{"id":3820,"date":"2017-07-31T09:12:23","date_gmt":"2017-07-31T01:12:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3820"},"modified":"2017-07-31T09:12:23","modified_gmt":"2017-07-31T01:12:23","slug":"admussen-on-liu-xiaobos-love-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3820","title":{"rendered":"Admussen on Liu Xiaobo’s Love Poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Awkward,<\/a>In honor of the recent passing of Liu Xiaobo \u5218\u6653\u6ce2<\/span>, here is a link to an old piece, which had slipped by without my noticing it when it was first published: Nick Admussen’s “Awkward, Diligent: Liu Xiaobo’s Love Poetry<\/a>” for his wife, Liu Xia \u5218\u971e. Admussen writes:<\/p>\n

In addition to the essays that have made him famous, Xiaobo generally writes two kinds of poems. One, best represented in translation by Jeffrey Yang, is a series of poems written for the victims of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, often on the anniversaries of the event. The other is a series of poems addressed to Liu Xiaobo\u2019s wife, Liu Xia\u2014a number of these appear in English at the end of Yang\u2019s translation, as well as in the collection No Enemies, No Hatred<\/em>, which I helped translate. The elegies for Tiananmen are persistent, ritual, endlessly harsh: they display not only the cruelty and excess of the government reaction to peaceful protest, but Liu\u2019s own sense of responsibility, loss, and helplessness. He writes, \u201cEven if I have the courage \/ to be jailed again \/ it isn\u2019t courage enough \/ to dig up corpses from memory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Xiaobo\u2019s poems to his wife, though, are the most illuminating to me. During some of his stays in prison, he was able to write and send hundreds of poems and letters to Xia. These poems waver between public documents and interpersonal contact. They wheedle playfully: \u201c. . . think of me as a cigarette \/ now to light, now to rub out \/ go ahead, smoke!\u201d They reach out: \u201cOne letter is enough \/ for me to transcend everything and face \/ you to speak.\u201d They often seem, implicitly or explicitly, to apologize: \u201cBeloved \/ my wife \/ in this dust-weary world of \/ so much depravity \/ why do you \/ choose me alone to endure.\u201d But they remonstrate and mock, too: a poem on Kant is dedicated to \u201cXia, who has never read Kant.\u201d Taken together, the poetry enacts a love in progress, a need, a selfless drive to care for and support the beloved that is deeply tied to a simultaneous, frightening urge to manipulate and transform him or her for self-serving purposes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Click on the image for the article in full.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In honor of the recent passing of Liu Xiaobo \u5218\u6653\u6ce2, here is a link to an old piece, which had slipped by without my noticing it when it was first published: Nick Admussen’s “Awkward, Diligent: Liu Xiaobo’s Love Poetry” for … 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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3],"tags":[1880,45,556,553,664],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8srwF-ZC","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4160,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=4160","url_meta":{"origin":3820,"position":0},"title":"Fotopoulos on Poetry Anthology in Commemoration of Liu Xiaobo","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"July 16, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"As you probably know, Friday was the one-year anniversary of the death of jailed democracy activist and poet Liu Xiaobo \u5218\u6653\u6ce2, and last Tuesday his widow Liu Xia \u5218\u971e was released from her eight-year house arrest and has taken refuge in Germany (her release was due to the principled negotiation\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/chinachannel.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/waves-cover.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1047,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=1047","url_meta":{"origin":3820,"position":1},"title":"Fiona Sze-Lorrain on Jeffrey Yang’s translatoin of Liu Xiaobo’s June Fourth Elegies","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"July 20, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Fiona Sze-Lorrain's review of Jeffrey Yang's translation of June Fourth Elegies \u5ff5\u5ff5\u516d\u56db by Liu Xiaobo \u5218\u6653\u6ce2 is now up on Words Without Borders. Strangely, her review doesn't mention Yang by name, but she does discuss the translation, calling it \"a stylistic rendering of Liu Xiaobo\u2019s plainspoken language, which at times\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3818,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3818","url_meta":{"origin":3820,"position":2},"title":"Graywolf Press on the Death of Liu Xiaobo","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"July 14, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Liu Xiaobo\u00a0\u5218\u6653\u6ce2, human rights activist, 2010 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and poet, died on July 13, 2017--less than a month after he was granted medical parole for a terminal liver cancer diagnosis. Graywolf Press, which published his poetry and that of his wife Liu Xia\u00a0\u5218\u971e in English translation, now has\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.graywolfpress.org\/sites\/default\/files\/Liu%20Xiaobo.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3830,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3830","url_meta":{"origin":3820,"position":3},"title":"Stern and Ming Di’s Liu Xia on Poetry Northwest","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"August 7, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Poetry Northwest has published Jennifer Stern's and Ming Di's translations of poems by Liu Xia \u5218\u971e, the missing widow of Liu Xiaobo \u5218\u6653\u6ce2. Stern writes in her introduction: Many of us here read and write poems to know that we exist, and that we are entwined with others through an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":970,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=970","url_meta":{"origin":3820,"position":4},"title":"Julia Lovell on Liu Xiaobo’s No Enemies, No Hatred","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"June 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Julia Lovell's review of No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems of Liu Xiaobo \u5218\u6653\u6ce2, edited by Perry Link, Tienchi Martin-Liao, and Liu Xia, is now up on Modern Chinese Literature & Culture. 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