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THE SHAPE OF HISTORY: ON READING LI WAI-YEE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Kai Vogelsang
Kai Vogelsang*
Affiliation:
Kai Vogelsang, 馮凱, University of Hamburg; email: [email protected].
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Extract

Ever since Hayden White declared that as a literary artifact the historical text is indistinguishable from fiction, the study of historiography has ceased to be the prerogative of historians. It is thus no accident that we owe some of the finest recent works on the Zuo zhuan, China's oldest narrative history, not to historians but to scholars of Chinese literature. In her splendid book on The Readability of the Past in Early Chinese Historiography (Cambridge 2007) Li Wai-yee demonstrates just how fruitful it is to treat Chinese historiography from a literary perspective. She puts to rest the “idea that kernels of historical truth can or should be separated from the rich verbal fabric” in favor of “what is more germane to the sense of history,” namely “the conscious formulation of patterns and principles to understand the past” (Li 2007, pp. 2–3).

Type
Review Forum
Information
Early China , Volume 37 , 2014 , pp. 579 - 599
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Study of Early China and Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

1. See White, Hayden, “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact,” in Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore, London: John Hopkins University Press, 1978), 81–100Google Scholar, and, with extensive documentation, White, Hayden, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore, London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973)Google Scholar.

2. Much of what follows is based on my book: Vogelsang, Kai, Geschichte als Problem: Entstehung, Formen und Funktionen von Geschichtsschreibung im Alten China (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007)Google Scholar. Since this book was written without the benefit of having read The Readability of the Past, it seems appropriate to review some of its main points in the light of Li Wai-yee's work.

3. Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)Google Scholar, 4.

4. Halbwachs, Maurice, La mémoire collective (Paris: Albin Michel, 1997)Google Scholar, 130: “C'est qu'en général l'histoire ne commence qu'au point où finit la tradition, au moment où s'éteint ou se décompose la mémoire sociale.”

5. For a recent survey of this awakening, see Schiffman, Zachary S., The Birth of the Past (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

6. This has become especially evident in our own times with its pervasive craving for history: “Because people in the modern world—which is subject to accelerated change and therefore more and more discontinuous—especially need to protect their continuity, the sense of history … arises especially and only in this world. The sense of history, if I am correct, is most of all a sense for continuity, for slowness.” Marquard, Odo, Zukunft braucht Herkunft: Philosophische Essays (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2003)Google Scholar, 228.

7. See Shaughnessy, Edward L., “Western Zhou History,” in The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C., ed. Loewe, Michael and Shaughnessy, Edward L. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 292–351CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 323–31, and, for the ritual reform, Jessica Rawson, “Western Zhou Archaeology,” in The Cambridge History of Ancient China, 352–449, and Falkenhausen, Lothar von, Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius (1000–250 BC) (Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California, 2006), 29–73.Google Scholar

8. For a detailed discussion of this process, see Vogelsang, Geschichte als Problem, 92–159.

9. Edward Shaughnessy called the Shi Qiang pan inscription “probably the first conscious attempt in China to write history.” Shaughnessy, Edward L., Sources of Western Zhou History: Inscribed Bronze Vessels (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991)Google Scholar, 1.

10. Shaughnessy, Sources of Western Zhou History, 185–89. For a different translation, see Lau, Ulrich, Quellenstudien zur Landvergabe und Bodenübertragung in der westlichen Zhou-Dynastie (1045?–771 v. Chr.) (Nettetal: Steyler-Verlag, 1999), 184–204Google Scholar. On the Lai pan, see Kaogu yu wenwu 2003.3, 3–12, and Wenwu 2003.6, throughout.

11. In another context, Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer remarked that “the break in tradition which was so strongly felt in the 11th century [c.e.] came to stimulate the production of clan genealogies. These were forms of compensation.” Schmidt-Glintzer, Helwig, “Chinesisches Geschichtsdenken,” in Die Vielfalt der Kulturen, ed. Rüsen, Jörn, Gottlob, Michael, and Mittag, Achim (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1998)Google Scholar, 126.

12. See Rüsen, Jörn, Lebendige Geschichte: Formen und Funktionen des historischen Wissens (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989)Google Scholar, 56, who calls it “traditionale Sinnbildung.” See ibid., 43–45, and Rüsen, Jörn, “Die vier Typen des historischen Erzählens,” in Formen der Geschichtsschreibung (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1982), 514–606.Google Scholar

13. The Zhou genealogy is spread over Shi jing nos. 235–45; for the Shang genealogy, see Shi jing nos. 303–5.

14. Translations from the Zuo zhuan are not from the book under discussion but from Li Wai-yee's, Stephen Durrant's, and David Schaberg's forthcoming translation of the entire work (footnotes omitted). I thank the authors for sharing their yet unpublished work with me. The Chinese texts are taken from : Chunqiu Zuo zhuan zhu 春秋左傳注, ed. Yang Bojun 楊伯峻 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1995).Google Scholar

15. Rüsen, Lebendige Geschichte, 43, describing “traditionale Sinnbildung.”

16. Pines, Yuri, Foundations of Confucian Thought: Intellectual Life in the Chunqiu Period, 722–453 B.C.E. (Honolulu, University of Hawai'i Press, 2002)Google Scholar, 180; see the discussion of de, ibid., 180–84.

17. Note the usage in Zhanguo ce 戰國策, ed. Liu Xiang 劉向 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1985)Google Scholar, 19.653, where king Wuling of Zhao says: 嗣立不忘先德，君之道也. See Crump, J.I., Chan-kuo Ts'e (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, The University of Michigan, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 288: “The Way of Kings is to be mindful of the virtue of their ancestors while they are on the throne”); interestingly, a parallel passage in Shangjun shu zhuizhi 商君書錐指, ed. Jiang Lihong 蔣禮鴻 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1996)Google Scholar 1.1, reads: 代立不忘社稷，君之道也. Here, the altars of earth and grain substitute for “virtue”: in both passages, not moral virtue is at issue but the tradition of the ruling house.

18. See the etymology of English “virtue” (< Latin virtūt-, virtus manliness, valor, worth, etc., < vir man), which originally meant “power or operative influence inherent in a supernatural or divine being” but also acquired the meaning of “conformity of life and conduct with the principles of morality” or “a particular moral excellence” (Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “virtue, n.”).

19. In at least one passage, Li, Durrant, and Schaberg translate 德 as “ties of beneficence” (see below). This nicely captures the word's meaning: it is clearly not a moral virtue.

20. For other quite different amoral elements in Zuo zhuan, see Vogelsang, Kai, “From Anecdote to History: Observations on the Composition of the Zuozhuan,” Oriens Extremus 50 (2011), 99–124.Google Scholar

21. Interestingly, Min Mafu, who opposes the speech by prince Zhao, argues that the latter committed “a great failure of ritual propriety (Li 2007, 391); but prince Zhao himself never uses this category. The same may be observed in another case, where the Zhou king Jing's arguments based on traditional history are countered by Shuxiang with reference to ritual propriety (Zuo zhuan Zhao 15.1374, see Li 2007, 387).

22. Not only the exact date (“In the sixth year of the reign of King Ding”) may indicate that prince Zhao is quoting from documents, but also numerous archaic elements in his speech, such as the possessive pronoun 厥 (instead of classical 其), the relative pronoun 攸 (instead of 所), the particle 唯, the preposition 于, and the conjunction 用 (instead of 以). In the speech of Zichan, above, the preposed object in 是賴 as well as the repeated use of anteposed objects as in 我周之自出, 我之自立, and 我之自入, “no doubt a survival of a more widespread placing of pronoun objects in front of the verb in preclassical language” (Pulleyblank, Edwin G., Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press 1996)Google Scholar, 70) appear as archaic elements.

23. Luhmann, Niklas, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1997)Google Scholar, 273. Interestingly, although Luhmann refers to European tradition, in this passage he cites Jacques Gernet, who observed a “retour du passé” with the spread of printing in the 12th and 13th centuries; see Gernet, Jacques, Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion, 1250–1276 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962)Google Scholar, 229: “return to [sic] the past.”

24. Incidentally, the rise of historical thought in the middle Western Zhou as described above seems to coincide with the spread of writing beyond the confines of the Zhou royal house; see, for a recent overview, Li Feng, “Literacy and the Social Contexts of Writing in the Western Zhou,” in Writing and Literacy in Early China: Studies from the Columbia Early China Seminar, ed. Feng, Li and Branner, David Prager (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011), 217–301.Google Scholar

25. Prince Zhao's speech is characterized as wenci (Zuo zhuan Zhao 26.1479) just like speeches of Zichan (Xiang 25.1106) and of Shuxiang (Zhao 13.1355).

26. Schaberg, David, A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 84. For an extensive discussion of the term wenci, placing it in a wider context of wen, see ibid., 81–86.

27. Surprisingly, however, the documents par excellence, the shu which would later become the Shu jing, are hardly ever quoted (as far as I can see, the only instance is Ziyu's speech in Zuo zhuan Ding 4.1537–42). Nor are the songs of the Shi jing, the most widely quoted text in all of classical literature, ever quoted in traditional history. I shall return to this observation.

28. Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996)Google Scholar, 5, with reference to the people of Israel.

29. Zuo zhuan Cheng 13.861: 穆公不忘舊德 (and, in a later passage: 我襄公未忘君之舊勳). Lü Xiang's message features the elements that are typical for traditional history: “virtue words” do not appear at all, and it uses archaic language like anteposed objects (我之自出, 余唯利是視, 唯好是求), the pronoun 厥, the preposition 于, and the conjunction 用 (see. n. 22 above).

30. Guoyu 國語 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1988)Google Scholar, 13.432. For further examples, see Vogelsang, Geschichte als Problem, 198–200.

31. Rüsen, Lebendige Geschichte, 46. Rüsen's original term is “exemplarische Sinnbildung.”

32. Li 2007, 363–66. While the following account is limited to examples from the Zuo zhuan, see Vogelsang, Geschichte als Problem, 223–63 for an extensive discussion of exemplary history incuding other Zhanguo texts.

33. Contrary to Schwartz, Benjamin, “History in Chinese Culture. Some Comparative Reflections,” History and Theory 35.4 (1996), 23–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who speaks of a “kind of ‘ahistorical’ view of history which regards history as a casebook of human actions in situations which can be considered in an entirely metahistorical framework.” This view would seem to be based on an all too narrow historicist interpretation of history.

34. See David Schaberg, A Patterned Past, above n. 26, at 158: “Knowledge (zhi) is the faculty that allows rulers and ministers to understand and predict events within the ritual system and its edges. In this sense zhi designates the hermeneutic skills that the historiographers prize both in their characters and in historical investigation itself.”

35. I here follow an emendation proposed by Chen Qiyou, who reads: 今之於後世，亦猶古之於今也. See Lüshi chunqiu jiaoshi 呂氏春秋校釋, ed. Chen Qiyou 陳奇猷 (Shanghai: Xuelin chubanshe, 1984)Google Scholar, 11.606, n. 3).

36. Koselleck, Reinhart, “Historia Magistra Vitae: Über die Auflösung des Topos im Horizont neuzeitlich bewegter Geschichte,” in Vergangene Zukunft: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1989), 38–66Google Scholar, esp. 40. This phenomenon is by no means restricted to ancient China. Forgeries (a modern concept which did not exist at the time) of all kind were ubiquitous in medieval Europe, and they were quite in accord with what was morally right and fair. For an instructive example of a deliberate historical lie in political debate from as late as the 19th century, see Koselleck, Reinhart, Vergangene Zukunft: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1989)Google Scholar, 38.

37. It hardly needs to be pointed out that not only stories but entire books or chapters thereof were forged in ancient China. The practice was so widespread that an entire branch of scholarship, bianwei xue 辨偽學, developed in reaction to it.

38. I have dealt with this issue more extensively in Vogelsang, Kai, “Some Notions of Historical Judgment in China and the West,” in Historical Truth, Historical Criticism and Ideology: Chinese Historiography and Historical Culture from a New Comparative Perspective, ed. Schmidt-Glintzer, Helwig, Mittag, Achim, and Rüsen, Jörn (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 143–75.Google Scholar

39. Zuo zhuan Xi 27.445: 詩、書，義之府也。The crucial difference between the sources for traditional and exemplary history is addressed in the evaluation about the scribe of the left Yixiang in Zhao 12.1340–41. While being praised for his ability “to recite the ‘Three Barrows,’ the ‘Five Canons,’ the ‘Eight Guidelines,’ and the ‘Nine Mounds’”—ancient texts, that is—he is dismissed by a critic for not knowing an ode: “If you ask him something at all obscure, how can he possibly know it?” The qualifications of a traditional historian do not count in the context of exemplary history.

40. Schmölz, Andrea, Vom Lied in der Gemeinschaft zum Liedzitat im Text: Liedzitate in den Texten der Gelehrtentradition der späten Chou-Zeit (Egelsbach: Hänsel-Hohenhausen, 1993)Google Scholar, 122.

41. The “Confucian virtues” are discussed in Schaberg, A Patterned Past, 154–60, however without distinction between different modes of historical discourse.

42. In Shuxiang's speech, “virtue” does appear in a quotation from the odes; but interestingly, the transmitted version in Shi jing no. 272 has 典 instead of 德.

43. One may wonder, however, about the passage discussed in Li 2007, 286, where lord Huan of Qi is dissuaded from attacking Lu: “The lord said, “Can Lu be taken?” He [Zhongsun Qiu] replied, “It cannot. It still upholds Zhou ritual. Zhou ritual constitutes its trunk. I have heard it said, ‘When a domain is about to perish, the trunk must first fall. Only then will the branches and leaves follow.’ If Lu does not abandon Zhou ritual, it cannot be shaken.” This speech combines elements of traditional and exemplary history, juxtaposing the appeal to the long-established power of “Zhou ritual” with a general rule that was “heard.”