In Memory of a Dead Wife.—Of a Dear Friend.—Farewell Verses.—Æsthetic Feeling.—Drinking Song.—Music.—Justice to Rats
In Memory of a Dead Wife.—Of a Dear Friend.—Farewell Verses.—Æsthetic Feeling.—Drinking Song.—Music.—Justice to Rats.
紀念亡妻。——紀念摯友。——告別詩。——美學感受。——飲酒歌。——音樂。——對老鼠的公正。
It is so much our habit in China to think the Chinese have no sentiment, that I have thought it might be interesting to gather together what indications I have observed during eleven years' residence among them, leaving the reader, if of a judicial frame of mind, to sum up and formulate his own conclusions.
One of the most poetic events in history used to seem to me in childhood that crowning of his dead Queen by King Pedro, to which Mrs. Hemans consecrated some of her most pathetic verses. To this day I cannot think of the beautiful dead Inez de Castro in all the grandeur of her coronation robes, seated upon her throne, without feeling something of the faint, cold shuddering which the poetess imagines. Yet when I went for the first time to a grand Chinese house in the Arsenal at Shanghai, and found it all dressed out with signs of mourning, white cloths, and balls of twisted white cotton, people all in their best dresses, 384and preparations complete for three days of theatrical performance, though I was startled to find that all this was to commemorate the birthday of the wife of the master of the house, lying quiet in her grave already these twenty years, the twenty-years-in-China-and-not-know-a-word-of-the-language men all said it was quite usual, and seemed surprised and annoyed that I should find it affecting. Alas! to this day I have never learned whether he loved her very much, nor quite satisfied myself whether it was really her birthday or the day of her death they were thus celebrating. But, interpret 385it all after whatever fashion, there was surely in this some indication of sentiment.
Again, there are many suicides in China, and habit seems to make both Europeans and Chinese callous. Yet when a German who had returned to China happy in the belief a girl he knew would follow and marry him, and on hearing she had changed her mind, or for some other reason would not come, thought it better to leave a life that for him held no promise, the following poem appeared in a Shanghai paper:
在中國，我們常常習慣性地認為中國人沒有情感。因此，我認為收集一下我在居住中國十一年間所觀察到的情感跡象，可能會很有趣，讓讀者如果有公正的心態，可以總結並形成自己的結論。
在我童年時，歷史上最富詩意的事件之一是佩德羅國王為他已故的王后加冕，海曼夫人為此寫下了一些最感人的詩句。直到今天，當我想到美麗的伊內斯·德·卡斯特羅穿著加冕禮服，坐在她的王座上時，仍會感到詩人所想像的那種微弱、冷颤。然而，當我第一次去上海兵工廠的一座華麗的中國宅邸，發現整個房子裝扮著喪服的標誌，白布條和捲曲的白棉球，人們穿著最好的衣服，並為三天的戲劇表演做好了準備，儘管我驚訝地發現，所有這些都是為了紀念房主妻子的生日，而她已經在墳墓裡安息了二十年，那些在中國待了二十年卻不懂一句中文的人都說這很正常，似乎對我感到這件事感動感到驚訝和惱火。可惜的是，直到今天，我也不知道他是否非常愛她，也不完全確定他們是在慶祝她的生日還是她的忌日。但是，無論如何解釋，這其中肯定有一些情感的跡象。
再者，中國有很多自殺事件，習慣似乎使歐洲人和中國人都變得麻木不仁。然而，當一位德國人返回中國，滿心歡喜地相信一位他認識的女孩會跟隨並嫁給他，聽說她改變了主意或因其他原因不會來時，覺得生活對他毫無希望，選擇了結束生命，上海的一家報紙上出現了以下的詩句：
"AVE ATQUE VALE!
In memory of the late ——.
'Es lebe,
wer sich tapfer halt!'
—Goethe's 'Faust.'
The wild prunes blossom, red and white,