EXTENSION SECTION: 1
DISTINCTIVE FORMS OF EXPRESSION IN MODERN POETRY TEXTS
SECTION 1: DISTINCTIVE FORMS OF EXPRESSION IN MODERN POETRY
Contemporary modern poetry in Taiwan, due to the profound influence of Western modernism and postmodernism, has gradually developed many expressive forms and techniques different from those of fiction and prose, thereby expanding and enriching the domain of modern poetry. These “diverse transformations,” in essence, mainly derive from contemporary modern poets no longer rigidly adhering to conventions; they have fully absorbed and “internalized” expressive methods from related fields, and have boldly experimented and innovated, such as advertising copywriting, film darkroom editing and shot manipulation, three-dimensional perspective in painting, and even musical melody and harmony, and so on.
In terms of combining advertising copywriting, for example, modern poet Chen Kehua’s “Station Messages” uses the Dadaist concept of “collage,” “simulating” the real situations that are separately yet juxtaposed on travelers’ message boards in railway stations, attempting through “situational reconstruction” to generate in readers a sense of being personally present at the scene (sense of immediacy). In terms of using darkroom editing techniques, modern poets often display highly original expressions, mainly presented through montage, dissolve, and double exposure. For example, modern poet Luo Fu’s “Reading Du Fu on the Train” uses lines from Du Fu’s “Song on Hearing the Recapture of Henan and Hebei by Imperial Forces,” taking each clause as a “subtopic” (or “keystone”) of a section, presenting a juxtaposed scene of ancient and modern interweaving and classical poetry reinterpreted in the present (the juxtaposition of scenes). This involves the use of montage (associative and contrastive association; see later discussion) and cinematic dissolves.
In terms of the use of filmic shot theory, some modern poets with avant-garde viewpoints replace the performance of “imagery” with “camera shifts,” with main forms of expression including fade-in and fade-out, close-up, zoom in and zoom out, and obfuscation of focus, and so on. For example, modern poet Chen Li’s “The Night of Liquid Paper” employs a fade-out followed by a fade-in technique to construct a dramatized narrative; similarly, poet Luo Fu’s “Naked Running (II)” uses explanatory sentences inserted between paragraphs to produce close-ups of the body and movement; modern poet Hsia Yu’s “Ventriloquism” uses enlargement to present scenes seen by a voyeur through cracks in a wall.
In terms of three-dimensional perspective in painting, modern poets employ directional layered scenery (homogeneous superimposed scenery)¹, following themes in an orderly and directional performance. In terms of musical melody and harmony, modern poets also introduce the concept of heteroglossia, using the polysemy of words or images to create polyphonic symphonies or mixed choral compositions, as in modern poet Guan Guan’s “Lotus.”
Whether these rapidly evolving forms and techniques of expression may become new rhetorical devices is worthy of investigation. However, if these new forms and techniques are repeatedly used by many modern poets, they may gradually become conventionalized through “social consensus.” This involves the issue of “establishing rhetorical patterns”: the creation of new rhetorical figures. In general, rhetorical figures are abstract patterns derived from similar rhetorical phenomena. Each rhetorical figure has certain characteristics; they enrich the expressive means of a linguistic system and produce active rhetorical effects in actual language use, enabling language to move away from plain exposition and enter a vivid and imagistic realm².
SECTION 2: THE POSSIBILITY OF NEW RHETORICAL FIGURES
Rhetorical figures are forms of speech designed to enhance expressive effect. With the aid of specific contexts, they involve special uses of language and constitute structured verbal forms. They are expressive methods accumulated through long-term linguistic practice and embody rich human wisdom. In the field of rhetorical studies, new rhetorical figures are continuously discovered or differentiated from existing figures. In recent years, scholars in mainland China have successively proposed several new rhetorical figures, such as double embellishment, segmental extraction, ambiguous doubt, new allusion, paradoxical diction, and others, making the classification of rhetorical figures more detailed and better able to explain increasingly diverse contextual phenomena.
I. COLLAGE
(1) Western Avant-Garde Art Movements: The Origin of Collage Techniques
In the early twentieth century, a series of avant-garde art movements emerged in the West, including Cubism, Futurism, and Dadaism. The so-called “avant-garde art movement” refers to artists and writers of the time who “deliberately and consciously experimented within their works, pursuing new forms, techniques, and subject matter.”³
The concept of collage originated in 1907 from a new artistic form created by Western Cubism. Major Cubist figures such as Braque (1882–1963) and Picasso (1881–1973) emphasized playfulness and wit in form, thereby establishing the status of this art form. Cubism divided objects into multiple facets, simultaneously presenting surfaces from different angles. As a result, Cubist works appear like fragments placed upon a single plane. Early works were painted only in gray tones; because neutral colors were used, the spatial composition did not appear to advance or recede.
In 1909, Futurism emerged as the first art movement in art history to issue a manifesto. A manifesto implies a specific ideology. Futurist painters expressed “speed” and “movement,” capturing the sense of turbulence in modern life. This movement was led by poet Marinetti (1876–1944) and painter Balla (1871–1958). Boccioni (1882–1916) wrote “The Manifesto of Futurist Painters,” published in February 1910, and in 1912 Marinetti successively published “The Manifesto of Futurist Literary Technique.” In painting, their images were repetitive, overlapping, and imitated cinematic methods in order to express movement. Important representatives also included Severini (1883–1966) and Boccioni.
Subsequently, in 1915, Dadaism emerged, and collage and “montage” became the primary expressive techniques of its members. Representative artists included M. Duchamp (1887–1968), Picabia, and Arp. The theory of montage was originally proposed by Russian filmmakers led by Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1948), who advocated creating new meaning through the recombination of a series of segmented shots. For example, in Battleship Potemkin, Eisenstein intercut images of a stone lion with scenes of mass uprising, producing an implied meaning of proletarian revolution. Montage is a cinematic technique that can even construct film time and film space that do not correspond to real-life time and space. As one of the main narrative and expressive devices, compared with long-take filmmaking, it assembles a sequence of shots taken in different locations, from different distances and angles, and by different methods (i.e., editing) to narrate plot and depict characters. Through montage, cinema gains great freedom in time and space.
In literature, the “collage” technique was also mastered by the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918), who frequently employed collage techniques in visual poetry.
(2) Postmodern Trends: Collage Techniques in Taiwanese Modern Poetry
Taiwanese modern poets did not widely adopt collage as a creative method until the postmodernist trend began to take effect on the island in the 1980s. In 1986, poet Luo Qing officially declared the emergence of a “postmodern condition” in poetry circles⁴. Techniques originally belonging to Cubism and Dadaism—such as collage, word play, montage, and visualization—were appropriated by postmodern poets and became major modes of expression.
Chen Kehua, “Station Messages”⁵
A-mei A-cao
I will take the 11:37 southbound train first
I do not hate you
If the typhoon arrives tomorrow
Call: (00)7127ㄓ998
Father left this. Child, remember me
Sir, let’s talk later
Money, don’t wait for me
My home is not in Taipei Echo:
What I owe you
I have found a job
A very long time later, essence
and phenomenon conflict very strongly
Wishing you a safe return home
Three hens and cabbages
all are well
Your most sincere love ends here
Return it to you again.
This is a typical collage poem, performed through a faithful “reproduction” of original fragments, fully expressing a sense of immediacy. It is a random assembly of several messages, but it is difficult to deconstruct and restore. This poem presents a highly unstable condition and can be regarded as a “random reproduction” of station message board postings; the method of “improvised assembly” changes not only according to each reader’s reading order but also varies over time as the message content is constantly in flux. What kind of meaning, then, does this poem intend to convey?
In fact, it replaces the transmission of abstract ideas with the expression of a constantly shifting “phenomenon.”
Such texts possess a high degree of indeterminacy; therefore, the content of the poem is not important—its “form” constitutes its primary meaning.
II. DARKROOM EDITING TECHNIQUES
(1) Montage
In film, “montage” refers to an editing method in which individual related shot fragments are assembled together to form a sequence. Film theorist Béla Balázs (1884–1952) offered a more concrete explanation of montage, stating that it is the linking of individually filmed shots (shot or cut) in a specific order, thereby combining continuous shots to produce the effect intended by the director.
No matter how strong or expressive an image may be, it cannot fully express the meaning inherent in the object within the frame on screen. At the final moment (when using montage), one must operate from a higher-level perspective to assemble and unify each independently filmed shot. In other words, these filmed fragments, originally without order or intention, are connected through montage (editing) under the director’s intention to produce a systematic effect. “Montage” is a collective concept encompassing multiple editing techniques, including jump cuts, acceleration, and contrastive collision, among others.
In actual creation, montage can be broadly divided into “narrative montage” and “expressive montage.” The former primarily aims at presenting events; continuity editing such as parallel editing and cross-cutting belongs to this category. “Expressive montage,” on the other hand, enhances artistic expression and emotional impact by linking different shots or creating contrastive relationships in content, thereby generating new meanings that did not originally exist. Pudovkin’s accumulation montage, Eisenstein’s collision montage, and symbolic and metaphorical montage all belong to this category.
“Poetry rearranges the duration of time, and poetry also combines different spaces. Poetry, like cinematic montage, edits reality.”⁶
Montage is the foundation of cinematic art and the grammar of film. Those who compare montage to film grammar liken each filmed shot (shot) to an independent word; organizing and connecting these words into a moving poem is analogous to how filmmakers edit and structure filmed shots. In other words, these recorded fragments of montage are transformed into a moving film.
Let us examine Luo Men’s poem “Traffic Accident”⁷
He walks, his hands searching for that sky
He walks, still muttering the echo of shells at his lips
He walks, slanted outside his body
He walks, walking into a sudden braking sound
He no longer walks; the road walks him instead
He no longer walks; the city’s beautiful weekend still continues to move
He no longer walks; the elevated billboard
holds the entire sky suspended there
In the first part of the poem, the camera follows the protagonist’s movement until he “walks into a sudden braking sound,” at which point the camera becomes fixed. It then records the process of his gradual loss of consciousness. In the second half, the camera replaces the protagonist’s vision, tilting upward in a wide angle to survey the surrounding environment, representing what the protagonist sees before losing consciousness.
In this poem, the camera never switches to other events; it first “follows” and then “encircles.” This mode of expression is a single-line narrative and therefore lacks dramatic tension.
(II) DISSOLVE
It refers to a transition from image A to image B in which the two images overlap (both A and B can be seen simultaneously). As image A gradually becomes transparent and fades out, image B gradually becomes clear and fades in. In nature, it belongs to a lyrical mode of expression, and is commonly used for (1) compressing time, (2) creating transition effects: two scenes are separated yet also related, and (3) producing a sense of smoothness, a feeling that is not abruptly cut.
Shang Qin, “The Escaping Sky”⁸
The face of the dead is a swamp that no one has ever seen
The swamp in the wilderness is a partial escape of the sky
The fleeing sky is an overflowing rose
The overflowing rose is snow that has never fallen
The unfallen snow is tears within the veins
The rising tears are plucked strings of a zither
The plucked strings are a burning heart
The cremated heart is the wilderness of the swamp
This poem is precisely performed through the “dissolve shot” in cinematic montage. Each line is a juxtaposition of two images, and the transitions between lines are connected through fade-out and fade-in (dissolve). Its structure is:
A – B
B – C
C – D
D – E
E – F
F – G
G – (B + C)
Thus, the beginning connects to the end, forming an “imagery circuit,” which is a borrowing of a “palindromic” form, with slight variation, making it highly intriguing.
(III) “JUMP CUT”
It refers to the cutting of a continuous action by removing connecting parts, producing a jumping effect. This type of editing is called a jump cut. In other words, two or more shots are connected without following chronological order. This editing technique and its effect are the opposite of continuity editing, producing a very abrupt sense of discontinuity.
Consider the following passage from poet You Huan’s “The Pull-Down Sky”⁹:
………………………the pull-down sky
Your posture is reduced to format and insertion
The real playful interest is an empty void
Switching you is equivalent to line break
Not wanting yet still wanting
Birdsong merely pulls a window farther away beyond outer space
A few barks of dogs, tools oh, wilderness wilderness
Are wild pigeons wild or not
A snake moves a few times, cooky please register the latest version
pull-down sky
Under the postmodern trend, this poem can be regarded as a typical form of “improvised performance,” in which dialectical thinking and syntactic ruptures and leaps appear everywhere. “The effect of improvisational performance includes producing structural disorder, abrupt discontinuity of content, broken syntax, arbitrary use of punctuation (even deliberately placed at the beginning of lines), reversal of poetic line order… such writing challenges rationality and logic.”¹⁰
This poem employs a form similar to surrealist “automatic language,” making it difficult to organize semantic relations logically; one can only infer the author’s possible intention through the jumping images. The theme of “lack” (or “collapse”) is a common feature of many postmodern works. This poem essentially provides certain formal foundations for postmodernism.
Poetess Qiu Huan’s “When Not Wanting to Sleep” shows a similar sensibility:
Qiu Huan, “When Not Wanting to Sleep”¹¹
One must not lie
Make spelling mistakes
Restrict love.
Deliberately desert calm occasional smiling
Getting up need not deliberately fold the quilt
Shake open the dream
A dazed season of winter
One must realize that bad living is better than good death
Then
Eat a plate of fried rice with egg
Cleanse the body
This poem has no structure; its preceding and following sentences cannot be connected because each line is an improvisational performance. Indeed, the arrangement of lines and the combination of imagery do not exhibit clear logical or causal relations. Therefore, when read using a traditional “sequential reading method,” it feels as though the author jumps from one statement to another without coherence. Although one can vaguely grasp its meaning, it is difficult to articulate it in an orderly and systematic way.
(IV) DOUBLE EXPOSURE
Double exposure refers to multiple exposures on a single piece of film, with overlapping exposure values. It can be divided into fixed camera and moving camera methods, double exposure, and multiple exposure; such techniques produce special effects.
Luo Fu, “Poemless at Year’s End”¹²
Waking in the morning facing the mirror / he decides to reorganize his form and style
He washes his face and produces five lines / the dry towel erases three lines
While dressing he thinks up one line / shaving erases two lines
Combing his hair produces one line / brushing his teeth erases three lines
Defecating produces five lines / toilet paper wipes away six and a half lines
The remaining half line / is forgotten after finishing the last drink.
These poetic lines are constructed with a fixed camera, recording sequential shots of the poet’s thoughts and actions after waking up. In the end, the result is “nothing gained,” implying that all earlier efforts at composition are futile. The poem performs through a structure of positive and negative meanings: between production and cancellation there exists a relationship of creation and erasure. It conveys the poet’s laborious process of searching for words and the ultimate emptiness of the result. Although self-mocking, it is also highly engaging.
A similar mode of expression also appears in the poetry collection The Wound of Time. Consider “Water and Fire”¹³:
I wrote four lines of poetry about water / I drank three lines in one breath
The remaining line / formed an ice pillar inside your body
I wrote five lines about fire / two lines boiled tea / two lines kept for winter warmth
The remaining line I give you to read me on a night of power outage
This is not a simple arithmetic of addition and subtraction, but a tug-of-war and alternation between positive and negative thinking. Poets composing poetry often exhaust themselves searching for language, and in the end may be left with only one line or half a line.
(V) MIRRORING
You Huan, “Cotton Tree Etude”¹⁴
Road car change heart small return rotation return fold A kind of cotton tree red develops rightward into a highway
Bird in cloud flower in mist fully hanging There are clusters upon clusters
Standing upright spring signal lights
House flower edge wandering leaning Carefully purchase red candles
Ghost flower collision heart small Carefully pass through flower rain
Stop stop in Taiwan too late to shift gear
Stuck shadow flower wood cotton flower blooms
Memory photographing who is shock a thread of red falling
Heart flower pressing chaos do not request who falls into the flower formation
…cars cars cars flowers flowers flowers…
Crash onto piled flowers cars stacked upon flowers
This poem’s form is like a mirror reflecting left and right, which the author calls a “mirror structure poem.” The blank central line is an image of a highway; in nature, it belongs to a type of visual poetry in a broad sense. Structurally, it is a form of parallel correspondence, namely an arrangement of couplets composed of three or more lines.
The reading of this poem, if using a “cross method,” yields at least four interpretations; that is, there exist four different “contexts,” making its semantics highly rich and intriguing.
The aesthetic foundation of “mirror structure poetry” is symmetry. The central blank line can be regarded as a central axis, dividing the visual field into two equal parts. Objects in symmetrical relation are not only identical in quantity and quality, but also equidistant from the central axis.
THREE. FILM SHOT THEORY
French film theorist Alexander Arnauld once said: “Cinema is a language of images; it has its own words, sentence formation, diction, syntactic variation, ellipsis, rules, and grammar.”
(I) FADE-IN AND FADE-OUT
Fade-out: the image gradually disappears; it is often used to mark the end of an event and has a soothing effect. Fade-out refers to the process in which an image gradually becomes dimmer, from clear visibility to complete disappearance.
Fade-in: the image gradually appears from black/white/yellow; it also has a soothing effect. Fade-in is the opposite of fade-out; it refers to the process in which an image gradually emerges from nonexistence to presence.
Luo Fu, “Overlapping Scenery”¹⁵
A cold crow
From a snow-white rooftop
flies
away
The television flashes a sharp sword
on my rough forehead
striking a spark
the window
lights up again
In the first section, the protagonist looks up from the window and sees the crow disappear at the edge of the frame; the shot fades out. After fading in again, the scene becomes an interior television screen. The screen flashes a sharp sword striking the protagonist’s forehead, a spark appears briefly, and the window lights up again before the image fades out. The fade-out and fade-in between the two segments constitute a transition between scenes.
(II) CLOSE–UP
“Close-up” refers to enlarging and highlighting a particular part of a form in order to draw the audience’s special attention. In other words, it is a shot that magnifies a person or object taken at close range, or a detailed depiction of it; when the subject is a human being, a close-up usually refers to a facial image from the neck upward. The close-up is a powerful expressive device. It not only allows delicate representation of facial expressions or emphasizes parts of objects and details of things, but also strengthens film rhythm. Continuous use of close-ups of a character’s face on screen can often express that character’s thoughts and emotions.
Shang Qin, “Kaia Meisha Lake”¹⁶
More distant than the clarity of water
is
the solemnity of trees
More distant than the solemnity of trees
is
the stillness of mountains
More distant than the stillness of mountains
is
the vastness of clouds
More distant than the vastness of clouds
is
the remoteness of the sky
More distant than the remoteness of the sky
is
my
gaze
If the entire poem is performed through cinematic shots, the image moves gradually from near to far: “lake surface” → “trees on the opposite shore” → “distant mountains” → “vast clouds” → “sky,” and then abruptly pulls back into a close-up of the poet’s face → the lake, mountains, clouds, and sky reflected in the eyes. The camera movement in this poem is similar to Ma Zhiyuan’s Yuan qu “Tianjingsha,” both moving from near view to middle view to distant view. In contrast, “Tianjingsha” and Liu Zongyuan’s “Snow on the River” move in the opposite direction. This poem contains no sound imagery from beginning to end; with image but no sound, it becomes a “silent film.”
Let us look at Luo Fu’s “Entering the Mountains in Rain but Seeing No Rain”¹⁷
Holding a paper umbrella of oiled paper
singing “sour plums in the third month”
within the mountains
I am the only pair of straw shoes lost in mist
woodpecker empty
echo tree hollow
a tree rotates upward in the pain of pecking
entering the mountain
seeing no rain
the umbrella circles a blue stone in flight
there sits a man holding his head
watching cigarette ash turn to dust
descending the mountain
still seeing no rain
three bitter pine seeds
roll along the road sign
all the way to my feet
when I reach out to grasp them
they turn into a handful of bird sounds
The camera fades in. On a winding mountain road, a song is heard. A paper umbrella enters the frame from a bend in the road. The camera moves closer to the approaching figure, producing a close-up of his feet; he is wearing straw shoes made of cogon grass. The shaky camera follows him as he proceeds along the winding path.
The figure passes a tree; a woodpecker is pecking at the trunk, and the sound resonates within the hollow of the tree. The figure stops by a large blue stone, places the umbrella on its surface, and lights a cigarette. The camera circles the stone; within the rotating shot appear the paper umbrella and the man (sitting with his head in his hands, staring at cigarette ash) together with the stone, all rotating as a single composition.
The man turns and walks downhill. Passing through a pine forest, bitter pine seeds fall down with the mountain wind. Three pine seeds roll along the road sign all the way to his feet. He bends down and picks them up; the pine seeds are in his hand. The camera moves in for a close-up of the palm. The pine seeds suddenly transform into a burst of bird calls, which quickly disappear. The camera freezes.
This poem contains camera movements ranging from long shot → zoom in → panning shot → rotation → close-up → freeze frame. Compared with Shang Qin’s “Kaia Meisha Lake,” its camera movements are clearly more vivid and dynamic.
The flow of imagery in poetry is, in fact, the movement of the camera. Poets must know how to “operate the camera,” allowing the lens (imagery) to perform various flexible movements, bringing forth scene after scene, and carrying out narration and description through the process of linking scenes.
(III) ZOOM IN AND ZOOM OUT
Zoom in refers to a movement in which the camera jumps from a long shot, skipping the medium shot, directly into a close shot. Zoom out is the opposite.
Lin Yin, “Question”¹⁸
Hot wind blows, even a poem breathes faintly
evaporating and dispersing under sunlight
the answer to the question will also
become as small as a large painting
within the painting, a desert; within the desert, a grain of sand
In this section, the camera uses three types of framing—long shot, medium shot, and close-up—alternating through zoom in and zoom out. Hot wind and desert belong to the long shot; the human figure is the medium shot; and after the person collapses, the grain of sand seen before the eyes becomes the close-up.
(IV) EXPOSTION (RETROSPECTION) OR FLASHBACK
“Retrospection” or “flashback” refers to a camera movement that returns from present time-space to earlier time-space, retracing events in reverse order, like reviewing the developmental history of a person or object. In modern poetry, Yu Guangzhong’s “Or So-called Spring”¹⁹ adopts this method of retrospection:
So-called wife
once was bride
so-called bride
once was girlfriend
so-called girlfriend
once was very shy
From the perspective of rhetorical form, this may be regarded as a descending gradation within climax structure. “Wife” → “bride” → “girlfriend” are three stages, or three cinematic fragments. Through the linking of fragments into a continuous strip, narration is completed.
(V) THEATRE OF THE ABSURD
The present writer borrows the concept of “Theatre of the Absurd” mainly to provide an approximate explanation for certain modern poems influenced by surrealist creative thought. “Theatre of the Absurd” shares highly similar aesthetic features with these modern poems: both express the psychological anguish experienced by humans in absurd situations.
“In absurd theatre, traditional narrative plot is no longer the center of drama; struggle and conflict are greatly reduced or even absent. Even if a story exists within the play, what the audience sees and hears is only a fragment of it, with no beginning and no end; dialogue and actions of characters often lack causal or logical necessity. Therefore, while watching the performance, the audience may feel as if they are watching a group of aliens performing, completely detached and confused. Yet at a deeper level, the ‘play’ in absurd theatre is no longer a storytelling tool; it becomes an event itself, offering the audience an opportunity to ‘experience’ the absurd situation presented in drama, thereby realizing that we ourselves exist in such an absurd world. Everything presented in the play acts like a mirror reflecting reality. Thus, although absurd theatre is a non-realistic form of drama, it is closer to real life than realistic theatre.”²⁰
The performance techniques of absurd theatre mainly externalize human absurd conditions and feelings through direct metaphor, presenting them as perceptible stage images. Absurd theatre lacks a complete (coherent) storyline, or rather, it presents only fragmented situations. “Characters in the play have no distinct personality traits, lack psychological depiction, and usually function as distorted or dehumanized symbolic figures.”²¹
Surrealist performance art seeks to present the world of dreams and the subconscious. Therefore, such works are filled with fantastical, strange, dreamlike scenes, often juxtaposing unrelated things to form a reality-transcending illusion. This corresponds to André Breton’s (1896–1966) “automatic writing” and “dream narration”²². Freud discovered that if one relaxes the mind and allows associations to proceed continuously from an object or event, without self-criticism of the associations, one can access the subconscious—the true thoughts of the psyche. Freud believed that dream scenes are the result of condensation²³, meaning that daytime experiences, feelings, and fragments of perception (people, events, objects) are combined into a dream formation. Breton’s “automatic writing” was inspired by Freud’s free association. He proposed that once the first word or sentence appears in the mind, one should relax and allow associative flow to continue without censorship or judgment, writing everything down honestly. When comparing Freud’s theory with Breton’s automatic writing, one can clearly see Freud’s influence on Breton’s creative conception.
In some modern poetic works, surrealist performance aligns closely with the situation of the “Theatre of the Absurd.” From a rhetorical perspective, these surrealist absurd dramas are closely related to hyperbole, because distortion and transformation—the two “genes” (DNA)—exist in both, and hyperbole often becomes the main rhetorical device in surrealist works.
Let us examine examples of Taiwanese surrealist poetry and their absurd theatrical performance:
Bi Guo, “Sunrise”²⁴
Suddenly, on the breakfast table, a solemnly seated
half salted duck egg, cut-side facing outward
suddenly
the second uncle hastily compresses himself
like lightning flashes into the egg body
yet leaves his eyes outside the window
and thus becomes the window
The entry of a person into the egg implies a primal desire to return to the embryonic state. The act of entering the egg while leaving the eyes behind the window, and further transforming into the window itself, are surreal imaginative constructions. What symbolic or metaphorical meaning the eyes-as-window carry is difficult to determine.
Su Shaolian, “Beast”²⁵
On a dark green blackboard I wrote a character “beast,” adding its phonetic annotation “shou.” Turning to face the students, I began teaching the word. Despite great effort, they still did not understand, only staring at me. I became extremely troubled. Behind me, the blackboard became a dark green jungle; the white chalk word “beast” crouched on the board, roaring at me. I picked up the eraser to wipe it away, but it ran into the jungle. I chased after it, searching everywhere, until white chalk dust filled the platform.
I rushed out from the blackboard, standing on the platform. My clothes were torn by beast claws, blood stains appeared under my fingernails, insects sounded in my ears. Looking down, I could not believe it—I had transformed into a four-legged, fur-covered vertebrate animal. I roared: “This is the beast! This is the beast!”
The students all cried in fear.
The character “beast” on the blackboard comes to life; the teacher pursues it into the jungle, fails to capture it, and ultimately transforms into a beast himself. This strategy of “false becoming real” is highly bizarre and approaches magical realism. From a rhetorical perspective, it should be considered a “transformational hyperbole.”
Du Shisan, “Going Home”²⁶
After shopping, the woman leaves her legs at the bus stop
After playing mahjong, the man leaves his upper body at the gaming table
The woman takes the man’s lower body home by holding it with her hands
The metaphor in this poem is not difficult to understand, but if it were faithfully adapted into a short film, it would be quite incomprehensible. “The woman takes the man’s lower body home with her hands”—this scene is not only absurd, but also contains a set of intriguing “message codes.”
