thanatography and the poetic voice 133poems discussed above, «Spring» is closest to «Moved», but it has a
stronger sense of urgency. Authenticity is a tricky notion, but «Spring»
and «Moved» come across as authentic in that the poetic voice isn’t on
a quest for social endorsement or even understanding—and yet leaves
a lasting impression, in spite of or indeed thanks to the poem’s weird-
ness and its casual embrace of diverse semantic domains, moods and
protagonists. Just like in «Moved», one senses the possibility of transfer
between them: the various children Haizi, both come back to life and
wretchedly still alive, as well as you and me. Different from Yu Jian, I
hold that the astonishing image of ten children Haizi and their return
to life (⌏ ‘come back to life,’ ‘resurrection [of Jesus Christ]’) does in
fact steer clear of megalomania. This is because any self-aggrandize-
ment is undercut by the cruel scenes in the rest of the first and second
stanzas and because of the poem’s questions at two crucial moments,
their dejection visible in the absence of question marks: but what was it
for... but what does it mean.
The canonization of «Spring» is evidenced by its appearance in nu-
merous multiple-author anthologies, including those covering orthodox
poetry as well as the avant-garde.^61 Its reception history is inseparable
from the issues raised in the first half of this chapter. «Spring» is one
of Haizi’s best poems, but not because it was the last thing he wrote
before he killed himself.^62
Haizi wrote a good number of ode-like poems in dedication to vari-
ous addressees, including someone identified as “S,” the Pacific Ocean
and “the last night and the first day.” Two are simply called «Poem in
Dedication» (⤂䆫, both 1989). Dedication as a fundamental attitude,
regardless of its application to any particular object, or perhaps dedi-
cation to poetry itself, both fit the exaltation that Haizi’s poetry and
poetics exude. These are the opening and closing stanzas of «In Dedi-
cation to the Dark Night» (咥ⱘ⤂䆫), written in February 1989
(^61) Xie Mian & Meng 1996: 456.
(^62) In the title and the first line of «Spring», there is a curious echo of Wu Shao-
qiu’s «Spring: There Is a Child Falls in the River» (, ᳝ϔϾᄽᄤᥝ䖯⊇䞠).
Wu’s work appears in Born-Again Forest (⫳ᵫ, 1982), an unofficial collection of
avant-garde poetry compiled by Zhong Ming, using the pen name Shi Jile (1982),
which Haizi is likely to have read. Wu’s poem contains this long line: The child has not
got up again.... as if there were footprints, together with the rivulet, slowly wriggling, slowly coming
back to life.... But the intertextuality is strictly lexical (spring, child, coming back to life),
and fragmentary at best.