exile 185revolting. Both readings tie in with the sense of dislodgment in the
subsequent image of a drunk who travels. A constant throughout his
travels, however, is a (poet’s) heart watching over the lyric core; this
echoes the core in «Whet the Knife», as a point from which music—or
poetry—emanates and to which it returns. If we let the indirect exile
marker of the travels evoke Bei Dao’s biography, the accident that
shatters the music—or poetry—that is underway (㸠䖯Ё, literally
‘advancing’ or ‘in operation’) could lead one to think of June Fourth.
The last thing this poem needs, however, is the reductionist force of
such historical context. Its potential lies in the ability to address the
experience of exile at large, not the forces that sent its author into
physical exile. The final stanza offers a powerful, indirect exile marker
in the time-honored image of the migratory birds that we also encoun-
ter in Wang Jiaxin’s work, and that Zhang Zhen invokes to sum up
her border-crossing experience since the early 1980s. The birds rise
from the speaker’s sleep—from his dreams?—as the embodiment of
the urge both to leave and to return.^83
The poem’s last line, he that speaks is without guilt (㿔㗙᮴㔾), is a
near-literal citation of a phrase from “The Great Preface” (ᑣ) to
the Book of Songs, one of the canonical sources of early Chinese poet-
ics: 㿔П㗙᮴㔾 ‘he that speaks it is without guilt,’ with it referring to
admonitions of authority whose literary form gives them license to vio-
late social taboo.^84 In other words, according to a traditional Chinese
poetics, the poet has the right to remonstrate with the ruler, as long
as the remonstrations are well put. Of course, while he sees himself
as a poet not a dissident, Bei Dao’s biography can be used or abused
to interpret his poetry as political protest. One need only think of the
founding of Today, his 1989 open letter requesting amnesty for politi-
cal prisoners and his consistent refusal to let himself be silenced by the
threat of political repercussions.^85 Yet, again, «Borrowing Direction»
can do without all that qua poetry. He that speaks is without guilt presents,
above all, a reassertion of the (poet’s) right to speak his poetry, aside
(^83) Bei Dao & Tang 2003: 164-165, Zhang Zhen 1999b.
(^84) See Owen 1992: 46. Owen renders the full string as When an admonition is given
that is governed by patterning (wen), the one who speaks it has no culpability. My translation
aims to bring out the intertextuality with Bei Dao’s poem.
(^85) Bei Dao 1990: 78.