Many Worlds

Abstract

i a.j. letters letters Many Worlds In his editor's note in the January 2009 issue ofWorld LiteratureToday, Daniel Simon quotes David Dam rosch's essay (WLT,April 2003,9-14) inwhich he speaks about "World Literature" as a body of writings "wherebywriters frame theirrespec tive cultures as 'windows on the world.'" Simon finally asks: "How do we readworld literature,then?" I think his own answer?"start ingwith the one right outside our window"?is quite appropriate as it takes into account the shifting perspectives and wide-ranging com parative approaches needed for a competent reading. The pages of WLT, issue after issue, offer those necessary and rich vistas of litera turesand cultures in the twenty-first century. One certainly hopes that theseofferingscontinue togrow and flourish. It would also be appropriate to recall at this point, when sev eral anthologies and critical studies are beginning to propose such new focus, that the actual thought pro cess and itsformulationshave had a longer criticalhistory.As farback as 1988, the theoristAlamgir Hashmi wrote in The Commonwealth, Com parativeLiterature, and the World: "We must scratch away the thick paint at the back of the looking glass, so that it [the mirror, and the study of literatures] can now fulfill itsother promise?that it will be ourwindow on theworld" (36-37). Hashmi dis cusses many world writers, includ ing American, African, and Afri can American writers, in that book. Although it is not specificallymen tioned inhis discussion ofAmerican works, I have always wondered if he was making an oblique allusion toToni Morrison's Tar Baby to forge a poignant metaphor forfuturecriti cal approaches that will need to step beyond Western narcissism. Congratulations to World Lit eratureToday for having taken the firststeps in therightdirection. Both original creativewritings and critical commentaries put us truly in touch with the world and its literature. Margaret Stanfield London Winter's Voice: Bei Dao From the first timewe met (at the Asia Society'sNovember 1988 forum on the writer's role in contempo rarysociety),Bei Dao has impressed me with the art of understatement. Whereas Gu Cheng came in sport ing an eccentric hat and twittering speech filled with quotable apho risms, Bei Dao stood his ground in darker light.That chilly autumn before the student demonstrations of 1989, he already understood the healing power ofwintery speech. A refugee from the enforced, loqua cious ardor of theRed Sun, Bei Dao knew thatsaying less?leaving large gaps between his carefully crafted words and broken lines?allowed him, and his readers, tomake room forimagination,foradditional histor ical trauma, and maybe even forthe possibility ofhealing poetic language of itsaddiction to theoracular. Now, two decades after the crushing of the Beijing spring of 1989, Bei Dao remains a bard faith ful to chilling landscapes. In his poem "Black Map," we find again a poet who intends to "bring the heart ofwinter /when springwater and horse pills / become thewords 1 tomS^^ \ ^}S^t^M^^S of night." Brighter seasons such as spring contain cliched recipes for hope, giant horse pills thatmight weaken theeffort needed tohear the words ofnight. What is thisnight?A code word for theHistory that casts a shadow over all ofBei Dao's work?not only because he is a survivor of the late Mao period, not only because he sufferedexile forhis sympathywith thevictims of JuneFourth, not only because tragedywalks with a heavy step inhis personal life. Itmight be that "Northern Island" finds itdif ficult to unfold himself fromwhat he calls "the fan of history" out of fear thathemight fall silent, run out of things tosay as hiswounded gen eration finds fewer scabs topick. The challenge thatBei Dao faces head on is how to become a poet without that cursedly capital "P." I found his gloomy conclusion at the end of the2003 interviewwith Tang Xiaodu especially moving, especial ly honest: "The history ofmodern Chinese poetry in the last hundred years ought tomake us pause and 4 i World Literature Today ...