Adonis: Poetry in the West has already ended.

Yang Lian: When we weretalking yesterday you raised the interesting point that while it’scomfortable living in the West our actual poetic experiences are fromsomewhere else. Could I ask you to elaborate on this?

Adonis: I must first apologize for my broken English. It’s hard to make myself clear in English.

YL: Don’t worry, I’m also using this “international second language”.

A: To begin with, therelationship between language and things in Western languages are quitedifferent from those in our language, so there are differences in howthings are observed. To give an example, in Arabic you can’t talkdirectly about this cup, you have to talk about the things around itand the things related to it, and in this way make indirect referenceto it. We need a huge number of words to talk about anything, and thewords themselves are a mystery. This is quite different from Westernlanguages and their inherent relationships.

YL: Are you saying thatArabic implies through the power of image and metaphor rather thanusing language to talk directly about things?

A: Precisely. It thenfollows that you can’t use language to directly talk about or changereality. This is because reality doesn’t exist. The only “reality” isyour relationship with things.

YL: This is intriguing. Then, how does this understanding between words and things in the Arabic language come about?

A: As one’s perspective changes many realities are produced.

YL: You’ve probably heard ofthe philosopher Lao Tzu from ancient China. In the first chapter of theTao Te Ching, that work for which he is famous, are the words: “Dao kedao fei chang dao.” This sentence connotes two things. Firstly, thatlimitations inherent in language prevent us from discussing the trueWay; and secondly, sadder still, we ourselves are limited by language.If the true Way did exist, it would be impossible for us to know itbecause the limitations of language limit us.

A: That’s exactly how it is! Do we actually see anything? No!

YL: We don’t know. We are so limited that all we see are our own eyes.

A: So, humans are limited, and both reality and language are limited.

YL: But poetry has its ownexistence. This is because language is used to construct reality; thisis a “reality” that does not simply speak of what is external.

A: But we can’t say to whatextent poetry is superior to other modes of expression, such asphilosophy, the social sciences etc., because the basic situation ofhumankind is identical.

YL: Different understandingsof language in Arabic and Western languages must naturally affect theunderstanding of your writings by Western readers. Do you have anyviews on this?

A: Because of theuntranslatable nature of poetry, the translations of my poems in otherlanguages are no longer my poetry. Translation can refract certainelements of poetry, but essentially destroys it. However, I must makeit clear that I do not oppose this form of destruction. The translationis nothing like the original text. It is in a cultural context where itis impossible to translate the relationships between words and thingsor the meanings behind images and metaphors. Nevertheless, the price ofthis destruction is necessary so that some things can be transmitted toothers.

YL: It’s like the metaphorof scenery and eyes that we have used. The eyes aren’t dependent on thescenery but the scenery is dependent on the eyes. You call it a bluesky but another person might insist that it is brown. When read in adifferent cultural context, what is implied in a poem is different.People only select those things that they can understand.

A: Quite right. So I always feel that my poetry is diminished, diminished in different eyes.

YL: Maybe it is like lastnight when we stood on the terrace of Poetry House looking onto thecity of Amman. What we saw were the many fault lines of the past. Theancient Syrian, Roman and Byzantine empires, the Arab and Ottomanempires, the British colonial period and, after independence, also thePalestinian refugees have all constructed a history. They do not simplyexist in the past but also exist in the present and function in thepresent, in both one’s self and language in this instant. Our writingis founded on a history intersected by such riches and, with it,transforms endlessly. It’s hard for me to imagine a Western readerbeing able to feel this kind of cultural content in your poetry. Whenconfronted with Arabic poetry, what first springs to mind for theWestern reader are the political and territorial conflicts betweenIsrael and Palestine, the Arabs and America: this is a grosssimplification! And while unconsciously trying to identify yourpolitical stance, they overlook the cultural content of your work. Thismust of course sadden you?

A: Naturally. Yet at thesame time, poets such as Novalis and Rimbaud did not simplify us. Forme they were not Westerners. They were like Easterners: they resistedthe West.

YL: You probably know aboutPound’s special reading of the imagery of classical Chinese poetry.Academics may view that he is misreading, but for me it is “greatmisreading”. Pound read the Chinese from the perspective of a poet, andwas able to see what was of poetic interest. He was absorbinginspiration for his poetry, and was not playing a political game. So,perhaps one should one instead say that it’s unnecessary to separatethe people of the East or the West. The visual sensitivity of the poetthat can enrich scenery, but any politicization serves only to simplifyscenery.

A: Quite right. At presentthe attitude towards poetry in the West is both anti-Novalis andanti-Rimbaud. Today in America and in the West generally, whenever YangLian and Adonis are present they are labeled “dissident” poets.

YL: I hate it when they say that.

A: I hate it, too. Poetry is turned into something else.

YL: “Difference” or distancein fact exists between word and thing, and in people’s awareness ofthis difference. The question should be how a poet consciously seeks tocreate that distance instead of seeking to diminish it. Distance isinherently present as a characteristic of language. The poetic modeconsciously seeks to break through this inherent something. For me thisis most import.

A: Poetry sees nothing else apart from language itself.

YL: I’ve thought somethingelse. Euro-American history and cultural traditions have had a lengthyperiod of uninterrupted development, like a straight line. Theuniformity of its way of thinking even has similarities with China’scultural traditions that had endured for around two thousand years.However after the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century, the experienceof a series of military failures caused the Chinese to seriously doubttheir own traditions. Some even proposed totally abolishing Chineseculture and replacing it with Western culture. It is only now, lookingback, that we can see the tragic outcome of this self contradictory andcomplex psychology! But, as a poet, I must say that this situation wasalso a sort of dynamic energy that has served to deepen one’sunderstanding. Political, historical and cultural problems are all apart of the self of the poet. I think this is the authentic poeticexperience that you have spoken about.

A: There are many problemsin our traditions: the value of the individual is not recognized andthere is a lack of democratic traditions.

YL: The value of theindividual has never been emphasized in Chinese tradition. I callcontemporary Chinese poetry “nightmare-inspired,” because it comes frominterrogating the disasters of the Cultural Revolution. Why was anancient nation with five thousand years of civilization reduced to aland devoid of common knowledge? What caused this disaster? To beginwith we blamed a particular political leader, but why did he have somany successors? Maybe it was the political system, but then how canthe awful similarities between the past and the present be explained?Then there is what is known as “the people.” Does this mean that a fewpersecutors can create 1 billion victims? What propped up a way ofthinking that would induce children to denounce their parents, a wifeto expose her husband, students to victimize their teachers? And howdid this way of thinking take root in the Chinese language? Eachdisaster is a layer of questions, and the significance of poetryderives from this. Are these processes also evident in contemporaryArabic poetry?

A: Very much so. Theliberation of the individual leads one to oppose ideology and thespread of politicization and Islamic teachings in social life. Inpoetry it releases creativity that will oppose all forms ofsimplification.

YL: Maybe it is our situation that forces us want more to remake our own culture.

A: To reinvigorate it. Yourancient culture did not come under the control of Western ideology andreligion, so it is freer. While maintaining a critical stance you mustopen yourselves out in all directions. I think that there is now someinteresting Chinese poetry….

YL: But it’s very confused.Many Chinese poets are beset with contradictions. They want to maintainthe uniqueness of their own language and poetry, yet they lust aftersuccess–especially in the major world market, in the West. So,targeting translation, they make it their task to write in a way thatfacilitates translation and hence acceptance by foreign publishers.Afterward, they write following the same procedure, believing that theyhave found a short cut to success.

A: It’s exactly the samewith poets writing in Arabic. This is because the West has become ourcritic. You can’t turn into a Westerner, so instead you turn into onewho imitates Western writings while “representing” another culture.

YL: It is only when you are famous in the West that you realize how empty that fame is.

A: What is actuallytranslated is not poetry itself, but the relationship between poetryand something else, such as the nation, its politics and its ideology.In the end the poet is turned into a piece of material evidence.

YL: People discuss thedarkness of my poetry but confine themselves to the surface layer ofpolitics. They don’t talk about how that darkness manifests itself orhow it is created, nor do they talk about the creative energy of thelanguage. When reference is made to Chinese poetry there are inevitablythe words “underground” if in China, and “exile” if it is elsewhere inthe world. However these words are as futile as other politicalteachings and have nothing to do with whether a poem is good or bad.

A: That’s why I don’t likeyour poet whose name is something Dao. (YANG: Bei Dao?) Yes, I don’tlike poets who come to the West and say, “Look, I oppose communism,support me….”

YL: Everything is parceledand labeled. The situation is actually worse: when poets realize whythey are famous they make use of it as a trademark, like Coca-Cola andMcDonald’s. However what they are selling are counterfeit experiencesof suffering and their Western literary agents are arranging thesetransactions. Sometimes you get the feeling that Western literaryagents are placing orders for the sufferings of China. What is absurdis that the real victims of this farce are the suffering Chinese, Arabsand people from other countries who don’t have a voice. Amazingly,their sufferings have already been sold!

A: I always attack thistendency in Arab poetry. I also attack the one-sidedness of the West. Idon’t stand on either simplified side but oppose both! This isimportant.

YL: Then you must feel very isolated.

A: People who considermatters from a political angle can’t accept my way of thinking. I’llgive you an example. I have always opposed Saddam Hussein but I alsooppose how the American military forces have attacked and occupiedIraq. I oppose both of them. Many people can’t understand my attitude.For them you must take sides, say “yes” or “no.” Most “politicaldissidents” are like this. None-the-less we must persevere.

YL: Viewed from the angle ofcultural reconstruction, to persevere in independent thinking is theroot of all living traditions: it’s the same wherever it is andwhatever the objectives. The “governments” of the East arereprehensible, but if they simply follow the West they don’t thereforebecome any more honorable.

A: Compared with the severalhundred years of China’s history and culture what does today’s ideologysignify? Absolutely nothing!

YL: I think there is anotherreason for the West’s narrow understanding: anything outside its owntraditions is not worthy of “study”. They can only discuss what hasbeen written into their textbooks. This is “Chinese poetry” and that is“Arabic poetry.” There are ingrained notions about classical poetry ofthe past and about the political content of the present. But our poetryis much more than that. For example, the relationship between words andthings that you mentioned earlier is quite different from what peoplediscuss in the West. Moreover, our poetry neither follows tradition norduplicates the West. This is a completely new understanding that needsto be examined.

A: At the beginning youasked why I live in Europe. I think that I don’t treat Europe merely asEurope. Concepts that are valued in European culture have theircounterparts in Arabic, Chinese or other cultures. Europe is a“structure” acting as a carrier of these concepts. That structurebelongs both to Europeans and me. European culture, its philosophy,social sciences and ideologies are one thing, and its democratic systemanother. I can oppose Europe’s politics but at the same time I can alsooppose my own country’s politics.

YL: I have to say that beingfar away has led me to a deeper understanding of both China and theChinese language. When I left China at the age of thirty-three Icouldn’t speak a sentence of English. My understanding of English inthe intervening years allowed me to compare the two languages, and Ibecame aware of the special properties of the Chinese language, itsunique limitations and potentialities. This has helped me in my newwritings and even allowed me to understand my earlier writings. Forexample, the cycle of poems, “In Symmetry with Death”, —contained inthe long poem Yi that I wrote before leaving China—may be regarded asmy rewriting of Chinese history. In this cycle of poems I placedalongside one another the accounts of historical characters,contemporary lyrical poetry, and quotations from classical poetry.These three levels of language formed an integral whole. I was able todo this because Chinese verbs do not indicate tense. A verb that is nottense-specific can be “attached” to the past, present or future andtransform a line of poetry into the one single “situation”. I can’timagine how it would have turned out if I were writing with tenses inEnglish. Would the use of three levels of language be confusing? But itwas only after leaving China that I became aware of this.

A: I can appreciate what youfeel. For me too, it was only after I came to the West that I came tounderstand more clearly my own situation, the situation of Arabculture, and almost everything else. Internally, what you see are otherpeople and another place; and externally, what you see is your owninner mind.

YL: There is an ancient Chinese way of putting this: you can’t see the mountain, “because you are on the mountain”.

A: That’s beautiful, verybeautiful. But it’s not the same for everyone, and there are many poetswho can’t see things any differently. For example, there are some Iraqipoets living in exile who write no differently from when they were inIraq. When you are living in England, America or Europe why do youwrite in exactly the same way as you did in Baghdad? Why? When you arewriting can’t you feel the distance? I don’t know why this is. Maybeit’s because of ideology. Ideology in London is much the same as it isin Baghdad.

YL: Ideology blocks off any new experiences of existence.

A: Exactly. So we see much “exile poetry” that seem to be written in Baghdad.

YL: For me, it’s mostimportant for a poet to transform experience into creative potential.It’s not just a matter of “why transform”—after you have relocated afew times— it’s more “how to transform”. Do you have the capacity tocreate new forms of writing from your changed environment? That’sright, form. It’s not a matter of writing the same poem and justchanging the topic. That is to say, do you have the capacity fortransforming yourself? One of the criteria for evaluating the substanceof a writer is to see whether he or she is able to create severaldifferent stages of writing. If the poetry a poet now writes is thesame as what he or she wrote twenty or thirty years earlier, why keepwriting? You finished writing a long time ago! I always maintain thatour writings must each constitute small traditions that will togetherconstitute the roots of our whole cultural tradition.

A: I left Syria for Lebanonalmost fifty years ago. When civil war broke out in Lebanon twenty-fiveyears ago, water and electricity were cut off and it was impossible todo anything, so I eventually went to Paris. The Arab world has beeninfluenced by the cultures of the French and English, so although I’dnever studied it at school I could speak a little French. Today I canwrite essays and speeches in French, but I always write poetry inArabic. Language is my mother, and it’s not possible for a person tohave two mothers.

YL: We can have two wives, but we definitely can’t have two mothers!

A: And of course we can havelots of fathers, but we can only have one mother (laughs). Quite a fewpoets try writing poems in a foreign language, but they are just awful.

YL: In one’s own languagebetween normal and speech poetry there is quite a distance, and in aforeign language there’s also quite a distance. One has to rememberthis. If one doesn’t just want to write rubbish like “We’re sitting ina café watching a woman walk by”, but wants to write good poetry usinglanguage charged with energy this distance has to be preserved.

A: You’ve raised the matterof distance in language. In Arabic we have at least three types ofspoken language. For example the spoken Iraqi language has been soaffected by the influence of national minority languages that I can’tunderstand a thing when people are speaking it. The language situationin Morocco and Algiers is also like that. But other countries such asEgypt, Jordan, Syria and Tunisia have the same spoken language, andthis language has barely changed for two thousand years from before thetime of the Roman Empire.

YL: Is that so? Then how do you deal with modern concepts?

A: The Islamic religion hasone and a half thousand years of history, but the Arabic language farpredates the establishment of Islam. Of course, over time many wordshave become obsolete and many words have been born. Many modes ofexpression have changed but the grammar and the structure of thelanguage has not changed. Arabic has the biggest lexicon capacity inthe world.

YL: So Arabic poets have the special duty of modifying the lexicon?

A: Society, schools,universities and politics modify the lexicon. One can’t set out tomodify the language divorced from the total reality in which one islocated. In our country things are always very complicated, probablymuch more complicated than in China. You have ideology but you don’thave religious control.

YL: How do you see your poetry in relation to religion.

A: I oppose them, I opposethose Islamic attitudes that have created so many enemies for us. I amwell known for this. I go right to the heart of the matter and don’tjust confront a single regional politics.

YL: The Koran was written more than one thousand five hundred years ago.

A: The situation is verydifficult. The control of Islam is omniscient: in the schools, thehomes, and in the legal and academic organizations…. The situation isterrifying! What’s the population of China? 1.3billion? There are also1.3billion Muslims in the world, the same as the total population ofChina! So what can one do under the circumstances?

YL: That’s a massive enemy army!

A: It’s ghastly! If youthink differently, you are banned—banned by your own people. This ismuch worse than political censorship.

YL: Communist ideology infact died at the end of the Cold War. Everyone knows that it wasn’t agood thing, and even the party leaders are ashamed of the positionsthey hold. The system will off course come to an end. It’s only amatter of time. With religions it’s a different situation.

A: Islam is also finished. As a civilization, as a creation, it is already finished.

YL: That’s what you think, but it’s not what 1.3 billion Muslims think.

A: But there are also manypeople who agree with me. Just like communist ideology, Islam has nowconcerned itself with politics as well as economics. And just as in theChinese reality, power and ideology are in fact more important thanMarxism. With us you can’t talk about Islam without talking about ourdictators. Islamic dictators and political dictators think the same.You can almost see the end of your ideology but when will we see theend of ours?

YL: It’s because I can see the end that I can talk about reconstructing Chinese culture. But perhaps with you it’s different.

A: I really don’t know. It’s too hard.

YL: Your must be really strong, otherwise weariness, fatigue and despair would have crushed you.

A: It is only in poetry that I can find solace.

YL: Is poetry your salvation?

A: Absolutely. Who can convey this feeling in translation?

YL: I have always believedthat poetry functioned differently in the West. For us all thehistorical, cultural, social and political complexities have beeninternalized, they are a part of our individual fates. It’s notpossible to separate oneself from them. When the psychological burdenbecomes too great the only way to return to a realm of freedom is tosit down and write a line of poetry. It is only through poetry that wecan maintain equilibrium. This meaning of poetry is hard to understand,even for my closest European and American friends. For them poetry isthe product of a free life. You must first obtain freedom in lifebefore you can write poetry. But my only freedom is poetry. Poetry isthe only thing that can begin from the impossible, where everythingelse is in ruins.

A: In the West poetry is a cultural issue. In China and the Arab world, poetry is existence itself.

YL: In the West poetry isthe perfume on the bodies of beautiful women. Here, poetry is thechoice between life and death. It definitely isn’t just games of theintellect and styles. This is why our poetry is intense, profound, andmaybe also lonely.

A: Western poetry has already ended. You don’t have to go on reading it.

YL: The desire to read it is lost because you have already seen it all.

A: Poetry—not propaganda—isstill welcomed. That’s not the problem. For example in the poem I readyesterday I wrote about love using a form that was different from theclassical form yet people were able to respond to it. This is becauselove is basic to human beings.

YL: People say that love isthe only way to make time stand still. It leaves behind some specificmoments, but what can you do with those moments? Treat them as truth,fantasy, or treat fantasy as something more authentic than reality?What sort of beauty can transcend the limitations of life itself? Loveperpetually creates more problems so this is why there are moretragedies than comedies.

A: Indeed.

YL: Lastly, do you thinkthere is only the one time in the world? Westerners will look uponChina from an evolutionary perspective and say that we are their past;from another perspective, one with an exotic flavor, they will say thatwe are postmodern. Does this also occur between the West and Arabculture?

A: It’s very similar, but perhaps to a different extent. Apart from the religious part, the rest is much the same.

YL: For religion, time is abstract. However, dictators and power belong to the present.

A: It is dictatorshippolitics making use of religion. It is the present making use of“eternity”. Religions and political systems are the same: both are ourenemies.

YL: Then what can the poet do?

A: Only continue writing poetry.

YL: Can poetry save us?

A: Definitely, but it won’tbe easy, in fact it will be very difficult. We have manyresponsibilities and we must undertake them.

YL: Poetry contains all ofthese layers: religion, politics, individuality, and our understandingof language and culture… Poetry is a universe in which we exist.

A: I fully agree.