118 chapter three
Cui Weiping’s “In Memory of Truth” (ⳳ⧚ⱘ攴༴, 1992) ends on
a thanatographical note, and the section “Split and Rupture of the
Self” in “The Myth of Haizi” (⍋ᄤ干䆱, 1992) was likely inspired by
Haizi’s physical rupture on the railroad track. On the whole, however,
Cui’s analysis is based on textual evidence, not all-powerful visions of
poethood and of the poet’s life and work as one. Toward the end of
“The Myth of Haizi” she wonders whether a sense of calmness and
resignation in Haizi’s poems from his final months points to a resolve
to end his life, or to a quiet spell preceding a new outburst of creativity.
But she interrupts her own speculations:^40
Be all that as it may, it remains impossible to draw any conclusions about
the reason why on 26 March 1989 he suddenly chose to leave this world.
There was a crisis all along, but its outcome was by no means necessary.
In the end, to go by his poetry for drawing conclusions on the cause of
his suicide is not all there is to it—and to go by his suicide for an under-
standing of his poetry makes even less sense. His fate harbored a few
more secrets (they may be very simple ones) that he has taken away with
him forever.The most powerful instance of demythification is Xi Chuan’s “After-
word to Death” (⅏ѵৢ䆄, 1994). This is a different voice from that in
“Remembrance,” forceful yet reluctant and sometimes angry, intimat-
ing that “Afterword” was difficult to write, and was perhaps written
not out of the urge to continue speaking but from a sense of duty to the
memory of a friend and fellow poet, that had taken on a life all of its
own—spurred, incidentally, by Xi Chuan’s own earlier commentary
as much as by others.
Xi Chuan begins his intervention with critical reflections on the
publicity that Haizi’s death unleashed. He then gives a systematic ac-
count of “what he knows and what he conjectures” about possible rea-
sons for Haizi’s suicide. The first is Haizi’s “suicide complex.” Haizi
had apparently attempted suicide in 1986 and was fascinated by the
popular idea that artistic talent or genius often brings a young death
(ᠡⷁੑǃᠡᮽ༁). The second is Haizi’s disposition, which Xi
Chuan calls pure, stubborn, sensitive, puritan and sentimental among
other things, and generally gentle but “leopard-like” when he was an-
gered. Liaoyuan’s biography of Haizi presumably took its name from
(^40) Cui 1999b: 98, 1999c, 1992b: 101, 110. Zhong Ming’s reflections are similarly
inspired by the fact that Haizi had himself physically cut in two (1991).