Gao Feng, Professor of English Department of Peking University.
From the Hall of Spiritual Light to the Wuliang Ancestral Hall
Miao Zhe, Sanlian Bookstore, October 2021
This is the first time I have read in a work of my contemporaries that it will become a classic in the future. Thick ancient and thin is a safe habit, thick Republic of China and thin contemporary is also the choice after hating iron and steel. But after reading this book, our eyes, which have long been full of exhaustion and frustration, can finally throw a glance of surprise and admiration at contemporary scholarship (imitating a sentence written on page 4 of the book).
Miao Zhe is praised by a wide range of readers for his many exquisite translations, but translation is only his side business. The publication of the book "From the Hall of Spiritual Light to the Wuliang Ancestral Hall" gives us the opportunity to appreciate his profound skills in the field of ancient Chinese art history. Miao Zhe believes that the evolution of ancient Chinese art from the pattern decoration of the Shang Zhou To the han dynasty art is neither due to the change of psychological cognitive mode nor the internal event of the development of art form. The most direct and intense driving force came from the Han Empire's need to systematically express its official ideology through the strategy of imagery and narrative. This institutional dynamic is particularly reflected in the large-scale visual production of Wang Mang's era. (Interestingly, several books on Wang Mang were published in 2021, all of which can be extremely convenient notes for Miao Zhe.) ）
Reading the writings of today's people, it is a bonus to find honest and solid knowledge. Talent and knowledge have always been afraid to ask for luxury. But Miao Zhe's book, in addition to his profound knowledge, adds to the talents and wisdom that have been long lost by today's people, and such wisdom even overflows from the main text and spreads into a large number of endnotes, making reading notes also become a kind of enjoyment. Any reader who has long-term experience in reading and has the ability to "wait and see", even if he is not an expert in art history, as long as he reads the 25-page introduction, he can detect the talent, learning, and knowledge that lurk between the lines, with high concentration and high purity. And the author's strong, sharp, and imitable Chinese is also enough to restore our confidence in Chinese academic writing.
The author's knowledge of Han Dynasty literature and his profound knowledge of the scriptures did not surprise me. What surprised me was his in-depth understanding and application of Western scholarship. As far as I can recall after reading this book for the first time, in the discussion of Wang Mang, I often refer to Augustus, a contemporary of great Qin, who was also an emperor who incorporated ideology into large-scale visual production (according to Paul Zanker's analysis); in the key discussion, Mircea Eliade's distinction between the sacred and the mundane, René Girard and Walter Burkert's analysis of sacrifice and violence are used The introduction deals with the visual presentation of ideology, quoting Michael Walzer's aphorisms. All of this is enough to prove that even if the study of ancient Chinese art history involves ancient religion, history and society, it is inseparable from the excavation and use of relevant Western theories.
Such a short review is naturally not enough to weigh this heavy work (both literal and figurative). I just want to play the courier of the shortcut and announce the birth of a masterpiece.
The Collected Sayings
Wang Ding, Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, August 2021
In the last years of the Qing Dynasty, envoys to Countries in Europe, North and South America, and Asia, with the multiple missions of "connecting diplomatic relations, dredging up the voice, and interviewing the situation of the country where they lived," recorded their own work and human observations, and "formed a diary-style memorandum that recorded work, life, and travel." This batch of envoys to the West diary is a direct result of "opening eyes to see the world" and is a front-line report made by Chinese diplomats in the capitals of countries with diplomatic relations. However, it is difficult to read through this batch of important documents on the history of Sino-foreign relations. Because these diaries use Chinese characters to directly transliterate the transliterations of foreign language words, a large number of unknown personal names and place names are formed. For example, who is Jady? Who is Guozi again? If the paper is full of words such as "Chinese characters in their tables and foreign languages in them" (this is Professor Wang Ding's exquisite description), then these Xi diaries are just "Making Xi codes".
To complete such deciphering work, it is necessary to combine Chinese and Western styles, and to cultivate both inside and outside. With solid knowledge of Chinese literature and history, such scholars are at least hundreds of thousands in China. But at the same time, they can master many modern languages in the West and are familiar with the European academic tradition, and the number of such scholars may drop to single digits in an instant. Deciphers also need to have knowledge of phonetics and dialects, because the transliterations of many Qing court envoys are deeply influenced by their respective hometown dialects, and they need to peel off the obscuration brought by dialects in order to restore the transliteration of The Quirky tooth to the original text. Finally, decipherers need to have long-term research on personal names, place names, and proper names, and need to be curious, sensitive, and even appreciative of strange linguistic phenomena. Fortunately, Professor Wang Ding, the author of the "Collection of Languages", met all the above conditions.
This collection of language collections contains ten articles written by the author over the years on Chinese and Western communication, Chinese and Western languages. The term "Yuzang" comes from Chen Yinke's famous 1930s letter to Liu Wendian, discussing whether pairs are the best way to test a candidate's Chinese language proficiency. The ultimate source of the word is the fragment of the Manichaean Scripture unearthed in Dunhuang. Professor Wang Ding expressed the purpose of this book with the "Sixteen Character Order": "Words explore the source, things explore the book, supplement the text with pictures, and implement the name and things". There are two long articles in the book that deal with the decoding of the Western diary, among which "The Circle of Friends of the Great Qing Dynasty" can be called a fan article, and the list of ministers stationed in Germany recorded in Li Fengbao's "Diary of envoys" has been examined in detail, so that we can finally understand where the foreign envoys visited by the minister stationed in Deqin in the fourth year of Guangxu are sacred.
Such rigorous historical research has also brought unexpected gains to other disciplines. At that time, the acting ministers of the Hawaiian Kingdom to Germany, after professor Wang Ding's investigation and reasoning, were reduced to Frank Williams Damon. Damon's family is a prominent family in Hawaii, and his wife's family has close ties with the Hawaiian Chinese Church. When Sun Yat-sen was studying in Honolulu in 1882, he was taken care of by a teacher named Flantyvan. Sun Yat-sen trained the revolutionary army, and it was this teacher who provided a school playground. After the victory of the Xinhai Revolution, Sun Yat-sen took office as the provisional president and wrote to Flantywin thanking this international friend for his strong support for the Chinese revolution. Well, Flantiven is Li Fengbao's Darmen. In other words, the Hawaiian international friends who supported Sun Yat-sen appeared in the diaries of Qing envoys in 1878. Without Professor Wang Ding's research on the source, the book, and the implementation of famous objects, who would have thought that the Frantiwen would have a deeper and earlier relationship with China?
Aristotle: Life and School
[Italian] By Carlo Natali, [Canada] Douglas Hutchinson, eds., translated by Wang Zhiruo, Liu Weixue, Peking University Press, April 2021
Readers who just want to talk about "thoughts" in a relaxed and pleasant way, please take a detour. This is an extremely hard-core book, not to narrate Aristotle's life experience, but to arrange all the important materials about his life in ancient Western books in chronological order and then examine them in detail. Hutchinson, the Book's English translator and editor, said in the foreword that he arranged the "first-hand evidence" compiled in ancient history books and biographies in bold font in the main text, rather than banishing it into the annotations, so it could create a dappled visual effect. But I think this artificial mottle can make us wary of the fragility of ancient biographical materials, and also make us abandon the illusion of writing a vivid and smooth biography of Aristotle.
Accounts and anecdotal accounts and anecdotes about the life of Aristotle are, by modern standards, few and far between. However, compared with other ancient philosophers, they still have a considerable advantage in numbers. But these miscellaneous accounts come from a variety of sources, some from his sympathizers and followers, and some from his opponents. All this evidence needs to be examined article by article to generally determine which ones have a certain historical value and which are unreliable rumors. For example, between 343 and 335 BC, Aristotle settled in Macedonia as Alexander's teacher. All those who wanted to peddle the art of statecraft, seeing this account, were all fascinated, thinking that the philosophers were responsible for educating the future monarch, and Aristotle had already made his mind. But what did Aristotle teach Alexander? Plutarch believed that Aristotle had given him all his profound philosophical knowledge. Others believe that Aristotle taught only poetry and tragedy (the equivalent of language); others believe that he taught the methods of thinking and argumenting. Natali examined these rumors and found that Aristotle's attitude toward Macedonia in his writings was rather indifferent, and that some of the so-called "textbooks" that belonged to Aristotle in ancient times and were used to educate Alexander were not real works. So, after all, what did Aristotle teach Alexander? It doesn't seem like much. Is he an Imperial Master? It doesn't seem to be.
I think every ancient philosopher should ask a scholar of Natali's level to write such a boring "biography." That is to say, all ancient accounts are listed, distinguish between right and wrong, and distinguish between true and false. Of course, there is a category of people who dare not read such a book. A few years ago, some delusional claimed that Aristotle's writings were forged by Renaissance Europeans. I'd love to recommend Natali's book to them, but I actually know that academia doesn't cure stupidity.
Hitchcock Biography
[English] Peter Ackerroyd, translated by Sun Weina, edited by Sun Changjiang, Houlang Beijing United Publishing Company, November 2021
This is a short biography of hitchcock by the famous biographer Akroyd, just when we are a little tired. A director like Hitchcock, who is a storyteller, high-output, and of constant quality, has a less brilliant life than his films. Born in a Catholic london home of low-class vendors, he had already made films like "39 Steps" and "The Missing Lady" before going to the United States in 1939 (to avoid controversy, I corrected it to "let me get tired of watching"). Since then, in the United States, where the film industry is more developed, Hitchcock has created a series of classics in the history of cinema: the confusing "Dr. Edward", the dizzying "Ecstasy", the maddening "Horror", the "Rear Window" that makes people want to close the curtains all the time, and the "Flock of Birds" with more birds than people. Such a life story, if written into a movie script, showed to Hitchcock, he would definitely say: "No drama." ”
The chubby, always-wearing director who hides his inner anxiety with an indifferent look is often relegated by arrogant, finger-pointing critics to the "commercial" director who pleases the masses. Such reviews seem to treat commercial films as clowns in the circus, and "art films" as sopranos in operas. In 1954, Hitchcock was interviewed by the French film theorist Bazin. He told Bazin that making art films is very simple, and the real difficulty is to make good commercial films (p. 196). I simply couldn't agree more! I don't think Hitchcock is making a fuss about it, it's the experience of a great artist. Similarly, in an interview with Truffaut, he once said about The Flock of Birds: "I don't care what this film is trying to convey. Akreuyd, the biographer, adds in the book: "The film needs to be watched, not explained. (p. 263) So anyone who wants to find Lacan in Hitchcock's film should listen to his own interpretation of Doctor Edward: "This is just another hunt story wrapped in pseudo-psychoanalysis." (p. 144)
When filming Birds, it is said that more than 28,000 birds were used. Hitchcock's wife, Alma (another talented female artist who has retreated behind the scenes to support her husband's career), commented: "There are not enough stories, too many birds. "The biography has similar problems: not enough stories, too many film reviews and tidbits. The more readers who have seen Hitchcock movies (preferably more than 10), the more enjoyable it will be to read this biography. People who don't watch Heath's suspense films, if they are not afraid of spoilers, can also bravely rush up.
On the domestic network, there are always people who call Hitchcock "Hee Fat". I think the nickname is full of fake affection and is quite rude. Hitchcock was a great people's artist, an outstanding film workshop model, and an advanced worker for 40 consecutive years. He didn't need this high-calorie nickname, but rather medals and our repeated movies.
Elizabeth the Great Chief
By Giles Milton, translated by Qiaoyi Chen, Kyushu Press, January 2021
Seeing this title, I feel a little strange. Elizabeth is queen of England, what does it have to do with the chief? The subtitle dispelled the confusion — "The Fate of The Adventurers of England and the First American Colonies." Five years after Columbus landed in the Bahamas, the British discovered the North American continent. But the cause they were most interested in at that time was the capture of live specimens of barbarians. In 1535, someone brought back the barbarian king of Brazil from South America, so sensational in England that some people came up with the idea of going to North America to capture barbarians and tour the civilized world. It was not until 1584 that the British began to manage the Americas with care and began to design permanent settlements. Queen Elizabeth's favorite, Walter Raleigh, took full responsibility for the Americas and launched the American Colonization Program.
In 1585, Reilly sent five ships, laden with supplies and men who wanted to gain wealth and opportunity in distant places, to the New World. The first settlers established the settlement of Roanoke. At first, they got along well with the local Indian tribes, so some tribes honored Queen Elizabeth as the "Grand Chief", which is where the title of the book comes from. Later, the British and indians fought each other, and armed conflicts broke out repeatedly. By 1587, the leader of the settlement returned home for help, leaving more than a hundred Englishmen on Rohnok Island. Because Britain and Spain went to war in 1588 and forbade ships from going to sea, reinforcements were able to return to Roynok Island two years later. However, there was no trace of the settlers on the island at this time, and the original settlement had been abandoned, and only a code was found in the trees, pointing to another island. The mysterious disappearance of more than a hundred Britons has become a historical suspense case.
Looking back at this history helps us understand both Shakespeare's Britain and the process by which the British before the Mayflower established themselves in what is now Virginia, USA. There are two things in the book that impressed me the most. In 1608, the English were ordered by James I to crown Powhatan, the head of the local Indians. Powhatan refused, declaring: "I am also the king, and this is my territory." Later, the British were half coaxed and half persuaded to complete a coronation ceremony that allowed them to make a difference. Another thing has to do with Pocahontas, the daughter of Powatan, the heroine of the 1995 Disney cartoon Pocahontas. The cartoon tells the story of an Indian princess who tries her best to ease the conflict between her own people and outsiders, and eventually marries the British. Such a plot is not a Hollywood fiction, but a "beautiful talk" that is talked about in the early history of the United States. The popular history of Elizabeth the Great Chief follows the common saying that Pocahontas interceded with her father for a British captive, and also informed the British of her father's conspiracy to sneak attack; later, an English boy fell in love with an Indian princess, the two married, and the two countries turned into jade; after marriage, Pocahontas went to London with her husband and was received by James I and the queen. But there has been more scholarly research on the "construction" of Pocahontas's story, so the legend of marriage for peace should be more complex and dubious than described in the book.
Peak Maple