The August Sleepwalker

by Bei Dao

First published in the US in 1990, the year after the uprising of Chinese students at Tiananmen Square, The August Sleepwalker collects all the early poetry of Bei Dao, China's premier poet, now living in exile. The August Sleepwalker is an extremely popular book (30,000 copies sold in China in one month) which was quickly banned by the Chinese government. The collection includes all of the poems Bei Dao published between 1970 and 1986. Bei Dao has lived in exile since the Tiananmen Incident. He is widely esteemed as one of contemporary China's most significant writers. His work is experimental, and subjective, while remaining passionately engaged in the individual's response to a disordered world.

Genres: Poetry, China

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Name in Chinese: 北岛

Bei Dao ("Northern Island") is another name for Zhifu Island.
Bei Dao literally "Northern Island", born August 2, 1949) is the pen name of Chinese poet Zhao Zhenkai. He was born in Beijing. He chose the pen name because he came from the north and because of his preference for solitude. Bei Dao is the most notable representative of the Misty Poets, a group of Chinese poets who reacted against the restrictions of the Cultural Revolution.

As a teenager, Bei Dao was a member of the Red Guards, the enthusiastic followers of Mao Zedong who enforced the dictates of the Cultural Revolution, often through violent means. He had misgivings about the Revolution and was "re-educated" as a construction worker, from 1969 to 1980.[5] Bei Dao and Mang Ke founded the magazine Jintian[6] (Today), the central publication of the Misty Poets, which was published from 1978 until 1980, when it was banned. The work of the Misty Poets and Bei Dao in particular were an inspiration to pro-democracy movements in China. Most notable was his poem "Huida" ("The Answer") which was written during the 1976 Tiananmen demonstrations in which he participated. The poem was taken up as a defiant anthem of the pro-democracy movement and appeared on posters during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. During the 1989 protests and subsequent shootings, Bei Dao was at a literary conference in Berlin and was not allowed to return to China until 2006. (Three other leading Misty Poets — Gu Cheng, Duo Duo, and Yang Lian — were also exiled.) His then wife, Shao Fei, and their daughter were not allowed to leave China to join him for another six years.

Since 1987, Bei Dao has lived and taught in England, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, and the United States. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages, including five poetry volumes in English[7] along with the story collection Waves (1990) and the essay collections Blue House (2000) and Midnight's Gate (2005). Bei Dao continued his work in exile. His work has been included in anthologies such as The Red Azalea: Chinese Poetry Since the Cultural Revolution (1990)[8] and Out of the Howling Storm: The New Chinese poetry.[9]

Bei Dao has won numerous awards, including the Tucholsky Prize from Swedish PEN, International Poetry Argana Award from the House of Poetry in Morocco and the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. He is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Jintian was resurrected in Stockholm in 1990 as a forum for expatriate Chinese writers. He has taught and lectured at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Beloit College, Wisconsin, and is Professor of Humanities in the Center for East Asian Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has been repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Reviews

[Rowena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to Goodreads I discovered a new poet. And it was a happy (nerdy) coincidence that I read "The August Sleepwalker" in the month of August. I found it brilliant but as I'm no good at analyzing poetry collections for reviews I will leave you with one of my favourite poems from this book.

A Perpetual Stranger

A Perpetual stranger
am I to the world
I don't understand its language
my silence it can't comprehend
all we have to exchange
is a touch of contempt
as if we meet in a mirror

a perpetual stranger
am I to myself
I fear the dark
but block with my body
the only lamp
my shadow is my beloved
heart the enemy

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beidao now lives in exile from the China he obviously loves. He grew up in the days of the Cultural Revolution when he awoke to the realization that this was not his China. He became a thorn in the side of the government, eventually forcing the exile.

The poems reflect his love of country, experiences in the re-educated masses and hopes for change. There is nature and romantic imagery that is beautiful, sometimes hopeful, sometimes mournful.

There are many poems I love, but my favorite today is:

Song of Migrating Birds

We are a flock of migrating birds
Who have flown into winter's cage;
In the green early dawn we set off
On our flight to the ends of the earth.

Let our shed feathers
Fall on the heads of young women;
Let our strong wings
Bear the sun aloft.

We herd dark clouds,
Swaying manes pass through rainbows;
We herd the winds,
Flying pockets are filled with songs.

It is our cries
That frighten icebergs into ancient tears;
It is our jeers
That shame roses into crimson cheeks.

North, our homeland,
Accept our dream: let a tree
Grow from each crack in the ice
To bear great and small bells of joy...
p 29

Highly recommended

[Ana]

Codes told in an alley in the city in a city, in a forest in a city. Thank you Mia

[pearl · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Art of Poetry

in the great house to which I belong
only a table remains, surrounded
by boundless marshland
the moon shines on me from different corners
the skeleton's fragile dream still stands
in the distance, like an undismantled scaffold
and there are muddy footprints on the blank paper
the fox which has been fed for many years
with a flick of his fiery brush flatters and wounds me

and there is you, of course, sitting facing me
the fair-weather lightning which gleams in your palm
turns into firewood turns into ash

[Cool-Burne Psmith · Rating 5 out of 5]

the stone bell tolls on the seabed
its tolling stirs up the waves

the August Sleepwalker
has seen the sun in the night
(The August Sleepwalker)

There are two main categories of poems in this collection. The first are like double and triple exposed images layered on top of each other. In small glimpses, you may be able to make out an image of beauty, but all jammed together they create an overwhelming totality. They are a reflection of the tension that drove through China in the 70s and 80s when these poems were written. In an age where a revolution turned into genocide, and a glimpse of freedom turned into new shackles, a poet can be forgiven for struggling to pull together a unified image amidst the disorienting chaos. But it is in the second type of poetry, when Bei Dao does grasp this unified vision, that the full majesty of his poetry is revealed. Even in genocide, and even in shackles, the mind can ascend to a higher plane. Many of these poems are a perfect example of that, even when they capture an almost beautiful sense of despair.

the sea, the sea
the lichen tightly massed on the reef
spreads towards the naked midnight
along the seagulls' feathers gleaming in the dark
and clings to the surface of the moon
the tide has fallen silent
conch and mermaid begin to sing
(Boat Ticket)

I'm happy to be lulled into an unsettling dream by that kind of language. Or rather, an unsettling sleepwalk. And given the world he is writing about, that, in and of itself, is a small miracle.

[Emma Grayson]

from Ocean Chong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, quotes “Accomplices”

[Andrew Blok · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for an assignment (knowing only one poem before hand). While I don't think my reading was served by the circumstances under which I read the collection (procrastination anyone?), I still was really impressed by the way Bei Dao mashes together images and gives them significance. And, anyone who writes a poem that's chanted at the Tiananmen Square protests has me intrigued already ("The Answer"). If you don't want to read the whole collection, some of my favorites are "The Answer" (also one of my favorite poems in general), "Untitled ("Stretch out your hands to me...")", "Resume", "The Red Sailboat". There are probably others I'm forgetting or missed when I was reading. Very interesting author, very interesting poetry.

[يوسف عبداللطيف · Rating 4 out of 5]

The detail that completely flipped my perspective in The August Sleepwalker was how much of the big, famous story came down to one overworked clerk who misfiled a document. Bei Dao clearly dug through the archives, and you feel it in the small stuff, like what people ate, what they argued about, and what they were too scared to say out loud. The pacing dragged a bit in the chapters on politics and treaties, where it turned into alphabet soup of names. Solid pick if you're into the weird human accidents behind the headlines.

[Roddy Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up my copy of this in a charity shop, and what a happy choice that was. Bei Dao's work is deceptively sparse and elegant with unexpected depths. I found myself thinking of his poems at odd moments. They slip into the consciousness very easily.
Strangely, I can't locate my copy of this now, so it looks like I'm going to have to hunt down another one.

[Bruce Carr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dao takes you into an imaginary landscape of hope and despair.

[Mills College Library]

895.1152 B4221a 1988