Some thoughts on 文言文/Classical Chinese

Since I wrapped up my Chinese Studies degree last May, I've been pretty terrible about keeping up with, well, Chinese studies. Modern Chinese, at least. I've been pouring a considerable amount my effort into learning classical/literary Chinese, in which what almost everything before 1911 was written. Like any language, 古文 gǔ wén, also known as 文言文 wén​yán​wén, changed over time, with pre-Han dynasty literature being more grammatically rigorous than, say, that of the Ming dynasty; if anyone ever says the language was static- a claim which is more or less understandable, since it was increasingly divorced from spoken Chinese over the centuries- they're misinformed, ignorant, or have an agenda. Not that it's very likely any of my readers will run into someone with an agenda with regard to classical Chinese, but hey, who knows?

Mind you, I'm no expert, and I never will be. As fulfilling as it is to grind my way through a passage of Sima Qian's 史記 and learn 繁體字 (traditional characters) in the process, classical Chinese is not an easy language. It's more than just a language; it's a mode of thought attuned to a world that hasn't cohabitated with ours in over a century, and I'm so far removed from its source that all I can do is hope to approximate it when I make juvenile translations of the characters I copy out. It's hard work, made even harder by the nigh-unshakeable feeling that I'm achieving nothing by focusing on a dead language.

You know what, though? Classical Chinese might be dead- and yeah, it could be stale even during its heyday; read about eight-legged essays sometime- but the myriad things expressed in the 2,000-plus years it was used aren't dead. Chinese poetry, philosophy, and fiction survive for a reason, even if modern folks like you and I can't immediately appreciate or in many cases even be aware of the parallelisms, historical context, cultural references, tone patterns, et cetera, that make it such a rich language. Via classical Chinese, a culture honed its expression of the range of human emotion and experience to just about as fine a point as any writer could hope for, and that expression can be seen, albeit imperfectly, even in translation.

I remember the first volume of Chinese poetry I ever bought- a used Penguin edition of Wang Wei's poetry- and how hard the language hit me. Since then, it's only gotten more impressive, and I'm not talking only about poetry, or what I've learned since I began studying Chinese. Being able to tackle an entire world (and imperial China constitutes a world as much as Europe until the 19th century did, if not more so) on its own linguistic terms- skewed by time/distance/culture as my understanding of those terms may be- is a privilege, and even if you never pick up a word of Chinese, you can enjoy that privilege in a different form, as I did with Wang Wei. You don't have to know Chinese to see how spot on Chinese culture is about a lot of things. I merely took a few extra steps so I could try to engage it directly. I'm not very good at it, but I suspect most people aren't- viz. the small number of really acclaimed translators from classical Chinese to English.


I study classical Chinese because it is interesting; because it contains a long tradition of thought still woefully under-represented in English (no offense to all the excellent translators over the decades); because I want to send a signal, no matter how weak, to the modern world- in both its Chinese and Western forms- that their ancestors shouldn't be ignored; because I love language(s); because I sometimes like a challenge; because I am sometimes a Taoist, sometimes a Buddhist, and always deeply indebted to both schools of thought; because I appreciate the idea, if not the practice, of the 科舉 imperial examination system; because I love Li Bai and Wang Wei and Du Fu and Han Shan and all the other great poets; because I want to read the Latin of East Asia; because I can't give in to- nor do I believe- the forces that say Mandarin alone is "real" Chinese; because you can't understand shit about now if you don't know about then.

I don't need to justify or rationalize my choice of pastimes. That's not what this is about. I like classical Chinese, and while that's enough for me, there are a thousand other, better, reasons to study it. Maybe you'll find one of your own some day, but like I said, there's no shortage of amazing stuff available to you in English. We all start somewhere.

微臣
史大偉
蛇年二月十一日