Interview with Xue Di was published in Arts & Letters , No. 8, Fall 2002

Interview with Xue Di

Brown University , Providence , RI

August 1999

Interviewer: Yang Xiaobin

YXB: In your interview with Edward Lee, you mentioned the change in your poetic style since you left China . Could you speak in detail about the reasons for this change?

XD: The sudden change of surroundings caused my mind to turn blank. In my new environment I could write freely, but I had lost the environment I knew well. I had lost the environment where my own language is spoken. In a single day my friends were suddenly gone; the government that had been suppressing my creative work was suddenly far away; the forces that had pushed me to create were suddenly gone. I felt at a loss, speaking a language I didn't know, in a culture foreign to me. My clumsy, painful attempts at self-expression made me feel retarded. This frustrated, beleaguered feeling added to the pressure in my new life, and it pushed my writing toward an important turning point. I started looking inward more intently, listening to a distinct voice within myself, instead of listening to a jumbled mass of loud voices, as I used to do in China . Formerly I lived and wrote among those voices. But there was too much loud noise mixed in with them. Writing abroad is more individual, more solitary; for that reason the voice from inside comes more purely, with a less utilitarian slant. It is much more a matter of one's own awareness. My writing has become more distinct, more inward, less explosive. This is what's behind the change I've gone through.

YXB: What is the most fundamental difference between writing in America and in China ?

XD: My first answer touched on that. The basic difference is that back in China , my creative work was too much of an outward release, because my state of life was so constrained. My writing had a strong anti-government thrust; it got its momentum from the struggle for free expression. So what I wrote was explosive. There was momentum, but not enough inner content. My poetry went through different phases back in China , to some extent I was influenced by the approach of Western poets that were being introduced in translation. My writing overseas is done outside of my own cultural and language environment. For that reason, my works seem more serene, more collected; there is more self-examination and inner illumination; there is more of what you get by listening. This brings about distance: between the writer and the work there is a distance of thought and feeling; there are distances between the reader and the work and realities of life. There is also the distance between the work itself and what the reader perceives. These interlocking kinds of distance give tension and impact to the work. As the work touches on a deeper, inward region, the expressive form becomes distinct and clean. Because I don't live within my mother tongue, I experience and use my mother tongue sensitively, in a more self-initiated way. The poems I write go more directly inward; the language is more clean; aimless things have been gotten rid of. My pieces are showing a progression, a movement toward perfecting a style not influenced by other poets. This is because a life of solitary thought in a foreign culture have strengthened and matured my sense of self and character. As a poet, I've gotten stronger and more clear-edged. One thing has remained the same: whether in China or abroad, my poetry has always kept a tight connection with life. When you read my poems, you'll find a person's genuine, concrete states of feeling: pain, dejection, crying out, feeling delight, or pursuing things of the spirit. They faithfully record my growth process in spirit and flesh, the upward route of my spiritual journey, and my aesthetic development. Since they are genuine, clear, and uncontrived, that may enable their expressive mode to be all the more abstract.

YXB: What does exile mean to you? Do you consider yourself to be in exile? Or are you exiled in an inward sense?

XD: Banishment and exile are forced upon a person for political reasons. I do not feel I am in exile. To live in another country was my choice; nobody forced me to stay abroad, and I can return to China if I want. I don't describe myself with the term “inner exile” either. I chose to live in America , which means I take an active stance in life. There are difficulties to living in a new country, especially for a poet who builds his lifework on language. His intimate connection with language goes beyond that in any other field of art. So in a country where his mother tongue is not spoken, the pain and deep loneliness inside have the power to tear someone apart. If an emigre poet's character isn't strong enough, and if his goal isn't clear enough, if he cannot ward off distraction and bewilderment caused by new material temptations, and if he cannot summon up every ounce of energy to do what needs done, such a poet will have no way to keep writing in a new country. This is the reason many mainland poets have stopped writing since they came to the West. It's tiring to live in the Western world with your energy focused intently, unless you get into the right state, and feel that this life brings tremendous compensations. I feel this kind of inner life is a challenge; there is also happiness in one's spirit that is hard to come by. I've chosen this way of life, so it is not “inner exile.” Nobody made me go into exile inside myself. I did this on my own initiative, knowing what choice I was making.

YXB: If you had to classify yourself, which school would you say you belong to.

XD: From beginning to end my poems have been closely connected with life. My poetic understanding and my expressive mode have been getting richer and more complete. If I lost my delicate, clear feel for emotions and details of life, I wouldn't write poems any more. I have never labeled my writing as part of a school, just as I couldn't classify life into schools. Creative work and life are the same: complex, clear, and alive with goodness. You need to be sincere, to show some insight and collect your energy. Earnestness and depth are paramount. These are my articles of faith as a person and poet. So even if you forced me I would not claim membership in any school. My poetry is created from life, from my sincere feelings. I would hope poetic expression to be as substantial as soil, and expansive like the sky. Development of poetic craft should be like air and energy by which living things exist; they are in you and of you. You breathe them in and out; you attune yourself; at the same time, air connects you with the life of things. You see them flowing, changing direction, vanishing and then appearing again. They bring all things into connection, and then manifest in a scene of nature. You watch it, and you are in it. This is the style poetry gets written in. It cannot be characterized or capsulized by the name of a school.

YXB: What was your relation with Today magazine in the late Seventies?

XD: Zhenkai [Bei Dao], Mang Ke, Duo Duo, Yang Lian and Yan Li were all friends. Hei Dachun was too. I joined many of Today's activities, but I didn't belong to the circle that wrote for Today . The number of times I got drunk with them far exceeds the number of times I joined in their literary activities. They held several readings in my place, when I lived at residence No.212 in the Chinese Medical Institute near Dongzhimen. In the recollection of patrolmen and residents in that locality, residence No.212 in the Medical Institute was a place where people got drunk, got in fights, and had literary readings. This was my connection with the old Today magazine.

YXB: What is your understanding of classical Chinese poetry and culture? Have they had any influence on you?

XD: Classical Chinese poetry admirably expressed the connection of “tangible form” with “meaning.” Actually, this is also a topic and approach for modern and post-modern poetry. Perhaps the clusters of images are different now; perhaps there are different states of feeling and intention, but modern works also need to combine “tangible form” with “meaning.” One needs to study how intention and image can be brought into perfect connection. We should notice the mindfulness about detail in classical poems. I believe this is where the great success of the old poems lies. What gives them their strong aesthetic component and their impact on our sensibility has a lot to do with the old poets' ability to observe and render details. They presented details accurately, then connected them abstractly. So you have matter resonating, and you have an abstract gestalt [body]. At that moment, matter rarefies into a flow of energy; the details become vehicles for an inward and outward expansion. Classical poems always speak substantively of things, which is the “core”; spirit is conveyed richly and perfectly in the connections among things, which is the “gestalt”[body]. The two complement and lend weight to each other; together they evolve poetic beauty that holds abundant spiritual qualities.

In April 1998 I was awarded a residency at Djerassi in California . From April to June I stayed in the Santa Cruz mountains, immersing myself in writing “Cat's Eye in a Splintered Mirror.” At that time I was doing a study of old poems. The wonderful mountain views and large tracts of red pine; the vast sea at the foot of the mountains; countless mountain animals and the endless coastal rainy season: all these things led me to experience the natural beauty of the old poems for myself. My fascination with photography during that period helped me sense the importance of details in classical poems.

Post-modern art reflects the era of consumption in the West; it is an era marked by disappearance of the whole, as the particular emerges and dominates everything. The art of advertising is becoming more refined, and is occupying people's everyday lives. Post-modern art is an art of details. From Pop Art to the Language Poetry movement on America 's west coast, the concern with detail is a concern with the particular. That is, it is opposition to standardization and collectivity. Without concern for details there would be no everyday life, and the artistic character of post-modernism would be lost. My ten years of life in America has given me an appreciation for this. Further understanding of post-modern art has given me clearer insight into its formal connection with classical Chinese poetry. My new writings pay attention to detail; they pay attention to accurate, well-honed depiction of detail; they pay attention to exploring the substance underlying separate phenomena; they pay attention to the openness and thought that go into connecting details; they pay attention to the precise beauty of embodying perception abstractly. In this way, the poems are more solid since the words point to things; at the same time they are more open and precise. I've been searching for the place that links my writing with classical Chinese poetry. I have never wanted to cut off my tie to traditional culture. I have been considering how to let classical culture connect with modern modes. Being thrown on my own resources in a foreign country made me sense the urgency and importance of this search. In the mountains of California , as I listened to a pack of North American wolves howling outside my window, it dawned on me what form that connection could take.

YXB: Some people believe that trends in poetics either fall under mainstream culture or counterculture. You don't seem to belong to either. What is your view on this issue?

XD: My poems reflect life---the concrete desires and feeling-states of life: suffering, longing, solitary moments, and sounds heard on a quiet night. All these things are genuine and distinct. Poetry is my dialogue with my soul; it is the written record of certain stages when my corporeal body was developing toward a higher stage. In my writing, I have a deeper understanding of self, and I can transform some of life's bitter moments into beauty. My poetry writing is closely tied to the relation of spirit and flesh; it is deeply bound up with my awareness of spirit. So my writing is not about “culture,” and it's not about “counterculture.” I don't wish to set up labels, or chant slogans. I just write. I let the act of writing become the narrator and the interpreter. My writing process is also a cultural process, but the creativity points toward life itself. Writing poetry for me is an endeavor to sublimate life-energy, it is a record of pure thoughts about beauty; it records moments of revelation, and the joy of finding myself within beauty. These things are about realization and feeling, so they are somewhat removed from“culture” and “counterculture.”

YXB: You often use the idea of “inward,” or sometimes “downward.” Can you explain what those mean to you?

XD: Inwardness refers to a stance or a mode of existence; it is a choice, the choice to lead the inner life. Connecting this to writing, it is a style that turns energies inward, it turns emotions inward, until they erupt into a deeper area. This relates to my life in America . Those harmful external phenomena disappeared, and the direct object of opposition was gone (of course external pressures of earning money and paying bills still exists). At this point you discover the most formidable opponent, the one who harasses the serene life you're trying to lead, is none other than yourself. We are not used to battling with the self. We are used to living with external oppression, and then resisting oppression, and then being persecuted, and then resisting persecution. In that cycle we found our motivation for writing; we found the will and resolve to live. In this state of existence, we gained knowledge, we thirsted to get more knowledge, so we could fight a more protracted fight, a more impressive fight. This was our state of life, and it determined the details. It was our habit to scope out the shortcomings of the other guy. We lacked benevolence and sense of honor. According to our cognitive habit, “all mistakes were made by the other side,” by the Party.

Living in a new country, the object of my opposition was gone. In a free environment, breathing the air of democracy, I discovered that the “spirit of strife” actually put us at the lowest zone of existence. We had no time, or need, or proper setting to recognize, develop, and exalt our inner world. We never interrogated ourselves: In what respects were the mistakes ours? Wasn't it the chaos of our own intellects that caused our bewilderment and disaffection in daily life? Wasn't it our own frailty of spirit that caused us to live without clarity, without happiness. All this is mixed up with the Party's despotic rule, and cruel persecution by state police. We never asked ourselves: what errors and wrongdoings did we commit against human life and human nature? Those things were fatal, they were intolerable, and didn't they originate from one's own inner evil?

Therefore, I think inwardness is an attitude and an approach toward life. It is a choice to lead a life of intelligence and spirit. It is sincere and has abundant goodness. It directs energy inward, rather than expanding it outward; it finds a challenge in uplifting life to a new height. It is an attitude of seeing self's mistakes, of recognizing them and moving on. This attitude changes the way one writes poetry. Poems become cleaner; attention is more focused; the voice of spirit comes through more in the poems. Poems connect with the thinking of the classical poets, presenting language that is far-reaching, and imbued with wisdom. This kind of writing has well-rooted solidity. You feel the underlying part of these poems settling deeper, circulating in areas of depth. At the same time, the thrust of the poem is uplifting, arriving at a new level. It leads us along to a new height. Up there it is clean and easeful. Going inward is an arduous project, it is not a process of going along with impulse. But you can always see light above, and you don't give up. You can feel the light running through your days of writing poems.

YXB: What are your thoughts about the relation of poetry and politics?

XD: A poet should feel sympathy for sentient beings. If your people, your friends, and your family members live without happiness and freedom, you need to create poems that stand up for justice. Being “poetic” means sincerity and kindness; it means abundant dreams and fantasies of beauty. Politicians lie to achieve their aims; poets reach their aim by speaking what is in their hearts. They accept the risk of being persecuted for this. This is the basic distinction between poetry and politics. If you live in a country where despotism touches all aspects of people's lives, it is your duty as a poet to denounce and oppose injustice and inhumanity. You express this in language; every line implies your understanding and your responsibility to the value of life. Politicians utilize organizational means, which they shift around for their own benefit. They should take responsibility for values of life and purity of spirit. But too often they trample and harm those values.

A poet's sympathy should be universal. If you have no sympathy for people who live in misery, how can you approach your inner world with sincerity? How can you write poems that move people in this era? If you lack kindheartedness, your poems will not be kindhearted. Beauty is not cut off from goodness. Great beauty has great sympathy within it. Even if lines of poetry are beautiful, that comes from beauty in the poet's character. Poetry comes from a poet's goodheartedness and his acute perceptions. As for a poet who grew up in Mainland China , his writing must somehow be connected to the inhumane political situation there.

Even when writing the inner life, the more inward it gets the more closely it is connected with the politicized life our family members lead. The unjust treatment they receive is a failure in our own lives. We who live in a free environment have no excuse not to utter a cry of conscience, in our poetry, for our brothers and sisters who live in an inhumane situation.

Last Updated: May 15, 2004