Year

2001

Text

Type

Publication

Contributors (1)

Mentioned People (1)

Subjects

Chronology Entries (9)

#	Year	Text	Linked Data
1	1922	The May Fourth Movement of 1919 had given the Chinese people a new sensitivity to Western culture. There were Chinese scholars with mind open enough to be interested in a new work like Ulysses by James Joyce, as witness the orders received at Sylvia Beach's bookstore in Paris. "Ten copies to Peking !" Joyce himself reported with excitement to Harriet Weaver.	Person: Joyce, James
2	1923	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 !"	Person: Joyce, James Person: Xu, Zhimo
3	1935	Zhou, Libo. Zhanmusi Qiaoyisi [ID D28972]. "Ulysses is a notoriously obscene novel, as well as a notoriously abstruse book, and it was at first banned in Britain. It was completed in 1921 and published in 1922 ; the only person who first appreciated it and promoted it was a very wealthy aesthete. Few other people have been interested in this book, where the reader, cutting through a boundless forest of words, would find nothing but worthless trifles and erratic images. Who but persons with an excess of fat would need such a book ? The bizarre formal features of Joyce's work are closely linked to its empty content. They have nothing to do with literature. The same is true of his microscopic method, his method of the 'realization of the subconscious' and the 'internal monologue'. Even the naturalistic technique he employs in describing the outside world is not beneficial to literature. For all this, being static and artificial in character, is incompatible with literature, which ought to have fresh content and noble aims." Jin Di : There was never a formal ban on Ulysses in China. The Chinese leftist voice of authority branded Ulysses as 'a notoriously obscene novel', conspicuously and unequivocally. And the authorities were able to stand unchallenged, because the general readership was in no position to protest, having no access to the work in a version they could read.	Person: Joyce, James Person: Zhou, Libo
4	1964	Yuan, Kejia. Ying mei yi shi liu xiao shuo ping shu [ID D30387]. Tao Jie : The essay makes a careful study of The sound and the fury and As I lay dying by William Faulkner, Ulysses by James Joyce and To the lighthouse and The waves by Virginia Woolf. In the concluding section, Yuan Kejia labels the stream-of-consciousness fiction as "a literary product of the declining bourgeoisie in the West", and mentions As I lay dying and its interior monologues as a good example of "the psychological reflection of the declinging bourgeoisie that is divorced from reality and therefore afraid of confronting it". He severely criticizes stream-of-consciousness novelists for writing about "dreams, sex, madness, and nonconsciousness" which "are but expressions of the perverted psychology and low taste of a decadent class" and which have "power to corrupt the people's minds and their militant will." Despite the political jargon, Yuan makes a correct and objective interpretation of The sound and the fury and As I lay dying. Some of his arguments – such as the stream of consciousness as the best technique to depict the spiritual decadence of the Compsons ; the decline of the Compsons as represented by Benjy's idiocy, Quentin's suicide, and Jason's greed ; the complexity of psychological reaction to experience as reflected in the different characters in As I lay dying ; Addie's distress about the disjunction between words and reality and Anse's belief in abstraction – are still valid twenty-five years later. Although the author criticizes Faulkner for making Dilsey "more slavish than rebellious" and remarks that "it is incredible that this old woman should be so hardworking and so devoted to the white masters that have been exploiting her for years, he stresses the fact that "Faulkner took part in the 1951 campaign to protect a black man called Willie McGee and denounced the racists in the South in 1955 and opposed segregation in American schools", to show that Faulkner was not so "reactionary" as James Jyce or so "conservative" as Virginia Woolf. Jin Di : Yuan criticized Ulysses by James Joyce for its 'nihilist, philistine and pornographic tendencies', and denied its artistic values as well.	Document: Tao, Jie. Faulkner's short stories and novels in China. In : Faulkner and the short story. Ed. by Evans Harrington and Ann J. Abadie. (Jackson : University of Mississippi Press, 1992). (Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha, 1990). (Faul5, Publication) Person: Faulkner, William Person: Joyce, James Person: Yuan, Kejia
5	1982	Centennial of James Joyce in China. Speech : "The fact that we are here commemorating the centenary of James Joyce is of great significance in the cultural life of the Chinese people. It is most fitting that we do so, for the true Marxist does not reject outright any cultural legacy whether ancient or modern, Chinese or foreign, but should study its historical significance and assimilate whatever is useful. Moreover, James Joyce as a master who has left a lasting mark in modern Western culture, calls for our serious study in terms of merits and demerits so that we can draw lessons from him. If we compare Bloom living in the wilderness of the modern city with Robinson Crusoe who built a life for himself in the veritable wilderness of the desert island, it is not hard to perceive the progressive deterioration of the bourgeois hero in the novel. Bloom's world is shocking in its pettiness, obscenity, ugliness, and confusion. If, as is alleged, he reflected the decadence of the modern bourgeoisie, all the more reason he has an epistemological value for us."	Person: Joyce, James
6	1983	Jin Di is the first Chinese Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. "If I had admired James Joyce's Ulysses as a work of art, I now began to see it as an embodiment of the culmination of art. The structure, the characters, the language - everything is perfect - or perhaps a little more than perfect, for there are certain things which I am rather inclined to think Joyce overdid."	Person: Jin, Di Person: Joyce, James
7	1986	Wang, Jiaxiang. [Happy reading : selected translations of and essay on Ulysses]. In : Wai guo wen xue (Aug. 1986). "45 years after his death, Joyce enjoys now a position in Western literature which ought to be described as established by consensus, yet in our country Joyce studies have been very tardy in getting started. It is impossible, however, to comprehend twentieth-century Western literature very well without a serious study and understanding of this important author who was a pioneer of modern English literature. For quite some time till now, translations of Joyce were as a rule just stories from Dubliners, and writings about Joyce were usually confined to his biographical facts. People dared not approach Ulysses, mainly kept off by a chilly atmosphere, originating from nobody knows where, which enveloped the work as 'decadent', 'nihilist', 'pornographic', 'poisonous', etc. But what exactly is its theme ? It is, after all is said and done, a poisonous book or a superior literary masterpiece ? How should we view Joyce's ideas, principles and artistic styles ? This involves not only the evaluation of one book or one author, but the question of how we ought to appreciate and evaluate the whole modernistic literature in the West. Practice is the only criterion for testing truth, and Mr. Jin Di's translation of selected episodes from Ulysses has made it possible for readers themselves to get to know Joyce and his work."	Person: Joyce, James Person: Wang, Jiaxiang
8	1995	Xin min wan bao ; (May 1995). Headline : "Puzzling : Ulysses [by James Joyce] a best-seller !"	Person: Joyce, James
9	1996	First International Academic Conference on James Joyce in Beijing and Tianjin, July 5-9 1996. Sponsored by Tianjin Foreign Studies University under the chairmanship of Qian Ziqiang, Professor and President Tianjin Foreign Studies University. Zhang Jintong, Foreign Affairs Office, Tianjin Foreign Studies University, read a letter of good wishes from Mary Robinson, the President of Ireland. Joe Hayes, the Ambassador of Ireland, mentioned the awareness of the Irish Literary Renaissance in China during the 1920s and 1930s…	Person: Joyce, James Person: Qian, Ziqiang Person: Zhang, Jintong

Sources (2)

#	Year	Bibliographical Data	Type / Abbreviation	Linked Data
1	1935	Zhou, Libo. Zhanmusi Qiaoyisi. In : Shen bao ; May 6 (1935). [James Joyce]. 詹姆斯乔依斯	Publication / JoyJ48	Person: Joyce, James Person: Zhou, Libo
2	1940-1941	Xi shu jing hua. Huang Jiade ; Lin Yutang. Vol. 1-6. (Shanghai : Xi feng yue kan she, 1940-1941). [Literary periodical, translations from Western literature]. 西書精華. [Enthält] : Special edition on James Joyce : Short biography ; translation of his poems A painful case from Dubliners ; translation of the chapter Joyce in 'Axel's castle' in Edmund Wilson's James Joyce ; translation of three short excerpts from Ulysses in Stuart Gilbert's James Joyce's Ulysses, transl. by Wu Xinghua.	Publication / JoyJ49	Person: Huang, Jiade Person: Joyce, James Person: Lin, Yutang Person: Wu, Xinghua

Cited by (1)

#	Year	Bibliographical Data	Type / Abbreviation	Linked Data
1	2000-	Asien-Orient-Institut Universität Zürich	Organisation / AOI	Cited by: Huppertz, Josefine ; Köster, Hermann. Kleine China-Beiträge. (St. Augustin : Selbstverlag, 1979). [Hermann Köster zum 75. Geburtstag]. [Enthält : Ostasieneise von Wilhelm Schmidt 1935 von Josefine Huppertz ; Konfuzianismus von Xunzi von Hermann Köster]. (Huppe1, Published)