Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if we live for a hundred years more, we will still say, 'This was our finest hour.'"
--Imitating Winston Churchill
Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination. No sane man can be happy, for to him life is real, and he sees what a fearful thing it is. Only the mad can be happy, and not many of those.
--Mark Twain
There is an important political and cultural point to be made…by answering Saul Bellow's question... "Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans?" with the names of Ousmane Sembene or Ngugi wa Thiong'o, who are entitled to ask in reply what has Bellow written lately that is all that great?.
-- John Beverly, "The Real Thing"
代表团一行还分别与中国驻欧盟使团、中国驻德国使馆的官员，以及德国联邦议员、德国教育与科研部和德意志学术交流中心的有关官员进行了会谈，为中欧中心框架内的联合学位教育和合作科研等项目的实施争取支持。
 |
| The Mayor of Trier is a good friend of China |
The delegation also divided into groups for talks with the Chinese Mission to the European Union and officials from the Chinese Embassy in Germany, as well as the German representative of the United Nations and officials from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the DAAD Information Centre, seeking support for implementation of joint degree education and cooperative research projects within the framework of the China-Europe Centre.Final version after two editors (the second of which does not have Chinese) worked on it:
The delegation also held talks with the Mission of the People’s Republic of China to the European Union and officials from the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Germany, as well as representatives from the Federal Republic of Germany, officials from the German Ministry of Education and Research and from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), for the purpose of seeking support for joint degree education and cooperative research projects within the framework of the China-Europe Centre.
"He had an honest-looking nose, but of what use was it to him now?"
 |
| Illustration by Shaoyang No. 1 Middle School |
I begin by defining, in an inescapably simplistic way, what I mean by the three terms in the title: sublime, figure, and history….“Figure”…points to the subject, the concept of preference for denoting the makeup of the individual psyche, its conscious and unconscious workings, and all its social, cultural ramifications. But “figure” is more sensuous, imagistic, and specular, and it bears the traces of historical and cultural formations at their most visible and palpable. The figure can be a plastic figure, a figure of speech, a figure for mirror identification, or a historical figure enveloped in a mythical aura. I use the word to denote sensory or figural representations in contrast to the more abstract term “subject,” which in current theoretical formulations has revealed its manifold, historical contingent figurations.
– Ban Wang, The Sublime Figure of History, 1–2
Pulsions (psychanalyse) Le mot pulsion vient du (latin pulsio, action de pousser, pellere, pulsum, il est une traduction du terme allemand Trieb) qui a été utilisé par Freud. --Wikipédia: L'encyclopédie libreJe pousse, tu pousses, elle pousse, nous poussons, vous poussez, elles poussent.
...for centuries we have been overly interested in the author and insufficiently in the reader; most critical theories try to explain why the auhor has written his work, according to which pulsions, which constraints, which limits...
--Barthes, "Writing Reading"
Missverständniss des Traumes"Missverständniss" is the plural of "Missverständnis." "Des" is the definite article in the genitive case (gender?). Strange that "Missverständniss" is not preceded by an article:
The Missunderstanding of Dreams
Die Missverständniss des Traumes
Mißverständnis, Siebdruck, 21x31cm, 1975, von Margret Hofheinz-Döring
It is their consummate artistry, their ability to express complex signifying structures, that gives access to multiple dimensions of meaning, meanings that are always rooted in a specific setting and cultural tradition but that further constitute, upon comparison, a thought-provoking set of perspectives on the varieties of human experience.
--Sarah Lawall, The Norton Anthology of World Literature
君子有終身之憂，而無一朝之患，順道而行，循理而言，喜不加易，怒不加難。Rouzer on the range of 而 as a connector of verbs:
The Superior Man has worries all his life, that he not have a single morning of catastrophe, for he behaves adhering to the Way, speaks according to principle, enjoys without excess of ease, and grows angry without adding difficulty.
-- From the Shuo yuan 說苑 (compiled by Liu Xiang, 2nd century BC)
小人逆道而反德
Inferior Man goes counter to the Way and opposes Virtue.
圣人自禁而不禁人
The wise person constrains himself but does not constrain others.
君行仁义而治国
The ruler implements benevolence and righteousness and so puts the state in order.
The ruler administers the state by implementing benevolence and righteousness.
The ruler uses benevolence and righteousness to administer the state.
The ruler implements benevolence and righteousness and then and only then puts the state in order.
The ruler implements benevolence and righteousness and then and only then will the state find order.
--A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese
Kings of the Warring States (3rd cent. BC), a contemporary Chinese impression
...I kept stopping as I read this text...Recalling the camera's first feats in decomposing a horse's trot, I too attempted to "film" the reading of Sarrasine in slow motion: the result, I suspect, is neither quite an analysis (I have not tried to grasp the secret of this strange text) nor quite an image (I don't think I have projected myself into my reading; or if I have, it is from an unconscious site which falls far short of "myself"). Then what is S/Z? Simply a text, that text which we write in our head when we look up....
[D]ealing with a story...we see clearly that a certain constraint of our progress (of "suspense") constantly struggles within us against the text's explosive force, its digressive energy: with the logic of reason (which makes this story readable) mingles a logic of the symbol. This latter logic is not deductive but associative: it associates with the material text (with each of its sentences) other ideas, other images, other significations...
[T]here is no objective or subjective truth of reading, but only a ludic truth; again, "game" must not be understood here as a distraction, but as a piece of work -- from which, however, all labor has evaporated: to read is to make our body work (psychoanalysis has taught us that this body greatly exceeds our memory and our consciousness) at the invitation of the text's signs, of all the languages which traverse it and form something like the shimmering depth of the sentence....
--"Writing Reading," The Rustle of Language
 |
| Wang Anyi (thanks to WanderMonkey) |
The world’s disparate traditions have developed very distinct kinds of literature, even very different ideas as to what should be called “literature” at all. This anthology uses a variety of means to showcase what is most distinctive and also what is commonly shared among the world’s literatures. Throughout this anthology we employ three kinds of grouping…
--David Damrosch, Preface to The Longman Anthology of World Literature
| Crosscurrents | Highlights overarching issues or developments many cultures have faced, e.g. creation myths (or World War II) |
|
|---|---|---|
| Perspectives | Provides cultural context for a cluster of major works, e.g. death and immortality in the ancient Near East (or childhood experiences of transgression) |
|
| Resonances | Links works across big reaches of time and/or space, e.g. Odyssey and responses by Kafka, Walcott, Seferis (or Song of Everlasting Sorrow by Wang Anyi (Shanghai, 1995), “Song of Everlasting Sorrow” by Bai Juyi (Chang’an, 800s)) |
|
 |
| Still from 小厂主 (1925, The Young Factory Owner) Thanks to The Chinese Mirror |
[G]iven the intricate nature of Chinese polygamy, we should begin to wonder what remolding people had to undergo in order to assume post-polygamous identities.
***To be "Lacanian," as I interpret it, is to occupy the position of the analyst, the fourth of his four discourses of subjectivity, which are also crucial to this discussion and are as follows: Master and University (which comprise the masculine pole), Hysteric and Analyst (which comprise the feminine pole). In particular, the analyst is one who, like a Zhuangzian Daoist, engages in the continuous exposure of the arbitrary and self-enclosed nature of the Confucian master's discourse. Lacan points out that in the paradigm-shifting passage from one discourse or social formation to another, the discourse of the analyst always emerges for a brief moment. He is referring to the moments in history in which one master regime gives way to another, during which the inherently arbitrary and contingent nature of any regime is at least revealed.
-- Keith McMahon, Polygamy and Sublime Passion, "Introduction: The Male Consort of the Remarkable Woman"
她又像一般教會中學畢業的女學生，能閱讀西洋小說，愛慕西洋小說裡的男主人公：身材高，膚色深，面貌俊秀，舉止瀟灑。
She was just like any other high school girl: able to read Western fiction, she loved best the male heroes of novels: tall, dark, and handsome -- and unrestrained, too, though accomplished.
上了大學，圖書館裡可讀的書可豐富了，夠他仔細閱讀和瀏覽欣賞的。
At university, though, he could read all the books he wanted, because there were enough for him to read closely and to skim those that he liked.
他的笑容軟化了老師的嚴厲。
His smile melted the sternness of his teacher.
彥成笑嘻嘻他說，他正在看一本書，思索一個倫理問題，想到牛角尖裡去了。
Yancheng laughed -- ha! ha! -- and said that he was just then reading a book, considering a theoretical problem, and had gone off into a trivial matter (cow-horn-tip).
雪仍在飄，兩人越談越親密。一個是癡心，一個是誠懇；一個是愛慕，一個是感激。
With the snow still blustering, the two of them became more intimate the more they spoke. One was a fool for love, the other honest and sincere; one was in love, the other was filled with gratitude.
-- Yang Jiang, Baptism, chapter 7
...[T]here is certainly not a single scientific matter which has not at some moment been treated by universal literature: the world of the work is a total world, in which all (social, psychological, historical) knowledge takes place, so that for us literature has that grand cosmogonic unity which so delighted the ancient Greeks but which the compartmentalized state of our sciences denies us today....science will become literature, insofar as literature -- subject, moreover, to a growing collapse of traditional genres (poem, narrative, criticism, essay) -- is already, has always been, science; for what the human sciences are discovering today, in whatever realm: sociological, psychological, psychiatric, linguistic, etc., literature has always known; the only difference is that literature has not said what it knows, it has written it.>
Students should be working in Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development. Ideally instruction is aimed at the level where students can learn with the aid of a teacher or more knowledgeable peers (Vygotsky 1962).
-- Carol Jago, Classics in the Classroom
 |
| Detail from "Blue Maunderings," one of the Lost Divers series by Josh Dorman (Cerise Press) |
For example there was a story in the end where his brother says that to help your sick mother you must feed some of your flesh and the narrator remembered this at the time of his sister’s death and believed that his brother had eaten her and was sad because maybe he wasn’t full and was wanting to eat someone else, and that this world is kind of like survival of the fittest."The student is being a bit lazy, writing quickly, mangling syntax. Worst of all, they make a weak gesture at an idea "survival of the fittest" that is complex and even intriguing.
This is a really good thought, but I'd like you to expand it a bit: how does the first part of this sentence, up to "eat someone else," make us feel that the world ensures the "survival of the fittest?"
Based on further research I have found that in ancient China there was a widely-known tale about a farmer who found a dead rabbit in his field one day who had run into a stump and broken his neck upon impact. As the story goes on, the hopeful farmer then proceeded to disregard his work in order to watch the stump, hoping that more unfortunate rabbits would meet their end by it. Instead of capturing more rabbits, the farmer became the laughingstock of his community and therefore became known as the stump-watcher. The title of stump-watcher eventually became coined as a term for “those who think they can take the ways of the ancient kings and use them to govern the people”.I looked this up; it's from Han Feizi.
 |
| 守株待兔 (illustration from MyChinaConnection) |
A wit, Mr. Rambler, in the dialect of ladies, is not always a man who, by the action of a vigorous fancy upon comprehensive knowledge, brings distant ideas unexpectedly together, who, by some peculiar acuteness, discovers resemblance in objects dissimilar to common eyes, or, by mixing heterogeneous notions, dazzles the attention with sudden scintillations of conceit. A lady's wit is a man who can make ladies laugh, to which, however easy it may seem, many gifts of nature, and attainments of art, must commonly concur. He that hopes to be received as a wit in female assemblies, should have a form neither so amiable as to strike with admiration, nor so coarse as to raise disgust, with an understanding too feeble to be dreaded, and too forcible to be despised. The other parts of the character are more subject to variation; it was formerly essential to a wit, that half his back should be covered with a snowy fleece, and, at a time yet more remote, no man was a wit without his boots. In the days of the Spectator a snuff-box seems to have been indispensable; but in my time an embroidered coat was sufficient, without any precise regulation of the rest of his dress. --Samuel Johnson
Thanks to PowerOfBabel
The cyst turned out to be a benign tumour. Kat liked that use of benign, as if the thing had a soul and wished her well. It was big as a grapefruit, the doctor said. "Big as a coconut," said Kat. Other people had grapefruits. "Coconut" was better. It conveyed the hardness of it, and the hairiness, too.
-- Margaret Atwood, "Hairball"
One has to admire the Americans. Who else would come up with the idea of turning the belly of a fighter into a robot's head and then proceed to create a machine that executes the transition so flawlessly?
-- Bi Shumin 毕淑敏, "Broken Transformers"
In olden times the vagina went around on her own. She had not yet fused with the woman. The vagina wandered about all parts of the earth. She was constantly on the move. She let anybody sleep with her. ... The vagina met the scorpion and said to him: 'Have sexual intercourse with me.' The scorpion did so. But the scorpion stung the vagina with his tail while they were making love, whereupon the vagina screamed with pain. Frightened, the vagina ran away. She ran to the woman and hid herself there. The vagina said to the woman: 'Hide me and protect me!' The woman did so. Ever since that time, women have had a vagina."
--Old Tale of Guinea
Ultimately, qing involves an experience of abyssal nothingness, whether sacrificial death, castration, or the severing of one's flesh, all being forms of the dissolution of the self...Previously, McMahon gave:
...[in Liaozhai zhiyi stories] The man's foolishness, the literal and metaphorical acts of the self-negation of severing the flesh, and the liminal quality of the remarkable woman -- all these are signs of the negativity of the frame, and in themselves amount to the empty core of the individual subject...
...To say that the subject is fundamentally split is a way of referring to the impossibility of full and present self-consciousness or self-understanding. In simplest terms, there will always be a gap between what subjects think they know of themselves and what is hidden from them. The subject can only fantasize that "I am what I say I am." ....The I is a pure void, an empty frame only knowable through the predicates that make up except through the endless series of predicates and statements that fill out what the I thinks....(8-9)
There are two principal ways in which reflective human beings try, by placing their lives in a larger context, to give sense to those lives. The first is by telling the story of their contributions to a community. This community may be the actual historical one in which they live, or another actual one, distant in time or place, or a quite imaginary one, consisting perhaps of a dozen heroes and heroines selected from history or fiction or both. The second way is to describe themselves as standing in immediate relation to a nonhuman reality. This relation is immediate in the sense that it does not derive from a relation between such a reality and their tribe, or their nation, or their imagined band of comrades. I shall say that stories of the former kind exemplify the desire for solidarity, and that stories of the latter kind exemplify the desire for objectivity.
[On Honglou fumeng a 19th century sequel to Honglou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber) ] Even though Baoyu now has twelve wives, he is fair to all, harboring no favorites. Reborn as Mengyu, he is all "sentiment" and no "lust" (that is, all qing and no se), as the narrator describes in a stunning take-off on the motif of gender fluidity, such that when he consorts with this wives and maids, "he is not even aware that he is female and they are female. ... Even if one of the women is sponging herself or taking a bath, he comes and goes as he pleases and no one minds...
[On Qilou chongmeng and Honglou huanmeng, other sequels of the 19th century] In both, Baoyu resembles the sexually active polygamist of Ming and Qing erotic novels who enjoys cozy and harmonious relations with them all his wives. ... He has five wives by age sixteen...Before marriage, he learns the trick of having sex with prepubescent girls, especially maids, so that none will get pregnant. He learns erotic arts form a nineteen-year-old female acrobat, after which he practices the arts with a new group of twenty-four maids, of whom he takes four each night... (Chapter 2, "Qing Can be With One and Only One" 39-40)
 |
| Singapore edition of Heroic Sons and Daughters, a major Confucian Romance. |
 |
| Photo via John Pappas |
人若憎时我亦憎，. Funny it seems so simple, yet neither of us are sure how the lines all go together.
逃名最要是无能。
后生乞汝残风月，
自作深林不语僧。
If others hate the times
then I too hate them:
To flee from fame the vital thing
is to have no talent.
Later generations! I beg you,
to lay waste to your sensual urges,
And turn yourselves into silent monks,
who dwell in the deep woods.
‘Hurrah for revolution!’ Ah-Q thought. ‘It’ll do for the whole rotten lot of them!…I’m going over to the revolutionaries as soon as I get the chance.’ His sense of grievance against the world sharpened first by the rather embarrassed circumstances in which he had recently found himself, and second by the two midday bowls of wine he had drunk on an empty stomach, Ah-Q floated ruminatively along his way. -- Lu Xun, "The Real Story of Ah-Q," tr. Julia Lovell (Penguin and Other Tales of China: The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun (Penguin Classics, 2010) (p. 109).
