“”, it absolutely is, I returned again to that city like a ghost,
and met again some other ghosts. I wrote Xinjiekou, Xidan,
Zizhuyuan, Houhai... all these poems are being together with
those dead. This is very realistic, so realistic that I was only record-
ing it down literally, sometimes it was like copying down sentences
or sounds in dreams. I don’t think this is a political concept, but
rather a natural phenomenon in my life. (Gu 2005a: 113)
Here one suspects that the “,” again an omission at the editor’s
discretion, may actually stand for “liusi,” or “June Fourth.” Besides Kubin,
Allen also adopts this reading (Gu 2005b: xii).
- Gu Cheng’s recognition of Beijing through Berlin is confirmed by Yang
Lian’s own impression: “Since the first day when I arrived in Berlin, I
immediately felt this city wasn’t that unfamiliar. Its long, dark and cold
winter nights, the dusk which came as early as at four in the afternoon, its
snow, and the frozen branches in the snow... somehow often reminded
me of Beijing. Berlin is a city full of history and yet seemingly without
time” (Yang 1998: 214).
- For example, see Yeh 1991c: 405. For Gu Cheng’s own accounts, see Gu
2005a: 101; 179–180; 263; 332–333.
- This “possession” testifies to Yeh’s analysis of the correspondence
between the “Cult of Poetry” and the “Cult of Mao” in contemporary
Chinese poetry (Yeh 1996).
- The following explanation by Gu Cheng himself of the genesis of his
“fairytale poetry” is perhaps the most nuanced and yet most telling we
have seen so far in this regard: “My so-called ‘fairytale’ wasn’t completely
born out of a natural state. In fact it originated from the fear that the
Cultural Revolution had brought to me. When I said ‘Heaven and Earth
have no mercy’ (tiandi wuqing), I didn’t just have this feeling when I was
walking in the desert fields; I already had it in Beijing.” “My self-nature
(zixing) shrinks owing to fear, and is liberated owing to fairytales, which
is why in that fairytale world there are not only fishes and birds, but also
so many graves” (Gu 2005a: 310).
- On another occasion in 1992, Gu Cheng said, “A ghost will not be able
to die” (Gui shi meifa side) (Gu 2005a: 292).
- The line quoted from Gu Cheng is the ending line of the poem “Nature”
(Ziran), which is included in the sequence Praises to the World(Songge
shijie) (1983–1985) (Gu 1995: 654–680).
Gu Cheng’s Metamorphosis 143
