China and the West

Fosco Maraini ist in Gefangenschaft in Nagoya.

Cao Weifeng was the first Chinese translator who tried rendering the complete plays of William Shakespeare's plays in poetic form.

Film : Hong fen zhi yi = 红粉知己 [Confidantes] unter der Regie von Wu Wenchao nach Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre : an autobiography. Vol. 1-3. (London : Smith, Elder, 1847). [= Jian Ai].

Film : Qing chao = 情潮 [Tide of passion] unter der Regie von Griffin Yue Feng nach Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina. (Moskva : Tip. T. Ris, 1877-1878).

Film : Ri ben jian die = 日本间谍 [Japanese spy] unter der Regie von Yuan Congmei nach Vespa, Amleto. Secret agent of Japan : A handbook to Japanese imperialism. (London : Little, Brown & Co, 1938).

Jozef Hoogers kommt in japanische Gefangenschaft in Weixian (Shandong).

[Tsurumi, Yusuke]. Bailun zhuan. Chen Qiuzi yi. [ID D26447].
Chen Qiuzi schreibt in der Einführung : "Will the striving Chinese intellectuals of today, especially the younger generation, who worship Byron for his heroic deeds, be deeply moved and nobly inspired by this biography ?"
Chu Chih-yu : Tsurumi's Byron came during the Japanese War. At this time of national crisis, the glorious image of Byron again played a very important role in encouraging the Chinese to defend their country. Tsurumi believed in the political power of Byron's poetry. He wrote the book in the hope that Byron's spirit could inspire Japanese youth. The aspect of Byronism he admired the most seems to have been Byron's uniqueness, his unique ideas, 'ideas that shocked all the people'. All the facts, the analysis and interpretation of Byron's behaviour, and very often, even the diction were taken from Maurois. The difference is, that Tsurumi usually quoted Byron's letters and journals directly from Moore's book and at greater length, and he adapted remarks from Taine and Arnold on Byron's poetry. He also added some brief description of the plots of Byron's major poems. The book was overloaded with eulogistic words such as heroism, genius, freedom, revolution, rebellion, uniqueness etc. About Byron's women, Tsurumi followed Maurois' presentation except in his description of Byron's relationship with his half-sister. He neither supported nor rejected the charge of incest again Byron, but simply shunned the topic as best as he could.

E.T.C. Werner wird von den Japanern in Weixin (Shandong) interniert.

Xiao Qian and Maurice by E.M. Forster.
Lien Wen-shan : The most intriguing feature of the correspondence between E.M. Forster and Xiao Qian is their repeated discussions of Forster's novel Maurice. Some of their discussions touch upon issues that Forster had never discussed before with his other British friends and critics. Xiao recalls his reading of Maurice : "He let me read his novel about homosexuality, Maurice, which was locked in a safe and not to be published until a hundred years later". Forster said : "As for my unpublished novel, you are welcome to read it whenever you like. It is almost publishable, but not quite. There is a MS down here if you would car for it at any time." Letter from E.M. Forster to Xiao Qian ; 17 April 1943 : "Shall be interested when we meet what you think of Maurice. It seems to me in retrospect very English, and there is no harm in that, but for the Moment I am tired of what is very English."
Xiao Qian to Forster : "There is no law in China forbidding this more severely than seduction. In Shanghai & Tientsin, there are even such Brothels, who are know as 'rabbitts'. One of the Emperors of ours was known to be fond of 'plucking the flowers in the back garden'. In the Imperial court, there used to be dramatic repertories. The boys playing feminine parts used to be seduced either by their own co-actors or by men in the Forbidden City". "I told him [Forster] the blackmail scene in Maurice should serve as a lesson to all homosexuals, hence, the novel is beautiful. I seem to have told him that the novel (especially the blackmail scene) discourages homosexuality. Hence, I regarded it as healthy, I was shocked by the blackmail scene".
Forster to Xiao Qian : "As you say, one characteristic of Maurice is his maturity. And another is his liking for happiness and his dislike for self-pity. If I had had to end the book sadly or tragically for him, I should not have thought it worth writing. We have in England (as in France) good studies of immaturity, some tiresome self-pitying, some tiresome proclamations of the Cause, and some pornography which, like most pornography, fail to be graphic."

Letter from E.M. Forster to Xiao Qian ; 1 May, 1943.
"It made me sad for I felt that I was too old to 'take on' China, and that, better than Italy (my first love), India, or France, could it have been taken on by me".

Letter from E.M. Forster to Xiao Qian ; 7 July, 1943.
"I have been considering what you said about poverty and your misery and 'crime' in China. Why am I ashamed to hear of such things ? Not because I am shocked by them, as you suggest, nor because I feel I cannot imagine them, because they emphasise a defect in my mental equipment. For an instant, they become real, then they fall back again into words… It is an extra barrier too to realize that European poverty is nothing to Oriental. I am very glad that you mentioned this subject to me and I hope you will do so again."

Letter from Xiao Qian to W.J.H. Sprott about a talk he planned to give in Nottingham; 12 Oct. 1943.
"I am very curious to know whether there are some people at Nottingham interested in Virginia Woolf's novels, and especially if there are people who have patiently read her and disagreed with her. She is so much a fact of Cambridge, that to discuss her here often ends in collective eulogy. Her reaction to the Midlands, industrial, Lawrentian ought to be very fresh to me (I am doing a book for China next spring on E.M. Forster and Virginia Woolf). If you think it possible to gather a handful of people, I would be glad to pose as an ardent fan of Virginia Woolf before them and evoke their vehement antagonism and thereby reap a rich Harvest."

Letter from Xiao Qian to E.M. Forster ; 25 Nov. 1943.
"He [D.H. Lawrence] has made me so unhappy, this hairy misanthropist. I have just read one of the dehydrated Lawrence, the Fantasia : he must have been very bitter when writing it. I did enjoy A man who died which even reminded me of the Castle of Kafka. But so many of his characters are mere pegs on which hung all his queer ideas about life and the universe."

Letter from E.M. Forster to Xiao Qian ; 25 Nov. 1943.
Forster had urged Xiao to turn his attention to James Joyce : "never has so much been talked of a person whom so few understand". Xiao himself noted that his copy of Ulysses was nearly black with the notes of meanings of words marked in 1940. He wrote to Forster that he felt the great achievement of Joyce who reconciled "two heterogeneous elements in writing : free flow (of consciousness) and external shape".

Xu, Chi. Meiguo shi ge de chuan tong [ID D29887].
Xu Chi contended that the tradition in American poetry is none other than Whitman's tradition of democracy. He drew 'a historical parallel' between two pairs of poets and political leaders : Whitman and Lincoln, Mayakovsky and Lenin.

Chen Xiying geht nach London und arbeitet für das Sino-British Cultural Council.

Moore, Marianne. "We will walk like the tapir". In : The Nation ; no 156 (19 June 1943).
"Be gentle and you can be bold" is an ancient Chinese saying ; "be frugal and you can be liberal ; if you are a leader, you have learned self-restraint."

Eliot, T.S. Burnt Norton. In : Eliot, T.S. Four quartets. (New York, N.Y. : Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1943).
http://www.coldbacon.com/poems/fq.html.
V
…"Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness…"

Robert Payne unterrichtet Lyrik und Schiffbau an der Lienta-Universität (Southwest Associated University) in Kunming.

Knud Lundbaek ist Arzt.