230 chapter six
trast, prose poetry doesn’t manifest itself in literature from the People’s
Republic until the mid-1980s. Orthodox traditions in PRC literature
contain many examples of poems that could be called prosaic, such
as Li Ji’s «Wang Gui and Li Xiangxiang» (⥟ḖϢᴢ佭佭, 1946), He
Jingzhi’s «Song of Lei Feng», and Luo Gaolin’s «Deng Xiaoping»
(䙧ᇣᑇ, 1996),^12 but the features that lead one to do so—length: tens
and indeed hundreds of pages of more or less linear narrative, lack
of original metaphor and ambiguity—are not those that characterize
prose poetry in the broad Baudelairean tradition. If we loosely define
the latter as short texts with conventionally poetic features but without
line breaks, experiments with prose poetry can be seen to occur again
in China from the 1980s onward, in the works of authors including
Yang Lian, Ouyang Jianghe, Xue Di, Liao Yiwu, Chen Dongdong
and Xi Chuan.
As we have seen, Xi Chuan’s use of the prose-poetic form in the
1990s appears to be structural rather than incidental, in texts such as
«Salute», «Misfortune» and «What the Eagle Says». Further to the
close reading offered in chapter Five, an analysis of the prosaic and
poetic qualities of «Salute» stands to gain from contrasting it with Yu
Jian’s «File 0», and vice versa. Both texts call attention to distinctions
of poetry and prose, but in very different ways. Chapter Five has pro-
vided some context for situating Xi Chuan in the avant-garde at large,
and chapter Seven will do so for Yu Jian. Here, we go straight to the
texts. For «File 0», the analysis is based on the 1994 Grand Master edi-
tion.
«Salute» consists of eight constituent texts with separate head-
ings containing numbers One through Eight and the individual titles
«Night», «Salute», «Abode», «The Monster», «Maxims», «Ghosts»,
«Fourteen Dreams» and «Winter». In translation, the text totals over
3200 words. «File 0» consists of seven parts: a prologue called «The
File Room» (ḷḜᅸ), five Books (ोϔǃोѠ etc, some with sub-
divisions): «Book One History of Birth» (ोϔߎ⫳), «Book
Two History of Growing Up» (ोѠ៤䭓), «Book Three His-
tory of Romantic Love» (ोϝᘟ⠅), «Book Four Daily Life»
(ोಯ᮹ᐌ⫳⌏) and «Book Five Forms» (ोѨ㸼Ḑ), and an
(^12) Li Ji 1982, vol 1: 1-55; He Jingzhi 1979: 366-426; Luo Gaolin 1996. «Wang
Gui and Li Xiangxiang» predates the founding of the PRC but is a product of the
lines laid out in Mao Zedong’s 1942 “Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and
Art” that would determine PRC cultural policy for decades to come (McDougall
1980, Denton 2003).