The Exquisite Distance: Yiyun Li and the Unforgiving Mirror of Grief 精妙的距離感：李翊雲與哀慟的嚴酷鏡像

Grief makes us illegible to others. And sometimes, in trying to survive it, we make ourselves illegible on purpose.

哀慟使我們成為他人眼中的難解之謎。有時，為了在其中存活，我們甚至刻意將自己寫成晦澀的密碼。

In her recent essay in The New Yorker, “The Deaths—and Lives—of Two Sons,” Yiyun Li writes about the unimaginable: losing both her sons, six years apart, each by suicide. The prose is restrained, sparse to the point of frictionless. There are no crescendos of pain, no indulgence in pathos. It is, in fact, a text one could almost misread as dispassionate—until you realize that it is the kind of dispassion one arrives at only after one has been emptied by feeling.

李翊雲在《紐約客》近期文章〈兩個兒子的死與生〉中剖析著不可言說之事：兩個兒子相隔六年，相繼自盡。文字如無菌手術臺般克制，疏淡至無跡可尋。沒有痛楚的漸強音，亦無溺於悲情的自我沉醉。它甚至可能被誤讀為冷漠——直到你驚覺，這般冷漠，唯有在情感被徹底掏空後方能抵達。

It is also the kind of dispassion that enrages some readers—especially, though not exclusively, many of her readers in Chinese.

正是這種冷靜令部分讀者感到刺痛——尤其（但不限於）她的中文讀者。

Yiyun Li is no stranger to this polarization. For over a decade, she has occupied a curious literary position: a Chinese-born writer who refuses to be the “Chinese writer,” who disavows nostalgia, shuns political commentary, and insists on English as her language of choice—not because it flatters the market, but because it affords her, as she has often said, a kind of self-erasure. English, to Li, is not a bridge. It is a veil.

李翊雲對這種撕裂並不陌生。十多年來，她始終處於一種曖昧的文學位置：身為中國出生的作家，卻拒絕被定義為「中國作家」；否認鄉愁，繞行政治評論，堅持以英語創作——非為取悅市場，而是如她常說，這門語言讓她得以完成「自我消隱」。英語於她而言，並非橋樑，而是一層帷幕。

And that, for many readers—especially those who long to claim her as a cultural interlocutor—is unforgivable.

而對許多讀者而言——尤其是那些渴望將她視為文化代言人的人來說——這種選擇幾乎不可原諒。

On Chinese social media, responses to Li’s latest works split into familiar factions: one side accuses her of self-colonization, emotional alienation, and cultural betrayal; the other defends her fiercely, celebrating the radical autonomy of her voice, her refusal to perform grief or cultural belonging in recognizable forms. These arguments, however, are not really about prose style or even personal trauma. They are about something deeper: who gets to speak for whom, and in what language; who gets to grieve out loud, and who is punished for grieving too quietly.

在中文社群媒體上，對李翊雲新作的回應裂變為熟悉的兩派：一方控訴她進行自我殖民、情感疏離與文化背叛；另一方則力挺她，讚頌其語言的極端自主性，以及她對公式化哀慟與文化歸屬展演的堅決拒絕。然而，這些爭論本質上無關文體風格，甚至無關個人創傷，而是觸及更深層的問題：誰能為誰發聲，以何種語言發聲；誰得以公開哀慟，誰因靜默而受罰。

Li’s detractors argue that her English is a betrayal of roots. That she abandoned her mother tongue, and with it, a kind of moral accountability to a nation and its people. They want witness literature. They want confession. They want, perhaps, an act of national mourning through the vessel of her personal tragedy.

批評者認為她以英語創作是一種背叛根源的行為。她捨棄了母語，也一併放棄了對國家與民族應負的道德責任。他們要的是見證文學，是懺悔錄，甚至可能是透過她的個人悲劇來完成一場民族性的哀悼儀式。

But what Li offers is something far more elusive—and therefore more unsettling. She writes not as a voice of a people, but as an orphan of experience. She refuses the grammar of redemption. She declines the narrative arc of healing. Her prose is not therapeutic. It is diagnostic.

然而，李翊雲所提供的，是更難以捉摸的東西——因此也更令人不安。她不是以族群代言人的身份寫作，而是以經驗的孤兒自居。她拒絕使用救贖的語法，拒絕那種療癒性的敘事弧線。她的文字並非療癒之語，而是診斷之刃。

There are moments in “The Deaths—and Lives—of Two Sons” that resist the expectations of memoir—not because they lack emotion, but because they refuse the reader's desire for visible breakdown. Grief, here, is not adorned with metaphor or resolved with insight. It is relayed in actions so small they almost vanish: a son rereading The Myth of Sisyphus, a raised hand in farewell, the remembered cadence of a goodbye. The story does not reach for consolation; it simply endures. One could mistake this restraint for coldness. But in truth, it is something rarer: a form of devotion too private to perform.

〈兩個兒子的死與生〉中有些段落明顯抗拒著回憶錄的期待——不是因為缺乏情感，而是拒絕讀者對「崩潰可見性」的渴望。此處的悲傷，無需比喻來裝飾，也不藉由頓悟來釋解。它藏於幾近隱形的動作裡：兒子重讀《西西弗神話》，揮手道別的瞬間，腦中浮現道別語調的回音。這個故事並不試圖安慰誰，它只是靜靜地持續。這份克制可能會被誤解為冷漠，但其實，那是一種更稀有的虔誠——私密到無法展演的信仰儀式。

To understand Yiyun Li’s sensibility, one must abandon the Western liberal reflex to celebrate all trauma-writing as inherently virtuous. One must also abandon the nationalist reflex—Chinese or otherwise—that seeks to fold every personal sorrow into collective history. What Li performs, in both her fiction and essays, is a disassembly of narrative comfort. In a world obsessed with visibility, she chooses opacity.

若要理解李翊雲的感性，必須先擺脫西方自由派對創傷書寫自動聖化的反射動作，也必須放下任何形式的民族主義衝動——不論來自哪個文化——即那種試圖將個人悲苦納入集體歷史的習性。李翊雲在其小說與散文中進行的，是對敘事安慰劑的拆解。在一個迷戀可見性、透明度的世界裡，她選擇成為一塊毛玻璃。

This, of course, is dangerous.

這樣的選擇，當然是危險的。

Because grief, when made too quiet, can be mistaken for detachment. And detachment, especially in women—especially in mothers—especially in immigrants—is always suspect. We demand from women who mourn not just suffering, but performance. We want weeping. We want flesh. We want Instagram-ready vulnerability. Li gives us none of that. Instead, she gives us endurance. And there is nothing more confrontational than endurance rendered in prose.

因為哀慟若過於沉靜，便容易被誤認為情感抽離。而抽離——當其發生在女性，尤其是母親、尤其她還是移民時——總是會處於道德質疑的風口浪尖。我們要求女性哀悼者不僅要承受痛苦，還要展示痛苦。我們要眼淚，要血肉，要那種可供社群媒體觀賞的脆弱圖像。李翊雲拒絕這一切。她給予我們的，是耐痛。而以文字形塑的耐痛力，是最沉靜也最銳利的對抗。

Even Li’s defenders sometimes misunderstand her. They praise her as “brave,” when what she truly is, is exacting. Not brave like a martyr, but brave like a surgeon: she cuts with precision. Her choice to write in English is not a rejection of Chinese identity, but a reworking of it on her own terms. She refuses to translate her sorrow into the currency others expect. That is not betrayal. That is resistance.

即便是擁護者，有時也會誤讀她。他們讚她「勇敢」，而她實際上是精準的。她的勇敢不似殉道者，而更近於外科醫師——刀刀見骨。她選擇以英語創作，並非否認中文身份，而是以自己的方式對其進行重塑。她拒絕將自己的悲傷翻譯成他人期待的語言貨幣。這不是背叛，而是抵抗。

But resistance has its price.

但抵抗從來有其代價。

Li’s insistence on aesthetic detachment, her refusal to use language as a balm, can feel exasperating—even to those of us who admire her. Her work does not invite intimacy. It denies it. And perhaps that is her greatest risk. In her literary world, empathy is not a given—it must be earned. And sometimes, it isn’t.

她對美學抽離的堅持，對語言撫慰作用的拒絕，甚至可能令仰慕者感到挫折。她的作品不邀親密，甚至刻意拒斥之。這或許正是她最大的風險。在她的文學世界裡，共情不是理所當然的恩賜，而是必須經由閱讀者自身努力去獲得的東西——有時，甚至無法獲得。

So what do we do with a writer like Yiyun Li?

那麼，我們該如何與李翊雲這樣的寫作者共處？

We read her the way one reads the sea during a storm: not for safety, not for consolation, but to be reminded that silence can roar. That language, even in its most refined form, remains inadequate to what we carry.

如閱讀風暴中的海：不是為了尋找安慰或安全，而是為了記住——寂靜亦能轟鳴。語言，即便打磨至最精緻的形態，仍舊無法完全承載我們所負的沉重。

Li’s prose is a scalpel that cuts away sentimentality. It exposes the nerves. It does not promise catharsis. And yet, in the sheer bleakness of her honesty, there is something liberating. She gives us the right not to be inspirational. She gives us the right to grieve incompletely.

李翊雲的文字是一把刪除感傷的手術刀。它直接劃開神經，不承諾淨化與釋懷。然而，在她誠實得近乎荒蕪的文字中，藏著一種深層的釋放。她賦予我們不必成為勵志範本的權利，也允許我們哀慟得不完整。

In a literary world that often confuses confession with connection, Yiyun Li remains an author of the unsaid. And sometimes, the unsaid is the only place where truth survives.

在這個常將懺悔誤認為連結的文學世界裡，李翊雲始終是那未言說之物的守夜人。而有時，唯有未被說出的部分，才是真相最後的避難所。