1949.8 中国的画笔

shiyi18

The Chinese Brush
American poet and playwright, WITTER BYNNERtraveled widely in the Orient in the golden days of security, and there developed a thoughtful interest in Chinese poetry, painting, and jades. His translation, with Dr. Kiang Kang-hu, of the poems included in The jade Mountain (1929) was the first volume of Chinese verse to be translated in full by an American poet. Mr. Bynner’s most recent books include The Way of Life According to Laotzu (1944) and Take Away the Darkness (1947),

By Witter Bynner
AUGUST 1949 ISSUE
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by WITTER BYNNER

1
SOON after my arrival in the Orient in 1917, I , asked a Chinese friend why he preferred writings on his walls to paintings, of which he apparently owned none and this at a time when good originals, as well as almost equally desirable copies, were often found by a watchful seeker with small means. “In this one poem on my wall,”he answered, “there are several paintings.” He referred not only, as I thought then, to scenes or figures or actions visualized through the poem. I believe now that he referred quite as much, or even more, to details of brushwork combined, like parts of a painting, in the whole composition.


It is no wonder then that Chinese calligraphy — whether used merely for signature and date and place or more fully for record, comment, homily, poetry, philosophy — should have become an inherent part of paintings for its own sake, its own forms, its placing and brushwork, as well as to convey informational data or literary significance. In brush strokes almost always seeming to be part and parcel of the painting, there are countless such inscriptions as “Painted at his home, Three Friends, in the summertime.” There are inscriptions also by copyists, disciples, admirers: —

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“Lung Yu’s brush was quick as a wind, flowing as a cloud —
I have had him in mind and tried to be like him.”
“Copied from the Sung painting, with a dragonfly added.”
Bound into a book of small landscapes and fragments attributed to Wang Men are separate pages of script telling how that painter, like Lung Yu’s follower, continued not slavishly but creatively the tradition and spirit of the predecessor: —

“Wang Men studied with Li Kao-tze and drew trees as vigorous as spears in a camp, and rocks not dead but changing with life. Though Wang learned the ancient manner, he was able to adapt it, using only its virtues.”

This reverence for the work of past masters by no means precluded new zest and new inspiration. On a four-panel screen of “Pines and Storks” Ch’ang Hsung, for example, has versified: —

“Drunk with my subject, I have painted hard enough
To shake the roots of the Five Sacred Mountains.”
Such balance and fitness between painting and writing are not customary in the Occident. Here a signature is often a blemish. It rarely participates in the composition but seems to have been perfunctorily added, and in most cases badly written, at the lower corner of the canvas like a scrawl at the end of a business letter. Occasionally Western artists have used careful lettering, such as the Holbeins’, or have signed their work with a decorative monogram, such as Dürer’s. Whistler, under the spell of Japanese charm, used for signature his butterfly symbol — which, however, was an alighting decoration, a butterfly entering from outside rather than a bud stemming from the design or a bird echoing it.

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Chinese custom is different and here is an extreme instance. In my private collection of paintings is a scroll attributed to Huang Shen (c.1720-1760), “Two Fishermen” is drawn with a minimum of broad, bold strokes. Above them the artist has affixed his brush name, Ying-piao, in strokes so similarly broad and bold that they less resemble writing than they do his wen and the gourd he always carried in his sash. The ideographs for wen and gourd, which were the actual characters of his painting name, are so roughened in this instance to conform with the style of the painting that they long baffled a Chinese friend who tried to decipher them for me and thought them possibly but a whimsical echo of strokes used in the figures of the fishermen.

One notes that in lama paintings, which crowd the space full of line and color, a signature — even if allowed by ecclesiastical regulation — could find no resting place, no perch, no air to breathe; and it is possible that in the usual solidity of Western painting not enough air is left for lettering.

Or does our difficulty arise from the nature of the letters themselves? Is it because our script, our print, is not beautiful? Unfamiliar letter-strokes seen apart from knowledge of their meaning may be more directly felt as design than familiar letterstrokes in which knowledge of meaning takes precedence. But that is not the point here. The Chinese, conscious of what their ideographs signify, are almost equally conscious of the graphic form with which the meaning comes through. Though Germany’s Gothic type has its chunky charm, there is no doubt that in Oriental characters lines and spaces are more agreeably related for the aesthetic eye than in any pattern of Western lettering. The Chinese ideograph is within itself, like the Egyptian hieroglyph, a compounded pictorial design. Many of the radical strokes joined into Chinese characters originated as rough illustrations or symbols, so that a character which combines such radicals is a graphic composition beyond any likeness to Western script, is literally “significant form.”


Lettering used by a Chinese artist is a part of his own skill: his signature and whatever else he inscribes on his scroll usually prove him to be as individual a creator in his handwriting as in his painting. He has not used a piece of type fixed by some other man; he has used personal calligraphy. I wonder again if our own artists might not also have been calligraphers had the forms of our script paralleled, as do Chinese characters, the directions of the creative brush, so that handwriting might have been in itself a worthy and highly esteemed art.

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2
FROM the very beginning of Oriental calligraphy, when ideographs were so different from those now in use that only the most learned scholars can still read them, the Chinese have deeply reverenced the art. The eminent T’ang scholar, poet, and calligrapher Han Yü (768-824) was prompted to write his famous Poem on the Stone Drums by an ink rubbing taken from one of the oldest known stone carvings in China, the ten stone drums which had been made and engraved with poems during the reign of the Chou Emperor Hsüan Wang (827-782 B.C.). Three of the drums still exist and were lately in the Confucian temple at Peking, together with replicas of the other seven. Han Yü tells the story: —


“Chang handed me this rubbing, from the stone drums,
Beseeching me to write a poem on the stone drums.
Tu Fu has gone. Li Po is dead.
What can my poor talent do for the stone drums?”
Then he tells of their origin, of the Emperor’s great concourse and hunt which they celebrated, and continues; —

“The event was recorded, to inform new generations.
Cut out of jutting cliffs, these drums made of stone —
On which poets and craftsmen, all of the first order,
Had indited and chiseled — were set in the deep mountains. . . .
Time has not yet vanquished the beauty of these letters
Looking like sharp daggers that pierce live crocodiles,
Like phoenix-mates dancing, like angels hovering down,
Like trees of jade and coral with interlocking branches,
Like golden cord and iron chain tied tight together,
Like incense tripods flung in the sea, like dragons mounting heaven.”
The poet laments the fact that

“Historians, gathering ancient poems, forgot to gather these,”

and recounts

“How a friend of mine, then at the western camp,
Offered to assist me in removing these old relies.
I bathed and changed, then made my plea to the college president
And urged on him the rareness of these most precious things.
They could be wrapped in rugs, be packed and sent in boxes
And carried on only a few camels: ten stone drums. . . .
We could scour the moss, pick out the dirt, restore the original surface
And lodge them in a fitting and secure place forever. . . .
But government officials grow fixed in their ways
And never will initiate beyond old precedent;
So herdboys strike the drums for fire, cows polish horns on them,
With no one to handle them reverentially.
Still aging and decaying, soon they may be effaced.
But now, eight dynasties after the Chou and all the wars over,
Why should there be nobody caring for these drums? ”
Somebody eventually cared enough to save three of them, still fairly whole; and I judge that on the replicas of the other seven the fragmentary poems and the writing thereof were reproduced from old ink rubbings. Thus, for devout Orientals, the script which Han Yü admired nearly two thousand years after it had been written has sounded its drumbeat from stone, and the echo of it from paper, through another thousand years.


A slightly later T’ang poet, Li Shang-yin (813— 858), in his poem The Han Monument, tells a story about lettering on stone designed by this same Han Yü, who died when Li was eleven years old. Emperor Hsien Tsung’s premier, P’ai Tu, had written an account of the overthrow of the Huai-hsi rebels, and Han Yü, who was P’ai Tu’s secretary, was appointed to inscribe the exploit on a monument. After the monument had been installed, the Emperor, having sent envoys to India to import Buddhistic doctrines, was preparing to receive a relic, a bone of the Buddha. Han Yü, resisting imposition of a religion unsuited to China, maintained that, whatever virtue might have resided in the Buddha, there could be none in his bone which, besides, might be really that of a dog or a sheep, whereupon the Emperor angrily exiled the prolestant. The monument was then thrown down and another, with an inferior inscription, set up in its place.

Here, in part, is Li Shang-yin’s account of the original inscription, its ordering, its accomplishment, its destruction: —

“The Emperor said: ‘To you, Tu, should go the highest honor
And your secretary, Yü, should write the record of it!’ . . .
When Yü had bowed his head, he leapt and danced, saying:
‘Historical writings on stone and metal are my especial art :
And, since I know the finest brushwork of the old masters,
My duty in this instance is more than merely official
And I should be at fault if I modestly declined.’
The Emperor, on hearing this, nodded many times.
Yü retired and fasted and then, in a narrow workroom,
His great brush thick with ink as with drops of rain,
Chose characters like those in The Canons of Yao and Hsun,
A style like that in the ancient poems. Ch’ing-miao and Sheng-min,
And soon the description was ready on a sheet of paper.
In the morning he laid it, with a how, on the purple stairs. . . .
The tablet was thirty feet high, the characters large as dippers;
It was set on a sacred tortoise, its columns flanked with dragons. . . .
But jealousy entered and malice, and reached the emperor —
So that a rope a hundred feet long pulled the great slab down
And coarse sand and small stones ground away its face.
But literature endures, like the universal spirit,
And its breath becomes a part of the vitals of all men.
The T’aug plate, the Confucian tripod, are eternal things
Not because of their fashioning but because of their inscriptions.”
3
WHEN I was in China the second time, twentylive years ago, I met several men whose skill in handwriting was an honored distinction and whose scrolls of lettering were as treasured as paintings, line of these men, a physician in the native city of Shanghai, whose grand fat her had been a calligrapher even more noted, offered through an English-speaking son to show me their family collection of paintings. After entering the house and sitting to our tea, I could feel the shadows and hear the breath of women who, though in other rooms, were yet present, peering through some crevice while Dr. Liu Chen-tung unrolled and hung landscapes, figure paintings, portraits. I remember having brought with me a landscape I considered buying, and asking him if it was good. “It is as good as you think it ” was his answer.

Later in the afternoon he showed me two small inscriptions by his grandfather, Liu Wen-ch’ao, which look my breath. The several characters on each scroll were like the changes of an assured voice. Their meanings, when translated, did not especially catch me. “Ten thousand volumes lodged in the heart” was, I believe, one of them. But I was held by the spell of sheer, pure form. They had the remote closeness of stars fixed and yet moving in space. It was the first time I had thoroughly felt the dignity and power of fine Chinese writing, and the doctor warmed to my exclamation.

His own writing, which he then showed me, was of a different order, microscopic, meticulous, admirable, but not bringing the quick whole unquestioning exhilarated “yes’ plumped out of me by the other. He presented me, however, with four of his closely written pages, which the son later translated.

The first in verse and the second in prose may have been the doctor’s own composition, but I have forgotten: —

“Under heaven are works of many kinds.
You cannot realize that things are hard to do by seeing others do them.
The time comes when you have to face them and do them yourself.”
“Even if a man is a master at his work, he listens to what other men have to say and learns thereby. It is the ignoramus who claims to know and thereby fails to learn from other men. However great or little Lis means, a man must not squander what lie has but must put it to square use; and he should think less about how much a dollar counts than about a copper’s doing a copper’s worth of good to himself or to someone.”

The third, signed by the doctor, was presumably his own neat poem: —

“Turn to all men your true face,
Tell the truth to your own heart,
Foresee the results of whatever you do,
Be as helpful to the rich as to the poor.”
And to the fourth was signed, in the doctor’s hand, the name of his distinguished grandfather, who must therefore have been its author: —

“To be contented with your means is to be happy.
With such contentment you can often smile,
For you are trained to meet all circumstance.
To live above fame and to think above what happens.”
The Liu family must have been well trained in Tao, well founded in Laotzu who said: —

“A man who knows how little he knows is well.
A man who knows how much he knows is sick";
“A man’s work, however finished it seem,
Continues as long as he live”;
“Content need never borrow ”;
and

“Only he who contains content
Remains content.'
Upon taking leave and being asked by Dr. Liu what I had liked best of all I had seen, I was candid in naming his grandfather’s two scrolls. That evening, when I returned home late from a theater, the scrolls were in my room at the hotel.

The rest of the story may be digression and does me doubtful credit, but is worth telling. I knew the Oriental gesture of making a present of what is admired, but with little or no expectation of the gift’s being finally accepted. I would be Oriental too. I told the doctor that I was going north and should be pleased if he would let me take the scrolls to hang in my rooms its I traveled, and presently to hang in my memory, but that I was borrowing them, not keeping them. On the other hand I should be happy to accept, if he would write it out for me, a copy of a four-line poem by Wang Wei of which I was particularly fond. I showed him my Chinese calling card. Because I so admired this poet, Dr. Kiang Kang-hu had enjoyed translating my name, Witter, into Chinese characters which mean a devotee of Wêi. Fond himself of Wang Wei both as painterand as poet, Dr. Liu told me which of the shorter poems was his own favorite. Before I left Shanghai he sent me, in his small perfect script, the lines I had asked for, A Parting. Having found out meantime from young Liu that a metal ink box from Peking would be a gift acceptable to his father, I took one to an expert craftsman in the northern city and had him engrave on it Wang Wei’s My Retreat at Mount Chung-nan, the doctor’s favorite.


The day before I was to sail from Shanghai for America I went again with the son to call on the doctor, taking with me the ink box and the borrowed scrolls. The boy commended me for returning them, inasmuch as they were the only formal examples left in the family of his great-grandfather’s writing, a fact I had not known till then. “The rest,” he said, “were burned.”And he added frankly and not, it seemed to me, quite Orientally though politeness is an odd bird anywhere — “I am sure that my father would prefer their coming finally to me, so you are acting well to return them to my father.”

When I handed them back to Dr. Liu I expressed my appreciation of his entrusting them to me awhile, especially since he had no others by his grandfather. “My son should not have told you that” Wits the severe answer, which I understood from his expression, even before the son dutifully interpreted. But the doctor laid the scrolls aside on a table and bowed. Then he look the ink box and, bowing again, read the Chung-nan poem aloud to me with a delicacy of intonation comparable to the delicacy of his script. He gave me a beautiful small landscape which I accepted. And as I bade him farewell, I felt that I had correctly and courteously met the delicacy of the situation.

The son had said little, walking back with me to the hotel. Next day when he came to see me off on the steamer, he handed me a package from his lather.


“Here are the scrolls.”

“But no,” I exclaimed, “I can’t take them.”

“My father wishes it.”

“No,” I persevered, against a firm look in his eye. “They were a present from him to me and now they are a present from me to you. There is no other way. And now, not later — now before I sail, I must leave them with you, lest they be lost in sending.”

“It would not be right,” he held his ground gravely.

“But tell me what would be right, what I can do.”

“Nothing more,” he concluded and then the quiet bomb, “because you did wrong.”

I sailed with the scrolls and without being told how I had done wrong. Nor shall I ever quite know. The son and I corresponded for some years, but friends in Shanghai cannot tell me what has become of him or of his family. Perhaps he has been lost in the wars. Perhaps, if I had persuaded him to keep his great-grandfather’s scrolls, they would have been lost too. When I look at them now, they are more than poised and beautiful abstractions. They are the presents and presence of friends lo whom I innocently “did wrong.”





中国的画笔
美国诗人和剧作家维特-班纳（WITTER BYNNER）在安全的黄金时期在东方广泛旅行，并在那里对中国的诗歌、绘画和玉器产生了浓厚的兴趣。他与姜康虎博士一起翻译了《玉山》（1929年）中的诗篇，这是美国诗人全文翻译的第一卷中国诗篇。宾纳先生最近的书包括《老子的人生之道》（1944年）和《带走黑暗》（1947年）。

作者：韦特-拜纳
1949年8月号
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作者：维特-拜纳（WITTER BYNNER

1
1917年我刚到东方时，我问一位中国朋友，为什么他喜欢在墙上写文章而不是画画，因为他显然没有画画，而在当时，好的原作和几乎同样理想的复制品往往被细心的追求者发现。"他回答说："在我墙上的这首诗里，有好几幅画"。正如我当时所想的那样，他指的不仅仅是通过诗歌所想象的场景、人物或行动。我现在相信，他指的是同样多的，甚至更多的，在整个构图中结合的笔触细节，就像一幅画的一部分。


因此，难怪中国书法--无论是仅仅用于签名、日期和地点，还是更全面地用于记录、评论、讲道、诗歌、哲学--都应该成为绘画的固有部分，因为它本身的形式、它的位置和笔法，以及传达信息数据或文学意义。在几乎总是被认为是绘画的一部分的笔触中，有无数这样的题词："夏日画于其家，三友"。

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"龙宇的画笔像风一样快，像云一样流动------。
我一直把他放在心上，并试图成为他的样子。"
"抄自宋画，加了一只蜻蜓。"
在一本归功于王门的小幅风景画和片段的书中，有几页单独的文字，讲述了这位画家如何像龙玉的追随者一样，不是奴颜婢膝，而是创造性地继承了前人的传统和精神：--。

"王蒙向李可染学习，他画的树木像营地里的长矛一样有活力，岩石不是死的，而是有生命的变化。王氏虽学古人，却能变通，只用其优点"。

这种对过去大师作品的敬畏绝不是排除了新的热情和新的灵感。例如，在 "松树和鹳鸟 "的四幅屏风上，钱钟书写下了诗句。-

"醉心于我的主题，我已经画得够辛苦了
撼动五行山的根基"。
绘画和写作之间的这种平衡和配合在西方并不常见。在这里，签名往往是一种瑕疵。它很少参与构图，而似乎是被敷衍地加上去的，而且在大多数情况下写得很糟糕，在画布的下角，就像一封商业信函末尾的潦草字迹。偶尔，西方艺术家也会使用仔细的字体，比如霍尔宾夫妇，或者用装饰性的字母签名，比如丢勒的作品。惠斯勒在日本魅力的诱惑下，用他的蝴蝶符号作为签名--然而，这是一种落脚的装饰，一只蝴蝶从外面进入，而不是从设计中产生的花蕾或鸟儿与之呼应。

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中国的习俗是不同的，这里有一个极端的例子。在我的私人绘画收藏中，有一幅归属于黄慎（约1720-1760）的画卷，"两个渔夫 "是用最少的宽大笔触画出来的。在他们的上方，艺术家用同样宽大的笔触写下了他的笔名 "英彪"，这些笔触不像文字，倒像是他的 "文 "和他总是带在腰间的葫芦。文和葫芦是他的画名的实际字符，在这个例子中，为了符合画的风格，它们被弄得如此粗糙，以至于一个中国朋友长期以来一直困惑不解，他试图为我破译它们，并认为它们可能只是渔民形象中所用笔画的异想天开。

人们注意到，在喇嘛画中，挤满了线条和色彩的空间，签名--即使是教会规定允许的--也找不到休息的地方，没有栖息的地方，没有呼吸的空气；可能是在西方绘画通常的坚固性中，没有足够的空气留给刻字。

还是我们的困难来自于字母本身的性质？是不是因为我们的文字，我们的印刷品，并不美丽？在不了解其含义的情况下看到陌生的字母笔画，可能比熟悉的字母笔画更直接地感受到设计，因为在熟悉的字母笔画中，对含义的了解是优先的。但这不是问题的关键。中国人意识到他们的表意文字意味着什么，他们几乎同样意识到通过图形的形式来体现其含义。尽管德国的哥特式字体有其厚重的魅力，但毫无疑问，在东方的文字中，线条和空间的关系比任何西方字体的模式都更符合美学的要求。中国的表意文字本身就像埃及的象形文字一样，是一种复合的图像设计。许多加入汉字的偏旁笔画都是作为粗略的插图或符号出现的，因此，一个结合了这些偏旁的字是一个超越西方文字的图形组合，是字面上的 "重要形式"。


中国艺术家使用的文字是他自己技能的一部分：他的签名和他在卷轴上刻下的其他东西通常证明他的笔迹和他的绘画一样是一个独立的创作者。他没有使用别人的字体；他使用的是个人书法。我又在想，如果我们自己的艺术家也是书法家，如果我们的文字形式像汉字一样与创作用笔的方向相一致，那么手写体本身就可能是一种有价值的、受人尊敬的艺术。

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2
从东方书法的一开始，当表意文字与现在使用的文字如此不同，以至于只有最博学的学者仍能读懂它们时，中国人就对这种艺术深怀敬意。著名的唐代学者、诗人和书法家韩愈（768-824）从中国已知最古老的石雕之一，即周宣王（公元前827-782年）统治时期制作并刻有诗歌的十个石鼓上取下墨迹，促使他写下了著名的《石鼓诗》。其中三个石鼓仍然存在，最近在北京的孔庙里，还有其他七个石鼓的复制品。韩愈讲述了这个故事：-


韩愈说："昌哥递给我这个石鼓上的擦子。
恳请我在石鼓上写一首诗。
屠夫已去。李宝已死。
我这可怜的人才能为石鼓做什么？"
然后，他讲述了石鼓的起源，以及他们庆祝的皇帝的盛大集会和狩猎，并继续说； --

"这一事件被记录下来，以告知新的世代。
这些石鼓是从突出的悬崖上凿出来的，由石头制成
诗人和工匠，都是一流的。
都曾在上面刻画和凿刻--被镶嵌在深山之中。. . .
时间还没有征服这些字母的美丽
看起来像刺穿活鳄鱼的锋利匕首。
像凤凰的伴侣在跳舞，像天使在盘旋而下。
像玉石和珊瑚的树，枝叶交错。
如金绳铁链紧紧相连。
像香鼎抛在海里，像巨龙上天"。
诗人感叹道

"历史学家在收集古诗词的时候，忘记了收集这些。"

并叙述了

"我的一个朋友，当时在西部的营地
主动帮助我消除这些旧的依托。
我洗了澡，换了衣服，然后向大学校长提出了我的请求
并敦促他注意这些最珍贵的东西的稀有性。
他们可以用地毯包裹，用箱子包装和发送
只用几只骆驼就能运走：十个石鼓。. . .
我们可以清除苔藓，挑出污垢，恢复原来的表面
并把它们永远安放在一个合适和安全的地方。. . .
但是，政府官员在他们的方式上越来越固定
从来不会超越旧的先例。
于是牧童敲鼓取火，牛儿擦亮牛角。
没有人恭敬地处理它们。
他们还在老化和腐烂，很快就会被抹去。
但现在，周朝之后的八个朝代，所有的战争都结束了。
为什么没有人关心这些鼓呢？"
最终有人关心到保存了其中的三个，仍然相当完整；我判断，在其他七个的复制品上，零星的诗句和文字是根据旧的墨迹拓片复制的。因此，对于虔诚的东方人来说，韩愈所推崇的文字在写成近两千年后，在石头上发出了它的鼓声，在纸张上发出了它的回声，又过了一千年。


稍后的唐朝诗人李商隐（813-858）在他的《汉碑》一诗中讲述了一个关于韩愈设计的石刻文字的故事，韩愈在李商隐11岁的时候就去世了。宪宗皇帝的总理柏图写了一篇关于推翻淮西叛军的报告，而作为柏图秘书的韩愈则被任命在一块纪念碑上刻下这段功绩。纪念碑立好后，皇帝派使臣到印度输入佛教教义，准备接受佛祖的舍利子。韩愈抵制将不适合中国的宗教强加于人，坚持认为，无论佛祖身上有什么美德，他的骨头里都没有，而且，他的骨头可能真的是一只狗或一只羊的骨头。于是，皇帝愤怒地放逐了这名妄想者。这块碑被推倒，并在原地树立了另一块碑，碑文的内容也不尽相同。

以下是李商隐对原碑文的部分描述，它的排序，它的完成，它的销毁： -

"皇帝说：'你，图，应该得到最高的荣誉
而你的秘书，禹，应该写下记录！'......。
禹低下头后，便跳起舞来，说："。
'在石头和金属上写历史是我的特殊艺术。
而且，既然我知道古代大师们最优秀的笔法。
在这种情况下，我的责任不仅仅是官方的。
如果我谦虚地拒绝，那就错了。
皇帝听后，多次点头。
俞敏洪退休后禁食，然后，在一个狭窄的工作间里。
他的大笔浓墨如雨滴。
选择了像《尧舜典》中的人物。
像古诗词中的风格。正明和圣明。
很快，描述就在一张纸上准备好了。
清晨，他把它放在紫色的楼梯上。. .
这块碑高三十尺，字大如斗。
摆在神龟上，两边的柱子上有龙。. .
但嫉妒和恶意的进入，达到了皇帝------。
于是，一根百尺长的绳子将大石板拉了下来
粗糙的沙子和小石头磨去了它的脸。
但是，文学就像普遍的精神一样，经久不衰。
它的气息成为所有人生命力的一部分。
泰戈尔的盘子，儒家的鼎，都是永恒的东西
不是因为它们的造型，而是因为它们的铭文"。
3
当我第二次来到中国时，也就是二十多年前，我遇到了几个人，他们的书法技巧是一种荣誉，他们的字卷就像绘画一样珍贵，这些人中有一个是上海本地的医生，他的祖父是一位书法家，甚至更有名，他通过一个讲英语的儿子提出让我看看他们家的绘画收藏。进屋后，我们坐下来喝茶，我可以感觉到阴影，听到女人的呼吸声，她们虽然在其他房间，但仍然在场，在刘辰东医生展开和悬挂山水画、人物画和肖像画时，透过一些缝隙窥视。我记得我带来了一幅我考虑购买的风景画，并问他这幅画是否好。他的回答是："它和你想的一样好"。

下午晚些时候，他给我看了他祖父刘文彩的两幅小铭文，让我大开眼界。每个卷轴上的几个字就像一个可靠的声音的变化。他们的意思，在翻译时，并没有特别吸引我。我相信，"万卷归心 "是其中之一。但我被纯粹的、纯粹的形式所吸引。它们有如恒星在太空中固定而又移动的遥远的亲近感。这是我第一次彻底感受到精美的中国文字的尊严和力量，医生对我的感叹也很热情。

他随后给我看的他自己的字，是另一个等级的，微观的，细致的，令人钦佩的，但却没有带来另一个人给我带来的快速的整个无疑问的令人振奋的 "是"。不过，他给我看了他写得很仔细的四页纸，后来儿子把它们翻译了出来。

第一篇是诗，第二篇是散文，可能是医生自己写的，但我已经忘记了：-

"天底下有许多种类的工作。
你不能通过看到别人做的事情而意识到事情很难做。
时候到了，你必须面对它们，亲自去做。"
"即使一个人在他的工作中是个高手，他也会倾听其他人的意见，并从中学习。无知者才会自称了解，从而不向他人学习。无论李斯的财力有多大或多小，一个人都不能浪费他所拥有的东西，而必须把它用在正道上；他不应该考虑一美元有多少价值，而应该考虑一个铜板对自己或别人有多大的好处。

第三首由医生签名的诗，大概是他自己的整齐的诗。-

"向所有人展示你的真面目。
对自己的心说真话。
预见你所做的一切的结果。
对富人和穷人一样有帮助"。
第四句话是由医生亲笔签名的，是他杰出的祖父的名字，因此他一定是这句话的作者： --

"知足常乐就是幸福。
有了这样的满足感，你就可以经常微笑。
因为你被训练得能应付一切情况。
生活在名利之上，思考在所发生的事情之上"。
刘家一定在道上受过良好的训练，在老子那里有良好的基础，老子说：----。

"知之甚少的人是好的。
一个人如果知道的太多，就会生病"。
"一个人的工作，无论它看起来如何完成。
只要他活着就会继续下去"。
"内容永远不需要借用"。
和

"只有包含内容的人
才会继续满足"。
告辞时，刘博士问我在所有看过的作品中最喜欢什么，我坦然说出了他祖父的两幅画卷。那天晚上，当我从剧院晚间回家时，这两幅画卷就在我的旅馆房间里。

故事的其余部分可能是离题的，对我来说是值得怀疑的，但还是值得讲的。我知道东方人的姿态是把所欣赏的东西做成礼物，但对礼物最终被接受的期望很小或没有。我也想成为东方人。我告诉医生，我要去北方，如果他能让我把这些卷轴挂在我的房间里，现在就挂在我的记忆中，我应该很高兴，但我是借来的，不是留着的。另一方面，如果他能为我写出王维的一首四行诗，我很乐意接受，我特别喜欢这首诗。我给他看了我的中国电话卡。由于我非常欣赏这位诗人，姜康虎博士很喜欢把我的名字Witter翻译成汉字，意思是Wêi的信徒。刘博士自己也很喜欢王维，既是画家又是诗人，他告诉我哪一首短诗是他自己的最爱。在我离开上海之前，他用他的小楷给我寄来了我要的那首《离别》。我从小刘那里了解到，北京的金属墨盒是他父亲可以接受的礼物，于是我带着墨盒去找北方城市的一个专家工匠，让他在上面刻上王维的《我在终南山的隐居》，这是医生最喜欢的。


在我要从上海出发去美国的前一天，我又和儿子一起去拜访医生，带着墨盒和借来的画卷。男孩称赞我把它们还给了他，因为它们是他曾祖父写作的家族中仅存的正式例子，这个事实我直到那时才知道。"他说："其余的都被烧掉了。"他还坦率地补充说，在我看来，虽然礼貌在任何地方都是一种奇怪的鸟，但也不是很东方--"我相信我父亲更希望它们最后能到我这里来，所以你把它们还给我父亲是个好办法。"

当我把它们交还给刘医生时，我对他把它们托付给我一段时间表示感谢，尤其是他没有祖父的其他作品。"我的儿子不应该告诉你这些。"Wits的回答很严厉，我从他的表情中明白了这一点，甚至在儿子尽职的解释之前。但医生把卷轴放在桌子上，鞠了一躬。然后他看了看墨盒，再次鞠躬，向我大声朗读了那首《中南诗》，其音调的细腻程度可与他的字体的细腻程度媲美。他送给我一幅美丽的小山水，我接受了。当我向他告别时，我觉得我已经正确而有礼貌地满足了这种微妙的情况。

儿子没有说什么，和我一起走回了旅馆。第二天，当他来送我上汽船的时候，他从他的皮包里拿出一个包裹递给我。


"这是卷轴。"

"可是不行，"我惊呼，"我不能拿它们。"

"我父亲希望如此。"

"不，"我坚持说，对抗他坚定的眼神。"它们是他送给我的礼物，现在它们是我送给你的礼物。没有其他办法。而现在，不是以后--现在在我启航之前，我必须把它们留给你，以免它们在发送过程中丢失。"

"这是不对的，"他严肃地坚持自己的立场。

"但请告诉我什么才是正确的，我可以做什么。"

"没有什么了，"他总结道，然后是安静的炸弹，"因为你做错了。"

我带着卷轴出海，没有被告知我是如何做错的。我也不可能完全知道。这个儿子和我通信了好几年，但上海的朋友不能告诉我他或他的家人的情况。也许他已经在战争中失踪了。也许，如果我说服他保留他曾祖父的书卷，它们也会丢失。当我现在看着它们时，它们不仅仅是姿态优美的抽象物。它们是朋友们的礼物和存在，我无辜地 "做错了"。