media, literary and otherwise, seeing an opportunity not merely in the
interest of poetry, offered a helping hand. As a result, the polemics
ensued from 1999 to 2002, during which time an ever-expanding list
of interested parties spilled an incredible amount of ink on the prob-
lem via several dozens of media outlets.^2 In terms of the exclusive
positioning and personal intolerance displayed by the participants,
this dispute created a colorful literary spectacle in the cultural life of
China unprecedented in the last two decades.
Is there any substance to the debate? What stands behind the ugly
personal attacks and rhetorical fights? Are the noises created by the
participants merely a publicity stunt or an expression of emerging new
poetics? In this chapter, I will revisit the major issues of contention
between the two schools of thought, examine their artistic positions
through a reading of the respective chief spokespersons and finally
offer a critique of the debate in terms of the development of contem-
porary Chinese poetry. First, let us turn to the theoretical construction
of “intellectual writing.”
According to the poet and critic Xi Chuan, intellectuals are “those
of superior intelligence who are rich in the spirit of independence, the
spirit of skepticism, and moral fiber, and who, through the means of
literature, write about the most important contemporary affairs for
educated ordinary readers. Their chief characteristics are to offer a
critique of thought” (Shao 1998: 104). In the same vein, Ouyang
Jianghe ?@>A(b. 1956) writes: “Intellectual is never an honorary
title, for it is always deeply connected with a sort of doubting
individualism, whose position is that of a typical liberal” (Wang
1994: 5). Clearly, this view of intellectuals was borrowed heavily from
the West as indicated by the critics’ choices of words, but the idea is
not foreign to the Chinese shi (scholar/official) Btradition. There is a
close correspondence between the Western maxim “the intellectual is
the conscience of society” and the Chinese one “the scholar/official
concerns the world” BC天EF. This description of the intellectual as
a skeptical individual also stands against the Maoist discourse of
China’s immediate past, which not only took away the intellectual’s
individual rights but also stripped away his dignity as a human being.
If, however, Xi Chuan and others mean to describe the parameters
of the intellectual with one eye on the West and another on the
Chinese shi tradition, they show some creative and original thinking
when they begin to theorize about “intellectual writing” based on
their ideas of the intellectual. Explicit political interventions and
avowed social responsibilities are two key elements that are ostensibly
missing in their propositions of intellectual poetry. Here one sees a
186 Dian Li