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Qian Zhongshu

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In this Chinese name, the family name is Qian.
Qian Zhongshu
Born(1910-11-21)November 21, 1910
Wuxi, Jiangsu
DiedDecember 19, 1998(1998-12-19) (aged 88)
Beijing
Nationality Qing dynasty
 Republic of China
 People's Republic of China
EducationTsinghua University (BA, 1933)
Exeter College, Oxford (BLitt, 1937)
Spouse
​
(m. 1935)​
ChildrenQian Yuan [zh]
ParentQian Jibo [zh]

Qian Zhongshu (November 21, 1910 – December 19, 1998), also transliterated as Ch'ien Chung-shu[1] or Dzien Tsoong-su,[citation needed] was a renowned 20th century Chinese literary scholar and writer, known for his wit and erudition.

He is best known for his satirical novel Fortress Besieged. His works of nonfiction are characterized by large amount of quotations in both Chinese and Western languages such as English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Latin.[2] He also played an important role in digitizing Chinese classics late in his life.[3]

Qian created a profound theoretical meaning for the three features of motivational nature, empathetic nature, and rational nature of aesthetic emotion for literature by deeply studying questions such as the source of emotion motivation, the ways to express emotion, and the optimal comfort in emotion in writing. He believed that the source of emotion motivation is poems because poems can convey human's emotion. When people transfer their emotion to inanimate objects, they give these objects life, which is the ways to express emotion. Also, Qian insisted that humans cannot express their emotion as they want; instead, they should rationally control their emotion to a certain degree so that they can achieve an optimal appreciation status.[4]

Names
Traditional Chinese: 錢鍾書
Simplified Chinese: 钱锺书[5]
Pinyin: Qián Zhōngshū
Wade-Giles: Ch'ien Chung-shu
Zi: Zheliang (哲良)
  Mocun (默存)
Hao: Huaiju (槐聚)

Life

Most of what is known about Qian's early life relies on an essay written by his wife Yang Jiang.[6] Born in Wuxi, Qian Zhongshu was the son of Qian Jibo (T: 錢基博, S: 钱基博), a conservative Confucian scholar, landed gentry, and Chinese language professor at Tsinghua, St. John's University, and National Central University (Nanking), respectively. By family tradition, Qian Zhongshu grew up under the care of his eldest uncle, who did not have a son. Qian was initially named Yangxian (仰先 ; "respect the ancients"), with the courtesy name Zheliang (哲良; "sagacious and upright"). However, when he was one year old, in accordance with a tradition of zhuazhou, practiced in many parts of China, he was given a few objects laid out in front of him for his "grabbing"; he grabbed a book. His uncle thusly renamed him Zhongshu,[7] literally "fond of books," while Yangxian became his intimate name. Qian was a rather talkative child. His father later changed his courtesy name to Mocun (默存), literally "to keep silent," in the hope that he would talk less.

Both Qian's name and courtesy name forecasted his future life. While he remained talkative when talking about literature with friends, he kept silent most of the time on politics and social activities. Qian was indeed very fond of books. When he was young, his uncle often brought him along to teahouses during the day. There, Qian was left alone to read storybooks on folklore and historical events, which he would repeat to his cousins upon returning home.

At the age of 6, Qian went to Qinshi primary school and stayed home for less than half a year due to illness. At the age of 7, Qian studied in a private school of a relative's family. Due to inconvenience, he quit school a year later and was taught by his uncle. When Qian was 11, he entered the first grade at Donglin Elementary School, and his uncle died this year. [8] He continued living with his widowed aunt, even though their living conditions drastically worsened as her family's fortunes dwindled. Under the strict tutelage of his father, Qian mastered classical Chinese. At the age of 14, Qian left home to attend Taowu middle school,an English-language missionary school in Soochow, after being scolded by his father, he studied hard and improved his writing level.[8] In 1927, Qian was admitted to Furen Middle School, an English-language Missionary School in Wuxi,where he manifested his talent in language. At the age of 20, Qian’s aunt died.[8]

Despite comparatively lower score in mathematics, Qian excelled in both Chinese and English languages. Thus, he was accepted into the Department of Foreign Languages of Tsinghua University in 1929, ranking 57 out of 174 male students.[9] One of his few friends was the budding Sinologist and comparatist Achilles Fang.[10] Qian also frequently cut classes, though he more than made up for this in Tsinghua's large library, which he boasted of having "read through."[10] It was probably in his college days that Qian began his lifelong habit of collecting quotations and taking reading notes. At Tsinghua, Qian studied with professors, such as Wu Mi 吳宓, George T. Yeh (Yeh Kungchao 葉公超), and Wen Yuan-ning 溫源寧,[11] In 1932, he met his wife, Yang Jiang, who became a successful playwright and translator.[8] In 1933, Qian became engaged to Yang Jiang, and they married in 1935.[8] For the biographical facts of Qian's following years, the two memoirs by his wife can be consulted.[12] Yang Jiang wrote, "Zhongshu's 'foolishness' could not be contained in books, but just had to gush forth'".[13] Two years after Qian graduated from Tsinghua University in 1933, Qian taught at Kwanghua University in Shanghai and contributed to English-language publications such as The China Critic.[14]

In 1935, Qian received a Boxer Indemnity Scholarship to further his studies abroad. Together with his wife, Qian headed for the University of Oxford in Britain. After spending two years at Exeter College, Oxford, he received a Baccalaureus Litterarum (Bachelor of Literature).[15] Shortly after his daughter Qian Yuan (T: 錢瑗, S: 钱瑗) was born in England in 1937, he studied for one more year in the University of Paris in France. In 1938, he returned to China and was appointed as a full professor at Tsinghua University, which, due to the war, had relocated to Kunming, in Yunnan province and become part of Southwestern United University. In 1939, after Qian returned to Shanghai to visit his relatives, he directly went to Hunan to take care of his sick father and temporarily left Southwestern United University. In 1941, During the Pearl Harbor incident, Qian was temporarily trapped in Shanghai.[8]

Owing to the unstable situation during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War, Qian did not hold any long-term jobs. However, it was during the late 1930s and 1940s that he wrote most of his Chinese-language fiction, including Fortress Besieged and the story collection Human, Beast, Ghost, as well as the essay collection Written in the Margins of Life. After Japan's defeat, in the late 1940s, he worked in the National Central Library in Nanjing, editing its English-language publication, Philobiblon.

The old gate of Tsinghua University, where Qian Zhongshu studied and taught

In 1949, Qian was ranked on the list of National First-class Professors (T: 國家一級教授, S: 国家一级教授) and commenced his academic work in his alma mater. Four years later, an administrative adjustment saw Tsinghua changed into a science and technology-based institution, with its Arts departments merged into Peking University (PKU). Qian was relieved of teaching duties and worked entirely in the Institute of Literary Studies (T: 文學硏究所, S: 文学研究所) under PKU. Qian is a senior researcher at the institute, and his wife Yang Jiang is also a researcher.[8] He also worked as part of a small team in charge of the translation of Mao Tse-tung's Selected Works and poetry.

During the Cultural Revolution, like many other prominent intellectuals of the time, Qian suffered persecution. Appointed to be a janitor, he was robbed of his favorite pastime, reading. Having no access to books, he had to read his reading notes. He began to form the plan to write Guan Zhui Bian (T: 管錐編, S: 管锥编) (which Qian himself gave the English title of Limited Views) during this period. Qian, his wife, along with their daughter survived the hardships of Cultural Revolution, but their son-in-law, a history teacher, was driven to suicide.

After the Cultural Revolution, Qian returned to research. From 1978 to 1980, he visited several universities in Italy, the United States and Japan, impressing his audience with his wit and erudition. In 1982, he was instated as the deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He then began working on Guan Zhui Bian, which occupied the next decade of his life.

While Guan Zhui Bian established his fame in the academic field, his novel Fortress Besieged introduced him to the public. Fortress Besieged was reprinted in 1980, and became a best-seller. Many illegal reproductions and "continuations" followed. Qian's fame rose to its height when the novel was adapted into a TV serial in 1990 which was acted by some famous Chinese actors, such as Daoming Chen and Da Ying.[16]

Qian returned to research, but escaped from social activities. Most of his late life was confined to his reading room. He consciously kept a distance from the mass media and political figures. Readers kept visiting the secluded scholar, and an anecdote goes that Qian when approached by a British admirer, remarked: "Is it necessary for one to know the hen if one loves the eggs it lays?"

Qian entered a hospital in 1994, his daughter also became ill in 1995. On March 4,1997, Qian’s daughter died of cancer. On December 19, 1998, Qian died in Beijing.[17]

Former Residence

Qian's former residence, covering 1,600 square meters, is located at Xinjiexiang #30 and #32 in Wuxi, Nanjing. It was built in 1923 by his grandfather Qian Fujiong. In 1926 his uncle Qian Sunqin built five buildings and several auxiliary rooms on the west side of the back of the house, covering an area of 667.6 square meters. The whole group of buildings are typical Jiangnan courtyard houses. Inside the residence, there are some unique separate buildings, such as Haixu Shulou and Meihua Shuwu.[18] In 2018, it applied for China's significant cultural relics protection units. The former residence has related exhibitions and is open to the public without fees.

Pictures of Qian's former residence

Works

Qian lived in Shanghai from 1941 to 1945, which was then under Japanese occupation. Many of his works were written or published during this chaotic period of time. A collection of short essays, Written in the Margins of Life (Traditional: 寫在人生邊上, Simplified: 写在人生边上) was published in 1941. Human, Beast, Ghost (T: 人‧獸‧鬼, S: 人‧兽‧鬼), a collection of short stories, mostly satiric, was published in 1946. His most celebrated work Fortress Besieged (T: 圍城, S: 围城) appeared in 1947, but not until 1980s that it receives more attention. On the Art of Poetry (T: 談藝錄, S: 谈艺录), written in classical Chinese, was published in 1948.

Besides rendering Mao Tse-tung's selected works into English, Qian was appointed to produce an anthology of poetry of the Song Dynasty when he was working in the Institute of Literary Studies. The Selected and Annotated Song Dynasty Poetry (T: 宋詩選注, S: 宋诗选注) was published in 1958. Despite Qian's quoting the Chairman, and his selecting a considerable number of poems that reflect class struggle, the work was criticized for not being Marxist enough. The work was praised highly by the overseas critics, though, especially for its introduction and footnotes. In a new preface for the anthology written in 1988, Qian said that the work was an embarrassing compromise between his personal taste and the prevailing academic atmosphere.

Seven Pieces Patched Together (T: 七綴集, S: 七缀集), a collection of seven pieces of literary criticism written (and revised) over years in vernacular Chinese, was published in 1984, and has been translated by Duncan Campbell as Patchwork: Seven Essays on Art and Literature. This collection includes the famous essay "Lin Shu's Translation" (T: 林紓的翻譯, S: 林纾的翻译).

Qian's magnum opus is the five-volume Guan Zhui Bian (T: 管錐編, S: 管锥编), literally the Pipe-Awl Collection, translated into English as Limited Views. Begun in the 1980s and published in its current form in the mid-1990s, it is an extensive collection of notes and short essays on poetics, semiotics, literary history and related topics written in classical Chinese.

Qian's command of the cultural traditions of classical and modern Chinese, ancient Greek (in translations), Latin, English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish allowed him to construct a towering structure of polyglot and cross-cultural allusions. He took a range of Chinese classical texts as the basis of this work, including the I-Ching, Classic of Poetry, Verses of Chu, The Commentary of Tso, Records of the Grand Historian, Tao Te Ching, Lieh-tzu, Jiaoshi Yilin, Extensive Records of the T'ai-p'ing Era and the Complete Prose of the Pre-Tang Dynasties (T: 全上古三代秦漢三國六朝文, S: 全上古三代秦汉三国六朝文).

Broadly familiar with the Western history of ideas, Qian shed new lights on the Chinese classical texts by comparing them with Western works, showing their likeness, or more often their apparent likeness and essential differences.

"It is a monumental work of modern scholarship that evinces the author's great learning and his effort to bring the ancient and the modern, Chinese and Western, into mutual illumination."[19]

Qian Zhongshu is one of the best-known Chinese authors in the Western world. Fortress Besieged has been translated into English, French, German, Russian, Japanese and Spanish. It represents an alternative strand of modernism, which has long remained hidden and unexamined in the history of modern Chinese literature.[20] "Humans, Beasts, and Ghosts" has been translated into English, French,[21] and Italian.[22]

Besides being one of the great masters of written vernacular Chinese in the 20th century,[23] Qian was also one of the last authors to produce substantial works in classical Chinese. Some regard his choice of writing Guan Zhui Bian (Limited Views) in classical Chinese as a challenge to the assertion that classical Chinese is incompatible with modern and Western ideas, an assertion often heard during the May Fourth Movement.[24] Ronald Egan argues that the work contains an implicit negative commentary on the Cultural Revolution.[25]

Posthumous publications

A 13-volume edition of Works of Qian Zhongshu (Traditional: 錢鍾書集, Simplified: 钱锺书集/钱钟书集) was published in 2001 by the Joint Publishing, a hard-covered deluxe edition, in contrast to all of Qian's works published during his lifetime which are cheap paperbacks. The publisher claimed that the edition had been proofread by many experts.[26] One of the most valuable parts of the edition which demonstrating Qian's writing ability while blending humor and irony.[27], titled Marginalias on the Marginalias of Life (T: 寫在人生邊上的邊上, S: 写在人生边上的边上), is a collection of Qian's writings previously scattered in periodicals, magazines and other books. The writings collected there are, however, arranged without any visible order.

Other posthumous publications of Qian's works have drawn harsh criticism. The official writing of Supplements to and Revisions of Songshi Jishi began in 1982. In the following ten years, Qian invested a lot of energy to make extensive and in-depth Supplements to and Revisions of Songshi Jishi.[28] The 10-volume Supplements to and Revisions of Songshi Jishi (T: 宋詩紀事補正, S:宋诗纪事补正), published in 2003, was criticized as a shoddy publication. Liaoning People’s Publishing House published Qian Zhongshu’s ''Supplements to and Revisions of Songshi Jishi in 2003.[29] A facsimile of Qian's holograph (known as 宋詩紀事補訂(手稿影印本) in Chinese) has been published in 2005, by another publisher. The facsimiles of parts of Qian's notebooks appeared in 2004, and have similarly drawn criticism on account of blatant inadvertency.[30] In 2005, a collection of Qian's English works was published. Again, it was lashed for its editorial incompetence.[31]

The Commercial Press (Shangwu yinshuguan) has, per an agreement with Yang Jiang, begun publishing photoreproductions of Qian Zhongshu's reading notes, totaling several score volumes in both Chinese and foreign languages.[32]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Hsia Chih-tsing (1999) [first edition in 1961]. A History of Modern Chinese Fiction (3 ed.). Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. p. 432. ISBN 0-253-33477-2.
  2. ^ Lu Wenhu (1990). 管锥编谈艺录索引 [Indices to Guan Zhui Bian and Tanyi Lu] (in Simplified Chinese). Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company.
  3. ^ Liu Shengqing (劉聖清); Li Shiyan (李士燕). 文化傳信集團電子漢文史資料庫建設透視. People's Daily Online (in Simplified Chinese).
  4. ^ "国家哲学社会科学学术期刊数据库". www.nssd.org. Retrieved 2020-11-10.
  5. ^ From the 1950s, in mainland China the two traditional characters 鍾 and 鐘 were both officially simplified into the character 钟, but since 2003 the two characters have been separated again, as 锺 and 钟 respectively. 钱锺书 is thus the current standard simplified form and is used, for example, in works by Qian's wife Yang Jiang, although the form 钱钟书, which was standard from the 1950s until 2003, remains in widespread use.
  6. ^ (in Chinese) "On Qian Zhongshu and the Fortress Besieged" Archived January 1, 2007, at the Wayback Machine (T: 記錢鍾書與《圍城》, S: 记钱锺书与《围城》), 1985, collected in Yang Jiang's Selected Prose (T: 楊絳散文, S: 杨绛散文), Hangzhou: Zhejiang Literary Press, 1994.
  7. ^ "CCTV-文化频道-纪念钱钟书先生". www.cctv.com. Retrieved 2020-11-09.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g Qian, Zhongshu (July 2017). Weicheng. Shanghai: People's Literature Publishing House. ISBN 9787020127894.
  9. ^ "钱钟书、闻一多、季羡林……真是被清华破格录取的？". www.tsinghua.org.cn. Retrieved 2020-11-07.
  10. ^ a b Kelly, Jeanne and Nathan K. Mao. "Afterword." Fortress Besieged. By Qian Zhongshu. Tr. Kelly and Mao. New York: New Directions Publishing, 2004.
  11. ^ Wen Yuan-ning, and others. Imperfect Understanding: Intimate Portraits of Modern Chinese Celebrities. Edited by Christopher Rea (Amherst, NY: Cambria, 2018), pp. 18-20.
  12. ^ Yang Jiang, tr. Howard Goldblatt, Six Chapters from My Life "Downunder", Seattle: University of Washington Press; Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1984; (in Chinese) Yang Jiang, We Three (T: 我們仨, S: 我们仨), Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2003.
  13. ^ Yang Jiang, tr. Jesse Field, "On Qian Zhongshu and Fortress Besieged." Renditions: A Chinese English Translation Magazine 76 (Autumn 2011), 91.
  14. ^ "The Critic Eye | China Heritage Quarterly". www.chinaheritagequarterly.org. Retrieved 2016-09-30.
  15. ^ His thesis is called "China in the English Literature of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century", collected in Adrian Hsia (ed.), The Vision of China in the English Literature of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1998.
  16. ^ Wei cheng, Daoming Chen, Ke Bi, Da Ying, Liping Lü, China Central Television (CCTV), Shanghai Cultural Development Foundation, Shanghai Film Studios, retrieved 2020-11-07{{citation}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  17. ^ Yang, Jiang (July 2003). We three. Shanghai: Life, reading, new knowledge Sanlian Bookstore. ISBN 9787108042453.
  18. ^ "CCTV-文化频道-纪念钱钟书先生". www.cctv.com. Retrieved 2020-11-09.
  19. ^ Zhang Longxi. "The 'Tao' and the 'Logos': Notes on Derrida's Critique of Logocentrism." Critical Inquiry. Vol. 11, No. 3. (Mar., 1985), pp. 385-398.
  20. ^ He, Weihua (2021). "Fortress Besieged: Cynicism and Qian Zhongshu's Narrative of the Modern Chinese "Self"". Journal of Modern Literature. 44 (2): 106–119. doi:10.2979/jmodelite.44.2.09. S2CID 234168378.
  21. ^ "Hommes, bêtes et démons - chinoise - Connaissance de l'Orient, format poche - GALLIMARD - Site Gallimard".
  22. ^ Uomini Bestie Demoni.
  23. ^ See, for example, the evaluation in Hsia Chih-tsing's A History of Modern Chinese Fiction, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999, pp. 432-60.
  24. ^ (in Chinese) 《管錐編》為什么用文言？ Archived September 28, 2007, at the Wayback Machine, 孫玉祥, 《太原日報》.
  25. ^ Egan, "Guanzhui bian, Western Citations, and the Cultural Revolution," ch. 5 in "China's Literary Cosmopolitans" (Brill, 2015)
  26. ^ (in Chinese) 钱锺书作品全集明年多家推出, 赵武平, 《中华读书报》.
  27. ^ 杜, 啸尘 (2003). 从《 写在人生边上》 看钱钟书散文的风格与魅力. 青岛科技大学学报: 社会科学版. p. 75-78.
  28. ^ 钱, 钟书 (2002). 宋诗选注. 生活讀書新知三联书店.
  29. ^ (in Chinese) 对《宋诗纪事补正》的几点意见, 陈福康, 《文汇报》, 2003年6月15日.
  30. ^ (in Chinese) 《钱钟书手稿集》的编辑错误 Archived 2005-03-07 at the Wayback Machine, 高为, 《中华读书报》.
  31. ^ (in Chinese) 《钱锺书英文文集》的编辑错误, 范旭仑, 光明网.
  32. ^ chinanews. "商务印书馆推《钱钟书手稿集》 历时15年共72卷册-中新网". www.chinanews.com. Retrieved 2016-09-30.

Portrait

Further reading

Innumerable biographies and memoirs in Chinese have been published since Qian's death.

Two critical studies of Qian's life and works in English:

Literary works by Qian in English translation:

A selected translation of Qian's most celebrated work of literary criticism, Guan Zhui Bian, with critical introduction:

An essay about Qian's critical vision and early writings:

Five of Qian's essays on poetry in French translation:

  • Qian Zhongshu, trad. Nicolas Chapuis (1987). Cinq Essais de Poetique. Christian Bourgois Editeur. ISBN 2-267-00485-2.
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