Elegy and Commemoration

Cam Rivers published Elegy and Commemoration: Selected Poems by Yan Zhi in 2023. Please find the introduction and afterwords written by our editors and distinguished authors below.

Introduction by Peter Hughes

Afterword by Alan Macfarlane

Afterword by Xie Mian

Afterword by Han Zuorong

Afterword by Zou Jianjun

Repetition is a key structuring principle in this poem, or sequence of poems. We have already mentioned the recurrence of ‘night’. This is when the speaker writes most of the poems and talks to Ran whilst doing so. She is long gone, both from this relationship and from life itself, so the speaker addressing her by name achieves various results. Firstly it rhetorically returns her to the presence of the speaker and the reader. It is therefore a kind of resurrection. Or, at least, a conversation with her spirit. The constant return to this setting, ‘late at night’, also communicates to the reader the obsessive nature of this quest, this poetic project. The speaker cannot control this obsession which functions like an addiction. Yet, at the same time, he insists on returning to this nocturnal setting, night after night, as if longing to immerse himself once more in the ritual. The repetition also has the effect of freeing the ritual from the confines of ordinary time. There is a timelessness about the invocations and poetic formulations which will lay the foundations for elevating the whole story to the realms of legend. In Part 4, ‘Requiem’ the reader is alerted to this tendency, this shift to an almost-mythic dimension in these lines: ‘Maybe decades later / I’ll meet a girl / on a mountain near my hometown // And she’ll tell me / of a legend that once belonged to us…’

In the fifth section of the poem we are introduced to the notion of ‘unstoppable seawater’ and a flood of biblical proportions. This image of ruinous crisis operates on a range of levels. Hitherto the poem has worked largely on a pattern of dualities, as we have seen. Dream and waking, ideal and real, heaven and earth. But the unstoppable seawater rushes in to breach these categories and sweep away distinctions. What kind of crisis is it? Is this an environmental crisis caused by rising sea levels? Is it a fractured dam? Is it a psychological crisis, or an existential one? It is all these things and is provoked by a renewed awareness of the significance of the loved one’s death. It is reminiscent of that moment in Petrarch’s poetry when the author becomes aware of the death of Laura. So the themes of loneliness and solitude return, together with the idea of being lost at sea. Loneliness can be overwhelming – one can drown in it. This brings the poet to talk about the importance of friendship from the earliest age. He speaks of being a baby and yearning for a friend beyond the family group. The rise of machine power is now seen as a threat to the world of human values based on friendship. The world of machine-powered work is seen as alienating and impersonal. Models of industrial efficiency become increasingly inhuman.

A contemporary world dominated by machines is contrasted with the world represented by the speaker’s parents. His father had an intimate bond with his fields and woodlands, a bond based on direct knowledge and experience of those locations through the changing seasons. The father derived crops and firewood from the land. But he also derived, through his own senses,  a deeper sense of belonging to the world through his everyday contact with its natural features. As the speaker moves from childhood to adulthood he is conscious of becoming estranged from his father and his father’s values. The poet has lost that fundamental connection with the land and therefore no longer belongs. This awareness is very painful to the speaker and echoes through the rest of the poem.

As the poem proceeds, the figure of the father undergoes a kind of metamorphosis and begins to represent an entire generation. The ‘father’ is still the father of the speaker, but he also starts to stand for all those left behind by industrialisation and urbanisation. There is an important moment when the speaker realises that his own problems are a direct consequences of these shifts in values: ‘My faults come from my youth / No, not entirely / more from the city / with its distant, glaring lights…’ We understand that the poet grew up in a period of transition, a period during which traditional rural values were being destroyed by the age of machines. The indifference of the city is emphasised repeatedly. The city simply doesn’t care about people. They are just its fuel, its food. Another notable moment, startling in retrospect, is when the poem shifts to talk about a dangerous virus sweeping through the community, a virus linked to unnatural practices.

In the course of this long poem the speaker throws himself wholeheartedly into what life has to offer. Sometimes the choices made are poor ones, deviations that are later regretted. The poem is always honest about the power of temptations, whether the temptations involve sex with strangers, making money at the expense of loved ones or realising personal ambitions for higher status without thinking about the potential impact on other people. The poem celebrates life, and the importance of keeping going even when things seem bleak and difficult. Your good experiences from the past have helped to form you, and you take them forwards with you into the future: ‘Whether it's a journey decked with flowers / or a journey threatened by sharp thorns / doesn't really matter /  The main thing is that you are always with me / Ah, this warmth / this unknown journey unfolding before me…’ Yet the poem also acknowledges and dramatises the challenges of dealing with loss, and coping with self-loathing after disappointing behaviour. So the reader is left with an optimistic message in the end, but it is an optimism that has grown out of sorrow and despair. We must go on to make a new world that will be tinged with our past sadness, but also warmed and cheered by our memories of joy.

Yan Zhi began his literary career in 1989 and became a member of the Chinese Writers’ Association in 1999. He has published several hundred literary works in various well-known Chinese literary publications and published over ten literary works. His poetic works have received numerous prestigious awards in China. His works have been translated into English, French, Russian, Japanese, Korean, and other languages and he serves as the chief editor of the Chinese Poetry magazine.

Yan Zhi founded a bookstore called the ‘Zhuo’er Bookstore’ in Wuhan. This opened in November 2013, focusing on humanistic reading and combining a bookstore, art gallery, a small theatre, coffee shop, pottery art hall, and gallery all in one artistic space.

Yan ZHi’sbookstore emphasises promoting quality books and building a cultural brand through various cultural activities. From its operational philosophy, it brings together the concepts of humanity, art, creativity and life. It provides not only an elegant and refined reading space for te general public but also various extended reading activities in a cultural and artistic atmosphere, meeting the spiritual and culturla needs of the masses. It has also created a space for dialogue and exchange among numerous poets and cultural figures. Zhuo’er Bookstore has recently opened a branch in Singapore, attracting the attention of more international poets.

Yan Zhi’s Work

I am not in a position to comment on Yan Zhi’s evident brilliance as an entrepreneur which has made him an impressive figure within the Chinese economic miracle. Nor am I in a position to comment on the quality of his poetry, which has been excellently surveyed by Peter Hughes. On the latter, however, I can say that, reading the translation of his long autobiographical poem was a real pleasure. It was evocative, imaginative and deeply personal and honest in its self- questioning. In some ways it reminded me of my favourite autobiographical poem in the English language, William Wordsworth’s ‘Prelude or Growth of a Poet’s Mind’. Many of the images, and the tension between his deep love of the countryside and the feverish atomism of the city to which he went remain in the mind. In brief it is a theme which we find in some of the greatest western poets as well, for example in W.B. Yeats’ The Lake Isle of Innisfree’, with its deep longing for childhood oneness with the natural world.

Yan Zhi and Wuhan

Yan Zhi’s poetry collection is primarily based on his life experiences in Hubei Province, especially in Wuhan City, where he has lived for several decades. His attachment to the city continues and recently, during the initial outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Mr. Yan, as a local entrepreneur, donated a significant amount of supplies to assist patients. This deep connection with the countryside and people of Wuhan is something I can comment on, since I have been to the city a number of times and read a good deal about its history.

Wuhan is a vast city, roughly the size of London in population. It has hundreds of universities and a university student population of over a million. It is in many ways the heart of China, both because of its central position, and because it is on the great waterways that have unified China over the millennia, particularly the Changjiang River (Yangtze) and the Hanjiang River. Its strategic and economic importance have been recognised through the centuries. Wuhan operated as an international trading port in the 19th century, when one part of the city was known as Hankow.

On one of our visits to Wuhan we went to Hankow and were impressed by the preserved buildings of the British and other concessions there. Our diary records:

We got our friend to stop the car near the old Customs House and set out on a walk through the old streets. Amazed at how many of the substantial buildings were banks. Didn’t see a British one, but there was Japanese banks, the New York Bank, and many Chinese ones, set up in the past when Hankow was a commercial hub for foreigners. One, the Kanching Bank, became the HQ for Japanese forces in 1938 when they took the city. Apparently they studiously left other foreigners alone, but treated the Chinese badly. This building is now the Wuhan Art Gallery. We went in and looked at photographs from all the cities that have friendship links with Wuhan. Ate lunch at a local cafe. The speciality of Wuhan are dried noodles cooked as a curried spaghetti dish. After lunch we wandered on the Bund and along the river bank. Not many boats but most of them large barges carrying sand etc.

The descriptions of Wuhan in the nineteenth century and before show its immense wealth and importance. For example, Abbe Evariste Huc, whose life and work I have described in my book China, Past Present and Future (2024) describes it thus:

Han-keou especially, “The Mouth of Commercial Marts,” must be visited, for it is one great shop; and every production has its street or quarter particularly devoted to it. In all parts of the city you meet with a concourse of passengers, often pressed so compactly together, that you have the greatest difficulty to make your way through them. Long lines of porters stretch through every street; and, as they proceed with a peculiar gymnastic step, they utter a measured monotonous cry, whose sharp sound is heard above all the clamours of the multitude.

Huc notes that it is not just on the streets and in the markets that there is activity, but inside the many shops and over the waterways.

In seeing the streets thus constantly thronged with people, you might be apt to think that all the inhabitants of the town must be out, and the houses empty. But just cast a glance into the shops, and you will see they are crowded with buyers and sellers. The factories also contain a considerable number of workmen and artisans; and if to these you add the old men, women, and children, you will not be surprised to hear the population of Han-keou, Han-yang, and Ou- tchang-fou, taken together, estimated at eight millions. We do not know whether the inhabitants of the boats are included in this calculation, but the great port of Han-keou is literally a forest of masts, and it is quite astonishing to see vessels of such a size, in such numbers, in the very middle of China.

Among our most memorable moments in China were visiting the street markets in Wuhan, with their amazing foods, musical artists and painters with water, spread along the wonderful bund where the moon sinks slowly into the glittering river. Another memorable moment was our first visit to a top Chinese school. Even as early as our second academic visit to China in 2003, we found the progress in Chinese education very impressive, as described in our diary.

“First stop Wuhan Number 11 Middle School, where Alan talked on his book Letters to Lily. As we entered the school there was a long red banner welcoming Alan. We toured the school first and it appears to be well equipped with enthusiastic children and staff. The students in the lecture hall were very alert and each had the list of subjects Alan tackles in ‘Letters’. Alan suggested after an introduction that they each write three things they would be interested to see in such a book. Amazing to see later how many were written in good English and how interesting they were.”

It is not difficult to see why Yan Zhi should feel such an attachment to this amazing city and the lush and vibrant countryside around it.

Yan Zhi and Wuhan University

Yan Zhi is an alumnus of Wuhan University, and here again I can make some comments based on a number of visits to that University. The first was in 2003 and I gave a talk there as described in this diary account.

Alan spoke to Wuhan sociology department after that, on tea. The Professor of Sociology showed us round the huge and beautiful campus. It is one of the oldest universities in China and was built in 1893. The style is Chinese with turquoise tiles. We saw a library of foreign books, better than Tsinghua.

In 2014 where I was asked to give a distinguished lecture. My wife, Sarah Harrison’s diary account of the event also explains a connection to my college in Cambridge, which carried on its strong links, particularly in the connection to the poet Xu Zhimo, a student in King’s from 1921-2.

Taken to the President’s building at Wuhan University where we met the Vice-Chair of the Wuhan University Council. Among the subjects touched on was a Yeh Chun- Chan exhibition at King’s College next year which they would like to be involved in. Later the Vice President showed us some of the many pictures of Yeh Chun-Chan (Ye Junjian). We walked around the area of the old library, the highest building in the university complex – another lovely sunny day. Alan gave the Luojia lecture in the new library to a huge audience, with people sitting on the floor and standing, on the peculiarity of the Japanese as an explanation of why China found them so difficult to deal with. This named lecture series is the highest-level forum at Wuhan University, featuring renowned scholars from around the world as speakers. It has been established for 5-6 years and Alan is the 87th lecturer.

The direct links between my College in Cambridge and Wuhan University was inaugurated by the British poet and writer, Julian Bell, the son of Vanessa Bell (sister of Virginia Wolf). Bell was a teacher at Wuhan University in 1935. Among his students was Ye Junjian, who Bell became close to and travelled round China with. After Bell’s tragic death in the Spanish Civil War, Yeh remained friends with the Bell family, and through this, came to spend several years in King’s at the end of the war. Ye played an important role in explaining the Chinese struggle against the Japanese on the BBC.

Ye graduated from Wuhan University’s Department of Foreign Languages and Literature and conducted post-World War II research in European literature at the University of Cambridge. Among his excellent autobiographical novels was Mountain Village, depicting the farmers in a remote village duringthe period of the First Chinese Civil War. Ye was knighted by the Danish government for translating all of the works of Hans Christian Anderson into Chinese. We became friends with Ye’s son and held an exhibition on Ye in King’s College in 2015, where a number of Ye’s letters are held in the archives.

Given all these links and memories of the great city of Wuhan, it is an especial pleasure and honour to be able to introduce this fine poem to an English audience at a time when need for mutual understanding and respect is especially needed.

Elegy and Commemoration is a long poem written by Yan Zhi over a considerable period of time. It is a poem of great scale, with many striking episodes. It is of great significance for our times and required enormous commitment to bring the work to fruition. The work started in 1996 and was finalised in 2008. So it took twelve years, and at least three major revisions, to create this major work which bridges the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The material of the poem is rich and varied. It includes personal experiences, memories and other autobiographical elements. The poem also involves meditation and reflection on various aspects of the world. It is certainly true to say, however, that the major focus of the poem is on expressing the author’s nostalgia for rural life. Yan Zhi recalls stories of places and people in the countryside, as well as reflecting upon his contradictory feelings towards cities. The poem is characterised by many mixed and intertwined emotions, including deep regrets that can never be resolved.

The poet’s words sometimes create dreamlike scenes (such as the ‘Sleepwalking’ sections) which can seem a little blurred at first reading but become clearer when related to his emotional attachment to rural areas:

This is the wheat field

this is the forest

Part Six of this long poem is entitled ‘Father’ and this is perhaps the most crucial section - it can be seen as the heart of the entire work. The presentation of the ‘father’, sometimes in the singular but sometimes in the plural, specific (my father) or general (our fathers), real or imaginary, is imbued with great and vividly realistic emotional force. The wheat fields and forests depicted here are in rural areas of China. Those hardworking farmers are an older generation from these regions. It is they who have occupied these lands with their rough hands, stooping backs, and deeply wrinkled faces. Their lives evoke an intensely emotional response from the poet.

As for the younger generations, who may leave home to pursue dreams or to escape from boredom, they cannot sleep peacefully amidst tranquility of the countryside. Unlike their parents’ generation which stayed committed to rural life, they chose the cities. Their departure leads to fathers ageing overnight. This disruption of the ties between people and forest means the city is suddenly brought to centre stage, with a shock. The father feels lost in this unfamiliar urban environment with its overpasses and concrete pillars, dazzling lights and blaring horns, trembling and huddling in winter. Ultimately it leads to an end of his dreamlike wandering through the city. This is the rural tragedy of China today. Part Six of this poem, entitled ‘Father’, recounts this tragic story.

The most exciting episodes take place in the city. The journey from the mountains of the father to the city of the future resembled a pilgrimage. The pilgrims were like autumn leaves looking for ‘life nourishing’ dew. The city never loses its distinctive character which draws incomers seeking ‘unique advancement’. But in the end all they discover is a deeper sadness: ‘there are still many cities’, ‘there are still many car horns’, and here, ‘sleeplessness became my future’. The poet is in the city, unable to sleep as he used to do in the countryside. Moreover, as well as the indifferent eyes peering from every direction that make people shudder with fear, there is also the sad fact that the poet calls ‘the fall of cities’:

the fallen spirit

of the final city

This prompts heart-wrenching lines, ‘Birds fly away, The mountains, the water of the lakes, and the soil avoid us too. This is the last city’. The tragedy happened at the end of the century, a time when dreams were shattered. The poet says that he might have been sent to a mental hospital by the city or maybe not; it could be him who sent the city to a mental hospital. And thatpurple dragonfly’ always dancing in front of his eyes ‘is unable to remain’; it can no longer embellish people’s dreams.

I have noticed that Mr. Yan Zhi repeatedly claims that he only writes for art. In Epilogue: In the Name of Myself, he says, ‘I can only approach poetry as an art’; ‘Poetry is just one of the many forms of art. Perhaps there are displays, revelations, foreshadowings, and even directions in poetry, but they are all artistic expressions of the poet, not the main purpose.’ But regardless of how he expresses himself or even how he prides himself on his ‘artistic purity’, the fact remains that his compassion goes beyond the aesthetic he tenaciously adheres to - his concern for this world is so deep that we register his sorrow when reading this poem.

Following the ‘fallen’ comes another more shocking term - ‘transaction’. In Part Eight, entitled ‘In Exchange’, Mr. Yan Zhi discovers that people engage in transactions for ignoble personal gain, even trading their very selves. He writes about the temptations caused when cities attempt to take over rural areas and children help the wealthy to buy up their fathers’ last remaining mountain forests – he ‘decided to sell himself ’. At this point, with great pain, he realises almost everything had already been sold, including human organs. He’s shocked by the scenes of these grubby transactions:

Gradually others started to buy

my eyes, my legs, my liver...

Finally my whole body was sold off

in exchange for a stack of banknotes

The next day, I used this wad

to buy the Imperial Building

So you see I succeeded

I learned to sell myself in this city

just like everybody else

The poet’s ‘discovery’ naturally reminds us of the ‘discovery’ by the ‘madman’ at the beginning of the last century (translator’s note: referring to famous Chinese writer Lu Xun’s work A Madman’s Diary): thousands of years of history of ‘people eating people’ and the fact that ‘I also eat people’. These cruel words and phrases go beyond poetry and may not fit the author’s original intention, but they do represent the profound thinking involved in this poem. As the poet says, ‘Poetry is a kind of comfort, and can also become a way of life. Poetry is close to kindness.’ Froma poetic point of view he is correct in this statement. Poetry is meant to make people dream. Unfortunately, however, the poet is obliged to sing elegies in a reality which is far from dreamlike.

The title of this poem indicates both elegy and commemoration. Its background may come from the same source as an image that repeatedly appears in the poem – ‘father’s mountains and forests’. If this understanding is close to what the poet originally intended, then ‘commemoration’ refers to nostalgia for a past homeland; while ‘elegy’ mourns its irretrievable disappearance. In many parts of the poem we feel the poet’s deeply sorrowful sighs and heavy grief.

Sometimes the poet starts to sing when rhododendrons blooms or when dusk falls. Singing begins on stormy nights when he listens to his own voice; he says it is an unpolluted sound. Essentially Yan Zhi’s poetry is sympathetic because his heart is sympathetic. His heart always remains in his father’s countryside along with its mountains, forests and lakes. Here he knows there are still reassurances such as smoke rising from chimneys or farmland he has sorely missed throughout his stays in cities. All these things are losing their original appearance so his voice becomes blurred, yet enriched.

What we read is this contradictory voice full of praise and curses, nostalgia and boredom. The poet’s passion is intrinsic and implicit in his sharp critical language. What is directly displayed is a rational mind which sometimes appears to be close to a state of self-destruction due to the intense emotional demands – it’s at these times that we find the best of the poet.

Peking University, March 29th 2009

When Yan Zhi gave me his long poem Elegy and Commemoration and asked me to share my thoughts after reading it, my first thoughts, to be honest, were how to earn the trust and respect of a fellow poet. As a friend, I naturally treat him with sincerity, but perhaps I did not initially give enough attention to the poem itself. When I did take the time to read this poem carefully, this poet, already quite familiar to me, seemed suddenly surprising - did he really write this? That feeling was like witnessing the ugly duckling turning into a beautiful swan in an instant, or finding green fruit on trees quietly ripening one day and emitting an enticing and surprisingly new aroma.

In the context of modern Chinese poetry, not many long poems have been able to stand the test of time over the past century; they are mostly epic poems from ethnic minorities or long narrative and lyrical poems. Although many long poems have been published in modern times, few have succeeded in leaving a lasting impression, and fewer still deserve a special mention. Of course, I am not suggesting that this poem should be compared with the classics, or elevated to unattainable heights. But from a certain perspective this work represents something different from other well-known long poems; it could be said to be revolutionary in the context of Chinese poetry. Whether it will endure through literary history remains to be seen but its unique creative approach and writing style undoubtedly give it a special significance because of its literary originality. Elegy and Commemoration represents a completely new attempt at creating a long poem. It constructs various illusions within dream-worlds while revealing social issues along with essential aspects of life such as complexity coexisting with simplicity, majesty intertwined with practicality, fading desires mixed with true love, and rebirth amidst death. It reflects both an individual struggling to escape fate, whilst also reflecting many of its era’s inherent characteristics.

Previous long poems tended to be written from an outsider’s perspective, or they foregrounded explicit themes and emotional tendencies with ideological stances. Yan Zhi’s highly personalised, or rather highly spiritualised autobiographical writing is truly innovative in the field of the long poem. As a rural boy who escaped to the city his experiences, struggles, successes and failures all embody typical characteristics of this era of transformation and social transition. His emphasis on emotions, insights, sensations, and developing thought in his writing not only approaches a thorough understanding of life and society but also comes close to the true essence of poetry.

As well as a preface and an epilogue, this poem consists of twelve parts. ‘Twelve’ represents both day/night divisions as well as the long cycles of years. It is also a method used to count human age in China. The author chooses this number perhaps because it has these additional meanings. The twelve parts are each composed of two sections with identical titles, ‘Sleepwalking’ and ‘Purple Dragonfly’. Perhaps, to put it simply, this long poem just tells the story of a dreamer’s experience in the context of their spiritual homeland.

‘Sleepwalking’ is sometimes a pathological manifestation, a mode of behaviour driven by invisible forces that the speaker is unaware of. It runs through the entire poem, presenting the loss of reason and faith, the involuntary reality of desires and evil wrapped in inexplicable and invisible forms. It is a manifestation of brain damage; it is ‘brainless face’ and ‘hollow person’; it is the disease of the whole society in this era. Naturally, ‘sleepwalking’ is both pathological behaviour and social phenomenon, metaphorical as well as symbolic. As for the theme of this poem, it is both abstract and concrete. The purple dragonfly symbolises idealised, beautiful things and the soul; sometimes it may represent love, guidance or salvation, or even helplessness and mutation. However, the purple dragonfly hovers from the beginning to the end of this poem, reminding us of beauty and also containing a warning. It appears intermittently yet always returns at the end of a section.

As for the genre of this poem, Elegy and Commemoration has a strong sense of form, and literary genres are defined by formal characteristics. Its overall form consists of recurring dream imagery along with the purple dragonflies which have underlying meanings that coincide with poetry’s aesthetics, reality, and society. Naturally, the form isn’t just an empty shell but rather when expressing memories relating to reality and history, it becomes integrated with the content. Form becomes an extension of content. In terms of societal, cultural perspectives in this long poem, we can say that when economics dominates social life, everything becomes a commodity to be traded away, souls exiled, love encountering ruin and death. People grow up amidst this trading, trickery and debauchery. Cities become as crazed as the people. Perhaps returning to an earlier way of life is the only way people can find meaning and resistance. From this perspective, as Bakhtin said, ‘The true poetics can only be poetic sociology.’

Of course, poetry is ultimately determined by language, as poetry is the art of language. This long poem consists of recurring dreams and purple dragonflies, but ‘snake’, ‘ant’, ‘stone’ and ‘mountains and forests’ are also repeated core images.’Wandering’, ‘escaping’ and ‘returning’ are ways of survival, an accurate portrayal of life’s strategies. In the countryside where ants gather and seem as timeless as ancient stones, we recall Adam and Eve being tempted by the snake to eat the forbidden fruit. Desire, evil, toxic substances and fear create a physical as well as a spiritual exile. This is another world created by language between the cold-hearted and cruel reality of ego, death and dreams. Childhood memories, adolescent restlessness, running away at eighteen wearing a devil’s mask; despair in the face of first love; reaching extreme truth through heading towards death; crazy love outlasting death; decay, corruption, madness, alienation from humanity, transformation of the soul, city lights, all beautiful things and lost beauty, sorrowful tragedy struggling in swampy sinking, lush forests lingering in dreams, warmth, countryside, nature saving people, the old self dying and a new self being born... All these things opened up to poetic wisdom within the poet’s genuine painful feelings. There are experiences full of drifting turbulence, dreamlike illusions, searches for the mysteries of existence, peering insightfully to reveal intense experiences, displaying deep social imagery alongside autobiography. The poet finds a way to bare his soul through a language rich in imaginative creativity.

Compared to some long poems, Elegy and Commemoration does not have a very complex structure or too many impressive scenes or accumulating events. Nor does it use devices such as lamentation or plot twist. This work has penetrating insight into society and the era, through an approach which appears simple yet is complex. Its rich connotations are expressed with restrained language. It analyses the author’s soul with a realism rarely seen, reveals existential truths through enlightened and philosophical thinking; it sings elegies, achieves redemption. As the poem says:

I’ve been heading there repeatedly

but have never reached the destination

Is this the place I keep escaping

or is this where I keep hoping to arrive?

Is that me disappearing

or me arriving here at last?

This is a struggle between two levels of existence, an unpredictable fate, opposed yet complementary. In authentic locations one obtains a kind of emptiness.

This work also offers us the contradictory psychology of escape and exile, the unforgettable memories of first love, the description and return to the life of the mountains and forests filled with fatherly love and rural life, led by purple elves, smoke rising from cooking fires, motherhood, a bowl of hot wine - all filled with longing and deep emotion. ‘Quiet as a girl, I can sleep again in the countryside,’ even though the countryside has changed it remains the poet’s spiritual home.

Reading each part of this long poem, I see this work is composed of many insightful short sections. These are more concise and focussed even compared to some short poems. For example, the lines ‘So I sing/Ants beneath the rocks/ free and unobstructed love’ have simple imagery and great economy. Although there seems to be no connection between them, they leave plenty of potential for imaginative readers. Similarly, ‘The sun/ was left behind/ The sun/ remained’ and ‘Eleven years old/ a little girl who never grew up/ and her innocent smile’, both appear directly without any decoration yet they leave a strong impression on the reader. For poetry, the unexpressed is often as powerful as the stated, and stark simplicity can create unexpected and fascinating resonances.

Some poignant feelings about society and an understanding of life also have a philosophical resonance in this long poem. However these philosophies are not rational speculations or explanations but rather an experience or discovery. ‘My hands/ sculpted the voice of desire/ out of your restless youth’ leads to an insight that ‘Men make women grow up/ just as women make men grow up’. Likewise, ‘the world in which we live/ exists/ because of us’, stems from the recognition that ‘The growth of the group/ is also individual growth’. And lines such as ‘dreams within dreams/ waking in awakenings/ never dreaming/ never waking up/ the days and years of chaos/ now perhaps within my grasp’ seem to be a kind of delirious confusion; this kind of fatalistic philosophy belongs to poetry rather than philosophical works. A poet’s thinking is innate and may confirm certain philosophies. It may also make deeper discoveries than philosophers can.

From the Epilogue written by the poet we know that this work was revised four times over twelve years. In his own words, it is about personal nostalgia and the memories of an era. However, since it is also an ‘elegy’, it mourns a death as well. As the poet says, ‘one me will fall through the dream/ but one me will rise and stand firm in it’. And finally the dragonfly with its eyes twinkling like stars allows us ‘to see through/ all the walls and obstacles’; ‘So/ let us lay the past to rest/ So/ let us be born anew’. Another reborn self has finally found its dreamland to explore and build upon – ‘Let the city begin a new journey’. Here it is no longer just a return but rather a new creation which seeks beauty in reality while rebuilding spirituality.

Therefore I would like to say that this is a ground breaking long poem created in its own unique way which expands into an uncharted territory for future poets to explore. As with all art, it does not depict anything real but creates something intangible and distinctive instead. A long poem can contain multitudes.

Yan Zhi’s work Elegy and Commemoration has become one of the

most outstanding contemporary Chinese long poems in the past

decade. This is not only because of its rich emotions, profound

thinking and multiple themes; nor is it because it always expresses

feelings in a personal way to present the reality of poetry and

foreground emotional sincerity. More importantly, it is because

of its various explorations of the poetic art which demonstrate

a broad range of artistic conceptions, techniques and uses of

language. Two especially important examples are the artistic

conception of writing about the world through the poet’s own

experience, and the artistic approach of writing about reality

through dreams.

I. The artistic conception of writing about the world through personal perspectives

The most important characteristic of Elegy and Commemoration in terms of artistic conception is that the poet observes the world from a self-centered perspective where everything stems from his own feelings. From adolescence onwards, a contemporary Chinese youth is the subject of this long poem. The views on rural and urban areas, reflections on morality and ecology, contemplation of various problems existing in today’s society, even those poetic lines containing a rich philosophy on life and profound thoughts on the cycles of life and death - all the basic ideas in this long poem derive from the same lyrical subject. Nothing in the poem comes from hearsay or mere description of the external world; it is not just borrowing from existing knowledge either. On the contrary,I believe that everything in this poem is deeply rooted in reality, society, specific individuals and history. Therefore everything bears the mark of ‘self ’, and specifically the ‘self ’ as lyrical protagonist.

Firstly, there is a real ‘self ’ present in this long poem. This ‘self ’ becomes the source of information, emotion, and even the source of thinking and philosophy in the long poem. In some earlier long poems by contemporary Chinese poets’, such as works by He Jingzhi, Guo Xiaochuan and Wen Jie (and even in Russian writer Vladimir Mayakovsky’s ‘political lyrical epic’ poetry) the ‘self ’ was often amplified and had strong characteristics of the era. However, the ‘self ’ in this long poem, although it may be said to represent some general aspects of contemporary Chinese youth, is no longer an image of an ‘enlarged self ’; it basically only exists and appears as the poet’s self. This ‘self ’ is precisely the poet himself whom we are familiar with, who moved from the south of Dabie Mountain to Wuhan City in central China to continue his personal development. His parents worked in the forestry industry in Luotian County of Hubei Province, so he often writes about the ‘forestry farm’, ‘mountains and forests’, and ‘forests’ throughout this long poem. He has a father who for many years worked in forestry, a kind mother and two loving sisters; so the ‘father’, ‘mother’ and ‘two sisters’ in this poem are actually his own father, mother, and sisters. When studying at middle school in his home town the poet experienced first love, a troubled period that often worried his parents. Then later he married his beautiful wife after moving to the city. The presentation of ‘self ’ conveyed through this long poem mostly concerns real feelings, emotions and thoughts actually lived through personal experience. The poet has an adorable daughter whom he calls ‘god’ in the poem, a transformation of the future. His references to her also reveal his actual feelings, alongside poetical themes and ideas. Therefore the expression of emotional growth and thought related to self throughout this long poem is authentic and comprehensive. At the beginning of this epic work, the poet writes: ‘my dream/ in every breeze/ I will tell my mother and my sisters/ about the metamorphosis of the wind/ and of the scream.’ (Preface • 1) This is how the poet felt about himself as a teenager. In the first part, there are such lines as ‘I recall I learned to cry again when I was seven/ I learned to cry for the angels/ on my seventh birthday/ I witnessed a demon snatching one away’ engage the reader on an emotional level. We can say that the work is written through the poet’s own life experience and is not merely a fabricated story.

Secondly, the poet focuses on his own family and their domestic life as the main content of this work, and this means that the emotions and thoughts are fully embodied in real people. So the success of this long poem is largely a success for the family as a whole. This reminds me of the contemporary Chinese- American novelist Amy Tan and her creations. This long poem begins with the lines: ‘As for the elder sisters singing in the field/ do they care about the song that’s drifting with the clouds/ the song the flowing water hears singing in its shadows/ What about the forests of the mountains/ so green that they cannot cling to sorrow.’ (Preface • 3). In Part Four, the poet speaks these words: ‘My first love/ came from the city/ A girl named Ran/ it was she who gave me/ the deepest feelings of my life.’ (Part Four • Sleepwalking • 1) ‘Among so many graves I cannot find you/ Ran/ you are at peace/ like clouds/ like the insubstantial cry of my life.’ (Part Four • Sleepwalking • 6). In Part Five, the poet says: ‘But mother and my five elder sisters/ were unable to leave me/ Tears soaked our affections/ But I still ran away/ under the May sky.’ (Part Five • Sleepwalking • 4). As analysed above, there is often a corresponding relationship between images such as ‘father’, ‘mother’, ‘sisters’ and ‘daughters’ in long poems.

Similarly, images such as first love, second love and true lover correspond to real people known to the poet. At the same time, many events experienced by the lyric protagonist in his personal life, such as ‘individual’ versus ‘group’ experiences during his development as a sensitive poet; singing a ‘requiem’ for his girlfriend far away in heaven; exchanging father’s ‘mountains’ with robots made by city people called Cobalt; all these are based on the poet’s personal emotional experiences. Therefore, character images in this work are all from the poet’s own family and friends, and the main content is a summary of profound life experiences based on real-life impressions observed by the poet. It is not that the poet does not describe his times and society in this work, but that he observes people and things around him with his real self as the centre, so all images and thoughts bear the colours of this self. As pointed out earlier, the theme of this long poem has multiple aspects such as moral, human nature, ecology, growth, urban; however, all these themes can only be truly expressed through the poet’s personal perspective. The poet’s understanding of his era is unique and profound; his prediction of human survival issues and world evolution is far- sighted. However, this can only be fully realised in the poet’s own way. This determines the depth of thought and artistic heights of this long poem. The special nature of poetry requires that if the poet leaves out ‘self ’ when expressing emotions then there will be no expressive theme or artistic composition at all. The external world itself cannot constitute direct content for poetry nor produce poetic meaning or quality. The writer of this long poem knows these mysteries well, hence his distinctive artistic choices.

II. The artistic approach of writing about reality through dreams

If a poet has unique artistic ideas, what kind of artistic expression would be appropriate? I believe that in this work, the poet’s artistic expression is closely related to dream. The most prominent image of this long poem is ‘dream’, and the entire work is basically about dreams. In fact, it can even be said that this is a ‘poem about dreams’. When reading this long poem I was often reminded of Freud’s literary theory that literature is a ‘daydream’ and his theoretical insight that poets are ‘dreamers’. Why do I say this is a poem related to dreams?

First of all, the main content of the long poem consists of twelve parts, and each part begins with ‘sleepwalking’. Also the main body of the poem consists of twelve sleepwalking episodes experienced by the poet. Apart from this, there are basically no direct descriptions of real life. Whether or not there really have been twelve sleepwalking experiences in the poet’s personal life and emotional experience seems unimportant; what matters is that this long poem may very well be an authentic record of the poet’s self-induced sleepwalking experience. The poem begins like this: ‘I emerge from dream/ to start the long-awaited wandering/ Barley shines with its bright radiance/ nightingales glow with their own brilliance / together they illuminate this journey.’ (Preface • 1) And ends like this: ‘I finally found the land of my dreams/ the land I have always dreamed of/ it was here all along/ I tell my friends/ this is where it is – this is where/ we need to plant green trees and flowers/ construct all sorts of buildings/ this is where we build a city.’ (Epilogue: Beginning • 8) There are also works about dreams in the literature of both China and other countries, such as the Chinese novels Dream of Red Mansions and Dream of Green Mansions, which are actually entitled as ‘dreams’; however, in the history of Chinese literature, there seems to be no long poem written about sleepwalking and this entire poem is based on that subject. Therefore I suggest that the twelve sleepwalking episodes are not only the main content of this long poem but also its main artistic feature.

Secondly, in terms of the specific content of each sleepwalking episode, it seems that the poet’s thought is not very clear. The plot and story in the long poem only give us a vague impression. It explores profound themes relating to morality, ecology, human nature, love, growth and urban life. However, these themes do not seem to be expressed in particular sections but are rather reflected in the overall artistic work. Therefore I believe that the long poem presents an integrated form as each theme often permeates every section. This may be because the subject matter written by the poet in the long poem was obtained from dreams or created by him while he was in a dreamlike state of mind. Throughout the creative process, it seems that every time he entered into a poetic realm it was actually a semi-conscious dream-like state. Certainsections may focus on particular themes. Part Two, ‘Individual and Collective Growth’, mainly describes self-growth during adolescence under the watchful eyes of his parents. Part Three, ‘Unforgivable Love’, mainly tells about chaotic love experienced by himself in cities which mostly exist only as dreams.

Each part of this long poem is like one episode of the writer’s dreaming in different times and places, and each dream described within this epic varies greatly both in length and depth - sometimes consisting of only seven or eight sections while at other times having as many as twelve or thirteen. From such free-flowing emotional expression and artistic form present throughout this epic poetry we can see how continuous dreaming has led to the overall form. Although this epic poet generally expresses thematic ideas in a clear-cut way, they may sometimes appear rather unfocused because of the dream-like forms the artist employs. However such characteristics determine its uniqueness and success. ‘Sleepwalking’ might be the major feature of the artistic construction of this work; so when we read it we cannot help but feel that in a sense we are sleepwalking too.

Furthermore from Part One to Twelve there are twelve lyrical poems named after the ‘Purple Dragonfly’ which also express themselves artistically through a form of sleepwalking. In real life we have probably never seen such a purple dragonfly, and it is only possible to glimpse it in the poet’s dreams. The first part, The End of Tears, ends with ‘Purple Dragonfly (I)’: ‘It is a purple/ a purple elf/ its brilliance was suddenly dazzling/ a purple dream/ haunting the black meadows/ endlessly/ The purple dragonfly flies in happiness/ leaving its impression/ to the spring.’ In this long poem, the image of ‘purple dragonfly’ is highly significant. If we want to delve deeper into it, perhaps it symbolizes another world or reflects another side of the poet’s emotional and ideal life. Nevertheless, the main content of this work appears in a dreamlike form - that is to say that this epic poet represents a dream-state for its writer.

On the other hand, many of the themes presented in this poem are highly realistic. The lyricism does not depart from the era and society in which the poet lives. The various problems raised and considered are important contemporary issues facing China today, as well as emotional and psychological issues faced by the poet during his own personal development. Therefore, from a subjective perspective, this is a realistic long poem that deals with major issues that contemporary China and even the entire world must face. These include environmental problems affecting human life, industrial waste and emissions, people who cannot afford to eat after leaving ‘imperial buildings’, city dwellers trading their organs for money, robots created by humans now crying at humanity’s ‘dusk’, and people frantically fleeing from intolerable conditions. All of these problems do not stem from the poetic imagination but rather reflect accurate observations made by the poet. However, all of this is not directly or realistically described in the poem; instead it is narrated through broad strokes and imagery - typical poetic techniques. These images mainly come from the poet’s imagination or dreams. Reading this long poem by Yan Zhi reminds me of the British poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge whose long poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan are both based on dreams and are characterised by dreamlike qualities.

Therefore we can say that this long poem primarily uses dreams as its main artistic technique to express what the poet has observed about our world today while analysing our current era. The basic nature of emotions expressed in this poem is one of pain which appears to be related to national concerns; it actually reflects pain felt by all Chinese intellectuals today. Using this dream technique to reflect present reality along with our contemporary existence, the poem creates a unique depth through Yan Zhi’s artistry. Thus we see how on the one hand there are very real social issues present throughout this work while on the other there exists an ethereal quality based on dream. This dichotomy creates an organic combination of reality and fantasy within the overall structure of this long poem: the real parts are very realistic while the imaginary ones are particularly surreal, and it is in this unity between ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’ that its artistic strength lies. Without Yan Zhi’s exploration of various real-life issues from his childhood in rural areas to later life in cities, perhaps this long poem would not have achieved such depth or insight. Without the episodes of dream-like lyricism permeating the entire work, there would not be those special times and spaces for readers to share imaginatively.

‘Dreams within dreams/ waking in awakenings/ never dreaming/ never waking up/ the days and years of chaos/ now perhaps within my grasp.’ (Part Nine • Sleepwalking • 9). The power of beauty and philosophy derives from this. Ancient Chinese poetry pays special attention to the art of reality and illusion, and critics of such poetry have repeatedly emphasised that good poetry is a unity comprising both reality and illusion. In this regard, Elegy and Commemoration directly connects with traditional Chinese poetic art. This long poem is artistically accomplished in its overall unity of reality and illusion. Through specific details it establishes an organic combination of reality and illusion everywhere, allowing it to focus on real problems in society while also enabling people to think more deeply about philosophical and aesthetic issues. Of course, first of all, it allows us to pay attention to the poet’s thinking on these issues - how a contemporary young person in China looks at these problems. Literature is ultimately about humanity, especially lyric poetry; poets use their emotions, imagination and dreams, as well as their compositional skills, to practice the artistic concept of unity between reality and illusion as celebrated throughout traditional Chinese poetry.

Representing over ten years’ effort and commitment by the poet Yan Zhi, Elegy and Commemoration is the outstanding innovative long poem in contemporary Chinese literature.

We extend our sincere appreciation to the following teams for their substantial contributions to the editing, design, and management of this book.

Honorary Editor: Professor Alan Macfarlane FBA

Editor-in-Chief: Peter Hughes

Editor: Zilan Wang, Yuchen Qin, Levente Koroes, Yue Li

Translator: Peter Hughes, Zunlu Qin

Design and Typeset: GE Dalong, QIN Yubin (MUYE Studio)

Artwork on the book cover © David Paskett

Poems (Chinese) © YAN Zhi

Poems (English) © Cam Rivers Publishing

Book Design © Cam Rivers Publishing

The publishing of this book is supported by the Vanishing Worlds Foundation, U.K.
ISBN: 978-1-912603-97-8