146 chapter four
Second, this has occasionally enabled him—and perhaps, following a
traditional Chinese poetics, made him feel obliged—to remonstrate
with the rulers of his native land.^11
As for my focus on Yang, Wang and Bei Dao, we will return to this
in section 2. There are of course other poets from the PRC to whose
life and work the present inquiry could have extended. Duoduo, for
instance, is generally recognized as having had exile status during his
fifteen years abroad, and Wang Jiaxin isn’t the only one whose exile
status is open to debate. But on Duoduo and exile, I have written else-
where; and Wang’s case is interesting precisely because it is controver-
sial.^12
- Poets in Exile
Even though they have visited China since their effective displacement
in 1989, Yang Lian and especially Bei Dao are clearly poets in exile.
As for Wang Jiaxin, there is a case to be made for viewing his sojourn
in England as a period of exile too.^13
For these claims, I base myself on John Glad’s model of writing
literature in exile, which sidesteps some of the less objectifiable aspects
of exile literature. The editor of a volume of essays by starkly different
voices that somehow hang together, Glad defines literature in exile as
literary creation outside the boundaries of one’s native land, taking
the writer’s physical displacement as his point of departure. Glad’s
approach is akin to that adopted by John Spalek and Robert Bell, who
specifically assess how the physical exile experience affects the writer’s
style and means of expression—with Adrienne Ash’s contribution ar-
guing forcefully against prejudiced views of poetry as less suited to the
negotiation of exile than fiction. Examples of research on modern Chi-
nese literature with a similar outlook to Glad’s and Spalek and Bell’s
(^11) For the traditional Chinese poet’s “solemn duty” of remonstration, see Idema
& Haft 1997: 48; for the continued impact of traditional views of literature on PRC
writers, see Link 2000: ch 3.
(^12) Van Crevel 1996: ch 4 and 221-234.
(^13) Biographical and bibliographical detail draws on Yang’s, Wang’s and Bei
Dao’s publications (including “chronicles” [ᑈ㸼], interviews and prose writings such
as Yang Lian 1998b and Bei Dao 1998 and 2004) and those of their commentators,
and on personal communication over the years.