I just bring water to the mill of the headlines ... forgive me if I swim against the tide ... (You must row, it's hard).
Political correctness has struck again, and also, dialectically, the politically incorrect ... at any time in these rough times you remember to hate China, wary China, condemn China and if I carelessly throw a glance at the agenda of those who build this obsession I realize that the same agencies and interlocutors (trice) do not work nearly as "establish and strengthen ties between Europe (France, Italy, etc..) and China." What to do? Laugh? Cry? Fear? Ignore? Say that it will pass?
can at least smile as he recalls a special moment for the formation of European thought, decisive for the history of European (and global?): The 18th century, the century may be the brightest of our history , and the role China plays in the Enlightenment.
Chinese, atheists, then say the philosophers who give an example, enjoy a civilization born before pagan antiquity - and long before Christ - with laws, institutions, justice, arts , technology, morality. Might one not conclude, because the painting as sociable, polite, knowledgeable, fair, the world could exist without religion? And especially that morality could be sustained without religion based on the dogma of original sin. China, without knowing it, then provides arguments against Christian theologies that underpin the value of man on his only connection with the divine and its respect for religious rules.
Foremost among these philosophers Voltaire found (which is however not an atheist but a deist, he sometimes says theist) who, having made its critical capacity vis-à-vis Europe's criterion, uses the Middle Kingdom to better illustrate his thought. He opposes the fanaticism of the religious wars that were for centuries the cancer of Europe (the mid-18th century is still killing the Protestants in France during a war of extermination that lasted from 1685 to 1758 and that was called "The Dragonnades") tolerance of the Chinese emperors who received long Catholic missionaries without censoring or their thoughts or their missionary work.
Voltaire has met only once Chinese and he did not know the language but he considers himself a very experienced Sinologist. He writes frequently on the topic China. It really starts to take care when writing his Age of Louis XIV, about the question of the presence of Christians in Asia misionnaires but it was in 1755 by a play which he entitled The Orphan of China that the artistic treatment. It is noted that China had become fashionable several decades ago, thanks to the Italian theater in Paris: already in 1601 (following the receipt of a Chinese Embassy?) We play and dance to the court a Ballet Princes of China who made a splash ... After a few here and there harlequinades chinoisées during the reign of Louis XIV and the Regency, in 1752 the Italian company established in Paris presents "eroe cinese (Chinese hero) from a work by Pietro Metastasio, a room Voltaire is remembered for writing the orphan, and a comedy, "The Schiava cinese (Chinese slave) of the Abbe Chiari (rival of Goldoni in Venice), followed by a" Chinese rimpatriato "in 1753 which was immediately translated into French as "The Chinese returned" represented barely dried ink from the translation. In 1754 two French coins are data still in Paris: "The Chinese Feasts" and "The Chinese policy in France." Note that the Chinese are polite, virtue in the minds of Europeans will retain while skillfully combining the latest on deceit and hypocrisy. Apart from the Chinese Heroes, it is just comedy and jokes of course, nothing serious until Voltaire put it. (This is to say ... and depending on what is meant by "serious" ...!)
The Orphan of China , created at the Comedie French 20 August 1755, is clearly a tragedy . One of its features is that it is a tragedy that ends well. In fact it is a work of propaganda for the philosophy of Voltaire. That the subject wants is as exotic as a tribute to the writer makes the insatiable curiosity of his contemporaries to an 'elsewhere' ever-changing, renewing a successful operation which dates from 1721: the Letters , theoretically Persian , Montesquieu The playwright draws quite openly - he will report the loan in the Warning to the edition of his room - a room Chinese popular in Asian empire entitled The Orphan of the Zhao family Jun Ji Xiang (XIII - XIV century). A French translation by Father Prémare, a Jesuit, had been published, inserted into the Description of the Empire of China and Chinese Tartary of Father Jean-Baptiste Du Halde - another Jesuit - published in 1735 (it was almost the only book available at this truly documentary on China time). The exotic, less than the exact picture of manners which Voltaire ignores just about everything, will read in the sets and props and costumes in the actress Clairon and actor Le Kain, the two titans of the theater of the time. The Bugle in the role of Idame abandons dresses and baskets to embody Lekain Genghis Khan is a Mongolian costume, the two initiatives do. literally, sensation (see an overview of suits vintage illustration, supra) It must be said that the insistence of Voltaire for the theater of "Tatar costume" had strong reason to be, the success generated a revolution in art, oriented toward a certain realism of the set, after which operated in France, won Italy and England.
And the text? And the plot? Nothing much really ... Voltaire Chinese adaptation of the original which he likened to "monstrous farces of Shakespeare and Lope de Vega" changing the action at its discretion and the moving time of the taking of Peking by the Tartars in 1215. Genghis Khan had resolved to exterminate the Dynasty defeated in massacring the last shoot, saved by the Mandarin and his wife Zamti Idame who substituted their own child. But the subterfuge discovered, all are condemned to death. Genghis Idame then acknowledges that he loved in vain once. This sum is to give him or perish with all his family. When she goes to kill himself, Genghis intervenes. Won by so much generosity of spirit, forgiving: "Who can you inspire this design? "Your virtues.". Voltaire concludes on a positive note this tragedy to illustrate the triumph of "the natural superiority that give reason and engineering (ie him, Voltaire) on the strength blind and barbaric". Chinese civilization is praised for the high morals it draws Confucianism, ie, for the author in reason, wisdom and tolerance. Baron Grimm and Diderot demolish part but no matter Voltaire: his philosophy of human progress that focuses on the social laboratory still active, enriched by a new work and it enjoys immense popularity. ..
For in reality, more than a literary quarrel with Encyclopedists more than a theological confrontation with the Pope or the pastors of Geneva, Voltaire at this time and its delights torment of a different battle. He throws his forces in a philosophical debate with Jean-Jacques Rousseau (or rather with the philosophy of Rousseau, which measures the dangers arising from its utopian nature), a debate that will soon become a personal quarrel is not devoid of cruelty on both sides ... but for now the future Patriarch of Ferney leads the way: happy, spiritually intense and not without generous impulses. The Orphan ... replied brightly and annoying to the paradoxes of the author's theory of virtue and the natural goodness of man ... the first edition of the play will be accompanied a letter blend of reason and irony which Voltaire sarcastically thanked the author of Discourse on Inequality ... of his "new book against the human race."
The Italian comedians will build and play very quickly, in March 1756, a parody of the Orphan ... under the title The Magots , written by an author who remained anonymous because Voltaire was more or less lived in exile between Geneva and Lausanne to Paris but he kept very powerful friends. The satyr was also a success. In view of these successes (Part Voltaire was performed until March 1756) all the theaters of Paris felt inclined to exploit public enthusiasm for this remote civilization and we will send in the Middle Kingdom - virtually of course - Harlequin until poor who do not understand anything and sometimes take for Persia. China will not disappear scenes with the French First Empire.
Voltaire wrote later, the Chinese civilization and Confucian morality, Dialogues and articles for the Philosophical Dictionary, giving the kickoff to a temporary worship - that would have desired eternal and universal - the wisdom of the man he calls "Socrates the Chinese" and that he admires as a moralist. For years Paris, France, Europe discuss philosophical writings than in reality almost no one knows except through partial translations and approximate, much less seriously it will be disguised with Chinese, Tartar, Mongol. .. (or what we believe to be), the sets of tables, rooms, houses become Chinese, a Chinese garden architecture invade the princely mansions English, Russian, Danish, French, European porcelain factories will copy the hard parts imported from China ...
To European opinion for almost a century the Chinese people are the most free thinking! Nobody listens to the philosopher grumbling, poor Jean-Jacques Rousseau and sometimes penniless with no means to disseminate its thinking, which, in 1761, in his novel La Nouvelle Heloise , through the mouth of the protagonist deals with Saint-Preux Chinese barbaric hypocrites doomed to eternal slavery ... This response to the enthusiasm of Voltaire sinological go well on unnoticed.
Is there any need of authentic documents to philosophize? Voltaire, to its credit, tries to get information from multiple sources, look in the mores and institutions of China's true details. But once exhausted the publications of those who have traveled and lived in Asia, the documentary reveals substantive rather meager, the debate is dwindling and the philosophers of the Encyclopedia, to decide, call the Pope.
the Pope? Mercy! Resources rather Vatican. Is that the Catholic Church has long had to do with China (We can speak of expertise because the reports of the Pope with the Emperor were completed piteously for the Church). For centuries its more or less official envoys familiarized themselves with Asia. The archives of documents, letters and account reviews sent by Jesuit missionaries upon their arrival in China - St. Francis Xavier landed at Goa, May 6, 1542. The Jesuits will soon become the real experts from China and Asia. The problems begin when other missionary orders will want to get involved. It will take the Roman Catholic Church half a century - who was also a half-century of patience on the part Chinese people - NOT to settle the quarrel that opposed, from 1645 until about around 1715, the Jesuits missionaries of different orders (mostly Dominicans) all competitors in the race for the Christianization of China. The issue is the apparent laxity Jesuit who wrongly or rightly consider Christianized subjects who continue to practice ancient rituals of burial. At this permissiveness opposes theological rigor. the strictness other missionaries who would be condemned (and be able to prevent) what they called pagan rituals of . The real issue is elsewhere, course, in a power struggle within the Catholic Church which also has its field in Europe. The Dominicans will not happen because of the Jesuits assigned to the Tribunal of the Inquisition in Rome and the case-appear many times in this court. It will end momentarily to 1724: Chinese emperors, questioned in 1705 (to their surprise) in the dispute and angered by these arguments plus the arrival of missionaries in their territory many other Christian religions, eventually forbid all Christian missionaries to reside in China. An exception will be made in Macao where Chinese tiger gives consent to the presence of a Portuguese governor and a Catholic bishop. An innumerable materials on this ongoing matter lies in the Vatican archives, documents which also contain valuable information about this unknown country. Alas, the French philosophers will not have access, they will have to do with books pubbliés by the Jesuits and some English and Dutch traders. Ferney Voltaire, who has to maintain a Jesuit he generously, Father Adam - now suffers his pain and his chess partner - do not resign them with difficulty.
In the nineteenth century European versatile, be persuaded to retardation China by the proponents of colonialism, which did not bother warming of Confucianism. The Chinese have proved formidable commercial competitors, we must anticipate them demeaning. The Opium War, prompted by mercenary greed of the West, greatly contributes to the devaluation. We note in passing - as it would be easy to forget - that Voltaire was to make his countrymen more tolerant and able to design a sharing of national wealth (he took the trouble to realize at Ferney), while the Party had colonial exactly the desire contrary to that of the French people to the detriment of ruthless exploiters of other people that it was permissible - even advisable - to hate. (Ah, Monsieur Voltaire, decidedly I adore you with all your flaws)
Changing his mentors, France inevitably change of opinion about China: Voltaire wanted a beacon of tolerance? He had the intellectual and artistic to impose its views and Europe revered China. The leaders of the Parti Colonial a century later were given the means to make us despise. The times of struggle and of Mao's reign saw the whole avant-garde European intellectual become Pro-Chinese ... Why do they want us today and we will make it intolerable to convict the block? The modernization of China is not over, but the view through the lens of the historian, it will in any case much faster (still not a century since the fall of the Chinese empire in 1911) than was on ours.
My view (which is also the politically correct and politically incorrect that is not its opposite, trying to focus on their true meaning to the otherwise non-political, combat civil and citizen) does not overlook any reason nor opportunities to rebel against any repression of thoughts that work for the Love of Humanity and Respect the Earth (you'll notice the capital letters, I hope):
There are as many reasons to love Chinese and other peoples. Just like to hate. I find it useful to refuse to hate them. I hear too often in my opinion that they are felons, liars, cruel, hypocritical and dangerous at this particular time and multiply the votes in a particular Olympic event all means to them or they were good to carry a medal. I refuse to consider a course as a medal mark superiority (whether limited or extended to the individual to his nation). Their number does not impress me. I have many reasons to love Russian athletes and teams (I have excellent (e) s friend (s) in the Russian Orchestra of Moscow and is that not reason enough to support them passionately ?) and to desire their victory over the opposing teams and athletes ... to desire the victory of the Chinese teams, French, Italian, Mongolian, Algerian, Hawaiian, etc.. ad libitum , there is the choice. But I have even more reasons to hate everyone because ANY competition fills me where when and how whether it can or will be exercised.
When the Chinese rulers, accountable individually and / or group a number of barbaric acts and may be lawful under the laws in force (Ah ... Rousseau), assuming that power makes crazy, I put them in the same category as any man or woman political power whatsoever (many of them also shared responsibility with the Chinese government with regard to the most cruel acts) by assuming, where extremely rare, said that the ruler was not already crazy before coming to power, or - better said - before take power.
can do, if you will, within the category of nosological distinctions, nosographic and / or nosotaxiques. Sincerely
all of you, Olympics. Your
Claire
References literary on Voltaire are innumerable. I will not even try to make the list in a bibliography. Of all the books I know I recommend the book as biography Voltaire and the kingship of the spirit by Jean Orieux , A book regularly reissued in 1966 by Flammarion including pocket. Documented, entertaining, Mozart, this chronicle of a success is built or conceals faults and qualities of this love child of celebrity (said Sainte-Beuve), which was primarily a worker out of the ordinary, obsessive and relentless.
And on the subject of this post, Song Shun-Ching , a book that is a sum on Sinology Voltaire, Voltaire and China, published by Presses Universitaires de Provence, 1989.
Enjoy cutting-back ...
