Seven Lectures on Wang Guowei's Renjian Cihua

Florence Chia-Ying Yeh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351611145
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

Renjian cihua is a masterpiece of literary criticism written by Wang Guowei (1877–1927), a scholar of the Chinese classics who lived during the late Qing and early Republican periods. Since its publication in 1908 and 1909, it has been one of the most influential academic works in China. Elegantly written, Wang's set of "remarks on ci poetry" ( cihua ) retains a traditional Chinese impressionistic critical approach, and can present difficulties to the common reader. This set of lectures by Florence Chia-ying Yeh explains the text to readers, making accessible Wang's famous theory of jingjie ("aesthetic realm" or "artistic conception"), his views on how the ci differs from the shi genre of Chinese poetry, and his critical judgments of various famous ci poets from the Tang, Five Dynasties, and Song periods. The lectures are presented here in an English translation by Maija Bell Samei.

Lecture 1 Wang Guowei, the Ci genre, and the notion of Jingjie

Wang Guowei 王國維 (1877–1927) was an extraordinary scholar. The key to his greatness, and the reason he gained such widespread respect, is that what he sought was so different from what those who call themselves “scholars” seek today. Research and scholarship in our time is actually motivated by utilitarian ends. Some doctoral students today, for example, aim to get a PhD degree, in order to get a better job, a better rank, and better remuneration. This is a very widespread phenomenon in Chinese educational and scholarly circles. Furthermore, what many of these scholars seek is not true learning, but a scholarly appearance. Wang Guowei, in contrast, sought true learning, and not just ordinary learning: as I argued in my book on Wang Guowei and his literary criticism, what Wang Guowei was seeking was Truth.¹

What basis do I have for saying that what Wang Guowei was seeking was Truth? This was first pointed out by Chen Yinke 陳寅恪 (1890–1969) in the epitaph he wrote for Wang Guowei, which is inscribed on a memorial stele in front of the tomb containing his personal effects on the grounds of Tsinghua University in Beijing. The epitaph is quite long. I would like to share with you just two excerpts:

The scholar’s learning and research should involve extricating his heart and mind from the fetters of vulgar notions of reality, so that the truth is advanced. If thought is not free, one may as well be dead.

The Teacher’s writings were perhaps at times unclear. The Teacher’s claims may on some points be debatable. It is only his independence of spirit, his freedom of thought, that will endure as long as earth and sky, shining eternally with the sun, moon and stars.

What is meant here by “scholar”? A scholar is simply one who studies. In the four ancient Chinese categories of “scholar, farmer, workman, merchant,” “scholar” is ranked the highest.² In the Analects we find the phrase, “The scholar sets his intent upon the Way” 士志於道 (Analects 4.9). What is the scholar’s ideal? His ideal is to find the genuine truth, the fundamental principle governing what it means to be human. Therefore, the highest goal of a scholar’s learning or study should not be to obtain a degree, or to use learning to gain personal advantage. Rather, it should be precisely what Chen Yinke said was the aim of Wang Guowei’s learning: to free one’s thinking, one’s ideals, from within the confines of common ideas, “the fetters of vulgar notions of reality.” And what are these fetters of common notions of reality? Apart from what I have already mentioned, the seeking after degrees and high position, there is also the traditional ideal of “establishing a reputation to bring glory to one’s parents” 揚名聲顯父母³ – in other words, if you make a name for yourself, you can bring glory to your parents by way of your accomplishment. This is a no less “vulgar” goal than personal advantage. According to Chen Yinke, the goal of learning for true scholars is to seek Truth. In other words, we study in order to uncover the Truth and pursue it. This is why “if thought is not free, one may as well be dead;” if one does not have the freedom to seek Truth, then life has become a kind of suffering. Chen Yinke thought this was the reason for Wang Guowei’s suicide.

Wang Guowei was born in 1877 and died in 1927 at the age of only fifty years. For a scholar, the fifties are the golden years of research, the time when one’s thought is most vigorous, mature, and complete. It is the age at which one reaps the greatest harvest from one’s efforts. And yet it was at this age that Wang Guowei committed suicide. In the Summer Palace in Beijing, there is a place called Yuzao Pavilion, where Wang drowned himself in Kunming Lake. Why would he kill himself? To understand this, we have to talk a little about his historical context. Mencius said it well, “When one reads the poems and writings of the ancients, can it be right not to know something about them as men? Hence one tries to understand the age in which they lived.”⁴ This is meant to make you think: if you read someone’s works, but do not understand his time, or why he became the kind of person he became, how can you understand his works?

Since no person can be divorced from his or her time, I would like to talk a little about the time in which Wang Guowei lived. Wang lived during the period in which China’s last dynasty, the Qing, was losing its power. The late Qing saw the establishment of many unequal treaties, by which China ceded territory and was forced to pay indemnities. At the time, all the great powers were fighting to grab a slice of China’s territory. In 1840, the first Opium War broke out, and in 1842 the Treaty of Nanjing was signed. In 1860, the joint forces of England and France occupied Beijing, and the Treaty of Beijing was signed. When Wang Guowei was born on December 3, 1877, in Haiding, Zhejiang province, this was the context into which he was born.

I have a photograph taken of me in front of this commemorative stele at Qinghua, and another with a bust of Wang Guowei, taken in 1987, when Wang Guowei’s youngest son, Wang Dengming 王登明, invited me to Haiding to visit Wang Guowei’s former residence. I received this invitation because of the book I had published on his father in 1981, entitled Wang Guowei ji qi wenxue piping 王國維及其文學批評 (Wang Guowei and His Literary Criticism). The book was published in Hong Kong, and subsequently reprinted at different times on the mainland by Guangdong Renmin, Hebei Jiaoyu, and Beijing University presses. Wang Dengming had read this book, and expressly invited me to visit his hometown. The photo shows me at Wang’s former residence with the bronze statue of Wang Guowei that stands there. I have another photo from 1988, when I went to Taiwan to teach, and Wang Guowei’s daughter Wang Dongming 王東明 invited me to her home for a visit.

The background I gave above was from before Wang Guowei was born. When Wang was 18, in 1894, the first Sino-Japanese War broke out, which led to the utter defeat of China’s naval forces and ended in the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki (or the Maguan Treaty) in 1895. Another major event occurred in 1898, when Wang Guowei was twenty-two years old: the Guangxu 光緒 Emperor undertook the Hundred Days’ Reform, an attempt to rescue the nation through reform that unfortunately ended in failure.

Under the aggression of foreign powers, though the country was poor and the politics degenerate, still the Chinese people had many courageous and idealistic youth who were seeking a means of national salvation. One of these was a young man named Luo Zhenyu 羅振玉 (1866–1940), who had established an agricultural study society in Shanghai. Why an agricultural study society? Because agriculture is a foundation of nation-building. In the Analects, Confucius said that in order to effectively govern a country, “make sure there is sufficient food to eat, sufficient arms for defense, and that the common people have confidence in their leaders” (Analects 12.7).⁵

One must first have adequate food so that the people can eat their fill, then adequate armed forces in order to resist invaders, and finally, one must instil in the people confidence in their government. It is easy to see why the production of food should be of utmost importance. In the old society of China’s past, between famine, the chaos of war, and repeated bandit attacks, the people often did not eat their fill. I myself was born in 1924, and am eighty-five years old this year. When I was young, I would often see reports in the newspaper of famine in this or that county or city, sometimes caused by plagues of locusts, sometimes by flooding, sometimes by drought. At these times, the people were truly destitute. Having no food to eat, they would eat grass roots, tree bark, and even clay – in particular a kind of clay they called Guanyin clay. Those who ate it routinely developed a distended abdomen and died. Luo Zhenyu established his agricultural study society to promote the development of agriculture so that the people could have enough to eat.

Actually there were many young people at that time seeking a means of strengthening the country and enabling it to prosper. My own uncle went to Japan to study, and my father entered Beijing University’s Foreign Languages Department, eventually studying aeronautics. These young people chose to study the new learning in order to be of service to their country.

During the Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898, the Reformist Party established a newspaper in Shanghai called Shiwu Bao 時務報. When the twenty-two-year-old Wang Guowei left his relatively remote hometown of Haiding and came to the bustling metropolis of Shanghai, he joined the staff of Shiwu Bao as a proofreader.⁶

As for Luo Zhenyu, at this time he was also in Shanghai, running his agricultural study group. This group initially set out to promote agriculture, but at the time China’s state of scientific advancement was quite behind, so that people had to learn from Japan and the West. The first step in learning from Japan and the West had to be the translation of books.

This was exactly why my own father entered the Department of Foreign Languages, in order to learn to translate aeronautical books and materials. To translate these books, there was a need to train translators. This is why, when Luo set up his Agriculture Study Group, he also established the Dongwen Study Society 東文學社 (Dongwen means Eastern Language, and at the time referred to Japanese). Japan had seen great progress following the Meiji Restoration, and had embraced a great deal of new Western scientific knowledge. Luo Zhenyu established the Dongwen Study Society, and engaged some Japanese teachers to staff it. At the same time, Wang Guowei asked the head of the Shiwu Bao newspaper office, Wang Kangnian 汪康年 (1860–1911), if in addition to his work as a proofreader he could improve himself by obtaining some of the new learning. He asked if every afternoon he could spend two hours studying at Luo Zhenyu’s Dongwen Study Society. Wang Kangnian agreed. This is how Wang entered the Dongwen Study Society, and began his study of modern Western culture.

I mentioned above that Western culture was first introduced to China through Japanese translations. The reforms of the Meiji Restoration were modelled on the West, and we Chinese were learning Western culture through them. There were two Japanese teachers working with the Dongwen Study Society at the time, one called Fujita Toyohashi 藤田豐八 (1869–1929), and the other Taoka Reiun 田岡佐代 (1870–1912), who was a scholar of the German philosophers Kant and Schopenhauer. Wang Guowei was attracted to the new learning because of seeing China’s weakness. But after encountering Taoka Reiun through the Study Society and reading Kant and Schopenhauer, he started to become interested in Western philosophy.

Philosophy is interested in addressing questions of human life. What is the value and meaning of the few decades of life given to a person to live in this world? Is there no meaning or purpose apart from gaining wealth and enjoyment? This question arises especially when we see that people who have access to wealth and enjoyment are not necessarily happy; having wealth does not inoculate a person against vexation and anxiety. Ouyang Xiu 歐陽修 (1007–1072), in his “Rhapsody on the Sounds of Autumn” 秋聲賦 (Qiu sheng fu), says, “If man is an animal, he is the only one with spirit” 人為動物，惟物之靈.⁷ Cats, dogs, or pets one might raise can develop feelings of affection for their owners, but do they have thought? Can they think about the meaning of life? I really don’t know. On the other hand, Mencius says, “Slight is the difference between man and the brutes” 人之所以異於禽獸者幾希.⁸ If all one has is the desire for food, drink, and sex, how is one different from the animals? The question of the meaning and value of human life is a major one. It was questions like these that suddenly attracted Wang Guowei to philosophy, and started him off on h...