122 chapter three
Haizi’s poetry brings about a sacred (干) feeling, while being firmly
rooted in the concrete world of humankind.
One commentary that deserves special mention, if only because it
presents itself as questioning Haizi’s mythification, is Gao Bo’s Inter-
preting Haizi (㾷䇏⍋ᄤ, 2003). The motivation of Gao’s book—and
of the case study of Haizi in his Modern Poets and Modern Poetry (⦄ҷ
䆫Ҏ⦄ҷ䆫, 2005)— is akin to that of the present chapter in that
Gao questions a vision of Haizi’s writings that is determined by his
suicide. Gao’s discussion of central images in Haizi’s poetry is certainly
worthwhile, as are his reflections on Haizi’s rural provenance and his
affinity with folk art and popular cultural forms, and his contextualiza-
tion of Haizi in twentieth-century Chinese poetry.^44 Still, Interpreting
Haizi fails to reach its professed goal of clarifying matters and keep-
ing people from “misreading” mythified versions of Haizi, largely on
account of a reading attitude that is similar to that of Haizi’s biogra-
phers. Gao tends to take Haizi’s poetic genius as a given that precedes
any textual analysis, and Haizi’s explicit poetics as the unassailable
truth about the poet’s own writings. To Gao, the historical Haizi’s in-
tellectual and emotional experience is self-evidently knowable, and its
acute relevance is beyond a shadow of a doubt. This limits his textual-
interpretive space.
We have seen that the great majority of Haizi’s domestic commen-
tators mythify his life as part of his work, identify his poetry with his
suicide and make what he wrote inseparable from everything else he
did. In itself, this is perfectly understandable. After deduction of some
rhetorical exaggeration, there is no reason to doubt the accuracy of
Haizi’s image as a worshiper of poetry, as one absolutely dedicated to
and indeed possessed by poetry, and hence, in a romantic vision, as the
embodiment of poetry who wanted, in his own words, to “speed up the
pace of life and death.” Nor is there any reason to deny that certain
passages in his work lend themselves to a biographical reading. There
is textual evidence to that effect that is more concrete than a general
compatibility of mood or temperament between the poet’s personal-
ity and his writings. Several of his poems feature a protagonist called
Haizi, and there are phrases and words that fit biographical fact, such
as the names of places Haizi visited and a reference to a family of six,
(^44) Gao Bo 2003: e.g. 91, 96ff, 113-125 and 169ff. Gao Bo 2005: 132-179 (there
is considerable overlap with Gao Bo 2003).