176 chapter four
ideological terror. Zhang Hong broadly takes it as signaling political
intention.^68 In the rest of the poem, poetic imagery—as opposed to
pamphletish diction—more or less holds its own. But the poem lays
out its overall orientation in no uncertain terms when we read, in the
second stanza:
in obtuse crowds of people
the government finds its spokesmanYang Xiaobin cites «Morning Story» as highlighting a symbolic totali-
tarian discourse of dictatorial words, to illustrate Bei Dao’s reflection
on the problematic of language as a means to narrate history.^69
Strictly speaking, the poem contains no exile markers. The reader
has to invoke the author’s biography in order to make it exile liter-
ature—or, in the terms used in chapter Three, draw the boundar-
ies of the text in such a way as to give the author some space inside
them. Invoking the author’s biography is precisely what many of Bei
Dao’s (foreign) readers would have done, after encountering it in Old
Snow, his first (bilingual) collection of poetry after June Fourth. The
book’s contents are divided into three parts called “Berlin,” “Oslo”
and “Stockholm,” accurately advertised as “poignant reminders of the
restless and rootless life of the exile” on its back cover.^70
(Self-)censorship thus appears to come into play for Bei Dao’s 2003
domestic anthologies when his poetry refers to June Fourth and the
type of political repression that caused his exile, not for poems that
foreground the experience of exile as such. «Poison» (↦㥃, 1992?) is
an example of the latter, with strong declarative overtones:^71
«Poison»
Tobacco holds its breath
The exile’s window aims at
wings set free from the depths of the ocean
winter music sails closer
like faded banners
It is yesterday’s wind, it is love(^68) Zhang Hong 2003: 97.
(^69) Yang Xiaobin 1994: 108.
(^70) Cf Patton 1995a: 142.
(^71) Bei Dao 1994: 42, 2003a: 140, 2003b: 188.