Qian Zhongshu
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| Names | |
|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese: | 钱钟书 or 钱锺书 |
| Traditional Chinese: | 錢鍾書 |
| Pinyin: | Qián Zhōngshū |
| Wade-Giles: | Ch'ien Chung-shu |
| Zi: | Zheliang (哲良) |
| Mocun (默存) | |
Qian Zhongshu (November 21, 1910 – December 19, 1998) was a Chinese literary scholar, writer and polyglot, famous for his burning wit and formidable erudition.
Among the general readers, he is best known for his satiric novel Fortress Besieged (TC:《圍城》). His works of non-fiction are characterised by the unusually large amount of quotations: in his magnum opus Guan Zhui Bian (TC:《管錐编》), more than 2,000 Chinese and Western works are cited, with quotations in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Latin.
Familiar with the whole Western history of ideas, Qian shed new lights on the Chinese classical texts by comparing them with Western works, showing their likeness, or more often their apparent likeness and essential differences. "It is a monumental work of modern scholarship that evinces the author's great learning and his effort to bring the ancient and the modern, Chinese and Western, into mutual illumination."[1]
Beside being one of the few acknowledged master of vernacular Chinese in the 20th century, Qian was also the last person to produce substantial works in classical Chinese. Some regard his choice of writing Guan Zhui Bian in classical Chinese as a challenge to the assertion that classical Chinese is incompatible with modern and Western ideas, an assertion often heard during the May Fourth Movement.[1]
Contents |
[edit] Life
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Born in Wuxi, Qian Zhongshu was the son of Qian Jibo (TC:錢基博), a conservative Confucian scholar. Qian Zhongzhu grew up under the care of his eldest uncle, who did not have a son. Qian was initially named Zheliang, and given the zi Yangzhi (TC:仰之), literally meaning "to admire and respect". When he was one year old, according to a tradition practised in many parts of China, he was given a few objects laid out in front of him for his "grabbing". He grabbed a book. His uncle then renamed him Zhongshu, literally meaning "being fond of books". When Qian was young, he was brougt up by a women servant, who is a little silly. Possibly influenced by his servant, young Qian was very talkative, but made little sense. His father, a traditional serious professor, later changed his zi to Mocun, literally meaning "to keep silent", in the hope that he would be less talkative.
Both Qian's name and 'zi' predicted his future life. While he remained talkative when talking about literature with friends, he kept silent most time on politics and social activities. Qian was indeed very fond of books. When he was young, his uncle often brought him along to tea houses at night. There Qian was left alone to read storybooks on folklore and historical events, which he would repeat to his cousins upon returning home.
When Qian was ten, his uncle died. He continued living with his widowed aunt, even though their living conditions worsened drastically due to their reduced income. Under the severe teaching of his father, Qian mastered classical Chinese. At the age of fourteen, Qian left home to attend a western-style, English-speaking school in Suzhou, where he manifested his talent in languge, but lost interest in science.
Despite failing in Mathematics, Qian was accepted into the Department of Foreign Languages under Tsinghua University in 1929 because of his excellent performance in Chinese and English languages. The years in Qinghua educated Qian in many aspects. He came to know many great scholars, such as Wu Bi, etc. And these professors appreciated Qian's talent. Also, Tsianghua has a large library with a large amount of precious collections, where Qian spent a large amount of time and boasted to have "read through Tsinghua's library". It was probably also in his college days that he began his lifelong habit of collecting quotations and writing reading notes. No body knew exactly how many books Qian read at that time, but it is obvious that this period prepared Qian for scholarly reseach spanning the East and West.
Another notable thing is that Qian met his future wife Yang Jiang, who was to become a successful playwright and translator, and married her in 1935.
In the same year, Qian received government sponsorship to further his studies abroad. Together with his wife, Qian headed for the University of Oxford in Britain. After spending two years at Exeter College, he received a Baccalaureus Litterarum (Bachelor of Literature). Shortly after his daughter Qian Yuan (TC:錢瑗) was born, he studied for one more year in the University of Paris in France, before returning to China in 1938.
Due to the unstable situation during the Second Sino-Japanese War, Qian did not hold any long-term jobs until the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949. However, he wrote extensively during the decade of chaos and uncertainty.
In 1949, Qian was appointed a professor in his alma mater. Four years later, an administrative adjustment saw the change of Tsinghua into a science and technology-based institute, with its Arts branches merged into Peking University (PKU). Qian was relieved of teaching duties and worked entirely in the Institute of Literary Studies (TC:文學研究所) under PKU. He also worked in a agency in charge of the translation of Mao Zedong's works for a time.
During the Cultural Revolution, like many other prominent intellectuals of the time, Qian suffered persecution. Appointed to be a janitor, he was stripped of his favorite pastime - reading. Having no access to books, He had to read his reading notes and dictionary instead. He began to form the plan to wirte 'Guan Zhui Bian' during this period. Qian lived through the tough years of Cultural Revolution,though his son-in-law died in this disater.
After Cultural Revolution, Qian returned to research. From 1978 to 1980, he visited several universities in Italy, the United States and Japan, impressing his audience with his enormous knowledge, great wit, unbielivable memory and improbable erudition. In 1982, he was instated as the deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He then began working on Guan Zhui Bian, which occupied the next decade of his life.
While Guan Zhui Bian established his fame in the scholar field, his novel Fortress Besieged introduce himself to the public. Fortress Besieged was reprinted in 1980, and became a best-seller. Many illegal reproductions and "continuations" followed. Qian's fame rose to its height when the novel was adapted into a TV serial in 1990.
Qian returned to research, but escaped from social activities. Most of his late life is confined in his reading room. He conciously kept a distance from the mass media and political figures. Readers kept visiting the secluded scholar, and the famous anecdote goes that Qian replied to an old lady, who loved the novel and came to visit the author, that "is it necessary for one to visit the hen if one loves the eggs it lays?"
Qian entered hospital in 1994, and never came out. On December 19, 1998, he died in Beijing. The Xinhua News Agency, the official press agency of the PRC government, labelled him "an immortal" - a term usually reserved for revolutionary martyrs.
[edit] Works
Qian dwelled in Shanghai from 1941 to 1945, which was then under Japanese occupation. Many of his works were written or published during this chaotic period of time. A collection of short essays, Marginalias of Life (TC:《寫在人生邊上》), a show of his unusual wit and erudition, was published in 1941. Men, Beasts and Ghosts (TC:《人‧獸‧鬼》), a collection of short stories, most of them satiric, was published in 1946. His most celebrated work Fortress Besieged appeared in 1947. On the Art of Poetry (TC:《談藝錄》), written in classical Chinese, was published in 1948.
Beside rendering Mao Zedong's selected works into English, Qian was appointed to produce an anthology of poetry of the Song Dynasty when he was working in the Institute of Literary Studies. The anthology (TC:《宋詩選注》) was published in 1958. Despite Qian's quoting the Chairman, and his selecting a considerable number of poems that reflect class struggle, the work was criticized for not being Marxist enough. The work was praised highly by the overseas critics, though, especially for its introduction and footnotes. In a new preface for the anthology written in 1988, the scholar in his usual quasi-humble tone said that the work was an embarrassing compromise of his personal taste and the then prevailing academic atmosphere.
Seven Pieces Patched Together (TC:《七綴集》), a collection of seven pieces of literary criticism written (and revised) over years in vernacular Chinese, was published in 1984. This collection includes the famous essay "Lin Shu's Translation" (TC:〈林紓的翻譯〉).
Qian's magnum opus is the five-volume Guan Zhui Bian, literally the Pipe-Awl Collection, translated into English as Limited Views. Begun in the 1980s and published in its current form in the mid-1990s, it is an extensive collection of short essays on poetics, semiotics, literary history and related topics written in classical Chinese. Qian's command of the cultural traditions of Classical and Modern Chinese, ancient Greek (in translations), Latin, English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish allowed him to construct a towering structure of polyglot and cross-cultural allusions. He took as the basis of this work a range of Chinese classical texts, including I-Ching, Classic of Poetry, Chuci, Zuozhuan, Shiji, Tao Te Ching, Liezi, Jiaoshi Yilin, Taiping Guangji and the Complete Prose of the Pre-Tang dynasties. From neglected details in these works, he found points of connection with works from other literatures.
Qian Zhongshu was one of the best-known Chinese authors to the Western world. Fortress Besieged has been translated into English, French, German, Russian, Japanese and Spanish.
[edit] Posthumous publications
The posthumous publication of Qian's works has drawn considerable criticism.
A 13-volume edition of Works of Qian Zhongshu (TC:《錢鍾書集》) was published in 2001 by the Joint Publishing, a hard-covered deluxe edition, in contrast to all of Qian's works published during his lifetime which are cheap paperbacks. The publisher claimed that the edition had been proofread by many experts [2]. One of the most valuable parts of the edition, titled Marginalias on the Marginalias of Life (TC:《寫在人生邊上的邊上》), is a collection of Qian's writings previously scattered in periodicals, magazines and other books. The writings collected there are, however, arranged without any visible order.
The 10-volume Expansions and Revisions of Songshi Jishi (TC:《宋詩紀事補正》), a purely scholarly work, published in 2003, was also condemned by some as a shoddy publication. [3]
The facsimiles of parts of Qian's notebooks have appeared in 2004, and has similarly drawn criticism. [4]
In 2005, a collection of Qian's English works was published. Again, it was lashed for its editorial incompetence. [5]
[edit] Further reading
Innumerable biographies and memoirs have been published after the scholar's death. A good introduction to Qian's style of thinking is Ronald Egan's preface for his translation of Guan Zhui Bian:
- Ronald Egan (1998). Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-53411-5.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Zhang Longxi. "The 'Tao' and the 'Logos': Notes on Derrida's Critique of Logocentrism." Critical Inquiry. Vol. 11, No. 3. (Mar., 1985), pp. 385-398.
