What continues in the long poems of Aerdingfu Yiren is the poet’s long-time sighing and questioning for the sky, rivers, soil, mountains, the other bank, and the spiritual Utopia world (of course it is individual). This search for the spiritual hometown of poetry originating from the poet’s identity and national memory has nearly become a kind of prominent thought feature or even symptom in his poetry writing. It is a dimension which deserves the most respect for an excellent poet, in the context of post-industrial age, to stick to the exploration and questioning of a kind of metaphysical spiritual world. I am discussing, in a total sense, the embarrassing and detaining relationship between Yiren and idealism, agricultural civilization, and religious emotions. The poems writing, particularly the long poems writing by Yiren since 1980s, has indeed contained a kind of individual historical imagination and into-reality spiritual dimension which are quite important. This individual historical imagination, compared with the aesthetics imagination with the symptom of youth writing since 1980s, has more depth and tolerance. Historical imagination means the poet handles the glaring and gnawing questions in existence, history, and individual life by starting from individual subjectivity in independent spiritual posture and manner of discourse. In other words, in the domain of historical imagination, there is both individuality and historicalness of the age and existence. Historical imagination is not only the concept of poetry function, but also the concept of poetry-in-itself. The poems, particularly long poems by Aerdingfu Yiren, under the revelation of historical imagination, have forcefully exhibited the spiritual portrait of a nation and the poetry history or life history of a generation of people. These poems, it may be said, are the typical exhibition and inception of historical imagination on a generation of people, the repeated entanglement of sobriety and puzzlement, as well as the symmetry or opposition of self or foreign things.
The poetic lines by Yiren are like long, heavy chains which bluntly refuse any chance of rusting, and the clinging and clanging voices assume eternal chilliness and bleakness like a cross in the ambiguous and forceful background of midnight. “O, the silent earth / That is the son starting off on the distant horseback / From ancient times to now the concept of real time has never been decoded / Or there are more followers to gaze: behind existence / The hidden philosophy is veiled softly / Or gazing at the boundless view at the bank / Under brilliant sunshine step by step into the abyss” (Shipwrecked) The tolerant force, conflict of tension, and the poetic lines which carry powerful psychological energy and forceful belief, all these are rarely seen in the poems of contemporary poets. This only explains the fact that in the labyrinth of existence and strange circles which are co-built by history and the current age, special way of living, way of imagination, and way of writing, all have combined to create Aerdingfu Yiren, a “nostalgia” poet with much self-assertion who highlights complicated mirror image and boundless culture and tradition. “before you I have been an incurable patient / which makes me to re-confirm the weight contained in the surface of objects / over-reaching the minute shadow of grasses and trees / perhaps this is only a legend perhaps we have already met our own shadows / and on the bright road pulling a tail / through lanes and streets or the endless memory / and turn all the dreams into the motto of stones / to carve flowery trees of the silent soul” (The Mysterious Halo). In an age where belief is broken and ideal is banished, in a powdery age where the caterpillar chain crushes truth and conscience, he is a singer who is trudging on the spiritual road, a rider with ceaseless questions who battles with the windmill in industrial rivers and mountains. Therefore, poems of Aerdingfu Yiren more forcefully exhibit the emptiness and vitality of time; in other words, in concrete detail brushing and emotion revelation, more often than not, the long poems of Yiren show the poet’s worry and dilemma about time and existence; in the boundless dark night of time, the brief lamp of life is to die out, and the ever-living life is to eventually fade out in the withered memory. “only you / morning and evening in the singing of sublime poems / spending days peacefully again busy / not forgetful of the punctuality of time / strictly keep the secret of time / to entrust the most sacred exchange” (Flowers Blossoming at the Wrong Time: to Decorate Your Sleepless Stars). Some say, he who proofreads time, ages. But eventually Yiren has found, on the boundless river of time, the profound meaning of time and the secret poems.
Therefore, for years, the keynote of Aerdingfu Yiren’s long poems is consistently unutterable reverence and probing for existence, life, culture, history, religion, nationality, belief, even poetry itself whether concerning spiritual structure, emotional keynote, sense of motif, way of language, lyrical feature, or imaginary space, and a host of poetic lines reach afar to the source of poetry writing. Without question this can further move the reader in the shared reading reference, because this basic emotion about poetry and language and experience, is shared by human beings. The poetic lines of spiritual symbols shared by the existence totality of the original nature appear now and then in his long poems, this in some degree is homage and adherence to tradition, language, and poetry. “To believe or to doubt the crowd of people walking on the flagpole without marks / Are howling and wailing into my ears / But still I wait for them / When they are away from their kith and kin / Gentle wind blows hither” (Shipwrecked).
About the Author:
Huo Junming (1975— ), is a famous poet, critic, and scholar in contemporary China. Now he is a professor at the Chinese Department of Beijing Institute of Education, concurrently researcher at the Chinese Poetry Research Center of Capital Normal University. His works include: The Embarrassing Generation: Vanguard Poetry by Chinese Poets Born in the 70s, Change, Rhetoric, and Imagination — Research on History Writing of Contemporary Chinese Poetry, The Harmony of a Person, A General History of Chinese Poetry, etc. Besides, he has edited books such as Dictionary of New Chinese Poetry of One Hundred Years, The Deliverer of Poetry Forum, and New Poetry Field, etc.