“Woman.” Rather than experiencing night and darkness as oppressive,
Zhai Yongming transforms them into sources of strength. At the same
time, she creates a mythic world in which her speaker is oppressed by
and locked in a struggle with forces or natural objects that are tradi-
tionally yang(male), including the sky and sun. “The World” Shijie
Î(Zhai 1994: 15–16) exemplifies this conflict:
The sun maintains the sweep of Ï阳用ÒÓ者的光L持!愤怒的Ö×
its anger with a dictator’s gaze, Ø我的头顶腳Ü
seeking out the top of my head
and the soles of my feet
Zhai intensifies the mythic qualities of this poem by alluding to the
Chinese creation myth in which the goddess Nüwa女Ý is “impreg-
nated by the sky.” Despite persecution by the sun, the female narrator
remains aware of her own life-giving power. She knows that it is she
who gives birth to the same male principle that strives to overpower
her (although it deludes itself that it can): “... raven-black clouds
incubate the setting sun, my eye sockets brim with a vast sea /
From the depths of my throat grows white coral” (Þß化¢ ̈,
我的眶âãÒ大ä／æç的喉咙®è½éê). The sea
imagery that pervades this poem is indicative of another female force,
that of water, in this case the vast, primordial waters of the sea, from
which all life on earth has sprung.
As the poem continues, the narrator changes from a mother to a
newborn baby, who feels a “wild joy” as “the world bursts into my
body.” Zhai Yongming manages this transformation through the use
of imagery. First she is the great maternal ocean, and then it is the
waves of that ocean (life) that she feels striking her “like a midwife
striking my back.” The poet is giving birth to herself, creating herself
in her own image, as an independent woman free of social constraints.
This poem, with its stress on fertility and the female body, makes clear
the distinction between woman defined biologically and materially (as
female, or nüxing) and woman defined socially (as funüë女or
“feminine”). By embracing the former as a source of identity and
power, Zhai Yongming evades the snares of the latter. She concludes
the poem with her avowal that the black night of this poem and others
is a balm, a blessing.
Xia Yu’s handling of female sexuality tends to be less symbolic
and more graphic than Zhai Yongming’s. Zhong Ling regards the
former’s frank treatment of sexuality as truly groundbreaking, and
118 Andrea Lingenfelter