It was one of the frozen dark nights in Dec. 1991, Herta Müller walked out from the door of Mommsenstr 9, she felt warm because of the party she just had attented, there had been a lot of good Chinese food cooked by YoYo, the wife of Yang Lian who was a Chinese poet in exile invited by DAAD to live in Berlin for one year, they had been living in this beautiful apartment since 2nd of Jan. of this year, the dramatic time for everyone.
it was just a little longer than a year since the fall of the Berlin Wall. the face of the world had changed hugely because of it. Herta remembered very clearly the very tense feeling of those days when protests went to streets in Bucharest, Romania, where she was born. they called for Democracy loudly, while facing a very dangerous situation because every Romanian knew that the ex-president Ceausescu has ordered his Army to follow the model of what had happened in Beijing on June 4th of 1989, to do another Tiananmen Massacre in Europe. the massacre killed thousands of people but made the Communist power continue. Herta could almost see the blood colouring the streets she knew so well…. it was so lucky the tragedy didn’t happen in Romania, on the contrary, Ceausescu was killed by the people and the country was freed from the 44 years of control by the Communist party. but the experience was strong enough to make her feel that there was a deep link between her and China, and this is why she was deeply moved when she attended Yang Lian’s poetry reading in Berlin, and heard those lines from the poem “Death’s Angle” —-

gunshots hide inide, weeping

names hide still further in     so timid they

hope to be forgotten

submerging everyone

each evening

at zero hour    dripping blood again

She was moved because she knew well that the “everyone”, including also herself, those who had been killed were both Chinese, as well as Romanian, and all others dead tragically before and after 1989. the death and the fate brought all those “ghosts” together, they were/are the citicens of the cruel history. therefore, they found their own common language — deaths “Mother Tongue” – with the blood-red grammar, and making every breath a witness to the darkness of life, the memory and the experience will continue to be the foundation of our understanding for life and literature. she knows the ghosts are listening to her pen, she will write for them.

Any one who has tasted this pain will keep it as the spiritual root forever.

They became good friends, they often met for intense discussions, as well as read their works. she knew that year was like an exploding volcano for Yang Lian’s writings, during the year, he finished almost a whole collection of short poems titled Non-Person Singular, as well as a book of prose titled Ghostspeak. many of the works were translated into German and other languages immediately. ”the nightmare inspiration” didn’t distroy but built up Yang Lian’s writing powerfully, with the same happenings in the first-ever wave of Chinese literature in exile. the literature was so strong that it touched not only the comtemporary world, but also the depth of the great tradition of Classical Chinese poetry. Du Fu and Dante simply met each other. this kind of writings had never existed in Modern Chinese literature before. Herta felt the deep link between herself and this seemingly “strange” country and culture, she will fight for their freedom just like she fights for her own.

Many years later, when she gave her speech to receive the Nobel Prize in Stockholm, she specially mentioned China because she knew that the Chinese ambassador was among the audience there. then, she met Yang Lian and YoYo during their stay at the Hotel Bleibtreu those days, it was during the great celebration for her Nobel Prize held at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele on 18th of Dec. 2009, she told Yang Lian:”I was so happy to speak out about this, when they had to listen to it!”

Well, of course, the story I wrote above about our earlier meeting in 1991 was a little fiction, but it is based on ”the literary logic”, and what she told me last night – this was true. I have been moved so much.

The wine shop directly below our apartment on Mommsenstr 9, where I bought a lot of bottles

The little vegetable shop across the street, we were woken up when it opened in the early morning every day, perhaps, it still has the same owner like 20 years ago.

The road sign of Mommsenstr, the building behind was our "Temporary Home for 1991".

Writing in the back yard of the house home in Mommsenstr 9 in 1991

Herta Müller and me

Me, my wife and David Weinberger

More snow, even colder, the darker sky makes me feel like diving into the deep sea.

Room 308 in Hotel Bleibtreu is just like a submarine, I can see the Bleibtreustr under my window, where it is snow-white now. the roofs of the building on the other side of the street are snow-white too. we all together made Berlin an Atlantic in the depth of history. to me, the best feeling about Berlin is, to swim in all layers of time.

When I said “Time”, it doesn’t mean only the time in “Big History”, even though Berlin gained its most special style from it, how could one think about 20th century history and ignore the city? World Wars, Cold War, Fall of Berlin Wall, even recently, President Obama’s first speech in Europe……one by one, each event keeps Berlin standing out as the centre of World History. it is the rock in the depth of the sea, where we can feel every flow and endlessly challenging our thinking. perhaps, one can be cynical everywhere in the world but not in Berlin, the city keeps our eyes on the cruel situation of humanity and the beauty of transcendence of humanity. there is no possibility that one comes to Berlin and refuses to be creative poetically and politically.

To me, “Time” here is more private. as a Chinese poet, I can feel so clearly about how the big history is deeply involved in everyone’s life, therefore our personal lifes represent the real depth of history. in this sense, a city becomes familiar. it is also because we knew people who live here, those real lifes together with their thoughts are the meaning of the city. I put the word “poetically” before the word “politically”, because to me, they are two separate layers, one deeper than the other, “Poetical” is the passion of questioning one’s self, to challenge our own limits of understanding; but “Political” often represents a kind of collective emotion that easily falls for the power-games simplifying the richness and complexity of the matter. that is why those noisy slogans are often weaker on, even against, the developing of the independent thinking. taking ”Black or White” way of thinking is easier but it is different from the real life experience

I am thinking about Ms Verena Auffermann, she is a very stylish lady, a real German intellectual that means with rich knowledge on philosophy and literature, again, the best host of her quests in her home with the wonderfully tasty food and carefully chosen wine. I know this because my wife and I were invited to her home at the first night after we arrived, a taxi brought us to her house, to Verena’s beautiful appartment which is filled with arts, books, and now the friends, Verena, her husband and the most beloved “Lili”, Verena’s beautiful dog, gave a warmest welcome to us, especially to the two Chinese. her speech before the dinner has covered the short time but with quite rich experiences since we knew each other, actually, it was exactly two months, when we met for the first time during Suhrkamp Verlag’s reception held during the Frankfurt Bookfair on 14th of Oct, but  again, the good understanding between friends doesn’t need the length of time, but the depth of exchanges.

Verena Auffermann and me

The Frankfurt Bookfair this year had some special “highlights”. mostly, they came from one subject: “China”, because China was the main guest country of the bookfair this year. and not surprisingly (to me), Chinese officials managed to create the first scandal almost two weeks before even the beginning of the bookfair, by refusing to join the discussion with the two “Distant writers”, it caused a storm in the German media, and actually one sentence “Shame on Chinese Government” has been heard everywhere, and that made the two “refused” Chinese distants on the front page of every news paper, as well as TV programmes. but, within the noise, I felt there was something lost, what was it? I carefully thought about it and the answers were: 1, Literature; 2, China. within the noisy political slogans that were nothing new to us, we could hear any clear and independent voice of literature, which means, not only shouting to others but deeply questioning ourselves, even with the situation of China today, of course there isn’t a heaven for writers, but beyond the complain to “Why not a heaven”, should we actually ask more about what is the writers’ reaction to the control? what are the writings we have done to break through the cencorship? there is no place to be called “a Heaven” for those independent and creative thinkers in the world, so literature provides the base to us, to stand, to exist and to fight, in our own way which means, not only join one side of the game but through out the whole game. Poetry is something born to refuse both “official controls” of Power and Money, seen in the east and in the west, we speak our “Unique Mother Tongue” — Poetry. secondly and perhaps more importantly, among the “Black or White” political talks, tells what’s really happened in China and making it very exciting and interesting was mist, I mean the very difficult, very complex and very epical cultural transformation that brings the ancient cultural tradition to the modern world today. the huge energy came from the huge challenge. the classical Chinese culture, just the same as the western culture, is another, “the other” to Chinese today, even the Chinese language. it seems to use the same characters but actually more than 40% are new words translated from the west during the 20th century, therefore, it should be called “An ancient but youngest language”! even younger than American English! so, “China” is nothing but a huge piece of “Conceptual art”, full of experimental trying! the bookfair should be the best place to open up the discussion with detailed studies on this brand new phenomenon, and this way to gain some important understanding about China, and about the very closely linked world. but, it was not there, another chance lost.

Luckily, it existed in our event that was chaired by Verena, and held by the DAAD (Artist-in-Berlin Programme) for Gao Xingjian, the Nobel laureate 2000, and me. my worry was released the first minute I met Verena at the Suhrkamp reception, when she introduced herself and immediately said: “let’s talk about Literature.” yes! this is the point. China is nothing but Chinese people, and Chinese people is nothing but what they think. the two Chinese writers are nothing but the questions we ask to ourselves based on life experiences crossing China and the west, the situation of humanity again, and the depth of thought have to be developed into the creative form of literature. we are also “extremes”, but extreme literary based on extreme humanity. it was a great sucessful event in the bookfair, Verena (in my expression) drove the very heavy lorry in her light hands, made us step by step reach the idea of “Individually aesthetical resitance”, there is no heaven for poets and we didn’t even want a heaven, because all nightmare could be also our inspiration and energy for our writing, the beauty of poetry is dealing with all layers of “Impossibility”, but — always “Starting from the impossible!”

I remember the other frozen cold night in Berlin, on Dec. of 1991, DAAD and I organised the “Lightflow Fstival”, a small festival for those Chinese artists who were residing in Berlin, one member of the audience asked me: “your poems are so dark, where is the light?” I answered: “yes, the poems are dark, but I am writing — this is the light”.

The sentence is still shining, even with more light, because we are facing this world, even more bloody, cruel and strange — even darker.

The poems below were written in Mommsenstr, after my visit to Sils-Maria, Switzerland, where snow could be seen even in June, 1991. in the poems, the snow has been transformed into a “Language” that brings Berlin and the mountains, as well as poet Nietzsche and Yang Lian, together crossing spaces and times, poetry is ”non-personal”, therefore, it includes everybody.

THE NON-PERSONAL SNOW

THE NON-PERSONAL SNOW 1

the snowfall is arid　　rushed　　imitates the enthusiasm of a person
brutish, dusky daylight
snow walks along the treetops with tiny claws

tiny skeletons
skeletons of glass refined by fierce fire

snow　　always stops
the moment it’s still grating on the ear

as for death　　what can the dead still remember?
a body secretly sprinkled all silver
a thousand pregnant women giving birth in the sky
cold orphans still not given permission
a pink ladder of flesh　　leads to a tiny attic
a tiny attic of white night　　where corpses are kept

you don’t exist　　so all year round you are snow-capped

THE NON-PERSONAL SNOW 2

Sils-Maria, Switzerland

the snowy ground is covered with blind men　　they can’t see
the poem that died in the hotel
and　　the valleys that breed the fearsome sunlight

below the same precipices they lose their shadows
become thin black needles on the garden sundial
wash their feet in laughter

take pains to carve patterned vessels from a dead bird
drink deep at picnic time of the scarlet stream
noon　　the scarlet stream exuded by blind eyes

they can’t see　　the tourists in the poem
lying naked in hotel beds
no need to fall　　to get to the depths of an avalanche

THE NON-PERSONAL SNOW 3

a little clay lamp　　is your present to darkness
in the clashing together of the sounds of the rain
the snow in your name is born
snow that engrains your body
pain　　releases flocks of birds shut up in stones for years
each one a word　　and you are wordless
the storm　　is a cemetery in the air above city roofs
angels too　　in the nest must lick their wounds
like golden-headed beasts kneeling on the olden days
a person revealed by water just has to follow the current
a snowfall is like music that goes down to death
you, when a name dies every day
expose a body that no-one can caress
let the sky feel
from snow to blood　　feel all over the flame
until darkness　　pays back some unknown person’s time

THE NON-PERSONAL SNOW 4

Sils-Maria, Switzerland

night like a madman’s thoughts　　knocks
on our skulls　　making us encounter
dangerous snow from a non-existent distance
like horses racing past a single peak beneath two stars
with the pricking of a nail buried in the summer night
hear ghosts laying the dust　　sweeping the moon
hear　　headstones tell lies　　flaunt the arts of living

we are all snow　　slipping downhill
innately non-personal and so squandering each person’s death
night on the sickbed　　squanders vain hopes
as the village of madmen strums away
candles are undying　　bells sprinkle tears
on mountains and in fields white bones take off the mourning dress of our days
and　　we are frozen into one complete stone

THE NON-PERSONAL SNOW 5

this mountain valley can’t be visited
just like inside you　　that attic of white night

when you’re invited by the snow　　flowers and plants are a silence
field of vision　　like a glass of wine poured into darkness
burning in other places

when you’re turned down by the snow　　you are colourless
a hawk roosting in a wound　　softly weeping sunlight
rock　　slowly swallows you
and your sex shines with a brilliance impossible after death

when you have become the only impossibility
a lifetime’s snows have already fallen

in the attic of white night　　forceps tightly pinch
in the fragile dreams of birds　　the sky cheers heartlessly
sweet pears on girls’ breasts　　fall into
the rainy season 　　the sound of rain　　chases you all over your insides
an utterly naked man is only a snowflake

spotless white underfoot in the valley　　glaring

a walk of a thousand years still hasn’t crossed this room you aren’t in

THE NON-PERSONAL SNOW 6

Sils-Maria, Switzerland

those who live in time know time isn’t time
a rock is itself a poem
and shadow 　　engraved as a seat by a lake
weeds every June 　　read aloud here
snow 　　the silver-white book of the dead
and the brush of steel wire and coir is still stubbornly sweeping

a pair of muddy shoes of coffin wood
a set of paper handcuffs　　make the convict more terrified yet
these words　　go wrong when written down
words carved on cliffs　　ride on a runaway cable car
broken apart day after day
poets who leap into a poem deserve only to be broken apart

in an imagination more lifelike than death
snow is a once-only walk　　once and once only
June rots in chorus　　as the bodies of the dead ring bells
all men　　are ringing solitary bells that are fulfilled in this moment
dying more lifelike than in imagination
snow 　　has gone too far　　can’t help burying everything

© 2005, Yang Lian, All rights reserved.

Berlin again! I was so excited when I heard from someone: ” this is the first snow of the winter”, yes? why? Snow is poetic of course, but just because of that?

No, to me, the feeling was so much more and deeper. Together with the snow, the dark cold night again, the christmas lights on Ku-Damm again, the frozen streets under my feet again, finally, myself again but I almost become two different “persons”! My memory shifts back, to the other night almost 20 years ago.

It was the 2nd of Jan. 1991. The very first day I arrived Berlin as an invited guest of the DAAD artist programme, the journey to Berlin was long, my wife YoYo and I departed from Auckland, New Zealand, a city under a piece of sky totally different from here, but strange enough, after we settled our one-year temporary ”home” in Mommsenstr 9, a beautiful flat which later became a birthplace of many poems and prose of mine, we couldn’t sleep even though our bodies were extremely tired, what’s wrong? What were they calling us to meet up with? OK, let’s go to meet Berlin! Few minutes later, we found ourselves on the empty and silent Ku-Damm, it’s about 3 AM.

But, it’s not empty at all. Something was there waiting for me: The Air! the cutting-cold, spicy clear, a little bit salty like snow-tasting winter air in Berlin! I breathed it in deeply, and closed my eyes to feel, suddenly, I know what was hidden inside of it, it was so similar to the air in Beijing where I grew up my first 33 years of life. Within the same “Nordic air” there, I was a young student to experience the “Cultural Revolution”; I had been sent to the countryside as other millions of people; mainly intellectuals and students, for the so-called “Re-education”; I saw my mother’s yellow-white stiffing hand on the floor of a hospital and my nanny’s half fallen drop of tear on her face when they died; I started my too-yound poems under an oil-lamp after the whole day of hard labour-work, didn’t actually know what’s the meaning of a good poem but just loved the feeling of being together with words privately…… all journeys being a poet afterwards started with it: writing is a very private thing. However big and philosophical a concept must be proven by this kind of common sence, to build up a private link between the thinking and a life. This early-made understanding has never left me after that time, even though my “titles” changed all the way from “young poet”, “underground poet” in China during the 80s, and ”Chinese poet in exile” after the Tiananmen Massacre happened in Beijing on June 4th, 1989, until today, my international journey has been more than 20 countries, my poems were translated into the similar number of different languages, all those were the contents of the air I breathed in when I stood on Berlin street at that moment, the air and I, face to face, waked up by each other.

Well, I have to use the past tense, because it is 4,30PM, on the 17th of Jan, 2009. “Snow-flowers”, the way Chinese people called the falling pieces of snow, are falling fast outside of my window, Berlin is getting dark already, “the past tense”, but, can things really be past if they carved deeply in our heart and words?

I counted more than ten times of very heavy snows in Jan. and Feb. of 1991, they were the beautiful yet painful links between Berlin and Beijing, “Me” in 1991 and “Me” before then, as I mentioned many times, no-one could have more complex feelings than the Chinese when we saw the fall of the Berlin Wall, the day when Eastern exiled writers went back to home was just the beginning of our exile. Yes, history can run oppositely on the front of our eyes. The same dream could be finished in totally different ways: laughter in Berlin and tears in Beijing, and again, are they really two fates that totally separated? I remember how moved I was when I saw the BBC documentary on the fall of the Berlin Wall, the ex-DDR officer who guarded the wall and finally opened the gate said there:”In my mind, there was nothing but one sentence repeatly — NO TIANANMEN IN MY HAND! NO TIANANMEN IN MY HAND!” The two cities separated by ten thousands of kilometres distance therefore again linked so tightly by the common fate, and becoming a pair of symbols of 1989, the turning point of the world and millions of people.

My poem titled 1989 ended up with this sentence: “this is no doubt a perfectly ordinary year”, it made even my friends so shocked: how could that year be “ordinary”? But the hidden question in the sentence was: if we were so shocked by the Tiananmen Massacre as we saw the death for the very first time, then where are our memories about all other deaths before? Even cruelly, how can we guarantee our tears this time were not to wash our  memory away again? When this poem had been translated into English, the translators did spend a lot of times to think about which “tense” they should use? “The past” was correct, because 1989 was a past; but “the present” is even stronger, because “the death” was not only one happening, but a never changed situation! We have learned so much about it throughout the 20th century, including 1989, “9/11″ and recently the “Iraqy War”… the poem just like the snow, one time reminds another, one writing points out all others, Berlin today including all my earlier Berlin and my remembered Beijing. “IT IS” here and now, therefore, everywhere and forever.

“Forever” — I am taking the walk through the snowing Zoologischer Garden, listening goats’ crying just like some newly born babies in the darkness, and then wrote the following part of a poem:

The Garden on a Winter’s day

1.

trees frozen red in the snow    as if wearing worn-out wind-breakers
snow crunching underfoot
the hurried night always wears brand-new soles

goats fear loneliness    for every year
cries become bitter weeping

the path    a cow, just dropped a calf
scarred head to tail by the whip, panting paralysed in bloody mud

streetlamps come on still earlier    lovers dim as stones
stand, faces blurred, by a metal bier
the vole is an exhausted nurse    stealthily
slinking into the garden’s wounds to dream
flowers    are preserving their pink flesh below ground
like dead children    straightaway, fresh tender ghosts

underdeveloped stars lock us up with iron railings

Often, I stood on the window of my apartment on Mommsenstr 9, watching the snowing street under the strret lamps, I could hear poets’ questions to ourselves and writings clearly, perhaps, the only power of Poetry comes just from the questions on our powerlessness, as the second part of the poem said:

2.

in this world the ones who trust writing least    are poets
in the blank snow roses have been withering since birth
the flame is far away from two cold hands
winter bustles about    like an industrious editor
I    become something spiked by the sunlight
bending to sniff at my death-stench which grows daily stronger
in one man’s north wind    the garden long ago ceased to be
existing for the imagination    in the end, as always, returning to the imagination
the blue music of tree and tree    is played only on silence
so the same heavy snow has twice fallen on my shoulders
when it covers the garden    I am forgottenv
stepping on an intersection    I am mistaken
under the lamps the empty street is like a hoarse throat
declaiming    and for years the withered and fallen words look on

Finally, I am here, in Berlin, feeling have been brought back by the whole sky with full of dancing “Snow Flowers”, walking through my all memories in all-time, be a writer in residency in our “Hotel” of Life — does that with a borrowed name of “Bleibtreu”? — why not? the third of part of the poem has written down this fate long time ago:

3.

some people, addicted to corpses    love to stroll in winter gardens
people who salute ruins    can appreciate
a plot to drown a kitten in a ditch
pressing its head down like crushing a walnut
it’s definitely children    children running into the garden

children know better than anyone how to trample flowers

even our dying day is unreal    a piece of a charred pole
poking slantwise from the ground like the crocodile’s long snout
the sky is so gloomy it seems like daylight sleep
fishbones vomited by the ocean    stab us too
in dreams live fish, scraped clean of scales, are stabbed one by one
alive beneath the travelling knife

all flesh is reduced to a place with no power to look back

touch    all that is touched is non-existent
and cancer swells impalpably in the depths
a black pregnant woman    enwrapping a raped springtime
a treetrunk sliced by sight
swans’ necks become pale underwater snares
once we have divided the world with fractured compound eyes
we are all blind    each spectre sets the white snow off
exposed in the dry ice-hard wind
endures the pain of bones budding

until    the garden is shamed into colour
lashed all its life by an unidentifiable season