From Comparison to World Literature

202 Pages·2015·11.806 MB·English

by  Longxi Zhang

From Comparison to World Literature
SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture
Roger T. Ames, editor

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2015 State University of New York
AlI rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic,
electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise
without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Jenn Bennett
Marketing, Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zhang, Longxi, date.
From comparison to world literature 1 Longxi Zhang.
pages cm. - (SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5471-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5472-6 (ebook)
1. Comparative literature-Oriental and Western. 2. Comparative literature
Western and Oriental. 1. Title.
PJ312.Z525 2015
809-dc23
2014007255
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Introduction 1
1 Crossroads, Distant Killing, and Translation:
On the Ethics and Politics of Comparison 11
2 The Complexity of Difference: Individual, Cultural, and
Cross-Cultural 31
3 Difference or Affinity? A Methodological Issue in
Comparative Studies 47
4 Heaven and Man: From a Cross-Cultural Perspective 57
5 The True Face of Mount Lu: On the Significance of
Perspectives and Paradigms 71
6 History and Fictionality: Insights and Limitations of a
Literary Perspective 87
7 In Search of a Land of Happiness: Utopia and Its Discontents 103
8 Qian Zhongshu and World Literature 123
9 The Poetics of World Literature 155
10 The Changing Concept of World Literature 169
Bibliography 183
Index 193

Introduction
The most noticeable development in literary studies in the last de cade or so
is undoubtedly a renewed interest in world literature, and this is happening
not only in the United States and Europe, but aiso in China, India, Japan,
and many other countries in Asia as weIl as in Latin America and other parts
of the world. The term Weltliteratur was first made prominent by Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe in the early 1820s, but Goethe's cosmopolitan vision of
world literature as the coming together of very different literary traditions-he
spoke of an imminent age of Weltliteratur in his conversation with Johann
Peter Eckermann when he was reading a Chinese novel in translation-did
not materialize in comparative literature that emerged in Europe in the late
nineteenth century and was dominated by a positivistic emphasis on rapport de
fait within the sphere of European history and culture. Comparative literature
as a discipline remained largely a Eurocentric affair, by which 1 do not just
mean self-centeredness, parochial interests, and hegemonic norms in a negative
sense, but also in a descriptive sense: serious and influential scholarship that
has mainly been concerned with comparing literary works in the European
or Western tradition only. From Goethe to Erich Auerbach, from Leo Spitzer
to René WeIlek, from Franco Moretti to Pascale Casanova, aIl distinguished
scholars who have made significant contributions to, and thus made their
names well-known in, comparative literature are aIl Western or have made
their career in the West. That is now changing, however, and the rise of world
literature today has definitely a tendency to go beyond Eurocentric and any
other ethnocentric enclosure to reach a truly global perspective, and a study in
world literature would typically be expected to discuss important non-European
poets, writers, and critics in addition to well-known European ones. Perhaps
1
From Comparison to World Literature
2
the time is now for world literature finally to engage literatures of the entire
world rather than just one particular dominant region, and to give us a truly
global view of human creativity in the various forms of literary manifestations.
The expansion of horizon in literary studies is exciting, and it surely has
its basis in economic and political changes in our time, in an age of globaliza
tion. More specifically, it occurs at a time when the world is witnessing the rise
of Asian and South American economies and concurrently a financial crisis and
economic downturn in the United States and the European Union. We find the
world today a very different one from merely twenty years ago. At the same time,
however, we must also realize that literary and cultural relations are different
from economic and political ones, and that they are not just reflections of pat
terns of political economy. As Pascale Casanova argues forcefully, "there exists
a 'literature-world,' a literary universe relatively independent of the everyday
world and its political divisions, whose boundaries and operational laws are not
reducible to those of ordinary political space," even though the forms of literary
relations may in many respects depend on "the forms of political dominion."!
Despite the leveling effect of globalization in the production and distribution of
mate rial goods as commodities, the emphasis in the creation and appreciation
of literary and artistic works lies precisely on diversity, specificity, and local
identities, on the features of a particular tradition that are nonetheless acces
sible to a global audience or reading public. World literature is by no means a
simple by-product of economic globalization; it can and must be studied within
its own "literature-world" on issues that are specifie to certain cultural and
historical circumstances, to some aesthetic or formai characteristics, while they
can, and in many cases must, be put in the larger context of social and political
interactions among nations and national traditions. The social and the cultural,
the political and the literary, the local and the global-these are not mutually
exclusive daims in the study of human experiences and human expressions, and
world literature thus offers us not just the occasion to appreciate works from
different traditions for their aesthetic appeal and broadly human interest, but
also the glimpse into the specifie conditions in which those works are created
and circulated, the opportunity to understand different cultural and historical
circumstances that necessarily deepen our appreciation.
From the very beginning, comparative literature as an academic discipline
has for very good reason put linguistic proficiency high on the priority list
of required expertise, and it is understandably difficult to cross over the huge
!.Pascale Casanova, The World Republic of Letlers, trans. M. B. DeBevoise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2004), p. xii.
Introduction 3
gaps of language groups, particularly between East Asian and European lan
guages. Linguistic rigor, however, cannot be an excuse for denying large-scale
comparisons, and for world literature to develop beyond the usual East-West
divide, it is absolutely necessary to bridge linguistic and cultural gaps, and also
to take adequate translation into consideration. The possibility of cross-cultural
understanding and the question of translatability are still major issues that
challenge comparative studies and world literature. Many int1uential thinkers
and scholars in both the West and the East tend to argue for the fundamental
difference between Asia and Europe, particularly ancient China and ancient
Greece as originating sources of difference; and they insist on the untranslat
ab il ity of different languages and cultures, particularly between East Asian
and European languages. Indeed, China is often thought to be the opposite of
Europe, inhabiting an improbable space of a Foucaultian heterotopia, with its
non-phonetic scripts representing the irreducible writing of a Derridean dif
férance, symbolizing the ultimate non-European Other. Such dichotomous views
create a major obstacle for cross-cultural comparisons and world literature,
and 1 take it to be the task of the present volume to examine such claims to
cultural incommensurability and fundamental differences between China and
the West, and to argue not only for the possibility, but also the necessity of
cross-cultural understanding against aIl odds, despite aIl the differences.
The first three chapters in this book deal with the theoretical and
methodological issues of comparative studies across linguistic and cultural
differences. Chapter 1 lays the ground for comparative studies by presenting
comparison as ontologically given in thinking and in aIl human actions, as
we always need to make decisions in life and act upon our decisions, and aIl
decision-making or choices are based on comparison. In that basic sense, then,
comparison is something we always do, and it is pointless to talk about whether
we should or should not compare. The question is not whether, but how, and
what consequences our comparisons, choices, and decisions will have in our
own lives as weIl as those of others. Such questions constitute the ethics and
politics of comparison. Facing a crossroads is a conceptual metaphor of making
comparisons and difficult choices, and the nineteenth-century motif of tuer
le mandarin in European literature is another metaphor for thinking about
ethics as a moral choice, as extending one's moral responsibilities to outsiders
and strangers as compared with one's relatives and inner groups. Translation
is inherently comparative, as it is aIl about finding comparable or equivalent
expressions in one language for those in another, and the issue of translatability
on a conceptual level is crucial for any effort at cross-cultural understanding.
By looking at the conceptual metaphors of crossroads and distant killing, and