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HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES Idema's Literary Travels: Sinologist's fascination with China began in childhood By Andrea Shen
Wilt Idema teaches Chinese literature written from roughly 900 to 1900 A.D. "That’s from King Alfred to Edward VII. Or Leif Eriksson to the beginning of this century," Idema says. "The China I’m dealing with, to a very large degree, does not exist anymore," he says. "How do you imagine that China?"As visiting professor this fall and full tenured professor starting next spring, Idema helps students imagine.Idema became interested in China as a boy reading the novels of Pearl S. Buck and the Dutch sinologist Robert van Gulik. At the University of Leiden, in his native Netherlands, he received his B.A. and Ph.D. in Chinese language and culture. At Leiden, where he began teaching in 1970, Idema took part in a Dutch tradition of sinology dating to Holland’s 19th-century rule of the Dutch East Indies.In the China that Idema studies, a boy whose stepmother craves fish lies on a frozen lake until his body heat melts the ice, and carp leap up to reward his patience. In this China, soldiers spring up from a handful of rice scattered on the ground; mulberry bushes bloom in midwinter. The heavens press so heavily on the earth, in the Chinese cosmogony, that only the birds, flapping mightily, can lift the sky – an image recast in the tale of a boy who straps cone-shaped hats to his arms and flies from a burning barn. "These texts are moving, in many ways," says Idema. "They provide insights, they can move you either to laughter or to tears; the way that things are expressed can be extremely remarkable. It gives you a feeling of being there – in a completely different place, in a completely different era. It’s a certain type of high." Idema specializes in Chinese vernacular fiction, drama, and performative literature (such as ballads) of the 12th through 17th centuries. "Vernacular" refers to the spoken language of the imperial court, as opposed to the written language used for official communications, certain types of poetry, and technical treatises. "He is a great literary historian," says Peter Bol, professor of Chinese history and chair of the East Asian Languages and Civilizations Department. "In his earlier work, he undid the thesis that vernacular fiction emerged from below, that it was the writing down of popular tales." Rather, Idema claimed, the great novels and plays were written by the educated elite, for their own enjoyment."He’s one of the leading authorities in the world on Chinese drama," Bol adds. Idema is especially interested in the way texts interact with their performance context. In an anthology he’s compiling with Professor Stephen West of the University of California, Berkeley, Idema traces the development of 25 Chinese plays over four centuries. "You can compare it to what happened to Shakespeare’s texts," Idema says. "Shakespeare wrote his texts. All through the 17th and 18th centuries, these texts were heavily adapted for performance. Then in the 19th century, these texts were heavily bowdlerized." Idema frequently makes such cultural comparisons. He’ll compare Ji Bu, an emperor’s adviser, to Ulysses; or the Chinese character Shun to the Biblical Joseph. Translation seems to come naturally to him. The volumes of poetry, drama, and fiction he has translated into Dutch and English span 3 feet of shelf space in his office. "I like to translate, but also, as the Dutch public was allowing me to spend my life doing something which I like to do, I thought I should do something in return," Idema says. In a recent class, Idema constructed an elegant bridge of historical information, sociological observation, and textual analysis, strong enough to support his students as they tentatively crossed into ancient China. He vividly described the discovery, in 1900, of a cache of Tang dynasty (618-906 A.D.) manuscripts in a walled-up cave in Dunhuang, China. "He’s a great teacher, very enthusiastic," says Jennifer Carpenter ’91, a graduate student who is taking both of Idema’s courses this term. "I’ve had many very good teachers here, and he’s definitely among them.""He’s a very serious scholar, but he’s trying to bring a lot of humor to the class and make it more interesting," says Kenny Ng, another graduate student.Liberalized relations between China and the West mean Idema and others can imagine China in fuller detail. "Since the beginning of the ’80s, especially in the mainland, an immense amount of materials that we didn’t know existed, or perhaps we hoped would exist, but we didn’t have access to, have become accessible," Idema says. "Libraries have been opened, huge reprint projects have been started, there have been new archaeological discoveries. There is practically no field in the history of Chinese literature where you can say, well, what happened 20, 30, or 40 years ago is still the final word." As the British novelist L.P. Hartley says, the past is another country. But the present is another country for Idema, too. He and his wife moved to Cambridge only two months ago. "Harvard offered, apart from a chance to start in a different place, the opportunity to work in a surrounding where there would be an excellent group of people in Chinese literature," Idema says.
Copyright 1999 President and Fellows of Harvard College |
