of what he heralded as “from self to nature” (cong ziwo dao ziran)
(Gu 2005a: 99–115).
Gu Cheng’s relationship with the city never seemed as easy or
intimate as his relationship with nature. To Gu Cheng, the city had
always appeared somewhat alien and intimidating. This remains true
even for his native city, Beijing:
I returned to the city when I was seventeen, and I saw a lot of people. I
was embarrassed, I didn’t know how to talk... The city was like a
machine, a clock, and every minute and second you would have to obey
it. I could not get accustomed to it, so I climbed up to the loft to read
books. (Gu 1995: 920)I’m not accustomed to the city, but I live and write in it. Sometimes, one
after another, walls would unavoidably squeeze into my poetry, and
make me feel burdened...
I believe that in my poetry the city will disappear, and what will emerge
at last will be an open pasture. (Gu 2005a: 182)This constantly confessed uneasiness with and alienation from the
city has convinced some of his critics to view his poetry as “anticity
poetry” (fan chengshi de shi) (Yan 1993: 79–80). Nevertheless, what
may have been overlooked is that it is precisely such confessed uneasi-
ness with the city that proves its prevalence as a fundamental subtext
in Gu Cheng’s poetry throughout. Actually, ever since his first return
to Beijing from the countryside at seventeen, the city has made its
presence felt through its seeming absence or suppression. Moreover,
from time to time this subtext or meaningful absence would resurge as
a counter-theme: “return to the city.” This counter-theme culminates
and achieves supremacy in The Ghost Enters the Cityand, particu-
larly, City, where the “city” itself becomes one of the last imaginative
inner spaces in which he regains—at least to some extent—his free
agency as a compensation for, this time, his loss of “nature.”
But this “city” is regained only through the eyes of a ghost.
Furthermore, Gu Cheng regains his “city” through his recognition of
foreign cities, specifically, a city such as Berlin:
My biggest accomplishment in Berlin was to finish writing the sequence
The Ghost Enters the City. I came to Berlin, and it was snowing. I
walked in the snow, seeming to leave no traces. This reminded me of a
ghost’s life. When dusk fell, the nights in Berlin became thicker and
thicker. Then I seemed to see a huge hand softly pressing on all the
lamplights. Not only Berlin’s nights, but also its cold and indifferent
days, and its constant possibilities of madness, reminded me of Beijing.130 Yibing Huang