topics: |  linguistics | chinese | history

[argues that] the Chinese tradition has formed an implicit system of
reading and writing with fascinating insights that not only predated
similar ideas in the West by centuries but also anticipated contemporary
ideas of hermeneutic openness and open poetics. Furthermore, it seeks to
construct a Chinese system of hermeneutic theories, reflect on it from a
comparative perspective, and tease out theoretical insights that may
contribute to the formulation of a transcultural open poetics for textual
criticism and creative composition.

Origins of Openness in China

Initially, awareness of openness in China emerged from two major sources:
metaphysical inquiry of the universe and interpretive practice of canonical
texts. In the metaphysical inquiry into textual openness, the Chinese
tradition had an earlier start than the West. As early as the fourth century
BC4 in China, there appeared in the appended verbalizations to the Yijing,
also known as the Zhouyi or Book of Changes, a famous saying, which has since
become a household word for rationalizing different interpretations of the
same text or phenomenon:
     [In the interpretation of the Dao,] a benevolent person who sees it will
     say that it is benevolent; a wise person who sees it will say that it is
     wise.5

In the second century BC, the Chinese Confucian thinker Dong Zhongshu
(c.179–c.104 BC) articulated a dictum that is directly related to literature:
“[The Book of ] Poetry has no constant [or thorough-going] interpretation.”
Although this dictum referred specifically to the exegesis of the Book of
Poetry (or Book of Songs in Waley’s popular translation), it was later
extended to all poetry. Shen Deqian (1673–1769), for example, in relating
Dong Zhongshu’s dictum broadly to all poetry, practically viewed poetry as an
open hermeneutic space amenable to what contemporary theory calls reader
response criticism:

The words of ancient poets contain within themselves unlimited
implications.  When posterity reads them, they will come to different
understandings, depending upon their dispositions, which may be shallow
    or deep, high or low. . . . This is what Master Dong had in mind when he
    said: “[The Book of ] Poetry has no constant interpretation.”
    Commentaries, annotations, and interpretations are all posterity’s views
    from different quarters and corners.7

By the sixth century, the Chinese tradition already formed an
inchoate theory of hermeneutic openness that centers on the seminal ideas
and concepts like yiyin (lingering sound), yiwei (lasting flavor),
congzhi (literally, double intention, equivalent to multivalence), fuyi
(literally, multiple meanings, equivalent to polysemy), wenwai quzhi
(subtle connotations beyond the text), bujin zhiyi
(endless meaning, equivalent to unlimited semiosis).11

Mencius (372–289 BC) believed that a poet’s original intention could be
recovered through adequate reading, as he said: “Therefore, a commentator of
the Shijing should not allow literary ornaments to harm the wording, nor
allow the wording to harm the intent of the poet. To trace the intention of
the poet with the understanding of a reader — only this can be said to have
grasped the poet’s intention.”23 Mencius’ statement is a refutation of an
interlocutor’s reading of a Shijing poem in a different context. He was
against contextualizing a poem by supplying a different context but in favor
of the restoration of the original context of the poem so as to get the
original meaning. From a comparative perspective, Mencius’ idea reminds us of
E. D. Hirsch’s intentionalist theory based on Edmund Husserl’s view of
meaning as an “intentional object.”24 The similarity lies in that both
conceive of meaning as an intentional act willed by the author and fixed in a
series of signs, which may be retrieved by the use of the same system of
signs.25

In a provocative book on cross-cultural studies, Roland Barthes calls
Japanese culture an “empire of signs.” His epithet would apply to Chinese
culture equally well.28 Indeed, traditional China is, as some scholars put
it, an “empire of texts” or “empire of writing.”29