Spotlight on: The Orphan of Zhao (13th Century AD)

Premise:

The text below is a (more or less cohesive) summary of a series of research notes that I had jotted down whilst preparing for my lecture on The Orphan of Zhao and the drama of the Yuan period for my course at Goldsmiths. As I am currently planning a research paper on a topic related to this ancient play, I decided to publish an informative blog to introduce The Orphan to my readers and to share some of the thoughts that I formed before discussing the play with my students.

The Orphan of Zhao: A revelation of the spirit of China?

 The Orphan of Zhao (趙氏孤兒) is a Chinese zaju[1] play of the Yuan[2] period, the first to be translated into a European language by the French Jesuit missionary Father Prémare in the 18^th century. It was therefore the first Chinese pièce to reach the West, where it was warmly received, especially by the French philosophes, amongst whom Voltaire—the well-known polemicist—who wrote his own (adapted) version of The Orphan, re-titled L’Orphelin de la Chine.

1. Plot and Dramatic Structure

The plot of The Orphan is based on a historical fact recorded in Sima Qian’s monumental work titled Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji, Han Dynasty – I century BC). The story is set during the Spring and Autumn period, the later phase of the Zhou rule (771-476 BC) and consists of two parts with a temporal ellipsis of ca. 20 years in-between. The action revolves around the wrongdoings of Tu’an Gu, a military official who vents his jealousy for the righteous minister Zhao Dun by having him and the whole Zhao family exterminated and, subsequently, by forging a decree that orders the death of his son Zhao Shuo, who eventually takes his life. The only survivor is Zhao Shuo’s newborn son who is entrusted into the capable hands of the faithful Cheng Ying, a physician and retainer of the Zhao’s. Whilst attempting to escape with the little baby hidden in a basket, Cheng Ying valiantly sacrifices his own son whom he passes off for the real Orphan, so that the latter may live. Cheng has to grit his teeth, withdraw his tears and forcibly silence his own personal sentiments in order to comply with a moral standard that may seem cruel and almost unacceptable for us readers of the 21^st century but that was totally normal and commendable in pre-imperial China. Twenty years later, Cheng Ying, who has brought up the Orphan in his household and given him his own surname, decides that the right time has come for the young man to know about his origins, his family’s courageous resistance to evil and, most importantly, the perfidious nature of Tu’an Gu—the man who has recently adopted him unaware of his affiliation to the Zhao family. Cheng employs an intelligent method for “enlightening” his ward. He presents him with a painted scroll documenting the story of the Zhao family in a narrative form. Cheng points every single character to the Orphan, mentioning names and heroic deeds and disclosing the truth gradually but inexorably before the youth’s eyes. Furthermore, the scroll features the scene in which Cheng takes baby Zhao away during the night towards a (supposedly) brighter future, and it is exactly when seeing himself objectified on the scroll that the Orphan suddenly discovers his real identity and realizes the magnitude of his burden. If his first reaction is, understandably, that of losing consciousness—he “fell as a dead body falls”, we could say, to paraphrase my beloved Dante—as soon as he wakes up, he resolutely makes up his mind to kill the wicked Tu’an Gu, thereby effecting the revenge that would do justice to more than 300 innocent victims, including his biological parents.

Concerning its dramatic structure, The Orphan follows the typical four-act pattern of the zaju plus a wedge (or prologue), which serves the purpose of introducing the story and the main characters. The Ming-dynasty version of the play features an additional fifth act, which stages the actual revenge—effected under the patronage of Duke Ling, Zhao’s maternal grandfather—and sees the young Zhao officially regaining his position within his family of origin. The dramatic conflict is very simple, for it can be related to eternal struggle between good and evil of cross-cultural resonance. The positive characters are confronted with a series of obstacles posed from the outside rather than with an internal dilemma, whereas the absolute antagonist employs all sorts of strategies to carry out his extermination plan.

2. The Orphan and Hamlet: a(n) (im)possible marriage?

The Orphan, first introduced to the Western audience as an example of “Chinese tragedy”—was soon compared to Shakespeare’s Hamlet on account of the theme of the revenge, which is central to both plays. However, I am reluctant to endorse such a comparison, for there isn’t the flimsiest sign of hesitancy on the part of the young Orphan in responding to the categorical imperative that calls for a prompt act of revenge, no

 

William Shakespeare (1565-1616)

 

matter what. The character of the Orphan is as resolute and prone to action as Hamlet is dubious and deferring action. Furthermore, The Orphan, like many other contemporaneous zaju plays, enacts a circular dramatic process that tends towards the normalization/neutralization of the dramatic conflict. The fact that, in the end, the evil Tu’an Gu pays for all his wrongdoings by dying at the hands of the last of the Zhao’s is usually interpreted as an epitome of the mechanism of karmic retribution of Buddhist descent, whereby virtue is rewarded and vice is punished. Nevertheless, I think that this is more in line with the traditional Chinese view of nature and society as dominated by the universal principle that “reversal is the movement of the Dao” (Feng 1952: 19) and which also informs the theory of the dynastic cycles that was so preeminent in Chinese imperial historiography.

3. Voltaire and “the spirit of China”

Obviously, I had heard of The Orphan since the beginning of my undergraduate studies, yet I did not engage this play critically until I was required to give a lecture on it as part of the course I taught at Goldsmiths last term. As I delved into its classical storyline, I became interested in its European reception and I began to research the reasons behind the craze that it engendered amongst the European intelligentsia of the Age of Enlightenment. It was relatively easy to retrieve Voltaire’s early comments on The Orphan, which can be found in his letter to the Duke of Richelieu, the aristocrat to whom his own adaptation is dedicated. Whilst browsing it, I was particularly struck by the following remark, which I found extremely thought-provoking and worth deepening:

“The Orphan of Zhao is a precious monument, which is more appropriate to reveal the spirit of China than all the reports that have been written and will be written with regard to this vast empire.” (1756: X)

What Voltaire calls “the spirit of China” might be translated as “Chineseness”, a concept whose meaning is still a subject of debate in academia, alongside the (comparatively) newer notion of the “Sinophone”. But, where the latter is essentially a matter of language, the former concerns culture and, arguably, is by far more elusive. Academic speculations aside, the thoughts that I decided to share below will revolve around the following question(s): where could the “Chineseness” that Voltaire detected originate from, and to what extent may it be a “constructed” kind of Chineseness? Does it correspond to the authentic “Sinologist’s view” of Chineseness or is it rather an “imagined” one, disconnected from the reality?

Further on, Voltaire argues that in China, the theatre had a moral and didactic function, for it was meant to teach the virtue “by action and dialogue” (1756: X), and, despite his approval of the play’s incredible chain of events, he laments a few significant deficiencies, such as the disregard for the three Aristotelian unities, the lack of passion and the ineffective “painting of manners” (peinture des mœurs). By evaluating the Chinese play through the lens of European neoclassical aesthetics, Voltaire shows a biased view of the culturally different, especially when he judges The Orphan as a “barbarous” play, which needs a rewriting—his own rewriting.

Nevertheless, his commendation of the spirit of China demonstrates insight into the play’s highly moralistic content, which dramatizes the battle of good and evil in a society embroiled in chaos and disharmony (that of the play, set in a distant past) and reflects the discontent of the elites at the rise of the foreign rule (from the perspective of the playwright, who was writing at the time of the Mongolian domination). Confucian morality and its numerous displays is at its height in The Orphan, and Voltaire might allude to that as an epitome of the spirit of China.

 

Voltaire (1694-1778) wrote L’Orphelin de la Chine in 1753.

 

In effect, it is evident how all the “good” characters have interiorized the Confucian virtues to the point that they show no hesitation in accomplishing the supreme virtue of righteousness. Whether it comes to commit suicide or to sacrifice one’s offspring for the sake of protecting the life of the last descendant of an important and honorable family which they served with unswerving loyalty, all the supporting characters demonstrate a strong inclination to selflessness and sacrifice. A behavior that Confucius would have glorified and, possibly, even “canonized”, had he been a religious leader of some sort. But what is, after all, “righteousness”? And why did this Confucian virtue strike many positive chords amongst the philosophes? As Feng Youlan observes, “righteousness” (yi) “means the ‘oughtness’ of a situation” (1952: 42) and Confucius opposes it to the li, which means acting for one’s profit. When an individual abides by the social rules to honour them, his behavior can be said to be righteous or moral. Conversely, when he performs an apparently good deed in order to be rewarded (materially or verbally), then the action will not be intrinsically righteous nor moral. A befitting example thereof could be the following: we come across an old lady who is patently willing to cross the street but is hesitant for some reason. We therefore decide to help her and do what is meant to be a moral deed. But, is this really so? If, for example, we help the old lady because we hope that she will reward us with a tip afterwards or with verbal praise, then the action is not moral or righteous. On the contrary, if we help the old lady solely because we “feel” at the bottom of our heart that this is the right thing to do in that very moment, then the action is moral and righteous.

 

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a key figure of German Enlightenment and a precursor of Romanticism.

 

The philosophes were searching for a kind of natural morality that would stem from one’s interiority rather than being apprehended from religious education and dogmatisms. For them, morality should be a matter of developing an attitude to do good instead of an adherence to a given set of rules written by someone else and/or imposed from above. Rather than a precise content, morality should be therefore a form, a way of being. This cannot but remind one of Kant’s notion of the categorical imperative, whereby an individual is compelled by an unmediated, inner force to act morally in a given situation. Moreover, Kant supplements his concept of the categorical imperative with an additional principle: the humanity formula, which consists in always treating humans (including oneself) not as a means but as an end in itself. Cheng Ying, the righteous physician, gives up his only son not for his own profit but so that the Orphan could survive and one day avenge the torts undergone by his family.

This brings me to conclude that by reading The Orphan, one can not only learn about the workings of pre-modern Chinese society and its ethical standards—assuming that this is indeed what Voltaire was pointing at—but also, and most importantly, discern points of similarity with an (apparently) totally distant culture, both historically and geographically.

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References:

Feng Youlan, A History of Chinese Philosophy. London: Allen & Unwin, 1952-1953.

Ji, Junxiang. The Orphan of Zhao and other Yuan plays: the earliest known versions / translated and introduced by Stephen H. West and Wilt L. Idema. New York: Columbia UP, 2015.

Voltaire. The Orphan of China. A Tragedy. (available here)

Further Readings:

Chen, Shouyi. “The Chinese Orphan: A Yuan Play. Its Influence on European Drama of the Eighteenth Century.” In Hsia, Adrian (ed.), The Vision of China in the English Literature of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1998, 359-382.

Hsia, Adrian. “The Orphan of the House Zhao in French, English, German and Hong Kong Literature.” In Hsia, Adrian (ed.), The Vision of China in the English Literature of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1998, 383-400.

Aldridge, Owen. “The First Chinese Drama in English Translation.” In Luk, Yun-tong (ed.), Studies in Chinese-Western Comparative Drama. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1990, 185-192.

Viewings:

The Orphan of Zhao Part 1 & Part 2

Sacrifice (Chen Kaige’s 2010 cinematic adaptation of the play)

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Notes:

[1] Zaju—literally, “variety play” or “miscellaneous drama”—is a dramatic genre that came into being and became widespread under the Yuan dynasty when China was incorporated into the Mongolian Empire. It constitutes the earliest fully-fledged form of drama as narrative-oriented performance with a well-defined story-line and a four-act regulated structure. The “variety” element relates to the combination of different performance component and skills required of the actors. These would typically include singing, acting, reciting and acrobatics. A mixture of third-person story-telling, dialogic scenes and direct audience address was the norm. The Orphan is attributed to playwright Ji Junxiang.

[2] In his letter to the Duke of Richelieu, Voltaire calls it “the very dynasty of Gengis-Kan [sic].” (viii)

About Mei Lanfang (Part II)

NB:

Click here to read the first part of About Mei Lanfang

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Mei Lanfang as a cultural ambassador: Beijing Opera abroad

Mei Lanfang meets American actor Charlie Chaplin

Throughout his artistic career, Mei Lanfang and his operatic troupe toured the world in order to promote and disseminate knowledge about the art of Beijing Opera among the non-initiated people. These tours led Mei to perform three times in Japan (1919; 1924 and 1956), once in the U.S. ( six-month period between 1929 and 1930) and once in the Soviet Union (1935). Each one of those tours was a great success and contributed to enrich the cultural dialogue between China and the other nations. Mei’s performances were reviewed by seminal art critics of the time, and were received with great enthusiasm by the foreign audiences. Through the critics’ commentaries, the art of classical Chinese drama was compared with other kinds of theatres such as the Greek and the Elizabethan ones, with which they thought it shared several characteristics yet retaining its specificities. As we shall see next, most of the reviewers focused on describing the beauty of Mei’s gestures, trying to capture their rationale and symbolic meaning. These reviews, which are less known to the nonspecialists than the so much discussed Brechtian essay, show quite a different approach to understanding the art of Chinese drama. In fact, whereas Brecht ended up projecting his views on how western drama should be changed onto the conventionalities of classical Chinese theatre, and in so doing he operated a cultural displacement (or “refunctioning”, as observed by Min Tian [1]), other critics such as, for instance, the American drama theorist Stark Young, were interested in understanding the essential dynamics of this kind of theatre. They did not try to superimpose a pre-formed theoretic pattern on it but limited themselves to depict and possibly make sense of the Chinese performing art as they saw it, and in the purest manner.

As previously mentioned, Mei Lanfang went three times to Japan to give performances. Whereas the first and the second visit had mostly a cultural resonance, the third trip, which occurred in 1956, namely in the midst of the Maoist period, had a marked political aim, as well. In fact, at that time the diplomatic relations between the 7-year-old PRC and Japan had long been suspended. Mei’s artistic tour was promoted by the then prime minister Zhou Enlai and played a major role in paving the way for the restoration of ties of friendship between the two countries. On that occasion Mei received several compliments by the emperor’s brother, Prince Mikasa, who also thanked him on behalf of the emperor himself.

Mei’s American tour, which took place between 1929 and 1930 was also extremely successful. Yet, it took around four years to organize it. The idea for this project occurred to a group of American tourists who had watched Mei’s performances as early as in 1925. After returning to the U.S., they praised Mei’s artistic dexterity among family and friends, and on the following year the U.S. Minister to China, John Van A. MacMurray invited Mei to perform in America. He also had a chance to see one of Mei’s newly-composed mythological operas, entitled The Red Snake and the Golden Pin. Whilst in the U.S., Mei also had the wonderful opportunity to perform in Broadway. Besides, he met with several big names in the field of criticism, film and the performing arts. Among the notable people who honoured him with their friendship there were famous film stars such as Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, the director Cecil B. de Mille and the Afro-American musician Paul Robeson. Mei also visited many universities where he performed and lectured on classical Chinese drama. His academic activity earned him two honorary doctorates from the University of Southern California and Pomona College.

Mei Lanfang with Afro-American singer Paul Robeson

Mei’s tour in the Soviet Union was organized by the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS), which invited the Chinese actor to give performances both in Moscow and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in March and April 1935, respectively.

Overall, Mei’s role as a cultural ambassador was amply praised and emphasized in the press.

Whilst in the USSR, Mei met several directors, dramatists and drama critics and gave lectures on the acting techniques in Chinese theatre. Amog other things, he gave demonstrations of hand gestures and stage steps, such as the impromptu demonstration given at the Concert Hall in Moscow, which Bertolt Brecht attended and reported in his essay on Alienation effects in classical Chinese drama.

Before the eyes of the world: non-Chinese views on Mei Lanfang’s performing art

U.S. reviewers

John Martin (The New York Times) praised the beauty of Mei’s voice.

John Mason Brown (The New York Evening Post) highlighted the correspondence between Mei’s facial expressions and eye movements and the portrayal of the character’s innermost feelings.

John Brooks Atkinson (The New York Times) stressed the specificity of Beijing Opera with respect to Western drama, with particular attention to its remarkable imaginative power, which he constrasts to the rigidity of our theatres. He maintains that the main difference lies in the performative language characterizing Chinese drama, more than the language proper. He further notices its pictorial quality and therefore likens it to an old Chinese vase or piece of tapestry.

R. D. Skinnen (Commonwealth) observed that Mei’s performing art was not based on symbolism but on something else, which he calls, after Mei Lanfang’s phrasing, “patternism”. He explains that while symbolism, as understood in the West, consists in “representing some object or emotion by some quite different object”, Chinese theatre represents objects and emotions through dedicated patterns abstracted from reality.

Robert Littell (New York World) highighted Mei’s ability to combine several different arts (acting, singing and dancing) into a harmonius whole and in such a way as to transcend the boundaries between these three arts. He then observed, quite correctly, that the combined usage of different arts is an essential feature of Chinese drama as such. Finally, he stated that Mei’s artistic skillfulness is able to transform the stage into a timeless space, whereas his refined acting makes the audience forget that he is a man playing a woman’s role. The critic also compared the visual result of Mei’s quite pictorial kind of acting to an old Chinese painting.

Mary F. Watkins (The Dance Magazine), William Bolitho (New York World) and Ted Shawn praised Mei’s dancing skills, by defining him as a high-class, almost unparalleled dancer.

Stark Young deserves a special mention because he commented on Mei Lanfang’s performing art lenghtily and with great insight in a seminal essay entitled “Mei Lanfang”, which appeared in Theatre Arts Monthly. His comments are precious and worth studying, because they provide food for thought by raising a few interesting points and also because they set themselves as quite an alternative reading to the (certainly more famous) Brechtian analysis.

Concerning Mei Lanfang’s mode of acting, Young insightfully notes that Chinese theatre is not divorced from real life, because the conventional style of acting is actually grounded on the corresponding actions, places and conditions which can be found in everyday life. For instance, he maintains that the emotional shock that he gets from watching the portrayal of death and horror as conveyed by Mei Lanfang is simultaneously stronger than as if he were seeing a photo, and vaguer. This awoval clearly debunks Brecht’s idea that Chinese theatre does not aim at arousing any emotional reactions in the audience.

Further on, Young sets out to describe Mei’s acting skills in great detail and in so doing he acknowledges that it is difficult for the complete newbies to fully understand and appreciate the variety of the conventions used in a Chinese performance. Yet, he is of the opinion that the beauty of those conventional gestures and movements is apparent and can be noticed by everyone.

Still, Stark Young’s most interesting comments concern the issue of realism in Chinese art. To put it simply, he stresses the fact that traditional Chinese drama is not entirely “symbolic” and unrealistic as it might seem. In order to better explain what he means, he draws a parallel between Chinese drama and Chinese painting and sculpture [2]. All these three arts aim to convey only the impression of reality rather than reality as it is, yet, at the same time, they are able to capture the minutest detail of an object, movement or emotion. As Young puts it, “This exact notation is marvellously set into the whole work of art, which taken in its completeness, is ideal and dreamlike. Dexterous realism combined with tradition, convention and abstract pattern.” [3] He further elucidates the essence of Mei Lanfang’s symbolic realism (or realistic symbolism?) by commenting on the latter’s mode of interpreting femininity on stage. Particularly, he observes that Mei’s mode of acting is not aimed at bringing a particular woman to life. Rather, his acting is like a distillation process for he strives to extrapolate and reproduce a range of essential feminine qualities as well as translating them into dance figures, patterns and movements.

Elsewhere in his essay, Young praises Mei’s “idealistic flexibility” [4], which is exemplified in Chinese theatre’s ability to blend the real and the unreal as a means of portraying inner realities such as psychological ghosts, memory, dreams: in other words, the human mind in the profoundest and most accurate way.

Finally, Young indicates Chinese theatre as an example of the “classical mind” because although changes have occurred, they did not occur abruptly. He also points out several elements of comparison between Chinese theatre and ancient Greek drama: “There is the unceasing stylization throughout. There is the intention of beauty, grace or exaltation.” [5] However, Young states that such beauty is not a end in itself, it is not beauty for beauty’s sake but it is aimed at the creation of specific patterns which establish a continuity between an action and the other, a phrase and the other. This helps create an essence, a soul that makes the performance all the more fluid and, utimately, all the more enjoyable.

Min Tian further notices that Stark Young had a chance to meet Mei in his hotel (in the company of Qi Rushan) and Mei confirmed all his impressions on Chinese theatre [6].

U.S.S.R. reviewers

Karl Radek (Izvestia): despite the language barriers, Mei was successful in engaging the audience’s attention to the point that they were all spellbound by his artistic charm.

S. Radlov: he highlighted the emotional quality of Chinese theater, namely its ability to give an accurate psychological portrait of a character.

Bertolt Brecht*** (see my previous articles here and here)

Konstantin Stanislavsky: he and Mei met several times to discuss and exchange their theatrical experiences. They soon became good friends. Stanislavsky defined Mei’s art as “free movement guided by the laws of the art”.

Vsevolod Meyerhold: he applauded Mei Lanfang’s ability to portray true femininity on stage even better than a female performer could do. He also likened Chinese theatre to Pushkin’s quote that “dramatic art is based on unverisimilitude”, and went on to says that “Whoever sees the work of Dr. Mei Lan-fang will tell that the great power of rhythm this ingenious master of the stage displays is not felt on our stage. […] We do not have a sense of time.” [7] In a conversation with student graduates of GITIS (The Russian Academy of Theatre Arts), he maintained that Chinese theatre is based on movement. Besides, he recognises a realistic substratum in the movements performed in both Japanese and Chinese theatres.

Sergeij Ejzenštein: he made a few scenes of one of Mei’s plays into a movie, which has regrettably gone lost. He even gave to Mei a copy of a British journal (Close Up), which featured an article of his entitled “The Principle of Film Form” and which he dedicated to the Chinese performer “the greatest master of form”. Most importantly, he wrote an article in praise of Mei Lanfang’s charming theatrical art and defined the great Chinese actor as “The Enchanter of the Pear Garden”. In this essay he stresses the symbolic quality of Mei’s art, downplaying the realistic overtones: “pure realism is removed from the performance and the realistic atmosphere is banished from the stage.” [8] Next, he describes some of the techniques for depicting certain actions such as passing through a door, sleeping, fighting (duels), and eating. He concludes by the idea of learning from Chinese drama in order to enrich their pathway toward socialist-realism.

Sergei Tretyakov: in his article “Mei Lanfang – Our Guest”, he states that “His [Mei’s] embodiment of the female form becomes more psychological than the iconic image of classical theatre.” [9]

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*** Bertolt Brecht was a German national but at the time Mei Lanfang visited the Soviet Union he was on voluntary exile in Moscow.

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Endnotes

[1] See Min Tian’s essay “The Effect of Displacement: Bertolt Brecht’s Interpretation and Refunctioning of Mei Lanfang’s Art”, in Tian, Min (ed.). China’s greatest operatic actor of female roles: documenting the life and art of Mei Lanfang 1894-1961. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, c2010.

[2] A similar parallelism was highlighted by Huang Zuolin, who extended the concept of xieyi 写意 (to capture the essence), which is typical of Chinese painting, to the Chinese theatrical art as well.

[3] Young, Stark. “Mei Lan-fang”, in Tian, Min (ed.). China’s greatest operatic actor of female roles: documenting the life and art of Mei Lanfang 1894-1961. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, c2010, 121.

[4] Ibid., 123.

[5] Ibid., 127.

[6] Ibid., 129.

[7] Meyerhold, Vsevolod. “On Mei Lan-fang: Artist on Tour”, in Tian, Min (ed.). China’s greatest operatic actor of female roles: documenting the life and art of Mei Lanfang 1894-1961. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, c2010, 143-44.

[8] Ejzenštein, Sergeij. “The Magician of The Pear Orchard”, in Tian, Min (ed.). China’s greatest operatic actor of female roles: documenting the life and art of Mei Lanfang 1894-1961. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, c2010, 155.

[9] Tretyakov, Sergeij. “Mei Lan-fang – Our Guest”, in Tian, Min (ed.). China’s greatest operatic actor of female roles: documenting the life and art of Mei Lanfang 1894-1961. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, c2010, 160.

Bibliographic Details

Tian, Min (ed.). China’s greatest operatic actor of female roles: documenting the life and art of Mei Lanfang 1894-1961. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, c2010.

Wu, Zuguang, Huang Zuolin, and Mei Shaowu. Peking Opera and Mei Lanfang: a guide to China’s traditional theatre and the art of its great master. Beijing, China: New World Press, 1981.

The Enchanter(s) from The Pear Garden: Chinese Response(s) to Brecht

NB: Click here and here to read the first and the second part of this study.

Introduction: classical Chinese drama from within

In the same year in which Brecht published his essay on Alienation effects in Chinese drama (1936), the Russian director Sergeij Ejzenštein wrote an article in praise of Mei Lanfang, whom he nicknamed as The Enchanter from the Pear Garden. Ejzenštein was among the lucky people who, like Brecht, had the opportunity to watch not only Mei’s performances but also his impromptu demonstration, which he gave at the Concert Hall in Moscow as part of his 1935 tour in the Soviet Union.

Ejzenštein is circled in red, whereas Mei is marked in green.

The purpose of Ejzenštein’s article, which is significantly entitled “The Enchanter from the Pear Garden”, is to introduce Mei Lanfang, his work and the art of traditional Chinese theatre, as its subtitle would suggest. Particularly, Ejzenštein aims to present the theoretical and philosophical matter informing such a unique theatrical tradition. As we shall see next, the approach taken by the Russian director in this essay is diametrically opposed to Brecht’s, which I have documented in part 1 and part 2 of this study. To sum up, Brecht limited himself to capture those external details that, in his opinion at least, would confirm the effectiveness of his theory of estrangement/alienation effect. In reality, Brecht’s description of Chinese drama as “estranging” or “alienating” probably stems from his watching the Chinese performance with the eyes and attitude of an “uninitiated tourist”. In this sense, it would seem that Ejzenštein’s article was written in order to challenge the attitude with which Brecht addresses Mei’s performing art as if he knew perfectly its inner dynamics. For Ejzenštein, one cannot illustrate the art of the Chinese actor by simply making a list of the peculiarities that “strike the superficial and unprepared tourist accustomed to the routine of the European stage” (762). Rather, it deserves to be explored in greater depth in order to be able to penetrate its most concealed aspects, and to extrapolate its innermost meanings. In sum, Ejzenštein‘s essay contains an important proposal, namely to cast a fresh look at Chinese drama from “within”. If one abandons the perspective of the “foreign tourist”, by exploring the motivations behind the apparent symbolism of Chinese acting (which is quite different from Western symbolism and from Brecht’s notion of Gestik), one can realize that for the Chinese audience, the theatre functions as a surreal space in which the actors bring forth a great mystery: this is the human being itself, which is depicted through the portrayal of its innermost feelings and transfigured through the intensity of poetry. 

In this article, I intend to further develop Ejzenštein‘s observations by examining Chinese views on indigenous Chinese drama in order to show that emotional identification between actor and character is an essential task for a Chinese performer, because it is aimed at achieving a better aesthetic result. Therefore, what follows is a catalogue of Chinese theatre critics, theorists and performers of all times and their ideas on theatre. We shall start with Mei Lanfang.

Mei Lanfang: acting means to comprehend

One of the crucial aspects of traditional Chinese performance is the complete transformation of the actor into the character (s)he is supposed to interpret. This is important in order to ensure the beauty and refinement of the performance and should be preceded by a full study of the character’s personality and interiority, which is usually reflected in the lyrics that the actor has to sing [1]. During a talk that Mei Lanfang delivered for the students of the China Academy of Traditional Theatre in 1960, he pointed out the following:

If an actor does not understand the meaning of the lyrics, he cannot empathize with the true character of the role he plays. […] After I understood the meaning of the lyrics, it still took me a long time to fully understand and identify with my character.” (in Fei, 143)

The above quote makes it clear that for Mei acting means first and foremost to analyse and fully comprehend the character. It then means to scrutinise every single nuance of his/her temperament, and to study his/her socio-historical background. Finally, it means that the actor should synthesise skilfully all these aspect into a comprehensive, articulated whole. The scope here is to make characterisation even more vivid and expressive. Particularly, the actor must be able to reproduce with extreme precision the multiple contrasts that mould the inner life of the character and make him/her a truly unique and unrepeatable human being [2].
In the same talk, Mei recalled two different roles he embodied several times during his career, namely Du Liniang [3] and Wang Baochuan [4]. These are both female characters belonging to the same theatrical type, the so-called guimendan 闺门旦 or young and accomplished lady of high descent. Despite the similar character-type, Mei stresses the fact that Liniang and Baochuan have two distinct personalities, which cause them to react in different ways vis-à-vis the same difficult situation. In fact, both of them reject the feudal marriage conventions, yet whereas Liniang’s struggle is confined to her mind, Baochuan has the courage to act. This important difference demands to be brought forth during the performance and can be carried out only through an accurate study of the characters’ different psychological disposition and life experiences (in Fei, 144-145).

Another important evidence of the fact that traditional Chinese drama is grounded on a sort of “creative mood”, which guides and gives meaning to the grammar of its conventional gestures is contained in an anecdote recounted by Huang Zuolin 黄佐临 (1906-1994). He tells about a famous Beijing Opera actress who had studied under Mei Lanfang’s supervision, specialising in playing the part of Luo, the female protagonist of a play entitled “The river goddess” (Luo shen 洛神). After his first performance, she was greatly appreciated for her artistic talent and everyone in the audience agreed on her ability to imitate her teacher in every detail, copying every gestures and intonation. Nevertheless, there was a critic who pointed out that she failed to imitate that sylph-like bearing, which Mei had rendered so gracefully on stage. After inquiring around about how to perform with that sylph-like attitude, she suddenly understood what that critic really meant, as someone told her that whereas Mei performed the part of Luo, she performed the part of Mei playing that role. As noted by Huang, from this example one can easily understand that the true essence of Chinese theatre lies in the creative inner force rather than in its external manifestation, which matches Mei’s ideas on drama as reported above [5].

To conclude, the two pillars of classical Chinese acting according to Mei are authenticity and psychological truth. Below, we shall see how these two principles can be found, again, in the dramatic theory of the Ming and Qing ages.

Ming and Qing Theatres: the importance of transformation and the aesthetics of emotions

The first critic I shall mention here is Li Yu 李渔 (1611-1680?), also known as Li Liweng, who was a drama critic, playwright and director of the late Ming and early Qing dynasty, remembered also for having set up an all-female drama troupe. As a drama critic, Li Yu wrote a series of essays on theatre, which are included in a miscellaneous work titled “Casual Notes on a leisurely Mood” (Xianqing ouji 闲情偶记). Overall, Li Yu maintains that character impersonation is one of the toughest challenges for every performer, because its success depends on the way in which the latter manages the relationship between “emotion” (qing 情) and “scene” (jing 景). Here “qing” stands for the character as a cluster of unique and unrepeatable perceptions and sensations, whereas “jing” indicates the events that involve him/her from without and determine his/her reactions. In this respect, Li Yu recommends to avoid stereotypes, which denote superficiality and insufficient empathy. Moreover, he states that an actor is required to put himself into the character’s shoes and experience directly his emotions in order to be able to portray them on stage with the necessary accuracy. Interestingly, as he mentions that “I put myself in my character’s shoes and try to feel and think like him when I write the words for him to speak. (in Fei, 81)”, he very much resembles Gustave Flaubert, the master of 19th-century French realism, who tasted arsenic in order to be able to describe Madame Bovary’s feelings after taking the poison that would kill her. Furthermore, Li yu notes that in order to avoid artificiality, a (female) actor should forget that she is acting on the stage and “try to get get closer to her character inwardly” because “if she lives that part the female performer will win praises because she embodies his spirit and expresses his emotions truthfully and accurately. (87)”

Zhang Dai 张岱 (1598-1685?) [6] and Ji Yun 纪昀 (1724-1805), two drama critics and writers, also expressed a similar stance. Particularly, Zhang Dai, who also wrote some librettos, commented on and praised the acting style of an actress named Zhu Chusheng, who was renowned for the elegance and expressivity of her interpretations. He notes that “sometimes she became so involved with the emotional life of her characters that she forgot herself. (in Fei, 71)” Similarly, Ji Yun reported the answer that an anonymous actor of female roles gave to justify his extraordinary talent: “I always put myself in the shoes of my characters, completely identifying with their emotions: happiness, anger, sorrow, or joy as well as kindness, resentment, love, or hate. (in Fei, 90).”

Ji Yun

All these comments clearly contribute to highlight Brecht’s biggest mistake whereby “these problems [i.e. those connected to the process of complete conversion of the actor into the character) are unknown to the Chinese performer, for he rejects complete conversion.” (94)

Ding Yaokang 丁耀亢 (1607-78), a dramatist from Shandong, composed a series of annotations about the main do’s and dont’s of playwrighting. In particular, he recommended that the playwright must astonish people, amaze them “in order truly to touch and move them. (in Fei, 76)”

Pan Zhiheng 潘之恒 (1556-1622), a poet of the late Ming dynasty who was extremely passionate about theatre, wrote a book where he collected his own observations on dramatic art. This book would later become a classic of acting theory. After watching a performance of The Peony Pavilion, he commented on the actors’ performance by stressing the fact that both performers seemed “possessed by the emotions of the role” and “also capable of physically enacting their love in a completely natural and unaffected manner. (in Fei, 59)”

Huang Fanchuo 黄幡绰, who was a 18th-century actor, composed a treatise on dramatic theory, which is significantly entitled “Pear Garden Basics” Liyuan yuan 梨园元. Here, he mentions the eights principles of movement and expression and particularly stresses the importance of eye movements, which play a crucial role in ensuring the eloquence and expressivity of the performance. As he notes, “you should let your eyes take the lead – that is, to give priority to using your eyes expressively to indicate emotions as well as situations. The old saying is right: ‘When the eyes are expressive, the face becomes the window of your heartfelt sentiment.’ (in Fei, 98)”

Last but not least, Tang Xianzu 汤显祖 (1550-1616), a contemporary of Shakespeare and author of the famous play “The Peony Pavilion” (mentioned above). In an epigraph dedicated to the theatre master Qing Yuan, Tang expresses his view of drama as the dimension in which dreams are created and where the audience is given the opportunity to experience, through the actors’ performance, the sweetness of the illusions that make ordinary people forget about themselves for a moment and set their imagination free. Particularly, he maintains that, since the goal of drama is to represent human sentiments and emotions in such a way as to encourage the people to correct their shortcomings and lead a virtuous life, it can then contribute to the strenghtening of the social order. As he notes, “the spectators react simultaneously and differently. […] The rich and the privileged put aside their arrogance, even the poor and miserly vie to make charitable contributions. The blind hunger for sight, the deaf crave for sound, the mute want to shout, and the lame want to run. The impassive become passionate; the reticent speak with eloquence. The silent make noise; the noisy grow silent. The hungry feel sated; the drunk sober up. People walking stop; people sleeping wake up. The coarse become refined; the foolish become intelligent. (in Fei, 56)”

Tang Xianzu

Needless to say, Tang’s words, jointly with all the remarks expressed by Chinese drama theorists of all times cited above, further confirm the idea that the Chinese actors, far from being “drug-sellers”, as Brecht would say, are rather “enchanters”: the enchanters from the Pear Garden.

NB: If you want to know more about the details of Brecht’s cultural misunderstanding, just wait for the next and last part of my study on Brecht and Chinese drama, which is entitled “Unveiling Chinese Drama: What Brecht did not see”.

Endnotes

[1] In traditional Chinese drama (xiqu 戏曲) singing is an essential part of the performance. That is why in English Chinese theatre is usually known as Chinese opera.

[2] For more information on Mei’s ideas on acting see also my previous article.

[3] Du Liniang is the female protagonist of “The Peony Pavilion” (Mudan ting 牡丹亭), a play by Ming dynasty playwright Tang Xianzu 汤显祖 (1550-1616)

[4] Wang Baochuan is the female protagonist of a traditional play entitled “The Red-Maned Steed” (Hongzong liema 红鬃劣马).

[5] This episode is narrated in Huang’s seminal essay titled “Mei Lanfang, Stanislavsky, Brecht – A Study in Contrasts” (see bibliography below). In my dissertation I read the original Chinese version (梅兰芳, 斯坦尼斯拉夫斯基, 布莱希特戏剧观比较) which I found in the website of the Mei Lanfang Memorial Museum. Regrettably, the link to the correspondent webpage is no longer available, therefore in the bibliography I put the translated version.

[6] He wrote a collections of essays on drama, which is entitled “Tao Hut Dream Memoirs” (Tao’an mengyi 桃庵梦忆).

Bibliographic Details

Alongside my BA dissertation, in writing this article I have relied on the following sources:

Brecht, Bertolt. “Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting”. Willett, John (ed. and trans.). Brecht on Theatre. London: Methuen Drama, 2001.

Ejzenštein Sergej. “The Enchanter from the Pear Garden”, in Theatre Arts Monthly, 19 October 1936, 761-770.

Fei Faye Chunfang. Chinese theories of theater and performance from Confucius to the present, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999.

Huang, Zuolin. Mei Lanfang, Stanislavsky, Brecht – A Study in Contrasts. Wu, Zuguang, Huang Zuolin, and Mei Shaowu (ed.). Peking Opera and Mei Lanfang: a guide to China’s traditional theatre and the art of its great master. Beijing, China: New World Press, 1981.

Mei Lanfang梅兰芳. Wutai Shenghuo Sishi Nian: Mei Lanfang Huiyi Lu 舞台生活四十年: 梅兰芳回忆录 (Forty Years of Life on the Stage), Tuanjie Chubanshe 团结出版社, Beijing, 2008.

 

 

V/A-effekt or cultural misunderstanding? Brecht on Chinese drama

NB:

Click here to read the first part of this study

A Premise: humble opinions of an aspiring academic

Bertolt Brecht wrote several short essays [1] to document his first encounter with the techniques of acting underlying classical Chinese drama. The longest and most detailed one, which is entitled “Effects of Alienation in Chinese dramatic art” (Verfremdungseffekte in der chinesischen Schauspielkunst) is surely the most famous, as well as the most discussed and debated by scholars of theatre studies and sinologists alike. This piece of writing is undoubtedly highly controversial and quite problematic in itself, yet, being a kind of outsider among the numerous reviews written by Western critics, which praise the beauty and refinement of Mei Lanfang’s performing art, it offers an alternative perspective of Chinese drama even if marred by a few significant misconceptions and cultural misunderstandings.

Having studied Brecht’s theories of epic drama in relation with classical Chinese drama for a number of years, I have formed my own ideas on the controversies embedded in Brecht’s peculiar interpretation of the function and value of certain dramatic techniques affiliated to the Chinese xiqu. Therefore, in this article I would like to present and discuss a few of those ideas, which I have already expressed in my now five-year-old BA dissertation, and which I had the opportunity to revise and further sharpen in the last two years. Indeed, I am aware of the vast amount of secondary literature dealing with this particular topic, whereby it would seem that everything that could be said on it has already been expressed and that there is no more room for attempting some further investigation. Nevertheless, like Mei Lanfang’s performance was commented upon countless times and with different insights, and just like Mei himself used to change his performance of the same character over and over again without sacrificing the truthfulness and beauty of the artistic rendering, here I shall try to re-propose what is now a consummated field of study in a way that (hopefully!) shall not alter its enduring (academic) appeal.

For the sake of correctness, I would like to point out that when I was doing preliminary research my BA dissertation, due to the fact that I was in Italy at the time and my access to secondary sources was fairly limited, I did not have a chance to read Min Tian’s seminal articles commenting on Brecht’s (mis)interpretation of Mei’s performance [2]. To be quite honest, I completely ignored their existence. Nevertheless, when I came to the UK to do my MA and could suddenly benefit from a range of books and essays blinking at me from the shelves of my open-access library, which I was, obviously, most eager to read, I became acquainted with the work of the Sino-American scholar and… I was shocked! Positively, though. Interestingly enough, I found out that his methodological approach was quite similar to mine, because we both relied on theories of classical Chinese drama to undermine Brecht’s assumption that the Chinese actor never identifies himself with the character he portrays. The only difference was that, while he consulted the original sources, I had to rely on Faye C. Fei ‘s translations from classical Chinese [3], a language that I did not and do not master.

What follows is a summary of my arguments on Brecht’s famous essay cited above. Overall, my investigation shall include three main points: first, I will focus on the Brechtian text with the purpose of underlining some its incongruities and contradictions; next, I will demonstrate the nature of Brecht’s misunderstanding, and support my argument by mentioning Chinese classical theories of acting; last, I will metaphorically put Brecht’s theories on trial and open up a possible avenue to the solution of this conundrum. In this article I shall cover only the first aspect, whereas the rest will be dealt with in a separate post. The productive aspects of Brecht’s misunderstanding will also be tackled in a separate article.

Involuntary misunderstanding or conscious fabrication? Deconstructing Brecht’s essay

Brecht characterizes the alienation effect as the opposite process of the Aristotelian catharsis. Rather than empathizing with the characters and be one with them at the level of emotions, the spectator should keep at a critical security-distance from the events portrayed on the stage, in order to be able to pass judgment onto them.

That being said, one has to distinguish between the alienation effect and the technique of estrangement. The former designates an attitude and affects mainly the audience, whereas the latter indicates a method and is accomplished by the actor.

In the essay “Alienation effects in Chinese acting”, such a fundamental differentiation is apparently overlooked by Brecht, for there is only one typology of alienation effect, which can be achieved through a variety of techniques. This is only the first, and the least salient of the numerous contradictions afflicting this over-discussed piece of writing. That of deconstructing Brecht’s article is a comparatively easy task for the attentive critic, and, far from being a dull, philological exercise, it represents the first avenue for invalidating Brecht’s claim that classical Chinese drama “knows the alienation effect, and applies it most subtly” (91).

Before I set out to enumerate the argumentative inconsistencies that cause Brecht’s text to appear self-contradictory, I shall briefly explain why the German dramatist classifies the Chinese techniques of acting as “alienating”. What follow is a list of the Chinese techniques of estrangement as theorized by Brecht.

1. The Chinese acting is fundamentally symbolic and anti-naturalistic. Actors make use of symbolic gestures as a means of externalizing the characters’ salient features (personality traits, social status and emotional temperament), and help the audience visualize the setting in which the story takes place.
2. The Chinese actor does not perform as if there were a fourth wall to separate the stage from the audience. He does not aim to create an illusion of reality for the audience, for he is aware of being watched.
3. The Chinese actor observes himself whilst performing. This is a clear example of self-estrangement/self-alienation.

Another important point to highlight, is that Brecht defines the techniques of estrangement (not the alienation effect!) as a technical device or mechanism with no aesthetic/artistic purpose or content. It is rather a mere artifice with a political substrate.

To begin with, Brecht asserts that “the artist’s object is to appear strange and even surprising to the audience. He achieves this by looking strangely at himself and his work. As a result everything put forward by him has a touch of amazing.” (92) It is evident how this remark actually expresses Brecht’s own feelings experienced whilst watching Mei’s performances in Moscow, rather than describing the Chinese’s artist intentions toward his audience. This point has been highlighted by Douglas Robinson as well, who suggests that Brecht might be guessing or projecting his own ideas and prejudices onto Mei’s artistic performance, and notes that, after all, Brecht was a foreigner in a foreign country watching a foreign actor presenting the basics of a foreign type of drama (sorry for the funny pun!). It can be argued that Brecht experienced a kind of alienation, also because we do not know whether he interviewed Mei Lanfang after the performance. This would confirm the hypothesis of a cultural misunderstanding on the part of Brecht’s. Later, Brecht contradicts himself by saying that the Chinese audience is very well familiar with the stories portrayed on stage and with the ways in which they are depicted by the actors. Therefore, it is impossible for a Chinese audience to feel any enlightenment or awe during the performance.

Next, Brecht claims that the Chinese artist never falls into creative trance (cfr. the Stanislavskian notion of “creative mood”), because he does not create a character during the performance but enters the stage with the character already formed in his mind. This highly arbitrary opinion inevitably clashes with Mei Lanfang’s conception of acting as a kind of comprehension on the spot. Mei once recalled that a friend of his once noticed his tendency to slightly alter the impersonation of a given character. Mei acknowledged this as true, yet he asserted that he performed those subtle changes almost subconsciously and certainly not on purpose, thanks to what he called a “new understanding” (227).

The Brechtian assumption that the Chinese actor never gets self-mesmerized by his role (i.e. never merges his own self with the character’s) is once again contradicted by the following statement (still by Brecht):

What is still harder is that one must accept the fact that when the Chinese performer conjures up an impression of mystery he seems uninterested in disclosing a mystery to us. He makes his own mystery from the mysteries of nature (especially human nature): he allows nobody to examine how he produces the natural phenomenon, nor does nature allow him to understand as he produces it. We have here the artistic counterpart of a primitive technology, a rudimentary science. The Chinese performer gets his A-effect by association with magic. ‘How it is done’ remains hidden; knowledge is a matter of knowing the tricks and is in the hands of a few men who guard it jealously and profit from their secrets. (96)

If the Chinese actor is able to transform himself into the character like a magician would do, and also without really knowing how, then how can we endorse Brecht’s argument about the performer’s tendency to self-alienation and self-awareness? This hypothesis proves clearly untenable.

Last, but not least, Brecht keeps justifying his assumptions and goes even so far as to claim that, since it is difficult for a European spectator to get rid of that feeling of estrangement he gets when watching a Chinese performance, then “one has to be able to imagine them [the Chinese actors] achieving an A-effect among their Chinese spectators too.” (96) This last sentence, which reveals Brecht’s latent insecurity about the correctness of his theories, clashes overtly with an earlier claim. A few lines before, Brecht had commented on the behaviour of some spectators sitting in front of him during one of Mei Lanfang’s performances featuring a death scene [4]. As soon as the female protagonist (played by Mei) killed herself, a guy sitting next to Brecht got greatly impressed and could not help manifesting his amazement through some loud exclamation. The two spectators in the front promptly turned their heads back and shushed him. Brecht interpreted this reaction as a sign that the A-effect did not work out on them, because they acted as if they were watching a real death. Yet, like Carol Martin rightfully pointed out, this is rather a clear sign that “while Brecht was seeing ‘alienation’, Mei was concerned with [the] essence […] rather than the appearance of things.” (78)

***

NB: 

If you want to know more about Mei Lanfang’s and his colleagues’ viewpoint on acting in classical Chinese drama, jump to the next article, which is entitled “The Enchanter from The Pear Garden: Chinese Response(s) to Brecht”.

Endnotes:

[1] See also “Remarks about Chinese Acting” (Bemerkungen über die chinesische Schauspielkunst), first published in 1949 in Theater der Welt: ein Almanach.

[2] Particularly, see Tian, Min. “‘Alienation-Effect’ for Whom? Brecht’s (Mis)Interpretation of the Classical Chinese Theatre,” Asian Theatre Journal 14.2 (Fall 1997): 200-222. Further sources by Min Tian will be mentioned in the next articles.

[3] See Fei, Faye C. Chinese Theories of Theater and Performance from Confucius to the Present. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999. Please note: a review of this book is soon to appear on this blog.

[4] The play in question is “The Death of The Tiger General”.

Bibliographic Details

In writing this article I have relied on my BA dissertation, which includes the following seminal sources:

Brecht, Bertolt. “Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting”. Willett, John (ed. and trans.). Brecht on Theatre. London: Methuen Drama, 2001.

Martin, Carol. “Brecht, feminism and Chinese theatre”. TDR 43, 4, (Winter 1999), 77-85.

Mei Lanfang梅兰芳. Wutai Shenghuo Sishi Nian: Mei Lanfang Huiyi Lu 舞台生活四十年: 梅兰芳回忆录 (Forty Years of Life on the Stage), Tuanjie Chubanshe 团结出版社, Beijing, 2008.

Robinson, Douglas. Estrangement and the Somatics of literature: Tolstoy, Shklovsky, Brecht. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2008.