Interview with Sheng Keyi by Tiffany Troy

No Society Without Poetry:
A Conversation with Sheng Keyi about Death Fugue

Tiffany Troy: Do you want to introduce yourself to your readers of the world?

Sheng Keyi: I was born in the 1970’s in a small village in Southern China. There, people walked to towns and diesel engine-fueled ships, that slowly moves its way into the city for more than an hour. The pace was slow, and resources were scarce. 

My work, as a result, focuses on the everyday lower-class individuals, especially people from my hometown. I focus especially on the survival of female characters.

I have written full time for twenty years. As of today, I have published 10 novels, 3 collections of short stories/novellas and have been translated into 15 languages. My passion for writing has only increased with time.

Some of the books could not be published in China, but received support from publishing houses in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Now, I am at the tail´s end of a three-year long process of writing my newest novel, centering around a woman who is mute and with intellectual disabilities. The book is a touchstone of reality and society and human nature. At the same time, her experience parallels the 40-year trajectory in intellectual and social changes brought by China´s opening the door. I focused on the shifts in moral values. The novel will be published next year.

Tiffany Troy: In Death Fugue, you have Dayang and Swan Valley, which are opposing geographies and world scape. How do the geographies in which the protagonist Yuan Mengliu experience and grow?

Sheng Keyi: When I wrote of Dayang in 2008, I am thinking of the Beijing street scene from the 1980s. I created Dayang in the shape of a grass worm. In my mind, Dayang represents materialism, where the protagonist and poet Yuan Mengliu attends the protests passively to be with his girlfriend. In reality, Yuan Mengliu is trying to evade the reality. But after the disappearance of his fiancée, the poet stops writing poetry.  

The journey to Swan Valley is based in part in Utopia by Thomas Moore. Moore’s description of Utopia’s political system is revelatory in the setting of Swan Valley. In this novel, I took Moore´s Utopia a step further—with abstinence, eugenics, cloning, and eradication of the elderly—these kinds of inhumane measures behind the peaceful, idyllic scenery of Swan Valley. Yuan Mengliu arrived upon the scene and realized that the interior of the society is even more corrupt than Dayang. Yuan was swirled inside by the huge whirl of wind. The lake is modeled after the Dongting Lake in my hometown in Hunan, which historically did swirl human lives into its vastness. 

So there are three geographies: the lake is based on the memories and imaginaries of my hometown. Beijing is also based on my experience there. As to Swan Valley, it is a fantastical land based on Utopia, 1984, Brave New World, and other dystopian classics. 

Tiffany Troy: What is your writing process like? As a reader, I felt the novel was very cinematographic. Yuan Mengliu would go into on this journey, but he would flash back on the past, with his friends and family.

Sheng Keyi: This novel has two timelines, which might confuse some readers. The narrator is standing in the future, narrating the past. In the future, there is a future even further in the future. The first English translation of the book was printed by Giramondo Publishing of Australia and the publisher made substantial edits to avoid confusions as to the timeline. Even in translation, however, many readers commented on the timeline, and perhaps I should have clarified the timeline. There is no fixed time in the novel, and because of that the English translation may require an extra effort to explain the setting and background.

In 1996, I became familiar with some intellectuals, including poets, who were passionate, romantic, idealist, and even sorrowful. They told me stories that I never saw on my rural hometown TV growing up. I became interested in the truth of history, and the difference between the storylines between the stories they told and the stories told on mainstream media.

In the 1980s, the people admired poets especially. If a young man can write a poem well, a woman will fall in love with him. If that young poet can play guitar, then the people will be touched with their purity. 

Octavio Paz wrote “There can be no society without poetry, but society can never be realized as poetry, it is never poetic.” In the novel, both poetry and the poet disappeared. This novel is ultimately a psychological portrayal of the dissipation of social morals and the disillusionment of the people. During the Chinese Revolution, the massacre is a massacre of ideals. The protagonist Yuan Mengliu gave up poetry to become a doctor. This symbolized his giving up of his revolutionary idealism. A person without poetry is like a society without soul.

Tiffany Troy: You included a lot of poems in the novel, of the protagonist and the protagonists’ friends. How did you decide which poems to include and the different styles of the poems?

Sheng Keyi: In reality, the verse in the book is written by my best friend, a very talented poet. I told my friend the novel’s plotline as well as the character’s mental state, and the friend wrote poems based on that.

Tiffany Troy: You mentioned that you wrote a lot of novels, many of which feature a woman protagonist. As someone who is interested exploring the female perspectives, how do you use female characters to explore the trajectory of the protagonist’s development?

Sheng Keyi: Because the main focus on the novel is on the protagonist poet, the female characters serve as foils to the protagonist, which underscore his mental and psychological change over time.

In other novels, the features of the females are memorable and the reader knows clearly their names and what the female character likes and doesn’t like. In this novel, Qizi has a lot of revolutionary drive and is willing to sacrifice her own life. But she remains to be fleshed out, and the spotlight remains on the protagonist poet. In Swan Valley, too, female characters appear without their own will, and are tools of reproduction.

Tiffany Troy: How does science fiction shape this novel?

Sheng Keyi: Science fiction requires a great deal of scientific knowledge to create a world with rules that line up. My novel includes the future, the whirlwind, Swan Valley, and the society in there. But ultimately, my main emphasis is on writing about the characters of the intellectuals and the social reality.

I did a lot of research going into this novel, and I found that I could never convey the shock of the truth portrayed in the documentaries or the truth as it happened. So, I avoided writing it in a social realism style, but instead focused on the development of the characters and their voices. I was inspired by own personal relationship with China in the 1980s, which was a golden period for literature and idealism. We would look upon the 1980s with nostalgia even though resources were scarce, because people were simple and pure. The picture is completely different now.

Tiffany Troy: Who are some of your literary influences?

Sheng Keyi: Talking about the novel as a whole, the most important thing is my background and individuals who I have seen and came to know in my hometown.

I am extremely moved by ancient Chinese literature including Tang and Song-era poetry, which inspired me to write. I was able to transfer the knowledge that I have gleaned from my study of ancient Chinese poetry in my novel writing to transform language into art. 

I also am moved by Mexican writer Juan Rulfo, William Faulkner, Joshua Marcus, and Gustave Flaubert. I would keep on reading them, each year. I learn from them on how to write plot, as their ability to write plot cannot be ignored.

Tiffany Troy: Do you have any closing thoughts?

Sheng Keyi: My readers could look forward to my next work. I have a lot of confidence in this work.

Sheng Key is the author of ten novels as well as numerous short stories and novellas. Her debut novel in English translation, Northern Girls, was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. She has received numerous literary awards, including the Chinese People’s Literature Prize, the Yu Dafu Prize for Fiction, and the Chinese Literature Media Award. Death Fugue is a lyrical and explosive dystopian satire that imagines a world of manufactured existence, the erasure of personal freedom, and the perils of government control.

Tiffany Troy is a critic, translator, and poet.

26 January 2022