I’ve been looking for my own copy of Gia-fu Feng and Jane English’s edition of Chuang Tsu for at least five years. I found one the other night at the Brookline Booksmith. My parents have one; almost as soon as I moved I was able to find a copy of the matching Tao Te Ching. I mentioned it here. I was surprised to find the Chuang Tsu at all. Although it seems a reissue is available on Amazon, the copy I found is dated 1974, and I’m sure it’s less common than the Tao Te Ching. Chuang Tsu is described as the Plato to Lao Tsu’s Socrates, his Inner Chapters the “perfect expression” of Taoism. He is the source of the image of the man who dreams he is a butterfly wondering if he is a butterfly dreaming of being a man. I’ve actually read the poetic and epigrammatic Tao Te Ching, but I have to admit it may be some time before I do more than look at the gorgeous pictures in this one.
Gia-fu Feng came to the United States after the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. The period comprising the fall of the emperor, the Japanese invasion, World War II, and the communist takeover was obviously a time of great chaos and destruction. I know almost nothing about it, and, what’s maybe worse, I don’t even know a book I should read. The 25th anniversary edition of Feng’s Tao Te Ching contains a tiny snippet of autobiography; here and elsewhere there are tantalizing hints of a longer memoir.
This post was precipitated by a thought that struck me suddenly while poking around after information about Gi-fu Feng: After the fall of the old order in China, there must have been an exodus on the same order as that following the Russian revolution, and yet it doesn’t seem to be given nearly the same credit, so to speak. I would say that in my mental map of the twentieth century American intellect, the influence of the Russian diaspora far outweighs that of China’s.
This is truly shocking to me, after a fashion, not least because one of my best friends growing up was a recent Chinese immigrant. But I am really not thinking in such personal terms. I know almost nothing about it, so perhaps I’m wrong, or merely repeating western prejudice. It may even be a matter of East Coast versus West Coast, of New York and Boston versus California. Unlike my father, I never went to school in the western U.S. It also occurs to me that the Russian influence is closely related to the colossal impact of the Holocaust. Indeed, it appears that Vladimir Nabokov, the only figure that immediately jumps to mind as a Russian emigre of great importance for American culture (perhaps quite sufficient on his own), lived in Berlin after leaving Russia, and it’s easy to guess why he left. The cultural effect of the revolution was not immediate, and, similarly, Einstein had his annus mirabilis of 1905 long before he removed to the United States. Perhaps the impact of the Cultural Revolution is yet to be appreciated here.
Here’s what I want to know: does the cultural impact of the Russian Revolution on America really outweigh that of China’s, despite the obvious parallels? How far does the effect extend, and are there vast intellectual movements, a hundred and more years old now, whose stories have yet to be told? Is the translation empire of Pevear and Volokhonsky rooted in the upheavals at the beginning of the twentieth century? Who, besides Nabokov, am I missing? Leafing through the Inner Chapters, I found a discussion between Confucius and one Yen Hui. What is Confucius doing in the Taoist text? Is there any parallel in the Platonic dialogues of philosophers and demagogues, and the efforts of later and lesser writers like Philostratus to untangle them? Who can tell? Without greater cognizance of these matters, do we in our political moment risk throwing away something of inestimable value?
Not Merely For Fun 