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The Burning Forest: Essays on Chinese Culture and Politics
The distinguished sinologist and art historian, who has served as cultural attache at the Belgian Embassy in Peking, reflects on China's past and present in essays that trace the links between Chinese culture and politics
257 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
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About the author
Simon Leys
52 books75 followersSimon Leys is the pen-name of Pierre Ryckmans, who was born in Belgium and settled in Australia in 1970. He taught Chinese literature at the Australian National University and was Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Sydney from 1987 to 1993. He died in Sydney in 2014.
Writing in three languages - French, Chinese and English - he played an important political role in revealing the true nature of the Cultural Revolution. His many prizes include the Prix Renaudot, Prix mondial Cino Del Duca and the Christina Stead Prize.
Writing in three languages - French, Chinese and English - he played an important political role in revealing the true nature of the Cultural Revolution. His many prizes include the Prix Renaudot, Prix mondial Cino Del Duca and the Christina Stead Prize.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 21, 2014
I would say skip to the "Politics" part. The previous stuff is a bit boring and dry. Politics part is fascinating. It can be a bit dated at times. The whole thing was kind of boring.
"All that can be spelled out is without importance"
"...By definition, the writer is a rebel; he disturbs the established order. The writer and the revoultionary have a common ground; they are both equally dissatisfied with the present state of affairs, they both refuse the status quo. They cooperate; the writer denounces institutionalized injustice, the revolutionary works at overthrowing it. Revolution is always necessary, but it also ends necessarily in failure, since its victory transforms it into a new political orthodoxy. The alliance between the writer and the revolutionary can only be temporary; their ways are bound to part as soon as the latter reaches his objective, which is to establish himself as the new authority. The former revolutionary, once in power, turns against the writer, whose activity now appears to him subversive and intolerable, since the writer remains by definition the permanent critic of all political power."
"I take the word "totalitarian" in a commonly used sense, meaning a political system where all social ties have been entirely replaced by state-imposed organization and where, consequently, all groups and all individuals are supposed to act only for goals which both are the goals of the state and were defined as such by the state. In other words, an ideal totalitarian system would consist in the utter destruction of civil society, whereas the state and its organizational instruments are the only forms of social life; all kinds of human activity- economical, intellectual, political, cultural- are allowed and ordered (the distinction between what is allowed and what is ordered tending to disappear) only to the extent of being at the service of state goals (again, as defined by the state). Every individual (including the rulers themselves) is considered the property of the state."
"A second useful definition of totalitarianism is George Orwell's (in his postface to Homage to Catalonia). According to his description, the totalitarian system is one in which there is no such thing as "objective truth" or "objective science". There is only, for instance, "German Science" as opposed to "Jewish Science", or "proletarian truth" as opposed to "bourgeois lies": "The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future, but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event 'It never happened'- well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five, well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs."
"To know only what those in authority allow one to know is, more or less, all the infant can do. To be able to make one's own observations and to draw pertinent conclusions from them is where independent existence begins. To forbid oneself to make observations, and take only the observations of others in their stead, is relegating to nonuse one's own powers of reasoning, and the even more basic power of perception. Not observing where it counts most, not knowing where one wants so much to know, all this is most destructive to the functioning of one's personality...But if one gives up observing, reacting, and taking action, one gives up living one's own life. And this is exactly what the SS wanted to happen."
"Jean Pasqualini- whose book Prisoner of War is the most fundamental document on Maoist "Gulag" and, as such, is most studiously ignored by the lobby that maintains that there is no human-rights problem in the People's Republic- notes a similar phenomenon. He confesses that after a few years in the labor camps, he came, if not exactly to love the system that was methodically destroying his personality, at least to feel gratitude for the patience and care with which the authorities were trying to reeducate worthless vermin like himself. Along the same lines, Orwell showed premonitory genius in the last sentence of 1984: when Winston Smith realizes that he loves Big Brother, that he has loved Big Brother all along...."
"Objectivism- the belief that there is an objective truth whose existence is independent of arbitrary dogma and ideology- is thus the cornerstone of intellectual freedom and human dignity, and as such, it is the main stumbling block for totalitarianism."
"In a totalitarian system, whenever common sense clashes with dogma, common sense always loses- at tremendous cost to national development and the people's livelihood."
"Most thing in the world are achieved by judicious leaving alone."
"... tyranny is achieved by a whole nation, it is not accomplishment of a single individual".
"Deng Xiaoping's rule is more akin to the aimless drift of a dead dog; only its belly, swollen with the windy promises of the "Four Modernizations," still keeps it vaguely afloat."
On this subject we should have read Milan Kundera: "When I was a boy, I used to idealize the people who returned from political imprisonment. Then I discovered that most the oppressors were former victims. The dialectics of the executioner and his victim are very complicated. To be a victim is often the best training for an executioner. The desire to punish the injustice is not only a desire for justice, pure and simple, but also a subconscious desire for new evil."
"In the main, people do not read; if they read, they do not understand. And those who understand forget."
"As to those who are strong and winning, most of the time they keep silent. Consider, for instance, the eagle when it swoops upon a rabbit; it is the rabbit that squeals, not the eagle. Similarly, when a cat catches a mouse, the mouse squeaks, but not the cat. Or again, remember the Tyrant of Chu: in his golden days, as he was leading his victorious armies from one end of the country to the other, he did not say much. When he began to play the poet and sing lyric laments, his troops were beaten and he knew that his own end was near."
"When a man feels the pangs of loneliness, he is able to create. As soon as he reaches detachment, he ceases to create, for he loves no more. Every creation originates in love. Creation, even when it is a mere outpouring from the heart, wishes to find a public. By definition, creation is sociable. Yet it can be satisfied with merely one single reader: an old friend, a lover."
"Women have a mother-nature and a daughter nature; there are no women with a wife-nature. The quality of wife is an acquired character; it is a combination of mother and daughter."
"Whoever thinks he is objective must already be half drunk."
"Trust only him who doubts"
"Schopenhauer made this observation: when estimating the size of a man, one must follow opposite methods if one wishes to know his spiritual stature of his physical height. The latter decreases with distance, whereas the former increases. As a great man appears smaller when seen at close quarters, where his blemishes and warts are more conspicuous, he also becomes more like us: he is no longer a god, or a miraculous creature, or a supernatural being, he is simply a man. But this is precisely where his greatness lies."
"Before the revolution we were slaves. And now we are slaves of former slaves."
"Hope can be neither affirmed nor denied. Hope is like a path in the countryside: originally there was no path- yet, as people are walking all the time in the same spot, a way appears."
"All that can be spelled out is without importance"
"...By definition, the writer is a rebel; he disturbs the established order. The writer and the revoultionary have a common ground; they are both equally dissatisfied with the present state of affairs, they both refuse the status quo. They cooperate; the writer denounces institutionalized injustice, the revolutionary works at overthrowing it. Revolution is always necessary, but it also ends necessarily in failure, since its victory transforms it into a new political orthodoxy. The alliance between the writer and the revolutionary can only be temporary; their ways are bound to part as soon as the latter reaches his objective, which is to establish himself as the new authority. The former revolutionary, once in power, turns against the writer, whose activity now appears to him subversive and intolerable, since the writer remains by definition the permanent critic of all political power."
"I take the word "totalitarian" in a commonly used sense, meaning a political system where all social ties have been entirely replaced by state-imposed organization and where, consequently, all groups and all individuals are supposed to act only for goals which both are the goals of the state and were defined as such by the state. In other words, an ideal totalitarian system would consist in the utter destruction of civil society, whereas the state and its organizational instruments are the only forms of social life; all kinds of human activity- economical, intellectual, political, cultural- are allowed and ordered (the distinction between what is allowed and what is ordered tending to disappear) only to the extent of being at the service of state goals (again, as defined by the state). Every individual (including the rulers themselves) is considered the property of the state."
"A second useful definition of totalitarianism is George Orwell's (in his postface to Homage to Catalonia). According to his description, the totalitarian system is one in which there is no such thing as "objective truth" or "objective science". There is only, for instance, "German Science" as opposed to "Jewish Science", or "proletarian truth" as opposed to "bourgeois lies": "The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future, but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event 'It never happened'- well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five, well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs."
"To know only what those in authority allow one to know is, more or less, all the infant can do. To be able to make one's own observations and to draw pertinent conclusions from them is where independent existence begins. To forbid oneself to make observations, and take only the observations of others in their stead, is relegating to nonuse one's own powers of reasoning, and the even more basic power of perception. Not observing where it counts most, not knowing where one wants so much to know, all this is most destructive to the functioning of one's personality...But if one gives up observing, reacting, and taking action, one gives up living one's own life. And this is exactly what the SS wanted to happen."
"Jean Pasqualini- whose book Prisoner of War is the most fundamental document on Maoist "Gulag" and, as such, is most studiously ignored by the lobby that maintains that there is no human-rights problem in the People's Republic- notes a similar phenomenon. He confesses that after a few years in the labor camps, he came, if not exactly to love the system that was methodically destroying his personality, at least to feel gratitude for the patience and care with which the authorities were trying to reeducate worthless vermin like himself. Along the same lines, Orwell showed premonitory genius in the last sentence of 1984: when Winston Smith realizes that he loves Big Brother, that he has loved Big Brother all along...."
"Objectivism- the belief that there is an objective truth whose existence is independent of arbitrary dogma and ideology- is thus the cornerstone of intellectual freedom and human dignity, and as such, it is the main stumbling block for totalitarianism."
"In a totalitarian system, whenever common sense clashes with dogma, common sense always loses- at tremendous cost to national development and the people's livelihood."
"Most thing in the world are achieved by judicious leaving alone."
"... tyranny is achieved by a whole nation, it is not accomplishment of a single individual".
"Deng Xiaoping's rule is more akin to the aimless drift of a dead dog; only its belly, swollen with the windy promises of the "Four Modernizations," still keeps it vaguely afloat."
On this subject we should have read Milan Kundera: "When I was a boy, I used to idealize the people who returned from political imprisonment. Then I discovered that most the oppressors were former victims. The dialectics of the executioner and his victim are very complicated. To be a victim is often the best training for an executioner. The desire to punish the injustice is not only a desire for justice, pure and simple, but also a subconscious desire for new evil."
"In the main, people do not read; if they read, they do not understand. And those who understand forget."
"As to those who are strong and winning, most of the time they keep silent. Consider, for instance, the eagle when it swoops upon a rabbit; it is the rabbit that squeals, not the eagle. Similarly, when a cat catches a mouse, the mouse squeaks, but not the cat. Or again, remember the Tyrant of Chu: in his golden days, as he was leading his victorious armies from one end of the country to the other, he did not say much. When he began to play the poet and sing lyric laments, his troops were beaten and he knew that his own end was near."
"When a man feels the pangs of loneliness, he is able to create. As soon as he reaches detachment, he ceases to create, for he loves no more. Every creation originates in love. Creation, even when it is a mere outpouring from the heart, wishes to find a public. By definition, creation is sociable. Yet it can be satisfied with merely one single reader: an old friend, a lover."
"Women have a mother-nature and a daughter nature; there are no women with a wife-nature. The quality of wife is an acquired character; it is a combination of mother and daughter."
"Whoever thinks he is objective must already be half drunk."
"Trust only him who doubts"
"Schopenhauer made this observation: when estimating the size of a man, one must follow opposite methods if one wishes to know his spiritual stature of his physical height. The latter decreases with distance, whereas the former increases. As a great man appears smaller when seen at close quarters, where his blemishes and warts are more conspicuous, he also becomes more like us: he is no longer a god, or a miraculous creature, or a supernatural being, he is simply a man. But this is precisely where his greatness lies."
"Before the revolution we were slaves. And now we are slaves of former slaves."
"Hope can be neither affirmed nor denied. Hope is like a path in the countryside: originally there was no path- yet, as people are walking all the time in the same spot, a way appears."
October 12, 2023
A while back I read a terrible book by Simone de Beauvoir about a visit to Communist China, in which she seemed to regard everything that happened before 1949 as faintly disgusting, and was credulous about what she was told by her hosts. This book of essays is something like the reverse - nuanced, intelligent and surprising on Chinese culture, and shrill and bombastic on its 20th century politics. Leys gets compared to Orwell, and you can see why: a good cultural critic and a political writer obviously motivated by real hatred for injustice and people applauding injustice from a safe distance - but with a line in shouted moral absolutes and an ill-advised liking for making predictions whose total wrongness doesn't seem to have harmed either's reputation much.
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