Finally, it should also be observed that Chinese forgeries could achieve very high standards of aesthetic and technical quality. In every period, including our own time, some of the greatest artists had no qualms about indulging in this activity.
12. Jorge Luis Borges, “Funes the Memorious,” Labyrinths (Harmonds-worth: Penguin, 1981), pp. 87–95.
13. On this subject see also Wang Gungwu, “Loving the Ancient in China,” in I. McBryde, ed., Who Owns the Past? (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985).
14. Xun Zi’s journey to the totalitarian state of Qin, as its power was on the rise, calls irresistibly to mind the political pilgrimages that Western intellectuals undertook in the 1930s to the Soviet Union of Stalin. Xun Zi’s account of his visit (Xun Zi 16: “Qiang guo”) could in a way be summarised by Lincoln Steffens’s notorious utterance: “I have seen the future and it works.”
15. I am referring here to a famous passage of the Zuo zhuan (twenty-fourth year of Duke Xiang) which relates a dialogue that took place between Shusun Bao and Fan Xuanzi. Fan asked: “What is immortality? Could it be the continuous transmission of certain titles within a same family?” and he invoked the example of his own ancestors who had occupied high positions since the Xia dynasty. “No,” replied Shusun, “that is merely a case of hereditary privilege, which can be found everywhere and merely rests upon a continuity of the family clan. The true immortality consists in establishing virtue, in establishing deeds and in establishing words [that can continue to live in posterity], whereas the mere preservation of the greatest dignity cannot be called freedom from decay.” The philosophical interpretation which I present here comes from Qian Mu, Zhongguo lishi jingshen (Taipei: Guomin chubanshe, 1954), pp. 94–5.
16. The ancestors cult, which was the cornerstone of Chinese culture and society, should be studied in this connection.
17. On this subject, I am drawing heavily from L. Ledderose’s masterful study, Mi Fu and the Classical Tradition of Chinese Calligraphy (Princeton University Press, 1979).
18. It was suspected that the Orchid Pavilion was in the hands of a monk called Biancai, but the monk denied possessing it. Emperor Taizong then dispatched the censor Xiao Yi, disguised as an itinerant scholar, to visit Biancai. Xiao Yi gained the confidence of the monk and showed him various autographs of Wang Xizhi from the imperial collection, which he had brought along to be used as bait. Excited by this sight, Biancai told his visitor that he could show him even better stuff — and he picked from among the rafters of the roof where it was hidden the original scroll of the Orchid Pavilion. In front of this masterpiece, Xiao Yi pretended to be unmoved and even questioned its authenticity. Biancai, suffocating with indignation, stormed out of his hut. Xiao Yi grabbed the calligraphy, put on his court attire, and when Biancai returned, the visitor informed the monk that, from now on, the Orchid Pavilion would belong to the imperial collection. Struck with horror and grief, Biancai fainted. When he recovered, it was found that he could not swallow anymore — the emotional shock having resulted in a constriction of his gullet. Unable to absorb any solid food, he died a few months later. This arch-famous anecdote has provided the subject of many paintings.
19. L. Ledderose, op. cit., p. 20.
20. This is the positive aspect of the phenomenon — but it also has a negative side. Modern Chinese intellectuals, progressives and revolutionaries have increasingly felt strangled by the seeming invincibility and deadly pervasiveness of tradition. The outstanding exponent of the struggle to get rid of the past was of course Lu Xun, who analysed with unique clear-sightedness the desperate nature of the modernisers’ predicament: they can never pin the enemy down, for the enemy is a formless, invisible ghost, an indestructible shadow.
21. Liu Shilong, “Wuyou yuan ji,” in Wan Ming bai jia xiao pin, pp. 104–7. This delightful (and very Borgesian!) little essay was brought to my attention some years ago in a seminar given at the Australian National University by Dr. Tu Lien-che.
22. Holmes Welch, “The Chinese Art of Make-Believe,” Encounter (May, 1968).
23. Rice University Studies 59.4 (1973).
ONE MORE ART: CHINESE CALLIGRAPHY
1. The view that human beings, as sexual creatures, are essentially incomplete belongs to Western culture; the Chinese view is that every individual contains in himself both yin and yang elements, and therefore should be able to achieve his own perfection in isolation.
2. Confessions, Vol. 1, 3: “When Ambrose was reading, his eyes ran over the page and his heart perceived the sense, but his voice and tongue were silent. He did not restrict access to anyone coming in, nor was it customary even for a visitor to be announced. Very often, when we were there, we saw him silently reading and never otherwise… We wondered if he read silently perhaps to protect himself in case he had a hearer interested and intent on the matter, to whom he might have to expound the text being read if it contained difficulties… If his time were used up in that way, he would get through fewer books than he wished. Besides, the need to preserve his voice, which used easily to become hoarse, could have been a very fair reason for silent reading. Whatever motive he had for his habit, this man had a good reason for what he did.” (I am quoting here the beautiful translation by Henry Chadwick, Oxford University Press, 1991.)
3. Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, entry of 8 May 1778.
4. See “Arrêt, vision et language,” in Philosophies, No. 44 (December 1994).
5. In a book recording a series of dialogues with François Mitterrand, Mémoire à deux voix (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1995), which, for the rest, is unfortunately without interest.
AN INTRODUCTION TO CONFUCIUS
1. On these problems of chronology and textual analysis, see E. Bruce Brooks, The Original Analects (Columbia University Press, 1998).
2. Julien Gracq, Les carnets du grand chemin (Paris: José Corti, 1992), pp. 190–91.
3. The earliest images of the cross discovered by archaeology were anti-Christian graffiti, whereas the art of the Catacombs only used abstract symbols to represent Christ. The cross was a hideous instrument of torture, a reminder of abject humiliation and death; it is only in the time of Constantine that it began to be displayed as a triumphant symbol of victory over evil; and yet it still took nearly another thousand years before medieval artists dared to represent the dead Christ hanging on it.
4. Elias Canetti, The Conscience of Words (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), pp. 171–5.
POETRY AND PAINTING
1. Quoted by Monica Furlong, Merton: A Biography (London: Collins, 1980), p. 266.