IX
In the early nineteenth century the reaction against
China as a model state
led to a more positive interest
in the Chinese as human beings. The sources
for this
new interest were found in the translations of popular
literature, especially poetry, which had become in-
creasingly available. A precursor of this trend was
Ludwig Unzer, the German poet, who published in
1773 an elegy entitled
Vou-ti bey Tsin-nas Grabe, eine
Elegie im
chinesischen Geschmack. In this poem, which
the young Goethe
criticized as contrived, Unzer sought
to depict the feelings of a Chinese
who is bereaved
at the death of his beloved. Unzer's allusions to
Taoist
beliefs and other Chinese attitudes are naive, but his
poem is
important as the first European effort to show
that the individual Chinese
is subject to the same
emotions as others when facing death.
Goethe, who had satirized the Chinese in his youth,
was in the final decade
of his life to express open
admiration for the Chinese attitude towards
nature, the
self-discipline and refinement of the people, and the
aesthetic qualities of Chinese literature. He was par-
ticularly moved by the Chinese poems which were
published in English translation in Peter Perring
Thoms' Chinese Courtship (1824). He rendered a few
of Thoms'
translations into his own poetic language
and epitomized others in his set
of lyrical poems called
Chinesisch-deutsche Jahres- und Tageszeiten
(1827).
Friedrich Rückert published in 1833 his imitation in
freely paraphrased odes of the Shih-ching
(“Book of
Poetry”). The German romantic poets thus
deepened,
personalized, and beautified Europe's conception of the
Chinese. In their vision of Chinese imaginative life they
fused an
admiration for the intellectual resources of
the Chinese with a sensitivity
to Chinese creativity that
was not appreciated in the eighteenth century.
But not all of the German poets shared Goethe's
enthusiasm. Heinrich Heine,
at the beginning of the
third book of his Romantische
Schule (1833), used one
of the stories of Chinese beauties,
translated by Thomas,
to lend color to his own attack upon the
grotesque
character of German romanticism. Others in the ro-
mantic and Young German movements saw in
China
nothing but dry pedantry and tiresome automatism in
government.
The Liberals of the 1830's regarded China
as a model of the police state
that they so heartily
despised (see Rose, p. 314). The American Transcen-
dentalists, like the British
romantic poets, were con-
cerned more with
Indian than with Chinese thought.
But the ethical teachings of Confucius appealed to
Emerson,
particularly the emphasis on the duty of the
individual to assume social
responsibility. Tennyson
expressed the Victorian exasperation with a static
and
unprogressive China by proclaiming: “Better fifty years
of Europe than a cycle of Cathay” (“Locksley
Hall,”
line 184).
In France, Théophile Gautier, influenced by the
China specialist G.
Pauthier and the novelist René
Bazin, became at mid-century a
propagandist for
Chinese literature and art. He wrote stories and
verses
on Chinese themes, collected Chinese art, and talked
about
Oriental subjects with Flaubert, Baudelaire, and
Victor Hugo. His daughter,
Judith Gautier, who studied
Chinese with a tutor, translated Chinese poems
into
French verse in the Livre de jade
(1867). Her intention
was to transmit poetic quality rather than
linguistic
accuracy, a goal which has been retained by most
Western
translators of Chinese poetry ever since. She
also wrote several novels
about China and collaborated
with Pierre Loti in preparing a Chinese play entitled
La Fille du Ciel. Edmond and Jules de Goncourt,
who
were more interested in Japan than in China, were
among the first
to point out the debt of Japanese litera-
ture and art to China. Among those who fell under
the spell of the
Goncourts was Émile Guimet, an in-
dustrialist and founder of the Paris museum of Oriental
art that
still bears his name. Georges Clemenceau,
while not active in politics,
prepared just at the begin-
ning of the
twentieth century a play about China that
was inspired by his study of the
Chinese classics and
his reactions to the Boxer Rebellion.
Collection of Chinese art became popular in Europe
after 1860, the date of
the sacking of the summer
palace in Peking. The Boxer expedition of 1900
also
brought a windfall of Chinese art into the West. But
while
individual connoisseurs and museums built up
impressive collections of all
forms of Chinese art,
Western artists have so far not been inspired to
imitate
Chinese painting and sculpture. The influence of
Chinese art
in the West has been limited to a continu-
ation of the popular vogue for chinoiseries and the
decorative arts.
This is particularly surprising in the
light of the attraction that
Japanese color prints, archi-
tecture, and
furnishings have had for Western artists.
The visual arts have also had but
a small interest as
sources for China's social and intellectual history.
Only
in recent years, and especially in the works of C. W.
Bishop and
H. G. Creel, have the findings of archae-
ology been used in the West as aids in the reconstruc-
tion of China's ancient past.
The dispatch of Chinese students to the West on
Boxer fellowships and other
grants helped at the be-
ginning of the
twentieth century to stimulate a new
interest in Chinese thought. Irving Babbitt at Harvard
early
evinced an interest in the humane and moderate
qualities in Buddhism and
other faiths as they were
practiced in China. The Imagist poets,
particularly
Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell, were attracted to
Chinese
poetry for its compact portrayal of universal
wisdom. In Germany, O. J.
Bierbaum, one of the lead-
ers of impressionist
art and culture, wrote novels and
poems on the basis of his own renditions
of Chinese
themes. He stressed the erotic elements and burlesqued
the
pompous characters of his Chinese literary sources.
More accurate
translations of the meaning and spirit
of Chinese poetry were provided in
Germany by
Richard Wilhelm, in America by Florence Ayscough,
and in
England by Arthur Waley. Through the efforts
of both poets and translators,
Chinese poetry, mythol-
ogy, and history
became a source of inspiration for
creative writers in the contemporary
West.
