Vagueness: Identity and Understanding Across Literatures East and West Ryan Johnson A thesis submitted in fulfillment for the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences The University of Sydney 2019 This is to certify that to the best of my knowledge, the content of this thesis is my own work. This thesis has not been submitted for any degree or other purposes. I certify that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work and that all the assistance received in preparing this thesis and sources have been acknowledged. Ryan Johnson 31 January 2019 Vagueness: Identity and Understanding Across Literatures East and West Abstract iii A Note on Translations and Abbreviations v Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 1: Literary Worlds and Degrees of Distance 29 1.1. Literature as a World 29 1.2. Mutual Intelligibility 40 1.3. Literary Worlds 43 1.4. Multidimensionality 60 1.5. Ontological Vagueness 71 2: The Chou-Hughes Bardo Thödol and the Problem of Classification 81 2.1. General Background 85 2.2. Comparison with Evans-Wentz’s The Tibetan Book of the Dead 95 2.3. W.B. Yeats and Bardo 97 2.4. The Bardo in Relation to Chinese and European Theater 108 2.5. The Bardo and Its Worlds 119 3: What We Disagree About When We Disagree About Nō 135 3.1. Three Kantans 138 3.2. Nō Background 140 3.3. Mishima Yukio’s Critical Background 147 3.4. Paul Claudel’s Critical Background 156 3.5. Mishima’s Kantan 167 3.6. Claudel’s Le Soulier de Satin 179 3.7. Ontology and the Plays 191 3.8. Fundamental Structure of Reality in the Plays 192 4: Paul Claudel and Kuki Shūzō in the 1920s: France, Japan, and the World 203 4.1. Historical Conditions in Paris and Tokyo and Critical Background 206 4.2. Paul Claudel, French Ambassador-Poet in Japan 215 i 4.3. Kuki Shūzō, Japanese Philosopher-Poet in Paris 226 4.4. Claudel’s and Kuki’s Poetry on Autumn and Spring 233 4.5. Worlds, Constellations, and Universes of Belief 238 5: Tradition East and West, English and Chinese: The Cross-Cultural Poetry of Bei Dao and Ted Hughes 242 5.1. Tradition According to Bei Dao and Ted Hughes 247 5.2. A Chinese History of the Calder Valley 263 5.3. Bei Dao, Finding China as an Exile 275 5.4. Multidimensional Traditions? 289 Conclusion 291 Works Cited 297 ii Abstract The twentieth century witnessed an explosion in cultural exchanges between East and West. Through the increasing ease with which ideas could be communicated across the globe, and with which people, sometimes willingly, sometimes not, could move between distant countries, intercultural cross-fertilization became increasingly important to both “Eastern” and “Western” art. Yet this intellectual and physical movement also brought new forms of art that defied previous modes of interpretation, and called the very concepts of East and West into question. This dissertation uses the great exchange of people and ideas in the twentieth century to ask what identity cross-cultural literature can have and how we as critics should understand the heterogenous materials “East-West” literature presents us. My study addresses itself to debates in comparative literature and world literature. In particular, the concept of “literary worlds,” or of works of literature as imaginative worlds unto themselves, is the starting point of this thesis. Though the theory of literary worlds is rich and informative, it falters when dealing with texts founded on different ontologies as it can run the risk of highlighting superficial similarities without attending to deep-level differences. Recent work in philosophical logic, philosophical approaches to vagueness, and Asian Analytic Philosophy fortifies the theory, and the strengthened concept of literary worlds serves as a methodological framework throughout this dissertation. The ensuing chapters compare literary responses to East Asian texts or sets of texts, then consider what sort of epistemic and ontological relations obtain between these different literary works. Chapter II looks at Ted Hughes’ and Chou Wen-Chung’s unfinished operatic adaptation of the Bardo Thödol. Hughes and Chou worked to make the Eastern and Western material from which they were constructing the Bardo fuse in a coherent East-West text. The process by which iii they attempted to carry out that fusion is the subject of the chapter. Chapter III considers two adaptations, one by Paul Claudel and one by Mishima Yukio, of the classical Japanese Nō play Kantan. The ways in which Claudel and Mishima borrowed from Kantan to suit their own aesthetic and philosophical visions provides a fascinating case study of identity relations between literary worlds bearing the same origins but having different coherences. Chapter IV compares the poetry of Paul Claudel and Kuki Shūzō written in the 1920s, during which time Claudel lived in Kuki’s native Tokyo and Kuki in Claudel’s native Paris. To craft short poems on life in one another’s cities, Claudel and Kuki drew from similar sources and experiences, yet, as their critical writings show, held divergent views of the fundamental structure of art and, indeed, of the universe. The extent to which these divergent metaphysical viewpoints affect the structure of each poet’s poetic worlds is considered. Finally, Chapter V treats the exile poetry of Bei Dao along with Ted Hughes’ rewriting of a poem on his native Calder Valley into a “Chinese history”. Both Bei Dao and Hughes have spoken in depth about the effects of tradition on poetic composition and reception, and the chapter ruminates on how that conception changes over time, and what it means for Bei Dao’s and Ted Hughes’ poetry and our comprehension of it. The Conclusion reconsiders the modified theory of literary worlds advanced at the start of the dissertation, and reflects on how the findings of the previous five chapters might affect future study of East-West and comparative literature. iv A Note on Translations Unless otherwise noted, all translations from French and Japanese are my own. For translations from Chinese, I have deferred to extant translations into English, though I have provided the original Chinese texts where beneficial. Abbreviations When citing Paul Claudel’s work, I have employed the following abbreviations: Œuvre poétique: Po. Œuvres en prose: Pr. Œuvres complètes: Oc. Théâtre: Th. All of Kuki Shūzō’s writings cited in this dissertation are found in Kuki Shūzō Zenshū, Dai Ichi Maki, which I have abbreviated as Zs. v Acknowledgements My thanks go to everyone at Sydney and Keio Universities with whom I have discussed the ideas presented here, as well as to those present in the audiences in Copenhagen, Paris, Sydney, and Tokyo at which I have tested parts of this work. Particular thanks are due to Stephane Cordier, Ryland Engels, Ryoichi Imai, and, more than to anyone, to Jessica Sun. A special debt of gratitude is owed to my supervisor in the French Department at Keio, Ayako Nishino. Her insight into French and Japanese literature, and into the process of comparing literature across languages and cultures, has taught me more than I could hope to express. My greatest thanks go to my supervisor, Mark Byron. His innumerable insights and steadfast guidance in conversations throughout the past years, along with his inspiring personality and work, have led to a piece of work far better than I would have been able to achieve without him. What I owe him is incalculable. Part of Chapter I was published as “A Critique of Literary Worlds in World Literature Theory: Multidimensionality as a Basis of Comparison in The Journal of World Literature 3:3, pp. 354-372, and Chapter IV was founded on an article in French published as “La Poésie de Paul Claudel et de Kuki Shūzō durant les années 1920 : le Japon, la France, et le monde” in Cahiers d’études françaises 23, pp. 31-46. I am grateful to all who helped refine my thoughts during the publication processes of both. A final word goes to my family, and to Gabriela, to whom I dedicate this work. vi Introduction Les choses ne sont pas seulement des objets de connaissance, mais des motifs de co-naissance. Elles provoquent, elles déterminent dans le sujet toutes les attitudes impliquées par sa construction. Elles suscitent en lui une image animée, leur symbole commun. Elles lui fournissent le moyen de co-naître, de se connaître par rapport à elles, de produire et de diriger la force nécessaire pour assurer entre les deux termes contact. (Claudel, Po. 187)1 When Paul Claudel began to compose l’Art Poétique, he was taking his first look at the “grand livre de l’Orient” as a young consul in China. Fed up with the “l’ancienne [logique qui] avait le syllogism pour organe” [“the old logic with the syllogism as its motor”], Claudel constructed “une nouvelle logique” that could explain the correspondences he found in the “East”: Jadis au Japon, comme je montais de Nikkô à Chuzenji, je vis, quoique grandement distants, juxtaposés par l’alignement de mon œil, la verdure d’un érable combler l’accord proposé par un pin. Les présentes pages commentent ce texte forestier, l’énonciation 1 “Things are not merely the objects of knowledge [connaissance], but the motifs of co-naissance (being born together). They provoke, they determine in the subject all of the attitudes implicated by their construction. They elicit in him an animated image, their common symbol. They provide him with the means to co-naître, to know himself in relation to them, to produce and to direct the force needed to assure contact between the two terms.” 1 arborescent, par Juin, d’un nouvel Art poétique de l’Univers, d’une nouvelle Logique.