Over these few days we in London are celebrating the Diamond Jubilee of the Queen, Elizabeth II. But after watching the excellent movie Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (I really wish Tsui Hark pushed more bravely the lesbian subtext between Empress Wu and Jing'er... sigh) I've decided to blog about my favourite activity - writing - during the Tang Dynasty. My post is split into two parts and today I'm asking why anyone should care about the consequences of some group of impoverished, hungry writers from a long-dead dynasty. In other words, who cares about Tang-era literature, seriously?
As China is still recovering from the repercussions of the Cultural Revolution (among them a distinct cultural amnesia or wilful ignorance), I've always argued that you can't recover cultural memory unless you understand writing and its history. Writing crafts narrative, and it's impossible to recover any kind of cultural memory without narrative. In turn, memory is so important and powerful that it forms the very heritage of a people. Narrative and memory are most certainly the lifeblood of any tradition's heritage. Everyone has narrative - from people as diverse as Quakers to British monarchists, from American conservatives to Sikhs or Hindus. No one escapes the magnetic power of narrative because it tells your story, your life, and your place in the world... and it is always being retold as history unfolds.
In other words, the historical understanding of writing, which facilitates the recovery of narrative and memory (and by implication, heritage) is one of the most urgent questions faced by not only Chinese people today, but by anyone interested in culture.
The inheritance of Modernism has not only resulted in republics, the rolling of aristocratic heads, and imperialism without use of the word "empire" (just look at today's USA and China). It also resulted, most dramatically in Central Eurasia and China during the Cultural Revolution, a vicious disowning of the past and time-honoured institutions, and along with these institutions went their ideas about Beauty and Art. As Beckwith pointed out, Modernism demands perpetual revolution, which means that nothing can be considered ideal, or the best, or worthy of emulation, except the narrative of "deposing the aristocrat, the emperor, or the priest". How could I, for example, look up to my Buddhist temple or its monks as the ones to serve if "religion is the opiate of the masses" and Religion, with all its Art, standards of Beauty, Good, and Writing, need to be destroyed?
Which is why art and music during Mao Zedong's rule was so pathetically homogenous in theme as well as morals. And where was the proliferation of genuinely influential authors, who, if they weren't being murdered or sent to a re-education camp, could match the standards of previous periods. Sure, Modernism most definitely has created good art. I'm a lover of cartoons, manga, and anime. I love digital animation (this whole blog is meant for creative media) and I'm unapologetic about some of the writing and music of our contemporary age. But until we understand what it meant to write well in historical periods of cultural productivity, we can never recover that sense of the Ideal.
Of course, no aristocrat or priest was ever perfect. I know my employer isn't (he's a monk). But it didn't matter - in the name of aristocrats and kings creative people, needing money and food and therefore higher society's patronage, wrote or made art or made music. And from understanding kingship/religion/nobility as the Ideal sprang true masterpieces, from the Homeric Epics to the Poetic Edda, from the various scriptures of world religions to Mozart and Handel. That's why we need to look back to the literature of the Tang and other imperial dynasties - if not to emulate their Ideal, then to craft a different Ideal for ourselves with the hindsight of their wisdom.
In other words, the historical understanding of writing, which facilitates the recovery of narrative and memory (and by implication, heritage) is one of the most urgent questions faced by not only Chinese people today, but by anyone interested in culture.
The inheritance of Modernism has not only resulted in republics, the rolling of aristocratic heads, and imperialism without use of the word "empire" (just look at today's USA and China). It also resulted, most dramatically in Central Eurasia and China during the Cultural Revolution, a vicious disowning of the past and time-honoured institutions, and along with these institutions went their ideas about Beauty and Art. As Beckwith pointed out, Modernism demands perpetual revolution, which means that nothing can be considered ideal, or the best, or worthy of emulation, except the narrative of "deposing the aristocrat, the emperor, or the priest". How could I, for example, look up to my Buddhist temple or its monks as the ones to serve if "religion is the opiate of the masses" and Religion, with all its Art, standards of Beauty, Good, and Writing, need to be destroyed?
Which is why art and music during Mao Zedong's rule was so pathetically homogenous in theme as well as morals. And where was the proliferation of genuinely influential authors, who, if they weren't being murdered or sent to a re-education camp, could match the standards of previous periods. Sure, Modernism most definitely has created good art. I'm a lover of cartoons, manga, and anime. I love digital animation (this whole blog is meant for creative media) and I'm unapologetic about some of the writing and music of our contemporary age. But until we understand what it meant to write well in historical periods of cultural productivity, we can never recover that sense of the Ideal.
Of course, no aristocrat or priest was ever perfect. I know my employer isn't (he's a monk). But it didn't matter - in the name of aristocrats and kings creative people, needing money and food and therefore higher society's patronage, wrote or made art or made music. And from understanding kingship/religion/nobility as the Ideal sprang true masterpieces, from the Homeric Epics to the Poetic Edda, from the various scriptures of world religions to Mozart and Handel. That's why we need to look back to the literature of the Tang and other imperial dynasties - if not to emulate their Ideal, then to craft a different Ideal for ourselves with the hindsight of their wisdom.
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