Yang Lian: Misty But Meaningful
"Don't impose meaning on this poetry, but rather let the images wash over you as dream images do, or as music does," says Brian Holton in a brief introduction to Yang Lian's poetry in Notes of a Blissful Ghost. Interpreting Yang Lian's poetry is much like trying to decipher a dream. Often, dreams contain elements of familiarity. The dreamer might recognize his or her environment or the people in the dream. Dreams are usually so haunting, though, in that this familiarity is challenged by unfamiliarity and incoherence. A person whom the dreamer recognizes as a friend might be very mean in the dream. The dreamer may be at the mall one moment and then at home the next. In the dream, regardless of how bizarre the situation, to the dreamer, all seems perfectly real. The dreamer is unaware of the impossible passages of time until he or she awakens and realizes the ridiculousness.
Yang Lian's work comes from a tradition called misty poetry. Characterized by lines and stanzas that seem to make no sense and are often largely incoherent, misty poetry can be very frustrating for the reader seeking meaning. A misty poem is like a dream, but unfortunately, the reader is like the awakened dreamer. It is the task of the reader to disregard logic. Time must cease to exist. The imagination must be freed from the shackles of consciousness. The reader must not take Yang Lian's poetry too literally, but must instead use the imagery to paint a larger picture, and nobody's painting will look alike. Some paintings may look remarkably like Yang Lian's original intention, while others will appear entirely different, but does Yang Lian care? If one were to ask Yang Lian what the meaning of a particular poem is, he would most likely respond, "What do you think it means?" One will notice, though, that just about every painting based on the imagery of Yang Lian will be dark and ominous in nature, but still quite beautiful, nonetheless and will bear some sort of meaning to the reader.
Perhaps by taking a close look at a sample of Yang Lian's poetry, one might better understand how the relentless ambiguities and twisted imageries can be manipulated in different ways to arrive at numerous conclusions but still manage to paint a picture with a central idea that can be interpreted. Below is a poem entitled Stone on the Windowsill, found in Yang Lian's collection Notes of a Blissful Ghost. The lines are numbered for the convenience of reference.
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Stone on the Windowsill
- stone on the windowsill looks out of the window
- makes a whole room tilt to the cliff
- fish living in sunken ships ready to rot to bones
- music hacked by the axe
- trees still doing a green finger exercise
- the rainstorm that always stands still at the window
- uses its standstill to insinuate itself into the room
- insinuates itself into you like the indifferent gleam of the stone
- an entire ocean tilts to its beginning
- as you are monitored you climb into an invertebrate
- unwittingly shaped like a corpse
- could be pecked by a crow any time
- the glass magnifies the threat of not speaking
- a grey eyeball staring at your face ignoring you (p.73)
Line 4 breaks the coherence of the image momentarily: "music hacked by the axe." Music is given a physical body, and like the fish, this music is doomed. More death. What kind of music? Where is it playing? Why should the music stop and why so abruptly and violently? "Trees still doing a green finger exercise," states line 5. Trees have no fingers, but Yang Lian claims they are doing some sort of finger exercise. Perhaps these green fingers are leaves. It could be that these finger exercises are referring to those played upon musical instruments. Trees cannot play instruments, but they do make sound when the wind blows through their branches. Wind is quite like the finger exercises that dance along a musical scale. It starts out with a low note, and as wind picks up in strength, it reaches for higher and higher notes, before the wind dies down again, and returns to the bottom of the scale. Is this wind the music? An axe can chop branches thus rendering the branches incapable of wind or music, but trees have plenty of branches, and this poem has but one axe. The work of one axe against all those branches is futile, so the trees are "still" making that sound without melody, the fast musical scales of finger exercises on a saxophone, trumpet, or a clarinet. So what does the image look like now? There is a stone looking out the window at a cliff that is perhaps blanketed by trees. Wind could be blowing the trees and perhaps this axe that Yang Lian speaks of is invisible. Perhaps the wind is so strong that the branches are breaking on their own, as if they are being hacked by an invisible axe. Down at the bottom of the cliff, there is a body of water with fish that are ready to die.
After reading five lines, it is quite obvious that there is serious ambiguity. Although the questions are abundant, there is an image. It is rather strange, and it will not look the same for everyone, but it is there. Perhaps another person will not see these trees. Maybe the music is not wind, and the axe actually exists as a presence in the painting. The image is very subjective. This is very characteristic of misty poetry.
Next, lines 6 and 7 paint more of the picture. "The rainstorm that always stands still at the window… uses its standstill to insinuate itself into the room." Rain falls from the sky, but when one looks out a window, even though there is movement, the image remains constant. Steady rain is like static on a television screen. It moves, yet is a continuous presence. If looked upon in this way, the rain can stand still in the window. Perhaps to the stone, or anybody else for that matter who is looking out the window, this continuous rainfall is so mesmerizing that the rain seems to be falling inside the room, as well. The focus of the poem seems to be the sight outside of the window. What is happening out there is so fascinating to the looker that it is as if the looker is actually out there. Could this be what Yang Lian means by the whole room tilting to the cliff? Perhaps the room only seems to be tilting because the observer is so engrossed by what is happening outside the window.
Line 8 brings the poem an extra pair of eyes: "insinuates itself into you like the indifferent gleam of the stone." It seems that the real observer in this poem is "you," whoever "you" is. Why is the gleam of the stone indifferent? This is perhaps because the stone is on the inside of the window. It is not where the action is. It is a by-stander, like the "you" presence, also observing what appears to be chaos outside. The outside world "insinuates itself into you." The observer's attention is clearly outside.
"An entire ocean tilts to its beginning," states line 9. First off, it is now clear that the body of water at the bottom of the cliff is an ocean. The questions line 9 delivers are quite perplexing. They are perhaps not as easy to try and make sense of and answer. What is the beginning, and where is it? This might depend solely on the religious beliefs of Yang Lian, the poem's author. It is known that Yang Lian was an atheist, but to the reader that knows nothing of Yang Lian's background, there is really no way to know where he believes an ocean might originate. Even the knowledge that Yang Lian was an atheist does not help the deciphering process much. If Yang Lian expressed a strong Daoist faith, perhaps the ocean's origin would be "qi," but since "qi" is everywhere and makes up every object, how can an ocean lean towards "qi"? What direction would "qi" flow? Regardless of where the ocean is tilting, one must keep in mind that the image depicts an entire ocean tilting. This is quite a catastrophic event and a good reason why an observer might be looking out the window so fixedly. Maybe the room and the ocean are tilting in towards each other, with the observer and the stone being, in a sense, swallowed. Obviously, it is difficult to judge, but for the sake of this painting, try picturing it this way.
Lines 10 and 11 say, "As you are monitored you climb into an invertebrate unwittingly shaped like a corpse." It seems there are only two characters before this line with the ability to see: "you and the stone." By deduction, it appears that the stone is monitoring "you." Climbing into an invertebrate, again, is a tricky phrase with lots of possible interpretations. What can be climbed in this poem? There is a cliff, but "you" and the stone are still inside the room. Remember, though, that the rainstorm has insinuated itself into the room and the "you" is so gripped by the outdoor happenings that it is as if the "you" is outside. Does the "you" climb down the cliff and somehow into a spineless aquatic creature? That sounds absurd, not that absurd is wrong, but perhaps there is another interpretation more fitting for the large painting. The invertebrate is shaped like a corpse. Could it be that the "you," like the fish and the trees, is doomed to die? Perhaps this invertebrate corpse is really just a transparent hollowed twin of the "you" character. One can almost see this corpse dim and flickering like a ghost, waiting for "you" to embody it. Perhaps "you" must surrender to death and climb into this corpse in which, like line 12 suggests, "could be pecked by a crow any time."
"The glass magnifies the threat of not speaking," says line 13. The magnifying glass is most likely the window, but "the threat of not speaking" needs some thought and some possible explanation. The threat of not speaking could be referring to the corpse image. Maybe it is as if the corpse is taunting the "you" character with death. Could it be that the "you" is afraid of the inability to speak as would be promised by embodying the corpse and dying?
The poem closes with "a grey eyeball staring at your face… ignoring you." Is it a new eyeball that just appears? Is it one of the dead eyeballs of the corpse? Is it the stone? Arrows seem to point at the stone. The stone can be grey. Yang Lian personified the stone, so it has the ability to stare. The assumption that the eye is the stone also redirects attention back to the title, which seems appropriate for the final line of a poem. The title implies the stone as the central figure of the poem. It sits there with its "indifferent gleam" gazing, and ignoring the "you."
It is time to step back and look at the final painting. In the center sits the stone on the windowsill. On one side of the window, there is the "you" presence, and there is a room that is tilting towards the cliff. On the other side of the window, there is transparent corpse, there is an intense storm, there are some hopeless ill-fated fish, and the ocean is rising presumably in a tidal wave heading for the foreground towards the window. There is a sense that what is inside the room is drawn to what is outside, and vice versa. It is like two grand-scale magnets. The center of this extreme implosion seems to be The Stone on the Windowsill, and the stone remains indifferent.
This is the interpretation by one imagination. It is a peculiar painting, indeed, and it is easy to see how others can have exceptionally different imaginary paintings of this poem. What is key is that one is able to arrive at some final image or collection of images. In this way, one can look at the product and decide upon a personal meaning. This personal meaning matters about as much as the painting. If Yang Lian wants the reader to choose for oneself what is depicted by the imagery in his poems, he probably invites the reader to draw upon his or her own life experiences and imagination to decide on a meaning.
For example, if one had to analyze the painting above, one might return to the notion that death plays an important role in this poem. All the images in the poem seem to be gearing up for death. The "you" character is faced with a magnified image of his or her own silent corpse. The fish at the very bottom of the ocean in sunken ships are getting ready to rot to bones. A tidal wave is heading for the room. The collision will be monstrous. The only figure that stands unaffected is the stone, or the staring grey eye. Unconcerned, it watches the misfortune all around it. Perhaps this poem is just a reminder that all things come to an end. Life is hopeless, and death will catch up with everything, so why trouble oneself? This can be either a depressing message, or an uplifting message in disguise. Hopefully, one would choose to see the light among this darkness. Humans are granted but one life to live. Would it not be wise to disregard the inevitability of death like the stone does and to live life to the fullest?
The desire to offer disclaimers while interpreting the misty poetry of Yang Lian is not surprising. Stone on the Windowsill can mean just about anything to anyone. This is the beauty of abstract poetry. To some, this kind of poetry is just annoying because there is no real way to know exactly what the poet's original meaning is. The key to enjoying misty poetry lies in the reader's willingness to accept that the final meaning is in the hands of the reader, and arriving at this meaning requires the work of the imagination. Ambiguities force the reader to ask numerous questions and to decide upon several answers. The poet can only hope that the reader has the patience to address all the questions posed, to paint a picture, to decide what the picture is, and to internalize its meaning.
by Peter Cain