Sima Qian's Bibliography of Sorrow

Sima Qian, Historian. And, apparently, part monkey.

In the end portion of his "Letter in Reply to Ren An," Sima Qian creates an entire history of personal expression. For me, this establishes the potential scope of Chinese life writing; indeed, it is the scope of Chinese literature more generally:

古者，富貴而名磨滅，不可勝記；唯倜儻非常之人稱焉。蓋文王拘而演《周易》；仲尼厄而作《春秋》；屈原放逐，乃賦《離騷》；左丘失明，厥有《國語》；孫子臏腳，兵法修列；不韋遷蜀，世傳《呂覽》；韓非囚秦，《說難》、《孤憤》。《詩》三百篇，大抵賢聖發憤之所為作也。此人皆意有所鬱結，不得通其道，故述往事，思來者。

In-progress and very literal translation and a brief supplemental bibliography:

Among the ancients, those who gained wealth and nobility and yet still saw their names tarnished and erased cannot be completely recorded; only the untrammeled and unusual person is called to it [being recorded]. Hence King Wen was captured [at Yuli] when he expanded upn the Zhou yi; Zhong Ni was in danger when he wrote the Springs and Autumns. Qu Yuan was exiled, and so came to rhapsodize in Li sao. Zuo Qiu lost his sight, and only then was there a Guo yu. Sun Zi was stripped of his feet, thus was the Bing fa revised and complete. Buwei was exiled to Shu and yet passed down to the world the Lülan. Hanfei was imprisoned in Qin: "The Speaking on Difficulties," "Lonely Indignation." Of the Three Hundred Poems, a majority are works meant to express the frustration of worthies and sages. These men all had something dense and knotted in their intents, and so were unable to pass through along their own paths; consequently they narrated past affairs and thought wistfully of the future.

Primary Secondary Sources and Translations of Works Sima Qian Cites Above:

Rutt, Richard. The Book of Changes (Zhouyi): A Bronze Age Document. Richmond Surrey: Curzon, 1996. The former Bishop of Leicester (see this review) demonstrates the effectiveness of a hobbyist Sinologist. I've always seen this on the shelf, but never read it.

Legge, James. The Chinese Classics: With a Translation, Critical and Exegetical Notes, Prolegomena, and Copious Indexes. 2nd ed. Hongkong: Hongkong Univ. Press, 1960. Volume five of seven translates in entirety "The Ch'un Ts'ew with the Tso Chuen." I love this big old book, its tiny double-columned print sprinkled with Chinese terms and phrases. I tried to read it in earnest back in 2003, summer I think, but I I've never finished it.

Hawkes, David. The Songs of the South: An Ancient Chinese Anthology of Poems by Qu Yuan and Other Poets. New York: Penguin Books, 1985. This one is an easy choice.

Schaberg, David. Foundations of Chinese Historiography: Representation in the Zuozhuan and Guoyu. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1996. I looked at this once, but don't remember anything from it now, except that it was a very scary PhD dissertation.

Sunzi. Sun Tzū, on the Art of War, the Oldest Military Treatise in the World. Translated from the Chinese with Introduction and Critical Notes by Lionel Giles. London: Luzac, 1910. Believe it or not, I've never studied this most famous of Classical Chinese texts. Just as with my teachers, I have a feeling that the text is simply too popular, and thus slightly tainted. However, I'm sure that Giles's version is up to snuff, and it is available everywhere online (here, for example).

Lü, Buwei. The Annals of Lü Buwei: A Complete Translation and Study. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. I don't know a thing about this text or what is clearly the definitive edition. Shame, really. I do know from Wikipedia that it is an eclectic mishmash of texts, characteristic of the Chinese language and stuff from the ancient world (is that redundant?).

Han Fei. Han Feizi: Basic Writings. Translated and edited by Burton Watson. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. I looked at this once, too, but can't really remember much, other than the Mizi Xia story, of course. There was a complete translation by somebody named Tsai, but I couldn't force my way even through a single chapter of it. (That might have been my fault, admittedly.)

Waley, Arthur. The Book of Songs. Edited and with a Postface by Joseph Roe Alen. New York: Grove Press, 1996. Aw, it's Joe's baby, how could I choose anything else? My PhD oral exam proved I didn't read the "Postface" carefully enough, though.

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Why Sima Qian did not commit suicide

Sima Qian, 2nd century BC. Taken from a mainland China website

Seeing that one of my students can read classical Chinese well, I felt a burst of jealous competitiveness. I determined to finish going over the "Letter in Reply to Ren An" by Sima Qian to help get my chops back. The draft of my own translation, along with many notes, continues to evolve here.

Today, I got up to the climax of the letter, where Sima Qian talks of his own personal troubles and excuses himself at length for not committing suicide. Any man should have died rather than suffer the punishment of castration, but he accepted it and lived on miserably so that he could finish writing his history of China.

Some thoughts on this part:


It's a grand act, strangely self-centered and self-immolating at the same time, summed up in what is currently my favorite sentence of the letter:

The reason I bear it all in hiding, eeking out my miserable life, that I dwell in the dark solitude of dirt, and shit, never taking my own leave, is that I hate that my inner heart has something that isn't over with. I am loath to leave the world and not express it in written style for later generations.

所以隱忍苟活，幽於糞土之中而不辭者，恨私心有所不盡鄙陋，沒世而文采不表於後世也。

After that part of the letter, Sima Qian goes on to describe a tradition of literature that is the product of expressing indignation. I'll write an entry on that next.

Notes on comprehension so far: Sima Qian's Chinese is undeniably difficult, with much special vocabulary that even the commentators see fit to explain at times. I think what most takes getting used to, however, are his complex sentence structures. Often there are more than three clauses strung together with very definite relation. Examples:

If a man cannot early on resolve himself outside of the constraints of the law, his degradation increasing by degrees, when it reaches the point that he's between the whip and the lash, then to want to draw on honor [commit suicide], isn't the situation too far gone already?

夫人不能早自裁繩墨之外，以稍陵遲；至於鞭箠之閒，乃欲引節；斯不亦遠乎？

It is human nature always to love life and hate death, to think of one's mother and father, to care for one's wife and children; only a person struck by higher principle could do otherwise, then there is something one cannot avoid.

夫人情莫不貪生惡死，念父母，顧妻子；至激於義理者不然，乃有所不得已也。

Note the 至 ... 乃 pattern which is very clear in the Chinese but difficult to translate literally. I consider that a good lesson for today. Also note the aphoristic opening to the thought, which to me shows us Sima Qian's encapsulating, generalizing mind at work nearly all the time. Perhaps that's over-reading, though.

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