Soli Deo Gloria

        Students, as they began to write on the writings of others, were not to say anything that was not derived from the text they were considering. They were not to make any statements that they could not support by a specific use of language that actually occurred in the text. They were asked, in other words, to begin by reading texts closely as texts and not to move into the general context of human experience or history. Mere reading, it turns out, prior to any theory, is able to transform critical discourse in a manner that would appear deeply subversive to those who think of the studying of literature should really be studying of a combination of ethics, sociology, psychology and intellectual history.

        There are, after all, more important things than mere reading--there is life, for instance. Only specialists could have built their distinctive professional virtue— textual impeccability—into a theory of interpretation. And the current practice of close reading has lasted, not because it is commonsensical, but because specialists have appointed themselves the policemen of their own field. In an age of specialization, the specialist usually frightens off the amateurs. But this triumph of professionalism is not necessarily a triumph of intelligence or truth.

        What is at stake, then, is clearly the nature of reading; the question is not whether to be or not to be close but how to read in such a way as to break through preconceived notions of meaning in order to encounter unexpected otherness— in order to encounter objective truths through grounding in language and immersion in the literature, history, and culture of a society. For it is the question of the nature of the act of reading that can either illuminate or repress.

        Cheng might never notice me quietly sitting in a corner managing to get out as much as I can from Latin Prose Composition.  But we met in a dinner celebrating the very survival of the course at the end of semester, and were naturally surprised by each other’s unusual interest in Chinese stuff; she the labor issues and I the metaphysics. So it seemed logical that we often engage in discussions of various matters. She invited me to have tea or dinner in her apartment, and repeated the summons whenever I zigzagged my way through the train system coming to campus from my tiny shelter in Flushing.  

        Cheng was a fine Latinist and, without any preparation, shot almost full score on the law school admissions test in sophomore year, but there was nothing ostentatious about her except the confident consciousness of having a mind that moved like a deadly laser among the shams and delusions of our time. This rather awed and frightened me, for I had some romantic fancies of my own. I comforted my pride by wondering whether Cheng’s sharp and decisive thinking, despite her passion for learning and precision of language, had ever allowed her to feel the wisdom hiding in the social and moral traditions of the race. But this is ungracious of me after having accepted her tea. She walked with me on the riverside discussing Chinese politics; she confessed her aversion to New York City and also to ancient Greek. She was young, yet leading noble and desperate causes, and sometimes coming out of the bout with success; she was determined to dedicate her whole life to future China. I admired her as a miracle among women, a rising star among the very brilliant and promising, but – though I several times met her in friendly debate – I never knew her intimately enough to like her as I had come to like Kevin or Bin. I believe that Kevin was the deeper, subtler, kinder person.  

Lorenzo, first exemplar of animal tameness, whose manly spirit by Fortune’s malignant mistake was allotted a guinea pig’s body, had been forcibly abused by Dr. Sun, a French lop rabbit. In a family meeting hosted by Antigone, a black kitty of differently colored eyes, after bitterly bemoaning his misfortune, he fought against Dr. Sun with his nails he had concealed in his claws, and by so courageous a fighting gave his master a reason to relocate their living arrangements for a just and lasting peace.

Come without cage, for only one of them is given away; better for a home that already has a guinea pig or bunny.  The charger of my camera is missing, but they look almost the same as in these pictures found online. They live in Manhattan; delivery to Queens is possible during weekends. Please contact: lingxi@gmail.com

Rabbit: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8e/Loprabbit.JPG

Guinea Pig: http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/images14/GuineaPigP1010122.JPG

Modern Chinese is a language greatly in need of shaping, opening and discipline -- new possibilities of expression.  That growth will not come from endlessly recycling the same tired patterns; this is precisely why exposure to Greek and Latin and the modern European languages like English, which have all been influenced by them (and Hebrew, and often Celtic literature, and in the case of English its own older, more Germanic forms).

Presumably once having connected with the extraordinary possibilities in other languages, it will be natural to bring those possibilities to Chinese as well.  Thus far the biggest outside influence on modern Chinese has, unfortunately, come from the bureaucratic language of Marxism (via German and a sad form of Russian), and modern Chinese, to emerge as a great vehicle of expression, will have to purge itself of that wooden claptrap.  People can't spend decades trying to hide their read thoughts behind bureaucratic mud and then expect to be able to write powerful, clear Chinese.  As with many other aspects of Chinese civilization, renewal will come from (1) the excavation and critical re-examination of China's own cultural heritage through cross-cultural perspectives and (2) deep encounter with other cultures, primarily the West.

So learn English to explore the wider world and communicate with it meaningfully, Latin and Greek (the very keys to understanding Western civilization from its heart) for intellectual excavations -- but create in Chinese, and thereby help to renovate and rejuvenate the culture of East Asia.

In the picture (Ancient Greek):
ὁμολογοίην ἂν ἔγωγε οὐ κατὰ τούτους εἶναι θρέμμᾶ. -- Ἀντιόνη

Antigone (my kitten) says: I would confess that I am not a tame animal of their stamp, i.e. that I am far fiercer than them.

02 The Socialist

Wuhan at the end of the twentieth century was a bustling chaos of movement and energy, poverty and hope, due to Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms sweeping over the country. Enjoying the confluence of the Yangtze and Han River, the city is the most populous metropolitan in central China, first settled more than 3,000 years ago. A renowned center for the arts (especially poetry) and intellectual studies, it is also internationally famous for the Wuchang Uprising in 1911 which triggered the collapse of Qing Dynasty and establishment of the first republic in East Asia.  

My family was living in the nearby area of Wuhan University when I was five years old to record the first continuous memory of my life in the year of 1989, a year of events led by students, intellectuals and labor activists who developed over the course of their demonstration from protests against corruption into demands for freedom of the press and an end to, or the reform of, the rule of the Communist Party and Deng Xiaoping.

I was too young to appreciate that energizing myth, though. Nevertheless, I can still visualize the sunny day when everywhere well-wishers come out of their homes, offices and shops to wave and show support. My mother carries me to join the students. By the time we reach JiedaoKou, the numbers are swelling beyond count. Police blockades at critical junctions are relaxed as the good-natured vanguard of students wearing sun-visors, carrying the sweaters and jackets no longer needed in the midday sun, cheerfully beg cooperation.  A jolt of energy surges through the rapidly moving procession, numbering ten thousand or more as we reach DaDongmen. The students around me are sweaty and sunburned, some losing their voices, others already limping from the long march. My mother purchased several boxes of soda-water and arranged me to uncap all the bottles and distribute to the students. My father, having organized a group of peasant construction workers equipped with huge slogans (wrote by father on my mother’s wedding sheet) marching to the magnificent palace of provincial government, settled me in the front of his bike and followed behind in a safe distance. He was shrewd enough to ensure that our personal safety would remain intact during later possible arrests and bloody purges - which occurred indeed, yet we remained safe.

Father was then a factory worker who received his education by reading consciously during the dark days of the Cultural Revolution; he loved Chinese literature and law. Being a son of an “extreme-rightist” and grandson of Chief Justice Cheng (r. 1953-67) in the adversarial state of Taiwan, the “bad elements” in his political background ruled out his eligibility of getting a lawyer’s license, but he almost developed an expertise on classical Chinese. When I was born, he betrayed the patriarchal tradition in China, showing no objection to name me after mother, who shares the 77^th lineage of Confucius or Kong-Fu-zi with the last name Kong. And as literary as he was, he took lingxi from a poem of Li Shangyin - the best and most loved poet of the late Tang period whose works are sensuous, dense and allusive. ling means spirit or inspirited and xi or lingxi refers to a special rhinoceros horn; legend has it that under the burning light of lingxi, human can ultimately see through nature and recognize monsters and deities.

He proved to be a gentle and kind companion, never authoritative and always tolerant of my solipsistic peculiarities. I (if my memory does not deceive me) received few bombardments of moral exhortations from him, but encouragements to debate and discuss ideas, to challenge and persist, to attack and defend by reason. Consequently, I was always seen as the most troublesome student in school, in part because the behavior did not match the academic records - who would love to have a top student challenging his authority, thus behaviorally corrupting the rest? It became more so in middle school when I shamelessly attempted to employ classical Chinese rhetoric to challenge the school’s unpopular policies; terrible relationship with the teachers readily led to my voluntary exile from the classroom into three-month home-education, during which I experienced, with pain and ecstasy, the pregnancy and birth of my first invention.

My father ran a construction and decoration company since I was ten, but the company suffered an economic crisis resulted from the uninspired manager betting on an uninspired project, which finally led to its collapse when I was in middle school. Our family moved many times to avoid the terrifying creditors, and the ungratefulness of our debtors could hardly lighten our estimation of men. Father demonstrated his skills as a talented lawyer and brought me as his assistant to all levels of courts to sue the debtors, but it was a time when gold-clad hands could easily buy off laws and justice. Frequented the courts, it was the first time I came into contact with the hapless side of contemporary life. The ragged dress and frightened faces of men, women and children who covered the ground outside every court, having suffered from all sorts of injustice and official wrong-doings, received no legal assistance and some of them had to sleep outside the courts in the open air; they were waiting - some had waited for months to get a chance meeting the director during the monthly office hours, during which he, by a kaleidoscope of excuses, rarely showed up. My father tried his best to advice them on procedural laws, on the way to collect and present what sort of evidence, the tactics of dealing with bureaucracy, the basics of legal reasoning, etc. As his assistant, I was gradually able to process some uncomplicated cases under his supervision and even once disguised as a lawyer to represent an old, ragged, impoverished lady hoodwinked by a charlatan. She with her trembling hands offered 20 yuan for my successful effort and crowned me Living Lei Feng, a soldier hailed by the propaganda as the best moral exemplar of young people. I returned the money and gently removed the wreath from my unwilling head with a confused modesty. Her innocent son was executed without trial in 1983 during the yan’da or harsher punishment period; no positive outcome had been reached thus far despite her seventeen years of undiscourageable petitioning. But when I learned from her melancholy voice that she herself was sent to lao’jiao or labor education three times during these years, because each time the local government deemed her peaceful petition in Beijing had “disturbed social harmony”, my imagination was chilled.

The relative economic liberalism of Jiang Zemin’s administration let me, aged 16, to hope that the proximate aims of socialism might be realized sooner, and with less turmoil, if more and more socialists should carry on their faith and work for the welfare of the society. Consequently and naturally, it was my belief that there would be the presence of a leader of genius ability and exceptional integrity who could effectively control corruption and gradually launch political reforms benefiting future generations.  My parents unfortunately being shuang’xia’gang or simultaneously laid-off were victims of these economic reforms; yet my childhood was not embittered. Like every baby produced under the One-Child Policy, I had no siblings and was protected well. I joined almost every student of my generation to become a member of The Communist Youth League in middle school and promised to write Ideological Reports regularly. The promise was kept, but my doubts grew.

With that touching, sentimental, idealizing blend of hope, confusion and socialism that dominated my spiritual chemistry, I became a high school student in Wuchang Experimental School in 1999, where I strived to compete with my ambitious peers in the effort to bear off a prestige award in the Olympic competition of science - math, chemistry, physics or biology. Biology particularly fascinated me; I studied diligently the subject and made a hectic start: At the end of my second year high school, I had gained a substantial knowledge in the main fields of biology, being somewhat mediocre in physiology and microbiology, yet proudly excellent in taxonomy.

I think it was my studies of biology did most to sober me and further diluted these blind hopes for a warless socialist regime or for a Chinese Gorbachev: it forced me, aged 17, to recognize the social and political implication of the inescapable, omnipresent struggle for existence; now I saw that struggle not merely in plants and animals, but as well in the competition of man against man, of woman against woman, of state against state, of idea against idea - competition is the law of life. In this view the socialist call for a warless and classless society seemed doomed by the processes of nature and the resultant nature of man. It became clear to my budding brain that the communist ideal of equal reward and a classless society was biologically impossible.

01 The Anarchist

What the Mirror Said

Listen, oh woman

you are a speaker

greater than Homer

because someone can

catch the nerd's lines in ancient Greek

but not your words in a patient week!

Listen, oh woman

you are a runner

faster than Hector

for he is the man

who passed away in Book Twenty-two

but someone's heart you just lived into!

Listen, oh woman

you are a city

with puzzling geography

but be plain as you can

for someone needs your map to learn you

and directions to move around you.

June 29, 2006

           We

Real cool. We

Peel fool. We

Sing sin. We

Fling kin. We

Rape date. We

Tape mate. We

Hive wrong. We

Live long.

当我把恺撒大叔用拉丁语写的《高卢战记》中的一段话翻译成古代汉语时，我就有种愿望把我祖先孔子的《论语》的一些话翻译成古希腊语。

《论语》学而篇第一

Analects of Confucius, Chapter 1-1

Chinese:

　　子曰：学而时习之，不亦说乎？有朋自远方来，不亦乐乎？人不知而不愠，不亦君子乎？

English:

The Master said, "To study and frequently practice what has been learnt, is that not a pleasure? To have friends come from distant places, is that not a happy event? One who shows no displeasure when not understood by other people, is he not a noble person?"

Classical Greek:

διδασκᾶλος ό ἔλεγον, ἆρα ἆρεστός τό μανθᾶνειν καί πολλᾶκις άσκεῖν ὃν έμάνθαντο; ἆπα καλός τό ἔχειν ξένους άπο αλλότπιου; ὃστις μή μανθανόμεντου, δεικνύντος ούκ όργης, καλός.

The Goblet of Relief

  "Nunc est bibendum!" *

Filled is the goblet to its brim;

Quickly the sparkling bubbles swim.

  Filled are my eyes with silent tears

  Slowly telling the sorrows of years

I unfold the thoughts like a pilgrim.

No rosy flowers, no meadows green,

Embrace the goblet’s shade or sheen.

  The bubbles, like phantoms, grow and

  Rise in the air; yet cannot withstand

The gleams of shine, and vanish unseen.

This goblet, plain, lucid and chaste,

Is filled with wine (your favored taste);

  As the deep fountains of my heart

  By strong spasms shattered apart,

The wine is all running to waste.

O, I pledge in this cup of grief

Brewed by Time, the deceiving thief:

  For maddening quaffs of dewy wine

  From the holy streams of Hippocrene,

In half-waking dreams I find relief!

* Nunc est bibendum (Latin): “Cheers!”; literarily means “Now it’s time to drink”.

June 11, 2006

Lingxi Kong

Professor William D. White once noted that “fundamental openness to challenges and change matters in the long run.”  To him, emotion is controlled, reason flourishes and intellect dominates everything. Though he tends to discourage working with inspiration and passion, I would largely agree with him that it is intellectual maturity thriving on experience and wisdom that needs to be sought after.  I believe that it is through reading and intellectual immersion, rather than through college or any institution, that a person at last acquires a “liberal education” and grows from an animal into a human being capable of seeking truth and creating beauty.

Today we think a man is educated if he can read the newspaper morning, noon and night; but though our colleges turn out graduates like so many standardized Fords every year, there is a visible dearth of real culture of our life.  No wonder that some economists have questioned the use of a college education. This is pessimism exaggerated to make a point; but it is well that some people should check us up in our notion that the multiplication of schools and graduates can make us an intelligent people.

Our schools and colleges have suffered severely from Spencer’s conception of education as the adjustment of the individual to his environment; it was a dead, mechanical definition, drawn from a mechanistic philosophy, and distasteful to every creative spirit. The result has been the conquest of our schools by mechanical and theoretical science, to the comparative exclusion of such “useless” subjects as literature, history, philosophy and art. So we make good analysts, good clerks, and good technicians, who, when their workday is over, devour the pictorial press and crowd into theatres that show them forever the same love-scenes on the screen and the same anatomy on the stage.

This mechanical and “practical” education produces partial, not total, men; it subordinates civilization to industry, biology to physics, taste and manners to wealth. But education should make a man complete; it should develop every creative power in him, and open his mind to all the enjoyable and instructive aspects of the world. A man who is heavy with millions, but to whom Beethoven or Corot or Hardy, or the glow of the autumn woods in the setting sun, is only sound and color signifying nothing, is merely the raw material of a man; half the world is closed to the blurred windows of his spirit. An education that is purely scientific makes a mere tool of its product; it leaves him a stranger to beauty, and gives him powers that are divorced from wisdom. It would have been better for the world if Spencer had never written on education.

It is well that Latin and Greek are passing from our colleges, for they consumed a hundred times more effort than they were worth. As Heine said “They Romans could not have had much time left to conquer the world if they had first had to learn Latin.” But though the languages of Greece and Rome are necessary only to philologists, the literature of these nations is almost indispensable to education. A man may conceivably ignore Virgil and Horace, Lucretius and Cicero, Tacitus and Marcus Aurelius, and still become mature; but of all possible instruments of education in our world, none is so fine and sure as a study of Greek life in all the varied scope of its democracy and imperialism, its oratory and drama, its poetry and history, its architecture and sculpture, its science and philosophy. Let a student absorb the life and letters of the Periclean age, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment, and he will have a better education than any college can offer. Education does not mean that we have become certified experts in banking, or engineering, or journalism, or epistemology; it means that through the absorption of the moral, intellectual and esthetic inheritance of our race, we have come to understand and control ourselves as well as the external world; that we have learned to add courtesy to culture, wisdom to knowledge, and forgiveness to understanding. When will our colleges create such men?