Landscape over Zero (New Directions Paperbook, 831)

by Bei Dao

Collects fifty poems in both Chinese and English that reflect futility, distance, and the possibility of love's renewal

Genres: Poetry, China

Paperback

First published October 1, 1996

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

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The night is rushing to perfection
I drift inside language
the musical instruments of death
are filled with ice

who sings on the crevice
of days, water turns bitter
flames hemorrhage
pouncing like pumas to the stars
there must be form
for there to be dreams

in the chill of early morning
a wide-awake bird
gets closer to the truth
while my poems and I
sink as one

February in books:
certain movements, certain shadows

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

in the cold morning
an awakened bird
comes closer to truth
as I and my poems
sink together

- February

It's been a long while since I last directly composed a review on the computer rather than transferring over from work time doodles, so if I ramble along for longer than usual, that's why. I almost held off on finishing this until I could do my review-while-work-is-slow ritual, but the end of year transition is making me antsy with its accompanying slow but sure changes and new opportunities, so I might as well break the mold and return to a more lackadaisical style of penning my thoughts down. In terms of this work itself, I honestly first noticed it because of its beautiful cover design, and upon flipping through it and finding bilingual spreads of intriguing flashes of rhetoric, I figured it was worth acquiring for the buck it was listed at. After completing it, I honestly can't say that I understood any of it, but considering how short it is and how beautifully the edition is put together and how it was put forth by New Directions and how the professor taught at my sister's alma mater, it appeals to me in a collection of discombobulated ways to the point that, it's short enough that I'd like to see it reach a wider audience. Now, you may ask, how likely is that to happen with experimental Chinese poetry on an Anglocentric platform. If I worried about such things any more than I had to, I'd never get anything done.

novice evenings
nothing to fear
they recite on rooftops in one voice
that page of wordless twilight
out on snowstorm debts
and the gasping of tired horses
they approach a site that's blooming
and out on that town square of age
they produce and schools of thought
use long whips to touch meanings
sow their names
along cracks in the concrete

- Novice

The ones I liked the most inevitable returned to the subject of poetry, as it's what I have the most experience with. I probably would have picked up on more had I delved into the author's wiki article involving the Cultural Revolution and exile (?) from China, but that, weirdly enough, felt too much like spoilers for me to refrain from doing so until just now. Thanks to the area of my upbringing, I'm pretty decent at differentiating Mandarin Chinese from Japanese and Korean and Vietnamese and Cantonese by ear and every so often visually in script, but I maybe know one (?) character of the pinyin (I'm assuming it's pinyin), if that, so unlike Textermination where I could maybe get one in three of the French and one in ten of the German, here I rested completely in the hands of the translation. Going back to the poetry thing, that's what I have the most experience with in terms of the fulfillment of artistic craftsmanship and the miracle that is the written world, so any time 'poetry' or 'poem' or even 'writing' showed up, I went into metaphor mode and thought about how I could apply the foxes and the paperweights and the pipe-organs to some semblance of interpretation. I'm sure the accuracy of the results is abysmal, but I'm content with some sections enough to transfer them here, and if it convinces people with far more experience with Mandarin text than me to give this a chance, I'll have done my job. So, lack of understanding definitely compromised my ability to appreciate this, but I can comprehend certain themes that I'm naturally predisposed to enough to think that Bei Dao is doing interesting work, and if this edition's backflap rumors of shortlists for the Nobel Prize prove substantial, I won't complain about the potential for a greatly enhanced translation market.

Bao Dei was exiled from China post-Tienanmen Square and has hung out with the likes of Ginsberg and Sontag, which is probably why New Directions latched onto him in the first place. I thought I understood maybe half of one poem every four or five, and looking at this author's GR page, this is one of the more esoteric works of an already esoteric author, so it's a weird intro, to say the least. It's why I'm glad I'm not popular anymore, as kudos are little more than a brainwashing distraction that tend me towards the ironclad well-knowns however much I conscientiously try to avoid it, and Mandarin Chinese + Poetry + an author whose most popular book has less than 150 ratings hardly invites good coverage. In any case, I've done my part, and if this gets certain people (big hints to the ones who inculcated my desire for New Directions editions in the first place) paying attention to more than nihilistic Euro-ness, I'll have accomplished far more than I thought I would. Next month I'm taking a break from all my carefully laid plans, but if I see Bei Dao show up in any contemporary lit news, I'll at least have a base to stand upon.

looking back a few times in the poem
night birds singing together
you set smoke drifting free
toward a place where song vanishes

walking into tomorrow beneath an umbrella
you, a wanderer
set out from your own end
what can replace joy

- Untitled

[Kalina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ювелир.

[Yana · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were some pretty phrases but this mostly seemed like unrelated words strung together. I just didn't get it. Maybe it was that I was reading in English or maybe I'm just not a poetry person.

[Monica Raycheva · Rating 3 out of 5]

БЕЗСЪНИЦИ

през своя прозорец гледаш себе си
лъчите на живота капризно се менят

с очи слепи от завист
звездите се движат срещу вятъра
отвъд метафората на смъртта
се разгръщат добродетелни пейзажи

на място наречено Извора
нощта най-сетне те догонва
войската на безсънието
отдава чест пред флага на самотата

нощен страж се върти в леглото
и осветява цветето на ужаса
котката със скок изчезва в необятната нощ
за миг се мярва опашката на съня

~

КЛЮЧОВА ДУМА

опасна е моята сянка
този артист на служба при слънцето
носи последното знание
и то е пустота

ето я мрачната същност
в работата на молците
най-малките рожби на насилието
стъпки из въздуха

ключова дума моята сянка
кове желязото вътре в съня
пристъпвайки в ритъм
вълк единак приближава

залезът не е нечий провал
бяла чапла изписва нещо по водата
един живот един ден една фраза
приключват

~

РАБОТА

в състезание със сянката си
една птица се превърна в ехо

няма нищо случайно че ти
избра професия по време на буря
това са думи в летящ цепелин
бодли
в древната памет

майка отваря прозореца
като главен герой от стара книга
и разтваря ветрилото на есента
така ослепително

ти детето недостойно
с бял облак измиваш стъклото
измиваш и себе си в стъклото

~

УТРЕ – НЕ

това не е сбогуване
защото никога не сме се срещали
макар веднъж на улицата
сянка и сянка да се припокриха
като някакъв самотен беглец

утре – не
утре не е от другата страна на нощта
онзи който се надява е престъпник
а историята започнала нощем
нека пак през нощта да приключи

~

ДУМИТЕ

колко много думи
из този свят летят
сблъскват се, раждат искри
понякога на омразата
понякога на любовта

високите сгради на разума
безшумно хлътват надолу
и мисли тънки като лико от бамбук
изплитат кош
пълен със слепи отровни гъби

зверовете от скалните рисунки
преминаха в бяг и стъпкаха цветята
едно глухарче тайно
поникнало в затънтен край
а вятърът отнесъл семенцата му

колко много думи
из този свят летят
думите се раждат
но не прибавят и не отнемат
от мълчаливата човешка мъка

~

ТОКОВ УДАР

веднъж се ръкувах с един невидим човек
стиснахме ръце, вик на болка
и ръката ми обгоря
останаха белези

когато се ръкувах с видимите хора
стискахме ръце, вик на болка
и ръцете ми обгаряха
оставаха белези

вече не смеех да се ръкувам с другите
постоянно криех ръце зад гърба
но когато отправях молитва
към небесата, допрях длан в длан
вик на болка
и дълбоко в душата ми
останаха белези

~

СТАЯ ЗА ЕДИН

когато той се роди мебелите бяха грамадни и величествени
както сега са нищожни и похабени
вратата няма стъкло светлина идва само от лампата
доволен е че в стаята е топло
но кълне невидимото лошо време навън
до стената са наредени бутилки на омразата
той отваря някоя но няма с кого да вдигне наздравица
забива гвоздеи възможно най-високо по стените
и кара измислен куц кон да ги прескача

един прицелен в дървениците пантоф стъпва
на тавана и оставя очертанията на мечтата му
защото той жадува да види кръвта
своята кръв като лъчите на зората да се пръска

~

***

за света
аз винаги оставам непознат
аз не разбирам неговите думи
той не разбира моето мълчание
разменяме си само
мъничко презрение
като при поглед в огледалото

за себе си
винаги оставам непознат
боя се от мрака
но с тяло закривам
единствената лампа
сянката ми е любовница
а сърцето – смъртен враг

~

ИЗКУСТВОТО НА ПОЕЗИЯТА

в огромния дом на който принадлежа
е останала единствено масата, наоколо
се простират безкрайни тресавища
под различен ъгъл ме огрява месечината
трошливите скелети на съня все така стърчат в
далечината като неразглобено скеле
ето ги и калните стъпки по белия лист
лисицата която дълги години отглеждам
помахва огненочервена опашка
и ту ме величае ту ме наранява

разбира се и ти си тук седиш срещу мен
перчиш се с тази мълния сред ясно небе в ръцете ти
която се превръща в суха клонка, после в пепел

[Lucy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is translated by David Hinton with Yanbing Chen. Translator seems to me just as important as author.

I found these poems to be very refreshing for the most part. Seemingly random lines merged together. Here is an example of Bei Dao's gift in the poem Borrowing Direction:

borrowing a direction
migratory birds break out of my sleep
lightening strikes everyone's cup
the speaker's innocent

Fish and bird images abound in these poems. The bird with its flight and the fish with its fluidity seem to be emblematic of Dao's free style. An example of how Dao surprises readers is in Untitled, page 51:

celebrated fish
move through everyone's tears
hey, you folks upstream achievers so hale and hearty
how far is it to tomorrow.

Many poems did fall flat in that they were about the art of writing poems or depression, which seem to pull the poems so far down into muck. Still, this book is worth a read for the many brilliant poems that move fluidly and surprise the reader.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

The king of the Misty's. I read him for the imagery and for the subtlety of his political messages. I learned a lot about him from Karmia's interpretations and comparisons with Ginsberg. He's another one I hope to be able to read (and actually understand) in the original some day...

[Manuel Mellado Cuerno]

Una pasada

[Alvaro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Correcto pero confuso debido a la traducción. Falta de notas explicativas.