[a] Surprise RL |
Accidental 6a Accidental 6b Accidental 6c Accidental 6d
Accidental 6e Accidental 6f Accidental 6g Accidental 6h
Accidental 6e Accidental 6f Accidental 6g Accidental 6h
[b] Imagine RL |
There is a sentence in that last paragraph that makes me think he and Marcel Granet had been studying early Chinese social theory together like chums sipping their preferred beverages (more on both later) in the shadow of the Sorbonne, Notre Dame, and the Seine.
The [interpretive] shaft has not been sunk deep enough to reach the
primitive thought of the peasant.[1]
Although we wouldn't articulate it quite the same way today, Geil was "speaking Granet" here. He was excoriating the silly attention given by many diplomats, journalists, and travelers to the "ephemeral froth and foam" of surface events. His translator, the eminent sociologist Maurice Freedman, states it clearly:
Granet installed himself in Peking to spend under two years there in
1911-1913. The point of his going to China was not to study Chinese
life as it was lived, as one might imagine if one were not aware of his
background; it was, certainly, to get some idea of what the country
was like; but the overriding aim was to study the Chinese classical
texts in the setting where Chinese studied them, a sort of field work
(as we might now say) upon scholarship.[2]
[c] Froth RL |
Or Homer.
This was not just Marcel Granet's point, either. It hinted at the historical-structural thinking of another French historian who, a quarter century later, would distinguish between deep (and deeper) structures and l'histoire evenementielle—the daily drumbeat of events that seem large for (to use today's language) a news cycle or two. "History," writes Fernand Braudel, "may be divided into three movements: what moves rapidly, what moves slowly and what appears not to move at all."[3]
Events are the ephemera of history; they pass across
its stage like
fireflies, hardly glimpsed before they settle back into
darkness and as
often as not into oblivion. Every event, however brief,
has to be sure a
contribution to make, lights up some dark corner or
even some wide
vista of history. Nor it it only political history which
benefits most, for
every historical landscape--political, economic,
social, even
geographical--is illumined by the intermittent flare of the
event.[4]
Granet (1884-1940), Braudel (1902-1985), and now Geil argued for something much more significant. They sought an understanding of the underpinnings—the deep, dark, gelid sea lying many miles deeply below the "ephemeral foam and froth of temporary and superficial agitations."
You go William Edgar, I thought. "Foam and froth?" Beautiful. "Temporary and superficial?" The hammer drives the nail into the beam. Geil's exasperation with the ways Western observers were thinking and writing about China...1925, when he wrote this preface...might as well be said by moi and just about every colleague I have in anthropology and historical studies. Does the selection of a Chinese president (later this year) matter? Sure. Does the apparent slowing of the Chinese economy affect world markets and China's future? Yup. Does any of it matter if we don't understand the political, economic—not to mention historical and "cultural"—context of it all?
Nope.
Then it's just the windsock floating in the breeze. All sound and fury and no use to anyone, including the avid reader of international news. As Geil states with admirable force, we need to understand what Braudel would later call le longue durée, the foundations of it all. I could refine and tweak the language to bring it up to speed with the academic language of 2012. (we'd leave out "culture" and speak of "habitus," for example), but Geil saw something that too few of his contemporaries could comprehend. Too few of today's readers get it, either.
So what do we make of Geil and "mammoth, masterful, immortal China?" Let's allow his final paragraph speak for itself. I never saw the last paragraph coming.
Is it not time that the student who has the "spiritual power of 5 teeth"
turned a little more serious attention to China—mammoth, masterful,Granet (1884-1940), Braudel (1902-1985), and now Geil argued for something much more significant. They sought an understanding of the underpinnings—the deep, dark, gelid sea lying many miles deeply below the "ephemeral foam and froth of temporary and superficial agitations."
[d] Windsock RL |
You go William Edgar, I thought. "Foam and froth?" Beautiful. "Temporary and superficial?" The hammer drives the nail into the beam. Geil's exasperation with the ways Western observers were thinking and writing about China...1925, when he wrote this preface...might as well be said by moi and just about every colleague I have in anthropology and historical studies. Does the selection of a Chinese president (later this year) matter? Sure. Does the apparent slowing of the Chinese economy affect world markets and China's future? Yup. Does any of it matter if we don't understand the political, economic—not to mention historical and "cultural"—context of it all?
Nope.
Then it's just the windsock floating in the breeze. All sound and fury and no use to anyone, including the avid reader of international news. As Geil states with admirable force, we need to understand what Braudel would later call le longue durée, the foundations of it all. I could refine and tweak the language to bring it up to speed with the academic language of 2012. (we'd leave out "culture" and speak of "habitus," for example), but Geil saw something that too few of his contemporaries could comprehend. Too few of today's readers get it, either.
So what do we make of Geil and "mammoth, masterful, immortal China?" Let's allow his final paragraph speak for itself. I never saw the last paragraph coming.
Is it not time that the student who has the "spiritual power of 5 teeth"
immortal China? Time has been devoted by some who seem to have
teeth at all in discussing the ephemeral froth and foam of temporary
and superficial agitations. The shaft has not been sunk deep enough
to reach the primitive thought of the peasant. This persists. This
indicates the age-long drift of a 5th of the human race. It may be that
these pages, while they do not pretend to achieve ultimate scientific
results, may at least awaken some competent investigator to the
possibilities of the Land of Central Glory, wherein dwell the greatest
people in all the world.[5]
Wow. And that is exactly what I wrote in the margin of my book. Wow. Geil had surprised me again. This was going to be an interesting ride.
Accidental 6a Accidental 6b Accidental 6c Accidental 6d
Accidental 6e Accidental 6f Accidental 6g Accidental 6h
Accidental 6e Accidental 6f Accidental 6g Accidental 6h
[e] Margin RL |
[1] William Edgar Geil, The Sacred 5 of China (New York: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1926), xix.
[2] Marcel Granet, The Religion of the Chinese People (New York: Harper & Row, 1975, xxii.
[3' Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1972), 8.
[4] Braudel, Mediterranean, 11.
[5] Geil, Sacred 5, xix.
Bibliography
Braudel, Fernand. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972.
Geil, William Edgar. The Sacred 5 of China. New York: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1926.
Granet,Marcel. The Religion of the Chinese People. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.
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