Chinese Literature Podcast IX

[x_los]

Merry Christmas to a Friend: Du Mu Poetry and Baby Names

On a late-Tang poem about the passage of time, growing older, and refinding an old friend or early love.

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Interview with Antonio Leggieri

“On the late imperial novel Guzhang Juechen”. Sort of an expanded huaben—a transitional moment between the short stories and the era of great novels. 

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Pu Songling, Part 1: Lian Xiang

The poly adventures of a ghost, a fox spirit and a lonely scholar who all hook up. The guys don’t mention an f/f side tension, which is odd because it sounds quite present. 

They were chiller about sex this time; maybe I’m off-based with the Christianity Bros theory.

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Stephen Durrant and the Zuo Commentary

An interview with the translator of this Confucian classic, where he explains the shape of the text and the pedagogic social use he believes it may have had. 

A really neat observation: in both huaben and this far earlier commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals, if someone is described by the narrative as mei, beautiful, that's almost always the sign a good thing will happen, a positive value judgement. If a man sees a woman as mei, beautiful, it's a sign the narrative is headed somewhere terrible. This is about the mechanics of being seen by someone, being perceived to be ‘mei’: the failure of containment on the woman’s part and of his restraint, or containment of his gaze and appreciation, on the man’s. (Because huaben are all like, What happens if Containment fails? Nothing good.)

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Marriage Manga with Nick Stember 

I’m sorry, the CLP boys are only going to bring up now, after how many hours of Moaning about the mid-century’s ‘degraded’ literature, the Maoist hatred of complex allusion, and the huge Disruption of the Cultural Revolution, that before 1950, most women in China could not read? That’s such a fucking PERTINENT POINT, IN YOUR CONVERSATION ABOUT OVERLY SIMPLISTIC AND STRAIGHTFORWARD ART IN THIS PERIOD. It seems as though within a generation or so, the franchise of literacy, at minimum, doubled. Did they think that would have zero impact, or adjustment period? They’re sitting here like ‘ :( it got less elite man what changed—’ Well I don’t know chaps, maybe dense baroque intertextuality is indeed alienating when most people cannot even, or have only just learned to: read? 

For a Western analogy, by 1950s the mid century Victorian literacy acts had absolutely creamed the UK’s previously terrible literacy rates. This process was imperfect, and in historical terms the change was still relatively recent. But this was still a wildly different situation for public education to be in, compared to China in the same decade; I was outright bitch-slapped by this information. 

Just. If you’re having a WHOLE ASS long-standing grudge about ‘simplistic art’ and never once telling me, or seeming to consider, ‘by the way, this is when literacy actually became widespread’: what the fuck? ‘The Cultural Revolution was a massive disruption!’ Well how much ‘culture’ is a bitch who cannot read receiving and transmitting there, Sebastian? Not ‘none’, but there’s a fuckin impact, innit. Whose culture was disrupted, and who was enfranchised? 

I’m not trying to be Tankie about this, but the guys keep asking shit like, ‘is the crudity of this pamphlet telling women they can divorce husbands who abuse them a sign that the country’s artistic production is crippled under Mao? That was rhetorical; it definitely was.’ 

The key thing, I think, is whether women know they can divorce their abusive husbands? I feel that is—the most pertinent aspect of this, rather than the artistic virtue of the prose employed (and they keep using propaganda here in a way I feel they would not for a comparative informational text in a Western setting: ah, yes, the Propaganda of federal pamphlets advising black American southerners they are indeed entitled to vote, no matter what the local government claims to the contrary). Like, gov.uk isn’t winning the Nobel for literature right now either, so what even is their basis for comparison? 

If more people can read and write than previously could, and more (largely marginalised) people are enabled to make art, you will struggle to convince me that is not a net win, especially long term, regardless of whether the constructed structures of craft valuation established by elite artists and patrons are disrupted by that rush of fresh blood. The podcast’s guest pushes back somewhat, making much the point I would about the breadth of enfranchisement, but the hosts swing right back around to reinforce a straight up White Russian style reading.

Just a real clown-shoes framing these lads bring to the table. The dulcet tone of the honked nose, like the ‘guan guan’ cry of the circling ospreys, is never far-off. 

Comments

[superborb]

Are pamphlets usually analyzed for artistic merit? I feel like... sometimes Old Stuff by virtue of being old is?

[x_los]

Yeah, it's that energy, like, imo not enough attention to the functional aims of the artefact and how those don't necessarily include and may even run contrary to high art.