None but the Nightingale: An Introduction to Chinese Literature

By Margaret Thiele

This classic introduction to the Chinese literature is a fundamental step towards the West's understanding of the rich literary legacy of China.

Readable, condensed, entertaining, the selections contained in this book belong to enduring world literature; the "Great Society" envisioned by Confucius; the "Fireside Chats" of K'ang Hei; the supercilious letter of the Emperor Ch'ien Lung to King George of England; the "Memorial: on the Bone of Buddha”; the imaginative lines of the poets.

The wit and wisdom of China dispel time and distance and bring East and West together as the heart and soul of a great people is revealed in their stories, anecdotes, essays, and poems. Here is a close-up view of the educational system, home life, and government of old China as found in their own writings, with personal glimpses of some of the great--the emperors bathing in their crystal pools, of Lao Tzu in his library, and Confucius in his fur-lined underwear.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
• Release date: Jun 15, 1996
• ISBN: 9781462912759

Book preview

Introduction

None but the nightingale should part his lips merely to emit sound.

Chinese proverb

Much that we hear around us today is mere sound. The trivial, the sensational, the ephemeral clamor so loud that we are inclined to believe that, Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. But there are and always have been voices that disagree. In fact, the greater portion of the literature of the world which has stood the test of time strongly proclaims that life has significance, joy, and beauty.

What is literature? A Chinese statesman gives this definition:

A rose in a moonlit garden, the shadow of trees on the turf, almond bloom, scent of pine, the wine-cup and the guitar; these and the pathos of life and death, the long embrace, the hand stretched out in vain, the moment that glides forever away, with its freight of music and light, into the shadow and hush of the haunted past, all that we have, all that eludes us, a bird on the wing, a perfume escaped on the gale—to all these things we are trained to respond, and the response is what we call literature.¹

Such a response began early in China and has continued to be enthusiastic and voluble for thousands of years. Probably no other people have such a heritage of literature—so old, so much, so beautiful, so deep, so expressive of human experience and feeling. Some measure of the regard these people have had for their literature and their determination to record and preserve this response is evidenced in the fact that they are the ones who invented paper and ink, and printing.

But in spite of translations and scholarly works, the average Westerner knows little of Chinese literature. He knows about the famines and poverty and footbinding of the past, and the communes and restrictions and barrenness of the present. But the tender heart of the people, with their love of family, beauty in nature, gay laughter, and deep philosophy—these things are little known or appreciated. And it is hard to know them now.

The Chinese have a proverb—All human affairs are my affairs—which was an early bid for better international understanding and relationships. The Chinese themselves may not have progressed noticeably toward making this a national goal (!), but more and more we are beginning to realize that the affairs of Assam and Algeria to Zambesi and Zion are our affairs. More and more we are beginning to realize that knowledge of a country, not only of the present, but of the past, is a bridge to understanding, and understanding is the key to friendship.

It was one of the great desires of the poet Goethe to see the furtherance of a world literature as the means of bringing the nations into closer relations with each other, by the increase of their mutual understanding and of their common sentiments.

The affairs of any people, the very human affairs, are best reflected in their literature, for their poets and philosophers leave a more meaningful legacy for succeeding generations than all the politicians and generals. The literature of a country is a window enabling us to look into the very heart of a people, and to learn about what they really think and feel and what they have learned from experience and life.

Especially is this true of the Chinese, for they have been writing and recording, printing on paper and collecting in libraries longer than any other people. And their written language, not being phonetic, is a living language, while other ancient languages, such as that of ancient Egypt and Greece and Rome, are dead languages. In the beautiful Hall of Classics in Peking, the words of Confucius (complete text of the Five Classics and the Four Books), chiseled on walls of stone, may be read and understood today after 25 centuries.

And what do we learn of the people who lived so long ago, in this faraway land, and those who have followed them down through the ages?

As we look through the window, the noises and sights of a Chinese courtyard spring into life after centuries of time, with the words of the poet:

The early light of the rising sun shines on the beams of my house;

The first banging of opened doors echoes like the roll of a drum.

The dog lies curled on the stone step, for the earth is wet with the dew;

The birds come near to the window and chatter, telling that the day is fine . . .²

We see:

A lady in a glistening gown

Opens the casement and looks down . . .

We smile at the flutter of a bridegroom bringing home his bride:

With axle creaking, all on fire I went

To fetch my young and lovely bride;

No thirst or hunger pangs my bosom rent;

I only long to have her by my side.³

We see women on the sidelines, frustrated because the men are bungling the affairs of state:

The Elder Statesmen sit on the mats

And wrangle through half the day;

A hundred plans they have drafted and dropped,

And mine was the only way.⁴

We share a mother's grieving for her son in the service of his country.

We feel the misery of soldiers slowly borne on ox carts along dusty roads.

We see tears and laughter and romance and humor, and learn the wisdom of the ancients and the philosophy of the sages. In brief, we learn that people, here and there, and then and now, are very much alike, and that all men are brothers.

Our English language and literature is a tapestry woven from many threads, from many lands. We owe much to Greece and Rome and France and Spain, from Saxony and Normandy, from Germany and Denmark. We read the stories of Hans Christian Anderson and forget that they are translations. We have the works of Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas, of Ibsen and Dante, of Geothe and Cervantes, and our literature is enriched thereby.

China, too, has much to contribute; so much that the average person would enjoy and appreciate if it were put before him. Perhaps the only reason he is unaware of these things which are so common in China is because he has had no best friend to say to him, Have you read this? You must, for it is really good . . . or funny, or clever or pathetic, as the case may be. For sometimes we learn of the best books, the finest poetry, and funniest jokes in this way.

And sometimes we are so distracted by the sound and fury all about us (and not even the sound of a nightingale!) that we need someone to say, Stop a minute, here is something worthwhile, something I have enjoyed, and I think you will too.

And so, from a tremendous amount of eminently worthwhile material which I have enjoyed, I have made a few selections to share, largely from translations not readily available or accessible. They represent personal taste and personal enjoyment and are presented with the desire to lead others to a wider and fuller appreciation of Chinese literature as found in the larger anthologies.

Forest

of

flowers

I

PICTURESQUE SPEECH

The genius of the Chinese is in their written language, in the curves and squares and dashes of its mystic signs.

Witter Bynner

The written language of China has been a greater barrier between the East and West than the Great Wall ever was between the North and the South. These inscrutable black characters have prevented more people from exploring the fields of Oriental thought than the thousand-li barrier held back from pillaging of Chinese harvest fields. But both barriers have been outmoded by time and circumstance. Still, there are those who view the Chinese written language as something akin to Babylonian hieroglyphics—cumbersome, occult, weird. Why don't they do something about it? they ask. Reduce it to some intelligible alphabet, simplify it, or streamline it?

Well, it is not as simple as that. Take the character 明 for example. It is pronounced ming, and is the word for bright or clear. It is composed of two parts, 曰 the symbol for the sun, and 月 the symbol for the moon. What could be brighter than the sun and moon? But if this picture-character should be discarded and just the word ming used in its place, it could be confused with a dozen other words which are also pronounced ming, but have other meanings, and it would lose its identity as the word which combines the sun and the moon and means bright.

There is a built-in rapport with nature, a trace of humor, a key to primitive thinking, a record of philosophical gropings in the composition of the Chinese characters. There is no language more delightful and challenging to the etymologist.

Consider a few other examples. A simple picture-gram 木 represents a tree. Two trees, side by side, thus, 林 do not represent the plural of tree or two trees, but rather convey the idea of quantity—many trees or specifically, woods and also forest (pronounced, lin). The word tin was thus suitable for many uses, connoting quantity, as for instance, a collection of. Thus Yü Lin, meaning The Forest of Sayings was the title of a book in the fourth century and was a collection of anecdotes. The expression Han Lin meant literally Forest of Pencils and was the name for the old Imperial Academy at Peking, the ultimate in the old Chinese educational system. Is this not a picturesque way to describe a famous old seat of learning?

Place the emblem for rain 雨 above the two trees (woods) thus, 霖 and the idea of refreshing is conveyed. A tree inside a gateway 閑 is just what you might think—an obstruction. Is not this a unique way of presenting an abstract idea by a picture?

A mouth 口 inside a doorway 問 indicated someone asking for information; to inquire. Thus the language was developed with the combination of various elemental ideas, like parts of a molecule, until by this method they were able to express the most delicate shades of thought, the most subtle and abstract ideas of philosophy, the most exact terms of technology.

By the combination of two or more characters a phrase was derived, or an idiomatic expression, perhaps on the surface bearing no connection with the original meaning of the words. But the relation is there, if one seeks to find it.

For instance, the word for thing. (And how can one possibly translate this concept into another language without using long explanations?) The Chinese word for thing is literally east-west. Obviously, everything between the east and the west is a thing. The combination of the two characters hill and water make the word for landscape. The word for water plus the word for dirt make the word for climate. I used to wonder when I first went to China, why I was asked so frequently, How do you like our water and dirt? And later I learned that they were saying simply, How do you like our climate?—a routine expression of courtesy.

Of course, we do the same thing in English. But generally speaking, we have forgotten the Latin or Greek component parts that make up most of our polysyllables. Who thinks of without wax when he uses the word sincere, or black bile for melancholy?

When it was necessary to invent new words to express new concepts such as interstellar, or telephoto, or hydroponic, we could draw from our Greek and Latin roots as the case might require. And so the Chinese have kept up with modern times by using a combination of already existing ideographs, such as rise-descend-machine for elevator; or without-wire-electricity for wireless. This is not as cumbersome as the English equivalents might suggest, since in the Chinese language these are monosyllables, and many times the derived expression is actually a short-cut compared to the English equivalent.

From the smallest portion of a complicated character to the syntax of a line of verse or a grouping of ideographs in one of the difficult-to-understand classics, the interpretation of life in terms of nature is apparent. It seems that the Chinese recognized the kinship between the beauty of nature and the beauty of the imaginative phrase. There is an almost flamboyant use of color and figures and symbols.

We see it in the titles of everyday places of business—The Righteous International Tea Shop; the names of streets, gates and provinces—The Great Horse Road (Broadway), The Gate of Heavenly Purity, The District of Dreary Clouds; the names of buildings—Pavilion of the Fragrant Breeze (name of the Empress Dowager's bedroom), The Tower of the Sixth Wolf; the names of rivers—The Son of the Ocean (Yangste Kiang), The River of Golden Sands; the names of mountains—The Mountain of the Two-edged Sword, The Hill of the Painted Eyebrows.

In the court of silent dreams,

I lost the thread of worldly care.

We see it in the figurative language used in inscriptions; such as found on a mountain trail, or in a garden.

On a wash basin:

Oh, rather than sink in the world's foul tide

I would sink in the bottomless main;

For he who sinks in the world's foul tide

In noisesome depths shall forever abide,

But he who sinks in the bottomless main

May hope to float to the surface again.¹

On an old metal mirror:

Man combs his hair every morning; why not his heart?

On the bathtub of T'ang, founder of the Shang Dynasty, in 1766 B.C.:

If any one on any day can make a new man of himself, let him do so every day.

On a flat stone in a palace courtyard:

Like floating clouds her silken robes,

Like swaying willow boughs her grace.

But may I even dare compare

The dazzling sunshine to her face.²

Figures of speech to describe a woman's loveliness have been the medium of poets in all lands. The Chinese have a few which have a specific Oriental flavor: fingers like blades of grass, skin like purest ointment hard congealed, neck like larvae on the tree which shine so long and white, teeth like melon seeds behind their screen concealed, eyebrows curved upon the field like horn of silkworm moth, her moth-winged ebony eyebrows, willow-walk.

Couturiers delight in inventing new names for shades of color to advance their latest creations, and the Chinese have been doing the same for ages with the most delightful and original results: "bats' brown, onion green, apes blood red.

Figures of speech are woven into everyday conversation as well as into the classical tomes. Mencius, the disciple of Confucius, liked to use figures of speech. One of his, expressing utter impossibility, is well-known to the Chinese.