Title

Literature as Psychiatric Treatment: Taiwan Poetess Ye Hong as Subject

Author

Lee, Kuei-yun

Genre

Article  

Pages

255-282

Download

PDF

Language

Chinese  

Key words

Ye Hong, melancholia, meaning of writing, death writing, psychiatric treatment

Abstract

        This paper discusses the Taiwanese woman poet Ye Hong 葉紅’s poems about death, attempting to articulate her perspective on death and what it means in her poetry. Based on her poetry linking psychiatric treatment with death writing, this paper further explains how the poet employs the imagery of death and poetry writing as an escape from life crisis.  In the case of Ye Hong, literature as psychiatric treatment did serve to soothe her melancholia and prevent her from losing her capability of speaking. At the same time, she also attempted to save herself by writing about death, that is, by sublimating the death drive by incessantly refashioning the signs of death in her poems. Ye’s death, however, indicates the impossibility of redemption through writing: poetry can never be a substitute for medical treatment. Nevertheless, considering the eternal value of literary work, we may conclude that literature is Ye’s afterlife, through which readers can overcome her physical death by returning again and again to her narrative of death before she died.