Modern Selfhood in Translation

New Frontiers in Translation Studies

Limin Chi

Modern Selfhood in Translation A Study of Progressive Translation Practices in China (1890s–1920s)

New Frontiers in Translation Studies

Series editor Defeng Li Centre for Studies of Translation, Interpreting and Cognition, University of Macau, Macau SAR

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11894

Limin Chi

Modern Selfhood in Translation A Study of Progressive Translation Practices in China (1890s–1920s)

Limin Chi Kiangsu-Chekiang College Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR

ISSN 2197-8689     ISSN 2197-8697 (electronic) New Frontiers in Translation Studies ISBN 978-981-13-1155-0    ISBN 978-981-13-1156-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1156-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018950665 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

To my father

Acknowledgments

My engagement with modern Chinese scholarship started in the early 2000s, soon after my initial foray into IB Chinese teaching in New Zealand. It was my study under the guidance of Professor Gloria Davies of Monash University, however, that sustained my enthusiasm for this engagement. Over the years, she exercised earnest patience, providing incisive counsel and constructive criticism which went a long way toward sharpening my scholarly abilities. I benefited immensely from her juxtaposition of perspicacious observations and encouraging words in our conversations and email exchanges. I regard Gloria as the epitome of an empowering and transformative mentor, who, through her own example, has inculcated in me the personal qualities essential for good scholarship so that I was able to cope with academic rigor with a tenacity and grit previously unparalleled in my life. Throughout this journey I have been privileged to receive precious help and vital encouragement from many other people, who have greatly facilitated the completion of such a herculean project. My special thanks go to Dr. Susan Daruvala of the University of Cambridge. I express my gratitude for her invaluable input as well as her ebullient appreciation of my work. I have incorporated many of her suggestions into the book. I indubitably take accountability for all the deficiencies and inadequacies that remain. I am deeply indebted to Professor Rita Wilson of Monash University for her guidance and support, to Associate Professor Warren Sun for being an engaging interlocutor, to Professor Wang Yiyan of Victoria University of Wellington for her comments on my manuscript, and to Professor Li Defeng of Macau University for his encouragement and friendship. My ex-students Clarice Tse and Naomi Tse are gratefully recognized here for their help with providing the books unavailable in Hong Kong public libraries. The friendly and supportive staff at Hong Kong Central Library were instrumental in maintaining an inclusive milieu and enabling me to avail myself of the great resources in the library, from the earlier editions of Liang Qichao’s works to the microfilms of late Qing and early Republican periodicals.

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I am grateful to the dedicated editors and professionals during the production of this book, notably Ms. Ramabrabha Selvaraj, for her prompt responses to my queries. Finally, gratitude is owed to my family. Their spiritual support has been a valuable source of unremitting hope and resilience. I dedicate this book to my father Chi Xueqing, who has been my hero since childhood.

Introduction

In late nineteenth and early twentieth-century China, the term “national extinction” (wangguo) was increasingly used by progressive Chinese scholars who were alarmed by their country’s decline. They were convinced that China was doomed unless there were modern Chinese citizens to defend the nation’s interest. The forging of a modern Chinese identity became an important part of Chinese intellectual culture of the period. From then on, cultural modernization became tied to the imperative of national survival. Translation was seen by Chinese advocates of modernization as essential for China’s cultural alignment with the modern West. This study examines the development of Chinese translation practice in relation to the rise of ideas of modern selfhood in China from the 1890s to the 1920s. The chapters that follow attempt to contribute to our understanding of the historical interweaving of continuity and discontinuity in the formation of a modern Chinese identity. The selected translations over the three decades in question reflect a preoccupation with new personality ideals informed by foreign models and the healthy development of modern individuality, in the face of crises compounded by feelings of cultural inadequacy. In general, the translation practices of this period exhibited a range of approaches: from early attempts in the 1890s at accommodating traditional elements of story-­ telling in the introduction of Western ideas and values, through incipient incorporation of foreign literary techniques in addition to the importation of foreign concepts and moral ideals, to a broad choice of source countries and a dominant direct translation (zhiyi) strategy in the 1910s and early 1920s. In this study, I assign special importance to the translation of literature. In the 1890s, Liang Qichao (1873–1929) uplifted the status of fiction in his promotion of new citizens. Although Yan Fu (1854–1921) was known for his translation of Western social scientific and philosophical works, he also put a high premium on the role of literature in social transformation, stating in 1897 that fiction was “the root of orthodox history” (zhengshi zhi gen) (in Chen and Xia 1997: 27). Yan’s positing of elegance (ya) as one of his

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principles of translation and his esoteric pre-Han style of translation, while running counter to the lucidity of Liang Qichao’s semi-vernacular writing, are indicative of Yan’s literary inclinations. From the 1900s onwards, increasing attention was paid to the translation of literature, with a wider choice of genres. According to Bassnett and Lefevere (1990: vii), translation reflects a certain ideology and a poetics and as such manipulates literature to function in a given society in a given way. The history of translation is the history also of literary innovation and of the shaping power of one culture upon another, although there are also cases where it can repress innovation, distort and contain. It is therefore necessary to go into “the vagaries and vicissitudes of the exercise of power in a society, and what the exercise of power means in terms of the production of culture, of which the production of translations is a part” (ibid: 5). In this study, translation is viewed as a primary agent of cultural change and a privileged locus of intellectual activity. In the context of late Qing and early Republican China, it provided Chinese intellectuals with imported paradigms of critical thinking, images of modern selfhood and knowledge of modern science that served as a cultural ideology. In the 1910s, this ideology came to be seen as necessary for the enlightenment of the mind. The ideals of modern selfhood that late Qing and New Culture intellectual leaders promoted represented a significant deviation from the goals of political and military reforms of earlier decades (1840s–1880s) and involved a process of personal development through exposure to a wide variety of translated works. My research attempts to clarify how these translated works supplied the meanings for new terms and concepts that signify modern human experience and to shed light on the ways in which they taught readers to internalize the idea of the modern as personal experience. I am particularly interested in the ways the focus on character building as nation building encouraged an ideologically motivated approach to understanding modern culture, and my investigation of translation will revolve around three interrelated aspects: (i) the construction of a recognizably modern Chinese identity through the promotion of particular concepts and attitudes; (ii) the representations of Chinese society of the late Qing and early Republican period, illustrated via comparison or contrast with accounts of foreign cultures and societies (as presented in the source works); and (iii) the role of highly influential translators and their textual selections on the development of modern Chinese elite culture. The ethical and moral dimensions of concepts of selfhood have an effect on why individuals act or fail to act in various situations (Ricoeur 1992). Adaptation to new sources of values refashions the moral role of selfhood and brings about the transformation of identity. In this study, identity construction is presented as synonymous with character building. This is because the influential Chinese translators of this period were all focused on how Chinese citizens should acquire foreign moral and ethical values of the kind that appeared in the works they translated.

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From Self-Strengthening to New Culture In Chinese scholarship, the idea of the modern is frequently discussed as a process involving distinct phases of political and cultural development. Liang Qichao, arguably China’s leading intellectual of the late Qing and early Republican period, played a significant part in shaping this view. In 1923, Liang (in Feng 1994: 170) delineated in a treatise entitled “Fifty Years of China’s Evolution” (Wushi nian Zhongguo jinhua gailun) three phases of China’s modern development. In Phase One, the focus was on machinery (qiwu), corresponding to the importation of armoury and machinery during the Self-Strengthening Movement1 of the 1860s and 1890s, within the framework of “Chinese learning as basis, and Western learning for practical application” (Zhongxue wei ti, xixue wei yong).2 During this period, “[Western] influence on intellectual thought was insignificant”, and the few scientific books translated by government-run agencies were “among the most memorable” (ibid). Phase Two was characterized by the engagement in the installation of modern political, economic and educational institutions (zhidu) in the wake of the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895. Despite their failure in instigating reforms, the pioneering activists of this period became powerful advocates of the acquisition of Western social science and literature. According to Liang (ibid), the most valuable works produced in this period were Yan Fu’s translated books, which introduced important trends in social sciences to Chinese readers. In Phase Three, the emphasis was on culture (wenhua), marked by Chinese intellectuals’ realization of their cultural inadequacy in understanding the modern world and their questioning of the compatibility of traditional Chinese culture with modern institutions. This was the New Culture Movement of the 1910s and 1920s. Liang’s use of the word “culture” may have kept its traditional Chinese meaning of “the acquisition of civic values” or “becoming edified”, which, dating from the Western Han dynasty (206 BCE to 9 CE), involves the combination of “civility” or “good manners” (wen) and “becoming” or “changing” (hua). Given the importance Liang accorded to Meiji Japan as a model of modernization for China, it is also very likely that he borrowed wenhua from the Japanese bunka, which as a modern concept drew its meaning from European definitions of culture.3 Clearly, Liang Qichao was attempting to highlight the cultivation or edification of people when he used the word “culture”. As he observed in the same essay: “Society and culture are inseparable; therefore, it 1  I adopt the standard translation of yangwu yundong for ease of reference. The literal translation is foreign affairs movement. 2  Zhongxue wei ti, xixue wei yong can also be translated as “Chinese learning as essence, and Western learning as function”. 3  There has been a plethora of notions that were associated with the word “culture”. In Europe “culture” had already acquired the modest and restricted sense of “cultivation” by the fifteenth century; in the sixteenth century, it extended from the physical into the spiritual sphere, so that it suggested the refinement of human manners and intellectual attainment. In Japan, the word took on the meaning of “national character” during the Meiji era (1868–1912). See Tessa Morris-Suzuki (2004).

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is impossible to apply the old psyche to the new system. People’s self-­consciousness will gradually be required” (ibid).4 While deploring the intellectual and scientific underdevelopment in China as compared to foreign countries such as the United States, Britain, Germany, Russia and Japan, he expressed hope for Phase Three to surpass the previous two phases in acquiring the quintessence of foreign cultures. We can assume that he included translation as an instrument of modernization, for the countries that he named were among those that furnished important source materials for translation projects of the New Culture period. Despite the vagueness of Liang’s “phases”,5 his pithy summary of the change from “machinery” to “institution” and finally to “culture” and “people” has been frequently quoted in Chinese scholarship as reflecting the trajectory of China’s modernization process from the late Qing to the May Fourth period. Translation was an important aspect of the Self-Strengthening Movement, which started in the early 1860s. Prompted by imperial decline, military defeats and foreign occupation in the wake of the Opium Wars (1839–1842 and 1856–1860), leading Chinese scholar-officials, such as Li Hongzhang (1823–1901), Zeng Guofan (1811–1872), Yixin (1833–1898) and Zhang Zhidong (1837–1909), regarded translation as crucial for building up a strong nation. They attached equal importance to the work of translation bureaus and the establishment of shipyards and arsenals. Translation activities of the Self-Strengthening period (1861–1894) centred on engineering, military and natural science, because of the senior bureaucrats’ advocacy of “Chinese learning as essence and Western learning for practical application”, an approach to China’s modern development reflective of what many Chinese intellectuals of the 1900s and since perceived as the conservative mentality of that era. Following China’s defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, the imperial Qing government in China was forced to sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki (Maguan tiaoyue) that included ceding territory and making reparations to Japan. This defeat led educated Chinese of the time to conclude that the reforms undertaken to date had been insufficient. They began a concerted process of introducing ideas they considered vital for China’s institutional transformation and modernization. Kang Youwei (1858–1927), his protégé Liang Qichao, Tan Sitong (1865–1898) and other late Qing reformist intellectuals urged for effective political reform towards the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in China. Adopting ideas of modernization that had fuelled the reforms of Meiji Japan, Chinese reformers ­solicited the support of the Guangxu Emperor (1871–1908). Their efforts culminated in the Hundred Days’ Reform (wuxu weixin or bairi weixin) in 1898. This political and educational reform movement was crushed in a coup d’état by powerful conservative opponents led by Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908).  Translations from Chinese in this book are mine unless otherwise indicated.  Liang’s clear-cut demarcation between Phase Two and Phase Three apparently underestimated the role late Qing reformist intellectuals, among others, had played in constructing representations of the self and the nation towards the creation of Chinese modernity. 4 5

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In defence of their proposals, the reformers of the late 1890s drew heavily on popular nineteenth-century Western writings such as those that had been translated into Chinese by missionaries residing in China and well-known translators like Yan Fu (e.g. Timothy Richard’s (1845–1919) translation6 of Robert Mackenzie’s (1823– 1881) History of the Nineteenth Century and Yan Fu’s translation of Thomas Huxley’s (1825–1895) Evolution and Ethics). To strengthen their arguments, they also cited success stories of modernization outside China, including accounts of Russia after the rule of Peter the Great and Prussia and, above all, reports about the rapid modernization of Meiji Japan. Japan’s modernization was of particular interest to Chinese advocates of political reform largely because of the cultural proximity between Japan and China.7 The reformist intellectuals believed that education in the broader sense included reading massive amounts of translated texts and noted that translations had contributed greatly to Japan’s reforms, enabling the Japanese to learn from the successes and failures of the West. Historical accounts published in China and in international scholarship often present the years following the 1911 revolution as being overshadowed by a deepening sense of “national humiliation” and “cultural crisis” among the Chinese, characterized by the instability of the post-Qing Chinese state, the continuing decline of the political situation and, in particular, Yuan Shikai’s (1859–1916) capitulation to Japan’s extraterritorial demands. Amid Yuan’s autocratic rule, the warlord hegemonies, the outbreak of World War I and the rapid economic growth in urban China, a new cosmopolitan elite, of whom a large number had received their education in Japan and Western countries, began to dominate the intellectual scene, bolstered by a substantial literary establishment, whose activities were organized around literary societies and the journals they published. The New Culture Movement was instigated by new literary initiatives proposed in the journal New Youth (Xin Qingnian), notably Hu Shi’s (1891–1962) essay “Tentative Proposals for a Reform of Literature” (Wenxue gailiang chuyi), pub6  Richard’s translation was through the help of his Chinese assistant Cai Erkang (1851–1921). The Chinese title of the translation is Taixi xinshi lanyao. 7  Many late Qing scholars wrote about the importance of learning from Japan after the Meiji Restoration. Among them was the noted educator Sheng Xuanhuai (1844–1916). He observed: “After the Japanese Meiji Restoration, Japan busied itself with the translation of Western works. Now its people have a coherent grasp of the various branches of Western learning, and derive considerable power from those translations” (Sheng in Reynolds 1993: 111). In his memorials before and during the Hundred Days’ Reform, Kang Youwei chronicled the first 23 years of the Meiji period and interpolated the history with his explanatory annotations. Kang exhorted the Guangxu Emperor to follow the Japanese example and build a Meiji-like political structure in China. For Kang (in Jiang and Zhang 2006: 66), Japan had adapted the essentials of Western civilization to their own purposes, and China should learn from the West via Japan. Liang Qichao (in Willcock 1995: 818) was also convinced that the Japanese victory was the result of Japan’s swift and successful modernization and that “behind the great success of modernization in Meiji Japan lay the ability of the Japanese to select and assimilate foreign values in the existing social and cultural tradition”.

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lished in January 1917. Basing their new intellectual agenda on an essential rejection of elements of the national tradition, New Culture proponents viewed the translation of foreign literary works as a source of modern enlightenment and ­introduced new literature and new ideas in their endeavour to develop an enlightened national culture. The period between the end of the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895 and the New Culture Movement of the 1910s and 1920s marks a watershed in the break with the imperial past in China. This was a time when the idea of a modern awakened China grew popular and a modern commodity culture developed rapidly in urban China. By the late 1890s, Chinese reformist intellectuals had realized the limitations of “Western learning for practical application”, advocated by self-strengtheners between the 1860s and the 1890s. They promoted a more spiritual (as opposed to the previous instrumental) conception of modernization. Meanwhile, large quantities of social scientific and literary translations were produced by publishing companies and literary societies mainly based in Beijing and Shanghai. Under the weight of new foreign threats, the word “imperialism” (diguozhuyi) was introduced to China via Japanese in the early 1900s and appeared frequently in popular periodicals of the time, such as Liang Qichao’s Upright Discussions (Qingyi bao) (Ma 2014). Accordingly, the term “anti-imperialism” (fandi) became an important idea and was widely promoted in the early 1920s through the political discourses of the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party. Bassnett and Lefevere’s (1990: vii) observation that translation “reflect[s] a certain ideology and a poetics” is useful to consider in relation to the self-­strengtheners’ slogan of “learning the superior techniques of the [Western] barbarians to control the barbarians” (shiyi zhi changji yi zhiyi), first proposed by Wei Yuan (1794–1857) in 1842. The emotional ambivalence towards Western imperialism prevalent among scholar-officials of this time persisted into the 1910s and 1920s. In fact, ambivalence continues to resonate in Chinese intellectual discourse a century later in the 2010s. In this study, the concepts, ideas and literary distortions and innovations adopted in the Chinese translation of foreign works (1890s–1920s) are examined as choices and decisions undertaken by translators who were gripped by the prospect that China was on the brink of political and cultural extinction. The terms “nation” (minzu) and “self” (ziwo) became important in the early twentieth century. Leading Chinese intellectuals were preoccupied with the identification of the source of China’s degeneration and sought to raise awareness of impending crisis through appeals of social Darwinism and national survival. In the meantime, they set a cultural pattern of self-inspection and national improvement. Equipped with foreign-derived new ideas and the spirit of science, the intellectuals started to probe the inadequacies in the “national character” (guominxing), another Japanese-derived neologism that appeared in Chinese periodicals in 1903. Works such as A Doll’s House (to be discussed in Chap. 5) were key events in the popular dissemination of the vocabulary of character building as nation building.

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Identity, Chinese Modernity and Translation Identity, one of the most important political and cultural concepts of the twentieth century, is often examined in relation to subjectivity, understood as the psychological and emotional state of the subject.8 Anthony Giddens’s (1991: 76) definition of personal identity as an evolving project suits the purpose of this book: “We are not what we are, but what we make of ourselves”. It is “not something that is just a given, as a result of the continuities of the individual’s action system, but something that has to be routinely created and sustained in the reflexive activities of the individual” (ibid). Stephen Frosh (1991: 187) shares Giddens’s argument and considers identity to be “always in danger of being undermined, of withering away or exploding into nothingness”. To maintain the coherence of human experience and the functioning of social life, the individual continually adopts techniques intended to display agency or competence of self to others and to the social world. As societies change through the operation of political, economic and other social forces, the individual makes necessary adjustments to cope with the new challenges and situations. In studying translated Chinese works for what they indicate about the kind of “modern identity” being promoted, I draw on the modernity frameworks of contemporary sociologists such as Jürgen Habermas and Anthony Giddens. Namely, I examine the translated texts as characteristically modern. They all display a focus on the consciousness that is needed for constructing a new self. Both Habermas and Giddens see this focus on consciousness as a hallmark of the modern age or modernity. Moreover, as Jorge Larrain (1994: 143) points out: “One of the main philosophical characteristics of modernity is that it made the human being the centre of the world, the measure of all things, …the necessary point of reference for all that goes on. But originally this conception of the ‘subject’ was…separated from history and social relations, that is to say deprived of a sense of change and of its social dimension”. In other words, the link between individuals and society is one aspect of a characteristically modern way of thinking. Charles Taylor (1994), well known for his communitarian critique of liberal theory’s understanding of the “self”, puts a premium on the political and social recognition of one’s community and claims that the individual’s acceptance or internalization of socially significant meanings and values, along with his active exchange with the social environment, makes him part of society. Bernd Simon (2004: 61) echoes Taylor in claiming that personal identity “is increasingly required as an appropriate psychological reflection of one’s own complex social positioning in modern society”. He goes on to argue that “in modern society, the increasing prepotency of individual identity is sustained especially by the decreasing permanence and increasing interchangeability of ‘we-relations’ and 8  “Subjectivity” and “identity” are sometimes used interchangeably in this study despite their difference in historical origin and perspective, as one stresses an inner stable core and the other focuses on the making of selfhood.

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finds expression, inter alia, in psychological privatization, reflexive subjectivism and individual self-expression” (ibid: 62).9 All of these statements are highly relevant to our analysis of translation practice in the late Qing and early Republican era, especially in relation to the types of issues highlighted by the translators in their own essays or translation prefaces/ postscripts. For leading late Qing and New Culture intellectuals, being a “new” person required the “sacrifice” of “old” Confucian social-familial relations so that people could relate to each other as “humans”. This was a key feature of the translated works that were influential in the period under study. However, because self-transformation was related to nation building, there was also the implication that reading translated works should not only benefit the “self” (ziwo) but also the “nation” (minzu). The pursuit of a modern identity in late Qing and early Republican China was further complicated by the legacy of state Confucianism, in which intellectuals perceived themselves as “spokespeople” for the Chinese public. In this regard, their writings often included “a claim of prescience” (Davies 2007: 52). Identity can only be “originary” as “it is constructed in and through language”; therefore, representations of self and the people constitute a discursive means of realizing their self-worth and identifying with the public, and “awakened articulations” thus become entangled with the larger discourse of national salvation and enlightenment (ibid: 39). With regard to translation, the translators were thus prescribing certain foreign works as necessary for nation building and the development of the person. In the Qing dynasty, the need to liberate the individual from the shackles of Confucian moralism was initiated as early as 1823 by the eminent litterateur Gong Zizhen (1792–1841), whose positing of the fundamentality of self to the human condition and social functioning exerted a great influence on his contemporaries and later Qing-era scholars. Gong (1975: 13) started his 1823 essay “The First of My Preliminary Thoughts Between 1822 and 1823” (Kuiren zhiji taiguan diyi) with these words: “The world is created by people, and not by sages….People’s destiny is not dominated by the Way of Heaven or Great Pole but by ‘me,’ a term people call themselves”. In 1897, Tan Sitong published his 50,000-word philosophical work, entitled A Study of Benevolence (Renxue), alternatively translated as On Humanity, in which he accused absolute monarchy as being the root of social evils and argued that the creative disposition of human agency would contribute to the agendas defining a modern China.10 Tan’s promotion of a ren-centred self tallied with Yan Fu’s propagation of national strength (minli), national intellect (minzhi) and national

9  Similar statements can be found in other works. For instance, Stryker and Serpe (1982: 206) stress that “a complexly differentiated and organized society requires a parallel view of the self”. Elias (1991) affirms that, since the European Middle Ages, the balance between collective identity (“weidentity”) and individual identity (“I-identity”) has changed tremendously towards an increasing prepotency of individual identity. 10  For discussions about Renxue, see, for example, Ip (2009), Sakamoto (1985) and Chan (1984).

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morality (minde).11 Liang Qichao (1998), who fled to Japan after the aborted attempt at nationwide reform in the summer of 1898, emphasized the importance of new citizenry and entrusted the young generation with the task of adopting a new morality befitting a modern nation-state.12 These late Qing literati’s efforts to cultivate the people, along with their nationalistic narrative of cultural resilience, wielded an enormous influence on the intellectual life and translation projects in the 1910s and 1920s.13 During the May Fourth era, the concept of the individual became elevated to the defining feature of the human in the modern intellectuals’ consideration of political, cultural and literary issues. Japan-educated modern Chinese writer Yu Dafu (1896– 1945) (1935: 5) noted: “The greatest success of the May Fourth Movement consists in the discovery of the individual. In the past people lived for their emperors, the moral Way (dao), and their parents. They are now living for themselves”. The May Fourth intellectuals’ rediscovery of self and their emphasis on the value of self-­ existence (ziwo cunzai) became the basis for distinguishing a modern Chinese identity from its traditional counterpart, most commonly presented in terms of the difference between the “new” and the “old”. The two rallying cries of the May Fourth Movement, i.e. democracy and science, are reflective of the May Fourth intellectuals’ apotheosization of the self and the new. Derived from foreign sources, democracy signifies new political institutions involving a new view of self vis-à-vis others; on the other hand, being scientific entails the questioning of established traditional beliefs and the remedying of old, defective mode of thinking. New Culture leaders’ reconstitution of Chinese identity was manifested through the literary apotheosis of new people as well as new literary techniques and modern concepts derived from foreign works. Influenced by the emphasis on self and subjectivity in Western, Russian and Japanese literature, New Culture avant-gardes made presentations of the people, along with the analysis of the complexities and contradictions of their existence, an integral process of their imagination of Chinese modernity. The frequent appearance of these literary characters in translated works, presented with new narrative forms and neologisms, not only advanced readers’ understanding of themselves and their world but also actively shaped a new modern language that was being promoted as vernacular (baihua) Chinese. Chinese modernity is often construed as a reaction to Western aggressions and to historical unequal relations between China and the West. While ideas associated with modernity and the Enlightenment in the West are regularly subjected to criticism in post-modern discourse, there has been a significant scholarly interest in alternatives to the established Western sense of modernity and in representing  Taken from Yan Fu’s article “On Strength” (Yuan qiang), published in 1895. See Wang (1986: 12).  Between 1902 and 1906, Liang Qichao published 20-odd articles on new citizenry in The New Citizen’s Gazette (Xinmin congbao). These articles were later published in book form entitled On the New Citizen (Xinmin shuo). 13  John Fitzgerald (1996: 67–8) argues that the collapse of the established order in imperial China launched literati on voyages of self-discovery in the same way as the discovery of the modern self in Europe. 11

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modernity as a positive development for China, to the extent that the idea of Chinese modernity is often viewed by Chinese scholars as “embodying the nation-building goals of several generations of the Chinese” (Yang 2003: 8). Seen from the perspective of translation activities in early twentieth-century China, however, there was an active process of assimilating Western concepts into Chinese culture, across the twentieth century. A good description of Chinese modernity should highlight the historicity of its formative period and the fact that it is “a mirror and consequence of the experience of European hegemony” (Mudimbe 1988: 185),14 as well as the development of a modern Chinese identity and the key features of this identity, such as “newness, progress, enlightenment, revolution, and self received from Western sources but remoulded by intellectuals in response to a specific historical context of imperialism and domestic decay” (Denton 1998: 6–7). Denton’s statement highlights the Chinese intellectuals’ adoption of Western discourse of self and historical progress in their pursuit of Chinese modernity. Although the pluralistic nature of China’s experience of modernity can be better reflected, such descriptions do point to the importance of borrowed ideas. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century China, intellectual endeavour at the construction of a modern identity via translation contributed fundamentally to the creation of a “translated modernity” (to use Lydia Liu’s expression).15 In this regard, translation can be seen as becoming an integral part of Chinese modernity.

 he Role of Translation and Translators in Translation T Studies In the present study, translation is a key source of new ideas and values, harnessed by Chinese translators to foster a strong sense of the modern self. Developments in the field of translation studies have provided useful underpinnings for my research. In the 1970s and 1980s, translation theorists started to consider translation from the point of view of the target culture within a broader context of communication, beyond the preoccupation with the mere words on the page and the static linguistic analysis of translation shifts, which characterized earlier approaches to the study of translation. More emphasis was also placed on the reception of the translation in the target culture (e.g. Steiner 1975; Holmes et al. 1978; Van den Broeck 1978; Bassnett 1980; Toury 1980; Newmark 1981; Nord 1988; Reiss and Vermeer 1984).16 In the mid-­1980s, the theses in the anthology The Manipulation of Literature evolved into  Although Mudimbe was dealing with the conception framework of African thinking, I think it may well apply to the Chinese thinking. 15  See Liu (1995). 16  Although these theorists have in common an emphasis on the sociocultural context and the target culture, they approach translation from quite different disciplinary perspectives. 14

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the “cultural turn” in translation studies (Hermans 1985). The scholars who had contributed to the anthology revealed that the source text could be manipulated to create the kind of “culture” desired. Of particular importance is André Lefevere’s (1985) “Why Waste Our Time on Rewrites?” In this treatise, Lefevere gave a full presentation of his argument about the polysystem theory,17 which was further elaborated in his writings of the 1990s. He observed that the production of literature in a culture is influenced by a series of poetic, ideological and power-related elements, which can have constraining effects on both creative writing and translation and which are active both inside and outside the literary system (1992). Subsequent years saw a surge of new investigations that extended beyond the range of linguistic and literary translation and into issues of cultural formation. In their search for an answer to how translation related to cultural dominance, cultural assertion and cultural resistance, translation scholars brought to the core questions of politics and power (Bassnett and Trivedi 1999; Tymoczko and Gentzler 2002). The new orientation in translation studies also led to a reconsideration of the power relationship between writer and reader and a re-evaluation of the authority of the source text. Since then, resistance to the notion of translation as a secondary activity has started to accelerate, and the notion that a translation might be a transparent copy of a superior original has gradually been dismissed as untenable. In the traditional Euro-American conception of translation, the subordination of the translator to the author was typically taken for granted, just as translation was frequently contrasted unfavourably with original writing.18 Since the cultural turn, many scholarly works have examined the role of translators in the context of the interrelationship between history, society and culture and helped pull the translator out of the traditional invisibility. Among these are Translation, Rewriting and Manipulation of Literary Fame (Lefevere 1992), Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation (Bassnett and Lefevere 1998), Translation Studies (Bassnett 1980/2002), Comparative Literature: A Critical Introduction (Bassnett 1993) and The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation (Venuti 1995), to mention a  Polysytem theory was first proposed by Israeli scholar Itamar Even-Zohar. He adopted the Russian formalists’ theory of a hierarchical literary system and studied the status and function of translated literature in target-culture systems. For Even-Zohar, semiotic phenomena, such as culture, language, literature and society, need to be studied and understood as the elements of a multiple, dynamic system. In particular, he is interested in the ways in which various semiotic systems are hierarchized within the polysystem (central vs. peripheral, canonized vs. non-canonized, primary vs. secondary) and in the struggle among the various strata. As a part of that approach, he claims it necessary to regard translated literature as a subsystem within the literary polysystem and to study translation as an activity dependent on the relations within a certain cultural system (EvenZohar 1978: 27). 18  Attempts to redress the supremacy of the original text and the marginalization of translators have never stopped. As early as 1923, Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) published his seminal essay “The Task of the Translator”, which emphasized the role of translation and translators in social progress and the evolution of human thought. It was Benjamin’s introduction to a Baudelaire translation. The text was translated by Harry Zohn in1968 and was included in Lawrence Venuti’s 2000 anthology The Translation Studies Reader. 17

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few. In the 1990s, translation studies also started to incorporate poststructural and postcolonial thought into its realm. The role of translators was studied along the lines of cultural identity (e.g. Bassnett and Trivedi 1999; Venuti 1998; Robinson 1992, 1997; Alvarez and Vidal 1996; Delisle and Woodsworth 1995), and translation began to be seen as an expressive form of cultural identity. The beginning of the twenty-first century also saw a number of research studies focusing on the role of translators in the context of cultural change, political discourse and identity formation in a variety of contexts (e.g. Ellis and Oakley-Brown 2001; Tymoczko and Gentzler 2002; Cronin 2006). Of particular importance was the study of the sociology of translation, which integrated the work of eminent sociologists like Pierre Bourdieu, Bruno Latour, Bernard Lahire, Anthony Giddens and Niklas Luhmann into translation studies (e.g. Wolf and Fukari 2007). Since the cultural turn of the early 1980s, it has been generally acknowledged that what distinguishes translation studies from translating is the emphasis on cultural history and the role and function of translation in the broader sociocultural context. Poststructuralist and postcolonial theorists have led translation scholars to emphasize the translator’s agency in the evolving social, political and cultural configurations that make up society. Instead of just redirecting pre-existing messages, translators give voices to new texts and intervene in them and, “in so doing, establish a subject-position in the discourse they shape” (Munday 2009: 96). In addition, scholars such as Venuti (1992) and Pym (1998) have accorded great importance to the study of the role of translators from historical perspectives. Venuti (1992: 10) posits that the objects of analysis in translation studies should not only encompass a broader spectrum of cultural forms and practices but be taken from various historical periods and put to a thoroughgoing historicization. Amid the development of translation studies in Europe and America, ventures into non-Western traditions have breathed new life into the research on canonical Western European literature and its past. Acknowledging the limitations to their scope of enquiries, Bassnett and Lefevere (in Hermans 1999: 45) “have urged expansion [of critical studies in non-Western contexts] along these lines”. Bachmann-Medick (2009: 8) claims that the study of global translation processes calls for a reinterpretation of the transition of non-European nations to capitalism and the distinctive forms of multiple modernities, which should be perceived as a result of historical distinctions and translational ruptures. In this study, I am particularly concerned with the decisions involved in translation, such as the choice of foreign works and translation strategies, which bear upon the historical conditions of the Chinese experience of modern selfhood. The challenge, then, is to go beyond the words on the page and examine what they reveal of translation practice at the given time by considering the sociocultural context in which these translated works were produced. The agency of translation in shaping distinctive forms of intercultural communication in late Qing and early Republican China is central to this study. These forms of intercultural communication indicate the active role of translators in promoting a cosmopolitan view of modern selfhood, prior to its politicization under the KMT and CCP.

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 pproaches to Researching Chinese Translation History A and Overview of Chapters Following John Fairbank (2005) and Ren Shukun (2009), the May Fourth era in the present study covers the period between 1917 and 1927. However, as the book is focused on the New Culture aspect of May Fourth, it deals with events primarily up to 1924. The 30-year period between the end of the First Sino-Japanese War and the waning of the New Culture Movement is often described in the People’s Republic of China as “anti-imperialist”. As noted earlier, the word “imperialism” was imported into Chinese in the early 1900s. The fact that the Chinese translation of foreign works has always been saddled with a political mission (that of “national salvation”) makes it important for us to distinguish between the broader and more cosmopolitan understanding of “national salvation” from the 1890s to the 1920s and the idea of “national salvation” that became tied to the political doctrines of the KMT and CCP from the mid- and late 1920s onwards. I am mindful that there are well-established accounts of translation activities of the period in question that highlight their nation-saving or “revolutionary” aspects from a CCP historiographical perspective. The approach I have taken emphasizes certain liberal, cosmopolitan aspects of translation in the period. In Chinese studies, May Fourth is generally accepted as marking the beginning of a decisive cultural difference that, since the 1990s, has been referred to as “Chinese modernity” (Zhongguo xiandaixing). In English language scholarship, the works of scholars such as David Der-wei Wang (1997), Lydia Liu (1995) and Leo Ou-fan Lee (1999), as well as Wen-Hsin Yeh’s (2000) edited volume Becoming Chinese, show general agreement that the dramatic intellectual shifts of the May Fourth period and thereafter were facilitated by cultural trends that first emerged in the late nineteenth century. We know from studies of late Qing translations (e.g. Huters 2005; Fogel 2004; Wong 1999; Liu 1995) that late Qing constructions of modern selfhood were fundamentally informed by Western and Japanese definitions. Yan Fu, well-known for his translation of social Darwinist and liberal concepts from Western sources, and Liang Qichao, who not only patronized translation projects of the time but also acquired significant reputation for his translated fiction from and via Japanese, were the most prominent intellectuals of the time to instil in their countrymen a modern sense of self. They also promoted a new linear consciousness of time and history, in which what was new and modern was presented as contrasting values with the past. Their translations enabled New Culture intellectuals to scrutinize China through, as it were, “foreign eyes”. Comparisons between China and the West brought into sharp relief problems in Chinese society (shehui, a neologism of Western origin introduced into China via Japan in the late nineteenth century) of the time. Less than two decades from the time Yan Fu and Liang Qichao published their key translations of social science and fiction, the New Culture Movement developed in a significantly more radical direction. The New Culture quest for paragons of

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spiritual rebellion against old values and ways of life led the intellectuals to call for a literary revolution to inaugurate a modern written vernacular. It was in this vernacular that works from diverse Western and Japanese philosophers and litterateurs, from Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) to Kuriyagawa Hakuson (1880–1923), were translated. Meanwhile, portrayals of the plight of the working people in the literature of Russia and Eastern European countries highlighted the dark aspects of social reality and encouraged the cultivation of compassion and universal love. The translation activities of New Culture intellectuals, consisting mainly of editors and major contributors of the journal New Youth, became an integral part of the New Culture mission of constructing the modern self. This New Culture emphasis on self-development bifurcated by 1920, when intellectuals such as Chen Duxiu (1879–1942) and Li Dazhao (1888–1927) began to promote the cause of communism, leading to the breakup of the New Youth organizational core. Recent scholarship has tended to highlight differences and divisions between various models of modernity or between key historical actors in Chinese intellectual life of the late Qing and early Republican period. In my view, while it is important to acknowledge the contributions that non-New Culture intellectuals and writers made to the enrichment and pluralism of the May Fourth intellectual thought, the depth and breadth of the New Culture inquiry into modern selfhood should not be discredited.19 Equipped with an extensive education background and writing in a period of warlordism and burgeoning print culture, New Culture advocates did take an unconventional approach to sociocultural issues; they helped to make the May Fourth “a period of greatest intellectual debate and creativity in twentieth-century China” (Schwarcz 2003: 236–7). Since the publication of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (1983), in which Anderson stresses the image of nationhood as held in the minds of members of a nation and the forging of national consciousness through modern publishing, the rise of modernity has generally been considered to have been accompanied by print capitalism or the fruits of modernization in general. In examining modernity as modernization of beliefs and values, however, most scholarly publications fail to direct the reader’s attention to the material culture in which this process of self-­ transformation was located. Since the 1990s, Sinology has started to include sociocultural institutions and the educational and economic milieu in its inquiries. Denton’s (1998) The Problematic of Self in Modern Chinese Literature, Lee’s (1999) Shanghai Modern, Shu-mei Shih’s (2001) The Lure of the Modern, Davies’s  Scholarly attempts at dethroning the centrality of New Culture radicals in constructing the Chinese experience of modernity became prevalent in the late 1990s and early 2000s. With the mounting of undue blame put on the May Fourth paradigm, some scholars have cautioned against the other extreme in the decentring of May Fourth. For instance, Vera Schwarcz (2003: 236) points out that some scholars in The Appropriation of Cultural Capital: China’s May Fourth Project conflate the political autocracy that led to the flattening of historical and literary imagination in communist societies with the intellectual arrogance of cultural innovators during the May Fourth Movement. Schwarcz (ibid) argues that if China’s post-1919 literature and history became an arid terrain, the blame does not rest primarily with May Fourth intellectuals.

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(2007) Worrying About China and the treatises in Liu and Tang’s (1993) anthology Politics, Ideology, and Literary Discourse in Modern China, to mention but a few, point to a broader approach to combine intellectual inquiry with the cultural apparatus of translation that has sustained the growth of Chinese modernity and modernism. In China, published works on translation history were few before 1990, and these include Ma Zuyi’s (1984) A Concise History of Translation in China: Before the May Fourth Movement (Zhongguo fanyi jian shi: Wusi yiqian bufen) and Chen Yugang’s (1989) Historical Material for Translated Literature in China (Zhongguo fanyi shigao). The 1990s saw the publication of about a dozen such works, but the majority of these did little more than outline historical facts, much as what Ma and Chen did in the 1980s. The 1990s, however, also saw bilingual Chinese scholars such as Lawrence Wang-chi Wong publishing on the history of Chinese translation in both English and Chinese. Wong’s (1999) Reinterpreting Faithfulness, Comprehensibility and Elegance: A Study of Translation in Twentieth-Century China (Chong shi xin, da, ya: Ershi shiji Zhongguo fanyi yanjiu) is a work that has been widely cited and discussed in mainland Sinophone scholarship since the 2000s. Wong’s incorporation of functional approaches in his case studies of late Qing and early Republican translators provided an innovative way of interpreting historical sources. Another important work to appear in Chinese (2002), following its initial publication in English (1995), is Lydia Liu’s Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity – China, 1900–1937. Liu examined the process by which new words, meanings, discourse and modes of representation arose, circulated and acquired legitimacy with the host language due to, or in spite of, the latter’s contact/collision with the guest language. Liu’s probe into literary representations of the emerging new relationships between individual, nation and culture not only advanced scholarly understanding of the complexities involved in translation or “translingual practice” but also opened new perspectives for postcolonial critiques of May Fourth. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, there was a significant increase in the number of studies on the translations of late Qing and early twentieth-century China. Influenced by Party historians of earlier decades, some of these works hailed Lu Xun as a Marxist imbued with “a revolutionary sense of responsibility” (geming zerengan) (Meng and Li 2005: 127) and gave prominence to the contributions that Lu Xun and others made to the spread of Bolshevik and Marxist literature, while the translations of other prominent New Culture intellectuals such as Zhou Zuoren and Hu Shi remained marginalized. Moreover, the preoccupation of many writers with a comprehensive history or all-inclusive account of the translation activities of the period precluded in-depth inquiry into many of the important issues encountered. Nonetheless, several scholars writing in Chinese attempted to employ appropriate theoretical models to “combine analysis and argumentation with historical description” and “draw conclusions out of historical data” (Wang 2003: vii). Among them were the contributors to the anthology Translation and Creation: On Translated Fiction in Early Modern China (Fanyi yu chuangzuo: Zhongguo jindai fanyi

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xiaoshuo lun) (Wong 2000)20 and Eva Hung (Kong Huiyi), author of Translation, Literature and Culture (Fanyi, wenxue, wenhua) (2000) and Rewriting Translation History (Chongxie fanyi shi) (2005). Hu Cui’e’s (2007) Literary Translation and Cultural Engagement: A Cultural Study of Late Qing Fiction Translation (Wenxue fanyi yu wenhua canyu: Wanqing xiaoshuo fanyi de wenhua yanjiu) is one of the earliest books written by mainland Chinese scholars in which insights from the cultural studies of translation were drawn upon to investigate Chinese translation history. In the book, Hu examined late-Qing fiction translation from historical, functional and cultural perspectives. She analysed the political and cultural reasons for the popularity of the domesticated translation strategy and presented translation as the transformation of Chinese culture through new ideas primarily between 1902 and 1909. Similar works produced in mainland China include Ren Shukun’s (2009) An Investigation of Literary Translation During the May Fourth Period (Wusi shiqi waiguo wenxue fanyi yanjiu) and Wang Xiaoyuan’s (2010) Translation Discourse and Ideology: Literary Translation in China, 1895–1911 (Fanyi huayu yu yishixingtai: Zhongguo 1895–1911 nian wenxue fanyi yanjiu). The present study is focused on the impact of key translations in late Qing and early Republican China on the development of models of modern selfhood and modern ways of seeing and feeling in Chinese intellectual culture. It is my hope that this study will contribute to the recognition of the fundamental role that translation played in the construction of modern senses of self, society and nation. Such an investigation requires the researcher to have an open attitude such that the translated works can be examined more fully as culturally hybrid artefacts, reflective of the exigencies of the time and the views of the translators. The translations produced by the late Qing and New Culture intellectuals, while often reflecting a nation-building goal, were largely attempts at imagining and fashioning a Chinese identity in keeping with the requirements of the modern world. A cosmopolitan outlook, derived from translated works, was manifested through Yan Fu’s preoccupation with evolutionism and liberalism, Liang Qichao’s concern with moral ideals of “new citizens” and New Culture emphasis on “wholesome individualism”, “humanism” and the transformation of the national character in pursuit of universal values of empathy and love. The study takes into account the emergence and development of translation as a “field”, in which certain types of symbolic and material capital circulate, to use Bourdieu’s concept of the field.21 In this regard, I will include in my discussion specific aspects of translation as cultural production, such as the running of journals for the publication of translated works, the number of print runs and translation  See Vittinghoff (2000) and Du (2000) for reviews of this book.  For Pierre Bourdieu, the field is the site where different forms of symbolic and material capital are disseminated, while his habitus is the set of socially learnt dispositions, skills and ways of acting, which are acquired through the activities and experiences of everyday life. Bourdieu brings the individual and society together and reconciles the subjective and the objective. Translation scholarship has taken a cue from Bourdieu’s sociological theory of symbolic goods in an effort to adapt it to the investigation of translation practice. For more information, see, for example, Gouanvic (2005).

20 21

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manuscript fees, with the assumption that translation is an inevitable by-product of modernization. Throughout the book, I adopt Toury’s broad definition of a translation: “any target text which is presented or regarded as such within the target system itself, on whatever grounds” (1980: 37). Many of the translated texts in the study may well be called “rewritings”, which, in Lefevere’s use of the term, include what have traditionally been conceived as both adaptations and translations (Lefevere 1992: 47). The translators who worked in the particular cultural and political environment of the late Qing and early Republican China were mostly men who belonged to an exclusive group. They were well trained in Chinese and had studied in Britain, the United States and Japan before they made their names as translators and cultural innovators.22 The personal views and personal agendas of these translators were often evident in their treatment of the foreign source texts. I will analyse the translators’ selection of source texts and their approaches to translation to indicate how their translations served to highlight key beliefs and values that were important to them. Insofar as the translator of a foreign work is a reader who translates, it is necessary to note that there is always an “unpredictable and potentially transformative to and fro of a reciprocal, open-ended exchange” between the foreign work and its Chinese translator (Armstrong 2008: 219). The translator, as a reader-cum-translator, plays an important part in deciding how foreign wordings can acquire an expressive power in Chinese. The following is a brief overview of the seven chapters. Chapter 1 examines translation activities in the 1890s and 1900s. During this period, the vast bulk of translations of Western scientific and literary works were carried out, championed and produced mainly by the Chinese educators and publishers who were disillusioned with the government’s earlier attempts at military emulation of the West. The chapter provides an organized account of the development of translation as part of modern publishing and education and then considers how translations were selected for the purpose of popularizing modern values. During the last two decades of the Qing dynasty (1890s–1900s), intellectual discourse started to be actively reshaped by Chinese translators, writers and critics in response to the social and political problems of the day. Chapter 2 singles out Yan Fu and Liang Qichao, “the twin beacons of reformist thought in the period after 1895” (Huters 2005: 205), for an examination of how the importation and manipulation of Western ideas contributed to the construction of an alternative cultural imaginary. Despite their deep attachment to cultural traditions, Yan and Liang effected the popularization of important Western concepts and values that helped to link the Chinese experience with the rest of the world. The chapter will focus on Yan’s translation of social Darwinism and liberalism and Liang’s translation of political and adventure fiction as key events in the history of modern Chinese translation. Chapter 3 (the 1900s and early 1910s) traces the formative trajectory of the new generation of Chinese intellectuals, who became New Culture leaders in the late 22

 Liang Qichao was not educated overseas, but he travelled extensively.

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1910s and mid-1920s, and examines the role of translation in shaping their views of China and China’s place in the modern world. They were brought up in a world of Chinese learning but became acquainted in their teens with Western ideas, as conveyed in the translations of Yan Fu and Liang Qichao, as well as other translators like Lin Shu (1852–1924). The chapter treats their exposure to Western knowledge and engagement in promoting literary and social changes through translation practice as important factors that shaped the up-and-coming intellectual elite’s understanding of modern selfhood, guiding them towards discovering and fostering values essential for the construction of a modern Chinese identity. Chapter 4 explores the field of translation production as an aspect of social mobilization in urban China in the mid-1910s and mid-1920s, as Western ideas were being widely disseminated via a modern education system and in public culture. It examines how leading literary societies and their journals contributed to the rise of a modern intellectual discourse in China. The focus is on New Youth (Xin qingnian), the vehicle for the literary revolution and the modern written vernacular, and Short Story Monthly (Xiaoshuo yuebao), a flagship magazine of the Association for Literary Studies (Wenxue yanjiu hui), and on how the intellectuals associated with these magazines forged an avant-garde identity that became a highly desired image among their followers. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 are case studies of New Culture intellectuals’ use of translation in their construction of modern individuality. The translations of Hu Shi and the Zhou brothers (i.e. Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren) are selected for analysis. Different in their selection of source texts as they were, they underscored the importance of individual morality, self-reflection and human feeling in their translation of literature while at the same time exemplifying modern vernacular writing in Chinese and experimenting with new literary forms. Their translations, along with their appropriation and propounding of individualism and humanism, became a counternarrative to the old literary and cultural traditions. They challenged the traditional understanding of family and social relations and offered a cosmopolitan perspective on the development of modern personality. Such a cosmopolitan, liberal-democratic conception of self can be perceived as a significant aspect of these New Culture intellectuals’ efforts to affirm a new morality and a belief in the social possibilities of the individual and as a representation of a unique vision of Chinese modernity. The activism implicit in their translation practice is thus best described as progressive.

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Schwarcz, Vera. 2003. Book Review – The Appropriation of Cultural Capital: China’s May Fourth Project. The Journal of Asian Studies 62 (1): 236–238. Shih, Shu-mei. 2001. The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, 1917–1937. Berkeley: University of California Press. Simon, Bernd. 2004. Identity in Modern Society: A Social Psychological Perspective. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Steiner, George. 1975/1992. After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. London: Oxford University Press. Stryker, S., and R.T.  Serpe. 1982. Community, Identity Salience, and Role Behaviour: Theory and Research Example. In Personality, Roles and Social Behaviour, eds. W. Ickes and E.S. Knowles, 199–218. New York: Springer. Taylor, Charles. 1994. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Toury, Gideon. 1980. In Search of a Theory of Translation. Tel Avio: The Porter Institute for Poetic and Semiotics. Tymoczko, Maria, and Edwin Gentzler. 2002. Translation and Power. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Van den Broeck, Raymond. 1978. The Concept of Equivalence in Translation Theory: Some Critical Reflection. In Literature and Translation: New Perspectives in Literary studies, eds. James S.  Holmes, José Lambert, and Raymond Van den Broeck, 28–47. Lenven: SCCO. Venuti, Lawrence. 1992. Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology. London: Routledge. ———. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London: Routledge. ———. 1998. The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference. London: Routledge. ———. 2000. The Translation Studies Reader. London: Routledge. Vittinghoff, Natascha. 2000. Translation and Creation: Readings of Western Literature in Early Modern China, 1840–1918 (review). China Review International 7 (1): 195–198. Wang, Shi. 1986. Yan Fu ji [Collection of Yan Fu’s Works]. Beijing: The Commercial Press. Wang, David Der-wei. 1997. Fin-de-siècle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849–1911. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Wang, Jiankai. 2003. Wusi yilai woguo yingmei wenxue zuopin yijie shi, 1919–1949 [History of British and American Literary Translation in China since the May Fourth Period, 1919–1949]. Shanghai: Waiyu jiaoyu chubanshe. Wang, Xiaoyuan. 2010. Fanyi huayu yu yishixingtai: Zhongguo 1895–1911 nian wenxue fanyi yanjiu [Translation Discourse and Ideology: Literary Translation in China, 1895–1911]. Shanghai: Waiyu jiaoyu chubanshe.

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Willcock, Hiroko. 1995. Japanese Modernization and the Emergence of New Fiction in Early Twentieth Century China: A Study of Liang Qichao. Modern Asian Studies 29 (4): 817–840. Wolf, Michaela, and Alexandra Fukari, eds. 2007. Constructing a Sociology of Translation. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins Pub. Co. Wong, Lawrence Wang-chi., ed. 2007/1999. Chongshi xin, da, ya: Ershi shiji Zhongguo fanyi yanjiu [Reinterpreting Faithfulness, Comprehensibility and Elegance: A Study of Translation in Twentieth-Century China]. Beijing: Qinghua daxue chubanshe. ———. ed. 2000. Fanyi yu chuangzuo: Zhongguo jindai fanyi xiaoshuo lun [Translation and Creation: On Translated Fiction in Early Modern China]. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe. Yang, Lianfen. 2006/2003. Wanqing zhi wusi: Zhongguo wenxue xiandaixing de fasheng [From the Late Qing to May Fourth: The Emergence of Literary Modernity in China]. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe. Yeh, Wen-hsin, ed. 2000. Becoming Chinese: Passages to Modernity and Beyond. Berkeley: University of California Press. Yu, Dafu. 1935. Zhongguo xin wenxue daxi, sanwen er ji [A Compendium of Modern Chinese Literature: The Second Volume of Prose]. Shanghai: Liangyou chubanshe.

Contents

1 Modernization Through Translation: Shifts and Trends (1890s–1900s) ����������������������������������������������������������������������    1 1.1 Statistical Analysis of Translated Works��������������������������������������������   4 1.2 Modern Development of the Print Culture and the Rise of Translation��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   5 1.2.1 The Patronage of Publishers and Literary Journals����������������   7 1.2.2 Liang Qichao: A Leading Patron of Translation��������������������  12 1.3 Translation from Japanese������������������������������������������������������������������  18 1.4 Translation of Textbooks as a Response to the Promotion of Modern Education��������������������������������������������������������������������������  21 1.5 Acquiring Modern Values Through Science Translation��������������������  25 1.5.1 From Gezhi to Kexue: “Science” and Modern Chinese Identity������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  25 1.5.2 Promotion of Scientific Understanding as a Marker of Modern Fitness ������������������������������������������������������������������  26 1.6 Translation of Fiction��������������������������������������������������������������������������  29 1.6.1 Translation of Political Fiction ����������������������������������������������  30 1.6.2 Translation of Science Fiction������������������������������������������������  31 1.6.3 Translation of Detective Stories����������������������������������������������  33 1.7 Conclusion������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  35 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   36 2 Translation as an Education in Modern Values: Yan Fu and Liang Qichao������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   41 2.1 Yan Fu on Western Social Thought����������������������������������������������������  43 2.1.1 Yan Fu’s Selection of Works for Translation��������������������������  47 2.1.2 Yan Fu’s Translation and Writing Style����������������������������������  55 2.1.3 Yan Fu’s Translation Strategy as Dictated by His Ideology of Modernity������������������������������������������������  56 2.2 Liang Qichao on Modern Citizenship Through Translation ��������������  63 2.2.1 Liang Qichao’s Promotion of Modern Attributes ������������������  64 xxxiii

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Contents

2.2.2 Liang Qichao’s Fiction Translation����������������������������������������  66 2.3 Conclusion������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  71 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   73 3 Making a “New Culture” Through Translation������������������������������������   77 3.1 Acquisition of Western Knowledge����������������������������������������������������  79 3.1.1 The Impact of Late Qing Translations on the New Generation of Chinese Intellectuals����������������������������������������  80 3.1.2 Overseas Study������������������������������������������������������������������������  86 3.2 Translation as a Precursor to New Culture ����������������������������������������  89 3.3 Conclusion������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 103 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  104 4 Translating New Culture into a Collective Identity������������������������������  109 4.1 New Culture Collectives �������������������������������������������������������������������� 112 4.1.1 The New Youth Group������������������������������������������������������������ 114 4.1.2 The Association for Literary Studies and Short Story Monthly�������������������������������������������������������������������������� 116 4.2 The Growing Authority of Translated Works�������������������������������������� 119 4.3 Otherness and Identity Politics: New Youth Debates with Lin Shu���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 122 4.4 Conclusion������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 125 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  126 5 Constructing the Modern Self in Translation (I): Hu Shi��������������������  129 5.1 Hu Shi’s Rewriting of Ibsen and Promotion of Liberal-­Individualist Ideals������������������������������������������������������������ 134 5.2 Nora as a Literary Trope for Self-Empowerment ������������������������������ 139 5.3 Hu Shi’s Short Story and Poetry Translation and His Development of Cosmopolitan Humanism �������������������������������������������������������������� 143 5.4 The Influence of Foreign Thinkers and Hu Shi’s Academic Approach to China’s Modern Transformation������������������������������������ 146 5.5 Promotion of Modern Vernacular������������������������������������������������������� 149 5.6 Conclusion������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 153 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  154 6 Constructing the Modern Self in Translation (II): Zhou Zuoren��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  157 6.1 Discovering Humanity in “Dishrags” and “Sad, Beautiful Souls”�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 163 6.2 Faith in Humanity ������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 165 6.3 Zhou Zuoren and the May Fourth Cult of Children���������������������������� 169 6.4 Promoting Gender Equality and Modern Womanhood���������������������� 171 6.5 The Naturalness of Humanity and the “Invisible Utility” (Wuxing de gongli)������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 174 6.6 Conclusion������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 181 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  183

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7 Constructing the Modern Self in Translation (III): Lu Xun����������������  187 7.1 The Nietzschean Spirit������������������������������������������������������������������������ 190 7.2 An Instructive Realism������������������������������������������������������������������������ 194 7.3 The Social Exteriorization of Mental Anguish ���������������������������������� 198 7.4 Investing Hope in the Young�������������������������������������������������������������� 202 7.5 Conclusion������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 207 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  208 Conclusion��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  211 Appendix ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  219

Chapter 1

Modernization Through Translation: Shifts and Trends (1890s–1900s)

The modern conception of self is intimately bound up not only with the development of the modern nation state but also with the market economy (MacIntyre in Stephenson 1999: 2). The process by which China’s print and translation industry of the early Republican era helped to popularize modern values furnishes evidence for this argument. The reading of “new works” was the means by which people acquired modern ways of seeing and knowing. These were fashionable works whose success in the marketplace ensured that more of the same works were produced. The consumption of these works and the internalization of their contents allowed Chinese readers of early twentieth century to identify themselves as modern. In the tumultuous decades following the Opium Wars, China’s national sovereignty was seriously challenged. Imperial decline, military defeats and foreign occupation led to the founding of shipyards, arsenals, and translation bureaus by Self-Strengthening scholar-officials who sought to prevent the country from falling into further decline. Of these measures, translation was regarded by many of China’s senior bureaucrats of the time as crucial for building up a strong nation. Because of their advocacy of “Chinese learning as essence and Western learning for practical application,” translation activities of the Self-Strengthening period (1861–1894) centred on engineering and natural science. According to the statistics provided in one Chinese study, of all the translated works from Western countries between 1850 and 1899, 169 fell under natural science, accounting for 29.8% of the total, and 230 belonged to applied science, taking up 40.8%; by contrast, there were 57 translated works in history and geography (10%), 46 in social science (8.1%), and 10 in philosophy (1.8%) (An 2001: 99). Among the government-sponsored translation agencies, two were especially influential: the Imperial Language Academy (Jingshi tongwenguan), set up by Yixin in the early 1860s, and Jiangnan Arsenal (Jiangnan zhizaoju), established by Zeng

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 L. Chi, Modern Selfhood in Translation, New Frontiers in Translation Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1156-7_1

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2

1  Modernization Through Translation: Shifts and Trends (1890s–1900s)

Guofan and Li Hongzhang in 1865.1 In a climate of acute elite anxiety about China’s political future, translation was used as an instrument of military and industrial modernization. This was a time when the patronage of the Qing government played a significant role in translation activities. By contrast, the early half of the nineteenth century saw the choice of texts for translation being determined by Western missionaries and the Religious Tract Society (Li 2005; Lai 2007). The focus on military buildup was accompanied by fear of the loss of Chinese power in a world of hostile competitors. For the educated elite, the abolition of the imperial examination system in 1905 created a crisis of career and identity, for officialdom was no longer the reward for years of study of the Confucian classics. The Confucian examination syllabus itself was undermined. After 1905, with modern learning replacing traditional classical education as the means to career advancement, increasing numbers of educated Chinese sought work as translators, writers and in different areas of publishing (Chen 1992; Wang 2007). In the late nineteenth century the long-standing patronage of the Chinese monarchy2 continued to weaken, as state revenue was depleted by peasant uprisings (such as Taiping Rebellion) and wars fought against foreign invading troops (such as the Sino-French War and the First Sino-Japanese War). With the establishment of more privately-run publishing houses and periodicals in the 1900s, translators depended more heavily on the patronage of editors and publishers, whose commercial and political concerns, as well as what the public would find acceptable, dictated the translators’ selection of foreign works. These translators were mostly editors and publishers, or the people who studied or taught at schools and universities. In post-­ 1895 translation activities, Chinese intellectuals’ command of foreign languages, along with their use of Japanese as an intermediary between Chinese and Western languages, gradually marginalized the approach to translation involving slow dictation of foreign texts, sentence by sentence, to Chinese scribes.3 1  Liang Qichao (1989: 71) once remarked: “[After the Opium Wars,] shocked by Westerners’ military prowess, the authorities set up Jiangnan Arsenal in Shanghai, with its affiliated translation bureau, whose counterpart in Beijing was the Imperial Language Academy.” 2  André Lefevere (1992:17) makes a distinction between “differentiated” and “undifferentiated” patronage. Patronage is undifferentiated when its three components, i.e. the ideological, the economic and the status components, are all dispensed by one and the same patron. On the other hand, patronage is differentiated when economic success is relatively independent of ideological factors, and does not necessarily bring status with it, at least in the eyes of the self-styled literary elite. He claims that of all literary systems known in history the classical Chinese system has been able to resist change the longest, because undifferentiated patronage limited both the producers and the readers of literature to a relatively small coterie dominated by the court and the mandarins, and also because it could impose its ideology and its poetics by making them a sizable part of the requirements to be met by those who wanted to belong to that coterie (ibid: 24). 3  In the late Ming Dynasty, translation of Western works depended on the cooperation between Western missionaries and Chinese scholar-officials, due to their lack of foreign language competence. The most eminent missionary-translator in the Ming Dynasty was the Italian Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), who dictated several important scientific works, such as

1  Modernization Through Translation: Shifts and Trends (1890s–1900s)

3

The focus of this book (from Chap. 3 to Chap. 7) is on literary translation, which was harnessed by Chinese intellectuals as a major means of character building. Liang Qichao was one among several intellectuals of the late 1890s and 1900s who firmly believed that literature could be life-changing. In a famous 1898 essay he claimed that when the Reformation was first launched in Europe, men of great learning would often use fiction as a vehicle to record their personal experiences and express their political views and that people from all walks of life would read and discuss novels during their leisure. He observed: “A celebrated scholar in England once remarked that fiction was the soul of the people. How true! How true! It is precisely for this reason that we are now specially selecting works by celebrated foreign scholars that are relevant to the current situation in China and then translating and publishing them by instalments in this newspaper. In so doing, we hope to make them accessible to our compatriots” (1996a: 73). The understanding of how modern Chinese literary translation served to popularize modern values requires the consideration of the conditions that facilitated its development. Translation, in my view, was an important educational tool, a way of quickly transmitting modern values to a “backward” society. As Venuti (1995: 9–17) observes, “Translation wields enormous power in constructing representations of foreign cultures” while it is “simultaneously engaged in the formation of domestic identities.” To present a substantial account of the beginning of China’s early modern translation industry and the directions it took, we must take into account both quantitative and qualitative aspects. The six sections of this chapter are organized as follows. The first section uses statistical information to provide an outline of the translation industry’s development in terms of the fields and topics of greatest interest. The second section examines the patronage of translation during the late Qing, focusing on academic periodicals and Liang Qichao, an entrepreneurial activist who founded several influential journals. The third section deals with Chinese intellectuals’ importation of Western learning through the Japanese language while the fourth section provides a survey of the translation of textbooks. Both Japanese-mediated translation and the translation of textbooks from Japanese and other languages occurred with support from government agencies and private enterprises. The role that science translation played in disseminating modern values is discussed in Sect. 1.5, and the last section is devoted to an examination of the political and moral appeal of three most popular subgenres of fiction.

Euclid’s Elements (Jihe yuanben), while Chinese official-scholars transcribed them in Chinese. The practice continued into the Qing Dynasty. For instance, ten foreign interpreters were enlisted in the translation projects of Jiangnan Arsenal. For more information, see Li (2005), Li (2006) and Xu (1949).

4

1  Modernization Through Translation: Shifts and Trends (1890s–1900s)

1.1  Statistical Analysis of Translated Works Between the 1890s and 1900s large quantities of translations were produced in the field of social science and literature (fiction in particular). Statistics provided by Gu Jiegang (1893–1980) (in Fan 2006) indicate that between 1902 and 1904 the number of scientific translations was 535, with 399 in social science. Tsuen-hsuin Tsien (Qian Cunxun) (1954) shows that between 1902 and 1904 a total of 321 books were translated from Japanese, with 21 in philosophy, 2 in religion, 4 in literature, 90 in history and geography, 83 in social sciences, 73 in natural sciences, 24 in applied sciences and 24 in “miscellaneous.” Statistics supplied by Hong Kong scholar Yue-­ him Tam (Tan Ruqian) (1985) reveal that between 1896 and 1911, of the 958 translations from Japanese, 8 belong to the general category, 32 fall under philosophy, 194 under politics and law, 45 under military, 44 under economics, 4 under society/ sociology, 76 under education, 238 under history and geography, 133 under language and literature, 3 under art, 249 under science and 243 under technology. Books in the categories of social science and humanities amount to 778 (81.2%) while 172 fall under national and applied sciences, taking up 17.9%. This poses a sharp contrast to the 80% of translations on applied and natural sciences in the period up to 1896 as revealed in Liang Qichao’s Catalogue of Books on Western Learning (Xixue shumu biao) published in 1896 (in Zou 1995). In fiction translation, Tang Tao (1984: 4) estimates that of 1500 novels published in the late Qing,4 two thirds were translations. Japanese scholar Tarumoto Teruo’s (1998) bibliographical research reveals that original fiction outnumbered translated fiction – 1288 original versus 1016 translated between 1840 and 1911. Taromoto concludes that the number of translated titles exceeded original titles for the 6 years between 1902 and 1907. The growth of Chinese students in Japan and the promotion of modern education were the two main reasons for the rapid rise in “indirect translation” of Western works from Japanese and the translation of Japanese textbooks on Western topics. Yue-him Tam (1985) estimates 958 titles (not including textbooks or serial translations in journals) between 1896 and 1911, with an annual average of 63.86 titles. By contrast, only 86 works, or 15.1% of 567 titles, were translated from Japan between 1850 and 1899 (Tsien 1954). The following statistics on textbook translation are derived from “Secondary and Primary School Textbooks in the Late Qing” in the authoritative General Catalogue of the Republican Era: Secondary and Primary School Textbooks (Minguo shiqi zong shumu: Zhongxiaoxue jiaocai).5 Other sources, such as Yue-him Tam’s (1980) A Comprehensive Bibliography of Chinese Translations of Japanese Books (Zhongguo yi Riben shu zonghe mulu), are not included in this statistical analysis,  Tang did not specify the years or decades during which the novels were published.  General Catalogue of the Republican Era came out in succession between 1986 and 1995. Its Secondary and Primary School Textbooks was published by Shumu wenxian chubanshe in 1995. See Zhang Shouzhi (1995a). 4 5

1.2 Modern Development of the Print Culture and the Rise of Translation

5

because, in most cases, it is difficult to determine whether a translation was a textbook or for the general public. Of the 677 textbooks listed in “Secondary and Primary School Textbooks in the Late Qing,” 192 are translations (Zhang 1995). Between 1898 and 1911, 129 textbooks were translated from Japanese, 11 from America, 6 from Britain and 44 from other countries. Table 1.1 is my tally of translated secondary and primary school textbooks based on the above source. In this analysis, books marked “edited works” (bianding, bianzhu or bianzhuan) are considered original writing while those featuring the word “translation” (yi) such as “translated works” (yizhu), “translated and edited works” (yishu or yiji) fall under translations. It is almost certain that a large number of the translations in the category of “unknown source” are from Japanese writings. Most of these translations were conducted by Chinese students or scholars in Japan and some may have first been published in Japan. For instance, A Textbook on the Plane Triangle (Pingmian sanjiao jiaokeshu) is listed under “unknown source” but was translated by the Fujian Academic Organization (Min xuehui) in Japan and published in Tokyo. There are clear omissions in the compilation of “Secondary and Primary School Textbooks in the Late Qing,” as some science translations are not included even though they appear in other lists such as A Comprehensive Bibliography of Chinese Translations from Japanese. However, the statistics do shed important light on textbook translation at the time. Textbook translation reached its zenith between the years 1903 and 1908, with a total of 173 titles. This made up 90.1% of the total textbook production over the entire period. As comprehensive education reforms started in 1903 and the old imperial examination system was abolished in 1905, the demand for modern scientific textbooks was at its peak, bringing about an avalanche of textbook translations in these two years. The momentum continued until 1908.

1.2  M  odern Development of the Print Culture and the Rise of Translation In Chinese scholarship over the past 20  years, literary societies and journals in Republican China have been studied as a foundational aspect of modern Chinese literature (e.g. Hockx 2003; Dolezelova-Velingerova and Kral 2001; Gimpel 2001; Lee 1999). Based on Benedict Anderson’s notion of “imagined communities,” Jürgen Habermas’s theory of “public sphere” and Pierre Bourdieu’s interdependent concepts of “habitus” and “field,” these studies have argued that there was a close link between the burgeoning print culture and the construction of a new national imagination in Republican China. Drawing on these studies, I concern myself with the sociology of translation production in this section and examine the role the print industry and academic journals played in the translation of scientific and literary works in the 1890s and 1900s.

Year Country Japan America Britain France Unknown source Total

1900 1

1

1898 1 1

2

2 8

1902 5 1 1 6 15

1903 8

7 21

1904 12 2

8 20

1905 8 2 2 1 10 46

1906 33 2

Table 1.1  Translation of secondary and primary textbooks between 1898 and 1911

7 47

1907 37 1 2 2 24

2

1908 20

1 5

1909 3 1

1

1

1910

1 2

1911 1

Total 129 11 6 2 44 192

% 67.2 5.7 3.1 1.0 23.0 100

6 1  Modernization Through Translation: Shifts and Trends (1890s–1900s)

1.2 Modern Development of the Print Culture and the Rise of Translation

7

The booming translation industry may be best accounted for by the argument of eminent translation theorist André Lefevere (1992: 15), who maintains that patronage is a very important factor in the production of both literature and translation. Patronage is “something like the powers (persons, institutions) that can further or hinder the reading, writing, and rewriting of literature.”6 In post-1895 China, ­privately operated publishing houses and academic journals formed a strong system of patronage that proved highly favourable for the transmission of “Western learning” through Chinese writings and Chinese translations of foreign works.

1.2.1  The Patronage of Publishers and Literary Journals In the late nineteenth century, the rise of commercial publishing provided Chinese intellectuals with new channels for reaching out to new audiences. The mushrooming of translation agencies, publishing houses and academic journals fuelled the translation of literary and scientific works. Among the most prominent translation agencies and publishers were Xia Ruifang (1872–1914) and Zhang Yuanji (1867– 1959)’s Commercial Press (Shangwu yinshuguan), Liang Qichao’s Datong Translation Bureau (Datong yishuju) and Guangzhi Book Bureau (Guangzhi shuju). The development of the Commercial Press from a small workshop in 1897 into a modern publishing enterprise in the early twentieth century is a landmark success story in Chinese publishing history and one that has been widely recounted. During the Republican years, it became a prestigious publishing company, largely due to its impressive list of translated works. From 1912 to 1935, of the 13,300 translated books in the fields of philosophy, humanities, social and natural sciences published by 350 publishing houses in China, more than 3350 (or 25.2%) were published by the Commercial Press (Xu 1999: 253). The Commercial Press was launched by Xia Ruifang, Gao Fengchi (1864–1950) and the Bao brothers, namely, Bao Xian’en (1861–1910) and Bao Xianchang (1864–1929). In 1898, it published its first book, an English textbook entitled 6  According to Lefevere (1992: 16), a double control factor is at work to ensure that “the literary system does not fall too far out of step with the other subsystems society consists of.” Lefevere’s two types of control mechanism include one belonging squarely within the literary system, represented by the “professionals” (i.e. the critics, reviewers, teachers and translators), and one factor operating mostly outside the literary system, called “patronage.” Patronage may take the form of individuals or groups of persons, a political party, a social class, publishers and the media (e.g. newspapers and magazines). Patrons regulate the relationship between the literary system and the other systems, which, together, make up a society, a culture and they count on the professionals to bring the literary system in line with their own ideology. Patronage consists of three elements. The first is an ideological component, acting as “a constraint on the choice and development of both form and subject matter.” The second is an economic component: the patrons see to it that writers and translators, who in Lefevere’s framework are considered “rewriters,” are able to make a living. They pay royalties on the sale of books or hire professionals as teachers and reviewers. Finally, an element of status is involved. The acceptance of patronage means that professionals are integrated into a certain support group and its lifestyle.

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English and Chinese Primer (Huaying chujie), whose 2000 initial edition copies were sold out within one month. More textbooks were published and sold well in the next year. Between 1900 and 1901, the Press suffered huge commercial losses due to its publication of a number of poorly selected and badly translated Japanese books (Zou 2000: 47; Li 2005: 235–6). In 1901, Zhang Yuanji became a shareholder of the Commercial Press at the request of Xia Ruifang. The following year saw the establishment of its editing and translating department (bianyi suo) and the ­circulation department (faxing suo). In 1903, it entered into partnership with a Japanese company. Meanwhile, with Zhang Yuanji taking over the leadership of the editing and translating department, more books, including textbooks, in social science, literature and art, were translated while several journals were launched. The turnover in 1903 reached more than 300,000 yuan. Between 1902 and 1910, the Commercial Press published 865 books, 330 of which were translations. All of the 14 books on politics were translated from foreign languages. Seven of the ten books on philosophy and psychology were also translations. In fiction, there were 175 translated books, accounting for 89% of all the published novels of the period (Zou 2000). Among the publications of the Commercial Press that exerted a profound influence on its readers were Lin Shu’s translated novels and Yan Fu’s translations of Western social sciences. Between 1895 and 1908, the Commercial Press published 8 of Yan Fu’s 12 translated social scientific books (ibid: 55). Bing Xin (Xie Wanying) (1900–1999) (Xie 1987: 312–3), distinguished modern Chinese writer, recollected in her essay “The Commercial Press and Me” (Wo he Shangwu yinshuguan), “When I scraped together enough money, I would request the messenger from the naval academy who went to get mail in Yantai every day to buy The Fiction Series (Shuobu congshu) published by the Commercial Press at Mingshan Bookstore. The majority of the books in this series were translated novels of Mr. Lin Qinnan7….I can still recite the touching sentences in these books.” The influence of Lin Shu’s fiction translation on the identity formation of the New Culture leaders, most of whom were born around the 1880s, will be discussed in Chap. 3. With the introduction of standard rates of payment for manuscripts and the emergence of modern ideas of royalties and copyright at the turn of the twentieth century, fiction, together with plays,8 became the earliest “commercialized” form of literature. Publisher and novelist Bao Tianxiao (1876–1973) (in Yuan 2006: 11) recollected: “At that time, people who wrote for newspapers did not get any payment except fiction writers. They contribute to newspapers of their interest without asking for payment.” That the same amount of remuneration was offered for translations and original writing was an important contributing factor to the surge in fiction translation. According to the royalties offered and the living standard of the time, a writer whose 7  Lin Qinnan is the courtesy name of Lin Shu, who was most famous for translating Western literature into Chinese in spite of his ignorance of foreign languages. Michael Gibbs Hill has published an intriguing study of Lin’s translation practice. See Hill (2013). 8  Modern scholars tend to agree that plays fell under the category of fiction in the late Qing. See, for instance, Yuan (2006).

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Table 1.2  Major journals responsible for the publication of fiction Journal title New Fiction (Xin xiaoshuo) Illustrated Fiction (Xiuxiang xiaoshuo) Latest Fiction (Xin xin xiaoshuo) Periodical of the Association of New World Fiction (Xin shijie xiaoshuo she bao) The All-Story Monthly (Yueyue xiaoshuo) Fiction World (Xiaoshuo shijie) Fiction Forest (Xiaoshuo lin) Jingli Association Fiction Monthly (Jingli she xiaoshuo yuebao) Chinese and Foreign Fiction Forest (Zhongwai xiaoshuo lin) Fiction Weekly (Xiaoshuo qiri bao) New Fiction Miscellany (Xin xiaoshuo cong) Yangtze River Fiction (Yangzijiang xiaoshuo bao) Fiction Times (Xiaoshuo shibao) Short Story Monthly (Xiaoshuo yuebao)

Year of publication 1902 1903 1904 1906

Place of launching Yokohama (Japan) Shanghai Shanghai Shanghai

1906 1907 1907 1907

Shanghai Hong Kong Shanghai Shanghai

1907

Guangzhou/ Hong Kong Shanghai Hong Kong Wuhan Shanghai Shanghai

1908 1908 1909 1909 1910

daily output was a thousand words would be able to make a reasonable living. Most of the scholars who wielded their pens for a living in the early years of the twentieth century earned enough to live quite comfortably. Some of them, like Wu Jianren (1866–1910) and Lin Shu, were able to accumulate wealth and achieve enormous fame out of their writings and translations. Between 1899 and 1924, the royalties Lin Shu received totalled about 100,000 yuan, 20% more than the amount of the Nobel Prize during that same period (Chen 2001: 72–3). Between 1902 and 1916, 57 literary periodicals were launched in China’s major cities, 29 of them containing the word “fiction”/“story” (xiaoshuo) in their titles (Chen 2005). The following table lists 14 highly influential literary journals by their first year of publication (Table 1.2). Of these periodicals, New Fiction, Illustrated Fiction, The All-Story Monthly and Fiction Forest are now considered by mainland scholars to be the four major fiction journals of the late Qing. The translated works took up nearly half or more of all the novels and short stories published in these journals. In this, we can see Liang Qichao applying the principle of “half creative writing and half translation” – New Fiction was a pet project of his. Before Liang Qichao launched New Fiction in Yokohama, he published an article in The New Citizen’s Gazette (Xinmin congbao) entitled “The Only Literary Periodical in China – New Fiction” (Zhongguo weiyi zhi wenxuebao Xin xiaoshuo),9 9  The article was published under the name of New Fiction Press (Xin xiaoshuo baoshe). Chinese scholar Fan Boqun (2000) is of the opinion that the article must have been written by Liang Qichao himself, given that he was in charge of the periodical at the time.

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to generate publicity for this new enterprise. Liang wrote: “The purpose of launching this periodical is to arouse political enthusiasm and instil patriotism in our people. All obscenities and vulgarities which undermine moral education will be rejected” (in Chen and Xia 1997: 59). New Fiction attached equal importance to translated and original works and was the first Chinese periodical to feature translated literature with clear political objectives. The publication of New Fiction met with enthusiastic reactions from Chinese scholars and publishers. Bao Tianxiao (1971: 357) recollected in 1949: “The journals of the time followed in the footsteps of New Fiction. It is no exaggeration to say that following the call of New Fiction, all the ‘mountains’ echoed and responded.” Renowned writer and poet Huang Zunxian (1848–1905) mentioned New Fiction several times in his exchange of correspondence with Liang Qichao in 1902. He extolled it as “an excellent periodical” and expressed his intense appreciation for some of the works published in the journal, such as The Future of New China (Xin Zhongguo weilai ji) and The Eastern European Heroine (Dong’ou nü haojie) (in Ding and Zhao 1983: 300). Illustrated Fiction was launched in May 1903 and like New Fiction, the publication of translated fiction was high on the agenda of the journal’s editors. In its inaugural statement, the nationalist purpose was clearly set out: Europeans and Americans educate their citizens mainly through fiction; the rise of Japan accentuates its importance….In view of this, we have rallied like-minded intellectuals to launch this journal in order to emulate the success stories of the West and Japan. We accept both creative works and translations and have them published twice a month. We will endeavour to enlighten the masses.… (in Chen and Xia 1997: 68–9)

The sentence “Europeans and Americans educate their citizens mainly through fiction” echoes Liang Qichao’s view in “Foreword to the Translation and Publication of Political Novels” (Yi yin zhengzhi xiaoshuo xu) published in 1898. The chief editor Li Boyuan (1867–1906) of Illustrated Fiction was more interested in introducing social customs and disseminating new ideas through popular literature without rigidly patterning the journal after New Fiction. By 1903, Liang’s New Fiction had earned a reputation as a leading vehicle for Western-style political ideas and social reforms. Illustrated Fiction ran for 72 issues, publishing 34 novels in instalments, exactly half of which were translations. The All-Story Monthly was launched in November 1906 by Wang Qingqi. Eminent novelist Wu Jianren (ibid: 188), who was one of the journal’s inaugural editors, wrote in the journal’s first issue: “Fiction readers tend to seek pleasure out of their reading. Indeed new knowledge is included in pleasurable reading and therefore is acquired first as entertainment and then as knowledge without the readers’ awareness.” These remarks are suggestive of the popularity of reading fiction as a result of Liang Qichao’s active promotion. The intellectuals’ understanding of their readers’ expectation, i.e. to acquire knowledge from pleasurable reading, was also an important factor for their manipulation of the source texts in compliance with Chinese literary stereotypes.

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The translations that were published in The All-Story Monthly were mostly detective and adventure stories. While Wu Jianren was responsible for Chinese writing, Zhou Guisheng (1873–1936) undertook the translation and editing of foreign works. Contemporary accounts indicate that the two editors cooperated well in their sharing of creative writing and translation (Li 2012: 65; Xia 2008: 95–6). Altogether 16 translated novels and 33 translated short stories were published before the journal ceased publication in 1909. Despite its short-lived existence, Fiction Forest was among the best-known journals in the early twentieth century. In 1905, the editorial “Notice of the Recent Interest of Fiction Forest” (Jingao Xiaoshuo lin she zuijin zhi quyi) stated: We publish different types of fiction in the hope of using stories to enlighten the Chinese public and eliminate unwholesome habits. We are indebted to the intellectuals in China who have helped to popularize the journal and who offer suggestions from time to time….As translations are produced in large numbers, it is time to categorize them in light of genre and subject matter; otherwise, the future of fiction is at stake. Our colleagues are all apprehensive. (in Chen and Xia 1997: 173)

Among the 12 genres that Fiction Forest favoured were science fiction, detective stories, sentimental narratives and social novels. The editors were adamant that they would not publish anything that failed to conform to their specified categories (ibid). In the 12 issues of the journal, 9 translated novels and 10 translated short stories were published. The editors and shareholders of these journals were all advocates or supporters of literary reforms, though they had clear preferences in their choice of subject matters and literary genres. In addition to the journals that were devoted exclusively to the publication of fiction, the early twentieth century also saw a sharp rise in the number of other academic journals, whose topics “extended to all branches of learning and generated a veritable explosion of knowledge” (Reynolds 1993: 118). Publishing houses in late Qing China were mostly based in Shanghai and Beijing, and quite a few journals were launched in Japan and elsewhere by overseas students. Between 1900 and 1914, the number of periodicals focusing on the dissemination of scientific knowledge was more than 50 (Ding 1982: 96). Most of the founders of these periodicals made clear their purpose of “national salvation through science” (kexue jiuguo). Overseas students, especially those in Japan, also contributed to the spread of translation via the journals they launched. The ease of publishing Western-style periodicals greatly expanded the scope of an already well-established translation industry. Fudan University-based scholar Zou Zhenhuan (in Song 2000: 70) observes: “A large number of students studying in Japan later became chief editors of journals specializing in science, society and culture. Some translators made themselves pillars of translation work in new publications.” Japanese sinologist Saneto Keishu’s study reveals that, of the 63 periodicals that the Chinese students published between October 1898 and May 1911, students in Japan were credited with the publication of 59 (Song 2000: 63). In 1906, when the number of Chinese students studying in Japan reached its peak, 25 periodicals made their appearance in China and overseas, 14 of them being launched by students in Japan (ibid).

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Among the best-known late-Qing periodicals Chinese students founded in Japan were Journal of Enlightenment (Kaizhi lu), Journal of Compiled Translations (Yishu huibian) and National Tribune (Guomin bao). After 1903, there appeared in Japan journals founded by groups of Chinese students that were named for the provinces from which these students came. These included Hubei Students (Hubei xuesheng jie), Zhejiang Tide (Zhejiang chao), Yunnan, and Henan (Song 2000: 66–9). Although intellectual production showed some continuity with traditional practice (such as working in study groups10) at the turn of the twentieth century, social-­ political upheavals and the modernization of the printing industry provided unprecedented opportunities for Chinese intellectuals to assume new roles, as publishers, editors and professional translators. Both their publications and translation activities started to acquire a specialized character, reflecting the academic disciplines of the contributors. Not only did academic journals provide a clear career path to the literati whose dream of officialdom was sundered by the abolition of the imperial examination, but they also became vehicles for the introduction and promotion of new ideas and cultural changes. With the development of the modern print industry, intellectuals progressively carved out their discursive space or “public sphere,”11 in ways that exceeded the control of the Qing court. Lefevere’s observation about the role of patrons in shaping translation practice is pertinent to the situation in late Qing China. Lefevere (1992: 23) argues that, if the literary system fails to have an impact on the environment by means of the works or rewritings it produces, patrons are likely to demand or at least actively encourage the production of works of literature more likely to meet their expectations. In the aftermath of the Self-Strengthening Movement and the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), influential publishing companies and periodicals in China (such as the ones discussed above) accorded greater importance to the importation of social science and fiction. These patrons of translation exercised significant control over the choice of texts for translation. In turn, translators who wished to be gainfully employed and to see their translations become influential complied with the expectations of their employers.

1.2.2  Liang Qichao: A Leading Patron of Translation In the 1900s Liang Qichao was indubitably the leader among his peers in shaping the direction of translation publications. His promotion and sponsorship of translation contributed fundamentally to the sharp increase in the number of translations from and via Japanese, and in the translation of social science and fiction. Moreover,  The largest literary society in the 1900s was the Southern Society (Nanshe). For a study of literary groups in late Qing and early Republican China, see, for example, Hockx (2003). 11  According to Habermas, “public sphere” is a realm of freedom of private and collective activity to be defended against state intrusion and domination. While Habermas was referring to journals and salons that contributed to the formation of a civil society in eighteenth-century Europe, the “public sphere” in late Qing and early republican China consisted mainly of journalistic discourse. See, for example, Lee (2001). 10

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he elevated and gradually popularized the use of a distinctively free and lucid writing style, which greatly facilitated his promotion of “new citizen” ideals. Liang (in Ma 2004: 365) pointed out the limitations of the translation projects of the earlier decades in a memorial he presented to the Guangxu Emperor in 1898: Before the war with Japan, whenever scholar-officials spoke about the West, they took it for granted that the strength of Westerners lay in their powerful weaponry and sophisticated machinery. Therefore, Western learning was limited to ship-building and gun-making. This was in fact what caused our failure. After 1895, the literati came to attribute the strength of the West to scholarship.

Liang was an ardent advocate of acquiring Western knowledge via Japanese. He claimed in the same memorial: Over the thirty years since the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese have passionately sought a wide range of knowledge. The number of useful books they have translated or written is not less than several thousand. Besides, most of the books deal with politics, economics, philosophy and sociology. They are what we need badly for the purpose of enlightening the people and strengthening the country. (ibid)

Liang made it clear that the translation of Western political works from and via Japanese was an important step for China’s modernization. To encourage the Chinese to acquire Western ideas in Japanese translation, Liang (in Mareshi 2004: 264) listed the advantages of learning Japanese over learning a Western language,12 and added that “compared to Western languages on this point, you can do half the work and reap twice the reward.” His remarks about the affinities of Chinese and Japanese were echoed by Zhang Zhidong, the conservative reformer of the Qing court. Zhang (1998) summarized the benefits of learning Japanese and studying in Japan in his 1898 essay “Exhortation to Learning” (Quanxue pian), noting Japan’s geographical proximity to China, the similarities between the two languages and the availability of Japanese translations of major Western works. In August 1896 Liang Qichao embarked on his career as a journalist when he launched Chinese Progress (Shiwu bao), the single most influential reform-oriented periodical at the end of the nineteenth century, of which he was chief editor and a co-founder, the other two founders being Huang Zunxian and Wang Kangnian (1860–1911). In A General Discussion of Reform (Bianfa tongyi), published serially in Chinese Progress in 1896 and 1897, Liang (2002: 141) attributed the success of the Western powers to translation and claimed: “In today’s world, translation is undoubtedly the first principle of strengthening the nation.” The premium Liang placed on translation was evident in the publishing houses and periodicals he founded subsequently. In October 1897, Liang Qichao set up the Datong Translation Bureau in Shanghai. In the founding charter, Liang observed that between the mid-1860s and mid-1890s, all governmental translation departments combined had produced only around 100 translations from all languages. He  According to Liang, it is easier for a Chinese speaker to become proficient in Japanese. “First, the number of phonetic sounds is small. Second, the sounds all exist in Chinese, and there are no weird or difficult sounds. Third, there are few strict rules of grammar. Fourth, the things and phenomena recorded are often similar to those in Chinese. Fifth, Chinese characters comprise 60–70% of the text” (in Mareshi 2004: 264).

12

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thus “gathered together several like-minded associates, and established this agency to translate works chiefly from Japanese, and only secondarily from Western languages” (in Reynolds 1993: 112). As regards the selection of texts, Liang (1936: 58) wrote in his 1897 essay “On the Running of Datong Translation Bureau” (Datong yishuju xuli), published in Chinese Progress: We will translate various textbooks for school children to read; we will translate books on the constitution, to serve as the basis of our nation-building; we will translate books on regulations to guide our daily running; we will translate books on commerce to boost studies of Chinese commerce and to retrieve our economic rights and interest.

Liang also touched upon the economic aspect of running Datong Translation Bureau. To encourage contributions, he promised to provide royalties or gifts of books to those “Chinese scholars, who are willing to submit to the bureau for publication any books, whether they are translated, written, or compiled” (ibid). At a time when such notions as royalties or copyrights were still new to the Chinese, Liang’s offer was ground-breaking. He is widely acknowledged as being the first Chinese person to introduce a schedule of manuscript fees (Su 2004; Chen 2005). Running the acclaimed Datong Translation Bureau established Liang Qichao’s reputation as a leading reformist journalist. His role as an “undifferentiated patron” became more obvious as the journals he ran gained popularity and acceptance, enabling him to exercise greater economic and ideological control over translation activities. This type of “undifferentiated patronage” then became a model that many others sought to follow in subsequent decades. In 1901, while Liang Qichao was still in exile in Japan, he launched Guangzhi Book Bureau in Shanghai, with the funds he raised through stock sale to overseas Chinese (Wu 2010). Liang hoped that the bureau would broaden knowledge and wisdom (guangzhi). Feng Jingru (d. 1913) and Liang Yinnan were mainly responsible for the running of the bureau in Shanghai, while the shareholder Huang Huizhi (year unknown), who was based in Yokohama, acted as finance supervisor. The bureau privileged the translation of Western learning via Japanese in its publication. Altogether the bureau published more than 200 translated books, nearly 200 of which were based on Japanese texts. Of its published translations, the majority dealt with politics, economics, philosophy, geography and history (Zou 2000: 58–9).13

 In the couple of years after its establishment, Guangzhi Book Bureau also published large quantities of exam guides. With the abolition of the imperial examination in 1905, the exam guides were rendered worthless and the bureau suffered severe losses. Meanwhile, the rampant piracy of its best-sellers and Huang Huizhi’s embezzlement during Liang Qichao’s trip to America landed the bureau in further financial difficulty. Liang’s own diversion of 20,000 yuan in support of the running of The New Citizen’s Gazette also exacerbated the financial situation of the bureau. In 1903, He Qingyi (year unknown) took over the leadership in Shanghai. With assistance from Kang Youwei and Xiong Xiling (1870–1937), Guangzhi Book Bureau was able to keep its business afloat until 1915 (Zou 2000: 66–7).

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15

In Japan, Liang Qichao also founded a succession of periodicals, the most famous being Upright Discussions (Qingyi bao), The New Citizen’s Gazette and the above-mentioned New Fiction. Launched on 23 December 1898, Upright Discussions published translated works from Japan and Western countries, commentaries and reports on current events in China and internationally, as well as political fiction and prose essays. It was issued every 10 days with 3000-odd copies, and its distribution was international, extending from China, Japan, and Korea, to Europe, America and Australia. The periodical ceased publication on 21 December 1901, replaced by The New Citizen’s Gazette (Du 2008). In early 1902 Liang Qichao borrowed several thousand yuan and launched The New Citizen’s Gazette. One year later, the debt was cleared, and Liang decided to adopt the stock management system, with himself holding two of the six shares and Feng Zishan (d. 1923), Huang Weizhi (year unknown), Deng Yinnan (1846–1923) and Chen Lusheng (year unknown) taking the remaining four shares respectively (Fang 1992: 651). The objectives of The New Citizen’s Gazette were clearly set out in the journal’s first issue: The periodical takes its name “New Citizen” from the term “xinmin” (to renew the people) in the Great Learning. We consider educating our people to be of primary importance in saving the nation. China’s malaise is due to the lack of civic virtue in its citizens, who remain unenlightened. It is to remedy this malady that the periodical has been launched. We will strive to bring together Chinese and Western ethics to serve as guiding principles for education and to amass political theories to be used as the basis of ethics.14

The journal claimed that it would select important Western works and adapt them to suit the taste of Chinese readers; therefore, direct or literal translation (zhiyi), which faithfully followed the content, language and expression of the source text, was not encouraged.15 In 1902, 24 issues were published, with a total of 80 illustrations, 75 of which were scenic spots or historical figures from Western countries and Japan. Twenty-three translated works were given a prominent position in the issues of the year and appeared as the first or second article on the journal’s content pages. Of the 340-odd articles published in 1902, about 180 were translations or commentaries of Western works, and more than half of these fell under social science. In addition, the New Citizen’s Gazette made a point of introducing sociology, history and philosophy from Western countries through regular columns such as Theories (Xueshuo) and Overseas Report (Haiwai huibao). Liang Qichao’s articles on René Descartes (1596–1650), Charles-Louis de Secondat (1689–1755), Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689–1755), Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), George Wilhelm

 In “Announcement” (Gaobai), The New Citizen’s Gazette, Issue I.  In “Our Distinctive Features” (Benbao zhi tese), The New Citizen’s Gazette, Issue I.

14 15

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Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) and other Western philosophers and scientists made up a large proportion of the articles appearing under Theories. The New Citizen’s Gazette was published on the first and fifteenth days of each month. Each copy of the journal cost 2.5 yuan while the subscription price was 5 yuan per year. The bimonthly became immensely successful and its circulation was widespread. In its heyday it sold 14,000 copies, and reprints were not uncommon for many of its issues. In a letter to Liang Qichao, Huang Zunxian (in Ding and Zhao 1983: 274) remarked: Upright Discussions has outstripped Chinese Progress in many ways while The New Citizen’s Gazette is several times better than Upright Discussions. Reading the journal has been a revelation….The force of these writings is unprecedented.

In the early twentieth century, many Western-style schools used articles in The New Citizen’s Gazette’s Theory column as teaching materials. Distinguished educator Jiang Menglin (1886–1964) (2000: 57) hailed The New Citizen’s Gazette as “the fountainhead of wisdom for every young person longing for new knowledge,” and took pride in having been “one of the students deeply influenced by it.” In his running of The New Citizen’s Gazette, Liang Qichao offered different rates for different types of writing. He wrote to a friend in 1907, suggesting 2 yuan per thousand Chinese characters for reports or accounts (jizai) while setting paraphrased translation (yishu) and criticism (piping) at 3 yuan (Ding and Zhao 1983: 387). The rates were higher still for books, and depending on their quality, a maximum of 4 yuan per thousand characters and a common standard of 3 yuan per thousand characters would be offered (ibid). Liang’s standardization of royalties and payments was an important modern innovation. While keeping his publications economically viable, it also enabled him to encourage contributions that conformed to his promotion of modern values. Liang was keen to introduce Western philosophy and social science through the essays he published in his own journals. Convinced that literature was an effective vehicle for the articulation of his moral-political ideals, he placed a special importance on the translation of literary works. This is evident in the essay he wrote in 1898, titled “Foreword to the Translation and Publication of Political Novels” (Yi yin zhengzhi xiaoshuo xu), published in Upright Discussions. Liang (1996a: 72) agreed with Kang Youwei’s observation that people with low levels of literacy would often read fiction instead of the classics. Therefore, “fiction should seek to teach where the Six Classics have failed to teach, to convey lessons where the official histories have failed to convey, to illuminate where the recorded sayings are unable to illuminate, and to govern where laws are found wanting” (ibid).16 In 1902, Liang Qichao reiterated the didactic function of fiction and the linkage of fiction with social and political reforms. He opened his essay “On the Relationship between Fiction and the Government of the People” (Lun xiaoshuo yu qunzhi zhi guanxi) with words intended to inspire:  I have made slight changes to the last part of the quotation. The English translation in Denton’s book is “…to govern where laws have failed.”

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If one intends to renovate the people of a nation, one must first renovate its fiction. Therefore, to renovate morality, one must renovate fiction; to renovate religion, one must renovate fiction; to renovate politics, one must renovate fiction; to renovate social customs, one must renovate fiction; to renovate learning and arts, one must renovate fiction; and to renovate even the human mind and remould its character, one must renovate fiction. (Liang 1996b: 74)

According to Liang (ibid), “there is nothing more profound to indoctrinate the minds than fiction.” He outlined and enumerated four powers that he believed fiction held to influence people, namely, thurification (xun), immersion (jin), stimulation (ci) and lifting (ti). After explaining what they meant, Liang (ibid: 78) asserted that these powers were “capable of shaping the world as well as establishing and nurturing the various norms of society.” They could be a boon or a bane depending on how they were used: One who possesses these four powers and who uses them to promote what is good will bring benefit to millions of people. But if he uses these powers for evil purposes, the curses they cause will last for thousands of years. It is only through fiction that these four powers most readily exert their influence. How admirable fiction  is! How frightening fiction  is! (ibid)

These four powers had turned fiction into a vehicle for transmitting old feudalistic ideas among the Chinese so that it “has entrapped and drowned the masses so deplorably” (ibid: 80). Liang considered it to be “the roots of all decadence in Chinese society” (ibid: 79). While decrying the vicious cycle that traditional Chinese novelists produced with their stories of violence and lust, Liang was mindful of fiction’s great potential as a vehicle for disseminating the values of the “new citizen.” Fiction could transform the reader into “an avatar of Washington, of Napoleon, and of Buddha or Confucius,” promoting what is good and “bringing benefits to millions of people.” This is precisely where fiction is “admirable.” Liang even called for a revolution in fiction: “The reformation of the government of the people must begin with a revolution in fiction” (ibid: 81). Liang’s elevation of fiction was in opposition to the long-standing traditional privileging of poetry and prose as the only worthy literary genres. By 1902, Liang had become so influential that his emphasis on the educational function of new fiction was readily taken up by his contemporaries so that their selection of foreign fiction for translation became focused on building the national character and spirit. Liang Qichao’s advocacy of new ideas, conveyed in a fresh style of writing, overpowered the educated elite of the 1900s. Prominent scholars of the time spoke highly of Liang and his writings. Historian Li Jiannong (1880–1963) (1947: 220) quoted Yan Fu as saying: Liang’s pen has the magical power that seizes his readers’ hearts. If he advocates assassination, people will do so without demur. If he advocates sabotage, people will rally to his call.

Li Jiannong felt that Yan Fu’s remarks might not be entirely appropriate but agreed that Liang Qichao did hold sway in the intellectual world of the time. “In the five or six years after the Hundred-Day Reform, it was an undeniable fact that Liang Qichao had the power to arouse young people to challenge the status quo” (ibid).

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In a 1903 letter to Liang, Huang Zunxian (in Ding and Zhao 1983: 306–7) echoed Yan’s and Li’s praises for Liang as follows: In the past six months or so, all of the newspapers in China, a total of around fifty, gave their support to your polemics and copied your ideas and writings….Your teachings and criticisms, once published, have the moral force to change people’s minds. Your writings are heroic and capable of bringing about rapid changes! As a result of this, they must bear the enormous responsibility of making a significant impact. Because the attention of the educated and wise people in China is focused on you, what you do is of paramount importance….Words can make a country prosper and they can ruin it as well. Let me remind you that the fate of our nation depends on you.

Being both a “patron” and a “professional,” by Lefevere’s standard, Liang Qichao was regarded by his peers as the most influential intellectual reformer of the 1890s and 1900s. Although his journals were generally short-lived, they exerted significant intellectual and aesthetic influence on Chinese readers and were precursors to the journals of the 1910s and 1920s (to be discussed in Chap. 4). His patronage of translation and his own (re)writings thus became mutually enhancing. Liang’s fiction translation practice will be examined more closely in Chap. 2.

1.3  Translation from Japanese Contemporary translation scholar Gideon Toury (1995: 129–30) has noted that the recurrence of indirect translation (or mediated translation) reflects key forces at work in shaping the culture in question, stating: “No historically oriented study of a culture where indirect translation was practiced with any regularity can afford to ignore this phenomenon and fail to examine what it stands for.” Recent developments in translation studies have enabled us to understand translation activities as part of historical “totalities” which favour and sustain certain modes of translating while excluding or marginalizing others. Indirect or mediated translation offers us a means of moving from observable phenomena to underlying factors. Study of mediated translations and the practices which give rise to them can, according to Toury (ibid), help to determine how “systemic relationships and historically determined norms intersect and correlate.” Toury’s observation has relevance for our understanding of how modern translation practices developed in China. As the statistical information provided in Sect. 1.1 indicates, the translation of Western learning via Japanese sources was prevalent in the wake of the First Sino-Japanese War. The war altered the power relations between China and Japan, and kindled the enthusiasm for learning from Japan. Section 1.2 demonstrates that intellectual leaders such as Liang Qichao leaned over backwards to convince their countrymen that translating from Japanese works was a shortcut to acquiring the quintessence of Western learning. A number of high-­ranking government officials were also in favour of indirect translation via Japanese, believing that Western works had been carefully chosen and compiled by

1.3 Translation from Japanese

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the Japanese and that the indirect translation practice would be more efficient than direct translation from the West.17 In the last decade or so of the Qing dynasty, despite the relative ineffectiveness of the state reforms that the Qing government implemented, achievements were made in the realm of education, such as the setting up of Western-style schools, and the sending of students overseas. The first official dispatch of 13 students to Japan in 1896 set the stage for education reforms in China in the early 1900s. After 1896, huge numbers of Chinese students went to study in Japan. By 1905 and 1906, there were 8000 students in Japan as opposed to only 130 Chinese students in the US in 1905 (Huang 1972; Wang 1992). Japan’s popularity as the preferred destination of Chinese students continued until after World War I. As discussed previously, Chinese students in Japan acquired the skills of modern publishing and set up periodicals that greatly facilitated the translation of works from Japanese. The large volumes of Japanese translations exerted an extensive and profound impact on the traditional Chinese episteme, as they became sources of new knowledge. The influx of new ideas generated lexical changes which significantly expanded the vocabulary of Chinese intellectuals. In the 1890s and 1900s, the translation of Japanese works introduced an enormous number of modern Japanese terms into the Chinese language, of which key terms such as kexue (science), shehui (society), and jinhua (evolution) quickly gained popularity through their widespread use in newspapers and magazines. One important reason for the influx of Japanese borrowings is the fact that these loanwords had been used in Japanese writings or Japanese translations of Western works for decades. In 1905, the eminent scholar-official Wang Guowei (1877–1927) published in Education World (Jiaoyu shijie) an article entitled “On the Importation of Neologisms” (Lun xin xueyu zhi shuru), in which he advocated lexical borrowings from Japanese: The pursuit of learning involves an increased number of new phrases. Now that Japanese scholars have already surpassed us in coining neologisms, we should simply use them in our language. What harm can there be? Therefore, except for the ones that are clearly wrong, we do not need to invent new terms. (in Jiang and Liu 2006: 42)

Wang Guowei pointed out that the formation of Japanese neologisms was anything but hit-and-miss. Instead, “they are the result of close examination by scores of experts and several decades of revision” (ibid: 43). Weng Wenhao (1889–1971), a pioneer of modern geology in China, concluded after careful investigation that the Japanese geological terms were more unified and

 The importance that the Qing government accorded to the translation of Japanese is also evident in their establishment of the Department of Japanese at the Imperial Language Academy in 1897 and subsequently also at the Shanghai and Canton language schools. See Biggerstaff (1961: 339) and Masini (1993: 107).

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better established than Chinese ones. He recommended the use of Japanese geological terminology as follows: Japanese nouns consist of Chinese characters and are thus easily usable [in Chinese]…. When the Japanese first coined new words, they made detailed reference to the Chinese language and invariably imported those words commonly used in Chinese. Most of the geological terms are derived from Chinese. Science knows no national boundaries and interaction is easier within the same language family. Why should we be so parochial? (in Wen 2005: 22)

Weng’s remarks suggest that the popularity of Japanese loanword neologisms in late Qing China is not so much because of the terminological standardization in Japanese as because of their ready availability as a potent terminological tool. Moreover, as these Japanese terms typically followed Chinese word-formation patterns, their importation into China served as an expedient way to acquire new ideas. Thus, Wang Guowei and his followers attributed the inevitability of lexical borrowing to the dynamics of terminological development in the late Qing. “When Western learning poured into China, the shortage of Chinese phrases [to express new ideas] became apparent” (Wang 1905 in Jiang and Liu 2006: 42). Lexical borrowing was not a rare phenomenon in China or Japan. Before the reverse process of Japanese loan translation started in the late nineteenth century, words of Chinese origin had streamed into the Japanese language for centuries. Since the Han dynasty the Chinese had borrowed extensively from other languages (Gao and Liu 1958). However, the massive influx of Japanese neologisms at the turn of the twentieth century was unparalleled in Chinese history in terms of scale and impact. Through the translation of Western works via Japanese, the Chinese language absorbed the Japanese nomenclatures of different branches of Western learning. Saneto (in Liu 1995: 18) identified 830 loanwords from Japanese kanji (character) translation, of which 98 were nouns. Yue-him Tam’s research added 233 more to Saneto’s list, bringing the number of neologisms from Japanese kanji translation to a total of 1063. Tam (ibid) himself was certain that the list was far from exhaustive. In their translation of Japanese works, Chinese scholars frequently took the line of least resistance by directly copying the new terms as they appeared in the Japanese language. These terms were either completely foreign or modified from existing lexicons (Lackner et al. 2001). While enriching the Chinese vocabulary, the influx of Japanese loanwords also influenced the Chinese language in other ways. At the turn of the twentieth century, writing in classical Chinese (wenyan) was still the norm in literary circles. Translations were mostly produced in classical Chinese, despite the modern ideas they transmitted. Liang Qichao was known to have a propensity for employing Japanese loanwords and for incorporating a Japanese way of writing in his works. After Liang took refuge in Japan, he not only availed himself of the Japanese-mediated Western expressions but also started to write in a new style characterized by perspicuous presentation, clear organization, and flexible structuring, as opposed to his preference for parallelisms and couplets in his earlier writings. The new style stemmed from the assimilation of Western syntax into Japanese as well as the popularity of the use of colloquial language in Japanese lit-

1.4 Translation of Textbooks as a Response to the Promotion of Modern Education

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erature at that time. His published writings in the periodicals he ran, notably Chinese Progress, New Fiction, and The New Citizen’s Gazette, featured this semi-classical, semi-vernacular (ban wen ban bai) style of writing, which became known variously as the “Chinese Progress Style” (shiwu ti), the “New Citizen Style” (xinmin ti), or the “New-Style Writing” (xin wenti). It gained considerable currency among journalists and writers of the time. Liang (in Chen and Xia 1997: 82) noted in 1903: “The crux of literary evolution is the conversion of classical literature into colloquial literature. The development of literature in every country follows this rule.” Zhu Zongyuan (1874–1932) (in Zhang 1957: 95), a famous poet and calligrapher, observed in 1927: “[After the First Sino-Japanese War,] there was a surge in the number of Chinese students going to Japan. As the translation of their language was easier than other languages, books translated from Japanese filled Chinese bookstores and were widely used in schools….Our writing style underwent a gradual change in this process.” The gradual linguistic change instigated by late Qing translations gathered pace during the New Culture Movement, when vernacular Chinese (baihua) replaced the classical language as a vehicle of cultural transformation through Western concepts and ideals.18

1.4  T  ranslation of Textbooks as a Response to the Promotion of Modern Education In the early twentieth century, the changes in school curricula were accompanied by a sharp increase in the number of newly-established Western-style schools. In 1903, there were 680 schools in China, and the number jumped to 14,606 in 1906 (Chen 1930). Studies of that era also indicate that there were 217,176 primary schools with 2,545,274 pupils and 1319 secondary schools with a total of 108,514 students in the three years between 1907 and 1909 only (Li et al. 1995). As social and educational reforms accelerated in China, the shortage of appropriate textbooks became evident. Liang Qichao (1989(1): 19–20) warned in a 1902 essay “My Discussion of Education Policy” (Jiaoyu zhengce siyi): “If Chinese children don’t receive the education comparable to the civilized countries, the development of their moral intelligence will be several notches lower….Textbooks…should be available for use as long as they conform to the official curriculum structure.” The shortage of textbooks on science was particularly acute as science subjects were new to Chinese schools. Therefore, ambitious textbook translation projects began in the early 1900s. Textbooks of the time were mainly published either in periodicals or by the bourgeoning translation agencies and publishing houses founded in Japan and China. These enterprises were generally more productive than

 For a discussion of some of the tenets of “May Fourth linguistic orthodoxy,” see Christoph Harbsmeier (2001).

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the few agencies run by the Qing government.19 In 1906, the Ministry of Education (Xuebu) validated 102 primary textbooks, 85 of which were produced by private publishers. The Commercial Press published 54 (or 52.9%) primary school textbooks that year. In 1910, of the 84 secondary textbooks that the Ministry of Education authorized, 30 were published by the Commercial Press, accounting for 35.7% of the total (Li 2005: 236). Among the periodicals publishing Japanese textbooks in instalments were Agricultural Press (Nongxue bao), The Eastern Miscellany (Dongfang zazhi), Yaquan Journal (Yaquan zazhi), The World of Science (Kexue shijie) and Education World (Jiaoyu shijie). Education World was China’s first modern journal of education, established in 1901 by Wang Guowei and the late Qing philologist Luo Zhenyu (1866–1940). It featured a three-section format, with Section One devoted to commentaries, Section Two to the education administration system and school regulations of Japanese schools, and Section Three to translations, including, among others, textbooks for beginning and middle school levels, primarily from Japan. In its 40 issues, the journal published 240 articles, 80% of which were full translations from Japanese, 93 items were translations of various Japanese educational statutes, systems, or regulations, and another 27 were translations of textbooks and educational theories. As was clearly stated in its founding charter, the journal’s textbooks, all of which had been translated from Japanese, were to be used as master copies (Wang 1996: 67). In 1900, the Society of Compiled Translations (Yishu huibian she), the first translation agency composed solely of Chinese students in Japan, was founded. Its mission was the translation and introduction of university textbooks, published serially in its Journal of Compiled Translations (Yishu huibian) before appearing in book form. In 1902, it set up its Department of the Translation and Editing of Textbooks (Jiaokeshu yiji she), responsible for the translation of secondary and primary school textbooks, in a bid to meet the needs of schools in China. In its periodi The major government translation agency devoted to the translation of textbooks was the Bureau of Book Translation and Compilation (Bianyi tushu ju) set up in 1906. It was a division of the Ministry of Education (Xuebu) established by the Qing government in 1905. As set out clearly in its “Constitution for Compilation and Translation” (Bianyi zhangcheng), two principles guided the bureau’s translation work. First, “with regard to the translation of textbooks, priority will be given to junior primary, followed by senior primary, with middle schools and junior normal schools coming last” (in Wang 1996: 149). Second, in choosing the countries of origin, “premium will be placed on books from Britain and Japan, and books from other countries will be considered only when more competent staff are employed” (ibid: 150). In carrying out translation work, the bureau emphasized the collaboration between compilation and translation, illustration, printing and general affairs. Once a book was completed, it was submitted to the Examination and Approval Section (Shending ke) of the Ministry of Education to be examined and finalized before going out to schools. After that, feedback from the schools was collected for improvement. Typical of a government agency, the principle of “Chinese learning as the basis and Western learning for practical application” still prevalent at the time also found its way into the translation work of the bureau, which sought to maintain a reverent attitude to Confucianism while encouraging the importance of new learning, as expressed in the phrase “gain a wide range of new knowledge” (guangji xinzhi).

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cal Physics Made Easy (Wuli yi jie), the purpose of translation was stated: “We [Chinese students in Japan] rallied to set up the textbook translation agency to translate and compile new textbooks from the West and the East, so that they can be used by schools in China’s different provinces” (in Saneto 1983: 223). The publishing houses with the largest number of textbook publications at the time were the Commercial Press, Civilization Book Company (Wenming shuju), Huiwen Academic Society (Huiwen xueshe), Popularization Book Company (Puji shuju) and East Asian Company (Dongya gongsi). The Commercial Press came first in its publication of translated textbooks, followed by Civilization Book Company, which published 25 translated textbooks from 1901 to 1908 (Zhang 1995). One of the greatest feats that Huiwen Academic Society accomplished was the publication of the 100-volume General Encyclopaedia (Putong baikequanshu), which covered a wide range of academic areas including philosophy, literature, education, politics, law, history and geography. Based on the contents of Japanese secondary school textbooks and teaching references, the General Encyclopaedia was instrumental in helping the Chinese gain a systematic understanding of Western science. Saneto (1983: 228) celebrated the translation as “a great enterprise,” claiming that it represented “the best of all translations from Japanese in the year.” The dissemination of scientific knowledge via translated textbooks made a far-­ reaching impact on young Chinese students of the time. The prominent modern writer and poet Guo Moruo (1892–1978) (in Saneto 1983: 233) recalled his school days in the early years of the twentieth century as follows: To learn from Japan, China sent large numbers of students to Japan and in the meantime teachers were brought from Japan. At that time a profusion of textbooks used in Japan were translated into Chinese. Before I went to Japan, the geometry textbook I used at school was compiled by a Japanese scholar by the name of Kikuchi Dairoku. Moreover, our physics textbook was compiled by Mr. Kotaro Honda.

The influence of Japanese textbooks on tertiary education was also profound. The following paragraphs from the regulations concerning political and legal textbooks in “Regulations for Institutions of Higher Learning” (Zouding gaodeng xuetang zhangcheng) sketch out the teaching methods for the course and provide a glimpse into the guiding principles of textbook use at Chinese universities and colleges of the time: Compendium of Politics (Zhengzhi zongyi) – The Japanese name for it is seijigaku. We may consider using it for the time being, though we should still compile our own textbook. Essentials of the Code of Qing (Daqing huidian yaoyi) – The book is long and complicated. We need to use the abridged version of The Code of Qing (Daqing huidian) popular to the public, together with Quotations of Learning (Wu xue lu), and compile the essentials into a textbook. Teachers should make up for important omissions in the original version of The Code of Qing so that students will have a general idea of it. Political History of the World (Geguo zhengzhi shi)  – The Japanese transliteration is seijishi. We may consider using it, though we should still compile our own textbook. Survey of the Legal Systems in Chinese Dynasties (Zhongguo gujin lidai fazhi kao) – The Japanese book The Legal History of China (Zhongguo fazhi shi) can be imitated to compile our own textbook, as it is simple and easy.

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1  Modernization Through Translation: Shifts and Trends (1890s–1900s) Practical Finance for the Whole Nation (Quanguo renmin caiyong xue) – The Chinese characters used for the Japanese title are 财政学. It can be adopted for the time being, though we will need to compile our own. Fiscal Management History of the World (Geguo licai xue shi) – The Chinese characters used for the Japanese title are 经济史. It can be adopted for the time being, though we will need to compile our own. The Academic History of Fiscal Management of the World (Geguo licai xueshu shi) – The Chinese characters used for the Japanese title are 经济学史. It can be adopted for the time being, though we will need to compile our own. National Statistics of Land and Personal Property (Quanguo tudi minwu tongjixue) – The Chinese characters used for the Japanese title are 统计学. It can be adopted for the time being, though we will need to compile our own. Administration of Governmental Departments of the World (Geguo xingzheng jiguan xue) – Gyousei hougaku in Japanese. It can be adopted for the time being, though we will need to compile our own. Policing and Prison (Jingcha jianyu xue) – The original Japanese book will be used for the time being, but compilation of our own book taking account of the Chinese situation should be considered. The Law Concerning Disputes (Jiaoshe fa) – Divided into national disputes and civil disputes: the former is kokusaiyi kouhou (International Common Law) and the latter kokusai sihou (International Private Law) in Japanese. It can be adopted for the time being, though we will need to compile our own. Early Modern Diplomatic History of the World (Geguo jinshi waijiao shi) – The book is available in Japanese and its adoption should be considered, though we should still compile our own. Military Affairs and Politics of the World (Geguo hailu junzheng shi) – Translation is available in Japanese. It can be adopted for the time being. Theoretical Basis of Law (Falü yuanli xue) – Hourigaku in Japanese. It can be adopted for the time being, though we should attempt to compile our own. The Constitution, Civil Law, Civil Lawsuit, Commercial Law, Criminal Law, Law Concerning Criminal Suits of Different Countries of the World (Geguo xianfa, minfa, minshi susong fa, shangfa, xingfa, xingshi susong fa) – For teaching purposes we should select and translate reliable books from other countries. Books for other subjects of Western learning are already available. We may do well to select and translate reliable ones for use in the classroom. (Shu 1961: 586–7)

The repetition of such sentences as “The book is available in Japanese and its adoption should be considered, though we should still compile our own” bespeaks the enormous reliance of Chinese tertiary education on the importation of Japanese textbooks. There were similar translation practices in other areas of study, making translations of Japanese textbooks a hallmark of China’s education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The regulations quoted above indicate that universities were encouraged to compile their own textbooks. They also reflect the fledgling attempts of Chinese educators to modernize education by following Western examples. It was through such regulations that the translation of textbooks was made more meaningful and commercially viable. The importance of the translated textbooks is also revealed in the number of times they were reprinted. According to the General Catalogue of Secondary and Primary Textbooks in the Republican Era, from 1903 to 1911, 26 textbooks had two or more reprint editions (Zhang 1995: 325–7).

1.5 Acquiring Modern Values Through Science Translation

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1.5  Acquiring Modern Values Through Science Translation The translation of Western science, especially through the intermediary of Japanese, became an important source of modern values for Chinese readers and students from the 1890s. While science was often proposed as a “technical” solution to the mounting problems besieging China in the nineteenth century, by the early twentieth century, science had acquired a cultural significance. It was the word commonly used to identify a modern ideal of social and personal development.

1.5.1  From Gezhi to Kexue: “Science” and Modern Chinese Identity The linguistic description of new ideas was the first challenge confronted by the Chinese intellectuals seeking to modernize China through the promotion of science. At the heart of the matter was how to find a Chinese expression to stand for the word “science” per se, a concept which touches on most branches of modern thought. Hu Shi (2003(2): 196) observed in a 1923 essay: “There is a noun whose status in China has almost reached supremacy. Whether people understand it or not, whether they are conservatives or reformists, they dare not treat it with contempt or profanity. That noun is ‘science.’” The evolution of the Chinese term for “science” is a good reflection of cultural transformation in relation to lexical changes in late Qing China. The term “science” was first translated as gewu qiongli zhi xue, which literally means “learning which involves the investigation of things and the fathoming of principles,” by the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) and his Chinese colleague Xu Guangqi (1562–1633), a bureaucrat and scientist in the Ming Dynasty, in their translation of Euclid’s Elements. From then on gezhi was commonly used to translate “science.” Borrowed from the Chinese classics, gezhi was fundamentally different from the Western concept “science” and was ambiguous insofar as the term carried both Confucian and Western connotations. Gezhi comes from gewu zhizhi (investigation of things leading to an extension of knowledge) in the Confucian classic Great Learning.20 Using gezhi to stand for “science,” Ming-era scholars were relying on a Confucian vocabulary so that the  The first paragraph of Great Learning reads: “What the Great Learning teaches is to illustrate illustrious virtue; to renovate the people; and to rest in the highest excellence….The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the empire, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their own states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the uttermost their knowledge. Such an extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things. Things being investigated, knowledge became complete” (Translated by James Legge (1815–1897)).

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Western concept of science was assimilated into a traditional Chinese way of thinking. In the 1860s, Self-Strengthening scholar-officials attempted to make a distinction between the two by regarding gezhi as immaterial learning (xuxue) and “science” as concrete learning (shixue). In traditional Chinese culture, gezhi pertains to Dao, the moral Way that a gentleman-sage is expected to follow, while the general understanding of Western science during the Self-Strengthening Movement was qi, the “clever techniques” of machine-building. Sceptical of the moral function of science, Liu Xihong (d.1891) and many other scholar-officials took exception to the use of Confucian-inflected gezhi to mean the Western concept of “science” (Wright 2000: 367). Before the nineteenth century, Japanese scholars also used terms that carried traditional Confucian connotations to stand for “science.” It was not until 1871, when Inoue Kowashi (1843–1895) translated science as kagaku (科学, or kexue in Chinese pinyin), which originally stood for “classified learning,” that Western science became a specific term in its own right in Japanese. Kagaku “successfully captured the specialized and institutionally differentiated character of science as it was understood in the late nineteenth century” (Reardon-Anderson 1991: 86). At the turn of the twentieth century, kexue was adopted as the standard translation for “science” by prominent individuals like Kang Youwei and Yan Fu. Thereafter, there was a high incidence of the use of the term in published writings, although gezhi was also used occasionally. In the works of Yan Fu, Liang Qichao and Wang Guowei published in the early years of the twentieth century, gezhi was regarded as part of kexue, and was described as techniques of science used in the study of concrete things or shixue. Meanwhile, kexue was defined as knowledge of scientific theories. Thus, whereas gezhi signified “techniques” or “practical skills,” kexue underscored the systemic “principle” that underpinned “learning” (xue). With the gradual desuetude of gezhi in the 1900s, kexue, which by this time had acquired the dual connotations of a paradigm (i.e. scientific laws or principles) and a discipline (i.e. as a specified field of knowledge), took hold in the Chinese language. From 1912 onwards, kexue emerged as “the common label for a new, profound and broadly conceived way of looking at the world” (Reardon-Anderson 1991: 88). Thus, while the classical Chinese gezhi played an important role in premodern China to facilitate the reception of Western science, it was the Japanese designation kagaku (kexue) that proved instrumental in advancing the Chinese understanding of modern science.

1.5.2  P  romotion of Scientific Understanding as a Marker of Modern Fitness Science translation during the Self-Strengthening Movement did little to improve people’s cognitive behaviour or mode of thinking, with Western learning of the time confined to the practicality of machinery and military technology. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Chinese intellectuals came to see political and social revolution as requiring a scientific revolution in ideas.

1.5 Acquiring Modern Values Through Science Translation

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Following the widespread dissemination of skills of critical, logical argumentation and empirical research, Chinese intellectuals started to acquire and apply scientific methods to solve modern problems. This was a great breakthrough in traditional Chinese scholarship, which favoured spontaneous thinking grounded in informal and ad hoc analogical procedures – what Hall and Ames (1998) call “correlative thinking.” Although this holistic approach presupposed both association and differentiation and lent itself to the study of the correlation and dynamics between objects, its lack of explanatory power of physical causation and its indifference to logical analysis often gave rise to ambiguity and incoherence. Eminent geologist Ding Wenjiang (1902–1936) (in Shen 2007: 591) observed, “The omnipotence, generality, and connective power of science do not lie in the raw material of science, but in its method.” Among late Qing translators, Yan Fu played a leading role in spreading the belief that the wealth and power of Western countries grew out of their reliance on scientific methods. He deplored the subjective speculation commonly adopted in traditional Chinese scholarship and cautioned against the damage it would cause to the fostering of talented people and national enlightenment. “It will bring disaster to scholarship first, and to the country eventually” (in Wang 1986(1): 45). His translation of John Stuart Mill’s (1806–1873) A System of Logic (Mule mingxue) and William Stanley Jevons’s (1835–1882) Primer of Logic (Mingxue qianshuo) introduced to his countrymen the principles of logic, “the science of sciences.” Of particular importance to Yan was the importation of induction, which he believed was the prerequisite for scientific revolutions.21 Yan Fu’s translations thus became a new source of authority when the influence of Confucian learning as part of the imperial system continued to wane. At the turn of the twentieth century, the reading of science translations involved more than an eagerness to acquire scientific knowledge. The intellectual impact of translated Western science was also reflected in the perception of science as a means to instigate social changes and instil modern values. Tan Sitong and Kang Youwei were among the first Chinese reformist scholars to argue that modern science could be given a spiritual interpretation. From the 1880s, disappointed at the overemphasis on machinery and military technology in science translation of the Self-Strengthening Movement, Kang made an earnest though unsystematic study of Western science and established connections between the Chinese idea of a primal qi and the material theories of the Westerners. Tan Sitong was also passionate about Western science, but it was not the scientific study of matter that appealed to him. In A Study of Benevolence (Ren xue), Tan deployed the concept of ether (yitai) to posit the universality of benevolence (ren), and used it as a philosophical basis for reform, foreseeing the creation of caring individuals worthy of a modern nation.22  Joachim Kurtz (2011) gives a spirited examination of the trajectory in the transmission of logic in China. One chapter is devoted to a discussion of Yan Fu. 22  For more information about Kang’s and Tan’s spiritual interpretations of scientific concepts, see David Wright’s Translating Science: The Transmission of Western Chemistry into Late Imperial China, 1840–1900, pp368–416.

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With the increase in the translation of scientific works, more and more science tropes began to be used in serious political discourse. For instance, the term aili, originally used to mean “chemical affinity,” was given a more spiritual meaning as the translation of the “power of love” by John Fryer (1839–1928) in A Method for the Avoidance of Illness by Controlling the Mind (Zhixin mianbingfa), published in 1896 (Wright 2000: 85). In an 1896 article, Wang Kangnian, a co-founder of Chinese Progress, extended the metaphor and used it to mean “(political) cohesion” (ibid: 393). Modern science as disseminated through science translation thus became the Dao of progress, an agent of political and spiritual coherence, or aili. In the early twentieth century its presence was increasingly felt in discussions about society and ethics or in literary and philosophical studies. New Culture avant-gardes readily employed the term “Mr. Science” (Sai xiansheng) to emphasize the moral agency of a scientific outlook. New Culture intellectuals regarded Western science as the symbol of modern civilization and a remedy for China’s backwardness. Chen Duxiu (1879–1942) (1927: 9) observed in 1915 that Chinese intellectuals “must attach equal importance to science and human rights” in order for China to “lift itself out of ignorance” and for the Chinese people “to feel ashamed of being shallow.” He claimed (ibid: 362–3) in a 1919 essay entitled “In Defence of the Sins of the Journal New Youth” (Xin qingnian zui’an zhi dabian shu): “To endorse Mr. Science, we must oppose old art and religion; to endorse Mr. Democracy as well as Mr. Science, we must oppose old literature….We are convinced that only these two misters can expel all the darkness in China’s politics, ethics and scholarship.” His proposal of “the replacement of religion with science” (yi kexue dai zhongjiao) (in Ren et al. 1993(1): 253)23 may well be regarded as a manifestation of this new scientific pursuit. Lu Xun and Hu Shi were also ardent champions of Western science in their efforts to transform old ethics and national character. Lu Xun (1981 (1): 35) saw science as sacred light for human beings and maintained that it could “stem the spread of ignorance.”24 To Hu Shi, science was not only necessary for academic research but also applicable to society and human life. He opined in a 1922 article entitled “The Philosophy of the World in the Past Fifty Years” (Wushi nian lai zhi shijie zhexue), “We cannot but admit that the greatest responsibility that befalls mankind today and what needs to be done most urgently are to apply the scientific method to human life” (in Ouyang 1998 (3): 302). He believed that science could govern a person’s view of life, and with this conviction he developed his scientific outlook on life.25 Modern science thus not only signified knowledge and methodology but also entailed a new cultural value system. It enabled self-styled modern intellectuals to  Chen Duxiu’s essay “More Discussion of Confucianism” (Zai lun kongjiao wenti), published in January 1917. 24  Taken from Lu Xun’s 1907 essay “Lessons from the History of Science” (Kexue shi jiao pian). 25  See, for example, “Science and the Philosophy of Life” (Kexue yu renshengguan) (Hu 2003(2): 195–224) and “Scientific Outlook on Life” (Kexue de renshenguan) (ibid (7): 481–90). 23

1.6 Translation of Fiction

29

now disparage the folk practices in their midst as “superstition,” thereby improving the modern ethical awareness of the Chinese people and inculcating a sense of inquiry and self-governance among them. A new outlook on life based on modern science was seen to “unfetter the shackles of slavery” and to enable the Chinese people to “develop their free and autonomous ego” (Chen 1927: 3).26 The role of translation in elevating science to the defining feature of modern selfhood cannot be understated. It was because of translations that sought to nurture and consolidate a “scientific” worldview that literary translations began to flourish from the 1890s.

1.6  Translation of Fiction Chinese intellectuals’ fervent embrace of modern Western science was also reflected in their translation of Western literature. Through literature, and in particular, fiction, they fleshed out what having a scientific view meant to the nation. Moreover, universal moral qualities such as independence, perseverance and cooperation were what the protagonists in the translated stories possessed to combat adversities in life. For translators such as Liang Qichao, Lin Shu and Zhou Guisheng (1873– 1936), the positive moral, intellectual and physical traits highlighted in translated literature were consistent with the scientific spirit, which included the disposition to doubt (shan huaiyi), to enquire (shan xunwen), and to seek truth (qiu zhen), among other traits Liang Qichao (1936(3)(wenji 7): 87) summarized in “General Tendencies in the Development of Chinese Thought” (Lun Zhongguo xueshu sixiang bianqian zhi dashi), an essay Liang published in installments in The New Citizen’s Gazette between 1902 and 1904. “Writing as a vehicle of moral instruction” (wen yi zaidao), an important principle in Confucian thought, remained the guiding idea of reformist intellectuals of the time. Using this motto which had previously referred to the moral exemplarity of the Confucian classics and commentaries, they now considered modern fiction to be a potent instrument for their national imagination and the inculcation of their political and moral ideals. Not surprisingly, political novels, adventure fiction and detective stories, which abounded with references to scientific (forensic) knowledge, were among the most translated genres during the translation boom of the late 1890s and the 1900s. The novelist Wu Woyao (1866–1910) was one of the witnesses of a growing interest in Western literary works. He wrote passionately in 1906: “I am touched by the large volumes of novels, translated or written, that have been published in the few years since Liang Qichao wrote ‘On the Relationship between Fiction and the Government of the People’ and advocated a reform in fiction. They are still coming out day in and day out and there is no end in sight” (in Chen and Xia 1997: 187).

26

 Taken from Chen Duxiu’s 1915 essay “Words of Caution to the Young” (Jinggao qingnian).

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1.6.1  Translation of Political Fiction Several scholars have argued that political fiction originated in Britain in the mid-­ nineteenth century (e.g. Speare 1924; Meng and Li 2005). Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881), the eminent statesman who was British Prime Minister for two terms, was one of the most popular political novelists in Japan during the Meiji period and his translated novels contributed greatly to the popularity of political novels in Meiji Japan. The Japanese placed great importance on this literary genre, hailing it as “written for the purpose of raising people’s political consciousness and propagating the ideals of political parties” (Yoshida 1976: 14). Some of the most famous Japanese political novels included Shiba Shiroo’s Romantic Encounters with Two Fair Ladies (Kajin no kigu), Yano Ryuukei’s A Beautiful Story of Statesmanship (Keikoku bidan), and Suehiro Tetcho’s Plum Blossoms in the Snow (Setchuubai) and The Nightingale among the Flowers (Kakan’o). Kang Youwei was the first Chinese scholar to call attention to the usefulness of political fiction for teaching Chinese readers about modern social values and the political system in Western countries. He showed particular interest in those Japanese political novels that made projections about the future, as he believed that these projections were of great political significance to China. His disciple Liang Qichao was not only a zealous advocate of political fiction; he also translated and wrote political novels himself. When Liang Qichao launched Upright Discussions in November 1898, he included a Political Fiction column, making it an important feature of the newspaper. He stated at the time, “Indeed, political novels should be given the highest credit for contributing to the steady progress made in the political sphere in America, England, Germany, France, Austria, Italy, and Japan” (Liang 1996a: 73). The premium Liang Qichao put on political fiction was shared by a number of like-minded intellectuals. Eminent reformer and literary critic Qiu Weixuan (1874– 1941) (in Chen and Xia 1997: 47), for instance, echoed Liang’s views in the essay “On the Relationship between Fiction and National Wisdom” (Xiaoshuo yu minzhi guanxi), which Qiu wrote in 1901, and emphasized that in addition to the translation of concise and comprehensible textbooks, the translation of political novels was crucial for importing to China new ideas in different fields. In 1901, Cai E (1882–1916),27 then a student in Japan, published in Volume 68 of Liang Qichao’s Upright Discussions a short article titled “The Power of Fiction” (Xiaoshuo zhi shili), under the pen name Hengnan jiehuo xian (Fire-Stealing Supreme Being in Hengnan). He was categorical in his statement about the function of the political novel in boosting social progress in the West. On the other hand, he noted that the situation in China was deplorable because Chinese novelists wrote without a political purpose:  Between 1898 and 1899, Cai studied at the progressive School of Current Affairs (Shiwu Xuetang), where he was taught by Liang Qichao. He became a renowned military leader in the early Republican years and forced Yuan Shikai to abandon monarchism in 1916.

27

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31

The authors of American and European novels are mostly government officials or great men-of-letters, who observe social situations all over the world and who are perspicacious about what is subtle and abstruse in mankind….Very few Chinese novels contain political ideas. In some cases they are even fraught with obscenities offensive to the eye. (ibid: 48)

As a result of the advocacy of these intellectuals, the translation of political fiction became all the rage in early twentieth-century China. Some of the popular translated political novels include Romantic Encounters with Two Fair Ladies (Jiaren qiyu) (1998–1900), A Beautiful Story of Statesmanship (Jingguo meitan) (1900), Happy Encounters of Japanese Restoration Heroes (Riben weixin yingxiong qiyu ji) (1901), Chronicle of Future Warring States (Weilai zhanguo zhi) (1902), Billows of Politics (Zheng hai bolan) (1903), An Account of the Adventures of a Roving Paladin (Youxia fengyun lu) (1903), Plum Blossoms in the Snow (Xue zhong mei) (1903), The Nightingale among the Flowers (Huajian ying) (1903), Silent Journey (Ya lüxing) (1906), The World in a Millennium (Qiannian hou zhi shijie) (1904), New Stage (Xin wutai) (1905), and Two Heroes in Lushun (Lushun shuang jie zhuan) (1909) (Meng and Li 2005; Guo 2005; Li 2005). Strictly speaking, the political novel, which is aimed at propagating political ideas, often lacks an intriguing storyline. The authors’ political or social ideals are often expressed by way of lengthy monologues or debates. Even in the 1880s, when the writing of political fiction was at its peak in Japan, a number of sagacious Japanese scholars took issue with this subgenre of the novel for its inappropriateness to the form of novels and a lack of structure and variety (Wong 2007: 132). Political fiction appeared in Japan in the tenth year of the Meiji era (1877) and was no longer a popular genre after the twenty-third year (1890), with the consolidation of the Japanese imperial system as a modern constitutional monarchy. When political fiction came to the attention of Chinese intellectuals, it was already at a low ebb in Japan (Wong 2000). The popularity of the subgenre lasted around a decade (starting in the early 1900s and waning by 1911), bearing close resemblance to its fate in Meiji Japan. Although short-lived, the interest in translations of political fiction among elite late Qing readers served as a contributing factor to the fostering of modern Chinese writers and further development of Chinese literature.28

1.6.2  Translation of Science Fiction The popularity of political fiction in late Qing China can be said to be a manifestation of the political and nationalistic ideals shared by progressive Chinese intellectuals of the time. Aside from political novels, science fiction and adventure novels  Quite a number of prominent literary figures of the May Fourth period were engrossed with political novels in their youth. Zhou Zuoren (2002: 162) recalled that when his brother Lu Xun pursued his studies in Japan, he was deeply affected by translated political novels, though Zhou himself later changed his views about the nature and typology of fiction, with his interest gradually turned to purer literary and artistic works.

28

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were also translated in abundance.29 These novels were generally invested with a “political” mission of educating and enlightening the Chinese. The most popular science fiction writer among the Chinese translators of the time was Jules Gabriel Verne (1828–1905), French writer and pioneer of science fiction. It is estimated that 15 of Verne’s works were translated before 1917 (Fan 2006: 193). In addition, there appeared to be a market for different translations of Verne’s works in early twentieth-century China. For example, his Around the World in 80 Days appeared in four different Chinese versions between 1900 and 1914 while Journey to the Centre of the Earth was translated by Lu Xun in 1903 and retranslated by Zhou Guisheng in 1906.30 In the translation of these works, the tenacity and adventurousness of European heroes were emphasized. In Chap. 10 of Haidi lüxing (Chinese version of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea), the translator31 commented: “Europeans are undaunted and staunch by nature. When it comes to adventurousness, no other race on earth can match them” (in Yan 2006: 85). In addition to inculcating moral ideals, the translation of science fiction was also intended to provide an entertaining way of disseminating scientific knowledge. In the preface to the 1906 translation of Around the World in 80 Days (Bashiri huanyou ji), Chen Shoupeng (b.1855) (in Shi 1991: 5) observed, “The book, written by Frenchman Jules Verne, includes various seaside cities of the world, and in particular, the railways in India and America are described in great detail. All the geographical conditions and social customs are given graphic depiction, and knowledge of astronomy and piloting is also included. According to the author, the book contains 20,000 words of specialized knowledge…and this is why it suits both refined and popular tastes.” In 1903, Lu Xun (in Chen and Xia 1997: 67–8) wrote in the foreword to Yuejie lüxing, his translation of Verne’s 1865 book From the Earth to the Moon: The Trip Direct in 97 Hours 20 Minutes: Detailed accounts of science often bore the readers, who are liable to doze off before they read the last page. They certainly make reading difficult. With the power of fiction…the abstruseness of scientific knowledge can be absorbed by the interested readers.…Science fiction has the benefit of imparting learning in a way that is anything but rigid to ensure the readers’ easy understanding without thinking hard. They will acquire general knowledge without conscious effort, and undoubtedly science fiction is powerful enough to do away with longstanding superstitions, improve people’s thinking and contribute to civilization…. It is the translation of science fiction that will pave the way for the progress of the Chinese nation.

 The demarcation between translated science fiction and adventure novels at the time was vague. There was a tendency for science fiction to incorporate adventurous elements. The exact number of translated science novels is difficult to determine. A Chinese scholar estimates about 80 such works in the late Qing. See Chen (2010). 30  Lu Xun’s Chinese title is Didi lüxing while Zhou Guisheng’s title is Dixin lüxing. 31  The translation of the novel was based on the Japanese version. The Chinese translation was allegedly done by Lu Jidong (year unknown) and polished by Hong Xisheng (year unknown). 29

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33

Lu Xun was typical of students and younger scholars of the late Qing who viewed science fiction as an instrument of modernization. Even though the scientific knowledge in many late Qing science novels was questionable, the hopes Chinese writers and readers pinned on “science” (kexue) in science fiction (kexue xiaoshuo)32 point to their valorization of science as a solution to China’s mounting problems and call to mind the importance accorded to the translation of science textbooks examined earlier. The translation of science fiction became the embodiment of their hopes of national regeneration, and a discursive field in which the notion of Chineseness was accentuated and expanded into a vision of modern China.

1.6.3  Translation of Detective Stories When discussing the popularity of translated detective stories in the 1900s and 1910s, Shandong University-based Chinese historian Guo Yanli (2005: 124) observes: “In the translation of different categories of foreign literature, detective stories top the list in terms of quantity (taking up one fifth of all the translated fiction), scope (with the translation of nearly all the works of famous European and American detective story writers) and speed (with translations produced at almost the same pace as the writing of detective stories in the West).” As early as 1896, the first translation of British detective fiction appeared in Chinese Progress. It was one of the Sherlock Holmes’ stories by Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930), namely “The Adventure of the Naval Treaty,” entitled “Ying baotan zhendao miyue an” (literally, A British Detective’s Investigation into a Stolen Confidential Treaty) in Chinese and published in three instalments. Immediately afterwards, three more stories were translated and published in Chinese Progress, namely “The Adventure of the Crooked Man” (Ji yuzhe fuchou shi; literally, A Crooked Man Taking His Revenge), “A Case of Identity” (Jifu kuangnü po’an; literally, Solved: The Case of a Stepfather Duping the Stepdaughter) and “The Final Problem” (He’erwusi ji’an bei qiang; literally, Holmes Killed in Criminal Investigation). Of all the detective stories published between 1896 and 1916, the most translated author was Conan Doyle, with 32 translations; the second was Henry Rider Haggard (1856–1925); Jules Verne and Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) came third with 17 translations (Chen 1989: 43). Eminent Chinese historiographer A Ying (Qian Xincun, pen name of Qian Defu) (1900–1977) (1996: 217), argued in his 1937 book History of Late Qing Fiction (Wanqing xiaoshuo shi) that no translator of the time could afford to neglect detective fiction. “If the number of translated fiction at the time was 1000, translated detective fiction took up more than 500” (ibid). Besides the large quantities of translations, another distinctive feature of the translation of popular fiction, and detective fiction in particular, was that the novels  Kexue xiaoshuo was the standardized translation of “science fiction” at that time, as opposed to kehuan xiaoshuo (science fantasy fiction), which is commonly used nowadays.

32

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were translated soon after the originals came out. For instance, “The Crooked Man” and “The Naval Treaty” were published in 1893, while their Chinese translations appeared in serialized form in Chinese Progress in 1896. Irish writer Matthias Bodkin’s (1850–1933) book The Quests of Paul Beck was first written in 1908, and by 1909 it had been translated and published in Chinese by Lin Shu and Chen Jialin. Other famous detective story writers such as Guy Newell Boothby (1867–1905), Fergus Hume (1859–1932), Dick Donovan (1843–1934), Allen Upward (1863– 1926) and Edward Philips Oppenheim (1866–1956) were also translated. These contemporary authors wrote their novels at the turn of the twentieth century, the heyday of English detective stories. Detective fiction, like all the other categories of popular literature, was, in the eyes of the proponents and followers of fiction revolution, a form of literature that could be harnessed to construct “national civilization” (guo zhi wenming) (Chen and Xia 1997: 253),33 rather than one pursued for its literary merits. Political instruction was often implicit in the translation of detective stories. The New Culture pioneer Liu Bannong’s (1891–1931) “Preface to The Complete Holmes’ Works” (Fu’ermosi quanji ba)34 is one example: Conan Doyle has his mind set on enlightening the masses and attempts to achieve his purpose through detective stories.…He produces what he has gathered and includes profound and even abstruse learning in the stories….This is Conan Doyle’s purpose of writing, and I think I may do well to alert my readers to this in the first place. (in Xu 2002: 93)

Far-fetched as Liu’s remarks about Conan Doyle’s purpose of writing may sound, his intention to call the readers’ attention to the modern lifestyle, science and technology contained in the stories is clear. The descriptions of trains, the underground railway, and telegrams were regularly featured in these works and were a source of novelty to Chinese readers. The heroes in such detective stories would often solve complicated cases and, like Sherlock Holmes, they found out the truth by using their powers of observation and deductive reasoning. These were the qualities that the educated Chinese elite felt were lacking among the Chinese people of the time. Translated detective stories in the late Qing often gave readers a sense of closure when the evil characters were finally brought to justice. What invariably happened was that the detectives tracked down the criminals with logical reasoning and by resorting to the law. They provided Chinese readers with a window through which to gain a better understanding of the social, political and legal systems in the West. In reading translated fiction, the vices of the Chinese feudalist monarchy were brought into stark relief. In 1904, Zhou Guisheng (in Chen and Xia 1997: 135) analyzed the reason for the popularity of the genre in the preface he wrote for The Detective Stories of Sherlock Holmes:

 Taken from “Editorial Foreword to the First Issue of Fiction Forest” (Xiaoshuo lin fakanci), written in 1907. 34  Liu Bannong was one of the translators of The Complete Holmes’ Works, which was first published by the Commercial Press in 1916.

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35

The criminal procedure in our country is a far cry from that in Western countries, and detectives have never figured even in our dreams.…In joint hearings [in leased territories], personal considerations and misgivings often colour judicial decisions, and due to time constraints, judges often pass hasty verdicts without careful investigation. In inland areas, it is an indisputable fact that torture is readily resorted to during judicial inquiries so that people suffer brutal injustice. Are the efforts of detectives still required in such cases? In Western countries, human rights are held in high esteem. A defendant is entitled to the assistance of counsel for their defence and must not be declared guilty unless there is solid evidence. This explains the popularity of detective studies. Thieves who become policemen and rascals who assume office in the government cannot be mentioned in the same breath with the detectives who have a propensity for learning and deep thinking.

Zhou’s observations were representative of popular views of the time. To the Chinese translators and readers, detective stories contained scientific and legal knowledge that not only reified modern qualities worthy of emulation but also enabled them to understand how justice could be upheld. The focus on character building among Chinese translators and reviewers of detective stories reflects the Confucian emphasis on self-cultivation, though many of the modern attributes they sought to inculcate in the Chinese were unavailable in indigenous texts – they could only be found in translated works.

1.7  Conclusion As part of the Self-Strengthening Movement (1860s–1890s), the work of translators and writers was directed by the Qing government. By the 1890s, the patronage of private publishers and journal editors had come to dictate the selection of works for translation. In the late 1890s and 1900s, the bourgeoning publishing industry, considered “a byproduct of political movements” and “an important measure of national salvation and political reforms” (Yuan 2006: 13), greatly fuelled the translation of foreign works. In contrast to the military and technological pragmatism of the Self-Strengthening period, greater importance was accorded to social science and literature after the 1890s. The shift in topics was a reflection of changing attitudes to the type of Western knowledge that China required in order to modernize. This was a shift largely facilitated by the availability of Japanese translations of Western works, leading to a strong tendency for indirect translation from Japanese to Chinese. Chinese scholars such as Xiong Yuezhi have noted that of the vast volumes of translations produced, only a small fraction were directly translated from European languages. Translations via Japanese had an impact which “outstripped [the former] both in range and in depth” (Xiong 1994: 7). During the period under investigation, translation was seen by translators, editors and publishers as playing the key role in disseminating scientific knowledge. There emerged from different scientific perspectives the understanding of science as leading to cultural transformation. Science became an ideological tool to supersede the old culture and morality for the enlightenment of the mind. It also gave authority to

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the translation of fiction as Chinese intellectuals were inspired to import scientific concepts and values via literature. Throughout the 1900s, as political fiction, science fiction and detective stories dominated the translation choices of prominent patrons, the links between the acquisition of scientific knowledge, self-­improvement and nation building were being consolidated in Chinese intellectual discourse and public culture. Whereas political fiction highlighted public-mindedness and political self-assertion, detective and adventure novels “inspired the spirit of adventure” and an inquiring mind (Liang in Chen and Xia 1997: 61).35 Science fiction, on the other hand, facilitated the readers’ understanding of “scientific principles in a way that is anything but rigid” (Lu in Chen and Xia 1997: 68).36 Although the knowledge gained from science fiction might not be reliable, it stimulated the readers’ imagination and curiosity, and together with translations of scholarly writings and textbooks, provided Chinese readers with a large number and a great variety of translated works that catered to their needs for modern self-improvement. The next chapter will examine more closely how “science” motivated the translations of Yan Fu and Liang Qichao, leading Yan to promote liberalism and social Darwinism and Liang to advocate political and adventure fiction as resources for cultivating the qualities required for “new citizens.”

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Li, Nanqiu. 2006. Zhongguo kexue fanyi shi [History of Science Translation in China]. Hefei: Zhongguo keji daxue chubanshe. Li, Jiuhua. 2012. Qingmo xiaoshuo zazhi de cuxiao shouduan yanjiu [A Study of the Methods of Promoting Fiction Journals in the Late Qing]. Xinwen aihaozhe 2012 (12): 64–66. Li, Guilin, Mingxiu Qi, and Manqian Qian. 1995. Zhongguo jindai jiaoyu shi ziliao huibian [Collected Materials of Early Modern Chinese Education History]. Shanghai: Shanghai jiaoyu chubanshe. Liang, Qichao. 1989/1936. Yinbingshi heji [Collected Works from the Ice-Drinker’s Studio]. Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju. Liang, Qichao. 1996a. Foreword to the Translation and Publication of Political Novels. In Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature (1893–1945), ed. Kirk Denton, 71–73. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. 1996b. On the Relationship Between Fiction and the Government of the People. In Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature (1893–1945), ed. Kirk Denton, 74–81. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. 2002. Bianfa tongyi [A General Discussion of Reform]. Beijing: Huaxia chubanshe. Liu, Lydia. 1995. Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity – China, 1900–1927. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Lu, Xun. 1981. Lu Xun quanji [Complete Works of Lu Xun]. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe. Ma, Zuyi. 1984/1998/2004. Zhongguo fanyi jianshi: Wusi yiqian bufen [A Concise History of Translation in China: Before the May Fourth Movement]. Beijing: Beijing fanyi chubanshe. Mareshi, S. 2004. Liang Qichao’s Consciousness of language. In The Role of Japan in Liang Qichao’s Introduction of Modern Western Civilization to China, ed. Joshua A. Fogel. Berkley: University of California Press. Masini, Federico. 1993. The Formation of Modern Chinese Lexicon and Its Evolution Toward a National Language: The Period from 1840 to 1898. Berkeley: Project on Linguistic Analysis, University of California. Meng, Zhaoyi, and Zaidao Li. 2005. Zhongguo fanyi wenxue shi [History of Translated Literature in China]. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe. Ouyang, Zhesheng., ed. 1998. Hu Shi wenji [Selected Works of Hu Shi]. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe. Reardon-Anderson, James. 1991. The Study of Change: Chemistry in China, 1840–1949. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ren, Jianshu, Tongmo Zhang, and Xinzhong Wu, eds. 1993 Chen Duxiu zhuzuo xuan [Selected Chen Duxiu’s Works]. Shanghai: Renmin chubanshe. Reynolds, Douglas R. 1993. China, 1898–1912: The Xinzheng Revolution and Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Saneto, Keishu. 1983. Zhongguoren liuxue Riben shi [History of Chinese Students Studying in Japan]. Translated into Chinese by Tam Yue-Him and Lin Qiyan. Beijing: Joint Publishing. Shen, Grace. 2007. Murky Waters: Thoughts on Desire, Utility, and the ‘Sea of Modern Science’. ISIS 98 (3): 584–596. Shi, Zhecun. 1991. Zhongguo jindai wenxue daxi: Fanyi wenxueji er [A Compendium of Early Modern Chinese Literature: Translated Literature (II)]. Shanghai: Shanghai shudian. Shu, Xincheng. 1961. Jindai Zhongguo jiaoyu shi ziliao, xiace [Historical Data of Early Modern Chinese Education (III)]. Beijing: Renmin jiaoyu chubanshe. Song, Yingli. 2000. Zhongguo qikan fazhan shi [Historical Development of Chinese Journals]. Zhengzhou: Henan daxue chubanshe. Speare, M.  Edmund. 1924. The Political Novel: Its Development in England and in America. New York: Oxford University Press. Stephenson, Susan. 1999. Narrative, Identity and Modernity. Discussion paper for ECPR workshop “The Political Uses of Narrative.” Mannheim, 29–31 March 1999. Su, Yongli. 2004. Wang Shuo and the Professionalized Writing. In Asia Examined: Proceedings of the 15th Biennial Conference of the ASAA, ed. Robert Cribb. Canberra: Asian Studies

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Association of Australia (ASAA) & Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies (RSPAS), The Australian National University http://coombs.anu.edu.au/SpecialProj/ASAA/biennialconference/2004/proceedings.html. Tam, Yue-him. 1980. Zhongguo yi Riben shu zonghe mulu [A Comprehensive Catalogue of Chinese Translations from Japanese]. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. ———, ed. 1985. Sino-Japanese Cultural Exchange (III): The Economic and Intellectual Aspects. Hong Kong: Institute of Chinese Studies, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Tang, Tao. 1984. Zhongguo xiandai wenxue shi [History of Modern Chinese Literature]. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe. Tarumoto, Teruo. 1998. A Statistical Survey of Translated Fiction (1840–1920). In Translation and Creation: Readings of Western Literature in Early Modern China, 1840–1918, ed. David Pollard, 37–42. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Toury, Gideon. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co. Tsien, Tsuen-hsiun. 1954. Western Impact on China through Translation. Far Eastern Quarterly 13 (3): 305–327. Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. Translation and the Formation of Cultural Identities. In Cultural Functions of Translation, eds. Christina Schäffner and Helen Kelly-Holmes, 9–25. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd. Wang, Shi. 1986. Yan Fu ji [Collection of Yan Fu’s Works]. Beijing: The Commercial Press. Wang, Chunnan. 1992. Qingmo liuri gaochao yu chuban jindai hua [The High Tide of Studying in Japan and Early Modernization of Publishing]. Nanjing daxue xuebao [Academic Journal of Nanjing University] 1992 (1): 83–89. Wang, Jianjun. 1996. Zhongguo jindai jiaokeshu fazhan yanjiu [Study of the Development of Chinese Textbooks in Early Modern China]. Guangzhou: Guangdong jiaoyu chubanshe. Wang, Yingying. 2007. Qingmo kejuzhi de feichu yu zhishifenzi de chulu [The Abolition of the Imperial Examination System and the Intellectuals’ Career Paths]. Wenshi zazhi [Journal of Literature and History] 2007(2): 69–71. Wen, Changbin. 2005. Woguo jindai guanyu ruhe duidai ri yi keji mingci de taolun [Discussions of the Treatment of Japanese-Derived Scientific Terms in Early Modern China]. Guangxi daxue xuebao [Academic Journal of Guangxi University] 11(4): 20–29. Wong, Lawrence Wang-chi., ed. 2000. Fanyi yu chuangzuo: Zhongguo jindai fanyi xiaoshuo lun [Translation and Creation: On Translated Fiction in Early Modern China]. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe. ———. 2007/1999. Chongshi xin, da, ya: Ershi shiji Zhongguo fanyi yanjiu [Reinterpreting Faithfulness, Comprehensibility and Elegance: A Study of Translation in Twentieth-Century China]. Beijing: Qinghua daxue chubanshe. Wright, David. 2000. Translating Science: The Transmission of Western Chemistry into Late Imperial China, 1840–1900. Leiden: Brill. Wu, Yuhao. 2010. Guangzhi shuju yanjiu [Research on Guangzhi Book Bureau]. Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe. Xia, Xiaohong. 2008. Wanqing baokan guanggao de wenxueshi yiyi [The Significant Role Late Qing Newspapers and Periodicals Played in Literary History]. Nanjing shifan daxue xuebao [Academic Journal of Nanjing Normal University] 2008(4): 92–96. Xie, Bingxin. 1987. Wo he Shangwu yinshuguan [The Commercial Press and Me]. In Shangwu yinshuguan jiushi nian [Ninety Years in the Running of the Commercial Press]. Shanghai: The Commercial Press. Xiong, Yuezhi. 1994. Xixue dong jian yu wanqing shehui [The Influence of Western Learning on the East and the Late Qing Society]. Shanghai: Renmin chubanshe. Xu, Zongze. 1949. Mingqing jian Yesu huishi yizhu tiyao [Digest of Translations by Jesuit Missionaries in the Ming and Qing Dynasties]. Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju. Xu, Min. 1999. Minguo wenhua [The Republican Culture]. Shanghai: Renmin chubanshe.

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Xu, Lei. 2002. Wenben dujie yu fanyi celue [Understanding of Texts and Translation Strategies]. Leshan shifan daxue xuebao [Academic Journal of Leshan Normal University] 17(6): 91–94. Yan, Fangfang. 2006. Qimengzhe de gaige yuyan [The Enlighteners’ Prophecy of Reform]. Ha’erbin daxue xuebao [Academic Journal of Harbin University] 27(8): 84–97. Yoshida, Seiichi. 1976. Xiandai Riben wenxue shi (History of Modern Japanese Literature). Trans. Qi Gan. Shanghai: Renmin chubanshe. Yuan, Jin. 2006. Zhongguo wenxue de jindai biange [Literary Change in Early Modern China]. Guilin: Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe. Zhang, Jinglu, ed. 1957. Zhongguo jindai chuban shiliao [Historical Data of Early Modern Chinese Publications]. Shanghai: Qunlian chubanshe. Zhang, Shouzhi, ed. 1995. Minguo shiqi zong mulu: Zhongxiaoxue jiaocai [General Catalogue of the Republican Era: Secondary and Primary School Textbooks]. Beijing: Shumu wenxian chubanshe. Zhang, Zhidong. 1998. Quanxue pian [Exhortation to Learning]. Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou guji chubanshe. Zhou, Zuoren. 2002. Lu Xun de qingnian shidai [Lu Xun’s Youthful Days]. Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe. Zou, Zhenhuan. 1995. Wanqing xishu zhongyi ji dui Zhongguo wenhua de yingxiang [Late Qing Chinese Translation of Western Books and Its Influence on Chinese Culture]. In Chunban shi yanjiu (disan ji) [Study of Publishing History (III)], ed. Ye Zaisheng, 1–29. Beijing: Zhongguo shuji chubanshe. ———. 2000. Ershi shiji Shanghai fanyi chuban yu wenhua bianqian [Twentieth-Century Translation Publication in Shanghai and Cultural Change]. Nanning: Guangxi jiaoyu chubanshe.

Chapter 2

Translation as an Education in Modern Values: Yan Fu and Liang Qichao

As shown in Chap. 1, the rise of China’s translation industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in Shanghai and other major cities such as Beijing and Guangzhou led to an increase in the translation of works on social sciences and fiction. Occurring in the context of rapid political, social and cultural changes, this translation work was actively pursued by several prominent scholars, among whom Yan Fu and Liang Qichao were especially influential. Chinese historian Qian Mu (1895–1990) (1994: 26) claimed that an important hallmark of late Qing Chinese intellectuals was their inability to hold themselves aloof from politics. Political considerations also affected how translations were produced. In literary translation, for instance, the predominant strategy in the late Qing was free translation, characterized by close conformity of texts to the target culture, variously described in that time as “translating the meaning, not the words” (yiyi bu yici),1 or the “heroic translation style” (haojie yi).2 Such free translation is similar to the American translation theorist Lawrence Venuti’s (1995a, 1998) concept of domestication, in which a transparent and fluent style is adopted to minimize the foreignness and to make the source text more intelligible to the target text readers. Venuti also proposed the concept of foreignization, which refers to the deliberate retention of the linguistic information and cultural images of the source text in the translation, as an antipode to domesticated translation. The concepts of d­ omestication 1  The phrase was first introduced in 1902 by Liang Qichao in the postscript to Chap. 1 of Fifteen Little Heroes (Shiwu xiao haojie), the Chinese translation of Jules Verne’s adventure novel Deux ans de vacances (Two Years’ Vacation). Liang (1999: 5666) noted that the phrase appeared in the preface to the English version of the novel. According to Hu Cui’e (2007: 88), yiyi bu yici was widely accepted in the early twentieth century because of Liang’s popularity among Chinese intellectuals. By contrast, Yan Fu’s translation principles of xin, da, ya (faithfulness, comprehensibility, elegance) did not become popular until the late 1910s (ibid: 86–7). 2  The term was imported from Japan. Meiji-era Japanese activists, who took liberties with source texts to promote their political agendas in their translations, regarded themselves as “heroes” for their refusal to follow source texts slavishly (Guo 2005: 176; Jiang 2009: 39). The method was popularized in China by Liang Qichao. See Jiang (2009).

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and foreignization are useful for categorizing different approaches to linguistic and cultural translation. In late Qing China, domestication was the norm of translation. Late Qing Chinese translators showed no concern for faithful translation of the literary style of the original. It was not until the 1910s that foreignization became a more important strategy for Chinese translators of foreign literature. This will be discussed in Chap. 3. Although not all of the late Qing translators who favoured yiyi bu yici or haojie yi were politically motivated, there were some who tended to weave into translations their ideals of modern nationhood and personality. As will be discussed later, in the translations of Yan Fu and Liang Qichao, there was often a clear intention to present the source text as an agent of change. The treatment of texts as essential “resources” for ensuring China’s survival in a modern world invested the translations and, by implication, the translators, with a powerful moral authority. The manner in which two key translators popularized this attitude is the subject of this chapter. Yan Fu and Liang Qichao were among a growing group of progressive late Qing scholars who initiated a shift in the importation of Western learning from a focus on technology and material culture to the pursuit of modern values and in particular, of liberty and new citizenship. This chapter argues that despite their divergent approaches to translation, Yan Fu and Liang Qichao, the two most prominent reform-minded translators of the late Qing period, attached the same importance to cultivating the correct set of values in Chinese readers. In effect, both saw the creation of a modern Chinese identity – the “making new” of people – as the primary goal of their translation activities. While Yan Fu posited the development of people’s strength (minli), intellect (minzhi) and morality (minde) in his 1895 essay “On Strength” (Yuan qiang), Liang Qichao promoted the fostering of new citizens (xinmin) in the early twentieth century. I will identify key aspects of Yan Fu’s and Liang Qichao’s promotion of “new” ethics and values through a close reading of some of their well-known articles. This serves as a point of departure for understanding their conception of a modern Chinese identity. I will then proceed to an examination of how they imported and manipulated Western ideas in their construction of an alternative cultural imaginary, focusing on Yan’s translation of social Darwinism and liberalism and Liang’s translation of adventure fiction.3 A key feature of Yan Fu’s and Liang Qichao’s translations was their conscious use of linguistic and literary stereotypes in Chinese that would best suit the translation of key Western concepts and values. Herein lies the “skopos” they assigned to their translation. According to German linguist Hans Vermeer (2000: 230), the skopos of a translation is its goal or purpose, defined by the commission and adjusted in terms of how the translator understands the task. The way the target text e­ ventually 3  Liang Qichao also translated and introduced modern European theory of science, German theories of the state, the philosophy of Kant, and James’s pragmatism and his theory of religion (Wang 2011: 92). Compared with Yan Fu’s more systematic translation of social science and philosophy, Liang’s fiction translation lends itself better to an examination of how his “sense of a crisis of values” (ibid) led to his promotion of modern citizenship ideals.

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shapes up is determined by the skopos or its commission,4 accepted by the translator as being adequate to the goal of the action. In this chapter, the translation strategies adopted by Yan Fu and Liang Qichao will be examined to reveal the extent to which they reflect the translators’ “skopos” of character moulding. As a fiction translator, Liang Qichao was not as prolific as other translators of his day, such as Lin Shu, who “translated” 159 novels with the help of his interpreters (Xiao 1980: 2036; Han 2005: 44). Liang Qichao, as the doyen of Chinese intellectuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, made contributions to the boom in translation activities of the period mainly through his patronage of fiction translation and indirect translation from Japanese, as examined in Chap. 1. His translation practice exemplified what he preached in many of his articles, i.e. to use translation as a tool of new citizenship. As a practitioner of fiction translation from Japanese texts, he followed Yan Fu in making addition an important translation strategy.5 Unlike Yan Fu, who dealt with philosophical and sociological writings directly from Western sources, Liang did not encounter the same degree of cultural translation as Yan Fu and had less scope for additional interpretations of the kind Yan produced. As Yan observed in “General Remarks on [the] Translation [of Evolution and Ethics]” (Yi li yan), written in 1898, “The diction in the original texts is complex while the elaboration of theories and principles profound. They are not readily intelligible. Therefore, I have to provide annotations and contexts, and make alterations in order to bring out their significance” (in Liu 1996: 9). Yan added that such a treatment of the source texts boiled down to what he called “comprehensibility” (da) and that the achievement of such comprehensibility amounted to “faithfulness” (xin). He understood xin not in terms of literal accuracy but as fidelity to the truth he discerned in the original. In this chapter, more space is devoted to discussing Yan Fu’s translation.

2.1  Yan Fu on Western Social Thought Despite Yan Fu’s training in natural science in Fuzhou and Britain,6 he was more interested in the dissemination of Western philosophical, political and sociological ideas. He saw these as of urgent relevance to China’s national salvation and enlight4  Vermeer (2000: 229) defines a commission as “the instruction, given by oneself or by someone else, to carry out a given action – here: to translate.” 5  Liang Qichao sometimes deleted or changed parts of the source texts when they went counter to his political agenda. For instance, in translating Kajin no kigu (Romantic Encounters with Two Fair Ladies), Liang made many trimmings and alterations, “not explicitly on the grounds of opposing imperialism as such, but on the basis of his own Chinese nationalism” (Yeh 1990: 162). Generally, Liang used the strategy of adaptation to reorganize chapters or storylines in order to achieve a “domesticating” effect. 6  Yan Fu was admitted to Fuzhou Shipyard School at the age of 14. The subjects in the curriculum included, among others, math, physics, chemistry, trigonometry and navigation. In 1877, he went to Britain to study seamanship, first at Portsmouth, and then at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich.

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enment and observed that lack of these ideas in China had “impeded the development of enlightened thinking, given rise to bad intentions and produced good-for-nothings” (in Wang 1986: 43).7 He was among the first scholars of the late Qing period to argue that the secret to Western wealth and power did not lie in science and technology alone but in the institutions, ideas and values associated with them (Schwartz 1964). After the Chinese navy’s defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895, scholar-­ officials became disillusioned with the Self-Strengthening Movement on which they had pinned their hopes of restoring China’s economic and military power. The war aggravated Yan’s sense of crisis so that he “felt there was something in my chest, which I was desperate to spit out” (in Wang 1986: 514). Between February and June of 1895, Yan Fu published four articles in Zhibao, a newspaper in Tianjin. These were: “On the Urgency of the Current Changing Situation” (Lun shibian zhi ji), “On Strength” (Yuan qiang), “Refuting Han” (Pi Han)8 and “On National Salvation” (Jiuwang juelun). In these fiery political treatises and his subsequent writings, Yan was highly critical of Chinese cultural and political traditions and underscored the importance of learning from the West. In the essay “On the Urgency of the Current Changing Situation,” Yan compared many aspects between the West and China, with a focus on political and academic differences. From Yan’s perspective, the modern weaponry and technology that Self-Strengthening scholar-officials sought to learn from the West in order to “beat the barbarians” (zhi yi) were superficial, and knowledge of them was woefully inadequate for understanding the “lifeblood” (mingmai) of the West, which was nourished by scholarship that taught liberty, justice and social progress. He claimed that Chinese knowledge, by contrast, suffered from lethargy and was a hindrance to the liberty that true scholarship should foster. He observed: What is the lifeblood of Westerners? In essence it is their scholarship, in the pursuit of which they discard the false and respect the truth,9 along with their political and legal  Yan Fu made these observations in the 1895 essay “On Strength” (Yuan qiang).  “Refuting Han” is a radical critique of the feudalistic autocracy theorized in the essay “Essentials of the Moral Way” (Yuan Dao) written by Han Yu (768–824 CE), a philosopher and prose stylist in China’s Tang Dynasty, who stood for strong central authority in politics and orthodoxy in cultural matters. In his article, Yan Fu unveiled the connection between autocratic monarchy and China’s backwardness to advocate his democratic politics. 9  Yan Fu was convinced that scholarship had played a critical role in the buildup of Western power. In “On Strength,” another essay he published in 1895, Yan (in Wang 1986: 29) observed: “Western learning had been on a par with Chinese learning before the Ming dynasty. Since then, Western scholars have emphasized innate laws of things as opposed to exquisite diction when pursuing learning; they set great store by practicality and make light of the rhetoric of writing. In their teaching, they make sure that students actively participate in and reflect on what they learn, commending selfprocurement and disregarding the adoption of old conventions, celebrating the propensity for questions and exercising caution when it comes to received wisdom. In subjects such as mathematics, students are trained in thinking skills while in other subjects such as physics, students are taught how to observe mutations.” Yan Fu (ibid: 43) lamented the way scholarship was pursued in China during his time, and summarized it as “articulating views in a loud and empty way without close observation of things and indulging in bombastic pronouncements without thinking about practicality.” 7 8

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s­ ystem, by which they put aside their private interests for the upholding of justice and the public good. Originally their scholarship and politics were not any different from those in China. The smooth practice of these two in the West, as opposed to their dysfunctioning that we often experience in China, can only be accounted for by whether liberty is exercised. (in Wang 1986: 3)

The importance Yan Fu accorded to liberty is evident in this passage. In fact, the next section of the article presents liberty as separating China and the West in many other respects. Liberty for Yan Fu meant positive Western qualities.10 Yan Fu thus proposed a new ti-yong (essence-function) formula in the essay “On Strength.” [Westerners] abandon taboos, reject red tape and break barriers to communication. Everyone is able to exercise their free will and air their views. There is little gap between the upper and lower strata of society….The reason for this is that they regard liberty as the essence (ti) and democracy as its function (yong). (ibid: 11)

“Liberty as the essence and democracy as its function” (ziyou wei ti, minzhu wei yong) represents a very different interpretation of the old ti-yong dichotomy, i.e. “Chinese learning as the essence and Western learning for practical application (or as its function),” which was a motto of earlier reformers. Yan Fu was not dismissive of traditional moral teachings and in fact, he frequently incorporated Confucian ideas into his translation of Western social science. Nonetheless, his blending of Chinese and Western values was far from a mere variant of the Self-Strengtheners’ ti-yong bifurcation (Huang 2008).11 His notion of “liberty as essence and democracy as function” framed his understanding of liberalism12 and guided his thinking about what it meant to be modern and Chinese. Yan Fu argued that essence and function were inseparable and did so in deliberate opposition to the majority of his peers, who assumed a fundamental distinction between the “essential” nature of Chinese learning (Zhongxue wei ti) and the “applied” or “functional” nature of Western knowledge (xixue wei yong). He believed that democracy in the West was a manifestation of a universal form of liberty that China had to acquire if it was to become modern.

 For instance, Yan argued that the Chinese practiced nepotism while Westerners prized merit and talent. The Chinese governed through filial piety while Westerners governed in the public interest; the Chinese revered their rulers while Westerners held common people in high regard. Whereas the Chinese were restricted by too many taboos, Westerners prized candid comments that included ridicule and criticism. In finance, the Chinese tended to reduce expenditure while Westerners opened up new sources of income; in etiquette, the Chinese emphasized formality while Westerners delighted in simplicity; in the face of disasters, the Chinese consigned themselves to the tender mercies of the elements while Westerns were reliant on human effort (in Wang 1986: 3–4). 11  According to Max Huang (2008: 244–5), Yan Fu regarded Confucian morality as the social glue for a modern society, and an accommodationist version of modernization as the best hope for China’s survival. 12  The core of Western liberalism is generally understood to consist in commitment to individualism as well as to its institutional embodiments, civil rights and liberties. See, for example, De Ruggiero and Collingwood (1959) and Talmon (1960). 10

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Yan expressed his firm belief in Herbert Spencer’s (1820–1903) concept of social organism in the essay “Refuting Han.” He attributed the power and wealth of a country to the physical stamina, wisdom and moral virtues of its citizens, observing that in the West these three qualities determined whether a nation possessed power and was superior to its neighbours (in Wang 1986: 18). He then wrote of a longstanding despotic monarchy in China which had cowed the people and made them slave-like so that the “national strength has drained, national intellect weakened and national morality diminished” (ibid: 26). Yan Fu’s definition of state power in terms of “strength,” “intellect” and “morality” underscored his understanding of what it meant to be a modern Chinese person. Of the three, he considered the initiation of new morality to be the most difficult. If people were “greedy and selfish” and disregarded Western learning, the dream of “turning China’s misfortune into fortune” would never come true (ibid: 3). In many essays written between 1895 and 1902, Yan Fu deplored the fact that inadequate knowledge of the West had already taken its toll on China’s development. He became eager to introduce modern ideas to China. In 1895, the same year he published the four articles, Yan began to translate Evolution and Ethics by English biologist Thomas Huxley (1825–1895). Two years later, he started his translation of another important Western work – John Stuart Mill’s (1806–1873) On Liberty. The modern concepts in Yan Fu’s translations are far from being mere by-­ products of his translation practice. If we read Yan’s translations as closely tied to the development of his own ideas about social and political reform, we can see that they embody the cultivation of “people’s strength, intellect and morality” and are constitutive of the basis of his nation-building and modern identity ideas. This is also evident in his 1899 letter to Zhang Yuanji, eminent author-cum-­ publisher. Yan Fu (ibid: 525) explained his rationale for translating Western works and revealed his ardent expectation for his translations to enlighten the Chinese: If the populace remain ignorant, it will be no use talking about whether to adopt conservative or radical approaches….But if the number of people in the general public and the younger generation, who possess a good knowledge of China and the West, increases with each passing day, then the Chinese nation may not necessarily go to rack and ruin. It will revive easily even if it is caught up in crises. Such being the case, I decide that translation is the only way to educate the people.

Yan Fu’s selection of works for translation was thus organized around the question of “educating the people.” Through his translations, Yan urged the Chinese to look beyond Westerners’ sophisticated machinery and powerful artillery to acquire the essence of Western learning. He wanted them to see with Western eyes and to arrive at a new understanding of democracy and liberty, which Chinese ancient sages “had never attempted to propound as part of their teachings” (ibid: 3).13 Yan Fu’s translations enjoyed a wide readership. His translation of Evolution and Ethics (Tianyan lun) boasted about 25 reprints by the Commercial Press alone between 1905 and 1930 (Wang 2006b: 274). The January 1903 reprint of Yuan fu, 13

 Taken from Yan’s 1895 essay “On the Urgency of the Current Changing Situation.”

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Yan’s translation of An Inquiry into the Nature and Cause of the Wealth of Nations, by Nanyang College Translation Department (Nanyang gongxue yishuyuan), produced 2000 copies, all of which were sold out in two  days (Han 2006: 108). According to the Fudan University-based historian Zou Zhenhuan (1996), of the 18 translated social scientific works that had the most profound influence on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century China, 5 were by Yan Fu.14 Throughout his life Yan Fu translated about a dozen Western works, and the translations of eight major Western works he published between 1898 and 1911 are especially well-known in Chinese scholarship.15 Wang Shi’s (in Meng and Li 2005: 67) calculation revealed that Yan Fu’s translations totalled more than 1.7 million Chinese characters. Yan was also paid generously for his translations. According to Wang Rongzu (2006a), in the early modern Chinese publishing history, Yuan fu was the first translated book that had ever received royalties, amounting to 20% of the book’s selling price. When Zhang Yuanji took over the Commercial Press, Yan’s royalties for his translations were raised to 40% of their selling prices. Yan Fu’s translation was mainly ideologically motivated. To demonstrate more clearly Yan’s motives behind his selection of source texts, the following section provides an analysis of Yan Fu’s prefaces, commentaries, letters and essays associated with some of his major translations.

2.1.1  Yan Fu’s Selection of Works for Translation 2.1.1.1  Evolution and Ethics (Tianyan lun) After the publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species, enthusiasm for the theory of evolution gained momentum throughout the world. Herbert Spencer soon transferred the laws of physiology to the domain of social science and coined the term “the survival of the fittest.” Yan Fu was particularly drawn to Spencer’s social Darwinism and liberalism.16 He made several mentions of Spencer in his 1895 essays. For instance, Yan (in Wang 1986: 7) observed in “On Strength” that, of the dozens of Spencer’s books, The Man versus the State and Education: Intellectual,  These are Evolution and Ethics (Tianyan lun), An  Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Yuan fu), Study of Sociology (Qunxue yiyan), L’Esprit des lois (The Spirit of the Laws; Fa yi) and A System of Logic (Mule mingxue). 15  They are: Evolution and Ethics (Tianyan lun) (1898), Study of Sociology (Qunxue yiyan) (1902), An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Yuan fu) (1902), On Liberty (Qunji quanjie lun) (1903), A Short History of Politics (Shehui tongquan) (1904), A System of Logic (Mule mingxue) (1905), Primer of Logic (Mingxue qianshuo) (1908) and L’Esprit des lois (Fa yi) (1909). 16  Yan Fu (in Wang 1986: 1320) wrote in the preface to his translation of Evolution and Ethics: “A Mr. Spencer has written a book on evolution, incorporating in his theory nature and mankind. This recently published book is a rare masterpiece.” He added in his annotation to Guangyi in Tianyan lun: “Evolution thus includes these and Spencer extends it to agricultural, commercial, industrial and military spheres and even to language and literature….If intelligent people can contemplate and digest it, that will be a real pleasure” (ibid: 1327). 14

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Moral and Physical were the best known, adding that while the former expounded the creation of “the perfect man in the perfect society,” the latter exhorted the readership to pursue the study of sociology. In educating people to become socially adapted, “[Spencer’s] centrepiece is the development of wisdom, stamina and ethics” (ibid). Similarly, Yan Fu accorded great importance to the release of an individual’s energy, which he saw as contingent on a free, competitive environment. The influence of Spencerian Darwinism and liberalism on Yan’s notion of “liberty” was immense. Notwithstanding his preference for Spencer’s works, Yan Fu (ibid: 1327) considered them to be “too voluminous, extensive and abstruse” for translation. He turned his attention to shorter works which he hoped would provide Chinese readers with lucid, concise summaries of the fundamental principles of Darwinism. English biologist Thomas Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics turned out to be such a book. Evolution and Ethics was Huxley’s Romanes Lectures delivered in 1893. Interestingly, it was an assault on, rather than a defence of, social Darwinism. Huxley’s expounding of evolutionary theory covered much of the historical development in human thinking, from the philosophy of ancient Greece and Rome to the various schools of modern thought in the West, and to Buddhism in ancient India. In a letter to his fifth brother Yan Guanyan, written on 23 August 1897, Yan Fu (ibid: 733) noted: [The manuscript of Tianyan lun] has been widely acknowledged to be of great benefit to the spread of new learning. China is in imminent danger, its future hanging in the balance…. How lamentable! Even modern sages in China could do nothing to save China from peril. China’s chronic malady consists in the deficiency of scholarship. With its low national intellect, China is not powerful enough to succeed in the competition for survival.

Yan Fu intended his translation of Evolution and Ethics to supply a practical solution to improving what he saw as China’s “low national intellect.” Furthermore, he viewed the translation as a means of broadening the Chinese outlook to universal principles of truth and reason in the modern world. At the outset of his preface to Tianyan lun, Yan Fu quoted Mill to highlight the importance of the mastery of languages in fathoming the profound ideas and supreme principles of reason (liji 理极 in Yan Fu’s own words) (in Liu 1996: 6). He then expressed the hope that the Chinese literati would understand and assign due importance to the non-utilitarian techniques and values in Western scholarship that would lead to universal truth (ibid: 7–8). He further observed in “General Remarks on [the] Translation [of Evolution and Ethics]” (Yi li yan): “Seeking universal principles is like performing official duties. Both will benefit from pooling ideas” (ibid: 10). This remark reveals the task-like purpose he ascribed to both the production and reception of translation. For the purpose of “seeking universal principles” (qiongli), Yan “pooled the ideas” (jisiguangyi) of Spencer, Huxley, Darwin and other Western scientists and philosophers, comparing them with traditional Chinese thinking and attempting to bring out the best in Chinese and Western learning. Yan Fu (in Wang 1986: 525) admitted in a letter to Zhang Yuanji, written in 1901, that the translation of Evolution and Ethics was not meant to be “a study of evolu-

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tion qua evolution” (tianyan zhengxue). He was more interested in using evolution as a frame of reference to critically assess the Chinese tradition so as to outline the principle that evolution and modernization went hand in hand. Yan’s promotion of “evolution,” which would later be described as social Darwinism, wielded an enormous influence on how educated Chinese in late Qing and early Republican China understood what being modern meant. His translation of Study of Sociology was particularly important in linking modernization to concepts of competition, struggle and survival. Later in this chapter, we will see that Yan Fu was so intent on seeing natural selection at work in the modern world that he turned Huxley’s criticism into an endorsement of social Darwinism. 2.1.1.2  Study of Sociology (Qunxue yiyan) Study of Sociology was written by the renowned British philosopher Herbert Spencer and published in 1873. Yan Fu claimed that when he first read the book around 1880, he was fascinated by the affinity between Spencer’s sociology and the essential teachings of the canonical Confucian works Great Learning (Daxue) and Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong). “With abundant details, [Spencer] believes that the keystone for maintaining social order consists in the investigation of things (ge), the extension of knowledge (zhi), sincere thoughts (cheng) and rectified hearts (zheng)” (in Liu 1996: 119).17 Yan Fu’s explanation of Spencer using classical Chinese concepts of reasoning and understanding has long been regarded as adding to the appeal of his translations in his day. Qunxue yiyan, literally “Study of Grouping,” was the Chinese title Yan Fu gave to Spencer’s Study of Sociology. He further explained his motive for translating the book and defined sociology, which he called qunxue,18 in the “Preface to the Translation of Study of Sociology” (Yi Qunxue yiyan xu): What is qunxue? It is the use of scientific principles for the purpose of observing the changes of society, getting things in perspective and taking appropriate future actions. What is yiyan? It is to find out about the objectives and functionality of a subject of study for the purpose of demonstrating its usefulness…. Nowadays, it is not just to seek fame, rank and wealth that scholars pursue learning. They should take it upon themselves to purify the national taste, to put it to good use and to benefit the people – all these qunxue has set as its objectives. (in Liu 1996: 115)

Between 1897 and 1898, Yan Fu published in National News (Guowen bao)19 his translation of the first two chapters of Study of Sociology, which he entitled An 17  Taken from Yan Fu’s “Additional Remarks to Qunxue yiyan,” which appears before the translated text. “Investigation of things leading to the extension of knowledge” (gewu zhizhi), “sincere thoughts” (chengyi) and “rectifying the hearts” (zhengxin) are important doctrines propounded in Great Learning, as noted in Chap. 1. 18  The term shehuixue, borrowed from Japanese, gradually replaced qunxue in the early twentieth century. 19  The newspaper was founded by Yan Fu, Xia Zengyou (1863–1924) and Wang Xiuzhi (1858– 1903) in Tianjin on 26 October 1897.

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Exhortation to Learning (Quanxue pian). The translation of the whole book was not completed until 1902. In 1903, Yan’s translation was published by Civilization Bureau of Translation and Editing (Wenming bianyishe) in Shanghai in four volumes. For Yan Fu, the evolutionary and liberal ideas in Spencer’s book served as intellectual and moral guidance for the pursuit of scholarship in China. The initial Chinese title he gave to his translation, i.e. An Exhortation to Learning, revealed not only the high premium he placed on learning but also his inheritance of the Confucian tradition of cultivating moral values through scholarship (zhongxue mingdao). He wrote that China’s old-fangled learning and education system “inhibit the development of intelligence and corrupt morals” (gu zhihui, huai xinshu) (ibid: 554–5),20 and hoped that Study of Sociology would steer Chinese readers in the right direction (ibid: 120).21 2.1.1.3   An Inquiry into the Nature and Cause of the Wealth of Nations (Yuan fu) Although Yan Fu majored in naval science during his study trip to England in 1877– 1879, he became attracted to political theory, in particular the principles of political economy. Yan saw the developments in modern economics as a principal reason for the affluence in Europe (in Wang 1986: 1349).22 Of the Scottish economist Adam Smith’s works, the most famous is An Inquiry into the Nature and Cause of the Wealth of Nations. It encompasses three major arguments, namely, the Division of Labour, the Pursuit of Self-Interest and the Freedom of Trade, and is generally considered to be the first modern work in the field of economics. Instead of translating the original title verbatim, Yan Fu shortened it to Yuan fu, literally “Inquiry into Wealth.” Yan Fu drew particular attention to the benefits of Smith’s work for improving China’s situation. In his “Remarks on Translating [Yuan fu”] (Yishi liyan), he observed: In its immediate application, economics can help get rid of poverty in China; in the long run, it determines whether the Chinese nation will prosper or weaken. Therefore, whenever I find Smith’s observations relevant to the current situation in China, or if they find an echo in my heart, I make a point of expanding on them by way of annotations….Alas! The application of natural selection exists in human society at all times. (ibid: 101)

Yan found much of Smith’s criticism of the rulers of his day who emphasized agriculture to the neglect of commerce applicable to the close-minded rulers of contemporary China. “[Smith] accuses important officials of their misconceptions. Many of these misconceptions are also harboured by financial officials in our country. Therefore, the book should serve as a whip to flog them from behind” (ibid: 102).  Taken from Yan Fu’s 1895 “On National Salvation.”  See “Additional Remarks to Qunxue yiyan.” 22  Yan Fu made the remark in an annotation to the translation of Evolution and Ethics. 20 21

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While acknowledging the importance of financial interests, Yan was mindful of the negative attributes such as selfishness that the pursuit of wealth might generate. For him, it was unbeneficial not to follow scientific rules in Western learning, and it was morally unreasonable to abandon universal principles of truth (ibid). This accords with his emphasis on “scholarship, good faith and integrity” (xueshu, ­chengyi he zhengzhi) in his translation of Study of Sociology. Yan Fu understood Western ideas as demonstrating connectivity across subjects of study and as requiring thorough and serious investigation. As mentioned just now, he wrote of the omnipresence of natural selection in the modern world (ibid: 101), believing that it enabled superior nations to outdo their inferior counterparts. In one of the annotations Yan Fu added to the translation of An  Inquiry into the Nature and Cause of the Wealth of Nations, he reiterated the importance of liberty as a feature of superiority: I have not known of a country which can be said to be free without the freedom of its citizens, or a country which enjoys rights while its citizens have no rights at all.… It is most unwise for a government to deprive its people of their proper rights. (ibid: 917)

This remark reminds one of the emphasis Yan placed on the inviolable nature of personal liberty in the West in his 1895 essays, such as “On the Urgency of the Current Changing Situation,” in which he construed the enjoyment of liberty and equality as the yardstick of a country’s civilization (ibid: 3). Yan Fu’s understanding of liberty as the condition enabling the formation of a smart nation is further evident from his translation of Mill’s On Liberty. 2.1.1.4  On Liberty (Qun ji quanjie lun) As noted earlier, Yan Fu’s proposition of “liberty as essence and democracy as function” epitomizes his understanding of Western learning. To Yan, “survival of the fittest” can also be understood as the survival of China as a civilized nation, which would necessitate the construction of a strong modern state but also the renovation of its people. On Liberty, a treatise representative of John Stuart Mill’s radical liberalism, was published in 1859. In the treatise Mill expounded on civil or social liberty, i.e. the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual. Yan Fu started to translate the book soon after the Hundred-Day Reform was halted in September 1898. What he wrote in “Remarks on Translating [On Liberty]” (Yi fan li) reveals his optimism about the positive benefits of free speech: Freedom of speech means speaking in a practical and honest way and seeking the truth. It should neither be coloured by ancient thinkers nor succumb to the authorities. What is true should not be abolished even if it is told by our enemy; what is false should not be upheld even if it is proposed by the emperor. (ibid: 134)

At a time when conservative officials at the Qing court viewed liberty as “a surging torrent or a fierce beast” and when “radicals give impetus to it without sound

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understanding” (ibid: 132), Yan Fu was eager to raise awareness of the true meaning of liberty in the West. He further opined that liberty could result in a person being evil or virtuous, and underscored the responsibilities of a liberal as follows: By rights, a liberal can do what he wishes to do. This is much like a hermit staying away from the world. What confines does his liberty have? Being virtuous or evil is entirely at his own discretion. Who can stop him? After becoming a member of the society, however, [things are different because] I am a liberal and so is everybody else. If there are no constraints, conflicts will arise. Therefore, the boundary of each person’s liberty needs to be marked by the liberty of other people. This is what the Great Learning exhorts concerning the etiquette of society, with which gentlemen bring peace to the world. This book, written by Mill, purports to specify the extent to which people should exercise their liberty. (ibid)

Such observations explain why Yan Fu chose to translate On Liberty, the title of the book, as The Boundary Between the Group and the Self (Qun ji quanjie lun). Yan was not only concerned with the exercise of liberty, unrestrained by government control, but also the adjustment of one’s own conduct and speech vis-à-vis other people in society. Obvious in these remarks is his approval of the Western concept of egalitarianism and the Confucian virtue of caring for and revering others. He recalled in the 1906 treatise “Lectures on Politics” (Zhengzhi jiangyi) that when translating On Liberty, he was more interested in promoting “individual freedom in an ethical sense” (lunxue zhong geren ziyou) (ibid: 1282), which he associated with the development of self-governance and public-spiritedness. As he put it, “the difficulty lies not so much in giving freedom to the people as in turning them into qualified citizens to enjoy the benefits of freedom” (ibid: 1283). 2.1.1.5  A Short History of Politics (Shehui tongquan) While seeking to augment the Chinese public’s understanding of how liberty was developed in the West, Yan Fu paid particular attention to Western works on politics.23 He mentioned Bagehot’s Physics and Politics24 on several occasions and had planned to translate it. However, the book proved less attractive to Yan Fu than the work of British jurist and writer Edward Jenks’s (1861–1939) A Short History of Politics. A Short History of Politics explores social evolution through a historical lens. To Yan Fu, it provided a panoramic view of the type of social and political arrangements that China must develop. He said in his translator’s preface, “it is a fact that in the evolution of mankind totemic society is the starting point, which is followed by patriarchal society and which culminates with the nation” (in Wang 1986: 135).  See Yan Fu’s letter to Zhang Yuanji written in April 1899 (in Wang 1986: 527).  Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) was a nineteenth-century British journalist, who wrote extensively about government and economic affairs. His Physics and Politics: Thoughts on the Application of the Principles of “Natural Selection” and “Inheritance” to Political Society was well received in Britain after it was published in 1872. In the book Bagehot expounded on the implications of science and was in favour of studying the history of social development by way of evolution (Wang Xianming 2005: 40). Of the six chapters, two were devoted to the discussion of nation building.

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Yan praised Jenks for providing such a clear account of human social development and equated social evolution with the four seasons of the year and the physical development of an individual being. Yan Fu further expounded in the preface that the historical evolution of the West was representative of the development of mankind in general. Although the social development of the West was slow at the later stage of feudalism  – what was described as the transitional period from patriarchal society to political society –, it made tremendous progress in the last 400 years. By contrast, the entire 2000-odd years of Chinese history was marked by feudalism, typical of patriarchal society. Yan deplored the lack of social reforms in China. “In the West, the evolution of society appears to be slow at the beginning and rapid toward the end, while in China the reverse seems to be true” (ibid: 135). Yan Fu was obviously satisfied with his translation of A Short History of Politics. In his letter to Cao Dianqiu (1877–1960), he urged his friend to read the book: “I have recently completed the translation of A Short History of Politics, which has been published by the Commercial Press. You may want to get a copy for your perusal. After reading, I believe you will have a full understanding of why China is backward” (ibid: 567–8). 2.1.1.6  L’Esprit des lois (The Spirit of the Laws; Fa yi) L’Esprit des lois or The Spirit of the Laws was the magnum opus of the French social commentator and political thinker Baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755). It was a treatise on political theory first published in 1748 and spanned widely over many topics of politics, law, sociology, and anthropology. Yan Fu’s translation of the work was published in seven volumes by the Commercial Press between 1904 and 1909. His dedication to translating this work attests to his enthusiasm for liberty, good citizenry and the British (“Western”) legal system. He wrote in an annotation to this translation: Soon after I arrived in Europe, I had the opportunity to observe a court hearing. I was in a sombre mood and felt something was missing for several days after I returned to my apartment. I talked to my friend Mr. Guo,25 telling him that the power and affluence of Britain and other parts of Europe was due to the upholding of justice in these countries. Mr. Guo was of the same mind. (ibid: 969)

Yan Fu viewed the Western legal system favourably against the way that law operated in China’s dynastic system. In one of his many annotations to the translation of The Spirit of the Laws, he remarked: “Benevolence may result in [monarchs] being parents of the common people whereas callousness will turn them into beasts” (ibid). This was his implicit criticism of the Chinese law as being vulnerable to abuse. Though he did not directly accuse the dynastic system, his comment reflected his disapproval of the absolute power of the emperor as producing a situation in  Guo Songtao (1818–1891) was a Chinese diplomat and statesman. He was the ambassador to England and France from 1877 to 1879.

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which good government and sound laws were entirely dependent on the monarch’s virtue and talent. Yan Fu’s support for the Western idea of the rule of law was in accord with his proposition of “liberty as the essence and democracy as its function.” For him, the proper political and legal framework of a nation constituted bulwarks of liberty and democracy, both of which fostered the development of “people’s strength, intellect and morality.” 2.1.1.7  A  System of Logic (Mule mingxue) and Primer of Logic (Mingxue qianshuo) John Stuart Mill’s A System of Logic was hailed as a masterpiece in formal logic and inductive reasoning soon after it was published in 1843. Yan translated the first half of the book between 1900 and 1902, and put his failure to complete the second half down to his poor physical condition, mental fatigue and other problems. He also explained that he lacked the extensive knowledge and expertise required for translating the book (in Wang 1986: 265). By contrast, Yan Fu completed the translation of W. S. Jevons’s Primer of Logic, a simple account of formal logic, in two months. Yan Fu was convinced that the problems that China had encountered over the centuries boiled down to “the question of science.” He discredited traditional belief in the acquisition of knowledge, which in his view was devoid of inference or reason. He claimed that what drove Western science forward was the study of logic, which, “according to Bacon, is the method of all methods and the science of all sciences” (ibid: 1028). By upholding logic as paramount to the pursuit of science, Yan proposed a corrective to the deficiency in Chinese scholarship. As early as 1895, Yan Fu expressed his disapproval of the various forms of intuitionism common to the Chinese traditional way of thinking in “On National Salvation.” He traced Chinese intuitionism to Mencius’ assertion that “all things are stored up in me” (wanwu jie bei yu wo). He maintained that the only way to stem the further spread of such thinking was to open Chinese people’s eyes to the vital importance of using logic. In his letter to Zhang Yuanji, Yan (ibid: 546) observed: The translation of A System of Logic will be halfway through before the end of the year. The principles that will shed light on our way of thinking abound in the book, which, once published, will put an end to the old Chinese way of pursuing science and go a long way toward helping Chinese scholars master useful research methods.

Yan Fu was convinced that the method of induction, which was central to Miller’s logic, constituted the key to Western scientists’ discovery of the fundamental principles which had a huge impact on the social development of mankind. To Yan, the study of logic would set the Chinese on the right track of scientific pursuit, which was conducive to their modern education and transformation. Yan (ibid: 32) maintained that the opening of people’s intellect (kai minzhi) would need to be addressed “most urgently.” While wealth and power were contingent on a political system that benefited people (limin zhi zheng), all of this had to start with the development of

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people’s capacity to benefit themselves (zili), to be self-competent (zineng) and to exercise their liberty (ziyou) (ibid). The series of Yan Fu’s translated works may appear unrelated at first sight, but as the above analysis indicates, Yan believed that these works were a unified and indispensable whole. The “canon” of essential theories he selected were integral to his imagination of the set of modern values he saw as necessary for constructing modern citizens in China, organized around his new formula of “liberty as the essence and democracy as its function.” Yan Fu’s praise for the moral and intellectual superiority of Western thought, as well as his anticipation for his translations to serve as preparation for good citizenship, were widely accepted by progressive intellectuals of his day. The modern values Yan saw as urgently needed for national salvation and as required for a moral idealist vision of human society were further highlighted by his manipulation of these Western source texts and his effort at the assimilation of the supreme principles of Wester learning into the grand system of Chinese thinking.

2.1.2  Yan Fu’s Translation and Writing Style An admirer of the Tongcheng School,26 Yan Fu wrote in an abstruse pre-Han style, resulting in criticisms of his translations among his contemporaries. Typical of the criticisms levelled at his poetic choice was Liang Qichao’s observation that Yan’s “esoteric” (yuanya) writing style, coupled with the profundity of his translated works, made the civilized ideas he intended to disseminate incomprehensible to the general public (Liang 1902). Liang Qichao, who was already experimenting with the vernacular in the late 1890s and early 1900s, maintained that the vernacular was a good vehicle for the popularization of modern ideas. He made the comment in a critique of Yan Fu’s translation of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Yan Fu (in Sun 2003: 181) defended his style of writing this way: Diction serves as feathers to ideals and a voice to feelings. Therefore, profound theories cannot be expounded in a straightforward and uninhibited style of writing while sincere feelings cannot be expressed with vulgar language.

Yan was making a conscious effort to win over Confucian-trained scholars. He knew that they prized classical Chinese and were sceptical about Western science. Yan thus sought to persuade such readers by producing elegant translations in an archaic style. In “General Remarks on Translation,” Yan (in Liu 1996: 10) argued: “The profound principles and subtle ideas become comprehensible if pre-Han

 The Tongcheng School was one of the most distinguished literary schools in the Qing dynasty. The chief representatives were from Tongcheng County of Anhui Province, hence the name. The school espoused Confucian tenets of the early Chinese classics and adopted an archaic prose style.

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syntactic and verbal traditions are followed, whereas the use of modern vernacular will make the texts difficult to comprehend.” Yan Fu (in Sun 2003: 182) claimed that his translated work was targeted at the intellectual elite conversant with the Chinese classics rather than students or ordinary readers. Clearly, Yan’s use of abstruse pre-Han stylistics was to help members of the scholar-official class to comprehend unfamiliar Western concepts and arguments. From his perspective, these people had the capacity to carry out social reforms, and only when they were equipped with a new vision and advanced knowledge would the goal of enlightening the general public and raising the national taste become achievable. As elegant classical Chinese was highly regarded by men of letters, Yan’s style helped to valorize his translations, thus contributing to their acceptability by the Confucian educated elite. In other words, Yan Fu chose to coat what he deemed the efficacious but bitter drug of Western ideas and values with the sugar of his elegant writing in a bid to facilitate reception.27

2.1.3  Y  an Fu’s Translation Strategy as Dictated by His Ideology of Modernity In his preface to Tianyan lun, Yan Fu presented his now famous tripartite model of translation, i.e. xin (faithfulness), da (comprehensibility) and ya (elegance). These three principles have come to define the practice of translation in China and critics of Yan Fu have, in fact, evaluated his translations using his criteria. Despite the fact that many have rebuked Yan Fu’s translation on the grounds of being neither faithful nor comprehensible, it should be noted that the purpose of Yan Fu’s translation was the importation of modern liberal ideas to empower China and to reconstitute the Chinese identity. Yan’s translation strategies were dictated by the social situation in late Qing China and according to Elsie Chan (2002: 69), he did not understand xin in terms of mimetic “faithfulness” or reproduction of the full content and form of the original text, as the conventional interpretation of xin has it. Although there are cases where Yan Fu translated the source text in a relatively faithful way, manipulations of the source text are far more common. To him, the Western works were sources of information which could be manoeuvred in a variety of ways to meet the expectations of his envisaged audience. This approach to translation chimes with the importance that translation scholars such as Toury and Vermeer accord to the reception of translated texts in the target culture. Toury (1995:  The great Tongcheng master Wu Rulun lamented the poor writing in most of the translations during his time. He praised Yan Fu’s style of writing, observing that his essays were comparable to those written during the Eastern Zhou (pre-Han) dynasty. He went so far as to exclaim: “We can only discuss translating books with those whose writing is as good as Yan Fu’s” (in Liu 1996: 4). Lu Xun (1981 (4): 381) recalled in 1931 that in Yan Fu’s time, returned students would not be considered a member of the gentry unless they could write in elegant classical Chinese.

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12) notes that features of a source text are retained “not because they are important in any inherent sense, but because they are assigned importance, from the recipient vantage point.”28 Vermeer (2000: 230–1) argues that the function (skopos) of the translated text is determined by the interests and expectations of its recipients, rather than that of the source text. Yan (in Liu 1996: 9) observed in “General Remarks on [the] Translation [of Evolution and Ethics]” that in his translation he made a point to fully comprehend the source text before setting pen to paper. “When expressions in the source text are abstruse and pose difficulty for the reader, I make references and take the entire context into consideration in order to illuminate them. Alterations of such kind facilitate comprehensibility, which in turn will make for faithfulness” (ibid). To understand how Yan Fu’s approach to translation reflects a didactic purpose – namely to promote liberty as the basis for fostering modern individuals –, an analysis of his translation of Mill’s On Liberty is necessary. The work has been wonderfully carried out by Taipei-based scholar Max Ko-wu Huang in his book The Meaning of Freedom: Yan Fu and the Origins of Chinese Liberalism. Huang (2008) provides numerous examples of Yan Fu’s manipulations to demonstrate his synthesis of autochthonous Chinese ideas and modern Western liberal values and how Yan finessed the issue of positive freedom (i.e. possession of necessary power and resource to maximize one’s abilities) and negative freedom (i.e. absence of interference or external pressure). Yan Fu distorted Mill’s conception of liberty to meet his ideological purposes. While Mill saw liberty of the individual as an end in itself, Yan rendered it into a means to the advancement of the people’s virtue and intellect. In Chap. 3, for instance, Huang clearly illustrates, through several well-chosen examples, the influence of Confucian moral ideals on Yan Fu’s thought about the selfgroup relation. Instead of conveying Mill’s notion of individualism and his imagined polity of individuals sharing the benefits of negative freedom, Yan adapted Mill’s ideas creatively to promote a Confucian balance between self and group and the ability of a nation to succeed in a Darwinist struggle for survival. According to Huang (2000: 153–4), Yan mixed Mill’s celebration of idiosyncrasies with an emphasis on the Darwinist concept of struggling for survival and the goal of realizing the truth of humanity. Extending Huang’s analysis of Yan Fu’s translation of On Liberty to other translations he published, it becomes clear that Yan manipulated the target texts to serve a specific ideological end. The following examples are taken from Evolution and Ethics, Huxley’s original book, and Tianyan lun, Yan Fu’s translation of Huxley.

 Gideon Toury opines that translating is a teleological activity which is to a large extent conditioned by the receptor culture. He observes in Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond: “After all, translations always come into being within a certain cultural environment and are designed to meet certain needs of, and/or occupy certain ‘slots’ in it. Consequently, translators may be said to operate first and foremost in the interest of the culture into which they are translating, however they conceive of that interest” (1995: 11). Yan Fu’s translation practice lends support to Toury’s observations.

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The translation strategies in Tianyan lun mainly comprise adaptations, additions, supplemented by commentaries and annotations.29 These strategies highlight not only the complexity of this multi-faceted process of exchange and adaptation but also Yan Fu’s strong intention to make his translations a means of building “people’s strength, intellect and morality.” 2.1.3.1  Annotations Yan Fu’s provision of commentaries and annotations is a highly salient characteristic of his translations. They account for more than 50% of the whole text of Tianyan lun, and serve to elucidate major concepts in the translation and to reinforce what Yan preached on other occasions, such as in his essays. Example 1 斯宾塞之天演说曰:“天演者,翕以聚质,辟以散力。方其用事也,物由纯而之杂,由流而 之凝,由浑而之画,质力杂揉,相剂为变者也。” (in Liu 1996: 16) (My translation of the above: Spencer’s theory of evolution has this to say: “Evolution occurs when objects contract to gather substance and unfold to disperse force. In the process of evolution, objects change from purity to diversity, from drifting to solidity, from obscurity to clarity, with substance and force mingling and complementing to make changes.”)

Yan Fu (ibid: 18) noted at the end of Section Two of Part One (Guangyi) that it was desirable to contemplate the evolutionary theory and find the truth in it. Evolution acquired its impetus from inner movements, thus bringing about changes and progress. He believed that individual entities were subject to laws of nature while moving from a lower state to a more advanced form. He celebrated Spencer’s proposition that social “organisms” reflected the same evolutionary principles or laws as biological entities. Yan Fu then extrapolated Spencer’s theory to recommend attitudes to collective solidarity and project ideal qualities of modern life for the Chinese. Example 2 此篇所论,如“圣人知治人之人,赋于治于人者也”以下十余语最精辟。盖泰西言治之 家,皆谓善治为草木,而民智如土田。民智既开,则下令如流水之源,善政不期举而自 举, 且一举而莫能废。(ibid: 30) (My translation of the above: In this part, the sentences that follow on from “The sage is aware that the success of rulers lies in the ruled” are the most incisive. Europeans liken good governance to plants in nature and people’s intellect to arable land. Once people’s intellect has been developed, orders from above will flow like a source of running water, with good, unexpected and long-­ lasting effects following automatically.)

 Yan Fu demonstrated flexibility in his manipulation of the original works. He applied the same set of strategies to varying degrees across a range of source texts. For example, his translation of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations and most other later publications stayed closer to the source text than his translation of Evolution and Ethics.

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Interestingly, these supposedly “incisive” sentences cannot be found in Evolution and Ethics. Yan Fu’s additions indicate the importance he attached to the intellectual maturity of society and free exercise of wisdom as the natural order of things. These remarks bring to mind what Yan emphasized before and after the publication of Tianyan lun, such as people’s intellect in the 1895 essay “On Strength,” negative freedom in his translation of On Liberty, and legal institutionalization in the translation of The Spirit of the Laws. Example 3 夫既以群为安利,则天演之事,将使能群者存,不群者灭;善群者存,不善群者灭……又 案: 班孟坚曰:不能爱则不能群,不能群则不能物,不能物则养不足。群而不足,争心将 作。 (ibid: 39) (My translation of the above: Now that gregariousness signifies stability, it must be borne in mind when speaking about evolution that those who stick together will survive while those who stay away from social groups will perish; gregarious people will survive while those who tend to be aloof will perish….In addition, Ban Mengjian30 said: “If people do not love, they will not coalesce; if they do not coalesce, they will not be able to withstand the elements; if they cannot withstand the elements, they will suffer from shortage of means of subsistence. Staying together without sufficient means results in people scrambling for what little is left.”)

Yan Fu’s concern with the unification of social groups prompted him to emphasize the importance of gregariousness in his annotation. Moreover, by invoking ancient sages, he made Spencer’s concept of the “survival of the fittest” more acceptable to the Chinese people, who, according to him, must be united as one to survive the struggle for existence. 2.1.3.2  Additions Besides specific annotations of the kind discussed above, Yan Fu sometimes inserted into the main text of Tianyan lun his own biological metaphors to imply the naturalness of modernization. For example, in “Introduction One: Observing Changes” (Daoyan yi: Chabian), Yan Fu added the following remarks. “Spencer said: ‘Natural selection is to keep the fittest.’ So living things struggle for survival while nature selects what is left of the struggle. Struggle and selection thus bring about changes.” As mentioned previously, it was Spencer, rather than Huxley, to whom Yan Fu turned for his explanation of social Darwinism. It would seem that Yan Fu added the quote from Herbert Spencer at the end of the paragraph to conflate Huxley’s statement about natural adaptation with Spencer’s view. This again brings to mind Yan’s criticisms of the conservative Qing officials in his essays.31 To him, they lacked the  Ban Mengjian (AD 32–92), also named Ban Gu, was a historian and poet in China’s Han dynasty. He was best known for his compilation of the Book of Han (Han shu). 31  For instance, Yan Fu held several Chinese philosophers to ridicule in his 1895 essay “On National Salvation.” 30

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motivation for social and personal transformation that he saw as necessary for China’s modernization. Example 4 Without the first tendency there could be no evolution. Without the second, there would be no good reason why one variation should disappear and another take its place; that is to say, there would be no selection. Without the third, the struggle for existence, the agent of the selective process in the state of nature, would vanish. (Huxley 1894: 7) 自其反而求之,使含生之伦,有类皆同,绝无少异,则天演之事,无从而兴。天演者以变 动不居为事者也, 使与生相待之资,于异者匪所左右,则天择之事,亦将泯焉。使奉生 之物,恒与生相副于无穷,则物竞之论,亦无所施,争固起于不足也。然则天演既兴,三 理不可偏废。无异、无择、无争,有一然者,非吾人今者所居世界也。(in Liu 1996:19) (My back-translation of the last sentence: A world without any of the three, i.e. variation, selection and struggle, is not the world where we live now.) Huxley’s focus was on the natural world while Yan Fu, by adding this concluding remark, shifted the focus to human society. His addition of the sentence “A world without any of the three, i.e. variation, selection and struggle, is not the world where we live now” (无异、无 择、无争,有一然者,非吾人今者所居世界也) had the effect of reminding the Chinese readers of the ubiquity of natural selection and intense competition. Yan Fu’s addition to Huxley indicates how, in the process of translation, Yan Fu was presenting himself as an agent of cultural transformation.

2.1.3.3  Adaptations While most of Yan Fu’s annotations and additions sought to consolidate or expand what was stated in the original, distortion or conscious misreading of the source text also revealed his understanding of what being modern meant. In translation, misreading or faulty reading of the text results in misinterpretation or distortion of the source message. This may occur at both the macro and micro levels. According to Traugott and Pratt (1990: 341), misreading may stem from carelessness and the influence of stereotypes. “Readers often tend to read carelessly and stereotypically, that is, they often notice only a few features of the language they read without paying attention to…how it is represented” (ibid). Harold Bloom (1973: 30) contends that misreading may have positive outcomes: “Poetic influence – when it involves two strong, authentic poets – always proceeds by a misreading of the prior poet, an act of creative correction that is actually and necessarily a misinterpretation.” Susan Bassnett (1991: 77) quotes Soviet semiotician Jurí Lotman (1922–1993) as saying that misreading can happen when the reader deliberately extrapolates one level of the work for a specific purpose. If we consider such views of misreading in light of the skopos theory, we may find that Yan Fu’s misreading and mistranslation were in fact a strategy he employed to serve the skopos of his translation.

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Yan Fu was highly competent in English and unconscious misreadings were rare. Max Huang (2000: 25) identified only five such unconscious “errors” in Yan’s translation of On Liberty, two of which were due to his misunderstanding of Western concepts. For the most part, Yan Fu deliberately misread and adapted the source text to omit what he considered to be irrelevant or contrary to his nationalistic concerns. Yan’s translation of the titles of some Western works is indicative of this deliberate misreading. For instance, he translated Jenks’s A Short History of Politics as Shehui tongquan (Comprehensive Explanation of Society), thereby highlighting the relevance of Jenk’s work to the solution of social problems in China. Wang Xianming (2005) prefers Yan Fu’s title to the original, and his study reveals that Yan’s manipulations emphasized the application of the Western work to the Chinese social context. Turning to the examples from Yan’s translation of Evolution and Ethics, we can easily identify the conformity of his mistranslation with his nation-building and character-building motives. Example 5 So far as that limited revelation of the nature of things, which we call scientific knowledge, has yet gone, it tends, with constantly increasing emphasis, to the belief that, not merely the world of plants, but that of animals; not merely living things, but the whole fabric of the earth; not merely our planet, but the whole solar system; not merely our star and its satellites, but the millions of similar bodies which bear witness to the order which pervades boundless space, and has endured through boundless time; are all working out their predestined courses of evolution. (Huxley 1894: 4) 凡兹运行之理,乃化机所以不息之精。苟能静观,随在可察。小之极于跂行倒生,大之 放乎日星天地,隐之则神思知识之所以圣狂,显之则政俗文章之所以沿革。言其要道, 皆可一言蔽之,曰:天演是已。(in Liu 1996: 15) (My translation of Yan Fu’s translation: Motion is the principle of keeping things changing. If watched quietly, it exists everywhere – from such small things as crawling insects and trailing vines to such big things as the sun, the stars, the earth and other celestial bodies. When inconspicuous, it leads to the advancement of understanding and knowledge; when dynamic, it contributes to the development of politics, culture and scholarship. To put it in a nutshell, this is evolution.)

In this example, “the world of planets,” “that of animals,” “living things,” “the whole fabric of the earth,” “our planet,” “the whole solar system,” “our star and its satellites,” and “the millions of similar bodies” become “跂行倒生” [crawling (insects) and trailing (vines)], “日星天地” (the sun, the stars, heaven and the earth), “神思知识” (spiritual understanding/contemplation and knowledge)32 and “政俗文 章” (politics, culture and scholarship). Neither 神思知识 nor 政俗文章 have their equivalents in the original text. Yan Fu’s eagerness to see natural evolution at work in human society led him to turn Huxley from a critic of social Darwinism into a social Darwinist. Yan’s misreading and misrepresentation of Huxley provides an important clue about his aspirations for combining the supreme principles of reason

 神思 (shensi) was an important Chinese literary concept, first discussed by Liu Xie (465–520). It assigns significance to the use of creative imagination in intellectual work.

32

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and morality in the West with those in China33 and teaching modern values via translation. This also accords with the contemporary conception of ideology34 as a determining factor “in the image of a work of literature as projected by a translation” (Lefevere 1992: 41). In addition to the provision of annotations, addition and adaptation, another strategy that Yan Fu adopted in his translation is deletion. The translation of the title Evolution and Ethics into Tianyan lun is a case in point. In Chinese, tian stands for “heaven” or “nature,” yan stands for “evolution” or “change” and lun “theory” or “doctrine.” Whereas Huxley viewed “evolution” and “ethics” as two contradictory constructs, Yan Fu’s dropping of “ethics” in the original title revealed his belief in the unity of nature and man. The trimming accords with his attempt to explain Western principles of reason in terms of the correct way for China to modernize and to “evolve” as a nation and a society. Clearly, Yan Fu’s translation norms reflected his didactic interests. He made no pretence of preserving the original style of the source texts. His own subjective constructions were evident in the confidence with which he assimilated Western ideas into an existing Confucian vocabulary. It is important not to see Yan’s translation style as resulting in a conglomerate of disparate elements. His conscious effort at accommodation between Western and Chinese values contributed to a harmonious integration by which Western elements were complemented and tempered by Chinese values and which helped his translation to function in integral systems. In effect, he re-created his own version of an elite Chinese culture. As the above examples from his translation of Evolution and Ethics show, Yan Fu assigned evolution not only cosmological but also socio-ethical values. The cultural world he imagined for the Chinese was to be at once determined by natural selection and constructed by human effort. Through his rewriting and manipulation, Yan turned social Darwinism into a discourse that promoted self-assertion and individual responsibility in relation to society. Yan used Darwinism effectively to define the modern Chinese mentality as founded in individualism and nationalism. His “self-­ identity,” the non-existence of the word “identity” in his writings notwithstanding, was thus closely linked to social and national interests. One of the most famous exaltations of Yan Fu was made by Japanese historian Inaba Kunzan (1876–1940) (1915 (2): 30), who observed: “Since Zeng Guofan initiated the translating enter “When inconspicuous, it leads to the advancement of understanding and knowledge; when dynamic, it contributes to the development of politics, culture and scholarship” echoes Yan Fu’s citation of Sima Qian (c. 145–86 BCE) in the preface to his translation of Evolution and Ethics: “Book of Changes (Yi Jing) educes the conspicuous out of the hidden while Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu) elicits the hidden from the conspicuous.” Meanwhile, the sentence conforms to what The Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong) prescribes for a virtuous person – that they should be able to exercise self-discipline and guard against immoral behaviour even when they are alone or inconspicuous. 34  According to Lefevere (1992), ideology can be willingly embraced by the translator or imposed on him or her as a constraint by some form of patronage. Yan Fu obviously belongs to the former case, although Wu Rulun played some kind of patronizing role in recommending his translations to the public. 33

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prise, books in chemistry, physics and law have been translated. However, they were not sufficiently inspiring. Modern transformation started with Yan Fu in the year 1895. The translation of Evolution and Ethics blazed a trail and breathed new life into Chinese thought.” In educating the Chinese people and seeking to bring them in line with the requirements of the modern society, Yan Fu was exploring the uncharted territory of finding new values in Western and Chinese cultures. His manipulation of the source texts involved considerable hesitation and decision making, revealing the complexity of his translation project. Yan (in Liu, 1996: 10) admitted in “General Remarks on [the] Translation [of Evolution and Ethics]” that he often spent a couple of weeks pondering the proper translation of even one word. Yan Fu voluntarily took on the task of educating the people via importation of key Western concepts expressed in pre-Han archaic style. His blatant manipulation of the source text and his fusion of Western ideas with traditional Chinese values were meant not only to inspire patriotism but also to arouse awareness of the individual’s self-worth in modern society.

2.2  L  iang Qichao on Modern Citizenship Through Translation Yan Fu’s introduction of Western philosophy and social science for the fostering of self-government and national identity preceded the tide of science and fiction translations from Japanese sources. In this wave of Japan-mediated translation, Liang Qichao was the most outstanding representative, mainly as a powerful patron of translation activities but also as a translator-cum-writer of “new citizen” (xinmin) ideals. Like Yan Fu, Liang was a staunch advocate of nationalism and liberalism, hailed to this day as “the most influential thinker of early twentieth-century China and the godfather of Chinese nationalism and liberalism” (Schell and Delury 2013: 91). Liang was preoccupied with the opening up to the new (xin), not least in the appearance of the word in his influential journal The New Citizen’s Gazette (Xinmin congbao), his widely acclaimed series of articles On the New Citizen (Xinmin shuo), and his incomplete political novel The Future of New China (Xin Zhongguo weilai ji). To maximize the powers of fiction, Liang Qichao based his method of translation on Yan Fu’s dazhi (comprehensibility). In fact, Liang was the first scholar to comment on Yan Fu’s tripartite translation principles of faithfulness (xin), comprehensibility (da) and elegance (ya) as stated in the preface to Yan Fu’s translation of Evolution and Ethics. Although Liang took issue with Yan Fu’s notion of ya, i.e. his esoteric writing style, he was supportive of Yan’s da, observing in A General Discussion of Reform (Bianfa tongyi), a series of articles he published in Chinese Progress between 1896 and 1999, that it was incumbent on translators to make their meaning intelligible. For that purpose, “[translators] are free to make abridgements and additions or to reorganize the original text….Yan Fu used this method in his recent translation of Evolution and Ethics” (Liang 1999: 50).

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Liang’s understanding of da was the conformity of the translated text to Chinese literary and discursive norms. Such an approach to translation comes down to the application of “translating the meaning, not the words” (yiyi bu yici) or the “heroic translation style” (haojie yi), common in the late Qing. Both Yan Fu and Liang Qichao were in fact presenting their translation practice as “rewriting.” For Lefevere (1992), rewriting manipulates and adapts source texts to a certain ideology or to a certain poetics, and usually to both. Yan Fu’s more general pedagogic and didactic assumptions about translation and Liang Qichao’s sharper focus on moulding an ideal “new citizen,” were governed by their nation-building and character-building concerns. At a time when the Chinese literati had a complacent sense of Chinese literary superiority (despite their acknowledgement of the military prowess of Western powers), Yan and Liang sought to make their translations cater to the taste of their imagined Chinese readers. Yan Fu chose to write in an abstruse pre-Han style whilst Liang Qichao was experimenting with a semi-wenyan type of newspaper prose. The popularity of their translations among Chinese readers, especially young students, evident in the diary entries and essays they wrote in the early twentieth century, revealed the instrumentality of their chosen poetics to the promotion of modern ideals. Yan Fu and Liang Qichao differed in their choice of foreign works for translation. Yan’s canonical translations brought to China liberal ideas and evolutionary concepts, hitherto largely unknown to the Chinese. Liang’s fiction translations had the effect of making “new” qualities such as self-determination, enterprise, independence, and team spirit more easily imaginable. Unlike Yan Fu, who translated directly from Western sources, Liang Qichao’s translation was through the intermediary of Japanese, due to his lack of Western language competence.

2.2.1  Liang Qichao’s Promotion of Modern Attributes Liang Qichao’s advocacy of “revolution” in poetry, prose and fiction marks a radical moment in late Qing intellectual life. Rather than an attempt at pursuing literature for literature’s sake, Liang’s literary revolution was a politically-charged endeavour aimed at nation building and modernization. This section examines Liang Qichao’s politicization of fiction translation and how he harnessed it to challenge “old” customs and norms in order to promote modern selfhood. Like Yan Fu, who lamented the intellectual inadequacy of traditional ideas and who accorded importance to the fostering of modern people, Liang Qichao emphasized the need for people to acquire new modern values. To better understand Liang’s translation motives, a brief look at his moral-political ideas is in order. After the failure of the Hundred-Day Reform Movement in September 1898, Liang lived in exile in Japan from which he travelled to a few countries. It was in Tokyo that he started to read a wide range of Western social scientific works in Japanese translation. An important consequence of this period of learning was his relinquishing of the traditional idea of “all under heaven” (tianxia) to promote the

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nation-state (minzu guojia) by 1900. While the Confucian notion of world order was dominated by the utopianism of universal harmony, informed by a Sinocentric image, Liang Qichao’s ideal of a nation-state was characterized by a new view of world order supported by social Darwinism.35 Liang conceived of evolution as the survival of competent peoples through their successful adaptation to an increasingly competitive world. The concomitant extinction of weak races as a result of their inadaptability was the point that he seized upon when he advocated group solidarity and group interest, in defence of nationalism. According to Liang (in Xu 2005), nationalism (minzuzhuyi) signified, on the one hand, public and national interests that held sway over personal interests, and on the other hand, the stemming of the expansion of imperialism. He believed that nationalism and the ideal of nation-state could only be fulfilled by citizens equipped with new civic virtues. In 1902, Liang Qichao set out to formulate a modern identity ideal for the whole nation in a widely read serial entitled On the New Citizen (Xinmin shuo). He started with the question: Why are some countries affluent and powerful while others remain poor and weak, now that they bear similar geographical features and their people have the same round heads and square toes? Liang pointed out that the answer lay not in individual heroes but in the citizens. Therefore, “for the sake of peace, wealth, dignity and glory of a country, the importance of a new citizenry must be underscored” and “[the fostering of] new citizens is top priority in China” (Liang 1999: 655). In order for modern citizens to honour their obligations, democratization would need to be implemented. These observations that Liang made in On the New Citizen reminds one of the emphasis Yan Fu placed on “overcoming ignorance, curing poverty and lifting [the nation] out of weakness (yuyu, liaopin, qiruo)36 and his new ti-yong formula. For Liang, the political rights of citizens secured their autonomy and freedom to construct new modes of subjectivity. He was more concerned with the collective rights of the group (qun) than the rights of individuals. His understanding of liberal rights as part of personality stemmed from his belief in new citizens laying the foundation of a powerful state. In this light, Liang Qichao established an organic relationship between freedom, citizenship and nation-state. His explanation of freedom as new citizenship was to advance the notion of social solidarity and national independence. This presupposed a view of society that assigned primacy to the community over the individual. In a 1903 essay entitled “On the National Character of the Chinese People” (Lun Zhongguo guomin zhi pinge), Liang Qichao (1999: 1077–9) summarized the traits  Liang believed in the eventual mastery of the world by human effort. The values he emphasized can be found in Confucian teachings, but they were mainly Western inspired. For instance, whereas in Confucianism perseverance and enterprise are virtues meant to accomplish an inner ethical imperative or to fulfil Confucian moral ideals, Liang’s use of the values in his translation focused on the sustained effort and determination to overcome adversaries in dealing with the outside world and to achieve the imagined social objective. 36  Yan Fu (in Schwartz 1964: 49) wrote in 1902, “What are China’s principal troubles? Are they not ignorance, poverty and weakness? In a nutshell, any method which can overcome this ignorance, cure this poverty, lift us out of this weakness, is desirable.” 35

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that he regarded as essential for the fostering of new citizens in China. These qualities were patriotism, independence, public-mindedness and self-governance. He accordingly recommended ten complementary traits for the Chinese people, namely, independence and gregariousness (duli yu hequn), freedom and sanction (ziyou yu zhicai), self-confidence and modesty (zixin yu xuxin), self-benefit and altruism (liji yu aita), destruction and construction (pohuai yu chengli) (ibid: 428–32). In On the New Citizen, he urged his readers to acquire gregariousness, public-mindedness, independence, self-esteem, perseverance (yili) and an adventurous and enterprising spirit (maoxian jinqu zhi jingshen) (ibid: 660–705). In contrast to the Confucian virtue of perseverance, which was traditionally understood in terms of heeding an inner moral imperative, Liang proposed a modern view of perseverance as the will to achieve set social goals through sheer determination. He invoked as paragons of perseverance individuals and nations from the West, and cautioned about the lack of similar examples in China. He then emphasized the enterprising and adventurous spirit of Europeans as a modern quality that the Chinese ought to cultivate. There is more than one factor that explains the superior strength of European nations in comparison with Chinese people. However, almost the most important among these factors is the resourcefulness of European people in their enterprising and adventurous spirit. (in Chang 1971: 185)

To Liang Qichao’s mind, it was this important quality that accounted for European success in economic and military expansion. He then identified hope, zeal, wisdom and courage as the four components that made up this vital spirit (ibid). Liang believed that translated fiction could actualize this modern spirit in Chinese readers.

2.2.2  Liang Qichao’s Fiction Translation Modern nationalism and the notion of citizenship were often incompatible with the Confucian traditional approach to imperial authority. Therefore, the importation of new citizen ideals became necessary. Liang Qichao (1999: 476) wrote in 1901, “The creation of new citizens entails the elimination and changeover of the old misleading ideals of the country. For this purpose, it is necessary to borrow ideas and theories from other societies and to synthesize (tiaohe) them.” Liang thus became an ardent promoter of translation as an important nationalistic and cultural tool. In Chap. 1, we examined Liang Qichao’s patronage of translation and fiction. Below we consider Liang as a translator of fiction. Like Yan Fu, he translated with a clear intention to instil moral and political ideals in his readers. As discussed above, these ideals took the form of the attributes Liang saw as necessary for the cultivation of modern Chinese citizens.

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Liang Qichao’s advocacy and sponsorship gave a powerful legitimization for fiction translation and writing and elevated the genre from a peripheral status37 to the centre of the Chinese literary system. Liang himself was also a translator of several political and adventure novels. Political fiction is said to have been Liang Qichao’s favourite subgenre of fiction, though his first exposure to it was quite fortuitous. When the Qing court’s suppression of the Hundred-Day Reform Movement started, he escaped to a Japanese warship which carried him to Japan. On board the ship, the captain gave the forlorn Liang Qichao a popular Japanese political novel entitled Kajin no kigu in Japanese (Romantic Encounters with Two Fair Ladies),38 so as to “assuage and amuse [Liang Qichao]” (Ding and Zhao 1983: 158). The book appealed instantly to Liang, who found much of its nationalistic and anti-monarchist theme in agreement with his own enlightenment goals, so that he started to translate the novel while reading it.39 As a fugitive in Japan, Liang was desperate for recognition and understanding. Amid the change in his political status and his concern for China’s future, his longing for recognition and understanding found expression in the translation of Romantic Encounters with Two Fair Ladies (Jiaren qiyu in Chinese), which had as the thread of the story the encounter between the protagonist Tookai Sanshi and the two fair ladies  – Honglian, an activist in the Irish independence movement, and Youlan, who supported Prince Carlos of Spain against the rule of her sister Queen Isabella II.  The protagonist’s difficult political situation, as well as the activists’ staunch nationalism and their hardships of national salvation, struck a ready chord with the reader-cum-translator Liang Qichao. In Chap. 1 of the translated novel, he inserted a classical poem of his own creation to describe the protagonist’s situation: 晚降独立阁,行吟蹄水浔。蹄水流滔滔,灶溪烟沉沉。疏钟响夕阳,倦鸟还远林。微风 吹轻裳,新月照素襟。对此风景好,何为独伤心?当年汉马地,沧桑不可寻。英雄皆枯 骨,铁戟半销沉。义士建国檄,百年钦余音。成败有定数,白眼睨古今。 (Liang 1999: 5496) (My translation of the above: As night falls on the Independence Pavilion, I come to the Tishui riverside, chanting as I walk. The Tishui River is rolling forward with huge momentum whereas the Zaoxi is enshrouded in thick mist. Under the setting sun the bell rings intermittent; to the distant woods the birds return tired. Gentle breezes ruffle my light garment; the new moon shines over my simple clothing. With such fine views unfolding before me, why am I still so melancholy? The erstwhile battlefield, bristling with sweating horses carrying sweating warriors, is nowhere to be found as the years go by. The heroes have become skeletons and their halberds sunk into oblivion. It is time for high-minded individuals to make nationalistic statements. They will perpetuate history. Success and failure are foreordained. What has happened from ancient times to the present day will be looked at obliquely.)  According to Wang Yiyan (2016: 195), the Chinese term for fiction, i.e. xiaoshuo (small talk), confirms its genetic make-up and low social standing in traditional Chinese literary system. 38  The novel was written by the journalist and political activist Shiba Shiroo (Tookai Sanshi) (1852–1922). 39  The last part of the novel was fraught with imperialist invasionist elements, which Liang Qichao replaced with his own rewritings. See, for example, Jiang (2009) and Wong (1998). 37

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The poem may well be viewed as the articulation of Liang Qichao’s own “nationless sentiment”40 on the one hand and of his determination to construct a modern identity on the other. Liang’s strong feeling of nostalgia was understandable, especially at the beginning of his exile, when it was accentuated by concern for his own fate and for China’s future at the hands of the Qing conservatives. However, Liang sought to embody the qualities he later set forth in On the New Citizen, in which he emphasized the importance of having perseverance and an enterprising spirit. Liang’s fiction translation accords with the view of modern translation as bound up with identity. It was designed “precisely to form domestic cultural identities by appropriating foreign texts,” and “to construct an authorial subject through affiliation with a particular literary discourse” (Venuti 1995b: 18). The above example also reveals that such construction is “at once discursive and psychological, worked out in writing practices” that could be “open to psychoanalytic interpretation” (ibid). Not only did Liang Qichao translate Japanese political fiction, but he also emulated Japanese political fiction writers in his own political novel The Future of New China,41 which he never completed. The monologues and debates of the protagonists in Liang’s propagandistic political fiction were the reification of the Western political ideas he had read and preached. Similarly, the courageous acts of the little heroes in his Fifteen Little Heroes (Shiwu xiao haojie) should be understood as embodying the independent and enterprising self. Fifteen Little Heroes was Liang Qichao’s and Luo Xiaogao’s (1876–1949) translation of Deux ans de vacances (Two Years’ Vacation), an adventure novel written by Jules Verne. Liang and Luo translated Fifteen Little Heroes from Morita Siken’s (1861–1897) Japanese version, which in turn had been based on an English version of the novel. Fifteen Little Heroes comprises 15 chapters, of which the first 9 chapters were translated by Liang Qichao and the translation of the remaining 6 chapters was completed by Luo Xiaogao. The story tells of a group of schoolboys who, after a storm, were cast upon a deserted island in the South Pacific. By creating a Robinson Crusoe-like situation, Verne gives a vivid account of how the children pulled together and learned to combat adversities. As previously noted, Liang Qichao highlighted what he saw as weaknesses in the Chinese national character and emphasized the spirit of independence and adventure, which he believed was the most important factor to account for the strength and power of Westerners. In his translation, Liang was well aware of the expectations of his readers, most of them being intellectuals who were steeped in the ­tradition of Chinese fiction but who had just started to turn their attention to new fiction.42 To cater to the taste and reading habits of his readers, Liang Qichao was  Renowned theoretician of Chinese liberalism Zhang Foquan (1930–1994) used the phrase “nationless sentiment” (wuguo gan) to describe Liang Qichao’s lack of sense of national belonging. See Zhang (1971). 41  For more information about the Japanese influence on Liang Qichao’s writings, see Wong (2007), Willcock (1995), and Fogel (2004). 42  Some of the new fiction advocates who described new fiction readers as common and ignorant folks failed to get a good understanding of their readership. See Wong (2007: 166–7). 40

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inclined towards the characteristics of the Chinese novelistic tradition, such as an engrossing and intricate plot, vivid characters and a distinctive narrative style of the first-person story-teller (shuoshu ren). Liang often reorganized chapters, addressed the reader directly, and inserted descriptive rewritings as well as his observations and comments about the characters and scenes into his translation. These ways of producing an effect of familiarity were well captured in the phrase Liang used – “translating the meaning, not the words” (yiyi bu yici). The following is a comparison of two versions of the first part of Fifteen Little Heroes: (Direct translation from Japanese, in Fan 2006: 196) 1860年3月9日夜,满天黑云低低地垂压在海面上,四周一片漆黑,难辨咫尺之外。这 时一只尚未扯起风帆的小船掠过巨浪,向着东方飞快地驶去。闪电不时划破天空照 亮了小船的身影。 (My back-translation of the above: On the night of 9 March 1860, black clouds overhung the sea, turning everything black, and it was hard to make out objects just a few inches away. At this juncture a little boat with lowered sail moved swiftly through the torrential waves toward the east. From time to time lightning pierced the sky and shone on the boat.) (Liang Qichao’s translation, in Liang 1999: 5664) 莽重洋惊涛橫雨,一叶破帆漂渡。入死出生人十五,都是髫龄乳稚。逢生处,更坠向 天涯岛无归路,停辛佇苦。但抖擞精神,斩除荊棘,客我两年住。英雄业,岂有天公能 妒。殖民俨辟新土,赫赫国旗辉南极,好个共和制度。天不负,看马角乌头奏凯同归 去。我非妄语。劝年少同胞听鸡起舞,休把此生误。看官,你道这首词讲的是什么典 故呢? 话说距今四十二年前,正是西历一千八百六十年三月初九日。那晚上满天黑云, 低飞压海,蒙蒙暗暗,咫尺不见。忽有一艘小船,好像飞一般,奔向东南去。 (My back-translation of the above: The vast sea surged violently, accompanied by sweeping rain; a boat with broken sail drifted along. Through life and death came fifteen people, all young children. After weathering the storm and surviving the savage sea, they were left stranded on a remote island. But by overcoming trials and tribulations, they managed to stay for two years. Their heroic deed is the envy of the Heaven. Colonies are created in a new land; national flags are flying proudly in Antarctica – what a good republican system! Heaven will not let these heroes down; see how horned horses and headed tortoises return triumphant. I am not talking nonsense. I thereby urge our young compatriots to rise at the rooster’s crow and not to idle away your lives. Dear reader, what do you think the above poem is all about? It started forty-two years ago, on 9 March 1860, according to the Western calendar. On that night black clouds drifted low, over the sea; darkness reigned, and it was hard to make out objects just a few inches away. All of a sudden there was a little boat, which was, as it were, flying toward the southeast.)

About two thirds of Liang Qichao’s version is not in the original. Liang started with a poem of his own creation to meet the requirement of the traditional Chinese zhanghui (chapter-driven) fiction.43 Unfaithful to the source text as it was, this supplement helped enhance the novel’s appeal to the Chinese readership of his day. Liang’s high praise for the heroism of the little boys in the story and his exhortation to “our young compatriots” highlighted the moral-political ideas he proposed in his essays. This brings to mind the 43

 I have borrowed Jeffrey Kinkley’s translation of zhanghui xiaoshuo. See Kinkley (2000: 39).

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poem Liang added to his translation of Romantic Encounters with Two Fair Ladies, mentioned earlier in this section. Both poems are infused with a sense of awe for the work of nature, which Liang Qichao then translated into a positive attitude for constructing a modern Chinese identity. Liang’s aesthetic approach to reform and national enlightenment becomes evident. Aside from the addition of a classical poem at the beginning of a chapter, Liang Qichao also included his reflections and comments on the story and the characters at the end of each chapter.44 In the postscript of Chap. 2, for example, Liang extended the debate between the teenagers Wu An and Du Fan over the issue of when and how to get ashore to evolution and competition. He commented: “Where there is competition, there is evolution – this is axiomatic. The rivalry between the parties of Wu and Du reflects the situation of all political parties in the countries of the world” (Liang 1999: 5669). Liang encouraged the Chinese people to foster a spirit of teamwork and perseverance, quoting the hero Wu An as saying that “now that we are in grave danger, it will benefit us if we stick together” and that “if we go our separate ways, we will meet our doom.” He urged his compatriots to “repeat these words three times a day” (ibid). His exaltation of the little heroes also appears at the end of Chap. 3, where he exclaimed: “When the students are on holiday, they decide to go sailing across the sea instead of playing other games. This reveals the vivacity and enterprising spirit of these Western teenagers” (ibid: 5671). In re-translating the Japanese version of Verne’s Deux ans de vacances Liang sought to criticize what he perceived as a culture of subservience and spiritual lethargy in late Qing China. In the adventure novel, Liang discovered new moral and civic virtues for the Chinese people to take up. He saw these virtues as ultimately shaping a modern society in China. As he wrote: “If we have new citizens, we need worry no longer about not having new institutions, a new government, and a new nation” (ibid: 657). In his translation of this work, he saw in the youngsters the much-needed spirit of resilience, independence, adventure and teamwork that he found wanting in his fellow Chinese. Liang assigned the Japanese source text with the mission of fostering new citizens for China, and the addition of his own ideas to his translation thus served as a guidance to the politicized reading of the literary works.  Additional remarks at the end of chapters are traditional Chinese fiction writers’ way of creating a sense of suspense and holding the reader’s attention. This was taken up by most late Qing fiction translators. For instance, at the end of Chap. 2 of A Beautiful Story of Statesmanship (Jingguo meitan), after Babituo pacified the old housekeeper, there came three friends, who were excited to see Babituo and told him what had happened to them. The Chinese translator Zhou Kui chose to end the story before Babituo got to know who the three people were. “He heard footsteps outside the house as if there were a couple of people coming his way. Then he heard a shout: ‘Mr. Babituo, here comes our opportunity to distinguish ourselves.’” The chapter thus concludes with the following plot summary for Chap. 3: “Change occurred as a result of unexpected incidents, misfortune emerged out of accidents; heaven envies the hero and tortures him this way and that. The identity of these people and what they say will be revealed in the next chapter” (in Wang 1995: 41).

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Fifteen Little Heroes was published in 1902, when Liang Qichao started to write his series of essays on the “new citizen.” The positive traits that the “little heroes” demonstrated in Liang’s re-translation of Verne’s work were then reflected in his essays, as discussed above. Among Liang’s peers, Huang Zunxian was perhaps the first to acknowledge his indebtedness to Liang’s works on the new citizen. In 1902, Huang (in Zheng 1988: 432) claimed that after reading Liang Qichao, he realized the importance of “uniting the group” and considered it necessary for people to be imbued with public morality, and to have collective strength and virtuous ways. Huang ascribed a cause and effect relationship between public morality and collective strength, observing that a group’s collective strength stemmed from the combined moral commitment of the group’s members (ibid). Qian Xuantong (1887–1939) (1979: 40), a Chinese philologist and New Culture advocate, asserted in a letter to Chen Duxiu, written on 25 February 1917: “I believe that the credit of the innovation of modern literature must go to Mr. Liang.” In fact, it can be argued that Liang Qichao shaped much of the mainstream New Culture discourse. The impact of his translations and writings on the intellectual formation of New Culture leaders will be dealt with in the next chapter.

2.3  Conclusion Yan Fu and Liang Qichao understood translation primarily as a “tool” for educating the people about Western ideas and the relevance of these ideas to self and collective improvement so that Chinese people would acquire a modern character. They sought to highlight these features in their translations, even to the extent of adding original content of their own. In order for Chinese readers to appreciate their intended messages, both Yan and Liang carefully selected foreign texts for translation, and took liberties with these works in the process of their translation. Accuracy of translation did not appear to be a concern, and aesthetic concerns were discussed mainly in pragmatic terms of how effectively the translations would achieve the desired effect on readers. The translations of Yan Fu and Liang Qichao brought them into historical prominence. While Yan Fu ended the domination of the translations of the missionaries and the early modern government schools and arsenals, Liang Qichao’s translation practice, as well as his promotion of translation through the periodicals he ran, marked the beginning of scientific and literary translation from Japanese sources. This wave of translation from and via Japanese did not start to abate until the 1910s. Yan Fu and Liang Qichao were convinced that human freedom could not be achieved if the citizens were unprepared. Their pattern of modern identity construction via the importation of foreign values and concepts has remained prominent since then. In the late 1910s and 1920s, New Culture advocates viewed liberty and

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character moulding as central to national enlightenment, and developed ideas that had first appeared in translations produced in the late Qing period. Notably, Hu Shi’s “wholesome individualism” and Zhou Zuoren’s and Lu Xun’s humanistic and individualistic worldviews promoted modern understanding of the liberty of individuals and their relation to society. Throughout the period, translation played an essential part in the New Culture intellectuals’ conception and propounding of modern values. Yan Fu’s purpose of translation has often been solely associated with “national salvation” (jiuwang) and “racial preservation” (baozhong) in Chinese scholarship (e.g. Wang 1957; Yang 1997; Zhang Zhijian 1995). This chapter has shown that Yan’s translation practice was in fact focused as much on the cultivation of a new cultural personality as on strengthening China. Yan conceived “people’s strength, intellect and morality” as China’s “basis” (ben) for transforming inherited institutions and cultural norms (in Liu 1996: 550).45 Through his translations, Yan sought to inculcate such Western virtues as the free exercise of wisdom, self-governance and public-spiritedness. As is evident in his translation of Evolution and Ethics, he identified these virtues with changes and progress, with evolution in its social, intellectual and moral manifestations. When Yan Fu initiated the translation of Western philosophical works, Liang Qichao, 19  years Yan’s junior, was still keen to implement reforms through the edicts of a sympathetic emperor. Aware that top-down, court-derived reforms were impossible in the aftermath of the purge of the Hundred-Day Reform Movement, Liang turned to political campaigning outside China. Living in exile, Liang prescribed a set of new personality ethics and societal values for his countrymen and sought to accentuate them in his fiction translations. He placed particular emphasis on gregariousness and social conscience, which were derived from the notion of “group” (qun) first proposed by Yan Fu. In fact, all of Liang’s “new citizen” ideals were aimed at improving the quality of individuals in their service to group interest. To prevent these virtues from becoming rash emotional drive, Liang (1999: 703–4) noted in On the New Citizen that they would need to be guided by intellectual vision, echoing Yan Fu’s emphasis on wisdom and intellect in his espousal of ethical values. In the late Qing period of the 1890s and 1900s, Yan Fu and Liang Qichao achieved fame as advocates of economic and socio-political modernization in China (e.g. Schwartz 1964; Chang 1971; Tang 1996). As this chapter has shown, they undertook translation with a view to inspiring their readers to develop mental strength and internalize modern values, evident in their frequent adjustments of the source texts to serve this didactic end. What they wanted to cultivate via the introduction of these qualities were new citizens sufficiently strong, wise and virtuous to construct a modern society, which was not only wealthy and powerful but also liberal and congenial.

45

 Taken from “On Strength.”

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The generally domesticated translation method favoured by Yan Fu and Liang Qichao exerted a tremendous influence on Chinese translators in the 1900s. Although some of them, such as Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren, attempted to present the source language features faithfully to their Chinese readers by adopting a literal approach to translation, “translating the meaning, not the words” or the “heroic translation style” continued to reign supreme until the mid-1910s, when it gave way to the literal translation strategy involving not only the retention of information from the source text but also the use of a modern vernacular.

References Bassnett, Susan. 1991. Translation Studies. London/New York: Routledge. Bloom, Harold. 1973. The Anxiety of Influence. New York: Oxford University Press. Chan, Elsie. 2002. Translation Principles and the Translator’s Agenda: A Systemic Approach to Yan Fu. In Crosscultural Transgressions: Research Models in Translation Studies II: Historical and Ideological Issues, ed. Theo Hermans, 61–75. Manchester: St. Jerome Pub. Chang, Hao. 1971. Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and Intellectual Transition in China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. De Ruggiero, Guido, and R.G. Collingwood. 1959. The History of European Liberalism. Boston: Beacon Press. Ding, Wenjiang, and Fengtian Zhao. 1983. Liang Qichao nianpu changbian [Chronicle of Liang Qichao’s Life]. Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe. Fan, Xiangtao. 2006. Kexue fanyi yingxiang xia de wenhua bianqian [Cultural Change under the Influence of Translation of Science]. Shanghai: Shanghai yiwen chubanshe. Fogel, Joshua A., ed. 2004. The Role of Japan in Liang Qichao's Introduction of Modern Western Civilization to China. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California. Guo, Yanli. 2005. Zhongguo jindai fanyi wenxue gailun [A General Introduction to Translated Literature in Early Modern China]. Wuhan: Hubei jiaoyu chubanshe. Han, Hongju. 2005. Lin yi xiaoshuo yanjiu [A Study of Lin Shu’s Translated Novels]. Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe. Han, Jianghong. 2006. Yan Fu huayu xitong yu jindai Zhongguo wenhua zhuanxing [Yan Fu’s Discursive System and the Cultural Transformation of Modern China]. Shanghai: Yiwen chubanshe. Hu, Cui’e. 2007. Wenxue fanyi yu wenhua canyu: Wanqing xiaoshuo fanyi de wenhua yanjiu [Literal Translation and Cultural Engagement: A Cultural Study on Late Qing Fiction Translation]. Shanghai: Waiyu jiaoyu chubanshe. Huang, Max K.W. 2000. Ziyou de suoyiran: Yan Fu dui Yuehanmi’er ziyou sixiang de renshi yu pipan [The Raison d’ètre of Freedom: Yan Fu’s Understanding and Critique of John Stuart Mill’s Liberalism]. Shanghai: Shanghai shudian chubanshe. ———. 2008. The Meaning of Freedom: Yan Fu and the Origins of Chinese Liberalism. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press. Huxley, Thomas H. 1894. Evolution and Ethics, and Other Essays. London: Macmillan and Co. Inaba, Kunzan. 1915. Qingdai quan shi [A Complete History of Qing Dynasty]. Shanghai: The Commercial Press. Jiang, Lin. 2009. Liang Qichao haojie yi yanjiu [A Study of Liang Qichao’s Heroic Style of Translation]. Shanghai: Shanghai fanyi chubanshe. Kinkley, Jeffrey. 2000. Chinese Justice, the Fiction: Law and Literature in Modern China. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Lefevere, Andre. 1992. Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame. London: Routledge.

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Liang, Qichao. 1902. Shaojie xinzhu – Yuanfu [Introducing a New Book – Yuanfu]. Xinmin congbao [The New Citizen’s Gazette] (1). (February 1902). ———. 1999. Liang Qichao quanji [Complete Works of Liang Qichao]. Beijing: Beijing chubanshe. Liu, Mengxi, ed. 1996. Yan Fu juan [Selected Readings of Yan Fu]. Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe. Lu, Xun. 1981. Lu Xun quanji [Complete Works of Lu Xun]. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe. Meng, Zhaoyi, and Zaidao Li. 2005. Zhongguo fanyi wenxue shi [History of Translated Literature in China]. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe. Qian, Xuantong. 1979. Ji Chen Duxiu [Letter to Chen Duxiu]. In Zhongguo xiandai wenxueshi ziliao huibian [Collection of Modern Chinese Literary Material], 34–40. Zhengzhou: Henan renmin chubanshe. Qian, Mu. 1994. Zhongguo zhishifenzi [Chinese Intellectuals]. In Tai gang ji haiwai xuejie lun Zhongguo zhishifenzi [Discussion of Chinese Intellectuals by Scholars from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Overseas], eds. Tang Xuezhi and Yang Kuanghan. Zhengzhou: Henan renmin chubanshe. Schell, Orville, and John Delury. 2013. Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-­ First Century. London: Little, Brown. Schwartz, Benjamin. 1964. In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sun, Yingxiang. 2003. Yan Fu nianpu [Annalistic Biography of Yan Fu]. Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chubanshe. Talmon, Jacob Leib. 1960. The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy. New York: Praeger. Tang, Xiaobing. 1996. Global Space and the Nationalist Discourse of Modernity: The Historical Thinking of Liang Qichao. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Toury, Gideon. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co. Traugott, E.  Closs, and Louise Pratt. 1990. Linguistics for Students of Literature. New  York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Venuti, Lawrence. 1995a. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London: Routledge. ———. 1995b. Translation and the formation of cultural identities. In Cultural functions of translation, eds. Christina Schäffner and Helen Kelly-Holmes, 9–25. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd. ———. 1998. The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference. London: Routledge. Vermeer, Hans J.  2000. Skopos and Commission in Translational Action. In The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti, 221–232. London: Routledge. Wang, Shi. 1957. Yan Fu zhuan [Biography of Yan Fu]. Shanghai: Renmin chubanshe. ———. 1986. Yan Fu ji [Collection of Yan Fu’s Works]. Beijing: The Commercial Press. Wang, Zhongzhen. 1995. Xushu zhe de bianmao [Narrator’s Change of Position]. Qinghua daxue xuebao [Academic Journal of Tsinghua University] 10 (4): 39–43. Wang, Xianming. 2005. Yuyan, fanyi, zhengzhi: Yan Fu yi Shehui tongquan [Language, Translation and Politics: Study of Yan Fu’s Translation of “A History of Politics”]. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe. Wang, Rongzu. 2006a. Chongdu Yan Fu de fanyi [Rereading Yan Fu’s Translations]. Zhuanji wenxue [Biographical Literature] 88 (1): 21–36. Wang, Tiangen. 2006b. Tianyan lun chuanbo yu qingmo minchu de shehui dongyuan [The Dissemination of Tianyan lun and Social Mobilization in the Late Qing and Early Republican Period]. Hefei: Hefei gongye daxue chubanshe. Wang, Hui. 2011. In The Politics of Imagining Asia, ed. Theodore Huters. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wang, Yiyan. 2016. Fiction in Modern China: Modernity through Storytelling. In A Companion to Modern Chinese Literature, ed. Zhang Yingjin, 195–213. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.

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Willcock, Hiroko. 1995. Japanese Modernization and the Emergence of New Fiction in Early Twentieth Century China: A Study of Liang Qichao. Modern Asian Studies 29 (4): 817–840. Wong, Lawrence Wang-chi. 1998. ‘The Sole Purpose is to Express My Political Views’: Liang Qichao and the Translation and Writing of Political Novels in the Late Qing. In Translation and Creation: Readings of Western Literature in Early Modern China, 1840–1918, ed. David Pollard, 105–126. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. ———. 2007/1999. Chongshi xin, da, ya: Ershi shiji Zhongguo fanyi yanjiu [Reinterpreting Faithfulness, Comprehensibility and Elegance: A Study of Translation in Twentieth-Century China]. Beijing: Qinghua daxue chubanshe. Xiao, Yishan. 1980. Qingdai tongshi [General History of the Qing Dynasty]. Taipei: The Commercial Press. Xu, Jilin. 2005. Modern Chinese Liberal Nationalism: Between Modernity and National Character [Zai xiandaixing yu minzuxing zhijian: Xiandai Zhongguo de ziyou minzu zhuyi sixiang]. Sixiang yu wenhua 2005 (1): 247–290. Yang, Zhengdian. 1997. Yan Fu pingzhuan [A Critical Biography of Yan Fu]. Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe. Yeh, Catherine Vance. 1990. Zeng Pu’s Niehai Hua as a Political Novel: A World Genre in a Chinese Form. Unpublished PhD Dissertation. Harvard University. Zhang, Foquan. 1971. Liang Qichao guojia guannian zhi xingcheng [The Formation of Liang Qichao’s National Concept]. Zhengzhi 1: 1–66. Zhang, Zhijian. 1995. Yan Fu xueshu sixiang yanjiu [A Study of Yan Fu’s Intellectual Thought]. Beijing: The Commercial Press. Zheng, Hailin. 1988. Huang Zunxian yu jindai Zhongguo [Huang Zunxian and Modern China]. Beijing: Joint Publishing. Zou, Zhenhuan. 1996. Yingxiang Zhongguo jindai shehui de yibaizhong yizuo [One Hundred Translated Works That Influenced Early Modern Chinese Society]. Beijing: Zhongguo fanyi chubanshe.

Chapter 3

Making a “New Culture” Through Translation

The New Culture Movement of the mid-1910s and mid-1920s was referred to as the Chinese Renaissance (Zhongguo de wenyifuxing) by Hu Shi and other participants at the time, being a multi-faceted intellectual and cultural movement frequently historicized as the “awakening” to individuality, freedom and other modern values associated with a Western democratic society. The movement was conducted through publications, in which translations from foreign works featured prominently. The producers and consumers of these publications were people1 who had been exposed to modern education in Western style schools in China and at universities overseas. In their teens and early 20s, they were immensely influenced by the modern ideas and concepts they acquired through the reading of late Qing translations of foreign works and modern education in general. They were products of important historical changes which enabled intercultural experience and new imaginings of the Chinese culture. This chapter traces the trajectory of identity formation of leading New Culture intellectuals, concentrating on their exposure to Western knowledge and their involvement in social and literary activism by way of translation practice in the 1900s and early 1910s. According to Jorge Larrain (1994: 143), identity is normally not an issue in situations of relative isolation, prosperity and stability. Rather, it tends to arise in periods of instability and crisis, when there is “a perceived threat to established ways of life.” In the late nineteenth century, not only was China’s national sovereignty at stake, but the idea of China’s cultural power, which Chinese literati had previously regarded as self-evident, was also severely challenged. An overwhelming sense of identity crisis permeated Chinese intellectual discourse. Amid this crisis, translation became identified with nation building and self-empowerment. Prominent translators such as Yan Fu and Liang Qichao selected source texts and manipulated them in ways that were instrumental to the internalization of modern concepts and values 1  The older of the two generations that made up the New Culture readership had some familiarity with old-style private schools (sishu) in their childhood while the younger generation, born in the 1900s, did not receive a traditional sishu education.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 L. Chi, Modern Selfhood in Translation, New Frontiers in Translation Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1156-7_3

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among Chinese readers. The instrumentalism of their translation practice, manifested mainly through their selection of social scientific and literary works from Western sources, often via Japanese, and their adoption of the domesticated translation strategy, can be understood as a reflection of their perceived sense of national crisis and their confidence in effecting social and cultural changes by inculcating people with translated modern values. A distinctive feature of the modern self is its relative autonomy. The autonomy of the modern self is something that develops as a specific product of specific social and historical conditions (e.g. Taylor 1989; Simon 2004). In the early twentieth century, in contrast to the imperial decline, political turmoil, and chronic underdevelopment in China’s rural areas, there was rapid economic growth in major cities, accompanied by significant intellectual autonomy. An important area of economic development was the bourgeoning publishing industry. As private publishers became more financially independent, they started to exercise greater authority over the print culture. Newly published books were thus both commercial products and carriers of new knowledge. Chinese publishers and translators started to play a leading role in the processing of what they perceived as vital forms of knowledge for China. New ideas were assimilated by Chinese readers, especially the young students in Western-style institutions in China and overseas universities. According to the contemporary translation theoretician Gideon Toury (1999: 9), translating as an act and as an event is historically, socially and culturally determined, in short, norm-governed. For Toury, norms are intersubjective factors that govern behaviour. He points out that both mainstream and avant-garde (“avant-­ garde” only in view of subsequent attitudes towards the behaviour) norms are time-­ bound (1995: 64). Toury’s observation is relevant for the historical contexualization of translation as it enables us to detect the implicit norms that guided the decisions that late Qing and New Culture translators made in their selection of source texts and their approaches to translation. Their imagination and construction of a modern Chinese culture was shaped by norms, and the same norms were implicit in both the works they chose to translate and the methods they used to translate these works. There is an evident difference between the dominant strategy of a free, domesticated style of translation in the 1890s and 1900s and the trend toward a more literal, or “adequate” (to borrow from Even-Zohar, in Toury 1995: 56), way of translation. By the 1910s and 1920s, modern character moulding via translated works had undergone significant changes, reflected in the texts selected for translation (e.g. short stories), the translation approach (dominated by literal translation) and the types of comments made by the translators. This chapter lays the groundwork for the modern vernacular (baihua) translations of the New Culture period, which will be dealt with in greater detail in the following chapters. The translations examined in this chapter were undertaken in the 1900s, by students who received an education overseas, whether in Japan or the United States. The intellectual makeup of many of these young students, who would

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become the intellectual leaders of the 1910s, had been enormously influenced by translations of the earlier generation (such as those produced by Yan Fu, Liang Qichao and Lin Shu). In their own translations, they also sought to disseminate the ideas that they acquired from their reading during their overseas study. Unlike their predecessors who were focused solely on the translations of content and on popularizing foreign ideas, the New Culture translators sought to also introduce new literary forms and techniques.

3.1  Acquisition of Western Knowledge In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Chinese intellectuals, feeling the inadequacy of cultural traditions, epitomized their nation-building ideas in a few popular slogans such as “saving China through science” (kexue jiuguo) and “saving China through education” (jiaoyu jiuguo). These slogans were all predicated on learning from the West, which was also actively pursued by young students in Western-style schools and universities. The expectation or norm of learning in relation to Western knowledge was that the learner should acquire concepts and values that would provide China with the basis for the transformation of traditional worldviews. The exposure of these students to new concepts and values was mainly through the translated works published in the press and the modern education they received in China and overseas. Their impressionable minds were greatly influenced by the wonders of the modern Western world presented in the translations of such prominent intellectuals as Yan Fu, Liang Qichao and Lin Shu. Their perceptions of new possibilities for themselves and their country were also mediated by their overseas education. Chinese students responded positively to Western ideals and associated these values with moral and cultural strength which they believed China needed to build up by modelling the West.2 We argue that the reading of late Qing translations and exposure to modern education in the 1900s constituted an early experiential phase in the development of the self for the young May Fourth generation and positioned them toward the modern, the idea of which acquired different meanings in the process. This phase played an important role not only in their embrace of new modes of thought but also in their heightened awareness of the powers of translation in social and cultural transformation.

2  Gimpel (2015: 152), for instance, uses the word “self-colonization” to describe the wish of one of the Chinese students studying abroad in the early twentieth century to follow what she imagined to be modern and Western modes of life.

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3.1.1  T  he Impact of Late Qing Translations on the New Generation of Chinese Intellectuals In the 1900s, the proliferation of translated scholarship and literature, produced mainly by scholar activists and fuelled by a bourgeoning publishing industry, provided a continual flow of new ideas. This section presents case studies of leading New Culture intellectuals whose ideological and intellectual development was fundamentally influenced by prominent late Qing translators. 3.1.1.1  The Influence of Yan Fu’s Translations on New Culture Leaders Yan Fu’s rewritings introduced the notion of “natural selection” (tianze) into Chinese discourse on national regeneration and brought to the forefront of Chinese intellectuals’ political agenda the concept of “the survival of the fittest” (shizhe shengcun).3 Social Darwinism took root in China as one of the earliest Western thoughts “whereby the next few generations observed society, life and the world” (Li 2008:182). In the early twentieth century, young students’ acceptance of the theory of evolution was greatly facilitated by their reading of Yan Fu’s translation of Evolution and Ethics (Tianyan lun). Chen Duxiu (1984a) recounted how he was fascinated by Tianyan lun when he was studying at the Qiushi Acamedy (Qiushi shuyuan) in Hangzhou. This was a Western style academy founded by Lin Qi (1839–1900), the magistrate of Hangzhou in 1897. Chen wrote that reading the work led him to see Darwinism as one of the most important theories that had brought significant changes to human society. Lu Xun (2008) also noted that Yan Fu’s translations had a huge impact on his political and ideological orientation. He recalled how he was infatuated with Tianyan lun when he was studying at the Mining and Railway Institute of Nanjing (Nanjing kuanglu xuetang). He went all the way to the south of the city to purchase a copy of Yan Fu’s translation. He then read the book avidly and tried to absorb the unfamiliar ideas while eating pancakes, peanuts and pepper (ibid: 23). In a 1903 essay “Brief Discussion of Geology in China” (Zhongguo dizhi luelun), Lu Xun (1981 (8): 2) wrote that the Chinese should strive for self-­empowerment and national strength in the face of severe national crisis; otherwise, the nation would “surely become a fossil” and “be winnowed out in the struggle for survival.” In 1907, Lu Xun published “History of Humanity” (Ren zhi lishi) in Henan, a journal founded by Chinese students in Japan. He observed: “Recently terms associated with evolution have been commonly used in China. Innovative writers attract their readers with them while conservative people detest the idea that human beings are 3  American missionary W. A. P Martin (Ding Weiliang) (1827–1916) is considered to be the first person to introduce Darwinism to China. However, his work was far less influential than Yan Fu’s translation.

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descended from apes, and lean over backwards to stem its spread” (ibid (1): 19–20). According to Lu Xun, “the strong species thrive and the weak degenerate with each passing day” in the struggle for survival. While emphasizing natural selection (tianze), he understood the first principle of Darwinism as “human selection” (renze), and claimed: “Human selection involves human will while natural selection…occurs unknowingly” (ibid). Lu Xun thus demonstrated his independent and critical thinking as the result of acquiring knowledge of evolutionary theory. The words he used drew on Yan Fu’s translations, and the ideas Lu Xun presented were derived from Yan’s “rewritings” of the original texts. Yan Fu’s translation of Evolution and Ethics was also a constant source of inspiration to the young Hu Shi. Hu recounted how it transformed his view of life when he was a student at Chengzhong School, a private school in Shanghai, in the mid-­ 1900s. Students like him were required to purchase Tianyan lun as their textbook and to write compositions expanding on “natural selection” and “the survival of the fittest.” Although the students might not have a good understanding of Huxley’s contributions to scientific and intellectual history, what they learned was Yan Fu’s application of “the survival of the fittest” to international politics and the situation in China. In Self-Reckoning at Forty (Sishi zishu), published in 1933, Hu (2003(18): 58) wrote: A few years after the publication of Yan Fu’s translation of Evolution and Ethics, it became one of the best read books in the country, even among middle school students….After China’s repeated debacles, especially the humiliations suffered in 1900 and 1901, the notion of the survival of the fittest was indeed a stern alarm, giving most of the people in China the greatest shock. In a few years this term kindled the enthusiasm of many youngsters, much like wild fire. Terms such as “evolution” (tianyan), “competition” (wujing), “winnow out” (taotai) and “natural selection” (tianze) were commonly used in newspapers and became patriotic buzzwords…. In the one and a half years when I was in Chengzhong, I read several books outside the requirements of the school curriculum and among them was Yan Fu’s translation of On Liberty (Qunji quanjie lun), I think.

Hu Shi also related how parents jumped on the bandwagon of naming their children Tianze (Natural Selection) or Jingcun (Competing to Survive). “Even my own name is a souvenir of that time” (ibid). Yan Fu’s translation and synthesis of social Darwinism and evolutionary theory not only shaped the world outlook of New Culture leaders but also provided the conceptual basis for their understanding of modern values. In an article entitled “French People and Modern Civilization” (Falanxi ren yu jindai wenming), published in the first issue of Youth Magazine (Qingnian zazhi), which in 1916 was renamed New Youth (Xin qingnian), Chen Duxiu (in Ren et  al. (1), 1993: 131) extolled Darwinism as one of the three major features of modern civilization. He was ardently supportive of Yan Fu’s application of evolutionary theory to national regeneration, and set out to make “progress” (jinbu) and “enterprise” (jinqu) important notions for the May Fourth enlightenment. Chen (ibid: 277) wrote in 1917, “Ethics should change as society and times change. It is evolutionary and not immutable. This is precisely why old ethics is not applicable to today’s world.”

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Hu Shi made similar observations in his defense of New Literature. In his 1917 essay “Tentative Proposals for a Reform of Literature” (Wenxue gailiang chuyi), Hu (in Ouyang 1998(2): 7) averred, “Literature should change along with the times. Each historical period has literature of its own.… This is not my own observation; it is the universal truth of the evolution of civilization.” And he recalled in the early 1920s, “The most profound influence that I had at that time was what I often called ‘historical evolution of literature,’ which constituted the fundamental theory for my discourse on literary revolution” (ibid (9): 74). Jiang Menglin (1886–1964), eminent educator and writer, attributed the new trend of thought of the May Fourth period to an “evolutionary” attitude. He pointed out in a 1920 essay entitled “What Is New Thought” (Hewei xin sixiang), “I think the current ‘new thought’ refers to an attitude toward evolution. Because of evolution, we are bound to come across obstacles and inveterate habits. We should therefore ask what they signify and criticize them” (in Chen 1984b: 188–9). In his view, the evolutionary attitude entailed the advocacy of new thought, the eschewal of outdated modes of thinking and the reprehension of old traditions. He then commented on Hu Shi’s expounding of “critical attitude” in light of evolution. According to Hu (2003(1): 692–3), “the fundamental significance of a new trend of thought involves a new attitude, which can be called a ‘critical attitude.’”4 When Hu made these observations, he was emphasizing the conscious exercise of an individual’s free will and judgment, which Yan Fu elucidated by linking evolution to liberty. 3.1.1.2  Liang Qichao’s Influence on Hu Shi and Lu Xun For Liang Qichao (2002: 141), translation was “the first principle for strengthening the country” (qiangguo diyi yi).5 Liang’s essays on the importance of translation and his own translated works enjoyed a wide readership. The semi-vernacular language which Liang used to publish essays and translations in the popular periodicals was especially appealing to the young students studying in Western-style schools in China and overseas. In the early twentieth century, premodern literary Chinese, as adopted by Yan Fu and Lin Shu in their translations, was still the norm. Liang (1902) criticized Yan Fu’s translation style as being “too esoteric” (tai wu yuanya) and believed that as a tool for “disseminating civilized ideas among the Chinese nationals,” translation should be undertaken with a “fluent, sharp pen” (liuchang ruida zhi bi) so that even school children would “benefit from it” (shou qi yi). Liang Qichao’s new semi-­ vernacular style can be seen as setting the stage for the transformation of Chinese to a modern vernacular. Hu Shi (2003(1): 7), who claimed to have been immensely influenced by Liang Qichao’s style of translation and writing, averred in 1917 that modern vernacular was “a sharp weapon for literature of the future” (jianglai 4  Hu Shi made the remark in “The Meaning of the New Trend of Thought” (Xin sichao de yiyi), published in New Youth in December 1919. 5  Taken from Liang Qichao’s 1897 essay “On Translation” (Lun yishu).

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wenxue zhi liqi). He not only actively promoted modern vernacular but also used it in his translations. More of this will be discussed in Chap. 5. Hu Shi recalled in his diaries and memoirs how Liang’s essays and translations, which were lucid and filled with passion, held great power over the enchanted school children. He wrote in the 1933 autobiography Self-Reckoning at Forty (Sishi zishu) that Yan Fu translated foreign works in a writing style that was “too old and arcane” (tai guya) and that as a result Yan’s influence on the young people was not as great as Liang Qichao’s (Hu 2003(18): 58). According to Hu Shi (ibid: 59), Liang “piqued our curiosity by pointing to an unknown world for us to explore.” Among Liang Qichao’s writings, Hu Shi (ibid: 59–61) mentioned On the New Citizen (Xinmin shuo) in particular, noting that it “opened up a whole new world for me, convincing me of the existence of more advanced nations and cultures.” Encouraged by the vision of the “new world” that Liang Qichao “opened up,” the young Hu Shi went to study in America in 1910 and undertook translation activities with a view to introducing modern ideas from “more advanced nations and cultures.” Hu saw Liang’s promotion of new citizens as the transformation of the “old diseased Chinese nation” into a “fresh, vivacious” one. He noted that his rereading of Liang’s essays after an elapse of 25 years still enthralled him, “let alone an impressionable teenager” (ibid). In 1916, one year before Hu’s return from America, the debate over the pros and cons of the monarchy and the republic was in full swing in the political and intellectual realms in China. He contended that without certain prerequisites neither the monarchy nor the republic would save China. He therefore considered it paramount to provide the prerequisites or “to create new causes” (zao xinyin). The best way to create new causes, in Hu’s point of view, was the cultivation of people. In February 1929, Hu (ibid (31): 328) presented at Liang’s funeral an elegiac couplet he had composed. It read: “Revolution in China depended on his pen; He made it his lifelong goal to turn the Chinese into new citizens.” Liang Qichao’s introduction of modern ideas and his promotion of new citizen ideals via the translation of fiction also had an immense impact on other New Culture luminaries. Chen Duxiu (1993(1): 204) recollected in 1916: “When I was very young, … I read the essays written by Kang Youwei and his disciple Liang Qichao and started to appreciate the brilliance of political teachings and scholarship ….I am indebted to Kang and Liang for my knowledge of the world.” Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren were also avid readers of Liang Qichao’s works. Zhou Zuoren (2002b: 73) observed in 1956: “He infused his pen with such emotions that his writings had the effect of tugging at young people’s heartstrings.” Although Lu Xun did not openly admit his indebtedness to Liang Qichao, the latter’s influence on Lu Xun’s intellectual makeup was clearly expressed by his brother Zhou Zuoren (ibid), who recollected: “In 1903, Lu Xun sent me a parcel of books, which contained eight compilations of articles from Upright Discussions, three compilations of The New Citizen’s Gazette, and three compilations of New Fiction.” Zhou (ibid: 73 and 125) also wrote about Lu Xun’s interest in the translation of science fiction in the early 1900s, believing that it was the reading of Liang

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Qichao’s journal New Fiction and his essay “On the Relationship between Fiction and the Government of the People” that inspired Lu Xun. In 1903, Lu Xun completed his translation of From the Earth to the Moon. The foreword he wrote for the translation, as quoted in Chap. 1, imitated Liang Qichao’s tone in his emphasis of the social function of fiction. Students such as Hu Shi and Lu Xun thus discovered a wellspring of wisdom and passion in Liang Qichao’s translations and writings, which impacted fundamentally on their intellectual development. In the mid and late 1910s these New Culture avant-gardes followed Liang Qichao in making translation of foreign literary works a source of modern enlightenment. Their translation projects were accompanied by their promotion of the literary revolution and the baihuawen movement, and marked a significant change from the types of translation produced by Yan Fu and Liang Qichao. As Schwarcz (1986: 29) maintains, these builders of culture “bore upon their shoulders the hopes of those who had rebelled and failed before them.” To save the nation (jiuguo), they believed, they must first and foremost commit themselves to the salvation of mankind (jiuren). And while they shared Yan Fu’s and Liang Qichao’s self-improving and nation-building goals, these younger intellectuals now defended a critical-minded humanism, which was derived from authors such as Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), Anton Chekhov (1860–1904), Mikhail Artsbashev (1878–1927) and Kuriyagawa Hakuson (1880–1923). 3.1.1.3  The Influence of Lin Shu’s Translations on the Zhou Brothers Unlike Liang Qichao and Yan Fu, whose translations were driven by nationalistic motives throughout, Lin Shu’s initial intention of literary translation was more personal.6 Lin was most famous for his introduction of Western literature to a whole generation of Chinese readers, despite his ignorance of any foreign language. According to historian Xiao Yishan (1902–1978) (1980: 2035), Lin Shu translated around 175 titles (mostly novels) from about a dozen source countries (mainly Britain and France), amounting to ten million Chinese characters. Lin Shu’s translated fiction can be said to have accompanied the growth of the whole May Fourth generation and guided their acquisition of modern ideas in the process. Quite a number of leading May Fourth literary figures wrote about their

6  In Chinese scholarship, there is a popular account of how Lin Shu’s first translated work came about. In 1897, his wife died. Lin’s friends Wei Han and Wang Shouchang, in their attempt to assuage his bereavement, advised him to translate a foreign novel. Lin turned them down, apprehensive that he might not be capable of the work. His friends persisted and Wang Shouchang gave an oral interpretation of the French novel La Dame aux Camélias on their cruise along Gushan of Fujian Province. By the end of the journey Lin Shu had finished “translating” the novel. That was how the famous Bali chahuanü yishi came out. See, for example, A Critical Biography of Lin Shu (Lin Shu pingzhuan) (Zhang 2007).

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experiences of reading Lin’s translated novels in their youth.7 Zhou Zuoren (2002b) recollected in 1956 that he and Lu Xun became ardent readers of Lin Shu’s translation of La Dame aux Camélias (Bali chahuanü yishi) after Lu Xun bought a copy of the novel while a student in Nanjing. During their time in Japan, they would run up to the Chinese bookstore in Kanda, a district in Tokyo, to purchase Lin Shu’s translated novels as soon as they arrived. After reading, Lu Xun would take the books to a bookbinding shop and have them bound in hard covers, with the spine covered with greenish grey cloth (ibid: 74). Zhou Zuoren (ibid) also observed: Lin Shu’s translation of Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (Sakexun jiehou yingxiong lue) was what we “admired.” The original was a masterpiece and the translation had also been wonderfully done. Besides, it touched upon the conflict between the Saxons and the Normans, which struck at the time as having a hidden meaning. That was why we rated the book very highly ….Our favourite was Henry Rider Haggard’s Nada the Lily (Guishan langxia zhuan), in which the aborigine who called himself “the old hunter” was most vividly portrayed. In our casual conversations, we often mentioned that he was very much like the familiar heroes in the Chinese novel Outlaws of the Marsh (Shuihu zhuan), such as Lu Zhishen or Li Kui.

Zhou’s recollections convey a sense of the Zhou brothers’ fondness for Lin Shu’s translations as a powerful introduction to Western literature. The translated fiction that the Zhou brothers read avidly in Japan ranged from the English author Henry Haggard through the French short story writer Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893) to the Russian novelists Vsevolod Mikhailovich (1855–1888), Ivan Turgenev (1818– 1883) and Leonid Andreyev (1871–1919). Japanese scholar Uchida Michio (1916–2000) (2010: 206) pointed out: “Although Lin Shu’s translation methods were unique and the original works were not necessarily of the first rank, yet his introduction of Western fiction, being the most fundamental, enjoyed public acclaim and is of great significance in the history of China’s importation of West European culture.” Put differently, Lin Shu’s translated novels were in accord with the intellectual makeup of the young students and conformed to their “most fundamental” requirements for knowledge of Western literature and culture. His domesticated translation coincided with the young students’ established intellectual and psychological structures, leading to increased acceptance of his rewritings.8 In the early twentieth century, classical Chinese training still received 7  Guo Moruo (1892–1978) (1978: 113–4) observed that two of Lin Shu’s translated works that had exerted the most positive impact on his subsequent literary orientation were Joan Haste (Jiayin xiaozhuan) and Ivanhoe (Sakexun jiehou yingxiong lue), with the former being “the first Western novel I have ever read” and the latter “impressing me with its Romanticism.” Hu Shi (2003(32): 35) recalled that Lin Shu’s rewritings of European novels not only provided him with basic Western literary knowledge but also opened another window for him to gain a better understanding of the significance of such concepts as “the world,” “the mankind” and “humanism.” 8  Lin Shu himself took greater pride in his grasp of classical Chinese than in his translated literature. In the 1930s, Lin’s friend Chen Yan (1856–1937) expressed his puzzlement when he learned that it was Lin’s translations that first inspired the interest in Western literature of Qian Zhongshu (1910– 1998), a modern Chinese literary scholar. He said to Qian: “This is altogether reversed … After reading his translations, you should have picked up more classical Chinese from him. Why did you start to admire the foreign? Hasn’t Qinnan (Lin Shu) unexpectedly inclined you toward foreign literature [when he intended to develop your interest in classical Chinese]?” (in Qian 1994: 102).

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prominence despite the introduction to Western style education at many Chinese schools. It was even more so during the students’ early education at the end of the nineteenth century. Meanwhile, Lin’s translation spelled a tragic end. In the 1910s, it gradually fell by the wayside and was even used as a counterexample to the New Culture intellectuals’ construction of modern identity. An ongoing heated debate occurred over translation strategies between the translator Lin Shu, who achieved fame in the late 1890s, and New Youth intellectuals such as Qian Xuantong and Hu Shi, who rose to prominence in the late 1910s. The debate, which will be discussed in the next chapter, gives an indication of the determination of modern Chinese radicals to undercut the positions of their intellectual predecessors in order to draw public attention to their own writings.

3.1.2  Overseas Study Prominent translators such as Liang Qichao, Yan Fu and Lin Shu played an important role in shaping how students steeped in traditional Chinese learning came to understand Western ideas. In the 1900s, the surge of outbound studies exposed young students to foreign cultures and enabled them to acquire new knowledge from sciences, humanities and other modern disciplines. In A Compendium of New Chinese Literature: Index of Historical Material (Zhongguo xin wenxue daxi: Shiliao suoyin), the famous literary critic and Marxist theorist A Ying (Qian Xincun) (1900–1977) (1990: 209–28) compiled 142 biographical sketches of the May Fourth writers. Of these 87 (or more than 60%) had been educated overseas. Moreover, a large number of other writers who did not have brief biographies in the compendium had also studied abroad. These figures indicate the popularity of overseas study as an important means of modern knowledge acquisition at the beginning of the twentieth century. This outbound trend was in part due to the policies promulgated by the Qing government in favour of overseas study. It was also attributed to the superior social status of returned overseas students. Intellectuals who had studied abroad played an increasingly important role in China’s socio-political arena. “More than ninety percent of the teaching staff in the tertiary institutions had studied abroad. Returned overseas students were working in virtually all the important departments or enterprises throughout the country” (Shu 1926: 212). According to one study, in 1925, 32.71% of the graduates from America taught in universities, 15.41% became government officials and 22.09% were engaged in business (Wang 1966: 514). The occupational and economic incentives point to a renewed understanding and recognition of Western learning. Whereas the lure of overseas qualifications, which was conducive to the enhancement of career prospects, was an important reason for the popularity of international education, the eagerness of Chinese students to acquire Western knowledge for the purpose of national salvation and regeneration also constituted a significant motivation factor. The following paragraph from Overseas Students Yearbook (Liuxuesheng jian), a reference book published by

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Chinese students in Japan at the beginning of the twentieth century, stated the motives of their overseas study this way: Riding winds and waves, we left our homeland and traveled long distances to pursue our study …. Why? When asked about their aspirations, thousands of overseas students invariably gave the same answer: it is because of the incompetence of the Qing court, the languor of [Chinese] scholarship, the corruption of [Chinese] society …. We would give up our current comfort and pleasure to concentrate on our study in pursuit of permanent well-being in the future. (in Li 1997: 50)

The implication in the final sentence was the “permanent well-being” of China. The majority of Chinese students saw their overseas study as having both personal and collective significance. The quoted statement reveals a clear sense of national mission. In the 1900s Japan was by far the most popular country for overseas education. Li Xisuo (2007) estimates a total number of about 34,000 Chinese students studying in Japan between 1900 and 1907 while Saneto Keishu (1983: 451) believes the number to stand at 26,000 between 1901 and 1909. In Chinese scholarship, there is a common view that during the mass exodus of the 1890s and 1900s, Chinese students in America were more “serious” about their study (e.g. Li and Chen 1996; Li Xisuo 2006; Wang Qisheng 1992). Nonetheless, many students in Japan were immensely influenced by the reading and translation of Japanese works, whether originally written in Japanese or translated from Western languages. These works played a significant role in shaping their intellectual thinking and literary tastes. Lu Xun (1981(10): 155), who studied in Japan between 1902 and 1909, wrote in 1909: Since new foreign scholarship has started to find its way into Chinese, intellectuals are no longer restrained by conventions. They invariably absorb the quintessence of it to develop their own thinking. A tiny drop of the huge wave as it may be, intellectual development consists in this. Because of this, the world of translation in China is no longer falling behind the times.

Longing for advanced knowledge and for ways to curb China’s problems thus provided impetus to overseas study. These aspirations also reflected the style of Yan Fu’s and Liang Qichao’s accounts of the importance of Western ideas, as discussed in Chap. 2. Geographical, linguistic and cultural proximity were key reasons that brought thousands of young Chinese to Japan. On the other hand, the smaller number of students who went to America and Europe learned Western ideas in a Western cultural and socio-political setting. Between 1896 and 1911, a total number of 558 Chinese students studied at American universities (Chen and Tian 1991: 686–7), and between 1908 and 1910, the number of Chinese students studying in Europe was about 500, the majority of them being in France and Britain (Wang 1980: 612, 640). The early and mid-1910s were when Hu Shi studied in the United States. This was a time of rapid industrial and urban growth in North America. Hu Shi wrote of the lasting impression American society made on him many times in his diaries. As

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Grieder (2000: 43) argues, the American experience “in some respects established the standards against which he was to judge Chinese political and social conditions after his return in 1917.” The American influence on Hu Shi was comprehensive – he admitted all aspects of American life, whether it be political, philosophical, historical or literary. For instance, scholars have established a connection between American imagism and Hu Shi’s promotion of New Literature (e.g. Huang 1997; Heaton 2012; Shih 2001). The observations made by Hu Shi’s friend, the literary scholar Liang Shiqiu (1903– 1987) (1988: 8) are helpful in understanding the extent to which Chinese students modelled their views on their preferred foreign ideas: Nearly all the advocates of modern Chinese vernacular (baihua) in recent years are graduates from other countries. They have been exposed to foreign languages to the extent that they are keenly aware of the similarity between the spoken and written forms of these languages as opposed to the vast difference between the spoken and written forms of the Chinese language. Meanwhile, the foreign countries are at the stage of literary innovation. For example, in America and Britain a number of poets have formed a coterie and called themselves “impressionists”….Their sole characteristic is the avoidance of the use of the outmoded language and of the expression of old ideas. In my opinion, when impressionism was in its heyday in America ten years ago, Chinese students studying there could not but be influenced by it. A detailed study of the impressionists’ tenets reveals their almost item-­ by-­item congruence with those of the advocates of modern Chinese vernacular. Therefore, I believe that the modern vernacular movement resulted from foreign influences.

As Liang was a former Harvard University student, his observations reflected the views of a highly privileged group even among May Fourth intellectuals. During their overseas study, Chinese students were led to reevaluate Chinese culture from a Western academic perspective. In 1913 Hu Shi (2003(20): 8) presented cultural translation in heroic language as the responsibility of returned overseas students: The gap between the new and old civilizations is as untraversable as the wide seas. Overseas study serves as a ferry while overseas students are like ferrymen. Riding the wind, they set sail to foreign land. Once there, they gather miraculous medicine from mountains and spare no effort in their search for the cure for their national problems. They then return full sail with all their treasures. They take it upon themselves to spray the precious dews and plant glossy ganoderma all over their home country. They endeavour to make up for the country’s deficiencies by assimilating other countries’ strengths in the hope of regenerating ancient Chinese civilization to create a new civilization – a mixture of the old and the new – in China.

Close contact with Western ideas and institutions thus expanded the students’ vision, enabling them to examine the Chinese culture from a renewed vantage point. Although the young students were criticized by several of their contemporaries for being biased in their judgment and evaluation,9 they saw themselves as c­ osmopolitan. Their international education, as Grieder (1970: 43) puts it, 9  In the early twentieth century, there were criticisms regarding their way of looking at the Chinese culture. “They tend to view favourably what is foreign, no matter whether it is right or wrong and disregard whatever is in their home country. They fear they don’t look like foreigners when mimicking them” (in Wang Qisheng 1992: 246).

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“provided [them] with the framework around which to construct [their] own detached and ‘cosmopolitan’ view of the conflict between Eastern and Western cultural values.”

3.2  Translation as a Precursor to New Culture As previously noted, those who were later to become leading May Fourth intellectual reformers benefited immensely as adolescents or young adults from reading late Qing translations of Western works. In the New Culture Movement of the 1910s and 1920s, nation-saving and self-transforming goals still prevailed, albeit with constantly evolving arguments about the necessity for significant social change. Other norms of translation, such as textual selections and translation approaches (including the rapid adoption of a direct translation strategy and the experimental modern Chinese vernacular as the language of translation), were diametrically different from late Qing translations produced by prominent translators such as Yan Fu, Liang Qichao and Lin Shu. This section discusses the works that Chen Duxiu, Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren and Hu Shi, as students, translated in the 1900s, predating their proposals about “New Culture” in the mid and late 1910s. The majority of works they chose to translate reflected their revolutionary, patriotic passion for the eradication of old morals. Several of their other translations indicated a concern with liberal, humanistic values of universal significance. Their translation choices, together with the ideas they expressed in their writings about translation, not only provided the framework of the “New Culture” they sought to promote but also guided literary practices in modern Chinese. In this process the translators often drew attention to how they themselves were transformed by the works they translated. In this regard, they echoed but demonstrated a certain degree of transcendence over pioneering translators such as Yan Fu and Liang Qichao. Chen Duxiu’s intellectual development is a case in point. Much has been written about the enormous influence on Chen Duxiu of the French Revolution and the French culture (e.g. Haugen 2006; Lee 1983; Chen 1979). In fact, Chen’s French attachment started in the early 1900s. While a student in Japan in 1901, he became fascinated with Western civilization. He read avidly, in translation or in English and French, important philosophical works such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s (1712– 1778) The Social Contract (Du Contrat Social), John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty and Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws. In 1903, Chen Duxiu and his friends coedited a short-lived newspaper, The National Daily (Guomin riribao), through which they aired their democratic views. Chen’s critiques of China were harsh and strikingly uncompromising, even hyperbolic. Of all the 29 articles collected in The National Daily, Chen’s essay “On Slavery” (Jian nuli) was the longest. At the outset, Chen (in Zhang and Wang 1960: 702) brought “citizens” (guomin) in sharp contrast with “slaves” (nuli):

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3  Making a “New Culture” Through Translation Slaves are the opposites of citizens. The nation comprises either citizens or slaves. Nothing exists in between – there are no such people as a combination of citizens and slaves….

Chen (ibid) went on to contrast advanced Western countries with China from a historical evolutionary point of view: History ought to be evolutionary and is meant to elevate the nationals. However, our country is different. Its history serves as the raft on which dictators carry slaves….Our current history is manipulated by dictators who circumscribe the slaves’ activities by setting a number of rules….

Chen pointed out that the solution to the problem could be found in Rousseau’s The Social Contract. He quoted Rousseau as saying: “A contract binds two parties. Slaves are in no position to argue. They can do nothing but be driven around” (ibid: 703). And he was convinced that “the fight for freedom and the proclamation of independence in Britain and France” should be a wakeup call for China, which was “thousands of kilometers” from Western civilization (ibid: 712). The French Revolution and Rousseau’s advocacy of democracy and liberty thus served as important references for Chen Duxiu in his understanding of the socio-­ political and cultural problems in China. He became an enthusiastic translator of French literature and in so doing established his own French-inspired understanding of cultural values and national identity. Chen Duxiu’s evolutionary and revolutionary views were further developed and expressed in Can Shijie, a Chinese version of the French writer Victor Hugo’s (1802–1885) Les Misérables (The Miserable Ones), co-translated by Su Manshu (1884–1918) and Chen Duxiu.10 Many Chinese scholars note that Chen Duxiu was as responsible for the creative rewriting of the novel as Su Manshu, based on previous studies of the Chinese version of the novel. For instance, Hong Kong-based scholar Chen Wanxiong (1979: 12) quotes Zhang Shizhao (1881–1973) as saying: “Chen would work together with Su Zigu (Manshu) in Xiangshan on the translation of Hugo’s novel and portray the dire conditions of mankind. They titled it Can Shijie, sharing the same political viewpoint [with the original author].” Chen Wanxiong (ibid: 13) goes on to assert: “In the translation of Les Misérables, Chen Duxiu did more than add finishing touches and write the last three chapters. He was involved in plotting out ideas and did a fairly large part of the writing.” Chinese scholar Wang Xiaoyuan (2010: 164) has indicated that up to two thirds of The Miserable World (Can Shijie) is Su’s and Chen’s creative writing, the corresponding part being non-existent in Hugo’s original. It is in the “creative” part that Su and Chen’s real purpose lies (Yang 1995; Wang 2010). As such, the translators’ subjective views were significantly imposed on the original work, and masquerading as a translated work, The Miserable World enabled Chen Duxiu and his co-­ author Su Manshu to give their readers the false impression that they were merely presenting someone else’s words. Late Qing translators such as Yan Fu had set the  The first ten chapters and the first part of Chap. 11 of the novel first appeared in installments in The National Daily in 1903. The complete “translation” of the novel, entitled Can Shijie, which literally means “the miserable world,” was published by Jingjing Press the following year.

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precedent for highly interpretive translations. The blatant rewriting of Su Manshu and Chen Duxiu has led Wang Xiaoyuan (2010: 156) to suggest in his study of The Miserable World that it be considered a pseudotranslation. However, if Wang is using Gideon Toury’s term, he is using it inaccurately. Toury (1995: 40) defines pseudotranslations as “texts which have been presented as translation with no corresponding source texts in other languages ever having existed – hence no factual ‘transfer operations’ and translation relationships.” It would be better, therefore, to understand The Miserable World as an adaptive or creative translation. Su and Chen created a hero with the surname Ming, the first name Bai and the style name Nande,11 a chivalrous, knightly man who clung to the belief that “We should conduct ourselves and do everything according to the moral Way, regardless of social ranking” (ibid: 140). He exclaimed after a narrow escape from death: “This is by no means strange. In this miserable world, isn’t everybody as mean as Valjean? I don’t think there’s any other way out of it than to destroy this rotten old world and create a world of equality by harsh means.” He then drew out his sharp sword and said: “It is on you that I’ve pinned my hopes of benevolence and morality. How can I not preserve you well?” After these words, he put the sword back in his bag (ibid: 144). Nande’s propensity for assassination is further revealed in these remarks: Notwithstanding your vindictiveness upon your father’s death, you should, as I see it, do well to organize an army, pick out those bad officials from the government and wipe them out, now that you are ready to risk your own life to revenge your father. That way, not only have you achieved your own purpose of revenge, but you have also pacified popular resentment for the nation. (ibid: 180)

Later, when Kede told Nande that President Napoleon was on his way to becoming a tyrant, following in the footsteps of Louis XIV and Louis XVI, Nande “flew into a fury and acted on the spur of the moment.” Taking a bomb with him, he went to assassinate the president and being unsuccessful in his attempt, he shot himself. A strong tinge of revolutionary radicalism pervades this episode that Su Manshu and Chen Duxiu “translated.” Su was an adherent of radical anarchism, and was involved in revolutionary activities against the Qing court and Yuan Shikai (1859– 1916). He died at the age of 34, reputedly of gluttony, in 1918. In the 1910s, along with his vehement attack on Confucian moralism, Chen ardently upheld modern values of liberty, equality and human rights, which he called the “spirit of constitutional politics” (in Gu 2001: 593). In the 1915 essay “The French and the Modern Civilization” (Falanxiren yu jindai wenming), he called for the importation of the “doctrine of independence, equality, and human rights” and pointed out that the Chinese people had to uproot “the foundations of our country’s ethics and politics” in order to have a genuine republican revolution (ibid). The Miserable World also embodied Chen’s evolutionary and revolutionary outlook. He used the novel to highlight traditional China as culturally backward. 11

 Mingbai nande literally means “sensible and rare” in Chinese.

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Meanwhile, his understanding of the evolution theory led him to see revolution as the only means of ensuring a better future for China. He wrote in 1916: “Only revolution can make evolution possible; where there is evolution, revolution is necessary” (in Ren et al. 1993: 182). In this regard, Chen’s advocacy of revolutionary measures for the realization of his imagined ideals in The Miserable World seemed to foreshadow his conversion to revolutionary Marxism-Leninism around 1920.12 In the projection of his subjectivity and the articulation of his political ambitions, Chen Duxiu was blatantly unfaithful in his translation of Hugo’s original writing.13 Nonetheless, and arguably because of this, The Miserable World was favourably received among progressive students and intellectuals of the time. Although Hu Shi, 12 years Chen’s junior, was not as creative as Su Manshu and Chen Duxiu in his translation of foreign works, he also had no compunction about changing the original text with the aim of appealing to the preferences of his Chinese readers, and his manipulated translations became quite a hit among Chinese students.14 In 1906, the then 15-year-old Hu Shi published in Struggle Trimonthly (Jingye xunbao) his first translated story, which he entitled “The Sinking of the Warship Baokan” (Baokan haijian zhi chenmo). He enunciated his motive of translation clearly in the preface: A weakness characteristic of the Chinese is their tendency to care about themselves without regard for others …. In the wrecking of the ship Yuanhe, which happened last year, and this year’s wrecking of Hankou, all the crew and passengers ran for their lives, leaving the poor, helpless women and children stranded amid thousands of people …. Almost all of them were devoured in flames or drowned in the water. Alas! How pitiable! I was exasperated upon hearing these two accidents. I later came across a story when reading foreign books. I think this can serve as an excellent example for us Chinese and have therefore translated this story for all of us to read. (2003(42): 449)

The sinking of the Chinese ships Yuanhe and Hankou thus stimulated Hu’s thinking about his countrymen. In contrast to the Chinese men running for their own lives in the face of grave danger, the soldiers on board the warship in Hu’s translated story were more respectable: In an orderly manner they lined up on the ship as if on the drill ground, so that the seamen could put all the women and children on the skiff …. No sooner had the women and children left the ship, it was under water and sank; the soldiers sank with it. They sacrificed themselves to save the lives of all the women and children on the ship. Their most h­ onourable and respectable reputation will be indelible despite the passage of time. Alas! How respectable! (ibid: 450)

What struck Hu Shi were the humanistic moral values portrayed in the story, which he highlighted by quoting Rousseau’s statement at the end of the translation: “Our  Chen Duxiu’s political beliefs are often considered to be complex. See, for instance, Tai (2007).  A Chinese scholar calls in question the literary merit of Can Shijie, believing it can only be regarded as a piece of creative work written by a fledgling youngster who disfigured his characters in the novel because of their drastic legendry. See Yang (1986). 14  See, for example, Mu Mutian’s (1900–1971) 1985 essay “My  Recollections  of May Fourth” (Guanyu wusi geren de huiyi). 12 13

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country cannot exist without freedom. It cannot exist if freedom does not involve morality.” Hu Shi’s translation in Struggle Trimonthly is reflective of his preliminary probe into humanism and of his fledgling attempt at assimilating Western ideas into the Chinese culture, following in the footsteps of his late-Qing predecessors. It was patriotic feelings that inspired the young Hu Shi’s translation practice. Hu’s patriotism, so clearly expressed at the beginning of his overseas study, reveals the high degree of political awareness among educated Chinese adolescents in the 1900s. He noted in a diary entry, written on 24 March 1911, that his nationalistic concerns had kept him “contemplating during the day and sleep-talking at night” (Hu 2003(27): 123). He claimed in the diary that patriotism was “simply natural” for “people equipped with some knowledge.” He went on to propose “the establishment of a department of correspondence, which is responsible for the translation of negative observations made about our country in British and American newspapers.” In Hu’s opinion, these depreciative comments “should be published in the periodicals in China to raise national awareness and hopefully to eliminate feuds between political factions.” From his diary entries and early publications, we can see how it had become an altogether common expectation of educated persons to link civic responsibilities to nation building. Hu’s patriotism is also clearly evident in his translation of French novelist Alphonse Daudet’s (1840–1897) “La Dernière Classe,” or “The Last Lesson.” The story is set around the year 1870, when the Prussian forces attacked and captured France. The new Prussian rulers terminated the teaching of French in the schools of Alsace and Lorraine. The French teachers were asked to leave. The story describes the last day of one French lesson. In the story Daudet shows the change in France’s fortunes through the eyes of a young boy by the name of Franz. Obviously the realism and sentiment embedded in the story was what appealed to Hu Shi. His translation first appeared in The Republic Daily (Da gonghe ribao) in 1912. He chose to entitle it “Gedi” (Land Cession) in Chinese, instead of “Zuihou yike” (The Last Lesson), which was commonly adopted by subsequent translators of the same French story. “Land Cession” conveyed Hu Shi’s concern about the impending cession of China’s land and about the future of the vulnerable people. Hu’s intention was to arouse public concern over the nation’s fate through his translation, as he stated in the preamble: “The story portrays the tragedy of land cession in the language of a schoolboy, in order to instigate patriotism among the French people” (ibid (42): 301). With equal patriotic passion, Hu Shi published his translation of another Daudet’s story “The Siege of Berlin” in 1914. He stated in the preface: The story tells about a besieged city and portrays the powerful heyday of Napoleon. Historical vicissitudes should pacify the French people who have recently suffered a great loss and rekindle their patriotic enthusiasm. (ibid: 306)

It was obvious that at the beginning of his overseas study Hu Shi accorded greater importance to his own country in his consideration of national and global issues. He was inspired to “render service to [my] country by writing one or two articles” (ibid

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(23): 79).15 Meanwhile, his reading of Western works prompted him to contemplate the reconstitution of the Chinese identity and extend his patriotic concerns to a reconsideration of how individuals should relate to their own nations and the world. He first expressed his new intellectual outlook in a diary entry he wrote in April 1913, saying that his perception of cosmopolitanism was a conglomerate of patriotism and humanism (ibid (27): 239–40). He equated the parochial view of keeping one’s vision within the shoreline of a country to suicide and believed that intellectuals ought to elevate their patriotism to “cosmopolitan nationalism” (shijie de ­guojiazhuyi). During the New Culture Movement, Hu Shi further developed his intellectual vision and modern identity. This will be examined in Chap. 5. In their early translation forays, both Chen Duxiu and Hu Shi followed the free translation (yiyi) trend of the late Qing. Lu Xun and his brother Zhou Zuoren adopted the same strategy during much of the 1900s, but employed the literal or direct translation (zhiyi) in their translation of the 1909 Collection of Short Stories from Abroad (Yuwai xiaoshuoji), which was distinctively unpopular at the time. In their writings and translations, the Zhou brothers used either premodern Chinese (wenyan) or preclassical Chinese (guwen), in which they had been masterfully trained. They had no intention of translating in modern vernacular (baihua) even in Collection of Short Stories from Abroad.16 It was not until 1918 that they published their works in baihua. In that year, Lu Xun published his first baihua story “A Madman’s Diary” (Kuangren riji) and Zhou Zuoren produced his translation of Theocritus’s “Idyll X” (Gushi jinyi), which Zhou (2002a: 383) himself claimed to be his “first modern vernacular work” (diyipian baihuawen). Lu Xun went to Japan in 1902. Not long afterwards, he was enrolled in Sendai Medical Academy, but discontinued his medical study two  years later to devote himself entirely to literature. As mentioned earlier, Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren were avid readers of late Qing translations and were inspired to translate a number of foreign novels during their study in Japan. In the early 1900s, their translation practice, like Liang Qichao’s, was focused on science fiction and adventure novels. The year 1903 saw the publication of four of Lu Xun’s translations. They were “Ai chen,”17 “Sibada zhi hun” (The Soul of Sparta),18 Yuejie lüxing and Didi lüxing – the last two were based on Japanese translations of the novels by French writer Jules Verne, namely, From the Earth to the Moon and A Journey to the Centre of the

 Taken from Hu Shi’s letter to his mother, written on 22 March 1915.  Lu Xun (1981(13): 473) recollected in 1932 that in the late 1900s Lin Shu’s use of the classical language in his translation of foreign fiction was “very good indeed.” It was Lin’s many mistranslations that displeased the Zhou brothers, who eventually decided to carry out their own translation project in order to “set things right” (jiayi jiuzheng) (ibid). 17  Lu Xun translated the short biographical piece, which was a restrained protest against official injustice, through the intermediary of Japanese. In the postscript to his translation, Lu Xun (1981(10: 437) attributed the original to Victor Hugo. According to James Pusey (1998: 13), however, it was actually written by Hugo’s wife. 18  This is considered a pseudotranslation as Lu Xun failed to remember the origin of the source text. Scholars have tried in vain to locate the original. See, for example, Wong (1999). 15 16

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Earth. Two years later, Lu Xun translated another science fiction story “The Technique for Creating Humans” (Zaoren shu). After reading Lin Shu’s translation of Cleopatra (Aiji jinta poushi ji, or literally, Autopsy at an Egyptian Pyramid), the Zhou brothers were motivated to translate Henry Haggard’s fiction. They chose the classic fantasy novel The World’s Desire and titled it Hongxing yishi in Chinese (An Unorthodox History of a Red Star). Zhitang (Zhou Zuoren) translated the novel from the English version. The twenty-­ odd poems in the book were dictated by Zhou Zuoren while Lu Xun rendered them in classical Chinese, drawing on the style of the ancient work Songs of the South (Chu Ci). The translation was published by Shanghai Commercial Press in 1907 (Zhou 2002a). The World’s Desire, jointly written by Haggard and Andrew Lang (1844–1912), British mythologist and anthropologist, is a good blend of legends and myths, of Haggard’s unique descriptive writing style and Lang’s mythical imagination. While both writers appealed to the young Zhou Zuoren, he seemed to favour Lang more. He recollected in Memoirs of Zhitang (Zhitang huixianglu): My translation of the book was because of the two authors. One of them was Haggard while the other was Andrew Lang … Lang was not a novelist but a talented essayist, well known for his erudition on mythology and for his works on Greek literature. This was precisely what interested me, as The World’s Desire was about Ancient Greece. (ibid: 243)

Ancient Greece for Zhou was the birthplace of Western culture, and of freedom and humanity, which he saw as reflected in Greek myths. Zhou (2001: 56) maintained in The Literary History of Europe (Ouzhou wenxue shi), written in 1917, “The beauty and richness in Greek mythology are nonpareil. Its uniqueness lies in its anthropomorphism.” Undoubtedly, Andrew Lang’s anthropological approach to mythology provided great impetus to Zhou Zuoren’s fondness for humanist individualism.19 In the summer of 1907, the Zhou brothers decided to collaborate with Xu Shoushang (1883–1948) on the publication of the literary journal New Life (Xinsheng). Despite the effort the Zhou brothers put into the preparation of the journal, they failed to get it published as planned, largely due to lack of financial support (Lu 2009: 3).20 The failure to launch New Life saddened the Zhou brothers, but they were unfaltering in their determination to import new ideas from foreign literary works. In 1909, the Zhou brothers’ Collection of Short Stories from Abroad was published in two volumes in Tokyo. Of the 16 stories in the collection, Lu Xun was responsible for the translation of three while the rest were done by Zhou Zuoren. Some of the writers of these stories were from Western countries, such as Britain, America and France, while the rest of the authors were from what they called the

 Zhou Zuoren (2005: 16) claimed in his 1944 essay “My Miscellaneous Learning” (Wo de zaxue): “Andrew Lang’s anthropological explications have helped me gain understanding not only of mythology and other related stories but also of cultural anthropology….The little interest I have in anthropology stems not from the study of it as a subject but from [its emphasis on] human beings.” 20  See Lu Xun’s preface to Call to Arms (Nahan). 19

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“small and weak nations” (ruoxiao minzu) or the “humiliated and oppressed/injured nations” (bei wuru he bei yapo/sunhai minzu), such as Poland, Finland and Russia.21 Of the stories in the anthology, about 60% were written by Russian authors. The brothers derived their preference for Russian writers from the humanism they perceived as abounding in Russian literature,22 which Zhou Zuoren (1920: 180) regarded as “distinctive from other countries.” Zhou noted that the other stories in the anthology were also “replete with humanism.” The translation was based on the English version of the stories. Of the three translations that Lu Xun did, two stories, namely, “The Lie” (Man) and “Silence” (Mo), were originally written by Russian writer Leonid Andreyev (1871–1919). Andreyev’s works revolved around humanitarian themes and incorporated elements of realism, naturalism and symbolism. According to Mau-sang Ng (1988: 75), May Fourth intellectual leaders were “especially captivated” by the “vividness with which [Andreyev] depicted Russian reality” and his “compassionate spirit towards the weak and the suffering.” Among May Fourth intellectuals, Zheng Zhenduo’s (1898–1958) (1924: 132) comments about Andreyev remain frequently quoted in Chinese language scholarship: “[Andreyev’s works] enable us to see the light of humanism in the grave tragedies in life and to hear the sound of humanism from the reverse side and the negative aspect. Therefore, they are most intense, most poignant, and profoundly touching.” Andreyev’s two stories in the Collection of Short Stories from Abroad give a graphic portrayal of the mental throes and spiritual anguish of the protagonists, whose lives are troubled by the deception of others (as in “The Lie”) and loneliness (as in “Silence”). The alienation, restlessness, and ache of the soul are reminiscent of the protagonists in Lu Xun’s own stories written during the May Fourth period, such as the madman in “A Madman’s Diary” (Kuangren riji), the first story in Lu Xun’s vernacular short story collection Call to Arms (Nahan). The last paragraph of “Silence” reads: “He looked around and it was silent …. And the silence reigned over the solitary and bleak house” (Lu and Zhou 2006: 117). The story thus reveals how solitude and reticence became aspects of ego-­ formation in the sufferers. According to Lu Xun, it was the depiction of interpersonal estrangement and other human frailties that inspired his translation of  Zhou Zuoren (1995: 272) explained in an essay “The Literature of Small and Weak Nations” (Ruoxiao minzu wenxue) why Russia fell under the brothers’ category of the “humiliated and oppressed/injured” nations: “Russia is not small or weak, but the people there are oppressed. Therefore, we have chosen to include it in the category. It might be more appropriate to call them nations where oppression is resisted and freedom is sought.” 22  During the May Fourth period, Russian novels and short stories were still favoured by the Zhou brothers in their choice of source texts for translation. Lu Xun (1981(4): 253) claimed in a 1932 essay that 15 years earlier the literature of Russia, seen as a half-civilized country by the so-called civilized people in West Europe, had been triumphant in literary circles of the world. He wrote: “When I say ‘triumphant,’ I refer to the fact that it enjoyed a wide readership, with its remarkableness in content and technique, and that its readers derived substantial benefits from it. We were aware at that time that Russian literature was our guide and friend, as it enabled us to see the kind soul, sufferings and struggles of the oppressed …. Literature brought home to us the existence of two types of people in this world, that is, the oppressors and the oppressed.” 21

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Andreyev, as well as Andreyev’s focus on human suffering. Lu Xun (ibid: 175) wrote in the “Translators’ Notes” (Zhuzhe shi lue) of the anthology: “It is not impossible that the protagonist [of ‘The Lie’] regards life as a big lie or that the author thinks so. In ‘Silence,’ the author may wish to express the idea that the power of silence is greater than that of speech …. The reticence of the living is different from dead silence, but nonetheless more appalling.” For Lu Xun, both lying and reticence constituted negative human traits. The negativity of dishonesty, nonchalance, unquestioning submission and the suppression of the individual voice was what intellectuals like Lu Xun sought to eradicate and to replace with the positive qualities of sincerity, compassion, self-assertion and a rebellious spirit. Since the 1900s, general silence or the lack of assertive voices (fasheng) in China became one of Lu Xun’s major preoccupations and led to his translation of more Russian stories featuring Nietzsche’s “warrior spirit.” As noted previously, Lu Xun’s propounding of human selection (renze) in his 1907 essay “History of Humanity” reflects his unique understanding of Yan Fu’s translations. It should also be understood as a consequence of Lu Xun’s concern with human individuals. Lu Xun presented an individualism which was in opposition to the materialist tendency or the force that evolutionary theory granted to matter. Although Yan Fu recognized the important role an individual played in history, his translations projected an evolutionism which subjected the individual to the cosmic force and the nationalistic cause. In the 1907 essay “The Power of Mara Poetry” (Moluo shili shuo), Lu Xun (1981(1): 98–100) called on the Chinese to become “warriors of the spirit” (jingshen jie zhi zhanshi). He maintained that national salvation and the transformation of national character could only be achieved by “seeking new voices in foreign cultures” (bie qiu xin sheng yu yibang) (ibid: 65). In this connection, Lu Xun’s early translation practice may well be seen as a manifestation of his cultural determinism23 and the prelude to his subsequent “calls to arms.” In Collection of Short Stories from Abroad, “The Happy Prince” is a fairy tale written by Irish writer and playwright Oscar Wilde (1854–1900). In 1920, Zhou Zuoren explained his preference for Wilde’s stories in the “Brief Descriptions of the Authors” (Zhuzhe shi lue) of the republished anthology as follows: Wilde adheres to aestheticism and advocates the artistry of life …. He has published two collections of fairy tales, one entitled A House of Pomegranates and the other The Happy Prince and Other Tales. The nine stories in these two collections are beautifully written with a touch of irony. “Anle wangzi,” which has been translated from the first story of the second collection, is representative of [Wilde’s] humanist inclinations in the stories. (Lu and Zhou 2006: 170)

 Davies (2007: 203) quotes Shanghai-based Chinese historian Zhu Xueqin as asserting that when Lu Xun regarded China’s basic problem as one of national character, and sought to change the national character, he enlisted a form of cultural determinism to address what should have been specifically circumscribed instead as issues of institutional reform, adjustment, and innovation. Zhu also argues that both Lu Xun and Hu Shi were following in Liang Qichao’s footsteps when they explained China’s problems in totalizing culturalistic terms.

23

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In his translation of “The Happy Prince” (Anle wangzi), Zhou Zuoren sought to faithfully represent the theme of humanistic compassion by adhering verbatim to the original text; yet his use of abstruse classical Chinese in his translation turned the fairy tale into a text intended for adult readers rather than for children. Zhou (1998: 61) expounded in 1922 that Wilde’s fairy tales were more like poetry than children’s literature. Citing Archibald Henderson (1877–1963), he regarded A House of Pomegranates and The Happy Prince and Other Tales as “fanciful Marchen shot through with a sensitive and beautiful social pity, like embroidered, jewelled fabrics firmly filiated with a crimson thread” (Henderson 1911: 63; Zhou 1998: 60–1). Wilde’s aesthetic depiction provided a balance of the rational and the emotional. In fact, the use of artistic methods to express individual feelings and to elicit “a sensitive and beautiful social pity” was what Zhou Zuoren started to espouse as a way of constructing the individual and affirming the individual’s importance. The translation of such stories as “The Happy Prince” marked Zhou’s development of rationalism in terms of a humanistic and compassionate understanding of the world, and this was an early sign of his broad intellectual vision beyond the type of ideal modern citizenship being promoted in progressive writings, such as those produced Liang Qichao. The writer with the largest number of stories included in the Zhou brothers’ collection is Polish Nobel Prize-winning novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846–1916). Sienkiewicz was in opposition to the fiery patriotism of the preceding generation of romantic writers, and his works were marked by clarity of exposition and infused with rational, humanistic protest against social injustice. “Yanko the Musician” relates the story of a poor, frail and mentally handicapped boy who has a natural ear for music. He is always listening, for music in the forest, in the fields, in the wind, for music played by nature. However, his illusion is unwelcome to people around him. Whenever he hears a fiddle at a harvest home or a wedding, it is a great holiday for him. After that he goes behind the stove and says nothing for whole days. He then makes himself a fiddle out of a shingle and some horsehair. In times of famine, raw carrots and the self-made fiddle are what the weak child resorts to for survival and solace. Out of admiration, Yanko sneaks into a neighbour’s house on a moonlit night in an attempt to take a close look at a proper fiddle. He is then given a relentless beating and dies soon afterwards. The figure of the musician serves to expose problematic aspects of human emancipation and his demise reveals how cruel realities may destroy what is beautiful in human life. Zhou Zuoren observed in the “Brief Descriptions of the Authors” of Collection of Short Stories from Abroad that the sad story Yanko the Musician was an immediate success upon publication in Poland, where readers bemoaned the tragic death of the poor music lover (Lu and Zhou 2006: 176). Zhou greatly admired Sienkiewicz’s depiction of the individual as an existential self. In the preface to the reprint edition of Collection of Short Stories from Abroad, written in 1920, Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren expressed their displeasure at a subsequent Chinese translation of the story, which virtually copied Zhou Zuoren’s own translation but which bore the caption “Funny Story” (Huaji xiaoshuo). Lu Xun

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(ibid: 3) claimed: “It has left me feeling a painful void inside. I am amazed at how people’s feelings may differ in this world.”24 To Zhou Zuoren, the dramatic force in the portrayal of the life of the music-loving boy was such that the brutality of reality and the deplorable, dark side of human nature were vividly conveyed. Despite the beauty of Sienkiewicz’s depiction, a vigorous and intense realism emanated from the story. This was constitutive of what Zhou Zuoren called “idealist realism” (lixiang de xieshi zhuyi), which he subsumed under “human literature” (ren de wenxue) in the late 1910s. What Zhou sought to do with the translation of “Yanko the Musician” was to highlight the image of the “insulted and injured” in order to cultivate the reader’s sympathetic understanding. This resonated with his brother Lu Xun’s abiding commitment to representing the oppressed in society. In the 1933 essay “How Did I Start Writing Stories?” (Wo zenme zuoqi xiaoshuo lai), Lu Xun (1981(4): 511) claimed that he still cleaved to the notion of “enlightenment” (qimeng zhuyi) and “life improvement” (gailiang rensheng) that he had held more than ten years back. “I detest calling novels and short stories books for killing time only .… Therefore, I get ideas for my works from the underprivileged people in this morbid society, with the intention of unveiling their sufferings and soliciting solutions” (ibid). Despite their good intentions, Collection of Short Stories from Abroad failed to appeal to Chinese readers. After its publication in 1909, only 21 copies of the first volume and 20 copies of the second volume were sold (Lu and Zhou 2006: 1) mainly because the genre of short stories was not yet popular in translation. Lu Xun (ibid: 3) remarked in 1920: “At that time short stories were rare, and readers were accustomed to [traditional-style] zhanghui novels of 100 or 200 chapters .… ” Besides, those stories included in Collection of Short Stories from Abroad have features different from traditional Chinese narratives. For instance, rather than entertaining plots, these stories put more emphasis on the revelation of mentality or inner feelings of the characters, and are characterized by subjective depiction and emotionalized narration. Compared to traditional Chinese fiction, these works do not “look like” stories but approximate to poetry. In the early twentieth century, readers of foreign literature were so attached to the classical Chinese literary stereotypes that they were reluctant to read anything that ran counter to the existing poetics. As noted in Chap. 1, the types of “new fiction” that Liang Qichao and his followers promoted were political fiction, detective stories, science and adventure fiction. In order for new concepts and values to be better received, translators of “new fiction” sought to minimize the impact of the perceived “intrusion” of foreign fiction by choosing the “right” genres for their Chinese readers. The Zhou brothers were also keenly interested in the translation of science and adventure fiction before they embarked on Collection of Short Stories from Abroad. Apparently, the Zhou brothers’ selection of texts in the late 1900s pushed the envelope on existing literary 24  The remark was made in the preface to the republished Collection of Short Stories from Abroad. The words “Written by Zhou Zuoren” (Zhou Zuoren ji) appeared after the preface. Zhou (1969: 234) recollected in the 1936 essay “About Lu Xun (II)” (Guanyu Lu Xun zhi er) that the preface had actually been written by Lu Xun.

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norms. In 1920 Lu Xun (Lu and Zhou 2006: 1) explained their translation motive as follows: While studying in Japan, we had a vague hope of making literature a tool for edification and social reformation. As a result, we naturally decided to introduce new literature from foreign countries …, hence the publication of Collection of Short Stories from Abroad.

This sense of mission informed the brothers’ selection of the stories in the collection. For them, translation was a means of cultivating empathy and transforming national character. On the other hand, it constituted an important part of self-­ expression, which was arguably what set them apart from many other late Qing translators. Preoccupation with individual persons and human consciousness dominated the brothers’ translation activities following the publication of Collection of Short Stories from Abroad. As they became widely known in the late 1910s and early 1920s, their efforts at modern identity construction began to make a powerful impact on the New Culture scene. Zhou Zuoren’s essay “Human Literature” (Ren de wenxue), among many other writings, is construed by many as epitomizing the awakening of the May Fourth self. These will be further explored in Chap. 6. Hong Kong-based translation scholar Lawrence Wang-chi Wong (2007: 219–20) puts the lack of appeal of Collection of Short Stories from Abroad down to three factors. First, the Zhou brothers were young and unknown to the reading public at the time of its publication. Second, the authors of the stories were generally not famous enough to arouse the readers’ interest. Third, the style of translation was unacceptable at the time. Wong goes on to claim that the third reason should be regarded as the most important of the three. Literary historian Chen Pingyuan (1997: 624) observes: “[In the late Qing] literal translation never became dominant; nor was it given adequate recognition in scholarship.” Therefore, literal translation, or zhiyi,25 was mostly denigrated in late Qing and early Republican China, and described as “irresponsible,” “hard to read,” “as tasteless as wax,” “incomprehensible” and “confusing” (ibid). In the late 1890s and 1900s, the majority of Chinese readers, who had an attachment to traditional Chinese literature, lacked foreign language skills and were neither interested nor able to compare the faithfulness of the translations to their originals. They tended to favour free translations such as those produced by Lin Shu. Therefore, Chinese translators made every endeavour to water down the foreignness of source texts in order to cater to the habits and tastes of their readers. The Zhou brothers’ translations before the publication of Collection of Short Stories from Abroad had followed this trend.26 In the late 1900s, they reevaluated their translation approach and chose to follow the linguistic and literary styles of the source text. Lu Xun (1981(10): 155) wrote in the preface of Collection of Short Stories from Abroad, first published in 1909:

 The term zhiyi was not used by Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren until 1920.  Lu Xun (1981(12): 409) wrote in 1934: “In retrospect, I regret acting as a smart aleck and refusing to attempt literal translation when I was young.”

25 26

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It was with great prudence that we edited and published the book, in the hope of not losing the original flavour. New techniques in foreign scholarship will be imported to China from now on.

The hope to introduce new literary techniques to Chinese readers is therefore an important reason that inspired the Zhou brothers to go against the grain of domesticated translation. The following example is taken from Yanko’s death scene in “Yanko the Musician,” a story from Collection of Short Stories from Abroad. It is representative of the author Sienkiewicz’s plaintive lyricism and rational humanism through which Sienkiewicz achieved transcendence of literary stereotypes: The swallows were twittering in the cherry tree which grew at the cottage; the rays of the sun entered through the window pane and colored with the brightness of gold the dishevelled hair of the little boy and the face in which there remained not a drop of blood. That ray was as it were a road upon which the soul of the boy was to go away. It was well that it went out by a broad shining road in the moment of death, for during life it went on a thorny one, truly. Meanwhile the emaciated breast moved with another breath, and the face of the child was as if absorbed in listening to the sounds of the village which came in through the open window. It was evening, so the girls coming back from hay-making were singing, “Oi, on the green field!” and from the stream came the playing of pipes. Yanko listened for the last time to the sounds of the village. On the matting lay the shingle fiddle at his side. All at once the face of the dying boy lighted up, and from his whitening lips came out the whisper, “Mother!” “What, my son?” answered the mother, whom tears were choking. “Mother, will the Lord God give me a real fiddle in heaven?” “He will, my son, He will give thee one,” answered the mother. (Sienkiewicz 1893: 24–5, translated by Jeremiah Curtin (1835–1906))

Zhou Zuoren’s translation, rendered in elegant literary Chinese, vividly captures the pathos of the scene and presents as a conscientious attempt to stay faithful to the original text. 斜阳入窗,色作黄金,照儿枕上,乱发蓬飞,面惨白无血色。此落日作光,盖犹大道,垂死 之魂,即乘此去。当永谢此世,得趁光明,善也。彼生时,仅行荆棘道耳。儿余息未绝, 色若有思。时则村中有诸响度窗而入,暮色既下,女郎自田野束刍归,各歌绿野之曲,而 川畔亦有萧声断续,扬珂今末次闻此矣。其手制胡琴,则横卧于席上。 儿忽若喜,微语曰:“阿奶!”母咽泪曰:“吾儿,何也?”杨珂曰:“阿奶,至天国,帝肯与我 一真胡琴耶?”母应之曰:“然。吾儿,彼当与汝。”…… (Lu and Zhou 2006: 122–3) (My English translation of Zhou’s Chinese version: The sun slanted through the window and cast its golden rays onto the pillow of the child, who was dishevelled, pallid and colourless. The ray of the setting sun was like a big road; the soul of the dying boy was to go away upon it. It was good to shuffle off this mortal coil on such a bright road. Throughout the child’s life, he had been walking on bramble-strewn paths. In his last breath, the boy looked pensive. At this juncture, various sounds of the village were wafted to him through the window; in the evening, girls were returning from hay-making, all of them singing country songs, while by the riverside there were the intermittent melodies of pipes. It was the last time that Yanko listened to all these, his handmade fiddle lying beside him on the mat. The child suddenly appeared cheerful and whispered, “Mother!” The mother answered, choking back her tears, “Yes, my son?” Yanko said: “Mother, will God give me a real fiddle when I am in heaven?” The mother answered: “Sure, my son. He will give one to you.”…)

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Zhou Zuoren’s close adherence to the English source text can be clearly seen. Years later in 1918, Zhou Zuoren (in Chen Fukang 1992: 169) gave a detailed explanation of literal translation in his essay “Literary Reform and Confucianism” (Wenxue gailiang yu kongjiao): I think we should make allowance for foreign literary elements in our translations…and seek to retain the social customs and language order. It is best to translate word for word, or at least sentence by sentence. We would rather make our translations neither Chinese nor Western than make adaptations.

Lu Xun felt that the Chinese language in both lexicon and syntax was imprecise. He observed in 1931 that such imprecision led to the reduction in powers of expression and confusion in an educated Chinese person’s train of thought (1981(4): 382). Thus, Lu Xun claimed that it was imperative to break the poetic stereotypes through the radical reform of the Chinese language. In his opinion, precise ideas should be expressed by precise language and now that new ideas came from the West, it followed that the language used to articulate these ideas should be learned from the West. The best way to achieve this was to import precise language and advanced cultures from the West by way of literal translation. The Europeanized syntax introduced through literal translation would be instrumental in enriching the Chinese language. Lu Xun (ibid: 383) summarized his translation strategy as “faithfulness, even at the cost of incoherence” (ning xin er bu shun), observing that translations produced in this way “can import not only new content but also new literary devices.” It was clearly his intention to modernize the Chinese language, though toward the end of the 1920s his translations were seen by many as too rigid.27 Zhou Zuoren was less radical in his espousal of direct translation. After the 1910s, Zhou developed a translation and writing style that was refreshing and unpretentious, and was therefore widely acclaimed by his New Culture peers. Qian Xuantong (1919) wrote in New Youth, “In his translation of foreign works, Zhou Qiming (Zuoren) follows the original text closely without changing it … I think this is epoch-making.” In 1922, Hu Shi (2003(2): 259–60) claimed in “Chinese Literature in the Past Fifty Years” (Wushi nian lai Zhongguo zhi wenxue) that the achievements in literary revolution were characterized by the “experiment in vernacular poetry” and the “advocacy of new European literature.” In terms of the latter, Hu regarded Zhou Zuoren as the most successful. “In his direct translation, he retains the syntax and style of the original text. This way of translation, which has been imitated by many people in recent years, is the first step toward the Europeanization of Chinese” (ibid: 260).28  In 1929, Liang Shiqiu launched a vehement attack on Lu Xun’s translation method and gave rise to a prolonged debate between the two great translators. For more information about this debate and Lu Xun’s translation method, see, for example, Ren (2009), Liu (1995), and Chan (2001). 28  For all the efforts New Culture intellectuals made to the development of modern Chinese, studies of the Mandarin translations of the Bible produced by Protestant missionaries in China during the second half of the nineteenth century reveal a close connection between Protestant Bible translation and the rise of the modern vernacular. See, for example, Edward Gunn (1991), Yuan Jin (2014), and George Kam Wah Mak (2017). 27

3.3 Conclusion

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Toury (1995: 64) reminds us that translation norms change with time. The late Qing translation activity during the 1890s and 1900s was characterized by free translation, which was the translational behaviour of the mainstream. Hovering in the periphery were the rudiments of new translation norms, such as literal translation attempted by Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren. Although the Zhou brothers’ literal translation failed to find favour with Chinese readers in the late 1900s, literal translation became the dominant translation strategy in the late 1910s and 1920s, adopted by New Culture proponents in effecting linguistic and literary reforms.

3.3  Conclusion In the 1900s, the lives of Chinese students were imbued with new possibilities and self-discovery. Economic and educational developments in China’s urban areas and increased exposure to Western learning deepened their sense of cultural inadequacy and enhanced their understanding of the “new,” not as applied knowledge but as a culture to be internalized. The reading of late Qing translations inspired young students who would later play an important part in promoting radical change in the form of “New Culture.” It was in the late Qing translations that traditional Chinese views of history were displaced by evolutionary theory and ideas of modern social progress. As more students studied overseas, their pursuit of knowledge became even more directly linked with activities that were to align their home country with the concepts and principles of the “civilized world.” Quotations from the early translations of Chen Duxiu, Hu Shi, Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren have been used in this chapter to illustrate their inheritance of the 1890s’ late Qing translation practice, as well as late Qing approaches to the representation of Western ideas for nation building. However, the translation “norms” of those who translated throughout the 1900s differed in important ways from those of Yan Fu’s and Liang Qichao’s translations of the 1890s and early 1900s. These up-and-coming intellectual leaders were confident about their understanding of the modern world, which was predicated on foreign (mainly Western) ideals, and about their ability to translate these ideals in the interests of modernizing China. Chen Duxiu took a firm revolutionary stance in his attack of Confucian moralism. Hu Shi’s liberal morality had yet to transcend the narrow confines of the state. Lu Xun’s passion for science and adventure fiction had started to give way to his focus on liberating the Chinese from their “slave mentality” while his brother Zhou Zuoren developed an interest in rational humanism. Notwithstanding their different approaches, they were all preoccupied with questioning “old” Chinese values and promoting “new” concepts and attributes. The direct or literal translation adopted by the Zhou brothers in the late 1900s, characterized by strict fidelity to the source text, was a downright reversal of the domesticating translation prevalent among late Qing translators, who were often unscrupulous about changing the original text to make their translations more intelligible to Chinese readers. Although the Zhou brothers’ literal translation strategy

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met with a cold response from the public, it started to dominate the literary scene once baihua was rapidly adopted in the late 1910s. Europeanized syntax and literary devices borrowed from foreign works entered baihua via the translation of literary works, and contributed fundamentally to the modernization of the Chinese language and literature. The spread of the modern vernacular, together with the use of modern modes of literary writing, devitalized the stylized classical Chinese and weakened the dominance of traditional literary stereotypes.

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Chapter 4

Translating New Culture into a Collective Identity

The intellectual landscape of the New Culture period (mid-1910s and mid-1920s) is generally understood as one of mutual disagreements and criticisms between different intellectual groups over cultural values. There were many proposals regarding what China needed and how Chinese citizens should comport themselves. In Chinese scholarship, the features of the New Culture Movement are typically presented in terms of the promotion of vernacular Chinese, the iconoclasm of leading New Culture intellectuals in their opposition to China’s cultural traditions, and their optimistic view of the power of literature, including translated literature, to transform society. Traces of these features of modern resistance to premodern Chinese thinking had already presented themselves in the translation activities of the 1890s and 1900s. They became highly evident in the mid and late 1910s as to define the collective identity of the New Culture proponents as people who were opposed to the “old society” (jiu shehui). These avant-garde intellectuals, through their translation projects and their journals, afforded “differentiated patronage,” to use Lefevere’s term (1992), to the May Fourth literary system, where different patrons represented different ideologies and where the ideological and the economic components of patronage were not necessarily linked,1 as opposed to “undifferentiated patronage” of the kind that had been common in the 1890s. The promoters of New Culture distanced themselves from other intellectual groups of the time, such as the Critical Review School (Xueheng pai), whose avowed aim of adhering to the old ways of writing was antithetical to the iconoclastic agenda of New Culture, and the Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies School (Yuanyang huidie pai), which produced commercial and popular romantic stories in an older vernacular language. The New Culture 1  The journals established during the New Culture period are mostly “colleagues’ journals” (tongren zazhi). The Chinese writer and journal editor Shi Zhecun (1905–2003) (in Yu 2006: 73) summarized the key feature of these “colleagues’ journals” as the general conformity of each journal in group opinion. “One person organized a few like-minded collaborators, launched a study group or literary association and a journal….Divergence of opinion often resulted in the demise of the journal” (ibid).

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Movement then became historicized as the leading intellectual movement of the 1910s and 1920s. Collective identity is a concept that highlights how a sense of “we-ness” and collective agency becomes generated between individuals through beliefs or values they share (Snow 2001 in Fominaya 2010: 394). Charles Taylor (1989: 35) offers the useful observation that “[The] modern independence of the self is no negation of the fact that a self only exists among other selves.” His definition of “who I am” is based on “where I speak from…in the space of moral and spiritual orientation within which my most important defining relations are lived out” (ibid). The formation of collective identity in social movements, as Taylor and Whittier (1992) contend, is by nature oppositional to dominant cultural practices. The New Culture attack on the Confucian moral ideology and the espousal of individualism, humanism and cosmopolitanism, as well as the promotion of baihua in translation and free writing, constituted a conscious, overt alternative to the premodern intellectual tradition, and enabled New Culture advocates to subvert dominant paradigms and to gain recognition and prestige in the process. Because of their foreign education background, New Culture radicals considered themselves to embody modern values. They saw translation as a tool for promoting science and democracy and for doing away with the “slave mentality” (nuxing) that had hindered the Chinese from becoming modern selves. To develop a scientific ethos, they promoted “serious” literary techniques, such as realism2 (at times interchangeable with naturalism) and “literature for human life” (wei rensheng de wenxue). This chapter explores how translation activities in the 1910s and 1920s helped to promote New Culture as an imaginable collective identity. Translation activities of this period constituted an integral part of literary societies and were regularly featured in the journals published by these societies. Moreover, discussions of translation and translated works were a significant feature of Chinese intellectual discourse of the time. Two journals, i.e. New Youth (Xin qingnian) and Short Story Monthly (Xiaoshuo yuebao), the flagship publication of the Association for Literary Studies (Wenxue yanjiuhui), will be examined. These were the two leading vehicles of the New Culture Movement (Hockx 1998, 2003; Wang 1993). The translated works published in them greatly contributed to the development of New Culture and New Literature (Ren 2009; Xie and Zha 2006), and sustained the collective image of the New Culture intellectuals. Avant-garde New Culture translators to be discussed in the next three chapters were all associated with these two journals – Hu Shi, Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren with the first, and Zhou Zuoren in particular with the second. From the late 1910s onwards, one of the most widely used terms among Chinese intellectuals writing in the modern vernacular baihua was “individualism”  In the early May Fourth period, the Chinese translation of “realism” was xieshizhuyi, which, according to Leo Ou-fan Lee (1993: 364), “seems to give as much weight to ‘writing about’ reality as to reality itself.” The phrase “xianshizhuyi,” or literally “the doctrine of contemporary reality, for which Reality assumes almost an ontological status and the technique of writing is deemphasized” (ibid), has become widely used since the late 1920s.

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­(gerenzhuyi). It became known to Chinese intellectuals since Yan Fu’s translation of On Liberty, and gained currency during the New Culture era after Hu Shi’s translation of Henrik Ibsen. The promotion of “individualism” then became something of a collective ideology among the intellectuals who were affiliated with New Youth and Short Story Monthly. Before the May Fourth incident in 1919, Chinese intellectuals had formed study societies and literary societies, and published journals (Hockx 2003; Denton and Hockx 2008). This had provided them with a means of articulating their commitment to social goals as the first decade of the Chinese Republic descended into full-­ blown warlordism. Hu Shi (2003 (28): 318) wrote to Chen Duxiu in 1916: “The creation of new literature for our country ought to start with the importation of Western literary masterworks for Chinese intellectuals to observe, learn and emulate, before they create their own new literature.” The instigation of a “literary revolution” gained momentum in January 1917 when Hu Shi published “Tentative Proposals for a Reform of Literature” (Wenxue gailiang chuyi) in New Youth. Hu’s article was widely acclaimed and effectively served as the New Culture Movement’s unofficial manifesto (Denton and Hockx 2008; Grieder 2000). Hu (2003 (1): 5–6) proposed eight points: 1 . Be meaningful and concrete in writing. 2. Don’t imitate the ancients. 3. Pay attention to grammaticality. 4. Avoid empty sentimentality. (Or: Don’t groan if you are not sick.) 5. Get rid of platitudes and clichés. 6. Don’t use classical allusions. 7. Don’t be particular about antithetical parallelism. 8. Don’t try to avoid colloquialisms. These eight points were directed against the use of the premodern literary language or wenyanwen. The promotion of baihuawen, as outlined in Hu’s article, not only disavowed the “highbrow” status of wenyanwen but prescribed the type of attitude that people wishing to use baihuawen should adopt. It was on this basis that New Culture intellectuals came to project character-building ideals via translated works and consolidated their collective identity in the process. In 1918, Hu Shi reiterated the importance of the use of baihuawen in translation in a revised version of his January 1917 essay, entitled “On a Constructive Literary Revolution” (Jianshe de wenxue geming lun). He warned: “The beauty of the original text will be lost if we translate in classical Chinese” (ibid: 68–9). In the meantime, he outlined the fundamental principle guiding the selection of foreign works for translation, which was to “translate works by renowned masters only” and “not to translate works that were below second class such as those by Haggard” (ibid: 67). Translating literary masterpieces in baihuawen was far removed from the mainstream late Qing translation practice, and became a norm that facilitated the construction of New Culture.

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When Tsinghua University-based scholar Wang Hui (2004: 1208) described New Culture intellectuals as displaying taidu tongyixing, or a “commonality of attitude” (quoted in Davies 2007: 194), he was drawing attention to how a shared view of intellectual modernity had been identified and articulated by the late 1910s. The type of attitude Hu Shi’s article proposed was contingent on the rise of baihuawen. The promoters of baihuawen, according to Wang (2004: 1208), “sought intellectual structures that were in accord with their interests in a fast changing society, and engaged in intellectual activities based on these.” By the end of the 1910s, Hu Shi and other New Culture proponents were calling for a “critical attitude” (pingpan de taidu) to be adopted in the “new trend of thought” (xin sichao).3 These intellectuals saw the application of critical acumen as necessary for a scientific understanding of the world, and the use of the modern vernacular as bound up with this critical attitude. To Hu Shi and his New Culture peers, the sole purpose of this new trend of thought was the re-creation of civilization with scientific methods; or briefly, “the reorganization of the national heritage” (zhengli guogu) through the “importation of scholarly principles” (shuru xueli). My principal concern in this chapter is to show how translation furnished the discourse of New Culture with ideas and images of a modern Chinese self while also ascribing values to this self. In so doing, I have chosen to examine the works that were selected for translation in New Youth and Short Story Monthly. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the debates generated over translation strategies and use of language by editors and leading contributors of the two journals.

4.1  New Culture Collectives Studies have shown that professionalization and specialization were more significant trends than politicization in Chinese intellectual life of the 1910s and 1920s and that the main way in which professionalization was reflected in literary circles was through the involvement of literary societies with the publishing industry (e.g. Denton and Hockx 2008; Hockx 2003; Volland 2014; Xu 2001). During this period, literary societies associated with New Culture were sites of both material and symbolic production. Materially, they provided a spate of texts, as periodicals and books, which gave reality to baihuawen as a visible phenomenon. The readership in the late 1910s and early 1920s was more heterogeneous than in the late Qing. Readers, writers, editors, publishers and critics came to constitute a modern cultural community connected by their affiliations with and preferences for specific literary societies and the journals they published. Based on Fan Quan’s Dictionary of Modern Chinese Literary Societies and Schools (Zhongguo xiandai wenxue shetuan liupai cidian), Hockx (2003) tabulated a total of 215 literary societies for the period 1920–1927. And according to Fitzgerald (1996: 13), 700 new journals were issued over the eight to nine years to 1923, and the total number of scribes came close to matching the largest subscription lists. 3  See Hu Shi’s essay “The Meaning of the New Trend of Thought” (Xin sichao de yiyi), published in New Youth in December 1919.

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Bassnett and Lefevere (1990: 5) observe, in relation to understanding significant changes in translation practice, that one must heed “the vagaries and vicissitudes of the exercise of power in a society, and what the exercise of power means in terms of the production of culture, of which the production of translations is a part.” Translators make choices and select aspects of a source text to transpose or emphasize. Their choices serve to create representations that are partial. Tymoczko and Gentzler (2002: xxx) argue that partiality is what differentiates translations, enabling them to participate in the dialectic of power, the ongoing process of political discourse, and strategies for social change. The promotion of New Culture in the 1910s and 1920s saw translation being used to create and consolidate bargaining positions, and an investigation into translation choices made by leading translators associated with New Culture, along with the rivalries and polemical engagements among translators of different persuasions, will shed light on which ideas, texts and translation approaches possessed greater symbolic power for New Culture and helped to solidify a strong sense of “being modern.” As outlined in the above, the identity of New Culture intellectuals was closely related to the use of baihuawen, the attitude associated with baihuawen and participation in the activities of literary societies with well-defined manifestos about promoting modern ideas. Of these intellectuals, a large number had received overseas education and had some command of foreign languages. Nanjing University-based scholar Dong Guoqiang (2003: 57) observes that 64% of the editors and contributors who regularly submitted translated works to New Youth had studied in or visited foreign countries. Hockx’s (1998) analysis of the 1924 membership list of the Association for Literary Studies reveals that three quarters of the 131 members were born after 1892, with 1899, 1900 and 1901 being the peak years. This points to the fact that the majority of them grew up without having to study for the imperial civil service examinations. They were able to come into closer contact with modern learning. Moreover, an average knowledge of 1.2 foreign languages (mostly English) was claimed by each member (ibid).4 The educational background of May Fourth intellectuals thus enabled them to enter the academic field “with an unusual dose of confidence and with the capacity to establish and occupy a completely new position within that field” (ibid: 57). Easy access to modern ideas and new knowledge, coupled with the sense of mutuality and the “commonality of attitude” through active involvement in the maintenance of literary societies and journals, afforded leading New Culture academics cultural and institutional power to promote new ideas. The last two sections of the chapter will be devoted to the investigation of how New Youth and Short Story Monthly promoted, through their translation activities and polemical engagements in the defense of their translation approaches, the rise of a modern intellectual discourse and modern values that formed a cornerstone for a cultural identity in the midst of accelerating change. But we must first outline how the two New Culture enterprises were established and how they developed. 4  Although Hockx cites the late Wang Yao as saying that the foreign language proficiency level of the members of the Association for Literary Studies should be seriously doubted, it remains to be proved how much truth there was in Wang’s statement. Even if Wang was right, the fact that the Association members jumped on the bandwagon of claiming grasp of foreign languages bespeaks the importance literary societies assigned to new knowledge.

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4.1.1  The New Youth Group New Youth, originally named The Youth Magazine (Qingnian zazhi), was launched in September 1915 in Shanghai by Chen Duxiu with the support of Qunyi Publishing House. Chen’s hope of blazing a trail of constructing a modern Chinese identity was evident even from the name of the periodical, given that at that time the neologism “youth” was used more commonly in Christianity, a major vehicle of Western knowledge in China. His opening statement of The Youth Magazine, entitled “Words of Caution to the Young” (Jinggao qingnian), was an exaltation of the youth in China’s social transformation. “The youth to society is what fresh, active cells are to the human body....A society will prosper if it follows the rules of metabolism, and perish if it is filled with banal, hackneyed elements” (Chen 1915). This is reminiscent of Liang Qichao’s famous 1900 essay “Discourse on Young China” (Shaonian Zhongguo shuo), by which Chen had been deeply influenced. He then passionately implored young people to achieve self-awareness that was to “become his generation’s common faith” (Schwarcz 1986: 59). “What is self-awareness? It is to be conscious of the value and possibility of one’s young life” (Chen 1915 in Schwarcz 1986: 59). Chen Duxiu was committed to the promotion of science and democracy as the guiding ideas of the journal, which featured regular columns such as Important Events in China (Guonei dashiji) and Important Events Abroad (Guowai dashiji) with the aim of educating its readers and making them more cosmopolitan. After it was renamed in 1916, Chen’s strategic moves continued to boost the popularity of the journal. It caught the imagination of young Chinese intellectuals as no journal had done since Liang Qichao’s The New Citizen Gazette (Xinmin congbao), and according to Grieder (1981: 224), it “took up the task of cultural enlightenment pretty much where Liang had left it a decade earlier.” In early 1917, New Youth was relocated to Beijing. One year later, an editorial committee was created to further professionalize the journal’s operations. Among its members were Hu Shi, Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao, Qian Xuantong, Liu Bannong (1891–1934) and Gao Yihan (1885–1968). Each member acted as chief editor of the month and devoted his issue to one particular topic. The leading members of New Youth were professors of Peking University, and did not depend on editorial work for a living.5 New Youth thus became the house organ of academics at Peking University, and a “colleagues’ journal.”6

5  Timothy Weston (2004) describes in detail how Cai Yuanpei recruited New Culture avant-gardes as Peking University professors. Until the 1920s, Peking University was the leading voice of elite Chinese public opinion. 6  When The Youth Magazine was launched, Chen Duxiu stated in “Regulations for Contributions” (Tougao zhangcheng) that the journal welcomed manuscript submissions, whether original or translated, and offered between 2 and 5 yuan for every thousand characters. Soon after New Youth became a tongren zazhi, it nullified the initial contribution regulations, and put the colleagues of the journal in charge of all the writing and translation. See Chen (2005).

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The majority of the leading advocates of New Culture who rallied around New Youth and Peking University had studied overseas, and knew Japanese and English, as well as a few lesser used foreign languages such as Russian, French and German, so that they were able to commit themselves to both translation and free writing.7 From 1915 to 1922 about 65 out of 90 contributors had both their translated and original texts published in New Youth. They also applied theories and concepts of foreign authors, such as Nietzsche, Ibsen, Kuriyagawa, Artsbashev and Leonid Andreyev (1871–1919), to their own writings, creating a modern foreign-inspired identity for their intellectual pursuits in this process. The circulation of New Youth increased from about 1000 copies monthly in 1915 to an estimated 15,000–16,000 copies per monthly issue in 1919 (Wang 2006c: 33). In September 1920, the founding of the New Youth Society in Shanghai marked the journal’s separation from Qunyi Publishing House. As the journal’s influence grew, Chen Duxiu became more opinionated and interested in “discussing politics.”8 He gave over the responsibility of editing and publishing to Chen Wangdao (1891– 1977), an educator who had not previously worked with New Youth. Colleagues in Beijing became concerned about the vested interest and future of New Youth and jointly wrote a letter to Chen Duxiu. Hu Shi proposed three methods to take the increasingly sharp political tinges out of New Youth: (1) the launching of another philosophical and literary journal; (2) the restoration of the earlier promise of “no politics,” or (3) the closing down of New Youth. Hu later added: “[Closing down the journal] won’t benefit the New Youth Society, so the third method is not as advisable as the first two” (Hu in Chen 1987: 294). At the end of 1920, Chen Duxiu went to Guangzhou to take up the position of chairman of the Education Committee of Guangdong Province offered by the provincial military governor Chen Jiongming (1878–1933). In April 1921 New Youth was relocated to Guangzhou, which had become the new revolutionary headquarters of the re-organized Kuomingtang under Sun Yat-sen. It ceased publication in July 1922.9 7  This was a common phenomenon in the May Fourth period. For instance, the major achievement of many of the members of the Association for Literary Studies, according to Chow (1980: 285), was the introduction of foreign literature, although they engaged in creative writing and the study of traditional Chinese literature. 8  When New Youth was launched, Hu Shi urged for complete abstention from politics for at least 20 years. 9  How the New Youth era was brought to an end has been a subject of great interest to historians and Sinologists. In addition to academic and political disparities among the leading members of the journal around the year 1920, the journal’s about-face and its eventual demise had its economic reasons. In March 1919, Chen Duxiu was dismissed from the post of dean of the School of Arts and Sciences of Peking University. Three months later, he was arrested for distributing “Beijing Citizens’ Manifesto” against the Beiyang warlords. While he was in jail, Hu Shi and Li Dazhao, a supporter of Chen’s communist beliefs, were engaged in an “issues versus isms” (wenti yu zhuyi) debate. After Chen Duxiu’s release from prison, his notion of “making a living by editing” resurfaced; after all, the luring salary as chief editor was important for the jobless Chen Duxiu. He took the decisive step of turning the journal into an independent enterprise and a propaganda tool, first for Marxism, to which he had become a convert, and then for the Chinese Communist Party, which he co-founded in 1921.

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In June 1923, the quarterly that bore the same title was launched in Guangzhou, where it served as a vehicle for the Communist Party. Its new manifesto stated that the magazine would “become a compass for China’s proletarian revolution.” The politicization of New Youth as a CCP organ perpetuated the split between its colleagues. Whereas Chen Duxiu and his followers directed May Fourth toward political revolution by actively engaging in ever-broadening mass organization and mobilization, the liberal wing headed by Hu Shi and others continued with the New Culture project in the intellectual realm (Yu 2001:308–9).

4.1.2  T  he Association for Literary Studies and Short Story Monthly In the first half of the 1920s, the largest and most active group on the Chinese literary scene was the Association for Literary Studies, founded in 1920 and officially inaugurated in January 1921. Its founding was the result of negotiation between a group of intellectuals and the management of the high-powered Commercial Press. These intellectuals, including the young Zheng Zhenduo (1898–1958), Shen Yanbing (1896–1981), better known by the pen name Mao Dun, and older New Culture figures such as Zhou Zuoren, successfully took “the New Literature out of the [Beijing] university campuses and into the [Shanghai] publishing world, out of the general interest journals such as New Youth and into commercial literary journals such as The Short Story [Monthly]” (Denton and Hockx 2008: 81). Short Story Monthly was founded in 1910 by the Commercial Press. After the mid-1910s, the journal’s incongruity with the changing times and the expectations of young students began to be felt. In October 1917, Zhang Yuanji, one of the founders of the Commercial Press, deplored the ineffective running of Short Story Monthly, and urged for its adoption of a more flexible approach. According to Zhang Yuanji’s Diaries, there were two reasons for Zhang’s dissatisfaction, i.e., the journal’s indiscriminate publication of Lin Shu’s translations and the strife between him and Yun Tieqiao (1878–1935), chief editor of Short Story Monthly since 1912, in issues related to translation and editing, especially in translation method (Zhang 1981). Lin Shu was an esteemed and prolific translator of foreign literature, and most of his translated novels were published by the Commercial Press. In 1916, Lin’s submissions became an encumbrance for both Short Story Monthly and the Commercial Press. As a veteran translator, Lin received the highest royalties from Short Story Monthly.10 This, coupled with his prolificacy, put the journal under excessive financial strain. By the late 1910s, Lin Shu’s translated short stories, novels and dramas took up one fifth of each issue of Short Story Monthly. The increase in Lin’s submissions was accompanied by the decrease in the quality of his translations. Zhang  The average royalties Short Story Monthly offered at the time was about 3 yuan per thousand words, with the maximum of 5 yuan. Lin Shu was given 6 yuan for every thousand words.

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Yuanji (ibid: 233) wrote on 12 June 1917, “Zhuzhuang told me in yesterday’s letter that Qinnan (Lin Shu)’s manuscripts were carelessly produced and fraught with errors, over and above the large numbers of his submissions. I replied that we could do nothing but accept all his manuscripts, but that the mistakes ought to be put right.” Soon after, Zhang revealed his disapproval in another diary: “Lin Qinnan’s manuscript of the translation Students in Love (Xuesheng fengyue jian) is inappropriate and will not be published. Evil Romance (Fengliu nieyuan) needs retitling. Rose (Meiguihua) teems with unfamiliar words, for which I will provide annotations, and will be sent back to him for his rereading” (ibid: 265). Despite Zhang Yuanji’s tolerance, the intention to stem the overspread of Lin Shu’s translations was implicit in his diaries. Not surprisingly, the Commercial Press consented with alacrity to the proposal made by Mao Dun, that none of Lin Shu’s manuscripts were to be considered for publication, when Mao Dun took over as editor-in-chief of Short Story Monthly in 1921. What Zhang Yuanji considered the ineffective running of Short Story Monthly also stemmed from the discord between him and Yun Tieqiao, in the style of editing11 and especially in translation strategies. In August 1917, Zhang drafted five proposals regarding the translation of foreign literature. Understandably, the prudent Zhang Yuanji was in favour of direct translation, with the translated text staying close to the original, in conformity with his own rational reformist stance. Zhang’s intervention in Short Story Monthly displeased Yun Tieqiao, who believed a free style of translation would cater to more readers. Both had good reasons for their preferred way of translation and refused to compromise; hence Zhang’s expression of dissatisfaction with Short Story Monthly two months later. Wang Yunzhang (1884–1942), who was the first editor-in-chief of Short Story Monthly, resumed the mantle after Yun Tieqiao gave up the editorship. Despite the high hopes pinned on him by the Commercial Press, the ineffectiveness of the running of Short Story Monthly continued to reveal itself, the major reason being Wang’s encouragement of the Mandarin Duck and Butterfly literature, which was largely derided by New Culture intellectuals as highlighting maudlin sentimentality and a nostalgic and romantic ethos. Although recent Chinese scholarship has reexamined the value of its literature, it is apparent that in the 1910s and 1920s the entertaining and romantic style of the Mandarin Duck and Butterfly group was at odds with the social realism advocated by New Culture proponents.12  In 1917, Zhang and Yun collided over the style and layout of annotating Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (Liaozhai zhiyi), written by Pu Songling (1640–1715). 12  The Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies literature, a term which Zhou Zuoren first used derisively in 1918, dominated the literary scene in China in the 1910s. In June 1914, the magazine Saturday (Libailiu) published “Superfluous Words about Publication” (Chuban zhuiyan), in which the reason for naming the journal Saturday was given  – because people work on week days and the journal closes on Sunday. Why, among all the Saturday pastimes, such as going to the theatre and getting drunk at a restaurant, should people choose to read fiction? “Because getting drunk is not healthy and the theatre is noisy while reading fiction is economical, simple and happy” (in Chen and Xia 1997: 484). This emphasis on reading literature for delight in privateness ran counter to the nationalistic and enlightenment function of literature that Liang Qichao and his followers had 11

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In 1921, Mao Dun established the Association for Literary Studies with the help of Zhou Zuoren and Zheng Zhenduo, and became editor-in-chief of Short Story Monthly. Influenced by the New Culture Movement, Mao Dun and his colleagues set out to transform what was a popular entertainment magazine into a tool of cultural and literary reform. Their opening paragraph of “Reform Manifesto” (Gaige xuanyan) states: Eleven years have passed since the publication of Short Story Monthly. From the twelfth year onwards, we will seek renewal and expansion of this magazine, keeping abreast of literary trends throughout the world and exploring ways of reforming Chinese literature, in addition to the translation of Western fiction from eminent authors.13

In addition, the manifesto emphasized the importance of translating different genres from different schools and different countries. The founding manifesto of the Association for Literary Studies echoed New Youth propositions in the latter’s first phase of publication. According to the renowned scholar and cultural critic Leo Ou-fan Lee (1973: 13), two significant contributions of the Association for Literary Studies lay in “widening the scope of the literary arena” and “consolidating and popularizing the new role of the practitioners of New Literature.” Immediately after Mao Dun assumed chief editorship of Short Story Monthly, he mothballed the manuscripts of Lin Shu and the so-called Saturday School (Libailiu pai). Mao Dun and his colleagues dismissed Lin’s blatant distortion of source texts and his use of abstruse classical Chinese as unconducive to modern language and literature reforms; meanwhile, they disparaged the popular romances of the Saturday School as Mandarin Duck and Butterfly fiction, considering them to be formulaic and self-indulgent. The first issue of the revamped magazine, i.e. Number 1 of Volume XII, boasted a print run of 5000, which were immediately sold out. The second issue had 7000 copies, and the number reached 10,000 at the end of 1921. The Association publications soon became highly influential, in contrast to New Youth, which lost its popular appeal once it became a Communist Party journal. Contemporary Chinese scholar Fan Boqun (2009: 80) claims that the modernization of Chinese fiction journals started with Liang Qichao in the late Qing but that it was Mao Dun who brought the project to fruition.

underscored since the late 1890s. However, it catered to many readers who were disillusioned by the social unrest in the early years of the Republican era. The escapist mindset of these readers, coupled with the development of the print media, provided a boost to the popularity of the Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies literature. Recent Chinese scholarship has rediscovered the value of literature that was not associated with the “canon” of New Literature, such as stories of the Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies persuasion (e.g. Hu 2013; Hockx 2003). Many of these works coalesce traditional stylistics and foreign-derived ways of presenting life and society, approximating the “invisible utility” (wuxing de gongli) and “literature of the art of human life” (rensheng de yishupai de wenxue) that Zhou Zuoren advocated in the 1920s. 13  “Special Notice of the Monthly” (Ben yuekan tebie qishi), Short Story Monthly, 11(12).

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In the late 1910s and the early 1920s, the absence of a strong government and disillusionment with aspects of the Chinese cultural tradition prompted New Culture activists to instigate intellectual change and enact ruptures with the past more revolutionary than the 1911 Revolution. New Youth and the Association for Literary Studies were representative of styles of organization and intellectual practices that influenced many later literary collectives (Hockx 2003). The observations made by contemporary translation scholars about the importance of relating the practice and products of translation to the exercise of power (such as Bassnett and Lefevere quoted above) are pertinent to the discussion of how the two New Culture groups sought to control the literary scene by promoting realist, “human” literature via translation.

4.2  The Growing Authority of Translated Works While presenting themselves as spokespersons for modern China, the intellectuals who regarded themselves as members of New Culture made translation a tool for their promotion of serious “human” literature, which they believed embodied moral values necessary for the development of modern selfhood. Their perceptions of translation were different from their late Qing literati predecessors, for whom translation was more than anything else a vehicle for the realization of their political ideals. The late Qing reformists rewrote the source texts to fashion an idealized human imagery, thereby achieving their purpose of national salvation and enlightenment. The majority of them did not fully comprehend the modern ideas that inhered in their translations; nor were they keen to change their own socio-cultural status or identity through the act of translation. By contrast, the New Culture elite viewed their translation practice as a struggle for a modern identity, for a collective subjectivity that could help to establish China as a modern culture and society. When discussing the New Culture ethos of a “critical attitude,” Wang Hui (2004: 1208) observed that it was “most suitable for the May Fourth intellectuals to give a ‘scientific’ look to their intellectual activities and to view them as a free exploration based on scientific principles.” For Hu Shi and his New Culture peers, the scientific spirit of critical thinking and raising doubts implicit in their acquired theories and concepts (such as Nietzsche’s “transvaluation of all values,” Huxley’s agnosticism and John Dewey’s (1859–1952) pragmatism) was indispensable to the advocacy of a vernacular-based literary revolution. Their goal was to rethink the raison d’être of traditional beliefs and values. This scientific approach may also be construed as a discursive strategy that New Culture intellectuals employed to construct their collective identity. Translation, as a manifestation of their acquaintance with foreign languages and modern learning, added a strong tinge of scientific truth to what they sought to promote and facilitated their advocacy of New Culture.

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Table 4.1  Percentage of translated texts in New Youth Volume I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX

Politics 9 7 8 10 7 9 15 49 29

Society 19 9 15 9 9 8 9 11 9

Literature 17 23 22 24 27 28 25 31 18

Other 6 7 4 2 3 2 3 4 2

Total no. of translations 51 46 49 45 46 47 52 95 58

% of translations 53 37 44 36 32 49 43 61 47

The following table is based on my tally of translated texts vis-à-vis creative writings in New Youth from Volume I (September 1915) to Volume IX (July 1922) (Table 4.1). The importance New Youth editors accorded to translated works can be clearly seen from the table. Translation reached its apex in Volume VIII (September 1920–April 1921), in which a new column of Russian studies appeared. The majority of the articles in the last two volumes were devoted to the introduction of political and social issues in Russia, Marxism and Leninism. Chen Duxiu’s determination to “discuss politics” and to turn the journal into a vehicle for the Communist Party is obvious. In addition to the profusion of translations in the journal, it is also important to note that translated texts spearheaded New Youth’s literary and cultural initiatives. Western concepts and ideas that had made their way into the Chinese language as a result of large-scale translation acquired legitimacy and popularity among Chinese intellectuals, and were reinvented within the Chinese social milieu. A study of some of the key words in New Youth reveals a large number of overlaps in translated and original texts. For instance, “science” (kexue), “liberal spirit” (ziyou jingshen), and “youth” (qingnian) are repeatedly used in the translated texts of Volume I. These key words and expressions are also found in the original writings, and often appear in subsequent issues to the translated texts. As will be shown in the next two chapters, Hu Shi’s and Luo Jialun’s (1897–1969) 1918 translation of A Doll’s House (Nuola) and Zhou Zuoren’s 1918 translation of “On Chastity” (Zhencao lun) engendered vigorous discussions on women’s liberation. According to one study, more than thirty gender-related articles were published in New Youth even before the May Fourth Movement of 1919 (Lü and Zheng 1990: 373). The frequent reference that contributors to New Youth made to new concepts and values helped to consolidate a common vocabulary that New Youth writers and their readers shared. This common vocabulary helped to stake out knowledge of the modern world and highlight modern values different from traditional ways of understanding and thinking, accentuating an “epistemological relationship between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’” (Davies 1992:143).

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Table 4.2  Percentage of translated texts in Short Story Monthly Volume/year 12/1921 13/1922 14/1923 15/1924 16/1925 17/1926 18/1927

Poetry 21 38 22 20 9 10 3

Drama 10 9 6 7 2 0 3

Fiction/short story 84 24 41 39 20 30 28

Prose 39 1 4 28 7 1 7

Children’s literature 1 1 1 10 35 3 5

% of translations 69 31 33 40 45 23 37

Such a conscious attempt to “assume unique subject positions in social time and space” (Koepnick 2000: 40) and to develop the basis for a shared or collective identity entails the careful selection of source texts for translation. In the essay “Translation, Community, Utopia,” Lawrence Venuti (2000: 468) writes: “The foreign text…is not so much communicated as inscribed with domestic intelligibilities and interests. The inscription begins with the very choice of a text for translation, always a selective, densely motivated choice….” In the translations published in New Youth certain moral ideals, such as liberty and egalitarianism, were regularly promoted. Despite the wide range of source countries and the multitude of theoretical thoughts and literary genres in their translated works, it is obvious that New Youth colleagues’ translated works played a fundamental role in shaping their readers’ understanding of what “New Culture” and “New Literature” meant. The translation of foreign works was also high on the agenda of the Association for Literary Studies, which published Short Story Monthly. The following table illustrates the number of translations vis-à-vis creative writings, organized under nine categories, published in Short Story Monthly between 1921 and 1927,14 the period when Mao Dun acted as chief editor of the journal. The works included in the statistics cover Volume XII to Volume XVIII.  During the six  years, Short Story Monthly ran several special issues, namely, Literature of the Injured Nations (Bei sunhai minzu de wenxue) (Vol. 12, No. 10; 1921), Russian Literary Study (Eguo wenxue yanjiu) (Vol. 12; 1921), French Literary Study (Faguo wenxue yanjiu) (Vol. 15; 1924) and Chinese Literary Study (Zhongguo wenxue yanjiu) (Vol. 17; 1926). I have categorized the texts in these special issues according to the genres provided in Index to Short Story Monthly and come up with the following (Table 4.2). The above table does not include articles appearing under regular sections of the journal such as Commentaries (Pinglun), Literary History (Wenxue shi), Authorial Study (Zuozhe yanjiu), Reviews of Literary Works (Zuopin pingjie), The Literary World in Foreign Countries (Haiwai wentan), Anecdotes in the Literary Arena (Wentan yihua), Introduction to Books and Journals (Shukan jieshao) and Treatises (Zhuanzhu/Zhuanji). Most of the contents of these regular sections were either

14  The information has been obtained through my analysis of Index to Short Story Monthly, 1921– 1931 (Xiaoshuo yuebao suoyin, 1921–1931), published by Shumu wenxian chubanshe in 1984.

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direct translations or summaries of foreign literature. The inclusion of these works would increase the percentage of translations in the above table exponentially. For instance, all the 40 articles in Literary History are related to foreign literature – in Japan, Russia, the West as well as East Europe. Of the 101 essays in Authorial Study, only 6 are introductions to Chinese authors, such as Lin Shu and Lu Xun. Altogether 42 chapters were published between 1924 and 1927  in Outlines of Literary History (Wenxue dagang), subsumed under the heading “treatises.” Of the 42 chapters, American and European literature takes up 65%, Asian literature 7% and Chinese literature 28%. From Volume XII to Volume XVIII, literary works by more than 270 authors from 35 countries were translated; 206 “overseas literary world” news items were published. In addition to Short Story Monthly, the Association for Literary Studies also ran Literary Weekly (Wenxue zhoubao) between 1921 and 1927, which published more than 300 translated works. Of all the book series published during the 1920s and early 1930s, those organized by the Association for Literary Studies were the most popular (Qin 2009). In Short Story Monthly Series (Xiaoshuo yuebao congkan), Literary Weekly Series (Wenxue zhoubao congshu) and The Association for Literary Studies Series (Wenxue yanjiu hui congshu), great importance was assigned to translation. The translated works in The Association for Literary Studies Series account for 57% of all the published works in the series; the translated works take up 53% in Short Story Monthly Series and 43% in Literary Weekly Series respectively. For the proponents of New Culture and New Literature, the translation of foreign literature was an overriding concern, as “New Literature in China was still in its infancy and had no great works to draw on for reference” (Wang 1933: 259). Renowned cultural research and translation scholar Itamar Even-Zohar (1978: 24) outlines three social circumstances allowing translation to maintain a primary position: when a literature is “young” or in the process of being established; when a literature is “peripheral” or “weak” or both; and when a literature is experiencing a “crisis” or turning point. Chinese literature underwent a radical change in the early twentieth century, when Westernized intellectuals sought to extricate themselves from the Chinese cultural tradition. This change was facilitated by the enormous authority invested in foreign works, leading to the priority accorded to translation, to reflect the situation Even-Zohar has sketched.

4.3  O  therness and Identity Politics: New Youth Debates with Lin Shu A key feature of any collective identity is its shared sense of inclusion. Such an identity is often defined against other perceived groups and, as Stein (1996) has observed, it is often through systematic comparison, differentiation and derogation of others who fall outside the privileged group one identifies with that the idea of a

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given collective identity becomes more powerful. We turn now to examine one dialectical tension by which the New Culture identity gained strength in the late 1910s. In order to fulfil and consolidate their own identity, people create enemy images, which are “the product of deeply rooted social and psychological needs and [which] frequently serve the interests of important groups and elites” (ibid: 97–8). Conflicts and dialogues with the narrative of others thus become a necessary condition for the development of an autonomous identity (Sayers 1999). By 1918, with the advancement of New Culture and an ever-expanding readership for its products, contributors to New Youth and other New Culture magazines such as Short Story Monthly and New Tide (Xinchao) had engaged in numerous polemical debates with their critics or translators of different camps. The New Youth colleagues’ debates with Lin Shu will be dealt with in detail in this section. They reflect the desire of the New Culture elite to claim cultural authority. At the beginning of the New Culture Movement, New Youth intellectuals were keen to construct their identity as leaders of the movement. Hu Shi (1917) claimed: “Vernacular literature embodies the quintessence of the Chinese literature and is an effective tool for the literature of the future, seen from a historical evolutionary perspective.” He wrote that vernacular literature was the only “true literature,” as it “portrays truthfully the situation in today’s society” (ibid). In so doing, Hu and other New Culture leaders such as Chen Duxiu argued that those who defended China’s premodern literary tradition produced “carved and ingratiating aristocratic literature,” and “gaudy and stale classical literature” (Chen 1917). On 8 February 1917, Lin Shu expressed his disapproval of the New Youth’s “literary revolution” in an essay titled “On Not Abolishing the Classical Language” (Lun guwen zhi buyi fei), which he published in Republic Daily (Minguo ribao). Lin (1917) argued against the abolition of classical Chinese, using Latin and premodern Japanese as analogies to defend the raison d’être of classical Chinese. Hu Shi (1917) was the first to openly criticize Lin Shu’s essay, noting: “As a master of the classical language, Mr. Lin is unclear about why it should be preserved. Isn’t the reason for its abandonment evident?” In 1918, Qian Xuantong and Liu Bannong targeted Lin Shu’s translations in a series of articles framed as an exchange of letters. Qian, using the pseudonym Wang Jingxuan, masqueraded as an admirer of Lin Shu’s translations and wrote to New Youth enumerating the reasons for their popularity, i.e. their elegant classical Chinese style, their fluency as a result of Lin’s free translation and the romantic sensuality of their storylines. Qian’s bogus glorification of Lin Shu set the stage for Liu Bannong’s rebuttal. In his reply to “Wang Jingxuan,” Liu (1918) called in question Lin’s selection of source texts: If the novels that Mr. Lin has translated are judged from the perspective of casual reading, they may not be listed as targets of attack.…If they are judged from a literary perspective, then, to be frank,…they don’t even have the least tinge of literature. Why? Because he didn’t choose the original texts carefully for his translation and often ended up translating those foreign works with no literary value. He has not translated, or lacks the ability to translate, works of real value and good quality….

The effect of this staged correspondence was to denigrate Lin’s translations as meant only for “entertainment” or “casual reading.” According to Liu, if the

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importation of foreign literature was Lin Shu’s purpose of translation, his translations were worthless due to the absence of literary merit of the source texts. Besides Lin Shu’s selection of texts for translation, Qian’s and Liu’s ridicule of Lin also included the strategies he used. Liu wrote that Lin Shu’s translation was anything but faithful, as he was at liberty to leave out and make changes to the original texts, so that his translations were fraught with ludicrous mistakes. In accusing Lin of “translating foreign fiction with the style of Tang fiction in Chinese history” (ibid), this exchange of correspondence had the added effect of underscoring the translation approaches favoured by the advocates of New Culture, namely, by making the translated text “conform to the foreign text,” much like what Zhou Zuoren did in his translation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s (1821–1881) works (ibid). And despite the use of classical Chinese in his translations of the late 1900s, as discussed in Chap. 3, Zhou adopted strategies very different to Lin Shu’s. Liu (ibid) thus added: “I suggest that Mr. Lin make some effort to read the Collection of Short Stories from Abroad that Mr. Zhou translated ten years ago” (ibid). Qian Xuantong’s and Liu Bannong’s reproof of Lin Shu was taken up by Hu Shi, who ridiculed and criticized Lin specifically for his use of classical Chinese in translation in the essay entitled “On a Constructive Literary Revolution,” published in Number 4 of Volume IV. Hu (2003 (1): 68–9) mentioned in particular Lin’s translation of Shakespeare’s plays, observing that Lin “was indeed a sinner” when he translated the plays into classical Chinese narrative. The outcome is quite obvious. Hu Shi (2003 (18): 328) recalled the debate many years later15: In retrospect, there are indeed a number of historical reasons for the success in our literary revolution. First, I must point out that the opposition was too weak at that time. Between 1918 and 1919, their key figure was the renowned translator Lin Shu, who had translated more than 200 Western novels in classical Chinese even though he had absolutely no knowledge of Western languages. He once said: “I am aware that classical Chinese should not be abolished, but I cannot tell you why.” Against such wishy-washy opposition, our power was all the stronger.

Such public attacks on Lin Shu’s translations served to highlight the difference between “old” and “new.” Even though Lin’s New Culture critics had been deeply influenced by his translations in their student days, they were now explicitly defying his translation approaches, and seeking to gain discursive authority in translation, or in the words of Taylor and Whittier (1992: 111), to “resist or restructure existing systems of domination.” In addition to the New Youth colleagues’ debates with Lin Shu, the New Culture camp’s eagerness to solidify their collective identity also led to other polemical engagements over the power to produce “legitimate” translation and literature, such as the Association for Literary Studies’ debates with the Mandarin Duck and Butterfly writers. Through the debates, the leading intellectuals of the association not only publicized their modern pursuit of “literature for human life” (wei ­rensheng  The following remarks are taken from Tang Degang’s Hu Shi’s Dictated Autobiography (Hu Shi koushu zizhuan). No information is given as to when Hu made them.

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de wenxue) but also positioned themselves better for recognition from the young reading public. In particular, the essays that Mao Dun wrote16 defended the literary stance of the association with the valorization of “naturalism,” which became the core of his argument. He substantiated the deployment of naturalism in literary and social construction and rationalized “literature for human life,” which, rooted in realist concerns, had become prevalent discourse for the Association for Literary Studies intellectuals and dominated the translations published in Short Story Monthly.17 Debates of this kind are best understood as “symbolic struggles”18 over the power to produce “legitimate” literature and translation. The New Culture radicals, who had risen against more established writers and translators and who claimed superior knowledge over them, started to fight among themselves by the early 1920s. As noted earlier, political differences had begun to drive a wedge between the founding members of New Youth around 1920. An increasing number of translations of Marxist and Soviet revolutionary writings were published in New Youth, as a result of Chen Duxiu’s and Li Dazhao’s political inclinations (Dillon 1979: 144). The rise of Marxism was accelerated by the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921 and Sun Yat-sen’s Soviet-aided cause for a new revolution to unify China against warlord rule (Yao and Zhang 1991; Wright 2011: 132–34). It is important to note, however, that New Culture was a movement that was affiliated with the broad cause of nation building and character moulding and that the type of collective identity promoted by the spokesmen for New Culture was centred on an ideology of self-transformation.

4.4  Conclusion This chapter has examined the formation of a New Culture collective identity via the activities of two journals, i.e. New Youth and Short Story Monthly. When New Culture spokesmen, who had received extensive Japanese and Western education in  The most notable of these essays was “Naturalism and Modern Chinese Fiction” (Ziranzhuyi yu Zhongguo xiandai xiaoshuo), published in August 1922. 17  Attempts have been made in Chinese scholarship to associate the formation of Mao Dun’s conception of realist literature with the influence from early naturalists in Europe. For example, Li Jinmei (2009) cited French writer Emile Zola’s (1840–1902) emphasis on the teleology of literature, social engagement, and the representation of human life as contributing to Mao Dun’s literary views. In September and October 1921, Short Story Monthly launched two special issues of translated literature, namely, Russian Literary Study (Eguo wenxue yanjiu) and Literature from the Injured Nations (Bei sunhai minzu wenxue). The special issue of Literature from Injured Nations published translated literary works from nine European nations, including Poland, Czechoslovakia, Serbia, Finland, and Croatia. Of the ten translated stories, two were translated by Lu Xun, three by Zhou Zuoren, and the other five were by Mao Dun. 18  Bourdieu uses the term “symbolic struggles” to refer to struggles among groups over the imposition of the legitimate vision of the world in various fields of cultural production. See Bourdieu (1984, 1989). 16

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their teens and early twenties, carved out their intellectual niche in the 1910s and 1920s, they turned their journals into vehicles for their own literary experimentations and translations. According to Qian Xuantong (in Chen 1927: 145), the journals were “the testing ground for modern vernacular compositions” (baihua wenzhang de shiyanchang). New Youth and Short Story Monthly, in particular, greatly facilitated the rise of New Culture and a distinctive approach to modern translation practice, in the use of baihua and the selection of source materials. The collective image the New Culture activists maintained through the running of these journals set them apart from late Qing reformists. They were generally not interested in providing a platform for the voicing of different views, and were more contentious and less tolerant in their protection of group solidarity. The New Culture representatives’ modern agenda elevated translation to a tool of discursive power. As the ridicule of Lin Shu and the translation activities of leading intellectuals attest, translation had acquired a new set of New Culture criteria, such as the adoption of baihua and direct translation method and a more varied approach to the importation of foreign ideas, by the late 1910s. In the late Qing of the 1890s, there were a relatively small number of key works translated by prominent individuals, including Yan Fu’s translation of socio-­ philosophical works such as Evolution and Ethics, On Liberty and Liang Qichao’s fiction translation, such as Deux ans de vacances, to mention a few of the most popular. By the late 1910s, the range of translations that appeared in New Culture journals expanded considerably and became a prominent feature of the movement. The flux of new ideas and values promoted via translation were quickly spread among New Culture colleagues and their followers. Notably, the concepts of individualism, cosmopolitanism, humanism, and modern personhood, introduced by New Culture luminaries such as Hu Shi, Zhou Zuoren and Lu Xun, not only accelerated the reevaluation of native traditions but also provided an abiding basis for cultural solutions to China’s problems.

References Bassnett, Susan, and Andre Lefevere, eds. 1990. Translation, History and Culture. London: Pinter. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. ———. 1989. Social Space and Symbolic Power. Sociological Theory 7 (1): 14–25. Chen, Duxiu. 1915. Jinggao qingnian [Words of Caution to the Young). New Youth 1(1). ———. 1917. Wenxue geming lun (On Literary Revolution). New Youth 2(6). ———. 1927. Duxiu wencun [Collected Works of Chen Duxiu]. Shanghai: Yadong tushuguan. ———. 1987. Chen Duxiu shuxin ji [Anthology of Chen Duxiu’s Letters]. Beijing: Xinhua chubanshe. Chen, Mingyuan. 2005. Wenhua ren de jingji shenghuo [The Economic Life of Intellectuals]. Shanghai: Wenhui chubanshi. Chen, Pingyuan, and Xiaohong Xia, eds. 1997. Ershi shiji Zhongguo xiaoshuo lilun ziliao, diyi juan [Theoretical Materials on Chinese Fiction in the Twentieth Century, Vol. I]. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe.

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Chapter 5

Constructing the Modern Self in Translation (I): Hu Shi

In the previous chapter, we examined how a “commonality of attitude” (Davies 2007) or taidu tongyixing (Wang 2004) grew out of the activities of literary journals and literary societies, of which translation was an integral part. In the 1890s and 1900s, translators, of whom Yan Fu and Liang Qichao were leading figures, espoused the translation of social science and fiction as instrumental to the construction of modern identity. The mid to late 1910s saw Chen Duxiu, Hu Shi, Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren and others emerging as influential practitioners and patrons of translation. The idea of translation as a vehicle for China’s cultural modernization was presented through a sharpened distinction between “old” and “new.” In their repudiation of what they denounced as old morality (jiu daode) and old thinking (jiu sixiang), New Culture leaders declared their faith in individual autonomy (geren duli) and healthy development of individuality (gexing de jiankang fazhan), as well as the universal value of justice (gongli) as a shared ideal. Self-transformation to aid China’s modernization occupied a central place in stories and translations published in leading magazines such as New Youth, Short Story Monthly and New Tide. By the early to mid-1920s, the goal of self-transformation had become less unified. The shared purpose of New Youth contributors and founding members had fractured into opposite political goals by 1923. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, literary journals provided the means for New Culture enthusiasts to celebrate their identity as “modern Chinese” and to align themselves with one or both of the two broad literary persuasions, i.e. realism (xieshizhuyi) and romanticism (langmanzhuyi). While “realists” emphasized “writing about reality” and the “sincerity of the emotions expressed in a literary work” (Ye Shengtao in Lee 1993: 364), “romanticists” saw cultural modernity as bound up with “a concern with self-discovery, sentiment and a return to nature” (Farquhar 1999: 92). In the construction of group identities, prominent individuals, as “incarnations of the collective” (Bourdieu 1989: 23), brought different conceptions to their groups. The leadership of celebrated intellectuals such as Chen Duxiu, Hu Shi, Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren, Guo Moruo and Xu Zhimo (1897–1931) in this regard

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played an important part in deciding a given group’s politico-cultural character and in helping members of the group model their sense of self. The modernity of New Culture intellectuals became defined in terms of their severe criticism of the Chinese tradition and their enthusiasm for foreign theories and literary works. As we saw in Chap. 4, New Culture journals published an abundance of translations. For instance, translations amounted to an average of more than 40% of all the published works per volume in New Youth between 1915 and 1922, and translated literature published in Short Story Monthly reached 66% of all the literary productions in 1921 alone. Well-known translators such as Hu Shi, Zhou Zuoren and Lu Xun were crucial in enhancing the authority of the translated text. In Chaps. 5, 6, and 7, we examine in some detail how Hu Shi and the Zhou brothers (i.e. Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren)1 saw translation as a tool for constructing a modern Chinese identity. In these case studies, I seek to show that the translations of these three men reflected the values and ideas that had a profound impact on the construction of modern Chinese identity as a self “awakened” (juewu) to its confinement in a society it finds suffocating. I will start with Hu Shi, whose publications in 1917 and 1918 established his authority as a leader of avant-garde thinking or “New Culture.” Chapter 6 will be an investigation of Zhou Zuoren’s translations while Lu Xun, who started to publish translated works in baihua a couple of years later than Hu Shi and Zhou Zuoren during the May Fourth period, will be dealt with in Chap. 7. Through his translation of European literature, Hu Shi highlighted the importance of individualism and Ibsenism. In contrast, Lu Xun’s source countries for translation were mainly Russia and Japan. Lu Xun’s translations affirmed the New Culture agenda of transforming what he called disparagingly the Chinese “national character” (guominxing). Somewhat different to Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren translated writings from Greece, Japan, Russia and Poland to promote “human literature” (rende wenxue). Zhou Zuoren’s idea of “human literature,” by which he meant literature featuring characters who articulated their own emotions and ideas and who, thus, showed a will to lead a meaningful life, was influential in the late 1910s and 1920s. The translation activities of these prominent individuals shaped their own writings to a significant degree. In the intellectual discourse of the late 1910s and mid-1920s, the popularity of foreign-derived concepts, such as individualism and humanism, and the critique of national character, were often discussed in relation to translations of foreign literature. These ideas became representative of the New Culture Movement and in historical retrospect, they formed key elements of what Chinese intellectuals would celebrate as the “May Fourth spirit” (wusi jingshen) in the post-Maoist 1980s and since. In his essay “Historical Memories of May Fourth: What Kind of Patriotism Is It?” (Wusi de lishi jiyi: Shenmeyang de aiguozhuyi), the prominent Shanghai-based historian Xu Jilin (2009: 10) states that Yan Fu was representative of a nationalism 1  Both Hu Shi and Zhou Zuoren worked with Peking University and New Youth. Zhou was also a member of the Association for Literary Studies. Lu Xun identified himself with quite a number of literary associations, such as Southern Society (Nanshe), New Youth, Spinner of Words (Yusi), the Unnamed Society (Weiming she), and the League of Left-Wing Writers (Zuolian).

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founded in the ideology of universal justice (gongli). Yan maintained that the evolutionary processes of the survival of the fittest involved not only the struggle for wealth and power but also the progress of civilization, or wisdom and morality; on the other hand, Liang Qichao’s nationalism was built on the ideology of power or strength, wherefrom freedom and rights derived and which was equivalent to universal justice (ibid). New Culture advocates such as Hu Shi, Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren were concerned not only with the plight of China as a civilization in decline but also with human existence and humanity writ large, in their translation of foreign works of the Western origin, the so-called “oppressed nations” and other countries. According to Xu, they associated universal justice with liberty and equality, and with the larger sense of intellectual, scientifically based principles. Similarly, Xu Xiaoqun (2014: 6) opines that besides foreign works and ideas, it is what educated Chinese articulated as their larger vision of an ideal world that defined Chinese cosmopolitanism. He sees Chinese cosmopolitanism as strong aspirations to a world of universal peace, international equality, individual liberty, and a common culture drawn from and shared by all peoples. I agree with the above scholars that “cosmopolitanism,” understood as an ideal, provides us with a useful way of seeing New Culture intellectuals’ vision of modern selfhood as a development out of the universal yet nationcentred concerns of Yan Fu and Liang Qichao. In this regard, the focus of New Culture intellectuals’ translation of literary works was on strengthening a sense of universal justice. They chose works that highlighted values that would lead to selfmastery and social harmony. For instance, in his 1918 essay “Ibsenism” (Yibusheng zhuyi), Hu Shi (2003(1): 601–2), referring to The Doll’s House and other Ibsen’s works, summarized for readers that the main lesson to be learned was to reject four major evil tendencies in themselves, namely, selfishness (zisi zili), dependence (yilai xing) or slave mentality (nuli xing), pseudo-ethics (jia daode) and lack of courage (nuoqie). He stated that only then could they become individuals befitting the modern world. Through his translations and postscripts, Lu Xun decried flaws in the Chinese national character and expressed hope for the Chinese to be “citizens of the world” (shijie ren) (1981(1): 307).2 He wrote: “For us Chinese people to progress and secure a position in today’s world, we must acquire advanced knowledge, high levels of morals and character, as well as highly developed thinking” (ibid). Similarly, Zhou Zuoren’s translation of East European, Greek and Japanese literature prompted him to emphasize human empathy and love. In his 1918 essay “Human Literature” (Rende wenxue), Zhou (1999: 8) wrote that reading foreign works should lead one to strengthen one’s understanding of humanism in terms of cultivating the ability to “love oneself” (aiji) and to “love humankind” (ai renlei). Xu Jilin (2009: 7) describes New Culture intellectuals as people who promoted “a patriotism which was at once steadfast in its defence of the priority of the ­individual but which also strived for the betterment of civilization.”3 The New 2  Impromptu Reflections No. 36″ (Suigan lu sanshiliu), published in New Youth on 15 November 1918. 3  Translated by Duncan Campbell. See “Historical Memories of May Fourth: Patriotism, But Which Kind?” In China Heritage Quarterly, 17, 2009. Accessed on 4 May 2014, http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/features.php?searchterm=017_mayfourthmemories.inc&issue = 017.

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Culture preoccupation with self-realization went hand in hand with concern over human destiny and consideration of the fundamentals of humanity. To the proponents of New Culture, each individual must become a qualified and contributing member of society in order to savour the benefits of modern civilization. Through their translations, Hu Shi and the Zhou brothers provided different ways of understanding the “individual.” This chapter focuses on how Hu Shi understood and presented his translations of drama and short stories from European countries as a source of instruction on the type of individuality and cosmopolitan humanism Chinese people should acquire. He attributed his individualistic outlook to such illustrious foreign men of letters as John Dewey and Henrik Ibsen. In the 1920 essay “The Non-Individualist New Life” (Fei gerenzhuyi de xin shenghuo), Hu (in Ouyang 1998b: 90) expanded on Dewey’s notions of “false individualism” and “true individualism,” observing that individualism, among other things, involved distinguishing “individuality” (gexingzhuyi) from “egoism” (weiwozhuyi). He used the term “wholesome individualism” (jianquan de gerenzhuyi) in 19304 to summarize his understanding of individualism. He recapitulated what he had elaborated on 12 years earlier in the essay “Ibsenism,” which not only emphasized the free development of individuality and conscious self-realization but also reprehended conservative morality and “statism in a narrow sense” (xiayi de guojiazhuyi). Following Ibsen, Hu Shi (2003(1): 613) sought to transcend national boundaries in his advocacy of social equality and “the forging of the material of yourself into a useful, finished product.”5 Hu Shi conceived of the relationship of individuals to the nation and society in terms of the cultivation of a sincere attitude. He saw such sincerity as the basis of the “critical attitude” (pingpan de taidu) to scholarship that he promoted. This chapter will also discuss how Hu idealized a rational, scientific approach to the solution of social problems and how this approach shaped his understanding of self-­ transformation through examining and changing the way in which one thought, spoke, wrote, and communicated with other people. While a student in America, the young Hu Shi (2003(20): 10) expressed his concern over the academic inertia in China, and longed to “serve [his] countrymen with what [he] had learned.” He lamented in the 1914 essay “Against Studying Abroad” (Fei liuxue pian) that it was not just modern scholarship that China lacked – “it lacks learning in general, not to mention a modern civilization” (ibid (27): 11). He then articulated his understanding of contributing to China’s new civilization: “To import new knowledge for the creation of new civilization in our motherland, we must write more books, translate more books and launch more periodicals” (ibid). Chen Duxiu’s New Youth, and the development of print mechanism in China’s urban centres, gave wings to Hu’s aspirations. In fact, Hu’s involvement in the editing of a 4  Hu Shi’s first use of “wholesome individualism” (jianquan de gerenzhuyi) was in the essay “Introducing My Personal Thought” (Jieshao wo ziji de sixiang). The essay is the preface to Selected Works of Hu Shi (Hu Shi wenxuan), which contains the essays Hu Shi wrote in the 1910s and 1920s, including “Ibsenism” (Yibusheng zhuyi). The book was published in 1930. 5  Taken from Hu Shi’s 1918 essay “Ibsenism.”

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number of periodicals, such as Struggle Trimonthly (Jingye xunbao), New Youth, Weekly Review (Meizhou pinglun), National Learning Quarterly (Guoxue jikan), Endeavour Weekly (Nuli zhoubao), The Crescent (Xinyue), Independent Critique (Duli pinglun) and Free China (Ziyou Zhongguo), greatly facilitated the publication of his scholarly works and promotion of modern values. According to Grieder (1970: 78), Hu “could be sure that whatever he said would receive an attentive and a respectful hearing.” By the early 1920s, Hu Shi had already been widely acknowledged as a central figure of Chinese liberalism, which has led to scholarly focus on his pioneering role in establishing liberal Chinese thought.6 What is less often discussed is the role his translations of the late 1910s and early 1920s played in giving shape and form to his ideas. Hu Shi’s translated works were as popular as his own writings from 1917 onwards, and were regularly reprinted. His Anthology of Short Stories (Duanpian xiaoshuo ji), which contained his translations of the late 1910s, was reprinted in April 1920, only six months after the first edition came out (Hu Shi 1999: 4). By 1936, there had been twenty reprints. The second anthology of Hu’s translated short stories also enjoyed more than twenty reprints (Xie and Zha 2004: 62). Hu Shi’s translations reflected his liberal ideals and helped to explain individualism and cosmopolitan humanism, two concepts he was most sedulous in promoting in the late 1910s. Hu Shi expounded modern values and concepts largely through his translation of drama, short stories and poetry. Besides, many of his essays incorporate such a great proportion of borrowed ideas and the reference to so many foreign literary works that they may reasonably be treated as “rewritings,” in Lefevere’s use of the term. According to Lefevere (1992: 6), the products of rewriting, or rewrites, are “texts that rewrite the actual text in one way or another, such as plot summaries in literary histories or reference works, reviews in newspapers, magazines, or journals, some critical articles, performances on stage or screen, and last but not least, translations.” Hu Shi’s 1918 essay “Ibsenism,” in which Hu presented his interpretation of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s individualism and liberal thought, is based on nine of Ibsen’s plays. These are When We Dead Awaken, A Doll’s House, Ghosts, Rosmersholm, Pillars of Society, John Gabriel Borkman, An Enemy of the People, The Wild Duck, and The Lady from the Sea. Scholars (e.g. Zhao 2011; Tam 1984) 6  Following the footsteps of earlier proponents of social liberalism, such as Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse (1864–1929), and his Columbia University professor John Dewey, Hu Shi conceived of liberalism as a state of mind, an intellectual discipline necessary for the good order of democratic social structures. He was influenced by Dewey’s liberal conceptions, expressed in statements such as this: “Liberalism is a method of experimentation based on insight into both social desires and actual conditions.…It signifies the adoption of the scientific habit of mind in application to social affairs” (Dewey in Geiger 1958: 171). According to Grieder (2000: 328), Hu Shi’s conception of liberalism as shaped by Dewey’s argument led him to “the belief that politics must involve not only the institutions and processes of government but also the social and cultural environment in which institutions exist and processes operate.” Hu emphasized the importance of education in exercising individuals’ potential for the good of society. While he conceded to the government’s usefulness in keeping institutions functional, he affirmed the legitimacy of the freedom of individual opinion, and was opposed to the government setting standards for moral values and individual virtues.

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have tended to agree that Hu Shi’s formulation of Ibsenism was inspired by George Bernard Shaw’s book The Quintessence of Ibsenism. The essay “Ibsenism” abound with excerpts from Ibsen’s letters to his friends, translated into Chinese by Hu. In fact, Hu (2003(1): 610–1) noted that he made a point of quoting from the 1905 collection of Ibsen’s Letters, edited by Henrik Ibsen’s son Sigurd Ibsen (1859–1930). And according to Zhao (2006: 127–33), Hu Shi’s manifesto for literary revolution, i.e. “Tentative Proposals for a Reform of Literature,” was rewritten from “A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste[sic],” an essay produced by the American poet and critic Ezra Pound (1885–1972). For Lefevere (1992: 6), rewriting manipulates and adapts source texts to a certain ideology or to a certain poetics, and usually to both. Hu Shi’s rewriting challenged the raison d’etre of traditional literary language, and revealed his intention to help his readers develop the type of critical attitude toward cultural traditions he believed he represented. This critical attitude, in his view, would foster closer relations between people.

5.1  H  u Shi’s Rewriting of Ibsen and Promotion of Liberal-­ Individualist Ideals The formation of Hu Shi’s liberal individualistic ideas owes much to Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen’s problem plays came to hold immense appeal for Hu Shi when the latter was studying in America. He declared in a 1934 essay, entitled “My Belief” (Wode xinyang), that the works of Ibsen, Morley,7 and Huxley taught him the importance of honesty in thinking and speaking (in Ouyang 1998a(1): 16). When Hu returned to China and identified himself with New Youth, he began to publish his translations and writings of Ibsen, with emphasis on his liberal social message rather than on the dramatic form.8 The translation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House was published in the June 1918 special issue of New Youth on Ibsen (Yibusheng hao). It was jointly translated by Hu Shi and his student Luo Jialun (1897–1969) based on the 1906 edition of Scottish critic William Archer’s (1856–1924) English version. While Luo translated the first two acts of the play, Hu was responsible for the translation of the third act. The title they gave to the translation, i.e. Nuola, which is the Chinese transliteration of the name Nora, had the effect of underlining the female protagonist as a self-liberated woman. Compared with Luo Jialun’s translation, in which several instances of mistranslated expressions can be found and which were a reflection of either his limited English ability or his purposeful manipulation for the sake of thematic enhancement or both

 John Morley (1838–1923) was a British liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor.  Hu Shi affirmed that he was more interested in Ibsen as a social reformer than as an artist. See Hu (1919). 7 8

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(Yuan 2015: 41),9 Hu Shi’s translation seldom steered away from the English source text. In his translation Hu chose to mark with little circles sentences that revealed familial and social problems. These highlighted sentences in Nuola were an attempt on the translator’s part to instruct the reader. Moreover, to sustain his argument in the essay “Ibsenism,” published in the same special issue on Ibsen, Hu placed many of these highlighted sentences with other excerpts from Ibsen’s plays that he deemed important for the transmission of individualistic ideas. In the essay Hu gave a comprehensive explication of how Ibsen portrayed individualism and liberal thought, based on, as noted previously, nine of Ibsen’s plays. Hu Shi (2003(1): 600–1) extolled Ibsen for his gift in producing remarkable characters that left a deep impression on readers and for highlighting the moral dilemmas of the central characters. He referred to the realism of Ibsen’s portrayal of social problems and advocacy of self-liberation and how impressed he was by this form of realist literature. To Hu Shi, Ibsen’s realism (xieshizhuyi) was a pursuit of truth. He wrote in the first section of “Ibseninsm” that the Norwegian playwright had clarified his mind. He translated and quoted Ibsen: “My intention was to produce the impression in the mind of the reader that he was witnessing something real” (ibid: 509).10 He then articulated his understanding of Ibsenian realism: “Ibsen gives a truthful depiction of familial and social situations. Whoever reads his works will be moved, and will realize how dark and corrupt our families and society are, and see the necessity of reform. This is Ibsenism” (ibid: 612). Hu’s use of the first person possessive pronoun (“our”) waters down the foreignness of the topic in question, and draws Ibsen closer to the Chinese readership. Such sinicization has the effect of diverting the reader’s attention from Europe to Chinese families and society, with all their feudalistic values and practices. In this way Hu Shi intended to turn Ibsen and his problem plays into a source of instruction for readers, who, to his mind, would then be equipped to properly address China’s problems. Hu Shi believed that Chinese society needed to see reforms it needed along the lines Ibsen had proposed. These ideas of reform, he argued, should be called Ibsenism, for they all required a mental transformation based on the privileging of individual thinking. According to Hu (ibid: 611), Ibsen detested politicians and regarded them as fighting for superficial rights. Hu translated and cited Ibsen’s letter: “What is all-important is the revolution of the spirit of man.”11 Hu Shi’s two favourite characters from Ibsen’s plays were Nora from A Doll’s House and Dr. Stockmann from An Enemy of the People. He frequently used them to exemplify his own Ibsen-inspired view of individualism as intellectual and psychological independence. 9  According to Yuan (2015: 43–4), there are places in Luo’s translation where the affectionate flavour, the mixture of condescension and admiration in Helmer’s speech, is replaced with a clear, patronizing tone. 10  Translated from Norwegian to English by Mary Morrison. See Morrison (1905: 463). 11  The English sentence is found in Morrison (1905: 205).

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In “Ibsenism” Hu presented the lack of this independence as the reason for Nora’s reduction to a plaything and her loss of dignity and happiness. She failed to see that she was resigned to living in the “doll’s house” that her husband Torvald Helmer had built for her. Eventually Nora was “awakened” to her situation, realizing that “the greatest evil in society is the destruction of individuality and the impediment to its free development” (ibid: 614). Leaving her irresponsible husband and the “doll’s house” signifies Nora’s consciousness and determination of self-­ emancipation. According to Hu Shi, this was the point at which she achieved her true individual nature. Hu (ibid(4): 663) later described Nora’s courage to leave her husband as a paragon of “wholesome individualism.”12 Hu Shi thus accorded great importance to the independence of the individual. Another of Ibsen’s characters Hu considered exemplary was Dr. Stockmann, the male protagonist in The Enemy of the People. Dr. Stockmann is ready to take any consequences for his actions, and chooses to do the right thing and to act morally. Hu Shi viewed Dr. Stockmann as an individualist who was opposed to “the tyranny of the majority.” In the essay “Introducing My Personal Thought,” Hu (ibid: 662–3) praised the two characters as follows: Nora leaves behind her family, her husband and children, and walks out of the house, as she has realized that she herself is also a human being….This is Ibsenism….Dr. Stockmann is called “an enemy of the people” by the whole community because he tells the truth and exposes the dark secrets of the local society. However, he insists on telling the truth despite the accusation....This is the true spirit of wholesome individualism.

Hu Shi’s wholesome individualism thus comprises two major components. The first is the free development of individuality, like the heroine Nora, and the second is the courage to remain “contrarian” (teli duxing) against “evil forces” (e shili) (ibid: 663), like the hero Dr. Stockmann. The articulation of these two traits in the two characters of different genders indicates that Hu saw female emancipation as an integral part of the New Culture discourse of self-liberation and modern identity construction. In the 1918 essay “Ibsenism,” Hu Shi did not provide a substantial explanation for how people should achieve their freedom and individual personality. He sought less to dictate than to urge readers to allow themselves to be moved by Ibsen’s plays. Their emotions would then help them to question themselves and make them alert to familial and social vices in their midst. For him, the best way of changing oneself was to ask if one knew what it meant to be a wholesome individual (ibid (1): 613). Hu Shi then explained the practical function and social values of individualism. He translated and cited Ibsen’s letter to his friend George Brandes: “There is no way in which you can benefit society more than by coining the metal you have in yourself....There are actually moments when the whole history of the world appears to me like one great shipwreck, and the only important thing seems to be to save one’s self.”13 Hu Shi deplored the people who, with full realization that the world was 12 13

 See Hu Shi’s 1930 essay “Introducing My Personal Thought.”  The English version is taken from Morrison (1905: 218).

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sinking, would rather sink (luchen) and become degenerate (duoluo) with it than save themselves (jiuchu ziji). As he noted, they had failed to appreciate that society was composed of individuals and that if the number of people who saved themselves increased, the number of individuals who would re-create society would grow accordingly. “Saving oneself” thus involved “the preparation of one more individual for social reconstruction,” and “saving oneself from the sinking ship” would bring hope to others on the “sinking ship,” a metaphor for the old society. Interestingly, Hu sought to modernize a famous statement by Mencius “When people are poor, they attend to their own virtue in solitude” (qiong ze dushanqishen) by equating it with what Ibsen meant by “saving oneself.” He then praised Nora for leaving her husband and children, stating that her actions demonstrated what “saving oneself” meant. The following lines from Hu’s translation of A Doll’s House were then cited in the essay “Ibsenism:” Nora: What do you consider my holiest duties? Helmer: Do I need to tell you that? Your duties to your husband and to your children. Nora: I have other duties equally sacred. Helmer: Impossible! What duties do you mean? Nora: My duties toward myself. Helmer: Before all else you are a wife and a mother. Nora: That I no longer believe. I believe that before all else I am a human being, just as much as you are - or at least that I should try to become one. (A Doll’s House, Act 3, Vol. VIII, in Williams et al. 1911: 182)

To be a human being “before all else” transcends all the traditional forms of moral conduct such as being “a good wife and loving mother” (xianqi liangmu). For Hu, this Confucian patriarchal ideal for women was detrimental to the development of women’s individual character. In this essay by Hu, we get a clear sense of how literary translation helped to create vivid images to promote modern qualities and virtues. Extemporizing on what he had learned from reading Ibsen, Hu Shi (2003(1): 615) wrote that a society or a nation devoid of people of free and independent personality was like wine without yeast, bread without yeast powder, and a body without a brain  – it would be bereft of any hope of improvement. A sense of hope, according to Hu,14 was necessary for social progress. There could be no individual freedom or a strong sense of social responsibility if people did not have hope (ibid). He focused in particular on how individuality, as personal empowerment, involved people being responsible for their decisions and actions. Hu expanded on these ideas of responsibility, social action and individual liberties in his 1919 article “Immortality: My Religion” (Buxiu: Wode zongjiao). He claimed that society should be understood as immortal and explained what he meant in the following way:  Hu Shi (2003(27): 243) wrote in a 1913 diary entry that “hope remains as long as one has a breath left.” In the diary, Hu reversed the two clauses in the manifesto of the American newspaper Life, which went “Where is life, there is hope,” and changed it to “Where there is hope, there is life.” According to him, the change was because he was disturbed by the death of two promising young men who had been disillusioned by social vices.

14

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I - this “lesser self” - … am in direct or indirect relationships with myriads of other lesser selves, with the whole of society and with the entire world…; yet everything that the lesser self has done, good or bad, right or wrong, will remain in the greater self eternally….This is what [I call] the immortality of society, the immortality of the greater self. (in Fung 2010: 154–5)

Despite the limited life span of the lesser self, Hu was convinced that the immortality of the greater self would enable the transcendence of the lesser self’s ephemerality. In “Ibsenism,” Hu drew on Ibsen’s character Dr. Stockmann to illustrate the greater sense of responsibility that the individual, as a “lesser self,” should possess. According to him, the individual must fight for his own individuality and the individuality of society. This was because “the health of the society and the nation depends entirely on a large number of tenacious, unrelenting white blood cells who waste no time in battling the wicked and depraved elements of society” (Hu 2003(1): 616). Therefore, to keep society healthy, “there will need to be ‘white blood cell’ elements like Dr. Stockmann in the society” (ibid). Hu Shi accorded great importance to his translation of Ibsen, and prided himself on his writing of “Ibsenism.” In 1930, he made a point of noting that three of his essays, namely, “Ibsenism” (1918), “Immortality: My Religion” (1919) and “Preface to Science and Philosophy of Life” (Kexue yu renshengguan xu) (1923) were representative of his outlook on life and his religion (ibid (4): 662). Hu (1972: 28) recollected in 1935: In January 1918, after the republication of New Youth, we were determined to do two things. First, stop writing in classical Chinese and focus on vernacular writing. Second, translate early modern and modern literary masterpieces from Western sources. In June that year, New Youth launched a special issue on Ibsen….In my essay “Ibsenism,” I introduced, through Ibsen’s words, the “wholesome individualism” that the New Youth colleagues shared a conviction in.

The point to be highlighted is that Hu Shi understood Ibsen from the perspective of self-transformation, of using Ibsen’s works to teach people how to become “wholesome” individuals. His translations, as “rewritings” (to use Lefevere’s term), resulted in the Chinese reception of Ibsen’s works as a source of modern character building. Although Hu Shi encouraged “more study of issues” and “less talk about isms” (duo yanjiu xie wenti, shao tan xie zhuyi),15 his frequent reference to Ibsenism bespeaks his belief in the usefulness of this concept in application to social issues. To him, educating people about the importance of exercising individuality based on Ibsenism would benefit society in the long run as more “wholesome individuals” were produced as a result.

 Hu Shi published the essay “Issues and Isms” (Wenti yu zhuyi) in 1919. See Hu (2003(1): 324–59).

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5.2  Nora as a Literary Trope for Self-Empowerment While Hu Shi made Ibsen a household name among educated Chinese in the late 1910s, the first Chinese writer to introduce Ibsen to Chinese readers was in fact Lu Xun. He mentioned Ibsen in two of his 1907 essays “On Imbalanced Cultural Development” (Wenhua pianzhi lun) and “The Power of Mara Poetry” (Moluo shili shuo). Lu Xun (1981(1): 74) extolled Ibsen as a hero who “holds fast to truth to resist ignorance and mediocrity.” In 1914, the Spring Willow Society (Chunliu she), the first Chinese Western-style drama group, staged A Doll’s House in Shanghai. It was not until the publication of the special Ibsen edition of New Youth in 1918, however, that Ibsenism and Ibsen’s plays received widespread acceptance in China. Ibsen then started to be associated with social reform, self-liberation and the awakening of humanity. During the May Fourth period, the image of Nora, the female protagonist in A Doll’s House, as an archetype for new women, and new people for that matter, took root in China, and became closely aligned with New Culture enlightenment. The translation and rewriting of Ibsen ushered in the dissemination of new cultural thought through translated European drama while inadvertently providing models for modern Chinese problem plays.16 A Ying (1981: 740) recalled in a 1956 essay that the introduction of Ibsen to China in 1918 gave an enormous boost to the promotion of New Culture. “Ibsen was worshipped by every ‘new’ person and discussed by almost all the periodicals of the time. There emerged many ‘Noras’ among Chinese women” (ibid). Mao Dun (2001: 149) wrote in 1925: “Ibsen has an unusual relationship with the New Culture Movement, which has been surging across the country in recent years. Six or seven years ago the special Ibsen issue of New Youth upheld this great literary figure of North Europe as emblematic of literary revolution, women’s emancipation, and anti-traditionalism. At that time, Ibsen’s name lingered in the minds of young people and was spread by word of mouth among them.” Mao Dun (in Tam 1984: 258) made a similar remark in 1938: “It is no exaggeration to say that the women’s movement in the May Fourth period is nothing but ‘Noraism’….Nora’s spirit to ‘be a human being,’ her realization that besides being a mother and wife she is a person, and her idea of ‘the responsibilities she as a person has’ are all healthy, progressive thoughts, even for us today.” The observations made by A Ying and Mao Dun are representative of the enthusiastic responses Ibsen and his plays aroused among Chinese intellectuals. After the publication of Hu Shi’s and Luo Jialun’s translation of A Doll House in 1918, Chinese writers started to create Chinese female characters modelled on Nora in emulation of Ibsen. In 1919, Hu Shi published a one-act play entitled The Greatest Event in Life (Zhongshen dashi), which highlighted the collision between traditional constraints and modern values of freedom, between familiar duties and self-liberation.

16

 See, for example, Fung (2010) and He (2004).

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In the play, the female protagonist Tian Yamei, the only daughter of a well-off middle class family, makes up her mind to break free from her father’s strict control to marry Mr. Chen, a man of her own choosing, despite her family’s strong objection to the marriage. Before she walks away from the house, she leaves a note to her parents, claiming: “Marriage, the greatest event in my life, ought to be decided by myself” (in Ouyang 1998a(2): 626). These words bring to mind Nora’s aspiration “to be a human being.” In this regard, The Greatest Event in Life well embodies Hu Shi’s understanding of Ibsenism, although in terms of intricate plotting and sophistication of theatrical craft, Hu’s simulation of A Doll’s House can be said to be awkward. In The Greatest Event in Life, opposition occurs between parents and daughter, unlike the emphasis on gender relations in A Doll’s House. Both, however, convey the same “leaving home” (chuzou) motif. The play premiered in June 1919 at Peking University.17 It then became a favourite stage performance of many theatrical troupes and student associations, and continued to occupy a particularly prominent position in the Chinese theatrical repertoire for ten-odd years following the New Culture Movement. After Tian Yamei appeared on stage, more Chinese “Noras” were featured in fictional and dramatic works. Among them were Zeng Yuying in Xiong Foxi’s (1900–1965) A New Person’s Life (Xinren de shenghuo), Wu Zhifang in Ho Yao’s (1903–1942) An Abandoned Woman (Qifu), Qian Yulan in Yu Shangyuan’s (1897– 1970) Warrior (Bingyong), Yu Suxin in Ouyang Yuqian’s (1889–1962) A Shrew (Pofu), Fanyi in Cao Yu’s (1910–1996) Thunderstorm (Leiyu). While Zeng Yuying, in her pursuit of free individuality, flatly rejects the offer to be the concubine of a warlord, Wu Zhifang leaves home because she is at odds with her feudal-minded aunt, who keeps a tight rein on her individuality and self-expression. In A Shrew, Yu Suxin marries a young man out of free love, but the husband, under the influence of the old tradition, takes a concubine. Suxin is so disappointed that she leaves home with her husband’s concubine, with the intention to educate her about women’s emancipation. The playwright Cao Yu was only 23 years old when he published the four-act tragedy Thunderstorm, which bears a strong resemblance to Ibsen’s plays in thematization and characterization. Cao presented an extreme example of women’s struggle for self-liberation. Fanyi is an educated liberal woman, whose passion for new ideas is suppressed in the patriarchal household of Zhou Puyuan, a rich mining entrepreneur whose rigid traditionalism and hypocrisy lead to the destruction of the family. Fanyi’s incest with her stepson, according to Malmqvist (1990: 54), “represents for her only an extreme form of escape, on the road towards efficient social communication and her own human and social self-assertion.” Between 1922 and 1926, Guo Moruo wrote Three Rebellious Women (Sange panni de nüxing), a trilogy of plays based on three well-known female figures in Chinese history, namely, Zhuo Wenjun, Wang Zhaojun and Nie Ying. Guo’s purpose  Lu Xun (1981(14): 359) noted in a diary entry dated 19 June 1919 that he and his second younger brother Zhou Jianren went to watch Hu Shi’s play The Greatest Event in Life, performed by students.

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was to “find several meritorious women in history” and to promote “the new ‘three-­ disobedience’ ethics” (“sanbucong” de xin daode) in opposition to the old “three-­ obedience” (sancong) ethics, which required a woman to obey her father as a daughter, obey her husband as a wife, and obey her son in widowhood (Guo 1986(6): 134). The self-empowerment motif is ingeniously woven into each play of the series, which is acknowledged as more nuanced in characterization and better structured in plot than Hu Shi’s The Greatest Event in Life (Chen 2011: 59). When Hu Shi and other Chinese writers borrowed the trope of Nora from Ibsen, they remoulded it to varying degrees to suit their purpose of modern identity construction. And whereas Ibsen had used the metaphor of “a doll’s house” to represent a marital trap and the imbalance of power in marital relations, Chinese writers often employed the trope of the house to stand for hegemonic power relations in Chinese families and to associate it with authoritarianism, ignorance, and all the other cultural practices and values typical of the old society. The abandonment of the old household thus suggested the rejection of the old value system and the triumph of individual freedom. Such a house brings to mind the iron house (tiewuzi) that Lu Xun used in the preface to his first short story collection Call to Arms (Nahan) as a metaphor for the entrenched reactionary force of the old Chinese society. Lu Xun’s preoccupation with women’s emancipation and self-empowerment is evident in his stories that depict women as victims of age-old morality and social cannibalism, such as Xianglin Sao in “The New Year’s Sacrifice” (Zhufu). As the enthusiasm for “leaving home” and Chinese “Noras” surged, Lu Xun began to concern himself with the future of these “Noras” in a society that was still largely defined by traditional Chinese norms and values. In 1923 he gave a speech “What Happens after Nora Leaves Home?” (Nuola zouhou zenyang) at Beijing Girls’ Normal College (Beijing nüzi gaodeng shifan xuexiao). Lu Xun (1981(1): 629) warned Chinese Nora-esque women that they must be prepared for the realities of hardship and poverty if they wanted to leave home to pursue their dreams of freedom; otherwise, they would be left with two alternatives, that is, to be a prostitute or to return home. Two years later, he published the short story “Regret for the Past” (Shangshi) to illustrate what he meant. Through depiction of the failed marriage of Juansheng and Zijun after they claimed their freedom and walked away from their families, Lu Xun reiterated the importance of economic independence and continuous self-improvement for an effective women’s struggle for freedom. Lu Xun’s concern about women’s economic and social independence was echoed by many other prominent intellectuals who advocated New Culture. Long after he had become a Communist, Guo Moruo, in the 1941 essay “Answer to the Question of Nora” (Nuola de da’an),18 suggested what he regarded as the sole solution for the problems besetting Chinese women, i.e. they must take to the revolutionary (Communist) path. Guo (1991: ii) described the famed female revolutionary and martyr Qiu Jin (1875–1907) as a Chinese “Nora” who had abandoned her “doll’s house” to become a revolutionary heroine, one who “laid down her life” for the 18

 The essay serves as the preface to Historical Documents on Qiu Jin (Qiu Jin shiji).

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eventual emancipation of the whole society. Guo observed: “I believe that the path Qiu Jin took is the answer to the question of Nora.” In fact, from the mid-1920s, as many intellectuals became attracted to Marxism through the greatly increased availability of translations of Soviet and Japanese revolutionary writings, Nora-esque female protagonists in Chinese literature began to be depicted as escaping from their families and transforming themselves into valiant revolutionaries. A well-­ known example is Mei Xingsu, the female protagonist in Mao Dun’s 1929 novel Rainbow (Hong).19 Interest in the translation and enactment of Ibsen’s plays in China’s major cities did not start to wane until the breakout of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937.20 This indicates that the translation and staging of Ibsenian drama exercised an important influence for nearly two decades. The best known of Ibsen’s plays were A Doll’s House, followed by An Enemy of the People, Ghosts and The Wild Duck. These plays underwent considerable retranslation, with A Doll’s House alone attracting four retranslations from 1918 (after the New Youth special issue on Ibsen) to 1937 (Qin 2009: 125–32).21 There is no doubt that Nora was the favourite Ibsenian character among young men and women in China from the late 1910s to the mid-1930s. The trope of Nora enabled Chinese readers to appreciate the New Culture advocacy of modern selfhood in a more concrete and tangible way, and Nora’s “leaving home” (chuzou) became a byword for self-awakening in pursuit of one’s freedom. The trope of “Nora” and the concept of Ibsenism, as used by Hu Shi, became integral elements of modern identity construction in the New Culture discourse of the late 1910s. Translation and rewriting thus played a fundamental role in the development of the discourse itself. A month earlier, New Youth had featured a translation by Zhou Zuoren of “On Chastity” (Zhencao lun), an essay written by  In the late 1920s and the 1930s, literary works that depicted Nora-esque protagonists as antipatriarchal, self-liberating individualists coexisted with those that featured revolutionary “Noras.” Mao Dun’s 1928 short story “Creation” (Chuangzao) tells about how the male protagonist Junshi attempts to mould his young wife Xianxian, whose name connotes demureness and gentleness, into an “ideal” woman and how, as Xianxian’s horizons broaden, she becomes an individual of her own free will, rather than a product of her husband’s mastery. The story ends with the female protagonist’s departure from home. Ba Jin (1904–2005), the penname of Li Yaotang, created a male “Nora” in his magnum opus Family (Jia), first serialized between 1931 and 1932. The novel portrays the struggles of the three brothers Gao Juexin, Gao Juemin and Gao Juehui with the oppressive, autocratic patriarchy of the Gao family. In the novel Juehui’s defiance and recalcitrance of the feudalistic family are set in sharp relief by the obedience and acquiescence of Juexin, the eldest of the brothers. Juehui eventually walks away from the house to pursue his new life in Shanghai. 20  The year 1935 was called “The Year of Nora” (Nuola nian), as Nuola (A Doll’s House) was staged by five theatrical troupes in Nanjing, Shanghai, Jinan and other cities. Wang Ping, a primary teacher in Nanjing, was dismissed by her school for acting as Nora. She was reinstated following severe criticisms of the school from the media. 21  After Hu Shi’s and Luo Jialun’s translation of A Doll’s House appeared in June 1918, Chen Gu (dates unknown), Pan Jiaxun (1896–1989) and Ouyang Yuqian (1889–1962) retranslated the play in October 1918, 1921 and 1925 respectively. Two editions (i.e. 1921 and 1923) of Pan Jiaxun’s Collection of Ibsen’s Plays (Yibusheng xiju ji) were edited by Hu Shi. See Qin (2009: 125–7). 19

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Japanese feminist and social reformer Yosano Akiko (1878–1942). The same May 1918 issue included Lu Xun’s short story “The Diary of a Madman” (Kuangren riji), a work which would subsequently be celebrated as a major turning point in both Chinese literature and Chinese thought. Zhou Zuoren’s translation was his attempt to promote a new sexual morality based on love and gender equality. In fact, Zhou’s many translations of Russian and Japanese works were published in New Youth around 1918, and culminated in his promotion of humanism and humanist literature. Lu Xun’s “The Diary of a Madman” is widely considered the first modern short story in Chinese literature. By likening traditional values and practices to a form of cannibalism, Lu Xun intended his story to be not only an ironic attack on Confucianism but also a call for the adoption of Western values of individualism and freethinking. While Lu Xun’s madman was a discerning sceptic of the old system, Nora’s “home-leaving” took things one step further. She signified an actual refusal to comply with the old cultural norms. These foreign-inspired characters in Chinese literary works, translations, and rewritings, presented an ensemble of the quest for self, or in Yu Dafu’s words, “the discovery of the individual” (geren de faxian) (1935: 5). And as translators and advocates of modern self-making, the New Culture leaders were effectively staging a collective Nora-esque act of “departure” from traditional Chinese culture and morality.

5.3  H  u Shi’s Short Story and Poetry Translation and His Development of Cosmopolitan Humanism When presenting Ibsen to Chinese readers, Hu Shi equated Ibsenism with individualism. He asserted in the 1930 essay “Introducing My Personal Thought:” “Ibsen epitomizes the quintessence of individualism in nineteenth-century Europe. Therefore, what I wrote in the essay [‘Ibsenism’] boiled down to a philosophy of life based on wholesome individualism” (Hu 2003(4): 662). In addition, Hu attempted to describe Ibsen as an advocate of cosmopolitanism. In Section Five of “Ibsenism,” Hu (ibid(1): 611) noted that Ibsen was never a narrow-minded patriot. Unlike his presentation of individualism, which he substantiated with ample evidence from Ibsen’s plays, Hu’s argument of Ibsen’s cosmopolitanism was rather gratuitous, and he did no more than conjecture: “I think before his death he must have progressed to cosmopolitanism.” Hu Shi’s invocation of Ibsen’s cosmopolitanism was to elucidate what he sought to promote as the “wholesome individualism” that Chinese citizens needed to cultivate. Although he failed to demonstrate this clearly in the essay “Ibsenism,” his short story and poetry translation of the period reveals what he meant. His attitude can best be described as cosmopolitan humanism, as it conforms to the ethical thinking of modern cosmopolitan philosophers, who regard all humans as the basic

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unit of concern while making strong claims for the equal moral worth of every human being (Rosenthal 2009; Singer 2002). As examined in Chap. 3, Hu Shi’s initial attempt at translation was instigated by news of two sinking ships in China. The “sinking and saving” motif implied in his first translated work became freeze-framed, as it were, in the mind of the young Hu Shi and resurfaced thereafter in his enlightenment discourse, its significance being extrapolated from the practical to the more philosophical domain. Hu’s two translations published during his overseas study, i.e. Daudet’s “La Dernière Classe” and “The Siege of Berlin,” were inspired by profound love of his motherland. Soon afterwards, Hu extended the “sinking and saving” or “national crisis” motif, as well as patriotism, to the deliberation of nations and humanity. Hu Shi’s 1917 translation of French short story writer Guy de Maupassant’s (1850–1893) “Deux amis,” or “Two Friends,” entitled “Er yufu” (Two Fishermen) in Chinese, can be understood as marking Hu’s rethinking of national crisis and patriotism. “Deux amis” was set in the besieged city of Paris during the Franco-­ Prussian War. Maupassant laid emphasis on the discussion of the war in the form of a conversation between two protagonists. Prior to the translation of “Deux amis,” Hu Shi gave an introduction to Maupassant’s literary technique and sang praises for the French author’s naturalistic style of presenting characters and plot. Hu wrote an afterword for his translation in which he provided detailed reflections on “Deux amis.” To Hu, the difference between “Deux amis” and other patriotic works was not immediately apparent and could only be revealed after careful scrutiny: First, in his narration of the siege, Maupassant chooses as his protagonists two drunkards who show unconcern for their country, instead of depicting the heroic deeds of one or two staunch patriots. The two men indulge in fishing despite the critical juncture their country has reached. This is only natural to common people, although idealist novelists will frown on it. In the second place, the two men delight themselves in fishing. In the meantime they discuss the war and banter about their government, amid roaring cannons in Mont-Valérien. This shows that Maupassant is not writing about patriotism in a narrow sense. Patriotism in the narrow sense results from the manneristic amalgam of circumstance and scholarship, which is an unnatural phenomenon. Third, in the face of death, the two fishermen’s hearts soften, their eyes filled with tears. They tremble all over as they shake hands with each other. This is again the natural response of innocent common people. It would be unnatural if they were depicted as maintaining their composure, holding their heads high, or laughing and cursing. (Hu 1917)

Hu Shi’s appreciation of the author’s naturalistic depiction is manifest from such expressions as “only natural to common people,” “unnatural phenomenon” and “natural response of innocent common folks.” Implicit in these expressions, however, is Hu Shi’s reconsideration of the individual, the nation, politics and war. Hu expressed empathy for the two friends who “indulge in fishing despite the critical juncture their country has reached,” because their conduct was “only natural.” From Hu’s perspective, it seemed more important for common people to “self-save” from a “sinking ship.” Meanwhile, Hu also found the two protagonists’ unique way of loving their country worth admiring – they were able to “discuss the war and banter

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about their government” at the height of the siege. Given that “patriotism in the narrow sense results from the manneristic amalgam of circumstance and scholarship,” Hu maintained that instigating or joining the war blindly was inhuman and not the ultimate form of patriotism. He emphasized his understanding of patriotism toward the end of the postscript: The two fishermen lay down their lives for their country notwithstanding their lack of intention to be patriotic; they die as a result of their refusal to betray their country despite their unconcern for national affairs.22 This is where Maupassant applies his exceptional perspective. To betray the capital of one’s own country for fear of one’s life is beneath any person of conscience. This is natural patriotism. This kind of patriotism has been harboured by people of conscience in both ancient and modern times, in China and abroad. The fostering of such patriotism does not necessarily follow narrow statist thought. Patriotism should not be narrower than this; otherwise, it will lead to … narrow statism, which is against human nature. (ibid)

Hu Shi’s distinction between “natural patriotism” and “narrow statism” reflects a liberal aversion to a doctrinal attitude to patriotism. According to Grieder (1981: 228–9), the cosmopolitanism in Hu Shi stemmed largely from his involvement in the Cornell Cosmopolitan Club,23 an organization that embraced the principles of pacifism and internationalism in the heyday of Wilsonian idealism. Indeed, Hu’s study in America provided him with a wider scope of thinking about China’s place in the world, as well as a universalist attitude. Hu returned to China with a more spacious view of the world and greater optimism in human reasonableness, despite China’s deepening political and social crisis. His activities and publications reflected a confidence in human intelligence and effort to achieve social progress and human development (Bieler 2004: 243). This is perhaps why Grieder considers Hu Shi to be “the least sympathetic to, or comprehending of, the claims of political nationalism” (Grieder 1981: 229). While praising student demonstrations, for instance, Hu Shi cautioned students not to neglect their studies. And as “national salvation depends on talented people of all kinds,” he wrote in a 1925 essay entitled “Patriotic Movements and Pursuit of Learning” (Aiguo yundong yu qiuxue), “the real preparation for national salvation is to make oneself a talented person” (Hu 2003(3): 822). He once again used the metaphor of a sinking ship to figure China as a country in crisis, this time adding that “saving myself [from the sinking ship] is of overriding importance.” By the same token, “saving your country should start with saving yourself” (ibid). Hu Shi believed that the wellbeing of all humans resided in the fostering of a personal ethics. His translation of “Auld Robin Gray,” a poem written by Scottish poet Lady Anne Lindsay (1750–1825), bears this out. Hu Shi himself liked the poem so much that he chose to include it in Book of Experiments (Changshi ji), an

 According to the story, the two friends are captured by the Prussians while fishing and talking. They are made to choose between execution as spies and return to their families in Paris upon releasing the password they use to get through their own defence lines. As they refuse to cooperate, they are shot dead. 23  Hu Shi attended Cornell University from 1910 to 1914. 22

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anthology consisting mainly of poems of his own creation.24 The following is the first stanza of “Auld Robin Gray,” followed by Hu Shi’s translation: When the sheep are in the fraud, and the kye at hame, And a’ the warld to rest are gane, The waes o’ my heart fa’ in showers frae my e’e, While my gudeman lies sound by me. 羊儿在栏,牛二在家, 静悄悄地黑夜, 我的好心人早在我身边睡了, 我的心头冤苦,都迸作泪如雨下。(ibid (10): 81)

The realistic portrayal, together with the lucidity of the translation, helps bring out the protagonist’s abjection and distress. Hu Shi (ibid) wrote in the preface to his translation of “Auld Robin Gray” (Lao Luobo): “This poem is the most poignant of all love poems of the world. It adopts the tone of a village woman…as if she was pouring out her lamentations.” He observed in a 1919 essay “The True Colours of Humanism” (Rendaozhuyi de zhen mianmu): “Whoever reads these lines cannot but be overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness” (ibid(21): 162). Soon after the publication of the translated poem, it was adapted into a short story. Hu Shi was dissatisfied with the adaptation and took to task the author’s change of the sense of abjection into a happy reunion (ibid). Hu’s criticism is in line with the emphasis he placed on literal translation as reflecting the faithful presentation of human existence and the evocation of sympathy. Nonetheless, despite Hu’s displeasure, the adaptation was inspired by his translation of the poem in the first place.

5.4  T  he Influence of Foreign Thinkers and Hu Shi’s Academic Approach to China’s Modern Transformation Through his choice of foreign texts and the issues he highlighted in his essays about these foreign texts, Hu Shi revealed a tendency to treat knowledge from foreign sources as a tool for China’s modern cultural transformation. His translations played a large part in shaping how his readers understood liberalism. Soon after he joined New Youth, Hu Shi (2003(2): 467) pledged “not to discuss politics for twenty years,” in the hope of “laying the groundwork for the renovation of China’s political structure in the intellectual and literary realms.”25 Hu adhered to his noninvolvement in politics for two years after his return from his study in the United States, but in an era when political and revolutionary agitation swept over all  Three translated poems are included in Book of Experiments. These include “Auld Robin Gray” and “Over the Roofs,” a poem written by American poet Sara Teasdale (1844–1933). The third translated poem is titled “Xiwang” in Chinese, which means “hope.” Hu’s translation is based on Edward FitzGerald’s (1809–1883) English translation of “The Rubáiyát,” originally written in Persian by Omar Khayyám (1048–1131). 25  Taken from Hu Shi’s essay “The Wrong Way I Took” (Wode qilu), originally published on 18 June 1922. 24

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the urban and rural areas of China, abstention from politics “proved an impossible resolution to keep” (Grieder 2000: 175). Despite Hu’s failure to maintain his apolitical approach to problems of social and intellectual reform, his distrust of revolutionary causes remained an essential and persistent element in his intellectual outlook. In many of the essays and translations Hu Shi published in the late 1910s and 1920s, he continued to advocate individual dignity and intellectual independence, even as large numbers of his contemporaries became Marxists, anarchists and Communists. Hu’s promotion of “literature in the national language” (guoyu de wenxue) and “reorganization of the national heritage” (zhengli guogu), his engagement in “issues versus isms” (wenti yu zhuyi) polemics with Li Dazhao, a co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party, and in fact all his efforts at the regeneration and transformation of cultural and literary traditions can be construed as his attempt to remain above politics and to hold fast to the New Culture mode of intellectual discourse. In 1930, Hu Shi wrote that the two people who had exerted the most profound influence on his intellectual development were Thomas Huxley and John Dewey. He observed in the essay “Introducing My Personal Thought:” “While Huxley has taught me to raise doubts and to be sceptical of anything that is devoid of sufficient evidence, Dewey has taught me how to hypothesize and to seek verification” (Hu 2003(4): 658). As noted in Chap. 3, Huxley’s influence on New Culture intellectuals like Hu Shi was the result of Yan Fu’s translation of Evolution and Ethics. Huxley’s evolutionism and agnosticism were the types of ideas that enabled New Culture intellectuals to style themselves as “doubters of antiquity” (yigu). While in America, Hu Shi was particularly interested in studying experimental pragmatism,26 of which his professor John Dewey was a major proponent. In his writings, Hu Shi was unequivocal in affirming his embrace of Dewey’s ideas. He wrote in the preface to his Diary While Studying Abroad (Liuxue riji), “I avidly read all of Mr. Dewey’s works in the summer of 1915…, and since then, experimentalism has become my guide in life and thinking. It is the basis for my own philosophy” (Hu 2003(27): 104). He attributed his writing of An Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy (Zhongguo zhexueshi dagang) to Dewey’s academic influence and believed that his theories of literary revolution was a result of reading Dewey’s approach to pragmatism, which also inspired his Book of Experiments (Changshi ji) (ibid).27 Based on his understanding of Deweyan pragmatism, albeit uncritical and oversimplified, Hu Shi developed a method of pursuing scholarship encapsulated in a pithy statement “Hypothesize with boldness, and seek verification with care” (dadan jiashe, xiaoxin qiuzheng). Hu applied this scientific method to his inquiries  As a philosophical tradition centring on the combination of theory and practice, pragmatism was founded in America in the 1870s by Charles Pierce (1839–1914). Dewey further developed the theory, emphasizing controlled and reflective inquiry, and often regarded his version of pragmatism as “instrumentalism” or “experimentalism.” 27  The book, first published in 1920, is generally acknowledged as the first collection of new (vernacular) poetry in China. Judging by its title, Hu Shi must have regarded the writing of free verse as a scientific experiment. 26

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of scholarship and promoted a rational, academic approach to social and cultural problems. As noted earlier, Hu Shi (ibid (1): 692–3) posited in the December 1919 essay “The Meaning of the New Trend of Thought” (Xin sichao de yiyi) that the fundamental significance of a new trend of thought involved a new attitude, which could be called a “critical attitude.” He quoted Friedrich Nietzsche, observing that the best explanation for such a critical attitude was the “transvaluation of all values” (chonggu yiqie jiazhi). Hu then wrote, “What is the sole purpose of our new trend of thought? It is the re-creation of civilization.” In regard to cultural traditions, the best approach was “to make some rearrangements with scientific methods” through the “importation of scholarly principles” (ibid). Seen in this light, Hu’s “new trend of thought” entailed a critical modern consciousness, predicated on Western models. His translations are indicative of his persistence in scholarly pursuits through the introduction of Western concepts and values. The link between translation and self-transformation was taken as self-evident by early twentieth century intellectuals beginning with Yan Fu and Liang Qichao. Just as Liang endeavoured to promote the virtues of the “new citizen,” Hu Shi sought to help his readers become “wholesome” individuals. In his Self-Reckoning at Forty, Hu (ibid (18): 61) noted that though Liang Qichao pioneered the idea of the “new citizen,” he was unable to share the vision of the New Culture generation. “He balked when we followed him closely and wanted to go further” (ibid). Quite understandably, in a period of radical transformation, Hu Shi and his New Culture peers “kept their eyes on the merits of Westerners without noticing their weaknesses or acknowledging them” (in Tang 1993: 43). In 1935 Hu (2003(22): 255–6) explained that his advocacy of “wholesale Westernization” (quanpan xihua) was out of the consideration that “there is an ‘indolence’ in cultures” and that “wholesale Westernization will naturally have an eclectic tendency.” Hu (ibid) wrote: The indolence in the old culture will then put an eclectic spin on the wholesale acceptance of Westernization and naturally turn it into a new, China-based culture….As the old saying goes, ‘If you aim high, you will only achieve average results; if you aim for the average, you will very likely achieve poor results.’ This is a principle that is well worth our contemplation. We may well do whatever it takes and go to extremes, knowing that the indolence in the culture will make adjustments and hold us back.

The impact of such an “extremist” approach on New Culture intellectuals is evident from the radical iconoclasm they adopted in their cultural and literary reforms. It is also reflective of Hu Shi’s concern with modern identity construction. According to Davies (2007:191), such Westernized radicalism was an “iconoclastic form of self-­ cultivation,” which “transposed the Confucian emphasis on knowing how to speak, act, think, and judge into a praxis aimed at modernizing the self.” Hu Shi’s assumption that he and his New Culture peers shared a responsibility to transform their fellow citizens reflects the influence of the premodern Chinese idea that the educated must “assume personal responsibility for all under Heaven” (yi tianxia wei jiren) (ibid: 18). What is ironic is that they assumed this traditionally-­ derived role in hopes of destroying the tradition itself. The clearest example of this is in Hu Shi’s promotion of the modern vernacular as a modern language befitting

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modern Chinese, which required the destruction of the premodern literary language or classical Chinese wenyan, perceived by Hu as the carrier of traditional ethics and values.

5.5  Promotion of Modern Vernacular In recent scholarship, there have been attempts to assign elements of coincidence and playfulness to key events in New Culture history. For instance, some scholars have attempted to underplay Hu Shi’s scholarly inclinations in his advocacy of vernacular literature by citing Wang Pingling’s (1898–1964) account of an incident28 that aroused Hu Shi’s inspiration in vernacular poetry. The incident happened in New York in the summer of 1917 when Chen Hengzhe (1893–1976) and several other female students were invited to a picnic outside the city. The picnic was spoiled due to heavy rain; this prompted Hu Shi to write a poem in vernacular Chinese and to publish it in The Chinese Students Quarterly (Liuxuesheng jikan). Some students regarded the vernacular poem as Hu’s intention to find favour in the eyes of the girls, and this set off vehement attacks and counterattacks between a number of poetically inclined gentlemen, such as Ren Hongjun (1886–1961), Mei Guangdi (1890–1945), and Hu Shi. The most famous literary revolution in Chinese history thus ensued. Without discrediting these scholarly efforts to challenge the received views about the New Culture Movement, this section presents a counterargument, based on the seriousness with which Hu Shi embarked on writing in the vernacular and his elevation of translation to an essential tool for reforming the Chinese language in the process.29 In the early 1900s, after Liang Qichao advanced a revolution in poetry and fiction, Hu Shi started to write articles and short stories in vernacular Chinese, submitting them to Struggle Trimonthly (Jingye xunbao), a periodical launched by students of China College (Zhongguo gongxue) in 1906; he assumed editorship in 1908. In Self-Reckoning at Forty, Hu (2003(18): 75) said he was “appalled” when he reread what he had written for the journal and recalled that at seventeen or eighteen he had already started to “show obvious inclinations” that later developed into important strands of his intellectual thinking. Over the 41 issues during the running of Struggle Trimonthly,30 Hu Shi published a total number of 150,000 characters in vernacular Chinese. His experience with  Michel Hockx (2003: 144) quoted the incident as a lead-in to his rediscovery of playfulness related to Hu Shi’s promotion of literary revolution. 29  Some studies have investigated the influence that foreign poets, such as William Wordsworth (1770–1850), and poetic movements, such as imagism, exerted on Hu Shi’s poetic inclinations. See, for example, Gu (1992) and Zhou Zhiping (2002). 30  The journal ceased publication after the tenth issue, and resumed one  year later. Struggle Trimonthly published its last (i.e. 41st) issue in early 1909. 28

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Struggle Trimonthly reinforced his childhood interest in vernacular fiction31 and prompted his serious deliberation of vernacular literature. He wrote in Self-­ Reckoning at Forty: The dozens of issues of Struggle Trimonthly not only offered me an opportunity to organize and publicize my ideas but also enabled me to practise my vernacular writing for more than one year. I have no idea what influence the dozens of pieces of my vernacular writing had at that time, but I could see that the one-odd year of vernacular practice was of great benefit to me such that writing in the vernacular became a tool I owned. Seven or eight years later, this tool turned me into a pioneer of the literary revolution in China. (ibid: 77)

In addition to prose, Hu Shi also wrote and translated poems and had them published in Struggle Trimonthly. Hu’s five or so translated poems in the periodical all adhered to classical Chinese poetics. It stands to reason to ideate Hu’s discontent with the incongruity between his classical Chinese poems and vernacular prose writings. When he lived in the United States from 1910 to 1917, Hu was accustomed to writing and thinking in English, whose spoken and written forms are not as different as classical and vernacular Chinese.32 English became an implicit model for his promotion of a written Chinese vernacular. As noted in Chap. 4, the eight points Hu Shi outlined in the January 1917 essay “Tentative Proposals for a Reform of Literature” were intended to demarcate a new beginning for Chinese writing. By declaring wenyan a dead language and exalting baihua as the literary language of the present and future, Hu Shi was seeking to establish a new standard language. The prescriptive nature of his proposal is also clear from his April 1918 article “On a Constructive Literary Revolution.” He started each of these principles with “don’t.” They have since then become known as the “eight don’ts” (ba bu zhuyi). Hu assigned equal significance to language and literature, observing that the aim of the literary revolution was to create “a national-­ language literature and a literary national language” (guoyu de wenxue, wenxue de guoyu). “Without a national language, literature will be valueless…; by no means will living literature emerge out of a dead language” (Hu 2003(1): 59). In the same essay Hu also stressed the urgency of translating and modelling on the magna opera of major Western writers and thinkers. His preference for vernacular literature prompted him to underscore the importance of pellucidity in translation, considering it fundamental to render foreign literature into lucid host language (ibid: 52–68). In June 1918, Hu Shi and Luo Jialun translated A Doll’s House in vernacular Chinese. After that, Hu used vernacular to write the one-act play The Greatest Event in Life. In fact, Hu is credited with the distinction of being the first writer to produce spoken drama (huaju) in modern vernacular Chinese. Hu Shi’s use of vernacular in his translation and emulation of Ibsen’s plays greatly facilitated the spread of realist  Hu Shi was an avid reader of vernacular fiction such as Outlaws of the Marsh (Shuihu zhuan) and Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou meng) while a little pupil at a private school (sishu) in his hometown Jixi, Anhui Province. 32  Hu Shi expressed his predilection for the confluence of spoken and written Chinese in “My Belief” (Wode xinyang), written in 1931. See Ouyang (1998a(1): 13). 31

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presentations and liberal-individualist ideas. It also brought about the modernization of Chinese drama, when modern Chinese dramatists such as Cao Yu brought spoken drama to its maturity in the 1930s (Mostow 2003). As mentioned in Chap. 3, Hu Shi (2003(2): 259–60) maintained in the 1922 essay “Chinese Literature in the Past Fifty Years” that the achievements in literary revolution were hallmarked by the “experiment in vernacular poetry” and the “advocacy of new European literature.” We have already examined Hu Shi’s translation of the poem “Auld Robin Gray,” in which Hu’s use of vernacular language helped to bring out the poem’s emotional tenor. Sara Teasdale’s (1844–1933) poem “Over the Roofs,” which Hu Shi also included in Book of Experiments, is another example of his “experiment” with modern vernacular style of poetry. The poem, which celebrates the emancipation of human nature and the pursuit of love, is entitled “Guanbuzhu le” in Chinese, the literal meaning being “this can no longer be shut in.” Here are the last four lines of Teasdale’s original poem, followed by Hu Shi’s translation: My room was white with the sun And love cried out in me, “I am strong, I will break your heart Unless you set me free.” 一屋子都是太阳光, 这时候“爱情”有点醉了, 他说,“我是关不住了的, 我要把你的心打碎了!” (ibid (10): 94)

Hu Shi made many formal attempts in his rendering of the poem, including the use of a unique rhyming scheme, such as the rhyming in “醉了” (zui le) and “碎了” (sui le), characteristic of colloquial Chinese. Equally noteworthy is Hu’s translation of “My room was white with the sun/And love cried out in me” into “一屋子都是太 阳光,/这时候‘爱情’有点醉了,” the literal translation of which is “My room was awash with sunlight/At this juncture ‘love’ became a little intoxicated.” The word “white” is nonexistent in Hu’s translation; besides, it would be far-fetched to establish a connection between “cried out” and “醉了” (intoxicated). In this instance, Hu Shi’s primacy of literary form is obvious. His translation of the poem is constitutive of his attempt to convey humanistic and individualistic emotions in free-flowing vernacular Chinese. Contemporary Chinese literary critic Gao Yu (2001: 11) regards Hu Shi’s translation of the poem as a breakthrough in poetic pattern, and opines that its significance consists in the trail it has blazed for both the translation and creation of modern Chinese poems. Hu Shi (in Ouyang 1998a(9): 84) himself also held the poem in high regard, and claimed that it had started a new chapter in his production of “new poetry.” He made a distinction between “vernacular poetry” and “new poetry,” maintaining that the latter was more avant-garde. When he made these remarks in 1920, he underplayed the fact that the poem had been translated from a foreign source. The treatment of translations as one’s own creations was very common in the 1910s and 1920s, partly because the translators wished to be seen as modern cultural pioneers. Rather than diminishing the importance of translation, however, this phenomenon bespeaks the

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New Culture intellectuals’ perception of translation as essential to their literary revolution. Renowned cultural critic Ye Weilian (Wai-lim Yip) (1992: 126–7), while acknowledging the role that translation played in the development of modern Chinese poetry, places special importance on the use of the first person in modern poetry: At the initial stage of the May Fourth vernacular movement, vernacular was assigned the mission of “transmitting” new thought to the masses. When it comes to actual expression, this mission became “I have something to tell you.” As a consequence, the “I” mode of expression was very much in vogue at the time. Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” and for that matter, Western narrative and syntactic styles, permeated all the poems since the beginning of May Fourth.

The importation of the first person was thus a great aid in popularizing modern ideas and modernizing the Chinese poetry. It was also applied to short stories and fiction, often with focus on the individual’s inner conflict.33 Other linguistic and literary borrowings from foreign works played a similarly important role in revitalizing the old Chinese language. New Culture proponents viewed the Europeanization of the Chinese language as necessary for their creative experimentations. Fu Sinian (1972: 251–3) wrote in his 1919 essay “How to Undertake Vernacular Writing” (Zenyang zuo baihuawen) that the aim of “humanization” (renhua) in New Literature could only be achieved through Europeanization (ouhua). He advocated the direct adoption of lexical, syntactic and rhetorical styles from Western languages in order to create “a Europeanized national language” (ouhua de guoyu) and to establish “a literature based on a Europeanized national language” (ouhua guoyu de wenxue). In Fu’s view, this modern vernacular would be superior to both the classical Chinese and the old vernacular, and it should be able to “express scientific spirit,” “accommodate the most profound and precise thought” and “articulate human emotions” (ibid). Fu Sinian’s propounding of Europeanization was ardently supported by Hu Shi, Qian Xuantong, Chen Wangdao, Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren. To these New Culture advocates, the importation of linguistic and literary elements from the West was impossible without translation. During the May Fourth period, Hu Shi and his New Culture colleagues saw translation as a major means of expanding the repository of New Literature and turned modern vernacular into a culturally loaded image and a vehicle for undercutting the tyranny of old ideas. The modern vernacular became part of their identity. According to Venuti (1998: 76–7), translation can contribute to the invention of domestic literary discourses, and that is why it has inevitably been enlisted in ambitious cultural projects, notably the development of a domestic language and literature. “And such projects have always resulted in the formation of cultural identities aligned with specific social groups, with classes and nations” (ibid: 77). The rapid development of the written vernacular alongside with the assimilation of foreign elements into Chinese literature and Chinese intellectual discourse shaped the preferences of many publishers and readers. The modern Chinese vernacular ­  For discussions of the first person narrative in modern Chinese literature, see, for instance, Lydia Liu (1993) and Yi-tsi Mei Feuerwerker (1993).

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became a marker of good literary taste, and through its promotion New Culture proponents attained enormous intellectual authority and prestige.

5.6  Conclusion In explaining Hu Shi’s fame and influence, historian Yu Ying-shih (1984: 20–1) remarked, with reference to the turbulence of China’s modernization for the some 60 or 70 years from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1910s, that, “Hu Shi happened to knock an intellectual breach at this ‘critical juncture,’ letting loose the sluices of questions and emotions that had long been simmering among many people.” This chapter has given focus to Hu Shi’s translation of drama and short stories. The analysis shows that translation informed his views of patriotism and intellectual and cultural independence to a significant extent. The exercise of individuality and freedom was for Hu Shi, in the words of Grieder (2000: 326), “the precondition of modernity” and also “synonymous with it.” And we have seen how Hu Shi explored these ideas through Ibsen’s works. In this context, he made Nora, the female protagonist in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, an icon of individualism and self-empowerment. In “Ibsenism” and “Tentative Proposals for a Reform of Literature,” Hu Shi adapted foreign ideas and literary works to the Chinese context and made impassioned calls for cultural transformation and literary revolution. These seminal essays, along with Hu’s literary translation, wielded an immense influence on Chinese readers and constituted his exemplary contributions to Chinese liberalism and the construction of modern individuals. Hu Shi’s advocacy of literary changes and liberal ideals, in addition to his personal history and charisma, made him a public figure in the May Fourth era. He was greatly admired by his intellectual peers and students. The more famous among his acolytes included the educator and diplomat Cheng Tianfang (1899–1967),34 historian and folklorist Gu Jiegang (1893–1980), and Luo Ergang (1901–1997), an expert on the history of the Taipings. In 1949 Hu Shi left the mainland for America, where he lived until 1958. He then went to Taiwan to assume presidency of Academia Sinica, and died of a heart attack in 1962. During the Maoist period (1949–1976), he was vilified by Communist Party officials as a reactionary and “enemy of the people.” In the 1980s, mainland scholars started to re-evaluate Hu Shi and restore his historical importance. The publication of Complete Works of Hu Shi (Hushi quanji) in 2003 marked a milestone in the “study of Hu Shi” (Hu xue as the activity has recently been called). Dozens of books on Hu Shi by mainland scholars have been published since then.

34

 See Cheng (1962).

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Liu, Lydia. 1993. Narratives of Modern Selfhood: First-Person Fiction in May Fourth Literature. In Politics, Ideology and Literary Discourse in Modern China: Theoretical Interventions and Cultural Critique, eds. Liu Kang and Tang Xiaobing, 102–123. Durham: Duke University Press. Lu, Xun. 1981. Lu Xun quanji [Complete Works of Lu Xun]. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe. Malmqvist, Nils Göran David. 1990. Selective Guide to Chinese Literature 1900–1949: The Drama. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Mao, Dun. 2001. Mao Dun quanji, disanshisanjuan [Complete Works of Mao Dun, Vol. 33]. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe. Morrison, Mary. 1905. The Correspondence of Henrik Ibsen. New York: Haskell House. Mostow, Joshua, ed. 2003. Columbia Companion to Modern East Asian Literature. New  York: Columbia University Press. Ouyang, Zhesheng., ed. 1998a. Hu Shi wenji [Selected Works of Hu Shi]. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe. ———., ed. 1998b. Hu Shi: Gaojie rensheng [Hu Shi: Exhortation on Life]. Beijing: Jiuzhou chubanshe. Qin, Gong. 2009. Ershi shiji Zhongguo fanyi wenxue shi: Wusi shiqi juan [History of Literary Translation in Twentieth-Century China: The May Fourth Period]. Tianjin: Baihua wenyi chubanshe. Rosenthal, Joel. 2009. Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism. In Policy Innovations. http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/briefings/data/000141. Accessed on 18 Jul 2012. Singer, Peter. 2002. One World: The Ethics of Globalization. New Haven: Yale University Press. Tam, Kwok-kan. 1984. Ibsen in China: Reception and Influence. Urbana: University Microfilms International. Tang, Degang. 1993. Hu Shi koushu zizhuan [Hu Shi’s Dictated Biography]. Shanghai: Huadong shifan daxue chubanshe. Venuti, Lawrence. 1998. The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference. London: Routledge. Wang, Hui. 2004. Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi [The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought]. Beijing: Joint Publishing. Williams, Archer, Edmond Gosse, and Edward Dowden. 1911. The Works of Henrik Ibsen. New York: Scribner’s. Xie, Tianzhen and Mingjian Zha. 2006/2004. Zhongguo xiandai fanyi wenxue shi 1898–1949 [A History of Translated Literature in Modern China 1898-1949]. Shanghai: Waiyu jiaoyu chubanshe. Xu, Jilin. 2009. Wusi de lishi huiyi: Shenmeyang de aiguozhuyi? [Historical Memories of May Fourth: What Kind of Patriotism Is It?]. Dushu 2009 (5): 5–16. Xu, Xiaoqun. 2014. Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and Individualism in Modern China: The Chenbao Fukan and the New Culture Era, 1918–1928. Lanham: Lexington Books. Ye, Weilian (Wai-lim Yip). 1992. Zhongguo shixue [Chinese Poetics)]. Beijing: Joint Publishing. Yu, Dafu. 1935. Zhongguo xin wenxue daxi, sanwen er ji [A Compendium of Modern Chinese Literature: The Second Volume of Prose]. Shanghai: Liangyou chubanshe. Yu, Ying-shih. 2001. Neither Renaissance Nor Enlightenment: A Historian’s Reflections on the May Fourth Movement. In The Appropriation of Cultural Capital: China’s May Fourth Project, eds. Milena Dolezelova-Velingerova and Oldrich Kral, 299–324. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center. Yuan, Ziqi. 2015. “Isms” and the Refractions of World Literature in May Fourth China. (Electronic Thesis or Dissertation). Accessed on 4 May 2015, https://etd.ohiolink.edu. Zhao, Wenjing. 2006. Cultural Manipulation of Translation Activities: Hu Shi’s Rewritings and the Construction of a New Culture. Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe. ———. 2011. How Ibsen Travels from Europe to China: Ibsenism from Archer, Shaw to Hu Shi. In Translation and Opposition, eds. Dimitris Asimakoulas and Margaret Rogers, 39–58. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Zhou, Zuoren. 1999. Yishu yu shenghuo [Art and Life]. Shanghai: Wenyi chubanshe. Zhou, Zhiping. 2002. Hu Shi yu Zhongguo xiandai sichao [Hu Shi and Modern Chinese Intellectual Thoughts]. Nanjing: Nanjing daxue chubanshe.

Chapter 6

Constructing the Modern Self in Translation (II): Zhou Zuoren

In the previous chapter, we examined how Hu Shi’s literary translation promoted the “wholesome individual” as a key aspect of China’s New Culture. This idea was closely tied to the types of humanism advanced in Zhou Zuoren’s and Lu Xun’s literary translations.1 Chapters 6 and 7 examine the Zhou brothers’ translation activities and their impact on the construction of modern selfhood in the late 1910s and mid-1920s, with a focus on their translation of short stories and essays. Their political trajectories were different from 1924 onwards. However, these two chapters will argue that Zhou Zuoren and Lu Xun shared at the very least the view that literary translation was akin to creation, and both consistently borrowed ideas from their translations with an eye to shaping a modern Chinese personality. Zhou Zuoren (1999: 12) saw translation as being of equal importance to literary creation. While this was implied in his writings of the late 1910s and early 1920s, by the mid-1920s, he made the point explicit. In the first preface to his collection of literary essays Art and Life (Yishu yu shenghuo zixu yi), written on 10 August 1926, he explained: “Translation should start with a real affective resonance between the translator and the writer; therefore, I have elected to include my translations in this 1  Hu Shi, among others, was highly appreciative of the Zhou brothers’ contributions to New Literature. In the 1922 essay “Chinese Literature in the Past Fifty Years” (Wushi nian lai Zhongguo zhi wenxue), Hu (2003(2): 343) ranked Lu Xun as the greatest short story writer since the inception of the New Culture Movement while Zhou Zuoren’s prose, “plain in style yet pregnant with significance,” “has completely unraveled the superstition that beautiful prose cannot be written in baihua.” In the diary entry of 11 August 1922, he praised Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren as “the most loveable” brothers because of their literary talents (ibid (29): 209). The eminent New Culture writer Zheng Zhenduo (in Zhang 2015: 62) recollected in 1946: “Zhou Zuoren advocated ‘human literature’ (ren de wenxue), and translated many Russian stories. He has also made exceptional accomplishments in the study of Greek literature, which has significantly influenced his production of poetry and prose….If we ask ourselves what achievements have been made in Chinese literature since the May Fourth, we should no doubt say that he (i.e. Zhou Zuoren) and Mr. Lu Xun are indisputably large rocks and key towns (jushi zhongzhen). Without them, the new literary history would lose its appeal.”

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collection.” He made the same point in the preface he wrote to Endless Days (Yongri ji), an anthology of his essays published in early 1929: “Some people might frown on the inclusion of my translations in the anthology….The words are handled by me, and the meaning, which is just to my liking, is what I want but cannot conceive and what I wish to express but cannot articulate” (1995a: 1). Like Zhou Zuoren, Lu Xun also turned to foreign stories for inspiration, and although he did not include translations in anthologies of his own essays and stories, he was explicit about the debt he owed to reading foreign works. For instance, Lu Xun (1981(4): 512) wrote in the 1933 essay “How Did I Come to Write Stories?” (Wo zenme zuoqi xiaoshuo lai) that his own short stories “must have relied entirely on the 100-odd foreign works I had read, together with a smattering of knowledge about medicine.” In this respect, it is important to view the Zhou brothers’ own writings in the context of their commitment to the translation of foreign works and their acknowledgement of the fundamental role that translation played in their intellectual makeup. Both entered the literary scene with the publication of a translated story and both died with an unfinished translation that they had planned to complete. The Zhous started to produce translations of foreign works in the early 1900s. Lu Xun published four translations in 1903; Zhou Zuoren’s first recorded publication, i.e. the translation of “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” from The Arabian Nights, appeared two years later. “A Heroic Woman Slave” (“Xia nünu”), the Chinese title Zhou gave to the translated story, speaks volumes about his intention to use the story to promote the empowerment of women. When Lu Xun died in 1936, he had completed the translation of only the second chapter of Part Two of Nikolai Gogol’s (1809–1852) novel Dead Souls (Si hun ling). Zhou Zuoren died without finishing his translation of the best-known epic work of the thirteenth century Japan – The Tale of Heike (Heike Monogatari, or Pingjia wuyu in Chinese). He started to translate the Japanese work in April 1965 and was only able to complete the first 6 of the 13 chapters when he died in 1967. There are many articles in Chinese that note the importance translation occupied in Lu Xun’s and Zhou Zuoren’s careers. For instance, the figure of about three million Chinese characters has been attributed to Lu Xun’s translations in total while Zhou Zuoren is credited with having generated more than five million Chinese characters’ worth of translations (e.g. Yi 2008; Wu 2012). Their translations take up about half of their entire literary oeuvres. Of the modern Chinese writers-cum-translators who published their works in the twentieth century, Zhou Zuoren produced the largest number of translations, while Guo Moruo and Lu Xun were the most prolific translators in the first half of the century (Wang Yougui 2005: 301). As a leading representative of the New Culture Movement, Zhou contributed fundamentally to a human-centred approach to New Literature via his translation of modern values and humanist ideals. During this period, Zhou Zuoren demonstrated a broad understanding and representation of humanist literature. His adherence to a humanistic education distanced him from the turn toward an increasingly politicized social realism in the early to mid-1920s. Unlike many of his New Culture peers, Zhou continued with his pursuit of aesthetics and cosmopolitanism in the mid-1920s and beyond.

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In the late 1910s, Zhou Zuoren equated “modernity” (xiandaixing) with “the souls of dishrags” (mabu de linghun). These terms were used by English writer W.  B. Trites (b. 1872) in his essay “Dostoievsky,”2 and it was in Zhou’s January 1918 translation of the essay that xiandaixing – the Chinese translation of “modernity” – was used for the first time. In the essay, Trites discussed Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “striking modernity” in reference to “dishrags,” which Trites interpreted as “the lowly” and “the degraded,” who nonetheless possessed fine but concealed feelings. Quoting The Double, a novella of Dostoyevsky’s first published in 1846, Trites (1915: 265) wrote that Dostoyevsky made the reader see the souls of dishrags and “let [them] hear the lamentations of the lowest, the vilest, the most shameless.” He went on to observe, “And lo, all those voices are beautiful. They are sad and beautiful. All those ruined souls are like you and me. Like you and me, they love virtue. Like you and me, they loathe vice. And they mourn…their incredible fall as you and I would mourn…” (ibid). Zhou Zuoren obviously shared Trites’s opinion.3 In the postscript to his translation of “Dostoievsky,” Zhou quoted Raskolnikoff, the protagonist in Dostoyevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment, “I am not kneeling before you; I am kneeling before the misery of mankind” (1918a: 53). He then observed that this remark was the best description of Dostoyevsky’s oeuvre as a whole, and wrote that he sought to extend his compassion to all “dishrags” (mabu) and to contemplate the fate of the human being in general. In December 1918, Zhou Zuoren’s promotion of human literature put the human being (ren) squarely at the centre of New Literature. In his acclaimed essay “Human Literature” (Ren de wenxue), published in New Youth, Zhou propounded his understanding of humanism (rendaozhuyi), which can be summarized into two aspects, namely, the conformity of soul and flesh (ling rou yizhi) and individualism. The influence of Darwinism and Greek mythology is obvious in Zhou’s definition of humans as living beings that had evolved from animals. Nonetheless, he emphasized the difference between animals and humans by referring to the amalgam of soul (ling) and flesh (rou) in humans. According to Zhou, flesh concerned genetics and animal nature (shouxing) while soul related to spiritual nature (shenxing). Flesh and soul, Zhou wrote, were two sides of the same coin and should not be regarded as being in opposition. “The combination of the animal nature and the spiritual nature amounts to humanity” (1999: 8). He thus underscored the importance of doing away with old norms and rules that went against human nature while promoting creative initiative and seeing the goal of writing as the transformation of life (gaizao shenghuo) and the attainment of lofty, peaceful ideals (dadao gaoshang heping de jingdi). Zhou (ibid: 9) wrote that the first step toward the ideal human life was “to create a life which is beneficial to oneself and to others and in which benefiting others is equivalent to benefiting oneself.” While Zhou’s statement might resemble the 2  Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Trites’s article was published in 1915. 3  Zhou Zuoren reprised his comments on the souls of dish rags on several other occasions, such as in his 1921 essay “In Memory of Three Litterateurs” (Sange wenxuejia de jinian).

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Confucian idea of benevolence as “loving everyone” (airen), he was referring to a broader idea – that of modern self-love (ziai) and love of humanity (ai renlei). To Zhou, this kind of “humanism” was not the Confucian philanthropy of “donating generously to relieve the masses” (boshi jizhong); rather, it was “individualistic humanism.”4 He argued, “Humanism as I call it starts with individuals. To be humane and to love humanity, we must first of all make ourselves qualified as humans....Without self-love, how can we love others in the same way we love ourselves?” (ibid: 9–10). Zhou Zuoren’s humanism has as its basic principle the recognition of human nature and the protection of human dignity, together with an emphasis on the moulding of the individual into a moral agent. Such a conception of humanism resonates with the significance that contemporary communitarian philosophers (such as Charles Taylor and Anthony Giddens) assign to the connection between individual identity, moral progress and social environment. In the spring of 1917, five  years after Lu Xun became an official in the new Chinese Republic’s Ministry of Education, Zhou Zuoren left his hometown Shaoxing and began lecturing on European literary history at Peking University. It was not long before he attracted a large following among Beida students. He became an acclaimed contributor to the journal New Youth, and the figurehead of New Tide Society (Xinchao she), a student organization of Peking University (Chen 2003: 237). The respect he won stemmed, on the one hand, from his association with New Culture intellectuals, and on the other hand, from his translation practice and other scholastic pursuits. Like many of his New Culture contemporaries, Zhou deemed himself a pioneer of modern values, but whereas many others pursued a political path, he sought to encourage cultural change almost entirely through scholarship. The source texts for Zhou Zuoren’s translations came from many different countries and cultures. During the late 1910s and early 1920s, Zhou mainly translated from Japanese and Russian literature, which he had read in Japanese and English. He was also interested in the translation of ancient Greek literature, which became an essential part of his intellectual life after the 1920s. The ancient Greek literature Zhou translated in his entire life amounts to two million Chinese characters (Yu 2014: 137). The works published in book form include Greek Mimes (Xila niqu) (Herodas and Theocritus), Greek Poetess Sappho (Xila nüshiren Sabo), Complete Translation of Aesop’s Fables (Quan yi Yisuo yuyan ji) (based on Émile Chambry’s version), The Tragedies of Euripides (three volumes) (Oulibidesi beju ji) (co-­ translated with Luo Niansheng), The Comedies of Aristophanes (Alisituofen xiju ji), Dialogues of Lucian (Luqian duihua ji), Bibliotheca (Xila shenhua) (Pseudo-­ Apollodorus). Both in terms of the sheer volume of his Greek translations and in respect of his insightful use of the Greek culture in the development of modern Chinese identity, Zhou Zuoren was acknowledged to be the most accomplished translator of ancient Greek literature in modern Chinese history (ibid). He was proficient in English, Japanese and ancient Greek,5 and was therefore able to translate 4  Zhou Zuoren’s original expression is geren zhuyi de renjian benwei zhuyi, which is a direct translation from Japanese. 5  Zhou Zuoren started to learn ancient Greek in the autumn of 1908.

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directly from the source texts written in these languages. His translation of literature from Russia and other countries was through the intermediary of English, Japanese and German. As noted in Chap. 3, Zhou Zuoren started to translate Russian literature in the 1900s. He conceived of Russian literature as the bedrock of humanist values, calling it “idealistic realism” (lixiang de xieshi) capable of “fostering love and compassion for mankind” (in Zhong 1998(8): 422–6).6 Zhou (ibid(3): 46) observed in the 1920 essay “Requisites of New Literature” (Xin wenxue de yaoqiu) that the relationship between the environment and the disposition of the Russian people made it impossible for them to discard social problems or incline toward the two extremes of subjectivism and objectivism. For him, Russian literature epitomized what human literature should be. Japan influenced Zhou Zuoren profoundly. From the time he went to study there in 1906, his attitude to life and to literature became shaped in many ways by his fondness for Japanese culture and the interests he nourished in Japan (Daruvala 2000: 61). He exhibited a genuine preference for Japan, unlike many of his contemporaries, whose interest in Japan was inspired by the practical purpose of acquiring advanced technology or introducing foreign literature to China. While in Japan, Zhou made frequent visits to the theatre and avidly read Japanese folkloristics. He claimed that Japanese popular culture, unlike China’s, was good at using beautiful forms to embody deeply felt tragic sorrows (in Daruvala 2000: 91). He collected popular songs from the Edo period and translated sixty of them in 1920, as “they were full of artistic emotions” (ibid). Zhou (2005: 205) observed in 1923 that Japanese poems allowed the audience to acquire ideal beauty (lixiang zhi mei) from the dreamlike imagery. He noted that what he had gained from Japan was mostly in the domain of sentiment (qing), and deemed it necessary to “get into the affective life of the people” in order to fully appreciate Japanese literature and art (in Daruvala 2000: 89). Japanese constructions of “the affective life of the people” also sparked Zhou’s interest in mythology and anthropology. Zhou Zuoren believed that myth signified knowledge not only relished by children and primitives but also operated as a link between social life and art. It “enabled us to see the sorrows and fears common to humanity, and was therefore not valueless” (1998: 23).7 To Zhou, the kind of myth that would serve the social and artistic purposes was the anthropological explanation of myth propounded by the British anthropologist Andrew Lang. Zhou (in Zhong 1998(5): 669) claimed in his 1912 essay “A Brief Discussion on Fairy Tales” (Tonghua luelun) that Andrew Lang’s comparison of anthropology with mythology had invested fairy tales with truth. This pursuit of truth also guided Zhou Zuoren’s reading of psychology. In 1933, Zhou (1986: 165) extolled the British psychologist Havelock Ellis’s (1859–1939) 6  Zhou Zuoren’s 1920 essay “Russia and China in Literature” (Wenxue shang de Eguo yu Zhongguo). 7  Taken from Zhou Zuoren’s 1922 essay “Supernatural Beings in Literature and Art” (Wenyi shang de yiwu).

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magnum opus Studies in the Psychology of Sex as revealing the author’s “good outlook on life.” He added that the book “is suffused with human feelings and the natural order of things, whereby knowledge becomes wisdom and culminate in a clear state of mind and sober judgment.” Daruvala (2000: 87) argues that “human feelings and the natural order of things” (renqing wuli) constituted Zhou Zuoren’s unique understanding of the civilized modern self. In fact, “human feelings and the natural order of things,” an observation Zhou made in the 1930s about Ellis’s proposition of sexuality, can be seen as a restatement of “the conformity of soul and flesh” (ling rou yizhi), which embodied Zhou’s early views on humanism. It also points to the influence foreign works exerted on Zhou’s mind. He once described his outlook on life as “formed by mixing clear feelings with pellucid wisdom, based on scientific common sense” (in Zhong 1998(3): 641).8 Zhou Zuoren (2011: 34) regarded Ellis’s works as imbued with a “natural, scientific attitude.”9 For him, the scientific spirit entailed the moral stance of “not going sheeplike with the flock” (Ellis 1923: 151).10 He understood intellectual independence as an important requisite for the modern self, and guarded against the passive attitude of going with the flow by being sensitive to what he felt to be true and sincere in human nature, equating this Ellis-inspired “natural and scientific attitude” with “the conformity of soul and flesh.” In the late 1910s and early 1920s, Zhou Zuoren translated from a wide selection of texts. His translations during this time were calculated to reveal social injustice, encourage faith in humanity and present an ideal humanity in aesthetic form. Whereas the adherence of many of his peers in the New Culture camp to political fundamentalism inclined them to identify translation with the realist and revolutionary literary project, which led to their political radicalization, the way Zhou Zuoren viewed and translated literature during this period presented to the May Fourth literary scene a mode of cognition and relationship to the world with both socio-political and aesthetic potential. As Susan Daruvala (2000) puts it, his was an “alternative response to modernity.” For Zhou Zuoren, the world was a community of people sharing the same historical moment. Gamsa (2008: 241) perceives this concept of Zhou’s as “pre-­ nationalist, universalist,” and believes that his purpose was to “unite the world of letters with that of living men and women.” Through his careful selection of texts, not only from the “weak” and “oppressed” nations but also from ancient Greek and  Taken from Zhou Zuoren’s 1921 essay “Belles-lettres” (Meiwen).  Zhou made the remark in his 1933 essay “Psychology of Sex” (Xing de xinli). 10  Ellis (1923: 151–2) observed in his book The Dance of Life: “There is only one rule to follow here, − and it is simply the rule in every part of art, − to know what one is doing, not to go sheeplike with the flock, ignorantly, unthinkingly, heedlessly, but to mould speech to expression the most truly one knows how….[The writer] has to be true, − whether it is in the external world he is working or in his own internal world, − and as truth can only be seen through his own temperament, he is engaged in moulding the expression of a combination which has never been seen in the world before.” There is no telling whether Zhou Zuoren ever read these sentences, but it is apparent that Ellis’s sincere attitude toward science and his integrated approach to literature played an important part in Zhou Zuoren’s intellectual makeup. 8 9

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modern Japanese literature, Zhou Zuoren highlighted compassion and universal love. Translation was in Zhou’s eyes the means to maintain amity within the cosmopolitan community.

6.1  D  iscovering Humanity in “Dishrags” and “Sad, Beautiful Souls” From his reading of Russian literature, Zhou Zuoren derived the terms “dish rags” and “sad, beautiful souls” to characterize the plight of human beings in modern times. Zhou’s January 1918 translation of Trites’s essay “Dostoievsky” in New Youth reflected his particular interest in the lives of “the lowly” and “the degraded.” Soon after “Dostoievsky,” Zhou published two translations in Numbers 3 and 4, Volume IV of New Youth, namely, Fyodor Sologub’s (1863–1927) “The Miracle of the Youth Linus” (Tongzi Lin zhi qiji) and Aleksandr Kuprin’s (1870–1938) “The Kings’ Park” (Huangdi zhi gongyuan). Sologub is generally acknowledged as the first Russian writer to introduce the lugubrious, traumatic elements typical of European fin de siècle literature and philosophy into Russian prose. “The Miracle of the Youth Linus” reveals human cruelty with ghastly details. Set in the Roman Empire, it tells about the murder of the innocent, gleeful child Linus by a squad of “triumphant” cavalry, who are on their way back to their barracks after an earlier slaughter at a village. Outraged at his protest against their massacre, they kill the innocent child. As the night deepens, the soldiers’ fears intensify. To alleviate their horror, they start to hack the body with their swords. But the hacking fails to assuage their fears; the cries of the child reverberate in their ears and produce an even greater panic among them. The spectre continues to haunt them and lead them to the sea, where they are drowned by huge roaring waves. In the foreword he wrote to his translation of “The Miracle of the Youth Linus,” Zhou Zuoren (1918b: 233) quoted Sologub’s statement about the authorial self: “My own self, i.e. the one called Sologub, is a conglomerate of genetic influences. Who can tell whether the ideas in my books are mine or inherited from my ancestors?” Zhou (ibid) then noted that he would rather make no further comment on the story, as he was “unclear whether my views accord with Sologub’s or his ancestors.” Zhou obviously shared Sologub’s view about the individual self being “a conglomerate of genetic influences,” and further extended the anthropological thinking to the relationship between mankind and self, which he elaborated in his subsequent essays such as “Russia and China in Literature” and “Requisites of New Literature.” Zhou gave serious consideration to the question of the “human” – what it meant to be human – and sought to develop “human consciousness” (renjian de zijue)11 through his translations. In translating “The Miracle of the Youth Linus,” Zhou’s  Taken from Zhou Zuoren’s 1920 essay “Requisites of New Literature.” See Zhong (1998(3): 45–9).

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intention appears to have been to highlight the inescapability of human conscience. The soldiers, having murdered Linus, could not avoid being haunted by the dead child. Zhou did not see a story of revenge. In this, he was quite unlike other New Culture fans of Russian and Eastern European literature who sought to be inspired, as Xu Shoushang (1883–1948) (1997: 20) put it, by its “spirit of struggle, revolt and bellow” (zhengzha, fankang, nuhou de jingshen). Instead, Zhou regarded Sologub as an “extoller of death” (si zhi zanmei zhe), and observed that Linus’s death was “solemn and beautiful” rather than “ugly and horrific” (ibid: 233). For Zhou Zuoren, the power of a literary work resided in the evocation of the reader’s empathy and compassion, and he found such power in the short stories of Aleksandr Kuprin, one of the last proponents of the great tradition of Russian critical realism. In “The Kings’ Park,” the former rulers of the earth start to deteriorate in body and become degraded in soul when they have lost their power. They become wrinkled, groaning, sickly old men, envious, suspicious, and quarrelsome. As the old, lonesome, childless, widowed King of Trapesund sits down in the most secluded and faraway alley of the park, the spring sun and air fill his soul with a quiet sadness. Then a kind, light-haired, blue-eyed girl approaches him and asks him to cheer up on such a fine holiday. The innocence of the little girl brings home to the old King the absurdity and uselessness of his stubborn faith in what is past. There awakens in him a desire for a family, for caresses, attention, childish prattle. Finally the old King, the little girl and her father walk out of the Kings’ Park (Kuprin 1919; Zhou 1918c). In the postscript to the translation of “The Kings’ Park,” Zhou Zuoren (1918c: 322) speculated that Kuprin must have felt repressed as if in jail and that his personal self was enshrouded in the veil of grief, but he noted at the same time that “The Kings’ Park” revealed the author’s hopefulness rather than despair. “[Kuprin] believes that the future is nonetheless bright and hopeful, although the contemporary world is vicious and filthy….It is now difficult to tell when Kuprin wrote this story; I guess it was after World War I….Kuprin had witnessed the miseries, and therefore reflected them in his writings. This is understandable. However, it must be argued that the story is full of hope rather than despair” (ibid: 318). Although Zhou Zuoren did not specify where hope came from, the sincerity and compassionate love of the little girl in the story suggest unmistakably the human qualities Zhou was looking for. Both Kuprin (1919: 235) and Zhou (1918c: 318) hoped that in the future world “vices [would] disappear entirely and virtue [would] blossom out.” The old King’s willingness to lead an ordinary but “real, happy” (zhenshi, xingfu) life is constitutive of the miracle of love that Russian humanists such as Kuprin underscored in their literary works. While depreciating violence, hierarchy and prejudice, the story affirms the importance of a life that conforms to humanity. In addition to Russian literature, Zhou Zuoren was also drawn by the sense of lugubriosity that informed Japanese literature. The sadness, or wu ai, was often mixed with a vague hope. Zhou (in Zhong 1998(7): 75) claimed in 1925 that traditional Japanese literature and art tended to “wrap up deep sorrow in beautiful forms,” which he believed was “different from Chinese literature.” In December 1918, Zhou Zuoren published his translation of Japanese novelist and short story writer Ema

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Shu’s (1889–1975) “A Small Person” (“Chisai hitori,” or “Xiaoxiao de yigeren” in Chinese). The story highlights the protagonist’s compassion for a six-year-old girl who had to endure hardships in life after her father left the family. This is how the story ends: For two months after that, I have kept thinking about the child and have often talked about her with my wife. I visualize her destiny and her mishaps. On several occasions my wife and I saw on the street children who looked very much like He’er; of course, they were not her. We cannot keep our minds off the small person who seems to have dissolved in the sea of humans, as if we were led by an invisible string. I often think that the existence of the child in mankind has inclined me to love humans. Indeed it is no exaggeration to say that because of the child, I have started to give more profound consideration to human issues than before. (Zhou 1920a: 325)

The story thus revealed not only the severity of life that surrounded ordinary people but also great hopes for an ideal society and human life. Amid a distinctive tinge of plaintive melancholy, Zhou Zuoren noted that stories like “A Small Person” taught readers how to empathize with other people.

6.2  Faith in Humanity When projecting an ideal human life in his seminal essay “Human Literature,” Zhou Zuoren considered the improvement of human relations to be of fundamental importance. He figured an individual as a tree in a forest and noted: “We are humans to each other, and each of us is one of all human beings” (1999: 8). Zhou (ibid) then emphasized the importance of love, observing: “When I love humankind, it is because humankind has me as a member and is related to me.” Zhou Zuoren believed that current social conditions had given rise to nonchalance and apathy between human beings. To restore faith in humanity, it was necessary to instil in people love, understanding and sensitivity to the feelings of other individuals. On several occasions Zhou (1920a: 192; in Zhong 1998(8): 426; in Zhong 1998(8): 444) quoted Russian writer Leonid Andreyev (1871–1919) as saying: “Our misfortune stems from our lack of understanding for other people’s minds, lives, sufferings, habits, inclinations and wishes.”12 In 1919, he attempted to answer the question of human alienation by referring to English poet William Blake (1757– 1827). He translated and quoted Caroline Spurgeon (1869–1942) in his essay “Blake’s Poetry” (Bolaike de shi): In Blake’s view the qualities most sorely needed by men are not restraint and discipline, obedience or a sense of duty, but love and understanding….To understand is three parts of love, and it is only through Imagination that we can understand. It is the lack of imagination that is at the root of all the cruelties and all the selfishness in the world. Until we can feel for all that lives, Blake says in effect, until we can respond to the joys and sorrows of others  Zhou Zuoren made the remark in part or whole in the postscript to his translation of “Ben Tobit” published in 1919, as well as his 1920 essay “Russia and China in Literature” and his 1921 essay “The Bible and Chinese Literature” (Shengshu yu Zhongguo wenxue).

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as quickly as to our own, our imagination is dull and incomplete....When we feel like this, we will go forth to help, not because we are prompted by duty or religion or reason, but because the cry of the weak and ignorant so wrings our heart that we cannot leave it unanswered. Cultivate love and understanding then, and all else will follow. (Spurgeon 2004)

Zhou Zuoren agreed with Blake that lack of love and understanding was “at the root of all the cruelties and all the selfishness in the world.” He wrote that people without such qualities would “get embroiled in their own problems and end up in solitude” (in Zhong 1998(8): 383).13 To attain love and understanding, people should have the sensitivity to “feel for all that lives … until [they] can respond to the joys and sorrows of others as quickly as to [their] own.” Only when people were equipped with such spiritual sensitivity, or what Blake called “imagination,” would they be able to understand and love. Zhou was clearly impressed by Blake’s vision of love, which corresponded with his own sense of love, understanding and spiritual sensitivity as integral modern human qualities. He adduced the comments made by Japanese novelist Nagayo Yoshiro (1888–1961) on Senge Motomaro (1888–1948), Japanese poet and humanist writer, in the postscript to his translation of the latter’s story “Bugle in the Night” (Shenye de laba): According to Nagayo Yoshiro, Senge is a person with an extraordinary ‘heart.’ The heart is most gracious yet fiery. Senga is a poet who is driven by the heart and who lives in the fire. The heart has generated his unusual sensitivity, which has in turn brought about the development of Senge’s distinctive art and religion. Like wind, Senge’s heart drifts about and discovers other hearts and lives. ‘Feelings are everything.’ This is a sentence that Senge regards as axiomatic….[He is] a rare and natural person. (1920c: 7)

Nagayo and Senge were both members of the Shirakaba (White Birch) School, a literary coterie with its emphasis on idealism, humanism and individualism. They saw sensitivity to the feelings of others as essential qualities required by modern humanity. This was why Nagayo regarded Senga as a “man of the world” (shijie ren). Zhou Zuoren concurred with the Japanese writers, noting that Nagayo’s observations about Senge’s moral character and his literary works were “to the point” (ibid). In translating the concepts of “understanding” and “love,” Zhou Zuoren differed from many political and social reformers who pledged to struggle for human happiness. To him, if people were totally apathetic towards the individuals who were feeling and suffering before their eyes, the prospective human happiness these reformers promised was mere fantasy (Zhou in Zhong 1998(1): 77). Zhou found a ready resonance in Angelo S. Rappoport’s (1871–1950) disquisition “The Philosophic Basis of Russian Revolution” and published his translation of it in New Youth in April 1919. In the essay, Rappoport (1917: 216–7; Zhou in Zhong 1998(1): 77) dismissed nonchalant benefactors, “be they labeled socialists, nationalists, Pan-­ Germans, Pan-Slaves, Zionists, e tutti quanti, who dream of the welfare and happi13

 Taken from Zhou Zuoren’s 1919 essay “Blake’s Poems.”

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ness of millions,” as “dryasdust intellectuals” and underscored the starting point of human love, i.e. sensitivity to and empathy with the feelings and sufferings of ­individuals. In fact, this was what Zhou Zuoren sought to emphasize in the translations and writings he produced around the late 1910s. In his 1919 essay “Plebian Literature” (Pingmin wenxue), Zhou (1999: 2) stressed the need for the portrayal of woes and joys of ordinary men and women in modern literature, and made a point to advocate “the tendency in literature toward the human” (wenxue shang de renlei qingxiang), which echoed Rappoport’s overriding concern for understanding and love. In 1920, Zhou Zuoren compiled some of his literary translations that he published from January 1918 to December 1919 into an anthology, which Lu Xun entitled Drops (Diandi).14 Zhou (1920a: III–IV) wrote in the preface, Though these stories are all different, they have one thing in common, which is humanism. Whether optimistic or pessimistic, they adopt a sincere attitude toward life and hope to find a complete solution. Tolstoy’s universal love and nonresistance are certainly humanism; Sologub’s exaltation of death cannot be said to be anything other than humanism….In this range of humanistic ideas one can see the true character of modern literature; a unified fixed model is neither possible nor tolerable. A multifaceted humanist literature is indeed an ideal literature.

These remarks well reveal Zhou’s single-minded focus on cultivating humanism in his readers through literary translation and bring to mind the deliberate choices Zhou made to translate stories, such as “The Miracle of Youth Linus,” “The Kings’ Park” and “A Small Person” (discussed earlier), all of which Zhou Zuoren selected in his compilation of Drops. Also included in the anthology were Sologub’s “The Hoop” (Tiequan), Andreyev’s “Ben Tobit” (Chitong), Spanish novelist Vicente Blasco Ibáñez’s (1867–1928) “The Rabies” (Diangoubing), Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen’s (1805–1875) “The Little Match Girl” (Mai huochai de nüer) and Greek writer Argyres Ephtaliotes’s (1849–1923) “Uncle Yannis and His Donkey” (Yangnisi laodie he ta lüzi de gushi) and “Aunt Yannoula” (Yangnula ao fuchou de gushi), among others.  In his foreword to Drops, Lu Xun quoted directly from his translation of “Zarathustra’s Prologue:” “I love all who are like heavy drops falling one by one out of the dark cloud that lowereth over man: they herald the coming of the lightning, and succumb as heralds. Lo, I am a herald of the lightning, and a heavy drop out of the cloud: the lightning, however, is the SUPERMAN!” (Nietzsche 1894, translated by Thomas Common). In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, lightning is a symbol of the Overman that Zarathustra teaches. The title of the anthology and the foreword reveal Lu Xun’s intention to make Zhou Zuoren’s translated stories the “heavy drops” that would “herald the coming of the lightning.” In 1928, the second edition of Drops came out. The two brothers had already broken up, and Zhou Zuoren’s literary and intellectual outlook further broadened. Two important amendments were made. First, Zhou renamed the title of the anthology The Empty Drum (Kong dagu), after the first fable by Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), a moral thinker and social reformer well known for his ideas on nonviolent resistance. Second, he left out Lu Xun’s foreword. Zhou Zuoren (in Zhong 1998(8): 599) observed in the preface to The Empty Drum, “I have decided to remove the title and the quote from Nietzsche, because I don’t like them.” Through the publication of The Empty Drum, Zhou Zuoren affirmed his aesthetic approach to literature. See Wang (2001).

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The anthology Drops featured works with a predominantly morbid motif (as in the writings he translated from Andreyev and Vsevolod Garshin (1855–1888)) and works of warmth and mild moderation by Tolstoy. Zhou Zuoren brought together stories that offered realist portrayals of social problems and allegorical tales that represented moral ideals. To highlight the humanistic purpose of these translations, Zhou chose to include in the anthology three of his own essays, namely, “Human Literature” (1918), “Plebian Literature” (1919) and “Requisites of New Literature” (1920). Two years later, Zhou published the first volume of Anthology of Translations from Modern Fiction (Xiandai xiaoshuo yicong). In the anthology, 18 of the 30 stories were translated by Zhou Zuoren, while Lu Xun and Zhou Jianren (1888–1984), the youngest of the three brothers, translated nine and three stories respectively. The works of 18 authors from eight different countries were included. Zhou’s interest in “a multifaceted humanistic literature” (duo fangmian duoyang de rendaozhuyi wenxue) prompted him to continue to explore the universality of humanity in these works. He opined in the preface to the anthology, “I don’t think there exists a paradigm, or an icon, in art. Therefore, the views of one person or one school of thought may be too narrow. Not only that, even the products of one country or nation cannot be claimed to have attained the acme of beauty and virtue of the world and to be sufficient to satisfy all our needs” (Zhou et al. 2006: 1). In the anthology, “Shades,” “The Beggars” and some other stories contain realist elements to varying degrees; several others, such as Polish Nobel laureate Henryk Sienkiewicz’s “Life and Death: A Hindu Legend” (Er caoyuan), are entirely of a religious and unearthly character. Zhou articulated the relevance of these stories in the postscript to his translation of “Life and Death,” Sienkiewicz’s religious story. He observed: “These newly-adapted classical stories are suffused with a distinctive flavour, like new wine in an old wineskin. No matter how remote and surreal these stories are, they set the hearts of modern men and women dancing. Therefore, they tug at our heartstrings as much as realist works do” (ibid: 129). The juxtaposition of stories of different types in the two anthologies, i.e. Drops and Anthology of Translations from Modern Fiction, indicates clearly Zhou Zuoren’s wide-ranging literary thought. On the one hand, he was affected by poignant depictions of human existence, “so much so that I want to dig my fingernails deep into my flesh to feel the pain” (in Zhong 1998(8): 600).15 On the other hand, he was attracted to literary works that sought to “nourish imaginations and interest (quwei)” (in Daruvala 2000: 88). To him, both the conveyance of the tragic sense of deprivation and the inclusion of more spiritual, idealistic elements in literature would help his readers to acquire empathy for other humans and relate to their suffering and happiness, however “remote and surreal” their culture might seem. Zhou’s translation of realist literature and “theorizing” of human literature contributed to the popularity of what May Fourth litterateurs called “problem stories”

 Zhou made the remark in the preface to the 1928 anthology The Empty Drum (Kong Dagu). The anthology was a slightly revised reprint of Drops.

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(wenti xiaoshuo).16 Like “problem plays” (wenti ju), which gained currency after the publication of the special Ibsen issue of New Youth (1918) and Hu Shi’s The Greatest Event in Life (1919), the problem stories were mainly focused on the revelation of social injustice, family conflicts and women’s plight. They may be traced back to the translation and writing of political fiction popular in the early 1900s (Wang 1989; Luo 2012). The emphasis that Liang Qichao placed on “group” (qun) was replaced with outcries for individual freedom in the May Fourth period. The writers of these problem stories “only attempted to identify the source of the disease without worrying about prescriptions” (zhi wen bingyuan, bu kai yaofang), and were generally unconcerned about providing solutions to the social issues they exposed. The type of faith in humanity, compassion and sincere love that Zhou Zuoren promoted was reflected in many May Fourth literary productions, which exerted a substantial influence on New Literature. In particular, the stories in Call to Arms, which his brother Lu Xun published in 1923, reveal the unhealthy relations between people, characterized by apathy and deception manifested in the character of the senseless Chinese masses. Underlying Lu Xun’s scathing criticism of the national character was a modern sensibility and understanding of human subjectivity as sharing a fundamental, universal similarity, which Zhou Zuoren sought to advance through his translations that highlighted the “sad, beautiful souls” and positive human qualities.

6.3  Zhou Zuoren and the May Fourth Cult of Children The Zhou brothers, i.e. Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren, started to show an interest in fairy tales and books on child development during their study in Japan in the 1900s. The fairy tales that Zhou Zuoren translated, such as “The Happy Prince” (Kuaile wangzi), were among the first few Chinese translations of children’s literature produced. Because of Zhou’s 1913 essay “Danish Poet Andersen” (Danmai shiren Andui’erran), he was acknowledged as the first person to introduce to China H. C. Andersen, who was best remembered for his fairy tales (Fujii 1997: 213). In the early and mid-1910s, Zhou Zuoren compiled and published a number of books on children, such as Introduction to the Study of Children (Ertong yanjiu daoyan), Study on Fairy Tales (Tonghua yanjiu), and Brief Discussion of Fairy Tales (Tonghua luelun), while Lu Xun translated three essays from the Japanese educationist and psychologist Ueno Yoichi (1883–1957), namely “Education in Art Appreciation” (Yishu wanshang zhi jiaoyu), “Children’s Curiosity” (Ertong zhi haoqixin) and “Social Education and Taste” (Shehui jiaoyu yu quwei).

 In his 1918 speech “The Bourgeoning of Japanese Fiction in the Past Thirty Years” (Riben jin sanshinian xiaoshuo zhi fada), Zhou Zuoren sang high praises for the role that problem stories played in modern Japanese literature. According to Qian et al. (1998:65), these observations were an important factor for the rise of problem stories in China.

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As the previous sections have shown, the notion of the underlying unity of humanity was a guiding thread in Zhou’s translations. It can be argued that his enthusiasm for translating children’s books was inspired not so much by the scientific knowledge inherent in them as by the wisdom about children’s education and human life that scientific knowledge could develop. In the heyday of New Culture, many young writers and intellectuals were drawn to Zhou Zuoren’s translations and writings and to the values of sincerity, compassion and love that he presented as a cultural remedy for China’s social problems and as a means of the transformation of Chinese character in alignment with the universality of human nature. Zhou’s acolytes then helped to fashion the new May Fourth emphasis on understanding children. On 24 July 1923, Morning News Supplement (Chenbao fujuan) launched the special column of The Children’s World (Ertong shijie) with these opening words: “As of today, we will add the special column of The Children’s World [to the periodical], which will first publish Mr. Zhou Zuoren’s The Banquet of the Earth (Tu zhi panyan)17 in instalments. We will then publish as many as we can reading materials for children, whether translated or creatively written.” In 1924, Short Story Monthly launched its special column of Children’s Literature (Ertong wenxue). In addition, it published two special issues of Andersen (Antusheng hao) and three special issues of Children’s Literature (Ertong wenxue zhuanji). In September 1921, Xie Wanying (1900–1999), better known by her pen name Bing Xin, published “The Realization of Love” (Ai de shixian) in Short Story Monthly. It tells the story of reawakened love of a reclusive poet, whose writing is inspired by two innocent children passing by his window. When the story was misinterpreted by Japanese journalists, Bing Xin’s Yanjing University supervisor Zhou Zuoren translated the story into Japanese and wrote an essay in defense of the story. In the early 1920s, Bing Xin was able to construct a “philosophy of love” (ai de zhexue) around maternal love, childhood and nature. “Superhuman” (Chaoren) (1921), “Unease” (Fanmen) (1922) and “Awakening” (Wu) (1924) constituted a trilogy of love and the hope for a better world. She devoted her life to the promotion of the “philosophy of love,” and published about 20 anthologies of essays and short stories for children. These works, which embody Bing Xin’s “idealization of love and celebration of childhood” (Farquhar 1999: 118), resonate soundly with Zhou Zuoren’s humanistic writings. Zhou Zuoren’s translations also influenced the literary production of Ye Shengtao (1894–1988), another member of the Association for Literary Studies. Ye’s anthology The Scarecrow (Daocaoren) comprises 23 children’s stories he wrote between 1922 and 1923. Ye treated the real and the illusory with finesse, and according to Lu Xun (1981 (10): 394), the anthology “blazed the trail of the creation of children’s stories in China.”18 Ye himself was forthright about the impact that translated fairy 17  The Banquet of the Earth is a collection of folktales and songs for children collated by Zhou Zuoren. 18  Lu Xun made the obsrvation about Ye Shengtao in the postscript to his 1935 translation of The Watch (Biao), originally written by Soviet Russian writer Panteleev Leonid (1908–1989).

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tales exerted on his writing of children’s stories. He wrote in 1980, “My writing of children’s stories was under the influence of the West. Around the May Fourth Movement, the fairy tales of the Grimm brothers, Andersen and Wilde were translated into Chinese. As a primary school teacher, I showed particular interest in literary works that made good read for children. The idea of trying my own hand [at children’s literature] then occurred to me” (Ye 1990: 1). When asked in 1979 about his favourite translators, he replied, “the translations of Lin Shu and the Zhou brothers appealed to me most” (in Yan 1988: 169). Not surprisingly, the stories in The Scarecrow bear a close resemblance to Zhou Zuoren’s translated fairy tales. Many of the characters in Ye Shengtao’s stories in The Scarecrow are incarnations of love and empathy, such as the fool in “The Fool” (Shazi), who endeavours to save lives and dissolve hatred among people, and the thrush in “The Thrush” (Huamei), who brings solace and love to people suffering from the hardships of life. We can easily find their counterparts in Zhou Zuoren’s translated stories, such as the statue prince and the swallow in “The Happy Prince.” Renowned essayist and cartoonist Feng Zikai (1898–1975) maintained an elegant and non-abrasive style throughout his literary and artistic career. His cartoons and comic strips, which mostly feature the world of children, celebrate candor and empathy while disparaging deceptiveness, and help to redefine the modern Chinese character. In 1950, Feng produced 69 graphic illustrations to accompany Zhou Zuoren’s Poems on Random Subjects for Children (Ertong zashi shi). Feng’s artistic treatment well captured Zhou’s idealization of childhood. Zhou Zuoren’s translations thus provided fresh impetus to the creation of modern children’s literature in China. In fact, Bing Xin, Ye Shengtao and Feng Zikai are among the prominent modern Chinese intellectuals who acquired from Zhou Zuoren’s works elements of human love and pursuit of truth to which Zhou himself ascribed greater importance from the 1920s onwards, amid mounting political intrusion.

6.4  Promoting Gender Equality and Modern Womanhood One notable feature of Zhou Zuoren’s humanism was his defence of gender equality. In “Human Literature,” Zhou traced the discovery of “humans” in Europe to the fifteenth century, when religious reformation and the Renaissance occurred, and regarded the nineteenth century as the beginning of the discovery of women and children. He was confident that the solution to the problems related to women and children was very likely to yield good results in Europe. On the other hand, Zhou (1999: 7) lamented that in China “the question of ‘humans’ has never been resolved, to say nothing of [the question of] women and children.” In May 1918, Zhou Zuoren published in New Youth his translation of Yosano Akiko’s essay “On Chastity” (Zhencao lun). In the essay Yosano argued against traditional marriage and couple relationship, and propounded new sexual morality based on love and gender equality. Zhou concurred that the old morality of viewing

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chastity as something that only women were required to maintain was a serious flaw in human history. Zhou’s foreword indicates how he understood the translation as providing guidance for modern relationships. I am convinced that the article is full of wholesome ideas. Although sunlight and air are hygienic and healthy, it is likely that the chronically debilitated patients or those who are used to living in the dark may feel very uncomfortable about taking fresh air or being exposed to bright sunlight.…The fact that some people do not appreciate sunlight, air or physical and mental freedom should by no means inhibit us from basking in the sun and enjoying fresh air. Neither should it hinder us from glorifying the sunlight and the air. (Zhou 1918d: 386)

Zhou Zuoren deplored the apathy regarding the issue of women’s rights in China and extended the topic to the awakening of the people: New Youth once published an advertisement for half a year, encouraging discussions about the question of women. It evoked a number of answers at that time, but in the last few months there has been no response. The awakening of the people should start from the heart. Without intense, genuine feelings, one will have very little to say about the issue. Moreover, there is still so much about the question of men that requires resolution….But the question of women is after all an issue of paramount importance, and should therefore be studied in real earnest. If women do not care, it is then incumbent upon men to study it; if ordinary men are unwilling to bother, it is then up to the few awakened men to study it. My translation of the article is thus for the reference of the few awakened men. (ibid)

In Zhou Zuoren’s view, the question of women should be observed in a wider moral context, and the mistreatment of women revealed problems such as insincerity and apathy in the national character. He viewed new ethical ideals and visions of happiness and freedom as essential for encouraging “intense, genuine feelings” that would awaken Chinese men and women from torpor. Inspired by Zhou Zuoren’s translation of “On Chastity,” Hu Shi published “On the Question of Chastity” (Zhencao wenti) in July 1918, and was effusive in his praise of Zhou’s translation. Hu (2003(1): 324) wrote that “On Chastity” was “something very laudable in the history of Oriental civilization.” Echoing Zhou, Hu pointed out, “from a humanistic point of view,” that chastity was an issue that concerned every human being, and emphasized the importance of men’s loyalty to their wives. One month later, Zhou’s brother Lu Xun elaborated on the question of chastity in his usual trenchant style in the essay “My Views on Chastity” (Wo zhi zhenlie guan). He attributed the deterioration of public mores to the failure to practise new ethics, and averred that chastity, being “most difficult, most bitter,” was “beneficial to neither other people nor the nation” (1981(1): 124–5). Lu Xun thus concluded that chastity, which was meaningless to life, “has lost its raison d’etre” (ibid). Zhou Zuoren reaffirmed his stance on the issue of gender equality in “Impromptu Reflections 34” (Suigan lu sanshisi), which he published in September 1918. In the essay Zhou gave an in-depth explication of Love’s Coming of Age, a short book of papers by English poet and philosopher Edward Carpenter (1844–1929). The book, which probes the development and maintenance of gender roles, held immense appeal to Zhou Zuoren. He expressed his approval of Carpenter’s view of improving couple relationship on the basis of freedom and honesty, and declared: “The human

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body and its instinctive desires are all beautiful, virtuous and clean” (Zhou 1995b: 221). In his view, gender equality involved economic emancipation and sexual emancipation for women, and in a sense, the latter was more important and more difficult to achieve (ibid). While acknowledgement of the natural desires of human beings prompted Zhou to espouse women’s emancipation, he expressed disdain for “parasitic women” who willingly gave up their independence in exchange for material comfort. In early 1919, Zhou Zuoren published his translation of the much acclaimed short story “The Darling” (Ke’ai de ren) written by renowned Russian author Anton Chekhov (1860–1904). The story is a character sketch of a young lady Olenka Plemyannikova, whose life takes on meaning only in relation to the men she becomes involved with. Olenka is constantly in love. She marries a theatre owner, then a timber merchant. After they die, she takes up with a veterinary surgeon, and falls for his son when the vet leaves her. The story casts Olenka as a loving and gentle soul, a “darling,” but it was Chekhov’s intent to ridicule the protagonist, as representative of a woman who could not form her identity without attaching herself to a man. Zhou Zuoren (in Zhong 2009(14): 451) subscribed to Chekhov’s view and observed in the postscript to the translation19: “[Women] are wives and mothers of their husbands and children, but they are individuals to the humankind….We cannot write off the person and the self in them at one stroke, and expect them to reduce themselves to mere objects and to do nothing but wait upon others.” Zhou (ibid) hoped that women of the future would be “robust, independent and intellectual, with moral character and sense of selfhood” and that they would “undertake human enterprises for the betterment of their own wellbeing and that of society, much like men.”20 He then asserted that only in this way could humanism be enacted (ibid). Modern womanhood thus constituted an important part of Zhou Zuoren’s humanism. In his translation of modern womanhood and humanism, Zhou also evinced a strong interest in “non-realistic” literary works. As noted in Chap. 3, Zhou Zuoren became drawn to anthropology and Greek mythology while a student in Japan, as a result of reading Andrew Lang. Preoccupation with the human inspired Zhou to read not only Greek mythology but also the allegories of South African author Olive Schreiner (1855–1920). In Zhou Zuoren’s translation anthology Drops, two allegorical tales from Schreiner’s book Dreams are included, namely, “The Garden of Pleasure” (Huanle de huayuan) and “Three Dreams in a Desert” (Shamo jian de sange meng). Zhou (in Zhong 2009(14): 453) noted in the postscript to his translation of “Three Dreams in  The postscript is actually a separate essay, entitled “Tolstoy’s Criticism of ‘The Darling,’” which was published in New Youth (Number 2, Volume 6) in February 1919. Zhou Zuoren put the essay after the translation of “The Darling” in the anthology The Empty Drum. 20  Zhou Zuoren’s thinking about the role of women changed slightly toward the end of the May Fourth period. In a December 1927 letter, he underscored femininity in women while highlighting women’s independence and dignity as identical to men. Zhou (in Zhong 1998(5): 103) pointed out that “a big mistake of nowadays is to judge everything according to men’s standard.”

19

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a Dessert,” which was first published in New Youth in November 1919, “Modern readers may find her outmoded. However, what we need is the kind of literature that can interpret life.” In the story “Three Dreams in a Desert,” the narrator falls asleep in an African desert and dreams of a series of scenes, the meaning of which is explained by a prophet. The three dreams present three stages of female emancipation – a vision of women’s historic subjection, the status quo in which the feminist pioneer is advised to shuffle off the chains of the patriarchal tradition, and an idealized harmonious male-female relationship. Zhou Zuoren (ibid) observed: In regard to the question of women, what Schreiner finds by observing the past and the present is mostly darkness, as can be expected. However, she looks further into the future with infinite sanguineness of hope. As a result, the tenor of her works is different from negative naturalists. She bases her literary works on reality, yet does not stop there. With her idealistic vision, she is always on the lookout for perfect solutions. This positive attitude sets her apart from the empty fantasies of her utopian predecessors. Although the allegory is not the kind of first-class literary work like The Pilgrim’s Progress, it is nonetheless more real. It depicts the “progress” of human life; therefore, modern people will naturally find it more profound and practical. As the saying goes, “keep new wine in an old bottle.” We cannot doubt the content just by looking at the form.

Zhou Zuoren’s idealistic tendencies are discernible from these remarks. His choice of Schreiner’s less known literary works bespeaks his search for “the ‘progress’ of human life” and the “sanguineness of hope,” with which he envisioned future human relationship. Like realist works such as “The Darling,” Zhou underscored the performance of new womanhood as the emerging self. In the meantime, the translation of such allegorical tales or parables suggests a watering down of the abjection and gloom emanating from many of the realist works of the “weak and oppressed” nations. Zhou Zuoren’s exploration of the universality of humanity and his wide conception of the function of literature enabled him to look beyond the monolithic realism fervently embraced by the New Culture camp, as a way to expose and rectify social injustice.

6.5  T  he Naturalness of Humanity and the “Invisible Utility” (Wuxing de gongli) As the previous sections indicate, while Zhou Zuoren’s translations contain realist elements to varying degrees, they also reveal his interest in the kind of ecumenist worldview and cultural ideals inherent in the source texts. They expose social realities, but also spin a rich skein of optimism and exhibit an aesthetic character. Zhou’s translated texts manifest his intellectual persona of the period, which is varied and eclectic. In their subversion of literary and cultural traditions, New Culture advocates attempted to set themselves apart from the literary utilitarianism of “literature as the vehicle of moral instruction” (wen yi zai dao). On the other hand, they saw literature

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as a means of social progress, and their addition of a strongly anti-feudal, anti-­ traditional colouring to literature, including translated literature, cannot be said to be non-utilitarian. Hu Shi (2003(1): 5) asserted in the January 1917 essay “Tentative Proposals for the Reform of Literature” that only the kind of literature that “gives realist portrayal of social realities” could fall under “genuine literature.” Chen Duxiu’s “On Literary Revolution” (Wenxue geming lun), published in February 1917, was more politically forceful, as Chen (in Denton 1996: 141) cried out, “Down with the ornate, sycophantic literature of the aristocracy; up with the plain, expressive literature of the people!”21 Zhou Zuoren’s human literature is also tinged with realist utilitarianism. After explaining what he meant by humanism in the 1918 essay “Human Literature,” he hastened to expound: Human literature is based on this humanism. It is a literature that records and studies questions concerning human life. It consists of two kinds. One is direct and deals with an ideal human life or the possibility of human life at a higher level. The other is indirect and depicts ordinary human life or inhuman life. The second division comprises the bigger body of works, which are more important and which may well be used for study purposes. This is because they bring out the contrast with the ideal life and enable us to understand the real situation of humans and find ways of improving it. The literature which depicts inhuman life is often confused with inhuman literature; in fact, they are poles apart….The difference [between human literature and inhuman literature] lies in the attitude toward literary works. One is serious; the other playful. One aspires to live a fully human life - it shows sorrow and outrage toward inhuman life, while the other indulges in, and feels satisfied with, inhuman life, often japing and titillating. In a nutshell, the difference between human literature and inhuman literature consists in the attitude toward literary works….Don’t the articles which aim to encourage women to be buried alive, or to die out of loyalty for their dead husbands, purport to “maintain good morals?” But forcing people to commit suicide is inhuman morality, and therefore inhuman literature as well. In Chinese literature, human literature is scarce. Few articles written from the perspectives of Confucianism and Daoism pass muster. (1999: 10–11)

Zhou’s contention that “human literature should take human morality as its basis” (ibid: 11) implies that readers must learn to discriminate between good and bad texts on the basis of the feelings they inspire. Zhou’s commendation of the realist literature for situations of injustice lent support to the conviction of his New Culture peers in the instructive powers of social realism. In “Human Literature,” Zhou’s examples of ideal human literature are all taken from foreign works, while inhuman literature is illustrated by Chinese literature. He observed that the discovery of the “human” truth in Europe occurred in the fifteenth century, and later cited Iliad, an epic by ancient Greek poet Homer dating from around the eight century BC, as an example to support his argument about human love. Zhou’s radical disapproval of Chinese literary and philosophical traditions and celebration of European civilization bear the typical New Culture iconoclastic imprint. Zhou Zuoren’s use of such contrastive terms as “human” vs. “inhuman,” “serious” vs. “playful,” “sorrow and outrage” vs. “indulgence and titillation” brings to mind 21

 The English translation is obtained from Timothy Wong’s translation of “On Literary Revolution.”

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his emphasis on sincerity and compassion in his translations. By commending the former and negating the latter, he underscored the importance of producing foreign-­ inspired sincere literature to evoke sympathy for the social “dishrags” and to “foster morals befitting humans.” The significance Zhou assigned to the “pedagogical” function of translation reminds one of Liang Qichao’s advocacy of the translation of fiction and Zhou’s New Culture peers’ promotion of translation as a tool of social and cultural reforms. The publication of “Human Literature” drew enthusiastic responses from New Culture intellectuals. Fu Sinian (1896–1950) (1919: 919) stated that “Human Literature,” together with Hu Shi’s “Ibsenism” and “On a Constructive Literary Revolution,” defined what literary revolution meant. In a 1921 essay entitled “The Translators in the History of Russian Literature” (Eguo wenxue shi shang de fanyi jia), Zheng Zhenduo (in Chen 1996: 229) echoed Zhou Zuoren in maintaining that foreign literature was essential for guiding the Chinese people to find the correct answers to modern life questions. Thirteen years later, he exclaimed in the editorial of the first issue of Literature Quarterly (Wenxue jikan), “Just as Mr. Hu Shi’s ‘Tentative Proposals for Literary Reform’ set the literary revolution in motion, so Mr. Zhou Zuoren’s ‘Human Literature’ laid the foundation for the construction of New Literature” (Zheng 1934: 2). Hu Shi (1972: 29–30) himself extolled “Human Literature” as “the most important manifesto of literary reform” and “the plainest and greatest manifesto” in the preamble to Volume One of Compendium of Modern Chinese Literature (Zhongguo xin wenxue daxi) first published in 1935. Zhou’s “Human Literature” blazed the trail of “literature for human life” (wei rensheng de wenxue), a slogan mainly used by the Association for Literary Studies. In 1921, its founding manifesto proclaimed: “Those who study new literature rely solely on foreign material….Gone are the days when literature and art were treated as a game when one was happy and as a diversion when one felt despondent. We believe that literature is work, and for that matter, work that is vital to human life” (in Jia and Su 2010: 2). The resolution to make literature a vehicle to reflect social reality and serve human life was then accompanied by the large-scale translation of literary works from the “weak and injured nations” (ruoxiao yu bei sunhai de minzu). In 1922, one year after his revamp of Short Story Monthly, Mao Dun published an essay entitled “Reflections of the Past Year and Plans for the Next” (Yinian lai de ganxiang he mingnian de jihua), in which he stated: “Translation of literary works is as important as [literary] creation. In a country such as ours where human literature is not yet mature, translation is all the more important. Otherwise, how can we remedy the poverty of the soul and fill the void of humanity?” (in Chen 2000: 231– 2). Mao Dun’s remarks are redolent of Zhou Zuoren’s translation of the “souls of dishrags.” They also indicate that “human literature,” which Mao Dun understood as realist literature or the literature of the “oppressed,” had become a privileged genre for which Mao Dun, as editor of a highly regarded magazine, was calling for more translations. Since then, many scholars and critics have laid the blame for May Fourth realist utilitarianism, the subsequent proletarian literature and the Marxist literary canon of

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socialist realism at the door of Zhou Zuoren’s human literature. Sima Changfeng (pen name of Hu Xinping) (1922–1980) (1975: 118) claims, “Because Zhou Zuoren’s human literature opened the door to ‘art for human life,’ it no doubt became a body-selling indenture for New Literature, sold and resold, so that it has not restored its freedom even today.” Such criticisms are not well grounded. It should be noted that despite the realist utilitarian elements in Zhou Zuoren’s 1918 essay “Human Literature,” his perception of “proper human life” (renlei zhengdang shenghuo), which he believed entailed “the conformity between flesh and soul,” or “the amalgam of the animal nature and the spiritual nature,” embodies first and foremost his concern for human dignity and the naturalness of humanity. Natural humanity constitutes Zhou Zuoren’s point of departure for his reproof of inhuman morals and practices in society, as well as his aesthetic inclinations. To him, human literature involves not only “the depiction of people’s ordinary life or inhuman suffering” but also “the presentation of ideal life or the possibility of attaining a higher level of human morality” (1999: 8).22 To achieve natural humanity and “a higher level of human morality,” Zhou Zuoren highlighted lyricism (shuqing) or the empathetic projection of individual feelings in literary presentations. He observed in the postscript to his 1920 translation of Kuprin’s “The Evening Guest” (Wanjian de laike): “My translation of the story…is intended to present this type of short stories in modern literature. Stories do more than narrate and describe. They can also be used to lyricize. A special feature of literature is ‘the transmission of emotions,’ …‘through the naturalness of the writer’s disposition,’ as Zola23 said” (1920b: 41). Zhou’s translation of such “lyricized stories” (shuqing xiaoshuo), which were featured in the Zhou brothers’ anthologies published in the 1920s, bespeaks his broad vision of translation as a tool of literary enlightenment and modern humanity, and represents a dynamic “alternative Chinese response to modernity,” to borrow Daruvala (2000). In the 1920 essay “Requisites of New Literature,” Zhou Zuoren amended “literature for human life,” the utilitarian slogan of the Association of Literary Studies, into “literature of the art of human life” (rensheng de yishupai de wenxue), which he stated should convey the writer’s understanding of human life and human emotions so as to give his readers “the pleasure of art and the explanation of life” (in Zhong 1998(3): 46). On 22 January 1922, Zhou Zuoren took issue with both “art for human life” (wei rensheng de yishu) and “art for art’s sake” (wei yishu de yishu) in his essay “My Own Garden” (Ziji de yuandi), published in Morning News Supplement (Chenbao fujuan). He dismissed the latter as sundering art from life. On the other hand, “‘Literature for human life’ attaches art to life, treating art as the tool of reforming life rather than the end. Doesn’t it also sunder art from life?” (ibid: 63). He indicated that his “literature of the art of human life” was neither entirely utilitarian nor “purely” literary. Zhou (ibid: 64) concluded that as long as “literature takes individuals as masters and turns itself into art by expressing human feelings,” 22 23

 Taken from Zhou Zuoren’s 1918 essay “Human Literature.”  Émile Zola (1840–1902) was a French writer.

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it “will enrich [people’s] spiritual life, and this is the basis of real life.” Zhou Zuoren regarded this literature as possessing invisible utility or utilitarianism (wuxing de gongli). The invisible utility of art and the inseparability of art and life best captured Zhou Zuoren’s literary stance in the late 1910s and early 1920s. Many scholars take the writing of “My Own Garden” as the turning point in Zhou’s renunciation of the basic New Culture instrumentalist belief that people could be shaped by literature (e.g. Qian 2005; Wang 2001). However, as we have seen, Zhou attempted to reconcile the revelation of social darkness with humanitarian ideals, and to reduce the contradiction of modern identity construction and a didactic approach to literature by adopting what he termed “invisible utility” in his translations and essays. Realist, romantic and aesthetic elements existed, albeit not so compatibly sometimes, in his translations while Zhou sought to assign his translated works with the function of constructing modern men and women. “Literature of the art of human life,” which embodies Zhou Zuoren’s invisible utility, is built on his humanism. As noted earlier, Zhou Zuoren’s humanism has as its major components individualism and the combination of the animal nature and the spiritual nature, or the amalgam of flesh and soul. This is in keeping with his understanding of modern civilization. He observed in the 1924 essay “The Art of Life” (Shenghuo zhi yishu): China boasted an advanced culture a thousand years ago, and for a time almost achieved the amalgam of soul and flesh. However, asceticism later reigned. Our life has become what it is today, and is devoid of freedom and restraint. Suppression is enforced and self-­ abandonment is practiced behind the mask of ethical codes….What China urgently needs now is a kind of new freedom and new restraint in order to construct a new civilization. In other words, we should regenerate millennium-old civilization, and merge it with the Greek culture, which is the foundation of Western culture. (in Zhong 1998(9): 25–7)

Zhou’s “art of life” is thus synonymous with the life of “the amalgam of the animal nature and the spiritual nature,” a core component of his humanism. Zhou’s imagining of modern individual reconstitution and new Chinese civilization is driven by a profound understanding of modern humanity. By taking a pluralistic approach to the selection of source texts for translation and by emphasizing the diversity of localities, Zhou sought to promote a modern, universalist subjectivity that went beyond national confines.24 Zhou Zuoren’s intellectual stance exerted a positive influence on many modern Chinese writers. Among them was Fei Ming (1901–1967), penname of Feng Wenbing. He was a member of the Threads of Talk (Yusi) literary society, which was founded by Zhou Zuoren in 1924. Fei Ming’s 1925 story “Bamboo Grove”  To Zhou Zuoren, human literature transcended national boundaries and languages. He observed in the 1918 essay “Human Literature:” “Humans share the same destiny, and if I am concerned with my destiny, I must at the same time concern myself with the common destiny of mankind. Therefore, we should only speak of historical eras and should not focus on differences between nations….The translation of foreign works is calculated to broaden the readers’ horizons. Once they see humans in the world, they will be able to foster morals befitting humans and live a human life” (1999: 14–15).

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(Zhulin de gushi) presents to the readers a personable, good-natured country girl Ah San through a number of episodes in her life. In the story we find a harmonious interconnection between human life and nature. There are no conflicts or radical emotional changes whatsoever on the part of the characters. Even the grief of the death of Ah San’s father Lao Cheng is downplayed and treated with a touch of tranquillity. Fei Ming described human suffering and conveyed sorrow with restraint and elegance. He sought to create a world of natural but exquisite humanity through the literary works he produced between the 1920s and the 1940s. Under his pen, ordinary people, with their ordinary dreams and hardships in life, manifest sincere and pure human feelings. They seem to live a heavenly life, away from the fraudulent schemes and artifices of the real world. To the extent that the villages and small towns they dwell in are like fairylands of ideal human relations, Fei Ming’s works have acquired an ethereal beauty. The kind of ordinary human life unsullied by human vices embodies Fei Ming’s exaltation of the spiritual nature of humanity. Shen Congwen (1902–1988) (in Zhang 2002(16): 145–6) once wrote of Zhou Zuoren: “He experiences the dynamic and the static in this world with a peaceful heart, and discovers dynamic and static qualities of beauty where ordinary people overlook. He slightly reserves his emotions when approaching all this.”25 Shen (ibid: 146) noted that Fei Ming’s literary interest was not any different from Zhou’s. In fact, the same applies to Shen Congwen himself. In the 1930s, Shen’s literary stance was opposed to socialist realism promoted by the League of Left-Wing Writers (Zuoyi zuojia lianmeng) and the politicization of literature. He prioritized the beauty and the naturalness of humanity, and made a point of presenting what was good in human nature while exposing and seeking to expunge moral evils in human beings. Shen (in Wu 1993: 191) hoped that writers would endeavour to produce “literary canons that teach people to be healthy, courageous, and cooperative in their pursuit of a bright future for humankind.” He also encouraged the creation of “literary works that will develop human wisdom and love, enhance the national spirit, and enrich national feelings.” For these purposes, writers would need to understand or be conscious of humanity, and “this understanding or consciousness are not only social and economic but also physiological and psychological” (ibid). Shen’s emphasis on the improvement of human character bears a strong resemblance to Zhou Zuoren’s “invisible utility” in literary presentations. In the preface to Congwen’s Selected Stories (Congwen xiaoshuo xizuo xuan), Shen (1945: 5–6) wrote about the motive behind his writing of the 1934 novella The Border Town (Biancheng): What I wished to present was ‘a form of life,’ a beautiful, healthy, and natural form of life, which does not go against humanity….I situated the story in a small town 700 li north of the Land of Peach Blossoms and a number of ordinary people there, who were involved in an ordinary event. They experienced their joys and sorrows in the process, and exemplified ‘love’ very well.

 Shen made these comments in the essay “On Feng Wenbing” (Lun Feng Wenbing). According to Zhang Zhaohe (1910–2003) (2002(16): 152), Shen Congwen’s wife and chief editor of The Complete Works of Shen Congwen, neither the year nor the journal that carried the essay is known.

25

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Shen Congwen thus invested The Border Town with the ideal of egalitarianism and freedom. He exercised considerable restraint in his portrayal of Cuicui and Nuosong’s tragedy while highlighting the sincerity and innocence of the local ­people and apotheosizing the beauty of humanity through the depiction of romance, kinship and neighbourhood support. In his literary criticisms, Shen (in Zhang 2002(16): 149) judged literary works by the yardstick of aestheticized emotions and moderate presentations, believing that writers should seek to “present what [they] intend to present with restrained diction.” Fei Ming and Shen Congwen were both pioneers of the Beijing School (Jingpai). During the 1930s, the school developed its unique style of literary creation, hallmarked by an aesthetic portrayal of human suffering and a focus on imagination. It watered down the realism of the May Forth fiction, and accentuated lyricism and aestheticism in its glorification of innocent yet elegant humanity. Although fiction produced by the Beijing School inherited from the Chinese literary and cultural traditions elements of literary presentation (Feng 2012; Wen 2011), traces of foreign influence is clearly discernible. In particular, Zhou Zuoren’s translation of Russian, Japanese and Greek short stories in the late 1910s and early 1920s set a pattern for emulation. Fei Ming was one of the modern Chinese writers who were explicit in expressing indebtedness to Zhou. He wrote in the 1927 essay “Speaking about Dreams” (Shuo meng), “I remember how I loved reading literary works such as ‘Goldfish’ (Jinyu) and ‘Nostalgia’ (Xiangchou)26 ….I made annotations and comments in my notebook, and they became reference materials for my own story ‘The Bamboo Grove’” (Fei 2002: 52). Zhou Zuoren’s aesthetic approach to translation and free writing opened his readers up to new ways of seeing, and affirmed their grasp of the wider issues underlying Chinese experience. In the 1980s, some of these issues resurfaced when a group of young writers started what was called the “searching for roots literature” (xungen wenxue), which sought to present a different way of constructing self and its relation to the nation with “the invocation of locality and positing of a politically independent authorial presence” (Daruvala 2000: 56). Daruvala (ibid: 56 and 253) posits a loose lineage of fiction writers from the Beijing School to the Searching for Roots School, and points out that these schools of writers are indebted to Zhou Zuoren, the mentor of the Beijing School, for their free, aesthetic depiction of local culture, which signified an important way China could join the mainstream of world culture. “Invisible utility” constitutes Zhou Zuoren’s contribution to the New Culture view of realist translation as a character-building tool. Zhou’s attempts to cultivate a responsive attitude to translated literature led him to identify a “higher” level of reality and to encourage his readers to engage with what could be described as “conscious realism” (Grant 1970: 13–17; 20; 47).27 In the post-May Fourth literary  Both “Goldfish” and “Nostalgia” were translated by Zhou Zuoren. They were included in the Zhou brothers’ Collection of Modern Japanese Stories (Xiandai Riben xiaoshuo ji). 27  In “conscious realism,” the author is concerned less with an indiscriminate mimesis of objective reality than with the artistic or aesthetic construction of their fictional worlds. The expanded realism that Zhou Zuoren advanced may also be labeled “modernism” by many. 26

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realm, Zhou and his followers distanced themselves from national literature and socialist realism, and persisted in their presentation of bittersweet social realities and liberalist, moral ideals.

6.6  Conclusion In the 1980s, the literary scholar Liu Zaifu (1986: 241) promoted subjectivity in literature as the effort of the writer to “recover the human being’s status as the subject of literature.” He presented his theory of subjectivity as a renewal and continuation of the endeavours made by New Culture intellectuals, especially Zhou Zuoren, to defend a humanist literature. In “Human Literature,” Zhou Zuoren’s invocation of social conditions and human existence was in conformity with his emphasis on moral awareness and self-liberation. The values he promoted as necessary for leading (what he saw as) the “ideal human life” (ren de lixiang shenghuo) were in large part derived from the literary texts he chose to translate. Zhou Zuoren’s interest in humanism prompted him to search for “eternal humanity” (yongheng de renxing) in the works of authors from Russia, Japan, Greece and other countries. As his translations and postscripts indicate, what he understood by humanism was the conditions and virtues necessary for harmonious social co-­ existence in the modern world. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, Zhou Zuoren was among the most prominent advocates of love, understanding and empathy. Although the concept of love the New Culture intellectuals introduced to China through their translation of foreign works is similar to ren (benevolence), the core virtue of Confucianism, what they sought to encourage among the Chinese is different from the traditional idea. Ren is hallmarked by the love of people and things (ai ren, ai wu). Its starting point, however, is “filial piety and love of siblings” (xiaoti). When extended to the love of other people, ren presupposes the existence of different levels of love and a hierarchical relationship, in which the superior is expected to act as a role model in exchange for loyalty from the inferior. Therefore, in feudalist China, ren often became an ethical-­ political principle to keep the patriarchal order of the social edifice. On the other hand, Zhou Zuoren highlighted in his translations the value of “self-love” (ziai), “loving others as oneself” (airen ru ji) and “love of humanity” (ai renlei). The foreign-­derived concept of love entails equality between people of different social strata and from different nations. Such love happens between natural human beings and forms an integral aspect of Zhou Zuoren’s humanism. Zhou Zuoren’s soul-flesh (ling-rou) duality, which ran counter to traditional Chinese understandings of personhood, lent legitimacy to women’s emancipation and self-development. He emphasized the naturalness of humanity, and acknowledged in “My Own Essay” (Ziji de wenzhang), which he wrote in 1936, the “important” influence that “modern scientific knowledge, such as biology, anthropology, and psychology of sexuality” exerted on his moral outlook (2013: 196). He applied the imported idea of the amalgam of flesh and soul, or of the “animal nature” (shouxing) and the “spiritual nature” (shenxing), to the imagination of ideal humanity.

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While contending for women’s right to pursue happiness, he urged women to maintain their independence and dignity through translations such as “The Darling.” Lu Xun invested the same sense of purpose in his translation of “Happiness” (Xingfu) (to be discussed in Chap. 7). The many female characters under his pen, such as Xianglin Sao in “New Year’s Sacrifice” (Zhufu) and Shansi Saozi in “Tomorrow” (Mingtian), embody the downtrodden individuals yet to be liberated from the strictures of the old social morality. Hu Shi was responsible for the popularity of Nora among the Chinese youths as a fine example of female emancipation and self-­ liberation. Hu (2003(1): 613) construed such act of “saving oneself” as “the most valuable altruism,” since people who turned themselves into useful members of society would bring hope to themselves and to other members of the society. The New Culture leaders’ translations and writings about female emancipation and self-­ liberation are representative of the New Culture feminist discourse. They subsumed “the question of women” (funü wenti) under the broader concern of humanity and freedom of individuality. For New Culture intellectuals, the creation of new Chinese women was in fact metonymic of the narrative of self-assertion and modern identity construction. Zhou Zuoren took a broad approach to the importation of foreign ideas. His “invisible utility” opened up new perspectives for representing social reality and imagining modern humanity. Zhou’s influence on the depoliticization and culturalization of literature is discernible from the jingpai writers’ adoption of modernist universality. According to Shih (2001: 153), what vindicated Chinese tradition in jingpai thought was its perceived universal qualities which could be shared by both China and the West. In fact, the same can be said of many post-Mao (such as “searching for roots”) writings. Post-Mao probes into selfhood and narrative discourse have largely been premised on both a reimagined holistic cultural tradition and new literary imports. Intellectuals such as Han Shaogong, Zhang Zhongxing and Jia Pingwa have sought to rethink the relationship between the local and the global in their construction of an inclusive mode of cosmopolitanism. These neotraditionalist cultural formation endeavours are clearly evocative of Zhou Zuoren’s (1998: 104) contention that the local taste is related to cosmopolitanism in the same way as each of us individuals is a member of the human community of the world and that a strong smack of locality is integral to the universality of literature.28 Zhou Zuoren’s professed optimism in the 1930s about the possibility of cultural fusion between Japan and China proved unrealistic. Several studies, sympathetic to his situation, have described his underestimation of the atrocities of Japan’s militarism as part of the reason for his collaboration with the Japanese occupiers of Beiping (Beijing) during the Second Sino-Japanese War (e.g. Chen 2013; Liu and Cai 2004). He was accused of treason by the Nationalist government and served his prison sentence from 1946 to 1949 in Nanjing. After the founding of the People’s Republic in October 1949, he was branded a “cultural traitor” (wenhua hanjian) by Mao Zedong. Zhou’s disgraceful stint has also led David Der-wei Wang (2015: 73–4) to associate his lyrical vision with “a lyricism of betrayal.” Such an a­ ccusation runs counter to 28

 Zhou Zuoren’s 1923 essay “Old Dream” (Jiumeng).

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the “invisible utility” that Zhou adhered to since the May Fourth period. I tend to agree with Miami University-based scholar Yang Haosheng (2016: 124), who argues that Zhou Zuoren was overall neither a weak puppet scholar easily controlled by the Japanese (as his attackers maintained) nor a devoted hero who sacrificed himself for the smooth transition of life in occupied China (as claimed by his defenders).

References Chen, Fukang. 2000/1996/1992. Zhongguo yixue lilun shigao [Outline of the History of Chinese Translation Theories]. Shanghai: Waiyu jiaoyu chubanshe. Chen, Fangjing. 2003. Duochong duihua: Zhongguo xin wenxue de fasheng [Multiple Conversation: The Emergence of New Literature in China]. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe. Chen, Shuaifeng. 2013. Dui Zhou Zuoren funi de sixiangshi jiedu [An Interpretation of Zhou Zuoren’s Collaboration with the Japanese Occupiers from the Perspective of Intellectual History]. Xiandai Zhongguo wenxue yanjiu congkan [Modern Chinese Literature Studies] 2013(1): 165–176. Daruvala, Susan. 2000. Zhou Zuoren and an Alternative Chinese Response to Modernity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Denton, Kirk, ed. 1996. Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature (1893–1945). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Ellis, Havelock. 1973/1923. The Dance of Life. Connecticut: Greenwood. Farquhar, Mary Ann. 1999. Children’s Literature in China: From Lu Xun to Mao Zedong. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe. Fei, Ming. 2002. Fei Ming wenji [Selected Works of Fei Ming]. Beijing: Dongfang chubanshe. Feng, Hui. 2012. Jingpai xiaoshuo yu daojia zhi yinyuan [Fiction of the Beijing School and Its Relationship with Daoism]. Guangzhou: Jinan daxue chubanshe. Fu, Sinian. 1919. Baihua wenxue yu xinli de gaige [Vernacular Literature and Psychological Reform]. New Tide 1(5): 915–921. Fujii, Shozo. 1997. Lu Xun bijiao yanjiu [Comparative Study of Lu Xun]. Trans. Chen Fukang. Shanghai: Waiyu jiaoyu chubanshe. Gamsa, Mark. 2008. The Chinese Translation of Russian Literature: Three Studies. Leiden: Brill. Grant, Damian. 1970. Realism. London: Methuen. Hu, Shi. 1972. Daoyan [Preamble]. In Zhongguo xin wenxue daxi, jianshe lilun ji [Compendium of New Chinese Literature, Volume One, Construction of Theory], ed. Zhao Jiabi, 1–32. Hong Kong: Xianggang wenxue yanjiushe. ———. 2003. Hu Shi quanji [Complete Works of Hu Shi]. Hefei: Anhui jiaoyu chubanshe. Jia, Zhifang, and Xingliang Su. 2010. Zhongguo wenxueshi ziliao quanbian xiandai juan: Wenxue yanjiuhui ziliao shangjuan [A Complete Anthology of Modern Chinese Literary History: Material from Association for Literary Studies (I)]. Beijing: Zhishi chanquan chubanshe. Kuprin, Alexander. 1919. The Park of Kings. The Bracelet of Garnets and Other Stories, 235–243. Trans. L. Pasvolsky). London: Duckworth & Co. Liu, Zaifu. 1986. Liu Zaifu lunwen xuan [Selected Essays of Liu Zaifu]. Hong Kong: Dadi tushu gongsi. Liu, Wei, and Hongmei Cai. 2004. Riben wenhua qingjie yu Zhou Zuoren de funi [Japanese Culture Complex and Zhou Zuoren’s Collaboration with the Japanese Occupiers]. Dongyue luncong 2004 (6): 137–141. Lu, Xun. 1981. Lu Xun quanji [Complete Works of Lu Xun]. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe. Luo, Xiaojing. 2012. Qun yu geren: Wanqing zhengzhi xiaoshuo yu wusi wenti xiaoshuo zhi bijiao yanjiu [Groups and Individuals: A Comparative Study of Late Qing Political Fiction and May Fourth Problem Stories]. Wenxue pinglun 2012 (6): 88–96.

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Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1894. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Trans. Thomas Common. (Philosophy Eserver). http://philosophy.eserver.org/nietzsche-zarathustra.txt. Accessed on 25 Aug 2013. Qian, Liqun. 2005. Zhou Zuoren zhuan [A Biography of Zhou Zuoren]. Beijing: Beijing shiyue wenyi. Qian, Liqun, Rumin Wen, and Fuhui Wu. 1998. Zhongguo xiandai wenxue sanshinian [Thirty Years of Modern Chinese Literature]. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe. Rappoport, Angelo S. 1917. The Philosophic Basis of the Russian Revolution. The Edinburgh Review 226 (461): 113–133. Shen, Congwen. 1945. Congwen xiaoshuo xizuo xuan [Congwen’s Selected Stories]. Shanghai: Liangyou tushu gongsi. Shih, Shu-mei. 2001. The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, 1917– 1937. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sima, Changfeng. 1975. Zhongguo xin wenxue shi [History of New Chinese Literature]. Hong Kong: Chiu Ming Publishing Co. Ltd. Spurgeon, Caroline F.E.. 2004. Mysticism in English Literature. Gutenberg EBook. http://www. gutenberg.org/files/11935/11935-h/11935-h.htm#ch05. Accessed on 18 Aug 2013. Trites, W.B. 1915. Dostoievsky. The North American Review 202 (717): 264–270. Wang, Xuejun. 1989. Wenti xiaoshuo faduan: Lun Xin Zhongguo weilai ji jiqi qunlei [The Origin of ‘Problem Stories’: On The Future of New China and Its Emphasis on Groups]. Mingqing xiaoshuo yanjiu 1989 (4): 204–216. Wang, Yougui. 2001. The Translator Zhou Zuoren [Fanyijia Zhou Zuoren]. Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe. ———. 2005. The Translator Lu Xun [Fanyijia Lu Xun]. Tainjin: Nankai daxue chubanshe. Wang, David Der-wei. 2015. The Lyrical in Epic Time: Modern Chinese Intellectuals and Artists Through the 1949 Crisis. New York: Columbia University Press. Wen, Xuewu. 2011. Jingpai xiaoshuo he Zhongguo wenhua jingshen [The Stories of Beijing School and the Spirit of Chinese Culture]. Shanghai jiaotong daxue xuebao [Academic Journal of Shanghai Jiaotong University] 2011(4): 80–85. Wu, Lichan. 1993. Shen Congwen zhuan [Biography of Shen Congwen]. Shanghai: Wenyi chubanshe. Wu, Bo. 2012. Huanyuan zui jiujie de Zhou Zuoren [Unravel Zhou Zuoren, Who Had the Most Intense Inner Struggles with His Feelings]. Guangzhou ribao B19–B20. 31 March 2012. Yan, Huo. 1988. Bigeng yu bange shiji de Ye Shengtao [Ye Shengtao, the Writer Who Has Wielded His Pen for More Than Half a Century]. In Ye Shengtao yanjiu ziliao [Research Data about Ye Shengtao], eds. Liu Zengren and Feng Guanglian, 161–170. Beijing: Shiyue wenyi chubanshe. Yang, Haosheng. 2016. A Modernity Set to a Pre-Modern Tune: Classical-Style Poetry of Modern Chinese Writers. Leiden: Brill. Ye, Shengtao. 1990. Children’s Literature and I [Wo he ertong wenxue]. In Ye Shengtao he ertong wenxue [Ye Shengtao and Children’s Literature], ed. Wei Shang, 1–6. Shanghai: Shao’er chubanshe. Yi, You. 2008. Lu Xun yisheng xie le duoshao zi? [How Many Words Did Lu Xun Write in His Lifetime?]. Yaowenjuezi 2008 (3): 14. Yu, Xiaozhi. 2014. Zhou Zuoren wenxue fanyi yanjiu [A Study on Zhou Zuoren’s Literary Translation]. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe. Zhang, Zhaohe. 2002. Shen Congwen quanji [Complete Works of Shen Congwen]. Taiyuan: Beiyue wenyi chubanshe. Zhang, Chunxia, ed. 2015. Yongzai de wenqing: Wenren bi xia de wenren [Eternal Affection: Men of Letters Writing About Other Men of Letters]. Beijing: Zhongguo wenshi chubanshe. Zheng, Zhenduo. 1934. Wenxue jikan fakanci [Editorial in the First Issue of Literature Quarterly]. Wenxue jikan 1934 (1). Zhong, Shuhe., ed. 1998. Zhou Zuoren wenlei bian [Collection of Zhou Zuoren’s Essays]. Changsha: Hunan wenyi chubanshe. ———., ed. 2009. Zhou Zuoren sanwen quanji [Complete Collection of Zhou Zuoren’s Essays]. Nanning: Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe.

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Zhou, Zuoren. 1918a. Tuosituofusiqi zhi xiaoshuo [Dostoievsky’s Novels]. New Youth 4 (1). ———. 1918b. Tongzi Lin zhi qiji [The Miracle of the Youth Linus]. New Youth 4 (3). ———. 1918c. Huangdi zhi gongyuan [The King’s Park]. New Youth 4 (4). ———. 1918d. Zhencao lun [On Chastity]. New Youth 4 (5). ———. 1920a. Diandi: Jindai mingjia duanpian xiaoshuo [Drops: Short Stories by Famous Modern Writers]. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe. ———. 1920b. ‘Wanjian de laike’ yihouji [Postscript to ‘The Evening Guest’]. New Youth 7 (5). ———. 1920c. Shenye de laba [Bugle in the Night]. New Youth 8 (4). ———. 1986. Zhitang shu hua [Zhitang’s Notes on Books]. Changsha: Yuelu shushe. ———. 1995a. Yong ri ji [Endless Days]. Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe. ———. 1995b. Tan long ji [Speaking of Dragons]. Beijing: Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe. ———. 1998. Ziji de yuandi [My Own Garden]. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe. ———. 1999. Yishu yu shenghuo [Art and Life]. Shanghai: Wenyi chubanshe. ———. 2005. Wo de zaxue [My Miscellaneous Learning]. Beijing: Beijing chubanshe. ———. 2011. Yedu chao [Notes from Night Reading]. Beijing: Shiyue wenyi chubanshe. ———. 2013. Zhou Zuoren sanwen jingxuan [Selected Essays of Zhou Zoren]. Wuhan: Changjiang wenyi chubanshe. Zhou, Zuoren, Lu Xun, and Jianren Zhou. 2006. Xiandai xiaoshuo yicong, diyiji [Anthology of Translations from Modern Fiction, Volume I]. Beijing: Xinxing chubanshe.

Chapter 7

Constructing the Modern Self in Translation (III): Lu Xun

The story of how Lu Xun came to write is well-known and often quoted. In his December 1922 preface to Call to Arms (Nahan), the first anthology of his short stories, Lu Xun (2009: 2–3) recalled that the Japanese instructor in the bacteriology class he attended at the Sendai Medical Academy in northeast Honshu showed slides of images from the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). One of the pictures displayed the execution of a Chinese man whom the Japanese accused of spying for the Russians. Apparently, the apathy on the faces of the Chinese spectators in the slides appalled Lu Xun. In any case, this was the reason Lu Xun gave for dropping out of the Academy to pursue literature.1 The epiphany or “awakening” (juewu) and other similar terms of the day brought on by the lantern slide incident, as narrated by Lu Xun, had already become part of the Chinese idea of being modern by the 1900s. Hence Chinese readers could already identify this type of writing with “progress” (jinbu). As discussed in Chap. 3, the intellectual currents and influences of the 1890s and 1900s, such as the evolutionism of Herbert Spencer popularized by Yan Fu’s translation and the “new citizen” ideal espoused by Liang Qichao, were well-known to young students like Lu Xun. The translation activities of Lu Xun and others who rose to prominence in the 1910s and 1920s reflected a continued preoccupation with character building, with a new emphasis on building empathy and developing individuality. In his 1907 essay “The Power of Mara Poetry” (Moluo shili shuo), Lu Xun provided examples of foreign poets, such as George Gordon Byron (1788–1824), Percy Bysshe Shelly (1792–1822) and Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837). He ascribed to these poets a supreme power, claiming that it was because of their unflinching “adherence to sincerity and truth” (baocheng shouzhen). He further argued that literature would bring to light what was good and evil in human life toward the

1  Scepticism has been raised about the genuineness of this story. Pollard suggests that the slide incident may have been invented or exaggerated so as to explain away Lu Xun’s decision to abandon medicine, which he was struggling with and not finding all that interesting. See Denton (2002).

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a­ttainment of human ideals. He wrote: “Unlike ordinary education, literature inspires self-awakening, valour and a drive toward progress” (1981(1): 69). In another 1907 essay “On Imbalanced Cultural Development” (Wenhua pianzhi lun), Lu Xun (ibid: 56–7) emphasized social equality and the role of individuals in social reforms. His view of cultural development reflects a modern longing for authentic ways of understanding the human condition. Lu Xun (ibid) then elaborated on human and national improvement: “The self-consciousness of our countrymen will result in them giving full play to their individuality, and as a result, a country in which people are no more than gathered sand will be turned into a country of human beings….Establishing human character (liren) will lead to the flourishing of every enterprise; its principle consists in the privileging of individuality and the lifting of the human spirit.” For all Lu Xun’s rhetoric about transforming the Chinese people into modern human beings through literature and language, his essays and translations in the 1900s were in either premodern wenyan or preclassical guwen. From the publication of his baihua story “A Madman’s Diary” in 1918, Lu Xun came to regard wenyan as inherently elitist and inaccessible to the masses (Davies 2013: 231–2). Lu Xun, like Hu Shi and other advocates of baihua, sought to utilize it as a vehicle for modern identity construction. Although Lu Xun was ambivalent about the standardization of baihua,2 he was insistent about using it for moral self-improvement. For him, the modern vernacular was instrumental for cultivating an active compassion for the socially disadvantaged and forging a human path (rendao).3 Lu Xun saw the “establishment of human character” (liren), quoted above, as the primary goal of literary translation. His understanding of humanism drew on traditional and modern sources. Rather than providing a definition of humanism, he merely suggested that it ought to encompass human dignity and universal values such as “sincerity” (cheng) and “love” (ai).4 In this regard, he was not much different from his brother Zhou Zuoren. Zhou’s notion of humanism was premised on individualism and the “conformity of soul and flesh” (lingrou yizhi), which he 2  While Lu Xun welcomed the institutionalization of baihua, he was opposed to the intellectuals’ adoption of newfangled terminology, which alienated the masses. In fact, as Davies (2013: 250) points out, baihua in its formative years from the 1910s to the 1930s was a language largely confined to China’s urban intellectual elite, and despite his insistence on fostering simple communication in baihua, Lu Xun’s language was by no means common fare. 3  This is evident in his lectures of the late 1920s. According to Davies (2013: 33), Lu Xun’s frequent figurations of baihua as a path or road were both a play on Confucian-Daoist-Buddhist conceptions of the Way (dao) and a literalization of the Chinese term he employed for humanism (rendao). 4  Lu Xun first mentioned sincerity and love in 1902. Xu Shoushang (1883–1948) (1978: 1) recalled in the 1940s that Lu Xun often discussed the issue of “national character” (guominxing) with him at that time. The three questions that haunted the then Lu Xun were: What is the ideal humanity? What does the Chinese race lack most? What is the root of their ailment? “As regards the second question, what we found most lacking in our people were sincerity and love” (ibid). Lu Xun reiterated the importance of human dignity, sincerity and love in many of his essays written in the 1900s and 1910s, such as the 1907 essay “The Power of Mara Poetry” (Moluo shili shuo) and the 1919 essay “What Is Required of Us as Fathers Today?” (Women xianzai zenyang zuo fuqin).

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p­ roposed in “Human Literature.” In order to become dignified humans, as he further contended in the 1918 essay, people would need to love others and themselves and “make [themselves] qualified as humans” (1999: 9). Lu Xun (1981(4): 512) wrote in 1933 that the possibility of human improvement inspired him to translate and write fiction. His focus was on “the unfortunate people in an unwholesome society,” and through them he intended to “expose malaise and arouse attention for a cure” (ibid). In contrast to Zhou Zuoren’s generally moderate and low-key style of writing, Lu Xun tended to use caustic language in his discussion of the flaws of the Chinese people. Lu Xun often credited Russian and Japanese works with shaping his worldview. In the postscript to his 1925 translation of Japanese literary critic Kuriyagawa Hakuson’s Out of the Ivory Tower (Chule xiangya zhi ta), he urged his readers to reflect on Kuriyagawa’s ideas of Japanese national character and to consider how they might apply to China (ibid (10): 243). In the book Kuriyagawa blamed the Japanese for their apathy, parsimony, hypocrisy, arrogance and conservatism. Lu Xun made clear the instructive nature of reading and translating foreign works in remarks such as: “My translation of the book is not meant to expose the weaknesses of our neighbour to gratify my countrymen….When [Kuriyagawa] lashes himself, I seem to feel the pain, but am then relieved, as if I had taken some medicine” (ibid). He wrote that the “prescriptions” (yaofang) Kuriyagawa had provided to the Japanese might well be used to cure similar “illnesses” in China. His criticism of the benighted masses and constant search for “prescriptions” rested on a hope of the future and is indicative of what Shih (2001: 80) describes as “evolutionary humanism.”5 Lu Xun’s critique of the Chinese character is widely acknowledged as based on his reading and translation of foreign literature. Zhou Zuoren (1922) noted that “The True Story of Ah Q” was inspired by foreign short stories, especially the works of Gogol and Sienkiewicz. Lydia Liu (1995) examined how American missionary Arthur Smith’s (1845–1932) Chinese Characteristics impacted on Lu Xun’s conception of national character and his literary practice, especially on his writing of “The True Story of Ah Q.” Patrick Hanan (2004) establishes plausible connections between Andreyev’s “Silence” (which Lu Xun translated in 1909) and “Medicine,” and between the Russian writer’s “The Red Laugh” (the translation of which Lu Xun did not complete) and “A Madman’s Diary.” Scholars such as Tang Xiaobing (2000), Shih Shu-mei (2001) and Chiu-yee Cheung  (Zhang Zhaoyi) (2001) have traced the influence of Nietzsche’s use of symbolism on Lu Xun’s stories, and especially on “A Madman’s Diary.” Lu Xun’s application of these modernist ideas to his own literary writing not only ensured his place as an avant-garde experimentalist with the development of modern Chinese baihua fiction6 but also helped to cultivate modern qualities in pursuit of the “ideal humanity” (lixiang de renxing). 5  According to Shih (2001: 80), such evolutionary humanism foregrounds Lu Xun’s consistent train of thought from medicine as bodily cure and medicine as metaphor for curing the ills of the Chinese national character. 6  For a study of Lu Xun’s conscious development of the art of the fictional character, see Anderson (1985). Davies’s (2013) assessment of the later Lu Xun (1927–1936) is mainly from a linguistic perspective.

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Lu Xun’s ideas about character building and the transformation of the “Chinese national character” became the guiding principles for his translation between the late 1910s and mid-1920s. This chapter explores how Lu Xun’s choice of foreign works for translation and his emulation of translated works facilitated his promotion of a modern identity (against the flaws he ascribed to the “Chinese national character”) through an examination of his integration of certain key concepts and literary models derived from foreign works in his own writings.

7.1  The Nietzschean Spirit Lu Xun’s view of character building through reading translated works is most fully set out in the four essays he wrote in 1907, namely, “History of Humanity” (Ren zhi lishi), “The Power of Mara Poetry” (Moluo shili shuo), “On Imbalanced Cultural Development” (Wenhua pianzhi lun) and “Toward a Refutation of Malevolent Voices” (Po e’sheng lun). He invoked as paragons of these qualities the Romantic poets Byron and Shelley, Ibsen’s Dr. Stockmann in Enemy of the People and Nietzsche’s Overman (chaoren), among others. Lu Xun expressed lavish admiration for these people, believing that they stepped up the destruction of outmoded processes, and lit the way to human progress in doing so. Soon after Lu Xun’s fledging attempts at cultural criticism in the late 1900s, he experienced setbacks to his literary ambitions. He failed to launch the literary journal New Life, and the Collections of Stories from Abroad he and Zhou Zuoren translated was poorly received. He remained inactive in literary production for several years. His re-entry in literary publishing occurred in May 1918, when his first short story in the modern vernacular “A Madman’s Diary” appeared in New Youth. The expectation that ideas can transform people’s lives was intense among Lu Xun and his New Culture peers. Thus the “humanizing” effect of literature was widely assumed. Drawing attention to their conviction in the power of language, Fudan University-based literary critic Chen Sihe (1991: 228) wrote: “New Culture intellectuals acquired unprecedented strength and courage in their vehement criticism [of old Chinese traditions] like superhero fairytale characters. And they marvelled at their massive strength and energy. This superhuman power is nothing but the discovery of the notion of ‘humans,’ or humanism based on individuality.” The Nietzschean solitary genius who distains the masses and is unappreciated by them was a powerful archetype for Lu Xun. In 1918, he translated part of “Zarathustra’s Prologue” in wenyan and published the complete baihua translation of the prologue in New Tide in September 1920, under the pseudonym Tang Si. In this prologue to Nietzsche’s philosophical novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, Zarathustra, a man who has found contentment and enlightenment during his ten years in the wilderness, descends back into the human world and preaches to people about the death of God and the importance of the “Overman,” who lives to create virtue. Zarathustra tries to discourage people from worshipping a dead God. The alternative he offers to the masses is the Overman, a being with a

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new relationship to the earth and to nature. Zarathustra’s first attempts to communicate his message to the masses met with laughter and derision. He then wakes up one morning realizing that talking to the masses is like carrying around a dead corpse. What he needs are living companions who will follow him around and learn from his teachings. For Nietzsche, the Overman was the ultimate form of being in which man could achieve total self-mastery. Human beings were only a little above animals in biological evolution, while the evolution Zarathustra sought in the Overman was a spiritual evolution of self-awareness. The belief that God was dead was a prerequisite for the attainment of the state of the Overman, for if a person believed in ascension to Heaven, he could not be at one with nature and therefore would not rise to the state of the Overman. Ascent and descent were important concepts for Nietzsche. In the prologue, Zarathustra ascended to the mountain to become an enlightened individual. He descended to become a prophet and philosopher, and he preached to people about the need to descend so as to ascend again and to achieve transcendence. In Nietzsche’s philosophy, the “transvaluation of all values” was a defining characteristic of the Overman. To Lu Xun, the Overman was a leader who enlightened others by assuming a new god-like role after the death of God. He construed the Overman as one equipped with new morality and capable of leading the masses to transvaluate the old values. Under the influence of the Overman philosophy, Lu Xun (1981(1): 46) posited an individualism that “decries materialism to exalt self-­ improvement and inner drive” and that “valorizes individuality and enterprising spirit to resist the received wisdom.” “Zarathustra’s Prologue” was a shaping influence on Lu Xun’s “A Madman’s Diary” although he took the idea of the madman’s diary from the story of the same name by Gogol. In fact, he undertook the translation of “Zarathustra’s Prologue” and his writing of “A Madman’s Diary” at about the same time. Whereas Nietzsche’s Zarathustra took great pains to preach about the progress toward the Overman, the protagonist in “A Madman’s Diary” found himself recoiling from the society of cannibals and realized to his horror that he too was doomed to cannibalism. Like Zarathustra, whom Nietzsche depicted as an individualized, tragic hero, the madman in Lu Xun’s story sought to bring home to his fellow Chinese the cannibalistic nature of the Chinese society and urged them to make changes. Lu Xun’s irony is penetrating – precisely because the madman was awakened, he was looked upon as “insane” and scoffed at by the “sensible” people around him. Unlike the diarist in Gogol’s story “The Diary of a Madman,” who steered further from truth as he became mad, Lu Xun’s protagonist advanced toward the discovery of truth when he went insane, i.e. the truth about how old social system and morality were debilitating the Chinese spirit. In November 1918, six months after the publication of “A Madman’s Diary” in New Youth, Lu Xun (ibid: 311) published “Impromptu Reflections No. 38” (Suigan lu sanshiba), in which he sang high praise for “individual self-importance” (geren de zida). He wrote: “Individual self-importance means being aloof from others and

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declaring war against the mediocre masses” (ibid). Lu Xun maintained that the awakened individuals often had “an air of arrogance” (jifen kuangqi) about them. In the subsequent years after “A Madman’s Diary,” Lu Xun produced more fictional characters of the “self-important,” “insane” intellectual variety, who were estranged from and affronted by the benighted masses, and who defied outmoded morality and social norms. Among these characters were the condemned revolutionary Xia Yu in “Medicine” (Yao) (1919), who was described by the customers in Lao Shuan’s teahouse as “having gone mad” (fa le feng) for attempting to talk the prison guards into rebelling while in jail, and Wei Lianshu in “The Loner” (Guduzhe) (1925), who was “a new convert to Western values” (chi yangjiao de xindang) and “a strange anomaly” (guguai de yilei) in the eyes of the villagers because of his cynical struggle against old ethical systems. The defiant madman and the martyr characters in Lu Xun’s early stories (late 1910s) gave way to the disillusioned cynic in his 1925 work “The Loner.” Lu Xun (ibid) lamented that the intellectuals whose “modern ideas and vision were beyond the mediocrities” gradually became “misanthropes or ‘enemies of the people.’”7 The inspiration he derived from reading and translating foreign works is implicit in his defence of the tragic intellectual figures in his fiction: “But all the new ideas are generated by them; political, religious and moral reforms are initiated by them. Therefore, we will be truly fortunate to have more citizens imbued with such ‘individual self-importance!’”(ibid). Of the Nietzschean rift Lu Xun presented between the “normal” majority and the “insane” few, Leo Ou-fan Lee (1985: 8) wrote: “The very process of gaining an acute consciousness dooms the enlightened individual (the madman) to alienation – to rejection by the very people he wishes to enlighten and change.” For the iconoclastic May Fourth radicals, insanity became a synonym for challenging the accepted “wisdom” in Chinese society as well as a model for character building as they sought to transform people from unthinking “cannibalism” to a higher self-aware level of humanity. Lu Xun’s choice of Nietzsche’s “Zarathustra’s Prologue” bears out late twentieth-­ century translation scholars’ emphasis on the features of the target culture as decisive factors affecting the production of translation (e.g. Bassnett and Lefevere 1990; Lefevere 1992; Toury 1995). The way Lu Xun extended Nietzsche’s work to the creation of his own literary archetypes, as a means to foster a critical attitude to the status quo, indicates the influence of the translator’s ideological agenda: the skopos of his translation. In the prologue to Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche also presented the Underman (translated into Chinese as moren, literally “people at the end”) as the opposite of the Overman. The Underman is described as shallow, passive and lacking in self-consciousness and creativity. It has a value system based on fear, and a distortion of the will to power, and objects to all the “higher types” and “elitist” value systems. In his own stories Lu Xun created many a Chinese “underman,” through whom the apathy, ignorance, and the slave mentality of the masses are revealed as symptomatic of the Chinese national character of the time. These  Lu Xun made it clear in the footnote that he was quoting Ibsen.

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“undermen” are cast in the form of “mediocrities” (yongzhong) and “mindless people” (yumin).8 The majority of these characters in Lu Xun’s stories belong to the peasantry class in rural China. They have received little education, and fall easy prey to tyranny and oppression. Instead of rebelling against social injustice, they take their misfortune lying down and remain nonchalant about the suffering of others. Some of them inflict suffering on other people. The most representative of Lu Xun’s “undermen” is perhaps Ah Q in “The True Story of Ah Q” (A Q Zhengzhuan), a village idler. When he is humiliated, he easily indulges in self-deception, or “spiritual victory” (jingshen shengli fa), by considering himself mentally superior to his oppressors. Such self-deception does not in the least liberate him from tyranny and suppression. In the meantime, Ah Q is a bully to those weaker victims. Eventually he becomes a scapegoat for looting, and is executed. The disturbing realism of the story, along with Lu Xun’s satire of the protagonist Ah Q, led many Chinese to conduct self-introspection (Gao Yihan in Davies 1991: 58). Mao Dun (in Foster 2006: 179) was of the opinion that Ah Q constituted a “crystallization of Chinese qualities.” And according to Davies (1991: 58), Ah Q “became a symbol of all that was backward, despicable and tragic in Chinese society and often served Chinese intellectuals of the 1920s as a kind of negative criterion against which they could measure China’s and their own advance into modernity.” Another “underman” character Lu Xun created is Hua Laoshuan in the story “Medicine.” In an attempt to cure his son of tuberculosis, Laoshuan makes his son take as medicine a steam bun dipped in the blood of an executed revolutionary. Despite the intention of the enlightener to cure the Chinese of their diseases of the soul, the enlightened are only concerned with physical health. The contrast between their physical consciousness and their spiritual stupor is brought into sharp relief. The “medicine” made out of the blood of the elitist fails to save the life of Laoshuan’s son; nor does his sacrifice awaken Laoshuan and other “undermen” in the story. In both Lu Xun’s translation of Nietzsche and his own short story writing, we come across vivid portrayals of onlookers. While Nietzsche described onlookers as no more than nonbelievers in what the heroic individuals preach, Lu Xun sought to highlight the attributes he considered to characterize the “underman,” such as moral ignorance and apathy. The afore-mentioned customers in Laoshuan’s teahouse in the story “Medicine” are typical of such “onlookers” (kanke). At the end of his 1907 essay “The Power of Mara Poetry” (1981(1): 99–100), Lu Xun decried the lack of “warriors of the spirit” (jingshen jie de zhanshi) in China and called for “warm and compassionate voices that will save our people from cold desolation.” It echoes his quotation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra at the beginning of the essay: “O my brothers, 8  In the 1930s, Lu Xun became less accepting of Nietzsche’s philosophy. He dismissed the Overman as nihilistic in the preamble to Volume Two of Fiction, Compendium of Modern Chinese Literature (Zhongguo xin wenxue daxi xiaoshuo erji xu), published in 1935 (1981(6): 254). However, he was not entirely opposed to Nietzsche and quoted him from time to time to make his points. In the 1933 essay “From Deafness to Dumbness” (You long er ya), Lu Xun (ibid: 278) cautioned against turning young people into “effete and paltry undermen” (kuhe miaoxiao de moren).

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not long will it be until new peoples shall arise and new fountains rush down into new depths.” In effect, Lu Xun’s revelation of the negative qualities in the “piteous and deplorable” (ai qi buxing, nu qi buzheng) “mediocrities” and “mindless people” should be viewed as his attempt to awaken Chinese readers to the need for a modern identity, of which he believed European writers such as Nietzsche and Ibsen had presented forms of embodiment.

7.2  An Instructive Realism One of the earliest mentions of Nietzsche in Chinese was made by Liang Qichao in his 1902 essay “The Theory of Evolution by Revolutionary Thinker Kidd”9 (Jinhualun gemingzhe Jiede zhi xueshuo), in which Liang observed that one of the two most influential ideologies in Germany was Nietzsche’s individualism, the other being Karl Marx’s socialism. Two years later, Wang Guowei published “Schopenhauer10 and Nietzsche,” in which Nietzsche was hailed as a destroyer of old culture and constructor of new culture. Enthusiasm for Nietzsche gained momentum among New Culture advocates in the 1910s. Between 1915 and 1919, at least 19 articles about Nietzsche were published in New Youth. Nietzsche’s rebellious, anti-traditional individualism became a new theoretical weapon in the New Culture promotion of individual independence. The denunciation by Lu Xun and others of traditional Chinese society’s “cannibalistic creed” (chiren de lijiao) and “slavish morality” (nuli de daode) was significantly shaped by the Nietzschean idea of the Overman as well as his antipode the Underman. Lu Xun is generally credited with being the first to translate Nietzsche’s work into Chinese. He saw Zarathustra as one of the “types” (dianxing) that Nietzsche created in his philosophy. According to Peter Button (2009: 111), it was the Nietzschean notion of the type that profoundly influenced Lu Xun’s writing of Ah Q and for that matter, his discourse of the Chinese national character. In fact, before Lu Xun created the first literary type in China,11 he had applied the implications of Nietzsche’s philosophy to Chinese criticism through the translation of the Russian naturalist writer Mikhail Petrovich Artsybashev (1878–1927). In July 1921, Lu Xun published his translation of Artsybashev’s novelette The Worker Shevyrev (Gongren Suihuiluefu) in Short Story Monthly. In the essay “After Translating The Worker Shevyrev” (Yi le Gongren Suihuiluefu zhihou), Lu Xun (1981(10): 165) cited Artsybashev’s argument that the literary character Sanin in his novel Sanin was constitutive of “a type” (yizhong dianxing), whose spirit “infused the new, courageous and strong representatives of New Russia.” Lu Xun then added that Artsybashev’s literary characters were imbued with “anarchistic individualism”  Benjamin Kidd (1858–1916) was a British sociologist.  Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) was a German scholar best known for his philosophy of pessimism. 11  “The True Story of Ah Q” was published between December 1921 and February 1922. 9

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(wuzhi de gerenzhuyi) or “individual anarchism” (geren de wuzhizhuyi). He perceived in Shevyrev the spirit of Nietzsche, and observed: “Shevyrev clearly demonstrates the power of Nietzsche. With all his strength and willpower, he dedicated himself to struggle” (ibid). Lu Xun’s essay is thus often understood as the initial alignment of Chinese criticism with Russian thought (Button 2009: 92).12 Lu Xun was mindful of the idea of revenge that Artsybashev presented through such characters as the anarchist Shevyrev and the doctor who refused to treat the chief of the police in Artsybashev’s short story “The Doctor” (Yisheng), Lu Xun’s translation of which was published in Short Story Monthly in September 1921. He established a connection between the topic of revenge and Nietzschean individualism by describing revenge as an individualist discovery of possible solutions to social problems. Clearly, the vision of Nietzsche’s Overman, with his licence for destruction, provided Lu Xun with the promise of finding relief in retaliation, and prompted his writing of the plight of awakened intellectuals and of their solitary struggles in many of his essays and stories. While Lu Xun perceived The Worker Shevyrev and “The Doctor” as Nietzschean in character, he also detected in the hatred and revenge portrayed in these works the need for love among human beings. Lu Xun (1981(10): 177) wrote in the postscript to “The Doctor:” “Humans cannot exclude hatred from their nature. The hatred may well be rooted in love in a larger sense.” Translating Nietzsche and Artsybashev deepened Lu Xun’s awareness of the isolation of the individual from the crowd. Nonetheless, he did not lose sight of the dualistic nature of this conflict. Lu Xun saw the relationship between the revenger and the masses as one forever locked in love and hatred, and called for sympathy for the underprivileged despite his perennial criticism of his contemporaries. In 1932, Lu Xun summarized the insight he gained from reading and translating Russian literature as one of seeing the world as divided essentially into two kinds of people, i.e. the oppressors and the oppressed, and reprised his belief in the need to “be outspoken” on behalf of “the toiling masses” in order to remedy this bleak reality (ibid (4): 472). Despite Lu Xun’s fury at the despicable servility and ignorance of the oppressed, his sympathy for their sufferings may well be seen as a major reason for his translation of Artsybashev’s “Happiness” (Xingfu), which, published in the December 1920 issue of New Youth, highlighted the “inseparability of love and hatred” (aihen bu xiangli).13 “Happiness” tells about the wretched life of a prostitute by the name of Sashka. On a cold winter night, the penniless and syphilitic Sashka accosts a man walking along the railway track, and after all her attempts to amuse the man has failed, she succumbs to the man’s proposal to undress herself and receive ten blows which he  In 1926, Lu Xun further explained the reason why he chose to translate the novelette among a pile of German books confiscated from a German businessmen’s club in Shanghai soon after the First World War ended. “Probably, I felt that many of our reformers before and after the founding of the Republic of China bore a close resemblance to the fate of Shevyrev; therefore, I wished to borrow the wine glass from abroad” (Lu 1981(3): 356). 13  Lu Xun made the remark in the postscript to his translation of “Happiness.” 12

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is to deal her with his cane. When the man finishes the beating, Sashka bleeds on the ground, barely conscious. She holds the five roubles that the man gives her firmly in her hand, her heart filled with “happiness.” The prospect of returning to the city and finding food, warmth, rest and vodka soothes her so that she quickly forgets her pain and humiliation. In the postscript to the translation, Lu Xun (ibid (10): 172) stated that unfortunate people like Sashka were ruining their own lives by putting behind them the wrongs administered to them. Sashka’s forgetfulness reminds one of Ah Q’s “spiritual victory” in Lu Xun’s 1921 story “The True Story of Ah Q” and the torpor of Xianglin Sao in his 1924 story “New Year’s Sacrifice” (Zhufu). Lu Xun’s contempt for the benighted victims, who, like Sashka in “Happiness,” forgot the blows inflicted upon them at the mere sight of “a teahouse ablaze with lights,” was accompanied by his sympathy for their sufferings. Lu Xun’s translation of “Happiness” was through an intermediary German text. Soon after it came out, Mao Dun published an essay entitled “The Responsibilities and Efforts of New Literature Researchers” (Xin wenxue yanjiuzhe de zeren yu nuli) in the February 1921 issue of Short Story Monthly, acclaiming it as exemplary of successful translation. Mao Dun (1989: 67) considered it paramount for translators of foreign literature to capture the “spirit” (shenyun) of a literary work. Mao Dun did not state what he saw as the “spirit” of the story “Happiness,” but it would have been bound up with the portrayal of the abject misery of the poor. Bleak stories were identified with social realism or “literature for life’s sake,” the slogan of Short Story Monthly. In other words, by 1921, the year when Lu Xun’s translation of “Happiness” appeared, social realism was already being understood as sombre stories deemed necessary for strengthening a modern person’s resolve to improve himself and his society. In the postscript to his translation of “Happiness,” Lu Xun (1981(10): 172) claimed that Artsybashev was “one of the remarkable representatives of new literature in Russia,” and extolled his works as “the acme of realism.” For Lu Xun, not only did Artsybashev’s works manifest the maturity of a rigorously examined life, but they also highlighted the typicality of fictional characters. According to Marston Anderson (1990: 16), it is through the notion of types that realism is opened to the encyclopedic portrayal of social reality and the transmission of general truths. Indeed, Lu Xun’s translation of Russian literature laid the groundwork for the institutionalization of “typical characters” in social realism from the 1920s onwards. He was not seeking absolute objectivity in presenting social reality; nor was he content with mere reflection and description of reality. What he intended to do with the characters in his translations and writings was for them to either serve as prototypes of positive modern qualities or prompt deep thinking about the implications of negative attributes in modern life. And it is in light of the issue of modern subjectivity and its relation to the discourse of literary exemplarity that, according to Button (2009: 39), we can “better understand what has with remarkable consistency shaped the formation of modern Chinese literature.” Another Russian writer who impressed Lu Xun was Leonid Andreyev. In the first volume of the Anthology of Translations from Modern Fiction published in 1922, a

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follow-up to the reissue of Collection of Short Stories from Abroad in the previous year, two stories by Andreyev were included, both translated by Lu Xun in September 1921. “In the Dreary Haze” (Andan de yan’ai li) gives an account of the young Nikolai, who, having returned home after a long absence, finds himself at odds with the bourgeois family. He eventually walks out of the house into the dreary haze although he has promised his dying grandmother to reconcile with his father and younger sister. “The Book,” the other Andreyev’s story Lu Xun translated, is an ironic tale of the alienation of intellectuals from the toiling masses. The manuscript of a seriously diseased author, entitled For the Sake of the Unfortunate, is split among the young typesetters, lead poisoning victims who have no interest in reading the book. The child who carries the printed volumes to the bookstore and who drops his heavy burden on the way is illiterate and unable to read even the title of the book. We can easily associate the first story with works that highlighted the “leaving home” motif, popular after Hu Shi’s and Luo Jialun’s translation of The Doll’s House, whereas in “The Book” the pointlessness of mere rhetoric on the part of intellectuals is contrasted with the plight of the working class. While stressing the importance of self-consciousness, Lu Xun sought to caution against, through his translation, the danger of intellectuals’ incapacity for social engagement. The dual emphasis on self and social involvement resonated with the “literature of blood and tears,” a term which was mainly used by New Culture advocates such as Mao Dun and Zheng Zhenduo and which implied the necessity of integrating self-expression with a social setting of injustice and injury. The moral efforts of the New Culture writers to legitimize the sympathy for the working people was typical of realist literature of the period, which was to constitute part of the turn to socialist realism. While these two translations of Lu Xun’s manifest more of Andreyev’s realist side,elements of symbolism and modernism, for which the Russian writer was acknowledged to be adept at conveying in his writings, are distinctively perceivable. We may recall Lu Xun’s translation of Andreyev’s short stories “Silence” and “The Lie,” discussed in Chap. 3. In both of these stories, Andreyev stinted on realistic details while highlighting the characters’ inner tensions and socio-psychological dilemmas through images of alienation, loneliness and feelings of terror. Behind silence and mistrust lay solitude and despair, typical of modernist presentations. These were literary effects that impressed Lu Xun. In the postscript to his translation of “In the Dreary Haze,” Lu Xun (1981(10): 185–6) observed that Andreyev incorporated solemnity, depth and subtlety into his writing and that no other Russian writer could match him in bridging the gap between inner self and outer manifestation. “Although his works are tinged with symbolism, they never lose touch with reality” (ibid: 185). Like Andreyev, Lu Xun directed his pursuit of the meaning of modern life to the suffering of the human soul. And he brought his translation of philosophical concepts, such as Nietzsche’s Overman and Kuriyagawa’s mental anguish, to bear on his selection of literary works and his own literary creations. In Lu Xun’s translation of Artsybashev’s and Andreyev’s works we see the combined effects of literary realism and political criticism on the Chinese discourse of New Culture.

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7.3  The Social Exteriorization of Mental Anguish In the 1920s Chinese intellectuals frequently expressed their inner conflict regarding China’s destiny and their own roles in it. Their inner torment was not just a manifestation of their individual angst. They expressed their torment as a necessity for fostering the type of positive spirit needed to strengthen the modern Chinese republic, and as a universal condition to be found among all people who were concerned about their times. Statements such as the following by Zheng Boqi (1895– 1979) (in Yan 1997: 469–70), a literary critic of the Creation Society, were frequently made. Zheng observed in a 1927 essay “A Critique of Cold Ashes” (Hanhuji piping): “The 1920s saw China entering an epoch of sea changes. The stability of the millenniums turned into a state of turmoil….Ours is an epoch of mental anguish, of agitation, of resistance, and of clamour.” It is clear that the New Culture construction of a modern identity was constituted not only by their attacks on traditional or “old” society as productive for nation and culture building but also by their inner suffering and torment. Zheng’s 1927 reference to “mental anguish” as a modern character-building sentiment is indicative of the importance of Lu Xun’s 1924 translation of The Symbols of Mental Anguish (Kumon no shocho, Lu Xun’s title in Chinese is Kumen de xiangzheng) by Kuriyagawa Hakuson. Lu Xun started to read Kuriyagawa in 1913 after he bought a copy of the Japanese author’s Ten Lectures on Modern Literature (Kindai bungaku jikko). On 8 April 1924, Lu Xun bought Kuriyagawa’s The Symbols of Mental Anguish. According to his diary entries, he started to translate it on 22 September, and completed the translation on 10 October (Lu 1976: 441–2). In The Symbols of Mental Anguish, Kuriyagawa expounded on the fundamentals of literary aesthetics and highlighted a subjective relation to artistic creation and appreciation. In his view, the writer’s symbolic expression of his desires allowed readers to discover their role in what he called “the common contents of life.” Symbolization in literature led readers to a realm of fantasies through which they could better appreciate the contents of their own lives. Kuriyagawa equated the symbols of mental anguish with the contents of life. According to him, human beings share the contents of life, and the symbolic expression of these contents provides a means for people to get in touch with what is essential in life. Kuriyagawa emphasized that anguish was the precondition for the writer’s tapping into the pool of life. Kuriyagawa’s view of mental anguish as crucial for leading a meaningful life was derived from two sources: the concept of “élan vital” (i.e. a vital impulse or life force) proposed by the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941) and Freud’s notion of literature as motivated by the anguish of a repressed libido and as a form of sublimation. Kuriyagawa’s major interest was not in Freud’s preoccupation with sexuality; instead, he accorded great importance to agony and suffering. This was what the translator Lu Xun wished to emphasize. He found Kuriyagawa’s argument about literary and artistic creation being the sublimation of anguish very appealing. Lu

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Xun’s vision of modernity was open-ended. He did not imagine a particular society of the future. Rather, his focus was on revealing the hypocrisy and degenerate practices that had developed out of the traditional culture of dynastic China. Suffering was what he felt that he and other Chinese people needed to value as a universal human experience. The preface Lu Xun wrote for his translation of Kuriyagawa provides a very clear outline of what he saw as the benefits of reading Kuriyagawa’s work. He observed that Kuriyagawa was forthright in his denunciation of the frailties of the Japanese. We may recall Lu Xun’s postscript to his 1925 translation of Kuriyagawa’s Out of the Ivory Tower, in which Lu Xun identified with Kuriyagawa’s self-­criticism, and intended those suffering from similar illnesses to feel the pain. He noted that people would derive greater pleasure from feeling and alleviating the pain than simply enduring it (1981(10): 243). From Lu Xun’s perspective, only with pain could people appreciate what “painful pleasure” (tongkuai) entailed. Pain and anguish thus constituted a way of demonstrating empathy to others, as people indifferent to the suffering of others could never experience the “painful pleasure” as desired by Lu Xun. His belief that reading Kuriyagawa could bring long-lasting comfort and relief is also evocative of the power he had ascribed to reading foreign works as a cathartic and life-affirming experience.14 For New Culture translators like Lu Xun, reading the foreign works of their choice was primarily about discovering new values and empathizing with other selves in the fictional world while translation gave them relief and “painful pleasure” which they in turn imparted to their readers. Kuriyagawa’s conception of mental anguish required the writer and reader to be fully self-aware. According to him, it was through experiencing anguish in coping with the tribulations of life that people would understand their human nature. In other words, there was a causal relationship between individuality and mental anguish  – the manifestation of individuality was bound to give rise to mental anguish, which in turn revealed the presence of individuality. Lu Xun (2008(2): 224) pointed out in the preface to The Symbols of Mental Anguish that Kuriyagawa expounded literature and art (literature in particular) based on the “first-class philosophy and science” of Bergson and Freud. Without bothering to go into details about how Kuriyagawa adapted them to emphasize the “acceleration and leap of force” (li de tujin he tiaoyue), Lu Xun hastened to add that no great literature and art would emerge without the “grand untrammelled spirit” (tianmaxingkong si de da jingshen). A “grand untrammelled spirit,” Lu Xun implied, would produce the courage needed for people to break away from the habits and norms of the traditional past. Lu Xun (ibid) admonished Chinese readers to read his translation twice or three times, believing that such reading would help gain a better understanding of their fractured existence and regenerate the “languishing and occluded” (weimi gubi) national spirit. 14  For instance, Lu Xun (Lu and Zhou 2006: 4) observed in the preface to the Collection of Short Stories from Abroad, published in 1909, that he had benefited from reading the foreign works included in the anthology, as they contained sagacious ideas and enabled him to fathom the depths of the human condition.

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Lu Xun’s translation of The Symbols of Mental Anguish provides an authoritative account of mental anguish as a distinctively modern state of mind. His choice of Kuriyagawa’s works and his emphasis on the exercise of free individuality coincide with New Culture advocates’ construction of modern identity. We may easily recall Hu Shi’s rewriting of Ibsen and his propounding of “wholesome individualism,” together with his opposition to “groaning without being sick” (wubing shenyin), mentioned in Chap. 5. However, by 1925, Lu Xun had become hostile to Hu Shi, even though they shared the same broad view of how Chinese people ought to acquire a modern outlook. In fact, despite the political differences that deepened from the mid-1920s onwards, all of the New Culture intellectuals sought to promote modern womanhood and the importance of cultivating empathy for the sufferings of other people. For instance, as a committed Communist, Mao Dun published in 1928 the story “A Woman” (Yige nüxing), in which he incorporated the use of suffering and mental anguish in his depiction of a Nora-esque “new” woman. In the story, Qionghua becomes the victim of a society that reins in her aspirations for independence. What Mao Dun sought to reveal, through the tragic death of the female protagonist, was the result of socially imposed moral codes on the lives of individuals and the “mental anguish and melancholy of modern women” (xiandai nüxing de kumen he youyuan) (Mao 1985: 53). Mao Dun’s reference to “mental anguish and melancholy” owes a clear debt to Lu Xun’s translation of Kuriyagawa’s work. Zhou Zuoren offered a clear statement about the importance of “mental anguish” as a literary aesthetic in the essay entitled “The Nobility of Literature” (Wenxue de guizu xing), in which he expressed his disapproval of implementing social movements under the banner of “revolutionary literature.” He observed: “Literature is supposed to express one’s thoughts and emotions, or what is called mental anguish. When I am not content with society or when society imposes displeasure on me, I will target what is in opposition to the self to convey my thoughts and emotions. It is a reflection of my mental anguish, and ought to become the standpoint and backdrop of literature” (1928). The observations that Zhou Zuoren made in the 1928 essay differ somewhat from Lu Xun’s concern with “social anguish” in his translator’s preface to Kuriyagawa’s work of 1924. To Zhou Zuoren, to be true to oneself by knowing one’s anguish was a manifestation of one’s concern for society. In the mid and late 1920s, the mental anguish Zhou Zuoren experienced in his struggle against society was carefully concealed in his translation of Greek mythology and the tranquility of his prose writing, in which we often come across the word “bitter” (ku), such as “bitter rain” (kuyu), “bitter bamboo” (kuzhu) and “bitter house” (kuzhai), echoing “anguish” (kumen) in Lu Xun’s translation. From December 1924 to October 1935, Lu Xun’s translation of The Symbols of Mental Anguish boasted twelve reprints (Wang 2005: 117).15 It became his most widely read translated work. Prominent modern Chinese writers such as Hu  Feng Zikai (1898–1975) also translated Kuriyagawa’s The Symbols of Mental Anguish. His translation was first published in 1925 by the Commercial Press in Shanghai.

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Feng (1902–1985), Zang Kejia (1905–2004) and Xu Maoyong (1911–1977) all acknowledged on various occasions the influence of The Symbols of Mental Anguish on their literary writing. Hu Feng (1999 (7): 259) recalled in January 1984: “In the early 1920s, I read Lu Xun’s translation of Kuriyagawa’s The Symbols of Mental Anguish. Its theory of literary creation and appreciation purges literature and art of all manner of vulgar sociological thoughts….It is perfectly correct that no literary creation is possible without spiritual pursuit (mental anguish), but the ‘mental anguish’ … should stem from a social life that is fraught with class contradictions.” Zang Kejia (1981: 6) recollected in a 1981 essay “Some People Have Died, But He Is Still Living” (Youde ren si le, ta hai huozhe): “Half a century ago, when I started to read Lu Xun’s translation of The Symbols of Mental Anguish, I took to it immediately. I had the feeling that Kuriyagawa had said what we wanted to say.” Xu Maoyong (1980: 72) wrote in 1972: “At that time, two of Lu Xun’s publications, namely, The Symbols of Mental Anguish and Out of the Ivory Tower, exerted a profound influence on me.” Lu Xun (2008(2): 223) quoted Kuriyagawa in the preface to his translation of The Symbols of Mental Anguish: “The cornerstone of literature and art consists in the anguish and chagrin that arise from the repression of the life force, and the mode of expression for such anguish and chagrin is symbolism in a broad sense.” The influence of Kuriyagawa’s The Symbols of Mental Anguish on Lu Xun’s own writings is most evident in Wild Grass (Yecao), an anthology which incorporates the prose verses Lu Xun wrote between 1924 and 1926. Lu Xun had started to incorporate the use of symbolism in many of his earlier stories such as “A Madman’s Diary” and “Medicine.” In Wild Grass, however, he embarked on a series of literary experimentations that reflected Kuriyagawa’s idea of anguish as the highest form of symbolic expression. Following Kuriyagawa, Lu Xun saw the “anguish of living” (sheng de kumen) and the “tribulations of struggle” (zhan de kutong) as the route to the “functioning of life” (sheng de gongxiao) (ibid: 226). His poetic play “The Passer-by” (Guoke) in Wild Grass depicts a solitary wayfarer who moves forward unflinchingly. The traveler, with no knowledge of his place of origin or his destination, stops by a house in the evening twilight. The old man (the personification of the past) and the young girl (the personification of the future) in the house give him a cup of water and ask the dreary man to stay. Although the old man warns him of the grave ahead and the prospect of never reaching the end of the journey, the wayfarer replies that he does not want to rest or go back to where oppression, servitude and hypocrisy are. He is determined to be on his way, saying that there is a voice ahead that urges him on. “The Passer-by,” as the personal allegory of Lu Xun, thus highlights the importance he accorded to perseverance and a combative spirit against the old ­society and all its attendant dark aspects, such as “expulsion and cages” (quzhu yu laolong), “pretentious smiles” (pimian de xiaorong) and “hypocritical tears” (kuangwai de yanlei) (Lu 2014: 56).16 It brings out the conflict between the new and hopeful vs the old and rotten, in the same way as the images of the date trees 16

 These phrases are taken from “The Passer-by” in Wild Grass.

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(zaoshu) vs the night sky (yekong) in “Autumn Night” (Qiuye) do. In essence, such a conflict reflects the conflict between the “life force” (shengmingli) and social “coercion and repression” (qiangzhi he yayi), as shown in Lu Xun’s translation of The Symbols of Mental Anguish. In 1926, Lu Xun published his second anthology of short stories under the title Wandering (Panghuang).17 In this volume, anguish remained a persistent theme, at times conveyed through descriptions of emotional turmoil (such as in “At the Tavern” (Zai jiulou shang) but also as the acceptance of the idea that one’s spiritual journey is always solitary (e.g. “The Lamp That Was Kept Alight” (Changming deng) and “The Loner” (Gudu zhe)). He reprised the moral purpose of “wandering” in a 1933 poem “About Wandering” (Ti Panghuang), in which he figured his critical inquiry as the experience of a soldier “wandering” in a fractured discursive terrain. The line “wandering alone with a halberd” implies a sense of uncertainty; it also reveals Lu Xun’s critical vigilance against potential adversaries. This was constructive anguish that conveys “certitude in its purposive and self-determined pursuit of true expression” (Davies 2011: 152). Lu Xun’s modern attitude of “wandering” is the opposite of wallowing in self-­ indulgence and self-pity. He presented it as a character-building emotion; however, he did not suggest a clear program as to how such an emotion would help the country out of its desperate situation.

7.4  Investing Hope in the Young Despite the pessimistic mood in many of Lu Xun’s short stories, he sought to present young people as the hope for a healthier future China. As mentioned earlier, Lu Xun’s “A Madman’s Diary” was inspired by Gogol as well as by his reading and translation of “Zarathustra’s Prologue” and “The Red Laugh.” At the end of the story, Lu Xun explicitly states his hope for the future through his protagonist: “There may still be children who have not eaten people? Save the children….” While much of the story excoriates the evils of “old” China, the hope invested in the young marks a departure from all that had preceded it. For Lu Xun, as for Zhou Zuoren, the young represented a “tabula rasa on which a modern subjectivity could be inscribed” (Jones 2011: 24). From January to April 1920, New Youth published Lu Xun’s translation of A Youth’s Dream (Aru seinen no yume, or Yige qingnian de meng in Chinese), a four-­ act play written by Mushakoji Saneatsu (1885–1976), who was the leading figure of the Shirakaba School. Lu Xun’s translation of the play was in fact inspired by his  The stories in Wandering were written between February 1924 and November 1925. On the title page of Wandering, Lu Xun cited two lines from the ancient poet-martyr Qu Yuan’s (340–278 BCE) epic “Grievances” (Li Sao): “The road ahead is long, but I will search high and low with unremitting perseverance.” By invoking Qu Yuan, Lu Xun was seeking to find inspiration for his own modern “wandering.”

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brother Zhou Zuoren. The latter had written and published an essay introducing Mushakoji and the play in 1918. Zhou (1998: 93) quoted a character from the play as saying: “If the people throughout the world are united as one and shake hands, the war will then be over….Those who benefit themselves at the expense of others, whether they are our countrymen or foreigners, are enemies of peace….” Zhou (ibid) then added to the quote his own views: “Every one of us should concern ourselves with the destiny of humanity, and we are not overstepping the bounds by doing so….I have to say this because of my love for humanity.” After reading Zhou Zuoren’s article, Lu Xun read the Japanese book and was “deeply touched.” He found the play “well worth translating,” as “the ideas are thorough, the confidence firm and solid, and the voice sincere” (Lu 1981(10): 192).18 While Zhou Zuoren and Lu Xun were both attracted to the cosmopolitan message contained in Mushakoji’s book, Lu Xun’s preoccupation with the concept of a “national character” inclined him to claim, in the second preface he wrote for his translation of A Youth’s Dream, that he expected the play to “cure many chronic diseases in old Chinese thought” (Zhongguo jiu sixiang shang de guji) (ibid: 195). To him, when people lacked compassion, love and when they did not have a sense of justice, then society became prone to “chronic diseases” of the mind. He observed: “While it is true that the Chinese are not good at war, they don’t imprecate it. While they themselves are unwilling to fight, they show no sympathy for those who are unwilling to fight. They think of themselves, but have no thought for others” (ibid). His unrelenting criticism of the Chinese national character notwithstanding, the translation of the Japanese play reveals Lu Xun’s humanist ideals. A Youth’s Dream tells about a Japanese young man’s dream of travelling around the world and experiencing the trauma of war. During the journey, he encounters various characters, such as beggars and ghosts, who strongly denounce the cruelty of wars. Written during World War I, the play highlights the importance of amity and harmony between nations. With his cosmopolitan and pacifist approach, Mushakoji advocated the transcendence of historical rivalries between countries and sought an ideal pattern for international relationships. Lu Xun (ibid: 192) wrote in the first preface to his translation: “I subscribe to these words [of Mr. Mushakoji’s]. ‘If everyone commits themselves to humanity rather than to their country, we will enjoy permanent peace, which has to start with the awakening of the populace.’ I believe this will be achieved in the future.” In Lu Xun’s translation of A Youth’s Dream, we can discern how he imagined human empathy and love in the late 1910s and early 1920s. A Youth’s Dream, which presented an international political utopia of the twentieth century, was also reflective of the May Fourth discourse of enlightenment, in which “youth” was equivalent to “hope.” In his 1920 essay “Russia and China in Literature” (Wenxue shang de Eguo yu Zhongguo), Zhou Zuoren figured China as a “forlorn old man” (luopo de laoren). He then expressed his hope for the transformation of this “forlorn old man:” “After all, we are still adolescents of this old nation. With a combination of indi Taken from the first preface to the translation of A Youth’s Dream, which, together with the second preface and the first act of the play, was published in January 1920 in New Youth.

18

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vidual forces, we can fight for the fortune of our nation. Although the system in general is old, individuals are new. As long as we manage to invigorate it with fresh blood, there is a strong likelihood of its rebirth” (in Zhong 1998(8): 427–8). Zhou Zuoren’s forward-looking view echoes Lu Xun’s belief that the future of China depended on the future generations of China. Lu Xun (1981(1): 295) wrote in 1918: “We can imagine what China will be like in twenty years’ time by looking at Chinese youth today.” In his view, it was the older generation’s responsibility to create conditions and pave the way for the character building of the younger generation. In his 1919 essay “What Is Required of Us as Fathers Today” (Women xianzai zenyang zuo fuqin), Lu Xun (ibid: 136, 140) took issue with the Chinese tradition of treating the raising of children as requiring repayment and contended that the awakened people should first liberate their children, foster their lofty morals and free spirit. They were obligated to “take the heavy load of inheritance upon themselves and hold up the gate of darkness with their shoulders” for their children to stay in “an expansive and bright place” (ibid: 140), in contrast to the traditional notion of repayment by offspring of the parents’ kindness (en), which, according to Lu Xun, overemphasized parental authority to the neglect of responsibility on the part of the parents. Devoid of genuine love, this Chinese tradition would “sow bad seeds” (boxia guaici de zhongzi). Lu Xun noted that the Confucian emphasis on filial piety had failed to produce loving children from generation to generation, arguing that it was “all because of the promotion of pseudo-morality and disregard for real human affection” (ibid: 138). Two days after he wrote “What Is Required of Us as Fathers Today,” Lu Xun came across “To the Little Ones,” a story written by Japanese author Arishima Takeo (1878–1923). He stated in his 1919 essay “To the Young” (Yu youzhe) that Arishima’s conviction in the transformative power of love, together with his exaltation of the spirit of emancipation, resonated deeply with him (ibid: 362). He accentuated the belief that social harmony was contingent on love and that all human love should be a manifestation of people’s love for children. Lu Xun (ibid) quoted a few sentences from Arishima’s “To the Little Ones:” You will be wrong if you don’t treat us just as stepping-stones. Surpass us, and press on toward higher, more distant goals….I have loved you, and I will always love you. I do not want to be rewarded for what I have done as a father….You will be as brave and as valiant as little lions who have stored up energy. You should simply leave us behind and move on with your life.

In the essay Lu Xun reprised his assertion of familial and social responsibilities.19 In a sense his interest in the translation of children’s literature also stemmed from his voluntary assumption of these responsibilities.  Influenced by Arishima, Lu Xun further developed his historical thinking about the roles of individuals and the relationship between individuals and society in the mid-1920s, and propounded his “consciousness of in-between objects” (zhongjianwu yishi). On 1 January 1926, he wrote in “Afterword to Grave” (Xie zai Fen houmian): “In the chain of evolution, everything is an inbetween object” (1981(1): 286). Lu Xun’s “consciousness of in-between objects” underscored human experience within the time perspective of the past, the present, and the future, and main-

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Lu Xun later translated part of Arishima’s essay, which he entitled “Yu y­ ouxiaozhe.” It was included in the Zhou brothers’ Collection of Modern Japanese Stories (Xiandai Riben xiaoshuo ji), first published in 1923. Although Lu Xun read widely in Japanese literature, his interest in children’s literature was developed mainly from his reading of Russian works (largely in Japanese translation). In the postscript to his 1921 translation of “By the Pond” (Chibian), a short story by the blind Russian anarchist writer Vasili Eroshenko (1890–1952), Lu Xun explained what he found important about children’s stories: Some people say that his works are too serious for children and anything but serious for adults. They might have a point there. However, I do not think that his fairy tales are anything but serious; nor have I found any dangerous ideas. He is not a propagandist or an instigator; he only dreams, pure white and big-hearted. He also sighs for the underprivileged from races other than his own. (ibid (10): 221)

Eroshenko’s stories, like Mushakoji’s A Youth’s Dream, revolve around the ideal of universal fraternity among people from different nations. Eroshenko went to China in 1922 and became friends with Zhou Zuoren and Lu Xun. In the same year, Lu Xun published A Collection of Eroshenko’s Fairy Tales (Ailuoxianke tonghua ji). He stated in the preface: “I hope that the author will never deviate from such a beautiful, child-like dream and that he will rally people toward the dream so that they can see real rainbows” (ibid: 197). The collection comprised twelve stories. Two were translated by Hu Yuzhi (1896–1986), and one by Wang Fuquan (1899–1959). Of the nine stories Lu Xun translated, he mentioned that “Eagle-heart” (Diao de xin) and “The Narrow Cage” (Xia de long) were two stories that he had chosen to translate instead of “following the wishes of the author” (ibid). “Eagle-heart” foregrounds the changes in aspiration that the human children and the young eagles have undergone in five years. The two children of a hunter, who are brought up by eagles, have learnt to “love the sun” and not to look down at the “dark, narrow cage” and “the cemetery of slaves.” They become robust, courageous and enterprising, and are called “eagle-heart” brothers. By contrast, the two young eagles, which have been raised by humans, are killed by the eagles for losing their real nature and drive. In “The Narrow Cage,” a Bengal tiger cooped up in a cage becomes fed up with the faces of the human beings around him and their laughter. He starts to dream of returning to his free and majestic jungle life. Having experienced the trauma of captivity, he opens the fold to set the sheep free, but they refuse to escape. The concubine he intends to rescue from the imperial palace is scared of him and prefers to stay in the palace. The birds and fish he attempts to let loose are not keen on the

tained a causal relationship between the three. It not only encompasses Lu Xun’s perception of social history but also demonstrates his understanding of the spiritual history of humanity. To him, the concept of the “consciousness of in-between objects” assigned value and significance to human life. With this concept, an individual, while ephemeral in his lifespan, could free himself from worries of solitude, life and death, and acquire inner strength in his struggle against reality.

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prospect of freedom. The tiger then wakes up, and finding himself caged, he roars with disappointment. In the postscript to the translation of “The Narrow Cage,” Lu Xun (ibid: 200) expressed his appreciation for the innocence and sincerity revealed in Eroshenko’s stories: “When I closed this book, I became very grateful for the existence of such a pure and innocent writer and such literature in the human world.” He then extended the caged life of the story to human society and decried the people who were content with their enslaved, passive life. “Although they don’t have enemies, they are still ‘mean-spirited slaves’ in a cage” (ibid). Lu Xun’s translation is reminiscent of the “mean-spirited slaves” in his own stories such as Runtu and Xianglin Sao. Lu Xun did not seek to disparage these characters. Rather, in both his short stories and in his translation of such stories as “The Narrow Cage” and “Eagle-heart,” he hoped to alert readers to how they might be shackled to “the old society” and to the need for self-development if China was to modernize.20 As examined in Chap. 6, the translation of literary and scholarly works on children by the Zhou brothers (Zhou Zuoren in particular) exerted an important influence on modern Chinese intellectuals’ presentation of modern values through children’s literature. Zhou Zuoren not only asserted the significance of the “educational fairy tale,” in which primitive materials are judiciously adopted to achieve educational ends, by “eliminating elements unfit for the physical and mental development of children or harmful to human morality;” he also affirmed the value of what he termed the “literary fairy tale” (in Jones 2011: 158). He saw the latter as focused on the achievement of aesthetic and artistic skill in order to fire the imagination of the child. Unlike Zhou, Lu Xun did not elaborate on different types of the fairy tale. He understood the translation of children’s literature largely in terms of “playing an ancillary role in education” (fuyi jiaoyu) (1981(8): 49).21 The ­pedagogical value Lu Xun assigned to reading children’s works is thus constitutive of his “establishing human character” (liren) endeavours.

 Like Eroshenko, Lu Xun himself espoused an education for children based on the inculcation of beauty, strength and aspirations. Lu Xun continued to concern himself with the modern upbringing of Chinese children in the 1930s. In his 1933 essay “Children in Shanghai” (Shanghai de ertong), Lu Xun (1981(4): 156) stated how he felt when he saw foreign kids walking and playing on the streets in a vivacious but imposing manner and Chinese children looking dejected, subdued, and inconspicuous as if under the shadow of others. He railed against traditional ways of educating children: “All day long the child is slighted, berated, or even beaten up so that he cringes, like a slave or puppet. However, the parents praise the kid as ‘compliant,’ thinking they have been successful in their education. When the child is brought in contact with the outside world, he will act as if he was a little chicken which had just been released from a cage, unable to fly or jump”(ibid). 21  Taken from Lu Xun’s 1913 essay “Proposal on the Promulgation of Fine Arts” (Ni bobu meishu yijianshu). 20

7.5 Conclusion

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7.5  Conclusion This chapter has explored the ideas and themes significant to Lu Xun’s humanistic concerns of character building in his translations of Nietzsche, Russian and Japanese authors such as Artsybashev, Andreyev, Kuriyagawa and Mushakoji. We can see that what Davies (2013: 267) calls Lu Xun’s appeal to “an egalitarian humanism” was drawn, to quite a significant extent, from the instructive emotions of love and sympathy that he read into Russian literature, the importance of upholding the truth and the value of free individuality that he learned from translating “Zarathustra’s Prologue,” as well as his presentation of anguish as a positive ordeal in his 1920s’ writings, inspired by Kuriyagawa’s works. In reading Lu Xun’s translations, we find that his own writings were significantly shaped by the texts he translated. In “Impromptu Reflections No. 46” (Suigan lu sishiliu), written in 1919, Lu Xun (1981(1): 332) hailed Nietzsche as a great thinker who had helped to destroy idols in modern times. He saw this type of destruction as necessary for China’s survival but he also highlighted the personal costs that it involved. On the anguish that came of realizing one’s freedom and individuality, Kuriyagawa’s writings were a very important resource for Lu Xun. The observations he made about his translation of Kuriyagawa and his own stories well presented the interplay between mental anguish and national spiritual reinvigoration. Through Lu Xun’s translation of children’s literature, we find the types of virtues that he and other New Culture writers sought to foster in Chinese children. These were virtues that required people to strive for self-development and to free themselves from oppressive forces and the stifling confines of tradition. Lu Xun found the symbolic power of fairy tales very appealing. For him, animals and the life of the jungle could be used to shed light on human social existence. The depiction of the imagined animal world in his translation of these stories served to remind Chinese readers of the urgency of struggling for survival in a competitive society. Lu Xun’s translations and stories can thus be read as allegories of enlightenment, premised on a process of becoming modern. As preeminent representatives of the New Culture Movement, Lu Xun and his brother Zhou Zuoren contributed fundamentally to the translation of modern values and humanist ideals in Chinese culture of the late 1910s and early 1920s. The brothers stopped speaking to each other after July 1923. Zhou Zuoren became increasingly defensive of the need for aesthetic literary ideals in the post-May Fourth years. By contrast, Lu Xun, in his later years, translated Soviet proletarian literature, such as the works of Marxist revolutionaries Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov (1856– 1918) and Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky (1875–1933), and became the prime organizer and titular head of the League of Left-Wing Writers (Zuoyi zuojia lianmeng). As a leading figure on the Left, Lu Xun became highly influential in the 1930s. He rose to national prominence after 1949, when his legacy was used to support the Party. In contrast to The Complete Works of Lu Xun (Lu Xun quanji), which was first

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published in 1938, two years after his death, and which enjoyed four editions since the founding of the People’s Republic, the first version of Zhou Zuoren’s “complete works,” i.e. ten volumes of Collection of Zhou Zuoren’s Essays (Zhou Zuoren wenlei bian), did not come out until the late 1990s (Zhong 1998). In recent years, with the increase in the renewed interest in the study of Zhou Zuoren and other modern literary figures whose marginalization “went hand in hand with the deification and canonization of Lu Xun” (Sun 2017: 165), more of Zhou’s works have been published, including Complete Collection of Zhou Zuoren’s Essays (Zhou Zuoren sanwen quanji) (Zhong 2009) and Complete Collection of Zhou Zuoren’s Translated Works (Zhou Zuoren yiwen quanji) (Zhi 2012).

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Conclusion

This study has examined how the translation of selected foreign works generated “new” or modern knowledge in China from the 1890s to the 1920s. I have identified and elaborated on three key developments in Chinese translation practices over this 30-year period: first, the understanding of translation as an activity of self and collective transformation aimed at cultural alignment with the modern world; second, the shift from translations focused on the acquisition of knowledge of practical relevance to China under the threat of imperialist encroachment in the late Qing to translations from a wider range of sources during the May Fourth period with emphasis on self-liberation, individual consciousness and the reevaluation of cultural traditions; third, a growing cosmopolitan cultural attitude that accompanied the dissemination of new terms and concepts calculated to redefine and promote a modern Chinese identity. The late Qing period in the study serves as the inception of a process of using translated works to imagine and construct a modern identity. Chapter 1 explored the infrastructure of a developing commercial translation industry toward the end of the nineteenth century that had helped to facilitate the growth of translation as an important aspect of publishing, mainly based in Shanghai. One most tangible manifestation of the patronage of leading Chinese intellectuals and entrepreneurs was the boosting of the translation of social science and fiction. The view of science as a “technical” solution to the mounting problems besieging China, popular among scholar-officials during the Self-Strengthening Movement, started to lose cogency after the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895. Science became increasingly valorized and harnessed as a cultural resource and the model for social and personal development. In the 1890s and 1900s, Yan Fu and Liang Qichao were among a growing group of progressive late Qing scholars who initiated a shift in the importation of Western learning from a focus on technology and material culture to the pursuit of modern values and in particular, of liberty and new citizenship. Yan Fu’s and Liang Qichao’s translations highlighted the importance of cultivating in Chinese people a sense of national identity. Yan Fu sought to find in Western scholarship solutions to what he © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 L. Chi, Modern Selfhood in Translation, New Frontiers in Translation Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1156-7

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perceived as perennial Chinese problems. He was convinced that liberty was the outcome of social evolution, observing that human freedom could not be achieved without developing national strength, cultivating national intellect and renewing national morality. Through his eclectic selection and manipulation of Western scientific and philosophical works, Yan promoted the formation of the individual self as a necessary part of national survival. Liang Qichao refined Yan Fu’s idea by linking liberty to citizenship. Liang’s intention was to make education meaningful in terms of nation building, and his advocacy of a “revolution in fiction” was constitutive of his efforts to boost fiction from personal expression to a morally uplifting mode of collective behaviour while readers of new fiction were largely imagined as potential new citizens. Liang’s own literary translation highlighted the need for independence and enterprise as qualities that he saw as lacking in the Chinese national character. The new citizen image he sought to promote through his writings and translations played a large part in the education of Chinese students in the 1900s and 1910s. In Chap. 3, an account was provided of how diaries kept by students at newly-­ modern schools and colleges in China in the 1900s revealed the importance of translated works, which, together with their international education, deepened their sense of China’s cultural inadequacy and advanced their understanding of the “new,” not merely as “useful” knowledge but as an entire culture to be internalized. Examples of the translation activities of Chen Duxiu, Hu Shi, Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren demonstrated how the young intellectuals “operated at an intercultural junction”1 through recourse to translation as a means of self-discovery and modern identity construction. By the late 1910s and early 1920s, translation, especially literary translation, had emerged as a social activity that supported a sense of community among members of literary societies while nation building had become more deeply intertwined with the conceptualization of modern selfhood. As shown in Chap. 4, the champions of New Culture forged a collective avant-garde identity and gained greater access to cultural capital that bolstered their intellectual power and social standing through their translation activities and debates over translation and literature. Case studies of Hu Shi, Zhou Zuoren and Lu Xun in subsequent chapters further revealed that in their keenness to bring to China a new spirit of individual and social responsibility, New Culture luminaires changed the emphasis placed on public action by late Qing reformist intellectuals to personal development and pursuit of historical consciousness, seeking to readjust and revive the Chinese tradition with imported ideas and new outlooks. What the New Culture advocates envisaged was a society comprising free, “sincere and loving” (cheng yu ai) individuals sharing the same set of modern values. Each individual (the lesser self) was related to other individuals,

1  Max Huang (2008: 253) regards Yan Fu as “a political thinker operating at an intercultural junction.” I tend to see the young translators in the early twentieth century as following the lead of Yan Fu and Liang Qichao in resorting to translation as an important medium of cultural appropriation.

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and they together formed human society (the greater self).2 This relationship of the lesser self with the greater self also led to a causal relationship of the lesser self with the past and the future of the human society. This is what Hu Shi called “the immortality of the greater self” (dawo de buxiu) (2003(1): 661).3 During the 30-year period in question, translated works were the source of several key concepts that were promoted by leading translators. These key concepts included evolution, liberalism, citizenship, wholesome individualism, humanism and national character. They became meaningful via translated works, and the explanations provided by the translators. The five translators selected as case studies (i.e. Yan Fu, Liang Qichao, Hu Shi, Zhou Zuoren and Lu Xun) were influential in their time, and their translations, which attracted notice in intellectual and student circles of their time, thus played a significant part in popularizing these modern concepts. This study has explored the translation choices and approaches undertaken by the five translators, who are presented as having championed an open-minded, humanistic and progressive view of the world. In focusing on the period from the 1890s to the 1920s, this study has foregrounded modern character building as a key goal in the translation of foreign works, and has sought to show the dynamism with which the five translators pursued this goal in the works they translated and commented on. It has also examined more broadly how translated works influenced the educational and reading experiences of Chinese intellectuals from the 1890s to the 1920s, with a focus on the influence of Yan Fu’s and Liang Qichao’s translations on those who came of age in the 1900s and 1910s. Moreover, as the case studies of Hu Shi, Zhou Zuoren and Lu Xun indicate, the production of New Literature was significantly shaped by the availability of foreign works in Chinese translation. By the late 1920s and early 1930s, translation had become far more politically driven. With the spread of communism, greater importance was accorded to the translation of political theory and proletarian literature. However, there was still a market for literary translation of the kind carried out by scholars like Zhou Zuoren, Liang Shiqiu (1903–1987) and Lin Yutang (1895–1976) with an emphasis on elegance of presentation and refined cultural sensitivity. The argument that the translation of foreign works in late Qing and early Republican-era China focused on modern character building has been advanced, over several decades and in a variety of ways, in studies of intellectual and literary developments for this period (e.g. Xu and Song 2011; Song 2008; Huters 2005; Wang 2004; Pollard 1998; Lee 1995; Liu 1995; Liu and Tang 1993; Schwarcz 1986; Grieder 1981). In this regard, the present study has sought to promote an enhanced understanding of how the translation of foreign works actively contributed to the imagining of modern character building. It also argues that from Yan Fu and Liang Qichao onwards, ideas of “national strength (minli), national intellect (minzhi), 2  According to Xu Jilin (2009), the concepts of the greater self and the lesser self as used during the May Fourth period were of a completely secular, worldly and historical nature, whereas in ancient China the greater self constituted a moral cosmos. 3  See Hu Shi’s 1919 essay “Immortality: My Religion” (Buxiu: Wode zongjiao).

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national morality (minde)” (Yan) and the “new citizen” (xinmin) (Liang) shaped how educated Chinese of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries understood “becoming-modern.” However, as both these translators’ reflections on the works they translated indicate, they also defended a cosmopolitan view of modern values as universal. The alternations of nationalism and cosmopolitanism that characterized the thinking of Yan Fu and Liang Qichao shaped the ideas of the promoters of New Culture. In the individualism and humanism ardently advocated by Hu Shi and the Zhou brothers, we can see a common attempt to make Chinese people “fit” to inhabit a modern world with a shared moral culture and to promote a form of “universalism” that extended the frame of reference for modern values beyond national confines. Hu Shi (2003(1): 600) claimed in his 1918 essay “Ibsenism:” “The root to the problems in human life lies in people’s reluctance to open their eyes to the reality of the world.” And based on his understanding of Ibsen’s plays, he proposed “wholesome individualism,” which involved both the free exercise of individuality and the assumption of responsibility for their own actions. Hu made a distinction between natural, universal patriotism and “narrow statism,” and noted that narrow patriotism “is against human nature” (1917). Zhou Zuoren’s human literature involved “every individual and the whole of humankind.” “[It] is not racial, national, provincial or familial” (in Zhong 1998(3): 46).4 His translation from a wide range of source texts reified and reinforced the modern values he deemed as essential for the maintenance of harmonious human relations and ideal human life. In the same vein, Lu Xun’s revelation of the negative traits in the Chinese national character and his exaltation of positive human qualities constituted his effort to “secure a place in today’s world” for the Chinese and to “live and prosper in harmony with other races” (1981(1): 307).5 Through his translation and emulation of Western, Russian and Japanese literature, Lu Xun sought to cultivate a human spirit that crossed boundaries of space and time and to create a universal culture of progress and evolution. This study has thus presented the period from the late 1910s to mid-1920s as one in which translations helped to produce a heightened awareness and an inclusively cosmopolitan view of modern being. The construction of a new identity that became an increasingly important goal in the translations of New Culture intellectuals required a conscious rethinking of universal qualities in connection to Chinese culture in the global context. From the mid-1920s, the balance of Chen Duxiu’s “ethical awakening” (lunli de juewu) and “political awakening” (zhengzhi de juewu) tipped towards political revolution. Meanwhile, the intellectual inclinations of many New Culture celebrities also underwent changes. Hu Shi was unable to maintain his abstention from politics and his affiliation with the Nationalist government. Lu Xun identified increasingly with the Communists and by 1930 had become a leading figure of the League of  Taken from Zhou Zuoren’s 1920 essay “Requisites of New Literature” (Xin wenxue de yaoqiu).  “Impromptu Reflections No. 36” (Suigan lu sanshiliu), published in New Youth on 15 November 1918.

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Left Wing Writers. In 1925, Zhou Zuoren (2000: 89) declared in his essay “Wielding the Pen on New Year’s Day” (Yuandan shibi) that his belief in cosmopolitanism was “impractical” (yuyuan). None of them, though, ever completely relinquished their cultural ideals. Zhou Zuoren, in particular, continued to write little prose pieces (xiaopin wen) with the aim of giving the reader “the pleasure of art and the explanation of life” (in Zhong 1998(3): 46).6 During the Maoist decades, the search for individualist values and universal subjectivity gave way to communist nationalism and “revolutionary realism.” The 1980s and 1990s saw a resumption of the “incomplete project” of May Fourth. Since then, the themes and questions promoted in the translations of the New Culture period, such as those of Hu Shi, Zhou Zuoren and Lu Xun (examined in Chaps. 5, 6, and 7), have been frequently revisited. Contemporary quest for China’s cultural modernity is accompanied by renewed interest in the translations produced by the five translators discussed in this study, along with their source texts. In 2009, the Commercial Press in Taiwan republished its Series of Famous Translations by Mr. Yan Fu (Yan Fu xiansheng fanyi mingzhu congkan), after its 1965 first edition. Shidai huawen shuju in Beijing republished the same series from Taiwan in 2013 and 2014, including Yan Fu’s translation of Evolution and Ethics, Study of Sociology, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, On Liberty, A Short History of Politics, A System of Logic, Primer of Logic and L’Esprit des lois. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, Jules Verne’s novel Deux ans de vacances, which Liang Qichao titled Fifteen Little Heroes (Shiwu xiao haojie) in 1902, boasted 23 retranslations, variously titled The Drifting of Fifteen Teenagers (Shiwu shaonian piaoliu ji), The Adventures of Fifteen Teenagers (Shiwu shaonian lixian ji), Fifteen Teenagers (Shiwu shaonian), Two Years’ Vacation (Liangnian jiaqi or Liangnian de jiaqi) in Chinese, published by different book companies. More than 10 retranslations of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, of which Hu Shi’s Chinese title was Nuola, and about 40 books on the study of Ibsen have been published in mainland China since the 2000s. In addition, the publication of the Chinese versions of English-language monographs on New Culture translators has become popular in recent years, such as Lu Xun: Zhongguo “wenhe” de Nicai,7 Zhou Zuoren: Zhongguo xiandaixing de linglei xuanze8 and the reprint editions of Hu Shi yu Zhongguo wenyifuxing.9 These books constitute a valuable complement to similar works originally written in Chinese.  See, for instance, Daruvala (2000) and Laughlin (2008).  Chinese version of Chiu-yee Cheung (Zhang Zhaoyi)’s Lu Xun: The Chinese “Gentle” Nietzsche (2001), first published in 2011 by Beijing University Press. 8  One of the Chinese versions of Susan Daruvala’s 2000 book Zhou Zuoren and an Alternative Chinese Response to Modernity, published by Fudan University Press in 2013. Another version was published by Taiwan’s Rye Field Publishing Co. in 2011, the Chinese title being Zhou Zuoren: Ziji de yuandi. 9  Translated from Jerome Grieder’s Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance: Liberalism in the Chinese Revolution, 1917–1937. I have found six editions published by Jiangsu renmin chubanshe. The earliest was in 1989, and the more recent ones were in 2005, 2010 and 2016. 6 7

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Translation in this study has been considered to be a textual legacy that includes not only the translations themselves but the prefaces and postscripts to, and commentaries on, the translated works. These different types of paratext have been as crucial to the work of translation in China as the translated texts, not least because they enabled Chinese translators to educate readers into having the right emotions when reading their translations and to equip them with a sense of seeing and knowing the world in a modern way. In choosing foreign texts for translation and in giving voice to new texts, the five translators selected as case studies exercised considerable agency and in the process, “establish[ed] a subject-position in the discourse they shape[d]” (Munday 2009: 96). It is interesting to note that Yan Fu’s and Liang Qichao’s highly “fluent” (Venuti 1995) texts of translation, due to their use of free, domesticating strategy, did not lead to their reduced visibility. Instead, Yan’s paratextual notes and Liang’s patronage of translation helped to make these two translators of the late Qing period highly visible. This does not seem to accord with Venuti’s positing of fluency and the translator’s invisibility,10 and is suggestive of the requirement of a more nuanced approach to the examination of translational representations in modern Chinese identity discourse. In this study, the focus on modern selfhood offers a way of understanding the translation choices and approaches undertaken by the chosen translators as based in their education and reading preferences. I have sought by this means to provide an empirically grounded understanding of Chinese modernity as opposed to merely theorizing Chinese modernity as an abstract concept, and relying on other abstract concepts such as “Westernization” and “anti-traditionalism.” I hope to have shown how the translations produced during the period under study involved a significant degree of interpretation as to how foreign works should be read and understood in Chinese. As Lu Xun (1981(4): 553) observed in the 1933 essay “About Translation” (Guanyu fanyi), translation “provides impetus to and encourages creative writing.” What the period from the 1890s to the 1920s indicates is that translation and literary creation converged on the question of how to translate the foreign “other” so as to improve the Chinese “self.” The interest in nation building always included a concomitant interest in advancing a cosmopolitan society in China. In post-Maoist China since the late 1970s, this intellectual legacy of the late Qing and early Republican period has become significant once more.

References Daruvala, Susan. 2000. Zhou Zuoren and an Alternative Chinese Response to Modernity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Grieder, Jerome. 1981. Intellectuals and the State in Modern China: A Narrative History. New York: The Free Press.

 According to Venuti (1995), the more fluent a translation is, the more invisible the translator becomes.

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Huang, Max K.W. 2008. The Meaning of Freedom: Yan Fu and the Origins of Chinese Liberalism. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press. Hu, Shi. 1917. Er Yufu [Deux amis]. New Youth, 3(1). Hu, Shi. 2003. Hu Shi quanji [Complete Works of Hu Shi]. Hefei: Anhui jiaoyu chubanshe. Huters, Theodore. 2005. Bring the World Home: Appropriating the West in Late Qing and Early Republican China. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Laughlin, Charles A. 2008. The Literature of Leisure and Chinese Modernity. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Lee, Leo Ou-fan. 1995. Some Notes on ‘Culture,’ ‘Humanism,’ and the ‘Humanities’ in Modern Chinese Cultural Discourses. Surfaces 5: 5–29. Liu, Lydia. 1995. Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity – China, 1900–1927. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Liu, Kang, and Xiaobing Tang, eds. 1993. Politics, Ideology and Literary Discourse in Modern China: Theoretical Interventions and Cultural Critique. Durham: Duke University Press. Lu, Xun. 1981. Lu Xun quanji [Complete Works of Lu Xun]. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe. Munday, Jeremy. 2009. The Routledge Companion to Translation Studies. New York: Routledge. Pollard, David. 1998. Translation and Creation: Readings of Western Literature in Early Modern China, 1840–1918. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co. Schwarcz, Vera. 1986. The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919. Berkeley: University of California Press. Song, Huichang. 2008. Ren de faxian yu ren de jiefang [The Discovery of Human Beings and Human Emancipation]. Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe. Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London: Routledge. Wang, Hui. 2004. Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi [The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought]. Beijing: Joint Publishing. Xu, Jilin. 2009. Wusi de lishi huiyi: Shenmeyang de aiguozhuyi? [Historical Memories of May Fourth: What Kind of Patriotism Is It?]. Dushu 2009 (5): 5–16. Xu, Jilin, and Hong Song. 2011. Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de hexin guannian [The Core Concepts in Modern Chinese Thought]. Shanghai: Renmin chubanshe. Zhong, Shuhe. 1998. Zhou Zuoren wenlei bian [Collection of Zhou Zuoren’s Essays]. Changsha: Hunan wenyi chubanshe. Zhou, Zuoren. 2000. Yutian de shu [Book for a Rainy Day]. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe.

Appendix

Key Translated Works Discussed (1898–1925) 1898: Tianyan lun (Evolution and Ethics). Translator: Yan Fu 1901: Jiaren qiyu (Romantic Encounters with Two Fair Ladies). Translator: Liang Qichao 1902: Qunxue yiyan (Study of Sociology); Yuan fu (An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations). Translator: Yan Fu Shiwu xiao haojie (Two Years’ Vacation). Translators: Liang Qichao and Luo Xiaogao. 1903: Qunji quanjie lun (On Liberty). Translator: Yan Fu 1904: Shehui tongquan (A Short History of Politics). Translator: Yan Fu Can Shijie (Les Misérables). Translators: Chen Duxiu and Su Manshu. 1905: Mule mingxue (A System of Logic). Translator: Yan Fu 1907: Hongxing yishi (The World’s Desire). Translators: Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren 1908: Mingxue qianshuo (Primer of Logic). Translator: Yan Fu 1909: Fa yi (L’Esprit de1s lois). Translator: Yan Fu Yuwai xiaoshuo ji (Collection of Short Stories from Abroad). Translators: Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren 1912: “Gedi” (“La Demiere Classe,” or “The Last Lesson”). Translator: Hu Shi 1914: “Bolin zhi wei” (“The Siege of Berlin”). Translator: Hu Shi 1917: “Er yufu” (“Deux amis,” or “Two Friends”). Translator: Hu Shi 1918: Nuola (A Doll’s House). Translators: Hu Shi and Luo Jialun “Lao Luobo” (“Auld Robin Gray”). Translator: Hu Shi “Tuosituofusiqi zhi xiaoshuo” (“Dostoievsky”); “Qingnian Lin zhi qiji” (“The Miracle of the Youth Linus”); “Huangdi zhi gongyuan” (“The Kings’ Park”); “Zhencao lun” (“On Chastity”); “Xiaoxiao de yigeren” (“A Small Person”). Translator: Zhou Zuoren 1919: “Guan bu zhu le” (“Over the Roofs”). Translator: Hu Shi © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 L. Chi, Modern Selfhood in Translation, New Frontiers in Translation Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1156-7

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“Bolaike de shi” (“Blake’s Poetry”); “Ke’ai de ren” (“The Darling”); “Shamo jian de sange meng” (“Three Dreams in a Desert”). Translator: Zhou Zuoren 1920: “Shenye de laba” (“Bugle in the Night”); “Wanjian de laike” (“The Evening Guest”); Diandi: Jindai mingjia duanpian xiaoshuo (Drops: Short Stories by Eminent Modern Writers). Translator: Zhou Zuoren “Chalatusitela de xuyan” (“Zarathustra’s Prologue”); “Xingfu” (“Happiness”); Yige qingnian de meng (A Youth’s Dream). Translator: Lu Xun 1921: Gongren Suihuiluefu (The Worker Shevyrev); “Yisheng” (“The Doctor”); “Chibian” (“By the Pond”). Translator: Lu Xun 1922: Xiandai xiaoshuo yicong, diyiji (Anthology of Translations from Modern Fiction: Volume 1). Translators: Zhou Zuoren, Lu Xun and Zhou Jianren “Diao de xin” (“Eagle-heart”); “Xia de long” (“The Narrow Cage”); Ailuoxianke tonghuaji (A Collection of Fairy Tales by Eroshenko). Translator: Lu Xun 1923: Xiandai Riben xiaoshuo ji (Collection of Modern Japanese Stories). Translators: Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren 1924: Kumen de xiangzheng (The Symbols of Mental Anguish). Translator: Lu Xun 1925: Chu le xiangya zhi ta (Out of the Ivory Tower). Translator: Lu Xun