SIAN VOICES

IN ENGLISH

Edited by
Mimi Chan & Roy Harris
Department of English, University of Hong Kong

HONG KONG UNIVERSITY PRESS

 Pub.lished by Hong Kong University Press,
University of Hong Kong,
139 Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong

© Hong Kong University Press, 1991

ISBN 962 209 282 9

All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopy, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the Publisher

EDITORIAL BOARD

Mimi Chan
Julian Davey
Roy Harris
Jill Martin
Dino Mahoney

Printed in Hong Kong by Liang Yu Printing Factory Limited

(-==================C==ON==T==EN==T==S ==========~)
Contributors vii

Introduction 1

WOLFGANG ZACH
The Study of 'New Literatures in English' at University Level:
Current Problems and Trends 3

HANSUYIN
Plenary Lecture 17

RICHARD KIM
Plenary Lecture 23

CATHERINE LIM
Plenary Lecture: The Writer Writing in English in Multiethnic Singapore:
A Cultural Peril, A Cultural Promise 33

BIENVENlOO SANTOS
Plenary Lecture: The Filipino Writer in English as Storyteller and
Translator 43

ME IRA CHAND
The Experience of Writing in an Expatriate Situation 51

MERLINDA C. BOBIS
Scaling Daragang Magayon: The Bilingual Poet Translating Herself 55

MIMI CHAN
'Listen, Mom, I'm a Banana':·Mother and Daughter in
Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior and
Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club 65

LEON COMBER
Publishing Asian Writers in English 79
 CONTENTS

ROY HARRIS
English versus Islam: the Asian Voice of Salman Rushdie 87

Comments on Professor Harris' paper by CHRISTOPHER NEW 97

Response to Mr New's comments by ROY HARRIS 99

AAMER HUSSEIN
The Echoing of Quiet Voices 101

CHELVAKANAGANAYAKAM
Caliban in the Andes: Figures of Enchantment as Post-colonial Text 109

DOUGLAS KERR
David Henry Hwang and the Revenge of Madame Butterfly 119

RUTH MORSE
A Case of (Mis)taken Identity: Politics and Aesthetics in Some
Recent Singaporean Novels 131

GORDON T. OSING
The Poems of Su Tung P' 0: Catches and Losses in the Net of
Translation 147

NORMAN PAGE
Speech, Culture and History in the Novels of Kazuo Ishiguro 161

LILY ROSE TOPE

The Chinese Margin in Philippine Literature in English 169

NUR NINA ZUHRA

The Social Context of English-Language Drama in Malaysia 177

SYDHARREX
Spontaneous Impressions of Asian Voices 187

vi
Merlinda C. Bobis
De La Salle University, Philippines.

Mimi Chan
University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

MeiraChand
Of Swiss-Indian descent but now a long-standing resident of Japan. He has
written novels set both in India and Japan.

Leon Comber
University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

Roy Harris
University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

Syd Harrex
Flinders University of South Australia, Australia.

Aamer Hussein
London.

Chelva Kanaganayakam
Trinity College, University of Toronto, Canada.

Douglas Kerr
University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

Richard Kim
Now living in the United States and principally a documentary film maker, he
wrote several novels in the 1960s, dealing with his early experiences in Korea
during the Japanese Occupation and the Korean War.

Catherine Lim
Author of several collections of satirical short stories on life in her native
Singapore. She also lectures on sociolinguistics and literature.
 CONTRIBUTORS

Ruth Morse
Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University, U.K.

Christopher New
University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

Gordon T. Osing
Memphis State University, Tennessee, U.S.A.

Norman Page
University of Nottingham, U.K.

Bienvenido Santos
A prolific poet, novelist and short story writer. He has also taught creative
writing and received numerous awards both within the Philippines and inter-
nationally.

HanSuyin
The widely known novelist and historian of modem China and the original
inspiration behind the sumposium Asian Voices in English'.
I

Lily Rose Tope

University of the Philippines, Philippines.

Wolfgang Zach
Karl-Franzens-Universitat Graz, Institut Fur Anglistik, Germany.

Nur Nina Zuhra

MARA Institute of Technology, Malaysia.

viii
In December 1988, as part of the British Council's celebration of forty years' work
in Hong Kong, Dr Han Suyin gave a public lecture entitled 'Asian Writers in
English'. It was on that occasion that the idea of a meeting of Asian writers
currently publishing in English was first mooted. The British Council felt that the
organization of such a meeting was a worthwhile project. So did the Head of the
English Department at the University of Hong Kong when he was approached by
the Director of the British Council with a proposal for joint sponsorship of a
symposium to be entitled 'Asian Voices in English'.
The organizers were overwhelmed by the enthusiastic response to their invita-
tions to attend and their call for papers. Some eighteen months after the original
suggestion and after a year's preparation, the symposium was held at the Univer-
sity of Hong Kong from 27 April to 30 April 1990. In all there were nearly 150
participants from 17 countries.
The focus of the symposium was a series of lectures by six invited Asian
writers: Han Suyin, author of many books, including A Many-Splendoured Thing, a
biography of Mao Zedong and a five-volume autobiography I history of modern
China; Richard Kim, author of Lost Names, The Martyr and other novels with a Ko-
rean cultural background; Catherine Lim, writer of many short stories set in
Singapore; Bienvenido Santos, prolific Filipino American poet, novelist and short-
story writer; Pira Sudham, whose books Monsoon Country and People of Esarn
reflect his own experience of life in rural Thailand; and Nayantara Sahgal, author
of a series of political novels of modern India, including Rich Like Us, Point of De-
parture and A Situation in Delhi.
In addition to the public lectures given by the invited writers, the programme
included readings, discussions, workshops and academic papers. The latter were
divided into four areas of general interest: (D literature written in English from the
Far East and South Asia, (ii) Asian American and other immigrant literature,
(iii) creative writing in university curricula, and (iv) translation into English of
literature written in the languages of the Far East and South Asia.
Altogether, more than 60 papers were presented. The contributors came from
Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal,
New Zealand, Pakistan, the People's Republic of China, the Philippines, Singa-
pore, Thailand, U.K. and U.S.A.
In making a selection for inclusion in this volume, the Editors decided to focus
mainly on two prominent and complementary strands in contemporary Asian
English literature. One of these is 'post-colonial' writing, in which we see the re-
appropriation of the English language for their own cultural purposes by people
for whom it was formerly a symbol of imperialism. The other is 'immigrant'
writing, based on the experiences of Asians living in the U.K., U.s.A. and other
English-speaking countries.
The symposium was also the occasion of a literary competition for local Hong
Kong writers, with the invited speakers acting as judges. The first prize in the
short story section was awarded to David T.K. Wong and the second prize to
Manju Kak; in the poetry section the first prize went to Patrick Ng Pak Kay and the
second to Wu Chi Kuen.
If judged by the desire of those present at the symposium to hold further
gatherings of a similar kind and to involve even larger numbers of writers and
critics, clearly 'Asian Voices in English' was a successful venture. Many people
and organizations contributed towards its success, and we should like to take this
opportunity to acknowledge their help. The chief source of funding was the British
Council. The Louis Cha Fund also provided a very generous grant. The Secretary
for Education and Manpower, Mr Yeung Kai-Yin, opened the symposium. The
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, Dr Wang Gungwu, offered
accommodation in Robert Black College for the invited writers and also delivered
the closing address. The Master of Robert Black College, Professor W.s. Leung,
provided a gracious venue for an evening of poetry reading. The staff of the British
Council and the English Department gave invaluable encouragement and sup-
port, without which the symposium could not have taken place.
In keeping with the spirit of the symposium, the Editors and Publisher have
refrained from imposing any standardization on contributors' orthography. Those
who are free to speak their own English must also be free to write their own
English.

Mimi Chan
Roy Harris

2
 THE STUDY OF 'NEW LITERATURES IN
ENGLISH' AT UNIVERSITY LEVEL:
CURRENT PROBLEMS AND TRENDS

Wolfgang Zach

1. Introduction

Our world has indeed become a global village. Mass air transport makes it possi-
ble to reach almost any capital on our globe within one day (often faster than the
airport of the city we are departing from) and mass communication allows us to
watch 'live' on TV what is happening on the other side of the world (so that we
may know more about what is happening in other continents than in our immedi-
ate neighbourhood). A third phenomenon has also greatly contributed to breaking
down the traditional national informational barriers: the phenomenal spread of
English around the globe, particularly since WorId War II. This development has
been very well described by J.R. Rickford:

The sun sets regularly on the Union Jack these days, but never on the
English language. It was spread by British colonists, got a boost from
American GI's , and it was cemented by the multinational corporation.
Today, like it or curse it, English is the closest thing to a lingua franca
around the globe. Roughly 700 million speak it - an increase of 40% in the
last 20 years and a total that represents more than a seventh of the world's
population. 1

It is also interesting to note that today more than 60 percent of the world's
broadcasts are in English and that English newspapers are now available in
virtually every capital. Also, English has become the main language of communi-
cation and commerce within and between many countries and is accorded the

1. J.R. Rickford, 'English, English Everywhere', Newsweek, 42 (15 November 1982). Quoted from
H. Priessnitz, 'The Dual Perspective of "Anglo-Colonial" Literatures and the Future of English
Studies: A Modest Proposal', in Literature(s) in English. New Perspectives, ed. W. Zach et al. (Frankfurt,
1990).
 WOLFGANG ZACH

status of second language in many non-Anglophone countries around the world,

particularly in Asia. 2
Anybody interested in literature cannot fail to notice either that this develop-
ment of English into the lingua franca of our time has gone hand in hand with a rise
in the importance of those 'Literatures in English' that have developed outside of
Britain since the transplantation of English into the British colonies. Since the end
of colonial rule the international significance of these 'new literatures' has greatly
increased, as can be measured by the world-wide critical and commercial successes
of non-British (and non-American) authors: the Nobel Prizes awarded to Patrick
White and Wole Soyinka, the more than 5 million copies sold of Chinua Achebe's
Things Fall Apart, Salman Rushdie's fantastic royalties, or Seamus Heaney's recent
appointment to the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford are just a few examples
which illustrate this development.
What I should like to do now is to take a closer look at the situation of the
'New Literatures in English' in the field of English Studies at university leveL By
doing so I will attempt to provide a general framework which should help us, I
hope, to see many of the problems that will be raised in our following discussions
of 'Asian Voices in English' embedded in the wider context of 'World Literature
Written in English'. Before embarking on my subject I should also like to mention
that you will find my position influenced by my Austrianness: i.e. my native
language is German but I am not a German. This, I think, makes me particularly
aware of the paradoxical fact that two countries can be divided by a common
language, to use a Shavian phrase, and that more than one literature can be written
in the same language. Also, my viewpoint cannot but be that of a European,
although I will attempt to avoid Eurocentrism, in Han Suyin's words, ~the belief in
the universe of man restricted to a small Europe'.

2. The Study of 'New Literatures in English': Development

As I experienced in my own university education, English Literary Studies were

totally Anglo- and Americocentric in the 1960s. Non-British and non-American
writers were hardly ever mentioned, and if they were, the fact of their having been
born in Ireland, Canada, etc. was not regarded as important but rather as an
unfortunate accident which the author could not help and which could be forgot-
ten about in the.discussions of his works. This was basically the situation at most
of the universities in Europe (as well as in other continents, I suspect) in the 1960s,
and in many universities this antiquated paradigm taken over from the 19th
century still persists.
It is true that, over the past 25 years, the situation has changed. Several
international associations, journals, and study centres were founded and have

2. See L. Fernando, Cultures in Conflict. Essays on Literature and the English Language in South East
Asia (Singapore, 1986), pp. 195ff.

4
 THE STUDY OF 'NEW LITERATURES IN ENGLISH' AT UNIVERSITY LEVEL

done excellent work in promoting the study of the 'New Literatures in English'
throughout the world. 3 Also the number of courses and classes offered in the field
at European universities has progressively increased. Thus the interest of scholars
in the' area is definitely growing, although the situation on the whole has not really
changed as much as one would expect. In a survey which I carried out recently the
persistent dominance of the Anglocentric paradigm becomes quite obvious. At
Irish universities, for example, even the great Anglophone literature of the country
is still greatly underrepresented in syllabi and literary canons and it still seems to
be possible to get a degree in English Studies without having done work in this
area. 4 Another survey done by a German colleague a few months ago shows that
only a quarter of the German and Austrian universities offer classes in at least one
area of the 'New Literatures in English' regularly (Le. at least one class per term!).
It is also interesting to note that European scholars are most interested in the
literatures of Ireland and Canada, and to some extent in the literatures of Africa
and Australia. 5 Asian literaturem English, however, is very little studied in Europe,
even the great literature of India has very few devotees, and I may well have been
the first European to offer a class on Singaporean literature at a European univer-
sity last year.
Thus, we find that the 'New Literatures in English' have not found entrance
into the majority of English Studies programmes at European universities yet and
that only a minority of scholars do work in this area. This is also true of the
situation in the USA, for example, as we can see from the little attention given to
the 'New Literatures' at MLA Conferences. A section dealing with 'World Litera-
ture Written in English' was first introduced there in 1967, and in 1988 there was
still only one section with only 50 lectures (out of ca. 2500 lectures offered altogether)
on the most diverse subjects devoted to the study of all the 'Literatures in English
Other Than British and American'. 6 However, there are hopeful signs of growing
interest in the field, as is instanced by the foundation of a German Association for the

3. The Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (ACLALS), founded at
Leeds in 1965, has organized numerous conferences in the different regions of the world and
publishes several journals (ALALS Bulletin, Kunapipi, SPAN). Today a great number of inter-
national and national associations dealing with the 'New Literatures in English' or one of these
literatures exist. Other important journals, to name but a few, are the Journal of Commonwealth
Literature, ARIEL, and World Literature Written in English.
4. See A. Carpenter, 'The Study of Anglo-Irish Literature in Ireland: Problems of Definition,
Perspective and Text', in Literature(s) in English, loco cit.
5. See E. Lehmann, 'Beobachtungen zur Lage der Neuen Englischsprachigen Literaturen an
Deutschsprachigen Universitaten', in Contribution to the Conference of the German Association for
the Study of New Literatures in English (Mannheim, 1990).
6. See H. Galinsky, Welche Aufgaben fUr Forschung und Lehre stellt die weltweite Ausbreitung der
englischen Sprache und ihrer Literaturen, Wilhelmshavener Vortrage (Wilhelmshaven, 1970) 5; id.,
'Entwicklungen und Perspektiven der literaturwissenschaftlichen Forschung zu den
englischsprachigen Literaturen auBerhalb Englands', in Literaturen in englischer Sprache: Ein
iiberblick iiber englischsprachige Nationalliteraturen auf3erhalb Englands, ed. H. Kosok and H. Priessnitz

5
 WOLFGANG ZACH

Study of the New Literatures in English in 1989 or of an European Association for Aus-
tralian Studies this year. I also hope that the founding of small research centres like
the Centre for the International Study of Literatures in English at Graz by scholars from
all the world in 1987 will contribute to accelerating the process of internationaliza-
tion of English Literary Studies which we have been witnessing for the past 25
years.
Despite these hopeful signs of change, it is a fact that academics in the Western
hemisphere have been very slow in responding to the challenge posed by the
emergence of numerous important literatures in English. The persistent dominance
of the traditional Anglocentric paradigm at Western universities may be caused by
the precarious staff situation and the shrinking budgets of English Departments as
well as by the inflexible departmental organization and institutionalized
conservativism of many universities. Another important factor that should not be
overlooked either, I think, is certainly the great number of problems which have to
be tackled when we want to study 'Literatures in English' instead of 'English
literature'. Here I will attempt to discuss briefly the major issues (some of them
inherent in the subject, some of them specific to the Western critical tradition) as
they appear to me.

3. The Study of 'New Literatures in English': Problems of Research

3.1 Terminology
The problems begin as soon as we try to find an umbrella term for the subject area.
The first question is whether we should emphasize the features shared by the
whole body of 'Literature in English' or the diversity to be observed in the various
'Literatures in English'. Personally, I prefer the plural, as this takes us away from
the notion that one language can only have one literature and points instead to the
diversity of the cultural contexts. It should also be mentioned that in addition to
'Literature(s) in English' two other terms are also used to describe the same area:
'World Literature Written in English' and 'International English Literature'. These
terms are not unproblematic either, as 'World Literature Written in English' has
strong evaluative connotations, at least for Europeans, and as 'International Eng-
lish Literature' contrasts with the emphasis on the different 'national' traditions in
the literatures comprised under this term.
It becomes even more complicated when we want to solely refer to the non-
British and non-US literatures in English, as several- problematic - terms are in
common use: 'Literature(s) in English outside of England and the USA' is clumsy,
implicitly claims superiority for the literature of Britain and that of the USA
(which is itself one of the post-colonial literatures) and ignores the fact that

(Bonn, 1977), pp. 239-60, 254ff.; H. Kosok, 'Englischsprachige Literaturen aufSerhalb Englands
und der USA', in Anglistik heute, ed. A.-R. Glaap (Frankfurt, 1990), pp. 79-105, 85.

6
 THE STUDY OF 'NEW LITERATURES IN ENGLISH' AT UNNERSITY LEVEL

authors of many different nationalities write in Britain and the USA; 'Common-
wealth Literature(s)' excludes literatures from non-Commonwealth countries; 'Post-
colonial literature(s)' excludes literature from non-colonized countries and the
literature produced in countries under colonial rule; and 'New Literature(s) in
English' does not take account of the fact that some of these literatures are indeed
quite 01d. 7

3.2 Grouping of Literatures

Another problem is that of how to group the various countries and their litera-
tures, and different models are currently being discussed. From a political point of
view the area can be divided into Commonwealth countries, countries that have
left the Commonwealth, and countries that have never belonged to it. s In addition
to this 'political model' one could also think of a 'language model', i.e. one
focusing on the different status of English (and literature in English) in various
(groups of) countries. Of great literary interest is a grouping of countries that takes
mto account the way in which colonization took place and the degree of interfer-
ence with indigenous cultural traditions. Hans Galinsky developed such a 'cultural
model' in the 1970s.9 He divides the countries up into three groups: 'settler colo-
nies' where indigenous cultures were unimportant for the development of the
new literatures in English (USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc.); 'conquered
countries with highly-developed indigenous cultures' where the descendants of
the colonized are now the producers of literature in English (particularly in Asian
countries); and 'conquered countries with heterogenous tribal cultures' (particu-
larly African countries). This tripartite division should be supplemented by two
further categories, I think. As a fourth group one should add England's first
colonies (Scotland, Wales, Ireland) and as a fifth group 'uncolonized countries'
where literature in English is produced (as e.g. Israel or Japan). It should also be
mentioned that Galinsky's model has been refined by more strongly emphasizing
the diverse cultural contexts (uniformity /heterogenity of cultures/languages) and
regional differences. In several articles Horst Priessnitz has developed this 're-
gional cultural context model', as one may call it, which has led him to differenti-
ate between six groups: 'Anglo-European literatures' , 'Anglo-African literatures',
'Polynesian literature', and'Anglo-Carribean literature' .10

7. See also Kosok, 'Englischsprachige Literaturen', loco cit. Another term, 'The Literature of
Terranglia', has practically disappeared. See J. Jones, Terranglia. The Case for English as World-
Literature (New York, 1965).
8. Cf. Kosok, 'Englischsprachige Literaturen', loco cit., for detailed listings of the countries.
9. Cf. Galinsky, Welche Aufgaben, loco cit., pp. 10f£.; Kosok, 'Englischsprachige Literaturen', loco cit.
10. Cf. H. Priessnitz, 'Was ist koloniale Literatur? VOriiberlegungen zu einem intertextuellen
historiographischen Modell am Beispiel der anglo-autralischen Literatur', Poetica, 19 (1987), 55-
87; id., 'Zukunftsperspektiven der Anglistik', Anglia, 104 (1986),423-44; id., 'The Dual Perspective
of 'Anglo-Colonial' Literature', loco cit.

7
 WOLFGANG ZACH

The value of this discussion and of such categorizations is not to be doubted,

but I think that we should not overlook the ideological implications in any of the
above groupings and the fundamental problem of how to mark off different
national literatures. In fact, a great number of writers, from Henry James and T.S.
Eliot to Brian Moore and Salman Rushdie, do not fit into neat national compart-
ments. I do not think that, in many cases, biographical criteria or the characteristics
of an author's works can really serve as satisfactory criteria for 'placing' an author
in a certain national tradition. This points to the problematic, heuristic nature of
the concept 'national literature' and 'national literary history' as well as to the
necessity of dealing with many writers in the context of more than one literary
tradition.

3.3 Specialization or Unifying Perspective?

There are also a host of other important issues that deserve our attention. The most
difficult problem is perhaps that of the great variety of literatures and the enormous
number of authors and texts comprised under the heading 'New Literature(s) in
English'. How can a single scholar do justice to all these texts, with their vastly
differing sociocultural and multilingual contexts? Does the answer lie in speciali-
zation in particular areas or writers in the wide field of the 'New Literatures' (as is
common practice for British and American literature)? Or should the emphasis
rather be on an eclectic study of the 'masterpieces' from the various 'Literatures in
English'? And to what extent should the relationship between the 'New Literatures'
and British literature be a privileged topic of discussion?
Specialization will certainly be necessary for scholarly and pragmatic reasons,
but I believe that it is also of great importance not to overlook the fact that the
'Literatures in English' have more in common than the use of the English language.
We should not forget that language does not exist in a vacuum, but that it also
transmits cultural concepts and values. In addition, most of the post-colonial
writers are still influenced by the literary tradition of the 'mother country', to
which they react in their specific ways depending on the other cultural and
linguistic influences to which they are exposed. The concept of 'intertextuality' has
placed renewed emphasis on these literary interconnections, which are most obvious
in cases like J.M. Coetzee's anticolonial and postmodern version of Robinson Crusoe,
Foe, Jean Rhys's West Indian rendering of Jane Eyre in her Wide Sargasso Sea, or
Chinua Achebe's attempts to counteract the European image of Africa as found in
the novels of Joseph Conrad or Joyce Cary.
Also, despite the somewhat simplistic nature of the concept, one can neverthe-
less see that the 'New Literatures in English' (or at least the literatures in the
'settler colonies') have basically gone through similar stages of development, from
dependence on and imitation of texts from the 'mother culture' to reactions against
the original text and a growing confidence in the use of new forms of writing. It
can also be observed that the 'Anglo-European literatures' have many features in

8
 THE STUDY OF 'NEW LITERATURES IN ENGLISH' AT UNNERSITY LEVEL

common,l1 just as the experience of colonisation has led to the evolution of com-
mon themes and techniques in the literature of peoples as diverse as the Irish,
Indians, Malaysians, or Igbos. I am thinking here particularly of themes like the
problem of coping with a new language, detribalization anxiety, clash of cultures,
redefinition of identity, and the like. Edwin Thumboo has drawn our attention to
the fact that the so-called Third World countries are 'a mixed group, each with its
own level of economic, social and political development', but that, despite these
dissimilarities, 'Third World is not so much a geography, not so much a history,
but a state of mind'. This is the reason why he also regards W.B. Yeats as 'in a
crucial sense, a Third World poet' .12
In addition to regarding W.B. Yeats as a 'typical' Third World writer, one can
also see Anglo-Irish literature, its development and dominant features, as a para-
digmatic case for other colonial and post-colonial literatures. This is most obvious
in regard to the attitude of Irish writers towards the English language and their
'self-conscious' handling of it, which I should like to deal with briefly in order to
exemply my contention. As I have attempted to show elsewherep Irish writers feel
evicted from the Paradise of an indigenous linguistic and cultural tradition. Neither
supported nor hampered by a standard linguistic code or by an over-powering
literary tradition they have had to forge their identities and poetic language anew,
each individual writer for himself. This, I believe, is characteristic not only of the
Irish situation but also of the basic situation in other colonial contexts and one of
the main sources of the vibrant vitality and striking originality of post-colonial
literatures in general.
Works by Irish writers, just like texts by post-colonial authors generally, are
usually most successful when they confront central issues in post-colonial discourse.
A good example is Brian Friel's celebrated play Translations (1980), in which crea-
tive use is made of the plight of the Irish by reflecting upon their language loss, the
guilt complex of the Irish for having forsaken their native language, their problem
of identity, the problem of cultural transfer from one language to another, and of
communication as such. 14 Friel and other Irish writers also centrally deal with the
question of whether English should be used as the literary medium by an Irish
writer. Their dilemma can perhaps be best illustrated by pointing to the example
of Michael Hartnett. In a poem written in 1975 he bade 'Farewell to English' and
movingly explained why, from now on, he intended to write in Irish, 'the lan-

11. See e.g. the list of papers on common features in Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand
literature in Priessnitz, 'Zukunftsperspektiven', loco cit., pp. 435ff., n. 33.
12. See E. Thumboo, 'New Literatures in English: Imperatives for a Comparative Approach', in
Literature(s) in English, loco cit.
13. See W. Zach, 'Blessing and Burden: The Irish Writer and his Language', in Anglo-Irish and Irish
Literature. Aspects of Language and Culture, ed. B. Bramsback and M. Croghan, 2 vols. (Uppsala,
1988), Vol. 1, pp. 183-94.
14. See W. Zach, 'Brian Friel's Translations: National and Universal Dimensions', in M~dieval and
Modern Ireland, ed. R. Wall (Gerrards Cross, 1988), pp. 74-90.

9
 WOUGANG ZACH

guage of my people'.Is As a consequence, however, he disappeared from the inter-

national literary scene. Other Irish authors, in the footsteps of Flann O'Brien and
Brendan Behan, court bilingualism and now write in both English and Irish, and a
group of other writers, among them the celebrated Seamus Heaney, feel that the
historical changes of culture and language in Ireland have to be accepted whether
one likes them or not, which leads Heaney to voicing his paradoxical conviction
that 'one can be faithful to the nature of the English language and at the same time
to one's non-English origins'.I6
It might even be said that we find a verbal war raging in Ireland between
Whorfians and Chomskyans debating the old question, still unresolved, of whether
language determines thinking and culture, and as to whether English can be a
suitable medium of expressing 'Irishness'. These are exactly the questions hotly
debated by post-colonial writers in Asia and Africa as well, and their opinions
differ as widely as they do in Ireland. Here one can point, for example, to Obi
Wali's much discussed essay 'The Dead End of African Literature' where it is
claimed that the use of English by African writers 'can only lead to sterility,
uncreativity and frustration'. Similarly, Ngugi wa Thiong' 0 regards the use of
English by African writers as only perpetuating the spiritual subjugation of the
Africans and, as a consequence, he started writing in his native language again.
Chinua Achebe, on the other hand, although equally intent on decolonizing the
African consciousness, emphasizes the significance of English as a unifying factor
'a
in multi.,.ethnic states as making it possible to speak in new voice coming out of
Africa, speaking of African experience in a world-wide language'.I7 In much the
same way, the question of how to 'convey in a language that is not one's own the
spirit that is one's own', as Raja Rao puts it,IS and the ensuing problems are being
discussed in Asia. Here also the spectrum of opinions reach from self-reproaches
for using English as a literary medium and the call to discard it to the praise of
English as an ideally flexible medium to express divergent national consciousnesses,
particularly the complexity of Asian cultures. I9
What I have tried to exemplify above is the fact that post-colonial literatures
have central features in common, which make their discussion as a single area of

15. M. Hartnett, 'A Farewell to English', in id., A Farewell to English, ed. P. Fallon (Dublin, 1975),
pp. 62-67. In the meantime, Hartnett has published another volume of poetry in English, a
translation of D. 0 Brudair's Irish poems.
16. S. Heaney and S. Deane, 'Unhappy and At Home', Crane Bag, I, i (1977), 65ff.
17. O. Wali, 'The Dead End of African Literature', Transition, 10; Ch. Achebe, 'English and the African
Writer', Transition, 18 and 29; id., 'The Role of the Writer in a New Nation', Nigeria Magazine,
81 (June 1964), 160; Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African
Literature (London, 1986); D.1. Nwoga, 'Bilingualism and Literary Curiosity: An African
Perspective on Literature in English', in Literature(s) in English, loco cit.
18. R. Rao, Kanthapura (New York, 1938), p. 39.
19. See B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths and H. Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back. Theory and Practice in Post-
colonial Literatures (London and New York, 1989), ch.II, pp. 38ff.

10
 THE STUDY OF 'NEW LITERATURES IN ENGLISH' AT UNIVERSITY LEVEL

study plausible and productive. This, however, should not lead to an underesti-
mation of the different ways in which individual authors and the different na-
tionalliteratures react to the same basic problems and to a neglect of essential
differences between the various texts, writers, and national literary traditions. 20
These reflections lead to a call for the use of a comparative approach? which should
take account of similarities and differences on four levels: between the British (or
American) base and the 'New Literatures', between the 'New Literatures' them-
selves; between the 'New Literatures' and their indigenous literary traditions, and
between the 'New Literatures' and non-English literatures in general. What is also
needed, however, is a clearer vision of what the comparative method should aim
at, as, in the words of C.N. Narasimhaiah, 'starting from Derry Jeffares ... in 1964,
to the present day many of us have called attention to the value of the comparative
approach but few have demonstrated how to compare and what to expect of it'.22

3.4 Ethnocentricity and Universality

What is also of prime importance in our studies of the 'New Literatures' is the
development of a non-ethnocentric, especially non-Anglocentric, methodology
and terminology. Of course, European critics are particularly in danger of judging
a work from a different cultural context according to standards derived from
Western literature. I think we cannot often enough be reminded of what Charles
H. Larson wrote almost twenty years ago: 'What we really mean when we talk
about the universal experiences in literature are cultural responses that have been
shaped by the Western tradition.'23 In addition, Western critics are tempted to

20. The unifying concept 'Commonwealth literature' as such has also come under attack in recent
years. See e.g. G.N. Devy, 'The Wind and the Roots', in The History and Historiography of
Commonwealth Literature, ed. D. Riemenschneider (Tiibingen, 1983), pp. 78-90; H. Tiffin, 'Com-
monwealth Literature: Comparison and Judgement', in ibid., pp. 19-35, 23; B. King, 'Nationalism,
Internationalism, Periodisation and Commonwealth Literature', in ibid., pp. 10-18, 11; K.
Goodwin, 'Introduction', A Common Wealth of Words, ed. K. Goodwin and M. Freers (Brisbane,
1982), p. xi.
21. See, above all, H. Galinsky, 'Entwicklung und Perspektiven', loco cit., p. 254; H. Kosok and H.
Priessnitz, 'Vorbemerkung', in Literaturen in englischer Sprache, loco cit., p. 3; 'Schwerpunktthema
Inneranglistische Komparatistik', in Anglistentag 1983 Konstanz: Vortriige, ed. J. Schlager (Giessen,
1984), pp. 279-436; H. Tiffin, 'Commonwealth Literature', loco cit.; Priessnitz, 'Zukunftsperspektiven',
loco cit., pp. 433ff.; Thumboo, 'New Literatures in English', loco cit.; G.N. Devy, "The
Commonwealth Literature Period' and 'Comparative Literature", in Literature(s) in English, loco
cit.; H. Tiffin, 'Commonwealth literature and Comparative Methodology', World Literature Written
in English, 23, i (Winter 1984), 26-30; id., 'Comparative Literature and Post-colonial Counter-
discourse', Kunapipi, 9, iii (1987), 17-34; A. Hashmi, The Commonwealth, Comparative Literature
and the World (Islamabad, 1988).
22. CD. Narasimhaiah, 'Concluding Remarks', World Literature Written in English, 23, i (Winter 1984),
269.
23. Ch. H. Larson, 'Heroic Ethnocentrism: The Idea of Universality in Literature', The American
Scholar, 42, ii (1973), 475. To what an extent 'a perception of the wider implications of a work

11
 WOLFGANG ZACH

focus their attention on aspects which they regard as typical of the post-colonial
experience and to apply other paternalistic patterns of thinking to the develop-
ment of the 'New Literatures' as well. Let me just mention the fallacy of the
traditional 'family model' and the 'coming-of-age metaphor' usually applied by
Western critics to describe the relationship of British and (post-)coloniallitera-
tures. 24 Britain's relation with her colonies was not really one between a 'mother'
and her 'daughters' as implied by the 'family model', and the assumption that the
'New Literatures' went through the successive stages of childhood and adolescence
to finally come of age implies an absurd evolutionary teleology of literary greatness,
which as little fits the actual development of the 'New Literatures' as does the
widely accepted system of periodization derived from the same model. It is also a
curious fact that the 'coming of age' of Australian literature, for example, has been
proclaimed by critics from the 1860s to the present day.25 Of course, other such
traditional Western notions concerning the essence of the 'New Literatures' or
myths about the specific 'national identity' of a literature, particularly those that
lead to the exclusion of a whole body of literary texts, should also be critically
reviewed. 26
Generally, I believe that our task must be to derive critical norms from the
works under discussion and in this way to explicate their unique characteristics,
rather than concentrate on evaluation. Also, interdisciplinarity, i.e. cooperation
with historians, sociologists, etc. is essential if we really want to understand the
literary works produced in post-colonial societies in their sociocultural contexts,
as we sh~uld attempt to do.

4. The Study of 'New Literatures in English': Problems of Teaching

In university teaching additional problems are caused by the introduction of the

'New Literatures' into the curriculum, since it is not possible to simply graft this
area on to the material already taught. In this situation conservative scholars want

is more likely at a cultural distance', as claimed by N. Wattie, should also be discussed. See
N. Wattie, 'Geographical, Historical and Cultural Distance in the Reception of Literary Works',
in The History and Historiography, loco cit., pp. 40ff. His view is shared by H. Kosok,
'Englischsprachige Literaturen', loco cit., pp. 97f.
24. See J. Colmer, 'Constructing a National Tradition: Myths, Models and Metaphors', in Literature(s)
in English, loco cit.
25. See R. McCruaig, 'Contemporary Australian Literature', The Literary Review, (Winter 1963/64),.
165-71.
26. See Colmer, 'Constructing a National Tradition', loco cit. The 'national identity model' also leads
to myth-making about the national characteristics of a certain literature and to the exclusion
of numerous texts that do not fit the myth. M. Atwood, for example, in her book, Survival
(Toronto, 1~72), 'outlines a number of key patterns', which, 'taken together, constitute the shape
of Canadian literature insofar as it is Canadian literature, and that shape is also a reflection of
a national habit of mind' ('Preface', p. 13).

12
 THE STUDY OF 'NEW LITERATURES IN ENGLISH' AT UNIVERSITY LEVEL

to preserve the traditional Anglocentricity of English Studies, radical reformers

want to reduce British literature considerably and put the emphasis on the 'New
Literatures', while others like myself plead for a compromise and point to the
importance of the British tradition, both in itself and for a proper understanding of
literatures in English from other countries, as well as to the need to include the
'New Literatures' in all study programmes at university level.
Of course, this leads to the problems of which and how many courses should
be offered as well as which texts should be selected for undergraduates. Priorities
will certainly be different in Dakkar, Hongkong, Dublin or Winnipeg, but I think.
that this variety and divergence should be regarded not as a weakness but as a
strength, as different areas in the field of the 'Literatures in English' will be
developed in this way. Similarly, specialization in various regions or writers at
different European universities, which cannot be avoided, in many cases (owing
to limited staff and funds) may also have positive effects, as students will have
more options and may become more mobile, while scholars may feel called upon
to cooperate more closely in order to understand the post-colonial literatures in
their entire spectrum. I also think that, in addition to specialized courses in one
post-colonial literature, courses should be offered with a 'thematic' or 'intertextual'
focus, as important texts from different 'Literatures in English' (including British
literature), their specific artistic features, common traits, and their interrelation can
be discussed in this way.27
As to the selection of texts for undergraduates, we actually have no choice but
to resort to 'Who counts? Criticism'. At present, in Germany and Austria Margaret
Atwood, V.S. Naipaul, Doris Lessing, Katherine Mansfield and Nadine Gordimer
are the writers most often taught at universities. The dominance of Anglo-European
novelists in the teaching of the 'New Literatures in English' is also quite strong in
the German-speaking countries. 28 I also recently asked colleagues in 28 different
countries (20 of them in Europe) for their personal lists of 30 'canonical' works in
the field of the 'New Literatures in English'. The more than 350 titles given cannot
be listed here, but I should like to mention those works that were listed by at least
4 scholars. They rank as follows: Swift, Gulliver's Travels (16); Joyce, Ulysses (13);
Joyce, Portrait (10); Achebe, Things Fall Apart (10); Rushdie, Midnight's Children (9);
Atwood, Surfacing (8); Beckett, Waiting for Godot (8); White, Voss (7); Joyce, Dub-
liners (6); Yeats, Poems (6); Tutuola, Palm-Wine Drinkard (8); Naipaul, A House for Mr
Biswas (5); Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (5); O'Brien, At-Swim-Two-Birds (5); Synge,
Playboy of the Western World (5); Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Petals of Blood (5); Wilde, Im-
portance of Being Earnest (5); Mansfield, Short Stories (5); Laurence, Stone Angel (5);
Harris, Palace of the Peacock (5); Soyinka, Plays (4); Soyinka, Interpreters (4); O'Casey,
Juno and the Paycock (4).

27. See also I. Vidan, 'Expanding Curricula: Global Literature in English', in Literature(s) in English,
loco cit.
28. See E. Lehmann, 'Beobachtungen', loco cit.

13
 WOLFGANG ZAeR

Interestingly, almost half of these works are by Irish authors, most of the
books are novels and there is almost no poetry contained in this list. For our
discussion here it may be of interest to note that there is only one work of a writer
who may be claimed as Asian among these titles. Among the other writers in-
cluded in the complete list there are only 13 Asians (11 Indian and 2 Sri Lankan
writers), and these were almost exclusively named by my two respondents from
India and Sri Lanka. This shows us again how little Asian writing in English is
known and studied in the Western world. These are the most interesting results of
the survey, which also shows that only in a very few cases are scholars agreed on
the 'canonical' nature of post-colonial texts.
I should like to add that I am of course aware of the pr.oblematic nature of this
list as well as of a prescribed literary canon. We must not forget, however, that we
cannot avoid selection as only a limited number of texts can be studied by us and
our students (particularly undergraduates). Such a list may also be of interest to
scholars who can compare their literary priorities with those of other colleagues.
More importantly, a certain literary canon will be needed for the compilation of an
anthology of texts from the post-colonial literatures. I am convinced that, particu-
larly in view of the unavailability of texts in many poorer countries, such an
anthology of texts from various 'New Literatures' would greatly promote their
study.

5. Conclusion

It will certainly take a considerable time before a change of perspective among

English scholars and a reorganization of university syllabuses takes place on a
scale necessary so that the 'New Literatures in English' can play their proper role
in universities everywhere. However, I believe that it is of the greatest importance
that this paradigm change should be brought about, particularly in the so-called
First World. Literature plays an important role in inspiring and internalizing
social norms and values. In particular, by reading works written by authors from
so-called Third World countries European and American readers can not only
learn about the diversity of cultures but also come to see the prejudiced ethnocen-
tricity of their own thinking. Feelings of superiority will be counteracted, stere-
otyped notions about other nations will be dispelled, narrow aesthetic views will
be broadened, and respect will be inspired for people of different creed and
colour, and for their cultural achievements. It is the existence of great literary
works in English from dozens of countries which makes access to the wealth of
various cultures possible and also enables us to become personally involved with
the social problems of other nations, especially those of the Third World.
The globalization of social, economic and ecological problems as well as the
internationalization of literature in English, of authors and publishers alike, should
make scholars realize that 'the world has become too small for us to remain in

14
 THE STUDY OF 'NEW LITERATURES IN ENGLISH' AT UNIVERSITY LEVEL

culture-tight compartments'29 and revise their too narrowly Anglocentric perspec-

tive. In response to the geopolitical and intercultural developments of our times
we cannot but widen our field of study from 'English (and American) literature'
into 'Literature(s) in English'. By doing so, and by studying 'Asian writing in
English' as we are doing here, we can also contribute to a better understanding
between nations, and learn how to think and feel (and act) like true 'citizens of the
world'. At least, this is my sincere hope.

29. Fernando, Cultures in Conflict, loco cit., p. 140.

15
 Han Suyin

Words imprison and divide; unite and release. Words are dangerous and fulfill-
ing, molding concepts and systems of thought which destroy and reshape our
mental universe. The writer, through words, mediates between ideas and reality.
Hence comes the awe, the dread, the adoration and hatred which nimbus-like
surrounds his vulnerable humanity.
When both ideas and reality are foreign to his audience, the writer has an
added burden - that of making accepted and universal what is strange and
esoteric, that of making accepted and familiar what is repulsive and rejected. By
converting into starkness, realism, what his audience regarded as unthreatening
exoticism, the writer disturbs, profanes, foists a new nakedness upon those pi-
ously clad in the phantasms of conformity.
Hostility, therefore, towards those who strive to tell the world of human
beings that it lives by shiboleths, idioms, accepted cliches, encrusted dogmas,
unqueried assertions, is to be accepted as commonplace. It has existed since Man
painfully began to record himself upon clay tablets, upon rock. It continues,
perhaps now more all-pervasive, more frighteningly efficient than ever. Through
all the euphemisms of 'free thought' and of 'self-expression', there is a terrifying
culling by the media of what is deemed acceptable or not. Once again, anyone who
confronts with argument new evangelistic creeds - now political and commer-
cial, such as the wondrous no-sense word 'free enterprise', which means freedom
for those who have, but not for those who do not have the means of assertion in a
world ruled by commercialism - is bound to find him or herself hedged in his or
her creative expression with impalpable but merciless difficulties. The havoc of
publishing companies, the sorry fate encountered today by editors who do not
think that good books and literature must necessarily mean reaching financial
quotas of instant commercial success, illustrates my point. In some of the major
publishing houses in Europe and America today, the marketing expert, because he
or she successfully sold bedsheets, perfume, or canned peas, is promoted to run
publishing companies, and to decide on the value of an author's creativity.
But we have not come together to contemplate the appalling state of publish-
ing houses in the West. We have come, I think, for the first time as Asians,
embedded in our own cultures, undergoing with our own people the changes
which the 20th century has brought to us. Many of you will speak with moving
knowledge of the emergency from colonialism into the post-colonial period, into
 HAN SUYIN

the present era when our respective countries are still burdened with antiquated
structures of their own past, as well as the handicaps imposed by past, and
present, economic exploitation.
In 1955, at Bandung in Indonesia, took place the first conference of Asian
nations, freshly out of colonial dependence, and into difficult, dangerous inde-
pendence. At this Bandung meeting the late Prime Minister of China, Zhou Enlai,
announced that the meeting was held not to air private or national hostilities, not
to flaunt grievances, but in a new spirit of searching for what united the nations
present, in a spirit of mutual self-help, peaceful coexistence, irrespective of politi-
cal systems. In a way, our meeting in Hongkong this year also shares, with that
1956 meeting, the objective of striving to understand what unites us, what we can
do to help each other, and not to air matters which may pertain to our own
respective cultures, but which we can best deal with on other platforms, at another
time.
I think one of the purposes of our meeting should be to contemplate what
unites us, and that is the English language that we use, in all its extravagant
splendour, its monstrous capacity of growth, acquisition and incorporation of new
words and phrases and concepts.
The second objective, I suggest, should be to examine how Asian writers, from
cultures and backgrounds different from the one in which the language we use
was born, are contributing to the enlargement and extension, the enrichment of
the English language. Our third objective should be to discuss whether, by our use
of English we can inform and expand knowledge of our own cultures and coun-
tries, and also affect the latter, introducing in our own native languages new
concepts, new word formations, strengthening thereby another literature, other
modes of expression.
I have noticed how much the Chinese language has been transformed, since
the early 20th century, by the translation of many terms, both scientific and
philosophical, from original English works. Shakespeare, performed in Chinese as
it is done today, necessitates inventiveness, a new juxtaposition of ideograms. It
affects syntax, builds new metaphors, which at first seem strange, but later pass
into current use. Nowhere is this coining of new terms, new concepts, more
evident than in the sciences, biology, physics, medicine and psychology. Chinese
dictionaries today contain many new terms and phrases, and this will inevitably
also enrich literature. Even if, until today, no adequate term for the word 'inspira-
tion' has as yet been coined in China, many approximate terms for this word have
been invented. Chinese masters of the language will tell you themselves that the
full rendering of the meaning of 'inspiration' still challenges the experts.
In a speech in April 1988, Enoch Powell affirmed that the English language
was the distinctive property of the English people. I do not believe that any
language can be treated as the sole property of one nation, group, tribe, even
though we duly recognize its birth and origin. Perhaps there are some, like Mr
Powell, who resent the many ways in which English language has been knocked
about, battered, extended, twisted, reshaped, by many non-English throughout

18
 PLENARY LECTURE

the world, including the Americans. English, that miraculous putty language, can
be tongued into an infinite variety of tones, accents, spellings, not to mention
changes in grammar, syntax, and rhythm. Not only Asians, Africans, Polynesians,
Australians do it, but the scientists of today are inventing new forms of English,
fascinating ones, sometimes known as computerese. I shall give an example of the
latter 'I'm interrupt driven' says a disorganized scientist to another who replies in
psychobabble, another version of computerese: 'I was as down as my computer is
when power spikes and bad vibes surge through the lines and don't go with the
data flow ... now I'm starting to interface ... really cosmic parameters ...' to
which the reply is 'I'm accessing to what you say.'
Mathematicians have an English of their own, and I picked up an exotic
example in a paper recently read by a Chinese mathematician in Sichuan province,
China: 'Because the compact hyperbolic manifold leave no killing vector if all odd
Betti numbers equal zero, we get the condition that the massless ghosts are
absent.' This use of English should not worry us. Shakespeare remains, forever, a
source of vivid modernism. 'Shark me up a short list' was a sentence in American
business-English discovered by William Safire. It is not new, but dug out of
Shakespeare: 'Shark up a list of lawless resolutes.'
Recently in New York, I discovered new specimens of the language now
currently circulating. 'He was avalanched in Aspen' said a friend to me, and I
found the verb 'avalanched' in a recent thriller as well. In Manhattan on 51st street
houses bear the warning: 'This building is alarmed with electronic installation.' In
the United States, every plane is departing 'momentarily', when ready to take
wing. No one questions the use of the word to mean 'pretty soon'. Doublespeak, of
course, is a highly favored form of English, not only in universities, but far more in
government circles, where officials and politicians vie to produce mind-boggling
bureaucratese. Perhaps the worst offender is the u.s. military establishment,
which has invented Pentagonese, of which this is an example: 'We would like you
to explore an improved ratio between the explosive projectile, and decommissioned
aggressor quantum.' To which the naive and baffled scientist addressed, replies:
'You mean, you want me to see if I can make the explosive kill more people?'
In The State of the Language, Michael Howard notes at length how writers of
non-English descent have contributed to the expansion of the language. He par-
ticularly mentions India and Pakistan as wrestling felicitously with the putty
quality of English and reshaping sentences. He also notes the Indian aptitude in
preserving a formal English which has long fled from its native habitat. From
Bombayspeak to Madrassi English, from Sri Lankish to Bangladeshi, the subconti-
nent has dealt creatively with English, adding to its power to enchant, to stir, to
awaken new perceptions. But there are many other contributors. There is Singa-
pore English and Hokkien English, Hongkong English and Chinglish, a quaint
and sedate form of English often seen in the translations of the Foreign Language
Press in Beijing. 'Please don't be polite', and 'this action is not appropriate' are
Chinglish formulae which stick doggedly to me when I have been for some weeks
in China.

19
 HAN SUYIN

I do not see English as debilitating one's own native language, nor as in

opposition, hindering one from using Chinese; or Malay" or Hindi. I see it as the
international vehicle, most effective in accomplishing the task to which every
writer is dedicated, i.e., in rendering the unfamiliar and the unknown accessible to
all, removing the barriers of ignorance, interpreting for a world audience the
wealth of our own cultures, our modes of feeling and thought. And by so doing,
we Asian writers who use English are overturning the dogma whereby only
European or American writers, anchored in their own culture, took it upon them-
selves to write and to speak of Asia and the Asians, creating stereotypes, possibly
in the charitable pursuit of understanding, but stereotypes far removed from our
own reality.
I must now say a few words about my own work in this endeavour. It was a
purely unconscious endeavour, an enterprise begun by accident, and continued
without any deliberate, planned attempt to become a writer. Emotionally, I am
involved, bound, to China and Chinese culture, even if, at times, in China itself
some of the Han people I meet, and who are as prone to unconscious racism as any
other people, do feel that I am not a Han Chinese. 'Too true,' I reply to these men
or women. 'But in China you have 56 national minorities, and many of them are
far less grounded in the Chinese language, in Chinese culture, than Eurasians like
myself.' It is only too true that my English derives its unconscious roots from
Chinese. Chiefly from Chinese poetry, which is responsible in producing a new
rhythm in sentence construction in certain of my books. I found myself almost
creating an English which, from its inception, was totally cliche free, since I had
not learnt any cliches, nor been exposed to them.
And now, to conclude, a few words about this meeting. It began - the idea of
it - when I was in Singapore, in the late 1950's, teaching at Nanyang University.
Nanyang University had been set up with Overseas Chinese money to fulfill the
needs of the Chinese educated, who in the past regularly went to China to attend
the Chinese universities set up there, also with Overseas Chinese money. But in
1949, after the Communist revolution, any Chinese from Singapore or Malaya who
went to China was liable to imprisonment, for at least two years, and without trial.
This was under the 'emergency regulations' promulgated at the time, and which
continued for many years. Hence Nanyang University was set up. It encountered
the ire of the British establishment, and later was closed by the Singapore govern-
ment.
I began, in 1958, a course entitled Contemporary Asian Literature in The Context
of National Emergence from Colonialism, and it led me to a long search for those
Asian writers who, in many lands, had contributed to awakening the conscious-
ness of their own people. Thus I found Pakistan's Faiz Ahmed Faiz, and Mulk Raj
Anand, and in Singapore discovered Edwin Thumboo, as well as others. I was
struck by the fact that many of these writers were only known to each other
through a connection with 'western approval' of their work. There were many
more I discovered, who remained unknown, because untranslated. Slowly, in my
mind, grew a project. The project of creating a gathering of Asian writers, so that

20
 PLENARY LECTURE

we could compare experiences, and share our particular views. Within the last few
years, our numbers have greatly increased. In the United States, too, Asian-
American literature, hitherto ignored, or only hailed when it fell within the ac-
cepted orbit of nostalgic exoticism, has surged forward. In England as well, Asian
writers are being acknowledged and read, accepted for their creative originality.
We have with us today a good many of these writers, as also two young writers
dedicated to the critical study of Asian-English literature and Asian-American
literature. Dr Amy Ling, who has devoted many years to the research of the first
Asian women writers in America, and Mr Aamer Hussein, whose knowledge of
the work of writers both prominent and obscure throughout the world is second to
none.
All of us gathered here today, must voice our gratitude to our immediate
predecessors - the very few that began to write during the era of challenge to the
world as it was then. The challenge continues, for the Asian countries where our
roots are embedded still suffer from antiquated feudal structures, from economic
inferiority. The work of a writer is not only to entertain, but to inform; and to
create a history for his times. We shall only subsist, our work useful, if by creating
new images we continue this never-ceasing endeavor to promote more under-
standing, more tolerance and more humanity. We can only do this by acknowl-
edging the root of our being, of our creative urge, in our own earth, even if the
branches of our tree of life clutch at faraway lands. We have to accept that we are
divided, schizophrenic, but working schizophrenics - as I said in an interview
two years ago - and functioning precisely because of this dichotomy, which is a
reflection of the world today. We live with half of ourselves immersed in the past,
the other striving towards the future. But so do all the peoples of the world today,
even if they know it not. We share the presumptions and the prejudices of that vast
underground of yesterday, but because we operate in another language, struggle
with other prejudices and assumptions, we are compelled to avoid dogmas, cat-
egorical judgements. We must and do have opinions, and ideals, for this is to us
the fount of life. But we must also understand our own work as teaching, an
uninterrupted effort to strive for enlightenment. The English we use we mold to
our own patterns, to forge new words and images. We cannot reject or spurn
anything, and even our condemnations of cruelty and injustice are acts of love.

21
 Richard E. Kim

I am an American and have been one for more than a quarter of a century - but,
as you all know, appearance can be deceiving ...
I live, and I have lived for more than twenty years, in a very liberal, small
academic town in what must be the most liberal state in America - Massachu-
setts.
Now - my barber in that very liberal academic town in that most liberal state
in the Union still greets me at each of my tonsorial visits to his shop by saying,

'Well, you're still here, eh?'

'Well, yes, I am still here as you can see.'
'So, what are you studying these days?'

That - after all those years of my academic life as professor of English at the
University in his town.
I would merely mumble something to the effect that I am, well, studying life,
sort of.
Then there is this blue-eyed, blond,lady bank-teller who asks me where I am
from, the sort of question no one ever asks my blue-eyed, brunette wife of Danish-
German ancestry.
Again, I would mumble, 'Oh, from here and there.'
The lady and I are trying to untangle a bureaucratic mishap involving a
quarter of a million dollars of our business account, and, speaking on the phone to
someone at the main office of the bank, she says - oh, so sweetly - 'Look, Jane, I
have here with me a very nice foreign student who ... blah, blah, blah ... '
Well, it has been also like that for me in the States in my relation with the so-
called American literary establishment.
I remember that, when my first novel, The Martyred, was published in New York,
I was simply presumed to be and presented as a Korean writer, and,. no one,
including myself, minded that - except the Koreans in Korea, especially Korean
writers and critics who felt that since I wrote in English I lacked proper credentials
and legitimate claims to be a Korean writer.
In fact, a professor-critic there who made his living mainly by putting out
anthologies told me in all seriousness that when I finally wrote something - By
 RICHARD E. KIM

God, said he, anything - in Korean, he would certainly include me in one of his
literary anthologies.
To this day, I am not considered, so I am told, by Korean writers and critics, to
be qualified as a proper Korean writer.
So it went till my third book was published in the States, when Professor
Edward Sidensticker, an eminent authority on Japanese literature, reviewing the
book most favorably, referred to me as Richard Kim of Korea, whereupon the
progressive, liberal staff of the New York Times Book Review listed the book in the
Review's list of Editor's Choice and defined me categorically as a Korean-American
writer. The dawn of hyphenated Americans (not all of them, mind you) has
arrived.
But, that, of course, made the Korean writers and critics more adamant than
ever about my literary status (or non-status).
Now, really, all this is quite silly, but what it all seemed to signify was that,
from a literary point of view of categorizing writers, I was a very inconvenient
writer indeed - both to the Koreans and the Americans.
Well, I really was too busy doing this and that non-literary things to care much
about all that, but I did want to look into this business of my Koreanness, so to
speak, just to see,if for nothing else, if I could also write in Korean.
To make a long story short, it did turn out that I could indeed write in Korean,
and thank God for that, and that was that. That is, as Dr Han Suyin has remarked
the other day, I could just think of myself as a writer at peace with the world, the
whole world, in diverse cultures and languages, and let the literary intelligentsia
and academicians worry about the rest.
And yet, the very theme of this conference, not so much about 'in English,' I
confess, as about 'Asian Voices,' has made me realize that, at last, I have now
found one unequivocal, unchallengeable claim that I can make about myself,
about my literary status and identity - an Asian writer. How nice!
Now, to this matter of 'in English.' I do write in English, more so than in
Korean, and I think I can say that I am one writer who is madly in love with the
first person 'I' of the English language - from the point of view of the metaphys-
ics of Being.
The joy, excitement and wonder that came to me when I first discovered the
impact of the 'I' in English- and I am sorry it is all so personal, not intellectual,
that I really can't go into it all at this point - well, it was like when, on my maiden
voyage to the United States, in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean, I came, alone,
face to face with the sun emerging from the waves on the morning horizon ... and
it was then as if I saw the sun for the first time in my life, it speaking to me and I
speaking to it.
I think it all went with my own, private exploration, discovery of my Self, now
utterly alone, physically and psychologically, away from Korea toward the un-
known ...
And, later when I began to write in English, the 'I' in Korean gave way
willingly and joyously to the 'I' in English - and it was like discovering and

24
 PLENARY LECTURE

assuming a wholly new identity of Being and, with it, a wholly new way of seeing,
thinking, cogitating and understanding, having shed the Korean 'I' that is not
really 'I' bl!t that is subservient, always, to the Korean 'we.'
And, with all that came also my fascination with the relative pronouns of the
English language. I don't know about other writers whose native tongue is not
English, but, for me, the relative pronouns of the English language forced me to
think, to reason, to qualify, logically and rationally - in short, to make myself
clearer to myself and to others. Thank you, whoever you are, for inventing the
relative pronouns of the English language.
Now, what I am going to say and do in the remaining hour could not have
been possible, I assure you, if I had not begun my writing life in the English
language. I mean not only that I couldn't have thought, written and said it in the
Korean language exactly the way I wanted but also that I couldn't have, perhaps,
arrived at certain points intellectually and psychologically had I not been writing
in the first person 'I' of the English language with its metaphysical implications.
Here, then, is a piece titled, 'Remembrance of Things Lost,' not of Things
merely Past but of Things Lost ...

Remembrance of Things Lost

One of the most important elements in Korean literature of the past and even
the present - from the point of view of understanding Korean literature psycho-
logically and philosophically - is the concept of han.
Han is difficult to translate into other languages. It is a composite of ideas and
emotions and everything that goes with a certain perception and understanding of
humanity's misfortunes and tragedies - all compressed into one single Chinese
character. Because the character is shared by the Chinese and the Japanese as well,
perhaps the Chinese and the Japanese may be able to understand the Korean
version of han - but only to a limited extent and even then with, I suppose, quite
different shades of meanings and connotations and, therefore, emotional impact.
Han, in the Korean context, is - and this is purely my own personal under-
standing of it - a composite, as I have mentioned, of human responses and
reactions to what we may call man's inhumanity to man. Or - as Albert Camus
might have put it - victim's responses to their executioners.
Han can be expressed individually as well as collectively. Han contains a range
of human emotions derived from one's awareness of one's doom - and that
awareness is expressed with (and I list the following in no particular order or
sequential significance): lamentation; a sense of loss, doom and destruction; a
certain amount of anger and resentment at one's perception of unfairness inflicted
upon oneself, that is, one's sense of being an unfair victim; a fatalistic perception of
a fundamentally, inexorably unfair, cruel universe, and an equally fatalistic resig-
nation and final acceptance of one's fate.

25
 RICHARD E. KIM

At this point, a literary example that comes to mind, one that may be more
familiar to Western readers, is Franz Kafka's K in The Trial and his last three words
uttered at the moment of his execution: 'Like a dog.' But, Korean han is much more
than that, I think, perhaps mainly because, with Korean han, there always seems to
be a collective sense of it even when only an individual han is apparently involved.
Perhaps, who knows, there is a collective racial sense and perception in it all- of
sharing in Man's Fate, the Human Condition, by one and all.
Having said all that and also having said that han is the most important ele-
ment in Korean literature, I should now like to say that I have long ago declared
myself free from the Korean version of han and said goodbye to all that.
Now, what I would like to do is to share with you one Korean writer's will and
effort to liberate himself and his characters from the iron grip, from the centuries-
old clutch of han. For, what I have been trying to find in and through my writing is
nothing less than the ways and means - psychological and philosophical- to
destroy the Korean version of han. But - why, one may ask.
I am of that generation of Koreans who have experienced the Japanese domi-
nation of Korea, the Soviet occupation of North Korea and the American occupa-
tion of South Korea with the resultant division of the country, and I am one of that
generation who fought in the bloody Korean War, of the generation that experi-
enced in a very short period of time a heartbreaking, bone-crunching tyranny of
inexorable History, a generation that was asked to sacrifice most and that willingly
sacrificed most.
And - having experienced all that, having suffered through all that, and
having survived to testify to the sacrifices, destruction and unfulfilled aspirations
of those of my generation both dead and alive - I found han not to,my liking, not
worthy of my own' and my generation's battle hymn and not acceptable as my
final dirge. More than that, I found that han had inhibited our will and spirit to
wrestle our political freedom from the foreign powers and to explore and develop
our own destiny.
Han - I realized - had made Koreans pliant before foreign powers and
domination, subservient to foreign interests, and obsessed, masochistically and
degradingly, with a petty, private and baser instinct for only one's survival.
Surrounded by foreign interests, which were urging on and forcing on us an
outmoded concept and practice of dialectical materialism on the one hand and, on
the other, a quaint, outmoded political, economic liberalism rooted in alien soils of
materialistic pursuit of an illusory happiness on earth, and equally alien, imported
religions with conflicting promises of salvation, Koreans, with their ingrained
sense of han as a way of viewing the world and understanding their place in that
world, have become in the past powerless and susceptible to accepting either
consciously or unconsciously their roles as victims. It goes without saying, then,
that han in Korea has helped produce many a Korean flunkey and servant of
foreign interests.
I found han, therefore, degrading and repugnant. It has - you see - a smell of
defeat and a stench of death - in the not yet completed confrontation and conflict

26
 PLENARY LECTURE

between my own and others' small histories with a small h, and History with a
capital H.
Of course, as Rubashov found in Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, as Kyo
found in Andre Malraux's Man's Fate and as Denisovich found in Alexander
Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - just to name a few at ran-
dom - History will no doubt crush and destroy small histories.
But - and this is to me the most important - it is not the fact that History will
and shall destroy small histories that gives History its victory and small histories
their defeats. Rather, it is how small histories confront History and battle with the
tension of that confrontation and, though they may be ultimately crushed, fight
the battle honorably without despair and surrender and, thereby, liberate them-
selves from the tyranny of History and win their final victory.
How, then, one may ask, my remembrance of things lost has led me, through
my writing, to the final denunciation of han, which I would dearly love to consign
to the dustbin of Korean history.
Certainly, what I am in search of in and through my writing are things lost to
me personally and to Koreans in general by extension. To engage in remembrance
of things lost is not only to remember and recall things lost but also to retrieve that
which has been lost from the innermost niche of our souls.
And - I and Koreans have a lot to retrieve from the past, from our misbegot-
ten recent history. Our history - of thirty-six long years of colonization by the
now defunct Japanese Empire - and of the savage Korean War that claimed
millions of our lives - and of forty-five long, heartbreaking years of the division
of our land with millions of refugees and displaced persons and families torn
asunder.
We had in the past lost a lot. We had lost our land to the Japanese; we had lost,
because of that foreign domination, our country which is to say a home to us,
something much more than a mere nation-state. And, above all, we had lost even
our names to the Japanese who had forced us to adopt Japanese names. I would
ask you to consider that extraordinary, historically unprecedented chapter in all
histories of colonial experiences: a symbolic and quite ritualistic effort on the part
of the colonizers, the oppressors, to alter the identity and destroy the self-respect
of the colonized, the oppressed.
It was a brazen attempt by the imperial colonizers to erase and obliterate our
history and, in the last analysis, our memories, our individual and collective
memories. But, of course, it did not work out quite like that, and we have retrieved
our names and all that goes with them - but, still, we have a lot more that are lost
to us and we have a lot more to retrieve.
But, here, I ask myself - why is this all so important? What is it really that I
am trying to retrieve?
'Nothing really happens to a person,' someone has said once, 'except as it is
registered in the subconscious. This is where event and feeling become memory
and where the proof of life is stored. The poet - and we use the term to include all
those who have respect for and speak to the human spirit - can help to supply the

27
 RICHARD E. KIM

subconscious with material to enhance its sensitivity, thus safeguarding it.' I

couldn't have said it any better.
The proof of life - that is precisely what I am after, what I am in search of, in
my remembrance of things lost.
That - the proof of Life - not of Death - is what I am trying to retrieve from
among the ruins and shambles of the twisted, distorted, stunted histories of our
people in our recent past - to see a light, a glimmer, however faint, of the proof of
life in the ashen twilight years of our past lives - so that that proof of life, of the
living, will triumph over the withering negation of life, the dead ...
And - a reward for my remembrance of things lost may be not merely to cry
out NEVER AGAIN, though I suppose one must begin somewhere, but to come to
terms with one's past, with one's things lost, and to come to peace with oneself
and, ultimately, I suppose, with the enigmas of the world - an affirmation of life
- yes, as Joseph Conrad would exclaim - a moral victory.
Otherwise, defeats suffered by small histories at the hands of tyrannical History
would be too nihilistic to bear and to endure with honor and dignity. Shake-
speare's King Lear lamented - 'As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They
kill us for their sport.' Like dogs, like flies ... But, no, we can't accept that sort of
han.
I realize it is not fair to refer all that I have said so far to a work, and my own
work at that, which is not known to you. But please indulge me if I read a few
passages from my work titled Lost Names.
On February II, 1940, the Japanese forced all Koreans to abandon their names
and adopt Japanese names. The hero of the story, a young boy of 12 or so, goes out
to the village cemetery with his father and grandfather - after their new names
had been officially registered by the Japanese at the police station - to report, as it
were, the event to their ancestors.
I was interested in how the event was registered in the subconscious of my
character - if 'nothing really happens to a person except as it is registered in the
subconscious.' Obviously, how something is registered is very important indeed,
and I, the author, wanted to explore and excavate that subconscious - to give life
to that which had been registered ...

. . . When we are in front of the graves of our ancestors, my father wipes the snow
off the gravestones. The names chiseled on the gravestones are filled with ice, so
that I can barely distinguish the outlines of the letters.
The three of us are on our knees, and, after a long moment of silence, my
grandfather, his voice weak and choking with a sob, says, 'We are a disgrace to our
family. We bring disgrace and humiliation to your name. How can you forgive us!'
He and my father bow, lowering their faces, their tears flowing now un-
checked, their foreheads and snow-covered hair touching the snow on the ground.

28
 PLENARY LECTURE

I, too, let my face fall and touch the snow, and I shiver for a moment with the
needling iciness of the snow on my forehead. And, I, too, am weeping, though I
am vaguely aware that I am crying because the grown-ups are crying.
My grandfather unwraps a small bundle he brought with him and takes out
three wine cups and a bottle of rice wine. He fills the cups with the wine, for all of
us.
We hold the cups in our hands and pour the wine over the graves, one by one,
with my grandfather filling our cups with more wine before each mound. The pale
liquid forms a small puddle for a second on the hard snow before it trickles down
into the snow, as if someone inside the mound beneath the snow-packed earth is
sipping it down.
Then, my grandfather fills our cups once more, and we hold them up high
before our eyes for a moment and then drink.
My grandfather would like to be alone for a while. My father and I make a
final bow to the graves and leave him.
More people are trudging in the snow, coming up to the burying ground. Here
and there, I see people on their knees in front of graves, some crying aloud, some
chanting, wailing mournful words. An old man in white - gasping in the freezing
air and the blowing snow flurries, supported by a young woman also in white and
with her hair down and disheveled, stumbles in the knee-deep snow. He comes up
to my father.
The old man stretches out his wrinkled, gnarled hand to my father, touching
him. His long white beard is caked with snow. His small, bleary eyes, opaque and
watery, peer out of the hollows formed by his high cheekbones.
His tremulous voice says to my father, 'How can the world be so cruel to us?
We are now ruined - all of us! Ruined!'
My father does not speak.
The young woman says, 'Come on. Father, we must hurry home.'
The old man says, 'Now I lost my own name and I am as dead as ...'
'Please!' the young woman begs.
And - suddenly - I am repelled by the pitiful sight of the driveling, groveling
old man, whose whining muttering is lost in the bitter wind and swirling snow.
Turning away from him, I stride down the path made by footsteps. I stop and turn
around to see if my father is following me.
He is still with the old man, who is now clutching at the arm of my father,
openly wailing, and my father stands silently, with his head bowed. The young
woman, too, standing behind the back of the old man, is weeping. Behind them, I
see my grandfather on his knees before the graves.
The snow keeps falling from a darkening sky, millions and millions of wild,
savage pellets swirling and whooshing about insolently before they assault us
with malicious force. I watch the people everywhere, all those indistinct figures
engulfed in the slashing snow, frozen still, like lifeless statuettes - and I am cold,
hungry, and angry, suddenly seized with indescribable fury and frustration. I am
dizzy with a sweet, tantalizing temptation to stamp my feet, scratch and tear at

29
 RICHARD E. KIM

everything I can lay my hands on, and scream out to everyone in sight to stop-
Stop! Please stop! - stop crying and weeping and sobbing and wailing and
chanting ... Their pitifulness, their weakness, their self-lacerating lamentation for
their ruin and their misfortune repulse me and infuriate me. What are we doing
anyway - kneeling down and bowing our heads in front of all those graves? I am
gripped by the same outrage and revolt I felt at the Japanese shrine, where,
whipped by the biting snow and mocked by the howling wind, I stood, like an
idiot, bowing my head to the gods and the spirit of the Japanese Emperor ... and I
remember my father's words: 'I am ashamed to look in your eyes. Someday, your
generation will have to forgive us.' Stop! Stop! Stop! I want to shout out into the
howling wind and the maddening snow. How long - for how many generations
- are you going to say to each other, 'I am ashamed to look in your eyes?' Is that·
going to be the only legacy we can hand down to the next generation and the next
and the next?
'Oh, we are ruined!' Ha! What is the matter with you all, you grown-ups! All
this whining, wailing, chanting, bowing to the graves, sorrowful silence, meaning-
fullooks, burning tears ... that is not going to save you from having to cry out,
'Oh, ruination!' Damn, damn, damn - like my good old grandmother would say
-Damn!
And - with the kind of cruelty only a child can inflict on adults - I scream
out toward those frozen figures:
'I don't care about losing my name! I am just cold and hungry!'
And only then do I give in to a delicious sensation of self-abandonment - and
I begin to cry.
My father is at my side. 'We'll go home now.'
With tear-filled eyes, I look up at him. 'I am sorry, but ...'
'Yes?'
'But - what good can all this do? What good will all this do for us?' I say
defiantly, flinging my arms wide open to encompass the burying ground, with all
its graves and the people; 'What good will all this do to change what happened!'
To my surprise, he says quickly, 'Nothing.'
'Then, why do you? ... '
'That's enough now,' he says, 'Someday, you will understand.'
I am not soothed by these words, which are vague and hollow to a child's
comprehension of the here and now. I do not respond to him.
He bends down, bringing his face close to mine. There is a strange smile on his
face. 'Today,' he says, 'you, too, have made a small beginning.' Ah - Father -
always a riddle.
'Come on,' he says, extending his hand to help my grandfather onto the path.
'Let us all go home now.'
It is dark, and, with the coming of darkness and the night, the wind is dying
down, and the snow is falling straight and calmly. The blurry figures of the people
move about the burying ground like ghosts haunting the graves in the snow ...

30
 PLENARY LECTURE

The father's riddle, his enigmatic smile, a small beginning - what were they, what
did they all mean - and, more important, where did they all lead the boy to?

One day, several years later, the young boy and his classmates were ordered by
the Japanese teachers to go around their town and collect all the rubber balls
which had been given, as gifts, to Korean children by the Japanese to celebrate
their conquest of Malaysia and Singapore. The Japanese were losing the war and
had already surrendered in Malaysia and Singapore. No more rubber for the
Japanese. So - the boy and his classmates collected rubber balls and, because so
many rubber balls would not fit into a sack, they punctured and flattened the balls
- on the advice of his grandmother - and brought them, proudly, to the Japa-
nese teachers. The boy was beaten by a Japanese teacher who accused him of
being dangerous and subversive - all because of the punctured and flattened
balls .

. . . and, suddenly - with a whoosh - the bamboo sword smashes my bottom,

jolting me with a numbing blow that instantly shoots thousands of sharp needles
of pain through my body, snapping it into an arch, flinging my head backward.
My body is shaking and my knees trembling and I can't control my body. I press
my lips tight and close my eyes with all my strength, but I can't shut the tears in. I
taste the salty tears on my lips, but I make no sound. The bamboo sword is
slashing into my flesh, onto my legs, my bottom, my back, each blow contorting
my body and blinding me for a second. Then - suddenly - my tears stop and my
body goes limp ... yet I am calm, so calm that I am almost surprised, as if I slipped
out of my body so that I won't feel the pain. I can take it, I can take it, I think,
feeling strangely serene and almost powerfuL Every fiber of my being is alive and
pulsating with a sense of triumph, not hatred, of pride, not heroic bravery, and of
being larger than life. Don't cry ... They know not what they do ... Love and
compassion for sinners and evildoers ... Turn the other cheek also ... Be noble in
suffering ...
But, that self-induced, masochistic euphoria - an illusion - does not last
long. There is no nobility in pain; there is only degradation. And, now, every
sensation within me is turning, with each blow, into a boundless contempt, and
my contempt is burning into hatred, hatred fierce and immense - until screaming
... still screaming, I faint ...
There is a blank in my memory - but my mother is saying, A boy being
I

carried home, bleeding and swollen and unconscious. No, you don't forget that.'
No, you don't forget that. No, I won't forget that. I exult in neither bitterness

31
 RICHARD E. KIM

nor hatred Jlor an ephemeral snobbishness of suffering; yet, I glory in neither

magnanimity nor understanding nor forgiveness. I merely reflect, with a quick,
sharp ache within me, that THAT is only one of the many other things that I
cannot and will not forget. 'Vengeance is Mine,' says a god. 'Vengeance is Yours,' I
say to him, 'Memories are Mine.'

Oh, yes! 'Vengeance is Mine,' says a god. 'Vengeance is Yours,' I say, 'but Memo-
ries are Mine.'
Years and years after the event, the young boy, now a man, in his remem-
brance of things lost, has come to that point in his life, where he can now consign
his Vengeance to a god and say with all his heart and affirmation, 'Memories .are
Mine.'
And that, to me, is the proof of life, without the paralyzing whiff of the
withering breath of death.
He still has miles to go before he sleeps but he has already travelled miles and
miles in the confrontation of his small history with History. He has won a battle, I
should like to think and believe - for he has at last freed himself from the spell
cast by the accursed han.
And, after many a small beginning, one day in the midst of a carnage among
the fallen comrades on a barren Korean hill, he would repeat after the immortal
words of Holderlin:

' ... and openly I pledged my heart to the grave and suffering land, and
often in the consecrated night, I promised to love her faithfully until
death, unafraid, with her heavy burden of fatality, and never to despise a
single one of her enigmas. Thus did I join myself to her with a mortal
cord.'

32
 THE WRITER WRITING IN ENGLISH IN
MULTIETHNIC SINGAPORE:
A CULTURAL PERIL,
A CULTURAL PROMISE

Plenary Lecture by Catherine Lim

The writer writing in English in multiethnic Singapore in the present time faces a
problem that is far more complex than the widely understood one of the native
voice afraid to lose its true tones in a foreign tongue. The complexity lies in the
unique role of the English language in Singapore, a role not seen in other post-
colonial countries. Here, through a combination of historical and geo-political
quirks, a foreign language for which no role was envisaged in a mixed Asian
immigrant setting, was soon discovered to be so useful that it was systematically
promoted and strengthened into a position that has remained incontestable ever
since. The ethnic languages of Chinese, Malay and Tamil did put up some fight,
but have, long since, settled into murmuring second place.
Even Mandarin, nurtured to greater strength by a series of intensive national
campaigns, is unlikely to dislodge English as the dominant language in Singapore.
By any indicator - extent of use in government administration and education,
dealings with foreigners, number of speakers, degree of prestige accorded -
English is the undisputed language of Singapore.
The changeling child who was dropped on the doorstep, adopted by the
household and who soon gained ascendancy over the rightful heirs. The concu-
bine who was led in by the back door and who soon superseded Wife No.1 and
No.2 and No.3. Such has been the dramatic story of the rise of the English
language in Singapore.
Yet it was no story of love and bonding, but rather one of sheer necessity and
opportunism. For English was precisely the means by which, first the colonial
government and later the PAP (People's Action Party) government solved one
problem after another in the early unruly years of the ethnically divided colony.
Beginning as a useful language for the locals to learn in order to serve as court
interpreters or junior administrators in the colonial service, English achieved its
apotheosis as the means, by which, firstly, the small island with no natural re-
sources of its own, could plug into world trade, business and technology, and by
 CATHERINE LIM

which, secondly, it could be the unifying factor for the hitherto divided ethnic
groups. Hence, by its rare combination of economic, political and social uses,
English became and continues to be the most valued language.
But the usurping changeling could not go unchallenged, and the sixties and
seventies saw the rightful heirs clamouring for a share of the power and prestige.
The Chinese voice was particularly strident. In its characteristic no-nonsense,
canny manner, the PAP introduced a policy which must be regarded as both a
political and psychological masterstroke because it not only silenced the voices,
but established a framework within which the government could have the legiti-
macy to concentrate on what it considered its top priority, the economic develop-
ment of the island. This policy was bilingualism by which the true roles of English
and the mother tongues were settled once and for all. According to this policy, in
addition to the school language of English (by the late seventies, all schools had
become English-medium), every school child had to learn his mother tongue, that
is, the Chinese child had to learn Mandarin, the Malay child Malay, the Indian
child Tamil. English was to be learnt purely because it was a necessary language
for the world of employment; therefore it was the medium of instruction for
subjects such as Maths, Science, Geography. The mother tongues were to be learnt
for the social moral and cultural values they imparted; therefore they were the
medium of instruction for subjects such as Civics and Moral Education.
With the Orwellian starkness of 'English for earning a good living - yes',
'English for learning to live a good life - no', the policy of bilingualism, in one fell
swoop, silenced remaining chauvinistic voices, lifted the guilt off those parents
who had felt uneasy about sending their children to English-medium schools, and
freed English forever from its troublesome political trappings, so that completely
neutralised and depoliticised, it could concentrate on its work of pushing the little
island state to the ranks of industrialised nations. The policy of bilingualism has
since undergone some changes, but in its stern separation of functions for English
and the mother tongues, it has essentially remained the same.
But languages have a way of subverting neat political schemes. For in real life,
languages do not work by fiat, but have a spontaneous life of their own. What
happened over the years was that, in response to the separation of functions, a
kind of two-layered Singaporean lifestyle or culture developed. At the top, was a
common lifestyle, based on a common English-medium education, that was shared
by all the different ethnic groups, in particular the younger age groups. It was a
lifestyle characterised by an orientation towards Western Scientific thinking and
values, but tempered, along the way, by qualities retained from the ethnic back-
grounds as were compatible with the western orientation. At the bottom, were the
three different lifestyles or cultures of the Chinese, Malays and Indians, separate
from but in apparent easy co-existence with one another.
It was easy to see that while the ethnic languages and cultures were hence
protected and preserved, this model of a Singaporean way of life was a very
unequal one. The top layer was growing, and the bottom layer was merely exist-
ing. For the top layer had a vitality of its own and was continually developing, in

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 THE WRITER WRITING IN ENGLISH IN MULTIETHNIC SINGAPORE

response to its own impulses and to those of the larger world of cosmopolitanism
to which it looked, whereas the bottom layer, historically cut off from the parent
cultures, had no source of sustenance and had to continually draw upon itself. In
its most visible form, it was still little more than a showcasing of Chinese, Malay
and Indian dances, music, costumes, festivals, customs, etc for special occasions
such as National Day, or for tourist entertainment.
The policy of bilingualism had ironically then created the opposite of what it
had intended: the very language that was meant to have no part in the real life of
the people was actually shaping and nourishing it, and the very languages meant
to have that role had become too enfeebled to have any significance beyond
providing communication at the level of the market-place and occasional nostalgic
displays.
But whatever misgivings about the policy might have been felt, they were
quickly forgotten in the entire usefulness of the two-layered system it had created.
It was useful to the central purpose of the government then, which was to fully
exploit the use of English for rapid economic development. Young talent was sent
to western universities abroad, to return with the much desired professional
technological and managerial expertise. English-using multinational corporations
were successfully wooed; they came and stayed. The two-layered system fitted
perfectly into the economic-technical framework of government operations in
which human resources were aggressively mobilized and maximised through a
highly competitive system of education and training, to meet the ever escalating
demands of world business and technology. Not surprisingly, processes that did
not lend themselves to precise quantification and quick results were less valued:
the ultimate criterion of merit was a paper certificate attesting to so many distinc-
tions and credits obtained in an examination. Within such a framework, scientific,
technical and managerial disciplines received greatest support, the humanities
less and the creative arts not at all.
But the smooth working of this framework did not obscure its inherent contra-
dictions which had to be addressed sooner or later. The eighties in which the new,
younger leaders had set the goal of a common identity, a sense of being one
people, became the years of deep soul searching. And at the heart of the dilemma
was the incongruous position of English and the resulting ambivalence about
English and everything associated with it. While the country was busy getting its
economic footing, the ambivalence was of no consequence. Now as Singapore
progressed from the merely physical entity of a state to the spiritual principle of a
nation and hence from a quantitative to a qualitative type of framework, the old
model of the two layers had to be examined anew, to see how it could serve the
new aspiration of a national identity. At no time in the history of Singapore has
this need been more strongly felt or articulated. Twenty five years after achieving
political independence, it now remains to translate the instrumental and political
conditions of statehood into the socio-cultural realities of peoplehood.
But what are these socio-cultural realities? As long as the ambivalence towards
English and the lifestyle it has created remains unresolved, there will continue to

35
 CATHERINE LIM

be a whole host of psychological discomforts that will prevent Singaporeans

seeing these realities. As a continuing reaction against their colonial past,
Singaporeans still feel uncomfortable about openly accepting the fact that the
language of the colonial masters and the lifestyle it has generated have become the
real and only common Singaporean way of life. The discomfiture is borne of a
sheepish sense of guilt in having left behind their mother tongues. In its more
severe form the discomfiture is expressed in open hostility against 'western deca-
dence'.
In the same way, it goes against the Singaporean's basic sense of reality to
agree with the leaders' admonitions that the true Singaporean way of life must be
derived from the traditional ethnic cultures, when everyone can see that these
have to be kept alive by strong doses of government support, whether in the form
of grants, assignations of special periods of time, such as the current 'Cultural
Months' to each ethnic group for the promotion of its culture and the setting up of
display cultural villages.
Behind all this promotional activity, much played up by the media, is the
uneasy feeling, therefore, that comes with unresolved conflicts. Something is not
quite right, but nobody is quite sure what it is. It might be useful to look at certain
truths squarely in the eye. Firstly, a nation that is awash with nostalgia as it looks
again upon the quaint spinning tops, cooking utensils and customs of the past, is
not necessarily going to be much affected by this nostalgia as it goes back to its
business of getting on in the world. Secondly, the rallying cry of 'one people, one
nation, one Singapore', is not really being authenticated at ground level, when
Chinese, Malays and Indians each aggressively, proudly go their own cultural
way. Indeed, the fear has been voiced that the cry may sadly rebound upon itself if
each ethnic group, totally isolated in its cultural self-consciousness, seeks affinity
with similar ethnic and cultural groups in the world, thus reducing Singapore to a
meaningless cluster of outward-looking groups, or worse, to a potentially explo-
sive mix of hostile groups.
That dark scenario is of course far from the present mood of determined
optimism, as Singapore, ranked among the most progressive Asian countries, tries
to craft a new framework in which the earlier quantitative achievements can be
translated into enduring qualitative successes, in which, above all the vexatious
problem of the incongruity of the English language and the whole social and
cultural milieu it has created will have to once again stand at the centre of these
deliberations.
I will not contend that there is no incongruity, and perhaps never has been.
The so-called 'Western' lifestyle of Singaporeans is not so western after all. It is the
result of a steady process or blending of elements of ethnic traditions based on
Confucianism, Buddhism, Islam and Hinduism. This blending has produced
Singaporean Chinese who are different from Hongkong Chinese or Mainland
China Chinese, Singaporean Malays who are different from Malaysian Malays
and Singaporean Indians who are different from Indians in India. And the Singa-
pore Chinese, Malay and Indian, although each different in his own way, are

36
 THE WRITER WRITING IN ENGLISH IN MULTIETHNIC SINGAPORE

identifiably Singaporean, in other ways. Just what this 'Singaporeanness' consists

of is hard to say. It is extremely difficult to define a national character, perhaps it is
not even desirable to do so, for it would lead to stereotyping. However, if one has
to do it, one will have to treat it like the Law of Gravity which is more easily
defined in terms of concrete everyday manifestations like falling apples than of
abstractions. Hence one could actually point to a particular 'Singaporean' way of
doing business, of solving a problem, a particular 'Singaporean' attitude towards
work, money, marriage, even a particular Singaporean way of speaking or walk-
ing. Whether endearing or repelling, these traits define the Singaporean. Neither
Western nor Asian, they are an inextricable synthesis of both, and they are all
underlain by that something that must ultimately define a Singaporean identity:
the consciousness of being Singaporean. This consciousness, bordering on pride,
owes in no small way to the example of seriousness of purpose, dedication to duty
and personal integrity of the leadership.
A Singaporean culture in these everyday terms has certainly evolved during
the two and a half decades of the country's independence. And it is the vibrant,
still evolving top layer. What is less certain, however, is the evolution of a
Singaporean culture in terms of artistic expression. Singaporean music, dance,
drama and literature, that can be identifiable as such by outsiders because uniquely
definable as such, are yet to be born. And if the protest is raised that the bottom
layer is the needed artistic distillation of Singaporean life, and that there is there-
fore no need to look elsewhere, the answer must be that it is not so. The bottom
layer represents the aggregate of the preserved forms of the different traditional
cultures. At best, it may be inspiration and source for this artistic distillation of
Singaporean life, but to equate it with Singaporean culture would be a severe
anachronism.
A Singaporean culture in terms of artistic expression satisfying the highest
imperatives of art, is therefore still non-existent, or at the most, nascent. However,
art and culture evolve over time, and given the new expanded qualitative frame-
work that Singapore is moving into, is indeed committed to, there is much prom-
ise.
The writer writing in English in Singapore today stands at the centre of all
these uncertainties and contradictions, anxieties and hopes. It is the heady, excit-
ing, tremulous perilous climate that marks a transition.
If I have taken so long to come to the topic of my paper, it is because I feel a
detailed analysis of the Singapore writer's milieu is crucial to the understanding of
his unique role. For the writer, try as he may, cannot escape his milieu; he draws
upon it, reflects it, shapes it. The writer writing 'in English in Singapore is totally
permeated by all the contradictions of his setting: he is at once a threat because he
is allied to a language and a lifestyle that continues to be repudiated, and a
promise because it is only he, and not the writer writing in Mandarin, Malay or
Tamil who can truly reflect the Singaporean way of life. His voice is considered a
false one because he is as likely to draw from the larger world of cosmopolitanism
for his writing as from his Singaporean setting, yet if Singaporean literature is to

37
 CATHERINE LIM

be addressed to a worldwide audience, it is he rather than the other writers who

will contribute to the development of that literature.
It can be seen therefore that the paradoxical position of the writer writing in
English is an outcome of the unresolved tensions arising from the ambiguities still
surrounding the language in Singapore. The paradoxes affect him in a way that is
both inhibitive and creative. I would like now, using myself as an example, to
show how these influences have affected my writing. Firstly, the sense of guilt that
the English-educated invariably feel at some time or other for speaking English
and repudiating their own mother tongue and culture, was very real with me. It
was the greater because my recollections of my schooldays were mostly of a
superior bearing towards my Chinese-educated friends and neighbours. In my
crisp blue and white convent uniform, I mimicked the wailing tones of the Hokkien
stage 'wayang'. My Chinese-educated antagonists in turn hurled their insults, one
of which would translate into something like 'white-man's shit eater'. I was
defiant. I was elated. I belonged to that elitist group that had nothing to do with
superstitions and foolish kitchen gods and temple cures. All my school composi-
tions were on subjects like strawberry-picking and picnicking in spring woods; my
stories were about families witp. names like Millington-Ramsey (hyphenated!) and
even when I started writing about local folks, these had names like Joseph Tan and
Rosemary Ong and they spoke correct, perfect English.
In my childhood, being a very curious child, I had absorbed Chinese legends
and neighbourhood gossip, but somehow I could not write about these in English.
Perhaps I felt they were unworthy subjects for the language of Shakespeare and
Milton and Jane Austen.
The great psychological break-through came only in adulthood, alas, and if
now I write only local Chinese stories, it must be part of an exercise of self-
e{(piation. In 1974, I was doing a teachers' course with fellow teachers from all over
Southeast Asia. Outside lectures, we shared experiences, cultures. As part of our
coursework, we had to produce some instructional materials. I decided to write
half a dozen stories for the teaching of comprehension, and they would all be local
stories. I wrote in great excitement about the local temple woman I remembered
from childhood, the old neighbour who had a coffin in readiness for his death, the
old Chinese woman who quarrelled with her English-educated daughter-in-law
and called the curse of the lightning god upon her. I found, to my surprise, that the
English language was no impediment to the conveying of local flavours. I was
jubilant. I was later advised by my supervisors to add to the six stories and bring
out a book. The book, called Little Ironies: Stories of Singapore, came out in 1978 and
was warmly received. I have since gone on to write five more books, all on local
experiences, and it seems each time I tame the English language a little more and
cajole it into serving my special needs.
But I suspect it will be some time before the language can be fully indigenised
to give my writing the true Singapore tones, the spirit, the whole Weltanschaung.
Right now, it seems I am having some difficulty even at the level of description
itself. For instance, I want to describe, in all its pungency and piquancy, a Hokkien

38
 THE WRITER WRITING IN ENGLISH IN MULTIETHNIC SINGAPORE

curse. Cursing is an integral part of Hokkien cultural behaviour; you are angry
with a relative but in your position of poor relative, you cannot show it openly, so
you curse a child in the presence of the relative, and so you have expressed your
hurt through a culturally acceptable mode. You are very angry with your daugh-
ter-in-law whp has been disrespectful to you, and you want to show that this
anger is the very anger of the gods who will strike dead those guilty of filial
impiety. So you call upon her the curse of the lightning God, and hear your curse
endorsed by reverberations of thunder and lightning as soon as you utter it.
To this day, I have not succeeded in using the English language to convey the
full power of Hokkien curses; the English maledictory range is pitifully inad-
equate for their sheer virulence. But the challenge is intriguing, and the
Singaporeanisation of the English language is fraught with promise. It will certainly
be more than throwing in local expressions, it will be the challenge of keeping the
language internationally intelligible, yet uniquely Singaporean in its deepest dyes
and echoes.
The greater challenge to the writer writing in English at the present time,
however, is not overcoming any psychological problem in a continuing process of
laying to rest the colonial ghosts once and for all, nor any linguistic one in the
forging of new uses of the English language. It is a largely developmental one,
related to the earlier observation of a Singapore in transition with all the insecuri-
ties and unresolved tensions that this implies.
One of the insecurities that has translated into some difficulty for the writer in
English concerns the matter of censorship. The authorities are not worried about
the writers in Chinese, Malay or Tamil, but they are wary of the writer in English
who is more critical and questioning and more likely to write on the forbidden
subjects. There are no censorship laws as such in Singapore but there is a great
deal of self-censorship by publishers and by the writers themselves. Any topic that
could be construed as even remotely touching upon the sensitive issues of race,
language and religion in this multiethnic society is likely to be self-censored out at
manuscript stage.
This, in effect means that all stories are potentially offensive, since all stories
are about people, and people come from one ethnic group or another. I once wrote
a story about an old Indian man, a retired junior clerk from the days of British
administration, living alone in a one-room flat. He was wrongly accused of raping
a little girl by bumbling policemen and then quickly released amidst much official
embarrassment. He decided to do something to reform Singapore. He would go
into politics. He would stand as an independent in the coming national elections.
The story ends with him falling asleep in the midst of his daydreaming, his mouth
wide open and the ceray juice trickling from it.
A secondary school decided to put up a play based on the story, for the Youth
Drama Festival. They changed the Indian man to a Chinese man. My A.P. Velloo
became Tan Ah Hock, or something like that. After the concert, to which I had
been invited as the guest of honour, I politely asked why they had made the
change. I also politely suggested that the Indianness was an essential part of the

39
 CATHERINE LIM

story. The reply was that race was a sensitive issue. Minority groups might feel
offended.
The safest topics would of course be those celebrating the very visible achieve-
ments of Singapore. We are told by visitors that they are astonishing achievements
by any standard. The Best Airport in the world. The Cleanest, Greenest City. The
Investment Choice of multinational corporations for the third year running. Almost
an embarrassment of riches. But no, few writers could make their pen dance to the
tempo of steel and glass and dollars. It is said that the Asian voice is often cynical,
melancholy. If so, the Asianness in my Singaporean make-up eschews the gloss
and gleam of the boulevards for the dark shadows of the secret alleyways, where I
seek out the sad little tales of the lost, the dispossessed, the casualties of transition.
But the tales are so little - little in every sense of the word. They are about
ordinary happenings in the lives of ordinary men and women, they seldom go
beyond the very narrow world of my Chinese childhood in a small town, they are
about a small section of the English-speaking world of Singapore. They constitute
my little square inch of ivory on which I am quite happy to continue with my fine
etchings. But then Jane Austen never felt the need, in the name of national identity,
to attempt the large canvas where the whole rather than just a small portion of
Singaporean life could be depicted. It is one thing for a Singaporean way of life to
have evolved; it is an entirely different thing for that way of life to be distilled as
art. So far, that distillation has eluded Singaporean artists, and we writers in
English continue to work each on his own little square inch of ivory, preoccupied
with our favourite themes borne out of our own ethnic backgrounds, personal
experiences and idiosyncrasies, each square inch making up only a very small part
of the large Singapore canvas, and having little in common with the other squares.
My stories are as different from Philip Jeyaratnam's, as Philip's are from Goh Sin
Tub's, and as Edwin Thumboo's poetry is from Lee Tsu Pheng's. To emphasize the
isolation of the writer in English in multi-ethnic Singapore, I once described
myself as 'an English-educated Chinese writer writing in English about English-
educated and uneducated Chinese with a perspective strongly influenced by a
temperament derived in part from my traditional Chinese and Catholic background,
for English-educated Chinese, Malay, Indian and other readers in Singapore'.
What greater cultural anomaly can there be? Will the presence of anomalies,
the separate square inches, mean that there can never be one large canvas? I think
not. Indeed, I think that the presence of the little square inches of ivory will be the
very condition for the emergence of a true large picture. The little squares will
increase and grow in the course of time, and finally coalesce, and in the coalescence
will emerge the true Singaporean character, from which the much desired
Singaporean literature will draw its inspiration. It is then that the true Singaporean
identity will have arisen spontaneously and organically and been distilled as art.
Not the pressure-cooked, ersatz identity of mass-learnt national songs, dances and
costumes that it is sometimes tempting to provide as quick substitutes.
When will this take place?
Not yet. Probably not for a long time yet. Meanwhile, as a writer in Singapore,

40
 THE WRITER WRITING IN ENGLISH IN MULTIETHNIC SINGAPORE

and aware of my responsibility as such, I will continue to work on my little square

inch, and be comfortable in my use of English, which is no longer a foreign
language to me, but my own very language, to be used by me as I please. The
changeling child is no longer alienated from the family; but welcomed as truly one
of them. If they look closely enough, they will see that all the signs that were ever
alienating are gone now, for the adopted child has taken on the very colours and
tones and accents of those who adopted him. And that should be enough reason to
stop feeling uneasy about him in their midst, and to start accepting and loving
him.

41
 THE FILIPINO WRITER IN ENGLISH AS
STORYTELLER AND TRANSLATOR

Plenary Lecture by Bienvenido Santos

I am honored to be part of this distinguished gathering of Asian writers in English.

The invitation from the British Council was irresistible. I was going to see Hongkong
again, the first spot of foreign soil where I landed when I went abroad in my
youth, innocent and ignorant as well. This was in September, 1941, three months
before the outbreak of the Pacific war and I was on my way to the United States on
a freighter, the 5.5. Ruth Alexander, which made its first stop in Hongkong. I was a
Philippine government scholar to specialize in English in America, one of those
who would be qualified to replace Americans in the Philippine educational system
during the transition period before our so-called independence.
Hongkong, indeed, but that was not all. The organizers of the symposium
'hoped that the meeting will focus on the ways in which Asian writers have
enriched the English language by their use of it, and explore the experiences of
writers who are expressing the ideas of one culture through the language of
another. We should like the authors (they wrote) to discuss the choice of English as
the language of their books, looking perhaps at their education, literary influences
and cultural backgrounds. It would also be interesting to examine the conse-
quences of this choice for their works, both in terms of the limitations which it may
impose and the freedom it provides.'
How could I refuse this once in a lifetime chance to talk about myself in public,
something which, as a published writer, I have always done anyhow, but this is
something else, I am provided with a captive audience, and then, too, this is by
invitation, like, oh, please, if you don't mind. And I definitely, don't mind.
I have taken as the theme of my talk 'The Filipino Writer in English as
Storyteller and Translator.' With this theme, I seek to make known the dual
burden placed upon the Filipino writer in English: as storyteller, he is our connec-
tion with the past, as he hearkens back to an oral tradition and a heritage of songs;
as translator he is our link to the future, as he brings his culture forward to new
audiences. Underlying the theme of writer as storyteller-translator are a few
assumptions, almost transparently evident, but which I need to mention before-
hand: 1) I am here largely as a result of an historical accident; 2) I am here not
because I chose the English language as my medium, but because it chose me; 3) to
 BIENVENIDO SANTOS

one degree or another, all of us here are translators of a culture; and finally 4) The
question of audience - of who will read us - is probably the most crucial issue
we need to face.
I was born in 1911, thirteen years after the onset of the Spanish-American War,
the war which gave the Philippines a new colonizer, America now instead of
Spain; and with the change came a new educational system, based on the public
school instead of the convent or Church school; and with it all came a new
language, English instead of Spanish. Many of my generation were products of the
new public school system, established by the Americans, and where the medium
of instruction was English. Thus the historical accident because in order for one to
be socialized under the new rulers, one had to learn English: to read it, to speak it,
to think in it, to write it.
How well I remember those days when as school children, we were forced to
speak the new language of our new masters. As soon as we stepped on the school
grounds, we were met by sign boards in conspicuous places. The sign read:
SPEAK ENGLISH. It didn't sound threatening. It was almost humble in its brevity.
But there were spies in our midst who reported to the school authorities those who
disobeyed the order and spoke in their native dialect. When I 'started writing
poems or what sounded like poems to me in English in grade school at age 10 or
12, I signed my work with a pen name, Welcome Saints, a literal translation of my
name Bienvenido Santos, which is Spanish. I never used the pen name when I went
to high school and thereafter. I simply mention this in passing, but perhaps I am
trying to make a point.
What made it possible for myself and for writers of my generation to write
creatively in English? Listen: Long before Magellan, who is credited with having
discovered us in the name of Spain, ever came to our shores, there already existed
in the islands a tradition of storytelling, or singing, and myth making. Philippine
culture is rich with a heritage of songs and stories celebrating all conceivable
occasions that called for commemoration: birth, courtship, harvest, marriage,
death. There were stories that depicted battles between gods and mortals, rituals
in song and dance to draw abundance, gain peace of mind and spirit. Most of these
literary experiences were not preserved in whatever ancient scripts were available
in those times. They trusted the memory to preserve the cultural heritage.
Much of what were sung and recited and told were close to the spiritual lives
of the ancient Filipinos. Our earliest songs and tales expressed love and loyalty,
atonement for sins against the gods, alleviation of the pain of the sick and the
dying, prayers over the dead. Others were cries for help to an almighty who was
known by various names, depending upon the dialect spoken in the tribal group;
prayers for abundance on land and sea, for happiness at home, on the farm and
safety for those who hunt in jungles or ply the seas in feeble rafts and wooden
boats.
When the Spaniards came, they introduced their own God, but were much
impressed by the natives who were always smiling and cheerful, yet shy, who
made merry at the least provocation, what wonderful tales they told, and how the

44
 THE FILIPINO WRITER IN ENGLISH AS STORYTELLER AND TRANSLATOR

audience listened and were quick to remember and retell the stories. According to
some Spanish chroniclers, some of the tales they told were quite indecent and
vulgar, albeit, effective in evoking laughter.
A great amount of fabricating went on in creation legends; for instance, tales
on how places like towns, provinces, and islands all over the archipelago came to
have their names. Sometimes the stories were told in poetical form, with compul-
sory rhyme obviously needed to aid memorization (mnemonics), in a chanting,
almost keening manner. These were stories not only about the beginning of things
but of the present and the hazy future. A lot of collective or group chanting went
into the telling.
But no matter how deeply rooted an oral tradition in a country like the
Philippines is, it could be said that much is lost through the ages. This is true of
what has been written down, but much truer in what is simply recited. One of the
aspects of what we call the Filipino tradition is based on very little evidence. What
have we to show that we had a culture of our own even as the earliest Filipinos
wandered from rainforests to another? Hardly anything. One reason for this is that
the earliest craftsmen and artists of the Philippines did not build for permanence
much less for posterity. Everything or nearly everything they composed or cre-
ated, be it a metrical tale, etched on the bark of a tree or a sculptured form out of
wood or a nipa house was easily destroyed in season, particularly seasons of
strong winds and floods, not to mention fires.
The vernaculars, Tagalog (now Pilipino) in particular held and continued to
encourage poetical jousts. In my college days there were poetical jousts in English,
which drew big, enthusiastic crowds. This was during the American regime when
my Alma Mater, the University of the Philippines, produced the country's best
storytellers, poets, and writers in English. One of the earliest American professors
who taught English in the University, Dean Fansler, encouraged the recording of
folk tales. He sent his students to their homes in the country to listen to and record
as faithfully as they could, old folks tell old tales. Later he wrote and published a
book of Philippine folk tales.
The Americans fostered the oral tradition in the Philippines through their
system of public schools. By the late twenties the rhythms of an American tradi-
tion of eloquence were vibrating in every classroom. As I have said earlier, we
were reciting from memory, sometimes accompanied by gestures, body language
and corresponding mien that somehow indicated we fully comprehended the
meaning of what we were saying, although this was not always the case or was
possible at all without the able coaching of our teachers. Thus we went through
Patrick Henry ('Give me liberty or give me death!,), Edgar Allan Poe ('And we loved with
a love that was more than lovell and my Anabelle Lee.'), Abraham Lincoln ('a govern-
ment of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from this earth.'), etc.,
not to mention the longer epic-like poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Ladies and gentlemen, I know whereof I speak. At a very early age, I found
myself deeply in love with the sound of the English language. The meaning came
later. You see, I was a declaimer, a prize winning declaimer, and later, orator of the

45
 BIENVENIDO SANTOS

purest ham. I collected prizes, mostly books and fountain pens called self-fillers,
but didn't really do the job. I went through 'Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight'
honestly believing in my foolish heart that it shall not ring, indeed, even if I had no
idea what 'curfew' meant. Poe was an overall favorite in my generation. We
chanted his poems from memory. They were so musical, so incantatory, it felt
great to feel them 'trippingly on the tongue.' The point is, beneficiaries as we were
of a long and rich oral tradition, we had fallen in love with the sound of the lan-
guage.
Traditionally, we have as a people been very much drawn to the way things
sound. The number of dialects we speak makes us keenly aware of intonation. The
awit, the folk or popular song, has a long tradition that antedates the colonial
period in our history. The verbal joustings I have mentioned earlier were tests of
wit as well as of a contestant's ability to compose a poem or tell a story on the spot.
Thus I can say that the language chose me because I was already predisposed
to appreciate its rhythms. I have often spoken of my addiction to the English
language as a result of my love for its sound. There is nothing particularly strange
in this as far as Filipinos are concerned. The Spanish language for all its lyricism
was not the language of the masses in the Philippines but of the elite and this fact
somehow put a stigma to it. On the other hand, English was made available to all
young Filipinos, and somehow, the American tradition of eloquence found a
home in our love of the lyrical. When our American teachers gave us to read the
works of the poets I have already mentioned, we went practically berserk with
sound. Imagine, if you will, a group of school children listening to their old
American teacher read 'Snowbound' with obvious nostalgia for the faraway land
of her childhood in snowbound New England, while her students sat enthralled,
'their (brown) faces looking up, holding wonder like a cup' - who had never seen
snow in their lives - and at that moment sweltered in the stifling heat of their
crowded room.
Any visitor to the Philippines then as now, I suppose, would not fail to notice
if he stayed long enough and was interested in an educational system that uses
English as a means of instruction, that our schools are practically schools in the
oral tradition. We were told as school children by our American and later, Filipino,
teachers, to memorize and be able to recite poems and passages, sometimes entire
speeches, when called upon to do so. I can still recite from memory long passages
from Hiawatha, which I used to know by heart practically in its entirety; as well as
Evangeline. We studied nothing else for one year in our literature class. In primary
school we had to memorize by rote as we did the prayers learned in childhood
without understanding what they meant. It did not matter. We loved the sound, so
from day to day in the classroom we recited, often chanted, passages in English
from memory.
In a scholarly and rather flattering essay on my poetry (in the Spring 1989
issue of World Literature Written in English) critic Lynn M. Grow quotes a line from
The Wounded Stag, the first of my two books of poems. The line reads:

46
 THE FILIPINO WRITER IN ENGLISH AS STORYTELLER AND TRANSLATOR

Memory's accent is an alien tongue

Speaking, but clear and true as summer rain.

Dr Grow uses the line to argue that, through memory, the poet celebrates
'continuity's triumph over disruption in human history.' I am not about to argue
with the critic's interpretation; I just want to say that I wrote the line with a keen
sense for its rhythmic quality

an a-Ii-en tonguejSpeak-ing but clear and true ..

In this respect, I see myself as transmitting a heritage held in thrall by sound,

as conveyor of a heritage of songs. Notice the quatrain that precedes the quoted
line, which opens a short poem called 'Pagan' in the book, The Wounded Stag:

When my ancient gods are tired of waiting

I shall go, but quietly, lest silence
Break in the native woodland and startle
The sleeping flower and the nodding leaf.

By the very nature of language, sound cannot be isolated from sense nor
rhythm separated from meaning. The meaning of the line 'Memory's accent is an
alien tongue/Speaking, but clear and true as summer rain' as well as the just
quoted quatrain, have, I believe, quite a bit to do with the idea of translation. We
are, all of us here, translators to one degree or another. Our object is to convey the
truth of something, even though it may simply be the experience of summer rain
or a Filipino way of saying in English how one should go when the time comes,
'gentle into the night.' No 'raving' please.
A translator is ordinarily thought of as a bridge between cultures, as one who
takes ideas and carries them over (as its etymology suggests) from one culture to
another. It is as though the translator has no life of his own apart from the
existence of the two separate cultures for which he is the bridge. My view is that
the writer in English as translator already is the unity, that is, he is the synthesis,
the embodiment of both cultures. In other words, there is no longer a bridge; the
unity that is possible between cultures is already incarnate in the writer whose
medium is a non-native tongue. For the non-native writer of English, the very act
of writing is pure translation.
Inevitably, the themes that the storyteller-translator deals with - the recon-
ciliation of contradictions within a culture, hierarchy vs. equality, the theme of self
vs. society, personal vs. national identity, city life vs. village life, custom vs.
innovation, innocence vs. experience, permanence vs. change - have already
been forged in their poly-linguistic, multi-layered, multi-cultural crucibles the
writer has gone through. The goal of the storyteller-translator, therefore, is not so
much to ferry across a bridge, but to confiate, juxtapose, coalesce; not so much to
trans-fer, as it is to trans-form; not so much to carry over, as it is to change ove~·.

47
 BIENVENIDO SANTOS

Yet even as we try to confront ourselves and reconcile the contradictions

within us and our culture, using a language we were not born to but is widely read
and understood all over the world, how are we to interpret ourselves to our own,
especially to those who are deprived of the opportunities that English offers in
addition to their own dialects? There will always be questions with answers never
quite catching up, but the world moves on. There are changes at every turn, both
good and bad. The world being what it is and people being what they are, each
one of us chasing his own favorite phantom, though much is given little is taken.
In this last decade of the twentieth century, there is still too little of what is known
about my country. How many remember, much less took notice, that a young
Philippine girl named Lea Salonga, won early this month the highly esteemed
Laurence Olivier Award for her superstar performance in Miss Saigon, the first Asian
and Filipino to be so honored; on the other hand, everybody knows about Imelda's
incredible collection of shoes.
In our works we Filipinos who write in English attempt to interpret the
Filipino character to our readers as a typical human being with traits, strengths
and weaknesses no different from those of other races and cultures. We could be
likeable and hateful, with contrasting characteristics warring inside us. Our love
of family and closeness to one another, our inordinate sense of gratitude and
hospitality to a fault often ride roughshod over accepted tenets of decorum and
proper conduct in government. Our fun-loving nature could appear strange to the
outside world, like the festive dancing, feasting and singing on EDSA during the
people power revolution of 1986. It was not a picnic, but it certainly looked like
one to foreigners instead of the life or death crisis that it was. In our book, as well
as in our heart, the Filipino could be mighty like the molave, resilient like the
bamboo; a picaresque character, a charming rogue. Our minds and hearts have a
love-hate relationship. We are both personal and professional in our dealings with
others even when only one of these attitudes is called for; we are equally shy and
overbearing. We are too self-centered and parochial to actually have a sense of
national pride, our self-interests blur our sense of the common good. Our piety
easily translates into fanaticism. How could we, writing one book after another,
miss to touch on these aspects of our nature if indeed, our task is to tell the truth
and tell it well in English?
The ideal for us Filipino writers in English is to recognize our individual
talents, and like T.5. Eliot, declare:

We do not imitate, we are changed; and our work is the work of a changed man; we
have not borrowed, we have been quickened and we become bearers of a tradition.

As bearers of a unique tradition, the question remains: What audience will we

have? Who will listen to our translated songs? In the Philippines today, a student
could go through the entire school system without having to learn English, cer-
tainly not the way we did in my time. A number of departments of literature in
prominent Philippine universities are now bilingual, with the greater complement

48
 THE FILIPINO WRITER IN ENGLISH AS STORYTELLER AND TRANSLATOR

of lecture courses being conducted in Pilipino. School newspapers and journals as

well as some national newspapers and magazines ostensibly English, are written
in English and Pilipino. There are columns in English periodicals written exclusively
in Pilipino or a combination of the two languages deftly mixed and sounding, no
doubt, quite natural to those who write and speak that way, which count among
the elite from the highest functionary in the government down to the masses. The
resultant hybrid is called Taglish, which combine the prefix of one and the suffix of
the other. English is now regarded the same as Spanish used to be at the turn of the
last century: as a repository of colonial values, residual presence of an older time,
elitist, anti-democratic. It did not, of course, help the cause of the language for
America to continue to exert its military might in Asia. And let me add another
irony: one of the most eloquent speakers of English in the Philippine political
arena in the last two decades was none other than the late dictator, Ferdinand
Marcos.
In some ways I have been fortunate. I am no politician. My young Filipino
students in English creative writing classes at De La Salle or Ateneo still listen to
me, respectfully, as though in my later years, I have come to represent a tradition
of eloquence in a language that they themselves will have some difficulty carrying
forward. I have been fortunate, too, because early in my writing career I began to
write about Filipinos in America. Contemporary Literary Criticism (Vol. 22) has this
brief description of my life's work: As the leading fictional spokesman for his
I

fellow expatriates, Santos sensitively captures the pain of their homelessness.' This
description, dated 1982, was based on work previously done: You Lovely People
(1955), Brother My Brother (1960), Scent of Apples (1979), and has since been further
proved by my last two novels: The Man Who (Thought He) Looked Like Robert Taylor
(1983), and What the Hell for You Left Your Heart in San Francisco (1987).
I have found an audience among the Filipinos who wish to share in the
experience of their brothers and sisters overseas. Whether this audience is in the
Philippines or in America, the language that it will hear narrating the experience
of expatriation is English. And one thing remains certain: that little brown expatri-
ate, Pinoy, or Manong, as he is variously called, who emigrated to America in the
thirties, or who came around World War II, some of whom are now dead like the
writer Carlos Bulosan, or still living in retirement, alone and anonymous, or as
parents and grandparents of a new breed of Filipino Americans, these are de-
scended from a race of storytellers of an island archipelago rich in folklore and
myths, steeped in a heritage of songs.
The unique act of translation, as I have defined it, continues. An enterprising
writer from the Philippines, Virgilio Felipe, who resides in Hawaii, has been
urging Manong to tell his stories to him. Unlike Professor Fansler's students from
the University of the Philippines, Felipe has been going around the plantations
with a tape recorder. He will soon have a book ready for publication, if it isn't
published already, of stories told by old Filipino plantation laborers in Hawaii.
Nor is Felipe alone in his dream to put down in print what could otherwise get lost
the way the spoken word disappears with the quickness of sound in the air. There

49
 BIENVENIDO SANTOS

are currently more Filipino writers in English in America than at any other time in
history. With perseverance and a little luck, they, too will find their stories in print,
as quite a few have already, so that those who come after them, Filipino and
American, and perhaps the rest of the English speaking world as well, may know
their story and be that much richer in mind and spirit.

50
 THE EXPERIENCE OF WRITING IN AN
EXPATRIATE SITUATION

Meira Chand

The very title of this workshop, 'The experience of writing in an expatriate situa-
tion', would seem to imply from the beginning that those of us who work in this
situation are dealing with something others writers are not. If we look up the word
expatriate in the dictionary, we read 'exiled' and also 'banished'. The prefix ex-alone
means 'outside of'. The writer is by nature and the circumstances of his work a
natural outsider. Wherever he may live he has in some small way already exiled
himself in his role of observer. So, what difference you might ask does a little more
exiling make in his life?
When I hear the term expatriate writer, I have to admit that the immediate im-
age summoned up is of an elderly Western gentleman in a panama hat and
crumpled linen jacket sipping sundowners on a tropical veranda, far from home.
Perhaps this comes from reading too much Kipling, Graham Greene and Somerset
Maugham at the wrong age. I have to struggle past this image before I can think
more deeply. And even then the old gentleman still persists so that, in my mind,
expatriate writers fall into two different categories. The panama hats and linen
jackets belong to my first type of writer, someone from one culture who, willingly
or unwillingly, finds himself uprooted from his homeland and replanted, often for
a lengthy period of time, in another culture. The displacement might be through
the trauma of war, such as happened to Isaac Bashevis Singer and countless others
of his era, or the mere fulfilling of a whim to live in a chosen place, such as with
Somerset Maugham or Samuel Beckett. But this displacement is also disinherit-
ance and brings with it special problems.
The great writers of any nation have all been born in the security of a cultural
tradition, whether we speak of Dickens and the British novel, Chekov and Russia,
Natsume and Japan or any of China's old writers. Tradition nurtures, it offers the
consistency of a bloodline, a springboard for evolution, growth and experimenta-
tion. Its stability and a past of example and learning can be drawn upon. It is a well
into which to let down a line and pull up one's own small cupful of water. The
expatriate writer has forsaken all this. He has been cut off from his own tradition
and culture, from its daily osmosis and introspection, and from his own context
within it. How he deals with this trauma, this crisis of identity, is perhaps the
greatest problem confronting him in his situation.
 MElRA CHAND

Every writer struggles to find a meaningful context within which to write. He

must, if you like, find the exact angle at which to align himself to the universe.
Within his own tradition this is difficult enough, but the problem is greatly
compounded when the writer is relegated to a peripheral position on the edge of
an alien culture. Alienation strips himself and his work of all homogeneous
meaning. The problems of context and of viewpoint are suddenly immense. If he
attempts to see with the alien eyes of his adopted culture into a mentality and
heritage often inexplicably different from his own, the result if merely pastiche. If
he sticks to his own peripheral viewpoint from which to look into his new society,
he realises only too quickly the limitations that now afflict him. How is he to find
his way in beneath the surface to the jugular vein of his new culture?
Yesterday I heard Pira Sudham speak about his early life in Thailand, and
after listening to him I feel he must be the most perfect example of a writer who is
not an expatriate. I say that very glibly for in fact Pira was at one point an
expatriate writer, living away from Thailand for twelve years, during which time
he wrote much of his novel about his homeland, Monsoon Country. But Pira was one
of those expatriates who, wherever they live, are still spiritually rooted in their
own soil. Yesterday he told of how, as a child, in the shade of a tree in the hot Thai
afternoons he slept with the water buffaloes, propped up against them. Today, in
his work, he still draws on the richness and strength of those early memories. The
writer is a creature of the subconscious, for it is on that level that the real work is
done. The responses of that mysterious part of ourselves are formed so early in
life. Pira Sudham, in spite of long years of expatriation, never left or diluted his
source. He has direct access of that deep repository of memory in himself, and
from it can go directly to his subject matter without any cultural dislocation, and
this is a very great strength.
On the other hand, if I may use myself as an example, dilemmas possibly
unknown to Pira Sud ham surround me. My heritage is mixed and my loyalties
divided; fragmentation has its own rewards and brings riches different from Pira's
deep-rooted strengths. I live as an outsider in Japan, on the periphery of a culture
notoriously difficult to penetrate. In writing about Japan my recurring dilemma is
that I must at times use Japanese characters. And in this context I come up against
what, for me, is the crux of the expatriate writer's problem. I have no deep source
of tradition to return to like Pira, writing about rural Thailand while in Australia
and Hong Kong. I must use the material about me. Yet how is it possible to
produce a convincing, three-dimensional character when I cannot enter into the
subconscious of that character? Imagination and the observations of long resi-
dence in Japan, allow me to approximate it in my work. But within myself there is
a great unease and the knowledge that my characters, if they are to be central, well
explored characters, must carry a basic falsity. In contrast to Pira Sudham, I write
upon a narrow ledge, for I have no sense of belonging and, I believe, no real way
into Japan. I do not have the spiritual affinity that a Japanese parent would have
given me, nor the insights that a Japanese husband might have provided. I did not
arrive there at a young age and live formative years in the country absorbing

52
 THE EXPERIENCE OF WRITING IN AN EXPATRIATE SITUATION

responses, sharing thought and play with Japanese friends. I must write my main
narrative from the position of the outsider and relegate my Japanese characters to
secondary roles. This is a great limitation in my view to writing, in a multitude of
ways.
In her lecture the other day Dr Han Suyin mentioned that, in spite of mixed
heritage and later an expatriate life, she had not suffered any crisis of identity. I
found this interesting and it made me reflect more upon this whole facet of being
an expatriate and finding a way in to writing about another culture. I, unlike Dr
Han, readily admit to an ongoing identity crisis. But I feel, after listening to Dr
Han, that this must come partly from being an extreme kind of expatriate, born
into a third culture that neither parent belonged to, and now living in a fourth to
which I feel little access. Dr Han is fortunate to have the sustenance of roots. She
was born in the country of one of ·her parents, and lived all her formative years
there. Whatever the problems of duality she faced, she had this source of spiritual
nourishment to anchor and sustain her. She has too all the requirements I have just
listed to enter into the Chinese mind, and that I so sorely lack to enter the Japanese.
This came home to me hard with the writing of my last book. It was the first
book that I set in India, and had only Indian characters. My other books are all set
in Japan and deal mainly with cross-cultural themes. India, in contrast to Japan, is
a country whose blood flows in my veins and to which, outsider though I may be
in many respects, I have a deep and very real spiritual affinity with. I have a sense
of completion when in India. In some deep part of myself a door is open. I have a
way in. The writing of that last book was like a celebration. It was as if I stretched
cramped limbs. I knew then that I was not writing in an expatriate situation. I had
at last found a source.
With these special dilemmas before them, how have expatriate writers sur-
vived and grown? Those that have flourished best are those who have been able to
continue to draw upon the great source of their own traditions, like Pira Sudham.
To go back to my earlier examples, Isaac Bashevis Singer, a Jewish refugee from
Nazi Poland in America, drew all his remaining life on his Jewish traditions and
the Yiddish fables he heard as a child. He married them to America. But his Jewish
Polish roots were a brimming well always within him, indestructible, and from
which he could draw life-giving water. Somerset Maugham, wherever he trav-
elled and whoever he observed in the darkest corners of the world, never really
left the protection and the dubious strengths of the British Empire. Samuel Beckett
for all his abstraction and bi-lingualism remained to the end, I suspect, an Irishman
in France. Countless other expatriate writers both today and in the past have
continued to do the same. But there are also those writers who, cut off from their
source, cannot reach it within themselves for any number of reasons. These writers
must draw on the material close to them, like myself, and their task is often the
harder and more fraught with failure, for they must forge a completely new
identity.
The other category of expatriate writer I want to draw your attention to is a
result of our changing, multicultural world, and expatriate in its very deepest

53
 MElRA CHAND

meaning. It is the addition of the word multicultural that makes this writer differ-
ent. He faces all the problems of the first category of expatriate writer, but has a
great wealth of advantages. He is of a different breed. He is not been displaced by
war or whim but, in this world of massive emigration, by his very birth itself or
uprooting at a tender age, and is of mixed race or heritage. He is a natural outsider.
The thread that ties the mono cultural writer to his past is divided in him. His
priorities regarding cultural identity are of his own order and he stands all tradi-
tion on end. He belongs wholly nowhere except within himself. He lives with
dualities, searching for roots while examining his adopted country, free and very
able to make multicultural judgements. He is both insider and outsider and so can
zoom in and out of his identikit cultures at will, often with great perversity. This
type of expatriate writer has a privileged position. He has an opportunity that
nobody entrenched in the legacy of tradition can ever have. He has the opportunity
to invent himself and his own traditions. He is the world's intellectual refugee. He
travels without heavy cultural baggage, free to explore his own original land-
scapes. Never before has there been such a community of expatriate, multicultural
writers as there are today. Now a whole list of names spring to mind: Salman
Rushdie, Timothy Mo, Bharati Mukhajee, Kazuo Ishiguro, V.S. Naipaul, Han
Suyin and Ruth Jhabvala to name but a few. All expatriates, all a far cry from the
image of panama hats and sundowners. Their scope is immeasurable, and their
voice as a community is loud in breaking down barriers and striking out for
themselves. They have forged original ground and already laid down the founda-
tions for creating a rich new tradition in the history of literature, the expatriate
tradition. The multicultural expatriate writer is a survivor and, in his search for his
source and his roots, can marry the most improbable opposites with natural
daring. This emerging community of writers and their work is, I feel, the most
exciting thing in the literature of today's world. And if, as yet, few feel entirely
comfortable upon their unique platform, there is no doubt in my mind that it is the
framework of the future.

54
 SCALING DARAGANG MAGAYON: THE
BILINGUAL POET TRANSLATING
HERSELF

Merlinda c. Bobis

they meet at the yawa river, there in the kingdom of rawis. and daragang magayon
(beautiful maiden) and panganoron (cloud) fall in love.
but patuga (eruption) desires her - and he is a bad loser. he encounters
panganoron in a battle.
patuga is killed by panganoron, but panganoron also dies. as a spear is hurled
at him by the rival army, daragang magayon runs to him, embraces him. she
suffers the death meant for her beloved who is eventually killed.
the lovers are buried in one grave. this mound grows, rises high, higher into a
mountain shaped like a woman's breast.
they call her mt. mayon from 'magayon'.
she is a volcano of terrible beauty. on clearest days, she stands bluish-grey-
green, hushed and beautiful. on others, she is capped by a cloud - panganoron
kisses her. but on dark days, she spews dire reminiscent of patuga's rage.
after many eruptions, she is now wounded by deep gulleys and ravines.
battle-scarred, but still beautiful and brave.

She is the terrible beauty of Bicol Region, south of Luzon. In her peace, she buries
the awed viewer dumb. In her fire, more burning than the sun, she entombs
everything at her feet. Years ago, she buried a whole town, saving only the belfry.
In her recent eruptions, she has been slowly burying another town. It is only the
sensibility she cannot bury.
Poetry, she unearths.
She made me write in two voices. Originally, I translated her native image into
a foreign tongue. She came out as a long poem in English. No, it was not a choice
between English and Filipino, or even Filipino and my Bikol dialect. It was a
course of nature. I studied in schools where English was the medium of instruc-
tion. My nursery rhymes were in English; poetry was in English. I was delightfully
trapped in the English metaphor.
So the vision of Daragang Magayon was thought out in English. The volcano
was scaled down to the size of a poem, while scaling it to its peak, while scaling the
 MERLINDA C. BOBIS

demands of a foreign tongue. But I never got there. I could not bring myself to
finish the English original. I shelved the poem, allowing the sensibility to rest a
few thousand miles from the apex. But almost a year later, I translated this
unfinished work into Filipino after re-thinking my chosen voice. A European
wondered about this 'strange' preference of medium. A Filipino remarked I did
not sound like a Filipina anymore. A feminist poet read her poems in Filipino. I
knew I missed out on something.
The vision of Daragang Magayon in English had to be re-visioned in Filipino.
And finally, I was able to finish the poem. It found its true spirit in my own
tongue. I was ridiculously entranced - I realized for the first time that my
language is beautiful! Writing in Filipino after being too intimate with English
seemed like tasting my first vintage. Like tasting it new when in fact it was old.
But I did not give up English. Old fires are not doused by new burning. The
English metaphor burned on. The Filipino translation was ultimately translated
again into English, leaving me three poems after two years. This whole writing
experience proved a pleasurable tongue-tripping between two languages, like
going up and down the volcano. A creative process so strange, with all the death-
birth pangs along the way. It seemed as if I lost-gained-Iost-gained a poem at
every shift.
This process of many movements is what I wish to review.
What exactly happens in the course of translating?
Whatever languages are involved, certain patterns are almost always felt.
Expectedly, the texture of the original word/poem is lost in the new tongue, but a
new texture is found, and maybe found more exciting. The old image is displaced
by an image that may not be its perfect equivalent, but this inexact image may
strike you as 'more exact' in the new language. The old metaphor dies, but a
novelty may be born. The impact of the poet's old sensibility gets distorted in a
translation, but 'the new distorted sensibility' may metaphor more palpably in a
new tongue. The original vision dims because the old intention does not get across
fully and accurately, but the new vision may become the new intention. The old
poem 'disappears', so a new one may emerge.

Visioning Daragang Magayon

The first and original English version, the unfinished one, comes under the title
'Daragang Magayon' and is divided into Jose's song and Magayon's reply. Jose is
a youth who surveys the volcano from the foot, fascinated.

In this half-light, you stun me.

He desires to know her 'up close', to know her more than mountain. This
vision strains him to fly to her peak. He is stunned 'to a flash of wing' :

56
 SCALING DARAGANG MAGAYON

a bird startled into possibility of flight

like knowing its name for the first time.

But at close range, he discovers she is actually a 'wounded mountain', lined

with the deepest grooves. He is frustrated.

. .. Something
vicious about wounded mountains, a breast
that suckled monster teeth ...

Thus, he rejects her:

Up here, your name is lost.

I have no love for lost names.

But Daragang Magayon answers him:

Lovers are better nameless.

She assures him her wounds would not wound; it is all right to roost on her
peak. The encounter with her wounds in that height would make the youth a man.
Thus, he would not need wings anymore. Vision enriched by the experience, he
would eventually soar without even flying, there at her foot where 'depth and
height' are already 'within walking distance'.
Daragang Magayon establishes affinities at this point. Jose's encounter with
her is a self-encounter from both perspectives. Her wounds are his after all.
Because all wounding is nothing but a desiring for counterpart. She promises him
a tenderness, which she is willing to give even after his death, when he goes back
to her womb. Even the volcano will learn peace:

I will even still this breast

from heaving, because I do not wish
to give away your tomb in my womb.

This last part of the poem is not in the original English version. It is only a
translation of the ending which found its voice in Filipino first.

Re-visioning the Vision

At this point, I will illustrate the death-birth patterns experienced in the course of
translation.
The texture of the old language is lost in the new voice. Translating, I can only
approximate the spirit of the original. In English, the first lines read:

57
 MERLINDA C. BOBIS

In this half-light, you stun me.

You repeat a perfect crest,
a once-upheaval caught at its height.
Framed against the sky, a breast
heaved and held with no letting go
of breath, your quiet fury of all ages.

Though inexact, the Filipino translation reads letter.

Daragang Magayon, (Daragang Magayon

tinutuliro mo ako you confuse me
sa unang liwanag. in the first light.
iginuguhit mo ang tuktok ng alon you sketch the crest
sa kanyang paghampas sa langit; in its breaking against the sky;
suso kang nakaukit sa ulap, you are a breast drawn on a cloud,
bumuntonghiningang dibdib, a bosom that heaved a sigh,
pasikdu-sikdo ang hangin, wind that pulsates
parang sigwang kinikimkim. like a leashed storm.)

Note the obvious inaccuracy. The present progressive tinutulire does not mean
'stunning', but 'confusing'. However, if I choose the exact verb for 'stun', which is
gulat, meaning 'surprise', the line would sound lame and bald. Not enough to
capture the overwhelming strain of the youth wishing to wing. Tinutuliro has this
spirit.
Then, take the image of the 'heaved and held' breast. It turns out as 'a bosom
that heaved a sigh', the sigh being 'wind that pulsates/like a leashed storm'. It is
difficult to explain to a non-Filipino audience that it is better in its difference, not
only in visual terms but in terms of sound. If I read the Filipino version, I know
your ears would only gather how my Filipino syllables fall into each other to
orchestrate this fluidity, but I could never let you perceive this sound's flavor as
more exciting than that of the English version.
The new image is inexact - this is another consequence of translation. But an
inexact image which can be 'more exact'. It comes to the poet-translator almost like
an epiphany - 'This is it! Why have I never thought of this before?'
To illustrate, Jose jealously proclaims:

And later in the day, you shall be capped

with clouds I shall elbow out.
Because I wish you clearest, more personal
as a lump in the throat full as this morning.

The Filipino version goes:

umuusad na ang umaga, (morning moves on,

58
 SCALING DARAGANG MAGAYON

lalo kang napapandungan ng ulap you are covered more with clouds
na sinisiko kong paalis; I elbow out.
naninibugho ako - mithi kong I am jealous - I wish
ika' y umaliwalas, you brighter,
maging kasinlinaw, kasimpersonal clearer, as personal
ng kimpal na kirot as a lump of ache
na hindi ko malunuk-Iunok. I cannot gulp.
ganito nga ba ang mahirinan ng is this how to choke in
simbuyo passion,
sa labis na gandang pumupuwing because of too much beauty
sa mata? that splinters the eye?)

The image is pruned, then allowed to bud into a newer image. In this trans-
lated version, the 'lump in the throat' loses its being 'full as this morning'. It
becomes instead the 'lump of ache/I cannot gulp' (because it is 'full'). And a
question which is not in the English version is affixed as an afterthought - 'is this
how to choke in passion ... ?'
Obviously, the image does not fit the original, but it does fit the new language.
And reading it, I sense an exactness of my vision, which I now doubt in the
original version.
Then the old metaphor dies in order to birth something novel. Daragang
Magayon says:

So roost on me and I will set you down again

as man this time, ready to burn his wings,
because earth below would have become earth here
and sky. Depth and height within walking distance.

In the Filipino translation, her words take on a different shade:

kaya ipakalong mo sa akin (so let your youth

ang iyong kamusmusan,
ipaghehele kita hanggang
magkagulang
sa gayo'y maibababa sa aking
paanan
lalo't natuto ka nang maging tao
na kahit walang bagwis,
umiilanlang pa rin sa kalawakan,
sapagkat ang langit dito sa itaas
at ang lupa riyan sa ibaba
ay nagtatalik na sa pusod ng diwa.
rest on my lap;
I will sing you to sleep till you come
of age,
so I can set you down at my foot,
especially because you have learned
to bea man
who without wings
still soars in the sky,
because the sky up here
and the earth down there
are already love-ing in the depth
of the consciousness.)

59
 MERLINDA C. BOBIS

Note how the concept of burning of wings in the English original is lost in
Filipino, and how the idea of becoming a man is re-metaphored.
It could also be that another metaphor is appended to the original to reinforce
it. The old metaphor is simply:

Gather all my wounds in your eyes

without blinking . ..

Translated, it turns into:

kaya ipunin mo sa iyong mga mata (so gather my wounds

ang aking mga sugat - in your eyes -
huwag kang kukurap; do not blink;
huwag kang magtago sa ngatal ng do not hide in the tremor
mga talukap. of lids.)

The last two lines are appended as spontaneously demanded by the growing
text. When this consequence happens, I sometimes discover a fresh metaphor,
sounding strange both in English and Filipino, but certainly apt for the poem's
spirit.
From the English original:

Here, you shall know me in the years

you have spent, those tossing of days
that deepened gashes into grooves,
into wounds you call mine alone.

To the Filipino version which is not only changed, but expanded as well:

... makikilala mo ako (you will know me

sa mga taong ika'y nangarap.
sa lambitin ng mga araw
na nagnasang umakyat,
sa pukpok-pintig ng bawat minutong
nagpalalim ng uka,
hanggang ito'y bumigay na bangin,
sugat na di lang ako ang may angkin.
in the years you dreamt.
in the swinging of days
that desired to climb,
in the hit-beat of every minute
that deepened the groove
till it gave into a ravine,
a wound not mine alone.)

At another time, a metaphor can get distorted once translated. And once read,
it feels as if the impact of the sensibility active in the original writing gets equally
distorted - but it is no cause for fretting. This 'new distorted sensibility' meta-
phors more palpably in the new tongue.
If the original English version has these lines:

60
 SCAUNG DARAGANG MAGAYON

flight is singing
on four winds,
there where I can tell you dreams
of tall husbands and fat babies
that never cry, or die.

The Filipino version has something more:

ang lipad ay awit (flight is song

sa apat na hangin. on four winds.
do on, gumuguhit ang sugat there, the wound
ng aking pag-aasam of my desire draws
ng mataas na kabiyak a tall spouse
at malulusog na sup ling and strong babies
na hindi umiiyak that do not cry,
sapagkat hindi namamatay. because they never die.)

'Dreaming' now becomes a 'wounding' and the 'never-dying' becomes a

reason for the 'non-crying'. But this is a welcome distortion.
As mentioned earlier, the last part of the poem is not finished in English but in
Filipino. So I resort to translating the Filipino ending into English, and adding it to
the first and original English version. This time, the shuttling is in the reverse, but
the experience is no different. The patterns are still felt.
To cite an example, the original Filipino version goes:

sariwain rno itong kuwento (refresh this story

ng Zahat ng buhay na nabuhay.
bukas kukuwentuhan kitang muli,
aawitan at aawitin ko ang ikaw at ako
sa bawat paglipad, hanggang mapatag
ang piZa ng panahon,
hanggang ito' y maiwang bakas na
Zamang.
of all life that lived.
tomorrow, I will tell you the story
again,
I will sing for and sing to you and I
in every flight, till they are flattened,
these queues of time,
till they are left as tracks only.)

The literal ~nglish translation at the right side sounds awkward and labored.
They intimidate the sensibility even before they are written. So they are reworked
through the old patterns: an image pruned, a metaphor changed, lines distorted,
recast till a final translation is reached. This is the one added to the original English
version:

green this taZe in your memory

and find the lives of all who lived.
tomorrow, I will sing it

61
 MERLINDA C. BOBlS

and sing you and I again

in every flight till queues
are levelled into tracks.

Vision in Two Voices

Assessing the whole process of translation, we see how the original vision dims,
because of the changes, the distortion, the dying - and of course, the living of new
things. So in the translated version, the old intention of the original may not get
across fully and accurately. However, we discover that the new vision becomes
the new intention. The old poem disappears; a new one emerges.
In the case of Daragang Magayon, the Filipino translation attempts to approxi-
mate the intention of the English original.
It succeeds, but not at all points. Because in the process, I lose track of the old
intention. I find the text becoming too volatile - changes break out suddenly and
inevitably at all points. I get overwhelmed by the new language and its own
powers and eccentricities. Call this being an irresponsible neophyte in my own
tongue, this getting beached to a different slant. But I will still keep my 'marooned'
position, with its gift - I am able to finish the poem in the translation, which is
judged as a better version by other Filipino writers writing in English. They find
that Daragang Magayon breathes her true spirit in the Filipino translation. Sur-
prisingly, it is the English original which sounds inadequate.
This makes me feel insecure about my first poet's tongue. So I am pulled back
to it, as if to make amends with an old flame. I revise the original closer to the spirit
of the translation. In effect, I re-language the new vision in Filipino back to
English, that is, using as references, two poems already: the English original and
the Filipino translation. I end up writing a third poem, which is also different from
the literal translations included at the right side of the Filipino excerpts. It means
another writing process again. This time though, it is simpler. Of course, the
death-birth pangs still echo here and there, but they no longer jump at the sensibil-
ity.
On hindsight, I find this tongue-tripping of two years actually metaphored in
the poem - I have been scaling Daragang Magayon while scaling my tongues.
Jose's initial fascination is so like my fascination with the English language. I
attempt to get to her peak. Like Jose, I wish to know her better. But I do not get
there. I am halted by the call of another language, which ironically is my own.
Jose's self-encounter is my self-encounter. I am not what I think I am as Daragang
Magayon is not what Jose thinks she is. My spirit is not lodged in the English
language. Inadequate though I am in my own tongue, I am still anchored to it.
I will write more in Filipino, but I will never stop writing in English. I will
probably be shuttling forever from language to language even in the writing of a
single simple poem. I know this may not be considered 'the ideal bilingualism'.
Ideally perhaps, one writes directly in the chosen language without any need for

62
 SCAUNG DARAGANG MAGAYON

translation. But this might not be as exciting as the gameing with the conscious-
ness in the light of two voices. I rather enjoy this endless losing-discovering that
comes with tongue-tripping. I prefer that sometimes I stand at the brink of a word
not yet thought out, but certainly there, to feel quite helpless and mute with
longing for that other voice singing somewhere in my consciousness, that part
where I can sing, but cannot hear, or where I can hear, but cannot sing - not yet. It
is humbling. A welcome and warm douse of cold water when I think I am too hot.
H keeps me in touch with my humanity.

63
 'LISTEN, MOM, I'M A BANANA': MOTHER
AND DAUGHTER IN MAXINE HONG
KINGSTON'S THE WOMAN WARRIOR
AND AMY TAN'S THE JOY LUCK CLUB

Mimi Chan

Chinese American writers have their own set of preoccupations and interests. And
the authors of Asian American literature offer a perspective that is neither entirely
Eastern nor Western: their focus is not just on 'Chinese-ness' but Chinese-ness in
an American context. Dennis Bloodworth has this to say about 'Westernized
Chinese':

There is no point in explaining westernized Chinese to the West; someone

should write a book that explains them, rather, to the Chinese. 1

If 'Westernized Chinese' are a separate species who have to be explained to

their compatriots, then even more separate from their original mould would be
immigrant Chinese, the characters who write and people Chinese American Lit-
erature. The Chinese American authors who are the subjects of my study are
second generation Americans. Maxine Hong Kingston was born in Stockton,
California in 1940 to Chinese immigrant parents. Amy Tan was born in Oakland,
California, in 1952, two and a half years after her parents immigrated to the United
States. As is often the case with writers of Asian American literature they are
deeply concerned with integrating into American society and yet feeling strongly
the pull of their Chinese cultural heritage. The case of Asian Americans is so
striking because of the physical dissimilarity between them and the Americans
with whom they wish to integrate. In the literature of this genre there are constant
reflections of this idea of identifying physical features, of being 'American born
and foreign'. 2

1. Bloodworth, D., The Chinese Looking Glass (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1967).

2. This is the title of an anthology of Asian poets edited by F. Chiang, H. Wong Hiue, ]. Hwang,
R. Oyama and S.L. Yung (New York: Sunbury Press, 1977).
 MIMI CHAN

For second generation Chinese American writers the ties with their Chinese
antecedents, which they feel strongly, though often grudgingly, are represented in
a concrete form by their parents, whose physical features they have inherited,
whose 'lessons' and 'stories' about China have been incorporated into the shaping
of their personalities - often, again, in spite of themselves. In this paper I want to
do a preliminary study of the reflection in Chinese American literary works of the
extremely complex and delicate relationship between Chinese mothers and their
Chinese American daughters by focussing on the motif of physical appearance
used in Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior and Amy Tan's The Joy Luck
Club.
The relationship between mothers and daughters is a time-honoured subject
for literature and other disciplines, and indeed tends to be complex enough for all
the light that modern sciences and quasi-sciences can shed on it. But when mother
and daughter are literally 'worlds apart', separated not only by the time gap but
also by a wide cultural gap, then the subject is yet more complicated. Jewish
mothers, Italian mothers, Irish mothers and American daughters are fairly easily
recognizable leitmotifs in American fiction, television and film. Until fairly recent
times 'the Chinese' as a group, indeed 'Orientals' as a group, were far more
mysterious and 'exotic' than Italians or Jews. Until recent times the stereotype of
the 'Chink' operating the hand laundry still prevailed in the popular western
imagination. In the past the issue of Chinese people trying to integrate into
American society tended not to have a very wide appeal to Chinese people outside
the United States because immigration was limited. But in recent times new waves
of immigrants include representatives of virtually all classes and sectors of the
population, and the whole issue of integrating into American society has acquired
new interest and relevance for many more people in Hong Kong and abroad,
including myself. My title has been supplied by an old friend, who did postgradu-
ate studies in Chinese History at Yale and Columbia. In response to my friend's
exasperation at her inability to speak Chinese and her 'shameless' ignorance of
Chinese culture, her daughter expostulated,

Listen, Mom, I'm a banana,

apparently in total ignorance of and/ or total indifference to, the derogatory nature
of the term 'banana'. Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior was first pub-
lished in 1976, and caused considerable stir when it first appeared. Hong Kingston
explores the fact of her not being a banana: she is yellow on the outside, but not
altogether white on the inside. A great deal of her Chinese heritage has gone into
her makeup. The same can be said of Amy Tan, whose first novel The Joy Luck Club,
published in March 1989, became a runaway best seller, a sustained presence on
bestseller lists, by July of the same year attracting a reprint price in excess of
US$1.2 million.
The mother of The Woman Warrior lived in a period of transition when China
was struggling to throw off its feudal shackles. At a time when girl babies were

66
 'LISTEN, MOM, I'M A BANANA'

considered clear liabilities and infanticide of female newborns an accepted fact of

rural life, the mother was fortunate enough to have had a father who believed in
having his daughters taught to read and write. Her family arranged her marriage
to a scholarly young man whom she had not seen before the wedding day. And
when her husband went off to the Gold Mountain, i.e. to the United States, to make
his fortune, she was left behind to take care of her two 'Chinese' children. After
these children died, she prepared herself for joining her husband by enrolling in,
and graduating from, a medical school in Canton. She finally joined her husband
in 1939. After a number of financial disasters they set up a laundry in Stockton,
California, where she raised her six 'American' children, all born after her forty-
fifth birthday. The multiple 'Chinese' experiences of the mother coupled with her
strong personality - indeed the multiplicity of her experiences is partly the result
of this strong personality - have profound implications for the daughter, brought
up in a clash of cultural presuppositions and expectations. Hong Kingston has
remarked that she is most flattered when her books are treated not as anthropol-
ogy or sociology, but as works deserving a place in the curricula of English
departments. And it is essentially from the point of view of the literary critic that I
shall approach the reflection through her work of the relationship between the
daughter and the mother. I use the general forms 'The mother'. 'The daughter' here
advisedly.
Hong Kingston has as many detractors as admirers. Many Hong Kong Chi-
nese I have talked to, or even recent immigrants to the United States - all
'Westernized' Chinese - tend to see Hong Kingston as exploiting her Chinese-
ness, selling out her country and her people. She wallows in accounts of barbarism
and unspeakable horror: a crazy lady clad in flowers stoned to death as a Japanese
spy by ignorant villagers; the mother being midwife to 'whatever spewed forth',
deftly catching 'spewings that were sometimes babies, sometimes monsters'; a
child born without an anus left to die in the outhouse, the vision of the 'homeless
baby' coming back to haunt the daughter'S dreams. 3 Hong Kingston does not dis-
sociate herself from squalor and humiliation. Quite the contrary. I feel she
'overwrites' when she stresses her own and her mother's aberrant behaviour,
aberrant not only in its deviance from Western 'norms', but indeed from human
norms recognizable to many readers.
Amy Tan's book is altogether more 'heart-warming', if that is the best word,
than Hong Kingston's work, in any case more purely entertaining and straightfor-
ward, rather than pretentious, in style. It relates the stories of four sets of mothers
and daughters. The mothers, all refugees from China drawn by their common
experiences, begin meeting in San Francisco in 1949 to play mahjong, invest in
stocks, eat dimsum, and tell stories. They call their group The Joy Luck Club. Some
forty years later, one of the members, Suyuan Woo, dies, and her daughter, Jing-
mei or June, is asked to take her place. This introduces the four stories, of the
mothers' experiences in China and America, the daughters' in America. The story

3. Hong Kingston, M. The Woman Warrior, Picador edition (London: Pan, 1981), pp. 81-82.

67
 MIMI CHAN

ends in a quasi-resolution of Chinese and American differences in Jing-mei Woo's

reunion with her long-lost 'Chinese' half sisters, separated from their mother by
the war. The last two paragraphs of the book are movingly simple, representing
the blurring of Chinese and American dissimilarities in a happy reunion of three
reincarnations of the Chinese mother:

My sisters and I stand, arms around each other, laughing and wiping
the tears from each other's eyes. The flash of the Polaroid goes off and my
father hands me the snapshot. My sisters and I watch quietly together,
eager to see what develops.
The gray-green surface changes to the bright colors of our three im-
ages, sharpening and deepening all at once. And although we don't speak,
I know we all see it: Together we look like our mother. Her same eyes, her
same mouth, open in surprise to see, at last, her long-cherished wish.4

For all the differences between Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston's work there
is yet a sameness, a sense of deja vu overtakes the reader of The Joy Luck Club. Yes, it
is more readable; the story lines are clearer; the characters are varied and deline-
ated in more human terms. The style is direct, less contrived. Instead of overpow-
ering the narrative the symbolism is more integrated into it. But have we not come
across similar situations, similar stylistic devices - the tremendous influence of
the mother; the futile rebellion of the daughter; the combination of frailty and
tremendous strength of the mother, the use of Chinese myths, parables, stories,
fables, indeed the Chinese language; conflicting emotions, embarrassment, shame
vs. loyalty and loving defensiveness aroused by the mother; the romanticizing of
China co-existing with its demystification and the debunking of myths surround-
ing it?
The Joy Luck Club relies for its charm and interest to a large extent on the flash-
backs to the mothers' Chinese existence, filled with all the paraphernalia of myths
and parables, rituals and ceremonies, concubines and suffering daughters-in-law
the Western reader has come to associate with Chinese stories. But Amy Tan has
invested the material with freshness in the telling. Her style is direct for all the
'quaint' and 'exotic' experiences she relates, and the characters are successfully
realized as three-dimensional figures who are first seen in the 'familiar' context of
Chinatown in San Francisco, with references to street names and American cus-
toms to 'anchor' the characters, to give the women and their daughters a 'local
habitation' and names.
In both The Woman Warrior and The Joy Luck Club there is the shifting of the
narrative perspective. Hong Kingston uses the first person narration, her persona
being the daughter. But she changes her perspective in one section' At the Western
Palace', which describes the mother's sister's traumatizing experiences in trying
- then failing - to adjust to the perplexing oddities of American life, Americans

4. Tan, A., The Joy Luck Club (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1989), p. 288.

68
 'LISTEN, MOM, I'M A BANANA'

and her Chinese American relatives. A third person narration is adopted for this
section, and this mode lends greater objectivity to the tragic account of the wom-
an's growing bafflement which leads finally to loss of sanity. For those parts of the
book where the narrative takes place in China we are made aware of the fact that it
is her mother who has provided the material, and in some cases, the attitudes. But
the mother's perspective is not directly used. This is not the case in The Joy Luck Club.
The mothers have their say. The same narratives are told from the perspective of
the daughters and the mothers; we have a sort of Rashomon in a minor key. The
mother in each case reveals more depth, sensitivity and breadth of understanding
than is presumed by the daughters, who only see their mothers' tyrannical influ-
ence over their minds and attitudes, and hear their mothers' imperfect communi-
cation in fractured English. In each of the five sets of mothers and daughters, one
in The Woman Warrior and four in The Joy Luck Club there is a striking contrast be-
tween the exotic previous Chinese life and the mundane present American life.
This, in spite of, or the more so, because of the fact that at least three of the
daughters attain to American yuppy-hood with its attendant pattern of marital
squabbles, divorce, insomnia, psychoanalysis, career traumas, and property set-
tlements.
The contrast between Chinese and American is a pivotal idea in both novels.
The mothers see the daughters as 'American'. One of the mothers in The Joy Luck
Club asks her daughter

Why do you Americans have only these morbid thoughts in your mind?5

The Chinese American children in The Woman Warrior comments, without self-
consciousness, 'Chinese people are very weird.' And yet the truth is the daughters
are not Americans to the majority of white Americans. We can relate this idea to
the popular myth of 'The American melting pot of people' . Stuart Creighton Miller
points out the historical nationwide hostility towards the Chinese:

Americans have generally assumed that the theory of the melting pot
involved a two-way process whereby immigrants contributed to the cul-
tural matrix in the process of becoming' Americanized.' Until the coming
of the Chinese, however, no immigrant group had differed sufficiently
from the Anglo-American root stock to compromise basic social institu-
tions such as Christian religion and ethics, monogamy, or natural rights
theory, not to mention the doctrine of material progress for the individual.
Faced with the concrete possibility that it might become necessary to
sacrifice substantial elements of these axiomatic beliefs in the name of a
melting-pot hybrid' Americanization', many editors and legislators frankly
shifted their ground ... The immigrant had to become a convert and shed

5. Ibid., p. 103.

69
 MIMI CHAN

his foreign, heathen ways. The alternative was total exclusion of culturally
distant groups, and a melting pot that was limited rather than infinite in
scope.6

Miller also gives an account of the racist theory in the nineteenth century
which linked the genes of the Chinese to their thoughts and habits. This provided
a basis for the argument that they could not be assimilated: their behaviour was as
unchangeable as their physical racial characteristics. So we are confronted by two
basic obstacles to integration: physical and behavioural. The daughters in the two
novels under discussion are depicted as consciously shedding their 'foreign, hea-
then ways', of getting As in American schools, going to college, becoming profes-
sional women, marrying white Americans. But the physical characteristics which
prevent them from being absorbed into the great melting pot remain. One of the
devices used by both authors to bring out the idea of similarity in dissimilarity
between mother and daughter is the use of the motif of physical appearance.
The mother in The Woman Warrior is seen in a photograph of her graduation
from the Hackett Medical College for Women at Canton. Her appearance is
described by the daughter, with comments on changes which have taken place
after her long stay in America. The thirty-seven year mother of the photograph is
described in this way:

She has spacy eyes, as all people recently from Asia have. Her eyes do
not focus on the camera. My mother is not smiling. Chinese do not smile
for photographs ... My mother does not understand Chinese-American
snapshots. 'What are you laughing at?' she asks?

The woman's face remains the same, incapable of being assimilated into the great
melting pot. But her gaze changes, becomes assimilated. 'The far gaze lasts only a
few years after a Chinese emigrates,' the author asserts - an assertion my experi-
ence and observations contradict. According to the daughter, the mother adjusts.

In America my mother has eyes as strong as boulders, never once

skittering off a face. 8

The direct gaze is symptomatic of the ability to survive. Look the enemy in the eye,
though, again, because of physical differences this is not always possible to do
literally. The daughter notes,

6. Miller, S.c., The Unwelcome Immigrant: The American Image of the Chinese, 1785-1882 (Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), pp. 6-7.
7. Hong Kingston, M., op.cit., p. 58.

8. Ibid., p. 59.

70
 'US TEN, MOM, I'M A BANANA'

I've learned exactly who the enemy are. I easily recognize them -
business-suited in their modern executive guise, each boss two feet taller
than I am and impossible to meet eye to eye. 9

Failure to grow hard; to take on a direct gaze means non-survival. The face
motif is used again in the account of the mother's sister, Moon Orchid, left behind
in her village when her husband emigrates to America. She subsequently moves to
Hong Kong and acquires a taste for a luxurious lifestyle, supported by remittances
from her successful doctor husband. Brave Orchid arranges for her arrival in
America to claim her rightful place as her husband's wife. The two sisters are
reunited, now both grey haired old women, each is astounded at the aged appear-
ance of the other.

Her daughter pointed toward Brave Orchid. And at last Moon Orchid
looked at her - two old women with faces like mirrors.lO

But Moon Orchid has waited too long to come to 'the land of the ghosts,' that
is America. She cannot acquire the direct gaze. Confronted by her astonished and
astonishingly young husband, she is unable to meet his direct gaze.

He looked directly at Moon Orchid the way the savages looked,

looking for lies. 'What do you want?' he asked. She shrank from his stare

Moon Orchid was so ashamed she held her hands over her faceY

There is a section of The Woman Warrior which is devoted to an encounter be-

tween the aged mother and the middle-aged daughter. The daughter has always
found it wrenchingly hard to communicate with the mother. She has had to break
away in order to be free, to be rid of psychomatic pains and illnesses and imagined
terrors associated with the mother and childhood. The daughter is home for a
visit, and the mother comes into room at night as she tries to fall asleep. The
account includes rather lengthy detailed physical descriptions, and verbal com-
munication between mother and daughter rarely found in the work. The mother is
described thus, the description an amalgram of disharmonious parts.

Eyes shut, I pictured my mother, her white hair frizzy in the dark-
and-light doorway, her hair white now too ... That night she was a sad

9. Ibid., p. 50.
10. Ibid., p. 109.
11. Ibid., p. 139.

71
 MIMI CHAN

bear: a great sheep in a wool shawl. She recently took to wearing shawls
and granny glasses. American fashions. 12

The mother has lost the beauty that was hers before coming to America, but
her perceptions of what is beautiful remain tied to her cultural and racial back-
ground. The daughter, however, repudiates the criteria of Chinese beauty, both as
understood by the traditional Chinese and the vulgarized, Westernized version,
popularized in literature and media. Hong Kingston is deliberately anti-romantic
and anti-nostalgic. In The Joy Luck Club, when Amy Tan evokes the Chinese past
she gives descriptions of women beautiful in the traditional way. The mother of
one of the mothers, a woman considered lost to her family because she has
renounced an honourable widowhood to become the third wife to a rich man, is
described by her daughter in this way:

I watched my mother, seeing her for the first time, this pretty woman
with her white skin and oval face, not too round like Auntie's or sharp like
Popo's. I saw that she had a long white neck, just like the goose that had
laid me ... I could feel her long smooth fingers rubbing and searching
under my chin.13

Another of the mothers describes her younger self in terms of great approba-
tion. Her looks conformed to the Chinese standards of delicacy and daintiness.

She does not know how beautiful I was ... I was far more pretty than
my daughter, who has country feet and a large nose ...
Even today, my skin is still smooth, my figure like a girl's ... And my
poor feet, once so small and pretty.14

The general image the West has of Chinese women tends to be one of great
physical attraction, also with emphasis on daintiness, small hands and feet, im-
mense delicacy, smooth pale skin, narrow 'moth eyebrows', this being an abbre-
viated way of referring to the thin curved antennae of moths, garments of richest
silk in pastel shades, perfume, and an abundance of gorgeous precious gems. The
daughter of the disgraced woman in The Joy Luck Club sees her mother as beautiful
in this traditional way. The mother and aunt in The Woman Warrior apparently base
their aesthetic judgements of feminine pulchritude on similar criteria. Moon Or-
chid's gifts are clothes of sumptuous silk in pastel shades and bracelets and
earrings which are intended to enhance their appearance. The daughter's ideas of
what she wants to look like are at variance both with the American dream of blond

12. Ibid., p. 93.

13. Tan, A., op. cit., pp. 45-46.
14. Ibid., p. 246.

72
 'LISTEN, MOM, I'M A BANANA'

goddess or toothy cheerleader and the Chinese one of delicate sylph. In The
Woman Warrior the reader is struck by a long passage relating to the daughter's
loathing for, and cruelty to, a mute Chinese girl, too weak apparently to survive
the rigours of the society into which she has been transplanted by her parents. In a
detailed scene of the daughter's tormenting the poor girl in a deserted school
playground we are given a description of the 'quiet girl,' whose looks can be seen
as a cruel caricature of the ideal Chinese beauty, making a travesty of the criteria
and the related set of stereotypical images.

I hated her for her China doll hair cut....

I looked into her face so I could hate it close up. She wore black bangs,
and her cheeks were pink and white. She was baby soft .... She stood still,
and I did not want to look at her face any more; I hated fragility ... I hated
her weak neck, the way it did not support her head but let it droop; her
head would fall backwards. I stared at the curve of her nape. I wished I
was able to see what my own neck looked like from the back and sides. I
hoped it did not look like hers; I wanted a stout neck. I grew my hair long
to hide it in case it was a flower-stem neck. I walked around to the front of
her to hate her face some more ... 15

Other features, admired in another context, become objects of revulsion to the

daughter, hardened through necessity and grown contemptuous of weakness.
Her mute victim has white teeth, long fingers; she is talL In the daughter's detailed
account of her deep and almost frightening aversion to the 'quiet girl' we find her
rejection of failure and the very 'Chinese' physical appearance that in this case
goes with it.
The motif of physical appearance seems even more significant in The Joy Luck
Club which focusses less on the trials and tribulations of the daughters in trying to
assimilate into their adoptive society. Theirs appear to be gentler times for immi-
grants; memories of forced incarceration in Angel Island Immigration Station
seem far away. The emphasis is more on the mystery of the mother-daughter
bond, enriched by the ancient cultural heritage which the mother has to pass on to
the daughter. The motif of physical resemblance is used very effectively to under-
line the mysterious connection.
In the short prologue that precedes the section 'American Translation', we
find a procreation image based on the looking glass which is evocative of one of
the recurrent images in Shakespeare's Sonnets. The mother gives her married
daughter a gilt-edged mirror as a housewarming present. She leans it against the
headboard of her daughter's bed, on top of the two pillows.

'You hang it here,' said the mother, pointing to the wall above. 'This

15. Hong Kingston, M., op. cit., p. 160.

73
 MIMI CHAN

mirror sees that mirror (the mirror on the armoire against the other wall)
- haule! - multiply your peach blossom luck.'
'What is peach-blossom luck?'
The mother smiled, mischief in her eyes. 'It is here,' she said, pointing
to the mirror. 'Look inside. Tell me, am I not right? In this mirror is my
future grandchild, already sitting on my lap next spring.'16

The image of the mirror recurs quite a few times in the book; it is used to bring
out the unbroken line of similar faces, visibly bearing witness to the unbroken
bond linking grandmother and daughter and granddaughter. Embodied in the
images of physical similarity are Chinese (and indeed Western Medieval) ideas of
physiognomy, of facial traits being indicators of character traits and destiny. I
have already referred to the closing paragraph of the book, when the' American'
daughter of Woo Suyuan is reunited with her two 'Chinese' ones, each the spitting
image of the other, and all three the spitting image of the mother. It is the sight of
the familiar faces which causes the American daughter to come to a full realization
of her Chinese roots. The familial bond, the ethnic bond, are reflected in the
similarity of physical appearance. Those of Amy Tan's second generation heroines
who marry all marry Caucasian men. One has a daughter by her first, Chinese,
husband. One of the heroines, Lena St. Clair is Eurasian, her father being English-
Irish. But even with such mixed blood, growing up in California, Lena St. Clair is
linked irrevocably to her Chinese heritage. Physical appearance is the visible
symbol of this link. The implication seems to be that the Chinese part will remain
indomitable, unaffected by the effects of the melting pot.

My eyes, my mother gave me my eyes, no eyelids, as if they were

carried on a jack-o-Iantern with two swift cuts of a short knife. I used to
push my eyes in on the sides to make them rounder. Or I'd open them
very wide until I could see the white parts. 17

These 'lidless' eyes are the celebrated 'phoenix eyes' of traditional Chinese beau-
ties.
The physical appearance motif is utilized in both works to bring out the idea
of putting on a mask, using the face as a 'vizard' to the heart for the sake of
convenience, to avoid direct confrontation. As I have mentioned already, in The
Woman Warrior the adoption of a false appearance is generally shown to be part of
the technique of survival in a potentially hostile land. Their insecurity causes these
older immigrants to remain secretive. All Chinese look the same, anyway. And the
Exclusion Act and the practice of getting 'paper sons' into the country fraudu-
lently meant the loss of real identity in any case. The daughter learns how to

16. Tan, A., op. cit., p. 147.

17. Ibid., p. 104.

74
 'US TEN, MOM, I'M A BANANA'

assume certain appearances for self-protection and to get ahead. In a very embar-
rassing encounter with a druggist, the daughter protects herself by assuming a
persona definitely not her own. She tells herself:

Be cute and small. No one hurts the cute and smalI.I8

In The Woman Warrior the motif of false seeming is related mainly to interac-
tion with aliens, 'ghosts'. But Chinese Americans cannot always be trusted either.
The older immigrants would not always show their true faces to their children
because they have been born among ghosts, have been taught by ghosts and are
themselves half ghosts.1 9
This motif of the mask worn by mother and daughter as a defence is deftly
manipulated in The Joy Luck Club. The use of false appearance within the family
rather than merely as a weapon against outside forces is related to one of the major
themes of the book. The daughters have to learn to understand their mothers, to be
reconciled to their Chinese-ness in spite of superficial assimilation. The daughters
'grow impatient when the mothers talk in Chinese', and think them stupid when
they explain things in fractured English. To their 'closed American-born minds'
anything that does not conform to American standards of behaviour is a source of
embarrassment. One of the mothers, Ying-ying St. Clair, keeps quiet as she ob-
serves what strike her as the absurdities of her daughter's 'American' life and
marriage. As a result she is constantly wearing a mask.

All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a
small shadow so nobody could catch me. And because I moved so secretly
now my daughter does not see me. She sees a list of things to buy, her
checkbook out of balance, her ashtray setting crooked on a straight table. 20

One of the daughters has the desire to disguise herself figuratively, hide her true
self from her mother by filling her mind with other people's thoughts - all in
English - so that 'when she looked at her inside out, she would be confused by
what she saw.'2l Another of the mothers worries about her 'two faces':

I think about over two faces. I think about my intentions. Which one is
American? Which one is Chinese? Which one is better? If you show one,
you must always sacrifice the other.22

18. Hong Kingston, M., op. cit., p. 153.

19. Ibid., p. 165.
20. Tan, A., op. cit., p. 67.
21. Ibid., p. 191.
22. Ibid., p. 266.

75
 MIMI CHAN

This worry is not shared by her complacent, successful daughter, who displays a
lack of introspection. Two-facedness is deviousness, not related to a conflict of
cultures, and is good 'if you can get what you want' through it. But this daughter
takes pride in being her 'own woman', needing no mask to make her way in
American society, no mask but the American-forthright one. It is, after all, a virtue
to show your mind, to be candid, frank. Herein lies a distinct cultural difference.
Most Chinese people, however Westernized, believe a veneer of artificiality is
often what makes social intercourse bearable. One of the mothers complains,

I couldn't teach her about Chinese character ... How not to show your
own thoughts, to put your feelings behind your face so you can take
advantage of hidden opportunities. 23

Both Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan put a great deal of emphasis on the
difficulties of communication. Hong Kingston uses graphic and highly original
metaphors of the tongue and voice to highlight the problems of finding a voice in
an alien society. The problem is essentially twofold: on the one hand the children
have to learn to communicate with Americans, often having to communicate not
only for themselves but for their parents; on the other hand they have to find
means to communicate with their parents, whose ways eventually become more
foreign to them than those of the foreigners. Amy Tan highlights only the second
aspect of the problem, and her novel provides ample scope for the study of the
novelists' strategies for dealing with the dialogue of Chinese characters.24 The
daughters speak no - or very poor - Chinese. The mothers speak pidgin English
and versions of Putonghua, giv.en in transliterated form, then glossed. Nuances of
mood and character are presented through the choice of language and code-
switching. The novel culminates in Jing-mei Woo's awakening to the conscious-
ness of what it means to be Chinese. She wants to know clearly everything about
the mother she never appreciated. Her own spoken Chinese is broken, but when
her father starts to tell her mother's story in English, she requests,

No, tell me in Chinese ... Really, I can understand.25

Tersely, yet poignantly, Amy Tan makes her point.

The devices relating to communication and language barriers are ingeniously
used, but I feel that as generation after generation of Chinese American mothers

23. Ibid., p. 254.

24. For a discussion of the subject of the presentation of the speech of Chinese women characters,
see M. Chan, 'Chinese Women's Speech in English', Language & Communication, 10, 4 (Oxford:
Pergamon Press, 1990).
25. Tan, A., op. cit., p. 281.

76
 'US TEN, MOM, I'M A BANANA'

and daughters succeed each other, as the Chinese Americans become more and
more cut off from knowledge of their own language and culture the superficial
problems of at least verbal communication will be eradicated. The gap between
Chinese Americans and American society, between Chinese American mother
and daughter will no longer be a linguistic one. But the question of physical
appearance remains. Chinese faces - indeed all Asian faces - will continue to
differ from the general American 'norm', different from Black Americans as well.
But that is another story.
Two extracts in The Joy Luck Club which occurs, appropriately enough, in a
section entitled 'Double Face' sum up many points I have been trying to make
about the significance of the idea of 'face', of physical similarity and dissimilarity,
to the predicaments of Chinese American mothers vis-a,-vis their daughters and
mothers and daughters vis-a,-vis American society. The first is this:

My daughter wanted to go to China for her second honeymoon, but

now she is afraid.
'What if I blend in so well they think 1'm one of them?' Waverly asked
me. 'What if they don't let me come back to the United States?'
'When you go to China,' I told her, 'you don't even need to open your
mouth. They already know you are an outsider.'
'What are you talking about?' she asked. My daughter likes to speak
back. She likes to question what I say.
'Aii-ya,' I said. 'Even if you put on their clothes, even if you take off
your makeup and hide your fancy jewelry, they know. They know just
watching the way you walk, the way you carry your face. They know you
do not belong.'
My daughter did not look pleased when I told her this, that she didn't
look Chinese. She had a sour American look on her face. Oh, maybe ten
years ago, she would have clapped her hands - hurray! - as if this were
good news. But now she wants to be Chinese, it is so fashionable. And I
know it is too late. All those years I tried to teach her! She followed my
Chinese ways only until she learned how to walk out the door by herself
and go to school.
Only her skin and her hair are Chinese. Inside - she is all American-
made. .

And the second:

My daughter is getting married a second time. So she asked me to go to
her beauty parlor, her famous Mr Rory. I know her meaning. She is
ashamed of my looks. What will her husband's parents and his important
lawyer friends think of this backward old Chinese woman?
'Auntie An-mei can cut me,' I say.
'Rory is famous,' says my daughter, as if she had no ears. 'He does
fabulous work.'

77
 MIMI CHAN

So I sit in Mr Rory's chair. He pumps me up and down until I am the

right height. Then my daughter criticizes me as if I were not there. 'See
how it's flat on one side,' she accuses my head. 'She needs a cut and a
perm. And this purple tint in her hair, she's been doing it at home. She's
never had anything professionally done.' ...
'How does she want it?' asked Mr Rory. He thinks I do not under-
stand English ...
'Ma, how do you want it?' Why does my daughter think she is
translating English for me? Before I can even speak, she explains my
thoughts: 'She wants a soft wave. We probably shouldn't cut it too short.
Otherwise it'll be too tight for the wedding ...
And now she says to me in a loud voice, as if I had lost my hearing,
'Isn't that right, Ma? Not too tight?'
I smile. I use my American face. That's the face Americans think is
Chinese, the one they cannot understand. But inside I am becoming
ashamed. I am ashamed she is ashamed. Because she is my daughter and I
am proud of her, and I am her mother but she is not proud of me.
Mr Rory ... looks at me. He looks at my daughter. Then he says
something to my daughter that really displeases her: 'It's uncanny how
much you two look alike!'
I smile, this time with my Chinese face. But my daughter's eyes and
her smile become very narrow, the way a cat pulls itself small just before it
bites. Now Mr Rory goes away so we can think about this ....
'You can see your character in your face,' I say to my daughter with-
out thinking. 'You can see your future.'
'What do you mean?' she says.
And now I have to fight back my feelings. These two faces, I think, so
much the same! The same happiness, the same sadness, the same good
fortune, the same faults.
I am seeing myself and my mother, back in China, when I was a
young gir1.26

These passages say a great deal about the' American face', the 'Chinese face',
the unbreakable link to the Chinese mother in spite of subjective distancing. For all
its wry humour it is a penetrating and indeed a poignant exposition of the plight of
'the banana'.

Only her skin and her hair are Chinese. Inside she is all American-
made.

26. Ibid., pp. 253--56.

78
 PUBLISHING ASIAN WRITERS
IN ENGLISH

Leon Comber

I first became aware in the early 1960s of the African Writers Series' published by
I

Heinemann Education Books Ltd., London, although the Series had been started
well before that. I was then the Southeast Asian Representative of Heinemann
Educational Books Ltd. based in Singapore. I thought it would be a splendid idea
to build up a similar list for Southeast Asia as I was sure it would give a tremen-
dous boost to creative writing in English in this part of the world, which was still
regarded then as something of a cultural desert.
Our textbook publishing programme was doing well, and after giving careful
consideration to the matter, I felt we could use at least some of the profits gener-
ated by it to establish a fiction list. I decided to call it the Writing in Asia Series as I
thought that would permit us to include in it, if we wished, some Western writers
who were either living in or had lived in Asia. At the same time, I had a dream of
starting an academic non-fiction list of books about the Asian area straddling all
academic disciplines, and although I had to put this aside for the time being, I
mentally reserved the title Asian Studies Series for it. I also planned to start a list of
children's books, which I called the Favourite Stories Series, to be based on the re-
telling of little-known Asian folk-tales and legends in simple straightforward
English. I thought these children's books could sell into the school market, too, as
supplementary readers, since teachers had often told me there was a need for
English readers with a familiar Asian flavour rather than stories about daffodils
and snow.
In fact, both the ,Asian Studies Series and the Favourite Stories Series came about
in due course of time, but that is another story. But first I wanted to launch the
Writing in Asia Series. I knew there must be good writers in the area although we
didn't have anyone at that time as well known as Chinua Achebe of Nigeria,
whose Things Fall Apart, published in our London office's African Writers Series, had
received acclaim in the British national press and instant acceptance in the USA,
and eventually went on to sell 3 million copies, and be translated into 45 foreign
languages. This was a novel from the African continent which affirmed universal
human values in the context of a traditional tribal society in a time of change. If
you haven't read it, I strongly recommend it to you. Then there was James Ngugi
 LEON COMBER

who wrote Weep Not Child, the East African equivalent of Things Fall Apart, its
background being the Mau Mau uprising, which went on to sell eventually one
million copies.
Another African writer whose work appeared in the African Writers list was
Nelson Mandela. His collected writings were published under the title No Easy Walk
to Freedom while he was in prison.
How could we match the success of our London office? Of course, I was not
sure that we could but I thought we would have a good try as I was confident
there were Asian writers out there whose work deserved to be published and
made known to a wider audience. In fact, some Asian writers had already been
published in English, usually in translation, by other British publishers with local
offices in Asia such as Oxford University Press in Kuala Lumpur, which had
published Malay writers in English translation. And then there was the formida-
ble Charles E. Tuttle Publishers Inc., Japan, which had been started by Charlie
Tuttle in Tokyo immediately after the Second World War. He had already built up
a greatly admired list of Japanese novelists and short story writers in English
translation. Besides Heinemann and OUP, there were some indigenous publishers
too, who were beginning to publish Asian literature, such as, Singapore's Time
Books International and Federal Publications and the Philippine's New Day. But I
wanted, if possible, to go beyond what all of them had done and encourage
creative writing in English from the entire Asian area stretching from Japan in the
north to Indonesia in the south. In addition to this there was, of course, a tremen-
dous body of local writers writing in their own languages. I decided that wherever
possible we should consider publishing their work in English translation to make
it available to a wider reading public. This was something which I felt the other
publishers had not done as their publishing of fiction was very much confined to
literature coming from the country in which they were located.
The first book we published in the Writing in Asia Series was, in fact, Modern
Malaysian Chinese Stories, which rolled off the press in 1966. It was an anthology of
modern Malaysian Chinese stories translated into English by myoid friend Ly
Singko with a little help from myself. Ly was in those days a reporter on the
Singapore Nanyang Shang Pao, and a part-time lecturer in Chinese drama at the
Singapore Teachers' Training College. He was a short bespectacled man, Manda-
rin-speaking, which was quite unusual at that time in Singapore, who had been
educated at Beijing University and the Sorbonne. His first language was Chinese
and his second language was undoubtedly French and his third language was
English. Han Suyin agreed to write a foreword. Sad to relate, not long afterwards,
Ly was arrested by the Singapore authorities, accused of Chinese chauvinism, and
detained under the internal security regulations. He was to spend several years
inside Changi Jail before he was released and allowed to migrate to Australia. I
never did find out what the actual charges against him were but I gather he had
been accused of 'greater Chinese chauvinism' by lauding the accomplishments of
mainland China in his newspaper articles which, of course, ran counter to the
Singapore government's policy of keeping China at arm's length and encouraging

80
 PUBLISHING ASIAN WRITERS IN ENGLISH

instead a 'Singaporean' identity. We continued to pay the royalties earned by the

sale of the book, which were not very much, to his wife and ten children.
We never did get a good novel by an Asian writer from Hong Kong or China,
even when I moved up to Hong Kong from Singapore in the early 60's, and
became Managing Director of the Heinemann Far Eastern office. The nearest we
got to it was a novel, Running Dog, written in English by a woman author, Lee
Ding Fai, whose husband was on the staff of the Chinese University of Hong
Kong. It was a rags-to-riches story of a young Chinese refugee who escaped to
Hong Kong from China, and his subsequent adventures in capitalist Hong Kong
but although. it was a good first try, I'm afraid it didn't sell very well.
Our best known Hong Kong author was Austin Coates, an expatriate, who
had a good understanding of the Asian scene and who had lived in Asia for a long
time. He had formerly served as an administrator in the British colonial service in
Hong Kong and Sarawak, and afterwards for a short spell in the diplomatic
service in Malaysia. His two books, which we published early on in the Writing in
Asia Series, Myself a Mandarin and City of Broken Promises, both became best sellers
and helped to establish and draw attention, at least locally, to the Series. Myself a
Mandarin was serialized by the BBC and broadcast, too, by Radio Hong Kong with
the author as the reader. We sold an option on the film rights and a pilot film was
made but it was not taken up by any of the film studios or TV stations in the USA,
Australia and the UK, to which it was offered by the film producer, which I always
thought was a pity. City of Broken Promises was very successfully produced as a
play in the 1978 Hong Kong Festival of Arts and we had hopes of its going on
Broadway but in the end nothing came of it, although it was performed in Los
Angeles. Nevertheless, many people considered it to be one of the best books from
Austin Coates' pen and it was widely admired. In fact, it was his second novel as
he had written previously The Road but that had been published in the States and
not by us. Curiously, it never found a British publisher although a reprint has been
brought out recently by Oxford University Press in Hong Kong.
Maria Merop, the main character in City of Broken Promises was a real person
who had lived in Macau, and the novel is based on her colourful life. She was sold
into prostitution at the age of 13, and became the mistress of Thomas Merop, an
officer of the East India Company, who was the son of the founder and first
Chairman of Lloyd's of London and a cousin of Jeremy Bentham. From her
humble beginnings in Macau, the 'City of Broken Promises', she eventually be-
came an international trader and the most powerful and wealthy woman on the
south China coast. The story is fascinating, and every time I go over to Macau, I
make a point of visiting the Santa Casa da Miseracordia where her portrait still
hangs. I find it quite haunting.
Comparisons are invidious but I would nevertheless like to highlight just a
few of the other books in the Writing in Asia Series which appealed to me. This is
not to say that the other titles which appeared under the Writing in Asia imprint were
any less good, as they were all by fine writers, but they represent the books which,
purely subjectively, made the greatest impact on me.

81
 LEON COMBER

In 1978 we published Little Ironies: Stories of Singapore by Catherine Lim. I be-

lieve this was the first book she had published. She was teaching English language
and literature at the time at a Junior College in Singapore. As she put it, it was'An
accumulation over the years, of small experiences, random observations and
casual reflections which I thought I had forgotten, would persist in coming back
and working itself first to the memo pads and then to the typewriter.' It was a
good book and it was deservedly well reviewed. She followed it up in 1980 with
another collection of stories, Or Else, the Lightning God and Other Stories, which es-
tablished her reputation of being able to stand back and look objectively at every-
day life in Singapore with a mixture of compassion and irony.
Lee Kok Liang, a lawyer in Penang, who had studied at an Australian univer-
sity before going to read for the Bar in London, impressed me, too, with his
Kafkaesque collection of short stories and a novella of around one hundred pages
which we brought together in The Mutes in the Sun. He followed up with a short
novel, Flowers in the Sky. I thought he showed tremendous promise in those early
days but he has somehow not published anything else since then. Perhaps one
day, who knows, when the practice of law does not take up so much of his time, he
may surprise us all with a novel which I know he has been mulling over for a long
time.
As I said, we started the Series with an anthology of Malayan-Chinese short
stories, and we brought out between 1968 and 1981 three other short story an-
thologies from the Malaysian and Southeast Asian area. 22 Malaysian Stories and
Malaysian Short Stories were edited by Lloyd Fernando, when he was Professor of
English at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, before he forsook academia
for the law, and the third anthology, ASEAN Short Stories, was edited by Robert
Yeo, a highly-thought-of Singapore author and poet. In these three books, we
included stories from some of the region's foremost writers of fiction. Indeed some
of them are considered to be the best in the region: Mochtar Lubis and Pramoedya
Ananta Toer (Indonesia), Usman Awang, Keris Mas and Shahnon Admad (Malay-
sia), Nick Joaqim and Frankie Jose (Philippines), S. Kon and Catherine Lim (Singa-
pore), and Pensri Kiengsira (Thailand).
Many of these stories were translations from the variety of languages which
are to be found in the region, such as, Bahasa Malaysia, Bahasa Indonesia, Thai,
and so on. Our best translator from Bahasa Indonesia was Harry A veling, an
Australian specialising in Indonesian language and studies, whom I first met
when he was teaching at the University Sains, Penang, before his 'metamorphosis'
into Swami Anand Harida (he afterwards reverted to plain Harry Aveling but
now I hear he has entered the Islamic faith and is attached to the Malay Language
and Literature Bureau in Kuala Lumpur). He made several fine translations of
Indonesian writers for us, and I thought his best work was The Fugitive by
Pramoedya Ananta Toer. The entire 160 pages of the book are taken up with the
events of two momentous days, the 16th and 17th August 1945, which were the
last two days of the Japanese occupation of Indonesia, and the beginning of the
struggle for Indonesia's independence. His translation, too, of Iwan Simatupang's

82
 PUBLISHING ASIAN WRITERS IN ENGLISH

novel with the title of The Pilgrim was truly noteworthy. It has been suggested that
Simatupang's book is the forerunner of the modern Indonesian novel, and it won
the first ASEAN Literary Award for the Novel in 1977.
By the time the Heinemann empire in this part of the world came to an end in
around 1984, with the taking over of the parent Heinemann group of publishers in
London by a new holding company which was led by accountants who had little
idea about the business of publishing, I had edited the Series for more than twenty
years. During this period we had published more than seventy titles, mainly
novels and short stories, and an impressive array of local poets' works. Edwin
Thumboo, who had the Chair in English at the National University of Singapore,
edited for us The Second Tongue: An Anthology of Poetry from Malaysia and Singapore,
which brought together the most significant poetry in English from Malaysia and
Singapore over the preceding twenty-five years. We then published his own
collection of poems Gods Can Die.
Ee Tiang Hong, one of Malaysia's most distinguished poets, was published by
us and his Myths from a Wilderness displayed his great and enduring love for Ma-
laysia and his home town of Malacca. He emigrated with his family to Perth,
Western Australia, for 'political reasons', where he spent the reminder of his life
teaching at a local tertiary institution, quietly eating out his heart for the country in
which he was born, before sadly passing away earlier this year.
Shirley Lim's Crossing the Peninsula, which we published in 1980, won the
Commonwealth Prize that year for the best first volume of poetry by a Common-
wealth writer. She,like Ee Tiang Hong, comes from Malacca where she spent her
early years, although she is married to an American and now teaches English at
the State University of New York.
When I left Heinemann in 1985, I felt that we had, in fact, achieved our aim of
publishing authors drawn from south, southeast and northeast Asia, and my
dream had become a reality. We had writers on our list from China, Hong Kong,
Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, Borneo, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, India
and Sri Lanka. For those who are interested in exploring the literature of the
region, I can still think of no better introduction, and there is the added attraction
that many of the titles which appeared under the Writing in Asia imprint will soon
become collector's items.
What did we gain from this in tangible business terms? Frankly speaking, very
little. But neither did we lose, and as I said earlier, we were able to make money
from our school books which enabled us to subsidise our fiction publishing. At the
most, our experience was that a good local novel could only sell up to 5,000 to
6,000 copies over time while short story anthologies could sell anything up to 3,000
to 4,000 copies but there were, of course, some notable exceptions. By regional
standards, these are pretty good figures even though they cannot compare with
the sales of similar books in the West. Why is this? I have often thought about this
question. Judging from the work which has already been published locally, there
is no shortage of first-class and talented authors. Aside from the Writing in Asia
list, Asiaweek magazine ran an annual short-story writing competition which lasted

83
 LEON COMBER

eight years from 1981 to 1988, which attracted every year hundreds of entries from
all over Asia and the Pacific Rim. (The prize-winning short stories will be pub-
lished soon by Hong Kong University Press under the title Prizewinning Asian Fic-
tion.)
The above question leads on to other questions, too, which have not so far
been researched or satisfactorily answered. Is it that local writing in English tends
to emphasize local sights and sounds which are 'alien' and unfamiliar to a Western
audience, and therefore do not 'travel' well? Or does the problem lie with the few
local publishers, who chance their arm by publishing Asian writers in English, in
what is seemingly a non-lucrative and narrow Asian market, not trying hard
enough to promote their books outside the region? Is there a built-in 'arrogance'
towards Asian writers in English in the West?
However, some pointers have emerged in thinking about these questions.
Firstly, the marketing aspect is extremely important and generally speaking pub-
lishers in this area do not have the international marketing strengths and expertise
of British and American publishers. Even the local branch offices of British and
American publishing companies cannot usually rely on the support of their head
offices in promoting the sales of local books outside the area. For instance, when
BTR acquired Heinemann a few years ago, they rather looked down their nose at
what they considered to be Heinemann Asia's peripheral publishing of Asian
writers in English, and, moreover, they were not even sure that it would be
worthwhile for Heinemann Asia to continue publishing textbooks in Malay and
Chinese for the local quantitatively attractive markets in Malaysia and Hong
Kong, as they felt that Heinemann, as a British company, should concentrate on
publishing textbooks in English, regardless of whether there was a viable market in
Malaysia and Hong Kong for books in Malay and Chinese respectively. These
were regarded as 'foreign' languages, 'not like French and German which every-
one learned at school in England', so I was told.
In many ways, East and West are still worlds apart, and not very much is
known about the Asian book world by Western publishers. So I was not very
surprised when a leading Singapore publisher told me at the Frankfurt Book Fair
last year that she had experienced considerable difficulty explaining to one of her
British customers th<:t Singapore was not part of Malaysia but a separate sovereign
state. In Hong Kong, we often receive mail addressed to 'Hong Kong, China' (and
this was years before there was any talk of Hong Kong reverting to China in 1997),
and 'Hong Kong, Japan' is not unknown. As one of the participants at the regional
conference on ASEAN scholarly publishing held in August 1990 in Kuala Lumpur
said: ' It will be much easier when the world gets to know about Asia' .
Nevertheless, it is true that the local regional markets for fiction written
directly in English or in English translation are small. In January 1980, when
UNESCO hosted a seminar in Karachi to examine the state of publishing in Asia, it
concluded rather pessimistically that 'the book publishing scene in general is not
satisfactory in most countries of the region', and the situation has not changed
very much since then. There is no doubt that various constraints hinder the efforts

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 PUBLISHING ASIAN WRITERS IN ENGLISH

of Asian publishers of creative writing, such as, relatively low literacy rates, lack of
purchasing power, shortages of professional publishing expertise (editors, pro-
duction staff,. translators), and an aversion on the part of the public to reading
compared with other more popular and less demanding forms of entertainment.
Meanwhile, it is interesting to note that those Asian writers who have estab-
lished a name for themselves internationally have all been published outside the
Asian region: Nayantara Sahgal, Han Suyin, Meira Chand, Timothy Mo, Anita
Desai, V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, and Kazuo Ishiguro are good examples.
Similarly, the African writers whom I referred to earlier were all published in
London. This may well be because all of them have lived in the West at some time
and have had access either directly or through literary agents to Western publish-
ers, and they did not have to try to gain a foothold, as it were, from the 'outside'.
Perhaps, then, Asian publishers should try harder to arrange copublishing
deals with the established fiction publishing houses in the West? The trouble with
this is that Western publishers often still do maintain something of a 'colonial'
hangover towards creative writing in this region. I remember carrying around a
suitcase full of books to show Western publishers at Frankfurt but most of those I
spoke to considered what I had to offer to be 'quaint' and not quite in the main
stream of fiction writing, and certainly, as they put it, there was no way in which
Asian novelists writing in English could measure up to the work of 'real' novelists
in the West.
However, perhaps Asian writers in English, without compromising their in-
tellectual integrity, should give more thought to what readers in the international
marketplace look for (and are prepared to pay for). They should not rely entirely
on local colour and sights for their attraction but they should be encouraged to
write about universal human themes of love, hatred, jealousy, intrigue, disaster,
the clash of cultures and religions, war, and so on, which transcend time, place and
race. In doing so, they would not depart from the universally accepted role of the
writer, whether in the East or West, or shining a light into areas of human
experience and the human heart which are common to all mankind.

REFERENCES

,Asia's Own, a Case of Publish or Perish' ,Asiaweek Literary Review, 27 March 1981
(Hong Kong), p. 51.
'Behind the Book', The Sunday Times, 28 February 1982, Singapore.
Borsuk, Richard, 'A Publishing House or Massage Parlour, Thailand' ,Media, June
1977 (Hong Kong), p. 13.
Hill, Alan, 'Books for a Commonwealth, Publishing Locally or from London' ,
Times Literary Supplement, 10 August 1962.
Hill, Alan, In Pursuit of Publishing (London: John Murray, 1988), pp. 244-89.
Law, Jenny, 'Writing in Asia' ,Pacific, 11,3 (1982), Issue No. 41b (Hong Kong).

85
 LEON COMBER

Lolarga, Elizabeth, 'Publisher of Asian Books', Who, 6 March 1982 (Manila), pp.
26-27.
'Publishing: Why the "Foreigners" Do well', Asiaweek Literary Review, 27 March 1981
(Hong Kong), pp. 47-48.
Sakurai, Yoshiko, 'Bunko-Bon Boom Sets Record-Breaking Sale for Paperback' ,
Media, June 1977 (Hong Kong), p. 14.
Wignesan, T. (ed.), Bunga Emas: An Anthology of Contemporary Malaysian Literature
(1930-1963) (Malaysia/London: Anthony Blond with Rayirath (Raybooks)
Publications, 1964).

86
 ENGLISH VERSUS ISLAM: THE ASIAN
VOICE OF SALMAN RUSHDIE

Roy Harris

The title of this paper, English versus Islam: the Asian Voice of Salman Rushdie, achieved
the dubious distinction, unique in its writer's experience, of becoming a topic of
controversy before the paper itself had even been finished, let alone delivered.
That this should have happened is symptomatic of the tenor of debate which still
continues over Rushdie's most recent book. The debate in question has been
marred by intemperance, by intolerance, and by distortion. It is to be hoped that in
what follows the most sensitive critic will be able to find none of these faults, but
no attempt either to shirk any of the relevant issues, or to evade the responsibility
of making clear to one's audience where one stands in what has, somewhat
unexpectedly, become one of the most significant causes celebres concerning free-
dom of expression in our time.
Unlike the majority of recent attempts to suppress works of literature, the
extraordinary attack on The Satanic Verses is neither a commonplace case of politi-
cal censorship nor a rearguard effort to maintain former standards of sexual
morality and public decency which are currently being called in question. The
issues involved are of far wider import, and no one should underestimate them. It
is to be hoped that this paper does not fall short in that respect either.
To have written a paper with a controversial title is at least a happier distinc-
tion for a writer than to have published a book for which one is sentenced to death.
That recently renewed death sentence cannot be ignored: it hangs over and col-
ours any serious discussion of The Satanic Verses as a work of literature at the present
time. Its intrusion inevitably focuses attention on certain facets of that complex
novel, and just as inevitably obscures others. It also renders some of the observa-
tions which a literary critic might otherwise be inclined to offer seem callously
trivial in the circumstances, and thus inhibits their being offered at all. All this
must be acknowledged as part of the historical context of the present discussion.
An Asian writer's life is at stake for what he has written, and that cannot be a
matter of indifference to a conference devoted to Asian writers.
The premises of this paper are simple. They are that The Satanic Verses is a book
written 'in good faith', to quote Rushdie's own statement; and that those who
claim to be offended by it also claim so 'in good faith'.
Both premises, it need hardly be said, are open to the charge of naivety; and
 ROY HARRIS

one can certainly discuss The Satanic Verses on the basis of assumptions other than
these. The point of stating them is to make it clear that as far as this paper is
concerned those are the premises on which the issue of authorial freedom is worth
arguing about. It does not much matter if either premise is in fact false. The point is
that such a book as The Satanic Verses could have been written 'in good faith', and
people could have been deeply and genuinely offended by it for religious reasons.
If you find that hypothesis difficult to accept, then it is unlikely that what follows
will be of very much interest to you.
This disclaimer is not intended as an easy way of shrugging off the real-world
dimensions of the Rushdie case. On the contrary, had there been any intention to
sidestep those issues, there would have been no point in pressing to be allowed to
give this paper in the first place or in insisting that the Rushdie affair should be
discussed at this conference.
Although there is no time to go into or even to list all of the charges that have
been laid at Rushdie's door for writing this book, it is worth noting for the
historical record that all or most of them were laid only after the official condem-
nation issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini.
Even at this relatively short distance in time, some of these charges appear in
retrospect astonishing. They include the charge of 'racism', which is nowadays a
crime condemned even by governments which appear most assiduously to prac-
tice it. Perhaps, indeed, that shows just how nebulous a charge it is. But to level it
against an individual with Rushdie's personal record on race relations is prima facie
both irresponsible and malicious, and cannot be considered otherwise.
It is nevertheless worth mentioning, if only because there have been some
contributors to the Rushdie debate who, although not accusing Rushdie person-
ally of premeditated racism, blasphemy, or provocation, proceed to complain at
lengtp about the damage to race relations for which the publication of his book is,
so they say, responsible, about the trouble which it has caused, about the way in
which it lends itself to being misrepresented, and so on. Academics in particular
should take the trouble to scrutinise the implications underlying pronouncements
of this kind. One such implication seems to be that the book is guilty of racism,
blasphemy, etc., even if its author is not. Therefore, whatever the author's inten-
tions may have been, the book itself should be banned, withdrawn, not re-issued,
etc. The book thus becomes in effect an authorless, decontextualized object, on
which society may take appropriate sanitary action. It is no longer a question of
opponents muzzling a dangerous person, but of the community's rational and en-
lightened elimination of a dangerous thing.
To hear Star Chamber casuistry of this kind deployed against the work of any
writer of note is disturbing, even sinister. But particularly disturbing for those
who are members of the international academic community. For the argument can
easily be adapted to works which are deemed likely to sponsor socially undesir-
able outcomes in areas other than race or religion. In short, this argument from
noxious consequences undermines that liberty of inquiry and debate essential to
the life of any university in a free society.

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 ENGLISH VERSUS ISLAM

Next, it may be as well to make clear that nothing in this paper depends on the
ascription of any particular literary merit to The Satanic Verses, although there can
be little doubt that it will be read and studied as a work of literature - and
deservedly so - for generations to come. But the literary merits or demerits of the
novel have little or nothing to do with the furore which it aroused, except that it
had been judged sufficiently meritorious to be awarded a prestigious literary
prize, which automatically drew media attention to its existence. The argument of
this paper, although it does not depend on the literary value of the novel, does
indeed presuppose that it is to be judged as a work of literature and a work of
fiction. But the issue to be addressed would remain an issue, even if posterity were
to judge The Satanic Verses to be a very bad novel and Salman Rushdie to be a very
bad writer.
It suffices for purposes of the argument that the novel is about what Rushdie
himself says it is about: that it is 'the story of two painfully divided souls'. It 'is
"about" their quest for wholeness.' If we accept that analysis, it is not because
there is any obligation to believe that authors are necessarily the best analysts of
their own writings, but because there is no other analysis on offer which even
begins to make sense of the whole work.
On a different semiological level, however, the two divided souls of Rushdie's
protagonists are themselves aspects of a single soul, and that single soul is the soul
of Asia today. Perhaps Rushdie thought this was too obvious to need pointing out,
or, since he already stood accused of so much presumption, that it might have
been thought too presumptuous if he had.
Why is one inclined to say 'the soul of Asia' and not just 'the soul of India'?
Because although Rushdie's two tormented protagonists are both Indian, there is
no doubt that just as their personal agonies can be seen as representative of a
dilemma facing all India, so the analysis of the Indian dilemma, as here presented,
applies to every country of the East which has thrown off a Western colonial yoke
only to confront immediately the problem of what to do about the languages and
the values that the West left behind.
This is a theme that other Asian writers have treated, and it certainly needs a
great work of fiction to do justice to it. For once we consign it to non-fiction, it
immediately fragments into a multitude of separate political, economic and reli-
gious issues where there is not only no unity to be found but no hope whatsoever
of a satisfactory synthesis describable in terms of individual human experience.
Fiction provides the only forum capable of staging it.
It is important to distinguish three aspects of the opposition between English
and Islam as they relate to the controversy over Rushdie's novel. There is, first, the
opposition as presented by the author within the novel through the attitudes and
actions of his characters. This we may refer to for convenience as the 'internal'
opposition. Second, there is what we may call the' external' opposition between
two potent forces in the contemporary world arena, where the novel itself has
become a kind of politico-religious football, kicked around by politicians and
prelates who have not even read it. And third, there is the 'prophetic' opposition

89
 ROY HARRIS

by which those two potent forces themselves represent cultural archetypes presag-
ing a future in which there will be, as Rushdie explicitly predicts in his recent
Herbert Read Memorial Lecture, no alternative to the 'liberal-capitalist social
model' other than the 'theocratic foundationalist model'.
Before considering any of these three aspects, it will be as well to deal with a
general point which may worry anyone who regards the title of this paper as
exemplifying a confusion of categories. In what sense could a language (namely
English) possibly be in conflict with a religion (namely Islam)? How could a
grammar and a vocabulary possibly oppose an established tradition of religious
belief? One religion, it might be held, can be in rivalry with another religion for the
allegiance of human minds and potential worshippers; or one language in rivalry
with another language for acceptance as a means of communication and hence for
potential speakers and writers. But how can a religion qua religion and a language
qua language be in competition?
The answer is that English is not just a language, any more than Islam is just a
religion. And perhaps the best way to appreciate that point is to consider whether
it is likely that Rushdie's novel would have attracted the death sentence if it had
been written in Catalan, or whether that sentence would ever have been pro-
nounced if the Islamic religion had today been demographically confined to
inhabitants of the island of Madagascar. The answer in both cases is fairly clearly
'no'. The names English and Islam, whatever else they may be, are names of two
very big battalions when it comes to the current international power struggle for
control of the Middle East. Indeed, there is a sense in which Salman Rushdie is just
one more military casualty in the barbaric war that has already cost more lives in
the space of seven years than any other war in modern history.
There is a great deal of truth in the witticism familiar to linguists which says
that the difference between a dialect and a language is that a language is a dialect
with an army. But one can cite many historical examples of language names that
are more than names of dialects with armies. Latin in medieval Europe had more
than an army behind it. It was also the language of medieval Christianity. But
then, medieval Christianity was not just a religion either, any more than Latin was
just a language. Indeed, the conflict between Latin and Christianity in the Middle
Ages offers an interesting comparison to the case we are considering, precisely
because it shows that such a conflict can occur even when the language and the
religion are apparently 'on the same side'. In medieval Europe that was just the
problem. Latin, the language of the Bible, or at least of the translation which
became the authoritative sacred book of European civilization, was also the liter-
ary language of a non-Christian culture. It was the language in which the collec-
tive wisdom of Graeco-Roman antiquity was passed on to the Middle Ages. It was
the language of grammar, of rhetoric and of logic. It was the language of the
universities. It was the language of law. It was the language of administration. It
was the language of diplomacy. It was the international language of the day. It
was far more than just the language of the Church. That is why when the Church
authorities condemned the writings of Peter Abelard, and forced him to throw

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them into the fire with his own hands, they were making a linguistic as much as a
theological point. The message was: 'The Devil take all your Latin learning if you
use it to dispute the Church's interpretation of what a Latin text means. Religious
truth takes precedence over linguistic truth; and if you put Latinity before Christi-
anity then you are a heretic, and you will go into the fire along with your books.'
The case of Abelard is worth citing not just because it is a classic example of
the suppression of freedom of expression in the name of religion. (One cannot
suppose it is any comfort to someone in Rushdie's personal plight to be told that
he has some distinguished predecessors.) But the precedent is of interest because
the case of Rushdie might have attracted less controversy and certainly less intem-
perance had it been more like that of Abelard. If Rushdie were a theologian or a
historian, who had committed all the crimes he stands accused of, but in the course
of some learned treatise on Islamic doctrine, then one can have little doubt that his
case would be judged differently. But because his view is expressed in a work of
fiction, which makes no pretence to scholarship as such, he immediately forfeits -
or so it would appear - much of the academic support he might otherwise enjoy.
This at least tells us something about the prevalent conception - or miscon-
ception - of what a work of literature is in the modern world. It tells us to what
extent literature is still regarded as something gratuitous, something superfluous,
an amusement or pastime for the literate. Hence the accusation that no poet or
novelist ever need have said what they did. They could have found something else
to write about. Or, at worst, they could have tried some other way of making a
living. Behind these attitudes lies the assumption that fiction is fundamentally
non-serious. Fiction is a kind of joke. And people who play jokes are themselves
solely to blame if the joke misfires.
That basic assumption one can sense behind much of the middle-of-the-road
criticism that has been made of Rushdie's position. The paradox is that those
extremists who support the death sentence manifestly do not regard works of
literature as jokes at all, not even when such a work is explicitly presented as a
fantasy, as The Satanic Verses is. So the author is caught between the upper and
nether millstones of opinion which takes what he has written only too seriously
and opinion which does not take it seriously enough.
No one who reads The Satanic Verses intelligently can doubt that it is indeed a
serious work; which does not mean that it is a solemn work, or that it eschews
humour, satire, ribaldry or hilarity. Indeed, if it did eschew those a reader might
find it an extremely dull book, and that it certainly is not. It is serious because it
has something to say about one aspect of the human condition which looms
increasingly large as a problem for a significant sector of the world's population. It
is the problem of how to construct a cultural identity for oneself in the face of quite
incompatible pulls and demands from different cultural sources.
In Rushdie's development of his theme, English and Islam represent two
influential cultural sources which stand opposed in various ways. English, as a
colonial linguistic legacy, has given millions of people in the population of Asia
potential access to a set of cultural values radically different from those of their

91
 ROY HARRIS

own indigenous societies. English means not only London, New York, Sydney and
the lifestyles characteristic, or supposedly characteristic, of these great Western
cities, but it also means, as one of Rushdie's main characters puts it, 'the protean
inexhaustible culture of the English-speaking peoples'. Of the Asian millions,
many are attracted by certain features of this Western alternative, though not by
all. A few are so attracted that they succumb to Anglophilia. A few feel so guilty or
so superior that they succumb to Anglophobia. This is the cultural backdrop to the
stage on which Rushdie's schizophrenic protagonists, Gibreel and Saladin, per-
form. Saladin has succumbed to Anglophilia, Gibreel to Anglophobia.
In the course of the novel, the Anglophile Saladin will discover to his dismay
that the English culture which so attracts him is a welter of contradictions. Help-
less in the grip of a supernatural metamorphosis, he is rejected by his English wife,
loses his highly paid job in the English entertainment world, and finds himself
taken in in his hour of desperate need by a family of Muslim immigrants in one of
the seedier inner London boroughs. But to these good Samaritans all Saladin can
say is: 'I'm not your kind ... You're not my people. I've spent half my life trying to
get away from you.'
In The Satanic Verses, Islam is chosen to represent the Asian values which stand
opposed to English values, not only, we may suppose, because Rushdie's own life
acquainted him with this particular background in more detail than with any
other, but also because the sense of symmetry which is evident throughout the
novel requires an alternative which can in tum be analysed as an amalgamation of
contradictions, even though it may like to present itself as unified, intransigent
and totally uncompromising. Furthermore, the opposition needs religion as an
important ingredient: for the attractions of English culture are presented as being
entirely secular in appeal.
Now religion, as portrayed in The Satanic Verses, is not the mild, accommodat-
ing, comfortable, Sundays-only variety that the West has grown accustomed to.
And that is another reason why there has been much confusion in Western
reactions to the Rushdie controversy. Religion as we find it in The Satanic Verses is
religion which has not yet undergone what a well-known anthropologist called
'the domestication of the savage mind'. It is the religion of miracles, of revelations,
of the calculated suppression of rationality in the interests of blind faith.
Unlike Saladin, the Anglophobic Gibreel discovers that the only person will-
ing to help him in his direst hour is not one of his co-religionists but an aloof and
unlikely English woman seduced by his sexual prowess. Driven to despair and
eventually to suicide, Gibreel also discovers that losing your religion is not just a
matter of losing your faith: it is a matter of losing your mind.
Not only is the attraction of opposites a constantly recurring topos in this
drama, but the manifest incapacity of the human actors to distinguish t' other from
which. Hence Rushdie's interest in the episode of the allegedly Satanic verses in
the Koran, which stands as a metaphor for much else. One would trivialize the
metaphor to gloss it simply as: 'Orthodoxy and heresy define each other recipro-
cally by mutual opposition, but the value assignment is ultimately arbitrary.'

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 ENGLISH VERSUS ISLAM

Nevertheless that crude gloss would not be miles off target. In the world of
Rushdie's novel, good and evil, right and wrong, truth and falsehood, reality and
dreaming, sophistication and innocence are equally compromised antitheses, pre-
cisely because they are reversible.
Alongside reversal of roles, a complementary recurrent topos throughout the
novel is metamorphosis. The Anglophile Saladin, who stoutly sings Rule Britannia
while falling from a jumbo-jet at 29,000 feet, does not anticipate that what the
future holds in store for him is a new existence as a humanoid goat, in which
satanic capacity he will become the symbol of black resistance to police brutality in
Mrs Thatcher's London. Nor does the Anglophobe Gibreel, whose tortured dreams
mock his loss of religious faith, anticipate transmutation into the archangel who
prowls that same capital city with his great trumpet, uncertain whether he is bent
on the redemption of the metropolis or its extermination.
English and Islam, therefore, although standing symbolically opposed, are by
no means unambiguously opposed. On the contrary, the ambiguity of that opposi-
tion is at the centre of the novel. It structures the great cosmic farce in which
Rushdie's performers find themselves willy-nilly engaged. But English enters the
world of this novel not just as the symbolic linguistic passport which confers
cultural right of abode to those seeking an alternative, non-Asian system of values.
It enters also as the language of the novel itself, and thus could be seen as playing
a double if not a duplicitous role. By writing in English, does not Rushdie as
author make it clear where his own cultural sympathies lie?
Here again, however, things are less clearcut than they might seem. Any
linguist would be happy to cite The Satanic Verses as an example of a book which
does not merely exercise a linguistic option for what already existed, but leaves
the English language a richer medium of expression than it was before. And it
does so precisely because so many aspects of the author's multicultural back-
ground, so many un-English ways of looking at things and of saying things, are
reflected by and blended into the language of his novel. (There is an engaging
touch of self-parody in the fact that Rushdie has his Anglophile Saladin earn a
lucrative living in London in corrunercial broadcasting and television by exploit-
ing a natural talent for mimicking voices.) Rushdie is a writer with an acute ear for
the many Asian and non-Asian voices with which English is spoken today. And he
is certainly to be numbered among those writers who have the great gift of making
what they hear become audible on the literary page. But more than that, as
Rushdie himself confes~es, he is a writer preoccupied with the problem of the
redemption of language. The English of his novel is not something fortuitously left
over from a colonial past: it is consciously reclaimed linguistic territory.
But what does all this matter, it will be asked, if a novelist's work, however
justifiable within the literary, linguistic and cultural conventions he adopts, never-
theless gives deep offence to many who may not even recognize those conven-
tions, or, if they do, cannot accept that the offence is in any way thereby mitigated?
Here, it must be stressed, nothing hinges on whether the text of The Satanic Verses
actually is blasphemous. Whether it is, and if so on what grounds, are technical

93
 ROY HARRIS

and, one gathers, contentious questions, on which it would be inadvisable even for
such experts on Islamic law as the Deputy Leader of the British Labour Party to
pronounce. The point is that any general charter of authorial freedom to publish a
literary work is not worth the paper it is written on if it does not take into account
the possibility that what the author writes may indeed technically be blasphe-
mous, or offend against some set of principles or values passionately held by
others.
There may be some who would maintain that a special case arises when what
an author writes offends people's religious convictions, and sets it apart from
offending against merely secular beliefs. But it is difficult to see what arguments
can be marshalled to support that particular distinction. The Supreme Court in
Washington has recently considered a secular case which many would find com-
parable: the burning of the American flag. It appears to have all the requisite
ingredients, being a symbolic act which may be regarded as quite intolerable by
many who witness it, as a denigration of cherished beliefs, as an insult both to the
living and to the memory of the dead, which may arouse anger,lead to violence,
social divisiveness, and so on.
In all these cases, the pivotal question is one discussed very lucidly by John
Stuart Mill in his essay On Liberty. How is it possible to draw the line between
protecting the rights of the speaker and protecting the rights of anyone who
objects to what the speaker says, given that we live in a world in which disagree-
ment all too frequently leads to violence? Mill's answer to this question has
provided the socio-Iegal basis for all subsequent attempts to deal with the prob-
lem, and it is certainly worth considering its applicability to the case at hand. The
principle Mill advocates (which, it should be stressed, is quite independent of
adherence to any particular religious or political doctrine) treats the hypothetical
speaker and the hypothetical objector with complete impartiality. It is a principle
which lays equal obligations on both parties. It requires them to distinguish
between behaviour which gives offence and behaviour which causes harm. It
takes as the overriding imperative for all human conduct our duty to make sure
that whatever we do will cause no harm to others. Correspondingly, prevention of
harm to others is the only motive which this principle recognizes as justifying
interference with personal freedom. To quote Mill's words:

the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collec-
tively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is
self-protection ... the only purpose for which power can be rightfully
exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to
prevent harm to others.

Whatever one may think of Mill's other achievements as a writer, his formula-
tion of that principle stands as one of the great intellectual landmarks in modern
humanism. In the hundred and thirty years since it was first articulated, it has not

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 ENGLISH VERSUS ISLAM

so far been surpassed. As a guideline to the humane conduct of human affairs, one
may doubt whether it ever will be.
From this principle it follows that in all cases of disagreement both parties
have the right to promote their own view and to attack their adversary's view,
whether on religious or other topics; but the means adopted in pursuit of those
objectives must not include causing or advocating harm to anyone. That is why
Mill places the restrictions he does on our freedom to express our opinions:

opinions lose their immunity when the circumstances in which they are
expressed are such as to constitute their expression a positive instigation
to some mischievous act.

Any intimidation or deliberate incitement to violence falls under this restric-

tion a fortiori.
There could hardly be a clearer case of incitement to violence than calling
publicly for the assassination of a writer and promising a multi-million dollar
reward to the successful assassin. Whatever Rushdie may have written, at least he
has neither overtly nor implicitly called for anyone's assassination. To argue that
one whose work provokes a violent reaction from opponents is ipso facto responsible
for the violence that ensues is to stand logic on its head. By that warped reasoning,
Mahatma Gandhi himself would stand convicted of the crimes of violence com-
mitted against his pacifist followers by British troops in India, and the students in
Tiananmen Square would themselves be to blame for sending in the tanks that
crushed them. These are travesties of rational thought about human responsibili-
ties. Only people who advocate or themselves resort to violence can be held
responsible for violence.
Nevertheless, it must be conceded that Mill's great principle is itself based on
cultural premises rooted in Western rather than Eastern ways of thought. English
literature is one of the most copious repositories of those occidental ways of
thought. Therefore does it not beg the question to defend one case of authorial
freedom by relying so heavily on arguments drawn from the same cultural tradi-
tion from which the very concept of that freedom comes? This is the Achilles' heel
of Mill's argument. Can it be used except within a cultural framework which
already validates its presuppositions? What happens when the concept of freedom
itself is challenged in the name of a different cultural tradition altogether? Is there
then any principled reconciliation possible between an author's right to do what
Rushdie has done 'in good faith' and a creed which simply denies that alleged
right as belonging to an opposed system of alien values, which it rejects in toto?
That is what the question has always been right from the start. Had any
Iranian leader seriously wished to eliminate the author of The Satanic Verses, who
can doubt that a hit squad would have been despatched before there was any
chance of its quarry going to ground? The death sentence need not have been
announced in advance by megaphone diplomacy, and the explanation could have

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 ROY HARRIS

been given to the world after the errant author was safely in hell. But that would
not have served the fundamentalist purpose: on the contrary, it would immedi-
ately have made Rushdie a martyr in the cause of freedom.
The assassination of Rushdie was never the objective. (To say that is not to say
that Rushdie's life was never in danger, or to dismiss the possibility that the
execution may still be carried out.) The objective was to re-establish in the name of
Islam the cultural inviolability of religion, a principle long abandoned by the
decadent religions of the West. The death threat, the book-burning, the gro-
tesquely inflated blood-money make no sense except as devices to dramatize the
issue. These are the theatrical props called for by the public politics of reverse
hostage-taking, the technique by vvhich one manoeuvres one's opponents into
holding the victim prisoner for his own protection. The main psychological differ-
ence between conventional hostage-taking and reverse hostage-taking turns on
the fact that the conventional hostage is of value only if there is a potential bargain
to be struck. Here there was never any bargain on the table and no reconciliation
was either sought or desired. But better still, in this instance reverse hostage-
taking was the ideal strategy for demonstrating that individual freedom must
ultimately be denied in the name of freedom. Thus the champions of freedom are
shown to be committed to a self-contradiction which the fundamentalist escapes.
For the subordination of personal freedom and personal judgment to belief in a
higher unquestioned truth is the essence of every fundamentalist ethic.
Given that context, the conflict over freedom of expression poses a cultural
dilemma which cannot be resolved by negotiations, by committees, by well-
intentioned talk of 'give and take', 'live and let live', or by counting heads to find
out just how many are offended, by what and how deeply. It is a question to which
there is no trouble-shooting answer. For it is a question about the status of culture
itself. Is obsession with freedom just a cultural dogma of Western secular funda-
mentalism? Is the very term 'culture' anything more than the collective name
given in different areas of the globe to the tyranny established by historically
privileged sets of local prejudices? Let no one doubt that these are questions on
which the sanity of the world must depend not only in the short term but in the
long term too. Rushdie should at least earn our gratitude for reminding us of
them.
Finally, what of those individuals who aspire to freedoms not sanctioned by
the tyranny of the local culture into which they happen to have been born?
Rushdie's own answer runs as follows:

How is freedom gained? It is taken: never given. To be free,

you must first assume your right to freedom.

It is the answer of a brave man, and it may be the only answer there is.

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 ENGLISH VERSUS ISLAM

COMMENTS ON PROFESSOR HARRIS'

PAPER

Christopher New

Professor Harris's refreshingly lucid paper expresses admiration for what he calls
Mill's great principle': the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over
I

any member of a civilized community . . . is to prevent harm to others. This principle,

Professor Harris says, requires us 'to distinguish between behaviour which gives
offence and behaviour which causes harm', and holds that it is only the latter
which governments may prohibit.
I share Professor Harris's admiration, but I think there are aspects of Mill's
principle, or Professor Harris' version of it, which need more examination than
Professor Harris - justifiably no doubt in the context of his wide-ranging paper-
gives them.

1. The Harm/Offence Distinction

Let us consider behaviour which deliberately gives offence. If, when you politely
invite me to your forthcoming guitar recital I give symbolic expression to my
detestation of your playing by slamming the door in your face, I offend you. If I
slam it on your fingers I harm you. Yet in each case there may be unjustified
infliction of pain (bruised feelings or bruised fingers), which leads to your playing
badly at your recital. So my giving offence would then seem to be also causing
harm. This suggests that it is only when giving deliberate unjustified offence does
not, or would not for reasonable people, have such dire consequences (i.e. when it
is mere offence, merely a matter of bruised feelings) that governments, according to
the principle, have no right to proscribe it.
But why are deliberately bruised feelings less important than deliberately
bruised fingers? (If you were not going to give a recital, that might be the only
harm done to you by my slamming the door on them.) Racial and religious, as well
as personal, taunts can give deep and justified offence (mere offence), and it is not
immediately clear why governments should never in principle prohibit them. Some
would argue that people have a right to be protected from behaviour which gives
such offence just as they have a right to be protected from obscene phone calls.
Their arguments need to be considered.
The example just cited is similar to, but also very dissimilar from, the case of
Satanic Verses. It is all the more important therefore that it should be thoroughly
scrutinised and distinguished from that case.

97
 CHRISTOPHER NEW

2. Responsibility for Violence

Professor Harris observes: 'to argue that one whose work provokes a violent
reaction is ipso facto responsible for the violence that ensues is to stand logic on its
head'. Perhaps it is. But to claim, as he does three sentences later, 'Only people
who advocate or themselves resort to violence can be held responsible for vio-
lence' may be thought to knock logic sideways. Suppose Professor Harris had
known before, or had very good reason to believe, that his peaceable defence of
Rushdie would so provoke a Muslim fundamentalist in his audience that the man
(or woman) would lob a grenade into the middle of the auditorium at the end of
the paper, killing many innocent and talented people. And suppose Professor
Harris had gone ahead with his paper regardless. Could he reasonably claim that,
since he had neither advocated nor resorted to violence, he could not be held
responsible for the violence at all? I hardly think so. Those who know, or have
good reason to believe, their work will provoke a violent reaction have a duty to
weigh the value they think their work will have against the harm they think it will
cause, even if the immediate agent of that harm is not themselves. Professor
Harris's principle ignores this fact, and therefore needs qualification.

[I hope that my comments will not be misconstrued as offering any support for
those who persecute Salmon Rushdie and call for his death. I regard them as
misguided fanatics. But if they are to be freed from their error by argument, it
must be by argument that is error-free.]

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 ENGLISH VERSUS ISLAM

RESPONSE TO MR NEW'S COMMENTS

Roy Harris

My admiration for Mill does not mean that I see no difficulty in applying his
offence vs. harm distinction in particular cases. (An earlier version of the paper
had raised the point; but I cut it out - in retrospect, I think wisely.) Nevertheless,
whatever the difficulties of application may be, I find Mill's distinction itself
convincing, and - more importantly - I do not think human beings have yet
managed to do better in their attempts to deal with how conflicts of values may be
resolved in terms of human conduct.
My own defence of the distinction would run roughly as follows. You can take
offence, but you can't 'take harm'. Harm is either caused in a given instance, or it is
not caused. (You can of course retrospectively find it to have been caused, even
though it was not recognized at the time; but that is a different matter. E.g.
Hiroshima.) Mill says - defensibly in my view - that we must do our best to
make sure we do not cause harm to others, not that we must do our best to ensure
that others do not take offence or even to ensure that we do not give them cause for
taking offence. He does not spell out the reason for this, but I think it is obvious
enough: i.e. there is almost nothing we could do at which offence might not be
taken. So if we accepted that as the Eleventh Commandment we should end up
piously doing nothing. (Actually, Mill does say that almost any forthright attack
on a position would be bound to give offence to some of its defenders.)
The important point is that Mill's psycho-legal framework places equal obliga-
tions on both parties. Those who do - or are disposed to - take offence have no
right of veto on those who do - or are disposed to - give offence, except when the
former can show that the latter are causing harm, as distinct from merely giving
offence.
Mill's position is also, as far as I can see, the position of the u.s. Supreme
Court in a series of judgements over recent years (to one of which I alluded in my
paper). There may be an endless number of marginal cases which come up for
decision; but the distinction championed is nevertheless viable as a principle on
which decisions in particular cases can pragmatically be made. Anyone inclined to
dispute this can be referred to the relevant portions of the legal history of the
U.S.A. (Unless we are dealing with a fanatic or a sceptic who does not accept that
the U.S.A. has a legal history based on certain ethical principles.)
This is not to deny that a devout Muslim might be caused mental pain or
distress on reading The Satanic Verses. But so might devout Bible-belt parents of
some mid-Western state on learning what their offspring are taught about evolu-
tion in the local school. Mental pain (however measured on some thermometer of

99
 ROY HARRIS

agony) is not equivalent to mental harm. Many processes of intellectual education

presumably cause the students 'mental pain', just as many processes of physical
education cause physical pain. Education would in neither case be justifiable if
pain always entailed harm. There are important distinction~ between pain, dam-
age and harm. A tooth extraction causes minor physical damage, and can cause
quite a lot of pain. But it is not clear that eo ipso it causes harm.
Mr New's second point concerns, as I see it, one particular application of Mill's
principle. If I knew a terrorist would (try to) blow up my audience, could I
disclaim all responsibility for the ensuing carnage? The way Mr New puts the
question seems to me to confuse precisely those distinctions which my paper
addresses. The answer to the question as put is that I would be clearly culpable if I
failed (given my prior knowledge) to make the risk clear to the potential audience.
But this is no different from Mill's example of restraining a man about to cross a
dangerous bridge. To consider a less hypothetical case, why not take the recent
bomb threat to a transatlantic flight? The airline - defensibl), in my view -
proceeded with the flight, having warned all crew and passengers. What more can
anyone reasonably want?
Mr New seems to be suggesting - but this strikes me as a gross non sequitur-
that anyone who 'went ahead' in the face of such threats would be at least partly
responsible for any harm done. Someone who takes such a view at least incurs the
onus of explaining to the rest of the world why that culpability follows. Otherwise
Mr New's moral principle seems to be no more than a philosopher's charter for
terrorists. For it implies that if we refuse to kowtow to the terrorist, then we
immediately share the responsibility for whatever wanton harm the terrorist
chooses to perpetrate. I find that an immoral rather than a moral principle, and I
feel fairly confident that Mill would not have swallowed it either.

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(~====T==H==E==E==C==H==O==IN==G====O==F ==Q==U==IE==T==V==O==I==C==E==S:::::::=:::::)

Aamer Hussein

Some years ago, it became fashic.>nable to speak at cultural seminars and symposi-
ums of the writer in various states of exile. While most exiled writers lamented the
loss of language, landscape and live debate with an audience, speaking of the pain
that led them to write and address/redress this loss, others held that this very loss
was a prerequisite to writing: that it was necessary to distance one's self from one's
environment in order to understand and describe it better. Exile as a necessary
prerequisite to writing? It seemed to me a harsh exhortation. Surely, I thought,
some of the writers I have most admired and loved write from the vital centre of
their own community? Can't each sort of writer claim her or his own space, and
shouldn't that space be equally relevant and accessible to us all? Need there be this
diehard dichotomy between exile and community? Most of us have experienced, at
times, the feeling of distance, not necessarily from our entire community or sur-
roundings, but from some part of these, and, on a very practical level, those of us
who choose a language that in some way deludes or disappoints one section of our
audience while it satisfies another, have experienced this sense of distance. Most
of all, perhaps, those of us who have exchanged our native tongue for English. But
I see a move from one language to another as a form of travel akin to seasonal
migration: an expatriation from one realm of expression to another, not perhaps
more congenial nor even necessarily a widening of creative horizons, but a chal-
lenge, or a voyage of contingency, or both.
Because for many of us who, while living in Asia, have written in English, our
choice is dictated by contingency: made before our birth, inscribed in our environ-
ment, imposed upon us by our schooling and our national and social conditioning.
I, for example, am often asked if I write in my mother tongue, Urdu. An easy
answer would be to proclaim my migrant credentials. Ah, but I left home when I
was sixteen and have lived in England for nineteen years, I could say. But the truth
is far more complex. Many of you will recognise the workings of a system that
teaches its subjects to build the structure of their thoughts in one language while
leaving us to learn at home, from our familiars, the emotional and sentimentive
discourse of another. For example, growing up in Pakistan, I and my classmates
were taught Urdu for about forty-five minutes a week, and penalised if, outside
the confines of this mandatory but token lesson, we spoke a word of any 'native'
language in classroom or playground.
 AAMER HUSSEIN

Literal expatriation, we know, entails another set of problems. Let me say that
I find expatriatio11 a far more comfortable concept to deal with here than exile: it
implies neither a forced eviction from one's motherland, nor a deliberate rejection;
there are no connotations of permanent or obligatory leavetaking. There is, in-
stead, a tremendous inherent privilege in the term, a mobility of mind if not
always of matter, to which we as writers should lay claim: a doubling instead of a
split.
Writers who live abroad from choice and yet continue to write in their own
language are in a quite different situation: they can address an audience at home
while speaking of the strangeness of the scenery they find around them, gently
imparting cultural information to their readers as many writers love to do, in the
form of stories and parables. We migrants and expatriates, on the other hand, are
expected to speak for our people while we really speak to and of them; the use of
our adopted language is fraught with ambiguity, with the notion of otherness, the
sense of having contiriually to explain ourselves to alien audiences. And yet a
curious snobbery prevails among those in our own countries who feel that we
have discarded their values and given in to the pressures of alienation by choosing
to write in English. This, I feel, is totally unjust both for the literally expatriate
writer and for the writer of English expression whose migration is metaphoric, or
externally imposed by the prevalent and arbitrary dictates of national cultural
trends. Malaysian critics, closely followed by Indians, have been particularly
harsh in their criticisms of the Asian Anglophone writer. Particularly ironic, one
may remark, when both countries boast not only an enormous and settled popula-
tion of writers in indigenous languages, but also writers who are actually bilingual
and write with fluency and ease in two languages. Malaysia even has two exqui-
sitely bilingual poets: Muhammad Haji Saleh translates his own work into English
and publishes learned works on classical Malay literature, and also translates and
introduces the work of his noted Malay poet-contemporaries. Salleh Ben Joned has
published a selection of his original poems in Malay and English in a bilingual
edition, a feat that most of us, I'm sure, would be inspired to emulate had we the
requisite talent or the time. Let us come back, however, to the monolingual writer:
the Anglophone is accused of having lost touch with his roots, while the
experimentalist who continues to write in his native tongue, and violently dis-
cards his cultural heritage of style and form and his linguistic heritage of syntax
and structure, is praised for his inventive contribution to the remaking of the
language. What, then, mediates the foreignness of idiom? Must we remain trapped
in a moment of antiquated post-colonialism?
Two recurrent terms consistently elucidate attitudes to expatriation and to the
use of English. These terms are sectional and elitist. Let me pause and examine these
attitudes in their national{ist) context before I move on to survey the migrant
scene. The Anglophone writer is accused of elitism because she or he is held to
address only that tiny segment of the population that understands English; and of
sectionalism because this attitude implies segregation from the collective.
Sectionalism, let me explain, is a term also applied to the literatures of incoming

102
 THE ECHOING OF QUIET VOICES

minorities, e.g. the Tamils and Chinese of Malaysia, written in their own tongues.
Now I'm all for the development of national languages as a unifying force all over
Asia - witness the successful propagation of Bahasa Indonesia. I also deplore the
feeling of proto-communalism in any linguistic discourse. But coming as I do from
a country where the imposition of a national language from above has given rise to
violent rejections, cultural fragmentation and literary provincialism, and no lin-
guistic unification has been possible in Urdu or in Ep.glish, I have to admit that any
language that suits the immediate purpose of its users is a viable tool for commu-
nication. Suppressing language only results in a battle of linguistic chauvinisms,
one of the less attractive forms of national struggle; after all, how can we apply an
ultimate value to any language, English included? But a value of efficiency, yes. If
we want to break out of cultural isolation, all our literatures should be accorded
recognition: notions of mutual exclusivity should be seen for what they are,
outmoded and disruptive, and the complementary nature of writings produced in
and by identical circumstances, albeit in different languages, should be accepted
and appreciated. However simple this may seem, English has now been possessed
by its speakers to such an extent that it can legitimately be considered a tool of
communication in a multilingual society whose languages and dialects are mutu-
ally incomprehensible and where deeply-rooted feelings of ethnic identity pre-
clude the free exchange of languages between communities. English, which be-
longs to everyone and no one, can at least be used as a satisfactory means of
compromise - and productivity.
Reading, for example, Scorpion Orchid by Malaysia's Lloyd Fernando, I am
struck by the deep similarities between this fine novel and the work of Fernando's
Malay contemporaries. This book is saturated in its author's knowledge of Malay
culture and literature, but uses English as a means of probing the multi-dimen-
sional reality of three ethnic and linguistic communities nurtured by the same soil.
From a slightly different perspective, let us look at the work of Singapore's
Catherine Lim. I admire her immersion in the daily life of her city; this is a writer
who, in speaking of the disenfranchised as well as of the privileged, seems prima-
rily to address her own society, but through her skilled and flexible use of English
ringing with the distinctive polylingual tonalities of her native city, gives her
readers remarkable insight into the minds and outlook of Singapore's citizens. But
English is not a passport to universal renown. Writers like Lim, though fortunately
bestsellers in their own countries, are accorded little recognition in the West:
European and Japanese fiction is regularly translated and lauded for its
experimentalism and exoticism, and novels from the First World countries of the
Commonwealth regularly sell in thousands, while the books of writers like Lim
and Fernando are relegated to obscure shelves in specialist libraries.
In what sense, then, is the deeply engaged writing of a Lim more elitist than
the kind of writings in national languages that are inaccessible in style and sub-
stance, entirely remote from their living environment? Written in English, Lim's
stories capture in an echoing-grove the voices of her native city, and cross national
boundaries to express her concerns, with a message that communicates itself to

103
 AAMER HUSSEIN

any Asian country where English is read, in a region where notions of art for art's
sake are patently difficult to put into practice.
Writers such as Lim and R.K. Narayan, Bienvenido Santos, Anita Desai, Bapsi
Sidhwa, Mulk Raj Anand, Nayantara Sahgal and so many others, may write for
their own countries or for the West, but their writings have a resonance and a
relevance for all Asia. They are involved in a double project, both writing and
translating a cultural reality often perceived as ineffable. In the first instance, they
are often closer to the truly great Asian writers in national languages, such as
Indonesia's Pramudya Ananta Tur, China's Ba Jin, Malaya's Samad Said or India's
Ismet Chughtai or Nirmal Verma. In the second instance, their work opens doors
into neighbouring but often concealed cultures. Certainly the language in which
we read other Asian authors in the Subcontinent is English. Perhaps the greatest
exponent of the pan-Asian novel is Han Suyin. Understandably identified with
mainland China, a country which for obvious historical reasons has produced a
significant tradition of Anglophone writing, Han Suyin moved from writing of her
own Sichuan to discussing the dilemma of Hong Kong's refugees and transients;
there followed her penetrating study of the Malaysian Chinese, assimilated or
alienated, capitalist and communist. By her fourth book she was exploring other
Asian cultural landscapes: Nepal and Cambodia, Thailand and India would ben-
efit from her scrutiny in her fictional works. When she came full circle and
examined her own roots in the context of China's historical development, she gave
the English-speaking world the most comprehensive account of China's recent
history to be produced by a native Chinese.
The Anglophone writers of Asia also lead us to the extant translated litera-
tures of their region. Let us think, for example, of Burma's Khin Myo Chit, whose
one entrancing historical novel and many short stories and essays convey her
Burmese/Buddhist sensibility in vivid, colourful English, whetting the appetite
for more stories of Burma; A. Samad Ismail, a novelist in his native Malay, whose
journalism in English offers valuable insight into Malaysian realpolitik; Adibah
Amin, another Malay novelist who in addition to her articulate and witty English
essays is also an able and sensitive translator of contemporary Malay prose and
poetry; and Pira Sudham, who in The Children of Esarn writes of his desire to com-
municate a specific Thai reality to an Anglophone audience.
But while Malaysia's many communities have produced a rich and varied
literature, few, if any, Thai writers are read or translated in English-speaking
countries. Writing in English in Thailand, a country with an ancient cultural and
linguistic tradition, must be a violently lonely and somewhat peripheral activity.
Whereas most Thai writers can rely on an intimate acquaintance with their audi-
ence and assume its familiarity with context and subtext, Sud ham' s work is like
the proverbial message in a bottle, navigating unknown waters in the hope of
being found and recognised. Pira Sud ham has also written convincingly about the
condition of the self-exiled, who travel to other countries in search of understand-
ing and knowledge and instead encounter incomprehension: an account that
reverberates with the authenticity of personal experience.

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 THE ECHOING OF QUIET VOICES

This, I think, is the moment when I should turn to immigrant and expatriate
writers, among whom I somewhat unwillingly count myself We, of course, are
seen as both sectional and elitist: the difference of classification lies in the opera-
tive split perspective. We are elitist in the eyes of those of our compatriots who
accuse us of being out of touch with our country's realities, or smoking the opium
pipe of nostalgia. We remain sectional in the countries of our adoption: and here I
speak particularly of Britain where I live and write - and I'll come back to this
topic later. There is, to be honest, some truth in our compatriots' accusations. The
migrant writer's feelings of dislocation or disorientation - and even in this age of
rapid travel, air-fares are enormously expensive for those of us not sponsored by
an organisation - the migrant writer's feelings of dislocation, then, often lead her
or him to tread continually the same terrain of memory imaginatively trans-
formed. Witness, for example, my compatriot Sara Suleri's poetic reminiscences in
Meatless Days, acclaimed by American critics when published a year or two ago
but read by many Pakistanis as an exercise in self-indulgent nostalgia. There are,
to be sure, exceptions. In the case of some of our fortunate colleagues whose tenure
in the West is an admitted matter of convenience, the more abstract problems of
commitment, choice and literary idiom may establish precedence over memory,
rendering the rhetoric of dispossession a somewhat threadbare fiction. The genu-
inely privileged writer, whose craft earns her or him financial mobility, can travel
so frequently that the term expatriate is notional or nonsensical in its literal sense
for much of the year.
In a literary context, writers who feel stranded between cultures and nations
have initiated a vital debate: Let us, they say, discard our past in the old country,
let us look at our surroundings and celebrate our presence here, let us give voice to
our fellow-expatriates and immigrants. This discourse of the migrant writer is
more fraught with ambiguity than the polemics of the second-generation immi-
grant who may never have seen the motherland: the identity repressed constantly
demands subtextual attention, as we can see in the work of Bharati Mukherji, who
in her attempt to discard the yoke of Indo-expatriation, has staked a claim on the
world of immigrants of our cultures adrift in America - only to find herself
returning to her Indian roots in her strange and disoriented new novel Jasmine, in
the time-honoured manner of the serpent eating its own tail.
Nevertheless, Asian writers, migrant, expatriate or assimilated, remain sec-
tional in many of the countries of our adoption. Last year's British literary celeb-
rity, Nagasaki-born Kazuo Ishiguro, often speaks of his primarily British literary
influences; but he was identified at the outset of his career with his early 'Japanese'
novels, and when he turned to the history of his adopted country, writing in The
Remains of the Day of England's recent past, his sensibility, immediately inter-
preted as an outsider's, was characterised as particularly and even quintessentially
Japanese. He eventually won a prize for this very work; grudgingly-conceded
literary excellence helps a writer break out of the sectional mould, though it is still
common to find this very English fiction on Third World bookshelves in specialist
bookshops. I can understand the dismay of a writer, assimilated or otherwise, who

105
 AAMER HUSSEIN

finds an essentially economic category imposed on his work. The Third World
implies unequal development, underdevelopment. Is he then held to be writing
about an underdeveloped culture - or is his work itself considered underdevel-
oped? Are his linguistic abilities in question? Another writer who seems to resent
this kind of classification is the acclaimed Timothy Mo. He, too, proclaims the
essential Englishness of his work, but made his name writing about Hong Kong,
Macao and their immigrant communities, posing the question: where does his fic-
tion belong? One possible answer being: not exclusively to England, but wherever
the English language is spoken and understood. For in England the foreignness of
a name - that is to say its non-Europeanness - imposes a bar on the handling of
indigenous, i.e. English, themes.
However, it is the immigrants of the second generation who are transforming
and will further transform the debate. In the USA, the voices of Maxine Hong
Kingston, Amy Tan, Cynthia Kadohata and the playwright David Henry Hwang
are staking new claims on American homeground with an authenticity somewhat
lacking in the would-be American writers like Mukherji, but profitably shared by
some first-generation migrants like the Indian poet Meena Alexander and the
Malaysian Hilary Tham. Let us, they seem to say, speak of our own histories,
wherever they take place: and these histories in many cases largely unfold on
American territory. These voices, proclaiming the redefined outlines of a map
quite different from the conventional American cartography of literary merit, are a
part of the mainstream and yet retain sectional interest.
In England, though, similar voices are still relegated to Third World peripher-
ies by the publishing and media establishment, though as I write the publication of
the well-known screenwriter Hanif Kureishi's first novel, The Buddha of Suburbia,
which touches upon the life of the narrator's Asian immigrant father, may yet
remedy the situation. But writers have responded in a hearteningly positive man-
ner to marginalisation. Let us, they say, speak out loud and let eavesdroppers
listen. Let us discard notions of the literary metropolis as a European centre; let us
claim decentralisation and autonomy. Let us recognise and define our own spaces:
and if our writings are categorised as Third World, Black, Feminist, Nationalist, let
us widen and affirm our own identities. This attitude, held up by negative critics
as an example of separatism, fragmentation and provincialism, due in large part to
the continuing relegation of such texts to specialist slots, is in fact a reaction to
sectionalisation and a call for a polycentiic rather than a metropolitan literary
culture. It is a precedent set in Britain as in American by our sisters and brothers of
African provenance, and recently taken up by the Asian communities; all of us,
with writers from Arab countries now swelling our ranks, subsumed by the
inefficient Third World label. (It is also interesting to compare French attitudes to
Francophone Afro-Asiatic literature.)
The problems remain. The immigrant still possesses a history that demands
recognition, but all too often lies interred in another country to which there is no
permanent return. The living voices of this, our past, oral testimonies, remembered
histories, all serve as our inspiration. The stories of our voyages are narratives that

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 THE ECHOING OF QUIeT VOICES

bind us together, first and second generation immigrants. Our texts constantly
explore the boundaries between fact and fiction, memory and imagination, indi-
vidual and collective consciousness. Witness, for example, fictional, poetic and
autobiographical works by the Indo-British Leena Dhingra, Canadian-Sri Lankan
Michael Ondaatje, Pakistan's Sara Suleri, Malaysia's Hilary Tham and India's
Meena Alexander in America, and England's Hanif Kureishi.
I would now like to locate myself in this debate. As a fairly late arrival in
England - I was sixteen - I still find myself looking to Asia for imaginative
nutrition and intellectual sustenance, as a Muslim looks to the holy stone wherever
he is. Having brought with me among my baggage of metaphors the lore of my
Urdu mother tongue, I have enriched my understanding of my own heritage by
my readings in the literatures and histories of China, South-East Asia, the Middle
East and also Africa, seeing how close our preoccupations remain and yet how
distant one country of the South is from another in terms of our understanding of
each other's work and worth. I became aware that the Asian writer at home and
abroad must have access to the work of other writers rooted in their environment
- not only creative' writers but also social scientists, investigative journalists and
I

political thinkers. Certainly for the migrant writer it helps make sense of cultural
dichotomies, to keep both doors of one's house open, to borrow a poetic image
from my great favourite, Han Suyin. Living in England, I'm constantly aware that
whereas European fiction may entertain us, inform us and even inspire us in terms
of narrative and linguistic strategy, it simply cannot articulate most of our concerns:
to put it baldly, we simply can't expect it to speak for us - we must speak for
ourselves.
Having begun my relatively recent writing life as a writer of simple stories, I
have felt it necessary, at times even obligatory and to the detriment of my career,
to turn my attention to book reviewing and literary research, specialising in Asian
fiction in English and in translation, digging for forgotten and unknown master-
pieces - and every honest testimony is a masterpiece - to try to guide readers to
the many excellent works of fiction out of Asia, many of which have transformed,
and continue to transform, the topography of the English language. It is also
essential to reclaim the works of transient writers who first published their work
in Britain - it is gratifying, for example, to see Chun Chan Yeh's beautiful
Mountain Village back in print after many years, and also Attia Hosain's two
fictional works. Writers such as these bring to the English the narrative traditions
of their own culture and the poetry of their native tongues; they perform the
double function of belonging essentially to the culture that inspires them while
transforming the English language to express a distinctly Asian sensibility. Thus
they set an example to the novice migrant writer too constrained by the restrictive
mode of the Great European Novel. This, of course, is not to say that Flaubert or
Dostoievski or Jane Austen has nothing to offer us; we must also accept that the
languages and literatures of East, West, North and South are not mutually exclu-
sive; we do, after all, inhabit the same planet. But we claim recognition, too, for the
richness and variety of our own writings, both traditional and contemporary.

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 AAMER HUSSEIN

There is also the question of responsibility and the obligation to write about all
the new works of Asian literature: translations from languages both national and
regional, and of course the immigrant literatures all too often misinterpreted as
mere propaganda. This to me is the privilege of living in one world while belong-
ing to another: to stand in a place where like a weather-vane I can revolve and look
in all directions.
To conclude: while gaps may seem to widen, at least in Britain, between the
sectional literatures of the incomers and the mainstream literature of the indigene,
gaps are closing between Asian and Asian, Asian and African and Caribbean; we
have common experiences and struggles. I hope this will soon become true, too, of
the literatures being written in Asia, in Africa, and in all our communities of the
diaspora; that we, migrants and expatriates, be heard not as the mournful wit-
nesses of exile but as affirmative and celebratory voices, echoing you from another
point on a shared map. I am frankly not concerned about the categories imposed
upon me: I am a writer out of Asia. I would like to say - and I'm sure this is true of
the rooted among us as well as the migrants - that if our writings gain the
international recognition they so richly deserve, if the centuries of our contributions
to literature in terms of borrowings are recognised, let this not be a question of
token First World consideration for a deprived region of underdeveloped writers,
but a tribute to our strength and excellence, to the echoing of our quiet voices, to
our refusal to be still and silent.

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 CALIBAN IN THE ANDES: FIGURES OF
ENCHANTMENT AS POST-COLONIAL
TEXT

Chelva Kanaganayakam

Ghose's ongoing preoccupation with the thematics of exile and native-alien expe-
rience, the ambiguities that underline the relation between text and reality, and
with the problematic status of language as a vehicle for consciousness. becomes
increasingly evident in his most recent work Figures of Enchantment. A moment that
comes to mind is the first meeting between Popayan, the magician and at times the
novelist-surrogate in the novel, and Federico, the ill-fated exile, condemned to
pursue an always compulsive and inevitably futile quest for a satisfying vision of
permanence. As Federico stands outside Popayan's shop and wonders if the
latter's magic would reverse the circumstances that torment him, Popayan, from
inside, appraises the boy:

Popayan had seen the boy earlier, standing outside and looking at th~ articles in
the shop window a few minutes after the cafe proprietor from across the street had
come to change a note. The boy had a haunted look, the kind he had seen on people
who had the compulsion to flee, an anxiety to be leaving some place, without
knowing what they were running from, and, in the majority of cases, not even
knowing that they were engaged in flight .. He himself had known the demon that
could suddenly possess the soul and draw it to some landscape as if it were a bird
migrating from a dusty scrubland, where it had twittered and warbled, that can
discov,er the full range of its singing voice only when it finds itself, after a journey
forced by blind instinct, in a cool, dark forest that is as unlike its native habitat as
is the terrain of the moon from that of the earth. 1 (pp. 61-62)

The passage with its deliberate pronominal ambiguities, passive structures,

repetitions, multiple clauses that resist closure and essentially metaphoric mode of

1. Figures of Enchantment (New York: Harper & Row, 1986). All quotations are from this edition
and page refuences are given parenthetically.
 CHELVA KANAGANAYAKAM

writing lead the reader away from the immediate referential context to one that
foregrounds language and artifice. The identification between the two anticipate
Popayan's subsequent gesture of giving Federico an amulet (significantly, shaped
like a book) and a gown (again, with stars and crescents on it) that would pass on
to Federico the power of the artist and the torment of quest. The passive construc-
tion of 'compulsion to flee' , combined with 'haunted' and' demon' , points to levels
of consciousness that are dimly perceived, to the disturbing presence of the Other
which can neither be fully comprehended nor totally abandoned. The juxtaposi-
tion of 'twittered and warbled' with 'dusty scrubland' suggests paradoxes that
involve sense of place, identity and exile. Finally, the possibility of discovering the
'full range' of one's singing voice only in a fictive construct that hardly resembles
the one left behind raises questions that relate to reality, artifice and language.
The dualities in the passage allude to more general concerns in Ghose's
writing. Apart from the early works, The Contradictions (1966) and The Murder of Aziz
Khan (1967) and the self-portrait Confessions of a Native-Alien (1965), Ghose's prose
has tended to steer away from referentiality and impose a distance between
historical circumstance and fictional text. The subsequent novels have been largely
experimental and innovative as they move from picaresque and stream-of-con-
sciousness to metafictional and magic realistic modes. If recognizable continuities
persist, they are to be found in the poetry where memories of 'home' return. He
recalls, for instance, in a poem called' A Memory of Asia':

pot-bellied Ganapati, the Hindu god, garlanded

with marigolds, and jasmine and with
his elephant head painted the red they used
for post boxes ...

But the memory could well be a figment of the imagination, or the mind
attempting to console itself while not entirely comprehending the cause of its
alienation. The poet then admits:

those are phrases in my memory, I'm nearly certain I'm quoting some poet
but can't remember who, it could even be something I myself wrote and
threwaway.2

The dualities point to a significant aspect of Ghose's writing. The movement

away from structures that are recognizably referential or post-colonial does not
signify a negation of historical consciousness or departure from the margin to the
'centre.' Rather, it points to an aesthetic awareness of complexities that refuse to be
circumscribed by the mimetic mode, and a desire to prevent a naive 'participation'
in order to elicit a complex response from the reader. The forces that provide the
impetus to write can still be located in a post-colonial context. Wilson Harris,

2. Zulfikar Chose. A Memory of Asia (Austin: Curbstone, 1984), pp. 3-5.

110
 CALIBAN IN THE ANDES: FIGURES OF ENCHANTMENT AS POST-COLONIAL TEXT

speaking of Ghose's poetry, quite rightly points out that 'the black roots of memory
in the perverse garden on dusty or hollow place are imbued with unconscious
illumination and sacrament because they run deeper than a mere progression of
fortunate or tragic circumstance.'3 The deeper and more complex the perception
the more insistent becomes the need to create fictive constructs. In a meditative
moment, the author himself wonders. 'Strange life, isn't it, when we pursue
counterfeits and are obliged to be content with the illusion of having once again
arrived at the original?'4
These assumptions surface in Ghose's critical writings and in his recent phase
of fiction that begins with A New History of Torments (1982). The notion of a created
world is central to an understanding of Figures of Enchantment. And yet the novel
does not abandon its quest for reality, nor does it jettison a mode that provides the
illusion of referentiality. What it eschews is a recognizable and often misleading
underpinning of historical circumstance. It refuses to participate in what could be
a misleading historiography. In fact, apart from a brief and inconsequential refer-
ence to Delhi, the novel steers clear of the South Asian context. The novel, set in an
unnamed South American country and concerned with characters who have no
ostensible relation to India or Pakistan, takes place at a time that is deliberately
indeterminate and tempts the reader into looking at the novel as a solipsistic text.
And yet Ghose reminds us in his critical writings that his art is intensely personal:

Fictions suggest themselves to a writer as images floating in the dimen-

sion of Time that must be ordered to form a believable story that might
appear to have nothing to do with the writer's own self and yet, when the
fragments of the narrative are inspected from an altered perspective, the
revelation is suddenly desperately personaLS

The paradoxical and often challenging aspect of the novel is that while the
novel provides clues that suggest a concern with post-colonial preoccupations, the
mode remains elusive by foregrounding its artifice. Here again, Ghose provides a
rationale:

The only certain reality is that which is known to be an appearance,

something made up to serve a theory of aesthetics which in itself is an
illusory puzzle obliging humans to argue in infinite ways in which it may
sensibly be assembled. 6

3. 'A Note on Zulfikar Ghose's Nature Strategies', The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 9, 2 (1989),
178.
4. Letter from Zulfikar Ghose, 11 December 1986.
5. 'Things That Appear', The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 9, 2 (1989), 116.
6. 'Things That Appear', The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 9, 2 (1989), 111.

111
 CHELVA KANAGANAYAKAM

Figures of Enchantment thus mediates between two kinds of discourse, one

mimetic and the other nonreferential. The novel takes the form of several micro-
narratives, each one exemplifying a paradigm that provides the promise of revela-
tion. The paradigms are varied, ranging from love story to adventure tale and
quest. These larger structures incorporate other paradigms, which include mar-
riage and detection. Each micro-narrative functions in an ostensibly mimetic mode,
although the promised revelations are often subverted at the end. Each narrative,
while remaining largely self-sufficient, is also linked to the master narrative by
strategies that involve character, locale and linearity. Thus even a diachronic
reading provides a level of meaning, although it hardly addresses the issue of
relevancy.
Inevitably, the inadequacy of a diachronic and sequential reading leads to the
more complex structures that inform the novel, ones that are suggested by the
metafictional episodes, the range of language, the patterns of repetition, the struc-
ture of myth and the re-writing of canonical texts. The episode that describes
Mariana watching with undivided attention the hackneyed sentimentality of a
soap opera alerts the reader to issues of linearity, illusion and time itself. The
reader, succumbing to the hypnotic pull of the 'story' recognizes that the TV series
is in fact a comment on the novel itself and that time, which becomes crucial to the
TV series, is in fact a chimera in the context of the novel. The narrator, having
commented that time is none other than 'a persuasion of the mind' adds:

time was created anew in each consciousness, the conception changing

with the experience, being a response to varying degrees of pleasure or
pain, and when this felt presence of the nonexistent became too unbear-
able an oppression, one turned to magic - a dream, a drug - for deliv-
erance. (p. 187)

Thus the negation of time and presence of magic become crucial to the novel
which creates structures of repetition, each one with a difference, thereby suggest-
ing the authorial intention of creating fictive constructs which are loosely linked
together in order to test the power of fiction to reveal reality. Further clues are
provided through motifs, particularly that of an albatross circling in the air above
an ocean, reminding the reader of the literariness of the text, the constant preoccu-
pation with exile and the predatory aspects of the Other. That the albatross
appears both as a bird that the characters see and respond to, as a TV series that
Mariana finds enthralling, as a picture whose significance escapes the characters,
and in disguise as a cargo plane that opens its flaps to drop unwanted political
activists into the ocean creates the impression of a palimpsest, of multiple layers of
meaning that the reader must peel in order to perceive the significance of the
work. Myth appears in various forms, notably in the boy Horus who must bear a
cosmic burden and whose symbolic representation in the image of a falcon con-
nects with the albatross.
A distinguishing feature, one that is not altogether surprising in the light of

112
 CALIBAN IN THE ANDES: FIGURES OF ENCHANTMENT AS POST-COLONIAL TEXT

the author's interests and the corpus of post-colonial literature, but significant
nonetheless, is the re-writing of The Tempest that informs this novel. Given the
context of de-centering that inevitably surrounds post-colonial writing, it is not
surprising that the post-colonial writer often feels the need to reevaluate
historiography and re-read canonical texts that embody an ideology and support a
form of political and cultural hegemony. Bill Ashcroft quite rightly speaks of the
'widespread employment of the characters and structure of The Tempest as a gen-
eral metaphor for imperial-margin relations ... or, more widely, to characterize
some specific aspect of post-colonial society.'7 The author's critical interest in
Shakespeare led to the study of Hamlet, particularly of dichotomies that involve
language and silence, reality and insanity, the language of representation and the
poetry of vision, in Hamlet, Prufrock and Language (1978). Notions of guilt, revenge,
patricide and alienation that inform Hamlet then surface in Don Bueno (1984) as a
structural principle. More recently, the poem 'Lady Macbeth Abroad'8 draws at-
tention to the ongoing interest in Shakespeare. Commenting on the magical real-
ism that he has practised in his more recent novels and the inevitable critical
attention on similarities with Garcia Marquez, Ghose points out in an interview
that he wrote a short story called 'Lila of the Butterflies and Her Chronicler' which
is a 'magical realistic pastiche' and that he ends the story with a quotation from The
Winter's Tale in order to suggest that magic realism was not a recent invention. In
the same interview, he adds that 'even in [his] recent novels - A New History of
Torments, Don Bueno, and Figures of Enchilntment - all written after reading Marquez
and all set in Latin America, what might be taken for magical realism is actually
drawn from Shakespeare.'9
Re-Iearning and re-writing Shakespeare are undoubtedly important in the
author's quest for a narrative form that would express a certain reality without the
snares of representationalism. No less important is re-writing Shakespeare from a
post-colonial perspective, for plays like The Tempest, which deal with the politics of
power, with transmission of culture, with language, identity and sexuality, with
artifice and magic serve as a paradigm for post-colonial writers who themselves
must confront the assumptions that once served to strengthen an imperial ideol-
ogy and which the colonized too have internalized in the process of emancipation.
At one level, a return to such texts foretells a subversive intent. On the other hand,
re-examining such texts also becomes a form of introspection, of coming to terms
with the multiplicity of the post-colonial experience, of creating from a decentred
perspective another centre that would reinforce the sense of otherness. Octavio
Mannoni's Prospera and Caliban (1950), George Lamming's Pleasure of Exile (1960),

7. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in
Post-Colonial Literatures (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 190.
8. The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 9, 2 (1989), 137-39.
9. Reed Way Dasenbrock and Feroza Jussawalla, 'A Conversation with Zulfikar Ghose', The Review
of Contemporary Fiction, 9, 2 (1989), 151.

113
 CHELVA KANAGANAYAKAM

and Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks (1967), for instance, are all concerned
with the politics of colonisation, often from the poil'!t of view of Caliban, the
dispossessed and enslaved being. Diana Brydon points out that 'those who read
The Tempest with a radical political orientation tend to champion Caliban as the
first rebel to misread and rewrite what he has learned under Prospero' s instruc-
tion: he takes Prospero' s language as his own, using it to deny Prospero's version
of reality and to subvert Prospero's rule.1l0 The issues often go beyond cultural and
political hegemony to fears of the unconscious which are displaced in Caliban by
the colonizer. Brydon, surveying the various emphases placed by writers from
different regions, asserts that while Caliban becomes the focal point of West
Indian, black American and French Canadian writers, Miranda, the dutiful daugh-
ter and symbol of innocence in a corrupt world, fascinates the English Canadian
writer. Points of emphasis alter as a result of historical factors, degrees of assimila-
tion, and so forth, but the paradigm remains one of central importance.
Current historical studies in India, particularly research that entails a ques-
tioning of colonial historiography, reveal so much that is fascinating and para-
doxical that any attempt to re-write The Tempest from an Indian or South Asian
perspective would be a tremendous challenge. The meeting between cultures in
India was not entirely confrontational although it was based on assumptions of
superiority. Lewis Wurgaft, who deals with the element of magic in the relations
between colonizer and colonized, adds that 'for both master and subject this was a
magical relationship. Both purchased a sense of omnipotent satisfaction at the
expense of a retreat from reality.1ll In addition to the element of magic that forged
tenuous bonds at the level of myth and religion, the whole process of English
education ensured a voluntary involvement of the colonized in the process of
colonization. In fact, so subtle and seamless was this process that the task of
dismantling the colonial past becomes something of a puzzle. And it is in this
context, one in which the lines of demarcation are still far from clear, that Ghose's
work becomes significant.
Figures of Enchantment, structured as a series of micro-narratives linked loosely
together in a somewhat picaresque manner, foregrounds The Tempest at times and
suggests its presence obliquely at others. The shifts are deliberate, for they deter-
mine the response of the reader and prevent an interpretation that could well
become reductive and ultimately simplistic. What the narrative attempts is to
rehearse The Tempest in various forms, each one reflecting on and complementing
the other, and all leading to the final episode in the deserted island where Gamboa,
Federico, Herminia and Baltazar, who represent Prospero, Ferdinand, Miranda
and Caliban, must attempt a resolution of conflicts that involve power, gender,
culture and sexuality.

10. 'Re-writing The Tempest', World Literature Written in English, 23, 1 (1984), 75.
11. The Imperial Imagination: Magic and Myth in Kipling's India (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan
University Press, 1983), p. 58.

114
 CALIBAN IN THE ANDES: FIGURES OF ENCHANTMENT AS POST-COLONIAL TEXT

Forms of power that result in the overthrow of Prospero and the suggestion of
sexual repression that characterise his obsessive preoccupation with Miranda's
chastity and his subsequent exile become the starting point of this novel as well,
where Gamboa, a humble civil servant, is thwarted by a corrupt bureaucracy and a
daughter whose ostensible purity is repudiated when Gamboa finds her in the
arms of a young man. Issues of patriarchy, gender, sexuality and repression merge
as Gamboa, awakened rudely from his fantasy of a pastoral world of wealth and
innocence, punishes the young man and then insists on a similar punishment
being meted out to his daughter. He vicariously punishes his wife to rid himself of
his feelings of sexual guilt. Subsequently, in a chain of surreal incidents (which,
incidentally, questions the legitimacy of mimetic sequentiality) he finds himself
referred to as 'a kind of leader', drawn into subversive activities, arrested by
security forces, placed on a boat and abandoned in the ocean. This latter-day
Prospero, now an exile, denied his daughter and the magic of patriarchy, reaches
an island alone, with an unconscious desire to relive the life he has left behind
without all the imperfections that attended it. Thus it is not surprising that he
marries Paulina whose innocent and powerful sensuality contrasts with the slov-
enliness of Sonia, and fathers Herminia, who resembles the daughter who be-
trayed him, but displays both a divine innocence and an unquestioning submission.
The novel thus provides a prologue to The Tempest, establishing the fictiveness of
the construct and reinforcing that re-writing a canonical text implies not only
looking at the past with a parodic intent but creating constructs that move towards
regeneration.
Gamboa's life in Santa Barbara reflects many of the paradigms, political,
cultural and sexual, that relate to the colonial context. The island itself owes its
sustenance to another island which establishes economic dominance by exchang-
ing food items for precious minerals and ensuring that the inhabitants of the
island are perpetually in debt. Gamboa soon marries Paulina, who becomes in
many ways a fulfillment of the sexuality that has been repressed in Gamboa. In a
significant scene in which Paulina smears her husband's semen on the walls of her
hut and Gamboa decides at that moment that the newly-built hut does not need a
door, the hut becomes a symbol of the womb, of sexuality and anticipates the
subsequent birth of Herminia, who by growing up to resemble Mariana and
remaining for the most part totally innocent, becomes 'an image of reality and an
appearance of it' (p. 215). In terms that are not difficult to interpret in the light of
Mannoni, Fanon and Lamming, the island becomes a version of the colonizer's
utopia where the power of patriarchy is never questioned, where nature is still
available in its unsullied form and sexuality can be indulged in without its attend-
ant feelings of guilt.
It is significant that the pastoral world soon dissolves as Paulina dies, thereby
causing her father Maturana to bow his head and invite his son-in-law to beat him
with his cane. The unbridled assertion of sexuality and the fantasy of Eden become
a form of death, involving feelings of guilt. Soon after Maturana's death, Gamboa
inherits the former's cane, and the feelings of repression return once more. It is in

115
 CHELVA KANAGANAYAKAM

this context that the Baltazar /Herminia/ Gamboa triangle becomes important.
Baltazar, the ape-like figure, the true inhabitant of the island, is drawn to Herminia,
much to the consternation of Gamboa. Unable to get rid of Baltazar, Gamboa
adopts a course of action that is strongly reminiscent of Prospero. He teaches
Baltazar just enough language to make him understand commands, for Baltazar's
own tongue resembles 'the calling cries of birds, the barking of sea lions' (120),
'civilizes' him by giving him clothes to cover his nakedness, domesticates him by
ordering him to do household chores and forbids him from coming any closer
than twelve paces from Herminia. Baltazar obeys, not out of fear, for Gamboa
lacks the magic of Prospero, but because of an asexual and almost filial love for
Herminia. Until the end of the narrative, he does not, unlike Caliban, rebel or even
question the authority of Gamboa.
Significantly, for the most part, it is not Prospero as the oppressed, or Caliban
as the dispossessed, or even Miranda as the dutiful daughter, that the narrative is
concerned with. Instead it is Ferdinand, the willing sufferer, the potential son-in-
law who wants an alliance with the source of power, who is shown to have a more
complex history and tragic destiny. Having being denied his love for Mariana, and
having rejected his father, Federico then becomes a quest figure who must com-
pulsively seek what he has lost and in the process recognize an aspect of self that
he has suppressed. Federico is at once colonizer and colonized, one who shares the
guilt of the former and the alienation of the latter. His meeting with Popayan is
significant, for the latter constantly surrounds himself with mathematical figures
in a futile gesture to impose order on threatening chaos and to avoid a combat of
Self with the Other. In a telling comment that establishes the post-colonial context,
the narrator observes that Popayan 'as if in a voluntary exile, after making his own
the language of another tribe, his own forgotten words were suddenly remem-
bered, evoking broken images of an abandoned homeland' (p. 66). Popayan now
gives to Federico an amulet, shaped like a book, which enables the latter to utter
his wishes and have them translated into reality. In the process of doing so, the
author raises interesting questions in relation to language, narrative mode and the
complex interplay between language and reality. Language does have the power
to transform, as Federico soon realizes, but the constructs it provides are only an
illusion of reality. In Hamlet, Prufrock and Language, Ghose talks about the ambi-
guity of language when he says that 'having the illusion that there is a necessary
correspondences between language and reality, we are driven to despair when
our words seem to reveal nothing,'U, and this novel affirms it. And yet the illusion
is necessary, for it is the very artifice that leads to a perception of reality. As Ghose
points out, 'the mind has a quarrel with reality, having for generations rejected
definitions of it while seeking with the craving of an addict, one more interpreta-
tion.'l3

12. New York: St. Martin's, 1978, p. 8.

13. The Fiction of Reality (London: Macmillan, 1983), p. 2.

116
 CALIBAN IN THE ANDES: FIGURES OF ENCHANTMENT AS POST-COLONIAL TEXT

The fictions that Federico constructs are all versions of an earthly paradise,
and each brings memorie~ of Mariana and each in some way re-writes The Tempest.
The first involves a world of unbridled sexuality and a travesty of lovemaking
involving an older woman, Daniela, the daughter of an exile, who herself is a
victim of repressions, 'a mind riddled with guilt' (p. 73), that tend to disrupt her
pattern of life. The house and the garden are often described in terms that recall an
earthly paradise, but here too an albatross circles above the house and the ele-
ments ravage the paradise. Significantly, when Daniela throws a wild costume
party, she appears dressed like a devil, and one person comments that she repre-
sents a witch in one of the Pacific islands, a sycorax-like figure, who 'plays out a
nightmare fantasy' (p. 82). Federico himself is unaware of the futility of his quest,
and the reader is made aware of this dimension in an apparently unimportant
moment when a girl, after having kissed Federico on his cheeks at several spots,
leaving marks of her lipstick, says, 'you look as though you have a dozen blind
eyes' (p. 73). The sexuality is both incestous and perverse, not altogether unex-
pected in a 'godforsaken paradise' (p. 89). The earthly paradise is soon destroyed
as limbs are 'tom from the trees', rose bushes 'are nearly stripped bare' (p. 99) by
angry winds, and once more Federico, now aware of his own sexuality and the
need to suppress it, leaves in order to create yet another paradise.
The second time he finds himself in a holiday resort, of 'lush meadows . . .
small lakes ... and mountain parks' (p. 185), visited by men and women who live
out their fantasies, and he soon finds himself a victim of the sexual overtures of
older women. His dream of fulfilment soon turns to its opposite as he becomes a
male escort, catering to the dreams of others rather than himself. The process is
relentless and self-defeating, for the amulet which enables him to transform the
sordidness of reality in the fantasy of art, blurs his vision, for he can no longer
recognize Mariana when he sees her in a hotel. His access to power, enshrined in
the amulet, not unlike Prospero's wand, is both a blessing and a curse, for it
provides the illusion of grandeur while underlining the condition of exile. It is
only when he decides to fling away the amulet, again in a manner that recalls
Prospero, that the final meeting with Herminia and the confrontation with the
reality of his suppressed self becomes possible.
Federico's arrival in the island and the chain of events that lead to the four-
some, namely, Federico, Baltazar, Herminia and Gamboa, being stranded on the
island clearly underline the paradigm of Shakespeare's text. With little prospects
for rescue, the four fall into a pattern of life that is as close as possible to the idyllic.
Structures of power are muted, sexuality is sublimated as an agrarian form of life
is established with colonizer and colonized working together for the common
good. Significantly, Herminia protects and is protected by Baltazar, and the empa-
thy is so strong that Herminia is even willing to take on the guilt of Baltazar. In
short, here is a syncretic world where Prospero, Miranda, Ferdinand and Caliban
co-exist in a state of harmony.
And yet the stability of the earthly paradise is tenuous, for Gamboa is tor-
mented by thoughts of betrayal and exile, thoughts which threaten his sanity and

117
 CHELVA KANAGANAYAKAM

which he, like Popayan, tries to suppress through figures and encode and restrict
the metaphysical and abstract in a mathematical order. The pain of exile is never
forgotten, for when Gamboa looks at Federico, the narrator comments that 'the
two looked at each other, seeing in the other's face the features of the outcast, the
sadness of infinite exile ...' (p. 217). Memories of volcanic eruptions, quicksand
that lies waiting for its prey and stingrays that swim in enticing stretches of water
form part of the backdrop. Baltazar, awakened to his own sexuality, finds Herminia
sexually attractive. In an unexpected moment, Federico observes that Herminia
'appeared ... to have become transformed to the likeness of Baltazar' (p. 243). And
Federico, wanting to suppress his innermost desires, is racked by his conscience.
Identities, forged by tradition, circumstance and repression become increasingly
difficult to sustain and threaten to transform into less acceptable ones. The con-
flicts merge when Baltazar, unable to control his impulses any longer, attempts to
seduce Herminia, and Federico, having rescued her, takes off after Baltazar, driven
compulsively to seek revenge, for he recognizes, in a flash, that without his
clothes, he would be a mirror image of Baltazar. The moment coincides with the
arrival of a boat and Herminia, no longer innocent or content with her role, leaves
the island with her demented father. Federico's chase takes on the quality of an
archetypal quest, or a journey into the self until, at the end, the two confront each
other and die locked in an embrace, in a gesture that symbolically questions and
dismantles the stereotypes of colonizer and colonized. In Popayan's words, it is a
moment of 'falling against the Other and the Other against him in a final transfor-
mation of substance in the violent glow of sunset' (p. 66).
To attempt a precise correspondence between the novel and a historical,
biographical or even a literary context would be to force a simplistic reading of the
work. Figures of Enchantment does not attempt to re-write the story of Caliban; nor
does it reinforce the inevitability of the dependence on Prospero or seek a syncretic
vision through Miranda. And it does not see in Ferdinand a possible (or parodic)
prototype for the South Asian experience of colonialism. It remains a narrative
that offers ambiguities. If the novel stresses a recognition of the self - political,
cultural and sexual- as a condition of freedom, it also asserts that the recognition
offers no comforting resolution. The condition of exile remains, and this novel, not
unlike Ghose's earlier ones, creates yet another paradigm to address the complex-
ity of cultural conflict, of divided loyalties, of the paradox of having to live with an
inheritance that at once enriches and alienates.

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 DAVID HENRY HWANG AND THE
REVENGE OF MADAME BUTTERFL Y

Douglas Kerr

One of the best-known of all Asian voices sings in Italian. I dare say that Madame
Butterfly is the most recognisable image in all of Western opera, and one that
comes freighted with meaning even for those who have never seen or heard the
opera, and have the vaguest idea of the story. One such was the American play-
wright David Henry Hwang, who, one afternoon in 1986 while driving down
Santa Monica Boulevard, was visited by 'the idea of doing a deconstructivist
Madame Butterfly', even though at the time he did not even know the plot of the
opera. 1 This paper is interested in what led to that idea, and what resulted from it:
that is, the production and development of the image of Madame Butterfly from
its origins almost a century ago, to its latest and violent reaccentuation in David
Henry Hwang's play M. Butterfly, given its first performance in 1988.
The composer Puccini was in England in the summer of 1900, in connection
with the London production of his latest opera Tasca, when he attended a per-
formance of an American play called Madame Butterfly. He was enthralled. He knew
very little English, but he knew what he liked, and (says Mosco Carner) 'came
away profoundly moved by the play, in spite of or perhaps because of his inability
to follow its dialogue'.2 When Puccini first heard Butterfly's voice, it was speaking
in a language he did not know, yet felt he understood.
The character of Madame Butterfly had made her debut in a novelette by John
Luther Long which was published in the American Century Magazine in 1898. This
in turn owes something to Pierre Loti's novel Madame Chrysantheme (1887), an ori-
entalist whimsy that tells the story of a European sailor's temporary marriage to a
Japanese geisha. (Loti specialised in this sort of thing: E.M. Forster described him
as 'a sentimentalist who has voyaged hat in hand over the picturesque world',
adding 'Les mariages de Loti se font partout'.3) But Butterfly seems to have had
her chief origin too in a piece of gossip which Long (who had never been to Japan)

1. David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1989), p. 95.

2. Mosco Carner, Puccini: A Critical Biography, 2nd edn. (London: Duckworth, 1974), p. 127.
3. E.M. Forster, Abinger Harvest (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1967), p. 286.
 DOUGLAS KERR

had heard from his sister, the wife of an American missionary at NagasakL4 The
dramatic or melodramatic potential of the tale, when he read it in the Century
Magazine, caught the attention of David Belasco, then at the height of his fame as a
playwright and theatrical producer. The collaboration between Belasco and Long
- Arthur Hobson Quinn describes it rather sadly as 'the most artistic period' of
Belasco's careerS - brought forth the one-act play Madame Butterfly, first produced
in New York in 1900, which was to be followed by five other exotic romances,
including The Girl of the Golden West (1905). Puccini first saw and heard Butterfly,
then, in the London production of Belasco's dramatisation of Long's story.
The play retains a great deal of the dialogue of the original story, but Belasco's
dramatic instinct led him to a concentration of the action into a single act . . . - more
accurately, an act of two scenes, separated by the overnight vigil of Butterfly, a
feature which Puccini was to retain. Belasco's other major change was to the plot.
In Long's story, Butterfly's attempt at suicide is unsuccessful: she decides to live
after all, and (it is implied) she returns in the end to her former profession of
geisha. Belasco could see that this would not do.
The action of the play starts some three years after Lt Pinkerton has sailed
away from Nagasaki, leaving behind Cho-Cho-San the geisha (known as Butter-
fly) with whom he has gone through a form of marriage, and promising to return
when the robins nest again. Even her servant Suzuki can see the cynicism of this
promise: but Cho-Cho-San believes Pinkerton will keep faith. She turns down an
offer of marriage from the wealthy Yamadori, even though Sharpless, the Ameri-
can consul, tries to make her understand that it is useless to pin her hopes on
PiRkerton. A ship's gun is heard: Pinkerton's ship has arrived in the harbour;
Butterfly, her child by Pinkerton, and the servant Suzuki sit up all night waiting to
welcome him home. In the second scene Pinkerton appears, though he has not the
courage to face a meeting with Butterfly. He has married an American girl, Kate,
and now they have come to take the child (whom Butterfly has named Trouble)
back to America with them. When Butterfly understands this, she agrees to give
up the child to Kate Pinkerton. But in losing her husband and her child, she has
lost everything. Rather than go on living without honour, she commits suicide,
using the blade with which her father too had killed himself. Her death ends the
play.
Madame Butterfly offered its audience large helpings of the exotic, spiced with
pathos and humour.
America's gaze was being drawn to the Orient. The year of Long's story was
the year of the 'splendid little war' which gave Guam and the Philippines to
America: Asia w.as becoming collectible. Japanese design was fashionable in the
West, and Madame Butterfly itself is a collection or thesaurus of japonaiserie, con-
taining most of what most people in the audience might be expected to recognise

4. Carner, pp. 125-26.

5. Arthur Hobson Quinn (ed.), Representative American Plays, 7th edn. (New York: Appleton-
Century-Crofts, 1953), p. 623. The text of Madame Butterfly is on pp. 627-36.

120
 DAVID HENRY HWANG AND THE REVENGE OF MADAME BUTTERFLY

as typically Japanese - fans, screens, marriage-broking, paper houses, tea, sui-

cide, cosmetics, ancestor-worship, politeness, cherry blossom. And at the centre of
the collection the little geisha herself, acquired by Pinkerton in a buyer's market
and referred to as Butterfly. Belasco's opening stage direction describes Butterfly's
'little house': 'Everything in the room is Japanese save the American locks and
bolts on the doors and windows and an American flag fastened to a tobacco jar.'
Pinkerton, who has acquired the place on a 999-year lease, has also possessed
Cho-Cho-San, who in his absence insists on referring to the house as an American
house and to herself as an American girL She is locked into the marriage with
Pinkerton that only she believes in. As Mrs Pinkerton, she can neither earn a living
as a geisha, nor even consider a marriage proposal from the obliging and fabu-
lously wealthy Yamadori. She has renounced her religion, and her family have
renounced her. She is entirely and disastrously dependent on Pinkerton. But what
is perhaps most interesting is what has happened to Butterfly's voice.
For obvious reasons, the play's dialogue is in English. The consul, and later the
Pinkertons, provide the norm of speech: the cosmopolitan Yamadori also speaks a
standard (even slightly Jamesian) American English. Against this must be meas-
ured Butterfly's idiom - as, for example, when she greets Mr Sharpless the
American consul.

0, your honorable excellency, goon night, - no, not night yaet: aexcuse
me, I'm liddle raddle', - I mean goon mornin', goon evenin'. Welcome to
'Merican house, mos' welcome to 'Merican girl! (Pointing to herself. They both
bow.) Be seat.

And this is not an idiom reserved for her dealings with foreigners. She speaks
to Yamadori and the marriage-broker in the same way, and at the beginning of the
play she has already reminded the servant Suzuki that 'no one shall speak anythin'
but those Unite' State' languages in these Lef-ten-ant Pik-ker-ton's house'. She
recognises and insists on this as the linguistic sign of Pinkerton's ownership - her
voice is locked in his language just as her house is secured by those American
locks and bolts. And so keen is she to refashion herself as her husband's creature
that, when she winks behind her fan, Sharpless exclaims 'Heavens! Pinkerton's
very wink.' This self-westernising of Cho-Cho-San is an assertion of her relation-
ship with Pinkerton but also, of course, a measure of the grotesque inequality of
that relationship. She refuses Japanese: in the English she has acquired from three
months with Pinkerton, she is not only disadvantaged but often ridiculous.
Butterfly's comical English belongs to a strong theatrical tradition. There are
moments when she sounds like a stage negro from a minstrel show. Alan S.
Downer usefully points out that she speaks the English of a once popular comic
figure, Hashimura Togo the 'Japanese Schoolboy'.6 American drama and vaude-

6. Alan S. Downer, Fifty Years of American Drama, Gateway edn. (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1966),
p.6.

121
 DOUGLAS KERR

ville were in any case full of characters and turns based on the immigrants
flooding into the States - an accelerating flood, almost nine million in the twenty
years before Madame Butterfly, almost nine million in the ten years after,? and most
of them no doubt protesting their Americanness loudly. (As one California Chi-
nese says to another in Hwang's Family Devotions, 'What do you know about
American ways? You were born here!') The theatres registered and applied the
pressure of assimilation: American audiences were used to the idea that foreigners
were condemned to be funny until they could become properly American. And so
while Butterfly'S setting made her part of an exotic spectacle, and her situation
made her recognisable as the melodrama type of the deserted mistress, a figure of
pathos, her voice made her recognisably a clown, a figure of fun. It is a potent and
more or less unbearable mixture, reaching a dramatic climax when Pinkerton
bursts in to find the dying Butterfly with the child he has never seen.

PINKERTON (Discerning what she has done): Oh! Cho-Cho-San! (He

draws her to him with the baby pressed to her heart. She waves the child's
hand which holds the [American] flag - saying faintly.)

MADAME BUTTERFLY: Too bad those robins did n' nes' again. (She
dies.)

The audience is gone which could enjoy this tableau, and this curtain line, in
any straightforward way.8 Yet that audience did exist, and it made the playa
sensational success in its time. The ending is constructed out of widely shared
ideas or feelings about what it meant to be Asian an~ what it meant to be Western,
and about the relation between the two.
The transformation of the Long-Belasco play took four years, and is not a
simple matter. I do not propose to try to disentangle the contributions of Puccini,
his two librettists Giacosa and Illica, or the different stages of revision. I must treat
the opera as a single, finished thing, and pay attention to the transformation of the
voice of Butterfly from Long's heroine to Puccini's.
First, in the opera Butterfly loses the linguistic disadvantage that made her
sometimes ridiculous in the story and the play. She is as fluent as Pinkerton and
the others in the language of the opera, Italian. Difference of idiom is a device
more suited to the more realistic forms. Puccini does give his Butterfly elements of
native Japanese and pseudo-Japanese music,9 but it would be difficult for the sing-
ing voice to suggest a Japanese imperfectly imitating an American idiom: besides,
these language nuances probably were of no interest to the Italians who worked

7. See Maldwyn A. Jones, The Limits of Liberty (London: O.D.P., 1983), p. 648 (Table 2).
8. It is perhaps worth speculating at what point this ending ceased to be playable.
9. Discussed in William Ashbrook, The Operas of Puccini (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1968),
pp. 118-22.

122
 DAVID HENRY HWANG AND THE REVENGE OF MADAME BUTTERFLY

on the opera (and they certainly would not have been noticeable to Puccini when
he saw the play). Gone is any sense that as a foreigner Butterfly is linguistically
inferior: that sense perhaps depended on an experience of empire, or of immigra-
tion. The result of the equalising (so to speak) of Butterfly's language is that she is
now no longer at all comic. The comedy, such as it is, recedes into the background
to be distributed among the locally-colourful relatives who attend her wedding;
the heroine herself is perhaps even more picturesque and exotic than she was in
the original version but her Japaneseness is attractive and charming and not
laughable. Unlike her prototype, Puccini's Cio-Cio-San is neither vulgar nor silly.
Her powerlessness in relation to Pinkerton is registered not in an inadequate
command of his language, but in the much greater emphasis the opera gives to her
youth (she is fifteen when she meets Pinkerton).
The major structural difference between the opera and the play is the intro-
duction of a long first act centred on the wedding, or 'wedding', of Pinkerton and
Cio-Cio-San. The erotic climaxing of this first act in the union of Pinkerton and
Butterfly will be followed, and parodied, at the end of Act 1 of M. Butterfly. In an
obvious sense, the act is a necessary prelude to the obligatory and dazzling love
duet, but it serves other purposes too, purposes that open up differences from the
original play. Butterfly's bridal happiness supplies what the play had lacked, a
sense of the high point from which the heroine's fortunes decline, an arc of
tragedy. It also lends a certain credibility to her devotion to Pinkerton - he is after
all a Puccini tenor, which is something, and an improvement on the timid and
brutal oaf of the play. The opera brings a very much stronger light to bear on the
erotic. And yet that rhapsodic duet under starlight on the wedding-night is al-
ready ironic, pathetic. Earlier in the act and before Butterfly's first entrance,
Pinkerton has given notice, in the aria 'Dovunque al mondo', that he intends to
take pleasure and profit wherever he can find them, and that he is taking his wife
on just the same contractual terms as he took the house - 999 years, with the
option to quit at any time he likes. So the unbridled lyricism of the wedding-night
duet has some emotional subtlety, deriving from Butterfly's unawareness of what
is being done to her. Her bliss is dependent upon her ignorance that for Pinkerton
she is another score added to his total, another wife in another port for the 'Yankee
vagabondo'. She is not to know that, immediately before her arrival, the groom
was drinking a toast to the day he would marry'con vere nozze / a una vera sposa
americana' - a real marriage, to a real American bride.
The pathos of women was Puccini's speciality. He liked to speak of his hero-
ines as his 'little women'; and indeed the littleness of Butterfly is inscribed all over
the opera. Pinkerton bombards her with diminutives. She is his 'piccina mogliettina' ,
his tiny little wife. In one passage of the love duet he addresses her as his squirrel,
his little toy, his child (a witch-like child, rather like the subject peoples of the
Kipling poem, the 'fluttered folk' who are 'half demon and half child'.l0) She con-

10. Rudyard Kipling, 'The White Man's Burden: 1899 (The United States and the Philippine Islands),.

123
 DOUGLAS KERR

curs, replying in kind: ·'Somiglio la Dea della luna, / la piccola Dea della luna' -
she is the little goddess of the moon. She is even, as it were, racially miniature. 'Noi
siamo gente avvezza / aIle piccole cose, / umili e silenziose', she comes from a
people accustomed to small things, modest and quiet (a line quoted but interest-
ingly misunderstood in M. Butterfly). Long before the transistor and the microchip,
Japan was associated with miniature artefacts. Here the diminution of Butterfly
speaks to a recurrent western imagination of the Orient as delicate, beautiful and
fragile. ll Linked to the libretto's insistence on the girl's extreme youth - and this
is in turn related to a paternalistic tendency of the discourse of orientalism - and
its characterisation of her as a grave child, courageous but out of her depth, these
features add up to what was clearly for Puccini the truth of Butterfly's story, its
overwhelming pathos. At one point in Act 2 Yamadori, the consul and the mar-
riage-broker discuss her 'blindness' while she is in the room; people plot around
her, she is the last to know. She is small, virtually alone, innocent and helpless, she
has no power and no knowledge, nothing but dignity. Nothing, that is, except her
voice. Whereas John Luther Long gave Butterfly a voice that made it impossible to
take her seriously, Puccini's Butterfly has a voice of power, and she has all the best
tunes. She does not resist her sufferings, but she sings. Her pathos is the opera.
Poor Butterfly. Long's narrative had her deserted: Belasco for the play re-
quired her death: Puccini's treatment of her story prolongs and deepens her
pathos, while making it more impressive. You do not need to be particularly
sensitive to consider that the myth of Butterfly, and its production, is a story of
exploitation. The geisha herself is a resource exploited by the freebooting Pinkerton,
and then abandoned. He adds her to his collection of erotic bibelots - she is like
blown glass, he sings, or a figure painted on a lacquer screen. She is an attractive
prize for him because she is Japanese; yet in getting his hands on her, he alienates
her from her Japanese family, religion, language and future. To collect her is to kill
her. And Pinkerton can take advantage of her by exploiting the powerlessness of
virtually every card in her hand - her youth, her sex, her poverty, her race. But
perhaps the buck should not stop at Pinkerton. Mosco Carner claims that it is
'precisely because of their degraded position that [Puccini] was able to fall in love
with his heroines'; but that, having created them to fall in love with them, he
proceeds to punish them with 'a manifestly sa do-masochistic enjoyment'P But it
was not only Puccini who enjoyed the spectacle of Butterfly's suffering. It filled the
opera houses; it was something people wanted. ryoglion prendermi tutto!' Butterfly
realises, far too late: they want to take everything from me. But she utters not a
single word of protest or anger. She is the queen of submission.
When David Henry Hwang perused the libretto of Madame Butterfly, he says
he found in it 'a wealth of sexist and racist cliches', and concluded that the figure
of Butterfly could be understood as a 'fantasy stereotype'. There is no doubt that

11. Turandot gives the obverse image.

12. Carner, pp. 275 & 276.

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 DAVID HENRY HWANG AND THE REVENGE OF MADAME BUTTERFLY

this is true. Butterfly is clearly a wish-projection of what a Western male imagina-

tion supposed an Oriental woman might be like - beautiful, exotic, loving,
yielding and not binding, giving all and demanding nothing. She is an aspect of a
stereotype, fashioned in an age of colonial adventure (though by no means ex-
tinct), a Western myth of the Oriental female (and of the Orient as female) about
which a post-colonial criticism has found a lot to say, much of it along the lines of
Rana Kabbani's claim (in Europe's Myths of Orient) that 'To perceive the East as a
sexual domain, and to perceive the East as a domain to be colonised, were comple-
mentary aspirations.'13 It is appropriate that this myth should be reappraised at the
hands of an Asian American writer. It will be remembered that Butterfly had a
child who would grow up in the States, a child both Asian and American, and that
his name was Trouble.
So Hwang's project is, really, the revenge of Butterfly, a revolutionary retell-
ing in which the means of production of the story, as it were, are in Asian hands -
or, if you like, Madame Butterfly with an Asian voice. Hwang uses (and in the
process inverts) the myth of Butterfly as a way of telling and of understanding the
story spun from an anecdote he heard in a casual conversation, an anecdote about
a French diplomat in Beijing who had fallen in love with a Chinese actress, who
subsequently turned out to be not only a spy, but a man. The play is set in Beijing
and Paris and most of its action takes place in the 1960s. But Hwang has said that it
is also a personal play for him, coloured by his own experience of the stereotyping
social attitudes and expectations that confront an Asian American.

In M. Butterfly what I was trying to ask was: Is it reasonable to assume that

those attitudes I felt from society at large influence the policy makers as
they consider the world ?14

How does the play manage its dialogue with the opera, story and myth of
Madame Butterfly?
The facts of the play's story are these. Rene Gallimard, a junior French diplo-
mat in Beijing in 1960, meets the opera singer Song Liling at a diplomatic reception
where she fascinates him by singing Puccini; she invites him to see her perform in
Chinese opera, a hesitant courtship ensues in which first Song and then Gallimard
himself plays hard ,to get; this culminates in their becoming lovers at the end of Act
1. In Act 2, Gallimard has set up his mistress in an apartment, and she has begun to
extract diplomatic intelligence from him (it is the early days of U.S. military
involvement in Vietnam), Gallimard having been promoted on the strength of his
envied ability to 'get along with the Chinese'. Gallimard starts another affair, with
a European girl, but her sexual frankness repels him; he returns to Song, who

13. Rana Kabbani, Europe's Myths of Orient (London: Pandora Press, 1988), p. 59.
14. 'Playing with stereotypes from both East and West', interview with D.H. Hwang in The South
China Morning Post, 25 January 1990.

125
 DOUGLAS KERR

announces she is pregnant and (after going away for some months to the country)
presents him with a child. But things start to go wrong: Gallimard is posted back
to France, demoted and demoralised, Song suffers in the Cultural Revolution, and
four years later is sent by his political masters penniless to France, to live off
Gallimard and carry on spying. Act 3, fifteen years later, deals with Gallimard's
discovery (or admission) of the truth about Song; the trial; and Gallimard alone in
prison, with his memories and fantasies. It ought to be added that the audience is
aware from the start that Song Liling is a man.
The play itself is presented (like Yeats' Purgatory) as an obsessive re-play, 'al-
ways searching for a new ending'. (1.3) Gallimard, alone in gaol, introduces and
stage-manages (or tries to) a series of tableaux from his memory, interwoven with
verbal and musical allusions to the opera - necessary, he says, 'in order for you to
understand what I did and why'. (1.3) It is largely through this intertextuality that
the play explores the issues of love and betrayal beween cultures, the story of
Gallimard being a parody and a reversal (up to a point) of the story of Pinkerton.

Through the first act, Gallimard gives a sort of caricature or cartoon version of
the story of Madame Butterfly, his favourite opera, with himself in the role of
Pinkerton. Here is Gallimard/Pinkerton telling the consul about his bride.

PINKERTON: Cio-Cio-San. Her friends call her Butterfly. Sharpless, she

eats out of my hand!

SHARPLESS: She's probably very hungry.

PINKERTON: Not like American girls. It's true what they say about
Oriental girls. They want to be treated bad!

SHARPLESS: Oh, please!

PINKERTON: It's true!

SHARPLESS: Are you serious about this girl?

PINKERTON: I'm marrying her, aren't I?

SHARPLESS: Yes - with generous trade-in terms.

PINKERTON: When I leave, she'll know what it's like to have loved a real
man. And I'll even buy her a few nylons.

SHARPLESS: You aren't planning to take her with you?

PINKERTON: Huh? Where?

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 DAVID HENRY HWANG AND THE REVENGE OF MADAME BUTTERFLY

SHARPLESS: Home!

PINKERTON: You mean, America? Are you crazy? Can you see her
trying to buy rice in St. Louis?
0.3)

This is hardly the language of the 1890s in which the action of the opera is
supposed to take place. In fact the jokes about hunger and nylons point rather to
the era of Macarthur, but the idiom is a slick contemporary colloquial. It also has a
certain brutal self-confidence, apt for the speech of a latter-day Pinkerton, but
actually ill-suited to Gallimard himself.
For though he may have his dreams of sexual conquest and power, Gallimard
is a timid man, gauche and mild-mannered, and he is at first at a loss when his
fantasies become actual in the alluring shape of the 'Chinese diva' singing the role
of Butterfly - his dream made flesh. Though not one of nature's Pinkertons,
Gallimard is enthralled by the myth, and drawn into it; he creates himself as
Pinkerton, just as he creates Song Liling as Butterfly. And his old schoolfriend
Marc collaborates in the ~onstruction of these roles, with his man-of-the-world
advice about how the Chinese girl is 'bound to surrender'to her western suitor,
she cannot help herself. It is, says Marc (quite accurately) 'an old story' 0.9), and
so, evidently, not just Gallimard's singular fantasy but a communal, cultural and
historical one. A Butterfly requires a Pinkerton; and in his pursuit of Song, Gallimard
becomes calculating and commanding, aggressive and confident. He acquires
authority, in both senses, of knowledge and power. He is promoted, and consulted
by his ambassador as an expert on the East, a man with 'inside knowledge' whose
advice ('Orientals will always submit to a greater force', and so on) is passed on to
the Americans. Pinkerton possessed his Butterfly: 'A lui devo obbedir!', she said; I
must obey him in everything. But Gallimard's authority and possession are a
delusion. In M. Butterfly the tables are turned: he has been had.
Song him/herself is first seen in the panoply of Oriental mystique, costumed
for Peking opera, and is last seen demystified, as a naked man. For unlike the
guileless Butterfly, Song is an actor. 'Only a man knows how a woman is supposed
to act', (2.7) and Song has captivated Gallimard by telling him just what he wants
to hear.

SONG: Please. Hard as I try to be modern, to speak like a man, to hold a

western woman's strong face up to my own ... in the end, I fail. A
small, frightened heart beats too quickly and gives me away.
(1.10)

This is consummate: it is recognisably the voice of Butterfly - diminutive,

meek, feminine, culturally quaint but backward, pathetically anxious to be West-
ern. But of course the helplessness that doomed Puccini's Butterfly is a gambit for

127
 DOUGLAS KERR

Song. Song's submissiveness makes a conquest of Gallimard: it is an instrument of

power.
For Gallimard believes - and goes on believing (like Butterfly in the opera) -
because he wants to believe. The Chinese singer has assumed the form of his
desire, as romance embodied, beside whom Western women seem either com-
monplace or alarming. And so the demystification of Song, when it comes, is stark
and brutal. In the courtroom scene in Act 3, Song responds with a cruel lack of
modesty, to the judge's (the audience's?) prurient curiosity.

SONG: ... I did all the work. He just laid back. Of course we did enjoy
more ... complete union, and I suppose he might have wondered why
I was always on my stomach, but ... But what you're thinking is: 'Of
.course a wrist must've brushed ... a hand hit ... over twenty years!'
Yeah. Well, Your Honor, it was my job to make him think I was a
woman. And chew on this: it wasn't all that hard. See, my mother was
a prostitute along the Bund before the Revolution. And, uh, I think it's
fair to say she learned a few things about Western men. So I borrowed
her knowledge. In service to my country.
(3.1)

Song in the witness-box stands revealed as cynical, arrogant and unfeeling,

proud of his powers as actor, lover and spy. This is what the voice of Butterfly has
come to: it speaks now in a register, and manner, that recalls the boastful and racist
vulgarities of Pinkerton in Act 1. And Gallimard - humiliated, betrayed and
helpless - is forced to listen.

It is a dramatic discovery and reversal that turns the Butterfly story inside out.
Gallimard understands at last that he has been telling the wrong story, or rather
telling the right story but from the wrong point of view. The fantasy of Butterfly
has been turned against the fantasist: Gallimard's dream of power was the weak-
ness that enabled Song to use him. It is Gallimard who has been tricked into
submission, exploited, deluded and lied to - he who is the last to know, ruined,
and now abandoned. He has been brought, a low-mimetic Antony, to the heart of
loss; and all for love.

GALLIMARD: . . . Yes - love. Why not admit it all? That was my

undoing, wasn't it? Love warped my judgment, blinded my eyes,
rearranged the very lines on my face . . . until I could look in the
mirror and see nothing but ... a woman.
(3.3)

He is Butterfly; and in the last moments of the play he enacts Butterfly's death,
which Song is brought onstage (like Belasco's and Puccini's Pinkerton) in time to
witness.

128
 DAVID HENRY HWANG AND THE REVENGE OF MADAME BUTTERFLY

The project of Hwang's 'deconstructivist Madame Butterfly', as he explains in

the Afterword, was to expose the falsities and dangers of the kind of 'sexist and
racist cliches' that were to be found in 'the archetypal East-West romance that
started it all'. The play that gives Butterfly her revenge is as much of its place and
time as were the earlier versions of the story that watched her suffer. Terms like
'American' and 'Asian', 'Oriental' and 'Western', are growing new meanings in
multi-ethnic California, after Vietnam. But though its premises are quite different,
M. Butterfly has much in common with Belasco's play, and not least in its
theatricalism, its spectacle and melodrama. And if it stumbles at times over its
own ambitions, it is none the less compelling. I want to conclude by raising two
points, one political and one dramatic, about this latest but probably not last of the
metamorphoses of Butterfly.
The play's overt political story is not one of its more impressive features. Its
portrayal of Chinese communism is of the cartoon variety, and it is clumsy and
contrived in its linking of Gallimard's adventures with Song to American activities
in Vietnam. To be sure, the Americans took advice from the French over Indochina.
But the play suggests there is a direct causal connection between the advice of a
French vice-consul, whose orientalist qualifications are that he has a Chinese
lover, and American decisions to escalate the war and later to have President Diem
assassinated. (2.2, 2.6) The play is realist enough in its predication to suffer a good
deal from its own improbabilities. And as a gloss on the history of East-West
relations in its own time, it can't be assumed that M. Butterfly, for all its knowing-
ness, is necessarily superior to the libretto of the Puccini opera.
Opera of course is not realist. Its words are in another language; they tend to
be smothered in their music. The music, Brecht said, makes the reality vague and
unreal: the point is repeated by the feminist Catherine Clement in her Opera, or The
Undoing of Women, but, Clement adds, 'The unconscious ... does not hear with this
deaf ear' .15 And her critique of the opera repertoire finds room to praise, of all
people, Puccini.

None of these 'women in Puccini's operas' can be understood without

history. Perhaps no one knew better than he and his librettists how to
show a destiny and a politics that were intimately inseparable, right down
to their final, crushing action. 16

And indeed Puccini's Madame Butterfly is not a mere fantasy. It is an opera that
opens with a man appraising a piece of real estate and ends with a woman making
arrangements for the emigration of her son to the West. Butterfly's fate is of no
historical moment, yet it has historical meaning. Her domestic tragedy is played

15. Catherine Clement, Opera, or the Undoing of Women (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press,
1988), p. 9.
16. Clement, p. 20.

129
 DOUGLAS KERR

out on a stage whose dimensions are political and economic, racial and cultural;
and these awarenesses are created in the language, in the libretto - it may be a
symptom but it is also an investigation of the discourse of orientalism. In Puccini
the private drama lives in history in a way that makes M. Butterfly seem heavy-
handed.
The dramatic point is related to this. Belasco and Puccini both identified the
pathos of the betrayed victim as the dramatic centre of gravity of the Butterfly
story. When David Henry Hwang undertook Butterfly's revenge and turned the
story upside down, that centre of gravity remained fixed, though the victim was
now not the Oriental woman but the Western man. Song triumphs over Gallimard;
but Song's revenge (as we have seen) reveals him to be unfeeling and cruel.
Gallimard's undoing leaves him a pathetic, even tragic loser. This could perhaps
be related to the contemporary discovery by Hollywood that America was the real
victim of the Vietnam war. And what is Gallimard, after all, but one who has loved
not wisely but too well? You might say that, in drawing to a conclusion focused on
the pathos of Gallimard, the story of Madame Butterfly exacts its own revenge on its
would-be deconstructor. It remains a story of pathos. But its recomposition in M.
Butterfly appropriates that pathos (Butterfly'S last possession), taking it away from
the Eastern and the female - for in the end, no Asians or females in the play are
portrayed as deserving much sympathy - and investing it finally in a Western
voice.

130
 A CASE OF (MIS) TAKEN IDENTITY:
POLITICS AND AESTHETICS IN SOME
RECENT SINGAPOREAN NO VELS

Ruth Morse

The argument of this paper proceeds on the principle of Chinese boxes - with, I
hope, some sense of appropriateness to the occasion. The main contentions are
simple enough: that, in exploring the problem of national identity in Singapore,
three novelists who may have thought they were adventuring into the sensitive
area of political discussion in a polis where that has not been an easy subject have
in effect played precisely into the hands, or the expectations, or even the fondest
hopes, of governmental policy. They have, in proposing that the constant discus-
sion of certain competing values are the questions of moment in Singapore, re-
sponded to an agenda common to many emerging nations, accepting the putative
responsibility of the creative artist to create, first and foremost, precisely that sense
of national identity which artificial states so desperately require. That is, the
national identity of Singapore proceeds from arguments about national identity,
thus stressing the multivalent basis of the society. This may, of course, be one of
those temporary topics relevant to a particular period, but we are close enough to
the eighties to make it one worth discussing. My second contention is that famili-
arity with these issues must not lead us to overvaluing the novels which discuss
them. Indeed, I suspect, though this must remain speculation, that the quality of
the novels has suffered because of their aptness. It is how one makes judgements
like that, and whether, indeed, one can, coming from the West, which is the larger
of my Chinese boxes. 1
In the mid-eighties three short novels appeared by Singapore writers that
suggested a grouping which might be called 'novels of national identity'. They are
Catherine Lim's The Serpent's Tooth (1982 and reprinted 1984, 1989), Christine Lim's
Rice Bowl (1984, reprinted 1989), and Stella Kon's The Scholar and the Dragon (1986).
All three consider the question of the values by which Singaporeans are to live; all

1. It is a pleasure to record gratitude to a third-year undergraduate at Cambridge, Benjamin Pwee.

He first persuaded me to read Singaporean novels, and without his generous legwork it would
have been extremely difficult to acquire copies of the books I quote. He will recognize in this
essay many of our regular areas of disagreement.
 RUTH MORSE

are primarily private novels, though two mention public-order events; all are
short, competent romans Ii these; none is distinguished. And that judgement focusses
my subject. The box which contains the discussion of these novels is itself con-
tained in another box: the difficulties raised by multiple criteria of aesthetic value
when aesthetic value is located within the particularities of different cultures. I
shall call this the Confucian box. Thus, today I'd like to use these novels to raise
some more general issues of concern to us as literary critics and cultural historians
of the literatures of the Commonwealth. How far can we consider literary values
to be shared, mutual, coincidental or at least comprehensible between cultures? Is
there never an escape from some kind of necessary cultural override, so that the
twain do indeed never meet?
Now I think I need to say that I am not going to follow the obvious and
tempting comparative box which might, given more time, be fruitful: that of the
Overseas Chinese. I shan't consider the fictionalized autobiographical genre in
Singapore, though it seems to sell more copies than other kinds of fiction, nor will
I mention, except in passing, the more robustly political novels of Minfong Ho,
who is an expatriate writing about Thailand. 2 Neither can I digress to encompass
the epistolary novel, Letters from Thailand, by the pseudonymous 'Botan', which
won the SEATO prize for Thai literature in 1970.3 There are important things to be
said about multiple displacement in Asia as in other parts of the world, and
writers are both freer to say what they think in some places than in others, and also
more encouraged to write because of some writing cultures than others. Expatria-
tion, itself a complex phenomenon, will reappear at the end of this paper, but only
as a crystal ball, not as another box.
My boxes might be described as lines of argument; certainly they arise consist-
ently in discussions about the special problems of assessing post-colonial texts and
groups of texts. And because we tend to take them as lines of argument, we
assume that there is a coherent way to get from one to the other, and that a good
analysis will lead, to use the directional metaphor so familiar to us all, to a
solution. But literature is not a problem in mathematics, unless our analysis of it
invokes some uncertainty principles, and it is my uncertainties which I want to
explore now. First, there is the question of aesthetic evaluation. Once upon a time,
and that not very long ago nor in countries far away, this seemed a relatively

2. Rice without Rain (Singapore: Times Books International, 1986). The existence of Ho's books, which
raise questions about the education of women and the governmental process in Thailand, suggest
that eighties censorship in Singapore cannot have been a complete blanket on such discussions.
3. Originally published in 1969, the book was set for schools in 1976 as a way of enhancing mutual
tolerance between ethnic Thai and ethnic Chinese inhabitants of Thailand. The English translation
by Susan Fulop (Bangkok: Editions Duang Kamol, 1982) has a translator's preface which raises
some issues of particular relevance to this paper. First, Fulop stresses the importance of the
Confucianism in which the protagonist was raised in forming the values by which he lived.
Second, she defends the book against accusations that it is not great literature by replying,
basically, 'So what? Anyone familiar with this area of the world at this time will recognize
that it is a reliable depiction of many people's experience.'

132
 A CASE OF (MIS)TAKEN IDENTITY

straightforward matter for an optimistic and relatively coherent group of highly

trained sensibilities. 4 Institutionalized literary criticism, into which one could be
brought by dint of exposure to the great texts of the past, posited its evaluations by
virtue of an agreed corpus of recognized masterworks, touchstones, if you like, in
the Arnoldian sense, which together represented the best that had been written.
This collection of texts was always an open one, which could be redefined by new
additions, to add the Eliotic criterion. This was not merely hypothetical, as Eliot's
own poetry demonstrated; nor, although this raises more questions than it an-
swers, was it language-bound, despite the tendency for canons in the narrow
sense to correspond with the literature and language of a particular polity. Never-
theless, canons of judgement, as well as the judgement of canons, have recently
come to seem, at least potentially, vitiated by ethnocentricity, nationalism and,
basically, the West projecting its own taste as a standard of universality. In fact, of
course, within Western textuality, questions about submerged and forgotten texts
by regional, female, popular, or racially-disadvantaged writers have challenged
canons of many kinds, and it is important to remember that we are not dealing
with monoliths. Canons differ between nations and between language-groups.
The upsurge in 'magic realism' (which we may derive from Borges or Singer or
Garcia Marquez, or the interconnections of all three) began in languages not
English. Still, for the sake of the discussion, let us agree to consider one strand of
thought: that of arguments over aesthetic evaluation. Is the box, in fact, empty, a
trick of Western imperialism? Or is it possible that there are areas of overlap, of
what one hesitates now to call universals which we can recognize, or at least find
some measure of agreement about, which will enable us to maintain a parity of
aesthetic evaluation? Or is the very concept a myth, a chimaera which itself shores
up that very Western hegemony it seeks to demystify? Let me show my hand at
once. I think that there are; there are universals of subject, of structure and
ordering, of linguistic presentation, style, if you like, which, though not all meth-
ods will be to all tastes, can be recognized by subscribers of many different kinds
of upbringing in many different places in the world. The metaphor here might best
be thought of as a kind of multilingualism, not translation, for we might agree that
certain works adorn one language or community but will not travel. The lack of
high-style linguistic register in the English language is a case in point. Here I wish
to maintain a distinction between recognition of quality within a definable category,
and the more arbitrary elevation of one category over another in terms of value.
Let me be more concrete: if none of the novels I shall mention today are particularly
good novels, that says nothing about the relative value of novels over poetry. Nor

4. The controversy over the Oxford History of Australian Literature, with its arguments over the
apparently inescapable conservatism of canon-construction might be cited in evidence, or even
the rather similar criticisms of Helen Vendler's anthology of American poetry, accused of
'Eastern' bias. That this approach still exists, and in remarkably unselfquestioning robustness,
can be evidenced from at least one recent survey: William Walsh, Indian Literature in English
(London: Longman, 1990).

133
 RUTH MORSE

does it answer the question of the value of fiction as historical witness, a function
serious literary critics are all too ready to dismiss as sociology or journalism.
The other line of argument looks at texts as cultural productions with political
repercussions, that is, texts as they are read and interpreted, rather than as isolated
aesthetic objects. To take the example which is central to so much Commonwealth
literary criticism, the projections which we think of as Orientalism, or Others, as
fantasies which tell us a great deal about the anxieties and desires of the countries
in which they were written, also function to define, and misdefine, those Others
they describe. We may talk about Heart of Darkness within western Europe as an
aesthetic object, but, so this argument would run, unless we also discuss it as a text
deeply implicated in the justification of colonial expansion, which misrepresented
Africans in ways satisfactory to imperialists, we miss something important in the
understanding of the uses to which literature is habitually put as an agent of
thought and, in the end, a root of action and justification for action. On this kind of
description, texts are also how they are used. 5 And, though the dramatic case may
be novels which reach outside their author's home culture and audience to colo-
nial subjects, how texts are used also applies to insider writing. Martin Green's
work about the support that writers like Kipling gave to a group of insider readers
is relevant here.6 That is, within a culture we may find ourselves telling ourselves
stories that represent projections of our desires or fears. Familiarity with the idea
of ideology does not necessarily make ideology easier to recognize.
And here I think we raise an issue of concern to us all as Commonwealth
specialists, because we are in the business of spotting those projections, whether
from the inside or the outside of a culture. In asking 'how good?' we also ask
'under what circumstances?' 'for what audience?' and 'on what subject?' while
never forgetting to ask 'by whose criteria?'.
The desire for independent and absolute criteria of purely literary value looks
more and more like either the prejudices of old-fashioned literary critics (white
male etc.) or an unattainable goal. But as so often, part of the problem lies in the
way the desire, or the goal, is described. When we ask that works of art please
many and long, we also ask that the 'many' include what we might now call the
'unimplied reader'. Since different societies erect different criteria of judgement,
how far are those different criteria based upon such different premises that aes-
thetic evaluations are incommensurable, completely culture-bound? And if I think
not, how far is that judgement in tum the prisoner of my culture's logical modes? I
take it that how far we can get in discussions of this kind, involves us in clarifying
a number of different kinds of distinctions, so that we put ourselves in the position
of translators, able to understand (or to think we understand) within varying

5. Gauri Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1989 and London: Faber and Faber, 1990) has some interesting things to say
about the institutionalization of English and the study of English literature in India over the
last century and a half.
6. The English Novel in the Twentieth Century [The Doom of Empire] (London: Routledge, 1984).

134
 A CASE OF (MIS)TAKEN IDENTITY

languages, even if we are not sure we can find exact equivalents by which to moye
from one to another. 'How good' may involve us in distinctions which are them-
selves constantly shifting, as, for example, the definition of what novels are or do
changes under the impact of new long prose fictions. And that point about process
seems to me to underwrite the idea that judgements are possible, because we can
change our minds on grounds about which we can either agree or agree to
disagree. If we concentrate on extremes we may sacrifice large areas of consensus.
Where and how we think, as groups, depends upon circumstances larger than
novels. Public debate depends upon a press which is not only free but committed
to considering who we are now, how we got here, and where we might go next.
Many countries rejoice in works which seem to have condensed the state of the
nation into a single book, even a single character, like Huck Finn or Schweik. One
aspect of certain kinds of polities is the necessity to allegorize (in plays or narra-
tives) discussions which cannot take place elsewhere, either because of actual
censorship by a particular regime, or because of a climate in which the complexities
at issue are best removed from immediate public debate. Novels in particular,
because of their bagginess 'and the space they allow, are an attractive way of
raising questions; by contrast, in newspapers, after all, columnists are expected to
suggest ways forward, potential solutions. It is literature's advantage over phi-
losophy that it can juxtapose contradictions, question what might count as forward,
even imply that some problems may not be susceptible of solution, or, at least, not
now, not here. I take it that one of the things we mean when we accuse novelists of
writing like journalists is not only a point about style, but a point about simplicity
of analysis. That is, novels which announce themselves as being issue-oriented,
books to think with, must give something more than cliches of character and
banality of situation. This is the direction of a number of recent Singaporean
novels, and a thick description of those novels and their context would deal, in
ways in which I, as an outsider, am probably not capable of dealing, with the
particularities of the changing political climate and the permissibility of certain
kinds of discussion.
For if any generalization about what is wrong with these novels as a group can
be safely made, it is that in their haste to deal with the theses they are too simple.
They offer the solid and seductive outlines of binary polarities: materialism vs.
spiritual value, ethnocentricity vs. multiculturalism (whatever that implies be-
yond informed respect and mutual tolerance), conservatism vs. progress, or au-
thoritarianism vs. participatory democracy, or traditional family structures vs.
individualism. And all subordinated to the creation of a Singaporean national
identity through the creation of a thin crust of culture to which everyone can
subscribe. In a way, 'political commitment' becomes a new name for the kind of
conformity demanded by traditional society.
Any study of the indigenous novel of that complex peninsula must begin with
Scorpion Orchid, Lloyd Fernando's ambitious meditation of 1976. Among the con-
texts appropriate for the evaluation of this novel is Modernism. Here is prompt
use of expressionist techniques, cueing the fiction within quotations from histori-

135
 RUTH MORSE

cal and traditional sources which expand the novel's area of reference as a fiction,
as a Malay fiction, and as a Malay historical fiction. This appropriation of Modern-
ist technique announces a craft-internal decision about what style of fiction Fernando
wanted. To my mind this signals, as of right, a self-contextualization within a
fashion which makes the fashion no longer 'merely' Western, but world-wide, and
it is part of my theme that that appropriation is the West's good luck. That is, like
those female Aboriginal painters whose recent use of acrylics has caused such a
rumpus among the so-called guardians of tradition, it is crucial to recognize some
kind of artistic parity: artists can take what they want from other cultures, whether
they are Picasso misreading Africa or Fernando creating a new literary palette.
With hindsight, of course, it is easy to see, and to say, that Fernando's vision
had the monocular period problem with women. And that is to say that one of our
criteria for excellence is breadth of political vision, if you like, even truth in
representation. There need be no objection to four friends, each of whom repre-
sents his ethnic group, nor need there be an objection to the use of the motif 'the
whore with the heart, of gold'; rather, it is the limitations of Fernando's use of these
motifs which prompts reservations. And the reservations I express, consistently
with the assessments of many other critics, come in terms of characterization,
including speech, of plot (because it is sometimes difficult to follow what is
happening), of theme, because the tissue of the story appears too subordinated to
the political theme. If there is a method of finding bases for aesthetic agreement, it
is likely to emerge from the comparison of judgements from different cultures,
whether implicit in the literature or expressed explicitly by critics - though for
obvious reasons the practice of literary criticism may be a phenomenon of a
particular place or period, like this one. And one of the places where anyone,
outsider or insider, can look, in order to find a continuing context for analysis, is
the yearly bibliography and commenting introduction in The Journal of Common-
wealth Literature. Although and because these reports have been written by the
same person for well over a decade, they have one point of view, the consistency
of that point of view, and its reactions to the surrounding culture, are a fascinating
witness to what has been happening in Singapore. In part, what Ooi Boo Eng says
in passing, or by the way, tells us more than his individual judgements on writers
and their works. (If it is of a Mr rather than a Ms Eng of whom I speak.) And here I
cite in evidence the similar views of Ooi Boo Eng about the

... tendency in Malay (and, too, in Asian) literary criticism to place far too
much weight on the moral, social and political messages and views which
the community of readers of the literature like to see reiterated, and not
anything like enough on the dynamics of ordering and structure in the
large and verbal and rhythmic articulation locally in the writing, here, at
this point, and here, and here again.
The latter is of course made much more of in Anglo-American criticism.
And so we come back full circle to the notion that Western-trained critics /
readers should back off Eastern literature'. (JeL, 18 (1983), 116)

136
 A CASE OF (MIS)TAKEN IDENTITY

This seems to focus, for us as critics, at least on present showing, the key
difficulty of these novels, romans athese so intent upon thematic discussion, so very
economical and efficient as fictions that their failure is a failure to escape their own
skill.
If it is true, as Ooi Boo reported in 1983, that The Serpent's Tooth was written in
a matter of six weeks, that may offer an explanation for some of its combination of
energy and repetitiveness. 7 So, of course, may certain unspoken facts about the
circumstances of publication: the possible limitations on length, may, equally with
certain political complexities in Singapore, need to be taken into account. Yet,
whatever those circumstances, we are left with the novel as published, and, after
all, twice reprinted. Its social satire is a promising subject, with serious themes
with considerable potential appeal outside the home audience. Both the problems
of the conflict of generations (in the United States at the moment women like Lim's
protagonist, Angela Toh, are referred to as the sandwich generation, caught be-
tween care of the old and nurture of the young) and the competing values of
conspicuous consumption, achievement, and social status versus some often un-
specified humane aspiration (discussed explicitly in, for example, Rice Bowl), are
recognizable all over the world. If the 'servant problem' is not part of every novel-
reader's life experience, it is part of his or her reading experience, and the same can
be said for marital infidelity. And social satire usually deals in type-characters:
Angela, of whom we see most, is certainly that, a mother ambitious for her
husband and children to the point of unbearable pushiness, blind to her own
manifestation of the faults she castigates in others, and the last to see what is
happening between her husband and her trusted maidservant. 8 But Angela is not
funny enough as a type, or complex enough to transcend her type, to carry the
novel. She is insufficiently awful, or funny, or pathetic. Nor has she a foil. The
evocation of her life is unremarkable, and Catherine Lim's ear for dialogue, even
for likelihood, constantly lets her down. The book is repetitious both in style and
in incident.9 The more serious, more literary ambitions appear in the use of repeating
symbols: the antique Chinese bed, imagined in several different ways, the birthday
parties, the dreams which project the feelings of the different characters, above all
the emphasis on snakes, serpents, and vipers which are the leitmotif of the book. 10

7. fCL, 18 (1983), 116.

8. The affair is signalled on pp. 54, 66, 98-99, 100, 107-108 (subconsciously by Angela herself in
a dream), 119, and 149; it is hinted at by Old Mother five times: pp. 116, 125, 126, 158, and
16CH>1; finally it is dismissed p. 182.
9. For poor style see, for example, pp. 40 or 51-52, where Lim's weakness for verbal repetition
is all too apparent; I am unconvinced that a student speech contest would use Lear's cursing
of his daughters - especially in the Chinese context where the inauspiciousness of such a speech
in a room full of parents and children would be remarkably tactless. Syntactically, the preference
for hypotaxisover parataxis leaves something to be desired.
10. The serpent appears as viper and snake, e.g. pp. 70, 77, 85, 103, 114, 116, 125, 136, and 167,
but the idea of the ungrateful child, taken from Lear, fails to cohere. Many of the repetitions

137
 RUTH MORSE

The book is full of promise it does not fulfill, for the potential is clearly there. One
of the problems seems tb be that the characters are treated mechanically, as if the
author had been contented too quickly with her first inspiration; they never escape
her own angelic hand. But none of this seems to me criticism that is inappropriate
to an 'Eastern' novel. Far from it. As a novel for Singapore readers now, though,
The Serpent's Tooth has a powerful appeal as witness to the pressures of that society
now, but the level of analysis is schematic and limited.
Much the same can be said of Stella Kon's The Scholar and the Dragon, in which
the protagonist's experience resumes - with significant omissions - that of the
Overseas Chinese in twentieth-century Singapore. For Kon, the opening stress on
the Confucianism of Tan Boon Jin's upbringing anticipates the apolitical solutions
of the book's closeY Above all in The Scholar and the Dragon this is a tacit part not
only of how the novel achieves its effect, but also in its potentially complex subject,
the adaptation of Confucian values to modern Singapore. The heroic businessman
who makes this synthesis achieves the position of double strength which comes
from making a great deal of money while respecting ancestral traditions. That is,
'the status of his ethical opinions is underwritten by worldly success: his acumen
about society and politics is not the abstract philosophizing of the 'mere' scholar,
but the result of study tempered by experience. This can be divided into three
areas. First, there is the idea of the traditional education and the class which
maintains it; the Tan family is proud of being a line of learned bureaucrats whose
sons serve the Emperor. Boon Jin, already restless, if naively so, finds himself
caught up in the political agitation which heralded the end of the Dragon Throne,
and has to leave mainland China. The novel is already ·noticing resistance to
gradual change and improvement, both in the area of education (Kon criticizes the
sterile repetitiousness of the traditional literary examination subjects) and in busi-
ness. Boon Jin's father cannot see that he has to modernize his cloth business (e.g.
p. 21). At the same time, however, Kon emphasizes the importance of family and
continuity. So family, class, education, and the need for gradual change are intro-
duced in the first two chapters (e.g. pp. 35f£.), but the subjects do not develop, and
the logical contradictions of their interactions are left hanging.
But, second, the traditional education in Confucian literature which in fact
helps Boon Jin forward in Singapore is already outdated and comes to feel so to

come in the context of the servant who may be having an affair with Dr Toh, and hardly
contribute to the main theme at all.
11. An incident at the beginning of the book may stand for her use of icon rather than analysis:
'Boon Jin, new in Singapore, did not understand just what he was seeing: the Straits Chinese
of the British Crown Colony of Singapore, demonstrating their loyalties along with their sense
of themselves as a community with its own identity. They brought their great procession, mixing
Western and Chinese cultures, to greet Prince Arthur Connaught ... Those pictures of Cabinet
Ministers which led the procession, represented the Parliament of Britain. They were symbols
of democracy' (p. 8). And the parade symbolizes healthy, multiculturat democratic Singapore.
This is repeated explicitly at the novel's end: 'Chinese culture and identity can survive, even
without the Chinese nation' (p. 151). But nothing is said of how much that culture must change.

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 A CASE OF (MIS)TAKEN IDENTITY

him almost at once. There is considerable discussion of this in the course of the
novel, both in terms of what kind of styles are to be exploited in writing for the
Overseas Chinese audience, and in terms of education for the new communities,
where one of the chief objectors is Quek Choo (e.g. pp. 63-69). This paradox, that
Confucian values promise a staple of continuity in a changing world which will
unify the Chinese communities abroad, while the expression of Confucianism
itself represents an outdated, indeed, a stifling, educational and stylistic mode, is
not one which Kon confronts.
Third, although the novel opts for gradual political and social change, Kon is
much better at ridiculing excess than at making any suggestions about what those
gradual changes should involve beyond more democratic process and better
education and equal rights for women. By splitting attitudes to political involve-
ment between Boon Jin and his more politically-committed business partner, Kon
enables her protagonist to disapprove (on grounds of distraction from running the
firm) of aspects of peninsular politics which might otherwise have proved awkward.
Indeed, he is the Confucian ideal who has worked hard and prospered, as well as
the Singaporean who has managed to make a mixed marriage work as if that were
no problem at all. Marrying one's business partner's sister may appear appropri-
ate in old-fashioned Chinese terms, but when she is a Malay step-sister the novel
offers a potentially daring subject. Problems of several kinds are skirted here,
partly by making Quek Choo an unusually educated and independent-minded
modern woman. These are not the only problems upon which the novel stumbles.
The omission of the so-called 'Japanese War' and the complexities of the inde-
pendence and coalition movements limit the novel's claim to representative sta-
tus. For the proposed solution of multicultural mixing within a balance of Confu-
cian values and business success can only be proposed within a limited compass
and a partial and excluding vision of history.
In a novel like this the outsider critic must remember to orient the work not
only within its intellectual tradition: after all, it announces its Confucianism from
the outset, but also to test the possibility of historical allegory. One may ask how
far this imaginary life uses history as a way of criticizing an authoritarian govern-
ment, so that The Scholar and the Dragon aims not only at considering the problems
of forging an identity for the Overseas Chinese, or the Overseas Chinese commu-
nity of Singapore, but also the recurrent political problems which have plagued
both the Dragon Throne and the Island Nation. So intent on the message is this
book that little attention is given to making the dialogue sound like the way
people speak, or to differentiating character, or even to the style in which the book
is written. The narrator clearly intended her primary audience to be Singaporean,
for she addresses her readers as people familiar with its physical geography and
even dares to criticize the ravages of Urban Renewal (p. 4, p. 26). Her narrator is
intrusive and overtly didactic, often explaining unnecessarily what her story has
already illustrated, e.g. the suicide of a political protester: 'The Americans in
Shanghai probably thought the fellow must be a madman, not a martyr, to cut his
own throat for nothing; he was just crazy, to think he could hurt his enemies by

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 RUTH MORSE

killing himself. Maybe modern Singaporeans can understand, without entirely

sympathizing' (p. 17). Here the literary critic can find criteria of judgement from
within the Chinese tradition which in significant ways coincide with Western
ones, and it does not seem to me ridiculous to claim that overt didacticism with
black and white characters gives the reader less pleasure,and is a worse method,
than the kinds of complexities one finds in Genji or the best, most irresolvable, tra-
ditional Chinese poetry.12 Complexity is literarily superior to simplicity when it is
adequate to the situations it describes not only for the sake of the analysis, but also
for the sake of the reader, whose involvement in recognizing and discussing those
complexities is more demanding. The informed critic needs to know both lines of
descent.
Like the two earlier novels, Christine Lim's Rice Bowl (1984, repro 1989) has its
didactic purpose, and it founders on similar problems. Once again, here is a novel
which fulfills its didactic purpose energetically and efficiently, but which lacks
many of the aesthetic qualities that would make it a fine novel. The most literarily
ambitious of the three novels, it attempts to describe a number of different charac-
ters, but too quickly to do more than sketch cliches. Mak Sean Loong, the political
activist whose mechanical interpretations and reactions become predictable after
his second appearance, is only the most stereotypical of a number of types. And
like Ser Mei, the poor girl who commits suicide in horror after the man to whom
her virginity has been sold dies in the taking of it, Mak takes a melodramatic role
in the novel. That Lim's protagonist is a Catholic postulant whose vocation recedes
before the challenge of marriage and a family, but that that challenge comes from
an expatriate Westerner with whom the protagonist goes into exile, tells us a great
deal more about possibility in Singapore than authority might have wished. Much
of the novel focusses upon education, in schools, at university, among workers. It
is an American sociologist who reinforces Marie Wang's own propensity to try to
teach students to question rather than to learn by rote (e.g. p. 57), and an American
missionary who seduces her from her vocation. Marie Wang herself is a central
problem in the novel: her charismatic powers are repeatedly asserted, but not
demonstrated by what she says and does herself. The criticism of her which comes
from Paul Tan, her rejected suitor, and Tan Siew Yean, first her student, then her
fellow student, both contradicts the authorial assertions and fails to convince as
character reservations. The plot is not convincing, but as a discussion of some of
the perceived problems of value in Singapore, that is probably not important in
the local context. That, however, Lim had ambitions for her prose is clear from the
occasional shifts into a kind of free verse which appear to indicate a desire to slow

12. My judgement is preceded by D.J. Enright's comparison of national characters in his Memoirs
of a Mendicant Professor (London, 1969): 'The Japanese react tragically, the Indians also, but
Singaporeans react Confucianly: literature is exhortation or admonition, and therefore you expect
it to be 'exaggerated' or 'melodramatic', with incredible whites and impossible blacks.' (p. 180).
The problems this raises are many, and it is worth reminding ourselves that in the age of the
global village cultures no longer exist insulated one from another. The Singaporean who reads
Endo, Eco, or Enright with pleasure is open to multinational company.

140
 A CASE OF (MIS)TAKEN IDENTITY

down the momentum and to indicate a kind of meditation upon what is happen-
ing, even when what is happening is sordid (e.g. pp. 35 and 84). It must be said
that the 'poetry', too, is efficient at the paraphrasable method, but has little to
recommend it as poetry. In what we might continue to call Confucian terms, Marie
Wang finally succumbs to her duty to marry and have children; that this marriage
is that of a woman rather than a man makes her miscegenation and exile more
poignant but less important than it might otherwise have been. Her choice of the
private over the even moderately public life of the teacher is once again a rejection
of political engagement for concern for a more limited sphere. The themes of
politics, exile, and miscegenation which the novel might have raised are also
muted by virtue of the American Hans Kuhn's nationality and denomination
(American Protestant). The physical description of this All-American boy (re-
peated three times by different characters) illustrates Lim's limitations: 'The tall
handsome blue-eyed Hans Kuhn with his wavy blonde hair looked like an athlete
with broad shoulders and strong arms accentuated by a well-cut sports shirt
which gave him an air of sophistication and style ... ' (p. 61). Punches are being
pulled. 13
Let me return to my boxes. The situation in Singapore which takes the imme-
diate post-independence period as its setting must, of course, be taken into ac-
count. It will be argued that there is a preliminary political question about what
gets published, about who censors what for whom, that requires attention, and
attention, as I have already hinted, can only be found in hints. Take Ooi Boo Eng's
1985 essay for leL (pp. 99-103), in which he contrasted Christine Lim's Rice Bowl
with the more popular Twilight of the Nyonyas of Chin Kee On:

[T]he writer, through a protagonist, Marie Wang, and her surrounding

aide [sic], courageously and responsibly insists upon being the conscience of
society. This novelist insists on the need to 'needle' a Singapore perceived
as in danger of becoming too complacent about its ideals and practice of
survival at all cost, economic progress and rational planning. The novel
bristles and stimulates with thought-provoking impression and observa-
tions ... (pp. 99-100)

And, later in the same essay, having praised Chee Kee On for his
informativeness,

As a novel, however, it is stillborn: in terms of narrative, characterization,

scene-setting, description and imaginative perception there is simply no
life to it. (p. 102)

13. It might also be mentioned that in the world of these three novels there is little analysis of
the coincidence of race and class, but occasional casual disapproval of ethnic Indians, like
Angela's servants in The Serpent's Tooth and the overweight Indian glimpsed at a party in Rice
Bowl (p. 61, see also p. 170). The broader attempts of Lloyd Fernando have disappeared.

141
 RUTH MORSE

I submit that these pieces are written for two audiences: the home audience, in
which powerful readers resent the suggestion that there is any dirty linen for
public washing, and the international literary-critical audience which has slightly
different ideas of what constitutes a laundry, Chinese or otherwise. This is an
argument that responsible criticism is a legitimate activity while it argues that it still
requires courage to publish it.
But, it will be objected, Ooi Boo Eng is a Western-trained, or at least Western-
influenced literary critic, so of course Western canons appear to be the right ones.
What we have in these three novels has to be seen in the context of a Confucian-
derived ethical imperative, in which the novels must be seen to teach in order to be
efficacious for their audience of address, which expects this in its literature. This may
be a sociological point, but it is not a literary one, except insofar as it posits an
unsophisticated, or a small but growing, readership. Here, too, Singapore, as a
colony of settlement, is both like and unlike other new nations. For the kind of
Chinese immigrant who came to the island, or to the peninsula, was not part of the
highly educated class of Chinese. The aspiration to education, or the respect for it,
is as complex and contradictory a subject in Singapore as elsewhere. What educa-
tion is to be, for whom (especially a question for women), and under what
circumstances, are questions which many Asian novels touch. The vague gestures
of The Scholar and the Dragon or the institutional- but equally vague - references
of Rice Bowl suggest at least that there are interesting questions to be discussed.
None of the novels, however, link education and social stratification, which they
might well have done. Whether or not Singapore is to have an intelligentsia may
not be the stuff of which novels are made, but it is certainly a question of moment.
It is a question which reveals essential limitations to the respect for Confucianism
which these novels all seem to imply, because modern (i.e. inescapably Western-
inspired) education emphasizes questioning authority in ways that are anathema
to traditional society's educational values of preservation and deference. Educa-
tion, and, perhaps, the kind of novel being written all over the world today, is the
enemy of traditional society. At least in Singapore good novels can still consider
themselves dangerous. But this seems to me precisely to raise that question of
recognizing ideology with which I began. So far from being dangerous, these
novels, by concentrating on the values which are to make the Singaporean na-
tional identity, play directly into the hands of a government which wants its artists
to perform the useful function of creating that identity. These are all novels which
exactly meet the expectations of the governmental agenda, which discuss the same
kinds of issues raised by the newspapers and magazines of the area, the educa-
tional establishments, and no doubt the papers of government policy-makers. 14

14. My differences from D.]. Enright will, I hope, be clear, but it is worth citing his Memoirs of
a Mendicant Professor in this context: 'For the language of these writers [Singaporeans] is English,
and alas they have entered into competition with the Oxford Book of English Verse and its centuries
- just like any other English poet. They will have to decide whether they wish to be judged
by 'absolute' (that is, literary) standards or by special 'local' standards. The world will urge

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 A CASE OF (MIS)TAKEN IDENTITY

A contrast with some rather less ambitious books may be instructive, in part
because the work of Tan Kok Seng has had to be translated from Chinese. Novel-
ists who choose English, or find that English is the appropriate medium for what
they want to say, have sometimes had to face the question, Why in English at all?
The answer seems relatively straightforward. It has to do with the educational
background of the authors, within a governing elite which is Anglophone for all
the usual historical reasons; with the multilingual Asian community to whom the
books are addressed (and which shares English); with what I hope I may be
allowed to characterize as the delight of writing in that language which these
authors manifest. Or, in the words of Tan Kok Seng, in his fictionalized memoir,
Son of Singapore (1972), 'because in society English was a,language which linked
everybody, no matter what language they spoke at home' (p. 91). Yet this is a
remarkably successful book - though I would like to have more than the figure
20,000 copies, since a book as congenial to government policy may have had help
along the way from pricing and distributing. These fictionalized memoirs are
absolutely admirable as case studies in how a good Chinese ought to behave; if
Tan Kok Seng had not existed - and I have no doubt that he exists in hundreds ~
someone would have invented him. The decency of this moral conservative is
meant as a moral example; the books have no literary pretensions, and there is no
requirement upon them to pretend to them.
I suppose that all I am saying, in the end, is that it is important to retain
multiple analysis, to be able to say that certain texts are important in a place at a
time for recognized reasons, and to be able to be confident about that as a claim
upon our attention without also having to assert that texts important for local
reasons are also great novels. This must be true of Margaret Drabble as it is of
Stella Kon or Catherine Lim. But this is not enough unless learnedness can be
taken into account, so that new contexts can be heard by old readers. And whether
this is Kikuyu oral tradition, or the great written traditions of Chinese Confucian-
ism, poetry, and narrative, we have an obligation to recognize what authors
intended, within recognized cultural assumptions, for different kinds of audi-
ences, to what ends.
Whether or not the novels I have discussed are great works of literature which
promise canon-fo!mation for Singapore, by their coincidence of theme and their
return to questions of multiculturalism and the problem of competing values they
do indeed create a body of discussable texts which focus extra-literary problems.
They appear to say that at least at the moment, what it is to be Singaporean (and

them to choose the latter, to partake of that new phenomenon, that new 'subject', administered
fairly legitimately by sociologists and anthropologists and ignobly by careerists, called 'Com-
monwealth Literature'. One deficiency which all creative work suffers from here (Singapore)
(outside university poetry-writing circles, perhaps!) is the absence of informed and relevant
criticism, though this is better than suffering from an excess of professional criticism. The criteria,
here as in so many other spheres, have been political, political, and political again.' (London,
1969, p. 185).

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 RUTH MORSE

we might extend this to many other emergent nations) is to ask what it is to be

Singaporean.
Nevertheless, this leaves us in the complex paradox opened by the need to
look beyond the text to the political and social context. Before we assume 'free'
literary evaluation of these novels we need to ask about the sieving which has
preceded their publication, and brought precisely these authors and subjects to
prominence. And this is why I end with the problem of 'appear to say', for the
direction of the question of national identity is too satisfying for the government
not to raise suspicions. And the discussions in the novels are so personal, so
individual, that they deflect attention from larger political issues which have
scarcely been raised since Fernando's Scorpion Orchid - a book which, although
apparently crucial to any local canon formation, remains out of print. A govern-
ment which allows discussion of some measure of conflict, or which encourages in
its authors a state of self-censorship in which muted discussion is how discussion
takes place, nevertheless succeeds in creating something not unlike what it in-
tended to create. It finds, and promotes, authors like Tan Kok Seng. It tolerates a
small intellectual class, more advantageous when its proponents are women, like
Christine Lim or Catherine Lim, who appear to write about the personal problems
of women, necessarily restricted to family and subordination to their men.
I could do no better than to end by quoting D.J. Enright, whose reflections on
the original reaction to his Memoirs of a Mendicant Professor appeared in The Inde-
pendent on Saturday 10 March 1990, on the occasion of the book's reissue. He
begins by remembering that the book had been, well, not exactly, or officially,
censored in Singapore on first publication in 1969, even if only foreigners could
buy it. The irony, and underlying anger, will be obvious:

I had been in bad odour with the government, continuously though

faintly, ever since delivering my inaugural lecture as Professor of English
in 1960, because of some passing remarks about leaving people free to
create their own culture: an attempt to be 'relevant' which mistakenly
assumed that literature and culture were closely associated. The govern-
ment's view was different: to rule a country effectively, especially if it is
multiracial (in fact ethnic Chinese make up about 80 per cent of the
population), you require a national identity, and if you can't wait for it to
form, then you impose one ... A Singapore intellectual has recently found
some irony in the affair, since my views that the country should remain
culturally open and the government show itself less authoritative, 'are
now commonplace'. If that is true, then my offence was to be prematurely
right, a grave offence, fit to be punished by premature burial.
Singapore has since achieved a national identity: diligence, docility,
astuteness, prosperity. More satisfying for the majority, it seems, than
mere abstract rights.

If the question 'By what values shall we live?' brings us back to the question of

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 A CASE OF (MIS)TAKEN IDENTITY

universalism in literary discussion - for if this is not a question to be asked in all

times and places, it is hard to think what would be - we must nevertheless
remember that even this question cannot be asked in ignorance of the publishing
and political context. These three Singaporean novels - and by how far they are
better than Kadir or Tan goes without saying - have thus obeyed the governmen-
tal agenda of forging national identity through what appears, on the surface, to be
responsible and courageous questioning. In taking issue with what are in effect
anodyne questions of materialism vs. some higher spiritual value, they in fact
fulfill precisely their alloted role of creating cultural identity: Singapore is the
country which appears to build itself, materially and spiritually, through modifi-
cation of its Overseas Chinese Trader heritage plus the appropriation, by an elite
group which seeks to create a spiritual trickle-down effect throughout the popu-
lation, of the inheritance of Chinese literature, especially certain aspects of Confu-
cianism as a questing philosophy. The novelists themselves, under this analysis,
become part of an aspiring Mandarinate intellectual class which is also the Shelleyan
conscience of their nation. For in asking what the books say about value, we
recognize that they are essentially about one kind of value, but we must also ask
what they do not, cannot say, and how far that might account for their efficient,
astute, diligent docility. Playing safe is a guarantee of being allowed to play at all.
These texts may be what they are, not because of the lack of talent of a small
number of writers, that individual explanation which might offer itself, but because
of the circumstances which obtain in Singapore even now. We may feel that
among the judgements we have to make is that these are sociologically important
works in this time and place, but works which will date rapidly as the circumstances
which gave rise to them change. Thus, for Singaporean readers, especially those
with Confucian expectations of what literature does, their overt didacticism is
effective. But, like many consumables, they are seasonal and not for export. I fear
that when fine writing of a public kind emerges from Singaporeans, it will emerge
from Singaporeans in exile. And this is not to make a preemptive strike about
Westernization, but to claim that exile gives distance and perspective which allows
writers to see, and to write and publish, what they could not see from within their
apparently homogeneous island nation.

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 THE POEMS OF SU TUNG-P'O:
CATCHES AND LOSSES IN THE NET OF
TRANSLATION

Gordon T. Osing

The following represents a work of scholarship or criticism not so much as an

experiment, an attempt anyway, at rendering the poems of Su Tung-p'o as poems
in English. The project was initiated in the winter of 1986-87 while I was teaching
as an exchange professor at Huazhong Normal University in Wuhan, Hubei
Province, in the People's Republic of China. My post-graduate student Min Xiao-
hong came to me with her own enthusiasm for the great Sung Dynasty poet and
suggested we try our hand at putting the poems into English. I had a desire to
learn what I could about the poetics of Classical Chinese poetry and rather liked
the literary personality of Su Shi for his very human feelings and his frankness.
Later I learned to respect his masteries and uses of old poetic forms to contain
those lively matters.
Of course, this sort of thing has been done, numerous times, and by people
with scholarly credentials more real than mine. (Theirs could hardly have been
less.) But there were interests that drew me to the project anyway. In fact, I had not
been always satisfied with the renderings of Chinese poems in English. They
seemed self-consciously sparse, like some kind of austere free verse, bad Sandburg
in other words. Even Ezra Pound's renderings, confessedly largely reinvented,
seemed to be lacking some sense of the Chinese artist's loyalty to received forms,
his participation in the ongoing historical salon of the art form and the culture. It
seemed to me the Classical authors played their poetic games inside a small and
demanding space, in spite of the variety of their expressions and achievements.
Three things drew me to try my hand at it anyway: Min Xiao-hong is bright
and nearly bi-lingual and related to me with unusual openness and frankness and
could tell me when I hit and why I didn't hit the marks with my phrasings; I felt I
had certain advantages because I am a poet myself; I had the freedom to invent
equivalent poems, taking some chances and reworking the syntactical parts of the
originals rather than being obligated to capture a word for word literal translation.
That kind of work struck me as resulting in what we used to call in classical
 GORDON T. OSING

languages classes the invention of a pony, not the same thing at all as a finished
artifact. Perhaps such a pony can be the internal skeleton of finished work, and
certainly it is a necessary intermediate stage of translating. But the essential
matters surround the question: Which does one want, finally, a set of rough
cultural evidences or a work possessing an attendant polish like the original?
Min Xiao-hong had begun bringing me Su Shi poems on rainy Sunday after-
noons, and it rains a lot in the winter/springtimes in Hubei Province. Her former
professor at Huangang Teachers University, Huang Hai-peng, is a Su Shi scholar
and helped her make a selection of the poems generally considered the best if not
most central to his artistic career. He and she worked up fifty poems, printing
beneath the original characters a character by character (or phrase by phrase)
English pony. They set in the pinyin for each Chinese character, to assist the
Western reader who might wish to try his hand at reading the poems out loud. To
these he and she added notes for each allusion to a historical or mythological or
cultural matter and a set of remarks guiding the reader to broader 'readings' of the
poems, called 'appreciations.'
One attraction of the project for me was prosopopoeic. I wanted to make Su
Shi live in English as immediately and humanly as he lives in his original poems. I
hasten to add that I have worked in and around translation projects enough to
know that total victory in translation is next to impossible. The best translations
fall short, interestingly, or daringly, or cleverly, in brief, in terms that feature one
or several aspects of the original but do not fully embody it. I could see early on in
our project that that would be the case with our work. That's why I prefer to talk
about equivalent poems, or transliterations, or even reinventions, rather than close
translation. Especially Chinese poetry is made by representational means and a
poem rhetoric that do not exist in English and its literary culture. Let me say what
numerous of you already know. A Chinese poem exists as an image/ character text
with only word order to suggest syntax, and without inflections to guide gram-
matical meanings, plurals, tenses, etcetera. The poet offers instead separate
metonymies with somewhat unspecified (in comparison with poetry in English)
relationships, often with a view to making the resultant ambiguity a lively core of
meanings; he includes stock epithets; he presumes a scholarly reader's receptivity
to numerous historical matters, and to artistic and cultural histories. The poem's
text is richly encoded, in other words, and the act of reading is the same as the act
of recreating the poem within one's own being. One lives the poem while reading
it. Understanding and interpreting are not at the heart of the matter. Nevertheless,
real learning and artistic preparation are necessary for this kind of reading, which
would appear to be class-learning conscious to a serious degree, as if to say the
language and the art of that language exist deliberately at some distance from
common uses. The reader participates in the highest intellections and privileges
and privacies the culture offers. The past, and the language and the poet's present
moment of experience gather into one another. On the back side of some imagined
circle or continuum of culture, the classical author uses folk and ballad and
popular tunes to contain these comparatively esoteric emotional knowings. The

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 THE POEMS OF SU TUNG-P'O

language of the art contains the limits and hierarchies of human feeling and the
culturally learned one reads to find those learnings reenacted and embodied as
poetry.
One begins to speculate on contrasts between Chinese and English language
poetries, and one by one the generalizations become suspect or fall beneath elabo-
rate qualifications. A strange, present-tense immediacy describes both, as if to say,
to read a poem correctly is to live it for a while. And then come the devices of the
art, both arts, to weave delays and multiple meanings that take the knowing
moments into the culture's past, indeed, into the world of the language's past. The
poem embodies a combination of fresh and correct moves, within the rules of
consciousness that are the qualities of the language, unacknowledged legislation if
ever we heard of it.
More importantly, we realize the preeminence of the plane of language itself
in the generation of a poem, the written and assumed characters and figures
already in the past of the poetry the author puts down freshly. Contrast this with
Wordsworth's and Coleridge's expectations for their Lyrical Ballads, and with T.S.
Eliot's suggestion that our poetry needs to refresh itself at new wells of conscious-
ness every few generations. Contrast this with the English and American traditions
that require poetry to embody and renew itself at the sources of useful language,
regardless of how salonesque the end product is to be. Spoken language is very
much at the center of values in the English and American traditions. While certain
Chinese traditions feature fixing poems in ballad form or in tzu, famous song
melodies of the past, the locus of value in Chinese poetry is a combination of
characters whose usage was perfected before the current author thought of them,
actual usages and phrases that fix many characters in the contexts of a detailed,
received tradition. So in the works of author upon author, the present is riddled
with the parameters of the past and the past receives the present as its due
offering. To read is to read the poem from the intimate perspective of the past.
May I suggest that the motion of reading in the English and American traditions is
one that brings the past forward to elucidate or embellish the present?
The Chinese classical author had a definite idea about life imitating art, and
often complained until his did. His art was considered life-regulating, one notch
more compelling than consolational, I suppose. He considered ethical and intellec-
tual problems to be solvable in terms of art, also literary art. Certainly the established
and successful citizen regarded surrounding himself with arts to be the highest
and best privilege and duty. That which art was to be right about certainly
included daily living. Westerners, perhaps, misunderstood the frequency and
moral sentimentality of the political slogan! poems that are still part of everyday
political and social life in China. Mao and Zhou En-lai as poets, too, fit an old,
established tradition.
They also had an irresistible notion of art imitating art, especially the folk or
popular or antique aspects. The old ballad form from the original Book of Songs was
never out of fashion, and, in fact, was handled and trusted to give a piece quite
venerable respectability. 'The Five aIds,' or five character line also reflected the art

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 GORDON T. OSING

of antiquity. From the Tang poets onward, the poem written to an old and popular
tune was a favored method. Su Shi, two-hundred years later, is taken to be the
master of that kind of composition, called tzu.
The quality of a classical poem depends on its victories in filling the received
line and stanza form with tonally balanced progressions and balances, especially
in line pairs, and with a finished emotion realized through graceful, continuous
allusion to the presence of the past in its recounting. The structural tension is, as
usual, between the external form and the sound and sense matters in the text.
Because the external form belonged to the past, too, the poem offers a complete
sense of being absorbed into what went before. Let me say here that what I find
most lacking in those stark free verse renderings referred to before is precisely that
they have gotten rid of the outer shell of the poem and give us only a sense of the
meanings conveyed, not of the artful business of the poem. They have the informa-
tional substance of the text, but not a sense of the poem's artistic whole. Perhaps
this is impossible without submitting something like a Procrustean nursery rhyme
as finished product, with phrases and allusions stretched out or clipped to fit a line
that might sound, in English, a bit attenuated. That's the worst prospect of what
we have done, because we have attempted to create a line English very much like
the original line in duration and with some attentions to gamesmanship, too. What
is missing is the music that once accompanied it, which leaves the poem a sort of
aria without orchestra. Tang and Sung melodies I have heard validate our decision
to write an English line that would not be right if the essential business of the
poem were British or American. We would invite a slower reading of the Su Shi
poem than one would give the blank verse texts of Robert Frost or Philip Larkin. In
fact, a Su Shi tzu especially ought to be rendered and read with a sustained sense
of longer line, with more of a sense of parallelism, for instance, like that we
associate with Psalm verses. Something vital to their original composition is lost
when they are changed into quick, plain line and image artifacts.

We decided to represent the salon aspects of Su Shi's work with one English word
or small phrase for each Chinese character or phrase, in general. His poems' lines
are four, five, six or seven characters in length. I believe we had opportunity to
work in all the insinuations and much of the semantic action of the original
characters, though I felt obliged to recompose the rather taut and clipped, elliptical
flow of the originals as English sentencing. As I have suggested, in Chinese poetry
it is as if the cultured mind of the reader supplies to the poem's musical! image
suggestion the instrument of rendering.
We hope certain flourishes of language and phrasing in English, along with
certain traditional tricks of the trade, such as internal and end rhymes, slant
rhymes, alliteration and assonance, will suggest strongly the formality and
gracefulnesses of the originals. Some aspects of the originals could not be brought

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 THE POEMS OF SU TUNG-P'O

along into English. Many syllables were chosen for their subtle variations in length
and tonal echos. A great many characters and phrases in Chinese poetry allude to
their prior occurrences in great old poems. The Chinese concept of Nature in-
cludes the harmony between the language and the deepest traditions of personal,
family and social order, including the literature of that lore. Certain expressions
are beautiful because they have always been part of that Nature.
We took compositional shortcuts to keep the poems from sprawling to include
all their original subtleties and allusions and references. We tried to suggest much
of this action in the notes and appreciations. Keep in mind the well-trained
Chinese reader would bring many of these with him to the act of reading. Indeed,
to read is to be reminded of all that has gone into the making of the consciousness
in prior artistic experience, which tends to take a sort of historical precedence over
ordinary experience because the artist has abdicated his own selfish interests in
the act of composition and is therefore the sublime equivalent of the peasant, the
learned commoner. Poetry, in this case, is simply the most compressed and pre-
served cultural expression of all. Perhaps we in English-speaking cultures bring a
parallel devotion to our appreciations, but I don't think we think of the great
poems as finalizing quests and emotions and difficulties in the same way Chinese
intellectuals do.
Our publisher, by the way, The People's Publishing House of Henan Province,
up at Zhengzhou, most happily, is going to grant us the sizable favor of printing
the original texts (+ pinyin + pony + cultural notes + appreciations) so that any
reader can try his hand at rendering the poems. In this respect, we think our little
volume brings the reader into direct involvement with the business of translating
classical Chinese poetry. We hope numerous readers try their hand at it.

Both the spirit of composition of Sung Dynasty poetry and the openness with
which it addressed the worlds of experience outside courtly and intellectually
fashionable matters are remarkable. It was an era that saw expansions in subject
matters and a sort of Romantic declaration of the poet's self as the central matter of
composition. Su Shi is among the masters of that era. He knew well the poets of the
past, Tu Fu, Wen Ting-jun, Yen Hsuan, Li Po, Wang Wei and Po Chu-i. He knew
practically by heart the writings of Lao Tzu, and Confucius, and passed government
qualifying tests at several levels to prepare himself for government appointment.
He would already have internalized the strictures and fashions in composition,
the prescriptions and conventions, before he began his career in writing. He was a
master of the tzu poem, which was a kind of freely constructed lyric. He composed
numerous tzu, or poems written to the tunes of ancient and popular melodies. He
knew and admired the lu-shih, or tonally formulated couplet poems, of the T' ang
era, eight or twelve line poems featuring end rhymes and lines of five or six
characters, and the chueh-chu, quatrains made of five to seven character lines, that

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 GORDON T. OSING

were often set to music, too, and, at its best, left the reader suspended among
several possible realizations. He knew a great many of the old yueh-fu, or folk and
common songs. He knew perfectly well the intellectual gravities of Confucian
thought, with all its emphases on duties and responsibilities to family, village, and
state, and was fascinated by Taoist and Buddhist thought, too, with their empha-
ses on the illusory character of the world and the timelessness of the senses.
Especially he knew, as did all scholar-artists, the ancient literary model poems, the
Shih Ching, or classic songs, compiled before the time of Confucius (the 5th Century
B.C.), and the Ch'u-tzu, or 'Elegies of Chu,' which are composed rather rhapsodi-
cally and filled with sensuous imagery, in five to seven character lines broken with
a sort of suspended pause that amounts to a kind of inward sigh, very much like
the English language caesura. The subject matters of the 'Nine Songs' are unusually
personal. These poems date from the time of the Warring Kingdoms, in the
centuries following Confucius. I mean to suggest that Su Shi's originality includes
thorough and lively utilization of his very many sources and influences. He was,
as were so many before and after him, a scholar-poet, and was required to be when
he qualified originally to become an imperial advisor and governor and states-
man.
Su Shi was regarded as dealing strongly and creatively with the often closely
regarded form of the tzu. The texts he wrote take command of the tunes they fit,
tradition has it, and represent a masculine virtue utilizing the feminine song. His
learning, too, differentiates him from many other practitioners of the art. He made
the tzu a vehicle from autobiographical as much as fanciful reverie, the usual
ground of meaning. He was also a great parodist of current affairs and ideas, an
artist in fact who lived his private life in exile without taking his inner eye off
events and controversies and individuals affecting his time. These public matters,
too, riddle his poems, along with their learned and artistic concerns. Keep in mind
his 'readers' too would have been people much like himself, courtly or learned, a
very small group of famous persons who viewed society and history through
Confucian masks of advantage.

Su Shi was a native of Meishan, in what is now Sichuan Province. He was a

beneficiary of the somewhat enlightened policy of the emperor, former military,
heroic figure General Chou, who ordered elaborate systems of cultural tests be
given to find the best artistic and philosophical minds to advise and govern the
empire. Both Su Shi and his brother Su Che did well on the tests, largely because
their father, also a notable scholar, Su Hsun, saw to it the boys were well prepared.
The tests covered the entire of the culture's famous past and fewer than ten per
cent of the takers passed. Examinees were asked about the histories of the usages
of certain key words and phrases, and were asked to differentiate between numer-
ous literary styles. They had to display comprehension of the aesthetic issues and

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 THE POEMS OF SU TUNG-P'O

their priorities in the arts of the past. These matters were deemed important for
judging the law and policies of the government. I mention these to suggest the
matter of life imitating art also in official thinking.
Su Shi (1037"":1101) came to the capital during the administration of Wang An-
shih (1021-1086), who served as prime minister. He was called 'the bull-headed'
for his determination to shore up the nation's failing agricultural economy with
what came to be called 'The New Law', or 'The Green Law', in Chinese, the Ching-
miao-fa, which lent moneys to farmers in bad years, assessed taxes according to
land productivity, allowed farmers to pay taxes in cash and sell crops locally, and
worst of all, taxed wealthy absentee landlords more than local farmers. Su Shi,
when he arrived at court, took the side of those who thought it dangerous for the
throne to be engaged in business better left to the provinces and villages. Does the
Emperor wish to be found, Su Shi wrote, peddling coal and ice and grain like any
greedy merchant? (One sees a bit of the Confucian disdain for business in the
remark.) It cost him his popularity at court, and nearly his life. Perhaps because of
his father's reputation, perhaps because he was so young and learned and new at
court, he was banished instead, in 1080, to Huang Chou, in what is now Huangang
County of Hubei Province. When he returned to the capital, in 1085, he had met
the ousted Prime Minister and admitted his error and come around to the imperial
policy, only to find that policy was now quite out of favor. And besides, he spoke
openly and sharply about the corrupt officials out in the countryside, who admin-
istered the laws unfairly. He took the peasants' views about the national govern-
ment. So he was banished again, and this time it was as good as for good. He spent
his entire career in provincial government posts, Suzhou, Huizhou, Zhangzhou,
and finally desolate Hainan, from which he returned to the capital, in 1101, to
retire, at sixty-six. He was no less humble and demanding about the honor of the
peasants, with whom the scholar-artist had spent most of his life. He escaped the
life at court, with its myriad rules and rigid prescriptions of gestures and addresses,
and instead fished and farmed alongside ordinary people of his day, regarded
them as intimates, and became dear to them and their descendants.
The Rule of Heaven turned out to be in his day the rule of men who thought he
took his Confucian pieties too zealously and his Taoist and Buddhist humors too
literally. And he spent a lifetime writing against pretense, intellectual literal-
mindedness and injustice.

He left the world his journals, seventeen-hundred poems, and more than eight-
hundred private letters, so the man had his say. He is also one of the great
calligraphers. His social criticism is enough to be a feature of study. Often this took
the form of satire. In one such piece he assaults the Confucian tendency to see
issues prescriptively and proscriptively. He employs what we must see as a bit of
Taoist humor:

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 GORDON T. OSING

One blind man from birth has no conception of the sun. If one day he
questions someone about the sun, he is told, 'The sun is like a brass basin.'
Then he knocks against a basin and hears it clang, and later takes a bell for
the sun. So another man tells him, 'The sun-light is like a candle.' Then he
feels a candle to discover its shape, and later takes a flute for the sun. The
sun is very different from bells and flutes, but a blind man does not know
this because he has never seen it - he goes by hearsay.
N ow the Way is more difficult to discern than the sun, and those who
do not study are like blind men. So when one who knows the way speaks
of it, even though he is skilled in making apt comparisons, he can think of
nothing better than a basin or a candle; though a basin may make his
hearer think of a bell, a candle of a flute, until the hearer gets farther and
farther from the truth. Thus when men talk of the Way, they attempt to
describe it in terms of what they have seen, or imagine it without having
seen it, and both cases they deviate from the Way.

One sees in these remarks not only a presentation of certain Taoist perspec-
tives but also a kind of apology, defining the territories of figurative thought and
poetic language, strongest when least definitive, when most allusive and suggestive
without becoming programmatic.
Su Shi influenced literary developments in poetry in both the matters of
subject and style. His poems quite often present the most accurate and intimate
details of ordinary living, add those to the accumulated and almost exclusively
courtly matters taken as legitimate in times past. He writes of harrassed peasant
women working their farms for primarily tax collectors' gains, of a famously
crooked sheriff, made into a corpse-candle by the peasants, of old fishing and
drinking buddies in straw capes, cleaning their nets and hanging them out to dry,
of wonderful festivals in remote villages, of pretty local girls and their lucky
husbands. If the fashions in writing that prevailed in his day featured courtly
goings-on, sentimental romance, and something like the cliches of Petrarchan art
as essential to literary performances, Su Shi's sympathies and consolations and
pleasures were found among those living the old, village life. He returned to the
subject values of Li Po, the great T' ang poet. His one continuing theme was that
honorable men must suffer the world a good deal.
He wrote many nature lyrics, in which he described moments of peace and
satisfaction in that changeless world. He was a master at finding an emblem in
nature to name the struggle of his inner life, in a lonely swan-goose's coming to
rest in the cold sand in the brush by a wintered river, in the first reappearance of a
globefish in springtime, when the soul felt wintered-out. In his emotional frank-
ness he reminds us of certain modern poets, beginning with Wordsworth. The
virility of his style reminds of Byron.
In some respects Su Shi strikes us as nearly modern, with his sense of irony,
his sense of alienation, and his colloquial frankness. Certainly he democratized the
tzu poem, and gave it new dimensions of a directly autobiographical character. He

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 THE POEMS OF SU TUNG-P'O

and Huang Ting-jian are credited with having founded the 'Jiangxi School,' some-
times called the 'Su-Huang School,' characterized by direct, personal, and colloquial
gestures in poetry. He gave literary substance to what had been more often than
not a kind of artful palace dalliance, and explored its lyrical and satirical applica-
tions. He continues to be a favorite for those who prefer to break down the
distances between the remote emotions of those who rule and the feelings of
ordinary people who are ruled. Though he was the well-trained Confucian intel-
lectual, he lived much of his life as the Buddhist chiissu, or wandering mystic. The
old master took his literary name from the East Hill that he made into his farm,
near Huangzhou, in honor of his life in an out-of-the-way place among out-of-the-
way people: Su Tung-p' o. His pride and his talent made a great and important
literature out of that obscurity.

It's not possible to enter upon a project of translating Chinese poetry without Ezra
Pound historically looking over one's shoulder to ask what kind of attention one is
paying to the nature of the original Chinese characters. In his rather fine essay in
the introduction of the Penguin Anthology New Songs from a Jade Terrace, J.H. Prynne
reminds us Pound had a literary program in mind, to substantiate the Imagists'
interest in 'an absolute metaphor,' one that did more than allude to historical and
symbolic matters, that embodied actual, living realization. It would seem to me
Pound and the others were trying to shake-off the attendant implications that
surrounded PreRaphaelite and Georgian imagery, poetics that alluded to the
senses more than they recreated them. They alluded to literary culture, instead.
Indeed, Pound wished to adopt Ernest Fenollosa's observations about The Chinese
Written Character as a Medium for Poetry to his program for reforming verse, away
from rhyme, metrical regularity, and from emotional self-consciousness. He saw
in the ideogram a suddenly total revelation instead of a contemplative address.
Anglo-American Modernism owes everything to his utilizations in Cathay. I would
like to remind, however, that his translations are utilizations, and, as such, leave
out or minimize, other aspects of Chinese poetics that are just as real, or just as
important, in the original texts.
Pound saw each character as subsuming everything in an emotional intellec-
tion, as revelation. Each character is a world, as we have all read in his famous
notes and rendering of 'The Jewelled Stairs Grievance.' Each represents a direct
treatment, an 'absolute metaphor,' as Prynne calls it. Pound even gets rid of
footnotes and explanations of historical allusions, explanations of puns, cultural
metonymies, all the implied business of the singular characters. Certainly poetry
in English needed to unload its spiritual sentimentality and post-Romantic self-
indulgences. It needed a model that cut cleaner to the bone, perhaps one that got
rid of the idea of culture itself as mediating individual experience. I want to
defend Pound's taste in my own way even as I say his choices omitted the

155
 GORDON T. OSING

consideration of that which would certainly have militated against the poetic he
wanted to describe, that he found and admired in the Chinese and urged upon the
Imagists in London.
But Chinese ideograms do not embody only or even mainly such action. They
do not allude primarily to the senses. To read a Chinese character is to find what it
names released from actual time into literary time, so to speak. Where the Chinese
poet names events in nature as reflecting his spirit or emotion, it is to be under-
stood that the Nature he is implying is the inherited, highly developed literary
language of the culture. Indeed his characters and phrases quite often allude
directly to prior literary occasions, as Prynne's essay demonstrates. There is a
single metonymy operating in classical Chinese poetry and it is the past of its
literature and history. The image/character breathes, to be sure, in with the poet's
immediate experience (and Pound used that aspect as he want to), and the image/
character also breathes out and that action occurs because the expression has been
translated into a language dialect set aside by an old hierarchical art for that
purpose. Only those trained in the art, after all, can read classical Chinese poetry;
does that sound like the direct and democratic energy Pound wished to use?
Add to this that line lengths, 'The Five Olds,' heptasyllabic, etcetera, are
traditional forms, along with, of course, the old tunes of the sing-song ladies. The
rhetorical shapes of poems and their rhythmical characteristics and dimensions
are rather declared from the outside. Their forms are organic vis-a.-vis a good deal
of preceding work. The relation between the tensions of the external form and the
internal flow of tonal and image senses cannot be set aside without inventing a
sort of loose, indeed, (for lack of a better word) democratized version of the old
poems. Originally, their very meanings are bound up with restriction, like the
weaving Yeats refers to and Robert Frost's tennis net, without which he simply
refused to play.
This is not to bash Pound for taking what he needed to exemplify what he
wanted. Even though I think William Carlos Williams wrote more in the spirit of
Chinese ideograms than Pound (and so did Hilda Doolittle), Pound's borrowings
now seem essential for what needed to come after, a poetry without a decorative
sense of expression. .
We found that by extending the line sense to include the same number of beats
or words as the originals we were able to create an equivalent poem of yet another
kind. We were able to include or imply certain of the baroque matters of the
originals. We felt that another and just as real appreciation of Chinese verse,
however sparse its denotative signals, presented an occasion for cultural reading,
for baroque appreciation, in fact. The original verse is not minimal, in fact, except
to the devices of another language. Have not recent opinions about texts in English
turned to their layers of content, to seeing how the simplest texts implicate a good
deal of cultural savvy and semiotic suggestion? Multiple readings are possible of
an artful text and even informal or accidental texts bear considerable fruits in
analysis as artifacts.
Our renderings tried to keep some of the cultural suggestions of the originals,

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 THE POEMS OF SU TUNG-P'O

and to hold the English versions to the formality of the primary texts, too. What
one gets is a different sounding poem, to be sure, one that appears to be held to a
form that precedes it, within which it narrates and suggests as much as possible.
Pound was right: a character contains worlds of metonymy, not worlds of symbol
only, or even mainly. For the metonymies are stylized allusions; worlds of cultural
suggestion, historical pre-usage, elegantly shaded allegory of episodes and per-
sons are implicated, as is a consciousness taken as the domain of art. Perhaps, at
the center of the matter, that is what led us to want to try for another representation
of Chinese poetry. Which is not to say that spending rainy Sunday afternoons and
evenings with the old Sung master Su Tung-p' 0 was not a splendid trip into his
world and times, because we had a lovely time doing it. Once I even lay down on
the his stone bed, where he drank and toasted the moon, at Huangzhou's 'Red
Cliff.' I wouldn't trade the experiences for anything, even if the results of our
labors turned out to be interesting failures that, at best, inspired still other efforts .
to get the translations right.

REFERENCES

Chiang Yee, The Chinese Eye (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964).
'Chinese Poetry', Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, ed. Alex Preminger
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965).
Feng Yuanjun, An Outline History of Classical Chinese Literature (Hong Kong: Joint
Publishing Company, 1983).
David Hawkes, A Little Primer of Tu Fu (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press,
1987).
Huang Hong-Quan, Song Dynasty Ci-Poetry (Beijing: People's Liberation Army
Publishing House, 1988).
Lin Yutang, The Gay Genius: Life and Times of Su Tung-p'o (New York: The John Day
Company,1947).
Lin Yutang, My Country and My People (New York: The John Day Company, 1937).
W. Scott Morton, China: Its History and Culture (New York: McGraw Hill, 1980).
J.H. Prynne, 'Introduction', in New Songs from a Jade Terrace (New York: Penguin,
1986).
Kenneth Rexroth, One-hundred Poems from the Chinese (New York: New Directions
Paperbacks, 1971).

157
 GORDON T. OSING

Notes on the Chinese Names

The Wade-Giles system of Romanization is used in the case of names which have to
some extent gained currency in the West in that form. Otherwise pinyin forms are
used.

Chinese characters Wade-Giles Pinyin

~*~ Su Tung-p'o Su Dongpo

=* Sung Song
~~ Su Shih Su Shi
~~ tz'u ci
=§ Mao Mao
J!JJ~l* Chou En-lai Zhou Enlai
lOJ1¥J Honan Henan
~T Laotzu Laozi
II)j-/'l Chengchou Zhengzhou
fim Tu Fu Du Fu
~~~ Wen T'ing-yiin Wen Tingjun
$E3 Li Po Li Bai
~*l Wang Wei Wang Wei
E3J5£ Po Chii-i Bai Juyi
~ T'ang Tang
~~:f Iii-shih Iii shi
~il] chiich-chii jue ju
~fff yiieh-fu yue fu
~~ Ch'u-tz'u Chu ci
[?:9JII Szech'uan Sichuan
m Chou Zhou
f§W Meishan Meishan
~~ Su Ch'e Su Zhe
~ilU Su Hsiin Su Xun
~*E Wang An-shih Wang Anshi
w1Ei* Ch'ing-miao-fa Qingmiao fa
tIgg Kiangsi Jiangxi
~1-/'1 Soochou Suzhou

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 THE POEMS OF SU TUNG-P'O

Chinese characters Wade-Giles Pinyin

~'lH Huichou Huizhou

~JH Changchou Zhangzhou
JiHI Huangchou Huangzhou
i4lJWJ Hainan Hainan
ill Tao Dao
~Ji Su-Huang Su-Huang
~&!~ Huang T'ing-chien Huang Tingjian

159
 SPEECH, CULTURE AND HISTORY IN
THE NOVELS OF KAZUO ISHIGURO

Norman Page

In the third and most recent of Kazuo Ishiguro's novels, The Remains of the Day,
published last year, the narrator is an elderly butler who has spent a lifetime
employed in an English country house and who looks back from the vantage-
point of 1956 to a period that begins just after the end of the First World War. It
seems a highly unlikely subject for a young novelist who was born in Nagasaki in
1954, but in this paper I shall try to show that it has a certain inevitability and-
despite superficial differences - is consistent with the preoccupations to be found
in Ishiguro's previous two novels.
Born in Japan, Ishiguro was taken to Britain as a small child, received his
education there, is resident there, and has chosen to write in English. His first
novel, A Pale View of Hills (1982), concerns a Japanese widow who has settled in
England but who recalls her life in Nagasaki in the traumatic period just after the
end of the Second World War. His second, An Artist of the Floating World (1986), is
set wholly in Japan but again concerns an elderly narrator, this time male, and
places its largely retrospective narrative in the late forties - again, that is, in the
postwar years. Even these bald indications will suggest that the three novels have
some important elements in common, but rather than treating them chronologi-
cally I should like to begin with the most recent and then to suggest ways in which
the ground for it is laid by its predecessors.
Stevens, the narrator and protagonist of The Remains of the Day, is a member of
a servant class that came close to extinction as a result of the upheavals in British
society brought about by the Second World War and its economic and social
aftermath. At the date of his narrative, 1956, his former employer, Lord Darlington,
is dead, and the house has been bought - with Stevens as one of the fixtures - by
a wealthy American business man. The butler is thus a survivor of a vanished
world, reminders of which exist in the other accessories of the once aristocratic
household: the furniture, silver, family portraits, and so on.
In the course of the narrative Stevens makes a short journey into the West
Country to visit one of his former fellow-servants, and simultaneously journeys
into the past through a series of leisurely mental digressions. In the course of these
he recreates the vanished past, defines and justifies his own role in it, and by
 NORMAN PAGE

implication evokes a major phase of European history. Ishiguro's method thus

resembles that of a Victorian novelist such as Thackeray, who in Vanity Fair
presents public history not directly but through private experience. Ishiguro's
method is, however, more complex and potentially- richer in contrasts and ironies
than Thackeray's, for whereas the Victorian novelist looks back from the late
forties to the Napoleonic War and its aftermath some thirty years earlier, the
contemporary writer takes two strides backward: some thirty years from the date
of composition to the period of the narrative, and a further thirty years or more
from that date to the beginning of the period recalled. What they have in common
is an important relationship to war: Professor John Carey has described Vanity Fair
as 'War and Peace without the war', and Ishiguro too foregrounds private experi-
ence and allows domestic and even trivial events to represent, by synecdoche,
historic happenings on a world stage.
The period summoned up by the old butler's memory - an act at once
nostalgic and self-justifying - begins in 1920. His then employer, Lord Darlington,
is a politician who finds his own aristocratic and gentlemanly code offended by
the idea of punishing a defeated enemy. As he remarks at one point to his butler,

'Disturbing, Stevens. Deeply disturbing. It does us great discredit to treat

a defeated foe like this. A complete break with the traditions of this
country.' (p. 71)

Soon afterwards Steven refers to a group of his employer's friends - influen-

tial figures in several European countries as well as Britain - who share his view
that 'fair play had not been done at Versailles and that it was immoral to go on
punishing a nation for a war that was now over'. At such a point the reader would
do well to recall that, though his immediate theme is European history between
the wars, the novelist himself was born in Japan in the period following its defeat.
Later the phrase 'a defeated foe' is echoed by another character, who analyses
Darlington's motivation in the following terms:

'His lordship is a gentleman. That's what's at the root of it. He's a gentle-
man, and he fought a war with the Germans, and it's his instinct to offer
generosity and friendship to a defeated foe. It's his instinct. Because he's a
gentleman, a true old English gentleman ... ' (p. 223)

Darlington's 'instinct' as a gentleman has led him to support the rise of

Fascism as a form of protest against the injustices of the Versailles settlement, and
the same speaker adds:

'The way they've used it, manipulated it, turned something fine and noble
into something else - something they can use for their own foul ends ...'

Stevens's devotion to his employer, and to the aristocratic ideal he represents,

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 SPEECH, CULTURE AND HISTORY IN THE NOVELS OF KAZUO ISHIGURO

is absolute; hence he is inevitably cast in the role of an apologist for Darlington's

political and moral shortcomings. The ironic result is that, while seeking to excul-
pate his former employer, he makes his disastrous failures of judgment quite clear.
At one point he insists,
It needs to be said ... what salacious nonsense it is to claim that Lord
Darlington was anti-Semitic, or that he had close association with organi-
zations like the British Union of Fascists ... Sir Oswald Mosley, the
gentleman who led the 'blackshirts', was a visitor at Darlington Hall on, I
would say, three occasions at the most ... (p. 137)

Stevens here not only makes a somewhat desperate attempt to redeem his
master's integrity but exposes the limitations of his own judgment and awareness
in his unintentionally but grimly comic reference to Mosley as 'the gentleman who
led the 'blackshirts".
But Stevens is first and last a servant, bound by the strict code of the class to
which he belongs and by a relationship to the class he serves that allows no scope
for judgment, let alone condemnation. As Stevens's memories unfold, we have the
curious experience of seeing European history from an altogether unfamiliar point
of view. Hitler's persecution of the Jews is reflected in the microcosm of the
country house by the unfair dismissal of two Jewish housemaids. In one extraordi-
nary passage, Stevens goes far towards convincing himself that his professional
skill at polishing silver may have altered the course of human history: when
Ribbentrop, the German Ambassador, comes to dinner at Darlington Hall with, as
his fellow-guest, Lord Halifax, a leading member of Chamberlain's administra-
tion, Stevens believes that the pleasure given by the gleaming silver may have
transformed the mood of the guests - and hence, as he comments, 'one's efforts,
in however modest a way, [mayl comprise a contribution to the course of history'
(p. 139). This may sound like hubristic absurdity but serves to emphasize the
circumscribed moral world of one who must accept unquestioningly the values of
his employer's class as well as his own lowly status. Stevens's tragedy is that he
survives the world that has given his own life a meaning: as narrator he can only
try to defend a life that has been manifestly devoted to hollow ideals, and to
question the severe verdict that history has delivered upon them. As he says at a
key point in his narrative,

How can one possibly be held to blame in any sense because, say, the
passage of time has shown that Lord Darlington's efforts were misguided,
even foolish? ... It is hardly my fault if his lordship's life and work have
turned out today to look, at best a sad waste - and it is quite illogical that
I should feel any regret or shame on my own account. (p. 201)

This is probably the closest the butler comes to an honest admission of Lord
Darlington's shortcomings and a sad recognition of the futility of his own life of
service. The reader is likely to recall that the implicit excuse that he was only

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 NORMAN PAGE

obeying orders was made by other, more famous or more notorious members of
Stevens's generation.
To sum up the most important points made so far: The Remains of the Day is a
historical novel but the angle of vision is that of a bystander rather than a partici-
pant: Stevens has been on the periphery of great events, a mainly silent figure
ministering to the physical comfort of those who influence policy. Like Prufrock,
he has been not Prince Hamlet but an attendant lord with a walking-on part on the
stage of history. His narrative thus enables us to perceive historical events ob-
liquely rather than directly, but it is more fundamentally unreliable in that his
loyalty makes him judge partially and his half-defined sense of a shared guilt
makes him self-defensive. He has tunnel vision in more senses than one, for his
narrow focus is directed down a long perspective of time. We shall find all of these
characteristics in Ishiguro's earlier fiction, so that the prize-winning third novel
does not so much break fresh ground as represent a summation of, and perhaps
also a refinement upon, his work so far.
Like its predecessors, The Remains of the Day is a first-person narrative, and
Stevens's language is an index of his mental and emotional entrapment in an
archaic world: both his narrative and the dialogue it incorporates are character-
ized by the use of class and occupational dialects that imprison the man within a
prescribed code just as surely as his costume and deportment must follow strictly
defined and to some extent arbitrary conventions. There is a significant moment
when Stevens is caught by a fellow-servant in the act of reading a romantic novel,
and defends this choice of literature on the grounds that 'such works tend to be
written in good English, with plenty of elegant dialogue of much practical value to
me' (p. 168). The implicit concepts of linguistic excellence and elegance are con-
servative, literary and rehearsed, never demotic, spontaneous or expressive, and,
in Wittgensteinian fashion, Stevens's language reflects the limits of his world.
The user of such a language is inevitably a victim of self-censorship and self-
repression - the individual and the instinctive have no place in the codes of
behaviour, including speech behaviour, to which he is subject - and the novel
depicts the long starvation of Stevens's emotional capacities. The effects of these
prohibitions and inhibitions may be illustrated from two passages on very differ-
ent levels of seriousness. In the first, the story is told of 'a certain butler' in an
Anglo-Indian household who, preparing the table for dinner, finds a tiger lying
underneath. Apologizing to his employer for this piece of careless housekeeping,
he explains, ' ... there appears to be a tiger in the dining-room. Perhaps you will
permit the twelve-bores to be used?' Those in the drawing-room then hear three
gunshots, and when the employer enquires a few minutes later whether all is well,
the butler is entirely unruffled:

'Dinner will be served at the usual time, and I am pleased to say there will
be no discernible traces left of the recent occurrence by that time.' (p. 36)

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 SPEECH, CULTURE AND HISTORY IN THE NOVELS OF KAZUO ISHIGURO

The invasion by the jungle has been neutralized by the formality and imper-
sonality of these phrases.
A parallel scene later in the novel forms one of its emotional climaxes - if that
is the appropriate term for a scene in which no emotion is directly expressed.
Stevens, who knows that his father is dying upstairs, is supervising the smooth
running of an important dinner-party, in the course of which the news is brought
to him of the old man's death. To desert his professional duties would be as
unthinkable as to show emotion before his employer's guests, and even in his
private conversation with his fellow-servant Stevens is as stiff and formal as the
shirt he is wearing: when she asks "Will you come up and see him?" he replies,
that he is too busy:

'In that case, Mr Stevens, will you permit me to close his eyes?'
'I would be most grateful if you would, Miss Kenton.'

His next words register a flicker of conscience:

'Miss Kenton, please don't think me unduly improper in not ascending to

see my father in his deceased condition just at this moment. You see, I
know my father would have wished me to carry on just now.'

His father too has been a butler, and his impassivity is bred in the bone, but it
is striking to see how his professional mask also involves a linguistic mask whereby
such expressions as 'unduly improper' and 'deceased condition' hold at bay the
realization of death and bereavement. One refers naturally to the butler's code of
behaviour, but a code in a stricter sense is involved: a system of linguistic equiva-
lents that can be substituted for, and hence will hold at bay, inadmissible or
intolerable meanings.
It is also natural and commonplace to refer to the formalities and conventions
of Japanese linguistic and non-linguistic behaviour as a code, and this suggests an
important link between what we may for convenience call Ishiguro's English
novel and his Japanese novels. The narrator-protagonist of An Artist of the Floating
World has much in common with Stevens, despite the fact that he is Japanese and
not English, a distinguished artist and not a servant. He is an elderly man who
looks back from a postwar to a prewar period: his narrative takes place in the years
1948-50, and there are at the outset and subsequently several reminders of the
postwar mood of Japan: the phrase 'before the war' occurs in the very first
paragraph, there is an early reference to 'the surrender' and another to 'the
cynicism and bitterness of our day' (pp. 10,21), the setting is a city large parts of
which still lie in ruins, and a hotel has been redecorated 'in a somewhat vulgar
manner - intended, no doubt, to strike the American clientele with whom the
place is popular as being charmingly "Japanese'" (p. 116).
It gradually emerges that the retired artist has supported the rise of militarism
by allowing his artistic gifts to be used for the purposes of propaganda: like the

165
 NORMAN PAGE

butler, that is, he has given his support to a misguided and defeated cause, and
like Stevens's narrative the artist's is permeated by a mixture of self-deception and
self-justification. In an early scene a young child, his grandson, speaks a truth that
no one else has spoken to the artist's face and that he has not really come to terms
with himself:

'Father says you used to be a famous artist. But you had to finish.'
'I've retired, !chiro. Everyone retires when they get to a certain age. It's
only right, they deserve a rest.'
'Father says you had to finish. Because Japan lost the war.' (p. 32)

The theme of this novel, as of its successor, is responsibility for past actions in
both the private and the public spheres. In one of the most important scenes of An
Artist of the Floating World the artist makes a semi-public confession of his political
and moral misjudgments':

'There are some who would say it is people like myself who are responsi-
ble for the terrible things that happened to this nation of ours. As far as I
am concerned, I freely admit I made many mistakes. I accept that much of
what I did was ultimately harmful to our nation, that mine was part of an
influence that resulted in untold suffering for our own people ... All I can
say is that at the time I acted in good faith. I believed in all sincerity I was
achieving good for my fellow countrymen ...' (pp. 123-4)

There is a closely similar passage - already quoted - in The Remains of the Day,
with the important difference that the butler shifts moral responsibility to his dead
master:

It is hardly my fault if his lordship's life and work have turned out today
to look, at best, a sad waste - and it is quite illogical that I should feel any
regret or shame on my own account. (p. 201)

The old servant's attempt to quieten his conscience, the workings of which are
evident throughout his narrative, is hardly convincing and does nothing to palli-
ate the ultimate authorial judgment against him.
There are, then, many similarities between Ishiguro's second and third novels,
above all in their mediation of public history through private experience. A crucial
difference, however, is that all the characters of An Artist of the Floating World are
Japanese speakers, compelling the novelist to confront a problem that many novel-
ists have faced before, in texts as diverse as A Tale of Two Cities and For Whom the
Bell Tolls: that of presenting foreign speech within an English-language narrative.
Ishiguro's solution operates on several levels: he uses a very limited number of
Japanese words in contexts where their meaning is obvious, but he also writes
English dialogue that is quite unlike contemporary speech in the English-speaking

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 SPEECH, CULTURE AND HISTORY IN THE NOVELS OF KAZUO ISHIGURO

world in.its extreme and sometimes archaic formality. Thus a mother says of her
child that he has 'inconvenienced the taxi-driver with numerous questions' (p. 15),
and a man remarks, 'We had some sad news at work today. The President of our
parent company is now deceased' (p. 55). The stilted quality of this latter sentence
conceals deep feelings concerning a dramatic event, the suicide of a man in
atonement for a moral offence. A more extended example of the same use of
formal language simultaneously to conceal and convey strong emotion occurs
near the end of the novel when the narrator recalls a turning-point in his career
and his moral life, his decision that he cannot 'remain forever an artist of the
floating world' but must involve himself in the world of events (pp. 179-80).
Significantly, the old man's grandson is a partly Americanized child whose
speech is sprinkled with English words and allusions to an internationalized
popular culture: his hero is the Lone Ranger and, as his mother points out, 'When
he plays cowboys, he tries to speak English' (p. 35). In a scene in which the child
and the old man go to the cinema together to see a Western movie, the gulf
between the two generations is evident.
The formality of speech and manners on the part of Ishiguro's Japanese
characters may simply confirm the assumptions of a Western reader, but it is more
surprising to find it paralleled in a novel about an Englishman living in England.
In endowing the central figure of his third novel with the temperamental and
professional attributes we find in Stevens, the novelist has gone as far as it is
possible to go in transferring to an English context a mode of communication and
behaviour that resembles the Japanese in its use of a highly formal surface to cover
tensions, concealments and self-deceptions. Both butler and artist have been
moulded by traditional and hierarchical worlds whose disintegration they have
survived to witness; both look back from a postwar world of bewildering change
to a prewar past constituted by both public and private events and express their
perceptions and their misreadings of cataclysmic historical phenomena through
local, even trivial experiences. Both are, of course, narrators of their own stories:
slow-paced and incurably digressive, they repeatedly allow their account of the
present to be interrupted by and set in contrast to a remembered past evoked
through time-shifts and narrative looping.
If The Remains of the Day is Ishiguro's English novel and An Artist of the Floating
World his Japanese novel, A Pale View of Hills is both, for it concerns a Japanese
woman who has survived the bombing of Nagasaki and the harsh conditions of
the immediate postwar period to settle in England. Again, however, Ishiguro's
thematic preoccupations and structural and stylistic modes are consistent with
what has already been described. Once more an elderly first-person narrator
revisits the past through long excursions of memory, and once again there is an
exploration of the relationship of private lives to public history. In the evocation of
postwar Japan the sense of a world radically and irredeemably changed is very
strong: the shock of the atomic bomb and the death and devastation it has brought,
and of the defeat and its sequel, has deeply affected the individual psyche as well
as national life and political status. The narrator recalls the events of her youth

167
 NORMAN PAGE

reluctantly but obsessively: as she says at one point,

... such things are long in the past now and I have no wish to ponder them
yet again. My motives for leaving Japan were justifiable, ... There is
nothing to be gained by going over such matters again. (p. 91)

But she continues to go over them, moved by guilt and sorrow into this
persistent act of self-explanation and self-justification. Like the male narrators of
the other two novels, she is also a victim of self-deception, though she does
explicitly recognize at one point the distortions and falsifications to which the
remembering mind and the autobiographical act are prone. Without a fuller
discussion of this subtle and powerful first novel it may already be clear that it
establishes a pattern that its successors follow - not merely repetitively but with
more profound explorations into the common themes of guilt, responsibility and
self-knowledge.
Ishiguro's work has been praised by reviewers for its elegance, lucidity, preci-
sion, polish, gentleness and poetic sensitivity. These seem to me, if I may say so, to
be tributes to the surface rather than to the depths. The formality of the narrative
style, like the almost ritualistic quality of some of the dialogue, creates the illusion
of geriatric serenity that conceals self-doubt and even anguish. One waits eagerly
to see whether his next novel will continue to rework the themes and the narrative
style that can already be recognized as characteristic; certainly his first three
novels have a remarkable and powerful consistency.

REFERENCES

Page-references are to the following editions:

An Artist of the Floating World (London: Faber & Faber, paperback edition 1987;
originally published 1986).
A Pale View of Hills (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1983; originally published
by Faber & Faber, 1982).
The Remains of the Day (London: Faber & Faber, 1989).

168
 THE CHINESE MARGIN IN PHILIPPINE
LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

Lily Rose Tope

For the Chinese, being a minority group in the Philippines has never been easy.
They have often been the object of merciless derision not only because of their
alien ways but also because of the Filipinos' distrust of their ability to survive in
the direst of circumstances and their incredible talent at accumulating wealth.
History too had a hand in driving the wedge between the two peoples. The
Spaniards, fearful of the increasing influence of the Chinese in the colonial economy,
set forth a divide-and-rule campaign which resulted in the belief among the
natives that the Chinese were out to fleece them and which justified the persecu-
tion and (in the spirit of colonial zeal) massacre of thousands of Chinese.
This is unfortunate especially when one considers how China has enriched
Philippine culture. Although the cultural exchange between the Philippines and
China is not as intense as that between the Philippines and its colonizers, Philip-
pine-Chinese relations are older, dating back to pre-Hispanic times, or in Chinese
terms, the Tang dynasty. In fact the Philippines, for a time, was considered a
colony of China and Philippine datus (chieftains) periodically paid tribute to the
Ming emperors. That China (and other Asian countries for that matter) does not
enjoy the esteem we accord our colonizers underscores the Filipinos' lack of
appreciation of Chinese contributions to Philippine culture - and these contribu-
tions are significant. Let me cite a few. The Chinese taught the Filipinos the art of
retail trade and commercial farming. 1 They taught us the virtues of frugality and
enterprise as well as filial piety which later brought about the extended family
system. Certain social customs such as the hiring of professional mourners for a
funeral, the veneration of ancestors, the wearing of white garments for mourning,
the use of firecrackers during the New Year, to mention only a few, are of Chinese
origin.2 Our languages were also enriched by Chinese words, incorporating tech-
nologies, implements and social institutions of Chinese origins into our everyday
life. Words depicting utensils for everyday needs abound: batya, susi, hikaw, tanso,

1. Teresita Ang See, 'Chinese Elements in Philippine Culture', paper read at the University of the
East, Department of History Lecture, n.d., p. 2.
2. Ibid.
 LIL Y ROSE TOPE

siyanse, etc. Words depicting kinship are just as numerous: ate, kuya, ditse, sanse, diko,
etc. A popular source of new words is food: pet say, siopao, hopia, mami, upo, toge, etc.
Moreover, the Chinese have contributed to the cause of nationhood in the persons
of patriotic men and women of Chinese extraction who have bound their fates
with that of their Filipino compatriots. General Paua fought against Spain and was
described as more Filipino than most Filipinos. Jose Rizal, the national hero, had
parents who were of Chinese descent. During more recent times, Chinese genes
gave Roman Catholic Philippines its first saint, macho Philippines its first woman
president and pious devotees a church leader whose cardinal sin is his abundant
sense of humor.
What is worth noting is that this cultural relationship is relatively painless, for
the elements absorbed into Filipino life were never imposed. The Chinese, except
for one occasion, came in search of trade and greener pastures, and not of con-
quest. Thus Philippine culture acquired a degree of Chineseness not through
imposition but through assimilation.
Early literary relations between the two countries were practically nil because
of two reasons. First, the Chinese came solely to trade. The first Chinese settlers in
the Philippines were not men of culture, they were mostly merchants, artisans,
laborers and peasants. Literature had no place in the struggle to survive in alien
territory. Second, the language barrier proved insurmountable. The Chinese kept
their language within their communities and the pictographic quality of their
script made it difficult for the Filipinos to decipher the language.
It was only recently when second generation Philippine-educated Chinese,
conversant in English and Filipino, decided to jo~n the social mainstream that
some sign of literary activity was felt.
Among the initial activities was translation, from and into Chinese, English
and Filipino. Another important event was the introduction of the printing press
into Philippine life, a legacy of the early Chinese migrants. Filipino writers such as
Virginia Moreno, Ricaredo Demetillo, Emmanuel Torres, Alejandrino Hufana and
N.V.M. Gonzales were influenced by Chinese writings. Of more recent develop-
ment is the role played by Maoist esthetics in the formation of Philippine protest
literature from the late 60s to the present.
The most fruitful literary product of the marriage of the two cultures is the
emergence of a Philippine Chinese literature which is defined as the 'body of
written work published by the Philippine Chinese writers in whatever genre ...
and in whatever language (Chinese, English, Filipino) whose subject matter can be
about the Philippines and Philippine culture and society, about China and things
Chinese or about the Philippine Chinese community.'3 Its development parallels
the phases of Chinese migration to the Philippines and reflects the shifts in the
orientation and function of Philippine Chinese writings.
The earliest writings belong to first generation Chinese migrants who were
driven by poverty, famine and lack of opportunities to the Philippines in search of

3. Teresita Ang See, 'Philippine Literature in Chinese', TULAY, (February 1988), p. 61.

170
 THE CHINESE MARGIN IN PHILIPPINE LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

a better life. Hardy, practical and determined to succeed, they regarded the Philip-
pines as just a place of work and not a promised land where one settles perma-
nently. It was unthinkable for them to think of dying on non-Chinese soil.
The literature produced by the first generation Chinese is 'expectedly Chinese
in medium and content. The overlying themes reflected their sentiment for China,
their longing for home, their yearning for the families they left behind and the
hardships they went through. It was essentially literature for and about immi-
grants whose dreams were those of returning home to China, of seeing their
country become strong and prosperous once more.'4 This literary stage thus earns
the appellation 'hua chiao' or sojourner's stage, manifesting the writer's intention
to simply pass through.
These migrants however found it more and more difficult to return home.
They started to grow roots. To complicate matters, Chinese wives were not al-
lowed to accompany their husbands so that men often resorted to having two
families - one in China, another in the Philippines. They began to speak Filipino
and English although schools remained China-oriented. Some of them weakened
ties with the motherland but their ties with the local Chinese communities remained
strong. Slowly but surely they acquired Philippine interests. Though the majority
retained their allegiance to China, many began to distance themselves from a
country they would never see again. Finally, they renounced Chinese citizenship
and became naturalized Filipinos. Thus began the second phase of Philippine
Chinese writing.
The last and current phase saw the emergence of second and third generation
Chinese who have been educated in the Philippines. Their first language is English
or Filipino and not Chinese. Having no first hand experience of China, they only
know of China through textbooks and the stories told them by their elders. These
young Chinese may regard themselves as ethnically Chinese but they also prefer
hamburger and coke to dumplings and tea. Chopsticks and Chinese music alien-
ate them. s These are the hua yi or the Philippine-born, Philippine-oriented Chinese
who hold Filipino citizenship.
It is the works of these Filipinized Chinese which form the corpus of Philip-
pine Chinese literature. The writers want to be regarded as a Philippine minority
group, similar to the Igorots and the Tausugs, and their language (Fujianese/
Hokkien) a Philippine dialect, on a par with Hoko and Hiligaynon. Their greatest
task and dream is not only to be heard and recognized as a distinct group with
traditions and values peculiar to them but also to be accepted as active contribu-
tors to the creation of a distinct but pluralistic Philippine culture.
Philippine Chinese literature is an anguished literature, the product of a
people who have come to love their adopted country but have neither completely
severed old ties with the old life nor firmly established strong ties with the new. It

4. Teresita Ang See, 'Social Change: Impact on Philippine Chinese Literature', Mimeograph.
5. Ibid.

171
 LILY ROSE TOPE

is cursed with a dual fate, which is expectedly the source of conflict arising from
the competing claims of a Chinese heritage and a Filipino environment. 6
Philippine Chinese literature in English is doubly cursed, for if language is
consciousness, then the battle becomes three cornered. Western education, em-
bodied in the use of English, joins the fray.
In the Philippine context, the choice of literary medium always has sociologi-
cal and political ramifications. English has always been associated with colonial-
ism and its modern form, imperialism; its users have been (openly or otherwise)
branded as elitist. The language of education, especially of higher education,
English, has set apart those who can afford good education from those who can
not. In fact, to this day, the mark of a well-educated man (often read as having
access to better opportunities) is his fluency in English. Education, then, causes
stratification rather than acts as the great leveller.
English also carries with it a whole gamut of values and cultural traditions
that often clashed with those of the Chinese and the Filipinos. Thus the Hollywood
imagery of Paul Stephen Lim, for example, is just as alienating to the Filipinos as to
the Chinese.
The irony is that the Chinese Filipino acquires fluency in English in the
process of his Filipinization. He absorbs the culture and idiosyncrasies of the
Filipinos as well as their historical baggage. He too makes an ideological choice
when he chooses to write in English.
What is noteworthy however is that generally Chinese Filipino writers writing
in Filipino talk of things Philippine. The questions of identity and belonging seem
to be more pressing among the English writers. My conjecture is that English,
fortunately or unfortunately, allows the writer a third choice. He cannot write in
Chinese; he is not proficient in it. He does not want to write in Filipino and be
totally assimilated. English is neutral for it reflects neither total assimilation nor
the retention of the old culture. In a way, English serves as a buffer language that
relieves the writer of his cultural dilemma. Paradoxically, this could result in
greater difficulty to belong to any culture. Like Paul Stephen Lim's Philippine-
educated, Taiwanese-passport-wielding US immigrant, the Philippine Chinese
writer may find himself unable to fuse three mind sets and may end up mixed up,
alienated or lost.
Being a Chinese Filipino writer is not a matter of race, it is a matter of
sensibility. In fact, some Philippine Chinese writers concern themselves with
universal themes such as love and death, and on many occasions do not reveal
anything about their race or their peculiar situation in Philippine society. Others
such as Linda Ty Casper, probably the most famous Filipino writer of Chinese
descent, write of things Philippine without betraying their ancestry.
The focus of this paper however will be on those who write as Chinese

6. Richard Uysiuseng, 'Dual Heritage as a Source of Conflict in Contemporary Short Fiction by

Philippine Chinese Writers in English', Undergraduate thesis, Ateneo de Manila University, n.d.

172
 THE CHINESE MARGIN IN PHILIPPINE LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

Filipinos, those who manifest the preoccupations and sensibility of the group,
those who have put their semiotics (to quote Professor Thumboo) into the lan-
guage.
What do Chinese Filipino writers in English write about? The problem of
assimilation is easily one of the most recurrent themes in Philippine Chinese
writings. Bound by strong Chinese traditions on the one hand and urged by the
necessity to adapt on the other, the characters of Philippine Chinese fiction are
tom between two loyalties that are equally essential to their well-being. The Choice
by Dolly Dee for instance tells the story of a family forced to uphold a debt of
gratitude owed by someone long dead. A first generation migrant (the grandfa-
ther of the narrator) was the object of the generosity of a neighbor in the old village
who lent him money to go to the Philippines. Long after the debt had been paid,
the narrator's family continued to send the neighbor's family expensive presents
although the narrator's family was not too well-off. In the end, the narrator
decides to stop the remittances, significantly cutting the umbilical chord that
bound him to the old world and its traditions, symbolically embracing his new
country where he and his family will begin anew.
Rain by Charlson Ong, a complex story about the clash of generations, high-
lights the failure of the first generation immigrants to completely assimilate, in
contrast with the second generation's ease in embracing huanna culture. The father
of the narrator, long widowed, assuages his loneliness by masturbating in front of
his Filipina maid. He does not touch her physically though he could have, because
a sexual act with her would mean tainting his Chinese purity. After all, she is a
huanna, a native. Certainly, a strong sense of 'they' and 'us' pervade the story.
The second-generation characters usually opt for the values of the land of their
birth rather than those of the land of their origin. As they repudiate the old world
mentality of their fathers, so do they embrace the culture of their new nation. The
choice is painful, the victory over tradition pyrrhic, for in the process they lose
their fathers.
Sociological problems peculiar to the Chinese Filipinos are also central to
many stories. Richard Uysiuseng in his study entitled 'Dual Heritage as a Source
of Conflict in Contemporary Short Fiction by Philippine Chinese Writers in Eng-
lish' lists four: the two-family system, filial piety, Chinese women and western
education and national identity.7
The first problem occurs when a Chinese man who has left behind a wife in
China marries a Filipina and raises a second family. Confrontations are rare but
when they do happen they are classic cases of culture clash. The Burial by Benito Lim
chronicles the mutual insistence of each family (Chinese and Filipino) to observe
each nationality's death ritual. While one family employs Buddhist rites during
the wake, the other insists on bringing the casket to a Catholic church for a final
blessing.
Confucian undertones emerge in stories that deal with the problem of filial

7. Ibid.

173
 LILY ROSE TOPE

piety. In Doreen Yu's The Sins of the Songs a martinet of a mother invades the fami-
lies of her sons in Manila. A veritable shrew of a woman, she indirectly causes the
death of a grandchild and quarrels v~olently with another. Her sons abandon her
but by virtue of her age and status, she is said to deserve better treatment and a
more comfortable old age. Her sons may have good reasons for abandoning her
but they also commit the worst social crime. What is significant is that whereas
filial piety holds high priority among traditional overseas Chinese families, its
excesses are not honored in Filipino homes. The Chinese Filipino therefore prac-
tices a watered down version of Confucian filial piety that is indicative of his
Filipinized sinicity.
Gender themes arise when a Chinese set of patriarchal values is confronted by
a culture inhabited by strong women with a liberal westernized education. In
Twentieth Century Romance a highly unconventional girl (by Chinese standards)
opts for a Caucasian husband with whom she cohabits before she marries him. She
jilts her almost perfect Chinese boyfriend. While the time of arranged marriages
has long been gone, Chinese Filipino girls still seek the approval of their parents
before marrying. The heroine therefore breaks several social taboos. To the dismay
of her relatives, she not only chooses her mate, she also decides how to conduct
her relationships. In the eyes of her relatives, she has violated her womanhood by
her adherence to modern norms. The writer, however, is sympathetic and mutes
the severity of the social crime by creating an understanding Chinese boyfriend
who upholds the girl's decision by giving her away on her wedding day.
Grief by Caroline Hau suggests the strength of the weaker sex in the face of
adversity. Set in World War II Philippines, the story revolves around a Chinese
woman whose husband was taken away by the Japanese for conscription. She
sublimates fear and grief by working on the grinder that creates soya milk which
she in turn manufactures into tofu or bean curd.
The most striking aspect of the story is the almost sexual description of the
process of grinding - the wooden pole which the woman grasps powerfully, the
tensing of her back as she grinds, the short panting breaths, and the white milk
that eventually issues forth. The female hand on the grinder seems to imply the
woman's fortitude in the face of loss. Alone in the process of procreation, she takes
the role of life-giver by producing life-sustaining soya milk which saves her family
from hunger.
The search for identity is probably the most pervasive theme in this body of
works. Like all migrant peoples, the Chinese Filipinos have had to deal with
hostility from those who are threatened by their presence. They also had to get
used to being second-class citizens forever. Worse, Philippine-born, Philippine-
educated Chinese had to straddle a wide fence between their Chinese features and
upbringing and the Filipino world outside. They have to be Chinese inside, Filipi-
nos outside; Chinese at home, Filipinos outside home. Who are we, they all ask. In
an essay entitled 'Life in this Country: Through a Pair of Chinky Eyes' Jane Tiu
speaks of how she was cruelly taunted by her classmates because she was Chinese,
how she feared teachers who are prejudiced against the Chinese, how she felt

174
 THE CHINESE MARGIN IN PHILIPPINE LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

ashamed at being Chinese. Nowhere is this theme explored better than in the
works of the two best writers of Chinese Filipino fiction: Paul Stephen Lim and
Charlson Ong.
Paul Stephen Lim, a Chinese Filipino writing in the United States, creates
character's who are defeated by their circumstances. In Flight the main character,
Wing, tries to escape his dual fate (of being both Chinese and Filipino), his dual
tragedy (of being unacceptable to both) by going to the United States, only to find
out that he cannot escape from himself. He suffers from a severe identity crisis
expected of a westernized Chinese Filipino, eventually losing himself in the three-
cornered battle.

I am Chinese and yet I do not sympathize with Chiang Kai Shek ... I am
Chinese and yet I take no pride in Mao Tse Tung ... I am Chinese yet my
roots are Philippine. So why is it that I have never identified completely
with the Filipinos? I only know one thing, that everyday I feel the aliena-
tion growing.

Charlson Ong's characters similarly fight the identity battle but although the
pain of self-acceptance is equally searing, they eventually confront and accept this
cultural duality. The young man in Another Country is typically of Chinese par-
entage, is Philippine educated, and is ignorant of China and the Chinese. He lands
a job in Taipei but while there is moved not by the Taiwanese national issues but
by the plight of Filipino domestics. In Rain and Owl sons spiritually abandon fa-
thers who dream of the old world. Not that they love their fathers less, but second
generation Chinese Filipinos often have to make a choice between isolation and
assimilation. Knowing the futility of identifying with the culture of their fathers,
they opt for the culture of their sons. Without really abandoning their Chineseness,
they cleave to Philippine life, their sense of nation having become Filipino. Finally,
in Men of the East the Chinese Filipino comes to grips with the reality that he is in
the Philippines. Though he feels nostalgic towards China, the fact is his problems
are Philippine problems (militarization of the countryside, insurgency) and it
would be useless to think otherwise. The son, like other second or third generation
Chinese Filipinos, has made his choice and has embraced the social tensions of the
land of his birth as if they were his own. He emerges a winner in the three-
cornered battle; he has found himself.
Philippine Chinese literature is marginalized literature because of certain
factors that hamper its development. First, the average Filipino is ignorant of
China and the Chinese. Hence, there is evident danger of misreading and misap-
prehension. Second, because of the above, Philippine Chinese literature cultivates
a limited audience. Thus readership remains minimaL And third, there is the
prejudice and hostility with which the dominant culture (Filipino culture) regards
the Chinese. Philippine literature itself reflects Filipino prejudices towards the
Chinese. A study by Joaquin Sy reveals that the image of the Chinese in Philippine
literature is generally negative. First, he is depicted as filthy rich but the origin of

175
 LILY ROSE TOPE

his wealth is dubious. He may be a stingy sundry shop owner or an unscrupulous

capitalist. Second, he is pictured as oversexed. The two-family system and the
traditional practice of concubinage did not go down well in Roman Catholic
Philippines. Third, he is uncouth and ignorant, pathetic and despicable in his
addiction to opium, and is very often the butt of jokes.
The good news is that more Filipinos are now being exposed to Philippine
Chinese writings and the Chinese Filipino, who in the past has never been re-
garded as a man of letters, is now being recognized for his talent, not as a Chinese
or a Filipino but as a writer. The Philippine Chinese writers may yet become one of
the strongest emergent literary groups in the country.
In conclusion, Philippine Chinese writing is young, the writers' pens not
lacking in uncertainty and creative dread. There are many more stories to tell, a lot
of contexts to define. In its maturity, however, it is definitely a force that will not
fail to make its mark.

176
 THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF ENGLISH-
LANGUAGE DRAMA IN MALAYSIA

Nur Nina Zuhra

Modern drama in Malaysia has been written in all four of the country's major
language streams: Bahasa Malaysia or Malay (the national language), Chinese,
Tamil, and English. Most of the research done on modern Malaysian theatre has so
far focussed on plays in Malay which do, in fact, constitute the dominant theatre
trend in the country. 1 Modern Malay theatre has a historical development dating
back to the 1930s and, since the 1950s, has actively kept pace with the nationalist
movement and subsequent issues of nation-building.
To my knowledge, no comprehensive studies have yet been made on the
development of theatre in other languages spoken in Malaysia. In this paper, it is
not possible to present such a comprehensive view of English-language drama,
but I do hope to provide a basis for further research by taking a broad look at the
social context which has nurtured English-language theatre in Malaysia.

The Beginnings

That English became an important language in Malaysia (the name given to the
Federation of Malaya on September 16, 1963) as an offshoot of British colonialism
is easily understandable. During British rule in the 19th and first half of the 20th
centuries (in then-Malaya), students who were educated beyond the primary level
often attended secondary schools where English was the medium of instruction.
After Independence on August 31, 1957, and until the 1970s, higher education in
Malaysia was predominantly in English. In addition, thousands of Malaysians
have, over the years, studied abroad, especially in England, America, Canada, and
Australia. As a result, many educated Malaysians have tended to use English
partially, or to a large extent, in their daily interactions with family members,
friends, and colleagues, as well as with expatriates with whom they associate at
work or in social and cultural activities, such as theatre.

1. For comprehensive discussions of modem Malay drama, see Nancy K. Nanney, 'An Analysis
of Modem Malaysian Drama', Dissertation, University of Hawaii, 1983; and Solehah Ishak, The
Histrionics of Development: A Study of Three Contemporary Malay Playwrights (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan
Bahasa dan Pusataka, 1987).
 NUR NINA ZUHRA

In view of the above circumstances, it was only natural that a local English-
language literature and drama would eventually emerge, influenced in part by the
Western precedents studied and performed in Malaysia and abroad. Although the
writing and producing of Malay-language plays had already become an estab-
lished cultural activity during the 1950s, particularly at Malay teacher training
colleges such as the influential Sultan Idris Training College in Tanjung Malim,
Perak, the heyday for English-language drama written by Malaysians occurred
later: during the latter half of the 1960s through the beginning of the 1970s.
The actual roots of the English-language theatre can be found in the staging of
amateur theatricals in English of popular Western plays under the sponsorship of
the expatriate community during the colonial period. Indonesian touring groups
also performed in Malaya at this time and had an impact upon the development of
Malay drama, but not upon the later generation of English-language writers for
whom the dominant influence was from the West.
The involvement of Malaysians in amateur expatriate-led productions was
limited to acting roles. That is, prior to the mid-1960s, Malaysians had not yet
participated in English-language theatre as writers, directors, producers or set
designers. 2
The year 1965 was a turning point in English-language drama. In that year,
two productions were staged with all-Malaysian casts. Lidra (Literary and Drama
Association), a student society of the University of Malaya, produced Beckett's
Waiting for Codot and Bosco D'Cruz directed Agatha Christie's Witness for the
Prosecution. In addition, the Malaysian Arts Council's 1965 playwriting competi-
tion was won by budding Malaysian playwright Edward Dorall for his first play
The Young Must Be Strong. These events inaugurated a vigorous period of
playwriting and play production by Malaysians in English.
Prominent among the new breed of English-language playwrights at this time
one finds Malay, Chinese, Indian and Eurasian writers who reflect the country's
multiracial society (47% Malay, 8% other indigenous peoples, 34% Chinese, 9%
Indians and 2% other races). In particular, the works of Edward Dorall, Syed Alwi,
Lee Joo For, and Patrick Yeoh, who were active during this period, are available in
two volumes published in 1972: New Drama One and New Drama Two.
These writers studied and/or worked in a Westernized, English-language
milieu, but they nonetheless sought to give expression to Malaysian life and
concerns in the post-Independence period. No doubt envisioning themselves as
part of an artistic vanguard, they sought to Malaysianize modern theatre through
the use of settings, characters, themes, and plots drawn from the realities of life in
the new nation. Since they were educated in English, it was natural that they
should write in English. Albeit English was the legacy of a colonial past, they tried
to make the language work for them in a contemporary Malaysian setting. They

2. 'Introduction' in New Drama One (ed. Lloyd Fernando) (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press,
1972), p. viii.

178
 THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF ENGLISH-LANGUAGE DRAMA IN MALAYSIA

no doubt felt a special challenge in doing so. After all, English had previously
served to inform them of the world at large, and in particular foreign literature
and drama: hopefully it could now serve them in developing their own artistic
potential and social-mindedness.
The English writer's initial attempts to Malaysianize drama in post-Independ-
ence Malaysia have their parallel in the earlier efforts of Malay writers to create a
relevant local theatre in the pre-Independence era. These Malay writers, particu-
larly those who formed the influential literary group called ASAS 50 in Singapore,
allied the cause of nationalism with the development of the Malay language as a
language of modem literature and drama. Among writers in both language streams
there was evidently a sense of pride and challenge in what local writers could
accomplish, even though in actual fact Malay and English-language writers were
little aware of each other's efforts.
Edward Dorall authored the first play in English by a Malaysian to be staged
in public: Arise a Youth! The play was produced in 1966 when Dorall was teaching
English literature at Victoria Institution in Kuala Lumpur. Dorall's next play, A Tiger
Is Loose in Our Community, was presented in 1967 and portrays the struggles of
young Malaysians confronting an unknown future. Dorall uses Malaysian English
- 'the fragmentary speech which can be heard throughout Malaysia'3 - to create
a lively local atmosphere. His last dramatic effort is a sophisticated and intellec-
tual trilogy entitled Nicodemus Also (including The Hour of the Dog, The Foolishness
of God, and The Death of the Old Man) which deals with matters of conscience, in-
tegrity and compromise.
Syed Alwi is another major English-language playwright/director of this
period. His first play, The More We Get Together, was written at the University of
Minnesota where he was studying theatre. The play explores personal relation-
ships between American and foreign students. A later play, Going North,
philosophizes about the nature of choice and chance in human life.
Syed Alwi first achieved prominence as a theatre activist through his involve-
ment with the Malaysian Arts Theatre Group (MATG) which was originally an
expatriate-led Western-oriented drama association in which Malaysians partici-
pated mainly as actors. Under Syed's leadership, Malaysians gained control of the
organization in 1967 through general elections and they began to produce plays
that were entirely their own. The group's 1968 production of Lela Mayarig{ an ad-
aptation of a traditional Malay tale, proved their dedication to creating local
theatre. Although profifs from the show were minimal, Lela Mayang was an en-
couraging artistic enterprise. The group was satisfied to have achieved self-ex-
pression and to have loosened the grip of the West in English-language drama. 4
The most prolific English-language dramatist of this period was Lee Joo For,
whose satire Son of Zen was performed in New York. Lee Joo For was noted for

3. Ibid., p. xii.
4. Ibid., p. x.

179
 NUR NINA ZUHRA

writing plays quickly in reaction to topical issues. Between 1968 and 1971, he
created at least 16 dramas, several of which have been published.
A fourth promising playwright was Patrick Yeoh. In The Need to Be, Yeoh uses
Malaysian English to portray the life of a poor family whose hopes for a better
future are shattered when the eldest son, a lawyer living abroad, refuses to return
to Malaysia and help the family. In the end, the only daughter remains a prosti-
tute, and the youngest son becomes a thief who is killed by the police.

The 1970s

Prior to the 1970s, Malaysian drama developed independently along separate

language lines. Therefore, English-language writers were basically unfamiliar
with their Malay-language counterparts, and vice-versa. At the start of the 1970s
certain drama festivals were held which brought Malay and English-language
works and writers together so that an interchange of ideas and mutual recognition
could start to occur. Highlighting this interchange was Genta Rasa, a 3-day-and-
night outdoor cultural show (May 13-15, 1971). Free to the public, Genta Rasa
attracted audiences totalling more than 7,000 people. At this event, Malay and
English works were presented and well-known artists from both language streams
were able to meet.
Genta Rasa was, in fact, an attempt to create a positive experience in the
aftermath of racial disturbances which stunned the country on May 13, 1969. On
that date, riots broke out between Malays and Chinese in Kuala Lumpur. This
national tragedy brought about a necessary reevaluation of the purposes and
policies of the nation. A major cause for the disturbances was economic disparity.
The Malays were significantly poorer than the Chinese who dominated the economy
at that time. As a means of easing tensions after May 13th and restructuring
society to eradicate poverty, the government instituted certain programs to help
the Malays advance economically. The government also formulated a national
cultural policy which stated in effect that Malay culture would be the basis of
national culture, that Islam is the basis of Malay culture and that other cultural
groups could make a worthwhile contribution to national culture. In addition, the
medium of education in the public schools and universities was progressively
converted to Malay, with English taught as a second language.
Under these socio-cultural conditions, Malay drama rose in terms of national
recognition, and indeed the 1970s saw a rich flowering of theatrical experimenta-
tion among Malay playwright/ directors. At the same time, however, there was a
noticeable decline in English-language theatre activity, particularly in terms of
home-grown English-language plays.
Although English-language plays continued to be written in the 1970s, the
exuberance of the earlier period faded. Some English-language playwrights may
have felt that their works would not receive enough attention and support since
they were not writing in the national language. Lee Joo For emigrated to Australia

180
 THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF ENGUSH-LANGUAGE DRAMA IN MALAYSIA

to teach art and eventually gave up theatre to become a Christian evangelist.

Edward Dorall, who became a lecturer at the University of Malaya, and Patrick
Yeoh stopped writing plays altogether. And Syed Alwi decided to write and direct
plays in Malay and has achieved a great deal of success as a Malay-language
playwright. Some other prominent theatre people who had previously worked
mainly in English-language theatre also switched to Malay drama at that time, and
added their expertise and enthusiasm to the development of Malay theatre in the
1970s, among them being director/critic Krishen Jit, and well-known performers
Faridah Merican and Rahim Razali. These theatre people may have felt they had·
lost touch with the masses by doing theatre in English that essentially catered to
the Western-educated sector of society. They may also have felt out of touch with
their own roots and sought to rediscover these roots through. Malay theatre.

The 1980s and Onwards

However, English-language drama never died out completely. Through to the

present day, various theatre and student groups have continued to perform in
English. The repertoire comprises both original and translated works. Malaysian
plays written originally in English and occasionally a Malay play translated into
English are performed, as well as Western, Asian and other non-Western works.
Indeed, during the 1980s, there were signs of a renewed confidence in English-
language theatre and a flexible approach to the issue of language and drama in
Malaysia.
For example, Syed Alwi's 1981 play Z: 00 M/1984 (the third play in the Alang
Trilogy) is bi-lingual. This play shows the writer's concern for the loss of Malay
values, culturally rich and humanistic, in the face of the continuing onslaught of
Western, in this case American, values and images. The play traces the curious
encounter between Lily, an American woman who heads a delegation that comes
to Malaysia to prepare for then-President Ronald Reagan's visit, and Alang (the
Malay cultural hero created by Syed Alwi) whose versatility in silat (the Malay
martial arts form) wins him acclaim at home and in the U.S.
Krishen Jit, a promoter of Malay-language drama in the 1970s as critic, pro-
ducer and director; is now doing English-language theatre once again. At the end
of 1983, Krishen Jit, choreographer Marion D'Cruz and playwright/director Chin
San Sooi established the Five Arts Centre with the intention of training students in
drama, dance and creative writing. The Centre presents workshop performances
of works in progress and invites audience reaction and discussion. As stated in
one of their brochures: 'The Centre stages dance and theatre performances with an
emphasis on exposing original works for the general public. The Five Arts Centre
is committed to the training and exhibition of distinct Malaysian cultural forms. It
emphasizes training as much as producing with the aim of leading Malaysians
toward a finer appreciation of their plural multi-dimensional artistic heritage and
promise.'

181
 NUR NINA ZUHRA

The Centre's first production in 1984 was K.S. Maniam's The Cord, which de-
picts the conflicts and complexities of Indian life in Malaysia. The group then went
on to stage a Malaysian version of George Orwell's 1984, called 1984 Here and Now
by Kee Thuan Chye.
Chin San Sooi, one of the most durable of the English-language theatre artists,
also produces under the Five Arts banner. While still a teacher in Ipoh, San Sooi
gained a reputation for staging large-scale spectacles, but during the first part of
the 1980s he concentrated on creating solo performances in English with actress
Leow Puay Tin. This talented young woman has since earned her Master of Fine
Arts Degree in playwriting from the University of Hawaii, staging an original
work: The Heart of the Pyramid as her thesis project. Before leaving Malaysia once
again for further theatre studies in England, two more of Puay Tin's original plays
were staged: Two Grandmothers and Three Children. In these pieces the playwright
draws upon reminiscences of her childhood in Malacca. .
Meanwhile, Chin San Sooi has returned to large-scale productions, this time
drawing upon his own cultural roots. One work, Yap Ah Loy (1985), is a musical
rendition of the colorful life of Kuala Lumpur's 'Kapitan China' (or Chinese
headman) who led the aff~irs of the turbulent town until his death in 1885. San
Sooi's most recent work, Lady White (1989), is a refashioning of the legendary Chi-
nese tale of Lady White Snake.
Another English-language group established during the early 1980s is Kami.
The group's 1987 comedy, Caught in the Middle, written and directed by Thor Kah
Hoong (one of the group's leaders) was well-received by audiences and critics and
a sequel was produced not long after that was taken to the Singapore Arts FestivaL
The play is 'an ongoing examination' of middle class Malaysian society 'caught in
the middle' of noisy and nosey neighbors living in adjacent linked houses.
Faridah Merican recently founded the Actor's Studio in Kuala Lumpur (1989),
which, like Five Arts Centre, has a training function: 'Emphasis is placed on the
training of actors, performers, production personnel and directors.' She, along
with director Joe Hasham, have brought a high degree of professionalism to their
art, but they have yet to stage locally written works. In this respect, it is worth
noting that the English-language theatre serves as the vehicle by which audiences
can see plays by foreign authors, since foreign plays are, as yet, much less fre-
quently performed in Malay.
Other groups also continue to perform in English. Lidra initially produced
plays by local writers, but their current efforts have also been from the Western
repertoire (Shaw, Strindberg, Ionesco, Clare Booth). Similarly the long-established
Liberal Arts Society (Romeo and Juliet, 1989; The Death of a Salesman, 1989) and the
Selangor Philharmonic Society (The Mikado, 1989), as well as the Association for
Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (Old Times by Pinter, 1989) and
Yayasan Seni (The Zen Substitute, 1987 and Sleuth, 1988), perform foreign plays in
English.
The evident commitment of the above groups to English-language theatre
does not preclude the possibility that they could diversify and do Malay plays as

182
 THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF ENGLISH-LANGUAGE DRAMA IN MALAYSIA

well in the future. In so doing, they could reach audiences which are not yet being
drawn into the English-language theatre, which in the main still caters to urban,
middle-class viewers. One group, Yayasan Seni, has in fact already developed a bi-
lingual approach to play selection. The Producer's Notes in the program for one of
their productions indicates the group's multifaceted approach: 'With sincerity and
cooperation from all performing arts syblings, we could stir and motivate our
creativity to truly lend credence to our rich multi-cultural heritage.' Apparently
inherent in the outlook of many of the above groups is the desire to draw upon
and cater to the diverse cultural heritages and talent in the country.
In addition to the foreign works performed in English, and the continuing
efforts to create a relevant English-language theatre based on original scripts, a
further source of dramatic material to be considered is translations of Malay plays.
Among the translations already available in published form are: Usman Awang's
The Death of a Warrior (Matinya Seorang Pahlawan) and Visitors at Kenny Hill (Tamu
di Bukit Kenny); Kemala's In Another World (Di Bumi Lain); Dinsman's Ana and It is
Not Suicide (Bukan Bunuh Diri); Noordin Hassan's Spare the Butterflies (Jangan Bunuh
Rama-Rama); Hatta Azad Khan's Corpse (Mayat); Othman Haji Zainudin's Myth
(Mitos); and Johan Jaaffar's Someone (Dia). Journals such as Tenggara, Malay Litera-
ture, and Asian Theatre Journal carry some of these translations. More translations
are forthcoming in book form as welL Performances of translated Malay plays
seem to be the prerogative thus far of English-language educators. In 1988, stu-
dents at Universiti Pertanian Malaysia (Agricultural University of Malaysia) staged
Usman Awang's Uda and Dara in English and an English version of Kemala's Anna
was presented by Law students at MARA Institute of Technology. Not only can
translations increase accessibility of Malay drama to an international audience,
but translations can also help enrich the repertoire of the English-language theatre
in Malaysia itself.

Concluding Thoughts

The fact that English is the official second language in the country and that its
importance as an international language is recognized by national leaders may
also boost its cultural significance. Certainly, in order for a language to be consid-
ered a living language, it must give rise to creative, artistic expression. As Ahmad
Kamal Abdullah, the Head of the Modem Literature Unit at Dewan Bahasa dan
Pustaka (the national publishing agency) views it, those writers who choose to
write in English may feel extra incentive to do so because· of the international
audience their works could reach. s Already K.S. Maniam is known abroad. Kee
Thuan Chye directed one of his plays in England, and Leow Puay Tin staged three
of her pieces in Hawaii. Certainly, Malay writers and literary promoters would
like to see Malay literature better known abroad. This desire on the part of

5. Interview with Ahmad Kamal Abdullah, 2 March 1990.

183
 NUR NINA ZUHRA

Malaysian artists for international! recognition is consistent with the government's

growing international posture and interest in promoting tourism. It is also a sign
of the Malaysian writer's pride in and aspirations for her/his country.
Although the English-language writer may have an advantage in that her /his
works do not need to go through a process of translation to be internationally
accessible, for playwright Kee Thuan Chye, the English-language writer is none-
theless in an unenviable position'6 because of the need to use a second language
I

that, in spite of its international status, is still part of a colonial heritage. A

thoughtful response to this dilemma may be found in a talk given by Dr Amina
Wudud Muhsin (an American lecturer at Malaysia's International Islamic Univer-
sity) at a' recent convention for English-language lecturers at MARA Institute of
Technology. Addressing the issue of Islam and language, Dr Amina stated simply
but to the point: truth can be expressed in any language. 7 That is, no language is
intrinsically better or worse than any other since all languages share the ever-
present potential of being mediums of truth.
Of course, the English-language writer has a special challenge in creating
characters which can be real in English. The playwright must decide what kind of
English to choose: Malaysian English or a special stylized English or her /his own.
According to K.S. Maniam, speaking at an education seminar at Malaysia's Cur-
riculum Development Center last January, language for a writer is not a fixed
entity; it is a flexible medium to be used creatively.s
Beyond the issue of language, for Kee Thuan Chye, the most pressing problem
he, and perhaps other English-language playwrights face, is the lack of a per-
ceived cultural base from which to draw upon in their works: the myths, idioms
and expressions which give a work power and relevancy.9 Cut off from his roots as
it were, Kee Thuan Chye feels unavoidably drawn to sources derivative of Western
culture and Western sensibilities. In contrast, he feels that Malay writers have a
strong cultural base at their disposal which gives their work a firm cultural
identity. Yet as both Malay and English-language writers have pointed out, the
goal of a Malaysian, rather than a community-based, identity in theatre is still
elusive.
What happens educationally in the country will also affect the future of
English-language theatre. It appears that today's educationists are taking a posi-
tive view overall of the importance of drama in the school curriculum. In terms of
language teaching, drama techniques are considered appropriate for all language
classes, whether the language taught is Malay, English, Chinese, or Tamil. Also,

6. Interview with Kee Thuan Chye, 1 March 1989.

7. Talk delivered at the English-language Convention sponsored by the Language Center, MARA
Institute of Technology, Shah Alam, December 1989.
8. Talk delivered at the Training Course for the New Literature in English Syllabus, Curriculum
Development Center, Kuala Lumpur, January 1990.
9. Interview with Kee Thuan Chye.

184
 THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF ENCLISH-LANGUAGE DRAMA IN MALAYSIA

the new Literature in English syllabus which is currently being formulated for
Forms IV and V (secondary level), includes the appreciation of drama. This section
is meant to foster not only an appreciation and understanding of dramatic texts
but also knowledge of how theatre is produced by asking students to carry out
performance projects.
Although in the past, English literature courses in Malaysia stressed British
works, the new syllabus, with its shift in name to Literature in English, includes
world literature, whether originally written in English or translated, particularly
Asian and Malaysian works. This new syllabus, as well as the drama techniques
used in language teaching, may indeed encourage the continued writing of plays
in English.
In looking back historically, we can see that the mid-1960s through to the
beginning of the 1970s were a creatively fertile period in which English-language
playwrights could find expression. In part, this was because their effort to write
Malaysian plays, albeit in English, was part of their effort to create a Malaysian
theatrical identity that was not shackled to the West. They wanted to write and
stage their own plays, complete with Malaysian images and idioms. There was a
special vigor to their work in that these playwrights no doubt felt they were
contributing to the nation's cultural development as well as finding a means for
their own personal expression.
During the 1970s, although English-language plays continued to be performed,
fewer Malaysian works were staged. This period may be seen as a time of aliena-
tion for the English-language playwright who may have felt that her/his works
could not gain national attention. During the 1980s, however, with the renewed
interest in English as an international language, there has been a renewed interest
in English-language plays and in creating a serious English-language theatre that
reflects the country's diverse cultures and talents.
As we look ahead to the 1990s, it is the hope of this writer that the English and
Malay-language theatre worlds continue to draw closer together, sharing talent
and repertoire, for the enrichment of audience and artist alike. The recent forma-
tion of Majlis Teater Kebangsaan Malaysia or TEMA (the National Theatre Coun-
cil of Malaysia), a pan-Malaysian association of theatre societies and clubs, is a
further step in this direction.

REFERENCES

Lloyd, Fernando (ed.), 'Introduction' in New Drama One (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford
University Press, 1972).
Nancy K. Nanney, 'An Analysis of Modern Malaysian Drama', Dissertation, Uni-
versity of Hawaii,1983.
Nancy K. Nanney, 'English Drama in Malaysia', Chongdae Times, 15 Nov. 1984, p. 4.
Solehah Ishak, The Histrionics of Development: A Study of Three Contemporary Malay
Playwrights (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1987).

185
 SPONTANEOUS IMPRESSIONS OF
ASIAN VOICES

Syd Harrex

Preceding the 'Closing Address' by Professor Wang Gungwu (Vice-Chancellor of

the University of Hong Kong), my contribution to the final session of the Sympo-
sium was optimistically - but in the event misleadingly - entitled 'Academic
Summary'. Belatedly I realised that two indispensable qualifications for undertak-
ing such an assignment were omniscience and the capacity to write a public
address in a few minutes. Accordingly, I began with an unscripted apologia for
my thorough lack of omniscience, pointing out that it was impossible for me to
present any summary which could with justice and accuracy recapture the cultural
diversity and intellectual riches of the Symposium. There were too many butter-
flies and I only had one small net. This was a problem, I confessed, which caused
me not inconsiderable neurotic anxiety.
I calculated that the official Programme (encapsulated into just 4 days) in-
cluded 10 plenary addresses and lectures, 54 academic papers distributed among
parallel sessions (3 or 4 at a time),5 workshops conducted by learned chairpersons
and panels, and numerous readings by many writers. Moreover, no summary of
these events would be complete without reference to the speeches and comment
that preceded and succeeded the formal presentations: a vast array of discourses
by way of Introductions, Questions, Answers, Debates, etc., many of which were
miniature papers or addresses in any case. How could I possibly do justice to such
a panorama of Asian voices I pleaded, in tones of pathos fraught with despera-
tion? At best, as I explained, I was but a trembling veil of subjective impressions,
fragments, and footnotes under which I wore (as I demonstrated by taking off my
jacket) an Association for the Study of Australian Literature t-shirt decorated with a
cartoonist's caricature of a 'down under' literature professor. Added to which was
the equally undisguisable problem of my conspiring Australian voice, with its
tentative claim of acceptance as an Asian voice as well. Was any inspiration of
lateral thinking at hand to rescue me in my dire half-hour of need?
Of course there were a couple of features - undeniably and obviously impor-
tant impressions the Symposium embedded in the minds of all - which I could
confidently summarise. Especially (as I said), it was a joy and privilege to ac-
knowledge the dedication, efficiency and elegance with which the organisers -
 SYD HARREX

Jill Martin, Mimi Chan, and Dino Mahoney - had orchestrated the Conference.
And, likewise, the plenary lectures fulfilled the organisers' aspirations bountifully
by providing large appreciative audiences with fascinating and compelling insights
into the creative range, cultural plurality, and linguistic diversity of Asian litera-
tures written and translated in English. The keynote lecture thoroughly and chal-
lengingly provided the Symposium with literary and critical contexts which proved
to be guiding and pervasive concerns throughout the proceedings. Particularly
impressive, each within a different cultural ambience, were the personal voices of the
6 leading writers; and the passion, precision and poetry with which they enter-
tained and educated the Conference. Occidental platitudes about the Orient or the
East were exorcised when the writers, either following Han Suyin disclaimed
being victims of 'identity crisis', or with Nayantara Sahgal eloquently demon-
strated how multiculturalism or exile within one's own country could be con-
structively created into 'a many-splendoured thing'.
Having conceded the impossibility of providing a valid academic summary of
the Symposium, I attempted to attach my impressions instead to possible threads
of meaning, connection or synthesis that I thought I detected amid the plethora of
voices. Thus it occurred to me that my own small experiment with lateral thinking
led me to speculate that the Symposium itself was a large-scale model of lateral
thinking in cultural practice. Was that not actually as well as figuratively evident
in the communication processes of the Conference, of the writers present and
absent revealing the cross-cultural basis of their literary pursuits and commit-
ments? Lateral modes of communication among and between Asian cultures, to
which English has contributed as a fairly accessible and pragmatic lingua franca,
supplied for the Symposium the tacit basis for intellectual ferment and controversy
as these activities (in conjunction with literary texts and language issues) flowed in
and out of the Conference sessions.
At some point during a Tea Break on the final afternoon, while I was mentally
pursuing a frayed thread through the labyrinth of my conference notes, I recalled
an image from a novel by one of the distinguished writers we had listened to
intently the previous afternoon. Here it is, now surgically extracted from the body
(Chapter 4 to be precise) of Nayantara Sahgal's A Situation in New Delhi (1977, 1988):

We're a society at the crossroads, all right, as the professors in the Cabinet
keep saying ... But they don't realise how many different crossroads
we're at, some in yesterday, some in tomorrow, some in the Middle Ages .
. . in this confusion of change ... To bring all these crossroads together
needed an artist. It was a task of the imagination.

On checking this passage immediately (for by chance I had the novel in my

Symposium folder at the time), I experienced something akin to the kind of
epiphany Henry James once described in a cultural-encounter scene as 'the shock
of recognition'; a luminous conjunction of associations. The Symposium had been
devoted to explorations of Asian-English writing and translation 'from a rich

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variety of cultures', and had reverberated as much if not more with shocks of
recognition as with geo-political shudders of division.
Recognising that shocks of recognition may be agreeable as well as disturbing,
ju~t as challenges are to be relished as well as feared, I perceived that the Sympo-
sium had enabled and encouraged each writer and critic to present ideas and
views from the perspective of one or more crossroads with which he or she was
especially familiar. This meant that the Asian voices were at once particularised
and generalised, and the crossroads were inextricably personal and cultural: his-
torical, political, geographical, economic, literary, linguistic, religious, vocational,
psychological, etc. The image of the crossroad, being one of intersection, reminds
each individual that she or he is involved in mankind, as humanity has been
consistently reminded by its poets before and since John Donne. Present-day
Hong Kong, and with it to some extent the English language and Western politics,
are also in their own complicated ways at the crossroads of contemporary Asian
history. Asian Voices in English, therefore, has been uniquely a Conference in which
its theme was its own location, and its location essentially its theme.
The meeting of crossroads at crossroads in an Asian-English context, I have
submitted as a spontaneous impression, may have been the abiding theme of the
Symposium, for indeed the processes of literary, cultural and linguistic intersec-
tion were constantly to the fore. Just as it is healthy and productive to acknowledge
and recognise that literature is permeated by politics, so it is to experience and
engage the politics of international literary conferences. Sometimes the nexus of
literature with politics is particularly complex and troubling - especially when it
also embraces religion and sex as does Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses - but
that does not constitute an intellectually respectable reason for avoiding the is-
sues. On this score, or in the scale, of these considerations alone, the Symposium
was a subtle and potentially influential success.
A crossroad is a very traditional kind of location, a meeting point, and collec-
tively the papers, lectures, workshops and readings revealed the marvellous vari-
ety of variables to be seen in motion when individuals from different cultures meet
each other and create possibilities for each to enter imaginatively the other's
world. The Symposium at its best, I believe, indicated how this happens both
literally on the page of a book and metaphorically at a streetcorner or crossroad.
Without both kinds of intersection (which many writers think of in terms of
paradox), life would probably seem insupportable.
But that may be nothing more than a fanciful flight of omniscience which I
began by precluding as academically impossible for me to attempt. Better, instead,
I cite others who know better while I remain within the real limits of tautologies
like 'personal subjectivity'. Indeed, everything I heard on the art and craft of
translation (especially from Asian languages into English and English into Asian)
was dependent on experience and expertise. But even to my untrained sensibility
that did seem to corroborate as a truism the following statement by Asian poet and
translator (a specialist in Indian languages), A.K. Ramanujan:

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A translation has to be true to the translator no less than to the originals.

He cannot jump off his own shadow. Translation is choice, interpretation,
an assertion of taste, a betrayal of what answers to one's needs, one's
envies. (Speaking of Siva)

My shadow is me; it was born in Australia where it mainly inclines, moves,

reclines. I am therefore disposed - excusably I trust - to conclude my 'summary'
which is not a summary from a personal-Australian perspective. Many Austral-
ians would maintain from a point of view of geographical realism that, while we
have culturally re-Iocated ourselves distantly from Europe and our Anglo-Saxon
origins, we have done so with an increasing sense of proximity to, and speculative
affinity with, countries and cultures from the Asian region which we are much
closer to than we are to Europe on the one (historic) hand, or Africa, South
America and Antarctica on the other (hemispherealor antipodean) hand. Contem-
porary Australian literature has been increasingly reflecting this new sense of self-
awareness and thereby acquiring, if not a semi-Asian voice, at least a sense of
tactile contact or communal association (inside as well as outside our shores) with
Asian voices. One increasingly detects in our literature accents of this phenom-
enon which - in the phrase of our poet James McAuley - could be described as
Surprises of the Sun (the title of one of his later works). Indeed the following lines
from a poem in that volume reflect not only a spiritual crossroad within McAuley's
poetic sensibility, but also the fruitful intersection of his Christianity with his
inspired reading of Hinduism and the Bhagavad Gita:

But I shall know this

Only in knowing
My self's Self, who is, and is
The end of my going.
('Time Out of Mind')

In increasing numbers our novelists, too, like Hal, Porter, Hugh Atkinson, C.J.
Koch, Blanche D' Alpuget, Robert Drewe, Janet Turner-Hospital, Nicholas Jose,
and others have explored various aspects of the Australian encounter with Asia.
We increasingly hear the Australian voice in Asia these days. Let us hope it is
recognised less as the 'cultural cringe' (in either its colonial or raucous manifesta-
tions) and more as an Asian-Pacific voice communicating sanely and sensitively
with its northern neighbours. Experiences like the Symposium, to which I have
been paying homage, do much to encourage and bring together under one sun a
complex variety of Asian voices, reminding us not only of the Authorship of the
Voice, but also that the voice and the word are one, that communication is their
vital function, and that voices and words are the minds and hearts of humanity
speaking out, to, and in.

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