Chinese Approaches to Literature from Confucius to Liang Ch'i-Ch'ao 9781400870868

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Preface
Chronology of Chinese Dynasties
Abbreviations
Introduction Adele Austin Rickett
Confucius and Ancient Chinese Literary Criticism Donald Holzman
Ch'i in Chinese Literary Theory David Pollard
The Literary Theory and Practice of Ou-yang Hsiu Yu-Shih Chen
Method and Intuition: The Poetic Theories of Huang T'ing-chien Adele Austin Rickett
Ch'ing and Ching in the Critical Writings of Wang Fu-chih Siu-Kit Wong
The Ch'ang-chou School of Tz'u Criticism Chia-Ying Yeh Chao
The Chih-yen-chai Commentary and the Dream of the Red Chamber: A Literary Study John C. Y. Wang
Yen Fu and Liang Ch'i-ch'ao as Advocates of New Fiction C. T. Hsia
List of Contributors
Index

Citation preview

CHINESE APPROACHES

TO

FROM CONFUCIUS TO LIANG

LITERATURE CH'L-CH'AO

Chinese Approaches to Literature from Confucius to Liang Ch'i-ch'ao Edited, with an Introduction, by Adele Austin Rickett with contributions by Chia-ying Yeh Chao Yu-shih Chen Donald Holzman C. T. Hsia David Pollard Adele Austin Rickett John C. Y. Wang Siu-kit Wong

Princeton University Press Princeton, New Jersey

Copyright © 1978 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press. Princeton, New Jersey In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Guildford, Surrey All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data will be found on the last printed page of this book Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Paul Mellon Fund of Princeton University Press This book has been composed in Linotype Baskerville Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey

Preface

These essays were originally presented at a conference on Chinese literary criticism held in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, in December 1970. The conference was organized by W. Allyn Rickett under the sponsor­ ship of the American Council of Learned Societies Committee on Studies of Chinese Civilization. Herbert Franke acted as chairman, and J. R. Hightower as discussant. Since the subject of literary criticism is so broad, it was inevitable that the papers would cover a wide range of topics, and would repre­ sent different approaches to problems of theory and criticism. Thus, when the time came to consider bringing the fifteen papers together into a book, it was clear that a homogeneous work would be almost impos­ sible to achieve. A selection was accordingly made of those papers which seemed to have some elements in common and which were not too technical for a general reading public. The other papers, each excellent in its own way, have appeared or will appear in scholarly journals. In addition, two of the papers in this book have appeared elsewhere: C. T. Hsia's " Ten Fu and Liang Ch'i-ch'ao as Advocates of Mew Fiction" in the J o u r n a l of Oriental Studies (Hong Kong), xiv, 2; Chia-ying Teh Chao's "The Ch'ang-chou School ofTz'u Criti­ cism" in the H a r v a r d J o u r n a l of Asiatic Studies, 35(1975). I wish to extend thanks in particular to Eugene Eoyang and the late Arthur Wright, who, as chairmen of the Sub-Committee on Literature of the ACLS Committee on Studies of Chinese Civilization, offered invaluable support and guidance over the years the book was taking shape. Quotations from scholarly works of literary criticism have

ν

PREFACE

been fully acknowledged in the footnotes. In addition, thanks are due the following publishers for permission to quote from their publications: Columbia University Press for material from Vincent Shih's Literary Mind and Carving of Dragons; Oxford Clarendon Press for excerpts from The Poetical Works of Richard Crashaw and David Hawkes' A Little Primer of Tu Fu; and Alfred Knopf for a poem in Witter Bynner's The Jade Mountain. Characters for technical terms occur in the text where needed for clarification; characters for translated passages appear at the foot of the page in question.

Vl

Contents

Preface Chronology of Chinese Dynasties Abbreviations Introduction

ν ix xi

ADELE AUSTIN RICKETT

3

Confucius and Ancient Chinese Literary Criticism DONALD HOLZMAN

21

CKi in Chinese Literary Theory DAVID POLLARD

43

The Literary Theory and Practice of Ou-yang Hsiu YU-SHIH CHEN

67

Method and Intuition: The Poetic Theories of Huang T'ing-chien ADELE AUSTIN RICKETT

97

Ch'ing and Ching in the Critical Writings of Wang Fu-chih SIU-KIT WONG

121

The Ch'ang-chou School of Tz'u Criticism CHIA-YING YEH CHAO

151

The Chih-yen-chai Commentary and the Dream of the Red Chamber: A Literary Study JOHN C. Y. WANG

189

Yen Fu and Liang Ch'i-ch'ao as Advocates of New Fiction C. T. HSIA

List of Contributors Index VIl

221

258 261

Chronology of Chinese Dynasties

Shang (Yin) Chou Ch'in Han Former (Western) Han Hsin ( Wang Mang Interregnum) Later (Eastern) Han Three Kingdoms Period Six Dynasties Period Sui T'ang Five Dynasties Period Sung Northern Sung Southern Sung Mongol-Yiian Period Yuan Ming Ch'ing Republic

IX

Tr. 1766-1122 (1027) B.C. Tr. 1122 (1027) to 221 221-207 206 B.C. to A.D. 220 206 B.C. to A.D. 8 A.D. 9-23 25-220 221-280 280-589 581-618 618-906 907-960 960-1279 960-1127 1127-1279 1206-1368 1280-1368 1368-1644 1644-1912 1912

Abbreviations

GENERAL

CTCC

KCWPS

LTSH

LTSHHP

LCWPS

SPPT SPTK TSCC

THTP

xi

Chu-tzu chi-ch'eng Shanghai: Shih-chieh shu-chü, 1935. Continuous paging in each volume. Kuo Shao-yü Chung-kuo wen-hsüeh p'ip'ing shih Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1934-48. Li-tai shih-hua Comp. by Ho Wen-huan (late 18th cent.). Orig. pub. 1770. Shanghai: Yi-hsüeh shu-chü, 1927. Li-tai shih-hua hsii-pien Ed. by Ting Fu-pao Shanghai: Wen-ming shu-chii, 1916. Lo Ken-tse Chung-kuo wen-hsiieh p'i-p'ing shih. First publ. 1943. Shanghai: Ku-tien wen-hsiieh ch'u-pan she, 1957-61. Ssu-pu pei-yao Shanghai: Chung-hua shu-chii, 1927-35. Ssu-pu ts'ung-k'an Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1920-36. Ts'ung-shu chi-ch'eng Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1935-37. Continuous paging in each volume. Tz?u-h.ua ts'ung-pien Ed. by T'ang Kueichang Pref. dated 1934.

ABBREVIATIONS USED IN YU-SHIH CHEN ESSAY

Works OWC

Ou-yang Hsiu ch'üan-chi Taipei: Shihchieh shu-chü, 1963. Ou-yang Wen-chung kung wen-chi SPTK ed. USED IN SIU-KIT WONG ESSAY.

CCSH

CSCC

CYNC CTWC CTCMC HTYJHL KSPH MSPH SKC

SSHY SSYY TSPH TSSTCS

Chiang-chai shih-hua (written in 1690 at age 72). (Comprises Shih-yi and HTYJHL (part 1). In Ting Fu-pao ed., Ch'ing shihhua (1927; repr. ed., by K u o Shao-yü, Shanghai: Chung-hua shu-chii, 1963). Ch'uan-shan ch'iian-chi 16 vols. Taipei: Li-hsing shu-chii, 1965. This seems to be a photostatic copy of the 1933 edition of Wang's collected works, Ch'uan-shan yi-shu (Shanghai: T'ai-p'ing-yang shu-tien). Pagination in arabic numerals is continuous through the whole set (making one mistake in the process, as has been pointed out to me, by giving us the same plate twice, once as p. 12696, again as p. 12698). Chou-yi nei-chuan In CSCC. Chou-yi wai-chuan In CSCC. Chang-tzu Cheng-meng chu In CSCC. Hsi-t'angyung-jih hsu-lun In CCSH. Ku-shih p'ing-hsuan (1690). In CSCC. Ming-shih p'ing-hsuan (1690). In CSCC. Shih kuang-chuan (written in 1671/72 at age of 53). Ed. by Wang Hsiao-yu (Shanghai: Chung-hua shu-chii, 1964). Ssu-shu hsiin-yi In CSCC. Shang-shu yin-yi In CSCC. T'ang-shih p'ing-hsuan (1690). In CSCC. Tu ssu-shu ta-ch'iian shuo In CSCC.

USED IN C. T .

HHYC xn

HSIA

A Ying

ESSAY

ed. Wan-Ch'ing wen-hsiieh ts'ung-ch'ao:

ABBREVIATIONS

Hsiao-shuo hsi-ch'ü yen-chiu chüan Peking: Chung-hua shu-chii, 1960. Liang Ch'i-ch'ao. Yi-ch'ou ch'ung-pien Yin-ping shih wen-chi Shanghai: Chunghua shu-chü, 1926.

YW

xiii

«^

CHINESE A P P R O A C H E S TO L I T E R A T U R E FROM CONFUCIUS TO LIANG C H ' l - C H ' A O

·*§ Introduction ADELE AUSTIN RICKETT W h e n I speak of this thing or that thing you concentrate all your effort on the pursuit of my words, in a chase after my phrases. But if I were like the antelope that hangs by its horns, where could you lay h a n d on m e ? 1

I In December 1970 a number of "hunters" gathered in the lush, tropical island of St. Croix, Virgin Islands, to search for the meaning of Chinese literary theory and criticism. The most well-known critics were not the direct subjects of the papers presented at the conference since it was felt that they had already been well introduced to the Western world through translations or scholarly studies. Lu Chi, Liu Hsieh, Ssu-k'ung T'u, Han Yu, and Yen Yu, to name just a few of them, were inevitably cited, of course, but the main purpose of the conference was to expand the knowledge of Chinese 1

FrOm a discourse by the monk Yi-ts'un §£# of Hsueh-feng 11¾ (822908), recorded in Ch'uan teng Iu ($JS$& (Record of the Transmission of the Lamp), comp, by Tao-yuan M S in 1004, 16/328b. See Taisho Tripitaka, No. 2076 (51.196-467). When Yi-ts'un's disciples gathered around their teacher to learn about the meaning of enlightenment, he likened their quest for a specific method to that of the hunter's dog, sniffing along the ground in search of its prey, the antelope. The latter, according to Chinese belief, customarily stayed out of range at night by hanging from the branches of a tree so that no trace of scent was discernible on the ground. This Ch'anBuddhist image of the branch-hanging antelope (ling-yang kua-chiao Pfi^pSl· Pi) was applied to Chinese poetry by the critic Yen Yu (fl. c. A.D. 1200) in his attempt to convey the spirit of the intuitive approach to poetry. That is to say, the essence of poetry lies not in the words (the traces or tracks) but in what lies beyond the words. In this book, Yen Yu's ideas are mentioned by Siu-kit Wong, John Wang, and Adele Rickett.

3

INTRODUCTION

literary criticism beyond the point it had thus far reached, not to produce a history of the subject, but rather to probe specific areas that could contribute to a greater understanding of the whole. In the search for the "antelope" each scholar had very early become aware of the peculiar problems posed by the nature of Chinese critical writings, and the content of many of the papers reflected this. O n e of the most frustrating problems can be described as the "closed circuit" world of criticism. Throughout the ages scholars made and recorded their remarks about literature for other scholars who had had similar training in a common body of material. T h e need for lengthy elucidation of references was therefore unfelt. A quotation inserted to make a point need not be identified; in fact, it need not be quoted in full, since the reader would recognize it immediately and would understand the context in which it was mentioned. Terse comments made u p of vivid images and metaphors again presupposed a body of knowledge shared by writer and reader. A common fund of knowledge and experience in any given age is, of course, the basis for any communication in writing. This is a type of closed circuit imposed by the element of time. W h a t makes the world of Chinese criticism different to a certain extent is that the closed circuit operated beyond the contemporary scene. Criticism of works of art tended to build on previous attempts at criticism, with each generation adding layer after layer to the existing corpus. T h e assumption that each layer was clear to the scholarly world meant that terms and images appeared in era after era as a matter of course. W a n g Kuo-wei, writing at the beginning of the twentieth century that " C h i a n g K'uei (1155-1221) at least had bone (ku) in his writing," 2 felt quite confident that his fellow-scholars would remember the use of "wind and bone" (feng-ku) in Liu Hsieh's Wen-hsin tiao-lung written in the sixth century A.D. They would know immediately what he meant. W h y say more? Even though the same term may not have held exactly the same meaning in all ages, the writers felt 2

Wang Yu-an 1¾¾¾?, ed., Jen-chien tz'u-hua APslffii (Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1961), p. 259.

4

INTRODUCTION

they were talking to each other from a common base. This is not the case in our modern age. Very few modern Chinese scholars and even fewer Western scholars (if any) have had the classical training of the previous generations. They must ascertain the meaning of the vocabulary before the content of the work in question is to be understood. T h e second problem is related to the first and arises from the very form of much of Chinese criticism. Aside from the Wen-hsin tiao-lung and Yeh Hsieh's (1627-1703) Tuan-shih, which are made u p of well-constructed essays on specific aspects of the theory and practice of literature, most criticism is found in scattered form. Sometimes the core of a critic's theory must be pieced together from notes jotted down on the margins of other works, or from letters written to friends over a number of years, or from chance remarks written after conversations with drinking companions and later put together to form little books of comments (shih-hua). Finally, and again related to the first two problems, there is the use by critics of certain terms that contain the essence of their theories of literature. A particular term will become associated with a particular critic and if the modern scholar wants to make a study of that critic, he must clarify the term or terms the critic uses in his works. Thus with the Ch'ing dynasty scholar, W a n g Shih-chen, we associate the term shen-yiin (spirit and tone); with W a n g Fu-chih a key pair of words is ch'ing (emotion) and ching (scene), and so on. Scattered through a critic's works can be found explanatory points about his favorite terms, but it was not common practice in the past for a scholar to make any attempt at systematic exposition of them. Through examples taken from well-known poems he would illustrate his concept of literature as enshrined in the term. O r he would, in casual style, write a paragraph or less on what he meant by it. Sometimes a disciple or commentator would try to give an explanation, but usually such explanations were couched in metaphorical language not designed to clarify the picture at all. It is possible that this form of criticism, well established by the eleventh century A.D., would have continued to satisfy 5

INTRODUCTION

Chinese scholars so long as they remained in the environment that fostered the closed circuit type of communication. Farreaching changes in the political, social, economic, and academic world of China about the beginning of the twentieth century, however, had their effect on the literary world. Oldstyle Chinese scholars have been replaced in increasingly large number by scholars with Western and Chinese training. The frame of reference has changed and with that change has come a keen awareness of the complexities of Chinese literary criticism, of the wealth of insight to be gained from an understanding of it, and a determination to bring Western techniques of criticism and analysis to bear upon specific subjects. It is no accident, therefore, that several of the papers at the St. Croix conference dealt with the semantics of key terms. David Pollard chose a term that has appeared in the writings of scholars for centuries. As he points out, ch'i was originally a philosophic term and as such has had various connotations, depending on the period and beliefs of the philosopher. Yushih Chen, having previously examined the world of Han Yii as the leading exponent of the ku-wen style in the T'ang dynasty,3 saw strong points of difference in the literary theories of Ou-yang Hsiu, writing about and in the ku-wen style over two centuries later. Her discussion of Han Yii's ch'i (unusual) as opposed to Ou-yang Hsiu's ch'ang (universal) is crucial to an understanding of the development of ku-wen theory from T'ang to Sung. I was struck by the metaphorical terms to-t'ai (evolving from the embryo) and huan-ku (changing the bone) used by Huang T'ing-chien to describe the method of borrowing from the ancients to improve one's own rhetoric, and so I attempted to elucidate the terms as a means to understanding the phenomenon of imitation employed so widely and with such approval by Chinese poets. The terms ch'ing and ching are to be found scattered through the pages of literary criticism for centuries, but it was Wang Fu-chih in the seventeenth century who made them the basis of his own thoughts on literature. 3 See her "Han Yu as a Ku-wen Stylist," Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies, n. s. ViI, 1 (August 1968), pp. 143-208.

6

INTRODUCTION

Siu-kit Wong, in analyzing Wang's use of the terms, has clarified their meaning for Chinese literature in general. And J o h n Wang, writing on the Chih-yen-chai Commentary of the Dream of the Red Chamber, has devoted a substantial part of his paper to an explanation of terms used to describe methods and style of fiction writing, but he has made clear that many of the terms must have come originally from discussions on painting and calligraphy. I n summary, an understanding of the language of criticism is essential. Simple words such as those used by Ou-yang Hsiu must be set in the context of the age in which they were used. Elaborate, metaphorical language, used with such grace and nonchalance by Chinese writers, must be elucidated and paraphrased.

II O n that foundation it is then possible to move on to the role of the critic a n d to the content of criticism for which the words act merely as a conductor. W h o are the critics and what do they consider their role to be in the intellectual world of their age? W h a t does the world of criticism embrace in China? First of all, the critic in China has himself been a poet and/or essayist, consciously practicing the art on which he brings to bear his critical powers. I n the West we are reminded of the poet/critics Coleridge, Wordsworth, T. S. Eliot, and many more, or novel/critics such as E. M . Forster. But in the West we are also familiar with the phenomenon of a critic who makes no pretense of being a practitioner of the genre he is criticizing. Such persons in China, however, were rare indeed. Liu Hsieh is one of the very few who is known in the literary world only for his work of criticism, the Wen-hsin tiao-lung. There are, I think, a few rather simple explanations for the dual role played by writers. First, the critics and writers were in most cases part of a scholar-official class. They had experienced a traditional Confucian education designed to equip them for a position in the bureaucracy, and they were part of a closed circle that shared a common body of experience. Some

7

INTRODUCTION

felt critical of the corruption and turmoil in which they lived and eventually withdrew from society to comment on the world through the medium of poetry and essays. Others stayed within the system, in the belief that they could help to right the injustices they saw around them. But in one way or another most of them in their day were not noted as critics alone. Thus, in this volume, Ts'ao P'i in David Pollard's paper on ch'i may be known as a pioneer in the world of literary criticism but he is also known historically as Emperor Wen of the Wei dynasty (r. 220-226). Ou-yang Hsiu is perhaps less well known as a critic than as a poet and as an official in the Northern Sung dynasty. 4 H u a n g T'ing-chien is probably known more as a poet than a theorist, and in his own day had some reputation as an official. W a n g Fu-chih acquired fame as a philosopher, classicist, and patriot. Liang Ch'i-ch'ao's activities in the field of literature are of particular interest to us, but most students of modern China, on hearing his name, will think first of his role in the area of political change. T h e second reason for the writer's dual role is to be found in the training of intellectuals for the examinations that would lead them to positions in the official world. In some ages the ability to write poetry was deemed important; in other ages the ability to write essays was paramount. But, in any case, good writing was stressed and thus each aspiring official felt pressed to perfect his style to the highest degree. Since one way to do this was to learn from the masters of the past, critics who could point out the merits of one or another style were held in high respect. This leads, then, to another reason for the dual role played by writers, and that is the view of criticism shared by m a n y of the scholars. By and large a Chinese critic was interested in commenting on a work or a writer in order to instruct or to help his contemporaries or disciples in the art of writing. A poet or essayist from a past age would be held u p either as a model to follow or as a bad example from whom one 4

See James T. C. Liu, Ou-yang Hsiu, an Eleventh-Century Neo-Confucianist (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967).

8

INTRODUCTION

could learn in a negative way. It is for this reason that so much criticism is to be found in the form of letters to friends, in colophons and prefaces to other men's works, or in records of conversations with friends. Even those critics who were imbued with Buddhist-Taoist ideas of the inconsequent nature of words and who urged their readers to look for the meaning beyond the words, for "the antelope hanging by its horns," still wrote comment after comment, page after page, in an instructional way. Would it be too simplistic to say that it was Confucius and his teaching that set the precedent for this attitude among critics? Donald Holzman has discussed the role of Confucius in the development of literary criticism. H e has pointed out that Confucius really did not see literature as an aesthetic experience but rather concentrated on the utilitarian aspects of the arts. It was not until the beginning of the third century A.D., when Ts'ao P'i talked about the ch'i of a man's writing, that men began to see that there were differences in types of writing to the extent that a work of art could be appreciated not just for its functional value but for its power to move aesthetically, that the concept of wen as literature in the modern, Western sense was recognized. T h e world of literary criticism took shape and developed into a complex area of literary endeavor, and yet the Confucian attitude of viewing literature as a vehicle of education, a n d hence literary criticism too as an educative tool, persisted. Chia-ying Yeh Chao has illustrated this well in her treatment of the Ch'ang-chou School of the Ch'ing dynasty. Faced with the task of instructing young men in the field of literature, Chang Hui-yen and Chang Ch'i found themselves having to explain the existence of passionate love songs in a scholar-oriented world. T h e love songs were a fact; many had been written by highly respected scholarofficials such as Ou-yang Hsiu. W h a t kind of example did they set for impressionable young men? T h e answer lay in a didactic explanation. For such critics the love songs were obviously symbolic a n d provided an outlet for the anguished feelings of a neglected official. T h a t literature could a n d should serve a didactic function is

9

INTRODUCTION

also exemplified in C. T. Hsia's discussion of the literary theories of Yen Fu and Liang Ch'i-ch'ao. Both men had absorbed Confucian attitudes toward literature in their classical studies, but they had also turned to the West for an answer to many of China's problems at the end of the nineteenth century. Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, in particular, was highly impressed by the potentiality of the political novel. Flying in the face of the traditional Chinese scholar's attitude of disdain for this genre, he was awed by what seemed to him the lofty place accorded it in the West. If high-ranking statesmen such as Disraeli and members of the peerage such as Lord BulwerLytton could be held in esteem for writing political novels, then the Chinese should begin to take another look at this literary form. Because the critic was concerned with the function of literature in a practical way, emphasis on style became a matter of course. Large numbers of handbooks designed to help the young and not-so-young writers achieve reputations in their own age a n d assurance of continued glory in posterity appeared in literary circles from the latter part of the T ' a n g dynasty on. These were mechanical tools and need not concern us here. M u c h earlier philosophical discussions of the importance of skill (kung) as contrasted with natural endowment (t'ien-ts'ai) came to constitute a significant element in literary criticism. This will be discussed below. T h e pragmatic aspect of literary criticism can be seen, then, to have grown out of the scholar's life style—his training as a Confucian official—and his highly developed sense of responsibility toward others of his own class. But this is still only an outward manifestation of the critical process. T h e world of literary criticism must also be examined in terms of its content. And so we come back to the question: what does the world of criticism embrace? Ill As in the West a striking amount of literary criticism in China is concerned with the creative process. H o w is a poet made? IO

INTRODUCTION

And how is a poem born? Is there a native genius with which a m a n is born, that operates spontaneously, uniquely, for that one person, or can a m a n acquire this talent through practice and discipline? Ts'ao P'i opened the question for later discussion when he stated very briefly: " T h e important thing in literature is ch'i. T h e embodiment of ch'i is in clearness (ch'ing) and cloudiness (cho). It may not be had through striving for it. To compare it with music, though the score m a y be the same, a n d the rhythm may have a given measure, inasmuch as the drawing of breath (yin ch'i) is unequal, the degree of skill [in performance] is predetermined: though the father or elder brother may have it, it cannot be passed on to the children or the younger brothers." 5 Here it would seem that Ts'ao P'i gave major credit in the creative process to natural endowment. Pollard points out later in his paper, however, that the concept of a naturally endowed ch'i came, in the minds of subsequent critics, to be something that could be cultivated. Liu Hsieh, writing at the beginning of the sixth century A.D., expanded on Ts'ao P'i's concept in a chapter of his Wenhsin tiao-lung entitled "Shen ssu" (Spiritual thought or Spirit and thought). I quote from Prof. Vincent Shih's translation: "Individuals vary with respect to their natural talents; some are slow a n d some are quick. And when they express themselves in literary forms, they also excel in many different ways. . . . A spirited scholar, with the essentials of the art of writing in his mind, is quick to meet situations with an instantaneous response even before he has time for consideration; while a m a n of profound thought, whose emotional reactions are complicated and who is ever aware of all possible alternatives, achieves light and maps plans only after prolonged questioning and inquiring. A m a n whose mechanism of response is quick does his work in a h u r r y ; but it takes a long time for a m a n of deliberation to show his accomplishments. T h o u g h these two groups of people differ in their ways of writing, one group writing with ease and the other with great labor, both types 5

See below, David Pollard's paper on ch'i, pp. 43-66. II

INTRODUCTION

must be men of comprehensive learning and broad experience." 6 Here recognition is given to the innate talent of an individual, but the weight of the discourse lies in the belief that comprehensive learning and wide experience are essential for chat genius to produce a worthwhile piece of writing. Thus a great proportion of Liu Hsieh's work is devoted to the techniques of writing and to a description of the writing process. Although such scattered references on the subject are to be found in the early history of literary criticism, it is the critics in the Sung dynasty to whom we must turn for fuller discussion. I n particular, their inquiry into the relationship between native genius and acquired talent sharpened and deepened. Thus H u a n g T'ing-chien, who acquired a reputation for emphasis on imitation of the ancients as a way of achieving success in writing, and who urged his disciples to spend hours of hard effort in the pursuit of skill, had to go beyond the man-made aspect to acknowledge that an undefinable metaphysical quality had to be present. Best of all was to be born a genius, but if a person were not so favorably endowed, H u a n g felt it was possible to make a qualitative leap into that state after building u p quantitative experience through study and writing. Thus he made a distinction between T u Fu, who had perfected his skill by "reading to tatters 10,000 volumes," and T ' a o Ch'ien, who had a natural genius that enabled him to write poetry without effort. If a writer could master T u Fu's technique and then make the intuitive leap into spontaneity in the manner of T ' a o Ch'ien, he would achieve success. H u a n g presaged the Southern Sung Buddhist-influenced critic, Yen Yu, who used the metaphor of the "antelope hanging by its horns" to signify his view of the creative process. After a long period of study a writer would find the meaning in life, not by looking for its traces consciously, but by seeing it intuitively; at this point he could then write without effort. And the reader would find the meaning intended by the writer, not by poring over the individual words, but by grasping the sense beyond the words. ^Literary Mind and Carving of Dragons (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), pp. 156-157. 12

INTRODUCTION

Given the number of critics who, while recognizing the significance of natural genius, still placed more emphasis on training and discipline, it would be tempting to say that this view was typical of Chinese literary criticism in general. But Professor Wong shows clearly that there was one scholar at least who did not adhere to this doctrine. He says of Wang Fu-chih: "he frequently speaks of the contrast between 'the effort of man' (jen-li) and 'the gift of All-Being' (t'ien-shou), making it quite clear that poetry of the highest order invariably belongs to the latter category." For him poetry has its "natural law of formation," but this is very different from rules of versification that must be studied and mastered in order to produce a great work. IV All would, I think, agree, however, that the creative process is a personal, individual phenomenon that is influenced by external factors. Among them is the critic's awareness of the effect nature has had on writers, both poets and essayists. Countless numbers of images, metaphors, and similes taken from nature have been used in literature since the creation of the songs in the Shih ching dating from the eleventh to seventh centuries B.C. To start a poem with one or two lines descriptive of some natural phenomenon such as "Look at that cove of the Ch'i (River) /The royal fodder and the creepers are luxuriant," 7 and then switch with no transitional phrases to a human subject, a device commonly employed in the Shih ching, has been typical of lyrical poetry in China ever since. Introduction of the natural object served to rouse the listener's or reader's imagination to be ready for a related subject in the body of the poem. Such covert metaphorical usage was equaled by more conventional metaphorical devices so common in the West. But no matter what the form used, the proponderance of natural images is striking. The critics took cognizance of this in their remarks on the relationship between man and the natural 7 SMh ching, no. 55. Bernhard Karlgren, Book of Odes (Stockholm: Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1950), pp. 36-37.

13

INTRODUCTION

world as expressed in literature, and at the same time made liberal use of natural phenomena as a means of conveying their ideas in metaphorical terms. This can perhaps be explained by the fact that most of the critics were poets too, and were completely at home in the world of metaphor as soon as they picked u p a writing brush. But that is a superficial reason. Of deeper import is the fundamental relationship of the writer to the world of nature. Lu Chi in his " W e n fu" states it well: Erect in the Central Realm the poet views the expanse of the whole universe, And in tomes of ancient wisdom his spirit rejoices and finds nurture. His lament for fleeting life is in observance of the four seasons that ever revolve, His regard for the myriad growing things inspires in him thoughts as profuse. As with fallen leaves in autumn's rigor his heart sinks in grief, So is each tender twig in sweet spring a source of joy. In frost he finds sympathy at moments when his heart is all frigid purity, O r far, far, into the highest clouds he makes his mind's abode. . . . 8 Ssu-k'ung T'u, in describing the twenty-four qualities of poetry (Erh-shih-ssu shih-p'in), identifies the writer closely with natural phenomena. In the twelfth mode, entitled "Hao-fang" (The Untrammelled Mode), he says: Free to study Nature's mysteries, H e breathes the empyrean; His spirit grounded in T r u t h , Sure of himself, he casts off all restraint. Wide sweep the winds of heaven, Grey loom the hills out at sea, 8

Tr., Shih-hsiang Chen, "Essay on Literature," in his Literature as Light Against Darkness (Peiping: National Peking University Press, 1948), p. 48. 14

INTRODUCTION

And with true strength imbued, All creation spread before h i m ; H e beckons sun, moon and stars, Leads on the phoenix, Drives the six tortoises at dawn, And washes his feet in the stream where rises the sun. 9 Yen Yu, writing around A.D. 1200, felt that a writer had to enter into the spirit or essence (ju-shen) of the object that was the subject of his contemplation. Only when he had absorbed this spirit could he write about it in such a way that the reader would also be able to feel the spirit of that object. And only when this was accomplished could there occur an intuitive leap to the meaning behind the words to raise writer a n d reader to a metaphysical plane above the m u n d a n e world. This relationship between writer and external object of nature was elaborated upon by W a n g Fu-chih in his treatment of the terms ch'ing and ching. For a poem to be born, the scene must be acted upon by the consciousness of the poet a n d this act transforms these two originally separate phenomena into one. In a quasi-scientific approach to the subject he sees the creation of poetry almost as a materialistic process. T w o forces come in contact with each other, unite, and form a third that is different in nature from the other two. This third " t h i n g " is a poem, unique in itself, not to be repeated in exactly the same form ever again. Once born, its identity is independent of any other force. Thus, with this view, W a n g Fu-chih could, like the New Critics in the West, see a poem apart from its writer's background. T h e external stimulus was the motivating force, but once the poem had been written that background was no longer important for a n understanding of the poem. This view was in sharp contrast to that of the Confucian critics, who saw a strong relationship between creative writing a n d a man's social background. T h e Confucian critic was fond of ascertaining the date of writing of a man's poem or essay, in the belief that the historical setting would help to elucidate the 9

Tr., Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang, "The Twenty-four Modes of Poetry," in Chinese Literature, 1963, no. 7, p. 71.

»5

INTRODUCTION

man's state of mind at the time of writing and thus help to explain the meaning of the poem. Professor Yeh deals with this view in her paper on the Ch'ang-chou school in the Ch'ing dynasty. She refers to several critics, from the Southern Sung to the twentieth century, who found hidden meanings in a tz'u of Hsin Ch'i-chi by tying certain lines to historical events of his own time and others to past events that were used by the poet allegorically to represent his state of mind at the time of writing. T h e critics claimed that the poem could not be fully understood if read without a knowledge of the historical events that prompted its writing. V Such explanations were an attempt to bring into sharp focus the writer's relationship to h u m a n society. But they do more than that for those of us who are interested in the role of the critic, for they show us clearly how the critic viewed the reader in relationship to the writer. Naturally a critic who saw literature more as a didactic vehicle and less as an aesthetic experience would be concerned about its effect on the reader. Why, for example, should Chang Hui-yen spend so much time giving allegorical interpretations to what appeared on the surface to be simple love songs if he did not have the reader in mind? His zeal in guiding them away from any hint of sensuousness in the poems that he included in his anthology led him into forced explanations that must have seemed implausible to at least some of his fellow-scholars. But there is no doubt that he felt the reader to be incapable of forming his own j u d g m e n t of the poems and that he was placing himself in the position of a bridge between them and the poet. Chou Chi saw the reader in a much more sophisticated light when he defined the active participation of the reader in the aesthetic experience of poetry. Professor Yeh quotes from Chou Chi's preface to his Tz'upien: " W h a t moves a m a n to write and what he chooses to write about are not necessarily always serious or proper. T h e important thing is that the reader can draw something from the poem that is right. T h e poem does his character 16

INTRODUCTION

no harm, and we should not reject the work because we disapprove of the man. . . . " Professor Hsia also provides us with a picture of a critic who viewed fiction in terms of its effect on the reader. Liang Ch'ich'ao used four metaphors to define fiction's power: "fiction spreads a cloud of smoke or incense (hsiin) around the reader so that his senses and power of judgment are conditioned by his reading; it immerses (chin) him in the situations and problems depicted in its pages so that even for days or weeks after the reading he is still seized by sorrow or anger or other appropriate emotion; it pricks (tz'u) him into an unusual state of excitement over scenes depicted with great power; lastly, it lifts (t'i) him to the level of the hero and motivates him to imitate him." Again we gain the impression from his concern over the power of fiction that Chinese readers were extremely impressionable and easily led or misled. Also in the field of fiction, John Wang makes the statement that "the overwhelming impression one gets from reading the [Chih-yen-chai] Commentary is that it is meant to elucidate the meaning and fine writing in the novel for the sake of a reader with no inside knowledge of the events described therein." In reading Professor Wang's translations of various comments, we are struck by the chatty tone in which they are written, illustrated by such phrases as "The reader must remember this," and " . . . there are numerous [other moments in the story when] we can neither laugh nor cry nor sigh nor feel sorry. The only thing we can do is to reward our author with a big cup of wine." The commentator and his reader are sharing a common experience. When we get away from the environment of the self-appointed mentors among Chinese critics, the concern for the reader is not as readily apparent. And yet, even a man like Wang Fu-chih, whose interest seemed to center primarily on the making of a poem and the poet's relationship to the phenomena that started the process in motion, showed a remarkable sensitivity to the reader's role in the aesthetic experience. Professor Wong quotes a comment made by Wang Fu-chih that seems to foreshadow the views of Chou Chi: "The poet, in 17

INTRODUCTION

writing, may have had a single unified thought to convey, but readers must each take that of a poem which is allowed him by his emotions. . . . T h e freedom of movement that men's emotions enjoy knows no bounds, and every m a n gets such experience as his peculiar emotions permit—this then is the value of poetry." T h e papers in this book, taken together then, shed light on both the role of writer and reader, their relationship to each other, and to the external world that stimulates creativity. Through them all runs a consistent thread of concern for truth in portraying the universe at large and the individual in particular, the physical world and the h u m a n emotion. China's best-known critics from Liu Hsieh on wrote in a mood that reflected dissatisfaction with the literary milieu of their time. They observed their contemporaries busying themselves in writing ornate, ostentatious, frivolous, and insincere verse and essays, either in an effort to outshine others in the current fashion or because their talents were so meager that they could only attach themselves to one or another school and write in imitation of others. Confucian critics deplored these lapses from the W a y a n d called for a return to truth. For them this could be accomplished only by studying the sages of old. Thus their works are filled with references to writings of past centuries. But Buddhist critics, too, looked back to earlier poets as examples for writers to follow. Their emphasis was on the ability of the former masters to grasp the essential truth of an object and portray it in simple terms so that its nature could be clearly grasped by the reader. T h e poets held up for esteem varied from age to age, but the practice was the same. T h e attention paid to truth and a simple rhetoric for its expression can be seen as reflecting the main principles inherent in the practice of criticism by Chinese scholars: (1) the belief that it is the critic's role to act as a corrective force in a society that has strayed too far from the moral W a y ; (2) the determination of the critic to set forth guidelines for the production of literature that reflects reality in both the h u m a n and non-human world; (3) the concern for an understanding of the creative process and its function in the illumination of the 18

INTRODUCTION

dynamic forces of life in the universe. The participants in the St. Croix conference presented papers that dealt with all these aspects of the Chinese critics' world. The papers that appear here are, it is hoped, representative of the desire felt by all who shared in the conference to add another dimension to the gradual understanding in the West of Chinese criticism.

19

«*§ Confucius and Ancient Chinese LiteraryCriticism DONALD HOLZMAN

I Surely there is no more bookish civilization than China's, no civilization more prone to revere its ancient writings and to seek for guidance in its daily affairs within the pages of its traditional and even modern literature. And yet when we look into ancient Chinese writings to seek for general remarks about the nature of this literature—perhaps the broadest way of defining "literary criticism"—we come very near to being completely frustrated. Whole volumes have been consecrated to the study of what the ancient Greeks, and in particular Aristotle, wrote about literature, and their influence still persists. T h e historians of Chinese literary criticism, on the other hand, hardly devote a chapter to the entire ancient period (origins to the end of the H a n ) and, although it would be very wrong to say that the period has exerted no influence in later times, that influence has come more from general philosophical attitudes and an extremely small sampling of short statements, usually reinterpreted or simply misinterpreted, than from anything resembling literary theory as such. It is my intention, in this paper, to show how literary theory developed (or, more exactly, failed to develop) in ancient China, why it took the forms it did, and why we have to wait until the very end of "antiquity," the end of the H a n , to find something resembling literary theory as we know it in the West. I will concentrate on Confucius in my discussion, for I think he is at once the most influential thinker in the ancient 21

DONALD HOLZMAN

period and the one who has raised the greatest number of problems. But first I would like to indulge in some general theories on the reasons why literary criticism did not develop in ancient China. II I know my uncomplimentary attitude towards ancient Chinese literary theory is polemical and I give it rashly, " a well-bound frog's frog's-eye view," as Chuang Tzu might say, a n d very schematically. Stated briefly, literary theory (or literary criticism) failed to develop in ancient China because the ancient Chinese thinkers who talked about literature at all, the Confucianists, refused to look upon it as a separate entity, as something that could be considered in itself, divorced from morality, ritual, and politics, the subjects that seemed to absorb their entire interest. Their view of the world, moreover, of m a n and his works, was extremely synthetic, not to say monolithic. Things were seen as a whole, in their relations to one another, rather than analyzed into their component parts. This way of looking at things is, of course, admirable, a n d it enabled the philosophers of the Golden Age to say things about m a n and the world that are still very relevant to us today—perhaps more than ever, as the highly technical and complex patterns of modern life tend to make us unable to see the woods for the trees. O n e could even imagine that this synthetic view could engender extremely pertinent remarks about the place of literature in society, its importance in a man's moral life, for example; but the ancient Chinese thinkers were too completely oriented towards the exterior, towards the objective world and towards the state, towards m a n as a political animal, to be able to see literature as anything more than an element in the running of the state. T h e earliest remarks on literature are probably the wellknown conversation in the Shang shu between the legendary emperor Shun and his Director of Music, K'uei 3|. T h e political prejudice I a m speaking about appears full blown in this very ancient text. Shun, after explaining the civilizing 22

DONALD HOLZMAN

influence that he believes music will confer upon his progeny, makes the following remarkable statement that can truly be called literary theory or literary criticism: "Poetry puts into words what we have in our hearts; song prolongs those words into chants; and the notes that follow the chant are put into harmony with the scales. W h e n the eight instruments are in accord [as they play these chants] and do not encroach upon one another, then the spirits a n d m a n will be brought into h a r m o n y . " 1 W e have to wait close to a millenium before we again hear a statement as general, as suggestive, a n d as pregnant as "Poetry puts into words what we have in our hearts." But in the Shang shu, as in later tradition, this intriguing phrase remains stillborn; it seems to have been uttered only to describe the duties of the Director of Music and, although the eventual effects of this heart-begotten poetry reach to the very gods, there is no need to pursue the matter further: once the Director of Music has got the knack of the thing, the ritual chants will be sung and the work of the state will run smoothly.

Ill Almost all ancient remarks on literature share this state-oriented prejudice, and few of them are as interesting and as 1 SHaUg shu, ii, 1/5, "Shun tien"; cf. Bernhard Karlgren, tr., Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities (Stockholm), 22 (1950), 7. The date of the "Yao (and Shun) tien" chapter has been highly debated (cf. the discussion in Chang Hsi-t'ang # 5 5 ¾ Shang shu yin-lun l£j!i5lin [Sian, 1958], pp. 173177), but, as Lo Ken-tse has pointed out in LCWPS, i, 36), the phrase "poetry puts into words what we have in our hearts" is found in several preHan texts. But, aside from its date, this text is so concise that it is highly ambiguous. Does it refer to the expression of sentiments by a poet, or by someone reciting a poem from the Shik ching to "express his thoughts" diplomatically (fu shih RNF) ? There are some interesting comments on this passage and on its subsequent history in Chu Tzu-ch'ing ifcUSf, Shih yen chih pien !#11¾¾? (Shanghai: K'ai-ming shu-tien, 1947); see also Chow Tse-tsung, "The Early History of the Chinese Word Shih (Poetry)," in Chow, ed., Wen-lin (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1968), pp. 151-166.

23

DONALD HOLZMAN profound. This applies as m u c h to Confucius, the true glory of ancient Chinese civilization, as to his successors. O n e 2 modern scholar has attempted to prove, on the contrary, that " t h e ability of Confucius as a literary critic" cannot be ques­ 3 tioned. T h e Chinese historians of literary criticism, or at least the two most famous a m o n g them, are divided on just 4 how much "literary critical ability" he h a d . But let us look into what Confucius himself h a d to say about literature. T h e Lun-yu is short; the part of it devoted to literature is much shorter still. Let us first look into what we can learn of Confucius' at­ titude towards art in general, to see whether or not he was receptive to manifestations of artistic excellence, the sine qua non of any critical activity worthy of the n a m e . T h e most striking proof of Confucius' artistic sensitivity, the one that springs to mind immediately, is Lun-yu, 7:13: " W h e n the Master was in Ch'i he heard the S h a o 5 a n d for three months he did not recognize the taste of meat. H e said, Ί did not realize that music could reach this point [of perfection].' " Like almost the entire Lun-yii, this passage is full of difficulties. M y translation is only one of three or four possible, and not necessarily the best. Perhaps Confucius did not lose the taste of meat "for three m o n t h s " ; perhaps he was not amazed at the perfection of the music, but at the fact that it had been played in Ch'i. Whatever translation one opts for, the fact remains that Confucius was severely jolted by the music he 2

M a Yau-woon, "Confucius as a Literary Critic: A Comparison with the Early Greeks," in Essays in Chinese Studies Dedicated to Professor Jao Tsung-i (Hong Kong, 1970), pp. 13-45. *Ibid., p . 44. 4 LCWPS i, 38-40 and 47-49, is very critical; Kuo Shao-yu, Chung-kuo wen-hsueh li-lunp'i-p'ing shih ¢ £ ! ! ¢ ¢ 8 ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ (Peking: Jen-min wen-hsiieh ch'u-pan she, 1959), pp. 15-19, is much more favorable. See also the bibliographical material quoted in the article by Ma mentioned above, on p. 16, n. 5, and in the Addenda, pp. 44-45. 5 Music for a ritual ballet said, in early commentaries, to have been composed by the mythical emperor Shun. It is also mentioned in Lun-yii, 3:25 and 15:10.

24

DONALD HOLZMAN

heard. Was his appreciation aesthetic, ritualistic, a n d archae­ ological, or a bit snobbish? T h e r e is no way of knowing, but I think we should take the irreductible meaning (after allow­ ing for variant translations) as signifying that Confucius was a highly sensitive m a n , very m u c h capable of reacting, a n d reacting strongly, to artistic stimulus. Further proof of this, all concerning music, can be found in his passionate playing of the musical stones (Lun-yti, 14:42), his appreciation of the musical accompaniment to the first poem in the Shih ching (Lun-yii, 8:15), a n d his fondness for singing (7:31 and, per­ haps, 11:25). In general, all the most trustworthy conversa­ tions a n d remarks in the Lun-yii describe a m a n of superior sensitivity a n d refinement: a perfect type for a b u d d i n g liter­ ary critic. But did Confucius' literary critical talent ever flower? A second requirement for a literary critic, albeit slightly less imperative than sensitivity, is a love of learning, a desire to read a n d assimilate the works of the past a n d to use them as a guide a n d a standard in his appreciation of the works of his own time. Confucius seems, from the very beginning, throughout, and to the very end of the Lun-yii, to be the very image of a lover of the past and to fit our second requirement almost too well. T h e very first line of the Lun-yii, as I like to interpret it, in any case, seems to describe the perfect amateur antiquarian re-reading his old tomes: " T o study and, from time to time, to repeat what we have learned, is that not, too, 6 a pleasure?" (1:1.) T i m e a n d again he, usually so modest, prides himself on his love of learning: " T h e Master said: ' I n a hamlet of ten households there will surely be men as loyal and truthful as I a m ; b u t there will be no one to equal my desire to learn' " (5:27). Sometimes he gives the impression that the love of the past is his only virtue: " T h e Master said: " I a m not one with innate knowledge. I a m one who loves 6 The nuance in the word " t o o " (yi ^ ) being, "even if one is unknown and out of office."

ΨΒ0

+mZELo P%, (SPPred.), 2/2b.

118

Hou-shan chi igWJI

ADELE AUSTIN RICKETT

Huang T'ing-chien, or with their more remote model, Tu Fu, is ample evidence that hard work and determination are not enough. Huang himself realized this. It is unfortunate that later critics have tended to overlook this aspect of his views on the creative process.

"9

·*§ Ch'ing and Ching in the Critical Writings of Wang Fu-chih SIU-KIT WONG

I Wang Fu-chih 3 ¾ ½ (1619-1692)1 was hardly known as a literary critic in his own day and his views of poetry have not been either popular or influential since. But it is possible to establish that his critical writings are characterized by a clarity and precision of expression, a consistency of standard, and, ultimately, a sense of relevance and purpose. These qualities, not always discoverable even in some of the bestknown Chinese critics, should qualify Wang Fu-chih as a major critic by such standards as are likely to be found acceptable in our own times. The immediate object of this study is to examine Wang's use of the highly recurrent expressions ch'ingfflfand eking ^- in his criticism. Such an examination leads inevitably to a consideration of Wang's basic thinking on the nature of poetry, the nature of its genesis, and the function of reading and interpretation. Wang's criticism is inseparable from the rest of his "philosophy"; that this is so will be argued briefly towards the end of the discussion. 1

FOr a brief account of the main events in the life of Wang Fu-chih see S. Y. Teng's "Wang Fu-chih's Views on History and Historical Writing," Journal of Asian Studies, xxvm, 1 (Nov. 1968), pp. 111-123, repr. in the Indiana University Asian Studies Research Institute Reprint Series. Chang Hsi-t'ang's S B S Wang Ch'uan-shan ksueh-p'u IfeUJPU (1938; repr. ed., Taipei: Commercial Press, 1965) is also useful. 121

S I U - K I T WONG

II T h a t poetry comes about when the poet allows his mind to become engaged with the world outside him is a familiar assumption in Chinese critical thinking from as far back as the " G r e a t Preface," the " W e n fu," the Wen-hsin tiao-lung, and the Shih p'in. T h e poet's mind is referred to by such various labels as hsin , chih ,¾, yi 3¾ and ch'ing ff, or simply wo ft; the " w o r l d " is often merely designated " t h i n g , " (wu %), although L u Chi, Liu Hsieh, and Chung H u n g all make it clear that, among things, natural scenery in particular has a way of stimulating the mind into poetic activity. It is therefore hardly surprising that Chinese critics soon learned to talk about ch'ing and ching, meaning in some contexts "feeling" and "scenery" but, much more often, "emotional experience" and "visual experience," as freely and loosely as European critics have bandied about the word "creative." 2 T h e earliest sustained use of ch'ingjching in Chinese literary criticism is, as far as I know, in the Shih ko ff |g·, attributed to W a n g Ch'ang-ling ΞΐΙΙβι of the T ' a n g period. 3 From the Sung period on practically everyone talking about poetry employed the dichotomy in some form or other, 4 a n d the 2 At one or two moments in this essay comparison is made, without being stated, with European thinking on the subject; this is a necessity, not always a virtue, inherent in the choice of language. Some of the references made, such as "creation, "imagination," "willing," "shaping," "form," are, of course, commonplaces, and can easily be confirmed by consulting any general work on European criticism. But Coleridge looms large and the thirteenth chapter of the Biographia Literaria is constantly in one's mind. For another example of the "European" critic, one might turn to an American, Susanne K. Langer. Her belief in "forms that set forth the nature of human feeling," and talk of " t h e creation of expressive forms," in her Problems of Art (New York: Scribner, 1957), p. I l l , so man-centered, is almost the re­ verse of anything Wang Fu-chih has to say. 3 T h a t the Shih ko is a work of the Sung period is widely held. See, for in­ stance, LCWPS, n, 188, and Ch'ien Chung-lien's SWW essay on the Shih shih ! # £ of Chiao-jan ft£§ (fl. c. 760) in Vol. ν of the Yi-Un ts'ung-lu B # * » (Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1964), pp. 37-41. 4 Interesting examples of its use can be found in Fang Hui's Jj IsI Ying-k'uei lu-sui Sllgftfi (Ssu-k'u ch'uan-shu ed.), Fan Hsi-wen's ?S$S3t Tui-ch'uang

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Ming critics too were just as much in the habit of using ch'ing\ching for convenience. 5 I think it would be correct to sum u p the earlier uses of ch'ing and ching by saying that (1) some critics, especially the more technically biased ones, regarded these two "elements" or "component p a r t s " of poetry as a guide to the formal construction of poems, requiring certain lines to be ch'ing, certain others to be ching; and (2) nearly all of them recognized that it is preferable to have ch'ing and ching merging into a single whole. I would like to suggest at once where W a n g Fu-chih surpasses his predecessors in criticism. Most of the time Wang's argument is, as in the earlier critics, that ch'ing and ching should merge; but while no other critic to my knowledge has questioned the suitability of the two words as signs for what they are meant to stand, W a n g points out that ch'ing and ching are merely names, useful for the purpose of reference and discussion but, contrary to ordinary thinking, not to be mistaken for entities of reality. T h e recognition is that of the problem of reification in philosophy. 6 T h e other consideration whereby Wang's use of the two words must be regarded as superior is that his oeuvre of enviable range is there to bear out what he chooses to express in them so that there is a coherence, a clarity, and a depth in his arguments to which other critics can have no claim. Going through those passages in Wang's critical writings in which the words ch'ing and ching occur, one realizes that there are cases in which he uses the two words in a conventional, simplistic sort of way, that is, taking them to stand for two unrelated, separately definable areas of reality. In No. 17 of the Chiang-chai shih-hua (2/11), he quotes a number of lines yeh-yii %WSM {LTSHHP ed.), Shen Yi-fu's ft«K Taeh-fu chih-mi ^ ¾ ¾ (THTP ed.), and Chang Yen's 3§i£ Tz'u yuan MU (ibid.), all critical writings of the Southern Sung. 5 One of the better examples is Hsieh Chen's M S Ssu-ming shih-hua BiK t#|g (LTSHHP ed.). 6 The "fallacy of reification" is defined as "confusing a concept with a real object or cause. We commit this fallacy whenever we confuse an abstraction with a reality. . . . " See L. W. Beck and R. L. Holmes, Philosophic Inquiry (2nd ed., New York: Prentice-Hall, 1968), p. 29. 123

SIU-KIT WONG

descriptive of natural scenes and says: "These are all ching; is any one of them ch'ing? As for poems in which all four lines are ch'ing, there is no end to quoting examples of them. Do we therefore conclude that such poetry is not to be allowed by the rules?" 7 T h e same crude, clear-cut distinction between ch'ing and eking is again in evidence in No. 24 of the same work (2/14): " I f you can't handle the language of ching, can you possibly handle the language of ch'ing? T h e ancients often give us lines of ching in their sweetest lyricism. . . . " W a n g goes on to quote examples, before he explains: "Feeling (ch'ing) resides in those lines: it is only by expressing your feelings in the spirit of writing descriptions of scenery that you can succeed in bringing out without effort the particularised experience of body and mind." Here there is no indication that he is aware of the imperfect semantic specification of the two words. Similar use of the words occurs elsewhere. Commenting on a poem by T ' a o Ch'ien, W a n g says: "This is suitably the poetry of a refined hermit; the scenic description has purity, the emotional expression has d e p t h " (KSPH 4/33a). 8 Again, in another passage he writes: "Bodying forth scenes and situations is easy; bodying forth one's own feelings is a matter of difficulty. . . " (MSPH l/4b). But it is not characteristic of 'Many of Wang Fu-chih's comments on ch'ing and ching are to be found in short passages accompanying poems in his three anthologies, Ku-shih p'ing-hsuan, T'ang-shih p'ing-hsuan, and Ming-shih p'ing-hsuan. In some cases his remarks are of a general nature and do not need the poem itself for clarification. In such cases I have simply added the chapter and page number following the translated passage. In other cases he refers specifically to the form or rhetoric of a poem and I have therefore included in the notes further information as background for the reader. I have purposely left the poems out of the text, however, so that we may the better concentrate on the criticism of Wang Fu-chih. 8 The poem is "Ho Kuo Chu-pu" Wf|i±®; tr. by J . R. Hightower, The Poetry of T'ao Ch'ien (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 81.

nwmmMo Jb^fmnhzfto 124

SIU-KIT WONG W a n g to speak on the assumption that ch'ing and ching are so discrete. If we go back to the first passage I have quoted from Chiangchat shih-hua (2/11), we find W a n g continuing t h u s : "Ching is assembled by the agency of ch'ing, and ch'ing is given life by ching; basically the two are not separate, as they simply go the direction the [poet's] state of mind tends. If you sever ch'ing a n d ching into two halves, the ch'ing will no longer be good enough for arousing the [reader's] feelings, and the ching won't even be what one means by ching any m o r e . " 9 T h e r e is, already, in this suggestion a sense of the complete relatedness between " m a n " a n d " t h i n g s " in the process of poetry. And this sense is at the very heart of Wang's criticism. Let m e simply quote further examples. I n one place he says: " A b o u n d a r y line being placed between ch'ing and ching, there can no longer be any true action of the emotions; one might as well not have poetry if the emotions slow down and their actions come to a h a l t " [KSPH, 4/22b P'an Yueh j#g·). O n a poem by Po Tao-yu ft,W& (A. D. 4th c e n . ) : " T h e principal ('host') a n d the subordinate ('guest') elements are beautifully related; the ch'ing a n d ching merge into each other. Yang Shen $§fg (Ming dyn.) proposed to remove the last four lines of the poem but he was w r o n g " 10 (KSPH, 4/36b). Hsieh Ling-yiin has a poem which invites this: " T h e ch'ing a n d the ching penetrate into each other a n d 9 The verb that I have translated as "is assembled" in the first sentence is ho ff. Wang's meaning seems to be that there are disparate elements in ching that only the shaping and ordering action of ch'ing (note: not of the poet) can bring together, although it is not clear that the verb is, grammati­ cally, active; the phrase "come together," which my English sentence does not admit, may be more acceptable. In the last sentence, the word "reader's" is my expansion. It should be justified by the argument in Sec­ tion ν below. 10 The poem is "Ling-feng ts'ai yao ch'u-hsing wei shih" Bg^3=S?ISPi§f# and is translated as follows:

*fmt»£-o maw-Ao Wfmm0 mmmmo ®»mm0 wm^&mmm

125

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WONG

there is no dividing horizon; past or present there can be no other poet capable of achieving this" (KSPH, 5/2a). n Equally warm praise goes to Li Po (Li, like Hsieh, is one of Wang's favorite poets): " T h e tone is one of unity. Lines 3 and 4 are to convey feelings but the description of scenery in them is of rare beauty. This is what one would call a double stroke, the ultimate skill in writing" (TSPH, 2/9a). 12 Another T'ang poet, Ts'en Ts'an has a poem that is the occasion of the comment: " I n the eking is seen the coming to life of ch'ing; Linked peaks of several thousand li, Stretches of trees and, further down, a ford. Passing clouds darken those mountains lying across, And winds descend to make the wilds more desolate. Somewhere there must be a cottage hidden from view— You can tell from the cockcrow that men live here. Yes, I walk on, treading human paths, Seeing firewood dropped here and there. Then I know that in these modern days Still live subjects of the primeval king. n "Lin-li hsiang-sung chih Fang-shan" tr. J. D. Frodsham, The Murmuring Stream (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1967), i, 117. 12 The poem referred to is Li Po's " K u feng" No. 58. My translation runs:

Travelling to the ranges of the Magic Mountains, I climb the ridge anciently known as the Sun Terrace. Tinted clouds in the broad expanse of the sky seem dead; In my direction from lands far away blows a strong wind of sorrow. It's been a long time since the goddess took her departure; As for the more mortal Prince of Ch'u she offered to please, can he still be expected to be around? The pleasures of the flesh usually come to an end; Let innocent woodcutters and cowherds continue to bemoan the miseries of life.

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in the ch'ing is contained the possibility of the ching. Indeed here the ching is ching-va-ch'ing, and the ch'ing is ch'ing-'m-ching. How different is the effect of Kao Shih (another T'ang "frontier" poet), who reminds one of the courses served at a village feast, a dish of meat, then one of vegetables . . . " (TSPH, 4/9a). 13 In the Ming-shih p'ing-hsuan, Wang Fu-chih reiterates the same idea from time to time: the comments on poems by Chang Yu-ch'u (MSPH, 4/23a), Shen Mingch'en (5/36b) and Mei Ting-tso (5/41a) are essentially in the same vein. There is, in all this discussion of the relationship between the ch'ing and ching, a point that recurs with curious persistence. The fusion of ch'ing and ching everyone believes in would easily suggest that inner feeling and external world of the same mood should go together, that the emotion (anger, sorrow, joy, etc.) a poet wishes to register in a poem should be reinforced by reference to natural objects and scenes customarily associated with that emotion. Wang Fu-chih offers us repeated warning to the contrary. Commenting on the use of visual details in the Shih-ching poem "Ts'ai-wei," he remarks, " T o convey the feeling of sorrow in a scene of joy, or to convey the feeling of j o y in a scene of sorrow, doubly increases 13 The poem is "Shou-ch'un Wei hsi-chiao hsing ch'eng Lan-t'ien Chang Erh chu-pu" M y translation runs:

Sudden winds and passing showers, west of the city of Wei Fresh flowers, willows wiry thin are kneaded by footsteps into mud. If, on Hu Kung's slope you begin to feel the sun, O n Ch'in Nu's Peak perhaps snowing is not yet done. I steal a sad glance at the white hair that mocks my humble office, And regret the separation from green hills and streams that I must miss. They say in Wang Ch'uan you escape from the mundane; If so there's at least one place where with my flask of wine, I'll choose to remain.

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the joy or the sorrow" [CCSH, 1/4, No. 4). 1 4 I take this to be a considered opinion since, in the discussion of the same poem in the Shih kuang-chuan W a n g gives us substantially the same argument: "Those who use their ch'ing well do not hoard u p the youth or decay of things in nature to enhance their own sorrow or joy. Are things so predictable? When I a m sad, must there be things to meet me with their sorrow? When I a m happy, must there be things to welcome me with their own joy? Men of little understanding are quick to seize any support for their private feelings. In fact when I am sad, there are things enough that go on in their cheerful way; when I a m happy, there are things enough that continue in their misery. As for those who are not reduced to helplessness by ch'ing,1^ they recognise that when they are sad, things can still be happy, but this does not 14

SAi/! ching, No. 167; Karlgren, Book of Odes, pp. 110-112. Wang Fu-chih is speaking in particular about the first four lines of the last stanza of this soldier's lament: Long ago, when we marched, The willows were luxuriant; Now when we come (back) The falling snow is thick, 15 I have not attempted in this essay to suggest the range of meanings covered by the word ch'ing as used by Wang Fu-chih in his critical and philosophical writings. In fact nowhere do I even define what ch'ing in the ch'ing/ ching combination usually means. One will tend to take it to mean something like the total activities of man as man, with the exception of the physical ones. Such a definition would not be much worse than another. But there are other possibilities. The ch'ing that has necessitated this note has obviously an overtone of evil that the ch'ing in ch'ingjchmg is free of; the latter is not taken in moral terms at all. Toward the end of this essay there is one quotation from the TSSTCS that uses ch'ing in moral terms, but there it is something that can be either evil or good. The fluidity of Chinese critical

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* a a £ „ *§«« meaning " i n h u m a n " (Chap. 24). (14) "Although the mountains appear severed, the cloud joining them together remains u n b r o k e n " iiiHritSI (p. 171). Smooth continuation of an interrupted episode or topic, such as the resumption after a brief interruption of the scolding of a servant by Phoenix in Chapter 14, when she is managing the funeral services for Ch'in K'o-ch'ing. (15) " T h e painter's method of dyeing three times" WM HlfeiS (p. 24). Sometimes known as " t o shade and dye tens of thousands of times" TUtHife (p. 8), this means adding details to an outline gradually and repeatedly. Thus an outline account of the Chias is given in a conversation by Leng Tzuhsing at the beginning of the novel before they are presented and gradually made into full-blown characters in the main part of the story. (16) "Mixing the colors" PalfeiS (p. 394). This is a diversionary measure on the part of the author to make his writing appear elusive. In Chapter 31, for example, we see Tai-yii fret over the fact that Hsiang-yiin (River Mist) possesses a gold unicorn, apparently for fear that she may be destined to marry Pao-yii (^EES^c "the auspicious match of gold and j a d e " ) , when the author's intention all along is actually to have Pao-ch'ai marry Pao-yii in the end. (17) " T h e painter's method of arranging objects by threes and fives" HSiCHESEiScS · I n Chapter 7 Chou Jui's wife is seen taking some artificial flowers from the Imperial Palace to the Chia girls. Instead of finding them all together, she sees them in two different rooms. Whereupon one commentator writes: 35

Trans. by Irwin in The Evolution of a Chinese Novel, p. 93. 213

J O H N C. Y . W A N G

" B y using the painter's method of arranging objects by threes and fives the style will not appear stiff or rigid" (p. 110). (18) " A whirlwind makes the snow dance [in the air] and a precipitous gorge turns back the water " This means to let things happen contrary to expectation, as when the appearance of an old, deaf monk in a dilapidated Buddhist temple in Chapter 2 prompts the commentator to say, "Before the p o m p and prosperity o f Ning [-kuo fu] and Jung [-kuo fu] are portrayed, a small scene o f desolation is depicted. Before a whole book o f mundane and befuddled people is described, an unworldly and enlightened person is presented. [This is like] snow being made to dance [in the air] by a whirlwind or water being turned back by a precipitous gorge—a technique not to be found in other novels" ( P . 30). (19) " A hidden parrot in a willow tree whose presence is undetected until it speaks" (p. 112). Probably containing a reference to a painting b y Ch'iu Y i n g (fl. 1522-1560) of the M i n g , 3 6 it characterizes the subtle and suggestive way a love scene between Phoenix and her husband is described in Chapter 7. (20) " T o advance one step further into the house" (p. 195). That is to say, to advance further in the revelation or description of a topic or an event. Governess Chao's inquiry about Yiian-ch'un's impending royal visit in Chapter 16, for example, prompts Chia Lien to give a fuller description o f such a custom. (21) " A d o r n m e n t " (p. 332). Peripheral characters or matters are shown first so as to make the appearance of the central ones seem more important and dramatic. In a typical morning scene in Pao-yii's living quarters in the beginning of Chapter 25, for example, the activities of the more lowly maids 36 See

Chao and Ch'en, I, 131. T h e painting in question is known as

"Listening to the Oriole by the Lonely W i n d o w on a Melancholy Spring Day"

214

JOHN C. Y. WANG are shown first before Hsi-jen, Pao-yii's chief personal maid, appears, and her importance is immediately seen by her sending another maid on an errand. (22) " T o adorn by contrast" KWrn-fc (p· 5 3 ; also cf. p. 333). Although the comment in which this technique is mentioned is garbled and not very clear, from the rest of the Commentary (especially places where the expression K$g is used) we can see that what is meant by this technique is that the author sometimes says one thing, but means another. Thus when in Chapter 3 Pao-yii is called "mischievous and vile" jjg^ by other characters in the book, the commentator cautions us that we would be wrong if we think the author himself also thinks so. (23) " T h e painter's method of dotting the trees, grass, and rocks with thick and light ink after the hills, rivers, tree branches, and ravines are already d o n e " MMliift.ffiM5$i&$;ffl> MJBWUiMMkWg; (p· 320). T h a t is, adding interesting details to a story already well developed, such as Hsiang-ling's search for Tai-yu at the beginning of Chapter 24. (24) " F r o m the simple comes the complicated" g t ^ J ^ ^ (p. 163). T h a t is, to make what appears to be a simple matter into an involved and complicated one, such as the detailed description of an enormously elaborate funeral service for Ch'in K'o-ch'ing in Chapter 13. (25) " T o change from the complicated to the simple" 7¾¾¾!¾(M) (p. 337). Although no actual example is given for this technique, it is clearly the opposite of the previous one, i.e., to give but a casual treatment to a potentially complicated event. (26) "Avoiding unnecessarily involved writings" ΜΜΌέ (p. 364; cf. p . 374). I n the beginning of Chapter 27, for example, the author, instead of giving a more detailed de­ scription of Tai-yu's habit of crying easily, simply mentions this casually through the eyes of her maids. (27) " A busy composition" |g$:j£ (p. 128). T h a t is, to make a thick action appear even thicker, such as to let Tai-yii show up in Chapter 8, when Pao-yii a n d Pao-ch'ai are chatting together a n d examining each other's j a d e and gold clasp. 215

J O H N C. Y. WANG (28) " T o reveal secretly" ^ ¾ ¾ (p. 330). While the term SBJS (without the character ££) found in another part of the Commentary (p. 245) means to hint at what is to come later in the story, the specific example given for the technique means rather to let one character in the story speak what is on the mind of another. T h u s toward the end of Chapter 24, when it is announced that a m a n is going to come to the Ta-kuan yuan to supervise the planting of some trees, Hsiaohung, though suspecting it to be Chia Yun, whom she has inadvertently met and developed a special feeling for, waits to let another maid ask who it is. (29) "Bringing difficulty upon oneself" gJtgffi (p. 366). T h a t is, the author purposely puts himself in a difficult situation in developing the story and yet is able to find a way out. Thus, in Chapter 27, Hsiao-hung is having a confidential talk with Chuei-erh about what to give Chia Yiin for a handkerchief he has found for her when the former suddenly suggests having the windows in the pavilion they are in opened lest someone might be eavesdropping. Pao-ch'ai happens to be coming by just then and has in fact overheard the conversation. However, she cleverly manages to get out of the embarrassing situation at the expense of Tai-yii. (30) " T o debase a thing before elevating it" JFM^MZM (p. 214). Such as to have Chia Cheng speak disapprovingly of a place in the Ta-kuan yiian before showing how marvelous it actually is (Chap. 17). (31) " F r o m far to near, from small to large" ώ ϋ Χ ί ί , &'hRJZ (p· 24; cf. p p . 11, 185). Such as writing about Tai-yii's family (relatives) before the main characters of the Jung-kuo fu. (32) " T o move gradually from near to far" n S i f t s l S (p. 377). Although this technique seems to be the opposite of the previous one, no actual example is given for it. (33) " T h e gold cicada shedding its shell" ^SfE5riS (p. 450). T h a t is, a clever a n d smooth way of moving from one topic to another, such as the girls' switch from a discussion of Chu Hsi ^ ¾ to that of household matters at the beginning of Chapter 56. 2i6

J O H N C. Y. WANG

(34) "False knocking and real response" 11¾¾¾ (p. 377). While, again, no actual example is given for this technique, it may refer to Pao-yii's wrong guess of Tai-yii's real reason for being upset with him in Chapter 27. But, although Pao-yii has guessed incorrectly, Tai-yii's anger remains real a n d undiminished. T h e commentators' close scrutiny of the text pays off handsomely. T h e Commentary is full of enlightening observations on various aspects of the novel, which would have been difficult, if not impossible, to obtain through a cursory reading. T h e commentators themselves were aware of this fact, a n d could not help feeling smug about it every now and then. O n e interesting development in the story, for example, is the dramatic change in the relationship between Tai-yii and Pao-ch'ai subtly recorded in Chapter 45. As C T . Hsia has observed, "Their open competition ends in Chapter 45 when Precious Clasp, concerned with Black Jade's deteriorating health, proffers her unfeigned friendship. And Black J a d e , who has been hitherto quite aggressive toward her rival, accepts this friendship gratefully and openly acknowledges her fault in having harbored suspicions about her good intentions." 3 7 T h e commentators notice this, too, and comment with an obvious sense of self-satisfaction: " . . . Tai-yii begins to reveal her real feelings only because she has now come to know Pao-ch'ai, and Pao-ch'ai too begins to show willingness to tease Tai-yii only after having come to know her. This is a crucial point, and very fine writing. Unless we are careful, we won't notice this" (p. 430). At another point in the Commentary, one commentator seems to be so excited over a new discovery that he can hardly wait to confide it to the reader: " I n commenting on this book, I have learned a secret, and I wish to tell you gentlemen. . . . T h e nice thing about this book is that the author himself never makes any comment or annotation, saying, 'So-and-so is such-and-such a person.' 31

The Classic Chinese Novel, p. 289.

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H e merely employs occasional remarks by the characters in the book; therefore there are no unclosed seams to be discovered by the reader. His pen is really tricky" (p. 438). 3 8 This is a remarkable insight into the objective art of Ts'ao Hsueh-ch'in. While paying heed to minute technical details in the novel, the commentators do not lose sight of the general development of the story. Viewed as a whole, the construction of T a kuan yiian on the occasion of Yiian-ch'un's royal visit and the subsequent moving of Pao-yii and the young girls into it have to be considered the climactic point in the story: they mark the pinnacle of prosperity of the Chia family. Accordingly we see the commentators refer to the writings about Ta-kuan yuan in the novel as "the veins and arteries of the entire book" (p. 193) and " t h e main cord of this work" (p. 207). And when in Chapter 16 an architect is said to have been commissioned for the construction of the garden, one commentator says: " . . . T a - k u a n yuan will serve as the L a n d of Illusion for Brother Yu (Pao-yii) and the twelve fair maidens. So how could it be handled carelessly?" (p. 198.) 39 Quite appropriately, therefore, the turning point in the story comes when a purse with obscene embroidery on it is discovered in the compound of Ta-kuan yuan. In the subsequent turmoil, its youthful inhabitants are finally awakened from their enchanted existence in the Land of Illusion, and are ruthlessly made to face an ugly reality. And as Hsia has remarked (to quote him one final time), "from then on, the Chia family becomes increasingly plagued by unfortunate happenings and can no longer make a pretense of gaiety or merriment." 4 0 T h e commentators agree, but feel at the same time that all 38

Trans. based on Wu Shih-ch'ang, p. 60. It is interesting to note that C. T. Hsia also compares Ta-kuan yuan to an idyllic refuge for Pao-yii and the young girls: "Symbolically, therefore, Takuanyuan may be seen as a paradise for frightened adolescents, designed to lull their awareness of the misery of approaching adulthood." {The Classic Chinese Novel, p. 279.) «o/fcid., p . 280. 39

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this is perhaps inevitable a n d to be expected: " . . . Without this t u r n of events, not only would there be no end to the whole thing, but also it would be too illogical. Moreover, this is also what I have in the past actually seen or heard, and what the author himself has gone t h r o u g h ; it is not something concocted by searching [one's imagination]. Therefore, it is completely different from the set pattern of separation a n d reunion, sadness a n d joy [found in other] novels" (pp. 4 1 9 492). Of course, not all comments in the Chih-yen-chai Com­ mentary are equally insightful. M a n y of them are so brief a n d superficial that they a m o u n t to nothing more t h a n admiring interjections. Some of them, moreover, are com­ pletely off the mark. I n Chapter 2, for example, when Chiam u is mentioned for the first time by Leng Tzu-hsing, one commentator says: " I t is because of [Shih] Hsiang-yun that she is m e n t i o n e d " (p. 33), as though the existence of Chia-mu in the novel is for the purpose of depicting Shih Hsiang-yun. What is so remarkable about the Commentary, however, is that these unreliable comments are so few. T h e great majority contain observations that appear judicious a n d artistically sound even today. T h e Chih-yen-chai Commentary more or less set the pattern for all subsequent commentaries on the novel down to the turn of the present century. While some later commentaries (such as the one by W a n g Hsi-lien Ξ 3 M [fl. c. 1821]) 4 1 m a y seem to be more comprehensive a n d more elaborate, very few, in my view, can compare with the Chih-yen-chai Com­ mentary in its objectivity a n d incisiveness. It was not until 1904, with the appearance of W a n g Kuo-wei's epoch-making "Hung-lou meng p'ing-lun" £1¾^!?¾, 4 2 that further new ground was broken in the critical evaluation of the novel. ^Tseng-p'ing pu-t'u Shih-t'ou chi J^fflilKSKIB. 16 vols. (Wan-yu wenk'u 2nd ed.; Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1934). 42 Reproduced in full in Yi-su's - ¾ Hung-lou meng chuan φ (Peking:

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By bringing Western critical and philosophical ideas to bear on his topic, Wang Kuo-wei started a new and exciting path in the study of the Dream of the Red Chamber. But to discuss it would take us too far afield. Chung-hua shu-chu, 1963), i, 244—265. For a discussion of it see my article, " M . H. Abram's Four Artistic Co-ordinates and Fiction Criticism in Traditional China," Literature East and West, xvi, 3 (Sept., 1972), pp. 10061008.

22O

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and Ying-ying are the best known of all recorded Chinese heroes a n d lovers argues for the greater effectiveness of fiction at preserving deeds. This is so because fiction is recorded in a language closer to the living tongue and is more verbose a n d circumstantial in its description of morals and manners. At least in the Chinese tradition, where historiography always employs a terse, classical style and captures little of the concrete reality, the arguments advanced so far are plausible. But then, Yen's clinching argument in favor of fiction is clearly sentimental or condescending: he maintains that, whereas actual historical events do not always conform to our heart's desire, fiction invariably does so by punishing the evil and rewarding the virtuous (one may ask what virtue has to do with the struggle for individual or group survival). Such a result can be contrived even if a work of fiction "alters somewhat the events of history" (p. 12). And he goes on to say that "nothing in the world is more satisfying than this meting out of just reward and punishment; since h u m a n minds are alike, that is why such books of fiction circulate fast and last long." I n other words, whereas traditional Chinese moralists look down upon fiction for its lying or distortion of truth, Yen regards as the peculiar virtue of fiction its strong tendency to rectify history so as to ensure the perpetual commemoration of certain heroes and lovers (even though such celebrated lovers as Chang Sheng and Ying-ying are totally fictitious). O n e may ask Yen: is it better to falsify history in conformity with man's desire for elementary justice or to preserve the truth, however bitter and unpalatable, about historic struggles in the sanguinary and cerebral worlds? Although most traditional novelists, both Chinese and Western, subscribe to a scheme of justice that flatters conventional morality, it has always been the distinction of great fiction (not to say of tragic drama) that it refuses to yield to sentimentality in its inspection of the h u m a n condition. Of the two protagonists from San-kuo, in what sense is Liu Pei rewarded or Ts'ao Ts'ao

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punished, even though most readers sympathize with the former and detest the latter? Yen curiously omits Hung-lou meng from his examples of beloved fiction: the novel remains fascinating without meeting most readers' expectations re­ garding its main characters. I believe Yen is being dishonest with himself when arguing for the greater appeal of fiction over history in strictly Chinese terms. If applied to the Western tradition, all his arguments would collapse, and yet Yen must have been exposed to a good deal of Western history, fiction, and drama. He should know that a work of history does not have to be more terse and archaic in style or less committed to the full truth than a novel. And a moment's reflection will tell him that it is patently not true that the great figures of Chinese history re­ tain their identity and fascination mainly through the medium of fiction (and drama). The first emperors of the Ch'in and Ming, though indifferently treated in fiction, remain no less awesome figures to the average Chinese. And what has fiction to do with the lasting appeal of Peter the Great, Washington, and Napoleon? Although Napoleon figures in some great novels, no one gains a sense of his importance solely from reading them, which, more often than not, attempt to reduce his heroic size. And readers today are drawn to semi-historical accounts of Napoleon's amours precisely because they have been preconditioned to accept him as a great man whose every little escapade is of interest. Despite his employment of some Darwinian arguments to account for the appeal of fiction, Yen is therefore very much of a traditionalist in his condescension toward it. He takes pains to demonstrate the power of fiction among the masses so as to underscore its vast potential as an educational instrument. But this new type of educational fiction has yet to be created and translated, since traditional fiction, including its most celebrated works, is full of "poison" (tu H). San-kuo has attracted the militarists, Shui-hu has become a manual for the underworld, and the plays of T'ang Hsien-tsu ϋΙΚΙΙ have caused young men and women to be unhealthily preoccupied with love. But since his whole essay builds upon the power and 229

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prestige of these works of poison, Yen cannot deny their literary or moral value and so, as a last resort, he shifts to another traditional line of defense: "But when the ancients made fiction, each had in mind a subtle and refined purpose that, however, is conveyed beyond words and is too deeply hidden to be fathomable. And because people of shallow learning are addicted to fiction, the world has suffered incalculably from the poison of fiction and it is difficult to speak of its benefit" (p. 12). So the biological and evolutionary urge to delight in lovers a n d heroes counts for nothing at all. T h e vast majority of Chinese turn out to be as incapable of profiting from fiction as from the Confucian classics and history. They have to be re-educated with the kind of new fiction presumably without any subtle intent (and without the kind of literary pretension that distinguishes San-kuo and Shui-hu) that has done wonders in the West and in J a p a n . " W e also understand," Yen tells his readers, " t h a t the European countries, the United States, and J a p a n , at the time when they got enlightened or civilized, have time and again benefitted from the assistance of fiction" (p. 12). This statement definitely refers to J a p a n after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, but the term k'ai-hua remains unclear when applied to Europe or America. W h e n did England or France get enlightened? During the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, or the Industrial Revolution? For both countries, while each of these periods has produced its characteristic fictional literature (including d r a m a ) , it is difficult to say that its authors have deliberately set out to instruct or enlighten the public in compliance with the Zeitgeist or a massive governmental program of civic education. It is true that writers like Voltaire and Rousseau consciously sought to educate the public, but they were primarily philosophers or intellectuals appropriating fiction as a vehicle of ideas rather than as a medium of entertainment. I n Russia, it is true, great novelists from Gogol down have all tried to enlighten the

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public, but by and large the Czarist government has opposed their endeavors at enlightenment so that late-Ch'ing intellectuals are quite right in believing that, with all its military expansionism, Russia remains a backward country and not a model for China to imitate. 9 So at least in Russia, a fictional literature of unsurpassed greatness has not at all assisted progress except in the modern sense (unintended by Yen) that it has remained powerfully subversive and fostered generations of a dissident elite opposed to the establishment. It is only in Meiji J a p a n , then, that fiction can be said to have played a conscious role in arousing the people and in assisting the government's plan for modernization and progress. Although educated in England, Yen Fu could not help being impressed by the phenomenal success of J a p a n ' s modernization in his chosen role as a reformer and publicist, and Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, who acquired his knowledge of Western history, culture, and institutions mainly through his reading of secondary Japanese sources, must have been even more decidedly under the spell of J a p a n ' s success when, following his exile there in October 1898, he advocated fiction as a medium for national reform. I n his "Foreword to O u r Series of Political Novels," Liang concurs with Yen in seeing the vast educational potential of fiction, but he shows even greater contempt for the traditional product. Even its most highly esteemed titles, Shui-hu and Hung-lou, do not escape his implicit scorn. Liang maintains that most Chinese novels are imitations of either one or the other and have thus earned the disapprobation of scholars for their "incitement to robbery and lust." But popular novels cannot be proscribed since they are far more intelligible and interesting to the populace than the Confucian classics and history. A far better policy would be to transfer the public's interest in old fiction to translations of political fiction {cheng9 This attitude is reflected in the large number of late-Ch'ing novels, many adapted or translated from foreign works, about Nihilists or Anarchists bent on destroying the Czarist government. The best-known example is Tseng P'u's Nieh-hai hua li$s?E (see n. 47 below). The popularity of this type of fiction deserves a full-scale investigation.

231

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chih foiao-shuo jgc$}'MS). One would think that novels like San-kuo and Shui-hu all belong to this category, since they deal with politics and implicitly or explicitly endorse an ideal political order. But Liang clearly has in mind novels descrip­ tive of the actual political transformation of modern nations that could have direct bearing on the contemporary Chinese situation. He gives a rather fanciful account of the genesis and prestige of political novels in foreign countries: "Formerly, at the start of reform or revolution in European countries, their leading scholars and men of great learning, their men of compassion and patriots, would frequently record their personal experiences and their cherished views and ideas concerning politics in the form of fiction. Thus, among the population, teachers would read these works in their spare time, and even soldiers, businessmen, farmers, artisans, cabmen and grooms, and schoolchildren would all read them. It often happened that upon the appearance of a book a whole nation would change its views on current affairs. The political novel has been most instrumental in making the governments of America, England, Germany, France, Austria, Italy, and Japan daily more progressive or en­ lightened" (p. 14). Even if we discount the illogic of lumping America and Japan among European countries, the whole passage is full of untruth and wild exaggeration. How many of the world's "leading scholars and men of great learning" have written political novels while active in politics or during their re­ tirement? Has there ever been a novel that overnight changed the opinion of a nation? Mrs. Stowe, no leading scholar but certainly a compassionate woman, did stir up America on a vital issue with Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), but the vast sympathy for the slave elicited by her novel was not instantly translated into legislation, and the South certainly was not persuaded, for otherwise there would have been no Civil War.

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T h e whole passage makes some kind of sense only with reference to Liang's understandable admiration for the political novel then in vogue in J a p a n . By 1898 J a p a n had already embarked on serious experimentation with Western forms of fiction. Its first modern novel, Futabatei Shimei's 2131^0¾ Ukigumo j ? | t (Drifting Clouds) —the kind of novel that did not appear in China until the 1920's—was serialized from 1887 to 1889, and Tsubouchi Shoyo's ffftfgjg Shosetsu shinzui /MftpfS (The Essence of the Novel, 1885) had appeared sometime earlier to promote the art of realism and disabuse the Japanese of their didactic notions about fiction.10 But the political novel, which had dominated the literary scene during the 1880's, was certainly still quite popular with the general public in the next decade. Arriving in J a p a n in late 1898, Liang could not be expected to follow its latest trends in fiction and criticism and would have found the political novel far more relevant to his needs as a propagandist of political reform. I n early-Meiji J a p a n , as in late-Ch'ing China, no systematic plan was discernible in the translation (in the loosest sense of the term) of Western fiction. Perennial juvenile classics vied in popularity with Victorian best-sellers. In 1879, O d a J u n ichiro ^EH|ffi—IP, who claimed to have studied law at Edinburgh University, translated Bulwer-Lytton's Ernest MaItravers (1837), which became highly popular and set the trend for the political novel. T h a t of all the Victorian novelists a British-returned student should have chosen to introduce Lytton to his nation would always strike us as rather odd. But Ernest Maltravers, about a talented youth's rise to high position against a political background, must have appealed to O d a not only because it describes the kind of life that ambitious youths of J a p a n "saw themselves destined to lead" (in the explanation of Sir George Sansom), 1 1 but because he must have been fooled by its literary quality. I n her pioneering 10

For a study of both works, see Marleigh Grayer Ryan, Japan's First Modern Novel: Ukigumo of Futabatei Shimei (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967). u S i r George Sansom, The Western World and Japan (New York: Knopf, 1950), p. 398.

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study of the popular novel in England, Fiction and the Reading Public, Q . D. Leavis calls Lytton the earliest best-selling novelist of the modern variety: " F o r all his yawns and indolence and stiffness Scott has a splendid self-assurance which Lytton in the next generation woefully lacks, but then Lytton had discovered how to exploit the market, as a mere list of his novels proves. And this lowering of the level of appeal makes Lytton the first of modern bestsellers, with Marie Corelli and Gilbert Frankau as his direct descendants. . . . Lytton's inflated language means an inflation of sentiment, and his pseudo-philosophic nonsense and preposterous rhetoric carry with them inevitably a debasing of the novelist's currency. But they were taken seriously by the general public. . . . T o make a useful generalization, bestsellers before Lytton are at worst dull, but ever since they have almost always been vulgar." 1 2 If Lytton was taken seriously by the British public, how much more so must his "pseudo-philosophic nonsense and preposterous rhetoric" have impressed a Japanese with his greater readiness to be dazzled by an inflated language! Another factor that must have made O d a decide to translate Lytton's novels and that must have contributed to their popularity with Japanese readers was that Lytton was a nobleman in government service. H e was created a baronet in 1838 when serving as a member of Parliament; he later served as colonial secretary and was raised to the peerage in 1866. T h e fact that an important public servant, and a lord no less, should also be a novelist, must have caused the Japanese (and later Liang Ch'i-ch'ao) to revise their attitude toward fiction, since in their own countries novelists had always been men of no consequence or official standing. With Lytton in high favor, it is understandable that Disraeli should have become the second Victorian novelist to be translated and widely read in J a p a n . T h e Earl of Beaconsfield, after all, was a statesman of the highest distinction. W h e n in his " F o r e w o r d " Liang Ch'i-ch'ao refers to European ^Fiction and the Reading Public (London: Chatto & Windus, 1932), pp, 163-164.

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novelists as "leading scholars a n d men of great learning," therefore, he must have in mind primarily Lytton and Disraeli, and possibly also Voltaire and Rousseau. At the same time he could not but be highly impressed by the prestige and influence of J a p a n ' s leading political novelists—Suehiro

Tetcho ^mmm (1849-1896), Yano Ryukei ^gfffig (18501931), and Shiba Shiro %m% (1852-1922). 1 3 As eminent public figures, they all took trips abroad and played an active part in journalism and politics. Yano Ryukei, after writing the first political novel to adorn the Meiji period, Keikoku bidan US^M (A Noble Tale of Statecraft, 1883-1884), took over the control of the newspaper Hochi shimbun and served as minister to Peking from 1891 to 1899. Shiba Shiro was private secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and Commerce when he started serializing in 1885 his work in eight parts, Kajin no kigit feA^WM (Unexpected Meetings with Beautiful Women), which, while unreadable by modern standards, became one of the most popular novels of the Meiji period. He was elected to the Diet at its opening in 1890, and later served as the director of the Osaka Mainichi shimbun and Vice-Minister of Agriculture and Commerce. T h e last three parts of his novel came out in 1897, and if the brief extant accounts of the story are to be believed, Liang was introduced to the book about a year later during his passage to J a p a n as a political refugee, and he started translating it forthwith. But since he did not seriously study the language until after his arrival in J a p a n , one may well wonder if he knew enough Japanese at the time to translate the work even though its style was highly Sinicized. In any event, Liang was so impressed by Kajin no kigti that it became the first political novel to be serialized in Ch'ing-yi pao, and even though he had never signed his n a m e to the work, 13 The best-known works of these three authors are reprinted in Yano Ryukei, et al., Seiji shosetsu shu ftin'hlSiS, which also provides for each a chronological biography. This is vol. 3 of Its Sei OTISE et al., eds., Nikon gendai bungaku zenshu H ^ S f t i t P S i l i (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1965). For accounts in English of these novelists and their works see Sansom, op.cit.; Horace Z. Feldman, "The Meiji Political Novel: A Brief Survey," Far Eastern Quarterly, ix (May 1950), pp. 245-255, and "The Growth of the Meiji Novel" (unpublished dissertation, Columbia University, 1952).

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the Chinese version was posthumously collected in Tin-ping shih ho-chiM Liang's second essay, "Fiction Seen in Relation to the Guidance o f Society," is generally believed to have been most instrumental in effecting a new attitude toward fiction among Chinese novelists and readers. As in the earlier essay, Liang sees the reader's response to fiction as primarily visceral: " T h e most popular novels are invariably those that shock us, astonish us, sadden us, and move us so that the reading of them causes us to have numberless nightmares and wipe away countless tears" (p. 15). But b y 1902 he has somewhat refined his understanding o f fiction so that he is able to illustrate its power with four metaphors: fiction spreads a cloud of smoke or incense (hsiin ) around the reader so that his senses and power of judgment are conditioned b y his reading; it immerses (chin ) him in the situations and problems depicted in its pages so that even for days or weeks after the reading he is still seized by sorrow or anger or other appropriate emotion; it pricks (tz'u ) him into an unusual state o f excitement over scenes depicted with great p o w e r ; lastly, it lifts (t'i ) him to the level of the hero and motivates him to imitate him. 1 5 ^Yin-ping shih ho-chi was edited by Lin Chih-chun

comprising a wen-chi and a chuan-chi and first published in 1936. Chia-jen

appears in Chuan-chi, xix, c. 88 (Shanghai: Chung-hua shu-

ch'i-yu

chu, 1936). T h e editor appends to the work a brief note (p. 220), asserting Liang's role as translator. A fuller account o f h o w Liang started translating the novel while a passenger to Japan is given in Ting Wen-chiang's Liang Jen-kung hsien-sheng nien-p'u ch'ang-pien ch'u-kao (Taipei: Shih-chieh shu-chu, 1958), i, 80-81. Ting cites as his authority a work known as Liang Jen-kung hsien-sheng ta-shih chi without giving the name o f its author. T h e only instance o f Liang's acknowledgment of his role as translator is a p o e m which begins with the line The poem is quoted in the editor's note to the translation. It may be o f interest to note that "Foreword to O u r Series of Political Novels in Translation" eventually served as the preface to Chia-jen ch'i-yu after Liang had made an appropriate change in the wording of its last sentence. 1 5 T h e article is remarkable for its references to Buddhism and Buddhist sutras. Thus, o f the four terms cited here, hsiin is borrowed from the Lan-

236

C. T. HSIA Liang attaches the greatest importance to the last virtue of fiction (t'i), but he deplores the fact that, instead of lifting the reader, Chinese fiction regularly sinks him to the level of the undesirable types of hero. T h u s the reader of Hung-lou meng inevitably identifies himself with Chia Pao-yti, while the reader οι Shui-hu patterns after Li K'uei or Lu Chih-shen (one may well wonder why he should not imitate Sung Chiang or Lin C h ' u n g instead). Since such heroes are all unfit for imita­ tion, the reader's plight is in direct proportion to their creator's ability to fumigate, immerse, prick, and lift him. By emphasiz­ ing the spell-binding power of some famous Chinese novels, Liang, in a sense, concedes their artistic excellence only to underscore the greater h a r m they will do the reader. Liang apparently shares Yen Fu's position that these novels all contain poison despite their irresistible appeal, b u t he is the harsher critic in t h a t he no longer sees the need to exonerate them on the ground t h a t they all convey a subtle message beyond the comprehension of the populace. Having demonstrated to his satisfaction the pernicious in­ fluence of Chinese fiction, Liang then performs the amazing rhetorical feat of tracing to that influence all the undesirable life-ideals a n d superstitions of traditional Chinese society: " W h e n c e comes the Chinese habit of overprizing the successful scholar a n d prime minister? It comes from fiction. Whence the Chinese vice of fancying oneself as a talented beauty or gifted young scholar? It comes from fiction. Whence the Chinese admiration for brigands a n d thieves of the rivers a n d lakes? It comes from fiction. Whence the Chinese fascination kavatara Sutra. It appears, for instance, in c. 4 of Gunabhadra's Chinese version dated A.D. 443. See Leng-chia ching fiifiniB (Shanghai: Ta-chung shu-chii, n. d.), p. 126. Chin has specifically to do with the length of a work and the time it takes to read it. Along with Hung-lou meng and Shui-hu chuan Liang regards the Avatamsaka Sutra as a prime example of a work that has the power to "immerse" the reader. Liang likens the power of tz'u to the Zen experience of sudden enlightenment and regards t'i as the most advanced of all Buddhist means for self-transformation.

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with demons, shamans, fox spirits, and ghosts? It again comes from fiction."16 Subsequent critics, even those writing for Hsin hsiao-shuo, would question Liang's logic here. It would certainly seem more plausible to believe that it is precisely because traditional Chinese society has always encouraged young men to earn the highest honors at the examinations and in bureaucratic service and has always delighted in romantic lovers, chivalrous outlaws, and tales of the marvelous that there will be a fiction to cater to this deep-seated hunger for vicarious thrill or wish-fulfillment. But if the Chinese have suffered incalculably from their imitation of fictional heroes, at the same time Liang envisages a society modeled upon the most admirable characters. He would certainly have delighted in Shelley's praise of Homer's influence on society in the following passage from " A Defence of Poetry": " H o m e r embodied the ideal perfection of his age in h u m a n character; nor can we doubt that those who read his verses were awakened to an ambition of becoming like Achilles, Hector, and Ulysses; the truth and beauty of friendship, patriotism, persevering devotion to an object, were unveiled to the depths in these immortal creations: the sentiments of the auditors must have been refined and enlarged by a sympathy with such great a n d lovely impersonations, until from admiring they imitated, and from imitation they identified themselves with the objects of their admiration." 1 7 But the heroes fit for Chinese imitation are to be drawn from modern Western history rather than from the Homeric past. " I f the hero of our book is Washington," Liang confidently asserts, "then the reader will transform himself into Washington ; if the hero is Napoleon, then he will transform himself 16 TW, ts'e 17, pp. 18a-b. The corresponding passage in HHTC, p. 18, contains a misprint. I have conveniently translated yao ft as "demons." Actually the term applies to plants as well as to animals that have attained human intelligence or form. They are usually described as evil. 17 Mark Schorer, Josephine Miles, Gordon McKenzie, eds., Criticism: The Foundations of Modern Literary Judgment (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1948), pp. 458^59.

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into Napoleon; and if the heroes are Confucius and Buddha, then readers will want to transform themselves into Confucius and B u d d h a " (p. 17). Given Liang's passion for national reform, it can safely be assumed that, despite his great interest in and high regard for M a h a y a n a Buddhism, he throws in the names of Confucius and Buddha as a sop for the traditionbound reader: the real paragons for modern Chinese are Washington, Napoleon, and many other modern patriots, revolutionaries, and statesmen who have transformed their nations. Liang himself has already written several biographies of the latter, 1 8 and now it is the novelists' turn to follow suit. Liang Ch'i-ch'ao apparently believes with Tolstoy that all art is infectious: hence his stern dismissal of traditional fiction for its pernicious effect upon the nation and his utterly naive faith that to read about Washington is to become like Washington. O n e may quibble by saying that, whereas it is relatively harmless for people to fancy themselves as romantic lovers or to aspire to high examination honors a n d bureaucratic success, society would be really thrown into confusion if everyone were determined to become a Washington or Napoleon. But Liang must have envisioned a new nation of noble patriots, all working in unison for the common good, and he could well apply Shelley's definition of poetry to his own utilitarian brand of political fiction: it is " t h e most unfailing herald, companion, and follower of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion or institution." 1 9 Although most famous for its admonition to novelists to lift the political level of the nation, "Fiction Seen in Relation to the Guidance of Society" appears to me far more interesting as a contribution toward critical theory in its attempt to discriminate between two kinds of fiction. Between 1898 and 1902 18 By the time Hsin hsiao-shuo was launched (October 15, 1902), Liang had already published in his biweekly Hsin-min ts'ung-pao J f S S f S his biographies of Louis Kossuth (Nos. 4-7) and Madame Roland de la Platiere (Nos. 17-18) and was about to conclude the serialization (Nos. 9-22) of Ti-la-li chien-kuo san-chieh chuan e . ^ f W H H S i f t , his celebrated collective biography of Cavour, Mazzini, and Garibaldi. 19 Schorer, Criticism, p. 470.

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Liang must have acquainted himself to some extent with contemporary Japanese criticism, for his new essay shows an awareness of Romantic literary views that is otherwise difficult to account for. In the early part of the essay, Liang gives two basic reasons for the appeal of fiction beyond the usual explanations (its easy intelligibility and h u m a n interest). First, each person lives in a narrow world confined by what he can see, feel, and touch, and fiction offers him worlds [shih-chieh U:f?.) beyond his own world. "Fiction, then, frequently guides him into another world and alters the climate of his customary sensory experience." 2 0 Second, one is so inured to his own world that his sensory and emotional responses to it become mechanic. "Frequently he knows that this is so but does not know why this is so. Even if he wants to recreate a scene, neither his mind nor his mouth nor his pen is able to convey or depict it. But if someone lays bare the whole scene and thoroughly explores it, then he will slap the table and cry in astonishment, 'How true, how true! This is so, this is indeed so!' " (p. 15). Although the phrase "slap the table and cry in astonishment" is a cliche in the traditional criticism of the novel, Liang is not here referring to sensational or melodramatic incidents that would normally call for this kind of praise, but to the truth obscured by habit or custom, or, in the far more famous words of Coleridge, descriptive of Wordsworth's aim when composing his share of the Lyrical Ballads, to "the loveliness and the wonders before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand." 2 1 T h e kind of 20 HHTC, p. 15. I have followed Professor James J . Y. Liu in translating ching-chieh, which itself is the standard Chinese term for the Sanskrit word visaya, as "the world." See Liu, The Art of Chinese Poetry, p. 84. In view of the numerous Buddhist references in the essay, Liang must have used the term in the Buddhist sense of "sphere" or "spiritual domain." 21 Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, chap. 14, reprinted in Schorer, Criticism,

3i\ %)%.! ta& ! 240

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fiction that extends beyond our own limited world would seem also to correspond to the kind of poetry Coleridge wrote for that joint volume. While Liang may not care for "persons a n d characters supernatural" (Coleridge's phrase), he would certainly include in fictional worlds other than our own exotic lands, foreign political heroes fired by patriotism, and Utopian and scientific projections into the future. Liang calls this kind of fiction "the idealistic school of fiction" {li-hsiang-p'ai hsiaoshuo WSM) and the other kind "the realistic school of fiction" (hsieh-shih-p'ai hsiao-shuo 5¾¾¾) . 22 III In the preceding section I have analyzed the main points of the three essays and further examined them with reference to the traditional Chinese attitude toward fiction, the Western ideological and literary influence, and the vogue for political novels in Meiji J a p a n . We have seen that both Yen Fu and Liang Ch'i-ch'ao are so obsessed with the educational function of fiction that they deliberately forfeit any sense of objectivity in painting a picture of lurid contrast between Chinese and foreign fiction solely by reference to their utility. They both exaggerate the power of fiction a n d presuppose a naive reader utterly docile to persuasion. Although Yen Fu's application of Darwinism to account for the appeal of fiction is of some interest 23 and although Liang's discrimination between two p. 250. The same idea is memorably phrased in Shelley's "A Defence of Poetry": "Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar." Ibid., p. 459. 22 In The Introduction of Socialism into China Dr. Li Yu-ning lists chu-yi (shugi), li-hsiang (riso), and hsien-shih chu-yi (genjitsu shugi) as Japanese-coined terms later adopted by the Chinese. Hsieh-shih chu-yi (shajitsu shugi), although not on her list, must also have been one of these terms. Thus in Shosetsu shinzui Tsubouchi Shoyo champions realism (shajitsu shugi) and divides fictional heroes into two categories: genjitsuha (hsien-shih-p'ai MMM.) and risoha (lihsiang-p'ai S S S ) . It is difficult to say whether or not Liang had read Tsubouchi's treatise since, despite their terminological resemblance, Liang's didactic approach is utterly different from the Japanese critic's aesthetic approach. 23 At the time Yen Fu wrote, it was the fashion among American, French, 241

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kinds of fiction shows genuine discernment, clearly their three essays are by design superficial and propagandistic and make no pretense of being serious works of critical thought. In the Chinese context, the sole distinction of Yen and Liang lies in the fact that, whereas earlier critics and commentators defend or deprecate fiction for its moral effect on the individual reader, they are mainly concerned about the impact of fiction on the possible reformation or degeneration of the nation as a whole. But obsession with China is characteristic of late-Ch'ing thought, and one is not surprised that such prominent intellectuals as Yen and Liang should regard fiction as an instrument for national regeneration. Clearly, the importance of these essays lies in their influence. But it is good to remember that, with most critical documents of this type, it is only in retrospect that we can assign them the full measure of their significance. I rather doubt that an unsigned article in Kuo-wen pao, as Yen and Hsia's piece was, could have caused an immediate stir. 24 It was important at the time of its publication only in the sense that it expressed a point of view with which a significant portion of the elite was already in sympathy. While Liang's two essays were visibly more influential, they represent, nevertheless, a small part of his endeavor as an advocate of new fiction. T h e full measure of his influence must be assessed with reference to his triple role as a promoter and translator of foreign fiction, as the founder of the first magazine to promote new fiction, and as the author of the fragment, Hsin Chung-kuo wei-lai chi ^ 4 ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ (The Future of New China) (1902), which marks the first appearance in China of a new kind of political fiction. and British critics to apply the Darwinian theory of evolution to the study of literature. See "The Concept of Evolution in Literary History" in Rene Wellek, Concepts of Criticism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963). In The Introduction of Western Literary Theories into Modern China 1919-1925 (Tokyo: The Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies, 1971), Bonnie S. McDougall has studied the prevalence of the concept of literary evolutionism among Chinese scholars and critics of the May Fourth period. 24 In the entry for Hsiao-shuo ts'ung-hua referred to in n. 1, however, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao avows his great love for the piece even at the time of its serialization.

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T h e impact of Yen's and Liang's essays on subsequent lateCh'ing criticism, however, can be easily ascertained. Practically all late-Ch'ing comments on fiction have been gathered in Hsiao-shuo hsi-ch'ii yen-chiu chiian '^MWMWi^M, which forms a part of A Ying's Wan-Ch'ing wen-hsueh ts'ung-ts'ao, to which all students of that literature are beholden for its inclusion of a large number of works otherwise not easily obtainable. An inspection of the critical volume not only confirms Yen and Liang's influence, however; it also reveals considerable reaction against their sweeping condemnation of traditional Chinese fiction and Liang's indiscriminate endorsement of foreign fiction as the work of erudite scholars and high-minded patriots. Liang's first essay is, I believe, directly responsible for the late-Ch'ing fashion of labeling different kinds of novel. If the term hsiao-shuo has retained its pejorative connotations, the label cheng-chih hsiao-shuo (political novel) is a newly minted term of positive approbation. U n d e r Liang's influence, therefore, it soon became the fashion among editors a n d novelists to label one work as a political novel and another as a social novel. Philosophic novels, idealistic novels, scientific novels, nihilist novels, and especially detective novels flooded the market. Even the traditional types of yen-yi and love fiction regained dignity under their new designations respectively as li-shih hsiao-shuo 18¾ and hsieh-ch'ing hsiao-shuo M^ oryen-ch'ing hsiao-shuo It'lff.25 Translations and abridgments of foreign fiction were similarly labeled. This is not the place to account for the enormous popularity of foreign fiction at that time, but the public's initial receptiv25 In examining the fiction journals of the period, I find that all novels advertised in their pages are clearly labeled as to their nature of interest and that some of these journals label all their entries in fiction in the table of contents. This policy was adopted, for instance, by Tueh-yueh hsiao-shuo -BU'htft (The All-Story Monthly was its given English title), which began publication in 1906. For readers without access to these journals, see the listing of the principal works of fiction featured in Hsin hsiao-shuo in Chang P'eng-yuan S M H , Liang Ch'i-ch'ao yu Ch'ing-chi ko-ming W&&mH^m, &S'M&, « ρ * » , •»*&, snfcMB, mmΊ-m, **#'>»„ 243

C. T. H S I A

ity must have been partly due to theinfluence of Liang's first essay. But, ironically, by the late nineteenth century, the gap between best-selling authors and serious novelists had already become apparent in the West. T h e best-sellers would easily attract Chinese attention because they were more widely publicized in Western periodicals and more easily available in cities like Shanghai and Tientsin. We have seen the undeserved popularity of Bulwer-Lytton in early-Meiji J a p a n ; the comedy is repeated with even greater absurdity in late-Ch'ing China, when Rider Haggard is declared to be a genius on a par with Shakespeare and becomes the most assiduously translated of all living novelists. 26 While many publishers and translators in Shanghai were clearly after profit at the reader's expense, we find a serious translator like Lin Shu trying his best to say something good about Haggard's novels, usually about their embodiment of a martial or adventurous spirit or their moving depiction of romantic love. 27 But in traditional eyes these works are no better than Chinese novels in their encouragement of robbery and lust. T h u s in a matter of years we begin to hear adverse criticism of the imported product. Writing in Hsin hsiao-shuo in 1905, Chin Sung-ts'en ^ ¾ ^ (the original author of the first few chapters of Nieh-hai hud), while parroting Liang Ch'i-ch'ao about the great influence of fiction 26 Lin Shu ##?, the foremost translator of his time, rendered twenty-five of Haggard's works into classical Chinese. See Leo Ou-fan Lee, "Lin Shu and His Translations: Western Fiction in Chinese Perspective," Papers on China (Harvard University, East Asian Research Center, 1965), xix, 176. This essay studies Lin's reactions to Haggard, Scott, Dickens, and La Dame aux camelias (Pa-Ii ch'a-hua-ηύ yi-shih £8?¾¾:¾¾¾). In the preface to his translation of Tales from Shakespeare (Tin-pienyen-yu ν§Ά$·ία, 1904), Lin Shu introduces the poet by way of Haggard, whom he had already trans­ lated: " T h e English prose writer Haggard and the poet Shakespeare, are they not the exceptional geniuses of a great civilized nation?" (HHYC, p. 208). 27 Nearly all the prefaces and postfaces to Lin's translations are collected in HHTC, Section 3. It must be noted that, after he was introduced to Dickens in 1907, Lin took great delight in his genius as a novelist and could appraise Haggard realistically even though he continued to translate him. In his brief and perfunctory postface to She H T i p S R I B (1910), he con­ cedes Haggard's vast inferiority to Dickens as a writer (HHTC, p. 268).

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on society, raises an alarm over the tremendous popularity of the translations of such love novels as La Dame aux camelias and Haggard's Joan Haste (1895; first truncated Chinese version, 1901; Lin Shu's complete version, 1905) and their impact on morality: "If a man wants to dally with prostitutes, he can say, Ί am Armand Duval,' and then his father's command will be easily defied. . . . If a girl falls in love, she can say, Ί am Joan Haste,' and then her chastity will be instantly lost."28 At the same time, exposure to translated fiction has only confirmed many readers in their admiration of the best Chin­ ese novels. In their sweeping condemnation of Chinese fiction, Yen and Liang have not taken into account the kind of na2S HHTC, p. 33. Joan Haste, one of Haggard's lesser novels that have been long forgotten in the West, had a reception in China that should have as­ tounded its author. Of all the sentimental foreign novels available to the late Ch'ing public, Chia-yin hsiao-chuan M&'l·^ (both translations bear this title) was by all indications second in popularity only to La Dame aux camelias, the novel that launched Lin Shu's career as a translator in 1899. Both novels feature a noble-minded heroine who sacrifices herself so that her lover may improve his worldly fortune; but, whereas Marguerite is a courtesan by profession, Joan is an honest girl who fell in a moment of weakness (as she laments in the last chapter, " O h , one hour of love—and life and soul to p a y ! " ) . The first Chinese version, which is silent about Joan's pregnancy, was well received, but it was Lin's version that made Chia-yin (Joan) a household name in China by its disclosure of her sinful condition. Appended to this version are a tz'u by the translator himself and a lu-shih by Hsia Tseng-yu, both poems attesting to the work's tragic power (HHTC, pp. 597-598). In his Shih-hua 1#1S (YW, ts'e 79, p. 81b), Liang Ch'i-ch'ao includes a poem by a friend on this novel and echoes the general opinion that it is the equal of La Dame aux camelias in literary art. The young Kuo Mo-jo wept over the Lin version of Joan Haste (Leo Ou-fan Lee, op.cit., p. 187). Other testimonials by famous men of letters could be cited. According to Lin's preface to his version, the earlier translation was by Fan-hsi-tzu •fSH1 and had a preface by T'ien-hsiao-sheng (Pao T'ien-hsiao 1 SiS^:). (HHTC, p. 210) According to A Ying, Wan-Ch'ing hsi-ch'ii hsiao-shuo mu ?£?!!i£tt'>iftB (Shanghai: Ku-tien wen-hsiieh ch'u-pan she, 1957), p. 129, Fan-hsi-tzu was the pen-name of Yang Tzu-lin HStR and the trans­ lation was the joint effort of Yang and Pao.

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tionalism that would prompt writers to defend these popular classics. I n view of their supposedly poisonous character, their defenders have to assert their modernity or ideological relevance, and the easiest way to do so is to relabel them according to fashion. Shui-hu and Hung-lou meng, quite expectedly, were singled out for unqualified critical re-endorsement. I n the series of Hsiao-shuo ts'ung-hua featured in Hsin hsiao-shuo, one of Liang's associates, Hsia-jen # J A , declares that "of our country's novels none is more wonderful than Hung-lou meng. It may be called a political novel, a novel of h u m a n relationships, a philosophical novel, a moral novel." 2 9 Hsia-jen implicitly exonerates the work from Liang's charge of immorality a n d he further anticipates more recent criticism by saying of Ts'ao Hsiiehch'in that "with the insight of a great philosopher he tore down and demolished the structure of old morality." 3 0 Several other critics call Hung-lou meng a consciously anti-Manchu novel, thus placing it on another plane of contemporary relevance. By 1908 a new edition of Shui-hu chuan with commentary was being prepared by one Yen-nan Shang-sheng 5^¾^¾, who subtitled his version " O u r Fatherland's Foremost Political Novel." Not only so, he declares in the preface, it is also a social novel, military novel, detective novel, a n d novel of h u m a n relationships. Apparently, the more labels a novel can have, the greater it is, a n d Shih Nai-an is for that reason " t h e patriarch among the world's novelists # # ^ 1 8 ¾ ¾ ! ! lit!!." 3 1 But even in 1908 the kind of political novel represented by The Future of New China and its most distinguished successor, Ch'en T'ien-hua's ^ 3 ¾ Shih-tzu hou Sp^pnfL (The MHHTC, p. 324. mbid., p . 327. 31 IHd., pp. 125-126. The editor A Ying has seen only ts'e 1 of this projected edition of Hsin-p'ing Shui-hu chuan ffPMCfHi. Most probably it was never completed.

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Lion Roars), 32 commanded great respect so that Yen-nan Shang-sheng felt justified to regret that Shih Nai-an had for­ gotten to spell out the constitution of the just government established by the Liangshan heroes: if the novel "could imitate The Future of New China and The Lion Roars of the pre­ sent day and draw up all kinds of statutes for the guidance of the citizens, then it would be the best of the best." 3 3 In the same year T'ien-lu Sheng 5ξϋ£, a more influential critic, ranked Shih Nai-an with Plato, Bakunin, Tolstoy, and Dickens, and labeled Shui-hu as a socialist novel, a nihilist novel, and, of course, a political novel. 34 Many other famous novels were similarly defended. Thus, apropos of the remark that China has no scientific novels, a contributor to the Hsiao-shuo ts'ung-hua series maintains that Ching-hua yuan comes closest to being one. 3 5 Out of this ran32 Ch'en T'ien-hua was a revolutionary propagandist who drowned himself on December 8, 1905, in Tokyo, to further the cause of patriotism. He had studied in Japan and, upon his return to China, joined the Huahsing hui ¥ P ! # , a revolutionary group led by Huang Hsing W91 (1874— 1916) a fellow Hunanese. Later he joined the T'ung-meng hui | H J H # . See Chun-tu Hsueh, Huang Hsing and the Chinese Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961), for scattered references to Ch'en. Shih-tzu hou, a fragment of five chapters, was serialized in Min pao Rffi, Nos. 2-9 (Tokyo, 1905-1906), and has been reprinted by A Ying in Wan-Ch'ing wen-hsueh ts'ung-ch'ao; Hsiao-shuo san-chuan Φ18Ξ® (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chii, 1960). In "Hsu Ii" l&M, however, the editor has wrongly assigned 19031904 as its dates of serialization. 33HHW, p. 132. 34 "Chung-kuo san-ta-chia hsiao-shuo lun-tsan" ΦΒΙΞλίΚ'ΜΒΙηΛ, HHTC, pp. 100-101. The other two novels praised are Hung-lou meng and Chin P'ing Met. T'ien-lu Sheng is the pen name of Wang Wu-sheng £:¾¾., a regular critic for Tueh-yueh hsiao-shuo,. 35 HHTC, p. 329. The contributor is Hsia-jen #sA. With even less plausibility he claims the same distinction for Tang-k'ou Mh HSSf, and Hsi-yu chi. For another comment on Ching-hua yuan as a scientific novel, culled from a late-Ch'ing or Republican source, Fu-hsuan hsu-yu JkViMm, see K'ung Lingching iLSSi, Chung-kuo hsiao-shuo shih-liao Φ Ι Ι ' Μ δ ΐ ^ (Shanghai: Kutien wen-hsueh ch'u-pan she, 1957), p. 215.

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dom, unconcerted defense of the old a n d not-so-old novels, a n d the best works of Li Po-yiian ^ { 0 ¾ (1867-1906) and W u Chien-jen Jg(FfA (1867-1910), emerged the tradition of the Chinese novel substantially as we know it today. W h e n during the Literary Revolution H u Shih corresponded with Ch'en Tuhsiu and Ch'ien Hsiian-t'ung about the novel, they were echoing the view of these late-Ch'ing critics. T h e only contribution of that correspondence is H u Shih's unqualified endorsement of Ju-Un wai-shih as one of China's greatest novels. 36 Tsubouchi Sh5yo declares in Shosetsu shinzui: " T h e novel is a r t ; it is not something to be made for practical purposes. An attempt to make the novel the means of bestowing practical benefits would be a distortion of its purpose." 3 7 Even though 36

See Hu Shih wen-ts'un SjSiCff (Taipei: Yuan-tung t'u-shu kung-ssu, 1953), i, 5-54. In "Wen-hsueh kai-liang ch*u-yi" 3fcP3fc&SM, Hu Shih names three novelists—Li Po-yiian $ { S x , Wu Chien-jen 8E)FA, Liu E ®J§1—as the only contemporary Chinese authors worthy of being classed among the world's "first-rate" writers and further maintains that they are all influenced by or indebted to Ju-Un wai-shih, Shui-hu, and Hung-lou meng. In a letter to Ch'en Tu-hsiu dated February 25, 1917, Ch'ien Hsiian-t'ung places these three along with Kuan-ch'ang hsien-hsing chi HfSIJI1JPtB and Erh-shih-nien mu-tu chih kuai-hsien-chuang Ι 2 + Φ SiSUSSItK among the only six Chinese novels of value, replacing Liu E's Lao-ts'an yu-chi with Tseng P'u's #)¾ Nieh-hai hua. In reply to Ch'ien (in a letter to Ch'en dated May 10), Hu Shih dismisses Nieh-hai hua as a work of lesser importance but maintains that all the late-Ch'ing novels mentioned in Ch'ien's letter are "the offspring of Ju-Un wai-shih." In his survey of Wu-shih-nien-lai Chung-kuo chih wen-hsueh Ε + ί ^ Φ Β έ Λ Ρ (1923) H u Shih reiterates his view that all the best-known late-Ch'ing novels stemmed from Ju-Un, a view that has since become a critical commonplace. But H u Shih himself was the first to acknowledge that, of all the classics of the Chinese novel, Ju-Un had until recent times the most limited circulation (Hu Shih wen-ts'un, n, 233), which would certainly seem to account for the paucity of references to the work in HHTC. (In combing through some 650 pages of HHTC, I may have over­ looked some references to Ju-Un, but it is nonetheless striking to note the sheer scarcity of references to that novel, in contrast to numerous references to what we would regard as the lesser novels of the Ch'ing.) Even if we as­ sume that Li Po-yiian, the earliest late-Ch'ing novelist to write the episodic type of satiric fiction, was directly influenced by Ju-Un, it is still a moot question whether his followers were directly responding to this popularity or consciously modeling their work after Wu Ching-tzu's SScfi novel. 37 Ryan, Japan's First Modern Novel, p. 60.

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in his second essay Liang Ch'i-ch'ao extols fiction as " t h e highest kind of literature" (Tsubouchi calls the novel "nothing other than a variety of poetry"), 3 8 he is all for didacticism, not only because he lacked comparable training in literary criticism but because in the interests of national renovation the task of political enlightenment appeared paramount. But when the fraudulent claims for the foreign novel were being exposed a n d the merits of old Chinese novels being defended in new terms, the advocates of new fiction could no longer avoid the question of aesthetics. Granted all the educational values of fiction, it would seem that it must first have artistic value to be worth bothering about. In 1907 H u a n g Mo-hsi KSIH became co-founder of the magazine Hsiao-shuo Un 'lsMW (The Grove of Fiction) and spoke out unambiguously for the art of the novel. In his "Fa-k'an t z ' u " gfliff (Announcement of Publication), he acknowledges the great influence fiction now wields in changing the manners and attitudes of the people, but deplores the fact that "whereas fiction used to be too much looked down upon, it is now regarded too highly." 3 9 " T o d a y , the situation is the reverse of the old days. Whenever one publishes a novel, he vaunts its claim to advance the people; whenever one reviews a novel, he asserts its intention to reform manners and morals . . . as if the statutes of a state, the scriptures of a religion, the textbooks to be used in schools, and the moral norms of nation and society were all to be provided through the medium of fiction. Is this indeed the case or n o ? " H e believes that a serious critic should ask himself whether fiction can really transform a benighted person into an intelligent one, whether it can dispel the rotten air around us a n d refresh it, whether, despite his pious declarations, a particular novelist is seriously 39 HHYC, p. 15: Ryan, op.cit., p. 52. Tsubouchi's phrase comes from the introduction to his translation of Bulwer-Lytton's Rienzi. 39 For this and the immediately following quotations from "Fa-k'an tz'u" see HHTC, pp. 159-160.

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C. T. HSIA interested in promoting the welfare of the masses or merely seeking pecuniary profit, a n d whether fiction is the panacea it is supposed to be. H e then invites the reader to examine " t h e nature of the novel '^MZLM1S-" Fiction, after all, is a species of literature a n d it has to be aesthetically satisfying. T h e novelist who scorns all artistic consideration to vaunt a higher or nobler purpose is not performing his proper function: all he can accomplish is " a valueless lecture or a series of roughly formulated m a x i m s . " H u a n g ' s " A n n o u n c e m e n t " marks a new maturity of understanding in its assessment of the nature a n d function of fiction; in the history of Chinese criti­ cism, it should be assigned a place of higher honor than Yen and Liang's essays, despite their far greater impact on the public. For his magazine H u a n g Mo-hsi wrote a series of Hsiao-shuo hsiao-hua 'hlS'hiS that are far more distinguished t h a n similar "fiction talks" of his time. W h e n he discusses Shui-hu as a novel of socialism or ranks two of Haggard's novels with Sankuo a n d Sui- T'ang yen-yi as exemplars of historical fiction, he is, of course, strictly a critic of his age, but, on the whole, his cool-headed approach to the Chinese novel, neither down­ grading it for its supposed depravity nor advancing new claims for its relevance but assessing each a n d every work on its own artistic or philosophic merit, sets a high standard for later critics. Especially remarkable is his critical survey of some ninety works of historical a n d pseudo-historical fiction. Scholars today have only begun to pay t h e m more t h a n biblio­ graphic a t t e n t i o n . 4 0 I must not close this section without mentioning the unique •""See especially C. T. Hsia, " T h e Military Romance: A Genre of Chi­ nese Fiction," in Cyril Birch, ed., Studies in Chinese Literary Genres (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974). Hsiao-shuo hsiao-hua is reprinted in HHTC, pp. 351-377. Among the unconventional novels receiving Huang Mo-hsi's attention are Hsi-yu pu Bjfifli, Teh-sou p'u-yen SSMW, and Tin shih ΐ | 3 ΐ . Lu Hsiin was most probably under his influence when he chose to discuss these three works at length in Chung-kuo hsiao-shuo shih-lueh Φ®'ϋΝ

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example of philosophic criticism of its time with which all students of Chinese fiction are familiar—Wang Kuo-wei's "Hung-lou meng p'ing-lun" (1904). 4 1 With all its simplifications, it is a remarkably brilliant study of the novel according to the aesthetic principles of Schopenhauer, and was clearly written in disregard of all current cant about the importance and func­ tion of fiction. No less a patriot in his own fashion than Liang, W a n g had the scholarly tact not to subject literature to a narrow political or educational test, with the result that, whereas Liang's essays on fiction can be studied only as historical documents, Wang's essay on Hung-lou meng, along with his Jen-chien tz'u-hua a n d studies in Chinese d r a m a , is still consulted by scholars today for their critical insights.

IV Liang Ch'i-ch'ao was most certainly the first Chinese to refer to the "realistic school of fiction," a school destined to dom­ inate the Chinese literary scene down to the present day. But, j u d g i n g by his contributions as a translator a n d practi­ tioner of fiction, he must have been far more taken by the idealistic school. His Future of New China, serialized in the first issues of Hsin hsiao-shuo, is by his own definition a political novel of the idealistic variety. Since this fragment exemplifies what he preaches in his two essays on fiction, we must give it some attention to ascertain the extent of his success a n d in­ fluence as a n advocate of the political novel. The Future of New China was not a project t h a t Liang could carry out with ease. According to his preface to its first install­ ment, he h a d wanted to write the novel for five years, but, since he was always so busy, he h a d launched Hsin hsiao-shuo in order to force himself to meet each monthly deadline so that he could complete it. H e says he h a d written two or three chapters, but since the second a n d third chapters are equally inventive in technique, while the fourth chapter departs in 41

HHTC, pp. 103-125. It was originally published in Chiao-yu ts'ung-shu fiWSfβ in that year.

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mood and method completely from the preceding narrative, I believe Liang must have completed three chapters by the time he wrote the preface, a n d it was his realization that Chapter 4 was a false start that led him to discontinue the novel. Liang has enough self-knowledge to say in the preface that "after reading several times the first two or three chapters I have completed, it strikes me that this work looks like a novel b u t is not quite one, looks like unofficial history, but is not quite that either, looks like a treatise but is not quite that also. Not knowing what kind of literary form it will have, I cannot help laughing at myself with wry amusement. But since it is my aim to publicize my political views a n d deliberate on national policy, the novel will naturally have a somewhat different form from that of a n ordinary novel. It frequently records statutes, bylaws, orations, a n d disquisitions, a n d these take up so m u c h space a n d are so boring that I know I cannot satisfy the reader's expectations." 4 2 Actually, The Future of Mew China, with its shapelessness and miscellaneous content, is a remarkable example of the type of fiction designated by N o r t h r o p Frye as " a n a t o m y . " 4 3 Its opening scene is set sixty years hence, during the New Year season of 1962, when China is celebrating the fiftieth anniver­ sary of its governmental renovation. 4 4 At that time the pleni42

YW, ts'e 80, p. Ib. See Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton Univer­ sity Press, 1957), pp. 308-312. 44 Suehiro Tetcho's Setchubai β Φ ( 6 (Plum Blossoms in the Snow) (1886), one of the most popular political novels of Meiji Japan, "opens with a prologue describing a scene in Tokyo on October 3 in the year 2040, the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the first opening of Parliament in Japan." Liang must have been influenced by this and other Meiji novels forecasting the future. Sansom, The Western World and Japan, gives a rather full account of this prologue; my quotation comes from p. 416. Edward Bellamy's Utopian novel, Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (1888), which ap43

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potentiaries of all the nations are attending the International Peace Conference in Nanking, China's new capital, and many heads of state are there, too, to congratulate the government on the anniversary of its renovation. Meanwhile, a great exposition is being held in Shanghai, attracting a multitude of foreign visitors, including several thousand distinguished specialists and authorities and tens of thousands of college students. As one of its programs, the exposition features Dr. K ' u n g Hung-tao, a venerated educator-statesman and direct descendant of Confucius, giving a series of lectures on sixty years of recent Chinese history. According to Liang's original plan, then, these lectures were to constitute the substance of the novel. T h e pageantry of the brief introductory chapter reminds one of the opening scene of The Lotus Sutra, which sets the stage for Buddha's grand discourse. In Chapter 2, Dr. K ' u n g cites various kinds of evidence in support of China's progress during the last sixty years, but by Chapter 3, he has no choice but to begin his recital in the year 1902 and present the issue then uppermost in the author's m i n d : whether China should adopt the form of a parliamentary monarchy or oust the Manchus with a revolution. Accordingly, Dr. K ' u n g introduces two youths freshly returned from years of study in Europe: H u a n g K'e-ch'iang, the future father of the Republic, 4 5 and his best friend Li Ch'u-ping. They hold a nightpeared too late to influence Suehiro Tetcho, could also have inspired Liang to write The Future of New China. By 1900 the book had become internationally well known. Timothy Richard's translation, entitled Pai-nien yichueh H f ^ - j 6 , was published by Kuang-hsueh-hui in 1894. See A Ying, Wan-Ch'ing hsi-ch'u hsiao-shuo mu, p. 120. Since Liang was for a time Richard's secretary in 1895—1896 (Chang P'eng-yuan, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao yu Ch'ing-chi ko-ming, pp. 35-36) and was deeply indebted to him for his intellectual development, he must have read the Chinese version of Looking Backward soon after its publication. 45 Every student of modern Chinese history knows that the revolutionary leader Huang Hsing was styled K'e-ch'iang. But his original name was Chen # , and he did not change it to Hsing and adopt the tzu K'e-ch'iang until 1904. He was a student of education in Tokyo from May 1902 to June 1903. Since Liang's writings were avidly read by Chinese students in Japan, Huang must have read The Future of New China in Hsin hsiao-shuo

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long debate over the immediate prospects for C h i n a — H u a n g speaking as a constitutional reformer and Li as more of a revolutionary. For over twenty rounds, each argues cogently against the other without yielding an inch of his ground, and the whole debate is indeed sustained with intellectual brilliance. T h e commentator (most probably Liang himself) is perhaps justified in calling it an unprecedented piece of writing, surpassing in power its only model in Chinese literature, Ten-t'ieh lun MWiIm (Debate on Salt and Iron). 4 6 But by Chapter 4 Liang's inspiration has flagged. Abandoning completely the framework of a lecture, he resorts to narrative and tells us a few inconsequential adventures of the two young heroes. Since in late 1902 neither the reformers nor the revolutionaries have scored any decisive victory or accomplished anything beyond influencing public opinion, Liang cannot predict the immediate future a n d recite the as-yetunknown careers of the two representative leaders of the new China. H e could, of course, fabricate, but fabrication would forfeit the note of urgency so ably maintained in the earlier debate. T h e gulf between the known present a n d the Utopian future is impassable for Liang, or any novelist. Following Liang's precept and example, many tried to write political novels presupposing a rejuvenated China after a period of reform or revolution, but they were all saddled with the problem of how to depict the immediate future. Ch'en T'ien-hua abandoned The Lion Roars after completing the eighth chapter. But even if he had not committed suicide, I believe he still could not have proceeded to finish the novel. In the allegorical introduction he presents the double vision of China's total extinction and the alternative possibility of her total rejuvenation. T h e n he proceeds to describe the eduand must have later adopted the name K'e-ch'iang because Liang had so named the national savior in his novel. In a speech given in 1911, however, Liang expressed surprise over this coincidence. See Chang P'eng-yiian, op.cit., p. 306. 46 See the tsung-p'i iffiSt appended to Chap. 3 in TW, ts'e 80, pp. 33a-b. The commentary states that the debaters in Ten-t'ieh lun digress too often from the main theme and resort too readily to rhetoric without basing their arguments on solid learning.

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cation of a group of patriotic youths on a small island off the coast of Chekiang. M a n y soon leave for Europe, America, and J a p a n for advanced study, but one prefers to begin his patriotic task on the mainland. There he gets in touch with revolutionaries and members of secret societies, but the author simply cannot go on from there without knowing the coming shape of the revolution. T o j u d g e by the n u m b e r of its abortive imitations, one can say that the special type of fiction that The Future of New China exemplifies must have caught the imagination of many patriotic writers, but its possibilities nevertheless remained unfulfilled. If we regard Liang's fragment in this fashion, then we can appreciate all the more keenly the prophetic interlude in Liu E's Lao-ts'an yu-chi and the romantic interlude of Russian Nihilists in Tseng P'u's # 1 1 Nieh-hai hua.41 But clearly, despite their authors' excursions into the realm of idealistic fiction, these two great works, along with the best novels of Li Po-yiian and W u Chien-jen, are firmly grounded in contemporary political and social reality and share little affinity with The Future of New China and its successors. T h e latter constituted a separate small stream, not to be confused with the main current of late-Ch'ing fiction. It would seem that Liang was far more realistic in his awareness of what kinds of useful fiction could be produced for his time before he was seized by his enthusiasm for the political novel. In 1896 he serialized in Shih-wu pao a long treatise called Pien-fa t'ung-yi ^ ¾ ¾ ¾ (A Comprehensive Proposal for Governmental Reforms), which includes a remarkable section on juvenile education ("Lun yu-hsiieh" ϋ#/