thanatography and the poetic voice 107on contemporaries like Wang Jiaxin—by Yi Sha, Qin Bazi and Xu
Jiang, but also by Yu Jian, as we shall see below—stands to gain from
contextualization in the Popular-Intellectual Polemic of 1998-2000 to
which we turn in chapter Twelve, with Yi Sha, Qin, Xu and Yu as
representatives of the Popular camp.^21
MythificationAs is true for many other modern poetries, romantic notions of po-
ethood featured prominently in the early stages of modern Chinese
poetry. The beginnings of this poetry are commonly associated with
Huang Zunxian’s writings in the closing years of the Qing dynasty
and Hu Shi’s early in the Republican era. An important moment in
between occurred when Lu Xun published “On the Power of Mara
Poetry” (ᨽ㔫䆫䇈) in 1907. Lu Xun’s remark that “Poets are they
who disturb people’s minds” recalls Jonathan Culler’s characteriza-
tion of modernity in poetry as essentially disruptive in nature. Ac-
cording to Kirk Denton, Lu Xun introduces to the Chinese reader “a
demonic model for the poet (based on Western Romantics like Byron
and Shelley) that was essentially alien to the tradition.” In an essay on
the image of the mad (⢖) poet in Chinese tradition and modernity,
Yeh shows that this “Chinese Romanticism” is by no means a purely
European or Western, imported affair and that its impact didn’t cease
after the early years but has persisted. She argues that the motif of the
mad poet is “a key to understanding the dynamics of modern Chi-
nese poetry” up to the present day. That Haizi’s romantic poethood
partook of both indigenous and “foreign” or international discourses
would have spurred the process of mythification outlined below.^22
Whether Haizi’s commentators offer praise or blame, none dispute
that his suicide did indeed cause the emergence of a myth (干䆱, liter-
ally ‘story of things divine’), elevating him to godlike status. It is this
mythification that leads to a vision of his life and work as one. The
suicide of the poet as the most romantic of public persons provokes
(^21) For the “countryside intellectual,” see Xi Chuan 1991a: 6. Qin 1999: 227,
234, 248ff. Qin’s essay is undated, but he claims to write ten years after Haizi’s death
(227). While Criticizing Ten Poets (Yi et al 2001) also contains a tongue-in-cheek essay
by Yi Sha about Yi Sha (sic), and one by Xu Jiang about rock idol Cui Jian as a poet,
Qin Bazi’s piece is entirely serious. Xu Jiang 1999a.
(^22) Lu Xun 1996: 102, Culler 1997: ch 5, Denton 1996: 69, Yeh 2005: 122.