of the Cultural Revolution. Even if “exorcism” had never been explicitly
spelled out by Gu Cheng, the dialectic of this “possession/exorcism”
nevertheless constitutes the paradoxical core of his poetics and its
practice.^13 What one critic says about Michaux’s poetics equally holds
true for Gu Cheng:
It is an art of compensation, creating possession where there were
lacks, a substitute personality where there was an insecure nonentity,
relief where there was tension. It is essentially a non-aesthetic poetry,
governed not by artistic but by psychological needs, and improvised
with whatever fortuitous fragments come to hand. (Broome 1977: 19)It may be an instinctive rebellion against sensed dictatorships within
himself; or a shaking-off of potential dictatorships from the outside.
Most often it is a violent exorcism, performed “pour se délivrer
d’emprises” [in order to liberate oneself from the influences]: a laying of
ghosts and haunting obsessions. (Broome 1977: 25)In this light, Gu Cheng’s case is a good example of the dual mechanism
of “possession/exorcism,” or of the “reenchantment/disenchantment”
of history in contemporary Chinese poetry.
A Final Tribute: Thirteen Years After
Gu Cheng entered contemporary Chinese poetry as a “child” and exited
as a “ghost,” but surely this exit has also served as his reentrance.
“[T]he dead don’t just disappear. The ghosts melt into the air, the dusk,
the lamplights and the bodies of all the people. Things don’t just stop
there.” As a “ghost” Gu Cheng will continue to linger in his “city.”^14
Taking a bird’s eye view of today’s Beijing with its mushrooming
high-rises and sprawling highways, thirteen years after Gu Cheng’s
violent end thousands of miles away on Waiheke Island in the South
Pacific, anyone would be taken aback by the thought that Gu Cheng
might no longer recognize most of the old sites that he once enumer-
ated and described in City. Indeed, as it moves further into the new
millennium, Gu Cheng’s “city” is almost already too far-gone.
Le vieux Paris n’est plus (la forme d’une ville
Change plus vite, hélas! que le coeur d’un mortel);
(Baudelaire 1993: 174)[The old Paris is no more (the shape of a city
Changes faster, alas, than the heart of a mortal)]140 Yibing Huang