Circling the Void: Memory in the Life and Poetry of the Manchu Prince Yihuan (1840-1891)

History and Memory

Volumn 16, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 32-66

  Schwarcz, Vera ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84905808808     PISSN: 0935560X     EISSN: 15271994     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/ham.2004.0010     Document Type: Article

References (39)

1. William Carlos Williams, Paterson (New York, 1958), 96.
2. David B. Pillemer, Momentous Events, Vivid Memories (Cambridge, MA, 2000); Dori Laub and Nanette Auerhahn, eds., On Knowing and Not Knowing the Holocaust, special issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry 5, no. 1 (1985).
3. The first collection of Yihuan's works, in seven volumes, was titled Jiusi Tang shigao (Draft verses from the Studio of Nine Reflections). It came out in a folio edition in 1876. After his death in 1891, another six-volume collection was put together, the Jiusi Tang shigao xuji (Additional draft verses from the Studio of Nine Reflections). I consulted both of these works in the Beijing University Library Rare Books Collection during a brief visit in May 2002. Due to limita tions of time, I was unable to make copies of all the poems cited in this essay. Some of those quoted in this essay come from Hou Renzhi, Yan Yuan shihua (Poetic anecdotes from Yan Garden), published in Chinese and English (Beijing, 1988). Others were drawn from a volume edited by Su Yong and Fan Jing, also titled Yan Yuan shihua (Beijing, 1985). All renditions in this essay are my own. I have chosen to make highly interpretative renditions of Yihuan's poems, after careful work on their literal meaning. This project is animated by my conviction that we have to hear Yihuan's words in our own cadence in order to appreciate fully his contribution to historical memory. In creating these renditions, I have drawn inspiration from many sources, many poets. Perhaps the single most criti cal work in this process was the slim volume, Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, by Eliot Weinberger and Octavio Paz (Mount Kisco, NY, 1987).
4. Dori Laub, "Art and Trauma," International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 76 (1995): 991-1004.
5. Yihuan, "Jiyou shitou tong jiujie zuo" (Ten verses composed while meander ing in the company of my ninth sister), in Jiusi Tang shigao xuji, 4:17.
6. Hou Renzhi, Yan Yuan shihua.
7. Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory (Cambridge, MA, 2002), 27-33.
8. For a suggestive discussion of the role of memory in the "thickening" of communal identities, see Edward Casey, Remembrance: A Phenomenological Study (Bloomington, 1987).
9. Benedetto Croce, "Poetry and Historiography," in idem, History as the Story of Liberty, trans. Sylvia Sprigge (London, 1941), 312-14.
10. Ch'ien Chung-shu, "Poetry as a Vehicle of Grief," in Stephen Song, ed., A Brotherhood in Song: Chinese Poetry and Poetics (Hong Kong, 1985), 30-31.
11. Ibid., 315.
12. Carolyn Forché, ed., Against Forgetting: The Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness (New York, 1993), 39.
13. Yihuan, "Xie jiudi zhi Minghe Yuan zhi gan" (Reflections upon visiting Singing Crane Garden in the company of my ninth brother"), in Jiusi Tang shigao xuji, 4:46.
14. Daniel Libeskind and Leon Wieseltier, Monument and Memory: September 27, 2002, the Columbia Seminar on Art in Society (New York, 2002), 39-40.
15. Most of the references to Yihuan can be found in the Qing shi gao (Draft history of the Qing), chap. 221. I have used the Hong Kong edition of 1978. Two other biographies of Prince Chun have been helpful, although they make no mention of his poetry: Yang Yimao, "Yihuan," in Su Ming and Yang Yimao, eds., Qingdai renwu zhuan'gao (Biographies of major Qing personages) (Shenyang, 1994), 114-28; and Wu Yuqing, "Chun Qinwang Yihuan zhuan" (Biography of Yihuan, Imperial Prince Chun), in Wu Yuqing and Wu Yuanxing, eds., Qingchao ba da qinwang (Eight renowned princes of the Qing dynasty) (Beijing, 1993), 432-48.
16. Lynn A. Struve, "Chimerical Early Modernity: The Case of 'Conquest-Generation' Memoirs," in idem, ed., The Qing Formation in World-Historical Time (Cambridge, MA, 2004), 335-88.
17. Margalit, The Ethics of Memory, 147.
18. Yihuan, "Shei Jia" (Whose home?), in Jiusi Tang shigao, 1:73.
19. Douglas Hurd, The Arrow War: An Anglo-Chinese Confusion (1856-1860) (New York, 1967); and J. Y. Wong, Deadly Dreams: Opium, Imperialism and the Arrow War (Cambridge, 1998).
20. Theodore Walrond, ed., Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin (London, 1872), 361-66.
21. Yihuan, "Weixiu Yuan yi lu" (A rhymed poem about the Garden of Flourish ing Grace) in Jiusi Tang shigao xuji, 1:62.
22. Yang Yimao, "Yihuan," 119.
23. Ibid., 120.
24. Yihuan, "He Lin Xisan you yuan ji shi wu shou yuan yun" (Five rhymed verses written in the company of Lin Xisan while rambling through the garden), in Jiusi Tang shi gao, 7:28.
25. Young-tsu Wong, A Paradise Lost: The Imperial Garden Yuanming Yuan (Honolulu, 2001), 174.
26. This memorial is quoted and discussed at length in Yang Yimao, "Yihuan," 123.
27. Libeskind and Wieseltier, Monument and Memory, 44.
28. For a fuller discussion of memory theory and the Chinese garden, see Edward Casey, Remembrance, 207-12.
29. Craig Clunas, Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China (Durham, NC, 1996), 31-32.
30. Ibid., 26.
31. Yihuan, "Weixiu Yuan xiao qi gan jiu si shou" (Four verses upon resting in the Garden of Flourishing Grace), in Jiusi Tang shigao xuji, 4:15.
32. Yihuan, "Han bu cheng mei" (Chilled and unable to sleep), in ibid., 2: 57.
33. Jeffrey Cody, Building China: Henry K. Murphy's "Adaptive Architecture" (Seattle, 2001), 117.
34. Ji Xianlin, "Ta shixian le shengming de jiazhi" (He realized the value of life), in Xi Zhenxian, Wang Ling and Zhu Xinxin, eds., Zhu Guanqian jinian ji (Reminiscences about the life of Zhu Guanqian) (Hefei, 1987), 187-203.
35. Rick Harbaugh, ed., Zhongwen zi pu (Chinese characters: A genealogy and dictionary) (Taipei, 1998), 234.
36. Yihuan, "Shijiu ri fu Weixiu Yuan dao zhong zuo" (Verses composed on the 19th day [of the new year] on the way to the Garden of Flourishing Grace), in Jiusi Tang shigao xuji, 1:50.
37. Louise Glück, The Wild Iris (Hopewell, NJ, 1992), 1.
38. Czeslaw Milosz, "Dedication," in Forché, ed., Against Forgetting, 437-38.
39. William Carlos Williams, "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower," in idem, Selected Poems (New York, 1969), 150.