China and the West

Philip West erhält den B.A. des Machester College.

Scuola orientale dell'Università di Roma teilt sich in Istituto del vicino Oriente antico, Istituto di studi islamici und Istituto di studi dell'India e dell'Asia orientale.

Franco Demarchi erhält das Diploma di specializzazione in scienze politico-amministrazione in diritto pubblico der Università cattolica di Milano.

Franco Demarchi ist Assistent, dann Direktor des Dipartimento di sociologia des Istituto per la scienza dell'amministrazione pubblica di Milano.

Lionello Lanciotti ist Professore incaricato di lingua e letteratura cinese der Università di Roma.

Film : Xiang gui chun qing = 香闺春情 [Romance in the boudoir] unter der Regie von Fei Luyi und dem Drehbuch von Wang Jiping nach Rolland, Romain. Jean-Christophe. Vol. 1-10. (Paris : Ollendorff, 1906-1913).

Film : Chun chao = 春潮 [Torrents of spring] unter der Regie von Tao Qin nach Turgenev, Ivan. Veshnie vody. (Leipzig : W. Gerhard, 1873).

Film : Ci mu xin = 慈母心 [Motherhood] unter der Regie von Zuo Ji und dem Drehbuch von Zuo Ji nach Ibsen, Henrik. Gengangere : et familjedrama i tre akter. (Kobenhavn : Gyldendal, 1881).

Film : Yi ge ming de ming yi = 以革命的名义 [In the name of revolution] unter der Regie von Li Enjie, Shi Daqian nach Shatrov, Mikhail. Imenem revoliutsii : geroicheskaia drama. ([S.l.] : M. Iskusstvo, 1958).

René Etiemble écrit dans le Préface Tao-tê-king [Dao de jing in der Übersetzung von Liou Kia-hway] que Henri Michaux cherche à célébrer l'effacement propre au taoïsme.

Tel quel : littérature, philosophie, science, politique [ID D24159].
1971 : "On comprend donc comment, dans ces conditions, la révolution culturelle prolétarienne chinoise, plus grand événement historique de notre époque, dérange le calcul révisionniste et qu'il fera tout pour la falsifier. Eh bien, nous, nous verson tout pour l'éclairer, l'analyser et la soutenir."
Lisa Lowe : The editorial committee at the journal Tel quel had become ardent followers of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. After 1968 these critics and intellectuals, who judged the promising yet ultimately suppressed May revolts in France a failed revolution, turned to the Cultural Revolution as an alternative example of revolutionary theory and practice. These intellectuals adopted 'Maoism' and defined it as a more radical critique of society, one that took its theoretical inspiration from a source outside western Marxism.
In 1971 Tel quel constituted the People's Republic and the Cultural Revolution as absolutely nonoccidental phenomena, which, owing to their very situation outside, western European political experience, represented a model for revolution and ongoing cultural criticism that could not be recontained by western ideological systems. French Maoism at Tel quel subsided by 1975.
By 1971 a manifesto indicating the journal's enthusiastic embrace of Maoism had been published ; the political tenets of the Mouvement de juin 71 were consolidated, with the publication of a "Déclaration" and lists of "Positions" appearing in Tel quel ; no 47 (1971). The declaration began with a protest against the censoring of Maria-Antonietta Macciocchi's De la Chine at a commercial display by L'humanité, the Communist press. Tel quel editors argued that the choice to suppress De la Chine indicated a repressive and dogmatic policy, which colluded with and made possible the revisionist 'line'. The declaration of Tel quel's Maoism was specifically a reaction to the PCF's prohibitions ; China was embraced as a privileged topos of revolution precisely because information about China was suppressed by L'humanité and the PCF : "La censure inévitable du révisionnisme sur la Chine est le prix à payer 'par lui' pour que cette hégémonie soit 'totale'..."
The lack of knowledge about China also enabled Tel quel's theorists to idealize the Cultural Revolution as the epitome of 'permanent revolution', a revolution which they constituted as having successfully reintegrated into the factories and countrysides the solidifying elite strata of administrators, bureaucrats, and technicians. In addition, Tel quel elaborated on the then popular notion of the Chinese Cultural Revolution also inclueded a vigorous and continual critique of art and literature, resulting in an ever-changing and ultimate avant-garde. It is in this latter sense particularly that Tel quel romanticized China as a utopian aesthetic ; because information about China was prohibited and censored, the theorists at Tel quel were able to situate their abstract notions of textual practice there without risk of contradiction or disillusionment.

François Houmant : Philippe Sollers n'ira pas à la fête Fête de L'Humanité. In : Le monde ; 11 septembre 1971.
Sous ce titre, le quotidien rend public le désaccord du directeur de Tel quel avec le Parti communiste français. L'objet de cette rupture : l'interdiction du livre de la journaliste italienne Maria-Antonietta Macciocchi - De la Chine – à la fête annuelle du Parti. Prenant la défense de l'auteur, Philippe Sollers ne rompt pas seulement avec le Parti communiste mais rend hautement visible l'admiration qu'il porte à un ouvrage qu'il a contribué à faire publier. Il stigmatise l'interdit, exalte le livre et prophétise son inscription dans la durée : "Aucun intellectuel d'avant-garde, et plus encore aucun marxiste, ne peut, semble-t-il, rester indifférent davant cette mesure. De la Chine représente aujourd’hui un admirable témoignage sur la Chine révolutionnaire mais encore une ressource d'analyser théorique qu'il serait illusoire de croire refouler. De la Chine, c'est la puissance et la vérité du nouveau lui-même. Son absence, sa censure... sont les symptômes d'un aveuglement navrant... Le travail de Maria-Antonietta Macciocchi a devant lui toute l'histoire."
L'affaire Macciocchi joue en fait le rôle de catalyseur idéologique. Elle apparaît surtout comme un prétexte rendant possible le divorce de Tel quel avec son allié communiste d'hier et enracine la revue dans le camp des pro-chinois : opération qui permet de cumuler les avantages liés à la prééminence idéologique, Tel quel devenant rapidement le point de passage de toute und fraction de l'intelligentsia maophile sans perdre ce visage de révolutionnaire qui sied aux avant-gardes.
Si l'intérêt pour la Chine était quelque peu perceptible avant 1971, il faut donc attendre cette année-là pour qu'éclate la primauté des thèses maoïstes au sein du comité de rédaction.
La parabole telquelienne n'aurait sans doute pas été complète sans un voyage en Chine populaire. A leur retour, loin des polémiques suscitées par l'irruption de L'Archipel du Goulag et la parole du 'zek' Soljénitsyne, ils s'empressent de donner réalité littéraire au simulacre de dévoilement qui leur fut proposé.

Eric Hayot : Tel quel's reception of the Cultural Revolution was itself conditioned by a numer of contexts, both practical and theoreticall. It was these contexts that set the stage for Tel quel's eventual embrace of Maoism and the 1974 trip to China.
After 1966, the distinction between the cultural dream-object 'China' and actual China became less desirable to maintain, since doing so would be to miss out on 'the message' China was putting out for the first time. The sudden breath of revolution now from a place that had previously functioned largely as an exotic utopia in the past pushed Tel quel toward an increasing sense that China was the literal place of world revolution, and toward a greater sense of the material and intellctual value of China.
Tel quel turned openly to Maoism in 1971. The move came about partly because of the journal's deteriorating relationship with the French Communist Party. Between 1966 and 1971, as Tel quel began publishing texts on China, the journal and the PCF stood together in the field of French politics, a stance that remained largely true even during the student revolts of 1968. The final break between Tel quel and the PCF in 1971, occurred around the PCF's refusal to sell Maria-Antoinetta Macciocchi's book 'De la Chine'. Tel quel's adoption of Maoism was officially announced in its 1971 issue. As a whole, the declaration and positions in this issue concern themselves far more with European politics than Chinese ones. Besides the various positive references to Mao Zedong's thought and the Cultural Revolution, no mention is made of conditions in China. But the ninth in a list of provosals made by the journal's editorial committee encouraged intellectuals both inside and outside Tel quel to 'undertake the serious work of ideological and political reeducation', and suggested that Tel quel would eventually think through the political, economic, national and international implications of its political struggle.
The preface of “Chinese thought” says the issue offers its readers the background necessary to understand the global political situation for which China has assumed a growing importance. More specifically, it asks readers to consider 'the particularities of the language, literature, art, and philosophy of China, in order to better follow and understand the political, social, and cultural transformations that China today is producing and manifesting'.
The 1972 issue on China reflected the two major lines of Tel quel's inquiry : one more concerned with developing a theory of Maoism (and thus with contemporary China), and the other more interested in the radical possibilities of Chinese language and literature (and classical China).
Facts about 'China' as it appeared to Tel quel : 1) Its language uniquely combined signifier and referent ; 2) its poetry articulated the universal and long-repressed (in the West) problem of symbolization ; 3) its Maoism offered the hope of a truly cultural revolution.

An, Qi. Shi lun Bailun shi ge zhong de pan ni xing ge [D D26470].
An Qi schreibt : "Childe Harold exiles himself because he is sick of the voluptuous dissipation of the nobles. He finds expression of his protest against the society he loathes in nothing more than dissipation and the beauty of nature. Conrad revolts against the ugly society with piratical acts of murder and arson and Manfred with his pessimistic world-weariness. What about Cain ? The one who supports him against God is the daemon. No doubt, God and his world order should be challenged and negated, but the daemon is a daemon after all ; he is not the force to liberate the people. The daemon is only God who has lost his office or power. Don Juan's rebellion against the society of the time was a series of dissolute acts. In Don Juan and other works, Byron fights evil with evil. If these works give his reader the impression that they are 'an eulogy of vice', that is truly what they are."

Chu Chih-yu : An Qi's arguments reflect a typical dialectic materialism with 'Chinese characteristics'. He rised again (like Elistratove and Du Bingzheng) the issue of 'the rebellious character of Byronic heroes'. He sought explanation for Byron's rebellious spirit in the class and national conflicts of European society, but he did not mention Byron's 'spiritual connection' with the English workers' movement. He wanted to describe Byron as a 'radical bourgeois democrat', who did not belong to the proletarian camp. He noted some personal reasons : Byron's disillusion and anger with English society as ruled by the nobles and the church, and his dissipated life. In his view, English society made use of Byron's separation as an excuse to attack his private style and forced him to leave England for political reasons ; and this political persecution pushed Byron into a more dissipated life and a stronger rebellion. An Qi recognized Byron's influence on the European democratic intellectuals and the progressive role he had played in Chinese literary history. The value of Byronic heroes consists only in their adding to our knowledge of feudalism and capitalism.
He tried to accdentuate is to the effect that 'Byron's self-centred, absolute freedom is not only visionary but, after the maturing proletariat showed their power, could turn to the opposite of the proletarian revolutionary movement'.

Fan, Cunzhong. [On Defoe's Robinson Crusoe] (1960). [ID D26816].
Fan Cunzhong states emphatically one of the prominent Marxist points of view : "In the person of Robinson Crusoe we not only see the face of capitalism, but we also come to understand a specific period – the growth of British capitalism."
He describes this new capitalist class as "prosperous, self-confident, aggressive", but not at all explitative and very different from today's "ceclining capitalis". Robinson Crusoe is not the starting point of historical development, but the product. Continues with assessments of Robinson as always the merchang and colonizer, especially in his travels through China, and of Defoe, "a pre-Adam Smith economist", because of beliefs in ouverseas trade and the necessisty to establish English volonies in Central America. He clarifies the important difference between Thomas More's and Francis Bacon's utopias as fairylands and Crusoe's island as "the product of the imagination of the colonialist".

Marián Gálik ist Research Fellow am Institute of Oriental and African Studies, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava.

Snyder, Gary. Statement of poetics. In : Allen, Donald. The new American poetry, 1945-1960 [ID D29319].
"Walking, climbing, placing with the hands, I tried writing poems of tough, simple, short words, with the complexity far beneath the surface texture. In part the line was influenced by the five- and seven-character line Chinese poems I'd been reading, which work like sharp blows on the mind."
"I've just recently come to realize that the rhythms of my poems follow the rhythm of the physical work I'm going and life I'm leading at any given time – which makes the music in my head which creates the line."

Snyder, Gary. Myths & texts [ID D29322]. [Auszüge und Sekundärliteratur].
1972
David Rafael Wang : Myths and texts is a long poem in three sections – a poem which has no precedent or equivalent in classical Chinese poetry. The first section entitled 'Logging' consists of fifteen individual poems ; the second section 'Hunting' of sixteen poems ; and the third section 'Burning' of seventeen poems.
2009
Joan Qionglin Tan : From a Chan point of view, the three fragments 'Logging', 'Hunting' and 'Burning' complete a spiritual quest for enlightenment on a mythopoetic level uniting Chan and ecology.

Logging
Tan : The fragment 'Logging' contemplates destruction. In basic Chan teachings greed, anger and ignorance are the three poisons, the origin of suffering. These can be turned into 'sila' (morality), 'samadhi' (meditation) and 'prajna (wisdom).
1
"The morning star is not a star
Two seedling fir, one died
Io, Io."
Tan : Begins with the statement 'The morning star is not a star'. There is a subtle relationship between two parallel traditions. Venus is a planet, one of the brightest celestial objects in the sky. It is not a star, but is called the morning star and the evening star as well, because it is nearer the sun than the earth.
Wang : It is the Taoist 'self-transformation'.
2
"The ancient forests of China logged
and the hills slipped into the Yellow Sea.
Squared beams, log dogs,
on a tamped-earth sill.
San Francisco 2x4's
were the woods around Seattle."
Wang : The forests of China merge with 'the wood around Seattle.
Tan : Logging 2 uses the image of Chinese landscape as a comparison. In ancient China, the large scale of logging resulted in the vanishing of the forests and the erosion of the landscape. This historical disaster plays an apocalyptic role, for Snyder always tries to 'hold both history and wilderness in mind'. When juxtaposed with the present logging site in Seattle, the astonishing similarity between ancient china and present day Seattle deforestation is designed to move the reader to greater awareness. To address the destruction of American forests, the poet refers to the idea of reincarnation in Buddhism and the natural process of rebirth in physical world and hopes that these may give some consolation.
3
Tan : In Logging 3, the nature-Chan image of 'lodgepole pine' is used to exemplify the regenerative power of nature, for lodgepole seed can withstand fire. The possibility of renewal expresses the idea of reincarnation in Buddhism. In Snyder's mind, spiritual fire in Buddhism, as one of the mythical forms of healing, helps to eradicate the three poisons (greed, anger and ignorance) in humans. Hsü Fang's simple life is deftly compared to life in modern American society. Hsü Fang was a mythic figure in ancient China, who, like Han Shan, lived on mountain plants and vegetables. This image is juxtaposed with the apparently unrelated image of the American grown-up kids, which virtually shows some automatic connections. If the kids are well-educated, they will realize the importance of environmental protection.
10
"Man is the heart of the universe
The upshot of the five elements,
Born to enjoy food and color and noise.
Get off my back Confucius
There's enough noise now."
Shu Yunzong : In this passage Snyder first turns Confucius into an epicurean who advocates that men should enjoy themselves at the expense of the rest of the world. Then Snyder pits himself against Confucius from an exological perspective rather than from the one held by Chuang Tzu.
12
" At the high and lonely center of the earth:
Where Crazy Horse
Went to watch the Morning Star,
& the four-legged people, the creeping people.
The standing people and the flying people
Know how to talk…
In a long south flight, the land of
Sea and fir tree with the pine-dry
Sage-flat country to the east.
Han Shan could have lived here,
& no scissorbill stooge of the
Emperor would have come trying to steal
his last poor shred of sense.
On the wooded coast, eating oysters
Looking off toward China and Japan…"
Tan : Han Shan is treated as a mythical Chan Buddhist sage. The 'scissorbill stooge' was an allusion to Lü Qiuyin, an official of Taizhou appointed by the Emperor in the Tang dynasty.
15
"Pine sleeps, cedar splits straight
Flowers crack the pavement.
Pa-ta Shan-jen
(A painter who watched Ming fall)
Lived in a tree :
'The brush
May paint the mountains and streams
Though the territory is lost."
Wang : The 'Ming' referred to the Ming Dynasty whose downfall was brought about the invasion of the Manchus. Pa-ta Shan-jen lived on to paint the mountains and streams of his homeland, even when his homeland was lost.
Tan : The last poem is a summation of the first fragment 'Logging'. Unlike Logging 1, this poem manifests two traditions and two worlds, including the Oriental and the Occidental, the Buddhist and the Romantic, the physical and the spiritual, and the human and the non-human. Through juxtaposing different images, Snyder attempts to create a harmonious scene within the poem. In the opening stanza, the void where a lodgepole cone is waiting for fire is the right place where enlightenment will be attained through transcendence and reincarnation in the Chan tradition. The poet invokes the Chinese tradition in the form of the painter Pa-ta Shan-jen's (Bada Shanren) powerful brush, which the artist used both literally and metaphorically to keep the landscape intact.

Hunting
Tan : The subtitle 'Hunting' hints in a primeval forest, where animals and plants will be seen to possess a supernatural power in shaman songs. This fragment is mainly concerned with native American lore, which dedicates some poems to the animals, birds, bears, and deer. Throughout 'Hunting' humanity's life will be intimately tied to the life cycles of animals and the myths surrounding them.
Three main aspects are involved in the process of hunting. First, there must be pure divination before hunting, for hunting in the proper time and place is seen as a spiritual encounter, in which the hunted will sacrifice themselves to the hunter. Second, mindfulness is needs for such a spiritual encounter.
2
"Atok: creeping
Maupok: waiting
to hunt seals.
The sea hunter
watching the whirling seabirds on the rocks
The mountain hunter
horn-tipped shaft on a snowslope
edging across cliffs for a short at goat
'Upon the lower slopes of the mountain,
on the cover, we find the sculptured forms
of animals apparently lying dead in the
wilderness' thus Fenollosa
On the pottery of Shang
It's a shem I didn't kill you,
Yang Keui Fei,
Cut down in the old apartment
Left to bleed between the bookcase and the wall,
I'd hunt you still, trail you from town to town.
But you change shape,
death's a new shape,
Maybe flayed you'd be true
But it would't be through.
'You who live with your grandmother
I'll trail you with dogs
And crush you in my mouth. '
- Not that we're cruel –
But a man's got to eat."
Wang : Legend of Yang Guifei, the favorite concubine of Ming Huang of the Tang Dynasty, who was forced to hang herself from a beam when the Tang soldiers revolted in protest against her nepotism and the usurpation of power by her relatives. What starts out to be Eskimos hunting becomes Fenollosa's commentary on the art of the Shang Dynasty, then becomes Yang Guifei of Tang China bleeding to death in an apartment and finally becomes contemporary America.
Going through the three stanzas of the poem, we find that the first one deals with hunting for food (Eskimo hunters), the second one with hunting for revenge (Wang Guifei), and the third one with a rationalization for hunting. Whereas the Eskimos may have a legitimate reason for hunting since they need food for survival, whereas the Tang soldiers may have an adequate excuse for demanding the death of Yang Guifei (who was indirectly responsible for the An Lu-shan rebellion in 755), there is neither a legitimate reason or an adequate excuse for trailing someone who lived with his grandmother with a pack of dogs in order to crush him 'in my mouth'. Reading Snyder's poem in the light of the different justifications for hunting, we find that the Eskimos can be exonerate of their guilt because they need food, that the Tang soldiers can be pardoned because they demanded the restoration of order in the empire, but that the thrill-hunters are accountable for their guilt. The poem seems to suggest a progressive degeneration of values, with 'primitive' Eskimos hunting for food, 'sophisticated' Chinese hunting for revenge, and the 'civilized' modern hunting for thrills. By a cyclical reference to man's eating habit, we mean that the poem starts with showing us the activity of hunting to acquire food and ends with giving us the reason for hunting. In each case, 'eating' is man's justification for his acts of violence. In this light, Snyders's poem can be interpreted as a Buddhist's plea for mercy, or universal compassion, for according to the Buddha, man perpetuates his sin in the killing of any sentient being, human or animal. Snyder's Myths and texts can be viewed as a demonstration of the Buddhist belief that all appearance is illusory or deceptive, because the poem in the beginning, turns out to be carfully designed in the end. The unity of the poem lies in Snyder's use of metamorphosis as the leitmotiv. This metamorphosis illustrates the Buddhist principle that nothing is permanent or real in this world as well as the Taoist principle that the only permanence is change. Snyder's selection of primordial images from the myths of diverse cultures serves to demonstrate that, despite the barriers of languages and cultures, all mankind shares a collective unconscious. The poem illustrates the Taoist concept of endless self-transformation. And, as the Taoist transformation is cyclical, we feel the inevitability of the end when 'The morning star is not a star' is transformed into 'The sun is but a morning star'.
Tan : Snyder borrowed tow Inuit verbs, 'atok' and 'maupok', literally 'creeping' and 'waiting', to describe the Inuit's hunting habit with a harpoon, which 'was central to all sea mammal hunting'. For the Inuit, this harpoon hunting is called 'maupok', because it depends upon timing, patience and co-ordination as well as hunters' extensive knowledge of the habits of sea mammals.
5
Tan : Hunting 5 is a good example of embodying the third aspect of hunting. Snyder depicts how Native American people used 'the head of the mountain-goat' for 'the making of the horn spoon'. The sacredness is manifested in the last line.
10
"Flung from demonic wombs
Off the some new birth
A million shapes – just look in any biology book.
Wang : Snyder is referring to the popular Buddhist belief that on can cat reborn in different shapes.
14
"Buddha fed himself to tigers
& donated mountains of eyes
(through the years)
To the blind."
Wang : Buddha must be reborn in order to feed himself to tigers and he must have 'mountains of eyes' to donate them continually to the blind.
16
"Meanging: compassion.
Agents: man and beast, beasts
Got the Buddha-nature."
All but
Coyote.
Tan : 'Hunting' comes to its end with an image from the Chinese tradition. The Chan master Zhao Zhou tried to instruct the novice that all sentient beings possess the Buddha nature. Hunting 16 is about Zhao Zhou's famous 'koan' concerning the Chan concept of 'wu/no'. The last lines not only reveal the theme of the second fragment 'Hunt8ing', but also suggest that the spiritual quest should go ahead.

Burning
Tan : The whole fragment 'Burning' concentrates on nonduality, emptiness and sudden 'satori' using some nature-Chan images.
2
One glance, miles below
Bones & flesh knit in the rock
'have no regret –
Chip chip
(sparrows)
& not a word about the void
To which one hand diddling
Cling.
Tan : At the end of Burning 2, Snyder chooses the bird to depict the moment before enlightenment.
3
Tan : The fragment is about enlightenment. To keep Chan in the foreground, Snyder changed the direction of his exploration into the Oriental tradition. He left his 'western American wilderness' as a logger and a hunter in the tradition of American Indian lore.
6
Tan : Snyder himself wears the mask of Han Shan on Cold Mountain. This is the early image of Han Shan's self-portrait, who was ready to cut down delusion with the sword of wisdom.
7
"Face in the crook of her neck
felt throb of vein
Smooth skin, her cool breasts
All naked in the dawn
'byrdes
sing forth from every bough'
where are they now
And dreamt I saw the Duke of Chou."
Wang : Snyder is reminiscing about a former girlfriend who appears as prominently in a dream to him as the Duke of Chou supposedly appeared in a dream of Confucius.
9
"Bodhidharma sailing the Yangtze on a reed
Lenin in a sealed train shrough Germany
Hsüan Tseng, crossing the Pamirs
Joseph, Crazy Horse, living the last free
starving high-country winter of their tribes."
Wang : Transition from China, where the Yangzi river flows, to Germany where the Soviet leader rode 'in a sealed train', to the border of China, India, and Afghanistan, and finally to the North American continent, the tribal home of Crazy Horse.
11
Snyder, with the mask of Han Shan, became 'a pure but' waiting for sudden enlightenment.
17
"The storms of the Milky Way
Buddha incense in an empty world
Black pit cold and light-year
Flame tongue of the dragon
Licks the sun
The sun is but a morning star."
Wang : The transformation of the morning star which is 'not a star' into the sun is brought about by the dragon's tongue. The dragon is 'the symbol of the infinite in Chinese art and literature.

50th anniversary of Mark Twain's death.
Meeting in Beijing.
Lao She spoke on 'Mark Twain – the man who exposed U.S. $ Imperialism'. Lao She concluded that Twain was a significant, outstanding satirist and realist, not the harmless 'humorist' described by those critics who had been 'bribed' by the Wall Street.
Zhou, Jueliang. 'On Mark Twain's work and thought'.
Yuan Kejia presented an introduction to The man that corrupted Hadleyburg.
These articles reflected the Chinese scholars' movement away from Soviet influences and towards the work of progressive British and American scholars.
Reprints of the translations The adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi and The adventures of Tom Sawyer by Zhang Yousong.

Moore, Marianne. Brooklyn from Clinton Hill. In : Vogue ; no 136 (1 August 1960).
The Bridge – a word associated with fantasy, a sense of leisure, shade under willows or at sunset, a pair of Chinese herdmen 'enjoying the breeze in a fishing-boat' – is in Brooklyn synonymous with endurance – sacrifice…

Samuel Becket and China : general.
Lin Lidan ; Zhang Helong : Beckett in the 1960s showed the monolitic tendencies of misunderstanding and refjection, his reception in the mid-1970s and 1980s took off in more diverse directions, with some scholars showing the initial signs of serious interestin Beckett. In the period 1977-1990, over fifty translations of and criticisms on Theatre of the Absurd, and over twenty criticisms on Beckett's drama were published. These translations and criticisms constituted the major trend in Beckett studies during the period. A the same time, the Theatre of the Absurd and Beckett's plays became the focus in Chinese scholars' introduction to Western modernist literature and arts.
Chinese academics seemed willing to affirm the aesthetic value of Beckett's experimental dramatic techniques, which they saw were mostly anti-theatre in the sense that these techniques effectively dismantled realistic dramatic techniques by eroding the teleological and logical development of plots. They continued to betray a lack of understanding regarding the themes of Beckett's plays and the relationship between the themes and the experimental techniques. The general critical trend of the period tends to lament the hopeless tone underlying Beckett's plays and to align the deplorable human conditions in his plays to those in the Western world. For many Chinese academics, Beckett's experimental techniques must be scrutinized for how they were used to dramatise the bleak human conditions in the bourgeoisie Western world.
The studies of Beckett's drama in the 1990s continued mainly in two directions : while some critics continued to interpret Beckett's plays along the lines of absurdity, hope, and quest thematically, as well as of anti-theatre, anti-tradition, and anti-art technically, a trend prevalent in the 1970s and 1980s, a few critics endeavoured to move beyond these established critical parameters by broadening critical perspectives and by experimenting with new approaches. Shifting the focus to language, structure, narrative, and dialogue in Beckett's plays, these critics seemed able to penetrate deeper into Beckett's artistic design and, in so doing, to reveal their aesthetic value.
During the early 1980s, only a small number of criticisms were published on Beckett's short fiction, and critics tended to read it as anti-fiction.
The 1990s saw a significant leap forward in terms of the achievements in the studies of Beckett's fiction, a leap characterized by Chinese academics' efforts to shrug off the previous influence of established concepts of literature and of the leftist ideology to gain independent voices.
2000- : Beckett, as the representative writer of the Theatre of the Absurd school and as Nobel laureate, became a popular object of study for both college teachers and graduate students, with a number of over two hundred essays published, of which over one hundred essays have been devoted to Waiting for Godot. Beckett's plays attracted more critical attention than his fiction, with Waiting for Godot enjoying more popularity than his other plays.
Chinese academics responded to Beckett's centenary celebration in 2006 with much enthusiasm and vigour.

Kerouac, Jack. The scripture of the golden eternity [ID D34297].
Sekundärliteratur :
Sarah Haynes : The scripture is a remarkable Buddhis sutra that reveals aspects of different traditions. What we see in the title is the Christian influence that remained with Kerouac even when he was in the process of writing a 'traditional' Buddhist text.
Kerouac loaded the short scriptures with haikus, Zen koans, poetry, prose and meditations that reflected his inner search for enlightenment and outward quest for the meaning of the universe.
He focused the material of his sutra around the Buddhist notion of emptiness and the nature of form as being consistent with concepts of emptiness. While he offered a meditation of emptiness and form, it is important to note that he's emphasis was on the golden eternity. The manner in which Kerouac presented his golden eternity used the form of Buddhist sutras ; he employed the Zen practice of koans. This was a departure for him since at this point in his life he was not as interested in Zen Buddhism as he was with other Mahayana schools. He saw Mahayana as the purer form of Buddhism, writing that 'Mahayana is the essence of reality'. Kerouac's original influence was that of the Indian Mahayana Buddhism, and, as is evident, his interest in Zen was limited, but at the same time he had respect for D.T. Suzuki. The blissful and 'golden' tone of Scripture is an important aspect of his sutra because it could be said to be a direct reflection of his experience of awakening.
The knowledge that Kerouac reaped from his enlightenment experience was that which he wrote as the first teaching of the golden eternity. In Scripture he continued to focus on the Buddhist view regarding emptiness, nothingness and arbitrary conceptions.