An autobiographical fiction based on the poet’s natal chart
Whether real or imaginary journeys by plane or in virtual reality, the poems of Chinese poet Yin Xiaoyuan construct a sort of parallel reality composed of electric fields, sudden apparitions, and transient epiphanies, described with scientific accuracy and set within a meticulously calculated sequence of events. The view of nature, in physical and atmospheric values, dialogues in counterpoint with a virtual tributary of today’s technological culture, where travel conditions suddenly ignite, as if by internal combustion, references to the fantastic (here the Russian, the spiders of Kafka, and the Lautreamontian memory…), give rise to rapid and fleeting triggers like those of the short films that are so fashionable today.
So, reality and “reality” alternate and confuse, presenting scenes of a dream that the author provides, not without irony (especially in the dialogues), along with the premise (C. G. Jung), the script, and the interpretation.
The result is a singular textuality, explicitly transgeneric, serial and fluvial, the result of multiple contaminations between literature and science, between visual art and storytelling, in an orderly chaoticism that seems to open the palette of the text to every action, and then fade in the endings like a visionary film modernly adorned with high definition, without any figure prevailing or remaining. It is akin to a poetic video game, with the original and fascinating features of post-subjective pyrotechnics. This term refers to the explosive and subjective nature of the poet’s expression.
Fabio Scotto
Author: Yin Xiaoyuan