Zexie Collection; Past Life: Past Life

Author: Zhou Zuoren
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-01-01
Features: My grandfather was a Hanlin scholar in the early years of the Guangxu reign and passed away twenty years ago. He had never heard of terms like "National Language Literature," but his educational methods were quite unique. Of course, he still taught his children poetry and prose, but his approach was to encourage them to read freely, especially rewarding the reading of novels, believing that it could help them "understand" and that once they understood, they could then pursue other things without difficulty. The novels he recommended were Journey to the West, Flowers in the Mirror, and The Story of the Scholars, which were also the first books I ever read (I had previously studied the "Complete Works of the Four Masters," but that was just rote memorization). During my childhood, I particularly loved Flowers in the Mirror. Lin Zhiyang's adventures were widely admired, but what I cherished was Duo Jiugong, as he could recognize all the strange events and wonders. The primal desire for tales of the supernatural runs deep in our veins, so works like Classic of Mountains and Seas, Records of the Ten Continents, and Records of the Marvels of Things from over a thousand years ago still hold a fresh appeal for modern readers: the nine-headed bird, the one-legged ox—truly absurd and preposterous, yet how delightful they are! The sea-sailing portion of Flowers in the Mirror is a modernization of these elements. I believe anyone who can appreciate the charm of the Greek epic The Odyssey will also enjoy this absurd story. Some might argue that such nonsense is mere deception. I admit that, but I want to clarify that only false statements made with the intent to deceive are blameworthy, while simple, self-contained lies—lying for the sake of lying—have no moral standing in art.
Traditionally, it has been said that children's tendency to lie is the foundation of theft, but modern research shows this is not the case. Children's lies are often manifestations of imagination, a form of artistic creation. When they say, "I saw a horned red snake today," they are not trying to deceive for personal gain but simply engaging in creative activity, using ordinary materials to form extraordinary things for their own amusement. Describing the products of one's imagination is as true as describing the real world, because experience is not limited to sensory perception. We want children to be honest, but this should also extend to being honest with their own fantasies. The harm of lying lies in deceiving others; simple lies, however, are merely deceiving oneself, and others may be deceived by them—but into a realm of dreamlike beauty, which cannot be considered a bad thing. Oscar Wilde once wrote a dialogue titled The Decay of Lying (The Decline of Lying), lamenting the decline of art. In the preface to his translation of The Prisoner of Zenda, the translator rendered "Lying" as "artifice," as if to avoid the word "lying" (Japan does the same), but what's the harm? Would Wilde have been so squeamish? He said that what is important in literature is "telling beautiful things that don’t exist"—that is, lying. Yet in practice, he was not as adept at it as his compatriot, Lord Dunsany. "This world was made for dreamers," he wrote, "and it is they who inhabit it"—a wonderfully insightful remark. P. Colum, in the preface to Lord Dunsany’s The Dreamer of Dreams, wrote: "He was just such a man, who would walk into a hunter’s lodge and say, ‘Look at this moon—it’s so strange. I’ll tell you how it works and why it does.’ After explaining the moon, he would go on to describe the wondrous city in the woods and the treasures hidden in the unicorn’s horn. If others accused him of only telling them dreams and fantasies, he would reply, ‘I am nourishing their spirit of wonder—wonder is sacred in man.’" In his works, one rarely finds any social thought. Yet there is one thing there: a fierce opposition to anything that diminishes people’s imagination—against vulgar cities, commercial profit, and the culture born from material organization.
Dreams are immortal. Young men in love and old men under the twilight share their dreams, though their hues differ. Their children may sometimes rebel against them, but they ultimately return to their embrace. When we read Wilde’s fairy tales, we appreciate many things about them, but the descriptions of fantastical scenes in The Happy Prince and The Fisherman and His Soul are truly beautiful. That is why I love the sea-sailing account in Flowers in the Mirror. I also love Fool Ivan or The Dream of MacGullion, though I may love Greek mythology even more in its more naive form. I remember a line at the beginning of Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio: "Speak as you please, listen as you will"—a wonderfully profound saying. Journey to the West, The Investiture of the Gods, and other absurd tales (excluding tedious imitations) have their own unique charm in this regard, but this applies only to those initiated into the secret, not to the general public, nor to those whose minds have already entered the horns of the bull. For them, without instruments like chronometers and microscopes to measure art, they bow before images of Zhong Kui with incense and lanterns. In their eyes, Flowers in the Mirror would either be detestable nonsense or a trustworthy historical account.
(October 1923, April)