Bad Character - The New Yorker

If Chinese Were Phonetic

Credit Illustration by Joon Mo Kang

It's not personal. I never learned anything in the Saturday-morning Chinese school I was forced to attend as a child, but that's not what motivates my choice here. There were plenty of reasons for my poor performance in those classes—my resentment at having to miss the "Super Friends" cartoon being just one of them—so I don't blame Chinese characters for my failure.

No, my objection is a practical one: I'm a fan of literacy, and Chinese characters have been an obstacle to literacy for millennia. With a phonetic writing system like an alphabet or a syllabary, you need only learn a few dozen symbols and you can read most everything printed in a newspaper. With Chinese characters, you have to learn three thousand. And writing is even more difficult than reading; when you can't use pronunciation as an aid to spelling, you have to rely on pure memorization. The cognitive demands are so great that even highly educated Chinese speakers regularly forget how to write characters they haven't used recently.

The huge number of characters poses other obstacles as well. I've flipped through a Chinese dictionary, I've seen photographs of a Chinese typewriter, I've read about Chinese telegraphy, and despite their ingenuity they are all cumbersome inventions, wheelbarrows for the millstone around Chinese culture's neck. Computers and smartphones are impossible to use if you're restricted to Chinese characters; it's only with phonetic systems of writing, like Bopomofo and Pinyin, that text entry becomes practical. In the past century, there have been multiple proposals to replace Chinese characters with an alphabet, all unsuccessful; the only reform ever implemented was to invent simplified versions of the more complex characters, which solved none of the problems I've mentioned and created new ones besides.

So let's imagine a world in which Chinese characters were never invented in the first place. Given such a void, the alphabet might have spread east from India in a way that it couldn't in our history, but, to keep this from being an Indo-Eurocentric thought experiment, let's suppose that the ancient Chinese invented their own phonetic system of writing, something like the modern Bopomofo, some thirty-two hundred years ago. What might the consequences be? Increased literacy is the most obvious one, and easier adoption of modern technologies is another. But allow me to speculate about one other possible effect.

One of the virtues claimed for Chinese characters is that they make it easy to read works written thousands of years ago. The ease of reading classical Chinese has been significantly overstated, but, to the extent that ancient texts remain understandable, I suspect it's due to the fact that Chinese characters aren't phonetic. Pronunciation changes over the centuries, and when you write with an alphabet spellings eventually adapt to follow suit. (Consider the differences between "Beowulf," "The Canterbury Tales," and "Hamlet.") Classical Chinese remains readable precisely because the characters are immune to the vagaries of sound. So if ancient Chinese manuscripts had been written with phonetic symbols, they'd become harder to decipher over time.

Chinese culture is notorious for the value it places on tradition. It would be reductive to claim that this is entirely a result of the readability of classical Chinese, but I think it's reasonable to propose that there is some influence. Imagine a world in which written English had changed so little that works of "Beowulf" 's era remained continuously readable for the past twelve hundred years. I could easily believe that, in such a world, contemporary English culture would retain more Anglo-Saxon values than it does now. So it seems plausible that in this counterfactual history I'm positing, a world in which the intelligibility of Chinese texts erodes under the currents of phonological change, Chinese culture might not be so rooted in the past. Perhaps China would have evolved more throughout the millennia and exhibited less resistance to new ideas. Perhaps it would have been better equipped to deal with modernity in ways completely unrelated to an improved ability to use telegraphy or computers.

I have no idea if I would personally be better off in such a world, assuming that it's even meaningful to talk about my existing there at all. But there is one thing I'm certain of: in a world where Chinese was written with phonetic symbols, I would never have to read or hear any more popular misconceptions about Chinese characters—that they're like little pictures, that they represent ideas directly, that the Chinese word for "crisis" is "danger" plus "opportunity." That, at least, would be a relief. 

Sign up for the daily newsletter.Sign up for the daily newsletter: the best of The New Yorker every day.

E-mail address

Ted Chiang 

Related Stories

Evernote helps you remember everything and get organized effortlessly. Download Evernote.

阅读小报︱古往今来最佳性爱描写，居然是“乔瓦尼”的开头_翻书党_澎湃新闻-The Paper

阅读小报︱古往今来最佳性爱描写，居然是"乔瓦尼"的开头

2016-05-16 13:58 来自 翻书党

"我的每个部分都在喊着No!但我的总和叹息了一声Yes。"
今年是Giovanni's Room（《乔瓦尼的房间》）六十岁，四处是"你一定要再读詹姆斯·鲍德温"语气的文章。他二十四岁为了躲避标签逃到巴黎，这是第二部小说，用了全白人的卡司，写求婚之后准未婚妻躲去西班牙犹豫，而他自己留在巴黎跟一个意大利男人谈恋爱。我很喜欢他说自己要写的是愧疚的性，再牵扯种族问题怕累着。引的那句是第一次到了乔瓦尼的房间，被推倒；当时一惊，心想居然有这么干净而妖娆的情话。鲍德温的文字很特别，通彻，思无邪，直透纸背；有点像李后主，高兴了就恣意怜，亡国破家就水长东，俨然担负人类罪恶，写什么都很好。
也是巧，读到一半的时候，发现文学LitHub网站评了个古往今来最佳性爱描写，居然就是"乔瓦尼"开头的一段，写他启蒙，和小伙伴在床头玩闹时突然就如胶似漆起来。Literary Review（《文学评论》）从1993年开始评最差性爱描写每年都挑不过来，难得这回有人评了次好的居然读的时候根本就没注意。主要是性本身太难写了，好像是莎士比亚和玄学派诗人之后，感受和思想分离，怎么处理都有些尴尬；或者，是金斯利·艾米斯（Kingsley Amis）所说的性描写会让角色失去普遍性（de-universalise），意思大概是这件事情已经私人化到每个人的感受都千差万别，所以你写得再如何真实，第二个人来一看还是觉得你什么都不懂（而且是写得越细他越看不起你）。

"我从他身上跌开，躺在他旁边，想的是在一时情热的剧场（theatre of heat）之外，欲望是多么无助，而且在它不受欢迎的那一刻起，又立马会显得多么荒唐。"
最近还读了一本加斯·格林威尔（Garth Greenwell）的What Belongs to You（《什么属于你》），和乔瓦尼有点像，讲的是一个美国诗人到保加利亚教书，在公厕勾搭了一个带男妓属性的小混混Mitko。处女作，亚马逊页面上还没见过这么长的表扬栏，读罢的确有种"不可限量感"的精湛和笃定。不剧透，但要说不少桥段，比如在澡堂如何被父亲察觉自己的性向，以及第一部分结束时和Mitko大吵的缘由，真的是闻所未闻。
厄普代克当年有一篇争议很大的书评，评的是我很迷恋的同性恋作家霍林赫斯特的The Spell（《着魔》），居然感慨"异性恋再怎么琐碎，至少关乎物种繁衍，牵涉到家庭这个古老而神圣的架构"，而同性恋文学不够"普世（universal）"，因为"除了爽之外再无其他得失（Nothing is at stake but self-gratification）"。这当然很不得体，从厄普代克的嘴里听到让人尤为难过。他当年开出的书评守则中第一条就是："试图理解作者希望完成的是什么，不要怪他没有做成本来就没有试图要做的事。"而抱怨同性恋小说缺一颗受精卵，荒唐得就像冲到馄饨摊大骂怎么连杯像样的现磨玛奇朵都没有。

"世界提供非虚构，其他的交给人类。"
当年到了复旦就去旁听了不少陆谷孙老师给本科生上的文法课，说打磨英文多读些散文不会错，就去图书馆抱了好些选集回来，其中就有约翰·达加塔（John D'Agata）编的两大本The Next American Essay（《美国散文的未来》）和The Lost Origins of the Essay（《消失的散文源流》）。上个月发现这个系列的第三本出来了，叫The Making of American Essay（《美国散文的形成》）。现在Kindle方便，马上把每篇选文前面编者的话读了一遍；达师傅对散文有很多新奇的想法，比如这一回他选了艾略特的诗，选了巴塞尔姆的一个小故事，选了《白鲸》的一个章节，甚至还有字谜一样的概念艺术。难道这是陆老神仙的埋伏：只要写得好原来都叫散文？
达加塔也不相信"虚构"和"非虚构"的分界。几年前他有本书，物议沸腾，叫The Lifespan of A Fact（《事实的寿命》），是他再现和杂志事实核查员的邮件往来，里面达老师脾气还不小，因为对方居然"粗俗"到胆敢指出他的报道造假。杰夫·戴尔喜欢说文体间的界限像是网球场中间的网，摆在那里就是为了让你把球从上方打过去；这当然很好，但在摆明了"非虚构"的文章里虚构就是另一回事了，关键在于读者是照着他和文本之间签的合同来触发情绪的；就像如果网球是按照击球动作的优美程度来判断是否进线就不会有意思。而且，我也没能想明白为什么一个有追求的网球选手不能同时把球打在界内并显得足够潇洒。

"用短信发去了他认为稍后可能会天晴的意见。"
4月28日，阿兰·德波顿发了新书The Course of Love（《爱的轨迹》），二十年来第一本小说。上来德波顿自己就剧透所有情节，说他们"会结婚，会痛苦，会经常担心钱，会生一个女儿，再生一个儿子，有一个人会出轨，有时候会无聊，有几次想杀了对方，还有几回想了结自己。这是一个真正的爱情故事"。记得当年意气风发地办了张国际信用卡，在美国亚马逊下的第一单里就有The Romantic Movement，中文版译成《爱上浪漫》。新书和德波顿出道的那两本小说写法一模一样，很像张信哲参加比赛唱《信仰》，一下把人送回高中寝室，起个前奏几乎就想哭。后来也是德波顿自己职业规划的关系，书一本比一本讨巧，好处类似星座和算命，其实就是精心设计来让每个人都觉得"你怎么猜这么准？"
但他的书我还是每本都读，主要是文笔有趣。都说英文写作忌讳一件事，叫nominalization，名词化，平克的那本The Sense of Style（《风格的感觉》）就很痛心地说这是把活泼泼的动词木乃伊化（embalm）成了死名词；但德波顿的才气就在于让句子变成一堆名词，文雅地坐下来。引的这句是两人初识之后男主终于忍不住，但他没有"发去一条短消息猜稍后可能会天晴"，他是texts his opinion that，写作老师会生气的句式，但那种"想认真又怕输"的拘谨姿态却全挂在了那个多余的名词上。德波顿写性也是这样，两人第一次动情，男主伸手，"一秒之后，是一种确凿无疑象征着welcome和excitement的wetness"；简直让人要在页边大写一个"服"字，不但有趣，其实也很性感。

Evernote helps you remember everything and get organized effortlessly. Download Evernote.

Two Spirits of Liberty

The world could use more of Christopher Hitchens's courage and Isaiah Berlin's tolerance.

Redux

Christopher Hitchens, left, and Isaiah Berlin

By Timothy Garton Ash May 08, 2016

hortly after Isaiah Berlin died, Christopher Hitchens launched an attack on him in the London Review of Books. The celebrated liberal philosopher, argued the celebrated polemicist, had been cowardly, weak, inconsistent, an apologist for the Vietnam War, a toady of the powerful. Berlin, wrote Hitchens, was "simultaneously pompous and dishonest in the face of a long moral crisis where his views and his connections could have made a difference." And Hitchens deplored the fact that Berlin's reputation stood "like a lion in your path" if you "chafe at the present complacently 'liberal' consensus."

Berlin's most famous essay is "Two Concepts of Liberty," but it seems to me that Hitchens and Berlin personified two spirits of liberty. The distinction be­tween these two spirits is not a philosophical one, like that between two conc­epts. Rather, it is a matter of temperament, character, habits of the heart. Put most simply, Hitchens exemplified courage; Berlin, tolerance. Hitchens was outspoken, outrageous, never afraid to offend, impressively undeterred by Islamist death threats. He was also almost never prepared to admit that he had been wrong, nimbly shifting his ground to defend, with equal vehemence, whatever contrarian position he chose to adopt at a particular moment. But he was brave, and utterly consistent in his defense of free speech.

Berlin was not notable for his courage. This was a weakness he struggled with. In a letter to a close friend, written when he was already a highly re­spected, middle-aged man, he wrote, "I wish I had not inherited my father's timorous, rabbity nature! I can be brave, but oh what appallingly superhuman struggles with cowardice!" And in an essay on his beloved Turgenev, he evokes "the small, hesitant, self-critical, not always very brave, band of men who oc­cupy a position somewhere to the left of center, and are morally repelled both by the hard faces to their right and the hysteria and mindless violence and demagoguery on their left. ... "

Yet Berlin was one of the most eloquent, consistent defenders of a liberal­ism which creates and defends the spaces in which people subscribing to dif­ferent values, holding incompatible views, pursuing irreconcilable political projects — in short, the Hitchenses and the anti-Hitchenses — can battle it out in freedom, without violence. Berlin personified not merely tolerance but also an extraordinary gift for empathy, that ability to get inside very different heads and hearts which is a distinguishing mark of the liberal imagination.

In a speech delivered in 1944, explaining what the United States was fighting for in the Second World War, to an audience that included many newly created American citizens, Judge Learned Hand declared: "What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias." Who can doubt that Berlin was filled with that spirit of liberty? But Hitchens was filled with a spirit of liberty too.

Though they tend to distrust, even to despise each other, both these spirits are indispensable. Each has its characteristic fault. A world composed entirely of Hitchenses would tend to intolerance. It would be a permanent, if often amusing, shouting match, one in which there would be neither time nor space to understand — in the deepest sense of understanding, involving profound study, calm reflection, and imaginative sympathy — where the other person was coming from. A world composed entirely of Berlins would tend to relativism and excessive tolerance for the sworn enemies of tolerance.

lainly this tension does not begin with those two late-20th-century writers. Toward the end of his life, the German-British liberal thinker Ralf Dahrendorf wrote a book about a line of political intellectuals he called Erasmians, among whom he included Isaiah Berlin. And the argument between these two spirits of liberty is already there in the 16th-century relationship between Erasmus of Rotterdam and Martin Luther. Erasmus, the most cele­brated scholar of his day, prepared the way for the Reformation. So close was his intellectual affinity with Luther in earlier years that the joke went aut Erasmus Lutherat, aut Erasmissat Lutherus — now Erasmus Luthers, now Luther Erasmusses. But when Luther made his break with the Roman Church, Erasmus would not follow. Men of goodwill, he insisted, must be able to conduct these arguments with civility and reason, within the body of the church. In his com­mentary on the Latin adage "So many men, so many opinions" (Quot homines, tot sententiae), he attributes to St. Paul the view that "for the putting aside of strife, we should allow every man to have his own convictions." (This was, one might add, adventurous ijtihad of St. Paul.) In 1517, the very year that Luther nailed his Protestant theses to a church door, Erasmus wrote an essay titled "The Complaint of Peace," lamenting the "word warriors" who "attack each other with poison pens, ripping each other up with the keen phases of satire and hurling lethal darts of insinuation."

Dahrendorf recalls a scene when the mortally ill 35-year-old Ulrich von Hutten, a reformer who was in some ways even bolder than Luther, actually knocked on the door of Erasmus's house in Basel to seek help, "but Erasmus, himself sick, and fearful both of physical and of spiritual infection, did not admit him. All Basel saw it. … " Hutten had just enough strength left to pen an Expostulation With Erasmus, including this stinging rebuke: "Your own books will have to fight out the battle between them." For several years, Erasmus resisted pressure from church leaders to confront the reformers, and when he finally did so, it was in the form of a learned dialogue disputing Luther's views on free will. Hutten's barb was an early version of the 20th-century jibe that a liberal is someone who can't take his own side in an argument. It connects to a recurrent critique of liberalism as pale, bloodless, sickly, unable to stand up for itself in a fight.

People can possess these two qualities in different measures at different times. Dahrendorf himself was an Erasmian in his old age, but as a 15-year-old schoolboy in Nazi Berlin he had formed a resistance group and been incarcer­ated in a Gestapo camp. There is the courage of youth and the tolerance born of experience. The mix in any one person is never entirely simple. Hitchens could be witheringly, contemptuously intolerant in print and on the public stage, yet in private he had a gift for good fellowship with a remarkably wide range of people. One of his characteristic and, for the recipient, mildly irritating rhetorical tropes was to say, "X is a friend of mine, but …" followed by a fulminating attack on something said or written by X.

Erasmians also have their own brand of courage or, perhaps more precisely, of fortitude. It takes a certain quiet fortitude to maintain your intellectual in­dependence when all about you are becoming partisan. "On no other account do I congratulate myself more," Erasmus wrote toward the end of his life, "than on the fact that I have never attached myself to any party." It takes perseverance to keep calmly advocating an independent, liberal position — balanced, fair, respectful of complexity, more concerned to get at the truth than to be entertaining — when what Jacob Burckhardt called the terribles simplificateurs are harvesting youthful enthusiasm and collective emotion.

"So we must weigh and measure, bargain, compromise, and prevent the crushing of one form of life by its rivals," wrote Berlin, three years before he died, in a text subsequently published by The New York Review of Books as a "message to the 21st century." "I know only too well that this is not a flag under which idealistic and enthusiastic young men and women may wish to march — it seems too tame, too reasonable, too bourgeois, it does not engage the generous emotions. But you must believe me, one cannot have everything one wants — not only in practice, but even in theory."

Raymond Aron was another such Erasmian, and his last hours are a perfect example of this cooler virtue. Convinced that his friend Bertrand de Jouvenel had been travestied in a book by an Israeli historian, Aron agreed to testify in a libel case de Jouvenel had launched against the author and publisher. Emphasizing to the court that de Jouvenel had been wrong in his early assessment of Hitler, while Aron himself "at once saw the devil in Hitler" — and, as his audience knew, had gone on to serve Charles de Gaulle's exile government in London — he nonetheless deplored the book as ahistorical: "The author never put things into context. The definition he gives of fascism is so vague and imprecise that it could include anything." It therefore represented "the worst kind of libel — the result of a procedure which I deplore and condemn: guilt by asso­ciation."

Having thus spoken up for intellectual clarity, historical understanding and elementary fairness, the frail old philosopher stepped out of the courtroom and into a car, where he suffered a massive heart attack and died. Just before he disappeared, Aron remarked to the journalist Marc Ullman: "Je crois avoir dit l'essentiel." (Roughly translated as: "I believe I said what needed saying.") What finer death could there be for an Erasmian?

It is quite rare that these two spirits of liberty, with their distinctive qualities of courage and of tolerance, come combined in equal parts in one individual. The nearest I have seen to this was Václav Havel, a brave dissident, in the footsteps of his 14th-century compatriot Jan Hus. He proved that courage through four years in prison and multiple subsequent arrests. His solidarity with dissidents in other parts of the world was unwavering. One of his last public actions, when already a very sick man, was to stand outside the Chinese Embassy in Prague to protest against the imprisonment of Liu Xiaobo — an exceptional, undiplomatic act for a former president. Yet Havel was also the epitome of Erasmian tolerance, not just unfailingly courteous but genuinely open to a wide range of philosophies and ways of life, wanting them all to be heard and seen. Usually, however, the two spirits of liberty are found unevenly distributed be­tween individuals: the one more Lutheran, the other more Erasmian. Freedom needs both.

It is for others to say whether we can identify a similar dichotomy in non-Western cultures and traditions. My own superficial impression from countries I know much less well, such as China, Myanmar, and Egypt, is that we can. On my journeys I have met deeply admirable people who seem to me to embody each of these two spirits of liberty. And was Gandhi perhaps, like Havel, an exception to prove the rule, combining both courage and tolerance? What is certain is that those who stand up for free speech in these countries, against the armed and booted orthodoxy of their time, make harder decisions, and face graver consequences, than most of us in the West ever will.

Timothy Garton Ash is a fellow at St. Antony's College, Oxford, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. This essay is adapted from his new book Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World (Yale University Press).

A version of this article appeared in the  May 13, 2016 issue.

Evernote helps you remember everything and get organized effortlessly. Download Evernote.

The Habits of Highly Cynical People

By Rebecca Solnit

Download Pdf

Read Online

Single Page

Print Page

On April 24, 1916 — Easter Monday — Irish republicans in Dublin and a handful of other places staged an armed rebellion against British occupation. At the time, the British Empire was the strongest power on earth; Ireland was its first and nearest colony. That the puny colony might oust the giant seemed far-fetched, and by most measures the endeavor was a failure. The leaders were executed; the British occupation continued. But not for long: the Easter Uprising is now generally understood as a crucial step in a process that led, in 1937, to full independence for most of the island. A hundred years on, some view 1916 as the beginning of the end of the British Empire.

This year also marks the fifth anniversary of the Arab Spring. It seems to be taken for granted that these uprisings, too, were a failure, since many of the affected countries are now just different kinds of dire than they were before. But the public display of a passionate desire for participatory government, the demonstration of the strength of popular power and the weakness of despotic regimes, and the sheer (if short-lived) exhilaration that took place five years ago may have sown seeds that have not yet germinated.

I am not arguing for overlooking the violence and instability that are now plaguing North Africa and the Middle East. Nor am I optimistic about the near future of the region. I do not know what the long-term consequences of the Arab Spring will be — but neither does anyone else. We live in a time when the news media and other purveyors of conventional wisdom like to report on the future more than the past. They draw on polls and false analogies to announce what is going to happen next, and their frequent errors — about the unelectability of Barack Obama, say, or the inevitability of the Keystone XL pipeline — don't seem to impede their habit of prophecy or our willingness to abide them. "We don't actually know" is their least favorite thing to report.

Non-pundits, too, use bad data and worse analysis to pronounce with great certainty on future inevitabilities, present impossibilities, and past failures. The mind-set behind these statements is what I call naïve cynicism. It bleeds the sense of possibility and maybe the sense of responsibility out of people.

Cynicism is first of all a style of presenting oneself, and it takes pride more than anything in not being fooled and not being foolish. But in the forms in which I encounter it, cynicism is frequently both these things. That the attitude that prides itself on world-weary experience is often so naïve says much about the triumph of style over substance, attitude over analysis.

Maybe it also says something about the tendency to oversimplify. If simplification means reducing things to their essentials, oversimplification tosses aside the essential as well. It is a relentless pursuit of certainty and clarity in a world that generally offers neither, a desire to shove nuances and complexities into clear-cut binaries. Naïve cynicism concerns me because it flattens out the past and the future, and because it reduces the motivation to participate in public life, public discourse, and even intelligent conversation that distinguishes shades of gray, ambiguities and ambivalences, uncertainties, unknowns, and opportunities. Instead, we conduct our conversations like wars, and the heavy artillery of grim confidence is the weapon many reach for.

Naïve cynics shoot down possibilities, including the possibility of exploring the full complexity of any situation. They take aim at the less cynical, so that cynicism becomes a defensive posture and an avoidance of dissent. They recruit through brutality. If you set purity and perfection as your goals, you have an almost foolproof system according to which everything will necessarily fall short. But expecting perfection is naïve; failing to perceive value by using an impossible standard of measure is even more so. Cynics are often disappointed idealists and upholders of unrealistic standards. They are uncomfortable with victories, because victories are almost always temporary, incomplete, and compromised — but also because the openness of hope is dangerous, and in war, self-defense comes first. Naïve cynicism is absolutist; its practitioners assume that anything you don't deplore you wholeheartedly endorse. But denouncing anything less than perfection as morally compromising means pursuing aggrandizement of the self, not engagement with a place or system or community, as the highest priority.

Different factions have different versions of naïve cynicism. There is, for example, the way the mainstream discounts political action that proceeds outside the usual corridors of power. When Occupy Wall Street began five years ago, the movement was mocked, dismissed, and willfully misunderstood before it was hastily pronounced dead. Its obituary has been written dozens of times over the years by people who'd prefer that the rabble who blur the lines between the homeless and the merely furious not have a political role to play.

But the fruits of OWS are too many to count. People who were involved with local encampments tell me that their thriving offshoots are still making a difference. California alone was said to have more than 100 Occupy groups; what each of them did is impossible to measure. There were results as direct as homeless advocacy, as indirect as a shift in the national debate about housing, medical and student debt, economic injustice, and inequality. There has also been effective concrete action — from debt strikes to state legislation — on these issues. Occupy helped to bring politicians such as Bernie Sanders, Bill de Blasio, and Elizabeth Warren into the mainstream.

The inability to assess what OWS accomplished comes in part from the assumption that historical events either produce straightforward, quantifiable, immediate results, or they fail to matter. It's as though we're talking about bowling: either that ball knocked over those pins in that lane or it didn't. But historical forces are not bowling balls. If bowling had to be the metaphor, it would be some kind of metaphysical game shrouded in mists and unfolding over decades. The ball might knock over a pin and then another one in fifteen years and possibly have a strike in some other lane that most of us had forgotten even existed. That's sort of what the Easter Rising did, and what Occupy and Black Lives Matter are doing now.

Then there is the naïve cynicism of those outside the mainstream who similarly doubt their own capacity to help bring about change, a view that conveniently spares them the hard work such change requires.

I recently posted on Facebook a passage from the February issue of Nature Climate Change in which a group of scientists outlined the impact of climate change over the next 10,000 years. Their portrait is terrifying, but it is not despairing: "This long-term view shows that the next few decades offer a brief window of opportunity to minimize large-scale and potentially catastrophic climate change that will extend longer than the entire history of human civilization thus far." That's a sentence about catastrophe but also about opportunity. Yet when I posted the article, the first comment I got was, "There's nothing that's going to stop the consequences of what we have already done/not done." This was another way of saying, I'm pitting my own casual assessment over peer-reviewed science; I'm not reading carefully; I'm making a thwacking sound with my false omniscience.

Such comments represent a reflex response that can be used to meet wildly different stimuli. Naïve cynicism remains obdurate in the face of varied events, some of which are positive, some negative, some mixed, and quite a lot of them unfinished.

The climate movement has grown powerful and diverse. On this continent it is shutting down coal plants and preventing new ones from being built. It has blocked fracking, oil and gas leases on public land, drilling in the Arctic, pipelines, and oil trains that carry the stuff that would otherwise run through the thwarted pipelines. Cities, states, and regions are making stunning commitments — San Diego has committed to going 100 percent renewable by 2035.

Remarkable legislation has been introduced even on the national level, such as bills in both the House and the Senate to bar new fossil-fuel extraction on public lands. Those bills will almost certainly not pass in the present Congress, but they introduce to the mainstream a position that was inconceivable a few years ago. This is how epochal change often begins, with efforts that fail in their direct aims but succeed in shifting the conversation and opening space for further action.

These campaigns and achievements are far from enough; they need to scale up, and scaling up means drawing in people who recognize that there are indeed opportunities worth seizing.

Late last year, some key federal decisions to curtail drilling for oil in the Arctic and to prevent the construction of a tar-sands pipeline were announced. The naïvely cynical dismissed them as purely a consequence of the plummeting price of oil. Activism had nothing to do with it, I was repeatedly told. But had there been no activism, the Arctic would have been drilled, and the pipelines to get the dirty crude cheaply out of Alberta built, before the price drop. It wasn't either-or; it was both.

David Roberts, a climate journalist for Vox, notes that the disparagement of the campaign to stop the Keystone XL pipeline assumed that the activists' only goal was to prevent this one pipeline from being built, and that since this one pipeline's cancellation wouldn't save the world, the effort was futile. Roberts named these armchair quarterbacks of climate action the Doing It Wrong Brigade. He compared their critique to "criticizing the Montgomery bus boycott because it only affected a relative handful of blacks. The point of civil-rights campaigns was not to free blacks from discriminatory systems one at a time. It was to change the culture."

The Keystone fight was a transnational education in tar-sands and pipeline politics, as well as in the larger dimensions of climate issues. It was a successful part of a campaign to wake people up and make them engage with the terrifying stakes in this conflict. It changed the culture.

Similarly, the decision by Congress in December to allow crude oil to be exported was widely excoriated, and it was indeed a bad thing. But many commenters ignored the fact that it was part of a quid pro quo that extended tax credits for solar and wind power. Those who have studied the matter closely, such as Michael Levi and Varun Sivaram at the Council on Foreign Relations, believe that this extension "will do far more to reduce carbon dioxide emissions over the next five years than lifting the export ban will do to increase them."

Accommodating change and uncertainty requires a looser sense of self, an ability to respond in various ways. This is perhaps why qualified success unsettles those who are locked into fixed positions. The shift back to failure is a defensive measure. It is, in the end, a technique for turning away from the always imperfect, often important victories that life on earth provides — and for lumping things together regardless of scale. If corruption is evenly distributed and ubiquitous, then there is no adequate response — or, rather, no response is required. This is so common an attitude that Bill McKibben launched a preemptive strike against it when he first wrote about the revelations last fall that Exxon knew about climate change as early as the 1970s:

A few observers, especially on the professionally jaded left, have treated the story as old news — as something that even if we didn't know, we knew. "Of course they lied," someone told me. That cynicism, however, serves as the most effective kind of cover for Exxon.

Even so, in response to the Exxon news, I heard many say airily, "Oh, all corporations lie." But the revelations were indeed news. The scale is different from any corrupt and dishonest thing a corporation has ever done, and it's important to appreciate the difference. The dismissive "it's all corrupt" line of reasoning pretends to excoriate what it ultimately excuses.

When a corporation writes something off, it accepts the cost. When we write off corporations as inherently corrupt, we accept the cost, too. Doing so paves the way for passivity and defeat. The superb and uncynical journalists at the Los Angeles Times andInside Climate News who investigated Exxon, along with the activists who pushed on the issue, prompted the attorneys general of New York and California to launch investigations. And the revelations offer us opportunities to respond — in David Roberts's terms, to change the culture more. Like the much-disparaged fossil-fuel-divestment movement, the attacks on Exxon have delegitimized a major power in ways that can have far-reaching consequences.

What is the alternative to naïve cynicism? An active response to what arises, a recognition that we often don't know what is going to happen ahead of time, and an acceptance that whatever takes place will usually be a mixture of blessings and curses. Such an attitude is bolstered by historical memory, by accounts of indirect consequences, unanticipated cataclysms and victories, cumulative effects, and long timelines. Naïve cynicism loves itself more than the world; it defends itself in lieu of the world. I'm interested in the people who love the world more, and in what they have to tell us, which varies from day to day, subject to subject. Because what we do begins with what we believe we can do. It begins with being open to the possibilities and interested in the complexities.

Evernote helps you remember everything and get organized effortlessly. Download Evernote.

《容安馆札记》641-645则 此博文包含图片 (2016-05-03 20:41:35)转载▼

《容安馆札记》641-645则  此博文包含图片    (2016-05-03 20:41:35)转载▼

标签： 钱钟书 钱锺书 容安馆札记     分类： 容安馆札记

《容安馆札记》641-645则

豐坊草書杜甫詩

六百四十一

          鮑昭《代挽歌》云："生時芳蘭體，小蟲今為災。"西方中世紀僧侶，如 St Bernard de Clairvaux 等，均謂四肢百骸為蛆糧 ("O esca verminum", "quae vermis esca paratur") 見 Remy de Gourmont, Le Latin mystique, pp. 247, 248 引。沙士比亞 Romeo & Juliet, III, I, 106 所謂 "worm's meat"是也【Henry IV, V. iv, 85-7: Hotspur: "N, Percy, thou art dust, / And food for..." Prince Henry: "For worms, brave Percy..."】。英國古謠中尤屢言之，Patricia Ingram: "The World of the Ballad", RES, Feb. 1957, p. 30 舉例頗多。【Gertrude Atherton, Adventures of a Novelist, p. 162: "Richard Whiting told me a story about George Moore.... One night he recited a new masterpiece about a disconsolate young man digging up his beloved from the grave & eating the worms crawling in & out."】【Victor Hugo: "Les Mangeurs" (La Légende des siècles, XXXIII, "Le Cercle des Tyrans", 6): "... Enfin, Revanche! les mangeurs sont mangés, ô mystère! / 'Comme c'est bon les rois!' disent les vers de terre" (Oeuv. poétiques complètes, Montréal: Éditions B. Valiquette, p. 555) 則不以美人，而以帝皇為言，用意仍同 (又 XIII "L'Épopée du ver", pp. 473 ff. 結云："... deux Tout-puissants, le Dieu qui fait les mondes, / Le ver qui les détruit" — p. 478)。A. Boito, Re Orso (L. Baldacci, Poeti Minori dell'Ottocento, p. 916) 亦此意。】意大利十五世紀詩家 Andrea del Basso 亦云："Ressurga da la tomba avara e lorda / La putrida tua salma, o Donna cruda, / Or che di spirto nuda, / E cieca e muta e sorda, / Ai vermi dai pastura" 見 St. John Lucas,The Oxford Book of Italian Verse, 1925, p. 171，復引申之云："Dov'è quel bianco seno d'alabastro, / Ch'onduleggiava come al margin flucto? / Ahi, che per too disastro / In fango s'è reducto. / Dove gli occhi lucenti, / Due stelle risplendenti? / Ahi, che son due caverne / Dove orror sol si scerne. / Dove'l labro si bello / Che parea di pennello? / Dov'è la guanza tonda? / Dove la chioma bionda? / E dove simetria di portamento? / Tutto e smarrito, como nebbia al vento / ... /Cos'è che non sia guasto / Di quel tuo corpo molle? / Cos'è dove non bolle / E verme, e putridume, / E puzza, e succidume? / Dimmi cos'è, cos'è, che possa piue / Far a'tuoi Proci le figure sue?" pp. 172-173，又不啻為《茶花女》第六章 Armand 開Marguerite 棺一節說法矣La Dame aux Camélias, éd. Nelson, p. 71: "C'etait terrible à voir... Les yeux ne faisaient plus que deux trous, les lèvres avaient disparu, et les dents blanches étaient serrées les unes contre les autres. Les longs cheveux noirs et secs étaient collés sur les tempes et voilaient un peu les cavités vertes des joues, et cependant je reconnaissais dans ce visage le visage blanc, rose et joyeux que j'avais vu si souvent."！【此章實本之 Hugo: "L'Épopée du ver" 中 "Amant désespéré, tu frappes à ma porte" 一大節(op. cit., pp. 476-7)。】【丘處機《金蓮花出玉花‧自述》："子羽潘安。泉下骷髏總一般"（《全金元詞》四六九頁）則為男言之。《螢窗異草二編》卷一《酒狂》一則"外史氏曰"引《鶯鶯灰》一文（"羅衣化蝶，不掩冰肌；錦衾成灰，難藏弱體。剝面不僅無皮，刳目何嘗有肉。香溫玉軟，衹留鷄肋根根；臉杏腮桃，惟見瓠犀落落。不信予言，請臨彼穴"）。】Théophile de Viau: "Élégie": "Ceux qui jurent d'avoir l'âme encore assez forte / Pour vivre dans les yeux d'une maîtresse morte, / N'ont pas pris le loisir de voir tous les efforts / Que fait la mort hideuse à consumer un corps" etc. (A.J. Steele,Three Centuries of French Verse, p. 131)  而言之未詳，皆禪家觀相所謂"脹相"、"壞相"、"骨相"等"九相觀"是也，詳見《大智度論》卷二十一《九相義》[1]，又六百四十七則引 Henry de Montherlant,Carnets, p. 273。【《野叟曝言》中文素臣闢佛不遺餘力，而第十一回《喚醒了緣》云[2]："只如余雙人已死，渾身肉腐蛆攢，見之可怕"云云，正用禪家觀法。】【J. Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien, Grosse-Illustrierte-Phaidon Ausgabe, S. 363: "Auch die Poesie des 15. Jht stimmt bisweilen denselben rohen Ton an. Eine Canzone des Andrea da Basso konstatiert bis ins einzelne die Verwesung der Leiche einer hartherzigen Geliebten. Freilich in einem Klosterdrama des 12 Jahrh. hatte man sogar auf der Szene gesehen wie König Herodes von den Würmern gefressen wird. Carmina Burana, p. 80, s" (A note to S. 235 on the "Naturalismus" of some of scenes in the "Mysteries").】【《分別功德論》卷二："昔有比丘於江水邊食，食訖澡缽。時上流岸邊塚間有新死女人，風吹頭髮，墮缽中。比丘持髮諦視，心口獨語：'若是馬尾，此復太細。若是男子髮，復太軟細。若繫不解者，必是女人髮。此髮如是，人必妙好，面如桃花，眼如明珠，鼻如截筒，口如含丹，眉如蚰蜓。便起欲心，順水尋求。見一女人，狐狼噉半，身形臭爛，其髮猶存。執髮比之，長短相似，欲念釋然。"亦此意，而較有波折。】參觀第二百二十五則。又按 Andrea del Basso 詩乃 "Memento mori"，用意略如Caesarius Arelatensis 說法 "De Elemosinis"此類教宗語，詳見 The Journal of English & Germanic Philosophy, July 1957, pp. 434 ff.。然此皆言死屍之為蟲食，佛家上有言生人體中蟲食，而生憎厭者，如《觀佛三昧海經‧觀相品第三之二》："太子以白毛擬，令三魔女自見身內蟲八萬戶。又於鄙處，諸蟲食女根。"【Baudelaire, "Une charogne": "Alors, ô ma beauté! dites à la vermine / Qui vous mangera de baisers, / Que j'ai gardé la forme et l'essence divine / De mes amours décomposés" (Oeuvres Complètes, "Bibliothèque de la Pléiade", p. 107) 與古為新，真化臭腐為神奇者。後來 Olindo Guerrini" "Il canto dell'odio", Emilio Praga: "Vendetta postuma" (L. Baldacci, Poeti minori dell'Ottocento, I, pp. 815-7, 883-4) 皆本此推衍。Die Nachtwachen des Bonaventura, XVI: "Ich... redete... einen Wurm an": "Der König ernährt sichvon dem Marke seines Landes,und dudich wieder von dem Könige selbst" usw. ("Edingburgh Bilingual Library", p. 240-2).】【Allan Poe: "The Conqueror Worm".】

六百四十二

          王逸塘《今傳是樓詩話》第三四○頁稱樊山《崇效寺看牡丹》詩云："花事依然人事改，同光惟剩舊斜陽。"[3]按鄧孝威《天下名家詩觀初集》卷四選彭而述《讀史亭詩集》卷十六《筇竹寺》第四首云："六詔雕殘舊戰場，青山無恙一松長，王孫老去仁祠在，頗耐興亡是夕陽"（《晚晴簃詩匯》卷二十三亦選之，《詩觀》"祠"上一字缺，《詩匯》作"荒"，蓋未見本集，以意補填耳），意同而語更有味。鄧氏選政極濫，舍牧齋、梅村等名家篇什外，彌望皆黃茅白葦，唯禹峯此一首跳出耳。劉中山《石頭城》云："山圍故國周遭在，潮打空城寂寞回。淮水東邊舊時月，夜深還過女墻來"[4]；放翁《楚城》云："江上荒城猿鳥悲，隔江便是屈原祠。一千五百年間事，只有灘聲似舊時"；馬樸臣《報循堂詩鈔》卷二《偕左白石翁朗夫等游西山》第二首："憔悴碧雲寺，高臺半已傾。有形皆佛累，不壞是泉聲"；姚朋圖《當得異書齋詩錄》卷四《湯貞愍手書題畫艷詩七絕十二首真跡卷》第二首自注云："曾見貞愍為定菴畫松巨幅，上題八分四字曰：'六朝遺老'，下記云：'定庵來白下求友不遇，訪遺孤無所得，有句云："載得齊梁夕照歸"，嘱為此畫'"，皆是意也。參觀第七百十七則論汪莘《水調歌頭》。

          〇裴伯謙《睫闇詩鈔》卷七《嫁婦詞初到戌所循例衙參賦作解嘲》云："已成棄婦車前水，又學新娘廚下湯。"按香山《初到江州寄翰林張李杜三學士》云："傷禽側翅驚弓箭，老婦低顏事舅姑。"

          〇易碩甫《巴山詩錄‧道中絕句》云："暖風著樹已先溫，吹落梅花是淚痕。絕好東川正月半，柳還魂處客銷魂。"《明文在》卷十四王穉登《正月十六夜長安步月簡朱少傅》："月到今宵微有魄，人從何處正消魂"；劉芙初《尚絅堂詩集》卷三十《車中晚興‧之二》云："驛燈催起尚黃昏，絲柳成煙半挂門。看取日來清瘦處，月銷殘魂處客銷魂"，文字小狡獪，頗饒風韻。元遺山《遺山詩集》卷十二《出都》云："春閨斜月曉聞鶯，信馬都門半醉醒。官柳青青莫回首，短長亭是斷腸亭"；李元度《遊金焦北固山記》："椒山祠壁鍥楊忠愍詩，有'楊子江行入揚子，椒山今日遊焦山'，句字奇偉"；鄧孝威《枕烟亭聽白三琵琶》第三首云："白狼山下白三郎，酒後偏能說戰場。颯颯悲風飄瓦礫，人間何處不昆陽附見《詩觀》卷二黃雲《贈白璧雙》詩後"，則又以聲音逞狡獪也。

          〇日本漢詩總集以《懷風藻》為最古，編者不知何人，自序作"天平勝寶三年"[5]，則唐天寶十年也。詩甚稚劣，中有大津皇子臨刑賦詩云："金烏臨西舍，鼓聲催短命。泉路無賓主，此夕誰家向？"按《全五代詩》載江為《臨刑詩》云："衙鼓侵人急，西傾日欲斜。黃泉無旅店，今夜宿誰家？"異哉巧合至此！《列朝詩集傳‧甲二十一‧孫蕡傳》："臨刑口占云：'鼉鼓三聲急，西山日又斜。黃泉無客舍，今夜宿誰家。'"實誦江為詩，牧齋未察。

六百四十三

          In his conscientious study of the stylistic devices of Jules Renard, Léon Guichard has quite failed to see that Renard's metaphors have pronouncedly Baroque affinities. For example, the phrase for the butterfly in Histoires naturelles, which, according to Guichard, seems to be a condensation of Hugo's poem Vere novo (L'Oeuvre et l'âme de Jules Renard, 1935, pp. 375-6), "Ce billet doux plié en deux cherche une adresse de fleur", recalls Góngora and Marino. Similarly, Góngora's description of a flight of cranes, "an arc... writing winged characters on the diaphanous paper of the sky" (G. Brenan, The Literature of the Spanish People, 2nd ed., 1952, p. 242; "Die Kraniche bilden bei ihm [Gongóra] geflügelte Schriftzeichen auf dem durchscheinenden Papier des Himmels" (Soledades, I, 609 f.) ... Góngora hat hier einen antikenconcepto ernenert: Kraniche bilden im Fluge das griechische Λ (lambda)".... Claudian De bello Gildonico I (=XV) 477 — Curtius, S. 349; Angelo Poliziano, Rusticus: "Clangunt naupliadae volucres, et pervia pinnis / Nubila conscribunt" — an improvement upon the legend that Palamedes, the son of Nauplius invented several letters of the Greek alphabet by watching cranes in flight, Modern Language Notes, Jan, 1958, p. 7; Robinson Jeffers: "The Cycle": "The gulls, the cloud-calligraphers of windy spirals before a storm"; V. Brancatti, Il vecchio con gli stivali: "Nel cielo azzurro le rondini scorrono come una veloce scrittura" (D. Provenzal, Diz. d. Immag., p. 758), is worthy of the "renardeux", though it will not give any new thrill to a reader of old Chinese poetry with the fine edge of his sensibility blunted by so many ingenious verses on "雁字" (cf.《清異錄》卷二《禽門》："書空匠"；金君卿《金氏文集》卷上《九日過長蘆泊小港留題龍山古寺》："仰天一笑六朝事，過雁書天作文字"；《倪雲林先生詩集》卷六《十月》："停橈坐對西山晚，新雁題詩小著行").【程穆衡《據梧亭詩集》卷二《郡邸再排義山‧之二》："雲裏雁書枯墨字，枝頭蟲粉倚花粧"；卷三《泊射陽湖》："魚噞月影燈生暈，雁没雲端墨淡書"；《牧齋初學集》卷 85《題項君禹雁字詩》（"《雁字》詩倡於楚人龍君御、袁中郎、小修，海內屬和者，溢囊盈帙。其在吾吳，則嘉定唐叔達為最工……"）；又《題項孔彰雁字詩》（"唱於楚中，秋舷老衲與檇李諸君更相酬和，卷軸粗於牛腰"）。】【上官婉兒《遊長寧公主流杯池》："風梭織水紋。"】【Longfellow, Tales of a Wayside Inn, Pt. III, "Prelude": "The flocks that from their beds of reed. / Uprising north or southward fly, / And flying write upon the sky. / The biforked letter of the Greeks, / As hath been said by Rucellai."】【Claudian, De Bello Gildonico, I, 474-8: "Pendala ceu parvis moturae bella colonis / ingenti clangore grues aestiva relinquunt / Thracia, cum tepido permutant Strymona Nilo: / Ordinibus variis per nubila texitur ales / Litera, pennarumque notis inscribitur aër" ([of the soldiers' rush] Even as the crane leave their summer home of Thrace clamorously to join issue in doubtful war with the Pygmies, when they desert the Strymon for the warm-watered Nile, the letter traced by the speeding line stands out against the clouds & the heaven is stamped with the figure of their flight) — Claudian, Loeb, vol I, p. 132.】Jean Rousset who considers "violons ailés" the "métaphore-type" in French Baroque poetry (La Littérature de l'âge baroque en France, Nouvelle éd., 1954, pp. 184; cf. Anthologie de la poésie baroque Française, I, p. 148-149), gives two Spanish examples & one Italian; but cf. E.R. Curtius, Europäische Literatur und Lateinisches Mittelalter, IIte Aufl., 1954, S. 285: "Ein Manierismus des 12 Jahrhunderts ist auch die Metapher 'Zitherspiel' für Vogelsang. a) Alan (SP, II 276): die Vogel sind cytharistae veris. b) derselbe (SP, II 438): der Schwan singt sein Sterbelied  'mit der Orgel honigsüssen Zitherspiels' (mellitae cithariationis organo). c) ebenso bei Walter Map (Poems, 238, 39): cygnus citharizat. d) Petrus Riga (...PL, 171, 1236B und 1289C): 'Rivus garrit', 'olor citarizat', 'pavo superbit' und 'Vernat humus', 'garrit fons', 'citharizat avis'. e) Johannes de Garlandia (RF, 13, 1902, 894): 'cum citharizat avis…' Wir finden das wieder bei Góngora (Soledad, I, 556): 'Pintadas aves, cítaras de pluma'; Variationen: 'El ave, que liberal / Vestir malices presuma / Veloz cítara de pluma'." This type of metaphor is really as old as Gorgias Leontini, as Chevreny pointed out (Rousset, op. cit., p. 188), see supra 第一百六十七則 on Leonardo da Vinci's Notebooks, I, p. 69. Cf. 第二百五十九則 a propos of "鳥語花中管絃". Also the examples given in Gaetano Mariani's paper "L'Analogia nella poesia secentistica e in quella contemporanea": "... la zanzara 'animato rumor, tromba vegante, / che solo per ferir talor ti posi, / fremito alato e mormorio volante...' del Materdona (G.G. Ferrero, Marino e i Marinisti, p. 771); la lucciola 'favilla alata, atomo errante / è dell'ombre selvagge occhio lucente, / informato di rai piropo ardente, / animato splendor, face spirante...' del Pisani; le api 'verginelle volanti, / peregrine lucenti, / vivi globi minuti, ori spiranti, / spiritelli dell'aria, aromi ardenti, / luminose faville, auree facelle, / del bel cielo d'april correnti stelle' del Fontanella" (La critica stilistica e il Barocco letterario: Atti del secondo congresso internazionale di studi italiani, 1958, p. 275). G. Battista: "Cava moralità delle lucciola": "viva favilla, e tremulo diamante, atomo alato e fiaccola lucente animato baleno astro volante."【Girolamo Fontanella: "Alla lucciola": "fiaccola volante" (p. 856). Giacomo Lubrano: "Le lucciole": "Vivi baleni, e facelline erranti" (p. 1036).】【Tommaso Stigliani: "Desiderio di lucciola": "Fiaccolette vaganti / e baleni volanti, / vive faville alate, / vive stelle animate" (p. 653); "Lanternini animati, / candele vive e moccoli incarnati" (p. 654). Marino's famous passage in "La bruna pastorella" (La sampogna): "baleno volante, / viva favilla alata, / viva stella animata" (G.G. Ferrero,Marino e i Marinisti, p. 324); again in "la Strage degli Innocenti", Lib. II, §183: "animate faville, aromi vivi" (p. 618).】

六百四十四

          （參觀第六百三十一則）《弇州山人續稿》稍減襞積之習，務為安和之態，雖嫌狼伉木強，似豬八戒試變一枰金，反不如《四部稿》之矜持而尚遒鍊也。乃知非邢夫人，斷不宜故衣；非裴令，斷不宜粗服亂頭；非太原公子，斷不宜不衫不履。《羅湖野錄》卷一法秀頌子云："誰能一日兩梳頭，撮得髻根牢即休。大底還他肌骨好，不搽紅粉也風流。"豈易言哉！余今之所見，似無以易《談藝錄》第五頁之論[6] 。舊讀胡元瑞《弇州先生五、七言律選》，嘗云："廓清鋪張，遂欠真趣，所謂'吁嗟濶兮，不我活兮'者也。"張元長《梅花草堂集》卷十《三台行記題辭》云："讀嘉靖諸君子記游之作，如北地位置廬山，山東刻劃太華，琅琊譜牒岱宗，所謂高文大冊，與天不朽。然恐眉疎眼巨，不親小物，山靈豈得無知己未盡之感"云云，可相發明。（孫德祖《寄龕文存》馬賡良《序》云："惲大雲與人牋云：'廬山游記，竟流元明習氣，然奇境不暢寫，山靈有知，後此必有風雨之阻。'大雲文品最高，乃亦有不忍高居云云。"可與張語參觀。）【蕭士瑋《春浮園辛未偶錄》五月初八："'所說無一急，𠴲唅一何多。疲倦向之久，甫問君極那'……便是弇山、太函諸人游記耳。"】【詞句掎摭秦漢，而機調拈弄作態，則八股小品之習，此節無人拈出。尺牘、題跋尤采擷《世說新語》。《少室山房筆叢》卷二十九論《世說》云："嘉、隆間尺牘、詩詞靡不采掇"云云，是也。】然終有體面。湯海秋極尊弇州便落獷野，有都洛之異。《列朝詩集》丁五指摘于鱗用古之割裂紕繆，弇州雖不至此，亦每欠妥帖。《圍爐詩話》卷六斥其"漢壁晨馳大將牀"、"殘夜花明月滿樓"等語（上句出《贈楊仲芳武選》，下句出《同省中諸君過徐丈》，二詩皆錄《皇明詩選》卷十一中），第二句特與出語不稱，第一句"晨"字則杜撰矣。又如《悼亡兒果祥》云："見汝娟娟淨，誰能不解顏"，何至以"雨洗"之竹相以[7] ？《病中于鱗等夜過》云："意氣扶衰眼，歡呼失病容"，衰可扶，眼亦可扶耶？《送曹子念赴永嘉》云："報贈豈無青案玉，歸裝定有赤城霞"，亦"巴西"、"仲翁"之類。又如《答李伯承》云："故人青玉吟為案，上國黄金别起臺"，似不知"案"之為"椀"，望文生義，直以為吟几矣！并錄於此。

〇《續稿》王元馭《序》云："當公少時，一二俊士，句飣字餖，欲藉大力者為幟，而以虛聲撼公，公稍矜踔應之。迨其晚年，閱盡天地間盛衰禍福之倚伏，江河陵谷之遷流，國是政體之真是非，才品文章之真脈絡，而慨然悟水落石出之旨，故其詩若文，盡脫去角牙繩縛，而恬淡自然為宗。蓋公晩而始好子瞻也。今之貌尊元美者，見其詩文輒曰：'此史，此固，此漢魏，此盛唐。'夫必史，必固，必漢魏，必盛唐句字而儀之，則當公之時，蓋亦有優於飾畫者矣！傳未數十年，新陳相變，世已笑其索然而無奇。嘉、隆之間，與公結軫而起者，皆以公重，非能重公者也。吾知吾元美而已。"按此《序》亦見《王文肅公文草》卷一，黃梨洲選之入《明文授讀》卷三十三，而誤為穆文熙作。元馭之意，已開《列朝詩集傳》丁六所謂元美"晚年定論"之說。《孫月峯先生全集》卷九《與李于田論文書》謂元美"氣脈本出子瞻，後乃飾以莊、左及子長"云云（同卷《與余君房論文書‧之五》略同）。則老去之新賞，正緣先入之宿好，《文子‧道原篇》所謂"求之遠者，往而復返"者歟？明承唐、宋，法後王其事順，法先王其勢逆。前後七子始必順流而下，繼乃逆波而上耳。月峯謂元美本出子瞻，渼陂謂德涵初好老泉（《渼陂續集》卷中《康公神道碑》），其彰彰可考者也。

〇卷一百五十《吳中往哲象贊‧歸有光》有云："先生於古文詞，雖出之自《史》、《漢》，而大較折衷於昌黎、廬陵。當其所得，意沛如也。不事雕飾，而自有風味，超然當名家矣。其晚達而終不得意，尤為識者所惜云。《贊》曰：'風行水上，渙為文章；當其風止，與水相忘。剪綴帖括，藻粉鋪張。江左以還，極於陳梁。千載有公，繼韓歐陽。余豈異趨，久而始傷。'"按弇州能識異量之美，牧齋遽據此以為其翻然改悔，降心相從之證。《初學集》卷七十九《與唐訓導汝諤論文書》、卷八十三《題歸太僕文集》、《有學集》卷四十九《題宋玉叔文集》、《列朝詩集傳》丁六、丁十二凡五引《贊》中語，皆竊易"久而始傷"為"久而自傷"，幾如刀筆吏伎倆，一字之差，語氣大異。《四庫提要》卷一百七十二《讀書後》、《震川集》兩條均承之[8] 。歸莊編《震川全集》，末即附弇州此《贊》及《列朝詩集》中震川傳，皆作"始傷"，蓋已改正，而《提要》諸臣竟瞠如無覩，亦怪事矣。【周櫟園《書影》卷一記弇州晚年翻然自悔作此《贊》事，又引作"始傷"；《明史‧文苑傳》則作"自傷"；李世熊《寒支二集》卷一《答葉慧生書》："及元美末年為震川《贊》，乃曰：'予豈異趣，晚而自傷。'蓋傷震川之不可及也"；呂星垣《白雲草堂文鈔》卷三《再復嚴明府書》云："究之王、李所成，不能軼出於韓、歐之徒之上。晚而自傷，竟屈伏於震川之下"；蔣湘南《七經樓文鈔》卷四《與田叔子論古文第二書》："論者謂弇州贊熙甫有'余豈異趨，久而自傷'之語，遂以熙甫上弇州，此則目睫之論也。熙甫之弊，在於有筆無文。……弇州州老而懷虛，龍門已矗，又何妨自貶以揚之？……若'優孟衣冠'之說，更不足以服弇州。偽八家詎非優孟乎？里魁市卒之衣冠，安見其能傲楚相之衣冠耶？"】夫"始傷"者，始知熙甫之不易得，而重惜其九原不復作也；"自傷"者，深悔己之失嚮狂走，迷途已遠，欲復為難也。二者毫釐千里，故仍標舉《史》、《漢》為究竟義，而曰"豈異趨"，以示己之亦法《史》、《漢》，特不自韓、歐入耳。王麟洲《藝圃擷餘》云："正如韓、柳之文，何有不從左、史來者。彼學而成為韓為柳，我却又從韓、柳學，便落一塵矣。輕薄子遽笑韓、柳非古，與夫一字一語必步趨二家者，皆非也"云云，可參觀。弇州晚年議論寬平，肯以"西京以下牛耳"許韓，"宋文中與蘇氏居洛屋兩頭"稱歐（見《讀書後》卷三《書韓文後》‧《書歐文後》，《讀書後》諸篇目錄附見《續稿》目錄卷八後，而其文別行，未收入），非不賞音，然政如右軍之稱鍾、張為"絕倫"，而曰"吾可與抗行"，非北面而朝者。《續稿》卷一百七十五《與徐宗伯書》云："弟數年來甚推轂韓、歐諸賢，以為大雅之文，故當於熙甫不薄，第無繇相聞耳"；卷一百八十一《與李仲子能茂》云："劉子威、吳瑞穀諸君，不過日取《三蒼》、《五雅》、揚雄《方言》之類，字剽而句擬之，以文其陋。足下但讀《左》、《國》、《短長》、賈誼、史遷數大家言，何嘗有此也！若爾更不如昌黎、河東、廬陵、眉山之為快"；卷一百八十二《與顏廷愉》云："願足下多讀《戰國策》、《史》、《漢》、韓、歐諸大家文意，不必過抨王道思、唐應徳、歸熙甫。旗鼔在手，即敗軍之將、僨羣之馬，皆我役也。至於詩，取則於盛唐，取材於獻吉、于鱗輩，自不憂落夾矣。"此三節豈牧齋所謂"晚年定論"乎？惟卷一百八十三《與于鳬先》云："詩須取李、杜、高、岑、王、孟之典顯者熟之，有得而稍進於建安、潘、陸、陶、謝。文取韓、柳兩家平正者熟之，有得而稍進於班、馬、先秦"云云，則以于之詩"未易屈指訾"，文"篇法未講"，"句病、字病乘之"，中人以下，不足語上耳。故其晚年自為文，仍時時藻粉點綴，惟書牘、題跋、七言近體詩學東坡波瀾老成者，如此而已。我慢矜狂，依然狂奴故態，觀《續稿》卷一百八十二《與徐孟孺‧之一》、《與程巢父》、卷一百八十八《寄敬美弟‧之三》，乃欲與于鱗爭雄代興，寧肯一瓣香為熙甫哉？《四部稿》卷一百二十八《答陸汝陳》云："足下以為僕見歸文不多，輒便誣詆，使僕啣後生輕薄之愧。歸生規格傍離，操縱唯意，單詞甚工，邊幅不足，每得其文讀之，未竟輒解，隨解輒竭，若欲含至法於詞，吐餘勁於言，雖復累車，殆難其選。僕不恨足下稱歸文，恨足下不見李于鱗耳。昔有問王中郎、謝僕射優劣，桓公臨欲答，復停曰：'公好傳人語，不能復語卿。'僕偶然之談，足下得無示人乎？"《讀書後》卷四《書歸熙甫文集後》云："陸明謨貽書責余不能推轂熙甫，盛年憍氣，漫應之。熙甫集中有一篇盛推宋人，而目我輩為蜉蝣之撼不容口，當是於陸生所見報言，故無言不酬，吾又何憾哉！故是近代名手，志、傳、碑、表，昌黎十四，永叔十六，又最得昌黎割愛脫賺法，唯銘詞小不及。所不足者，起伏與結構也。照應點綴，絶不可少，而貴琢之無痕"云云。以此二篇與《往哲象讚》參觀，庶幾不墮牧齋彀中矣。王山史《砥齋集》卷二《書錢牧齋湯臨川文集序》云："'弇州艷義仍之名，先往造門，有古人之風焉。義仍不與相見，盡出其所評抹弇州集，散置几案。'預出之以度弇州之至耶？抑延弇州至堂而後出之耶？其述事似飾而未確。'弇州信手繙閱，掩卷而去。'卒不聞有他言以復。此弇州之弘，而亦足以見義仍之佻矣！牧齋欲訾弇州，而適著其美；而其譽義仍也，君子以為猶詆也"云云，雖斥牧齋，而仍過信其言。《列朝詩集傳》丁五《吳國倫傳》云："海內噉名之士，不東走弇州，即西走下雉"，丁六《汪道昆傳》云："海內之山人詞客，望走噉名者，不東之婁東，則西之谼中"。數葉之內，矛盾如此！據《玉茗堂尺牘》卷一《答王澹生》云："於敝鄉帥膳郎舍論李獻吉，於歷城趙儀郎舍論李于鱗，於金壇鄧儒孝館中論元美，各標其文賦中用事出處，及增減《漢》、《史》、唐詩字面處。有傳於司寇公之座者，公微笑曰：'隨之。湯生標塗吾文，他日有塗湯生文者。'弟聞之憮然。"牧齋所記，分明揑造。《尺牘》卷三《復費文孫》自言與二美"不往還"，亦可證也（卷四《與張夢澤》亦隱詆弇州）。牧齋蒙義仍讚賞（《玉茗堂文集》卷一《張元長噓雲軒文字序》、《尺牘》卷六《答錢受之太史》），遂故甚其詞以酬耳。《道古堂文集》卷二十八《書汪息廬辨誣後》云："蒙叟之詆王、李也，其有爭心乎？因王、李而及汪司馬伯玉，則人欲橫决，肆意衝口，無復檢制，尚足與辨乎？"黃謙牧《夢陔堂詩集》卷二十二《題汪伯玉司馬誥命卷》謂汪息廬有《列朝詩集辨誣》一冊[9] ，竊謂余所拈出此段因緣，與第八十則、第百三十六則，皆"辨誣"也。政恐息廬輩未必知耳。鍾伯敬《隱秀軒詩‧黃集》三《弇園憶贈王元美先生四首》："有詩滋異議，無史答明時"；"吾聞公長者，眾謂世文人。"

〇卷一百六十《題程應魁詩後》："孟孺曰：'公不善書，何以獨後先論書？'余笑曰：'管公明雲："善易者不論易。"吾不善書，是以論書也。'"按參觀《四部稿》卷一百五十三末一則云："吾眼中有筆，故不敢不任識書；腕中有鬼，故不任書。記此以解嘲。"即《湧幢小品》卷二十二所駁者，實本之坡公、米老之說也，詳見第五百則論《寶晉英光集》卷三《自漣漪寄薛郎中紹彭》詩。又《續稿》卷一百六十四《題豐存禮手札》云："余毎覽豐人翁書，輒怪其胸次有眼，能聚古碑於筆端；而腕指却有鬼掣搦之，不使縱其外擫，以取姿態"，與解嘲語略同。雖然弇州學右軍行書，滯弱無力亦無致，余於日人編《書道全集》第二十卷中覩豐南禺草書，則真有怒猊抉石、渴驥奔泉之態也。

〇觀《續稿》卷一百五十六至一百五十九諸題跋，乃知弇州中歲後，縱觀釋、道兩藏。有明文流攻乎異端，博涉外道之書者，前有宋景濂，後有錢受之。宋、錢於釋藏精究皆過弇州，於道藏則輸弇州獨探。《南吳舊話錄》卷十三記馮習卿云："王元美如杭州租物，無事不有，求欲收藏，寥寥落落"，譏之太過矣。又按《皇明詩選》卷九陳臥子評胡元瑞云："如中賈張肆，不皆珍異，卻無物不有"，與馮評弇州語同。《唐詩歸》卷四鍾伯敬評張說云："燕公大手筆，奇變精出，不墮作家氣，尤其胸中無宿物。今之大家，如都門肆中通套禮物，事事見成，事事不中用，賃來賃去，終非我有，衹見不情耳。"可參觀。

〇《續稿》卷一百七十六《與元馭閣老》云："辱諭諸老意欲弟以《詩刪》為據，稍成損益，葺為一編。弟嘗謂'作者不鑒'，古有斯言，于鱗此《刪》，遺憾不少。必欲厭服羣心，少假時日乃可。"按《四部稿》卷一百四十七云："于鱗選杜七律，似未識杜者，恨曩時不為極言"，又云："錢、劉佳句，于鱗不錄，又所未解。"屠長卿《鴻苞集》卷十七《論詩文》云："于鱗選唐詩，衹取其格峭調響類己者，一家貨何其狹耶！如孟浩然'欲尋芳草去，惜與故人違'，幽致妙語，于鱗深惡之，宜其不能選唐詩。詩道亦廣矣，何其自視大而宇宙小乎？"（屠長卿《白榆集》卷三《高以達少參選唐詩序》亦云："于鱗選較高氏《品彙》加精，然取悲壯而去清遠，采峭直而舍婉麗，重氣骨而略性情，不無遺恨焉"）。

〇《續稿》卷一百七十九《與元馭閣老》云："騏兒嬾散任真，矯枉過正，未便恰好。"按弇州書牘中，數言其子之嬾嫚。《列朝詩集傳》丁六云："士騏字冏伯，元美之長子也。論詩文多與弇州異同，嘗語余曰：'先人搆弇山園，疊石架峯，以堆積為工。吾為泌園，土山竹樹，與池水映帶，取空曠自然而已。'余笑曰：'兄殆以為園喻家學乎'"云，蓋非弇州肖子，牧齋有以窺其隙也。弇州與妻不睦，讀王辰玉《緱山先生集》卷十四《魏淑人傳》可見，略云："他姓母生辰，趨為壽者塞巷，先妣愴然曰：'傷哉魏淑人，誰為投薪冷釜者乎！'衡重有感焉！乃為文□壽淑人，且嘆弇州先生以章采太洩，不克長世；淑人處靜晦，故宜壽。然未兩月，夫人竟沒。沒之日，趨□冏伯諸兄弟，冏伯固非夫人生，乃哭致毀不成聲，（中略）曰：'吾母實有隱德，不孝心知之，不能言，言亦不忍盡。'淑人十五歸弇州公，事嚴姑郁夫人。淑人故朴直得讓多，夫婦相敬如大賓，弇州公以其有意相遠也，微嗛之。淑人乃益自遠，中歲遽謝家乘，日與二、三爨婢落落相對而已。淑人無子，子貳室高之子士驌，少才隽自喜，一旦中蜚語，淑人沒而驌猶然囚服也。初冏伯於驌弟恣柔愛之道，朝夕暱近無間，已隙漸開，又一年而甲午之事起，家人刺刺，環淑人牀頭，曰：'仇弟者兄也'，淑人不應。平居寡言笑，常謂其愛女某曰：'吾隨汝父京邱，一日大雨庭潦，㽻一木為梁。汝父引余手以渡，汝祖母瞥見，大慙，幾墮水。夫婦手相引，而可令人見乎'云云。"王士驌事，見《野獲編》卷十八《江南訛傳》條。然牧齋撰著，正亦苦堆積，吳修齡《正錢錄》即譏其文以古字換今字，與弇州同病（參觀第六百四十七則），故《潛邱劄記》卷五《與戴唐器書》數斥牧齋文點染不能本色，排比不能單行（《昭昧詹言》卷一謂："百詩於文章之事無與，然其言有精當可取者"，即指此數語）。徐昭法《居易堂集》卷五《惠而行詩草序》云："今世之所謂文章鉅公，自負起衰救弊者，又以暢達為性情，富贍為神采，體格風調，一概抹摋"，亦指牧齋也（參觀《彙刻列朝詩集小傳》錢陸燦《序》、《柳南續筆》卷三）。其異於弇州者，漁獵較廣博，機調較諧潤，修琢較勻緻耳。

〇《續稿》卷一百八十八《與顧憲副益卿‧之三》云："弟眉毛也，何足關頤頰間事？"卷一百九十三《與石拱辰司馬‧之一》云："且弟面上眉耳。"按《四部稿》卷一百二十八《寄友人》云："吾譬如面上眉雖少，用處自不可無。"陳玉田《黃嬭餘話》卷二引鄭仲夔《清言》記王弇州語吳峻伯云云，因謂"楊孟載號眉菴，寓意正如此。"蓋陳氏不知弇州語之有本也。《唐語林》卷六顧況諷其府公曰："某夢口、鼻、眼爭高下，眉曰：'我雖無用，亦如世有賓客，何益主人？無即不成禮儀；若無眉，成何面目？'"且不道陳仲醇字眉公，何耶？《野獲編》卷二十三云："陳仲醇別號眉公，人頗稱其新，但國初詩人楊孟載已號眉菴，謂如人眉在面，雖不可少，而實無用，以寓自謙。仲醇意亦取此，然亦落第二義矣"云云，似亦未知顧逋翁語也。袁小修《珂雪齋近集》（中央書店全編本）卷三《普仰寺大士殿乞檀文》云："今夫人面之有眉，至無用也。其不如目司視，耳司聽，鼻司臭，舌司嘗之用也審矣。而眉乃以其無用者，踞於耳目口鼻之上，而獨處其尊。有美丈夫於此，以為吾有耳目口鼻足矣，安所需無用之眉，而剪除之，汙垢之，有不至投礫者乎？"亦隱用逋翁語。《五燈會元》卷十七歸宗志芝偈曰："未到應須到，到了令人笑；眉毛本無用，無渠底波俏。"張宗子《瑯嬛文集》卷六《祭秦一生文》云："世間有絕無益於世界，絕無益於人身，而卒為世界人身所斷不可少者，在天為月，在人為眉，在飛植為草本花，為燕鸝蜂蝶之屬。"《清詩紀事初編》卷四："蔣中和晚號眉三子，謂人之一身，惟眉最無用，兩且為贅，而況三乎！"

〇《續稿》卷二百《與屠長卿‧之一》。按書中引于鱗語，見《滄溟集》卷一《鼓樂府自序》。長卿原書見《由拳集》卷十四《與王元美先生》，論弇州詩文得失頗得間，弇州答書亦無愧於存心知也。

〇《續稿》卷二百三《與況吉夫》論"千古而有子長，亦不能成《史記》。"按其第一說所謂"嘗筆之《巵言》"者，見《四部稿》卷一百四十六。屠長卿《鴻苞集》卷十四《詹炎下》論"我朝無史"其之一、二、三全同。袁伯修《白蘇齋類集》卷二十《論文上》謂："且空同諸文，尚多己意，紀事述情，往往逼真。其尤可取者，地名官銜，俱用時制。今却嫌時制不文，取秦、漢名銜以文之。……而近說乃云西京以還，封建宮殿，官師郡邑，其名不雅馴，雖子長復出，不能成史"云云，即指弇州，卷五《同惟長舅讀唐詩有感》所謂"一從馬糞巵言出"是也。《孫可之集》卷二《與高錫望書》謂"史才最難"，千古惟司馬子長，而曰："史家紀職官、山川、地理、禮樂、衣服、亦宜直書一時制度，使後人知某時如此，某時如彼，不當以秃屑淺俗，則取前代名品，以就簡編"云云，識力遠在弇州上矣。《容齋隨筆》卷十："漢官名既古雅，故書於史者，皆可誦味"；尚鎔《持雅堂文集》卷五《讀左氏傳二》謂："《日知錄》云：'作詩文官名、地名不可稱古。'然《春秋》於列國之卿皆曰'大夫'，不書'宋殺其司馬孔父'，'楚殺其令尹得臣'。孔子刪詩，《邶》、《鄘》皆《衛風》，而不統以《衛》；《唐風》皆晉詩，而不名為晉。左氏亦言不利子商，夫商之為宋久矣"云云，可助弇州張目。《孫月峯先生全集》卷九《與余君房論文書‧之四》云："弇州文字雖俊勁有神，然所可議者，只是不確。不論何事，出弇州手，便令人疑其非真。"參觀 Walter Bagehot,Literary Studies, ed. R.H. Hutton, vol. I, p. 227: "It is not a style in which you can tell the truth. Truth is of various kinds — grave, solemn, dignified, petty, low, ordinary; an historian who has to tell the truth must be able to tell what is vulgar as well as what is great. Gibbon is at fault here. He cannot mention Asia Minor... he omits what does not suit him."

〇《續稿》卷二百六泰半皆《答胡元瑞書》，稱其詩，一則曰："不知仲黙、于鱗前亦有之否三"，再則曰："有足下，于鱗未為死也七"，三則曰："于鱗外，首稱獨步可也八"，四則曰："家弟生平所推轂，僅于鱗與吾元瑞十五"。此外推其博學，許其詩識。又與友人書亦時及之，如卷一百八十《與李允達》、卷一百八十一《與李仲子能茂》、卷一百八十七《與張助甫》、卷一百九十八《答邢知吾》，宜弇州門下有由羨生妬者矣！《野獲編》卷二十三云："王元美伯仲并東南諸名士大會於湖中，汪仲淹傲然起，謂弇州曰：'公奈何遽以詩統傳元瑞，此等得登壇坫，將置吾儕何地？'弇州倉卒不及答，元瑞亦識仲淹氣盛，第怒目視。戚元敬軟語兩解之，胡大怒移罵，目為粗人，滿座不歡。時人作雜劇嘲之曰：'胡學究醉鬧湖心亭，戚總兵敗走萬松嶺。'"今觀《弇州續稿》卷一百八十一《與汪仲淹‧之四》云："足下篇什自足籠罩時輩。元瑞器不勝才，吻不謀腕，腦滿腸肥，談笑間生荊棘，何足與較也？"當是指汪、胡交惡事，而故抑元瑞，以平仲淹之憤耳。《弇州山人續稿》卷六十八《胡元瑞傳》云："有莫生者，躁而貪，以品不登上中，側目元瑞甚，屬伯玉、元敬游西湖，故遍詈坐客為閧端，元瑞夷然弗屑也。及在弇，仲淹被酒狎元瑞，元瑞拒弗受。客謂元瑞曰：'曩湖上之役，胡以異兹？'元瑞徐曰：'莫生者庸，詎足校也？仲淹司馬公介弟，吾儕當愛之以德，奈何成人過耶？'"《少室山房類稿》卷十二《仲淹病臥三載矣兹以余之抵新都也為我一至桃溪再至岩市三至太函聞余告歸意殊戀戀別之古詩二章》、卷三十一《贈汪仲淹伯仲》、卷三十三《示能齋頭阻雨仲淹輿疾來會一律遲之》、《簡汪仲淹時以足病居肇林去太函三十里》、卷三十四《汪仲淹病足三年未瘳余先有此疾半載始癒戲作十六韻嘲之并期起色焉》、卷五十七《早春汪司馬伯玉抵嚴陵以手札見招先此奉柬期司馬過小園時仲淹同至》、卷七十五《答汪仲淹》、《別汪仲淹二首》。卷百十一《報長公》云："至於弇園雅集，狂客嗣興，尤為可笑。藉令不肖才至駑劣，不遇明公，猶將躑躅中原，披猖小島，秋蟄春蚓，不竅自鳴，寧至與此輩較量身手，挈競短長"；卷百十三《中秋湖上飲歸柬伯玉司馬並元敬大將軍》："夫公瑕之詩，不肖固贊之不啻口出者，而彼以為譏。彼以沉湎之餘，乘鬨詈之後，修睚眦之隙，報疇昔之故。跳梁於湖光山色之間，呶叫於朗月清風之下。蓋自有中秋有西湖以至今日，未有若斯會之奇，亦未有若斯會之厄者也。雖然其人醉矣，始而怒號，旋即創艾長跽乞盟者再，指天畫地而自誓者三，不肖第付之一粲而已"；《報伯玉司馬》："仲淹即世，十載同盟，一朝電露，私衷悼惻，何可勝言"；《報汪氏二仲洎獻于肇元諸昆》。

【葉思菴矯然《龍性堂詩話初集》云："何大復《懷寄邊子》詩（乾隆十四年刊本《何大復先生集》卷二十七）'汝從元歲侍今皇，誰念先朝老奉常。一出雲霄空悵望、十年岐路各蒼茫。'起最似李義山《上令狐相公》詩。王元美最愛而屢效之，《送史僉事》云：'汝過崆峒劍色開，輕裘千騎擁登臺'；《送汝康》云：'汝游桂嶺疑天盡，更入滇方覺地寛'；《寄仲芳》云：'當年汝拜尚書郎，天子宵衣問朔方'[10] ，亦稍彷彿。後陳臥子《寄楊伯祥》一律云：'汝從高臥豫章城，何減關西伯起名。鉅鹿風塵餘部曲，匡廬烟霧擁諸生。'深得奇妙。"按"似義山《上令狐》詩"語不知何指。《徐昌榖全集》（周文萃編本）卷九《贈別獻吉》云："爾放金鷄别帝鄉，何如李白在潯陽"；《薛考功集》卷七《贈陳真人》云："汝侍先皇游帝京，今年七十道將成"，皆此格。臥子詩見王述菴編《陳忠裕全集》卷十七，題為《寄懷楊機部太史》，同卷《寄方密之翰林》云："汝奉金輿帝子家，誰憐孤客滯天涯"；王敬美《王奉常集》卷九《送周公瑕還吳‧之二》云："爾向滄江問釣磯，風塵猶是舊荷衣。"又《龍性堂詩話續集》："王元美再召入京，一時親知出餞，置酒金山，醉後有云：'送客總歸惟月在，游人欲老奈山何！'袁小修最激賞之，謂《四部》中所無妙語，讀之信然。"[11] 】

【王畿《龍溪先生全集》卷十六《曾舜徵別言》："曾子鳳洲君，楚棘闈所取名士也。……君聰明絕世，博學多聞，……《藝苑巵言》古今詞人皆有評騭，友人之賢者書來見規曰：'以足下資，在孔門當備顏、閔科，何不為盛徳事，而方人若端木哉！'君愧不能答。弘正間，京師倡為詞章之學，李、何擅其宗。陽明先師結為詩社，更相倡和，……既而翻然悔之。……社中人相與惜之，……先師聞而笑曰：'……使學如韓、柳，不過為文人；詞如李、杜，不過為詩人。……蓋天蓋地，始是大丈夫。'……君之詩曰：'平生所讀盡千卷，著述亦餘千萬言；臨期一字用不著，咨磋咄唶空茫然。'是殆有意於友人之規。君之所愧，即先師之所悔，可謂能辨其志矣。"】

【董香光《容臺別集》卷二："弇州公嘗呵唐、宋人文字如此篇杜牧之《晚晴賦》，索之《四部稿》中，曾有一否？"卷三："王文肅論文推歸太僕，其於弇州公未嘗措意。弇州公亦謂文肅不脫措大氣。然文肅諸奏疏，筆芒迅利，一刀見血，《四部稿》中無是也。"】

【宋起鳳《稗說》卷三云："《弇州四部稿》有三變：當西曹至青州，機鋒肅括，立意遷固，尚近刻畫；迨秉鄖節，則巉刻之跡盡去，惟氣格體法尚矣；晚年家居，濫受羔雁諛墓祝觴之言，二氏雜進，雖耽白、蘇，實白、蘇弩末之技耳。是一手猶初、中、晚之殊，中多倩筆，斯誠門客所為也。若夫《金瓶梅》，全出一手，始終無懈氣浪筆與牽強補湊之跡，行所當行，止所當止，奇巧幻變，媸妍、善惡、邪正、炎涼情態，至矣！盡矣！殆《四部稿》中最化最神文字！（中略）聞弇州尚有《玉嬌麗》一書[12] ，與《金瓶梅》埒，係抄本。（中略）友人為余道其一二大略（下略）。"宋為明遺民，此書成於康熙十二年，頗多齊東野語，而絕少流傳，故節錄之。徐樹丕《識小錄》卷三："元美以造弇園而傾其貲，初落成時，有客題其門曰：'欲寫終天涙，堆成滿地懽。'"】

六百四十五

          陳之遴《浮雲集》。素菴詩學本之七子，觀《自序》及卷四《贈潘子子見》七古、卷九《鄱陽湖》五排小序可知，雖自言悟其非是，然結習難除，夙好猶在，特參以中、晚唐人耳。且已在牧齋彈射弘嘉體之後，故綴詞比事，較為細貼，非如北人李天生等依然以粗作大，賣為七子也。七律尤多工緻纏綿之什，最擅一氣之勝。【曹秋岳《靜惕堂詩集》卷四十四《雜憶平生詩友》第一首自注："陳素庵詩名《浮雲》，十之一二，非全本也。"周簹谷《采山堂詩集》卷四《讀陳海寧集外遺稿》："尚留詩卷在，猶是少陵風。"】

          〇卷一《短視賦》寫短視人之苦，戚戚吾心，有云："青春紫陌，有女如雲；游者目飫，先生徒聞"；又云："執手之友，漠如路人；傾蓋未識，謂我弟昆。"黃安濤《慰託集》卷一《沈瘦客昔昌黎云年未四十而視茫茫而髮蒼蒼而齒牙動搖今余亦然各賦一首》有云："有時尋江梅，不辨花與雪。有時逢麗人，惟見朱與碧。徜徉路道中，豈無客相識。彼或還能見，我轉近而失。其人疑我驕，往往易生隙。"可參觀。萬循初《柘坡居士詩集》卷十七有《自笑》七律一首亦詠短視，則浙派餖飣體，碎而不貼，了無風韻。黃野鴻《長吟閣詩集》卷四《目暗》七律，雖粗拙而如"逢人一一呼名悞，揮翰行行落點粗。昨夜山妻理寒服，笑他補綻亦模糊"，尚牽合有情也。【宋潛溪《宋文憲公全集》卷四十五《咨目童文》略云："走也病目，視不及尋。爾於咫尺，不分五牲。爾顙湊几，僅辨一丁。此明而執，熟視勿迎。彼不面識，反揖而承。"張弼《張東海全集》卷五《自題近視》："先代太師歐六一，當朝學士宋潛溪。"嚴長明《眼花》（《湖海詩傳》卷二十七）五古"夙憶宋金華"云云。《沈石田先生集》（陳仁錫編）五古一《戲人短視》云："睇遠野常霧，瞻晴天久陰。逢人昧真面，而從言語尋。把卷睫著字，具服倒捉衿。"謝雍錄本《枝山文集》卷四《奉和沈先生戲贈性父短視之篇》（五排）略云："對樹常疑屋，尋芳不辨柯。臨觴更喚酒，披縠妄稱羅。回身避石獸，揮策叱銅駝。堂名勞想像，壁障枉摩挲。占面悲歡誤，答儀輕重訛。短軀皆主簿，長帽即東坡。過鵲憎鴉噀，眠豬誤狗訶。"】

          〇卷七《燕京雜詩甲申四月作十二首》，當與卷九《燕京一百韻》合觀。此第三首之"翻城虎旅元牙爪，揖寇貂璫總腹心"即彼之"翻城皆虎騎，揖寇半貂璫"也。惟此僅憑弔故國之思，彼復增出"真人神器屬，大國義旌揚"等一段頌揚新朝語耳。董潮《東臯雜鈔》卷三云："素菴相國《燕京雜詩十二首》作於甲申四月，蒼涼悲壯，不減唐人，所惜局外快心之意多，故國戀君之感少耳。如'誰使金甌終缺陷，赤眉青犢滿都城按第一首'，儼以亡國之主責思陵。其'未歌玉樹已亡陳，不築阿房亦覆秦按第二首'，言思陵雖絕去聲色，終必亡也。又云：'烈皇亦是英明後，辛苦興邦反喪邦按第六首。'他如'翻城虎旅元牙爪，揖寇貂璫總腹心'云云，相國在明季以奸臣子永不敘用，於其亡也，不無幸心焉。舅氏副憲存齋云：'"千帳美人歌夜月，四郊殘鬼哭秋星按第七首"一聯，美人當喪亂之際，對此夜月豈盡"歌"者？此一字足見公富貴之念深矣！欲以"悲"字易之。'是雖親者不諱也。"可以參觀。卷七《大凌河》云："大凌河畔有頹墉，匝地長圍塹幾重。終見楚材供晉用，枉將墨守抗輸攻。黃沙漫漫驚鴻落，白霰濛濛倦馬衝。生聚十年良不易，幾家烟火事春農？"亦所謂"有幸心"者也。【方中通《陪集》第二種《陪詩》卷一《過王父中丞公官署故址有感》第一首自注云："父執錢飲光語中通兄弟，曰曾遇故中官為僧者云：'一日先帝御經筵回宮，天顏不懌，忽歎曰："求忠臣必於孝子之門！"如是者再，某跪請其故，上曰："今早經筵有展書官陳之遴，其父祖苞巡撫河南失職，而大辟繫獄，之遴衣錦薰香，展書朕前，略無憂戚之色。不孝如此，豈能忠乎！"某進曰："展書官舊例皆然，跪近上前，恐有不潔之氣上觸，故衣必鮮華，展紬時要令芳徹御座耳。"上曰："既知此例，便當辭官，不然解差可也。朕聞有新進士方以智，其父孔炤亦以巡撫湖廣，與祖苞同罪下獄。聞以智懷血疏，終日於朝門外候百官過，叩頭求為上達。"言訖又歎曰："求忠臣必於孝子之門！"未幾，釋孔炤而辟祖苞矣！'"】【《漳浦黃忠端公全集》卷八《諭浙東士民詔》云："爾天下冠冕之國，神禹所奠，靈秀攸鍾，我朝三百年，忠節勳猷，爛於史冊。（中略）宮坊陳之遴等，皆行鏘璜瑀，音吐宮商，豈有忍視鄉閭坐拜□□之理？"】【徐樹丕《識小錄》卷二："鼎革之際□□□□□，率先投誠，則浙海寧陳之遴首也。（中略）其投誠一疏，至謂父為清朝而死，真塗面喪心，狗彘之不若也"；卷四："之遴丙戌夏秋間北上，先往長干謁洪承疇，說承疇以掘孝陵洩盡明朝秀氣。承疇但聽人伐松柏，而不遽發掘，可謂猶有人心。其《玉芝宮修史詩》揚揚新朝顯職，竟無一字有黍離之感，而抹摋神宗，至比之周之烈、顯，漢之成、哀"；"其為禮書時，寄一緘於蘇之富人云：'皇上今年十四，長如成人，天表英偉'云云[13] 。"】

          〇卷八《秋日偶成》第八首："天接燕臺勞北望，水趨遼海羨西流。"按參觀《晚晴簃詩匯》卷二十四季開生《尚陽堡即事》云："極塞有山皆北向，重邊無水不西流。"駸駸欲度驊騮前矣！其意皆本《北史‧魏本紀五》孝武帝語："此水東流，而朕西上。"

          〇卷八《病足》："羊腸踏遍傷心易，虎尾當前擬步艱。"按香山《江南謫居十韻》云："虎尾難容足，羊腸易覆輪"，無此深婉。

          〇卷十二《憶秦娥》："連朝舊雨，一庭今雪。"按"今雪"下字頗創，蓋自姜堯章《一萼紅》"池面冰膠，牆腰雪老"化出。參觀張玉田《長亭怨》："故人猶記舊遊否？雨今雲古。"

[1]"壞相"原作"壞想"。

[2]"第十一回"原作"第九回"。

[3]"惟剩"原作"只有"。

[4]"故國"原作"故城"。

[5]"天平勝寶三年"原作"天平勝寶十年"。

[6] 見《談藝錄‧一》（香港中華書局 1986 年補訂本 4 頁；北京三聯書局 2001 年補訂重排版 6-7 頁）。

[7] 杜甫《嚴鄭公宅同詠竹》云："雨洗娟娟淨"，王世貞此詩則云："見汝娟娟靜"，此處誤引為"淨"。

[8]"卷一百七十二"原作"卷一百四"。

[9]"黃謙牧"原作"黃謙谷"。

[10]《寄贈楊仲芳武選》原詩起云："當時爾拜尚書郎"，《龍性堂詩話》引作"當年汝拜尚書郎"。

[11]"最"原作"再"。

[12] 原文脫落"嬌"字。

[13] 原文列"其為禮書"一段於卷四之下，實為卷二。

Evernote helps you remember everything and get organized effortlessly. Download Evernote.

Weekly Book List, May 6, 2016

Compiled by Nina C. Ayoub May 01, 2016

AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDIES

A Chance for Change: Head Start and Mississippi's Black Freedom Struggle by Crystal R. Sanders (University of North Carolina Press; 250 pages; $27.95). Documents the collaboration of working-class black women and the federal government in creating, in 1965, the Child Development Group of Mississippi, a Head Start program that along with aiding children, provided work for the women as teachers and aides.

ANTHROPOLOGY

Fragile Elite: The Dilemmas of China's Top University Students by Susanne Bregnbaek (Stanford University Press; 172 pages; $85 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Draws on fieldwork at Beijing and Tsinghua Universities in a study of the psychological pressures experienced by students, including from their biological parents and the "parent" represented by the state.

Indigenous Bodies, Maya Minds: Religion and Modernity in a Transnational K'iche' Community by C. James MacKenzie (University Press of Colorado; 368 pages; $110 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). A study of tensions over religion and identity in the Guatemalan highland community of San Andres Xecul, whose residents profess varied Christian and indigenous beliefs.

Learning in Morocco: Language Politics and the Abandoned Educational Dream by Charis Boutieri (Indiana University Press; 304 pages; $85 hardcover, $32 paperback). Topics include the clash between government efforts to promote Arabic and a job market in which French is still key to advancement.

Mythic Frontiers: Remembering, Forgetting, and Profiting with Cultural Heritage Tourism by Daniel R. Maher (University Press of Florida; 294 pages; $79.95). Focuses on Fort Smith, Ark., in a study of distortions and embellishments of the past at heritage sites.

The Politics of Suffering: Syria's Palestinian Refugee Camps by Nell Gabiam (Indiana University Press; 232 pages; $85 hardcover, $30 paperback). Traces interactions between UNRWA, the United Nations' relief agency, and residents of three Palestinian camps in urban Syria.

The Strange Child: Education and the Psychology of Patriotism in Recessionary Japan by Andrea Gevurtz Arai (Stanford University Press; 233 pages; $85 hardcover, $25.95 paperback). A study of how children and their development became a focus of societal unease in the recessionary Japan of recent decades.

The Unseen Things: Women, Secrecy, and HIV in Northern Nigeria by Kathryn A. Rhine (Indiana University Press; 218 pages; $80 hardcover, $30 paperback). A study of HIV-positive Nigerian women who mask their condition.

ARCHAEOLOGY

Sacrifice, Violence, and Ideology Among the Moche: The Rise of Social Complexity in Ancient Peru by Steve Bourget (University of Texas Press; 431 pages; $75). Considers why sacrifice was key to the ideology, religion, and society of the ancient Peruvian culture; draws on data from Huaca de la Luna, a site where some 75 men were killed, dismembered, with their remains arranged with offerings.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Airport Urbanism: Infrastructure and Mobility in Asia by Max Hirsh (University of Minnesota Press; 201 pages; $87.50 hardcover, $25 paperback). A study of airport infrastructure in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore.

Painting the "Hortus deliciarum": Medieval Women, Wisdom, and Time by Danielle B. Joyner (Penn State University Press; 241 pages; $89.95). A study of a 12th-century illuminated manuscript compiled by Abbess Herrad of the Hohenbourg abbey in Alsace.

What Is Paleolithic Art? Cave Paintings and the Dawn of Human Creativity by Jean Clottes, translated by Oliver Y. Martin and Robert D. Martin (University of Chicago Press; 207 pages; $18). Translation of a 2011 work by the French archaeologist on cave painting that links the creative impulse of our ancestors to shamanism and explores the power and appeal of Paleolithic art for those who view it today.

CLASSICAL STUDIES

Beyond Boundaries: Connecting Visual Cultures in the Provinces of Ancient Rome edited by Susan E. Alcock, Mariana Egri, and James F.D. Frakes (Getty Research Institute; 408 pages; $69.95). Writings on the art and archaeology of the Roman provinces; topics include the creation of a sculptural tradition in the Roman Central Balkans.

Euripides' Revolution under Cover: An Essay by Pietro Pucci (Cornell University Press; 240 pages; $59.95). Examines the strategies used by the playwright to subvert a traditionally anthropomorphic view of the gods.

COGNITIVE SCIENCE

The Ancient Origins of Consciousness: How the Brain Created Experience by Todd E. Feinberg and Jon M. Mallatt (MIT Press; 366 pages; $35). Argues that consciousness in animals emerged 520 to 560 million years ago, much farther back than has been assumed and that all vertebrates have always been conscious.

COMMUNICATION

How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet by Benjman Peters (MIT Press; 298 pages; $38). Analyzes the failure of successive efforts to create a large-scale computer network in the Soviet Union between 1959 and 1989, in contrast with the success of the U.S. ARPANET, which went online in 1969.

Playing War: Military Video Games After 9/11 by Matthew Thomas Payne (New York University Press; 272 pages; $89 hardcover, $28 paperback). Examines the popularity of Call of Duty and other game franchises of the military-shooter variety and how they both challenge and perpetuate ideas of U.S. prowess.

ECONOMICS

Globalized Fruit, Local Entrepreneurs: How One Banana-Exporting Country Achieved Worldwide Reach by Douglas Southgate and Lois Roberts (University of Pennsylvania Press; 248 pages; $59.95). Focuses on business interests in and near the port of Guayaquil in a study of how Ecuador became the leading world exporter of bananas without the domination of foreign multinationals.

Integrating Social and Employment Policies in Europe: Active Inclusion and Challenges for Local Welfare Governance edited by Martin Heidenreich and Deborah Rice (Edward Elgar Publishing; 328 pages; $135). Draws on research on 18 localities in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Sweden.

EDUCATION

Education and the Commercial Mindset by Samuel E. Abrams (Harvard University Press; 417 pages; $39.95). Topics include the history of Edison Schools as a once-leading for-profit educational management organization, and charter management organizations that followed.

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Fighting King Coal: The Challenges to Micromobilization in Central Appalachia by Shannon Elizabeth Bell (MIT Press; 344 pages; $65 hardcover, $32 paperback). Draws on fieldwork in southern West Virginia in a study of why few in the region have joined a movement to combat industry-produced hazards to health.

Natural Interests: The Contest over Environment in Modern France by Caroline Ford (Harvard University Press; 281 pages; $49.95). Discusses the 19th and early 20th centuries as a neglected period in the emergence of environmentalism in France; topics include concerns over deforestation, and the impact of major floods in Paris in 1856 and 1910.

Taking Chances: The Coast after Hurricane Sandy edited by Karen M. O'Neill and Daniel J. Van Abs (Rutgers University Press; 292 pages; $90 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Writings by biologists, urban planners, climatologists, and others on whether the 2012 hurricane has changed perceptions and policies on coastal hazards; focuses on New Jersey.

GAY AND LESBIAN STUDIES

Lesbian Decadence: Representations in Art and Literature of Fin-de-Siecle France by Nicole G. Albert, translated by Nancy Erber and William Peniston (Harrington Park Press, distributed by Columbia University Press; 403 pages; $85). Draws on literary, artistic, and other realms in a study of a simultaneous demonization and poeticization of lesbianism during the period.

GEOGRAPHY

Hitler's Geographies: The Spatialities of the Third Reich edited by Paolo Giaccaria and Claudio Minca (University of Chicago Press; 378 pages; $55). Writings on Lebensraum, Entfernung, and other geographic concepts used by Hitler to justify his expansionism, exploitation, and genocide.

HISTORY

Abolitionizing Missouri: German Immigrants and Racial Ideology in Nineteenth-Century America by Kristen Layne Anderson (Louisiana State University Press; 272 pages; $48). Focuses on St. Louis in a study that documents a wide and ambivalent range of German immigrant views on slavery and racial hierarchies.

Abraham Lincoln and Liberal Democracy edited by Nicholas Buccola (University Press of Kansas; 256 pages; $35 hardcover, $17.95 paperback). Essays on Lincoln's response to "ultimate questions" in politics, including issues of law, liberty, sovereignty, and equality.

Accidental State: Chiang Kai-shek, the United States, and the Making of Taiwan by Hsiao-ting Lin (Harvard University Press; 338 pages; $39.95). Draws on recently declassified archives to argue that the creation of Taiwan was not the result of deliberate planning, but rather emerged from ad hoc half measures and compromises.

Africans in the Old South: Mapping Exceptional Lives across the Atlantic World by Randy J. Sparks (Harvard University Press; 204 pages; $26.95). Discusses six West Africans who lived in the South between 1760 and 1860 and whose experiences, including manumission, passing, and legal struggles, challenge dominant narratives.

Boy Soldiers of the American Revolution by Caroline Cox (University of North Carolina Press; 208 pages; $29.95). Draws on diaries, letters, and memoirs in a study of the experiences of boys under 16---including some as young as nine---who served in the Revolutionary army.

Comrade Huppert: A Poet in Stalin's World by George Huppert (Indiana University Press; 157 pages; $24). A biography of the Austrian Communist and writer (1902-82).

Court-Martial: How Military Justice Has Shaped America From the Revolution to 9/11 and Beyond by Chris Bray (W.W. Norton & Company; 398 pages; $28.95). A history of the military trials that considers their relationship to wider debates in American society.

D-Day Remembered: The Normandy Landings in American Collective Memory by Michael R. Dolski (University of Tennessee Press; 336 pages; $45). Traces representations of the June 6, 1944, invasion in film, literature, museum exhibits, journalism, and other realms over the past seven decades.

The Enlightenment of Cadwallader Colden: Empire, Science, and Intellectual Culture in British New York by John M. Dixon (Cornell University Press; 264 pages; $35). A study of a Scottish-born colonial politician and "gentleman-scholar" (1688-1776), who was a pioneer in colonial botany, wrote a history of the Iroquois, and pursued other intellectual interests from his home in rural New York.

Europe's Utopias of Peace: 1815, 1919, 1951 by Bo Strath (Bloomsbury Academic; 537 pages; $128 hardcover, $39.95 paperback). Examines efforts to create a lasting peace on the continent, with a focus on the Congress of Vienna, the Versailles Treaty, and the Schumann Plan.

Feeding Manila in Peace and War, 1850--1945 by Daniel F. Doeppers (University of Wisconsin Press; 472 pages; $79.95). Discusses rice, produce, and other commodities in a study of the rural provisioning of the Philippines capital, including a breakdown in supplies that led to starvation during World War II.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: The War Years, 1939-1945 by Roger Daniels (University of Illinois Press; 636 pages; $34.95). Completes a biography of the president, with a focus on his command in world affairs.

From Day to Day: One Man's Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps by Odd Nansen, edited by Timothy J. Boyce (Vanderbilt University Press; 616 pages; $39.95). Includes previously untranslated selections from the Norwegian architect's wartime diary, which was originally translated into English in 1949.

The Habsburg Empire: A New History by Pieter M. Judson (Harvard University Press; 567 pages; $35). A study of the empire (1770-1918) that emphasizes the shared institutions, administrative practices, and cultural programs that bridged its diverse societies.

The Invasion of Canada by the Americans, 1775-1776: As Told Through Jean-Baptiste Badeaux's Three Rivers Journal and New York Captain William Goforth's Letters edited by Mark R. Anderson, translated by Teresa L. Meadows (State University of New York Press; 224 pages; $80). Offers contrasting first-hand accounts of the Quebec campaign of the Revolutionary War.

Kosher USA: How Coke Became Kosher and Other Tales of Modern Food by Roger Horowitz (Columbia University Press; 303 pages; $35). Topics include the extension of kosher certification to Coca Cola, Jell-O, and other products, and debates over techniques of kosher slaughter.

Last Outpost on the Zulu Frontiers: Fort Napier and the British Imperial Garrison by Graham Dominy (University of Illinois Press; 279 pages; $45). Examines the key imperial role played by an isolated garrison in the British southeast African Colony of Natal.

Matthew Flinders, Maritime Explorer of Australia by Kenneth Morgan (Bloomsbury Academic; 313 pages; $120). Discusses the British commander, navigator, and hydrographer (1774-1814), who was the first naval commander to circumnavigate Australia and establish it as a continent.

Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers: How a Nineteenth-Century Man of Business, Science, and the Sea Changed American Life by Tamara Plakins Thornton (University of North Carolina Press; 400 pages; $32.50). A biography of the mathematician, navigator, and actuary (1773-1838).

North Africa under Byzantium and Early Islam edited by Susan T. Stevens and Jonathan P. Conant (Dumbarton Oaks, distributed by Harvard University Press; 322 pages; $70). Writings by historians, archaeologists, and other scholars on life in the contested lands of western North Africa, with a focus on the pre-Islamic sixth century.

Opposing the Second Corps at Antietam: The Fight for the Confederate Left and Center on America's Bloodiest Day by Marion V. Armstrong Jr. (University of Alabama Press; 216 pages; $39.95). Completes a study of the Civil War battle that was the deadliest day of combat in American history.

The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andres Resendez (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 431 pages; $30). Examines varied forms of bondage and forced labor of indigenous populations in the Americas and argues that it was slavery more than epidemics that caused the populations' decimation in North America.

The Papers of James Madison: 1 March 1823-24 February 1826 edited by David B. Mattern and others (University of Virginia Press; 800 pages; $95). Includes Madison's replies to requests for advice from his presidential successor, James Monroe, and exchanges with Thomas Jefferson on what became the University of Virginia.

The Portland Black Panthers: Empowering Albina and Remaking a City by Lucas N.N. Burke and Judson L. Jeffries (University of Washington Press; 283 pages; $34.95). Discusses a branch of the Panthers formed in Portland's Albina district in the 1960s and disbanded in the 1980s; sets their creation, activism, and legacy in the wider context of race and politics in the Oregon city.

Religious Crisis and Civic Transformation: How Conflicts over Gender and Sexuality Changed the West German Catholic Church by Kimba Allie Tichenor (Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England; 304 pages; $40). Topics include the church's response to West German women leaving in large numbers because of its stand on contraception and other issues.

Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai: Maritime East Asia in Global History, 1550--1700 edited by Tonio Andrade and Xing Hang (University of Hawai'i Press; 396 pages; $69). Essays on such topics as diplomacy between Momoyama Japan and the Spanish Philippines in the 1590s.

Tales From the Long Twelfth Century: The Rise and Fall of the Angevin Empire by Richard Huscroft (Yale University Press; 305 pages; $50). Traces the rise and fall of the short-lived dynasty through the lives of eight men and two women---of the nobility and otherwise---who were significant to its history.

Zionism without Zion: The Jewish Territorial Organization and Its Conflict with the Zionist Organization by Gur Alroey (Wayne State University Press; 359 pages; $54.99). A study of Territorialism, an alternative movement to Zionism, and its efforts to obtain land for a Jewish state outside of Palestine.

HISTORY OF MEDICINE

Essays on Some Maladies of Angola (1799) by Jose Pinto de Azeredo, edited by Timothy D. Walker and others, translated by Stewart Lloyd-Jones (Tagus Press, distributed by University Press of New England; 144 pages; $24.95). Translation of a Portuguese physician's 1799 text on indigenous diseases and medical remedies.

HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" at Fifty: Reflections on a Science Classic edited by Robert J. Richards and Lorraine Daston (University of Chicago Press; 202 pages; $75 hardcover, $25 paperback). Topics include Thomas Kuhn's "Aristotle experience" and the impact of Cold War culture on his 1962 masterwork.

INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

Socialism of Fools: Capitalism and Modern Anti-Semitism by Michele Battini, translated by Noor Mazhar and Isabella Vergnano (Columbia University Press; 321 pages; $65). Translation of a 2010 Italian study on the emergence of a new form of anti-Semitism during the Enlightenment that expressed itself in an "anti-Jewish anticapitalism."

LABOR STUDIES

Not Talking Union: An Oral History of North American Mennonites and Labour by Janis Thiessen (McGill-Queen's University Press; 298 pages; US$110 hardcover, US$32.95 paperback). Draws on more than 100 interviews in a study of Mennonite responses to farmworkers' and other unions.

LINGUISTICS

Ojibwe Discourse Markers by Brendan Fairbanks (University of Nebraska Press; 222 pages; $70). A study of the Algonquian language that examines the role of mii, gosha, and other discourse markers.

LITERATURE

Emily Dickinson's Poems: As She Preserved Them edited by Cristanne Miller (Harvard University Press; 845 pages; $39.95). Annotated edition of Dickinson's verse that distinguishes some 1,100 poems she copied onto folded sheets with works she kept in rougher form.

Empiricist Devotions: Science, Religion, and Poetry in Early Eighteenth-Century England by Courtney Weiss Smith (University of Virginia Press; 288 pages; $45). Uses writings by Boyle, Newton, Locke, Addison, Defoe, Gay, and Pope to explore a "meditative empiricism" that linked science, religion, and literature.

Fashion and Fiction: Self-Transformation in Twentieth-Century American Literature by Lauren S. Cardon (University of Virginia Press; 232 pages; $29.50). Explores links among fashion, self-transformation, and upward mobility in works by such writers as Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Nella Larsen.

The Gospel According to David Foster Wallace: Boredom and Addiction in an Age of Distraction by Adam S. Miller (Bloomsbury Academic; 114 pages; $86 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Offers a religious perspective on Wallace's discussions of boredom, distraction, addiction, and other themes in The Pale King and Infinite Jest.

Indecent Exposure: Gender, Politics, and Obscene Comedy in Middle English Literature by Nicole Nolan Sidhu (University of Pennsylvania Press; 300 pages; $69.95). Discusses works by Chaucer, Langland, Lydgate, and other writers in a study of the role played by obscene comedy in England's literary and visual culture in the century and a half following the Black Death.

Literary Territories: Cartographical Thinking in Late Antiquity by Scott Fitzgerald Johnson (Oxford University Press; 195 pages; $74). Explores geography as defining principle in varied genres of Greek, Latin, Syriac, and other literature of AD 200 to 900; describes how authors viewed the oikoumene, or, for them, known inhabited world as a metaphor for the collection and organization of knowledge.

Literature, Law, and Rhetorical Performance in the Anticolonial Atlantic by Anne W. Gulick (Ohio State University Press; 258 pages; $99.95). Explores the challenging of colonial and imperial authority in texts from Haiti's declaration of independence to Ngugi wa Thiongo's A Grain of Wheat.

The Official World by Mark Seltzer (Duke University Press; 281 pages; $89.95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Uses suspense novels, films, and performance art to explore the contemporary predilection for self-reporting.

Physics Envy: American Poetry and Science in the Cold War and After by Peter Middleton (University of Chicago Press; 318 pages; $45). Focuses on physics in a study of the influence of science on the work of such poets as Charles Olson, Muriel Rukeyser, Amiri Baraka, and Rae Armantrout; also discusses physicists such as Robert Oppenheimer, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrodinger who looked to poetry for insight into the quantum world.

Science Fiction in Argentina: Technologies of the Text in a Material Multiverse by Joanna Page (University of Michigan Press; 246 pages; $80 hardcover, $39.95 paperback). Examines literature, cinema, theater, and comics in a study of the genre in Argentina since 1875.

Struggling Upward: Worldly Success and the Japanese Novel by Timothy J. Van Compernolle (Harvard University Asia Center, distributed by Harvard University Press; 246 pages; $39.95). Links the Meiji-era Japanese novel to risshin shusse, an emerging discourse on social mobility; topics include imagining rural Japan in novels of ambition.

Tropologies: Ethics and Invention in England, c.1350-1600 by Ryan McDermott (University of Notre Dame Press; 424 pages; $45). Draws on literary, theological, and other texts in a study of medieval and early modern views of the moral sense of scripture.

Women Write Iran: Nostalgia and Human Rights from the Diaspora by Nima Naghibi (University of Minnesota Press; 211 pages; $98 hardcover, $28 paperback). A study of memoirs, prison testimonials, documentary films, and other "life narratives" by Iranian women in diaspora.

MUSIC

Goze: Women, Musical Performance, and Visual Disability in Traditional Japan by Gerald Groemer (Oxford University Press; 304 pages; $99 hardcover, $35 paperback). Discusses a Japanese tradition from the 17th to the 20th centuries of thegoze---visually disabled women who traveled the countryside as professional singers.

The Pathetick Musician: Moving an Audience in the Age of Eloquence by Bruce Haynes and Geoffrey Burgess (Oxford University Press; 323 pages; $39.95). Focuses on Bach in a study of the performance of Baroque music.

Stalin's Music Prize: Soviet Culture and Politics by Marina Frolova-Walker (Yale University Press; 369 pages; $65). Draws on the transcripts of judging panels and other sources in a study of the annual prize and its recipients, who included such figures as Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Mayakovsky.

Tracing Tangueros: Argentine Tango Instrumental Music by Kacey Link and Kristin Wendland (Oxford University Press; 370 pages; $99 hardcover, $35 paperback). Traces innovations in the music since the 1920s.

PHILOSOPHY

Aesthetics of Negativity: Blanchot, Adorno, and Autonomy by William S. Allen (Fordham University Press; 316 pages; $65). Considers how the French and the German thinkers' views of negativity are mutually illuminating.

Meaning and Mortality in Kierkegaard and Heidegger: Origins of the Existential Philosophy of Death by Adam Buben (Northwestern University Press; 208 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Argues that the two philosophers offer a compromise between Platonic and Epicurean views of death.

Merleau-Ponty and the Art of Perception edited by Duane H. Davis and William S. Hamrick (State University of New York Press; 320 pages; $95). Topics include modernism, postmodernism, and the French philosopher's theory of signs.

The Mutual Cultivation of Self and Things: A Contemporary Chinese Philosophy of the Meaning of Being by Yang Guorong, translated by Chad Austin Meyers (Indiana University Press; 326 pages; $100 hardcover, $45 paperback). First English translation of the Chinese philosopher's work.

Traversals of Affect: On Jean-Francois Lyotard edited by Julie Gaillard, Claire Nouvet, and Mark Stoholski (Bloomsbury Academic; 293 pages; $112). Essays on the French philosopher (1924-98) and his work on affect before and after the turning point of The Differend (1983).

The Will to Reason: Theodicy and Freedom in Descartes by C.P. Ragland (Oxford University Press; 255 pages; $74). Topics include the French philosopher's effort to reconcile his concept of freedom with divine providence.

Without the Least Tremor: The Sacrifice of Socrates in Plato's "Phaedo" by M. Ross Romero (State University of New York Press; 192 pages; $75). Discusses Socrates' death as an act of self-sacrifice rather than an execution or suicide.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

China in the Era of Xi Jinping: Domestic and Foreign Policy Challenges edited by Robert S. Ross and Jo Inge Bekkevold (Georgetown University Press; 336 pages; $64.95 hardcover, $32.95 paperback). Writings by American, Asian, and European scholars on policy trends under China's current president.

The Decision to Attack: Military and Intelligence Cyber Decision-Making by Aaron Franklin Brantly (University of Georgia Press; 226 pages; $49.95). Develops a rational-choice model of how states decide to use cyber weapons against other states.

Politics Against Domination by Ian Shapiro (Harvard University Press; 273 pages; $35). A work in applied political theory that asserts the centrality of resistance to domination, here understood as the illicit use of power that threatens people's basic interests.

Taxing the Rich: A History of Fiscal Fairness in the United States and Europe by Kenneth Scheve and David Stasavage (Princeton University Press/Russell Sage Foundation; 320 pages; $29.95). Draws on data from 20 countries over the past two centuries in a study of factors that shape whether and to what extent the rich incur taxes.

Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict over Israel by Dov Waxman (Princeton University Press; 316 pages; $29.95). Draws on interview and other data in a study of the origins and impact of growing divisions over Israel among American Jews, particularly for a younger generation.

A World of Struggle: How Power, Law, and Expertise Shape Global Political Economy by David Kennedy (Princeton University Press; 298 pages; $29.95). Examines "rule by expertise" in global political and economic life, including legal expertise in warfare that, it is argued, has divorced politics from ethics and responsibility.

POPULAR CULTURE

Openness of Comics: Generating Meaning Within Flexible Structures by Maaheen Ahmed (University Press of Mississippi; 223 pages; $60). Draws on Umberto Eco's idea of the open work of art in a study of British, American, Franco-Belgian, German, and Finnish comics of varied genres.

RELIGION

Coming of Age in Jewish America: Bar and Bat Mitzvah Reinterpreted by Patricia Keer Munro (Rutgers University Press; 230 pages; $90 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Explores the conflicts and negotiations that can characterize the planning and performance of the rituals; draws on interviews with more than 200 people in Conservative, Orthodox, Reform, and independent congregations in the San Francisco Bay area.

Dismembering the Whole: Composition and Purpose of Judges 19-21 by Cynthia Edenburg (Society of Biblical Literature; 424 pages; $71.95 hardcover, $51.95 paperback). Examines, as political polemic, a tale of violence in Judges involving a Levite who hands over his concubine, in his stead, to a mob of Benjamites in Gibeah and after she is raped and dies, cuts her body into 12 pieces and sends a piece to each of the tribes of Israel.

The Mormon Jesus: A Biography by John G. Turner (Harvard University Press; 352 pages; $29.95). Traces changes in how Mormons have understood and experienced Christ since the church's beginnings; topics include views of the church's relationship to broader Christianity.

Patron Saint and Prophet: Jan Hus in the Bohemian and German Reformations by Phillip N. Haberkern (Oxford University Press; 334 pages; $74). Discusses both supporters and opponents of Hus in a study of the contested memory of the Bohemian religious reformer, who was burned as a heretic in 1415.

Signs and Wonders: Theology After Modernity by Ellen T. Armour (Columbia University Press; 323 pages; $105 hardcover, $35 paperback). Draws on Foucault in a work in philosophical theology that explores the public reception and photographic representation of four events, including the consecration of the openly gay Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson in 2003.

Traces of the Sage: Monument, Materiality, and the First Temple of Confucius by James A. Flath (University of Hawai'i Press; 320 pages; $55). Examines the history and material culture of Kong Temple, a monument to Confucius in Qufu, Shandong province.

The Valiant Woman: The Virgin Mary in Nineteenth-Century American Culture by Elizabeth Hayes Alvarez (University of North Carolina Press; 256 pages; $27.50). Uses women's magazines and other sources to document Mary's appeal as a symbol of womanhood for American Protestants as well as Catholics.

SOCIOLOGY

Distributing Status: The Evolution of State Honours in Western Europe by Samuel Clark (McGill-Queen's University Press; 520 pages; US$49.95). Discusses awards, decorations, and medals as instruments of power.

Living with Alzheimer's: Managing Memory Loss, Identity, and Illness by Renee L. Beard (New York University Press; 323 pages; $89 hardcover, $30 paperback). Argues that the medicalized view of Alzheimer's patients distorts their actual experience of life with memory loss; draws on observations of nearly 100 seniors undergoing cognitive evaluation.

SPORTS STUDIES

Iron Dads: Managing Family, Work, and Endurance Sport Identities by Diana Tracy Cohen (Rutgers University Press; 208 pages; $80 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). Draws on in-depth interviews with 47 male competitors to examine the pressures that training for "iron-distance triathlons" place on families.

THEATER

Edo Kabuki in Transition: From the Worlds of the Samurai to the Vengeful Female Ghost by Satoko Shimazaki (Columbia University Press; 372 pages; $60). Uses changes in the ghost play Yotsuya kaidan since its initial staging in 1825 to examine the fluid nature of kabuki theater into the modern era.

Spectacular Disappearances: Celebrity and Privacy, 1696-1801 by Julia H. Fawcett (University of Michigan Press; 304 pages; $65). Uses the concept of "over-expression" to explore the ways in which actors and other celebrities of the era both concealed and disclosed; figures discussed include David Garrick, Mary Robinson aka Perdita, Colly Cibber, and Cibber's cross-dressing daughter Charlotte Charke.

WOMEN'S STUDIES

Awkward Politics: Technologies of Popfeminist Activism by Carrie Smith-Prei and Maria Stehle (McGill-Queen's University Press; 280 pages; US$110 hardcover, US$27.95 paperback). Uses a concept of awkwardness to explore tensions in feminists' use of digital technologies in activism.

Power Interrupted: Antiracist and Feminist Activism inside the United Nations by Sylvanna M. Falcon (University of Washington Press; 244 pages; $90 hardcover, $30 paperback). Focuses on a world conference in Durban, South Africa, in 2001 in a study of anti-racist organizing by feminists from Mexico and Peru, and feminists (of color) from Canada and the United States.

Evernote helps you remember everything and get organized effortlessly. Download Evernote.