Lu Xun Complete Works/en/Qiejieting zawen

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Essays from the Semi-Concession (且介亭杂文)

Lu Xun

Section 1

[Complete Works of Lu Xun, Volume 6]

Essays from the Semi-Concession

Preface

—— 1934 ——

Two or Three Things About China

Reply to the International Literary Society's Questions

Introduction to "Straw Sandals," an English Translation of Chinese Short Stories

On "Adopting Old Forms"

Miscellaneous Talks on Serial Pictures

Confucian Arts

"Learning Characters from Pictures"

Grabbism

Estrangement

Introduction to "The Course of Woodcuts"

Difficulty of Action and Disbelief

Notes on Purchasing the "Complete Elementary Learning"

Epitaph for Wei Suyuan

In Memory of Mr. Wei Suyuan

In Memory of Mr. Liu Bannong

Reply to Mr. Cao Juren's Letter

Starting from Children's Photographs

A Layman's Remarks on Writing

On Not Knowing the Taste of Meat and Not Knowing the Taste of Water

The Rebirth of the Chinese Language

Have the Chinese Lost Their Self-Confidence?

"An Eye for an Eye"

On "Face"

Fate

Speculations on Facial Masks

Browsing at Random

Napoleon and Suina

Reply to the Editor of the Weekly "Theater"

Letter to the Editor of the Weekly "Theater"

Ghosts and Goblins on the Chinese Literary Scene

On the New Script

Random Talks After Illness

Further Random Talks After Illness

Stele Inscription for Teacher Cao of Lushi, Henan

Ajin

On the Duty of Common Folk to Avoid the Refined

Appendix

Essays from the Semi-Concession, Second Collection

Preface

—— 1935 ——

Preface to Ye Zi's "Harvest"

The Hermit

"Tear Down After Posting"

The Resurrection and Mass Production of Books

Casual Talk on "Cartoons"

Preface to the Second Collection of Fiction in "The Compendium of New Chinese Literature"

Preface to Uchiyama Kanzo's "Aspects of Living China"

"Looking for Fun"

The Necessity of Re-Translation

On Satire

Starting from "Wrong Characters"

Preface to Tianjun's "Village in August"

Preface to Xu Maoyong's Collection "Odd Jobs"

Learning to Read Is Where Confusion Begins

Literati Despise One Another

"The Peking School" and "The Shanghai School"

Epitaph for Kamata Seiichi

Street Peddling in the Alleys, Past and Present

One Should Not Write Like That

Confucius in Modern China

What Is the Difference Between Six Dynasties Fiction and Tang Dynasty Chuanqi?

What Is "Satire"?

On the Fear of Public Opinion

Once More on the Mutual Contempt of Literati

Preface to the "National Woodcut Joint Exhibition Album"

Three Types on the Literary Scene

From Serving to Idle Talk

Preface to the Japanese Translation of "A Brief History of Chinese Fiction"

Draft for "Title Undecided" (One to Three)

Famous People and Famous Sayings

"Living Off Heaven"

The Tragedy of Near-Nothingness

Third Discussion on "Literati Despise One Another"

Fourth Discussion on "Literati Despise One Another"

Fifth Discussion on "Literati Despise One Another" – The Art of Clarity

Draft for "Title Undecided" (Five)

On the Writing Brush and Such

Fleeing from Fame

Sixth Discussion on "Literati Despise One Another" – Two Kinds of Peddling

Seventh Discussion on "Literati Despise One Another" – Mutual Injury

Preface to Xiao Hong's "The Field of Life and Death"

On Dostoevsky

Preface to Kong Lingjing's Compilation "Letters of Contemporary Literati"

Casual Talk on the Familiar Essay

Draft for "Title Undecided" (Six to Nine)

On the New Script

Introduction to "One Hundred Illustrations for Dead Souls"

Afterword

Essays from the Semi-Concession, Supplement

—— 1936 ——

Comparative Studies of Literati

Great and Small Miracles

Section 2

Yet in our China, she has still not been much introduced. I recall only that in the now-defunct magazines Modern and Translations, one woodcut of hers was each published; her original works have naturally been seen even less. Four or five years ago, Shanghai held an exhibition of several of her works, but I fear not many people paid close attention. Of the reproductions published in her own country, the best I have seen is the Käthe Kollwitz Mappe (Herausgegeben von Kunstwart, Kunstwart-Verlag, München, 1927). The pictures in it are rather small, but the printing technique is good; however, it contains only line drawings and etchings, no woodcuts, and the album has only ten plates.

The present volume is likewise limited to reproductions, but the illustrations are somewhat larger and include woodcuts, etchings, lithographs, and drawings—twenty-one plates in all. The selection was made according to personal preference, and the arrangement followed no strict system but was ordered by convenience. Whether the accompanying text will aid understanding, I dare not say; I am merely a lover of art, not an expert.

Käthe Kollwitz was born in 1867 in Königsberg, East Prussia. Her grandfather was Julius Rupp, founder of the Free Evangelical Congregation, an independent and upright man who exerted a significant influence on her development. In her youth she first studied with the engraver Rudolf Mauer in Berlin, then went to Munich, where she studied under Ludwig Herterich. In 1891 she married the physician Karl Kollwitz and moved with him to northern Berlin, where his practice was among the poor and the workers. What she saw and heard there became the wellsprings of her artistic creation.

Her first major work was the cycle "A Weavers' Revolt," which in 1898 won the small gold medal at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition after a jury recommended the work; but Kaiser Wilhelm II refused to award it. This portfolio, comprising six plates, drew its subject matter from Gerhart Hauptmann's play The Weavers, which itself was based on the Silesian weavers' uprising of 1844. Yet it was no mere illustration but an independent artistic creation that depicted the weavers' condition—from poverty through revolt to destruction—in images of gripping power.

Later she created the cycle "Peasants' War," which drew on the great German Peasants' War of 1525 and captured the full tragedy of that rebellion in seven plates. Then came the World War, and Kollwitz lost her younger son Peter, who fell as a volunteer. From then on her work turned ever more to the theme of war and its victims, and her art, which had always been devoted to the suffering and oppressed, gained an even deeper dimension of grief and accusation.

In her later works—the cycles "War," "Proletariat," and "Death"—she achieved an expressive power unmatched in modern art. Her woodcuts and lithographs show the faces of mothers who have lost their children, of the starving and desperate, but also of those who rise to resist. It is an art of naked truthfulness, devoid of all embellishment, and therein lies its tremendous impact.

Section 3

And so the author of this essay on "Mr. Wu Xun" poses a question:

"Dear children! After reading the story above, what are your thoughts?"

I too am most eager to know what thoughts the little friends will have. If the person who read the story above is a beggar, or someone slightly better off than a beggar, then he will probably feel ashamed of his own inadequacy, or indignant that China has so few beggars of this kind. But what will the children think? They will probably just open their eyes wide and ask the author in return:

"Dear big friend! You've told us the story above, but what do you mean by it?"

The Wrongly Published Article

It seems that a conscientious editor of a children's magazine accidentally reprinted from an old—and already banned—periodical an article about Wu Xun's "School of Righteousness." It is a story intended to teach children the virtue of begging and self-abasement for the sake of building schools. But the way this story is told is most revealing: children are taught that a beggar who voluntarily allows himself to be kicked and beaten in order to beg money for a school is a model of virtue. What strange morality! For the real question is thereby elegantly evaded: Why are there no schools in a society that needs them? Why must a beggar provide through humiliation what should be the duty of the state and society?

The glorification of Wu Xun is essentially nothing more than the glorification of servility. The little man is praised for debasing himself before the powerful, instead of the powerful being censured for neglecting their duty. This is the age-old Chinese method: to praise the sacrifice rather than to change the conditions that make the sacrifice necessary.

Section 4

The journal Yiwen (Translations) came into being in September 1934, under just these circumstances. At that time, monumental enterprises like "World Literature" and "World Library" had not yet appeared, so in this gap between seasons one might say it was rather like an oasis in the Gobi Desert: a few people stole a bit of leisure to translate short texts, showed them to each other, and if there were readers, let them read too, seeking a little pleasure for themselves and hoping perhaps for a little benefit as well—but naturally, this was no vast ocean.

Yet this small, peaceable periodical could not avoid bidding farewell to everyone in September of last year with a "final issue." Though they were merely wildflowers and small grasses, they had once bloomed in a devastated world. I do not mean to say the past world was a desert, but certain things were desolate enough. The little flowers had their season, then they withered; but now there are readers who remember them and wish to plant new flowers. As for Translations, one must tell of its beginnings to understand the history of such a small journal.

There was a time—not so very long ago—when translating foreign literature into Chinese was something generally viewed with contempt. Translation was considered low work, mere craft, pursued only by those incapable of original creation. The great literati wrote their own works, which is to say they copied the old masters; the lesser literati translated, meaning they took the trouble to bring foreign things into Chinese, and were despised by the great literati for it.

But times changed, and with them the attitude toward translation. People recognized that a literature revolving only around itself must wither, and that looking outward was necessary—not to imitate, but to broaden one's own horizon. Translations was an attempt in this direction, a modest but honest attempt. That it did not last was not the fault of the translators but of the circumstances.

Section 5

At that time I was not at all surprised that the Third Brother was thinking of women, and moreover I knew what kind of women he had in mind. People might suppose he thought of nuns, but that was not the case—for a monk and a nun to be "intimate" was doubly inconvenient. What he dreamed of were daughters of wealthy families or young married ladies; and the medium of this "longing" or "unrequited longing"—what today we would call "unrequited love"—was the "knot." In the wealthy families of our district, whenever there was a death, a Buddhist ceremony was performed every seven days, and on one of these seventh days a "loosening of the knots" ceremony was conducted, because the deceased had inevitably wronged others during his lifetime, leaving behind grudges that needed to be resolved after death.

The method was as follows: on that day, several "knots" of white cloth were set up at the ceremony, and a monk walked through singing and untied them one by one. When the knot was loosened, the wrong was also resolved. What was remarkable about this was that the white cloths forming the knots were held by the women of the family—daughters, daughters-in-law, sometimes also young maidservants. The monk had to pass close enough to touch the cloth, and occasionally close enough to smell the fragrance of their hair.

For the Third Brother, these ceremonies were therefore moments of heightened excitement. He prepared carefully, shaving his head particularly smooth, putting on his finest robe, and endeavoring to sing the sutras as melodiously as possible. As a child, I observed all this with a mixture of amusement and pity, for I already understood that these brief moments of proximity to women fulfilled a longing that ran through the monk's entire visible life—a longing that could never be satisfied and was therefore all the more painful.

This is one of those small stories that says more in retrospect than at first glance. It is the story of an institution that denies people their natural needs and then leaves them the most pitiful surrogates as consolation. The Buddhist monastic world with its strict rules had not freed the monk from his desires but had only taught him to conceal them and to work them off in this absurd fashion. The "loosening of the knots" was intended for the deceased, but the real knots—the knots of the living monks—remained untied.

Section 6

In the February 17 issue of the DZZ, I found a piece by Willi Bredel commemorating the eightieth anniversary of Heinrich Heine's death, entitled "A Fairy Tale." I was quite taken with the title, and so I too shall write one.

Once upon a time, in such a country. The rulers had subdued the people, but then came to believe they were all formidable enemies: the phonetic alphabet looked to them like a machine gun, woodcuts like tanks. They had conquered land, but could not get off at the prescribed stations. One could no longer walk on the ground either; one had to fly through the air constantly. Moreover, the skin's resistance grew ever weaker—at every important matter one immediately caught cold, and the cold was contagious besides.

In that land there was a great people, whom the rulers feared above all else. This people was not only numerous but also clever and industrious. Yet the rulers had ways of keeping them in ignorance: they banned books, suppressed the press, and had those arrested who dared to think aloud. They detested the phonetic script, for it would have enabled the people to learn to read quickly, and a people that reads is a dangerous people. They detested the art of woodcutting, for pictures speak a language that even the illiterate understand.

So the people lived in a state of oppression, and the rulers lived in a state of fear. For they knew: the phonetic letters could not be undone, and the woodcuts could not all be burned. The new instruments of enlightenment multiplied faster than they could be destroyed. And so it came to pass that the rulers became prisoners in their own fortress, while the people they had locked up gradually found the means to breach the walls.

This is no fairy tale. Fairy tales end well, and in reality there is no certainty of a good ending. But there is the certainty that no state of oppression lasts forever, and that those who sow fear are in the end the most fearful themselves.

Section 7

The title is forceful. Although the author does not expressly call this a "self-criticism," he is carrying out the task of a "self-criticism" designed to obliterate Village in August; only when the official "self-criticism" he hopes for is published will this task be discharged, and Village in August may perhaps regain some vitality. For this kind of vague head-shaking is more harmful to an opponent than listing ten capital crimes—a list at least has specific points, while a vague accusation lets people speculate that the corruption is boundless.

Certainly, Mr. Dick's demand for "self-criticism" is well-intentioned, since "these writers are ours." But I believe one must at the same time never forget that the self-criticism one demands must always take a different form from the criticism the enemy practices. If our criticism becomes indistinguishable from the enemy's criticism, then it has defeated its own purpose and serves only the enemy.

The question is not whether one may criticize—of course one may—but how one criticizes. Criticism that disparages a work without making constructive suggestions, that inflates the faults without acknowledging the merits, is not genuine criticism but an execution under the guise of justice. And precisely this happens all too often in our literary world: people cry "self-criticism" but mean annihilation.

As for Village in August, it has its shortcomings—what first work does not?—but it also has its strengths, and the most important of these is that it was written at all. In a time when an eloquent silence reigns over the suffering of the Northeast, an author has dared to tell of it. That alone deserves recognition, not ridicule.

Section 8

This quite "confused" me, for does not the success of the Soviet Socialist Republics Union under the Misters Stalin in every respect around the world precisely demonstrate the wretchedness of Mr. Trotsky—expelled, wandering, destitute, and finally "compelled" to use the enemy's money? The present wandering may differ in flavor from the days in Siberia before the revolution, when there was probably not even anyone to bring a slice of bread; but the state of mind must be different again, and that precisely because of the present Soviet Union's success. Facts speak louder than words, and unexpectedly such merciless irony has now arrived. Furthermore: your "theory" is certainly far more sublime than that of the Misters Mao Zedong—not just somewhat, but very much more sublime. Yet sublime theory alone does not transform society; that is accomplished by people who act, not people who theorize.

The tragedy of Trotskyism lies in the fact that it may be right in theory and yet wrong in practice. For what good is the finest theory if it cannot be realized? And what does the success of the "less sublime" theory prove, if not that it is closer to reality? There are intellectuals who would rather fail gloriously than triumph ingloriously, who would rather go down with an elegant formula than survive with a clumsy truth. That is their affair; but they should not demand that the masses follow them on this path toward elegant failure.

As for China, here too there are such theorists who like nothing better than to point out the imperfections of the fighting practitioners. They sit in safety and explain to the fighters that their fight is being conducted incorrectly. But the incorrectly conducted fight is worth more than correctly formulated inaction.

Section 9

Preface to the Second Collection of Fiction in "The Compendium of New Chinese Literature"

One

Anyone who is concerned with modern Chinese literature knows that the journal New Youth was the champion of "literary improvement" and later went a step further to call for "literary revolution." Yet when it first appeared in Shanghai in September 1915, it was entirely in classical Chinese. The creative fiction of Su Manshu and the translated fiction of Chen Gu and Liu Bannong were all in classical Chinese. Not until the following year, when Hu Shi's "Modest Proposals for the Improvement of Literature" was published, were any works—and only Hu Shi's poems and fiction—written in the vernacular. Gradually more writers in the vernacular joined in, but because New Youth was primarily a platform for ideas, works of fiction always remained in the minority.

The emergence of the new Chinese short story was indeed a process of groping and experimentation. The first generation of vernacular fiction writers had no models in their own tradition—the classical narrative tradition did exist, but was written in so different an idiom that it could scarcely serve as a model. So the new storytellers reached for foreign models—Chekhov, Maupassant, the Japanese—and attempted to apply their methods to Chinese material.

The result was uneven, as is always the case with such beginnings. Some of the early stories possess a touching sincerity, others a painful awkwardness; some find their own voice, others sound like translations from a language the author does not quite command. But taken together they constitute a document of inestimable value: the document of a literary revolution that was not decreed from above but forged from below.

Section 10

To be sure, although plain, or as the author himself modestly says, "naive," his stories are little embellished and suffice to express the sorrow of his heart. The range he depicts is narrow—a few ordinary people, some trivial matters—but a story like "Water Burial" reveals to us the cruelty of rural customs in "far-off Guizhou" and the greatness of maternal love that emerges from this cruelty—Guizhou is far away, but everyone's situation is the same.

At that time—1924—Pei Wenzhong and Li Jianwu also occasionally published works. The former was presumably not someone who usually devoted himself to creative work; yet his "Amid the Sound of Arms" recorded in a discursive fashion how students abroad, caught in the turmoil of war, could think only of returning home. Li Jianwu, on the other hand, already possessed a certain literary training and wrote with deliberation and skill.

As for the other authors who emerged during this period, they did not form a school in the proper sense. They were isolated voices sounding from different corners of the country, illuminating different aspects of Chinese life. Some wrote about the countryside, others about the city; some about the poor, others about the educated; but all shared the fact that they wrote in the new vernacular and thereby participated in the great experiment of literary renewal.

It was a fertile decade, the first decade of the new Chinese short story. Not everything written during this period has endured; much has been justly forgotten. But the best has endured, and it deserves to be collected and handed down to posterity, not merely as literary testimony but as testimony to an era of upheaval such as China had never before experienced.

Section 11

'In this year's university entrance examination, the composition topic for the arts division was: "The scholar should first attend to character and learning, and only then to belles-lettres"; for the science division it was: "Draft a reply from the King of Nan-Yue to Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty," with the original text of Emperor Wen's letter to King Zhao Tuo of Nan-Yue appended. Perhaps these examination topics, given the present disturbances, were not without a touch of topical allusion. But the students were quite at a loss with these two topics in the style of old-fashioned policy essays. One student wrote in large characters on his examination paper: "The name Emperor Wen of Han seems vaguely familiar, but I do not know which generation descendant of the founder of the Han Dynasty he is. As for Zhao-the-Other, King of Nan-Yue, I have never met him in my life; about him I can say nothing. I had better go home and study, and we shall meet again next year." An examiner noticed that the student had confused the character "Tuo" with the character for "other," and wrote beneath: "Zhao-the-Other waited for you; when you came you did not recognize him, that is all right, but I am disappointed." How witty!'

This story is indeed amusing, but it also contains a deeper truth. The universities demanded of their students a familiarity with classical learning that they simply did not possess—and why should they? The old learning was the learning of a class and an era, and both had passed. That students were still required to draft reply letters to Han emperors only showed how far the university was from reality.

The real question was not whether the students knew who Emperor Wen of Han was, but whether the university knew who its students were. And the answer was obvious: it did not. It taught a dead world and was surprised that the living did not understand it.

Section 12

Even before the performance began, one could tell this was no ordinary village opera, for on both sides of the stage paper hats were already hanging—what Gao Changhong had called "paper crowns"—meant for gods and ghosts. Thus the old hands leisurely ate their dinner, drank their tea, and sauntered over; one glance at the hanging hats sufficed to know which gods and ghosts had already appeared. The performance began quite early—the "raising of the violently dead" took place at sunset—so anyone going after dinner was certain to have missed a good while already, but those were uniformly uninteresting parts.

The "raising of the dead"—in Shaoxing this is now mostly misunderstood as "funeral," as though it simply meant summoning ghosts—actually refers exclusively to those who died violent deaths. In the "Nine Songs" of the Chu Ci, there is the "raising of the fallen," referring to soldiers killed in battle. But in the folk theater of Shaoxing, the meaning was broadened: all who died by misfortune—the drowned, the burned, those eaten by tigers—were raised as ghosts and represented on stage.

What was remarkable about this kind of theater was not so much the performance itself—which was often enough crude and clumsy—but the matter-of-factness with which the boundaries between the world of the living and the world of the dead were dissolved. The audience watched the ghosts as they would watch any other performers, feeling neither fear nor awe but at most a mild interest and a little entertainment. The dead were part of the community, just as the living were, and the theater was the place where both met.

Section 13

Not watching "insulting films" does oneself no good whatsoever—one simply does not see them, closes one's eyes and remains swollen. But watching them without reflecting is equally useless. To this day I still hope someone will translate Arthur Smith's Chinese Characteristics into Chinese. Read such things and then engage in self-reflection, analyze, recognize which points are correct, change, struggle, do the work yourself, without seeking others' forgiveness or praise—that is how one proves what a Chinese person truly is.

Hereby Filed for the Record (Four)

Morning Bugle

In recent years there has been a periodical called Yue Feng (Wind of Yue), but the contributors are by no means all from the Yue region, nor do the topics all concern Yue affairs. I am mystified as to how it got its name. As for the Yue region, I myself hail from there, but I have no idea what exactly they mean by the "wind of Yue." The magazine mingles old and new, classical and modern, and the result is a peculiar brew that is neither fish nor fowl.

The glorification of one's own region—"my land is the finest, my customs the noblest"—is one of the most endearing and at the same time most dangerous forms of self-deception. Endearing, because it springs from genuine affection; dangerous, because it obscures the view of reality. He who loves his homeland only when he cannot see its faults does not love his homeland but a phantom.

Section 14

Jinghua was a member of the Weiming Society; the Weiming Society had always been based in Peking and was a small group that did practical work without making a fuss. Yet it still suffered some undeserved calamities, and rather absurd ones at that. It was once shut down—on account of a telegram from Zhang Zongchang, the military governor of Shandong; the instigator, it was said, was a fellow man of letters. Later nothing came of it, and it was reopened. After being cleared out, Jinghua's two translated novels remained at Tai Jingnong's house and were confiscated along with a "new-style bomb." Although it was later proved that this "new-style bomb" was in fact merely a machine for manufacturing cosmetics, the books were still not returned; and so these two volumes became the rarest books between heaven and earth.

Because myErta was being sold in Peking, several copies also fell into official hands during a raid. I do not know what the police did with the confiscated books—probably nothing, for the policemen surely had better things to do than read literature. But the confiscation itself had served its purpose: it had intimidated the authors and unsettled the readers. That was the real aim—not reading, but preventing reading.

The Weiming Society, in its brief existence, accomplished some things that should not be forgotten. It published translations from Russian when that was still considered dangerous; it offered a platform to young writers when the major journals ignored them; it did, in short, what small literary groups ought to do: quietly, persistently, and without regard for the consequences.

Section 15

On Satire

We inevitably harbor a certain prejudice: when we see satirical works, we feel this is not the proper path of literature, because we assume from the outset that satire is not a virtue. But when we go into society, we can often observe the following scene: two portly gentlemen, bowing to each other and clasping hands, their faces shining with oil, begin their conversation—

"What is your esteemed surname?"

"My humble surname is Qian."

"Oh, long admired, long admired! May I inquire your courtesy name?"

"My insignificant courtesy name is Kuoting."

"How elegant, how elegant! Where do you hail from?"

"From Shanghai..."

This is what is called polite intercourse, and no one calls it satire. But let us ask whether this exchange is sincere! Of course it is not. It is a ritual, an empty play of forms, in which every word means the opposite of what it says. Satire does nothing more than call this play of forms by its name. And for that it is censured—not the play of forms.

Such is the peculiar logic of our society: the lie is tolerated so long as it observes the forms; the truth is condemned as soon as it violates the forms. And satire is nothing other than a form of truth that violates the forms.

Section 16

Starting from "Wrong Characters"

Since the discussion of writing wrong characters has progressed to the present advocacy of "hand-written characters," probably more than a year has passed, and I recall that I myself said nothing about it. I am not opposed to these things, but neither am I enthusiastic, for I consider the block script itself to be a terminal illness—taking a little ginseng or devising some trick may perhaps postpone the end, but ultimately there is no salvation, which is why I never paid much attention to this matter.

A few days ago I saw in the "Free Talk" column an article by Mr. Chen Youqin entitled "Living and Dead Characters," which reminded me of the old affair. He mentions there that applicants at Peking University's entrance examination had written wrong characters—provoking both mockery and outrage.

But what, exactly, are "wrong characters"? In the strict sense, they are characters that deviate from the established norm. But who establishes the norm? The norm did not fall from heaven; it was made by humans, and what was made by humans can be changed by humans. Today's "correct" characters were once yesterday's "wrong" characters, and today's "wrong" characters may be tomorrow's "correct" ones.

The real question is not whether a character is written correctly or incorrectly, but whether the Chinese script as a whole is equal to the demands of modern times. And the answer is: No, it is not. The block script is too difficult to learn, too slow to write, and too unsuitable for mass education. As long as we cling to it, the literacy of the people will remain a dream. The simplification of characters is a step in the right direction, but it is only a step—the real step would be the adoption of a phonetic script.

Section 17

Preface to Tianjun's "Village in August"

After discussing the literati of France's upper-class society, Ehrenburg (Ilya Ehrenburg) said that there were also quite different kinds of people: "Professors work noiselessly in their studies; doctors experimenting with X-ray therapy die at their posts; fishermen who plunge in to save their comrades sink quietly into the ocean… On one side, solemn work; on the other, debauchery and shamelessness."

These last two sentences truly sound as if they were speaking of present-day China as well. Yet China has even worse to offer. I don't have the book at hand and cannot quote it precisely, but in essence Ehrenburg said that in today's world, the writers who tell the truth work under the most difficult conditions, while those who lie enjoy every comfort.

Tianjun's Village in August is the work of just such a writer who tells the truth. It recounts the resistance of peasants in northeastern China against the Japanese invasion—a subject that practically did not exist in the official literature of the time, although it was the most pressing reality facing the country. That a young author dared to take up this subject deserves the highest recognition, regardless of whatever literary shortcomings a first work may naturally possess.

Section 18

Preface to Xu Maoyong's Collection "Odd Jobs"

I find that China is sometimes a country supremely devoted to equality. The moment anything protrudes a little, someone comes along with a long knife to shave it flat. Take individuals: Sun Guiyun was a fine runner, but as soon as he reached Shanghai, he somehow became listless; by the time he arrived in Japan, he could no longer run at all. Ruan Lingyu was a comparatively successful film star, but "public opinion is fearsome," and in the end she had to swallow three bottles of sleeping pills at once. Naturally there are exceptions: some are lifted up. But this lifting up is done only to smash them all the more thoroughly afterward.

Some probably still remember the "Mermaid"—she was praised to a point that made audiences uncomfortable. And when she fell, she fell far. This is the Chinese method: first lift up, then let drop. Or alternatively: don't lift up at all but trample immediately. Or more subtly still: trample while praising, by heaping such extravagant compliments on someone that those around already suspect something must be rotten.

To write in such an atmosphere requires courage—the courage not to want to be lifted up, and the courage to do the lowly work: the small tasks, the "odd jobs," that no one sees and for which no one distributes laurels. Xu Maoyong's essays are such odd jobs. They do not claim to be great literature, and therein lies precisely their strength.

Section 19

Learning to Read Is Where Confusion Begins

In Chinese there is only the saying "Learning to read is where sorrow begins." This sentence here is my own adaptation.

Children often give me good lessons, and one of them is in learning to speak. When they learn to speak, they have no teacher, no grammar textbook, no dictionary—they simply listen continuously, memorize, analyze, compare, and finally understand the meaning of every word. By the age of two or three, they can generally understand and speak simple everyday sentences, and they rarely make mistakes. Small children love listening to adult conversations, and even more love accompanying guests—the main aim is naturally to share the refreshments, but there is also the delight in bustle, and above all they are researching the language of adults.

This is the natural method of language learning, and it works remarkably well. But as soon as the child is supposed to learn to read and write, everything changes. Suddenly there are rules, regulations, right and wrong, and the spontaneity of spoken language is smothered by the rigidity of written language. The child who just a moment ago was learning with playful ease now sits before a sea of characters and does not know where to begin.

Section 20

Literati Despise One Another

Repeating the same sentence over and over gets tiresome. On the so-called literary scene, two years ago there was a bout of crying "Literati have no morals"; last year there was a commotion over "the Peking School and the Shanghai School"; and this year a new slogan has appeared: "Literati despise one another."

The slogan-monger feels great anger at this tendency—"truth weeps"—and so he raises his voice loudly and heaps contempt on all "literati." "Contempt" is what he detests most of all, yet because they "despise one another" and thereby damage his ideal of a harmonious world, he finds himself compelled to practice the art of contempt himself. Of course this is done on the principle of "fighting fire with fire"—but that is precisely the joke. For he who condemns the contempt of others by practicing contempt himself has already proved that "mutual contempt" is not merely a disease of literati but a universal human weakness.

Section 21

"The Peking School" and "The Shanghai School"

Last spring, the masters of the Peking School had given the petty clowns of the Shanghai School a thorough mocking, and the Shanghai clowns had returned a few blows, but before long the matter was over. Storms on the literary scene arise easily and subside just as easily; if they did not subside easily, things would indeed be inconvenient. I too had joined in the commotion a little, and amid all the verbal fencing I maintained that my analysis at the time was not entirely wrong. Among other things I wrote:

"…Peking is the imperial capital of the Ming and Qing, Shanghai is the concession of various nations; the imperial capital has many officials, the concession many merchants; therefore literati in Peking gravitate toward officials, those in Shanghai toward merchants…"

This distinction strikes at the heart of the matter. The "Peking School" means literati who orient themselves toward power—political, cultural, academic power. The "Shanghai School" means literati who orient themselves toward the market—toward money, popular taste, commercial success. Both despise each other, and both are right in their contempt, for in each there is something contemptible: in the one, servility toward power; in the other, servility toward money.

The truly free literati—those who serve neither officials nor merchants—are few in either camp, and they are attacked from both sides: by the Pekingese as unserious, by the Shanghainese as unsaleable.

Section 22

Epitaph for Kamata Seiichi

In March 1930, he came to Shanghai and took charge of books with diligence and care; at the same time he pursued the art of painting and achieved commendable results. Amid severe trials he remained true to his path, aided those in distress and succored those in need, fulfilling both public and private duties. In July 1933, he returned to his homeland due to illness to recuperate; it was hoped he would recover and display his talents, but medicine and remedies proved unavailing, and he passed away at last, at the age of only twenty-eight. Alas, the unfathomable heavens have cut short a noble plant! Radiant youth, forever in dark earth. As one who had the honor of counting himself among his friends, I write these lines in his memory.

Written on April 22, 1935, by Lu Xun of Kuaiji.

Section 23

Street Peddling in the Alleys, Past and Present

"Barley, almond, and lotus seed porridge!"

"Rose-petal sugar Lundiao cake!"

"Shrimp wonton noodles!"

"Five-spice tea eggs!"

These were the cries of snack vendors in and around the alleys of Zhabei four or five years ago. Had one recorded them at the time, from morning till night, there would probably have been twenty or thirty different ones. The residents apparently really did spend their small change on snacks, giving the vendors a bit of business from time to time, for the cries frequently fell silent—a sign that the vendor was attending to a customer. Moreover, the peddlers' calls were truly elegant—had they perhaps consulted the "Late Ming Anthology" or "Late Ming Familiar Essays" for their vocabulary, or had the literati on the contrary borrowed their phrases from the street vendors?

But that was then. After the war, the bombardment, and the devastation, the alley vendors came no more, and the beautiful cries fell silent. What now echoes through the alleys are different sounds—the sounds of a changed era, in which the small street trade has yielded to a larger machinery that is neither picturesque nor poetic.

Section 24

One Should Not Write Like That

Anyone seriously interested in creative work probably thinks first of the question: "How should I write?" The "guides to novel writing" and "courses in the art of fiction" currently displayed in bookshops are designed precisely to pick the pockets of such young people. Yet they seem to be of no use—we have not to this day heard of any author who emerged from a "guide to novel writing." Some young people try to ask already famous authors; the answers have rarely been published, but the result is easy to guess: nothing useful. This is no wonder, for creative work has no secret recipe that can be whispered in an ear and transmitted in a single sentence.

But there is another approach, far less heeded, that is at least equally instructive: instead of asking how one should write, one should ask how one should not write. For this question can be answered far more concretely.

Section 25

In the sixth chapter, this question is answered:

"How one should write must be gleaned from the completed works of great authors. But how one should not write—that is best learned from the unpublished drafts of those same works. There it is practically as though the artist were giving us hands-on instruction. As if he pointed to each line and spoke directly to us: 'Look—see, this must be deleted. This must be shortened. This must be rewritten, because it has become unnatural. Here something must be added to make the image more distinct.'"

This is indeed an extremely instructive method of learning, yet in our China we have hardly ever applied it. The Chinese tradition has no culture of drafts and revisions—or rather, it has always concealed the drafts and shown only the finished work. The master was supposed to appear flawless, and flawlessness tolerates no traces of struggle. Thus the most important learning material was withheld from successors: the process of writing itself.

Section 26

Confucius in Modern China

Recently the Shanghai newspapers reported that the governor of Hunan Province, General He Jian, had sent as a gift a long-treasured portrait of Confucius, on the occasion of the completion of the Confucian temple on Yushima Island in Japan. To be frank, the ordinary Chinese people have virtually no notion of what Confucius looked like. Since ancient times, every county has had a holy temple—the Confucius temple—yet these generally contained no image of the sage. Whenever a figure worthy of veneration was painted or carved, the general principle was to depict him as larger than an ordinary person; but with the most venerable figure of all, a sage like Confucius, it seemed as though even depicting his appearance would constitute blasphemy.

This is an interesting Chinese paradox: the more one venerates someone, the less one dares to depict him, until he finally becomes entirely invisible. The Confucius of modern China is indeed invisible—not because he is so sacred, but because he serves so many different interests that any concrete depiction would offend someone. Everyone has his own Confucius: the conservatives have one, the reformers have one, the militarists have one, and even the revolutionaries have one—if only as a bogeyman.

The irony is that during his lifetime Confucius was a failed politician, a man who was rejected in every state he visited. Only after his death was he elevated to sainthood—and indeed by precisely the kind of rulers whom he had served in vain during his lifetime. Dead saints are more useful than living thinkers: they can no longer be questioned, and so they can mean whatever one puts into them.

Section 27

What Differences Exist Between Six Dynasties Fiction and Tang Dynasty Chuanqi Tales?

— Reply to the Literary Society's Questions

This examination question is difficult to answer.

For the chuanqi tales of the Tang dynasty have surviving originals that we can still see today, but what we now call "Six Dynasties fiction" is based solely on the classifications in bibliographies ranging from the New Book of Tang to the Qing dynasty's Catalogue of the Four Treasuries. Many of these works were not considered fiction at all during the Six Dynasties period itself. For example, Tales of Emperor Wu of Han, Miscellaneous Records of the Western Capital, Records of the Search for Spirits, and Continuation of the Qi-Xie Records were still classified under court diaries and miscellaneous biographies in Liu Xu's bibliography of the Old Book of Tang. At that time people still believed in immortals and spirits and did not consider the records to be invented; though they dealt with immortals and mortals, the bright world and the dark, they all belonged to the category of history.

Moreover, the library catalogues from the Jin through the Sui dynasties have all been lost, so we cannot know what was considered "fiction" at that time, or what form and content it had. The only earliest surviving catalogue is the bibliography of the History of the Sui. A genuine comparison between Six Dynasties fiction and Tang chuanqi is therefore impossible in the strict sense, since we do not even know for certain what one side of the comparison encompasses.

Section 28

What Is "Satire"?

— Reply to the Literary Society's Questions

I think: when an author, using a refined or even somewhat exaggerated style—which must naturally also be artistic—portrays the truth of a group of people or one facet of reality, then the group portrayed calls this work "satire."

The life of "satire" is truth; it need not be something that actually happened, but it must be something that could happen. Therefore it is neither "fabrication" nor "slander"; it is neither "exposure of private secrets" nor a mere record of those sensational things called "oddities" or "grotesque conditions." What it depicts are public, commonly known things that are also commonly regarded as normal and surprise no one. The satirist merely makes visible what everyone sees but no one dares to name.

That is why satire is so detested: not because it lies, but because it tells the truth—and indeed a truth that everyone knows but no one wants to hear spoken.

Section 29

On the Fear of Public Opinion

"Public opinion is fearsome"—these were words found in the farewell letter of film actress Ruan Lingyu after her suicide. This incident, which caused a sensation for a time, has gradually been forgotten after some hollow debates; as soon as the film The Story of Ruan Lingyu's Fading ceases to be shown, it will vanish as completely as Ai Xia's suicide last year. Their deaths were merely a few grains of salt in the boundless sea of humanity—they gave the chattering mouths a little flavor, but soon it too will be bland, bland, bland.

This sentence had initially caused a small stir. A critic suggested that blame for her suicide lay also with the newspaper reporting about her. This view is not wrong, but it falls short. The newspapers report what readers want to read, and readers want to read what the newspapers report—a vicious circle in which the question of blame goes round and round.

The real question is: why is public gossip so fearsome in China? Because there are no institutions to protect the individual. There is no functioning legal system, no reliable public opinion, no social solidarity. The individual stands naked before the mob, and the mob judges at whim, without accountability, without consequences. In such a society, "public opinion" is indeed fearsome—not because the people are particularly malicious, but because they know no bounds.

Section 30

Once More on Literati Despising One Another

This year's so-called "literati despising one another" is not merely a slogan that confuses black and white, providing cover for the darkness on the literary scene; it also enables certain people to "hang up a sheep's head and sell dog meat."

How many truly "despise each other's weaknesses on the basis of their respective strengths"? What we have encountered in recent years are cases of "despising others' weaknesses on the basis of one's own weaknesses." For example: in the vernacular, some writing is awkward and hard to read—that is certainly a "weakness." Then along come people who brandish short essays or aphorisms and proudly attack on this point. But before long they show their tails, and it turns out that even with the kind of writing they themselves advocate, they frequently mispunctuate—their "weakness" is considerable.

Some go even further, "despising others' strengths on the basis of their own weaknesses." For instance: those who scorn the "zawen" (essay) themselves employ nothing but "zawen," and their "zawen," compared to the "zawen" of others that they scorn, is so clumsy that comparison is impermissible. All this grandiloquent talk is reminiscent of nothing so much as Chekhov's immortal characters—those provincials who use big words to conceal their small world.

Section 31

Preface to the "National Woodcut Joint Exhibition Album"

Woodcut art is actually a very old thing in China. Buddhist images from the late Tang period, playing cards, and the later novel illustrations and primers—we can still see the originals today. And from these it is clear: the woodcut was originally a thing of the people, that is, something "common." During the Ming dynasty, some scholars used it for letter paper—this came close to the "elegant"—but the result was that scholars swept their large brushes across its entire surface, thereby proving that to them the woodcut was essentially nothing more than a doormat.

The woodcut art that has suddenly flourished in the last five years does have a certain connection to the old culture, but it is by no means an exhumed corpse dressed in new clothes. It is the product of a living connection between artists and society—an art that comes from the people and speaks to the people.

Section 32

Three Types on the Literary Scene

In the past twenty years, China has already produced some writers, a certain number of works, and since writing has not yet ceased, there is without doubt a "literary scene." But if one wished to exhibit it at a world's fair, one would have to think twice.

Because of the difficulty of the script and the scarcity of schools, among our writers there are probably no village girls turned poetesses, nor shepherd boys transformed into men of letters. In ancient times there were supposedly people who read the classics while herding cattle and tending sheep and eventually became scholars, but today such people probably do not exist. —I have said "probably not" twice; should there in fact be such an exceptional genius, I beg for indulgence. In short: everyone who takes up the pen has had at least a little education, and is thus anything but a proletarian.

On the literary scene there are essentially three types: the servant of power, the merchant of the market, and the truly writing writer. The first two types are in the majority, and the third type is attacked by both sides. But only the third type is worthy of literature, for only he writes what he thinks, and not what others expect of him.

Section 33

From Serving to Idle Talk

"Entertainment literature" was once considered a malicious epithet—wrongly so, for it is actually a misunderstanding.

The Book of Songs later became one of the canonical works, but during the Spring and Autumn period some of its pieces were used as drinking songs. Qu Yuan is the founding father of "Chu poetry," but his Li Sao is nothing more than the lament of a man who was not allowed to serve. Then came Song Yu, and judging by the surviving works, he was already without any complaint—a pure entertainer. Nevertheless, the Book of Songs is a canonical work and also great literature; Qu Yuan and Song Yu remain important authors in literary history. Why?—Precisely because, despite everything, they possessed literary quality.

The path of Chinese literature leads from serving to idle talk: first one serves power and helps it achieve its ends; then one loses influence and merely entertains; and finally one has neither influence nor entertainment value and simply chatters away. These three stages are simultaneously the three stages of decline—not only of literature, but also of society.

Section 34

Preface to the Japanese Translation of "A Brief History of Chinese Fiction"

When I heard that the Japanese translation of my humble work, A Brief History of Chinese Fiction, was about to be published under the title History of Chinese Fiction, I was very pleased, but at the same time I felt my own decline.

If I recall correctly, some four or five years ago Mr. Masuda Wataru came to my lodgings almost daily to discuss this book with me; sometimes we also chatted about the state of the literary world at the time, which was very pleasant. In those days I still had such leisure and also the ambition to continue my research. But time rushes on, and lately even wife and child have become almost a burden; as for collecting books and such, these have become truly superfluous things. The revision of the Brief History of Chinese Fiction will have to wait for better times—if they come.

Section 35

The sixteenth section discusses that precise treatise, which is collected in the Jülou ji. There is also another matter: the Jin Ping Mei Ci Hua was discovered in Peking and is the ancestral text of the work of the same name that has been circulating to this day. Although the prose is cruder than the current edition, the dialogue is written entirely in Shandong dialect, which conclusively proves that the book is by no means the work of Wang Shizhen of Jiangsu.

But I myself have made no revisions. I see the book's incompleteness, leave it as it is, and merely rejoice over the appearance of the Japanese translation. May there yet be an opportunity to remedy this negligence.

This is, needless to say, a book with a lonely fate. But Mr. Masuda has overcome all obstacles and pressed forward with the translation—for that he deserves our thanks. May the Japanese edition help make the history of the Chinese novel known beyond China's borders.

Section 36

Draft for "Title Undecided" (One to Three)

One

Even the most commonplace expectations are often shattered by experience. I always assumed that translating was easier than original creation, since at least one need not invent anything. But as soon as one truly sets about translating, one encounters difficulties: for instance, a noun or a verb that one cannot render—in original work one can avoid it, in translation one cannot; one must think until one's head spins, as if groping in the dark for the key to a chest that urgently needs opening, and not finding it. Yan Fu said, "To establish a single term, one ponders for months"—that was his own experience, and it is literally true.

Just recently I was again surprised by my wrong expectations. I had been translating, and while proofreading my own translation I found passages I myself could no longer understand. This sounds absurd, but it is true: the translation one made yesterday has already become foreign today. Language ages quickly, and what sounded comprehensible yesterday already sounds forced today.

Two

The question of translation is in truth the question of language itself. Every language is a mirror of the society that speaks it, and every translation is an attempt to reflect one mirror in another. What comes out is inevitably distorted, for no two societies are alike, and therefore no two languages are alike.

Three

The translator must choose: fidelity to the original or intelligibility for the reader. Both at once is rarely possible. He who translates faithfully becomes obscure; he who translates intelligibly becomes unfaithful. The ideal translation does not exist—there are only better and worse compromises.

Section 37

"Famous People and Famous Sayings"

In "Taibai" magazine, Volume 2, Issue 7, there is an essay by Mr. Nanshan titled "The Third Strategy for Preserving Classical Chinese." He lists: the first strategy says "wanting to write in the vernacular fails because one cannot master classical Chinese"; the second says "to write good vernacular, one must first master classical Chinese." Ten years later came Master Taiyan's third strategy: "He believes that if you say classical Chinese is difficult, then the vernacular is even more difficult. The reason is that today's spoken language contains many ancient words; without thorough knowledge of philology, one cannot know that a certain sound in today's spoken language corresponds to a certain ancient sound, corresponds to a certain ancient character, and one will write it incorrectly..."

Master Taiyan's words are quite correct. Today's spoken language did not descend from heaven overnight; naturally it contains many ancient words, and since there are ancient words, naturally many can be found in ancient texts. If someone writing in the vernacular had to look up the original character for every word in the "Shuowen Jiezi," it would indeed be immeasurably more difficult than writing classical texts where one freely uses loan characters. But since the vernacular was first promoted, no one has ever demanded such absurd things...

Section 38

"Living Off Heaven"

The doctrine of "living off heaven" is a national treasure of our China. Already in the mid-Qing Dynasty there existed a stele with the image "Living Off Heaven," and at the beginning of the Republic, the top imperial examination graduate Lu Runxiang also painted one: a large character for "heaven" (天), with an old man leaning against the tip of the last stroke, holding a bowl and eating. This image was lithographed; devotees of heavenly faith or collectors of curiosities may still have copies.

And indeed this doctrine is put into practice — the only difference from the picture being that there is no bowl to hold. Thus this doctrine exists at least in half.

A month ago we heard people crying: "The drought has taken hold!" Now it is plum rain season, it has rained for over ten days straight — an annual occurrence, without typhoon or downpour — yet floods have appeared everywhere. The few trees planted on Arbor Day are not enough to reverse heaven's will. The era of Emperors Tang and Yu, when "every five days came a wind and every ten days a rain," lies far in the past. That one relies on heaven yet ends up unable to eat — this was probably not foreseen by the devotees of heavenly faith.

Section 39

"The Nearly Eventless Tragedy"

Gogol's (Nikolai Gogol) name is gradually becoming known to Chinese readers, and the translation of his masterwork "Dead Souls" has already been published through the first half of Part One. Although the translation is not entirely satisfactory, through it one learns that from the second to the sixth chapter, five typical landowners are described. There is much satire, yet aside from an old woman and the miser Plyushkin, each of them has his lovable qualities. As for the portrayal of the serfs, there is not a single commendable trait — even when they sincerely try to help their masters, it is not merely useless but actually harmful. Gogol was himself a landowner.

The gentlemen of the time, however, were very displeased, and the customary counterattack was to claim that the types in the book were mostly Gogol himself, and that he did not know the circumstances of Great Russian landowners. This argument holds some water — the author was Ukrainian, and his family letters sometimes indeed resemble the opinions of the landowners in the book. Yet even if...

Section 40

Nozdryov in the fourth chapter is a landowner of the local bully type — he loves excitement, gambling, tells grand lies, demands flattery — but doesn't mind getting beaten either. When he meets Chichikov at an inn, he boasts about his fine puppy, forces Chichikov to stroke the dog's ears, and then demands he also touch its nose —

"Chichikov, to be agreeable to Nozdryov, stroked the dog's ears once. 'Yes, it will make a fine dog,' he added.

'Now feel its cold nose too, come on!' And not wanting to offend him, Chichikov also touched the nose and said: 'No ordinary nose!'"

This kind of brash, self-satisfied host and the smooth, worldly-wise guest's polished response — this is something we can still encounter at any time today. Some people make this very thing their lifelong art of social intercourse. "No ordinary nose" — what kind of nose then? One cannot say precisely, but the listener need only accept this...

Section 41

"Third Discussion on 'Literati Despising Each Other'"

In the eighth issue of "Mangzhong" there is an essay by Mr. Wei Jinzhi titled "Clear Right and Wrong and Passionate Likes and Dislikes," written in response to the earlier piece "Again on 'Literati Despising Each Other'" in the "Literary Forum." He first gives almost complete agreement in principle, saying: "People should have a clear sense of right and wrong and passionate likes and dislikes — this is correct. Literati should have an even clearer sense of right and wrong and even more passionate likes and dislikes — this too is correct." In the middle he says: "When a person falls on hard times... if he can keep company with apes and cranes, all the better; otherwise, the company of deer and swine will do. Even in the most desperate circumstances, lying in the corner of a ruined temple with leprosy bacteria for company — so long as my physical strength still allows natural resistance and I do not perish thereby, it is still better than being lured into a trap and cut to pieces by those who are in truth also swindlers and butchers." This may seem to contain some veiled criticism, but in fact it expresses his loathing for swindlers and butchers, which far exceeds that for apes, cranes, or even leprosy bacteria...

Section 42

[Appendix]: Clear Distinction of Right and Wrong and Passionate Likes and Dislikes – Wei Jinzhi

People should have a clear distinction between right and wrong and passionate likes and dislikes—that is correct. Literati should have an even clearer distinction and even more passionate likes and dislikes—that too is correct. But the affairs of this world are not so simple; besides right and wrong there is also "the seemingly right that is in truth not right" and "the wrong in which right nonetheless resides." At this juncture our likes and dislikes find themselves in difficulty.

For instance, there is a kind of person who hides behind a fine signboard and does as he pleases; without distinction of right and wrong, without distinction of like and dislike, he places everything under the heading of what he wishes to oppose. This is then called—but let us pause here. For this is precisely the crux of the matter: under the pretext of acknowledging the complexity of the world, all moral clarity is softened until nothing remains but a comfortable relativism.

Section 43

Fourth Discussion on "Literati Despise One Another"

What was not mentioned last time: Mr. Wei Jinzhi's grand essay "Clear Distinction of Right and Wrong and Passionate Likes and Dislikes" contains yet another very interesting point. He holds that nowadays there are "often people with two faces" who esteem one person highly but disparage another. Of course he does not mean that literati should treat everyone equally, greeting each with bows and the words "Long admired, long admired," merely because the despised party might also be a meritorious author. Therefore, when it comes to the two parties, "at this moment, in order to discuss right and wrong, one must exchange places."

This sounds plausible and fair. But in practice it means: one should refrain from judgment until one has heard all sides—and since in literature one can never hear all sides, one should refrain from judgment altogether. This is the philosophy of eternal indecision, and in the end it serves only those who profit from indecision—namely the powerful.

Section 44

Fifth Discussion on "Literati Despise One Another" – The Art of Clarity

"Literati despise one another" is an expression used by outsiders or those pretending to be outsiders. If one is oneself a party to the situation, then one is either being despised or doing the despising—one certainly does not use the evenly balanced word "one another." But in extremity one can also use these four characters as cover. This cover is an escape route, but it is at the same time still a battle tactic, which is why this saying is treasured by certain people.

But this is the later development. In the beginning, naturally, there is "contempt."

The arts of contempt are manifold. Roughly speaking, there are three methods. The first is self-abasement: one throws oneself into the gutter and then drags the other in. The second is self-exaltation: one ascends a throne and looks down from on high. The third is indifference: one pretends the other does not exist at all, which is the most refined and simultaneously the cruelest form of contempt, for against it there is no defense. One can fight against an attack, but how does one fight against being ignored?

These three methods are all equally practiced in the Chinese literary world, and he who masters all three is a true master of the art of contempt.

Section 45

Draft for "Title Undecided" (Five)

Five

Mr. M sent me a clipped newspaper article. This has been a frequent occurrence over the past ten years; sometimes it is a magazine. When I have leisure I leaf through it, and usually there is something related to me, sometimes even such unpleasant news as "he has meningitis." On such occasions I must prepare about one yuan's worth of stamps to answer the people who then inquire one after another. As for the person sending the newspaper clipping, there are probably two kinds: one consists of friends, who merely mean to say that this periodical has something that concerns you; the second—well, that is hard to say. One can only speculate that it may be the author or editor himself: "Look, see what we've written about you."

The sending of a magazine or newspaper clipping is a subtle means of communication in the Chinese literary world. It can signify friendship or provocation, warning or gloating—and it is precisely this ambiguity that makes it so effective. The recipient must guess, and the guessing is often more unpleasant than certainty.

Section 46

On the Writing Brush and Such

The promotion of domestic goods has been going on for quite a long time; although Shanghai's domestic goods company has not prospered and the "National Goods City" has long since closed its gates and even torn down its walls, the daily newspapers still frequently carry special supplements on domestic goods. And in them, as usual, the ones being lectured and scolded are primarily students, children, and women.

A few days ago I saw an article about brushes and ink in which middle-school students and their kind received a thorough scolding: nine out of ten of them used steel pens and ink, and this meant that China's brushes and ink had no market. Of course the author did not quite say that such people were traitors, but at the very least he compared them to fashionable women who use foreign cosmetics.

The irony of this argument is telling: students who write with modern implements are accused of betraying Chinese culture, while the real traitors—those who sell the country to foreign powers—remain unmolested. To call the steel pen a weapon of cultural betrayal while cannons bombard the cities is the kind of diversionary tactic in which China has achieved true mastery.

Section 47

Fleeing from Fame

Just these past few days, the Shanghai newspapers have carried an advertisement whose headline consists of four large characters, each an inch square:

"Come see lives being saved!"

If one reads only the headline, one might imagine it to be a demonstration of a surgeon performing a major operation on a critically ill patient, or artificial respiration on a drowning victim, or the rescue of passengers from a grounded ship, or the extraction of workers from a collapsed mine. But in truth it is nothing of the sort. It is the usual "charity variety show for flood relief"—with solo comedy by Chen Pimei and Shen Yidai, songs and dances by the Moonlight Revue, and the like. As the advertisement aptly puts it: "Pay five jiao, save a life… kill two birds with one stone, why not?"

This is the Chinese way of charity: one amuses oneself while incidentally saving the world—or more precisely, one calls one's amusement "world-saving" in order to enjoy the pleasure all the more. The true life-saver flees from fame; the pretender seeks it. And as always in China, the real truth lies not in the grand words but in the small numbers: five jiao for a human life.

Section 48

Sixth Discussion on "Literati Despise One Another" – Two Kinds of Peddling

On this year's literary scene, a tactic from five or six years ago used by the Sun Society has been revived: old age has again been declared a crime, under the charge of "trading on seniority."

Yet the real offense lies not in being "old" but in "trading." If the person in question were playing mahjong or chanting prayers and writing not a word, he would certainly not draw the verbal and written censure of young writers. If this surmise is correct, the literary scene faces still more varieties of sinners; for some writers, besides their "works," also deliver a special bonus gift: some trade on wealth, claiming that the works of authors who write for money are inferior. Others trade on youth, still others on connections, and others again on having studied abroad.

"Trading" is the real disease, and it comes in many varieties. He who trades on age is no worse than he who trades on youth—both are attempting to capitalize on an attribute they did not create themselves.

Section 49

"Seventh Discussion on 'Literati Despising Each Other' — Both Wounded"

The so-called mutual contempt among literati goes on endlessly, causing other authors to shake their heads and sigh, thinking the garden of literature is being desecrated. This view is certainly defensible. Master Tao Yuanming "plucked chrysanthemums beneath the eastern fence" — his mood had to be serene and leisurely for him to "serenely behold the Southern Mountain." But if inside and outside the fence someone is shouting and raging, cursing and fighting, then the Southern Mountain is still there, yet he can no longer be "serene" — he can only "startledly behold the Southern Mountain." Today the situation differs somewhat from the transition between Jin and Song; even the "ivory tower" has been carried into the street, which does suggest a certain "immediacy," yet one still needs leisure — otherwise there is no place to hang one's deep pain.

Section 50

"Preface to Xiao Hong's 'The Field of Life and Death'"

If I remember correctly, it was four years ago. It was February, and I was with my wife and child, trapped in the line of fire in Shanghai's Zhabei district, watching Chinese people disappear through flight or death. Later, thanks to the help of several friends, we managed to enter the peaceful British Concession; though the streets were full of refugees, the residents lived quite calmly. Only four or five li from Zhabei, it was an entirely different world — how could we have thought of Harbin?

When this manuscript reached my desk, it was already spring of this year; I had long since returned to Zhabei, and all around was bustling again. But what I now read was the world of five years ago and even further back...

Section 51

"On Dostoevsky" — Written for the popular edition of "The Complete Works of Dostoevsky" by Japan's Mikasa Shobo

The time has come when one cannot but say a word or two about Dostoevsky. What shall I say? He is too great, and I myself have not read his works very carefully.

Looking back, in my youth, when I read the works of great writers, there were two whom I revered but could never love. One was Dante — in the "Inferno" of the "Divine Comedy" there were heretics I loved; some souls were still pushing very heavy stones up steep cliff faces.

Section 52

"Preface to Kong Lingjing's 'Letters of Contemporary Literary Figures'"

Diaries and letters have always had their readers. In the past, people read them for court and state affairs, beautiful phrases and elegant words — and so famous people no longer dared to write casually in their diaries and letters. Jin dynasty people already had to declare in their letters: "In haste, no time for cursive script." Today's contemporaries write daily diaries while daily guarding against unauthorized copying before publication.

Section 53

"Remarks on the Familiar Essay"

Since the term "familiar essay" (xiaopinwen) has come into fashion, even letters and treatises are listed under familiar essays in bookstore advertisements — this is of course mere salesmanship. The general opinion holds, first, that brevity is the main feature.

But brevity alone is not a characteristic of the familiar essay. A geometric theorem has only a few dozen characters; the "Tao Te Ching" has only five thousand words — neither can be called a familiar essay.

Section 54

"Draft 'Title Still Undetermined' (Six to Nine)"

Six

I recall Mr. T. once told me: after my "Jiwaiji" was published, Mr. Shi Zhecun had published a review in some journal, saying the book was not worth printing and that a selection should have been made. Judging from Mr. Shi's admiration for the "Wen Xuan" and his accomplishment in personally compiling "Twenty Masters of Late Ming Familiar Essays," this does indeed sound like his words.

Section 55

To prove "purity" or "serene grandeur," it is really inadvisable to cite the whole poem, because the four middle couplets lean rather toward what is called "decline and decay." Without the preceding text, however, the last two lines appear vague — but this very vagueness may be what the one who cites them calls "sublime." Looking at the title, it immediately becomes clear: "at the song's end" concludes the "zither playing," "no one is seen" points to the character for "spirit," "on the river, several peaks green" renders the character "Xiang."

Section 56

"On the New Script"

No sooner had the method of Latinizing Chinese characters appeared than the simplified characters and Zhuyin phonetic symbols were superseded; the only remaining competitor was Romanization with Roman letters. The strongest argument conservatives use against Latinization is that its method is too simple and many characters are hard to distinguish.

This is indeed a shortcoming. Any script that is easy to learn and easy to write is often not precise enough.

Section 57

"Introduction to 'One Hundred Illustrations for Dead Souls'"

When Gogol began the first part of "Dead Souls," it was the second half of 1835 — a full hundred years ago. Fortunately — or unfortunately — many of the characters therein remain very much alive to this day, making us readers of different countries and different eras feel as though our own surroundings were being described — one cannot help but admire his great realistic skill.

Section 58

"Afterword"

The arrangement of this volume follows the same principle as the previous one, ordered by date of composition. All works published in periodicals were censored by the authorities in the first half of the year — there were probably some deletions, but I was too lazy to check each one and mark them with black dots.

Two pieces were entirely banned: one was "What Is Satire?", written for "One Hundred Topics of Literature" — when it appeared in print, it had been replaced by a single character meaning "missing."

Section 59

Literary Theory — Pan Zinian Heart of a Virgin — Pengzi Death of an Old Era — Roushi Theater and Dance in New Russia — Feng Xuefeng One Week — Jiang Guangci The Moon Breaks Through the Clouds — Jiang Guangci Hezhong: Erxinji (Two-Hearted Collection) — Lu Xun Music of Labor — Qian Xingcun Yadong: Common Grave