178 chapter four
repression, one is reminded of the “internal emigration” by intellec-
tuals and writers in Nazi Germany, which Rosemarie Morewedge
convincingly classifies as a “real” type of exile. More generally, many
moments in poethood the world over have involved inner exile in the
sense of self-assigned outsider status, as both cause and effect of the re-
jection of socio-cultural convention or political strictures. This is some-
times called “metaphorical exile,” in a neutral sense. Authors such as
Boym, Buruma and Rudolphus Teeuwen put metaphorical exile and
exile as metaphor to polemical use, to question an intellectual-cultural
discourse that they see as trivializing “real” exile, that is: physical ban-
ishment. Inner or metaphorical exile can co-occur with physical dis-
placement, but it can also happen at home. Beginning in Eastern and
Western antiquity with authors such as Qu Yuan and Ovid, it has in
fact been cited as a prerequisite for original art.^73
Yang Lian, Wang Jiaxin and Bei Dao have all described exile as
inherent in poetry. In a 1993 interview by post with Chen Dongdong
and Huang Canran, during Wang’s time in England, he speaks of “a
kind of ‘exile’ that started long ago, inside the words.” Brodsky’s depic-
tion of exile as “an absolute perspective,” meaning “the condition at
which all one is left with is oneself and one’s language, with nobody or
nothing in between,” comes to mind when Bei Dao, in a conversation
with Anne Wedell-Wedellsborg, calls exile “an extreme clarification
of every poet’s situation.” Bei Dao argues that writing poetry always
constitutes a challenge to the dominant language and culture; that the
poet is hence never really at home anywhere; and that in this sense,
poetry and exile are almost “synonymous concepts.” As for Yang
Lian, whose “conception of poetry as an exilic art form” is under-
scored by Jacob Edmond and Hilary Chung, the title of his 2002 essay
“In Search of Poetry as the Prototype of Exile” says it all. The central
question recurs in the preface to Yang’s bilingual collection Notes of a
Blissful Ghost, published in the same year: “When did this “self-exile”
begin? What true poet who touches upon the true nature of poetry is
not in spiritual exile?”^74
(^73) Cicero is cited in Edwards 1988: 21. Morewedge 1988: 115. Lagos-Pope (1988:
9) uses metaphorical exile as more or less synonymous with inner (and domestic)
exile. Boym 1998: 243-244, Buruma 2000, Teeuwen 2004. Schneider 1980, Edwards
1988: 22. 74
Wang Jiaxin & Chen & Huang 1993: 44, Brodsky 1990: 108, Bei Dao &
Wedell-Wedellsborg 1995: 229, Edmond & Chung 2006: 9-10, Yang Lian 2002c: 37