Bei Dao

[Stewart]

Bei Dao (born August 2, 1949) is the pseudonym of Chinese poet Zhao Zhenkai. He was born in Beijing, his pseudonym (literally 'northern island') was chosen because he came from the north and because of his preference for solitude. Bei Dao is the most notable representative of the Misty Poets, a group of Chinese poets who reacted against the restrictions of the Cultural Revolution.

Since 1987, Bei Dao has lived and taught in England, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, France, and the United States. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages, including five poetry volumes in English along with the collection of stories Waves (1990) and the essay collections Blue House (2000) and Midnight's Gate (2005). Bei Dao continued his work in exile.

He has won numerous awards, including Tucholsky Prize from Swedish PEN, International Poetry Argana Award from the House of Poetry in Morocco and the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. He is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Jintian was resurrected in Stockholm in 1990 as a forum for expatriate Chinese writers. He has taught and lectured at a number of schools, most recently the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, as well as the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and Beloit College in Wisconsin, and is currently Professor of Humanities in the Center for East Asian Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has been repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

RELATED LINKS

• Bei Dao on Wikipedia

 

[Stewart]

You can get a sample of Bei Dao's poetry here. Like most poetry, I don't really get it. Oh well.

 

[Mirabell]

Major Chinese poet

Bei Dao (simplified Chinese: 北岛; traditional Chinese: 北島; pinyin: Běi Dǎo; literally "Northern Island", born August 2, 1949) is the pseudonym of Chinese poet Zhao Zhenkai (趙振開). He was born in Beijing, his pseudonym was chosen because he came from the north and because of his preference for solitude[1]. Bei Dao is the most notable representative of the Misty Poets, a group of Chinese poets who reacted against the restrictions of the Cultural Revolution[2].

As a teenager, Bei Dao was a member of the Red Guards, the enthusiastic followers of Mao Zedong who enforced the dictates of the Cultural Revolution, often through violent means. He had misgivings about the Revolution and was "re-educated" as a construction worker the next eleven years.

Bei Dao and Mang Ke founded the magazine Jintian ("Today"); the central publication of the Misty Poets which was published from 1978 until 1980, when it was banned. The work of the Misty Poets and Bei Dao in particular were an inspiration to pro-democracy movements in China. Most notable was his poem "Huida" ("The Answer") which was written during the 1976 Tiananmen demonstrations in which he participated. The poem was taken up as a defiant anthem of the pro-democracy movement and appeared on posters during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. During the 1989 protests and subsequent shootings, Bei Dao was at a literary conference in Berlin and was not allowed to return to China[3]. (Three other leading Misty Poets, Gu Cheng, Duo Duo, and Yang Lian, were also exiled). His then wife, Shao Fei, and their daughter were not allowed to leave China to join him for another six years.

Since 1987, Bei Dao has lived and taught in England, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, France, and the United States. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages, including five poetry volumes in English [4] along with the collection of stories Waves (1990) and the essay collections Blue House (2000) and Midnight's Gate (2005). Bei Dao continued his work in exile.

He has won numerous awards, including Tucholsky Prize from Swedish PEN, International Poetry Argana Award from the House of Poetry in Morocco and the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. He is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Jintian was resurrected in Stockholm in 1990 as a forum for expatriate Chinese writers. He has taught and lectured at a number of schools, most recently the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, as well as the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and Beloit College in Wisconsin, and is currently Professor of Humanities in the Center for East Asian Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has been repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

 

[Mirabell]

I was at a reading of Bei Dao in Bonn.

These are some pictures of that

Bei Dao in Bonn (1) shigekuni.


more tomorrow.

 

[Daniel del Real]

I was at a reading of Bei Dao in Bonn.

These are some pictures of that

Bei Dao in Bonn (1) shigekuni.


more tomorrow.

Cool. I thought you didn't like books signed by the author

 

[Mirabell]

Cool. I thought you didn't like books signed by the author

I think I jsut don't go out of my way to get them. Could have bought a cheap book signed by Norfolk last week but didn't buy it though I adore the man immensely. It's getting it signed, maybe, by a writer you admire a lot, who signs it in front of you. Maybe. I am also drunk on red wine which was passed around liberally at the reading.

 

[Daniel del Real]

It's getting it signed, maybe, by a writer you admire a lot, who signs it in front of you.

Agree, for me the important thing is the contact with the author, interaction, the moment. To buy a signed book doesn't make sense at all, altough you love the author.
Great you had the chance to meet Bei Dao.

 

[Mirabell]

I was at a reading of Bei Dao in Bonn.

These are some pictures of that

Bei Dao in Bonn (1) shigekuni.


more tomorrow.

More pictures and a few remarks on the reading and Bei Dao's poetry in general

Bei Dao in Bonn (2) shigekuni.

 

[Daniel del Real]

All the talk about the Nobel probably going to Africa or Asia this year has prompted me to read some authors I've postponed for long. This time I wanted to take a look to a pair of "misty" poets, Duo Duo and Bei Dao. Read the first a couple of weeks ago and finally I was able to get a book of Bei Dao in Spanish translation, the only translation available in this language: At the sky's edge, poems 1991-1996, which is the same book Mirabell got signed at a lecture back in 2009.

I'd like to quote Mirabell/Shigekuni's words to express the very similar feelings I got when reading this poet:

Bei Dao writes for the people, and his poetry, in Hinton’s translation, is a curious mixture of hermetic poetry, on the one hand with cliffs of images and metaphors that lead you onto the ice and leave you there to find your way home again, and very intense and deeply felt phrases. Bei Dao offers himself, or an image of himself in these poems, like a sketched burst of emotion, flanked by broader concerns. There is, interestingly, both spareness and abundance in his work, and it’s usually spare where the speaker talks about himself, and abundant, rich, and enigmatic, where he voices his worries, vents his urgencies.

He also refers to some of his influences in poets like Celan, Vallejo & Mandelstam.

After comparing both poets, Bei Dao (which means Northern Island), is way more cryptic, as if many of his words and ideas are in code, acting like symbols which we are not fully able to decipher because of our lack of context for Chinese culture and translation itself.
Duo Duo seems more reachable, a more palpable, tangible imagery, and so far, with these very little samples of their poetry, I think I prefer Duo.

I also would like to read another chinese poet recommended by a friend, Luo Ying. I wasn't aware of him, so if you have read him please share your thoughts.

 

[Marba]

For those of of you who have read them both, how does Bei Dao compare to Tomas Tranströmer? I remember that when Tranströmer was awarded the Nobel an argmuent was that it would seem wrong to award someone like Bei Dao, who was also in the discussions, before Tranströmer as Tranströmer had been one of Bei Dao's great influences.

And I have seen that Swedish sinologist and former SA member Göran Malmqvist has released a poetry collection of translations of Bei Dao and another one of the Misty Poets, Gu Cheng. Has anyone read him?

 

[Daniel del Real]

I honestly don't see many similarities between them. Tranströmer's poetry is more "open" and transparent. He delves into nature, its possibilities and connections. Also, his poetry is far from being political; not that Bei Dao's poetry is full of it, but it gives hints in some poems, especially when dealing with exile and his longing for his country.
First time I've heard of Gu Cheng, I'll look for him.

 

[Ben Jackson]

What gets me interested in Bei Dao poems is the cryptic like approach reminiscent of Celan and Mandelstam. Though his poems explores politics and exile, his recent poems explore memory, time and boundaries of realities. His influences, part from Celan, include Mandelstam, Vallejo and Transtromer. I think the reason his poems are compared to Transtromer is the straightforward lyricism and Dao's recent themes of boundaries of realities, although Transtromer is more transparent and apolitical.

For those who haven't read him, I recommend his Rose of Time: New and Seleted Poems (2010) or independent volumes like Unlock (2000). His essays like Midnight's Gate (2005) is also amazing. I haven't read his memoir City Gate yet.

The Boundary (August Sleepwalker 1988)
I want to go to the other bank
River water alters the sky's
Colour
And alters me.
I'm in the current
My shadow stands by the river
Bank
Like a tree struck by lighting.
I want to go to the other bank
In the trees on the other bank
A solitary startled wood pigeon
Flies towards me.

Black Maps (Rose of Time 2010)

In the end, cold crows piece
Together
The night: a black map
I have come home--- the way back
Longer than the wrong road.
Long as a life
Bring the heart of winter
When spring water and horse
Pills
Become the words of night
When memory barks
A rainbow haunts the black
Market.
My father's life--- spark small as a
Pen.
I'm his echo
Turning the corner of encounters
a former lover hides in a wind
swirling with letters.

Beijing, let me
Toast your lamplights.
Let my white hair lead
The way through black map
As though a storm were taking
In to fly.
I wait in line till the small
Window
Shuts: O the bright moon
I go home--- reunions
Are one less
Fewer than goodbyes.

 

[Ben Jackson]

I honestly don't see many similarities between them. Tranströmer's poetry is more "open" and transparent. He delves into nature, its possibilities and connections. Also, his poetry is far from being political; not that Bei Dao's poetry is full of it, but it gives hints in some poems, especially when dealing with exile and his longing for his country.
First time I've heard of Gu Cheng, I'll look for him.

I warmly recommend Selected Poems of Gu Cheng. The volume has many of his poems translated from Chinese and is, to my knowledge at least, the only volume of his poems available in English. Don't know if its in Spanish yet.

For those who don't know him, Gu Cheng's poems are modernistic, which challenged tenets of communism and introduced method for expressing subjective ideas. His works are very mystical and surrealistic and explores childhood, poverty and nature. The nationalistic, though personal and imaginative images in his early lyrics gives way to fragmented and impenetrable lyrics. Just unfortunate he died at a young age (I think 37).

The Between

Don't go to sleep, don't
Dear, the road is long yet
Don't go too near
The forest's enticements, don't
Lose hope.


Write the address
In snow melt or four hand
Or lean on my shoulder
As we pass the hazy morning
Lifting the transparent storm
Curtain.
We will arrive at where we're from
A green dusk of land
A road in an old pagoda.