Keynote Speech I Utopian Landscapes: from Thomas More's Utopia to Tao Yuanming's Peach Blossom Spring

Keynote Speech I

Utopian Landscapes: From Thomas More’s Utopia to Tao Yuanming’s Peach Blossom Spring

Fang Fan and Xue Qian School of International Studies, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China Email: [email protected]; [email protected]

[Abstract] The concept of “Utopia”, with a long history in western culture, shares a lot with the philosophy of “Peach Blossom Spring” in the Chinese culture (See Appendix I). By analyzing British writer Thomas More’s Utopia and Chinese poet Tao Yuanming’s “Peach Blossom Spring”, this paper tries to illustrate how both writers present a harmonious nation, society and culture, giving solutions to problems, and therefore, modeling an ideal society and a better future. Thomas More and Tao Yuanming put similar ideas into different literary practices, giving insightful Utopian landscapes even in today’s world.

[Keywords] Utopia, Peach Blossom Spring, Utopian landscapes

Introduction In the long process of history, the idea of “Utopia” (meaning “nowhere”) has a long-standing influence on western cultural tradition. In ancient Greece, Aristophanes (BC446-385) once made an ideal aspiration of society in The Birds (BC414), describing “a republic of wood-pigeons in clouds”. The concept of Utopia can be dated back to Plato’s (BC427-347) The Republic (around BC380), while the word of “Utopia” was first adopted by British writer Thomas More. The implication and expression of Utopia vary from a literary expression to the blueprint of an ideal political policy of a society, even to the psychological status of pursuing a happy life, and finally can be generalized as a plan for any future. The place called Utopia is not only an ideal society for living a happy life, but also an imagination and a configuration that never exists in reality. This double meaning gives opportunities for people to give different interpretations and add more possibility to establish their theories. The Utopian tradition was established, and since then a number of works show landscapes of Utopia with historical marks, such as Italian Utopian communist Thomas Campanella’s The City of the Sun (1623) and British famous materialist philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1627). In fact, “Utopia” only demonstrates that it is possible to build an ideal society, which gives an expression of dissatisfaction and places hope in the critique of their Utopian intent (Chen, 2000). Germany Marxist and Utopian theorist Ernst Bloch broadened the concept of “Utopia”, making it a philosophical concept which can be characterized by superstition or unrealistic fantasy, and can also be expressed by some kind of rational expectations and plans (Chen, 2000). “Utopia” has obvious overtones of politics since it has an inseparable relationship with the political system. It is also a purveyor of literature, such as a Utopian novel and science fiction. Frederic Jameson, through focusing on science fiction, analyzes ideology and Utopian scenes through the narrative and archaeology, showing political, ideological and Utopian issues in different cultural texts (Fang, 2012). The narrative of “Utopia” in Chinese literature and the imagination of an ideal society have fallen into a deep route of literary tradition, which is typically represented by Tao Yuanming’s Peach Blossom Spring (Wu, 2006). The poet of the Dongjin Dynasty, influenced by Taoism and Buddhism, finally embodied his seclusion idea in describing an ideal rural land of peach blossoms under the effect of

9 Confucianism. Comparatively speaking, Tao Yuanming withdrew from the world under the influence of Taoism, while More, who lived like a Confucian, entered the world and made more efforts in society. Tao’s imaginary world is full of fantasy. People in this place enjoy warmth, tranquility and satisfaction. It seems that there is no evil in that world, only kindness and peace. This peach blossom spring both corresponds to Confucius’ philosophy of the ideal and “great harmony” society, and also the philosophy of Taoism – such as “governing by doing nothing against the nature”. Traditionally this peach blossom spring is closely related with the ancient Chinese concept of “great harmony”, which makes the harmonious eras of Yao, Shun and Yu as the best examples. Also we can see in the earliest collection of poems and songs in China, the Book of Songs (BC1123-BC256), there is a description of similar landscapes to that in Peach Blossom Spring, “The villagers help each other in the farming. They go out farming when the sun rises and come home for rest when the sun sets”. The same landscape is also shown in another Chinese philosophical work Book of Master Zhuang (BC290) when it tells people to work when the sun rises, to rest when the sun sets, and to take life easy in the universe in order to find your own heart (Guo, & Cheng, 2011). They both share the ideal community, not politically-oriented but naturally and harmoniously surrounded. In this community of “great harmony”, there is no exploitation, no class difference and no oppression. In the Book of Rites (BC202-BC8), there is a clear definition of “great harmony”: the whole world as one community; people of virtue and talent are employed …there is no cheating, no stealing, ...that is great harmony. Sun (2011) points out that the ideal community continues in all phases of Chinese history, exemplified by Sun Yat-sen after the 1911 Revolution in the modern history of China: the aim of human evolution is what Confucius means when stating “when the great way prevails, the world is equally shared by all” (p. 226). In the long history of human beings, both western and eastern literature show an eagerness for an ideal society, an always better-world than the world today. Both western and eastern literature show the reflection of the time when writers live and write of their imagination for a better future. Among them, Utopia and Peach Blossom Spring are the two best examples, showing the landscapes of the Utopian world.

Utopia and Peach Blossom Spring: Communism and Seclusion Utopia and Peach Blossom Spring are different in their approaches to an ideal society, however, they are equally satisfactory in their result. The British writer Thomas More published his famous work Utopia in 1516, in which he put his diplomatic experience as the background. On the other hand, Tao Yuanming felt depressed about his unsuccessful career. After resigning and living in seclusion, he turned to writing. In his representative works Returning to My Farm and Peach Blossom Spring, he developed an ideal society and placed all his hope on writing in a poetic way. More gave a full account of Utopia in six aspects: public ownership, mode of production, agriculture and handicraft, city planning, medical security and education. On the contrary, Tao’s description was much shorter and more abstract. In their writings we can see how communism and seclusion are presented. It was not Plato’s, but More’s foresight that there could be a wealthy public ownership society. A hierarchical society misleads Plato to advocating that the minority might be rich because he thinks that wealth makes lazybones. More, as a representative of petty bourgeoisie, cares for the general public. His Utopia upholds a public ownership, which takes the road of common prosperity. Peach Blossom Spring, without tortuous introduction, never tells what kind of ownership it is. The basic unit of a society, in both Utopia and Peach Blossom Spring, is the family (home, private house). The male does the farm work in

10 fields, and the female weaves at home. Tao highlighted the hospitality of people in Peach Blossom Spring, describing families twice: “they invited him to their homes, where they put wine before him, killed chickens and prepared food in his honor”; “Afterwards all the rest invited him to their homes, and all feasted him with wine and food.” It is the highest courteous reception to invite the fisherman to the villagers’ homes rather than to the public places, which, to a great extent, shows that Tao is in concordance with a Confucius’ well-to-do family. Family is not only the beginning and the end of an individual life, but also the fundamental unit in sociological perspective. It is the icon and principle of property. Utopia has some general characteristics of a communist society. However, it is reported that every household has two slaves, who are either from foreign countries or are Utopian criminals. In this place, wealth is of little importance and is only good for buying commodities from foreign nations or bribing these nations to fight each other. Also, it is a welfare state with free hospitals, acceptable euthanasia and married priests, while premarital sex and adultery are seriously punished. People share meals in community dining halls, while the old and the administrators are given the best of the food. What’s more, laws are made deliberately simple here so that all people understand them with no doubt. Compared with these communist features, Tao Yuanming’s Peach Blossom Spring shows more of his philosophy of living in seclusion. Local people’s clothes were quite different from the outsiders’. They had good fields, ponds, plants and flowers, living peacefully and quietly. They talked with the fisherman, and entertained him with delicious food and drink. When the fisherman introduced the outside world to them in detail, they sighed but insisted that the fisherman should never mention this paradise place to others. Finally, no matter how hard the fisherman tried, he could never find the way back to the paradise. Though the social system is different, the two texts share the isolation of geographical landscape from the outside. The geographical landscape of the Island of Utopia, according to More (1965), is “broadest in the middle, where it measures about two hundred miles across. It’s never much narrower than that, except towards the very ends, which gradually taper away and curve right round, just as if they’d been drawn with a pair of compasses until they almost form a circle five hundred miles in circumference” (p. 69). It is really a crescent-shaped island that curves in on itself, enclosing a large bay and protecting it from the ocean and wind. Access to the bay is impeded by submerged rocks, the locations of which are known only to Utopians. The bay allows for easy internal shipping and travel, but makes any sort of external attack or unwanted contact unlikely. This allows the Utopians to remain as isolated as they want to be. It is even more mysterious for us to see how the fisherman found Peach Blossom Spring. Or, in other words, the landscape of Peach Blossom Spring is even more mysterious. The fisherman lost his way at first, then he spotted a light at the end of the stream in the cave. After some twists and turns, he was surprised to find a wide and fertile field. What’s even more mysterious is that, when the fisherman broke his promise of never telling others about this place and led local officers to locate the paradise, he got lost forever. Both Utopia and Peach Blossom Spring show that the isolated place never exists anywhere and anytime. It can be neither disturbed nor shared by more people. On one hand, it will lose its possibility of existence once it is discovered, as we can see from the end of Peach Blossom Spring that anyone, who looks for this place, gets lost and can never find it again, or might even “fell ill and died before realizing his plan.” This corresponds more to French theorist Herbert Marcuse’s (2002) definition of “Utopia”, which is “temporarily not feasible”, rather than “absolutely impossible”. This makes people longing for it forever.

11 Utopia, as a book describing life under communism and Peach Blossom Spring, as a prose describing life in seclusion, both reflect the sense of Utopia, which, in philosophical tradition, refers to an ideal commonwealth or state, a place of order, perfect in social, political, and moral aspects. The innate sense of Utopia aims at the desire and drive to achieve a better state of being, with the belief that the future can fundamentally transcend the present. However, collectivism and despotism are considered to be the inevitable productions of Utopia, while in Peach Blossom Spring, the sense of Utopia is reprimanded by its own natural properties.

Ideal Worlds: Reflections on the Present Every Utopian work is an ideal world imagined by its author, through which people see the reflections of the society they live in. English political philosopher, James Harrington, writer of the Utopian work The Commonwealth of Oceania and a System of Politics (1992), was influential in the design of three American colonies as Utopian societies. Fredric Jameson, in his Archaeologies of the Future (2005), argues that “Utopia has always been a political issue, an unusual destiny for a literary form: yet just as the literary value of the form is subject to permanent doubt, so also its political status is structurally ambiguous” (p. xi). Jameson connects Utopia with politics profoundly with historical backgrounds in consistent flux. Moreover, he contends that fiction is always concerned with good and evil, somehow in a magic way, while Utopia is about a future that probably never exists. In Jameson’s viewpoint, the form Utopia itself is a reflection of the radical difference, otherness and the systemic nature of society as a whole (Jameson, 1991). Thus, the aim of Utopia is not to imagine a brighter future, but to reflect on our existence in a non-Utopia world. Both Utopia and Peach Blossom Spring have fictional characters. By telling the story about a fictional character Raphael and himself, More exposed the shortcomings of the English social system. Raphael shared his adventures to many places, including an ideal community named “Utopia”. There people enjoyed equality in all fields and the property was owned by the public. More, in Rapheal Hythloday’s words, told everything that he saw during the five-year stay in Utopia, and made Rapheal a spectator who saw most of the game. In Tao Yuanming’s Peach Blossom Spring, when a fisherman from Wuling was sailing along the river, he strayed into a secluded place surrounded by peach grove. In that village, people happily enjoyed their family lives. Everyone wore the same thing and knew nothing about what happened on the outside. Tao led us to the whole process while the fisherman lost his way and happened to discover Peach Blossom Spring. On the other hand, the fisherman introduced the outside world to this secluded place and joined the villagers’ life. The ideal society in Utopia is not presented by Thomas More as the possibility for any nation to mimic. More admitted as much by describing Utopia only within a fictional frame. Utopia may be ideal, but in the very structure of Utopia the ideal can never be attained and can only be used as a measuring stick. In telling More about the Island of Utopia, Raphael revealed the evil of the English society, and also showed that no matter how good a proposed policy was, it would always be insane to a person with different views. In Raphael’s idea, the policies of the Utopians were superior to those of the Europeans, though the Europeans made those policies ludicrous. More (1965) claimed, “I don’t see how you can ever get any real justice or prosperity, so long as there’s private property, and everything’s judged in terms of money” (p. 65). More (1965) revealed the root of all problems: “unless you consider it just for the worst sort of people to have the best living conditions, or unless you’re prepared to call a country prosperous, in which all the wealth is owned by a tiny minority – who aren’t entirely happy even so, while everyone else

12 is simply miserable” (p. 65). The gap between the rich and the poor disturbed the public order. Besides, Amaurot, the capital city of Utopia, which means darkness and gloom, was considered to be an implication of London. More (1965) pointed out very few laws were required with their social system in Amaurot: “one of their great complaints against other countries is that, although they’ve already got books and books of laws and interpretations of laws, they never seem to have enough. For, according to the Utopians, it’s quite unjust for anyone to be bound by a legal code which is too long for an ordinary person to read right through, or too difficult for him to understand” (p. 106). This implicates the tortuous judiciary of England society and attacks current malpractice, especially to the king. Peach Blossom Spring is often regarded as Tao Yuanming’s idyllic seclusion. In Tao’s young age, he had an ambition to help people live better. However, the Dongjin Dynasty (317-420) was declining because of political corruption. Sovereignty was given over only a lesser part of the country, and gradually surrendered to foreign countries. The ruling class indulged themselves in sensual pleasures, while parties jostled with one another, and separatists held warlord regime. Heavy taxes brought common people more pain. In the year of 405, Tao resigned from the office in Pengze County, broke up with the ruler, and settled down his life on the brink of the society. Although he was away from the mainstream, he still maintained his ambition and poetic illusions. He tried to find a way to express his dissatisfaction with the regime and deepened the hatred for the society at that time. He couldn’t change anything. Just like many other Chinese poets, he turned into writing, and expressed his feelings and aspirations, creating an ideal and harmonious place in sharp contrast with the society at that time. Both works are exactly the reflection on the society at that time, or even the society of today. There is no doubt that both More and Tao give rational proposal to building a harmonious society and civilized country, which, beyond time and space, is worth exploring.

Conclusion Through the comparison and analysis of those two works, we can see that, both writers expose problems of government authorities, reveal the dark side of humanity, and explore a better habitation for human beings. More and Tao present how to harmonize the nation, society and culture, giving solutions to problems, and therefore, modeling an ideal society and a better future. Reflecting on the past is a nod to the future. More and Tao show not only their concept of an ideal society by describing the landscapes of Utopia and Peach Blossom Spring, but also present their lofty aspiration of political careers. Thus, More makes a confrontation, a revolt against the present political corruption and social problem, while Tao prefers the relative seclusion of the countryside. They are both eager to realize their ambitions. More speaks for the toiling masses who are plunged into an abyss of suffering with righteous indignation. He puts the cause of problems bluntly, but in Utopia he gives implicit criticism with fabrication and reality because of Henry VIII’s tyranny. This is quite similar to the way Chinese poets remonstrate with a monarch in ancient times. It is regrettable that their attempts achieve much less at that time, however, those attempts are meaningful to future generations beyond time and space. Of course, More and Tao give us the possibility to find an advantageous system, especially by applying the principle of distribution through work and need, and entering into communism peacefully. Obviously, an absolute equality and communism is still ideal and hard to reach. More’s Utopia doesn’t explain how the public ownership appears and how it maintains its status and keeps in order. More is much more fooled by his identity of bourgeoisie, with his ignorance of the strength of the masses to make a socialist revolution. The two writers have their limitations by the time period they lived in. Though an

13 ideal society and a better future will always be out of reach, we never stop fighting for it. More and Tao find an echo in Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia (1985): “…after a long tortuous, but heroic development, just at the highest stage of awareness, when history is ceasing to be blind fate, and is becoming more and more man’s own creation, with the relinquishment of utopias, man would lose his will to shape history and therewith his ability to understand it” (p. 268). At least, in Utopia and Peach Blossom Spring, there is a possibility to find an ideal homeland. In other words, we are on a journey to make the history of human beings.

References Chen, A. Y. (2000). Evolution of the concept of Utopia. Journal of Peking University (Humanities and Social Sciences), 37(1), 123-131. Fang, F. (2012). American postmodern science fiction. Hangzhou: Zhejiang University Press. Jameson, F. (1991). POSTMODERNISM, or, the cultural logic of late capitalism. London: Verso. Jameson, F. (2005). Archaeologies of the future. New York: Verso. Mannheim, K. (1985). Ideology and Utopia: An introduction to the sociology of knowledge. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Marcuse, H. (2002). One-dimensional man. London & New York: Routledge Classics. More, T. (1965). Utopia. London: Penguin Books. Sun, L. (2011). A biography of Dr. Sun Yat-sen. Nanjing: Nanjing University Press. Wu, X. D. (2006). The disillusionment with the rural Utopia in Chinese literature. Journal of Peking University (Philosophy and Social Sciences), 43(1), 74-81. Guo, X. & Cheng, X. Y. (2011). Commentary and sub-commentary to the Book of Master Zhuang. Beijing: Chung Hwa Book Co. Appendix 1

Peach Blossom Spring

Tao Yuanming (Translated by Yang Xianyi) In the reign of Taiyuan of the Jin Dynasty, there was a man of Wuling who was a fisherman by trade. One day he was fishing up a stream in his boat, heedless of how far he had gone, when suddenly he came upon a forest of peach trees. On either bank for several hundred yards there were no other kinds of trees. The fragrant grass was beautiful to look at, all patterned with fallen blossoms. The fisherman was extremely surprised and went on further, determined to get to the end of this wood. He found at the end of the woods the source of the stream and the foot of a cliff, where there was a small cave in which there seemed to be a faint light. He left his boat and went in through the mouth of the cave. At first it was very narrow, only wide enough for a man, but after forty or fifty yards he suddenly found himself in the open. The place he had come to was level and spacious. There were houses and cottages arranged in a planned order; there were fine fields and beautiful pools; there were raised pathways round the fields; and he heard the fowls crowing and dogs barking. Going to and fro in all this, and busied in working and planting, were people, both men and women. Their dress was not unlike that of the people outside, and all of them, whether old people with white hair or children with their hair tied in a knot, were happy and content with themselves.