Writing, Liu Xie and Learning Chinese

Friday February 13, 2009

Despite my earnest promises to blog more frequently over here, the last few weeks have somehow overtaken me. I’m currently juggling three possible book projects, projects that are so mutually dissimilar that one has to wonder what my mind is playing at, as well as getting stuck into teaching down at De Montfort, and getting to grips with learning Chinese. The latter is a new project, but something I’ve wanted to do for years. I never know (can one confess this kind of thing publicly?) whether I research stuff to write books, or whether the writing of books is a pretext for research. The latter, I suspect. The Chinese is research for a future novel that may one day see the light of day, and so I’ve been spending my Tuesday evenings at the University of Leicester’s Chinese classes, and also spending a fair amount of the time in-between hanging out with the estimable folks over at Chinesepod. So far, it’s been hugely rewarding, and I’m making some progress.

Anyway, casting about for unifying thought to end with, and finding none, I’ll give you this nice line that I turned up on a book on ancient Chinese literary criticism, from the brush of Liu Xie, back in the fifth or sixth century:

Consequently, the writer has two worries as he confronts the page and organises his ruminations. If his reasoning is pent-up and constricted, his writing will suffer from a deficiency of content. If phrases engulf him, his writing will be confused. Breadth of vision is the grain that feeds this deficiency, and unity of purpose is the medicine that treats this confusion. If he is able to achieve unity along with breadth, these will enhance the power of his mind.

Unity along with breadth… It’s a tall order, but I’m working on it.