China and the West

100th birthday of Mark Twain.
Several important Chinese periodicals published Twain's works and articles about him.

Hu, Zhongchi. [The American novelist Mark Twain]. [ID D29505].
Hu Zhongchi called Twain a pioneer of realism and the first representative American writer after Edgar Allen Poe, saying his works embodied 'the spirit of an important period in American history'. He believed that Twain cared more about political and social questions than any other American writer and that 'his humorous, satirical style was imbued with socialist and democratic thought'. In relating Twain's biography, Hu emphasized his compassion for American blacks and his support for the Russian revolution. In speaking of Twain's literary accomplishments, the article referred to W.D. Howell's citation of Twain as the 'Lincoln of American literature' and to John Macy's evaluation of several of Twain's works.

Hu, Zhongchi. [Commemorating the centennial of Mark Twain's birthday]. [ID D29506].
Hu refers to Twain as 'the greatest literary figure, humorist and socialist to appear in America in recent years'. He also informed readers of Twain's fame in the United States and the world as well as describing the large scale of commemorative activities that year. The greater part of this article was dedicated to a description of the Soviet scholar Dinamov's evaluation of Twain.
Hu expressed his regret that Twain died without finishing what he could have accomplished, for Twain grew in his later years more and more courageous and forceful in fighting the 'decadent social system'.

Huang, Jiayin. [Mark Twain and his works]. [ID D29538].
Huang included several interesting anecdotes which helped readers not only to come to know Twain's life history but also to understand a bit about Twain's powerfully humorous character. He did not describe Twain as a humorist, he also pointed out : 'The author's basic intention in writing was not only to make people laugh ; he had a more important purpose. He wanted to make people think and feel'.

Li, Bo. [Mark Twain - American common people's satirist]. [ID D29540].
"It can be said there was no American literature before Mark Twain", his predecessors being but 'English imitators'. Mark Twain is the first writer to have met the American demand for a pioneer's spirit and sense of humor, thus embodying the new national consciousness.

Shu, Ming. [In memory of Mark Twain's 100th birthday]. [ID D29541].
Shu Ming, after paying tribute to Mark Twain's contributions to the new national literature, pointed out the great writer's weaknesses and shortcomings : he was not so free in his writing and life after all ; and his wife and daughters did a lot of harmful editing and distortion. Shu Ming contrasted Mark Twain's 'tragedy' with Maxim Gorky's development as a writers and came to the conclusion that the reason lies not only in the dissatisfying factors in Twain's family life, but also in the differences between the social systems of the two countries.

Alfred Sao-ke Sze ist Botschafter der chinesischen Botschaft in Amerika.

Letter from Marianne Moore to George Plank ; June 25, 1935.
Thank you for thinking of me when you see dragons, and for being as willing to encourage me about my book now that it is out, as you were before.

Letter from Marianne Moore to George Plank ; August 14, 1935.
As for not being Persian or Chinese ; you spoke the truth – if not in the sense in which you meant it – when you said you would never add to the bad prose which is being written.

Letter from Marianne Moore to Elizabeth Bishop ; December 20, 1935.
Your word of the pigeons in the blue cage, and of the Chinese collection of Mr. Loo – his dragons with movable eyes and ears especially – delighted me beyond measure.

Wilder, Thornton. Heaven's my destination. (New York, N.Y. : Harper & Bros., 1935).
http://www.harpercollins.com/browseinside/index.aspx?isbn13=9780060088897.
Foreword : I came from a very strict Calvinist father, was brought up partly among the missionaries of China…

The letters of Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder [ID D30359].
1935
Letter from Thornton Wilder to Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, American Exp[ress], Wien, 15 Oct. 1935.
My mother was pious, and until 8 I was pious – but one day my father took me out for a walk in the Prater – I can remember it perfectly and explained to me that there was no way that we could no [know] there was a God ; that it didn't do any good to trouble one's head about such ; but to life and do one's duty among one's fellow-men. "But I like gods" and he pointed to handsome cases and cases full of images – Greek, Chinese, African, Egyptian – hundred of images !

1936
Letter from Gertrude Stein to Thornton Wilder, Paris, [postmark 9 Jan. 1936].
Lady Colefax turned up, we talked about you and about England, she is going to arrange that we see the Chinese show all by ourselves, and other things… [Exhibition of Chinese art, Royal Academy of Arts, London].
Letter from Gertrude Stein to Thornton Wilder, Chicago, Ill., postmark 26 April 1936.
… we leave on Thursday if weather and Chinaman permit, we are back to Chinamen only just now we have not got one…
Letter from Thornton Wilder to Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, New Haven, Conn., 27 Sept. 1936.
I have been reading aloud to my mother a droll and noble and touching little book translated from the Chinese. It is an account by a small provincial magistrate of the Boxer Rebellion, of the flight of the Empress Dowager from the Forbidden City and the reestablishment. It is full of loft utterances at the point of death, of absurd anxiety over etiquette, and of long intimate conversations with the 'Old Buddha'. And yet it is a slight little book and I am afraid that even sending it to MD will put it in such a mandatory light that the bloom of its modest charm will be rubbed off, but I shall sent it just the same. [Wu, Yung. The flight of an empress. (New Haven, Conn. : Yale University Press, 1936).
Letter from Gertrude Stein to Thornton Wilder, New Haven, Conn., postmark 26 Oct. 1936.
… the Chinese book came and Alice and I are both loving it, you know we always on the old empress very much and it brings her very near, and one likes her near if not too near. [Wu, Yung. The flight of an empress. (New Haven, Conn. : Yale University Press, 1936).

1937
Letter from Thornton Wilder to Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, Hotel Buckingham [Paris],16 July 1937.
I go to a theatre every night to improve my French. And all day I sit in on the Session a the Institute where I hear Chinese French, Roumanian French, Brazilian French etc.
Letter from Thornton Wilder to Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, Bilignin, France, Hotel Buckingham, [Paris 18? July 1937].
I feel like some brand-new Chinese convert, ardent but immature, who tears out Nanking mixing up his lessons pêle-mêle and saying that a Christian must turn his back on his family, expect the end of the world any minute, and must lose no opportunity to provoke his own martyrdom.

1937
Letter from Thornton Wilder to Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, Monte Verità, Ascona. 15 Oct. 1937.
This hotel was founded many years ago – as its pretentious name implies – to house cults, -isms and –ologies. A Dutch baron of vast wealth, still here and eating in our dining-room. But he also built the hotel to house his picture collection, and all the public rooms and the bedrooms are full of paintings. Picasso, Delacroix, Courbet, Matisse, Marées, Dali, and a host of Chinese paintings.
Letter from Thornton Wilder to Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, [Zurich], 28 Oct. 1937.
And for excitement's sake, guess who may act the long lanky New England Talkative Stage-Manager in it (who as in the Chinese theatre hovers about the action, picking his teeth, handing the actors their properties and commenting drily to the audience) – Sinclair Lewis.

1940
Letter from Thornton Wilder to Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, New Haven, Conn., 28 Jan. 1940.
Charlotte will have after many years a volume of prose ready this spring – Proust-like evocations of her childhood in Berkeley and China. [This book was never published].

1941
Letter from Thornton Wilder to Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, [Port Washington, Wisc.], 28 July 1941.
Friday night your ears burned and – as the Chinese put it – your eyelids twitched.
1942
Letter from Gertrude Stein to Thornton Wilder, Bilignin, [postmark 21 Sept. 1942].
I work quite a lot and the book To Do which has you in China in it, is out, and I hope you like it. [Publ. posthumously in Alphabets and birthdays, 1957].

Royal Leonard ist Privatpilot von Chiang Kai-shek.

[Austen, Jane]. Ao man yu pian jian. Yang Gang yi. [ID D13673].
Yang Gang recognized the humor and irony in Pride and prejudice, and defined it as a novel of 'family-focused irony'.

[Austen, Jane]. Jiao ao yu pian jian. Dong Zhongchi yi. [ID D30607].
Preface by Liang Shiqiu. He began to discuss the subject matter of Austen's novels, explaining that Austen tried to seek meaning in ordinariness.

Chen, Quan. Jia Aosiding zuo pin zhong di xiao ju yuan su [ID D30614].
Chen sought to show that comic works depend on human reason rather than sensibility, and that, as a great comic writer, Jane Austen reached the essence of comedy.

William Henry Donald ist u.a. Berater von Sun Yatsen, Chiang Kai-shek und Mme Chiang Kai-shek.in Chongqing.

Letters from Virginia Woolf.
Letter from Virginia Woolf to Vanessa Bell ; 17 July, 1935.
I was just sitting down to write to you last nicht when Julian [Bell] came in to say that he has got the Chinese professorship. You will have heard from him already. He seemed very excited, though also rather alarmed at the prospect. I wish it weren't for so long – though he says he can come back after a year. Still I suppose it's a great chance, and means that he will easily get something in England afterwards. Leonard thinks it an extraordinarily interesting job as it will mean being in the thick of Chinese politics, and Julian also felt this – what it means Chinese politics, I don’t know, nor I suppose to you. We had a long talk, and he was very charming and said that he felt it was time he made a complete break.

Letter from Virginia Woolf to Julian Bell ; 14 Oct., 1935.
We are all well in health, and spry in spirit ; but rather miss you, and I wish Q. wasn't going up to the potteries, however I rather suspect we shall make a push and come to China.

Letter from Virginia Woolf to Julian Bell ; 25 Oct., 1935.
Then Leonard heard from Tyrrell, whom you had also charmed. And now you are in your official residence on the banks of the Yangtse. Its useless to ask what youre doing at the moment much though I want o know.

Letter from Virginia Woolf to Julian Bell ; 1st Dec., 1935.
P.M. We have just been to the Chinese show, about which I don’t expect you want information…

Letter from Vanessa Bell to Julian Bell ; 7 Dec. 1935.
[About the first International Chinese exhibition of Art, Burlington House, London].
All London has gone Chinese… all the great dresses are going to be Chinese and no one talks of anything but Chinese art.

Letter from Virginia Woolf to Lady Ottoline Morrell ; 5 Jan., 1936.
We shall be back at the end of the week I think, and then I must go to the Chinese again – my one visit was as usual ruined by trying to dodge old friends (not you). And I'ver just been reading about the Chinese in some letters of Rogers [Fry] – he did all his off hand art criticism in letters, and I think its sometimes better than the printed – so fertile, so suggestive. [Exhibition of Chinese Art, The Royal Academy].

Letter from Virginia Woolf to Julian Bell ; 2 May, 1936.
I feel instinctively that China is a little like a blue pot ; love a little flowery ; leaning a little scented.

Letter from Virginia Woolf to Julian Bell ; 31 May 1936.
[Julian Bell wrote to Virginia Woolf he wished he were in Sichuan or Peiping.]
I hope now you are not dismal ; still it's a curse, your being so far away and then expect the mitigated culture of your university is rather like skimmed milk… In fact I think you are much to be envied. I wish I had spent three years in China at your age…

Letter from Virginia Woolf to Julian Bell ; 14 Nov., 1936.
Charles [Mauron] dined with us last night, and talked about you. He says for Gods sage don't leave China and come to fight in France – in Which I think he is right ; but no doubt he has said so already… Yes – tell me, what your amorous entanglements are ? I swear I wont reveal them. What about the Chinese ladies ? Are you wanting to come home ? What about a book on China ? We're having a bad season ; no one buys fiction… A Chinese evelope is a very nice sight, even though your pen is – well, a great black spider.

Letter from Virginia Woolf to Vanessa Bell ; Saturday Oct., 1937.
Thank you for sending [Richard] Rees' letter. It gives me the feeling I had when Julian came back from China…

Bell, Julian. Letters from China.
1935
Letter from Julian Bell to Marie Mauron ;1935.
Really, I am falling a bit in love with China – also, platonically, yes, I assure you (for particular reasons, social and so on) with a Chinese woman [Ling Shuhua]. She is charming – the wife of the dean [Chen Yuan] of the Faculty of Letters, a highly intelligent and amiable man, one of Goldie's [G. Lowes Dickinson] students. She's the dauthter of a mandarin, a painter and short story writer, one of the most famous in China. She's sensitive and delicate, intelligent, cultivated, a little malicious, loving those gossipy stories, etc., that are true about everyone, very gay – in short, one of the nicest and most remarkable women I know.

Letter from Julian Bell to Virginia Woolf ; Fall 1935.
It's lovely country and the Chinese are charming ; lecturing on the moderns, 1890-1914 ; 1914-36. I have to read the writers ; what is one to do : we all write too much ; I shall make the Lighthouse I think, a set book.

Letter from Julian Bell to Vanessa Bell ; 23 Oct., 1935.
Hsu Hwa [Ling Shuhua] is an intelligent and sensitive angel. Can you imagine someone quite unaffected, very sensitive, extremely good and kind, with a sense of humour and firm hands with life ; she's darling. She comes to my Shakespeare and Modern lectures, which has the good effect of making me lecture my best : when I'm with the students I sometimes don'trouble, or treat them as schoolboys.

Letter from Julian Bell to Vanessa Bell ; 22 Nov. 1935.
Oh Nessa dear, you will have to meet her [Ling Shuhua] one of these days. She's the most charming creature I've met, and the only woman I know whou would be a possible daughter-in-law to you (she isn't, being married with a charming child and ten years too old) that she is really in our world and one of the most gifted, the nicest, most sensitive and intelligent people in it. I don't know what will happen. I think when I'm cured I shall probably get her involved : at present I'm not physically disturbed – less by her than others – but I know myself well enough to know that the parade follows the fla, etc.

Letter from Julian Bell to Vanessa Bell ; 18 Dec. 1935.
She's [Ling Shuhua] a desperately serious person, with great reserves of unhappiness : she says she's lost faith in everything, and is now working to find love, something to believe in. She's subtle, sensitive, very complicated – also torn between an introspective – analytic part and a very fragile easily-damaged sensibility. And sensible and intelligent. And also very romantic at heart. And, I should imagine, nervously and ecstatically passionate. She wouldn't let me make love to her to any extent at all last night. And she looks lovely… And inexperienced in love.

Letter from Julian Bell to Eddy Playfair ; 27 Dec. 1935.
She's [Ling Shuhua] very shy, verbally and physically. It's my oddest affair to date. She's as intense and passionate as your old enemy Helen [Soutar] is also a selftorturer and pessimist asking reassurance. And both jealous and not wanting to lose face. On the other hand, intelligent, charming ,sensitive, passionate and a malicious storyteller. And a perfect adviser on social situations : she's saved me gaffes innumerable.

Letter from Julian Bell to Vanessa Bell ; 1 Febr. 1936.
Our day in the Western Hills spent lookg at temples. Some of them are very lovely, beautifully proportioned courts of white marble : lots of bas-relief that seems to me decent decoration, and some good statues. There's a colossal sleeping Bhudda in a sort of copper-gold who I fancy distinguished statesmen sen him presents of colossal slippers. Then, as you'll see from the photos, we climbed a small mountain. I really lost my heart to the Western Hills… I really could live very happily in Peking. But I think I prefer Charleston.

Letter from Julian Bell to Eddy Playfair ; Febr. 1936.
In Sichuan there's no real culture – even faintly foreign society. And the Chinese are, I fell very different, if one wants intimacy of intellectual conversation. At least these rather stiff and provincial academics are. Peiping is utterly different ; these are genuine flexible Chinese, come intelligent foreigners mix with them.

Letter from Julian Bell to Virginia Woolf ; Fall 1936.
China's leading woman writer, my Dean's wife with whom I'm platonically in love is a passionate admirer of your work.

Liu Chongjie ist Gesandter in Wien.