exile 175tory style affects the text’s vitality, if only in a poetics that privileges
types of literature that show rather than tell—without any intention of
downplaying the suffering of the historical person called Bei Dao. At
any rate, the poem remains eminently capable of moving the reader,
as a text that consciously inserts itself into a public discourse that in-
cludes the biography of its author. As McDougall notes, the poetry
that Bei Dao wrote soon after June Fourth reflects “[his] grief at the
time of the massacre, and his anguish as the separation from his fam-
ily was prolonged.”^65 This recalls the desperate tone of Yang Lian’s
work in late 1989 and early 1990, and Lin’s characterization of some
of Yang’s poems as exuding hysteria. Lin’s analysis bespeaks an ulti-
mate preference for Bei Dao’s exile poetry, on account of his success
in balancing the Dionysian and Apollonian forces in his art, in the
Nietzschean sense.
Bei Dao’s oeuvre after June Fourth contains more declarations of
exile and of the forces that brought it upon him, especially in the early
years. For some, it is likely (self-)censorship that excluded them from
his 2003 domestic anthologies. An obvious example is «Mourning the
Dead: For the Victims of June Fourth» (ᚐѵ—݁Ўgಯফ䲒㗙㗠,
1989?): publication in China would trigger repressive action by the
authorities until such time as the official government position on June
Fourth is revisited.^66 «Morning Story» (ᮽ᰼ⱘᬙџ, 1990?) is another
poem whose declarative hues invite citation. It is cited nearly as often
as «Local Accent» and «He opens his third eye....». This is the first
stanza:^67
One word exterminates another word
one book orders
the burning of another book
a morning erected on the violence of language
changes how, in the morning
people sound when they coughIn the entire passage, the sound of coughing is the only image that
leaves room for interpretation. One could, for instance, read the
coughing as representing routines of daily life that are affected by
(^65) Bei Dao 1991: xi. Cf Lee (Leo Ou-fan) 1995: 14.
(^66) Bei Dao 1991: 10; not in 2003a or 2003b.
(^67) Bei Dao 1991: 26; not in 2003a or 2003b.