The Poet As Scholar: Essays and Translations in Honor of Jonathan Chaves
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SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS Number 272 October, 2017 The Poet as Scholar: Essays and Translations in Honor of Jonathan Chaves edited by David K. Schneider Victor H. Mair, Editor Sino-Platonic Papers Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305 USA [email protected] www.sino-platonic.org SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS FOUNDED 1986 Editor-in-Chief VICTOR H. MAIR Associate Editors PAULA ROBERTS MARK SWOFFORD ISSN 2157-9679 (print) 2157-9687 (online) SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS is an occasional series dedicated to making available to specialists and the interested public the results of research that, because of its unconventional or controversial nature, might otherwise go unpublished. The editor-in-chief actively encourages younger, not yet well established, scholars and independent authors to submit manuscripts for consideration. 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You should also check our Web site at www.sino-platonic.org, as back issues are regularly rereleased for free as PDF editions. Sino-Platonic Papers is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivs 2.5 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. THE POET AS SCHOLAR: ESSAYS AND TRANSLATIONS IN HONOR OF JONATHAN CHAVES In a story from the Spring and Autumn Period, when Boya played the qin and Zhong Ziqi listened, Ziqi’s thoughts were transported to towering mountains. He exclaimed to Boya, “How wonderful, with majesty akin to Mount Tai!” But in another moment his thoughts were carried to flowing waters. “How marvelous,” he said, “bubbling and flowing like our mightiest rivers!” When Ziqi died, Boya smashed his qin and broke its strings. Despite many requests, he never again played the qin, for he felt no one in the world could fully perceive him through his music. The two-character phrase “understand the sounds” (知音) thus came to mean not only full awareness but also true friendship. The Poet as Scholar: Essays and Translations in Honor of Jonathan Chaves edited by David K. Schneider Sin0-Platonic Papers Contents Frontispiece Calligraphy by Stephen Addiss, University of Richmond Introduction Portrait in pencil of Jonathan Chaves, 1983 2 by Dora Lee The Poet as Scholar: Essays and Translations in Honor of Jonathan Chaves 3 by David K. Schneider, University of Massachusetts Amherst PART I Jonathan Chaves and His Mentor Burton Watson 1. My Later Years 29 by Burton Watson, formerly Columbia University PART II Translations 2. Fourteen Records of West Lake from Yuan Hongdao’s (1568–1610) Deliverance Collection 37 Translated by Stephen McDowall, University of Edinburgh 3. “The Last Days of Yuan Hongdao (1568–1610)” by Yuan Zhongdao (1570– 1624): A Translation Offered in Tribute to Jonathan Chaves 53 Translated by Duncan M. Campbell, The Australian National University 4. The Road Not Taken: A Tenth-Century Kanshi Dialogue 65 Translated by Timothy R. Bradstock, University of Montana, and Judith N. Rabinovitch, University of Montana 5. Dr. Chaves’ Translations—A Review of The Columbia Book of Later Chinese Poetry: Yuan, Ming and Ch’ing Dynasties, by Jonathan Chaves 117 by Chen Cheng, Shanghai Ocean University; translated by David K. Schneider, University of Massachusetts Amherst PART III Classical Chinese Poetry and Literary Criticism 6. Yang Shen as a Literary Critic 133 by Kang-I Sun Chang, Yale University 7. Wang Shizhen’s Theory of Spirit-Resonance: Evidence from the Shenyun ji (Spirit-Resonance Collection of Tang Verse) and Tangxian sanmei ji (Collection of Samādhi [Enlightened] Poetry by Bhadras [Virtuous Sages] of the Tang) 151 by Richard John Lynn, University of Toronto (emeritus) PART IV Art, Literati Culture, and Aesthetics 8. The Aesthetics of Paradox: Poetry and Image in Ma Yuan’s Spring Saunter on a Mountain Path 185 by Li-ling Hsiao, University of North Carolina 9. Research Notes on Seals in Late Qing Artistic and Intellectual Life 221 by Qianshen Bai, Boston University 10. Plucking Hairs to Save the World? Northern Song Poets on Their Writing Tools 239 by Colin Hawes, University of Technology, Sydney 11. Wang Mian’s Prunus Poetry and Painting 269 by Richard A. Pegg, Curator of Asian Art, MacLean Collection 12. Kimura Kenkadō: Painter, Patron, Poet, and Polymath of Eighteenth- Century Osaka 287 by Felice Fischer, Philadelphia Museum of Art 13. Mural, Mural on the Wall: An Ancient Custom Reflected in Six Dynasties Bricks 307 by Willow Weilan Hai, China Institute Art Gallery 14. A Day in the Life of Pu Songling 319 by Victor Mair and Zhenzhen Lu, University of Pennsylvania PART V Essays on Culture and History 15. Where Did Modern Japanese Music Come From? Some Informal Remarks 335 by Thomas Rimer, University of Pittsburgh 16. Alexis de Tocqueville, China, and France 355 by Emmet Kennedy, George Washington University (emeritus) 17. Chinese Art History Beyond the Modernist-Postmodernist Dialogue: Tung Ch’i-ch’ang and Immanuel Kant 367 by Arthur Pontynen, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh 18. The Vanished Chinese Community of Virginia City, Montana 397 by Philip F. Williams, Montana State University 19. The China Image and Political Reform in Clarence Budington Kelland’s The Cat’s-Paw (1934) 417 by David K. Schneider, University of Massachusetts Amherst INTRODUCTION Portrait in pencil of Jonathan Chaves, 1983, by Dora Lee The Poet as Scholar: Essays and Translations in Honor of Jonathan Chaves David K. Schneider INTRODUCTION This book is a tribute to the truly protean mind of Jonathan Chaves, Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at George Washington University since 1979. The range and depth of Chaves’ work is astounding. He is the author of twelve books and dozens of scholarly articles that cover a vast array of intellectual and aesthetic ground. He is at heart a poet, as his translations attest. But he is a poet with the skills of a most excellent philologist. His scholarship is legendary for its fidelity not only to the original language of poetry and art, but also to what poetry and art have to say, and to their aesthetic beauty. Chaves’ interests are not only in translation. He is one of our most insightful scholars of Chinese aesthetic theory and poetics, Chinese and Japanese art history, and literati culture and thought. Moreover, his interests are not limited to purely academic translation and philology. He takes the view that the job of the humanities, East or West, is not to subject literature and art to theoretical “interrogation,” but rather to make available to the modern reader, specialist and non- specialist alike, the beauties and truths of great literature and art; to revive for us the culture that nurtured such works so that we may once again appreciate them as objects of aesthetic, philosophical, and religious contemplation—a powerful voice emerging from the Great Tradition of humanistic studies that flourished so brilliantly in Columbia University’s Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures under the leadership of Wm. Theodore de Bary, Donald Keene, Burton Watson, and C.T. Hsia, from which Chaves graduated with a PhD in 1971. It is no surprise that a book dedicated to such a poet-scholar would be somewhat eclectic. My SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS NO. 272 purpose in organizing this volume was to ask Chaves’ friends, collaborators, and former students to contribute to a book that would serve as a just tribute to the personality and accomplishments of this truly Renaissance mind. The essays I received did not disappoint. In this volume, there are essays and translations that are not oriented around a single academic theme or problem. Rather, we have a collection of excellent contributions that add a singular perspective and academic or cultural contribution to a field of endeavor substantially influenced, or even originated, by Jonathan Chaves. Opening this feast of essays commemorating Chaves’ career, we have the honor of a short look at the life of one of the scholars who inspired him to such great heights.