刊出了
Verhaftungswelle – Ai Weiwei, vorher schon andere Künstler wie Wu Yuren; auch Ran Yunfei und viele andere Blogger, Teng Biao und viele andere Menschenrechtsanwälte …
Gao Zhisheng (Anwalt) seit Jahren verschwunden, vorher mehrfach inhaftiert und gefoltert
Viele unter Hausarrest und abgeschirmt, in letzter Zeit verschärft, auch Liu Xia, Frau von Liu Xiaobo.
Seit Oktober durfte niemand Liu Xiaobo besuchen, auch seine Frau nicht. Falls Bruder oder Eltern doch einmal hindurften, dann unter Geheimhaltung, alles abgeschirmt, jeder Kontakt nach außen wird strengstens verhindert.
Liu Xianbin wurde letzte Woche wieder zu 10 Jahren wegen Anstiftung zur Untergrabung der Staatsgewalt verurteilt. Seit 1989 bekam er insgesamt 25 1/2 Jahre, u.a. wegen Gründung einer Oppositionspartei. Solche wie ihn gibt es noch mehrere, sie sind halt alle nicht so bekannt wie Liu Xiaobo. Liu Xianbin kam erst 2008 frei, unterschrieb aber sofort die Charta 08 und wurde 2009 wieder erhaftet. Er hat eine Tochter im Teenageralter, die ihren Vater hauptsächlich von Besuchen im Gefängnis her kennt. Es gibt einen sehr interessanten Text von Liu Xianbins Frau Chen Mingxian (leider nur auf Chinesisch), in dem sie von ihrem Leben seit 1995 erzählt. Sie ist einfache Lehrerin, lernte zufällig Liu Xianbin kennen, wurde langsam in die Dissidentenszene hineingezogen, beschreibt sehr eindringlich ihr tägliches Leben in einer kleineren Stadt, mit häufigen Polizeibesuchen.
Seit Februar gibt es im Internet Aufrufe, in 10-15 Städten auf die Straße zu gehen, jeden Sonntag, gegen hohe Lebensmittelpreise, Korruption und viele Misstände; ohne Transparente, einfach Spazierengehen an bestimmten Orten, höchstens manchmal Sprechchöre; darauf wird jedoch mit großem Polizeiaufgebot, Brutalität und vielen teils willkürlichen Verhaftungen reagiert.
Der Dichter Liao Yiwu, der 1989 wegen einer Radioausstrahlung seines Gedichts “Massaker” ins Gefängnis kam, die 90er Jahre hauptsächlich in Lagern verbrachte, dort viel Stoff für Reportagen und Erzählungen fand, die auch ins Deutsche übersetzt wurden, und von einem alten Mönch Flüte spielen lernte, durfte im Herbst 2010 erstmals ins Ausland, nach den Solidaritätslesungen am 20. März (Tag der politischen Lüge, Authors for Peace, Internationales Literaturfestival Berlin) und nachdem sich sogar Angela Merkel für ihn einsetzte. September und Oktober 2010 war er in Deutschland, dann ging er zurück nach Sichuan. Sofort wurde er wieder überwacht, öfters zur Polizei beordert, etc. Heuer wurde er in die USA zu einer Lesereise eingeladen, durfte aber im März wieder nicht ausreisen. Auf diese Weise wird er auch die folgende Reise nach Australien, wo er dasselbe Buch vorstellen sollte, nicht antreten können. Seit den 90er Jahren wurde er 16 Mal in verschiedene Länder zu literarischen Veranstaltungen und Konzerten eingeladen, 1 mal (im Vorjahr) durfte er ausreisen, 15 mal nicht. Liao Yiwu ist nicht das einzige Beispiel; der Dichter Bai Hua durfte lange Zeit ebenfalls nicht ausreisen; ich habe noch von anderen Fällen gehört.
Zhao Wei, der Student, der unlängst auf einer Zugfahrt umkam, ist auch ein Fall, der einen an viele ähnliche Fälle erinnert, von denen man ebenfalls in China gehört hat.
Liu Xiaobo, Ai Weiwei und Bei Ling kennen einander aus den 80er Jahren. Alle Künstler, Musiker, Schriftsteller etc., die jetzt über 30 sind, sind durch das Proteste-Desaster und Massaker von 1989 miteinander verbunden, auch wenn sie künstlerisch, intellektuell etc. überhaupt nicht miteinander übereinstimmen. Dissidenten, auch im Ausland, sind teilweise sehr zerstritten. Liu Xiaobo wird von manchen nicht als geeignet angesehn, die Arbeiter, ArbeitsmigrantInnen etc. zu vertreten, die in den letzten Jahren mit Streiks, Selbstmorden und schon länger auch durch die vielen Arbeitsunfälle in den großen Fabriken in den Industriestädten um Kanton und anderswo von sich reden gemacht haben. Aber auch da gibt es eine Verbindung: Zheng Xiaoqiong, die Arbeitsmigrantin und Dichterin, die 2003/2004 bekannt wurde. 2009 kam eine Auswahl ihrer Gedichte in Taiwan heraus, in einer Serie, in der auch Gedichte der tibetischen Schriftstellerin Woeser erschienen. Am 5. April 1976 begann die Öffnung Chinas, noch vor Maos Tod, auf dem Tian’anmen-Platz mit Gedichten. Auch heute ist Lyrik bedeutender und integrativer, als man glauben möchte. Natürlich ist nicht alles davon immer ‘nur’ Literatur – Kunst und Politik sind in Wirklichkeit weiterhin sehr eng miteinander vebrunden, auch wenn seit den 90er Jahren alle sagen, alles sei nur noch kommerziell geworden. Unter Mao war allles Politik. In den 80er Jahren waren die Verbindungen noch sehr deutlich. Jetzt sind sie auch sehr deutlich, wenn man die Nachrichten hört.
12.4. 19 Uhr
Lesung mit Gerhard Ruiss und Bei Ling (Lyriker, Essayist, Dissident, Biograf des Friedensnobelpreisträgers Liu Xiaobo)
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Raum D / quartier21
Gedichte von Liu Xiaobo und Liu Xia
Auszüge aus Essays von Bei Ling und aus der Biografie von Liu Xiaobo
Gedichte von Bei Ling
Es lesen Gerhard Ruiss (IG Autorinnen Autoren) und Bei Ling
Nach der Solidaritäts-Lesung für den inhaftierten chinesischen Friedensnobelpreisträger Liu Xiaobo am 20. März (mit Gerhard Ruiss im Radio – siehe http://archiv.literadio.org/get.php?id=766pr1602) kommt sein Biograf Bei Ling zu einer Lesung nach Wien ins Museumsquartier. Der Versuch der Überwindung von Zeit und Raum ist für Bei Ling seit mehr als einem Jahrzehnt bittere Realität. Der Lyriker war – wegen der Veröffentlichung einer Literaturzeitschrift – selbst in Haft, wurde 2000 auf internationalen Druck hin freigelassen und aus China ausgewiesen. Seither lebt er im Exil.
„Es gibt keine Wahl mehr. Das Blut vieler junger Menschen, jene Seelen, jene eingekerkerten Menschen, und dann noch Xiaobo im Gefängnis – er wird mich verfolgen und auch das, was ich schreibe. Er wird mein Verhalten bestimmen“, das schrieb Bei Ling vor 22 Jahren als er erfuhr, dass sein Freund Liu Xiaobo nach dem Massaker vom 4. Juni 1989 verhaftet worden war – und er scheint recht behalten zu haben. Die Biografie seines Weggefährten Liu Xiaobo ,Der Freiheit geopfert´ ist erst kürzlich auf Deutsch erschienen.
Am 12. April liest Bei Ling mit Gerhard Ruiss Gedichte von Liu Xiaobo und Liu Xia (der Frau des inhaftierten Nobelpreisträgers, die seit Oktober in ihrer Wohnung festgehalten wird). Außerdem trägt Bei Ling aus seinem lyrischen Werk vor und liest aus der Biografie über den Friedensnobelpreisträger.
Die Veranstaltung in Kooperation mit dem quartier21/ MQ wird von der IG Autorinnen Autoren mitgetragen.
Herta Müller’s speech on March 20 in Berlin was published in the FAZ on March 26. Very good speech. She has read the biography. Maybe a little too fast. The labour camp didn’t come immediately after the first prison term. He wrote the confession in prison at the end of 1990 and went free in January 1991. Everything else is correct. The episode with his father, who wanted him to give in. And the labour camp. She does take a side, very emphatically. The last sentence is the most important one. “More and more supporters of Charter 08 are disappearing in jail.” Liu Xianbin was sentenced to 10 years a few days ago. Altogether he has been sentenced for more than 25 years since 1989. His most serious crime seems to have been one of the founders of an opposition party at the end of the 1990s. Liu Xianbin’s wife Chen Mingxian chronicles her life in the last 20 years in this account: http://08charterbbs.blogspot.com/2010/10/blog-post_23.html
Teng Biao has disappeared, Ran Yunfei has been detained for a while, and now Liu Xianbin has been sentenced to 10 years, to name but a few. The situation is very clear. No progress, just the opposite.
MuseumsQuartier Wien, Raum D / quartier21 - Photo by Pernille Koldbech Fich
Solidaritäts-Lesung für den inhaftierten Friedensnobelpreisträger Liu Xiaobo
20. März 2011
Österreichische und chinesische Künstlerinnen lesen Texte des chinesischen Bürgerrechtlers. Im Anschluss findet ein Gespräch mit SinologInnen, SchriftstellerInnen und MenschenrechtsexpertInnen statt.
One of the best texts I have read in a long time is Murong Xuecun‘s recent speech in front of the Foreign Correspondent’s Club in Hongkong. It was a speech he had wanted to give at the occasion of receiving the People’s Literature magazine’s “special action award”. But they didn’t let him speak at the ceremony. Time magazine has the full text, they say (acc.2011-03-02). Please read this text. If you like it, maybe you’ll agree that literature is a very good indicator of the state (of a nation), exactly because you can’t really know what it states. This is true for art in general, or a capacity for innovative culture. You can’t really know what it states, or maybe you’re sure you know, but you can’t really say, or what you can say is only one aspect. You can analyze the structure. You can try to translate it, and still keep the spirit. I haven’t read the original text, haven’t had time to look for it. Is there an original text in Chinese? Did he write it in English? He probably gave the speech in English, because it was at the foreign correspondent’s club. If the text in Time magazine is a translation, I’m pretty sure it is translated well. Yes, maybe there is something universal about it. Maybe Chinese writers have said similar things through the centuries. And millenia. But not only Chinese writers. And I am pretty sure, on the other hand, that this text is a very powerful indicator for the present state (of things). It’s both. Perfect example for Yomi Braester’s Witness Against History. Art has something else, something that goes far beyond History. Or also keeps record more faithfully.
In 2004/2005 or so in Beijing, my wife and I became friends with some parents of other kids at the local kindergarten. One mother had studied art in Japan and introduced me to blogging. Since early 2008 I have a website at Yahoo Japan. (I had spent a few weeks in Japan in early 1993, on a boat trip from Shanghai.) There is a blog I maintain at Langmates (translation and localization), another one for poems only (almost) and a harmonized teaser, among others. My translations of poems and various signs and banners in China can also be found on websites set up by Sam Brier (2004) and by Charles Laughlin (Ma Lan’s poetry). MCLC (Modern Chinese Literature and Culture), edited by Kirk Denton, has not only spawned an extensive treasure trove of Modern Chinese Literature and Culture sources, but also an Email-list server which has maintained professional and other exchange services for the international Chinese Studies community and beyond, including some very lively discussions. Recently, list members have introduced their blogs, such as Anne Henochowicz, Andrew Field, Jeanne Boden and Charles Laughlin. The initiative was started by Paul Manfredi.
Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese dissident sentenced to 11 years on Dec.25th 2009 for “incitingsubversion“, was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in absentia in Oslo on Dec. 10th, 2010. Liu’s old friend and Independent Chinese PEN co-founder Bei Ling has written a biography of Liu Xiaobo. Bei Ling started off from an essay he wrote in June 1989 in New York, after Liu Xiaobo had been arrested in Beijing in the aftermath of the massacre throughout the city, as People’s Liberation Army troops forced their way through the streets blocked by protesters in the last phase of the demonstrations on Tian’anmen Square. Liu Xiaobo had returned to China from New York and led a hunger strike of intellectuals on the square, supporting the students and Beijing residents in their demands for civil liberties. Bei Ling‘s essay from 1989 was re-published in Chinese in Hongkong and Taiwan in June 2009, and in the German newspaper FAZ on October 12th, 2010, a few days after the Nobel Peace prize announcement from Oslo. Soon after, the German publisher Riva expressed interest in a biography of Liu. Bei Ling had recently written a literary memoir of his years a Beijing underground poet in the 1980s and a literary magazine editor, shuttling between China and foreign countries, in the 1990s. Liu Xiaobo and other old friends such as Liao Yiwu are important figures in Bei Ling’s memoir, to be published by Suhrkamp in Germany this year. So Bei Ling was ready to write his biography of Liu Xiaobo on short notice. It was a crazy idea, but it worked. We worked around the clock in November 2010, and in early December the book hit the shelves. In the first week, from Dec. 9 to 16, it sold 2500 volumes, according to the publisher. Since then, Bei Ling’s biography of Liu Xiaobo has been reviewed in many newspapers, magazines, on TV and radio stations etc. throughout Germany and in neighbouring countries. This month (January 2011), according to the publisher, the book has started to appear on the Spiegel magazine’s bestseller list, the standard list in the German-speaking realm. On January 11th, 2011, a symposion with Bei Ling, Prof. Weigelin-Schwiedrzik, Prof. Findeisen, Prof. Zhu Jiaming, Dr. Felix Wemheuer and others was held at Vienna University and met with great interest among students and teachers from various faculties. Seehere …
Liu Xiaobo biographer Bei Ling at Vienna University on Jan. 11th, 2011. Photo: Angelika Burgsteiner
This is a book about an absent person, who is held in prison; who has won a Nobel Peace prize and is not allowed to collect it: Liu Xiaobo. His old friend Bei Ling writes about him. He draws a many-faceted picture – only a knowledgeable friend can do that. This book is concerned with manifestos, petitions, political actions, but also with self-doubt and guilt, stubbornness and ambition. The author Bei Ling, who was imprisoned himself before, sees his duty in painting a complicated picture of this civil rights activist, with many different shades and colors. Bei Ling knows that he can see Liu Xiaobo only from one side, he can only portray him in profile, not from the front. But even if it is only part of a bigger picture, this part shows us a whole cosmos of courage and repression, of labor camps and life outside watched by security agents, like the life that the wife of this civil rights activist is forced to lead. This book offers a lot of information, but it doesn’t explain everything, because it wants you to keep asking questions. This is why I think everybody should read it.
Elfriede Jelinek, Tr. MW
Two days ago I went to Wikipedia in Chinese and stumbled on a photo of the Dalai Lama. The browser started generating error messages. When I tried to get there again, my screen went black. Then it was blue, with a message from Microsoft about a serious system failure. “Starting memory dumping” was at the bottom. I had been using Gladder, a Firefox extension for circumventing the Great Firewall when you’re in China.
In the 1980s, when I was an undergraduate student, we had a Chinese reading class. It was mostly Chinese government-issued information on Tibet. There was one phrase I remember. The soldiers of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army were generous, so they didn’t ask the Tibetan people immediately to pay back the cost of pacifying their land. That was a memorable sentence. Then in 2001 or so I was translating and dubbing films for the Ministry of Culture in Beijing. There was a report on celebrating 50 years of liberating Tibet. Somebody important called me and asked me to please finish it quickly. It was a very important piece. Hu Jintao, who was already very important back then, had led a central party delegation on a fact-finding trip through Tibet to prepare for the celebrations. They stayed at ordinary people’s homes. And when they left in the morning, they gave the peasant family gifts to thank them for letting them stay. They gave them framed pictures of the core leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. Chairman Mao Zedong, Chairman Deng Xiaoping and Chairman Jiang Zemin. That was a memorable scene.
What is art? What is music? Music makes you dance or cry. Art is truth. It’s the truth in the ear of the beholder. Or in other orifices. Or somewhere in between. They call it the heart. There have always been found objects. And pictures of leaders.