thanatography and the poetic voice 113sociological in orientation and primarily focus on images of Haizi’s
poet-hood as part of broader discursive practice. When she does engage
in detailed textual analysis, in a 1993 essay on Haizi’s programmat-
ic poem «Asia Bronze» (Ѯ⌆䪰, 1984)—in Chinese, but published
outside China, in the new Today—this is quite possibly the only com-
mentary written after 26 March 1989 that makes no mention of the
poet’s death. As such, it pointedly implies a defense of the poetic voice
against the thanatographical hullabaloo that threatens to drown it
out. David Der-wei Wang mentions Haizi in passing in an essay on
the politics and poetics of (Chinese) literary suicides, with Wen Jie,
Shi Mingzheng and Gu Cheng as case studies. Wang draws on Yeh’s
suggestion of the poetry cult’s complicity with Maoism, a notion he
himself puts forward in his earlier writings on fiction. Like Yeh’s work,
Wang’s offers a wealth of stimulating analysis, although Alison Bailey
is right in calling the connections between the case studies tenuous.
While Wang is quick to point out that Alfred Alvarez’ categories of
the “totalitarian artist” and the “extremist artist” are anything but ab-
solute, he shows how thoroughly “political” suicides can in fact be
occasioned by romantic desire and seemingly “morbid” suicides may
well expose latent political trauma. The parameters of Wang’s analysis
would, however, be less applicable to Haizi than to Wen, Shi and Gu,
if we were still to arrive at what Wang calls the dialectic between late
modern Chinese culture and its body politic. Day calls attention to the
linkage of Haizi’s suicide and June Fourth in poetry and commentary,
discussed above. Mi Jiayan examines epistemic reconfigurations of the
river as a national symbol contributing to Chinese identity, in the fic-
tion of Zhang Chengzhi and the (epic) poetry of Haizi, Luo Yihe and
Chang Yao, duly noting the effect Haizi’s and Luo Yihe’s deaths have
had on the reception of their work. In fact, Mi might have extended
this observation to Chang Yao, who took his own life by jumping off a
building at age sixty-four, when he was terminally ill. When Chang Li
and Lu Shourong include Chang Yao in their discussion of Newborn
Generation Poetry, they can only do so by stretching this category
considerably, and their lament that the poet’s talent was insufficiently
recognized while he was alive comes as no surprise.^34
(^34) Yeh 1993a, 1995, 1996a; Wang (David Der-wei) 2004: ch 7 and 1994:
242-243; Day 2005a: ch 11; Mi 2007. Chang Li & Lu 2002: 250-252, Mao Jian
2005: 16, Liu Fuchun 2004: 592.