Patchwork East Asian Comparative Literature and Culture

Edited by

Zhang Longxi (City University of Hong Kong) Wiebke Denecke (Boston University)

Editorial Board

Alexander Beecroft (University of South Carolina) Ronald Egan (University of California, Santa Barbara) Joshua Fogel (York University, Canada) Alexander Huang (George Washington University) Peter Kornicki (Cambridge University, UK) Karen Thornber (Harvard University) Rudolf Wagner (Heidelberg University, Germany)

VOLUME 1

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/eacl Patchwork

Seven Essays on Art and Literature

Qian Zhongshu

Translated by

Duncan M. Campbell

LEIDEN | BOSTON This book was translated into English from the original《七綴集》(Qi zhui ji) by Qian Zhongshu 錢鍾書 with the permission granted by Yang Jiang 楊絳.

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual ‘Brill’ typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 2212-4772 isbn 978 90 04 27020 6 (hardback) isbn 978 90 04 27021 3 (e-book)

Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Global Oriental and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. Brill has made all reasonable efforts to trace all rights holders to any copyrighted material used in this work. In cases where these efforts have not been successful the publisher welcomes communications from copyright holders, so that the appropriate acknowledgements can be made in future editions, and to settle other permission matters.

This book is printed on acid-free paper. To Jonette and Grace Crysell Caleb Hoyle and Alexander Campbell with love

∵

Contents

Series Editors’ Foreword viii

Introduction by Professor Zhang Longxi 1 Translator’s Introduction 18

Preface by Qian Zhongshu 27 序

1. Chinese Poetry and Chinese Painting 29 中國詩與中國畫

2. On Reading Laokoon 79 讀拉奧孔

3. Synaesthesia 114 通感

4. Lin Shu’s Translations 139 林紓的翻譯

5. Poetry as a Vehicle of Grief 189 詩可以怨

6. Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life”—the First English Poem Translated into Chinese—and Several Other Related Matters 211 漢譯第一首英語詩人生頌及有關二三事

7. An Historical Anecdote, a Religious Parable, and a Novel 247 一節歷史掌故一個宗教寓言一篇小說

Appendix Preface, Four Old Essays (Jiuwen sipian 舊文四篇) 269 Preface, This Also Collection (Yeshi ji 也是集) 270 Index of Proper Names, Book Titles, & Terms 271 Series Editors’ Foreword East Asian Comparative Literature and Culture

East Asia is reaching into the world. The number of Chinese students and scholars studying at foreign universities has never been larger, the “Korean wave” washes K-dramas and K-pop ashore all continents, and Japanese manga and anime garner millions of young fans in New Delhi and Cape Town, Oslo and Vladivostok, New York and Rome. Popular culture proves a powerful medium to connect East Asian countries to the world, but also to each other, softening the divisions that the twentieth century has brought to this region. Much of what a good century ago connected the East Asian “Sinographic Sphere” of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam—cultures that traditionally relied on the Chinese script and literary language—has disappeared. East Asians around the year 1900 still communicated through the authoritative lingua franca of Literary Chinese. For almost two millennia “Chinese-style writing” had been the language of government, scholarship, Buddhism, and belles-lettres: Under China’s hegemony many states adopted Chinese culture and its script during the first millennium CE. During the second millennium Japan, Vietnam, and Korea developed phonographic scripts that led to the gradual abandonment of Chinese characters in Korea and Vietnam and the blossoming of local vernacular literatures. In the early twentieth century reformers inspired by Western ideas of “nation states” and “national languages” spearheaded vernacular movements that swept Chinese-style writing and the intellectual and literary culture that went with it aside. The death of Literary Chinese as East Asia’s venerable literary language over the past century and its replacement with the English language and West- ern culture marks an irreversible and little noticed inflection point in the history of humanity: the disappearance of the world’s last cultural sphere where a strongly “logographic” script (recording meaning of “words” rather than “sounds” as “phonographic” alphabets do) had enabled distinctive literary cultures to thrive for almost two millennia. The world history of writing starts with strongly logographic writing systems: Egyptian hieroglyphs, Mesopota- mian cuneiform, Chinese characters and Mesoamerican glyphs. Phonographic scripts have long since replaced all but Chinese characters. Thanks to the logographic writing system East Asia’s “bi-literacy”—textual production in Literary Chinese and local vernaculars—functioned quite differently from alphabetic lingua francas. Europe’s bilingualism during the Medieval Period was rooted in Latin, both spoken and read. In contrast, Chinese characters allowed East series editors’ foreword ix

Asians (including speakers of Chinese dialects) to pronounce any given text in Literary Chinese in their local vernacular language. Thus East Asia shared a “grapholect,” or scripta franca, as we should call it more appropriately. In the absence of a common spoken language, people could communicate in “brush talk,” conversing by passing paper back and forth. Around the year 1900 East Asian elites were still part of a shared world of transnational education and Bildung through intensive training in the Chinese Classics or a Chinese-style civil service examination system that brought elites in Hanoi and Seoul closer to each other than they were to their fellow peasant countrymen living in a village just outside the capital. The last Chinese-style civil service examinations were held in Vietnam in 1919 under the French colonial government, fourteen years after the abolishment of the examination system in China herself. The painful history of wars and colonial exploitation in the twentieth century has added yet more visceral divisions and, more recently, economic and military competition have done little to mend rifts. Rather they add to the global stream of daily news that define East Asia, negatively, as a region that fights over history text books and the naming of war events as “massacres” or “incidents,” struggles over appropriate ways to honor the war dead, and quib- bles over uninhabited islands. Because national ideologies have come to define East Asia over the past century, the death of East Asia’s biliteracy and the shared culture it afforded have gone largely unlamented. But the awareness of this common heritage is not just of academic rele- vance or nostalgic interest. Rather, bringing the rich histories of shared and contested legacies back into collective memory within East Asia and into public consciousness throughout the world, while not erasing all the complicated political and ideological issues generated by recent history, will contribute to the creation of a positive transnational identity where Japanese or Koreans will hopefully one day proudly call themselves “East Asians,” just as most French and Germans have overcome their war wounds and both would call themselves “Europeans” today. This is the most ambitious goal of Brill’s new book series East Asian Comparative Literature and Culture. The book series responds to a swiftly growing need as educational curricula, research agendas, and journalistic writing aim for an ever more inclusive global scope. With the increasing international importance of East Asia in economic, political, and cultural terms, more and more scholars and general readers are seeking a better grasp of this part of the world which can boast long-standing histories and traditions as well as vibrat- ing modern cultures. x series editors’ foreword

East Asian Comparative Literature and Culture responds to the need for a deeper understanding and appreciation of this region by publishing substantial comparative research on the literary and cultural traditions of East Asia and their relation to the world. We showcase original research on the methodology and practice of comparison, including intra-East Asian comparisons of China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam; East-West comparisons that examine Western alongside East Asian traditions; and comparative studies that examine East Asian literatures and cultures in the light of their relations with India, the Middle East, Africa, or Latin America. The series focuses on interpretive sciences, that is, the core Humanities of literature, history, religion, philosophy and thought, art history, but also welcomes contributions adopting culturally- informed approaches in archeology, historical geography, anthropology, political science, sociology, or linguistics. It befits our historical moment well to make sure that we as scholars combine comparative analysis with the depth of area-study-expertise and philology, theoretical acumen, and a courageous ori- entation towards the exploration of fundamental questions. This is the tall order that this book series and its authors are taking on. We are confident, however, that the book series we put forward in response to the rapidly growing interest in the entire East Asian region will make significant contributions to scholarship and mutual understanding and successfully integrate knowledge about and approaches to different literary and cultural traditions through critical examination in comparison.

Wiebke Denecke Zhang Longxi Introduction

Zhang Longxi

On the world stage, as well as in China, Qian Zhongshu (1910–1998) was one of the most learned humanist scholars of our time. We may think of him in the company of such savants as Erich Auerbach or Ernst Robert Curtius except that in addition to his vast knowledge of the Western tradition, read in five or six languages (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Latin), Qian also had an encyclopedic familiarity with the Chinese tradition and was himself a master of classical Chinese. “His knowledge of Chinese literature, of the Western tradition, and of world literature is immense (Sa connaissance de la littérature chinoise, du patrimoine occidental, de la littérature universelle, est prodigieuse),” as Pierre Ryckmans observed in Le Monde as early as 1983. “There is no one like Qian Zhongshu today in China, not even in the world (Qian Zhongshu n’a pas son pareil aujourd’hui en Chine et même dans le monde).”1 I have cited this remark several times on different occasions simply because its statement is true, and its truthfulness does not diminish with repeated citations. Despite his incredible erudition and his enormously high reputation in China, however, and despite his election as an honorary member of the Modern Language Association of America in 1985, Qian Zhongshu’s name and works remain very little known in the West except in a small circle of Sinologists. And yet Qian’s scholarship is not confined to China studies or literary studies, for his magnum opus, the modestly named Guan zhui bian 管錐編 or Limited Views, is so quintessentially interdisciplinary, contains such insightful discussions of Chinese classics in an intertextual dialogue with Western works, and comments on so many different subjects and fields that it becomes very difficult to classify it and put it under a subject heading in any library catalogue system.2 For understanding the Chinese tradition in the context of East-West comparisons, Qian Zhongshu’s works represent the very best of contemporary scholarship, and it is high time that we brought out translations and critical evaluations of his works for the appreciation and recognition they so richly deserve. With the rising interest in China and its culture, the situation has started to improve in recent years, and some of Qian Zhongshu’s works are now available

1 Pierre Ryckmans, “Fou de chinois,” Le Monde, June 10, 1983, p. 15. 2 In my university library, the book is put under PL anyway, but that is totally arbitrary and misleading, because PL usually covers books in Chinese literature. 2 zhang in English translation. His only novel, Fortress Besieged, which C.T. Hsia praised “for its delightful portrayal of contemporary manners, its comic exuberance, and its tragic insight,”3 was translated by Jeanne Kelly and Nathan Mao and published by Indiana University Press in 1979, reissued more recently by New Directions in 2004. Qian’s major scholarly work, Guan zhui bian, a real treasure trove of knowledge and wisdom, is now at least partially available in English. Out of the original five-volume set, Ronald Egan selected and expertly translated 65 passages under the title of Limited Views, which was published by Harvard University Asia Center in 1998. A collection of Qian’s essays and short stories, Humans, Beasts, and Ghosts, edited and largely translated by Christopher Rea, was brought out by Columbia University Press in 2011. In the present volume, we have yet another important work, a collection of seven essays by Qian Zhongshu, originally entitled Qi zhui ji 七綴集 (literally “seven stitched- together collection”), now beautifully translated by Duncan Campbell as Patchwork: Seven Essays on Art and Literature, and published by Brill to inaugu- rate our East Asian Comparative Literature and Culture book series. First published in 1984, this collection contains essays with consistently developed arguments on particular themes and are written in elegant modern vernacular, as distinct from Qian’s two other scholarly works, the massive Guan zhui bian or Limited Views and the much expanded Tan yi lu 談藝錄 or On the Art of Poetry, both written in classical Chinese in the traditional form of loosely connected notes and commentaries. The present collection represents Qian’s works in the modern form of critical essays written in the modern vernacular, but these essays include, as all his writings do, numerous quotations in classical Chinese and several European languages. The first essay in this collection is on poetry and painting; it offers, as the author states at the beginning, “no appraisal of either old Chinese poetry or old Chinese painting in and of themselves,” but “an elucidation of the comparative evaluation given these two arts within traditional Chinese criticism.” A critical examination of the “comparative evaluation” of poetry and painting becomes necessary because some often-heard conventional views would have it, particularly since the Song dynasty, that painting is “soundless poetry,” while poetry is “paintings of sound,” as though these two forms of art share the same origin and the same criteria in aesthetic judgment. Modelled on the division of Chan Buddhism, Dong Qichang (1555–1636), a famous painter and scholar of the Ming dynasty, divided traditional painting into the Southern and the Northern Schools and traced that division back to the Tang. Painting of the Southern School with the

3 C.T. Hsia, A History of Modern Chinese Fiction, 2nd ed. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1971), p. 434. introduction 3

Tang poet and painter Wang Wei (701–761) as initiator and the first patriarch became the orthodoxy in traditional painting, but poetry of the so-called “Spiritual Resonance School,” which was close to the Southern School of painting in style and artistic principles, never occupied the position of the orthodoxy or mainstream in traditional poetry. Even though Wang Wei is also a well-known poet, he has never been ranked high enough to compete with Du Fu, Li Bo, or Tao Yuanming in critical evaluation. By citing a wealth of textual evidence, Qian Zhongshu thus demonstrates a fundamental discrepancy in the evaluation of painting and poetry in traditional criticism, for “traditional literary criticism denied that the Spiritual Resonance School represented the most conventional poetic style, traditional art criticism on the other hand acknowledged the Southern School of Painting as representing the most conventional style of painting. On this issue of ‘canonicity’ and ‘orthodoxy,’ ancient Chinese ‘poetry and painting’ certainly do not embody ‘the same rules.’” In other words, the conventional view of poetry and painting as sharing the same criteria does not stand up to critical scrutiny. That poetry and painting are sister arts is also a traditional idea in Western criticism, for which Horace’s ut pictura poesis has often been misconstrued to provide a classic testimony. “To regard poetry and painting as twin sisters is a concept that was to become a cornerstone of Western literary and artistic theory,” says Qian. “Indeed, it was precisely this concept that Lessing sought to sweep away as he viewed it as a stumbling block.” The second essay in this collection is a multi-layered reading of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s famous work, Laokoon. One important point Qian Zhongshu made first is his strongly held view that critical insights and brilliant ideas contained in short phrases and fragmented expressions, undeveloped systematically as they are, may just be as valuable as tomes of systematic theoretical articulations. In fact, theories come and go, says Qian, and “those things of value that do remain after the collapse of complete theoretical systems are but partial ideas,” which are, “by their very nature, fragmentary.” Thus he concludes: “A viewpoint that pays attention only to major theories or that holds such isolated sentences or phrases in contempt, intoxicated with quantity and thus ignoring a gram of worth for a ton of verbiage, is superficial and vulgar—if it is not in fact an excuse for laziness and sloppiness.” With that in mind, Qian is able to argue that in their short and fragmented expressions, the ancient Chinese had often realized the same principal idea in Lessing’s argument that painting as spatial art cannot represent things and events that poetry as temporal art can express with ease and brilliance. Among the many examples, a particularly memorable one Qian provided is a comment the painter Gu Kaizhi (ca. 345–ca. 400) made on Xi Kang’s (223–262) 4 zhang two poetic lines: “The eye escorts the homing geese. / The hand sweeps over the five-stringed lute.” Gu was recorded as saying: “To paint ‘The hand sweeps over the five-stringed lute’ is easy, but to paint ‘The eye escorts the homing geese’ is difficult.” The line describing a momentary action of the hand sweeping over the lute can be easily represented in a painting, but the line portraying a gradual movement of the geese flying home to their nests, and the eye “escort- ing” the birds by following their movement across the sky from one point to the next, cannot be drawn or painted in one frame. In that brief comment, as Qian observes, Gu Kaizhi already realized “the issue of transition over time of the kind that Lessing discusses.” Lessing’s theoretical argument is not thoroughgoing enough, however, for what cannot be depicted in painting covers much more than the temporal dimension Lessing discussed. Many sensory perceptions or moods often written about in Chinese poetry are also difficult to paint, such as smell (“fragrance”), touch (“soaks,” “chills”), hearing (“sound of choking,” “resounding like a bell and sounding like a stone chime”), or a state of mind (“dreaming of home”), all of which do not have obvious external manifestations and are not, as Qian puts it, “simply a question of time and space.” The way poets depict colors or gradations of brightness or darkness is also hard to represent pictori- ally. For example, Li He (790–816) describes the “will-o’-the wisp” in a famous line: “The lacquer-black light of ghostly lamps illuminates the pinetree seeds”; and John Milton describes the horrible dungeon in hell as “No light, but rather darkness visible”; and the devil shooting at God’s angels with “black fire.” The “lacquer-black light,” “darkness visible” and “black fire” are all impossible to paint, or at least not as effectively as represented in poetry. A simple poetic metaphor would make a painter despair because the basic principle of metaphorical expression is putting two different things together that partially over- lap, but never the same, and it is thus impossible to draw or portray the metaphorical relationship that depends on our understanding of that partial overlapping. It is perfectly fine, for example, to compare a mountain peak to a camel’s hump metaphorically, but a painting of a mountain in the shape of a camel would appear very strange and in any case inadequate. These are some of the aspects that Lessing did not touch on in Laokoon, so Qian’s discussion expanded the range of Lessing’s theoretical insights to a wider coverage. What Qian Zhongshu points out most emphatically in this essay, however, is Lessing’s contribution to literary and artistic theory with his concept of the suggestive “moment” (Augenblick). Painting as spatial art is static and depicts just one particular moment in time, so the “pregnant moment” with the climax about to happen is crucial for a painter or a sculptor to choose for representation. Literary narrative as the temporal form of art can tell a story from the introduction 5 beginning to the end without the restriction of time, but we find story tellers also make use of the concept of the “moment” for different purposes. Quite often, “the narrative breaks off in medias res, the story ending or the curtain falling just the moment before the climax,” says Qian. “The audience is thus forced to come to their own conclusions about how it was to end. In other words, this principle of the ‘heavily pregnant moment’ can find full application within the literary arts as well.” In the many examples Qian cited, the Chinese critic Jin Shengtan (1610?–1661) is perhaps most conscious of this particular concept as a narrative technique. “The most marvelous aspect of writing is when although all attention may be riveted upon a certain matter,” says Jin, “the author does not write of this matter directly, but rather sets off towards it from a point far distant to it, approaching the matter in a roundabout way, and halting just before he broaches it.” That is to say, in narrative fiction, the author builds up the momentum and leads the reader towards a climactic point, but the narrative deliberately breaks off just before reaching that point, leaving the reader with intensified interest and attention, desperately wanting to know what is going to happen next. Jin Shengtan’s commentaries make us realize, as Qian remarks, “that ‘heavily pregnant moments’ are not only appropriately used at the conclusion of short stories, but may also be used as narrative linking within full-length novels.” Of course, the technique to keep reader’s interest and desire by disrupting the narrative flow is not only used in Chinese fiction, but also in European novels and narrative poems. From Dante and Chekhov to George Sand, Otto Ludwig, Ariosto and Charles Reade, Qian Zhongshu collected a large number of textual evidences from Western literature in addition to the numerous examples from Chinese to show that all those “moments of suspense” and narrative techniques are all variations of what Lessing articu- lated as a theoretical concept. “When Lessing spoke of ‘heavily pregnant moments,’” says Qian, “he was discussing exclusively the plastic arts. Unwittingly, however, he also provided the literary arts with an extremely useful concept.” Thus Qian puts Lessing’s theoretical contribution to the fore- ground and makes us realize how important and how widely used the concept of Augenblick is in literature as well as in the fine arts. The first two essays in this collection discuss painting and poetry, two other essays, “Synaesthesia” and “Poetry as a Vehicle of Grief,” constitute another cluster of thematic studies. Starting with a famous poetic line by Song Qi (998– 1061) that “Upon red apricot branch-tips, spring’s ardour clamours,” and several critics’ dispute of using the word “clamour” to depict “spring’s ardour,” Qian Zhongshu quoted some other poets and writers of the Song dynasty to prove that Song Qi’s usage was not all that unusual. “The word ‘clamour’ speaks of the soundless aspect of objects as if they gave off waves of sound, and 6 zhang seemingly we experience an auditory sensation through the sense of sight.” This seemingly illogical usage or confusion of sensory perceptions is not an isolated phenomenon found only in Chinese poetry, for Western languages also have words like “loud,” “criard,” “chiassoso,” “chillón,” and “knall,” originally all meant to describe the effect of noisy sound, but used to describe colors that are too bright or strong. The many Western examples may “assist our understanding of the usage of this word ‘clamour’ in ancient Chinese poetry,” says Qian. “To employ the terminology of psychology or linguistics, such usages are examples of what is called ‘synaesthesia’ or ‘the transference of the senses.’” It is characteristic of Qian’s style that a great number of examples are cited from Chinese and Western sources to provide a rich pool of textual evidence to argue for the ubiquitous presence of “synaesthesis.” From common words and phrases in daily language to poetic expressions and philosophical discourse, from Aristotle’s claim that “sound was to be divided into the ‘sharp’ and the ‘heavy,’ as ‘used by analogy from the sense of touch,’” to the metaphoric description of sound effect in the Chinese Record of Music, from the Tang poet Bo Juyi’s description of music to Western literary examples from Homer to the late 19th-century symbolists, from the Western mystics to the Chinese Taoists and Buddhists and their “merging the perceptions of the various senses into one, amalgamating them as mystical experience,” the numerous examples Qian gathered together make a convincing case of the importance of synaesthesia. And yet, despite the ubiquitous manifestations of “synaesthesia” in the Chinese and the Western traditions, as Qian observes, it seems to be a phenomenon “ancient critics and rhetoricians alike appear neither to have fully understood nor in fact been at all conscious of.” Even the great philosopher Aristotle, though he “mentions synaesthesia in his De Anima, he does not discuss it at all in his Rhetorika.” But for that very reason, Qian Zhongshu’s essay becomes all the more valuable; once he has singled out “synaesthesia” as a critical concept and given it an exhaustive treatment, we come to understand it with all the freshness of a discovery and thereby acquire a new perspective to understand the many examples of its presence. The same is true with the notion that “poetry can give vent to grievances,” which, as an important critical notion, was again not paid much attention to in traditional criticism. When Confucius talks about the uses of poetry in the Analects (xvii.9)—that poetry can give rise to high spirits (xing 興), can be used to observe social conditions (guan 觀), to reconcile and unite communi- ties (qun 群), and to give vent to grievances (yuan 怨)—the critical notion discussed in this essay is just one of the four functions, and comes as the last of the four. But by drawing on both the Western and the Chinese literary and introduction 7 cultural traditions and gathering numerous textual evidences, from Nietzsche and Freud to Croce, from Sima Qian (ca. 145–ca. 85 b.c.) and Zhong Rong (ca. 465–518) to Han Yu (768–824), Qian Zhongshu clearly demonstrates that it is a widely accepted view in both China and the West “that pain engenders poetry more than pleasure does, that good poetry is, in the main, an expression or discharge of the emotions of unhappiness, anxiety or frustration.” As I remember distinctly, Qian Zhongshu told me in a private conversation I had with him in Beijing in 1981 or 1982, that the title of this essay, “Poetry as a Vehicle of Grief,” which is a famous quote from the Confucian Analects, could be rendered as “Our Sweetest Songs,” if the essay was ever to be translated into English, because that is likewise a famous quote from P. B. Shelley’s “To a Skylark”—“Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought,” which gives the central idea discussed in this essay a beautiful and brilliant expression. Of the many examples Qian cited to argue his case in the essay, the use of the image of pearl stands out as a particularly striking metaphorical expression of this idea. Commenting on the works of Feng Yan, an Eastern Han dynasty writer, in his famous treatise The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, Liu Xie (ca. 465–522) used a peculiar analogy to say that Feng’s fine literary works were produced out of his frustration and sorrow that his talents were not appreciated in his time, and this is compared to “a pearl bred by the sickness of an oyster.” Another scholar Liu Zhou (514–565) also expressed a similar idea with the same metaphor when he says: “The cedar droops to develop the most beautiful knobs; the oyster sickens to mature the moon- bright pearl.” The two scholars’ use of the image of pearl can be traced back to a remark made by Liu An, the Prince of Huainan (179–122 b.c.), that “the pearl as bright as the moon is beneficial to us, but for the oyster it is the result of a disease.”4 This interesting remark changes our perspective and enables us to see the bright pearl as the outcome of pain and suffering of a sick oyster rather than a precious piece of jewelry. This is in itself a quite extraordinary shift of perspective, and when the idea is borrowed by critics to speak of literary creation, it becomes a beautiful metaphor for the idea that best poetry comes from pain and suffering. Such a particular metaphor, however, is not just Chinese, but can also be found in Western literature. Qian Zhongshu says:

4 Ouyang Xun 歐陽詢 (557–641), Yiwen leiju 藝文類聚 [Literary Texts Classified in Categories], ed. Wang Shaoying 汪紹楹, 2 vols. (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1982), 2:1675. 8 zhang

One of the analogies employed by European critics in discussing the making of literature is surprisingly close to this Chinese one. Poetry is, according to Franz Grillparzer, like the pearls produced by some mute, ailing mollusc (die Perle, das Erzeugnis des kranken stillen Musscheltieres). Gustave Flaubert thinks that if a pearl is produced by the oyster in disease (la perle est maladie de l’huître), then the style of a writer is fashioned by some deeper sorrow for the expression of that sorrow (l’ecoulement d’une douleur plus profonde). Heinrich Heine wonders whether poetry to the poet is not as the pearl to the poor oyster, the malady that causes the pain and the suffering (wie die Perle, die Krankheitsstoff, woran das arme Austertier leidet). And A.E. Housman observes that poetry is “a secretion,” whether “natural . . . like the turpentine in the fur,” or “morbid . . . like the pearl in the oyster.” The pearl / oyster analogy may thus be said to have been very commonly used, perhaps because it accurately suggests how poetry is written in a state of “agitation” and can be regarded as a “vehicle of grief.”

Reading this passage, we cannot but marvel how such unexpected affinities in literary minds can exist among poets Chinese and Western, and such surprising similarities in the formation of a poetic metaphor can so coincide across linguistic and cultural differences; moreover, we cannot but admire even more Qian Zhongshu’s incredible erudition, not only that he read everything, but that he had such excellent memory and paid such close attention to textual details that he could have put together the specific uses of pearl as a particular metaphor for poetry in different languages to prove the universality of the idea that poetry touches our heart most powerfully when it is produced out of the poet’s painful lived experience, just as the pearl is produced out of the pain of a suffering oyster. Once Qian Zhongshu has shown us the numerous examples of literary works and critical commentaries, Confucius’s remark in the Analects and Liu Xie’s use of the pearl as a metaphor can suddenly be seen in a different light as an important critical concept with implications for both literary creation and critical evaluation. The remaining three essays in this collection all deal with translation and reception of literary works, and the first two recapture the spirit of the time in late Qing dynasty when Western literature was translated into Chinese and started its eventful and sometimes bizarre adventure within a very different cultural milieu. With a masterful hand of a novelist, a satirist, as well as a cultural historian, these essays unfold before our eyes a vivid picture of the intellectual world of the late Qing period, and offer us an opportunity to catch a glimpse of the knowledge structure and cultural mentality of the literati elites introduction 9 at the time. Lin Shu (1852–1924) was an old-fashioned scholar with no knowledge of any foreign language, but he translated more than 170 Western novels with great success in collaboration with several assistants. As a traditional scholar, however, he valued his own ancient-style prose most and did not like others talking about his translation without first valuing his literary prose. Kang Youwei (1858–1927) wrote a poem in praise of his translation, saying that “This era’s twinned geniuses of translation we account Yan Fu and Lin Shu”; but in doing so, Kang “had actually managed to offend both Yan Fu and Lin Shu with this line of poetry. Yan Fu had always held Lin Shu in contempt. When he saw this poem, he held that Kang Youwei was talking nonsense for how in the world could there be a ‘genius of translation’ who knew not a word of a foreign language.” Lin Shu was not pleased, either, because Kang spoke of his translation of foreign novels “instead of mentioning first his Ancient Prose,” and also because Kang’s poem was supposed to pay tribute to Lin rather than Yan, and yet he put Yan’s name before Lin’s in that poetic line. In a humorous vein, Qian Zhongshu describes such “vanity fair” type silly behavior of these men of letters, their “mutual recriminations and jealousies,” which are often stuff for satire and good laughs. “As long as such rivalry does not degenerate into heartless, meaningless and shameless strife and enmity,” says Qian, “it may yet be considered but a light-hearted scene from la Comédie humaine.” Looking back in history, we may say that Lin Shu and his contemporaries were yet lucky to be able to indulge themselves in such petty and harmless “battle of the books,” because “heartless, meaningless and shameless strife and enmity” did befall later generations of Chinese intellectuals and poisoned the social atmosphere in China for a long period of time. Literati in the late Qing and the early Republican period did not take translation seriously; they even doubted that Westerners could have anything like poetry or literature. After the Opium Wars, cultural pride became more indispensable among the literati elites as everyone realized that China could not compete with the West in weaponry and technology. As Qian Zhongshu remarks: “Whereas they could but acknowledge that in terms of science China was less advanced than the West, they regarded literature as the basis for their feelings of racial superiority.” Qian also notes that “people from other ancient Eastern nations harboured similar attitudes, Edmond de Goncourt recording the fact that a Persian had once told him that although Europeans were able to manufacture clocks and various kinds of machinery and were otherwise very able, they nevertheless were not as brilliant as Persians, for did Europe also have men of letters and poets (si nous avons des littérateurs, des poètes)?” Though Lin Shu did not put much value on his own translation as part of his writings, he at least realized that foreigners had novels worth translating, and 10 zhang in that respect, says Qian, “Lin Shu’s perception surpassed that of his more talented and learned contemporaries.” In the essay on the translation of Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life,” Qian mentioned Zhang Deyi (1847–1919), one of the earliest graduates and a prize student of the Interpreters’ College, and contrasted him with Lin Shu. Zhang Deyi apparently had an excellent command of English, was sent on diplomatic missions to Europe and America, and had recorded his experience on those journeys in detailed diary entries, but he had neither interest nor understanding of Western literature, mistaking the social satire of Gulliver’s Travels as factual account of some African tribes. “At the very same time that Zhang Deyi was in London recording such ingenuous opinions, Lin Shu and Wei Yi were in the process of completing a translation of Gulliver’s Travels in China,” says Qian. “Lin Shu never travelled abroad and understood not a word of English, while Wei Yi never had the benefit of a university education.” But putting together Lin Shu’s “Preface” to his translation of Gulliver’s Travels (1906) and Zhang Deyi’s diary entry on the same novel written the year before, Qian remarks, “it is not at all difficult to decide which of these two men had a greater understanding of Western literature.” Given his ignorance of any foreign language and the not particularly high level of linguistic competence of his collaborators, Lin Shu’s many mistakes, his sins of omission and commission, and his absurd mistranslations are easy—perhaps all too easy—to be identified and ridiculed. Qian Zhongshu did poke fun at those mistakes, which makes very enjoyable reading, but more importantly, it is with respect and admiration that Qian acknowledges Lin Shu’s contribution to the introduction of Western literature to Chinese readers at a time when most literati-officials were woefully ignorant of anything Western. Qian recalls the joy of reading Western novels in Lin Shu’s vivid and elegant prose as “one of my great discoveries at the age of eleven or twelve.” It was in Lin Shu’s translations that he realized “how enchanting Western fiction could be.” Though supposed to replace an unintelligible original, translation may sometimes “inveigle” readers into a foreign world and generate in them a strong sense of curiosity to study the foreign original. That was exactly what happened to Qian in his teenage years. “I read and re-read Lin Shu’s translations of the works of Rider Haggard, Dickens, Washington Irving, Sir Walter Scott and Jonathan Swift in a fit of insatiability,” says Qian. “To the extent that I was then at all conscious of my motives for studying English, one of them would have been the hope that some day I would be able to read, to my heart’s content, all the adventure stories of Haggard and company in their originals.” Translation as mediation between languages and cultures can sometimes distort and mislead, but it is absolutely crucial and indispensable in the cultural interactions between nations. As Qian Zhongshu argues: introduction 11

A translation acts the role of an intermediary or liaison officer, introducing everybody to foreign literary works, encouraging in them a love for such works. Performing a function somewhat akin to that of matchmaker, a translation establishes “Literary Affinities” (wenxue yinyuan 文學因緣) between nations. Of all the “affinities” between nations, this is the type least likely to provoke disharmony, squabbling and fisticuffs.

When two cultures meet in their first encounters, translation, however difficult, faulty, and inadequate, constitutes the necessary first step towards mutual understanding, an indispensable bridge crossing over the gaping linguistic and cultural differences. The difficulties, the faults, and the inadequacies are all in themselves meaningful in hindsight as part of the effort to take the first step and the hard work in building the first bridge, which have made it possible for us to arrive where we are today. Perhaps that is the reason why we find Qian Zhongshu’s essay on the late Qing translation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” so fascinating in spite of, or perhaps because of, the many misunderstood words, awkward expressions, willfully modified meanings, and the other defects and failings that bewilder early translators. The historical picture recreated in Qian’s essay with all the intriguing details and presented with a sense of humor and irony is indeed captivating. In the mid-1860s, Thomas Wade (1818–1895), an interpreter promoted to be the British Minister to China, made a draft translation of Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life,” and Dong Xun (1810– 1892), at the time in charge of the Office of Foreign Affairs, rephrased the draft in a series of seven-character quatrains and wrote the poem on a fan. The Chinese fan was then brought by the American diplomat Anson Burlingame (1820–1870) to Longfellow himself as a gift at the Craigie House in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1865. Wade’s command of Chinese was obviously not good enough to translate Longfellow’s poem adequately, so his draft sometimes fails to make sense or very poorly, while Dong Xun knew no foreign language and had to work with a draft he could only make half sense of, supplying the other half by guessing what he could and then rewriting the poem in almost total disregard of what the original might say, which, as Qian Zhongshu comments sarcastically, “accords well with Johann Gottfried Herder’s claim that the translation of a poem should be one’s own creation based upon and in imitation of the original (nachdichten, umdichten).” Unfortunately, Dong Xun could not even base his rewriting on Longfellow’s original, but on Wade’s “crabbed and almost inarticulate version,” so the end-result could not be anything like a real translation. Qian continues in his sarcastic vein: “Robert Frost defined poetry as being: ‘What gets lost in translation.’ Christian Morgenstern considered that translations of poetry could ‘merely be divided into those that were bad and 12 zhang those that were less bad’ (Es gibt nur schlechte Übersetzungen und weniger schlechte), which is to say that if they were not worse, they were bad.” The early translation of Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life” seems to provide a testimony to these disparagements of literary translation. Again, it is easy to find fault with such early and inadequate translations, particularly of poetry, but when we look back at the social and historical conditions of the time, we may find it amazing that a poem like Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life” could have been translated into Chinese at all! The ancient Chinese were terribly ethnocentric and the dichotomy between the Chinese as civilized hua and foreigners as uncivilized barbaric yi was deeply ingrained in traditional thinking. As Qian Zhongshu reminds us, it is a “long-standing tradition in China” that the barbarians speak the language of birds and animals. In the Rites of the Zhou Dynasty, one of the Confucian classics, it is stipulated that “those official posts entrusted with the ‘duty of talking with the birds’ or ‘communicating with the beasts’ ought to be filled by Southern Barbarians and Northern Barbarians,” because “such barbarians could communicate with the birds and the beasts.” Ancient Greeks held very similar views, and animal sym- bolism is widely used in a variety of ways in different cultures. As G.E.R. Lloyd observes, not only are animals used to symbolize human characters or traits, but “representations of other peoples as or as like animals is very common (it flourished in early modern Europe especially).”5 In late Qing China, such a view still predominated among literati-officials. As late as 1887, as Qian tells us, Weng Tonghe (1830–1904), a leading figure in the late Qing court, wrote in his diary near the Chinese New Year’s Day that, upon seeing ambassadors of various nations coming for New Year greetings, he “avoided them by standing off in the Western wing and looked on at the proceedings from afar. There were more than twenty people there and Marquis Zeng Jize talked with them in their own barbarian language, sounding to me like the incessant chirping and warbling of birds.” Zeng Jize was one of the very few officials in late Qing court who could speak the “barbarian language,” but whether it was English or French they were speaking, “in the ears of a person who took the pains to shun the company of foreign devils as did Weng Tonghe, it all sounded like the endless cackle-cackle of birds.” In a cultural environment like this, few Chinese officials knew any foreign language, let alone anything about foreign literature, and this was true not only of staunch conservatives, but even of those who were involved in foreign affairs and went on diplomatic missions in the West.

5 G.E.R. Lloyd, Ancient Worlds, Modern Reflections: Philosophical Perspectives on Greek and Chinese Science and Culture (Oxford: Clarendon, 2004), p. 102. introduction 13

Qian Zhongshu took Li Fengbao (1834–1887) as one example of the kind of cultural ignorance because of cultural pride. Li was the Chinese diplomat sta- tioned in Berlin and it so happened that another diplomat, Bayard Taylor, the American Minister to Germany and famous translator of Goethe’s Faust, died in Berlin in 1878. Li Fengbao attended Taylor’s funeral and, as he recorded in his diary, it was at Taylor’s funeral that he learned about Goethe as being not only a poet, but also one of Duke of Saxe-Weimar’s ministers, decorated with several medals awarded by the Tsar of Russia and the King of France. This is the first time Goethe’s name appears in a Chinese text, but Li came to learn about Goethe only because he attended the American diplomat Taylor’s funeral. “An incumbent Chinese official gains knowledge of a German official of a previous generation from the recent death of an American official,” says Qian in a sarcastic tone; “among officials, they seem to have what Goethe himself spoke of as ‘elective affinities’ (Wahlverwandtschaften).” Even though the Qing officials sent to Europe and America were all educated in traditional Chinese learning, many of whom, such as Guo Songtao, Zeng Jize, Xue Fucheng, and a few others, were pretty good writers and poets themselves, in their diaries and other writings there is “not a mention of Shakespeare.” Under such circumstances, it was really amazing that Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life” was translated into Chinese, written on a fan, and presented as a gift to Longfellow himself across the huge distance from China all the way to America. Though Longfellow enjoyed a very high international reputation in the 19th century, Qian Zhongshu did not think so highly of him or his literary merits. “There are a great many major poets in the West. Perversely however the first to be introduced into China happened to be Longfellow,” he complains. “Longfellow wrote quite a few good or comparatively good poems, but again perversely, it so happened that the first to be translated into Chinese was ‘A Psalm of Life.’ To professors of literature and literary critics alike, this fact can be considered a minor taunt or provocation on the part of the history of literary relations between nations!” Qian even goes on to comment on the translation of Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life” as an example of the discrepancy between “what is” and “what ought to be,” of history “playing practical jokes on us.” All these are of course predicated on the assumption that Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life” was indeed the first poem ever translated into Chinese. In recent years, however, this assumption has been challenged by scholars based on their study of the interactions between Christian missionaries and Chinese culture in the late Ming and the early Qing period. In an article published in the Shanghai newspaper Wen Hui Bao 文匯報 on April 25, 2005, Zhou Zhenhe 周振鶴 maintains that if Dong Xun wrote the “Psalm of Life” on a fan and sent it to Longfellow in the mid-1860s, as Qian 14 zhang

Zhongshu argued in his essay, then, more than 10 years earlier, John Milton’s sonnet “On His Blindness” was already translated into Chinese and came out in 1854 in Chinese Serial (Xia Er Guan Zhen 遐邇貫珍), a monthly (and occasionally bi-monthly) Chinese-language publication based in Hong Kong, edited by British missionaries Walter Henry Medhurst and James Legge with Medhurst’s son-in-law Charles Batten Hillier, who had very little knowledge of Chinese. The Chinese version of the sonnet is in the form of four-character lines, and the well-wrought text shows the hand of a very capable and experienced translator with a discerning eye for important works by a major poet and a firm grasp of the meaning of the original. Unfortunately, the journal did not give out the translator’s name. According to Zhou, the Japanese scholar Ishida Yasuo thought it was the work by James Legge, but another scholar Shen Guowei 沈國威 believed it to be the product of collaboration between Joseph Edkins and Jiang Dunfu 蔣敦復, one of the so-called “three musketeers of Shanghai.” Though this Milton sonnet was translated into Chinese earlier than Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life,” says Zhou, we need not rush to declare it to be the very first English poem translated into Chinese, for it is a far more tricky and difficult business to pronounce that nothing can be earlier than what we have found. In their article published in Guowai wenxue 國外文學 (Literature Abroad) no.2, 2005, however, Shen Hong 沈弘 and Guo Hui 郭暉 did make the announcement that Milton’s sonnet “On His Blindness” was indeed the first English poem ever translated into Chinese, and that W.H. Medhurst was very likely the translator. Two years later, in the March 2007 issue of Zhongguo wenzhe yanjiu jikan 中國文哲研究集刊 (Journal of Studies in Chinese Literature and Philosophy), Li Sher-shiueh 李奭學 published another article to argue that the Jesuit missionary Giulio Aleni’s (1582–1649) translation of a Christian text into Chinese, Shengmeng ge 聖夢歌 (Ode to a Holy Dream), a dialogue between the body and the spirit, which came out in 1637, should be the first “English” poem translated into Chinese, thus pushing the date of the first Chinese translation of a Western poem back two hundred years. Though the title of his article says “The First ‘English’ Poem Translated into Chinese,” Li Sher-shiueh makes the point that “the genealogy of knowledge has so developed our consciousness of self-reflection today that what is called ‘the first’ has long become a rhetorical expediency.”6 The point is indeed well-taken,

6 Li Sher-shiueh 李奭學, “Zhong yi diyi shou Ying shi—Ai Rulue Shengmeng ge chutan” 中譯第一首“英” 詩—艾儒略《聖夢歌》初探 (The First “English” Poem Translated into Chinese: A Preliminary Study of Giulio Aleni’s Shengmeng ge,” Zhongguo wenzhe yanjiu jikan 中國文哲研究集刊 (Journal of Studies in Chinese Literature and Philosophy), no. 30 (March 2007): 88. introduction 15 for as Zhou Zhenhe also notes, it is very difficult to ascertain that no possibility of finding anything earlier exists once one has found an early text. More importantly, whether something comes out as the first in temporal sequence is not in itself the most meaningful point, for it is far more significant whether a translation circulated widely and has had a notable influence on a certain readership. Aleni’s “Ode to a Holy Dream” was meant to be used for proselytization in China and was probably known among a small number of Christian converts in the late Ming and early Qing period. As for the Milton sonnet expertly translated into Chinese, it was published in Chinese Serial, a journal edited by Christian missionaries in Hong Kong with a limited circulation and influence, so the translation was unknown to Chinese men of letters and elicited no commentaries from them. Quite different from these earlier translations, Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life” was translated by Thomas Wade the British diplomat in China, rephrased by Dong Xun, who “had held a rank somewhat equivalent to that of a vice-minister in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” written on a Chinese fan, and entrusted to the American diplomat Anson Burlingame to send it to the poet himself in a faraway land across thousands of miles over the sea. So in terms of influence and prestige, the Longfellow translation certainly stands as an important witness to the kind of intellectual interrelations between China and the West in the late Qing period. The essay on the translation of Longfellow’s poem, as Qian Zhongshu said himself, forms part of a larger work “on the introduction of Western literature into China during the late Qing period,” and more specifically, it “may perhaps serve to enhance our understanding of the vogues of an age that has already long passed.” Qian’s essay has achieved that purpose brilliantly, and therefore its value is not in any sense diminished even if his assumption—that Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life” is the first poem translated into Chinese—has been overturned. Translation is crucial for the appreciation of literature, and today we realize how important translation is for world literature. Qian’s last essay is first of all a comparative study of three works: a passage from the Buddhist Sutra on Former Births, an episode from The Histories by Herodotus, and a story from Matteo Bandello’s Le Novelle, in which he finds a sort of Ur-Story, a basic narrative line shared by these very different texts. In addition, it is also a tour de force on his part as an exercise in literary translation, particularly the translation he did of the Herodotus’s episode in imitation of the Buddhist Sutra, largely in four-character lines with many archaic words and expressions. Qian’s imitation of the stylistic features of the Sutra text is superb, and his translation of the Herodotus episode reads very much like an old Buddhist text, but his point is to highlight the excessive and tedious repetitions we find in the Buddhist text in comparison of the other two. “When the three versions are compared,” 16 zhang says Qian, “the Buddha’s abilities as a storyteller are the most deficient—he drags the story out in a most long-winded manner and runs the gravest danger of causing boredom and inattention amongst his audience.” This point of the comparison is of course lost in our text here because we have to quote the English version of the Herodotus text, which Qian used as basis of his Chinese translation. In the three essays related to translation, Qian Zhongshu has made it very clear that translation is difficult, treacherous, but also fascinating and transfor- mative. Lin Shu’s translation, however faulty and error-ridden, has played a significant role in introducing Western literature to China, and his contribution outshines any mistakes we may find in his translation. Qian Zhongshu has spoken eloquently of both the values and the difficulties of literary translation. “The highest ideal of literary translation,” he says, “is ‘to transform.’” When a translation fully expresses what the original says without “forced or inflexible usages,” without losing “the flavour of the original work,” then it may be considered “to have entered this ‘realm of transformation.’” But on the other hand, translation is always a difficult journey leading from the original as the point of departure to the translated text as the point of arrival. “The path that leads between these two points is an exceedingly tortuous one,” says Qian, “and the original, buffeted by hardships and encountering every sort of peril along the way, will inevitably suffer loss or damage. All translations therefore are, in part, untrue to their originals and serve to distort them.” A good translation, therefore, does a great service in transferring the original from one language to another with as little loss as possible, and thereby gives the original a lease of new life in a new medium. Readers of this volume should feel fortunate that we have in Duncan Campbell an excellent translator, who has provided us with a fluent, highly readable, and highly reliable translation of Qian Zhongshu’s enormously learned essays, that is to say, essays enormously difficult to translate. Beyond the usual difficulties of literary or scholarly translation, Qian’s text is challeng- ing because of its typical intertextuality, with numerous quotations from classical Chinese texts as well as texts in half a dozen European languages. As translator, Campbell has done a huge amount of research to check Qian’s sources, provide some additional information for the many persons he mentioned and book titles he cited, and a great amount of other such reference details. This is obviously a labour of love, the result of many years’ hard work, and I am convinced that no book can be a better volume to initiate our East Asian Comparative Literature and Culture series than Campbell’s translation introduction 17 of Qian Zhongshu’s critical essays, which may well serve as a model for the kind of scholarly work we all try to do in East-West cross-cultural studies.

November 7, 2013 Hong Kong Translator’s Introduction

Duncan M. Campbell

As argued by Zhang Longxi in his “Introduction” to this book, the scholar, novelist, and poet Qian Zhongshu 錢鍾書 (1910–1998) was one of the great minds of the twentieth century. In a manner both intellectually and stylistically remi- niscent of the outstanding evidential scholars of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), Qian’s scholarship was characterized by his consummate mastery of the entire corpus of the Chinese tradition, both literary and vernacular, and his prodi- gious memory, supplemented by a lifetime’s copious note-taking. A polyglot, his work was also informed by precise and extensive reading in the Greek and Latin classics, and in the English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish literary and intellectual traditions. A polymath, his scholarship roamed as freely across and between discipline and genre as did his equally remarkable contributions to Chinese literature. Broadly understood and with the qualifications that both Qian Zhongshu himself and others have posed, his scholarly work could be said to inhabit the domain of comparative literature. But Qian Zhongshu was a comparatist of a particular kind. Not for him the easy recourse to over-arching and systematic theory that seems to characterise much contemporary literary discourse but which so often serves to distort rather than enhance our reading of ancient texts. His interest was in the details of what had been written, with mining hitherto forgotten or ignored books for the nuggets of insight they contain, with juxtaposing a sentence or two from texts both ancient and modern, Chinese and Western, prosodic and poetic, discursive and fictional, with establishing connections across time and space. In fact, E.M. Forster’s injunction “Only connect!” could be said to be something of a motif of Qian Zhongshu’s scholarship. Qian’s own positive version of this ideal was “To strike a connection” (datong 打通) between literary, historical, and intellectual traditions, and, through thus “‘Striking a connection,’ light upon new readings” (‘datong’ er nian chu xinyi 打通而拈出新意). As argued by Zheng Chaozong, this phrase takes us to the very heart of “the true strength of his scholarship, his real abilities” (zhen xueli zhen benling 真學力真本領).7

7 Zheng Chaozong 鄭朝宗, “Statement of the Author of Limited Views” (“Guanzhui bian zuozhe de zibai” 管錐編作者的自白), People’s Daily: Supplement (Renmin ribao: fukan 人民日報副刊), 16 March, 1987, p. 8. For insightful discussions of Qian Zhongshu and his scholarship, in English, see Ronald Egan, “Introduction,” to Qian Zhongshu, Limited Views: Essays

Qian had given early notice of what was to become his life’s mission as a scholar in various of the essays translated below. In “On Reading Laokoon,” for example, he argued that research into ancient Chinese aesthetics must make use of the entire range of available texts, however “fragmentary and trifling” the insights garnered in this manner. After all, “. . . it is precisely because such fragmentary and trifling things are so easily overlooked and forgotten that they require even more that we garner them up and give them our care and attention. Spontaneous and isolated insights constitute the source of all self-conscious and thoroughgoing theory. What is more, many of those causeries on poetry and prose that we read so assiduously cannot be said to embody any form of theoretical system.” In “Chinese Poetry and Chinese Painting,” perhaps the best-known of the essays in this set of translations, he gave statement of the usage to which such extensive reading should be put. Far from constituting an autonomous branch of learning, the history of criticism was to serve the purposes of criticism itself:

If we wish both to understand an artist or writer and to pass judgement upon him, we must first know the views of his contemporaries towards the kind of work he produced. Such views, expressive as they are of a type of contemporary artistic or literary vogue (fengqi 風氣), comprise the raw material for later histories of artistic or literary criticism. Artists create not only in terms of their own particular social conditions but also within the constraints of specific artistic or literary vogues. These vogues influence their choice of subject, of genre and of style. They provide them with opportunities whilst serving at the same time to limit the scope of their work. . . . A particular vogue is a latent force within creativity, therefore. It provides the background to any work of creative endeavour, but is not necessarily clearly discernible within that work itself. Only by reading the theories believed in by an artist’s contemporaries, observing their

on Ideas and Letters, selected and translated by Ronald Egan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 1–26; Theodore Huters, Qian Zhongshu, Twayne World’s Authors Series # 660 (Boston: Twayne, 1982; and, most recently, Christopher Rea, “Introduction,” in Christopher G. Rea, ed., Humans, Beast, and Ghosts: Stories and Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. All three of these sources incorporate much enlightening biographical information. In Chinese, the standard biographical reference remains Kong Qingmao 孔慶茂, A Biography of Qian Zhongshu (Qian Zhongshu zhuan 錢鍾書傳) (Nanjing: Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe, 1995); the bibliography of the burgeoning field of “Qianology” (Qian xue 錢學) is already voluminous. 20 campbell

reactions to specific works and thus understanding both their criteria and the horizon of their expectations, may we readily perceive the actual nature of the vogue within which a particular artist worked, just as we can only descry the configuration of the wind from the particles of dust it carries, from the billowing of the wheat fields it passes over or from the contours of the waves it drives before it.

All translation is difficult. More foolhardy an enterprise it is to attempt to translate the work of a man as erudite and broadly read as Qian Zhongshu, a man who himself wrote with such wit and elegance in both the “langue de départ” and the “langue d’arrivée” involved. And a man, moreover, who wrote about the nature and history of translation with such insight; two of the essays translated below address aspects of the craft explicitly. Several paragraphs from the beginning of one of these essays, his famous treatment of the remarkable late Qing dynasty-early Republican translator Lin Shu 林紓 (1852–1924) (“Lin Shu’s Translations”), are characteristic of Qian’s procedure as a scholar and critic:

The Han dynasty epigraphist Xu Shen 許慎 (30–124) provides a gloss on translation that is richly suggestive. The entry for the twenty-sixth character under the “wei” 囗 (enclosure) radical in his Etymological Explanation of both Simple and Complex Characters (Shuowen jiezi 說文解字), juan 6, reads: “The character e 囮 means to translate (yi 譯). It comprises the ‘Enclosure’ radical wei and the phonetic hua 化. When a bird catcher makes use of a live bird as decoy, this is called e, and this character is read with the same pronunciation as the character e 訛.” Chinese “philologists” (xiaoxue jia 小學家) from the Southern Tang dynasty onwards have explicated the word rendered “translate” above as meaning: “To transmit the speech of the Barbarians of the four quarters as well as that of the birds and the beasts,” in a manner akin to that of a “bird decoy” (niao mei 鳥媒) which serves to “inveigle” (you 誘) the “various birds” (qinniao 禽鳥), the characters e 訛 (misrepresent), hua 化 (transform) and e 囮 all being variants of the same character. The interrelated and mutually denotative meanings of the words “translate” (yi), “inveigle” (you), “decoy” (mei), “misrepresent” (e) and “transform” (hua) constitute what scholars of poetic diction call “polysemy” or “manifold meaning.” This spectrum of meanings serve to tease out all the various aspects of translation; its function (“inveiglement”), its unavoidable shortcoming (“misrepresentation”), and the highest sphere to which it can aspire (“transformation”). translator’s introduction 21

The highest ideal of literary translation, it may indeed be said, is “to transform.” A translation which manages to change a work in the language of one nation into the language of another whilst not evincing any of the forced or inflexible usages that derive from differences between language habits, and which at the same time preserves intact the flavour of the original work, may be considered to have entered this “realm of transformation” (huajing 化境).

Translation, more broadly understood, could be said to have characterised Qian Zhongshu’s own life. Born on the very eve of the collapse of Qing dynasty (1644-1911), politically his was a lifetime buffeted by a series of extreme and often bloody events: the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), World War II (1939–1945), civil war (1927–1950), “Liberation” and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (1949), the repressive campaigns of the 1950s, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–1976),1 and, finally, the years of “Reform and Opening Up.” Much occasion here, then, for him to live true to the injunction “to keep his own counsel” implied in the alternative name given him by his father Qian Jibo 錢基博 (1887–1957), Mocun 默存. In his “Introduction” to his book, Ronald Egan provides a subtle and insightful discussion of the extent to which “the lurking presence of the Cultural Revolution,” for instance, may have influenced the nature of Qian Zhongshu’s scholarship. Certainly, Qian’s own discussion cited above from his essay “Chinese Poetry and Chinese Painting” of the extent to which, in order best to understand a writer, one needs to understand the vogue within which he labours, provides a clue to how he understood the importance of the contextual background to his own work. In this sense, then, one can think about his treatment of the issue of the extent to which “pain engenders poetry more than pleasure does” in his essay “Poetry as a Vehicle of Grief,” an early version of which had been delivered as a lecture at Waseda University in 1980, as an understated assertion of his own triumph over adversity. If Qian Zhongshu’s “Realm of Transformation” is one beyond my abilities as a translator, I hope that the essays presented below, to the extent that they manage to avoid the fault of “misrepresentation,” might serve to “inveigle” a renewed interest in both the scholarly work of their remarkable author and his

1 For two-and-a-half years between 1969–1972, Qian Zhongshu and his wife Yang Jiang were separately but proximately banished to cadre schools in the countryside of Henan, he to deliver letters, she to weed the vegetable patch; for her remarkable account of their time during this period (Ganxiao liuji 幹校六記), see Yang Jiang, Lost in the Crowd, Geremie Barmé trans. (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble, 1989). 22 campbell preoccupations. The two monuments of his scholarship are On the Art of Poetry (Tanyi lu 談藝錄), his treatment of the poetics of the Tang (618–907) and Song (960–1279) dynasties, completed in the early 1940s but only published in 1948, and Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters (Guanzhui bian 管錐編), which appeared between 1979–80 and in which, as Ronald Egan has argued, Qian both considerably broadens the scope of his attention to encompass “the entire humanistic tradition in China,” including the visual arts of painting and calligraphy.2 To some extent, the essays that make up Patchwork: Seven Essays On Art and Literature (Qizhui ji 七綴集), written at various times and translated below, can be understood to represent a connecting skein between these two books. In them, Qian deals in short compass with a number of the major themes and concerns of the two longer works. As such, these essays can serve as a threshold into his scholarly world. Both On the Art of Poetry and Limited Views are written in a dense but flexible form of classical or literary Chinese (wenyan 文言 or wenli 文理); the main body of the essays included in Patchwork are written in a fluent but nuanced style of the vernacular (baihua 白話), with copious citation of a wide variety of classical Chinese prose and poetry. This resistance to the absolute divide between the two linguistic systems that has resulted from the language reforms of the early twentieth century on Qian’s part embodies an ideal that he expressed in 1948 in a characteristically recondite commentary on the translation by his friend Yang Xianyi 楊憲益 (1915–2009) of Liu E’s 劉鶚 (1857–1909) novel The Travels of Old Decrepit (Laocan youji 老殘遊記), a novel he refers to in his essay “Synaesthesia”: Discussing a celebrated and much anthologized passage from the novel, he concludes: “In other words, this description of music which, with a modern Chinese writer disinherited of our literary tradition, would be an attempt to raise prose to poetry, is, with a man of Liu E’s education and cultural background, clearly an experiment o acclimatize poetry in prose. He made baihua prose do the work that had hitherto from Bo Juyi to Wang Yimin, been reserved for wenli poetry, and succeeded wonderfully. It is not merely a case of reddiderit junctura novum, making an old thing new by transposing it into a new setting, but a veritable contest of media as well as a transformation of genres.”3

2 Ronald Egan, “Introduction,” Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters, p. 5. 3 C.S. Ch’ien, “A Note to the Second Chapter of Mr. Decadent,” Philobiblon, September 1948; Romanisation altered. This essay has been recently reprinted in the electronic journal China Heritage Quarterly, 25 (March, 2011). translator’s introduction 23

Translated literally, Qian had modestly entitled the latter of his two tomes The Pipe and Awl Chapters, this being a reference to a story found in the Zhuangzi 莊子 and elsewhere about a man who attempted to “measure the height of heaven by observing it through a pipe and the depth of the earth by poking it with an awl.” With equal modesty, he suggested the title Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters for Ronald Egan’s translated selections from that work. As explained in the “Preface” to Patchwork: Seven Essays On Art and Literature, the title he chose for this collection was also a self-deprecatory one. In my translation of this title, I have tried to both remain true to the author’s intensions whilst also paying homage to the masterly example set by Egan’s translation. The versions of the essays translated below are those included in the 1988 second printing of the 1985 edition of Patchwork published by the Shanghai Classics Publishing House (Shanghai guji chubanshe 上海古籍出版社), as supplemented by Qian Zhongshu’s own copious handwritten “revisions & second thoughts,” as he put it in a letter to me dated 2 May, 1988 enclosing a copy of this edition. As he notes in his “Preface” to the collection, dated November 1984 and also translated below, the first four of the essays had earlier been included in Four Old Essays (Jiuwen sipian 舊文四篇), published by the Shanghai Classics Publishing House in September 1979. All four of these essays, originally written over the period 1948–1963, had been extensively revised for the purpose of their republication; Qian’s “Preface” to the Four Old Essays collection (a translation of which is provided in an appendix to the present volume) makes note of the publication details of these essays on their first appearance. The original publication details of the latter three essays, all of which were included in the This Also Collection (Yeshi ji 也是集) published in Hong Kong in 1984, are noted at the end of the translations of each of the essays. These three essays were first published in the early 1980s, although an earlier (and much shorter) version of “Longfellow’s ‘A Psalm of Life’—the First English Poem Translated into Chinese—and Several Related Matters” had first been published in English (under the title “An Early Chinese Version of Longfellow’s ‘Psalm of Life’”) in the journal of the National Central Library (then based in Nanking), Philobiblon, 2.2 (1948): 10–17. Qian Zhongshu had been encouraged to translate this essay into Chinese by Zhang Longxi, the editor of the series in which this translation of the longer and Chinese essay now appears. Translations into French by Nicolas Chapuis of a number of the essays included in Patchwork were published in 1987 under the title Cinq essais de poétique (Christian Bourgois). An abbreviated version of “Lin Shu’s Translations,” translated by George Kao under the title “Lin Ch’in-nan 24 campbell

Revisited,” appeared in Renditions, 5 (1975): 8–21. An earlier version of the late Siu-kit Wong’s translation of “Poetry as a Vehicle of Grief” was also published in Renditions, 21 & 22 (1984): 21–40 and was later included also in Stephen C. Soong, ed., A Brotherhood in Song: Chinese Poetry and Poetics (Renditions Books, 1985); it is included in this present collection with the kind permission of the translator. An English translation of this essay, under the title “Poetry Can Vent Resentment” and translated by Dong Chun, appeared in Cowrie: A Chinese Journal of Comparative Literature, 1.3 (1986): 1–15; Cowrie: A Chinese Journal of Comparative Literature, 1.1 (1983): 1–20 had earlier published an anonymous translation of “Synaesthesia.” My own approach in translating these essays has been to attempt to make them as fluent and readable as possible, whilst retaining the discursive (occasionally circuitous) flow of Qian’s originals. Although I have tried to maintain consistency in the translation of titles and so on both between the essays in this collection and with that given in Egan’s Limited Views, each essay here is designed to read individually. The breadth of Qian’s reference, to literature in Chinese and a range of European languages, is extraordinary. In the process between reading, reading note (biji 筆記), essay composition and revision, publication and republication, numerous minor and largely typographical errors of one sort or another have naturally arisen. On the occasions where I have become aware of such errors, I have silently corrected them. Doubtless, errors remain. Doubtless also, I have myself introduced additional errors. Qian’s bibliographical details are very often sketchy; on this occasion, I have made no attempt to supplement his text, and thus further belabor the reader, with, for instance, the particulars of place of publication. As a creative writer, Qian Zhongshu’s legacy was the best Chinese novel of the 1930s and 40s, Fortress Besieged (圍城) along with a number of witty and erudite short-stories and informal essays. As a scholar, his labours represent one of the twentieth century’s most remarkable engagements with the literary and artistic traditions of China. My hope is that the set of essays translated below will serve to make his work better known to a non-Chinese speaking community of scholars; in an era of increasingly arid specialization, we have much to learn from Qian Zhongshu and his scholarly method. Over the years, this set of translations has gathered to itself very many deb- its. Qian Zhongshu himself seemed somewhat sceptical when first it was suggested that I might undertake the task. Nonetheless, over the course of an unforgettable early December afternoon in 1987 when I called on him with some early drafts of my translations in hand, both he and his wife, the novelist, playwright, and translator Yang Jiang 楊絳 (b. 1911) received me with the grace, charm, and wit for which the couple were celebrated. In his inimitable translator’s introduction 25 manner, Qian regaled me with tales of the specific literary contexts of a number of the essays. As I departed, he inquired, in innocent tones, whether I had read David Lodge’s Small World: An Academic Romance. I hadn’t, but did so as soon as I could get hold of a copy. It was only after reading of the extent to which Akira Sakazaki, the erstwhile Japanese translator of a novel by Roger Frobisher, plagues the author with endless and detailed questions about his book did I understand the point of Qian Zhongshu’s question! His immense erudition always so lightly worn, few, surely, have manifested such delight in the manifold ironies of life. The translations that follow, much revised versions of those early drafts, are published here with the permission of Qian Zhongshu’s widow. On the occasion of this visit to Peking (as before and since), I am most grateful for the hospitality of my friend Alan Young, then serving in the New Zealand Embassy to the People’s Republic of China. Professor John Minford, then my colleague at the University of Auckland, first suggested that I might undertake the task of translating this set of essays; Professor Geremie Barmé, presently my colleague at the Australian National University, was kind enough in 1987 to take a letter to Qian Zhongshu in Peking proposing the project. Over the years since, both have made gentle and only occasional inquiries about my progress with it. Stephen Soong (1919–1996) described my task as a “thankless and herculean” one, but nonetheless was gra- cious enough to meet up with me in Hong Kong to discuss Qian Zhongshu and his work. The late Professor Liu Ts’un-yan (1917–2009) of the Australian National University spent many hours reading through earlier drafts of my translations, presenting me with pages of meticulous notes in his unmistak- able and tiny script. Professor Liu’s reading of these essays guided my own, and to the extent that my translations manage to avoid a number of egregious errors of commission or omission, I am indebted to his efforts. My friends and colleagues Pang Bingjun and Zhang Jingqing, too, subjected the drafts to their careful reading and offered many suggestions of ways the translations could be improved. More recently, the enthusiasm of Christopher Rea, of the University of British Columbia but then about to take up a fellowship with the Australia Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University and whose own recent edited collection of writings by Qian Zhongshu, Humans, Beasts and Ghosts: Stories and Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011) is a model of scholarship and translation, served to encourage me to return to a project that had laid dormant for too long. And finally, a fortuitous visit to the Australian National University in 2012 by Professor Zhang Longxi has resulted in the inclusion of my translations of this set of Qian Zhongshu’s essays in the 26 campbell new series “East Asian Comparative Literature and Culture,” edited by Professor Zhang Longxi (City University, Hong Kong) and Professor Wiebke Denecke (Boston University, Boston). Both editors have suggested numerous improve- ments. The rigorous close reading that the former, especially, has subjected my drafts translations to has served much to enhance both their precision and their flow. Repeatedly, the questions raised and the suggestions made have served to send me back to Qian Zhongshu’s original text, invariably to acquire a better appreciation of the wit and subtlety of his prose. Zhang Longxi has also graced the book with a characteristically insightful “Introduction.” Qin Higley, Publishing Editor with Brill, has been both pleasant and supportive. I am most grateful to all the friends and colleagues named above for their help and encouragement. I trust that this book will go some way to repay their various kindnesses. Naturally, all the various errors of commission or omission that doubtless remain are mine. I dedicate this book to my family, in the hope that it may serve both to explain and to excuse the hours of either absence or distraction that it’s craft- ing has caused over the years.

November, 2013 Wellington Preface 序

This collection of essays brings together all of those contained in Four Old Essays (Jiuwen sipian 舊文四篇) and half of those in the This Also Collection (Yeshiji 也是集). The first of these collections was published by the Shanghai Classics Publishing House (Shanghai guji chubanshe 上海古籍出版社) in September 1979, the latter by the Wide Lens Publishing House (Guangjiaojing chubanshe 廣角鏡出版社) in Hong Kong in March 1984; the prefaces to both these collections are reprinted in an appendix to the present collection. Published some five years ago now, Four Old Essays has long been difficult to acquire. Although the This Also Collection has been newly republished in Hong Kong, sale of this collection on the mainland is problematic. It seems that Chinese readers, whenever they cannot get hold of a particular book, are in the habit of writing a letter of complaint to the invariably powerless author of the work. One such reader—perhaps I should say rather someone who hoped to be a reader—wrote to me requesting that I combine the This Also Collection and Four Old Essays and have the resulting collection published in Peking and Shanghai in order that it circulate more widely. With this present collection I have responded to his kind suggestion, having taken the opportunity moreover to make major changes to the first four essays and some minor revisions to the latter three. The second half of the This Also Collection I have removed entirely; this consisted of selections from a new edition of On the Art of Poetry (Tanyi lu 談藝錄) to be published early next year by the Zhonghua Publishing House (Zhonghua shuju中華書局) in Peking. This collection, then, has been stitched together from various bits and pieces and offers seven essays, old and new. With the “fivefold patched cas- socks” and the “sevenfold repaired alms bowls” of old in mind, I have entitled the collection Patchwork (Qizhui ji 七綴集). The compilation and publication of Four Old Essays was very much the result of the enthusiasm and assistance of Mr Wei Tongxian 魏同賢. On this occasion too it has been his efforts that have ensured that these few half-Chi- nese but not Western, half-foreign and not ancient research essays are published by the Shanghai Classics Publishing House, a press that is famous for its contributions to the editing of classical Chinese books. A whippersnapper of a 28 preface

“Second-chop Chinaman,” it seems, may yet be an appropriate target of unifi- cation on the part of a “venerable Gentleman.” I take this opportunity to express my sincerest gratitude to him.

Qian Zhongshu Peking November, 1984 Chinese Poetry and Chinese Painting 中國詩與中國畫

One

What follows makes no claim to be an essay in artistic or literary criticism, but is simply the attempt on my part to clarify a specific issue within the history of artistic and literary criticism. As such, I venture no appraisal of either old Chinese poetry or old Chinese painting in and of themselves, but present merely an elucidation of the comparative evaluation given these two arts within traditional Chinese criticism. Of course, it is quite possible for the history of artistic or literary criticism to become a completely autonomous branch of learning. Those involved in such an enterprise will concentrate upon preserving the sanctity of their own specialised research topics, and the literary or artistic works touched upon in their studies will be regarded as mere hindrances, to be cast aside, ignored and left undifferentiated. In the final analysis, however, it is precisely the purposes of criticism that research into the history of criticism must serve. If we wish both to understand an artist or writer and to pass judgement upon him, we must first know the views of his contemporaries towards the kind of work he produced. Such views, expressive as they are of a type of contemporary artistic or literary vogue ( fengqi 風氣), comprise the raw material for later histories of artistic or literary criticism. Artists create not only in terms of their own particular social conditions but also within the constraints of specific artistic or literary vogues. These vogues influence their choice of subject, of genre and of style. They provide them with opportunities whilst serving at the same time to limit the scope of their work. Even those artists who seek to defy or renounce the vogue of their age are, perforce, circumscribed by it, if only negatively as they explore new ways of avoiding or correcting the vogue they so despise. Precisely as Lichtenberg has claimed, imitation is a double-sided phenomenon; if to ape at every step is imitation, “to work towards the opposite is also a kind of imitation” (Grade das Gegentheil tun ist auch eine Nachahmung). Sainte-Beuve, too, has claimed that one is nonetheless brought into contact with one’s own age, and powerfully so, even if one were to wish to reject it (On touche encore à son temps, et très fort, même quand on le repousse).1

1 G.C. Lichtenberg, Aphorismen, Essays, Briefe (K. Batt, ed.), p. 70. C.-A. Sainte-Beuve, Mes Poisons (V. Giraud, ed.), p. 197; he had argued this same point sometime earlier, in “M. Saint-

A particular vogue is a latent force within creativity, therefore. It provides the background to any work of creative endeavour, but is not necessarily clearly discernible within that work itself. Only by reading the theories believed in by an artist’s contemporaries, observing their reactions to specific works and thus understanding both their criteria and the horizon of their expectations, may we readily perceive the actual nature of the vogue within which a particular artist worked, just as we can only descry the configuration of the wind from the particles of dust it carries, from the billowing of the wheat fields it passes over or from the contours of the waves it drives before it. A tradition is simply the vogue of a certain age that has managed to persist over a long period of time without undergoing any fundamental change. By its very nature, tradition is given to inertia and is reluctant to change. Evolution of the material circumstances of life, however, enforces change upon tradition and gives rise to phenomena that are characterised by antinomy. Because tradition is reluctant to change, its inertia takes the form of habits and such habits are then promoted to the status of rules whereby the usual becomes both a matter of course and obligatory. That tradition cannot but change, on the other hand, ensures that exceptions are continually being made to these rules and habits to meet the requirements of the occasion, and that in actual practice the tradition is capable of various kinds of compromise in order to accommodate itself to evolving material circumstances. Such expedient change within the history of literary criticism has been ridiculed as “literary hypocrisy” (ipocrisia letteraria),2 and illustrates the point that tradition is not after all entirely inflexible. In actual fact, all traditions are characterised by a fair degree of agile opportunism. Whereas, on the one hand, a tradition defines its own conventions strictly, thus repressing the birth of new vogues, on the other it tends to interpret these conventions liberally in order to allow for accommodation with new vogues and to avoid the danger posed to its own position by outright opposition to such new trends. All traditions manifest a touch of that “elastic or flexible rigidity” that characterises the practised diplomat. The older the tradition, the more compromises it has been forced to make, the more unwilling it is to change, and the more pressing this need for change. Once a tradition is no longer capable of making the compromises necessary to preserve its own integrity, the old tradition and the new vogue split asunder, and the former is eventually destroyed by the latter.

Marc Girardin,” the first essay in his Causeries du lundi, Vol. 1, pp. 15–16, while this section from Mes Poisons is also found in “Notes et pensées,” Item 136, Causeries du lundi, Vol. 11, p. 495. 2 B. Croce, Estetica, 10th edition, p. 495. chinese poetry and chinese painting 31

Very often, however, the new vogue that has now replaced the old tradition will itself begin to behave somewhat paradoxically. On the one hand it will seek to emphasise the fact of its own originality and its opposition to the preceding tradition with which it can no longer accommodate itself. On the other, however, even more will it seek to prove its own legitimacy and importance, searching the past for alternative traditions that may serve as the fountainhead of it own creativity. I will give two examples of this process. In Europe, critics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries argued that the newly flourishing full-length prose novel was a remote successor of the epics of ancient Greece and Rome.3 Sainte- Beuve considered that the Romantic School of poetry of the France of his own day had metamorphosed out of the poetry of sixteenth century France. In China too, efforts of a similar kind have often been made. Critics of the Ming and Qing dynasties claimed connections between such vernacular novels as Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan 水滸傳) and The Scholars (Rulin waishi 儒林外史) on the one hand and the Records of the Grand Historian (Shi ji 史記) on the other. Continuing this theme, during our own student days a scholarly advocate of “Chinese literary reform” expended great pains over the composition of a work entitled A History of Chinese Vernacular Literature (Zhongguo baihua wenxue shi 中國白話文學史) in which he traced the history of vernacular literature right back into antiquity, whilst a vernacular essayist of the same period, in a discussion entitled The Origins of the New Literature (Xin wenxue yuanliu 新文學源流), located the origins of this new literature as far back as the two Ming dynasty schools of prose, the Gongan 公安 and the Jingling 竟陵. Such instances of “préfiguration retroactive”4 are analogous to the bastard son acknowledging publicly his parentage, the parvenu who constructs his

3 G. May, Le Dilemme du roman au 18e siècle, pp. 18–19, 33. 4 The phrase is that of Henri-Louis Bergson, as used in his discussion of whether or not Classicist literature embodied any elements of Romanticism. See his La Pensée et le mouvant, (1934 ed.), pp. 23–24. Cf. also Nietzsche’s discussion of the fact that great artists of a latter generation must instinctively (unwillkürlich) change the evaluations and significance of the works of earlier artists, (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, II.i, Item 47, Werke, K. Schlechta, ed., Vol. I, p. 793), and his claim elsewhere that to know history well what was needed was “the ability to reinterpret” (Rückwirkender Kräfte), (Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft, II.i, Item 34, Vol. II, p. 62). T.S. Eliot discusses the capacity of new works of art to “alter” the order of traditional works of art (T.S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” Selected Prose, J. Hayward, ed., Penguin, p. 23). Eliot’s view is much cited, of course, but his analysis is not as penetrating as that of Bergson. Whilst discussing Kafka’s precursors, J.L. Borges has this to say: “The fact is that each writer creates his precursors” (El hecho es que cada escritor crea a sus 32 chinese poetry and chinese painting own genealogy, or the grand officials of feudal times who conferred posthumous and fine-sounding titles on members of the three preceding generations of their own family. It is a process common in the history of literature. At times, it can even influence the nature of the creative act itself, transforming works of spontaneous naivety into ones of conscious breeding based upon previous models. Tradition, too, is transformed by this process, as older works are endowed with a new significance, given a new breath of life and a renewed value. Once a tradition has been destroyed, the new vogue which replaced it becomes itself the new tradition. Critics working within this new tradition are afforded a relatively comprehensive understanding of the literary works of the earlier tradition and are thereby able to provide an assessment of the merits of such works that is comparatively objective. After all, to them belongs the level-headedness and detachment that results from their being observers of the literary activities they discuss rather than participants in it—a truth that is captured by the aphorism: “Those within are confused, those beyond perceive” (Yuan Xingchong 元行沖, An Explication of Doubt [Shiyi 釋疑]). The critics of the older tradition, conversely: “Of Mount Lu they cannot make out the true face,/ For they are themselves lost in the heart of the very place” (Su Shi 蘇軾, “Inscribed on a Wall of the Western Forest Monastery” ([“Ti Xilin bi” 題西林壁]). To cast aside the old and promote the new in this manner advances also the collective forgetfulness of mankind. It is a healthy forgetfulness which serves to reduce the multitude of trends and loose ends down to two or three easily remembered essentials. Various complex problems found in the older tradition are perhaps not so much ignored by the new critics—their very existence is not even suspected. Entirely new vistas open themselves up before these new critics and no minor complications mar their field of vision. In stark contrast to such long-headedness, one is forced to admit of the older critics that they could not see the forest for the trees.

precursores), J.L. Borges, Otras Inquisiciones, Alianza Emecee, ed., p. 109, which is exactly what Bergson had in mind. The second name in Borges’s list of Kafka’s precursors is Han Yu 韓愈 (768–824), the author of the “Explanation of the Capture of the Unicorn” (“Huo lin jie” 獲麟解); this, along with Elias Canetti’s praise for Kafka as the only modern Western writer who embodied the true spirit of China (see his Der andere Prozess), are both items of news that we may not necessarily be pleased to hear, and yet they will certainly provide ample material for some far-fetched research in the future. Cf. also my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters (Guan zhui bian 管錐編), p. 568. chinese poetry and chinese painting 33

As always, there is a reverse side to this story of course—the risk of not being able to see the trees for the forest. Those who stand beyond a tradition remain outsiders nonetheless. At times their views are somewhat akin to those of “an upright magistrate striving to determine the rights and wrongs of a family dispute”. His judgement, however eminently convincing it may appear on the surface, will however overlook completely the subtle intricacies of the private emotions involved. Each society and every age has a linguistic universe particular to itself, just as all trades and professions, indeed individual clans and families, have their own argot, what is termed “the language of those involved” (ci zhong ren yu 此中人語). When fellow villagers or old friends meet to recall the past, for example, when couples exchange intimacies or profes- sionals and experts in a particular field confer, both the uninitiated and those beyond their circle will have little idea of what is being said. That this is so is not only because such talk will make use of jargon, private idiom or “thieves’ cant” (heihua 黑話). As a result of the interlocutors’ intimate understanding of each other, their speech will conceal many of those unstated assumptions that medieval scholasticism termed “supposition.”5 It is difficult for laymen to understand such talk. The monk Zhuhong 祩弘 (1535–1615), in his discussion of Chan Buddhist Mondo 問答 found in his Jottings Under a Bamboo Window (Zhuchuang suibi 竹窗隨筆) had this to say:

An analogy can be established with two people from the same district who meet again unexpectedly after a long separation. They speak in an arcane local patois that is both meaningless and unpalatable to those who happen to overhear them.

We encounter similar situations all the time within our everyday lives, only the degree of “meaningless[ness] or unpalatable[ness] to those who happen to overhear” differing according to the people involved or the matters discussed. When a critic does not fully understand an older tradition or vogue he is prone to “speak like an outsider,” to misinterpret the tradition or the vogue and to draw the wrong conclusions. I will illustrate this point with reference to one particular convention from the history of literary criticism.

5 Cf. Erdmann, K.O., Die Bedeutung des Wortes, 3rd Edition, pp. 66–69, where he discusses “ein Kapital Scholastik.” 34 chinese poetry and chinese painting

Frequently we hear it said that ancient Chinese literary criticism embodied two opposing schools of thought, one that advocated the “conveying of the Way” (zai dao 載道), and the other the “expression of the emotions” (yan zhi 言志). In actuality, within the classical Chinese tradition, the two phrases “prose as the vehicle of the Way” (wen yi zai dao 文以載道) and “poetry as the expression of the emotions” (shi yi yan zhi 詩以言志) sought essentially to specify the differing functions of various literary genres. They were certainly not intended as generalised definitions of the nature of “literature” (wenxue 文學) itself. The word “prose” (wen 文) commonly meant specifically prose or rather “Ancient Prose” (guwen 古文), in contradistinction to both “poetry” (shi 詩) and “lyric verse” (ci 詞). While at first glance the phrases appear dia- metrically opposed, in actual fact they bear no connection with each other, just as in the same way the two sentences “He is going to Peking” and “She is returning to Shanghai” provide no basis for comparison. Or perhaps one should say that the two notions are parallel, just as the sentences “For breakfast it’s porridge” and “For lunch it’s noodles” complement each other. In this way, the same author could employ “prose to convey the Way,” “poetry to express his emotions,” and the “supernumerary” lyric verse to “express” any “emotions” he felt too bashful to express in his poetry. Like a stepladder and a flight of stairs, these various literary genres were parallel to each other but by no means equivalent; the status of “prose” was always superior. Once the commonplaces of Western literary theory had been introduced into China, it became natural for us to understand the word “prose” in a wider sense as invariably referring to “literature” in general, and to regard “poetry” as a synonym for the quintessence of the creative urge. These two old phrases thereupon became mutually exclusive propositions, in exactly the same way as the sentences “Porridge for every meal” and “Noodles three times a day,” or “The two of them both went to Peking” and “The couple went to Shanghai together” contradict each other. Obviously, traditional literary criticism did contain its own contradictions. These two phrases cannot be understood as antithetic slogans, however. Such mistaken impressions of opposition derive from our own insufficient understanding of the tradition. Conversely, of course, such insufficient understanding can also produce false impressions of unity. An instance of this type of error is the frequently heard claim that there existed a perfect harmony between Chinese poetry and Chinese painting. chinese poetry and chinese painting 35

Two

Poetry and painting are known as the sister arts. Some have ventured a step further and claimed that not only are these arts sisters, but they are twin sisters at that. The scholars of the Tang dynasty had little to say on this topic, as follows:

Writing and painting are but different names for the same form (Shu hua yiming er tongti 書畫異名而同體). (Zhang Yanyuan 張彥遠 (ca. 847), “On the Source of Painting” (“Xu hua zhi yuanliu” 敘畫之源流), Famous Painters Through the Ages (Lidai minghua ji 歷代名畫記), juan 1)

From the Song dynasty onwards, however, everyone spoke of the two arts as if they were but different forms of the same phenomenon (yiti er tongmao 異體而同貌), as can be observed in the various examples I adduce below:

Guo Xi 郭熙 (ca. 1000–ca. 1090):

Again, it is as our predecessors said: “Poetry is formless painting (shi shi wuxinghua 詩是無形畫) while painting is poetry of form (hua shi youx- ingshi 畫是有形詩).” Wise men often discussed this saying and it is from them that we derive the idea. (“The Meaning of Painting” (“Huayi” 畫意), The Lofty Message of Forests and Springs (Lin quan gaozhi 林泉高致), pian 2)

Su Shi 蘇軾 (1037–1101):

Shaoling’s (Du Fu 杜甫) writings are formless paintings, Han Gan’s paintings are unvoiced poems (bu yu shi 不語詩). (“Han Gan’s Horses” (“Han Gan ma” 韓榦馬), found in Feng Yingliu 馮應榴, Collected Commentaries on the Poetry of Su Shi (Su Shi hezhu 蘇詩合注), juan 50)

In his “Prose-poem on Layman Su Shi’s Painting of Fantastic Rocks” (“Dongpo jushi hua guaishi fu” 東坡居士畫怪石賦), Zongbo ji 宗伯集, juan 1, Kong Wuzhong 孔武仲 (ca. 1041–ca. 1097) claimed that: 36 chinese poetry and chinese painting

Writing is a painting without form, whilst a painting is writing embodied in form. The outward manifestations ( ji 蹟) of the two differ, but they are similar in terms of their purpose (qu 趣).

Zhang Shunmin 張舜民 (ca. 1034–ca. 1100) noted that:

Poetry is formless painting, while painting is poetry of form. (“Postscript to Baizhi’s Poems and Paintings” (“Ba Baizhi shi hua” 跋百之詩畫), Huaman ji 畫墁集, juan 1)

The monk Dehong Juefan’s 德洪覺范 (1071–1128) Shimen wenzi chan 石門文字禪, juan 8, contains a series of poems entitled: “Song Di’s Depiction of the Eight Scenes are Exquisite and People Called them ‘Soundless Verses’ (wusheng ju 無聲句). Master Yan said to me Jokingly, ‘Can you, Reverend, Create ‘Paintings with Sound’ (yousheng hua 有聲畫)? I Responded by Writing a Poem for Each of the Eight Paintings.” Yue Ke 岳珂 (1183–1240), in his “A Note on Xue Daozu’s Poem on the White Stone Pond” (“Xue Daozu Baishitan shi tie” 薛道祖白石潭詩帖), Baozhenzhai fashu zan 寶真齋法書贊, juan 13, tells us that:

‘Paintings’ are celebrated for their ‘having sound,’ whilst ‘poems’ become famous for their ‘soundlessness.’ Xue Daozu already knows about those things ‘having sound,’ but is as yet incapable of those things that are ‘soundless,’ however much he wishes himself to be.

The Song shi jishi 宋詩紀事, juan 59, carries Qian Mou’s 錢鍪 poem “Follow ing the Rhymes of President of the Board Yuan’s Poem on Mount Wu” (“Ci Yuan Shangshu Wushan shi” 次袁尚書巫山詩), containing the following lines:

After reciting your paintings with sound [poem] many times, I finally see it as a soundless poem [painting].

Chen Dewu’s 陳德武 “Watching the Tide” (“Wang haichao” 望海潮), Quan Song ci 全宋詞, p. 3453, gives the lines:

Facing a soundless poem, I chant softly a painting with sound, A clue to its form already there before me.

In both these last two examples, the phrase “a painting with sound” (yousheng hua 有聲畫) is a reference to the poems, whilst the phrase “soundless poem” chinese poetry and chinese painting 37

(wusheng shi 無聲詩) refers to scenery which, by means of an extension of the meaning of the word for landscape painting, signifies the actual hills and rivers deemed picturesque enough to be captured in a painting. Examples of people who discuss just one aspect of the equation are even more numerous:

Huang Tingjian 黃庭堅 (1045–1105):

Lines that Duke Li (Gonglin) was reluctant to utter, He wrote in light ink as a soundless poem. (“Following the Rhymes of the Inscriptions on Li Gonglin’s Painting Resting in Solitude by Su Shi and Su Che” [“Ciyun Zizhan, Ziyou ti Qijitu” 次韻子瞻子由題憩寂圖])

Mi Youren 米友仁 (ca. 1072–1151):

The ancients composed lines that could not fully express the beauty of the scene, I imply my soundlessness upon silk and paper. (“My Own Inscriptions on Landscape Paintings” [“Zi ti shanshui” 自題山水])

Zhou Fu 周孚:

[Su] Dongpo playfully composed a painting of sound, Who will appreciate the sound of this he sighed. (“Inscribed on My Painting of Flowering Apricot and Bamboo” [“Ti suo hua mei zhu” 題所畫梅竹])

Some lines from Shu Yuexiang’s 舒岳祥 (1219–1298) poem “Rhyming with Zhengzhong, a Poem on Seeing Dashan off on his Return to Qiantang” (“He Zhengzhong song Dashan gui Qiantang” 和正仲送達善歸錢塘), Langfeng ji 閬風集, juan 6, go:

Fine poems much resemble paintings without sound, To clouded eyes like stele without words they seem.

A problem has arisen in this last example, brought about through the substitu- tion of the word “without” for “with” in order to abide by the prosodic rules of tonal symmetry within this antithetical couplet. As a rule, “stele” (bei 碑) are inscribed with words. A “stele without words” is thus a contradiction in terms, 38 chinese poetry and chinese painting and is used here as an appropriate metaphor ridiculing those without even a modicum of literacy. As “paintings” are “without sound” anyway, the meaning of the line would be fully conveyed by saying simply: “Fine poems resemble paintings,” the two additional words “without sound” constituting precisely what in rhetoric is termed a “redundant epithet.”6 When Sun Shaoyuan 孫紹遠 of the Southern Song compiled a collection of poems inscribed on paintings dating from the Tang dynasty onwards, he entitled his work A Collection of Paintings with Sound (Shenghua ji 聲畫集). The noted late Song dynasty artist Yang Gongyuan 楊公遠 himself compiled a collection of poetry which he entitled Paintings of Sound with a Rustic Air (Yequ you sheng hua 野趣有聲畫). The poet Wu Longhan 吳龍翰, in a preface to this work, had this to say:

When painting a scene difficult to depict, one completes it with a poem; once one has completed a poem difficult to compose, one supplements it with a painting. (Cao Tingdong 曹庭棟, Song baijia shicun 宋百家詩存, juan 19)

The point being made here by way of the comparison established between “soundless poetry” (wusheng shi 無聲詩) or “poetry of form” (youxing shi 有形詩) (that is, painting) and “paintings of sound” (yousheng hua 有聲畫) or “formless paintings” (wuxing hua 無形畫) (poetry) differs little from that found established in traditional Western comparisons between poetry and painting. Much earlier, the ancient Greek poet Simonides of Ceos had said: “Painting [is] unspoken poetry and poetry painting that speaks.”7 The fourth example of “Reciprocal Change” (commutatio) given in the work on rhetoric once falsely ascribed to Cicero states: “A poem ought to be a painting that speaks; a painting ought to be a silent poem” (Item poema loquens pictura, pictura taci- tum poema debet esse).8 Leonardo da Vinci put the matter in the most forthright terms. A painting, he said, is “a mute poem” (una poesia muta), whilst a poem is “a blind painting” (una pittura cieca).9 Lessing, in his famous work written

6 Cf. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, Book 8, Chapter 6, Section 40 (The Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 3), p. 324. 7 J.M. Edmonds, ed., Lyra Graeca (The Loeb Classical Library), Vol. 2, p. 258. Cf. Jean H. Hagstrum, The Sister Arts: The Tradition of Literary Pictorialism and English Poetry from Dryden to Grey, pp. 10, and 58. 8 [Cicero], Rhetorica ad Herennium , Book 4, Item 28 (The Loeb Classical Library), p. 326. 9 Leonardo da Vinci, Trattato della Pittura, Section 16 (G. Milanesi, ed.), p. 12. A modern Italian writer has transformed this sentence to read: “The paintings of a number of painters are not only poems without words, they are also music without sound” (La lor pittura non è soltan to una poesia muta, ma è anche una musica muta), D’Annunzio, Il Fuoco, (Fratelli Treves, ed.), chinese poetry and chinese painting 39 in opposition to this view that “Poetry and painting embody the same rules,” had precisely this line of ancient Greek poetry in mind when he cited “The startling antithesis of the Greek Voltaire” (die blendende Antithese des griechischen Voltaire)10—quite apart from the opportunity afforded him an easy sideswipe at Voltaire whom he so despised. The “unspoken poetry” and “painting that speaks” referred to here are exactly the same as the “soundless poetry” and “painting of sound” found in the Chinese sources, for the word “sound” (sheng 聲) as used there means not so much sound in general, but the sound of the human voice in particular, as in the sentences: “They uttered not a sound” (bu ze (zuo) sheng 不則〔作〕聲) or “Make not a sound” ( jin sheng 噤聲) found much used in traditional Chinese novels and operas. Horace’s well-known line: “Just as a painting, so too a poem” (ut pictura poesis erit), was later misconstrued to read: “Poetry was originally the same as painting,”11 thus coming to resemble Su Shi’s comment in his “On [the Painting of] Flowering Branches by Registrar Wang of Yanling” (“Shu Yanling Wang zhubu [suohua] zhezhi” 書鄢陵王主簿〔所畫〕折枝) to the effect that: “Poetry and painting in essence embody the same rules” (shi hua ben yi lü 詩畫本一律). To regard poetry and painting as twin sisters is a concept that was to become a cornerstone of Western literary and artistic theory. Indeed, it was precisely this concept that Lessing sought to sweep away as he viewed it as a stumbling block. To his mind both poetry and painting embodied their own particular aspects and outward features—they were “un-jealous sisters” (keine eifersüchtige Schwestern).12 As poetry and painting are both forms of art, they by necessity must have aspects in common; they are not the same form of art, however, and must therefore each embody characteristics specific to themselves. The extent of the differences and similarities of both their properties and their respective domains is an important theoretical question within aesthetics. What I wish to investigate here, however, is simply a matter of specific historical literary and artistic appreciation and criticism. One often hears the following emphatic

p. 107. This sentence also reveals the fact that ever since the Romanticist Movement, the place of music within the realm of the arts has risen to a position above that accorded poetry and painting. Cf. the item dated May 1926 in A. Gide’s Journal, Souveniers (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade), p. 1004 where he states that the critic l’abbé Brémond changed the criteria “a poem like a painting” (ut pictura poesis) to read “a poem like music” (ut musica poesis). 10 Lessing, G.E., “Vorrede,” Laokoon, in Gesammelte Werke (P. Rilla, ed.), Vol. 5, p. 10. 11 Horace, Ars Poetica, Line 361; cf. also J.H. Hagstrum, The Sister Arts, pp. 26, 37, 59–61, and 175. 12 Lessing, Laokoon, VII, p. 82. 40 chinese poetry and chinese painting claim made: classical Chinese poetry and classical Chinese painting embody the same kind of style and realise the same type of artistic realm. What does this claim really mean? Can it be substantiated by reference to the history of literary or artistic criticism?

Three

We have grown used to making this claim, or hearing it said, at exhibitions of traditional Chinese painting or reading it in histories of traditional Chinese painting and so on. Its significance is very different from the claim that “Poetry was originally the same as painting” (shi yuan tong hua 詩原通畫) or that “Poetry and painting embody the same rules” (shi hua yi lü 詩畫一律). To say either that “Poetry was originally the same as painting” or that “Poetry and painting embody the same rules” is to establish a principle, whereas the claim we are addressing here is merely to relate an historical fact. The former argue that the essential nature of both poetry and painting are identical; the latter, by contrast, considers that within Chinese tradition the most typical styles of both poetry and painting alike were exactly commensurate. If the principle of the former claim is tenable, then perhaps it may serve to explain the fact of the latter claim; if the latter claim is tenable, it remains however an insufficient proof of the principle implicit in the former claim. Of this former claim, we must demand that it sounds reasonable and that it avoids any misrepresentation of theory; as to the latter claim, we must ask that it is based on fact and that it does not serve to distort history. To speak in the plainest possible terms, what the cliché really means is this: ancient Chinese poetry and ancient Chinese painting both belong to the so-called Southern School (Nanzong 南宗), in exactly the same way that Western literary historians claim that the plays of Shakespeare and the paintings of Rubens and Rembrandt all belong to the “Baroque” (Barock).13 Within the history of Chinese painting, the “Southern School” was indeed the most representative and most important school. Dong Qichang 董其昌 (1555–1636) provides a most unequivocal statement of this view in a section of his Rongtai bieji 容臺別集, juan 4:

In Chan Buddhism there are two schools, the Southern and the Northern, which first diverged during the Tang period. The Southern and North- ern Schools of Painting also diverged in the Tang. But it is not that the

13 Cf. O. Walzel, Wechselseitige Erhellung der Kunste, p. 95. chinese poetry and chinese painting 41

artists of these two schools were of geographically southern or northern origins. The Northern School is that of the coloured landscapes of Li Sixun 李思訓 and his son Zhaodao 昭道; it was transmitted to Zhao Gan 趙幹, Zhao Boju 趙伯駒 and Zhao Bosu 趙伯驌, and then on to Ma Yuan 馬遠 and Xia Gui 夏圭 and their group, all painters of the Song period. The Southern School is that of Wang Mojie 王摩詰 (Wei 維), who first used an elegant thinness [in ink monochrome paintings], thus completely transforming the outline and [colour] wash technique. This was continued by Zhang Zao 張璪, Jing Hao 荊浩, Guan Tong 關仝, Dong Yuan 董源, Juran 巨然, Guo Zhongshu 郭忠恕, and Mi Fu 米芾 and his son Youren, down to the Four Great Masters of the Yuan, just as after the Sixth Patriarch [the teachings of the Southern School of Chan Bud- dhism] were continued by the many descendants or remote followers of the Maju 馬駒, Yunmen 雲門, and Linji 臨濟 Schools, whilst the North- ern School declined. Its essence is summed up in the lines by Wang Wei:

Clouds, peaks and rocky outcrops, All made manifest by the power of Heaven. If the brush strokes be bold and free, [Paintings] too may partake of the very power of creation.

Su Shi praised the murals of Wu Daozi 吳道子 and Wang Wei, saying: “No distance separates me from Wang Wei.” Knowing words indeed! (See also the item “Literati Painting was Initiated by Wang Wei” (“Wenren hua zi Wang Wei shi” 文人畫自王維始), contained in the same juan of this book wherein the argument is presented in greater detail)

The painter and calligrapher Mo Shilong 莫是龍 (d. 1587), like Dong Qichang a man from the Songjiang district, presents this argument in exactly the same words in Item 15 of his On Painting (Hua shuo 畫說); Chen Jiru 陳繼儒 (1558– 1639), Dong Qichang’s close friend and another fellow townsman, presents a similar argument in his Fragmentary Thoughts Whilst Lying at Rest Under the Sun (Yanpu yutan 偃曝餘談), juan xia, wherein he explicitly compares Li Sixun and Wang Wei to the “Chan Buddhists” Shenxiu 神秀 (d. 706) of the Northern School and Huineng 惠能 (637–712) of the Southern School respectively. The difference between the painters of the Southern and Northern Schools can also be summed up in the words of Wang Shizhen 王世貞 (1526–1590), a man much venerated by Chen Jiru. In the “Appendix” (fulu 附錄) to his “Truisms from the Garden of Art” (“Yiyuan zhiyan” 藝苑卮言), juan 4, contained in his Yanzhou sibu gao (弇州四部稿), juan 155, he states: 42 chinese poetry and chinese painting

Artists before Wu Daozi and Li Sixun painted realistically but their paintings were somewhat vulgar, whereas the paintings of the artists that followed Jing Hao and Guan Tong were elegant but overly abstract. At present, whilst the way of elegance persists, the virtue of realism has undergone decline.

This view was a commonplace of Ming dynasty connoisseurship, and was adopted by scholars of the Qing dynasty, Li E 厲鶚 (1692–1752), for example, saying:

People used to argue an analogy between lyric poetry and painting, painters of the Southern School being superior to those of the Northern School. Jiaxuan (Xin Qiji 辛棄疾, 1140–1207), Houcun (Liu Kezhuang 劉克莊, 1186–1269) and such poets constituted the Northern School of lyric verse, while Qingzhen (Zhou Bangyan 周邦彥, 1057–1121) and Baishi (Jiang Kui 姜夔, ca. 1155–ca. 1235) and so on are the Southern School of lyric verse. (“Preface to Zhang Jinfu’s “Lyric Verse on the Red Conch” (“Zhang Jinfu hongluo ci xu” 張今涪紅螺詞序), Fanxie shanfang 樊榭山房文集, juan 4)

These Qing dynasty scholars used the concept of the Southern and Northern Schools to differentiate between the various schools of calligraphy as well, extending its compass moreover to include Dong Qichang himself:

Essays by the Chamberlain of the Imperial Stud (Gui Youguang 歸有光, 1507–1571) and the calligraphy of the Chief Minister [Dong Qichang], Are both as if they embodied the essence of the Southern School. (See the third quatrain in Yao Nai’s 姚鼐 (1732–1815) series entitled “Quatrains on Calligraphy” (“Lun shu jueju” 論書絕句), in his Xibaoxuan shiji 惜抱軒詩集, juan 8)

Or elsewhere:

I once discussed calligraphy with Qian Yong 錢泳 (1759–1844), and just as painting schools are separated into the Southern and Northern, so too are calligraphers split into the Southern and Northern Schools. Calligraphers in the style of Yan Zhenqing 顏真卿 (709–785) and Liu Gongquan 柳公權 (776–865), and by extension Zhang Zhao 張照 (1691–1745) of my own family, constitute the Northern School; calligraphers of the style of chinese poetry and chinese painting 43

Chu Suiliang 褚遂良 (596–658) and Yu Shinan 虞世南 (558–638), on the other hand, and by extension Xiangguang (Dong Qichang), represent the Southern School. (Zhang Xianghe 張祥河, Guanlong yu zhong ouyi bian 關隴與中偶憶編)

In recent times, people have taken issue with Dong Qichang’s formulation, Mr Xia Jingguan 夏敬觀 criticising it in his Rengulou huashuo 忍古樓畫說 in the following terms:

I have examined the discussions of painting of the pre-Song and Yuan period and have been unable to find mention of this theory of the distinction between the ‘Southern’ and ‘Northern’ Schools. The Styles of southern and northern painting were indeed different, but to appropriate Chan Buddhist terminology to describe this phenomenon however, thus rendering meaningless the words ‘southern’ and ‘northern,’ is certainly not the view of a cognoscente. Both Li Sixun and his son were scions of the Tang imperial house, while Wang Wei was a native of Qi in Taiyuan— that is, they were all northerners. Furthermore, only Zhang Zao was of the Tang dynasty, the rest being men of the Song dynasty. How could it be argued therefore that painting styles had already diverged into southern and northern by the Tang period?

The reservation expressed here about the relationship between the distinction between the painting styles of the south and the north and the geographical provenance of the artists involved is one that is easily resolved. It is a phenomenon common to language usage that geographically specific names extend their reference and become general terms for certain properties. Examples of this process are the “Manner of Qi (Shandong)” (Qiqi 齊氣) that is said to predominate in the writings of the Han and Wei dynasties, the “Scholars of the South” (Chuzi 楚子) of the Six Dynasties period, the “barbarisms” (huyan 胡言) of the Song dynasty, and the “Suzhou Style” (Suyi 蘇意) of the Ming. The “Manner of Qi” was not restricted just to people from the state of Qi, nor did the “Scholars of the South” all come from the south. People from places other than Suzhou are said to have embodied the “Suzhou Style”, whilst Han Chinese have never been either incapable or forbidden from speaking or acting in a “barbaric” manner. Even better examples of this process may be culled from the nomenclature of literary sects. Yang Wanli 楊萬里 (1127–1206) claimed:

It is rather that the poems are of the ‘Jiangxi School’, not that the poets themselves are all from Jiangxi. 44 chinese poetry and chinese painting

(“Preface to Poems of the Jiangxi School” (“Jiangxi zongpai shi xu” 江西宗派詩序), Chengzhai ji 誠齋集, juan 79)

Jia Xuanweng 家鉉翁 (1213–1295) argued that:

Those active in the provinces of Qi 齊 (Shandong) and Lu 魯 (Henan), or the cities of Bianliang and Luoyang, are not naturally people of the Central Provinces. But it is also appropriate to give the appellation person of the Central Plains to those who, although born in all four quarters and active in distant regions, were esteemed as models for their learning and their writings, and whose virtuous deeds reached the entire empire. (Jia Xuanweng, “Postface to a Collection of Poems of the Central Plains” (“Ti Zhongzhou shiji hou” 題中州詩集後), in A Classified Collection of Yuan Dynasty Prose (Yuan wen lei 元文類), juan 38; the edition of the Zetang ji 則堂集 included in the Complete Library of the Four Branches (Siku quanshu 四庫全書) fails to include this postface)

To make painstaking reference to maps or local gazetteers in this matter is to be altogether too literal minded. Although painting styles may well not have “diverged into northern and southern” by the “Tang period,” Tang dynasty criticism of both poetry and prose had already long borrowed from Chan Buddhism this concept of a divergence between Northern and Southern Schools. In the “A Discussion of the Meaning of Literature” (“Lun wen yi” 論文意) contained in the “South Fascicle” (“Nan juan” 南卷) of Henjô Kongô’s 遍照金剛 (Kûkai, 774–835) Literary Mirror and Treasure of Marvels (Bunkyô Hifuron 文鏡秘府論) we find the following:

The tradition of Xunzi 荀子 and Mencius 孟子 was transmitted to Sima Qian 司馬遷, while Sima Qian transmitted it to Jia Yi 賈誼. From this we know that Sima Qian was the Northern Patriarch while Jia Yi was the Southern Patriarch, and that from that time onwards there was a divergence.

It is surprising that this Japanese monk should have spoken of Sima Qian (ca. 145– ca. 85 b.c.) despite having neither read the Records of the Grand Historian nor known that it contained a joint biography of both Qu Yuan 屈原 (ca. 343–278 b.c.) and Jia Yi (201–169 b.c.). Obviously he was working on the basis of hear- say and had managed to pick up a scrap or two of leftovers from the discussions of scholars of the Tang. According to the summary (tiyao 提要) given in the Catalogue of the Complete Library of the Four Branches (Siku quanshu chinese poetry and chinese painting 45 zongmu 四庫全書總目, juan 197), The Secret Meaning of the “Zhounan” and “Shaonan” Sections of the Book of Songs (Ernan mizhi 二南密旨), a work falsely attributed to Jia Dao 賈島 (779–843), states that:

The Southern School is represented by lines such as: “In the wood there is a clump of oaks,/ And in the wilds a dead deer” from the “Shaonan” 召南 section of the Book of Songs (Shijing 詩經), Bao Zhao’s 鮑照 (ca. 414–466) couplet: “Shen Hou was dismissed and Bao Si advanced,/ Lady Ban departed and Fair Lady Zhao Ji was promoted,” or Qian Qi’s 錢起 (ca. 722–ca. 780) lines: “I adore bamboos after the passing of a rain shower,/ I love the mountains at the time of the setting sun”; the Northern School by contrast can be represented by lines such as: “My heart is not a stone,/ It cannot be rolled” from the “Wei feng” 微風 section of the Book of Songs, Zuo Si’s 左思 (ca. 253–ca. 307) lines: “I love Duangan Mu,/ Who lying at rest screens the Sovereign of Wei,” or Lu Lun’s 廬綸 (ca. 737– ca. 798) poem: “Who knows the woodcutter’s path,/ That leads to the Taoist Master Ge Hong’s abode.”

To “appropriate Chan Buddhist terminology” in our discourse on painting may perhaps “render meaningless the words ‘southern’ and ‘northern,’ ” yet it may also be said that we can draw some lessons from doing so. And in fact, is such terminology really “rendered meaningless?” As early as the Six Dynasties, connections had been drawn between the geographical concepts “Southern” and “Northern” and two different modes of thought or intellectual style, and the distinction made during the Tang dynasty between the Southern and Northern Schools of Chan Buddhism simply mir- rored this earlier theory and served to extend it.14 In fact, the “Doctrine of the Mean” (“Zhongyong” 中庸) section of the Record of Ritual (Li ji 禮記) states that: “The strength of the South” was tolerant and peaceable, not seeking to “revenge unreasonable conduct,” while “The strength of the North” was bel- licose and warlike, “meeting death without satisfaction,” thus regarding the qualities of restraint and impetuosity as characteristics of the south and the north respectively. The “Letters and Scholarship” (“Wen xue” 文學) chapter of A New Account of Tales of the World (Shishuo xinyu 世說新語), Item 4, records

14 According to the writings of the Taoist priests quoted in Wen Tingshi’s 文廷式 Chunchangzi zhiyu 純常子枝語, juan 9 and 27, Taoism too diverged into “Southern and Northern Schools” after the Song dynasty. Whether or not the principles upon which this divergence was based are similar to those of Chan Buddhism is a question that I have not investigated. 46 chinese poetry and chinese painting

Chu Jiye 禇季野 (Pou 裒) as saying: “The scholarship of the Southerners is clear and penetrating, concise and essential,” and Zhi Daolin 支道林 (Dun 遁) as saying: “Sages and worthies, of course, are those who ‘forget speech.’ If we are talking about people from the middle range on down (zi zhong ren yi huan 自中人以還), however, the reading of the Northerners is like viewing the moon in a bright place, while the erudition of the Southerners is like peering at the sun through a window.” Generations of people, in citing this extract, have merely understood the phrase “peering at the sun through a window” as meaning something akin to the saying “Looking at a spot on a leopard’s skin through a bamboo tube” (guanzhong kui bao 管中窺豹—that is, to have only a partial view of something), and have thus misconstrued Zhi Daolin as intending praise for Northerners and disapprobation of Southerners. Moreover, Liu Jun 劉峻, in his commentary to this chapter of A New Account of Tales of the World, praises Southerners and denigrates Northerners, saying of the latter that: “If their scholarship is broad, then it is hard for them to be comprehensive, and if it is hard to be comprehensive, their knowledge will be dim;” and of the former that: “If their scholarship is narrow, then it is easy for them to be thorough, and if it is easy to be thorough, their wisdom will be bright.” Zhi Daolin’s comments are in fact no more or less than the impartial ones of an arbitrator. Whereas, in the item immediately preceding his comment, Sun Sheng 孫盛 and Chu Jiye enumerate the strong points of the “scholarship” of Southerners and Northerners respectively, Zhi Daolin acknowledges these strong points but continues by pointing out that both Southerners and Northerners had also their respective failings, their strong points thus becoming “le défaut de la qualité.” The seventh of the “Eight Observations” (“Ba guan” 八觀) section of the earliest Chinese treatise on “personality types,” The Study of Human Abilities (Renwu zhi 人物志) by Liu Shao 劉劭 of the Three Kingdoms period, states: “By observing people’s weak points, one can know their strong points;” of Zhi Daolin, one can say that: “By observing their strong points, he came to know their weak points.” And the word “middle” (zhong 中) as used here in the phrase “from the middle range on down” does not convey the meaning that it does in that sentence from Book VI of the Analects (Lunyu 論語) which goes: “Those above middling and those below middling,” but rather has the meaning intended in the locution “Perfect is the Mean” found in the “Doctrine of the Mean,” for it does not refer to mediocre people who can get by without any exceptional talents, but rather to people who are appropriate and impartial in their scholarship, precisely what the “The Nature of Personality” (“Tixing” 體性) section of The Study of Human Abilities intends by the sentence: “As to the virtue of the Mean . . . Ambitious men will go beyond it, narrow-minded man will not reach it, both alike violating the Mean.” When people from the “middle range” on down seek broad and all-embracing learning chinese poetry and chinese painting 47 they run the risk of being superficial, whilst if they pursue essential and simple learning they are in danger of being merely ignorant. A superficial overview and a narrow and partial one are, both alike, shortcomings, even if the nature of the shortcoming differs. They are both examples of what the “Capacities” (“Caineng” 材能) section of The Study of Human Abilities has termed “people of partial abilities.” In its discussion of classical exegesis, the “Biographies of Confucian Scholars” (“Rulin zhuan” 儒林傳) section of the History of the Sui Dynasty (Sui shu 隋書) claimed that:

In general terms, Southerners are simple and concise in their learning, penetrating to the essence of the subject, whereas Northerners by contrast tend towards complex profundity, investigating all possible aspects of their subject.

This comment is in keeping with Liu Jun’s commentary as cited above and became a commonplace in post-Tang critiques of the Southern and Northern Schools of Chan Buddhism. It would appear, then, that the divergence between Southern and Northern “scholarship” is analogous to the disputes within Song and Ming dynasty Confucianism between “Comprehensiveness” (boguan 博觀) and “Selectivity” (yuequ 約取), between “Broad Learning” (duowen 多聞) and “The One Thread” (yiguan 一貫), and between “Following the Path of Study and Inquiry” (dao wen xue 道問學) and “Honouring the Moral Nature” (zun de xing 尊德性). Pascal distinguished between two sorts of people of wisdom and ability (deux sortes d’esprit): those who were “Firm but narrow- minded” and those who were “Broad of learning but weak” (l’esprit pouvant être fort et étroit, et pouvant être ample et faible).15 Kant’s analysis of “Reason” identified a twofold tendency, the one being an interest in manifoldness in accordance with the principle of specification (das Interesse der Mannigfaltigkeit, nach dem Princip der Specification), the other being an interest in unity in accordance with the principle of aggregation (das Interesse der Einheit, nach dem Princip der Aggregation).16 One could say that the distinction made by Chan Buddhism between the South and the North is a manifestation within the realm of Buddhist thought of an understanding of these two sorts of wisdom and ability or the twofold tendency of reason.

15 Pascal, Pensées, Chapter 1, Section 2 (V. Giraud, ed.), p. 50. 16 Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B. Erdmann, ed. (W. de Gruyter Edition), p. 500, and also p. 495. The basic categorisation of “personality types” found in contemporary psychology—“extrovert,” “introvert,” “diverger,” and “converger”—is a rejoinder to this concept. 48 chinese poetry and chinese painting

The Southern School of Chan Buddhism repudiated both “Sutra chanting” and “Daily religious observances” as being unnecessarily troublesome, seeking also to simplify “scholarship” to the point where it could be simplified no further and had become as concise as possible. The school argued that “the mysterious gate of dharma makes no use of the written word and is transmitted other than through the teachings,” that “the chanting of three thousand sutras,/ Is effaced by a single sentence from Caoxi [Huineng],” and that “wide learning and a knowledge of the glosses . . . becomes submerged by the weight of the realm of the knowledge of such glosses” (See the “Sakyamuni” 釋迦牟尼, “Fada” 法達, and “Huaihai” 懷海 chapters of the Essence of the Five Lamps (Wudeng huiyuan 五燈會元), juan 1, 2 and 3, respectively). In his “Presented to the Court Monk of the Great Altar Xuanguan” (“Zeng gongfeng seng Xuanguan” 贈供奉僧玄觀), Li Changfu 李昌符 claims: “Ever since the method of Caoxi was obtained,/ The sutras were not read again”; Zhang Qiao 張喬, in his “Lodging in a Monastery in Mt Qi” (“Su Qishan sengshe” 宿齊山僧舍) gives the lines: “Your words fail to attain to the essence of the Southern School,/ Forever staying on the meditative couch gives rise to even more trouble.” All these quotations make the point that the Southern School of Chan Buddhism saved itself a great deal of “trouble” (shi 事) by not reading the “sutras” or sitting upon the meditative couch. In similar vein, the principle of the Southern School of painting too was “simple concision” ( jianyue 簡約), for painters of this school sought to achieve the richest possible artistic effects through the most economical use of ink, and to enrich the realm of meaning (yijing 意境) within their paintings by reducing their manifest content ( jixiang 跡象), all in keeping with the principle “less is more.” Zhang Yanyuan 張彥遠 had identified this ideal much earlier when he had argued that the brushwork required for a “Spare Painting” (shuti hua 疏體畫) was different from that necessary for a “Dense Painting” (miti hua 密體畫):

With just a brush stroke or two, the image already corresponds to the object of the painting. Spaces are left between the dots and the strokes, occasionally the dots and the strokes are omitted altogether (queluo 缺落), these being instances where although the brushwork is incomplete (bu zhou 不周), the conception of the painting is nonetheless complete (zhou 周). (“On the Brushwork of Gu Kaizhi, Lu Tanwei, Zhang Sengyao and Wu Daozi” (“Lun Gu Lu Zhang Wu yongbi” 論顧陸張吳用筆), Famous Painters Through the Ages, juan 2) chinese poetry and chinese painting 49

The word “complete” (zhou) as used in this quotation means something like “thorough” (zhoumi 周密), “meticulous” (zhoudao 周到) or “exhaustive” (zhoubei 周備). In the same section of his work, Zhang Yanyuan emphasises the fact that “the brushwork of both calligraphy and painting is the same.” This in turn makes it permissible to cite what another Tang scholar had to say about calligraphy as gloss to Zhang Yanyuan’s argument:

By ‘deficiency’ (sun 損) what is indicated here is plentifulness . . . signi- fying being long on elegance but short of brushwork (qu chang bi duan 趣長筆短), thus often causing the force of the conception to be plenti- ful though the dots and the strokes seem insufficient (ruo buzu 若不足). (Yan Zhenqing, “A Record of Administrator Zhang Huaiguan’s Twelve Conceptions of Brush Technique” (“Zhang Zhangshi shier yi bifa ji” 張長史十二意筆法記), Quan Tang wen 全唐文, juan 337)

The word “deficiency” as found here is used with a meaning akin to the word “omitted” in Zhang Yanyuan’s argument, while to “seem insufficient” is precisely to be “incomplete.” In his discussion of the techniques of “suggestion” employed by “Impressionism,” a distinguished contemporary historian of aesthetics has maintained that far from giving us as viewers nothing to occupy our minds, “the artist gives the beholder increasingly ‘more to do’” for we must partici- pate in the “making” or “creation” of the painting, “the inarticulate and unex- pressed” images being “‘conjured up’ in our minds.”17 This is nothing less than an encapsulation of the very principle we have been discussing. It was Hume, perhaps, who proved the first philosopher to identify the type of psychological activity involved here, although he spoke about it in terms of human experience in general and drew no connections between it and literature or the arts. He considered that our affections are governed by the “imagination” and that: “Nothing more powerfully excites any affection than to conceal some part of its object;” “by throwing it [the object] into a kind of shade,” by rendering it incompletely, a leeway is established that “leaves some work for the imagination” and that “the effort which the fancy makes to comleat the idea . . . gives an additional force to the passion.”18 If we bring

17 E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 5th Edition (1977), p. 169. 18 Hume, Dissertation on the Passions, VI.6, see Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, T.H. Green & T.H. Grose, eds., Vol. 2, p. 164. What Hume has to say here is similar to what Lessing was later to say in Chapter 3 of his Laokoon about the need for a painting to 50 chinese poetry and chinese painting

Hume’s general theory to bear upon our own specific topic, therefore, we can say that objects that have been “throw[en] into a kind of shade” are precisely those where the “brushwork is incomplete,” just as objects that the fancy “makes compleat” are those where the “conception [of the painting] is complete,” the word “compleat” providing perhaps the most exact English translation of the Chinese word “zhou”. Cheng Zhengkui 程正揆 (1604–1676), a man whose name is much associated with that of the painter-monk Shixi 石溪 (Kuncan 髠殘, 1612–ca. 1674), the two being known as the “Two Xi’s,” made repeated statement of this point. As his work Posthumously Collected Manuscripts from the Blue Stream (Qingxi yigao 青溪遺稿) appears to have languished in obscurity for three hundred years, I may be permitted to cite him rather more extensively than I would otherwise have done. The third poem from a series of six entitled “Inscriptions on Paintings from a Mountain Retreat” (“Shanzhuang tihua” 山莊題畫), Posthumously Collected Manuscripts from the Blue Stream, juan 15, goes:

As an iron rod or a silver hook my old brush flies, My effort conforms [to the principle] of simplicity but my meaning is profuse. In style I pride myself on being akin to Ni Zan, In profundity who will adjudge me to have been influenced by Dong Yuan!

His “An Inscription to my Painting ‘Journeys of the Mind’” (“Ti woyou tu hou” 題臥游圖後), juan 22 of the same work, contains the following lines:

It has been argued by those discussing the art of writing that to add one more observation ( jian 見) is not as good as adding one more insight (shi 識) to what has already been written, for the more profound the insights, the more restrained (dan 淡) the writing. I say that the same

select a scene that had plenty of room for fruitful development “in order to allow for the freest play of the imagination” (was der Einbildungskraft freies Spiel lässt), Laokoon, in Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 5, p. 28. “Work” and “play” are commonly regarded as opposing concepts, but when Hume speaks of “leav[ing] some work for the imagination” and Lessing of “the freest play of the imagination” the words are used with exactly the same meaning. Perhaps when reading foreign books we can not do better than remember what the ancients in China called “Obtaining the meaning and forgetting the words,” “The outward form differs, but the mind is the same,” “Do not get stuck on the literal meaning” and so on. chinese poetry and chinese painting 51

is true of the art of painting, for a brush stroke more is not as good as a brush stroke less, and when the conception (yi 意) of a painting is profound, the number of brush strokes is reduced ( jian 減). Why is this so? It is so because the conception of a painting precedes its actual brush strokes (yi zai bi xian 意在筆先) and its expression is not everywhere dependant upon these brush strokes [Qian Zhoushu’s annotation: The word “not” (bu 不) here negates the whole sentence, to mean that the realisation of the conception of the painting does not rely exclusively upon the presence of brush strokes]. Profuse lines and thickly applied colours, the painstaking attempt at verisimilitude, serve merely to dissipate the life force (shengqi 生氣) of a painting.

Cheng Zhengkui’s “On a Collection of Gong Xian’s Paintings” (“Gong Banqian huace” 龔半千畫冊), found in juan 24, argues that:

Painting can apply either the method of profuseness ( fan 繁) or that of reduction ( jian 減), in terms not of the artistic realm depicted ( jingjie 境界), but rather in the manner of the brushwork. In not one of the numerous hills and myriad valleys painted by artists of the Northern Song do the brush strokes not apply the method of reduction, whereas in the withered branches and jagged rocks painted by artists of the Yuan, not one fails to apply the method of profuseness. I once wrote a poem about this that went . . . [here Cheng Zhengkui quotes the poem that begins: “As a iron rod or silver hook . . .” cited above].

His “Inscribed on a Scroll by Kuncan” (“Ti Shigong huajuan” 題石公畫卷), in the same juan, goes:

I told Shixi (Kuncan) that: “It is not difficult for a painting to be profuse of brush stroke, whereas it is difficult to apply reduction (yong jian 用減), the impact of such reduction being far greater than that of profuseness. It is not that the artistic realm depicted ( jing 境) is reduced, it is rather that the brushwork is reduced; this is what is referred to by the saying: ‘It is better to kill a person with an inch long blade of iron than to employ a cartload of weapons.’”

In the first item of his “Miscellaneous Writings” (“Za zhu” 雜著), Posthumously Collected Manuscripts from the Blue Stream, juan 26, Cheng Zhengkui claims that: 52 chinese poetry and chinese painting

Painting esteems the application of the method of reduction rather than that of profuseness, in terms not of the artistic realm depicted ( jingjie), but rather in the manner of its brushwork. In none of the numerous hills and myriad valleys painted by the artists of the Song dynasty are the brush strokes not reduced, whereas not one of the sparse forests and jagged rocks painted by Ni Yuanzhen 倪元鎮 (Zan 瓚) lack this tendency towards profuseness of brush stroke.

Weng Fanggang 翁方綱 (1733–1818), in his “On Cheng Zhengkui’s ‘Painting of Journeys of the Mind on Rivers and Mountains’” (“Cheng Qingxi ‘Jiangshan woyou tu’ “程青溪江山臥游圖), in Fuchuzhai shiji 復初齋詩集, juan 12, writes:

Withered trees and jagged rocks profuse and heavy ( fanzhong 繁重), Numerous cliffs and a myriad valleys, all light and inspired (qingling 輕靈).

Here Wen Fanggang has drawn upon Cheng Zhengkui’s own writings for the wording of his inscription. The lines: “Not only did his scenes of luxuriant veg- etation contain no peaches and apricots,/ In his deserted mountains the yellow leaves too are few” from Wu Wen’s 吳雯 (1644–1704) “Inscription to Ni Zan’s ‘Painting of an Autumnal Mountain’” (“Ti Yunlin ‘Qiushan tu’” 題雲林秋山圖), Lianyang ji 蓮洋集, juan 6, also heap praise upon Ni Zan’s ability to paint in a manner whereby his “effort conforms to the principle of simplicity” (cong jian 從減). What immediately captures our attention is the fact that Cheng Zhengkui appropriates a Chan Buddhist “Keyword” (huatou 話頭) as a metaphor for the method of painting. The line: “To employ a cartload of weapons is not the way to kill a person, I have an inch long blade of iron with which I can kill someone” is a saying made famous by the Song dynasty Chan Buddhist master Dahui Zonggao 大慧宗杲 (1089–1163), a man whose writings even the Song Neo- Confucians much appreciated. Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200), for instance, cites the saying quoted above in his Categorised Sayings of Master Zhu (Zhuzi yulei 朱子語類), juan 8, while in juan 115 of the same work he admonished his disciples in the following terms:

I will therefore illustrate this with a Chan Buddhist saying: “An inch long blade of iron can kill a person; if there is no killing method, then even chinese poetry and chinese painting 53

were one to have a cartload of spears and swords which one used one by one, it would in the end be of no use.”

The Southern School of Chan Buddhism advocated “Penetrating directly with a single sword” (See the “Lingyou” 靈祐 chapter of the Essence of the Five Lamps, juan 9; and again, the “Shoukuo” 守廓 chapter of the same work, juan 11, and so on) and despised the play of spears or clubs, saying that: “All one needs to do is to penetrate directly with a single sword, one does not need broad learning” (Zongjing lu 宗鏡錄, juan 41), thus ridiculing those of “a hundred abilities” who had “read widely authors both ancient and modern” for their actual “lack of any one ability” (See the “Luojing Nanyuan heshang” 洛京南院和尚 chapter of the Essence of the Five Lamps, juan 7). All this differs only in terms of degree from the characterisation of the “scholarship of the Southerners” as being “clear and penetrating, concise and essential,” or “simple and concise, penetrating to the essence of the subject.” When expressed in terms of the plastic arts, this tendency becomes brushwork that “conforms to the principle of simplicity,” that “applies the method of reduction,” or that “is incomplete.” The denomination “Southern School of Painting” transcends the geographical origins of the painters involved and brings into focus the particular characteristic of their painting style. Can it really be said that such nomenclature, when used in this context, is entirely “meaningless”? If such is the case then, can it also be said that the style of the Southern School of Painting is commensurate with the style of the orthodox tradition of ancient Chinese poetry?

Four

Frequently, when Western literary critics discuss Chinese poetry, it seems as if they are in fact admiring a Chinese painting. One critic, for example, has said that ancient Chinese poetry is “intangible,” “light,” and “suggestive,” and that the Western poet whose manner they suggest most consistently is Verlaine.19 Another has argued that ancient Chinese poetry is simple and profound and that Verlaine’s Art poetique can be “taken as the definition of the principle of the Chinese literary tradition.”20 Yet another maintains that in ancient Chinese poetry “lyrical emotion is nowhere expressed but only

19 Lytton Strachey, “An Anthology,” in his Characters and Commentaries, p. 153. 20 Desmond MacCarthy, “The Chinese Ideal,” in Experience, p. 73. 54 chinese poetry and chinese painting suggested,” that Chinese poems contain “no excitement, no ecstasy, little or no rhetoric, few adjectives and very few metaphors or similes,” and that the short verse of poets such as Goethe, Heine and Thomas Hardy occasionally embody the flavour of Chinese poetry.21 Although such opinions derive from the early part of this century, they appear nonetheless to represent a view that remains common to this day. And indeed, to have arrived at such an appreciation of Chinese poetry through the medium of translation was certainly no easy task. On the one hand it testifies perhaps to the consummate art and vitality of Chinese poetry itself, for it is almost as if it had acquired an “auto-immunity system” analogous to that of the human body, giving it a powerful immunity from or resistance to the process of translation and which allows it to survive all attempts at translation, both good and bad. On the other, it betokens even more clearly the acute literary sensibilities of these Western critics and their firm grounding in the literature of their own native tongues. An art historian has pointed out that both Goethe’s short poem “Ueber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh” and Heine’s “Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam” embody a con- sonance with the lyrical atmosphere of Chinese painting (entsprechen jener lyrischen Stimmung).22 It is most thought provoking that these critics should have drawn connections between ancient Chinese poetry and Verlaine. The best poems, Verlaine had declared, are “grey songs” with “but the nuance to adorn,/ Not colour” (Rien de plus cher que la chanson grise. Pas de couleur, rein que la nuance).23 This, of course, is no less than a definition of the painting style of the Southern School:

In painting, what is desired is the quality of indistinctness, rather than that of bold relief; by bold relief one means the clear delineation of outlines, corners and angles, whereas by indistinctness one means the quality of being shrouded in clouds and mist. (Dong Qichang, “The Eye of a Painting” (“Hua yan” 畫眼)

In a word, then, to the eyes of these Western critics, the unrestrained verbal energy of Li Bo 李白, the profound mental force of Du Fu 杜甫, the uninhibited didacticism of Bo Juyi 白居易, or the endless metaphors of Su Shi 蘇軾—not to mention such poets as Han Yu 韓愈 and Li Shangyin 李商隱—all become subsumed under the lofty and bland “Spiritual Resonance” (shenyun 神韻) of Wang Wei 王維 and Wei Yingwu 韋應物. There is an adage

21 R.C. Trevelyan, Windfalls, pp. 115–19. 22 O. Münsterberg, Chinesische Kunstgeschichte, Vol. 1, p. 222. 23 Verlaine, “Art poétique,” in Œuvres complètes, Albert Messein, ed., Vol. 8, p. 295. chinese poetry and chinese painting 55 in the West that claims that: “At night, all cats are grey” (La nuit tous les chats sont gris); according to recent zoological research, cats are colour blind and “the daylight world is grey to the cat.”24 Just as when people look at cats in the darkness of night, or when cats look out at the world during daylight hours, when Western critics view the multifarious shades of ancient Chinese poetry all becomes that “grey song” (la chanson grise) once so admired by Verlaine. The phenomenon is not an uncommon one. When people habituated to the works of a particular literary or artistic tradition or vogue come to observe the works of another literary or artistic tradition or vogue they frequently fall prone to such sweeping generalisations, what the ancient Chinese aphorism calls: “Employing the viewpoint of a Huaisu, the Tang Monk famous for his cursive hand—one glance is enough to take everything in” (See Dong Yue’s 董說 (1620–1696) Supplement to the Journey to the West (Xiyou bu 西游補). In the eyes of French critics, for example, all German literature appears romantic, even German Classicism seeming romantic and “un-classical.” Conversely, to German critics, all French literature is considered classical, French romanticism being at very best “only half romantic”.25 If this is true of comparisons made between the literatures of Germany and France, neighbouring countries whose literature after all belongs to one and the same Western tradition, it is perhaps unnecessary to stress the extent to which this is more so when it comes to comparisons between the literatures of China and the West. In comparison with Western poetry, ancient Chinese poetry appears generally to be not at all bold or unrestrained in its expression of emotion, to be far less garrulous, to be pitched at a lower register altogether, and to be a great deal more effortless, whilst making far less use of colour as well. Poems that are considered “romantic” within the context of Chinese poetry seem “classical” when compared to Western poems; Chinese poems that are regarded as being straightforward appear merely suggestive when contrasted with Western poems. Diction we consider orotund and gaudy will be appreciated for its pellucidity by people habituated to rhetorical flourish; that which we consider loud and vulgar will be felt to be soft and whispered by those who have become used to sonorous tones. In the same way, to readers cloistered within the tradition of ancient Chinese poetry, Western poems which embody the quality of intangibility (kongling 空靈) will be suspected of being too obvious and forced, what is lofty and bland will be suspected of being too down

24 Cf. G.S. Gates, The Modern Cat, p. 116. 25 Gottfried F. Merkel, ed., On Romanticism and the Art of Translation, p. 68; cf. Sainte-Beuve and Nietzsche as cited by Henri Peyre, Le Classicisms français, p. 183, and also Margaret Gilman, The Idea of Poetry in France, p. 163. 56 chinese poetry and chinese painting to earth, while what is simple and unaffected will be charged with being too unsparing of ink. This phenomenon resembles the various rates of exchange on the international currency market whereby twenty cents loose change in the coinage of one nation becomes worth the full dollar in the currency of another. We can readily understand why therefore what Western critics have to say on the matter is often less than convincing. The authors of such critiques are not insiders, and when they look in from the outside they perceive only the broadest outlines of their subject, seeing the forest but not the trees, they are aware of the large and obvious similarities with their own traditions but miss completely the minor differences. Chinese critics have no such excuses, however. They ought to know that ancient Chinese poetry was not all “grey songs” and that the “Spiritual Resonance School” of Chinese poetry cannot alone represent the entire tradition. And yet, frequently, we too tend to overlook the fact that the position generally accorded the Spiritual Resonance School within the tradition of ancient poetry in China was not at all the same as the status commonly accorded the Southern School of Painting within the tradition of ancient painting, for whereas traditional literary criticism denied that the Spiritual Resonance School represented the most conventional poetic style, traditional art criticism on the other hand acknowledged the Southern School of Painting as representing the most conventional style of painting. On this issue of “canonicity” and “orthodoxy,” ancient Chinese “poetry and painting” certainly do not embody “the same rules.”

Five

As chance would have it, Wang Wei, the founder of the Southern School of Painting, happened also to be the great master of the Spiritual Resonance School of Poetry, and was moreover one of the earliest believers in the South- ern School of Chan Buddhism. Wang Wei’s “Stele Inscription for the Chan Master Huineng” (“Neng chanshi bei” 能禪師碑), found in his Wang youcheng ji 王右丞集, juan 25, eulogises Huineng, the founding Patriarch of the Southern School of Chan. It states, inter alia, that: “His disciple named Shenhui 神會 . . . knowing that I could understand the Way, entrusted me with his eulogy.” The “Remnants of the First Book of Recorded Conversations” (“Yulu diyi canjuan” 語錄第一殘卷) in the Posthumous Collection of the Monk Shenhui (Shenhui heshang yiji 神會和尚遺集) records further a dialogue wherein: “The Court Censor Wang Wei, whilst at the Lintuan post station, inquired of me what it was to cultivate the Way.” To Wang Wei, Chan Buddhism, poetry and chinese poetry and chinese painting 57 painting could be said to be intimately interconnected facets of his life, and it is therefore most appropriate to employ the locution “Poetry and painting are but twin sisters” when discussing him. Su Shi, in his “Colophon to Wang Wei’s ‘Painting of the Rainy Landscape of Lantian’” (“Shu Mojie ‘Lantian yanyu tu” 書摩詰藍田煙雨圖) in Dongpo tiba 東坡題跋, juan 5, says:

When one savours Mojie’s (Wang Wei) poems, There are paintings in them. When one looks at Mojie’s paintings, There are poems there.

His poem “‘Eight Views of Fengxiang’: The Paintings of Wang Wei and Wu Daozi” (“‘Fengxiang baguan’: Wang Wei Wu Daozi hua” 鳳翔八觀王維吳道子畫) is even more explicit in this respect:

Mojie was a born poet, Who carried the fragrant iris at his waist. Today as I view this mural of his, As pure and sincere as his poetry.

In his annotations to this poem, Ji Yun 紀昀 (1724–1805) quite correctly pointed out that: “Although the word ‘sincere’ (dun 敦) as used here can be understood, the line nonetheless reveals the traces of a forced rhyme.” In all probability, the word ‘sincere’ as used in this line “connotes” profundity, as also implied in the “On Painting Mountains and Rivers, Trees and Rocks” (“Lun hua shan shui shu shi” 論畫山水樹石) section of Zhang Yanyuan’s Famous Painters Through the Ages, juan 1, where he states: “It is also like the gravity (zhong 重) and depth (shen 深) of the Right Assistant Director Wang Wei.” As used here by Su Shi in close collocation with the word ‘pure’ (qing 清) however, it is somewhat far-fetched and betrays the embarrassing lengths to which one needed to go to achieve rhyme. Shen Gua 沈括 (1031–1095), in his Dream Stream Essays (Mengxi bitan 夢溪筆談), juan 17, maintains that:

The wonders of calligraphy and painting must be intuitively apprehended (shenhui 神會). They can hardly be sought through formal elements . . . Thus, for instance, in his discussion of painting, Zhang Yanyuan says that: ‘Wang Wei usually painted things without regard for the four seasons; when painting flowers for instance, he often depicted 58 chinese poetry and chinese painting

peach, apricot, hibiscus, and lotus flowers blooming in a single scene.’ In my own collection there is a painting by Mojie entitled “Painting of [Yuan An] Lying in Bed after a Snowfall” (“Wo xue tu” 臥雪圖) which has a banana tree growing in the snow . . . Such things cannot be spoken of with ordinary people.

Extant editions of Zhang Yanyuan’s Famous Painters Through the Ages no longer carry this last cited section on Wang Wei; to paint flowers “without regard for the four seasons” (buwen sishi 不問四時) was certainly a tradition within painting, however. And while the painting referred to, the “Painting of [Yuan An] Lying in Bed after a Snowfall,” has itself long been lost, the motif of the “banana tree growing in the snow” lingered on and circulated widely, providing both literary and artistic criticism with a theoretical demonstration.26 In Du

26 Cf. my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters, pp. 1304–5, and Supplement (zengding 增訂), pp. 99–100. Occasional writings of the Song dynasty such as Huihong’s 惠洪 Lengzhai yehua 冷齋夜話, the Yijueliao zaji 猗覺寮雜記, and Ma Yongqing’s 馬永卿 Lan zhenzi 懶真子, however, all speak of Wang Wei as having painted a “banana tree growing in the snow;” poems such as Huihong’s seven word regulated verse “Discussing Su Shi with Guests” (“Yu ke lun Dongpo” 與客論東坡), the third quatrain in Chen Yuyi’s 陳與義 series of seven entitled “Inscribed for the Studio of Pure Whiteness” (“Ti Qingbaitang” 題清白堂), Lou Yao’s 樓鑰five-word ancient-style verse “Huilin’s Painting of the Seven Worthies of the Cold Forest” (“Huilin hua hanlin qixian” 慧畫寒林七賢), and the first quatrain in Yang Wanli’s 楊萬里 series of seven entitled “Sent as an Inscription for Zhang Shangbi’s Sunflower Studio” (“Ji ti Zhang Shangbi kuitang” 寄題張商弼葵堂), for example, all make use of this allusion. Lines from Chao Chongzhi’s 晁沖之 poem “The Snow of the Third Month” (“Sanyue xue” 三月雪), a poem lost from the collection Ju ci ji 具茨集, go: “From then on I no longer doubted Wang Wei painting,/ It is appropriate for snow to have bananas growing in it” (cited from Zhu Bian’s 朱弁 (d. 1148) Fengyuetang shihua 風月堂詩話, juan xia 下). Tang Xianzu 湯顯祖 (1550–1617) retells a joke in his “Letter in Reply to Ling Mengchu” (“Da Ling Chucheng” 答凌初成) found in the “Private Letters” (chidu 尺牘) section of the Yumingtang ji 玉茗堂集, juan 4, that goes: “In the past, someone harboured a dislike for Wang Wei’s banana tree growing in a winter scene and removed the banana tree, replacing it with a flowering apricot. The scene remained that of winter, certainly, but it was no longer Wang Wei’s winter scene!” Ye Dehui 葉德輝 had the following praise for the “red maples” found in Li Tang’s 李堂 painting “Painting of a Summer Retreat in a Secluded Mountain” (“Shenshan bishu tu” 深山避暑圖) in his A Hundred Odes on Viewing Paintings (Guan huan bai yong 觀畫百詠), juan 2: “Such marvellous brush technique perfects Creation itself, attaining the import of Wang Wei’s disregard of the four seasons;” here the “banana growing in the snow” is used merely as a pretext. chinese poetry and chinese painting 59

Mu’s 都穆 (1458–1525) Allegorical Meanings (Yuyi bian 寓意編) we find the following comment:

In Wang Wei’s portrait of Scholar Fu of the Han dynasty, he depicted him not kneeling on the ground working on bamboo slips, but rather sitting with his legs stretched out and leaning against a low table upon which he had unrolled a scroll. This was because Wang Wei was not constrained by formal likeness, and this painting is of a type with his painting of a banana growing in the snow.

This painting of Scholar Fu later found its way into the collection of Sun Chengze 孫承澤 (1593–1675), and in his “Painting of Scholar Fu by Wang Wei of the Tang Dynasty” (“Tang Wang Wei Fu sheng hua” 唐王維伏生畫), Notes Written to Idle Away the Summer of 1660 (Gengzi xiao xia ji 庚子銷夏記), juan 1, he tells us that: “The painting depicted an old scholar sitting inclined upon a low table, holding a scroll in his hand . . . Du Mu once saw this painting in the house of a prominent man and it so amazed and pleased him that it could not keep it out of his mind.” From this time onwards, the motif of a “banana growing in the snow” was no longer simply an isolated artistic event, for a painting style that “could hardly be sought through formal elements” had acquired supplementary demonstration and it was even easier now for con- noisseurs to give vent to the method of “recuperation” and to ignore the doubts and ridicule of “ordinary types” (suren 俗人) who were “constrained by formal likeness” ( ju xingsi 拘形似). It was on this point that Wang Shizhen 王士禎 (1634–1711), the Great Master of the Spiritual Resonance School of Poetry, essayed a synthesis between Wang Wei’s poetry and his painting. In his Chibei outan 池北偶談, juan 18, he states:

It has been said that the Right Assistant Director Wang Wei painted bananas in the snow. His poetry is also like this. For example, take the lines from his poem “Replying to my Revered Brother with Cui Fu”: “In Jiujiang how many times have the maples turned green?/ Across the entire expanse of Yangzhou the Five Lakes are white.” In the lines following this couplet he mentions successively the place names Lanling township, the suburbs of Fuchun, and Shitou City (Nanking)—all of these places being vast distances apart they should not all belong together. In general terms, both the poetry and painting of the ancients concerned itself only with inspired apprehension (xinghui 興會) or reaching with the spirit (shendao 神到). 60 chinese poetry and chinese painting

It was on this point also that the noted painter and poet Jin Nong 金農 (1687– 1764) argued an even greater synthesis between Wang Wei’s paintings and his belief in Chan Buddhism. In his “Inscriptions to Various Paintings” (“Zahua tiji” 雜畫題記), Dongxin ji shiyi 冬心集拾遺, he says:

The Right Assistant Director Wang Wei’s bananas growing in the snow was a marvellously novel conception in painting circles. Bananas are plants that rapidly perish with the advent of autumn, how could they not have withered in the sever winter? The Right Assistant Director was deeply steeped in the principles of Chan Buddhism and thus created this painting as an analogy of the long life of the Sramana who remain strong and sturdy throughout the four seasons. My own compositions make use of precisely this intent, and viewers must certainly not believe what I paint to be true to life.

It appears that Jin Nong was himself not particularly well-versed in the “principles of Chan Buddhism.” Within Chan Buddhist teachings there is a type of “huatou” that describes the “inconceivable,” an example of which is the following:

‘Rain falls, the steps become wet, Fine and dry the weather, the river does not flow. Beasts nest at the bottom of the vast ocean, Fish leap across the stony mountain peaks.’ The first two lines of this huatou are matter-of-fact, but the last two lines are paradoxical. (See the “Zuqi” 祖琦 chapter of the Essence of the Five Lamps, juan 18)

The lines spoken of here as “paradoxical” (gewai tan 格外談) are similar in kind to the type of usage ancient Western rhetoric termed adynata or impos- sibilia.27 Further examples of this usage are:

Carp upon the mountain, Dusty tumbleweed beneath the oceans.

Lotus flowering in the twelfth month.

27 Cf. A. Preminger, ed., Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, p. 5. chinese poetry and chinese painting 61

Entering the Jetâ Garden by day, The bright moon in the sky. Ascending Grdrakuta peak by night, The sun dazzles the eyes. Crows resemble the snow, The single goose forms a flock. (See the “Daoqin” 道欽, “Daoying” 道膺, and the “Daokai” 道楷 chapters of the Essence of the Five Lamps, juan 2, 3, and 14 respectively)28

Precisely this type of metaphor is employed in the lines from Kumarâjiva’s 鳩摩羅什 (344–413) translation of the “Fodaopin” 佛道品 section of the Vimalakîrti Sutra, 8, which go: “When flames produce lotus blooms, this can be considered rare.” It is also a type of metaphor that immediately caught the fancy of the Taoists and which stole its way into the poem that begins: “In the past, when I was transforming the barbarians” found in the “Mysterious Songs” (“Xuange” 玄歌) section of the Classic of Laozi’s Transformation of the Barbarians (Laozi huahu jing 老子化胡經), 10, for example: “When flames produce lotus blooms/You will be truly perfected” (Mingshashishi yishu xubian 鳴沙石室佚書續編). If a banana growing in the snow embodied the “principles of Chan Buddhism” in some manner or another, then surely such principles implied no more than that such things as dust found at the bottom of the oceans or lotus flowers blooming either in winter or in the midst of a fire were “rare” or “inconceivable.” Apparently the late-Ming dynasty painter Li Liufang 李流芳 (1575–1629) understood this point. Lines from his poem “Rhyming with Zhu Xiuneng’s Poem on Bananas in the Snow” (“He Zhu Xiuneng xue jiao shi” 和朱修能雪蕉詩), Tanyuan ji 檀園集, juan 1, go:

The banana in the snow at its greenest, The lotus in the flames too is tall.

These lines seek to conjoin two types of “physically impossible” phenomena in order that they may set each other off to best advantage. Let me illustrate Wang Wei’s method by means of a much-quoted poem. The second poem in his series entitled “Miscellaneous Poems” (“Zashi” 雜詩) goes:

28 Cf. my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters, pp. 600–606. 62 chinese poetry and chinese painting

You’ve just come from my native village, You must know what is happening there? That winter plum beyond the latticed window, Tell me, had it flowered when you left?

In his Wang youcheng ji jianzhu 王右丞集箋注, Zhao Diancheng 趙殿成 provides the following annotation to this poem:

Note that Tao Yuanming’s 陶淵明 poem begins: “You’ve just returned from the mountains,/ Setting off sometime from Tianmu./ Beneath the southern window where I dwelt,/ How many clumps of chrysanthemums grow now?” This poem is spun on the same loom as that of the Right Assistant Director Wang Wei, except that the following couplets in Tao’s poem provide too much embellishment, and as a consequence the interest and meaning (quyi 趣意) of the poem seem less profound. Wang Wei’s poem is short, but it achieves a degree of subtlety that seems boundless (you youyang buji zhi zhi 有悠揚不盡之致).

Zhao Diancheng’s point is well made, although his textual research fails him somewhat. This “poem by Tao Yuanming” is in fact a later forgery and the first half of the poem actually derived from Wang Wei’s poem itself. The second half of the poem goes: “The leaves of the rose have sprouted,/ The autumn orchid too should be in full scent./ Return now to the mountains,/ For in the mountains the wine is ready,” this last couplet having been hatched out of the lines from Li Bo’s poem “Autumn Thoughts in the Palace of the Purple Pole” (“Zijigong gan qiu” 紫極宮感秋): “Return home Magistrate Tao,/ The peasant wine ought now to be ready”.29 Wang Wei’s twenty-character poem is best compared with the early Tang poet Wang Ji’s 王績 (585–644) poem entitled “Whilst in the Capital I think of

29 Hong Mai 洪邁 (1123–1202) well knew that the attribution of this poem to Tao Yuanming was doubtful, and yet despite this he argued that both Wang Wei and Li Bo had “employed” (yong 用) it. In the “Asking About the Former Home” (“Wen guju” 問故居) section of his Rongzhai wubi 容齋五筆, juan 1, he states: “None of the various collections of Tao Yuanming’s work contain this poem, with the exception of the edition held by Chao Wenyuan 晁文元. I suspect however that ‘Tianmu’ was not the home of Tao Yuanming, and Li Bo’s poem goes . . . and that is why I used it here. Wang Wei poem goes. . . .” Cf. also the Xiqing shihua 西清詩話, as found cited in the Inquiring of the Messenger (Wen laishi 問來使), Zhuzhuang shihua 竹莊詩話, juan 4. chinese poetry and chinese painting 63 my Former Garden, and Seeing a Person from my Native Village I Ask about it (“Zai Jing si guyuan jian xiangren wen” 在京思故園見鄉人問):

I have travelled abroad many a year, And old now I have no plan of return. Suddenly I meet a traveller at my door, Saying he has come from my native village. Mournfully I shake him by the hand, With tears in my eyes we drink together. Eagerly I inquire about friends of old, One by one I ask of the children. Of the many sons and nephews of my humble clan, Who now enjoys the beauty of the terraces besides the pond? Does my garden of old still remain? New trees ought to have been planted, Are the rows of willow closely arrayed? And how large is the thatched studio? From where have the bamboos been transplanted? And how many more plum trees have been planted? The watercourse ought not to have run dry? I guess that the rocks are now covered in moss? Which of the courtyard fruit trees ripen first? Which flowers were slow to bloom? I with the heart of the traveller think only of asking, And beg you to answer me as well you can. I will soon travel through the low-lying marsh, And go picking the goosefoot in my garden of old.

This is an excellent poem, and when placed alongside that by Wang Wei, it illustrates perfectly the different handling of the same subject matter. Wang Ji’s poem resembles a realistic painting (gongbi hua 工筆畫), while Wang Wei’s, by contrast, can be said to be “expressionist” (daxie 大寫). Wang Ji is painstakingly detailed in his questioning, to the extent that one can say that he “asked about everything.” Wang Wei is sparing of his words, very much in the manner of Confucius who asked “Was anyone hurt?” after the stable burnt down but did not inquire of the horses housed therein (see, Analects, Books III and X). It is as if Wang Wei has taken a pair of severe pruning shares to Wang Ji’s lengthy questionnaire, cutting away those questions which were superfluous, in keeping with the manner that Cheng Zhengkui in his critique of painting had called “applying the method of reduction” and not “being profuse” 64 chinese poetry and chinese painting

(weifan 為繁). Zhang Yanyuan had argued that: “With just a brush stroke or two, the image already corresponds to the object of the painting. Spaces are left between the dots and the strokes, occasionally the dots and the strokes are omitted altogether;” or to cite Cheng Zhengkui once again: “the more profound the conception of a painting, the more severely reduced the number of brush strokes it will contain . . . profuse lines and thickly applied colours, the painstaking attempt at verisimilitude, serve merely to dissipate the life force of a painting.” This sort of comment can be contrasted with Wang Shizhen’s poetics. In his Xiangzu biji 香祖筆記, juan 6, he tells us that:

Once, whilst reading Jing Hao’s discussion of landscape painting, I became enlightened to the samâdhi of poetry. He said: ‘Distant people have no eyes, distant waters no ripples, and distant mountains have no ridges.’30

In juan 10 of the same work, he says:

‘The New History of the Tang Dynasty (Xin Tang shu 新唐書) resembles in manner the theories on landscape painting of contemporaries such as Xu Daoning 許道寧 and his fellow painters—it is a realistic painting (zhen hua 真畫). By way of contrast, the Records of the Grand Historian is in the style of Guo Zhongshu’s painting of a few otherworldly peaks and makes use of only the minimum expenditure of ink and brush stroke (lue ju bimo 略具筆墨). What is more, that which is most affecting lies beyond the ink and brush stroke.’ The preceding quotation, from Wang Mou’s 王楙 (1151–1213) Yeke congshu 野客叢書, lights upon the samâdhi of both poetry and prose—what Sikong Tu 司空圖 has called “Without a word,/ The quintessence may be attained.”

In his “Preface to the Zhichan Collection” (“Zhichan ji xu” 芝廛集序), Silkworm Tail Collection (Canwei ji 蚕尾集), juan 7, after waxing expansive about the “principles” of the “Southern School of Painting,” Wang Shizhen continues by saying: “Furthermore, these principles apply not only to painting, for the truth underlying the development of the various literary styles over the ages does not transcend them either.” To his mind, it seems, the Southern School of Painting and the Spiritual Resonance School of Poetry were simply embodiments of the same artistic principles in dissimilar artistic media.

30 Cf. my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters, pp. 720–23. chinese poetry and chinese painting 65

Since “the samâdhi of the poet” equates with “only the minimum expenditure of ink and brush stroke” or “without a word,” it follows that finely detailed nature poems, fluent narrative poems, or straightforwardly expressed poems cannot be considered the “superior vehicles” (shangsheng 上乘) of the “various literary styles” ( fengsao liubie 風騷流別). The nature poetry of both Xie Lingyun 謝靈運 (385–433) and Liu Zongyuan 柳宗元 (773–819), for example, are all painstakingly detailed in their depiction of scene, to the extent that Yuan Haowen 元好問 (1190–1257) commented in his “Quatrains on Poetry” (“Lun shi jueju” 論詩絕句) that: “Xie Lingyun’s poetic style illuminates past and present,/ Its inspiration nowhere more profound than in Liu Zongyuan!”, adding his own annotation to the effect that: “Liu Zongyuan was the Xie Lingyun of the Former Song dynasty.” As it so happens, Song Changbai 宋長白 (fl. 1705) drew a comparison between Xie Lingyun’s poetry and the Northern School of Painting:

In terms of travelogue poetry, there was first Xie Lingyun, and he was followed by Xie Tiao 謝脁 (464–499). If one were to make an analogy with painting, Xie Lingyun’s poetry with its massed golds and accumulated whites belongs to the Northern School, whereas the bland loftiness and relaxed unrestraint of Xie Tiao’s poetry is in the manner of the Southern School. (Liuting shihua 柳亭詩話, juan 28)

If we extend the reference of Yuan Haowen’s comment somewhat, we can say that Liu Zongyuan too “belonged to the Northern School.” Little wonder then that in his “In Playful Imitation of Yuan Haowen’s ‘Quatrains on Poetry’” (“Xi fang Yuan Yishan lunshi jueju” 戲仿元遺山論詩絕句), Wang Shizhen disparages Liu Zongyuan, saying of him:

For purity and blandness of poetic spirit one esteems both Wei Yingwu and Liu Zongyuan, Their excellence found mostly within their five-word verse. In understanding the marvellous fingering of soundless music, How can Liuzhou (Liu Zongyuan) compare with Suzhou (Wei Yingwu)?

The phrase “marvellous fingering of soundless music” used here is just another way of saying: “Without a word,/ The quintessence may be obtained.” Wei Yingwu was precisely the poet that the distant precursor of the Spiritual Resonance School of Poetry, Sikong Tu, had most revered and had juxtaposed with Wang Wei, saying: 66 chinese poetry and chinese painting

The Right Assistant Director Wang Wei and Wei Yingwu are pure and bland, exquisitely fine and delicate (chengdan jingzhi 澄淡精致); such a mode of expression in integral to them. How could they fail to sour so high? (“Letter to Master Li Discussing Poetry” [“Yu Li sheng lun shi shu” 與李生論詩書])

Elsewhere he maintains:

The interest and flavour (quwei 趣味) of the poetry of both the Right Assistant Director Wang Wei and Wei Yingwu was incomparably pure and tranquil (cheng qiong 澄藑) (“Letter to Wang Jia Appraising Poetry” [“Yu Wang Jia pingshi shu” 與王駕評詩書])

In poetic terms, even more incompatible with the Spiritual Resonance School of Poetry was Bo Juyi whose poetry was capable of being at once both orderly in its narration of events and affective of its argument. On this point, Sikong Tu had said: “Yuan Zhen 元稹 (779–831) and Bo Juyi are both forceful but their spirit (qi 氣) was effete; they were simply powerful marketplace traders” (“Letter to Wang Jia Appraising Poetry”). Weng Fanggang, in his Shizhou shihua 石洲詩話, juan 1, provides an additional note to this comment when he argues that:

Ever since Sikong Tu created his Twenty-four ‘Properties’ of Poetry, revealing all the arcana of the poetic art, people have considered Yuan Zhen and Bo Juyi to be little more than butchers and wine merchants of the marketplace. Master Wang Shizhen concurred with this and repeatedly warned later worthies to read the Changqing ji 長慶集 only with the greatest of circumspection. In his teachings, Wang Zhizhen placed most emphasis upon inspiration (miaowu 妙悟), and it is for this reason that he argued as he did.

More than all others, of course, the poet who made things most awkward for the Spiritual Resonance School of Poetry was the one known as the “Sage of Poetry” (shisheng 詩聖)—Du Fu (712–770). Within the history of ancient Chinese poetry, the Spiritual Resonance School cannot be regarded as orthodox, unlike the Southern School which once commanded the dominant position within the history of ancient painting. It would appear that neither Sikong Tu in the Tang dynasty nor Yan Yu 嚴羽 chinese poetry and chinese painting 67

(ca. 1200) of the Song had much obvious lasting influence. During the late Ming and early Qing, the promotional effect of Lu Shiyong’s 陸時雍 (fl. 1628–1644) selection and annotation of his Mirror of Poetry (Shi jing 詩鏡), combined with the advocacy of Wang Shizhen’s theory and practice, engendered a somewhat half-hearted vogue. It was a vogue that proved pitiably short-lived, however. Wang Shizhen himself faced strong contemporary opposition in the form of Zhao Zhixin’s 趙執信 (1666–1744) Record of the Discussions of the Dragon (Tan long lu 談龍錄). From the Qianlong (1736–1795) and Jiaqing (1796–1820) reign periods right on down to the Tongzhi (1862–1874) and Guangxu (1875– 1908) periods, the consensus among both writers and critics was that the Spiritual Resonance School of Poetry represented no more than a minor and heterodox poetic style. This fact has already become a commonplace of literary history, of course. Wang Wei was doubtless a major poet, both his poetry and his paintings moreover equal to the terms of the locution: “The outward manifestations ( ji 跡) of the two differ, but they are similar in terms of their purpose (qu 趣),” and a place within the first rank of the tradition of ancient Chinese painting assured him. When the time came for the allocation of rank- ings within the tradition of ancient Chinese poetry, however, Wang Wei was certainly not counted among those given a seat in the front row. From the mid-Tang period onwards, the overwhelming consensus maintained that it was Du Fu who was the greatest of all poets. To borrow Croce’s phrase, in comparison to Du Fu, Wang Wei can be considered only to have been “un piccolo-grande poeta,” whilst his confederate Wei Yingwu we may perhaps call “un grande-piccolo poeta.”31 The work entitled Miscellaneous Records of the Immortals of the Clouds (Yunxian zaji 雲仙雜記) attributed to Feng Zhi 馮贄 (fl. 904) is apocryphal. The fabricated “Literary Gallery” (“Wenlan” 文覽) that forms juan 1 of this work records an immortal messenger boy instructing Du Fu to unearth beneath a “bean furrow” a “stone upon which was inscribed in golden characters the words ‘The King of Poetry lived in the Perfumed Land (Chenfang guo 陳芳國).’” The story is perhaps little more than a fanciful fairy tale, yet when employed as a measure of Tang and Song public opinion, however, the heavenly bestowed title “King of Poetry” (shiwang 詩王) may be given a weight equivalent to that of the commendation that: “the poetic works of Du Fu opened up the world of poetry” (Wang Yucheng 王禹偁 (954–1001), “Ri chang jian chong xian” 日長簡仲咸, Xiaochu ji 小畜集, juan 9). Earlier than this, Yuan Zhen’s “Funerary Tablet for the Tomb of the Late Commissioner of Works Du Fu”

31 B. Croce, “Giovanni Pascoli,” in his La Letterature italiana, Mario Sansone, comp., Vol. 4, p. 231. 68 chinese poetry and chinese painting

(“Gu gongbu yuanwailang Du jun mu ximing” 故工部員外郎杜君係銘) had praised Du Fu as being superior to Li Bo; his poetry, it argued, was able to “Synthesise the strengths of both modern and ancient verse.” Despite the fact that Song Qi’s 宋祁 (998–1061) own poetic practice was deeply influenced by the Xikun Style (Xikun ti 西昆體), his “Encomium Attached to the Biography of Du Fu” (“Du Fu zhuanzan” 杜甫傳贊) found in the New History of the Tang Dynasty was at one with the view expressed in Yuan Zhen’s funerary tablet and he was far from being like Yang Yi 楊億 (974–1020), the leader of the Xikun Style, who: “Did not like the poetry of Du Fu and called him a ‘village schoolmaster’” (Liu Bin 劉攽 (1022–1088), Zhongshan shihua 中山詩話).32 Sun He’s 孫何 “Wen zhen” 文箴, in the Mirror of the Prose of the Song Dynasty (Huangchao wenjian 皇朝文鑒), juan 72, states: “In returning to the Elegances (ya 雅) and going back to the Hymns (song 頌), Du Fu led the multitude;” here what is meant by to “lead” (tong 統) is precisely what was meant by “synthesising” ( jianzong 兼綜). In his “Occasional Verse” (“Outi” 偶題), Du Fu had himself said: “Writing is a matter of antiquity,/ One judges it in one’s own heart./. . ./ The methods began with the Confucian masters,/ I have exhausted my heart with them since youth” (See also, Xin Qiji’s “Nian nu jiao: Da Fu Xian zhi tiji” 念奴嬌·答傅先之提舉 which goes: “The strengths of your poetry, Sir,/ Resemble those of the Confucian masters of the states of Lu and Zou./ But with altogether marvellous character”). Later critics went even further than this, Qin Guan 秦觀 (1049–1100), in his “On Han Yu” (“Han Yu lun” 韓愈論), Huaihai ji 淮海集, juan 11, going so far as to compare Du Fu with the “Great Synthesiser” ( ji dacheng 集大成) and great Confucian Master Confucius himself. Chao Yuezhi 晁說之 (1059–1129), in his “A Discourse on Poems Rhyming with Tao” (“He Tao yinbian” 和陶引辯), Songshan wenji 嵩山文集, juan 14, argues that: “The poetry of Cao Zhi 曹植, Liu Zhen 劉楨, Bao Zhao 鮑昭, Xie Tiao, Li Bo, and Du Fu constitute the poetic equivalent of the Five Classics (Wu jing 五經), and are the best examples of what is central and correct in all the universe; the poetry of Tao Qian of Pengze constitutes the works of Laozi and the other Taoists.” In his Canghai

32 In its discussions of literature and art, the stance found in the New History of the Tang Dynasty (Xin Tang shu 新唐書) is both more earnest that those of the Old History of the Tang Dynasty ( Jiu Tang shu 舊唐書), and more to the point. If we are to believe the Old History of the Tang Dynasty, then the greatest poet of the Tang period was actually—Wu Jun 吳荺! The “Biographies of Recluses” (“Yinyi zhuan” 隱逸傳) section of this work says of him that: “His rhetoric was magnificent and comprehensive, his literary style radiant, and whenever he composed a verse, everyone would chant it. Only Wu Jun could combine both the unrestraint of Li Bo and the majesty of Du Fu!” In the entire 200 juan of this work, whether in individual biographies or within the “Biographies of Literary Figures” (“Wenyuan zhuan” 文苑傳), nobody else wins such profuse praise. chinese poetry and chinese painting 69 shihua 藏海詩話, Wu Ke 吳可 (fl. 1109) argues that: “When reading poetry, there are a number of poets who are leaders, but Du Fu’s poems are the orthodox classics, the others being merely supplementary classics.” Zhu Xi, in his Categorised Sayings of Master Zhu, juan 139, takes the poetry of Li Bo and Du Fu to be the “Primary Classic” (benjing 本經) for all those who would study poetry, while Chen Shan 陳善 (d. ca. 1160) writes in his New Expositions Made While Squashing Lice (Men shi xinyu 捫虱新語), juan 7, that: “Old Du’s poetry ought to be regarded as the Six Classics (Liu jing 六經) of poetry, the poetry of the others constituting the writings of the various philosophic masters.” Wu Qiao’s 吳喬 (ca. 1660) Weilu shihua 圍爐詩話, juan 2, gives Du Fu the appellation “Six Classics Du” (Du Liu jing 杜六經). Jiang Shiquan 蔣士銓 (1725–1784), in his “Preface to a Detailed Annotated Collection of Du Fu’s Poetry” (“Du shi xiangzhu jicheng xu” 杜詩詳注集成序), Zhongyatang wenji 忠雅堂文集, juan 1, says that: “Du Fu’s poems constitute the Four Books (Si zi shu 四子書) of poetry.” In his “Preface to the Primary Classic for Poetry Writing” (“Zuo shi benjing xu” 作詩本經序), Yangyizhai ji 養一齋集, juan 18, Pan Deyu 潘德輿 (1785–1839) claims that:

From the Three Dynasties onwards, of the poetry worthy of continuing the tradition of the Book of Songs (Sanbai pian 三百篇), none can compare with that of Li Bo and Du Fu . . . Master Zhu Xi said: “When writing poetry, one must first read Li Bo and Du Fu, just as literati study their respective primary Classics.” Although he does not hold the poetry of Li and Du to be one of the Classics, he does nonetheless consider that their poetry constituted the classics of poetry writing. Heedless of my own inadequacies, I have brought together more than a thousand poems by Li Bo and Du Fu which, in their didactic import ( fengzhi 風旨), are in keeping with that of the Book of Songs. I have entitled the collection Primary Classic for the Writing of Poetry (Zuoshi benjing 作詩本經).

Another of Pan Deyu’s works, the On the Poetry of Li Bo and Du Fu (Li Du shihua 李杜詩話), juan 2, extols Du Fu as the “Great Synthesiser.” Thus the frequent joint reference to both Li Bo and Du Fu can be compared with the common Confucian conjunction of “Confucius and Mencius,” the one as “Supreme Sage” (zhisheng 至聖) and the other as “Second Sage” (yasheng 亞聖), with Du Fu always regarded as the more important of the two. It would seem, therefore, that traditional Chinese literary and artistic criticism applied different criteria to poetry and painting; when discussing painting, it was the quality Wang Shizhen had termed “emptiness” (xu 虛) and its associated style which was most highly regarded, whereas when discussing poetry what was thought most highly of was the quality termed “substantiality” 70 chinese poetry and chinese painting

(shi 實) and its related style. In keeping with this, the “orthodox school” or “orthodox tradition” of ancient poetry exalted Du Fu above all as its representative. Obviously, the Spiritual Resonance School dissented from this view, but far from daring to declare their opposition openly, they actually gave it their half-hearted endorsement. Lu Shiyong alone proved more forthright than the others; in the “Prolegomenon” (“Xulun” 緒論) to his Mirror of Tang Poetry (Tangshi jing 唐詩鏡), he singled out for censure such major poets as Li Bo, Du Fu, Han Yu, and Bo Juyi and championed instead only Wang Wei and Wei Yingwu, even going so far as to say explicitly that: “It is not appropriate that Wang Wei be placed below Li Bo and Du Fu.” Wang Shizhen, by contrast, showed himself somewhat more worldly wise. In his Zhenyizhai shishuo 貞一齋詩說, Li Chonghua 李重華 (1682–1754) records the following anecdote:

I recently saw Wang Shizhen annotating and emending a collection of Du Fu’s poems and I became aware of the unbridgeable gulf that separates contemporaries from the ancients. They are like a crowd of short people trying to catch a glimpse of what is happening on the stage, this being precisely what Han Yu had termed ‘presumptuousness.’ (The reference here is to Han Yu’s poem “Joking with Zhang Ji” (“Tiao Zhang Ji” 調張籍) which goes:

The writings of Li Bo and Du Fu survive, Their radiance extending ten thousand leagues. But merely through the silliness of a hoard of ignoramuses, They were defamed without proper cause. Like mayflies trying to topple a giant tree, How laughable their presumptuousness!)

It is evident, then, that Wang Shizhen “defamed” (bangshang 謗傷) Du Fu in his privately annotated and emended copy of Du Fu’s poetry, as we may glean from the “Digest of Wang Shizhen’s Critique of the Poetry of Du Fu” (“Yuyang ping Du zhaiji” 漁洋評杜摘記), found in Weng Fanggang’s Shizhou shihua, juan 6. In his discussions with his disciples, however—as recorded in the A Record of Conversations Around the Lamp (Randeng jiwen 然燈紀聞)—Wang Shizhen nonetheless praised Du Fu’s Regulated Verse as “the ultimate abode” ( jiujing gui su chu 究竟歸宿處). Zhao Zhixin’s Record of the Discussions of the Dragon divulges the true facts of the matter. He tells us that Wang Shizhen considered it inappropriate that he should voice such criticisms of Du Fu in person, relying instead upon the insults of others: “Wang Shizhen harboured chinese poetry and chinese painting 71 a great dislike of Du Fu’s poetry, yet he dared not attack him overtly. Instead, he would always use Yang Yi’s term ‘village schoolmaster’ to refer to Du Fu when talking with guests.” The “annotated and emended” (pimo 批抹) copy of Du Fu’s poetry once seen by Li Chonghua provides us with physical evidence of Wang Shizhen’s “great dislike of Du Fu’s poetry.” Yuan Mei 袁枚(1716–1798), in his Suiyuan shihua 隨園詩話, juan 3, tells us also that: “Li Bo, Du Fu, Han Yu, and Bo Juyi were all poets that Wang Shizhen did not like, but because their standing was so high, he felt it inappropriate to denigrate them.” Weng Fanggang’s “Lifting a Corner on the Samâdhi of Seven-Word Verse” (“Qiyanshi sanmei juyu” 七言詩三昧舉隅) provides and explanation of the true circumstances:

Of all the worthies of the Tang dynasty, Master Wang Shizhen esteemed only Wang Wei and Wang Changling, along with their followers, for having attained the essence of ‘samâdhi;’ this was because he considered the properties of serenity and harmony, blandness and remoteness (chonghe danyuan 沖和淡遠) to be most important and wished not to consider the properties of heroism and solemnity, profundity and learning (xiongzhi aobo 雄鷙奧博) as orthodox. Neither did he like painstakingly realistic writing (kehua tiwu yu 刻劃體物語), rejecting the first half of Han Yu’s “Temple of the Blue Dragon” (“Qinglongsi” 青龍寺) for being somewhat too lifelike (sexiang 色相).

The expressions used here, “painstakingly realistic” and “somewhat too lifelike,” could in fact be used appropriately with reference to the Northern School of Painting. In an item of his Chibei outan 池北偶談, Wang Shizhen compared the “Peach Blossom Source” (taohua yuan 桃花源) poems of Wang Wei, Han Yu and Wang Anshi 王安石, and concluded by saying that: “On reading Wang Wei’s poem, how very natural (duoshao zizai 多少自在) it seems! Those by the other two masters seem painstaking and forced (nuli wanqiang 努力挽強), as if they had to work themselves into something of a lather (mianchi erre 面赤耳熱) when composing them.” This comment and that of Weng Fanggang as cited previously are mutually enlightening. Wang Shizhen’s “Postscript to ‘Quatrains on Painting’” (“Ba ‘Lunhua jueju’” 跋論畫絕句), Silkworm Tail Collection, juan 10, provides much food for thought. The author of the “Quatrains on Painting” (Lunhua jueju 論畫絕句) was none other than Song Lao 宋犖 (1634–1713), a man whom Wang Shizhen exalted as being both as equally famous as himself and in complete agreement with his own views, hence the contemporary saying: “The two handsome faced youths of the day,/ Wang Shizhen of Yangzhou and Song Lao of Huangzhou” 72 chinese poetry and chinese painting

(See the summary of the Xipi leigao 西阰類稿 in the Catalogue of the Complete Library of the Four Branches, juan 173). Wang Shizhen’s “Postscript” reads:

Recent painters revere only the Southern School, rejecting such great painters as those from Huayuan (Fan Kuan 范寬), Yingqiu (Li Cheng 李成), Honggu (Jing Hao) and Heyang (Li Tang 李唐). This is because they particularly enjoy the richly elegant (xiurun 秀潤), but fear the strangely heroic (xiongqi 雄奇). I dare not accept this as an established opinion. Even were one not to think of the historians Sima Qian and Ban Gu 班固, the prose writers Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan, the poets Du Fu and Han Yu (Wang Shizhen here adding the annotation: Du Fu was from Gong county in Henan), do not Li Mengyang 李夢陽 and He Jingming 何景明 of recent times both also belong to the Northern School? When Governor Song Lao discussed painting, he esteemed most of all a few masters of the Northern Song dynasty, thus offering sacrifices to the Yellow river before making obeisance to the other streams.

At brief first glance, it appears that in this passage Wang Shizhen either contra- dicts his usual stance or rids himself entirely of his preconceived ideas; most unexpectedly, he extols the merits of both Du Fu’s poetry and the Northern School of Painting. Upon closer examination, however, we discover that he did so with an ulterior motive in mind, so much so in fact that this short passage of less than a hundred characters loses entirely its inner coherence, the sense of the final sentences not at all following on from those that precede them. Since “painters revere only the Southern School,” then at the very least the actual practice Jing Hao’s “prose and painting”—not to speak of anyone else— had made a great contribution towards the establishment of the Southern School of Painting, while his “Formulae of Landscape Painting” (“Shanshui jue” 山水訣), along with such works as his “On Painting” (“Huashuo” 畫說) and “A Note on the Art of the Brush” (“Bifa ji” 筆法記), had become moreover the cornerstone of the Southern School of Painting theory. If he was to be “revered,” therefore, how could he be simultaneously be “rejected?” Further, since Wang Shizhen talks of “the prose writers Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan,” the logic of his argument would seem to demand that he continue by saying “the poets Du Fu and Li Bo.” Why then does he show himself so partial to Han Yu, to the extent that his name appears twice in this list of honour, thus, perforce, excluding Li Bo? And if he asks the rhetorical question “do they not all belong to the Northern School?”, it would be only logical for him to continue with words to the effect that “Song Lao esteemed most of all the Northern School.” Why, there- chinese poetry and chinese painting 73 fore, did he surreptitiously substitute “Northern Song dynasty” for “Northern School?” The implications of the two terms “Northern Song” painting and the “Northern School of Painting” are very different, the “many descendants or remote followers of the Southern School” listed by Dong Qichang having included those three masters of the “Northern Song” Juran, Guo Zhongshu and Mi Fu. In his “Postscript on Various Paintings by Yuan Dynasty Painters” (“Ba Yuan ren zahua” 跋元人雜畫), contained in the same section of the Silkworm Tail Collection, Wang Shizhen had himself characterised Song dynasty painting as belonging to the Southern School, saying: “The paintings of men of the Song and Yuan dynasties concentrated upon the quality of spirit resonance (qiyun 氣韻), just as in their discussions of the meanings of the Canon, Song dynasty Confucians rejected the notes and commentaries (zhu shu 注疏) in favour of talk of meanings and principles (yi li 義理).” Wang Shizhen uses the terms “Southern School” (Nanzong 南宗) and “Northern School” (Beizong 北宗) from art criticism to refer not to the painting style of the people he discusses, but rather to the question of whether the painters or literati concerned were from the south or the north. This is the reason why he makes particular point of saying that Du Fu was from Henan. It is for this reason also that Li Bo from Shu (Sichuan) cannot be accommodated within the “Northern School,” while that other Henanese, Han Yu, is forced to make up the numbers and serve in a dual capacity. Li Mengyang was registered as being from Fugou, while He Jingming was originally from Xinyang, both again men from Henan. The three non-Henanese—Sima Qian, Ban Gu and Liu Zongyuan—are dragged along merely to join in the fun, as if they had temporarily been granted “Honorary Citizenship” of Henan. Once one has exposed such legerdemain, one can see that Wang Shizhen is saying no more than that as Song Lao came from Shangqiu in Henan Province, he was truly the “Northern Region’s Great School Master.” Wang Shizhen’s statement here of his views on painting, for all the guest appearances of the various famous writers and poets it includes, is actually designed to be no more than tortuous and covert flattery of this “Governor Song Lao” as a major poet, and as such Wang Shizhen was forced to make even clearer statement of the fact that Du Fu and Song Lao were united by the comradeship of coming from the same district, both their reputations thus benefiting from this mutual association. What on the surface appears to be aesthetic criticism turns out in reality to be no more than social nicety couched in the guise of literary and artistic criticism. In research into ancient literary criticism—can one in fact say also “ancient and modern” or “successive ages of literary criticism”?—just as in our own daily round of social activity, we must learn to be able to do what Mencius had 74 chinese poetry and chinese painting termed “understand the words,” and to distinguish between the thoughts of a moment on the one hand and those opinions that are the result of mature consideration on the part of the ancients on the other. In particular, we must distinguish between their sincere and considered evaluations of literary and artistic works, and their officially inspired clichés or socially obligated formulae.

Six

There exists a very good example of the divergence of critical criteria within the traditions of poetry and painting. I cited earlier a section from Su Shi’s poem “‘Eight Views of Fengxiang’: The Paintings of Wang Wei and Wu Daozi”. This poem continues with some lines that were later cited by Dong Qichang as the authoritative conclusion to his own discussion of the Southern School of Painting:

In my view, of all paintings, None are to be as respected as those of the two masters Wang Wei and Wu Daozi. Although Master Wu was supreme in art, He can be regarded merely an artisan painter (huagong 畫工). Mojie (Wang Wei) soured above the images of this world, Like an immortal crane refusing to be encaged. In my view both masters were divine talents, But I fold my lapels out of respect to Wang Wei and can utter not a critical word.

This is to say that when judging the “quality of their paintings,” Wu Daozi was considered not as good as Wang Wei. As soon as comparisons were made between painting style and poetic style, however, critics placed the “artisan painter” Wu Daozi and the “King of Poetry” Du Fu within the same category. In other words, the painting style of the subordinate Wu Daozi was commensurate with the highest poetic style, whereas the poetic style of the foremost poet Du Fu was commensurate only with the second best painting style. Su Shi himself, in his “Colophon to a Painting by Wu Daozi” (“Shu Wu Daozi hua hou” 書吳道子畫後) had given equivalent praise to the poetry of Du Fu, the prose of Han Yu, the calligraphy of Yan Zhenqing and the paintings of Wu Daozi. In his “Evaluation of Painting” (“Huapin” 畫品) (contained in both Sheng’an chinese poetry and chinese painting 75 quanji 升庵全集, juan 64, and Sheng’an waiji 升庵外集, juan 94), Yang Shen 楊慎 (1488–1559) states that: “Wu Daozi was the Du Fu of painting.” Fang Xun 方薰 (1736–1799) was even more explicit in his Opinions on Paintings from the Abode of Mountain Tranquillity (Shanjingju hualun 山靜居畫論), juan shang:

When one reads old Du Fu’s poems on entering the gorges, how deso- late and haunting one finds them, just like the landscape paintings of Shu by Master Wu Daozi or Wang Zai 王宰 (active ca. 760–ca. 805). Ever since people began inscribing paintings with poems, only this old master plies his brush like a painting. In the past people have said of Mojie (Wang Wei) that: ‘There is poetry in his painting,/ Painting in his poetry,’ but when one compares him to Du Fu one cannot avoid concluding that Wang Wei is down in a valley while Du Fu is up upon a hilltop.

In his “Colophon to a Painting by Wu Daozi,” “Preface to a Collection of Wang Dingguo’s Poetry” (“Wang Dingguo shiji xu” 王定國詩敘), and “Colophon on the Calligraphy of Six Masters of the Tang Dynasty” (“Shu Tangshi liujia shu hou” 書唐氏六家書後), Su Shi repeatedly extols Du Fu as the “First among poets, both ancient and modern,” this being the commonplace orthodox view. His “Colophon to a Collection of Huang Zisi’s Poetry” (“Shu Huang Zisi shiji hou” 書黃子思詩集後), however, reveals somewhat heterodox sentiments:

Once, when discussing calligraphy, I stated that examples of the work of Zhong You 鍾繇 and Wang Xizhi 王羲之 were natural and unrestrained, simple and profound (xiaosan jianyuan 蕭散簡遠) and that their excellence lay beyond the brush strokes (bihua zhi wai 筆畫之外). By the time that Yan Zhenqing and Liu Gongquan of the Tang dynasty had begun their synthesis of calligraphic technique both ancient and modern and had developed them to their extreme, calligraphy had reached its apo- gee . . . the techniques of Zhong You and Wang Xizhi became even more attenuated. Poetry too has been thus. . . . Li Bo and Du Fu bestrode a hundred generations with their heroic, unique and unrivalled talents (ying- wei jueshi zhi zi 英瑋絕世之姿) . . . the peerless reputations of the Wei and Jin dynasties have suffered a slight decline since . . . although occasionally with the poets that have followed one finds a distant resonance (yuanyun 遠韻), their talents however do not match their will. . . . Sikong Tu’s . . . poetry and prose were both lofty and elegant (shiwen gaomiao 詩文高妙) . . . What a shame it is that his contemporaries did not 76 chinese poetry and chinese painting

recognise the genius of his arrangement of a set of his own poems which lighted upon the essence beyond words (de wenzi zhi biao 得文字之表) under twenty-four rhymes.

In the final analysis, therefore, when discussing poetry, Su Shi inclined towards the Spiritual Resonance School, just as when discussing painting he inclined towards the Southern School—gradually the aesthetic criteria he employed in judging these two different art forms conflated. The purport of his comment here that they “were natural and unrestrained, simple and profound and that their excellence lay beyond the brush strokes,” the “distant resonance” he speaks of, the extent to which they “lighted upon the essence beyond words,” and his claim that “Wang Wei soared beyond the images of the world” (Wei ye dezhi yu xiangwai 維也得之於象外), is identical in each case. Quan Zuwang 全祖望 (1705–1755) understood Su Shi’s dissatisfaction with Li Bo and Du Fu, and in his “Preface to the Spring Duck Collection” (“Chufu ji xu” 春鳧集序), found in the “Supplementary Collection” (waibian 外編) of his Jiqiting ji 鮚埼亭集, juan 26, he called our attention to this fact, adding the further comment that:

From the Tang period onwards, poets such as Han Yu, Meng Jiao, and Li He 李賀, as well as the Song dynasty poets Su Shi, Huang Tingjian, Yang Wanli, Chen Liang 陳亮, and Lu You 陸游, although they all differ one from the other both in terms of their attainments and their importance, are all nonetheless descendants of a lateral branch of Li Bo and Du Fu.

Convenient use is made here of Dong Qichang’s sentence about the “many descendants or remote followers” of the Southern School, while, by means of a contrast, the Spiritual Resonance School of Poetry can but approximate the “decline” it was argued applied to the Northern School of Painting. Literary history is not without other peculiar examples of people admiring without qualification, looking up to without contempt, the works of those whose style is absolutely dissimilar, even opposite, to their own, as in Su Shi’s esteem here for the works of Sikong Tu. Bo Juyi’s predilection for Li Shangyin (cf. the Cai Kuanfu shihua 蔡寬夫詩話 as cited in the First Collection of the Tiaoxi yuyin conghua 苕溪漁隱叢話, juan 16), Lu You’s (1125–1210) liking for Mei Yaochen 梅堯臣 (1002–1060), Goethe’s love for Spinoza, or Baudelaire’s admiration for both Hugo and Balzac are all instances of this phenomenon. What makes an even deeper impression upon us is Mallarmé’s—the founder of the Imagist School of poetry—infatuation with the “unprecedented sense of life” (son sens inouï de la vie) and ability to depict both crowd scenes and the chinese poetry and chinese painting 77 beauty of the individual human body and so on of Zola, the founder of the Naturalist novel.33 The ancient Greeks claimed that: “The fox knows many a wile, but the hedgehog has only one trick”.34 A contemporary philosopher has divided genius into two categories, Shakespeare, Goethe, Balzac, and so on all belonging to the fox type, and Dante, Ibsen, and Dostoyevsky and others belonging to the hedgehog type, whilst “Tolstoy was by nature a fox, but believed in being a hedgehog.”35 Couched in these terms, therefore, we may say that in his attitude to Sikong Tu, Su Shi was like a fox worshipping a hedgehog, while Baudelaire’s liking for Hugo resembles a hedgehog worshipping a fox. Both Goethe and Coleridge noticed this phenomenon, whilst Yeats gave loving description of his own pursuit of “the most unlike, being my anti-self.”36 Aestheticians have even formulated a law to describe it, namely “The Law of the Antinomy of Taste.”37 Although the term given this law is appropriately dignified and sonorous, its use can never substitute for explanation.

33 F. Strich, Kunst und Leben, pp. 90 and 93, and also p. 238 where he discusses H. Wöllflin; G. Picon, L’Usage de la lecture, pp. 188–89; Mallarmé, “Résponses à des enquêtes sur l’évolution littéraire,” Œuvres complètes (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade ed.), p. 871. 34 Cf. my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters, pp. 564–65. 35 I. Berlin, Russian Thinkers, pp. 22–24. 36 G.F. Senior and C.V. Bock, eds., Goethe the Critic, p. 8; T. Ashe, ed., Table-Talk and Omniana, p. 236; W.B. Yeats, “Per Amica Silentia Lunae,” see Essays (Macmillan, 1924), p. 484, and p. 493 where he discusses “The other self, the anti-self or the antithetical self.” 37 F. Kainz, Aesthetics the Science, H.M. Schueller, trans., pp. 203–204. In the first part (shang 上) of the “Prolegomenon” (“Xulu” 緒錄) of the Second Collection (yi ji 乙集) of the “Categorised Cases of the Miscellaneous Collections of Ancient Prose Masters” (“Guwenjia bieji leian” 古文家別集類案), Yanchaolou zazhu 燕超樓雜著, the authorship of which is unknown, we find the following critique of Lu You: “His prose was lofty and detached (chaoyi 超逸) and embodied great profundity (gaozhi 高致) . . . His son Lu Yu 陸遹 wrote a postscript to a collection of his father’s writings in which he claimed that they were written in imitation of Zeng Gong 曾鞏 (1019–1083). Lu You’s prose was not in fact similar to that of Zeng Gong, and it is difficult for me to understand why Lu You’s son received such specific instructions from his father in this vein!” In his discussions of prose, Lu You esteemed Zeng Gong, just as in his discussions of poetry he esteemed Mei Yaochen, such predilections manifesting his pursuit of “the most unlike, being his anti-self.” “The Antimony of Taste” is a common phenomenon, but not one sufficient in itself to be promulgated as a “Rule.” The tastes of Bo Juyi and Li Shangyin are a convenient example. In keeping with the “rule,” Bo Juyi “In old age much liked the prose and poetry of Li Shangyin, and once said: ‘If I died trying to become your son, I would die content!’”; Li Shangyin for his part, however, appears to have ignored this “rule” for he gave no evidence of a corresponding reaction to Bo Juyi’s prose and poetry. In the lengthy “Tomb Inscription of Master Bo Juyi” (“Bo Gong muzhi ming” 白公墓誌銘) contained in Fannan wenji 樊南文集, juan 8, not one mention is made of Bo Juyi’s poetry, to the extent 78 chinese poetry and chinese painting

In one of Molière’s famous comedies, someone asks why opium causes people to fall asleep. Solemnly, the doctor replies: “Because it contains a sleep inducing power” (une vertu dormitive). To say that Bo Juyi “much liked” both the prose and poetry of Li Shangyin because of “The Law of the Antinomy of Taste” is to say no more than that opium causes sleep because it contains a sleep inducing power. In actuality, such explanations are no more than the lazy avoidance of work on our part; instead of a true explanation, all they do is provide a label, or award a title, even a sobriquet. In summary, therefore, one can say that within the tradition of Chinese literary and artistic criticism, poetry that was commensurate with the style of the Southern School of Painting was neither the highest grade poetry nor was it orthodox, whereas paintings that were equivalent to the poetic style of the Spiritual Resonance School of Poetry were the highest regarded and most orthodox. This divergence between the criteria for judging ancient poetry and ancient painting is a fact of the history of criticism. We must first recognise this fact before seeking for an explanation of it, an explanation that enters into the very essence of the matter and which is not content merely to invest empty titles.

that when he writes: “His name crosses the oceans and has entered the literate lands of Korea ( Jilin 雞林) and Vietnam (Rinan 日南),” he was not prepared to substitute “poetic repute” for “name.” Of course, an explanation for this is easily found, and one could say for instance that as what was being written was a tomb inscription, while it was appropriate to mention such important matters as achievements and personal integrity, it was not appropriate to pay attention to such unimportant matters as literary composition. Or perhaps one could argue that if Li Shangyin had lived on for another two or three decades he would certainly have “in old age much liked” Bo Juyi’s prose and poetry. One can search out yet more explanations; explanations serve as stopgap measures, always willing to be of service, and appearing ready-made the minute one begins to look for them. On Reading Laokoon 讀拉奧孔

One

In the course of study into ancient Chinese aesthetics, our attention is often monopolised by only the most celebrated theoretical works. It goes without saying, of course, that works such as the “Record of Music” (“Yue ji” 樂記), the Ranking of Poets (Shipin 詩品), The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons (Wenxin diaolong 文心雕龍), and the various causeries on poetry and prose, painting and dramatic prosody must remain the focus of our research, as too must the innumerable letters, prefaces and so on that proclaim themselves to be discussions of literature and art. At the same time, however, anyone who is honest about the matter is forced to admit that extensive research into this type of material has certainly not produced a harvest commensurate in its proportions with the effort expended. Much of the research has resulted in cliché and empty rhetoric, and has simply afforded the researchers involved the opportunity to strike well-mannered poses. Discussing the nature of literary anthologies, Ye Xie 葉燮 (1627–1703) once complained: “They may well be entitled ‘An Anthology of Writing,’ but they are in fact little more than ‘Selections of People’” (On the Anthologist” (“Xuanjia shuo” 選家說), Jiqi ji 己畦集, juan 3). What are often “entitled” histories of the criticism of literature and art are “in fact” no more than Summaries of the Pronouncements of Famous Historical Personages in the Field of Literature and Art. Each and every one of the personages cited may well be famous, but what they have to say often lacks any substance. Frequently, however, in poetry and lyric verse, in occasional writings, novels and drama, even in popular ballads and proverbs or critical exegesis, we find expressed, unconsciously and often in only a line or two, profound and inspiring insights that benefit our understanding tremendously. When ampli- fied, these insights contribute greatly to our theories of literature and art. Some will perhaps argue that such bits and pieces amount to nothing and are thus unworthy of our picking out and glorifying. They will go on to claim that as such insights are at best both isolated and spontaneous they cannot pass muster as systematic and self-conscious theory. Yet it is precisely because such fragmentary and trifling things are so easily overlooked and forgotten that they require even more that we garner them up and give them our care and

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��4 | doi ��.��63/9789�4727�2�3_��5 80 on reading laokoon attention. Spontaneous and isolated insights constitute the source of all self- conscious and thoroughgoing theory. What is more, many of those causeries on poetry and prose that we read so assiduously cannot be said to embody any form of theoretical system. We need only reflect for a moment upon the processes of intellectual history. Although a great many closely argued and comprehensive philosophical and ideological systems have not survived the vicissitudes of time and have already lost their integrity, various specific insights once contained within these systems have remained to be taken up by later generations without losing any of their initial effectiveness. One can make an analogy with a large and imposing building that has already been destroyed and can no longer either accommodate people or inspire awe. The timber, stones, bricks and tiles used in such a building remain useful, however. Inevitably, those things of value that do remain after the collapse of complete theoretical systems are but partial ideas. Such partial ideas are, by their very nature, fragmentary, regardless of whether they have previously formed part of larger systems or have remained merely embryonic. A viewpoint that pays attention only to major theories or that holds such isolated sentences or phrases in contempt, intoxicated with quantity and thus ignoring a gram of worth for a ton of verbiage, is superficial and vulgar—if it is not in fact an excuse for laziness and sloppiness. Let me give an example of this truth. Recently,1 a number of our literary theorists have developed an interest in Diderot’s Paradoxe sur le Comédien (The Paradox of Acting), and have written numerous articles discussing this work. The essence of the “paradox” they discuss is this: only when an actor is himself calm and sober may he give lifelike expression to the ardent passions of the character he plays. He must first learn not to be “stirred” himself before he can vividly “manifest” the joy or anger, sorrow or happiness of the character (c’est le manque absolu de sensibilité qui prépare les acteurs sublimes [In complete absence of feeling is the possibility of a sublime actor]); for instance, when an actor wishes to play fury well (jouer bien la fureur), he must certainly not himself be furious (être furieux).2 In actual fact in eighteenth century Europe this insight was certainly not Diderot’s alone,3 while Don Quixote had hit the

1 This article was originally written in 1962. 2 Diderot, D., “Paradoxe sur le comédien,” J.Assézat, ed., Œuvres complètes, Vol. 8, pp. 370 and 423. 3 Cf. my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters (Guan zhui bian 管錐編), pp. 1190–93. Nietzsche has argued that if an actor is affected by the emotions that he is playing, then he is “finished” (er wäre verloren), Kunst und Künstler, Item 7, Werke, Alfred Kroner, Vol. XI, p. 2; a contemporary sociologist, Erving Goffman, has claimed that everyday life within society On Reading Laokoon 81 nail on the head very much earlier when he said: “The cunningest part in a play (la más discreta) is the fool’s (el bo bo), for a man who wants to be taken for a simpleton (es simple) must never be one.”4 In China too ancient folk wisdom was aware of this truth and had refined it down to a seven character proverb: “Learn to perform opera only after first learning how to be without passion” (xian xue wuqing hou xue xi 先學無情後學戲).5 Diderot’s theory causes us to look again at this old Chinese saying and to treat it with an increased respect, fully conscious now of its profound implications. At the same time, because this old Chinese saying would seem to lend distant support to Diderot’s stance, we recognise that his theory does not derive simply from the individual prejudices and paradoxes of a single European. It is precisely this kind of re-discovery of value in things of the past that Hegel spoke of repeatedly as the crucial turning point in the process of recognition, whereby as we increase our understanding of things to which we have become habituated we move from “recognition” (bekannt) to “knowledge” (erkannt) and old acquaintances become true friends.6 I would even presume

also requires a “dramaturgical discipline,” The Presentation of Self in Everyday life, Pelican Books, pp. 210–12. Both these arguments give unconscious support to the idea of this type of “paradox.” An actor in an eccentric German novel of unknown authorship but written during the Romanticist period maintains that he must act “with excessive emotion” (mit Gefühl) for “Sobriety is the grave of art” (Nüchternheit ist das Grab der Kunst), Die Nachtwachen des Bonaventura, XII, Edinburgh Bilingual Library, 1972, p. 186, a remark obviously intended as direct criticism of this “paradox.” 4 Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part 2, Chapter 3.; I employ here Yang Jiang’s translation of the novel. 5 The earliest written reference to this saying that I have come across is in Tang Chunsheng’s 湯春生, “A Collection of Vulgar Poems of Hangzhou” (“Ji Hangzhou suyu shi” 集杭州俗語詩), in Literary Games (Wenzhang youxi 文章游戲), 2nd Ed., juan 1, compiled by Miao Gen 繆艮 and published in the 21st year of the Jiaqing reign period (1816); Cf. Also Tang Gao’s 湯誥 “Vulgar Couplets of Hangzhou” (“Hangzhou suyu jidui” 杭州俗語集對), juan 8 of the same work. This “proverb” was certainly not restricted to the Hangzhou region, for I remember hearing it used in Wuxi and Suzhou when I was young. 6 Hegel, G.W.F., Phänomenologie des Geistes, J. Hoffmeister, ed., p. 28; also, Wissenschaft der Logik, Reclams Universalbibliothek, Vol. 1, p. 21. Cf. also G.C. Lichtenburg, Aphorismen, Essays, Briefe, K. Batt, ed., p. 75, where he argues that we are capable of holding two different beliefs about the same thing, these beliefs being very different in nature: a received belief that stems from our ignorance (noch glauben), and a renewed belief that has undergone some considerable thought (wieder glauben). The clearest discussion of the phenomenon is provided by J.H. Newman in his analysis of the concepts of “notional assent” and “real assent,” for which, see his The Grammar of Assent, Burns, Oates & Co., pp. 74–75, where he discusses these concepts. The following passage from the “Dialogues with Lü Dalin and Lü Dongjian” (“Lü Yushu Dongjian er xiansheng yu” 呂與叔東見二先生語), Henan Chengshi yishu 河南程氏遺書, 82 on reading laokoon to say that in terms of its theoretical insight, the simple proverb is in no way inferior to Diderot’s essay. Whilst reading Lessing’s Laokoon, I have been struck by thoughts of a similar kind to those I have expressed above.

Two

The distinctions between the relative functions of painting or the plastic arts on the one hand and poetry or the literary arts on the other, as discussed by Lessing in Laokoon, have already become critical commonplaces. His central point—that painting is more suitable for the expression of “bodies” (Körper) or forms whereas poetry is more suitable for the expression of “actions” (Handlungen) or situations7—had also been touched upon by the ancients in China. Lu Ji 陸機 (261–303) of the Jin dynasty established a distinction between the “Reds and Blues” (dan qing 丹青) (i.e. painting) and the “Elegances and Hymns” (ya song 雅頌) (i.e. poetry), saying: “For making things (wu 物) known nothing is greater than words, but for preserving the forms (xing 形) of things nothing is better than painting. (as cited in Zhang Yanyuan 張彥遠 (ca. 847), “On the Origins of Painting” (“Xu hua zhi yuanliu” 敘畫之源流), Famous Painters Through the Ages (Lidai minghua ji 歷代名畫記), juan 1).8 The word “things” as used here is a synonym for “matters” (shi 事). This is a usage found also in a line from Lu Ji’s Prose-poem on Literature (Wen fu 文賦) that goes: “Although this thing (writing) depends upon oneself,” to which, Li Shan 李善 provides the following gloss to the copy of Lu Ji’s prose- poem contained in the Selections of Refined Literature (Wen xuan 文選): “ ‘Things’ here means ‘matters.’ ” Shao Yong 邵雍 (1011–1077), of the Northern Song dynasty, pursued the matter in somewhat greater detail in two of his poems:

The historian’s brush is good at recording matters, The painter’s brush at depicting things.

juan 2 (shang 上) discusses precisely this difference: “True knowledge (zhen zhi 真知) and provisional knowledge (chang zhi 嘗知) differ. I once saw a peasant who had been injured by a tiger . . . That a tiger can injure people is something that is known to even the youngest child, but this does not constitute true knowledge. True knowledge is only of a kind with that of this peasant.” 7 Lessing, G.E., Laokoon, XVI, P. Rilla, ed., Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 5, p. 115; also XV, p. 114. 8 Neither the Essential Works of Lu Li (Lushi yaolan 陸氏要覽) compiled by Ma Guohan 馬國翰, nor Yan Kejun 嚴可均, comp., Quan Jin wen 全晉文 include this section. On Reading Laokoon 83

Depicting things and recording matters, Both alike achieve singularity. (“Song on the Historian’s Paintings” [“Shi hua yin” 史畫吟])

The painter’s brush is good at depicting things, Skilled in using the reds and blues. When reds and blues enter an exquisite conception, Not one of the manifold things can hide its form. The poet’s brush is good at depicting things, Skilled at the use of sincerity. When sincerity enters beautiful lines, None of the manifold things can hide their circumstances. (“Song on the Poet’s Paintings” (“Shi hua yin” 詩畫吟), both in Yichuan jirang ji 伊川擊壤集, juan 18)

Lessing’s discussion of this problem, however, was much more thorough and profound than this. Lessing went further than simply distinguishing between “matters” or “circumstances” and “things” or “forms,” for he also drew connections between the two arts and those two basic categories of cognition—time and space. Painting and sculpture, as spatial art forms, can only express time of the most limited duration, he argued, and what is painted or sculptured can never transcend the configuration or scene of a single moment (nie mehr als einen einzigen Augenblick). Painting in particular is able to depict this scenery of a single moment from only one point of view (nur aus einem einzigen Gesichtspunkte).9 A legend that circulated during the Tang period comes readily to mind:

A guest showed Wang Wei a painting of an orchestra in the midst of performing. Wang Wei said: “They are playing the first bar of the third movement of ‘Rainbow Robe’ (‘Nishang’ 霓裳).” The guest disagreed and summoned an orchestra to play the composition. Only then did he believe what Wang Wei had said. (From the Supplement to the Official History of the Tang (Guoshi bu 國史補), as cited in the Extensive Gleanings of the Reign of Great Tranquillity (Taiping guangji 太平廣記), juan 211; the item from the Miscellaneous Sayings of Master Lu (Lushi zashuo 盧氏雜說) recording “a connoisseur of painting” (bie hua zhe 別畫者) looking at “a mural of

9 Laokoon, III, p. 28. 84 on reading laokoon

music” (bihua yinsheng 壁畫音聲), as cited in juan 214 of the same work, is almost identical with this story)

In his Dream Stream Essays (Mengxi bitan 夢溪筆談), juan 17, Shen Gua 沈括 (ca. 103–ca. 1095) of the Song dynasty refuted this apocryphal story, saying: “This story has been invented by an aficionado of the strange and unusual (haoqizhe 好奇者), for when one paints the playing of music, one is restricted to painting a single note.” From this simple sentence we can see that he was already aware that spatial art forms were limited to the scenery of only a single moment. The words “. . . one is restricted to painting a single note” (zhi neng hua yi sheng 止能畫一聲), may also help us understand a particular Tang poem. Xu Ning’s 徐凝 poem “On a Painting of the Platform from which to Watch the Fishing” (“Guan diao tai huatu” 觀釣臺畫圖) goes:

Above a single deserted river the blue haze gathers, Between the two towering banks white clouds disperse. The painter intuits the moment when the gibbon’s wail rents the silence, But to paint three cries coming out of the trees is difficult.

The “three cries” (sansheng 三聲) as used here obviously derives from either the following lines found in the Record of Jingzhou (Jingzhou ji 荊州記): “A fisherman’s song goes: ‘Of the Three Gorges of Badong, the Wu Gorge is the longest,/ Three cries of the gibbon and tears soak my gown’” (As found in the annotations to the “Dismissal from Office” (“Chumian” 黜免) chapter of the A New Account of Tales of the World [Shishuo xinyu 世說新語]), or the Record of the Scenery of Yidu (Yidu shanshui ji 宜都山水記) which gives the lines: “The traveller sang about this, saying: ‘In Badong’s three gorges the gibbon’s cry is mournful,/ Three cries of the gibbon and tears soak my jacket’” (As cited in A Categorised Collection of Literary Writing (Yiwen leiju 藝文類聚), juan 95). The meaning of Xu Ning’s poem is that although the artist may well deploy consummate skill, in the end he can never manage to paint the successive “three cries” of a gibbon, for he “. . . is restricted to painting a single note.” Xu Ning could quite possibly have written: “To paint a mournful cry coming out of the trees is difficult,” or “To paint a resounding cry coming out of the trees is difficult,” but this would have been no more than equivalent to saying that painting can only depict forms, and that it can never “depict sound.” The implications of his use here of the expression “three cries” are both profound and subtle, the “three” of his last line echoing the “a single” and “two” of the On Reading Laokoon 85 previous lines; it is precisely this circumstance that Lessing termed the ability of painting to convey only actions juxtaposed in space (nebeneinander) and not actions that succeed each other in time (nacheinander). Thus it is easy to paint the juxtaposition of “a painter” or “a single river” followed by “two banks,” but to paint the “one” and then the “two,” the “two” and then the “three” of the successive “three cries” is “difficult.” The analysis of the issue given in Laokoon makes us look again at Xu Ning’s quatrain and at Shen Gua’s comment and to see them both in a new light. Hitherto, Xu Ning has been known only for his poem “Lu Mountain Waterfall” (“Lushan pubu” 廬山瀑布); I wonder if future historians of Chinese aesthetics will rate him a mention. There is no need here to relate either the textual research or the criticism that Laokoon has inspired among Western scholars and theorists. As Lessing focuses upon the depiction of scene or objects when discussing poetry and upon the portrayal of narrative when discussing painting, I will make a similar division in the thoughts that have come to mind as I read his work.

Three

That poetry contained paintings but could not be depicted by means of a painting was a commonplace among the ancients in China. Let me give some interesting examples. Su Shi 蘇軾 (1037–1101) records Canliao 參寥 (1043–ca.1116) as saying: “[Some lines of Du Fu’s 杜甫 go:] ‘On River Chu the Wu gorge is half shrouded in mist and rain,/ On a cool mat behind a bamboo screen I sit watching the chess game.’ This couplet can be painted, but I fear it will not approach the poem. (Inscriptions and Postscripts of Su Shi (Dongpo tiba 東坡題跋), juan 3; the lines are from the second poem in Du Fu’s series entitled “Inscribed for District Magistrate Zhong’s Water Tower, Written on the First Day of the Seventh Month” [“Qiyue yiri ti Zhongmingfu shuilou” 七月一日題終明府水樓]). Chen Zhu 陳著 (jinshi 1256) states:

Of all the aspects of the flowering apricot, none is more difficult to depict than its “scattered shadows” and this aspect is especially difficult to depict when it is juxtaposed with the flowering apricot’s “hidden scent.” How could it merely be difficult? It is actually impossible! Recluse Bu (Lin Bu 林逋, 967–1028) conceived of the image in his mind, but, finding that he could not depict the scene with his hand, he described it in words. (“Colophon on Wang Wenqing’s Lyrics on Paintings of Flowering Apricots Written on Someone Else’s Behalf” (“Dai ba Wang Wenqing meihua ci” 代跋汪文卿梅畫詞), in Bentang ji 本堂集, juan 44; the reference is to 86 on reading laokoon

a couplet from Lin Bu’s poem “Young Flowering Apricots of a Mountain Garden” (“Shanyuan xiaomei” 山園小梅): “Scattered shadows trans- verse and intersect upon the limpid and shallow water,/ Hidden scent wafts and drifts beneath the moon at dusk.”)

Zhang Dai 張岱 (1597–ca. 1684) had this to say on the matter:

What is there to paint of the “dream of home” from the lines “Lifting my head I watch the bright moon,/ Lowering my head I dream of home” from Li Bo’s “Quiet Night Thoughts” (“Jingye si” 靜夜思), for instance? The lines that go “In Blue Field the white stones become exposed,/ In Jade River the red leaves are few” from Wang Wei’s poem “Mountain Path” (“Shan lu” 山路) may yet be painted; the next two lines, however, “The mountain path has seen no rain,/ It is the airy greenness that soaks my clothes,” how can these be painted? Or again, in his poem “Temple of Gathered Fragrance” (“Xiangji si” 香積寺), whereas the “sound of the spring,” the “lofty rocks,” the “colour of the sun,” and the “green pines” from the lines “The sound of the spring choking upon lofty rocks,/ The colour of the sun chilling green pines” may all be depicted, the words “choking” and “chilling” are definitely impossible to paint. Thus is a poem marvellous only when it embodies the quality of intangibility (kongling 空靈), whereas poems that can be painted tend to be but eyesores. (“To Bao Yanjie” (“Yu Bao Yanjie” 與包嚴介), Langhuan wenji 琅嬛文集, juan 3)

Worthy of note is the fact that painters themselves have been aware of this difficulty. A couplet from the fifteenth of Xi Kang’s 嵇康 (223–262) poems in the series entitled “Poems Presented to My Brother the Licentiate Gongmu as he Enters the Army” (“Xiong xiucai Gongmu rujun zengshi” 兄秀才公穆入軍贈詩) reads:

The eye escorts the homing geese. The hand sweeps over the five-stringed lute.

Speaking of these lines, the painter Gu Kaizhi 顧愷之 (ca. 345–ca. 400) was recorded as saying: “To paint ‘The hand sweeps over the five-stringed lute’ is easy, but to paint ‘The eye escorts the homing geese’ is difficult” (Item 21 of the “Skill and Art” (“Qiaoyi” 巧藝) chapter of the A New Account of Tales of the World). Dong Qichang 董其昌 (1555–1636) argued thus: On Reading Laokoon 87

The lines “The river makes the sound of a Luofu stone chime,/ The mountains resound like a Yutian (Khotan) bell” are from a poem by Li Bo; do we still need the painting-in-a-poem by Wang Wei? Even if one wished to gather stone chimes and bells in a painting, one would be unable to do so! (Rongtai ji: Bieji 容臺集別集, juan 4; the couplet is from the Monk Lingyi’s 靈一 poem “Tranquil Forest Cell” (“Jinglin jingshe” 靜林精舍); cf. also Deng Chun’s 鄧椿 comment that the “The sound of the bell certainly can not be obtained” in his discussion of the painting “Evening Bell at Misty Temple” (“Yansi wan zhong” 煙寺晚鐘) from Song Fugu’s 宋復古 Eight Scenes (Ba jing 八景), in “Wang Kexun” (王可訓), Hua ji 畫繼, juan 6)

Cheng Zhengkui 程正揆 (1604–76) records a conversation he had with Dong Qichang to this effect:

Dong Qichang was fond of reciting the following lines, “To the west of Dongting lake an autumn moon shines,/ North of the Xiaoxiang river the early geese fly,” saying of them: “One can recite these lines, but one cannot paint them.” I replied: “Certainly one could paint them, it’s just that the painting would misrepresent the poem,” to which Dong Qichang responded with a loud laugh. Was I right, or not? (“Inscriptions on Paintings.” (“Ti hua” 題畫), Qingxi yigao 青溪遺稿)

Lessing considers that a “poetic picture” (ein poetisches Gemälde) cannot be transmuted into a “material painting” (ein materielles Gemälde) because, whereas words and language can describe the development of a series of actions over time, colour and lines on the other hand can but depict the layout of a certain scene in space.10 Although this view is not mistaken, it nevertheless appears not at all thoroughgoing enough when contrasted with what the ancients in China had to say as cited above. It may also be impossible to transform into a “material painting” a “poetic picture” that describes not an evolving series of actions but rather a static scene. Lessing’s theory can only be used to explain the type of difficulty acknowledged by Gu Kaizhi in the passage previously cited. The line “The eye escorts the homing geese,” unlike a line such as “The eye sees the flying geese,” is not an instantaneous scene but rather a progressive continuous action. The words “escorts” and “homing” both express

10 Laokoon, XIV, p. 112; Cf. also XIII, p. 108. 88 on reading laokoon the sense of the birds flying on and on towards their destination, gradually drawing nearer and nearer to it, and of people following their progress through the sky, the birds gradually receding further away as the people continue to gaze at them. One of Xu Wei’s 徐渭 (1521–1593) poems seems to be an elaboration of this line “The eye escorts the homing geese”:

The startled geese avoid the netting of the skiffs, The river is not yet in its spate. I squint at them for a long while, And watch them until they enter the tips of the clouds. (“On a River Boat, an Old Man Watches a Flock of Geese Begin to Fly” (“Jiang chuan yi lao kan yan qun chu qi” 江船一老看雁群初起), Qingteng shuwu wenji 青藤書屋文集, juan 10).

The phrases “for a long while” (yishang hou 一餉後) and “watch . . . until” (kan dao 看到) clearly express the sense of progression depicted in the poem. Here certainly is revealed the issue of transition over time of the kind that Lessing discusses. “Difficult,” if not “impossible to paint” too, however, are things perceived through the other senses as well, such as smell (“fragrance” 香), touch (“soaks” 濕, “chills” 冷), hearing (“sound of choking” 聲咽, “resounding like a bell and sounding like a stone chime” 鳴鐘作磬), along with states of mind (such as “dreaming of home” 思鄉) that unlike sorrow, joy, anger and anxiety do not have obvious external manifestations. It is not, after all, simply a question of time and space. To discuss only the aspect of space for the moment, a painting must pay much attention to its structure or composition. The couplet cited by Cheng Zhengkui couples scenery that is coincident in time but unconnected in space, thus causing the two scenes to set each other off, this being an example of what in poetry and prose is called “narrative divergence” (hua fen liangtou 話分兩頭) or “painting a picture with two brushes at once” (shuang guan qixia 雙管齊下).11 Even were a painter’s tableau to inhere the grandeur of a

11 Cf. my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters, pp. 68–70, and Supplement (zengding 增訂), pp. 8–9. The language of old Chinese poetry was succinct, unlike prose and vernacular fiction which required phrases such as “At that time,” or “Precisely at this time” to make matters clear. When describing events that take place at the same time but in different places, Western novels too occasionally leave out such explanations, an example being that part of Flaubert’s L’Éducation sentimentale where he has three of his characters On Reading Laokoon 89 panorama of a thousand li upon a one-chi long scroll, thus facilitating the awe- some appearance on silk of both the “moon to the west of the lake” (湖西月) and the “geese to the north of the river” (江北鴻), the two scenes would simply be juxtaposed upon a flat surface and would “misrepresent” the intricate relationship of disjunction and conjunction expressed by the poem. Within the two lines of poetry cited by Canliao, nature’s changeful scene is secondary (bin 賓) while the restful human activities taking place within the little cottage are primary (zhu 主), for the poet writes not “playing a chess game” but rather “watching the chess game,” the word “watching” here forming the “eye” (yan 眼) of the line, and the third person observer being even more the primary aspect of that which is primary.12 If the scene described in this poem were to be depicted in a painting it would be all too easy for changeful nature to overshadow the restful little cottage, or for the restful little cottage to transcend changeful nature. Even if the primary and the secondary aspects were to throw each other into appropriate relief, the position of the person “watching the chess game,” that of accentuated observer, “could not be painted.” Nature poetry does not comprehend merely various discrete and recogni- sable bodies but contains also enveloping, atmospheric scenes such as, for example, the “airy greenness” (空翠) that “soaks my clothes” (濕人衣), or the “colour of the sun” (日色) that “chills the green pines” (冷青松), these too being extremely “difficult to paint.” And quite apart from the atmospheres of material things, there exist also emotional atmospheres. Edmund Burke, that precursor to Lessing, had argued that it was the unique ability of the literary arts

weeping simultaneously but in two different places, using just the word “also” to make matters clear (“tous deux sanglotaient . . . Mme Dambreuse aussi pleurait”), L’Éducation sentimentale, II.i ii, Conard ed., p. 585; phrases of the type given above (such as “à cette heure-là;” “pendant ce temps-là;” “la même après- midi;” “au même moment;” “au moment même où”) however are nonetheless very often used (Madame Bovary, III. x, Conard ed., p. 469; L’Éducation sentimentale, II. iii, Conard ed., pp. 264–5; ibid., II. v, p. 356; Sodome et Gomorrhe, II. ii, A la recherche du temps perdu, La Pléiade ed., II, p. 739). 12 Yan Ruoqu 閻若璩 (1636–1704), in his Qianqiu zhaji 潛丘札記, juan 2, argues that “prose writing” embodies “four primary and secondary aspects”(si bin zhu 四賓主), these being: “the primary aspect of that which is primary”(zhu zhong zhu 主中主), “The secondary aspect of that which is primary”(zhu zhong bin 主中賓), “the primary aspect of that which is secondary”(bin zhong zhu 賓中主) and “the secondary aspect of that which is secondary”(bin zhong bin 賓中賓). Cf. also Wu Qiao 吳喬, Weilu shihua 圍爐詩話, juan 2, where he employs the “methodology of the four primary and secondary aspects of ancient prose” (guwen si bin zhu fa 古文四賓主法) to discuss Gao Shi’s 高適 “Ballad of the Swallow” (“Yan ge xing” 燕歌行). 90 on reading laokoon to introduce into the description of concrete things a few words of abstract or general reference, thus producing an all-embracing and forceful atmospheric effect. He gives as an example Milton’s description of the dark and wretched hills, valleys, lakes, bogs and so on of hell that, taken together, form “a universe of death.”13 This is a facility that is quite beyond the plastic arts. In actuality of course, scenery that “cannot be painted” need not be as vast, as fluid, nor as complicated as that in the examples I have cited above, nor need it be accompanied by fragrance or sound. Poetry can frequently achieve effects that painting has no means of matching even when describing a static and simple body. The colours applied within a poem, or contrasts established between light and shade, may cause the painter to rue the poverty of his pal- ette, while the sketched outlines or lifelike forms of a poem may cause the plastic artist to regret the jadedness and limitations of his chisel or his brush. This is not to deny of course that both painting and sculpture are themselves capable of achieving unique effects that the literary arts have no means of approximating. Wang Zhong 汪中 (1745–1794) in his “An Explication of the Numerals Three and Nine” (“Shi san jiu” 釋三九), found in the inner section juan 1 of his An Account of Learning (Shu xue 述學), argues that when reading poetry and prose we must make the distinction between “real numerals” (shishu 實數) and “nominal numerals” (xushu 虛數). We can extend the compass of this important rhetorical method beyond numerals to include colour words, for instance. When poets describe material objects they frequently describe them as if they were of two or three colours, either harmoniously complementing each other or in conflict with each other thus stimulating the mind’s eye of the reader; when we examine such lines more closely, however, we discover that they are not in fact so colourful, for some of the colours they contain are false. In poetry and prose, colour words too can be separated into “real” and “nominal,” for diction is somewhat like the art of warfare, requiring the use of false feints as well as true ambushes. There is a couplet of Su Shi’s that goes: “In viridian waves dance and swirl the red paddy, / The white clouds pierce the cyan-blue Linglong Mountains” (“Ascending the Linglong Mountains” (“Deng Linglong shan” 登玲瓏山), Feng Yingliu 馮應榴, comp., Su Shi hezhu 蘇詩合注, juan 10). The “whiteness” of the clouds, the “cyan-blue” of the mountains, and the “viridian” green of the paddy waves are all real colours; the “red paddy” is a type of rice that derives its name from the colour of its un-husked grains (cf. the line from the first poem

13 Burke, E., A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Part 5, Section 7, J.T. Boulton, ed., pp. 174–5. On Reading Laokoon 91 in Du Fu’s (712–770) series entitled “From My Thatched Cottage I Oversee the Rice Harvest” (“Maotang jian jiao shou dao” 茅堂檢校收稻): “Fresh reds one has all day,/ The jade grains are not what I lack,” or again, the line from his poem “After Staying Temporarily in White Emperor City I Return Again to the Eastern Farm (“Zan zhu Baidicheng fu huan dong tun” 暫住白帝城復還東屯): “Un-husked, the grains are red”). When the “viridian waves” of the paddy fields ripple, there is not yet a trace of the “grains being red!” The “red” here, therefore, is a nominal colour, with no substance in reality. Su Shi wrote another celebrated line that made use of both “red” and “viridian”: “From one flower of bewitching red the viridian about to flow” (“Rhyming with Shugu’s ‘Winter Peony’ ” (“He Shugu dongri mudan” 和述古冬日牡丹), Su Shi hezhu, juan 11). As Su Shi has said that the flower is “red,” does not his saying that the flower is also “viridian” make this poem similar to that old and much cited nonsense poem that goes: “A tree of yellow plum each resplendent green,/ The thunder roars, the rain pours, a sky full of stars./ Three monks sit in a square,/ Soundlessly and without a word they chant the sutras aloud” (Duoduofu 咄咄夫, Zengbu Yixihua 增補一夕話, juan 6)? In fact, of course, “viridian” (cui 翠) as used here does not really refer to the colour green, but “rather to its radiant beauty, not its colour” (乃鮮明貌非色也) (cf. Feng Yingliu’s annotations to this poem; cf. also Wang Yinglin 王應麟, Kunxue jiwen 困學紀聞, juan 18). The line contains only the one true colour of red. To the extent that “viridian” as used here retains its reference to colour, we can see that it is intended to create an effect but to be devoid of its substantive meaning. Far from contradicting or counteracting the real colour “red,” it actually sets it off and serves to make it more eye-catching. In the line from Du Fu’s poem “Returning in the Evening” (“Mu gui” 暮歸) which goes: “In frost yellowed cyan-blue paulownia trees a white crane nests,” the leaves of the “cyan-blue paulownia trees” have been “yellowed” by the severe frost (cf. the gloss given the line “Green maple leaves reddened by the frost that rained from heaven” from the poem “Annotations Sent to Censor Han” (“Ji Han jianyi zhu” 寄韓諫議注), and as we envision the scene, the “cyan-blueness” appears neither as real as the “yellow” nor the “white.” Yuan Zhen’s 元稹 (779–831) poem “Presented to Attendant Censor Wang Shiju Whilst Living in Idleness at the Kaiyuan Monastery” (“Kaiyuan Guanxianju chou Wang Shiju shiyu” 開元觀閒居酬吳士矩侍御) gives the lines: “With (red) sincerity I entreat the hoary-headed crane, / My dark hair serves as my black silk token.” The “red” here is a nominal colour, whereas the “hoary- headed,” “dark,” and “black” are real colours. Chang Dang’s 暢當 poem “Inscribed for Shen Bazhai” (“Ti Shen Bazhai” 題沈八齋) contains the lines: “Upon green gauze lute the Prelude to White 92 on reading laokoon

Snow is played, / Within black lined columns the Yellow Courtyard Canon inscribed.” The “green gauze lute” (綠綺琴) is an allusion to Sima Xiangru 司馬相如, and the colours “green” and “white” and “yellow” in this couplet are all nominal colours. Only the “black” of the lines on the scroll is a real colour. Wei Zhuang’s 韋莊 (836–910) poem “Meeting the Licentiate Xue on the Frontier and Talking about the Past” (“Bianshang feng Xue xiucai huajiu” 邊上逢薛秀才話舊) contains the lines: “There were also crimson lips singing White Snow, / I cherish even more the red sleeves grasping the golden gob- let.” The colour “white” here is a nominal colour, while the “crimson,” “red,” and “golden” are real colours. Lines from Bo Juyi’s 白居易 (792–846) poem “On Jiujiang’s Northern Bank I Encounter a Storm” (“Jiujiang beian yu fengyu” 九江北岸遇風雨): “In Yellow Plum County the yellow plum rain, / Within white crested waves a white crested Chinese bulbul.” The first line contains nominal colours whilst the colours in the second line are real. Another of Bo Juyi’s poems, “The Crape-myrtle” (“Ziweihua” 紫薇花), has the lines: “Alone at dusk I stand, who my companion, / A purple crape-myrtle faces the lad of the Palace of Purple Tenuity.” Here the “purple” of the flower is real, whilst the “purple” of the lad is nominal. The ability to cause the real and the nominal aspects of the same colour to set each other off, or, occasionally, to go one step further than this and to create a complex illusion of the contradiction between two colours, seems to be uniquely that of the literary arts, unattainable by the plastic arts. Think for a moment of a painter who has taken as his subject matter Su Shi’s poem “Rhyming with Shugu’s ‘Winter Peony.’” All he could paint would be a red peony or a peony that was drip- ping with fresh redness, for a flower that was both red and “viridian” would be beyond him. Even if he could paint such a scene, it ought not be painted in the manner of the poem for the “viridian” of the poem is certainly not a colour word in the same category as the colour red. The nominal colours found in poetry are not purely abstract for they serve the function of complementing the real colours. Try for a moment to substitute for the phrase “viridian about to flow” its synonym “brightness (can 粲) about to flow”—the line would become prosaic and insipid, dull and quite without “colour.” Western poetry and prose too has shown itself capable of a very similar technique. The English word “purple,” for example, when used occasionally in keeping with its Latin root-meaning (purpureus), indicates not a particular colour but rather bright-hued, brilliant,14 in exactly the same way that “viridian” as discussed above refers “rather to its radiant appearance, not its colour.” That major eighteenth century nature poet James Thomson gives us

14 Oxford English Dictionary (O.E.D.), “Purple,” A. 3. On Reading Laokoon 93 the following line: “One white-empurpled shower of mingled blossoms;”15 the colour “white” here is a real colour while “empurpled” is a nominal colour. Goethe’s famous lines go: “Gray are all theories,/ And bluish-green alone Life’s golden tree” (Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum). The first line of that well- known short poem by the contemporary American poet Robert Frost, “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” goes: “Nature’s first green is gold.”16 How can “golden” be also “bluish-green” or “green?” Here the word “golden” is used in precisely the way it is used in the expressions “golden age” or “golden mien,” and means precious or magnificent,17 bearing only “emotional value” (Gefühlswert) and not “impressionistic value” (Anschaungswert).18 In other words, “golden” is a nominal colour, while “bluish-green” is a real colour. If we changed the lines to read “The falling blossoms as a shower of white crystals,” or “And waxy green alone Life’s precious tree” they too would become insipid and colourless. Whilst the literary arts can create false contradictions between colours, they can also reconcile the actual contradiction between darkness and light, thus producing entirely novel scenes. Instances of this are the lines: “Two suns appear together,/ Black light covers the sky” from the “Warnings” (“Zhenjie” 箴戒) chapter of the sixth century work Master of the Golden Pavilion (Jinlouzi 金樓子), pian 2, and the lines from Feng Mingqi’s 馮明期 poem “Autumn Thoughts on Hutuo River” (“Hutuo qiuxing” 滹沱秋興): “Sweeping back- wards the black clouds hide the ancient forest,/ Upon the vast desert the sinking sun as bright as black lacquer” (Deng Hanyi 鄧漢儀, Shiguan 詩觀, Third Collection, juan 1); or Li He’s 李賀 (790–816) lines from his poem “Walking in South Mountain Fields” (“Nanshan tianzhong xing” 南山田中行): “The lacquer-black light of ghostly lamps illuminates the pinetree seeds,” and

15 James Thomson, The Seasons, “Spring,” Lines 109–110, The Complete Poetical Works of James Thomson, Oxford University Press, p. 7. 16 Faust, Part I, Scene IV, Lines 2038–9; Robert Frost, Collected Poems, (Halcyon House, 1939), p. 272. 17 The expression “golden” has been a cliché for female beauty ever since ancient Greek times, cf. the annotations given Dio Chrysostom’s Discourses, VII and XIX, Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 1, p. 61 and Vol. 2, p. 283. For example, the praise of a beautiful woman couched in the following terms: “. . . from her black eyes and from her golden face” (Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Everyman’s Library, Vol. III, p. 85) by a Westerner, where one colour is a real one, the other being nominal; “golden” means precisely “radiant beauty,” and indicates a face glowing with liveliness, “not its colour.” Chapter 7 of the novel On the Tang (Shuo Tang 說唐) contains the line: “Your esteemed mien is as sallow as gold,” but this Chinese hero and the Western beauty described above certainly do not have similar complexions. 18 Erdmann, K.O., Die Bedeutung des Wortes, 3rd Edition, pp. 215–217. 94 on reading laokoon the lines from Xu Lan’s 徐蘭 poem “Will-o’-the wisp” (“Lin huo” 磷火): “This fire is blacker than lacquer,/ As it waits in ambush amid mountain col, sizzling” (Shen Deqian 沈德潛, Guochao shi biecai 國朝詩別裁, juan 25).19 This type of description too is to be found within Western poetry. Accepting for the moment the scope prescribed by Lessing, let us look at a line or two of nature poetry, ignoring metaphors of the type such as “a deep but daz- zling darkness” so often found used in religious poetry.20 Lessing singled out Milton’s Paradise Lost for especial praise because he considered that it contained “poetic paintings.” In the notes for Laokoon he illustrates his point by citing a number of lines and passages from this poem. All these lines nar- rate progressive continuous actions that would be impossible for a “material painting” to depict.21 But Milton’s work contains as well a number of passages descriptive of states or conditions that “material paintings” would similarly find it impossible to depict, a fact that Lessing appears to have overlooked. The ghastly flames of hell, for instance, have “No light, but rather darkness visible,” and when the demons open fire on heaven, what is emitted is a shaft of “black fire.”22 It is very difficult for the plastic arts to depict a light that is in itself dark or a darkness that is in itself light. The “black sun” found in Chinese poetry also makes an appearance in the poetry of Victor Hugo: “A fearful black sun radiates forth the night” (Un affreux soleil d’où rayonne la nuit).23 When Valéry argues that expressions which are “impossible à penser” and “un non-sens” may nonetheless be excellent poems with “un résonance magnifique,” he illustrates his point with this line from Hugo.24 In fact a great painter once attempted to depict this black sun. However much the black sun of Albrecht Dürer’s celebrated painting Melencolia may

19 Cf. my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters, pp. 782–84. 20 Cf. my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters, p. 464. 21 Laokoon, XIV, p. 111; also “Anhang” (Appendix), pp. 270, 298–9, and 308–10. 22 Paradise Lost, Book 1, Line 63; Book 2, Line 67, The Poetical Works of John Milton, Oxford University Press, pp. 183 and 203. The titles of Milton’s poems, as with the titles of the famous works by Ariosto and Tasso, Orlando Furioso and Gerusalemme Liberata respectively, make use of Latin syntax; they should be understood correctly to mean “The Loss of Paradise” (rather than “The Lost Paradise”), “The Madness of Roland” (rather than “Roland’s Madness”), and “The Liberation of Jerusalem” (rather than “Liberated Jerusalem”). Cf. G. Highet, The Classical Tradition, p. 160. 23 Hugo, V., Les Contemplations, Book 6, Poem 26, Œuvre Poetique de Victor Hugo, Ollendorff, p. 421. 24 Valéry, Littérature, see Œuvres, Bibliothèque de La Pléiade, Vol. 2, p. 557. On Reading Laokoon 95 have won Hugo’s admiration,25 our own final assessment must be that it is not as soul stirring as the lines from Hugo’s poem. One can even make the audacious claim that if we had not already known beforehand what it was that Dürer had painted, we would have been unable to perceive that it was a black sun. Dürer’s failure, however, was certainly not an accidental one. Things such as the “black sun”, or “This fire is blacker than lacquer,” and so on are simultaneously both light and dark, and can only establish and maintain themselves as at once both pitch black and bright as day by means of the literary arts. Even the most ordinary metaphor can be more than enough to present painting with severe difficulties, and metaphors are precisely the distinguishing characteristic of literary language. In the notes to his work, Lessing mentions in passing painting’s inability to employ metaphor and its consequent inferiority to poetry.26 He does not pursue the matter in any detail however. When we say, for example, that “He is really like a lion” or “She is simply a fresh blossom,” the unspoken premises are: “He is not completely like a lion” and “She is not actually a fresh blossom.” If he really was one hundred per cent “like” a lion, or she genuinely “was” a fresh blossom, far from constituting metaphors, both these sentences would be little more than exercises in evidential zoological or botanical classification, and would seem flat and insipid. Gong Feng 鞏豐, a minor poet of the Southern Song dynasty, wrote a poem with a very long title: “Behind Yuyang Ridge, I hear the sound of rain fill the mountains. I listen carefully, and as the wind passes through the withered leaves upon the ridge, they brush against each other and make a sound, this sound being rhythmically spaced, producing a music so pure as to be inde- scribable. Evening rain upon the sail is nothing to marvel at” (“Yuyangling bei wen yusheng manshan. Xi ting, lingshang gao ye feng guo zhi, xiang jiaji er cheng yin, hou xian shu shu zhong jie, qing jue nan zhuang. Penglong ye yu, wei zu wei qi” 芋洋嶺背聞雨聲滿山細聽嶺上槁葉風過之相戞擊而成音後先疏數中節清絕難狀蓬籠夜雨未足為奇). It goes:

A single leaf begins to sing of its own accord, A myriad leaves compete to tease each other. Soon I can no longer hear the wind, Listening only to the soughing rain.

25 Plate 56 in the copy I have at hand, Ivan Fenyó, A Collection of Dürer’s Paintings; for Hugo’s praise of this painting, see “Hamlet,” in his William Shakespeare, Section 2, Chapter 2, Ollendorff, p. 130. 26 Laokoon, “Anhang,” p. 298. 96 on reading laokoon

If it were rain there would be nothing to marvel at, But resembling rain it brings me joy...... (Jianghu houji 江湖後集, juan 1, found in the Duhuazhai 讀畫齋 reprinted edition of the Nan Song qunxian xiaoji 南宋群賢小集, Vol. 33)

To “be” would be “nothing to marvel at,” whereas only by “resembling” does it “bring joy;” the lines present a succinct statement of both the actual nature and the emotional value of metaphor. By “resembling” but not “being,” or by not “being” but “resembling,” metaphors embody the principle of being both opposite and complementary. The things compared must have aspects in common, otherwise there would be no way of establishing an identity between them; they must also embody aspects of dissimilarity for otherwise there would be no way of differentiating between them. If there is absolutely no identity between the two things, they cannot be compared; if they are indivisible, however, then there is no need to compare them. Thus when the Buddhist sutras speak of “metaphors” (fenyu 分喻), the things compared are merely differentiated into the two categories of those that “differ greatly” (duofen 多喻) and those the “differ slightly” (shaofen 少分) (see the item on “Avadana” (parables, metaphors, stories, etc.), in the Fanyi mingyi ji 翻譯名義集, chapter 53, and also both the second of the four Tathagata Chapters of the Maha-parinirana Sutra and the third of the eleven Simhanada Bodhisattva Chapters). The more and greater these aspects of dissimilarity, the more sharply set off are those aspects of similarity; the greater the difference between two things, the more unexpected is their conjoining, and the more novel the resulting metaphor. As ancient Latin rhetoric had long argued, the greater the difference between the things compared (longius), the more novel and unexpected the effect of the metaphor (novitatis atque inexspectata magis).27 The ancients in China too evinced an understanding of the dialectical relationships implicit in metaphors. In the “Effective Persuasion” (“Shan shui” 善說) section of his Garden of Discourses (Shuo yuan 說苑), Liu Xiang 劉向 (80 B.C.–8 B.C.) records Master Hui Shi’s discussion of “analogy” (pi 譬) wherein he claims that to say “A dan 彈 (pellet) is like a dan 彈 in shape” would be to leave the matter “as yet unexplained.” Huangfu Shi 皇甫湜 (ca. 777– ca. 835), working on the basis of the import of a sentence that occurs in Hui Shi’s conversation mentioned above to the effect that “How can you explain

27 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, Part 8, Chapter 3, Section 74, The Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 3, p. 252. On Reading Laokoon 97 the nature of a dan by means of the word dan?”, adduces some general principles of metaphor: on the one hand “What is being explained must be of a different category,” while on the other, “What it is being compared to must be of the same kind” (“Second Letter in Reply to Mr Li” (“Da Li sheng dier shu” 答李生第二書), and “Third Letter in Reply to Mr Li” (“Da Li sheng disan shu” 答李生第三書), in Huangfu chizheng ji 皇甫持正集, juan, 4). Yang Jingzhi’s 楊敬之 (fl. ca. 820) “Prose-poem on Mount Hua” (“Huashan fu” 華山賦) contains the following lines:

From top to bottom, A thousand kinds and ten thousand types. Seemingly the same but actually dissimilar, Seemingly dissimilar but actually the same. (Quan Tang wen 全唐文, juan 721)

The lines may well serve as an elucidation of Huangfu Shi’s two lines. “Seemingly the same but actually dissimilar,/ Seemingly dissimilar but actually the same;” “If it were rain there would be nothing to marvel at,/ But resembling rain it brings me joy.” These few short lines from a piece of Tang dynasty prose and a Song dynasty poem sum up completely both the form and the attraction of metaphor. Metaphor, which is the making of the poet, may prove the undoing of the philosopher—serving merely as imprecise and unreliable analogy. The “Canons” (“Jing” 經) (xia 下) section of the Book of Master Mo (Mozi 墨子), a work that is much concerned with formal logic, states: “Different kinds are not comparable. Explained by: measuring” (yilei bu pi, shuo zai liang 異類不吡; the pi 吡 here is interchangeable with the word bi 比, to compare), while the “Canons Explained” (“Jing shuo” 經說) (xia 下) gives some examples as evidence of this: “Which is longer, a piece of wood or the night? Which do we have more of, wisdom or grain?” Whereas logic determines that “different kinds are not comparable,” both common speech as well as literary rhetoric, conversely, consider that “what is being explained must be of a different category.” Do not the popular idioms speak of: “Peck-measure men” or “One whose talents are enough to fill eight dou?” Master Mo, like all theorists both major and minor, frequently finds himself unable to accept the theoretical constraints that he has himself established. In the very first section of his book, for instance, a section entitled Honouring the Worthy” (“Qin shi” 親士), he pays scant regard to the principle he has so painstakingly identified, going so far as to “compare” “wisdom” and “grains,” the character of a man and the holding capacity of a vessel: 98 on reading laokoon

This is why the rivers and streams do not despise the little brooklets that flow into them, for it is through these that they grow large. And the sage does not neglect any menial task, nor does he reject any trifle, for thus he becomes the vessel of the universe.

The length of a piece of wood is a matter of space, while the length of the night pertains to the category of time, and so one cannot “compare” them; to do so would be to “measure” “different kinds.” Yet do not those marvellous lines from Yan Jidao’s 晏幾道 (ca. 1030–ca. 1106) poem “Qing shang yuan” 清商怨: “You wish to ask the length of my longing,/ The ends of the earth themself seem too short,” or again from his “Azure Peony” (“Bi mudan” 碧牡丹): “Silently I think of the ends of the earth,/ Compared to my love they seem too short,” seek to compare the length in time of endless “longing” or “love” and the distance in space of the boundless “ends of the earth?” Do not also the lines from a poem by a Ming dynasty poet that go: “The Prince of E’s embroidered coverlet is chill and without fragrance,/ The river itself is not as long as the remaining night” (Liu Ji 劉基, “River Song” (“Jiangshang qu” 江山曲) , Liechao shiji zhuan 列朝詩集, First Collection (jia ji 甲集), First Section (qian bian 前編), juan 1), or those from a lyric verse of the Qing dynasty that go: “People say a distant journey is to the ends of the earth,/ The ends of the earth are yet shorter than the remaining watches of the night” (Xu Erxuan 徐爾鉉, “Ballad of Treading the Nutgrass Flatsedge” (“Tasuo xing” 踏莎行), Quan Qing ci chao 全清詞鈔, juan 3), make even more straightforward use of the same yardstick to “measure” the “different kinds” of space and time?28 And does not that French idiom maintain that a tall and thin statue “is as long as a day without bread” (Ilest long comme un jour sans pain et maigre comme carême-prenant)? We can see from these examples that in rhetorical terms at least, it is permissible for “wisdom” and “grain” to be compared in terms of “amount” and for “a piece of wood” and “the night” to be compared in terms of “length.” Because of this, metaphors have been considered “errors of sound reasoning” (Figura è un errore fatto con ragione),29 or “fallacies of the contradiction between words (eine contradictio in adjecto) in terms of logical thought, thus providing us with the best proof of the inappropriateness of judging the arts in terms of Logic (das die Logik nicht Richterin der Kunst ist).”30 Is it not also simple testimony to the inability of painting to reproduce literary effects?

28 Cf. my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters, p. 175, and Supplement, pp. 19–20. 29 The expression is Menzini’s, see G. Leopardi, ed., La Crestomazia italiana, Biblioteca Classica Hoepliana, p. 89. 30 Grillparzer, F., Tagebücher, in E. Rollet and A. Sauer, eds., Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 7, p. 359. On Reading Laokoon 99

The plastic arts find it extremely difficult to depict scenes of the type that are “Seemingly the same but actually dissimilar,/ Seemingly dissimilar but actually the same.” Some lines from a lyric verse by a poet of the Song dynasty go: “In the stream stands a row of mountains, / When gathered at rest one sees a camel’s back” (Li Mixun 李彌遜, “Die lian hua: Xinqing” 蝶戀花·新晴). Two lines from a poem by a Jin dynasty poet go: “Tumultuous waves like a herd of racing stallions, / A barren mountain lies like a sick camel” (Lines taken from Yuan Haowen’s 元好問 (1190–1257) short biography of Zhang Ji 張輯, Zhongzhou ji 中州集, juan 9). Some lines from a modern poet go: “The ancient road stretches out like a snake, / The withered poplar as bare as a fist. / The evening mountain like a burdened camel, / Lying at rest besides the sinking sun” (Xu Chengyao 許承堯, “Occasional Poems Written on the Way from Lanzhou to the Capital” (“Lanzhou fu jingshi tuzhong zashi” 蘭州赴京師途中雜詩), found in his Yihan shi 疑厂詩, juan ding). To compare mountain peaks with a camel—camels have flesh peaks, what Du Fu described as “the peak of a purple camel”—may well be regarded as a most appropriate metaphor and one which is established by means of portraying one thing in terms of another. Furthermore, what is being described is a static condition— a “sitting” camel, or a “lying” camel, is certainly not an “action” that is “progressive and continuing.” The problem is this—how to depict in a “material painting” a mountain that is seemingly a camel? Would the mountain peaks be painted in such a manner that they resembled a camel? Or once the mountain peaks had been painted, would dotted lines then be used to outline the shape of a camel along the outer contours of the mountains? Perhaps a small camel could be painted standing besides a large mountain, thus allowing viewers to perceive the similarities between the two by means of the comparison established? Or would one imitate the method of the famous caricature “Les Poires” and have the mountain gradually transform itself through a series of linked paintings until it finally turned into a camel in the last painting?31 None of these could be considered a landscape painting. They would be little more than satiric or comic paintings playfully rendered, for it is the usual method of the comic to “make completely equivalent things that are only a half or a quarter similar”(Die Komik verwandle Halbe-und Viertelsähnlichkeit in Gleichheiten).32 In precisely this manner a number of “Modernist” paintings

31 This is a famous nineteenth-century French caricature, comprising four frames. The first frame is a portrait of the King, Louis Philippe, and gradually through the sequence of the second and third frames, his face takes on the features of a pear, until finally in the fourth frame he has become a pear with leaves. Cf. E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, pp. 290–91. 32 Lipps, T., Komik und Humor, p. 27. 100 on reading laokoon have depicted a bicycle as a bull’s head, its handle bars serving as its horns, or the face of a movie star as a room, her lips the sofa, and her nose the chimney.33 Yuan Kai’s 袁凱 “Inscribed on Wang Shuming’s Painting of a Cloudy Mountain” (“Wang Shuming hua Yunshan tu” 王叔明畫雲山圖), found in his Haisou shiji 海叟詩集, juan 2, contains the lines: “Great its effect when initially just a chaos of rocks,/ Linked peaks of burdened camels, horses and cattle at rest.” Poems inscribed on paintings are perfectly able to make use of metaphor to describe the scene depicted. If the paintings they are inscribed upon actually attempt to depict such scenes in the manner of their inscriptions, however, they can be considered not so much Paintings of Cloudy Mountains but at best Paintings of Livestock! This truth was discussed long ago by Diderot. He argued that whereas a poem can describe someone as having been pierced by Cupid’s arrow, a painting can only depict Cupid drawing his bow and aiming his arrow at that person. The expression “to be pierced by Cupid’s arrow” as employed in a poem is simply a metaphor. If one were really to paint such a scene, then, to all appearances, the person in the painting would be suffering from a grievous bodily wound (ce n’est plus un homme percé d’un métaphore, mais un homme percé d’un trait réel quon aperçoit).34 Hawthorne, too, relates a number of absurdities that result when one attempts “to make literal pictures of figurative expressions.”35 Whilst reading a number of ancient Chinese books quite unrelated to the arts, I have chanced upon similar views. Hong Gua 洪适 (1117–1184), “Explanation of the Images Depicted in the Wuliang Ancestral Temple” (“Wuliangci huax- iang shi” 武梁祠畫像釋), An Explanation of the Clerical Script (Li shi 隸釋), juan 16, contains the following passage:

Comments such as those of the Genealogical Records of Kings and Emperors (Diwang shiji 帝王世紀) which claim that the worthies of high antiquity had “Oxen heads and snake bodies” are to be compared to what Confucius in his forty-nine manifestations called “tortoise spines and tiger paws,” or the “rhinoceros form” or “crane form” spoken of by contemporaries who discuss physiognomy. When vulgar scholars paint, they depict such people as really having such abnormal shapes. Fuxi, as

33 Cf. M. Praz, Bellezza e Bizzaria, p. 104. A line from Cui Yai’s 崔涯 poem “Teasing Li Duanduan]” (“Chao Li Duanduan” 嘲李端端) contains the line: “A nose like a chimney, ears like a frying pan,” and if one where to depict this line in a painting, perhaps Li Duanduan and the movie star of the Western painting mentioned in the text would have a sisterly resemblance. 34 Diderot, D., Salon de 1761, in Œuvres complètes, Vol. 10, pp. 111–112. 35 Nathaniel Hawthorne, American Notebooks, R. Stewart, ed., p. 107. On Reading Laokoon 101

depicted in this stele, is given a snake’s body from his waist down, and this also is incorrect.

In his “Preface to Chen Zaitang’s Examination Essays of Haitianlou” (“Chen Zaitang Haitianlou shiyi xu” 陳再唐海天樓時藝序), Ni Wenzhen gong wenji 倪文貞公文集, juan 7, Ni Yuanlu 倪元璐 (1594–1644) argued that:

Portrait painters esteem above all the ability to express the majestic mountainous and riverine air of their subjects, their dragon-and- phoenix-like carriage, without at the same time losing the actual form of their cheekbones, face, mouth and eyes; if a painter were to take as models for his subject’s mouth and eyes real mountains and rivers, however, or if he were to add a profusion of feathers or scales to the face, then it would not be [a portrait] of a human any more!

Wang Yuezhen’s 汪曰楨 Elegancies of the Lake (Hu ya 湖雅), juan 6, contains the following story:

Being plagued at the time by mosquitoes, I came up with these two lines, written in imitation of the Classic of the Mountains and Seas (Shanhai jing 山海經): “With the body of an insect and a long beak, wings of a bird but the paws of a leopard.” . . . If one were to attempt to paint this, its body would be that of a large pupa, it would have a long beak, from its back would stretch two bird’s wings, whilst from its belly would extend four leopard’s paws, thus taking the form of neither insect, nor beast, nor bird. Who would then be able to recognise it as a mosquito!

A popular eighteenth century English novel derides “the ridiculous consequences which . . . might arise from thus realising the metaphors” when a painter obstinately attempts to give them realistic depiction. The novel provides several examples of such consequences. One such example is that of a painter who tried to depict the famous metaphor used in the Book of Matthew in the New Testament when discussing the hypocrisy of judging others more severely than one judges oneself: “And why beholdest then the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” The painter drew the following painting: one man with a long beam stick- ing out of his eye is stretching out his hand and endeavouring to pull a little straw out of another man’s eye.36

36 Richard Graves, The Spiritual Quixote, Vol. 2, Book 6, Peter Davis, Vol. 2, p. 16. 102 on reading laokoon

To put the matter in a word or two, even a simple dialectic poetic metaphor is beyond the power of a painting to depict; or perhaps one should say, “Certainly one could paint it, it’s just that it the painting would misrepresent the poem.”

Four

The type of painting discussed in Laokoon is essentially that of the history or narrative painting (l’istoria). At that time, the history painting was commonly recognised as the highest form of painting, just as the epic was universally regarded as the highest genre of literature. In his Della Pitura, that representative figure of the Renaissance, Leone Battista Alberti, praised the history painting as “the greatest, most highly developed” (grandissima, summa) type of painting. This predilection persisted throughout the nineteenth century. A single painting can only depict a single scene from a narrative. Because of this, Lessing considered that a painter ought to choose that “moment” (Augenblick) of a complete “action” that was most evocative and which gave freest play to the imagination. He must certainly never paint the “climactic” scene of the story. Once the climax had been reached, the story had proceeded to its ultimate stage and could no longer be “productive” (fruchtbar). Furthermore, that “moment” selected by the painter could be likened to a “pregnant” (prag- nant) woman, containing within her at once both all the repercussions of the past as well as the seeds of the future.37 Here we find Leibniz’s famous saying, “The present is big with the future and laden with the past” (Le présent est gros de l’avenir et chargé du passé),” employed with reference to literary or artistic matter.38 Speaking in abstract terms, one could argue that no single moment in time is not heavily laden with the past, whilst also bearing within itself an embryo of the future. In actual human experience, however, each single moment in time inheres a different value and significance. Its burden may be heavy or light, one may be either unable to cast it aside or unwilling to allow it to pass, whilst the embryos of the future may be either as yet undeveloped or just about to manifest themselves in a manner exactly as one expected or

37 Laokoon, III, p. 28; XVI, pp. 115–116; and XIX, p. 140. 38 Leibniz, G.W., “Preface,” Nouveaux Essais sur l’Entendement, in C.J. Gerhardt, ed., Die philosophischen Schriften von G.W. Leibniz, Vol. 5, p. 48. To employ the terminology of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, every moment of “time as it appears to consciousness” (innere Zeitbewusstsein) is a dialectical state that both “retains” (Retention) the past and “elongates” (Protention) the future. On Reading Laokoon 103 totally unexpectedly. The artist must choose the scene of the most appropriate moment in accordance with what is required. In his discussion of the plastic arts, Hegel repeatedly cites with approval Winckelmann, whom Lessing had been so critical of, whilst he gives Lessing himself only passing consideration, not even mentioning his name when he treats with the Laocoön statue.39 Implicitly, however, he had adopted Lessing’s viewpoint. Hegel too claimed that painting could not be compared to poetry for it was unable to depict the full unfolding of a situation or event, but could merely seize upon a single “moment” (Augenblick). For this reason, the single moment thus chosen was by necessity a scene in which were united at the one point in time both that which preceded and that which was to follow (in welchem das Vorgehende und Nachfolgende in einen Punkt zusammengedrängt ist). If, for instance, one were to depict a battle, one would have to depict that moment when although victory was already assured one side, the fighting was still heated (das Gefecht ist noch sichtbar, zugleich aber die Entscheidung bereits gewiss).40 This concept of the most richly pregnant moment was a very useful one,41 and latter day aestheticians were generally quite prepared to accept it. In actual fact, they sought to furnish it with a psychological explanation.42 Neither was the concept restricted to historical painting alone, for an English poet, when discussing portrait painting, went so far as to claim that the appearance of the subject should be “pregnant with many expressions but delivered of one.”43 The ancients in China too understood that one should choose neither the climax nor the final scene when painting a narrative scene. Huang Tingjian’s 黃庭堅 (1045–1105) “Inscription to Li Gonglin’s Painting of General Guo Ziyi of Yan” (“Timo Yan Guo Shangfu tu” 題摹燕郭尚父圖), in Yuzhang Huang xiansheng wenji 豫章黃先生文集, juan 27, records the following conversation:

Some time ago Li Gonglin did a painting for me of Li Guang (the Han dynasty general, who escaped capture by) snatching a horse from a Hun and galloping southward while clasping the Hun. He had the Hun’s bow and was shown pointing it fully drawn at the horseman chasing

39 Hegel, G.W.F., Aesthetik, Aufbau, pp. 703 and 705. 40 Aesthetik, p. 777; cf. also p. 869. 41 For example, Schiller’s letter to Goethe dated 2nd October, 1797, discusses the “pregnant” (prägnant) “moments” (Moment) of the plots of plays, found in the VEB 3 volume edition of Schillers Werke, Vol. 2, p. 255. 42 For example, J. Volkelt, System der Aesthetik, Vol. 1, pp. 146–147. 43 Sir Henry Taylor, Autobiography, Vol. 2, p. 249. 104 on reading laokoon

him. When you followed the path that the arrow would take if released, you saw that both the pursuing men and their horses were the target. With a smile, Li Gonglin said to me: “If an ordinary artisan had done this painting, he would certainly have made the arrow actually strike the pursuing horseman.” From this comment I gained a deep understanding of the character of painting (huage 畫格).

It appears then that men of the Tang dynasty had long “understood” (wu 悟) this aspect of the “character of painting.” Lou Yue 樓鈅 (1137–1213) in his “Colophon to A Painting of Prince Qin Hunting Alone” (“Ba Qin wang du lie tu” 跋秦王獨獵圖), Gongkui ji 攻媿集, juan 74, has this to say:

This painting is entitled Emperor Wen of the Tang Hunting Alone (Tang Wenhuang du lie tu 唐文皇獨獵圖), and is by the hand of the Younger General Li (Li Zhaodao) . . . Three horses and a boar, all running at break- neck speed; a bow about to be fully drawn, an arrowhead pointed directly at the boar. How was it that neither Huang Tingjian nor Li Gonglin saw this painting?

For further evidence of Li Gonglin’s deep understanding of the heavily pregnant moment, one need only read a Song dynasty description of another of his paintings, the Painting of Better than Being Idle (Xianyi tu 賢已圖). Yue Ke 岳珂 (1183–1243), in his Tingshi 桯史, juan 2, describes it thus:

The painting depicted five or six gamblers, the throw were all in the pan, five of them stood at six, whilst one continued to spin on; leaning over the pan, one of the gamblers was shouting furiously, whilst the bystand- ers stood erect, alarm on their faces.44

Here “throw” (tou 投) means “dice” (tou 骰), while the title is taken from Book XVII of the Analects: “Are there gamesters and chess players? To be one of these is better than being idle.” The method of the avoidance of the “climax,” thus forcing viewers to guess at the outcome of the action depicted, is embodied here by the one as yet undecided die and the gambler leaning over the pan shouting madly.

44 Cf. Wu Jianren 吳趼人 (1867–1910) Bizarre Happenings Eyewitnesses over Two Decades (Ershi nian mudu zhi guai xianzhuang 二十年目睹之怪現狀), Chapter Forty-five, for a vernacular adaptation of this scene. On Reading Laokoon 105

We can be sure of the outcome of the scene depicted in A Painting of Prince Qin Hunting Alone, but not that of the scene depicted in the Painting of Better than Being Idle. Both paintings alike halt suddenly before the deci- sive moment, whilst at the same time the scenes they depict extend on into the future and the paintings leave latitude for the “productive” play of the imagination. Obviously, neither Li Zhaodao 李昭道 (d. ca. 730) nor Li Gonglin 李公麟 (ca. 1040–1106) could have known of Lessing or Hegel, just as the early nineteenth century English wood-engraver Thomas Bewick had not necessarily read or heard of the theories of either of either of them. And yet Bewick too was adept at “telling a story by suggestive detail, foreshadowing a tragedy”—in a word, he too chose “moments” that allowed latitude for the productive play of the imagination. The General History of Quadrupeds contains the following illustration: in a meadow stands a nurse snuggling up to a young fellow; the small child in her care, hardly able to stand, is tugging furiously at the tail of a colt; the colt, with back-turned head and evil eye, has raised a back hoof; the child’s mother, terror on her face, rushes out of the cottage door, “but she can hardly be in time.”45 If this small picture, three inches by two, had been shown to either Lessing or Hegel, it would doubtless have earned their approbation. This “character of painting” is often found embodied in later historical or narrative paintings, for example J.E. Millais’s famous painting The Black Brunswicker which draws its subject matter from the Battle of Waterloo. I do not know whether it has become a convention of the plastic arts however. What interests me is the fact that it may possibly, in fact has already, become an effective method within the literary arts. Narrative within both poetry and prose develops continuously, and is adroit at describing an entire “action,” from beginning to end exactly as it happened, unlike painting which is limited to the depiction of a single scene of juxtaposed objects. Occasionally however, perversely, the narrative breaks off in medias res, the story ending or the curtain falling just the moment before the climax. The audience is thus forced to come to their own conclusions about how it was to end. In other words, this principle of the “heavily pregnant moment” can find full application within the literary arts as well. To accept for the present the limits established by Lessing, I shall give several familiar examples from narrative literature, ignoring the “reticence” so often observed in lyric poetry. Lessing had praised Dante’s poetic description of starvation in the “Inferno.”46 In the entire Divina Commedia there are two lines of poetry that have long

45 Andrew Lang, The Library, Chapter Four, pp. 142–143. This chapter, exclusively about book illustrations, was written by Austin Dobson. 46 Laokoon, XXV, p. 186. 106 on reading laokoon been recognised as representative of Dante’s style, illustrative of his ability to be at once both concise and profound, to “obtain the greatest possible effects by the simplest possible means (ottenere il maggiore effetto possibile coi minori mezzi possibili).”47 The first of these lines is the one cited by Lessing in the section mentioned above, while the other line is even more famous, being the last line from Francesca’s reminiscence of the course of her love for Paolo. She describes how gradually their love for each other developed as they read a tale together. When they reached that part in the tale where a character brings the man and woman together, she says: “That day we read no more (Quel giorne piu non vi leggemmo avante).”48 Francesca too breaks off her tale at this point; or to be more precise, Dante himself does not continue his tale. At the moment just before the two character’s love for each other reaches climactic expression, he cuts off the narrative flow, the inevitable conclusion of the scene being left inexplicit, “What the pen does not write of, the spirit has already possessed.” In essence, this method accords exactly with the example of warfare that Hegel used, as mentioned above, for in both cases whilst the trend of events has rendered the outcomes inevitable, these outcomes are not actually described, circumstances having reached a point of maturation, change is about to occur. Thus the term “heavily pregnant moment” refers not just to such pictorial scenes as when the arrow is aimed, “the bow fully drawn but not yet released,” for it is also an appropriate description of the scene in Dante’s poem where the characters can no longer restrain themselves and they find that they can read on no longer. The technique can be observed in all types of narrative literature, as in Chekhov’s short stories for instance. Chekhov employed a technique of finishing his tales without having to be explicit, this being his avoidance of a climax by bringing his story to an end before the events told of have reached their conclusion. By doing so he forced readers to imagine what follows or how things end in accordance with the circumstances that he has described. We can take as an example of this the frequently anthologised story “The Lady with the Dog.” In this story, a middle-aged man and a younger woman become acquainted and feel that for the first time they are experiencing the sweetness of love. Unfortunately, he has a wife and son and they can only meet in secret, never really being able to enjoy themselves as they would wish. Feeling aggrieved about this, the woman bursts into tears. Aware that things could not continue on in this manner, the man decides that they must come up with an

47 Giusti, G., “Di due versi dell’Inferno,” in Prose e Poesie scelte, Biblioteca Classica Hoepliana, p. 109. 48 “Inferno,” Canto 5, Line 138. On Reading Laokoon 107 appropriate solution to their problems. They discussed the matter carefully: “And it seemed as though in a little while the solution would be found, and then a new and splendid life would begin; and it was clear to both of them that they had still a long, long way to go, and that the most complicated and difficult part of it was only just beginning.”49 Is this a clue to the climax of the affair? It is nevertheless the very end of the story. The scene here of two lovers making secret plans is precisely one that may be called a “heavily pregnant moment.” As to exactly what “solution” they “found,” readers can only conjecture on the basis of what they know of the characters in the story and their circumstances, for the author wastes no more ink. In all the ancient Chinese literary criticism that I have seen, it is apparently Jin Shengtan 金聖嘆 (1610?–1661) who pays most attention to this narrative method in his commentaries. In Item 16 of his “How to Read the Romance of the Western Chamber” (“Du fa” 讀法), Guanhuatang di liu caizi shu 貫華堂第六才子書, juan 2, he had this to say:

The most marvellous aspect of writing is when although all attention may be riveted upon a certain matter, the author does not write of this matter directly, but rather sets off towards it from a point far distant to it, approaching the matter in a roundabout way, and halting just before he broaches it. In this manner, he changes his tract several times, each time setting off towards the matter from a point far distant to it, approaching it in a roundabout manner, and when he halts before broaching it, he writes no more of the matter upon which all attention is riveted, thus forcing people to envisage it for themselves, beyond the words of his text. The Romance of the Western Chamber (Xixiang ji 西廂記) employs this technique exclusively, as do the Zuo Commentary (Zuo zhuan 左傳) and the Records of the Grand Historian (Shi ji 史記).

In juan 8 of his edition of the play, Jin Shengtan comments:

I do not know who the author of this Sequel to the Romance of the Western Chamber (Xu Xixiang ji 續西廂記) in four acts was . . . There was once a crazy scholar who wrote an inscription for a Painting of the Upper Half of a Beauty (Banshen meiren tu 半身美人圖) the last sentence of which reads: “The most marvellous part is not conveyed.” This is not only shameless and demeaning, but I think also that he did not understand what he meant by this sentence, for what is meant by the most

49 Constance Garnett, trans., Select Tales of Tchehov, p. 26. 108 on reading laokoon

marvellous part not being conveyed is in fact to say that it is only the most marvellous part which is conveyed . . . Therefore, one can say that the enormous amount of ink expended here is solely for the purposes of this most marvellous part; only when one has already reached the most marvellous part does one’s brush halt. For this reason, those places where the brush halts are precisely the places that I am most pleased about. Given that this is so, when latter generations wish to discover the places that I was most pleased about, they must light upon those places where my brush halts. These four successive acts before us today appear intent upon actually conveying only the most marvellous part . . . and because of this reason they portray only half of the beauty.50

His commentary alerts us to the fact that “heavily pregnant moments” are not only appropriately used at the conclusion of short stories, but may also be used as narrative linking within full-length novels. The formula employed by the traditional Chinese chapter-divided novel (zhanghui xiaoshuo 章回小說), whereby at the end of each chapter readers are enjoined that “If you wish to know what happened next, then you must listen to the next chapter,” is designed to maintain the interest of the reader in the story being told and to prevent their attention wandering. There were a variety of methods for fulfilling the requirements of this formula, only one of which I will discuss here. In Chapter Seven of the novel The Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan 水滸傳), Lin Chong is banished to a distant province to serve in the army. Whilst being escorted to his place of exile, he suffers numerous hardships at the hands of his guards. When they reach Wild Boar Forest, one of his guards, Bully Xue, ties him to a tree, raises his official staff and swings it fiercely at Lin Chong’s head. The chapter concludes, “Did Lin Chong live or die? Read our next chapter if you would know.” This conforms very well with the logic of the “heavily pregnant moment,” the scene in Wild Boar Forest constituting a superb narrative painting: one person bound to a tree, another about to strike him with a staff, the other guard cheering

50 The “crazy scholar” mentioned by Jin Shengtan here is probably Tang Yin 唐寅 (1470– 1523). The Liuru jushi ji 六如居士集, compiled by Tang Zhongmian 唐仲冕, juan 3, contains two seven-syllable quatrains entitled “Inscription on a Painting of the Upper Half a Beauty” (“Ti Banshen meiren tu” 題半身美人圖) which give the following lines: “The parts that most excite people’s emotion are not depicted,” and “When it got to the romantic part it left off.” Cf. the marginal commentary to Miss Wu’s poem inscribed upon a fan depicting half a beauty in Act 19 of Li Yu’s 李漁 (1611–1680) play Nothing You Can Do About Your Fate (Naihe tian 奈何天) which reads: “This can be arrayed with Tang Yin poems but is even better;” cf. also the “Portrait of the Upper Half of the Beauty Xi Shi” (“Xizi banshen xiang” 西子半身像), in Li Yu’s Yi jia yan 一家言, juan 7. On Reading Laokoon 109 him on from the side-lines, whilst from behind the trees in the background, a gigantic monk bursts upon the scene brandishing an iron staff. A number of “Embroidered” (xiuxiang 繡像) editions of The Water Margin are in fact illustrated in precisely this manner. Such illustrations derive from the same artistic impulse as the painting entitled A Painting of Prince Qin Hunting Alone or the illustrations found in the General History of Quadrupeds, for they all alike depict that moment of incipient crisis that precedes the climax of events, “approaching the matter but halting just before broaching it,” “only when one has already reached the most marvellous part does one’s brush halt.” Novelists of the Qing dynasty used the cliché “If you wish to know what happened next, you must listen to the next chapter” quite self-consciously and to great artistic effect. Chapter 5 of The Gallant Maid (Ernü yingxiong zhuan 兒女英雄傳), for instance, ends with the following lines: “Did Young Master An live or die? Read our next chapter if you would know;” Chapter 6 begins: “. . . Don’t worry, the one who fell over was not Young Master An at all . . . it was the monk. If it was the monk who fell over, why not come straight to the point and simply say that the monk fell over, thus finishing with the matter— what need is there to indulge in such verbosity? This is in fact merely a bit of storyteller’s hullabaloo (guzao 鼓噪).” The “General Critiques” (zongping 總評) attached to Chapters 5, 106, 125, 129 and 139 of the A Rustic’s Idle Talk (Yesou puyan 野叟曝言) speak of “unexpected chapter-end build-ups” (huimo douqi qibo 回末陡起奇波), which “enhance the narrative tension (shi 勢) of the whole but which also sow the seeds for the next chapter,” and which are “the cure-all that restores life to all verbose and stereotyped writers” (leizhui daibanjia qisi huisheng danyao 累墜呆板家起死回生丹藥). “The heavily pregnant moment” is precisely the opportune time for a “chapter-end build- up” or “storyteller’s hullabaloo.” Zhang Xuecheng 章學誠 (1738–1801), in his “Shi pian bielu liyi” 史篇別錄例議, Wenshi tongyi 文史通義,“Wai pian” 外篇, juan 1, had this to say of the practice:

Popular novels and vulgar tales invariably end their chapters with the following phrase: “If you wish to know what happened next, then you must listen to the next chapter.” This formula is truly beneath the contempt of educated men, and if we investigate its origins can we not say that it stems from the phrase “This matter is discussed in such-and-such a section?”

The argument presented by this historian is a superficial one. The phrase “This matter is discussed in such-and-such a section” is used when one 110 on reading laokoon wishes to give passing reference to a matter without going on to discuss it fully, whilst at the same time announcing that the matter has either been discussed in detail previously, or will occur later. An example of this can be found in the “The Hereditary House of the Marquis of Liu” (“Liu hou shijia” 留侯世家) section of the Records of the Grand Historian: “. . . the matter was resolved once he had seen Xiang Yu, and a full account can be found in the account of Xiang Yu,” the cross-reference being to the “The Basic Annals of Xiang Yu” (“Xiang Yu benji” 項羽本紀), forty-seven juan earlier; or again, in the “Biographies of Yuan Ang and Chao Cuo” (“Yuan Ang Chao Cuo liezhuan” 袁盎晁錯列傳) of the same work: “. . . the armies of the state of Wu would thereupon halt, and a fuller account of this can be found in the section on the King of Wu,” the cross-reference here being to “The Biography of Pi, the King of Wu” (“Wu wang Pi liezhuan” 吳王濞列傳) found five juan later. The phrase “If you wish to know what happened next, then you must listen to the next chapter,” on the other hand, can be used under three differing circumstances: firstly, where the narration of a certain event has come to an end, and the author is preparing to immediately follow this with another event; sec- ondly, where the narration of an event is just about to reach its denouement but is suddenly not completed, as if its tail had been cut off; or thirdly, where a certain event has just been introduced but suddenly the narrative does not seek to develop it straight away, as if the event had been cut off at the neck. An example of this first type of circumstance is Chapter 3 of the The Water Margin, where the Abbot tells Sagacious Lu Da to quit the monastery and “seek refuge elsewhere,” presenting him with a “four-line gatha.” The chapter ends: “What exactly did Abbot True say to Sagacious Lu? Listen to the next chapter if you would know.” The scene in Wild Boar Forest discussed above is an example of the second type of circumstance, whilst Chapter 2 of the same novel illustrates the third circumstance. At the end of this chapter, Lu Da stands in the crowd listening to a proclamation being read out when suddenly someone throws his arms around him from behind, cries “Brother Zhang!”, and pulls him away from the street corner: “Who, after all, was the person who grabbed Lu Da? Listen to the next chapter if you would know.” Both the second and the third type of circumstance create “cliff hanger” situations, whereas the first type merely provides narrative bridging. In the phrase “This matter is discussed in such-and-such a section,” the “such-and-such section” indicated may be some considerable length away so there is no question of either cliff hanging or bridging; the sentence serves merely to make clear the argument or to promise something for the future, exactly akin to saying: “This will be discussed another day,” or “This has already been discussed.” It can be compared with Kipling’s line “but that is another story.” The phrases “You must listen to On Reading Laokoon 111 the next chapter” and “This matter is discussed in such-and-such a section” are not at all similar and ought not be placed within the same category. The use of such techniques for “Chapter-end build-ups” are certainly not restricted to the full-length Chinese novel alone, and Western literary researchers should pay it some attention. George Sand, for instance, is full of praise for both Dumas père and Eugene Sue and their ability to inject sudden twists into the concluding paragraphs of each chapter, thus causing readers to be on tenterhooks, anxious to know how events are going to work out (l’art de finir un chapitre sur une péripétie intéressante, qui devait tenir le lecteur en haleine, dans l’attente de la curiosité ou de l’inquiétude).51 In his own novel, Alfred de Vigny ridicules the authors of ordinary stories for “springing surprises and making hearers await the end of the story (faire des surprises et faire attendre la fin d’une histoire).”52 In a work on the theory of the novel, the nineteenth century German dramatist Otto Ludwig provides an exhaustive analysis of the means for injecting tension into one’s novel. One method he isolates is that of the arousal of the “tension of curiosity (die Spannung der Neugierde)” which causes readers to ask themselves questions such as “What happened? Who did it befall? How did it turn out? (Was geschiet? Wen betrifft es? Wie ist er?).”53 It would appear that the method had long been employed in the popular chantefables (cantastorie) of the Renaissance, as well as in long narrative poems, and had extended its use moreover to plays. M.M. Boiardo, for example, in a long poem that embodies the demonic quality of both the Journey to the West (Xiyou ji 西遊記) and the Investiture of the Gods (Feng shen bang 封神榜), concludes almost every canto with phrases such as “If you wish to know of something interesting or miraculous, then listen to the next canto I beg you (Però un bel fatto potreti sentire,/ Se l’altro canto tornareti a odire; Nell’altro canto ve avero contato,/ Se sia concesso dal Segnor supreme,/ Gran meraviglia e piu strana venture/ Ch’odisti mai per voce, or per scrittura).” He was so enamoured of the technique that an editor of his work once exclaimed: “This canto too is not finished without an interruption! (Ed ecco un altro canto

51 Cited from J. Pommier, Questions de Critique et d’Histoire littéraire, p. 88. 52 Alfred de Vigny, Servititude et grandeur militaires, Book 2, Chapter 10, in his Œuvres com- plètes, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Vol. 2, p. 591. 53 Otto Ludwig, Die Romanstudien, A. Stern, ed., Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 6, p. 104. The contemporary German literary critic W. Iser discusses the “cutting technique” (Schnittechnik) employed by the nineteenth-century serially published full-length novel to create suspense (Spannung, Suspens-Elbekt), thus causing readers to wish to know “What happens next” (Wie Wird es Weitergehan?); see, R. Warning, ReZeptionsasthelik, 2nd ed. (1979), pp. 236–7. 112 on reading laokoon che si interrompe col fiato sospeso!).”54 In the eloquent and free-flowing long poem by the later and very much superior Ariosto, cantos always end at crucial junctures, often with phrases such as: “I’ll tell you later on, my lord, the cause,/ But now the time has come to make a pause;” or “I’ll tell you later on what then ensued,/ Till later then, if you will be so good (Poi vi diro, signor, che ne fu causa,/ ch’avro fatto al cantar debita pausa; Ma differisco un’altra volta a dire/ quel che segui, se mi vorrete undire).”55 Corneille argued that in five-act plays, the curtain falls of the first four acts must serve to cause the audience to be impatient to know what is to happen next (il est nécessaire que chaque acte laisse une attente de quelque chose qui doive se faire dans celui qui le suit).56 The nineteenth century English novelist Charles Reade gave latter day novelists a clear-cut three sentence injunction to guide them in the practice of their craft: “Make’em laugh; make’em cry; make’em wait”—the “them” here being a reference to the readers, and the implication of the word “wait,” being precisely “the arousal of the tension of curiosity.” The phrase: “If you wish to know what happened next, then you must listen to the next chapter” too implies just this. The method is akin to that described by the line from the Mencius (孟子) that goes: “He is full of eagerness when he has drawn his bow but not let fly the arrow” or a line from one of Han Yu’s 韓愈 poems: “He circles round his horse, draws his bow but is reluctant to shoot.” Popular entertainment genres such as storytelling (shuoshu 說書) and the various forms of narration accompanied by singing, either with or without musical instruments, that are known as pingtan 評彈, had long used such methods, what in the countryside around Wuxi and Suzhou is called “Selling suspense” (mai guanzi 賣關子). In Chapter 50 of The Water Margin, when Bai Xiuying “has reached a moment of crisis (wutou 務頭) in her song,” Bai Yuqiao “interrupts her (anhe 按喝)” and says: “My child, make the rounds . . . Walk among them, the spectators all wish to reward you!” Chapter 10 of the Complete Tales of Yue Fei (Shuo Yue quanzhuan 說岳全傳) depicts two storytellers telling “Plain Tales” (pinghua 評話) in the Xiangguo Temple, one of whom “speaks no more” when he “reaches” (shuo dao 說到) the point in his story where the Eight Tigers arrive in Youzhou, and the other of whom “halts” when he “reaches” the point in his story where Luo Cheng secures the mountain pass, both Yang Zaixing and Luo Cheng thereupon opening up their money bags and rewarding the Master storyteller

54 M.M. Boiardo, Orlando innamorato, I. 1/91, I. 2/68, I. 25/61, G. Anceschi, ed., Garzanti, Vol. 1, pp. 28, 47, and 472. 55 Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, III. 77; and XI. 83, Biblioteca Classica Hoepliana, pp. 25, and 102. 56 Corneille, Discours sur le Poème dramatique, Section 3, Œuvres Complètes, Lefevre, Vol. 12, p. 117. On Reading Laokoon 113

(xiansheng 先生) with some silver. The third poem entitled “Comedians’ Dialogues” (“Xiangsheng” 象聲) in Jiang Shiquan’s 蔣士銓 (1725–1785) series “Ballads from the Capital” (“Jingshi yuefuci” 京師樂府詞), found in his Zhongyatang shiji 忠雅堂詩集, juan 8, goes:

Make a pause when you reach the best part of your story, Fly off on a tangent just as you reach the urgent moments. Before the audience is satisfied their money will fly about, Things will become even more exciting if they have to request an ending.

All these describe the “selling of suspense.” A very minor classic of nineteenth century English fiction writes of a Persian “storyteller” who “made a pause when the catastrophe drew near,” saying: “Now, my noble hearers, open your purses.”57 When Lessing spoke of “heavily pregnant moments” he was discussing exclusively the plastic arts. Unwittingly, however, he also provided the literary arts with an extremely useful concept. The “moments of suspense,” “urgent moments,” and “crises” discussed above are precisely what Lessing and Hegel had understood as “heavily pregnant moments.”

Five

In a letter to a friend, a modern English poet adept at the realistic description of scenery discusses Lessing’s claim that pictures ought not to be painted in verse. He declared it to be “a damned lie.”58 This illustrates the truth that Lessing’s Laokoon continues to have the power to excite people, for more than a hundred years after it was written it is still able to arouse in writers a reaction of such intensity. Lessing recognised that both poetry and painting had unique aspects, but that when compared with each other the expressive sphere of poetry proved “broader.”59 If there is any truth in the two points I have made above, then one can say that the expressive sphere of poetry is even broader than Lessing imagined it to be. Perhaps of course it may not be so much a matter of the broadness of poetry, but simply a reflection of my own narrowness, my own bias and partiality for poetry.

57 Morier, J., Hajii Baba of Ispahan, Chapter 11, The World’s Classics, pp. 70–71. 58 Abbott, C.C., ed., The Correspondence of Gerald Manley Hopkins and Richard Watson Dixon, p. 61. 59 Laokoon, VI, p. 58; VIII, pp. 77 and 79. Synaesthesia 通感

There is a type of descriptive device found employed in Chinese poetry and prose that ancient critics and rhetoricians alike appear neither to have fully understood nor in fact been at all conscious of. Song Qi’s 宋祁 (998–1061) lyric verse “To the Tune ‘Jade Tower Spring’ ” (“Yulou chun” 玉樓春) contains the famous line: “Upon red apricot branch- tips, spring’s ardour clamours.” In Item 7 of his “My Partial Views on Lyric Verse” (“Kui ci guanjian” 窺詞管見), Liweng yuji 笠翁餘集, juan 8, Li Yu 李漁 (1610–1680) voices his own inimitable opinion of this line, making it the object of some considerable ridicule:

This word is especially difficult to understand. “Clamour” (nao 鬧) describes a noisy fight; although peach and flowering apricot blossoms may well “in spring contend” (zhengchun 爭春), I have honestly never before seen red apricot trees “clamouring of spring.” If the word “clamour” can be used thus, then surely the words “quarrel” (chao 炒/吵), “struggle” (dou 鬥) and “hit” (da 打) may likewise be used!

A letter written by Fang Zhongtong 方中通, a contemporary of Li Yu, entitled “To Zhang Weisi” (“Yu Zhang Weisi” 與張維四) and found in his work Xupei 續陪, juan 4, devotes itself exclusively to the rebuttal of Li Yu’s views, although it never once mentions him by name. This letter cites the line “I have honestly never before seen red apricot trees ‘clamouring of spring’ ” and those that follow, and continues by saying:

Of the couplet “The red leaves within the temple, so many as to burn one’s eyes,/ The moss upon the ground so green as to stain the horse’s hoofs,” it would be possible to say that the use of the word “burn” (shao 燒) here is crass and vulgar for, as red leaves are not alight, they cannot possibly burn one’s eyes. Yet this line of poetry contains an “eye” (yan 眼), and if it were not for this word “burn,” the line could not be held to be descriptive of the multiplicity of the redness of the leaves, just as in the same way without the word “clamour” the line under discussion could not be held to be descriptive of the extreme redness of the apricot blossoms. All poetry works to principles beyond principles (shici zhong you li wai zhi li 詩詞中有理外之理). How could such principles be akin

to those involved in the writing of examination essays (shiwen 時文) or expounded in the teaching of the Classics?

Fang Zhongtong did not go on to provide a clear explanation of such “principles,” however. Su Shi’s 蘇軾 (1037–1101) juvenilia “Observing the Stars while Travelling at Night” (“Yexing guanxing” 夜行觀星) contains the line: “The small stars clamour like gushing water.” Ji Yun 紀昀 (1724–1805) drew a thick line beside this line in his critical edition of Su Shi’s poetry, Pingdian Su shi 評點蘇詩, juan 2, and appended the annotation: “Like a shooting star.” It is a gloss which reveals his misunderstanding of this line; he had taken it to be similar in meaning to Sikong Tu’s 司空圖 (837–908) comment: “This is also like small stars, which, when they are about to fall, suddenly give off blazing rays of light and which moreover are accompanied by sound” (“Collected Accounts of the Loss of the Unicorn” (“Juelin jishu” 絕麟集述), Sikong Biaosheng wenji 司空表聖文集, juan 4). Writers of the Song dynasty (960–1279) often employed the word “clamour” to describe scenes without “sound” and we ought not consider its usage by Su Shi in the line cited above in any way remarkable. In passing, perhaps one should mention that the line cited by Fang Zhongtong comes from Wang Jian’s 王建 (ca. 767–ca. 830) poem “Impromptu Lines Written in Jiangling” (“Jiangling jishi” 江陵即事). Yan Jidao’s 晏幾道 (ca. 1030–ca. 1106) “To the Tune ‘Immortal at the River’ ” (“Lin jiang xian” 臨江仙) contains the lines:

The breeze wafts, plum buds clamour, The rain drizzles, apricot blossoms perfume the air.

Mao Pang’s 毛滂 (fl. 1086–1093) “To the Tune ‘Sand of Silk-Washing Stream’ ” (“Huan xi sha” 浣溪紗) gives the lines:

North of the river the clouds are chill, the snow like flowering apricot blossoms, South of the river flowering apricot blossoms clamour, like a thousand layers of snow.

In Ma Ziyan’s 馬子嚴 (jinshi 1175) “To the Tune ‘Master Ruan’s Return’ ” (“Ruan lang gui” 阮郎歸) we find the following lines:

All of a swirl, rouge clamours upon Su Embankment, I wish to detain the spring, but how could spring understand! 116 synaesthesia

Huang Tingjian’s 黃庭堅 (1045–1105) poetry contains the following lines:

Carts fly by, horses gallop, lamps begin to clamour, Still the earth, idle the men, the moon beautiful of its own accord. (“Following the Rhymes of Gongbing’s and Ziyou’s Poems Remembering Wang Gong on the Evening of the Sixteenth Day” [“Ciyun Gongbing, Ziyou shiliu ye yi qingxu” 次韻公秉子由十六夜憶清虛]) and:

Through my frosted window enters a diffuse blue-green light, Upon moist plinths the green moss clamours. (“Respectfully I Present a Poem in the Same Rhymes to Wang Shibi to be Sent to Mr. Qixiong” [“Fenghe Wang Shibi ji shang Qixiong xiansheng” 奉和王世弼寄上七兄先生])

Chen Yuyi’s 陳與義 (1090–1138) poem “Written on the Night of My Arrival by Boat in Huarong County” (“Zhou di Huarong xian ye fu” 舟抵華容縣夜賦), Jianzhai shiji 簡齋詩集, juan 22, contains the lines:

At the third watch the light of the fireflies clamours, The Milky Way transverses a thousand li.

Lu You’s 陸游 (1125–1210) poetry contains a number of examples of this usage:

In the market place cherry shoots clamour, The time for festival dumplings approaches. (“Ten Days of Rain at the River Estuary” (“Jiangtou shiri yu” 江頭十日雨), Jiannan shigao 劍南詩稿, juan 16)

As a light breeze arrives suddenly, bayberry flowers clamour, As the clear dew begins to dry, the medicinal herbs smell sweet. (“Written in Idleness in Early Spring” (“Chu xia xian ju jishi” 初夏閒居即事), Jiannan shigao, juan 17)

The myriad plants puff out their fragrance, butterflies clamour, A stream of swollen green, the herons at rest. (“At the Beginning of the Year after Appearing to be About to Rain on Numerous Occasions it Eventually Rains During the Evening of the 26th synaesthesia 117

Day of the First Month and the Next Day I Write This Poem Whilst Visiting My Garden” (“Kai sui lü zuo yu bu cheng, zhengyue ershiliu ri ye nai de yu, mingri you jiapu you fu” 開歲屢作雨不成正月二十六日夜乃得雨明日游家圃有賦), Jiannan shigao, juan 75)

The first poem in Fan Chengda’s 范成大 (1126–1193) series entitled “Two Days After the Beginning of Autumn I Cross Lai Stream by Boat” (“Li qiu hou er ri fan zhou yue Lai xi” 立秋後二日泛舟越來溪), Shihu shiji, juan 20, contains the lines:

As we glide along the surface of the water disappears beneath a clamour of lotus, Red water lilies intoxicating, the white lilies sweet.

Chen Qiqing 陳耆卿 (1180–1236) gives the following lines:

In dancing moonlight, shadows at the tips of willow trees, In rising breeze fragrance where hibiscus clamour. (“With Two or Three Friends I Visit Tianqing Monastery” (“Yu er san you you Tianqing guan” 與二三友游天慶觀)

At the sun’s farthest reaches, opening and shutting, the flowers clamour, Beneath the dew, in light and shadow, the shade of the willow diffuse. (“Elegy for District Magistrate Chen” (“Wan Chen zhixian” 挽陳知縣), both in Yunchuang ji 篔窗集, juan 10).

Zhao Mengjian’s 趙孟堅 (1199–1267) poem “As Kang Jiezhi Did Not Accept this Poem on Ink Flowering Apricot Blossoms and a Man Called Xu Meigu Continued to Importune Me, I Again Composed a Long Regulated Verse” (“Kang Jiezhi bu ling ci mo mei shi, you Xu Meigu zhe reng qiu, you fu chang lü” 康節之不領此墨梅詩有許梅谷者仍求又賦長律), Yizhai wenbian 彛齋文編, juan 2, contains the lines:

In clamorous parts the blossoms brush against each other suggestively, In quietness they stand back to back as if bored.

The Monk Zhongren’s 仲仁 (d.1123) “Mnemonics” (“Kou jue” 口訣), Manual on the Painting of Flowering Apricot Blossoms (Meipu 梅譜), found in the Peiwenzhai shu hua pu 佩文齋書畫譜, juan 14, gives the lines: 118 synaesthesia

Where the blossoms are clamorous be not clamorous with your brushwork, Where they stand idle, be not idle in your brushwork. Blossoms faded and fresh, each depicted according to different method, The new and the old, divided by the year.

When seen in the light of these examples, Fang Zhongtong’s explanation of the word “clamour” as being “descriptive of the extreme redness of the apricot blossoms” is not precise enough. We ought rather to say that it is “descriptive of the fulsomeness (sheng 盛) (profuseness [ fan 繁]) of the blooms.” The word “clamour” speaks of the soundless aspect of objects as if they gave off waves of sound, and seemingly we experience an auditory sensation through the sense of sight. The line from Ma Ziyan’s lyric verse “To the Tune ‘Master Ruan’s Return’” quoted above can be compared to a line from a poem by another Southern Song dynasty poet, Chen Zao 陳造 (1133–1203), a poem which is also a description of a spring visit to West Lake:

Bent on playing music and singing, the thirty-thousand fingers, On the horizon the painted barges clamant amidst the lake-side hills. (“A Spring Day in the Countryside” (“Du xia chun ri” 都下春日), Jianghu changweng wenji 江湖長翁文集, juan 18)

The word “clamant” (gua 聒) describes the “music and singing” (shengge 笙歌) and implies a cacophony of wailing and shrillness (caocao qieqie 嘈嘈切切) assailing the ear. The word “clamours” describes the rouge, in a manner akin to the phrase “loud rouge” (naozhuang 鬧妝) and describes a scene so brightly coloured that it allows the eyes no rest. Although the words “clamant” and “clamours” are synonyms, they are used in Ma Ziyan’s lyric verse and Chen Zao’s poem respectively to describe two different kinds of sensory perception. This particular usage of the word “clamour” as observed here in the lyric verse and poetry of Song Qi, Huang Tingjian and so on is found also in the common parlance of later generations. In Chapter 38 of the novel The Gallant Maid (Ernü yingxiong zhuan 兒女英雄傳) for example, a “young lass” is described as holding up in her left hand “a large and thunderously clamorous (nao hon- ghong 鬧轟轟) bunch of clematis flowers and fleur-de-lis.”. There could be no better gloss to the word “clamorous” as descriptive of “a large bunch of flowers” than the word “thunderously.” The sentence also attests to the fact that the “vernacular” (baihua 白話) remains very often the best possible aid to our understanding of “classical Chinese” (wenyan 文言). synaesthesia 119

The use in Western languages of words such as “loud,” “criard,” “chiassoso,” “chillón,” and “knall” to describe colours that are too bright or strong,1 and the labelling of dull colours as “la teinte sourde” (a muffled tint) also assist our understanding of the usage of this word “clamour” in ancient Chinese poetry. To employ the terminology of psychology or linguistics, such usages are examples of what is called “synaesthesia” or “the transference of the senses.” In our everyday experience, our visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory and gus- tatory senses may very often interpenetrate or become associated with each other, and the lines of demarcation between the respective sensory domains of the eyes, ears, tongue, nose and body become blurred. Colour can appear to embody temperature, sound embody form, heat and cold have weight and smell solidity. All such phenomena make frequent appearance in common speech. In Chinese, we say “guangliang” 光亮 (light/brilliant), meaning lumi- nous, for example, as well as “xiangliang” 響亮 (sound/brilliant), meaning loud, thus transferring the word “liang” 亮, descriptive of radiance, to sound, just as in Latin and other modern Western languages we often speak of a “vox fusca” (dark voice) or a “voce bianca” (bright voice), as if in such cases the visual and auditory senses were capable of swapping their respective properties (“Sinnesgütergemeinschaft”). Or again, the two idioms “renao” 熱鬧 (heat/ clamour) for bustle and “lengjing” 冷靜 (cold/quiet) for calmness, express the fact that “heat” and “clamour,” and “cold” and “quiet,” coalesce with each other within our sensory perception of them. Once compounds such as these are formed, poets serve to turn them on their heads, as does Fan Chengda in his lines: “Already he felt the reed-pipes and song to be lacking in warmth” (“Reluctantly I Accept the Invitation of Relatives and Neighbours, but I Return Home Immediately” (“Qinlin zhaoji, qiang wang jigui” 親鄰招集強往即歸), in Shihu shiji 石湖詩集, juan 29).2 Much earlier, Li Shangyin 李商隱 (813–858) had pointed out in the “The Power of Suggestion” (“Yixiang” 意想) section of his Zacuan 雜篡 that: “Wearing green on a winter’s day makes one feel cold; seeing red during the summer months makes one feel hot” (Shuofu 說郛, juan 5), while we still say that the colour red is “warm” (wennuan 溫暖) and green is “cold” (hanleng 寒冷). Indeed the phrases “warm reds” and “cold greens” have long been poetic clichés. Although Descartes considered that if we were without the sense of hearing we would not be able to recognise sound (la connaissance des sons) merely through the sight of colours (par la seule vue des couleurs), nevertheless he

1 Cf. C. Bousoño’s explanation of “‘Colores chillones’ es concretamente una sinestesia etc.,” in his Teoria de la expresion póetica, 6th edition (1976), Vol. 1, pp. 240–42. 2 Cf. my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters (Guan zhui bian 管錐編), pp. 1075–6. 120 synaesthesia did not deny that sound was analogous to or connected with colour within our senses (d’analogie on de rapport entre les couleurs et les sens).3 Somewhat more imaginatively, Bacon claimed that: “the quavering upon a stop in music” and “the playing of light upon water” were completely alike, being not merely “similitudes” but rather “the same footsteps of nature, treading or printing upon several subjects or matters.”4 This can be considered the philosopher’s clever explanation of synaesthesia. Of all the phenomena of synaesthesia, perhaps the earliest to attract attention was the transference of the visual and tactile senses to the auditory. In his work on psychology, Aristotle claimed that sound was to be divided into the “sharp” and the “heavy,” as “used by analogy from the sense of touch,” for the auditory and tactile senses had aspects in common.5 The “Record of Music” (“Yue ji” 樂記) section of the Record of Ritual (Li ji 禮記) contains a marvellous passage which associates the sense of hearing with that of sight:

Thus, in song, the upper notes rise as if they were borne aloft, the lower notes descend as if falling to the ground, the finale resembles the breaking of a willow tree, emphatic notes seem made by the square, quavers are like the hook of a spear, and those prolonged on the same key are like pearls strung together.

In his exegesis of this text, The Proper Meaning of the Record of Ritual (Li ji zhengyi 禮記正義), Kong Yingda 孔穎達 (574–678) provides a concise explanation of the meaning of this passage: “When sound stirs the feelings of man it causes them to imagine (xiang 想) in their minds that the shapes (xingzhuang 形狀) of the sounds are thus”. The “Great Preface” (“Xu” 序) attached to the poem “The Ospreys” (“Guan ju” 關雎) in the Book of Songs (Shi jing 詩經) states: “When sound (sheng 聲) forms a pattern (wen 文) it is called music (yin 音)”; Kong Yingda in his The Proper Meaning of the Book of Songs (Mao shi zhengyi 毛詩正義) claims that: “To cause the five sounds to form a tune (qu 曲) is like the five colours forming a pattern.” In the Zuo Commentary (Zuo zhuan 左傳), 29th year of Duke Xiang, where Ji Zha discusses music, it is said that when: “They sang for him the odes of the ‘Great Elegancies,’ he said: ‘Winding but straight in form.” To this line, Du Yu 杜預 (222–284) in his Commentary and Sub-commentary to the Zuo

3 Descartes, “Réponses aux secondes objections,” Œuvres et lettres, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, p. 372. 4 Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Book 2, Chapter 5, Everyman Library ed., p. 87. 5 De Anima, Book 2, Chapter 3, Loeb Classical Library ed., p. 115. synaesthesia 121

Commentary (Zuo zhuan zhushu 左傳注疏), added the gloss: “This is to speak of its sound.” Such examples are truly cases of “Substituting the eye for the ear!” Ma Rong’s 馬融 (79–166) “Prose-poem on the Long Flute” (“Chang di fu” 長笛賦) contains not only the kind of metaphor found in the “Record of Music” but also an even more succinct explanation of it than that given by Kong Yingda in his The Proper Meaning of the Record of Ritual:

You then hear sound as if it had form, Its shape resembling flowing water, Or in the likeness of flying geese. Overflowing the barren expanse, Vast indeed and boundless, Looking into the distance and expanding afar, Circling around and again drawing together.

The lines beginning “Overflowing . . .” serve to explain the “shape” of the “flowing water,” while the lines beginning “Looking into the distance . . .” expand upon the “likeness” to “flying geese.” In version of this poem found in the Selections of Refined Literature (Wen xuan 文選), juan 18, Li Shan 李善 anno- tates the character translated here as “looking” (man 矕) as meaning: “vision (shi 視),” Ma Rong himself having pointed out the commutation of the auditory and visual senses. The “Comparison and Stimulus” (“Bi xing” 比興) chapter of The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons (Wenxin diaolong 文心雕龍) speaks much of “comparing sound (sheng 聲) with the heart or mind (xin 心),” “comparing sonority (xiang 響) with clear-sightedness (bian 辯),” “comparing outward appearance (rong 容) with the object itself (wu 物),” and so on, using as illustrations of such phenomena examples taken moreover from Ma Rong’s “Prose-poem on the Long Flute.” Perversely however it overlooks completely the obvious example of the line “hear[ing] sound as if it had form (ting sheng lei xing 聽聲類形)” cited above, thus revealing a blind spot in Liu Xie’s 劉勰 (ca. 465–523) reading of literature. The section from the “Record of Music” about “imagining” the “shapes” of sounds is both meticulous and subtle and served to open up new vistas for later poetry and prose. There is a much recited section of Bo Juyi’s 白居易 (772–846) poem “Ballad of the Pipa” (“Pipa xing” 琵琶行) which goes:

The high notes wail (caocao 嘈嘈) like pelting rain, The low notes whisper (qieqie 切切) like soft confidences. 122 synaesthesia

Wailing and whispering interweave, Like pearls large and small cascading on a plate of jade. Like a warbling oriole gliding below the blossom, Like a mountain brook purling down a bank.

The lines are comparatively simple and unambiguous, the description given not at all as complicated as that given in the “Record of Music”. Bo Juyi has merely compared the various sounds given off by a number of different things—the sound of rain, soft confidences, pearls cascading on a plate of jade, the warbling of birds and the sound made by a mountain brook—with the “wailing” and “whispering” sound of the pipa. He certainly does not claim that the high and the low notes of the pipa “cause [one] to imagine in one’s mind” the “shapes” of such things. In a word then, he simply draws connections between various sounds, all of which are perceived through the sense of hearing, and does not transfer the sense of hearing to that of sight. The line: “In song . . . those notes prolonged on the same key are like pearls strung together” from the “Record of Music,” is equivalent to a line in Li Shangyin’s poem “Preparatory Thoughts” (“Ni yi” 擬意) that goes: “A string of pearls within the singing throat,” in that they both speak of the sound of song as if it embodied the round and smooth shape of a pearl. The two lines produce an impression that is perceived by both our visual and tactile senses. Modern Western textbooks on piano technique speak much of playing “pearl- like notes” (la note perlée, perlend spielen), and writers have even invented a neologism—“s’éperle”—to describe the voice (une voix qui s’éperle),6 or have otherwise depicted the twitter of birds in the following manner: “A flock of sky- larks let fall in the sky their pearls of blissful and limpid twittering” (Le allodole sgranavano nel cielo le perle del loro limpido gorgheggio).7 The line “Like pearls large and small cascading on a plate of jade” speaks of the clear and soft sound made when the pearls hit the jade and does not describe the “shape” of the smooth and circular motion of “pearls swirling around a plate.” This is made clear by a line that follows on closely which says that not all these high and low notes “purl” down easily for some are “difficult” and constricted—“Till the brook turns to ice, the strings seem about to snap.” The line found in another of Bo Juyi’s poems, “Drinking with Vice Director Linghu whilst Listening to Ruan Xian” (“He Linghu pushe xiao yin ting Ruan Xian” 和令狐僕射小飲聽

6 Cited from, C. Bruneau, Petite historie de la langue française, Vol. 2, p. 198. 7 The line is that of F. Perri, as cited in D. Provenzal, Dizionario delle immagini, p. 23; cf. also the lines cited on p. 138 (D’Annunzio), p. 746 (Gentucca), and p. 944 (Mazzoni, Paolieri) of the same work. synaesthesia 123

阮咸): “A cascade of pearls falling on a plate,” or Wei Yingwu’s 韋應物 (735– 835) lines from his poem “Ballad of Five Strings” (“Wu xian xing” 五弦行): “As when the ancient sword first strikes the secluded stone,/ A thousand strings of pearls snap upon cold jade,” too merely associate one auditory sensation with another by comparing two different sounds. Only the following lines from Bo Juyi’s poem “Song of the Lad Xue Yangtao Playing the Flute” (“Xiaotong Xue Yangtao chui bili ge” 小童薛陽陶吹觱篥歌), however, truly do cause one “to imagine in the mind the shapes of the sound”:

At times it is adagio as if without bone or muscle, At times staccato as if with ridges. The fast notes round and circling, hurried but unbroken, Compact and dense like pearls on a string. The slow notes drawn out, elongated but ordered, Ordered and straight like brush-strokes. The low notes fall sharply, heavy stones sinking, The high notes rise suddenly, scudding clouds.

Here are found all the “upper notes which rise as if they were borne aloft . . . lower notes which descend as if falling to the ground . . . those prolonged on the same key . . . like pearls strung together” mentioned in the “Record of Music.” Yuan Zhen’s 元稹 (779–831) poem “Prose-poem on a Good Song Being as a String of Pearls” (“Shange ru guanzhu fu” 善歌如貫珠賦), Yuanshi changqing ji 元氏長慶集, juan 27, provides a detailed elucidation of the line from the “Record of Music”:

The notes beautiful, prolonged without end, Their shapes repeated and thus forming a whole...... Intoning the various sections each separate as if disconnected, But with marvellous inflection each becomes rounded. The high and the low notes all of a type, Li Zhu himself could not tell them apart, The song and the chorus although sequential, even Shi Yi would praise it as continuous...... As if about to form an image, a tinkling of pendants in the imagination...... Clear and round, straight but not scattered, Just like the accumulated pellets one after another. 124 synaesthesia

Not at all like the confusion of a swirling rapids...... Seemingly like but not in fact so, intoning the “Heavy Dew” (“Zhan lu” 湛露) and startling the bejewelled crown, With sound but no substance, singing the “Fragrant Tree” (“Fang shu” 芳樹) and imagining a string of pearls.

By means of an association of ideas, the line “accumulated pearls on a string” had inspired Yuan Zhen to think of the line that goes: “Heavy lies the dew” from the “Minor Elegances” (“Xiao ya” 小雅) section of the Book of Songs, his train of thought being very much akin to that of Li He 李賀 (790–816) in his poem “She Steals My Heart” (“Nao gong” 惱公): “The sound of song, dew upon spring grass,/ The gate closed, a profusion of apricot blossom.” It was a cliché for a song to be like pearls or dew drops to be like pearls (for example, Tang Taizong’s 唐太宗 Preface to the Sagely Teachings (Shengjiao xu 聖教序): “Even immortal dew like bright pearls,/ Can not match its lustrous quality”; or Bo Juyi’s “A Chant of the River at Dusk” (“Mu jiang yin” 暮江吟): “It’s a pity that on this evening of the third day of the ninth month,/ Dew drops are like real pearls, the moon like a bow”). By means of transference, however, Li He managed to transform the cliché and give it renewed life. His line can be paraphrased thus: “A song is like pearls, dew drops too are like pearls, therefore a song is like dew drops.” The methods of transference shunned by logical thought processes are precisely those most often used by symbolic thought.8 Lines from Li Qi’s 李頎 (fl. ca. 742) “Listening to Dong Zhang Playing the Mandolin” (“Ting Dong Zhang tan hujia” 聽董丈彈胡笳) go:

In empty mountain the birds disperse and gather again, Over ten thousand leagues clouds both dark and clear.

8 Much earlier, the “Examining Legends” (“Cha chuan” 察傳) chapter of the Spring and Autumn Annals of Lü Buwei (Lüshi chunqiu 呂氏春秋) had claimed: “Thus, the dog resembles the ape, the ape resembles the female monkey, the female monkey resembles man, but man and the dog are very different!” Cf. the discussion of “inference” (tui 推) in the “Minor Illustrations” (“Xiao qu” 小取) section of the Book of Master Mo (Mozi 墨子), and also the “Examining Names” (“Shen ming” 審名) section of Liu Zhou’s 劉晝 Book of Master Liu (Liuzi 劉子); cf. also the discussion of “scientific syllogism” (sillogismo scientifico) and the “imaginative and emotional enthymema” (entimema immaginativo e sensitivo) of literature in the “Introduction” to A. Rostagni’s Poetica: introduzione testo e commento, 2nd ed., pp. 78–9. synaesthesia 125

This is yet another example of “imagin[ing] in the mind that the shapes [of the sounds] are thus.” The phrase “birds disperse and gather again” is very much akin to what Ma Rong’s in his “Prose-poem on the Long Flute” had described as: “Geese flying afar and then returning.” The sense of those lines from the “Record of Music” that go: “the upper notes rise as if they were borne aloft, the lower notes descend as if falling to the ground” is found expressed also in the following lines from Han Yu’s 韓愈 (768–824) poem “Listening to the Reverend Ying Play the Lute” (“Ting Ying shi tan qin” 聽穎師彈琴):

Then floating clouds and willow floss without roots, Through the vastness of Heaven and Earth, continue soaring upward...... Or climbing up—can’t go even an inch, even a mite higher, Then, strength failing, one long fall, over a thousand feet down.

But the best description of this “rising” and “falling” is from Chapter Two of the late Qing dynasty novel The Travels of Old Decrepit (Laocan youji 老殘遊記) wherein Little Jade Wang tells a drum story:

. . . Her song rose higher and louder till suddenly she drew her voice up to a sharp high-pitched note like a thread of steel wire thrown into the vault of the sky . . . Still more amazing, she continued to move her voice up and down and in and out at that great height . . . Suddenly it was like the view seen when climbing Mount Tai from the western face of the Aolai peak . . . when you have wound your way up to the top, you see Fan Peak far above you. And when you have got to the top of Fan Peak, again you see the South Gate of Heaven far above Fan Peak. The higher you climb, the more alarming it seems . . . After Little Jade had sung her three or four highest flourishes, suddenly her voice dropped . . . like a flying serpent writhing and turning among the thirty-six peaks of Yellow Mountain . . . The more she sang, the lower her voice became; the lower she sang, the more delicate it was . . . it was as though a small sound came forth from under the ground . . . Suddenly the voice rose again, like a Japanese rocket which shoots into the sky, bursting and scattering with innumerable strands of multi-coloured fire.9

9 Chapter Two of The Travels of Old Decrepit also mentions a “young man” with a “Hunan accent” who praises Little Jade Wang’s skill as a storyteller in such terms that “those sitting beside” him said: “Mr Mengxiang has put it very sensitively!” This Hunanese person was 126 synaesthesia

This marvellously written passage is nothing less than an expression of the principle of “hearing sound as if it had form.” A great many lines that embody the phenomena of synaesthesia make direct use of words or phrases we customarily use to express such expe- riences in our everyday lives. Examples of this are lines such as those from Bo Juyi’s poem “Ascending Heavenly Palace Pavilion with Director Huangfu on the Dawn of the Mid-Autumn Festival” (“He Huangfu langzhong qiu xiao tong deng Tiangongge” 和皇甫郎中秋曉同登天宮閣): “Clear and brittle the strings and pipes in autumn” (cf. the line from the “Song of the Rainbow Robe” (“Nishang yuyi ge” 霓裳羽衣): “Clear strings, brittle pipes, hands so delicate”), Jia Dao’s 賈島 (779–843) “Thoughts of a Traveller” (“Ke si” 客思): “Sharp the sound of the cricket, sharp as a needle,” or Ding Wei’s 丁謂 (962–1033) “Spring Day at a Hostel” (“Gongshe chunri” 公舍春日): “The warble of the oriole so round and smooth as to cleanse my ear.” The use in these poems of the three words “brittle” (cui 脆), “sharp” (jian 尖), and “round” (yuan 圓) to describe sound is based upon everyday usage. Chapter Four of The Gallant Maid contains the following passage: “The one who sings best is called Little Darling, her voice is truly such that it could have been thrown on to the ground and broken into three!” This is a most precise and apt characterisation of the “brittleness” of a voice. A line from Wang Wei’s 王維 (ca. 699–ca. 761) “Written Whilst Passing Green Stream” (“Guo qingxishui zuo” 過青溪水作): “The colours quiet deep within the pines,” or both Liu Changqing’s 劉長卿 (d. ca. 785) line from his poem “Ascending to a temple on Wugong Terrace on an Autumn Day and Looking out Afar” (“Qiuri deng Wugongtai shang si yuan tiao” 秋日登吳公臺上寺遠眺): “The cold chime stone fills the empty forest” and a line from Du Mu’s 杜牧 (803–852) “Prose-poem on the Apang Palace” (“Apanggong fu” 阿房宮賦): “The song platform resounds warmly” which employ “quiet” as perceived through the sense of hearing to describe the colour of deep, clear water, or “cold” and “warmly” as perceived through the sense of temperature to describe respectively the pure resonance of the chime stone and the uproar of the song platform are all close to ordinary usage. The phrase “resounds warmly” is actually little more than a classical Chinese translation of the colloquial expression for “bustle” (renao 熱鬧—hot/clamour). In their relationship with things around them, poets very often transcend ordinary sensory impressions, their experience of such things being both

Wang Yimin 王以慜 from Wuling and his “On Jinan” (“Jicheng pian” 濟城篇), Biwu shicun 檘塢詩存, juan 7, speaks of Little Jade Wang’s ability at the drum song, but it provides no description of her recitation in terms of “hear[ing] sound as if it had form.” synaesthesia 127 deeper and more acute. This virtue enables them to formulate new words and phrases. I will give some more examples of this process. Some lines from Lu Ji’s 陸機 (261–303) poem “I Imagine a Tall Tower in the North-west” (“Ni xibei you gao lou” 擬西北有高樓) go:

The beauty strokes the zither, Her delicate hands light and languid. Fragrance gathers in the breeze, The mournful sound as perfumed as an orchid.

Yu Jianwu’s 庾肩吾 (ca. 487–ca. 551) “The First Rhyme of Prose-poems Written about the Four City Gates at Night in Baguan Studio” (“Baguanzhai ye fu si chengmen diyi fu yun” 八關齋夜賦四城門第一賦韻) gives the lines:

Already departed with the sun, Again of a type with the heat of a red flower.

Wei Yingwu’s “Visiting a Cell at Kaiyuan Temple” (“You Kaiyuan jingshe” 游開元精舍) contains the lines:

The green shade born of the quiet daylight, A solitary flower manifests the lingering spring.

The twelfth poem in Meng Jiao’s 孟郊 (751–814) series “Autumn Meditations” (“Qiu huai” 秋懷) contains the lines:

Shang-toned air washes thin the sounds, Evening shadows drive the scene to tiredness.

Lines from Li He’s poem “Butterflies Flying” (“Hudie fei” 蝴蝶飛) go:

Popular catkins beat upon the curtains, the spring clouds are hot, Tortoise-shell screens, clothes that dazzle the eyes.

Or again from his poem “A Ballad of Heaven” (“Tianshang yao” 天上謠) the lines:

The Milky Way wheels round at night, drifting the circling stars, In the silver sky, the floating clouds mimic the murmur of water.

Liu Jia’s 劉駕 (b. 822) “Autumn Evening” (“Qiu xi” 秋夕) gives the lines: 128 synaesthesia

Crickets moan beneath the lamplight, The light of the lamp colder than water.

Sikong Tu 司空圖 (837–908) gives the following lines in his poem “Sent to Cui Daorong of Yongjia” (“Ji Yongjia Cui Daorong” 寄永嘉崔道融):

The early evening drums darken in harmony with the tide, The light of boat lamps make the island appear yet more secluded.

Tang Geng’s 唐庚 (1070–1120) poem “Impromptu Lines Written in My Studio” (“Shuzhai jishi” 書齋即事), Meishan wenji 眉山文集, juan 21, contains the lines:

The colour of the bamboos as green as happy conversation, The breeze among the pines as chilly as one’s thoughts.

In Yang Wanli’s 楊萬里 (1127–1206) “Again I Follow the Rhymes with Two Quatrains” (“You he er jueju” 又和二絕句), Chengzhai ji 誠齋集, juan 3, we find the lines:

The cutting light breeze not at all light, As if causing flower petals to sound red.

Or the poem “Passing Through the Path of the Single Bamboo Sea” (“Guo dan zhu yang jing” 過單竹洋徑), juan 17 of the same work:

Tall trees and slender bamboo, Gathered together form a luxuriant forest. Without breeze appear coldly emerald green, Before dusk give rise to white shade.

Wang Zhuo’s 王灼 (d. ca. 1149) “To the Tune ‘The Beauty Yu’” (“Yu meiren” 虞美人) has the lines:

The branch tips I feel to be good, layer upon layer, But in truth the flowers vie with each other. A stroke of the oar, all cares in vain, I cast the present aside and fall drunk synaesthesia 129

amidst the clamorous fragrance. (Quan Song ci 全宋詞, p. 1034; cf. also the lines from Pang Zhu’s 龐鑄 poem “Beneath the Flowers” (“Hua xia” 花下), Quan Jin shi 全金詩, juan 27, which go: “If you wish to forever dream Zhuangzi’s dream,/ Then fly off to settle where the secluded fragrance clamours.”)

Wu Qian 吳潛 (d. 1262) gives the following lines in his “To the Tune ‘Redness Fills the River’” (“Man jiang hong” 滿江紅):

Several chrysanthemum stems, How vigorous their fragrance. Several osmanthus flowers, How superior their fragrance. (Quan song ci 全宋詞, p. 2726)

Fang Yue’s 方岳 (1199–1262) “The Reflection of the Candle Light shakes Red: I Send this to Gao Neihan on the First Day of Spring” (“Zhu ying yao hong: Li chun ri jian Gao Neihan” 燭影搖紅·立春日柬高內翰) contains the lines:

From behind whose curtain does this sound of laughter come, Engraved ice and red silk, profuse green clamours. (Quan Song ci, p. 2848).

Listed under the character “Village” (cun 村) in the Yongle dadian 永樂大典, juan 3579, we find the poem “Yellow Sand Village” (“Huangsha cun” 黃沙村) from the Feng Taishi ji 馮太師集, containing the following lines:

The remaining light at one’s back, the shadow of the mountain black, The south wind accompanies the horse, the sound of the bamboos scorched.

Under the character “Tide” (chao 潮), juan 5345 of the same work, is cited Lin Dongmei’s 林東美 poem “West Lake Pavilion” (“Xihu Ting” 西湖亭), containing the lines:

Shunning mankind, the cry of secluded birds like scissors, On the opposite bank, the colours of the marvellous flowers about to blaze. 130 synaesthesia

(cf. also the lines from Yu Xin’s 庾信 (513–581) poem “Respectfully I Rhyme a Poem with Prince Zhao’s Poem ‘The Reculse’ ”(“Fenghe Zhao wang ‘Yinshi’ ” 奉和趙王隱士): “The twittering of wild birds like a concert of lutes/ The mountain flowers ablaze with flames,” or the line spoken of by Fang Zhongtong as cited previously: “The red leaves of the temple so many as to burn my eyes”; Lu Zugao’s 盧祖皋 (jinshi 1199) “To the Tune ‘Pure Serene Happiness’” (“Qing ping le” 清平樂), Quan Song ci, p. 2404, gives the lines: “Besides the willows, in the inner courtyard,/ The speech of the swallows as bright as shears”.) Ruan Dacheng’s 阮大鋮 (1587–1646) first poem in the series entitled “Zhang Zhaosu Moves to Drink in Gensui Studio” (“Zhang Zhaosu yi zhuo Gensuizhai” 張兆蘇移酌根遂宅), in Xinsi shi 辛巳集, juan shang, Yonghuaitang shi 詠懷堂詩, Outer Collection (wai ji 外集), gives the lines:

A fragrant sound noisy among the oranges and pomelo, The breath of the stars fills the profusion of mugwort.10

Li Shixiong’s 李世熊 (1602–1686) “Jian pulu faci Lin Shouyi” 劍浦陸發次林守一, Hanzhi chu ji 寒支初集, juan 1, gives the lines:

Beneath a chill moon, my dream interrupted by the white crowing of the cock, Amidst calm maples the mist aroused by the red words of the birds.

Yan Suicheng’s 嚴遂成 (b. 1694) “On the Road to Mancheng” (“Mancheng daozhong” 滿城道中), Haishan shichao 海珊詩鈔, juan 5, contains the lines:

The wind turns with the willows, the sound entirely green, Bullied by the dust, the colour of the wheat turns yellow.

Huang Jingren’s (1749–1783) poem “To the Tune ‘Drunk in the Shadow of Flowers’: A Summer Evening” (“Zui hua yin: Xiaye” 醉花陰·夏夜), Liangdangxuan quanji 兩當軒全集, juan 19 has the lines:

Beyond the bamboos the pearl curtain is rolled up, Several bright stars murmur as if whispering secrets.

(cf. the lines from the third poem in Wu Qingpeng’s 吳清鵬 (1786–ca. 1850) series entitled “Autumn Night” (“Qiuye” 秋夜), Hu’an shi 笏庵詩, juan 4:

10 Cf. my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters, pp. 1071–73. synaesthesia 131

“The Milky Way spread out as if it were flowing,/ A mass of stars gather as if they were speaking”.) Li Jian’s 黎簡 (1748–1799) poem “Travelling in Spring, I Send this to Zhengfu” (“Chun you ji Zhengfu” 春游寄正夫), Wubaisi feng caotang shichao 五百四峰草堂詩鈔, juan 18, gives the lines:

The birds scatter soft words, pellet after falling pellet, The rain wings upon the fresh breeze, chilliness floating.

(cf. Yuan Zhen’s line as previously cited: “. . . like the accumulated pellets one after another”). Thinking about the issue logically, each of the five senses has its own domain, one sense neither serving on the behalf of another nor arrogating to itself the duties of another, just as is stated in the “On the Way of the Sovereign” (“Jun dao pian” 君道篇) section of the Book of Master Xun (Xunzi 荀子) “In all human affairs, the ears, eyes, nose and mouth may not borrow each other’s function.” The “On Hardness and Whiteness” (“Jian bai lun” 堅白論) section of the Gongsun Longzi 公孫龍子 speaks of this matter in even more specific terms:

By looking at something you do not find its hardness, you only find its whiteness, without its hardness. If you touch something you find not its whiteness, but find its hardness, without its whiteness . . . The eyes are not capable of perceiving hardness, neither are the hands capable of perceiving whiteness.

In a word, then, like river water and well water, neither the sense of touch nor that of sight should encroach upon the territory of the other. In the thirty-seventh of his “Linked Pearls Expanded” (“Yan lianzhu” 演連珠), Lu Ji makes the following plain assertion: “I have heard that the eyes do not have the ability to judge sound, just as the ears do not have the spirit to reflect scenery,” Liu Jun 劉峻 in his annotations to the version of this poem included in the Selections of Refined Literature, juan 55, providing the following note: “This would be to apply them to unusual duties” (shi zhi yiwu 施之異務). Yet Lu Ji had himself written the line: “The mournful sound as perfumed as an orchid,” making it very clear that: “The nose does have the ability to judge sound, just as the eyes have the spirit to smell the breath,” such “unusual duties” thus becoming a “borrowing of the functions” ( jieguan 借官). This line illustrates also the truism that when writing poetry a person may well contradict what he has to say when making reasoned argument; after all, “All poetry 132 synaesthesia works to principles beyond principles.” Not only can sound have an odour— “mournful sound perfumed,” “sound of birds fragrant,” it can also have colour and light—“sound red,” “as green as happy conversation,” “white crowing of the cock,” “red the words of the birds,” “the sound entirely green,” “the sound of the drums darken.” Not only can “fragrance” “clamour,” it can also be “vigorous.” The drifting clouds “imitate sound” and green shade “produces quietness.” Both the colour of flowers and the sound of bamboo can embody temperature: “hot,” “about to blaze,” “scorched.” At times the twittering of birds is as sharp as a pair of shears, at other times it can be as round and smooth as “pellets.” The five senses may truly be considered to hold properties in common and to be mutually generating. In order to perceive immediately the differing manner of the depiction of scenes of a similar type, all we need do is compare the line “Engraved ice and red silk, profuse green clamours” with the line “Carrying red and dizzy azures, giving miraculous assistance to my spring feelings” (Ouyang Zhan 歐陽詹, the rhyming word noted under the title “Prose-poem on a Spring Plate” (“Chun pan fu” 春盤賦), Ouyang xiansheng wenji 歐陽先生文集, juan 1), or the lines “The small stars clamour like gushing water” and “. . . bright stars murmur as if whispering” with the line “The stars appear like scattered sand, competing with each other in size and brightness” (Lu Tong 盧仝 (ca. 795–835), “Poem on an Eclipse of the Moon” [“Yueshi shi” 月蝕詩]). One group of lines does not “apply the senses to unusual duties,” writing only of impressions contained within the domain of the sense of sight. The other set of lines “borrow each other’s functions” (xiang jieguan 相借官) and write as if the sense of sight, not content with its lot in life, transcends its own domain and lays claim to impressions perceived by means of the sense of hearing. Modern readers may perhaps regard Meng Jiao’s line “Shang-toned air washes the sounds thin” as an example of the special style of “Meng Jiao’s chillness and Jia Dao’s thinness” (Jiao han Dao shou 郊寒島瘦), the phrase is that of Su Shi; for the ancients, however, familiar as they were with both the Confucian Canon and the writings of the various philosophers, the most original usage contained in this line would have been the word “washes” (xi 洗), not the word “thin” (shou 瘦). The distinction between sounds that were fat and those that were thin was a traditional one within Confucian theories of music. The “Record of Music” section of the Record of Ritual speaks of: “Fleshy, placid and harmonious music,” with Zheng Xuan 鄭玄 (127–200) providing the annotation: “‘Fleshy’ here means fat.” Or elsewhere, it talks of: “Winding and straight, profuse and lean, modest or fleshy rhythm,” Kong Yingda’s explanation of this line being: “The word ‘lean’ here means concise . . . and ‘fleshy’ means fat and full.” The “On Music” (“Yue lun pian” 樂論篇) section of the Book of Master Xun carries a passage that is largely in keeping with this explanation. synaesthesia 133

In another section of the “Record of Music” we find it stated: “Wideness allows for treachery, narrowness gives rise to thoughts of desire,” Zheng Xuan annotating this phrase in the following manner: “‘Wideness’ here is to say that the sound is slow, and ‘narrowness’ refers to urgent sounds.” The employment here of locutions such as “wideness” and “narrowness,” “fat” and “lean,” are all examples of the extent to which the ancients were capable of “hear[ing] sound as if it had form.” Synaesthesia made a very early appearance in Western literature. Oddly enough, although Aristotle mentions synaesthesia in his De Anima, he does not discuss it at all in his Rhetorika. Many sentences employing synaesthesia usages can be found within the works of the ancient Greek poets and dramatists,11 an example being that line in Homer that has been the bane of every translator: “Like unto cicadas that in a forest sit upon a tree and pour forth their lily-like voice.”12 The Baroque poets of sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe much enjoyed employing “mixed metaphors that exchanged the perceptions of the five senses” (certi impasti di metafore nello scambio dei cinque sensi).13 The Romantic poets of the early part of the nineteenth century often used the device also, while Symbolist poets at the end of the nineteenth century made even greater and especial use of it, to the extent that one can say that they employed it over much and rather carelessly. In fact, synaesthesia was to become almost emblematic of the style of Symbolist poetry itself (der Stilzug, den wir Synaesthese nennen, und der typisch ist für den Symbolismus).14 Ezra Pound, one of the progenitors of British and American Modernism, was fully conscious of the prevalent abuse of synaesthesia, and he counselled his fellow poets against the dangers of laziness. He enjoined them to “find the exact word,” telling them further: “Don’t mess up the Perception of one sense by trying to define it in terms of another.” Yet he maintained also that

11 For details, see W.B. Stanford, Greek Metaphor, pp. 47–62. 12 The Iliad, Book 3, line 152, Loeb Classical Library ed., Vol. 1, p. 129. Sainte-Beuve, in his “Hippolyte Rigault,” Causeries du lundi, Vol. 13, pp. 168–9, gives some clever examples of metaphors similar to that of Homer. Cf. also Diogenes Laertes, Lives of Philosophers, III. vii, Loeb Classical Library ed., Vol. 1, p. 273, where Plato is praised as “a sweet-voiced speaker,” who when speaking is “as the cicada who pours forth a strain as delicate as a lily.” It appears that the Greek poets had a special appreciation of the “chant of the cicadas,” unlike the Latin poets who, in the words of G. Carducci, hated and cursed the cicada (i poeti di razza latina odiino e oltraggino le cicale). 13 F. Flora, as cited by G.G. Ferrero in the introduction to his edition of Marino e i Marinisti, p. 12. 14 W. Kayser, “Der europäische Symbolismus,” Die Vortragsreise, p. 301. 134 synaesthesia one should not exclude the use of synaesthesia altogether, for “To this clause there are possibly exceptions.”.15 Lines such as John Donne’s “A loud perfume . . . cryed,/ even at thy father’s nose,”16 resemble the “clamorous fragrance,” “fragrant sound in uproar,” and “secluded scent clamours” given by our own poets. To call a strong and rich fragrance “loud” can be compared to the modern English usage of the expression “silent” for a wine lacking both flavour and bouquet. Pascoli’s famous line: “The stars whisper in the azure sky,/ Moving about like baby chickens” (La Chioccetta per l’aia azzurra/va col suo pigoliò di stelle)17 resembles to some extent the lines: “The small stars clamour like gushing water” or “Several bright stars murmur as is whispering secrets” given by our own poets. The eighteenth century mystic Saint-Martin said of himself that once “I heard flowers that sounded and saw notes that shone.”18 The Symbolists provided the technique of synaesthesia with a recondite theoretical basis, pro- claiming that through mystical experience the sense of smell could hear, the sense of touch see, and so on (l’odorat entend, le toucher voit).19 The Taoists and Buddhists of China too had often spoken of merging the perceptions of the various senses into one, amalgamating them as mystical experience.20 Examples of such Taoist arguments are the following passages from the “In the World of Men” (“Renjian shi” 人間世) chapter of the Book of Master Zhuang (Zhuangzi 莊子): “Thus in fact the ears and the eyes are connected within, and know external things through the heart,” from the “Yellow Emperor Chapter” (“Huangdi pian” 黃帝篇) of the Book of Master Lie (Liezi 列子): “The eyes are like the ears, the ears like the nose, the nose like the mouth, everything is interconnected, the mind concentrated, and the body relaxed,” or again from the “Confucius Chapter” (“Zhongni pian” 仲尼篇) of the same work: “Amongst Laozi’s disciples there was one called Gensangzi who,

15 Ezra Pound, “Retrospect,” in Pavannes and Divisions, A. Knopf, 1918, p. 101. 16 John Donne, “The Perfume,” The Poems of John Donne, Oxford, p. 76. 17 G. Pascoli, “Il Gelosomino notturno”, Poesie, Mondadori ed., p. 1058. Italian prose and poetry makes frequent use of words such as “clamorous” (rumore, ronzio) to describe the stars, cf. Dizionario delle immagini, p. 875 (Greppi), p. 876 (Moscardelli) and p. 879 (Ceccardi). 18 Cited in, E. Underhill, Mysticism, 12th Edition, p. 7. 19 Cf. R.B. Cherix, Commentaire des “Fleurs du mal”, pp. 31–6, and also C. Bousoño’s analysis of the language usage of San Juan de la Cruz, the major mystic poet, in his Teoria de la expresion poética, Vol. 1, pp. 361ff. 20 Cf. my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters, pp. 482-84, also “Supplement” (zengding 增訂), p. 39. synaesthesia 135 having obtained the Way of his master, could see with his ears and hear with his eyes.” An example from a Buddhist work is the following from the Vijnaptimatratasiddhi (Chengweishi lun 成唯識論), juan 4: “Take the various Buddhas (zhu fo 諸佛) as examples; they are quite at freedom wherever they are, their various senses being interchangeable (zhugen huyong 諸根互用).” To say that the “various senses [are] interchangeable” for the “various Buddhas” is equivalent to saying that “Laozi” could “see with his ears and hear with his eyes.” I will provide examples of the usage from both the sutra most popular among men of letters in China and from the recorded dialogues of the Chan Buddhists. The Surangama Sutra (Lengyan jing 楞嚴經), Item 5 of juan 4, states:

Because of this, the six senses could be used interchangeably. Andanda, how do you not know that at this meeting today, Aniruddha sees without eyes, Upananda hears without ears, the Goddess of the Ganges smells fragrance with no nose, Gavampati knows taste with an unusual tongue and the God of Sunyata feels things without a body.

The “Encomium on the Monk Vacuity, the Chan Master of the Dead Heart” (“Kongkong Daoren sixin chanshi zan” 空空道人死心禪師贊), in the Monk Xiaoying’s 曉瑩 (fl. 1155) Luohu yelu 羅湖野錄, juan 1, contains the following phrase: “To see form within the ears, to hear sound within the eyes.” Long before this, the early Tang dynasty Monk Xuanzang 玄奘 (600–664) had denounced the Chinese translation of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara’s name as Guanshiyin Pusa 觀世音菩薩 (literally, “The Bodhisattva who observes the sounds of the world”) as an “error” (cf. the annotation given in the “Shisu dubo xi du da he” 石窣堵波西渡大河, in his Da Tang xiyu ji 大唐西域記, juan 3). Yet later generations continued to use this translation, both monks as well as men of letters serving further to misconstrue this “error” and to gloss over it by means of an overly literal understanding of it in terms of synaesthesia. The Monk Huihong’s 惠洪 (1071–1128) “Encomium on the Sandlewood White Robed Guanyin of the Sizhou Monastery” (“Sizhouyuan nantan baiyi guanyin zan” 泗州院楠檀白衣觀音贊), Shimen wenzi chan 石門文字禪, juan 18 goes:

Without ears, the dragon hears with its spirit, the snake too, without ears, hears with its eyes, the ox hears with its nose as it has no ears, the crickets and ants, being without ears, hear with their bodies, the six senses being as interchangeable as this! 136 synaesthesia

You Tong’s 尤侗 (1618–1704) “Genzhai xushuo” 艮齋續說, Xitang waiji 西堂外集, juan 10, states:

I wrote a encomium which went: “Music enters through the hearing and forms a sight to observe; the ears and the eyes can rectify each other’s sensory sphere in order to mitigate the numerous difficulties.”

Xu Shanchang 許善長, in his Bishengyinguan tanzhu 碧聲吟館談麈, juan 2, argues that: “‘Music’ (yin 音) too can be ‘observed’ (guan 觀), only thus do I believe that hearing and sight have no more than one function.” Naturally then, when monks sat down to write poetry, they used the traditional products of their own profession with great facility. The contemporary monk Dangui 澹歸 in the twenty-third poem in his series “Miscellaneous Poems of Nanshao” (“Nanshao zashi” 南韶雜詩), Bianxingtang ji 遍行堂集, juan 13, writes for example:

Drums and bells sound in two places, The midnight hour takes hold of we alone. The sound I saw only then coalescing, The form I heard suddenly already asunder.

Or again, the monk Cangxue’s 蒼雪 fifty-eighth poem in his series entitled “One Hundred and Eight Poems of the Forest of Various Trees” (“Zashulin baiba shou” 雜樹林百八首), Nanlaitang shiji 南來堂詩集, juan 4, which goes:

Beneath the moon I hear the chill bell, Besides the bell I look at the bright moon. Is it the moon that accords with the sound of the bell? Or is it the bell that accords with the form of the moon?

Poets of the Ming and Qing dynasties too continued to mine this seam for whatever the Buddhists and Taoists had left behind, creating lines wherein “the various senses were interchangeable.” Zhang Yu’s 張羽 (1333–1385) “Listening to Incense Pavilion” (“Tingxiangting” 聽香亭), Jingju ji 靜居集, juan 1, for example, contains the lines:

People all depend upon three sniffs, I alone can love it with my ears. synaesthesia 137

Li Ciming’s 李慈銘 (1830–1894) “Shuyun Painted a Small Scene of Peach Blossoms in Hunan for Me” (“Shuyun wei yu hua Hunan shantaohua xiaojing” 叔雲為余畫湖南山桃花小景), Baihua jiangfuge shi 白華絳跗閣詩, juan si 巳, gives the lines:

The mountain air and the fragrance of flowers are nowhere expressed, This mourning I come to listen to them in this painting.

Guo Lin’s 郭麐 (1767–1831) Lingfenguan zazhu 靈芬館雜著, Continuation (xubian 續編), juan 3, contains a section entitled “Notes on a Painting of Listening to Incense” (“Ting xiang tu ji” 聽香圖記). All the above are examples of “smelling fragrance with no nose.” Zhong Xing’s 鍾惺 (1574–1624) lines from his poem “Evening” (“Ye” 夜), Yinxiuxuan shi 隱秀軒詩, Yellow Collection No. 2 (huang ji er 黃集二):

After playfully prognosticating my future, I quietly review the sound of the resounding loneliness provide an example of “seeing with the ears” or proof of the fact that “music too can be observed,” only the tonal rules (pingze 平仄) of prosody necessitat- ing the use here of the word “review” (yue 閱) rather than the word “observe” (guan 觀). Ruan Dacheng’s “Pingdeng Monastery on an Autumn Evening” (“Qiuxi pingdengan” 秋夕平等庵), Yonghuaitang shiji, juan 3, contains the lines:

As soon as the sense of sight and hearing are returned to the moon, Darkness and noise become indistinguishable to my mind.

Wang Zhenyi’s 王貞儀 (1768–1797) Defengting chuji 德風亭初集, juan 3, contains a section entitled “Record of the Listening to the Moon Pavilion” (“Tingyueting ji” 聽月亭記). The above are examples of “the ears and the eyes being connected within” or “hearing with the eyes.” As we have seen, Pound was deeply wary of lines that served to mess up the perception of the various senses. Yet when he saw that the Japanese character (that is, the Chinese character) “wen” 聞 (meaning either listen or smell) derived from the “ear” radical (er 耳) he made up his mind to mess up the sensory domains of the nose and ear, explaining the phrase “Smelling incense” (wenxiang 聞香) as meaning “Listening to incense,” going on to lavish 138 synaesthesia praise upon the conceit. Recently, a scholar has repudiated this farfetched and forced interpretation and has pointed out that, as used here in the phrase “wenxiang,” the character “wen” pertains to olfaction.21 Much earlier, in his “Explanation of the Stone Chime” (“Shi qing” 釋磬), Yanjingshi yiji 揅經室一集, juan 1, the Qing dynasty philologist Ruan Yuan 阮元 (1764–1849) had pointed out that: “For the ancients, that which was perceived by the nose and that which was perceived by the ears could all be generalised in terms of the analogy of hearing sound.”22 While we cannot demand of Pound that he should have been well-versed in traditional Chinese philology (xiaoxue 小學), it was nonetheless quite unnecessary for him to have risked such a misunderstanding of Japanese (in fact Chinese too, of course) by searching the Far East for such novelties. A ready-made tradition of fragrance seeming to embody sound, or the ear serving in the stead of the ears and so on existed within the language usage and literature of the Western traditions that were his own. His misinterpretation may nevertheless be considered “a happy mistake” however, for quite by chance this expression “listening to incense” (tingxiang 聽香) had a history of at least 600 years within Chinese literature, while in modern speech we still term the lack of an acute sense of smell a “deafness” (long 聾) of the nose. The English poet William Blake once used the expression “blind hand” to describe a numbed sense of touch. It is an expression which provides an antithesis for the phrase “deaf nose” that seems so perfect as to have been made in heaven.23

21 E. Miner, The Japanese Tradition in British and American Literature, p. 134. 22 Cf. also my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters, pp. 1071–72. 23 Cf. the blind man’s comment in Shakespeare’s play: “see thee in my touch” (King Lear, IV. i); Sor Juan Ines de la Cruz in her poem gives the line “In both my hands my two eyes let me bear” (tengo en entrambas manos ambos ojos) “Verde embeleso de la vida humana”, F.J. Warnke, European Metaphysical Poetry, 1961, p. 274; in Goethe’s poetry, lovers use “hands that can see to touch each other,” while the snail has a “sense of sight that can touch” (fühle mit sehender Hand) Römische Elegien, V; mit ihrem tastenden Gesicht, Faust, I, “Walpurgisnacht.” Werke, Hamburger Ausgabe, Vol. 1, p. 160, and Vol. 3, p. 127; the blind girl in R.M. Rilke’s poem says of herself that she: “uses her hands to touch the scent of the white rose” (und fühlte: nah bei meinem Handen ging/ der Atem einer grossen weissen Rose) “Die Blinde,” Werke, Insel Verlag, 1957, Vol. 1, p. 152. The French expression that goes: “To have eyes at one’s finger tips” (avoir des yeux au bout des doigts) is also used to describe an acute sense of touch. Lin Shu’s Translations 林紓的翻譯

The Han dynasty epigraphist Xu Shen 許慎 (30–124) provides a gloss on translation that is richly suggestive. The entry for the twenty-sixth character under the “wei” 囗 (enclosure) radical in his Etymological Explanation of both Simple and Complex Characters (Shuowen jiezi 說文解字), juan 6, reads: “The character e 囮 means to translate ( yi 譯). It comprises the ‘Enclosure’ radical wei and the phonetic hua 化. When a bird catcher makes use of a live bird as decoy, this is called e, and this character is read with the same pronunciation as the character e 訛.” Chinese “philologists” (xiaoxue jia 小學家) from the Southern Tang dynasty onwards have explicated the word rendered “translate” above as meaning: “To transmit the speech of the Barbarians of the four quarters as well as that of the birds and the beasts,” in a manner akin to that of a “bird decoy” (niao mei 鳥媒) which serves to “inveigle” ( you 誘) the “various birds” (qinniao 禽鳥), the characters e 訛 (misrepresent), hua 化 (transform) and e 囮 all being variants of the same character.1 The interrelated and mutually denotative meanings of the words “translate” ( yi), “inveigle” ( you), “decoy” (mei), “misrepresent” (e) and “transform” (hua) constitute what scholars of poetic diction call “polysemy” or “manifold meaning.”2 This spectrum of meanings serve to tease out all the various aspects of translation; its function (“inveiglement”), its unavoidable shortcoming (“misrepresentation”), and the highest sphere to which it can aspire (“transformation”). The highest ideal of literary translation, it may indeed be said, is “to transform.” A translation which manages to change a work in the language of one nation into the language of another whilst not evincing any of the forced or inflexible usages that derive from differences between language habits, and which at the same time preserves intact the flavour of the original work, may be considered to have entered this “realm of transformation” (huajing 化境). In praising the attainment in translation of just such a sphere, a seventeenth- century Englishman compared the process to “the transmigration of souls” whereby, although the external form of the original is completely replaced, the

1 For details, see the Etymological Explanations of both Simple and Complex Characters, with Collected Commentaries (Shuowen jiezi gulin 說文解字詁林), ce 28, pp. 2736–38. Cf. also my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters (Guan zhui bian 管錐編), p. 1171. 2 Cf. my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters, p. 589.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��4 | doi ��.��63/9789��4727�2�3_��7 140 lin shu’s translations inner soul remains exactly the same.3 In other words, a translation ought to cleave to its original so faithfully that it does not read like a translation, for in its original language a literary work certainly ought not to read like a translation. It was this consideration that led a major Italian poet to reflect that, on the face of it, the desiderata for a good translation were mutually incompatible, even contradictory (paiono discordanti e incompatibili e contraddittorie); in attempting to replicate the unaffectedness, naturalness and spontaneity (inaffettato, naturale o spontaneo) of the style of the author of the original the translator was, by necessity, prone to affectation (ora il trauttore necessaria- mente affetta) as he followed the original at its every step.4 There exists inevitably a hiatus between the language of one nation and that of another, just as it is impossible for there not to be an interstice between the understanding and literary style of the translator and the content and form of the original work. Moreover, there is also frequently a disjunction between the translator’s appreciation of an original work and his or her own powers of expression. To speak only of genre or style here, it may well be that there exist two distinct methods of translation, as identified by Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher. The first method would attempt to “Europeanise” (ouhua 歐化) the translation as far as possible, thus leaving the foreign author in peace and quiet and leading Chinese readers towards him. The second method would seek to “Sinocise” (hanhua 漢化) the translation as much as possible, leaving Chinese readers in peace and quiet to the greatest extent practicable and leading the foreign author towards us (Entweder der Ubersetzer lasst den Schriftsteller möglichst in Ruhe und bewegt den Leser ihm entgegen, oder er lässt den Lesermöglichst in Ruhe und bewegt den Schiftsteller ihm entgegen).5

3 See George Savile, First Marquess of Halifax’s letter to Charles Cotton, the translator of Montaigne’s Essays, in Complete Works, W. Raleigh, ed., p. 185. Ulrich v. Wilamowitz- Mollendorff, a great nineteenth-century German scholar of Greek, employs a similar metaphor in the introduction (entitled “Was ist Uebersetzen”) to his bilingual Greek-German edition of ancient Greek tragedies, Euripides Hippolytus. 4 Leopardi, Zibaldone di pensieri, F. Flora, ed., 5th edition, Vol. 1, pp. 288–89. 5 Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher, “Ueber die verschiedenen Methoden des Uebersetzens,” cited from E. Merian-Genast, “Französische und deutsche Ubersetzungskunst,” see F. Ernst and K. Wais, eds., Forschungsprobleme der vergleichenden Literaturgeschichte (1951), Vol. 2, p. 25; cf. also the French language delegate’s discussion of his attitude towards foreign works in A.W. Schlegel, “Der Wettstreit der Sprachen,” Kritische Schriften und Briefe, W.Kohlhammer, 1962, Vol. 1, p. 252. Leopardi’s discussion of the difference between the methodology of French and German translations accords unconsciously with the opinion voiced by Schleiermacher, see the work cited in Footnote 4, Vol. 1, pp. 289 and 1311. In actual fact, this difference is also lin shu’s translations 141

Yet translation, whether by way of “Europeanisation” or “Sinocisation,” by definition, will always involve both the language of the nation of the original work as point of departure and the language of the nation into which the work is translated as point of arrival.6 The path that leads between these two points is an exceedingly tortuous one and the original, buffeted by hardships and encountering every sort of peril along the way, will inevitably suffer loss or damage. All translations therefore are, in part, untrue to their originals and serve to distort them. They either violate the meaning and tone of these originals, or, at the very least, fail to quite match them. It is this aspect of translation that we refer to as its “misrepresentation”—as the Western adage has it: “The translator is a traitor” (Traduttore traditore). In similar vein, the ancients in China claimed that the character meaning “turn over, reverse” ( fan 翻) as used in the Chinese word for translate ( fanyi 翻譯) conveyed the same meaning it did when it referred to the “turning” inside out a piece of embroidery and the unfolding of its reverse side: “The word ‘turn over’ ( fan) is like turning over a piece of brocade whereby although the under side reveals the patterns, these patterns having all been reversed” (the monk Zanning 贊寧 (919–1002), “Translations of the sutras: Discourses” (“Yi jing pian: lun” 譯經篇·論), Biographies of Eminent Monks: Third Collection (Gaoseng zhuan sanji 高僧傳三集), juan 3). This metaphor naturally calls to mind Don Quixote’s claim that reading translations was like viewing Flemish tapestries from the wrong side (es como quien mira los tapices flamencos por el revés).7

manifested in the respective treatments of foreign topics and characters within French and German drama, cf. Hegel, Aesthetik, Aufbau, 1952, pp. 278–80. 6 J.P. Vinay and J. Darbelnet, Stylistique comparèe du français et de l’anglais (1958), p. 10, call the language of the original “langue de départ” and the language of the translation “langue d’arrivée.” Compared with what in Britain and America are popularly termed the “source language” and the “target language,” the terms employed above appears to make for smoother reading. 7 Don Quixote, Part 2, Chapter Sixty-two; according to the textual research cited in F.R. Marin’s annotated edition of the novel, Vol. 8, p. 156, two Spanish translators (Diego de Mendoza and Luis Zapata) of Horace’s Ars Poetica had used this metaphor as early as 1591. For Zanning, discussing as he was the translation of theoretical works, the original form and style of the works translated were not as important as they are in literary translation; although the reverse side of a piece of embroidery may be inferior to the obverse, the degree of distortion is not serious and he considers it passable. Cervantes was speaking of literary translation, and for him the obverse and reversed sides of a tapestry differed greatly. It is for this reason that he regarded such distortion involved in translation as intolerable. Cf. also Edgar Allan Poe, Marginalia, where he claims that the “turning over” that translation 142 lin shu’s translations

The words “decoy” (mei) and “inveigle” ( you) obviously serve to explain the role of translation within the processes of cultural interaction between nations. A translation acts the role of an intermediary or liaison officer, introducing everybody to foreign literary works, encouraging in them a love for such works. Performing a function somewhat akin to that of matchmaker, a translation establishes “Literary Affinities” (wenxue yinyuan 文學因緣)8 between nations. Of all the “affinities” between nations, this is the type least likely to provoke disharmony, squabbling and fisticuffs. Thoroughgoing and complete “transformation” (hua) is an unrealisable ideal; “misrepresentation” of certain kinds or to a certain degree being the unavoidable defect of any translation. In this connection, the words “decoy” and “inveigle” acquire a new significance. A translation is intended to save trouble, obviating the necessity for readers to study a foreign language in order to be able to read the original work. Conversely, however, a translation may also serve to entice a few readers into studying that foreign language precisely so that they may read the work in the language it was written. The translation may so excite their curiosity that it encourages in them a boundless yearning for the original. Having stimulated their appetites, the translation will fail to satisfy their craving. Such readers fall prey to the feeling that reading a translation is somewhat akin to admiring flowers through a glass darkly, lacking entirely the vividness of the original. Goethe once took the following view of the matter; quite without ceremony, he likened the translator to a lewd professional go-between (Uebersetzer sind als geschäftige Kuppler anzusehen)—what in China was once called a “horse-trader” (qianma 牽馬). Both alike seek to only half-reveal (eine halbverschleierte Schöne) the true features of the object of their attention. A translator wishes to inspire in the minds of readers a restless, indeed insatiable, curiosity that can but begin to imagine the beauty of the original.9 If such imaginings are to be realised, a reader must come up with the means of reading the original work, thus stripping away the enveloping veil and feasting his or her eyes upon its actual form.

involved meant to be “turned topsy-turvy,” E.G. Stedman and G.E. Woodberry, eds., The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Vol. 7, p. 212. 8 The term “Literary Affinities” was the title of Su Manshu’s 蘇曼殊 (1884–1918) collection of English translations of Chinese poetry; in his preface to this work, he speaks only of the “misrepresentations” of translation—“it is not good to have shifted its ground” (Quanji 全集, Beixin, ed., Vol. 1, p. 121). Although he does not explain the title of his collection, one can guess however that what he had in mind was similar to my usage of the phrase here. 9 Goethe, “Maximen und Reflexionen,” in the 14 vol. edition of Goethe werke, published by Hamburger Ausgabe, Vol. 12, p. 499. Cf. also Boswell’s entry in his journal, dated 11 April, 1776, recording Johnson’s views on translation, for which, see C. Ryskamp and F.A. Pottle, ed., The Ominous Years, p. 329, and also Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson, Oxford, p. 742. lin shu’s translations 143

In this sense, then, the function of a good translation is to eliminate itself. A translation, having brought us to the original work, is cast aside immediately we can read the work itself. Any translator proud of his abilities will produce with his translation, therefore, precisely the instrument of his own unintended suicide. However much that translator may himself be convinced that his translation will obviate the need to read the original, once a common reader becomes capable of appreciating the genuine article, he will more often than not heartlessly reject the surrogate the translator has laboured so hard and long to manufacture. Bad translations on the other hand may well serve to efface the original. The clandestine effect of a clumsy or obscure translation is to repulse potential readers of the work translated. Having found a translation unreadable, readers will be little inclined to turn to the original. Far from being intermediaries, such translations are mischief-makers. They undermine any possibility there may have been that a reader would go on to develop a direct relationship with the original work for they quench whatever interest he had in it, serving thereby to besmirch its reputation. The seventeenth-century Frenchman l’abbé de Marolles is a classic example of this process. His published translations of an ancient Latin poet, entitled Epigrams of Martial, was re-titled Epigrams against Martial by a contemporary.10 A writer acquainted with him once claimed that the Abbe’s translations were nothing but an affliction visited upon the French language (un de ces maux dont notre langue est affligée) and that given his promise to provide a complete translation of all the Latin poets, even poets like Virgil and Horace would not be spared (n’ayant pardonné). Sooner or later such poets as Ovid and Terence too would suffer at his assassin’s hand (assassinés).11 Needless to say, Marolles congratulated himself on his own successes as a translator and never tired of discussing them.12 We can all come up with a good many boon companions for this priest from our own reading.

10 Menage, Menagiana, as cited in I. Disraeli, Curiosities of Literature, Chandos Classical Library, Vol. 1, p. 350. 11 Jean Chapelain’s letter, as found cited in Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, Vol. 14, p. 136. The eighteenth-century English novelist Fanny Burney added a colophon to the unpublished manuscript of her youthful translation of Fontenelle’s masterpiece that read: “Murthered into English by Frances Burney”—see Joyce Hemlow, The History of Fanny Burney, p. 16. The poet Robert Burns, too, ridiculed an English translation of Martial by likening it to “murder”—see The Letters of Robert Burns, J. DeLancy Ferguson, ed., Vol. 1, p. 163. 12 See for example Marolles praise for his own translation of Virgil as being the “most exact, most beautiful, and most elegant” (la plus juste, la plus belle et la plus élégante) translations of his life, in the work by Sainte-Beuve cited in the previous footnote, p. 130. 144 lin shu’s translations

The “matchmaking” function played by Lin Shu’s 林紓 (1852–1924) translations is a fact of literary history that has long been generally recognised.13 There is no doubt that his translations have performed that “matchmaking” function spoken of by Goethe, leading many readers on to develop direct relationships with the authors of the originals. My own interest in the study of foreign languages and literatures was quickened by my reading of Lin Shu’s translations. The two small boxes of his translations published by the Commercial Press under the collective title Library of Novels translated by Lin Shu (Lin yi xiaoshuo congshu 林譯小說叢書) was one of my great discoveries at the age of eleven or twelve. They drew me into a totally new universe, a world that was quite dissimilar to that of the Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan 水滸傳), Journey to the West (Xiyou ji 西遊記) or the Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (Liaozhai zhiyi 聊齋志異). Prior to this I had read such works as Liang Qichao’s 梁啓超 (1873–1929) translation of Fifteen Little Heroes (Shiwu xiao haojie 十五小豪杰)—a translation of Deux Ans de Vacance by Jules Verne—and the detective stories translated by Zhou Guisheng 周桂笙 (1873–1936). I had found them all to be stifling and insipid.14 It was only after I had happened upon Lin Shu’s translations that I realised how enchanting Western fiction could be. I read and re-read Lin Shu’s translations of the works of Rider Haggard, Dickens, Washington Irving, Sir Walter Scott and Jonathan Swift in a fit of insatiability. To the extent that I was then at all conscious of my motives for studying English, one of them would have been the hope that some day I would be able to read, to my heart’s content, all the adventure stories of Haggard and company in their originals. Forty years ago15 in the small county township where I grew up there were neither films of wild beasts for the children to watch nor a zoo for them to roam about in. All there was to see were the performing monkeys of the “wandering entertainers” (zou jianghu 走江湖), or the mangy camels they led about as they peddled their medicines. That kind of entertainment obtained by later

13 Among the many articles and books which discuss Lin Shu’s translations, Han Guang’s 寒光 Lin Qinnan 林琴南 (Shanghai, 1935) and Zheng Zhenduo’s 鄭振鐸 “Lin Qingnan xiansheng” 林琴南先生, Zhongguo wenxue yanjiu 中國文學研究, No. 3 (1957): 1214– 1227, are both worthwhile references. I will not here repeat their arguments. 14 Zhou Guisheng’s abilities as a translator were not at all outstanding; what he had to say about translation, however, as recorded by Wu Jianren 吳趼人, “Dog cart” (“Quanche” 犬車), A New History of Laughter (Xin xiao shi 新笑史), such as: “All those who translate Western works must avoid both being too free or too literal,” and so on, seems very much to the point. 15 This article was written in March, 1963. lin shu’s translations 145 generations of children from watching films of wild beasts or visiting zoos, I could derive only from reading adventure stories. I remember clearly one circumstance in particular. The conclusion of Chapter Five of Haggard’s novel She (Chinese title: Sanqian nian yan shi ji 三千年艷尸記) contains a vivid description of the fight between a crocodile and a lion. To a child, this is a profoundly affecting scene. It quite took my breath away and I sat there gaping at it in astonishment. The final half of Lin Shu’s translation reads as follows:

By this time, the lion’s hind paw had sunken into the crocodile’s neck, and like a glove being stripped off a hand, it was yanked out with great force. In a second, the lion’s head was bent over the crocodile’s body, all the while making an extraordinary sound, whereupon the crocodile too turned its fangs sidewise, still embedded within the lion’s hindquarters, the lion’s stomach being so gnawed by the crocodile as to be about to burst open. Such a battle it was as I have never before witnessed in all my life. [The passage has been given modern punctuation in keeping with the sentence breaks and pauses of the original version of Lin Shu’s translation.]

If the lion had the crocodile by the neck, its claw certainly could not have sunken completely into it as if into mud, and so how could it have been yanked out “like a glove being stripped off a hand?” And if the crocodile’s fangs were “embedded within the lion’s hindquarters”, then in terms of the laws of both physics and physiology, it could not also have “gnawed the lion’s stomach.” However much I thought about this passage I could not make it clear to my mind. Nor could the adults in my family explain the matter. Moreover, what had been the outcome of this life-and-death struggle? Who had won, or did they both die in the struggle? I was far more concerned with the respective fates of the crocodile and the lion than with the vicissitudes of the major male and female characters. The translation left everything up in the air and I was on tenterhooks, itching to know whether the original too had ended the affair so obscurely.16 As soon as I was able to read books in foreign languages, it was

16 The translation is of the novel She, both Han Guang, Lin Qinnan and Zhu Xizhou 周羲冑, Chunjuezhai zhushu ji 春覺齋著述記 mistakenly identifying it as Montezuma’s Daughter. [The original reads: And then followed an extraordinary scene indeed. The lion managed to get well on the bank, the crocodile half standing and half swimming, still nipping his hind leg. He roared till the air quivered with the sound, and then, with a savage, shrieking snarl, turned round and clawed hold of the crocodile’s head. The crocodile shifted his grip, 146 lin shu’s translations inevitably to the novels translated by Lin Shu that I first turned. Over time, as I began to hear or read the disparaging, occasionally contemptuous, opinions of famous scholars of Lin Shu’s translations, I could not avoid becoming slowly more worldly-wise myself. I read him no longer, disdaining to do so in fact. Thus without the slightest regret I cast away the means by which I had managed to arrive at my end. Recently, however, I happened to open up one of Lin Shu’s translations and found to my surprise that it retained much of its power of attraction over me. Not only did I finish reading this novel in its entirety, but I continued reading his translations one after another until I had read the bulk of them. I discovered in the process that many of them were well worth re-reading, notwithstanding the fact that omissions and errors were apparent at every turn. I experimented by looking out later—and undoubtedly more “faithful”—translations of the same works, novels by Montesquieu and Dickens for example, and found that I would far prefer to read the originals. This fact gives considerable food for thought. To make a point of reading a faulty translation once one is capable of reading an original work may well be of course merely a pleasurable way of passing the time, serving also to enhance one’s own agreeable sense of superiority. A literary historian once claimed that the worse a translation the more interesting it was. When we compare a bad translation with its original we can observe how the translator has indulged his wildest fantasies, employed blind guesswork to fill in the gaps in his own understanding of the work, and invented or distorted at will, all very much in the manner of a “Surrealist” poet.17 My interest in the translations of Lin Shu, however, certainly does not lie in a

having, as we afterwards discovered, had one of his eyes torn out, and slightly turned over; instantly the lion got hold of him by the throat and held on, and then over and over they rolled upon the bank struggling hideously. It was impossible to follow their movements, but when next we got a clear view the tables had turned, for the crocodile, whose head seemed to be a mass of gore, had got the lion’s body in his iron jaws just above the hips, and was squeezing him and shaking him to and fro. For his part, the tortured brute, roar- ing in agony, was clawing and biting madly at his enemy’s scaly head, and fixing his great hind claws in the crocodile’s, comparatively speaking, soft throat, ripping it open as one would rip a glove. Then, all of a sudden, the end came. The lion’s head fell forward on the crocodile’s back, and with an awful groan he died, and the crocodile, after standing for a minute motionless, slowly rolled over on to his side, his jaws still fixed across the carcase of the lion, which, we afterwards found, he had bitten almost in halves. This duel to the death was a wonderful and shocking sight, and one that I suppose few men have seen— and thus it ended.] 17 M. Praz, “Grandezza dei traduttori,” see La Casa della fama, pp. 50 and 52. lin shu’s translations 147 desire to isolate howlers that may then become the butt of jokes. What is more, the infidelities or “misrepresentations” found in Lin Shu’s translations do not all derive from the linguistic deficiencies of his assistants or their insufficient understanding of the original text. I will give two examples to illustrate this point. Chapter Seventeen of his translation of Nicholas Nickelby (Chinese title: Huaji waishi 滑稽外史) writes of Miss Knag, the head saleswoman in a fashionable milliner’s shop, who, overhearing one of the customers refer to her as “an old hag,” becomes so enraged that she rushes back to the workroom in a state of some dishevelment. An uproar ensues as she begins to vent her jealous anger on the young and beautiful Kate. All the girls under her charge join in the chorus. Lin Shu’s translation of this scene includes the following passage, back-translated into English:

[Miss] Knag . . . began by laughing but ended up weeping, the noise of her lamentation sounding as if she were intoning a song. She said: “Alas, I have been here fifteen years now, and everybody in this establishment says that I am as a famous flower newly blossomed”—as she sang, she stamped her left foot, saying: “Alas, my Heaven!” Then she stamped her right foot and said: “Alack, my Heaven! In my fifteen years I have never been so insulted. Now I have been bested by this saucy vixen. What disgrace! I will die of shame.”

The scene is straight out of a burlesque play, combining both action and song. Few readers would be able to maintain a straight face. When we hurriedly look up Dickens’s original text (Chapter Eighteen), however, we come away somewhat disappointed. If we were to attempt to imitate the tone of Lin Shu’s work and re-translate the passage, it would come out something like the following:

Miss Knag gave an insane laugh after which she began to weep in a bird- like fashion, most affecting in its bitterness. She exclaimed loudly: “For the last fifteen years I have brought inestimable prestige to this establishment, both upstairs and downstairs. Thank Heaven”—as she said this, she stamped her left foot hard, then stamping her right foot with equal force, saying as she did so: “I have never before been insulted. Who was to know that one day I would be sold out by this slut! How low and despi- cable her purpose! Her behaviour reflects badly upon us all, and nobody with any sense of morality could fail to feel shamed. I hate and despise her, but I am so hurt! How very hurt I am!” 148 lin shu’s translations

[The original reads: “Miss Knag laughed, and after that cried. ‘For fifteen years,’ exclaimed Miss Knag, sobbing in a most affecting manner, ‘for fifteen years have I been a credit and ornament of this room and the one upstairs. Thank God,’ said Miss Knag, stamping first her right foot and then her left with remarkable energy, ‘I have never in all that time, till now, been exposed to the arts, the vile arts of a creature, who disgraces us with all her proceedings, and makes proper people blush for themselves. But I feel it, I do feel it, although I am disgusted.’ ”]

Here the doggerel that follows the phrase “sounding as if she were intoning a song” is entirely a function of Lin Shu’s polishing and alteration of the original text; it certainly could not have derived from misunderstanding or distortion on the part of his assistant. It is clear that Lin Shu felt Dickens’s depiction of the scene to be without the necessary rhetorical vigour and style. Laying it on thickly, he added elements of risibility to both character and scene. Chinese scholars who write histories of modern Chinese literature have no qualms in agreeing that Lin Shu revealed a great ability to capture Dickens’s wit, notwithstanding the fact that many of them may not have read Dickens in the original. Judging by this example, however, Lin Shu often supplemented Dickens’s sense of humour with his own “jocosity,” bringing to the story extra elements of colour and emphasis.18 The second example too is taken from his translation of Nicholas Nickelby, this time from Chapter Thirty-three (Chapter Thirty-four of Dickens’s original):

18 In his “Autobiography of the Cold Redness Scholar” (“Lenghongsheng zhuan” 冷紅生傳), found in his Weilu wenji 畏廬文集, Lin Shu says of himself that he was “taciturn, stubborn, and irascible” (muqiang duo nu 木強多怒), but he makes frequent mention in his later works of his own sense of humour. In Chapter Fourty-eight of Lin Shu’s novel Gengxin jian xing lu 庚辛劍腥錄, the character Bing Zhongguang says: “In my village there lives a man called Ling Weilu (a punning reference to “Lin Weilu,” or Li Shu himself) who is now very old. This man has translated as many as eighty-one different English and French novels . . . As a person, he is much given to jocosity.” The character of Bing Zhongguang, too, is an idealized self-portrait of Lin Shu himself; he is well-versed in Ancient Prose, good at painting, and skilled in the art of the sword. He is, moreover, “much given to jocosity,” to the extent that in a tussle with some robbers, he fights and jokes with them at the same time, causing his fiancée, who is also present, to be both overwhelmed with admiration for him and convulsed with laughter (Chapter Thirty-four). An item in the “Dou Lü’e” 竇綠娥 section of his Jianzhuoweng xiaoshuo 踐卓翁小說, Second Collection, states: “At the tip of my brush I have a little devil, much like the one called Puck in the novel of an Englishman”; this “Puck” is the “Puck” from the “Fairies” (“Xiankuai” 仙獪) section of Lin Shu’s translation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (Chinese title Yinbian yanyu 吟邊燕語), and is the embodiment of mischievousness. lin shu’s translations 149

Mr Squeers . . . addressed Ralph, saying: “This is my son, little Wackford. . . . Just look Sir, how fat he is, so fat that he can no longer encompass his clothes. He gets fatter by the day, to the extent that his seams are about to burst and his buttons fly off.” He then patted his son on the head and poked his finger here and there at the boy’s body, saying: “This is flesh.” Poking him again he continued: “This too is flesh, firm and solid. Now I will try to pinch his skin but he is so fleshy that that I will not get a grip.” As Squeers tugged at his son, the young Wackford began to weep and rub his flesh, saying: “You are hurting me, papa!” Mr Squeers said: “He is not yet full. If he had eaten his full he would be so strong and bloated that you would not be able to shut him up even in a brick house . . . Observe his tears, Sir, for they are replete with beef and mutton grease, a quality that comes from having enough to eat.”

This section of the translation is also vividly rendered. By contrast, Dickens had simply written that Squeers had “indent[ed] . . . parts of [little Wackford’s] figure with divers pokes” as he said that you could not have shut a bit of him in a door if he had eaten his full of lunch and that there was “oiliness” in his tears. Phrases such as “He then patted his son on the head,” “he would be so strong and bloated,” and “his tears are replete with beef and mutton grease, a quality that comes from having enough to eat,” and so on, all derive from Lin Shu’s own attempt to paint the lily. Even more worthy of our attention is the fact that in Dickens’s novel, little Wackford merely “uttered a sharp cry, and rubbed the place.” He says not a word. The plaint given him in the translation, “You are hurting me, Papa!”, was a gratuitous interpolation on Lin Shu’s part. It adds another twist to the scene and balances out the narrative. Without it, we just have Mr Squeers’s effusive soliloquy, with his son playing the role of a dumb beast of burden, his side of the story being left out in the cold altogether. In other words, Lin Shu found the original somewhat imperfect and underdeveloped. He added to it here and embellished it there. In the process, the language employed in the passage becomes more concrete, the scene more lively, and the depiction overall far more substantial and effective. In this connection, we cannot but think of the Records of the Grand Historian (Shi ji 史記) of Sima Qian 司馬遷 (ca. 145–ca. 85 B.C.), a work much admired by Lin Shu, and its embellishment and augmentation of earlier accounts of the past.19

19 An example of this process at work is found in the passage depicting the meeting at Jiagu from the “Hereditary House of Confucius” (“Kongzi shijia” 孔子世家) chapter of this work. It is an account which is based upon the text of the Guliang Commentary (Guliang zhuan 穀梁傳), 10th year of Duke Ding, all those vivid and concrete details such as “men with pennants, feathers, spears, halberds, swords, and shields advanced to the roll of 150 lin shu’s translations

Lin Shu wrote quite a few novels of his own, making use moreover the literary techniques of “the Westerner Haggard” (Xiren Hagede 西人哈葛德)and “Mr Dicken” (Diegeng xiansheng 迭更先生) to do so.20 Whenever he encountered in a novel he was translating a section which he considered weak or flawed, however, Lin Shu appears to have been incapable of taming his own creative urges. He would commandeer the author’s pen and continue the story on his behalf. Judged from the standpoint of translation, this constituted “misrepresentation” of course. Even if the original was altered or supplemented extremely well, to do so was nevertheless to depart from the original text of the work being translated. Besides, not all such alterations were necessarily appropriate. If it could be said that Lin Shu’s revision of the original of the second passage given above was successful, the previously cited section which has Miss Knag both weeping and singing is somewhat more problematical. Miss Knag is indeed a comic character, and there are certainly elements of artifice in this scene of tearful squabbling. Yet if she had really begun to “intone a song” in such a loud and tuneless manner, the scene would have become too manifestly farcical and her tears would have seemed, finally, to have been those of a crocodile. She would not have been able to manufacture a scene of such intensity, neither would her workmates and her adversary have taken her tantrum so seriously. Just as we cannot help laughing as we read the passage, those there at the time would have been incapable of maintaining a straight face. Li Zhi’s 李贄 (1527–1602) commentary to the “Examination” (“Kaoshi” 考試) Scene of the opera The Lute (Pipa ji 琵琶記), Scene 8, contains the comments: “Overly dramatic! Not at all true to life!” and: “Drama is of course theatrical, and yet it must appear real. Only what is real may well seem theatrical.”21 Lin Shu’s

drums,” “raising his sleeves, he said,” and “looking first to the right and then to the left,” however, being aspects of Sima Qian’s augmentation of the story. 20 See Chapter Thirty-three of his Gengxin jian xing lu and the “Hong Yanhuang” 洪嫣篁 section of his Jianzhuoweng xiaoshuo, Second Collection. The sentence of Haggard’s cited in the first of these works to the effect that: “I cause the readers eyes to fly along with my pen” comes in fact from Chapter Seventeen of “Mr. Dicken’s” Oliver Twist (Chinese title: Zei shi 賊史) and goes: “I trouble the eyes of my revered readers to fly along with my brush to the extent of their powers.” 21 Cf. Li Zhi’s “General Critique” (“Zongping” 總評) attached to Chapter One of the Rongyutang 容與堂 edition of the Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan 水滸傳) which states: “All the events in the Water Margin are false, but when told of they all appear true to life however, and herein lies the work’s marvellous quality. In recent prose collections, one often finds real events told of as if they were false, truly the products of blockheads.” According Zhou Lianggong 周亮工 (1612–1672), Shuying 書影, juan 1, this commentary lin shu’s translations 151 emendation of the original text of this passage is so exaggerated as to approach buffoonery and is precisely what could be termed: “Overly dramatic! Not at all true to life!” It has been commonly acknowledged that Lin Shu abridged the original texts of the works he translated, but the fact that he also supplemented them, as in the cases cited above, appears to have been overlooked. In the translations of the early period of his career, translations which he expended much time and effort upon, we find many instances of such supplementation. This is particularly so of his translations of the works of Dickens and Washington Irving. At times he would add to the text a metaphor of his own design in order to heighten the wit of the narrative. An example of this is found in his translation of the “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” from Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (Chinese title: Fuzhang lu 拊掌錄):

And when the stupid ones could read on no longer, the schoolmaster would help them along with the birch thus assisting them to negotiate by means of strenuous leaps the abysses that lay between the words.

A reading of this passage of the original calls to mind that line of Du Fu’s 杜甫 (712–770) that goes: “getting over the difficult words in one’s reading”

to The Lute is actually by Ye Zhou 葉晝 from Wuxi. In his “Letter to Jiao Hong” (“Yu Jiao Ruohou” 與焦弱侯), Xu Fenshu 續焚書, juan 1, Li Zhi tells us that: “I am deriving much joy from my commentary on the Water Margin, but the deletions and changes that I have made to the Romance of the Western Chamber (Xixiang ji 西廂記) and The Lute are even more marvellous”; Yuan Zhongdao 袁中道 (1570–1624), in his Notes Taken while Travelling and Resting ( youju feilu 游居杮錄), juan 6, also records that: “I saw Li Zhi write a critique on the Romance of the Western Chamber and The Lute that was most detailed”; the list of books forged by Ye Zhou given by Qian Xiyan 錢希言 in the “Forged Books” (“Ying ji” 膺籍) item of his Xi xia 戲瑕, juan 3, does not include The Lute with Commentary (Piping Pipa ji 批評琵琶記). Regardless of whether or not this comment was actually made by Li Zhi, it serves nevertheless to sum up concisely the problems of “vraisemblable” (verisimilitude) and “vrai” (real), “possible” and “probable,” raised in classic Western literary criticism. Boileau argued that although a thing may be real, it need not embody verisimilitude when written of in a literary work (Le vrai peut quelquefois n’être pas vraisemblable), Art poétique, III, p. 48; Proust maintains that notwithstanding how hard a lie may work towards verisimilitude, it can never be completely real (Le vraisemblable, malgré l’idée que se fait le menteur, n’est pas du tout le vrai), in La Prisonniére, A la Recherche du temps perdu, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade ed., Vol. III, p. 179; such comments can be compared to those of Li Zhi. The question of whether or not artistic fabrication becomes a moral lie or myths are falsehoods is a perennial one in ethical philosophy, cf. Sissela Bok, Lying (Quartet Books, 1980), pp. 206–9. 152 lin shu’s translations

(“Randomly Composed” [“Mancheng” 漫成]) and nowhere do we find the novel image conjured up by the phrase: “to negotiate by means of strenuous leaps the abysses that lay between the words.” On other occasions Lin Shu would extrapolate from the text several lines of disquisition in order to make the significance of what was being said more obvious, as in the following example taken from his translation of Chapter Two of Oliver Twist (Chinese title: Zei shi 賊史):

Whenever a child died by unknown cause, the doctor would say: “I opened up its belly but found nothing there”. Your unofficial historian (waishishi 外史氏) offers the comment: “The child’s death was precisely the result of its having nothing in its belly! If there had been something there, why would it have died?”

In the original of the novel what the “unofficial historian” has to say above is no more than an additional comment given parenthetically which, when translated into classical Chinese, would read something like: “ci yu dai fei wang” 此語殆非妄 (“which was very probable indeed”). Speaking in terms of the craft of translation, this kind of augmentation is not an appropriate exemplar. Viewed from the standpoint of rhetoric or writing technique, however, it may nevertheless frequently prove illuminating. Lin Shu’s repeated claims that foreign novels: “everywhere light upon the literary techniques (wenfa 文法) of Ancient Prose (guwen 古文)” and that “whereas in terms of their imaginative powers (naoli 腦力) all writers under heaven are divided into those from the East and those from the West, there is also nothing that they do not have in common,” are not at all far-fetched and meaningless. Neither are the comparisons he established between works such as the Zuo Commentary (Zuo zhuan 左傳) and the Records of the Grand Historian on the one hand and the narratives of Dickens and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre22

22 See Lin Shu’s “Introductory Remarks” (liyan 例言) to his translation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Chinese title: Heinu xu tian lu 黑奴吁天錄), the “Preface” (xu 序) to his translation of Dombey and Son (Chinese title: Bingxue yinyuan 冰雪因緣), the “Preface” to his translation of The Old Curiosity Shop (Chinese title: Xiao nü nai er zhuan 孝女耐兒傳), the “Postscript” (ba 跋) to his translation of Haggard’s Colonel Quaritch, V.C. (Chinese title: Hong han nülang zhuan 洪罕女郎傳), and the “Preface” to his translation of Scott’s Ivanhoe (Chinese title: Sakexun jie hou yingxiong lue 撒克遜劫後英雄略), and so on. His most specific use of such comparison is contained in his “Notes after Translating this Work” ( yiyu shengyu 譯餘剩語) attached to his translation of Saint- Pierre’s Paul et Virginie (Chinese title: Li hen tian 離恨天) where he discusses the narration of King Wen of Chu’s attack on the Sui as found in the Zuo Commentary (Zuo zhuan lin shu’s translations 153 on the other to illustrate his point. In keeping with his own understanding of such literary techniques, Lin Shu truly did lard his translations with a judicious number of what traditional Chinese critics (pingdian jia 評點家) had termed “fits and starts” (dundang 頓蕩), “wave patterns” (bolan 波瀾), “dotting the dragon’s eyes” (hua long dian jing 畫龍點睛) and “adding hair to the cheeks” ( jiashang tian hao 頰上添毫). He did so in order that his work would better conform with the “Principle and Method of Ancient Prose” (guwen yifa 古文義法).23 When someone who can write creatively, or who considers that he can, becomes engaged in literary translation it is impossible to guarantee that he will not resemble Lin Shu in his inability to restrain his creative itch. Grounding himself in his own literary criteria and expectations he will seek to serve as the original author’s “best friend and severest critic” (zhengyou 諍友), believing himself to have both the duty and the right to turn dross into gold, to make use of the stones of others to polish his own jade or to transform the oranges of one culture into the lemons of another. This type of translation becomes a parasitic and fragmentary exercise in creative writing. Counterparts to Lin Shu can be found in the histories of translation of all nations, especially in the earlier stages. The epoch-making translation of Thomas Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays (Chinese title: Tian yan lun 天演論) by Lin Shu’s friend Yan Fu 嚴復 (1854–1921), for example, “changed into Chinese” all the ancient books and events “of the West referred to in the original work” in order that “they may be used as admonishment within the main text.” The modern French poet Paul Valéry frankly admitted that it was difficult for him to resist the temptation to alter the original whilst he was

左傳). According to his own testimony, in the “Preface” to his translation of Dombey and Son, Lin Shu had a better appreciation of the literary methods of the original works than his bilingual assistants: “Wei Yi did not notice this at first and only became aware of it after listening to me talk about it to him many times.” 23 Lin Shu himself certainly believed that he was capable of great self-restraint and that he never made any wilful or indulgent changes to the original works in his translations. Chapter Five of his translation of David Copperfield (Chinese title: Kuai rou yu sheng shu 塊肉餘生述) contains the following note: “The foreign literary technique is always to first presage events that are to happen later in the story, thus causing readers to be on tenterhooks and wondering what is to happen, this being a difference of methodology. In the works I have translated, I slightly rearrange the sequence of events for the convenience of readers. If a section like this is found in the original, there is no way I can change it and I will retain the original.” See also the annotations given in Chapters Twenty-six, Twenty- nine, Thirty-nine and Forty-nine of his translation of Dombey and Son: “The original is thus, and I cannot but translate it so,” and “The translator too can but stroll along with the author.” 154 lin shu’s translations working on his translation of Virgil’s “Bucolics” (des envies de changer quelque chose dans le texte vénérable).24 Considerable self-restraint will be required of a translator who can also write creatively in order that he may suppress any inappropriate creative urges, this being particularly so of a translator who happens also to have a true awareness of both the nature and responsibilities of his craft. Such a translator will perhaps rather despise Lin Shu for his susceptibil- ity to such temptations. Yet it is my guess that just as an adult burdened with onerous family or social responsibilities will occasionally find himself envying the free and uninhibited behaviour of a child, certain translators will secretly regret that they cannot translate with the free abandon evinced by Lin Shu. Mr. Squeers’s line, as quoted above, “Just look Sir, how fat he is, so fat that he can no longer encompass his clothes” ought to read either “to the extent that his clothes cannot encompass him” or perhaps “to the extent that he cannot be encompassed by his clothes.” This kind of transposition or erroneous syntax is a rather common phenomenon in Lin Shu’s translations and evidently we cannot blame all such occurrences upon the carelessness of the typeset- ting. The speed with which Lin Shu “translated books” was a matter for some considerable self-pride and was indeed truly remarkable.25 Naturally there was a price to pay for writing with such flowing pen and without pause for

24 Wu Rulun 吳汝綸, “Letter in Reply to Yan Youling” (“Da Yan Youling” 答嚴幼陵), in Tongcheng Wu xiansheng quanshu: Chidu 桐城吳先生全書·尺牘, juan 1. J.E. Spingarn, in the “Introduction” to his compilation Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, Vol. 1, p. 50ff., claims that the translations of the time amounted to adaptations of the originals; cf. F.O. Matthiessen’s discussion of North and Florio as translators of prose, in his Translation: An Elizabethan Art, pp. 79ff. and p. 121ff., respectively. Valéry’s comment is found in the “Foreword” to his “Traduction en vers des Bucoliques de Virgile”, in Œuvres, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (1957), Vol. 1, p. 214. 25 Lin Shu’s translation of Walter Scott’s The Talisman (Chinese title: Shizi jun yingxiong ji 十字軍英雄記) carries a preface by Chen Xipeng 陳希彭 which claims that: “his brush flew along like a cloud scudding before the wind . . . What was so remarkable was that the prose flowed from his brush without pause for correction.” The “Biographies of Literary Men” (“Wenyuan zhuan” 文苑傳) section of the Fujian tongzhi 福建通志, juan 9, published in the 27th year of the Republic (1938), cites the following lines from Mr Chen Yan’s 陳衍 Xu Minchuan wenshi zhuan 續閩川文士傳 which inform us that, when translating, Lin Shu: “Had already got down on paper the sentence before his assistant had finished saying it, and he was capable of writing a thousand words in about the space of an hour, without correcting a single word”; this article by Mr Chen Yan caused something of a minor dispute at the time, cf. the lines from his poem “A Vernacular Poem in Memory of Gao Mengdan” (“Baihua yi shou ku Mengdan” 白話一首哭夢旦), carried in Qing he 青鶴, Vol. 4, No. 21: “When I wrote a biography of Lin Shu,/ People suspected that I was being sarcastic.” lin shu’s translations 155 punctuation. Omitted or mistaken words and sentences were undoubtedly one part of this price, as were the many instances of loose sentence construction and verbose diction. The sentence from his translation of She cited earlier, for example, which goes: “whereupon the crocodile too turned its fangs sidewise, still embedded within the lion’s hindquarters” (rendered in accordance with the sentence breaks indicated in the earliest version of his translation) is difficult to understand. In all likelihood, and with reference back to the original text, the word “body” had been omitted and the sentence ought to have read: “the crocodile turned its body sidewise, its fangs still embedded within the lion’s hindquarters.” Another example comes from his translation of La dame aux camélias by Alexandre Dumas, fils (Chinese title: Bali chahua nü yishi 巴黎茶花女遺事) which contains the following sentence: “I came to feel anger at Marguerite’s derisiveness, and by degrees my love for her gradually become distant and scornful.” The words “by degrees” (zhujian 逐漸) are superfluous here. Probably Lin Shu had originally intended to write: “my love for her gradually became more and more distant and scornful” but had changed his mind halfway through the sentence and had forgotten to delete what he had already written. As to sentence structures that are somewhat—in some cases, extremely—ungainly, such things can be found at every turn: “Marguerite would entertain each day at her home, and if more than ten people were not present Marguerite would not attend” (La dame aux camélias); “What I beseech you Sir, is only, I beseech you Sir, to pay more respect to this old gentleman” (Chapter Four of Joan Haste [Chinese title: Jiayin xiao zhuan 迦茵小傳]); “I thought to myself about what it was best for me to do, would it not be better, I thought, rather than remaining here, to steal a horse and flee” ( from Lin Shu’s translation of “Governor Manco and the Soldier,” in Washington Irving’s Tales of the Alhambra (Chinese title: “Ji shuaifu zhi fu you bing” 記帥府之縛游兵, Dashi gugong yuzai 大食故宮餘載). Such occurrences do not derive from mis-transcription or mis-printing and they belong within the categories of what Liu Zhiji 劉知幾 (661–721) termed “words to be omitted” (sheng zi 省字) and “tautology” (dian fan 點煩) (see the “Narrative” (“Xushi” 敘事) and “Tautology” (“Dian fan” 點煩) sections of his Historiographical Principles (Shitong 史通), nei pian 內篇 and wai pian 外篇 respectively). Obviously Lin Shu’s translations were not free of typographical errors, but many such errors stemmed from the illegibility of his hand-written manuscript. The most obvious example of this is found in Lin Shu’s translation of Haggard’s Colonel Quaritch, V.C. (Chinese title: Honghan nülang zhuan 洪罕女郎傳) where on the several hundred times the name of the major male character (Quaritch) occurs, it is transliterated as “Zhaolizhi” 爪立支. The character “zhao” 爪 here is surely a mistake for the character “gua” 瓜, 156 lin shu’s translations the confusion having arisen from the similarity of these two characters when written in the “grass script.” In this connection, I would like to cite a letter written to my father by Mr. Yun Shujue 惲樹珏, chief editor of the Short-story Monthly (Xiaoshuo yuebao 小說月報) for the period 1911 until 1917, a letter written on the 29th day, 10th month, 3rd year of the Republic (1914): “Recently this gentleman (that is, Lin Shu) composed a work entitled Ai chui lu 哀吹錄 in four pian which he then sold to our journal. With his great reputation in mind, I rather casually had it published (in Short-story Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 7). It contained a great many made-up words (duzhuanzi 杜撰字): for “to turn a somersault” ( fan jindou 翻筋斗) he had written “to turn a rollingsault” ( fan gundou 翻滾斗) and for “smoke from kitchen chimneys” (chuiyan 炊煙) he had “threads of smoke” (siyan 絲煙). Disregarding my own inadequacies, I pre- sumed to alter such things. Having seen also Yan Fu writing, I now consider Lin Shu’s to be much inferior!” This short passage encapsulates the haste and carelessness with which Lin Shu wrote for he had failed to correct even the obvious “made-up” or miswritten characters in his manuscript. Unconsciously it also reveals the ambivalent attitude typical of the editor of a journal when presented with the manuscript of a famous author. As far as the problem of “misrepresentation” is concerned, we have all tended to be lenient with Lin Shu himself whilst taking his assistants seriously to task. Lin Shu absolved himself of all responsibility in this respect very early on: “I am conversant with no Western language and have only the ability to express myself; if I make any mistakes, then I do so unknowingly” (“Preface” to his translation of Arthur Marchmont’s For Love of Crown (Chinese title: Xiliya junzhu biezhuan 西利亞郡主別傳).26 His purpose here, tantamount to the claim the “the ignorant are blameless,” is somewhat disingenuous. If what I have said above holds true, not all the “misrepresentations” found in Lin Shu’s translations can be blamed upon his assistants. In fact, the most characteristic aspects of such “misrepresentation” derive from Lin Shu’s own insouciance. Yet it is precisely these “misrepresentations” that have rendered Lin Shu’s translations immune to senescence and which have guaranteed their immortality.

26 This comment was made in the 34th year of the Guangxu reign period (1908). In a “Postscript” to his translation of Sophia H. Maclehose’s Tales from Spenser, Chosen from the “Faerie Queen” (Chinese title: Huangtang yan 荒唐言) his tone had changed completely: “I am not myself capable of any Western language and all that I translate derives from the oral narration of my friends, as everyone knows. As to mistakes and misunderstandings, these are all a result of my own carelessness and inattention as I let my pen run on, and I take responsibility for them as they have nothing to do with my friends.” Perhaps his assistants had requested him to make this clarification. lin shu’s translations 157

To illustrate this point, we need only look at the translation of Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities (Chinese title: Er cheng gushi 二城故事) that Wei Yi 魏易 (1880–1932), Lin Shu’s principal assistant, did on his own (published serially in Yongyan 庸言, Vol. 1, No. 13 onwards). Although we find in this translation many instances of the sort of “misrepresentation” by omission found in the works translated by the two men jointly, it manifests none of the “misrepresentation” through supplementation that characterises the translations they produced together. At various points in Lin Shu’s translations it becomes evident that it was not so much his assistants who had made the “mistakes,” but rather the one who had “the ability to express himself” who had misapprehended the point of the original. As he “let his pen run on,” Lin Shu often gave not a second thought to what he was doing. Fanny’s letter, found in Chapter Fourteen of his translation of Nicholas Nickelby (Chapter Fifteen of the original), has been admired by generations of readers. Refraining from adding any of the under-linings that he habitually employed to illustrate his own appreciation or understanding of the original, Lin Shu “expressed” the first line of the letter in the following manner:

My Respected Sir, My father has instructed me to write to you. The doctor informs us that he is sure my father’s leg is broken and he cannot use his wrist to write, thus does he request me to write on his behalf.

Quite unnecessarily, Lin Shu adds the word “wrist” (wan 腕) to his translation, this surely being a case of gratuitous superfluity, what in Chinese is called “Adding feet to a drawing of a snake!” To anyone who can read the original, Dickens’s sentence structure here (“. . . the doctors considering it doubtful whether he will ever recover the use of his legs which prevents his holding a pen”) all but excludes the possibility of the addition of the words “wrist” or “hand.” We find a similar conceit in a novel by Mrs Gaskell, an author much appreciated by Dickens: an elderly gentleman writes a letter on his wife’s behalf and states: “She being indisposed with sprained ankle, which quite incapaci- tated her from holding pen.”27 Apparently this old chestnut was common to both China and the West. The “Biography of He Xun” (“He Xun zhuan” 賀循傳) found in the History of the Jin Dynasty ( jin shu 晉書), juan 68, contains the following lines: “At the time of the disorder caused by Chen Min, an imperial edit was forged appoint- ing He Xun Administrator of Danyang. He Xun refused the posting on the basis

27 “Old Letters,” from Cranford. 158 lin shu’s translations that he had a diseased foot and could not hold a pen.” The Extensive Gleanings of the Reign of Great Tranquillity (Taiping guangji 太平廣記), juan 250, cites the Chaoye qianzai 朝野僉載 to this effect: “Li Anqi . . . looked over the script and said: ‘The calligraphy is rather weak.’ The candidate answered saying: ‘Yesterday I fell from my horse and injured my foot,’ to which Li Anqi responded: ‘How can an injury to one’s foot affect one’s calligraphy!” Were Lin Shu to have gone about his translations at a more leisurely pace, he would doubtless have been able to think of this famous bit of humour from the occasional writings of a Tang dynasty man of letters, even if he had failed to remember the rather obscure anecdote from the History of the Jin Dynasty. If he had done so, in all likelihood he would have translated the line as “he is sure my father’s leg is broken and he cannot write” or “it is doubtful that he will ever recover the use of his leg and he can no longer hold a pen steadily,” proceeding to not only to underline the sentence but to supply it with a footnote as well.28 There is no question that the foreign language proficiency of his assistants was somewhat unexceptional. Neither can one be at all sure that they adequately prepared themselves in advance for the tasks that were required of them. Moreover, as they translated extemporaneously from the text in front of them they encountered someone who “expressed” himself on paper the minute he heard them speak, giving them not an instant for hesitation or reflection. Haste results in mistakes and just as the oral translator was capable of either misreading the original text or misinterpreting it, so too was there no guarantee that the one expressing himself with his pen would not either mishear or transcribe incorrectly. Just as obvious is the fact that Lin Shu’s assistants never proofread his manuscripts. Under such circumstances, it would have been a miracle if “mistakes” had not occurred. It has been all too easy however for those who have been severe on Lin Shu’s assistants to either overlook or forget the nature of the art of translation. When we research a particular work of literature we hardly ever achieve a complete understanding of each and every word of that text, nor are we required to do so. We can be “content with only superficial understanding” of a certain

28 As he did, for example, in his translation “Interior of the Alhambra” (“Ji Alanbaila gong” 記阿蘭白拉宮) from Tales of the Alhambra where he added the footnote: “This also is of a kind with Su Dongpo’s poem on the Yellow Crane Tower”; or the footnote found in Chapter Thirty-five of his translation of Ivanhoe which reads: “The remark is very much in keeping with the sayings of the Song dynasty Confucian scholars”; or again, in Part Four, Chapter Fourteen of his translation of Don Quixote (Chinese title: Moxia zhuan 魔俠傳) where his footnote reads: “This is precisely the same as the line from the poem that goes: “Three thousand crossbowmen accompanied her husband to battle.” lin shu’s translations 159 number of words, phrases, and sentences, even of unimportant sections of this text, managing nevertheless to write articles on the work that appear eminently reasonable to others. Thus do we proclaim ourselves experts in the field. It is not incumbent upon us to manifest our serious and sincere approach to scholarship by admitting to our lack of understanding of certain words, sentences, allusions, folk saying, sections or so on found in the work. Translation, however, is quite otherwise in that it resembles more a lesson taken by an elementary schoolteacher than a lecture delivered by a notable professor. Not a single word of the original work can be glossed over, not a single troublesome passage can be avoided or fudged. We may well read a work with ease and fluency, but the minute we begin to translate it a range of unanticipated difficulties arise, difficulties of the sort that can not be easily solved by looking up a dictionary or reference to a native respondent. To skip those difficulties in the original text that we cannot resolve is to fall prey to the “misrepresentation” of wilful abridgement. To be either too timorous to skirt around such difficulties, or to be unwilling to do so, and to pretend to an understanding of the text is even more to indulge in the “misrepresentation” of wild guesswork and fancifulness. The pitiable translator has been labelled “traitor.” He can neither manufacture a smoke screen behind which to hide his own ignorance or mistakes nor is he commonly thick-skinned enough to dare to use J.L. Borges’ phrase and trump up a counter-charge by claiming that such instances of misrepresentation are examples of the original work’s infidelity to the translator (El original es infiel a la traduccion). The point I make can be illustrated by reference to Nicholas Nickleby. In Chapter Thirty-five of the original the brothers Cheeryble are called “German-merchants,” a term which Lin Shu in Chapter Thirty-four of his translation translates literally. Ordinarily we too would understand it in these terms, if we were not to reflect on the matter for a moment. Dickens was not at all likely to regard Germans as the saviours of English society.29 Moreover, in those English novels of the nineteenth-century that sought to depict the life of their own nation, foreigners with their odd tongue and outlandish dress served merely as the butt of jokes.30 Cheeryble’s name and his behaviour are those of a true Englishman however. This ordinary term of address embodies here a significance that is nowadays not often

29 H. House, in his The Dickens World, pp. 51 and 169, discusses the hopes that Dickens placed in people such as Cheeryble. 30 Max Beerbohm once compiled a list of the types of characters that were commonly regarded as ridiculous, including mothers-in-law, hen-pecked husbands, and so on, one item of this list being: “Frenchmen, Germans, Italians . . . but not including Russians,” cf. N. Clay, ed., A Selection of Essays by Max Beerbohm, p. 94. 160 lin shu’s translations used. It referred not to “German merchants” (Deguo jushang 德國巨商) but rather to Englishmen who did trade with Germany.31 If we were to be writing an article about Nicholas Nickleby or discussing Dickens’s ideology and craft, we would need only avoid claiming that Dickens harboured an admiration for Germany similar to that held by Carlyle to escape the shame of revealing our own ignorance and misapprehension of the text. Such security could not have been vouched us if we were to have been translating the novel. Many of the “mistakes” perpetrated by Lin Shu’s assistants can thus be for- given them. What surprises us however are the explanations they instructed Lin Shu to add to the text for these must have been the result of a certain amount of research and investigation. I will give two examples that I consider particularly bizarre. Chapter Five of Lin Shu’s translation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The White Company (Chinese title: Hei taizi nan zheng lu 黑太子南徵錄)32 contains the following passage:

‘Ouvre’ (wufuli 烏弗黎) [Note: this is French and is akin to saying “worker”] he cried out to me from his saddle, making a sign as he did so, ordering me to open the gate. When I had opened it up for him, he said to me: ‘Merci’ (mouerxi 懋爾西) [Note: this is English slang].

In Chapter Fifty-one of his translation of The Old Curiosity Shop we find the following:

Mr Brass said: ‘You really are quite a wit, and well versed in Natural History as well, why so? You are a buffoon of the first order!’ Now in English, ‘buffoon’ means to be a clown, whereas ‘bufon’ is the French word for toad. At this point in the story Brass intends to call Quilp a buffoon but he so mis- pronounces the word that it comes out sounding like the word for ‘toad.’

I shall not comment upon the confusion between “Open the door” (ouvre) and “Worker” (ouvrier). Why however is the French word for “Thank you” (merci)

31 Cf. O. Jesperson, Modern English Grammar, Vol. 1, Part 2, p. 304. This usage predates the examples that Jesperson gives from De Quincey and Dickens of course, for in Aubrey’s famous seventeenth-century biographies what is referred to as a “Turkey merchant” is an Englishman who does business in Turkey, cf. John Aubrey, Brief Lives, O.L. Dick, ed., (Ann Arbor Paperbacks), p. 19: “Mr Dawes, a Turkey merchant,” and p. 26: “Mr Hodges, a Turkey merchant.” 32 This title is a translation of The White Company; both Han Guang’s Lin Qinnan and Zhou Xizhou’s Chunjuezhai zhushu ji confuse it with Sir Nigel. lin shu’s translations 161 glossed as being “English slang?” A notable French zoologist’s surname and the French word for clown are near homophones. Hugo, we will remember, had some fun by rhyming the two in one of his poems.33 Whilst we should not be surprised by Lin Shu’s ignorance of Buffon, why did he insist upon altering the name and dragging in the Latin or Italian word for toad (bufo, bufone)? In this way, his translation transforms a major French “Natural Historian” into an amphibious Roman animal. In Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (III, i) Bottom falls prey to a spell which turns his head into that of an ass. One of his startled companions exclaims: “Bless thee! Thou art translated.” One could well make the same comment of Lin Shu’s translation! Lin Shu began translating at the age of forty-four or forty-five whilst on a boat during an excursion to Stone-Drum Mountain.34 He translated from this time onwards without cease until his death, by which time he had translated a total of more than 170 works, almost all of which were novels. Rumour has it that he was once invited to translate the Bible.35 In all probability this story was little more than apocryphal nonsense spread by a reporter of a minor newspaper who had no understanding of the workings of the missionary societies. Over the course of my recent partial browse through his corpus, it became obvious to me that his near thirty-year career as a translator fell into two distinct periods. I believe that his completion of a translation of Bernardin de Sainte-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie (Chinese title: Li hen tian 離恨天) in the 3rd month of the Guichou year (2nd year of the Republic [1913]) marks the point

33 Victor Hugo, “Le Comte de Buffon”, in L’Art d’être grand-père, Vol. 4, Poem 1: “Je contemple, au milieu des arbres de Buffon,/ Le bison trop bourru, la babouin trop bouffon.” 34 Huang Jun 黃濬, Hua sui ren sheng an zhiyi 花隨人聖盫摭憶, p. 238, records the following: “Wei Jizhu 魏季渚 (Han 瀚), then head of the Marine Engineering Bureau at Majiang, was friendly with Lin Shu. One day he informed him of the superiority of French novels and requested him to translate one, a request that Lin Shu declined, pleading lack of ability; when Lin Shu was repeatedly importuned, he replied: ‘You must invite me on an excursion to Stone-Drum Mountain before I will comply with your request’. Wei Jizhu assented to this without hesitation and thereupon hired a boat and invited Wang Ziren 王子仁 to accompany them, insisting upon his providing an oral translation of La dame aux camélias . . . When the book appeared before the public it was received with great acclaim, much to Lin Shu’s delight also . . . This event occurred during the Bingshen and Dingyou years of the Emperor Guangxu’s reign.” These years equate with the period 1896–7; according to A Ying’s 阿英 investigations, in his “About La dame aux camelias” (“Guanyu Chahua nü yishi” 關於茶花女遺事), Shijie wenxue 世界文學 (World Literature), No. 10 (1961), the translation was first published in 1899. 35 Zhang Huijian 張慧劍, Zhenzi shuolin 振子說林, p. 7, states: “A certain missionary society in Shanghai had the idea of inviting Lin Qinnan to essay a translation of their Bible, the price of 20,000 dollars having been mentioned. Nothing was ever finalised.” 162 lin shu’s translations of transition between these two periods. Seven or eight out of ten of the translations he had completed before this point in time are arresting examples of the art. Subsequently, however, his powers as a translator went into gradual decline and as his energies dissipated his translations became dull and colourless. These translations induce in us an overwhelming sense of tedium. This was certainly not due to any lack during this latter period of exceptional works for Lin Shu to translate. His translations of Cervantes’s Don Quixote (Chinese title: Moxia zhuan 魔俠傳) and Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes (Chinese title: Yu yan juewei 魚雁掘微) both belong to this latter period. Most improbably, having undergone the listless translation of a Lin Shu now more than sixty years old, these works become as soporific as those books of theology satirised within the Lettres persanes itself.36 An invidious comparison may be established by contrasting Cervantes’s lively and fluent prose with Lin Shu’s deathly and incoherent translation, or Montesquieu’s “magical pen” (shenbi 神筆) (“Preface”, Lettres persanes, see Eastern Miscellany (Dongfang zazhi 東方雜志), Vol. 12, No. 9) with Lin Shu’s now blunted brush. Strange as it may seem, even when we look at his translations of those works by Haggard that appeared during his latter period, novels such as The Witches Head (Chinese title: Tiehe toulu 鐵盒頭顱), they prove far more stifling than any of the translations of this same author that he had completed so successfully during his earlier period. Perhaps the most appropriate epithet for Lin Shu during this latter period is Yuan Mei’s 袁枚 (1716–1798) phrase “the despon- dency of an old practitioner” (laoshou tuitang 老手頹唐), as used in his discussion of poetry (“An Analysis of Subtlety” (“Bian wei” 辨微), A Continuation of Ranking of the Poets (Xu shipin 續詩品), Xiaocang shanfang shiji 小倉山房詩集, juan 20 and Suiyuan shihua 隨園詩話, juan 1). Lin Shu was indeed an old practitioner or dab hand who was now neither willing nor capable of taking the trouble to exert himself. He seems content rather to fall back upon the skills accumulated over the years in order to give perfunctory discharge of his duties. The translations of his earlier period conjure up a picture of a Lin Shu full of vigour and concentration going about his tasks with joy, ever ready whatever the occasion to parade his skills as a writer. The impression produced by the translations of his latter period is that of a weary old man mechanically driving on his blunted pen with limp hand in order that he may fulfil his quota of “a thousand words in the space of an hour.” He no longer appreciated the works he was translating, nor does he seem much interested in them,

36 See the letter from a doctor appended to Letter 143 of Lettres persanes, G. True, ed., pp. 260–61. In his translation, Lin Shu excised this “letter” (Eastern Miscellany, Vol. 14, No. 7). lin shu’s translations 163 unless he was merely intent upon the royalties they would earn him. In other words, then, such translations were for him no more than yet another item of business undertaken by his “mint;”37 nominally he was transforming foreign works of literature into Chinese ones, in actuality however what he was doing amounted to little more than the exchange of foreign goods for Chinese currency. There is a specific aspect of Lin Shu’s work that serves to make us aware of this shift in his attitude towards the translations he was working upon. The great majority of the translations of his earlier period carry prefaces, either by himself or others, postscripts, “Short Introductions,” “Exposition of the Theme,” “Introductory Remarks,” “Translators Notes,” “A Few Lines of Criticism,” and poems or lyric verses by himself or other people. Within the texts of such translations we often find Lin Shu’s own annotations to or commentary on the work. All such appurtenances served either to elucidate the significance and art of the original work or to commend it to us. Even though such comments were oftentimes both lightweight and infantile, they nevertheless reveal an attitude of mind that was at once both serious and engaged. Lin Shu developed an intimate relationship with the works he was translating, to the extent that under excess of emotion he would halt for a moment his flying pen and wipe away his tears.38 Such embellishments or accessories are very much reduced in the translations of his latter period. His poems and lyric verses disappeared completely; extremely rare too become the prefatory remarks such as the “Short Notes Made After Translating This work” we find attached to his translation of Hendrick Conscience’s De arme edelman (Chinese title: Xiaoyou jing 孝友鏡), or commentary such as the string of remarks “Laughable,” “Most laughable,” “This makes one collapse in laughter” and so on found in Chapter Two of his translation of Haggard’s The Brethren (Chinese title: Yanhuo ma 煙火馬). Even when translating a work such as that given the title Jintai chunmeng lu 金臺春夢錄 (co-authored by a Frenchman and a Russian, original unknown) which took Peking as its background and which dealt with the

37 The Xu Minchuan wenshi zhuan cited in Footnote 25 states: “When painting or trans lating, Lin Shu would not cease his labours even if a guest were present. Only when writing himself would he break off his work. His friend Chen Yan once jokingly referred to his house as a ‘mint’ for it produced money whatever he did.” Cf. Lin Shu’s “Preface” to his translation of Haggard’s Mr. Meeson’s Will (Chinese title: Yuxue liu hen 玉雪留痕) were he states: “How can an author ever hope to become rich? . . . Yet Haggard’s avarice is most ridiculous!” 38 In the “Preface” to his translation of Dombey and Son, and again in a line of commentary attached to Chapter Fifty-nine, we find the following comment: “By the time Lin Shu had reached this point, he had wept three time already!” 164 lin shu’s translations natural and social customs of China Lin Shu failed to rise to the occasion. He no longer treated the works he was translating with the intimacy and serious- ness he had displayed previously; his whole attitude appeared insouciant, one could even say cold and indifferent. If indeed the work of a translator is a matter of “Literary Affinities,” then the translations of Lin Shu’s latter period much resemble the title he had given his own translation of Dombey and Son—“An Affinity for Ice and Snow” (Bingxue yinyuan 冰雪因緣). Lin Shu was a “Master of the Ancient Prose Style” (guwen jia 古文家), and his friends complimented him on his ability to translate foreign novels into “Ancient Prose” (guwen 古文), as in the line from Zhao Xi’s 趙熙 poem “In Memory of Lin Shu” (“Huai Weilu sou” 懷畏廬叟): “He cast the novels of all nations in the mould of Sima Qian and Ban Gu 班固” (Chen Yan 陳衍 (1856–1937), Jindai shichao 近代詩鈔, Vol. 18). As a rule, later critics have persisted with this claim, quite unnecessarily to my mind, for it reveals little more than their own insufficient understanding of the literary tradition. This is a question that requires some clarification. Within the history of Chinese literature, the term “Ancient Prose” was a technical one which, from the Tang dynasty onwards and particularly during the Ming and Qing dynasties, embodied an especial and narrow significance. It was certainly not the case that all prose in classical Chinese could be considered “Ancient Prose,” whilst at the same time, under certain conditions, “Ancient Prose” was not necessarily the antithesis of vernacular prose (baihua 白話). The concept “Ancient Prose” encompasses two aspects. The first aspect is that referred to as the “Principle and Method” ( yifa 義法) by Lin Shu in the “Introductory Remarks” attached to his translation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and in the prefaces to his translations of Ivanhoe and David Copperfield. It signifies such devices as “The opening scene” (kaichang 開場), “The foreshadowing of narrative threads” ( fumo 伏脈), “Dovetailing” ( jiesun 接筍), “Points of culmination and summation” ( jiexue 結穴), “Turning points” (kaihe 開闔) and so on—in a word then, the techniques of narration and description. Speaking in terms of this aspect of the concept, works written in the vernacular were entirely capable of embodying the “Principles and Method of Ancient Prose Masters.” Much earlier, the Ming dynasty playwright Li Kaixian 李開先 (1502–1568) had made note in his Cixue 詞謔 of the fact that such “Ancient Prose Masters” as Tang Shunzhi 唐順之 (1507–1560), Wang Shenzhong 王慎中 (1509–1559) and so on had compared the literary worth of the novel Water Margin to that of the Records of the Grand Historian.39 The “Occasional Notes

39 Li Kaixian ji 李開先集, Lu Gong 路工 ed., Vol. 3, p. 945. Cf also Li Zhi’s 李贄 comments as cited in Zhou Hui 周暉, Jinling suoshi 金陵瑣事 and the remarks made by “Eminent lin shu’s translations 165 on Former Schools of Learning” (“Jiu xuean biji” 舊學盫筆記) by Lin Shu’s contemporary Li Baoxun 李葆恂 (1859–1915), found in his Yizhou Lishi con- gkan 義州李氏叢刊, appears to have been only very infrequently cited. One item from this work records the great-grandson of Yun Jing 惲敬 (1757–1817), the best of the Ancient Prose Masters of the “Yanghu School” (陽湖派), telling the author that: “His great-grandfather Mr Ziju had a hand-written manuscript entitled “On the Prose of the Dream of the Red Chamber” (“Honglou meng lunwen” 紅樓夢論文) which he had used yellow, red, black and green ink to annotate, in imitation of the method employed by Gui Youguang 歸有光 (1507–1571) in his critical edition of the Records of the Grand Historian.”40

Men” ( jugong 巨公) and “Luminaries” (mingshi 名士) as recorded by Hu Yinglin 胡應麟 (1551–1602) in his Shaoshi shanfang bicong 少室山房筆叢, juan 41. For similar opinions as voiced by Yuan Hongdao 袁宏道 (1568–1610), Wang Siren 王思任 (1575–1646), and others, see Ping Buqing 平步青, Xiawai jun xie 霞外捃屑, juan 7, for discussion of his claim that “Where Ancient Prose writes realistically or with verisimilitude, these are the places that most facilitate the use of the tricks of the novelist.” In his “Preface to a Collection of Wang Yuanzhao’s Writings” (“Wang Yuanzhao ji xu” 王元照集序), Chu xue ji 初學集, juan 32, Qian Qianyi 錢謙益 (1582–1664) records: “In the past there was somebody who studied writing under Xiong Nansha 熊南沙, Xiong Nansha having instructed him to read the Water Margin”; Wang Shucheng’s 王叔承 “Have You Not Seen: Playfully Presented to the Storyteller Zhu of Jinling at a Banquet at Tiaochuan” (“Jun bu jian Tiaochuan xishang xi zeng Jinling Zhu Shuoshu” 君不見苕川席上戲贈晉陵朱說書), Liechao shiji zhuan 列朝詩集傳, Ding jiu 丁九 juan, goes: “Have you not seen Master Luo’s Water Margin,/ Its historical genius highlighted, its prose resplendent. /. . ./ With the flowing incisiveness of Sima Qian and Zuo Qiuming,/ The marvellous twists and turns of Zhuang Zhou’s fancy.” I have not seen either of these references cited before. 40 The Gui Youguang critical edition of the Records of the Grand Historian that is presently extant is certainly not authentic (see Wang Maohong 王懋竑, “A Colophon to Gui Youguang’s Edition of the Records of the Grand Historian” (“Ba Gui Zhenchuan Shi ji” 跋歸震川史記), Baitian caotang cungao 白田草堂存稿, juan 8, and Yao Nai’s 姚鼐 own comment that what he had seen was: “a palace edition of the Records of the Grand Historian that had belonged to Gui Youguang but which only had circles written besides certain words and phrases (i.e. underlinings) such that truly express one’s views,” as cited in Lu Jilu 陸繼輅, Hefei xueshe zhaji 合肥學舍札記, juan 1), and yet Masters of Ancient Prose esteemed it as a heavenly work, to the extent that “Those earlier generations of scholars who discussed Ancient Prose honoured the transmission of it but were unwilling to show it to others indiscriminately” (Zhang Xuecheng 章學誠, “The Principles of Writing” (“Wen li” 文理), Wen shi tongyi 文史通義, nei pian 1). We can understand the importance that Yun Jing placed on the “prose” of the novel Dream of the Red Chamber from the fact that he gave it similar treatment when he annotated this work in four different colours. 166 lin shu’s translations

Another item in the same work states:

Ruan Yuan 阮元 (1764–1849) had the greatest admiration for the novel The Scholars (Rulin waishi 儒林外史), saying of it that: ‘Its author belonged to one of Anhui’s distinguished clans and in this work he records someone going from his village to Yangzhou and making his fortune in trade and having nothing to do with the original inhabitants. The author vented his spleen through this work, in a manner very similar to the Grand Historian’s use of books to vilify people, and thus his pen too attains almost the force of Sima Qian’s.’ His admiration for this book is boundless! My own opinion of it is that not only is such marvellous writing seldom found in other novels, even those who followed Ouyang Xiu 歐陽修 and Su Shi 蘇軾 and who have achieved such force are few, I fear; Gui Youguang and Tang Shunzhi of the Ming dynasty and Fang Bao 方苞 (1668–1747) and Yao Nai 姚鼐 (1732–1815) of the Qing dynasty were all far inferior. One need only observe the meaning that lies beyond the words, the volumes that are found between the lines, the praise and blame dispensed and the satiric force of the work to know that all such things derive from the Grand Historian’s “The Treatise on the Feng and Shan Sacrifices” (“Feng shan shu” 封禪書).41

41 I think that Ruan Yuan’s comments as cited here must derive from a manuscript owned by Li Baoxun for they are not found elsewhere. Li Baoxun harboured certain reservations about The Scholars: “The Marriage that Awakens the World (Xingshi yinyuan 醒世姻緣) can be considered the most delightful of books, at each point in the story several tens of sentences flow readily from the author’s pen, with the majestic surge and flow of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers . . . Of the other novels of this dynasty, only The Scholars can bear comparison with it, although the meaningful or joyful parts of this latter work are not as good.” The entry dated the 16th day, 2nd month of the 10th year of the Xianfeng reign period (1860) in Li Ciming’s 李慈銘 Yuemantang riji bu 越縵堂日記補 tells us: “I have just read a novel entitled Marriage that Awakens the World . . . It is sophisticated and finely wrought, being a most reasonable example of this type of work”; in his “Letter to Liang Qichao Discussing the Novel” (“Yu Liang Rengong lun xiaoshuo shu” 與梁任公論小說書), Huang Zunxian 黃遵憲 argues that: “One could copy down in their various categories all the metaphoric (piyu yu 譬喻語), descriptive (xingrong yu 形容語) and humorous ( jieyi yu 解頤語) phrases that occur in the Water Margin, the Dream of the Red Chamber, and the Marriage that Awakens the World as well as those found in Western novels and even popular fables in order that they be at one’s beck and call” (Entry dated 28th year of the Guangxu reign period in Qian Zhonglian’s 錢仲聯 “Chronological Biography of Mr Huang Zunxian” (“Huang Gongdu xiansheng nianpu” 黃公度先生年譜), Renjinglu shichao jianzhu 人境廬詩鈔箋注). These examples bear eloquent testimony to the fact lin shu’s translations 167

Expressed here is no less than a view of the vernacular novel as being of an equivalent class to the Records of the Grand Historian and the “Ancient Prose” of the Eight Masters, so much so in fact that they could be compared with each other and be traced back to the same origins. In the prefaces to his translations of David Copperfield and The Old Curiosity Shop, Lin Shu had himself spoken in the same breath of the novels Dream of the Red Chamber and Water Margin and the writings of the Han dynasty historians “Sima Qian and Ban Gu.” As I pointed out earlier in this article, he had also made the discovery that foreign novels “Everywhere light upon the literary techniques of Ancient Prose.” Thus, in terms of their “Principles and Methods,” foreign novels already accorded with the requirements of “Ancient Prose,” and there was no need for Lin Shu to transform them into “Ancient Prose.” The concept “Ancient Prose” embraced a second aspect however—that of its language. We need only observe the dogma propounded by Fang Bao, the founder of the “Tongcheng School” (桐城派) of prose and a man much venerated by Lin Shu, to understand the extent to which the language of “Ancient Prose” laboured under restriction and taboo. Not only was the use of the vernacular excluded altogether, most of classical Chinese was renounced as well: “Ancient Prose maintains a taboo against the use of the language of the recorded conversations ( yulu 語錄) of the Song dynasty Neo-Confucians, the ornate and euphuistic diction (zaoli paiyu 藻麗俳語) of the Wei, Jin and Six Dynasties period, the clichéd bi-syllabic compounds (banchong zifa 板重字法) found in the prose-poems ( fu 賦) of the Han dynasty and the exquisite phrases ( juanyu 雋語) found in the poetry of that period, as well as the clever conceits (tiaoqiaoyu 佻巧語) of the Northern and Southern dynasties.”42 Later

that famous men of letters and scholars of the late Qing period had not waited around impatiently for the advocates of vernacular literature to make a great song and dance about the “discovery” of this book; they had been aware of its position within the tradition of Chinese fiction much earlier. 42 See the “A Personal Note” (“Zi ji” 自記) attached to the “Biography of Mr Fang Bao” (“Fang Wangxi xiansheng zhuan” 方望溪先生傳) (in Shen Tingfang’s 沈廷芳 Yinzhuoxuan wenchao 隱拙軒文鈔, juan 4). The “Eight Taboos in the Diction of Ancient Prose” (“Guwen cijin ba tiao” 古文詞禁八條), Mutang biegao 穆堂別稿, juan 44, of Li Fu 李紱, a man much revered by Fang Bao 方苞, is an article that has always been overlooked and which in a clear and detailed manner stipulates the taboo against the use of the “language of the recorded conversations of the Confucian Masters” (ru xian yulu 儒先語錄), the “spittle of the Buddhists and the Taoists” ( fo lao tuoyu 佛老唾語), “classical exegesis” (xungu jiang zhang 訓詁講章), the “commentaries to examination essays” (shiwen pingyu 時文評語), “parallel phrases of the four-six prose style” (siliu pianwen 四六駢 168 lin shu’s translations writers of the Tongcheng School sought to extend the compass of these taboos and gradually both the tone and language of the “annotations and commentaries” (zhushu 注疏), “personal letters” (chidu 尺牘), and “causeries on poetry” (shihua 詩話) found their way onto the Index prohibitorum.43 Subject to the imperatives of these ever-increasing restrictions, writers of Ancient Prose sought to toe the line in fear and trepidation so as to protect the purity of their language. It was a negative purity—one of snowflakes rather than of flames.44 Viewed in terms of this aspect of the concept, the literary form of Lin Shu’s translations was not “Ancient Prose.” At the very least, it was not what he himself termed “Ancient Prose.” As a translator he violated and ignored the very regulations of “Ancient Prose” that he had himself formulated. Yuan Hongdao’s 袁宏道 (1568–1610) “Record of Solitary Mountain” (“Ji Gushan” 記孤山), for instance, contains the following line: “The recluse of Solitary Mountain (Lin Bu 林逋 (967–1028) took a flowering apricot tree as his wife and the cranes as his children and is one of the world’s most carefree souls (pianyiren 便宜人)!” In the eighth of his “Sixteen Taboos” (“Shiliu ji” 十六忌), subtitled “Taboo against Playfulness” (“Ji qingxuan” 忌輕儇), from his Lin Shu’s Discussions of Prose Writing (Weilu lun wen 畏廬論文) Lin Shu censures this usage: “Can this expression ‘carefree soul’ actually be used in prose writing?”45 Picking up one of

文), the “clichés of eulogistic prose” (songyang taoyu 頌揚套語), of “drama and fiction” (chuanqi xiaoshuo 傳奇小說) as well as the “vulgarisms of the market place” (shijing biyu 市井鄙語). Yuan Mei, who claimed himself to have been much appreciated by Li Fu, also respected these “taboos of diction” (cijin 詞禁), cf. his “Letter to the Licentiate Su Fuzhi” (“Yu Sun Fuzhi xiucai shu” 與孫輔之秀才書), Xiaocang shanfang wenji 小倉山房文集, juan 35. 43 Mei Zengliang 梅曾亮, “Preface to the Letters of Mr Yao Nai” (“Yao Jichuan xiansheng chidu xu” 姚姬傳先生尺牘序), Baijian shanfang wenji 柏梘山房文集, Continuation (xuji 續集), states: “The Master once told his students that in writing one could not make use of the tone (qi 氣) of the annotations and commentaries, the recorded conversations or letters”; the second item in Wu Dexuan’s 吳德旋 Prolegomenon on Ancient Prose from the Tower of the New Moon (Chuyuelou guwen xulun 初月樓古文敘論) goes: “Avoid the language of fiction, recorded conversations, causeries on poetry, examination essays (shiwen 時文) and letters.” 44 Even those Tongcheng School authors who held Fang Bao in high esteem could not but acknowledge the impoverishment of his language—he was “miserly of diction” (se yu ci 嗇於詞) (Liu Kai 劉開, “Letter to Ruan Yuan, Junior Guardian of the Heir Apparent, Discussing Writing” (“Yu Ruan Yuntai gongbao lun wen shu” 與阮芸臺宮保論文書), Mengtu wenji 孟涂文集, juan 4. 45 The Classified Conversations of Zhu Xi (Zhuzi yulei 朱子語類), juan 125, contains the line: “Laozi . . . with a permanent smile on his lips, was indeed a carefree soul who sought advantage by holding back”; this is an illustration of the fact that the “recorded lin shu’s translations 169

Lin Shu’s books at random however, I discovered written plain for all to see the following sentence from his translation of Nicholas Nickleby: “Even this large sum of thirty pound is to let them get it cheap (pianyi 便宜), and extremely so.” Another example of self-contradiction can be found in his “Methods of Phrase Formation” (“Pinzi fa” 拼字法), also from his Lin Shu’s Discussions of Prose Writing, which states: “The methods of phrase formation of Ancient Prose are the same as those employed in the composition of lyric verse (tian ci 填詞), only the choice of words differs. The ‘eye’ ( yan 眼) words of lyric verses are fine and gaudy (xianyan 纖艷), whereas those in Ancient Prose are elegantly refined ( yalian 雅煉) and always dignified (zhuangyan 莊嚴).” He gives as an example of the “phrase formations found in lyric poetry” the phrase “melancholy gauze and hateful silk” (chouluo henqi 愁羅恨綺). And yet we find that the title he gave to one of his translations of Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels, The Refugees, used precisely this phrase—A Record of Hateful Silk and Melancholy Gauze (Henqi chouluo ji 恨綺愁羅). An even clearer expression of his stance in this respect is seen in his “Taboo against Adulterations” (“Ji rouza” 忌糅雜), the fourteenth of his “Sixteen Taboos,” Lin Shu’s Discussions of Prose Writing, where he tells us that: “Adulteration (rouza 糅雜) is when one lards one’s prose with the usages of the Buddhists . . . I happened recently to be translating a work entitled Colonel Quaritch, V.C. (Honghan nülang zhuan) and I polished up the main tenets of the Surangama Sutra (Lengyan jing 楞嚴經) and had them serve as my preface. Afterwards I much regretted such adulteration. Fortunately the translation was done for fun and I have not kept the manuscript.” It is a passage that amply testifies to the fact that Lin Shu considered the translating of novels and the writing of “Ancient Prose” to be two completely different activities, and believed that the regulations and taboos under which “Ancient Prose” laboured had no force of jurisdiction over or con- straining effect upon his practice as a translator. In actual fact, Fang Bao had much earlier criticised the “Ancient Prose” of the Ming dynasty loyalists for revealing the fault of being “adulterated with the usages of fiction,” while other

conversations” did not in fact respect any taboos in terms of their diction. Chen Mengxi 陳夢錫, “Annotations to a Preface to the Laozi” (“Zhu Laozi xu” 注老子序), Wumengyuan ji 無夢園集, “Horse collection” (ma ji 馬集), juan 4, in a comment inexplicitly directed at Zhu Xi, states: “Laozi was not at all a carefree soul . . . He did not think up ways for people to get off cheap, what Laozi hated most was cheapness”; this was a warning against writers of the late Ming period breaking the “taboo against the language of the recorded conversations.” 170 lin shu’s translations

Ancient Prose stylists too had warned writers to “avoid the usages of fiction.”46 To wish to translate “realistic and lifelike” novels without allowing your writing to be “adulterated with the usages of fiction” is somewhat akin to biting down hard on your tongue at the very moment you wish to speak. We can see

46 Fang Bao’s comment is to be found in the essay by Shen Tingfang cited in Footnote 43. In his Chuyuelou guwen xulun, Wu Dexuan ventures the following opinion of Yuan Mei: “His prose is not as good as his fiction,” adding the annotation: “Chen Lingsheng said: ‘The best examples of the prose of both Hou Fangyu and Wang Yuyi were incapable of transcending the legerdemain of the novelist, how could these two men be regarded as famous prose masters!’” Note: for Chen Lingsheng’s comment as cited above, see Huang Zongxi’s 黃宗羲 (1610–1695), “Biography of Mr Chen Lingsheng” (“Chen Lingsheng xiansheng zhuan” 陳令升先生傳), Nanlei wending 南雷文定, Latter Collection (houji 後集), juan 4. Cf. also Peng Shiwang 彭士望, “Letter to Wei Yi” (“Yu Wei Bingshu shu” 與魏冰書書), Shulu wenchao 樹廬文鈔, juan 2: “Even where prose writes realistically it must do so in an upright and natural manner, delicate and frivolous (xiantiao 纖佻) phrases being what are most tabooed for even more than deception and slander, prose that makes use of such phrases degenerates into unorthodox and trivial history (baiguan xieshi 稗官諧史 [i.e. fiction]). The “Brief Account of Changes in the River” (“Jiangbian jilue” 江變紀略) of Xu Juyuan 徐巨源 and both the “Biography of Tang Pipa” (“Tang Pipa” 湯琵琶) and the “Biography of Li Yizu” (“Li Yizu zhuan” 李一足傳) by Wang Yuyi 王于一, both men of my village, bedazzle the eyes of contemporaries who give not a thought to the injury they do morality.” The sixth poem in Li Liangnian’s 李良年 series of nine entitled “Slogans on Prose” (“Lun wen kouhao” 論文口號), Qiujin shanfang ji 秋錦山房集, juan 3, goes: “Wang Yuyi’s essays are on people’s lips,/ In old age sighs gave way to sobs./ The “Biography of Tang Pipa” and the “Biography of Li Yizu” are most ridiculous,/ And can be used to supplement the records of the strange and absurd (qixie zhiguai 齊諧志怪).” In his “Colophon to a Posthumous Collection of the Writings of Wang Yuyi” (“Ba Wang Yuyi yiji” 跋王于一遺集), Dunweng qianhou leigao 鈍翁前後類稿, juan 48, Wang Wan 汪琬 states: “In the prose of earlier generations, there is that which approximates fiction, this trend having been initiated by Liu Zongyuan 柳宗元, his biographies of “Hejian” 河間 and “Li Chi” 李赤 as well as his “On the Banishment of the Dragon” (“Zhe long shuo” 謫龍說) and similar works for example all being examples of this development. Yet Liu Zongyuan’s prose was lofty and pure so one does not become aware of its lack of restraint. As to that of the present age, however, the usages of fiction have become the diction of Ancient Prose . . . and it has degenerated into no more than vulgar studies! Last evening I discussed with Wuzeng (that is, Li Liangnian) Hou Fangyu’s 侯方域 “Biography of Actor Ma” (“Ma ling zhuan” 馬伶傳) and Wang Yuyi’s “Biography of Tang Pipa,” and we could not help but sigh.” Wang Youding’s 王猷定 “Biography of Li Yizu,” Sizhaotang ji 四照堂集, juan 7, is in fact an adaptation based upon the “Short Biography of Li Yizu” (“Li Yizu xiaozhuan” 李一足小傳), Baisonglou jilue 白松樓集略, juan 8 by Han Chengyu 韓程愈, the man who had “spent the most time with Li Yizu.” The “A Record of the Polygonum Multiflorum” (“Heshouwu lu” 何首烏錄) and the “Explanation of the Soul of the River” (“Jie jiangling” 解江靈) by another of Han Yu’s associates, Li Ao 李翱 (772–841), also “approximates fiction.” lin shu’s translations 171 from the above that Lin Shu certainly did not translate his novels into “Ancient Prose,” nor would it have been possible for him to have done so. The literary form that Lin Shu employed for his translations was what he understood to be a relatively popular and informal form of classical Chinese that was rich in elasticity. Although it retained a certain number of elements from “Ancient Prose,” it was nevertheless very much freer than “Ancient Prose.” The rules that governed its diction and syntax were not at all strict. It proved an extremely capacious form of prose. Because of this, the “exquisite phrases” and “clever conceits” found in classical Chinese such as “the gentleman in the rafters” (liangshang junzi 梁上君子—i.e. a thief), “five clusters of cloud” (wu duo yun 五朵雲—i.e. one’s signature), “earthen bun” (tu mantou 土饅頭—i.e. a grave mound) or “a lady for passing the night” ( yedu niang 夜度娘—i.e. a prostitute), and so on, all of which were certainly not permitted in “Ancient Prose,” made their appearance within his translations in all sorts of guises. Colloquial vernacular expressions such as “precious little one” (xiao baobei 小寶貝), “Papa” (baba 爸爸), “God forsake thee, Blimber” (tiansha zhi Bolinbo 天殺之伯林伯) (Chapter Fifteen of his translation of Dombey and Son, “God forsake thee” is to say “God forsaken”) and so on appear in great profusion. Many of the foreign neologisms then much in vogue—what Lin Shu called the “neologisms of the Easterner” (Dongren xinmingci 東人新名詞) that “seem unrhymed as soon as they appear within the lines”47—such as “common” (put- ong 普通), “degree” (chengdu 程度), “heat” (redu 熱度), “well-being” (xingfu 幸福), “society” (shehui 社會), “individual” (geren 個人), “collective” (tuanti

47 “Preface” (Xu” 序), A Selection from the Classified Compendium of Ancient Prose (Guwenci leicuan xuanben 古文詞類簒選本); cf. the entry under the date 3rd year of the Republic (1915) in Zhu Xizhou, Chronological Biography of Mr Lin Shu (Zhenwen xiansheng nianpu 貞文先生年譜) where he records Lin Shu’s imprecations against “the adulteration of prose with neologisms.” During the late Qing period a number of people considered that just as Ancient Prose obviously could not permit itself to be “adulterated with neologisms,” so too should official documents avoid their use. Zhang Zhidong 張之洞 (1837–1909), for instance, declared that: “All memorials and official documents that make use of neologisms will have such things crossed out immediately and the comment ‘Japanese noun’ (Riben mingci 日本名詞) written beside them! Later on he realised that the word “noun” was itself a neologism and he changed the annotation to read ‘Japanese vulgarism’ (Riben tuyu 日本土語)” ( jiang Yong 江庸, Quting suibi 趨庭隨筆; cf. Hu Sijing 胡思敬, Guo wen beisheng 國聞備乘, juan 4). Yi Shunding 易順鼎, in the 5th section of his Alas, Yi Shunding (Wuhu Yi Shunding 嗚呼易順鼎), tells us that he was once the object of Zhang Zhidong’s “highest regard” (qizhong 器重) but that Zhang had “censured him severely” (da guai ta 大怪他) after he had used the words “sacrifice” (xish- eng 犧牲) and “organisation” (zuzhi 組織) in the draft of a document, claiming that Yi Shunding had “deliberately set out to oppose his will,” and that from that point in time Zhang had refused to promote him. 172 lin shu’s translations

團體) (Chapter Four of Lin Shu’s translation of Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge (Chinese title: Yulou huajie 玉樓花劫), “brains” (naojin 腦筋), “brain bag” (naoqiu 腦球), “cerebral force” (naoqi 腦氣), “reactionary force” ( fandong zhi li 反動之力) (Chapter Twenty-seven of his translation of Nicholas Nickleby, and Chapters Twelve and Fifty-two of his translation of David Copperfield), “sweet dreams” (mengjing tianmi 夢境甜蜜), “a lively spirit” (huopo zhi jing- shen 活潑之精神), “coolie” (kuli 苦力) (Chapters Eleven and Thirty-seven of his translation of David Copperfield) and so on make as much appearance in his translations as is to be expected. His translations are also afflicted by that contemporary mannerism of substituting transliteration for translation. Words such as “madan” 馬丹 (Madame), “misituo” 密司脫 (Mr), “anqier” 安琪兒 (angel), “julebu” 俱樂部 (club)48 appear on every page of his translations, some such transliterations being employed quite unnecessarily, as in “Liedi 列底 (a respectful term of address for a woman)” (Chapter Five of his translation of Ivanhoe, a transliteration of “lady”) or “This is what is termed ‘dewu- mang’ 德武忙 (which is akin to saying that one does as much as possible for one’s friends)” (Chapter Ten of La dame aux camélias, a transliteration of “du dévouement”). Totally unexpected are the remarkable elements of “Europeanisation” also found employed in Lin Shu’s translations. Their diction and syntax often resemble more the barbarisms to be expected of someone who understood the language of the original but was not particular conversant with Chinese rather than the “expressions” of a master of Ancient Prose. This type of stiff—not to say deathly stiff—translation constitutes a double “treachery.” It is injurious to the expressive effect of the original work while at the same time it violates the language habits of our own mother tongue. When translating, Lin Shu could lapse so far as to produce sentences of the various types given below! An example of the first type is:

The servant knocked on the door and said: “Xiansheng 先生 Milward has arrived.” (Chapter Five of Lin Shu’s translation of Joan Haste)

48 In Lin Shu’s translation of “Rip Van Winkle” from Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. we find this word translated as: “A small meeting of friends” (pengyou xiaohui 朋友小會); in his translation of La dame aux camélias, the line from Chapter Nine of the original that goes: “Il est temps que j’aille au club” is translated thus: “By this time it was not yet too late to go to the meeting place (huisuo 會所).” lin shu’s translations 173

The term of address “misituo” (Mr) has been translated as “xiansheng” but the word-order of the original text has been followed blindly so that the term of address has been placed before the surname.49 Examples of a second type are:

“I thought then that if I had the slightest freedom to do as I wished, I would certainly not have taken receipt of the Count.” (Chapter Fifteen of La dame aux camélias)

“Every one who knows me flatters me, to the extent that it destroys me.” (Chapter Nineteen, David Copperfield)

To translate “spoils me” as “destroys me” (bi wo 敝我) and “reçu le comte” as “taken receipt of the Count” (shou bojue 收伯爵) appears on the face of things to provide a more faithful translation than “causes me to be conceited” (shi wo jiaozi 使我驕恣) or “admit the Count” ( jiena bojue 接納伯爵). Unfortunately, it is the faithfulness of the lazy, the cowardly and the dull-witted. The results produced are two sentences of “pidgin-translatorese” which belong to the same category as such old saws as “He warmly rocked (shake—yaodong 搖動) my hand,” “There is no more chamber (room—fangjian 房間) in the trunk,” and “This is too beloved (cher—qin’ai 親愛), I cannot afford it.” A third type is sentences such as the following:

By now this humble artist had in this manner lived in an independent nation for quite some years already. (Chapter Nineteen of Lin Shu’s translation of Nicholas Nickleby)

To accord with the conventions of classical Chinese, the words “in this manner” (rushi 如是) would at the very least have to placed later in the sentence, to give: “had lived in an independent nation in this manner for quite some years already.” I cite another somewhat longer example:

I . . . think that God in his heart must know that my tears now were true, my reading of the scriptures based in sincerity and my alms in good faith. At her deathbed, this woman had I alone to close her eyes, put on her

49 In the third and eighth sections of his translation of the “Prologue” (xieyan 楔言) of Qiu feng ji 求鳳記, Zong Weihui 宗惟惠 transliterates this term of address and places it after the surname in keeping with Chinese habit, as in “Shiliemen Misi” 史列門密司 and “Kelun Misi” 克倫密司, providing fitting contrast to the “Xiansheng Milward” found in Lin Shu. 174 lin shu’s translations

clothes and place her in her coffin, all these due to the efforts of me alone. (Chapter Twenty-six of La dame aux camélias: “. . . mais je pense que le bon Dieu reconnaîtra que mes larmes étaient vraises, ma prière fervente, mon aumône sincère, et qu’ilaura pitié de celle qui, morte jeune et belle, n’a eu que moi pour lui fermer les yeux et l’ensevelir”).

I will leave aside discussion of the tautology of “I alone” and “me alone” and the inversion of the meaning of the original in the phrase “put on her clothes” (this ought to read: “dressed her”—the original does not state this). The whole sentence follows the word order of the original. It progresses forcefully along its course without the slightest attempt at rearrangement. In terms of the grammar of classical Chinese, there is absolutely no way that this solitary word “think” (si 思) can carry the burden of the long succeeding phrase; the sentence would appear far too cumbersome. Although the position of the word “know” (zhi 知) is not too isolated, it too has to carry a burden greater than it can manage and its phrases lack any cohesive force. A translation would have to reduce the number of the clauses by leaving out the level of meaning expressed by the phrase “God will have pity on her who died young and beautiful.” And yet still the clauses of this sentence remain too loosely connected and solecistic; if we were to give the passage modern punctuation without reference to the original text we may quite possibly take the phrase “At her deathbed was this woman” as being a sentence on its own. Even if we were to cut off the second half of the sentence in this way, the first half would still leave too many loose ends and be so loosely constructed as to be impermissible. Perhaps one ought to shift the sense of the phrase “God in his heart must know” towards the end of the sentence: “I think that my tears now are true, my prayers based in sincerity and my alms in good faith, all this must be known to God, and this woman’s early death whilst she was still beautiful, with nobody but me to arrange her burial, this too must earn the pity of God.” These examples amply illustrate the fact that when translating Lin Shu not only paid no attention to the constraints of “Ancient Prose,” he frequently ignored altogether the language habits of the Chinese language as well. In this respect, Lin Shu resembled that courageous and able “priest” in Ivanhoe who respects no rules and regulations the minute he dons his cassock.50 In the first novel he translated, La dame aux camélias, we can observe a Lin Shu who is experimenting, groping, and vacillating. He understood that the novel could not be translated unless the taboos and rules that governed

50 Chapter Twenty of Lin Shu’s translation of Ivanhoe: “When I am cased in my armour, I drink, swear, and dally with prostitutes, not avoiding one of such vices.” lin shu’s translations 175 the language of “Ancient Prose” were relaxed (not to say discarded altogether). It was necessary for him, therefore, to draw support from the traditional literary form employed in classical Chinese fiction and occasional writings as well as from the form made use of in the newspapers and journals of his own time in order to translate the novel. Yet, whether by reason of an uneasy conscience or because his own literary habits were too deeply ingrained, Lin Shu would lay aside the rules of “Ancient Prose” one moment only to make a great show of them the next. It is as if the Lin Shu long accustomed to writing Ancient Prose and the Lin Shu newly come to translation were involved in a form of tug-of- war or a seesaw battle. Such oscillation and alternation is obvious throughout his translation of La dame aux camélias and helps explain why this translation is more obscure, jerky and “bashful of manner” ( juzhi xiuse 舉止羞澀) than his others. The version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin that closely followed his earlier translation was considerably more fluent and lucid. Archaic or abstruse diction and syntax can be seen at every turn within the earlier translation. The sentence that goes: “I consider you to be pure, thus do I wish you not to supply the words, it is not for reason of myself” is but one example. Chapter One of the original contains a passage of 211 words that begins with “Un jour” and ends with “qu’autrefois” which is translated by Lin Shu, in twelve Chinese characters, in the following manner: “The woman accepted such joys and became gravid (chu 㛀), whereupon her mother ridded (xiazhi 下之) her of it and she fell ill.” If one were seeking to prove the concision of Chinese in contrast to Western languages, examples such as this one would give an entirely false impression.51 Even Sima Qian himself had shown no qualms in using the plain

51 Although Lin Shu’s sentence is not a good translation, it is nevertheless an example of polished and refined Ancient Prose. The character translated here as “gravid” (chu) is a motley old one that is not easily read, little wonder then that Hu Shi misquoted the line to read: “Her daughter became impregnated (zhu 珠), her mother ridded her of it,” adding the disparaging comment that: “Needless to say, this has long become a standing joke” (“A Constructive Theory of Literary Revolution” (“Jianshe de wenxue geming lun” 建設的文學革命論), Hu Shi wencun 胡適文存, juan 1). In all probability he thought the word translated here as “impregnated” (zhu) was a shortened form of the expression: “The embryo was impregnated in secret” (zhutai an jie 珠胎暗結), but because he had misread the character, the sentence actually becomes a solecism; moreover he insists upon adding the word “her” in front of the word “daughter,” the “her mother” that follows on closely from the “her daughter” thus becoming in fact a grandmother, the bastard child suddenly acquiring relatives of two generations. Hu Shi was apparently quite unaware of the damage done his reputation by latching upon this “standing joke” at Lin Shu’s expense. There is an anecdote to do with oral interpretation dating from the late Qing period that treats with the topic of the succinctness of Chinese as compared with Western languages. 176 lin shu’s translations and simple expressions “heavy with” ( you shen 有身) or “become pregnant” ( yun 孕) (as in the “The Hereditary Houses of the Families Related to the Emperors by Marriage” (“Waiqi shijia” 外戚世家), “The Hereditary Houses of the Five Families” (“Wuzong shijia” 五宗世家), “The Biography of Lü Buwei” (“Lü Buwei liezhuan” 呂不韋列傳), “The Biography of Chun Shenjun” (“Chun Shenjun liezhuan” 春申君列傳), “The Biographies of the Kings of Huainan and Hengshan” (“Huainan, Hengshan liezhuan” 淮南衡山列傳), “Biography of Chancellor Zhang” (“Zhang Chengxiang liezhuan” 張丞相列傳) chapters of his Records of the Grand Historian). Lin Shu, by contrast, lights upon a motley and obscure ancient character from the “The Timber of the Zi Tree” (“Zicai” 梓材) section of the Book of Documents (Shangshu 尚書) that goes: “As to gravid women,” as cited in both the Etymological Explanation of both Simple and Complex Characters and the Jade Chapters ( yupian 玉篇). Whereas Ban Gu 班固 (32–92), too, was prepared to state plainly that: “she took medi- cine which caused her to miscarry” ( from the “The Biographies of the Families Related to the Emperors by Marriage,” juan xia 下, section of his History of the Han Dynasty [Han shu 漢書]), Lin Shu however, in an excess of economy and in imitation of the “The Biographies of Bian Que and Duke Cang” (“Bian Que Cang gong liezhuan” 扁鵲倉公列傳) chapter of the Records of the Grand Historian, makes use of just the one character “xia.” In all probability this is an instance of what Lin Shu’s Discussions of Prose dubbed “the method of substituting characters” (huan zi fa 換字法). I will provide another illustration of a kind that is easily overlooked. When reporting dialogue between characters, novels have recourse to speech indica-

“Zaixun, in America in the company of the Admiral Sa Zhenbing in order to investigate the navy there, arrived in Washington. After having visited the ships and the naval yards, the naval authorities asked him: ‘Do you have any comment to offer, your excellency?’ Zaixun replied in Chinese: ‘Excellent!’ His interpreter, Zhou Ziqi, translated this as: ‘The machinery of your respected nation is excellent, an appropriate model for my own nation and I am full of admiration!’ The listeners clamoured . . . Zaixun certainly could not have said so much having hardly opened his mouth” (Chen Ganyi 陳灨一, “Dixiangzhai milu” 睇向齋秘籙, Xiaoshuo daguan 小說大觀, 15th Collection). In a seventeenth-century French farce there is a scene where a swindler translates a couple of so-called “Turkish” words into a long passage of French (Ergaste: “Oui, le langage turc dit beaucoup en deux mots”—Jean de Rotrou, “La Soeur”, III, iv, Œuvres, Garnier, pp. 252–53; Covielle: “Oui, la langue turque est comme cela, elle dit beaucoup en peu de mots”—Molière, “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme”, IV, Œuvres complètes, La Société des Belles lettres, Vol. 6, pp. 271–72); a satiric nineteenth-century English novel reverses this when a Persian gentleman delivers “a well-set speech” of 107 words and the interpreter concludes matters with a six word English translation, the Englishman’s reply being simply: “Oh!” ( James Morier, Chapter 15, Hajji Baba in England, The World’s Classics, p. 85). lin shu’s translations 177 tors such as “A said,” “B replied saying,” and “C thereupon said.” To avoid the monotony of a string of phrases such as “I said,” “He said,” “She said,” foreign novelists often developed new methods of announcing direct speech, such methods frequently appearing both affected and precious and incurring the censure of textbooks of rhetoric.52 Ancient books in China, too, displayed various ways of reporting dialogue, writing simply “said” ( yue 曰), “replied” (dui yue 對曰), “asked” (wen 問), “replied saying” (da yun 答云), and “spoke” ( yan 言) and so on without stating clearly who it was who was speaking. An even more classically elegant pattern was to do away with such words as “said” and “asked” altogether, what the “Imitation” (“Moni” 模擬) section of the Historiographical Principles, nei pian, termed: “To get rid of a succession of words such as ‘replied’ and ‘asked, saying.’”53 Instances of this are as follows:

“. . . When the Way does not prevail in the state, to be thinking only of your salary, this is shameful.” “Standing firm against the temptation to press one’s advantage, to brag about oneself, to harbour grudges or to be covet- ous may be called benevolence?” “It may be called difficult, but I don’t know about its being benevolence.” (Analects (Lunyu 論語), Book XIV)

“. . . were replicas of the state in miniature.” “I presume to ask which would you rather be?” Said: “Let us leave this question for the moment.” (Mencius (Mengzi 孟子), Book III)

Translations of the Buddhist sutras often miss out two speech indicators in a row, as in the following cases:

“. . . the extent of the land of all the states, could some arithmetician or some arithmetician’s disciple obtain its limits and know its size?” “No, indeed, Lokanatha.” “Assembled bhiksu, the land of the states managed by this person. . . .” (“Huacheng yupin” 化城喻品 section of The Lotus Sutra (Miaofa lianhua jing 妙法蓮華經), Item 7)

“. . . Do you see these two thousand disciples, both such as are under training and such as are not?” “I do indeed, I have seen them already.” “Ananda, all these people. . . .” ( from the “Shouxue: Wuxueren jipin” 授學無學人記品 section of the same work, Item 9)

52 Cf. A. Albalat, Comment il ne faut pas écrire, pp. 28–9; H.W. Fowler, “Mannerism,” Modern English Usage, p. 343, and E. Gowers, Rev. 2nd Ed. of this work, “Inversion” and “Said,” pp. 302 and 533. 53 Cf. my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters, pp. 246–48. 178 lin shu’s translations

Or some instances found in classical Chinese tales:

He said: “Gold.” “And who are the ones in black?” He said: “Cash. . . .” “And the ones in white?” He said: “Silver. . . .” “Who are you?” (“Zhang Fen” 張奮, Records of Marvels [Lie yi zhuan 列異傳])

The woman said: “It is not a goat, it is the work of the rain.” “What is the work of the rain?” She said: “Of a kind with the thunder and lightening.”. . . The Lord said: “How many were killed?” She said: “600,000.” “What extent of crops were destroyed?” She said: “800 li.” (Biography of Liu Yi [Liu Yi zhuan 柳毅傳])

The Taoist asked the crowd: “Have you had enough to drink?” They said: “Yes, enough.” “Then you had better retire early so as not fall behind with your wood-cutting tomorrow.” (“The Taoist of Laoshan” (“Laoshan daoshi” 勞山道士), Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio [Liaozhai zhiyi 聊齋志異])

Such instances are only infrequently seen in the corpus of “Ancient Prose.” Lin Shu’s translation of La dame aux camélias, however, makes repeated use of a pattern that, in the context of the tradition of “Ancient Prose” was held to represent high elegance:

Prudence (Duvernoy) said: “Do you wish to meet her? I could take you to her.” I would not let her. “Then shall I invite her here?”

“Yes,” she said. “But who is going to take Marguerite home?”

“Yes,” she said. “Then I will take you home.”

Marguerite said: “What are our guest’s names?” Prudence said: “One is called M. Gaston R. . . .” Marguerite said: “I know him.” “The other is called M. Armand Duval.” Marguerite said: “I have not met him before.”

I asked suddenly: “Where are Marguerite’s horses and carriage?” Prudence said: “Sold.” “Her shawl?” Again she said: “Sold.” “Where are her diamonds?” She said: “Pawned.”

I thereupon wiped away my tears and asked your father: “Can you believe that I love your son?” Your father said: “I believe it.” “Can you believe that lin shu’s translations 179

my love is not a matter of self-interest?” Your father said: “I believe it.” “Can you grant me this good intention so that I may redeem the sins of my life?” Your father said: “As I believe this, I will grant you it.” “Then I beg you to kiss my forehead. . . .”

It is noteworthy that we do not to find this pattern repeated in Lin Shu’s later translations. The second of Lin Shu’s translations to be published separately in book form was his rendition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and in this work the words “said” and “replied” are no longer omitted (in the dialogue between Mary Bird and others and Eliza found in Chapter Nine, for example, or in the dialogue between Miss Ophelia and Topsy in Chapter Twenty). The quality of Lin Shu’s translations of novels by Dickens and Washington Irving cannot be gainsaid, nor can that of his translations of Haggard that stem from his earlier period. Re-reading them on this occasion, I discovered that I far preferred reading Lin Shu’s translations to reading Haggard’s originals. Perhaps this was because I was already familiar with the content of the originals but now found their use of language excruciating. Haggard’s novels are sluggish and crudely worked, their dialogues even more stereotyped, those of his adventure stories being particularly so with their hotchpotch of old and modern English. I give here a short example chosen at random. Chapter Five of Lin Shu’s translation of Allan Quartermain (Chinese title: Feizhou yanshui choucheng lu 婓洲煙水愁城錄) contains the line: “In a harsh voice I thereupon cursed Umslopogaas, saying: ‘Why do you play such evil tricks. You would only do this if you were having a fit.’ ” The sentence is couched in fluent classical Chinese. His translation conveys the significance of the original line without allowing readers to descry behind it the method of expression of the original line. In the original, this line (“What meanest thou by such mad tricks? Surely thou art mad.”) resembles the following Chinese sentence: “You do this kind of mad trick with what intent? You have certainly gone mad.” The first time anyone with any sensitivity for the English language reads this motley sentence they will find it laughable. On future readings it will offend them. Lin Shu’s style cannot be considered finely wrought, but in general terms it is a lot more straightforward and lively than that of Haggard. A translator’s skill in the use of the “language of arrival” may quite plausi- bly be superior to the author’s use of the “language of departure,” or a translation be stylistically superior to the original.54 The stylist Walter Pater found the diction of Edgar Allan Poe’s short-stories somewhat commonplace and would only read them in Baudelaire’s French translations. Anatole France informs us

54 Cf. the examples given in E.S. Bates, Modern Translation, p. 112. 180 lin shu’s translations that “un jeune esthète” once told him that the French translation of Dombey and Son was well worth a read.55 Although Goethe never admitted that Gérard de Nerval’s French translation of Faust was more lucid than his original, this being merely an apocryphal story told by others,56 there are in fact instances of authors themselves admitting the superiority of translations of their own works. Walt Whitman, for one, never denied that as poetry, F. Freiligrath’s German translation of Leaves of Grass was perhaps better than his own English original. Borges went as far as to praise Néstor Ibarra’s French translation of his poetry as being far superior to his Spanish originals.57 Whereas it may be the case that Whitman was not in a position to determine the worth of the German versions of his work, Borges, however, was certainly well qualified to judge the quality of the French. One could argue that Lin Shu’s translations of Haggard’s novels are yet another instance of this phenomenon—a very minor instance, needless to say. In recent years, Haggard’s reputation within the Western literary world has recovered considerably, perhaps mainly as a result of an influential psychologist’s praise for She.58 A succession of critical biographies of him have also been published in England, testifying to the fact that his reputation has stood the test of time somewhat better than those of other popular novelists of his era.59 As Haggard’s stocks have risen, so too have Lin Shu’s translations benefited from this reflected glory. At the very least, we need no longer repeat the polite cliché that “Haggard is an author not worth speaking about” when discussing Lin Shu’s translations. “When . . . translating, Lin Shu would not cease his labours even if a guest were present. Only when engaged in his own writing would he break off his translating work.” What I have said above also testifies to the fact that when “translating” he was neither as careful nor as conscientious as when he was “writing.” I will take this opportunity to recall a few relevant anecdotes about him from the world of letters.

55 A.C. Benson, Biography of Walter Pater, p. 23; A. France, La Vie littéraire, Vol. 1, p. 178. 56 Cf. F. Ernst and K. Wais, ed., Forschungsprobleme der vergleichenden Literaturgeschichte, cited in Footnote 5, Vol. 2, p. 27. 57 H. Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden Town, S. Bradley, ed., Vol. 4, p. 16; G. Charbonier, Entrevistas con J.L. Borges, Martí Soler, trans., 3rd Ed. (1975), pp. 11–12. 58 That famous passage from C.G. Jung’s Modern Man in Search of a Soul is now included in current anthologies of literary criticism, for example, M. Rader, A Modern Book of Esthetics, Supplemented 3rd Ed., and D. Lodge, Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism: A Reader. 59 The biographies I have read are M. Cohen, Rider Haggard: His Life and Works (1960) and P.B. Ellis, H. Rider Haggard: A Voice from the Infinite (1978). Neither of these works is particularly good but they both assert that Haggard has managed to maintain his readership. lin shu’s translations 181

If it was not in 1931 then it was in 1932 that I had a long conversation with Mr Chen Yan in his residence on Rouge Lane in Suzhou. Mr Chen knew that I understood foreign languages but he did not know that my field was foreign literature, thinking that it must certainly be either technology, law or econom- ics and so on, a subject, that is, with some practical application. That day, having established the truth of the matter, he sighed and said: “What need is there to go off and study foreign literature! Is not our own Chinese literature good enough?”60 As I dared not argue with him, I merely cited the instance of his friend Lin Shu to deflect such criticism. I told him that my own interest in foreign literature had developed through my reading of Lin Shu’s translations. Mr Chen responded in the following manner: “You have got things the wrong way round! If Lin Shu knew this he would not be at all pleased. Having read his translations, you ought to have progressed to the study of his Ancient Prose. Why did you go off in pursuit of foreign literature instead? With respect to Lin Shu, isn’t this to have ‘cleared away the fish for the sake of the pond’?” He paused a while and then continued: “Lin Shu was most irritated by people complimenting him on the quality of his translations and his paintings. I once incurred his displeasure by sending him a birthday couplet praising his

60 A great many men of letters of an older generation held similar views, the following lines from a poem by Fan Zengxiang 樊增祥 being perhaps representative of this attitude: “The Classics and the Histories, supplemented with boundless learning,/ What poetry is there that the Europeans can read?” (“Jiudie qianyun shu gan” 九疊前韻書感, Fanshan xuji 樊山續集, juan 24). Whereas they could but acknowledge that in terms of science China was less advanced than the West, they regarded literature as the basis for their feelings of racial superiority. In this respect, Lin Shu’s perception surpassed that of his more talented and learned contemporaries. We can verify this by looking at a comment made by Wang Kaiyun 王闓運: “I have read a box-full of foreign novels and have found nothing of benefit in them, such activity being even more useless than Huang Chunyao’s [a Ming loyalist who died defending his district from the Qing forces] reading of The End of the Tang Dynasty (Can Tang 殘唐)!” (entry dated 24th day, 7th month, 3rd year of the Republic (1915), Xiangqilou riji 湘綺樓日記). This “box-full” was most probably the “Novels Translated by Lin Shu,” including translations of Gulliver’s Travels, Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe as well as works by Dickens, Scott and Washington Irving. It appears that people from other ancient Eastern nations harboured similar attitudes, Edmond de Goncourt recording the fact that a Persian had once told him that although Europeans were able to manufacture clocks and various kinds of machinery and were otherwise very able, they nevertheless were not as brilliant as Persians for did Europe also have men of letters and poets (si nous avons des littérateurs, des poètes)?—entry dated 9th September, 1887, Journal des Goncourt, Text Intégral, R. Ricatte, ed., Vol. 15, p. 29. Cf. Chapter Fifty-four of James Morier’s Hajji Baba in England, p. 335 of the edition cited in Footnote 51. 182 lin shu’s translations painting. Kang Youwei 康有為 (1858–1927), too, incurred his wrath by sending him a poem that extolled his translations.” I remembered having read that poem of Kang Youwei’s that contains the line: “This era’s twinned geniuses of translation we account Yan Fu and Lin Shu,”61 but I was then impatient to hear Mr Chen’s opinions on the famous people he had known and did not question him further on the matter. Seven or eight years later, Mr Li Xuangong 李宣龔 showed me his collection of letters from teachers and friends. It contained two large books of “Letters of Lin Shu,” one of which read, in part:

The year before last, on the occasion of my 70th birthday, Chen Yan sent me a couplet that read: “I respect as teacher an older generation;/ The Painting Master has now obtained a great old age.” He made not one mention of either my moral character or my prose. Chen Yan wrote me a

61 Yongyan, Vol. 1, No. 7, carries the poem, entitled “Mr Lin Shu, Having Painted A Painting of the Thatched Cottage of the Myriad Trees, Inscribed it with a Poem and Presented it to Me, and I Composed this Poem in Thanks” (“Qinnan xiansheng xie Wanmu caotang tu, ti shi jian zeng, fu xie” 琴南先生寫萬木草堂圖題詩見贈賦謝): “This era’s twinned geniuses of translation we account Yan Fu and Lin Shu,/ A hundred works of fiction all written with the intent of saving the world./ Overflowing with humour their divine luminosity will last the vicissitudes of the ages,/ Whoever grieves for Qu Yuan will daily intone a dirge./ The writings of the Tang, both playful and gorgeous, tend toward the sad and grieved,/ Deeply influential the romantic Western vulgarisms./ Many thanks for this painting combining the three masterpieces of a Zheng Qian,/ In wind and rain I will unroll this scroll within my thatched cottage.” For Lin Shu’s original work, see the poem entitled “Kang Youwei Sent Me a Letter Requesting A Painting of the Thatched Cottage of the Myriad Trees, and I Inscribed this Poem on the Painting” (“Kang Nanhai shu lai suo hua Wanmu caotang tu, ji ti qi shang” 康南海書來索畫萬木草堂即題其上), Weilu shicun, juan shang. Kang Youwei’s poem was hastily composed in perfunctory requital of a social obligation, the two characters “ri” 日 (sun) and “feng” 風 (wind) both occurring twice and the expression “ai gan wan yan” 哀感頑艷 (“Moving to grief both the stupid and the elegant”) being misconstrued and split asunder (cf. my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters, pp. 1046- 47), while the parallelism of the poem is most awkward and its sequence of ideas chaotic in the extreme. Lines 5 and 6 again speak of his translations of novels; it is as if line 7 gainsays altogether the value of translation given so much emphasis in lines 1, 2, 5 and 6, for suddenly it speaks of poetry, calligraphy and painting (the three masterpieces of the Tang dynasty painter Zheng Qian 鄭虔); line 8 shortens the expression “fengyu piaoyao” 風雨飄搖 (in stormy weather) to read “fengyu” (in wind and rain), as if to say that as soon as the weather clears up there would be no need to view this painting. The facsimile edition of Cui Sizhe’s 崔斯哲 manuscript “Nadong haiting shi” 納東海亭詩, Kang Nanhai xiansheng shiji 康南海先生詩集, juan 12, does not include this poem, perhaps more by virtue of commission than by omission. lin shu’s translations 183

letter that stated: “You did not make use of my message of birthday con- gratulations . . . thus I did not mention your virtues.”62

This is the occasion spoken of by Mr Chen. Another of Lin Shu’s letters mentions Yan Fu:

. . . yet whilst he was alive Yan Fu belittled me greatly, even to the extent that he insulted me to my face.63

62 Zhu Xizhou, Zhenwen xiansheng xue xing ji 貞文先生學行記, juan 2, records this couplet as reading: “I respect as teacher a famous generation;/ The Painting Master has now established a great old age.” 63 Although the two items found in Lin Shu’s Weilu wenji 畏廬文集, entitled “Preface to Yan Boyu’s [Yan Fu’s son] Trip to Paris” (“Song Yan Boyu zhi Bali xu” 送嚴伯玉至巴黎序) and “An Account of a Painting of Zunyi [Yan Fu’s alias] Translating Books” (“Zunyi yi shu tuji” 尊疑譯書圖記), express high regard for Yan Fu, they are both merely what in the terminology of Chinese commentators were described as “Respectful Addresses” (zunti 尊題) which voice “the meaning expected of such compositions” and do not “insult a person on his own doorstep.” Only the praise given Yan Fu in the colophon to Lin Shu’s translation of Haggard’s novel Colonel Quaritich, V.C. voices exceptional friendship for him. A poem entitled “I Compose this To Congratulate Yan Fu on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday” (“Yan Jidao liushi shou, zuo ci feng zhu” 嚴幾道六十壽作此奉祝), Weilu shicun 畏廬詩存, juan shang 上, which gives the lines: “In our youth we bitterly denigrated each other,/ In old age he has paid me great respect” makes frank recognition of the fact that the relationship between these two men was initially not altogether amicable; judging by Lin Shu’s letter and Mr Li Xuangong’s comment, Yan Fu certainly did not pay Lin Shu “great respect” in his “old age.” Yan Fu’s Yuyetang shiji 愈野堂詩集, juan xia 下, contains two poems written for Lin Shu. The poem entitled “Inscription to Lin Shu’s Painting of a Meeting of the Old Men of Jinan” (“Ti Lin Weilu Jinan qinian hui tu” 題林畏廬晉安耆年會圖) contains the lines: “In his youth Lin Shu harboured boundless ambition,/ Seeking his literary precedents from the Western Han dynasty./. . ./ The dispositions and circumstances of a myriad things fully revealed within his fiction,/ Dongye Ji’s [lacuna] talents humble the robust steed”; the poem entitled “Presented to Lin Shu” (“Zeng Lin Weilu” 贈林畏廬) contains the lines: “An abundance of lofty verses rivalling those of the early Han dynasty,/ As well as searching for important translations to match early novels.” In all probability what had caused Lin Shu to feel that Yan Fu had paid him the “greatest respect” (he tuizhi 荷推致) was the fact that Yan Fu praises his Ancient Prose for “seeking its literary precedents” from the Records of the Grand Historian without stating explicitly that it imitated the techniques of Gui Youguang, Fang Bao and so on. Yan Fu was obviously making a great play of Lin Shu’s achievements in Ancient Prose; he avoided the claim that Lin Shu had employed “Ancient Prose” to translate novels, as was made by Zhao Xi 趙熙 in his line: “He cast the novels of all the nations in the mould of Sima Qian and Ban Gu”; moreover, Yan Fu had merely listed both Lin Shu’s translations and his poetry as 184 lin shu’s translations

Kang Youwei’s poem came immediately to mind and I asked Mr Li about it. He told me that Kang Youwei had actually managed to offend both Yan Fu and Lin Shu with this line of poetry. Yan Fu had always held Lin Shu in contempt. When he saw this poem, he held that Kang Youwei was talking nonsense for how in the world could there be a “genius of translation” who knew not a word of a foreign language. This being the case, he was most ashamed to see their names yoked together. As to Lin Shu, for his part he was upset by two points. As the poem itself was not closely connected with the painting that occasioned it, serving merely to set it off, why then did it speak of his translations of novels instead of mentioning first his Ancient Prose as by rights it should have? Lin Shu’s first bone of contention with this poem, therefore, was that it attended to trifles at the expense of essentials.64 In this poem Yan Fu is merely a secondary guest invited along to help entertain the guest of honour. Why then the insistence on using the Twelfth Rhyme “qin” 侵 rather than the Fourteenth Rhyme “yan” 鹽 which would have enabled the line to read “This era’s twinned geniuses of translation we account Lin Shu and Yan Fu?” “Even a truth understood by Shi Siming, An Shaoshan did not understand!”65 The presumptuous

being of secondary importance. One edition of Yan Fu’s poetry gives the character “shou” 受 (to receive) for the lacuna in the line of poetry cited above. The two phrases “early Han dynasty” (Han shi 漢始) and “early novels” ( yu Chu 虞初) provide well-worked parallelism, their only fault lying in the fact that they do not accord particularly well with Sima Qian’s dates; I think that the origin of the name of Yan Fu’s study, “Hall for Surpassing the Wilds” (Yuyetang 愈野堂), must derive from Liu Xin’s 劉歆 “A Letter of Reprimand Sent to the Erudites of the Chamberlain for Ceremonials” (“Yi shu rang taichang boshi” 移書讓太常博士): “When the rites are lost and they are searched for in the wilds, is it not as if the ancient texts surpass the wilds!” 64 According to Lin Shu’s “Preface” (“Xu” 序) to his A collection of Gui Youguang’s Prose Writings (Zhenchuan jixuan 震川集選), Kang Youwei was not particularly approving of Lin Shu’s prose writing, saying: “Why do you imitate the Tongcheng School!” The mention in the “Preface” (“Xu” 序) to Lin Shu’s A Collection of the Prose Writings of Fang Bao ( fang Wangxi jixuan 方望溪集選) of “A certain man upbraiding me” refers precisely to this sentence. 65 This is an example of Lin Shu’s being “much given to jocosity.” In composing his poem “Cherry Seeds” (“Ying taozi” 櫻桃子), Shi Siming 史思明 preferred not to rhyme his line rather than place the name of the Grand Councillor before that of the Prince; this is an old Tang dynasty chestnut (See both the Zhitian lu 芝田錄, and “Xiexue” 諧謔, Item 1, Quan Tang shi 全唐詩, juan 869, as cited in the Taiping guangji 太平廣記, juan 495). An Shaoshan 安紹山 is a character who appears in Chapters Forty-five and Forty-six of Li Boyuan’s 李伯元 novel A Brief History of Enlightenment (Wenming xiaoshi 文明小史) and is an oblique portrait of Kang Youwei, his name being a pun on both Kang’s surname (“Ankang”) and the name of An Lushan, the “shao” of his name meaning “to lin shu’s translations 185 guest’s upstaging of the host was the second aspect of the poem that so upset Lin Shu. Sometime later, I discussed this affair with Mr Xia Jingguan 夏敬觀 and he reminded me that in a poem entitled “Presented to Lin Shu” (“Zeng Lin Weilu” 贈林畏廬) in his Rengulou shi 忍古樓詩, juan 7, he, too, had written: “Of the same era, Yan Fu/ Was an able rival.” Fortunately, this couplet had not caused a dispute, perhaps because “the words of the unimportant carry no weight.” The mutual recriminations and jealousies indulged in by men of letters, and their love of celebrity, has been a standing joke for centuries. As long as such rivalry does not develop into heartless, meaningless and shameless strife and enmity it can yet be considered but a light-hearted scene from the “la Comédie humaine.” We can well understand Lin Shu’s displeasure at being called a “genius of translation.” Much earlier, the Tang dynasty poet Liu Yuxi 劉禹錫 (772–842), in his poem “Given to the Monk Fangji on the Occasion of his Trip South to Visit Liu Zongyuan” (“Song Seng Fangji nan ye Liu yuanwai” 送僧方及南謁柳員外), Liu Mengde wenji 劉夢得文集, juan 7, had said: “Say not that a translator,/ Cannot be a master of literary elegance.” The couplet illustrates the fact that the common prejudice was that “a translator” could not be considered capable of “literary elegance.” Much earlier again than Liu Yuxi, the poet Xie Lingyun 謝靈運 (385–443), a man generally recognized as a “master of literary elegance,” had undertaken the task of translation. He had “a mastery of most of the vulgar and strange tongues.” At the head of the version of the Nirvana Sutra (Daban niepan jing 大般涅磐經) that circulates to this day it is clearly stated: “Polished by Xie Lingyun” (Xie Lingyun zaizhi 謝靈運再治). The Baoying Temple in Fuzhou, too, once maintained a site that was labelled: “Xie Lingyun’s sutra translating platform.” Poetry and prose collections of famous men from the Tang dynasty onwards contain writings about this historic site.66

carry on old traditions” (shaoshu 紹述); Tang dynasty history makes repeated reference to “The Disorder of An and Shi (An Shi zhi luan 安史之亂), and An Lushan and Shi Siming have become infamous together as a pair of “rebels.” Lin Shu praised A Brief History of Enlightenment as being “also a masterpiece,” see the “Superfluous Comments Made after Translating this Work” (“Yiyu zhuiyu” 譯餘贅語) appended to his translation of Haggard’s novel Beatrice (Chinese title: Hongjiao hua jiang lu 紅礁畫槳錄); Chapter Nine of Lin Shu’s Gengxin jianxing lu contains a character called Kun Nangai 昆南陔, this too being a homophone for “Kang Nanhai” (Kang Youwei). 66 See the “Biography of Huirui” (“Huirui zhuan” 慧睿傳) and the “Biography of Huiyan” (“Huiyan zhuan” 慧嚴傳) in Huijiao’s 慧皎 Biographies of Eminent Monks (Gao seng zhuan 高僧傳), juan 7; the Yongle dadian 永樂大典, juan 2603, cites the poems and essays on this theme from the writings of the Tang to the Yuan dynasties under the character “Platform” (tai 台). 186 lin shu’s translations

Chinese compilers of literary histories have all along turned a blind eye to the fact that Xie Lingyun was the only major ancient poet who also turned his hand to translation. This prejudice has certainly not been limited to China where the enterprise of translation has been a relatively underdeveloped one. In appraising Carlyle’s German Romance, Goethe expanded upon the sense of a line from the Koran, claiming that: “Every translator is also a prophet of his people” (So ist jeder Uebersetzer ein Prophet in seinem Volke).67 It appears that he had forgotten that line from the Bible that goes: “A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house” (Matthew 13.57). More recently, in 1927, the French novelist and translator Valery Larbaud raised a loud appeal on the behalf of the translator. He claimed that translators were the most overlooked and despised of all those working in the literary field. They needed to unite, he argued, in order to overcome such prejudice, protect their own “dignity” and to raise their collective status.68 Obviously Lin Shu considered himself a “master of literary elegance.” He could not have anticipated then that, on a socially obligated literary occasion, Kang Youwei would prove unwilling to afford him the slightest honour. He pronounced him to have been merely a translator. The difference between being a “genius of translation” and a “translator” is precisely that which Han Yu 韓愈 (768–824) termed the difference between a “large insect” (dachong 大蟲) and an “experienced insect” (laochong 老蟲). They are not of course equivalent, yet they belong nevertheless to the same category. Nor should it occasion much surprise that Lin Shu attached such great importance to his “Ancient Prose” whilst disparaging his translations. “Ancient Prose” was, after all, an aspect of his own creativity. We are all prone

67 Goethe, “Schriften zur Kunst und Literatur,” in Vol. 12, p. 353 of the work cited in Footnote 9. 68 Valery Larbaud, “Le Patron des traducteurs,” in Œuvres complètes, Gallimard ed., Vol. 8, p. 15. I will take the opportunity to corroborate this with some examples from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In his famous comic novel, Sorel claims that certain people can only make their living by translating books, “that most vile of tasks” (traduire des livres, qui est une chose très vile)—C. Sorel, Histoire comique de Francion, E. Roy, ed., Vol. 2, p. 80. In a letter to a painter friend (C. Jervas), Pope argues that he has become “a person out of the question” for “a Translator is no more a Poet, than a Taylor is a man”—Alexander Pope, Correspondence, G. Sherburn, ed., Vol. 1, p. 347; he also says that an aristocrat (Lord Oxford) had attempted to dissuade him from translating Homer’s epic by reason of the fact that “So good a writer ought not to be a translator”— J. Spence, Anecdotes, Observations and Characters of Books and Men, Centaur Classics, p. 181. Pope’s sworn enemy, Lady Mary Worthy Montagu, speaks about a novelist in a letter to a friend: “I am sorry my friend Smollett loses his time in translations”—Lady Mary Worthy Montague, Letters, Everyman Library, p. 449. lin shu’s translations 187 to feel that, in comparison to a translation, the products of our own creativity are more intimately our own, even if in actual fact this product of our own so-called “creativity” is perhaps not at all original, but rather an imitation or an adaptation, even a translation in disguise. Let us look for a moment at how highly Lin Shu regarded his own Ancient Prose in order thereby to estimate the extent of the difference in his attitude towards the various products of his pen. As a youth Lin Shu, had admitted that he was no poet, and Mr Chen Yan in his “A Poem Presented to Lin Shu” (“Changju yishou zeng Lin Qinnan” 長句一首贈林琴南), Shiyishi shiji 石遺室詩集, juan 1, records the fact that Lin Shu: “Said: ‘I devote my energies to Ancient Prose,/ Poetry is not my forte so do not demand that I cap your poems.” In old age, when Lin Shu wished to have published a collection of poetry, he wrote to Mr Li Xuangong saying:

My seven-word regulated verses are written in imitation of those of Su Shi and Chen Yuyi 陳與義; for my seven word Quatrains, I take as my models Jiang Kui 姜夔 and Shen Zhou 沈周, and occasionally Wang Anshi 王安石; with my five-word ancient-style poems the model is Han Yu; as for those ancient-style poems of mine that discuss affairs, these are written in imitation of Du Fu. It is only seven-word ancient-style poems and long Regulated poems (pailü 排律) that I am not good at.

Lin Shu’s conceit about the quality of his own poetic abilities is obvious here, for how very well connected within the orthodox literary tradition his poems prove. He continues with the following passage, however:

When Chen Yan arrived in the capital, we shook hands when we met. All the rumours that had come to my hearing dissolved into mist.69 We then went off together to the Bianyifang restaurant to eat duck, conversing animatedly for three hours. Chen Yan said that my poetry was the equal of my prose but I was not persuaded by his opinion and argued vigorously with him for an hour. Chen Yan is not an expert. What does he know of the subtleties of prose! . . . In the six hundred years since Gui Youguang, there has been nobody to match me; by comparison, my poetry merely resembles the bark of a dog or the bray of an ass.

How pitiable are Du Fu, Han Yu, Wang Anshi, Su Shi and company. In the final analysis, they served as little more than the models for the “bark of a dog or the

69 The “rumours” (liuyan 流言) mentioned here refer to all the gossip that their busybody friends had been telling them both about each other. 188 lin shu’s translations bray of an ass!” I know of no other instance of someone so intent upon promot- ing one aspect of their achievement that they do not hesitate to denigrate completely their other attainments. Despite the fact that in his A Selection of the Prose of Gui Youguang (Zhenchuan jixuan 震川集選), Lin Shu informs us that he had “humbly imitated” (qie xiao 竊效) Gui Youguang’s “On Matters Relating to the Death of Zhang Zhennu” (“Shu Zhang Zhennü si shi” 書張貞女死事) in his translation of Oliver Twist,70 I conjecture that the position he accorded translation was certainly not higher than that he accorded his own poetry. In all likelihood it was inferior. If somebody had probed him on the matter, saying to him: “Quite right! In comparison to your Ancient Prose, your poetry is truly merely the ‘bark of a dog or the bray of an ass,’ and your translations resemble the sounds made by an even more lowly creature—the croaking of a ‘toad’ perhaps,” how would he have reacted? Would he have gladly accepted such comment as being that of one who truly understood him, or would he have angrily “argued vigorously” with them and sought to defend both his poetry and his translations? Obviously, nobody ever conducted such an experiment. Perhaps it was unnecessary.

70 See Gui Zhenchuan quanji 歸震川全集, juan 3; the “On Guo Yiguan” (“Shu Guo Yiguan shi” 書郭義官事), and “On the Imprisonment of Zhang Zhennü” (“Zhang Zhennü yu shi” 張貞女獄事), both found in the same juan, are also examples of “Ancient Prose” that embody “the legerdemain of the novelist.” Poetry as a Vehicle of Grief * 詩可以怨

It takes a lot of courage to come and lecture in Japan. Even for a Chinese scholar to come and lecture in Chinese studies requires very considerable courage, if not total dauntlessness. The reasons why this is so are plain and simple. The distinguished achievements of Japan in the study of Chinese civilisation are universally recognised. Your findings are deeply admired and with humility turned to account by Chinese scholars conversant with your language. It is obviously no easy task for me therefore to find a topic that would seem novel and of some interest to you. Illiterate in Japanese, confronted with the treasure trove of your Sinology, I feel like a pauper looking at a big safe in a bank, neither knowing the combination, nor having the tools to pry it open, capable of doing nothing but stand in awe and stare. Ignorance can, however, be the inspiration of derring-do. In Italy it is often said by way of mockery, “he invented the umbrella” (ha inventato l’ombrello). The story has it that a country bumpkin was on the road one day when it started to drizzle; he happened to have with him a stick and a square of cloth; in a moment of inspiration, he spread the cloth on the top end of the stick to cover his head and succeeded in reaching home without becoming drenched. He congratulated himself, and furthermore was convinced that he had made a notable contribution to human progress and owed it to the world to make his discovery public. Along he came into the city, to the “Patents Bureau” (of which he had vaguely heard), equipped with stick and cloth, full of excitement intending to expound and demonstrate his discovery. When the staff of the Bureau heard what he had come for, they burst out laughing, and produced a real umbrella for him to inspect. My predicament today is really rather like that of the bumpkin going to the Bureau, benighted and ignorant, having never set eyes on an umbrella. But then, when you can’t find a house with eaves to

* This article is based by the author on a talk delivered at Waseda University on the 20 November 1980, and subsequently published in both Wenxue pinglun 文學評論 (Literary Review) (1981), No. 1 and the 1981 Zhongguo wenxue yanjiu nianjian 1981 中國文學研究年鑒 (1981 Yearbook of Research in Chinese Literature). This chapter is a revised version of the late Siu-kit Wong’s translation, first published in Renditions, 21 & 22 (1984): 21–40, and later republished in Stephen C. Soong, ed., A Brotherhood in Song: Chinese Poetry and Poetics (Renditions Books, 1985); it is included here with the kind permission of both Renditions and the author.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��4 | doi ��.��63/9789047270213_�08 190 poetry as a vehicle of grief shelter you from the rain, spreading a cloth on the top end of a stick should probably be considered an acceptable manner of coping with the contingency. Poetic expression has been likened by Nietzsche to the hen’s cackle, both being “induced by pain” (Der Schmerz macht Huhner und Dichter gackern).1 This homely but vivid analogy is in complete agreement with a view commonly accepted in the Chinese literary tradition, the view that pain engenders poetry more than pleasure does, that good poetry is, in the main, an expression or discharge of the emotions of unhappiness, anxiety or frustration. In pre-modern China, not only was this view a commonplace in theoretical discourses on literature, it was also a familiar norm in the practical business of writing. As a result we take this view for granted, forgetting its significance, failing to recognize it as an important concept in Chinese literary criticism. I shall confine myself to well-known examples in my attempt to illuminate this view in the rest of my discussion. “Poetry can be used to stimulate, to observe, to interconnect and to grieve” says Book XVII of the Analects (Lunyu 論語). To “grieve” is but one of the four functions of poetry; and it is placed last among them. “In times of peace, the music we hear sounds contented and joyful . . . In times of war, the music we hear is plaintive or agitated . . . And at the fall of a state, the music we hear is sorrowful and contemplative . . .” says the “Great Preface” of the Book of Songs (Shijing 詩經), dealing even-handedly, without favouring any one of the three types of “music” ( yin 音). In elaborating on the saying “Poetry is the expression of the emotions” (shi yan zhi 詩言志), the “Treatise on Literature and the Arts” (“Yiwen zhi” 藝文志) of the History of the Han Dynasty (Han shu 漢書) shows an equal absence of partiality: “Thus when the emotion of joy or sorrow is aroused, the voice of lyricism is sounded.” Sima Qian 司馬遷 (ca. 145–ca. 85 B.C.) is probably the first writer to deny that the claims of pain and of pleasure are equal. In both his “Letter in Reply to Ren An” (“Bao Ren Shaoqing shu” 報任少卿書) and the “Preface” (“Zixu” 自序) to his Records of the Grand Historian (Shi ji 史記), he considers some of the greatest works of literature from ancient times to his own day, and points out how they have been written in prison or in disgrace, when the writer has been suffering, generally from misfortune or more specifically from mutila- tion; in other words, these great works of literature have been produced by hapless persons tormented by poverty, disease and chastisement. Sima Qian concludes that the classical compilations ranging from the Book of Changes (Zhouyi 周易) to the Book of Songs were “mostly written by men of wisdom

1 See Also Sprach Zarathustra, Part 4, Chapter 13, in K. Schlechta, ed., Samtliche Werke (1955), Vol. 2, p. 527. poetry as a vehicle of grief 191 and ability when they were agitated ( fafen 發憤).” “These were men,” he further adds, “who saw their wishes checked and frustrated ( yujie 鬱結).” In such arguments, Sima Qian emphasizes the “grievous” or “painful” nature of the Book of Songs, ignoring its “pleasurable” dimensions: the Book of Songs was written by men of sorrow, whose wishes have been “checked and frustrated,” and their poetry consists “mostly” of “agitated” outbursts. We find the point made even more plainly in the “An Account of the Book of the End of Yue” (“Yuejue waizhuan benshi” 越絕外轉本事) from the Book of the End of Yue (Yuejue Shu 越絕書), juan 1, a work of the Eastern Han period: “When human emotions are in a state of tranquillity [people] do not create, when they are in straitened circumstances they grieve and are angry, and in such a state they create, like poets who write poems when, having lost office, they grieve and are angry with frustration.” The words “written by men of wisdom and ability when they were agitated” were once cited by Chen Zilong 陳子龍 (1608–1647) and briefly explained thus: “My observation is that, in the Book of Songs, poems that appear in the “Eulogies” (song 頌) section are really ‘satiric’ in nature. They belong to decadent times and reflect a yearning for the good rulers of the golden past” (“On Poetry” (“Shilun” 詩論), Complete Works of Chen Zilong (Chen Zhongyu quanji 陳忠裕全集), juan 21). The eulogizing of the past is no doubt a reflection of a dissatisfaction with the present, and it is in this sense that some of the poems in the Book of Songs that appear to be eulogistic are really expressions of grief. It may be mentioned in passing that Zheng Tan 鄭覃, who upheld the scriptural meaning (jingyi 經義) of the classics against their stylistic interest (wenhua 文華), in trying to dissuade the Emperor Wenzong of the Tang from indulging in the “Ignoble art of chapter-and-sentence analysis” (zhangju xiaodao 章句小道), once had this to say: “The ‘Elegances’ ( ya 雅) and the ‘Eulogies’ (song) of the Book of Songs were in all cases composed by those who were socially and politically ‘below’ for the sake of pricking (ci 刺) the conscience of those ‘above;’ they were not composed by those who were ‘above’ for the purpose of educating (hua 化) those ‘below’ ” (“Biography of Zheng Tan” (“Zheng Tan zhuan” 鄭覃傳), Former History of the Tang Dynasty [Jiu Tangshu 舊唐書]). These are dangerous words, and Zheng Tan had his own axe to grind, but we do have here an early instance of the belief that the “eulogistic” poems of the Book of Songs are deep down satirical in nature. In the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu 春秋) there is an entry against the fifteenth year of Duke Xuan which says: “For the first time, a tithe was lev- ied from the acre.” The Gongyang Commentary (Gongyang zhuan 公羊傳) says in this connection: “The tithe being enacted, eulogistic songs were made.” He Xiu’s 何休 (129–182) “Explication” (“Jiegu” 解詁) offers a very curious 192 poetry as a vehicle of grief explanation of this passage: “Songs eulogizing times of peace are the ruler’s delight . . . The reason why mention is only made of the ‘eulogistic songs’ is that food is all important to man . . . when men and women feel grievous and disgruntled, they band together and sing: the hungry sing about food, the labouring sing about their labour.” Where the Gongyang Commentary merely refers to “eulogistic songs” and He Xiu’s “Explication” speaks of nothing less than “songs of grief and disgruntlement,” He Xiu is already being somewhat irrelevant. But He Xiu says more: he claims that all songs derive from situations in which there exist grief and disgruntlement about something, totally forgetting the “songs eulogizing the times of peace” that we had at the outset. Chen Zilong believes that the eulogistic poems are veiled satirical expressions. Here what He Xiu is doing is something like this: he starts off following the Gongyang Commentary and goes through a lot of highfalutin nonsense; then he refers to actual experience and tells us the truth. The truth is that the “delights” which “songs eulogizing the times of peace” are, belong to the ideal or fantasy world of history textbooks, while the “songs of grief and disgruntlement” of “the hungry” and “the labouring” belong to life’s realities. The views of He Xiu and Chen Zilong are mutually complementary. And they are confirmed by certain Chinese proverbs and common expressions. “Instead of weeping, make do with a sad song; instead of returning, make do with a distant view of home” (Beige keyi dang qi, yuan wang keyi dang gui 悲歌可以當泣遠望可以當歸), so say the traditional ballad ( yuefu 樂府) lyrics of the Song of Sorrow (Beige xing 悲歌行). Subsequently, “Instead of crying, make do with a long song” (changge dang ku 長歌當哭) has passed into common usage. But “Instead of laughing, make do with a long song” (changge dang xiao 長歌當笑) is unheard of, although it is known that, in spite of Li Bo’s 李白 (701–762) great reputation, his “Song of Sorrow” (“Beige xing” 悲歌行) has been travestied into a “Song of Laughter” (“Xiaoge xing” 笑歌行). The word “yin” 吟 in the expression “xiao yinyin” 笑吟吟 (full of laughter), it might as well be remembered, is very different from the “yin” (to chant) in Du Fu’s 杜甫 (712–770) well-known line “Long I chanted my new song when I had done revising” (Xin shi gai ba zi chang yin 新詩改罷自長吟). Sima Qian’s view of literature is also touched upon by the writer Liu Xie 劉勰 (ca. 465–522), who gives it expression in an inspired analogy. In the “Talents” (“Cailue” 才略) chapter of his The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons (Wenxin diaolong 文心雕龍), Liu Xie has this to say of Feng Yan 馮衍, a writer of the Eastern Han dynasty: “Jingtong (Feng Yan) had a taste for fine language, but he lived unappreciated and frustrated in an age of general pros- perity. ‘Xianzhi’ 顯志, the rhymed prose piece in which he communicates his personal experience, is a pearl bred by the sickness of an oyster.” Liu Xie is in poetry as a vehicle of grief 193 effect saying that Feng Yan’s writing is a result of his being “agitated” and “frustrated,” to go back to Sima Qian’s expressions. Liu Xie is unlike Sima Qian only in that he speaks rather un-emphatically, of only one writer, and without gen- eralizing. If we speak of a writer’s “malaise,” the word must refer to suffering and unhappiness in general. It must include mental afflictions such as being “unappreciated and frustrated,” as well as the kind of physical agony Sima Qian has in mind when he speaks of “Zuo Qiuming going blind.” “Unappreciated and frustrated, the impoverished scholar loses his office and has no peace of mind” (kantan xi pinshi shizhi er zhi bu ping 坎廪兮貧士失職而志不平). These are the words of the “Nine Arguments” (“Jiu bian” 九辯), in the Songs of the South (Chuci 楚辭). Liu Xie lived under the Southern Dynasties. Another Liu, Liu Zhou 劉晝 (514–565) who lived under the Northern Dynasties, similarly believed that suffering could activate potential genius. He expressed this belief in a series of four analogies, one of which was, perhaps by chance, identical with the one proposed by Liu Xie: “The cedar droops to develop the most beautiful knobs; the oyster sickens to mature the moon-bright pearl; startled, the bird can soar to touch the blue clouds; thwarted, the arrow can cross the snow-capped ranges” (“Agitation Explained” (“Jitong” 激通), from the Book of Master Liu [Liuzi 劉子]).2 In a later age, Su Shi 蘇軾 (1037–1101) has said in one of his letters: “On the trunks of trees are knobs, on rocks can be seen haloes, and rhinoceros horns can in places be translucent. Things can thus be sickly and imperfect to please the human observer with their particular charm” (“Reply to Li Duanshu” [“Da Li Duanshu shu” 答李端叔]). Without using the oyster/pearl analogy, Su Shi is nonetheless speaking on the theme that beauty is bred by a condition of

2 These analogies are echoed elsewhere. Lines from Xu Yao’s 許瑤 poem “The Gnarled Cedar Pillow” (“Yong nanliu zhen” 詠柟榴枕), New Songs from a Jade Terrace (Yutai xinyong 玉台新詠), juan 10, go: “The tree growing straight by the river,/ Becomes beautiful by virtue of its disease;” the character “liu” 榴 used here in the title of this poem is a variant of the character “liu” 瘤, meaning “tumour.” The Book of Master Han (Hanzi 韓子) as it is cited in juan 350 of the Imperial Digest of the Reign of Great Tranquillity (Taiping yulan 太平御覽) says: “When struck, water develops energy; when struck, the arrow acquires speed.” In the “Collective Biography of Fan Sui and Cai Ze” (“Fan Sui Cai Ze liezhuan” 范睢蔡澤列傳) of the Records of the Grand Historian we find the following sentence: “The Grand Historian says: ‘And yet, the two men were not suffering, how could they become agitated.’ ” And Feng Yan, already referred to, is quoted by Zhang Huai 章懷 in a note to his biography in the History of the Latter Han Dynasty (Hou Han shu 後漢書) as having written: “As a common saying has it, ‘Without being hit hard, water cannot break a barge; without being struck hard, an arrow will not sink so as to bury its fletching.’ ” 194 poetry as a vehicle of grief sickliness, and to say that “on trunks of trees are knobs” is much of a muchness with saying that “the cedar droops to develop the most beautiful knobs.”3 One of the analogies employed by European critics in discussing the making of literature is surprisingly close to this Chinese one. Poetry is, according to Franz Grillparzer, like the pearls produced by some mute, ailing mollusc (die Perle, das Erzeugnis des kranken stillen Musscheltieres). Gustave Flaubert thinks that if a pearl is produced by the oyster in disease (la perle est maladie de l’huître), then the style of a writer is fashioned by some deeper sorrow for the expression of that sorrow (l’ecoulement d’une douleur plus profonde).4 Heinrich Heine wonders whether poetry to the poet is not as the pearl to the poor oyster, the malady that causes the pain and the suffering (wie die Perle, der Krankheitsstoff, woran das arme Austertier leidet).5 And A.E. Housman observes that poetry is “a secretion,” whether “natural . . . like the turpentine in the fur,” or “morbid . . . like the pearl in the oyster.”6 The pearl/oyster analogy may thus be said to have been very commonly used, perhaps because it accurately suggests how poetry is written in a state of “agitation” and can be regarded as a “vehicle of grief.” It is therefore surprising

3 Cf. the second of three seven-word regulated verses entitled “Posted to Jiang Shiquan on Hearing that he had Fallen Ill in the Capital” (“Wen Xinyu jingdi bing feng que ji” 聞心餘京邸病風卻寄) in Zhao Yi’s 趙翼 (1727–1814) Oubei shi chao 甌北詩鈔: “The bark with grains on it is sick,/ The stone that can speak is in for trouble.” See also “An Explanation of Words” (“Shi yan” 釋言) in Gong Zizhen’s 龔自珍 (1792–1841) Po jie cao 破戒草: “The wood with grain on it has been sick,/ Animals that make much noise do not live their natural span.” Speaking of artistic creation in his novel, Proust had this to say: “The imagination, the reflec- tive faculty may be admirable machines in themselves but they may also be inert. Suffering sets them in motion” (L’imagination, la pensée peuvent être des machines admirables en soi, mais elles peuvent etre inertes. La souffrance alors les met en marche), Le Temps retrouvé, III, A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Vol. III, p. 908. This is a perfect explanation of the title of Liu Zhou’s piece cited earlier, “Agitation Explained.” 4 These two examples are cited on p. 415 of Walter Muschg’s Tragische Literaturgeschichte (1957 edition). 5 From “Die Romantische Schule,” Chapter 2, Section 4 in Werke und Briefe (East Berlin, 1961), Vol. 5, p. 98. 6 From “The Name and Nature of Poetry” in J. Carter, ed, Selected Prose of A.E. Housman (1961), p. 194. Housman then goes on to say that his poetry has mostly been written when he has been ill. What he calls “natural” is something that is healthy, not morbid. Giosuè Carducci strongly opposes the Romantic theory that poetry is a “natural secretion” (secrezione naturale). See N. Busette, Giosuè Carducci (1958), p. 492. What Carducci means by “natural” is something that has been written effortlessly, without artistic refinement. Housman’s “morbid secretion” can, of course, be “natural” in Carducci’s sense. poetry as a vehicle of grief 195 that the passage in The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons in which this analogy occurs has never been given the attention it deserves. Sima Qian names a considerable number of works as having been written “in a state of agitation;” some of these are argumentative, others narrative. Then he concludes by referring to the Book of Songs as a final example, suggest- ing that all its poems can roughly be regarded as expressions of “grief.” Zhong Rong 鍾嶸 (ca. 465–518) is unlike Sima Qian in that his discussion is confined to poetry; his is a more concrete exploration of the theme that “poetry is a vehicle of grief.” The following is a passage from the “Preface” (“Xu” 序) to his An Evaluation of Poetry (Shipin 詩品) which has been unjustly neglected:

Poetry is fit for the voicing of affections occasioned by happy meetings, as it is for that sense of desolation caused by separation from the flock. Imagine how the faithful servant of Chu turned his back reluctantly on Chu territories, and how the fair one of Han bade farewell to the palace of Han. Or see with your mind’s eye the bones of the dead strewn criss-cross on the plains of the wild north, while their ghosts fast follow the tumbleweed. Again think what it would be like to be a lance-bearing warrior, posted at the unfriendly, autumnal frontiers; and, as this stranger to the borderland finds his clothes too light to keep him warm, how his widowed wife, alone in her room, cries till she can cry no more. A man of parts may be dismissed from office, never to be recalled. A lady of such beauty as could conquer a nation may, disporting her sweetness, sail proudly into the love of her prince. All these instances of fickle chance and circumstance do affect the heart and swing the soul into giddy activity. Without recourse to poetry, how could they be fully laid bare? Without a song, is there any way in which the emotions aroused could be allowed to range freely? It has, therefore, been argued: “Poetry enables one to communicate with many; it also enables one to give vent to one’s personal grief.” Nothing functions so efficaciously as poetry in palliating the sufferings of the poor and humble, in giving them a measure of comfort, or in dispelling the loneliness of those who dwell apart.

Strange as it may sound, what we have here is something of an outline of those two well-known Prose-poems ( fu 賦) by Zhong Rong’s contemporary Jiang Yan 江淹 (444–505), the “Prose-poem on Parting” (“Bie fu” 別賦) and the “Prose-poem on Resentment” (“Hen fu” 恨賦). Of the four functions of poetry proposed by Confucius, Zhong Rong does not concern himself with “stimulating” and “observing;” although he does mention “interconnecting” (the meetings and separations), the overwhelming majority of the examples 196 poetry as a vehicle of grief he cites are in the area of “grieving.” The only unquestionable examples of joy and happiness he provides are in the “happy meetings” and in “sailing proudly into the love of the prince.” But on second thoughts, it may be argued that even these are not the unquestionable examples I thought they were, since the lady “disporting her sweetness” and “sailing proudly into the love of a prince” could mean pain and “grief” as well. In Zuo Fen’s 左芬 (d. 300] “Prose-poem on Separation” (“Lisi fu” 離思賦) (Quan Jin wen 全晉文, juan 139), we find her lamenting her fate, saying how since “entering the purple villa,” she has been “from her closest kindred forever separated!”, how “sighing and sobbing, she could not check her tears!”7 Similarly, in Chapter Eighteen of the Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou meng 紅樓夢), we find Yuanchun the Imperial Concubine bewailing her lot in these words: “What is the use of all this luxury and splendour . . . if I am to be always separated from those I love?” On the contrary, according to the message we see in the well-known contemporary play Wang Zhaojun 王昭君, “the fair one of Han bidding farewell to the palace of Han” has nothing to do with “grief.” It is, to say the least, a case of “interconnecting;” perhaps it is a case of “happy meeting,” a case of blessed union—full cheerily, the lady, “disporting her sweetness, sails proudly into the love prince”—a prince of Xiongnu extraction. Of course, we do not have to subject allusions like this in the An Evaluation of Poetry to such close scrutiny, just as, in everyday social life, we do not have to put everyone we meet through a fluoroscopic examination. What is to be noted is that the “Preface” to the An Evaluation of Poetry concludes this part of the discussion with a list of exemplary literary compositions and among these—always excepting Zhong Rong’s less specific references and works no longer extant— more than half are what we should regard as “grief” poems. Among the poets in the “Upper” (“Shangpin” 上品) of Zhong Rong’s three grades, Li Ling 李陵 (d. 74 B.C.) is described thus: “He knew no harmony in his life; personally disheartened, he developed a dejected style. Had Li Ling never encountered suffering, his poetry could never have been what it is.” This, too, is an example of what Liu Xie calls “a pearl bred by the sickness of an oyster;” it is also in agreement with a very popular saying of a later age, that “a poet has to be frustrated and deprived if his poetry is to be good” (Shi bi qiong er hou gong 詩必窮而後工).8

7 Cf. her brother Zuo Si’s 左思 “Given to my Sister to Mourn our Separation” (“Dao li zeng mei” 悼離贈妹), Wenguan cilin 文館詞林, juan 152: “Parted forever from your closest kindred,/ Serving now within the purple court./ . . ./How tragic your separation,/ Your tears stream down your cheeks.” 8 See my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters (Guan zhui bian 管錐編), pp. 935–7. poetry as a vehicle of grief 197

I move on now to another theme of very considerable significance in Zhong Rong’s “Preface”. The same thing that to Sima Qian is an anticorrosive and pre- servative for dead bodies is to Zhong Rong an analgesic and tranquillizer for living men. In the “Letter in Reply to Ren An” already alluded to, when Sima Qian speaks of writing books and poems to give vent to his sense of frustration, his purpose is to preserve his name from being obliterated, or to prevent the best that is in him from being forgotten by posterity. In other words, what interests Sima Qian is the difference that literature makes when its author is dead, the way it immortalizes him. Zhong Rong’s emphasis is quite different; “Nothing functions so efficaciously as poetry in palliating the sufferings of the poor and humble, in giving them a measure of comfort, or in dispelling the loneliness of those who dwell apart.” The emphasis is on the difference that literature makes when its author is still alive, the way it enables him to compromise and live with deprivation and loneliness. In Zhong Rong’s view, if you are down and out, it is possible for you to find solace and a sort of compensation in “poetry, the vehicle of grief.” With the development of new literary forms in later periods, this understanding of the efficacy of literature and the author’s motive in writing becomes applicable to fiction and drama as well as poetry. In “Reincarnated, the Prince of Wu and Yue Reclaims his Kingdom” (“Wu Yue Wang zai shi suo jiangshan” 吳越王再世索江山) from juan 1 of West Lake: Second Collection (Xihu erji 西湖二集) Zhou Ji 周楫 describes how Qu You 瞿佑 (1347–1433) came to write his New Tales Under the Lamplight (Jiandeng xinhua 剪燈新話) and how Xu Wei 徐渭 (1521–1593) came to write Four Shrieks of the Gibbon (Sisheng yuan 四聲猿) in these terms: “They really could neither laugh nor cry, nor could they scream or leap to show their feelings. Would you not agree they were to be pitied? All that was left for them to do was to play along, to write their fiction as a thing of no consequence . . . In their fiction they could vent their pent-up emotions, finding an outlet for each and every one of their urges to wail, to scream, to gambol, to burst into song.” In the section entitled “Dramatic Dialogue” (“Binbai” 賓白) from Li Yu’s 李漁(1610–1680) Li Yu’s Casual Expressions (Liweng ouji 笠翁偶寄), juan 2, he speaks even more eloquently about his own experience in writing drama:

Born into hardship, plunged into destitution, from childhood to maturity, and from maturity to old age, never for a moment have I been content. And yet, when I am engaged in the making of melodies, the composition of lyrics, not only is my depression alleviated and my sense of outrage appeased, I do sometimes fancy myself the happiest of men . . . Nothing in the world of reality can compare with the freedom of the world of 198 poetry as a vehicle of grief

imagination. There, if I want to hold office, I have it in the twinkling of an eye . . . There, if I wish to be a genius, why I am a Du Fu or Li Bo reincar- nate. And if I wish to acquire a fabulous beauty for a wife, Wang Zhaojun and Xi Shi 西施 are equally ready to become my lawful wife.

Just as Chen Zilong believes that the eulogizing poems of the Book of Songs are deep down satirical in nature, so Li Yu recognizes that the world of imagination, or fantasy, of his drama is a reversed image of the cramped conditions of the world of reality—that drama shows us “the other side” of ordinary life. There is a well-known Freudian theory which should be familiar to us all. According to this theory, those of us whose desires cannot be fulfilled in life often retreat from life to create art; and the art thus created serves the purposes of a substitute (Ersatz für den Triebverzicht) so that fantasy becomes a kind of fulfil- ment (Phantasiebefriedungen).9 If I argue that this Freudian theory is already discernible in Zhong Rong and become more palpable in Zhou Ji and Li Yu, I don’t think I am being far-fetched; I am merely trying to draw your attention to a curious resemblance. It is interesting to note that while Zhong Rong and Freud can be imagined to be engaged in dialogue, two Chinese writers, Han Yu 韓愈 (768–824) of the Tang period and Sima Qian of the Han, can be so far removed from one another. Han Yu’s “Dedication Sent to Meng Jiao” (“Song Meng Dongye xu” 送孟東野序) is an essay that used to be included in anthologies for schoolboys as a specimen of “Ancient” prose to be learned off by heart. Han Yu declares at the beginning of this essay: “Whatsoever thing loses its calm and balance, is bound to make a noise (Da fan wu bu de qi ping ze ming 大凡物不得其平則鳴) . . . The human voice, condensed and purified (jing 精), becomes language, and literature is language further condensed and purified.” He continues by citing great writers like Zhuang Zhou 莊周, Qu Yuan 屈原, Sima Qian and Sima Xiangru 司馬相如 (179–117 B.C.) as examples of men who are “good at making noises” (shan ming 善鳴). Then he introduces the main character with great ceremony: “Meng Jiao 孟郊 (Dongye) first made a noise with his poetry.” It is commonly supposed that “making noise as a result of losing calm and balance” contains the same underlying meaning as “writing when one

9 See The Complete Papers of Sigmund Freud (London, 1950), p. 355 and p. 433. In his diaries, Franz Kafka tells us that his love for a certain actress could only be appeased (meine Liebe zu befriedigen) in literature or by sleeping with her (Es ist durch Literatur oder durch den Beischlaf möglich), see his Tagebücher 1910–1923, ed. M. Brod (S. Fischer, 1949), p. 146. I do not know if this had been cited before as the most straightforward example of Freud’s theory. poetry as a vehicle of grief 199 is agitated” ( fa fen suo wei zuo 發憤所為作). In actual fact, Han Yu and Sima Qian are taking about two entirely different things. Sima Qian’s “being agitated” should be understood in the sense of “being unappreciated and frustrated,” being generally “disgruntled.” Han Yu’s “losing calm and balance” is not the same thing as “being disgruntled,” in that it does not refer exclusively to a sense of discontent but includes the sense of happiness as well. Chinese psychology since the pre-Qin period has consistently held that man’s Nature (xing 性) is ordinarily in a tranquil state, and that it is when this tranquillity is disturbed that man’s Nature “loses its calm and balance” and becomes Emotion (qing 情). The “Record of Music” (“Yue ji” 樂記) says: “Man is by nature in a tranquil state; he is stirred to activity in reaction to things outside” (Ren sheng er jing, gan yu wu er dong 人生而靜感於物而動). This is characteristic of Chinese psychology, and in Taoist and Buddhist scriptures, too, can be found the metaphor of waves and billows being caused in still water by the wind.10 Kong Yingda 孔穎達, the classical scholar of early Tang, commenting on the pronouncement “What is ordained by heaven is Nature” (Tian ming zhi wei xing 天命之謂性) (from the “Doctrine of the Mean” (“Zhongyong” 中庸) section of the Record of Ritual [Li ji 禮記]), quotes from He Yang 賀瑒 (a “doctor of the classics” of the Liang period) and says: “Man’s Emotions to his Nature are as waves to water. What in tranquillity is water when activated becomes waves. What in tranquillity is human Nature when activated becomes human Emotion.” Li Ao 李翱 (774–836), a pupil of Han Yu’s, says: “Man’s Emotions are his Nature in activity. Water running through sand becomes impure even though it was pure. Human Nature when influenced by the Emotions becomes evil even though it was good” (“On Restoring Human Nature” [“Fuxing shu” 復性書]). Even Cheng Yi 程頤, the Confucian of the Song period, a man who would have feared being contaminated by the heresies of Taoism and Buddhism, braved the charges of heterodoxy and said this: “It is in the nature of water to be profoundly still, like a mirror. When checked by sand and peb- bles or affected by the uneven surface of the land, water can become turbu- lent; and when the wind moves above it, water can become quite torrential. But such behaviour is not in the nature of water . . . But then how can there be waves if there is no water, and how can there be human Emotions if there is no human Nature” (“The Sayings of Cheng Yi” (“Yichuan yu” 伊川語), Henan er Cheng yishu 河南二程遺書, juan 18). The metaphor we are dealing with is a widely accepted one. That this is the case can be seen in the regular use of the expression “With a sudden rush of blood to the head” (xinxue lai chao 心血來潮) (i.e. to act impulsively) in

10 See my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters, pp. 1211–12. 200 poetry as a vehicle of grief popular fiction. In the description of the Immortal Tai Yi sitting in contem- plation in Chapter Thirty-four of the novel Investiture of the Gods (Fengshen bang 封神榜) there is this explanation: “Readers, it is true of all immortals that they are totally oblivious of desire, wrath and anxiety. The mind (‘heart’) of an immortal, being rock-like, is immovable. What is known as ‘a sudden rush of blood to the head’ refers to the unexpected movement of the mind (or ‘heart’).” The “sudden rush” here is similar to the notion behind the expression “when activated becomes waves.” According to ancient Chinese psychology, all Emotions evolve from Human Nature temporarily losing its calm and balance: not only is being agitated or depressed a case of human Nature being disturbed; being happy, too, may be likened to water “becoming quite torrential,” to the “sudden rush.” What we have seen of Han Yu’s argument so far can perhaps be best understood when placed in this kind of linguistic context. Elsewhere, in “Dedication sent to the Mong Gaoxian” (“Song Gaoxian Shangren xu” 送高閒上人序), Han Yu says: “Whether happy or angry, frustrated or distressed, whether joyful or sorrowful, whether in love’s yearning or drink’s boredom, whenever his mind (or “heart”) loses its calm and balance and is activated, he seeks expression in the writing of the grass script.” Here, “to be activated” and “to lose its calm and balance” are two ways of describing the same condition, one positive, the other negative; emphatically, both joy and sorrow are included in this condition. Similarly, Han Yu says towards the end of his “Dedication Sent to Meng Jiao,” “it is not yet clear whether heaven will harmonize their voices (meaning those of Meng Jiao and two others) to sing the praises (cf. “to make noises”) of a prosperous state, or put their persons through hunger and deprivation and make their minds suffer so that they will make songs (or “noises”) of their suffering.” This clearly informs us that to sing the praises of a prosperous state when one has one’s way and to make songs of one’s suffering when one does not are equally examples of “making a noise at the loss of calm and balance.” In including both the brighter and the darker emotions, Han Yu agrees with the “Treatise on Literature and the Arts” of the History of the Han Dynasty in asso- ciating “the voice of lyricism” with both “joy” and “sorrow,” and parts company with Sima Qian, the advocate of the “agitation” theory. This view of literature entertained by Han Yu has been carped at by a number of critics.11 It seems to me that these critics failed to see the full implications of the expression “losing calm and balance” and mistakenly identified it

11 Cf. Shen Zuozhe 沈作喆, On Allegorical Meaning (Yu jian 寓簡), juan 4; Hong Mai 洪邁, Rongzhai suibi 容齋隨筆, juan 4; Qian Daxin 錢大昕, Qianyantang wenji 潛研堂文集, juan 2b; and Xie Changting 謝章鋌, Tengyin kezhui 籐陰客贅. poetry as a vehicle of grief 201 with the narrower concept of “agitation.” Unlike these critics, Huang Tingjian 黃庭堅 (1045–1105) has written this couplet: “Sinking and floating with the world, wine alone I find agreeable;/ In pain and pleasure with others, with poetry I make my noise” (The second of the two poems entitled “Zai ci yun jian jian lü zhongnan yu” 再次韻兼簡履中南玉, in Shangu nei ji 山谷內集, juan 13). Now, the inspiration of the second of these two lines is precisely Han Yu’s “Dedication Sent to Meng Jiao.” Huang Tingjian, instead, could of course have written such lines as “Out of tune with the times in hunger and poverty with poetry I make my noise,” or “In discord with the times and frustrated with poetry I make my noise.” That he should write “pain and pleasure,” as a synonym for “loss of calm and balance,” goes to show what a scrupulous reader of Han Yu Huang Tingjian was. The concept of “poetry as a vehicle of grief” is undoubtedly given a clearer definition by Han Yu than anyone before him, especially in his “Preface to a Collection of Poetry by Pei Jun and Yang Ping” (“Jing Tan changhe shi xu” 荊潭唱和詩序). This “Preface” is essentially a tribute paid to two mandarins for their ability to write poetry, and the highest compliment is that they should write poetry that matches in quality the poetry of impoverished scholars— “such august personages, that they should compare so favourably with the sallow-countenanced, meanly garmented scholar living in the narrow alley.” The implication is that poetry of the “sallow-countenanced scholar” (qiaocui zhi shi 憔悴之士) should be taken as a yardstick and the major premise is this: “The voice of the unperturbed is light and thin, that of the sorrowful is refined; those who are happy can hardly make skilful use of language, while those who suffer from frustration and poverty can easily write well.” “The voice of the unperturbed is light and thin” is a sentiment that had been given expression earlier on in the Six Dynasties period. In a letter, “Letter to My Cousin the Monk Zhuo” (“Yu zongdi seng chuo shu” 與從弟僧綽書), Wang Wei 王微 writes: “Without the animation of feelings of grief, one’s style flows lightly and is insipid” (Quan Song wen 全宋文, juan 19). The same belief is put more succinctly by a later writer: “The little formula is plain and open: You have to be ecstatic or heart-broken” (Fang Wen 方文, “Written upon Awakening from a Dream in which I thought Myself Talking about Poetry with Shi Yushan” (“Meng yu Shi Yushan lun shi xing er you zuo” 夢與施愚山論詩醒而有作), Tushan xuji 涂山續集, juan 5). And why is it hard to “make skilful use of language” (nan gong 難工) in some cases and easy to “write well” ( yi hao 易好) in others? A loyal servant of Ming at the end of the Ming period and a literary attendant of the court at the beginning of the Qing period both attempted to provide a psychological answer to this question along the same lines. Zhang Huangyan’s 張煌言 (1620–1664) 202 poetry as a vehicle of grief explanation runs thus: “Those who are happy can hardly make skilful use of language, while those who suffer from frustration and sorrow can easily write well! This is utterly true, for poetry is an expression of the emotions, and when you are happy, you are emotionally relaxed, and, being emotionally relaxed, you cannot think or feel deeply; on the contrary, when you are in sorrow, you are emotionally pressed down, and, being emotionally ‘depressed,’ you allow your natural voice to sound, often to tune in with the voices of the universe. That is why it is said that ‘a poet has to be frustrated and deprived if his poetry is to be good.’ It is a question of one’s experience in life” (“Preface to the Poetry of Cao Yunlin” (“Cao Yunlin shi xu” 曹雲林詩序), in the Guocui congshu 國粹叢書 edition of Zhang Cangshui ji 張蒼水集, juan 1). Chen Zhaolun’s 陳兆侖 (1701–1771) explanation is, perhaps, simpler: “Those who are happy can hardly make skilful use of language, while those who suffer from frustration and sorrow can easily write well. This is a familiar argument to many of us, but nobody seems to understand how it is true. It is true because happiness disperses (san 散) and once it is dispersed nothing is left; on the other hand, sorrow stays (liu 留), it lingers on and is never quite exhausted. This accounts for the difference in depth of mood and flavour engendered by the two conditions” (“Preface” (“Xu” 序) to “Eight Poems to Dispel the Cold” (“Xiaohan ba yong” 消寒八詠), Zizhushanfang ji 紫竹山房集, juan 4). This explanation by no means settles the question of good and bad poetry as something related to the poet’s fortunes, but shows great understanding of the tastes of joy and sorrow. Chen Jiru 陳繼儒 (1558–1639) is known to have contrasted Qu Yuan and Zhuang Zhou in these terms: “The sorrowful belong to yin 陰 and therefore is On Encountering Trouble (Li sao 離騷) solitary and profound, running deep; the joyful belong to yang 陽 and therefore is the Book of Master Zhuang (Zhuangzi 莊子) free and unrestrained, soaring high” (“Preface to the Book of Master Zhuang as Annotated by Guo Xiang” (“Guo zhu Zhuangzi xu” 郭注莊子敘), Wanxiangtang xiaopin 晚香堂小品, juan 9). An Italian poet has recorded a similar observation; to him joy tends to be expansive while sorrow tends to con- tract (questa tendenza al dilatamento nell’allegrezza, e al ristringimento nella tristezza).12 We often speak of “The flowers of the heart blooming profusely” (Xinhua nu fang 心花怒放) (meaning “very happy”), of being “Open hearted” (Kaixin 開心) (meaning “happy”), or “So happy that one’s bones feel light” (Kuaihuo de gutou dou qing le 快活的骨頭都輕了), of “Having knots tied in one’s heart” (Xin li da ge jie 心裡打個結) (meaning “unhappy’) or “Having a stone weighing down one’s heart” (Xin shang you le yi kuai shitou 心上有了一

12 See Leopardi, Zibaldone de Pensieri, F. Flora, ed. (1957), Vol. 1, p. 100. poetry as a vehicle of grief 203

塊石頭) (meaning “heavy-hearted”), or again of “Having a bellyful of repressed air” (Yi kou qi bie zai duzi li 一口氣憋在肚子裡) (meaning “unhappy”), and so forth. All these expressions suggest that it is characteristic of happiness to disperse, to vanish, whereas it is characteristic of sorrow to condense and precipitate.13 As happiness “disperses and nothing is left,” it is something you cannot retain. And as sorrow “lingers and is never quite exhausted,” it is something you cannot entirely get rid of. In Goethe’s analogy, happiness is spherical (die Kugel) and sorrow is polygonal (das Vieleck).14 A spherical object rolls past you, while a polygonal object tumbles and stops. Of this difference both Zhang Huangyan and Chen Zhaolun seem to have been aware. Han Yu holds up the poor scholar’s poverty as a yardstick, so that in praising the “august personages” he in effect raises the status of the “sallow- countenanced scholar.” Paying compliments without fulsome flattery, being worldly-wise without being excessively snobbish, he demonstrates how to write with restraint in dealing with grand mandarins. Sima Qian and Zhong Rong have only pointed out that suffering inspires one to write poetry, perhaps to write good poetry, and Wang Wei has said no more than that a literary style cannot be good without an element of grief, but Han Yu supplies the other side of the coin and tells us that happiness, too, can inspire us to write poetry, although what gets written is probably not the best poetry, or not even very good poetry. With this additional touch, Han Yu rounds off the discussion by saying the last thing that can be said on the subject. Han Yu’s major premise is not without its factual basis. It would be safe to say that the “poetry of pain” beats the “poetry of pleasure” in quantity, if not always in quality. If, however, we are to conclude that the “poetry of pain” alone constitutes good poetry, on the basis that we have more of it, we would be com- mitting a logical error. It is this little logical error that Han Yu can be said to have committed—in distinguished company though. I have here a few quotable quotes culled from the usual anthologies used in one’s student days: “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts;” “True poetry comes only from the human heart burning in profound sorrow” (und es kommt das echte Lied/ Einzig ans dem Menschenh’erzen,/ Das ein tiefes Leid durchglüht); “The most beautiful poetry is also the most despondent;

13 These sayings can be compared to “Happy is up; sad is down” and “Happy is wide; sad is narrow,” in G. Lakoff and M. Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (1980), pp. 15 and 18. 14 See G.F. Senior and C.V. Bock, eds., Goethe the Critic (1960), p. 60. See also the poem prefaced to Vol. 2 of Heinrich Heine’s Romancero, entitled “Das Glück ist eine leichte Dirne,” in his Werke und Briefe, Vol. 2, p. 79. 204 poetry as a vehicle of grief some of the immortal poems we have are tears unalloyed” (Les plus désépérés sont les chants les plus beaux,/ Et j’en sais d’immortels qui sont de purs sanglots).15 An American poet, writing about theories of poetry in prose, has made the remark that “true beauty” is always associated with a “certain taint of sadness;” and that “melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all poetical tones.”16 A more recent American poet argues that “grievances” should be the subject matter of prose, while “griefs” should be the subject matter of poetry, since “poetry is an extravagance about grief.”17 I mentioned Nietzsche and Freud earlier on. Croce, who admired Nietzsche and disagreed with Freud, saw poetry as a product of disappointments (La poesia, come è stato ben detto, nasce dal “desiderio insoddisfatto”).18 And the Swiss scholar Walter Muschg, great admirer of Freud’s literary style, went so far as to write a great tome entitled A Tragic View of the History of Literature (Tragische Literaturgeshichte), in which he seeks to prove that concealed or unidentified distress is often the source of poetry ( fast inner, wenn auch oft verhüllt, eine Form des Leidens); it is a pity that he was innocent of what the Chinese had to say on the subject.19 Nobody would wish to embrace sorrow, if they could help it; nobody would not wish to write beautiful poems, even if they were not particularly gifted; and everybody would be glad of an easy way out, especially when this would not do anyone harm. If the “poetry of suffering” easily pleases, then, obviously, in order to write good poetry, one must write about suffering. Unfortunately however, it takes a “sallow-countenanced scholar” to tell of hardship and suffering; moreover, despite the formula for composition we saw, we do not get many opportunities to be “ecstatic or broken-hearted,” not to mention that it must be pretty uncomfortable to be in either of those states!

Without talents, rejected by the sage liege; Many illnesses, distanced by my old friends.

Reading these lines by the Tang poet Meng Jiao 孟郊 (751–814), Feng Shu 馮舒 of the Qing period was prompted to say: “They mark the disappointments of a

15 “To a Skylark” by Shelley; “Poesie” by Justinus Kerner; and “La Nuit de Mai” by Musset. 16 Edgar Allan Poe, “The Poetic Principle” and “The Philosophy of Composition,” Poems and Essays (Oxford, 1945), pp. 177 and 195. 17 Robert Frost, “Introduction” to Poems of E.A. Robinson and “On Extravagance,” both quoted in William H. Pritchard, Lives of the Modern Poets (1980), pp. 129 and 137. 18 See La Poesia (1953 ed.), p. 158. 19 Tragische Literaturgeschichte, p. 16. poetry as a vehicle of grief 205 lifetime but will stand as a literary triumph from age to age” (in Gu Sili 顧嗣立, Hanting shihua 寒廳詩話). In a similar vein, Bo Juyi 白居易 (772–846) has written in response to the poetry of Li Bo:

Without public offices, In wartime pained by separations, In old age still a fugitive An unfrocked immortal on earth, a sorry sight...... To heaven’s will you should defer: Good poems are much needed among man. (“Written after Reading the Collected Poetry of Li Bo and Du Fu” [“Du Li Du shi ji yin ti juan hou” 讀李杜詩集因題卷後])

For good poems to be written, a necessary condition is to have gone through such sorry business as war and separation and personal humiliation. A “literary triumph” in the form of a couplet has to be paid for by “the disappointments of a lifetime.” This is costly, a price not every practising poet would be willing to pay.20 That is why it is so often the case that a poet secretly aspires to writing good poems at low cost, or at no cost at all. Some young fellow moans on about the inconveniences of age; some fat cat wallowing in lucre bewails the trials and tribulations of poverty; an ordinary person experiencing a nice, ordinary day waxes lyrical on the subject of “spring sorrow” or the “melancholy of autumn,” and so on. In Rustic Records of Mount Xiang (Xiangshan yelu 湘山野錄), the monk Wenying 文瑩 of the Song period says of the poetry of the Song poet Kou Zhun 寇准 (961–1023): “But then everything he wrote when he was a rich and successful person was sad and plaintive . . . Elsewhere I have said that it is common for those who are truly accomplished in the art of poetry to imitate the melancholy note of the early poets.” What Wenying says is hardly surprising. Language has a social function whereby we substitute words for actions, fabricating facts, disguising our thinking and feeling. What should be noted is that in poetry, this sort of “fabulation” is often biased, emphasizing the sad tidings, ignoring the glad tidings, giving us the crocodile’s tears, and not the “gently smiling jaws” of the crocodile in Alice’s

20 In a letter to Sarah Jeffrey, Keats writes that: “. . . the English have produced the finest writers in the World,” and the “great reasons” he gives for this is that “the English world has ill-treated them during their lives.” See The Letters of John Keats (1958), H.E. Rollins, ed., Vol. 2, p. 115. 206 poetry as a vehicle of grief

Adventures in Wonderland. I am reminded of a couple of lines in Poems from the Three Pavilions (Sange ci 三閣詞) in which the Tang poet Liu Yuxi 劉禹錫 (772–842) is describing a lady:

Little chance any remorse she should know, It’s her charm that grows into sorrow.

The traditional poets knows no “remorse” but has “sorrow,” to prove that he is talented, just as the lady, knowing no “remorse,” has “sorrow,” to prove her “great charm.”21 Reacting to Sima Qian’s remark about “writing when agitated,” Li Zhi 李贄 (1527–1602) of the Ming period muses: “Judging by this, we may conclude that in ancient times, men of wisdom and ability never wrote when they were not agitated. Writing when you are not agitated must be rather like shivering when you are not cold, or groaning when you are not ill. But if you really write when you are not agitated, you cannot expect to produce anything remarkable” (“Preface” to the Loyal and Righteous Water Margin (Zhongyi shuihu zhuan xu 忠義水滸傳序), Fenshu 焚書, juan 3). The “ancient times,” however, can never be recalled, and “men of wisdom and ability” are not what most of your poets would like to become, or could become: “groaning without being ill” is a hard fact of literature that must be squarely faced. “When your heart is not suffering from a dark depression,” con- cedes Liu Xie, “. . . this is a case of fashioning feelings for the sake of literature” (“Emotion and Literary Expression” (“Qing cai” 情才), The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons). Or as Fan Chengda 范成大 (1126–1191) says, getting at a lachrymose poem by Lu You 陸游 (1125–1210):

Officious the poet courts idle sentiments, He makes vast sorrows for himself behind closed doors.22

21 When Wang Fudao 王輔道 wrote in his ci poem to the tune of “Huan xi sha” (浣溪沙), “With much charm and little to do one languishes,” he was echoing Liu Yuxi. See Wu Zeng 吳曾, Nenggaizhai manlu 能改齋漫錄, juan 16. 22 “Lu You’s poem “Spring Sorrows” is exceedingly sad, but I write this poem it oppose it” (“Lu Wuguan zuo ‘Chun chou qu’, bei shen, zuo ci fan zhi” 陸務觀作春愁曲悲甚作此反之), Shihu shi ji 石湖詩集, juan 17. Fan Chengda’s expression “officious,” and Wang Fudao’s “with little to do” appear antonymous but refer to the same thing. Cf. my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters, pp. 169–172. poetry as a vehicle of grief 207

What Fan Chengda says here sounds very much like what a master of the classical school in France has said elsewhere of certain writers of elegies, that, “full of affectation, they make themselves broken-hearted” (qui s’affligent par art).23 Earlier on I quoted what the two Liu’s of the Northern and Southern Dynasties had to say about the sick oyster breeding the pearl. When the poet “groans without being ill,” he is like the child who should be going to school but has a headache in the morning, or the tycoon who is “indisposed” for the day— they are all shamming illness. The poet who shams illness hopes that, with a bit of luck, his sham illness will be delivered of a genuine pearl. Whether a sham illness can seem real, whether a fake pearl can look genuine, will depend on the imposter’s art and ability. It should now be clear why poetry should have been, together with politics and metaphysics, regarded as a fraud or a delusion (die drei Täuschungen).24 And, needless to say, the poet deludes himself as well. I would like to demonstrate this line of thinking with three examples. The first example is a famous Song poet’s criticism of another famous Song poet. Zhang Lei 張耒 (1054–1114), poking fun at Qin Guan 秦觀 (1049–1100), says: “Poetry was once very much a pastime of the poor, and that is why modern poets have come to affect the language of the poor. That, I suspect, is the reason why you affect the language of the anxious when you, sir, have no anxiety to speak of” (“Sent to Qin Guan on his Return from Suzhou and Hangzhou in Pursuit of Learning” (“Song Qin Guan cong Su Hang zhou wei xue xu” 送秦觀從蘇杭州為學序), Zhang Youshi wenji 張右史文集, juan 51). The second example is yet another famous Song poet’s personal confession. In the ci poem to the tune “Chou nuer” (丑奴兒), Xin Qiji 辛棄疾 (1140–1207) says:

In youth I knew not the taste of sorrow; I loved going up the pavilion, I loved going up the pavilion, To make a new poem I made up sorrow.

Now that the taste of sorrow I have known, I would rather become taciturn, I would rather become taciturn, Or say, autumn, rather cool it has grown.

23 See Boileau, L’Art poétique, 2.47. 24 A view entertained by Thomas Thorild, as cited by Jean Paul in “Verschule der Aesthetik,” Section 52; see Jean Pauls Samtliche Werke (Munich, 1965), Vol. 5, p. 193. 208 poetry as a vehicle of grief

In the first stanza, the poet confesses to having “groaned without being ill,” or having “written without being agitated,” as he admits himself: “In a drunken fit I playfully wrote “Spring Sorrows,” which was then written on silken screens and fans and passed around. To speak of sorrow at the time was like being in a dream, for what sorrows had I experienced?” (“Postface to ‘Spring Sorrows’ ” (“Hou chun chou qu” 後春愁曲), Jiannan shigao 劍南詩稿, juan 15). In the second stanza, the poet describes an entirely different experience, of life as well as of writing; silence—whether it is because one cannot speak or because one will not speak—is often an indication of an extremely serious illness or distress. The third example is a story about a little-known writer. A certain Li Tingyan 李廷彥 wrote a long poem in the “extended regulated verse” form and showed it to his superior for advice. The superior soon got to the point in the poem where a couplet said: “South of the river my younger brother perished,/ North of the border my elder brother went the way of all mortal flesh.” Deeply moved, the superior said in sympathy, “Really I hadn’t known that such awful disasters had struck your family. . . .” Thereupon Li Tingyan replied with utter civility: “But no, sir, I wasn’t being factual; I thought this might seem a neat little couplet, that’s all.” This story went the rounds among Li’s friends and became a popular joke, and someone took the trouble of making up two lines to round off Li’s tear-jerking couplet: “Rhyme away and be neat,/ Let death come twice for effect” (See Tao Zongyi 陶宗儀, Shuo fu 說郛, juan 32, Fan Zhengmin 范正敏, Dunzhai xianlan 遯齋閒覽 and Kong Qi 孔齊, Zhizheng zhiji 至正直記, juan 5). Obviously this Mr Li was going by the theory that the poetry of pain readily pleases, and he understood that poetry had to be concrete, that the emotions should be conveyed in things and facts as a sort of “objective correla- tive.” If the superior in the story had not been interested in the welfare of his staff, if he had not enquired immediately, then we, modern scholars who are strongly under the influence of Positivism, might never have suspected that this Mr Li was “affecting the language of the anxious when he had no anxiety to speak of.” But the ordinary layman, accustomed to this sort of convention, would definitely see through what this Mr Li was up to. In the Southern Song period a “geisha girl” addressed a ci poem (to the tune of “Que qiao xian” 鵲橋仙) to her lover:

Promises and oaths, Love to eternity, Spring sorrow clutters your missive. Better chant the Tuokong sutra. poetry as a vehicle of grief 209

Who taught you to lie? (Zhou Mi 周密 (1232–1308), Qidong yeyu 齊東野語, juan 11)

(“Tuokong” 脫空 means deceit, lying).25 This ci poem could be compared to the following lines from a love poem by Heine: “Men do not believe in what you call the flame of love;/ They see it as the language of poetry” (Diese Welt glaubt nicht an Flammen,/ und sie nimmt’s für Poesie).26 Expressions like “spring sorrow” or “the flame of love” are often used unconcernedly by writers, and there is no need for the reader to take them seriously: certainly when the reader is confronted with a “Tuokong sutra”, there is no point in treating it as a veritable record. And, let it be remembered, the “Tuokong sutra” comes in many forms, and is not confined to lyrical poetry or prose: it can come under the guise of personal confessions, memoirs, travellers’ accounts, and natural histories. I began by arguing that “poetry as a vehicle of grief” was a literary tenet in pre-modern China. In my rambling I touched on the modern West. This is perfectly natural. Had I started talking about the West, about recent times, I would have inevitably wended my way back to China, to ancient times. The different areas of the humanities are mutually related, and mutually enlightening; they link up different countries, different historical periods, and are linked up with other academic disciplines. As a man’s life-span and his intellect are both severely limited, we tend to narrow down our fields of research, making our areas of study increasingly restricted and specialised, all for the sake of convenience. Perhaps we have no alternative. But it does mean that, when you are an expert in a branch of learning, while you may subjectively be pleased with yourself, you cannot be very happy on objective grounds. “Poetry as a vehicle of grief” is a problem tied up with other larger problems. The “poetry of pain” interested the ancient Chinese, so did the “music of melancholy.”27 Was there a psychological basis shared by these two areas of human experience? Tragedy has been rejected by the “new critics” of our century,28 but it was considered

25 “Tuokong” is synonymous with “shaokong” 梢空. As a sutra records what the Buddha said, the Buddha must be present where there is a sutra. The Past Events of the Xuanhe Period (Xuanhe yishi 宣和遺事) informs us that Emperor Huizong of the Song dynasty once said to Li Shishi: “How can there be a jesting emperor or a lying Buddha?” 26 See the thirty-fifth poem in Neue Gedichte, Werke und Briefe, Vol. 1, p. 230. 27 See my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters, pp. 946–9. 28 For example, according to Roland Barthes as quoted by Alain Robbe-Grillet, Pour un nouveau roman (1963), p. 55. 210 poetry as a vehicle of grief superior to comedy in the best of traditional criticism.29 Could there also be a psychological basis shared by that traditional estimation of tragedy and the Chinese rejection of the “poetry of pleasure?” A literary scholar, strong in his sense of discipline, content with his methods, might well choose to ignore such problems, although he would have nothing to lose by recognizing their existence. It is better surely to have recognized the existence of a problem and not been able to solve it, than not to have acknowledged its existence at all. But then if he chose to deny that the problems were there, I can’t honestly say that he hadn’t found the best solution for all problems.

29 Hegel was perhaps an important exception, rating comedy more highly than tragedy as he did. Cf. S.S. Prawer, Karl Marx and World Literature (1976), p. 270, Note 99. Fischer, too, preferred comedy to tragedy, and considered it the noblest form of literature. Cf. R. Wellek, A History of Modern Criticism (1965), Vol. 3, p. 220. Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life”—the First English Poem Translated into Chinese—and Several Other Related Matters* 漢譯第一首英語詩人生頌及有關二三事

Samuel Butler records once meeting a young Italian boy who asked him: “And you shall read Longfellow much in England?” “No”, Butler replied, “I don’t think we read him very much.” Somewhat taken aback, the boy continued: “But how is that? He is a very pretty poet.”1 It seems that Butler, a writer much given to holding unorthodox views, had underestimated the breadth of the reading habits of his fellow countrymen—or perhaps one ought rather to say that he had overestimated their powers of discrimination. During his tour of London, George Santayana was everywhere encountering “the inevitable solitary elderly ladies,” one of whom, at table one night, spoke to him at length about how well loved Longfellow was in England, to the extent that he was “a household poet” there no less than he was in America.2 Both these somewhat obscure anecdotes reveal a level of contempt for Longfellow. They also provide apt testimony to his popularity abroad where women and children alike knew of him. As it happens, this was a popularity that extended all the way to China. For many years, one of Longfellow’s most frequently recited poems was his “A Psalm of Life”. The definitive biography of Longfellow relates in great detail the impact this poem had on a large number of readers and the profound influence it exercised over them. Among the various instances of this influence cited by the biography is the case of an American student who had decided to commit suicide. “A Psalm of Life” so restored his interest in life that he was saved.3

* This article was originally published in English thirty-five years ago, in Philobiblon, 2.2 (1948): 10–17. At the time I planned to write a monograph on the introduction of Western literature into China during the late Qing period, and this article was to form part of that work. Zhang Longxi came across it and suggested that I translate it into Chinese. I rewrote the article in keeping with the main tenor of the original. It was published in both the Hong Kong journal Dousou 抖擻, 1 (1982), and Peking University’s Guowai wenxue 國外文學 [Foreign Literature], 4 (1982). This present version is a revised one. 1 H.F. Jones, ed., The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), p. 264. 2 See Santayana’s autobiography, Persons and Places, Vol. 2, “The Middle Span,” p. 25. 3 Samuel Longfellow, Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1886), Vol. 1, pp. 271–72, and p. 303. If this poem by Longfellow saved someone from suicide, it is said that Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther” caused many a person to commit suicide; I do not know whether critics have judged these two poets from this angle.

Yet another claim to fame may be suggested for this poem. “A Psalm of Life” was the very earliest English poem to have been translated into Chinese. Of all foreign languages, English was the first to be studied widely and seriously in China. Yuan Mei’s grandson provided a precise description of the situation as it was then: “Everyone in China believed that English was the lingua franca of the West (Taixi guanhua 泰西官話), universally understood wherever one went. Thus English became the language of choice in China and people passed it on from one to the other until it was common to every household. In recent years, it has seemed as if the whole country has fallen prey to this madness.”4 Since “A Psalm to Life” was the first English poem to have been translated into Chinese, it was in all probability therefore also the earliest poem to have been translated into Chinese from any modern Western language. Longfellow was himself aware of the existence of a Chinese translation of the poem. Did he also know that in the history of the introduction of Western literature into China he long preceded that other English poet Shakespeare, or Dante whom he had himself translated into English? If he was indeed aware of this fact, what were his thoughts on the matter? Such questions, while they may well invite our conjecture, do not perhaps warrant our investigation. The Englishman Robert Ferguson visited Longfellow in September 1864 and, in America During and After the War, gave a pleasant account of his stay at Craigie House. In his description of the poet’s study we read: “The table was strewn with books and presentation copies in various languages,—ay, even in Chinese. But the ways of the Chinese are not as our ways; and this presentation copy was in the shape of a fan, on which a poet of the Flowery Land had written a translation of the Psalm of Life; and if the translation were only as good as the writing, assuredly the work was well done.”5 In Longfellow’s Journal we find the following entry for 30 November, 1865: “I gave a dinner to Mr and Mrs Burlingame, in honor of the Chinese Fan sent to me by a mandarin, with the ‘Psalm of Life’ written upon it in Chinese.”6 Anson Burlingame, it will be

4 Yuan Zuzhi 袁祖志 (1811–1853), Points of Attention for Those Going Abroad (Chuyang xuzhi 出洋須知). Yuan Zuzhi is depicted as “Hou Shiweng’s grandson, Hou Aochu” in Chapter 66 of Wu Woyao’s 吳沃堯 (吳趼人) novel Bizarre Happenings Eye-witnessed over Two Decades (Ershi nian mudu zhi guai xianzhuang 二十年目睹之怪現狀). After Yuan went abroad in 1883, he discovered that English was certainly not a language “universally understood wherever one went.” Cf. W.A.P. Martin, A Cycle of Cathay (1897), pp. 316–17, where he records some fascinating episodes that resulted from “a rush to learn English” on the part of the Guangxu emperor (1871–1908; r. 1875–1908) and his princes and ministers. 5 Quoted in Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Vol. 2, p. 412 (Vol. 3, p. 43 in the enlarged 1893 edition). 6 Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 429 (Vol. 3, p. 64 in the enlarged edition). Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” 213 recalled, had once served as American Minister to China. Upon his retirement, the Qing court appointed him Chinese minister plenipotentiary, in keeping with the classic principle of “the state of Jin employing the talents of Chu” (Chu cai Jin yong 楚材晉用) or those found argued in Li Si’s 李斯 “Memorial Against the Expulsion of Foreign Advisors” (“Jian zhuke shu” 諫逐客書). Burlingame was later sent on a mission to various foreign lands (including his own). In 1867 (6th year of the Tongzhi period) he led a mission including two Vice-ministers, one Manchu and one Chinese, which, “Bearing creden- tials, travelled to the various Western nations with whom China had treaties in order to conduct affairs pertaining to China’s foreign relations.”7 Neither Ferguson nor Longfellow give us any clue as to the identity of either the “poet of the Flowery Land” or the “Mandarin”. In an appendix to the enlarged edition of his Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Samuel Longfellow informs us that the man in question was “Jung Tagen,” which seems to be a transliteration of the three characters “Rong Daren” 容大人 (His Excellency Rong).8 Whether the Chinese version of “A Psalm to Life” given below is the one found on the “Mandarin Fan” is a question easily answered by those with the opportunity to visit America and interest enough to search through the poet’s memora- bilia. My sole purpose here is to catalogue the earliest Chinese accounts of Longfellow and his “A Psalm of Life.” Fang Junshi’s 方濬師 Commonplace Book of the Plantain Studio (Jiaoxuan suilu 蕉軒隨錄) was published in 1872 (11th year of the Tongzhi period), this being four years after he had left employment with the Tsungli Yamen;9 according to a letter he wrote from Canton to his former superior Dong Xun 董恂 (1807–1892), the first draft of his book had been completed before he set off on his “Cantonese journey.”10 The Commonplace Book of the Plantain Studio (Fascicle 12) contains an entry under the caption “Tall Friend’s Poem” (“Changyou shi” 長友詩). I will first cite and discuss both the introduction and

7 Once he had arrived in Russia, affairs became difficult, and Burlingame, “despondent and worried,” fell ill and died, unable to return to Peking to discharge his responsibilities. Cf. the account dated the 24th day, 1st month of the 9th year of the Tongzhi period in the journal of one of his Vice-ministers, Zhigang’s 志剛 A Record of the Important Events of the First Mission to the West (Chushi Taixi jiyao 初使泰西紀要). 8 Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1893 Edition, Vol. 3, p. 437. 9 Fang Junshi, “Cantonese Journey Collection” (“Yuexing ji” 粵行集), Poetry Collection from the Studio of Retreating One Step (Tuiyibuzhai shiji 退一步齋詩集) (juan 3). His “Cantonese journey” as an Outer Official had been made in 1868 (7th year of the Tongzhi period). 10 “A Letter in Reply to President Dong Xun” (“Fu Dong Yunqing shangshu shu” 覆董韞卿尚書書), Poetry Collection from the Studio of Retreating One Step, juan 4. 214 Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” the conclusion to this entry, before going on to juxtapose Longfellow’s poem and this “Tall Friend’s Poem” in order to facilitate comparison:

During the rule of the Latter Han dynasty (25–220), the Zuodu or South-western Barbarians composed a series of poems in three sections entitled “Poem of Longing for Civilisation and Returning to Righteousness” (“Muhua guiyi shi” 慕化歸義詩). When Tian Gong 田恭, the Administrator of the Jianwei Prefecture, was investigating the local customs of this area and having folk songs and poems translated into Chinese, the Regional Inspector of Liangzhou, Zhu Fu 朱輔, presented these poems to him. The Eastern Library Han Records Dongguan Hanji 東觀漢記) carries these songs, the annotations having been re-translated into Chinese, these being also the versions carried in Fan Ye’s History (Fan shi 范史), where they are glossed in keeping with the Barbarian language recorded in the Eastern Library Han Records: [poems omitted]. Note: the original poems are largely unintelligible, and thus Fan Ye’s History states that: “In the languages of the distant barbarians, it is difficult to restore the proper meanings to these words for such people are as strange as plants of a different flora and animals of a different fauna.” The English envoy to China Thomas Francis Wade once translated into Chinese nine poems (shi jiushou 詩九首) by a European named Tall-Friend (Ouluobaren Changyou 歐羅巴人長友). The number of sentences ( jushu 句數) var- ies from poem to poem, a characteristic suggestive of our ancient irregu- lar odes. Wade rendered the poems literally, giving stanzaic divisions but no rhyme ( you zhang wu yun 有章無韻), and submitted his version to His Excellency Ganquan (Ganquan shangshu 甘泉尚書) to be reduced into the pattern of the seven word quatrain (cai yi qiyan jueju 裁以七言絕句). His Excellency, finding the poems full of moral uplift and not at all contrary to Truth and Good Sense ( jie you celi yi wu ai li zhe 皆有策勵意無礙理者), graciously consented. Here I give the translation with Wade’s original text written under each sentence in the manner of the annotations found in the Fan Ye’s History (Fan shu 范書). Good writing from beyond our frontiers may perhaps be of use to future historians. The poems go: [poems omitted]. Note: During the Daoguang period (1821–1850) the Westerner Sir Robert Hart [?] knew Chinese, and had some understanding of the meaning of the Analects of Lu (Lu lun 魯論). With the services of an interpreter surnamed Yang, he paid a call upon Su Gengtang of Gaoyao and Waterways Commander Tinggui. The Waterways Commander composed a poem for him that went: “Confucius like a Wooden Clapper spoke on heaven’s behalf/ Awakening the ignorant Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” 215

and deaf of a myriad ages/ When the sages govern the world the people of the eight wildernesses draw near/ The same language extends so far that it converts the Western merchants/. . ./ The island barbarians have cherished morality these two hundred years/ Their many tall build- ings arrayed to the west/ China will not change her Confucian classics/ The distant regions should burn all their Yameng 亞孟 books (that is, their classics)”. When Confucius composed the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chun qiu 春秋), he treated as barbarians those feudal lords who observed barbarian rites, and as Chinese those who had advanced to the use of Chinese ways. When one reads the poems by both His Excellency and the Waterways Commander, one may understand their well-meant intentions.

The line beginning: “When Confucius composed the Spring and Autumn Annals . . .” is a famous one, and comes from Han Yu’s 韓愈 (786–824) essay “On The True Way” (“Yuan dao 原道). I conjecture that the “Yameng” here is a transliteration of the formula “Amen” used by Christians at the conclusion of their prayers. The “Taking Pleasure in Morality: Admiring Morality: Cherishing Morality” (“Lede: Mude: Huaide” 樂德慕德懷) poems were recorded in the “Biographies of the Southern and South-western Barbarians” (“Nanman: Xi’nanyi liezhuan” 南蠻西南夷列傳) section of the History of the Latter Han Dynasty (Hou Han shu 後漢書), the work Fang Junshi refers to here as the Fan Ye’s History, after the name of its author. In an age before the appearance of such things as “Foreign Affairs” ( yangwu 洋務) or the “conduct of foreign relations”, scholars cited these poems as outstanding examples of the idea that “the writings of foreign lands could be adapted for use in China”.11 Thomas Francis Wade began his career as an interpreter; his promotion to the august post of English Minister to China apparently broke all precedents.12 Untypically, however, he never forgot his original calling. That as an Englishman he should nevertheless have chosen to translate a poem by the American Longfellow illustrates the

11 Ji Yun 紀昀, “Preface to a Collection of Poetry by Erxi” (“Erxi shiji xu” 耳溪詩集序), Ji Wenda gong wenji 紀文達公文集, juan 9; cf. also my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters (Guan zhui bian 管錐編), pp. 1366–7. 12 Liu Xihong 劉錫鴻 tells us in his Journal of a Voyage to England (Yingyao riji 英軺日記) that: “According to British Government regulations . . . amongst those who were sent abroad on missions there were interpreters who were promoted as high as Consul. Wade was promoted from interpreter to minister, this breaking all precedents for it had never happened before” (Xiaofanghuzhai yudi congchao 小方壺齋輿地叢鈔, 1st Collection, juan 11, Vol. 2, p. 196). 216 Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” point that young Italian boys and old maids in England were not alone in their predilections. The person referred to here as “His Excellency Ganquan” is Dong Xun, President of the Board of Revenue and a native of Ganquan County in the Yangzhou Prefecture. In 1861 (11th year of the Xianfeng period), the Qing court established the “Office in General Charge of Foreign Affairs” (Zongli geguo shiwu yamen 總理各國事務衙門), abbreviated as the “Tsungli Yamen”. It was designed to be equivalent to the Foreign Office: “Thus the ‘Foreign Office’ is the ‘Tsungli Yamen’; transliterated from the English it is called the “Folin aofeisi” 佛林敖非司, which translated means ‘Foreign Office’“.13 Dong Xun was instru- mental in the establishment of this institution. His collected prose works include the prefaces he wrote for two works of law and natural science translated by W.A.P. Martin, the American English tutor attached to the College of Foreign Languages (Tongwen Guan 同文館).14 The preface to the book on law states, inter alia: “Fang Junshi of Dingyuan was entrusted with the revision and editing of this work.” Fang Junshi himself states that: “The work Elements of International Law was translated by the American W.A.P. Martin, and along with Chen Zijing, Li Shuyan and Mao Shengfu, I expended more than a year’s efforts in correcting and revising it.”15 Fang Junshi had acted as “Secretary” (zhangjing 章京) in the Tsungli Yamen from its inception, both Burlingame’s two Vice-ministers, Zhigang and Sun Jiagu, having been his colleagues.16 The date of the mention of the “Mandarin Fan” in the Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the years 1864–1865, corresponds exactly with the period that Fang Junshi served under Dong Xun. Is it possible that “Jung Tagen” is a mistaken rendition of Dong Daren (Tung Tajen in the Wade-Giles form of Romanisation)? Such a mistake would not be at all surprising for when capitalised J’s and T’s are similar in shape and easily confused. Dong Xun’s poetry collection contains a verse or two written to please some French prince or another but does not

13 Zhang Deyi 張德彝 (1847–1919), journal entry dated 10th day of the 12th month of the 2nd year of the Guangxu period, in The Fourth Narration of the Marvellous (Sishu qi 四述奇). 14 Dong Xun, “Foreword to [Henry Wheaton’s] Elements of International Law” (“Wanguo gongfa xu” 萬國公法序) and “Foreword to The Rudiments of Science” (“Gewu rumen xu” 格物入門序), both in Difenshuwu wengao 荻芬書屋文稿, juan 1. 15 “A Brief Account of the Oceans” (“Haiyang jilue” 海洋紀略), Commonplace Book of the Plantain Studio, juan 8. 16 “Note on the Four Cypress Studio Collection of Elegancies” (“Sibaixuan yaji qi” 四柏軒雅集啟), Commonplace Book of the Plantain Studio, juan 3. Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” 217 include a translation of “Tall Friend’s Poem.”17 Fang Junshi’s works, too, have long been forgotten about and so, contrary to all expectations, even his modest wish to “be of use to future historians” has proven an extravagant one. Fang Junshi was one of the more enlightened scholars of the Tongzhi (1862– 1874) and Guangxu (1875–1908) periods most experienced in the conduct of foreign affairs. To us today, however, prone as we are to that feeling of superiority allowed latecomers, his arguments strike us as being little more than ridiculous. Not only had he acceded to traditional Chinese feelings of racial megalomania, his attitudes betray too the generalised notions of the West prevalent at the time. To annotate and explain the passage given above may perhaps serve to enhance our understanding of the vogues of an age that has already long passed. What immediately catches our attention is the extent to which Fang Junshi’s argument about the purpose of translating foreign literature into Chinese seems to turn our own purpose in translating foreign literature completely upon its head. By rights, the aim of translating foreign literature into another language is to permit the people of that nation to read and learn from such works, and thus lead them to the enjoyment and study of these works. Fang Junshi’s argument is precisely the reverse of this. The “intention” ( yongxin 用意) behind the translation of “Tall Friend’s Poem” was the hope that “The same language would extend far and convert” (tongwen yuanpi 同文遠被) thus serving to encourage foreigners to study Chinese and to accept Chinese culture in order that “[like] barbarians who advanced to the use of Chinese ways [they too] could be treated as Chinese.” Exactly the same sort of reasoning led Jin Anqing, that wise and able activist of the Guangxu period, to establish in Shanghai a “Common Morality Academy” (Tonglun shuyuan 同倫書院) to “select the brightest scholars from the important nations of both East and West to come here at their own expense in order to learn from us how to read Chinese books and accept the way of the traditional

17 See the two five-word Regulated Verses in “Written on the Occasion of a Banquet Given in Honour of a Grandson of the Late King of France” (“Chunxueyan gu fa wang sun” 春雪宴故法王孫), Difenshuwu shigao, juan 4. Dong Xun’s colleagues and underlings all appear to have known about the matter of “Tall Friend’s Poem”. The entry dated the 25th day, 8th month of the 7th year of the Tongzhi period in Zhang Deyi’s journal, The Second Narration of the Marvellous (Zai shu qi 再述奇), states: “I met with the poet Tall Friend from the U.S.A., who is approaching his sixtieth year and whose poetry is refined and elegant. He is very famous in the West”; here Zhang Deyi breaks with his usual practice of always transliterating foreign names and respects the translation used by his superior. 218 Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life”

Chinese scholar . . . They can quit their dark ravines to settle upon a lofty tree . . . Thus could the aliens be transformed into [people like] ourselves.”18 Fang Junshi’s own translations of foreign works of law and science were not motivated by the view adumbrated above; obviously, he regarded such activity in a very different light and worked on it to different principles. His correction and revision of the Elements of International Law, for example, was certainly not done for the purpose of leading foreigners to “advance to the use of Chinese ways” and thereby to the observance of the statues contained in the Laws and Statutes of the Great Qing Dynasty (Da Qing lüli 大清律例). Such a cultural tendency to treat the same sort of activity in two very different ways is not of course unique to the Chinese. In the Middle Ages in Europe, for example, it was believed that there was a “double truth” that was both opposite and complementary—“a truth that derived from revelation” and “a truth derived from reason.” Nowadays it is claimed that there are “two cultures”—“the culture of the scientist” and “the culture of the humanities.” One even hears that the Soviets distinguish between “three sciences.”19 Over time, the situation slowly became more clear-cut, as is shown in a conversation recorded between Huang Zunxian 黃遵憲 (1848–1905) and a Japanese person in which he said: “In terms of metaphysics (xingershang 形而上), the theories of Confucius and Mencius are the ultimate, whereas in materialist terms (xingerxia 形而下), the learning of Europe and America is exhaustive.” Huang Zunxian’s own writings contain a statement to the effect that: “Those things that we cannot change are those to do with traditional ideas of social relationships and morality. Those things that we can change are those to do with financial management, animal husbandry, trade and the welfare of workers.”20 Zhang Zhidong 張之洞 (1837– 1909) developed a very popular formula for the dual nature of learning: “One should study both the old and the new: old learning for the essence (ti 體), new learning for practical application ( yong 用).”21 It was generally acknowledged that all of the “Western” natural sciences and part of the social sciences

18 Yu Yue 俞樾, “Written on the Occasion of Provincial Surveillance Commissioner Jin Meisheng’s Sixtieth Birthday” (“Jin Meisheng lianfang liushishou xu” 金眉生廉訪六十壽序), Chunzaitang zawen 春在堂雜文, Second Collection, juan 5. The phrase “at their own expense” tells us that the Academy was in no position to offer scholarships and that such foreigners as attended it would have to pay their own fees. 19 Cf. The New York Review of Books, 12th October, 1978, p. 41. 20 Entry dated 1st day, 8th month of the 7th year of the Meiji period (1905) in the journal of Oka Senjin 冈千仞, Journal of a Sightseeing Tour of China (Kankô kiyû 觀光紀游); Huang Zunxian, “Preface” (“Xu” 序) to the “Treatise on Technology” (“Gongyi zhi” 工藝志), in his Treatises on Japan (Riben guozhi 日本國志). 21 Zhang Zhidong, Item 3 in the “Establishing Schools” (“She xue” 設學) section of his Exhortation to Learning (Quan xue 勸學). It would appear that the germ of this concept Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” 219 were superior, and that China had much to learn in these respects. Thus was the “College of Foreign Languages” established. At the same time there existed also the profound belief that the literature, morality, and philosophy of China were superior to those of other nations and that, far from there being any need to import such things, once foreigners had become acquainted with the excellence of these Chinese things, they would become enlightened to true civilisation (guihua 歸化) and “enter our gates.” It was this belief that provided the rationale for Jin Anqing’s “Common Morality Academy.” If the translation into Chinese of foreign works was intended as a means of causing foreign writers to cast off their benighted ways, the “poem on a fan” resembled nothing so much as bait designed to lure Longfellow into an admiration for China. And if in the eyes of the giver, his gift was bait, the recipient however was to die in the belief that it constituted tribute. It would seem that the “intention” behind the gift was one held in vain, the fan having been given to no effect. Fang Junshi had said that as the “barbarians” were “[as strange as] . . . animals of a different fauna”, their language “unintelligible”. This concept constituted a long-standing tradition in China. “The twitter of birds” (niaoyu 鳥語) had long been a synonym for both the “language of the southern barbarians” (manyu 蠻語) or the “language of the Eastern barbarians” ( yiyu 夷語).22 In the account of the Ailao barbarians given in the same section of the History of the Latter Han Dynasty cited by Fang Junshi, it is stated that: “their mother tongue is the twitter of birds” (其母鳥語). The “Opinion” (lun 論) that concludes this biography declares further that: “They are of the category that live like beasts and twitter like birds”. The “Biography of Du Shang” (“Du Shang zhuan” 度尚傳), contained in the same work, speaks of: “people who wear their hair in mallet-shape fashion and speak in the twitter of birds.” To this, Zhang Huai 章懷 adds the annotation: “This is to say that the sound of their language resembles the twitter of birds, as in the line from the Book of Documents (Shangshu 尚書) which goes: ‘The Island barbarians wear clothes of grass.’ ” Wang Xianqian 王先謙 in his Collected Commentaries to the History of the Later Han Dynasty (Hou Han shu jijie 後漢書集解) cites Qian Daxin 錢大昕 to the effect that the word “island” (dao 島) here should actually read “bird” (niao 鳥). The “Biography of Sima Rui Usurper of the Jin” (“Jianjin Sima Rui zhuan” 僭晉司馬叡傳) in the History of the Wei Dynasty (Wei shu 魏書) contains the following passage: “The savage barbarians of Bashu dwell in remote and vulgar places and their voices sound like the twittering of birds, utterly dissimilar [to our own].” The text of Xu Huo’s 徐豁 memorial to the emperor as found in

of duality was present during the late Ming period, but this point would require its own specialised treatment. 22 Cf. my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters, p. 1329. 220 Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” the “Biographies of Good Officials” (“Liang li zhuan” 良吏傳) in the History of the Song Dynasty (Song shu 宋書) contains the following lines: “Thereupon we met with vulgar barbarians . . . furthermore, the savage people all dwell in nests and speak in the twitter of birds.” Much earlier, the “Ministers of Justice” (“Qiuguan sikou” 秋官司寇) section of the Rites of the Zhou Dynasty (Zhou li 周禮) had stipulated that those official posts entrusted with the “duty of talking with the birds” or “communicating with the beasts” ought to be filled by Southern Barbarians (Minman 閩蠻) and Northern Barbarians (Luodi 狢狄),23 this being an illustration of the belief that such barbarians could communicate with the birds and the beasts.24 Despite his advocacy of foreign affairs and Western learning, Huang Zunxian, too, was not immune from such traditional views when writing poetry. During his journey by boat from Japan to America he wrote a quatrain that gives: “With beating wings the seagulls pursue me/ Coming from opposite ends of the world we have never met/ I wish to send news by means of the twittering of birds/ But I fear that you do not understand Chinese.”25 Let me compare this poem with the famous poem entitled “Swallow Mountain Pavilion” (“Yanshan ting” 燕山亭) by Emperor Huizong of the Song dynasty, which goes: “I send with these my endless sorrow at parting/ This pair of swallows, how can they understand the language of man.”26 By writing not “you do not understand human language” but rather “you do not understand Chinese,” Huang Zunxian’s unstated implication is that seagulls and Westerners have a common language. In around 1867 (6th year of the Tongzhi period), Wu Yangxian 吳仰賢 wrote a poem in praise of the “Dialect Schools” ( fangyan guan 方言館) of the “Yangjingbang” 洋涇浜 concession area of Shanghai where “young Chinese boys were gathered together for the purpose of teaching them barbarian books and barbarian language.” The poem contains the following lines: “The crimson curtain newly hung, the lecture halls completed/ Insect

23 Sun Yirang 孫詒讓, The True Significance of the Rites of Zhou (Zhou li zhengyi 周禮正義), juan 69. One can give the interesting example of a line from Tang dynasty poetry, Li He’s 李賀 “Poem of Changgu” (“Changgu shi” 昌谷詩): “Orioles trill the songs of the maids of Min,” cf. Qian Yinguang’s 錢飲光 discussion of this line as cited in Wang Qi’s 王琦 Collected Commentaries to the Poetry of Li He (Li Changji geshi huijie 李長吉歌詩匯解). 24 Cf. Charles Quint’s belief in the similarity between the German language and the neighing of horses; literary classics such as Act 3, Scene 3 of J. Regnard’s Le Distrait, or Vol. 3, Chapter 3 of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels both make use of this sentence (“et suisse à des chevaux” and “to his horse in High Dutch”). 25 Thirteenth poem in the series entitled “Miscellaneous Thoughts at Sea” (“Haixing zagan” 海行雜感), in Renjinglu shicao 人境廬詩草, juan 4. 26 Complete Lyrics of the Song Dynasty (Quan Song ci 全宋詞), p. 898. Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” 221 books and bird-like writing compete in criss-crossed lines/ One’s sons should be made to study the language of the Xianbei/ In order to understand the sound of the warbling partridges.”27 The sentence beginning “One’s sons . . .” employs an allusion from the “Teaching Sons” (“Jiao zi” 教子) chapter of the Yan Clan Family Instructions (Yanshi jiaxun 顏氏家訓), while the sentence beginning “In order to understand . . .” refers explicitly to the twittering of birds and derives from some lines in the Tang dynasty poet Li Qunyu’s 李群玉 poem “Hearing Partridges on Nine Son Slope” (“Jiuziban wen zhegu” 九子坂聞鷓鴣): “Just as I passed along the winding rugged mountain path/ I heard again the warbling of partridges.” Weng Tonghe 翁同龢 (1830–1904) once recorded an amusing scene: “I called on the Tsungli Yamen, all the officials having gathered there. Just after one o’clock the ministers of all the various nations called to convey their New Year greetings. I avoided them by standing off in the Western wing and looked on at the proceedings from afar. There were more than twenty people there and Marquis Zeng Jize 曾紀澤 talked with them in their own barbarian language, sounding to me like the incessant chirping and warbling of birds (zhoujiu 啁啾).”28 The Chinese words zhoujiu, zhaozha 啁哳 and zhoujiu 啁噍 are all onomatopoeia used in ancient prose and poetry to describe the sounds made by birds. At the time, all the Chinese diplomats posted overseas much admired Zeng Jize’s (1839–1890) command of the “barbarian languages”; “The Marquis could understand both English and French, and was able to exchange pleasantries with such people when he had occasion to meet them.”29 Regardless of whether it was English or French being spoken, in the ears of a person who took the pains to shun the company of foreign devils as did Weng Tonghe, it all sounded like the endless cackle-cackle of birds. But perhaps I labour the point. It was not of course only the ancients in China who were prone to this type of prejudice. Anyone who has read a few of the classics of Western literature will immediately recall that the great ancient Greek comic poet Aristophanes had the speech of the barbarian peoples sound

27 Wu Yangxian, fourth poem in the series entitled “Folk poems in Pidgin English” (“Yangjing zhuzhici” 洋涇竹枝詞), Xiaopaoan shicun 小匏庵詩存, juan 6. 28 Entry dated 10th day of the 1st month of the 13th year of the Guangxu period [1887], in Diary of Weng Tonghe (Weng Wengong gong riji 翁文恭公日記). 29 Cai Jun 蔡鈞, Points of Attention for Officials Travelling Abroad (Chushi xuzhi 出使須知). Cai Jun knew some English, and once he had arrived in Spain (“Risibaniya” 日斯巴尼亞) he also began to study Spanish (“riyu” 日語). W.A.P. Martin had taught Zeng Jize spoken English, and in his A Cycle of Cathay, p. 365 he tells us that Zeng Jize’s English was “fluent but ungrammatical.” 222 Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” as if it were the chirping and warbling of birds in his famous work Birds.30 The sixteenth century French zoologist Pierre Gilles claimed that to those who did not understand the language, Englishmen speaking together were simply like geese (si Britanni colloquentes anserum clangore fundere),31 the goose in the West being a notoriously “stupid bird!” Fang Junshi had revised the draft translation of the American Martin, and Dong Xun and Martin were great friends, Martin’s memoirs containing a section that speaks exclusively of him.32 Despite this, both Dong Xun and Fang Junshi call Longfellow a “European.” Perhaps Wade had never explained the true facts of the matter to Dong Xun; or perhaps Dong Xun, for his part, had never mentioned his translation of this poem to Martin. The fan, however,—if in fact it derived from “Dong Daren” and not some other “Rong Daren”—nevertheless managed to find its way into the hands of Longfellow in The United States of America! In all probability, by the time the gift was sent, Dong Xun had corrected his initially mistaken impression of “Tall Fellow’s” nationality and that once Fang Junshi had respectfully recorded his superior’s translation he perpetuated the error without pursuing the matter and retroactively altering what had been written. This imbroglio goes some way towards illustrating the extent of the muddle-headedness that persisted in the concepts of the West held by those who advocated foreign affairs, even if such men did not display the utter confusion displayed by the more obscurantist officials. Wang Kangnian 汪康年 (1860–1911) recorded the following anecdote: “Soon after the trading ports had been opened up, President Wan Qingli stated: ‘How can the world contain this many different nations? Probably there are only two or three countries which today call themselves “England”, tomorrow “Italy,” and “Sweden” some days later, with the sole purpose of cheating us Chinese!’ There was also a certain Manchu who said: ‘Much of what Westerners say is not based on any reality. For instance, Ying, Ji and Li (Yingjili 英吉利— England) by rights ought to be three nations; but at present only men from the nation of Ying have come to China, those from the nations of Ji and Li having

30 See the Greek-French bi-lingual edition in the Series Collection des Universités de France, “Les Oiseaux,” Œuvres Aristophane, Vol. 3, p. 33, Lines 199–200, where the translator, Milaire Van Daele, adds the note: “The languages of barbarian peoples were formerly assimilated with the unintelligible twittering of birds” (Les langues barbares étaient assimiliées au gauzouillement inintelligible des oiseaux). 31 G. Boas, The Happy Beast in French Thought of the Seventeenth Century (1933), p. 41. 32 “Tungsuin, a Chinese Scholar,” A Cycle of Cathay, pp. 355–8. Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” 223 never shown up.’ ”33 At that time, people paid Europe a lot more attention than they paid America. America’s international position was not yet a particularly important one, her “manifest destiny” not yet reckoned upon, her rank as one of the “Five Powers” after the First World War still beyond her wildest dreams, even more so her position after the Second World War as one of the “two super- powers.” Her diplomats posted to England, Russia, France, and Germany were merely “Second ranking Ministers,” on a par with the ministers from China, Japan, Peru, Siam, Monaco and other such nations.34 Recently, in her book Footprints, Mrs Brooke Astor, the American millionairess and aficionado of Chinese architecture, recalled that the name given “a Yankee” by Chinese was “a second-chop Englishman.”35 It is perfectly understandable therefore that when Dong Xun heard that Longfellow was a Westerner he should immediately have assumed that he was a “European,” the more so for having been told about him by an Englishman. As to Wade’s translation rather than transliteration of Longfellow’s surname, perhaps he was conscious of the fact that Dong Xun knew no foreign language and wished to avoid giving him a jawbreaker of a name to deal with. Such a method of translation had also been employed in Wade’s own country. In a letter, David Hume had ridiculed an author who had translated rather than transliterated the names of both people and places in his discussion of the ancient Roman court, translating the love poet Anser’s name as “Mr. Gosling.”36 An essay by Leigh Hunt entitled “Rhyme and Reason” has the Italian poet Torquato Tasso given the name “Twisted Yew.”37 In a letter sent from France to a friend at home, Charles Lamb signed his name in French

33 Xingzuisheng 醒醉生 (Wang Kangnian), Selections Both Rustic and Humorous (Zhuangxie xuanlu 庄諧選錄), pp. 355–8. Cf. also Chapter Forty-six of Li Boyuan’s 李伯元 (1867– 1906) novel A Record of the Present State of Officialdom (Guanchang xianxing ji 官場現形記) where Tong Ziliang exclaims: “How could there be so many different countries”; in Chapter 12 of Youhuan Yusheng’s 憂患餘生The Words of Neighbouring Girls (Lin nü yu 鄰女語) Xu Tong says: “How can foreign nations have so many different names! . . . If you look up the ancient books where do you find such names as ‘England’ and ‘France’?” 34 Cf. the entries dated the 9th day, 2nd month of the 2nd year of the Guangxu period (1876) and the 1st day, 1st month of the 5th year of the Guangxu period (1879) in Zhang Deyi, The Fourth Narration of the Marvellous; also the entry dated 6th day 12th month of the 4th year of the Guangxu period (1878) in Li Fengbao 李鳳苞, Journal of the Mission to Germany (Shi De riji 使德日記); and the entry dated 6th day, 12th month of the 16th year of the Guangxu period (1890) in Xue Fucheng 薛福成, Journal of the Missions to England, France, Italy and Belgium (Chushi Ying, Fa, Yi, Bi siguo riji 出使英法義比四國日記). 35 Times Literary Supplement, 1st May, 1981, p. 492. 36 J.Y.T. Greig, ed., Letters of David Hume (1932), Vol. 1, p. 242. 37 Leigh Hunt, Selected Essays, Everyman Edition, p. 165. 224 Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” as: “Votre humble serviteur Charlois Agneau alias C. Lamb.”38 We learn from Longfellow’s biography that a lady imagined the poet to be “a tall, thin man,” while a little girl cried out “Mr Longfellow!” on seeing a daddy-long-legs;39 both these people had thought of the meaning of his name when they saw it, understanding it to mean “Tall Fellow” or “Tall Friend”:

Longfellow’s Poem Wade’s Version Dong Xun’s Translation

Tell me not, in mournful numbers, 勿以憂時言莫將煩惱著詩篇 Life is but an empty dream! 人生若虛夢百歲原如一覺夢 For the soul is dead that slumbers, 性靈睡即與死無異夢短夢長同是夢 And things are not what they seem. 不儘形骸尚有靈在獨留真氣滿乾坤 Life is real—life is earnest— 人生世上行走非虛生也天地生材總不虛 And the grave is not its goal: 總期有用何謂死埋方至極處由來豹死尚留皮 Dust thou art, to dust returnest, 聖書所云人身原土縱然出土仍歸土終當歸土 Was not spoken of the soul. 此言人身非謂靈也靈性常存無絕期 Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, 其樂其憂均不可專務無端憂樂日相循 Is our destin’d end or way; 天之生人別有所命天命斯人自有真 But to act, that each to-morrow 所命者作為專圖日日人法天行強不息常進 Find us farther than today. 明日尤要更有進步一時功業一時新 Art is long, and time is fleeting, 作事需時惜時飛去無術揮戈學魯陽 And out hearts, though stout and 人心縱有壯膽遠志枉談肝膽異尋常 brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating 仍如喪鼓之敲一從薤露歌聲起 Funeral marches to the grave. 皆係向墓道去邱隴無人宿草荒 In the world’s broad field of battle, 人世如大戰場擾擾紅塵聽鼓鼙 In the bivouac of Life, 如眾軍在林下野盤風吹大漠草萋萋 Be not like dumb, driven cattle! 莫如牛羊無言待人駑駘甘待鞭笞下驅策

38 E.V. Lucas, ed., Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (1903–5), Vol. 7, p. 596. In an essay in the third collection of his Promenades littéraires, Remy de Gourmont asserts that to translate into French the names of foreigners would serve to destroy readers’ “illusions” of these people; the examples of English names that he gives are Bacon translated as “Cochon” and Lamb as “l’Agneau.” 39 Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Vol. 1, p. 380. Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” 225

Longfellow’s Poem Wade’s Version Dong Xun’s Translation

Be a hero in the strife! 爭宜努力作英雄騏驥誰能轡勒羈 Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant! 勿言異日有可樂之時休道將來樂有時 Let the dead Past bury its dead: 既往日亦由己埋己可憐往事不堪思 Act—act in the glorious present! 目下努力切切只今有力均須努 Heart within, and God o’er head! 中儘己心上賴天祐人力殫時天祐之 Lives of great men all remind us 著名人傳看則繫念千秋萬代遠蜚聲 We can make our lives sublime, 想我們在世亦可置身學步金鰲頂上行高處 And, departing, leave behind us 去世時尚有痕跡已去冥鴻亦有跡 Footsteps on the sands of time. 勢如留在海邊沙面雪泥爪印認分明 Footsteps, that, perhaps another, 蓋人世如同大海茫茫塵世海中漚 Sailing o’er life’s solemn main, 果有他人過海才過來舟又去舟 A forlorn and shipwreck’d brother, 船只擱淺受難失望欲問失帆誰挽救見海邊有跡才知有沙洲遺跡可追求可銷免 Seeing, shall take heart again. 顧此即應備起動身一鞭從此躍征鞍 Let us then be up and doing, 心中預定無論如何不到峰頭心不甘 With a heart for any fate; 總期有濟 Still achieving, still pursuing, 日有成功愈求進功日進日高還日上 Learn to labor and to wait. 習其用工堅忍不可肯教中道偶停驂中止

Wade’s version is little more than what American slang calls a “pony” for a foreign language examination—that is, a word-for-word, sentence-by-sentence crib to be smuggled into the examination hall. Unwittingly, however, Dong Xun’s translation on the other hand accords well with Johann Gottfried Herder’s claim that the translation of a poem should be one’s own creation based upon and in imitation of the original (nachdichten, umdichten).40 Unfortunately, he based himself not on Longfellow’s original poem, but rather on Wade’s crabbed and almost inarticulate version of the poem—here the intermediary has actually proven something of an obstacle, and the middleman an instigator of discord. Two modern poets have been most straightforward when speaking of the problems of the translation of poetry. Robert Frost defined poetry

40 Cf. R. Haym, ed., Johann Gottfried Herder, East Berlin, 2nd Edition (1958), Vol. 2, p. 201. In his Parerga und Paraliopomena, Chapter 25, Section 299, Schopenhauer considers that this is the only means of translating poetry, and yet it too is quite without “guarantee” (misslich), in P. Deussen, ed., Samtliche Werke, (1911–29), Vol. 5, p. 627. 226 Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” as being: “What gets lost in translation.”41 Christian Morgenstern considered that translations of poetry could “merely be divided into those that were bad and those that were less bad” (Es gibt nur schlechte Uebersetzungen und weniger schlechte),42 which is to say that if they were not worse, they were bad. As a poem, a translation may perhaps be considered a good “poem,” but as a reproduction of the original poem, it cannot in the end avoid being a bad “translation.” In the case of the versions of “Tall Friend’s Poem” produced by Wade and Dong Xun, the original “poem” was bad enough, the “translations” even worse; or perhaps one could say that that the “translations” were bad and the “poem” itself less bad. Responsibility for the quality of the poem is that of Dong Xun, while blame for the fact that the translation was bad must be borne by Wade. Wade had a complete understanding of Longfellow’s original poem, but his expressive ability in Chinese was very poor. His command of lexicon was insufficient, translating “art” not as “yiye” 藝業 or “shuye” 術業 but as “zuoshi” 作事 (do work), for example. His syntax was either ungainly or incorrect, in some places quite incoherent, as in his rendition of “Let the dead Past bury its dead” as “you ji mai ji” 由己埋己 (it is up to you to bury yourself) and “remind us” as “kan ze jinian” 看則係念 (to look is to remember). For the sake of clarity, he would occasionally provide a paraphrase, often quite unnecessarily, as in his Chinese for the phrase “Life is real”, “Rensheng shishang xing- zou fei xusheng ye” 人生世上行走非虛生也 (The progression of human life through this life is indeed not in vain). To anyone with a knowledge of English, this “pony” appears a domesticated and obedient one. The pitiable Dong Xun knew no English, however, and all he had to hold on to was this intractable, even obscure, translation, perceiving the original poem as if through a glass darkly and consequently misunderstanding or misrepresenting it. On the basis of Wade’s version of this poem alone, it is easy to ridicule this diplomat who had served in China so long and who was to become a professor of Chinese literature upon his return to England. Yet Chinese is a far more difficult language to learn than English is. If we think for a moment of that bizarre poem written by his Chinese counterpart, Zeng Jize’s “A Combined Chinese-Western

41 Robert Graves praised this definition as a “splendid provincial definition” in STEPS (1958), p. 142. W.H. Auden however argued that the definition “Looks plausible at first sight but will not quite do,” The Dyers Hand and Other Essays (1962), pp. 23–4. Of course, Dante was the first to point out the impossibility of translating poetry (della sua loquela in altre trasmutata) when speaking from the point of view of the intonation and rhyme of a poem (cosa per legame musaico armonizzata), cf. his Il Convivio, Book 1, Section 3, in E. Moore and P. Toynbee, eds., Le Opere di Dante Alighieri, p. 244. 42 Christian Morgenstern, Epigramme und Sprüche (1921), p. 45. Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” 227

Poem” (“Zhong-Xi hebi shi” 中西合璧詩), we see an example of the incoherent and inarticulate foreign language writings produced by our fellow countrymen. Perhaps we ought not to be too critical of Wade. Dong Xun’s translated poem nonetheless accords with the minimum requirements of poetry writing in the old days in that it is coherent and abides by the correct prosodic scheme (pingze 平仄) (in all probability, the character “yi” 亦 (also) from the line “Yi qu minghong yi you ji” 已去冥鴻亦有跡 (The already departed goose of the nether world has left its trace also) in stanza seven is a mistake for you 猶 (appears to have), his rhyme going astray (chuyun 出韻) only twice. In stanza two he has the word xu 虛 (in vain), a sound of the sixth section (liu yu 六魚), rhyme with the words pi 皮 (skin) and qi 期 (time), both of the fourth section (si zhi 四支). Fortunately however, as the word xu occurs in the first line of the stanza, this was permissible in Modern-style regulated verse (jintishi 近體詩), being what was known as “The lonely swan enters the flock” (Gu yan ru qun 孤雁入群). In stanza five he has the word ji 羈(bridle), also of the fourth section (si zhi), rhyme with the words qi 萋 (luxuriant) and pi 鼙 (drum), both of the eighth section (ba qi 八齊), this certainly being a fault in terms of the criteria of the time. The word shi 時 (time) in the first line of the first stanza which goes: “Wu yi you shi yan” 勿以憂時言 (Don’t of troubled times speak) is certainly a mistake for the word shi 詩 (poem) on the part of the copyist or the printer; not only had Wade translated it correctly but he had also transcribed it correctly for Dong Xun’s translation reads: “Mo jiang fannao zhu shi pian” 莫將煩惱著詩篇 (Do not write of your troubles in poetry). If we give Wade’s translation modern punctuation so that the lines read: “Wu yi you shi yan:/ ‘Rensheng ruo xumeng’ ” 勿以憂詩言／人生若虛夢 (Do not of troubled poems say:/ ‘Human life is like a vain dream’), then Longfellow’s original intent is conveyed, only the two words you shi 憂詩 (troubled poems) proving somewhat stiff and incoherent; if “Human life is like a vain dream” is the content “spoken” ( yan 言) of by such “troubled poems,” then “poems” that “speak” of such things are unwanted (wu yi 勿以). Dong Xun did not understand that these two lines were the subject and predicate of the same sentence and he altered Wade’s translation to read as if they were two parallel and contrasting lines: “Mo jiang fannao zhu shi pian/ Bai sui yuan ru yi jue mian” 莫將煩惱著詩篇／百歲原如一覺眠 (Do not write of your troubles in poetry/ A hundred years are actually like slumber), connecting it to the third line with the words “tong shi meng” 同是夢 (alike are dreams), thus reversing the original meaning of the poem. The original meaning was: “Human life is certainly not a dream and one should not be pessimistic.” What Dong Xun says is: “Human life is actually a dream and so one should not trouble oneself about it.” The most economical way of effecting 228 Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” a partial correction would be to change two characters and have the line read: “Bai sui xiu yan yi jue mian” 百歲休言一覺眠 (Do not say that a hundred years is like slumber), but when following on closely from the “Do not” (mo jiang 莫將) of the line above, the tone of the poem would become overly repeti- tious. The metaphor of “hearts” and “muffled drums” found in stanza four derives perhaps from the famous eulogy to a friend written by Henry King in the seventeenth century: “My pulse, like a soft drum,/ Beats my approach, tells thee I come.”43 Baudelaire much admired these lines and took them almost unchanged from Longfellow for use in his own poem: “Mon coeur, comme un tambour voilé/ Va battant des marches funèbres” (My heart, like a muffled drum/ Beats out its funeral march).44 In both English and French, the same word could be used (beat, battre) to express both the “throbbing” (tiao 跳) of the heart and the “beating” (qiao 敲) of a drum, this poetic conceit thus coming easily to both Longfellow and Baudelaire. Chinese does not allow for such fortuitous usage, and Wade could but translate the two related meanings of the same word as a contrast between two things: “Ren xin ru sang gu zhi qiao” 人心如喪鼓之敲 (The human heart is like the beating of a muffled drum), whilst Dong Xun got rid of both “heart” and “drum” altogether. The metaphor found in stanza five had been singled out for criticism by a once famous professor of literature, Thomas R. Lounsbury, who considered that whereas it made sense to say that one ought to “be a hero” in the “strife” of the “field of battle,” it made no sense to say that when the “bivouac” too contained a similar “strife” one ought also to “be a hero.”45 Wade’s translation skates over this faulty wording and serves to disguise it. He translates the line as “Zheng yi nuli wei yingxiong” 爭宜努力為英雄 as if Longfellow’s poem had read not “Be a hero in the strife” but “Strive to be a hero.” The words zheng yi 爭宜 are inappropriate in any case for at the very least the word order should be reversed to read yi zheng 宜爭, zheng in classical Chinese being equivalent to zen 怎 (how) or zenyi 怎宜 (how could it be right) in the vernacular, that is, conveying a rhetorical or exclamatory tone. Under Dong Xun’s poetic brush, both the “field of battle” and the “bivouac” are dispensed with altogether, and Wade’s “cattle and sheep” become a “nag” (nutai 駑駘)—that is, an “inferior (liema 劣馬) or broken down horse,” while the “heroes” become “unbridled steeds” (qiji 騏驥)—that is to say, yet another type of inferior horse, the obstinate one. Stanza six of the original establishes a contrast between a “dead past” and a “living present”;

43 Henry King, “The Exequy,” in G. Saintsbury, ed., Caroline Poets, Vol. 3, p. 197. 44 “Le Guignon,” in Y.G. Le Dantce, ed., Œuvres Baudelaire, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, p. 92; cf. also p. 1386. 45 Cf. W.L. Phelps, Autobiography with Letters (1939), p. 324. Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” 229 before the large-scale introduction into China of “Neologisms” (xinmingci 新名詞), classical Chinese found it very difficult to express this type of “binary opposition.” A famous saying that had circulated from the time of the late Ming dynasty went: “Everything of the past is as if it died yesterday, everything of the future is as if it were born today” ( yiqian zhongzhong, piru zuori si, yihou zhongzhong, biru jinri sheng 以前種種譬如昨日死). In the final analysis, however, phrases such as “dead yesterday” (si zuo 死昨) and “living today” (sheng jin 生今) are unacceptable in Chinese—although this is not to say of course that those foreigners or half-foreigners who enjoyed extraterritoriality over the Chinese language were incapable of speaking or writing in this manner to their heart’s content. In classical Chinese, the words most often used to express both the sense of “past” and “dead” were “shi” 逝 and “gu” 故, the only problem being that the natural parallel to “gu” would be “xin” 新 (new) and to “shi” would be “liu” 留 (remain), in neither case would it be “sheng” 生 (living). Moreover, to collocate “xin” and “liu” would be to water down, if not actually to wash away completely, the sense of death implied in both the words “shi” and “gu.” In all likelihood, Wade simply abided by the speech habits of the day, giving the translations “days of yore” ( jiwangri 既往日) and “at the moment” (muqian 目前) rather than “days of yore that have already died” and “the moment that has just been born.” But he overlooked one aspect of the line, for if the word “si” (dead) is ellipted, then how is the presence of the word “mai” 埋 (bury) to be explained? Little wonder then that Dong Xun cut out the word “mai” as well. In Dong Xun’s poem, the three tenses “the future” ( jianglai 將來), “the past” (wang 往) and “the present” (jin 今) are all juxtaposed plainly and simply; by contrast, the “other days” ( yiri 異日), “past days” (wangri 往日) and “now” (muxia 目下) of Wade’s translation are most ill proportioned, and one is left guessing why he did not simply substitute “nowadays” ( jinri 今日) for “now”. The metaphor of the footprints left in the sand found in stanzas seven and eight also causes us some problems. In the third act of Guan Hanqing’s 關漢卿 (ca. 1220–ca. 1300) zaju drama Jade Mirror Platform (Yujing tai 玉鏡台), a male character sees the “footprints left in the dust” by a female character and exclaims: “How fortunate that I came so soon! If I had come any later, a gust of wind would have blown these footprints away.” Footprints left in the sand of beaches are even more transient and short-lived. Situations such as the following occur frequently in sixteenth and seventeenth century European lyric poetry: as in Chapter 30 of the Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou meng 紅樓夢) where Chunling writes the character for “rambler rose” (qiang 薔) on the ground, a boy or a girl will write the name of the one they love in the sand on a beach, but in an instant, the wind gusts (un petit vent) or the waves crash (the waves, l’onde) and the name disappears from the 230 Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” sand, the person named also exiting either the heart or the world.46 The most famous footprint in the sand in the canon of English literature is probably the one discovered by Robinson Crusoe during his inspection of the island. It was a discovery, which dumbfounded him with fear for, if it were not a trick played upon him by the devil, how would such marks in the sand have remained. They ought to have been “entirely defaced” as soon as the wind blew or the tide rose.47 In that minor poem entitled “The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls,” Longfellow had himself written: “The Little Waves, With their soft White hands,/ Efface the footprints in the sands”; in this poem, the footprints in the sand are somewhat akin to the huge footprints left on the stone on Lingyan Mountain in Suzhou by the ancient Chinese beauty Xi Shi. Dong Xun, for his part, makes use in his poem of a famous line from Su Shi’s poem “Rhyming with Ziyou’s Poem ‘Recalling Old Days at Mianchi’ ” (“He Ziyou mianchi huaijiu” 和子由渑池懷舊) which seems ready-made for his purposes. He appears to have forgotten however that the earlier part of the poem must accord with what was to follow. Although Wade’s line “Henji liu zai haibian shamian” 痕跡留在海邊沙上 (Traces left upon seashore sand) required some considerable effort of understanding, at least it is of a piece with the line: “Jian haibian you ji cai zhi you ke jiemian” 見海邊有跡可追求 (Only when you see the traces on the seashore do you know that there is some escape) which follows. Dong Xun’s line: “Xueni zhao yin ren fenming” 雪泥爪印認分明 (Claw-prints in snow and mud clearly perceived) by contrast bears no relationship with the line in the next stanza: “Shazhou yi ji ke zhuiqiu” 沙洲遺跡可追求 (The traces left on the sandy isle can be sought). First, the claw-prints of wild geese in snow and mud and human traces on sandy isles are two entirely different things. Second, the prints in the mud are “clearly perceived” and so require no searching for, while the traces in the sand “can be sought,” which is to say that “they can be discovered as soon

46 Jean de Lingendes, “Alcidon parle,” in J. Rousset, ed., Anthologie de la Poésie baroque fran- çaise (1961), Vol. 1, p. 87; cf. also the gloss given on p. 262; Edmund Spenser, “Amoretti,” Sonnet 75, in the “Minor Poems” section of E. Greenlaw, ed., The Works of Edmund Spenser, A Variorum Edition (1958), Vol. 2, p. 226; G.B. Marino, “Fede rotta,” in George Kay, ed., The Penguin Book of Italian Verse (1958), p. 219. In Voltaire’s Zadig the beach has become the banks of a stream (ruisseau), R. Pomeau, ed., Romans et contes (1966), p. 67. In Book 1 of his Les Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugène (1671), Dominique Bouhours tells of a Spanish lady who writes the name of her lover in the sand on a beach and then writes the following promise: “I would die before I change my affections” (Antes muerta que mudada), (Reprinted edition, Armand Colin, 1962), p. 20. In a poem by W.S. Landor, the loved one named makes an appearance and with a smile on his face he says: “O! what a child!/ You think you’re writing upon stone!”, in Imaginary Conversations and Poems, Everyman Edition, p. 351. 47 The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, The World’s Classics, p. 198. Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” 231 as you search for them.” Should we understand this as meaning: “One can continue searching on the basis of these?” If so, then the character “ke” 可 (can) would have to be changed to “zu” 足 (enough to) before the line would carry this meaning. Dong Xun had merely translated a single English poem, and not very well at that. Nonetheless we must acknowledge—even if we had already forgotten the fact—that he was the first person to introduce into China a specific work of modern Western literature. In his memoirs, H.E. Parker, an Old China Hand with whom Dong Xun was acquainted, made no mention of the fact that Dong Xun had translated Longfellow. He does tell us however that Dong Xun was responsible for a translation task which continues to astonish us today with its scale. “Tung Sün (Dong Xun) was a renowned poet, whose sacred fire was easily kindled by Sir Thomas Wade: I believe he inflicted upon the Peking world a translation of ‘Childe Harold.’ ”48 This is to say that Dong Xun had translated Byron’s magnum opus. Although Dong Xun had produced a collection of poetry, some of which had been anthologised by Fu Baosen 符葆森, also a native of Yangzhou,49 he could not at the time have been considered a poet. Yet in the eyes of a foreigner, an important official who also happened to have written a few poems was needless to say “a renowned poet.” Parker appears to have admitted that Dong Xun was a poet, but implied that his translation was certainly not at all good and that to read it would be an excruciating experience. Doubtless Wade had once aroused Dong Xun’s interest in English poetry, the translation of “A Psalm of Life” being nothing other than the result of “his sacred fire having been kindled.” Yet if Dong Xun were to have translated Byron’s epic poem he would have had to have found a draft of the type he had at hand for his translation of “Tall Fellow’s Poem.” Wade himself would not necessarily have had the time, nor the patience and enthusiasm, for the task, while the students then studying in the College of Foreign Languages were assuredly without the requisite standard of English. I find it unlikely therefore that Dong

48 H.E. Parker, John Chinaman and A Few Others (1901), p. 62. 49 The Anthology of Orthodox and Elegant Airs of the Qing Dynasty (Guochao zhengya ji 國朝正雅集), juan 86, includes one five-word Regulated Verse and two seven-word Regulated Verses by Dong Xun. This anthology extends to a full hundred juan, and selects poems from the Qianlong (1736–1795) and Jiaqing (1796–1820) periods on down to the works of Fu Baosen’s own contemporaries. As with a great many anthologies that include a large number of the works of contemporaries, this anthology proves yet again two points (if indeed they are in need of further proof): 1. The fact that a great many people either wrote poems or published collections of poetry is not to say that the number of true poets was correspondingly great; 2. Selecting and anthologising literature was very often a social rather than a literary activity. 232 Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life”

Xun had really produced a translation of Byron which he then “inflicted” upon his reluctant colleagues and underlings to read through gritted teeth. Perhaps Parker’s “belief” lacked any basis in reality. His claim that Dong Xun had come into contact with Western literature through Wade was indeed based upon fact however. We have been considering here only his translation of Longfellow, but he had quite possibly also heard of Byron or other poets. Dong Xun had held a rank somewhat equivalent to that of a vice-minister in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs when he had sat down to translate this work of Western literature. Moreover, China’s earliest envoys to foreign nations were all dispatched under his direction. This fact encourages in us the fond illusion that from this time on subordinates all followed the example set them by their superior, a vogue was established and the envoys of the Qing dynasty court had the opportunity to become what comparative literature calls “intermediaries,” performing the role of bridging the gap between the “transmitters” and the “receptors.” More so by reason of the fact that at this time both the ministers and their entourage were all “Men of Letters” (wenxue zhi shi 文學之士) who could not have been without an interest in the delights offered them by foreign literature. Let us see if this in fact proved the case. In a book published in 1803 (8th year of the Jiaqing period), Miao Gen 繆艮 listed his My Forty-two Wishes (Sishier yuan 四十二愿), the eleventh of which read: “To be sent as envoy to foreign capitals, and to travel to all foreign parts.”50 This impoverished scholar who lived by means of his brush was possibly the first person during the Qing dynasty who wished to go abroad as a diplomat; he was truly a pioneer in his time for he had harboured this wish for as long as the years before the Opium War! Perhaps it was precisely because he was an impoverished scholar in straightened and frustrating circumstances that he dreamed of going abroad. Sixty years later, when the Qing court began to dis- patch envoys to the West, officials proved most unwillingly “to be sent as envoys to foreign capitals.” They lived in trepidation that the gauze cap of the minister plenipotentiary would land upon their own heads. They believed that such missions were extremely dangerous, more fraught with misfortune than the chance of success. They feared that either the ships taking them abroad would overturn and they would be drowned, or they would be killed or arrested by the foreign devils upon arrival. Those sent would of course express deep gratitude for the favour accorded them, yet in their heart of hearts they would wail and bemoan their misfortune. To gain a general picture of the situation, all we need do is look at Chapter Forty of Wen Kang’s 文康 novel The Gallant Maid (Ernü yingxiong zhuan 兒女英雄轉). When young Master An is “elevated” to the post

50 Miao Gen, Literary Games (Wenzhang youxi 文章游戲), 1st Collection, juan 4. Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” 233 of Military Consultant to Mongolia “something exploded in his head, his heart began to rent itself apart, and his tears flowed like rain,” whilst at the same time he had to “prepare himself to go and express gratitude for the honour accorded him.” In a rare display of loquacity, the Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) once opined: “This business of going abroad on missions is basically not at all a pleasant one” (entry dated 19th day, 7th month of the 2nd year of the Guangxu period, in the hand-written manuscript of Guo Songtao’s 郭松濤 journal). In 1866 (5th year of the Tongzhi period), the minister plenipotentiary Binchun 斌椿 returned from the first mission abroad. Having returned safely to Tianjin he expressed the sentiment that he had never expected to arrive back home alive: “To have returned from the other ends of the world and to see again the scenes of my homeland, this truly is the joy of ‘Entering again the Jade Pass whilst yet still alive’!”51 When in the next year (6th year of the Tongzhi period) the second mission was dispatched, and the vice minister Zhigang went to the Hall of Moral Cultivation (Yangxindian 養心殿) “to kowtow in gratitude at the heavenly favour accorded him by the sagely Emperor,” the Empress Dowager asked him: “Do you still have your parents?” He submitted the following reply: “Your slave’s parents have both already departed this world.”52 These laconic few sentences of dialogue are redolent with unstated implication. The business of going abroad was more likely than not to end in death and because in China “the Empire was managed by means of filial piety,” it was incumbent upon the supreme authority to manifest at least a semblance of consideration for the ancient moral injunction that “whilst your parents are alive, do not travel far abroad.” As to whether this “slave’s” wife and children were to become widowed and orphaned, nobody could concern themselves about such details. In 1876 (2nd year of the Guangxu period) Guo Songtao (1818–1891) went on a mission to England and France. A Reformist who much prided himself on his understanding of foreign affairs, Guo Songtao was now afforded a marvellous opportunity. His heart appears not to have been in the task however. Before he departed he compared himself to Wang Zhaojun 王昭君 as she set off beyond the frontiers. After his return he was to compare himself with Ban Chao 班超 re-entering the Jade Pass: “For what reason has the Han court mar- ried off this beauty!/ Tear drops pour from the mandarin duck screen/ Your handsome face and gaudy makeup did not win you favour/ Do not complain that you have been sent far away to the court of the Chanyu”; “Cast into the

51 Entry dated 2nd day, 10th month of the 5th year of the Tongzhi period (1866), in Binchun, Notes on a Voyage by Raft (Cheng cha biji 承槎筆記). 52 Entry dated 10th day, 12th month of the 6th year of the Tongzhi period (1867), in Zhigang’s A Record of the Important Events of the First Mission to the West. 234 Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” wilderness, clearly no hope of return/ Why then do I enter again the Jade Pass while yet still alive!”53 In 1878 (4th year of the Guangxu period), when the imperial order for the establishment in Shanghai of the Hall of the Goddess of Seamen (Tianhouguan 天后館) was issued, envoys posted abroad and their entourage all contributed funds for its construction in order to facilitate the sincere entreaties to this all powerful Goddess of those about to go on missions that she may protect them and allow them to return without harm.54 Before ministers and so on went abroad, they would go to the temple to pray and make vows. Once they had returned they went to the temple again in order to repay these vows, put up plaques or to present couplets. In 1882 (8th year of the Guangxu period) a member of the mission posted to Germany, Qian Depei 錢德培, vented his pent up emotions in a frank statement of his true feelings: “Wang Zicong (Maocai) . . . died of illness in the Embassy . . . Master Wang was amiable and humane, and for the sake of his family’s livelihood, he travelled to foreign parts, but before a year had passed he received his final summons. He need not have died but for the incompetence of his doctors, how very tragic! I believe even more now in the sufferings met with by those who go abroad, and the fact that everybody regards it as a perilous undertaking.”55 The craze for going overseas which has lasted from the late Qing period right up to our own day did not develop overnight. Initially, the opportunity of “a foreign treat” (kai yanghun 開洋葷) proved not at all appealing to Chinese palates. In 1886 (12th year of the Guangxu period) Zhang Zuyi 張祖翼 served as an attendant (suiyuan 隨員) in Liu Ruifen’s 劉瑞芬 (1877–1892) Embassy to England, and in the memoirs written in his old age he recalled that: “When Guo Songtao was sent to London as minister he sought more than ten people to serve as attendants, but no one responded. How different this was to the later period when as soon as a minister received his papers of authorisation, more than a thousand letters of recommendation for people to accompany him would arrive! When Shao Youlian 邵友濂 accompanied Chonghou 崇厚 (1826–1893) on his mission to Russia (1878), his fellow graduates hosted a farewell banquet for

53 Guo Songtao, “Wang Zhaojun’s Complaint, Rhyming with President Dong Xun” (“Zhaojun yuan he Dong Yanqing shangshu” 昭君怨和董韞卿尚書), in his Yangzhishuwu shi ji 養知書屋詩集, juan 12, and the first poem in the series entitled “Following the Rhymes of Zhu Xiangsun, and Presented to Him when Seeing Him for the First Time upon My Return from Overseas” (“Ciyun Zhu Xiangsun shi zi haiwai gui jian zeng” 次韻朱香孫始自海外歸見贈), juan 13 of the same work. 54 Entry dated 13th day, 6th month of the 4th year of the Guangxu period (1878), in Zhang Deyi, The Fourth Narration of the Marvellous. 55 Entry dated 5th day, 5th month of the 8th year of the Guangxu period (1882), in Qian Depei, Occasional Notes on My Trip to Europe (Ouyou suibi 歐游隨筆). Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” 235 him in the Guangheju 廣和居 restaurant and Jiang Shoushan 蔣綬珊 of the Ministry of Revenue wept for him, believing that this farewell banquet was no different from the one given Jing Ke 荊軻 on the banks of the River Yi before he set off on his vain attempt to assassinate the future First Emperor from which he was not to return.”56 Here even Jing Ke is invited along to join Wang Zhaojun and Ban Chao, and perhaps such classical allusions as the stories of Su Ziqing 蘇子卿 and Cai Wenji 蔡文姬 were used by others to illustrate their bitter misfortune at having been posted abroad. The interpreters were usually the only members of Chinese diplomatic missions abroad who understood any foreign languages. The ministers themselves, their counsellors and attendants, were as Wang Tao 王韜 (1828–1897) ruefully described himself in the lines of a poem written whilst he was in England: “Mouth and ears alike impoverished, dependent only on my eyes/ Already both mute and deaf I worry about becoming blind as well.” Wang Tao provided his own gloss to this poem: “I say this for I do not understand the local language.”57 Neither was their field of “vision” particularly wide. Gu Hongming 辜鴻銘 (1857–1928) once recounted a story, the concluding part of which went: “The youth said: ‘I cannot read.’ Much surprised, the local landlord asked: ‘But why is it that in the past you have appeared never to put a book down, reading from dawn to dusk?’ The youth replied: ‘I wasn’t reading, I was just looking at the pictures.’ Alas, at present, when princes and great ministers go overseas to investigate constitutional government, it can also be said of them that they go overseas simply to look at Western pictures!”58 To meet the needs of everyday life they learnt a smattering of a foreign language, but in most cases this did not extend beyond a “survival kit.” Such language difficulties naturally inhibited their appreciation of the literature of the nations to which they were posted and prevented them moreover from developing any curiosity about it. Most of them were men of letters who had a predilection for writing essays or composing verses, and Binchun, the first envoy to be dispatched, was in fact a Manchu of some minor literary repute.59 When he “voyaged by raft” overseas he

56 Liangxi zuoguan laoren 梁溪坐觀老人, “Li Wenzhong zhi bang zhi you” 李文忠致謗之由, Qingdai yeji 清代野記, juan A. Zhang Zuyi was a native of Tongcheng in Anhui, and had long lived in Wuxi, hence his pen name. 57 Wang Tao, “Eye Infection” (“Mu ji” 目疾), in Henghuaguan shilu 蘅華館詩錄, juan 4. 58 Hanbang duyizhe 漢濱讀易者 (Gu Hongming), “Looking at Pictures” (“Kan hua” 看畫), in Record of Things Heard Whilst Serving as Secretary To Zhang Zhitong (Zhang Wenxiang mufu jiwen 張文襄幕府紀聞), juan B. 59 The Anthology of Orthodox and Elegant Airs of the Qing Dynasty, juan 85 also contains a five-word ancient-style poem, three five-word regulated poems as well as a seven- word quatrain by Binchun. In his Shihua 詩話, Fu Baosen cites one of Binchun’s poems, 236 Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” made a great display of his poetic abilities, composing verses everywhere he went, even presenting the “Taikun” 太坤 (Queen mother) of Sweden with a poem “wishing her a long life.” According to Binchun’s own testimony, it proved to be a poem that “circulated throughout the maritime nations.” His interpreter flattered him in the following terms: “Duke Bin’s poems circulated throughout the five continents, which is akin to saying that they were transmitted for a thousand years.”60 The poems contained in his Manuscript of My Travels to the Famous Sites in the Maritime Nations (Haiguo shengyou cao 海國勝游草) in one fascicle are little better than doggerel. Occasionally his poems embed within themselves transliterations of foreign words, as in the following: “The Misi 彌思 (Note: the word for a young lady, Miss) was named Anna, and she was intelligent enough to be called a flower that understands human speech.”61 It was a mannerism that can be said to have been inherited in part from Gao Xien’s 高錫恩 “Lyrics from a Barbarian Boudoir” (“Yi gui ci” 夷閨詞) and, in turn, to have inspired Zhang Zuyi’s Folk Poems of London (Lundun zhuzhici 倫敦竹枝詞).62 I do not know whether it was because Binchun’s

prefacing it with the comment: “Whilst in Yunnan, he got hold of a crow as large as a wicker basket, making with it a potion to encourage the growth of his beard which he then took, and before the year was out his beard had grown more than a foot.” Binchun’s long beard was one of the things that earned him a great repute overseas—“With long beard, wise look, and courtly bearing, he everywhere made a favourable impression,” see A Cycle of Cathay, p. 373. 60 Entries dated 18th and 29th days, 5th month, and 1st day, 6th month of the 5th year of the Tongzhi (1866) period, in Binchun’s Notes on a Voyage by Raft; entry dated 17th day, 5th month of the 5th year of the Tongzhi period (1866) in Zhang Deyi, Narration of the Marvellous Things Seen Whilst Travelling at Sea (Hanghai shuqi 航海述奇). Zhang Deyi’s claim that to have one’s name “circulated” within the spatial concept of the “five continents” is equivalent to having it “transmitted” for the temporal period of “a thousand years” parallels Mme de Staël famous saying that: “Foreigners are the descendants of the contemporaries” (Les étrangers sont la postérité contemporaine). 61 The second poem in the series entitled “Mr. Bao’s Summer Residence” (“Baoxing bieshu” 包姓別墅), in Binchun, Drafts from a Successful Tour of the Various Island Nations (Haiguo shengyou cao 海國勝游草). 62 The third poem in Gao Xien’s series entitled “Lyrics from a Barbarian Boudoir”, Youbaizhai ji 友白齋集, juan 8, goes: “I send word to my heshibo 赫士勃 (Note: barbarian women call their spouses heshibo [husband])/ Tomorrow you should appear astride a new horse”; poem eight gives the lines: “The writing upon the note penned by delicate fingers remains fresh/ It is time du maierli 度埋而立 (Note: the barbarians call taking a wife du maierli [to marry].” Gao Xien died in 1868 (7th year of the Tongzhi period) but these eight poems had been written much earlier, Li Jiarui’s 李家瑞 Tingyunge shihua 停雲閣詩話, juan 8, published in 1855 (5th year of the Xianfeng period), having cited five of them. The Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” 237 poetic reputation had “circulated throughout the maritime nations” that later Europeans were left with the impression that: “Chinese enjoyed composing verses; if they hadn’t met for several days, they would always say: ‘You must have written many poems in recent days! Are you about to compose another one?’ ”63 Amongst the ministers, Guo Songtao’s poetry and Ancient Prose, for instance, or both Zhang Yinhuan’s 張蔭桓 (1837–1900) poems and his parallel prose, were deservedly famous, while Xue Fucheng’s 薛福成 (1838–1894)

work entitled Folk Poems of London and attributed to “Juzhong Menwaihan xicao” 局中門外漢戲草 (Playfully rendered by an Involved Amateur) found in the Guanzidezhai congshu 觀自得齋叢書 published in 1888 (14th year of the Guangxu period) was written by Zhang Zuyi, his “Record of the Conditions and Customs of London” (“Lundun fengtu ji” 倫敦風土記) found in Vol. 10, juan 11, of the 2nd Supplemented Edition of the Xiaofanghuzhai yudi congchao 小方壺齋輿地叢鈔 comprising in fact his own annotations to the separately published Folk Poems of London. Wu Qiaoshan’s 吳樵珊 identically titled series Folk Poems of London (Lundun zhuzhici 倫敦竹枝詞), published in 1842 (“Renyin year of the Daoguang period”) as mentioned by Wang Tao in his “England Bound Aboard the Xingshi [?]” (“Xingshi wang Ying” 星使往英), Wengyou yutan 瓮牖餘談, juan 3, is a different work altogether and one that I have not read. In his poems, Zhang Zuyi makes frequent use of transliterations, as in poem 24 for example: “The sixteen year old misi sells them with her own hands/ All of a fluster she has no time to count my shillings,” wherein “misi” 密司 is of course the “misi” 彌思 found in Binchun’s poem; poem 5 in praise of Queen Victoria gives the lines: “Fifty years ago but beautiful maid/ And yet today enthroned as ‘kuiyin’ 魁陰,” this last word being a transliteration of the word “Queen,” whilst at the same time cleverly expressing the sense also that she was the “chief” (kui 魁) of all her “feminine kind” ( yin 陰). The use of transliterations in poems was not restricted to the relaxed doggerel of modern-style Regulated Verse for we occasionally find it used in the more orthodox ancient-style verse as well, as for example in the second poem in Zhao Zhiqian’s 趙之謙 “Ziqi Again Composed a Series Entitled “Miscellaneous Thoughts While Travelling in Fujian” Employing the Earlier Rhyme in Four Sections Which He Showed Me, and I Replied in the Same Rhyme” (“Ziqi fu yong qian yun cheng ‘Minzhong zagan’ sizhang jianshi, yi ci da zhi” 子奇復用前韻成閩中雜感四章見示依次答之), Beian jushi shisheng 悲厂居士詩剩 which goes: “What are called duo 度 bark once and all dogs are tamed (Note: the barbarians call dogs duo, in the entering tone)/ This is because things are afraid of their own kind”; here duo is what Chapter 34 of Li Boyuan’s 李伯元 novel A Short History of Enlightenment (Wenming xiaoshi 文明小史) calls: “foreign daoge 道搿 (dog).” All these are earlier than Liang Qichao’s 梁啓超 use of the transliterations “kaside” 喀私德 (caste) and “balimen” 巴力門 (parliament) in his Yinbingshi shihua 飲冰室詩話. 63 Hong Xun 洪勛, A General Outline of All Things Heard and Seen During my Travels (Youli wenjian zonglue 游歷聞見總略). Hong Xun visited Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, England, Germany, and France between the years 1887–1889 (13th–15th years of the Guangxu period). 238 Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life”

Ancient Prose also passed muster. Zeng Jize wrote very good poetry, and knew English besides, combining the two by translating his poems written on social occasions into incomprehensible English. Of the counsellors, Huang Zunxian of course was even more a major poet who founded his own school of poetry, while Li Shuchang’s 黎庶昌 (1837–1897) Ancient Prose was no inferior to that of Xue Fucheng. These Chinese poets and men of letters appeared however to have concerned themselves with “sweeping away only the snow outside their own doors,” regarding the Western literature separated from them by a wall of language as so much “frost upon other people’s eaves.” They did not even generate the curiosity to pick up what was being bruited abroad about it. The fact of the matter is that it was a pedantic and small minded official jealous of Guo Songtao’s literary reputation who left behind the only sentences of commentary on Western poetry that derive from this period: “There are poems written in English, their lines being of uneven length and rhyming to phonetic syllable; both men and women involve themselves with such things, very often collect- ing their poems together to form a book and calling themselves ‘poets.’ ”64 The last two sentences of this commentary are somewhat barbed and it is possible that what he had to say here did not refer only to English “men and women.” Regardless of whether or not they were poets and men of letters, all the men sent abroad inquired diligently into Western politics, military affairs, industry, education, legal systems, and religion, whilst at the same time they delighted in visits to famous historical sites, art galleries, variety shows, the opera, and zoos full of weird and wonderful birds and beasts. Their admiration for Western science and technology goes without saying, even if they were prone to the occasional face saving boast that of course ancient China had long ago developed such things. It was only Western literature—authors and their works, recent developments and anecdotes—that appears not to have attracted even their passing attention or slightest interest. When they watched plays, it was as if they were at the circus or some magician’s show, “thrilling their eyes” (renao renao yanjing 熱鬧熱鬧眼睛) alone (the expression is from Chapter 38 of the Gallant Maid), but not considering what they saw as a form of art. Their diaries record only digests of the plots of the plays they attended and make no mention of either titles or authors.65

64 Liu Xihong, Journal of a Voyage to England (in Xiaofanghuzhai yudi congchao, 1st Collection, Fascicle 11, Vol. 2, p. 199). 65 An interesting exception is an entry dated 23rd day, 1st month of the 21st year of the Guangxu period (1895) in Wang Zhichun’s 王之春 diary, Manuscript of my Mission to Russia (Shi E cao 使俄草), which reads: “The protocol officials arrived . . . and we were invited to the Tsar’s theatre to see a performance . . . It was entitled Hong chi 鴻池 (Swan Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” 239

Two diplomats can serve as typical examples of this phenomenon. The first is Li Fengbao 李鳳苞. In his Journal of My Mission to Germany (Shi De riji 使德日記) we find the following passage:

I attended the funeral of the American envoy Bayard Taylor . . . In his eulogy, the American priest Thompson 湯謨孫 said: ‘Last year the American envoy Taylor set up an association to honour the father of poetry Goethe (Guoci 果次) . . . [Taylor] was famous for his poetry, his annotated edition of Goethe in particular winning popular acclaim’. . . . Note: Goethe was an outstanding figure in the German intellectual world who was born in 14th year of the Qianlong period (1749). At the age of fifteen he entered the academy at Leipzig, but did not complete his studies there. He then went to Strasburg to study law, as well as chemistry and anatomy for the next three years. He then passed the examination to become a lawyer. He composed the work entitled Wanshe 完舍. At the age of twenty-three, the Duke of Weimar invited him to take charge of politics. He rewrote the poetry of Schiller into drama, and composed his own poems as well, all of which remain extant. At the age of twenty-seven, he travelled to Rome, Sicily, his learning becoming ever more profound. In the 57th year of the Qianlong period (1792) he took part in the battle of Champagne. Before long he became one of the Duke’s ministers, his achievements becoming even more outstanding. The Tsar awarded him the Star of Alexander, while the King of France awarded him the order of the Grand Cross. He died in the 12th year of the Daoguang period (1832).66

Bayard Taylor had produced a famous translation of Faust. Goethe, here given the transliterated name “Guoci,” was elsewhere referred to as “Ete” 俄特.67

Pond) and tells the fiction of Prince De’s infatuation for the Swan Maid and the Demon Bird’s hatred of them”. Hong chi is of course the earliest translation of the title Tiane hu 天鵝湖 (Swan Lake), and makes use of the ready-made term “Yu zhao” 御沼 (Imperial Pond) from the Han dynasty (see the “Records of Emperor An” (“Andi ji” 安帝紀), the “Biography of Zhao Dian” (“Zhao Dian zhuan” 趙典傳) and the “Treatise on the Hundred Officials” (“Baiguan zhi” 百官志), Section 3, in the History of the Latter Han Dynasty). Perhaps because this translation now appears too classically elegant, present-day scholars do not make use of it. 66 Entry dated 29th day, 11th month of the 4th year of the Guangxu period (1878), Li Fengbao, Journal of My Mission to Germany. 67 (Gu Hongming), “Self-strengthen without Cease” (“Ziqiang bu xi” 自強不息), Record of Things Heard Whilst Serving as Secretary To Zhang Zhitong, juan 8. This too is an article that has suffered from long-standing neglect. 240 Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life”

The work given the title Wanshe in the passage above is of course “The Sorrows of Young Werther.” Li Fengbao had studied some English,68 so his transliterations of Goethe’s name and the titles of his works are all rendered in accordance with English pronunciation. In a poem written as early as 1790, Goethe had boasted that a Chinese person, in fastidious hand, had painted the likenesses of Werther and his lover on glass (auch sogar der Chinese/ Malet, mit angstlicher Hand, Werthern und Lotten auf Glas).69 If this was in fact so, then it was as if the Chinese had observed the bamboos but had not inquired of their owner, eaten “the food on the plate” but not given a thought to the “farmer,” for they had remained unaware or rudely ignorant of the creator of Wanshe. Obviously, Li Fengbao was unaware of the fact that there existed such a painting of a beauty in his own native land. At least he knew that a poet such as Goethe had existed in foreign lands.70 This is the first mention of Goethe in any Chinese work. In the works of the various diplomats posted to the West during this period, this is the only detailed account we have of a major poet of the various countries to which these diplomats were posted. The works of such men as Guo Songtao, Zeng Jize, Xue Fucheng, and so on make not a mention of Shakespeare.71

68 Entry dated 10th day, 10th month, 4th year of the Guangxu period, in Journal of My Mission to Germany, which reads: “I met Bilu 畢魯 [?], President of the Board of Foreign affairs . . . He shook my hand and said: ‘We have not meet for a while, your English must be even more perfect.’ ” 69 “Venezianische Epigramme”, Stanza 17, in the Hamburger Ausgabe 14 vol. edition of Goethe Werke (1982), Vol. 1, p. 179. 70 Li Fengbao had once served as the “Supervisor” who had taken “government students” such as Yan Fu 嚴復 (1866–1921) and Ma Jianzhong 馬建忠 (1845–1900) abroad. Whilst serving in the Embassy in Germany, Li demanded bribes from the Canton merchants as they placed their orders; he was a typical official. This passage from his journal has suffered undue neglect; I hear that next year [1982] there will be a large-scale commemoration of Goethe, and I wish here to once again call attention to this reference. 71 During his editing of the unpublished manuscripts of Guo Songtao’s diaries, Zhong Shuhe 鍾叔河 showed me a section deleted from Guo’s A Record of the Progress of My Mission to the West (Shi Xi jicheng 使西紀程). On the 3rd day, 7th month of the 3rd year of the Guangxu period (1877), Guo Songtao attended the “Dakesideng saierlibulaishen 達克斯登塞爾里布來申 Meeting” where he learnt of Shakespeare’s name from among the exhibits: “I hear that of the most famous among them, one was called Shesesibier 舍色斯畢爾 (Shakespeare), he being an Englishman who two hundred years ago was skilled in the writing of plays and whose reputation is the equal of that of the ancient Greek poet Hemande 何滿得 (Homer). The exhibition contained a land deed which had been signed by Shakespeare and which had been framed and hung up . . . Another was named Biergeng 畢爾庚 (Bacon) . . . ” This “Meeting” was certainly the “Caxton Celebration,” Guo Songtao having misheard the sound “ka” 喀 as “da” 達, the name Homer (Hema 荷馬) as Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” 241

In 1881 (7th year of the Guangxu period), Li Shuchang was serving as counsel- lor in Spain, and his stay there coincided with the “Centenary Celebrations” of Calderon (“Jiaerdelong” 加爾得隴). When he received an official invitation to take part in these celebrations, he naturally felt duty bound to attend. Although he wrote an extensive account of the ceremony and its various items in almost two thousand characters, all he had to say about this “genius” was that: “He became famous for his poetic abilities and his skill at writing plays. He had begun life as a soldier, but was received at court by the Spanish sovereign as a courtier, and finally became a priest.” He went on to criticise the ceremony for being: “Actually a lot of fuss over nothing!”72 Li Shuchang’s disdainful tone contrasts starkly with Li Fengbao’s earnest attitude towards Goethe. In actual fact however, Goethe had merely benefited from his association with Bayard Taylor, for it was only Taylor’s death that gave Goethe the fortuitous opportunity of an appearance in Li Fengbao’s diary. If Bayard Taylor, the translator of Faust, had not also been Minister in Germany, or had he not died in that particular year, Li Fengbao may not have mentioned Goethe at all, even if he had remained longer in Germany. If Goethe had been merely a poet and not also an official, if he had only written Wanshe and various other “poems” and had never been elevated to the post of “Minister” and received various “decorations,” then Li Fengbao may well have simply cited the text of the “eulogy” and not felt it necessary to have made especial note of his curriculum vitae. “Beneath the black gauze mandarin cap, the facility for poetic composition” is an old saying in China (see Chapter Eighteen of the novel Flowers in the Mirror (Jinghua yuan 鏡花緣)), but the verses thus composed always profited from their association with the cap of the official.73 An incumbent Chinese official gains knowledge of a German official of a previous generation from the recent death of an American official—among officials, they seem to have what Goethe himself spoke of as “elective affinities” (Wahlverwandtschaften).

containing the syllable “de” 得 and Bacon’s (Peigen 培根) name as containing the syllable “er” 爾. On the 9th day, 1st month of the 3rd year of the Guangxu period (1877), before Guo Songtao had been in England for a month, he had already formed his conclusions: “In this country, the foundation of her wealth and power, as well as the political and educational systems, are all strong and well-organised, outstanding and worthy of our admiration, but as to the literature, ceremonies and music, these are far inferior to those of China.” 72 Li Shuchang, “Calderon’s Centenary Celebrations” (“Jiaerdelong dahui” 加爾得隴大會), Miscellaneous Records of the West (Xiyang zazhi 西洋雜誌). 73 This is precisely what Pope ridiculed in his famous lines: “What woeful stuff this madrigal would be,/ In some hackney sonneteer, or me!/ But let a lord once own the happy lines,/ How the wit brightens, how the style refines!”, from An Essay on Criticism, lines 418–21. 242 Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life”

The other diplomat is Zhang Deyi 張德彝 (1847–1919). He was “the first person who knew some English and American to be posted abroad,” and it is said that “he did not boast of his understanding of foreign affairs.”74 When the Qing court first started posting ministers overseas, he was “personally involved in its inception.”75 He was posted overseas most often and lived in foreign lands altogether for a longer period than anybody else. He had a good mastery of English for he had been one of the most talented of the students of the College of Foreign Languages, having once been chosen as the Guangxu emperor’s personal English tutor.76 At a meeting in London once he spoke “extempore,” causing the audience “to cry out in one voice ‘Hear! Hear!’ ”77 Not only did he have a facility for English, he was also in the habit of paying attention to what was happening around him, both making earnest examination of foreign institu- tions, customs, food, clothing, shelter and transportation, and also keeping a detailed account of such things.78 Contemporary Japanese much admired his Fourth Account of Marvellous Things (Si shuqi 四述奇); “Of works by Chinese recording foreign learning, none is superior to this work! . . . When contrasted with the Japanese work A Record of Things Seen in Europe and America (Oubei kairanki 歐米回覽記), Zhang Deyi’s work makes all the myriad aspects of both Europe and America as plain as the lines on one’s own palm.”79 Even new events and interesting happenings of localised significance were discussed coherently in his works. It was only on the topic of literature that he remained completely silent, almost as if to talk about literature “would cause huge boils to break out on his tongue.” No, he did in fact also talk of literature: “In England there exists a novel, very similar in nature to the Flowers in the Mirror of our own land, and which also tells of a country peopled by giants, and

74 Chongyi 崇彝, Miscellaneous Notes of Things both Within and Without the Court from the Daoguang and Xianfeng Periods Until the Present (Dao Xian yilai chaoye zaji 道咸以來朝野雜記). 75 “Preface” (Zi xu” 自序), Fourth Account of Marvellous Things. 76 A Cycle of Cathay, pp. 316 and 380. 77 Entry dated 1st day, 6th month of the 3rd year of the Guangxu period (1877), in Fourth Account of Marvellous Things. 78 For example, in an entry dated 28th day, 3rd month of the 5th year of the Tongzhi period (1866) in his Narration of the Marvellous Things Seen Whilst Travelling at Sea, he makes note of the hygiene precautions one should take when dallying with prostitutes, while in an entry dated 24th day, 4th month of the 31st year of the Guangxu period (1905) in Eighth Narration of the Marvellous (Ba shuqi 八述奇), he describes the various styles of wig used by fashionable young ladies, appending diagrams to illustrate his descriptions. 79 Entry dated 21st day, 12th month of the 17th year of the Meiji period (1915), in Ota Senjin, Journal of a Sightseeing Tour of China. Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” 243 another by dwarfs, without saying where these lands were. Everybody considered it to be preposterous nonsense. Note: twenty years ago the Englishman Sidanli 司丹里 (Stanley) travelled from east Africa . . . directly across to the West . . . encountering a land of dwarfs, headed by a chieftain, and which he named “Pijiami” 皮戛米 (pygmies), which translated means short and small.”80 The novel he speaks of is undoubtedly Gulliver’s Travels. We all know that the novel was intended as a satiric “fable,” yet Zhang Deyi insists on telling us that: “everybody considered it to be preposterous nonsense,” and naively seeks out anthropological information to prove that it was not in fact such. In a word then, this novel was actually like all the travel diaries written by Zhang Deyi himself, “giving an account of the marvellous things” met with whilst abroad, and not at all full of monstrous lies. At the very same time that Zhang Deyi was in London recording such ingenuous opinions, Lin Shu 林紓 and Wei Yi 魏易 were in the process of completing a translation of Gulliver’s Travels in China. Lin Shu never travelled abroad and understood not a word of English, while Wei Yi never had the benefit of a university education. Lin Shu’s “Preface” to his translation of the work (published under the Chinese title Haiwai xuanqu lu 海外軒渠錄), dated 1906 (32nd year of the Guangxu period), and Zhang Deyi’s diary entry of the year before ought to be read alongside each other.81 I believe that it is not at all difficult to decide which of these two men had a greater understanding of Western literature. In 1882 (4th month of the 8th year of the Guangxu period), an anonymous traveller made the journey from Yokohama in Japan to San Francisco in America, leaving behind him an account of his sixteen day sea voyage entitled Short Account of a Voyage at Sea (Zhouxing jilue 舟行紀略). The author gives no indication of his status, nor does he tell us the purpose of his trip. Contrary to all expectations, he provides both a critique of Longfellow’s poetry, and a comparison between it and Tang poetry. This is perhaps the earliest example of Chinese literary criticism that deals with Longfellow, and written less than

80 Entry dated 10th day, 6th month of the 31st year of the Guangxu period (1905), in Eighth Narration of the Marvellous. On the 9th day, 6th month, 30th year of the Guangxu period (1904), Zhang Deyi watched a play called Aimuli 埃木里 (Em’ly) at the Adelphi (Adailefei 阿代勒扉), and made a detailed record of its plot; obviously he did not know that the story was based on a novel by Dickens, that is David Copperfield, translated by Lin Shu (1852–1924) as Kuairou yusheng shu 塊肉餘生述. 81 I cite a few lines from Lin Shu’s “Preface”: “Alas! Gulliver’s Travels must be an utterance of indignation! . . . At the time, the English polity was not as enviable and complete as it is today and Gulliver’s frustration and solitary anger, expressed in the form of the fantastic, is actually meant as a satire of his own country . . . Alas! How could the despair of a Qu Yuan be restricted to Gulliver alone!” 244 Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” twenty years after Fang Junshi’s “Tall Fellow’s Poem” it is however, in terms of its attitude of mind, separated from this earlier reference by a distance that in the old saying is truly “not to be measured in terms of miles”:

(Renxu (1882), 4th month) 11th day. Rain prevented me from going on deck and looking into the distance, so I lit upon a book at random from those on my desk and began to browse through it . . . It was a collection of poems by the American poet Longfellow (Longfeilu 龍飛露), which I then read pleasantly for the whole day by end of which I had begun to appreciate their poetic beauty (jiaqu 佳趣).

12th day . . . On board there is an Anglo-Catholic priest called Shibiansha 史編沙 [Spencer?] with whom I fell into conversation. I took the opportunity to ask him: “Longfellow is an American poet, while in England there is a poet called Byron (Bailun 拜倫), the poems of both these men being much read by Europeans. I do not know whose poetry is superior?” Mr Spencer replied: “Both men have gained reputations as poets, and it is hard to determine which is the better poet. Byron’s poetry however abounds in wanton notes (miman zhi sheng 靡曼之聲), thus it cannot be considered refined and morally orthodox. In the final analysis, his poetry is not as emotionally charged as Longfellow’s is, nor is it as robust and exquisite, impassioned and fine. Do you agree with me?” I told him that I felt that Longfellow’s poem “The Open Window” was very similar to the Chinese poem by the Tang poet Cui Hu which contains the line: “I do not know where this visage has gone.” His two poems entitled “Arsenal at Springfield,” on the other hand, echo the line: “A general’s success accomplished, ten thousand withered bones” from Cao Song’s poem; this poem, written to bemoan his own times, can serve as the best reproach to all those who would go to war for profit. His poem “Sand of the Desert in an Hour-Glass” expresses the same emotions as the lines: “Men of today see not the moon of old/ But today’s moon has shone upon the men of old,” for Longfellow’s inspired intuition (shenzhi 神致) resembles that of Li Bo. Note: the sand in the hour-glass is sand taken from the deserts of Egypt and placed within an hour-glass in order to record the passage of time; the region of Egypt is the ancestor of all the various countries of Europe, for there was established the most ancient nation, this sand therefore having been trodden upon by the ancient sages of the Western nations. For this reason, Longfellow’s thoughts turn from the present to the past, and his emotions express themselves through reference to the hour- glass. Longfellow’s collection contains too many masterpieces to cite Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” 245

individually. The longest poems have as many as several hundred rhymes, while others contain several tens of rhymes, and Longfellow’s spirit pours forth from them like a welling fountain (qi ru yongquan 氣如涌泉), and all of them are clear and easily understood. I believe that they would cause even Yuan Zhen and Bo Juyi to look nervously to their laurels. I hear that Mr Longfellow joined the ancients some months ago. Perhaps another Castle of White Jade has been built in Heaven, and God needs a genius to celebrate it in verse.82

Looked at from the standpoint of the present, this critique, now more than a hundred years old, may appear somewhat commonplace in the views it expresses. It is not entirely ignorant nonsense however. In any event, the ability to enjoy Longfellow directly and to read Tang poetry as well—even if the specific examples given do not go beyond the poems contained in the Three Hundred Tang Poems (Tangshi sanbaishou 唐詩三百首), to have been able to read Tang poetry and to appreciate directly also poetry in a foreign language— even if was only Longfellow, more than a hundred years ago (perhaps even today?) is a matter worthy of our commendation. This critique juxtaposes Longfellow and Byron, just as Dong Xun, who had translated Longfellow, was also said to have translated Byron. This illustrates the fact that Byron’s name too had reached China. Regrettably, there is now no way of discovering whom the author of the Short Account of a Voyage at Sea was. It appears that he was unaware that a poem by Longfellow had already been imported into China under the name “Tall Fellow.” There are a great many major poets in the West. Perversely however the first to be introduced into China happened to be Longfellow. Longfellow wrote quite a few good or comparatively good poems, but again perversely, it so happened that the first to be translated into Chinese was “A Psalm of Life.” To professors of literature and literary critics alike, this fact can be considered a minor taunt or provocation on the part of the history of literary relations between nations! History contains many such examples of illogic—as does the present as well of course—or to put it more precisely, instances were historical reality does not accord with the ideals and theories of scholars. Such things illustrate Hume’s point that “what is” is very often incompatible with “what ought to be.”83 Over the course of history, the occurrence and development

82 Anonymous, Short Account of a Voyage at Sea (in Xiaofanghuzhai yudi congchao, 1st Collection, juan 12, Vol. 2, pp. 126–7). 83 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book 3, Part 1, Section 1, L.A. Selby-Bigge, ed. (1896), p. 469; cf. also p. 460. 246 Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” of things always creates difficulties for us, playing practical jokes on us and overturning all our most cast-iron judgements, besmirching our blueprints and tearing holes, both large and small, in all our most airtight, watertight densely argued theoretical systems. We often speak of “the lessons of history,” as if history was simply a strict superior or an upright teacher. In actual fact, history is also like a mischievous and troublesome child who loves to joke and play tricks on people. To find both the opportunity and the wherewithal to teach us lessons and to ridicule us at the same time, this is history’s real victory. It is history’s defeat that few of us either hear or understand its lessons, and almost nobody notices its ridicule. An Historical Anecdote, a Religious Parable, and a Novel* 一節歷史掌故一個宗教寓言一篇小說

Novalis (Friedrich Leopold von Hardenberg) believed: “History [to be] one long anecdote” (Geschichte ist eine grosse Anekdote). History books pasted together out of anecdotes (eine Geschichte in Anekdoten) in the manner of Voltaire, were, to his mind, the most interesting works of art (ein höchst interessantes Kunstwerk).1 Mérimée proved even blunter: “What I love in history is simply the anecdotes” (Je n’aime dans l’histoire que les anecdotes).2 To the historian, of course, such views are the quintessentially superficial and ignorant ones he has come to expect of men-of-letters who, as is their wont, ignore completely the larger issues involved and content themselves with casting about for minor points of “interest.” Early in the nineteenth century, men-of-letters could still dare say such things unashamedly. Yet the discipline of history, of all the various branches of the humanities perhaps, was the first that sought to employ the “scientific method,” and transpersonal or impersonal theories of history now prevail. Contemporary historians seek to discover the “rules,” the “patterns,” or the “rhythm” of historical change.3 Any man-of-letters of the present age who was to admit that his interests were confined to the anecdotal, would doubtless do so with an embarrassed laugh and in a somewhat self-deprecatory tone of voice. The situation with the religious classics is quite otherwise. If this man-of- letters were to claim that he read such works simply for the stories they contained, he would do so with a degree of self-righteousness, offering not a hint of apology to scholars of these religions, let alone to followers. Hypocrisy of this kind tells us much about the “climate of opinion” in vogue within contemporary scholarship. In actual fact, of course, an historical anecdote can quite possibly be also a religious parable or “metaphor,” and it is even more unnecessary to point out that it may possibly be a novel as well.

* This article was first published in Wenxue yanjiu 文學研究 [Literary Research] (1983), No. 4. The present version is a revised one. 1 “Fragmente,” Part 4, Section 17, in J. Minor, ed. Schriften (1923), Vol. 3, p. 6. 2 “Preface,” “Chronique du règne de Charles IX,” Mérimée, Romans et nouvelles, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade ed., p. 31. 3 I. Berlin, Historical Inevitability (1945), pp. 5–8.

The complete text of the “Sutra of the Uncle and his Nephew” (“Jiu sheng jing” 舅甥經) from the Sutra Spoken by Buddha on Former Births ([Fo shuo] Sheng jing [佛說] 生經 [Gataka-nidana]) translated by Dharmaraksha of the Eastern Jin dynasty and dated 285 reads as follows:

There lived a sister and her brother. The sister had a son who served with his uncle in the palace, weaving golden silk threads, spinning silk floss and making gauze-like ethereal garments. When they saw what good and precious things there were stored in the treasury they were moved to greed. They discussed the matter thus: “We weave garments industriously without cease and yet know how many good things there are stored here. Why don’t we take some of them in order to solve our own poverty!” That evening, once everybody had settled down for the night, they dug a tunnel and stole an incalculable amount of goods. The next day when the treasury overseers discovered the loss they informed the king. The king instructed them thus: “Do not spread the news about and allow others to learn of it. These thieves, the uncle and his nephew, believe that because I have so many things to attend to I will not be aware of this loss. In future they will tire of remaining in hiding and will certainly come again. For the meantime guard the treasury closely and await their return. Once you capture them, do not allow them to escape.” The treasury overseers, having received their instructions, thereafter increased their vigilance. After a long time, the two came again to steal. The nephew said to his uncle: “You, my uncle, are advanced in years and weak of body, if you are caught by the guards you will not be able to free yourself. When we again enter the treasury through the tunnel, you go in feet first. If you are seen, I am strong and will be able to pull you back and save you.” As soon as the uncle entered the tunnel he was caught by the guards who then called out for others to come and help capture him. The nephew could not restrain them, and fearing that his uncle would be recognised the next day, he quickly cut off his uncle’s head, carrying it away with him as he returned along the tunnel. At dawn the next day, the overseers reported these events to the king. Again the king issued his instructions: “Display the corpse at the crossroads. Whoever weeps for this person or attempts to collect his body is the instigator of this evil deed.” The corpse was placed at the crossroads and guard was kept over it for several days. At this time a rich merchant arrived from a far distant place, his retainers, horses and carts filling the streets and blocking passage with their rushing to and fro. In order to cause a scene, his men placed two cart-loads of firewood upon the corpse. The next morning the guards informed the king of this hap- an historical anecdote, a religious parable, and a novel 249

pening. The king instructed them thus: “You have not been vigilant enough in spying out information. If anyone sets fire to the pyre, arrest them and escort them here to me.” Thereupon the nephew told a group of street wastrels to perform dances on the street with torches in their hands. In the milling crowd they threw their torches onto the firewood which immediately caught fire and blazed fiercely. The guards had not been aware of what was happening and informed the king of this event. Again the king issued instructions: “As it has already been cremated (shewei 蛇維), increase your guard and watch closely over the bones. Whoever comes to collect them is the originator of this crime.” Yet again the nephew was aware of this plan and he had fermented some especially powerful wine. He thereupon lowered the price of the wine and sold it to the guards. Having had little to eat or drink for several nights in a row (lianxi 連昔), the guards all bought and drank a great deal of the wine, and having drunk over much of it, they proceeded to drop into a drunken slumber. The nephew then took the wine jars, collected the bones and left. The guards were quite unaware of what was happening and next morning informed the king. Yet again the king issued instructions: “Although we have posted guards for all this time, we have not yet managed to capture anybody. This robber is truly very crafty, and we must come up with another scheme.” The king then pressed his daughter into service, adorned in all her finery and precious gems. She was placed within a room besides a river with numerous guards around her to watch for the evildoer who, driven by his lust, would be sure to come and take her. Repeatedly he instructed his daughter that when the robber came she was to grab hold of him and call out for the guards, for in this way he could be captured. One night the nephew arrived intent on robbery and he released a number of logs into the river which then drifted down- stream making a loud noise as they did so. In their surprise, the guards thought that it must be someone extraordinary, but they discovered that it was merely logs. When this occurred several nights in a row (lianxi 連昔), each time in exactly the same manner, the guards became com- placent and would no longer awaken from their sleep. The nephew then mounted one of the logs and entered the girl’s room. She grasped hold of his clothes. The nephew said to the girl: “Why do you hold on to my clothes? You should grab hold of my arm.” The nephew was extremely crafty and had brought along the arm of a dead man for the very purpose of thrusting into the girl’s hands. The girl thereupon released his clothes, took hold of the dead arm and began to shout loudly in order to awaken the slovenly guards. The nephew escaped. The next morning, the king 250 an historical anecdote, a religious parable, and a novel

was informed and he again addressed his men: “This person is really very crafty. He is quite beyond compare and we have been unable to capture him for so long. What can we do about him?” The girl then conceived and after ten months she gave birth to an extremely handsome son. The king ordered the child’s wet-nurse to travel around the city with the child in her arms and whoever kissed (wucu 嗚噈) him was to be tied up and escorted to the king. Although she carried the child around for an entire day nobody approached them and kissed the child. The nephew was working as a master baker and lived besides his kitchen. When the child cried out in hunger, the wet-nurse brought the baby to the kitchen to buy a cake for him to eat. When the nephew saw the child he gave him a cake and kissed him as he did so. The wet-nurse returned to the palace and informed the king thus: “I walked around with the child in my arms all day and nobody came near us. As the child was hungry and we happened to be passing a cake shop just as they were beginning to sell cakes, the cake seller gave the child a cake and kissed him as he did so.” The king asked: “Why did you not have him brought here?” The wet-nurse replied: “The child was crying out in hunger and it was because the cook gave him a cake that he kissed him. I don’t think he could be the robber, why should I have had him arrested?” Again the king ordered the wet-nurse to go out around the state with the child in her arms, instructing the secret agents that anyone who approached them was to be bound and escorted to him. The nephew bought some fine wine and called upon the wet-nurse and her guards to join him for a drink in the wine shop, whereupon they all became so drunk that they fell into a drunken slumber. The nephew thereupon stole away with the child. When they awoke and discovered the loss of the child, they reported back to the king. The king said: “You lot really are useless and far too fond of the demon drink, not only have you failed to capture this villain, you have now lost the child as well.” Having stolen the child, the nephew carried him off to another state and went to visit the king, where, with his easy eloquence, he traced their friendship through reference to the sutras. The king was much pleased and he immediately granted him noble titles, appointed him to the post of minister, and told him: “In all my state there is nobody as wise and clever as you. If you wish for a wife, you can take my daughter as your match and do what you wish with her.” He replied: “I dare not presume to such an honour. If you grant me the favour of your affection ( jian ai 見哀) however, I am in fact intent on obtaining the daughter of the king of a certain state as my wife. The king said: “Good!” and granted him his wishes. As the king was famous, he made the nephew his own son and sent envoys an historical anecdote, a religious parable, and a novel 251

off to request the hand of the daughter of the other king. The king agreed immediately to the proposal; the king thought to himself: “It must be that villain again, he has been crafty all along.” He thereupon dispatched envoys with the message: “If you wish to receive my daughter, you must send your prince and five hundred mounted soldiers and chariots, all arrayed in good order.” The king issued the order that the chariots and mounted soldiers be assembled. As the nephew was a robber minister, he harboured a great fear, and thought to himself: “If I go to that other state, the king will certainly recognise me and I will doubtless be arrested.” He thereupon informed the king thus: “If you send me on this mission, you must ensure that the five hundred horses and men are all dressed in the same uniform and carry identical equipment, for only in this way will we manage to bring back the woman”. The king agreed with what he had said and they set off to bring back the woman. The king ordered his daughter to entertain them all with food and drink, singing and dancing. With two hundred and fifty mounted soldiers in front of him and two hundred and fifty mounted soldiers behind him, the nephew sat on his horse in the middle without dismounting. The woman’s father appeared personally and looked them all over carefully a number of times. The king entered the ranks of the mounted soldiers, took the nephew by the hand and led him out of the ranks. “You have been causing trouble for quite some time now and we have been unable to arrest you!” He knelt down and replied: “I am truly the one.” The king said: “Your intelligence and wisdom is unmatched in this world, I will grant you your wishes.” He thereupon gave him the hand of his daughter so that they could be husband and wife. The Buddha told the assembled bhiksu: “You must know that the nephew of that time was none other than I. The father king was Sariputra (one of Sakyamuni’s ten major disciples); the uncle was Devadatta (cousin of Sakyamuni who was a disciple but who later turned against him); the father-in-law king was Suklodama (father of Sakyamuni); the woman was Yasodhara (wife of Sakyamuni); and the son was Rahula (son of Sakyamuni).” When the Buddha said this, there was not one person in his audience who was not joyful.

Given modern punctuation, this unwieldy translation becomes immediately a great deal clearer. As we read the long section that follows the sentence: “The king said: ‘Good!’ ” our heads begin to swim with the use of a whole series of phrases that begin: “the king.” Total confusion is avoided, however, and we do finally manage to make out who is who. The phrase “lianxi” 連昔 (successive pasts) means “lianxi” 連夕 (several nights in row), while the expression “jian 252 an historical anecdote, a religious parable, and a novel ai” 見哀 (to appear sad) means “jian ai” 見愛 (to grant someone the favour of affection), both these expressions being usages of the Wei and Jin periods; “shewei” 蛇維, often written as “shewei” 闍維 or “tupi” 荼毗, refers to crema- tion (jhapita). The word “wu” 嗚 means to kiss, as we can see from Item 22 in the Samyuktavadana sutra (Za piyu jing 雜譬喻經) which goes: “The Master thereupon hugged the woman’s neck and they kissed (wu 嗚), and when they had finished kissing he said to the Brahmana: ‘This is the taste of desire.’ ” When used in conjunction with the word “cu” 噈 (to draw close to), the meaning of this word is made even clearer. Duan Yucai’s 段玉裁 (1735–1815), in his annotations under the “Qian radical” (“Qian bu” 欠部) of the Etymological Explanations of Complex and Simple Characters (Shuowen jiezi 說文解字), argues that the word “cu” is a character that “is at once both a semantic combination (huiyi 會意) as well as a phonetic combination (xingsheng 形聲).” He cites further a line from the Expanded Rhymes (Guang yun 廣韻) which states: “The word wucu refers to when two mouths draw close to each other;” in other words, this word refers to precisely what both in the story entitled “The Lovers’ Rendezvous at Which Murder is Committed” (“Wen jing yuan- yang hui” 刎頸鴛鴦會) found in the Stories from the Mountain Hall of Pure Tranquility (Qingping shantang huaben 清平山堂話本) and in other Ming or Qing dynasty vernacular novels is called “making a ‘lü’ character” (zuo ge lü zi 做個呂字). The “Blind Infatuations” (“Huoni” 惑溺) chapter of the A New Account of Tales of the World (Shishuo xinyu 世說新語) records the following: “When the child saw Jia Chong he jumped up and down with joy, and Chong drew close to him and kissed (wu) him in the wet-nurse’s arms.” Here also the word means “to kiss,” although it is commonly explained as meaning “to fondle” ( funong 撫弄). I think that this entirely erroneous explanation must derive from the line in the “Biography of Jia Chong” (“Jia Chong zhuan” 賈充傳) section of the History of the Jin Dynasty (Jin shu 晉書) that goes: “He drew close and stroked ( fu 拊) him.” In his The Histories, the great ancient Greek historian Herodotus, known to us as the father of Western history, narrates an interesting episode to do with the ancient Egyptian king Rhampsinitus, the complete text of the English translation of which I give below:4

This king (they told me) had great wealth of silver, so great that none of the later-born kings could surpass or nearly match it. That he might store his treasure safely, he made to be built a stone chamber, one of its walls

4 Herodotus, The Histories, Book 2, Section 121, A.D. Godley, trans., Loeb Classical Library ed., Vol. 1, pp. 415–423. an historical anecdote, a religious parable, and a novel 253

abutting on the outer side of his palace. But the builder of it craftily contrived that one stone should be so placed as to be easily removed by two men or even by one. So when the chamber was finished, the king stored his treasure in it. But as time went on, the builder, being now near his end, called to him his two sons and told them how he had provided an ample livelihood for them by the art with which he had built the king’s treasure house; he made them clearly to understand concerning the removal of the stone, and gave the measurements which would find it; saying that if they kept these in mind they would be stewards of the king’s riches. So when he was dead, his sons set to work with no long delay: coming to the palace by night, they easily found and handled the stone in the building, and took away much of the treasure. When the king opened the building, he was amazed to see the vessels lacking their full tale of treasure; yet he knew not whom to accuse, seeing that the seals were unbroken and the chamber fast shut. But when at the second and third opening of the chamber he saw the treasure grown ever less (for the thieves ceased not from plundering), he bid traps to be made and set about the vessels in which his riches lay. The thieves came in as they had done before, and one of them crept in; when he came near the vessel, at once he was caught and held in the trap. Seeing his evil plight, he straightway called to his brother, and, showing him how matters stood, “Creep in quickly,” said he, “and cut off my head, lest I be seen and recognised and so bring you too to ruin.” The brother consented and did this, thinking the counsel good. Then he set the stone in place again, and went away home, carrying his brother’s head. When it was morning the king came to the chamber, and was amazed to see the thief’s headless body in the trap, yet the chamber unbroken, with no way of passing in or out; and he knew not what to do. But presently he hung the thief’s dead body on the outer wall, and set guards over it, charging them to seize and bring before him whomsoever they should see weeping or making lamentation. But the thief’s mother, when the body had been so hung, was greatly moved: she talked with her surviving son, and bade him contrive by whatever means to loose and bring her his brother’s body, threatening that if he would not obey her she would go to the king and lay information that he had the treasure. So when she bitterly reproached him and for all he said he could not overpersuade her, the brother devised a plot: he got his asses and loaded them with skins full of wine and then drove them before him till he came near those who guarded the hanging body; then he pulled at the feet of two or three of the skins and loosed their fastenings; and the wine so running out, he cried aloud and beat his 254 an historical anecdote, a religious parable, and a novel

head like one that knew not which of his asses he should deal with first. The guards, seeing the wine running freely, all took vessels and ran into the highway, where they caught the spilt wine, and thought themselves lucky; the man pretended to be angry and reviled each and all of them; but the guards speaking peaceably to him, he presently made as if he were comforted and appeased, till at last he drove his asses aside from the highway and put his gear in order. So the guards and he fell into talk, and one of them jesting with him, so that there was laughter, he gave them one of the skins: whereupon without more ado they sat down and began to drink, making him one of their company and bidding him stay and drink with them; and he consented and stayed. They drank to him merrily, and he gave them yet another of the skins, till the guards grew very drunk with the abundance of liquor, and at last being overmastered by sleep lay down in the place where they had been drinking. When the night was far spent, the thief cut down his brother’s body and then (first shaving the guards’ right cheeks by way of insult) laid it on his asses and drove them home, having so fulfilled his mother’s commands for her. When the king was told of the stealing away of the dead thief’s body he was very angry, and resolved by all means to find who it was that had plotted the deed. So he bade his daughter (such is the story, but I myself do not believe it) to sit in a certain room and receive alike all who came; before she had intercourse with any, she should compel him to tell her what was the cleverest trick and the greatest crime of his life; then if any told her the story of the thief she must seize him and not suffer him to pass out. The girl did as her father bade her. The thief, learning the purpose of the king’s act, was minded to get the better of him by ready cunning. He therefore cut off the arm of a man newly dead at the shoulder, and went to the king’s daughter, carrying it under his cloak, and when asked the same question as the rest, he told her that his greatest crime was the cutting off of his brother’s head when the brother was caught in a trap in the king’s treasury, and his cleverest trick the release of his brother’s hanging body by making the guards drunk. Hearing this, the princess would have laid hands on him, but the thief in the darkness giving her the dead man’s arm, she seized that, thinking that she was grasping the arm of the thief, who, having given it to her, made his escape by way of the door. When this also came to the king’s ears, he was astonished at the man’s ingenuity and daring, and in the end, he sent a proclamation to every town, promising the thief impunity and a great reward if he would come into the king’s presence. The thief trusted the king and came before him; an historical anecdote, a religious parable, and a novel 255

Rhampsinitus admired him greatly and gave him his daughter to wife for his surpassing cleverness, for as the Egyptians (said he) excelled all others in craft, so did he excel the Egyptians.

Heinrich Heine makes use of this anecdote in a poem. The poem in question begins with the lines “When King Rhampsinitus/ Entered the golden hall” (Als der König Rhampsenit/ Eintrat in die golden Halle) and is an adaptation of this section of The Histories, a footnote to the poem providing clear statement of its derivation.5 The ending to this poem is replete with indirect irony. It claims that when this robber of an imperial in-law ascended the throne his regime was characterised by the absence of theft and depredation (Wenig, heisst es, ward gestohlen/ Unter seinem Regimente). Perhaps in terms of Herodotus’s original text this ending is an unnecessary embellishment. Within Heine’s poetic adaptation, however, it is precisely this touch that gives the poem its real effect. The passage that follows is translated from Matteo Bandello’s Le Novelle, that masterpiece of sixteenth century Italian literature. Chinese researchers of Shakespeare will have heard of this work for both “Much Ado about Nothing” and “Romeo and Juliet” derive their stories from it. Literary historians are full of its praise, claiming that it is “rich[est] in the quintessence of the age” (ricco di sostanza storica) and that other Italian literary works of the sixteenth century, both major and minor, cannot be compared with the stories it contains.6 My own lack of the necessary qualifications precludes me from adding my voice to this opinion; all I will presume to say, however, is that of all the works of the successors to Boccaccio, I enjoy most the stories by Franco Sacchetti, followed by those of Bandello.7 The beginning of each of Bandello’s novels is given something akin to the “Entering Story” (ruhua 入話) or “Prologue” (xiezi 楔子) to be found in vernacular Chinese literature, while the narratives themselves make frequent use of allusions or inserted disquisitions. The following translation excludes such non-essentials:8

5 The first poem of “Historien,” “Romancero,” Book 1, Heine, Werke und Briefe, East Berlin ed. (1961), Vol. 2, pp. 7–10, and the annotation found on pp. 181–2. 6 The expression is F. Flora’s, cited in L. Russo, ed., Antologia della critica letteraria (Revised 2nd Edition, 1958), Vol. 2, p. 207. 7 Cf. my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters (Guan zhui bian 管錐編), footnote 2, p. 341, p. 903, and footnote 2, p. 1521, as well as “Supplement” (Zengding” 增訂), pp. 85 and 109. 8 G. Brognoligo, ed., Le Novelle (Revised 2nd Edition, 1928), Book 1, No. 25, Vol. 1, pp. 334–343. [Translator’s Note: The following English translation is cited from J. Payne, trans., The Novels of Matteo Bandello (1890). I retain the spelling of this early translation]. 256 an historical anecdote, a religious parable, and a novel

You must know, then, that in the ancient histories of the kings of Egypt it is recorded that, Proteus being dead, there succeeded him in the king- ship one called Rhampsinitus, who was the richest king that ever reigned in those countries. He, being possessed of exceeding great, nay, well-nigh infinite treasures, which he had added unto those of Proteus, and mis- doubting him of their security, if he kept them in his palace, for that there were notable thieves in that kingdom, sought out a very ingenious architect and let make a privy place, with very strong walls and iron-plated doors, for the custody thereof. The architect, knowing what moved the king to do this, set all his wits awork to accomplish the royal will and make the place, besides its goodliness, very secure. Nevertheless, assailed and overmastered of the greed of gold, the which many times dazzleth the wisest with its venomous lustre, he set, in the wall which gave upon the street and which was all of marble and cunningly wroughten, a stone so contrived that it might be removed and replaced, and on like wise he so subtly dighted certain others which looked inward that whoso knew the secret might enter and come out anights, without leaving any trace of his passage. The work finished, the king let lay up all his treasures there and still carried the key at his girdle, never trusting it to any. The architect, whether it was he repented him of having thought to steal the king’s treasures or whatever might have been the cause, forbore from addressing himself unto that emprise, and thus delaying from day to day and still deferring the robbing of the place, he fell grievously sick; whereupon, seeing that the physicians’ tending brought him neither solace nor profit and that needs must he die of that his infirmity, he called two only sons whom he had and punctually discovered to them the secret of the building, showing them with many words how the stones should be removed and after replaced. No great while after he died and his sons, who were young and desirous of becoming rich quickly and with little pains, tarried not long after their father’s death to take their tools and give effect to their desire. Accordingly, they went one night to the place and putting the thing to the proof, easily removed the deceitful stones and entered the rich store-house, where they stole as much gold as they had a mind to and replacing the stones, returned home, laden with booty. Now the king was wont very often to repair all alone to his treasury and there to divert himself awhile, feeding his sight on the various kinds of medals of gold and coined monies, of golden vessels curiously wroughten and of jewels galore which were therein, and accounting himself blessed in this world for that there was no king who possessed so much gold as an historical anecdote, a religious parable, and a novel 257

he. Moreover, he was wont, whenas there came ambassadors to him from other princes or any persons of high degree arrived at his court, to carry them incontinent to the place aforesaid and show them his immense treasures. [Six sentences have been omitted from the translation at this point] Now, after the two brethren had done the theft, the king entering the treasury according to his wont and chancing to open certain vessels which he knew to have been brimming over with gold, found them lacking and abode full of the utmost wonder and astonishment, more by token that there was no trace to be seen of any man alive having entered there; and for that he was used to seal all the locks which were upon the door and found the seals unbroken, he knew not what to conceive. But, after the two brethren had returned thither twice or thrice, the vases still growing emptier, the king plainly perceived that there were thieves who robbed him and concluded that the misdoers must have found means to make counterfeit keys and false seals, wherewith they entered in at their leisure, taking and stealing that which most liked them. Accordingly, he sought out a cunning handicraftsman and let make a snare so curiously wroughten that it would be a marvellous thing to see and so strong that it would have held, not a man only, but eke an ox, nor without key, which the king carried about his person, was it possible to undo the hard and intricate knots. This snare he caused set among the vases on such wise that, whenas any one touched it, needs must he forthright become a prisoner, and after came thither everyday to see if the thief had fallen into the net. The brothers, knowing nothing of the trap set for them, one night, according to their wont, removed the deceitful stones and entered in, thinking to steal at their leisure; but one of them put a foot in the snare and incontinent abode a prisoner, finding his legs inextricably enchained; and the more he struggled to win free, the faster he entangled himself. The other brother would have aided him to loose himself, but could not, for that the more he strove to loose the inextricable chain, he knotted it yet more and straitened the toils; wherefore he who found himself a prisoner, seeing that there was no possible means of making his escape, thus bespoke the other, after they had both bitterly bewept so sore a mis- chance and piteously complained of the malignity of fortune, saying, “Brother mine, as thou seest, I am taken in this strait snare on such wise that, without his key who hath fashioned it, it is impossible that thou or any other should loose me thence; and if I abide here and the king find me, as without doubt he will, whenas he cometh to-morrow morning, 258 an historical anecdote, a religious parable, and a novel

I shall be known; thus our fraudful device will be discovered and I shall die for it, having first been tortured to make me confess who was with me in the thefts which we have done. If I am able without bewraying thee to endure the grievous tortures which they will inflict on me, I shall nevertheless die and thou wilt abide suspected of having been with me, more by token that the king will forthright send to our house and will find the gold, the which will be a very manifest proof that we have stolen it in company. Bethink thee also that our mother is old and privy to our nightly thefts; so will she also incur one same penalty with us and we shall thus be all most cruelly put to death. Wherefore meseemeth well (nay, I should rather say necessary) that of so many and such ills as await us we should without delay choose the least. In any case I know myself a dead man nor is there any means to save me; wherefore, dear my brother, let us lose no more time in words that avail nought, nay, which might, without profiting us anything, bring us exceeding great harm. Take courage, then, and cut my head from my body and strip me naked, so I may not anywise be known of whoso shall find me in this snare; then lose no time, but carry off without delay as much of these treasures, together with my clothes and head, as thou mayst avail to bear on thy shoulders. But take good heed to that which I tell thee; be this the last time thou returnest hither, for, an thou return, thou mayst lightly be taken and there would be none to succour thee. Neither do thou, for aught in the world, trust thyself to take any fellow in so parlous an emprise, for, even shouldst thou scape the snare, thy companion, to excuse himself and to have the king’s pardon, would accuse thee to him, or else he would confide in some one or other, who would belike not keep the thing secret. Wherefore do thou nevermore return hither nor trust in any one.” The other, hearing the true and loyal counsel that his ill-fortuned brother thus lovingly gave him and seeing none other way to save himself, fell a-weeping bitterly nor could resolve himself of what he should do. He accounted it over-unnatural wickedness and beyond measure heinous to be the slayer of his own and only brother and could not resign himself thereunto, choosing rather to share his fate. But the latter exhorted him to such purpose and availed so to persuade him that, day drawing near and time pressing upon him, he cut off the prisoner’s head with a knife, weeping most bitterly the while, and wrapped it in the dead man’s clothes; then, laden with gold and beyond measure woeful, he issued forth and adroitly replacing the stones in their stead, returned home, full of tears, and told his mother the woeful chance which had betided and an historical anecdote, a religious parable, and a novel 259

overwhelmed her with sighs and lamentations; after which they buried the head in the house and washed the bloodied clothes. On the morrow, the king repaired to his treasury and seeing the naked headless corpse and no sign or vestige whereby it might be apprehended how the thief had entered the place, knew not what to think. He considered the corpse with the utmost diligence and viewed it in every part, but, availing not to find any token by which he might recognise it, was like to go beside himself, for that seeing the seals unbroken and knowing that none might enter by the windows, which were barred with thickset and very strong gratings of iron and untouched in any part, he could conceive no otherwhat than that this was some wizard, who had stolen his treasures by means of enchantments; whereat he abode sore miscontent. Then, letting take up the body and expose it in public, he promised a great reward unto whoso should identify it; and the corpse was accordingly viewed by many, but none hit upon the truth; wherefore he caused set up, in a meadow afar from the treasury, a pair of gallows, hard by the highway, and let hang the corpse thereto by the feet; and thereby he posted six men on guard, straitly enjoining them to keep good watch day and night over the hanged man and menacing them, if the body were stolen away, to have them all crucified without mercy. Moreover he charged them note who passed along the road, going or coming, and if any, at sight of the body, wept, sighed, lamented or anywise discovered compas- sion of the hanged man, that they should straightway take him and bring him incontinent before himself. The thief’s mother, who still bewept her son’s death and refused to be comforted, learning that he had been ignominiously hanged up by the feet, as a traitor, and unable to brook this stroke of adverse fortune with patience and prudence, called her other son and all incense and over‑mastered with passion, bespoke him on this wise, saying, “My son, thou slewest thy brother and shorest off his head, as he were thy mortal enemy, giving me to believe that it behoved thee do thus for the salva- tion of thy life and telling me in proof a story of some inextricable snare, wherein he was taken. Now I know not how the thing passed nor what may have befallen there between you twain; who knoweth but thou, to abide sole possessor of the stolen gold, mayst have treacherously slain him and after shown me white for black (a me mostri il bianco per il nero)? Be that as it may, now the king hath thus ignominiously let hang him up, I will and command thee that, within two or three days at the most, thou bring him me home by night, so I may give him burial; and of this look 260 an historical anecdote, a religious parable, and a novel

thou fail not. I know, forsooth, that I shall die of grief, an the body abide overlong on the gibbet; wherefore look thou procure that I have it, else mayst thou be assured that I will discover thy thefts to the king.” The youth, who knew his brother’s body to be kept under the strait- est guard, hearing his mother’s cruel resolution, enforced himself with evident arguments to divert her from so parlous an intent, showing her the manifest ruin which would ensue thereof, not only to him, but to herself also, for that he saw no way of carrying off the body, without being himself taken, and should he fall into the king’s hands, the thefts would without doubt be discovered, whereupon he would be hanged for a thief and she, cognizant and consenting, would suffer the same penalty as himself. These and many other arguments he set out to her to move her from that her purpose; but all was in vain nor did aught he could say nor his showing her the manifest perils which beset them anywhit avail. She, frowarder and more obstinate than a restive horse, would no wise be brought to change her mind; nay, like one frantic, she still cried out that, except he did that which she bade him, she would tell the king all. [Here four sentences have been omitted from the translation]. When the young man saw that his mother was obstinate and would e’en have him at any risk bring home his brother’s body and that to seek to cross her was to wash an unbaked brick, he fell to racking his brains how he should do to satisfy the inordinate cravings of his dotard of a mother; and after he had resolved in himself innumerable chimerical designs, he resolved of the thousand devices which he had imagined to make proof of one which seemed to him the eathest and least parlous for the accomplishment of his purpose. He had two asses, which he kept for the household occasions, and these he loaded with four skins of the best and sweetest wine, which he had first drugged; then, the night come, he betook himself with the beasts to a place hard by that where his brother hung and about midnight, feigning to come from afar, turned back along the road which led straight to the gallows. When he drew near it, he loosed certain cords which held the skins fast and cried out loudly for help. The guardians of the body all ran thither and seeing the skins like to fall to the ground, set their hands thereto and supporting them, gave the youth, who made a show of being sore concerned lest his wine should be spilt and lost, commodity to stablish them anew upon the asses; which done, he thanked them for their aid and said to them, “Good soldiers, I am much beholden to you. By the head of the God Anubis, had you not been here, I was like to lose this my wine, the which would have been a sore hurt to me, for that with this trade which I ply I maintain myself and an historical anecdote, a religious parable, and a novel 261

my poor family. Indeed, I am greatly indebted to you for the succour you have afforded me and return you therefor thanks without end; nay, to requite you some scantling of my debt, I will have you drink with me of this good wine, which I know will please you.” Accordingly, pulling bread and meat out of his budget, he gave thereof unto all and fell himself to eat- ing and giving them to drink. When the soldiers tasted the sweet savour of the wine, I warrant you they quaffed great beakers thereof, nor was it long ere, what while they still drank, they were overtaken with heavy drowsiness and falling on the earth, abode all fast asleep. The youth, who had not drunken, as knowing the virtue of the wine, no sooner saw this than he took his brother’s body and hanging up one of the wine skins in its stead, returned home rejoicing; but, ere he departed, he clipped the sleeping watchmen’s beards, each on the right side. The king next morning, learning what had happened, marvelled infi- nitely at the thief’s craft and commended him for bold and most astute; and for that it chanceth oftentimes that many, to gain their ends, reck nothing of doing things which are unseemly and blameworthy, he deter- mined to seek to know who this crafty and quickwitted thief might be and took the following means. He had a very fair daughter, who was husband-ripe and from eighteen to nineteen years old, and with her he let cry abroad that it should be lawful unto every one to go lie the night and take amorous solace of her, so but he swore first, by Isis her godhead, to tell her, ere he touched her, all the crafty things he had done. Accordingly he set the damsel in a privy pavilion, where the door abode open, and charged her hold him fast who should tell her that he had stolen the royal treasures, cut off the thief’s head, baffled the guardians and taken down the body from the gibbet. Now seemeth it not to you that this blockhead, for all he was a king, had a most extravagant humour, stranger by far than those which take women with child? [Here one sentence has been omitted from the translation]. Now, the king having published this ordinance, the young man who had stolen the treasure and done the other things aforesaid divined the case to be even as it was; wherefore he bethought himself to cozen the king in this matter also and fortune favoured his design; for that, an assassin having been that day despatched by justice and quartered, he, coming by night, unhooked one of the evildoer’s arms and repaired therewith whereas the king’s daughter awaited him, in pursuance of her father’s commandment. The thief entered the pavilion and going up to the bed, told the damsel that he came to lie with her; whereupon she answered him that he was welcome, but that he must first perform the condition 262 an historical anecdote, a religious parable, and a novel

stipulated in the royal proclamation. Accordingly he punctually recounted to her the whole, and the undaunted girl offering to lay hands upon him, the crafty youth proffered her the murderer’s cut-off arm and made off, leaving her full of dismay and wonderment, for that she thought to have torn off the thief’s arm. Rhampsinitus, learning this new subtlety, judged the doer thereof to be a man of exceeding great wit and courage and worthy to be held in esteem; wherefore he let make public proclamation that whoso had done the things aforesaid should freely discover himself, for that he pardoned him all without exception and would give him, to boot, such a recompense as should content him. The young man accordingly betook himself to the king and told him the whole history of his knaver- ies from beginning to end; whereat Rhampsinitus marvelled and com- mending him amain, gave him his daughter to wife and made him one of the chief barons of Egypt. Thus, then, did this thief and fratricide, born of mean blood, become baron and lord over gentlemen and on this wise it chanceth that many are called noble, whose nobility began with wickedness committed and not with virtuous actions (E cosí avviene che molti sono chiamati nobili, la cui nobiltà cominciò per commesse ssceleraggini, non per opere vertuose).

Heine had felt free to change Herodotus’s account of the story. By contrast, although in Bandello’s hands what had been no more than a monochrome sketch (bai miao 白描) becomes a highly coloured realistic painting (gongbi hua 工筆畫), he nevertheless cleaves very closely to the original story line.9 The two versions of the story do indeed have one aspect very much in common. Just as the honeybee has a sting on the end of its tail, the poem concludes with detached irony and the novel with burning satire. Bandello’s last two lines are perhaps an illustration of the story’s “rich[ness] in the quintessence of the age”. He was a contemporary of Machiavelli and his Le Novelle contains an extremely funny joke that Machiavelli had himself once told, the “Entering

9 In the first of the imitations of Boccaccio’s Decameron, Ser Giovanni Fiorentine’s Il Pecorone, the First Story of the Ninth Day which tells of the fate of a Venetian architect and his son is also based on Herodotus but in this case the plot is much altered and embellished. John Dunlop’s very early English language history of the Western novel, The History of Fiction (1814), contains a discussion of the transmission of this story in the works of Greek, Italian, French and English authors. Coleridge once reviled this work, calling its author “a worm from the Rectum of Edinburghian Criticism”—Collected Letters, E.L. Griggs, ed., (1956–71), Vol. 4, pp. 647–8. Yet Dunlop’s achievements as a trailblazer ought not be underestimated. My own copy of this work is the 4th Edition published in 1845 and was given to me by my late friend Zheng Zhenduo 鄭振鐸, the section on this story being found on pp. 250–1. an historical anecdote, a religious parable, and a novel 263

Story” of that novel containing also a description of the fool Machiavelli once made of himself whilst drilling his troops.10 On the basis of his investigations of social and political life, both ancient and contemporary, Machiavelli formulated the truism that has since become infamous: “To come to glory and promi- nence by way of trickery and crime” ( frodi onorevoli, sceleratezze).11 The happy ending Bandello gave to his version of the tale of this robber is also grounded upon his understanding of both the nature of his own age and that of the past. The conclusion he arrived at is very much in keeping with the views advanced by Machiavelli. Obviously the three works, the Sutra Spoken by Buddha on Former Births, The Histories and Le Novelle, all speak of the same events. Needless to say, Herodotus is the source for Bandello’s tale; recently I read two Italian folktales, “Cric e Croc” and “L’uomo chi rubò ai banditi,” both of which also display traces of having adapted this story in a roundabout manner.12 It occasions much food for thought that a Buddhist sutra and an ancient Greek history should have developed such a literary affinity and perhaps this point has been made before and textual research done on the matter. The “Sutra of the Uncle and his Nephew” was “told [to] the assembled bhiksu [by the Buddha]”; when the three versions are compared, the Buddha’s abilities as a storyteller are the most deficient—he drags the story out in a most long-winded manner and runs the gravest danger of causing boredom and inattention amongst his audience. Many works of literature, both ancient and modern, do no more than induce in us a boredom we dare not state openly. I refuse to believe however that works such as the Sutra Spoken by Buddha on Former Births ought be excused from criticism. Boredom, after all, has not yet become the sole criterion for the highest form of aesthetic enjoyment or artistic effect. When Bandello had finished relating his story, he yoked to it a two-line thesis in order to elucidate the implied significance of his story. The “Sutra of the Uncle and his Nephew” is a religious parable and has an even greater responsibility to make manifest its theme in order that all manner of people may be transformed: “The Buddha told the assembled bhiksu: ‘You must know

10 Le Novelle, Book 1, No. 40, Vol. 2, pp. 83–100. 11 Cf. Il Principe, Chapter 8; Discorsi, Book 3, Chapter 40; Vita di Castruccio Castracani, Chapter 7; Historie fiorentine, Book 6, Chapter 17—M. Bonfantini, ed., Opere, Riccardo Ricciardi ed., pp. 28–31, 409, 555, & 843. The fifteen-line aphorism contained in Book 4, Chapter 15 of Henry Fielding’s The Life of Mr Jonathan Wild the Great can be considered to be an outline of this theory. 12 Italo Calvino, ed., Italian Folktales, Stories 17 and 193, G. Martin, trans. (1980), pp. 51–2, and 689–90; cf. the annotation on pp. 719 and 756. 264 an historical anecdote, a religious parable, and a novel that the nephew of that time was none other than I.’ ” As it turns out then, this sutra is identical to all the others contained within this work, its moral being no more than a restatement of the theories of former existence and re-incar- nation. In its entirety, the Sutra Spoken by Buddha on Former Births reminds us of a dramatic troupe, today playing the Romance of the Western Chamber (Xixiang ji 西廂記) with Scholar Zhang, Yingying, General Flying Tiger Sun and Zheng Huan, and tomorrow scenes from The Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou meng 紅樓夢) with Baoyu, Daiyu, Xue Pan, and Jia Huan all making an appearance. In all truth, what is given us each time is merely the same old wine presented in new bottles. The various characters are played by the same old group of actors, all of whom perform parts in keeping with their respective role-types. In this sutra the Buddha states that he was himself the nephew while in the “Sutra on the Wild Chickens” (“Yeji jing” 野雞經) he tells us that: “The chicken of that time was none other than myself,” and in the “Sutra of the Turtle and the Monkeys” (“Bie sunhou jing” 鱉猻猴經) that: “The king of the monkeys was none other than myself,” and so on; one moment that negative character Devadatta is “a monkey,” the next he is “the turtle,” and the next again he is a “demonic fox.” The karmic relationship between former and present existences appears to be simply one of predestined fate and not at all a matter of moral consequence, and the robber’s nephew, for example, actually manages to be reincarnated as the Buddha despite having perpetrated crimes of robbery, murder and lust. This is difficult to understand; certainly it is badly in need of some explanation. In his instructions, the king had stated that: “these thieves, the uncle and his nephew,” the two having further “served in the palace;” by rights, therefore, both the names and the whereabouts of the two should have been known and all the king needed do was send runners out to arrest them. This would have disposed of the matter in a clear-cut and simple manner. Perversely, however, the king sat about anxiously waiting for the uncle and his nephew to pay another visit to his treasury. Although it is only by this means that the story avoids miscarriage, it nevertheless fails to make any real sense. Perhaps one day the Sutra Spoken by Buddha on Former Births will be granted the accolade “literary masterpiece.” When this happens there will naturally be those who will seek out satisfactory explanations for its success, subjecting the work to a far more careful and patient treatment than I have accorded it here. Both The Histories and Le Novelle tell of a solitary robber who goes about his various activities alone; in the Buddhist sutra on the other hand, the villain has a hoard of followers to serve as his helpers (the “street wastrels”). In comparative terms, therefore, both the robber’s own skill and his ability to keep an historical anecdote, a religious parable, and a novel 265 the secret seem much reduced. In order to catch “the guards” out, he “released logs into the river” for several nights in a row. The effort required to carry out such a cumbersome scheme seems in inverse proportion to its cleverness. The Histories and Le Novelle allow us to imagine a person who, “driven by lust,” does not let any profitable opportunity pass him by but who once the crimes to which he has confessed prove unpalatable, is nevertheless quite content to run off in a carefree manner, having had his moment of fun at the king’s expense. The robber here is the only person who, far from having his way with the king’s daughter, actually exposes himself to the danger of a murderous scheme. The robber in the “Sutra of the Uncle and his Nephew,” on the other hand, is the first and only person to risk danger in order to deflower the princess, while she, it would appear, having quietly and obediently permitted him to have his way with her, only grasped him and called upon her “guards” to come to her aid once he had finished doing so. If this were not so, how could she have “then conceived and after ten months given birth to a son.” Moreover, how can we be at all sure that the son is truly the seed of the robber’s loins? The story here is full of flaws; perhaps the manifest failures of the writing are in actuality an expression of its true quality. Such an argument will have to await the testimony of those scholars well-versed in what the terminology of literary criticism calls “recuperation” however. The robber as told of in both The Histories and Le Novelle is given a mother, whereas the robber in the Buddhist sutra has a son; the mother plays the part of instigator, while the son is merely excess baggage and plays no part in the story. The Buddhist sutra begins by mentioning the robber’s mother (“The sister had a son”) but does not speak of her again; in terms of the part that she actually plays in the story, the robber could just as well have said of himself, as does Li Kui in the novel The Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan 水滸傳), that: “I burrowed my way out of an earthen hole” and had no “mother.” The Buddhist sutra unfolds the matter of the stealing of the corpse in the following manner; first the corpse is cremated and then the bones are stolen, while the robber’s audience with the king is unfolded by first having him serve as an official in a foreign land before returning to his native land to marry into the royal family. The more complicated the plot, the greater the number of characters who make their appearance. The more sluggish the time-frame of the story, the more disconnected become its various stages, the less neat and tidy its structure and the greater the number of inconsistencies that will appear. When talking of the modes of thought, the philosophers of the Middle Ages spoke of a principle for reducing complication and achieving simplicity, that is, the famous “Occam’s razor.” This principle could well have found an application on 266 an historical anecdote, a religious parable, and a novel the various tangents that crop up in this story. Monks may well have had razors for shaving their heads, but when it came to the telling of tales they appear to have lacked “Occam’s razor.” Herodotus was writing history and had a responsibility to record fact and tell the truth. Obviously his concept of historical veracity was nowhere near as careful and strict as that of latter day historians. He nevertheless embraced a critical attitude towards myths and legends and certainly does not make use of all those available to him, just as our own Sima Qian 司馬遷 (ca. 145– ca. 85 B.C.) only “selected the good and elegant” among the various “anecdotes” ( yishi 軼事) of the ancient period for inclusion within his Book of the Court Astrologer (Taishigong shu 太史公書), also known as the Records of the Grand Historian (Shi ji 史記).13 When Herodotus writes of the Egyptian king fixing upon the plan to use a beautiful woman to ensnare the robber, thus reducing his own daughter to the status of a prostitute freely available to all crimi- nals, he too felt this to be far-fetched and preposterous, and because ordinary readers would regard it to be implausible, he too considered it unbelievable. In order therefore to make allowance for the common sense and rationality of ordinary readers and at the same time uphold the professional morality of the historian, he makes a point of interrupting the story at this point with the comment: “Such is the story, but I myself do not believe it.” To thus highlight the incident while at the same time maintaining his own incredulity and dis- belief is somewhat akin to playing both the sorceress and the devil, jumping with the hares and running with the hounds. In this way, both camps can be satisfied. This type of rhetorical stratagem can manifest itself in a variety of forms, from the sentence found in the “The Sorting which Evens Things Out” (“Qi wu lun” 齊物論) chapter of the Book of Master Zhuang (Zhuangzi 莊子) that goes: “Suppose I put it to you in abandoned words, and you listen with the same abandon” to the contemporary English phrase “Believe it or not!” that is now so popular.14 The events told of in literary works are of course, in the final analysis, fictional. But when authors write of things not readily agreeable to common sense and

13 Herodotus makes even clearer statement of his practice in Book 12, Chapter 162 of his The Histories: “For myself, though it be my business to set down that which is told me, to believe it is none at all of my business; let that saying hold good for the whole of my history,” op. cit., Vol. VI, p. 463; cf. Vol. II, pp. 225, 307, Vol. IV, p. 123. In his The Idea of History (1946), pp. 18–9, R.G. Collingwood tells us that in Greek the title of Herodotus’s work means “investigation or inquiry;” cf. also my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters, pp. 251–2. 14 Cf. E. Partridge, A Dictionary of Catch Phrases (1977), p. 22. an historical anecdote, a religious parable, and a novel 267 reason, they very often employ similar methods. In this manner they can both warn their readers and discharge their own responsibilities.15 Let me give an example from the masterpiece of another Italian contemporary of Bandello, an example that is almost a pirated version of that sentence by Herodotus. Angelica, the major female character in Ariosto’s narrative poem, tells everyone that although she and the major male character of the poem, Orlando, have travelled about for many a year, she is yet a virgin (E che’l fior virginal cosi avea salvo,/ Come se lo portò del materno alvo [Defended her, and how she was, in fact,/ As when she left her mother’s womb, intact]); the author thereupon interrupts his narrative, to say: “It may be true, but no man in his senses/ Would ever credit it” (Forse era ver, ma non però credibile/ A chi del senso suo forse signore).16 Bandello much enriches the content of the original story by supplementing the psychological activity of the characters and their dialogue with each other. He adds such finely-wrought details as the striping off of the corpse’s clothes or the adulteration of the wine with knock-out drops, whilst at the same time he reduces the number of twists and turns in the plot of the story in order that it does not become too long-winded. An example of this last effect is his sim- plification of the prelude to the drinking of the wine by the guards. Bandello was clearly sceptical of the account of the king’s scheme to use a beautiful woman to ensnare the robber, or, at the very least, dubious of its practicability.

15 Cf. my Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters, pp. 826–8, 1040, and 1302. 16 Orlando furioso, Part 1, Section 55, Biblioteca Classica Hoepliana, p. 6; cf. also Part 19, Section 33 and Part 31, Section 61, pp. 194 and 335. Earlier than Ariosto, Boiardo, in his long narrative poem, wrote that Orlando was a “rude fellow” who once spent a night with the beautiful Leodilla out in the wilds, “Nothing of note having happened during the night,” the beauty being very disappointed at this, and the author interrupting his narrative with the comment: “It is said that the nobleman remained a virgin all his life/ Whether you believe this is up to you” (Turpino affirma che il conte de Brava/ Fo ne la vita sna vergine e casto./ Credete voi che vi piace ormai)—Orlando innamorato, Vol. 1, Chapter 24, Section 14–7, Garzanti ed., Vol. 1, p. 444; cf. Vol. 1, Chapter 25, Section 39, Chapter 29, Section 48 and Vol. 2, Chapter 4, Section 11, pp. 466, 537 and 606. In his long narrative poem, Edmund Spenser also told of a hero who spent the night in the wilds with two beautiful women (Aemylia & Amoret), the author immediately bemoaning the decline in morality that has taken place in his own day and making explicit avowal of the fact that people of an: “antique age . . . did live . . ./ In simple truth and blameless chastitie./ . . ./ And each unto his lust did make a lawe,/ From all forbidden things his liking to withdrawe”, “Faerie Queen”, Book 4, Canto 8, Verse 30, J.C. Smith, ed., Oxford ed., Vol. 2, p. 101. All these are instances of the author either discharging his responsibilities for the story or providing a warning to readers in keeping with his own understanding of the limited possibilities of situations. 268 an historical anecdote, a religious parable, and a novel

His concern for common sense and reason required him to warn his readers of this fact and thus he labours the point that the king “recks nothing of doing things which are unseemly and blameworthy” and that “this blockhead, for all that he was a king, had a most extravagant humour.” In the final analysis, such changes as he made to the story derive from a type of objective commitment to authenticity on Bandello’s part, a kind of feeling for the limited logical plausibility of any given situation. Without this commitment, he would not have found it necessary to make his own attitude clear. In one sense, the commitment to authenticity served to keep in check the freedom of his own imagination, for it was restrictive, just as the rules for games or sports con- strain the activities of chess players or those playing soccer. And yet, even in a ghost story full of preposterous things, this commitment to authenticity is a necessary component; if we can speak of “imaginary gardens with real toads in them,”17 then by means of a process that is both opposite and complementary, things only become really interesting when imaginary toads are placed within real gardens. Even absolute idealism must posit an objective “other” in order to stimulate the creative energies of the subjective “self” by means of resistance (Anstoss), just as it must admit also to an objective “inevitability” in order that subjective “freedom” may convey both significance and value. The principle here is the same. The stories told by the Buddha often lack any sense of authenticity that all stories require, the “Sutra of the Uncle and his Nephew” being an instance of this failure. Perhaps we ought not reproach the Buddha, however; after all, he made no claim to being a novelist, an historian or a biographer.

17 Marianne Moore, “Poetry”, G. Moore, ed., The Penguin Book of American Verse (1979), p. 346. Appendix

Preface, Four Old Essays ( Jiuwen sipian 舊文四篇)

This collection gathers together four of my early essays. The first of these was published in A Collection of Essays Commemorating the Twentieth Anniversary of the Establishment of the Kaiming Bookshop (Kaiming shudian ershi zhounian jinian wenji 開明書店二十週年紀念文集); the second and third in the journal Literary Criticism (Wenxue pinglun 文學評論); and the fourth in Collected Literary Research (Wenxue yanjiu jikan 文學研究集刊)—both these journals being produced by the Institute of Literary Research of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences 社會科學院文學研究所. The first essay was written some thirty years ago, whilst even the most recent, the fourth, too, was written some fifteen years ago now. In the process of putting together this present collection I have made alterations, to a greater or lesser degree, to all the essays, the changes made to the first being the most numerous. The essential arguments made in each of the essays have not been modified, however. These essays remain the work of an earlier period of my life, then, which, like the tables, chairs, beds, cupboards and so on to be found in second-hand furniture shops, cannot be considered new, however much they may have been cleaned up, renovated and given a new coat of paint.1 The compilation of this thin collection was done at the suggestion of Wei Tongxian 魏同賢. Luan Guiming 欒貴明 and Ma Rong 馬蓉 have checked a number of the Chinese citations against their originals on my behalf, while Shi Xianrong 施咸榮, Zhu Hong 朱虹 and Dong Hengsun 董衡巽 have been responsible for checking all the foreign language citations, thus ensuring that I avoid a number of mistakes I would otherwise have made. I am much indebted to them all.

October, 1978

1 Translator’s note: In my copy of Patchwork, Qian Zhongshu provides the following handwritten annotation to the title of this earlier collection: “i.e. the juvenilia in my senilia or the senilia in my juvenilia.”

Preface, This Also Collection (Yeshi ji 也是集)2

Mr Li Guoqiang 李國強 prevailed upon me to compile a collection of my essays for him to publish. His request placed me on the horns of a dilemma; my earlier work of several decades ago was not worth bringing together, while I had produced too little in recent years, a deficiency that could not immediately be made up. Mr Ma Li 馬力 came up with a solution and, after some considerable effort, managed to piece together this thin collection. It would be more appropriate to regard this present book as a token of the good intentions of these two friends, then, rather than as the fruits of my own labours. Qian Zeng’s 錢曾 (1629–ca. 1699) “This Also is a Garden” (Yeshiyuan 也是園) was famous for the book collection he assembled there. For present purposes, I’m prepared to run the risk that some will believe me guilty of basking in the reputation of my forebear by entitling the work This Also Collection; after all, this too may be considered a collection of essays. In the process of writing these essays, I have had the unstinting and frequent help of Madam Ma Rong, and Messers Luan Guiming, Dong Hengsun, Xue Hongshi 薛鴻時 and Zheng Tusheng 鄭土生 in cross-referencing material, and I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to them all.

June, 1983

2 Author’s Note: I later discovered that a man of the early Qing period wrote a book that was also entitled This Also Collection. In Wu Qingdi’s 吳慶坻 (1848–1924) Trifles from the Plantain Gallery ( Jiaolang cuolu 蕉廊脞錄), fascicule 5, is found listed the following item: “Li Ben 李本 (Tinggen 天根) of Jiangyin, Record of the Torchlight ( Juehuo lu 爝火錄), in 32 fascicles, with an authorial preface dated the 6th month of the 13th year of the Qianlong reign period (1748) and which records the affairs of the Princes of Fu, Lu, Tang, Gui and Lu at the end of the Ming dynasty, as well as of Zheng Chenggong of Taiwan and the Three Feudatories. A list of works cited is given below in the appendix: . . . This Also Collection, by the Self-Denying Recluse (Zifei yisou 自非逸叟). . . .” If one day this work is discovered and becomes readily available, I trust that even though we are told that the world is becoming smaller by the day, it will still prove large enough to contain two works of the same title. March, 1984. Index of Proper Names, Book Titles, & Terms

“A blind painting” (una pittura cieca) 38 Art poetique 53, 151 n. 21 A Categorised Collection of Literary Writing A Rustic’s Idle Talk (Yesou puyan 野叟曝語) (Yiwen leiju 藝文類聚) 84 109 A Classified Collection of Yuan Dynasty Prose A Selection of the Prose of Gui Youguang (Yuan wen lei 元文類) 44 (Zhenchuan jixuan 震川集選) 188 A Collection of Paintings with Sound Astor, Brooke 223 (Shenghua ji 聲畫集) 38 A Tale of Two Cities 157 A Cycle of Cathay 212 n. 4, 221 n. 29, Auerbach, Erich 1 222 n. 32, 236 n. 59, 242 n. 76 Advancement of Learning 120 n. 4 Bacon, Francis 120, 241 n. 71 Aesthetik 103 nn. 41–42, 44, 141 n. 5 Balzac, Honoré de 76–77 A History of Chinese Vernacular Literature Ban Chao (32–102) 233, 235 (Zhongguo baihua wenxue shi 中國白話文 Ban Gu (32–92) 72–73, 164, 176 學史) 31 Bandello, Matteo 15, 255, 262–263, Alberti, Leone Battista 102 267–268 Aleni, Giulio (1582–1649) 14–15 Bao Zhao (45–ca. 116) 45, 68 Alice’s Adventures in Baudelaire, Charles 76–77, 179, 228 Wonderland 205–206 Bentang ji 本堂集 85 Allan Quartermain 179 Bianxingtang ji 遍行堂集 136 Allegorical Meanings (Yuyi bian 寓意編) Binchun 233, 235–236, 237 n. 62 59 Biographies of Eminent Monks: Third America During and After the War 212 Collection (Gaoseng zhuan sanji 高僧傳 American Notebooks 100 n. 35 三集) 141 “A mute poem” (una poesia muta) 38 Biography of Liu Yi (Liu Yi zhuan 柳毅傳) Analects (Lunyu 論語) 46, 190 178 Ancient Prose (guwen 古文) 34, 152–153, Birds 4, 12, 20, 88, 101, 122, 124–125, 164 129–132, 139, 147, 179, 193, 219–222, 238, A New Account of Tales of the World (Shishuo 239 n. 65 xinyu 世說新語) 45, 84, 252 Bishengyinguan tanzhu 碧聲吟館談麈 An Evaluation of Poetry (Shipin 詩品) 195 136 An Explanation of the Clerical Script (Li shi Bizarre Happenings Witnessed over Two 隸釋) 100 Decades (Ershi nian mudu zhi guai Anser 223 xianzhuang 二十年目睹之怪現狀) “A Psalm of Life” 11, 13, 23, 211–213, 231, 104 n. 44, 212 n. 4 245 Blake, William 138 A Record of the Present State of Officialdom Bo Juyi (772–846) 6, 22, 54, 66, 70–71, 76, (Guanchang xianxing ji 官場現形記) 77 n. 37, 78, 92, 121–124, 126, 205, 245 223 n. 33 Boccaccio 255, 262 n. 9 A Record of Things Seen in Europe and Boiardo, M.M. 111, 267 n. 16 America (Oubei kairanki 歐米回覽記) Book of Changes (Zhouyi 周易) 190 242 Book of Documents (Shangshu 尚書) 176, Ariosto 5, 94 n. 22, 112, 267 219 Aristophanes 221 Book of the End of Yue (Yuejue shu 越絕書) Aristotle 6, 120, 133 191 Art and Illusion 49 n. 17, 99 n. 31 Book of Master Lie (Liezi 列子) 134

Book of Master Liu (Liuzi 劉子) 124 n. 8, Chen Zhu (jinshi 1256) 85 193 Chen Zhongyu quanji 陳忠裕全集, see Book of Master Mo (Mozi 墨子) 97, Complete Works of Chen Zilong 124 n. 8 Chen Zijing 216 Book of Master Zhuang (Zhuangzi 莊子) Chen Zilong (1608–1647) 191–192, 198 134, 202, 266 Chibei outan 池北偶談 59, 71 Book of Songs (Shijing 詩經) 45, 69, 120, Chonghou (1826–1893) 234 124, 190–191, 195, 198 Chuci 楚辭, see Songs of the South Borges, J.L. 31–32 n. 4, 159, 180 Chu Jiye (Pou) 46 Boswell, James 142 n. 9 Chunqiu 春秋, see Spring and Autumn Brethren, The 163 Annals Butler, Samuel 211 Chu Suiliang (596–658) 42–43 Burlingame, Anson 11, 15, 212–213, 216 Chuyang xuzhi 出洋須知, Points of Attention Byron, Lord George 231–232, 244–245 for Those Going Abroad 212 n. 4 Cixi, Empress Dowager (1835–1908) 233 Calderon, Pedro 241 Cixue 詞謔 164 Canghai shihua 藏海詩話 68–69 Classic of Laozi’s Transformation of the Cangxue 136 Barbarians (Laozi huahu jing 老子化 Canliao (1043–ca. 1116) 85, 89 胡經) 61 Canwei ji 蠶尾集, see Silkworm Tail Classic of the Mountains and the Seas Collection 64 (Shanhai jing 山海經) 101 Cao Zhi (192–232) 68 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 77, 262 n. 9 Catalogue of the Complete Library of the Four Collected Commentaries to the History of the Branches (Siku quanshu zongmu 四庫全書 Later Han Dynasty (Hou Han shu jijie 後漢總目) 44, 72 書集解) 219 Categorised Sayings of Master Zhu (Zhuzi yulei College of Foreign Languages (Tongwen Guan 朱子語類) 52, 69 同文館) 216, 219, 231, 242 Cervantes, Miguel de 81 n. 4, 141 n. 7, 162 Colonel Quaritch 152 n. 22, 155, 169 Chan Buddhism 2, 40–41, 44–45, 47–48, Commentary and Sub-commentary to the 53, 56, 60–61 Zuo Commentary (Zuo zhuan zhushu 左傳 Chang Dang 91 注疏) 120–121 Changqing ji 長慶集 66 Commonplace Book of the Plantain Studio Chao Yuezhi (1059–1129) 68 (Jiaoxuan suilu 蕉軒隨錄) 213 Chaoye qianzai 朝野僉載 158 Complete Library of the Four Branches (Siku Chekhov, Anton 5, 106 quanshu 四庫全書) 44, 72 Chen Dewu 36 Complete Tales of Yue Fei (Shuo Yue Cheng Yi (1033–1107) 199 quanzhuan 說岳全傳) 112 Chengzhai ji 誠齋集 44, 128 Complete Works of Chen Zilong (Chen Zhongyu Cheng Zhengkui (1604–1676) 50–52, quanji 陳忠裕全集) 191 63–64, 87–88 Confucius 6, 8, 63, 68–69, 100, 195, 215, Chen Jiru (1558–1639) 41, 202 218 Chen Liang 76 Conscience, Hendrick 163 Chen Qiqing (1180–1236) 117 Corneille, Pierre 112 Chen Shan (d. ca. 1160) 69 Croce, Benedetto 7, 67, 204 Chen Yan (1856–1937) 154 n. 25, Curtius, Ernst Robert 1 163 n. 37, 164, 181–182, 187 Chen Yuyi (1090–1138) 58 n. 26, 116, 187 D’Annunzio, Gabriele 38 n. 9, 122 n. 7 Chen Zao (1133–1203) 118 Da Qing lüli 大清律例), see Laws and Chen Zhaolun (1701–1771) 202–203 Statutes of the Great Qing Dynasty Index of Proper Names, Book Titles, & Terms 273 da Vinci, Leonardo 38 Doyle, Arthur Conan 160, 169 Dahui Zonggao 52 Dream of the Red Chamber, The (Honglou Dangui 136 meng 紅樓夢) 165, 166 nn. 42–43, 167, Dante Alighieri 5, 77, 105–106, 212, 196, 229, 264 226 n. 41 Dream Stream Essays (Mengxi bitan 夢溪 David Copperfield 153 n. 23, 164, 167, 筆談) 57, 84 172–173, 243 n. 80 Duan Yucai (1735–1815) 252 De Anima 6, 133 Du Fu (712–770) 3, 35, 54, 66–76, 85, 91, De arme edelman 163 99, 151, 187, 192, 198, 205 de Goncourt, Edmond 9, 181 n. 60 Dumas fils, Alexandre 155 de Marolles, l’abbé 143 Du Mu (803–852) 126 de Nerval, Gérard 180 Du Mu (1458–1525) 58–59 de Sainte-Pierre, Bernardin 161 Dürer, Albrecht 94–95 de Vigny, Alfred 111 Du Yu (222–284) 120 Decameron 262 n. 9 Dunzhai xianlan 遯齋閒覽 208 Dehong Juefan (1071–1128) 36 Della Pitura 102 Eastern Library Han Records (Dongguan Hanji Deng Hanyi 93 東觀漢記) 214 “Dense Painting” (miti hua 密體畫) 48 Eastern Miscellany (Dongfang zazhi 東方 Descartes, René 119 雜誌) 162 Dharmaraksha 248 Edkins, Joseph 14 Dickens, Charles 10, 144, 146–149, Egan, Ronald 2, 19 n. 1, 21–22 151–152, 157, 159–160, 179, 181 n. 60, Elegancies of the Lake (Huya 湖雅) 101 243 n. 80 Epigrams of Martial 143 Diderot, Denis 80–82, 100 Ernan mizhi 二南密旨, see The Secret Ding Wei (962–1033) 126 Meaning of the “Zhounan” and “Shaonan” Divina Commedia 105 Sections of the Book of Songs Diwang shiji 帝王世紀), see Genealogical Ernü yingxiong zhuan 兒女英雄傳, see The Records of Kings and Emperors Gallant Maid “Doctrine of the Mean” (“Zhongyong” 中庸) Ershi nian mudu zhi guai xianzhuang 二十 45 年目睹之怪現狀, see Bizarre Happenings Dombey and Son 152–153 nn. 22–23 Witnessed over Two Decades 163 n. 38, 164, 171, 180 Essence of the Five Lamps (Wudeng huiyuan Don Quixote 80, 141, 158 n. 28, 162 五燈會元) 48, 53, 60–61 Dongguan Hanji 東觀漢記, see Eastern Etymological Explanations of Complex and Library Han Records Simple Characters (Shuowen jiezi 說文 Dongfang zazhi 東方雜誌, see Eastern 解字) 252 Miscellany Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays Dongpo tiba 東坡題跋, Inscriptions and 139 n. 1, 252 Postscripts of Su Shi 57, 85 Expanded Rhymes (Guang Yun 廣韻) 252 Dong Qichang (1555–1636) 2, 40–43, Extensive Gleanings of the Reign of Grand 73–74, 76, 86–87 Tranquillity (Taiping guangji 太平廣記) Dongxin ji shiyi 冬心集拾遺 60 83, 158 Dong Xun (1810–1892) 11, 13, 15, 213, 216, 217 n. 17, 222–223, 225–232, 245 Famous Painters Through the Ages (Lidai Dong Yuan (ca. 934–ca. 962) 41 minghua ji 歷代名畫記) 35, 48, Dong Yue (1620–1696) 55 57–58, 82 Donne, John 134 Fan Chengda (1126–1193) 117, 119, Dostoyevsky, Fydor 77 206–207 274 Index of Proper Names, Book Titles, & Terms

Fang Bao (1668–1747) 166–167, 168 n. 44, France, Anatole 179 169, 170 n. 46, 183 n. 63, 184 n. 64 Freiligrath, Ferdinand 180 Fang Junshi 213, 215–219, 222, 244 Freud, Sigmund 198, 204 Fang Wen 201 Frost, Robert 11, 93, 225 Fang Xun (1736–1799) 75 Fu Baosen 231, 235 n. 59 Fang Yue (1199–1262) 129 Fuchuzhai shiji 復初齋詩集 52 Fang Zhongtong (1634–1698) 114–115, 118, 130 Gallant Maid, The (Ernü yingxiong zhuan Fan Kuan (fl. 990–1020) 72 兒女英雄傳) 109, 118, 126, 232, 238 Fan Ye’s History (Fan shi 范史), see History Gao Xien 236 of the Latter Han Dynasty (Hou Han shu Garden of Discourses (Shuo yuan 說苑) 96 後漢書) Ge Hong (283–343) 45 Fanyi mingyi ji 翻譯名義集 96 Genealogical Records of Kings and Emperors Fan Zhengmin 208 (Diwang shiji 帝王世紀) 100 Faust 13, 180, 239, 241 Gengzi xiao xia ji 庚子銷夏記, see Notes Feng Mingqi 93 Written to Idle Away the Summer of 1660 Feng shen bang 封神榜, see Investiture of the Gide, André 39 n. 9 Gods Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 13, 54, Feng Shu 204 76–77, 93, 103 n. 41, 138 n. 23, 142, 144, 180, Feng Yan 7, 192–193 186, 203, 239–241 Feng Yingliu 35, 90–91 Gombrich, E.H. 49 n. 17, 99 n. 37 Feng Zhi (fl. 904) 67 Gong’an School 31 Fenshu 焚書 151 n. 21, 206 Gong Feng 95 Ferguson, Robert 212–213 Gongkui ji 攻媿集 104 Fielding, Henry 263 n. 11 Gongsun Longzi 公孫龍子 131 Fifteen Little Heroes (Shiwu xiao haojie 十五 Gongyang Commentary (Gongyang zhuan 小豪杰) 144 公羊傳) 191–192 Flaubert, Gustave 8, 88 n. 11, 194 Gongyang zhuan 公羊傳, see Gongyang Flowers in the Mirror (Jinghua yuan 鏡花緣) Commentary 241–242 Grillparzer, Franz 8, 194 Folk Poems of London (Lundun zhuzhici 倫敦 Guanchang xianxing ji 官場現形記, 竹枝詞) 236, 237 n. 62 see A Record of the Present State of Footprints 223, 229–230 Officialdom 223 n. 33 For Love of Crown 156 Guanhuatang di liu caizi shu 貫華堂第六才 Former History of the Tang Dynasty ( Jiu Tang 子書 107 shu 舊唐書) 191 Guang Yun 廣韻, see Expanded Rhymes “Formless paintings” (wuxing hua 無形畫) Guan Hanqing (ca. 1220–ca. 1300) 229 38 Guan Tong (fl. 950) 41–42 Forster, E.M. 18 Guanzhui bian 管錐編, see Limited Views: Fortress Besieged (Weicheng 圍城) 2, 24 Essays on Ideas and Letters Four Old Essays (Jiuwen sipian 舊文四篇) Gu Hongming (1857–1928) 235 23 Gu Kaizhi (ca. 345–ca. 400) 3–4, 48, Four Shrieks of the Gibbon (Sisheng yuan 86–87 四聲猿) 197 Gui Youguang (1507–1571) 42, 165–166, Fourth Account of Marvellous Things (Si shuqi 183 n. 63, 187–188 四述奇) 242 Gulliver’s Travels 10, 181 n. 60, 220 n. 24, Fragmentary Thoughts Whilst Lying at Rest 243 n. 81 Under the Sun (Yanpu yutan 偃曝餘談) Guochao shi biecai 國朝詩別裁 94 41 Guo Hui 14 Index of Proper Names, Book Titles, & Terms 275

Guo Lin (1767–1831) 137 Hong Gua (1117–1184) 100 Guoshi bu 國史補, see Supplement to the Hong Mai (1123–1202) 62 n. 29 Official History of the Tang Horace 3, 39, 141 n. 7, 143 Guo Songtao (1818–1891) 13, 233–234, Honglou meng 紅樓夢, see The Dream of the 237–238, 240, 241 n. 71 Red Chamber Guo Xi (ca. 1000–ca. 1090) 35 Hou Han shu 後漢書, see History of the Latter Guo Zhongshu (d. 977) 41, 64, 73 Han Dynasty Hou Han shu jijie 後漢書集解), see Collected Haggard, Rider 10, 144–145, 150, 152 n. 22, Commentaries to the History of the Later 155, 162–163, 179–180, 183 n. 63, 185 n. 65 Han Dynasty Haiguo shengyou cao 海國勝游草, see Housman, A.E. 8, 194 Manuscript of My Travels to the Famous Hsia, C.T. 2 Sites in the Maritime Nations Huaihai ji 淮海集 68 Haisou shiji 海叟詩集 100 Huaisu (737–799) 55 Han Gan (ca. 706–783) 35 Huangchao wenjian 皇朝文鑒, see Mirror of Han Yu (768–824) 7, 32 n. 4, 54, 68, the Prose of the Song Dynasty 70–74, 76, 112, 125, 170 n. 46, 186–187, Huangfu chizheng ji 皇甫持正集 97 198–201, 203, 215 Huangfu Shi (ca. 777–ca. 835) 96–97 Hardy, Thomas 54 Huang Jingren (1749–1783) 130 Hart, Sir Robert 214 Huang Tingjian 黃庭堅 (1045–1105) 37, Hawthorne, Nathaniel 100 76, 103–104, 116, 118, 201 Hegel, G.W.F. 81, 103, 105–106, 113, Huang Zongxi (1610–1695) 170 n. 46 210 n. 29 Huang Zunxian (1848–1905) 166 n. 41, Heine, Heinrich 8, 54, 194, 209, 255, 262 218, 220, 238 He Jingming (1483–1521) 72–73 Hugo, Victor 76–77, 94–95, 161 Henan er Cheng yishu 河南二程遺書 199 Huineng (638–713) 41, 48, 56 Henjô Kongô (Kûkai, 774–835) 44 Humans, Beasts, and Ghosts: Stories and Herder, Johann Gottfried 11, 225 Essays 2 Herodotus 15–16, 252, 255, 262–263, Hume, David 49–50, 223, 245 266–267 Hunt, Leigh 223 He Xiu (129–182) 191–192 Huxley, Thomas 153 He Yang 199 Hu ya 湖雅, see Elegancies of the Lake Hillier, Charles Batten 14 Histories, The 15, 252, 255, 263–265, Ibarra, Néstor 180 266 n. 13 Ibsen, Henrik 77 Historiographical Principles (Shitong 史通) Inscriptions and Postscripts of Su Shi (Dongpo 155, 177 tiba 東坡題跋) 85 History of the Han Dynasty (Han shu 漢書) Investiture of the Gods (Feng shen bang 176, 190, 200 封神榜) 111, 200 History of the Jin Dynasty ( Jin shu 晉書) Irving, Washington 10, 144, 151, 155, 157–158, 252 172 n. 48, 179, 181 n. 60 History of the Latter Han Dynasty (Hou Han Ishida Yasuo 14 shu 後漢書) 193 n. 2, 215, 219, 239 n. 65 Ivanhoe 152 n. 22, 158 n. 28, 164, 172, 174 History of the Song Dynasty (Song shu 宋書) 220 Jade Chapters (Yupian 玉篇) 176 History of the Sui Dynasty (Sui shu 隋書) Jade Mirror Platform (Yujing tai 玉鏡臺) 47 229 History of the Wei Dynasty (Wei shu 魏書) Jia Dao (779–843) 45, 126, 132 219 Jia Xuanweng 44 276 Index of Proper Names, Book Titles, & Terms

Jia Yi (201–169 BCE) 44 Kant, Immanuel 47 Jiandeng xinhua 剪燈新話, see New Tales Kelly, Jeanne 2 Under the Lamplight Kipling, Rudyard 110 Jiannan shigao 劍南詩稿 116–117, 208 Kong Qi 208 Jianzhai shiji 簡齋詩集 116 Kong Wuzhong 孔武仲 (ca. 1041–ca. 1097) Jiang Dunfu (1808–1867) 14 35 Jianghu changweng wenji 江湖長翁文集 Kong Yingda (574–678) 120–121, 132, 199 118 Kou Zhun (961–1023) 205 Jianghu houji 江湖後集 96 Kumarâjiva 61 Jiang Kui (ca. 1155–ca. 1235) 42, 187 Kuncan, see Shixi Jiang Shaoshan 184 Kunxue jiwen 困學紀聞 91 Jiang Shiquan (1725–1785) 69, 113 Jiang Yan (444–505) 195 Lamb, Charles 223–224 Jiaoxuan suilu 蕉軒隨錄, see Commonplace Langhuan wenji 琅嬛文集 86 Book of the Plantain Studio Laocan youji 老殘遊記, see The Travels of Jin Anqing 217, 219 Old Decrepit Jindai shichao 近代詩鈔 164 Laokoon 3–4, 19, 82, 85, 94, 102, 113 Jinlouzi 金樓子, see Master of the Golden Laozi huahu jing 老子化胡經, see Classic of Pavilion Laozi’s Transformation of the Barbarians Jin Nong (1687–1764) 60 Laws and Statutes of the Great Qing Dynasty Jin Shengtan (1610?–1661) 5, 107 (Da Qing lüli大清律例) 218 Jintai chunmeng lu 金臺春夢錄 163 Leaves of Grass 180 Jing Hao (ca. 855–915) 41–42, 64, 72 La dame aux camellias 155, 161 n. 34, Jinghua yuan 鏡花緣, see Flowers in the 172–175, 178 Mirror Legge, James 14 Jingju ji 靜居集 136 Leibniz, G.W. 102 Jing Ke 235 Le Novelle 15, 255, 262–265 Jingling School 31 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 3–5, 38–39, Jingzhou ji 荊州記, see Record of Jingzhou 82–83, 85, 87–89, 94–95, 102–103, 105–106, Jiqi ji 己畦集 79 113 Jiqiting ji 鮚埼亭集 76 Lettres persanes 162 Jiu Tang shu 舊唐書, see Former History of the Liang Qichao (1873–1929) 144 Tang Dynasty Li Ao (774–836) 170, 199 Jiuwen sipian 舊文四篇, see Four Old Essays Liaozhai zhiyi 聊齋志異, see Strange Stories Ji Yun (1724–1805) 57, 115 from a Chinese Studio Joan Haste 155, 172 Li Baoxun (1859–1915) 165, 166 n. 41 Jottings Under a Bamboo Window (Zhuchuang Li Bo (701–762) 3, 54, 62, 68–73, 75–76, suibi 竹窗隨筆) 33 86–87, 192, 198, 205, 244 Journal of the Missions to England, France, Li Boyuan (1867–1906) 184 n. 65, Italy and Belgium (Chushi Ying, Fa, Yi, Bi 223 n. 33, 237 n. 62 siguo riji 出使英法義比四國日記) Library of Novels Translated by Lin Shu 223 n. 34 (Lin yi xiaoshuo congshu 林譯小說叢書) Journal of My Mission to Germany (Shi De riji 144 使德日記) 223 n. 34, 239 Li Cheng (919–967) 72 Journey to the West (Xiyou ji 西遊記) 111, Li Chonghua (1682–1754) 70–71 144 Li Ciming (1830–1894) 137 Lichtenberg, G.C. 29 Kafka, Franz 198 n. 9 Lidai minghua ji 歷代名畫記, see Famous Kang Youwei (1858–1927) 9, 182, 184, 186 Painters Through the Ages Index of Proper Names, Book Titles, & Terms 277

Li Du shihua 李杜詩話, see On the Poetry of Literary Mirror and Treasure of Marvels Li Bo and Du Fu (Bunkyô Hifuron 文鏡秘府論) 44 Li E (1692–1752) 42 Li Tingyan 208 Lie yi zhuan 列異傳, see Records of Marvels Liu An, Prince of Huainan (179–122 B.C.) 7 Li Fengbao (1834–1887) 13, 239–241 Liu Bin (1022–1088) 68 Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 213, Li Changqing (d. ca. 785) 126 216 Liu E (1857–1909) 22 Life of Samuel Johnson, The 142 n. 9 Liu Gongquan (776–865) 42, 75 Li Gonglin (ca. 1040–1106) 37, 103–105 Liu Jia (b. 822) 127 Li He (790–816) 4, 76, 93, 124, 127 Liu Jun 46–47, 131 Li ji 禮記, see Record of Ritual Liu Kezhuang (1186–1269) 42 Li ji zhengyi 禮記正義), see Proper Meaning Liu Mengde wenji 劉夢得文集 185 of the Book of Ritual Liu Ruifen (1877–1892) 234 Li Jian (1748–1799) 131 Liu Shao 46 Li Kaixian (1502–1568) 164 Liu Xiang (80–8 B.C.) 96 Li Ling (d. 74 B.C.) 196 Liu Xie (ca. 465–523) 7–8, 121, 192–193, Li Liufang (1575–1629) 61 196, 206 Li Mengyang (1473–1529) 72–73 Liu Xihong 215 n. 12 Li Mixun (1089–1152) 72–73 Liu Yi zhuan 柳毅傳, see Biography of Lin Bu (967–1028) 85–86, 168 Liu Yi Lin Dongmei 129 Liu Yuxi (772–842) 185, 206 Lin Shu (1852–1924) 9–10, 16, 20, Liu Zhen (d. 217) 68 144–165, 167–169, 171–176, 178–188, 243 Liu Zhiji (661–721) 155 Lin Shu’s Discussions of Prose Writing (Weilu Liu Zhou (514–565) 7, 193 lun wen 畏廬論文) 168 Liuzi 劉子, see Book of Master Liu Linji School 41 Liu Zongyuan (773–819) 65, 72–73 Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters Liuting shihua 柳亭詩話 65 (Guanzhui bian 管錐編) 22 Liweng ouji 笠翁偶寄, see Li Yu’s Casual Li Qi (fl. ca. 742) 124 Expressions Li Qunyu 221 Liweng yuji 笠翁餘集 114 Li sao 離騷, see On Encountering Sorrow Li Xuangong 182, 187 Li Shan 82, 121 Li Yu (1611–1680) 114, 197–198 Li Shangyin (813–858) 54, 76, 77 n. 37, Li Yu’s Casual Expressions (Liweng ouji 笠翁 78, 119, 122 偶寄) 197 Li Sher-shiueh 14 Li Zhaodao (d. ca. 730) 104–105 Li shi 隸釋, see An Explanation of the Clerical Li Zhi (1527–1602) 150, 206 Script Lloyd, G.E.R. 12 Li Shixiong (1602–1686) 130 Lodge, David 25 Li Shuchang (1837–1897) 238, 241 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 11 Li Shuyan 216 Lotus Sutra, The (Miaofa lianhua jing 妙法蓮 Li Si (ca. 280–208 B.C.) 213 華經) 177 Li Sixun (651–716) 41–43 Lou Yue (1137–1213) 104 Li Tang (ca. 1050–1130) 72 Ludwig, Otto 5, 111 “Literary affinities” (wenxue yinyuan 文學 Lu Ji (261–303) 82, 127, 131 因緣) 11, 142 Lu Lun (ca. 737–ca. 798) 45 “Literary hypocrisy” (ipocrisia Lundun zhuzhici 倫敦竹枝詞, see Folk Poems letteraria) 30 of London Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, Lunyu 論語, see Analects The (Wenxin diaolong 文心雕龍) 79, Lu Shiyong (fl. 1628–1644) 67, 70 121, 192 278 Index of Proper Names, Book Titles, & Terms

Lushi zashuo 廬氏雜說, see Miscellaneous Mirror of the Prose of the Song Dynasty Sayings of Master Lu (Huangchao wenjian 皇朝文鑒) 68 Lute, The (Pipa ji 琵琶記) 150 Mirror of Tang Poetry (Tangshi jing 唐詩鏡) Lu Tong (ca. 795–835) 132 70 Lu You (1125–1210) 76, 116, 206 Miscellaneous Records of the Immortals of the Lu Zugao 130 Clouds (Yunxian zaji 雲仙雜記) 67 Miscellaneous Sayings of Master Lu (Lushi Machiavelli, Niccolò 262–263 zashuo 廬氏雜說) 83 Maha-parinirama Sutra 96 Mi Youren (ca. 1072–1151) 37 Maju School 41 Mo Shilong (d. 1587) 41 “Manner of Qi (Shandong)” (Qiqi 齊氣) Molière 78 43 “Moment” (Augenblick) 4, 5, 83, 102–103 Manual on the Painting of Flowering Apricot Montesquieu 146, 162 Blossoms (Meipu 梅譜) 117 Morgenstern, Christian 11, 226 Mao, Nathan 2 Morier, James 113 n. 57, 176 n. 51, 181 n. 60 Mao Pang (fl. 1086–1093) 115 Mozi 墨子, see Book of Master Mo Mao Shengfu 216 Mr. Meeson’s Will 163 Mao shi zhengyi 毛氏正義), see Proper Muschg, Walter 194, 204 Meaning of the Book of Songs My Forty-two Wishes (Sishier yuan 四十二愿) Manuscript of My Travels to the Famous Sites 232 in the Maritime Nations (Haiguo shengyou cao 海國勝游草) 236 Naihe tian 奈何天, see Nothing You Can Do Marchmont, Arthur 156 About Your Fate Martin, W.A.P. 216 Nanlaitang shiji 南來堂詩集 136 Ma Rong (79–166) 121, 125 Nan Song qunxian xiaoji 南宋群賢小集 Master of the Golden Pavilion ( Jinlouzi 96 金樓子) 93 New Expositions Made While Squashing Lice Ma Yuan (ca. 1160–1225) 41 (Men shi xinyu 捫蝨新語) 69 Ma Ziyan (jinshi 1175) 115 New History of the Tang Dynasty (Xin Tang shu Medhurst, Walter Henry 14 新唐書) 64, 68 Meipu 梅譜, see Manual on the Painting of New Tales Under the Lamplight (Jiandeng Flowering Apricot Blossoms xinhua 剪燈新話) 197 Mei Yaochen (1002–1060) 76 Nicholas Nickelby 147–148, 157 Men shi xinyu 捫蝨新語, see New Expositions Nietzsche, Friedrich 7, 31 n. 4, 55 n. 25, Made While Squashing Lice 80 n. 3, 190, 204 Mencius 孟子 44, 112, 177 Nirvana Sutra (Daban niepan jing 大般涅 Meng Jiao (751–814) 76, 127, 132, 198, 磐經) 185 200, 204 Ni Wenzhen gong wenji 倪文貞公文集 101 Mengxi bitan 夢溪筆談, see Dream Stream Ni Yuanlu (1594–1644) 101 Essays Ni Zan (1301–1374) 50, 52 Mérimée, Prosper 247 Northern School 2, 40–43, 45, 47, 65, Miao Gen 81, 232 71–73, 76 Mi Fu (1051–1107) 41 Notes Written to Idle Away the Summer of 1660 Millais, J.E. 105 (Gengzi xiao xia ji 庚子銷夏記) 59 Milton, John 4, 14–15, 90, 94 Nothing You Can Do About Your Fate (Naihe Ming dynasty (1368–1644) 2, 31, 42, 47, tian 奈何天) 108 61, 98, 164, 166, 169, 229 Novalis (Friedrich Leopold von Hardenberg) Mirror of Poetry (Shi jing 詩鏡) 67 247 Index of Proper Names, Book Titles, & Terms 279

Old Curiosity Shop, The 152, 160, 167 Posthumously Collected Manuscripts Oliver Twist 150 n. 20, 152, 188 from the Blue Stream (Qingxi yigao 青溪 On Encountering Sorrow (Li sao 離騷) 202 遺稿) 50 On the Art of Poetry (Tanyi lu 談藝錄) 22 Pound, Ezra 133, 137–138 On the Poetry of Li Bo and Du Fu (Li Du shihua Preface to the Sagely Teachings (Shengjiao xu 李杜詩話) 69 聖教序) 124 On the Tang (Shuo Tang 說唐) 93 “Principle and Method of Ancient Prose” Opinions on Painting from the Abode of (guwen yifa 古文義法) 153 Mountain Tranquillity (Shanjingju hualun Primary Classic for the Writing of Poetry 山靜居畫論) 75 (Zuoshi benjing 作詩本經) 69 Origins of the New Literature (Xin wenxue Proper Meaning of the Book of Ritual (Li ji yuanliu 新文學源流) 31 zhengyi 禮記正義) 120 Orlando Furioso 94 Proper Meaning of the Book of Songs (Mao shi Oubei kairanki 歐米回覽記, see A Record of zhengyi 毛氏正義) 120 Things Seen in Europe and America “Prose as the vehicle of the Way” (wen yi zai Ouyang Xiu (1007–1072) 166 dao 文以載道) 34 Ouyang Xun 歐陽詢 (557–641) 7 n. 4 Prose-poem on Literature (Wen fu 文賦) 82 Ovid 143 Qian Daxin (1728–1804) 219 “Paintings of sound” (yousheng hua 有聲畫) Qian Depei 234 36, 38 Qian Jibo (1887–1957) 21 Pan Deyu (1785–1839) 69 Qian Mou 36 Paradise Lost 94 Qian Qi (ca. 722–ca. 780) 45 Paradoxe sur le Comédien 80 Qian Yong (1759–1844) 42 Parker, H.E. 231–232 Qian Zhongshu (1910–1998) 1–13, 15–18, Pascal, Blaise 47 20–21, 23–26 Patchwork: Seven Essays on Art and Literature Qidong yeyu 齊東野語 209 (Qizhui ji 七綴集) 2, 22–23 Qing dynasty (1644–1911) 8, 18, 20–21, 42, Paul et Viginie 152, 161 98, 109, 125, 138, 166, 232, 252 “Peach Blossom Source” (“Taohua yuan” Qin Guan (1049–1100) 68, 207 桃花源) 71 Qingteng shuwu wenji 青藤書屋文集 88 Pipa ji 琵琶記), see The Lute Qingxi yigao 青溪遺稿, see Posthumously Pipe and Awl Chapters, The, see Limited Views: Collected Manuscripts from the Blue Stream Essays on Ideas and Letters Qizhui ji 七綴集, see Patchwork: Seven Essays Poe, Edgar Allen 141 n. 7, 179 on Art and Literature Poems from the Three Pavilions (San’ge ci Quan Jin wen 全晉文 82 n. 8, 196 三閣詞) 206 Quan Qing ci chao 全清詞鈔 98 “Poetry as the expression of the emotions” Quan Song ci 全宋詞 36, 129–130 (shi yi yan zhi 詩以言志) 34 Quan Song wen 全宋文 201 Poetry Collection from the Studio of Quan Tang wen 全唐文 49, 97 Retreating One Step (Tuiyibuzhai shiji Quan Zuwang (1705–1755) 76 退一步齋詩集) 213 Quintilian 38 n. 6, 96 n. 27 “Poetry of form” (youxing shi 有形詩) 38 Qu You (1347–1433) 197 Points of Attention for Those Going Abroad Qu Yuan (ca. 343–278 B.C.) 44, 182 n. 61, (Chuyang xuzhi 出洋須知) 212 198, 202 Posthumous Collection of the Monk Shenhui (Shenhui heshang yiji 神會和 Rea, Christopher 2, 18 n. 1, 25 尚遺稿) 56 Reade, Charles 5, 112 280 Index of Proper Names, Book Titles, & Terms

“Reciprocal change” (commutatio) 38 Selections of Refined Literature (Wen xuan Record of Jingzhou ( Jingzhou ji 荊州記) 84 文選) 82, 121 “Record of Music” (“Yue ji” 樂記) 79, Sequel to the Romance of the Western Chamber 120, 199 (Xu Xixiang ji 續西廂記) 107 Record of Ritual (Li ji 禮記) 45, 120–121, Shakespeare, William 40, 77, 212, 240, 199, 132 255 Record of the Discussions of the Dragon (Tan Shangu nei ji 山谷內集 201 long lu 談龍錄) 67 Shanhai jing 山海經, see Classic of the Record of the Scenery of Yidu (Yidu shanshui ji Mountains and the Seas 宜都山水記) 84 Shanjingju hualun 山靜居畫論, see Opinions Records of the Grand Historian (Shi ji 史記) on Painting from the Abode of Mountain 31, 44, 64, 107, 110, 149, 152, 165, 167, 176, Tranquillity 190, 266 Shangshu 尚書, see Book of Documents Records of Marvels (Lie yi zhuan 列異傳) Shao Yong (1011–1077) 82 178 Shao Youlian 234 “Redundant epithet” 38 She 145, 155, 180 Refugees, The 169 Shelley, Percy 204 n. 15 Rengulou huashuo 忍古樓畫說 43 Shen Deqian (1673–1769) 94 Rengulou shi 忍古樓詩 185 Shenghua ji 聲畫集, see A Collection of Renwu zhi 人物志, see The Study of Human Paintings with Sound Abilities Sheng’an quanji 升庵全集 75 Rembrandt, Harmenszoon van Rijn 40 Sheng’an waiji 升庵外集 75 Rhetorika 6, 133 Shengjiao xu 聖教序, see Preface to the Sagely Rites of the Zhou Dynasty (Zhou li 周禮) 220 Teachings Romance of the Western Chamber, The Shengmeng ge 聖夢歌 (Ode to a Holy (Xixiang ji 西廂記) 107, 151, 264 Dream) 14 Rongtai bieji 容臺別集 40 Shen Gua (1031–1095) 57, 84–85 Rongzhai wubi 容齋五筆 62 n. 29 Shen Guowei 14 Rulin waishi 儒林外史, see The Scholars Shen Hong 14 Ruan Dacheng (1587–1646) 130, 137 Shenhui (670–762) 56–57 Ruan Yuan (1764–1849) 138, 166 Shenhui heshang yiji 神會和尚遺稿, see Rubens, Peter Paul 40 Posthumous Collection of the Monk Shenhui Rustic Records of Mount Xiang (Xiangshan Shen Zhou (1427–1509) 187 yelu 湘山野錄) 205 Shiguan 詩觀 93 Ryckmans, Pierre 1 Shihu shiji 石湖詩集 117, 119 Shi ji 史記, see Record of the Grand Historian Sainte-Beuve, Charles Augustin 29, 31, Shi jing 詩鏡, see Mirror of Poetry 55 n. 25, 133 n. 12, 143 n. 11–12 Shijing 詩經, see Book of Songs Samyuktavadana sutra 252 Shipin 詩品, see An Evaluation of Poetry Sand, George 5, 111 Shishuo xinyu 世說新語, see A New Account Santayana, George 211 of Tales of the World Schiller, Friedrich 239 Shitong 史通, see Historiographical Principles Schleiermacher, D.E. 140 Shiwu xiao haojie 十五小豪杰), see Fifteen Scholars, The (Rulin waishi 儒林外史) Little Heroes 31, 166 Shixi (1612–ca. 1674) 50–51 “Scholars of the South” (Chuzi 楚子) 43 Shiyi 釋疑, see An Explication of Doubt Scott, Sir Walter 10, 144, 181 Shiyishi shiji 石遺室詩集 187 Secret Meaning of the “Zhounan” and Shizhou shihua 石洲詩話 66, 70 “Shaonan” Sections of the Book of Songs, The Short Account of a Voyage at Sea (Zhouxing (Ernan mizhi 二南密旨) 45 jilue 舟行紀略) 243, 245 Index of Proper Names, Book Titles, & Terms 281

Short-story Monthly (Xiaoshuo yuebao 小說 “Spiritual Resonance” (shenyun 神韻) 54 月報) 156 Spiritual Resonance School 3, 56, 59, Shuihu zhuan 水滸傳, see The Water Margin 64–67, 70, 76, 78 Shuo fu 說郛 208 Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu 春秋) Shuo Tang 說唐, see On the Tang 124 n. 8, 191, 215 Shuowen jiezi 說文解字, see Etymological Stories from the Mountain Hall of Pure Explanations of Complex and Simple Tranquility (Qingping shantang huaben Characters 清平山堂話本) 252 Shuo yuan 說苑, see Garden of Discourses Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio Shuo Yue quanzhuan 說岳全傳, see Complete (Liaozhai zhiyi 聊齋志異) 144 Tales of Yue Fei Study of Human Abilities, The (Renwu zhi Sikong Tu (837–908) 64–66, 75–77, 115, 人物志) 46–47 128 Sui shu 隋書, see History of the Sui Dynasty Sikong biaosheng wenji 司空表聖文集 Suiyuan shihua 隨園詩話 71, 162 115 Su Manshu (1884–1918) 142 n. 8 Siku quanshu四庫全書, see Complete Library Sun Chengze (1593–1675) 59 of the Four Branches Sun He (961–1004) 68 Siku quanshu zongmu 四庫全書總目, see Sun Jiagu 216 Catalogue of the Complete Library of the Sun Shaoyuan 孫紹遠 38 Four Branches Sun Sheng 46 Silkworm Tail Collection (Canwei ji 蠶尾集) Sun Yirang (1848–1908) 220 n. 23 64, 71, 73 Supplement to the Official History of the Tang Sishier yuan 四十二愿, see My Forty-two (Guoshi bu 國史補) 83 Wishes Surangama Sutra (Lengyan jing 楞嚴經) Sima Qian (ca. 145–ca. 85 B.C.) 7, 135, 169 44, 72–73, 149, 150 n. 19, 164, 165 n. 39, Su Shi (1037–1101) 32, 35, 37, 39, 41, 54, 166–167, 175, 183–184 n. 63, 190–193, 195, 57, 58 n. 26, 74–77, 85, 90–92, 115, 132, 166, 197–200, 203, 206, 266 187, 193, 230 Sima Xiangru (179–17 B.C.) 92, 198 Su shi hezhu 蘇詩合注 35, 90–91 Simonides of Ceos 38 Sutra Spoken by Buddha on Former Sisheng yuan 四聲猿, see Four Shrieks of the Births 248, 263–264 Gibbon “Suzhou Style” (Suyi 蘇意) 43 Si shuqi 四述奇, see Fourth Account of Swift, Jonathan 10, 144 Marvellous Things Synaesthesia 5–6, 22, 24, 119–120, 126, Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., 133–135 The 151, 172 n. 48 Small World: An Academic Romance 25 Taiping guangji 太平廣記, see Extensive Song baijia shicun 宋百家詩存 38 Gleanings of the Reign of Grand Tranquillity Song Changbai (fl. 1705) 65 Tales of the Alhambra 155, 158 n. 28 Song Lao (1634–1713) 71–73 Talisman, The 154 n. 25 Song Qi (998–1061) 5, 68, 114, 118, 207 “Tall Friend’s Poem” (Chanyou shi” 長友詩) Song shi jishi 宋詩紀事 36 213–214, 217, 226 Song shu 宋書, see History of the Song Dynasty Tang dynasty (618–906) 20, 35, 38, Songs of the South (Chuci 楚辭) 193 43–45, 59, 64, 66, 68, 71, 75, 97, 104, 135, Soong, Stephen C. 24–25, 189 139, 158, 164, 181 n. 60, 182 n. 61, 184 n. 65, “Soundless poetry” (wusheng shi 無聲詩) 185, 191, 220 n. 23, 221 38–39 Tang Geng (1070–1120) 128 Southern School 3, 40–45, 48, 53–54, 56, Tangshi jing 唐詩鏡, see Mirror of Tang 64–66, 72–74, 76, 78 Poetry “Spare Painting” (shuti hua 疏體畫) 48 Tang Shunzhi (1507–1560) 164, 166 282 Index of Proper Names, Book Titles, & Terms

Tang Taizong (598–649) 124 Wang Kangnian (1860–1911) 222 Tang Yin (1470–1523) 108 n. 50 Wang Mou (1151–1213) 64 Tan long lu 談龍錄, see Record of the Wang Qi 220 n. 23 Discussions of the Dragon Wang Shizhen (1526–1590) 41 Tanyi lu, see On the Art of Poetry Wang Shizhen (1634–1711) 59 Tanyuan ji 檀園集 61 Wang Shenzhong (1509–1559) 164 Tao Yuanming (365–427) 3, 62 Wang Tao (1828–1897) 235, 237 n. 62 Tao Zongyi (b. 1316) 208 Wang Wei 王維 (701–761) 3, 41, 43, 54, Tasso, Torquato 223 56–63, 65–67, 70–71, 74–76, 83, 86–87, 126, Taylor, Bayard 13, 186 n. 68, 239, 241 201, 203 Terence 143 Wang Wei 王微 201 This Also Collection (Yeshi ji 也是集) 23, Wang Xizhi (303–361) 75 270 Wang Xianqian 219 Three Hundred Tang Poems (Tangshi Wang Yinglin (1551–1602) 91 sanbaishou 唐詩三百首) 245 Wang Youcheng ji jianzhu 王右丞集箋注 Tiaoxi yuyin conghua 苕溪漁隱叢話 76 62 Tingshi 桯史 104 Wang Yucheng (954–1001) 67 “To strike a connection” (datong 打通) 18 Wang Yuezhen 101 Tolstoy, Leo 77 Wang Zhaojun 233, 235 Tongcheng School (Tongcheng pai 桐城派) Wang Zhaojun 王昭君 196 167–168, 184 n. 64 Wang Zhenyi (1768–1797) 137 Tragische Literaturgeshichte 204 Wang Zhong (1745–1794) 90 Travels of Old Decrepit, The (Laocan youji Wang Zhuo (d. ca. 149) 128 老殘遊記) 22, 125 Wan Qingli 222 Tsungli Yamen 213, 216, 221 Wanxiangtang xiaopin 晚香堂小品 202 Tuiyibuzhai shiji 退一步齋詩集, see Poetry Water Margin, The (Shuihu zhuan 水滸傳) Collection from the Studio of Retreating One 31, 108–110, 112, 144, 150 n. 21, 151 n. 21, 164, Step 165 n. 39, 166 n. 41, 167, 265 Tushan xuji 涂山續集 201 Wang Zai (active ca. 760–ca. 805) 75, 197 Weicheng 圍城, see Fortress Besieged Uncle Tom’s Cabin 152 n. 22, 164, 175, 179 Weilu lunwen 畏廬論文, see Lin Shu’s “Un-jealous sisters” (keine eifersüchtige Discussions of Prose Writing Schwester) 39 Weilu shihua 圍爐詩話 69, 89 n. 12 Weilu wenji 畏廬文集 148 n. 18, 183 n. 63 Valéry, Paul 94, 153, 154 n. 24, 186 Wei shu 魏書, see History of the Wei Dynasty Verlaine, Paul-Marie 53–55 Wei Tongxian 269 Verne, Jules 144 Wei Yi (1880–1932) 10, 153 n. 22, 157, Vijnaptimatratasiddhi (Chengweishi lun 成唯 170 n. 46, 243 識論) 135 Wei Yingwu (735–835) 54, 65–67, 70, Vimalakîrti Sutra 61 123, 127 Virgil 143, 154 Wei Zhuang (836–910) 92 “vogue” (fengqi 風氣) 15, 19–21, 29–33, Wen fu 文賦), see Prose-poem on Literature 55, 67, 171, 217, 232, 247 Weng Fanggang (1733–1818) 52, 66, 70–71 Wade, Thomas Francis (1818–1895) Weng Tonghe (1830–1904) 12, 221 214–215 Wen Kang 232 Wang Anshi (1021–1086) 71, 187 Wenshi tongyi 文史通義 109 Wang Ji (585–644) 62–63, 66, 115, 119 Wenxin diaolong 文心雕龍, see The Literary Wang Jian (ca. 767–ca. 830) 115 Mind and the Carving of Dragons Index of Proper Names, Book Titles, & Terms 283

Wen xuan 文選, see Selections of Refined Xiyou ji 西遊記, see Journey to the West Literature Xu Chengyao 99 West Lake: Second Collection (Xihu erji 西湖 Xue Fucheng (1838–1894) 13, 223 n. 34, 二集) 197 238, 240 Wenying 205 Xu Lan 94 White Company, The 160 Xu Ning 84–85 Whitman, Walt 180 Xunzi 44, 131 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim 103 Xunzi 荀子, see Book of Master Xun Witches Head, The 162 Xu Shanchang 136 Wu Daozi (680–ca. 760) 41–42, 48, 57, Xu Shen (30–124) 20 74–75 Xu Wei (1521–1593) 88, 197 Wudeng huiyuan 五燈會元, see Essence of Xu Xixiang ji 續西廂記, see Sequel to the the Five Lamps Romance of the Western Chamber Wu Jianren (Woyao) (1867–1910) 104 n. 44, 144 n. 14 Yan Clan Family Instructions (Yanshi jiaxun Wu Jun 68 n. 32 顏氏家訓) 221 Wu Ke (fl. 1109) 69 Yan Fu (1854–1921) 9, 153, 156, 182–185 Wu Longhan 38 Yang Jiang 楊絳 (b. 1911) 24 Wu Qian (d. 1262) 129 Yang Jingzhi (fl. ca. 820) 97 Wu Qiao (ca. 1660) 89 n. 12 Yang Shen (1488–1559) 75 Wu Qingpeng (1786–ca. 1850) 130 Yang Wanli (1127–1206) 128 Wu Wen (1644–1704) 52 Yang Xianyi 楊憲益 (1915–2009) 22 Yang Yi (974–1020) 68, 71 Xia Gui (fl. 1195–1224) 41 Yanghu School (Yanghu pai 陽湖派) 165 Xia Jingguan 43, 185 Yangyizhai ji 養一齋集 69 Xiangshan yelu 湘山野錄, see Rustic Records Yan Jidao (ca. 1030–ca. 1106) 98 of Mount Xiang Yanshi jiaxun 顏氏家訓), see Yan Clan Family Xiangzu biji 香祖筆記 64 Instructions Xiaocang shanfang shiji 小倉山房詩集 Yan Suicheng (b. 1694) 130 162 Yan Yu (ca. 1200) 66 Xiaochu ji 小畜集 67 Yan Zhenqing (709–785) 42 Xiaoshuo yuebao 小說月報, see Short-story Yanpu yutan 偃曝餘談, see Fragmentary Monthly Thoughts Whilst Lying at Rest Under the Xie Lingyun (385–433) 65, 185–186 Sun Xie Tiao (464–499) 65, 68 Yanzhou sibu gao 弇州四部稿 41 Xihu erji 西湖二集, see West Lake: Second Yao Nai (1732–1815) 166 Collection Yeats, William Butler 77 Xi Kang (223–262) 3, 86 Yeshi ji 也是集, see This Also Collection “Xikun Style” (Xikun ti 西昆體) 68 Yesou puyan 野叟曝語, see A Rustic’s Idle Talk Xin Qiji (1140–1207) 42, 207 Ye Xie (1627–1703) 79 Xin Tang shu 新唐書, see New History of the Yichuan jirang ji 伊川擊壤集 83 Tang Dynasty Yidu shanshui ji 宜都山水記, see Record of Xin wenxue yuanliu 新文學源流, see Origins the Scenery of Yidu of the New Literature Yihan shi 疑厂詩 99 Xipi leigao 西阰類稿 72 Yi jia yan 一家言 108 n. 50 Xitang waiji 西堂外集 136 Yinxiuxuan shi 隱秀軒詩 137 Xixiang ji 西廂記, see The Romance of the Yiwen leiju 藝文類聚, see A Categorised Western Chamber Collection of Literary Writing 284 Index of Proper Names, Book Titles, & Terms

Yizhai wenbian 彛齋文編 117 Zhang Zhao (1691–1745) 42 Yonghuaitang shi 詠懷堂詩 130 Zhang Zhidong (1837–1909) 171 n. 47, Yongle dadian 永樂大典 129, 185 n. 66 218 You Tong (1618–1704) 136 Zhang Zuyi 234, 235 n. 56, 236 n. 62 Yuan Haowen (1190–1257) 65 Zhao Gan 趙幹 41 Yuan Hongdao (1568–1610) 165 Zhao Boju (1120–1182) 41 Yuan Kai 100 Zhao Bosu (1124–1182) 41 Yuan Mei (1716–1798) 71, 167 n. 42, Zhao Mengjian (1199–1267) 117 170 n. 46 Zhao Xi 164, 183 n. 63, 194 n. 3 Yuanshi chengqing ji 元氏長慶集 123 Zhao Zhixin (1666–1744) 67, 70 Yuan Xingchong 元行沖 32 Zhenchuan jixuan 震川集選, see A Selection Yuan Zhen (779–831) 66, 124, 245 of the Prose of Gui Youguang Yuan Zuzhi (1811–1853) 212 n. 4 Zhenyizhai shishuo 貞一齋詩說 70 “Yue ji” 樂記, see “Record of Music” Zheng Chaozong 18 Yue Ke 岳珂 (1183–1243) 36, 104 Zheng Xuan (127–200) 132–133 Yu Jianwu (ca. 487–ca. 551) 127 Zheng Tan (d. 842) 191 Yun Jing (1757–1817) 165 Zhi Daolin (Dun) 46 Yun Shujue 156 Zhigang 216, 233 Yunchuang ji 篔窗集 117 Zhizheng zhiji 至正直記 208 Yunmen School 41 Zhongguo baihua wenxue shi 中國白話文 Yunxian zaji 雲仙雜記, see Miscellaneous 學史, see A History of Chinese Vernacular Records of the Immortals of the Clouds Literature Yupian 玉篇, see Jade Chapters Zhong Rong (ca. 465–518) 7, 195, Yu Shinan (558–638) 43 197–198, 203 Yu Xin (513–581) 130 Zhong Xing (1574–1624) 137 Yu Yue (1821–1907) 218 n. 18 Zhong You (151–230) 75 Yuyi bian 寓意編, see Allegorical Meanings Zhongren (d. 1123) 117 Yuzhang Huang xiansheng wenji 豫章黃先生 Zhongshan shihua 中山詩話 68 文集 103 Zhongyatang shiji 忠雅堂詩集 113 Zhongyatang wenji 忠雅堂文集 69 Zanning (919–1002) 141 “Zhongyong” 中庸, see “Doctrine of the Zeng Jize (1839–1890) 221 Mean” Zhang Cangshui ji 張蒼水集 202 Zhou Bangyan (1057–1121) 42 Zhang Dai (1597–ca. 1684) 86 Zhou Fu 37 Zhang Deyi (1847–1919) 10, 216 n. 13, Zhou Guisheng 144 217 n. 17, 223 n. 34, 234 n. 54, 236 n. 60, Zhou Ji 197–198 242–243 Zhou li 周禮, see Rites of the Zhou Dynasty Zhang Huangyan (1620–1664) 201, 203 Zhou Mi (1232–1308) 209 Zhang Lei (1054–1114) 207 Zhouyi 周易, see Book of Changes Zhang Shunmin 張舜民 (ca. 1034–ca. 1100) Zhou Zhenhe 13, 15 36 Zhu Xi (1130–1200) 52 Zhang Xianghe (1785–1862) 43 Zhouxing jilue 舟行紀略, see Short Account of Zhang Xuecheng (1738–1801) 109 a Voyage at Sea Zhang Yanyuan 張彥遠 (ca. 815–ca. 877) Zhuchuang suibi 竹窗隨筆, see Jottings 48–49, 57–58, 64 Under a Bamboo Window Zhang Yinhuan (1837–1900) 237 Zhuhong 袾弘 (1535–1615) 33 Zhang Youshi wenji 張右史文集 207 Zhuzi yulei 朱子語類, see Categorised Zhang Yu (1333–1385) 136 Sayings of Master Zhu Zhang Zao 41, 43 Zhuang Zhou 198, 202 Index of Proper Names, Book Titles, & Terms 285

Zhuangzi 莊子, see Book of Master Zhuang Zuo Si (ca. 253–ca. 307) 45 Zizhushanfang ji 紫竹山房集 202 Zuoshi benjing 作詩本經, see Primary Classic Zola, Émile 77 for the Writing of Poetry Zongjing lu 宗鏡錄 53 Zuo zhuan 左傳, see Zuo Commentary Zuo Commentary (Zuo zhuan 左傳) 107, Zuo zhuan zhushu 左傳注疏, see 120, 152 Commentary and Sub-commentary to the Zuo Fen (d. 300) 196 Zuo Commentary