124 chapter three
shocking. Notably, the questions I have raised about conflations of his
life and work do not invalidate biographical readings per se, as long as
they are based on textual evidence—nor do such readings reduce his
poetry to documents of “mere” human interest.
Haizi himself found his long poems the most important, calling
them “the only real poetry.” His commentators differ in their assess-
ment. The posthumous publication of The Land shows that Luo Yihe
especially admired his epic poetry, and the same is true for Liaoyuan.
Tan Wuchang, too, while recognizing that Haizi’s epics provoked
fiercely negative reactions among his fellow poets, maintains that they
deserve a prominent position in literary history. Luo Zhenya calls
Haizi’s efforts toward the epic “legitimate” but concludes that his am-
bitions were not realized. Cheng Guangwei is critical of Haizi’s failure
to structure or limit his torrential outpourings of language, and Qin
Bazi, as we have seen, calls Haizi’s epic poetry fundamentally unfit for
the age. I concur with Cheng Guangwei. Large parts of «The Sun»,
for instance, present clichéd megalomania and unexplained allusions
to private experience in a bombastic mix that simply fails to gel, not-
withstanding the beauty of passages such as those in the part called
«Night Song» (℠).^47
I find Haizi’s short, lyrical poems easily the best part of his oeuvre.
Many contain archetypal subject matter and imagery from the natural
and rural worlds. This includes the sun, the earth, the moon and the
stars, the sky and the sea; fall, winter and spring—but not summer;
dusk, nightfall and night, darkness, dawn and daybreak, light; fire and
water, wind, rain, snow and sunshine; grasslands, rivers; the soil, wheat
and wheatfields, grain, farming villages, harvest, shepherds, livestock;
blood and death. The poems usually unfold from the perspective of a
first-person speaker, in whose mood moments of euphoria stand out
against a keynote of depression: sad, somber, sometimes downright
bleak. Haizi’s usage combines pompous expressions with colloquial-
isms and moments of intimacy. Most of his poetry is in free verse. Yet,
critics of various persuasions agree that he made a major contribution
to reestablishing the phenomenon of song (℠ଅ) in contemporary po-
(^47) Haizi 1997: 888. His preference for “big” and “epic” poetry and poetry “of
greatness” is evident throughout his explicit poetics (869-918, esp 898-901). See also
Xi Chuan 1994a: 94 and Luo Yihe 1990: 2-3. Luo Yihe 1990, Liaoyuan 2001: 277,
Tan Wuchang 1999: 197ff, Luo Zhenya 2005: 116-126, Cheng Guangwei 1999:
222, Qin 1999. Haizi 1997: 799-866. «Night Song» is found on 840-841.