China and the West

Katherine Mansfield and China : general
Gong Shifen : Xu Zhimo's translations played a seminal role in introducing Katherine Mansfield to China, and he was also one of the first Chinese writers to explore her style and techniques in his own fiction. The second phase in translating Mansfield in China : When the official policy on art and literature swung ultra-left and political standards were given absolute priority in the evaluation of a work of art, hardly any of Mansfield's work was translated. As the political pressures of the times diminished and government cultural policy moved hesitantly toward a more neutral stance, she began to reappear on the Chinese literary scene, the amount of translation gathering momentum throughout the 1980s.

Miao Miao. The Chinese critics particularly recognize Mansfield as a true artist. However, it differs from the Western definition of an artist in that it does not only involve painting. The difference of the Chinese reference lies in the two-fold meaning of the term 'art'. Although it is implied or mentioned occasionally in Western criticism that Mansfield is an artist figure, the Chinese understanding of art carries the meaning of both painting and poetry. Understanding this different concept of art and artist is crucial to appreciating Mansfield in a novel nuance – to see her through the lens of Chinese art.

Stevens, Wallace. Six significant landscapes [ID D30307].
I
An old man sits
In the shadow of a pine tree
In China.
He sees larkspur,
Blue and white,
At the edge of the shadow,
Move in the wind.
His beard moves in the wind.
The pine tree moves in the wind.
Thus water flows
Over weeds.
II
The night is of the colour
Of a woman's arm:
Night, the female,
Obscure,
Fragrant and supple,
Conceals herself.
A pool shines,
Like a bracelet
Shaken in a dance.
III
I measure myself
Against a tall tree.
I find that I am much taller,
For I reach right up to the sun,
With my eye;
And I reach to the shore of the sea
With my ear.
Nevertheless, I dislike
The way ants crawl
In and out of my shadow.
IV
When my dream was near the moon,
The white folds of its gown
Filled with yellow light.
The soles of its feet
Grew red.
Its hair filled
With certain blue crystallizations
From stars,
Not far off.
V
Not all the knives of the lamp-posts,
Nor the chisels of the long streets,
Nor the mallets of the domes
And high towers,
Can carve
What one star can carve,
Shining through the grape-leaves.
VI
Rationalists, wearing square hats,
Think, in square rooms,
Looking at the floor,
Looking at the ceiling.
They confine themselves
To right-angled triangles.
If they tried rhomboids,
Cones, waving lines, ellipses --
As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon --
Rationalists would wear sombreros.

Sekundärliteratur :
1972
David Happell Hsin-Fu Wand : Stevens' 'significant landscape' of the old Chinese in the pine shade projects the 'inner scene' of a man who is Taoist in his orientation through a careful selection of such details as the wind, the water, and the flowing beard. In the context of the poem, everything flows naturally – with the larkspur, the beard, and the pine tree moving in the wind and the water over the weeds. Stevens' choice of such traditional Chinese symbols in landscape paintings as the pine and the water is well justified in his poem. For the gnarled pine, a traditional symbol of longevity in Chinese paintings, underscores the 'venerable' age of the old man. The water image augments the theme of the fluidity of all living matter, as typified by the spontaneous movement of the larkspur, the pine, and the old man's beard in the wind.
1997
Qian Zhaoming : In this poem, Chinese landscape painting is represented in several ways by focus on a single point of sight ('An old man' gazing out forever at those gazing at him) ; by choice of subject of all that is most elemental in nature and in Chinese landscape painting ('a pine tree', 'larkspur', 'wind', 'water' and 'weeds', by reliance on a few simple strokes of description and by an almost monochrome tonality of gray and blue and white ('shadow' and 'blue and white') that is known to have dominated Chinese landscape painting in the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries. The poem, like the Chinese painting represents, portrays a single impression : consciousness of the unity of all created things. The style and sentiment presented a particular school – the Southern Song landscape painting. The work of this school is valued today especially for its power of illustrating obtuse and enigmatic aesthetic beliefs shared by Taoists and Chan Buddhists. One painting that matches Stevens' poem to the smallest detail is the handscroll 'A sage under a pine tree', a thirteenth-century imitation of a masterpiece attributed to Ma Yuan in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
2003
Qian Zhaoming : If Chinese landscape painting aiming to communicate the spirit of Chan or the Dao has a traditional scene. First of all, the old man in Stevens's ekphrastic poem, as in the kind of Song landscape painting it endeavors to emulate, appears sitting in meditation, that is, in a state of active tranquility that opens the way to enlightenment. Second, the figure is shown to be perfectly in harmony with nature. Third, the flowing water in the scene is a perfect symbol of the Dao.

In March and April Marianne Moore visited and revisited the Exhibition of Chinese paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts, New York, whose dragons, horses, buffaloes, and insects gave her a lesson on how seriously and artist might go about portraying nonhumans.

Letter from Marianne Moore to John Warner Moore ; March 25, 1923.
Tuesday we went to the Metropolitan with Mr. Wheeler to see the Chinese paintings. We pored over them, read the descriptions and made a complete survey of the collection. The animals were beautiful, a dragon appearing in a cloud, horses, water buffaloes and insects. There is a white falcon which as Mr. Wheeler said somewhat overrating it : 'it's like hammered silver'.

Letter from Marianne Moore to John Warner Moore ; April 8, 1923.
Yesterday we called on Mr. Faggi's friend, Miss Rubenstein, whom he asked us to call on about Christmas time. She was out and as she lives near the museum, we went over to look again at the Chinese paintings, stopping first to see the armor. One of the attendants took charge of us and discanted on history, armor making, the relative size of collections, the silk flags hanging from the roof and we were much benefitted.

Letter from Marianne Moore to Bryher ; May 5, 1923.
We have seen a loan exhibition of very old Chinese paintings at the Metropolitan, which would I think, interest you ; one of 'spirited horses' – a series of white horses with scarlet pompoms and smoky manes and tails ; one of a dragon in the clouds, concealed but for a few claws ; Enjoying the Breeze in a Fishing-Boat which made me think of the Oxford punt, and one of supremely delicate brush work called Herd Boys Returning Home in which two elderly peasants are mounted on water oxen upon whose skin whorls are indicated with minute brush strokes in a darker colour so blended as to be imperceptible except upon scrutiny. We also examined the manuscript of a poem on Wang Wei : 'He took ten days to paint a river and five days a rock. A masterpiece cannot be4 produced in haste or by pressure. It was after bestowing such pains as these that Wang Tsai allowed his work to remain. Powerful is the painting of the Fang Hu mountains of the Kuen Lun Range, and high it is hung on the spotless wall in the lofty hall of your mansion'. Since seeing the pictures, my only diversion has been the circus.

Moore, Marianne. Review of Hymen by H.D. [Hilda Doolittle]. In : Broom ; no 4 (Jan. 1923).
"In this instinctive ritual of beauty, at one old and modern, one is reminded of the supernatural yellows of China."

Ayscough, Florence. Review of The Temple. Translated by Arthur Waley.
"I don't suppose that Waley himself would lay claim to be a poet, nor to being a writer of great merit."

Theodor Sörensen kehrt nach Norwegen zurück und schenkt seine 314 Bände des Tibetan Buddhist canon der Universität Kristiania.

Nikolaj Konstantinovic Roerich reist nach Sikkim, Indien, Ladakh, Tibet, China und in die Mongolei.

Irmgard Grimm lebt mit ihrem Mann und Sohn bis 1930 in Beijing, dann in Tianjin. Sie verlassen China 1936.

Hans Wilhelm Siegel ist Kaufmann der Firma Hugo Stinnes, dann der Firma Behn, Meyer China Co. in Shanghai.
Nach einem Chinesisch-Studium am Seminar für Orientalische Sprachen Berlin, hält er sich 1933-1937 in Nanjing auf.
Er flüchtet vor den Japanern nach Hankou, dann nach Kunming und kehrt nach Shanghai zurück. Er hat den Vorsitz der deutschen Gemeinde in Shanghai 1952-1955.

George Roerich studiert Asienkunde an der Sorbonne in Paris und forscht über Zentralasien, Tibet und die Mongolei, studiert Chinesisch und Persisch.

Qu, Qiubai. Hui se ma yu Eguo she hui yun dong [ID D37312]. [Savinkov, Boris Viktorovich].
Ng Mau-sang : Qu Qiubai examined the work from the point of view of the environment that bred it. He regarded it as encapsulating Russian social thought in the decade between the 1905 and the October Revolution. Russian terrorism, he reasoned, was the result of the vile social environment, and the "Georgian-type" of young man was but its natural offspring. They were representatives of the rebellious yong who were utterly opposed to the dark and indulgent life. Underneth the cold surface of these assassins, Qu claimed, were the most sincere, honest and ardent of hearts which pined for love and social justice.

Shen, Yanbing [Mao, Dun]. Zheng yi Hui se ma xu [ID D38805].
Ng, Mau-sang : Mao Dun point out at the beginning of his article about The pale horse by Boris Viktorovich Savinkov : one might indeed hate or love, admire or pity this ringleader of the terrorist group, but one could not remain indifferent. His reaction to 'the metamorphosis of this soul in a particular environment' was one of sympathy and understanding. George's action in killing, he argued, was his only way of keeping himself alive when others were chasing him as a cat chases a mouse. His indifference was the paradoxical outcome of an acute sensitivity : if there could be no pure love in life, there could be no fear of death either, hence his final abhorrence of life. A confirmed evolutionist at this time, Mao Dun related the behavior and thinking of the hero to his social environment and extolled the author's 'greatness' in describing the hero's metamorphosis with great delicacy.
Mark Gamsa : It seems of late that they have grown tired of paying attention to all the different great problems. To say the least, they have become fed up with the word 'revolution' and thus indulge daily in self-intoxicating illusions ; by way of emancipating their spirits they merely look for excuses to console themselves. That is why Zhenduo's translation of The Pale Horse did not 'Create a sensation' when it began appearing in Xiao shuo xue bao last year. Frankly speaking, until the very end of The Pale Horse's serialisation in the journal, we did not receive a single letter from a youth discussing The Pale Horse.
I wonder: now that The Pale Horse comes out in a separate book edition, will young people continue to view it with the same indifference ? In today's political situation, ever more reactionary with each passing day, the call for a Socialist revolution has long fallen silent. Those anxious about the period we live in may think that in these times, when people's hearts are benumbed, some men of ideals are needed, who would 'die as martyrs tor a noble cause' ; holding a revolver and a bomb in their hands, they would ardently undertake to carry out such actions that may rouse the deaf and awaken the unhearing, and redeem the hearts that had already appeared dead. This is why, when The Pale Horse sees light again in these times, it may still leave people with a deep impression. Yet I hope that if The Pale Horse does succeed to evoke the attention of today's youths, they will firmly remember the following words : a Socialist revolution must have a programme and a strategy, and its weapon must be mass organization ; the ideology of assassination is not the right method for a Socialist revolution to be brought about.

Yu, Pingbo. Ba 'Hui se ma' yi ben. [Savinkov, Boris Viktorovich. Hui se ma]. [ID D37405].
Yu Pingbo viewed the hero's life and thought as representing 'a tremendous tragedy in the struggle for life'. The hero saw everything as futile, be it the revolutionary fervor of a terrorist, or the drowsy numbness of love. At the end, the only reality for him was, 'my revolver is with me' – suicide. The solution to the problem of life lay not in living, but in not living. In the seemingly contradictory action of the hero – an egotist ending his own life in suicide – Yu saw epitomized the sorrow of modern man : the never-ending conflict between love and hate, passion and intellect. 'I can say with certainty that his hate is but a transformation of his love. He said that he dies out of hatred for society, but underneath he gives up his life for love of this world.

Zhang, Wentian. Yi zhe xu yan [ID D37671].
Zhang schreibt : "We, who are bound by the so-called Confucian teaching and idolatry, unless we take hold of a sharp sword to cut off these things one after the other, shall never achieve freedom, never be able to understand life. Leonid Nikolaevich Andreyev's works are the sword we need, and we should brandish it about madly so as to destroy everything. However, on what should be done after the destruction, Andreyev has not even us an answer."

Shen, Yanbing [Mao, Dun]. Dujieniefu [ID D38544].
"The outstanding characteristic of Turgenev's works I that he could document the changes of his time. His novels cover a range of more than thirty years. During this time, Russian society witnessed changes from old to new, and the intelligentsia underwent drastic changes. Turgenev was able to discern with a philosophic eye, and render with art and much foreboding, the permutations of contemporaneous intellectual society. It is difficult to think of another writer endowed with as distinctive an artistic genius for mirroring the spirit of the time."

Mark Tobey trifft den chinesischen Maler Deng Kui, der ihn in die Technik der chinesischen Kalligraphie einführt.

Artsybashev, Mikhail Petrovich. Sanin.
1923 Yu Dafu called Sanin by Artsybashev an embodiment of class struggle in Russian literature. His contrived interpretation of Sanin's cruelty is an attack on the bourgeoisie and the ruling class.
1924 Mo, Dun. Zui hou yi ye. In : Xiao shuo yue bao ; vol. 15 (1924).
Mao Dun called Artsybashev's Sanin 'an immortal work', describing it as 'a Bible of anarchist individualism'.

Yu, Pingbo. Ba 'Hui se ma' yi ben. [ID D37405]. [Betr. Boris Viktorovich Savinkov].
The postscript of Yu Pingbo was an original, lyrical interpretation, intertwined with a long allegoric poem. He ended his essay with the regret that people were unable to live easily and naturally, without the constant questioning of life's meaning that had so tortured the hero. All of us, he says, are looking for solutions to the problems life poses, and, like a sick man we are happy every time the doctor prescribes a new medicine for us – even though all medicine may turn out to be mere illusion.

Qu, Qiubai. Hui se ma yu Eguo she hui yun dong. [ID D37312]. [Betr. Boris Viktorovich Savinkov].
Qu Qiubai sought both to explain the novel's sources in the Russian politics of its time and to place it within his conception of Russian literature as a literature constantly preoccupied with social change. Qu did praise the novel for displaying with 'artistic truth' the troubled epoch of early revolutionary struggle. He stressed George's being a 'type' limited to his own time and environment.

Lin Fengmian studiert Kunst in Berlin und kehrt 1925 nach China zurück.