讓我最想不到的，倒是古蒼梧自己提到他現在的「秘密寫作」。他的最新關注是國際金融海嘯與環境保護等宏大問題，他寫的一系列《重讀經典的想法》沒有公開發表，只在朋友間流傳，寫及他閱讀湯馬斯‧佛里曼（Thomas Friedman）出版了一本《世界又熱、又平、又擠：世界為何需要一次綠色革命》（Hot,Flat,and Crowded：Why The World Needs a GreenRevolution──And How Can Renew Our Global Future）、福山（Francis Fukuyama）的《歷史之終結與最後一人》（The End of History And The Last Man），以及溫格‧戴爾（Gwynne Dyer）的《氣候戰爭》（Climate War）等著作所引起的對世界未來的深思，古蒼梧笑說這其實是中國傳統文人憂患意識的傳承。
Illustrious Immigrants. The Intellectual Migration from Europe, 1930-41. Laura Fermi. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1968. xii + 440 pp., illus. $7.95
Title, Illustrious immigrants: the intellectual migration from Europe, 1930-41. Author, Laura Fermi. Publisher, University of Chicago Press, 1968. Original from, the ...
I have always found this sculpture by Henry Moore chilling. The bronze is titled "Nuclear Energy," and it commemorates the creation of the first sustained nuclear chain reaction, which was realized by a team of University of Chicago scientists led by Enrico Fermi. This knowledge eventually led to the creation of the nuclear bomb and, subsequently, to its use in Hiroshima. The sculpture was unveiled on December 2, 1967.
Location: Ellis Avenue between 56th Street and 57th Street Chicago, IL ----
My Life with Enrico Fermi Laura Fermi ... wrote Atoms for the World, Mussolini, andIllustrious Immigrants: The Intellectual Migration from Europe, 1930-1941.
Atoms in the Family: My Life with Enrico Fermi (University of Chicago Press, 1954)
第一章 第3頁 「維也納和約（the Peace of Vienna ）」不是「維也納和平時期」（歷史上有兩同名之約，應該是1873年簽的）。 「聰明又有野心，既偏狹又果斷」翻譯（who combined ambition and intelligent with a purposeful narrowness of mind），後半句翻得不準確。
Peter B. High's treatment of the Japanese film world as a microcosm of the entire sphere of Japanese wartime culture demonstrates what happens when conscientious artists and intellectuals become enmeshed in a totalitarian regime.
Drama in the Modern World: Plays and Essays (pirate edition, 1990, p.87) "...... To judge between good and bad, between successful and unsuccessful, would need eye of God." Anton Chekhov , 1860-1904
A generalisation of this kind will, of course, even if it has some degree of truth when applied to the body of literature, be changed profoundly when a writer of genius sets to work on it. At once other questions arise. It is seen that an “attitude” is not simple; it is highly complex. Men reft of their coats and their manners, stunned by a railway accident, say hard things, harsh things, unpleasant things, difficult things, even if they say them with the abandonment and simplicity which catastrophe has bred in them. Our first impressions of Tchekov are not of simplicity but of bewilderment. What is the point of it, and why does he make a story out of this? we ask as we read story after story. A man falls in love with a married woman, and they part and meet, and in the end are left talking about their position and by what means they can be free from “this intolerable bondage”.
“'How? How?' he asked, clutching his head. . . . And it seemed as though in a little while the solution would be found and then a new and splendid life would begin.” That is the end. A postman drives a student to the station and all the way the student tries to make the postman talk, but he remains silent. Suddenly the postman says unexpectedly, “It's against the regulations to take any one with the post”. And he walks up and down the platform with a look of anger on his face. “With whom was he angry? Was it with people, with poverty, with the autumn nights?” Again, that story ends. But is it the end, we ask? We have rather the feeling that we have overrun our signals; or it is as if a tune had stopped short without the expected chords to close it. These stories are inconclusive, we say, and proceed to frame a criticism based upon the assumption that stories ought to conclude in a way that we recognise. In so doing, we raise the question of our own fitness as readers. Where the tune is familiar and the end emphatic — lovers united, villains discomfited, intrigues exposed — as it is in most Victorian fiction, we can scarcely go wrong, but where the tune is unfamiliar and the end a note of interrogation or merely the information that they went on talking, as it is in Tchekov, we need a very daring and alert sense of literature to make us hear the tune, and in particular those last notes which complete the harmony. Probably we have to read a great many stories before we feel, and the feeling is essential to our satisfaction, that we hold the parts together, and that Tchekov was not merely rambling disconnectedly, but struck now this note, now that with intention, in order to complete his meaning. We have to cast about in order to discover where the emphasis in these strange stories rightly comes. Tchekov's own words give us a lead in the right direction. “. . . such a conversation as this between us”, he says, “would have been unthinkable for our parents. At night they did not talk, but slept sound; we, our generation, sleep badly, are restless, but talk a great deal, and are always trying to settle whether we are right or not.” Our literature of social satire and psychological finesse both sprang from that restless sleep, that incessant talking; but after all, there is an enormous difference between Tchekov and Henry James, between Tchekov and Bernard Shaw. Obviously — but where does it arise? Tchekov, too, is aware of the evils and injustices of the social state; the condition of the peasants appals him, but the reformer's zeal is not his — that is not the signal for us to stop. The mind interests him enormously; he is a most subtle and delicate analyst of human relations. But again, no; the end is not there. Is it that he is primarily interested not in the soul's relation with other souls, but with the soul's relation to health — with the soul's relation to goodness? These stories are always showing us some affectation, pose, insincerity. Some woman has got into a false relation; some man has been perverted by the inhumanity of his circumstances. The soul is ill; the soul is cured; the soul is not cured. Those are the emphatic points in his stories. Once the eye is used to these shades, half the “conclusions” of fiction fade into thin air; they show like transparences with a light behind them — gaudy, glaring, superficial. The general tidying up of the last chapter, the marriage, the death, the statement of values so sonorously trumpeted forth, so heavily underlined, become of the most rudimentary kind. Nothing is solved, we feel; nothing is rightly held together. On the other hand, the method which at first seemed so casual, inconclusive , and occupied with trifles, now appears the result of an exquisitely original and fastidious taste, choosing boldly, arranging infallibly, and controlled by an honesty for which we can find no match save among the Russians themselves. There may be no answer to these questions , but at the same time let us never manipulate the evidence so as to produce something fitting, decorous, agreeable to our vanity. This may not be the way to catch the ear of the public; after all, they are used to louder music, fiercer measures; but as the tune sounded so he has written it. In consequence, as we read these little stories about nothing at all, the horizon widens; the soul gains an astonishing sense of freedom. In reading Tchekov we find ourselves repeating the word “ soul” again and again. It sprinkles his pages. Old drunkards use it freely; “. . . you are high up in the service, beyond all reach, but haven't real soul, my dear boy . . . there's no strength in it”. Indeed, it is the soul that is the chief character in Russian fiction. Delicate and subtle in Tchekov, subject to an infinite number of humours and distempers, it is of greater depth and volume in Dostoevsky; it is liable to violent diseases and raging fevers, but still the predominant concern. Perhaps that is why it needs so great an effort on the part of an English reader to read The Brothers Karamazov or The Possessed a second time. The “soul” is alien to him. It is even antipathetic. It has little sense of humour and no sense of comedy. It is formless. It has slight connection with the intellect. It is confused, diffuse, tumultuous, incapable, it seems, of submitting to the control of logic or the discipline of poetry. The novels of Dostoevsky are seething whirlpools, gyrating sandstorms, waterspouts which hiss and boil and suck us in. They are composed purely and wholly of the stuff of the soul. Against our wills we are drawn in, whirled round, blinded, suffocated, and at the same time filled with a giddy rapture. Out of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading. We open the door and find ourselves in a room full of Russian generals, the tutors of Russian generals, their step-daughters and cousins, and crowds of miscellaneous people who are all talking at the tops of their voices about their most private affairs. But where are we? Surely it is the part of a novelist to inform us whether we are in an hotel, a flat, or hired lodging. Nobody thinks of explaining. We are souls, tortured, unhappy souls, whose only business it is to talk, to reveal, to confess, to draw up at whatever rending of flesh and nerve those crabbed sins which crawl on the sand at the bottom of us. But, as we listen, our confusion slowly settles. A rope is flung to us; we catch hold of a soliloquy; holding on by the skin of our teeth, we are rushed through the water; feverishly, wildly, we rush on and on, now submerged, now in a moment of vision understanding more than we have ever understood before, and receiving such revelations as we are wont to get only from the press of life at its fullest. As we fly we pick it all up — the names of the people, their relationships, that they are staying in an hotel at Roulettenburg, that Polina is involved in an intrigue with the Marquis de Grieux — but what unimportant matters these are compared with the soul! It is the soul that matters, its passion, its tumult, its astonishing medley of beauty and vileness. And if our voices suddenly rise into shrieks of laughter, or if we are shaken by the most violent sobbing, what more natural?— it hardly calls for remark. The pace at which we are living is so tremendous that sparks must rush off our wheels as we fly. Moreover, when the speed is thus increased and the elements of the soul are seen, not separately in scenes of humour or scenes of passion as our slower English minds conceive them, but streaked, involved, inextricably confused, a new panorama of the human mind is revealed. The old divisions melt into each other. Men are at the same time villains and saints ; their acts are at once beautiful and despicable. We love and we hate at the same time. There is none of that precise division between good and bad to which we are used. Often those for whom we feel most affection are the greatest criminals, and the most abject sinners move us to the strongest admiration as well as love.
^"This use of stream-of-consciousness would, in later years, become the basis of Chekhov's innovation in stagecraft; it is also his innovation in fiction." Wood, 81; "The artist must not be the judge of his characters and of their conversations, but merely an impartial witness." Letter to Suvorin, 30 May 1888; In reply to an objection that he wrote about horse-thieves ( The Horse-Stealers , retrieved 16 February 2007) without condemning them, Chekhov said readers should add for themselves the subjective elements lacking in the story. Letter to Suvorin, 1 April 1890. Letters of Anton Chekhov .
^"You are right in demanding that an artist should take an intelligent attitude to his work, but you confuse two things: solving a problem and stating a problem correctly. It is only the second that is obligatory for the artist." Letter to Suvorin , 27 October 1888. Letters of Anton Chekhov .
《契訶夫傳》還是讓我找到些Suvorin的資料
In many ways, the right-wing Suvorin, whom Lenin later called "The running dog of the Tzar" (Payne, XXXV), was Chekhov's opposite; "Chekhov had to function like Suvorin's kidney, extracting the businessman's poisons." Wood, 79 .
Friedrich Nietzsche died in Weimar, Saxony, German Empire on this day in 1900 (aged 55).
"'Where the tree of knowledge stands, there is always paradise': thus speak the oldest and the youngest serpents." — from "Beyond Good and Evil"
DIGITAL LIFE
Nietzsche - alive and well in the age of Twitter
One of the latest Twitter phenomena is publishing posthumous tweets from famous personalities beyond the grave. So far, so good. But why exactly is the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche proving such a hit?
Google "Friedrich Nietzsche" and you might just end up at his Twitter account. Or one of them, anyway.
Nietzsche has around 100 active Twitter feeds - an impressive feat for a man who's been dead for 130 years. It's even more impressive when you consider the company he's in: William Shakespeare has a similar Twitter presence; Jesus Christ comes in just a bit higher than Fritz and the Bard combined.
Yet unlike his companions, Nietzsche's words are not the stuff of high-school curriculums or Sunday sermons. Most, if they have heard of the philosopher, did so in college or thereafter.
Perhaps dead German philosophers are in vogue? Immanuel Kant, the father of German enlightenment thought, whose "categorical imperative" is still discussed not only in 700-level philosophy courses at Cambridge, has 15 phantom accounts. Hegel, the brain behind the master-slave dialectic and the author of one of the densest texts in the history of philosophy, the Phenomenology of Spirit, has a paltry single account.
In addition to being one of the most powerful minds in the history of thought, Nietzsche is known in scholarly circles today as a father of the aphorism - or philosopher speak for a tweet - a thought or saying packaged in a concise manner, oftentimes in a sentence or two.
"Without music, life would be a mistake."
"There are no moral phenomena at all, but only moral interpretations of phenomena."
"Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself."
Arthur Schopenhauer - young Nietzsche's educator
These are three examples of classic Nietzsche "tweets," just three of thousands of aphorisms that filled Nietzsche's books throughout his career. Quite often, Nietzsche's books consisted of nothing else.
"Nietzsche writes in an engaging way, whereas Kant, for example, writes in dense philosophical prose," said Kirk Wetters, Associate Professor of German language and literature at Yale University. "He's widely perceived as a philosopher of radical (or even macho) individualism. It's ironic, perhaps, that a purportedly individualistic philosophy should end up producing 100 impersonators."
Arthur Schopenhauer, meanwhile, has just 10 phantom Twitter accounts. It was the directness of Schopenhauer's language and thought that impressed the young Nietzsche, something the latter thinker was unashamed to acknowledge.
He called Schopenhauer outright his educator, and he attempted to emulate the immediate and straightforward way in which Schopenhauer wrote.
"Whoever knows he is deep, strives for clarity."
"It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what other men say in whole books - what other men do not say in whole books."
Another two Tweets. And indeed, what Nietzsche didn't take from the long line of German philosophers that preceded him was their wordiness, their long-windedness, their veritable logorrhoea, their - well, let's let Hegel speak for himself ...
A case of 'tl;dr'
"The moral consciousness, qua simple knowledge and willing of pure duty, is brought, by the process of acting, into relation with an object opposed to that abstract simplicity, into relation with the manifold actuality which various cases present, and thereby assumes a moral attitude varied and manifold in character."
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel - the philosopher's name alone is almost too much for Twitter
Come again? Such sentences - Nietzsche said it back in his day - are nothing other than a stumbling block on the path of knowledge. A discombubulated array of thoughts that few - philosophy PhD candidates included - could ever hope to comprehend.
And, they wouldn't even have a chance on Twitter. Hegel's sentence there clocks in at 259 characters, including spaces. Tweetable? Forget it - nearly double the 140 allowed. Little surprise, then, that Hegel's stuck at one phantom account.
But does this mean that thinkers today have changed the way they write across the board? Do thinkers have to be tweetable?
According to comments across the web, yes. Comments columns are peppered with the collection of letters and numbers known as "tl;dr." They stand for "Too long; didn't read."
While Kant and Hegel seem to have that problem, Nietzsche's Tweetable aphorisms don't. And in fact, his writing should remain free of "tl;dr" comments for quite some time.
The great philosopher claimed his work would only be understood 200 years after his death - giving us 70 more years to enjoy him.
"Some day it may be we shall see a new order of Jesuits, vowed not to the service of the Pope, but to the service of mankind."----Outline of History : H. G. Wells (我們讀羅文森著的《令人懷念的東海歲月與良師益友》台北：至潔出版社，2014。寫1962-66的故事)中，三位歐洲耶穌會神父來台之教育功績，可以感受他們很了不起。)
(《戀戀九號宿舍》的折頁廣告是九歌同年出版的《飄著細雪的下午》（作者：趙民德，台北：九歌，2007）也是作者跟父親的故事......飄著細雪的下午: quod erat faciendum) 朋友，今天羅文森 (1942~ ；1964級東海化學)學長來訪。他在九歌出版2本:《戀戀九號宿舍》2007、《當機會被我遇見》 (2009，中山文藝獎，獎金25萬)。
Daniel Barenboim conducts the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (Reuters) Legendary conductor Daniel Barenboim leads an orchestra that brings together people from groups in conflict in the Middle East. Clemency Burton-Hill reports.On the last night of the year in 2008, I received an email I’ll never forget.
A few weeks prior – following an impromptu audition backstage at the Metropolitan Opera in New York – I had been invited by the conductor Daniel Barenboim to join the members of his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra as an embedded journalist and ‘honorary violinist’ on their 10th anniversary tour.
Barenboim is an Argentine-born Israeli, who now also holds a Palestinian passport. In 1999, he founded the West-Eastern Divan – the title is based on a set of poems by Goethe – with the late Palestinian literary critic Edward Said. In inviting me to go on tour with the Divan, as it is known by its members, he was offering me a completely unique opportunity to witness the workings of the orchestra – which is made up of over one hundred Israeli and Arab musicians from the very heart of the orchestra, inside the ranks of the first violins. We were to go to Qatar, Egypt, Russia, Germany, Austria and Italy in early January. We were to play music by Beethoven, Verdi, Wagner, Mozart and Schönberg. And we would perform in some of the world’s greatest halls including Vienna’s Musikverein and Milan’s La Scala.
And then, on 27 December, war broke out in Gaza. I wondered what this would mean for the West-Eastern Divan. Would any orchestral members boycott the tour? Would it all go ahead as planned? When the chips were down, how truly committed were this group of young musicians from opposite sides of the divide to engaging with each other? On New Year’s Eve, I clicked open my inbox. The tour dates in Doha and Cairo had been cancelled for security reasons; Maestro Barenboim would understand and support any member of the orchestra who felt they could not join the tour in “such difficult circumstances for everyone involved”; but it was times like these that made the existence of the Divan all the more vital. Attached to the email was an editorial Barenboim had written about the war in Gaza, which also laid out his three wishes for the New Year.
In the end, not a single Arab or Israeli member of the Divan boycotted that tour: from Israel, from the Palestinian territories, from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt, they came together for a tough, but triumphant, two weeks.
And it was a fortnight that changed my life. The West-Eastern Divan is not an ‘orchestra for peace’, as it is so often dubbed, but an ‘orchestra against ignorance’ – mine, too. It is a singular space in which human beings who are otherwise forcibly kept apart can come together to exchange ideas and views, learn about each other and, above all, listen to each other in a world that would otherwise keep them silent.
No barriers
I have thought often about that New Year email and Barenboim’s three wishes for Gaza since the latest war in the region began in July. Here we are, over five years later, and the situation in the Middle East is somehow – unimaginably – worse.
And yet the members of the West-Eastern Divan meet on, play on and through their courage in the face of increasing hostility at home – not a single government represented by the orchestra’s members gives them its blessing – they are the living, breathing proof of a model in which Arabs and Israelis do come together. It isn’t perfect: there is plenty of disagreement within its ranks; but nor is it the product of some kind of utopian idealistic vision. Since the orchestra’s almost accidental inception fifteen years ago, hundreds of Arabs and Israelis have participated, and their daily discussions and debates about the conflict and the situation in the Middle East are as fundamental to their programme as the music rehearsals and concerts.
Engaged on their annual summer tour, which this year includes their own 10-day festival in Buenos Aires as well as major music festivals in Lucerne, Salzburg and Berlin, Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan arrived in London the week of 18 August. Against a backdrop of broken ceasefire announcements and unbroken strife between their peoples back home, the orchestra gave a BBC Proms performance 20 August that ended in no fewer than five encores from the rapturous audience at the Royal Albert Hall. Wherever you are in the world, you can listen to the concert here via the BBC Radio 3 website.
Hundreds of Arabs and Israelis have participated in the orchestra since its inception fifteen years ago (Corbis)
With a programme that included Ravel’s beautiful Pavane for a Dead Princess and special commissions by two Middle Eastern composers, the Israeli Ayal Adler and the Syrian Kareem Roustom, it is hard to think of a more moving concert. As in 2009, no members of the orchestra have boycotted this tour, and backstage the sense of communal pride that even in this year of all years they were doing this was palpable. No question: Israeli, Palestinian, Syrian, Jewish, Muslim, Christian – they were in this together.
Out of many, one
“The only way out of this tragedy, the only way to avoid more tragedy and horror, is to take advantage of the hopelessness of the situation and force everybody to talk to one another,” Barenboim commented in the Guardian on the situation in Gaza a few weeks ago, speaking of a “need for a mutual feeling of empathy, or compassion”. He went on: “in my opinion, compassion is not merely a sentiment that results from a psychological understanding of a person’s need, but it is a moral obligation. Only through trying to understand the other side’s plight can we take a step towards each other.”
Notwithstanding those Arab and Israeli commentators who view Barenboim and his orchestra as ‘traitors’ to their people for what they view as normalising relations with the enemy, many otherwise sympathetic people might view the idea of taking steps towards each other through music with outright cynicism. “But what difference can music make?” is a refrain I have heard over and over again when discussing the Divan. “Isn’t all this just spectacularly naïve?”
Over the years, I have interviewed Barenboim on many occasions and I can say with certainty that he is the least naïve person I have encountered. His polymathic intellect is not only razor-sharp but highly analytical. Of course, he is under no delusion that music might directly create the conditions for peace in the region. But, as he said on the BBC’s Newsnight programme: in these times “we cannot afford the luxury of pessimism”.
The model of the West-Eastern Divan is utterly unique. On a musical level, it can proudly take its place along with the myriad great orchestras that grace the Proms – it contains within its ranks many leading musicians including a former Concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic. But that person, an Israeli, Guy Braunstein, shares a desk with a 17-year-old Palestinian named Yamen Saadi.
The Divan not only encourages, but dares us to imagine what might – still, somehow – be possible one day.
Music at the Limits is the first book to bring together three decades of Edward W. Said's essays and articles on music. Addressing the work of a variety of composers, musicians, and performers, Said carefully draws out music's social, political, and cultural contexts and, as a classically trained pianist, provides rich and often surprising assessments of classical music and opera.
Music at the Limits offers both a fresh perspective on canonical pieces and a celebration of neglected works by contemporary composers. Said faults the Metropolitan Opera in New York for being too conservative and laments the way in which opera superstars like Pavarotti have "reduced opera performance to a minimum of intelligence and a maximum of overproduced noise." He also reflects on the censorship of Wagner in Israel; the worrisome trend of proliferating music festivals; an opera based on the life of Malcolm X; the relationship between music and feminism; the pianist Glenn Gould; and the works of Mozart, Bach, Richard Strauss, and others.
Said wrote his incisive critiques as both an insider and an authority. He saw music as a reflection of his ideas on literature and history and paid close attention to its composition and creative possibilities. Eloquent and surprising, Music at the Limits preserves an important dimension of Said's brilliant intellectual work and cements his reputation as one of the most influential and groundbreaking scholars of the twentieth century.
Edward W. Said (1935-2003) was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He was the music critic for the Nation and the author of numerous books, including Out of Place, Culture and Imperialism, and Orientalism. His books with Columbia University Press include Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography, Humanism and Democratic Criticism, Beginnings: Intention and Method, and Musical Elaborations.
薩依德 Edward W. Said 1935 年生於巴勒斯坦的耶路撒冷，接受過英式教育，取得哈佛大學博士學位，哥倫比亞大學英文系與比較文學教授，擔任《The Nation》雜誌樂評，著作等身，包括《鄉關何處》、《文化與帝國主義》、《東方主義》。他由哥倫比亞大學出版社出版的著作包括《康拉德與自傳小說》、 《人文主義與民主的批評》、《開始：意圖與方法》、《音樂的闡釋》，及《並行與弔詭》。2003年逝於紐約。 關於譯者 彭淮棟 1953 年生。譯有《後殖民理論》（Bart Moore-Gilbert）、《意義》（博藍尼）、《俄國思想家》（以撒．柏林）、《自由主義之後》（華勒斯坦）、《西方政治思想史》（麥克里蘭）、 《鄉關何處：薩依德回憶錄》、《現實意義》（以撒．柏林）、《貝多芬：阿多諾的音樂哲學》（阿多諾）、《美的歷史》和《醜的歷史》（艾可）等書。
艾德華‧薩伊德(Edward W.Said)、丹尼爾‧巴倫波因(Daniel Barenboim) 作{並行與弔詭：薩依德與巴倫波因對談錄} (Parallels and Paradoxes)吳家恆譯，台北：麥田出版股份有限公司，2006
Music
Conductor Barenboim turns 70
Argentine-Israeli conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim aims to create more tolerance in the Middle East conflict with the power of music. We take a closer look at this unusual artist as he turns 70 on November 15.
Daniel Barenboim has repeatedly and impressively shown how music can bring people together. As a musical prodigy, he left Argentina for Israel and Europe at a young age. In the decades since, he has enjoyed wide acclaim as a pianist and conductor. The multi-lingual citizen of the world has demonstrated the courage of his convictions as he creates projects that assemble people to play music together, while simultaneously dispelling prejudices and bridging gaps between groups of people. However, he has no ambitions to become a statesman, preferring instead to remain the artist he is. The human aspect, and not politics, is what interests him, he says.
Barenboim - the pianist
Born in Buenos Aires in 1942, Barenboim's grandparents - as Russian Jews - fled to South America at the beginning of the 20th century to escape the pogroms of the Russian Empire. In Argentina, Barenboim learned to play the piano at the age of five, and gave his first performance as a seven-year-old. En route to Israel, where his family emigrated in 1952, they stopped in Salzburg, where Barenboim performed a Bach recital as a young pianist. Two years later, legendary conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler called him a "phenomenon." Soon after, the nomadic life typical of an artist commenced for Barenboim as he gave his first performances in Vienna, Rome, Paris, London and New York. He also began recording albums.
A picture-book career
Following his conducting debut with the London Philharmonia Orchestra in 1967, he was soon conducting the world's top orchestras. He became principal conductor of the Orchestre de Paris, conducted at the Bayreuth Festival beginning in 1981, took up the post as Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and became General Music Director of the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden in 1992. In addition, he became Music Director of Milan's La Scala in 2011, having worked closely with the opera house in previous years. Barenboim has not only concentrated on the works of Wagner, Beethoven, Schumann and Mahler, but also on contemporary music. At the Berlin State Opera, the conductor has led works by Pierre Boulez, Wolfgang Rihm, Isabelle Mundry, York Höller and the sole opera by American composer Elliott Carter, who recently passed away at the age of 103. Barenboim likewise regularly shifts from the conductor's podium to the piano - such as in a recent concert series at La Scala in honor of his 70th birthday, during which he performed with his famous Italian colleague Claudio Abbado and others.
Argentinian-Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra
Provoking fellow Israelis
Holding Argentine, Israeli and Palestinian citizenships, Barenboim experiences the Middle East conflict first-hand without taking a one-sided view. The musician created a scandal in 2004 when he was awarded Israel's Wolf Prize. During his acceptance speech before the Knesset, he sharply criticized Israel's course of action again Palestinians, and quoted from the 1948 Israeli Declaration of Independence. Then Israeli President Moshe Katsav chastised Barenboim for offending Holocaust survivors by performing works by the anti-Semitic composer Richard Wagner. Yet Barenboim is convinced that music can break down the barriers of hate. In 1999 - along with now deceased Palestinian intellectual Edward Said - he brought together young Israeli and Arab musicians for the first time for a workshop in Weimar, Germany. Taking its name from a collection of poetry by German Wolfgang Johann von Goethe, the "West-Eastern Divan" arose out of that, becoming a multi-national, Middle East orchestra that has gone on tour every summer since.
An exceptional artist
Members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra come from Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. The musicians don't just rehearse and perform together: they also discuss controversial topics, such as current political developments. "The most important thing is that people enter into a dialogue with one another," Barenboim reflects in the documentary film 'Knowledge is the Beginning,' directed by Paul Smaczny and profiling the orchestra. "That doesn't mean one has to adopt the other person's stance. But in such a forum, the musicians have the opportunity to grow more tolerant." Overcoming boundaries
One of the highpoints in the existence of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra was a much-celebrated concert the musicians gave in Ramallah, in the West Bank, in 2005. With massive security measures in place, the orchestra was only able to enter the territory with Spanish diplomatic passports. Israeli musicians came to the Palestinian Territories for the first time, and their Arab colleagues had never before traveled in Israel. It became evident to everyone during that adventurous trip just how greatly the seemingly insurmountable borders had prevented people from learning about those on the "other side." As Barenboim explains, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra will have achieved its true dimensions once it has performed in all of the native countries of its members.
Music has the power to break down borders, Barenboim believes
In 'Knowledge is the Beginning,' an Israeli reporter asks Barenboim if musical education could stop a Palestinian child from throwing stones at Israelis. He said he didn't think so, but with music, he could give these young people something they would never want to live without. "And when kids go to violin or cello lessons three or four times a week, they don't have time to ponder radical ideas."
Involved in society
The Berlin-based Daniel Barenboim Foundation not only supports the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, but also numerous music and educational projects in the Middle East. Together with the Barenboim-Said Musical Center in Ramallah, it supports young musicians of various ages in Israel and in the West Bank. The Edward W. Said Music Kindergarden opened its doors in Ramallah in 2004. Barenboim also founded a music kindergarten in Berlin in 2005, where members of his Staatskapelle - the orchestra of the Berlin State Opera - regularly stop by with their instruments. Barenboim's vision of education by way of music, which can promote cooperation within society, evidently has a wide appeal: on his 70th birthday on November 15, he will perform with the Staatskapelle Berlin under the baton of his long-time friend Zubin Mehta in a benefit concert for his Berlin Music Kindergarden.
AN EVERYDAY OCCURRENCE: the way he endures an everyday confusion. A has an important business deal to conclude with B, who lives in H. He goes to H ...
AN EVERYDAY OCCURRENCE: the way he endures an everyday confusion. A has an important business deal to conclude with B, who lives in H. He goes to H ...
《審判》整部小說在一種不變的無情的令人不安的氣氛中進行，直到悲慘的結尾。小說表面上的主題是關於政治的—對法院的無能腐敗的抨擊。但小說主要用力在對這種環境對K的影響。它展示了人類的困境，K的努力沒有方向，也沒有結果。 嘗試分析一下《審判》——有必要指出小說的結局是卡夫卡最先寫出來的部分。所以K的審判和被處死是必然的，在小說中多處都有暗示。K從來都沒告知他 被起訴的罪名，並且他從頭到尾一直認為自己是清白的。而K被起訴的罪名恰恰是他的清白——做人就是有罪的。承認他的罪是做人，可能K就能從案子中解脫出 來。或者說，K的審判是因為他不承認他是有罪的，即他不承認他是人。 另外種說法是薩特在他的《關於猶太人問題的思考》(Réflexions sur la question juive) 一書中提出的。顧名思義，猶太人生來就是在一個充滿反猶主義的世界裡，似乎就像是K經歷的那樣，而卡夫卡本人也經歷過。薩特說：「《審判》可能是關於猶太 人的。就像小說的主人公K，猶太人陷入了一場漫長的審判。他不認識自己的法官，甚至從某種意義上來說不認識自己的律師。他不知道自己的罪名是什麼，但他是 被認為有罪的。審訊在被不斷的拖延，他利用這段拖延不斷地找人說情幫忙，但每一步都把他推向罪的深淵。他的外表雖然依然正常，但出生一刻起他就陷入了審 判。終於有一天他被告知被捕了，最後被處死。」
The Trial (original German title: Der Process,[1] later Der Prozess, Der Proceß and Der Prozeß) is a novel written by Franz Kafka in 1914 and 1915 but not published until 1925. One of Kafka's best-known works, it tells the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed to neither him nor the reader.
Legality metaphors
In a study based on Kafka's office writings,[2]Reza Banakar points out that many of Kafka’s descriptions of law and legality are often treated as metaphors for things other than law, but also are worthy of examination as a particular concept of law and legality which operates paradoxically as an integral part of the human condition under modernity.[3] Josef K. and his inexplicable experience of the law in The Trial were, for example, influenced by an actual legal case in which Kafka was involved.[3]
Charles Wang林 聰賢老師過去發表於《中原財經法學》的「灰色的靈魂─被害‧法律‧救贖」是一篇影響我個人重新看待法律很深的一篇文章(它從德國哲學家海德格的理論深刻的 檢討了法律世界中「被害」與「加害」的意涵。其觸動之深，至今仍難以忘懷)。「法律與文學」在20世紀中葉後的國外就已經逐步形成一門特殊的領域。國內較 少有這方面的文章(若有，絕大部分的論述方式是偏向於探討歷史文本上的公案(Law in Literature)。我記得張麗卿老師就曾開過這方面的課)。
Bronze medal of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, by Johann Gottfried Schadow
Berlin / Weimar, Germany, AD 1816
Portrait of a scholar
Johann Goethe (1749-1832), the famous poet, novelist, playwright and philosopher, was extremely wide-ranging in his scholarly and literary pursuits. He had a large collection of drawings, ceramics, bronzes and medals, of ancient and Renaissance craftsmanship. Johann Gottfried Schadow (1764-1850), a neo-classical sculptor, was asked to make a portrait medal by Goethe's son on a visit to Weimar in 1816, where Goethe offered Schadow advice on a monument to Field Marshal von Blücher, a hero of the Battle of Waterloo (18 June 1815)
The medal is very large, with a portrait bust of the writer on one side and an image of Pegasus on the reverse. The size and design are inspired by Italian Renaissance medals, which were of particular interest to Goethe. Pegasus, surrounded by an inscription in Greek meaning 'Go on thou wing of Pegasus, dear to me', is used on a sixteenth-century medal of Pietro Bembo by an anonymous Paduan medallist, which is the direct model for this piece. Goethe and Schadow must have taken some pleasure from the work, as the sculptor later produced an uncommissioned marble portrait of the author (1822-23, Berlin Alte Nationalgalerie). For his 80th birthday celebrations in 1829, copies of the portrait side were given away to guests invited to the party. By showing him in the same way as a Renaissance figure, the medal encapsulates Goethe's taste for and sympathy with the art and literature of the period.
E. Gans, Goethes Italian medals (San Diego, California, Malter-Westerfield Publishing Company, 1969)
G. Förschner, Goethe in der Medaillenkunst (Historiches Museum, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1982)
N. Boyle, Goethe, the poet and the age:, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1991)
歌德談話錄 http://www.hxa.name/books/ecog/Eckermann-ConversationsOfGoethe-1827.html 1827.1.31 談到中國小說中之文明人/詩人之心的普世/以希臘人/作品為榜樣/莎士比亞筆下的羅馬人是否英國化--- Alan Bloom等人的書中不同意哥德的說法....
「在限制中，大師方顯示自己。」（哥德：In der Beschrankung zeigt sich erst der Meister.）
沒譯原書的題詞:" as wine and oil are imported to us from abroad, so might ripe understanding , and many civil virtuals be imported into our minds for foreign wrightings; ...we shall else miscarry still, and come short in the attemp of any great enterprise. 取自 Book III, The history of Britain: that part especially now called England, ... - Google 圖書結果John Milton,Edward Phillips - 1818 - Great Britain - 400 頁 For Britain, to speak a truth not often " spoken, as it is a land fruitful ... ripens wits as well as (t fruits ; and,
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歌德對話集
周學普譯序
愛克爾曼所著的《哥德對話錄》三卷是自從發表以來被視為研究哥德的珍貴的名著，與哥德的自傳《詩與真實》（Dichtung und Wahrheit）同為研究哥德者必讀之書。著者愛克爾曼是一八二三年以後哥德的親信的隨從者，哥德是具有強盛的創作慾和活動力的偉人，而愛克爾曼是敏感溫閒精細的文士。所以愛克爾曼所記的哥德晚年的談話，不是學者或文藝批評家所寫的客觀的評論，而是仰慕師長的門人謙虛誠敬地記述的言行錄；但他在這書中並不是和中國的許多理學家的語錄那樣專述師長的論仁義王道格物致知等等的迂闊枯燥的理論，而是以優美輕清的文字描述哥德的日常的生活的動靜神態，以及應事接物，隨意發揮的談話的。所以此書除了作為哥德的內面的和外面的生活的寫照有特殊的意義以外，也是一種極富有情趣風韻的德國的優美的散文。愛克爾曼的這種不朽的浩瀚的傑作，世界的各文明國都有譯本，我以為我們無論從什麼立場上批評哥德，這書的翻譯，對於我國的讀書界總之是必要的罷。我不揣簡陋，於譯成了哥德的《浮士德》和《鐵手騎士葛茲》之後，因興味上的關聯，在前一個寒假的一個月內完成了這種翻譯。
現在作為簡單的介紹，將著者的生涯，本書的成立和內容略述如下：
約翰·彼得·愛克爾曼（Johann Peter Eckermann）在本書的緒言裡載有詳細的自傳。他於一七九二年生於漢堡東南的留納堡（Lueneburg）的小邑文森（Winsen）。父親是貧窮的小販，母親是個織工。他小時為人牧牛，連受小學教育的機會都沒有。十四歲時為鄉里的有力者所賞識，得與上流社會的子弟同習法文，拉丁文，音樂等；十六歲受堅信禮後，做某司法官的書記生，其後四年間輾轉服務於兩三個官廳；一八一三年做志願兵而參加自由戰爭，翌年歸鄉。從軍中得欣賞荷蘭的名畫的機會，打算做個畫家，而為才能和境遇所不許；乃入漢諾威邦的陸軍部任事，生活得以安定。但好學心切，二十五歲進漢諾威高級中學，學習古語；又得二三保護者的援助，一八二○年進格丁根大學，學法律。
《英國詩選》An Anthology of English Verse 王佐良主編，金立群注釋，上海譯文，1993。
此書選約《荒村》的三分之一。不過注解有錯，而且比不上下一本文選)的齊全(《荒村》全文都選。
Poetry in English : An Anthology, M. L. Rosenthal (General Editor), OxfordUniversity, 1987
aught“everything at all”
terms and tides the four quarter days on which rents, interest, wages and the like were due, and the ecclessiastical feast days or seasons, which changed every year
House of Stuart(史都亞特王室)兩國王的誤解
twelve good rules :James I (在位1603-25)制定的行為準則，旅店等常貼在牆上。
twelve good rules those appearing beneath a woodcut of Charles I (在位1625-49) ececution, and including “Pick no quarrells” and “Maintain no ill opinions”
royal game of goose 從前的一種遊戲，根據所擲的骰子的點數移動位置。
goose a game played on board, the aim of which was to reach the sixty-third and final space by advancing through the throw of dice. Landing on the goose depicted in different spaces doubled the number on the dice.
Gespräche mit Goethe (Translation: Conversations with Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann) is a book by Johann Peter Eckermann recording his conversations with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe during the last nine years of the latter's life, while Eckermann served as Goethe's personal secretary. It was first released in 1836 and substantially augmented in 1848. Margaret Fuller translated (and abridged) the first volume into English in 1838 to great acclaim. Subsequent translators, however, have taken great liberty with Eckermann's work, greatly reducing the autobiographical material and substantially altering his prose, rather than offering faithful renderings in English. Some editions go so far as to publish the book as Conversations with Eckermann, with Goethe listed as the author. This practice mistakenly implies Eckermann played a role of editor rather than author; on the contrary, the book is very frank about its point of view. Eckermann includes much autobiographical material and clearly states that his "conversations" are not word-for-word transcriptions, but reconstructions based on memory. Eckermann published the book at a time when Goethe's popularity was diminishing in Germany, and the book initially sold poorly there. It rapidly became very popular among international readers and subsequently played an important role in reviving interest in and appreciation of Goethe's work both in Germany and around the world. Nietzsche called it "the best German book there is [dem besten deutschen Buche, das es gibt]." It is frequently compared to Boswell's Life of Johnson.
want(LACK)Show phonetics noun[U] a lack of something: For want of anything better to do I watched television for a while. If we fail it won't be for want of trying(= We have tried even if we fail).
wantingShow phonetics adjectiveFORMAL lacking: I think she's perhaps a little wanting in charm.handy(SKILFUL)Show phonetics adjective[after verb] able to use something skilfully: Jonathan's good at wallpapering but he's not so handy with a paintbrush. Susannah's very handy (= good at doing things which need skilled use of the hands)about the house.
2006前幾天重讀『轉危為安』（台北：天下文化， 1997），被第十四章 兩則個案（ Two Reports to Management）中，轉引的哥德 (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) 的話：When an idea is wanting, a word can always be found to take its place.弄得迷糊。
Proud of my former student Emanuel Pastreich for publishing this amazing book; 跨海求真! (Also, Emanuel Pastreich, for mentioning me in your book, pp. 49-52. It brings back so many fond memories! Ah, but more than 30 years have passed! )
Pierre Ryckmans (born 28 September 1935, in Brussels, Belgium), who also uses the pen-name Simon Leys, is a writer, sinologist, essayist and literary critic.
Simon Leys is the pen name of Pierre Ryckmans, who was born in Belgium and settled in Australia in 1970. He taught Chinese literature at the Australian ...
Publisher: Viking Adult; 1st U.S. edition (September 15, 1977)
Language: English
(Opera Omnia is a project to record the complete works (in Latin: opera omnia)) 這是一本了解文革和現代中國的傑作 ( 我用Penguin 1978版) 看他在書末對 韓素英 、 C. P. Snow和費正清的一語道破其弱點，就可知其功力 (書中說， 魯迅先生的《阿Q正傳》說明革命的不可能， 以及一些當時法文刊物對中國的幽默)......
To the Editors: I am shocked by your recent articles on Vietnam and China, the likes of which one might expect to appear in Commentary or the Readers Digest. Apparently it is intellectually chic again to be anti-communist, especially in regard to third world countries. The authors of both pieces had profound personal biases against their subjects. One of your readers has already pointed this out in reference to the Vietnamese piece (NYR, May 12). I shall therefore focus on Simon Leys’s China pieces (NYR, May 26 and June 9). There is a proclivity among European intellectuals going as far back at least as Hegel to see China in terms of oriental despotism. It does not matter whether it is contemporary or historical China—it is all the same, there is always that terrible oriental despotism that the Chinese cannot escape. The most articulate of the twentieth-century European exponents of this point of view was Etienne Balazs. In a brilliant series of essays he argued that the Chinese had chances to escape oriental despotism through the Sung dynasty (end 1368). After that it has been all down hill. The weight of the past is such that contemporary China can in no way escape it—any revolution is a false one. Usually this view is derivative, as it was in Balazs’s case, of his own disillusionment with European politics and the left in particular. At bottom the Oriental Despotism view of China is Europe-centered. The genuine social and political revolution must come first in the West. Since it has not happened in the West, it is preposterous to talk of genuine revolution in such a place as China. I shall be specific on three points. 1) Walls, the walls that Leys mourns so bitterly. Is it not just possible that city walls symbolize the oppression of the past to most Chinese? Both Chiang Kai-shek and the Japanese hid behind these walls for decades—used as bulwarks against the guerrillas in the countryside. It was their custom also to put the ordinary inmates of these marvelously walled cities up against these walls and shoot them for some crime real or imagined. The heads of dissenters were displayed on these wonderful walls. And then there was the squatter housing squashed up against Mr. Leys’s walls. 2) Wang Shi-wei, the dissident who was shot in Yenan in 1947. True enough Wang was shot in Yenan in 1947 and Mao afterwards talked about it. What Leys fails to say is that Mao considered the execution a serious error which should not be repeated. In China, as elsewhere (even Europe), dissidents are persecuted, but they are rarely executed. In the 1950s we executed the Rosenbergs and today we publicly regret it. Eisenhower advocated executing American communists and we are embarrassed. Does this mean that Stalinist purges are the rule in either China or the US? Perhaps your readers would be interested in Mao’s full statement in 1962 about Wang Shi-wei’s execution:
There was another man called Wang Shi-wei who was a secret agent working for the Kuomintang. When he was in Yenan, he wrote a book called The Wild Lily, in which he attacked the revolution and slandered the Communist Party. Afterwards he was arrested and executed. That incident happened at the time when the army was on the march, and the security organs themselves made the decision to execute him; the decision did not come from the Center. We have often made criticisms on this very matter; we thought that he shouldn’t have been executed. If he was a secret agent and wrote articles to attack us and refused to reform till death, why not leave him there or let him go and do labor? It isn’t good to kill people. We should arrest and execute as few people as possible. If we arrest people and execute people at the drop of the hat, the end result would be that everybody would fear for themselves and nobody would dare to speak. In such an atmosphere there wouldn’t be much democracy. [from “On Democratic Centralism” in Stuart Schram, ed., Chairman Mao Talks to the People (Pantheon, 1974), pp. 184-185]
3) It is well known that the diplomatic community in China lives an isolated existence and receives formal and bureaucratic treatment from the Chinese. The ordinary visitor is received in a much more friendly, relaxed manner—and often sees much more than the cloistered diplomat like Leys did. There are other foreigners living in China as well. Teachers, students, “experts,” and writers have a much less isolated existence and often a rather integrated life among the Chinese people. Has Mr. Leys ever met Sid Engst, Jim Veneris, Israel Epstein, and others like them in China? Their perspective on the foreigner in China is rather different than Mr. Leys’s, although not without problems and barriers (see for example the excellent book by David and Nancy Milton, The Wind Will Not Subside [1976], which revolves around the foreign community in Beijing). No doubt Mr. Leys knows all this and that is what angers. His rigid preconceptions about the nature of past and present Chinese society and politics force a level of dishonesty which is unworthy of The New York Review…. Stephen R. MacKinnon Tempe, Arizona
Simon Leys replies:
Mr. MacKinnon’s criticism bears on four questions. Let us discuss them in succession: —Concerning Balazs: Etienne Balazs was a great scholar and an admirable man. That Mr. MacKinnon in reading my modest little essays should be induced to compare me with him fills me with a mixture of confusion and pride. (I doubt however if Mr. MacKinnon did understand Balazs’s writings any better than mine.) —Concerning city walls: In underlining the fact that walls can symbolize oppression and that it was therefore right to pull them down, Mr. MacKinnon raises a very interesting point. Come to think of it—is it not a shame that, in a revolutionary capital such as Peking, quite a number of other (far worse) symbols of oppression are still allowed to stand: the Imperial Palace, the Summer Palace, etc.? Actually, in this respect, too many countries are still badly in need of a big clean-up: the London Tower, the Louvre, the Escorial, the Vatican, the pyramids of Egypt, etc., etc., are all awaiting the revolutionary intervention of Mr. MacKinnon’s pickaxe. If he intends to devote his energy to such a worthy cause, he has, without doubt, a most busy career ahead of him. —Mao’s quotation concerning Wang Shih-wei: three points
“Mao deplored the execution of Wang Shih-wei.” Nixon too deplored his “plumbers” initiatives at Watergate. Great leaders are so often done a disservice by clumsy underlings!
“Mao opposes random killings.” This in fact was the only point on which Mao significantly departed from Stalin’s doctrine. Mao always agreed with the principle of Stalinist purges; only, to his more sophisticated taste, their methods appeared rather crude, messy, and wasteful. Mao eventually developed his own theory of the efficient way of disposing of opponents—which is expressed quite clearly in the fifth volume of his Selected Works recently published in Peking: executions should not be too few (otherwise people do not realize that you really mean business); they should not be too many (not to create waste and chaos). Actually before the launching of some mass-movements, quotas were issued by the Maoist authorities, indicating how many executions would be required in the cities, how many in the countryside, etc. This ensured a smooth, rational, orderly development of the purges. Some people see in this method a great improvement by comparison with Stalin’s ways. I suppose it might be so—at least from Big Brother’s point of view.
“Mao said that Wang Shih-wei was a secret agent working for the Kuomintang.” And Stalin said that Trotsky was a secret agent working for the Nazis. Later on it was also said that Liu Shao-ch’i was a secret agent working for the Americans. And that Lin Piao was a secret agent working for the Soviet Union. And now we have just learned that Madame Mao had been working for Chiang Kai-shek. Why not? After all there are always people ready to believe these things—Mr. MacKinnon, for instance.
—Other foreigners living in China: I do have a wide circle of acquaintances who have been, or are still, working in China in various capacities. I do also keep in close touch with a number of Chinese friends, former citizens of the People’s Republic, who know Chinese realities from the inside, a thousand times better than either Mr. MacKinnon or myself will ever do. If it had not been for the advice and encouragement I received from those persons who kept telling me that I was right on target, I would never have felt confident enough to publish these subjective impressions of China. On one point, however, I agree with Mr. MacKinnon: I too think it most unlikely that a person living in Peking, and being employed by the Chinese government, would ever express publicly his agreement with my views (though I know some who do so in private).
李克曼還寫過長篇小說《拿破崙之死》(The Death of Napoleon)，書中想像了這位被罷黜的君王從聖海倫島流放地逃回法國的經歷。1986年在法國首版，1992年出版了英文版，小說家佩尼洛普·菲茨傑拉德(Penelope Fitzgerald)曾為《紐約時報》書評版撰文，稱之為「一本非同尋常的書」，2002年，它被改編為電影，由伊恩·霍爾姆(Ian Holm)和休·博內威利(Hugh Bonneville)主演。
李克曼經常為《紐約書評》(The New York Review of Books)、《世界報》(Le Monde)和其他期刊撰稿，並獲得多項文學獎。
Pierre Ryckmans, 78, Dies; Exposed Mao’s Hard Line
ByMICHAEL FORSYTHEAugust 20, 2014
Pierre Ryckmans, who used the pen name Simon Leys, first traveled to China as a student in 1955. His once romantic view of China dissipated when he learned of the Cultural Revolution.
Pierre Ryckmans, a Belgian-born scholar of China who challenged a romanticized Western view of Mao Zedong in the 1960s with his early portrayal of Mao’s Cultural Revolution as chaotic and destructive, died on Monday at his home in Sydney, Australia. He was 78.
His daughter, Jeanne Ryckmans, said the cause was cancer.
Young students in the Red Guard waved copies of the “Little Red Book,” a collection of quotations by Mao, at a parade in Beijing in June 1966 to celebrate the start of the Cultural Revolution.
Mr. Ryckmans, who was better known by his pen name, Simon Leys, fell in love with China at the age of 19 while touring the country with fellow Belgian students in 1955. One highlight was an audience with Prime Minister Zhou Enlai. The man-made famine of Mao’s Great Leap Forward and his Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966 and ended about the time of Mao’s death, in 1976, were still in the future. There was much to be admired in the new China.
Yet pursuing his studies of Chinese art, culture and literature in the People’s Republic itself was not an option for a Westerner, so he settled in Taiwan, where he met his future wife, Han-fang Chang. He also lived in Singapore and Hong Kong.
It was in Hong Kong during the late 1960s, when it was still a British colony, that Mr. Ryckmans (pronounced RICK-mans) began to follow the turmoil just across the frontier, reading accounts in the official Chinese press about the Cultural Revolution and talking to former Mao supporters who had escaped it.
He began to find that the romantic view of Mao harbored by many Western intellectuals — as a progressive if flawed champion of the masses — was completely at odds with the cruelties of the Cultural Revolution, which sought to eradicate Chinese cultural traditions and Western capitalist influences and replace it with a Maoist orthodoxy. The movement led to purges, forced internal exiles and whipsaw shifts in the political winds, and it compelled Mr. Ryckmans to step into the arena of political commentary.
“Until 1966 Chinese politics did not loom large in my preoccupations, and I confidently extended to the Maoist regime the same sympathy I felt for all things Chinese, without giving it more specific thought,” Mr. Ryckmans wrote under his pseudonym in “Chinese Shadows,” which was first published in French in 1974. “But the Cultural Revolution, which I observed from beginning to end from the vantage point of Hong Kong, forced me out of this comfortable ignorance.”
His first account, “The Chairman’s New Clothes,” was also published in French, in 1971, a year after he had settled in Australia, lured by an eminent Chinese literary scholar, Liu Cunren, to teach at Australian National University. Mr. Ryckmans wrote the book under the name Simon Leys to disguise his identity so that he would not be banned from China.
He returned to China in 1972 on a six-month assignment as a cultural attaché for the Belgian Embassy in Beijing. The wanton destruction of the city’s ancient architectural heritage shocked him.
In “Chinese Shadows,” he wrote of his frantic search for some of the most magnificent of the city’s huge gates, which he assumed had been preserved, even though he knew that the city walls had been taken apart starting in the 1950s. The gates were gone. “The destruction of the gates of Peking is, properly speaking, a sacrilege; and what makes it dramatic is not that the authorities had them pulled down but that they remain unable to understand why they pulled them down,” he wrote.
The Cultural Revolution, he found, had destroyed the beauty of Chinese culture and civilization without destroying what needed to be exorcised: the tyranny of arbitrary rule.
In a telephone interview, Kevin Rudd, a former prime minister of Australia and a former student of Mr. Ryckmans, called him “the first of the Western Sinologists of the ’60s and ’70s to expose the truth of the cultural desecration that occurred during the Cultural Revolution, ripping away the political veneer from it all and exposing it for what it was: an ugly, violent, internal political struggle within the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao.”
Mr. Rudd added, “He was excoriated at the time by Sinologists who had been captured by the romance which many felt for the Cultural Revolution in the early days.”
The irony, Mr. Rudd said, is that the Chinese leadership moved to repudiate the Cultural Revolution after Mao’s death. Many of the delights of old Beijing — the food stalls, the street dancing on a summer’s evening — did indeed return, as did an appreciation for classical art, literature and, finally, the classical scholar Confucius, who had been vilified by the Maoists. Mr. Ryckmans translated, into English, the “Analects,” the collection of sayings attributed to Confucius.
Yet he did not change with the times. “It was difficult to get Pierre to accept that real, sustainable and positive changes had occurred in the China of the period of ‘reform and opening,’ ” Mr. Rudd said.
More than a Sinologist, Mr. Ryckmans was also a formidable European man of letters, earning doctorates in law and art in Belgium, said Richard Rigby, a China scholar and Mr. Ryckmans’s brother-in-law. His lectures, he added, brought the best of both worlds together.
“He could look at a Chinese painting or maybe something by Orwell and essays by Montaigne and put them all together into a coherent whole,” Mr. Rigby said.
Mr. Ryckmans also wrote a novel, “The Death of Napoleon,” which imagines the deposed emperor escaping from exile on St. Helena and making his way back to France. First published in France in 1986 and then in English in 1992, it was hailed as “an extraordinary book” by the novelist Penelope Fitzgerald, writing in The New York Times Book Review, and adapted into a film, with Ian Holm and Hugh Bonneville, in 2002.
Mr. Ryckmans was a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, Le Monde and other periodicals and the recipient of several literary prizes.
He was born on Sept. 28, 1935, in Brussels. Besides his daughter, he is survived by his wife; his sons Marc, Etienne and Louis; and two grandchildren.
He also taught at the University of Sydney and spent his later years writing and sailing. A collection of his essays, “The Hall of Uselessness,” discussing topics as far-ranging as “Don Quixote” and Confucius, was published in 2011.
In “Chinese Shadows,” Mr. Ryckmans wrote that even though Mao and his acolytes would leave the scene, and there would be an inevitable relaxation of authoritarian rule, the fundamental characteristics of Communist rule would not change.
“Among various descriptions of Communist China made at different times, one may note differences,” he wrote, “yet if these descriptions have been made conscientiously and perceptively, they will show more than ephemeral journalistic truths, for modifications will be in quantity, never in quality — variations in amplitude, not changes in basic orientation.”
内容简介
Barenboim - the pianist 
Argentinian-Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra 
An exceptional artist 
Music has the power to break down borders, Barenboim believes 
