From: lix@thames.bu.edu (Xiaowen Li)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china,soc.culture.taiwan,soc.culture.hongkong
Subject: FWD for Mr. H. Anonymous - Learn from Geshu (4)
Date: 5 Nov 92 18:09:41 GMT
Followup-To: soc.culture.china
Organization: Boston University

This is the part 4 of Mr. H. Anonymous' article.

================================================
  Re:  You Cannot Learn from Geshu (IV)

Since I was quite far behind in reading scc, it is to be hoped
that Sanyee would excuse my adding this short note (in response
to another related post of his).   Readers may rest assured that 
it is not about the "long geopolitical history" I have mentioned 
in my previous pieces

I take it for granted that we are not "professional" historians, 
though we share the same interest in Chinese history.  Nevertheless,
it is clear that the least we can do is to avoid what could be 
considered "blatant", irresponsible and rank amateurism.

As I was reading last night, rather belatedly, the following lines 
posted by Sanyee Tang:

>  It is not a fight, I am quite serious.  I think Mr. H. Anonymous has a
>severe problem beyond syntax details - he lost the big picture.

>  Virtually every Tang poet wrote a host of Gan-ye (High-ranking Officer
>Be My Master) poems, no decent critic ever gives a damn to those junk unless
>the receiver happened to be a good writer herself.  Li Bai's letter to the
>Governor of Jinzhou, Mr. Han, is a famous example.
	
It would seem that something "quite serious" indeed needs to be 
addressed.  Well, it is of course obvious that there are quite a few 
"severe problem[s]" readily visible in Sanyee's posts, e.g., "syntax", 
semantics, chronology of famous poems and historical events, etc.

But I am afraid an even bigger "picture" "lost" here is the simple yet 
basic postulate that history is NOT (at the very least NOT LIMITED TO) 
literary criticism and/or appreciation.  A mundane ancient document, 
e.g. a land lease agreement, is not necessarily any less valuable to a 
historian than Homer's Iliad.  In this context, any source material, 
such as poems exchanged between friends or "non-friends", IF PROVED 
AUTHENTIC, could be just as valuable as LiSao, no matter how poorly 
they may have been written as long as the subject matter is not, say, 
the history of aesthetics, much less whether any "decent [literary] 
critic ever gives a damn..."  Just take a look, however cursory, of 
any "decent" history book.

For this reason, it would be simply wrong to dispose of some very 
original source materials, no matter how inconvenient they may be to 
one's point of view, as "those[sic] junk."   Frankly, this kind of
statement borders on what I would call egocentric eclecticism, in
addition to what I have mentioned above: "blatant" and irresponsible 
amateurism.

To make this a "short" note, I will not go any further as to comment
on similarly irresponsible and amateurish, if not laughable, 
translation/interpretation implying the advancing TuFan/TuBo forces in 
QingHai were unarmed innocent children perhaps raised by Mother Teresa.  
As to classifying Li and Du's writings as "junk" to which "no decent 
critic ever gives a damn ...", let me just quote Han Yu:

	Li Du Wen2 Zhang1 Zai4
	Guang1 Yan4 Wan4 Zhang4 Chang2 ....


-- 
The SOS China Education Fund is a non-political, non-profit and independent
organization to raise money promoting the education in rural China. All donations
are tax-deductable. Make checks or money orders payable to: "SOS China Education
Fund"; c/o Jie KANG, 2610 E. 5th Pl, Apt. 1, Tulsa, OK74104, USA.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china