At Sarai, in the land of Tartary,
There dwelt a king who warred on Russia, he,
Whereby there died full many a doughty man.
This noble king was known as Cambinskan,
Who in his time was of so great renown
That there was nowhere in the wide world known
So excellent a lord in everything;
He lacked in naught belonging to a king.
As for the faith to which he had been born,
He kept its law to which he had been sworn;
And therewith he was hardy, rich, and wise,
And merciful and just in all men's eyes,
True to his word, benign and honourable,
And in his heart like any center stable;
Young, fresh, and strong, in warfare ambitious
As any bachelor knight of all his house.
Of handsome person, he was fortunate,
And kept always so well his royal state
That there was nowhere such another man.
This noble king, this Tartar Cambinskan
Had got two sons on Elpheta, his wife,
Of whom the elder's name was Algarsyf,
And that same second son was Cambalo.
A daughter had this worthy king, also,
Who was the youngest, and called Canace.
But to describe to you all her beauty,
It lies not in my tongue nor my knowing;
I dare not undertake so high a thing.
My English is quite insufficient for
What must require a finished orator
Who knew the colours needful to that art
If he were to describe her every part.
I am none such, I must speak as I can.
And so befell that, when this Cambinskan
Had twenty winters worn his diadem,
As he was wont from year to year, I deem,
He let the feast of his nativity
Be cried throughout all Sarai, his city,
The last Idus of March, as 'twas that year.
Phoebus the sun right festive was, and clear;
For he was near his exaltation grown
In face of Mars, and in his mansion known
In Aries, the choleric hot sign.
Right pleasant was the weather, and benign,
For which the wild birds in the sun's gold sheen,
What of the season and the springing green,
Full loudly sang their love and their affection;
It seemed that they had got themselves protection
Against the sword of winter keen and cold.
This Cambinskan, of whom I have you told,
High in the palace, mounted on his throne
With crown and royal vestments sat alone,
And held his feast, so splendid and so rich
That in this world its like was not, of which,
If I should tell you all of the array,
Then would it occupy a summer's day.
Besides, it needs not here that I apprise
Of every course the order of service.
I will not tell you of their each strange sauce,
Nor of their swans, nor of their heronshaws.
Moreover, in that land, as tell knights old,
There are some foods which they for dainties hold.
Of which in this land the esteem is small;
There is no man that can report them all.
I will not so delay you, for it's prime,
And all the fruit of this were loss of time;
Unto my first theme I will have recourse.
And so befell that, after the third course,
While this great king sat in his state that day,
Hearing his minstrels on their instruments play
Before him at the board, deliciously,
In at the hall door, and all suddenly,
There came a knight upon a steed of brass,
Holding in hand a mirror broad of glass.
Upon his thumb he had a golden ring,
And by his side a naked sword hanging;
And up he rode right to the highest board.
In all the hall there was not spoken word
For marvel of this knight; him to behold,
They stared and stretched and craned, both young and old.
This stranger knight, who came thus suddenly,
Armed at all points, except his head, richly,
Saluted king and queen and those lords all,
In order of rank, as they sat there in hall,
Showing such humble courtesy to each
In manner of behaviour and in speech,
That Gawain, with his old-time courtesy,
Though he were come again from Faery,
Could not have bettered him in any word.
And after this, before the king's high board,
He with a manly voice said his message,
After the form in use in his language,
Without mistake in syllable or letter;
And, that his tale should seem to all the better,
According to his language was his cheer,
As men teach art of speech both there and here;
Albeit that I cannot ape his style,
Nor can I climb across so high a stile,
Yet sky I this, as to his broad intent,
To this amounts the whole of what he meant,
If so be that I have it yet in mind.
He said: "The king of Araby and Ind,
My liege-lord, on this great and festive day
Salutes you as he now best can and may,
And sends to you, in honour of your feast,
By me, that am prepared for your behest,
This steed of brass, that easily and well
Can, in one natural day ('tis truth I tell),
That is to say, in four and twenty hours,
Where'er you please, in drought or else in showers,
Bear you in body unto every place
To which your heart wills that you go apace,
Without least hurt to you, through foul or fair;
Or, if you please to fly as high in air
As does an eagle when he wills to soar,
This self-same steed will bear you evermore
Without least harm, till you have gained your quest,
Although you sleep upon his back, or rest;
And he'll return, by twisting of a pin.
He that made this could make full many a gin;
He waited, watching many a constellation
Before he did contrive this operation;
And he knew many a magic seal and band.
"This mirror, too, which I have in my hand,
Has power such that in it men may see
When there shall happen any adversity
Unto your realm, and to yourself also;
And openly who is your friend or foe.
More than all this, if any lady bright
Has set her heart on any kind of wight,
If he be false she shall his treason see,
His newer love and all his subtlety
So openly that nothing can he hide.
Wherefore, upon this pleasant summertide,
This mirror and this ring, which you may see,
He has sent to my Lady Canace,
Your most surpassing daughter, who is here.
"The virtue of the ring, if you will hear,
Is this: that if she pleases it to wear
Upon her thumb, or in her purse to bear,
There is no bird that flies beneath the heaven
But she shall understand his language, even
To know his meaning openly and plain,
And answer him in his own words again.
And every herb that grows upon a root
She shall know, too, and whom 'twill heal, to boot,
Although his wounds be never so deep and wide.
"This naked sword that's hanging by my side
Such virtue has that any man you smite,
Right through his armour will it carve and bite,
Were it as thick as is a branching oak;
And that man who is wounded by its stroke
Shall never be whole until you please, of grace,
To strike him with the flat in that same place
Where he is hurt; which is to say, 'tis plain,
That you may with the flat sword blade again
Strike him upon the wound and it will close;
This is the truth, I seek not to impose,
For it shall fail not while it's in your hold."
And when this knight had thus his message told,
He rode out of the hall and did alight.
His steed, which shone as sun does, and as bright,
Stood in the courtyard, still as any stone.
This knight was to a chamber led anon,
And was unarmed, and there at meat sat down.
The gifts were brought and royally were shown.
That is to say, the sword and glass of power,
And borne anon into the donjon tower
By certain officers detailed thereto;
The ring to Canace was borne also
With ceremony, where she sat at table.
But certainly, it is no lie or fable,
The horse of brass could no way be removed;
It stood as it were glued to ground. 'Twas proved
There was no man could lead it out or drive
With any windlass that he might contrive.
And why? Because they hadn't craft to heave it.
And therefore in that place they had to leave it
Until the knight had taught them the manner
Of moving it, as you'll hereafter hear.
Great was the press of people to and fro
Swarming to see this horse that stood there so;
For it so high was, and so broad and long,
So well proportioned as to be most strong,
Just as it were a steed of Lombardy;
Therewith as horselike and as quick of eye
As if a gentle Apulian courser 'twere.
For truly, from his tail unto his ear
Nature nor art could better nor amend
In any wise, as people did contend.
But evermore their greatest wonder was,
How it could go, being made all of brass;
It was of Faery, as to people seemed.
And divers folk diversely of it deemed;
So many heads, so many wits, one sees.
They buzzed and murmured like a swarm of bees,
And played about it with their fantasy,
Recalling what they'd learned from poetry;
Like Pegasus it was that mounted high,
That horse which had great wings and so could fly;
Or else it was the horse of Greek Sinon
Who brought Troy to destruction, years agone.
As men in these old histories may read.
"My heart," said one, "is evermore in dread;
I think some men-at-arms are hid therein
Who have in mind this capital to win.
It were right well that of such things we know."
Another whispered to his fellow, low,
And said: "He lies, for it is rather like
Some conjured up appearance of magic,
Which jugglers practise at these banquets great."
Of sundry doubts like these they all did treat,
As vulgar people chatter commonly
Of all things that are made more cunningly
Than they San in their ignorance comprehend;
They gladly judge they're made for some base end.
And some much wondered on the mirror's power,
That had been borne up to the donjon tower,
And how men in it such strange things could see.
Another answered, saying it might be
Quite natural, by angles oddly spaced
And sly reflections thus within it placed,
And said, at Rome was such a one, men know.
They spoke of Alhazen and Vitello
And Aristotle, who wrote, in their lives,
On mirrors strange and on perspectives,
As all they know who've read their published word.
And other folk did wonder on the sword
That had the power to pierce through anything;
And so they spoke of Telephus the king,
And of Achilles with his magic spear,
Wherewith he healed and hurt too, 'twould appear,
Even as a man might do with this new sword
Of which, but now, I've told and you have heard.
They spoke of tempering metal sundry wise,
And medicines therewith, which men devise,
And. how and when such steel should hardened be;
Which, nevertheless, is all unknown to me.
Then spoke they of fair Canace's gold ring,
And all men said that such a wondrous thing
They'd ne'er heard of as being in ring-craft done,
Except that Moses and King Solomon
Had each a name for cunning in such art.
Thus spoke the people and then drew apart,
But notwithstanding, some said that it was
Wondrous to make fern-ashes into glass,
Since glass is nothing like the ash of fern;
But since long since of this thing men did learn,
Therefore they ceased their gabble and their wonder,
As sorely wonder some on cause of thunder,
Of ebb, of flood, of gossamer, of mist,
And each thing, till they know what cause exist.
Thus did they chatter and judge and thus surmise
Until the king did from the board arise.
Phoebus had left the angle meridional,
And yet ascending was that beast royal,
The noble Lion, with his Aldiran,
When that this Tartar king, this Cambinskan
Rose from his board where he had sat full high.
Before him went the sounding minstrelsy,
Into a room hung with rich ornaments,
Wherein they sounded divers instruments
Till it was like a heavenly thing to hear.
And now danced merry Venus' children dear,
For in the Fish their lady sat on high
And looked upon them with a friendly eye.
This noble king sat high upon his throne.
And this strange knight was brought to him anon,
And then to dance he went with Canace.
Here was such revel and such jollity
As no dull man is able to surmise;
He must have known and served love's high emprise,
And be a festive man as fresh as May
Who could for you describe such an array.
Who could tell you the figures of the dances,
So odd and strange and the blithe countenances,
The subtle glances and dissimulation
For fear of jealous persons' observation?
No man but Launcelot, and he is dead!
I therefore pass the joyous life they led
And saw no more, but in this jolliness
I leave them till to supper all did press.
The steward bade them serve the spices, aye,
And the rich wine through all this melody.
The ushers and the squires got them gone;
The spices and the wine were come anon.
They ate and drank, and when this had an end,
Unto the temple, as was right, did wend.
The service done, they supped while yet 'twas day.
What needs it that I tell all their array?
Each man knows well that at a kingly feast
There's plenty for the greatest and the least,
And dainties more than are in my knowing.
Then, after supper, went this noble king
To see the horse of brass, with all the rout
Of lords and ladies thronging him about.
Such wondering was there on this horse of brass
That, since the siege of Troy did overpass,
When once a horse seemed marvellous to men.
Was there such wondering as happened then.
But finally the king asked of this knight
The virtue of this courser, and the might,
And prayed him tell the means of governance.
This horse anon began to trip and dance
When this strange knight laid hand upon the rein
And said: "Sire, there's no more I need explain
Than, when you wish to journey anywhere,
You must but twirl a peg within his ear,
Which I will show you when alone with you.
You must direct him to what place also,
Or to what country you may please to ride.
And when you come to where you would abide,
Bid him descend, and twirl another pin,
For therein lies the secret of the gin,
And he will then descend and do your will;
And there he'll stand, obedient and still.
Though all the world the contrary had sworn,
He shall not thence be drawn nor thence be borne.
Or, if you wish to bid him thence be gone,
Twirl but this pin and he'll depart anon
And vanish utterly from all men's sight,
And then return to you, by day or night,
When you shall please to call him back again
In such a fashion as I will explain
When we two are alone, and that full soon.
Ride when you choose, there's no more to be done."
Instructed when the king was by that knight,
And when he'd stablished in his mind aright
The method and the form of all this thing,
Then glad and blithe this noble doughty king
Repaired unto his revels as before.
The bridle to the donjon tower they bore,
And placed among his jewels rich and dear.
How I know not, the horse did disappear
Out of their sight; you get no more of me.
But thus I leave, in joy and jollity,
This Cambinskan with all his lords feasting
Well nigh until the day began to spring.
Explicit prima pars.
Sequitur pars secunda.
The nurse of good digestion, natural sleep,
Caused them to nod, and bade them they take keep
That labour and much drinking must have rest;
And with a gaping mouth all these he pressed,
And said that it was time they laid them down,
For blood was in the ascendant, as was shown,
And nature's friend, the blood, must honoured be.
They thanked him, gaping all, by two, by three,
And every one began to go to rest,
As sleep them bade; they took it for the best.
But here their dreams shall not by me be said;
The fumes of wine had filled each person's head,
Which cause senseless dreams at any time.
They slept next morning till the hour of prime,
That is, the others, but not Canace;
She was right temperate, as women be.
For of her father had she taken leave,
To go to rest, soon after it was eve;
For neither pale nor languid would she be,
Nor wear a weary look for men to see;
But slept her first deep sleep and then awoke.
For so much joy upon her heart there broke
When she looked on the mirror and the ring
That twenty times she flushed, and sleep did bring-
So strong an impress had the mirror made-
A vision of it to the slumbering maid.
Wherefore, ere up the sun began to glide,
She called her mistress, sleeping there beside,
And said to her that she was pleased to rise.
Old women like this governess are wise,
Or often so, and she replied anon,
And said: "My lady, where will you be gone
Thus early? For the folk are all at rest."
"I will," said she, "arise, for I've no zest
For longer sleep, and I will walk about."
Her mistress called of women a great rout,
And they rose up, a dozen more or less,
And up rose lovely Canace to dress,
As ruddy and bright as is the warm young sun
That in the Ram now four degrees has run;
He was no higher when she all ready was;
And forth she sauntered at an easy pace,
Arrayed according to the season sweet,
Lightly, to play and walk on maiden feet;
With five or six girls of her company
All down an alley, through the park, went she.
The morning mists that rose from the damp earth
Reddened the sun and broadened it in girth;
Nevertheless it was so fair a sight
That it made all their hearts dance for delight,
What of the season and the fair morning,
And all the myriad birds that she heard sing;
For when she heard, she knew well what they meant,
Just by their songs, and learned all their intent.
The point of every story, why it's told,
If it's delayed till interest grow cold
In those who have, perchance, heard it before,
The savour passes from it more and more,
For fulsomeness of its prolixity.
And for this reason, as it seems to me,
I should to my tale's major point descend
And make of these girls' walking a swift end.
Amidst a dry, dead tree, as white as chalk,
As Canace was playing in her walk,
There sat a falcon overhead full high,
That in a pitiful voice began to cry,
rill all the wood resounded mournfully.
For she had beaten herself so pitiably
With both her wings that the red glistening blood
Ran down the tree trunk whereupon she stood.
And ever in one same way she cried and shrieked,
And with her beak her body she so pricked
That there's no tiger, nor a cruel beast
That dwells in open wood or deep forest,
Would not have wept, if ever weep he could,
For pity of her, she shrieked alway so loud.
For never yet has been a man alive-
If but description I could well contrive-
That heard of such a falcon for fairness,
As well of plumage as of nobleness
Of shape, and all that reckoned up might be.
A falcon peregrine she was, and she
Seemed from a foreign land; and as she stood
She fainted now and then for loss of blood,
Till almost she had fallen from the tree.
This king's fair daughter, Princess Canace,
Who on her finger bore the magic ring
Whereby she understood well everything
That any bird might in his language say,
And in such language could reply straightway,
She understood well what this falcon said,
And of her pity well-nigh was she dead.
So to the tree she went right hastily,
And on this falcon looked she pitifully,
And held her lap up wide, for she knew now
The falcon must come falling from the bough
When next it swooned away from loss of blood.
A long while waiting there the princess stood,
Till at the last she spoke, in her voice clear,
Unto the hawk, as you'll hereafter hear.
"What is the cause, if it be one to tell,
That you are in this furious pain of hell?"
Said Canace unto this hawk above.
"Is this for sorrow of death or loss of love?
For, as I think, these are the causes two
That torture gentle heart with greatest woe;
Of other ills there is no need to speak,
Because such harm upon yourself you wreak;
Which proves right well that either love or dread
Must be the reason for your cruel deed,
Since I can see no one that gives you chase.
For love of God, come, do yourself some grace,
Or say what thing may help ; for west nor east
Have I before now seen a bird or beast
That ever treated self so wretchedly.
You slay me with your sorrow, verily,
Such great compassion in my heart has grown.
For God's dear love, come from the dry tree down;
And, as I am a monarch's daughter true,
If I but verily the real cause knew
Of your distress, if it lay in my might,
I would make you amends before the night,
As truly help me God of human kind!
And even now will I look out and find
Some herbs to heal your hurts with, speedily."
Then shrieked this falcon the more piteously
Than ever, and to ground fell down anon,
And lay there, swooning, deathlike as a stone,
Till Canace within her lap did take
And hold the bird till she began to wake.
And when from out her fainting fit she made,
All in her own hawk's language thus she said:
"That pity wells up soon in gentle heart,
Feeling its likeness in all pains that smart,
Is proved, and day by day, as men may see,
As well by deeds as by authority;
For gentle heart can spy out gentleness.
I see well that you have on my distress
Compassion, my fair Princess Canace,
Of truly womanly benignity
That nature in your character has set.
Not that I hope much good therefrom to get,
But to obey the word of your heart free,
And so that others may be warned by me,
As by the whelp instructed is the lion,
Just for that cause and reason shall I fly on,
While yet I have the leisure and the space,
The story of my wrongs to you I'll trace."
And ever, while the one her sorrow said,
The other wept, as she to water'd fled,
Until the falcon bade her to be still;
And with a sigh, right thus she said her will.
"Where I was born (alas, that cruel day!)
And fostered on a rock of marble grey
So tenderly that nothing troubled me,
I knew not what it was, adversity,
Till I could soar on high under the sky.
There dwelt a handsome tercelet there, hard by,
Who seemed the dwell of every nobleness;
Though he was full of treason and falseness,
It was so hidden under humble bearing,
And under hues of truth which he was wearing,
And under kindness, never used in vain,
That no one could have dreamed that he could feign,
So deeply ingrained were his colours dyed.
But just as serpent under flower will hide
Until he sees the time has come to bite,
Just so this god of love, this hypocrite
With false humility for ever served
And seemed a wooer who the rites observed
That so become the gentleness of love.
As of a tomb the fairness is above,
While under is the corpse, such as you know,
So was this hypocrite, cold and hot also;
And in this wise he served his foul intent
That (save the Fiend) no one knew what he meant,
Till he so long had wept and had complained,
And many a year his service to me feigned,
That my poor heart, a pitiful sacrifice,
All ignorant of his supreme malice,
Fearing he'd die, as it then seemed to me,
Because of his great oaths and surety,
Granted him love, on this condition known,
That evermore my honour and renown
Were saved, both private fame and fame overt;
That is to say, that, after his desert
I gave him all my heart and all my thought-
God knows, and he, that more I gave him naught-
And took his heart in change for mine, for aye.
But true it is, and has been many a day,
A true man and a thief think not at one.
And when he saw the thing so far was gone
That I had fully granted him my love,
In such a way as I've explained above,
And given him my faithful heart, as free
As he swore he had given his to me,
Anon this tiger, full of doubleness,
Fell on his knees, devout in humbleness,
With so high reverence, and, by his face,
So like a lover in his gentle grace,
So ravished, as it seemed, for very joy,
That never Jason nor Paris of Troy-
Jason? Nay, truly, nor another man
Since Lamech lived, who was the first began
To love two women (those that write have sworn),
Not ever, since the primal man was born,
Could any man, by twenty-thousandth part,
Enact the tricks of this deceiver's art;
Nor were he worthy to unlace his shoe,
Where double-dealing or deceit were due,
Nor could so thank a person as he me!
His manner was most heavenly to see,
For any woman, were she ever so wise;
So painted he, and combed, at point-device,
His manner, all in all, and every word.
And so much by his bearing was I stirred
And for the truth I thought was in his heart,
That, if aught troubled him and made him smart,
Though ever so little bit, and I knew this,
It seemed to me I felt death's cruel kiss.
And briefly, so far all these matters went,
My will became his own will's instrument;
That is to say, my will obeyed his will
In everything in reason, good or ill,
Keeping within the bounds of honour ever.
Never had I a thing so dear- ah, never!-
As him, God knows! nor ever shall anew.
"This lasted longer than a year or two
While I supposed of him no thing but good.
But finally, thus at the last it stood,
That Fortune did decree that he must win
Out of that place, that home, that I was in.
Whether I felt woe, there's no question, none;
I can't describe my feelings, no, not one;
But one thing dare I tell, and that boldly,
I came to know the pain of death thereby;
Such grief I felt for him, none might believe.
So on a day of me he took his leave,
So sorrowfully, too, I thought truly
That he felt even as deep a woe as I,
When I had heard him speak and saw his hue.
Nevertheless, I thought he was so true,
And that to me he would come back again
Within a little while, let me explain;
And 'twas quite reasonable that he must go
For honour's sake, for oft it happens so,
That I made virtue of necessity,
And took it well, because it had to be.
A look of cheer I felt not I put on,
And took his hand, I swear it by Saint John.
And said to him: 'Behold, I'm yours in all;
Be you to me as I have been, and shall.'
What he replied it needs not I rehearse,
Who can say better than he, who can do worse?
When he had well said, all his good was done.
'It well behooves him take a lengthy spoon
Who eats with devils,' so I've heard folk say.
So at the last he must be on his way,
And forth he flew to where it pleased him best
When it became his purpose he should rest,
I think he must have had this text in mind,
That 'Everything, returning to its kind,
Gladdens itself'; thus men say, as I guess;
Men love, and naturally, newfangledness,
As do these birds that men in cages feed.
For though you night and day take of them heed,
And fairly strew their cage as soft as silk,
And give them sugar, honey, bread, and milk,
Yet on the instant when the door is up,
They with their feet will spurn their feeding cup,
And to the wood will fly and worms will eat;
So are they all newfangled of their meat,
And love all novelties of their own kind;
Nor nobleness of blood may ever bind.
So fared this tercelet, oh, alas the day!
Though he was gently born, and fresh and gay,
And handsome, and well-mannered, aye and free,
He saw a kite fly, and it proved a she,
And suddenly he loved this she-kite so
That all his love for me did quickly go,
And all his truth turned falsehood in this wise;
Thus has this kite my love in her service,
And I am love-lorn without remedy."
And with that word the hawk began to cry,
And after, swooned on Canace's fair arm.
Great was the sorrow for the falcon's harm
That Canace and all her women made;
They knew not how they might this falcon aid.
But Canace home bore her in her lap,
And softly her in poultices did wrap
Where she with her own beak had hurt herself.
Now Canace dug herbs more rich than pelf
Out of the ground, and made up ointments new
Of precious herbs, all beautiful of hue,
Wherewith to heal this hawk; from day to night
She nursed her carefully with all her might.
And by her bed's head she contrived a mew
And lined the cage with velvets all of blue,
Symbol of truth that is in women seen.
And all without, the mew was painted green,
And there were painted all these treacherous fowls
As are these titmice, tercelets, and these owls,
While for despite were painted there beside
Magpies, that they might cry at them and chide.
Thus leave I Canace her hawk keeping,
I will no more, just now, speak of her ring,
Till I come back with purpose to explain
How this poor falcon got her love again
Repentant, as the story tells to us,
By mediation of that Cambalus,
The king's son, of whom I've already told.
But henceforth I a straightened course will hold
Great battles and adventures to relate,
Whereof were never heard such marvels great.
First will I tell you of King Cambinskan
Who won so many a town and many a man;
And after will I speak of Algarsyf,
How he won Theodora for his wife,
For whom full oft in peril great he was,
Had he been help ed not by the steed of brass;
And after that I'll speak of Cambalo,
Who in the lists fought with the brothers two
For Canace, before he could her win.
And where I left off, I'll again begin.
Explicit secunda pars.
Incipit pars tercia.
Apollo in his chariot whirled so high
That in the God Mercurius' house, the sly--
Fan Cunzhong : In the age of Chaucer, the Book of Ser Marco Polo had become the most widely read account of China in Europe. In the Sqire's tale there is a Mongol khan and there are several Tartar names and a few wonderful things. But the tale is obviously modelles on the metrical romance Sir Gawain and the green knight. The knight who comes to the khan's court6 on a horse of brass is very much like the green knight who comes to Arthur’s court on a green horse. Moreover, Chaucer's characterization of Combyuskan, the Mongol khan, is medieval rather than Chinese. It is therefore doubtful whether the poet ever used the Book of Marco Polo.
Sekundärliteratur
http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng330/chaucersquire.htm.
Oure Hoost asks the Squire to tell a tale "somwhat of love" and the Squire demurs, but promises to tell a tale "as I kan... My wyl is good". After this unpromising beginning, the tale unfolds in three segments: Cambyuskan's birthday party; the arrival of the mysterious, gift-bearing visitor, the struggle to interpret his four gifts, and Canacee's use of the mirror and ring in her meeting with the "faucon peregryn"; and the interrupted description of Cambuskan's victories, Algarsif's wedding and escape from danger with the brass horse, and Cambalo's tournament victory to win Canacee. This is followed by the Franklin's interruption of the Squire in mid-sentence with a series of awkwardly delivered (or ironic) compliments. The Franklin is, himself, interrupted by the Hoost in the midst of a diatribe about his son's failure to pursue "gentilesse". Then the Hoost asks the Franklin to tell a tale, and he agrees to do so.
The setting in the Tartar or Mongol Empire appears to allude to the Squire's father's war experiences, but the Squire apparently knows of it only second-hand. How might this tale be a kind of "homage" to his father ?
- Document: Chaucer, Geoffrey. The squire's tale : modern English. In : Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury tales. [MS, geschrieben 1387-1400].
http://classicl*t.about.com/library/bl-etexts/gchaucer/bl-gchau-can-squ.htm. (Chau1, Web) - Person: Chaucer, Geoffrey
- Document: China und die Fremden : 3000 Jahre Auseinandersetzung in Krieg und Frieden. Hrsg. von Wolfgang Bauer. (München : Beck, 1980). (Bau 2, Publication)
Pires schreibt vor seiner Reise nach China : "The king of China is a heathen... The people of China are white, as white as we are... They are rather like Germans. They have thirty or forty hairs in their beards. They were very well-made French shoes with square toes. All Chinese eat pigs, cows and other animals... They are weak people of small account. Those who are to be seen in Malacca are not very truthful, and steal - that is the common people. They eat with two sticks, and the earthenware of china bowl in their left hand close to their mouth, with the two sticks to suck in. This is the Chinese way. The women look like Spanish women... They put a lot of ceruse on their faces and paint on the top of it, and they are so made up that Seville has no advantage ower them... They all carry fans in their hands. They are as white as we are, and some of them have small eyes and other large, and noses as they must be."
"Their method is to boil water in a great jar, and when it bubbles, to put a little child in an iron cage, place this over the jar and steaming the child in the vapour until the sweat comes out. When it has all come out they take the child from the cage and with a brush of iron bristles remove the softened skin. The child is still living. Then they kill it, slitting the abdomen and removing the intestines and stomach ; the body is then further steamed before it is eaten."
- Person: Pires, Tomé
- Person: Elizabeth I.
- Document: Library of Congress : http://catalog.loc.gov/. (LOC, Web)
- Person: Elizabeth I.
- Person: Wood, Benjamin
Er schreibt an Jacob Tonson : "I have broken off my studies from the Conquest of China to review Virgil, and bestowed my entire days upon him."
[The conquest of China wurde nie publiziert].
- Person: Dryden, John
- Person: Howard, Robert Sir
Chapter XIV : Attacked by Tartars
It was the beginning of February, new style, when we set out from Pekin. My partner and the old pilot had gone express back to the port where we had first put in, to dispose of some goods which we had left there; and I, with a Chinese merchant whom I had some knowledge of at Nankin, and who came to Pekin on his own affairs, went to Nankin, where I bought ninety pieces of fine damasks, with about two hundred pieces of other very fine silk of several sorts, some mixed with gold, and had all these brought to Pekin against my partner's return. Besides this, we bought a large quantity of raw silk, and some other goods, our cargo amounting, in these goods only, to about three thousand five hundred pounds sterling; which, together with tea and some fine calicoes, and three camels' loads of nutmegs and cloves, loaded in all eighteen camels for our share, besides those we rode upon; these, with two or three spare horses, and two horses loaded with provisions, made together twenty-six camels and horses in our retinue.
The company was very great, and, as near as I can remember, made between three and four hundred horses, and upwards of one hundred and twenty men, very well armed and provided for all events; for as the Eastern caravans are subject to be attacked by the Arabs, so are these by the Tartars. The company consisted of people of several nations, but there were above sixty of them merchants or inhabitants of Moscow, though of them some were Livonians; and to our particular satisfaction, five of them were Scots, who appeared also to be men of great experience in business, and of very good substance.
When we had travelled one day's journey, the guides, who were five in number, called all the passengers, except the servants, to a great council, as they called it. At this council every one deposited a certain quantity of money to a common stock, for the necessary expense of buying forage on the way, where it was not otherwise to be had, and for satisfying the guides, getting horses, and the like. Here, too, they constituted the journey, as they call it, viz. they named captains and officers to draw us all up, and give the word of command, in case of an attack, and give every one their turn of command; nor was this forming us into order any more than what we afterwards found needful on the way.
The road all on this side of the country is very populous, and is full of potters and earth-makers--that is to say, people, that temper the earth for the China ware. As I was coming along, our Portuguese pilot, who had always something or other to say to make us merry, told me he would show me the greatest rarity in all the country, and that I should have this to say of China, after all the ill-humoured things that I had said of it, that I had seen one thing which was not to be seen in all the world beside. I was very importunate to know what it was; at last he told me it was a gentleman's house built with China ware. "Well," says I, "are not the materials of their buildings the products of their own country, and so it is all China ware, is it not?"--"No, no," says he, "I mean it is a house all made of China ware, such as you call it in England, or as it is called in our country, porcelain."--"Well," says I, "such a thing may be; how big is it? Can we carry it in a box upon a camel? If we can we will buy it."--"Upon a camel!" says the old pilot, holding up both his hands; "why, there is a family of thirty people lives in it."
I was then curious, indeed, to see it; and when I came to it, it was nothing but this: it was a timber house, or a house built, as we call it in England, with lath and plaster, but all this plastering was really China ware--that is to say, it was plastered with the earth that makes China ware. The outside, which the sun shone hot upon, was glazed, and looked very well, perfectly white, and painted with blue figures, as the large China ware in England is painted, and hard as if it had been burnt. As to the inside, all the walls, instead of wainscot, were lined with hardened and painted tiles, like the little square tiles we call galley-tiles in England, all made of the finest china, and the figures exceeding fine indeed, with extraordinary variety of colours, mixed with gold, many tiles making but one figure, but joined so artificially, the mortar being made of the same earth, that it was very hard to see where the tiles met. The floors of the rooms were of the same composition, and as hard as the earthen floors we have in use in several parts of England; as hard as stone, and smooth, but not burnt and painted, except some smaller rooms, like closets, which were all, as it were, paved with the same tile; the ceiling and all the plastering work in the whole house were of the same earth; and, after all, the roof was covered with tiles of the same, but of a deep shining black. This was a China warehouse indeed, truly and literally to be called so, and had I not been upon the journey, I could have stayed some days to see and examine the particulars of it. They told me there were fountains and fishponds in the garden, all paved on the bottom and sides with the same; and fine statues set up in rows on the walks, entirely formed of the porcelain earth, burnt whole.
As this is one of the singularities of China, so they may be allowed to excel in it; but I am very sure they excel in their accounts of it; for they told me such incredible things of their performance in crockery-ware, for such it is, that I care not to relate, as knowing it could not be true. They told me, in particular, of one workman that made a ship with all its tackle and masts and sails in earthenware, big enough to carry fifty men. If they had told me he launched it, and made a voyage to Japan in it, I might have said something to it indeed; but as it was, I knew the whole of the story, which was, in short, that the fellow lied: so I smiled, and said nothing to it. This odd sight kept me two hours behind the caravan, for which the leader of it for the day fined me about the value of three shillings; and told me if it had been three days' journey without the wall, as it was three days' within, he must have fined me four times as much, and made me ask pardon the next council-day. I promised to be more orderly; and, indeed, I found afterwards the orders made for keeping all together were absolutely necessary for our common safety.
In two days more we passed the great China wall, made for a fortification against the Tartars: and a very great work it is, going over hills and mountains in an endless track, where the rocks are impassable, and the precipices such as no enemy could possibly enter, or indeed climb up, or where, if they did, no wall could hinder them. They tell us its length is near a thousand English miles, but that the country is five hundred in a straight measured line, which the wall bounds without measuring the windings and turnings it takes; it is about four fathoms high, and as many thick in some places.
I stood still an hour or thereabouts without trespassing on our orders (for so long the caravan was in passing the gate), to look at it on every side, near and far off; I mean what was within my view: and the guide, who had been extolling it for the wonder of the world, was mighty eager to hear my opinion of it. I told him it was a most excellent thing to keep out the Tartars; which he happened not to understand as I meant it and so took it for a compliment; but the old pilot laughed! "Oh, Seignior Inglese," says he, "you speak in colours."--"In colours!" said I; "what do you mean by that?"--"Why, you speak what looks white this way and black that way--gay one way and dull another. You tell him it is a good wall to keep out Tartars; you tell me by that it is good for nothing but to keep out Tartars. I understand you, Seignior Inglese, I understand you; but Seignior Chinese understood you his own way."--"Well," says I, "do you think it would stand out an army of our country people, with a good train of artillery; or our engineers, with two companies of miners? Would not they batter it down in ten days, that an army might enter in battalia; or blow it up in the air, foundation and all, that there should be no sign of it left?"--"Ay, ay," says he, "I know that." The Chinese wanted mightily to know what I said to the pilot, and I gave him leave to tell him a few days after, for we were then almost out of their country, and he was to leave us a little time after this; but when he knew what I said, he was dumb all the rest of the way, and we heard no more of his fine story of the Chinese power and greatness while he stayed.
After we passed this mighty nothing, called a wall, something like the Picts' walls so famous in Northumberland, built by the Romans, we began to find the country thinly inhabited, and the people rather confined to live in fortified towns, as being subject to the inroads and depredations of the Tartars, who rob in great armies, and therefore are not to be resisted by the naked inhabitants of an open country. And here I began to find the necessity of keeping together in a caravan as we travelled, for we saw several troops of Tartars roving about; but when I came to see them distinctly, I wondered more that the Chinese empire could be conquered by such contemptible fellows; for they are a mere horde of wild fellows, keeping no order and understanding no discipline or manner of it. Their horses are poor lean creatures, taught nothing, and fit for nothing; and this we found the first day we saw them, which was after we entered the wilder part of the country. Our leader for the day gave leave for about sixteen of us to go a hunting as they call it; and what was this but a hunting of sheep!--however, it may be called hunting too, for these creatures are the wildest and swiftest of foot that ever I saw of their kind! only they will not run a great way, and you are sure of sport when you begin the chase, for they appear generally thirty or forty in a flock, and, like true sheep, always keep together when they fly.
In pursuit of this odd sort of game it was our hap to meet with about forty Tartars: whether they were hunting mutton, as we were, or whether they looked for another kind of prey, we know not; but as soon as they saw us, one of them blew a hideous blast on a kind of horn. This was to call their friends about them, and in less than ten minutes a troop of forty or fifty more appeared, at about a mile distance; but our work was over first, as it happened.
One of the Scots merchants of Moscow happened to be amongst us; and as soon as he heard the horn, he told us that we had nothing to do but to charge them without loss of time; and drawing us up in a line, he asked if we were resolved. We told him we were ready to follow him; so he rode directly towards them. They stood gazing at us like a mere crowd, drawn up in no sort of order at all; but as soon as they saw us advance, they let fly their arrows, which missed us, very happily. Not that they mistook their aim, but their distance; for their arrows all fell a little short of us, but with so true an aim, that had we been about twenty yards nearer we must have had several men wounded, if not killed.
Immediately we halted, and though it was at a great distance, we fired, and sent them leaden bullets for wooden arrows, following our shot full gallop, to fall in among them sword in hand--for so our bold Scot that led us directed. He was, indeed, but a merchant, but he behaved with such vigour and bravery on this occasion, and yet with such cool courage too, that I never saw any man in action fitter for command. As soon as we came up to them we fired our pistols in their faces and then drew; but they fled in the greatest confusion imaginable. The only stand any of them made was on our right, where three of them stood, and, by signs, called the rest to come back to them, having a kind of scimitar in their hands, and their bows hanging to their backs. Our brave commander, without asking anybody to follow him, gallops up close to them, and with his fusee knocks one of them off his horse, killed the second with his pistol, and the third ran away. Thus ended our fight; but we had this misfortune attending it, that all our mutton we had in chase got away. We had not a man killed or hurt; as for the Tartars, there were about five of them killed--how many were wounded we knew not; but this we knew, that the other party were so frightened with the noise of our guns that they fled, and never made any attempt upon us.
We were all this while in the Chinese dominions, and therefore the Tartars were not so bold as afterwards; but in about five days we entered a vast wild desert, which held us three days' and nights' march; and we were obliged to carry our water with us in great leathern bottles, and to encamp all night, just as I have heard they do in the desert of Arabia. I asked our guides whose dominion this was in, and they told me this was a kind of border that might be called no man's land, being a part of Great Karakathy, or Grand Tartary: that, however, it was all reckoned as belonging to China, but that there was no care taken here to preserve it from the inroads of thieves, and therefore it was reckoned the worst desert in the whole march, though we were to go over some much larger.
In passing this frightful wilderness we saw, two or three times, little parties of the Tartars, but they seemed to be upon their own affairs, and to have no design upon us; and so, like the man who met the devil, if they had nothing to say to us, we had nothing to say to them: we let them go. Once, however, a party of them came so near as to stand and gaze at us. Whether it was to consider if they should attack us or not, we knew not; but when we had passed at some distance by them, we made a rear-guard of forty men, and stood ready for them, letting the caravan pass half a mile or thereabouts before us. After a while they marched off, but they saluted us with five arrows at their parting, which wounded a horse so that it disabled him, and we left him the next day, poor creature, in great need of a good farrier. We saw no more arrows or Tartars that time.
We travelled near a month after this, the ways not being so good as at first, though still in the dominions of the Emperor of China, but lay for the most part in the villages, some of which were fortified, because of the incursions of the Tartars. When we were come to one of these towns (about two days and a half's journey before we came to the city of Naum), I wanted to buy a camel, of which there are plenty to be sold all the way upon that road, and horses also, such as they are, because, so many caravans coming that way, they are often wanted. The person that I spoke to to get me a camel would have gone and fetched one for me; but I, like a fool, must be officious, and go myself along with him; the place was about two miles out of the village, where it seems they kept the camels and horses feeding under a guard.
I walked it on foot, with my old pilot and a Chinese, being very desirous of a little variety. When we came to the place it was a low, marshy ground, walled round with stones, piled up dry, without mortar or earth among them, like a park, with a little guard of Chinese soldiers at the door. Having bought a camel, and agreed for the price, I came away, and the Chinese that went with me led the camel, when on a sudden came up five Tartars on horseback. Two of them seized the fellow and took the camel from him, while the other three stepped up to me and my old pilot, seeing us, as it were, unarmed, for I had no weapon about me but my sword, which could but ill defend me against three horsem*n. The first that came up stopped short upon my drawing my sword, for they are arrant cowards; but a second, coming upon my left, gave me a blow on the head, which I never felt till afterwards, and wondered, when I came to myself, what was the matter, and where I was, for he laid me flat on the ground; but my never-failing old pilot, the Portuguese, had a pistol in his pocket, which I knew nothing of, nor the Tartars either: if they had, I suppose they would not have attacked us, for cowards are always boldest when there is no danger. The old man seeing me down, with a bold heart stepped up to the fellow that had struck me, and laying hold of his arm with one hand, and pulling him down by main force a little towards him, with the other shot him into the head, and laid him dead upon the spot. He then immediately stepped up to him who had stopped us, as I said, and before he could come forward again, made a blow at him with a scimitar, which he always wore, but missing the man, struck his horse in the side of his head, cut one of the ears off by the root, and a great slice down by the side of his face. The poor beast, enraged with the wound, was no more to be governed by his rider, though the fellow sat well enough too, but away he flew, and carried him quite out of the pilot's reach; and at some distance, rising upon his hind legs, threw down the Tartar, and fell upon him.
In this interval the poor Chinese came in who had lost the camel, but he had no weapon; however, seeing the Tartar down, and his horse fallen upon him, away he runs to him, and seizing upon an ugly weapon he had by his side, something like a pole-axe, he wrenched it from him, and made shift to knock his Tartarian brains out with it. But my old man had the third Tartar to deal with still; and seeing he did not fly, as he expected, nor come on to fight him, as he apprehended, but stood stock still, the old man stood still too, and fell to work with his tackle to charge his pistol again: but as soon as the Tartar saw the pistol away he scoured, and left my pilot, my champion I called him afterwards, a complete victory.
By this time I was a little recovered. I thought, when I first began to wake, that I had been in a sweet sleep; but, as I said above, I wondered where I was, how I came upon the ground, and what was the matter. A few moments after, as sense returned, I felt pain, though I did not know where; so I clapped my hand to my head, and took it away bloody; then I felt my head ache: and in a moment memory returned, and everything was present to me again. I jumped upon my feet instantly, and got hold of my sword, but no enemies were in view: I found a Tartar lying dead, and his horse standing very quietly by him; and, looking further, I saw my deliverer, who had been to see what the Chinese had done, coming back with his hanger in his hand. The old man, seeing me on my feet, came running to me, and joyfully embraced me, being afraid before that I had been killed. Seeing me bloody, he would see how I was hurt; but it was not much, only what we call a broken head; neither did I afterwards find any great inconvenience from the blow, for it was well again in two or three days.
We made no great gain, however, by this victory, for we lost a camel and gained a horse. I paid for the lost camel, and sent for another; but I did not go to fetch it myself: I had had enough of that.
The city of Naum, which we were approaching, is a frontier of the Chinese empire, and is fortified in their fashion. We wanted, as I have said, above two days' journey of this city when messengers were sent express to every part of the road to tell all travellers and caravans to halt till they had a guard sent for them; for that an unusual body of Tartars, making ten thousand in all, had appeared in the way, about thirty miles beyond the city.
This was very bad news to travellers: however, it was carefully done of the governor, and we were very glad to hear we should have a guard. Accordingly, two days after, we had two hundred soldiers sent us from a garrison of the Chinese on our left, and three hundred more from the city of Naum, and with these we advanced boldly. The three hundred soldiers from Naum marched in our front, the two hundred in our rear, and our men on each side of our camels, with our baggage and the whole caravan in the centre; in this order, and well prepared for battle, we thought ourselves a match for the whole ten thousand Mogul Tartars, if they had appeared; but the next day, when they did appear, it was quite another thing.
Sekundärliteratur
1935
Ch'en Shou-yi : After having left Cylon and called at Tonquin, Crusoe and his partner proceede to China. As their ship is suspected of being manned by pirates, they decide to land at Quinchang, a minor port, where they finally dispose of their cargo. Thence they go on to Nankin overland. They stay in Nankin for some time, and set out for Peking in company with some jesuits. From Peking they depart for Europe by caravan toward Archangel.
Although the description is very general and hazy, and the narrative dull and almost irrelevant to the main thread of the novel, the critical remarks and generalizations therein are sufficiently striking.
1940
Qian Zhongshu : In spite of Defoe's genius for realistic details, these chapters are rather shadowy. His knowledge of China is apparently inadequate for the purpose, and he has to spread it thin. He forestalls our criticism by the following remark : "I shall make no more descriptions of countries and people : it is none of my business or any part of my design ; but giving an account of my own adventures." But Robinson Crusoe had no adventures worthy of the name when he travelled through China with a Portuguese pilot as his guide. He recorded only his impressions and reflections on Chinese life.
Defoe is evidently in reaction against the seventeenth-century view of China. His analysis of the cause of this earlier attitude is quite subtle : the excell of admiration that the seventeenth-century writers conceived of China arose partly from the pleasant surprise of finding China more vicilised than they had expected, and partly from the proneness to take the Chinese at their own estimate. If Defoe had also mentioned the enchantment lent to China by distance, his diagnosis would have been complete.
Defoe's remarks almost set the tone of the eighteenth-century English criticism of China. Writers repeated what Defoe had said without perhaps being aware of the fact. These advers criticism in Robinson Crusoe also throw a sidelight upon Defoe's earlier romance The consodidator.
1990
Willy Richard Berger : Die Abenteuer von Robinson Crusoe führen über die indonesische Inselwelt nach Formosa, Nanking und Peking ; er bekommt die Grosse Mauer zu sehen und reist mit einer Karawane durch die Tartarei und Sibirien nach England zurück. Wo Defoes fast feindselige Haltung allem Chinesischen gegenüber herstammt, ist aus den Quellen, die er benutzte, kaum ersichtlich. Defoe hat sich bei Dampier bedient, aber Dampier war weder an der chinesischen Kultur interessiert noch ging sein Verständnis über das eines aufrechten christlichen Seemanns hinaus. Auch er kam nicht mit dem Konfuzianismus der gebildeten Schichten, sonder vor allem mit dem Buddhismus und Taoismus der einfachen Bevölkerung der Hafenstädte in Berührung ; da war dann allerdings eine Parteinahme entschieden negativ. Die Opfer, die chinesische Kauf- und Seeleute ihren Idolen brachten, erfüllten ich mit Abscheu, und ein Erlebnis mit einem ungebildeten Bauern, der ihn an einem zerfallenen Waldaltar vergeblich zur religiösen Huldigung zu bewegen suchte, bestärkte ihn in der Überzeugung, dass der chinesische Glaube aus nichts denn aus grotesker Idolatrie bestand.
Als Hauptquelle für die China-Passagen ist Louis Le Comte. Das stimmt wohl, was die Informationen über die kulturellen, politischen, wirschaftlichen Verhältnisse Chinas angeht, trifft aber keineswegs zu in Hinsicht auf Defoes ideologische Abwertung Chinas. Für die Beschreibung der Heimreise durch das Moskowitische Reich benutzte Defoe den Bericht von Isbrand Ides.
Das China des Robinson Crusoe ist ein Land des Aberglaubens und der Idolatrie, der Barbarei, Primitiviät und kindischen Unwissenheit, des Schmutzes, der erbärmlichsten Armut und eines geradezu lächerlich hinter dem europäischen Standard zurückgebliebenen Militärwesens.
Robinson hat auch für die Grosse Mauer nichts als Verachtung übrig. Was als Weltwunder gilt, mag ja vortrefflich geeignet sein, andringende Tataren aufzuhalten, aber würde die Mauer, 'this mighty nothing call'd a wall', auch der europäischen Kriegskunst standhalten ? Nicht einmal die Tataren selbst, als kriegerisch, hinterlistig und grausam verschrien, können Robinson beeindrucken. Mehr aber noch als die materielle ruft die geistige Kultur Chinas Defoes Kritik auf den Plan.
Dass sich bei all dem ein positives China-Bild in Europa hat entfalten können, liegt einzig darin begründet, dass die Europäer überrascht waren, in einer so entlegenen Weltgegend überhaupt Formen der Zivilisation und nicht nur 'a barbarous nation of pagans, little better than savages', anzutreffen.
2004
Han Jiaming : Defoe, who proudly saw England as the best society in the world, had a very negative view of China. In his novel, China is portrayed to be truly a savage, backward and uncivilized country where the enlightened Robinson finds nothing for him to learn from. Here is a typical passage describing Robinson's view of the Chinese people : "The pride of these people is infinitely great, and exceeded by nothing, but their poverty, which adds to that which I call their misery: and I must needs think that the naked savages of America live much more happy, because, as they have nothing, so they desire nothing ; whereas these are proud and insolent, and in the main, are meer beggars and drudges. Their ostentation is inexpressible, and is chiefly shewed in their clothes and buildings, and in keeping multitudes of servants or slaves, and, which is to the last degree ridiculous, their contempt of all the world but themselves." This portrayal of the backwardness of China in the early eighteenth century is rather striking, for historians generally agree that at that period China's productivity was more advanced than that of England. Keeping this in mind, the last clause seems to be self-ridiculing : we could also say that the passage shows Defoe or Crusoe's "contempt of all the world but themselves."
Defoe's strongest contempt is shown in the following passage : "But when I come to compare the miserable people of these countries with ours, their fabricks, their manners of living, their government, their religion, their wealth, and their glory, (as some call it) I must confess, I do not so much as think it is worth naming, or worth my while to write of, or any that shall come after me to read." And Defoe or Crusoe writes further : "hey have firearms, 'tis true, but they are awkward, clumsy, and uncertain in going off : they have powder, but it is of no strength ; they have neither discipline in the field, exercise to their arms, skill to attack, or temper to retreat ; and therefore, I must confess, it seem'd strange to me, when I came home, and heard our people say such fine things of the power, riches, glory, magnificence, and trade of the Chinese ; because I saw, and knew that they were a contemptible herd or crowd of ignorant sordid slaves, subjected to a government qualified only to rule such a people". We must admit that Defoe's notion of the backwardness of Chinese weapons is correct, but the general tone of contempt and the overall charge against China are by no means justified. The late Professor Fan Cunzhong writes about Defoe's attack against China: "We may know what he says, but we don’t know why he says so." Indeed, we could only speculate about Defoe's reasons for attacking China, and the most obvious and probable reason seems to be his pride of his own country’s progress and civilization, a kind of pride he expresses in almost all his writings. To glorify England is his life-long mission, and attacking the idealized China or Chinese is a "ready and easy way." His concern with the reader may also be taken into account. While the Jesuit reports about China particularly appealed to the upper-class intellectuals, Defoe who held the common reader in view, can serve his purpose best by demonizing China.
2006
Chi Yuan-wen : Defoe and his peers adopted a new narrative strategy that leaned heavily on an innovative literary realism. The substantial changes in style and form wrought upon the English society in the eighteenth century raises the question of the dynamic relationship between form and content, which is intriguing but, as many previous scholars have found, not easy to fully dissect. In Robinson Crusoe, Defoe adopts a new narrative strategy different from that of the epic, romance, or knight-errantry to depict the quotidian experience of the rising middle class. Defoe's narrative strategy is to set up a first-person narrator between the reader and the external worls so as to authenticate what the persona is about to witness and experience in his adventures.
Lin Shu's translation of Robinson Crusoe deserves critical attention as shown in his senisitivity for the writer's shifting of narrative style in the story per se. Whit his sensitivity for literary art and prose writing, Lin Shu is obviously keen enough to discern the fact that the novelist is stranded in the predicament of shifting between the first- und third-person narrators ; therefore, he coins and supplements a terminology to describe the style of Defoe's prose fiction as 'a parody of historiography'.
Lin Shu translated the work with the intention to educate and enlighten his compatriots through the introduction of Western literature. What he counted on was not the form of the novel, but the didactic and moral content which would wake the people up.
- Document: Defoe, Daniel. The life and strange surprizing adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, mariner : who lived eight and twenty years alone in an un-habited island on the coas of American, near the mouth of the great river of Oroonoque, having been cast : on shore by shipwreck, eherein all the men perished but himself. The farther adventures of Robinson Crusoe : being the second and last part of his life, and the strange surprizing accounts of his travels round three parts of the globe. Vol. 1-2. (London : W. Taylor, 1719).
Defoe, Daniel. The farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Chapter 12-14.
http://www.digbib.org/Daniel_Defoe_1661/The_Further_Adventures_Of_Robinson_Crusoe. (DefD5, Publication) - Document: Berger, Willy Richard. China-Bild und China-Mode im Europa der Aufklärung. (Köln ; Wien : Böhlau, 1990). S. 90-95. (Berg, Publication)
- Document: Han, Jiaming. Beyond ideology and utopia. [Robinson Crusoe von Daniel Defoe und Gulliver's travels von Jonathan Swift].
www.ailc-icla.org/2004/HKPNew%20-%20Han%20Jiaming.doc. (DefD2, Web) - Person: Defoe, Daniel
For eastward cast thine eye, from whence the Sun
And Orient Science their bright course begun
One god-like Monarch all that Pride confounds ;
He whose long wall the wand'ring Tartar bound ;
Heav'ns ! what a pile ! whole ages perish there.
And one bright blaze turns Learning into air…
- Person: Pope, Alexander
Fan Cunzhong : I do not assert that Samuel Johnson was an apostle of Chinese culture, which certainly he was not : he never loved any country except his own, and he never loved any culture except the classical heritage of Europe. Johnson did come in contact with Chinese culture and as an interpreter and critic of that culture.
- Person: Johnson, Samuel
Enthält Eintragungen über Du Halde's History of China [ID D26919].
Edward Cave issued proposals of a 'just translation' in English, to be entitled Description of China. The work was laborious and took time, but the readers of the Magazine were kept informed of its progress. In March 1737 the Description of China began to appear in weekly numbers, and there followed a heated controversy. In March the magazine pointed out that Richard Brookes edition had left out several moral tales. In a 'Letter to the Public' John Watts justified his omissions and gave some instances of the blunders and inaccuracies in Edward Cave's edition. Such attacks and counter-attacks continued until 1742, when, on the completion of his two volumes, Cave demonstrated once more how much his translation excelled that of Watts.
Letter to the editor about 'Description of China'. In : The Gentleman’s Magazine ; vol. 6 (1736).
"The more I read the Original, the more I admire it ; and wish, for the Benefit of the Publick, your Version was publish'd. What a rich and lovely Country does it represent to us ? How populous and full of glorious Cities ? What a number of surprising and magnificent Works ? What Industry and Genius in the People for mechanic Arts ? But above all, what admirable Maxims in Government and Morality ; wherein the Chinese wisely place the Top of all Sciences ? I am perswaded, no Nation ever had more sublime Notions of Moral Virtue, or produced such a number of illustrious instances in the several Branches of it, as the Chinese, who take more than ordinary Care to record them, for the Instruction of the Publick."
- Person: Cave, Edward
- Person: Du Halde, Jean-Baptiste
- Person: Watts, John
Sekundärliteratur
Fan Cunzhong : Hattchett's adaptation was never produced, it was 'totally unfit for representation'. Probably it was never intended for the stage : it was essentially an opposition pamphlet. Hatchett seems to have made an attempt to introduce orientalism in The Chinese orphan. In the dedication he says : 'China has furnish'd us long with the Produce of her Earth ; with her Manufactures ; and I am willing to flatter myself, the Importation of her Poetry will serve to regale in its Turn'. But there is nothing oriental about 'the dull rhetoric of its blank verse' except the presence of some exotic terms. The dramatis personae indeed look like Chinese, yet what an odd jumble of historical characters ! There one finds Laotze, the famous sophis, an elderly contemporary of Confucius ; Kio Hamti, by which Hatchett probably meant Han Kaoti, the first emperor of the Han dynasty ; Siako, or Hsiao-ho, minister to the great Han emperor ; Camhy (K'ang-his), the second emperor of the Manchu dynasty ; and Ousanquee (Wu San-kwei), a rebellious general during the reign of Camhy. 'Camhy', which in Chinese means prosperity and happiness, is intended by Hatchett to signify 'bitterness and sorrow'.
The Chinese tragedy has for its theme murder and revenge. A monstrous minister of state murders his political rival and all his household except an orphan, who is of royal blood. A couple of faithful friends of the victim take the orphan under their protection, even at the risk of their own lives. The orphan grows up, and at the age of twenty he wreaks vengeance upon the murderer. The plot is crude and loose and shows flagrant violation of decorum and all the unities of the drama. Hatchett considered it 'very rude and imperfect' ; but he was struck by 'certain Strokes of Nature in it, Scarce to be equall'd by the most celebrated of the European Drama'. He discovered in it a political significance. His adaptation was dedicated to the second Duke of Argyle. By 1741 the impetuous Duke had won an unusual popularity : he had been deprived of all his offices after virulent attacks upon Walpole.
Hatchee addresses his Lordship thus : 'As the Chinese are a wise discerning People, and much fam'd for their Art in Government, it is not to be wonder'd at, that the Fable is political : Indeed, it exhibits an amazing Series of Male-administration, which the Chinese Author has wrought up to the highest Pitch of Abhorrence, as if he had been acquainted with the Inflexibility of your Grace's Character in that respect. It's certain, he has exaggerated Nature, and introduced rather a Monster than a Man ; but perhaps it is a Maxim with the Chinese Poets to represent Prime Ministers as so many Devils, to deter honest People from being deluded by then'.
The villain of the piece is Siako, Prime Minister to the Emperor Kio Hamti. Opposed to his is Olopoen, a meritorious general, whose descendant Camhy, 'conceived in bitterness and sorrow' is the Chinese orphan. Grouped about the orphan are a number of loyal friends ; Kifang, a physician ; Vanson, a great officer of the Court ; Susan, Captain of the Guards ; Ousanquee, friend to the physician ; and Laotze, a retired mandarin.
The device, though ingenious, is transparent. Under the thin veil of dramatic characters with exotic names one can easily recognize George II, Sir Robert Walpole, and His Majesty's opposition under the leadership of the Prince of Wales. The Duke of Argyle is there, so are perhaps Lord Chesterfield and Lord Bolingbroke. When The Chinese orphan was published in 1741, furious attacks upon Walpole had flared up again in Parliament : they were led by Carteret in the Lords and by Sandys in the Commons. A motion was introduced, though it failed to be carried, that an address made to the Crown for the removal of Walpole 'from His Majesty's presence and counsels for ever. The appearance of The Chinese orphan was opportune.
Liu Wu-chi : In his Chinese orphan, Hatchett introduced a series of long political harangues that are irrelevant to the story and hinder the development of the dramatic action. The hero is no longer Ch'eng Ying, or Kifang in Hatchett's play, who was instrumental in the orphan's revenge, but T'u An-ku, renamed Siako, an archvillain of a politican. Wheras his prototype, T'u An-ku, was a simple villain bent upon the destruction of his rival's family, in which were embodied all the traits of such an unscrupulous politician as Sir Robert Walpole might have seemed to be to his foes.
One of the most important changes made by Hatchett is the shortening of the time duration in the play. In Chi Chun-hsiang's story, twenty years elapsed between the third and fourth acts. During this time, the orphan grows up to be a brave and strong youth ready to carry out his revenge. In Hatchett's play, the orphan remains a minor and performs no active part. The revenge motif is therefore considerably lessened ; though Siako meets his deserved death, it comes as a result of his political failure rather than of a family feud. Hatchett retains the use of pictures to reveal the tragedy of the persecuted family, but these are not painted on a scroll for the curious eyes of the orphan, as in the original play ; instead they are embroidered on an imperial robe to be presented to the emperor, who learns from them how wicked his trusted minister has been. Hatchett's version is less effective than the original, in which the intensity of the orphan's feeling increases when he learns the secret of his birth and the tragic story of his family. In Hatchett's play the scene becomes tediously long, as the king finds out for the first time from story after story what an egregious ass he has been to let the crafty Siako cajole and hoodwink him all these years !
Hatchett also altered the characters of the Chinese play. Besides giving them entirely different names, such as Kifang for Ch'eng Ying, Siako for T'u An-ku, and, rather ridiculously, Laotse for Kung-sun Ch'u-chiu, he introduced new characters such as Bonze, the Chief Priest ; Ousanguee, Kifang's friend and painter of the pictorial robe ; and Lyping, wife of Kifang. Lyping was introduced to provide an emotional scene in which she cries to have her baby back when she learns that it has been sent away by Kifang and replaced by the orphan. But her hysteria contributes little to the plot ; nor does she appear again in the play.
As for the songs that are interspersed in the play 'after the Chinese matter', they are of little value or interest. They add neither to the embellishment nor to the development of the drama ; and they are as much unlike the Chinese songs as is the blank verse in which The Chinese orphan is written. As a matter of fact, Hatchett's only authentic notation is the 'bamboo discipline' giben Laotse, the retired old courtier. Hatchett assumes quite a new form, and the alterations are no improvement.
Willy Richard Berger : Hatchett ist der erste, der den Stoff vom chinesischen Waisenkind adaptierte. Das Stück ist ein politisches Pamphlet gegen Horace Walpole, ist aber vermutlich nie aufgeführt worden. Bei Hatchett ist ein verbrecherischer und machtgieriger Mandarin der Verfolger des Waisenkindes, das wie im Original durch den Arzt, der die Kinder vertauscht, gerettet wird. Den Bösewicht ereilt die verdiente Strafe, als seine Verbrechen offenbar werden, hier aber durch den König selbst, denn das Wagnis, den Waisenknaben im letzten Akt in der Rolle des erwachsenen Rächers auftreten zu lassen, traute sich ein englischer Dramatiker nicht zu. Hatchett hat sich recht genau an die chinesische Vorlage gehalten. Die politische Tendenz des Stücks schlägt erst in den letzten beiden Akten durch, die er aus A description of the empire of China and Chinese-Tartary kannte und ganze Szenen beinahe wörtlich übernommen hatte.
- Document: Liu, Wu-chi [Liu Wuji]. The original orphan of China. In : Comparative literature ; vol. 5, no 3 (1953). [Betr. Arthur Murphy, William Hatchett].
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1768912.pdf. (LiuWu1, Publication) - Document: Berger, Willy Richard. China-Bild und China-Mode im Europa der Aufklärung. (Köln ; Wien : Böhlau, 1990). S. 201. (Berg, Publication)
- Person: Hatchett, William
Quellen :
Du Halde, Jean-Baptiste. Description géographique... de la Chine [ID D1819].
Le Comte, Louis.
Kircher, Athanasius. China illustrata [ID D1712].
Martini, Martino.
"But the obscurity which attended the Scantiness of Hieroglyphic Characters, joined to the enormous Bulk of Picture Volumes, set Men upon contriving a third Change in this kind of writing : of which the Chinese have given us an illustrious Example.
We have just observed, that the ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic was an Improvement on a more ancient manner, resembling the rude Picture-Writing of the Mexicans ; and joined characteristic Marks to Images. The Chinese Writing went still further, threw out the Images, and retained only the contracted Marks, which they increased to a prodigious number : In this Writing every distinct Idea has its distinct Mark ; which still, like the universal Character of Picture-Writing, is common to divers neighbouring Nations, of different Languages ; the Shapes and Figures of these Marks, however now disguised, do yet betray their Original from Picture and Images ; as the Reader may perceive, by casting his Eye on the Specimen given us by Kircher : For that it is but a more contracted and refined Hieroglyphic, we have the concurrent Testimony of the best Writers on the Arts and Manners of this famous People ; who inform us how their present Writing was brought down, thro' an earlier Hieroglyphic from the first simple Way of painting the human Conceptions.
Thus have we brought down the General History of Writing, by a gradual and easy Descent, from a Picture to a Letter ; for Letters are the very next Step to Chinese Marks, which participate of the Nature of Egyptian Hieroglyphics on the one hand, and of Letters on the other ; (just as these Hieroglyphics equally partook of that of Mexican Pictures, and of the Chinese Characters ;) and are, as we say, on the very Borders of Letters ; an Alphabet being only a compendious Abridgment of that troublesome Multiplicity ; of which this is a Demonstration, that some Alphabeths, as the Ethiopic, have taken in those very Characteristics Marks to compose their Letters, as appears both from their Shapes and Names. This is further seen by the Names which express Letters and Literary-Writing in the ancient Languages…
Here then we see the first Beginnings of Hieroglyphics amongst the Mexicans, and the End of them amongst the Chinese ; in neither of which Places were they ever employed for Mystery of Concealment : What therefore we find of this Practice, in their middle Stage of Cultivation amongst the Egyptians, we may be assured had an extrinsic Cause, and was foreign to their Nature.
But the Mexican Empire did not continue long enough to improve Picture into an Hieroglyphic ; and the Chinese, which in the mighty Course of its Duration hath brought it down thro' Hieroglyphics to a simple Mark, or Character, hath not yet, from the Poverty of its inventive Genius, and Aversion to foreign Commerce, been able to find out an Abridgment of those Marks, by Letters…"
Qian Zhongshu : Horace Walpole considered Chinese writing an improvement upon the Egyptian hieroglyphics which is turn is an improvement upon the picture-writing of the Mexicans. Thus, Chinese characters represent 'the last advance of hierglyphics towards alphabetic writin'. 'The opposite progress in the issue of hieroglyphic writing in Egypt and China... can be the least inventive people upon the earth ; and not much given to mystery'. 'The Chinese, which, in its long duration, hath brought this picture down, through hieroglyphics, to a simple mark, or character, hath not yet (from the poverty of its inventive genius, and its aversion to foreign commerce) been able to find out an abridgement of those marks, by letters'.
William Warburton denied emphatically that the Chinese had borrowed their 'real characters' from Egypt and rightly refuted the opinion of the French academician and orientalist.
- Document: Warburton, William. The divine legation of Moses demonstrated. (London : Printed for F. Gyles, 1738-1765). Vol. 2 (1741). [Enthält Eintragungen über China].
http://books.google.ch/books?id=Xd5VAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA216
&lpg=PA216&dq=The+divine+legation+of+Moses+demonstrated
+William+Warburton+1741&source=bl&ots=jS8OI5tmoO&sig=
C0Nw9vLti8Oz6upfk2ANPIpIT-s&hl=de&ei=KFJXTr25Iefh4QT
WusHQDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=
0CBsQ6AEwAA#v=snippet&q=chinese&f=false. (Warb1, Publication) - Person: Warburton, William
As the vast Empire of China has for a long Time been in Europe the Subject of Enquiry and Admiration, it cannot be doubted but the Publick will set a high Value on a Book that will satisfy that Curiosity which the Relations hitherto exhibited have only raised.
Father du Halde has spared no Labour by which any Information or Enterainment might be procured to his Readers, having examined, compared, and digested the Observations of near thirty Missionaries, of whom many had Opportunities of Observation and Enquiry, which were perhaps never enjoyed by any Travellers before, having been employed by the Emperor in making Maps of the Provinces after a Survey more exact than has been ever executed in Europe.
What may not be expected from the United Labours of Travellers like these, Men not intent, like Merchants, only on the Acts of Commerce, the Value of Commodities, and the Probabilities of Gain, nor engaged, like Military Officers, in the Care of subsisting Armies, securing Passes, obviating Stratagems, and defeating Opposition, but vacant to every Object of Curiosity, and at Leisure for the most minute Remarks, supported in their Progress by the Authority of the Emperor, and intitled to demand from the Governors of every Place, Information and Assistance.
The Want of Veracity in Travellers has been for a long Time generally complained of among the learned, and perhaps there are few of the Oriental Countries of which Relations have not been received widely different from each other, though all written by Men whose Rank and Learning, and Probity would set them above the Suspicion of Falshood in common Occasions, and of whom it would not easily be imagined that any Temptation of Profit or of Vanity would prevail upon them to abandon Truth.
When, therefore Accounts are produced of equal Authority with Regard to the Reputation of the Writers, yet manifestly contradictory, and which therefore cannot both be true, are we to conclude that either of the Relaters drew up his Narrative with a fixed Intention of deceiving Mankind ? Or must we determine in general, that no Man will regard Truth, when he imagines himself free from the Danger of Confutation ?
If we consider the Nature of the Contradictions discovered in Descriptions of remote Countries, we find them generally such as could not be produced by any apparent Influence, they do not often serve to confirm my Opinion favoured by the Authors, they can neither gratify a Party, nor promote any particular Views and therefore must be reasonably considered, rather as Errors than Falshoods.
Nor can such Errors be censured as the Effects of either Credulity or Negligence, if we consider the general Condition of Travellers, who are, for the greatest Part, Strangers to the Language of the Nations which they describe, suscpected and insuked by the People, excluded from the View of those Places which most excite their Curiosity, and afraid of appearing too attentive and inquisitive, left they should be seized as Spies, and tortured into Discoveries of their Designs.
If it be considered for one Moment, what imperfect Accounts the most diligent and sagacious Traveller, thus intimidated and embarrassed, would be able to collect, with what difficulty he would obtain any Knowledge of the History, Government, or Religion of a People without Skill in their Language ; how unlikely it must be that he should find any Means in a cursory Ramble throughout a Country, of conversing with those who might best inform him, and how rarely the most learned in those jealous and half civilized Nations, can be supposed to be communicative and sincere, and it will not be wondered that the Industry of Students is not rewarded with more certain Instruction, and that Writers, however honest and diligent, often deceive them.
This Apology for Travellers, however just, is not made necessary in this Place by any Defects in the Account of China, but has on the contrary, been introduced, to shew how much it is to be credited above any other Relations of the same Kind. The Authors of this Book are almost the only Travellers who do not require some Indulgence, and who may not be supposed to have written more from the Relations of others, than personal Knowledge.
For the Fathers of the Mission, are obliged by the Nature of their Undertaking, to make the Language of the Nation in which they reside their first Study, to cultivate a Familiarity with the Natives, to conform to their Customs, observe their Inclinations, and omit nothing that may produce Influence, Intimacy, or Esteem.
How well the Fathers, whose Lot it was to be employed in the Conversion of the Chinese practiced all the Arts of Address, appears from the Authority which they gained, and the Employments in which they were engaged by the Emperors, and which necessity enabled them to examine every Thing with their own Eyes, and exempted them from the Necessity of trusting to uncertain Informations.
Their Familiarity with the Emperor, and their Respect which in absolute Monarchies every Man certainly obtains who enjoys the Favour of the Prince, made it easy for them to acquaint themselves with the State of the Empire in its whole Extent, to trace the Government thro' all its Subordinations, to learn the various Opinions by which the several religious Sects among the Chinese Nation are divided, to know the Limits of every Jurisdiction, and the Original of every Tenet.
Of the State of Learning among the Chinese, they must be allowed sufficiently able to inform us, as they obtained all their Influence and Privileges by improving it. Their Skill in the mathematical Sciences being the chief Reason for which they were, on many Occasions, preferr'd by the Chinese Monarchs to the learned Men of their own Country.
To the Travels of the Missionaries we are indebted for the geographical Description of the Empire of China, exhibited in the first Part of this Collection, in which the Situation and Extent of every Province is accurately laid, the Cities are enumerated and described, the different Manufactures and Commodities mention'd, and the various Products and Qualities of the Soil minutely specified.
The Cities of China (Vol. 1, p. 64) resemble one another so nearly, that by the Sight of one it is easy to form an Idea of the Rest ; they are for the most Part square, encompassed with high Walls, and defended by Towers at convenient Distances. There are within the Walls other Towers either Hexagonal or Octagonal of eight or nine Stories. In the Streets are triumphal Arches, Temples of Idols tolerably handsome, or Monuments erected in Honour of their Heroes, or those who have done some important Service to the State, and some publick Buildings, of which the Extent is more remarkable than their Magnificence.
There are in most Cities many large Squares, and long Street of different Breadths, with Houses on each Side containing only a Ground Floor, or at most one upper Story ; here are Shops adorned with China Ware, Silks, or japan'd Goods, before the Door of each is a Pedestal supporting a Board, either painted or gilded, on which are written three Characters, such as the Shopkeeper chuses for his Sign, on others are the Names of the Goods fold there, to which is sometimes added that of the Keeper, with these Words, Pu hu, he will not cheat you. These Pedestals placed on each Side at equal Distances, form a colonnade, and produce an agreeable Prospect.
The History of China, extracted from the most antient Books, and laid down according to the Chronology generally established in that Country, is very particularly related, out of which it may not be improper to select some Passages remarkable either for the Events, of which they contain an Account, or for discovering the Customs or Opinions of the Chinese.
The first Emperor of China was Fo hi, who is said to have began his Reign near three thousand Years before the Christian Aera. He was born in the Province of Shen si and was chosen by his Countrymen as the Person best qualified for Supreme Power, being called on account of his extraordinary Qualifications, 'Tjentse' [Tianzi], or the 'Son of Heaven'.
In these Times Men lived like Beasts, they knew their Mothers but not their Fathers, eat only when pressed by Hunger, and when satisfied threw away that which remained ; they drank the Blood of Animals, and cloathed themselves with their Skins.
Fo hi taught them how to weave Nets for Fish and set Snares for Birds, and to breed domestick Animals for Ford and Sacrifice. He introduced Distinctions in the Habits of the Sexes, which had lived together without Shame or Restraint, and enacted Laws for the Regulation of Marriages, by which it was ordained, that no Man should take a Wife of the same Name, a Custom still continued, even when the original Reason, the Danger of mingling the same Blood cannot be apprehended ; for no Man at this Day marries a Wife of the same Name, though the Family be different.
He invented the eight 'Qua', or Symbols, which represent certain general Things, or original Causes, and to procure them the Veneration of the People, declared that they were first discovered by him, written on the Back of a Dragon Horse, which rose out of a Lake.
To soften the Fierceness and Turbu'ence of his Subjects, he invented musical Harmony, and played upon an Instrument of which the upper Part was convex, to represent the Heavens, and the lower Part flat to resemble the Earth ; but this Harmony, which he is said to have received from Heaven is confessed by the Chinese to have been long lost.
In comparing this Account with the original of other Nations very distant from China, it is not without Wonder to be observed what Conformity there is between them. Whether the Desire of astonishing Mankind with strange Relations, has produced the same Fictions in almost every Country ; or, as it is more credible, that these are just and natural Representations of the early Condition of every People.
The next Emperor was Shin Nong, or the 'Heavenly Husbandman', so called from having endeavoured to promote the Happiness of the People, he teaching them to cultivate the Ground, and inventing the Instruments of Agriculture.
Wang ti, the third Emperor, is said to have invented the Compass, to have established Measures, discovered the Art of dying with Colours, to have contrived Instruments for dressing Food, to have made the firs Bows and Arrows, built the first Bridges, and contrived the first Ships. He likewise drew the first Models of Houses, and was the original Inventor of Wheel Carriages.
He it was that introduced the Study of Anatomy and Physic, to restore to Mankind that Health which was continually impaired by the Elements without, and by their Passions within ; and his Empress by his order, taught the People how to breed Silk-worms, and to manufacture Silk. The Virtues of this Prince, say the Chinese, equal Heaven and Earth ; his Government was admirable, his Laws firm, and his Conduct unchangeable ; he scattered his Benefits all over the Earth, and we still feel the Effects of his Liberality, so that though he be dead, he may be said to be yet living.
Thus it is observable, that the Heroes of China, like the Deities of the old Pagans, are those who first taught the Means of securing the Necessaries of Life.
After a great Number of Emperors, about three hundred thirty seven Years before our Aera rose, Shi Wang Ti, in whose Reign Japan was first discovered and peopled by the Chinese, one of whose Admirals having touched upon that Country, gave the Emperor such an Account of it as induc'd him to send a Colony into it, telling him, that amongst other wonderful Productions it afforded an universal Remedy, by which it was practicable to escape Death. This was a sufficient Incitement to an Emperor whose Prosperity made him, perhaps, more than commonly fond of Life ; he therefore sent back the Admiral with 300 young Couples to plant a Colony. But the Admiral having built a City, and establish'd a Government, declared himself Sovereign and independent on the Empire of China.
This Emperor observing the Northern Provinces to be exposed to the Inroads of the Tartars, form'd a Resolution of building, for their Security, the stupendous Wall which is now standing, on which he employed a third Part of the Men of his Empire, that were not above or under a certain Age, and promoted the Work with such Diligence that it was finish'd in five Years.
To this Wall there is no Work equal in the known World, for it is extended from a Mole raised in the Sea, thro' three large Provinces, carried on in Places which seem inaccessible, and at proper Intervals fortified with Towers, Ships laden with Iron are said to have been sunk in the Sea to secure the Foundation, and the Architect is reported to have been obliged on Pain of Death, to cement the Stones in such a Manner that is should not be possible to drive a Nail between them.
The Solidity of this Work is apparent from its Duration, which the Missionaries, who often climbed to the Top of it in their Survey of the Provinces, had Opportunities of remarking. They found it always well paved from 20 to 25 Feet in Height, and so broad that six Horsem*n might ride upon it in a Rank.
With Regard to the Materials of this Wall the Narration is not very clear, and perhaps the Architects, in different Places, might make Use of different Materials, as they could most conveniently be procured. The Wall is said in general to be caied with Brick, and well terrass'd which is a Description not sufficiently clear ; the Towers in some Places are described as built of Brick on a Foundation of Stone, and in others the Wall is said to be only of Earth unplaistered ; but as it is not to be imagined that a Wall of Earth could have resisted the Rain and Wind for near 20 Centuries, it must be probably a modern Fortification, and no Part of the Work of Shi Wang Ti.
The Emperor having heightened his Reputation by this Structure, was desirous of preserving it from being eclipsed by a Comparison with any of his Predecessors, and form'd a Scheme for obliging all future Ages to begin their Historical Accounts from his Reign, by destroying all Records of former Times.
He therefore publish'd an Edict, that all Books relating to History and Government, or any Kind of Learning, except Architecture and Medicine, should be brought to the Governors of the Provinces, and burnt. This destructive Law, which is still lamented in China, was so rigorously executed, that many of the learned Men were put to Death for concealing their Books, which contained in the Emperor's Opinion, Doctrines of Disobedience and Principles of Sedition. The Order of a Prince, said he, must vary according to the Exigences of his Affairs, and yet, when any Edict is publish'd which the Doctors find contrary to the ancient Laws, they incite the People to Discontent. The Observation of the Chinese Monarch, may, perhaps, shew that absolute Princes may reasonably desire to abolish Literature, but will equally prove that it is the Interest of every Man to promote and protect it.
Some Copies of the most valuable of these Books were, however, preserved in Caverns and Tombs, and other private Places, and produced about fifty Years afterwards in the Reign of Ven Ti.
Ven Ti restored the Empire to its ancient Splendour, by encouraging Learning, restraining Luxury, remitting Taxes, and encouraging Manufactures. He maintained the aged Poor out of his own Revenue, encouraged his Subjects to Agriculture, by cultivating the Earth with his own Hands, and to Manufactures by commanding the Empress and her Ladies to employ themselves in Needle-Work.
In his Time the Art of grinding Bambues to Paper, and of making Ink, was invented, the Chinese having till then written only with an Iron Pencil on Bark or Leaves.
This Prince had the Weakness, with all his Virtues and Understanding, to give Credit to a Man who pretended, that by drinking a certain Liquor, he should become immortal.
This Kind of Credulity was not extinguished by the frequent Disappointments which it could not fail to produce, but after the Death of this Emperor, so far infatuated Wu ti, one of the most illustrious of his Successors, that he encouraged all the Pretenders to this immortalizing Liquor : One of his Ministers endeavour'd to disenchant him from his Credulity by an Expedient which deserves to be related. When the Chymist had placed the precious Vial before him, the Minister on a sudden snatch'd it and drank, for which, when the Emperor threaten'd him with immediate Death, he return'd this calm Answer, 'If this Liquor has made me immortal, to what Purpose do you threaten me ? If you can yet take away my Life, what Injury have you received ?'
The same Emperor suffered himself to be deceived by an Impostor who pretended that he would call one of his dead Wives down from the Moon, but the Cheat was discovered, and the Magician put to Death.
We shall conclude our Extracts from the Chinese History with remarking that by the Inactivity or Misconduct of some Princes, and the Infancy of others, China was brought under the Dominion of a Race of Tartar Princes, in 1264, after a decisive Battle in which more than an hundred thousand Chinese are said to have been destroyed.
The Government of the Chinese Empire which through so long a Succession of Princes of various Dispositions by Nature, and exalted to the Throne by various Accidents, has continued nearly the same, is founded on the same Principles with that of a private Family ; the Emperor is the Father of the whole Nation the Governour, of his particular Province ; and the Mandarin, of the City in which he presides.
The Mandarines have been always divided into 9 Orders, the first of which contains the Ministers of State, Presidents of the Supreme Courts, and chief Officers of the Army. A place in this Rank is the highest Honour of the Men of Letters.
Those of the second Order are Assistants to the first, and out of them are chosen Vice-roys of Provinces, and Presidents of lower Tribunals.
The third Order consists of Secretaries, who take care that all Subjects of Deliberation are reduced to writing. These three Orders compose the Privy Council.
There are in Peking, besides the Privy Council, six Soverign Courts, of which the Authority extends to the whole Empire, but they are restrain'd by several Regulations from any exorbirant Exercise of Power, partly by the necessity of the Concurrence of several Courts in the Ratification of each Sentence, and partly by an Officer who is appointed to oversee their Proceedings without any right to Suffrage, and to bring to Court an Account of every Transaction.
It is not consistent with our Design to mark out the Limits of every Jurisdiction, or to show the particular Duties of each Order of Mandarins, it may be sufficient to observe in general that if the Duration of a Government be a Proof of the Excellence of its Institution, none can be compared with that of the Chinese.
The Authors of the Description of China, after an Account of the Customs and Ceremonies of the Chinese, treat of their Trade and Manufactures ; among which the Porcelain or Earthenware, peculiar to this Country, seems to deserve particular Attention. The Materials, and the whole Process of the Workmanship of these elegant Vessels, are very accurately described by P. Dentricolles who had a Church in King te ching in the Province of Kyang si, at which Town only China-ware is made ; several of his Converts were Manufacturers, and therefore both able and desirous to give him Information ; but not being entirely satisfy'd with that Intelligence, he read the most authentic Treatise on that Subject, and took Opportunities of seeing with his own Eyes the greatest Part of the Operations.
The Materials of China-ware, says he, are 'Pe tun tse', a Species of Stone cut out of the Rock, and 'Kau lin', a Kind of Earth found in Mines at a considerable Depth, of which the Use is to make the Stony Particles glutinous and cohesive, by being mixed with them.
The Stone is Mortars with Iron Pestles, to an impalpable Powder, of which they separate the finer from the coarser Part, by throwing it into large Jars of Water, and stirring it about, by which the gross Particles fall to the Bottom, and those which are ground to a sufficient Lightness float on the Top, from which they are scumm'd and set aside for Use, and the Sediment is thrown again into the Mortar.
The Varnish, with which they give to their Ware the bright Gloss which distinguishes it from other Earthen Vessels, is made by pounding another Stone in the same Manner, and mixing it with the Ashes of Fern and with Quicklime.
The first Operation in making China-ware is that of mixing the Earth and Stone together in just Proportions, according to the Nature of the Ware designed, of which the finest consists of Earth and Stone in equal Quantities, and the coarser has more Stone than Earth.
The Clay thus compounded is kneaded diligently together, and is then carried to those that work with the Wheel, by which all the smooth and round Vessels are made, or to the Moulds, in which they form the irregular and uneven Figures. It is said that every Piece of Porcelain passes through the Hands of seventy Workmen.
When the Form of the Vessel is completed, they carry it to the Oven or Kiln, were it is baked ; after which the Colours are laid on, of which it is not necessary to describe the Composition. It is then baked a second Time, and taken out finished.
The next Manufacture which they have thought worthy of a particular Description is the Chinese Silk, to which, as the Art of Breeding and managing Silkworms is necessary, they have inserted an Extract of an old Chinese Author who has written with great Exactness on that Subject.
They afterwards treat of the Manufactures which have Relation to Literature, and explain the Marner of making Ink and Paper in China, and then proceed to shew how they are used.
The Chinese in Writing make Use of Pencils made of Rabbits Hair, or any other equally soft, and when they write dip their Ink, which is a black Substance work'd into small Rolls, in Water, and rub it upon a small Square of Marble which lies on their Table, pressing with greater Weight as they would have their Ink blacker, on this Marble they smear their Pencil, and then trace the Characters upon the Paper. The Pencil, Paper, Ink, and little Marble, they call 'Se Pau', or the four precious things.
The Manner of Printing, which has been many Ages in Use among the Chinese, is different from our common Method, but very nearly resembles that by which it is customary to embellish Volumes of small Price in Europe with Pictures carved upon Wood. When they have procured an elegant Transcript of the Work which they intend to print, they paste very Page upon a Board of a close Grain, and trace the Characters by cutting away the intermediate Spaces, as it is usual among us. These Boards, when they are finished, they smear with a Brush, gently upon them, with so much Quickness that a single Workman will print near ten thousand Pages in a Day.
Thus they have it in their Power to multiply the Copies of their Books at Pleasure, and therefore do not print more at once than they are sure to sell.
After this Account of the mechanical of instrumental Part of Study, they proceed to the Chinese Literature, and explain the Process of Education follow'd in that Nation, where Letters are the only Means of Riches and Preferment.
The Chinese Children begin at the Age of five or six Years to learn the Characters, the Knowledge of which in the chief Science among them, the Chinese language not arising like those of Europe from Combinations of a certain Number of Letters, but exhibiting every particular Word, under a particular Character ; so that there are in that Language as many Letters as Words.
The Children are initiated in this tedious Study by a Collection of about an hundred Characters, representing the most common Objects in Nature, and consequently most frequently occurring in Books, after which the Sentences consist each of only three Characters, and which relates to the Duty of a Child. They have then a Book put into their Hands of Sentences containing four Characters, of which Kind the Missionaries have composed a Catechism for the Christian Children. Of these Characters they are required to learn five or six each Day, according to their Capacity or Proficiency, and art taught at the same Time to form them, by having Pages printed with red Characters, which they trace with a black Pencil.
It is observable, that they are obliged to learn to repeat the four Books which contain the Doctrine of Confucius and Menzius, a Practice which it is astonishing to see little followed by Protestants, with Respect to those Books from which the Way to eternal Happiness is to be learned.
The Art of Writing beautifully, and tracing their Characters with Exactness, is a Qualification so much esteemed among them, that in their Examinations for their Degrees, they commonly reject those who have not attained to it ; and it is reported, that one of the Candidates was dismissed with Ridicule for an improper Abreviation of the Character which signifies a Horse.
The Authors then proceed to give an Account of the Degrees or Honours conferred upon the Learned in China, and afterwards treat of the Sciences by which they are obtain'd ; or the Canonical Books of the first Order or earliest Antiquity ; and these of the second Rank, which were composed by Kong fu tse, or Confucius, of whose Life, since he is considered by the Chinese as the great Doctor of Morality, it cannot be improper to give an Account.
Confucius was born 551 Years before Christ, his Father, was of an illustrious Family, and enjoy'd the highest Offices of the Kingdom, but dying while he was only three Years old ; left him without any Inheritance.
He was in his Childhood eminently serious and thoughtful, negligent of Trifles, and without any Regard to the common Amusem*nts of that Age ; at fifteen he applied himself to the Study of the ancient Books, and to the Collection of such Maxims and Principles as might most contribute to the Establishment and Propagation of Virtue, an Employment which was very little interrupted by Domestick Cares, tho' he married at the Age of nineteen.
At this Time the several Provinces of China, were Kingdoms govern'd by their own Monarchs, with absolute Authority, tho' with at least a nominal Subordination to the Emperors, whom they all acknowledged as chief Governor, but those Commands they frequently rejected, and whose Authority they reverenc'd only when they were in no Condition to resist it ; so that the Desire of Independency on one Part, and a Resolution of maintaining Superiority on the other, gave Occasion to perpetual Contests and daily Disorders. It is related that the Courts of all these inferior Sovereigns were Seminaries of Corruption and Licentiousness ; whether the particular Laws of those Countries were not well adapted to the Regulation of Manners, or whether the King was obliged to overlook the Faults of his Subjects, that they might give no Information of his Conduct or Designs to the Emperor of China.
These Irregularities it was the Design of Confucius to redress, and to establish Temperance, Integrity, and Purity of Manners, which he therefore incessantly promoted both by his Precepts and Example, and became in a short Time so eminent by his exemplary Behaviour, that the highest Employments were offered him in the Kingdom where he lived and accepted by him as Means of facilitating the Progress of Virtue, by making it more awful and illustrious, and therefore quitted them afterwards without Reluctance, when he found them no longer useful to the End which he proposed.
In his 55th Year he engaged in one of the chief Offices of the Kingdom of Lu, now the Province of Shan tong, his Native Country, which he had not possessed more than three Months, without a visible Reformation of the whole People, and Improvement of the general State of the Kingdom ; the Laws were no longer broken, or the Breach of them was regularly punished, Property was secure from Invasion, and was therefore by every Man diligently increased.
The Prosperity and Affluence produced in this Kingdom by the Maxims of Confucius, soon excited the Envy of the neighbouring Princes, by whom it was imagined that they were in Danger from a Nieghbour, whom, as he grew every Day more powerful, they should not long be able to resist.
The King of Tsi being more disturbed than any other, at this imaginary Danger, consulted with his Ministers upon the most probable Method of interrupting that Prosperity which he locked upon as the certain Parent of Ambition, and which therefore ought to be obstructed, and determined to make use of Means which have seldom failed of Success, and by which the greatest Monarchs have been destroyed, when neither Policy could circumvent, nor Armies oppose them.
A magnificent Embassy was in pursuance of this Consultation dispatched to the King of Lu, with a fatal Present of a great Number of young Maidens of exquisite Beauty, and finished Accomplishments, skilful in every Art of attracting the Eye, and alluring the Mind, of awakening the Affections, and lulling Reason. These Girls soon gained the Attention of their new Master, and his Counsellors, by their Airs, their Dances, and their Songs. Business and Politicks, Learning and Morality were banished from the Court, where nothing was now regarded, but Feasts, Revelry, and Diversions, Scenes of Pleasure, and Assemblies of Gaiety, and where the Amusem*nt of these lovely Strangers was preferr'd to the Care of the Publick.
It is no small Addition to the Honour of Confucius, that he remained uninfected amidst so fatal a Contagion, a Contagion against which the Preservatives of Philosophy have been often found of very little Effect. He endeavoured not only to escape, but to stop the Infection, and animated the King with all the Force of his Eloquence and Reason, to resume his Dignity, and re-establish the Authority of the Laws ; but finding his Persuasions unregarded, and his Arguments over-born by sensual Gratifications, he laid down his Employments, and retired in Search of Men less immersed in Luxury, and less hardn'd to habitual Vice.
With this View he travelled over several Kingdoms, where the Superiority of his Virtue and Abilities procured him more Enemies than Admirers, and the Ministers, instead of introducing to the Princes of Man capable of promoting the Publick. Happiness, endeavoured to suppress his Reputation, left his Abilities should be brought into Comparison with their own.
Confucius therefore, after having visited several Princes, and offered his Instructions in Policy to the Magistrates and Kings, and his Precepts of Morality to Persons of every Condition, was so far from finding a Reception agreeable to the Merit of his Conduct, or the Benevolence of his Intentions, that he was reduced to the lowest State of Poverty, in which he was far from losing any Part of his Philosophical Dignity, and which he never endeavoured to relieve by any mean Action.
It was probably on this Occasion that he said what is recorded of him in one of the Classical Books ; "I am reduced to extreme Indigence, having nothing to live upon but a little Rice and Water, with which, however I am content, because I look upon Dignity or Wealth unjustly acquired, as upon Clouds driven by the Winds." This Constancy cannot raise our Admiration after his former Conquest of himself ; for how easily may he support Pain, who has been able to resist Pleasure.
The several Passages of his Life are not related in Order of Time, or connected with any Circ*mstances which may contribute to fix their Dates, it is therefore impossible to discover when the following Adventure happened, which yet deserves to be related.
Confucius being once abandoned by the People, and without the Protection of the Prince, was in the Hands of a Mandarin of War, remarkably savage and licentious, and therefore implacably exasperated by a Man whose Lectures were continual Satires upon his Conduct. He therefore no longer saw Confucius in his Power, but he accused him of some pretended Offence, and commanded him to be executed. Some of the Spectators, who saw the Injustice of the Mandarin, and the Illegality of the Proceeding, advised him to retire, after the Example of most of his Followers, whom the first Appearance of Danger had driven from him ; but Confucius, though he saw the Sword drawn for his Destruction, remaining calm and unconcerned, answered without any Hesitation, "If we are protected by Heaven (Tyen) what have we to fear from this Man, though he be President of the Tribunal of the Army".
We are not informed whether he escaped this Danger by the Veneration which his Intrepidity produced in the Officer, or by the Interposition of others, who had Courage to oppose the Execution of an unjust Sentence, and Regard for his Virtue sufficient to engage them in his Cause¸ or whether the Mandarin designed in reality only to try whether his Principles were sufficient to support him under immediate Danger, and whether he would not forseit that Reputation, which was so much envied, by abandoning his Doctrines at the Sight of Death ; That this was his Intention seems probable, because it appears from the Relation, that when he threatened him most nearly, he still left him an Opportunity of escaping, which he was doubtless desirous that he should have used, for the Flight of Confucius would have gratified his Malice more than the Death.
That he did escape is certain, for in his seventy fifth Year he died of a Lethargy, occasioned, as it was imagined, by a Dejection of Spirits, at the Sight of the disordered State of the Empire ; for a few Days before his last Sickness he told his Followers, that "The Mountain was fallen, the high Machine was destroyed, and the Sages were no more to be seen". After which he began to loose his Strength, and the seventh Day before his Death, turning to his Scholars, "The Kings", said he, "Refuse to observe my Maxims, and it is fit I should leave the World in which I am no longer useful". After those Words he fell into a Slumber, in which he continued seven Days, and then expired.
He was tall and well-proportioned, with broad Shoulders and Breast, an Olive Complection, large Eyes, a Beard long and black, and a Nose somewhat flat, his Air was grave and Majestick, and his Voice strong and piercing. On the Middle of his Forehead grew a Wen, which somewhat disfigured him.
Confucius, say his Disciple, had three Contrarieties in his Character, which scarcely any other Men has known how to reconcile. He had all the Grace of Politeness with all the Awefulness of Gravity ; uncommon Severity of Countenance, with great Benignity of Temper ; and the most exalted Dignity, with the most engaging Modesty in his Air.
He left behind him three Books, of which the first is called the Grand Science [Da xue] ; the second the Immutable Medium [Zhong yong], a Title correspondent to the Metron ariston of Cleobulus and to the common Maxim, Virtus cum stet in medio ; and the third, Moral and concise Discourses [Lun yu] ; to which is added a Fourth, of almost equal Authority, written by his Scholar Mencius.
In the first Book he endeavours to shew, that the sovereign Good consists in a Conformity of all our Actions with right Reason, and that all the Science requisite for Princes consists in the Improvement of that reasonable Nature which they have received from Heaven, to which End it is necessary to enquire diligently into the Nature of Good and Evil, that Love and Hatred may be directed towards their proper Objects ; and when a Man has thus restored himself to his original Purity, it will be easy, says he, to reform the Corruption of others.
How this Doctrine was received by the Chinese Princes, it is not related ; but if it be true, that the same Condition has a Tendency to produce the same Manners and Dispositions, we may judge from the Conduct of European Monarchs, that his Rules have never yet been reduced to Practice.
In his Second Book he teaches that every Man ought to adhere to the Mean, in which he affirms Virtue to consist, and beginning with a Definition of human Nature and Passions, introduces Examples of Piety, Fortitude, Prudence, Filial Reverence, and other Virtues, and shews that they all arise from the Observation of the Mean, which, he says, is easy to practice, though it be a difficult Subject of Speculation. He gives Examples of several Princes who have confined their Conduct to the happy Mean, and lays down Rules by which Kings may make themselves and their Subjects happy.
The Third Book is a Collection of Sentences utter'd by Confucius, either on Occasion of particular Events, or in his casual Conversation with his Scholars, and contains a great Number of Reflections and Precepts very affecting and important. One of his Observations is, that he never found any Man, however good, so ardent in the Pursuit of Virtue, as the Voluptuous in quest of Pleasure. A Remark not less striking by its Truth, than by its Severity.
One of his Scholars once asked him by what means he should die well, but was answered by him, 'You have not yet learned to live well, and yet think it necessary to enquire after Death ; a Reply, in which the way to die well is very emphatically taught.
Life and Death, says Confucius, depend on the Law of Heaven [Tyen] which no Man can alter ; Poverty and Riches are dispensed by Heaven, whose Providence is not subject to Compulsion. From a submissive Reverence of these Laws and Dispensations the wise Man derives his Tranquility and Happiness.
There are other Maxims relating to Oeconomy, or the Conduct of a Private Life ; others to the Administration of publick Affairs ; and others which contain Rules of general Conduct. Three sorts of Friends says Confucius, are useful ; those that are Virtuous, those that are Open, and those that are Learned. He that is of an inconstant Temper, says he, will never increase the Number of the Sages. He that easily promises will often deceive.
His whole Doctrine tends to the Propagation of Virtue, and the Restitution of Human Nature to its original Perfection, and it is related that his Precepts always received Illustration from his Example, and that in all Conditions of Life, he took Care to prove by his Conduct, that he required no more from others, than he thought it his own Duty to perform.
[The third part contains the titles of the chapters of Du Halde's Description].
- Person: Johnson, Samuel
"All human race, from China to Peru,
Pleasure, howe'er disguised by art, pursue."
- Person: Warton, Thomas
Ch'en Shou-yi : Whitehead's attitude was decidedly antagonistic. Like many other writers of the time, he condemned both the Chinese and the Gothic as lacking the charm of simplicity. But as he concerned himself chiefly with the current fashion in English furniture, the word 'everything' which occurs in the passage above, must be considered merely as a sweeping overstatement. But that a considerable amount of irritation must have been present to warrant Whitehead's condemnation of the Chinese tast, can be taken for granted.
- Document: Murphy, Arthur. The orphan of China : a tragedy. (London : Printed for P. Vaillant, 1759). [Adaption nach Du Halde, Jean-Baptiste. Description... [ID D1819]. [Ji, Junxiang. Zhao shi gu er]. [Adaptation von L'Orphelin de la Chine von Voltaire ; geschrieben 1754 ; Aufführung 1759 im Drury Lane Theater mit David Garrick als Zamti und Mary Ann Yates als Mandane ; Aufführung in Dublin 1761 ; Aufführung im Southwark Theater Philadelphia 1767 ; Aufführung John Street Theater New York 1768].
http://books.google.at/books/about/The_orphan_of_China.html?id=rm8GAAAAQAAJ. (Mur1, Publication) - Person: Murphy, Arthur
- Person: Whitehead, William
Of late, ‘tis true, quite sick of Rome and Greece.
We fetch our models from the wise Chinese ;
European artists are too cool and chaste,
For Mand'rin is the only man of taste ;
Whose bolden genius, fondly wild to see
His grove a forest, and his pond a sea,
Break out, and whimsically great, designs
Without the shackles of rules or lines.
Form's on his plans, our farms and seats begin
To mach the boasted villas of Pekin.
On every hill a spire-corwn'd temple swells,
Hung around with serpents, and a fringe of bells ;
Junks and balons along our waters sail,
With each a gilded co*ck-boar at his tail ;
Our choice exotics to the breeze exhale
Within th' enclosure of a zig-zag rail ;
In tartar huts our cows and horeses lie
Our hogs are fatted in an Inian Style ;
Our ev’ry shelf a Joss divinely stares
Nymphs laid on chintzes sprawl upon our chairs ;
While o'er our cabinets Confucius nods,
Midst porcelain elephants and China gods.
- Person: Cawthorn, James
William Whitehead schreibt im 'Prologue' :
Enough of Greece and Rome. The exhausted store,
Of either nation now can charm no more :
Even adventitious helps in vain we try,
Our triumphs languish in the public eye ;
And grave pocessions, musically slow,
Here pass unheeded - as a Lord Mayor's shew.
On eagle wings the poet of to-night,
Soars for fresh virtues to the source of light,
To China's eastern realm, and boldly bears
Confuicus' morals to Britannia's ears.
Accept th' imported boon, as echoing Greece
Received from wand'ring chiefs her golden fleece ;
Nor only richer by the spoils become,
But praise th'advent'rous youth who brings them home.
One dubious character, we own, he draws,
A patriot, zealous in a monarch's cause !
Vice in the task the varying hand to guide, and teach the blending colours to divide ;
Where, rainbow-like, th' encroaching tints intvade
Each other's bounds, and mingle light with shade.
If then, assiduous to obtain his end,
You find too far the subject's zeal extend :
If undistinguished loyalty prevails,
Where nature shrinks, and strong affection fails,
On China's tenets charge the fond mistake,
And spare his error for his virtue's sage.
From noble motives our allegiance springs,
For Britain knows no right divine in kings.
From Freedom's choice that boasted right arose,
And through each line from Freedom's choice it flows.
Justice, with mercy joined, the throne maintains ;
And in his people's hearts, our monarch reigns.
- Person: Murphy, Arthur
- Person: Whitehead, William
Sekundärliteratur
1758
Brief von Oliver Goldsmith an Robert Bryanton.
Er schreibt : "I use Chinese names to show my own erudition, as I shall soon make our Chinese talk like an Englishman to show his." He refers in the same letter to himself as 'the Confucius of Europe', which statement seems to indicate that he had learned enough of China to know who Confucius was.
1759
Goldsmith, Oliver. Review of Goguet, Antoine-Yves ; Fugère, Alexandre-Conrad. De l'origine des loix, des arts, et des sciences, et de leurs progrès chez les anciens peuples. (Paris : Chez Desaint & Saillant, 1758). In : Critical review (March 1759).
Er schreibt : of the volume of 'curious extracts from Chinese writers', which contain many valuable particulars concerning the history, manners, government, arts and sciences of the ancient Chinese, to which Goguet has had frequent recours in his history.
1762
Review of The citizen of the world by Oliver Goldsmith. In : The critical review (1762).
After developing the thesis that human nature has been so fully described that 'nothing more remains for men of genius than to produce new combinations of old thoughts', the reviewer continues : 'Were we to examine these reflections of our Citizen of the world by the standard of originality, our pleasure would be greatly diminished ; but let us view them with regard to utility, and we must confess their merit. What seems cloying to an hundred persons of fastidious appetites, may prove wholesome delicious nourishment to thousands. These letters, if we mistake not, made their first appearance in a daily news-paper, and were necessarily calculated to the meridian of the multitutde, although they greatly surpass any late publications of the same nature, both in diction and sentiment. This circ*mstance alone would sufficiently plead the author's excuse, had he need of an apology ; that genius must be fruitful, indeed, which can supply such a variety of tastes with daily entertainment. It is rather extraordinary, that the philosophic Lien Chi Altangi could handle so many topics agreeably, and sustain the fatigue of so long a course without weariness, than that he has sometimes stumbled. All his observations are marked with good sense, genius frequently breaks the fetters of restraint, and humour is sometimes successfully employed to enforce the dictates of reason'.
1762
Review of The citizen of the world by Oliver Goldsmith. In : Monthly review (1762).
"Although this Chinese philosopher has nothing Asiatic about him, and is as errant an European as the Philosopher of Malmesbury ; yet he has some excellent remarks upon men, manners, and things – as the phrase goes. They are said to be the work of the lively and ingenious Writer of An enquiry into the present state of polite learning in Europe ; a writer, whom, it seems, we undesignedly offended, by some strictures on the conduct of many of our modern scribblers."
1762
Rider, William. An historical and critical account of the lives and writings of the living authors of Great-Britain. (London : Printed for the Author, 1762).
Er schreibt über The citizen of the world by Oliver Goldsmith : "But the Chinese letters, first published in the Ledger, in numbers, and since republished in volumes, under the Title of Citizen of the world, are, of all the productions of this author, those that do the highest honour to his genius, as they must be acknowledged by every reader free from influence of prepossession, to be but little inferior to the Persian letters of the celebrated Montesquieu. To conclude Dr. Goldsmith's character as an author, it must be acknowledged, that whilst he is surpassed by few of his contemporaries with regard to the matter which his writings contain, he is superior to most of them in style, having happily found out the secret to unite elevation with ease, a perfection in language, which few writers of our nation have attained to." [William Rider (London 1723-1785 London) : Historiker, Priester, Autor].
1926
L.F. Powell : Goldsmith copied for his Citizen of the world extensively from D'Argens Lettres chinoises and made use of Du Halde. He took the name of his Chinese philosopher Lien Chi Altangi from Walpole and that of his chief correspondent Fum-Hoam from Gueulette.
1939
Ch'en Shou-yi : The Chinese letters not only assured Goldsmith's literary fame, but also marked the culmination of English interest in Chinese culture and things Chinese.
Goldsmith pretends to give to the public the correspondence of a Mandarin, a disciple of Confucius, Lien Chi Altangi by name, who at other times corresponds with a mechant of Amsterdam, and at other times with his son Hing Po, a slave in Persia. The majority of the letteres were addressed to his friend 'Fum Hoam, First President of the Ceremonial Academy at Pekin, in China'.
The Chinese Empire is represented as a race which claims to have been descended from the Sun (XLII). Although the Chinese tolerate the followers of Fohi (X), and the belief in transmigration of souls (XV), their religion is on the whole rational (X) and tolerant (XLII). While the Chinese may be outdone by the Europeans 'in the art of building ships, casting cannons, or measuring mountains', they are not to be excelled in matters of governing kingdoms and themselves (XLII). The Chinese emperor being monarchical and yet paternal, his laws are enlightened and merciful (LXXX), seeking not only to punish vice, but also to reward virtue (LXXII). There is a universal passion for politics there, as in England (IV).
Learning flourishes in China because even the emperor himself takes cognizance ot the doctors in the kingdom who profess authorship (XXIX). Their writings, unlike those of other parts of the Orient, are phlegmatic (XXXIII), and soliloquies are not admitted in their plays (XXI). Missionaries (IV) and English factors (XXXIV) are allowed (II), nor are they permitted to do so (VI). On account of this cultural isolation, their ancient genius for inventions (CVIII) sometimes relapses into pure ignorance (CV). The ancient sage born about the same time as was Pythagoras (CIII), was Confucius, a man of practical wisdom.
The Chinese love this life and hate to die (XII). It is owing to this natural attachment to the present life that they are so fond of things wordly. They like magnificent interments (XII) ; are fond of seeing plays (XXI), of dancing (which even as a profession is not considered contemptible) (XXI), of pompous equipage (XXXII), of elegant manners (XXXIII), of gardening (XXXI), of riding horses (LXXI), and of luxury (II). To maintain good health, they specialize in the art of feeling pulses (LXVIII).
The Chinese women understand decorum (XXXIX). They seldom leave their house (VIII), and it is only on special days that they gamble (CII). The chief virtue they cherish is that of chastity (XIX). As to beauty, they have a different standard from the European : broad faces, short noses, little eyes, thin lips, and black teeth (III, XIII, CXVI). According to the Chinese, a woman is endowed by Fohi with three souls (XCVII). The genius for love is suppressed by ceremony in China, as it is by avarice in Europe, jealousy in Persia, poverty in Tartary, and lust in Circassia. Yet, the rest of the world, China only execpted, are strangers to the delights and advantages of love (CXVI).
The supreme representative of the Chinese nation is Lien Chi Altangi, a native of Honan (I), who has left China against imperial mandates to learn from abroad, having travelled through Tartary and Siberia, and thence to Holland, before his arrival in England.
His chief business being to procure wisdom (VII), he loves both nature and man. He hold the 'volume of nature' as the book of knowledge (IV). He believes in the Universal Soul (VI). He willingly submits to the stroke of Heaven (VII). But he is also fond of gay company (LIV), although he thinks that too much commerce may injure a nation (XXV).
He is a discontented wanderer (LVI), but 'a universal friend of man' (XXIII). He is tolerant in his views (LXII) and appreciative of other nations (VIII). Having conferred with missionaries while in China (VII, XVI, XXII), he has 'almost become British' after some residence in England (LXXXXV). He is attached to his former master Fum Hoam, and loves his son Hing Po as a philosopher should (XLVIII, LXVII, C). The man in black, his English friend, is held by him in high esteem (XIII, XXI, XXIV).
Well-versed in his own national culture, he yet seeks to learn from other nations. He reads European literature (XLIII, LIII, LXXII). Johnson and Smollet he praises as 'truly poets' (XL). The death of Voltaire he mourns, without being blind to the difference between the French philosophe and Confucius (III). He attacks superficiality (the flippant craze for chinoiseries) (CXVII), superstition (XXII), and sentimentality (CXVII). In short, he reasons without prejudice (XXV), and as he travels to increase happiness, and not merely out of curiosity (VII, XVI), the world 'is but a city' to him (CXXIII).
The use Goldsmith has made of Chinese material does not only reflect contemporary English taste for things Chinese, but also reveals the author's own interest in the Chinese people, although, he neither aspires to be a critic nor tries to be an interpreter of Chinese culture.
The passages that compare China favourably with Europe, or more particularly with England, usually do not indicate any positive enthusiasm for China on the part of Goldsmith. His chief purpose is to enlighten or satirize England and not to exalt or interpret China. China is represented as inferior to England, or the Chinese as inferior to the English, in order to make the ridicule more pungent. Most of the comparisons and contrasts are more jocose than serious, and are therefore to be taken more as Goldsmith's critical device than as his mediated opinion.
Goldsmith's Chinese Philosopher is also made to voice somewhat unexpected and disconcerting criticism of English ideas and manners. Although Lien Chi Altangi is a citizen of the world, who aspires to be the 'universal friend of man', he is nevertheless an Asiatic who 'sees many superior excellences among the English, which it is not in the power of all their follies to hide, and who 'desires to discover those differences with result from climate, religion, education, prejudice, and partiality'. More often than not, the Oriental's remarks are far from being complimentary to the Englishman.
In addition to Chinese tales, Goldsmith has studded his Letters with occasional quotations from Chinese sages, most frequently from Confucius. Strangely enough, he is not so much interested in Confucius' ideas as in his own. For most of the quotations are forgeries. There are a number of epigrammatic sayings in the letter, but none of them bears any noticeable resemblance to Confucius' Analects. Goldsmith is fond of manufacturing a sentence to suit an occasion and of attributing it to Confucius to make is 'poignant'.
Goldsmith's principal interest in Chinese life and manners, lies chiefly in their usefulness as a literary decoration and as a means to his critical and satirical end.
Like some of his contemporaries, Goldsmith is on the whole unfriendly to the current vogue of 'Chinese taste'. The craze for Chinese furniture and porcelain, for Chinese gardening and Chinese architecture, for Chinese fireworks and for goldfish, are one and all ridiculed. Not an enthusiastic admirer of China, Goldsmith's attitude is indifferent rather than antagonistic. He only caters to the taste of his time to the extent of making use of Chinese correspondents. But the Chinese philosopher is merely a satirical vehicle, and there our author stops.
As Goldsmith never showed much respect for either Leibniz or Wolff, it is not surprising that he did not catch their enthusiasm for the culture of China. But it is rather curious that even Voltaire, for whom Goldsmith expressed considerable admiration, and to whom he was indebted for a noticeable amount of influence, should have failed to inspire in the author a keener interest of China.
Golsdmith remained an indifferent writer with regard to China. His attitude may be explained perhaps, by the fact that enthusiasm for China never grew very strong in England, and that Goldsmith was too cosmopolitan on the one hand, and British on the other, to have his attention exlusively engaged in any single distant land.
1941
Qian Zhongshu : The story and its characters like Beau Tibbs, the Man in Black, and the Chinese philosopher himself, are too well-known to need re-telling here. The pompous and highly floriated style affected in the first two letters from Lien Chi Altangi is soon dropped to be spasmodically resumed in the books. Goldsmith himself seems to have been aware of this lack of consistency in tone, and tried to forestall the criticism of being "un-Eatern and out of character" in Letter XXXIII and Letter LI by showing that "the sonorous, lofty, musical and unmeaning style which passes for Chinese among the English" is really not Chinese at all.
Thus, we venture to think that the apology for the "concise, simple, grave, sententious, and dull" style in the preface and Letter XXXIII represents partly Goldsmith's considered opinion and Letter XXXIII represents partly Goldsmith's considered opinion on the subject of Chinese literature, and partly his attempt to make a virtue of necessity. It must have been impossible for Goldsmith's simple and charming genius to keep on writing inflated and stileted prose to the very bitter end of the book. After one or two letters in the pseudo-oriental style, even the fun of parody must have begun to pall.
If The citizen of the world is on the whole a genial satire of the English, does it also reveal Goldsmith's attitude towards the Chinese ? For example the passage in the preface : "The furniture, frippery and fireworks of China have long been fashionably bought up. I'll try the fair with a small cargo of Chinese morality. If the Chinese have contributed to vitiate our taste, I'll try how far they can help to improve our understanding". Obviously the "help to understanding" comes from Goldsmith himself, whereas the "vitiation of taste" is a blame to be laid on the Chinese. In Letter XII, he openly criticised the "Chinese taste" by describing "a lady of distinction" who "has got twenty things from China that are of no use in the world... pea-green jars, sprawling dragons, squatting pagods and clumsy mandarins". The lady, with more curiosity than good manners, buttoonholed Lien Chi Altangi in the street, wanted to see him eat and use chop-stocks, and asked him to speak Chinese so that she might hear the sound of the language. Letter XXXI contains a caricature of the Chinese garden the very disposition of whose groves, grottos and streams inculcated morals and wisdom. In Letter CX, Lien Chi Altangi gloated over the fact that the English had filled their houses with Chinese furniture, their public gardens with Chinese fireworks, and their very ponds with goldfish which had come from China. In Letter LXXXIX Goldsmith satirised both the theory of the Egyptian origin of the Chinese and the Noah-Fohi hypothesis. The following quotation from Letter LXIII is most revelatory of Goldsmith's opinion of China : "Yet believe me, my friend, that even China itself is imperceptibly degenerating from their ancient greatness : her laws are now more venal, and her merchants are more deceitful than formerly ; the very arts and sciences have run to decay... There was a time when China was the receptacle of strangers ; when all were welcome who either came to improve the state, or admire its greatness ; now the empire is shut up from every foreign improvement, and the very inhabitants discourage each other from prosecuting their own oriental advantages".
1951
Peter Venne : Goldsmiths Buch ist eine satirisch-kritische Zeitbetrachtung durch den Mund eines Chinesen, der allerdings nur eine konstruierte Gestalt ist, bekleidet mit vielen Details, wie sie der Verfasser aus den geläufigen Chinaberichten entnehmen konnte. Es kam ihm auch nicht darauf an, einen realen Chinesen zu zeichnen, sonderne eine literarische Kunstfigur, die abseits stand von der europäischen Kultur- und Gesittungswelt und darum geeignet erschien, objektive Kritik zu üben. Seine meist beissenden Bemerkungen zu englischen Zuständen vertreten den gesunden Menschenverstand, der sich zu distanzieren weiss von dem, was Gewohnheit oder Mode als Norm aufgestellt haben, und mit unbefangenem, unvoreingenommenem Auge auf die Dinge schaut. So bringt Brief XIII eine satirische Kritik des Verfassers and der unwürdigen Zuseisung von Plätzen im Ehrentempel der Nation, Westminster Abbey, gegen Bezahlung, sowie eine scharfe Ironisierung des Museumskultes. Brief XXI schildert einen Theaterbesuch und enthält eine fesselnde Kritik der zeitgenössischen englischen Bühne. Der Chinese tritt hier auf als Vertreter einer gesunden, phlegmatisch-überlegenen Vernünftigkeit, die nur staunen kann über die Unsinnigkeiten des westlichen Geschmacks. Die englischen Bühnen- und Theatergepfogenheiten jener Zeit erscheinen aus einer solchen neutralen Schau allerdings seltsam genug, und Goldsmith hat die Gelegenheit, seinen feinen Spott über die englische Gesellschaft auszugiessen, reichlich benutzt.
In Brief XXXIII wird die populäre geringschätzige Beruteilung Chinas sichtbar, zu der Robinsons Bericht einen Teil beigesteuert haben mag. Der Brief handelt von den naiven, lächerlichen und doch unverbesserlichen Ansichten der Engländer über die Chinesen. Wohin er komme – erzählt unser Philosoph seinem Pekinger Freund – errege er Misstrauen oder Verwunderung. Einige wollten nicht glauben, dass er ein Chinese sei, weil er mehr einem Menschen gleiche als einem Monstrum. Andere wunderten sich, dass jemand fünftausend Meilen von England entfernt geboren und doch mit gesundem Menschenverstand begabt sein könne. "Seltsam", sagen sie, "dass ein Mensch, der seine Erziehung so weit von London empfangen hat, common sense haben soll. Er muss wohl ein 'verkleideter Engländer' sein. Nicht einmal sein Gesicht hat etwas von echter fremdländischer Barbarei". Allerdings hatte Goldsmiths Held so viel von einem Europäer der Aufklärungszeit an sich und so wenig von einem Chinesen, dass der Verdacht von dem 'verkleideten Engländer' nicht unbegründet war.
In einem Briefe erzählt der Chinese dann von einer Einladung bei einer Lady, die ihre Kenntnisse des Ostens aus den vielen Romanen geschöpft hatte, "die hier täglich verbreitet werden". Die Behandlung, die er erhält, ist denn auch ein Niederschlag dieser Romankenntnisse. Er wird mit seltsamen Aufmerksamkeiten arg bedrängt, aber er kann den Leuten nicht böse sein, da ja alles nur ein Übermass von Höflichkeit ist. Als er aber bescheiden dagegen zu protestieren wagt, da das gar nicht chinesisch sei, wird ihm bündig erklärt, dass man Grund habe, sich als Kenner in chinesischen Dingen zu betrachten.
Noch mancherlei Belehrung über wahren orientalischen Stil und Geschmack muss er über sich ergehen lassen. Doch kann er sich nicht versagen, sich nachdrücklich dagegen zu wehren, dass sein Landsleute in eine Reihe gestellt werden mit ungebildeten Barbaren : Türken, Persern und Eingeborenen von Peru. Er weist hin auf die Leistungen chinesischer Wissenschaft und weiss zu berichten, dass manche seiner Landsleute sich auch westliche Bildung angeeignet hätten, nicht schlechter als ein Student in Paris. Aber so sehr sich der chinesische Gast auch bemüht, er findet bei dem Publikum gar keine Aufmerksamkeit, so dass er es für das Beste hält, sich zu empfehlen.
In Brief LXXXVI verbreitet er sich über die Sportbegeisterung der Engländer, die dem konservativen Chinese bis heute noch immer nur ein Kopfschütteln abnötigen konnte. Für die hochgeborenen Sieger im Pferderennen hat er nur Spott : "Wie glorreich muss solch ein Senator erscheinen in Mütze und Lederhosen, die Peitsche quer im Munde durch das Ziel jagend, unter dem Beifallsgeschrei von Pferdeknechten, Jockeys, in Ställen aufgewachsener Herzöge und heruntergekommene Generäle."
1971
Jody Faye Ponthieu : The guise of the Chinese persona failed to fool the British public for long, and the modern reader is apt to feel that the clumps of story essays which do appear are little more than an attempt to make the persona more convincing. This lack of dominance on the story line emphasizes the comparison of cultures, a fact which Goldsmith seems to have had in mind in his composition.
Letter III : to the bizarre dress of the English. Altangi looks about him and compares the English men and women with their counterparts in his native China.
When the philosopher compares the ladies of China to those of England he finds the latter quite ugly. Rather than having small feet as do the Chinese women, the English women have large feet, often as long as ten inches. The Chinese women are blessed with broad faces, small eyes, thin lips, short noses, pencil-fine eye brows, and black teeth. In comparison to such beauty, Altangi finds the English women frightfully odious.
Not only does the dress of Chinese and English women differ but also the manners ; especially the preliminaries of courtship are considerably different.
There is a difference between the Chinese and the English political system. In Altangi's country the emperor endeavours to instruct his people, in theirs the people endeavour to instruct the administration. China is governed by familial loyalty and has never become engaged in endless war.
In China, says Altangi, there is a great cooperation among authors for each to contribute in a unifying way to the body of learning. On the other hand, in England the situation is reversed. Each author looks upon his associates as rivals, and there is constant bickering and ridicule. Altangi states that Confucius observed that it was the "duty of the learned to unite society more closely, and to persuade men to become citizens of the world," but English authors strive to disconnect the union of all men.
1979
David Wei-yang Dai : Lien Chi Altangi possesses a natural love for all mankind. A man of genuine benevolence must be compassionate. Lien Chi says 'actual love is the spontaneous production of the mind, no generosity can purchase, no rewards increase, nor no liberality continue it : the very person who is obliged has it not in his power to force his lingering affections upon the object he should love, and voluntarily mix passion with gratitude. Love is often an involuntary passion. We love some men, we know not why ; our tenderness is naturally excited in all their concerns ; we excuse their faults with the same indulgence.
Goldsmith, like Confucius, seeks to promote the universal benevolence found in all good-natured person. In Letter XXVII Goldsmith traces the history of the Man in Black with affection and esteem. Five passages of the second part of the essay end with the phrase 'I was tolerably good-natured, and had not the least harm in me'. The world inevitably rejects good-natured men such as he, not because their benevolencs is false, but because men of the world are selfish. Only one can exist, the good or the evil, no coexistence ist possible.
Confucius also maintains that 'true benevolence' is 'to love all men', and to take no note of the result. The problem faced by the father of the Man in Black is that 'he loved all the world, and he fancied all the world loved him'. In reality, most of the beneficiaries of such love meet this benevolence with contempt. Goldsmith distinguishes between true love and gratitude. True love neither expects nor desires a reward, but loves for its own sake, for love is all the reward.
Lien Chi Altangi, the Chinese philosopher, recognizes that his fortitude is the origin of his pride. 'I know but of two sects of philosophers in the world that have endevoured to inculcate that fortitude is but an imaginary virtue ; I mean the followers of Confucius, and those who profess the doctrines of Christ. All other sects teach pride under misfortunes ; they alone teach humility'. Lien Chi encourages his son, Hingpo, to live according to his passion. Passion may lead people to vice but can also direct to virtue. Pride, for Lien Chi, is vice as well as virtue. All depends on the conditions. However, if a person rids himself of all passion and pride, he loeses the possibility of being virtuous and happy.
Lien Chi Altangi finds that Confucian philosophy is embodied in Voltaire, the poet and philosopher. The philosopher makes people wise, the poet makes people happy.
At the end of a silvery panegyric, Goldsmith presents another typical Chinese philosophical attitude : 'Let his errors rest in peace, his excellences deserve admiration ; let me with the wise admire his wisdom ; let the envious and the ignorant ridicule his foibles ; the folly of others is ever most ridiculous to those who are themselves most foolish'.
Like Confucius, Goldmith believes that 'a benevolent disposition contributed to public prosperity'. Lien Chi Altangi with his friends, the Man in Black, Beau Tibbs, Fum Hoam, and his son Hingo are humorous, benevolent, and amiable characters. They embody such attractive qualities in Goldsmith as his 'exuberant humour – and that mastery in the pathetic wich, though it seems opposed to the gift of humour, is often found in conjunction with it'.
1990
Willi Richard Berger : Höhepunkt der fiktiven Reisekorrespondenz im chinesischen Kostüm und neben den Lettres persanes das einzige Werk der Gattung von weltliterarischem Rang ist Citizen of the world. Lien Chi Altangi wechselt Briefe mit Fum Hoam, dem Leiter der Zeremonienakademie in Peking, und mit Hongpo, seinem Sohn, der dem Vater nach England nachfolgt und unterwegs in Persien in eine Reihe romanhafter Abenteuer verwickelt wird. Der Wechsel der Adressaten wirkt der Monotonie entgegen, die sich bei dieser Gattung leicht einstellt, auch halten die Reiseschicksale des Sohns das Interesse des Lesers über das blosse Vergnügen an der satirischen Entlarvung hinaus in einer ganz ähnlichen Weise wach, wie dies bei Montesquieu die Serail-Intrige im fernen Isfahan vermag. Goldsmith hatte zunächst wie Montesquieu einen Orientalen, einen Bürger aus Morokko oder Fez, zum Korrespondenten nehmen wollen ; angesichts der in England grassierenden 'China-Madness' durfte er sich aber von einem Chinesen eine grössere publizistische Wirkung erhoffen. Die Chinese letters waren auch bald so populär, dass der Public Ledger sie auf der ersten Seite veröffentlichte und andere Journale sie nachdruckten.
Goldsmith knüpft [u.a.] bewusst an Montesquieu an, von dem er viele Motive, ja ganze Szenen übernimmt. Seine Informationen über China bezog Goldsmith wie alle anderen aus den jesuitischen Publikationen. Von hier stammen die 'konfuzianischen' Weisheiten, die Lien Chi Altangi in seine Briefe an den Sohn einflicht, von hier die positiven Urteile über chinesische Moral und Kultur, Geschichte und Gesellschaftsordnung, die sich vor allem in den Briefen des Akademiedirektors aus Peking finden. Fum Hoam ist der eigentliche Lobredner Chinas in dieser Korrespondenz, des traditionellen Chinas zumal, denn wenn auch dessen konservatives Beharrungsvermögen sich leuchtend von der Geschichte Europas abhebt, die trotz allen technischen Fortschritts eine 'chaotische Folge von Revolutionen', 'a tiddue of crimes, follies and misfortunes' (XIIL) darstellt, so ist doch auch China der Naturgesetzlichkeit des historischen Wandels und der Gefahr des Verfalls ausgesetzt. Gerade das gegenwärtige China erlebt, so Fum Hoam, eine Phase der Dekadenz, genau wie das zeitgenössische Europa (LXIII). Der Naturzustand in dem die Tataren leben, ist für Goldsmith nichts Erstrebenswertes ; ihm ist eine geistig und materiell hochentwickelte Kultur wie die chinesische trotz aller Gefährung durch Genusssucht, Luxus und Lasterhaftigkeit allemal vorzuziehn (X, XI).
Fum Hoam ist nicht das Sprachrohr des Autors, denn Goldsmith macht sich frei von dem durch die Jesuiten und die kontinentale Aufklärung begründeten 'Mirage chinois', dem er überall in seinem Quellenmaterial begegnete. Sein wahrer Protagonist Lien Chi hat einen sehr viel freieren Blick auf die Welt und die Dinge, als sich aus den China-hagiographischen Missionsschriften gewinnen liess ; er urteilt selbständig, subjektiv und jedenfalls origineller als der Kulturkonservative Vorsitzende der Zeremonieakademi, origineller auch als die langatmigen Korrespondenten des Marquis d'Argens, bei denen Goldsmith sich so ausgiebig bedient hat.
Gewiss, Lien Chi Altangi ist ein 'Philosoph', wie es sich für den Chinesen à-la-mode gehört. Aber abstrakte Tugendideale und spitzfindige Erörterungen über den wahren Gottesbegriff kümmern ihn wenig, und die Verstiegenheiten der Chinoiserien finden nichts als seinen Spott. (XIV). Wenn dieser 'Weltbürger' schon als 'Philosoph' gelten soll, so allenfalls als ein Philosoph der praktischen Vernunft ; konfuzianische Weisheit äussert sich bei ihm als gesunder Menschenverstand, als typisch englischer Common sense. Zwar ist Lien Chi gebildet und gelehrt, erweist sich als überlegener Kenner der Welt und der Menschen und ist von seinem Autor zudem mit einem würdevollen Ernst ausgestattet worden, wie sie dem 'Chinois philosophe' zukam. Lien Chi Altangi tritt als lebendige, durch viele Einzelzüge plastisch charakterisierte Individualität vor uns hin. Unbefangenheit von Blick und Urteil, Liebenswürdigkeit und urbaner Charme, Humor, geistreicher Witz und spitzzüngige Ironie, Wohlerzogenheit, Gesittetheit, Humanität und moralisches Engagement.
Mit epischer Detailfreude blättert Goldsmith eine zeitgenössische 'Chronik der laufenden Ereignisse' auf, die bis heute nichts von ihrer Frische und Originalität verloren hat. Modetorheiten, Sektenwesen, Seuchenangst, Gottesdienst, Prostitution, Theaterkrieg, Wahlen, Pferderennen, Dekadenz des Adels, Titel- und Tablettensuche, Ehe und Ehebruch, Kurpfuscherei und die Eitelkeiten der Gelehrtenrepublik – nicht, was der kritisch-humoristischen Glossierung durch den Fremden entginge.
Für Abwechslung sorgen vor allem die überall eingeschobenen rein erzählenden Partien : kleine moralische Erzählungen meist satirischen und humoristischen Charakters.
Letztlich geht es Goldsmith weder um eine satirische Degration Europas noch um eine Verspottung chinesischer Wunderlichkeiten, vielmehr um einen kosmopolitischen Kulturvergleich, bei der beide Seiten einmal besser, einmal schlechter abschneiden, um eine west-östliche Synthese zuletzt, für die das anspruchsvolle Wort vom 'Citizen of the world' nicht zu hoch gegriffen ist.
1993
Christopher Brooks : Goldsmith situates his satirist and protagonist Lien Chi Altangi squarely in the role of impostor. Moreover, Goldsmith's use of an oriental figure as an impostor of sorts brings into view an important array of assumptions about orientalism, the identity of the 'other' in occidental works, and the nature of English imperialism.
Goldsmith vacillates between his occasional attempts to make Altangi seem 'genuine' and his use of Altangi as a mere literary and ironic device, a practice that again signals the imposture at hand. The tension that arises when a realistic literary persona devolves into a simpler form, that of 'eiron', serves to millify the version of the 'Orient' envisioned by Edward Said : the clownish Chinese philosopher becomes the satirical puppet master at the expense of the English reader who identifies with the fad chinoiserie. But this shift also occurs at the expense of the oriental persona that Goldsmith created, manipulated, altered, and then abandoned.
Altangi is often unable to discern the social status of his hosts and hostesses. Thus, Goldsmith depicts his Chinese philosopher encountering members of various classes as each reveals his or her participation in the Chinese vogue, be it by language, art, architecture, cuisine, or something else, and as each insists on defining orientalism as a Westerner perceives it.
When the subject of an essay concerns Chinese fashion of any sort, Goldsmith becomes an archironist 'imposing' his editor's occidental sarcasm and editorial notes onto Altangi's narrative. When Altangi is the central narrator and biographical participand and his subject matter is China, his hubris becomes that of an 'alazon', a braggart to be undermined by an 'eiron', usually played by Goldsmith-as-narrator and editor. But when Altangi plays the role of an outsider and turns his eyes to British society, he becomes the classic victim described by Said's orientalism in that each of his English hosts attempts to redefine the oriental observer into an occidentalized version of what 'should be' a Chinese visitor.
Goldsmith's work : his Chinaman is, in effect, engaged in the buying and selling of ideas, misrepresentations, half-truths, and subtle impostures.
China as topic of expansionist interest gives way in Goldsmith's story to China as vehicle for ironic discourse. Altangi encounters numerous English characters to whom he says nothing about China, though he insists on 'being' Chinese.
Not only does pretension threaten the reality of the individual but, as Goldsmith and others would assert, the pretense of chinoiserie threatens the traditions of England itself.
Goldsmith, after all, saw Chinese arts as offering a poor model and wrote in a critical review that 'there is not a single attempt to address the imagination, or influence the passions ; such therefore are very improper models for imitation. In other words, the lack of 'imagination' in Chinese arts stood at an opposite pole to the tenets of Goldsmith's neoclassicism, a posture that privileged the imagination not only in poetry but in biography and history as well.
Goldsmith's satire sought to use China satirically, with Goldsmith constantly altering the Orient to suit his needs as Altangi arbirarily vacillates between Englishman and Chinaman, 'eiron' and 'alazon', illusion and fact, observer and, antecedent to Said's view, 'observed'.
The collection of Chinese Letters does employ the Orient as a 'surrogate self' or illusion image in which the vogue-oriented English see the imposture of their own hubris, but the image is an occidentalized version of the Orient based on hearsay and incomplete evidence, creating room for Goldsmith's satire on English behavior at the expense of Chinese tales.
Altangi's character does not claim to have visited China : his pretense is to 'be' Chinese – and to be irritated that he is 'not' treated as such. In so doing, of course, the ultimate irony of Goldsmith's imposture is underlined : he, too, has written 'many a sheet of eastern tale', little of which is original, none of which emerges from firsthand experience of China. Altangi's plea to be taken seriously, is part of the aesthetic of imposture, a product of Goldsmith's imaginative but not wholly creative process, in turn a process that found Goldsmith's original reading audience dabating the reality of Altangi's letters.
Goldsmith does 'victimize' his reader with deceptive, illusionary 'knowledge' about the Orient, but even more critically he victimizes Altangi and the Orient that he represents by casting this Chinese wanderer in the alternative role of 'alazon-eiron'. Altangi is sometimes looked down upon for his foolish misreading of English society, making him a victim of his own dubious self-knowledge. He also imposes on his reader, giving misinformation about the Orient that the reader must decode.
Goldsmith's conversion of Altangi from his initial self as a Chinese 'eiron' into an English 'alazon' is certainly not done for the sake of the Orient but is done to protect an emulating culture from a seductive otherness. But in playing two such roles, both of which are intimately tied to the Orient, Altangi muddles the reality in such a way that little, if anything, is actually learned about the China of the eighteenth century, save for the English fondness for and subsequent rejection of the Eastern fad.
The whole of the Chinese Letters becomes a fabric made out of facts and fictions about the Orient that Goldsmith weaves into a single literary imposture, an imposture that exposes the very nature of emulative thinking and behavior, and a satire that exploits as its vehicle the apparent 'idiot-savant' nature of its Chinese narrator.
Altangi is merely a mirror for English manners, and his imposture is a reflection of their own. Moreover, Altangi offers the English the opportunity literally to 'recognize' that the real China is not present in misshapen pagodas and exotic ideas. And he provides them with a tool with which to recognize how little they know, in fact, of themselves.
In a nation of disguises, Goldsmith employs numerous pretenders who are specifically victims of the Chinese vogue. They emerge wherever pretense is never far away, as another of Altangi's encounter with an English sinophile reveals. Altangi enters a woman's home that is vertably filled with Chinese materials. She admits, 'I have got twenty things from China that are of no use in the world. Quite empty and useless upon my honour'. Upon being shown the Chinese temple in woman's garden, Altangi remarks, 'Where I stand I see nothing, madam, at the end of the garden that may not as well be called an Egyptian pyramid as a Chinese temple ; for that little building in view is as like the one as t'other'. The woman response : 'You surely must be mistaken. Mr. Freeze, who designed it, called it one, and nobody disputes his pretensions'. This 'lady of distinction' demonstrates all that is imposing about chinoiserie. She initially 'had taken [Altangi] for an Englishman', but upon being informed about his Chinese heritage, 'instantly lifted herself from the couch, while her eyes sparkled with unusual vicacity'. Altangi is, in fact, 'English' not by appearance but by his satirical, commentative nature. That the woman is quickly persuaded to perceive him as Chinese again implies that China was a mirror for satire and her own faddish self-deception, and nothing more.
Altangi's masquarade – as an oriental, cosmopolite, savant – does allude 'perversely' to the British Empire, for it brings out the worst in English behavior : hubris, egoism, racism. More important to this study, it demonstrates the depths of emulative silliness and the exploitative 'use' of the Orient.
We learn a great deal about English behavior in the narrative, but little about Chinese society that was not previously available in Du Halde, Montesquieu, D'Argens, or Lyttleton. Goldsmith creates and then abandons Altangi. Altangi does not go 'home' to China, as China was never his home and China was certainly never his identity. No longer of 'use', Altangi is left alone, his identity unacknowledged.
1996
Tao, Zhijian : The eighteenth century saw not only the rise of Britain as a great empire, it saw also the emergence of the modern spirit of cosmopolitanism, represented by the flood of foreign-travel and foreign-observer fictions, resulting from Europe's, particularly England's, newly-enlarged access to the rest of the world. Whether as trenchant satire on English customs, mentalities, and politics, or as a fanciful evocation of exotic mores, the traveller's story is, in complex ways, informed by England's growing geopolitical visions – its developing demand for foreign markets and its quest for power.
The citizen of the world appeared during January 1760-August 1761, a period when Britain was about to become the biggest colonial power. When he collected his Chinese letters into a book, he changed that generally known title to The citizen to the world. As many critics note, his intent was to teach a cosmopolitan humanism, which would transcend political and national confines. This cosmopolitan ideal was shared by many of the englightenment philosophers in Europe. Goldsmith's political stance as a Tory loyalist opposint the Tory war policy, is clearly stated in his journalistic 'Chinese letters'. Goldsmith's portagonist meets a politician who supports the expansion of the British Empire. “We are a commercial nation, we have only to cultivate commerce like our nighbours the Dutch ; it is our business to encrase trade by settling new colonies : riches are the strength of a nation (XXV).
One could argue that Goldsmith is merely showing that even patriotism should not argue for colonial expansion, and that a broader view and a more generous spirit of cosmopolitanism is just what Goldsmith is propagating. Yet the cosmopolitan sentiments embodied in The citizen of the world and informed by the empire's broadening geopolitical experiences, necessarily express an imperialist politics – even though this political stance remains, to a great extent, implicit and is masked, in particular, by the rhetoric of humanistic cosmopolitanism.
On one side of Goldsmith's satire, China as the Other is often frivolously appreciated as the ideal, on the other side, it is also tacitly the butt of criticism. Donna Isaacs Alnekoff aptly find that 'while Chinese nationality renders the protagonist a convenient satirist, it renders him an equally convenient object of satire. Goldsmith exploits the associations of China with extreme formality, pedantry, and ceremonialism to turn his philosopher into a figure of ridicule'. This is true not only of Lien China, but also of China and things Chinese, in general. They all provide, at once, contrasting images to ridiculous English idiosyncrasies and images to be ridiculed.
China, as an abstract utopian construct, is admired for many things. First of all, there is the Chinese political system. Fum Hoam boasts of Chinese excellence in 'the greatest of all arts, the art of governing kingdoms and ourselves. The whole state may be said to resemble one family, of which the emperor is the protector, father, and friend. (XLII). Lien Chi ist quite taken aback by the oddity of English politics. 'In our well-managed country the Emperor endeavours to instruct the people, in theirs, the people endeavour to instruct the administration. (IV). Although Goldsmith is known to have advocated greater monarchical power and can, therefore, be taken as genuine in his criticism of such anarchism as the people instructing the administration, his criticism of Chinese politics is also unmistakable. Goldsmith's treatment of Chinese government is a case in point. His praise of the Chinese political system is feigned, and its insincerity is easy to detect because the ostensible positive view is rebutted by hard 'facts'.
Goldsmith notes that 'the very Chinese, whose religion allows him two wives, takes not half the liberties of the English in this particular. By giving such ostensible credit to the Chinese, Goldsmith is criticizing the English who 'keeps as many wives as he can maintain'. But he is clearly using a double-edged weapon : the old Chinese practice of polygamy, which in Goldsmith's account of Chinese religion appears to be methodical, gets at least its share of the criticism – and this is very much at the expense of China, as part of the mysterious and evil ethos of the 'Orient'. Goldsmith's satire participates blatantly in the wilful, European concoction of the exotic.
The Chinese sense of beauty, as well, is purposely distorted and denigrated in Goldsmith's narrative. Lien Chi nostalgically pictures 'the small-footed beauties of China' “How very broad their faces ; how very short their noses ; how very little their eyes ; how very thin their lips ; how very black their teeth”.
Arbitrary management of China was prevalent in eighteenth-century Britain – one of its manifestations being the China fad, or chinoserie, which was later mocked by many, including Goldsmith. The citizen offers a good case of such satire for study. Here the management of China proceeds on at least two levels : first, the knowledge of the Orient and of China collected 'from fictions every day propagated here, under the titles of eastern tales and oriental histories', and, second, the assiduous and admirable efforts made by the Chinaman (Goldsmith) in yet another fiction for 'straighten' things out. When the Chinese traveller is invited to a dinner given by a lady of distinction, instruction about China, instead of being sought from him, is imprudently forced upon him. Such instruction ranges from the use of chopsticks to the function of similes and metaphors in Chinese rhetoric. (XXXIII).
Another instance of the 'orientalizing' management of China is in Lien Chi's descriptions of gardens in his country. After some complaints about English gardening, the philospher avows that 'there is scarce a garden in China which does not contain some fine moral, couched under the general design, where one is not taught wisdom as he walks, and feels the force of some noble truth or delicate precept resulting from the disposition of the groves, streams, or grottos'.
Goldsmith's satiric manipulation of China to direct subtle sarcasm at the boasts made about China's history in the context of the European fad of chinoiserie. It can be said that Goldsmith took advantage of the bythen popular appetite for things Chinese in order to revile China, or, that he used China as an absent and silent Other that would serve as a convenient target in his attack on the English.
One gradually realizes that China is excluded from the civilized world. It is an unhuman place that tellingly resembles Persia. Lien Chi's son Hingpo almost becomes a slave of the cruel Chinese emperor and has to escape at the risk of his life, just as he later falls into the hands of a cruel Persion lord from whom he escapes. China is actually said to be 'declining fast into barbarity' ; 'her laws are now more venal, and her merchants are more deceitful than formerly ; the very arts and sciences have run to decay'.
China, in particular, is a stagnant society ; it hardly ever changes – at least for the better. Comparing himself in Europe with his friends in China, and also Europe with China, Lien Chi deploringly remarks, 'I wander, but they are at rest ; they suffer few changes but what pass in my own restless imagination ; it is only the rapidity of my own motion gives an imaginary swiftness to objects which are in some measure immovable'.
What China is, Goldsmith does not care – he could easily have replaced China with any other exotic place, and have done his job equally well. Goldsmith is thus by no means a sinophile, as is sometimes suggested, but rather he uses China as just an example of the 'Other', and a vicious one at that. What he actually cares for is first and foremost his own people.
Goldsmith annexes his 'China' to Europe. China is a projection of Goldsmith's European ideal and/or fantasy, a figure in contrast to English idiosyncracy, an exotic locale of strangeness and abnormality – in European eyes. Simply put, what China, in reality is, Goldsmith neither knew well nor cared ; what is useful to him is that China is either the same, or different – in reference to Britain or Europe.
1996
Bob Vore : The description of London given in the very first letter is a good example of the kind of perspicacity of which Goldsmith's protagonist Altangi is capable : "Judge then how great is my disappointment on entering London, to see no signs of the opulence so much talk'd of abroad ; wherever I turn, I am presented with a gloomy solemnity in the houses, the streets and the inhabitants ; none of that beautiful building which makes a principal ornament in Chinese architecture. The street of Nankin are sometimes strewn with gold leaf ; very different are those of London".
The more Altangi's experiences in English society, the more detailed and subtle his insights become. Describing funeral practies, for instance, he observes that "people of distinction in England really deserve pity, for they die in circ*mstances of the most extreme distress. It is an established rule, never to let a man know that he is dying ; physicians are sent for, the clergy are called, and everything passes in silent solemnity round the sick bed ; the patient is in agonies, looks round for pity, yet not a single creature will say that he is dying".
An other point, this time commenting on a club of authors, he remarks that "In China the emperor himself takes cognisance of all the doctors in the kingdom who profess authorship. In England, every man may be an author that can write ; for they have by law a liberty not only of saying what they please, but of being also as dull as they please".
(Letter IIIVI) "The nobility are ever fond of wisdom, but they also are fond of having it without study ; to read poetry required thought, and the English novility were not fond of thinking ; they soon therefore placed their affections upon music, because in this they might indulge an happy vacancy, and yet still have the pretensions to delicacy and taste as before".
Perhaps no subject so befuddles Altangi than that of English women. Having expressed his distance for them, calling them 'horridly ugly', he returns to the subject later for a final frustrated gloss concernig the then-current fad for long trains on dresses. "Son of China, what contradictions do we find in this strange world ! Not only the people of different countries think in opposition to each other, but the inhabitants of a single island are often found inconsistent with temselves ; would you believe it ; this very people, my Fum, who are so fond of seeing their women with long tails, at the same time dock their horses to the very rump !!!"
As accurate and insightful as these criticism of English society may be, Goldsmith's satire is rarely, if ever, severe in any moral sense. Rather than offend his readers, Goldsmith's purpose in writing the letters was to invite them to laugh good-naturedly at the petty foibles of society at large, at the eccentricites of their immediate neighbors, and even on occasion at themselves.
There exists too a certain reflexive satire on Altangi's part when his own biases cause him to denigrate things undeservedly, thereby compromising his credibility as a judge of English manners and leaving Goldsmith's English readership feeling not so very bad about themselves after all. To his credit, Altangi is aware of the danger of falling into this habit and expresses some concern over the matter. He explains than "When I had just quitted my native country, and crossed the Chinese wall, I fancied every deviation from the customs and manners of China was a departing from nature ; but I soon perceived that the ridicule lay not in them but in me ; that I falsely condemned others of absurdity, because they happened to differ from a standard originally founded in prejudice or partiality".
(Letter XXVIII) Altangi's caustic remarks about aged bachelors stand as an example of his sometimes prejudiced point of view : "An old bachelor is a beast of prey, and the laws should make use of as many stratagems and as much force to drive the reluctant savage into the toils, as the Indians when they hunt the hyena or the rhinoceros".
(Letter LXXII) He is also to be questioned in his censure of the marriage act : "Would you believe it, my dear Fum Hoam, there are laws made, which even forbid the people marrying each other. Buy the head of Conf ucius I jest not ; there are such laws in being here ; and yet their law-givers have neither been instructed among the Hottentots, nor imbibed their principles of equity from the natives of Anamaboo".
The sincerely charitable nature of the English, the merits of their system of government, and the general simplicity of their outlock all leave favorable impressions in Altangi's mind. Thus, although the book ends with Altangi leaving England, his stay there was overall a pleasant one characterized by observations the overall effect of which is to tacitly condone the established order and make Citizen of the world palatable reading to Goldsmith's audience.
2006
James Watt : While Lien Chi is an 'ironic observer' of British customs and manners, he is also an 'ironic victim', a comic and perhaps even absurd figure. Like earlier imaginary travelers, Lien Chi appears in his first few letters as an innocent abroad, a naive observer of 'a new world', where 'every object strikes with wonder and surprise'. Goldsmith's traveler is especially bewildered by the appearance and the conduct of English women, which he often reads through the lens of his own 'Chinese' prejudices, incredulously declaring, for example, that the women he encounters 'have such masculine feet, as actually serve some for walking'. Shortly afterwards, Lien Chi is shown to be less dogmatic about standards of beauty, and to admire the engaging manners of 'the ladies in this city' ; nonetheless, he misinterprets what he sees, falling victim to the confidence trick of a prostitute : he gives his watch away to be repaired, never to see it again.
Goldsmith's Chinese philosopher is initially shown to be at sea in the London of pubs and prostitutes, and the comic potential of his errors and misrecognitions is explited throughout the work. If Lien Chi often comes across as a naive blunderer rather than a worldly traveler, The citizen of the world does not in any straightforward way satirize the humanistic ideals of the 'enthusiasm for knowledge' that he so often proclaims.
Lien Chi considers himself a 'philosophic wanderer', motivated by a scholarly curiosity, and determined to distance himself from narrow national prejudices. Goldsmith's work nonetheless uses Lien Chi to redefine contemporary constructions of global fraternity. While he often celebrates the life and writings of Voltaire, Lien Chi often looks beyond the 'actually existing' cosmopolitanism of a Francophile aristocratic elite, and conceives of cosmopolitan fellowship in a potentially much more inclusive sense, as the coming together of likeminded people concerned 'to unite society more closely'.
Some of Lien Chi's letters take the form of discrete moral essays on abstract questions, such as the pursuit of happiness, and a number of the letters explore Goldsmith's own predicament as a relative newcomer from Ireland to England, displaying a fascination with class distinction, or referring to the anxious and unstable condition of the modern writer.
If Lien Chi is frequently said to see Britain and Europe from a generally 'Asiatic' perspective, his specifically Chinese background often gives him a certain critical purchase too. He intermittently refers to the history of contact between Europe and China, complaining that European travelers to China have hitherto been people with an agenda - 'the superstitious and mercenary' – rather than the truly disinterested and enlightened. And while it is true that Goldsmith does little to flesh out Lien Chi's Chineseness, beyond presenting him as 'a native of Honan' and a former 'mandarine', Lien Chi nonetheless on occasion defends Chinese customs and manners. 'The Europeans reproach us with false history and fabulous chronology', Lien Chi tells the reader, but 'how should they blush to see their own books, many of which are written by the doctors of their religion, filled with the most monstrous fables, and attested with the utmost solemnity' ; the priestly case deceives the laity, Lien Chi states, not only in China but 'in every country'. Lien Chi's often misogynistic commentary on both English and Chinese women makes him a secondary obejcts of satire for the polite reader.
It is important, that he also sometimes challenges commonly held European assumptions, about the supposed condition and treatment of Eastern women. Lien Chi declares that 'the Asiatics are much kinder to the fairer sex than you imagine'. Lien Chi states 'The ladies here make no scruple to laugh at the smallness of a Chinese slipper, but our wives at China would have a more real cause of laughter, could they but see the immoderate length of an European train !' Lien Chi uses 'woman' as an index of cultural comparison for his own purposes, here, presenting himself as a rational and refined observer at the primary expense of female consumers of luxury goods.
The Chinese identity of Lien Chi is especially significant in the light of Goldsmith's engagement with the ongoing debate about the effects of luxury. As is well known, one of the key types of luxury commodity in the consumer culture of the mid-eighteenth century was 'chinoiserie', a catch-all term that referred both to goods brought from China- lacquerware, furniture, porcelain, silks, an so on – and to domestic imitations of these exotic imports.
In Letter XI, Lien Chi attributes to Confucius the humean injunction that 'we should enjoy as many of the luxuries of life as are consitent with our own safety and the prosperity of others'. Goldmith had denounced chinoiserie as 'a perversion of taste' in the review of The orphan of China and his use of a term like 'perversion' seems to position Goldsmith among those critics who saw the Chinese taste as a vulgar affront both to the integrity of the nation and to the dignity and truth of neoclassical aesthetics. Throughout The citizen of the world Goldsmith presents the taste for apparently Chinese commodities as frivolous and ignorant, having little or nothing to do with China itself.
Rather than attempt to provide an authentic description of Lien Chi's particularity, Goldsmith's work, notwithstanding its occasional reference to certain 'Chinese' eccentricities, seems much more concerned to 'de-exoticize' and familiarize its title character. Lien Chi complains that 'some fancy me no Chinese, because I am formed more like a man than a monster' and he tries in turn to frustrate others' curiosity by aiming at 'appearing rather a reasonable creature, than an outlandish ideot'.
Many of Lien Chi's letters refer to his companionship with the 'man in black', an English gentleman, sometimes interpreted as another authorial persona, who introduces himself to Lien Chi at Westminster Abbey. The citizen of the world certainly exploits the comic potential of the man in black's misanthropic 'humor', but at the same time it develops a bond between Lien Chi and his guide, a bond founded on the fact that 'the Chinese and we are pretty much alike'. Goldsmith's work has little to say about any makers of physical difference between Lien Chi and the people he encounters, and it is significant that the only interest in the Chinese philosopher's physiognomy comes from those figures, such as the 'lady of distinction' or the 'grave gentlemen', who are determined to see him as exotically other.
If The citizen of the world attempts to grasp the utopian potential of cross-cultural contact, however, it also appears to concede that the time is not ripe for the realization of this potential. One index of this is that while Goldsmith's writing insistently emphasizes the need to overcome the false consciousness of an unreflecting patriotism, The citizen of the world also acknowledges the enduring force of popular patriotic attachment.
If Goldsmith draws attention to the idealized nature of the dialogue between Lien Chi and the man in black, it is also important to contexturalize his appeal to the honorific term 'cosmopolitan', and to look more closely at the foundation of the critical authority that is sometimes accorded to his Chinese traveler. The way in which The citizen of the world often confronts received ideas about China and the Chinese seems to underscore its commitment to improving cross-cultural conversation, which is based on the assumption that 'the Chinese and we are pretty much alike'. It is significant that Lien Chi makes a particular claim for Chinese civility and politeness, though, defining these virtues against the 'voluptuous barbarities of our eastern neighbours' : when he defends Chinese reationality against the orientalist assumptions made by readers of Eastern tales, Lien Chi states that 'you must not expect from an inhabitant of China the same ignorance, the same unlettered simplicity, that you find in a Turk, Persian, or native of Peru'.
Even though Lien Chi intermittently asserts the cultural prestige of Chinese civilizations, Goldsmith's construction of China is itself ambivalent and divided. Despite Lien Chi's efforts to distinguish between China and its 'eastern neighbours', Goldsmith sometimes presents China as a generic oriental despotism.
Lien Chi's status as a philosophic traveler is loosely guaranteed by the enduring cultural cachet of 'Chinese morality' and Confucian wisdom, but the more detail that The citizen of the world supplies about China, the more unstable its account of Chinese civilization becomes. Despite Lien Chi's frequent distinctions between Chinese civility and Turkish or Tartar ignorance, the unabling claim that Goldsmith makes about the excellence of Chinese morality collides on a number of occasions with a more hostile account, increasingly prevalent from the 1760s onwards, of Chinese imperial despotism and cultural stagnation.
- Document: Powell, L.F. Hau kiou choaan. In : The review of English literature ; vol. 2, no 8 (1926). (PerT3, Publication)
- Document: Venne, Peter. China und die Chinesen in der neueren englischen und amerikanischen Literatur. (Zürich : Juris-Verlag, 1951). Diss. Univ. Zürich, 1951. S. 23-24. (Venne1, Publication)
- Document: Ponthieu, Judy Faye. Oliver Goldsmith as social critic in The citizen of the world. Diss. Texas Tech university, 1971.
http://etd.lib.ttu.edu/theses/available/etd-11042009-31295004289418/unrestricted/31295004289418.pdf. (GolO7, Publication) - Document: Dai, David Wei-yang. A comparative study of D'Argens' "Lettres chinoises" and Goldsmith's "Citizen of the world". In : Tamkang review ; vol. 10, no 2 (1979). (GolO10, Publication)
- Document: Berger, Willy Richard. China-Bild und China-Mode im Europa der Aufklärung. (Köln ; Wien : Böhlau, 1990). S. 164-170. (Berg, Publication)
- Document: Brooks, Christopher. Goldsmith's "Citizen of the world" : knowledge and the imposture of 'Orientalism'. In : Texas studies in literature and language ; vol. 35, no 1 (1993). (GolO12, Publication)
- Document: Vore, Bob. Oliver Goldsmith's "Citizen of the world" and Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson's "Letters from John Chinaman" : changing perceptions of the Orient in Imperial England. In : Tamkang review ; vol. 26, no 3 (1996). (GolO11, Publication)
- Document: Tao, Zhijian. Citizen of whose world ? : Goldsmith's Orientalism. In : Comparative literature studies ; vol. 33, no 1 (1996). (GolO8, Publication)
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Du Halde, Jean-Baptiste. Description [ID D1819].
Du Halde, Jean-Baptiste. A description of the empire of China [ID D11819].
Semedo, Alvaro. The history of that great and renowned monarchy of China [ID D17593].
Magalhães, Gabriel de. A new history of China [ID D1713].
Le Comte, Louis. Nouveaux mémoires sur l'état de la Chine [ID D1771].
Ides, Evert Ysbrandszoon. Three years travels from Moscow over-land to China [ID D4572].
Martini, Martino. Novus atlas sinensis [ID D1698].
Martini, Martino. Sinicae historiae decas prima [ID D1703].
Lettres édifiantes et curieuses [ID D15044].
Lockman, John. Travels of the Jesuits [ID D26896].
Couplet, Philippe. Confucius sinarum philosophus [ID D1758].
Confucius. The morals of Confucius [ID D26897].
Nieuhof, Johan. L'ambassade de la Compagnie orientale [ID D1711].
Ogilby's China. (1669-1671). Nieuhoff, John. An embassy from the East-India Company of the United Provinces, to the Grand Tartar Cham, Emperor of China.
Kircher, Athanasius. China illustrata [ID D1712].
Bayer, T.S. Mvsevm sinicvm [ID D407].
Fatinelli, Giovanni Giacomo. Historia cultus Sinensium [ID D1787].
The modern part of the universal history. Vol. 1-16. (London : Printed for T. Osborne, 1759-1765). Vol. 8.
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Harris, John. Navigantium atque itinerantium bibliotheca [ID D26900].
Kaempfer, Engelbert. The history of Japan ; together with a description of the Kindom of Siam. Transl. By J.G. Scheuchzer. Vol. 1-2 in 1. (London : The translator, 1727).
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Histoire de l'Academie royale es inscriptions et belles lettres.
The Preface.
The following translation was found in manuscript, among the papers of a gentleman [whose name Percy disclosed as James Wilkinson in the "Advertisem*nt" to the second issue of the book] who had large concerns in the East-India company and occasionally resided much at Canton. It is believed by his relations, that he had bestowed considerable attention on the Chinese language, and that this translation (or at least part of it) was unertaken by him as a kind of exercise while he was studying it : the many interlineations, &c., which it abounds with, shew it to be the work of a learner : and as the manuscript appears in many places to have been first written with a black-lead pencil, and afterwards more correctly over-written with ink, it should seem to have been drawn up under the direction of a Chinese master or tutor. The History is contained in four thin folio books or volumes of Chinese paper ; which after the manner of that country, are doubled in the fore-edge, and cut on the back. The three first of these volumes are in English ; the fourth in Portuguese ; and written in a very different hand from the former. This part of the Editor hath now translated into our own language.
The missionaries have given abstracts and versions of several Chinese books, which may be seen in the curious collection of P. Du Halde. Among them are some few novels. As there are but short pieces, the Editor thought it would be no unacceptable present to the curious to afford them a specimen of a larger kind : that they might see how a Chinese Author would conduct himself through the windings of a large narration.
Although the general character of a people should not be drawn from one or two individuals ; nor their literary excellence determined by the particular merit of one book ; yet it may be concluded that the following is a piece of considerable note amont the Chinese, otherwise a stranger would not have been tempted to translate it. That book would naturally be put first into the hands of a foreigner, which is in highest repute among the natives.
Such as it is, the Editor here presents it to the Public. Examined by the laws of European criticism, he believes it liable to many objections. It will doubtless be urged, that the incidents are neither sufficiently numerous, nor all of them ingeniously contrived ; that the imagery is often neither exact nor lively ; that the narrative is frequently dry and tedious, and while it runs out into a minute detail of unimportant circ*mstances, is too deficient in what should interest the passions or divert the imagination.
That there is a littleness and poverty of genius in almost all the works of taste of the Chinese, must be acknowledged by capable judges. This at least is evident in their writings ; and in a narrative like the following, would make a writer creep along through a minute relation of trifling particulars, without daring to omit the most inconsiderable. The objectness of their genius may easily be accounted for from that servile submission, and dread of novelty, which inslaves the minds of the Chinese, and while it promotes the peace and quiet of their empire, dulls their spirit and cramps their imagination.
It ought, however, to be observed in favour of the Chinese, that if they do not take such bold and daring flights as some of the other Eastern nations, neither do they run into such extravagant absurdities. Whether this be owing to the cause now assigned, or to their having bestowed more attention on literature, so it is that they pay a greater regard to truth and nature in their fictious narratives, than any other of the Asiatics. For it must be allowed to our present work, that the conduct of the story is more regular and artful than is generally seen in the compositions of the East ; hath less of the marvellous and more of the probable. It contains an unity of design or fable, and the incidents all tend to one end, in a regular natural manner, with little interruption or incoberence. After all, the Editor is not concerned about the judgment that will be passed on this performance, and neither attempts to conceal nor extenuate its faults. He gives it not as a piece to be admired for the beauties of its composition, but as a curious specimen of Chinese literature, and leaves to the critics to decide its merit.
But he also begs it may be considered in another light, as a faithful picture of Chinese manners, wherein the domestic and political economy of that vast people is displayed with an exactness and accuracy to which none but a native could be capable of attaining. To read in a Collection of Voyages and Travels ; in a portion of Universal History ; or in a Present State of any Country, an elaborate account of it, under the several heads of its customs, laws, government, &c. Drawn up by a foreigner however well acquainted with the subject, can convey but a superficial knowledge to the mind. Those accurate compilations have certainly their merit, but the little distinguishing pecularities which chiefly compose the true character of a living people will hardly be learnt from them. Many of these can come under no regular head of methodical arrangement. Those writers may give a dead resemblance, while they are careful to trace out every feature, but the life, the spirit, the expression will be apt to escape them. To gain a true notion of these we must see the object in action. There is no a greater difference between the man who is sitting for his portrait, stiffened into a studied composure, with every feature and limb under constraint ; and the same person unreserved, acting in his common sphere of life, with every passion in play, and every part of him in motion : then there is between a people methodically described in a formal account, and painted out in the lively narrative of some domestic history. A foreigner will form a truer notion of the genius and spirit of the English, from one page of Fielding, and one or two writers now alive, than from whole volumes of Present States of England, or French Letters concerning the English Nation.
But not to mention that many curious customs and peculiarities of a nation are better understood by example than by description : many of these cannot easily be known to foreigners at all. The whole system of the manners of a people can only be thoroughly known to themselves. The missionaries are the only foreigners from whom we can possibly espect compleat and accurate accounts of China, for none besides themselves were ever permitted to range at large through the Chinese empire : but let it be considered, that supposing we had no reason to question their veracity, yet the very gravity of their character would prevent them from being ocular vitnesses (not only of the idolatrous ceremonies, but) of many particulars of the interiour conduct of the Chinese. It is well known that this people affect a privacy and reserve beyond all other nations ; which must prevent many of their domestic customs from transpiring to strangers : and therefore the intire manners of the Chinese can only be thoroughly described by themselves.
Thus much in favour of the present, which the Editor here makes to the Public. It behoves him now to mention the share he hath bad in preparing it for their acceptance. As the version was the work of a gentleman whose province was trade, and who probably never designed it for the Public, nothing could be expected from him but fidelity to the original : and this, if one may judge from the erasures and corrections that abound in the manuscript, was not neglected ; which the general prevalence of the Chinese idiom will serve to confirm. The Editor therefore hath been so far obliged to revise the whole, as to render the language somewhat more grammatical and correct. Yet as the principal merit of such a piece, as this, must consist in the pecularities of its style and manner, he hath been careful to make no other alterations than what grammer and common sense merely required. He is desirous to conceal none of its faults, and he hopes he hath obscured none of its beauties. He hath been particularly exact in retaining the imagery, the allusions, the reflections, the proverbial sayings, any uncommon sentiment or mode of expression, and as much of the Chinese idiom in general as was not utterly inconsistent with the purity of our own : and when he could not retain this in the text ; he hath frequently been careful to preserve it in the margin. Sometimes where the narrative was insupportably diffuse and languid, interrupted by short questions and answers of no consequence, or retarded by dull und unmeaning repetitions : in these cases he could not help somewhat shortening and contracting it ; and probably the most rigid admirer of Chinese literature, would have pardoned him, if he had done this oftener. As the great fault of the original was its prolixity, it was generally more requisite to prune away than to add ; yet as the Editor hath been sometimes tempted to throw in a few words, it may be proper to inform the Reader that these will generally be found included in brackets. Once or twice where the incidents were inartificially conducted, a discovery which seemed rather premature, hath been postponed for a few pages, but never without notice to the reader. Some few inconsistencies and contradictions have been removed by the Editor, but generally such as the Translator himself had corrected in some other place : and where he had rendered a Chinese title improperly, it hath been set right from better authorities : two or three instances have occurred of this kind, wherein it was thought unnecessary to detain the Reader with particular information. But ever this liberty hath never been assumed, where there could be the least doubt of its propriety. In short, as the grand merit of such a piece as this must consist in its peculiarities and authenticity ; the reader may be assured that nothing hath been done to lessen the one or impair the other.
This close attachment to the original may perhaps be blamed, as it hath prevented the style from being more lively and flowing ; but the Editor had in view rather to satisfy the curious than to amuse the idle. It may have rendered the book less entertaining, but he believes more valuable. It was his intention, however, to have removed all such expressions, as were quite barbarous and ungrammatical, yet be cannot be sure but instances of both will be found to have escaped him. If any thing faulty of this kind should occur, he hopes the candid will pardon it as one of those oversights, which will sometimes elude the most vigilant attention.
It remains that something be said concerning the Notes, if it be only to apologize for their frequency and lenth. It was at first intended to have incumbered the page with as few of these as possible : but it was soon found necessary to depart from this plan. The manners and customs of the Chinese, their peculiar ways of thinking, and modes of expression are do remote from our own, that tey frequently require a large detail to render them intelligible. The Editor quickly saw that be should have occasion to touch upon most things remarkable among the Chinese : this tempted him to introduce a short account of others. He was desirous that the History and Notes taken together might be considered as forming a concise, and not altogether defective account of the Chinese, such as might be sufficient to gratify the curiosity of most readers, and to refresh the memory of others. This he hopes will serve as an apology for such of the Notes as appear impertinent or digressive. Where the narrative can interest or entertain the Reader, he will not suffer them to take off his attention : and where it is dull and tedious, they may possibly prove no unwelcome relief. The Editor was the less sparing of them, in hopes they might procure the book a second perusal : he can truly affirm, that they are extracted from the best and most authentic writers on the subject, many of which are scarce and curious : and that they will be frequently found to supply omission in more celebrated and more voluminous accounts of China.
The Editor wishes he could as easily apologize for some of the Notes which he is afraid will be thought unimportant and trifling : but, after the labour of inquiry many things will appear more deserving of attention than they really are ; and such is the weakness of the human mind, that it is apt to estimage things not so much by their intrinsic worth, as by the difficulty and pains with which they were acquired. After all, 'tis hoped there will not be found many instances of this kind, and that these will be pardoned for the sake of others more curious and important.
The Editor ought not to conclude without returning thanks to that Gentleman, to whose friendship he is indebted for the use of the manuscript here printed : who not only gave him leave to commit this piece to the press, but in the most obliging manner indulged him with the free use of all the Translator's papers, many of which contributed to throw light upon it.
His thanks are also due to those Gentlemen of distinction, who so obligingly gave him acess to their libraries, and thereby enabled him to prefix to his Notes a list of Authors, that would do honour to a much more considerable publication. The assistance received from the Earl of Sussex's library deserves particularly to be acknowledged ; the reasures of literature contained in that large and valuable collection are so well known to the learned world : that it will perhaps be some disadvantage to our little work to mention it here, as it will be apt to raise expectations in the reader, which nothing that follows may be able to answer.
Fussnoten
"The manuscript is dated 1719, which was the last year he [James Wilkinson] spent in China. He died in 1736." [Vorwort].
"Now these accounts have been taxed, as partial and defective, especially so far as they describe the religious ceremonies of the Chinese. For the reader is to be informed that the Jesuites have beecn accused by the missionaries of other orders, of making very improper concessions to their Chinese converts, and of so modelling christianity, as to allow an occasional conformity to many pagan superstitions, under a pretence that they are only of a civil nature. How far this charge was true, we will not pretend to determine, but probably it was not altogether grundless, as sentence was given against them by their superiors. These disputes have subsisted near a century ; and in all the descriptions of China, published by the Jesuites during this period, it may be expected they would give such an account of the Chinese ceremonies, as would best favour their cause." [Vorwort].
"In a blank page of the Translator's MS. Of the Chinese History is the following list [of celebrated Chinese poets and painters], dated Canton, 1720."
"... most of the modern Literati understand the word 'Tien' in their ancient books in a low material sense, and are down-right atheists-"
"It is very remarkable that the Chinese have no particular terms in all their language that expressly denotes the Supreme Being, or answers to our word GOD. Hence they have been branded with the characters of professed atheists. But whatever their Literati may be at present, it is certain that the Chinese have had from the earliest antiquity various forms of expression, and a multitude of religious rites, which prove their belief of a Divine Providence."
"We are not to wonder among a People so avaricious as the Chinese and who have so little notion of a future reckoning, that Power and Office are often productive of Tyranny and Oppression. Where there is no principle of conscience, it is not in the power of human laws to prevent injustice. If we examine the Chinese Government in Theory, nothing seems better calculated for the good and happiness of the people ; if in Practice, we shall nowhere find them more pillaged by the great."
"... as their magistrates are generally raised by personal merit and application, and that even from the lowest ranks, so that they come poor to their governments, they lie under strong temptations to be rapacious and greedy."
"It is the business of their Laws to check and correct this evil tendendy : and many fine Regulations to this end will be found among those of the Chinese. But after all, as the Chinese Laws are merely political institutions, and are backed by no sanctions of future rewards and punishments, though they may influence the exterior, they will not affect the heart, and therefore will rather create an appearance of virtue, than the reality."
"... the ancient Chinese lawgivers, although they inculcated pretty just notions of Providence, seem to have paid little or no attention to those of a Future State. Confucius himself hath scarce dropt a hint on this subject. What opinions of this kind prevail have been chiefly adopted from... Bonzes who propose a thousand ways to compound for iniquity... in short by being any thing else rather than Good and Virtuous."
"Where the women are held so cheap, we must not wonder that the men should be backward to acknowledge a soft and respectable passion for any one of them : or that a nation in other respects civilized and refined, should in this resemble the most savage and unpolished... Among some of the wild Nations of North America."
"... notwithstanding their boasted purity, evidently fall short of the Christian, since they know not how to inspire that open and ingenious simplicity void of all guile, which more elevated principles of morality propose to our esteem and admiration."
"The Morality of the Chinese Author... appears in a very contemptible light compared with the Christian, which so strongly recommends the forgiveness of injuries and the return of good for evil."
"... that even his great Philosopher doth not insist upon this, as a duty : and hath neither backed it with any Sanction nor recommended it upon adequate motives. But indeed where is this divine maxim taught with that precision ; urged with that glowing benevolence ; or enforced from those sublime and affecting motives, which it is in the mouth of the SAVIOUR of the world ?"
"Power and Riches... are the sole objects of attention in China, because Power and Riches produce every thing which can render this life desirable, and a Chinese seldom looks beyond it. And where only principles of this kind prevail, and there is no check from conscience, we must not wonder that general dishonesty and corruption prevail too."
Sekundärliteratur
1719
James Wilkinson translated Hau kiou choaan [Hao qiu zhuan] in 1719 probably as a form of language exercise while he was resident as a merchant in Canton.
1758
Thomas Percy borrowed a manuscript translation of Hau kiou choaan [Hao qiu zhuan].
1758-1762
Briefe von James Grainger und William Shenstone an Thomas Percy über Hau kiou choaan.
James Grainger (ca. 1721-1766) : Schottischer Arzt, Dichter, Übersetzer.
Robert Didsley (1704-1764) : Englischer Autor, Buchändler.
William Shenstone (Halesowen 1714-1763 Halesowen) : Dichter
Febr. : Grainger schreibt : "I gave G. [Ralph Griffith] that part of your letter to me, which related to Shui-ping-Sin. He did not seem to approve of the manner in which you propose to treat that fair foreigner. He wants a pleasing romance, and you talk of a faithful copy ; but he is to write to you, and till then I would not have you begin your rifacciamento."
"I have talked with Ralph Griffith about the Chinese novel. He tells me there is no occasion for any formal bargain ; you are to translate it into good reading English, and he is to pay you fifty guineas for your pains. You are to add notes to explain the more uncommon customs, and are to introduce the whole with a prefactory discourse upon the manner of writing in China. For this supernumerary labour he promises to let you have some copies for yourself and friends. I should really have been much pleased if Griffiths would have remitted you, at present, part of the price, but I find, from the best authority, that this is deldom if ever done. I therefore told Griffiths it would be obliging me to let you have part in hand, to animate you in your drudgery. But he replied, “Should any accident happen to your friend, before the version is finished, my money would be lost, as none but Mr. Percy can perform our agreement”. In short, after much pro-ing and con-ing, he at last told me that as soon as the whole MS. was sent him he would remit you the fifty guineas, whereas the custom was never to pay the whole till the last sheet was sent to the press ; and, indeed, I myself know this to be true ; you must therefore set about Shui-pin-Sin as soon as possible, and when you have finished the first two books dispatch them up. He shall then pay you the half, because the work may be given to the printer."
L.F. Powell : Percy adopted Griffiths' suggestion as to the explanatory notes, but apparently did not feel equal to a discourse on Chinese writing.
20. Juli : Grainger an Percy : "Griffith has sent me back the Chinese Lady, and I assure you I like her in her new English garb."
1. Aug. : "As to Shui-ping-Syn, I have mentioned her to Dr. Hawksworth, who desires to be introduced to her ; which I have the more readily complied with, as he is intimate with Payne the bookseller, and I know he will be pleased with this Chinese naturalization."
17. Febr. 1759 : Grainger schreibt : "Dodsley thinks well of the Novel, and I hope I shall bring him to bargain with your for it ; next week I shall show him the specimen. Let me know what you expect for your labor."
5. Aug. : Percy sent Dodsley the first packet.
11. Aug. : William Shenstone was able to tell Percy that Dodsley "seems to enterain no doubt, that your Chinese novel will excite curiosity".
20. Juni. : Percy an Shenstone : "Mr. Dodsley has promised to get up a set of our Chinese History for you as soon as possible".
5. Juli : Shenstone an Percy : "I have received your Chinese novel, but have not yet had time to read it. Tis a neat edition, I see, and I wish you all success."
Sept. Shenstone an Percy : "The novel, tho' in some parts not void of Merit, must certain.ly draw its chief support from its value as a Curiosity, or perhaps as an agreeable means of conveying to the generality all they wish or want to know of the Chinese manners and constitution."
September 1761 William Shenstone, who had received an advance copy of the novel, wrote to Percy : "Your annotations have great merit".
July 25, 1762 James Grainger wrote to Percy : "You have been at great pains in collecting your notes to the Chinese history. They throw much light upon it ; and, to deal frankly with you, I think they constitute the most valuable part of your book".
1774
Francis Douce (1757-1834) : Englischer Antiquar.
Francis Douce schreibt über Hau kiou choaan von Thomas Percy : "The authenticity of this work has been doubted, and an 'Extract of a letter from Canton, July 9th, 1763, to James Garland, Esq., of Burlington Street”, inserted, to countenance it, at the end of the 2nd edition of Reliques of Ancient English poetry, 1767, pronounced a forgery."
Advertisem*nt : "When this little work was first published, it was apprehended that the peculiarities of the composition would so clearly prove it to be a genuine translation from the Chinese language, as to render it unnecessary to metnion either the names of the translator, or the editor. But in order to remove any doubt or suspicious arising from that circ*mstance, the editor has now subscribed his name to the dedication ; and he no longer conceals that of the translator, who as Mr. James Wilkinson, an English merchant, equally respected for his ability and his probity. This gentleman's residence at Canton may be ascertained from the records of the East India Company ; and his respectable character is not yet forgotten. His own manuscript was lent to the editor by his nephew, the late Captain Wilkinson, of Bugbroke, near Northampton, to whom it was returned, and it is doubtless at this time in possession of his widow, a very amiable lady."
1803
Miller, Samuel. Brief retrospect of the eighteenth century [ID D26887].
Er schreibt : "In 1761 a very singular and curious performance made its appearance in Great-Britain. This was a translation of a Chinese novel, under the title of Hau kiou choan, or the Pleasing history, in four volumes. The translation had been made a number of years before by Mr. James Wilkinson, a British merchant, who had resided for dome time at Canton, where he studied the Chinese language. The editor was Dr. Thomas Percy, who accompanied the publication with extensive and learned notes, which have a tendency not only to illustrate the composition immediately connected with them, but also to throw new light on the character of Chinese literature in general."
In a footnote, Miller indicates that the Scottish critic Hugh Blair "once remarked in conversation, that the Pleasing history contained a more authentic and interesting account of the internal state of China, than all the other publications on that subject that he had ever seen." [Hugh Blair : (1718-1800) : Schottischer Geistlicher, Schriftsteller, Rhetoriker].
1810
John Barrow schreibt eine Rezension über Ta Tsing leu lee [ID D1911] in Quarterly review (May 1810). Affirming that Percy's text was "the most faithful" rendition of any Chinese work in a Western language." In his opinion, it was also "the best selected work for conveying just descriptions of the manners, habits, and sentiments of the people, as far at least as regards the state of social and domestic intercourse".
1821
Tulisen. Narrative of the Chinese embassy to the Khan of the tourgouth tartars [ID D1958].
In his introduction, George Thomas Staunton repeats his favorable opinion of Hau kiou choaan, affirming that "even under the disadvantage, in part of a double translation, and the Editor's want of acquaintance with the language of the original", the novel "conveys a juster and more lively picture of the actual state of manners and society in China, than any other work which we possess in the English language".
1822
Davis, John Francis. Chinese novels, translated from the originals [ID D1962].
Er schreibt : "It is nearly seventy years since Dr. Percy, Bishop of Dromore, edited from a manuscript, partly English and partly Portuguese, a sort of skeleton or abstract, rather than a translation of this romance, and without the poetical passages, under the title of The pleasing history, which is not the meaning of the original name. Although it abounded in both errors and omissions, this work, at the time when it appeared, was by far the best picture of Chinese manners and society that we possessed ; and Dr. Percy was not answerable for the imperfections of his materials. He was naturally puzzled by some parts of his manuscript, and expresses his surprise in notes at a number of incongruities, which, in a reference to the original, are not found to exist. In fact, at the distance of more than one hundred years since, for that is the date of the manuscript, no countryman of ours could possibly be competent to the task of translation ; and the work in question appears evidently to have been taken down in great part from the mouth of a native, probably in the imperfect jargon of English spoken at Canton."
1829
A writer wrote in Quarterly review : "At the distance of more than one hundred years since... no countryman of ours could possibly be competent to the task of translation ; and the work in question appears evidently to have been taken down in great part from the mouth of a native, probably in the imperfect jargon of English spoken at Canton."
1887
Reverend J. Pickford said, that the whole work was translated from the Portuguese by Percy.
1908
Aulice Cecilia Caroline Gaussen (1857-1918).
Alice C.C. Gaussen writes in : Percy : prelate and poet. (London : Smith, Elder, & Co., 1908) : "The work was a translation from a Portuguese MS. Of a Chinese novel... The actuel translation from the Chinese was executed by Mr. Wilkinson, and Percy merely translated the granslator into good English."
1926
Milner-Barry, Alda. A note on the early literary relations of Oliver Goldsmith and Thomas Percy. In : The review of English studies ; issue 2 (1926).
She wrotes that the novel “Was a rendering of a Portuguese translation of a famous Chinese work”.
1926
L.F. Powell : Percy had access to all Wilkinson's papers ; he had the manuscripts before him ; and he had a knowledge of Portuguese. Thus equipped, it is almost incredible that he could have failed to discover the truth ; and having discovered it, there does not appear to be any cogent reason for its suppression.
Wilkinson probably studied Chinese under a Portuguese tutor ; or with a Portuguese student under a Chinese tutor ; he had not finished studfying the whole work when he went home ; being interested in the story, he brought the Portuguese translation home to England together with a set of the Chinese original ; probably he studied Chinese through the medium of Portuguese, or at least depended on the Portuguese translation for a better understanding of the Chinese text ; Percy either did not see the Portuguese translation in whole, or concealed parts of it.
Percy's general attitude toward the Chinese race, - their boasted deism, their enlightened government, their excellent morals, and their learning – it only remains to be pointed out that his opinion is his own.
1933
Vincent H. Ogburn : The stock of Wilkinson manuscripts relating to Chinese subjects came to Harvard University with the materials purchased by Professor Francis James Child, from the Sotheby sale of the Percy library in April 1884. The first part reads thus :
Feb. 28th, 1758
Borrow'd of Cap't Wilkinson the following Books, which I hereby promise to restore upon demand.
The History of Shuey Ping Sin, a Chinese Novel in 4 Books MS. stitch'd in blue Paper.
The Argument of a Chinese Play, in 2 loose Sheets of Paper.
Four Chinese Books, with Cutts, I of human figures. 3 of Sketches of Landscapes etc. - Stitch'd in blue Chinese Paper.
Thomas Percy.
Bugbrook 23d Dec'er [vermutl. 1758] : Rec'd of the Rev'd. Mr. Percy all the above articles except the last. J. Wilkinson.
1936-1937
Ch'en Shou-yi : The Chinese novel was interesting to European readers only as a mirror of Chines ideas and manners, but not as a piece of creative art.
1941
Qian Zhongshu : Percy's knowledge of China, though acquired at second-hand, seems astonishingly extensive. The list of reference books given in the first volume of The pleasing history testifies to his wide reading on China.
1946
T.C. Fan
The manuscript on which Percy worked has never been discovered, and our knowledge of it is derived largely from the Preface to his edition. According to Percy, it was contained in 'four thin folio books or volumes of Chinese paper', of which the first three were in English and the fourth in Portuguese. His information is incomplete : he does not even give the name of the 'gentleman', of the East India Company, among whose papers the manuscript was found. Immediately upon the publication of Hau kiou choaan in 1761, doubt was cast upon its authenticity. Naturally, Percy was disturbed. He seems to have made inquiries about the novel in China through the East India Company. At the end of the 2nd ed. Of the Reliques of ancient English poetry (1767) he inserted an 'Extract of a letter from Canton', showing that the novel did exist in China and that people at Canton knew ist. But immediately this letter was pronounced a forgery. Then, in 1774, in the Advertisem*nt to a re-issue of Hau kiou choaan which was never published, he gives more information about the owner of the manuscript – 'Mr. James Wilkinson, an English merchant, equally respected for his ability and his probity'. Even as late as 1805 the question of the authenticity of the manuscript remained. On 13 August 1805 Edmond Malone [(Dublin 1741-1812) : Jurist, Historiker] inquired about it in his letter to Percy : Malone had heard some imperfect account of the work ; but 'nothing distinctively'. To this letter Percy replied on 28 Sept. 1805, repeating in the main what he had already said in the Prefact to his edition and in the Advertisem*nt to its re-issue in 1774. He did not, as he could not, produce definite proof of its authenticity.
Questions should arise : Was the merchant, whose name was Wilkinson, the translator ? Or was he only the translator of a translation ? Or, quite likely, was the whole thing simply a literary hoax, like Walpole's Letter from Xo Ho and Goldsmith's Citizen of the world ? Percy did try to gather further information ; and in 1800, when a new edition of the novel was contemplated, he wrote to Lard Macartney for proof of its authenticity.
If the translation is on the whole a condensed version, it is in certain prose portions quite literal, being a word-for-word rendering of the original. It seems likely that the translator was using the Chinese novel as a text in his study of the language.
The manuscript was in the main a chapter-by-chapter translation, though each chapter was condensed and most of the poetical passages omitted. In the first three volumes Percy indicates the places where the chapters in the manuscript began ; and these agree entriely with the chapter divisions of the Chinese version. Curiously, the Chinese novel was often used by Westerners in China as a language text : it was still used as such in 1904, when a special edition was published with notes in English.
It seems that the Portuguese portion which constitutes considerably less than one-sixth of the manuscript, was drastically condensed, so that the whole manuscript was composed of sixteeen chapters only.
It was this translation, about five-sixths in English and the remainder in Portuguese, incomplete, inaccurate, though in certain portions quite literal, that Percy edited and published for the English public. In his Preface and Notes he tels us what he had done with the manuscript. He translated the Portuguese part and edited the English part. The manuscript was not very legible, and some portions of it, especially the Portuguese part, were so obscurely written or over-written that he had to guess at the meaning. There were missing passages and missiong pages, and more than once he had do 'throw in a few words' in order to smooth a transition or bridge a gab. A number of pages in the manuscript contained 'an appearance of indelicacy', and he had to take the trouble either to suppress them altogether or 'soften' them in the interest of decorum. And then there werde dull passages and passages that forestall our curiosity ; these he had to cut or reduce, knowing that English readers could not possibly be interested in Oriental prolixities. Equally remarkable is the liberty he took to transpose wpisodes. His footnotes contain a large number of readings from the manuscript, and they give us an idea of what the language of the manuscript was like and how Pery altered it.
He says in his Dedication to Lady Longueville, 'at a time when this nation swarms with fictious narratives of the most licentious and immortal turn', this curious work from China has its value as a moral diquisition. Starting with scenes of virtue in distress and ending with scenes of virtue rewarded, it bears some resemblance to the sentimental fiction of England in the eighteenth century.
An other reason why Percy found the work valuable ; namely, it gives a faithful picture of Chinese manners.
On the title-page of Hau kiou choaan, he quotes with approval a passage from Du Halde's Description : "Il n'y a pas de meilleur moyen de s'instruire de la Chine, que par la Chine même : car par la on est sûr de ne se point tromper, dans la connoissance du génie et des usages de cette nation."
From the very beginning of his work he had planned, not only to edit and emend the text, but also to explain the uncommon customs and manners of China so as to make the events in the novel more intelligible to the English public. For this purpose, he borrowed bookis from Captain Wilkinson, from Dodsley, from the library of the Earl of Sussex and from other sources.
- Document: Powell, L.F. Hau kiou choaan. In : The review of English literature ; vol. 2, no 8 (1926). (PerT3, Publication)
- Document: Ogburn, Vincent H. The Wilkinson MSS. and Percy's Chinese books. In : The review of English studies ; vol. 9, no 33 (1933). (PerT4, Publication)
- Document: Berger, Willy Richard. China-Bild und China-Mode im Europa der Aufklärung. (Köln ; Wien : Böhlau, 1990). (Berg, Publication)
- Document: Aldridge, A. Owen. The dragon and the eagle : the presence of China in the American enlightenment. (Detroit, Mich. : Wayne State University Press, 1993). S. 21. (Ald1, Publication)
- Document: Cheung, Kai Chong. The theme of chastity in "Hau ch'iu chuan" and parallel Western fiction. (Bern : P. Lang, 1994). (Euro-Sinica ; Bd. 6). [Hao qiu zhuan]. S. 13, 73. (Cheu1, Publication)
- Document: Tan, Yuan. Der Chinese in der deutschen Literatur : unter besonderer Berücksichtigung chinesischer Figuren in den Werken von Schiller, Döblin und Brecht. (Göttingen : Cuvillier, 2007). Diss. Univ. Göttingen, 2006. S. 42. (Tan10, Publication)
- Document: Watt, James. Thomas Percy, China, and the Gothic. In : The eighteenth century ; vol. 48, no 2 (2007).
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ecy/summary/v048/48.2watt.html. (PerT5, Publication) - Person: Percy, Thomas
- Person: Wilkinson, James
Gray schreibt : "I mean our skill in gardening, or rather laying out grounds : and this is no small honour to us, since neither Italy nor France ever had the least notion of it, nor yet do at all comprehend it when they see it. That the Chinese have this beautiful art in high perfection, seems probable from the Jesuits' letters, and more from Chamber's little discourse, published some years ago ; but it is very certain we copied nothing from them, nor had any thing but Nature for our model. It is not forty years since the art was born among us ; and it is sure that there was nothing in Europe like it ; and as sure, we then had no information on this head from China at all."
- Document: Memoirs of the life and writings of Mr. Gray : http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/ecco/004869659.0001.000/1:4?rgn=div1;view=fulltext. (GrayT1, Web)
- Person: Chambers, William (1)
- Person: Gray, Thomas
Er schreibt : "Don't you love the Chinese ? Czernichew, her sumptuous minister here, was named for the Embassy to China, but the emperor said he would not receive an ambassador from a murderess. How often what we call barbarians make Europeans blush !"
- Person: Walpole, Horace
1767 Teignmouth : "His excursions into the regions of literature were unlimited ; and as his application was directed with his usual perseverance, he nearly completed his Commentaries, transcribed an Arabic manuscript on Egypt and the Nile, borrowed from Dr. Russel, and copied the keys of the Chinese language, which he wished to learn".
1770 (July) Brief von William Jones an C. Reviczki : "What shall I send in return for your present ? Accept the accompanying ode, which is, at least, valuable for its antiquity. You will perhaps smile : it is not an epithalamium on the Marriage of Antoinette the dauphiness, but contains the eulogium of a very ancient Chinese monarch, whose name, though a monosyllable only, I have forgotten. When I read the works of Confucius, translated by Couplet and others, I was struck with admiration at the venerable dignity of the sentiments, as well as at the poetical fragments, which adorn the discourses of that philosopher. They are selected from the most ancient records of Chinese poetry, and particularly from a work, entitled Shi-king, of which there is a fine copy in the royal library at Paris. I immediately determined to examine the original, and, referring to the volume, after a long study, I succeeded in comparing one of the odes with the version of Couplet, and analysed every work, or, more properly, every figure in it. Of this ode, I now send you a literal translation : it is a composition of wonderful dignity and brevity ; each verse contains four words only ; hence the ellipsis is frequent in it, and the obscurity of the style adds to its sublimity. I have annexed a poetical version, making every verse correspond with the sense of Confucius ; you will judge whether I have succeeded, or not ; it will be sufficient for me, if it please you. You know that this philosopher, whom I may venture to call the Plato of China, lived about six hundred years before the Christian aera ; and he quotes this ode, as very ancient in his time. It may, therefore, be considered a a most precious gem of antiquity, which proves, that poetry has been the admiration of all people, in all ages, and that it every where adopts the same images…"
1770 (9. Aug) Brief von C. Reviczki an William Jones.
"I am exceedingly obliged to you for the extraordinary composition with which you favoured me ; it is, indeed, a literary curiosity. But pray inform me when you learned the Chinese language : I did not suspect that this was one of your accomplishments ; but there are no bounds to your acquisitions as a linguist. I am the more delighted with this little performance, as I can rely upon it as a faithful translation from the Chinese language, or which the few things we have translated appear very suspicious ; it has not only the merit of being very ancient, but, in your version, appears even elegant."
1770 Teignmouth : The letter C. Reviczki to William Jones (Oct. 16) was received by Mr. Jones, after his return to England… The account which ge gives of his success in deciphering an ode of Confucius, is a remarkable proof of his ardour for universal literature, and of his invincible application in the pursuit of it. He had before acquired the keys of the Chinese language, and having accidentally discovered, through the medium of an inelegant translation, a treasure locked up in it, he applies them skilfully, and, with great perseverance, obtains access to it.
1771 (3. Juni) Brief von William Jones an J. Wilmot.
"I am sorry the characters you sent me are not Persian, but Chinese, which I cannot decipher without a book, which I have not at present, but, tous Chinois qu’ils sont, I shall be able to make them out, when the weather will permit me to sit in the Bodleian. In the mean time, I would advise you to enquire after a native of China, who is now in London. I cannot recollect where he lodges, but shall know when I come to town, which will be to-morrow or Saturday."
Fan Cunzong : We know very little how Jones learned his Chinese. This letter gives us an idea of his knowledge of Chinese and a clue as to the assistance he may have received in his Chinese studies. So far as I can ascertain, there were at least two natives of China in London in the ‘seventies, and it is almost certain that Jones knew both. One of them, by the name of Tan Chetqua = Tan Chitqua, a modeler from Canton, had was in England 1769-1772, he was the fashion in London. His lodging at Mr. Marr’s in the Strand was much frequented by savants, connoisseurs and artists. The Royal Family had been pleased to receive him and had given him several commissions for small modeled portraits. In the exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1770 he was represented by a bust. Jones must have met him and may have consulted him about some difficult characters.
1789 (20. Okt.) Brief von William Jones an Mr. Justice Hyde.
"I have written four papers for our expiring society, on very curious subjects, and have prepared materials for a discourse on the Chinese…"
1791 (18. Okt.) Brief von William Jones an Joseph Banks.
"I believe I shall send a box of inestimable manuscripts, Sanscrit and Arabic, to your friendly care. If I return to England, you will restore them to me ; if I die in my voyage to China, or my journey through Persia, you will dispose of them as you please."
- Document: Teignmouth, John Shore. Memoirs of the life, writings and correspondence of Sir William Jones. (London : J. Hatchard, 1804). (Making of modern law).
http://books.google.ca/books?hl=de&id=UecEAAAAYAAJ&q=china#v=snippet&q=china&f=false. S. 29, 82-83, 85, 88, 100-101, 340, 357-358. (JonW4, Publication) - Person: Jones, William
- Person: Teignmouth, John Shore
"Knight of the Polar Star! by Fortune plac'd
To shine the Cynosure of British taste ;
Whose orb collects, in one refulgent view,
The scatter’d glories of Chinese Virth ;
And spread their lustre in so broad a blaze,
That Kings themselves are dazzled while they gaze..."
Horace Walpole schreibt dazu : "Sir William Chambers, who was far from wanting taste in architecture, fell into the mistake of the French, who suppose that the Chinese had discovered the true style in gardens long before Kent ; and in order to deprive him and England of the honour of originality, the French call our style the Anglo-chinois Garden : whereas, the Chinese wander as far from nature as the French themselves, tho in opposite extremes. Regularity, Uniformity, Formality and Sameness are the characteristics of all French gardens : Irregularity and Extravagance of the Chinese... The imitation of nature in gardens is indisputably English."
Wittkower, Rudolf. Allegorie und der Wandel der Symbole in Antike und Renaissance.(Köln : Dumont, 1984). (DuMont-Taschenbücher ; 142). Er schreibt : Obwohl Chambers' Buch [Dissertation on Oriental gardening] auf dem Kontinent einen gewaltigen Einfluss ausübte, galt es in England als Anachronismus ; es wurde angegriffen und lächerlich gemacht. Gewandt verlieh der Dichter William Mason der Stimmung des Publiku*ms in seiner Satire 'An heroic epistle to Sir William Chambers' Ausdruck. Horace Walpole schrieb über diese Satire : "Ich lachte, bis mir die Tränen kamen, und je öfter ich sie las, desto besser gefiel sie mir."
- Document: Bald, R.C. Wir William Chambers and the Chinese garden. In : Journal of the history of ideas ; vol. 11, no 3 (1950). (Cham4, Publication)
- Document: Sir William Chambers und der Englisch-chinesische Garten in Europa. Hrsg. von Thomas Weiss. (Ostfildern-Ruit bei Stuttgart : G. Hatje, 1997). (Kataloge und Schriften der Staatlichen Schlösser und Gärten Wörlitz, Oranienbaum, Luisium ; Bd. 2). [Internationales Symposium Oranienbaum, 5.-7. Okt. 1995]. S. 17-18. (Cham8, Publication)
- Document: Day, Martin S. The influence of Mason's heroic epistle. [William Mason]. http://mlq.dukejournals.org/content/14/3/235.full.pdf. (DayM1, Web)
- Person: Chambers, William (1)
- Person: Mason, William
- Person: Walpole, Horace
- Person: Wittkower, Rudolf J.
Er schreibt : "It is not shocking that the law of nations and the law of politeness, should not yet have abrogated the laws of justice and good sense in a nation reckoned so civilised as the Chinese ?"
- Person: Walpole, Horace
