China and the West

Lu, Xun. Nuola zou hou zen yang ? = Lu, Xun. After Nora walks out, what then ? : a talk given at the Peking Womens Normal College = Beijing shi fan da xue on December 26, 1923. [ID D26227].
What I would like to talk about today is this : After Nora walks out, what then ? Ibsen is a Norwegian literary figure who lived in the second half of the nineteenth century. His works, with the exception of a dozen or so poems, are all plays. There was a period when most of his plays dealt with social issues – these are known to the world as "realistic problem plays". Nora is one of these "problem plays". Nora is also known as Ein Puppenheim, the Chinese translation for which is Family of puppets. But the term "puppe" refers not only to puppets on strings – it also covers dolls that children play with ; by way of metaphorical extension, the term also includes people who do whatever other people tell them to do. In the beginning, Nora was living contentedly in a so-called "happy family"; but she was eventually to wake up to the fact that she was a mere puppet manipulated by her husband, and her children were puppets manipulated by her. And so she walked out. We hear the slam of the door, and then the curtain falls. But I'm sure you're already familiar with all of this, so I won't go into the details.
What would it take for Nora not to leave ? We might say that Ibsen himself has already provided us with an answer, which is the play The Lady from the Sea (Die Frau vom Meer), also translated as Sea Madame in China. This is about a woman who was already married, but had a lover before the marriage who lived across the sea. One day, the lover appeared out of nowhere and came looking for her, asking her to go away with him. She went and told her husband that she wanted to meet with this outsider. Towards the end of the play, the husband says to her : now you're totally free. You're free to choose [whether or not to leave], but you'll have to bear the consequences yourself. And that changed everything. She decided not to leave. Had Nora been given the same kind of freedom, then perhaps she would have chosen to stay put. But Nora did leave after all. What next ? Ibsen does not provide us with an answer – what's more, he's dead. But even if he weren't dead, he wouldn't have been responsible for giving us an answer anyway. This is because Ibsen is a writer of poetry – he is not the kind of person who identifies social problems and figures out solutions on our behalf. He is like an oriole : the oriole sings because it wants to sing ; it is not singing because it wants to amuse people, or because it wants people to benefit from it in some way or other. Ibsen is a man not very attuned to the ways of the world. It is said that, once, at a banquet in which some women got together to show their appreciation for his writing of A Doll's House, which gave people new insights into issues such as female self-consciousness and the emancipation of women, Ibsen announced, to everybody's surprise : "That isn't what I meant when I was writing the piece – I was simply composing poetry".
So what happens after Nora leaves ? Others have expressed their views. An Englishman once wrote a play about a 'modern' woman who walked out on her family, but then had nowhere to go and ended up a degenerate in a brothel. And there was a Chinese chap – what shall I call him ? – let's say, a writer from Shanghai – he said he had seen a version of Nora that was different from the present translationiv : Nora comes back in the end. It's a shame no one else has ever seen this version – unless Ibsen himself sent the manuscript to him. But if we were to work at it with some common sense, then Nora, really, is left with only two ways out : either go home, or go to the dogs. Because - imagine if it were a little bird. While it's true that there's no freedom in a cage, once the bird leaves the cage, there are cats and hawks and other such [predators] outside. And, if it were a bird that's been caged for so long that its wings have become paralyzed – it no longer remembers how to fly – then, really, there's no way out for this bird. Well, there is another way out, which is to starve to death. But if it starves to death, then it would no longer be living, which would mean that it would no longer have any problems to deal with – so that's hardly a valid way out.
The most painful thing in life is to wake up from a dream and have nowhere to go. People who dream are in bliss. So unless you can see a way out for these dreamers, it is important not to wake them up. Look at Tang dynasty poet Li He. Now isn't he a man who's spent his entire life in the dregs ? Yet on his deathbed he said to his mother : "Mamma, God built this mansion of white jade, and wants me to go and write a piece to celebrate the occasion". Now how can this be anything but a lie ? How can it be anything but a dream ? Yet here you have a young one facing an old one, one who's dying facing one who lives on ; [thanks to these lies and dreams] the dying one is able to die happily, and the living one lives on, at peace with oneself. It is at times like this that lies and dreams serve a great purpose. For this reason, I believe that if there is no way out, then what we need is a dream. But one should never, ever, dream of the future. Artsybashevv once used his novel to question those idealists who dreamt of building a golden world of opportunity, who encouraged others to suffer in the pursuit of this cause. He said : "You promise a golden world of opportunity to their sons and grandsons, but what have you left for they themselves to enjoy ?" Well, there is something for them to enjoy, and that is their hopes for the future. But this is to be enjoyed at a price. In order to have these hopes, the senses are fine tuned to be so acute as to feel one's pain and suffering in all their intensity; the spirit is summoned to witness one's rotting corpse of a body. At times like this, dreams and lies become vital. So I believe that if there is no way out, then what we need is a dream – not a dream of the future, but a dream in the present.
But since Nora has already woken up from her dream, it is difficult for her to return to that dream state, and she is left with no choice but to leave. Yet once she leaves, at times it seems that her only options are return or ruin. Otherwise, what we need to ask is this : Has she brought anything with her, other than her emancipated mind ? If all she has is a mauve woolen scarf like the kind you women in the audience are wearing now, then, be it a two-foot scarf or a three-foot scarf, however wide it is, it is totally useless. She needs to be rich – she needs to have possessions in her suitcase. To put it bluntly, she needs money. Dreams are fine ; otherwise money is essential...
In fact, these days, if somebody like Nora were to leave home, she probably wouldn't have too much trouble surviving, because this is a special person we're talking about – many people will sympathize with her and help her sustain a living. But relying on other people's sympathy for a living already implies giving up one's own freedom. Now suppose there were a hundred Noras who left home, then there would be a lot less sympathy to go around ; now suppose there were tens of thousands of Noras who left home – people would start to get annoyed. Far more reliable [than sympathy] would be to have some form of economic leverage in one's own hands.
Now if we manage to acquire economic freedom, does this mean that we are no longer puppets manipulated by others ? Puppets we still are. The only difference is that we are less at the mercy of others, and have more people under our thumbs. Because, in modern society, it's not just women who are at the mercy of men, men are at the mercy of other men, and women at the mercy of other women ; there are also men who are at the mercy of women – this isn't something that will change overnight with a few women acquiring economic privileges. But then again we can't just sit there hungrily waiting for our ideal world to drop out of the sky ; like a fish lying on a wagon trail desperate for a sprinkling of water, we need something to ease our gasping, and the quest for down-to-earth economic privileges does just that – it is something to keep us going while we ponder other alternatives. Then again, so far we've been treating Nora as an ordinary person. Suppose she was special. Suppose she was the kind of person who would be willing to stick her neck out for others – that would make it a different story altogether. We have no right to encourage or entice people to make sacrifices ; nor do we have the right to stop people from sacrificing themselves. Mind you, the world is full of people all too happy to make sacrifices, all too happy to suffer pain...
A pity it is that change does not come easily in China – this is a place where anything from moving a table to refitting a stove will almost always end in bloodshed – and the shedding of blood does not always guarantee that the table can be moved, that the stove can be refitted. It will take some hard lashing on the back with a giant whip [to bring about change] – China simply is not going to move of its own accord. I believe this lashing is going to come sooner or later (whether or not it’s a good thing is another matter), but China is definitely going to be hit hard. As for where this blow will come from, how it's going to come, I really cannot say with any certainty. And that concludes my talk.

He Chengzhou : In his lecture, Lu Xun is not so much concerned with Ibsen's Nora as with the fate of a Chinese woman who dares to leave home. It seems that he only borrows the image of Nora and develops it into a polemic about the current situation of Chinese women. The solution for a Chinese Nora, according to Lu Xun, is that she will 'either degrade herself, or come back home... another alternative is to starve to death'. For women to avoid being puppets, it is very important to have equal economic rights with men. 'First, there must be a fair sharing between men and women in the family ; secondly, women should enjoy equal rights with men in society'. But Lu Xun immediately confesses that he has no idea about how women can win these rights. All he knows is that they must fight for it, and fight hard.

Tian, Han. Mi'erdun yu Zhongguo [ID D26345].
Tian Han schreibt : "When the storm overwhelms everything, strong weeds are desired. When the nation suffered civil unrest, loyal men are wanted. It is only natural that Wordsworth conjured Milton, because England was mired in corruption. Now allow me to recount concisely Milton's life and the relation of the man of his time. I hope that Milton's spirit, which has exerted gread remedial influences on England, might also cure today's China... to promote his idea of the three liberties, namely, religious liberty, domestic libery, and individual liberty. Domestic liberty also inclues the freedom of marriage, of education, and of expression. The three liberties are the foundation to ensure one's happiness as a member of the society. In the subsequent decade, apart from a few sonnets, Milton dedicated his pen solely to the struggle of political, religious liberty and justice. At the time, he gave up his ambition in writing a great national epic, since his aspiration for literary creativity has yielded to his concern for the troubled time !"

Huang Chia-yin : In the beginning, Tian Han quoted Wordsworth's sonnet London (1802), in which the poet invoked the spirit of Milton to save England out of political corruption and chaos. He created an analogy between the political scene in Wordsworth's England and that in the early 20th-century China, stressing the severity of corruption and turmoil in both cases. Drawing on the precedence of Wordsworth's invocation, Tian suggested Milton's potential contribution as an inspiration to China for political and social reforms.
Tian's declineation foregrounded Milton's participations in the political scene and left his literary career in the background. Although starting out with a literary ambition, hoping to compose a grand English heroic verse, Milton devoted himself to political writings when the time and the nation called for his contribution. In defense of 'liberty' against tyranny of the monarchy, he wrote abundantly in prose.
In Tian's construction, Milton was an unselfish poet who places the nation and the people before himself. In peaceful time, he prepared himself to be a national poet and to create narrative poetry that reflected the spirit of the nation. In troubled time, he willingly sacrificed his personal goals and devoted himself to defend freedom and justice for the people. He considered liberty the foundation of human society, the basis of all happiness. Only when religious liberty, domestic liberty, and individual liberty werde proteced could one live happily and freely as a member of the society.

Guo, Moruo. Xue lai shi xuan xiao xu. In : Fan yi lun ji. Luo Xinzhang bian. (Beijing : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1984).
Guo Moruo sagt im Vorwort : "Percy Bysshe Shelleys Gedichte zu übersetzen, bedeutet, dass ich Shelley werde und er wird mich."

Edward H. Hume ist Präsident des College of Yale-in-China in Changsha, Hunan.

Yu, Dafu. Ji zhong yu 'Huang mian zhi' de ren wu [ID D27660]. [Abhandlung über englische Autoren des The yellow book].
Yu Dafu traced the rise and fall of The yellow book and regarded the aestheticism of Wilde as a conscious reaction against the obstinate traditions in Victorian England. He believed, that Aubrey Beardsley was responsible for the reputation of this magazine. His special beautiful technique and imagination were unprecedented and the nudes in his paintings were appealing for they carried a message of nonconformity.

Zheng, Zhenduo. Dao cao ren. In : Wen xue zhou bao ; 15 Oct. (1923). [Preface to 'The scarecrow'].
Zhou Xiaoyi : Zheng Zhenduo mentions Oscar Wilde in his preface to 'The scarecrow' of Ye Shengtao's fairy tales. Zheng argues that in Wilde's fairy tales The happy prince and The young king as well as in Ye's fairy tales, the 'perfect and detailed description of beauty' deserves special attention.

Lu, Xun. Lu zhou [ID D27661].
In his response to Zhao Jingsheng (about fairy tales 1922), Lu Xun remarked that Hans Christian Andersen was more 'naive' than Oscar Wilde. He pointed out the simplicity and purity in Andersen but sophistication and wit in Wilde. He agreed with Zhao that Wilde's fairy tales were beautifully written and profound in insights. Lu Xun recalled that when he was young he liked reading Jing hua yuan, which is a famous Chinese novel about exotic adventures. As he read Wilde's fairy tales, was reminded of his love for this Chinese classic and saw the same kind of beauty and exoticism in both.
The strange combination of dreamland and reality, and the multi-layered meanings in Wilde's fairy tales were particularly appealing, aesthetically and philosophically, to intellectuals even like Lu Xun who was renowned for his unsympathetic position on the more sentimental writers in his day. The irony and literary depths in the fairy tales of Wilde certainly moved him.

Hu, Yuzhi. Jin dai wen xue gai guan [ID D27215].
Bonnie S. McDougall : Hu Yuzhi described Oscar Wild as a major dramatist as well as a poet, novelist and writer of fairy-tales. He mentions that The picture of Dorian Gray had already been translated into Chinese, as well as some plays and many fine poems and fairy-tales. According to Hu Yuzhi, Wilde's main contribution to literature was in the theory and criticism, as the founder of the Aesthetic School and major advocate of the separation of art from life. Hu then went on to say that Wilde was a decadent writer who led a dissolute life and was sent to prison for committing an offence against the law. He avoids making explicit the nature of Wilde's offence, but it is unlikely that it would not be known to this group of professional writers. In the puritanical atmosphere of the May Fourth movement, Wilde's flamboyant homosexuality may have been a substantial factor in alienating the more serious-minded of the literary revolutionaries.

Xu Zhimo hält Vorlesungen über modern englische Literatur an der Nankai-Universität.
Xu regarded Thomas Hardy as "a completely negative and extremely pessimistic novelist and poet".

Xu, Zhimo. Luosu you lai shuo hua le [Artikel über Leisure and mechanism von Bertrand Russell]. [ID D28403].
Bertrand Russell himself also said that his ideas were not novelties. But however commonplace a principle may be, if the society as a whole could recognize its importance and seriously put it into practice, then astonishing effect could be achieved.
In the final analysis, the current industrialism, mechanism, system of competition and the mentality associated with superstition engendered by those phenomena are enemy of our ideal society and obstacles to a national life. Now as far as China is concerned, the only hope is an early awakening by her leaders who could, by virtue of their positions, set example to resist the temptations from without and reverse the suicidal trend. Otherwise, the future will be bleak and full of traps.
Every time I read Russell's writings or recollect his voice and facial expressions, I think of New York City, especially the fifty-eight-storied Woolworth Building. Russell's thought and views resemble the summer evening on the sea – there are flashes of lightning like golden snakes, sharply and coldly streaking amidst the dark purple clouds. They appear and disappear before your eyes and above your head.
Isn't a skyscraper dangerous ? Just half a thunderbolt is enough to pulverize the entire building ; it could shake and terrify the woods and lawns along the Hudson river ! But no ! Despite the flash of lightning, the thunderbolt never comes. The building still towers high in the clouds. The golden lightning only illuminates its loftiness and adds to its lustre.

Lin, Zhaoyin. You Duwei ping min zhu han yu jiao xing zhi ji tang ruo yi wen [ID D28519].
Lin criticized Dewey for emphasizing process over purpose, society over the individual, the child over the adult, interest over discipline, rationality over sentiment, participation over contemplation and practical life over spiritual life. Dewey emphasized the importance of social sympathy and responsibility, but neglected the importance of individual interests and needs. In her opinion, schools should help transform society to serve individual needs better. Lin also thought that Dewey's process-oriented conception of education prevented him from specifying the aims of education, thus rendering the educational process haphazard and pointless. She also found Dewey's scientific, rational approach to life limited and inadequate. Dewey represented a typical Western mindset in its excessive desire to control nature rather than appreciate it. Dewey 'only knew the value of an active life but not that of a tranquil life.

Hong, Shen. Yama Chao = Zhao Yanwang. In : Dong fang za zhi ; vol. 20, no 1-2 (1923). = In : Hong Shen xi qu ji. (Shanghai : Xian dai shu ju, 1933). [Geschrieben 1922].
Performance of The Yama Chao = Zhao Yanwang by Hong Shen. Adaptation of The emperor Jones by Eugene O'Neill. Hong Shen played the main role.
In the newspaper 'Ching bao' reported that the performance was a failure because the audience couldn't understand it and even regarded the actor as a maniac.
Hong Shen : "Zhao Yanwang is intended to show that society should be held responsible for the sins of the individual. No one in the world is born morally good or bad. Both the good and the bad are products of their environment. Nor is there anyone who is perfectly good or absolutely bad, for human behavior is rather complicates. But why is Zhao like this ? If we can study his life story and the stories of people like him, we will find they might all have suffered seriously from maltreatment and unhappy experiences, especially when they were too young to resist."
"The first scene is somewhat splendid – the language, in particular, is condensed and the dialogues are full of vitality. From the second scene on, he borrows the background and facts from Eugene O'Neill's The emperor Jones, such as circling in the forest, becoming delirious and seeing hallucinations and being chased with people beating the drums, and so on. Apart from the meaning of its subject matter, nothing else in the play is worthy of mention"
Cheng Fu-tsai : Although Hong Shen is fiercely attacked for his imitation of O'Neill's play, his adaptation is undoubtedly a creation of his own rather than a mere mimicry of the American prototype. He has not just incorporated the expressionistic devices into his own play, but has striven to make the play represent and reflect the social and political situation of China in the 1920s. His attempt at externalizing the psychological fear of an escaped convict in modern Chinese drama is unmatched. Thus, the creation of The Yama Chao has achieved a certain degree of success in early modern Chinese drama.
From one of Hong Shen's admissions it ensues that for eight scenes of the drama he utilized the 'background and the facts' from The emperor Jones by Eugene O'Neill, and only the first scene, according to him, 'is essential, its style is cohesive and selective, the dialogue is impressive', hence, only this part of the drama is really original.
The Yama Chao borrowed from its American prototype the theme of money, the division of scenes, the use of soliloquies and the psychological treatment of hallucinations in a forest setting. Act three is an adaptation of the forest scenes from The emperor Jones. The Yama Chao follows in scene division, motif, and technical devices.
Hong Shen found O'Neill's symbolic treatment of social and individual ills in The emperor Jones congenial to his own purpose of staging social reform : the predominantly male cast in O'Neill's play attracted Hong Shen.
Hong, Shen : "I am extremely disgusted at the male's impersonating female characters. It is perhaps because I have read too much of Freud's works on abnormal sexuality. Every time I see a man putting on the make-up of a woman, I really feel like having goose-pimples all over me. But I still want to stage a play, and consequently the only thing I can do is to write a play which does not require female characters at all. This is one of the reasons why I made up my mind to borrow the form of Eugene O'Neill's The emperor Jones when the subject-matter of The Yama Chao was decided upon". [In : Zhongguo hua ju yun dong wu shi nian shi liao ji. Tian Han [et al.] zhu. (Beijing : Zhongguo xi ju chu ban she, 1958). 中国话剧运动五十年史料集].

O'Neill, Eugene. The fountain. In : O'Neill, Eugene. The great god Brown ; including The fountain, The dreamy kid and Before breakfast. (London : J. Cape, 1923).
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks04/0400121h.html.
"There is in some far country of the East – Cathay, Cipango, who knows – a spot that nature has set apart from men and blessed with peace. It is a sacred grove where all things live in the old harmony they knew before man came. Beauty resides there and is articulate."
Lee Sang-kyong : Taoist influence : Spring water in its process of circulation is a symbol of the natural course of all earthly things. Spring water evaporates up to the sky and returns to earth, this means the realization of unity between the sky (yang) and earth (yin). The 'Fountain' is located in the Far East of his dreams. O'Neill's longing for the Orient is clearly expressed in his idealistic view of the countries Cipango and Cathay where all things are in harmony and all hearts rest in tranquility.
James A. Robinson : The fountain hints at a Taoist influence in its repeated allusion to China as the home of the legendary fountain. During Juan's vision, the Chinese poet appears as the originator of the fountain myth. Juan Ponce de Leon's quest for youth accords with Taoist values and practices. Taoism idealizes the youthful virtues of simplicity and spontaneity, and its central purpose of prolonging life through conservation of energy became translated into various occult practices designed to restore one's youth. By far the most vital Taoist contribution to the play lies in its rhythmic reconciliation of opposites. Juan's climactic vision and the play's imagery illustrate the Taoist treatment of apparent opposites as yin and yang, which by their cyclical alternation symbolize the dynamic unity of reality. O'Neill was constantly plagued by conflicting impulses. In regard to Christianity, he deplored the historical intolerance of the Church, yet believed in Christian values. His disillusion with institutionalized Christianity helped the exploration of Oriental thought apparent in the play's climax and resolution

Wu, Mi. Wo zhi ren sheng guang. In : Xue heng M no 16 (1923). [My view of life].
Hou Chien : From his student days at Harvard University, Wu Mi has been a faithful propagandist of the Babbittian ideal. His diatribe against the Movement for a New Literature that culminated in the May fourth movement, and especially his self-expository essay antedating Irving Babbitt's stand, show clearly the direction of his mental efforts.
At Wu Mi's program for achieving a virtuous life we find it to contain three items. 1( self-discipline and resort to rituals (li), 2) practicing loyalty (or good faith, zhong) and sympathetic magnanimity (or extensions of one's feelings to others, shu), and 3) maintenance of the golden mean (zhong yong). The first has been used by Li Ji in summarizing Babbitt's teachings. All of them are found in Confucius.

[Sainte-Beuve, Charles-Augustin]. [Chan hui lu]. [ID D28825].
The editor's note attached to the translation echoed Irving Babbitt in condemning Rousseau for being responsible for 'the evils of society', adding that the blame for 'the social disorder today goes partly to Rousseau' and that Rousseau 'was the virus of civilization'.

Xu, Zhimo. [Prose foreword to poem "Dusk in the West Suburb of Cambridge"]. In : Shi shi xin bao, Shanghai, July 6 (1923). [Geschrieben 1922].
"And there is an Irishman called James Joyce. His name in international literary circles is probably similar to Lenin's in international politics, because he is both worshipped and attracked like him. Five or six years ago he published a book entitled The portrait of an artist as [a] young man, which has a unique style, starting a new epoch in prose – probably an immortal contribution already. Now he has written another book called Ulysses. Nobody in Britain or America was willing or daring enough to publish it, and finally he published it himself in Paris. Now I believe this book is not only a unique work for this year, but will be so for a whole historical period. The last 100 pages of his book (which has more than 700 pages in all) are written in a prose which is absolutely pure – smooth as cream, and clear as the stone front in a church. It is not only free from capital letters, but is totally unburdened with all those tiresome marks like, … ? : - ; - ! ( ) " ". There is neither the division of paragraphs, sentences, chapters or sections. Just a flow of limpid, beautiful, torrential text pouring forward, like a huge bundle of white poplin let loose, a large waterfall coming down without any break. What great masterly art !"

Letter from Ezra Pound to Homer Pound ; ca. June 21, 1923.
"His [Confucius'] idea of beginning in the middle i.e. on oneself, is excellent. The exact reverse of Chritianchurchism, which teaches : thou shalt attend to thy neighbor's business before thou attendest to shine own."

Williams, William Carlos. Spring and all. (Dijon : Contact Publ. Co., 1923).
Qian Zhaoming : Technical fusions in Spring and all have origins in the Chinese poetic heritage : the fusion of poetry with prose and the fusion of poetry with painting is a characteristic shared by virtually all Chinese lyrics.

Eröffnung der Freer Gallery der Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. Beginn des Baues 1916 durch Charles Lang Freer. Sie enthält Kunst aus Asien und Ostasien.

Xu, Zhimo. Manshufei'er [ID D29983]. [Katherine Mansfield].
… It was a wet evening last July. Braving the rain I walked alone through the streets of Hampstead, asking policemen and pedestrians the way to No. 10 Pond Street. On that evening I had my first, and, alas, my last encounter with Mansfield – my 'twenty immortal minutes'.
I already knew John Middleton Murry, who was the editor-in-chief of the Athenaeum, a poet and a well-known critic, and Mansfield's closest companion in the last ten years of her life.
They started living together in 1913, but she always used the 'pen name' Katherine Mansfield, which she adopted after settling in England. She was born in New Zealand. Her original name was Kathleen Beauchamp. She was one of the daughters of Sir Harold Beauchamp, chairman of the Bank of New Zealand. She had left her native land fifteen years before I met her. Together with her three sisters, she first went to England and studied at Queen's College, London University. Even as a child she was known for her good looks and intelligence. But she always had delicate health. She later lived in Germany, where she wrote her first stories, published in the collection In a German Pension. Then she spent some time in France during the war. In recent years she had spent a lot of time in Switzerland, Italy and the south of France. She had lived mostly abroad because of her poor health. She could not bear the wet foggy London weather. To be with her, Murry had to give up part of his work (this is why the Athenaeum merged with the London Nation). He followed his angel in her search for health. After the war, she had contracted tuberculosis and a doctor had given her no more than two or three years to live. So Murry's days with her were numbered. With every sunrise and every sunset, her beauty became more and more transfigured by the approach of death, and her last energies were consumed. Her fate recalls the famous words spoken by the Lady of the Camellias, as she passed the days of her critical illness in wine and pleasure: "You know I have not long to live. Therefore I will live fast!"
It is hard to conceive the helpless sorrow that the tender Murry must have felt as he watched this most beautiful of all sunsets gradually fade.
Mansfield's way of "living fast" was different from that of the Lady of the Camellias. She never indulged in wine and pleasure. Instead she devoted herself to her writing. Like the nightingale on summer nights in the elm-woods, she sang her songs of love with her heart's blood, until she could sing no more. Even then, she still considered it her duty to dedicate her remaining energy to the task of adding a little beauty to nature, of giving a little artistic consolation to this wretched world.
Her hard work produced two collections of stories: Bliss, and The Garden Party (published last year). She established herself in the British literary world with the stories in these two collections. While most fiction is mere fiction, hers is pure literature, true art. Mediocre writers crave popularity, the acclaim of the ephemeral public, but she wanted to bequeath to the world a few genuine crystals, whose glory would not be darkened by the 'dust of time'. She sought appreciation from that minority of readers who really understood her.
Because hers is pure literature, its brilliance is not shown, it is hidden deep within. It requires careful perusal to reach the essence. I had the honour of being granted by her in person the right to translate her works. Now that she is dead, I must treasure all the more this task entrusted to me, though I doubt if I can be worthy of it. My good friend Chen Tongbo, who must be better versed in European literature than anyone else in Peking, has lectured on Mansfield at Peking University, in his course on the short story. Lately he, too, has promised to do some translations of her work, and for this I will be deeply grateful to him. I hope that one day he will find time to say something further on her art as a short story writer.
Now let me tell you about the night I met Mansfield. A few days before, I had a discussion on English and French literature with Mum at the noisy ABC cafe behind Charing Cross. In passing I mentioned the Chinese literary renaissance of recent years. I told him that Chinese novelists had mosty been influenced by Russian writers. He almost jumped for joy on hearing that, since both he and his wife worshipped the Russians. He had made a study of Dostoievsky and written a book entided Dostoievsky: A Critical Study. As for Mansfield, her preference was for Chekhov. It was a source of constant regret to them that Russian literature had been so little noticed by the English. They believed that this neglect had enabled Victorian philistinism to exercise an influence over the content and form of fiction right up to the present day. Then I inquired how Mansfield was. He said that she was quite all right for the moment, and that he had been able to bring her back to London for two weeks. He gave me their address and asked me to meet her and their friends the next Thursday evening.
So I would see Mansfield. I was the luckiest of men. The following Wednesday I visited H. G. Wells at his country house in Easton Glebe and returned to London with his wife the next day. It was raining hard that day. I remember being soaked to the skin by the time I arrived home.
It was hard to find their house. (I always have great trouble finding my way in London. I really hate this labyrinthine city.) Finally I reached the place, a small two-storey house. Murry opened the door. I felt a bit awkward, standing there, holding an umbrella and several Chinese scrolls, paintings and examples of calligraphy that had just been returned to me by a friend of mine. I entered the house, took off my raincoat, and was led into a room on the right. Until then I had had a holy reverence for Mansfield as a famous young woman writer. I had never expected to find in her a creature of 'beauty and grace'. I had presumed her to be a literary woman in the style of Rose Macaulay, Virginia Woolf, Roma Wilson, Mrs Lucas and Vanessa Bell. Male writers and artists have always had a reputation for eccentricity…
Although I never expected Mansfield to be futuristic, I had certainly never imagined her as an ideal of femininity. So when I pushed the door open, I was almost expecting a middle-aged, kindly woman to stand up from the sofa in front of the fireplace, greet me with a smile, and shake me by the hand.
But as it turned out, the room —a long narrow one, with a fireplace opposite the door—contained not a single soul. A lamp cast a calm, pale yellow light. Paintings hung on the walls, and ornaments stood on the mantelpiece, in a variety of colours. A few easy chairs with patterned covers were placed before the fire. Murry told me to sit down in one of the chairs and started chatting with me. We talked about the similarities between the oriental Goddess of Mercy, Guan Yin, the Blessed Virgin Mary in Christianity, the Greek Virgin Diana, the Egyptian Isis and the Virgin in Persian Mithraism. The virginal saint seemed an indispensable symbol in every religion. We were in the midst of a heated discussion when there was a sound at the door. A young lady came in and stood smilingly in the entrance. 'Could this be Mansfield? She is so young . . . ' I said to myself. She had brown curly hair and a small rounded face, lively eyes and an expressive mouth. She was dressed in bright colours; patent leather shoes, green silk stockings, a rose-coloured silk blouse and a plum-coloured velvet skirt. She stood there gracefully, like a tulip nodding in the breeze. Murry stood up and introduced us. She was not Mansfield, but the landlady, a Miss Beir or Beek (I forget exactly). Murry was living there temporarily. She was an artist, and most of the paintings on the walls were her work. She sat down in the chair opposite me, taking something like a miniature motor from the mantelpiece and holding it in her hand. Then she put on a pair of earphones like the ones used by telephonists, and when she talked, she leaned over and tried to get very close to me. At first I thought what she had on was some sort of electronic toy. But later I realised that this pretty lady had trouble in hearing (as I had in seeing), and had to use some mechanical means to make good nature's deficiency. (At the time I thought what a good subject it would be for a poem 'The Deaf Beauty'. It would be impossible to 'whisper sweet nothings' to such a lady!).
She had just sat down when the door bell rang loudly; it seemed to me to be unusually loud. The man who came in was Sydney Waterlow, whom I had met at Mr Roger Fry's. He was a very humorous individual. Once, to amuse us, he took out from his huge pocket half a dozen pipes in different sizes and colours. As soon as he came in, he asked Murry how Katherine was that day. I was all ears to hear his answer: 'She is not coming downstairs tonight. It's been such terrible weather today. None of us can stand it'. Mr Waterlow asked him if he could go upstairs to see her, and Murry agreed. Then he politely excused himself to Miss B, and stood up. He was about to leave the room when Murry went over to him and said in a low voice: 'Sydney, don't talk too much!'
Light footsteps were heard from upstairs. W was already in Katherine's room. Presently two more guests came, a short one, a Mr M, who had just come back from a journey to Greece, and a tall handsome gentleman called Sullivan, who wrote the science column in the London Nation and Athenaeum. M told us about his trip to Greece, reciting all the names of ancient Greek sites such as Parnassus and Mycenae. S also inquired about Katherine. Murry told him she was not coming downstairs and that W was at that moment upstairs with her. Half an hour later, the heavy footsteps of W were heard coming down the stairs. S asked him if Katherine was tired. 'No', he replied, 'she doesn't seem to be. But I can't tell. I was afraid of wearing her out, so I left her.' After a while, S also received permission to go upstairs from Murry, who gave him the same warning not to tire her. Murry then asked me about Chinese painting and calligraphy. I used the scrolls I had brought to give him a brief introduction to Chinese calligraphy. That evening I had with me a painting by Zhao Zhiqian, called 'Plums in Cursive Script', a piece of cursive script by Wang Juesi, and a piece of running script by Liang Shanzou. I opened them and displayed them all. Miss B sat close to me with her hearing-aid in her hand, and seemed to be enjoying what I was saying.
But I was feeling profoundly disappointed. I had braved the rain to see the author of Bliss only to find her unable to come downstairs and receive her friends. The way W, S and Murry treated her made her seem all the more precious; it only increased my curiosity. I thought myself exceptionally unlucky. There she was, confined to her own room, into which it seemed that only old friends were allowed. I was a foreigner and a stranger, and it would be impossible for me to gain access. It was now half past ten, and with some reluctance I stood up and said my goodbyes. Murry saw me to the door. As he helped me on with my raincoat, I said how very sorry I was that Miss Mansfield had not been able to come downstairs, and how very pleased I would have been to see her. To my surprise, Murry responded by saying with great earnestness: 'If you wish to, you may go upstairs and see her'. I was overjoyed, took off my raincoat immediately and followed him step by step up the stairs.
Once upstairs, we knocked at the door, and went into the room. I was introduced, and S took his leave, going out of the room with Murry, and closing the door behind him. Mansfield told me to sit down, which I did, and then she sat down too. This long complicated procedure seemed to happen in an instant. In fact I was not even consciously aware of it taking place. I am just presuming now, in retrospect, that we must have gone through all these motions. Everything seemed so blurred to me at the time. And now when I recall it in my memory, it still seems blurred. Whenever we enter a brightly-lit house from a dark street, or when we leave a dim house and walk into the brilliant sunshine, we feel dizzy with the sudden brightness. We have to stand still for a while before we can see what is in front of us. Our senses are overwhelmed by excessive light. It is not only excessive light; strong colours too have the effect of 'overwhelming' our senses. That evening my senses may not have been overwhelmed by the brilliance of Mansfield's personality, but the lighting in her room and the strikingly bright colours of her jewellery and the clothes she was wearing confused my unprepared senses for an instant. It was perhaps understandable.
I do not have a particularly clear impression of her room. While she was talking to me, I was unable to detach myself and scrutinise my surroundings. All I remember is that the room was rather small. A large bed occupied most of it. Several oil-paintings hung on the papered walls, probably again the work of the landlady. She sat with me on the couch, against the wall to the left of the bed. Because she was sitting upright and I was reclining, she seemed to be much taller than I was (indeed, who would not seem small in her presence?). I suspect that the two lamp-shades were red. Otherwise why should I always associate her room with the image of 'red candles burning on high'? But the setting was in the end unimportant. What mattered was Mansfield herself and that 'purest aesthetic feeling' that she inspired in me. She enabled me to use the magic key to Paradise given me by God; she added new treasure to my soul. But even such high-flown language as this is inadequate to describe her as she was on that night! It is difficult enough to describe my own impressions of her that day, let alone to conjure up in words the very essence of her personality…
She was dressed in a similar fashion to her friend Miss B. She too had on a pair of shiny patent leather shoes and bright green stockings. She wore a burgundy velvet skirt and a pale yellow silk blouse, with elbow-length sleeves, and a string of fine pearls around her bare neck. She had black hair, cut short like Miss B's. But the way her hair was combed was something I had never before seen in Europe or America. I suspected that she was intentionally imitating the Chinese style, for her hair was pitch black and straight and cut in a neat fringe at the front. It was extraordinarily well combed. Though I could not hope to do it justice in words, I felt that hers was the most beautiful hair I had ever seen.
As for her features, I would never be able to describe a thousandth part of their crystalline beauty. Before her you felt yourself in the presence of one of nature's masterpieces: an alpine lake bathed in autumnal moonlight; a sunset swathed in roseate clouds; or a clear, star-studded night sky of the southern seas. Or she was like a masterpiece of art: one of Beethoven's symphonies, or Wagner's operas, or a sculpture by Michelangelo, or a painting by Whistler or Corot. There is something about such beauty that is complete, pure, perfect, irreducible, ineffable. It is as if you have been granted a direct insight into the creator’s will, a most intense experience, bringing with it a feeling of infinite joy. It cleanses the soul to be in the presence of a truly great personality. Mansfield's features seemed to me like the purest Indian jade, her gaze alive with spiritual revelation, her manner gentle as a spring breeze. She gave me a sense of what I can only call total beauty. She was like crystal. You could not but marvel at the flawless purity of her spirit. The brightly coloured clothes she was wearing might have aroused some trifling criticism had they been worn by someone else. But on her it looked so becoming, like green leaves, the peony's indispensable complement. H. M. Tomlinson, a good friend of hers, once compared her transcendent beauty to that of the pristine snow on the Alps. I think it a wonderful comparison.
He said : "She has been called a beautiful woman. That is hardly the word. Beauty, as we commonly understand it, is attractive. Katherine Mansfield's beauty was attractive, but it was also unearthly and a little chilling, like the remoteness of Alpine snow. The sun is on it, and it is lovely in a world of its own, but that world is not ours. Her pallor was of ivory and there was something of exquisite Chinese refinement in the delicacy of her features, her broad face, her dark eyes, the straight thick fringe, and her air of quiet solicitude. And her figure was so fragile that a man beside her felt his own sound breathing to be too evident and coarse for proximity to the still light of that wax taper, a pale star sacramental to what was unknown."
He went on to write of her penetrating gaze, the way her eyes pierced to the very depths of your soul and brought up into the light every secret hidden within it. There was something uncanny about her, something supernatural. When she looked at you, Tomlinson wrote, what she saw of you was not your outward appearance, but your innermost heart. But she did not wish to pry, she was not inquisitive, merely sympathetic. With her you felt no need for caution. She knew everything about you without having to be told. And when you told her your story she would not be surprised. She would offer neither blame nor praise, nor would she urge you on to any particular course of action. She would never-offer any practical advice. She would just listen, quietly, and then offer her thoughts, which contained a wisdom that transcended conventional morality.
These impressions of Tomlinson's were those of a man who had had the benefit of a long friendship with her. In my twenty minutes I could not reach such an understanding. But from the spiritual light that emanated from her eyes, I venture to say that the truth of his words is beyond doubt.
That night, as we sat together on the blue velvet couch, a soft light quietly enveloped her. As if in a hypnotic trance, I stared into her mystical eyes, letting her sword-like gaze penetrate my being, while the music of her voice washed over me and flooded into the depths of my soul. Whatever consciousness I had left resembled Keats's:
My heart aches, and a drowsy
numbness pains My sense, as
though of hemlock I had drunk . . .
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness...
Her voice was another miracle. Notes rippled from her fragile vocal cords one after the other, revealing to my common ears a world of wonders, bright stars appearing one by one in a sapphire sky. It was like listening to music which you known you have never heard before, and which yet seems familiar, perhaps from a dream, or from a previous life. Her voice was pleasing to the ear. It seemed to reach directly to the depths of your soul, soothing its hidden pain, kindling half-dead hopes, washing away stultifying worldly cares, and revitalising your spirits. It was as if she were murmuring into the ear of your soul, communicating some news from a fairy land that you had never dreamt of. When I recall it now, I still feel a tragic sense of grief. Tears almost come to my eyes. She is gone. Her voice and her smile have vanished like a mirage…

Mansfield : an elegy.
Last night in my dream I entered a dark vale
And heard cuckoos crying tears of blood amid lilies.
Last night I dreamed I ascended a mountain peak
And saw a gleaming tear falling from the sky.
In the suburbs of ancient Rome, there is a grave ;
In it lies a poet who died on a voyage.
A century later, the wheels of Hades' chariot
Rumbled in the grove of Fontainebleau.
If the universe is a machine,
Why do ideals shine before our eyes like lamps ?
If all things manifest truth, goodness, and beauty,
Why doesn't the rainbow stay in the sky ?
Although you and I met only once,
Those twenty minutes are immortal.
Who could believe your heavenly presence
Is forever gone from this dewy world ?
No ! Life is but a dream of substance ;
The fair soul is forever in the Lord's keeping.
A thirty-year sojourn is like a night-blooming cereus ;
Though tears I see you return to the Celestial Palace.
Do you remember our London pledge, Mansfield,
That this summer we'd meet by Lake Geneva ?
The lake always holds the reflection of snow-capped Mont Blanc –
When I look at the clouds, my tears fall.
That year, when I first came to understand the message of life,
I was struck, as if in a dream, by the solemnity of love.
Compassion is an unbreakable crystal ;
Love the only path to realizing life.
Death is a grand, mysterious crucible
That forges the spirits of us all.
How can my condolences fly like electric sparks
To touch your soul in the distant sky ?
I send you my tears with the wind –
When can I shatter the gate between life and death ?
March 11, 1923