Dream Speaker

Dream Speaker is a collection of thematic prose by the writer and poet Tang Zhaohui, published in 2012 by China Renmin University Press as part of the "Mingde Series · Slow Light of Culture." Taking "dream" as its point of departure, the book uses words to measure the distance between countryside and city and gives voice, through dream-speech, to the spiritual estrangement between people, repeatedly probing the experience of living and the condition of the soul in modern life. The author describes it as "a secret language of thought, the murmurings of the soul" and "a silent cry in an age when everyone dreams." The book comprises seven parts: it opens with "Ancient Village," writing of hometown and land, moves to "Tales of the Spirit," recording fragments of inner life, then turns to observations of the city and the sea of people, and to a look back at self, family, and fate, finally concluding with "Playing Cards," using suits and faces as metaphors for life's contingency and order. In form it is a prose suite of linked short pieces, yet its tone is composed and powerful; the surface of the writing is quiet, while within there is a vast, surging force. In his writing the author places particular value on "a sense of proportion" as a principle of artistic creation: the lyricism is rich but never excessive, the philosophizing dense but never obscure, giving the book a character in which poetry and thought interweave. Writers including Peng Yanjiao, Can Xue, and Zhang Chengzhi wrote endorsements for the book, affirming its poetic philosophical quality and the poignancy and intensity within its fresh naturalness.