Modern Singaporean poet Daryl Lim Wei Jie's dialogue with Chinese classical poet Bai Juyi

What is it about?

Chinese classical poetry is considered a treasure of Chinese civilisation and enjoys a continuous interest among contemporary poets, scholars, as well as broader audiences in China and beyond. Daryl Lim Wei Jie, a Singapore-born, UK-educated son of mainland-Chinese emigrants, whose first language is English, undertakes a creative reinterpretation of a Tang dynasty author Bai Juyi (772-846). He exchanges fictional letters with Bai in which he negotiates the translation and meaning of Bai's poetry in the contemporary world, while seeking his own identity as a person living between languages and cultures. He subsequently incorporates his experimental translations of Bai in his poetry collection "Anything but Human" (2021) as part of his sharp but loving critique of (post)modernity.

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Why is it important?

I reconstruct a unique critical strategy of Daryl Lim Wei Jie which allows him to express his scepticism concerning the condition of (post)modern world without moralising, on the one hand, and breaching the political correctness in which discourses of identity, especially in transcultural context, are entangled, on the other. He corresponds – literally and metaphorically, through an intertextual dialogue – with Bai Juyi, treating the readers as mutually anonymous receivers of a blind carbon copy of these peculiar poetic letters, so that each of them considers themselves the only "interceptor" of the exchange, and begins their own investigation of its content and source(s). This faithfulness to their (purported) discovery makes the reader focus on the actual artefact (the literary exchange) and the intention of the poet(s) rather than their own impressions, associations, and wishful interpretations, but without feeling overwhelmed or discouraged by the strong, patronising authorial voice. Thus, Daryl Lim Wei Jie shrewdly suspends the long-announced "death of the author" and successfully delivers his message.

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