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History and Epics in China and in the West

A Study of Differences in Conception of the Human Story

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 July 2024

Jaroslav Prusek
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My study cannot give more than some comments on a very extensive theme that requires a number of studies which have not even been precisely formulated, as yet. I should like to show that the specific thought pattern, the specific perception of reality, intrinsic to a specific cultural category—that which is the predominant one in the given cultural complex—influences all other categories and determines their nature. I want to illustrate my thesis on the relationship between literature and history. With some exaggeration I would formulate my thesis as follows : as literature is, so is history; the same perception of reality is in the background of both and determines their form. I will limit myself to this theme and I will not deal with the causes determining the differences of pattern in various fields of a certain culture; I will not attempt to solve the philosophical and sociological problems, neither will I seek for further connections in the total cultural complex, with which I illustrate my thesis, that is the Chinese cultural complex, although it would not be too difficult.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 11 , Issue 42 , June 1963 , pp. 20 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © 1963 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 Herodotus, Zdējin východních národu (From the History of the Eastern Nations) (Praha 1941), Preface, p. 14.

2 Quoted from the English translation, R. Crawley, Thucydides' Peloponnesian War (Everyman's Library, London-Toronto, 1929), p. 1.

3 Wen-hsin tiao lung, translated into English by V. C. Y. Shih, The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons by Liu Hsieh. A Study of Thought and Pattern in Chinese Literature (New York, 1959).

4 Burton Watson, Ssu-ma Ch'ien Grand Historian of China (New York, 1958).

5 Fou-sheng liu-chi, Hsin wen-hua shu-shem, Shanghai s.a. Translated into Czech by J. Prušek under the title Šest historil prchavého zivota (Six Histories of Fleeting Life) (Praha, 1956).

6 This difference between European historiography was characterized very appropriately by Ch. S. Gardner in his work Chinese Traditional Historiography (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1938), in which he says (p. 69) : "We in the West demand that an historian analyze and classify his facts for presentation in that logical sequence which shall seem to his individual brain best calculated to expose, not merely their order in time, but also the concatenation of cause and effect. We demand, moreover, that he create a faithful and lifelike reflection of past times, strange places, and unfamiliar personalities. The Chinese, on the contrary, conceive of the past as a series of concrete events and overt acts; and of history as a registration of them which should be exact and dispassionate, without any projection across the scene of the registrar, who must punctiliously refrain from garbling his presentation by his own perhaps imperfect appreciation of the true sequence of causation." And later on (p. 105) he adds: "that it may almost be said of Chinese history that it consists exclusively of primary sources."

7 See Shih Chi, chapter 130, Ku Chich-kang's edition, vol. 3, p. 8.

8 This biography was translated in the work of O. H. Stange, Die Monographie über Wang Mang (Leipzig, 1938).

9 B. Watson calls attention to the connections between Chinese historiography and rhetoric, he says (p. 137): "In the hands of these early thinkers, expounding their particular theories and panaceas, history became the handmaiden of rhetoric."

10 It is unworked only from our "epic" point of view, of course, always aiming at creating inclusive entities. As far as the individual pieces are concerned they are worked out very artistically.

11 The Theory of Prose, p. 246.

12 I deal with this complex of questions in detail in my introduction to the translation of Lao Ts' an yu-chi by Liu O, Putování Starého Chromce [The Travels of Lao Ts'an] (Praha, 1960), p. 105 and p. 128.

13 See Tsem-mo hsie, Yeh chi chih yi, Lu Hsün h'üan-chi (Peking, 1956), Vol. 4, p. 15.

14 It must be noted that Lu Hsün, well versed in literary theory, thoroughly shattered this opinion.

15 See A. Bernhardi, Tau Yuan-ming, Mitt. d. s. f. o. Sprachen, Berlin, XV (1912), p. 58 and on.

16 See Pei-fen shih erh shou, Ch'uan Han San-kuo Chin Nan-pei ch'ao shih (Peking, Chung-hua shu-chu, 1959), Vol. 1, p. 51.

17 See Legge, Chinese Classics, Vol. IV, Part. II, p. 530: "Of the remnant of Chow…There will not be half a man left."

18 Op. cit., p. 122.

19 Chen Shih-hsiang, "An Innovation in Chinese Biographical Writing," PEQ, XIII (Nov. 1953), pp. 49-62.