Classical Chinese: Rouzer, Lesson 1

Liu Xiang 劉向, Archivist and Collector.

Rouzer, Paul. A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, distributed by Harvard University Press, 2007. It's clear enough now that for my teaching and even my PhD work, I need better classical chops. I'm beginning at the beginning -- back to my teacher's basic textbook.

I have a recurring dream that I have to go back to elementary school, because it turns out I didn't actually finish some crucial credits. It's not entirely a nightmare, because I always imagine that I would do quite well in grade school, seeing as how I spell and write sentences at or above my grade level. Reading this book from the beginning, I get that feeling again. The first few lessons at least are quite easy, but of course they are also rabbit holes as well -- practically any line of classical Chinese, no matter how short or seemingly insignificant, seems capable of supplying adventures of the literary and linguistic kind.

Lesson 1: A Few Proverbs

知命者不怨天，知己者不怨人

He who knows Fate does not complain to Heaven; he who knows himself does not complain to men.

禍生於欲得，福生於自禁；聖人以心導耳目，小人以耳目導心。

Bad fortune is born of the desire for gain; good fortune is born of self restriction. The sage uses the mind to guide ear and eye; the inferior person uses ear and eye to guide the mind.

為善者天報以德，為不善者天報以禍。

Those who are good, Heaven repays with inner virtue; those who are not good, Heaven repays with bad fortune.

A Few Notes:

Proverb 1

知命者不怨天，知己者不怨人

He who knows Fate does not complain to Heaven; he who knows himself does not complain to men.

The term yuan 怨, which I translate here as the simple verb "complain," is also sometimes translated as "rancor," and refers to the deep indignation of a person who has not got what they want -- the classic example is the Confucian whose king will not listen to his advice. Yuan-rancor is a fraught concept because it demands expression but can only remain honorable if it is not whining. Hence the virtuous trait yuan'er bu nu 怨而不怒, to have rancor without complaint. This proverb perhaps gives us more clarification of yuan-rancor: its expression as a frustrating song to Heaven must mean that the singer does not "know" Fate; that is to say, he is not resigned to the workings of Fate, but has a strong desire to establish his own will.

In the second statement, whining is suspicious activity because there is the distinct possibility that the truly knowledgeable person would know to blame only himself. I could imagine arguing that a person of true understanding could at all times see that the decisions they have made have got them to this imperiled state, and so that person would not blame anyone else for his problems.

One sort of wants to link these statements together: on the one hand, you should not blame Heaven since Fate is fickle and everything crashes down at some point anyway. And on the other hand, you are most likely a big factor in any bad situation that arises in your life, so you should not whine about yourself too much. There is a strong sense of "shut up or put up," of learning to simply bear adversity in good form, without whining.

Proverb 3:

為善者天報以德，為不善者天報以禍。

Those who are good, Heaven repays with inner virtue; those who are not good, Heaven repays with bad fortune.

As we saw in the second proverb, "bad fortune" 禍 is more likely to be opposed with good fortune, but here it is paired with de, one of those rich philosophical terms whose meaning has been the subject of conversation for thousands of years. I haven't read Benjamin Hoff's book The Te of Piglet yet, but this proverb gives me a sudden desire to do so, because I think Hoff may have been on the right track by associating De (="Te") with the smallness, modesty, and general self-abnegation of Piglet. Hoff's message, I presume, is that we should all be a little like Piglet. Reading liberally, we might have it that in this proverb, the term shan 善, "good," describes the basic motivation to improve the self in an honest way, and the Chinese opinion is that the virtues of smallness, modesty and more generally the ability to adjust to the situation at hand will be the result of this basic good motive.

A little context:

The Shuo yuan 說苑, or "Garden of sayings," is a first-century BCE compilation by the great archivista Liu Xiang. To Liu Xiang, working hard every day in the Han Imperial Library, the work must have been like so many files that I have created to store little stories, images, sayings -- snippets, really -- that don't seem to go anywhere else but somehow seem to the reader who encounters them that they should not be lost, that they have some utility, either as wisdom or as records, but always because they bring the past back to life.

If you go over to The Chinese Text Project, a tremendous undertaking by Donald Sturgeon (thanks, Mr. Sturgeon!) you can see the entire text of the "Garden." You will see first of all that it is divided into twenty sections; all of these proverbs come from the 16th section, titled Tan cong 談叢, or "Grove of conversation." This metaphor of a garden, which contains little "groves," seemed whimsical to me at one point, and then quaint later, but Pauline Yu points out that it is actually a sophisticated design principle:

...[I]n fact, in the Chinese tradition if a large collection of works by more than one author is not called a "grove of letters" (wen lin 文林), then it will more than likely be named some variety of "literary garden" (wen yuan 文苑). Anthologies, indeed, are in many respects very much like gardens, for they are usually carefully designed, with individual works or plants selected and ordered according to a particular scheme or sequence. (from "Charting the Landscape of Chinese Poetry")

I unfortunately do not know much about the "Garden of sayings," and so won't go into the possible schemes and sequences in it here -- though I really feel like doing that right now rather than working on my dissertation.

Section 16, "Grove of conversation," has 74 short texts, all of which seem to be proverbs or long paragraphs of proverbs. Paul takes his first proverb from entry 22, which is the longest of them all:

無不為者，無不能成也；無不欲者，無不能得也。眾正之積，福無不及也；眾邪之積，禍無不逮也。力勝貧，謹勝禍，慎勝害，戒勝災。為善者天報以德，為不善者 天報以禍。君子得時如水，小人得時如火。謗道己者，心之罪也；尊賢己者，心之力也。心之得，萬物不足為也；心之失，獨心不能守也。子不孝，非吾子也；交不 信，非吾友也。食其口而百節肥，灌其本而枝葉茂；本傷者枝槁，根深者末厚。為善者得道，為惡者失道。惡語不出口，苟言不留耳；務偽不長，喜虛不久。義士不 欺心，廉士不妄取；以財為草，以身為寶。慈仁少小，恭敬耆老。犬吠不驚，命曰金城；常避危殆，命曰不悔。富必念貧，壯必念老，年雖幼少，慮之必早。夫有禮 者相為死，無禮者亦相為死；貴不與驕期，驕自來；驕不與亡期，亡自至。踒人日夜願一起，盲人不忘視。知者始於悟，終於諧；愚者始於樂，終於哀。高山仰止， 景行行止，力雖不能，心必務為。慎終如始，常以為戒；戰戰慄慄，日慎其事。聖人之正，莫如安靜；賢者之治，故與眾異。

All of the statements here seem to be proverbs, though there a fun and interesting variation in their quality. I'm out of time right now, but I will make an exercise out of translating each of these little proverbs in turn. To begin:

無不為者，無不能成也；無不欲者，無不能得也。

He who has nothing that he does not do has nothing he cannot complete; he who has nothing he does not want has nothing he cannot obtain.

He who tries it all can finish it all; he who desires it all can get it all.

The first translation is an effort to represent the literal meaning of the Chinese, which applies double negatives and nominalization to achieve a Yoda-like effect of wisdom. In the second, I try to rewrite it as a proverb more congenial to Western standards (suggestions eagerly accepted).

This first proverb seems a little unwise, doesn't it? Unless I've made some major mistake (quite possible), it seems to recommend that we should be infinitely ambitious and greedy. I suppose it was intended to be spoken to lazy boys who are too self-satisfied, but still, I can't imagine ever using this proverb.

More to come!