{"id":2393,"date":"2014-01-28T09:30:39","date_gmt":"2014-01-28T01:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=2393"},"modified":"2014-01-27T23:00:32","modified_gmt":"2014-01-27T15:00:32","slug":"lilburn-on-xi-chuan-zhai-yongming-in-brick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=2393","title":{"rendered":"Lilburn on Xi Chuan & Zhai Yongming in Brick"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Canadian literary journal Brick<\/em> <\/a>has published Tim Lilburn’s essay on “A Mandelstamian Generation in China,” on Xi Chuan and Zhai Yongming \u7fdf\u6c38\u660e. He writes,<\/p>\n

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There has been a tendency in North America and Europe to imagine Chinese writers, poets especially perhaps, as inevitably and necessarily political, dissidents in a way that flatters the West. This was true for writers in the Soviet Union too, which made it difficult, for example, to appreciate the complete range of someone like Joseph Brodsky once he first became known outside of Russia. Taking Xi Chuan this way, or any in his generation, would bring on similar reductive distortions. It is true that in China\u2019s current state of cultural undefinition, some intellectuals, as Xi Chuan told [Eleanor] Wachtel, \u201care trying to rethink or reflect on history, not only ancient history but also on modern history, revolutionary history,\u201d in order to imagine a possible, more coherent China. It\u2019s also true that traditionally poets, like scholars, in the Confucian scheme of things, have seen themselves as serving the state by helping to shape its notion of itself, either by speaking directly to the masses or by educating the ruler. But the West is chiefly keen to identify dissidents wherever it can, because these, it supposes, are warriors for its own cause within an opposing power, who work utterly at their own risk. It\u2019s hard to believe that any of the major Chinese poets I spoke to seeks to fulfill the role of furthering Western cultural expansion. As Xi Chuan said in the Wachtel interview: \u201cI don\u2019t think Cnia will one day become, for instance, Canada, America, England, or France.\u201d Nor, it seems, does he wish exactly that it would. When I asked the Chinese poets gathered in 2008 at White Stone Town in Anhui Province how they thought of being seen by the West as dissidents, Ouyang Jianghe, one of the most fiery of the group, exploded that he had no wish to be regarded as a writer who was professionally a disaffected Chinese intellectual. Such a vocation was far too soft and besides was a self-serving invention from elsewhere.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For ordering information and the journal’s table of contents, click the image above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Canadian literary journal Brick has published Tim Lilburn’s essay on “A Mandelstamian Generation in China,” on Xi Chuan and Zhai Yongming \u7fdf\u6c38\u660e. He writes, There has been a tendency in North America and Europe to imagine Chinese writers, poets … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3,814,7],"tags":[469,1333,236,1247,1654],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8srwF-CB","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":252,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=252","url_meta":{"origin":2393,"position":0},"title":"Northern & Central European Writers in Hongkong","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"November 2, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The participants of this year's International Writers' Workshop (which hosted Xi Chuan last year) at Hong Kong Baptist University will be reading at the Fringe Club in Central Hongkong tomorrow night, along with HK's own Poetry Out Loud. 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