Chinese literary criticism from the scattered passages in the Book of Change (I Ching) down to the illuminating critiques on poetic inscape and outscape by Professor Wang Kuo-wei (1877-1927) of the late Ching dynasty has a history of more than four thousand years. With regard to the concepts of art and literature, the Chinese excelled in precocity, in voluminousness and in profundity, and could easily emulate the Europeans. It is regrettable to say that Chinese literary criticism has not yet occupied its proper place in the domain of world literature since many a foreign sinologue fails to comprehend the essence of Chinese philosophy of art because of the language barrier and the old-type Chinese students of criticism also fail in their research owing to lack of method. To add to these difficulties, Chinese students who have studied abroad more often than not interpret Chinese literature in terms of European theories rather than interpret foreign literatures in terms of Chinese critiques. Thus Chinese literary criticism, among other genres, is still a virgin soil, largely unexploited and untrodden.
The Chinese are a mysterious people, so mysterious that one can hardly fathom the depth of their minds. Take poetry for example. The Chinese had attained what is now called pure lyricism or lyricita, the quintessence and summit of poetic consciousness in their literature as early as 2,000 years B.C. A poem written in the twelfth century before Christ, translated by Helen Waddell, runs:
"The dew is heavy on the grass,
at last the sun is set.
Fill up, fill up the cups of jade,
The night's before us yet!
"All night the dew will heavy lie
Upon the grass and clover.
Too soon, too soon, the dew will dry,
Too soon the night be over!"
The same precocity can be discerned in other branches of Chinese civilization which indeed seems to grow on the sunny side of the wall. In science China lags far behind the West, but it was the Chinese who first invented the magnet and the wheel, the gunpowder and the art of printing, which ushered in the modern era. In geometry, it was Liu Hsin (77 B. C. -6 A. D.) of the Han Dynasty and Tsou Chung-chih (429-500 A. D.) of the South and North dynasties who first worked out as equal to 3.14159255, more than one thousand years before the German Mathemetician V. Otto started to work it out. Chinese pictorial art has reached the stage of pure painting as developed by Impression ism and Post-impressionism in the West long before it perfects the technique of creating realistic illusion.
Chinese philosophy boasts of a supple dialectic method while Chinese logic remains elementary. As to music, it was Confucius who wrote the first comprehensive article on music in the world. It was Chih Kang of the Six dynasties period (early in the 4th century) who advanced almost 1,500 years earlier the argument of E. Hanslick in the latter's revolutionary booklet Vom Musikalisch-Schonen that music conveys no meanings and can therefore embody all meanings.
All these might sound like unwarranted generalizations. The present writer knows quite well the dangers in all comparative studies. One is the temptation to indulge in what might be called a pseudo-simplicity which, however plausible, does real violence to the actual wealth of aspects and facts by ignoring and suppressing so much. Another is the beguiling business of noting down resemblances to the neglect of important differences a failing which might result in hasty conclusions. Such a failing seems to be present to a large degree in the writings of many foreign students of Chinese art and Chinese students of Western literature, and it leads to so much that is misleading that it is hardly less inexcusable for being natural. Too often indeed one is so intrigued by this pursuit of piquant parallels that it almost ceases to be merely inadvertency and degenerates into ingenious tour de force to gain or strike home a point.
After all it is not wholly surprising that there should be similarities in the eventual products of human thought, and to this the special field of literary criticism under discussion offers no exception. Many of the similarities are real; others, only fancied. But the problem from the comparative standpoint is not one of ultimate results. It is primarily one of intents and motives, of the genesis and history of the conditions that have brought about the results. Thus conclusions superficially alike may actually differ toto coelo because of different implications and l a varying import. Resemblances then become incidental. To identify pacifism with Tu Fu (712-770 A.D.), socialism with Po Chu-i (772-846 A. D.), radicalism with Yuan Mei (1715-1797 A. D.) and many other-isms with other Chinese poets, as is the case with contemporary criticisms, is but to cover it over with the Western tourists' labels. One cannot be too careful in subsuming Chinese poets under Western critical categories. The cap rarely fits. For example, Li Sao, an elegy on "Encountering Sorrow," contains some of the most magnificent pieces of escapist literature in thc Chinese language. Chu Yuan (died 350 B. C.), the father of Chinese poetry, sought to leave his gnawing sorrow behind by wandering afar only to discover, as all persons in the same predicament have discovered:
Post equitem sedat atra cura
It is a typically romantic mood, but there is nothing about him of that fobrile restlessness and self-conscious deliberation which make Wanderlust a malady in many Western romantics, and a vocation in others. The difference is simply one of emphasis; but a little more, and how much it is! Again Tao Chien (365-427 A. D.)'s return to nature is totally free from any trace of didacticism and misty religrosity so common in Western nature poets. The Chinese poets, generally speaking, are more "naive," less "sentimental" or sickled over with metaphysical reflection than their Western confreres.
To do it justice, the literary criticism of China can match and equal that of Greece, both in quantity and in quality. But in dealing with Chinese literary criticism, one encounters three difficulties:
First, many of the Chinese poetics are to be found in the scattered passages of the Five Classics and Four Books. These passages are largely disconnected, because they are not formal critical works. In order to shed light on the concept of T'ien or heaven, the aesthetic sensibility to nature and the dream-thinking and wish-phantasies of the early Chinese which form the basis of Confucianism, one has to rearrange these scattered and disconnected passages in order.
Second, most of later Chinese critical works are written in the form of causeries or penned down similar to what is known in the West as "table talks." There are too many allusions, aphorisms and illustrations, which are not articulate enough. Chuangtze (d. 275 B. C.) once said: "A bait is for catching fish, but when one has got the fish, one need think no more about the bait. A foot-trap is for catching hares, but when one has got the hare, one need think no more about the trap. Words are for holding ideas, but when one got the idea, one need no longer think about the words." The Chinese seem to be the believers of the biblical saying that "Not of the letter, but of the spirit; for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." To the Chinese, the Tao cannot be told, but only suggested; to them, the spirit is everything, the letter is nothing.
Thus a foreign reader must acquaint himself with the suggestive style in Chinese literary criticism. In poetry, as well as in painting, we classify the creative style, suggestive of what is called "the psychical distance" in modern aesthetics), "dragon-flies skimming the water surface" (lightness of touch), "painting a dragon and dotting its eyes" (bringing out the salient points), "releasing a captive before capturing him" (playing about a subject), "showing the dragon's head without showing its tail" (the art of exposing and concealing), "a sharp precipice overhanging a ten-thousand feet ravine" abruptness of ending), "letting blood by one needle prick" (direct, epigrammatic gibe), "a light mist hanging over a gray lake," (mellow and tonedown style), etc. Every student of Chinese criticism is acquainted with two famous lines of Ssu-Kung Tu (834-908 A.D.), which is supposed to be the summit of Chinese poetic style:
"Without a word writ down. The spirit is fully attained."
Third or last, the Chinese, on the other hand, are partly the name-mongerers. Unlike Shakespeare who asks: "What's in a name?" they insist on rectifying names, and have formed a school of names since the Confucius' day whose professed aim is "to rectify the relationship between the names and facts in order to transform the world." Thus in Chinese criticism as well as in Chinese philosophy, one comes across so many literary and philosophic terms as Aristotle's mimesis and catharsis which baffles translation. The language barrier becomes even more formidable when one sees that a term may have many meanings and contain many ideas while the orthodox "commentator" and the translator in their rendering can at most convey one idea or nuance. Traduttori traditori!
Chinese critical writings are in general of Horatian type. Even the familiar and discursive style of Horace is there. The phrases and lines are individually masterpieces, carvings on the two-inch bit of ivory. Some are loose sallies of the mind which are so loose as to become amorphous. Others are merely a matter of patches and shreds without leading principles of art, pointing to a becalmed taste. The minute examination of verbal felicities and blemishes, word by word, line by line, which is so conspicuous in our old criticism, presupposes, if we may follow Mr. T.S. Eliot, a common agreement as to the fundamentals of literary art. In the unanimity of doctrine, as prevailed in the eighteenth-century Europe, our criticism, more often than not, deals with puzzles in terminology and shifts of literary fashions. Little originality shows itself, the orthodox and the rebellious, busy with denotations or connotations of the classics, being alike conventional in their arguments. But it should be noted with interest that the Chinese literary world, from time to time, does not lack an authority, an authority recognized, often a Confucian scholar, whose duty is to keep the fine quality of the Chinese spirit and the Confucian ideal unimpaired, and who imposes on the literary field a high standard in matters of intellect and taste.
It has been customary in China, in passing judgment upon a man, to speak of his literary gifts, his ideas, his scholarship and his character. We also make the distinction between "genius," "taste," "scholarship" and "conduct." None but Confucius is the "Teacher of All Time" that every man of letters in the succeeding generations follows and his words in matters literary or ethical have been considered final. Moreover, in some inspired moments, Confucius has more than once hit the hallmarks of literary theories of the West. With due indulgence for general and perhaps sweeping statements, one can say that Confucius belongs to all ages and all countries. He expounds what is called the Doctrine of Motion in the Book of Change that the physical realities regarded as actual are only the momentary combinations of forces that are perpetually at work and perpetually in motion in all nature and in all life. Such a theory of the perpetual flux, as forms the basis of Plato and Platonism and of the conclusion to the Renaissance by Water Pater, is further elucidated in the Chungyung or the Central Harmony. The obiter dicta of Confucius on sincerity (cheng) in art and communication (ta) as the aim of art are the quintessence of Benedetto Croce's theory of expression. The paragraph in Tahsueh or the Great Learning that "the point where to rest being known, the object of pursuit is then determined; and, that being determined, a calm unperturbedness may be attained to; to that calmness there will succeed a tranquil repose; in that repose there may be careful deliberation. And that deliberation will be followed by the attainment of the desired end" presupposes what is in modern aesthetics called "intuition." His proposition on persuasion (feng) as the instilment of conviction and the emphasis on a style lenis minimeque pertinax, that is, a style easy and flexible (wen and jou), are what we find and admire in true literature.
It is not by accident that Confucianism came to dominate Chinese life and thought. It embodied the essences of everything that was China. While other schools of thought speculated on one subject or another, Confucianism dealt with China as one single entity. Thus, aside from being a system of thought, it was at once a galaxy of knowledge piled up since time immemorial. The Confucian "Six Arts" (ritual, music, archery, charioteering, writing and calculation) and classics on poetry, history, music, ceremonial rites and the doctrine of change were in fact a testament of our endeavours, experiences, art concepts and ethical teachings. This was to the Chinese what the Old Testament was to the Hebrew people. The latter testifies to the religious experiences of the Jews, the former to our experiments with virtuous living. It is no wonder that in preference to others, Confucianism has become the standard creed in China and that it has maintained a supremacy over the Chinese people for the length of two thousand five hundred years.
Chinese literature is marked by its sobriety and conciseness, lightness of touch and quietness of tone. Its magic of evocation and technique of making speech and silence hand in glove with each other have, time and again, suggested to many a discerning Western critic the symbolist poetry of Verlaine. Yet it is sophisticated, purged of vehemence and emphasis. Our radical peculiarities and our long cultural history have combined to make our literature one of low tones, half tints, publique feelings and understatements. Emotions are austerely disciplined, pageants of bleeding hearts forbidden, gestures used only to conceal the blush of the face. It is supreme in sheer technique and has all the formal beauties of restraint. The spirit, as pointed out by Lytton Strachey, is the classical spirit,—classical in every sense of the word.
In "Letters from John Chinaman," there is a beautiful passage on Chinese literature: "A rose in a moonlit garden, the shadows of trees on the turf, the pathos of life and death, the long embrace, the hand stretched out in vain, the moment that glides forever away with its freight of music and light into the shadow and mist of the haunted past, all that we have, all that eludes, the bird on the wing, a perfume escapes on the gale—to all these things we are trained to respond, and the response is what is called "Literature." But the question is: how do we Chinese respond? To us,—to our classic poets at least—a rose in a moonlit garden is there simply to feast the eye—not to be "understood, root and all," like "the flower in the crannied wall." Our poetry is free from the taint of damp, miasmic mysticism which characterizes the Western nature poets. To us, the brevity of life makes the enjoyment of pleasures more imperative; the evanescence of pleasures renders the enjoyment of them more poignant. Whether the poet be hilarious like Li Po (705-762 A.D.) or quietistic like Tao Chien in his enjoyment, he is never perverse in his pleasures, or relentless in his pursuit of them. He will have nothing of that painful cult called Hedonism. He may be dissipated, if you please, but decadent he is not: there is a large healthiness even in his abandonment, a healthiness which is conspicuously wanting in the poetry of some of the Western romantics.
The Chinese are in general a people of becalmed taste. They have their sadness, but their sadness has never been diffused or universalized into an all-embracing Weltschmerz. They have their bitterness too, but their bitterness has never been intensified into the terrible saeva idignatio. They have attained a tutored sentiment and a state of "philosophic calm." Without passing through such imaginative tempests as have been witnessed in the romantic movement of the West. This owes much to Confucius, for does he not counsel: "Joy not in excess, sorrow without harm, murmuring of restlessness without spite" as the credo of the Book of Poetry.
It was Confucius who laid down the principles of Chinese art. It was Confucianism that permeated Chinese literature. In philosophy, Confucianism stood for an ideal of human relationship in harmony with the universal order. In ethics, as well as in politics, it stood for a rationalized social order, based upon personal cultivation. In literature and art, it stood for the expression of one's experience and the clarification of human life. This is sheerly a humanistic approach, for Confucianism is nothing else than humanism. To Confucius, every branch of human knowledge and every part of human activity are means to an end—the welfare, happiness and peace of the people. It was Confucius, not Croce, who had obliterated the distinction between the aesthetic and linguistic, between expression and intuition, between taste and genius. It was Confucius who brought about the unity between the good and the beautiful, the Platonic inspiration and Aristotlian reason, the artistic creativity and artistic conscience, the personal and the social, and man and men, whose relation is what he called jen.
In a fine passage in the Analects, Confucius says "To set on the tao, to found on virtue ("teh"), to follow the doctrine of jen and to swim in the arts ("i"). Tao belongs to the intellectual field which aims at truth; teh belongs to the ethical field which aims at the good, i belongs to the field of art which aims at the beautiful, and the doctrine of jen is the root of the three. Truth is the scientific term for jen, goodness is the ethical term for jen, beauty is the art term for jen. Without jen, science is a deadly weapon; ethics, a mere delusion; music and poetry, vox et praeterea nihil. Confucius says well: "There are only two courses which can be pursued in the world, that is, jen and the opposite."