Comparative Study of Poetics of Ancient China and Greece
Abstract: Chinese poetics originated in the pre-Qin period, while Western poetics came into being in the Hellenistic period. Although there was no mutual communication and influence between thetwo kinds of poetics because of both geographical distance and chronological displacement, the Sino-Western thinkers shared something in common, particularly in the social function of literature ,the pursuit of unified and harmonious aesthetics, and the advocacy of poets’ subjective initiative in the creative process of literature. In the sphere of rhetoric, the poetics of the pre-Qin scholars and their Greek counterparts also had heterogeneous similarity. By comparing the aesthetic ideas of Confucius, Mencius, Xun Zi and Deng Xi with those of Plato, Aristotle and Protagoras, this paper intends to reveal the common concerns of Chinese and Western poetics in the context of heterogeneous cultures and in their respective periods of genesis.
Key words: Pre-Qin poetics; Ancient Greek Poetics; heterogeneous similarity; genesis period
Many scholars argue that comparative study “(especially a comparison of Eastern and Western philosophical ideas, theories, systems, traditions) is just another pointless comparison of apples and oranges—Eastern and Western philosophies are simply too different to bear fruitful comparison.”1 However, this specious assertion fails to frighten scholars from continuous application of comparative approach in their cultural studies because of the inescapable necessity of this method in trans-cultural or interdisciplinary research. As far as the Sino-Western comparative study is concerned, it is far older than the comparative study itself as a discipline.
However, the Sino-Western comparative study, whether produced in China or in the West, has mostly been dominated by the theory of cultural superiority, which for the most part means the superiority of Western culture over the Chinese one or the acquisition of the Chinese culture from the Western one. This style of Sino-Western comparative approach is termed by Wiebke Denecke as “ellipsis”2. For instance, both Cecil Maurice Bowra and Ernst Robert Curtius argue that Chinese culture lacks epic tradition characteristic of European culture 3. Another frequently noted idea in Sino-Western comparative study is that “there is no tradition of tragedy in Chinese literature.”4 Perhaps the most notorious “ellipsis” in comparative studies is the doubt whether “there is such a thing as Chinese philosophy”5, which has lasted more than 200 years since it was first put forward by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Some of these ideas, in my view, are problematic and Chauvinistic. In a certain sense, these academic prejudices originated from Western scholars’ understanding of the relationship between name and actuality. As far as Chinese philosophy is concerned, China did not have the name “philosophy” until it was translated in by a Japanese scholar with the name of Nishi Amane in 18736. But that does not mean that China lacks the actuality of philosophy. As a matter of fact, China and the West share many perspectives in common, particularly in their early poetics. In this paper, I will prove that there are heterogeneous similarities between Chinese and Western poetics of literature and rhetoric in their respective origin periods, say, the pre-Qin period of China (479–221 BC）and ancient Greece (500-336 BC).
When I use the term “poetics”, I do not confine it strictly to the definition given by Aristotle, as the ancient Chinese scholars did not categorize subject matters into independent disciplines but incorporated literature, philosophy, rhetoric, music etc into an organic whole. Also, when I say “heterogeneous similarity,” I mean that the Sino-Western poetics is seemingly different in name, but essentially similar in actuality.
The comparative study of China and Greece, is one branch of Sino-Western comparative studies, and the comparative study of pre-Qin and ancient Greece is valued in particular. This framing of time and country is not without reason, since the two countries were both in what Karl Jaspers called Axial Age, a period ranging roughly from the eighth through the third centuries BC, “an interregnum between two ages of great empire, a pause for liberty, a deep breath bringing the most lucid consciousness.” 7 In the earliest period of human civilization, both pre-Qin and ancient Greece created splendid cultures. These cultures of pre-Qin and ancient Greece were original, since there was no recorded communication between the two lands because of the vast geographical distance and the backward transportation means. In such conditions, the cultures of pre-Qin and ancient Greece could only develop in their own ways without mutual influence. As is asserted by Derk Bodde, “There are, for example, the facts that Chinese civilization, though not so autochthonous as once supposed, was founded and thereafter developed in relative isolation from any other civilizations of comparable level.”8 The period of “Contention of a Hundred Schools of Thought” in pre-Qin dynasties was simultaneously the golden age of academic prosperity in ancient Greece. In the context of heterogeneous cultures, Chinese and Western poetics naturally differed in language, basic concepts and ways of expression. The Chinese- style expressions of literary terms and theories, particularly those of the ancient Chinese scholars, were so individual and metaphysical, that they were difficult to be understood by Western scholars, as is complained by Steven Van Zoeren: “There are nevertheless difficulties in discussing the history of traditional Chinese poetic criticism and theory. The language of criticism was allusive and metaphorical, and critics combined a passion for key terms with an almost total disinterest in the problems of their definition. Instead, writers on literature assumed a complex web of continuities and analogies between and within the natural and social/cultural worlds that worked to subvert and evade analytic distinctions.” 9 However, despite of the differences in language and ways of expression, the scholars of pre-Qin and ancient Greece shared much in common, particularly regarding the poetics of literature and rhetoric . Both the Chinese and Greek aestheticians put forward theoretical views of high value and far-reaching influence at nearly the same time, laying a foundation for the basic discourses and cultural paradigms of Chinese and Western poetics.
The first similarity in poetics shared by scholars of pre-Qin and ancient Greece is that they both emphasized the utilitarian purpose of literature. The Confucianism particularly highlighted poetry and music as the means through which political ideals were to be achieved. Starting with “poetic education”, Confucius (551 BC – 479 BC) spoke highly of the social functions of literature. He said: “Get your start with the Odes; acquire a firm standing through ritual; complete the process with music.”10 To “get your start with the Odes” means that one must first learn poetry if he wants to cultivate his moral character, while to “complete the process with music” indicates that the improvement of human nature relies on the nurture of music. Therefore, poetry and music are of great importance in the cultivation of a person’s moral integrity. Also in this book, Confucius says, “The Odes train you in analogy, allow you to observe customs, teach you to be sociable, teach you to express anger.”11This saying serves as a good summarization of the functions of poetry, and has exerted great influence on the theories of Chinese literature for thousands of years.
Xun Zi（310– 237 BC), another important representative of the Confucianism, also emphasized the social functions of literature, holding that the mutual use of ritual and music could achieve the goal of rectifying personal conduct, extending construction so as to produce personal reform and refining popular customs and usages12. In the history of Chinese literature, Xun Zi was the first scholar who proposed the theory of equilibrium and harmony, which deepened the theory of moral education and transformation of Confucianism. He noted that man could not live without music.
Originating from sound and being produced from movements, music enters deeply into men and rapidly transforms them. Moderate and tranquil music is of particular importance in making people harmonious and in encouraging them to shun excess, while stern and majestic music makes people well-behaved and encourage them to shun disorder. Xun Zi said, “Thus musical performances are the greatest creator of uniformity in the world, the guiding line of the mean and of harmony, and a necessary and inescapable expression of man’s emotional nature.”13 Moreover, Xun Zi held that the sage kings founded music to make good the hearts of the people, as it played the role of “harmony” in coordinating human social relations emotionally. Therefore, the ideal state of music in harmonizing all kinds of people was: “Hence, when music is performed within the ancestral temple, lord and subject, high and low, listen to the music together and are united in feelings of reverence; when music is played in the private quarters of the home, father and son, elder and younger brother, listen to it together and are united in feelings of close kinship; when it is played in village meetings or clan halls, old and young listen to the music together and are joined in obedience.”14 The aforesaid “reverence,” “close kinship” and “obedience” all refer to the social education functions of music. Disagreeing with Mencius’ arguments that human nature was originally good and ritual propriety was out of a heart of “courtesy” and “deference”, Xun Zi believed that, as contention and indulgence in extravagance were human nature, “Thus, to follow inborn nature and true feelings is not to show courtesy or defer to others. To show courtesy and to defer to others contradicts the true feelings inherent in his inborn nature.”15That is to say, there is a strong desire for extravagance in human nature; if the desires cannot be guided by ritual propriety and music, they will fall into pruriency. Therefore, to get rid of the evils of human nature, “cultivation through the way of Kings” must be promoted so as to make people embrace kindness. To this end, advocating decent music that emphasizes integration of kindness and goodness is a sensible choice.
As the two major sources of Western aesthetics, both Plato and Aristotle attached great importance to the functions of literature in guiding and educating people. Plato’s denial of Greek literature was not because he had not recognized its social influence; on the contrary, it was precisely because he had deep understanding of its influence that he adopted an extreme utilitarian attitude toward this issue. According to Plato, both the Homeric epics and tragicomedies were bad not only because they destroyed the God-hero worship in the Greek religion, but also because they released, and even nurtured, the “inferior part” of the human souls—as a result of which “justice” was destroyed. Therefore, in the third volume of The Republic, Plato expeled those poets who were engaged in creating honeyed lyrics and epics. If a poet wants to stay in the Republic, he or she must write good poetry: “For we mean to employ for our souls’ health the rougher and severer poet or story-teller, who will imitate the style of the virtuous only, and will follow those models which we prescribed at first when we began the education of our soldiers.”16 In the tenth volume of The Republic, Plato reiterated his prohibition: “…we must remain firm in our conviction that hymns to the gods and praises of famous men are the only poetry which ought to be admitted into our State.”17Plato’s intention of expelling poets, and in keeping the few poems that could motivate man’s rationalism and kindness, is completely based on the edificatory functions of poetry, which indicates that he attached importance to the educative role of literature. Therefore, Plato was the first in the Western world to use the political education effects as the evaluation criterion of literature.
Subsequently, this exerted influence over the views of Rousseau and Tolstoy on literature 18. Plato’s expelling poets was exactly the same as Confucius’ deleting poetry and correcting music. According to Sima Qian（145-87B C), “There were more than three thousand ancient songs, but Confucius rejected those which were repetitious and retained those which had moral value…Confucius choose three hundred and five songs in all, and these he set to music and song, fitting them to the music of Emperor Shun and King Wu. After that the old rites and music became widely known, to the enrichment of the kingly culture, and the Six Classics were established.”19 To correct the music, Confucius strongly opposed the emerging folk songs of the states of Zheng and Wei, saying that “for music, the Shao and Wu. Do away with the Zheng tunes and stay away from artful talkers. The Zheng tunes are excessive, and artful talkers are dangerous.” 20 Confucius believed that the excessive expression of emotion and honeyed folk songs could make people confused and caused them to become bad. Therefore, he equated the honeyed folk songs with those artful and dangerous talkers. From this perspective, it can be seen that Confucius had an in-depth understanding of the role of literature and art in cultivating moral character.
On the issue of the functions of literature, Aristotle went further than Plato. He held that literature could meet some natural demands of humankind, which is good to the healthy development of the people and the society at large. Aristotle defined tragedy and its function as “the imitation of an action that is serious and also, having magnitude, complete in itself; in language with pleasurable accessories, each kind brought in separately in the parts of the work; in a dramatic, not in a narrative form, with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.” 21 Unfortunately, Aristotle did not explicate the “catharsis” function in definite terms, which led to various interpretations by later scholars. Despite the heterogeneity of interpretation, there is still consensus regarding the literal meanings of the word “catharsis.”
According to Eva Schaper, “catharsis” means “purgation” in a medical context, a kind of “healing and curing through expulsion and evacuation of harmful elements;” while, in a religious context, it means “purification”, a kind of “cleansing the spirit and sublimating the emotions in order to prepare for or to achieve a state of exaltation.” 22 Nowadays more and more scholars turn to interpret this word from the viewpoint of spiritual purgation. Through music, literature and other arts, some strong emotions of human beings can be relieved and their psychological health can be improved. After experiencing this spiritual purification, people feel good and experience harmless pleasure. This view of Aristotle was dramatically opposed to that of Plato. According to Plato, emotions and pleasures were “inferior part” of the soul and must be suppressed; as poetry “nurtures” them, poets ought not to be admitted into the Republic. “So we were right not to admit him [the poet] into a city that is to be well-governed, for he arouses, nourishes, and strengthens this part of the soul and so destroys the rational one, in just the way that someone destroys the better sort of citizens when he strengthens the vicious ones and surrenders the city to them.”23 In addition, Aristotle believed that the purification effect of tragedy on audience had its own cognitive value and ethical purpose. In his opinion, the aim of a tragedy should not be the tragedy itself, nor should it be the enraptured state of audience. Rather, it should deliver wisdom and give enlightenment, letting audience recognize and practice “thrift” life. Although Aristotle inherited Plato’s ideas of “literary value,” he attached more importance to the “poetic education” of literature. Through the theory of catharsis, Aristotle explicated the functions of “tragedy” and other forms of literature.
The second similarity in poetics shared by scholars of pre-Qin and ancient Greece is that they both emphasized the principle of harmony in the creation of literature. “Doctrine of the Mean” was one of the basic principles of the Confucian philosophy. Confucius applied this principle to aesthetics, requiring that various opposite elements should be unified harmoniously in literature, and that they should not emphasize one side and deny the other. The appropriateness of the unity and development of opposite elements was the fundamental requirement of Confucius’ aesthetic criticism. Confucius’ aesthetic pursuit of harmony and unity was particularly reflected in the emotional expression of poetry and music. Confucius said: “The three hundred poems of the Book of Odes may be summed up in a single phrase: Think nothing base.” 24 From the perspective of art, the critical criterion of “Thinking nothing base” aims at advocating the beauty of “equilibrium and harmony”. From the perspective of music, equilibrium and harmony is a kind of moderate and peaceful melody. On that basis ,Confucius put forward the principle of “joy, but not excessive; sadness, but not to the point of injury.”25 In Confucius’ view, “Guanju Ode”, a famous love poem from the Book of Odes，was a good example due to its implicit and mild emotional expression, as it started with emotional love and ended with virtue. As far as literary works are concerned, the principles of “joy but with no excessiveness ”and “sadness but being not to the point of injury” require that literary works be euphemistic and implied in their contents and wordings.
Xun Zi emphasized harmony as the characteristic of musical art, advocating “harmony” in “diversity”. Harmony is antithetical to identity, whose addition is only the repetition of quantity, and only the harmony of diversity can produce something new. Xun Zi also stressed the peace and moderation of music, saying: “Hence for musical performances, the pitch of the prime note is set in order to determine the proper pitch of the other notes. The temperament of the other instruments is adjusted to match in order to prepare the modal key.” 26 Therefore, setting the prime note to determine the pitch of the other ones can serve as an explanation to the “guiding line of the mean and harmony.” That is to say, a mean note is set as the prime note, which serves as the basis on which other notes are organized so as to form harmonious music.
In the same way, the aesthetic ideal of ancient Greek philosophers was also to find an eternal law for diversified aesthetic phenomena, so as to achieve an ideal state of unity, order, harmony and perfectness. In Greek mythology, there is even a goddess with the name of Harmonia, who is the daughter of Ares, god of war, and Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty. As the offspring of war and love, Harmonia functions as the harmonization of opposites. Later, Pythagoras and Heraclitus, two philosophers before Plato and Aristotle, both put forward the theories that beauty lied in the harmonious unity of opposites. Pythagoreans conceived that the universe as a whole was harmony and number, and music was a harmony and unity of opposite elements, making multiplicity into one, and chaos into order. For the relationship between number, music and harmony advocated by the Pythagoreans, Aristotle gave a vivid though sarcastic summary in his Metaphysics:
They [the Pythagoreans] saw that the modifications and the ratios of the musical scales were expressible in numbers; since then, all other things seemed in their whole nature to be modeled on numbers, and numbers seemed to be the first things in the whole of nature, they supposed the elements of numbers to be the elements of all things, and the whole heaven to be a musical scale and a number. And all the properties of numbers and scales which they could show to agree with the attributes and parts and the whole arrangement of the heavens, they collected and fitted into their scheme; and if there was a gap anywhere, they readily made additions so as to make their whole theory coherent.27
The Pythagorean conception of harmonious unity of numbers and music became more clear and definite in Heraclitus’ assertion that the harmony of the world was a harmony of oppositions.
Heraclitus said that “from things that differ comes the fairest attunement” and that “all things are born through strife.” 28To Heraclitus, the whole universe was the attunement of opposites, such as day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger. But all these opposites were finally attuned in God. Plato inherited the theory of the harmonious opposition .When talking about the duality of love, Plato showed his unique thinking on harmony, saying “to speak of a harmony as being in disagreement with itself, or as existing when it is composed of elements still in disagreement, is quite absurd…Here it is music that creates agreement in all these things by implanting mutual love and unanimity between the different elements.”29 In addition, Plato believed that the highest form of beauty was an “idea”, which was “eternal,” and “does not come into being or perish, nor does it grow or waste away.” 30 All other beautiful objects were derived from the “idea”, and they were just imitations of this “idea” of beauty.
In Aristotle’s poetics, the concept of harmony is based on the concept of organic integrity, which was often emphasized by the philosopher while discussing poetry and other arts. As a matter of fact, the pro forma organic integrity is the reflection of the internal law of development in content.
Integrity is made up of parts, and the principle by which the parts are combined is their internal logic. In his Politics, Aristotle said, “there is a similar combination of qualities in good men, who differ from any individual of the many, as the beautiful are said to differ from those who are not beautiful, and works of art from realities, because in them the scattered elements are combined, although, if taken separately, the eye of one person or some other feature in another person would be fairer than in the picture.”31In his Poetics or On the Art of Poetry, Aristotle defined a “whole” as that which has beginning, middle, and end. A beginning is that which is not itself necessarily after anything else, and which has naturally something else after it; an end is that which is naturally after something itself, either as it’s necessary or usual consequent, and with nothing else after it; and a middle, that which is by nature after one thing and has also another after it. A well-constructed plot, therefore, cannot either begin or end at any point one likes; beginning and end in it must be of the forms just described. 32
Because the arrangement of various elements shows their proportional size and order, and forms an organic whole, harmony is therefore achieved. Regarding whether something is beautiful or not, Aristotle said, “to be beautiful, a living creature, and every whole made up of parts, must not only present a certain order in its arrangement of parts, but also be of a certain definite magnitude.
Beauty is a matter of size and order…”33Therefore, after a further development of the concept of harmony and beauty, Aristotle concluded that the structure of dramatic poetry was also an integral whole of parts.
The third similarity in poetics shared by scholars of pre-Qin and ancient Greece is that they both emphasized the principle of subjective initiative in literary and artistic creation, Mencius’ theory of “comprehending speech and nourishing spirits” had profoundly influenced the literary criticism of later generations. Mencius said, “I am skillful in nourishing my vast ,flowing passion -nature…This is the passion-nature:— It is exceedingly great, and exceedingly strong. Being nourished by rectitude, sustaining no injury, it fills up all between heaven and earth. This is the passion-nature: —It is the mate and assistant of righteousness and reason. Without it, man is in a state of starvation. It is produced by the accumulation of righteous deeds; it is not to be obtained by incidental acts of righteousness.” 34Mencius believed that the internal beauty of a spiritual character was the precondition for an author to create beautiful and decent dictions. Once applied in literary creations, Mencius’ thought emphasized that writers must at first cultivate their moral personality before they could create good literary works. This is an issue relating to authors’ subjective activity. Although Mencius’ “vast, flowing passion -nature” emphasized moral spirit and was of pure rational content, it was also an internally irrepressible passion of individuals, being full of strong will. To some extent, the “vast, flowing passion -nature” can be seen as a mental state jointly produced by the emotional will and moral ethics of individuals. Without the “vast, flowing passion -nature”, artists cannot generate creative impulses, and, therefore, they cannot achieve success in artistic creations.
The literary theories of ancient Greece also emphasized the subjective activity of writers, their talent, passion and inspiration. Plato attributed the subjective activity of poets to their inspiration, and inspiration, in his view, was the divine madness from God who threw poets into a crazy state of creation. In the “Ion”, Plato repeatedly emphasized that:
For all good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed…. like Bacchic maidens who draw milk and honey from the rivers when they are under the influence of Dionysus but not when they are in their right mind. And the soul of the lyric poet does the same…For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not
attained to this state, he is powerless and is unable to utter his oracles. 35 Plato’s attributing poetic creation to irrational “divine madness”, setting rationality in opposition to inspiration and identifying talent with inspiration, undoubtedly sowed the irrational seed for later artistic creations. Viewed from the method of artistic creation, what Plato represented is mainly romantic tendency. With the rise of romanticism in the late 18th century, the idea that literature was the expression of writers’ inspiration and passion became a world-wide literary trend, and, subsequently, formed the critical tradition of romanticism, which was “from imitation to expression and from the mirror to the fountain, to the lamp.”36
Unlike Plato who attributed inspiration to divine madness, Aristotle required poets to have good senses. In his Poetics, Aristotle said, “At the time when he is constructing his Plots, and engaged on the Diction in which they are worked out, the poet should remember to put the actual scenes as far as possible before his eves. In this way, seeing everything with the vividness of an eye-witness as it were, he will devise what is appropriate, and be least likely to overlook incongruities.”37 These words indicate Aristotle’s belief that poets should give play to their creativity and subjective activity so as to reveal the essence and internal relations of the world to be imitated. To Aristotle, the mysterious “idea” of Plato, was no more than the universality of particularity. Universality could not exist without particularity, and it existed in particularity. The “idea” was not the other shore of reality, but the “possibility” and the “cause” of everything. Like a seed or an embryo, the “idea” contains the possibility of growth and realization. Therefore, a poet’s imitation of nature in artistic creation is no longer a passive one, but a positive creation, making the possibility of imitating the nature into reality. In discussing the imitation of poetry, Aristotle held that “the poet being an imitator just like the painter or other maker of likenesses, he must necessarily in all instances represent things in one or other of three aspects, either as they were or are, or as they are said or thought to be or to have been, or as they ought to be.”38 The third case, namely, imitating things as they ought to be—emphasizes a poet’s subjective intention in artistic creation. Aristotle’s assertion that “poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history”39 was based on such an idea that history tends to express the particular as historians have no creative space, while poetry tends to express the universal as poets, who follow the necessity, can actively use their imagination and subjective activity to create works. Therefore, if a poet uses historic events as the materials of his creation, he or she must use the soul to conquer the chaotic, occidental and unintelligible materials, so as to make his poetry unified and harmonious in form and content.
Last but not the least important is the similarity in rhetoric as effective discourse shared by the scholars of pre-Qin and ancient Greece. James J. Murphy’s affirmation that “It is important to note at once that rhetoric is an entirely Western phenomenon”40 is again a chauvinistic idea. George A. Kennedy shared the same idea with Murphy by arguing that rhetoric existed in Greece only because it was given such a name as “rhetoric” was. This ridiculous affirmation was satirized by Edward Schiappa with a humorous analogy: “Just because the Greek texts of a period do not use a word for urination does not mean that no one was urinating at the time.”41 As a matter of fact, the Pre-Qin scholars not only paid the same importance to rhetoric as an effective discourse as the scholars in ancient Greece did, but also coined the name “xiuci”（the Chinese name for rhetoric）even before Plato coined the term “rhetoric.” The evidence was the famous Chinese phrase “xiuci li qi cheng” （polished expressions are to be based on sincerity）42,which appeared in The Book of Change, a book written during the West Zhou Dynasty (roughly 1027-770 B.C.
The major difference between the East and the West in studying rhetoric is that “in the East, rhetoric has been considered so important that it could not be separated from the remainder of human knowledge” while “in the West, rhetoric has been considered to be so important that it has had to be explored and delineated separately, as a special field of knowledge about human relations.”43
The essential similarity between the Pre-Qin rhetoricians and the ancient Greek ones is that they both valued the importance of sincerity, trust or credibility in rhetorical persuasion, except the Pre-Qin school of Mingjia and the Greek sophists. As is mentioned above, “xiuci li qi cheng”, which was established as a rule in rhetoric as early as the West Zhou Dynasty, was followed by the thinkers of Confucianism, Mohists, Daoism and the Legalists, although they meant the rule in different wordings. For instance, Confucius, who had once travelled around nearly all the states to preach his politics of benevolence, understood the importance of rhetoric in persuasion. “cheng”, in Confucius’ discourse, was explicated as rectification of names , and was regarded as playing an important role in the advocacy of rites in social order. He said: “If names are not rectified, then speech will not function properly, and if speech does not function properly, then undertakings will not succeed. If undertakings do not succeed, then rites and music will not flourish. If rites and music do not flourish, then punishments and penalties will not be justly administered. And if punishments and penalties are not justly administered, then the common people will not know where to place their hands and feet.”44 In the Aristotle rhetoric, ethos, logos and pathos were three indispensable modes of persuasion, among which ethos bore similarity with the sincerity of the Pre-Qin rhetoric. Ethos, in the Greek sense, meant “moral character”. In his Rhetoric, Aristotle thought that “character” played an important role in oration. He observed: “But since rhetoric exists to affect the giving of decisions— the hearers decide between one political speaker and another, and a legal verdict is a decision—the orator must not only try to make the argument of his speech demonstrative and worthy of belief; he must also make his own character look right and put his hearers, who are to decide, into the right frame of mind.” 45
The similarities between the Pre-Qin rhetoric and ancient Greek rhetoric were particularly found in the rhetorical ideas of the school of Mingjia, which was represented by Deng Xi（560- 501B.C.)，Hui Shi（370-310 B.C.）and Gongsun Long（325-250 B.C., and the sophists, which were represented by Protagoras( ca.490-420B.C.) and Gorgias (ca.483-375B.C.）.It is pity that most of the original works written by the Mingjia School and the sophists fell into oblivion and we can only know their ideas through the comments on them delivered by other rhetorical thinkers such as Xun Zi, Confucius and Aristotle.
For instance, Xun Zi argued that the Mingjia School “are fond of treating abstruse theories, and playing with shocking propositions…Nonetheless, some of what they advocate has a rational basis, and their statements have perfect logic, enough indeed to deceive and mislead the ignorant masses. Such Men are Hui Shi and Deng Xi. ” 46 In his Sophistical Refutations, Aristotle also gave a bad definition of sophists as the following: “For the art of the sophist is the semblance of wisdom without the reality, and the sophist is one who makes money from an apparent but unreal wisdom.”47 Both the two schools shared the concept of multiple probabilities in human life and recognized the power of language in debating and persuasion. As Xing Lu said, “In many ways Mingjia resembled the Greek sophists… ”48 For instance, Protagoras’ famous claim that “humans are the measure of all things , of things that are that (or: how ) they are, and of things that are not that (or: how ) they are not, ” according to Bryan W. Van Norton, was the Chinese version of Deng Xi’s advocacy that “both arguments are acceptable ,”49
which was termed as “liang ke” (dual possibilities ) and “liang shuo” (dual interpretations). The vivid illustration of Deng Xi’s theory of dual possibilities and dual interpretations was expressed in an anecdote in Lü Shi Chun Qiu:
The Wei River is very great in size. A wealthy man from Zheng drowned in it, and someone retrieved his body. The wealthy man’s family sought to buy it, but the one who found the body was asking a great deal of money. The family reported this to Deng Xi, who said ‘Do not worry about this. He certainly can sell it to no one else.’ The man who found the corpse was anxious about this and reported this to Deng Xi, who told him, ‘Do not worry about it. They certainly will be unable to buy the corpse from someone else.50
This anecdote about Deng Xi indicates that it is only the human faculty of reasoning that decides the truth of an issue instead of moral appeal or divine invention. If an argument is logically convincing and well presented, truth can be found in either side of the issue. That is why both the sophists and the school of Mingjia were accused of lacking of sincerity or moral sense in rhetorical poetics.
In conclusion, the genesis of Chinese and Western poetics was working in the context of heterogeneous cultures and was without mutual contact, exchange or mutual influence. Although they differed in most concrete contents and means of expression, the Sino-Western poetics were identical in some fundamental views about the nature and function of literature, art and rhetoric. To reveal these heterogeneous similarities of the Sino-Western poetics in their respective origin periods, can not only refute the theory of Chinese ellipsis or western superiority that has been prevalent in comparative studies for centuries, but also help western scholars to know more about Chinese culture, particularly the ancient Chinese cultures.
Notes
1 Fleming 2003, 259.
2 Denecke 2013, 13.
3 Chan 1974, 142-143.
4 Wallace 2013, 99.
5 Defoort 2001, 393.
6 Ibid, 394.
7 Jaspers 1953, 51.
8 Bodde 1981, 291-292.
9 Zoeren 1994, 146.
10 Confucius 2007, 55.
11 Ibid, 122.
12 Xun Zi 1999, vol.1, 249.
13 Xun Zi1999, vol.2, 653.
14 Ibid, 651.
15 Ibid, 749.
16 Plato 2016, 64.
17 Ibid, 233.
18 Zhu Guangqian 1979, 56.
19 Sima Qian 2008, 270.
20 Confucius , 107-108.
21 Aristotle 1920, 35.
22 Schaper 1968, 132.
23 Plato 1992, 276.
24 Confucius, 20.
25 Ibid, 29.
26 Xun Zi, Vol.2, 652.
27 Aristotle 1960, 9.
28 Heraclitus 1967, 46.
29 Plato 2008, 19-20.
30 Ibid, 40.
31 Aristotle 2009, 86.
32 Aristotle 1920, 40.
33 Ibid,40.
34 Mencius 1960, 189-190.
35 Plato 2009, 9-10.
36 Abrams 1958 , 57.
37 Aristotle 1920, 60-61.
38 Ibid, 85-86.
39 Ibid, 43.
40 Murphy 1983, 1.
41 Schiappa 1999, 21.
42 Kao 1993, 143-54.
43 Oliver 1971, 10.
44 Confucius 2007, 88.
45 Aristotle 2010, 59.
46 Xun Zi 1999, 127.
47 Aristotle 1984, 165a.
48 Xing 1998, 129.
49 Norden 2011, 102.
50 Buwei, 2000, 454.
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II. REVIEW
An 18th-century painted album leaf depicts events chronicled by second-century B.C. historian Sima Qian, in which Qin Shi Huangdi burned Confucian texts and hurled scholars into a pit. Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. (GRANGER/AURIMAGES)
This interesting
paper, provocative in many aspects, deals with a Comparative Study of
Poetics of China and Grece, so I find it necessary to clarify some basic
points on the subject. The author's decision to incorporate literature and
philosophy within their definition of poetics (p. 2) may be somewhat
perplexing, given that it diverges from the conventional everyday understanding
and usage of the term. It is also of some importance to note that China as a
cultural and political entity emerged only after the establishment of the Qin
dynasty and the assimilation of distinct populations and their distinctive
cultures. It is in this respect characteristic that Qin dynasty ordered a bibliocaust
so as to underline the fact that the new polity would have a new identity
starting from scratch! Therefore, when terms like 'nationality' and 'China' are
used in reference to periods preceding this, they should be understood
expansively as corresponding to a reality that was formed later, or as simply
in a geographical / descriptive sense. It is worth noting that due to this
aforementioned bibliocaust, written sources of (pre-) Chinese literature are of
questionable dating, usually surviving through Qin and post-Qin archives,
anthologies and collections! For example influential scholars like Zhu
Weizheng, Michael J. Hunter et al. have questioned the traditional status of
the Analects as the oldest stratum of Confucius’ teachings, while the
historicity of the latter has also been disputed (Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, s.v. Confucius).
In the
abstract of the paper two statements are emphasized, that warrant a
reappraisal:
FIRST
STATEMENT
“while
Western poetics came into being in the Hellenistic period ..”
This
assertation is lacking accuracy. The works of the two most prominent Greek
poets, Homer and Hesiod, were written down at circa the 8th century BC, but
they drew upon motifs and narrations that had been orally transmitted for
centuries, dating back at least to the Mycenaean era! Possibly earlier than
these two Greek poets, there exists a nearly complete poem by Orpheus (Orphics
– Orphica) while fragments of other epics are partly accessible through the
writings of other ancient authors! It is important to acknowledge that the
author revises this initial statement within the body of their paper, as on
page 2, they admit that the origins of their concept of Greek poetics are
rooted in what they term "ancient Greece" (500-336 BC).
SECOND
STATEMENT
“Although
there was no mutual communication and influence between the two kinds of
poetics, due to both geographical distance and chronological displacement ..”
Between the
two worlds, i.e. the Aegean and Serindia, there seem to have existed some kind
of contact through migration or other means, as it is seemingly shown from the
transfer of technologies, ideas and motifs. This contact was facilitated by the
expansion of the Persian Empire, while Alexander’s conquest put Greece side by
side to China and India from the end of the fourth century BC onwards! In this
sense even the assertion of Derk Bodde (pp. 2-3):
“There are,
for example, the facts that Chinese civilization, though not so autochthonous
as once supposed, was founded and thereafter developed in relative isolation
from any other civilizations of comparable level.”8
proves to
be very conservative and outdated by as many as 70 years of research since the
publication of the relevant paper at 1953! Without
going intο further details, we may simply note here that between Greeks and Chinese
there were even military contacts, friendly or warlike, as in the battle in
Talas – Kyrgystan (36 BC), in the conflict between Han China and the Greco-Saca
Jibin / Chi-pin, in the conflict with Ferghana (Dayuan – Greater Ionia) over
the heavenly horses of the latter and in the conflicts between Han China and
Xiongnu over the Hexi Corridor (king Xiutu as a vassal of the Xiongnu and later
member of Chinese elite)! (Konidaris 2020). Yinmofu
(Hermaios ?) seems to have been the first and also the last Indo-Greek king who
accepted investiture from China and established a formal political relation
with the Han court, while the hybrid Greek kingdom of Jibin could be admitted
as a vassal state of China!
Speaking
about Xiutu we may mention that this enigmatic and important figure in Chinese
history was possibly of Greek descend. He had a son named Midi (Ridi), who
would later receive the epithet “Golden Midi” from Wudi, the emperor of the Han
(157–87 BC). According to the Hanshu, King Xiutu had his capital
city in one of what were later the Han Chinese “ten districts of Wuwei”, and he
has been described as a Xiongnu king by most historians. (Christopoulos 2022)
According to wikipedia, wikipedia, s.v. Jin Midi, Jin Midi was born in 134 BC
to a Xiongnu allied royal family probably of Greco-Bactrian origins ruling
central Gansu. He was the heir of the king Xiutu (Soter/Σωτήρ), one of the major kings serving under the supreme
ruler of the Xiongnu, Gunchen Chanyu. After Gunchen's death in 126 BC, his
brother Yizhixie succeeded him. During this time, the king of Xiutu and another
major king, the king Hunxie, were assigned for defending Xiongnu's southwestern
border against the Han Dynasty – in modern central and western Gansu. This very
person, Jin Midi, along with Xiutu have been the genetic founders of the famous
Ban family (Sanping Chen 2011).
Story of Jin Midi - A black and white drawing of two people sitting on a bench
According
to Sanping Chen, an authority on Chinese culture and history, the family:
.... family
produced not only Ban Biao(3-54), Ban Gu (32-92) and Ban Zhao (ca. 49-ca.l20),
the father-son-daughter trio that authored China's first ever dynastic history
Han-shu but also the extraordinarily daring and capable diplomat-general Ban Chao
(33-103), who singlehandedly (reportedly with a force of only 36 fellow
adventurers) re-established the Han domination in Central Asia (known at the
time as the Western Regions) after the debacle under the tragicomic pretender
Wang Mang (45 BC-23 AD). Chao' s exploit was further carried on by his Central
Asia-born son Ban Yong.
..
The
historiography of the Ban family was clearly highly influential in restoring
the radically virtue-oriented, producerist and pro-peasant tenor of Confucian
thought, and if Hill’s reading of the history is correct, they seem to have
done it with such aplomb that it became taken for common sense in subsequent
eras (Sanping
Chen 2011).
According
to an interesting theory, that would explain some of the Hellenistic customs
and art references existing among the Murong Xianbei, Yao Weiyuan (1905–1985)
argues that King Xiutu was the ancestor of some members of the Xianbei military
aristocracy too! (Christopoulos 2022). Members of this 'ethnic' group are
supposed to have a long-lasting influence in China since they held prominent positions
in Chinese aristocracy (Sanping Chen 1996). In this sense Greek contribution in
Chinese intellectual history can be recognized as having an additional path for
cultural communication facilitating cultural exchange! But the introduction of Buddhism in ancient China was
another important channel for the diffusion of the artistic traits of the
Greco-Indian Gandhara art as well as of the relevant religious - philosophical
attributes of Buddhism.
Writing
about his method of comparative analysis the author states:
“This
style of Sino-Western comparative approach is termed by Wiebke Denecke as
“ellipsis”2. For instance, both Cecil Maurice Bowra and Ernst Robert Curtius
argue that Chinese culture lacks epic tradition characteristic of European
culture3. Another frequently noted idea in Sino-Western comparative study is
that “there is no tradition of tragedy in Chinese literature.”4”
The author
attempts to base his views on the theory of Denecke, who makes use of the
(Greek!) terms of ellipsis and catachresis in
order to build another not colonial and non chauvinistic approach.
This attempt in line with the rather extremist movement of ‘cancel culture’ is
usually employed by members of the so-called ‘younger’ or ‘deficient’ cultures, such as, possibly, the Chinese
compared to the Greek one. This reconsideration has been - with surprising
sincerity (!) - recognized by Beecroft as a result of changing
intellectual trends and shifts in global economic and political power (that) have
contributed to a reassessment and to approaches that account for similarities
and differences without assuming that the Greek tradition is superior or
paradigmatic (Beecroft 2016). This changing political power balance
urges the new major political players (mainly China and India) to ask for a
reappraisal of the past, in line with what Mazower has stated:
"As small states integrate into a wider world another future needs
another past" (Mazower 2006, p. 554).
At this juncture, it is important to emphasize that in an age marked by
political correctness, certain Western scholars felt compelled to challenge a
hypothesis suggesting significant foreign influences on the so-called deficient
cultures. Their motivation stemmed from concerns that acknowledging Greek
influence might inadvertently lead to an overemphasis on assessing the
accomplishments of other civilizations solely through the "Greek
lens." (Solos 2021).
The author
criticizes other scholars who have identified ellipsis (f.e. in epic tradition
and tragedy) in Chinese culture. However, the author seems to conveniently
sidestep addressing these particular deficiencies, downplaying their
significance. Should the author wish to delve into the origins of Chinese
theater and drama, it would be intriguing to explore Li Qiang's perspectives,
according to which:
"Readers
were surprised to discover that the traditional literary arts of China were all
related to the Silk Road, where Yanshi’s puppet plays, masked Nuo plays,
Buddhism music–dance plays, and religious ritual plays associated with Chinese
traditional operas were bred; Sanskrit plays, highly praised in Kushan in the
Western Regions, and Zhezhi plays, prevalent in the Tigris and Euphrates basins
of Central Asia, shaped the patterns of exchanges between Chinese and foreign
drama cultures after being introduced into the Central Plains.
..
An in-depth
study may further uncover the following conclusion that such masks prevailing
in the East actually originated from Gandhara art and Dionysus of ancient
Greece.
..
Khotan in
Xinjiang of China was adjacent to the mountains and rivers of Kushan and
Gandhara, and they once shared a common destiny. Therefore, it is quite
reasonable that there was a significant Hellenistic influence on performing
arts and drama in Khotan."
It is also
worth noting that China has never been colonized, at least not in the ancient
times and especially not from the ‘usual’ western colonial powers!
Writing
about similarities in Rhetoric the author states:
“Last but
not the least important is the similarity in rhetoric as effective discourse
shared by the scholars of pre-Qin and ancient Greece. James J. Murphy’s
affirmation that “It is important to note at once that rhetoric is an entirely
Western phenomenon”40 is again a chauvinistic idea.”
The author
tries to access another similarity between pre-Qin, i.e. pre-China (!) and
Greece, that in rhetoric (pp. 13-14). In this attempt he makes use of the The
Book of Change which, according to available data (Wikipedia, s.v. The Book of
Change) was initially a divination manual, that several centuries later at
about the 2nd c BC was transformed to a philosophical commentary!:
.. is an
ancient Chinese divination text that is among the oldest of the Chinese
classics… was originally a divination manual in the Western Zhou period
(1000–750 BC)… during .. Warring States and early imperial periods it
transformed into a cosmological text with a series of philosophical
commentaries known as the "Ten Wings".[1] After becoming part of the
Five Classics in the 2nd century BC, the I Ching was the subject of scholarly
commentary and the basis for divination practice for centuries across the Far
East, and eventually took on an influential role in Western understanding of
East Asian philosophical thought.
The author refutes
J. J. Murphy’s view that rhetoric is an entirely Western phenomenon, and
criticizes G. A. Kennedy who shares a similar perspective by arguing that
rhetoric existed in Greece only because it was given such a name as “rhetoric”
was, naming this affirmation as ridiculous! Forgetting his so impolite
characterization in the following part of his study the author states (pp.
13-14):
the Pre-Qin
scholars not only paid the same importance to rhetoric as an effective
discourse as the scholars in ancient Greece did, but also coined the name
“xiuci” the Chinese name for rhetoric）even before
Plato coined the term “rhetoric.” The evidence was the famous Chinese phrase
“xiuci li qi cheng” (polished expressions are to be based on sincerity）42, which appeared in The Book of Change, a book
written during the West Zhou Dynasty (roughly 1027-770 B.C. The major
difference between the East and the West in studying rhetoric is that “in the
East, rhetoric has been considered so important that it could not be separated
from the remainder of human knowledge” while “in the West, rhetoric has been
considered to be so important that it has had to be explored and delineated
separately, as a special field of knowledge about human relations.”43
In
conclusion the said reference to rhetoric is dated at about the 2nd century BC,
in a questionable and ambivalent - polysemic - ambiguous way, as Kong Yingda of
the 6th c AD interprets it differently! Even if this is the case rhetoric seems
much more ancient in Greece than in Qin China by several centuries!
Without
proceeding to analyze thoroughly this useful and informative study I would like
to give the following concluding remarks on certain of its aspects.
The view
that China developed a complex society and high culture without external
influence has already been proved to be inaccurate. It is now known that
contact and interaction did take place, based on mobility, migration and
exchange processes mainly along the Eurasian Steppe Highway and the Silk Road.
Not solely via the nomadic tribes but certainly through their agency as well,
said interaction included the Mediterranean and Bactria-Margiana Archaeological
Complex, as well as Afanasevo and Andronovo cultural horizons. The Hellenistic
civilization is shown to be a significant party in this cultural encounter,
mainly through its local cultural hybrids of Greek–Bactrian and Greek-Indian
polities! The use of gold and silver as preferred luxury materials and the
appearance of realistic life-size sculptures are only indicative examples with
a rather pronounced Greek dimension; the above, together with architecture,
landscape painting, various jewelry techniques, martial arts, and so much more,
all owe a great deal to the Aegean heritage.
..
https://neoskosmos.com/en/2018/08/23/dialogue/opinion/homer-in-the-time-of-the-zhou/
Whether by accident or design, the ancient cultures of Greece and China, though geographically at great distances from each other and politically, poles apart, present interesting parallels. One of many of these, would undoubtedly have to be surprising similarities in the foundational texts of both civilisations. Somewhere between 1000BC to 800BC, Homer’s epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, came into being, on the extreme western coast of Asia (Minor). At roughly the same time, at the easternmost extremity of the same continent, during China’s Zhou dynasty, the seminal Classic of Poetry {Odes} were collated.
.. Recently, several centuries of doubts about internal inconsistencies in the text {Analects} and a lack of references to the title in early sources were marshaled by classicist Zhu Weizheng 朱維錚 in an influential 1986 article which argued that the lack of attributed quotations from the Analects, and of explicit references to it, prior to the second century BCE, meant that its traditional status as the oldest stratum of the teachings of Confucius was undeserved. Since then a number of historians, including Michael J. Hunter, have systematically shown that writers started to demonstrate an acute interest in the Analects only in the late second and first centuries BCE, suggesting that other Confucius-related records from those centuries should also be considered as potentially authoritative sources. Some have suggested this critical approach to sources is an attack on the historicity of Confucius, but a more reasonable description is that it is an attack on the authoritativeness of the Analects that broadens and diversifies the sources that may be used to reconstruct the historical Confucius.
Χατζηαναστασίου, Τ. . "Κριτική αξιολόγηση των θεωριών εξιδανίκευσης της Οθωμανικής αυτοκρατορίας," <https://www.academia.edu/34097547/%CE%9A%CF%81%CE%B9%CF%84%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%AE_%CE%B1%CE%BE%CE%B9%CE%BF%CE%BB%CF%8C%CE%B3%CE%B7%CF%83%CE%B7_%CF%84%CF%89%CE%BD_%CE%B8%CE%B5%CF%89%CF%81%CE%B9%CF%8E%CE%BD_%CE%B5%CE%BE%CE%B9%CE%B4%CE%B1%CE%BD%CE%AF%CE%BA%CE%B5%CF%85%CF%83%CE%B7%CF%82_%CF%84%CE%B7%CF%82_%CE%9F%CE%B8%CF%89%CE%BC%CE%B1%CE%BD%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%AE%CF%82_%CE%91%CF%85%CF%84%CE%BF%CE%BA%CF%81%CE%B1%CF%84%CE%BF%CF%81%CE%AF%CE%B1%CF%82> (30 Οκτ. 2023).
Mazower, M. 2006. Θεσσαλονίκη, Πόλη των φαντασμάτων, χριστιανοί, μουσουλμάνοι και Εβραίοι, 1430-1950 (Salonica, City of Ghosts : Christians, Muslims and Jews), ελληνική έκδοση: Αλεξάνδρεια, Αθήνα.
"Καθώς τα μικρά κράτη ενσωματώνονται σ’ έναν ευρύτερο κόσμο ένα άλλο μέλλον χρειάζεται ένα άλλο παρελθόν". Κοντολογίς παραδέχεται ότι κατασκεύασε ένα άλλο παρελθόν της Θεσσαλονίκης το οποίο ουδέποτε υπήρξε στην πραγματικότητα, αλλά το οποίο είναι απαραίτητο για να ταιριάζει κουτί "στο άλλο μέλλον" και στον άλλο ρόλο για τον οποίο κάποιοι προορίζουν τη Θεσσαλονίκη στον "ευρύτερο κόσμο", όπου τα "μικρά κράτη ενσωματώνονται"... Σε διάστημα μικρότερο της από το 1990 η μεσοβαλκανική ζώνη έχει κατακερματισθεί σε μικρά θνησιγενή κρατίδια αλληλοϋποβλεπόμενα.... Η βαλκανική σκακιέρα μένει ανοικτή στους δύο Μεγάλους Παίκτες».
Μαζάουερ, όπ. π., σ. 554. Ομολογείται δηλαδή πως πρόκειται για πραγματική αυτή τη φορά «κατασκευή» του ιστορικού παρελθόντος που νομιμοποιείται να γράφει ό,τι νομίζει πως εξυπηρετεί καλύτερα συγκεκριμένες σκοπιμότητες και προθέσεις του παρόντος που επιχειρούν να καθορίσουν και να ελέγξουν το μέλλον.
p. 62
80. .. (or Ma Heluo), a colleague of the famous courtier Jin Midi of Xiongnu Xiutu origin, hence quite possibly of non-Han origin too. See HSh 68.2960-61 and ZZhTJ 22.743-44.
Christopoulos: An interesting theory that would explain some of the Hellenistic customs and art references existing among the Murong Xianbei comes from the work of Yao Weiyuan (姚薇元1905–1985). He argues that King Xiutu was the ancestor of some members of the Xianbei military aristocracy.100
