At Dao

At Dao (2010)

Bei Dao ( Chinese  北岛 , Pinyin Běidǎo ; real name: Zhao Zhenkai Chinese  赵振 开 , Pinyin Zhào Zhènkāi ; born August 2, 1949 in Beijing , Republic of China ) is a Chinese essayist and poet .

Life

In the 1970s, Bei Dao began writing, first poetry, and later, in 1974, a novel called Waves (波动Bodong ). Due to the political situation at the time of the Cultural Revolution , this type of literature was created in secret and was reserved for a select readership. After the political détente at the end of 1978, Bei Dao founded the literary magazine “heute” (今天 “Jintian”) together with Mang Ke芒克, which had to cease operations in 1980 at the urging of the government. Dao's poem "Huida" (回答, "The Answer"), which he wrote during the Tian'anmen demonstrations in 1976, became the resistance anthem of the democracy movement. During the Tian'anmen protests in 1989, the text was u. a. present on posters. In February 1989, Bei Dao wrote an open letter to Deng Xiaoping , signed by 40 leading intellectuals, calling for Wei Jingsheng's release, sparking a broad campaign for human rights. During the Tian'anmen massacre , Bei Dao took part in a literature conference in Berlin and was only able to return to China in 2006.

Bei Dao has lived and taught in England, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, France and the USA since 1987 and is now a professor at the Center of East Asian Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong . In 1990 he and other poets revived the magazine “Jintian” in Stockholm, and since then it has acted as a mouthpiece for Chinese in exile and in the country itself. Dao's works have been translated into 25 languages. He received numerous international honors, including a. He was awarded the Tucholsky Prize of the Swedish PEN, the PEN / Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award, the Golden Wreath of the Evenings of Poetry in Struga and the Jeanette Schocken Prize 2005. Dao has repeatedly been seen as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature .

Dao has an important place in the history of contemporary Chinese literature , especially because of his poems . In the case of Dao's style, Chinese literary criticism often calls it “ fog poetry ” (朦胧诗 menglong shi, also: obscure poetry , Menglong poetry, hermetic poetry). His poems are "webs of unexpected images that bring many readings to mind instead of suggesting a single correct one to the reader".

In 1996 he was elected as an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

plant

• The Book of Defeat - Poems , translated from Chinese and with a comment by Wolfgang Kubin ; Edition Lyrik Kabinett published by Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2009 ISBN 978-3-446-23283-9
• God's Chinese Son - Essays , translated from Chinese and with a comment by Wolfgang Kubin ; Weidle Verlag, Bonn 2011 ISBN 978-3-938803-37-0

See also

List of Chinese writers

References and comments

1. ↑ Martin Ebner: 'He who has hopes is a criminal' The Chinese lyric poet Zhao Zhenkai became famous as the 'Northern Island' , first published in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung (December 2, 2000)
2. ↑ Andreas Dorschel , 'Glowing Coals', in: Süddeutsche Zeitung No. 88 (April 17, 2009), p. 14
3. ↑ Honorary Members: At Dao. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 8, 2019 . 

Web links

Commons : Bei Dao  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Bei Dao in the catalog of the German National Library
• lyrikline.org: Dao reads some of his poems
• Bio