The
Spokesman and the Tribe
At the
outset of his career, a writer often wrestles with the Aristotelian
questions-to whom, as whom, and in whose interest does he write? His
answers to
those questions will shape his vision and help determine his subject
matter and
even his style of writing. Among the three questions, "as whom does he
write" is the most troublesome one, because it involves the writer's
sense
of identity and tradition, both of which, though often not a matter of
choice,
may be subject to change.
My initial
answers to those questions were
quite simple. In the preface to Between Silences, my first book of
poems, I
wrote, "As a fortunate one I speak for those unfortunate people who
suffered, endured or perished at the bottom of life and who created the
history
and at the same time were fooled or ruined by it." I viewed myself as a
Chinese writer who would write in English on behalf of the downtrodden
Chinese.
I was unaware of the complexity and infeasibility of the position I had
adopted, especially for a person in my situation. Indeed, too much
sincerity is
a dangerous thing. It can overheat one's brain.
In general,
writers from less-developed
countries are apt to define themselves in terms of their social roles,
partly
because of the guilt they feel for emigrating to the materially
privileged West
and partly because of the education they received in their native
lands, where
the collective is usually held above the individual. In fact, the word
"individualism" still has a negative ring in Chinese. When I began to
write, I longed to return to China, and I saw my stay in the United
States as a
sojourn, so it felt almost natural for me to claim to be something of a
spokesman for the unfortunate Chinese. Little did I know that such a
claim
could be so groundless. At any moment, a country can take a writer to
task and
even accuse him of misdeeds, betrayal, or other crimes against his
people. Even
the people he tries to serve can question him, "Who gave you the right
to
speak for us?" Some may even pose a challenge: "If you have not
suffered together with us, you've just appropriated our miseries for
your
personal gain. You sell your country and your people abroad."
Few of those
questioning the writer will
heed the truism that Homer didn't have to go to Troy with the Greek
warriors to
sing of their deeds. But then, Homer is a great poet. Who are we? As
aspiring
writers, we at times cannot help but wonder about the justification for
our
writing endeavors. Can our talent alone be our justification as tribal
spokespersons? Logically speaking, talent alone should be sufficient,
since
most collective experiences and personal stories have no lasting
significance
unless they are transformed and preserved in art. But the world
operates in its
own way, as if designed to frustrate and smother talent.
The best
qualification for claiming
spokesman-ship that a writer can have is to be an established voice in
his
native country-that is, before arriving abroad, to already have an
audience at
home. From this position, he can resume writing abroad, though he may
be
speaking to different people and about different things. This is a
fortunate
endowment, but, like most endowments, it cannot last forever. Such a
writer is
like a literary ambassador of limited tenure who will be replaced by
another in
time.
It stands to
reason that many important
writers in exile regarded themselves as spokesmen of their native
countries,
because this approach is an expedient way to resume their writing
roles. The
best examples of this are the Russian novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn
and the
Chinese author Lin Yutang, both of whom were exiles and viewed
themselves as
spokesmen of their countries, their visions shaped by nostalgia and by
their
efforts to rejoin their peoples after many years in the United States.
Solzhenitsyn was
stripped of his Soviet
citizenship for the false charge of treason. In December 1973, a
Parisian
publisher had brought out the first volume of The Gulag
Archipelago, and he was expelled from Russia in February
1974. Although a man of strong self-assurance and moral conviction, he
was
staggered by the expulsion, unable to imagine living elsewhere or
writing for a
different audience. He told a Spanish interviewer, "I never intended to
become a Western writer .... I came to the West against my will. I
write only
for my homeland." Also, to a Swiss reporter, he lamented, "I do not
live in Switzerland .... I live in Russia. All my interests, all the
things I
care about, are in Russia." (1)
After two years in Europe, Solzhenitsyn and his
family came to the
United States in the summer of 1976 and secluded themselves in the
outskirts of
Cavendish, a village in the Black River Valley of Vermont. It was said
that
Solzhenitsyn loved the New England state's cold climate, crisp air, and
natural
forests, all of which reminded him of Russia. (2)
Last summer, I
happened to take a trip to
Vermont, and, while on my way back to Massachusetts, I drove to
Cavendish to
look at Solzhenitsyn's estate. To my surprise, the fifty-acre property,
surrounded by a steel fence, was still inhabited by some members of his
family.
The iron- gate was forbidding, complete with an intercom and electronic
surveillance; nearby a tree bore a sign: "Private Property. No
Trespassing." The road to his estate and the driveway inside the
thickly
wooded acres were both unpaved. His two-story wood house on a hill
looked
weather beaten, and around it nature appeared to have run its own
course. A
burbling brook flowed through a deep gully at the foot of the hill,
making the
place easy to defend from a military point of view-we know that the
Solzhenitsyn’s occasionally received death threats even in Cavendish
(3).
Everything beyond the steel fence seemed to suggest that the
inhabitants had
not intended to live here permanently, had been extremely concerned
about their
safety, and had deliberately isolated themselves from the public and
their
neighbors. On the other hand, a middle-aged woman at a grocery store in
Cavendish gave me clear directions to the writer's home, fondly calling
him
"Alexander." My impression of his homestead was congruous with
Solzhenitsyn's statement that he always planned to return to his native
land.
He and his wife
and their three sons lived
at this place for eighteen years, until he was finally able to return
to
Russia, in March 1994 - his Russian citizenship restored, the charge of
treason
dropped, and his books at last published in Russia. It was at this
place where
he worked twelve or fourteen hours a day, from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven
days a
week, and wrote many of his books, mainly his magnum opus, The
Red Wheel series (4). Although he claimed, "I write only
for my homeland," Solzhenitsyn for many years could not speak to the
Russian people directly despite writing in his mother tongue. He could
speak,
through translation, only to a Western audience. All the same, he set
himself
the task of exposing the underside of the Soviet history, bearing
witness to
its destruction of humanity, and preserving the memories of the
Russians who
had no voice. This perspective made his later works more historical
than
literary: we can see that the books he wrote in Vermont are less
literary than
the novels he had written before his exile. In other words, by
comparison, his
early fiction, especially One Day in the
Life of Ivan Denisovich, The First Circle,
and Cancer Ward, is literature par
excellence. Some people may think that these novels written in the
realistic
tradition are old fashioned, clumsy, tedious, and overpopulated, but
each of
them has a fictional autonomy that resists the passage of time. They
will last.
In contrast, his later books do not have a firm artistic order, and
their
relevance might fall to the erosion of historical change.
Before setting
out for Russia in March
1994, Solzhenitsyn went into the Village of Cavendish, which he had
rarely
visited, and bade farewell to over two hundred villagers at a meeting.
He said
with gratitude, "Exile is always difficult, and yet I could not imagine
a
better place to live and wait and wait and wait for my return home than
Cavendish,
Vermont." (5). Obviously, to him, his eighteen years in the United
States
was just a long wait, during which, with his pen, he fought the Soviet
regime
and played a catalytic part in bringing it down.
Nevertheless, he
was acutely aware that the
new Russia differed greatly from the Russia he had left behind - the
country
had gone through Gorbachev's perestroika and was open to the influence
of
Western democracy and to the inroads made by capitalism. Although his
literary
books were well received in his homeland, his return was cautious and
hesitant.
It took almost two years for him to uproot himself from Vermont after
Boris
Yeltsin invited him to "work for the Russian people from within Russia
and
not from a foreign land." He felt he was going home to die and might
not
live for long once he was back in Russia. (6) For all that, his return
was no
less heroic and miraculous, considering that in literary history few
banished
giants succeeded in setting foot on their native soil again. In every
way, his
return is Odyssean.
Still, unlike
Odysseus who restored his
household and regained the kingship of his city-state, Solzhenitsyn had
a rough
time in his homeland. His patriotic views, mingled with Orthodox
Christianity,
fell on deaf ears, as his political books - Russia
in Collapse (1998) and Two Hundred
Years Together (20OI) - were coldly received, and he was considered
a
has-been, out of touch with Russian realty. His radio talk show was
cancelled
due to low ratings. Solzhenitsyn, once a powerful spokesman in the West
for the
oppressed Russians and a impassioned critic of the Soviet regime,
seemed to be
losing his voice and unable to play any significant role in Russian
society, like
a retired diplomat whose career and service had taken place elsewhere.
But
Solzhenitsyn is Solzhenitsyn, as a genius is genius. In late January
2006, the
state television broadcast a ten-part series adapted from his novel The First Circle. The show became one of
the most watched programs on Russian television. Solzhenitsyn, now
eighty-seven, wrote the screenplay and even narrated some long
passages. I t
was said that he had turned tearful when he saw the edited version of
the show.
(7)
A decade after
Solzhenitsyn moved back to
his homeland, we can say that he had at last returned to Russia,
finally having
gotten the acceptance of his people-though we should also bear in mind
that
this return was possible mainly through literature. Granted, it is the
political
situation in today's Russia that allows for his literary works to
participate
in reshaping the nation's identity and cultural heritage, but, had he
not
written significant literature, Solzhenitsyn might never have found
access to
the Russians' hearts again. Together with The
First Circle, other adaptations of Soviet era masterpieces were
also
televised, such as The Master and
Margarita, The Golden Calf, and Doctor
Zhivago, illustrating that, to achieve a return to favor with the
Russian
people, an author's physical presence on Russian soil was no longer a
prerequisite. Even if Solzhenitsyn had not been back in person, his
literary
works would have found ways to return to his people.
Heroic and
triumphant as Solzhenitsyn's
return was, let us not neglect his frustration and torment during his
years of
exile. On June 24, 1985, inside the courthouse in Rutland, Vermont, a
town
twenty miles north of Cavendish, court officials and three rows of
reporters
and photographers were waiting for Alexander Solzhenitsyn to appear and
take
the oath of U.S. citizenship. His wife, Natalya Solzhenitsyn, and his
son
Yermonlay were there, and everyone was waiting-but the writer never
showed up.
Mrs. Solzhenitsyn explained that her husband was "not feeling well,"
but a friend of the family revealed that he was, in fact, fine. A month
before,
the family had applied for U.S. citizenship, and a special ceremony was
arranged for them for June 24. On that day, Mrs. Solzhenitsyn received
her
certificate of citizenship alone, and she told the reporters she would
apply
for naturalization for her three sons now that she had become a
citizen. (8)
Obviously,
Solzhenitsyn changed his mind at
the last minute and could not go through with the ceremony. Why then
had he
applied for the citizenship in the first place? Joseph Pearce, who
apparently
knew the Solzhenitsyns well, offered the following explanation:
Years
later
the mystery surrounding his non-appearance was explained by Alya.
Throughout
the years of exile, her husband "never wanted to, and did not, become a
US
citizen, since he could not imagine himself to be a citizen of any
country
except Russia (not the USSR!)." During the early eighties, at the
height
of the Afghan war and at a time of failing hopes for short-term change
in the
USSR, Solzhenitsyn did in fact experience a moment of some doubt, but
ultimately he decided to "remain stateless- right up until Russia's
liberation from communism, an event for which he had always hoped."(9).
This
explanation sounds reasonable. Nonetheless, it cannot explain away the
fact
that Solzhenitsyn almost became a U.S. citizen and had for some time
lost
"the animal indifference" and "the writerly assuredness" he
eulogized in his fiction (10). He must have been sick of the long wait,
sick of
being a refugee without a country, and sick of the role of a spokesman
for a
country that could not hear him and would pay no heed to his service.
Above
all, as a father and a husband, he must have sought the best way for
his family
to live.
Like any
individual, he was entitled to
have self-doubt and to give up his native land if need be. Yet for a
writer of
his stature and social role, Solzhenitsyn could not have afforded to
become a
citizen of another country. If he were a U.S. citizen, his return to
Russia
would have been much more complicated and frustrating, because his
opponents,
even some ordinary Russians, would have treated him as an American and
raised
doubts about his allegiance.'! Such a move would have undercut his
credibility
when he kept propounding the necessity of nationhood, a core value in
his
thought. Fortunately, he was coolheaded enough to restrain himself from
attending the naturalization ceremony.
This episode in
Solzhenitsyn's life shows
that despite the writer's careful construction of his relationship with
his
tribe, his role remains susceptible to change-any accidental, sometimes
necessary, step might easily undermine the construction and force it to
drastic
revision. By writing about Solzhenitsyn's attempted naturalization, I
do not
intend just to point out the folly this great man almost fell into.
What I mean
is to illustrate the fragility of his identity as a spokesman for his
people.
In fact, I am
always moved by
Solzhenitsyn's bravery and his acceptance of isolation as the condition
of his
work. "All my life consists of only one thing-work," he once said.
The village of Cavendish didn't even have a doctor at the time,
according to
his biographer D. M. Thomas, (12) and, because of sciatica, the aging
Solzhenitsyn would stand at a lectern when writing. What made him so
tenacious,
I believe, was not only his dedication to work but also his Christian
faith,
which had inculcated in him a sense of continuity beyond this life. The
belief
in the afterlife can enable one to live this life fearlessly. At an
interview
before departing for Russia, Solzhenitsyn was asked if he feared death,
and he
replied with obvious pleasure on his face: "Absolutely not! I t will
just
be a peaceful transition. As a Christian, I believe there is life after
death,
and so I understand that this is not the end of life. The soul has a
continuation, the soul lives on. Death is only a stage; some would even
say a liberation.
In any case, I have no fear of death." In another context he said,
"The goal of Man's existence is not happiness but spiritual
growth."l3 That may account for the spiritual strength with which he
completed his work in exile.
His words remind
me of my meeting with a
group of Chinese poets in River Falls, Wisconsin, in the summer of
2001. One of
them was my former schoolmate. He greatly admired the small Midwestern
town
because its climate and landscape brought to mind the northeast of
China where
we were both from. I asked him, "If possible, would you mind living in
this town alone so that you can concentrate on writing poetry?" He
answered, "I need a friend at least." That was a typical Chinese
answer. The Chinese mind does not rely on a power beyond humanity for
spiritual
sustenance. This explains why very few Chinese exiles in North America
have
lived in isolation and why most of them have been city dwellers.
Gregariousness
is only a surface characteristic, and deep down it is the absence of
the
religious belief that produces a different outlook on life.
The writer Lin
Yutang (1895-1976) discusses
the Chinese ideal of life at length in his book My Country and My
People
(1935). (14). He points out that to the Chinese the essence of the
ideal life
is the enjoyment of this life. In the absence of a belief in an
afterlife, the
Chinese hold dearly on to this life and try their hardest to make the
best of
it. As a result, most Chinese fear death and the isolation that leads
to
loneliness. Their ideal of life, according to Lin Yutang, is
"brilliantly
simple" and is a "concentration on earthy happpiness."15
Confucius, the man who has influenced Chinese culture more than anyone
else,
once replied when asked about death, "I don't know enough about life,
how
can I know about death?" It is the deliberate focus on this life that
makes the Chinese afraid of missing out on the joy this life offers and
that
makes them believe the best death is inferior to the worst life-a
theme, the
novelist Yu Hua dramatized eloquently in his novel To Live (1993).
Not as fortunate
as Solzhenitsyn, the
exiled Lin Yutang never managed to return to his native land. He too
refused to
become a U.S. citizen, though he lived in the United States for three
decades.(16) Lin Yutang, a man of encyclopedic erudition, sharp wit,
and
practical vision, viewed himself as a cultural ambassador. Before he
earned his
B.A. from Harvard (1922) and his Ph.D. from Leipzig University (1923),
he had
been known as a rising scholar in Chinese lexicography in China and had
taught
at Tsinghua University. His life exemplifies how the writer's role,
whether as
a spokesman or a "renegade" of the tribe, can be shaped, or
misshaped, by national and international politics. His first English
book, My
Country and My People (1935), was written when he was still in China.
He had
been encouraged by his friend Pearl Buck, who also helped him with its
publication. The book became a bestseller in the United States. A year
later, in
1936, at the age of forty-one, Lin Yutang emigrated to America in order
to
devote himself to writing in English. When he was working on his most
popular
book, The Importance of Living, which would come out in late 1937, the
Marco
Polo Bridge Incident occurred - and the Sino-Japanese War broke out. To
support
his motherland's struggle, Lin Yutang began to publish articles in the
New York
Times, the New Republic, Time, the Nation, and the Atlantic condemning
the
Japanese scheme to annex China and persuading the American people to
support
the Chinese cause. He even drastically revised the last chapter of My
Country
and My People before it went through its thirteenth printing, to make
it more
suitable for the united Chinese efforts to resist the Japanese invasion.
At the time, few
Chinese officials in the
United States had access to the public media, so Lin Yutang literally
became a
spokesman for China. His public role was acknowledged by the fact that,
during
his half a year's visit to China in 1944, President Chiang Kai-shek and
Madame
Chiang received him no fewer than six times (17). The Nationalist
government
not only appreciated his propaganda writings, which had helped China
gain the
U.S. public support, but also liked his staunchly anti-Communist views.
It would have
been foolish and selfish for
a writer like Lin Yutang to remain detached while his motherland was
burning.
However, his view of himself as a cultural ambassador more or less
determined
the nature and even the quality of his writings. He admitted, "My
advantage is to be able to speak about Chinese culture to foreigners
while I
can speak about foreign cultures to the Chinese." (18) During his
lifetime, he published over sixty books; in English alone, he published
forty
titles, among which, seven are novels and the rest are nonfiction. The
nonfiction list includes long and short personal essays; biographies of
ancient
Chinese figures; translations of ancient Chinese texts, such as Laotsu
and
Confucius; a volume of Chinese art theories; a history of the Chinese
press; a
bibliography of the Chinese masterpiece Dream of the Red Chamber; a
political
treatise; and public lectures. Obviously, he was a man of many facets,
but his
energy was diffused and his writing career was actually in decline
after the
late 1940s, when he was in his fifties and thought of returning to
China. But
that return would be out of the question as a result of the Communists'
takeover in 1949.
Lin Yutang was an
accomplished literary
scholar and understood the logic and nature of literature. In the
prologue to
his first English book, he writes:
the only way
of looking at China, and of looking at any foreign nation, {is} by
searching,
not for the exotic but for the common human values, by penetrating
beneath the
superficial quaintness of manners and looking for real courtesy, by
seeing
beneath the strange women's costumes and looking for real womanhood and
motherhood, by observing the boy's naughtiness and the girls' daydreams
and the
ring of children's laughter and the patter of children's feet and the
weeping
of women and the sorrows of men - they are all alike, and only through
the
sorrows of men and the weeping of women can we truly understand a
nation. The
differences are only in the forms of social behavior. This is the basis
of all
sound international criticism. (19)
Here, he
argues for human similarity as the guiding principle of writing, a
principle he
adhered to in My Country and My People. Even today, many of the views
and
insights expressed in this book are still relevant and refreshing. To
my mind,
Pearl Buck's assessment of the book is still sound: "It is, I think,
the
truest, the most profound, the most complete, the most important book
yet
written about China." (20)
However, Lin
Yutang deviated from the principle
of similarity as he continued to write about China. Such negligence on
his part
had something to do with his vision of himself as a cultural
interpreter of his
nation for a Western audience. He was not satisfied with his remarkable
achievement in his English essays and understood the hierarchy of
literature,
as he once wrote, "My ambition is that all my novels will last." (21)
On the one hand, he knew that literature had its hierarchical order in
which
the personal essay, as a minor genre, remains at the bottom; on the
other, he
did not concentrate on fiction writing at all, especially in his later
years
when he often wrote a book a year without a clear literary purpose
except for
financial need. Among his novels, he was most proud of Moment in Peking
(1939),
a mammoth novel he wrote in one year, modeled after the style of Dream
of the
Red Chamber. Like the fate of his other novels except Chinatown Family,
this
book has long been out of print in English, but it's still read by the
Chinese
in translation, especially by readers in the Chinese diaspora.
Ambitious and
vast in design though the novel is, it is regarded as a minor work and
has some
inherent weaknesses. The most salient one is that the novelist had no
eye for
details, which prevented him from becoming a major fiction writer.
Indeed, the
novel offers a good deal of details of jewelry, clothes, furniture,
gardens,
and foods, but they feel like they were prompted by the author's
reading of
other books, not obtained from the author's own observations or
imagination. In
other words, they are bookish and derivative details, which do not
reveal the
characters' psychology or the quality of their daily life. As a result,
the
prose tends to remain on the surface of things and does not have enough
of the
texture that provides material sensation.
There are two
other weaknesses that must
have stemmed from Lin Yutang's vision of himself as a cultural
spokesman of
China. First, the narrator tries too blatantly to present Chinese
culture to a
Western audience. There are passages that read like mini-essays about
Chinese
women's education, Chinese medicine, and Chinese belief in the balance
of the
Five Elements in making marriages. (22) These passages are not blended
into the
dramatic context, block the flow of the narration, and result in prose
that
feels crude and unfinished. Such crudeness is not merely a technical
blunder.
It reveals the novelist's inadequate vision. Just as a creative writer
should
aspire to be not a broker but a creator of culture, a great novel does
not only
present a culture but also makes culture; such a work does not only
bring news
of the world but also evokes the reader's empathy and reminds him of
his own
existential condition. If a novel by which the ambitious author will
stand or
fall, he should imagine what kind of cultural order the book may enter
into
should it succeed. Lin Yutang obviously did not entertain such a vision
and
indulged himself too much in explaining China. Throughout Moment in
Peking, the
narrative reveals that the book was written only for a Western audience.
The other
weakness related to his
"spokesmanship" is a benign presentation of the life of modern China,
a period when the country was battered by wars and upheavals and when
people's
daily life was precarious and often disrupted. Among the oversized cast
of
eighty-odd characters, there is not a single evil person, which cannot
be true
to life. Granted, the author believed in Confucianism and the goodness
of man,
but such a sweetened narrative tends to soften the story to the genre
of
popular romance.
The translation
of Moment in Peking is
still read by Chinese readers mainly because it attempts to portray a
panorama
of modern China through the saga of three families. F or a similar
reason, Lin
Yutang's Chinatown Family, a novel about the American immigrant
experience, has
just been brought back into print by Rutgers University Press. This
novel is
not an essential piece of fiction in his corpus, but, because it is
about the
American experience, it is still read in the United States. Among all
his books
written in English, only this novel and his masterpiece of nonfiction
The
Importance of Living remain in print in English. This fact indicates
that often
it is not the language but the subject matter and the content that
determine
the life of a book.
In his seventies,
Lin Yutang spent five
years (1967-72) compiling a large dictionary, the Chinese-English
Dictionary of
Modern Usage, which he believed was the pinnacle of his literary
career. (23)
Interestingly, Solzhenitsyn also aspired to write a wordbook with an
eye to
preserving the purity of the Russian language that was violated by the
Communist revolution and threatened by Western linguistic and cultural
influences, and, in the early 1990S, he began to contribute a glossary
to the
Soviet Review Russian Speech. (24) Like most writers in exile, both
Solzhenitsyn and Lin Yutang were obsessed with language, but Lin
differed from
Solzhenitsyn in intention-he attempted to serve as a linguistic bridge
between
English and Chinese. Initially, he embarked on his project with a mind
to
supersede the two Chinese-English dictionaries already in use ("the
Mathews" and "the Giles"), which he thought could no longer meet
modern readers' needs. Such a purpose was easily achieved when Lin
Yutang's
dictionary was brought out in 1972. However, six years later, Beijing
Foreign
Languages Institute published A Chinese-English Dictionary (1978),
which is not
only more updated than Lin's dictionary but also more handy to use. The
compilation of this official dictionary was ordered by Mao Zedong and
attended
to by Zhou Enlai; an editorial staff of over fifty people, Chinese and
non-Chinese, spent eight years working on it. Ever since its
publication, it
has remained the standard Chinese-English dictionary and has been
revised and
updated regularly. Lin Yutang had a staff of three for his
lexicographic
project. It stands to reason that the dictionary by Beijing Foreign
Languages
Institute easily dislodged the position occupied briefly by Lin
Yutang's
dictionary.
In fact, in
recent decades, reference books
have been the forte of publishers in mainland China, where labor is
cheap and
where it is easy to gather collective efforts for a project that
requires
minimum creativity. For instance, the editorial staff of A Great
Chinese
Dictionary (1990), compiled by Wang Tongyi, was larger than two hundred
people,
fulltime and part-time. It was a mistake for Lin Yutang to take on his
dictionary project in the first place, and it was shortsighted for him
to claim
that it was the peak of his literary career, never mind that he might
have had
no inkling of what he was competing against in mainland China. An
exiled writer
must avoid pitting his individual effort against any collective effort,
because
his principal asset is his creative talent and energy, which should be
used
primarily for creative work - great literature has never been produced
by
collectives.
Unlike
Solzhenitsyn who secluded himself
and did not travel unless he had to, Lin Yutang, despite having New
York City
as his base, led a colorful, somewhat peripatetic life. He traveled
through
Europe frequently and was fond of the climate and lifestyle of southern
France.
In the midd1940S he spent all his fortune, $120,000 in total, inventing
the
first portable Chinese typewriter. He did succeed in making such a
machine, but
owing to the Civil War in China, no manufacturer was willing to produce
it; and
the model typewriter was later junked. Consequently, the invention,
potentially
revolutionary and lucrative, bankrupted him. In 1949, he worked for the
United
Nations as a senior official in charge of arts and literature, but soon
quit to
write full-time. In 1954, he moved to Singapore to take the office of
the
founding principal of Nanyang University, but he resigned half a year
later,
having been sabotaged by the Communists. Throughout those years, he
longed to
go home, but this was impossible because of his anti-Communist stance.
He often
went to Hong Kong in his later years and stood atop a hill, gazing at
his
homeland beyond the border. The rivers and mountains were in view, but
he could
not return.
When Lin Yutang
went to Taiwan to live in
1966, Chiang Kai-shek offered to have a house built for him as an
expression of
the Nationalist government's gratitude for his service, as if the
writer were
an official who had finally come home from a long stint abroad. Lin
Yutang
himself designed the house with the help of a noted architect. The
house, white
and topped with blue tiles, was exquisite, with a garden and a fish
pond,
constructed in a combination of the Chinese and the Spanish styles. Lin
Yutang
loved his house and seemed at home living there, though in reality it
had been
built with public funds. Since his death in 1976, the house has been a
museum
of his life and work.
Although not as
fortunate as Solzhenitsyn
and never physically present in his homeland again, Lin Yutang did
return to
mainland China through his literature. In 1987, the translation of
Moment in
Peking was finally published in China. Following the publication of
this book,
there appeared books on him and his literary accomplishments, though
criticism
of this kind is full of revolutionary clichés and patriotic platitudes.
His
collected works, in thirty volumes, were published in 1994. To date,
millions
of copies of his books have been printed in China, and he has become
one of the
most popular authors. There have been two competing TV series adapted
from
Moment in Peking, one made by Taiwan and the other by the mainland. The
people
of his hometown, Zhangzhou, Fujian Province, even built a museum
dedicated to
him with the help of the funds donated by his overseas fans. Yet
beneath all
the publicity, again we can see that it was his literary writings that
met some
cultural need of the newly opening China and thus paved the way for his
return.
Only through literature is a genuine return possible for the exiled
writer.
In truth, other
than slaking the writer's
nostalgia, the writer's physical return to his native land has little
meaning.
The pages of literary history are studded with the names of exiled
titans whose
works, despite the authors' inability to go back to their native lands
in
person, were eventually embraced by their peoples. Dante, who accepted
exile as
the state of his historical being, never returned to Florence-and even
his
ashes were not allowed to return in spite of the repeated efforts made
by some
of his fellow citizens to have him back-but time and Italy have crowned
him
with poetic laurels. Joyce, who made exile the fundamental condition
for his
writing as if separation from Ireland was also an act of creation, was
buried
in Zurich, but his works fiction. The Chinese writer Eileen Chang died
in Los
Angeles in complete obscurity (in 1995), and for decades, her writings
were
unknown to Chinese readers, but her works of fiction are read widely as
modern
classics now. Only literature can penetrate historical, political, and
linguistic barriers and reach the readership that includes the people
of the
writer's native country.
As a matter of
fact, in our time the
intense attachment to one's native land is often viewed as an
unnecessary and
anachronism feeling that tends to debilitate migrants. I would even
argue that,
for many displaced people, nostalgia is also blended with fear - the
fear of
uncertainty and of facing the challenges posed by the larger world and
the fear
of the absence of the clarity and confidence provided by the past. In
essence,
nostalgia is associated mostly with the experience of a particular type
of
migrants, namely, exiles. For most migrants, this attachment can become
unreasonable and even unjustified, as the narrator of Salman Rushdie's
novel
Shame refutes: "We know the force of gravity, but not its origins; and
to
explain why we become attached to our birthplaces we pretend that we
are trees
and speak of roots. Look under your feet. You will not find gnarled
growths
sprouting through the soles. Roots, I sometimes think, are a
conservative myth,
designed to keep us in places." (25) The debunking of the tree metaphor
makes it clear that human beings are different from trees and should be
rootless and entirely mobile. This is indeed a radical idea, which, in
a way,
the novel dramatizes, just as its protagonist Omar Khayyam is destroyed
after
he returns to his native place. But human beings are not always
rational
animals, and even the same narrator in Shame cannot help but feel
shamefaced at
times and admits, "And to come to the 'roots' idea, I should say that I
haven't managed to shake myself free of it completely. Sometimes I do
see
myself as a tree, even, rather grandly, as the ash Yggdrasil, the
mythical
world-tree of Norse legend." (26) What is fundamental here is the
playfulness manifested in the metaphor of the ash Yggdrasil, which,
existing in
the domain of Scandinavian mythology, has little to do with the
narrator's
native place, but which is transplanted into his being through artistic
imagination. Thus, art has become his way of reconciliation and
transcendence.
The acceptance of
footlessness as one's
existential condition - especially by some writers from former British
colonies
holding a British passport and using English as their first language
-exemplifies the situation most migrant writers face. Very few of them
are like
Solzhenitsyn and Lin Yutang who had been well-established authors
before they
left their native countries. For most migrant writers today,
displacement makes
them more vulnerable and their existence more haphazard, since they
cannot fall
back on any significant past and must struggle to survive in new
places. In his
novel The Enigma of Arrival, V. S. N aipaul poignantly describes such a
writer's predicament by reflecting on the eponymous painting by
Chirico. The
new arrival at a Mediterranean port wanders through the deserted
streets and
the bazaar of the town, passing strange people and entering mysterious
gates to
reach the interiors of temples. But finally, exhausted by the adventure
and
growing forgetful of his mission, he will "get back to the quayside and
his ship. But he wouldn't know how." Naipaul writes, "I imagined some
religious ritual in which, led on by kindly people, he would
unwittingly take
part and find himself the intended victim. At the moment of crisis he
would
come upon a door, open it, and find himself back on the quayside of
arrival. He
has been saved; the world is as he remembered it. Only one thing is
missing
now. Above the cutout walls and buildings there is no mast, no sail.
The
antique ship has gone. The traveler has lived out his life."27 The
depiction of the stranded traveler, to whose arrival Naipaul drew a
parallel to
his own arrival in England and English literature, speaks allegorically
to all
the migrants who by chance or by force of circumstances can no longer
return to
the places of their departures. Their ships are gone, and left on their
own in
a new place, they have to figure out their bearings and live a life
different
from that of their past. With the uncertainty that comes with freedom,
with the
bitterness of betrayal, and with the loneliness intensified by
confusion and
self-doubt, they will have no choice but to find a way to survive, and,
if
fortunate, some fulfillment.
Naipaul's
portrayal of the writer's
predicament is quite poetic despite its melancholy tone of voice. In
reality,
the struggle is much more painful and maddening. In a letter to his
sister
Kamla, Naipaul says, "So you will see that the reason why I am
remaining
in England is really my writing: and I think this is something you will
sympathize with, and encourage me. The short-term solution of returning
to
Trinidad and paying off the debt will cripple all of us in the long
run;
whereas if I can do something big-with effort-all of us will benefit.
Bear with
me, I beg you. I am not having it easy: I am not starving, but I worry
about my
responsibilities towards you a great deal, and I feel ashamed of
myyself."28 Naipaul here implores his sister not to ally herself with
their mother who wanted him to go home and help the family financially.
In
addition, he begs his sister to send him money so that he can finish
his books
in secret. He had told his mother earlier, "I don't see myself fitting
into the Trinidad way of life. I think I shall die if! had to spend the
rest of
my life in Trinidad."29 He must have meant an intellectual death in his
native country, which, ironically, had offfered him the scholarship for
Oxford.
When he begged for his sister's support, he had written his first two
books,
but neither had yet been accepted by a publisher. He was a beginning
writer and
had to justify his literary pursuit even to the people closest to him.
To most
others, that must have been like courting failure.
How different was
Naipaul's situation from
that of 5011zhenitsyn, who, when banished into exile, had won the Nobel
Prize,
and from that of Lin Yutang, who, before sailing for America, had
written a
bestseller in English and had earned the largest royalties ever in
China by a
single author at the time.3o I t was difficult for Naipaul even to
justify his
writing to his family, let alone to his native country. I t would have
been
insane for him to think of himself as a spokesman for his people, from
whom his
emigration to England had obviously alienated him. For a writer like
the
fledgling Naipaul, he must think how to write well and get published
while
surviving economically. Any ambition beyond that was a luxury.
I still remember
vividly my first reading
of Naipaul's novel A Bend in the River, a book that changed my life. It
was in
late December 1992, three years after I had declared in the preface to
my first
book that I would speak for the unfortunate Chinese, and I was in New
York to
attend the Modern Language Association convention, hunting for a
teaching
position. Before this trip, I had looked for a job two years in a row
without
success. As I walked from hotel to hotel to meet with the interviewers,
I could
not drive this passage from my mind:
If you
look at
a column of ants on the march you will see that there are some who are
stragglers or have lost their way. The column has no time for them; it
goes on.
Sometimes the stragglers die. But even this has no effect on the
column. There
is a little disturbance around the corpse, which is eventually carried
off-and
then it appears so light. And all the time the great busyness
continues, and
the apparent sociability, that rite of meeting and greeting which ants
travelling in opposite directions, to and from their nest, perform
without
fail. (31)
This is how
book 2 of the novel begins, when the narrator laments the death of
Father
Huismans, a Belgian missionary who collected African masks and
carvings, which
can be construed as either preserving the indigenous culture or looting
it. His
death is like a ripple in a river that occurs and then disappears while
the
stream keeps flowing, just as the column of ants is undisturbed by the
loss of
a single member of their tribe. To me, Naipaul's passage captures the
true relationship
between the individual and the collective. Perhaps, that passage pained
me even
more than Naipaul's narrator Salim, because people of my generation
from
mainland China had been indoctrinated to believe that there was a
unstated
contract between yourself and your country. As a citizen, you were
supposed to
serve your country, and, as for your livelihood, your country would
take care
of it for you. But in America I saw that such a contract gave you a
false sense
of entitlement (in China, it would never have occurred to me to look
for a
job-such an idea was alien to us). Here you had to work like everyone
else to
put food on your table and had to learn to live as an independent man.
Naipaul's novel moved me so much that I
wrote two poems in response. One of them is "The Past," and the other
is the following:
In New York
City
In the
golden rain
I plod along
Madison Avenue,
loaded with
words.
They are
from a page
that shows
the insignificance
of a person to a tribe,
just as a
hive keeps thriving
while a bee
is lost.
On my back
the words
are gnawing
and gnawing
till they
enter into my bones –
I become
another man,
alone,
wandering,
no longer
dreaming of luck
or meeting a
friend.
No wisdom
shines
like the
neon and traffic lights,
but there
are words as true as
the money
eyes, the yellow cabs, the fat pigeons on the sills. (32)
As I
wandered in downtown Manhattan, those lines echoed in my mind. They
marked the
beginning of my doubts about my claim as a spokesman for the
downtrodden
Chinese. Gradually, I came to see the silliness of that ambition.
Naipaul in his essay "Two Worlds"
speaks about the necessity of maintaining the distinction between the
writer as
a social being and the writer who writes. He quotes from Proust's early
book
Against Sainte-Beuve to argue that the self who writes a book is not
the same
as the person who exists in everyday life. (33) At first glance, this
argument
against the writer's social functions seems spurious, if not inane. How
many
significant writers have promoted justice with their pens? How many of
them
have been regarded as a conscience of the people? Some have even
endeavored to
save the soul of a nation. The assumption is that to become a good
writer you have
to be a good person, that the writing person and social being are one.
But if
we examine the issue, we see that both Proust and Naipaul are right.
Even the
most socially conscientious writers like Solzhenitsyn and Lin Yutang
could be
accepted by their peoples only on the grounds that they had written
lasting
literary works. Their social functions in their lifetimes have been
largely
forgotten; what remains are the books secreted from their writing
selves. This
is a cliché but still holds true: a writer's first responsibility is to
write
well. His social role is only secondary, mostly given by the forces
around him,
and it has little to do with his value as a writer.
On several occasions, I said I would stop
writing about contemporary China. People often asked me, "Why burn your
bridges?" or "Why mess with success?" I would reply, "My
heart is no longer there." In retrospect, I can see that my decision to
leave contemporary China in my writing is a way to negate the role of
the
spokesmanship I used to envision for myself. I must learn to stand
alone, as a
writer. That said, I do not mean that a writer should live in an ivory
tower,
answerable only to his art. I can even admire those writers, portrayed
by
Nadine Gordimer in her essay "The Essential Gesture," who have
managed to function as both a writer and an activist and whose art
responds to
social exigencies. Before I turned to writing seriously at the age of
thirty-two, I had never planned to become a writer. During my first
eight years
of college teaching, I never used the word "art" in the classroom,
having my doubts about writing as an art, not to mention its value, its
integrity, its autonomy, and its effectiveness in shaping society,
though I had
kept writing poetry and fiction. I could agree with Gordimer
wholeheartedly
that a writer must be "more than a writer" and must be responsible to
the well-being of his fellow citizens. (34) For a long time, I was
deeply moved
by Derek Walcott's line in "The Schooner Flight": "either I'm
nobody, or I'm a nation." (35) However, as I continued writing, the
issue
of the writer's essential gesture as a social being grew more
complicated to
me. Writers do not make good generals, and today literature is
ineffective at
social change. All the writer can strive for is a personal voice.
But for whom does the writer speak? Of
course not just for himself. Then, for a group? For those who are not
listened
to? There is no argument that the writer must take a moral stand and
speak
against oppression, prejudice, and injustice, but such a gesture must
be
secondary, and he should be aware of the limits of his art as social
struggle.
His real battlefield is nowhere but on the page. His work will be of
little
value if not realized as art. Surveying contemporary history, both of
the East
and West, we can see many blank spaces unmarked by literature:
genocides, wars,
political upheavals, and manmade catastrophes. Take the example of the
Anti-Rightist Movement in China in the late I950s. Millions of people
suffered
persecution, tens of thousands of intellectuals were sent to the
hinterlands
and perished there, yet not a single piece of literature with lasting
value
emerged from this historical calamity. The victims were the best
educated in
Chinese society, and some of them are still alive but too old to
produce any
significant work. Many of the accused Rightists were both writers and
activists, and some still write petitions and articles and organize
conferences. But without a lasting literary work, their sufferings and
losses
will fade considerably in the collective memory, if not altogether. Is
that not
a great loss? What was needed was one artist who could stay above
immediate
social needs and create a genuine piece of literature that preserved
the
oppressed in memory. Yes, to preserve is the key function of
literature, which,
to combat historical amnesia, must be predicated on the autonomy and
integrity
of literary works inviolable by time. In Andrei Makine's Dreams of My
Russian
Summers, the narrator meditates on how to bear witness: "And they {the
Russians who were busy writing personal memoirs} did not understand
that
history had no need for all these innumerable little Gulags. A single
monumental one, recognized as a classic, sufficed."(36) As this
implies,
the writer should be not just a chronicler but also a shaper, an
alchemist, of
historical experiences.
The writer should enter history mainly
through the avenue of his art. If he serves a cause or a group or even
a
country, such a service must be a self-choice and not imposed by
society. He
must serve on his own terms, in the manner and at the time and place of
his own
choosing. Whatever role he plays, he must keep in mind that his success
or
failure as a writer will be determined only on the page. That is the
space where
he should strive to exist.