desecrations? 395When discussing poetry, I’m in the habit of speaking in negative [ᥦ᭹
ᗻ] terms, such as what poetry is not, and what the poet is not. All claims
about what poetry is, and how the poet should act, are biased...Typically, when asked by Malingshu Xiongdi whether he writes to
get closer to people or to remove himself farther from them, Han
answers:^69
It seems that it’s neither [ԐТ䛑ϡᰃ].Of his 1980s adage that “poetry goes no farther than language,” dis-
cussed in chapter Two, Han says:^70
it has a negative intent [ᥦ᭹ᗻⱘᛣ]and^71
it wasn’t a theoretical formula... when a one-time saying like that turns
into a truth, this is very scary.Yu Jian has had considerable success in advocating the “rejection of
metaphor” and the “deconstruction of language” and, often together
with Han, waging war on whatever big beasts he spots on the Chinese
poetry scene. Yet, as noted in chapter Seven, in spite of the many ne-
gations he utters, Yu produces not just poems but also metatexts that
come across as wanting to be there and appropriating discursive terri-
tory. By contrast, many of Han Dong’s writings in both genres strike
one as exercises in disappearance, written in spite of themselves, as it
were—reluctant and reticent, often attempting to reason their very
subject out of existence.
That the voices of both Han Dong and Yu Jian carry weight in the
metatextual arena of contemporary China is evident in their author-
ship of flagship essays in multiple-author anthologies, reproductions
and citations of their work and so on.^72 Perhaps predictably, the con-
trast noted above also finds expression in their productivity in terms of
sheer volume. While Han Dong has a respectable list of publications to
his name, Yu Jian has generated astonishing amounts of metatext. This
is not just because he has so much to say—which he does—or because
he wants to make money, or because many of his pieces appear to
(^69) Han & Malingshu Xiongdi 2004: 103.
(^70) Han & Zhu 1993: 69.
(^71) Han & Chang 2003.
(^72) E.g. Han 1999 and Yu Jian 1999b.