Yang Lian - Quotes

No, a poem is nothing but an attempt to transcend the boundaries of language. And the poet is only someone who "climbs over the wall", who always tries to get over that Berlin wall built by masterpieces of the past.
Lian, Yang and Brian Holton (Translator). "Search of Poetry as the Prototype of Exile." in: Yang Lian Official Website.

Who can experience stronger feelings than a Chinese poet who watches television and sees the Berlin Wall being torn down? History really moves in opposite directions: In the summer of 1989, the democratic wave surging on Tiananmen Square was followed by the bloodshed of Chinese people and the cheers of East Europeans. Just when the East European writers regained a "mother country" my books were banned and I had to go into exile.
Lian, Yang and Brian Holton (Translator). "Search of Poetry as the Prototype of Exile." in: Yang Lian Official Website.

But what about poetry? Where should we head for after that point of departure has been forgotten? What difficulty in real life does not in fact take the darkness of human nature as its original version? A poem deals with the common predicament of man and language. Exile has given me an inescapable perspective, which I daily deepen by means of writing. I am fortunate.
Lian, Yang and Brian Holton (Translator). "Search of Poetry as the Prototype of Exile." in: Yang Lian Official Website.

My poems are foreign even to readers who are Chinese speakers. They cannot be "translated" into common, daily-life Chinese. The form that I invent for every poem, the overturn of earlier "models" that every new piece achieves sedulously increases the distance to the readers. When did this "self-exile begin"? What true poet who touches upon the nature of poetry is not in spiritual exile?
Lian, Yang and Brian Holton (Translator). "Search of Poetry as the Prototype of Exile." in: Yang Lian Official Website.

I want my writings in exile to become a journey in two directions: constantly distancing myself from my native land and at the same time returning to my own language. In my language I seek to complete the depth of reality.
Lian, Yang and Brian Holton (Translator). "Search of Poetry as the Prototype of Exile." in: Yang Lian Official Website.

When depth itself affects the grammar, something "new" will naturally emerge. This long journey has no end, because the effort to explore the ultimate limits of darkness can never be exhausted.
Lian, Yang and Brian Holton (Translator). "Search of Poetry as the Prototype of Exile." in: Yang Lian Official Website.

Exile writing is an old subject. Although old it still generates electric currents.
Lian, Yang and Brian Holton (Translator). "Search of Poetry as the Prototype of Exile." in: Yang Lian Official Website.

No matter how naive our writings from those years may have been, the notion that one should "use one's own language to express one's own perceptions" actually injected new life into sources of literature that had slumbered too long. Our modernity was manifested in an attitude of self-awareness with regard to language.
Lian, Yang and Brian Holton (Translator). "Search of Poetry as the Prototype of Exile." in: Yang Lian Official Website.

Much contemporary Chinese poetry gives western readers the impression of surrealism. But to me, playing such games with images which seem obscure but are actually so simple is a diminishment of real writing.
Lian, Yang and Brian Holton (Translator). "Search of Poetry as the Prototype of Exile." in: Yang Lian Official Website.

My effort to exceed the limits of the Chinese language was “translated” by Brian and Agnes into creativity in English. This is how it ought to be, because I am moved once again when I read the translation, and I feel that I am struggling free from time and am incorporated into the beautiful “concentric circles” of ancient and modern poetry, in China or elsewhere.
Lian, Yang and Brian Holton (Translator). "Search of Poetry as the Prototype of Exile." in: Yang Lian Official Website.

Any educated Chinese person would be ashamed to confess, ‘I don't know Ch’ien-chia-shih.’ In fact, merely to know the book would not be enough — one must have learned many poems by heart and in that way planted the rhythms of Chinese poetry deep in the soul, even before fully appreciating the poetry’s meanings. The rhythm grows up inside you like a secret flower, and one day its blossoming may help you in writing and reading poetry.
Lian, Yang and Red Pine (Translator). "Ancient, exhilarating poems that sound imagist." in: Poems of the Masters — China’s Classic Anthology ofT’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse.

I particularly recommend Red Pine's ‘Preface’ — it is a rich, colourful and acute introduction to Chinese poetry. He says, ‘Poetry is China's greatest art’, and that starts the piece with a strongly positive and precisely correct tone. Then in a brief study of the written character for ‘shih’, the word for ‘poetry’, he shows how the Chinese ideogram for that word actually means ‘language of the heart’. With this explanation, the translator immediately reveals the most important nature of Chinese poetry — it is an expression, or even an expressionist view of the internal world of the poet, rather than a reflection of the poet’s external world.
Lian, Yang and Red Pine (Translator). "Ancient, exhilarating poems that sound imagist." in: Poems of the Masters — China’s Classic Anthology ofT’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse.

... the Chinese belief that reading and writing poetry is such a personal experience that any concept of poetry evolution is an illusion, because ‘language of the heart’ communicates timelessly. What is implied is the importance of concentric circles of centuries of poetry tradition, layer upon overlapping layer.
Lian, Yang and Red Pine (Translator). "Ancient, exhilarating poems that sound imagist." in: Poems of the Masters — China’s Classic Anthology ofT’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse.

To me, the most impressive poetic quality of the Cantos lies in the contradiction between the synchronic nature of its poetic ideas and the diachronic nature of its language..
Lian, Yang. "Moved Once Again by an Ancient Betrayal." By Way of A Preface to Concentric Circles. in: Yang Lian Official Website.

His Cantos ramify through all time — it is by embracing all cultures, past to present, east and west, that he is enabled to peel away the illusion of the differentiation between the different presentations of life, and touch directly on the changeless core of existence. In other words, the Cantos is not an epic, i.e. a poema about history, but on the contrary, , it is a poetry which effaces “history”. That self-sufficient universe of poetry, without beginning or end, completely overthrows the European epic tradition.
Lian, Yang. "Moved Once Again by an Ancient Betrayal." By Way of A Preface to Concentric Circles. in: Yang Lian Official Website.

The poetic space of Concentric Circles is achieved precisely by deleting time in order to highlight the unchanging human situtation.
Lian, Yang. "Moved Once Again by an Ancient Betrayal." By Way of A Preface to Concentric Circles. in: Yang Lian Official Website.

To me, synchronization is not a metaphysical game, but a kind of necessity rooted in the connotative content of my writings.
Lian, Yang. "Moved Once Again by an Ancient Betrayal." By Way of A Preface to Concentric Circles. in: Yang Lian Official Website.

When my exile began in 1989, the challenge that I was faced with was not only “why should I write,” but “how should I write?” In other words, was it possible for me, instead of refusing to talk only on the subject of exile, but to continue developing creativity in poetic form, to match my so-called “profound” experiences?
Lian, Yang. "Moved Once Again by an Ancient Betrayal." By Way of A Preface to Concentric Circles. in: Yang Lian Official Website.

When you do that kind of heroic social resistance in poetry, you know, fankang, and when you, let's say, 'heroically' use your poetry against the government, then you quite easily put yourself as a poet's self in opposition to the official power. But, in that case, it's like black and white, the Communist is black and you are white, but actually if you question a bit deeper, then you will think: 'how can only a small group of communist leaders have made millions and millions of people become victims?' And what's actually the role that yourself played in the disaster? Are you guilty? Or actually are you simply a clean victim?
Lian, Yang and Sabrina Merolla (Interviewer). "To Touch The Border and Cross It." in: Yang Lian Official Website.

I think that exile is not only on the realistic surface but in the language. Actually the "exile" means to break through the limits of the language, to force ourselves, to touch the border and cross it. That is actually the original form of exile and by that nature we somehow make the surrounding reality come to prove our exile, by the way of political troubles, by the way of loneliness (because nobody understands you) by the way that maybe you will be forever in difficulties. But those are also the proofs of your 'active exile'.
Lian, Yang and Sabrina Merolla (Interviewer). "To Touch The Border and Cross It." in: Yang Lian Official Website.

Having a sense of localness in a foreign country far away from one’s native land is more peculiar than pure wandering. As a contemporary Chinese poet, twenty or so countries have slid past my soles since I first started my journey of exile in the late eighties. The pain of rootlessness, is comprehensible, and the sorrow of homelessness, is even a must.
Lian, Yang and Sabrina Merolla (Interviewer). "To Touch The Border and Cross It." in: Yang Lian Official Website.

The poet may travel far, but never really leave the autochthonous ground of his own inner self. The world slips by him like an abstract setting, and the distance between its fluctuating changes exists only in the direction of the internal inquiry.
Lian, Yang. "A Wild Goose Spoke Speaks To Me." in: Yang Lian Official Website. January 10, 2006.

Today’s philosophical question – the precise antonym for today – is just this: how can we abolish the mirage of time, and face anew the emptiness and darkness which have been eternally co-existent with human nature? In a word, the energy to do so comes from the awareness of the predicament.
Lian, Yang. "A Wild Goose Spoke Speaks To Me." in: Yang Lian Official Website. January 10, 2006.

Since how long ago, Poetry has become a “public thing”? Poets write with the idea of publishing in our mind, Poetry books printed with the idea of sale in publishers’ mind, Poetry events organised with the idea of “tickets” in the organisers’ mind….the “public” became an invisible hand plays and controls the standard of Poetry world, as boring as other fields directly commercial.
Lian, Yang. "Sailor's Home: A Preface." in: Yang Lian Official Website. August 14, 2005.

Sailor’s Home is a private poetry festival held in London during 21st to 23rd of October, 2005. It is also the title of poems written by six poets friends who came from six different languages. We are: Bill Herbert from English, Arjen Duinker from Dutch, Uwe Kolbe from German, Peter Laugesen from Danish, Karine Martel from French and Yang Lian from Chinese. The poems printed in this book are not “responding poems” in its narrow meaning, each poet created his or her own understanding on the title-line, and arranged his or her forms individually, thus, at least here are six boats set sail on to six different waterways. But, who says sailors cannot see each other in distance? The ocean below our boats is the deep link between us, by touching its waves, we could share all joys and dangers of navigations. We are all leave endlessly to sick a new home in a new poem.
Lian, Yang. "Sailor's Home: A Preface." in: Yang Lian Official Website. August 14, 2005.

Yet if the Chinese authorities succeed in imposing their ‘order’ on the peasantry, they will only be hastening the coming agricultural crisis.
Lian, Yang. "Dark Side of the Chinese Moon." in: Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao. Zhongguo nongmin diaocha [Survey of Chinese Peasants]. People’s Literature Publication Company. Publication Suspended. 2004.

It's not economics, popular culture or sports that lead us to a common ground, but instead it's poetry that gathers our life experiences and literary understanding in a shared space, to meet, to argue, to converse, to inspire. The tower, at completion, stands upon a foundation built from a deeper understanding - understanding based upon mutual exchange.
Lian, Yang. "Building A Tower From The Top Downward." in: Capstone Course. Bard College. 2003. (English).

When I first received the invitation to teach at Bard, I was both excited and afraid. As a Chinese poet in exile, I've participated in literary events the world over, but I had never done a job like this. Preparing to teach the Capstone course provided an opportunity for me to sift through and re-structure my life: awakening at the end of the Cultural Revolution, my dangerous but exciting life as a young, underground poet during the 1980s, the nightmare of the Tiananmen Massacre in June of 1989, my endless journey through exile, classical Chinese poetry, the Western poetic tradition. Could I teach all of this in my "Yanglish"?
Lian, Yang. "Building A Tower From The Top Downward." in: Capstone Course. Bard College. 2003. (English).

The autumn wind, wailing monkeys, pale sand, wheeling birds, borderless falling leaves, endless river waves, a traveling poet climbs a terrace, loneliness fills both time and space. Am I familiar with this picture? Yes, of course. As a poet in exile, I am all too familiar with this situation.
Lian, Yang. "Building A Tower From The Top Downward." in: Capstone Course. Bard College. 2003. (English).

The very nature of the Chinese language provides the special poetic for the poem. Chinese phrases are often devoid of an obvious subject/personal pronoun.
Lian, Yang. "Building A Tower From The Top Downward." in: Capstone Course. Bard College. 2003. (English).

If the true Way did exist, it would be impossible for us to know it because the limitations of language limit us.
Lian, Yang and Mabel Lee (Translator)."Yang Lian in Conversation With Adonis" in: Yang Lian Official Website. October 19, 2003.

Difference” or distance in fact exists between word and thing, and in people’s awareness of this difference. The question should be how a poet consciously seeks to create that distance instead of seeking to diminish it. Distance is inherently present as a characteristic of language. The poetic mode consciously seeks to break through this inherent something. For me this is most import.
Lian, Yang and Mabel Lee (Translator). "Yang Lian in Conversation With Adonis" in: Yang Lian Official Website. October 19, 2003.

People discuss the darkness of my poetry but confine themselves to the surface layer of politics. They don’t talk about how that darkness manifests itself or how it is created, nor do they talk about the creative energy of the language.
Lian, Yang and Mabel Lee (Translator)."Yang Lian in Conversation With Adonis" in: Yang Lian Official Website. October 19, 2003.

I have always believed that poetry functioned differently in the West. For us all the historical, cultural, social and political complexities have been internalized, they are a part of our individual fates. It's not possible to separate oneself from them. When the psychological burden becomes too great the only way to return to a realm of freedom is to sit down and write a line of poetry. It is only through poetry that we can maintain equilibrium. This meaning of poetry is hard to understand, even for my closest European and American friends. For them poetry is the product of a free life. You must first obtain freedom in life before you can write poetry. But my only freedom is poetry. Poetry is the only thing that can begin from the impossible, where everything else is in ruins.
Lian, Yang and Mabel Lee (Translator)."Yang Lian in Conversation With Adonis" in: Yang Lian Official Website. October 19, 2003.

Having a sense of localness in a foreign country far away from ones native land is more peculiar than pure wandering. As a contemporary Chinese poet, twenty or so countries have slid past my soles since I first started my journey of exile in the late eighties. The pain of rootlessness, is comprehensible, and the sorrow of homelessness, is even a must.
Lian, Yang. "International Within The Local." in: Yang Lian Official Website. October 11, 2003.

Exile forces a writer to mature, to be more exacting with language.
Lian, Yang and Gao Xingjian. "The Language of ExileGao xingjian & Yang Lian." in: Yang Lian Official Website. Original from What We Gained from Exile, a dialogue between Gao Xingjian and Yang Lian. 1993. (English).

Being separated from your readership means your work loses all practical significance: there is no connection between writing and making a living. If you still want to write, it has to be purely for yourself and you must make greater demands on your language.
Lian, Yang and Gao Xingjian. "The Language of ExileGao xingjian & Yang Lian." in: Yang Lian Official Website. Original from What We Gained from Exile, a dialogue between Gao Xingjian and Yang Lian. 1993. (English).

In 1987, when Gao left to take up a fellowship in Germany, he took with him the manuscript of Lingshan. Known in the West under the title Soul Mountain, it was completed in 1989 in exile in Paris, where he now lives. Essentially, it is the story of one man’s search for inner peace and tranquillity; for the recovery and expression of the self of the individual, all but annihilated in the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. Writers and artists for whom their work was a matter of self-expression were ruthlessly and brutally silenced at that time.
Lian, Yang and Gao Xingjian. "The Language of ExileGao xingjian & Yang Lian." in: Yang Lian Official Website. Original from What We Gained from Exile, a dialogue between Gao Xingjian and Yang Lian. 1993. (English).

...today, doesn’t everyone – especially Chinese writers in the diaspora – have an inescapable duty to take language and turn it upon the self, the individual; to use it to interrogate the self? To put it another way, we do not ‘exist’ within language, language ‘exists’ within us.
Lian, Yang and Gao Xingjian. "The Language of ExileGao xingjian & Yang Lian." in: Yang Lian Official Website. Original from What We Gained from Exile, a dialogue between Gao Xingjian and Yang Lian. 1993. (English).

Because tenses don’t change in Chinese, words are rewritten as ‘another renewed history’ – my own, individual fabricated history. The Chinese language can enable history to exist in the present tense.
Lian, Yang and Gao Xingjian. "The Language of ExileGao xingjian & Yang Lian." in: Yang Lian Official Website. Original from What We Gained from Exile, a dialogue between Gao Xingjian and Yang Lian. 1993. (English).

Some writers lay down their pens, others continue to write and others again merely ‘borrow’ the consciousness, sentence structures, vocabulary and ‘flavours’ from traditional vignettes, novels and the ancient plays of the Yuan and Song dynasties, just adding a little modern ‘spice’ and going through the motions of writing. Isn’t this because after the individual replaced the group [after the Cultural Revolution], the responsibility on the individual writer to develop language – the pressure of language on the individual – was too great? As a result, while the writer lives, the work collapses.
Lian, Yang and Gao Xingjian. "The Language of ExileGao xingjian & Yang Lian." in: Yang Lian Official Website. Original from What We Gained from Exile, a dialogue between Gao Xingjian and Yang Lian. 1993. (English).

Originally, a writer’s most fundamental contradiction was that between the desire to create and the limitations of language. But inside China this is often ‘externalised’ and becomes a different contradiction: such things as politics, the struggle for rights and social problems are externalised and create a sense of terror of external dangers. And in a collectivised social environment, this then hinders and even destroys the internal connections between the ‘self’, that sense of terror, and any ‘introspection’. As a result, there’s no politics and there’s no writing.
Lian, Yang and Gao Xingjian. "The Language of ExileGao xingjian & Yang Lian." in: Yang Lian Official Website. Original from What We Gained from Exile, a dialogue between Gao Xingjian and Yang Lian. 1993. (English).

Whether in or out of China, I often feel people have a kind of misconception that sees literature as a ‘necessary’ thing, something ‘needed’ by society or by reality.
Lian, Yang and Gao Xingjian. "The Language of ExileGao xingjian & Yang Lian." in: Yang Lian Official Website. Original from What We Gained from Exile, a dialogue between Gao Xingjian and Yang Lian. 1993. (English).