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Peer Gynt, Ah Q and the Loss of Self
Chengzhou He, Nanjing University
Peer Gynt in China Peer Gynt is one of the few Ibsen characters that have anything to do with China. He trades with China through exporting heathen images. When Ibsen was introduced to China in the beginning of the 20th century, his modern realistic plays, especially A Doll’s House, were most influential.1 His early verse dramas were largely ignored in China. Nevertheless, Peer Gynt caught the attention of some critics. To celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of Ibsen’s birth, Yuan Zhenying, one of the most enthusiastic advocates of Ibsen in China at that time, wrote an article “Boergen (Peer Gynt) de Piping” (About Peer Gynt), in which he analysed Peer Gynt in contrast to Brand. Prais ing Brand as a strict moralist; he condemned Peer as “a daydreamer, a pleasure -seeker, and above all, a compromiser.” (Yuan 1928: 25). Peer Gynt was translated to Chinese for the first time in 1978. The first Chinese production of Peer Gynt took place in B eijing in 1983.
Lun Xun and Ibsen Lu Xun, who wrote Ah Q Zhengchuan (The True Story of Ah Q) in 1921, is one of the great Chinese writers of the 20th century. He was the first Chinese to introduce Ibsen to China. In 1907, in the journal Henan (Nos. 2, 3 and 7), Lu Xun published two articles: “Wenhua Pianzhi Lun” (On Extremities of Culture) and “Moluo Shi Lishuo” (On the Power of Mara Poetry). In his articles, Lu Xun praised Ibsen for the exposure of social problems and for his dramatic realism. During the May 4 period, Lu Xun said: ”Rather than worship Confucius and Guan Gong (a well-known general from the period of Three Kingdoms) one should worship Darwin and Ibsen.”2 In 1923, Lu Xun delivered a lecture “Nala Zouhou Zenyang?” (What happens after Nora le aves home?), which aroused repeated vigorous discussions on Nora, Ibsen and Chinese feminism in the 1920s and 30s. In 1925, Lu Xun wrote a short story “Shang Shi” (Regret for the Past) to parody Nora’s decision of leaving home. Ibsen and Nora are directly referred to in the story. Following Nora’s footstep, the heroine Zijun leaves home. Echoing Nora’s claim that “I’m first and foremost a human being”, Zijun speaks, ”I am my own, no one has the right to interfere in my business” (Translation mine. Lu 1973: 278). Zijun gets married to the man she chooses for herself. But they fail to make a living on their own. In the end, Zijun has to return home to her parents and dies thereafter. Through this story, Lu Xun wanted to convey the message to his readers that women should first have economic independence in order to win freedom. In 1928, to mark the 100th anniversary of Ibsen’s birth, Lu Xun edited a group of articles, mainly translations, in his journal “Bengliu” (Running Water). 3
In contrast to his repeated discussions of Nora and Dr. Stockman, Lu Xun mentioned 2
Peer Gynt only once, in his essay Ah Jin 4, which however was published after he wrote The True Story of Ah Q (1921). Thus, it is difficult to know how much Lu Xun knew about Peer Gynt when he was workin g on The True Story of Ah Q. Given his enthusiasm for Ibsen, he might have read Peer Gynt and might have been impressed by it at the time he wrote The True Story of Ah Q. Whether or not he had read Peer Gynt prior to working Ah Q, nevertheless the intertextual relationships between the two are still worth our attention.
An Introduction to Ah Q Ah Q has been frequently compared to Don Quixote, as has Peer Gynt. A comparison between Ah Q and Peer Gynt has, however, never been developed, except for one brief comment by Xiao Qian, who translated Peer Gynt to Chinese. In the preface to his translation, Xiao Qian said, “Some critics (such as Bjornson) think Peer Gynt was written primarily for the purpose of satirising, attacking the negative elements of the Norwegian national character, such as selfishness, irresponsibility, self-righteousness, indulged in illusion. In this sense, Peer Gynt is the Norwegian Ah Q” (Translation mine. Xiao, 1981: 75).
Who is this Ah Q? The following is a brief synopsis of the story. In the village called Wei, Ah Q, having no home, lives in a temple and works for people as a day laborer. His personality is described, in a very sarcastic tone , as thoughtless and short-tempered. Ah Q is frequently humiliated by the villagers, but he somehow succeeds in transforming each humiliating experience into a victorious event in his own mind, and therefore is content. For instance, when he is beaten, he assuages his indignation by slapping his own face, thereby convincing himself that he has avenged on those who bullied him. One day, without giving any thought to the consequences, he carelessly asks Wu-Ma, a servant at the richest home in the village, to sleep with him. Consequently, the whole village avoids him, and he is unable to find any work. Running out of money, out of food, out of anything to pawn, he goes to the city to make money. In the city, the democratic revolution is under way. Taking advantage of the chaotic situation, Ah Q manages to “earn” some money. After coming back to the Wei village, Ah Q resorts to the power of the word “revolution” to scare people and gain his fame. Ah Q knows nothing of the revolution, but pretends to be a member of the army. It happens that some thieves had robbed the rich families under the guise of the revolution. The city authorities, having tried in vain to arrest the robbers, finds Ah Q to be a ready representative of the robbers. Without even knowing why he has been arrested, Ah Q ends up losing his life by being decapitated.
Ah Q Zhengchuan is Lu Xun's most celebrated story. It depicts an ignorant farm laborer, an everyman, who experiences, with an utter lack of self-awareness, a series of humiliations and who is finally executed during the chaos of the Republican revolution of 1911. Ah Q is conside red the personification of the negative traits of the Chinese national character. The term Ah Quism was coined to signify the Chinese penchant for calling defeat a “spiritual victory.” But Ah Q is not an altogether a bad 3 character. He has the peasant ’s simplicity. While revealing Ah Q’s weakness of will, the author also shows his deep sympathy for his character.
Ah Quism versus the Gyntian While Ah Q’s so-called “spiritual victory” depicts one thoroughly negative aspect of “guo min xing” (Chinese national character), Gyntian escapism is said to “a general malaise of modern Western man”. Ah Q is the Chinese counterpart of Peer Gynt in that they both represent the negative character traits in the author himself and of the nation as a whole (Ibsen said that Peer Gynt was himself as the lowest moment). Together, they serve to illuminate common weaknesses of humanity. A further study of the two reveals that they bear resemblance to each other in many different ways. Beginning with a comparison of their physical likenesses, this paper will go on to develop affinities in their spiritual states.
Peasant images As bankrupt peasants, Ah Q and Peer both look rather shabby. Each spends most of his time wandering in and around the village, although unlike Ah Q, Peer ha s a residence, with his mother. Peer and his mother are, according to John Northam, less than peasants, because they are unable to make a living out of the land. They become outsiders in their native village (Northam vii). Ah Q is in a similar, though even worse, situation. Owning no land, he lives on small odd jobs. Despised by their fellow villagers, Peer and Ah Q take pleasure in talking big and become in turn the laughing stock for the locals. “There’s always the laughing behind your back/and whispers that feel like they’re burning right through you,” says Peer (18). 5 Humiliated and disillusioned in the reality, they both indulge themselves in their dreams and seek comfort in their fantasies. When Ah Q was beaten, he would not admit it. Soon he would ima gine that it was not he, but someone else, who was beaten. The same thing occurred with Peer. He had a fight with the blacksmith of the village and was beaten by him. But in his account of that fight to his mother, he made himself the stronger, boasting how he beat the blacksmith. The way Ah Q and Peer Gynt deal with “humiliation and defeat’ seems universal.
These two downtrodden losers, however, have the boldest dreams --Both dream to be emperors. “A recurrent feature in Peer ’s wishful thinking is the dream of one day becoming an emperor”, says Asbjorn Aarseth (279). For both Ah Q and Peer, dreams are their defensive shields against the intrusion of real life.
Lack of principle Neither Peer nor Ah Q is able to think independently or to stick to moral values. Peer Gynt is compromiser. “It’s said, it’s true, man is no more than dust. Besides, one can always, as usual, adjust”, says Peer (45). In order to marry the daughter of the Dovre-king and get half of his “kingdom”, he agrees to have a tail installed on his backside. He avoids confronting difficulties; “to go around” is his principle. Ah Q keeps making excuses for not taking action in face of humiliation. He is skilful in 4 adjusting himself to different situations. Instead of challenging those who humiliate him, he also victimizes a young nun by making fun of her bare head. Ah Q is a representative of the double -sidedness of the Chinese – being tormented and tortured, they’re also accustomed to tormenting and torturing the weaker ones.
Peer and Ah Q are comic heroes. Like many of their comic literary counterparts, they are given to fantasy, storytelling and especially lying. They are very fond of lying. The play Peer Gynt begins with his mother angrily accusing: “You’re telling lies, Peer!” He repeatedly tells lies to his mother at home. He is also a known liar, or rather a storyteller, among the locals. He lies because he wants to win some respect, but he only succeeds in “winning” the opposite. Ah Q lies for the same purpose, which often arouses contempt rather than bringing him respect. His biggest lie is about joining the revolutionary army in the city. As a consequence of this lie, he ends up being decapitated by the local authorities.
The loss of “self” Ah Q’s humbleness, dumbness and contemptible “spiritual victory” are but superficial characteristics. The fundamental problem with him is his lack of “self”. He cannot think. Like an animal, he responds by instinct. He does whatever is beneficial to him. He claims to be a member of revolutionary army, simply because the villagers, especially the rich ones, treat him with awe. Ah Q himself cannot form any judgement of the new situation. His name, Ah Q, which is not an ordinary Chinese name, comes to suggest his lack of identity. At the end of Lu Xun’s story, when he is asked by the local court to put a signature on his death verdict, Ah Q, who has never used a pen in his entire life, takes great pains in drawing a rounder “0” on the paper, which comes to suggest his “nothingness,” his zero identity.
Peer is shown to be constantly adapting himself to changing circumstances, avoiding responsibilities. Peer’s journey is the life-long evasion. He follows what Boyg has told him: to “go round about”. What is “Boyg”? Heuscher (1992:85) interpreted it as the “true self” that Peer is not ready to accept. After the shipwreck on his journey home, he is washed ashore. Though he survives the accident, he is materially and spiritually bankrupt. Peeling one of the onions he has found, he discovers: “Down to the centre there’s nothing but layers, smaller and smaller.” This scene is charged with symbolic meanings about the protagonist’s loss of selfhood (Peer makes an epitaph for himself: Here lies no one). The identity value is reduced to zero. It parallels in a way Ah Q’s drawing a rounder ‘Zero” on his death verdict. But, it needs to be pointed out that beyond the similar symbolic connotations of the scenes, lies a significant difference--Peer Gynt’s dim awareness of his situation versus Ah Q’s absolute ignorance and numbness, which can be attributed to Ibsen’s romantic idealism in contrast to Lu Xun’s severe social criticism. In other words, unlike Ah Q who ends up being a complete failure, Peer still has some hope, the hope to be saved. His journey that ends with his reunion with Solveig takes on spiritual value. The genuine self of Peer is preserved in the faith, in the hope and in the unselfish love of Solveig. The 5 true self in Peer is awakened. The final scene, where Solveig is singing that she will guard him, like a mother cradling her child, is allegorical in its form. In the literal sense it is the man returning in his old age to his faithful fiancee. In the allegorical sense it is the union of the lower and the higher self, or in other words the animal element and the divine element made one, forming a complete human being.
National satire The name of Ah Q, which has been a catchword among Chinese for generations, is a symbol of the deep-rooted negative characteristics of Chinese nation. In his short article “Conc erning The True Story of Ah Q,” Lu Xun admits that he created Ah Q to “portray the silent soul of China’s countrymen” (Lu 69-70). Lu Xun's literary colleague, Mao Dun, believes that Ah Q is one in whom all Chinese characteristics become crystallized. For C.T. Hsia, “The immense success of The True Story of Ah Q with the Chinese public was mainly due to its recognition of the hero as the embodiment of a national disease” (Hsia 37).
From a historical perspective, Ah Q’s characterist ics satirized China’s attitudes towards national humiliations at the hands of Western powers. In the 1910s and 1920s, Chinese intellectuals tended to blame China’s defeats on traditional beliefs. Ah Q’s “spiritual victory” was thus a fashionable cultural criticism of Chinese concepts such as righteousness, dignity, and pride, which many considered as superfluous. When Ah Q tried to alter his state of consciousness after he was beaten and humiliated, the whole nation was satirized.
The True Story of Ah Q was immediately well received both at home and abroad. Roman Rolland, who in 1926 recommended the French translation of the novella to be published in France, commented that this is a realistic art of irony. Once reading it, one will be surprised to find that the miserable Ah Q is unforgettable and one begins to like it.6
Likewise, Peer Gynt was also a satirical attack on contemporary Norway. In the introduction of his translation of Peer Gynt, John Northam specifies the targets: “an obstinate and petty-minded obsession with national self -sufficiency, a capacity for self-delusion and cultural complacency, an inert and stagnating conservatism, above all a propensity for moral evasiveness, all of them dangerously active, to Ibsen’s mind, in the country he had left in disgust two years earlier” (Northam x)
Ah Q exposes the weakness in the Chinese national character. But there is a lot in Ah Q that appeals to people of other nations as well. It was reported that when Ah Q was translated to Russian, the Russian intellectuals exclaimed: “There are many Ah Q’s here in Russia” (Chen 768). After Peer Gynt was translated and staged in China, many, including the translator, said that there were many Peer Gynts in China. Peer and Ah Q are in a way both figures of an “everyman”, depicting common aspects of humanity. 6
Darwinism as a cross text between Peer Gynt and The True Story of Ah Q It was while abroad that Lu Xun became familiar and fascinated with the idea of Chinese “guominxing”, or “national/ racial characteristics.” The phrase originated in and gained instant credit from a popular Darwinian theory that Lu Xun personally helped to introduce to the Chinese through his article “Teaching Material on the History of Science” in 1908. In it he put forth the evolutionary theories of Lamarck, Darwin, Huxley, and Haeckel in terms laymen could understand. “The theory of evolution,” said Lu Xun, “was of help to me, because after all it was a way of understanding. It was better that I came to see and believe in things like ‘natural selection’, ‘the struggle for existence’, and ‘progress’ than if I had not.”7
Lu Xun seemed to find the Lamarckian brand of evolution particularly attractive: that apelike beings change into manlike beings according to the postulation of a perfecting power inherent in nature. After affirming the evolutionary chain of beings from animal to man, Lu Xun turned to satirizing the Chinese who seemed to resist this historical view. The animal nature in Ah Q is distinct. Ah Q is an animal that lives and acts on animal instinct.
In his book Beast in Man: A Contribution to the Interpretation of Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, Asbjorn Aarseth suggests that “from the moment of his appearance and through the major part of the work, Peer Gynt is dominated by the Beast” (Aarseth 278). Aarseth carries out a detailed analysis of the bestial dominance in Peer through the imagery, Peer’s movements, and his behavior in the larger sense. According to Aarseth, “as many as about 60 different kinds of animals are referred to in the dialogue, not primarily in descriptions of what can be observed in the countryside, but as a way of indicating qualities, moral or physical, in the main character, whether he is described and evaluated by secondary characters or he is talking about himself in such terms.”8 Peer is bestial Man without realising it. Towards the end of the play, he begins to see himself as among the animals, lacking identity as human being. The representation of animal motive in Peer Gynt might well be Ibsen’s response to Darwinism.
In Lu Xun’s story, Ah Q is killed. Ah Q’s death represents a race doomed to perish through natural selection. Ah Q’s death is decreed by nature for those refusing to accept the scientific laws of history. In the ruthless struggle for existence, the Chinese would either perish or survive. Like Peer, Ah Q was used by the author to awaken his people to adopt a more critical attitude towards their self image. Both were useful in the reconstruction of the national spirit.
Conclusion Ridiculous and inferior as they are, Peer and Ah Q have elicited the sympathy of their authors and their audiences alike. Representing negative dimensions of their respective national spirits, they nevertheless appeal to people of all cultures in that 7
through them we begin to “see” similar negative aspects in our own humanity. Both have become recognizable types, like Oedipus, Hamlet or Faust, who project essential parts of our total humanity.9 The charm of these two masterpieces of the world literature endures.
1 Ibsen was introduced to China mainly because his realistic plays appealed to Chinese intellectuals. A Doll ’s House was the most influential among them. A number of modern Chinese plays were written in imitation of A Doll’s House and they were grouped as “Nora Play”. 2 Lun Xun, “Sui Gan Lu”, Xin Qingnian , vol.6, no.2, pp. 212-3. 3 Five articles in Chinese translation appeared in that special issue. They are: “Ibsen’s Attitude in His Work” (Arishima Takeo), “The Story of Ibsen” (Lars Aas), “Henrik Ibsen” (R. Robert Roberts), “Ibsen” (Havlock Ellis) and “Henrik Ibsen” (G. Brandes). 4 In 1934, Lu Xun wrote an essay “Ah Jin”. In this essay, Lu Xun describes one female neighbor of his called Ah Jin, who has many boy friends. One day a western young man living nearby was run after by a group of angry men. He came to the building where Ah Jin lives and wanted to find shelter. However, Ah Jin closed the door , refusing to let him in. So Lu Xun wrote, ”A man could have been protected and cared for by his lover. In Ibsen’s play, Peer Gynt returned back to his lover after his failure, being comforted by her cradlesong. But in my view, Ah Jin, who is heartless and coward, is not comparable to the Norwegian woman.” (Translation mine. Lun Xun Quan Ji, Renmin Wenxue Chubanshe, 1958, p. 157). 5 All quotations of Peer Gynt are from John Northam’s translation Peer Gynt A Dramatic Poem, Scandinavian University Prsss, 1995. 6 Roman Roland’s letter was frequently quoted by Lu Xun scholars as a proof of his international status. 7 Cited in Feng Xuefeng, Huiyi Lu Xun (Lu Xun Remembered), Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1953. 8 This is cited from the manuscript of Aarseth ’s new essay “Ibsen’s Morality Play: Suggestions of a reading of Peer Gynt”, which is going to be published in Chinese in China. 9 In his chapter The Parable of Peer Gynt, Brian Johnston seems to suggest that Peer is the only character in Ibsen’s drama, if not in all modern literature, that has achieved the archetypal status (Johnston, 1980: 164).
Works Cited
Aarseth, Asbjorn, Dyret I mennesket: Et bidrag til tolkning av Henrik Ibsens Peer Gynt (The Beast in Man: A Contribution to the Interpretation of Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt), Oslo: Universittetsforlaget, 1975. Chen Shuyu (ed), Shuo Bu Jin de Ah Q (Studies on Ah Q), Beijing: Zhongguo Wenlian Chubanshe, 1997. Heuscher, Julius E., “Mythology—The Self— Peer Gynt”, The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, vol. 52 (1992), no. 1, pp. 79-91. Hsia Chih-tsing, A History of Modern Chinese Fiction, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971. Johnston, Brian, To the Third Empire: Ibsen’s Early Drama, Minneapolis, 1980. Lu Xun, "Ewen yiben Ah Q Zhengzhuan xu ji zhuzhe zixu zhuanlue", (Preface to the Russian translation of The True Story of Ah Q and a few things about the author), in Jiwai ji (Addenda Collection), Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1973. Northam, John, “Introduction” in his translation of Peer Gynt, Scandinavian University Press, 1995. 8
Xiao Qian, “Ibsen de