Sinicized Male-male Desire 39

Chapter Three Transforming Homosexual Subtexts: Sinicized Male-male Desire

Underlying homosexual subtexts in The Picture of Dorian Gray go through dramatic transformation in Wan Dahong’s Du Liankui, and these changes are yet to be discovered. As mentioned in the second chapter of this thesis, Wilde deliberately builds his homosexually suggestive story on a heterosexual model only to subvert from within, and then within this mock heterosexual framework he integrates multiple homosexual hints that metonymically relate to “gross indecency” in the Victorian England. Some of these homosexual representations under camouflage are modified, omitted, and even metamorphosed in Du Liankui. On top of these changes, many added passages can be observed in the target text. Chan Tak-hung and Du Shinshin have both identified succinctly a diminution in homosexual desire in Du Liankui, but they neither elaborate on Wang’s treatment of Wilde’s homosexual subtexts, nor identify Wang’s strategy for homoerotic representation.1 This chapter aims to delve into the much unexplored arena of Wang’s homosexual poetics in his translation by analyzing his representation of the original Wildean homosexual subtexts. As recontextualization marks Wang’s translation, I propose that his treatment of Wilde’s homosexual desire is subjugated to this major translating scheme. Chan’s interpretation of the concept of intertextuality helps trace this possibility of Wang’s homoerotic poetics. The theory itself originally proposes that a text cannot exist as a hermetic or self-sufficient whole, and so does not function as a closed system.2 Given that the writer is a reader of texts before becoming a creator of texts, the work of art of is “inevitably shot through with references, quotations, and influences of every kind.” 3 These “other textual structures” could include cultural and ideological norms—which entails the importance of reconstructing the cultural codes realized in texts.4 Chan applies the concept of intertextuality to translation study and points out that the source text inevitably figures as an intertext for its translation, but in an adaptive, recontextualized translation like Du Liankui, further intertexts from the target culture are invoked, causing intertextual processes to proliferate.5 In other words, The Picture of Dorian Gray is not simply Sinicized textually in Du Liankui,

1 Chan Leo Tak-hung, “The Poetics of Recontextualization: Intertextuality in a Chinese Adaptive Translation of The Picture of Dorian Gray” Comparative Literature Studies 41, no. 4 (2004): 477. Also see Du Shinshin, “The Pictures of Dorian Gray: A Cultural Analysis of Six Chinese Translations in Taiwan” (MA Thesis, National Taiwan Normal University, 2005), 64. They both observe that homoeroticism is toned down in Wang’s translation. 2 Julia Kristeva, Semiotiké: Recherches pour une sémanalyse (Paris: Seuil, 1969), 146. 3 Judith Still and Michael Worton, “Introduction” to their eds., Intertextuality: Theories and Practices (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1990), 1. 4 John Frow, “Intertextuality and Ontology,” in Judith Still and Michael Worton, eds., Intertextuality: Theories and Practice (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1990), 45-6. 5 Chan, “The Poetics of Recontextualization,”477. Sinicized Male-male Desire 40

because its content too becomes immersed in a web of Chinese cultural intertextual echoes. Wilde’s homoeroticism in the original novel is indeed disrupted by forces unleashed by Wang’s adaptive translation: A later section of this chapter will demonstrate how Wang’s translation utilizes traditional Chinese male-male desire as a representational devise. I would illustrate first how the translation departs from original homosexual subtexts/desire, and then trace the resurfacing of these target-cultural codes in Du Liankui to discuss Wang’s own homoerotic representation.

1. From Manifestation to Diminution: Digression from Homosexual Subtexts Numerous evidences show that Wang’s translation of homosexual desire is quite disparate from Wilde’s homosexual subtexts. One eminent question for the interest of this study is if Wang has not transplanted Wildean erotic expressions into the target text, what he would utilize to fill up the resulting gaps. But first it is important to have a general understanding of how homosexual subtexts are dug out, laid bare and discarded. As in what follows my study will compare quite a number of passages from the original novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray and the translated text, Du Liankui, I would utilize Wang’s Sinicized character names whenever necessary to discuss his modification in the translation to avoid confusion with the source text. The following list succinctly juxtaposes corresponding naming in the source and target text:

Original naming: Sinicized naming: Roles in the novel: Dorian Gray Du Liankui 杜連魁 protagonist Lord Henry Wotton Wu Teng 吳騰 aristocrat Basil Hollward Bei Xi 貝席 painter Sibyl Vane Xue Bifang 薛碧芳 singer (originally actress) Jame Vane Xue Jimei 薛吉眉 sailor; Sibyl’s (Bifang) brother Mrs. Leaf Li Ma 李媽 housekeeper of Dorian The Duchess Lady Ma 馬夫人 married woman that flirts with Dorian Campbell Gan Boer 甘柏爾 friend of Dorian’s Hetty Chunmei 春妹 country girl Dorian seduces -- Yuxiang 玉香 prostitute, added character -- Yulan 玉蘭 country girl, added character

1.1 “Aggressive-passive” Homoerotic Voice Technically speaking, the translator of Du Liankui preserves male-male desire in The Picture of Dorian Gray—though not necessarily in the same way. Multiple passages attest that male-male eroticism ostensibly is retained in the translation, especially in Sinicized Male-male Desire 41

the early part of the book. Du points out, Lord Henry and Basil’s adoration of Dorian clearly trespasses the acceptable boundary for male friendship, but the translator does not shy away from such erotic confession.6 In Wang’s translation, the painter’s first encounter with Du Liankui expresses overt male-male desire as in the original novel.

「我一轉身便看見杜連魁，那是我們初次見面。當我們對望時，我心裡起了 一種無名的恐慌，我知道我遇見了一個具有強大魅力的美男子。只要我一放 鬆自己，他便會支配我整個天性，控制我整個心靈，甚至影響我的工作，我 的藝術。你知道我的個性一向獨立自主，從不受任何外來的影響。但是自從 我認識他以後—我真不知如何向你解說。」7 (“As I turned around I saw Du Liankui for the very first time. As we looked at each other, I felt an unknown panic, knowing that I had met an overwhelmingly charming handsome man. If I let go of myself, he would dominate my whole self, my mind, work and art. You know I have always enjoyed independent life without any external influence. But ever since I met him—I do not quite know how to explain this to you.”)

But a closer look would reveal that even this seemingly faithful rendering is in essence a delusion of Wilde’s homosexual poetics. In fact, the translator’s literal portrayal of the painter’s affection surpasses that in the original book.8 In the previous example, the part in bold emphasizes the nature of such attraction: Du Liankui’s desirable physical beauty, but the original text simply reads “personality that is so fascinating,” thus showing how Wang would explicitly verbalize where Wilde tries to reserve. In the scene where Wu Teng (Lord Henry) inquires about the name of the young man “with extraordinary personal beauty,” the translation once again shows such lack of obliqueness, as Bei Xi (Basil) says,「我就是不想將我所喜 歡的人的名字告訴何人。洩漏他的名字就像把他分給了別人似的，也許這是因為 我的占有慾和嫉妒心太強的緣故。」.9 (“I just don’t want to tell the name of someone I like to other people. To reveal his name is like to share him with others, perhaps because I am too possessive and jealous”). As the original text simple says “When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It’s like surrendering part of them,” the translation’s added explanatory part in italics seems all the more straightforward with homoeroticism that Wilde seeks to at once hide and heighten. Later, as the love triangle among the male trio develops, the translation blatantly

6 Du, “The Pictures of Dorian Gray,” 65. 7 Wang, Du Liankui,15 (emphasis mine). 8 Du, “The Pictures of Dorian Gray,” 64. 9 Wang, Du Liankui, 12 (emphasis mine). Sinicized Male-male Desire 42 articulates Beixi and Wu Teng’s rivalry for Du Liankui. See the following juxtaposed examples:

[Basil] drove off by himself, as had been arranged, and watched the flashing lights of the little broughman in front of him. A strange sense of loss came over him. He felt that Dorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had been in the past. Life had come between them.10

[貝席]面色憂沉，獨自上了車，跟在吳騰的「德姆勒」後面。他隱隱望見前 面兩人並頭交談，心裡忽然若有所失，他覺得杜連魁不會再對他像以往一樣 親密了，吳騰已經插入他們兩人之間。11 ([Bei Xi] with a melancholy look got into his car alone and drove following Wu Teng’s Daimler car. He seemed to spot his two friends’ intimate chatting and felt rather empty. He had a feeling that Du Liankui would not be close to him as in the past, as Wu Teng had gotten between them.)

This example once again shows how the translation is comfortable with overt verbalization of the love triangle among the three men. While the original text says “Life had come between them,” the translation directly pinpoints the cause of the distance between Du Liankui and Bei Xi: Wu Teng. This explicitness about male-male relations is taken so much for granted that where Wilde hesitates to verbalize, Wang states it all in simplified textual declaration, as if the subject of homoeroticism does not encounter a censorial audience. This differentiates from the original novel’s deliberate evasion and obliqueness about affirmative and specific reference to male homoeroticism. From the very beginning it is undisputed that Wang’s homoerotic poetics digresses from Wilde’s homosexual subtexts: the former maintains an open, overt attitude, while the latter stresses the art of indirect subtlety. Such difference between Wilde and Wang’s depiction predetermines the following development of homosexual motif. Wang’s overt recognition of male homoerotic relations paradoxically does not produce as much intensity of this desire. Although the translator of Du Liankui does not intend to overlook homosexuality, his abrupt bluntness belittles rather than bespeaks male-male desire. Forgoing the original novel’s painstaking effort to camouflage and express male-male love, the translator treats this desire with alarmingly shocking forthrightness, and by rejecting opposition within and outside the original text, the controversy over and thereby intensity of homoeroticism is greatly diminished. By circumventing a homophobic audience, the

10 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 87 (my italics). 11 Wang, Du Liankui, 91 (my emphasis). Sinicized Male-male Desire 43

translator’s overt recognition implies his reluctance to dwell on detailed portrayal of and hint at such desire, and consequently his matter-of-fact stance suggests a refusal to allow homoeroticism to develop into the centerpiece, which anticipates less intense homosexual desire. Wang’s initial stance that consists of straightforward verbal affirmation drastically differentiates from Wilde’s homosexual expression and predicts a following move that further pulls away from the homosexual desire/subtexts in the original novel. Given the fundamentally very different stance mentioned above, Wang’s homoerotic representation indeed continues to drift away from Wilde’s homosexual expressions. How Wang insists on simplification or even omission of physical depiction of and interaction among male characters is one aspect that attests such digression. What Wilde could not do is to name the male-male desire, but he achieves his goal even more successfully through ambiguous means. For one thing, physical interaction sometimes serves as an indicator of male-male affection. After Lord Henry and Dorian meet each other for the first time,

“You are glad you have met me, Mr. Gray,” said Lord Henry, looking at him. “Yes, I am glad now. I wonder shall I always be glad?” “Always! That is a dreadful word. . . . It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that caprice lasts a little longer.” As they entered the studio, Dorian put his hand upon Lord Henry’s arm. “In that case, let our friendship be a caprice,” he murmured, flushing at his own boldness . . . .12

In the translation such physical intimate gestures as “putting his hand upon Lord Henry’s arm” are deleted and replaced by something less suggestive of intimacy.

吳騰說：「連魁，我很高興認識你，希望我們能做朋友，你呢？」 「我也很高興。」他答道，「希望我們永遠是朋友。」 「永遠！多駭人的字眼！⋯何況這兩個字毫無意義，終身的愛情和短時 的迷戀唯一的差別是，迷戀比較耐久一點。」 他們走進畫室，拿起桌上水晶杯裏的威士忌，微笑地對飲，杜連魁向吳 騰舉杯輕聲說：「既然如此，那我們的友誼就算是一種迷戀吧！」話一出口， 他又為自己的大膽而臉紅。13

12 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 28. 13 Wang, Du Liankui, 32-3 (emphasis mine). Sinicized Male-male Desire 44

(Wu Teng said, “Liankui, I am very pleased to meet you. I hope we could be friends, what do you think?” “I am pleased too,” he answered. “I hope we could be friends forever.” “Forever! What a dreadful word . . . besides this word means nothing; the difference between love for a lifetime and a short caprice is that the latter lasts a little longer.” After they walked into the studio, they raised crystal glasses of whiskey to drink to each other with a smile. Du Liankui toasted to Wu Teng, “In that case, let our friendship be a caprice!” Once he said these words, he blushed at his own boldness.)

Here the translation deletes an erotically charged physical act and opts for a gesture of drinking a toast to each other, a neutral and common manly interaction that decreases the intensity of male homoeroticism. The deliberate properness of male-male interaction also tones down the older man’s verbal seduction. Lord Henry’s daring and seductive remark—You are glad you have met me—is changed into a proper and polite verbal request for friendship in the translation. Despite the explicit recognition of homosexual relation, deleting physical interaction between male lovers dilutes sexual innuendo, which shows Wang’s gradually widening distance from the original novel. Not only physical interaction between men becomes less intimate, but also bodily descriptions of male characters disappear. The original focus on male body in the novel, which entails the writer’s intended male homoeroticism, fades away in Du Liankui. A case in point is the difference between Lord Henry/Wu Teng. Lord Henry is often portrayed showing off his long white pointed fingers, and his seductive musical voice.

[Lord Henry’s] romantic olive-coloured face and worn expression interested [Dorian]. There was something in his low, languid voice that was absolutely fascinating. His cool, white, flower-like hands, even, had a curious charm. They moved, as he spoke, like music, and seemed to have a language of their own.14

These details vanish and end in only one succinct sentence in the translation: 吳騰對 他有股強烈的吸引力.15 (Wu Teng really attracts him.) It is obvious that the translation strives to save up the elaborate depiction of physical attractiveness of this male character. This certainly decreases the homosexual innuendos, as the translation

14 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 25. 15 Wang, Du Liankui, 30. Sinicized Male-male Desire 45

skips how in the original novel Dorian is fascinated by and attracted to his steady mentor—certainly not only because of his eloquence but also his physical merit. Another immediate effect is that it shifts the focus to something other than male body. This reluctance to show male body in the text will be addressed again later in this chapter. With the translation’s contradictory obtrusiveness about the existence of male-male desire and reluctance to dwell on its physical details—thus refusing to mark such desire’s otherness and peculiarity—the male homoeroticism as a motif, subject, turns out to be less visible. Meanwhile deleting male physical interaction and details of male body—de facto rejecting the visibility of homosexual desire—also works to diminish the intensity of homosexual desire. Wang’s translation thus not only distances itself from Wilde’s expressions but also gradually breaks away from homosexual desire.

1.2 Receding Homoeroticism Although at first explicitly articulated, Wang’s homoerotic representation can be observed gradually receding away from the spotlight as the story unfolds. One event serves as a general transition point: when the protagonist meets his first female lover. That is, before Du Liankui meets Xue Bifang, he and his male companions under Wang’s permission express their mutual desire unambiguously. After the advent of the first girlfriend, the former male-male desire surrounding Du Liankui and other male characters start to disappear. It is after the appearance of Xue Bifang that Wang introduces more dramatic modifications to muffle homoerotic desire. One of his moves to pull away from the author’s male-male desire is changing the connotation of the homosexually connected issue of class liaisons. That is, how Wilde and Wang address the question of class liaisons reveals the discrepancy of their representations of male-male desire. This could be observed in an episode preciously after the protagonist encounters his first heterosexual love. When Du Liankui declares his engagement to Xue Bifang, his male suitors’ reaction shifts from jealousy and disappointment to shock about class liaisons. See the following comparison of source and target text:

“She lives with her mother, a faded woman who played Lady Capulet in a sort of magenta dressing-wrapper on the first night, and looks as if she had seen better days.” . . . “The Jew wanted to tell me her history, but I said it did not interest me.” “You were quite right. There is always something infinitely mean about other people’s tragedies.” “Sibyl is the only thing I care about. What is it to me where she came Sinicized Male-male Desire 46

from? . . . ”16

「⋯⋯聽說她母親以前是小有名氣的演員，她父親早已去世，她現在跟 母親和一個哥哥同住在歌廳附近。」 「她的家世不很好。」吳騰又下了評語。 「我愛的是她的才藝。她的出身對我毫無關係⋯⋯」17 (“. . . I heard that her mother used to be a somewhat famous actress. Her father passed away long ago. Now she lives with her mother and brother near the dance-hall. “She does not have a very good family background,” Wu Teng commented again. “I love her talents. Her background does not matter to me . . . .”)

While originally Lord Henry agrees with Dorian’s decision not to dig out Sibyl’s past, the translation emphasizes on the older man’s dissatisfaction of his pupil not finding the right match. The concept of seeing someone of matched social and financial status all of a sudden conveniently becomes an excuse for Wu Teng’s fretting over Du Liankui’s infatuation with a woman. Another example can illustrate this twist on the issue of class liaison. Lord Henry has a long interior monologue, after Dorian leaves for the theater to attend Sibyl’s play.

. . . The separation of spirit from matter was a mystery, and the union of spirit with matter was a mystery too. [Lord Henry] began to wonder whether we could ever make psychology so absolute a science that each little spring of life would be revealed to us. As it was, we always misunderstood ourselves, and rarely understood others . . .18

精神和肉體的分離與融合，是一個不容理解的奧秘。 杜連魁的狂戀也不容理解，至少他戀愛的對象令人費解。我們總是誤解 自己，也不常了解別人。⋯⋯19 (“ The separation and fusion of spirit and body is an incomprehensible mystery.” “Du Liankui’s infatuation is equally incomprehensible, or at least his choice of object of desire is perplexing. We tend to misunderstand ourselves and often understand nothing about others . . . .”)

16 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 60-1 (italics mine). 17 Wang, Du Liankui, 63 (my emphasis). 18 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 64. 19 Wang, Du Liankui, 66; my emphasis. Sinicized Male-male Desire 47

Here the translator inserts the emphasized sentence, and once again reminds the reader of Sibyl’s unacceptable and inappropriate socioeconomic background. This new and different emphasis contrasts interestingly with that in the original novel where class liaisons serve for different purposes. As Chapter Two points out, cross-class relations represented in The Picture of Dorian Gray shadow vaguely the concept of upper class men seeking working class boys in several famous homosexual scandals. Furthermore, Dorian’s cross-class relation with Sibyl also subverts the traditional heterosexuality. If anything, class liaisons challenge the heterosexual expectation and hint at homosexual desire. In Du Liankui, however, cross-class relation turns into a way to mask or tone down jealousy derived from male-male desire. The painter’s shock reinforces this twist all the more, as the following excerpts show:

“Dorian is engaged to be married,” said Lord Henry, watching him as he spoke. Hallward started, and then frowned. “Dorian engaged to be married!” he cried. “Impossible!” “It is perfectly true.” “To whom?” “To some little actress or other.” “I can’t believe it. Dorian is far too sensible.”20

⋯⋯吳騰坐下不久，貝席便隨著侍者進來，問主人道：「連魁還沒有來？」 「他就來，你曉不曉得他訂婚了？」吳騰笑笑請他坐下。 貝席似乎不信，蹙眉問道：「連魁訂婚了？他怎麼沒有告訴我？」 「他也沒有告訴我，他是用信通知我的。」 「你那天知道的？」 「今天早上。」 「他跟那位小姐訂了婚？」貝席好奇地望著他朋友。 「跟一個什麼歌廳裡演唱的女孩子。」 「我不信，連魁不會這麼傻！」貝席不悅地說。21 (. . . Shortly after Wu Teng sat down, Bei Xi walked in with the waiter, asking the host, “Is Liankui here yet?” “He will here soon. Do you know that he just got engaged?” Wu Teng smiled and invited him to take a seat.

20 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 79 (my italics). 21 Wang, Du Liankui, 83-4 (my emphasis). Sinicized Male-male Desire 48

Bei Xi frowned in disbelief and asked, “Liankui is engaged? But he did not tell me anything at all.” “He did not tell me either; actually he informed me via a letter.” “When did you find out about this?” “Just this morning.” “What lady did he get engaged to?” Be Xi asked curiously. “A girl that sings in some club.” “I don’t believe it! Liankui is not that stupid!” Be Xi was upset.)

In this episode, the original dialogue is seemingly faithfully translated. Yet a closer look help reveal that the two passages stress different issues. In the source text, Basil is mostly shocked by the fact that his desired Dorian is going to marry someone else, which directly denotes his future impossible access to his object of desire. His physical reaction is telling evidence—verbs such as “started” “frowned” and “cried” succinctly depict his dismay and denial. Also, if punctuation not being just taken for granted, Basil’s tone of voice, revealed by multiple exclamation marks, entails greater shock about the news of Dorian’s engagement than the knowledge of Sibyl’s social class—his response to her socioeconomic identity appears calm and flat. The translation on the contrary describes Bei Xi’s first reaction as doubt, and his subsequent questions suggest mainly his surprise of not being informed beforehand; it is only after he knows Du Liankui’s fiancé comes from low working class that he is described as upset and caught off guard. Although both the source text and translation show Western and oriental expectation of marrying the right match, the latter enhances this idea and transforms it into a way to temper male-male desire. This general development of toning down male-male desire is also evidenced by one of Wang’s modifications: Lord Henry’s pedagogical mindset is sharply diminished in the translation. One way Lord Henry masks his desire for Dorian is to disembody such desire and derive his pleasure from the exercise of influence.22 He remains a detached spectator that enjoys witnessing the consequence of his influence on Dorian. Turning carnal yearning into pedagogical ambition, Lord Henry carries out his homosexual desire via self-sublimation, which serves to both camouflage and betray his prohibited affection. In other words, pedagogy is indispensable to the homoerotic poetics in the original novel. The target text in question conversely depletes the story of pedagogical overtone after the early part of the novel—as the story goes on, homosexually motivated pedagogy also disappears out of view. For example, after knowing Dorian’s engagement, Lord Henry starts reflecting on this event, a passage heavily tinted with his pleasure in influencing and observing Dorian.

22 Nunokawa, “Homosexual Desire,” 315. See Chapter Two, 20, 21. Sinicized Male-male Desire 49

The translation streamlines this interior monologue into a short paragraph, with a slightly changed emphasis.

He was conscious—and the thought brought a gleam of pleasure into his brown agate eyes—that it was through certain words of his, musical words said with musical utterance, that Dorian Gray’s soul had turned to this white girl and bowed in worship before her. To a large extent the lad was his own creation. He had made him premature . . . 23

⋯⋯雖然他很得意杜連魁因為受了他的影響，而在追求新感受！人生最 大的感受─戀愛。他的靈魂已飛向那女孩的身邊，去愛她，崇拜她。24 (. . . Although he was quite pleased that it was under his influence that Du Liankui now pursued new experiences, with the most powerful experience as romantic love, his soul had now flown to the girl to love and worship her.)

The source text does not simply summarize the quoted passage as it appears at first sight. If we pay attention to its tone of voice—雖然他很得意杜連魁因為受了他的 影響⋯⋯他的靈魂已飛向那女孩的身邊，去愛她，崇拜她 (Although it was under his influence . . ., his soul had flown to the girl to love and worship her; the use of the conjunction, “although,” implies Wu Teng’s far stronger dissatisfaction about the following part of his sentence)—it becomes obvious that Wu Teng does not so much emphasize the pleasure of influencing Du Liankui as simply lament the loss of the lad’s undivided attention. Lord Henry’s pedagogical mindset is thereby significantly played down. This trend continues. The yellow book that has influenced Lord Henry as a young man and then takes over his pedagogical task of mentoring Dorian is largely omitted in the translation.25 Chapter Two has pointed out the significance of the yellow book, which contains homosexual incidents in the first place and also represents the continuous influence of Lord Henry, a replacement necessary for his self dispersal in this erotically suggested teaching. With the homoerotic connotation of pedagogy toned down, virtual omission of the yellow book marks an even more distinct difference between the source and target text. In a way the yellow book does not solely implies pedagogical influence. As Lord Henry first introduces Dorian into the world of male-male desire, his teaching metonymically represents homosexual

23 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 62-3 (my italics). 24 Wang, Du Liankui, 66 (my emphasis). 25 The yellow book is mentioned by Lord Henry and Dorian for multiple times; in the translation its existence and significance is reduced to one single irrelevantly brief reference at the end of the story. Du Liankui, 222. Sinicized Male-male Desire 50

ideologies. Once Lord Henry is made to retreat in order to circumvent overt homosexual expression, the book continues to influence Dorian: it in actuality stands for the homosexual desire. “For years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence of this book. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he never sought to free himself from it.”26 Practically deleting the yellow book, the translation threatens to eliminate erotic pedagogy, and by doing so gradually pulls away from the source text’s homoerotic poetics. The anonymous crowd that worships Dorian after the two male admirers retreat from the story, as explained in Chapter Two, vanishes into thin air in Du Liankui. Wang’s modification of the episode of Dorian’s hiding his picture exemplifies the disappearing universal worship of Dorian. Originally, when Dorian decides to hide the picture, Mr. Hubbard comes to help him carry the picture:

As a rule, [Mr. Hubbard] never left his shop. He waited for people to come to him. But he always made an exception in favour of Dorian Gray. There was something about Dorian Gray that charmed everybody. It was a pleasure even to see him.27

Mr. Hubbard’s amicable attitude conveys the prevalent worship of Dorian. Even Mr. Hubbard’s assistant, a young man, expresses overt worship of Dorian’s charm: “[The assistant] glanced back at Dorian with a look of shy wonder in his rough, uncomely face. He had never seen anyone so marvelous.”28 The translation, however, omits these suggestive details and thus the sense of a crowd adoring Dorian evaporates. This arrangement connects with the general trend in the translation: homoerotic desire become less intense, less thematically prioritized, and as the object of this desire accordingly withdraws from the spotlight, the crowd of worshipers disappear too. So far we have seen how male-male desire has gone through transformation in Du Liankui. Wang’s translation from the very start insists on a very different stance when it comes to homosexual desire. He simply verbalizes such desire in the text. The resulting implication is his sparing the whole set of complicated gay methodology that Wilde utilizes to avoid provoking his audience. This starting perspective ensures less visibility of homosexual desire and thus the intensity of such desire, and moreover it predicts Wang’s deviation from Wilde’s homosexual subtexts. In other words, since abrupt acceptance of homosexuality implies no assumed opposition, there is hence no need to find ways to simultaneously cloak and articulate male-male desire. This alone would predict a less intense homosexual politics in the translation. Although the

26 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 137. 27 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 130. 28 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 133. Sinicized Male-male Desire 51

translation textually pinpoints moment when the triangle relations develops, ripens and erupts, it refuses to provide lucid physical details that suggest intimacy. Namely, men’s mutual interaction is appropriated to abide by acceptable behavioral code. Even their verbal exchanges are tailored to demonstrate properness. Physical details about male characters’ bodies and gestures are omitted. The attempt to tone down homosexual desire is taken to the next level after the first female lover of Du Liankui enters the story, as Wilde’s homosexual subtexts are explicitly modified or removed: a twist in the episode of class liaison eliminates male-male desire; Lord Henry’s pedagogical mindset is diminished; the sense of a crowd that admires and worships Dorian is deleted. Wang’s homoerotic representation appears to initiate from open recognition and gesture toward repression of homosexual desire along with the intrusion of heterosexual relation, which simultaneously concurs with his digression from Wilde’s homosexual subtexts.

2. The Working of Traditional Chinese Male-male Desire The previous analysis of Wang’s translation unearths an undisputed departure from the original gay subtexts behind the seemingly faithful rendering. If Wilde’s homosexual subtexts are diminished, what is the residual homoerotic desire manifest in Wang’s translation? Certain characteristics of Wang’s homoerotic portrayal could serve as telling hints, leading toward what might govern Wang’s translation. First, this representational method enables the translator’s propensity to obliterate the intrusion of homophobia, as Wang blatantly verbalizes the existence of male-male desire. Second, whatever freedom from homophobic concern this depicting devise provides, it also dictates or requires a gradual diminution in homosexual desire. These two features, when placed within the scope of Wang’s translating strategy, gesture toward male-male desire in the target culture. My argument is that like Wang’s translating strategy, recontextualization, his representation of male-male desire also echoes the traditional Chinese homoeroticism. My following textual analysis of Wang’s homoerotic representation will showcase the dominance of Chinese male-male desire.

2.1 Chinese Male-Male Desire Emerging: Subject/Object Pattern Before I delve into Wang’s homoerotic depiction, it is necessary to address the form of Chinese male homoeroticism.29 Modern Taiwan society is deeply influence by

29 To refer to Chinese male-male desire as homosexuality would be anachronism. Tze-lan D. Sang discusses the awareness of and respect for historicity. The term, homosexual, is an identity construct that has its specific history and cultural context. Similarly, gay, queer, lesbian invoke the history of such identity formations and the subculture in connotation. However, she admits that, historicity can only be respected with limits, as a long list of historically specific terms would render relevant analysis unreadable. Tze-lan D. Sang, The Emgerging Lesbian: Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 30-34. For the sake of functional readability, I avoid Sinicized Male-male Desire 52

Western homophobia, but—perhaps to great surprise of many modern readers—ancient Chinese male-male desire was a sexual practice not stigmatized as nowadays. Scholars that have addressed sexual life in Chinese culture contribute to the knowledge about ancient Chinese male-male desire, such as Liu Dalin in his Xing de lishi 性的歷史, and Kang Zhenkuo with her study, Aspects of Sexuality and Literature in Ancient China 重審風月鑑：性與中國古典文學.30 Bret Hinsch in particular completes a comprehensive study on Chinese male homosexuality in his Passions of the Cut Sleeve: the Male Homosexual Tradition in China. These scholars provide ample evidence of the general tolerance of male homosexuality.31 One straightforward example would be the societal attitude toward the oldest recorded form of male-male desire, court favoritism. Kang Zhengguo points out that criticisms of these favorites centered on their potential threat to the emperor’s integrity and political management. Much ancient writing usually juxtaposed the danger of nanse 男色 and nuise 女色 to politics.32 Thus if there was any objection to male favorites, it was because favoritism contributed to the speedy fall of a dynasty, namely its political opportunism’s pernicious effects.33 Both male favorites and concubines traded sex for political, social and economical power. David Johnson even singles out this route as the only way for “the plebeian upstart to rise to high status.”34 In this way, male-male desire was evidently not viewed as a perverse practice. Another obvious example is marital union of two men in ancient Chinese homoeroticism, with the older man

utilizing excessive historic terminologies, therefore there are times when I would use modern identity constructs such as homosexual, gay to refer to male-male desire in pre-modern China. However, in general, desire within men in imperial China is termed “Chinese male homoeroticism”, nanse, Chinese male same-sex desire to minimize confusion in this present study. 30 Liu Dalin 劉達臨, Xing de lishi 性的歷史 (Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu, 2001), 510-530. Kang Zhangguo 康正果, Aspects of Sexuality and Literature in Ancient China 重審風月鑑：性與中國古典 文學(Taipei: Rye Field, 1996), 109-149. Also see Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization, 215-229, and Song Geng, The Fragile Scholar: Power and Masculinity in Chinese Culture (Aberdeen: Hong Kong UP, 2004), 126-140. Pan Guangdan 潘光旦, “Zhongguo wenxian zhong de xingbian tai ziliao 中 國文獻中的性變態資料” in Fan Xiong, Zhongguo gudai fangzhong wenhua tanmi (Taipei: Shin Chan She, 1996), 375-408. Wang Shunu 王書奴, Changji shi 娼妓史 (Taipei: Daibiao zuo, 2006), 50-53, 67-72, 232-236, 310-318. 31 See Bret Hinsch’s Passions of the Cut Sleeve: the Male Homosexual Tradition in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). Homosexuality here only addresses sexual desire within men in pre-modern Chine. As for the female-female desire, although there is not significant amount of written records available for analysis, Tze-lan D. Sang points out with existent literature that female-female desire could be seen fitting into polygamy, but such desire between women are often treated as laughable, unauthentic form of love or desire, and easy to manage. Also, unlike men who only need to carry on the family descent line, under the marriage imperative female-female desire meets more denial and repression. Sang, The Emerging Lesbian, 52-65, 91-93. 32 Kang, Aspects of Sexuality, 112. Also see Liu, Xing de lishi, 510-511. 33 Hinsch, Cut Sleeve, 59. 34 David George Johnson, “The Medieval Chinese Oligarchy: A study of the Great Families in Their Social Political, and Institutional Setting” (Ph. D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1970), 92, quoted in Hinsch, Cut Sleeve, 62. Sinicized Male-male Desire 53

named qixiong 契兄 and the younger qidi 契弟.35 The fact that these male-male marriages could co-exist with heterosexual marriages illustrates a predominant lack of hardcore hostility to male homoeroticism. Formally, Chinese male-male desire is generally structured according to a subject/object and masculine/feminine pattern, or trans-generational, class-structured, and trans-genderal homosexuality. 36 In the form of trans-generational male homosexuality, it is usually an older man paired with a boy. Class-structure male-male desire describes a financially and socially powerful man with a poor and socially inferior man, court favoritism for example. Because the older man is usually socially superior and financially more powerful, these two types of male-male desire often were interrelated to each other, resulting in a general subject/object pattern based on age and socioeconomic status. This subject/object pattern came to be genderized and thus intermingled with masculine/feminine role differentiation which very much resembles husband/wife union in that one partner adopts the female role in “her” dress, behavior, mentality and identity. 37 When addressing the Self/Other theories of Jacques Lacan, Edwards points out the feminine-Other as the object of masculine-Self sexual desires.38 This sexualized desire of the feminine by the masculine has decisive influence and power over any interaction between masculine and the feminine—the only conceivable contact with the feminine is through the sexual gratification of masculine desire—which could be utilized to interpret male-male relations as well. With this Self/Other theory reread the other way around, for the masculine Self to seek sexual pleasure from a male, he needs to “othernize” and feminize him first. These three kinds of male-male desire in a nutshell often turned out to correspond to each other, resulting in a rather predictable and consistent set of patterns of male-male relations: dominant/submissive, old/young and masculine/feminine demarcation within two men. The former role of these relations constitutes a desiring subject while the latter is viewed and views himself as an object of desire. Such intermingling also points out a common paradigm among these homoerotic forms: they share a same fundamental concept. Confucian understanding of human relationships emphasizes a pairing of dominant and submissive—the ultimate set of one-sided relations like father/ son, emperor/minister, older/younger brother, husband/wife—in turn Chinese

35 Liu, Xing de lishi, 523-524. 36 Hinsch, Cut Sleeve, 11-13. Hinsch points out that the fourth social expression, egalitarian paradigm, is not common in the Chinese tradition, but can be found in Red Chamber Dream. I will discuss this later. For typologies of “trans-generational,” “class-structured,” “trans-genderal” and “egalitarian,” see David Greenberg, The Construction of Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 25. 37 This form of male-male desire was actualized in male-male marriage between qixiong and qidi; the younger, passive partner goes through womanly experiences in Chinese narratives. See Kang, Aspects of Sexuality, 128-148. 38 Louise P. Edwards, Men and Women in Qing China: Gender in the Red Chamber Dream (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001), 40. Sinicized Male-male Desire 54

male-male desire also follows such a principle to organize erotic relationship and experience between men.39 These parameters of defining male-male desire were so deep-rooted that a man’s love for another outside of these boundaries was virtually unimaginable for ancient Chinese homoeroticism. Also, this remaining within the scope of orthodox philosophy in the society seems to explain the lack of acrimony and prejudice against the practice of male homoeroticism. Wang’s translation clearly shows a lack of homophobia in that the translator does not evade overt recognition of the existence of male-male desire. It marks a different attitude and disparate strategy from homosexual subtexts in the original novel. As a preliminary evidence, this explicitness gestures toward Chinese male homoeroticism, which as a way of representation affords (the propensity of) lack of homophobia. Namely with ancient male homoeroticism as his representational mode, Wang has no trouble verbalizing, recognizing the fact of male-male desire, because there is no presupposition of hostility and phobia. This shows again that right at the very beginning Wang makes it clear that he is utilizing a different way to understand and represent homosexual desire. Following the initial flagrant declaration, the rest of Wang’s depiction of homosexual desire continues to be governed by his chosen representational device, even though at first sight it appears to be faithful rendering. Modified male behaviors are the foremost element that reveals such working.

2.1.1 Transforming Male Effeminacy Male behaviors go through modifications in Du Liankui. In The Picture of Dorian Gray the male characters betray feminine behaviors, and male effeminacy itself as explained in Chapter Two, cloak and express male-male desire. The translation seems to faithfully transcribe such subversion of gender behaviors: in the early part of the novel, Dorian’s effeminate demeanor threatens to defy his identity as a man. Not unlike Dorian in the source text, Du Liankui in the translation blushes like a shy little girl, and bursts into crying with unmanly tearful eyes, as the following excerpts show:

杜連魁轉過身來，一臉固執、撒嬌的神氣。他一見到吳騰，便雙頰發紅，又 窘又害臊地站起來向貝席說，「對不起，我不知道有客人在。」40 (Dorian turned around, with a stubborn and playful look. When he saw Wu Teng, he blushed. He stood up, shy and embarrassed, to apologize to Bei Xi, “Pardon

39 Confucian emphasis on dominant/submissive human relationship based on age and social status bears a strikingly similarity to trans-generational and class-structured male-male desire. Meanwhile, comparing emperor/minister to husband/wife relation, as Song points out, entails a politicization of gender discourse which defines a socially inferior man as a woman in front of his male superiors. For example, male ministers often spoke in a feminine voice, when they addressed the emperor. Song Geng, “Jasper-like Face and Rosy Lips: An Intertextual Reading of the Effeminate Male Body in Pre-Modern Chinese Romances,” Tamkang Review 33, no.1 (Autumn 2002): 95 and his The Fragile Scholar, 15. 40 Wang, Du Liankui, 23. Sinicized Male-male Desire 55

me. I did not know you have a guest.”)

吳騰走出畫室，見杜連魁正把臉湊近一枝雪白的茉莉花，像喝美酒似的 深深吸著花的香味。41 (Wu Teng walked out of the studio, seeing that Du Liankui was sniffing the flagrance from snow-white jasmine, as if he was drinking wine.)

「我嫉妒一切美而不衰的東西，我嫉妒你為我畫的這幅像，因為它能保 持我會失去的美⋯⋯」他說著，眼眶盛滿了熱淚。他把貝席的手推開，倒在 沙發上，將臉埋在手裏⋯⋯42 (“I am jealous of anything whose beauty never fades. I am jealous of this painting of myself you just completed, because it will forever retain the beauty I will lose . . . ,” he said with his eyes full of tears. He then pushed away Bei Xi’s hands, threw himself on the sofa, and covered his face with hands . . . . )

In these examples listed above, Wang preserves the original novel’s characterizations of Dorian’s feminine shyness, womanly behavior and excessive sentimentality. The translation appears to leave intact this unconventional male behavior which works to cloak homosexual desire. Yet, in spite of Du Liankui’s well-preserved femininity in the translation, one of his male counterparts who also displays effeminacy behaves otherwise. Wu Teng in Du Liankui ceases demonstrating feminine deportment or effeminate behaviors; instead, multiple evidences suggest an endeavor to mark his manliness. Let us see a few examples of Lord Henry’s femininity in The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Lord Henry smiled, and, leaning down, plucked a pink-petalled daisy from the grass, and examined it. . . . “Yes; she is a peacock in everything but beauty,” said Lord Henry, pulling the daisy to bits with his long, nervous fingers . . . plucking another daisy.43

[Lord Henry’s] cool, white, flower-like hands, even, had a curious charm.44

. . . Lord Henry [dipped] his white fingers into a red bowl filled with rose-water.45

41 Ibid., 29-30. 42 Ibid., 60. 43 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 10-12. 44 Ibid., 25. 45 Ibid., 224. Sinicized Male-male Desire 56

In the first quoted example, Lord Henry repeats the act of plucking and fingering with flowers, while conversing with Basil. In the second passage, his hands are compared to flowers. The last quoted excerpt shows Lord Henry’s use of rose-water to clean and perfume his fingers. Such depictions endow a touch of femininity to Lord Henry. The translator of Du Liankui tones town such effeminate implications, as Wu Teng only momentarily picks a flower to smell the scent once. Feminine-suggestive details about this character, such as “flower-like hands” and “white fingers,” invariably vanish in the translation. Other examples suggest Wang tries to present a much more masculine character. See the following excerpts:

From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum . . . .46

一輛馬力強大的「德姆勒」轎車穩靜地由敦化南路駛入仁愛路。銀色的 車身在陽光下閃耀著，令人目眩。車內坐著一位青年紳士吳騰，一面駕駛一 面抽著菸，神態瀟灑。行到一幢高大的住宅前，他把車煞住，輕輕地按了一 聲喇叭，然後將菸蒂放在菸灰盒內。47 (A powerful Daimler car quietly drove from Dunhua South Road to Renai Road. The silver car shined dazzlingly in the sun light. Inside the car sat a young gentleman Wu Teng, who drove and smoked at the same time, with a manly dashing aura all around him. When he drove to a magnificent mansion, he brought the car to a halt, gave a light honk, and put out the cigarette stud on the ash tray.)

These two passages show how Wu Teng enters the story with a more macho image.48 While Lord Henry in the original novel is rendered sedentary, lying on a divan, Wu Teng is given more action-packed depiction in the translation, driving a masculine car—with great horsepower. Diction exposes such difference too. The original passage is filled with ennui and insipidity, which differentiates greatly from its translated counterpart, whose diction exhibits virility and vigor. Words in the

46 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 5. 47 Wang, Du Liankui, 9 (emphasis mine). 48 This beginning scene of the translation also reminds that in one of Bai Xianyong’s short story “Liangfu yin 梁父吟” which starts as 一個深冬的午後，臺北近郊天母翁寓的門口，一輛舊式的黑 色官家小轎車停了下來，出門打開，裏面走出來兩個人。前面是位七旬上下的老者，緊跟其後， 是位五十左右的中年人。In portraying this masculine character, Wang seems to bring in intertexts from his contemporary writer, Bai. Bai Xianyong, Taipei ren 臺北人 (Taipei: Chenzhong, 1974), 101. Sinicized Male-male Desire 57

translation such as 馬力強大,高大 give forth macho implications. The way smoking is portrayed also separates the two. This character in the novel tranquilly enjoys cigarettes in a flower-scented studio, but in Du Liankui, his demeanor emanates manliness and briskness—一面駕駛一面抽著菸，神態瀟灑. That Du Liankui’s femininity is preserved, but Wu Teng’s is not reveals a determining parameter for male effeminacy. In the original novel, Wilde utilizes male effeminacy as one of his homosexual subtexts. The male effeminacy is itself a hint of homosexual desire and does not depend on one’s relation with the other man. Wang preserves but bases male feminine behaviors on certain criteria. Or more correctly, Wang enacts the feminization of passive men rather than preserve Wilde’s homosexual subtexts. What marks the difference between Du Liankui and Wu Teng is their role in a male erotic relation: the former is a younger, submissive object of desire, while the latter is an older, dominant male suitor. In the intermingling of dominant/submissive, old/young and masculine/feminine structures of male-male desire, the young, submissive male is practically always expected to adopt the feminine role, and Du Liankui’s femininity reflects such Chinese homoerotic presuppositions. This re-representation of male effeminacy further evinces Wang’s dependence on ancient Chinese male-male desire. Du Liankui’s effeminacy does not remain the same till the end as in the original novel. His changing effeminacy/masculinity further illustrates the working of Chinese male-male desire. Indeed the protagonist fully retains his effeminacy only in the early part of the translation. Evidences show that Du Liankui gradually becomes a more masculine character, and his behavior shifts from persistently overt to conditional femininity. When Du Liankui just enters the world of male-male desire under his male friends’ guidance, he acts effeminate as in the original novel. However, once Du Liankui is positioned within a heterosexual relationship, his effeminacy alters. More manly depictions replace details about his femininity. After the night Sibyl’s flawed acting disappoints Dorian, the latter wakes up to go through letters. Compare the following two excerpts respectively taken from Du Liankui and The Picture of Dorian Gray.

[杜連魁]走進書房，拿起信來逐封地拆看⋯⋯有一個大信封，裏面是汽 車代理商寄來的目錄。他翻開看到一輛英國的「馬賽拉帝」跑車的圖片，感 到濃厚的興趣。雖然他的「費拉利」非常名貴，他仍想再買一輛更新的跑車。 49 ([Du Liankui] walked into his study room and went over letters . . . . There was a big envelop, inside which was a car dealer catalog. He opened it up and

49 Wang, Du Liankui, 103 (emphasis mine). Sinicized Male-male Desire 58

was greatly intrigued when he spotted a picture of a British Masaladi sports car. Although his Ferrari was already a luxury, he still wanted to purchase a newer sports car.)

[Dorian] . . . turned over his letters . . . . There was a rather heavy bill, for a chased silver Louis-Quinze toilet set, that he had not yet had the courage to send on to his guardians . . . .50

Both the translation and original novel stress the protagonist’s vanity and his desire for luxuries, but in terms of gender behavior they differentiate from each other. Du Liankui desires something that typically associates with men: fast sports cars. His interest in manly cars is substantive enough to solicit a catalog from vehicle companies. That Du Liankui wants to own expensive cars adds some masculinity to his characterization. On the contrary, in the original novel, Dorian covets “a chased silver Louis-Quinze toilet set,” a set of articles used in grooming such as a mirror, brush and comb. The toilet set implies the desire to enhance physical appearance, thus suggesting a feminine decorative nature in Dorian’s interest. The source text emphasizes Dorian’s need to remain the object of desire by maintaining his good looks, but the translation stresses Du Liankui’s masculine hobby. Other examples also provide evidence for Du Liankui’s vanishing femininity. One of them is the episode of hiding the portrait. In the original novel, the framed painting is too heavy for Dorian to carry to the schoolroom upstairs, and thus he requests help from the frame-maker Mr. Hubbard and his young assistant. It shows Dorian’s excessive gentlemanly refinement, and more importantly, his inability to complete physical labor suggests femininity. At the same time Mr. Hubbard’s flattering help resembles a chivalrous favor for the female. Wang omits the manual labor provided by Mr. Hubbard, and enables Du Liankui to carry the painting single-handedly, depleting the effeminate connotation and thereby reinforcing his physical manliness. Although Du Liankui’s masculinity grows evident, he still resumes to feminine behaviors when placed within male-male relations. For example, when Du Liankui is with male friends, the translator tones down but still retains his effeminate crying. The first of the following passages is at the beginning part of the novel when Du Liankui cries for jealousy of his portrait with the presence of his male companionship, before he begins to show masculinity. The next two passages show that after Du Liankui gradually rids his feminine behaviors, he would resume to womanly sentimentality with actual weeping, when placed in a male-male erotic context. Du Liankui cries

50 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 101-2 (my italics). Sinicized Male-male Desire 59 while he sits with Wu Teng and Bei Xi in a singing performance of Xue Bifang; also Du Liankui’s sentimental weeping is preserved in the presence of Gan Boer/ Campbell, allegedly his former male lover. These examples of Du Liankui’s womanly crying show that in the condition of male partners’ presence his effeminacy is retained despite the trend in the translation that intends to cast virility over the protagonist.

他說著，眼眶盛滿了熱淚。他把貝席的手推開⋯⋯杜連魁擡起頭來，面色蒼 白，眼淚汪汪地看著[貝席]。51 (. . . he said with his eyes full of tears. He then pushed away Bei Xi’s hands . . . .Du Liankui looked up with his pale face and tearful eyes at [Bei Xi].)

「你們請便，我不要人陪。」他的聲音微抖，眼睛濕潤。他取出一塊白 紗手帕暗暗地擦了一下眼。 「那我們先走了。」吳騰溫和地說。貝席望了杜連魁一眼，勉強地隨著 他朋友走出歌廳。52 (“You could just leave. I don’t need any company.” His voice was quavering, eyes tearful. He took out a white handkerchief to wipe his tears. “All right we will leave first,” Wu Teng responed gently. Bei Xi looked at Du Liankui and reluctantly followed his friend walking out of the dance-hall.)

甘柏爾轉過身來，走到窗前，忽然看見杜連魁的眼眶裏充滿了淚水。53 (Gan Boer turned around and walked to the window; suddenly he spotted Du Liankui’s eyes full of tears.)

The resumption of Du Liankui’s effeminacy in the context of male-male relations reinforces how Wang’s rendering is based on Chinese male homoeroticism. This return to femininization stands out in particular, as the translation shows a trend of recasting the protagonist as an increasingly masculine, manly character. Such abrupt and overt feminization of a man when situated in a male-male erotic context—especially when this male character is positioned as a submissive object of desire—illustrates that male-male relations in the translated text can not escape from such a norm of viewing the passive partner as the feminine, further bespeaking the working of Chinese male homoeroticism in Wang’s homoerotic representation.

2.1.2 Reinforcing Sinicized Homoerotic Role Pattern The analysis of male effeminacy has shown the resurfacing of Chinese male-male

51 Wang, Du Liankui, 36. 52 Ibid., 96. 53 Ibid., 172. Sinicized Male-male Desire 60

desire as a replacement or substitute for Wildean gay expression. The diminishing femininity of Dorian in turn mirrors the dominant/submissive pattern in Du Liankui. As Dorian’s age and social status and dominance (his fatal influence to young men signifies his later dominant mentor role) increase, he in the original novel could still act effeminate: Wilde sees no incongruity in this split between erotic role and gender behavior. In the translation, this disparity eventually creates unsustainable contradiction: although Du Liankui grows old, experienced and dominant in male-male relations, his unchanged effeminacy continues marking him as the submissive, passive role in Chinese male-male relations. Du Liankui’s femininity has to be curbed in order to solve this unacceptable “fault.” Behind the diminishing femininity of the protagonist is an emphasis on pattern of Wang’s depicting method. Fundamentally, Wang’s reliance on Chinese male-male desire suggests the very existence of the original homosexual desire is preserved because it closely resembles what Wang bases on for homoerotic representation. In Wilde’s novel, Dorian is desired and admired by his two elder friends, Lord Henry and Basil. The scene where Basil is depicting Dorian’s physical body and Lord Henry is lecturing the lad on paradoxical philosophies—Basil is manipulating Dorian’s perception of his body, while Lord Henry is enslaving Dorian’s mind—epitomizes this male trio’s position in their erotic relations: Dorian, the younger, passive, submissive, dominated; Lord Henry and Basil, the older, active, dominant. Campbell, albeit younger than Dorian, expresses the motivation of his involvement with Dorian, “it was . . . that indefinable attraction that Dorian seemed to be able to exercise whenever he wished.” “To [Campbell], as to many others, Dorian Gray was the type of everything that is wonferdul and fascinating in life.”54 In this example, Campbell is shown to be a desiring subject, while Dorian is a desired object.55 Had not the original male-male relations looked similar to Chinese homoeroticism, it is hard to say whether it would be retained in the translation. The current fact undoubtedly reinforces Wang’s utilization of Chinese male-male desire, as all preserved male-male relations do not trespass outside of Wang’s preferred representational basis. Namely, with the unequal positions as premise and rationale, the erotic dynamics among the male trio are accepted and thus preserved by the translator. It helps to observe Wang’s response when male-male desire directly conflicts with his representational method. If adherence to the conventional insistence on passive/active sexual roles dependent on the disparity of social status and age could

54 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 177. 55 The translation accentuates this point further: 何況杜連魁具有誘人的吸引力，能迷住所有和他交 往的人⋯⋯他也認為杜連魁是男人中最美妙，最迷人的典型 (Besides Dorian possessed charming charisma and can attract everyone that befriended with him . . . [Campbell] also thought that Du Liankui was the most beautiful and charming type of man). Wang, Du Liankui, 166. Sinicized Male-male Desire 61

enable survival of male-male desire in the translation, deviations from such norms could also lead to denial and thus textual omission. The scene in the original novel where the framemaker and his young assistant help Dorian carry his heavily framed portrait of himself to the schoolroom reveals the framemaker’s chivalrous admiration for Dorian, and of course the young assistant’s covetously gazing at Dorian’s charismatic beauty. These two characters, one of lower social status, the other of both inferior social status and younger age, are not supposed to desire a socially superior or elder man in accordance with Chinese homosexual assumptions, because the older, socially superior man tends to be the desiring subject, instead of the desired. This scene of the two characters lusting after Dorian conflicts with Wang’s representational framework and is completely omitted and replaced by the version wherein Du Liankui simply carries his portrait upstairs alone. An ultimate epitome of how Wilde’s homosexual subtexts is replaced by Wang’s Chinese homoeroticism is the transition from an exemplar homoerotic intertext of the Western culture to that rooted in the target culture: from Greek male-male love to Chinese novel Red Chamber Dream 紅樓夢. Greek male-male love has served as a potent cultural signifier for homosexuality in Wilde’s novel. In Chapter Two I have identified how this Greek rhetoric is utilized to openly hint at the secret homosexual desire. This Greek trope is largely removed from Wang’s translation, and new allusions to Red Chamber Dream can be observed. The beginning of Du Liankui seems to transcribe Greek evocations faithfully. For example, Basil and Lord Henry’s deployment of Greek rhetoric is shown verbatim in the target text,「他卻已不知不覺地為我下了一個新的藝術定義。這定義包含了浪 漫主義的熱情和古希臘時代精神的完美」.56 (“He has unknowingly set up a new definition of art, which includes the passion of Romanticism and perfection of spirit in ancient Greek era). 「回到古希臘時代肉體與精神和諧的理想生活中」. 57 (“Returning to ancient Greek ideal life of the union of body and mind). However, when direct Greek allusions are employed to describe characters or emotion metaphorically, they tend to be omitted. Lord Henry first inquires about the subject in Basil’s painting: “[This] young Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves. Why, my dear Basil, he is a Narcissus . . . .”58 Here good-looking youths from Greek mythology are omitted in Du Liankui. 59 Also, when Lord Henry contemplates on Dorian, he evokes Greek worship of male beauty: “Grace was his, and the white purity of boyhood, and beauty such as old Greek marbles kept for us.”60

56 Wang, Du Liankui, 17 (emphasis mine). 57 Wang, Du Liankui, 27 (emphasis mine). 58 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 7. 59 Narcissus appears later in the translation, seemingly only because this allusion has a clear moral that Wang can utilize. I will address this later in Chapter Four. 60 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 41. Sinicized Male-male Desire 62

Again, this reference to “Greek marbles” is nowhere to be found in Du Liankui. Dorian’s self-talk, “Like the gods of the Greeks, he would be strong, and fleet, and joyous” is likewise deleted.61 Wu Teng’s interior monologue is deprived of the overt allusion to Plato and this philosopher’s writing on male-male love in the translation, “Was it not Plato, that artist in thought, who had first analysed it? . . . But in our country it was so strange. . . .”62 This leaving out direct Greek allusions reaches the pinnacle, when Bei Xi’s face-to-face confession to Du Liankui omits every keyword related Hellenic evocation: “I had drawn you as Paris in dainty armour, and Adonis with huntsman’s cloak and polished boar spear. . . . You had leant over the still pool of some Greek woodland . . . .” 63 Wang erases “Paris,” “Adonis,” and “Greek woodland” completely. The tangible concept and imagery of Greek male-male love, paiderastia, is either toned down or omitted. It is clear that Lord Henry’s pedagogical mindset is tamed in Du Liankui. The symbolic continuing of his influence, the yellow book, is also virtually effaced. Since Lord Henry’s pedagogy echoes the ancient Greek male homoeroticism, pederasty, this modification results in the attenuation of Greek rhetoric. As the term derives from the combination of pais (Greek for “boy”) with erastēs (Greek for “lover”),64 it directly denotes the erotic desire of adult men for adolescent boys’ beauty, although in Plato and Xenephone’s opinion, such love is chaste and sexless. Suggestive keywords concerning such worship of the beauty of a boy recur throughout The Picture of Dorian Gray, such as “boyhood,” and “boy,” which are invariably neutralized as childhood, child, a young person or being young in the translation. See the following examples:

「連魁，你正是青春年華。」65 ( “Liankui, you are in the prime of youth”) “You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood”.66

他有幼童的純潔。67 (He had the purity of children.) “the white purity of boyhood”68

61 Ibid., 114-5. 62 Ibid., 42. 63 Ibid., 123. 64 Wikipedia, s.v. “Pederasty in Ancient Greece,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty_in_ancient _Greece (accessed December 15, 2006). 65 Wang, Du Liankui, 27(my emphasis). 66 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 23 (italics mine). 67 Wang, Du Liankui, 47 (my emphasis). 68 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 41(my italics). Sinicized Male-male Desire 63

這個青年和以前在貝席畫室裏那個怕羞的孩子宛若兩人。69 (“How different he was now from the shy, frightened child he had met in Bei Xi’s studio!”) “How different he was now from the shy, frightened boy he had met in Basil Hallward’s studio!”70

使自己永保青春。71 (“he might keep all the delicate youth.”) “he might keep all the delicate loom and loveliness of his then just conscious boyhood.”72

他自己依舊會像今天一樣地年輕力壯73 (“he would keep the glamour of youth and vigor.”) “he would keep the glamour of boyhood.”74

像個玩累後酣睡的孩子。75 (“He looked like a child who had been tired out with play.”) “He looked like a boy who had been tired out with play, or study.”76

他多麼渴望自己童年時的純潔─百合花似的潔白77 (“He felt a wild longing for the unstained purity of his childhood, his lily-white childhood.”) “He felt a wild longing for the unstained purity of his boyhood—his rose-white boyhood, as Lord Henry once called it.”78

And these are only a few examples in Du Liankui. Throughout The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde always uses “boyhood” and “boy” when narrating the character Dorian, who in effect forever maintains his boyish beautiful appearance.79 This obsession with boy love vanishes in the translation, where Du Liankui and other female

69 Wang, Du Liankui, 64 (emphasis mine). 70 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 60 (my emphasis). 71 Wang, Du Liankui, 101 (my emphasis). 72 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 98 (my emphasis). 73 Wang, Du Liankui, 116(my emphasis). 74 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 114 (italics mine). 75 Wang, Du Liankui, 163 (emphasis mine). 76 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 173 (my italics). 77 Wang, Du Liankui, 226(my emphasis). 78 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 234-5(italics mine). 79 In The Picture of Dorian Gray, words like ‘child’ and ‘childlike’ appear only in the description of Sybil. Such neutral terms are never applied to the character Dorian. Sinicized Male-male Desire 64

characters are invariably referred to as and compared to a child, and the Greek erotic potion that fuels the original novel’s homoeroticism is further rendered inaccessible in Du Liankui. Red Chamber Dream, alluded to multiple times in the translation, undisputedly includes the dominant/submissive, masculine/feminine patterns of male-male desire which as shown above, Wang utilizes in his homoerotic representation. David Evseeff lists multiple examples in his study describing how traditional Chinese male-male desire is reenacted in this Chinese novel: for example, the character Xue Pan 薛蟠 adopts the dominant, older role that seeks younger boy, feminine actors for his male-male desire.80 Quoting Red Chamber Dream thus does echo and at the same time reinforce Wang’s deployment of Chinese male-male desire. But the aspect wherein quoting Red Chamber Dream powerfully attests Wang’s Sinicized male-male desire is the fundamental concept of male homosexuality in ancient Chinese culture, or as I briefly term it, male bisexuality. This aspect will be addressed later. While studying the male-male desire in Red Chamber Dream, Evseeff identifies an idealized egalitarian male-male love that differentiates from the traditional male-male relations. The novel juxtaposes the new and old male-male desire in the story. In this new, subversive male-male desire, the prescribed boundaries such as social status, age and femininity are demolished. The result is a “subject-subject” relation.81 Behind the proposal of no norms, no forms of this male-male love is elevation of “lust of the intent 意淫,” an actual abandonment of traditional, exploitative male-male “lust of the flesh 濫淫.” The traditional forms that shape and define male-male desire signify an exploitative kind of relationship. The dominant/submissive, old/young, masculine/feminine patterns entail subject/object role allocation, wherein the more powerful man can dominant, control, and exploit the less powerful partner.82 The forms of Chinese male-male symbolize and at the same time perpetuate such selfish gratification of lust of the subject role. So far Wang’s translation has demonstrated a meticulous emphasis on formal conformity to the traditional patterns of male-male desire. As mentioned above, such prescriptive forms are a collective signifier of “lust of the flesh,” so the translator’s obsessive focus on subject/object “forms” itself reveals his intention to accentuate the exploitative nature of male-male desire. Wang’s evocation of Red Chamber Dream, if anything, does not introduce any of the subversive, egalitarian male-male love in the novel. Rather, by bringing in the juxtaposition of traditional and unconventional male homoeroticism in the Chinese novel, the translator reconfirms his preferred

80 David Evseeff, “Studies in Classical Chinese Male Homoerotic Literature” (MA Thesis, National Taiwan University, 2006), 94, 112, 121. 81 Evseeff, “Chinese Male Homoerotic Literature,”118-9. 82 Kang, Aspects of Sexuality, 110-1. Sinicized Male-male Desire 65 representation of male-male desire, and more importantly enhances the particular implication of such choice. In other words, Wang ties his homoerotic representation to traditional norms, and to make clear the insinuation of the nature of such desire he quotes Red Chamber Dream, wherein the idealization of subversive male-male love all the more reveals the selfish, superficial, destructive nature of the traditional Chinese male homoeroticism. Interesting enough, replacing Greek trope with Chinese male-male desire with the exploitative, destructive aspect enhanced, works with the plot virtually seamlessly. In fact, Wang’s employment of Chinese male-male desire depicts the destructive male-male relations more truthfully than Wilde’s Greek paiderastia. Wilde’s use of Greek rhetoric is more of as his last resort, as he taps the history for available expressions that can simultaneously cloak homosexual desire in his time, and it might not completely do justice to the male-male relations he wants to depict. Chapter Two has pointed out that the relationship between Lord Henry and Dorian is fundamentally disparate from Greek love, with the former consistently inducing the latter to fall deeper into ruin, instead of educating the youth for the better according to the ennobling purpose of paiderasita. Wang’s depiction underscores the exploitative side of male-male desire—with the signifier of such exploitation, patterns of Chinese male homoeroticism, dominating his homoerotic representation—and straightforwardly parallels with Lord Henry’s selfish mindset. In terms of male homoerotic depiction, Wang removed homosexual subtexts, and planted Chinese male-male desire in the translation. From the very beginning Wang exhibits a very different attitude: his overt verbalization of the fact of male-male desire indicates an alternative representational framework at work. Within male-male desire, patterns of men’s erotic relations and their behaviors are re-structured according to recontextualized homoerotic tradition. Male effeminacy is in particular tailored to fit traditional homoerotic assumptions. Transforming homoerotic intertext from Greek male-male love to Red Chamber Dream works to enhance Wang’s Sinicization of homoerotic lingo, and furthermore it pinpoints the exploitative nature of traditional male-male desire that Wang intends to highlight. This aspect of Chinese male-male desire fits in better with the general storyline than the original Greek paiderastia. Wang’s recontextualization not only tailors the text to the target culture, namely casting Chinese “roles” in the Western homoerotic script, but also by choosing to reinforce specific characteristics in Chinese male-male desire that echoes plot line, makes the translated text semantically and metaphorically more coherent. In other words, Wilde’s utilization of Chinese male homoeroticism on top of acculturization, has the value of contributing the meaning of the story. Such Chinese male homoerotic representation fits in the context of the story, presenting a (mis)conception that his Sinicized Male-male Desire 66

translation is a Chinese story, and Du Liankui and other men are reenacting the conventional male-male desire.

2.2 Chinese Male-Male Desire at Work: Male Bisexual Life Cycle In the first section of this chapter, the general analysis of Wang’s treatment of Wilde’s homosexual expressions suggests not only a different representational method, but also a gradual diminution in homosexual desire itself. I would argue that this development is a necessary part of Wang’s deployment of Chinese male-male desire. It will help to bring in a special feature of Chinese male homoeroticism first: male bisexuality. Hinsch observes that many Chinese men experienced both heterosexuality and homosexuality during their lives, and identifies the prevalence of bisexuality over exclusive homosexuality.83 Early sources revealed how bisexuality was assumed as the human norm.84 In later historic and fictional texts could be found an intricate intermingling of heterosexual marriage and slave favorite.85 The new pornographic genre of the Ming Dynasty, for example, described their protagonists as womanizers who also involved with their male servants quite like “their exuberant heterosexual escapades.”86 This masculine sexual freedom often mixed homosexual desire and bisexual behaviors, exhibiting the fluidity of masculine sexual desires.87 Chinese homoeroticism never truly developed its own autonomy, and instead it was often understood or expected to be male bisexuality wherein men gazed at both women and passive men as objects of sexual desire. That is to say, heterosexual desire and homosexual desire had a complementary relation in Chinese erotic views. However, the complementary dynamics of homosexual and heterosexual did not mean Chinese male bisexuality was an equal half-half composite of the two. There was a clear hierarchical order within Chinese bisexual desire. Giovanni Vitiello observes that the term wai 外 often occurred in compounds in reference to homosexuality, literally meaning “external” and he argues that this term also had the connotation of “other,” “heterodox,” and “deviant.’88 This bespeaks the unequal

83 Hinsch, Cut Sleeve, 11. It is not that there was no prototype of today’s male homosexuals in ancient China. Surely there were men who not only preferred men but also rejected women. However, the number of such pure homosexuals is not significantly high, or more correctly, there is not enough documents available to show such proto-gay identity. 84 Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization, 217. Crompton mentions that one of the earliest source, for example, is Intrigues of the Warring States 戰國誌. 85 Hinsch, Cut Sleeve, 49. Hinsch lists several anecdotes to describe the Chinese bisexual behaviors. One of them is in Duanxiu pian 斷袖篇 edited by Wuxia Ameng 吳下阿蒙, where the general has a wife and a slave boy at the same time. 86 Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization, 231. Examples include The Golden Lotus 金瓶梅 and The Prayer Mat of Flesh 肉蒲團. 87 Hinsch, Cut Sleeve, 136. 88 The section dedicated to homosexuality Feng Menglong’s Qing Shi is called “Qing wai 情外.” Relevant terms include hao wai 好外(“to be fond of men”), haowai bi 好外癖 (“the passion for men”), Sinicized Male-male Desire 67

positions of these two desires. In this sense, heterosexuality was proportionally the norm, against which homosexuality was defined. 89 To describe Chinese male bisexual desire more correctly, it was homoerotic desire that complemented orthodox heterosexuality. Plus, the previously discussed male effeminacy itself revealed how the dominant man looked for effeminate stereotypes on a passive male object of desire: the submissive male was desired for his resemblance to a woman, which shows the Chinese male-male desire was really the heterosexual desire projected onto an alternative object. In a nutshell, homosexual and heterosexual desire coexisted, but there was also the undeniable inequality of the two: heterosexuality was the orthodox, the major, the more common form of sexual interaction, while homosexuality, the additional, extra, alternative source of sexual pleasure. For this reason, there was a nebulous and subtle expectation of the masculine return to the heterosexual life. This indicates the end of revelry of youth and beginning of responsibility of procreation, and more importantly it reinforces the secondary position of homosexual pleasure to heterosexuality. Age acted as an important catalyst for relational change and pushed the need to return to heterosexuality. This is particularly embodied in the passive partner of male-male desire. When boys, adolescents with passive roles became grown men, they would start taking active roles and often desiring women, adhering to what Hinsch terms “a sexual life cycle.”90 Just like his master who was entitled to “amphibious” bisexuality, the passive boy crossed from his homosexual region to heterosexual sphere, when he reached maturity or adulthood. Thus this necessary part of Chinese male-male desire, male bisexuality, conceptually requires a gradual diminution of homosexual desire, and at the same time a clear transition to heterosexual life. How this aspect of Chinese male-male desire is included in the translation can be preliminarily attested in my previous observation of the downplayed intensity of homosexual desire. Apart from that, Wang’s re-depiction of the female by far best magnifies the inevitable inclusion of Chinese male bisexual concept by simultaneously reducing male-male desire and reinforcing the transition of male sexual life cycle.

2.2.1 Femme Fatale: Women as the Object of Desire In Wang’s translation, depictions of women are greatly transformed to pave the way for the bisexual aspect of Chinese male-male desire—to attenuate homosexual desire, and anticipate heterosexual interest. This necessity to incorporate

etc. Giovanni Vitiello, “The Dragon’s Whim: Ming and Qing Homoerotic Tales from the Cut Sleeve,” T’oung Pao LXXVIII (1992): 349. 89 Vitiello, “The Dragon’s Whim,” 349. Kang observes that in Chinese erotic literature, sexual affairs with beautiful boys were usually added to male promiscuous indulgence in heterosexual desire: nanse 男色 was always the additional sexual stimulus to nuise 女色. Kang, Aspects of Sexuality, 136-7. 90 Hinsch, Cut Sleeve, 10. Kang, Aspects of Sexuality, 136. Sinicized Male-male Desire 68

heterosexuality dictates introduction of women into male-male relations. In turn, women characters gain better visibility and are enabled to intrude and disrupt the previously exclusive male terrain. That Xue Bifang becomes a singer instead of an actress has significant implications. Sibyl’s theatrical career that originally entails identity confusion, especially gender misconception, essentially problematizes Dorian’s love for women: his infatuation with Sibyl is not so much desire for women as a camouflage for male-male desire. In Du Liankui, Xue Bifang as a female singer is validly loved, valued and disserted as a woman, which inevitably confirms Du Liankui’s heterosexuality.91 After Sibyl’s suicide, Dorian neither mentions nor misses her again, suggesting his lack of any residual desire for her. The translator, however, describes Du Liankui having such a lasting strong attachment to Xue Bifang that Wu Teng needs to take him to tour abroad for oblivion, an incident contrived by Wang: 杜連魁忘不了薛碧芳。吳騰見他悶悶不樂，於是建議他們結伴到歐美各地去遊 覽.92 (Du Liankui could not forget Xue Bifang. Wu Teng saw that he was moody, so he suggested a trip to Europe and America.) Besides, in the translation Du Liankui mentions Xue Bifang many more times, emphasizing how her influence lingers on in his memory:「那女孩子長得很美，非常像薛碧芳，也許就為了這點，她吸引住我。」 93 ( “That girl is very pretty, very much like Xue Bifang. Maybe that is why I am attracted to her.”)「不要亂講，你使我想起薛碧芳，我受不了。」.94 (“Stop it! You are reminding me of Xue Bifang, and I can’t stand it.”) Wang’s revision of the character Sibyl reinforces the female power over Du Liankui, enabling the feminine to intrude into the formerly male world. As the female gains more power and visibility in Du Liankui, they also eventually take over the young men whom Du Liankui is interested in and brings fatal effect to, claiming to be the major object of desire. The target text particularly emphasizes masculine physical/sexual lust for the female. From Wu Teng’s interior thoughts comes a statement that hints at male carnal desire for the female: 吳騰對他 朋友狂戀歌女的事感到興趣。他心想杜連魁對那女孩子必是因為好奇而發生了愛 意，好奇加上生理上的慾念.95 (Wu Teng was rather interested in his friend’s infatuation with a girl singer. He thought that Du Liankui’s romantic emotion must have come from his curiosity and his physical desire.) In comparison with the original text, Wang’s amendment looks all the more obvious: “His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences.”96

91 Chan observes this in his “The Poetics of Recontextualization,” 470. 92 Wang, Du Liankui, 135. 93 Wang, Du Liankui, 213. 94 Wang, Du Liankui, 214. 95 Wang, Du Liankui, 67 (my emphasis). 96 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 64; my emphasis. Sinicized Male-male Desire 69

Wang changes “desire for new experiences” into “physical desire” (生理上的慾念), which transforms the original desire for “myriad lives and myriad sensations” into a simple male lust for the female body. Du Liankui’s need to visit whorehouses demonstrates how the urgent desire for the female body looms in the translation, as the following vivid depiction exhibits male carnality.

杜連魁付了車錢，邁步走向一條小巷。⋯⋯巷子兩旁都是古老矮小的房 屋，每戶門前三三兩兩地站滿了妓女，有的在拉客，有的在嚼口香糖，巷子 裡擠滿了閒人。杜連魁加快腳步穿過人羣，慾念使他的神經跳動⋯⋯97 (Du Liankui paid for the car fare and walked into a small lane. . . . The lane was lined with small shabby houses, in front of each stood hookers. Some prostitutes were soliciting, and some chewing gum. The lane was packed full of people. Du Liankui sped up passing the crowd, his nerves twitching with desire . . . .)

Along with women characters’ increasing visibility and desirability is a deliberate display of the female body, instead of male body. While in the original novel, Dorian is constantly being gazed and admired at by both men and women, the narration in Du Liankui inclines to an emphasis on male voyeurism for the female body. There are multiple scenes of a single female figure being showcased under the desiring gaze of male audience. Two female characters are prominent examples of such modification in the target text: Xue Bifang (Sibyl) and Madam Ma (the Duchess). When Du Liankui takes his two male companions, Bei Xi and Wu Teng, to attend Xue Bifang’s singing show, the pairing of a female body on display and male spectators is reinforced: 他們在前排最好的位置上坐下⋯⋯旁邊坐了十幾個長髮的青年，有些 在喝可樂，有些在抽菸.98 (They sat down on the best seats in the front row . . . next to them sat about a dozen of long-haired young men, some of whom were drinking Coke, some smoking.) In the source text, the audience includes not only “the youth” but also “some women.” The translation however seems to suggest the audience is exclusively male. Descriptions and characterizations of Madam Ma (the Duchess) reiterate all the more the emphasis on a displayed female body. The man-woman interaction at a tea party is telling enough, as the following three passages, added to the target text, could illustrate.

對面白夫人坐在杏紅色皮墊上，假裝在聽馬先生形容他上星期在香港馬路上

97 Wang, Du Liankui, 186. 98 Wang, Du Liankui, 93. Sinicized Male-male Desire 70

被太保攔截的事，實際上她正在注意漂亮的董律師，而後者的眼神卻投在馬 夫人身上。99 (Madam Bai sat on the apricot-red leather cushion, pretending that she was listening to Mr. Ma’s story of how he got held up by gangsters in Hong Kong. But she was actually paying attention to the chic Attorney Dong, whose gaze was at Madam Ma instead.)

「⋯⋯今天我穿得太少了，有點涼。」[馬夫人說] 杜連魁正要過去把拿她椅背上的外衣，吳騰先一步順手拿起來，很殷勤地為 [馬夫人]披上，帶笑地對杜連魁說：「你不會怪我吧，我奪取了你的權利。」 100 ([Madam Ma said,] “. . . I was not wearing enough today. It is a bit cold.” Just before Du Liankui was going to grab her coat hung on the back of her chair, Wu Teng did so, and chivalrously put the coat over Madam Ma, at the same time smiling at Du Liankui. “I took away your advantage. I hope you will not be offended.”)

這時幾位男客都過來圍著馬夫人談天。你一句、我一句，使這位年輕美 麗的少婦難以應付。101 (At this moment all male guests came surrounding Madam Ma for conversation. This young, beautiful married woman hardly could handle this overwhelming attention to her.)

This social gathering shows Madam Ma is the object of male desire. First, she is described being gazed at. Then Du Liankui and Wu Teng are competing to please her chivalrously. Lastly, when Du Liankui walks away to pick some orchids for her dress, Madam Ma is instantly and overwhelmingly surrounded by other interested male guests. Compared to the original novel, where the narration only shows a series of ongoing conversation among Dorian, the Duchess and Lord Henry, but mentions nothing about the Duchess’s popularity among male guests, the translator of Du Liankui ostensibly attempts to display the female charm, creating an impression that women are gazed at, flattered chivalrously and desired. Wang also puts forth a conscious effort by supplementing additional description to reiterate the beauty of the displayed female body. Desired females tend to conform to Chinese stereotypes of female beauty: they are pure, innocent, and femininely and

99 Wang, Du Liankui, 193. The Duchess is rewritten as Madam Ma 馬夫人. 100 Ibid., 196. The woman here is the Duchess. 101 Ibid., 198. Sinicized Male-male Desire 71

naturally beautiful.102 In the target text, Xue Bifang and other women that Du Liankui desires fit such stereotypical female beauty. In the first of following examples, Du Liankui describes Xue Bifang’s natural beauty to his male companions. In the second example, he likewise finds the female natural beauty very appealing.

「⋯⋯那時碧芳正在臺上。她穿著一件粉紅色的旗袍，頭髮披在肩上，臉上 沒有化妝，完全是自然的美⋯⋯103」 (“. . . Bifang was on the stage. She wore a pink cheongsam, her hair draping on the shoulders, her face radiant with natural beauty without makeup . . . .”)

杜連魁初次遇見她時，她正好光著腳在樹上採橘子，髮絲被風吹得紛亂，像 野花一般嬌美。玉蘭和臺北的小姐們迥然不同，連魁非常迷戀她自然野放的 美。104 (The first time Du Liankui met Yulan, she was on a tree barefoot picking oranges. The wind blew her hair all around and she was beautiful like a wild flower. Yulan was rather different from ladies in Taipei. Liankui was very attracted to her natural beauty.)

More examples evince Wang’s stress on stereotypical female beauty. The male trio’s talk about Sibyl’s ability to dominate the audience is transformed into a unanimous agreement on Xue Bifang’s beauty and purity:「她像天仙一樣美，有天 使似的歌聲。」.105 (“She is beautiful like the divine, and her voice is like an angel’s.”) 「她一定是個又美又純潔的天仙。」.106 (“She must be a beautiful and pure angel.”) 貝席也被她的美吸引住，將她當作一件藝術品來欣賞.107 (Bei Xi was also attracted to her beauty, viewing her as a piece of artwork.) Also, Lord Henry’s comment on Sibyl’s acting skills is transformed into Wu Teng’s belief that Xue Bifang is being too innocent and naïve to have a relationship. “I see by The Standard that she was

102 This stereotype of feminine purity actually originates from what Edwards calls traditional “either pure or profane” approach to women in Chinese narratives in which to ensure that the female sexuality is efficiently controlled, propagating the virtue of chastity goes to two extremes: women are either chaste or promiscuous. Stressing the female purity de facto entails the masculine anxiety and fear when this female sexuality is not under control, when it is “impure” and “profane.” Thus in Chinese culture, the desired version of the female of course is the innocent, naïve, pure girl. Wang’s depiction of women fits these stereotypes. See Edwards, Men and Women in Qing China, 52, 56. 103 Wang, Du Liankui, 86. 104 Ibid., 204. Yulan 玉蘭, a character added to Du Liankui, is one of the women Dorian courts. 105 Wang, Du Liankui, 93. The speaker is Du Liankui. The original novel narrates, “when she acts you will forget everything.” Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 89. 106 Wang, Du Liankui, 94. The speaker is Bei Xi. The source text is “any girl that has the effect you describe must be fine and noble.” Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 89. 107 Wang, Du Liankui, 94. The original text reads “Basil Hallward leaped to his feet and began to applaud,” and never verbalizes Basil’s comment on Sibyl’s physical beauty. Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 90. Sinicized Male-male Desire 72

seventeen. I should have thought she was almost younger than that. She looked such a child, and seemed to know so little about acting.”108 The translation reads instead:「很 慘，這樣年輕就死了。報上登她才十六歲，我以為她還沒有這樣大呢，她看起來 像個小孩子，還不懂戀愛。」.109 (“Terrible, she died so young. The newspaper said she was only sixteen. I thought she was even younger. She looked such a child, and knew nothing about having a relationship.”) This example shows the translator of Du Liankui ostensibly reiterates Xue Bifang’s purity and innocence. Although the source text does sometimes describe the attractiveness of women characters, its narration does not dwell on them. In the original novel, description of female beauty is as succinct as one word, and there is no observable attempt of reinforcing women’s desirability.110 On the contrary, Wang endeavors to recreate the female splendor as crystallization of beauty. Those examples provided above show that female attractiveness comes from their looks and purity, which fit with Chinese stereotypical expectation of female desirability. That the translation not only showcases women’s physical beauty but also adds to them certain traits inherent in the target culture has some repercussions: It declares its focus on female beauty, and also evokes target readers’ recognition of such beauty. As the female body becomes the centerpiece of sexual desire, and as female beauty is given culturally evocative characteristics, characters like Xue Bifang and Madam Ma overshadow the originally most desired Du Liankui who formerly exercises his pronounced beauty and effeminacy as his source of charisma. This display and praise of female beauty fundamentally differentiates from Wilde’s deliberate stress on worship of male beauty. If we are to reflect on a previous discussion in this chapter on the translator’s reluctance to show the physical interaction among male characters, and along with such reservation, its deliberate omission of descriptive details of the male body, Wang’s arrangements would fall into place. In order to reinforce the worship of female beauty, the translation cuts down on descriptive details of male bodies that would interfere with the working of its preferred object of desire: the female body. In this way, decreased visibility of the male body matches the effect of increasingly hyped female beauty on display. That the pictures of Dorian originally kept by Lord Henry in his house are nowhere to be seen in Du Liankui is a rather straightforward example of such modification. While Dorian awaits Lord Henry’s return to his residence, the latter’s wife, Lady Henry, comes home first instead:

At last he heard a step outside, and the door opened. “How late you are,

108 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 107 (italics mine). 109 Wang, Du Liankui, 108 (my emphasis). 110 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 207. For example, the Duchess is described no more than as “pretty.” Sinicized Male-male Desire 73

Harry!” he murmured. “I am afraid it is not Harry. Mr. Gray,” answered a shrill voice. He glanced quickly round, and rose to his feet. “I beg your pardon, I thought—” “You thought it was my husband. It is only his wife. You must let me introduce myself. I know you quite well by your photographs. I think my husband has got seventeen of them.” “Not seventeen, Lady Henry.” “Well, eighteen, then. And I saw you with him the other night at the Opera.”111

⋯⋯聽見有人進來。[杜連魁] 便頭也不擡的說：「吳騰，這麼晚才回來。」 「我是吳太太，」一個尖亮的聲音應道。「你是杜先生吧？」 杜連魁忙把書放下，紅著臉起身說：「妳好，我還以為是吳騰。」 吳太太向他曖昧地一笑：「你不認識我；我倒認識你。前天晚上我還看 見你跟吳騰在一起看平劇⋯⋯」112 (. . . [Du Liankui] heard someone walking in. Without even looking up he said, “Wu Teng, you are really late.” “I am Mrs. Wu,” answered a shrill voice. “You must be Mr. Du.” Du Liankui put down the book and rose to his feet, blushing, “I beg your pardon, I thought you were Wu Teng.” Mrs. Wu smiled ambiguously, “You don’t know me, but I know you quite well. The other night I saw you and Wu Teng watching a Ping Opera . . . .)

Other examples evince Wang’s attempt to elevate women’s position in the story. The misogynic sentiment that overruns the original novel becomes less acrimonious, and almost in the guise of shortening textual length, some acute woman-hating comments are deleted and even replaced with glorifying overtones. The example of Wu Teng’s wife, Mrs. Wu (Lady Henry) can best illustrate this argument. In the original text, Lady Henry’s brief moments of visibility in the story exhibits a merciless misogynic judgment.

[Lady Henry] laughed nervously as she spoke, and watched [Dorian] with her vague forget-me-not eyes. She was a curious woman, whose dresses always looked as if they been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest. She was usually in love with somebody, and as her passion was never returned, she had

111 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 51 (my italics). 112 Wang, Du Liankui, 56. Sinicized Male-male Desire 74

kept all her illusions. She tried to look picturesque, but only succeeded in being untidy. Her name was Victoria, and she had a perfect mania for going to church.113

The narrator’s tone of voice is distant and detached, almost as if this passage exists only because of obligation. This quick succession of depiction describes Lady Henry as both a pathetic and unlikable character. Her love life is far from satisfactory. Her tastes do no fare any better at all. Her “perfect mania” for going to church suggests the narrator’s disapproval, as the novel incessantly criticizes the middle-class obsession such as moral and religion. In Du Liankui, this characterization gains a new interpretation. The woman-hating sentiment is gone. Mrs. Wu is instead an elegant woman with a slim body and fine taste in fashion. Formerly someone who is never loved, she is now transformed into somewhat of a beauty. Again, what is originally pejorative about this character is deleted in the translation, and even replaced with physical merit: 她身材苗條，服裝高貴。臉不算美，但卻給人一種美人的印象.114 (She was of slim build and donned elegant clothing. She did not have an absolutely beautiful face but gave an impression of beauty.) Even the misogynic guru Lord Henry becomes less of a woman-hater: his cruel comments about women are toned down. For example, when Lord Henry says “A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on,” Wu Teng in the translation forgoes such acerbic statement and says instead,「就拿馬 夫人來講，她對你的一番情意，連瞎子都看得出來。」.115 (“Take Madam Ma for example, her love and affection for you is obvious even to the blind.”) Here Wu Teng (Lord Henry) is talking to Du Liankui (Dorian) about Madam Ma (the Duchess); instead of mocking women’s obsession with spectacle like Lord Henry does, Wu Teng in the translation simply humorously points out Madam Ma’s interest in Du Liankui. Wang’s re-depiction of women produces a twofold effect, which anticipates the concomitant sexual life cycle in Chinese male-male desire. Women characters, under Wang’s representational maneuvers, gain more visibility and have the power to disrupt the world of masculine desire. Overall, women characters are more visible because they have more power to influence the masculine life. At the same time, this visibility is in a literal sense, for the female body is being showcased and openly desired under the male gaze in Wang’s portrayal. These modifications suggest women are re-defined as more desirable. On tope of that, misogynic sentiment, one of the homosexual subtexts, is greatly toned down. This enhanced female desirability parallels directly the declining male-male desire, which is actualized in Wang’s effort

113 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 51. 114 Wang, Du Liankui, 56. 115 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 219; Wang, Du Liankui, 206. Sinicized Male-male Desire 75

of avoiding showing the male body. The female body becomes visualized, while the male body is textualized abstractly and eventually rendered invisible. Thus the original domain of male homoeroticism is disrupted and reorganized in accordance with the focus on female desirability. That is, the masculine desire is re-directed to the female as the object of desire, a move that further attests Wang’s reliance on Chinese male homoeroticism.

2.2.2 Falling For the Female: The Shift in Masculine Sexuality To prepare for the required transition from homoerotic desire to heterosexual life, Wang recreates a new aesthetic standard by hyping the female as the ultimate object of desire, which also entails systematic omission of male desirability. Given these premises, what can be observed is an unmistakable effort of reconstructing heterosexual relations as the unproblematic sexual norm in Du Liankui, by changing homosexual camouflages into unproblematic heterosexual desire. The transition point of male-male desire to heterosexual life seems to concur with the introduction of Xue Bifang (Sibyl). That is, efforts to disambiguate heterosexual desire occur most obviously after the first female intrusion into male-male world. Meanwhile, revision of this female character itself can exemplify this modification. Gender confusion generated by her original acting career disappears when she becomes a singer and thus cancels out the ambiguity of Dorian’s sexuality. It is arguable whether Sibyl becomes a singer out of necessity. In Du Liankui, Wang writes about several Chinese opera shows.116 Since Wang recognizes attending acting performance is a relatively common activity in Taiwan of his time, transcribing verbatim Sibyl’s acting career in the translation theoretically should be feasible, and by implication, so is homoerotically charged cross-dressing. Wang’s revision unavoidably rules out homosexual implications, and in turn unambiguously validates a heterosexual relation. Virtually dis-guising homosexual camouflage, Wang rewrites drug addiction that formerly enables gay mutual recognition and self-constitution, as inability to curb heterosexual desire.117 Dorian’s quest for drug are turned into Du Liankui’s multiple visits to brothels, which emphasizes male lust for women.118 This consequently forces homosexual camouflage to vanish. Dorian who can not consummate his male-male desire in broad daylight can only seek satisfaction and oblivion through

116 For example, Lady Henry (吳騰的妻子) tells Dorian that「前天晚上我還看見你跟吳騰在一起看 平劇⋯⋯」. Lord Henry invites Dorian to see an opera show,「今晚你可不要悶在家裏，跟我出去吃 個晚飯。飯後再去聽一齣戲。今天演的是玉堂春⋯⋯」. Wang, Du Liankui, 56, 108. 117 Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 173. See her discussion for the link between drug addiction and homosexual expression. 118 Du, “The Pictures of Dorian Gray,” 64. She observes that the episode of the whorehouse has an effect of disabling homosexual overtone. Sinicized Male-male Desire 76

substance. With the drug episode removed, homosexual innuendo withdraws from the translation. On top of that, Du Liankui’s needs to visit whorehouses confirm the dominating heterosexual interest in his sexuality.119 The source and target text give rise to different moral consequences: while Dorian’s drug addiction is a symptom of decadence and degeneration, whose concepts are inseparable from homosexual desire, visiting female prostitutes incriminates Du Liankui as a whoremonger and womanizer.120 One prostitute describes Du Liankui as:「哼，他常到這裡來玩女人， 沒有人知道他是誰。他長得漂亮，又年輕，又有錢，人家都叫他王子。」.121 (“He came here to womanize. None knows who he is. Since he is young, rich, and has a pretty face, everyone calls him Prince Charming.”) 「他是一個嫖客，現在不要我 了，我恨死他。」.122 (“He is a whoremaster and now doesn’t desire me any more. I hate his guts.”) As the solid proof of Dorian’s vices respectively in the source and target text, drug addiction and visiting brothels result in completely different implications: The Picture of Dorian Gray seeks to reveal and conceal male-male desire, while Du Liankui diminishes implications of male-male desire, and reinforces heterosexual desire. Even though Dorian does not vigorously pursue women in the novel, Wang still enhances Du Liankui’s image as a womanizer and an aggressive suitor, reaffirming his heterosexual interest. In the original novel, Dorian never explicitly shows urge to court women. His brief passionate involvement with Sybil gives an ambiguous tip-off:

“ . . . But when did you speak to Miss Sibyl Vane?” [said Lord Henry]. “The third night. She had been playing Rosalind. I could not help going round. I had thrown her some flowers, and she had looked at me; at least I fancied she had. The old Jew was persistent. He seemed determined to take me behind, so I consented. It was curious my not wanting to know her, wasn’t it?” “No, I don’t think so,” “My dear Harry, why?” “I will tell you some other time. Now I want to know about the girl.”123

In this passage, Dorian describes to Lord Henry how he officially meets Sibyl. Interestingly, Dorian admits his “not wanting to know her” personally, and in response to that Lord Henry says he does not think it is odd, and will tell Dorian the reason

119 Du, “The Pictures of Dorian Gray,” 65. Du points out that in Du Liankui Dorian is transformed from a bisexual to heterosexual. 120 For the link between decadence and homosexuality, see Bristow, “Wilde, Dorian Gray, and gross indecency,” 49-51. See my discussion on Chapter Two, 14, 24-26. 121 Wang, Du Liankui, 188 (emphasis mine). 122 Ibid., 191(my emphasis). 123 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 59. Sinicized Male-male Desire 77

“some other time.” This conversation almost openly informs the reader of Dorian’s heterosexual ennui and Lord Henry’s not fully disclosed omniscience of the truth of Dorian’s sexuality. Du Liankui, however, is a more aggressive suitor that shows great eagerness to meet Sibyl.

「我每天去聽她唱，當然認識她。後來，我時常送些花籃給她。因此她 開始注意我，在演唱的時候，常看我一眼，有時臉上露出微笑，像是在對我 笑。有一晚，我叫老闆帶我到後臺休息室去見她。」124[杜連魁說。] (“I go to listen to her singing every night, so I know her of course. I had often sent some flower baskets to her, so she started to notice me. When she was singing, she often looked at me, and sometimes even seemed to smile at me. One night I asked the club manager to take me backstage to meet her.”[said Du Liankui.)

Here instead of “not wanting to know” Xue Bifang, Du Liankui willingly and proactively requests to meet her in person. This passage is one of the examples that depicts Du Liankui as an aggressive admirer and reiterates his heterosexual enthusiasm. Another example is the reversal of the Duchess and Dorian’s roles. In the original novel, as a married woman the Duchess seeks to flirt with Dorian, and therefore Lord Henry warns her to beware. “You are flirting disgracefully with [Dorian],” said Lord Henry to his cousin. “You had better take care. He is very fascinating.”125 The novel only avows Dorian’s charm to win over both men and women, but not his effort to court the female. In Wang’s translation, however, it is Du Liankui that pursues Madam Ma relentlessly. 吳騰便對馬夫人半開玩笑地說：「杜先 生對你很殷勤，妳要小心。他很迷人。」.126 (Wu Teng half-jokingly said to Madam Ma, “Mr. Du treats you rather solicitously. You had better be careful. He is quite charming.”) After transforming Dorian’s ennui to eagerness to court women, as if in case Du Liankui’s dominating heterosexual interest is not clarified enough, Wang further enhances the vice of womanizing by adding another girl who falls prey to Du Liankui: 玉蘭是他最近在永福里小村中結識的一個天真活潑的鄉下姑娘⋯⋯.127 (Yulan was a lively and naïve country girl her recently met in a small village of Yongfu borough.) Wang strips the story of homosexual camouflages, such as Sibyl’s gender confusion and drug addiction, to make male-male desire withdraw steadily from the

124 Wang, Du Liankui, 62 (emphasis mine). 125 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 211(my italics). 126 Wang, Du Liankui, 198 (emphasis mine). 127 Wang, Du Liankui, 204. Sinicized Male-male Desire 78

stage. He simultaneously reiterates heterosexual involvements, by, for instance, depicting Du Liankui as a womanizer. Wang’s revision inevitably and gradually dismisses male same-sex desire that has surrounded the original novel and marks opposite-sex relations as the dominating sexuality in the translation. To complete such transition to heterosexual politics, Wang fills up gaps of ambivalence in the source text with definitive clarity: whenever ambiguities arise as to the desired gender, he invariably assumes the female as the object of desire. When Dorian calls his love with Sybil “the greatest romance” of his life, Lord Henry tells him that, “. . . But you should not say the greatest romance of your life. You should say the first romance of your life. You will always be loved, and you will always be in love with love.”128 While Lord Henry in Wilde’s novel does not clarify who will love Dorian, the translation assumes they are women:「⋯⋯你不該說那是你一生中最重要的戀愛， 而該說是你的初戀才對。連魁，很多女孩子會愛你的。」.129 (“. . . You should not say the most important romance of your life. You should say the first romance of your life. You will always be loved by many girls.”) Lord Henry says to Basil later, “I hope Dorian will make this girl his wife, passionately adore her for six months, and then suddenly become fascinated by someone else. He would be a wonderful study.”130 In Du Liankui, his words turns into:「我希望連魁會娶這個女孩子，狂熱地愛他一年 半載，然後他會又愛上另一個女孩子。我們等著瞧吧！」.131 (“I hope Du Liankui will marry this girl, passionately adore her for six months, and then suddenly fall in love with another girl. Let’s wait and see.”) Lord Henry originally does not specify the gender of whom Dorian will fall in love with, but in the translation Wu Teng defines that as a female. Similar examples multiply in the translation. When Lord Henry dines with Basil and Dorian, he comments, “Yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays. I should fancy that the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich.”132 Lord Henry’s unspecified “beautiful sins” sinisterly suggests male-male desire, but Wang rejects that possibility, as the translation reads:「不錯，我們為任何事都要付出過高 的代價。我認為窮人真正的悲苦是他們只有自制。他們買不起桃色的罪惡。艷事 是有錢人的特權。」.133 (“ Yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays. I should fancy that the real tragedy of the poor is that they can only afford nothing but self-control. They can not afford man-woman sexual sin, which is the privilege of the rich.”) Here Du Liankui defines beautiful sins as man-woman sexual affairs, as the

128 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 55 (my italics). 129 Wang, Du Liankui, 60 (emphasis mine). 130 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 81 (my italics). 131 Wang, Du Liankui, 85 (emphasis mine). 132 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 85. 133 Wang, Du Liankui, 89 (emphasis mine). Sinicized Male-male Desire 79

term taose 桃色 in Chinese conveys heterosexual connotations. Beautiful sins explained as 桃色的罪惡 therefore defines Du Liankui’s sin as promiscuous affairs with women. Wang’s utilization of Chinese male-male desire for homoerotic representation in the translated text entails, on top of adherence to formal conventions, an inevitable transition for the masculine from homoerotic spree to heterosexual life. To integrate this transition to his homoerotic depiction, the translator embarks on a series of modifications to lay the foundations for the final return to heterosexuality, with the female re-depiction as the most noticeable change. Women cease remaining marginalized. They evidently hold the power over male characters, and the female body is hyped as the major object of male desire, with female beauty featuring culturally recognizable characteristics. On the contrary, male beauty grows increasingly irrelevant—the male body, constantly framed and gazed at in Wilde’s novel, becomes abstract. This asymmetrical development signifies the female desirability and the disappearing male-male desire. At last comes the final actualization of such transition: Wang removes residual homosexual camouflages and revises them textually or provides alternative episodes to disambiguate the masculine desire for the female, to complete the male sexual life cycle from homoerotic infatuation to heterosexual manhood. To return to incorporation of Red Chamber Dream into Wang’s representation scheme, allusions to this Chinese novel not only reflect the formal trait of Sino-based male homoerotic representation, but also reinforce the concept of male sexual transition. Red Chamber Dream, besides including the traditional patterns of male-male desire, in general bases male sexuality on the abovementioned sexual life cycle. Du Liankui is analogous to Jia Baoyu in the translation, 沒有一個富家子弟比 [杜連魁]更懂得高雅的享樂和生活，他被稱為現代的賈寶玉. (No dandy knew more about taste and pleasure than Du Liankui, and her was called the modern-day Jia Baoyu.) In this particular sense, Jia Boayu’s bisexuality reinforces and echoes in Wang’s translation the protagonist’s sexual transition.134 Jia Baoyu’s sexual life clearly transits from his earlier homoerotic desire to heterosexual manhood in that he gains sexual experiences with other youths, before embarking on his well-known triangle relations with two female characters, Lin Daiyu 林黛玉 and Xue Baochai 薛 寶釵.135 Du Liankui too in Wang’s depiction moves from his male-male relations

134 This analogy reaffirms Chinese homoerotic tradition which Hinsch describes as using poetic metaphor referring to earlier men or incidents related to homosexuality. Chinese authors would say whom he resembles, for example. Hinsch, Cut Sleeve, 7. 135 Although Baoyu is pre-exposed to heterosexual experience in the Land of Illusion 太虛幻境 with an imaginary female, Jianmei 兼美, and has one sexual tryst with Xiren 襲人, his real sexual experiences substantially come from being with his male companions (Baoyu has a brief tryst with Xiren in episode 6 of Red Chamber Dream; he meets Qin Zhong in episode 7). Evseeff lists plenty of Sinicized Male-male Desire 80

with Wu Teng and Bei Xi to his heterosexual affairs with Xue Bifang (Sibyl), Madam Ma (the Duchess), the young prostitute, Yuxiang, Yulan and Chunmei (Hetty). On top of the overall parallel, Wang quotes this Chinese novel in a way that reinforces the similitude of sexual transition: Where or when quoting is inserted in the translation enhances the idea of sexual transition. The following two quotes of Red Chamber Dream indicate transition points in Du Liankui’s sexuality, accentuating the working of Chinese male-male desire. The first allusion to Red Chamber Dream occurs when Du Liankui starts to drift from male-male desire: Wang quotes Lin Daiyu’s poem “Song of Buried Flower 葬花吟” shortly after Du Liankui meets Xue Bifang, his first female lover. As Daiyu is one of the female characters who betoken Baoyu’s heterosexual interest, quoting her poem unavoidably implies the beginning of Du Liankui’s interest in women, which literally synchronizes with his encounter with Xue Bifang. This poem’s motif further tones down homosexual desire in the translation. Daiyu’s melancholy reflection on the fleeting time and aging in this poem is overrun with her narcissistic emotions and self-pity.136 In her poem, Daiyu compares herself to the flower and the one who buries the flower, at the same time the flower and flower burier are compared to a pair of lovers. Coincidentally narcissism is in essence a recurring motif used to camouflage homoerotic desire in The Picture of Dorian Gray. However, the oriental self-love manifest in Daiyu’s poem is different from Wilde’s appropriation of Western narcissism that hints at homosexual desire.137 Daiyu’s narcissistic poem does not rebut heterosexual love, for the inaccessibility of Baoyu’s love is preciously one of the reasons she composes this poem. 138 Thus Daiyu’s poem is reminiscent of her unresolved yet desired heterosexual love. Quoting Daiyu’s poem thus subtly transforms Wilde’s evocation of Narcissus as a homosexual hint to an unfulfilled heterosexual love in Du Liankui—the tragic ending of the romantic affair of Du Liankui and Xue Bifang. Thus the first allusion to Red Chamber Dream, Daiyu’s poem, helps indicate Du Liankui’s sexual transition from homosexual to heterosexual

examples to show Jia Baoyu’s homoerotic relations with four men: Qing Zhong 秦鐘, Jing Yuhang 蔣 玉菡, Liu Xianglian 柳湘蓮, and Prince of Beijing 北靜王. Evseeff, “Chinese Male Homoerotic Literature,” 99-113. 136 Zhao Guodong 趙國棟, Wan Hong Lou 翫紅樓 (Taipei: Ya Shu Tang, 2005), 91. Also see Zi Xu 子 旭, Jiedu Hong Lou Meng 解讀紅樓夢 (Taipei: Yun Long, 1999), 206-8. 137 The story of Narcissus entails his rejection of a female, Echo, and a man’s love with another man (his reflection), so it makes it convenient for Wilde to deploy the tale as a homosexual hint. Narcissus metaphor could also be seen being linked to homosexual desire by other gay writers. For example, Bai points out that Narcissus in Greek mythology is in love with his reflection, an act of seeking another self; homosexual love’s nature is also to find self in another subject. Ovid, Metamorphoses, tran. A. D. Melville (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 61-66. Bai Xianyong 白先勇, “Jia Baoyu de suyuan: Jiang Yuhan yu Hua Xiren—jianlun Honglou men de jieju yiyi 賈寶玉的俗緣：蔣玉函與花襲人—兼 論《紅樓夢》的結局意義,” in Di lio zhi shozhi 第六隻手指 (Taipei: Erya, 1995), 96. 138 Zi Xu, Jiedu Hong Lou Meng, 206. Sinicized Male-male Desire 81

ground, just like Baoyu who transfers from his youthful passion with his male companions to his love for Daiyu and Baochai. Also, this poem’s self-pity differentiates from occidental narcissism, emanating heterosexual love rather than homoerotic desire. Another reference to Red Chamber Dream appears shortly after Basil’s death.

[杜連魁]閉眼靠著椅背，想起了板橋市的林家花園，據說那是舊時依照《紅 樓夢》裡的大觀園建造的。現在庭園早已殘破荒涼。多少年前，貝席曾和他 同遊過林家花園，兩人留連園中，欣賞那幾株高大的古木和圓月形的石門。 想不到貝席會突然死於非命，死得這麼悲慘恐怖。139 ([Du Liankui] closed his eyes, leaning back to the chair. He recalled the Lin Family Garden in Banchiao city. They said that this building was constructed according to the Daguan yuan (Grand View Garden) in the novel, Red Chamber Dream. Now the garden was long deserted and dilapidated. Many years ago, Bei Xi and he visited the Lin Family Garden once. They loitered in the garden, taking in the magnificent views of ancient trees and full-moon shaped stone door.)

The significance of this allusion can be interpreted contextually in the translation. As quoting Daiyu’s poem neatly parallels Du Liankui’s beginning of heterosexual explorations, namely his encounter with Xue Bifang, connecting Red Chamber Dream with Bei Xi’s death indicates more definitively the dominance of heterosexual desire over male-male desire: Bei Xi’s death in Du Liankui structurally echoes Qin Zhong’s death in Red Chamber Dream. Qin Zhong is Baoyu’s first male lover, so his death all the more symbolizes the cessation of Baoyu’s male-male desire, after which Baoyu embarks on his masculine responsibility, procreation, which entails heterosexual relations.140 Bei Xi too, is Du Liankui’s first male lover, and his death—due to Du Liankui’s murder—could practically foretell the demise of Du Liankui’s homosexual life, which is to be replaced by heterosexuality. Indeed, it is after Bei Xi’s death that Wang starts revealing a succession of young women whom Dorian is sexually interested in: Madam Ma, the young prostitute, two innocent country girls. That among these four female characters two are added to the translation can further bear out how Wang attempts to reinforce Du Liankui’s heterosexual escapades particularly after Bei Xi’s death. While the translator makes Du Liankui busy with his sexual relations with women, male-male desire accordingly withdraws from the spotlight, making more prominent a crossover to heterosexuality. As specific intertexts from

139 Wang, Du Liankui, 165. 140 Hinsch, Cut Sleeve, 150. Sinicized Male-male Desire 82

Chinese male-male desire—the abovementioned references to Red Chamber Dream—are given full play, they further attest and at the same time embroider the male sexual cycle in Wang’s Sinicized representation. Wildean homoerotic poetics rests on the artistry of simultaneous concealment and revelation of homosexual desire in his novel: a “straight” story filled with gay content. Wang’s representation also demonstrates at least the same level of sophisticated phantasm, as his translation of homosexual desire creates a delusion of faithful transcription of the original text, but in fact leaves Wilde’s subtexts out of picture, with paint and structure of the picture dismantled and joined by the axis of Sinicized male-male desire. At the very beginning, his overt verbalization marks a distinct departure from Wilde’s homoerotic expressions, foreshadowing a disparate representational framework. Thus as men’s erotic relations are reorganized to conform to dominant/submissive and masculine/feminine patterns, as the conspicuous Greek rhetoric is transformed to Chinese cultural intertexts from Red Chamber Dream, Chinese male-male desire surfaces in the translation. Meanwhile, enhanced female desirability and disambiguated masculine desire for the female body build up the increasing dominance of heterosexuality until the prescribed transition of male sexuality is completed. Although under the same frame of storyline, The “Picture” of Dorian Gray is stealthily removed and instead replaced with one distinctly painted with Chinese color and patterns, Du Liankui.