China and the West

Gu Cheng : Interview with a Hong Kong poet.
"Whitman is transcendental ; he manages to have straight access to the ontological being. I first read Whitman's poems at an early age but got reawakened much later. I was a curbed person. It was not until one morning in 1983 that the electricity of my anguish dissolved my skin, which had been as stiff as lead, and as a result I came to perceive the great ontological being - Whitman. His sound came down vertically from the air, blowing on me and shaking my every hour and minute. The century between us no longer exists ; nor does the Pacific Ocean, leaving Whitman himself – the visible but untouchable 'I' and himself only – the eternity that was getting nearer and clearer. I was stunned, almost desirous to throw myself away and give up my work grinding flowers on the glass of images. I was shaken again and again, lying there and feeling like a wooden piece in a piano. From morning to evening I was just listening to the sound of the falling raindrops. On that day I ate nothing."