100 chapter three
jing Press brought out Works by Haizi and Luo Yihe (⍋ᄤǃ做ϔ見ક
䲚), containing selections from every genre that Haizi had practiced.
Nominally edited by Zhou Jun and Zhang Wei, Works was in fact a
reprint of the second issue of the unofficial journal Tendency, edited
by Chen Dongdong, which had appeared in 1990. Also in 1991, the
People’s Literature Press sought out Xi Chuan to compile a collection
of Haizi’s short poems, after several other publishers had contacted
him with the same request but failed to convince him of their integrity.
Because of personnel changes at the Press, The Poetry of Haizi (⍋ᄤⱘ
䆫) didn’t appear until 1995. In an afterword to the first print run the
publisher is relieved to satisfy at long last the many reader requests for
such a book. This was no idle prattle. By the twelfth run in June 2005,
as many as 110,000 copies of The Poetry of Haizi had been printed,
and in 2006 People’s Literature brought out a new edition with minor
changes simply called Haizi (⍋ᄤ), in a series entitled Selected Poetry
by Famous Contemporary Chinese Poets (Ёᔧҷৡ䆫Ҏ䗝䲚). Finally, in
1997 the Shanghai Triple Alliance Bookstore published The Complete
Poems of Haizi (⍋ᄤ䆫ܼ㓪) in 934 pages, edited by Xi Chuan and
containing Haizi’s short and long poems and all 350 pages of «The
Sun», as well as his essays on poetry, forewords and afterwords to in-
dividual poems and diary entries.^9
The Complete Poems is one of four such collections of similar design,
published by the Triple Alliance between 1995 and 1999. The other
three contain the oeuvres of Gu Cheng, Luo Yihe and Ge Mai. Dead
authors lend themselves more naturally than live ones to the publica-
tion of their complete poems, but most of the work in three of the four
books (Haizi, Luo Yihe, Ge Mai) had remained unpublished while
its authors were alive. Clearly, these big, black volumes embody the
special status of poets who died young, suddenly and violently, and by
their own hand. The suicidal criterion extends to Luo Yihe by associa-
tion, through his dramatically thwarted editorship of Haizi’s legacy.
This observation also applies to the very idea behind Works by Haizi and
(^9) On the immediate effects of June Fourth on avant-garde literature and art, see
Luo Yihe 1990: 10 and Yang Li 2004: 16-17. Haizi 1990, 1995, 1997 and 2006,
Haizi & Luo 1991; for Haizi’s other books, see Van Crevel 2008a. English transla-
tions are found in Tang Chao & Robinson 1992, Zhao (Henry) & Cayley 1994,
Haizi 2005 and Tao & Prince 2006.