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CHINESE LITERATURE AND CULTURE IN THE WORLD
Fusion of Critical Horizons

in Chinese and Western
Language, Poetics, Aesthetics
Ming Dong Gu
Chinese Literature and Culture in the World
Series Editor
Ban Wang
Stanford University
Stanford, CA, USA
As China is becoming an important player on the world stage, Chinese
literature is poised to change and reshape the overlapping, shared cultural
landscapes in the world. This series publishes books that reconsider
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national contexts. While seeking studies that place China in geopolitical
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Ming Dong Gu
Fusion of Critical
Horizons in Chinese
and Western
Language, Poetics,
Aesthetics
Ming Dong Gu
School of Foreign Languages
Shenzhen University
Shenzhen, China
School of Arts and Humanities
The University of Texas at Dallas
Richardson, TX, USA
Chinese Literature and Culture in the World

ISBN 978-3-030-73729-0 ISBN 978-3-030-73730-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73730-6
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To The Memory of
My Father Gu Shirong (1929–2000)
My Mother Xu Hongzuo (1931–2000)
Preface
This book is a project that has taken two decades to complete. In fact, the
initial idea for conceiving this project could be traced back to the late
1990s when I was completing my doctoral studies at the University of
Chicago. In 2000, after the publication of an article in Comparative
Literature Studies, I began earnestly to draw a plan for undertaking a com-
parative study of Chinese and Western language, literature, and poetics. As
my scholarly interest broadened later on, the plan started to include topics
related to aesthetics and metaphysics. Encouraged by some successes in
placing a dozen articles in Philosophy East and West, Journal of Chinese
Philosophy, Asian Philosophy, Journal of Aesthetic Education, and Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism, I decided to finalize the plan of my research
and set my objective as an effort to contribute to the fusion of critical
horizons, Chinese and Western. Having a final plan is like having a blue-
print for a house, but to turn the plan into a book is as complicated as
building a house in accordance with a blueprint. In the past twenty years,
I have been working intermittently on the book. By 2007, I had com-
pleted most of the research and written rough drafts for most of the
planned chapters. For a time, I thought I would be able to bring the book
to a completion in a year or two.
But alas! “Man proposes, God disposes.” Just as I was ready to devote
my full energy to the book project, I changed my job and moved to the
University of Texas at Dallas. The new job brought with it new challenges
in terms of teaching, service, administrative duties, and research orienta-
tions. When I was a graduate at the University of Chicago, I was toying
with the idea of writing a dissertation that sought to focus on a study of
vii
viii PREFACE
Chinese and comparative literature from the postcolonial perspective, but

due to various reasons, I gave up the initiative. The idea, however, never
disappeared from my mind and my scholarly work has always moved in
that direction since my graduate program. After moving to Dallas, a strong
urge to write a postcolonial critique of China–West studies took priority
over a comparative study of Chinese and Western literature and poetics.
So, the present book was left on the back burner and I devoted my energy
to finishing Sinologism: An Alternative to Orientalism and Postcolonial
Studies (Routledge 2013). After its publication, I thought I would be able
to refocus my efforts on the book and hoped to finish it, but once again,
several new projects diverted my immediate attention. Two of them
demanded most of my time, energy, and devotion. One is an edited vol-
ume on comparative philosophy, which was published as Why Traditional
Chinese Philosophy Still Matters: The Relevance of Ancient Wisdom for the
Global Age (Routledge 2018). The other is even more demanding in
terms of time, energy, and scope. In late 2015, I was invited by the
Routledge Press to edit a handbook of modern Chinese literature. Fully
realizing the heavy workload of the project, I was hesitating for a while,
but finally, two eminent scholars of modern Chinese literature, Prof. David
De-wei Wang of Harvard University and Prof. Xudong Zhang of New York
University, and my dean Prof. Dennis T. Kratz convinced me of the value
of the project and persuaded me to accept the invitation. As the project
involved nearly 50 scholars from universities around the world, it occupied
most of my time. Thanks to the gracious cooperation of the participating
scholars, the project was finally completed and appeared as the Routledge
Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature (Routledge, 2019, pp. 768). With
the completion of this project, I vowed that I would not be distracted by
any other projects. After turning down a few projects, I devoted my full
energy to the present book and with the support of a few institutions I
have at long last brought a 20-year scholarly project to its finish. What a
sense of relief!
Richardson, TX, USA Ming Dong Gu

December 2020
Acknowledgments
Although this book project was relegated to a secondary place a couple of

times, I have never displaced it from my mind. As I was unable to finish it
at one go, I rewrote part of the drafts into articles and sent them to various
journals. Some sections of Chap. 2 were taken from an article,
“Reconceptualizing the Linguistic Divide: Chinese and Western Theories
of the Written Sign,” in Comparative Literature Studies, 37. 2 (2000):
101–124. Chapter 5 appeared as a long article, “Is Mimetic Theory in
Literature and Art Universal?” published in Poetics Today 26.3 (2005):
459–499. A substantial part of Chap. 6 appeared in an article, “Mimetic
Theory in Chinese Literary Thought,” in New Literary History 36.3
(2005): 403–424. A few sections of Chap. 7 were published in Journal of
Aesthetic Education, 42.3 (2008): 88–105. I would like to thank the edi-
tors of those journals for their permission to reuse the published materials
in this book.
In completing this book, I have been encouraged and supported by
many scholars, colleagues, friends, and leaders of some institutions, to
whom I have accumulated a great deal of intellectual debts. I wish to
acknowledge my indebtedness to the following scholars: my mentor the
late Prof. Anthony C. Yu, Carl Darling Buck Professor Emeritus in the
Humanities of the University of Chicago, who read and commented on an
earlier version of Chap. 8; Prof. W. J. T. Mitchell, the Gaylord Donnelley
Distinguished Service Professor of English and Art at the University of
Chicago, who read and suggested revisions for Chap. 2; Prof. Ralph
Cohen, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor Emeritus of English at the
University of Virginia and former editor of New Literary History, who
ix
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
edited a long version of Chap. 6 into a succinct journal article; Prof. Meir
Sternberg, former editor of Poetics Today, who meticulously edited Chap.
5 and generously provided enough space to publish a long article in his
journal. I would also like to thank Prof. J. Hillis Miller, Distinguished
Research Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at the
University of California-Irvine; Profs. Martin Powers, Sally Michelson
Davidson Professor of Chinese Arts and Cultures, University of Michigan;
Kang-I Sun Chang, Malcolm G. Chace ‘56 Professor of East Asian
Languages and Literatures at Yale University; David Wang, Edward
C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard University; Ban
Wang, William Haas Professor in Chinese Studies at Stanford University;
Haun Saussy, University Professor of Comparative Literature at the
University of Chicago; Longxi Zhang, Chair Professor of Comparative
Literature and Translation at City University of Hong Kong; Eric Hayot,
Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at
Pennsylvania State University; David Porter, Professor of Comparative
Literature, University of Michigan; Michael Puett, the Walter C. Klein
Professor of Chinese History and Anthropology at Harvard University;
Thomas O. Beebee, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Comparative Literature
and German at The Pennsylvania State University; Dennis Kratz, the
Ignacy and Celina Rockover Professor of Humanities; Frederick Turner,
Founders Professor of Arts and Humanities; and Nils Roemer, the Stan
and Barbara Rabin Professor of History at the University of Texas at
Dallas, for their stimulating ideas, sagacious insights, and warm encour-
agement in different ways. I need to express my special thanks to Prof.
Vincent B. Leitch, George Lynn Cross Research Professor at the University
of Oklahoma, who has provided valuable advice and suggestions to
improve the manuscript, and Rachel Jacobe, editor of literature of Palgrave
Macmillan Press for her professional advice and editing. I’d also like to
thank Drs. Chen Dandan, Duan Guozhong, Peng Xiuyin, and Feng Tao
of Yangzhou University for their assistance in locating research materials
and proof-reading the book. Finally, I must thank some institutions
including Rhodes College, the University of Texas at Dallas, Nanjing
University, Shenzhen University, and Yangzhou University for awarding
faculty development grants and providing various kinds of assistance to
complete the book project.
Praise for Fusion of Critical Horizons in Chinese
and Western Language, Poetics, Aesthetics
“In this ambitious study, which should prove central to further work on these top-
ics, Ming Dong Gu challenges the notion of a fundamental opposition between
Western and Chinese aesthetics and undertakes a comparative study of a series of
important issues in literary aesthetics, illuminating similarities and differences.”
—Jonathan Culler, Class of 1916 Professor of English and Comparative
Literature, Cornell University, USA
“Professor Ming Dong Gu has offered a most comprehensive investigation of

Chinese and Western studies. His latest book sets a new ground for conceptual and
scholarly inquiries into China-West humanities in language, metaphor, representa-
tion, aesthetics, and metaphysics, and proposes a paradigm shift from ethnocentric
criticism to global aesthetics. Both erudite and provocative, Gu demonstrates a
methodology that will inspire anyone interested in comparative studies.”
—David Wang, Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature,
Harvard University, USA
“This is a timely study showing how to get beyond cultural nationalism in search
of the most compelling values of civilizations, aesthetic values. In Chapters devoted
to language, writing systems, metaphor, and mimesis, poetics and aesthetics,
Professor Gu reveals the profound value of genuine dialogue, ‘with due respect
paid to the distinctiveness of each tradition.’ Alongside choice insights into core
aesthetic concepts, East and West, Gu offers a blueprint for a comparative method
rooted in the sober recognition of a shared human condition.”
—Martin Powers, Sally M. Davidson Professor of Chinese Arts and Cultures,
University of Michigan, USA
“Comparative studies placing Chinese cultural productions in conversation with

those emanating from “the West” all too often fall into simplistic and self-serving
dichotomies. The bold ambition of this rigorously argued and wide-ranging study
is to historicize and ultimately transcend dichotomous frameworks in order to
establish common ground for more inclusive and eclectic visionings of literary and
aesthetic theory. In its thorough and systematic analysis of deep-seated method-
ological habits, it provides both a timely corrective and an invaluable guidepost for
future comparative work.”
—David Porter, Professor of English and Comparative Literature,
University of Michigan, USA
Contents
1 Introduction: Aesthetic Divide and Vision of Global

Aesthetics 1
Part I Language and Writing 21
2 Writing System and Linguistic Controversy 23
3 Reconceptualizing the Linguistic Divide 57
Part II Metaphor and Poetics 93
4 Chinese and Western Conceptions of Metaphor 95
5 Metaphor as Signs: Bi-Xing and Metaphor/Metonymy131
Part III Mimesis and Representation 165
6 Is Mimetic Theory Universal?167
7 Western Mimeticism and Chinese Mimetic Theory201
xiii
xiv Contents
Part IV Metaphysics and Aesthetics 235
8 Divine Thinking and Artistic Creation237
9 Lyricism and Mimeticism in Aesthetic Thought271
10 Conclusion: Toward World Criticism and Global

Aesthetics309
Bibliography315
Index333
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Aesthetic Divide and Vision

of Global Aesthetics
Contemporary globalization and telecommunications have drastically

shrunk the geographical distance between the East and the West and made
it possible for the migration of human, material, and intellectual resources
and knowledge across continents. It has greatly facilitated exchanges
between different cultures and traditions and turned what Goethe had
envisioned as “world literature” into a reality. David Damrosch, an emi-
nent scholar of world literature who has written the first book to examine
the ways literary works mutate and transform as they move from national
to global contexts, confirms the salutary effects of globalization on the
internationalization of literature and its positive role in promoting world
literature beyond national boundaries.1 The rise of world literature calls
for the appearance of world criticism, world theory, and global aesthetics.
In 2008, the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism edited by Vincent
Leitch et al., changed the time-honored Western-centric editorial policy
and made an epoch-making move to incorporate non-Western theorists
from India, China, Japan, Arabia, Africa, and Latin America into a new
edition of the anthology that used to include Western thinkers, aestheti-
cians, and critics only.2 Although the editors admit that the anthology is
still Western-centric,3 it should be viewed as a landmark on the road
toward the fusion of aesthetic horizons. Moreover, it represents an admi-
rable effort to challenge us to reflect on the possibility of world criticism
and make concrete efforts to move toward global aesthetics.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
M. D. Gu, Fusion of Critical Horizons in Chinese and Western
Language, Poetics, Aesthetics, Chinese Literature and Culture in the
World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73730-6_1
2 M. D. GU
Nearly half a century ago, when James J. Y. Liu, a professor at Stanford

University, first introduced Chinese literary theory to the West in 1975, he
talked about several goals of his endeavor in the introduction. Among
them, the first and ultimate of his purposes is “to contribute to an eventual
universal theory of literature by presenting the various theories of litera-
ture that can be derived from the long and, in the main, independent
tradition of Chinese critical thought, thus making it possible to compare
these with theories from other traditions.”4 Although he was aware that
his declared purpose might raise the eyebrows of some sophisticated schol-
ars, he believed in his vision and went on to argue that comparison of
historically unrelated critical traditions might serve the purpose if they are
conducted on the theoretical rather than practical level. He also believed
that “comparisons of what writers and critics belonging to different cul-
tural traditions have thought about literature may reveal what critical con-
cepts are universal, what concepts are confined to certain cultural traditions,
and what concepts are unique to a particular tradition” (ibid.), plus help-
ing us discover universal features common to all literatures around
the world.
Forty years further back in time, Zhu Guangqian, a celebrated Chinese
aesthetician, who was educated in Europe and became one of the found-
ing members for modern Chinese aesthetics, expressed a similar view in
1936 by going beyond critical theory. Basing himself on his own educa-
tional background and critical experience both in China and Europe, he
argued that aesthetics is not only a “science of literature and art” but may
also offer global “scientific” approaches to and critical criteria for the stud-
ies of both Chinese and Western art, literary criticism, and critical theory.
Furthermore, he believed that aesthetics as a “science” could locate ideas
in Chinese art corresponding to its Western counterparts and help Chinese
tradition make its own contributions to universal conceptions and under-
standing of literature and art.5 I am immensely inspired by Liu and Zhu’s
visions. In many ways, this book is conceived with an aim to put what they
had envisioned into practice and as a concrete move toward the realization
of their vision.
State of the Field in Chinese and Western Aesthetics

The road to world criticism, world theory, and global aesthetics is destined
to be a long and tortuous march beset with different kinds of obstacles.
Among the numerous obstacles, cultural differences and intellectual
1 INTRODUCTION: AESTHETIC DIVIDE AND VISION OF GLOBAL AESTHETICS 3
inertia have determined it to be a long-term enterprise which cannot be

accomplished in a short period. In the development of aesthetics in the
global context, Bernard Bosanquet’s ground-breaking History of Aesthetics
(1892) is a magnum opus in the studies of philosophy of art, but regret-
tably it does not have any cursory reference to the ideas of beauty in the
Eastern traditions, be it Indian, Chinese, or Japanese. Anticipating criti-
cism for the “almost total absence of direct reference to Oriental art,
whether in the ancient world or in modern China and Japan,” he defended
his omission of Eastern aesthetic ideas in several ways. Besides his pro-
fessed lack of competence in Oriental aesthetic knowledge, his principal
reason for eliding Eastern aesthetics is his perception that the Oriental
tradition had not yet formulated “an aesthetic consciousness which had
not, to my knowledge, reached the point of being clarified into speculative
theory.”6 Although he acknowledged the influence of Oriental art on the
early Greek aesthetic thought and the charm and beauty of Chinese and
Japanese art, he firmly believed that the Eastern consciousness of beauty is
“something apart, and not well capable of being brought into the same
connected story with the European feeling for the beautiful” (ibid.).
Bosanquet’s defense imparts two messages. First, Eastern art, be it Chinese
or Japanese, is exceptional to its Western counterpart. Second, the Eastern
aesthetic feelings are incommensurable with those of the West. It is there-
fore necessary to leave it alone at best. Without doubt, Bosanquet treated
Chinese and Eastern art and aesthetics as something alien to aesthetics.
Bosanquet wrote at the turn of the twentieth century, the high period
of colonialism, so it is perhaps understandable that he had a low opinion
of Eastern art and did not consider it worthwhile to deal with the aesthetic
ideas of the East. In his defense, however, he mentioned that his “omis-
sion is not without a positive ground.” By positive ground, he seemed to
have meant, like most Western thinkers of his time, that Oriental art is
deficient of certain fundamental features that are essential and necessary to
connect Oriental art with European art: “The separation from the life of
the progressive races, and the absence of a reflective theory of beauty,
must surely have a fundamental connection with the non-architectural
character pointed out by Mr. Morris in the art of China and Japan.”7 In
his statement, he identified a nonsystematic character of Eastern art and
attributed it to two reasons: one is the separation between Eastern and
Western life, and the other is nonreflective nature of Eastern art. While we
may object to his describing Eastern life as nonprogressive and Eastern art
as nonsystematic, we must admit that the separation of the East and West
4 M. D. GU
in both material and intellectual life indeed contributed to the vast differ-
ences between Eastern and Western art.
Today globalization has removed geographical barriers between East
and West. The successes of globalization have also facilitated the com-
parative studies of Eastern and Western literatures and arts, especially in
the field of China–West studies. A great deal of effort has been made to
bring about dialogues between Chinese and Western humanities. Despite
impressive achievements, however, the same striking differences between
the two cultural traditions have continued to trouble scholars in the field
in a similar way as they haunted Bosanquet in the beginning of the twen-
tieth century. Though the same sense of incompatibility in Chinese and
Western aesthetics has been substantially reduced in degrees of intensity,
it has nevertheless generated new forms and adopted new perspectives
that continue to perceive and conceive China as the antithesis of the
West. In their attempt to deal with the distinctive differences between
China and the West, scholars have abandoned the hegemonic discourse
of Western-centrism and resorted to the anthropological theory of “cul-
tural relativism,” which spawns a series of ideas that conceive of China as
the “ultimate other” to the West. Even the irresistible trend of globaliza-
tion seems unable to dampen its popularity. As cultural relativism has
become the accepted paradigm for cultural and literary studies, it has
become increasingly hard to find conceptual premises upon which to
build bridges across different traditions and cultures. David Buck, a for-
mer editor of the Journal of Asian Studies, observes that cultural relativ-
ism is so predominant in East and West studies that “[c]utting across the
disciplines are epistemological and methodological problems involving
the issue of whether any conceptual tools exist to understand and inter-
pret human behavior and meaning in ways that are intersubjectively
valid.”8 In the postmodern age, when cultural relativism turns into radi-
cal forms, the enthusiasm for contrast rather than compatibility has given
rise to a trend in theoretical studies of literature and art that sees China
and the West as two distinct traditions radically set apart in history, lan-
guage, politics, poetics, aesthetics, and metaphysics. This is especially so
in the areas of Chinese and Western poetic theories. This situation has
been aptly summarized by Longxi Zhang, a well-known scholar of
Chinese and comparative literature, who finds it very unsatisfying:
“[T]he East and the West are so distinctly different that ways of thinking
and expression cannot be made intelligible from one to the other, and
therefore the knowledge of one must be kept apart from that of the
other.”9 This summary surely reminds us of Bosanquet’s view of Chinese

and East art and aesthetics as exceptional or even anomaly in comparison
with their Western counterpart.
As a result of the perceived incompatibility between things Chinese and
Western, a variety of differences between China and the West have been
radicalized into a series of dichotomies in the humanistic fields including
language, metaphor, literature, art, poetics, aesthetics, and metaphysics.
Whether influenced by cultural relativism or Western hegemonic dis-
course, the general perceived incompatibility has developed into an arch
paradigm of binary oppositions and differences. Under the influence of
this arch paradigm, various conceptual frameworks arise in different areas
of China and West studies. In the areas of literature and art, there appeared
an oppositional paradigm constructed on a series of dichotomies. It has
been adequately summarized by Rey Chow, an eminent critic and theorist
well versed in both Chinese and Western literature and criticism: “[T]he
assertion of the Chinese difference tends often to operate from a set of
binary oppositions in which the Western literary tradition is understood to
be metaphorical, figurative, thematically concerned with transcendence,
and referring to a realm that is beyond this world, whereas the Chinese
literary tradition is said to be metonymic, literal, immanentist, and self-
referential (with literary signs referring not to an otherworldly realm above
but back to the cosmic order of which the literary universe is part….
Accordingly, if mimesis has been the chief characteristic of Western writing
since time immemorial, then nonmimesis is the principle of Chinese writ-
ing.” 10 In contemplating what is responsible for the dichotomous ways of
conceptualization, she attributes it to “an a priori surrender to Western
perspectives and categories” (ibid.).
The arch paradigm has spawned more dichotomies in other areas of
Chinese and Western studies. Whereas Western language is highly abstract,
Chinese language is barely capable of expressing abstraction; whereas
Western literary writings are largely allegorical, Chinese literary writings
are generally nonallegorical; whereas Western poetry emanates from ex
nihilo creation, Chinese poetry grows out of immediate responses to real
situations; whereas Western literature is founded on imaginative fictional-
ity, Chinese literature as a whole is dominated by historical fidelity; whereas
Western art is perceived to be the result of artificial making, Chinese art is
the result of natural growth; whereas Chinese aesthetic theory is impres-
sionistic, unsystematic, and lacking clearly defined terms, Western aes-
thetic theory is profound, systematic, couched in rigorous categories;
6 M. D. GU
whereas Chinese philosophy is predicated on intuitive concretization and

sweeping generalization, Western philosophy is rooted in thoughtful
abstraction and logical analysis. Regarding the root cause for the differ-
ences, some have attributed them to cultural values. It was argued that
because ancient China lacked certain cultural determinants, its cultural
legacy in the domains of thought, literature, art, and aesthetics should be
treated as incommensurable with or exceptional to the Western counter-
part. As I will show in Chap. 5, one scholar attributes the alleged contrast
between Western mimesis and Chinese nonmimesis to the Chinese lack of
certain cultural determinants to be found in the West.11 This view falls
unwittingly in line with the Huntington thesis that there exist essential
and durable differences in cultural identities and values between the West
and “the Rest” and they are capable of generating cultural and civiliza-
tional conflicts and confrontations.12
What complicates the situation is that thinkers and scholars in China
have subscribed to the arch paradigm and accepted openly or tacitly these
perceived dichotomies as true and valid. Two examples suffice here. For
the first example, Zhu Guangqian, who has a vision for universal theory of
art and believes in the capability of aesthetics to locate corresponding ideas
in different cultures, expresses a similar view of incompatibility between
Chinese and Western aesthetic thought to that of Bosanquet. Although he
vigorously defended the distinctiveness of traditional Chinese literature
and art as having unique artistic value against the widespread belittlement
by Westernized Chinese intellectuals in his time, he tacitly agreed that
there is practically no Western-style philosophy or aesthetics in the Chinese
tradition. In The Psychology of Tragedy, he argues that because of the sim-
plicity of metaphysics and shallowness of religious feelings, ancient
Chinese, Indian, and other non-Western traditions did not produce liter-
ary works informed by the concept of tragedy in the strict sense of the
word.13 His view implies that Chinese philosophy and aesthetics, if they
exist at all, are incompatible with their Western counterparts.
Zhu Guangqian is not the only thinker who holds such a view. Up to
the present day, there are quite a few Chinese and Western thinkers who
believe that China has no philosophy in the true sense of the word. This
situation is duly reflected in a statement by a scholar of philosophy at
Peking University that he has, for many years, been struggling against the
view that Chinese tradition has no philosophy. In an article entitled “There
Is No Need for Zhongguo Zhexue [Chinese Philosophy] to Be Philosophy,”
one Chinese scholar argues that “philosophy” is a Western cultural
practice and cannot be used to designate traditional Chinese thought

unless one views it from an analogical or metaphorical perspective.14
During his visit to China in 2001, Jacques Derrida also states:
There is no problem with talking about Chinese thought, Chinese history,

Chinese science, and so forth, but obviously, I have a problem with talking
about the Chinese “philosophy” of this Chinese thought and culture …
Philosophy in essence is not just thought… It is an ancient Greek inven-
tion… It is something European. There may be various kinds of thought
and knowledge of equal integrity beyond Western European culture, but it
is not reasonable to call them philosophy.15
Although Derrida had no intention to belittle Chinese and non-Western

thought, his line of thinking aligns well with that of Hegel who believed
that “philosophy” originated from ancient Greece and Eastern thought
like Confucianism and Taoism is but a form of wisdom of life that had not
yet risen to the level of systematic thinking with abstract speculation and
spiritual consciousness. As I will show in later chapters, this kind of belief
has constituted the ontological and epistemological basis for both Chinese
and Western scholars to argue that the idiosyncratic nature of Chinese
philosophy has determined the antithetical nature of a series of dichoto-
mies in the comparative studies of Chinese and Western language, meta-
phor, representation, and aesthetics.
For the second example, Ye Lang, an influential Chinese aesthetician,
has conducted an examination of the major views on the nature and char-
acteristic features of classical Chinese aesthetics vis-à-vis its Western coun-
terpart and found some widely accepted views circulating among Chinese
thinkers and scholars that constitute a consensus and conform to the per-
ceived incompatibility between Chinese and Western aesthetics long con-
ceived by scholars in the West.16 The consensus consists of four major
ideas. First, it holds that “Western aesthetics emphasizes ‘representation’
and imitation and therefore developed a theory of typical characters under
typical circumstances. Chinese aesthetics sets store by ‘expression’ and
‘lyricism,’ and therefore develops a theory of yijing (idea-realm).”17
Second, “Western aesthetics privileges epistemology in philosophy, prefer-
ring the unity of ‘beauty’ and ‘truth,’ while Chinese aesthetics privileges
ethics, preferring the unity of ‘beauty’ and ‘goodness.’”18 Third, “Western
aesthetics privileges formal theorization and is endowed with analytical
and systematic qualities. By contrast, Chinese aesthetics privileges
8 M. D. GU
empirical exposition and is mostly random, impressionistic, and spontane-

ous, and endowed with qualities of intuition and empiricism.”19 Fourth,
“Concepts in Chinese aesthetics are generally hollow and impressionistic
adjectives devoid of definable substance.”20 While admitting some degrees
of truthfulness in these views, Ye Lang methodically refutes the validity of
each of them with solid evidence drawn from a wide range of Chinese
aesthetic materials. He convincingly argues that the popular assessment of
the nature and features of Chinese aesthetics in contradistinction to
Western aesthetics does not stand on reasoned and solid ground and has
oversimplified the complexity of Chinese aesthetic tradition.
The Arch Paradigm of Oppositions and Differences

My foregoing critical review suggests that despite their different cultural
backgrounds, scholars in both Chinese and Western studies of critical the-
ory and aesthetics share one common ground, which is an oppositional
and differential paradigm. Superficially, this paradigm may have risen
under the influence of Western intellectual hegemony or cultural relativ-
ism, but in its deep structure, it grows out of a historical perception of the
different patterns of human development and metaphysical conceptions of
the differences between Chinese and Western thought. In historical devel-
opment, the Chinese civilization is believed to have followed a pattern of
continuity between past and present while the Western civilization is
viewed as following a pattern of rupture. In modes of thinking, it is
believed that while correlative thinking is predominant in Chinese thought,
analytic thinking is the hallmark of Western thought. Metaphysically,
Chinese thought is construed to be wholly monistic while Western thought
is held to be disjunctively dualistic. While Western tradition is understood
to be founded on a disjunction between nature and culture, Chinese tradi-
tion is perceived to be based on a continuum between the human and
natural world. Whereas there is a creation God in the West, who is viewed
as the creator of all things, it is widely believed that in the Chinese tradi-
tion, there is no creation god and Chinese religion is pantheistic, lacking
religious feelings. In consequence, whereas the Western worldview dis-
plays a tragic tension between god and man, Chinese cosmology features
a harmonious collaboration between the human and divine beings.
In these series of dichotomies, we encounter a great irony. Cultural
relativism is meant to counter cultural universalism, which often leads to
ethnocentrism and cultural chauvinism, and to challenge Eurocentric
hegemony as well as to correct the imposition of Western ideology on

non-Western cultures, yet as a scholar of Indian culture perceptively points
out: whether in the colonialist and imperialist eras of Rudyard Kipling or
in our own time of postcolonialism, those who defend the Eastern differ-
ence and those who devalue it “share the most important descriptive pre-
sumptions, differing primarily in terms of evaluation,” and even those who
“see themselves as struggling against imperialism, racism, and sexism share
with their professed antagonists the bulk of relevant ideological beliefs.”21
Indeed, radical relativism is supposed to deflate the sense of superiority in
Western cultures in cross-cultural studies, but the end result often turns
out to be the opposite and reinforces Eurocentrism and Western superiority.
Indeed, in the established dichotomies concerning China and the West,
whether the Chinese terms are criticized as negative categories or cele-
brated as positive values, an implicit and sometimes even explicit bias is
inscribed within their internal structure. A closer look at the series of
binary oppositions reveals that they implicitly entail a hierarchy in which
the Chinese term occupies the lower position. This bias is clearly seen in
these typical contrasts: Western artifice, abstraction, figurative tropes, ex
nihilo creation, transcendental spirituality, logical analysis, and rational sys-
temacity versus Chinese naturalness, concreteness, literal fidelity, stimu-
lus–response transcription, immanentist worldliness, random
commentaries, and impressionistic generalization.
This oppositional paradigm was not consciously conceived by a single
theorist or scholar or developed in a single historical period. In fact, it
gradually took shape in the scholarship and metaphysical speculations by
many thinkers in both China and the West including philosophers like
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Johann Gottfried
Herder, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Max Weber, Bertrand Russell,
Liang Qichao, Yan Fu, Liang Shumin, Feng Youlan, and scholars like Gu
Hongming, Hu Shi, Zhu Guangqian, Marcel Granet, Fredrick Mote,
Benjamin Schwartz, Joseph Needham, K. C. Chang, Shih-hsiang Chen,
A. C. Graham, David Hall, Roger Ames, Tu Wei-ming, David Keightly,
and many others.22 It has exerted a profound impact upon Chinese and
Western studies as well as general studies of human civilizations. Though
it has evolved out of historical materials and scholarship, a self-conscious
urge to build contrasts and dichotomies opens the paradigm to question-
ing. Not surprisingly, it has aroused much controversy and has been sub-
jected to critical scrutiny. And in due time, most of the dichotomies have
been found to be problematic or simply false and untenable.23 Even the
10 M. D. GU
view of China’s cultural legacy as exceptional in regard to Western or so-

called universal values has been found problematic. Martin Powers, an
eminent scholar of Chinese art and culture, employs a wide range of tex-
tual and visual evidence in political theory, literature, art, print culture,
and public spaces in his most recent book, China and England: the
Preindustrial Struggle for Justice in Word and Image, to argue that the
humanly shared experience in those areas created common ground for
transformative exchange between China and the West in early modern
times and challenge the exceptional claim regarding Chinese cultural
legacies.24
Crossing the Aesthetic Divide

Although the oppositional paradigm has aroused a great deal of contro-
versy in which many scholars have participated, the heated debates have
not ended conclusively. Even those who argue against the oppositional
paradigm accept its partial validity. This tricky situation cannot but compel
us to consider: To what extent does the oppositional paradigm fit the real
conditions of Chinese and Western studies? Is it capable of guiding us in
our inquiry about the actual nature and conditions of Chinese and Western
language, literature, and art? Can it offer sound theoretical frameworks for
genuine dialogues between Chinese and Western humanities? And if we
abandon the oppositional paradigm, what alternative paradigms can be
conceived to facilitate genuine dialogues between Chinese and Western
traditions? In what ways can we bring fundamental issues of Chinese lan-
guage, literature, art, and thought into meaningful dialogues with their
Western counterparts? Last but not least, what common ground can be
located to reconceptualize differences in language, literature, poetics, aes-
thetics, and metaphysics from a cross-cultural perspective and move
toward the fusion of aesthetic horizons East and West?
In a book, Unexpected Affinities: Reading Across Cultures, which
uncovers a wide range of thematic and conceptual similarities that unite
literary and cultural traditions in the East and West, Longxi Zhang, unlike
those who have subscribed to the oppositional paradigm of dichotomies,
sagaciously “emphasizes affinity over difference and explores the relation-
ship between East and West in terms of cultural homogeneity (with shared
literary qualities as its signposts), challenging the traditional boundaries of
cross-cultural study and comparative literature as a discipline.”25 The dis-
tinctive differences between Eastern and Western cultures, however,
cannot be simply dismissed or will gradually disappear with the intensifica-

tion of globalization and digital communications. Likewise, a fusion of
aesthetic horizons in China–West studies will not come about naturally if
we continue to accept the existing paradigms and approaches. For the
fusion of aesthetic horizons, we need to locate common grounds for
bridging the gap between Chinese and Western humanities and start with
erecting groundwork for the fusion. We need to conduct genuine dia-
logues between Chinese and Western humanities and employ conceptual
tools to reconceptualize the materials from both traditions, with due
respect paid to the distinctiveness of each tradition. For this purpose, we
must confront those dichotomies head-on and explore to what extent they
are true or not true, and in what ways we can engage in meaningful com-
parative studies.
Since China opened its door to the outside world in modern times,
Chinese and Western aesthetics have been engaged in dialogues, but the
exchange of ideas has been dominated by a one-way flow with the results
that are largely sinicized Western discourses in Chinese academia, where
the Chinese aesthetic tradition has lost its voice due to the inundation of
Western aesthetic ideas, and effectively become a de facto branch of
Western aesthetics. As a consequence, two situations remain in place in
China–West studies: (1) Chinese and Western aesthetics are totally set
apart with each keeping to its own distinct frameworks and systems and
having random and superficial interactions; (2) Two traditions engage in
pseudo-interactions with Chinese materials mainly serving as raw data to
prove the value and validity of Western ideas and theories. How can we
change the existent situations and bring about a genuine two-way dia-
logue between Chinese and Western aesthetic discourses, which pays due
respects to the distinctiveness of each tradition and produces genuine uni-
versal value? I believe that we should challenge some commonly accepted
views on China and West studies and open up the old issues to new modes
of thinking and expression. Moreover, we should make systematic efforts
to demystify and de-marginalize traditional Chinese thought, restore it to
the mainstream theoretical discourse in Chinese and comparative studies,
and enable the lost voice of a time-honored tradition to be heard in the
ongoing discussions and theorizations of cross-cultural studies.
For this purpose, I have been pondering the dichotomies between
Chinese and Western conceptions of language, literature, poetics, and
metaphysics for over a score of years, and made various attempts to locate
a truly comparative rather than contrastive paradigm in Chinese and
12 M. D. GU
Western studies. Having scrutinized the oppositional paradigm for so

long, I have come to the realization that the root cause for the failure of
genuine dialogues is a series of perceived differences, cultural, conceptual,
representational, and last but not least, linguistic, which have formed an
epistemological divide. To cross this divide, I have, for the past decade,
conducted research to locate solid scholarship as well as new theoretical
frameworks for China and West studies. This constitutes the main purpose
of this book. The objective is not to expose errors in the comparative stud-
ies of Chinese and Western traditions. It is concerned with how to bring
about a paradigm shift, how to devise better and more effective method-
ologies for comparative studies, and how to build bridges across the epis-
temic divide. With this aim in mind, I have decided to focus my research
and disquisition on some basic issues, a study of which may yield insights
and solid scholarship for building a bridge across the divide.
Scope and Preview

This book covers areas of language, writing, metaphor, metonymy, rheto-
ric, mimesis, representation, lyricism, expressionism, aesthetics, and meta-
physics. It consists of an introduction, a conclusion, and eight chapters,
which are grouped into four parts, each focusing on a related thematic
cluster. The introductory chapter conducts a brief survey of the present-
day condition of China–West studies and discusses the nature, objective,
scope, and approach of the proposed study, sets the ground for conceptual
and scholarly inquiries into a series of dichotomies in China–West studies
of language, metaphor, representation, aesthetics, and metaphysics, and
proposes a paradigm shift from ethnocentric criticism to global aesthetics.
Part I addresses issues in the linguistic bases of Chinese and Western
literature and art. It has two chapters. Chapter 2 examines the discussions
and debates over the nature of Chinese language and writing in relation to
Western alphabetic language. In the field of China–West studies, Chinese
literature and culture have been viewed by not a few scholars as fundamen-
tally different from their Western counterparts. The root cause of the dif-
ference has often been traced to the difference in language and writing,
which has been further narrowed down to the nature of the writing sym-
bol. By contrast, some scholars consider Chinese language not any differ-
ent from alphabetic languages, because it is essentially a phonetic system
of writing. In this chapter, I reexamine the debates over the nature of
Chinese writing and bring theoretical discourses on the sign in Chinese
and Western thought into a meaningful dialogue so as to acquire useful

insights answering these questions: To what extent is the Chinese written
sign different from the Western sign? Is there a huge gap between the
Chinese written sign and the Western written sign? If the answer is yes, is
there a common ground that can serve as a bridge across the gap? Or is
there any analytical tool that can be used to create a bridge across the gap?
And last but not least, what significance do the gap and common ground
have for cross-cultural studies of literature and art?
Chapter 3 reexamines the linguistic differences between Chinese ideo-
graphic language and Western alphabetic language. By conducting a study
of traditional Chinese language theories in relation to Western theories of
language, it provides a new way of looking at the linguistic differences.
The aim of this chapter is not to systematize Chinese philosophy of lan-
guage but to conduct comparison and contrast with Western theories of
language. By demystifying various views about Chinese language in his-
tory and in present-day scholarship, the chapter demonstrates with evi-
dence that despite the distinct contrast between the ideographic nature of
Chinese writing and phono-centric nature of Western writing, Chinese
language philosophy is not significantly different from its Western coun-
terpart in the conceptions of linguistic sign. In addition, it explores feasi-
ble ways to reconceptualize the linguistic divide between Chinese and
Western languages, especially the written signs in terms of contemporary
theories of psycholinguistics and semiotics.
Part II deals with another essential aspect of the comparative studies of
literature and art, working on Chinese and Western conceptions and appli-
cations of metaphor in relation to its rhetorical use in poetry and poetics.
Metaphor has been recognized as an essential part of everyday language
that conditions and structures the ways we perceive, conceive, and behave.
It is also at the heart of poetry and poetics. In the field of Chinese and
comparative literature, scholars have observed a series of differences in
Chinese and Western conceptions and uses of metaphor. On the perceived
differences has been constructed a dichotomy between Western metapho-
ricity and Chinese nonmetaphoricity in poetry. Chapter 4 probes into the
controversy surrounding Chinese metaphor and answers these questions:
Is the Western conception of metaphor universal to all cultures? In the
comparative study of Chinese and Western cultures, is the Western style
metaphor alien to the Chinese tradition? Do the Chinese conceive and use
metaphor in a similar way as their Western counterparts? If there are any
14 M. D. GU
differences, what are they? This chapter reconfirms the universal nature
and features of metaphor in Chinese and Western poetry.
Chapter 5 recognizes one fact that Chinese metaphor in poetry does
have some special features in its concept bi-xing, a poetic method in the
Chinese tradition. By examining bi-xing (inspired metaphor or metonymic
metaphor) as a dual concept for poetic expression, it compares and con-
trasts it with Western metaphor/metonymy from an interdisciplinary per-
spective that integrates literary analysis, rhetorical study, and conceptual
thinking. With the aid of recent achievements in research on metaphor
and metonymy, it reconceptualizes Chinese notions of bi-xing and
advances a new model of metaphor for understanding Chinese bi-xing in
particular and metaphor and metonymy in general.
Part III moves to the core issue in literary and artistic creations: mime-
sis and representation. Chapter 6 explores whether mimetic theory is
unique to the Western tradition and whether it exists in Chinese critical
discourse. Mimesis is one of the most fundamental ideas in Western poet-
ics. Mimetic theories that grow out of it constitute a mainstream literary
thought in Western aesthetics. In the comparative studies of Chinese and
Western poetics, however, there exists a widely accepted opinion that
views mimetic theory as a cultural invention unique to the Western tradi-
tion. This chapter reexamines the widely accepted view that while mimesis
is the foundation of Western aesthetic thought, expression is the dominant
mode of representation in Chinese literary thought. By examining onto-
logical and epistemological issues concerning mimesis in the Chinese tra-
dition in relation to conceptual insights in the West, Chapter 6 reaffirms
imitation as a transcultural human instinct and mimetic theory in art as a
universal thought across cultural traditions, arguing that the difference in
the emphasis on mimesis and expression in Chinese and Western traditions
is only one in degree, not in kind.
Chapter 7 constructs a Chinese mimetic theory so as to lend further
support to the conceptual inquiry into the universality of mimesis in Chap.
6. In the first introduction of Chinese literary thought to the West, James
J. Y. Liu does not think that the Chinese tradition has a mimetic theory
though ideas of mimesis are not totally absent. Scholars after James Liu
have radicalized his position. They have not only proclaimed that mimetic
theory is nonexistent in Chinese literary thought, but have also taken elab-
orate moves to argue that the cultural conditions necessary for the rise of
mimetic theory did not exist in the Chinese tradition. Chapter 7 does not
engage in a conceptual inquiry into the necessary conditions for the rise of
mimetic theory since it has been dealt with in Chap. 6, but offers a com-
plete system of Chinese mimetic theory that covers ideas of mimesis in the
major areas of Chinese critical tradition: literary thought, poetry, drama,
and fiction. From an evidential perspective, it disconfirms the view that the
Chinese traditions do not possess the metaphysical and cultural determi-
nants responsible for the appearance of Western mimetic theory and a
mimetic view of literature and art.
Part IV addresses some foundational issues of aesthetics and metaphys-
ics in the Chinese and Western traditions. Chapter 8 answers these ques-
tions: What is responsible for artistic creation? What is an aesthetic ideal in
art that is likely to be accepted by different cultural traditions? Is there an
ultimate standard that people across cultures employ to judge the value
and achievement of a work of literature or art? By focusing on a special
way of thinking characterized by Goethe as “daemonic thinking” in the
West and “divine thinking” posited by Liu Xie in China, this chapter
explores critical and theoretical data on the divine, divine creation, and
artistic creation. Assimilating insights from Plato’s idea of art as the result
of “divine madness” and Freud’s rational understanding of art as uncon-
scious creation, it argues that (1) the aesthetic ideal of the divine is still
relevant to artistic creation today and (2) the traditional Chinese notion of
“entering the divine” (rushen) may serve as an imaginative way of artistic
creation and a universal aesthetic ideal across traditions.
Chapter 9 inquires whether Chinese and Western aesthetic thought are
compatible despite the consensus about the incommensurability of
Chinese and Western aesthetic thought in terms of their ontological and
epistemological grounds. This chapter chooses two groups of aesthetic
thinkers: one group from the Chinese tradition, and the other group from
the Western tradition and conducts a comparative study of such key issues
as mimesis and representation, lyricism and expressionism, metaphysical
foundations of art, and other topics. With both conceptual analysis and
critical evidence, the chapter argues that the aesthetic consciousnesses of
the Chinese and Western traditions are compatible though each tradition
displays a different emphasis in the course of history and exhibits culture-
specific characteristics. Through close analysis of ideas and views of the
chosen thinkers and aestheticians, it has located the common ontological
and epistemological foundations for the compatibility. Chinese and
Western aesthetic thought are essentially the same in ontology and episte-
mology, differing in degrees of intensity and formal features across differ-
ent historical periods.
16 M. D. GU
Having examined a series of dichotomies in Chinese and Western aes-

thetic thought and produced a large amount of critical and theoretical
evidence, I conclude in the last chapter that, in spite of the cultural and
linguistic differences, Chinese and Western traditions share broad com-
mon ground in aesthetic thought. The conclusion suggests ways to fur-
ther open up avenues to bridging the divide and bringing about what
Hans-Georg Gadamer calls the “fusion of horizons.”
For a Humanistic Paradigm of Fusion

For the fusion of critical horizons, I think we are in need of a paradigm
shift in East–West studies from an oppositional or differential one to a
humanistic one. In the comparative studies of Chinese and Western tradi-
tions, there are mainly three approaches: oppositional, differential, and
affinity-based. The first and third approaches occupy the two poles while
the second keeps a position in between. The oppositional approach insists
on incommensurability, while the affinity approach privileges commonal-
ity. The differential approach recognizes similarity but emphasizes differ-
ences and variations. Each approach has its merits and demerits, but none
seems wholly satisfying. I propose a humanistic paradigm of fusion inspired
by Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutic theory.
Gadamer’s theory emphasizes a dialogic relationship between the hori-
zon of the reader and that of the author through the interpretation of a
text. Since a text is a historical artifact produced by an author having a
particular aim and using a specific system of codes at a given historical
time, it inscribes the author’s historicity and intentionality on his or her
horizon in the text. In a likely manner, the reader’s horizon consists of his
or her historicity and intentionality. As the interpretation starts, because of
the difference in intentionality and distance between the two historicities,
the text resists the reader’s efforts at interpretation. However, when the
two kinds of intentionality meet in the encounter of reading, and when
the two kinds of historicities are adequately noted, there appears a fusion
of the author’s and reader’s horizons, which gives rise to an adequate
interpretation.26 In my proposed fusion paradigm, the two horizons are
not those of the author and reader but those of two aesthetic traditions.
Each of the horizons has its historical, linguistic, philosophical, and cul-
tural dimensions. The fusion of aesthetic horizons of both traditions
depends upon the merging of both traditions’ multiple dimensions con-
cerning the fundamental aesthetic issues. It requires a full recognition of
the issues in terms of their affinities and commonality as well as differences

and dichotomies. This paradigm of fusion has a common denominator,
which is the human faculty for perception, conception, imagination, rep-
resentation, and interpretation of the shared human experience in spite of
the differences in race, class, ethnicity, and national origin. This paradigm
will serve as a guiding principle for the examinations and discussions of the
chosen issues in the comparative studies of the Chinese and Western tradi-
tions in the chapters to follow.
Notes
1. David Damrosch, What Is World Literature? (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2003).
2. Vincent Leitch et al., eds., Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (New
York: Norton, 2008).
3. Vincent Leitch et al., eds., Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, p. xiv.
4. James J. Y. Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1975), p. 2.
5. Zhu Guangqian, Wenyi xinlixue (Psychology of Literature and Art)
(Shanghai: Kaiming shudian, 1936), “introduction.”
6. Bernard Bosanquet, A History of Aesthetics (1892) (London: George Allen
& Unwin, 1966), p. x.
7. Bernard Bosanquet, A History of Aesthetics (London: George Allen &
Unwin, 1966), p. x.
8. David Buck, Editor’s Introduction to “Forum on Universalism and
Relativism in Asian Studies,” Journal of Asian Studies 50.1 (1991): 30.
9. Longxi Zhang, Mighty Opposites: From Dichotomies to Differences in the
Comparative Study of China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998),
p. xvii.
10. Rey Chow, ed., Modern Chinese Literary and Cultural Studies in the Age of
Theory: Reimagining a Field (Durham and London: Duke University
Press, 2001), p. 10.
11. Liang Shi, “The Leopardskin of Dao and the Icon of Truth: Natural Birth
Versus Mimesis in Chinese and Western Literary Theories,” Comparative
Literature Studies, Vol. 31, No.2, 1994, pp. 162–163.
12. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of
World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), pp. 19–20.
13. Chu Kwang-Tsien (Zhu Guangqian), The Psychology of Tragedy: A Critical
Study of Various Theories of Tragic Pleasure (Strasbourg: Librairie
Universitaire d’Alsace, 1933); Chinese translation: Beiju xinlixue
(Psychology of Tragedy) (Nanjing: Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe, 2009).
18 M. D. GU
14. Min Ouyang, “There Is No Need for Zhongguo Zhexue to Be Philosophy,”

Asian Philosophy 22.3 (2012): 199.
15. Quoted from Jing Haifeng, “From ‘Philosophy’ to ‘Chinese Philosophy’:
Preliminary Thoughts in a Postcolonial Linguistic Context,” Contemporary
Chinese Thought 37.1 (2005), pp. 60–61.
16. Ye Lang, Zhongguo meixue shi dagang (Outline of Chinese History of
Aesthetics) (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1985), pp. 10–16.
Aesthetics), p. 11.
Aesthetics), pp. 13–14.
Aesthetics), p. 14.
Aesthetics), p. 15.
21. Parrick C. Hogan, and Lalita Pandit, eds. Literary India: Comparative
Studies in Aesthetics, Colonialism, and Culture (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1995), p. 6 and p. 8.
22. See G. W. Leibniz, Writings on China (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1994),
pp. 46–48; G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1942), p. 220, and Lectures on the Philosophy of World History
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 112, 198–199, 201;
Max Weber, The Religion of China (New York: Free Press, 1951),
pp. 152–153, 226–227, 240–248; Marcel Granet, La Pensée chinoise (Paris:
La Renaissance du Livre, 1934), pp. 25–29, 279, 476–479; Benjamin
Schwartz, “The Age of Transcendence,” in Special issue of Daedalus
(spring 1975), p. 3, “Transcendence in Ancient China,” pp. 67, 59–60,
and The World of Thought in Ancient China, pp. 25, 302; Fredrick Mote,
Intellectual Foundation of China ((New York: McGraw-Hill, 1989),
pp. 15–17; David Hall and Roger Ames, Anticipating China: Thinking
through the Narrative of Chinese and Western Culture (Albany, NY: SUNY
Press, 1995), p. xiii, 257; Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in
China, vol. 2: History of Scientific Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1956), 2: 216–217, 280–287; K. C. Chang, “Ancient
China,” in Archeological Thought in America, ed., C. C. Lanberg-Karlovsky
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 161–165, and The
Archaeology of Ancient China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986),
pp. 415–416, 418–421; A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical
Argument in Ancient China (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989), p. i and pp,
3–22, Yin-Yang and the Nature of Correlative Thinking, pp. 8–9; Tu Wei-
Ming, Confucian Thought (Albany, NY: State University of New York
Press, 1985), p. 43; David Keightly, “Early Civilization in China,” in Paul
S. Ropp, ed., Heritage of China: Contemporary Perspectives on Chinese

Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 20 and
32; Heiner Roetz, Confucian Ethics of the Axial Age (Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, 1993), pp. 273–274.
23. For scholarship that disputes the oppositional paradigm in the comparative
studies of Chinese and Western languages, literatures, and aesthetics, see
Haun Saussy’s The Problem of A Chinese Aesthetic (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1993), 13–73; Longxi Zhang’s Mighty Opposite: From
Dichotomies to Differences in the Comparative Study of China (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1998), 117–150; Ren Yong’s article,
“Cosmogony, Fictionality, Poetic Creativity: Western and Traditional
Chinese Cultural Perspectives,” Comparative Literature, 50.2 (Spring
1998), 98–119; and, Jonathan Chaves, “Forum: From the 1990 AAS
Roundtable,” in Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews, 13 (1991),
77–82; Martin Ekström, “Illusion, Lie, and Metaphor: The Paradox of
Divergence in Early Chinese Poetics,” Poetics Today 23.2 (2002): 251–285.
For scholarship that challenges the contrastive paradigm in historical pat-
terns and metaphysical thinking, see Michael Puett’s two studies, The
Ambivalence of Creation: Debates Concerning Innovation and Artifice in
Early China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001) and To Become a
God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2004). The reader will find the con-
clusions to Puett’s books especially illuminating.
24. Martin Powers, China and England: the Preindustrial Struggle for Justice
in Word and Image (London and New York: Routledge, 2019),
“Introduction,” and pp. 11–24.
25. Longxi Zhang, Unexpected Affinities: Reading Across Cultures (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2007), quoted from the book’s description.
26. See Gadamer, “Text and Interpretation,” in Hermeneutics and Modern
Philosophy, ed. Brice R. Wachterhauser (Albany: SUNY Press, 1986),
pp. 377–396.
PART I
Language and Writing

CHAPTER 2
Writing System and Linguistic Controversy
Language and philosophy of language have occupied a prominent place in

the field of human sciences in the twentieth century. Heidegger and
Wittgenstein, two of the most influential philosophers in the world, cher-
ished a profound interest in language and language theory. The former’s
famous saying, “Language is the house of being” has been on the lips of
numerous scholars in the field of human and social sciences. And the “lin-
guistic turn” has not only changed the landscape of academia but also
continued to exert its powerful impact on research in human sciences. For
a book like the present one, which aims to explore the possibility of fusing
aesthetic horizons between Chinese and Western traditions, it is natural to
start with an inquiry into the nature and (in)compatibility of Chinese and
Western languages and language theories. Since the Renaissance times,
numerous Western scholars have evinced a profound interest in Chinese
language and writing and turned out a large quantity of scholarship preoc-
cupied with comparative studies of Chinese and Western languages.
Despite the initial fascination, Western thinkers and scholars have gradu-
ally recognized the differences between Chinese and Western languages
and conceived of a conceptual divide that sets Chinese and Western tradi-
tions apart. In the field of criticism and aesthetics, Chinese literature and
art have been viewed by not a few scholars as fundamentally different from
their Western counterparts. The root cause of the differences would
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 23

Switzerland AG 2021
M. D. Gu, Fusion of Critical Horizons in Chinese and Western
Language, Poetics, Aesthetics, Chinese Literature and Culture in the
World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73730-6_2
24 M. D. GU
invariably be traced to the difference in language and writing, which has

been further narrowed down to the nature of the linguistic sign.
Indeed, the difference of the written sign has, since medieval times,
been viewed as a conceptual divide that separates the Chinese and Western
languages. This view has found theoretical support in linguistic science. In
his Course in General Linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure divided the
world’s languages into two large groups: the ideographic system, in which
“each word is represented by a single sign that is unrelated to the sounds
of the word itself,” and the phonetic system, which “tries to reproduce the
succession of sounds that make up a word.”1 Because in Chinese “each
written sign stands for a whole word and, consequently, for the idea
expressed by the word,”2 he identifies Chinese as an ideographic system.
“The classic example of an ideographic system of writing,” Saussure
declared, “is Chinese.”3 Needless to say, the alphabetic European lan-
guages belong to the phonetic system. Saussure further pointed out that
in contrast to an ideographic system, phonetic systems of writing are
“based on the irreducible elements used in speaking.” As Chinese writing
employs characters rather than letters to represent phonemes and mor-
phemes, there exists a recognized gap between Chinese and Western writ-
ing systems.
Saussure’s classification was not only a summary of the similar views
held by scholars in the field up to his time but also anticipated the domi-
nant theme in the repeated debates concerning the nature of Chinese lan-
guage and literature in the twentieth century: whether the Chinese
language is semantically based in contradistinction to the phonetically ori-
ented alphabetic languages.4 While acknowledging similar characteristics
such as the substitution of written signs for the spoken ones in the mind
in both systems, Saussure considered the Chinese writing as having a
graphic quality that makes the substitution absolute. In a subtle way, he
implied that the Chinese written sign has a visual quality that sets it apart
from phonetic systems of writing.5 This subtle point was more bluntly
amplified by Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound into a much-disputed “pic-
torial nature” of the Chinese written sign for the advancement of their
philosophical and aesthetic agendas.6 Perhaps because he was aware of the
gap between the two systems of writing, Saussure limited his linguistic
study to the phonetic system and claimed that his theory applies to non-
phonetic systems as well.
No one would dispute the claim that the Chinese written sign is differ-
ent from the Western counterpart. The indisputable difference entails a
2 WRITING SYSTEM AND LINGUISTIC CONTROVERSY 25
series of questions in cross-cultural studies: To what extent is the Chinese

written sign different from the Western sign? Is there a huge gap between
the Chinese and the Western written signs? If the answer is yes, is there a
common ground that can serve as a bridge across the gap? Or is there any
analytical tool that can be used to envision the fusion of linguistic hori-
zons? In the history of cultural encounters between China and the West,
are there any efforts that have attempted to bridge or narrow the linguistic
gap? If there are any, why have they failed? Last but not least, what insights
can the failed attempts offer in our efforts to fuse the aesthetic horizons
between the Chinese and Western traditions?
These questions have attracted the attention of scholars in the field for
several hundred years and given rise to many heated debates and exchanges
of ideas. I believe, to answer the above questions, it is necessary to have an
adequate understanding of the nature of Chinese language and writing in
relation to the Western counterpart. In this chapter, I wish to reexamine
the debates and controversies in history, but I do not want to take sides
with any school of thought because I believe that the issues in question are
amenable to investigations from multiple perspectives, and scholars in the
debates are prone to looking from one perspective to the neglect of the
humanly constructed nature of language and writing. Instead of tackling
the large issue of language system, I assign myself the modest task of
examining the building block of writing, the written sign, which happens
to be perceived to be the root cause of differences. In the process of exam-
ination, I hope to bring theoretical discourses on the sign in Chinese and
Western thought into a meaningful dialogue that may yield some useful
insights for cross-cultural studies. As the topic involves a number of past
controversies, which ended up inconclusively, my study is not meant as a
final reassessment but represents a step to go beyond traditional
considerations.
The Controversy Over Chinese Writing

In a well-researched book, Ideographia: The Chinese Cipher in Early
Modern Europe, David Porter offers a fascinating study of the first
European encounters with China in the early modern period through an
in-depth examination of four major areas: linguistic, theological, aesthetic,
and economic. In his study, Chinese language and writing serve as a pivot
upon which Europe’s imaginative constructions of China revolved. This
pivot is constituted by the Chinese ideograph or, to be more exact, by
26 M. D. GU
what he calls the “ideographic fantasy.” As he points out, “variations of

the ideographic fantasy have engendered not only exotic vision of the East
but also reassessment of the established ways of thinking in the West.”7
The ideographic fantasy refers to a “long standing, almost compulsive
desire to read it [Chinese writing symbol] as an impossibly pure significa-
tion and to systematize its notions in a relentless quest for an originary and
transcendental order.”8 This fantasy is endowed with so much explanatory
power that it has a paradigmatic function in interpreting Chinese culture
and determining Western responses to China. For my study, I see in this
fantasy an oppositional dichotomy that conceives the fundamental differ-
ence between Chinese and European writings as one between ideographic
and alphabetic writings as well as an illusory desire to locate a bridge across
the linguistic divide.
In a perceptively argued article on Chinese writing, Haun Saussy makes
this sagacious observation: “The opposition of ideographic and alphabetic
writing was a grand simplification and highly vulnerable to fact.”9 This
remark may also be viewed as a pithy evaluation of the controversy over
the nature of Chinese writing in European history. About the nature of
Chinese writing, there are basically two opposing views in the West. One
view argues that Chinese writing is a pictographic language or an ideo-
graphic language using pictograms and ideographs as linguistic symbols.
This is an age-old view that can be traced to medieval times. A number of
influential philosophers, linguists, and writers including G. W. Leibniz,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Giambattista Vico, Étienne Bonnot de Condillac,
G. W. F. Hegel, W. V. Humboldt, Ferdinand de Saussure, Ernest Fenollosa,
Ezra Pound, and others, either adopted or favored this view. The other
view opposes this argument, criticizing it as a silly and intolerable misrep-
resentation and proclaiming Chinese language to be essentially the same
as all other languages. Here, I would just quote a few of the most vocal
scholars in the more recent debate. John DeFrancis, a noted Sinologist,
dismisses the “ideographic” view of Chinese as a myth in his book-length
study of 1984.10 William Boltz, another scholar of ancient Chinese, agrees
with DeFrancis and states in his review article of the former’s book, “the
old drawing-room favorites about the quaintly quixotic and ‘ideographic’
nature of Chinese character are so much eyewash, and can no longer be
countenanced. … Silly and untenable notions about the Chinese script are
not limited, regrettably, to the bemused proposals of the ‘ideographs’ of
the 1930s.”11 In 1989, DeFrancis again reiterates his view, “It is simply
intolerable that Chinese writing continues to be misrepresented as
‘pictographic,’ a level of intellectual muddle-headedness on a par with

discoursing about astronomy in terms of astrology. It is also intolerable
that the nature of writing—of all writing—continues to be misunderstood
in large part because of the misrepresentation of Chinese.”12 I agree that
an adequate understanding of the nature of Chinese writing has impor-
tance not just for Chinese language, but has a much wider significance for
language and writing in general. But when he declares that “It should be
apparent that there is much justification for considering the Chinese script
to be basically—that is, more than anything else—a phonetic system of writ-
ing (italics mine),”13 this statement is tantamount to saying that Chinese
writing has little or no differences from the phonocentric alphabetic
languages.
This view has aroused heated discussions and debates, which focus on
one central question: Is Chinese writing an ideographic system or pho-
netic system? Scholars, most of whom are Sinologists, answer this question
with an unequivocal “no” to ideographic system. The argument against
the ideographic view, however, has met equally vehement opposition.
Chad Hansen, a scholar on Chinese language philosophy, launches a
counterattack and mounts a rigorous defense of the “ideographic” view:
“... the ideographic character of Chinese explains a sound insight found in
the Chinese view of language. We have good reason, therefore, to reject
this prohibitionist analysis of ‘ideograph’ and to continue to call Chinese
language ‘ideographic.’”14
This recent debate is in fact a revival of a heated debate between two
renowned Sinologists, Herrlee Creel and Peter Boodberg, in the late
1930s.15 Despite the differences, the recent debate and its precursor are
essentially overshadowed and determined by still another older debate
over the nature of Chinese language between the detractors who view
Chinese as an inferior language and the upholders of Chinese as a lan-
guage richer than Western alphabetic languages. In the rank of the detrac-
tors are found several venerable Western philosophers and linguists like
G. W. F. Hegel, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Friedrich Schlegel, F. Bopp,
A. Schleicher, H. Humphreys, and W. A. Mason. Among the upholders
are G. W. Leibniz, Athanase Kircher, John Wilkins, Ernest Fenollosa, Ezra
Pound, and Ernest Cassirer. We may even include Derrida in the rank of
defenders.16 The overshadowing of the older debate is clearly visible in the
background of the 1930s’ debate. Creel who started the debate expressed
in no uncertain terms that his purpose was to correct the Western preju-
dice with regard to the ideographic nature of Chinese: “It is a further and
28 M. D. GU
even more curious fact that we Occidentals have come, by long habitude,
to think that any method of writing which consists merely of a graphic
representation of thought, but which is not primarily a system for the
graphic notation of some sounds, in some way falls short of what writing
was foreordained to be, is not indeed writing in the full sense of the
word.”17 In Creel’s statement, we could hear a distinct note that antici-
pates Derrida’s deconstruction of phonocentric and logocentric views of
writing.
A Utopian Approach to the Linguistic Gap

In world history, some Western thinkers and scholars who cherished the
ambition to find a viable way to resolve cultural differences of different
traditions using different writing systems enthusiastically embraced the
ideographic view of Chinese writing as a possible way to bridge the lin-
guistic gap across continents. Their enthusiastic efforts turned out to be
totally utopian. This utopian act was started as early as the initial contact
between Chinese and Western civilizations in the Renaissance period.
Since then, the ideographic view has been used as either an exotic foil or
an alien frame of reference for Western thinkers in their investigation of
the nature of European languages in particular and world languages in
general. For over two centuries, there has existed an extended exploration
of the difference between Chinese and Western languages. In this section,
I will examine how the ideographic view was employed to bridge the lin-
guistic gap in European history, how it affected the European understand-
ing of the nature of language and writing in general, and what legacy it left
behind for cross-cultural studies of writing systems.
My discussion starts with an examination of a utopian movement to
promote Chinese language as a universal written language. In their early
encounters with Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and other peoples of Asian
and Southeast Asian countries, Western missionaries and scholars found
that those peoples, despite the fact that they do not know Chinese lan-
guage, could nevertheless read books written in Chinese characters. This
phenomenon fascinated them and made them believe that Chinese writing
is a system that employs an ocular method of communication, which,
entirely independent of speech and without the intervention of words,
conveys ideas directly through the sense of vision to the mind. As a result
of this belief, the nature of Chinese language was decided to be “ideo-
graphic” in contradistinction to “phonographic” or alphabetical European
language. This belief naturally led to the conviction that Chinese writing
was most likely a universal writing system, which might be promoted and
used by all peoples on earth, and then people could read books written in
Chinese ideograms like numerical figures or algebraic signs. Some mis-
sionaries went so far as to believe that Chinese language should be pro-
moted throughout the world and the Bible should be translated into
Chinese so that people all over the world could read it without the need
to learn spoken Chinese and on the mere perusal of Chinese characters.
The perception of Chinese as a universal language has proved to be
utopian and the attempt to use Chinese writing as a way to bridge the
linguistic gap was a total failure, but the intellectual exercise has produced
an unintended legacy that finds its presence in the contrast between
Chinese writing as an ideographic system and European writing as a pho-
nographic system. Nowadays, scholars basically accept Saussure’s dual
conception of world languages into two writing systems: the alphabetic
languages that employ letters as linguistic signs and the ideographic lan-
guages that use ideograms as linguistic signs. According to this classifica-
tion, Chinese language uses an ideographic system, because in
contradistinction to Western alphabetic languages, whose aim is to imi-
tate/record speech, Chinese language is one using ideograms to represent
ideas; hence, the basis of Chinese is the script that represents meanings
rather than sound as in alphabetic language. Saussure’s theory is indebted
to the linguistic legacy of concept-script theory that can be traced back to
the Renaissance period in the West. The earliest articulation of this idea
may be traced to the seventeenth century. Francis Bacon, the English phi-
losopher, made the following observation that may have expressed a prev-
alent view at that time with regard to the Chinese system of writing:
And we understand further, that it is the use of China, and the kingdoms of
the high Levant, to write in characters real, which express neither letter nor
words in gross, but things or notions; insomuch as countries and provinces,
which understand not one another’s language, can nevertheless read one
another’s writings, because characters are accepted more generally than the
languages do extend; and therefore they have a vast multitude of characters,
as many, I suppose, as radical words.18
Bacon’s idea was accepted and further promoted by missionaries who

went to and stayed in China and had direct contact with Chinese lan-
guage. Father Cibot, a French missionary who stayed in Peking, published
30 M. D. GU
a controversial essay in the first volume of the Mémores concernant les

Chinois, which proposed in effect an ideographic and pictographic view of
Chinese writing: “The Chinese characters are composed of symbols and
images, unconnected with any sound, and which may be read in all lan-
guages. They form a kind of intellectual, algebraical, metaphysical and
ideal painting, which express thoughts, and represents them by analogy,
by relation, by convention.”19 Since the fifteenth century until modern
times, this idea had developed into an exotic view that unlike other writing
systems, Chinese characters resemble mathematical symbols and represent
directly ideas and concepts in the mind and only incidentally represent
pronunciations. This view was even taken seriously by well-known linguis-
tic theorists. In his study of the relationship between language and intel-
lectual development (1836), Wilhelm von Humboldt, the German
linguistic philosopher, refined the exotic view into a philosophically rigor-
ous observation:
Nobody can deny that the old style Chinese reveals a stirring dignity owing
to the fact that important ideas impinge directly upon each other; it reveals
a simple grandeur because, by discarding all useless secondary designations,
it seems to take recourse in depicting pure thought via language.20
Clearly, Humboldt did not abandon the ideographic view that considers
Chinese written signs as graphic expression of thought. In fact, his words
remind us of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s view of hieroglyphic symbol as some-
thing that “depicts the facts that it describes.”21 In his time, however, an
entirely different view concerning the nature of Chinese language appeared
and eventually developed into an opposition to the ideographic view of
Chinese. Peter S. Du Ponceau, president of the American Philosophical
Society, published a monograph, A Dissertation on the Nature and
Character of the Chinese System of Writing, in 1838.22 In his treatise, he
argues that the concept-script premise of Chinese is a misconception based
on inadequate knowledge of Chinese language that cannot stand close
scrutiny and that a purely ideographical language independent of speech
cannot exist, and that the Chinese system of writing, like all languages in
the world, can be nothing less than “a servile representation of the spoken
language, as far as visible signs can be made to represent audible sounds.”23
Obviously, his view came under the heavy influence of phonocentrism,
which is the conceptual basis of alphabetic languages. Western linguistic
theory holds that language is a representation of thinking and writing is
only a copy of language, not a language per se. The philosophical founda-
tion of this theory is the Western tradition’s logocentrism, which privi-
leges presence over absence. Because spoken language is viewed as presence
and writing as absence, speech is regarded as more important than writing,
which is but a servant to language. This view of writing as an appendix to
speech is the rationale for Du Ponceau’s view of Chinese characters as
servants to spoken Chinese. We must admit that Du Ponceau’s criticism of
the exaggerated total separation of speech from Chinese writing is cer-
tainly reasonable, but his rejection of Chinese script as ideographic (i.e., it
represents ideas and not sounds) in nature evinces a strong phonocentric
belief. His argument reveals his conviction in the universality of phono-
centrism for all writings, because he holds that Chinese characters repre-
sent sounds in the same way as alphabetic languages and insists that “it is
impossible that the Chinese character should be understood, unless the
spoken language of China be understood at the same time.” True,
European languages and other alphabetic languages are phonocentric,
based on the idea that written symbols are linguistic holders of linguistic
sounds, but phonocentrism is not the only principle for composing
Chinese characters. In fact, it is not even the dominant principle, for the
major principle for character-making is graphic and semantic. In language
practice, the use of Chinese characters does not support his argument that
“if the Chinese writing is read and understood in various countries in the
vicinity of China, it is not in consequence of its supposed ideographic
character; but either because the Chinese is also the language or one of the
languages of the country, or because it is learned, and the meaning of the
characters is acquired, through the words which they represent.”24 For it
simply cannot explain the fact that numerous Japanese, Koreans, and
Vietnamese before modern times could read Chinese texts without the
ability to speak Chinese, or without ever making any effort to learn
Chinese.
His argument that Chinese writing is a handmaiden to spoken Chinese
shows him to be a staunch believer in phonocentrism. Here, I will offer a
critique of his phonocentric view and explain why it is not applicable to
Chinese writing. According to phonocentrism in Western linguistic the-
ory, writing is the record of speech and is therefore the handmaiden to
speech. For those who have some knowledge of the historical develop-
ment of Chinese language, Du Ponceau’s view of Chinese words as hand-
maidens to sounds is contrary to historical facts. In Chinese history, spoken
Chinese has consistently been placed in a servile position to written
32 M. D. GU
Chinese, and the same is true of the relationship between classical Chinese
(based on writing) and vernacular Chinese (based on speaking). In the
beginning, the correspondence between spoken Chinese and written
Chinese may have existed in the early stage of Chinese language develop-
ment, for example, in the Han Dynasty (or much earlier) when Chinese
language was formalized by the government. But since then, Chinese lan-
guage has split into two systems: classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese.
Although the two share some basic characteristic features, yet they are so
different that the uneducated could hardly understand what the educated
write even when what is written is read aloud to them. Just like the edu-
cated and uneducated who belong to two different classes, classical
Chinese and vernacular Chinese form a master–servant relationship, but
interestingly, contrary to the relationship conceived by phonocentrism in
Western linguistic theory, the hierarchy is reversed. Classical Chinese is the
master while vernacular Chinese is the servant because it is the former that
controls and dominates the latter.
The huge gap between classical and vernacular Chinese was brought
about not solely by the language development. Rather, the major factor
for the gap has much to do with the characteristic features in the Chinese
writing system: Chinese has a more enhanced visual quality than alpha-
betic language and is essentially semantically oriented rather than phoneti-
cally based. Simply put, it was determined by the stability of the Chinese
characters, or ideograms that represent meaning as well as sounds. Tang
Lan, a highly respected Chinese linguist, points out: “Chinese philology is
essentially a study of the shapes of characters. It should not include exege-
ses of sounds and rhyme of words. Although a character’s sound and
meaning are related to its shape, but in essence, they belong to language.
Strictly speaking, the meaning of a character is part of semantics; the sound
of a character is part of phonetics. Sound and meaning should belong to
linguistics.”25 Thus, one fundamental achievement of traditional Chinese
linguistics is the understanding that Chinese linguistic discourse is
character-centered rather than grammar-centered. There is an inexact but
sensible argument that Chinese has no grammar. A more exact way to
describe the situation should be that Chinese has a weak external grammar
but has a fully developed internal grammar, which is known to native
speakers through (un)conscious assimilation. This has been proven by
Chinese history. Chinese linguistic study produced many works like
Shuowen jiezi (Explication of Characters and Words), but there was no
such book comparable to Western “grammar” until modern times when
Ma Jianzhong compiled the first Chinese grammar book using theories

and methods of Western grammar.
The visually and semantically based Chinese language system is endowed
with an internal impetus to override speech. This inner tendency may be
reworded as an idea: writing does not necessarily depend on speech;
indeed, historical development has shown that classical Chinese is so dif-
ferent from vernacular Chinese that they practically formed two indepen-
dent, albeit related systems. The two systems might have started at the
same origin but followed two different routes of development in history.
While classical Chinese develops through the route from thought to writ-
ing, vernacular followed the route from thought to speech. Because of the
gap between the two systems, a few Western scholars were disposed to
treat classical Chinese as a notational system rather than a fully developed
language system. Because of the phonocentric view, Marcel Granet was
the first to cast doubt on the nature of Chinese writing system as a lan-
guage and suggests that it may be just a system of notation.”26 His view
finds supporters even among those who support the view of Chinese writ-
ing as ideographic. Henry Rosemont, an ideograph holder, argues that
written classical Chinese is a notational system that is only very indirectly
related to a spoken language.27 Though their expressed doubt about clas-
sical Chinese as a language system is erroneous, it nevertheless confirms
from the negative direction the fact that classical Chinese and vernacular
Chinese are two independent and interdependent systems and the former
is not a handmaiden to the latter.
Visual and Semantic Primacy in Chinese Writing

In a Chinese article on Chinese language, I have pointed out that a writing
symbol does not simply consist of sound and shape; it is made up of three
related elements that can be conceptually analyzed. I call them “three Ss,”
referring to “sound,” “shape,” and “sense.”28 My view is basically similar
to those of many Chinese and Western linguists. For an example, the
noted Chinese linguist Xu Tongqiang advances the same idea in his book
What Is Language.29 But what I want to emphasize is that in different
language systems, the three elements are valued differently. In European
alphabetic languages, sound and sense are privileged over shape. In
Chinese language, it is just the opposite: shape and sense are privileged
over sound.30 Those scholars who accept phonocentrism in their study of
Chinese language and writing do not seem to pay sufficient attention to
34 M. D. GU
the difference of emphasis in linguistic representation for Chinese and

European languages.
Moreover, some scholars do not seem to appreciate the difference in
representational value that Chinese and European languages emphasize.
The main function of Chinese writing is not to record exact sounds in
speech, but to adequately convey what is to be expressed in thought. As
an alphabetic language is mainly to record speech, it relies heavily on the
medium of sounds. As a result, some scholars believe that thought and
language are at least once removed from each other. By contrast, because
Chinese language mainly serves the function of expressing thought, think-
ing and speaking have a less mediated relationship. Perhaps for this reason,
some European thinkers considered Chinese language as a natural lan-
guage, a language closer to God. John Webb may be the first Western
scholar to give an account of the exquisite naturalness of the Chinese lan-
guage: “Besides they are not troubled with variety of Declensions,
Conjugations, Numbers, Genders, Moods, Tenses and the like grammati-
cal niceties, but are absolutely free from all such perplexing accidents, hav-
ing no other Rules in use than what the light nature has dictated unto
them; whereby their language is plain, easie and simple as NATURAL
speech ought to be.”31 Leibniz simply regarded Chinese as a language
taught by God: “If God had taught man a language, that language would
have been like Chinese.”32 He once compared Chinese and Western lan-
guages and came to the conclusion that Chinese characters form a writing
system endowed with more rationality because people can gain an under-
standing of a character by examining and reflecting on the character itself.
This is true to a certain extent. For example, when a person who has the
mastery of Chinese writing comes across a character with an animal radi-
cal, he or she may guess correctly that it is an animal even though he or
she does not know what animal it is. By contrast, a person who masters an
alphabetic language cannot acquire an idea of a word by simply reflecting
on the word itself. He or she must rely on the mediation of language.
In his argument against the ideographic view of Chinese writing, Du
Ponceau raised a loaded question: Which came first, writing or language?
This is a chicken–egg question that can never be satisfactorily answered
because it depends on what constitutes writing symbols. If we count the
cave paintings of primitive people as early writing symbols, writing might
have preceded speech as a system. Furthermore, there may be another
possibility that speech and writing arose and developed simultaneously in
high antiquity. Giambattista Vico, the well-known Italian philosopher and
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spectateurs et de maltraiter avec sa trompe, non seulement les personnes
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furoncle.
«Portait au moment du vol une tour renfermant des sièges pour quinze
personnes et une couverture en drap d’or de la grandeur d’un tapis
ordinaire.»
«Il n’y avait pas d’erreur. L’inspecteur sonna, donna le signalement à
Alaric et dit:
—«Cinquante mille exemplaires à faire imprimer à la minute et à
envoyer par la malle-poste à tous les bureaux de mont-de-piété du
continent.»
«Alaric se retira.
—«Voilà pour le moment. Maintenant il nous faut une photographie de
l’objet volé.»
«Je la lui donnai. Il l’examina en connaisseur et dit:
—«On s’en contentera puisque nous ne pouvons faire mieux; mais il a la
trompe rentrée dans la bouche. Cela est fâcheux et pourra causer des
erreurs, car, évidemment, il n’est pas toujours dans cette position.»
«Il toucha le timbre.
—«Alaric, cinquante mille exemplaires de cette photographie, demain, à
la première heure, et expédiez par la malle avec les signalements.»
«Alaric se retira pour exécuter les ordres. L’inspecteur dit:
—«Il faudra offrir une récompense, naturellement. Voyons, quelle
somme?»
—«Combien croyez-vous?»
—«Pour commencer, je crois que... Disons vingt-cinq mille dollars.
C’est une affaire embrouillée et difficile. Il y a mille moyens d’échapper et
mille facilités de recel. Ces voleurs ont des amis et des complices partout.»
—«Dieu me bénisse! vous les connaissez donc!»
«La physionomie prudente, habile à ne laisser transparaître ni les
pensées ni les sentiments, ne me fournit aucun indice, pas plus que les mots
suivants, placidement prononcés:
—«Ne vous occupez pas de cela. Je les connais ou je ne les connais pas.
Généralement nous avons vite une idée assez nette de l’auteur par la
manière dont le délit a été commis, et l’importance du profit possible pour
lui. Il ne s’agit pas d’un pickpocket ou d’un voleur de foires, mettez-vous
cela dans la tête. L’objet n’a pas été escamoté par un novice. Mais, comme
je le disais, considérant le voyage qu’il faudra accomplir, la diligence que
les voleurs mettront à faire disparaître leurs traces à mesure qu’ils
avanceront, vingt-cinq mille dollars me paraissent une faible somme, à quoi
nous pouvons cependant nous en tenir, pour commencer.»
«Nous partîmes donc de ce chiffre. Puis cet homme, qui n’oubliait rien
de ce qui pouvait fournir une indication, me dit:
—«Il y a des cas dans les annales de la police qui démontrent que parfois
des criminels ont été retrouvés par des singularités dans leur façon de se
nourrir. Pouvez-vous me dire ce que mange l’éléphant, et en quelle
quantité?»
—«Bon! ce qu’il mange? Il mange de tout. Il mangera un homme, il
mangera une bible. Il mangera n’importe quoi compris entre un homme et
une bible.»
—«C’est parfait. Un peu trop général toutefois. Il me faut quelques
détails. Les détails sont la seule chose utile dans notre métier. Très bien,
pour les hommes. Mais, voyons. A un repas, ou si vous préférez, en un jour,
combien d’hommes mangera-t-il, viande fraîche?»
—«Il lui importera peu qu’ils soient frais ou non. En un seul repas, il
pourra manger cinq hommes ordinaires.»
—«Parfait.—Cinq hommes.—C’est noté. Quelles nationalités préfère-t-
il?»
—«Il est tout à fait indifférent à la nationalité. Il préfère les gens qu’il
connaît, mais il n’a pas de parti pris contre les étrangers.»
—«Très bien! Maintenant, les bibles. Combien de bibles peut-il manger
à un repas?»
—«Il en mangera une édition tout entière.»
—«Ce n’est pas assez explicite. Parlez-vous de l’édition ordinaire, in-
octavo, ou de l’édition de famille, illustrée?»
—«Je ne crois pas qu’il se préoccupe des illustrations. C’est-à-dire je ne
pense pas qu’il fasse plus de cas des éditions illustrées que des autres.»
—«Vous ne saisissez pas ma pensée. Je parle du volume. L’édition
ordinaire in-octavo pèse environ deux livres et demie, tandis que la grande
édition in-quarto, avec les illustrations, pèse dix ou douze livres. Combien
de bibles de Doré mangerait-il à un repas?»
—«Si vous connaissiez l’animal, vous ne demanderiez pas. Il prendrait
tout ce qu’on lui donnerait.»
—«Eh bien, calculez alors en dollars et en centimes. Il nous faut arriver
à nous fixer. Le Gustave Doré coûte cent dollars l’exemplaire, en cuir de
Russie, reliure à biseaux.»
—«Il lui faudrait une valeur d’environ cinquante mille dollars; mettons
une édition de cinq cents exemplaires.»
—«Bon, c’est plus exact. J’écris. Très bien: il aime les hommes et les
bibles. Ça va, qu’aime-t-il encore? Voyons... des détails...»
—«Il laissera les bibles pour des briques, il laissera les briques pour des
bouteilles, il laissera les bouteilles pour du drap, il laissera le drap pour des
chats, il laissera les chats pour des huîtres, il laissera les huîtres pour du
jambon, il laissera le jambon pour du sucre, il laissera le sucre pour des
pâtés, il laissera les pâtés pour des pommes de terre, il laissera les pommes
de terre pour du son, il laissera le son pour du foin, il laissera le foin pour de
l’avoine, il laissera l’avoine pour du riz qui a toujours formé sa principale
alimentation; il n’y a du reste rien qu’il ne mange si ce n’est du beurre
d’Europe; mais il en mangerait s’il l’aimait.»
—«Très bien, et quelle quantité en moyenne par repas?»
—«Nous disons environ... Eh bien! environ un quart de tonne à une
demi-tonne.»
—«Il boit?»
—«Tout ce qui est liquide: du lait, de l’eau, du whisky, de la mélasse, de
l’huile de ricin, de la térébenthine, de l’acide phénique... inutile d’insister
sur les détails; indiquez tous les liquides qui vous viennent à l’esprit;
d’ailleurs il boira n’importe quoi, excepté du café d’Europe.»
—«Très bien. Et quelle quantité?»
—«Mettons de cinq à quinze barriques, cela dépend de sa soif, qui varie,
mais son appétit ne varie pas.»
—«Ce sont des habitudes peu ordinaires; elles serviront à nous mettre
sur la piste.»
«Il sonna.
—«Alaric, faites venir le capitaine Burns.»
«Burns arriva. L’inspecteur Blunt lui expliqua l’affaire, en entrant dans
tous les détails, puis il dit de ce ton clair et décisif d’un homme qui a son
plan nettement arrêté dans son esprit et qui est accoutumé à commander:
—«Capitaine Burns, vous chargerez les détectives Jones, Davis, Halsey,
Bates et Hackett de suivre l’éléphant comme une ombre.»
—«Oui, Monsieur.»
—«Vous chargerez les détectives Moses, Dakin, Murphy, Rogers,
Tupper, Higgins et Barthélemy de suivre les voleurs comme une ombre.»
—«Vous placerez un poste de trente hommes, trente hommes d’élite
avec un renfort de trente à l’endroit où l’éléphant a été volé, avec ordre de
faire faction nuit et jour, et de ne laisser approcher personne, excepté les
reporters, sans un ordre écrit de moi.»
—«Des détectives en bourgeois sur le chemin de fer, les bateaux à
vapeur et sur les bacs et bateaux de passeurs, et sur toutes les routes et tous
les chemins qui partent de Jersey-City, avec ordre de fouiller toutes les
personnes suspectes.»
—«Vous leur donnerez à chacun des photographies avec le signalement
de l’éléphant, et vous leur enjoindrez de fouiller tous les trains et tous les
bateaux et navires qui sortent du port.»
—«Si on trouve l’éléphant, vous le ferez arrêter et vous m’avertirez
immédiatement par télégraphe.»
—«Vous m’avertirez immédiatement si on trouve des empreintes de pied
d’animal ou toute autre chose de même nature.»
—«Vous vous ferez donner l’ordre enjoignant à la police du port de faire
des patrouilles vigilantes devant les façades des maisons.»
—«Vous ferez partir des détectives en bourgeois, par les chemins de fer,
et ils iront au nord jusqu’au Canada, à l’ouest jusqu’à l’Ohio, au sud jusqu’à
Washington.»
—«Vous aurez des hommes sûrs et capables dans tous les bureaux de
télégraphes pour lire les dépêches, avec ordre de se faire interpréter toutes
les dépêches chiffrées.»
—«Que tout cela soit exécuté dans le plus profond secret, dans le plus
impénétrable secret.»
—«Vous viendrez sans faute me faire votre rapport à l’heure habituelle.»
—«Allez maintenant.»
«Il était parti. L’inspecteur Blunt demeura silencieux et pensif un
moment; le feu de son regard s’éteignit et disparut. Il se tourna vers moi et
me dit d’une voix calme:
—«Je n’aime pas à me vanter. Ce n’est pas mon habitude, mais je crois
pouvoir dire que nous trouverons l’éléphant.»
«Je lui pris les mains chaleureusement et le remerciai. J’étais sincère,
tout ce que je voyais de cet homme me le faisait aimer davantage, et me
faisait émerveiller sur les étonnants mystères de sa profession. Il était tard.
Nous nous séparâmes, et je retournai chez moi le cœur autrement joyeux
qu’à mon arrivée à son bureau.
II
«Le lendemain matin, les détails complets étaient dans tous les journaux.
Il y avait même, en supplément, l’exposé des théories de l’agent un tel, ou
un tel, sur la manière dont le coup avait été fait, sur les auteurs présumés du
vol, et la direction qu’ils avaient dû prendre avec leur butin. Il y avait onze
théories, embrassant toutes les possibilités. Et ce simple fait montra quels
gens indépendants sont les détectives. Il n’y avait pas deux théories
semblables, ou se rapprochant en quoi que ce fût, excepté sur un certain
point, sur lequel les onze étaient absolument d’accord. C’était que,
quoiqu’on eût bouleversé et démoli l’arrière de ma maison, et que la porte
seule fût restée fermée à clef, l’éléphant n’avait pu passer par la brèche
pratiquée, mais par quelque autre issue encore inconnue. Tous s’accordaient
à dire que les voleurs n’avaient pratiqué cette brèche que pour induire la
police en erreur. Cela ne me serait pas venu à l’idée, non plus qu’à tout
homme ordinaire, mais les détectives ne s’y laissèrent pas prendre un seul
instant.
«Ainsi la chose qui me paraissait la seule claire était celle où je m’étais
le plus lourdement trompé. Les onze théories mentionnaient toutes le nom
des voleurs supposés, mais pas deux ne donnaient les mêmes noms. Le
nombre total des personnes soupçonnées était de trente-sept. Les divers
comptes-rendus des journaux se terminaient par l’énoncé de l’opinion la
plus importante de toutes, celle de l’inspecteur en chef Blunt. Voici un
extrait de ce qu’on lisait:
«L’inspecteur en chef connaît les deux principaux coupables. Ils se
nomment «Brick Duffy» et «Rouge Mac Fadden». Dix jours avant que le
vol fût accompli, il en avait eu connaissance, et avait sans bruit pris les
mesures pour mettre à l’ombre ces deux coquins notoires. Malheureusement
on perdit leurs traces juste la nuit du rapt, et avant qu’on les eût retrouvées,
l’oiseau, c’est-à-dire l’éléphant, s’était envolé.
«Duffy et Mac Fadden sont les deux plus insolents vauriens de leur
profession. Le chef a des raisons de croire que ce sont les mêmes qui
dérobèrent, l’hiver dernier, par une nuit glaciale, le poêle du poste de police,
ce qui eut pour conséquence de mettre le chef et les hommes de police entre
les mains des médecins avant l’aube, les uns avec des doigts gelés, d’autres,
les oreilles, ou d’autres membres.»
«Après avoir lu la moitié de ce passage, je fus plus étonné que jamais de
la merveilleuse sagacité de cet homme. Non seulement il voyait d’un œil
clair tous les détails présents, mais l’avenir même ne lui était pas caché!
J’allai aussitôt à son bureau, et lui dis que je ne pouvais m’empêcher de
regretter qu’il n’eût pas fait tout d’abord arrêter ces gens et empêché ainsi le
mal et le dommage. Sa réponse fut simple et sans réplique:
—«Ce n’est point notre affaire de prévenir le crime, mais de le punir.
Nous ne pouvons pas le punir tant qu’il n’a pas été commis.»
«Je lui fis remarquer en outre que le secret dont nous avions enveloppé
nos premières recherches avait été divulgué par les journaux; que non
seulement tous nos actes, mais même tous nos plans et projets avaient été
dévoilés, que l’on avait donné le nom de toutes les personnes soupçonnées;
elles n’auraient maintenant rien de plus pressé que de se déguiser ou de se
cacher.
—«Laissez faire. Ils éprouveront que, quand je serai prêt, ma main
s’appesantira sur eux, dans leurs retraites, avec autant de sûreté que la main
du destin. Pour les journaux, nous devons marcher avec eux. La renommée,
la réputation, l’attention constante du public sont le pain quotidien du
policier. Il doit rendre manifeste ce qu’il fait, pour qu’on ne suppose pas
qu’il ne fait rien; il faut bien qu’il fasse connaître d’avance ses théories, car
il n’y a rien d’aussi curieux et d’aussi frappant que les théories d’un
détective, et rien qui lui vaille plus de respect et d’admiration. Si les
journaux publient nos projets et nos plans, c’est qu’ils insistent pour les
avoir, et nous ne pouvons leur refuser sans leur faire injure; nous devons
constamment mettre nos agissements sous les yeux du public, sinon le
public croira que nous n’agissons pas. Il est d’ailleurs plus agréable de lire
dans un journal: «Voici l’ingénieuse et remarquable théorie de l’inspecteur
Blunt», que d’y trouver quelque boutade de mauvaise humeur, ou pis
encore, quelque sarcasme.»
—«Je vois la force de votre raisonnement, mais j’ai remarqué qu’en un
passage de vos observations dans les journaux de ce matin, vous aviez
refusé de faire connaître votre opinion sur un point accessoire.»
—«Oui, c’est ce que nous faisons toujours, cela fait bon effet. D’ailleurs,
je n’avais pas d’opinion du tout sur ce point.»
«Je déposai une somme d’argent considérable entre les mains de
l’inspecteur, pour couvrir les dépenses courantes; et je m’assis pour attendre
des nouvelles: nous pouvions espérer avoir des télégrammes à chaque
minute. Entre temps, je relus les journaux et notre circulaire, et je constatai
que les 25,000 dollars de récompense semblaient n’être offerts qu’aux
détectives seulement; je dis qu’il aurait fallu les offrir à quiconque
trouverait l’éléphant, mais l’inspecteur me répondit:
—«Ce sont les détectives qui trouveront l’éléphant, par conséquent la
récompense ira à qui de droit. Si la trouvaille est faite par quelque autre
personne, ce ne sera jamais que parce qu’on aura épié les détectives, et
qu’on aura mis à profit les indications qu’ils se seront laissé voler, et ils
auront droit, de toute façon, à la récompense. Le but d’une prime de cette
nature est de stimuler le zèle des hommes qui consacrent leur temps et leurs
talents acquis à ces sortes de recherches, et non pas de favoriser des
citoyens quelconques qui ont la chance de faire une capture sans avoir
mérité la récompense par des mérites et des efforts spéciaux.»
«Cela me parut assez raisonnable. A ce moment, l’appareil télégraphique
qui était dans un coin de la pièce commença à cliqueter et la dépêche
suivante se déroula:
«Flower Station, New-York, 7 h. 30 matin.
«Suis sur une piste. Trouvé série de profonds sillons traversant ferme
près d’ici, les ai suivis pendant deux milles direction est. Sans résultat.
Crois éléphant a pris direction ouest. Je filerai de ce côté.
«Darley, détective.»
—«Darley est un des meilleurs hommes de la division, dit l’inspecteur;
nous aurons bientôt d’autres nouvelles de lui.»
«Le télégramme nº2 arriva.
«Barker’s, N. J., 7 h. 30 matin.
«Arrive à l’instant. Effraction dans verrerie ici nuit dernière, huit cents
bouteilles enlevées. Eau en grande quantité ne se trouve qu’à cinq milles
d’ici; me transporte de ce côté. Éléphant probablement altéré, bouteilles
vides trouvées.
«Baker, détective.»
—«Cela promet, dit l’inspecteur, je vous avais bien dit que le régime de
l’animal nous mettrait sur la trace.»
«Télégramme nº3.
«Taylorville, L. I., 8 h. 15 matin.
«Une meule de foin près d’ici disparue pendant la nuit. Probablement
dévorée. Relevé et suivi la piste.
«Hubard, détective.»
—«Quel chemin il fait! dit l’inspecteur. Je savais d’ailleurs que nous
aurions du mal, mais nous l’attraperons.»
«Flower Station, N. Y., 9 h. matin.
«Relevé les traces à trois milles vers l’ouest. Larges, profondes,
déchiquetées. Nous venons de rencontrer un fermier qui dit que ce ne sont
pas des traces d’éléphant. Il prétend que ce sont des traces de trous où il mit
des plants d’arbres lors des gelées de l’hiver dernier. Donnez-moi des
indications sur la marche à suivre.
«Darley, détective.»
—«Ah! ah! un complice des voleurs! Nous brûlons», dit l’inspecteur.
«Il télégraphia à Darley:
«Arrêtez l’homme et forcez-le à nommer ses complices. Continuez à
suivre les traces... jusqu’au Pacifique, s’il le faut.
«Blunt, chef détective.»
«Autre télégramme.
«Coney-Point, Pa., 8 h. 45 matin.
«Effraction à l’usine à gaz pendant la nuit. Quittances trimestrielles non
payées disparues. Relevé et suivi la piste.»
—«Ciel! s’exclama l’inspecteur. Mange-t-il aussi des quittances?»
—«Par inadvertance, sans doute, répondis-je. Des quittances ne peuvent
être une nourriture suffisante. Du moins, prises seules.»
«Puis arriva ce télégramme émouvant:
«Ironville, N. Y., 9 h. 30 matin.
«J’arrive. Ce village est dans la consternation. Éléphant passé ici à cinq
heures du matin. Les uns disent qu’il se dirige vers l’ouest; d’autres, vers le
nord; quelques-uns, vers le sud. Mais personne n’est resté pour faire au
moment une observation précise. Il a tué un cheval. J’en ai mis un morceau
de côté comme indice. Il l’a tué avec la trompe. D’après la nature du coup,
je crois qu’il a été porté à gauche. D’après la position où on a trouvé le
cheval, je crois que l’éléphant se dirige au nord, suivant la ligne du chemin
de fer de Berkley. Il a une avance de quatre heures et demie. Mais nous le
suivons de près.
«Harves, détective.»
«Je poussai une exclamation de joie. L’inspecteur était calme comme une
image. Il toucha posément son timbre.
—«Alaric, envoyez-moi le capitaine Burns.»
«Burns entra.
—«Combien d’hommes disponibles avez-vous?»
—«Quatre-vingt-seize, Monsieur.»
—«Envoyez-les dans le nord, immédiatement. Concentration sur la ligne
de Berkley, au nord d’Ironville.»
—«Que tous les mouvements se fassent dans le plus grand secret. Dès
que vous aurez d’autres hommes disponibles, prévenez-moi.»
—«Allez.»
«A ce moment arrivait un autre télégramme.
«Sage Corners, N. Y., 10 h. 30 matin.
«J’arrive. L’éléphant passé ici à 8 h. 15. Tous les habitants de la ville ont
pris la fuite, sauf un policeman. Il semble que l’éléphant ait attaqué non pas
le policeman, mais un réverbère. Tué tous les deux. J’ai ai mis de côté un
morceau du policeman comme indice.
«Stumm, détective.»
—«Ainsi l’éléphant a tourné à l’ouest, dit l’inspecteur. D’ailleurs il ne
peut échapper. J’ai des hommes partout.»
«Le télégramme suivant disait:
«Glovers, 11 h. 15 matin.
«J’arrive. Le village est abandonné. Restent les malades et les vieillards.
Éléphant passé ici il y a trois quarts d’heure. La société de protestation
contre les buveurs d’eau était réunie en séance, il a passé sa trompe par la
fenêtre et l’a vidée dans la salle; la trompe était pleine d’eau de puits,
quelques assistants l’ont avalée et sont morts, d’autres ont été noyés. Les
détectives Cross et O’Shaughnessy ont traversé la ville, mais allant au sud,
ont manqué l’éléphant. Tout le pays à plusieurs milles à la ronde saisi de
terreur. Les gens désertent leurs maisons, fuyant partout, mais partout ils
rencontrent l’éléphant. Beaucoup de tués.
«Brant, détective.»
«J’aurais voulu répandre des larmes, tant ces ravages me consternaient,
mais l’inspecteur se contenta de dire:
—«Vous voyez que nous nous rapprochons; il sent notre présence, le
voilà de nouveau à l’est.»
«Mais d’autres nouvelles sinistres nous étaient préparées. Le télégraphe
apporta ceci:
«Hoganport, 12 h. 19.
«Arrive à l’instant. Éléphant passé ici il y a une demi-heure. Semé
partout terreur et désolation. Course furieuse à travers les rues. Deux
plombiers passant, un tué, l’autre blessé, regrets unanimes.
«O’Flaherty, détective.»
—«Enfin, le voilà au milieu de mes hommes, dit l’inspecteur, rien ne
peut le sauver.»
«Alors ce fut une série de télégrammes expédiés par des détectives
disséminés entre New-Jersey et la Pensylvanie et qui suivaient des traces,
granges ravagées, usines détruites, bibliothèques scolaires dévorées, avec
grand espoir, espoir valant certitude.
—«Je voudrais, dit l’inspecteur, pouvoir être en communication avec eux
et leur donner l’ordre de prendre le nord, mais c’est impossible. Un
détective ne va au bureau du télégraphe que pour envoyer son rapport, puis
il repart et vous ne savez jamais où mettre la main sur lui.»
«Alors arriva une dépêche ainsi conçue:
«Bridge-port, Ct., 12 h. 15.
«Barnum offre 4,000 dollars par an pour le privilège exclusif de se servir
de l’éléphant comme moyen d’annonce ambulante, à partir d’aujourd’hui
jusqu’au moment où les détectives le trouveront. Voudrait le couvrir
d’affiches de son cirque. Demande réponse immédiate.
«Boggs, détective.»
—«C’est absurde!» m’écriai-je.
—«Sans doute, dit l’inspecteur. Évidemment M. Barnum, qui se croit
très fin, ne me connaît pas. Mais je le connais.»
«Et il dicta la réponse à la dépêche:
«Offre de M. Barnum refusée. 7,000 dollars ou rien.
«Inspect. chef, Blunt.»
—«Voilà, nous n’aurons pas à attendre longtemps la réponse. M.
Barnum n’est pas chez lui, il est dans le bureau du télégraphe, c’est son
habitude quand il traite une affaire. Dans trois...»
«Affaire faite. P.-T. Barnum...» interrompit l’appareil télégraphique en
cliquetant.
«Avant que j’eusse le temps de commenter cet extraordinaire épisode, la
dépêche suivante changea désastreusement le cours de mes idées:
«Bolivia, N. Y., 12 h. 50.
«Éléphant arrivé ici, venant du sud, a passé se dirigeant vers la forêt à 11
h. 50, dispersant un enterrement et diminuant de deux le nombre des
suiveurs. Des citoyens lui ont tiré quelques balles, puis ont pris la fuite. Le
détective Burke et moi sommes arrivés dix minutes trop tard, venant du
nord. Mais des traces fausses nous ont égarés, et nous avons perdu du
temps. A la fin, nous avons trouvé la vraie trace et l’avons suivie jusqu’à la
forêt. A ce moment nous nous sommes mis à quatre pattes, et avons relevé
les empreintes attentivement. Nous avons aperçu l’animal dans les
broussailles. Burke était devant moi. Malheureusement l’éléphant s’est
arrêté pour se reposer. Burke, qui allait la tête penchée, les yeux sur la piste,
buta contre les jambes postérieures de l’animal avant de l’avoir vu. Il se
leva aussitôt, saisit la queue, et s’écria joyeusement: «Je réclame la pri...»
Mais avant qu’il eût achevé, un simple mouvement de la trompe jeta le
brave garçon à bas, mort et en pièces. Je fis retraite, l’éléphant se retourna
et me poursuivit de près jusqu’à la lisière du bois, à une allure effrayante.
J’aurais été pris infailliblement, si les débris de l’enterrement n’étaient
miraculeusement survenus pour détourner son attention. On m’apprend
qu’il ne reste rien de l’enterrement. Ce n’est pas une perte sérieuse. Il y a ici
plus de matériaux qu’il n’en faut pour un autre. L’éléphant a disparu.
«Mulrooney, détective.»
«Nous n’eûmes plus de nouvelles, sinon des diligents et habiles
détectives dispersés, dans le New-Jersey, la Pensylvanie, le Delaware, la
Virginie, qui, tous, suivaient des pistes fraîches et sûres. Un peu après deux
heures, vint ce télégramme:
«Baxter centre, 2 h. 15 soir.
«Éléphant passé ici, tout couvert d’affiches de cirque. A dispersé une
conférence religieuse, frappant et blessant un grand nombre de ceux qui
étaient venus là pour le bien de leurs âmes. Les citoyens ont pu le saisir et
l’ont mis sous bonne garde. Quand le détective Brown et moi arrivâmes,
peu après, nous entrâmes dans l’enclos, et commençâmes à identifier
l’animal avec les photographies et descriptions. Toutes les marques
concordantes étaient reconnues, sauf une, que nous ne pouvions pas voir, la
marque à feu sous l’aisselle. Pour la voir, Brown se glissa sous l’animal, et
eut aussitôt la tête broyée; il n’en resta pas même les débris. Tous prirent la
fuite, et aussi l’éléphant, portant à droite et à gauche des coups meurtriers.
—Il s’est sauvé, mais a laissé des traces de sang, provenant des boulets de
canon. Nous sommes sûrs de le retrouver. Traverse dans la direction du sud
une forêt épaisse.»
«Ce fut le dernier télégramme. A la tombée du soir, il y eut un brouillard
si opaque que l’on ne pouvait distinguer les objets à trois pas. Il dura toute
la nuit. La circulation des bateaux et des omnibus fut interrompue.
III
Le lendemain matin, les journaux étaient pleins d’opinions de détectives.
Comme auparavant on racontait toutes les péripéties de la tragédie par le
menu et l’on ajoutait beaucoup d’autres détails reçus des correspondants
télégraphiques particuliers. Il y en avait des colonnes et des colonnes, un
bon tiers du journal avec des titres flamboyants en vedette et mon cœur
saignait à les lire. Voici le ton général:
l’éléphant blanc en liberté! il poursuit sa marche fatale! des
villages entiers abandonnés par leurs habitants frappés d’épouvante!
la pâle terreur le précède! la dévastation et la mort le suivent! puis
viennent les détectives! granges détruites! usines saccagées!
moissons dévorées! assemblées publiques dispersées! scènes de carnage
impossibles a décrire! opinion de trente-quatre détectives les plus
éminents de la division de sûreté. opinion de l’inspecteur en chef
blunt.
—«Voilà, dit l’inspecteur Blunt, trahissant presque son enthousiasme;
voilà qui est magnifique! La plus splendide aubaine qu’ait jamais eue une
administration de la sûreté. La renommée portera le bruit de nos exploits
jusqu’aux confins de la terre. Le souvenir s’en perpétuera jusqu’aux
dernières limites du temps et mon nom avec lui.»
«Mais, personnellement, je n’avais aucune raison de me réjouir; il me
semblait que c’était moi qui avais commis tous ces crimes sanglants et que
l’éléphant n’était que mon agent irresponsable. Et comme la liste s’était
accrue! Dans un endroit il était tombé au milieu d’une élection et avait tué
cinq scrutateurs. Acte de violence manifeste suivi du massacre de deux
pauvres diables nommés O’Donohue et Mac Flannigan, qui avaient «trouvé
un refuge dans l’asile des opprimés de tous les pays la veille seulement et
exerçaient pour la première fois le droit sacré des citoyens américains en se
présentant aux urnes, quand ils avaient été frappés par la main impitoyable
du fléau du Siam». Dans un autre endroit, il avait attaqué un vieux fou
prêcheur qui préparait pour la prochaine campagne son attaque héroïque
contre la danse, le théâtre et autres choses immorales, et il avait marché
dessus. Dans un autre endroit encore il avait tué un agent préposé au
paratonnerre, et la liste continuait de plus en plus sanglante, de plus en plus
navrante: il y avait soixante tués et deux cent quarante blessés. Tous les
rapports rendaient hommage à la vigilance et au dévouement des détectives
et tous se terminaient par cette remarque que le monstre avait été vu par
trois cent mille hommes et quatre détectives, et que deux de ces derniers
avaient péri.
«Je redoutais d’entendre de nouveau cliqueter l’appareil télégraphique.
Bientôt la pluie de dépêches recommença; mais je fus heureusement déçu:
on ne tarda pas à avoir la certitude que toute trace de l’éléphant avait
disparu.
«Le brouillard lui avait permis de se trouver une bonne cachette où il
restait à l’abri des investigations. Les télégrammes de localités les plus
absurdement éloignées les unes des autres annonçaient qu’une vaste masse
sombre avait été vaguement aperçue à travers le brouillard, à telle ou telle
heure, et que c’était indubitablement «l’éléphant». Cette vaste masse
sombre aurait été aperçue vaguement à New-Haven et New-Jersey, en
Pensylvanie, dans l’intérieur de l’État de New-York, à Brooklyn et même
dans la ville de New-York; mais chaque fois la vaste masse sombre s’était
évanouie et n’avait pas laissé de traces. Chacun des détectives de la
nombreuse division répandue sur cette immense étendue de pays envoyait
son rapport d’heure en heure; et chacun d’eux avait relevé une piste sûre,
épiait quelque chose et le talonnait.
«Le jour se passa néanmoins sans résultat.
«De même, le jour suivant.
«Et le troisième.
«On commençait à se lasser de lire dans les journaux des renseignements
sans issue, d’entendre parler de pistes qui ne menaient à rien, et de théories
dont l’intérêt, l’amusement et la surprise s’étaient épuisés.
«Sur le conseil de l’inspecteur, je doublai la prime.
«Suivirent quatre jours encore de morne attente. Le coup le plus cruel
frappa alors les pauvres détectives harassés. Les journalistes refusèrent de
publier plus longtemps leurs théories, et demandèrent froidement quelque
répit.
«Quinze jours après le vol, j’élevai la prime à 75,000 dollars, sur le
conseil de l’inspecteur. C’était une somme importante, mais je compris
qu’il valait mieux sacrifier toute ma fortune personnelle que perdre mon
crédit auprès de mon gouvernement. Maintenant que les détectives étaient
en mauvaise posture, les journaux se tournèrent contre eux, et se mirent à
leur décocher les traits les plus acérés. Le théâtre s’empara de l’histoire. On
vit sur la scène des acteurs déguisés en détectives, chassant l’éléphant de la
plus amusante façon. On fit des caricatures de détectives parcourant le pays
avec des longues-vues, tandis que l’éléphant, derrière eux, mangeait des
pommes dans leurs poches. Enfin on ridiculisa de cent façons les insignes
des détectives.
«Vous avez vu l’insigne imprimé en or au dos des romans sur la police.
C’est un œil grand ouvert avec la légende: «Nous ne dormons jamais.»
Quand un agent entrait dans un bar, le patron facétieux renouvelait une
vieille plaisanterie: «Voulez-vous qu’on vous ouvre un œil?» Il y avait
partout des sarcasmes dans l’air.
«Mais un homme demeurait calme, immuable, insensible à toutes les
moqueries. C’était ce cœur de chêne, l’inspecteur. Pas une fois son regard
limpide ne se troubla, pas une fois sa confiance ne fut ébranlée. Il disait:
—«Laissez-les faire et dire. Rira bien qui rira le dernier.»
«Mon admiration pour cet homme devint un véritable culte. Je ne quittai
plus sa société. Son bureau m’était devenu un séjour de moins en moins
agréable. Cependant, puisqu’il se montrait si héroïque, je me faisais un
devoir de l’imiter, aussi longtemps du moins que je le pourrais. Je venais
régulièrement et m’installais. J’étais le seul visiteur qui parût capable de
cela. Tout le monde m’admirait. Parfois il me semblait que j’aurais dû
renoncer. Mais alors je contemplais cette face calme et apparemment
insoucieuse, et je demeurais.
«Trois semaines environ après le vol de l’éléphant, je fus un matin sur le
point de dire que j’allais donner ma démission et me retirer. A ce moment
même, pour me retenir, le grand détective me soumit un nouveau plan
génial.
«C’était une transaction avec les voleurs. La fertilité de ce génie inventif
surpassait tout ce que j’avais jamais vu, et pourtant j’ai été en relations avec
les esprits les plus distingués. Il me dit qu’il était sûr de pouvoir transiger
pour cent mille dollars, et de me faire avoir l’éléphant. Je répondis que je
croyais pouvoir réunir cette somme, mais je demandai ce que deviendraient
ces pauvres détectives qui avaient montré tant de zèle.
—«Dans les transactions, m’assura-t-il, ils ont toujours la moitié.»
«Cela écartait ma seule objection. L’inspecteur écrivit deux billets ainsi
conçus:
«Chère Madame,
«Votre mari peut gagner une forte somme d’argent (et compter
absolument sur la protection de la loi) en venant me voir immédiatement.
«Blunt, chef inspecteur.»
«Il envoya un de ces billets à la femme supposée de Brick Duffy, l’autre
à celle de Rouge Mac Fadden.
«Une heure après arrivèrent ces deux réponses insolentes:
«Vieux hibou, Brick Mac Duffy est mort depuis deux ans.»
«Bridget Mahoney.»
«Vieille chauve-souris, Rouge Mac Fadden a été pendu il y a dix-huit
mois. Tout autre âne qu’un détective sait cela.
«Mary O’Hooligan.»
—«Je m’en doutais depuis longtemps, dit l’inspecteur. Ce témoignage
prouve que mon flair ne m’a pas trompé.»
«Dès qu’une ressource lui échappait, il en trouvait une autre toute prête.
Il envoya aussitôt aux journaux du matin une annonce dont je gardai la
copie.
«A—XWBLV, 242, N, Tjd—Fz, 328 wmlg. Ozpo—2m!
«Ogw Mum.»
«Il me dit que si le voleur était encore vivant, cela le déciderait à venir
au rendez-vous habituel; il m’expliqua que ce rendez-vous était dans un
endroit où se traitaient tous les compromis entre détectives et criminels.
L’heure fixée était minuit sonnant.
«Nous ne pouvions rien faire jusque-là. Je quittai le bureau sans retard,
heureux d’un moment de liberté.
«A onze heures du soir, j’apportai les 100,000 dollars en billets de
banque et les remis entre les mains du chef détective. Peu après, il me
quitta, avec dans le regard la lueur d’espérance et de confiance que je
connaissais bien. Une heure s’écoula, presque intolérable. Puis j’entendis
son pas béni. Je me levai tout ému et chancelant de joie, et j’allai vers lui.
Quelle flamme de triomphe dans ses yeux! Il dit:
—«Nous avons transigé. Les rieurs déchanteront demain. Suivez-moi.»
«Il prit une bougie et descendit dans la vaste crypte qui s’étendait sous la
maison, et où dormaient continuellement soixante détectives, tandis qu’un
renfort de vingt autres jouaient aux cartes pour tuer le temps. Je marchais
sur ses pas. Il alla légèrement jusqu’au bout de la pièce sombre, et au
moment précis où je succombais à la suffocation et me préparais à
m’évanouir, je le vis trébucher et s’étaler sur les membres étendus d’un
objet gigantesque. Je l’entendis crier en tombant:
—«Notre noble profession est vengée. Voici l’éléphant!»
«On me transporta dans le bureau. Je repris mes sens en respirant de
l’éther.
«Tous les détectives accoururent. Je vis une scène de triomphe comme je
n’en avais jamais vu encore. On appela les reporters. On éventra des paniers
de champagne. On porta des toasts. Il y eut des serrements de mains, des
congratulations, un enthousiasme indicible et infini. Naturellement le chef
fut le héros du moment et son bonheur était si complet, il avait si
patiemment, si légitimement, si bravement remporté la victoire que j’étais
heureux moi-même de le voir ainsi, quoique je ne fusse plus pour ce qui me
concernait qu’un mendiant sans feu ni lieu: le trésor inappréciable qu’on
m’avait confié était perdu et ma position officielle m’échappait par suite de
ce que l’on considérait toujours comme une négligence coupable dans
l’accomplissement de ma grande mission. Bien des regards éloquents
témoignèrent leur profonde admiration pour le chef, et plus d’un détective
murmurait à voix basse:
—«Voyez-le, c’est le roi de la profession; il ne lui faut qu’un indice et il
n’y a rien de caché qu’il ne puisse retrouver.»

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Fusion of Critical Horizons in Chinese

and Western Language, Poetics,

Fusion of Critical Horizons

More information about this series at

Chinese Literature and Culture in the World

Cover illustration: Giordano Cipriani / Getty Images

Chinese and comparative literature from the postcolonial perspective, but

Richardson, TX, USA Ming Dong Gu

Although this book project was relegated to a secondary place a couple of

“Professor Ming Dong Gu has offered a most comprehensive investigation of

“Comparative studies placing Chinese cultural productions in conversation with

1 Introduction: Aesthetic Divide and Vision of Global

Part I Language and Writing 21

2 Writing System and Linguistic Controversy 23

3 Reconceptualizing the Linguistic Divide  57

Part II Metaphor and Poetics 93

4 Chinese and Western Conceptions of Metaphor 95

5 Metaphor as Signs: Bi-Xing and Metaphor/Metonymy131

Part III Mimesis and Representation 165

6 Is Mimetic Theory Universal?167

7 Western Mimeticism and Chinese Mimetic Theory201

Part IV Metaphysics and Aesthetics 235

8 Divine Thinking and Artistic Creation237

9 Lyricism and Mimeticism in Aesthetic Thought271

10 Conclusion: Toward World Criticism and Global

Introduction: Aesthetic Divide and Vision

Contemporary globalization and telecommunications have drastically

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Nearly half a century ago, when James J. Y. Liu, a professor at Stanford

State of the Field in Chinese and Western Aesthetics

inertia have determined it to be a long-term enterprise which cannot be

other.”9 This summary surely reminds us of Bosanquet’s view of Chinese

whereas Chinese philosophy is predicated on intuitive concretization and

practice and cannot be used to designate traditional Chinese thought

There is no problem with talking about Chinese thought, Chinese history,

Although Derrida had no intention to belittle Chinese and non-Western

empirical exposition and is mostly random, impressionistic, and spontane-

The Arch Paradigm of Oppositions and Differences

hegemony as well as to correct the imposition of Western ideology on

view of China’s cultural legacy as exceptional in regard to Western or so-­

Crossing the Aesthetic Divide

cannot be simply dismissed or will gradually disappear with the intensifica-

Western studies. Having scrutinized the oppositional paradigm for so

Scope and Preview

and Western thought into a meaningful dialogue so as to acquire useful

Having examined a series of dichotomies in Chinese and Western aes-

For a Humanistic Paradigm of Fusion

the issues in terms of their affinities and commonality as well as differences

14. Min Ouyang, “There Is No Need for Zhongguo Zhexue to Be Philosophy,”

S. Ropp, ed., Heritage of China: Contemporary Perspectives on Chinese

Language and Writing

Writing System and Linguistic Controversy

Language and philosophy of language have occupied a prominent place in

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 23

invariably be traced to the difference in language and writing, which has

series of questions in cross-cultural studies: To what extent is the Chinese

The Controversy Over Chinese Writing

what he calls the “ideographic fantasy.” As he points out, “variations of

Richardson, TX, USA Ming Dong Gu

1 Introduction: Aesthetic Divide and Vision of Global

Part I Language and Writing 21

2 Writing System and Linguistic Controversy 23

3 Reconceptualizing the Linguistic Divide 57

Part II Metaphor and Poetics 93

4 Chinese and Western Conceptions of Metaphor 95

5 Metaphor as Signs: Bi-Xing and Metaphor/Metonymy131

Part III Mimesis and Representation 165

6 Is Mimetic Theory Universal?167

7 Western Mimeticism and Chinese Mimetic Theory201

Part IV Metaphysics and Aesthetics 235

8 Divine Thinking and Artistic Creation237

9 Lyricism and Mimeticism in Aesthetic Thought271

10 Conclusion: Toward World Criticism and Global

view of China’s cultural legacy as exceptional in regard to Western or so-