Living
in an era that is not to my liking, surrounded by a sea that
I do not recognize, I have become a like a surging wave.
Using art to search for myself, living inside my own art, I
am like an old warhorse circling the walls of my crumbling
citadel, still yearning for the vistas scattered like stars
across the fallen empire.
Art’s “other shore”: it is the eternal
fire that has given inspiration to my life. In the breath
and spirit of my life, I seek purity and truth in art.
I often shed tears like a silent candle; in
those glistening tears a fearsome sword is revealed.
I constantly retreat into my inner being,
where my talent lies and has derived from the sufferings
within. I was once a soldier; I trained on the beaches and
fought in the trenches. I never imagined I would one day take
up ink and paper. I was once an artisan, with knife and chisel
in hand; I laboured in the workshop. I was also once a
prodigal son, and dreamlike I burst into the world of poetry,
my thoughts following images of the “Mystical Bird.” The
Confucian masters have left us one after the other; ritual and
poetry have been lost, creating the sorry situation of today’s
arts, in which, on the one hand, Western art is worshipped as
a holy thing, and, on the other, the wish to destroy our
country is only accelerating. Lu Xun’s statement that “either
Chinese characters die, or China is doomed” is proof of this.
The vitality of Chinese culture is hovering in a twilight
state. Fortunately China is prosperous enough to allow us the
time to reflect on Chinese culture; a cultural renaissance is
within our reach.
Perhaps I am not actually of Han (Chinese)
origin; perhaps fate has simply ordained for me a deep love of
Han culture, and it is the culture of the Qin and Han
dynasties that flows in my veins. My heart brims with passion
for Chinese culture.
I know not who I am. I surmise that I am a
landlord, a Red Guard, a soldier of the People’s Liberation
Army; I am the Great Leap Forward, the People’s Communes; I am
the Cultural Revolution. A tile, an urn, a gourd ladle, a wok—
these contain the purity of my heart and the eternity of my
love. I will never curse poverty because I cherish a pure
conscience. I know that the dignity of poverty is inscribed in
history. I will never begrudge past wrongs, because I have not
forgotten the magnanimity and selflessness that is the common
dream of human history.
Clouds move like speech, green mountains
meet like lovers, the earth after rainfall is like embroidery;
delightful times fly away like the wind and cannot be brought
back. Poetry exists in the shadows, and painting in the void.
Seeing my white hair in the mirror, I think of autumn. We must
reflect on the new culture of a unitary vernacular, and upon
its irregular form. The practice of the so-called “dream of a
new culture” over the past hundred years should have long ago
been proclaimed a dead end. I repudiate the westernization of
Chinese art, for it destroys beauty; it was the illiteracy of
contemporary poetry that led me to write “Literary Mind,” and
although my contribution has yet been insignificant, my will
is steadfast.
I do not know my future, but I do know the
shallowness of knowledge that reigns in the contemporary
world. People follow trends and neglect my work: the
difference is like heaven and earth. Yet I know that it is not
that I am behind the times, but rather that the profundity of
the Chinese language will someday be recognized in all its
resplendence.
