238 chapter six
institutionalization. In this respect as in others, Yu Jian’s method is
one of brute force and of what I have called purposeful monotony.
He exhibits endless examples of politically correct “official” or main-
stream language (ᦤ⊩) to represent various kinds of social traffic, and
alternates these with curious, incredulous, parodying comments and
would-be objective, disinterested depictions of “unofficial” realities of
human behavior. For «File 0», issues of subject matter, style and in-
terpretation may be summed up as follows: this text is not only about
a file, it is a file itself; and it not only has a style, but it is about style as
well.
Dividing lines between issues of form and content in literary writ-
ing are hardly ever clear. Still, it is safe to say that what «Salute» and
«File 0» are about, as distinct from what they look like and what they
sound like, gives us grounds for calling both texts poetry. Again, they
are given the same classification for different reasons: «Salute» primar-
ily for its imagery, «File 0» primarily for its irony and the means it em-
ploys to achieve this irony. Both the use of imagery and that of irony
are inextricably tied to their respective authors’ expert manipulation
of language.
Reading AttitudesComparison of the reading attitudes that «Salute» and «File 0» require
provides further clues. If poetry foregrounds the musical qualities of
language and spurs the imagination beyond the confines of “reality,”
and if it doesn’t invite the reader to engage in goal-oriented communi-
cation toward the primacy of a paraphraseable “message,” or indeed
discourages them from doing so, then «Salute» is definitely poetry.
The case presented by «File 0» is less simple. One would hardly call
a plethora of trivial information on an unspectacular, ordinary urban
life a message. Then again, the reader may well pick up an abstracted
message of the kind discussed above, for example on systems of control
exercised by files and their keepers, and by implication on ideological
and political repression. But can this message lay claim to primacy in
«File 0»? For the reader who finds that it cannot, the previous para-
graphs have shown that the peculiar presentation of «File 0» com-
pensates for this by offering alternative attractions, even if it doesn’t
employ conventionally poetic language.