Book review: The Hall of Uselessness, by Simon Leys
The fox knows many things, according to Isaiah Berlin, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.
by Simon Leys
New York Review Books
4 stars
The fox knows many things, according to Isaiah Berlin, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. If so, Pierre Ryckmans, better known to the reading public as Simon Leys, is a rare hybrid. He knows one really big thing, China, but judging by this eclectic collection of essays spanning three decades, his interests and erudition range across the humanities.
Born in Belgium, his mother tongue is French but his mastery of English gives him a wide readership as one of the world's foremost sinologists. More importantly, his mastery of the Chinese language enables him to understand what Hegel calls the spirit of a people. It's been said he that who knows only one country knows no country. If so, Leys is the opposite. That may be why many essays here offer deep and intriguing insights not only into China, but also modern European civilisation through its literature. The collection includes illuminating takes on Balzac, Victor Hugo, Malraux, Gide, Orwell and Evelyn Waugh.
Regarding China, one of Leys' recurrent complaints is about how many so-called China experts can barely speak the language. There is a rich literature on China in English (and French and German), so you can, presumably, master that and claim to be an expert. If you can't work with primary sources, your work will always be derivative.
Today, it is virtually impossible to be an academic sinologist without knowing the language, although there are still many hacks posing as experts.
And this takes us to an intriguing essay in this collection, one which considers whether sinology is a form of orientalism. As an influential literary theory developed by the late Palestinian-American critic Edward Said, it claims western scholarship on other cultures or civilisations, however sincere and well-meaning, inevitably distorts them as the other, and must end up in the service of western domination.
However, Said only applies it to western writings on the Middle East and the Levant. Does it apply to China?
Leys argues that the bulk of the materials of sinology are already found in the long and venerable Chinese literary tradition, to which western sinology is only a late addition. But, if you are not Leys and have no linguistic access to this vast Chinese canon, you will think, as most westerners or even many Chinese do today, that western-inspired sinology is the whole of sinology. I would not, therefore, be so dismissive of Said's theory as Leys is here.
Leys loves Chinese culture and its people, but despises the communist dictatorship. He and every literate Chinese know that the rich Chinese canon of history, literature, art and philosophy is the root source of the meanings of many Chinese words, phrases and poems. What may be called Chinese linguistics and aesthetics understand language has a reality separate from any material or physical objects that they may refer to. Or, as Leys writes, "the existence or non-existence of a material support for a Name never appeared to (Chinese scholars) a very relevant issue".
Words (calligraphy) and paintings have a beauty and meaning that are part of a long tradition and go beyond merely being useful or referential. That is the way to understand the Chinese literary mind.
