The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays (New York Review Books Classics) Read online

  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 National University and was Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Sydney from 1987 to 1993. Leys’s writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, Le Monde, Le Figaro Littéraire, and other periodicals. Among his books are Chinese Shadows, The Death of Napoleon (forthcoming from NYRB Classics), Other People’s Thoughts, and The Wreck of the Batavia & Prosper. In 1996 he delivered the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Boyer Lectures. His many awards include the Prix Renaudot, the Prix Femina, the Prix Guizot, and the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction.

  THE HALL OF USELESSNESS

  Collected Essays

  SIMON LEYS

  NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS

  New York

  THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

  435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  www.nyrb.com

  Copyright © 2011, 2013 by Simon Leys

  Translations of “The Prince de Ligne, or the Eighteenth Century Incarnate,” “Victor Segalen Revisited Through His Complete Correspondence,” “The Belgianness of Henri Michaux,” and “Roland Barthes in China” © 2013 by Donald Nicholson-Smith

  All rights reserved.

  Cover image: Mathew Lynn, Pierre Ryckmans II (detail), 2010

  Cover design: Katy Homans

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier printing as follows:

  Leys, Simon, 1935–

  [Essays. Selections]

  The hall of uselessness : collected essays / by Simon Leys.

  pages cm. — (New York Review Books classics)

  Originally published: Collingwood, Vic. : Black Inc., 2011.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-1-59017-620-7 (alk. paper)

  I. Title.

  AC25.L53 2013

  824'.914—dc23

  2012044121

  eISBN 978-1-59017-638-2

  v1.0

  For a complete list of books in the NYRB Classics series, visit www.nyrb.com or write to:

  Catalog Requests, NYRB, 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  For Hanfang

  CONTENTS

  Biographical Notes

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  The Hall of Uselessness (By Way of a Foreword)

  PART I: QUIXOTISM

  The Imitation of Our Lord Don Quixote

  An Empire of Ugliness

  Lies That Tell the Truth

  PART II: LITERATURE

  The Prince de Ligne, or the Eighteenth Century Incarnate

  Balzac

  Victor Hugo

  Victor Segalen Revisited Through His Complete Correspondence

  Chesterton: The Poet Who Dances with a Hundred Legs

  Portrait of Proteus: A Little ABC of André Gide

  Malraux

  The Intimate Orwell

  Terror of Babel: Evelyn Waugh

  The Truth of Simenon

  The Belgianness of Henri Michaux

  The Sins of the Son: The Posthumous Publication of Nabokov’s Unfinished Novel

  Cunning Like a Hedgehog

  The Experience of Literary Translation

  On Readers’ Rewards and Writers’ Awards

  Writers and Money

  Overtures

  PART III: CHINA

  The Chinese Attitude Towards the Past

  One More Art: Chinese Calligraphy

  An Introduction to Confucius

  Poetry and Painting: Aspects of Chinese Classical Aesthetics

  Ethics and Aesthetics: The Chinese Lesson

  Orientalism and Sinology

  The China Experts

  Roland Barthes in China

  The Wake of an Empty Boat: Zhou Enlai

  Aspects of Mao Zedong

  The Art of Interpreting Non-Existent Inscriptions Written in Invisible Ink on a Blank Page

  The Curse of the Man Who Could See the Little Fish at the Bottom of the Ocean

  The Cambodian Genocide

  Anatomy of a “Post-Totalitarian” Dictatorship: The Essays of Liu Xiaobo on China Today

  PART IV: THE SEA

  Foreword to The Sea in French Literature

  In the Wake of Magellan

  Richard Henry Dana and His Two Years Before the Mast

  PART V: UNIVERSITY

  The Idea of the University

  A Fable from Academe

  PART VI: MARGINALIA

  I Prefer Reading

  A Way of Living

  Tell Them I Said Something

  Detours

  Memento Mori

  Acknowledgement

  Publication Details

  Notes

  Index

  THE HALL OF USELESSNESS

  (By Way of a Foreword)

  Everyone knows the usefulness of what is useful, but few know the usefulness of what is useless.

  —ZHUANG ZI

  TRADITIONALLY, Chinese scholars, men of letters, artists would give an inspiring name to their residences, hermitages, libraries and studios. Sometimes they did not actually possess residences, hermitages, libraries or studios—not even a roof over their heads—but the existence or non-existence of a material support for a Name never appeared to them a very relevant issue. And I wonder if one of the deepest seductions of Chinese culture is not related to this conjuring power with which it vests the Written Word. I am not dealing here with esoteric abstractions, but with a living reality. Let me give you just one modest example, which hit me long ago, when I was an ignorant young student.

  In Singapore, I often patronised a small movie theatre which showed old films of Peking operas. The theatre itself was a flimsy open-air structure planted in a paddock by the side of the road (at that time, Singapore still had a countryside): a wooden fence enclosed two dozen rows of seats—long planks resting on trestles. In the rainy season, towards the end of the afternoon, there was always a short heavy downpour, and when the show started, just after dark, the planks often had not yet had time to dry; thus, at the box-office, with your ticket, you received a thick old newspaper to cushion your posterior against the humidity. Everything in the theatre was shoddy and ramshackle—everything except the signpost with the theatre’s name hanging above the entrance: two characters written in a huge and generous calligraphy, Wen Guang—which could be translated as “Light of Civilisation” or “Light of the Written-Word” (it is the same thing). However, later on in the show, sitting under the starry sky and watching on screen Ma Lianliang give his sublime interpretation of the part of the wisest minister of the Three Kingdoms (third century AD), you realised that—after all—this “Light of Civilisation” was no hollow boast.

  Now, back to The Hall of Uselessness. It was a hut located in the heart of a refugee shantytown of Hong Kong (Kowloon side). To reach it at night, one needed an electric torch, for there were no lights and no roads—only a dark maze of meandering paths across a chaos of tin and plywood shacks; there were open drains by the side of the paths, and fat rats ran under the feet of passers-by. For two years I enjoyed there the fraternal hospitality of a former schoolmate, whom I knew from Taiwan—he was an artist (calligrapher and seal-carver) sharing a place with two postgraduate students, a philologist and a historian. We slept on bunks in a single common room. This room was naturally a complete mess—anywhere else it would have resembled a dismal slum, but here all was redeemed by
the work of my friend: one superb calligraphy (in seal-script style) hanging on the wall—Wu Yong Tang, “The Hall of Uselessness.” If taken at face value, it had a touch of tongue-in-cheek self-deprecation; in fact, it contained a very cheeky double-meaning. The words (chosen by our philologist companion, who was a fine scholar) alluded to a passage from The Book of Changes, the most ancient, most holy (and most obscure) of all the Chinese classics, which said that “in springtime the dragon is useless.” This, in turn, according to commentaries, meant that in their youth the talents of superior men (promised to a great future) must remain hidden.

  I spent two years in The Hall of Uselessness; these were intense and joyful years—when learning and living were one and the same thing. The best description of this sort of experience was given by John Henry Newman. In his classic The Idea of a University, he made an amazingly bold statement: he said that if he had to choose between two types of universities, one in which eminent professors teach students who come to the university only to attend lectures and sit for examinations, and the other where there are no professors, no lectures, no examinations and no degrees, but where the students live together for two or three years, he would choose the second type. He concluded, “How is this to be explained? When a multitude of young men, keen, open-hearted, sympathetic and observant as young men are, come together and freely mix with each other, they are sure to learn from one another, even if there be no one to teach them; the conversation of all is a series of lectures to each, and they gain for themselves new ideas and views, fresh matter of thought and distinct principles for judging and acting day by day.”

  I hope I have remained faithful to the memory of The Hall of Uselessness—not in the meaning intended by my friends (for I am afraid I am not exactly of the dragon breed!), but at least in the more obvious meaning of Zhuang Zi, quoted above. Yet is this second aspiration more humble, or more ambitious? After all, this sort of “uselessness” is the very ground on which rest all the essential values of our common humanity.

  —S.L.

  Canberra, March 2011

  Part I

  QUIXOTISM

  THE IMITATION OF OUR LORD DON QUIXOTE

  IN DEBATES, the word “quixotic” is nearly always meant as an insult—which puzzles me, since I can hardly think of a greater compliment. The way most people refer to Don Quixote makes you wonder if they have actually read the book. In fact, it would be interesting to find out whether Don Quixote is still as widely read as the universal popularity of the character would normally suggest. But it could be awkward to conduct such an enquiry—especially among educated people, one often encounters a strange misconception that there are a certain number of books one should have read, and it would be shameful to acknowledge that one has failed in this sort of cultural obligation. Personally, I disagree with such an attitude; I confess I read only for pleasure.

  Of course, I am talking here about creative literature (fiction and poetry), not about the theoretical literature (information, documents) which scholars and professional people must master in order to perform competently within their respective disciplines. For instance, you would naturally expect that—let us say—a medical practitioner should have read some treatises of anatomy and pathology; but you cannot demand that he also be thoroughly conversant with all the short stories of Chekhov. (Though, as a wise doctor once remarked, between two doctors whose medical qualifications are otherwise equal, we should trust the one who reads Chekhov.)

  Literary critics do fulfil a very important role (as I shall try to show in a moment), but there seems to be a problem with much contemporary criticism, and especially with a certain type of academic literary criticism. One has the feeling that these critics do not really like literature—they do not enjoy reading. Worse even, if they were actually to enjoy a book, they would suspect it to be frivolous. In their eyes, something that is amusing cannot be important or serious.

  This attitude is unconsciously pervading our general view of literature. As a result, we tend to forget that until recently most literary masterpieces were designed as popular entertainment. From Rabelais, Shakespeare and Molière in the classical age, down to the literary giants of the nineteenth century—Balzac, Dumas, Hugo, Dickens, Thackeray—the main concern of the great literary creators was not so much to win the approval of the sophisticated connoisseurs (which, after all, is still a relatively easy trick) as to touch the man in the street, to make him laugh, to make him cry, which is a much more difficult task.

  The notion of “literary classic” has a solemn ring about it. But Don Quixote, which is the classic par excellence, was written for a flatly practical purpose: to amuse the largest possible number of readers, in order to make a lot of money for the author (who needed it badly). Besides, Cervantes himself hardly fits the lofty image most people have in mind when they think of inspired writers who create immortal masterpieces: originally a soldier of fortune, he was wounded in action and remained a cripple; captured by pirates, he was sold as a slave in North Africa; when, after long years of captivity, he was finally able to return to Spain, it was only to fall into dire poverty; he was sent to jail several times; his life was a harrowing struggle for survival. He repeatedly attempted—always without success—to earn money with his pen: theatrical plays, pastoral novels. Most of these works have disappeared and the little that remains is not particularly impressive.

  It was only at the very end of his career—he was already fifty-eight—with Don Quixote in 1605 that he finally hit the jackpot: the book was at once a runaway best-seller. And Cervantes died just one year after the publication of the second and final part of his book (1615). Since Don Quixote was rightly hailed as one of the greatest works of fiction of any age, in any language, it is interesting to note that it was also—quite literally—a pot-boiler concocted by a hopeless old hack, at the very end of his tether.

  Furthermore, when we consider what set off Cervantes’s imagination, our puzzlement increases: he had intended his entire book as a machine de guerre directed against a very peculiar target—the literature of chivalry and knight errantry, a genre which had been in fashion for a while. This literary crusade now appears utterly irrelevant, but for Cervantes it was an important cause that mobilised the best of his intellectual energy; in fact, the relentless pursuit of this rather idle quarrel provided the very backbone of his entire narrative. As we all know, the overall structure of Don Quixote is very simple: the basic premise of the story is set in the first few pages of Chapter One, and the thousand pages that follow simply represent its applications to diverse situations—hundreds of variations on one theme.

  Is it necessary to recall this premise here? Don Quixote, who is a kind, wise and learned country gentleman with little money and much leisure (always a dangerous combination for an imaginative person), develops an extraordinary addiction to the literature of chivalry. In Cervantes’s own words:

  This gentleman in the times when he had nothing to do—as was the case for most of the year—gave himself to the reading of books of knight errantry; which he loved and enjoyed so much that he almost entirely forgot his hunting, and even the care of his estate. So odd and foolish, indeed, did he grow on this subject that he sold many acres of corn-land to buy these books of chivalry to read . . . [In the end], he so buried himself in his books that he spent the nights reading from twilight till daybreak and the days from dawn till dark; and so from little sleep and much reading, his brain dried up and he lost his wits.

  As a consequence, he then decided to turn himself into a knight errant—and out he went into the vast world, in the hope of illustrating his name for all time with noble and valiant deeds. But the problem, of course, was that knights errant belonged to another age, long vanished. In the ruthless modern world, his obstinate quest for honour and glory was a grotesque anachronism. The conflict between his lofty vision and a trivial reality could only lead to an endless series of preposterous mishaps; most of the time, he ended up as the victim of cruel and elaborate
practical jokes. In the very end, however, he finally wakes up from his dream, and realises that, all along, what he had chased with such absurd heroism was a ludicrous illusion. This discovery is his ultimate defeat. And he literally dies from a broken heart.

  The death of Don Quixote in the last chapter is the climax of the entire book. I would challenge any reader, however tough and insensitive, to read these pages without shedding a tear. And yet, even at that crucial juncture, Cervantes is still pursuing his old obsession, and once again he finds the need to score a few more cheap points at the expense of some obscure books of chivalry. The intrusion of this futile polemic at that very moment is utterly anti-climactic—but then Cervantes has a perverse habit of ruining his own best effects, a practice that has infuriated many readers and critics (I shall return to this a little later). What I wish to underline here is simply this: it is bizarre to observe how a literary masterpiece which was to exert such universal appeal—transcending all barriers of language, culture and time—could, from the start, have been entirely predicated upon such a narrow, tedious and pointless literary quarrel. In order to appreciate fully the oddity of this situation, one should try to transpose it into modern terms: it is as if, for instance, Patrick White (let us say) were to have devoted his greatest creative effort to the single-minded debunking of some trash fiction published in Women’s Weekly or New Idea.

  But this, in turn, raises an interesting question. A little while ago, out of the blue, I inadvertently caught some critical flak for venturing to suggest in a nationally broadcast lecture (among a few other heresies) the notion (quite banal in fact) that creative literature, inasmuch as it is artistically valid, can carry no message. This view is not new, by the way, and should be self-evident. Hemingway, whom I quoted, had expressed it best to a journalist who was questioning him on “the messages” of his novels. He very sensibly replied: “There are no messages in my novels. When I want to send a message, I go to the post office.”