Chapter 5. Obscurity and Clarity in Modern Poetry
The controversy over obscurity and clarity in modern poetry has a long history. In the 1970s, there was already a dispute between Luo Fu and Yu Guangzhong, with supporters on both sides. In fact, this issue involves both poets and readers, and even extends to the question of whether poetry is elite-oriented or popular.
Section 1. From the perspective of poets
Poets who support obscurity argue that “obscurity is a necessary evil of poetry” and also the core value of linguistic art. Poetry that is overly clear lacks textual texture; “plain-water poetry” is nothing more than lineated prose. Creating such poetry reflects the poet’s superficiality and vulgarity. The closing lines of Luo Fu’s “Drinking with Li He” can be regarded as a representative statement of this position:
I will write an obscure poem for you in the darkness
let them not understand if they do not understand
not understand
why after reading it we look at each other and laugh
Poets who support clarity, as Yu Guangzhong states in his essay “On Clarity,” argue: “Clarity (Clarity) and implication (Ulteriority) are both virtues of poetic expression. However, clarity does not mean superficiality that is fully exposed at a glance, nor is implication synonymous with obscurity. Clarity is ‘making the profound accessible,’ it is what Wang Guowei called ‘without obstruction,’ it is the transparent state after aesthetic experience has been expressed, allowing the reader’s intuition to pass through uninterrupted… Superficial poetry cannot withstand repeated reading; clear poetry, though transparent, can endure a hundred readings. This is because behind superficiality lies emptiness, while behind clarity lies richness. What is called clarity is, in fact, profundity achieved through insight, richness refined into simplicity.” Yu Guangzhong thus proposes two main arguments: “making the profound accessible” and “the unobstructed transmission of aesthetic experience.”
Section 2. From the perspective of readers
When readers encounter obscurity and clarity in modern poetry, their typical response pattern is: when faced with obscure (incomprehensible) poetry, they usually bypass it. Unless guided by critics’ interpretations, they are generally unwilling to spend too much time and effort deciphering the lines and their underlying meanings. As a result, obscure poems are often not accepted by the general readership and remain marginal, circulating weakly within small groups of poets and poetry journals.
Poetic works that are still widely recited today are, in the vast majority, those that exhibit what Yu Guangzhong calls “making the profound accessible” and “the unobstructed transmission of aesthetic experience.” For example, Li Bai’s “Quiet Night Thought,” Du Fu’s “Spring View,” Wang Wei’s “On the Ninth Day, Thinking of My Brothers in Shandong,” and “Deer Enclosure.” These works share a common characteristic: they express “emotionally moving aesthetic experience,” or in simple terms, they evoke widespread resonance among readers.
Obscurity is not the same as “difficulty of interpretation.” Obscure poetry requires more interpretive tools (methodologies) to gradually peel away its layers. Difficult poetry, however, is poetry for which, even after exhausting all interpretive tools, one still cannot accurately grasp its artistic qualities (aesthetic experience) or thematic meanings. In the author’s view, “obscurity” and “difficulty of interpretation” are precisely the impressions that modern and postmodern poetry give to readers. Many postmodern poems are as hard and dense as walnuts; even trained poetry critics such as the author often find it difficult to use analytical tools effectively to precisely dissect and uncover their “enigmatic subtleties.” As a result, many published critiques or appreciations of postmodern poetry are in fact “impressionistic criticism” and “personal reading reports.” Ten critics will produce ten different interpretations, because many methodological tools of textual analysis are no longer effective; critics can only “rationalize their own readings and display their own skills.” However, such criticism and appreciation do not actually help readers enter the poetic text; instead, due to subjective misreadings or over-readings by critics, readers are often misled.
When poets write poetry, should they consider whether readers can accept it? Should the responsibility of reading be entirely placed on the reader? If the answer is “write and leave it,” then readers are unlikely to pay for it. Such poets are better suited to remain in ivory towers, continuing to “admire their own isolated elegance,” and should not complain: “Why does no one read my poetry collections?” Of course, the only exception is the poet Hsia Yu, whose dreamlike poems have been elevated by a group of poets into a “New Testament.” The negative effect of such excessive canonization is that many people buy her poetry not because they understand or like it, but because they follow trends, purchasing it for collection or for display among peers.
The author believes that modern poetry should be able to “convey the poet’s aesthetic experience” and “move readers to produce resonance,” possessing this two-way interactive nature, thereby replacing the dispute between “clarity,” “obscurity,” and “difficulty.” If a poetic text has no readership, it is “cold data.” If it circulates only among a small group of poets, it becomes “collectively narcissistic cold data.” The conclusion remains: it is still “cold data.”
