In Phantom And In Exile To Find The Truth

A not-to-be neglected fact in the Chinese poetic world of late 1 980s and early1990s was the successive commission of suicide by ten-odd poets. Various remarkshave been made on this, which, nevertheless, have not touched the essence of theproblem. This paper provides an analysis of Hai Zi's tragedy on the basis of aninvestigation into his poems, essays and other types of data, and further carries outreflections upon the phenomenon of "poet's death" and inquiries into its socio-cultural causes.This paper takes the most fundamental cause for Hai Zi's Commission of suicideto be: at a time of cultural transformation and in a context of market economy, HaiZi suspended reality and engaged himself in pursuit of a mysterious, holy and pureultimate existence and of the true state of life with blind piety and religiousperseverance by means of poetry; In accordance with this, he regarded such poeticcreation as the all and only content of his life, leaving himself no room for maneuver.Hence, when his metaphysical ideals were frustrated by more and more concretereality and he came to realize the emptiness of the ideals, he became utterly desperate.As he could not find himself a way out in reality, all he could do was to end his ownlife.Hai Zi failed or refused to see such a fact: man lives in a secular reality instead ofthe eternal world as described in his poetry. But from his perspective, his commissionof suicide was intended to pose his bravest challenge to the worldly society he hatedand to forms a part of his search for the true existence of life. In this sense, Hai Zisacrificed himself for poetry and died a poetic martyr. Also in this sense, hiscommission of suicide is not only his personal tragedy but also a tragedy of thesociety and culture.