MCLC: Liu Xiaobo book and poem

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Liu Xiaobo book and poem
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Source: The Guardian (11/12/11):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/12/liu-xiaobo-book-lifts-gag

Liu Xiaobo: new book lifts China's gag on jailed Nobel peace prizewinner
Liu Xiaobo, winner of Nobel peace prize, will have his collected writings
published in English for the first time
By Dalya Alberge

The collected writings of Chinese Nobel prizewinner Liu Xiaobo have been
translated into English for the first time, but there will be no
interviews, bookshop signings or appearances at literary festivals. The
author is not even aware of the English translation, because he
remainsincarcerated in a Chinese jail and his wife is under house arrest.

Liu, who won last year's Nobel peace prize, is serving an 11-year sentence
that began in 2009 for "inciting subversion of state power". Friends have
been unable to contact his wife, Liu Xia, even though she has not been
charged with anything.

The 55-year-old former professor at Beijing University has repeatedly been
detained or arrested and sentenced over the years for his relentless but
peaceful political activities, calling for democratic reforms, including
freedom of expression, and condemning China
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/china>'s treatment of Tibet. He was
barred from attending the Nobel ceremony, and at the funeral of his father
earlier this year he was forbidden from talking to anybody.

But, although silenced in China, his voice will be heard again in the west
with the first English-language collection of his essays and poetry, which
Harvard University Press will publish in January under the title No
Enemies, No Hatred.

The 345-page volume will also include "evidence" cited against him by the
Chinese court that sentenced him. The publishers describe the book as a
critical insider's account of contemporary China, as well as comparative
views of eastern and western cultures.

Work by a team of 14 translators has been edited by Perry Link, professor
of comparative literature at the University of California. He said that,
until the Nobel, Liu was little known in the west: "This collection offers
to the reader of English the full range of his astute and penetrating
analyses of culture, politics and society in China today."

Liu came to the attention of the authorities in 1989, during the
suppression of protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. He was sent to
prison for 19 months. In 1995 there was another seven months behind bars,
with no reason given, although it happened after he released a petition
called "Learn from the Lesson Written in Blood and Push Democracy". In
1996 he fell foul of the authorities again for speaking out about China's
one-party political system. Charges of "disturbing public order" led to
his "re-education" ­ imprisonment in a labour camp for three years.

It was there that he wrote most of the poems in the Harvard volume,
including a particularly tender one entitled Your Lifelong Prisoner,
dedicated to his wife. Link said: "Xiaobo's humane values took shape most
obviously during the late 1990s when he and Liu Xia, a poet, fell in love
and married, and this poem was written then. He wrote it in a prison, so
the contrast between 'unwilling physical prisoner of the state' and
'willing spiritual prisoner of my lover' has real-world significance."

Liu Xia was allowed to visit him once a month, making the 1,100-mile round
trip from Beijing 36 times. Despite personal risks, he wrote repeatedly of
police brutality ­ a woman beaten up "enough to disfigure her face" ­ and
of the persecution of people "for their words", observing: "The price of
freedom is to go to the limit."

Such a man cannot be silenced, Link said: "Once you've put someone in
prison, other thanŠ execute him, there's no further punishment to exact.
In that sense it frees the writer. About six or eight years ago, he just
made the decision: 'OK, no more self-censorship. I'm going to write down
what I think exactly and if I go to prison, I go to prison.'"

The book's foreword has been written by Václav Havel, the Czech writer and
fellow brave dissident whose own Charter 77, which called for human rights
in 1970s Czechoslovakia, inspired Liu and other Chinese activists to put
forward their own manifesto, Charter 08. Havel writes in the Harvard book:
"Despite Liu's imprisonment, his ideas cannot be shackled."


============

Source: 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/12/your-lifelong-prisoner-liu-xiao
bo


Your Lifelong Prisoner
By Liu Xiaobo

To Xia
My dear,
I'll never give up the struggle for freedom from the oppressors'
jail, but I'll be your willing prisoner for life.

I'm your lifelong prisoner, my love
I want to live in your dark insides
surviving on the dregs in your blood

inspired by the flow of your estrogen

I hear your constant heartbeat
drop by drop, like melted snow from a mountain stream
if I were a stubborn, million-year rock
you'd bore right through me
drop by drop

day and night

Inside you
I grope in the dark
and use the wine you've drunk
to write poems looking for you
I plead like a deaf man begging for sound
Let the dance of love intoxicate your body

I always feel
your lungs rise and fall when you smoke
in an amazing rhythm
you exhale my toxins
I inhale fresh air to nourish my soul

I'm your lifelong prisoner, my love
like a baby loath to be born
clinging to your warm uterus
you provide all my oxygen
all my serenity

A baby prisoner
in the depths of your being
unafraid of alcohol and nicotine
the poisons of your loneliness
I need your poisons
need them too much

Maybe as your prisoner
I'll never see the light of day
but I believe
darkness is my destiny
inside you
all is well

The glitter of the outside world
scares me
exhausts me
I focus on
your darkness ­
simple and impenetrable

Reprinted by permission of Harvard University Press from No Enemies, No
Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems by Xiaobo Liu
<http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9780674
061477>. Copyright © 2012 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.