I have never heard of the name of Chiang Hsun 蔣 勳 until I read about him in the blog of one of my fellow bloggers博樂. She said she was then reading his 孤獨六講. To me, solitude has always been something shunned by the ordinary people, something to be avoided at all costs. But I have also learned a bit of existentialist philosophy in connection with my previous study of novels like Dostoevsky's The Underground man, Albert Camus' The Outsider, Jean Paul Sartre's La Nausée that man's existential condition is to be irremediably alone and that he must therefore be honest and face up to his condition and create the meaning of his own life all by himself because there is simply no external God to give any "objective" meaning to his life. Of course, I also know that to practice meditation properly, it is advisable to do so in a secluded and silent environment, far from other people. One must be absolutely alone the better to examine the coming and going of one's own thoughts and emotions. But that is about all that I know about solitude. But I have never seriously thought about the role that solitude should play in my life. So it felt a bit odd that a Taiwanese author who studied in France and who subsequently became a leading speaker on Chinese culture should devote an entire book to this topic. This puzzle piqued my interest to explore him a little further. I then got the following information from a website on the internet:
一九四七年生於古都西安，福建長樂人。
中國文化大學史學系、藝術研究所畢業。
一九七二年負笈法國巴黎大學藝術研究所，一九七六年返臺。
曾任《雄獅》美術月刊主編，先後任教於文化、輔仁大學及東海大學美術系系主任。
現任《聯合文學》社長。
畫展
| 1987 | 楚戈、席慕蓉、蔣勳聯展【山水】於敦煌藝術中心 |
| 1989 | 第一次個展於敦煌藝術中心 |
| 1990 | 蔣勳、小魚、陳仕卿三人聯展【水墨四季】於敦煌藝術中心 |
| 1991 | 楚戈、席慕蓉、蔣勳聯展【花季】於清韻藝術中心 |
| 1992 | 蔣安、蔣勳聯展於敦煌藝術中心 |
| 1993 | 劉其偉、楚戈、席慕蓉、蔣勳聯展【春暖花開】於敦煌藝術中心 |
| 1994 | 蔣勳、小魚、陳仕卿、王意滿四人聯展於敦煌藝術中心 |
| 1996 | 個展【夏日、島嶼】於後院畫廊 |
| 席慕蓉、蔣勳聯展【流金歲月】於敦煌藝術中心 | |
| 1997 | 個展【新中產階級】於敦煌藝術中心 |
| 1998 | 個展【夏日如歌】於後院畫廊 |
| 蔣安、楊正雍、蔣勳聯展於台北、新竹敦煌藝術中心 | |
| 1999 | 蔣安、楊正雍、蔣勳聯展於台中、高雄敦煌藝術中心 |
| 聯展【盛世繁花】於時報藝術中心 | |
| 2000 | 千禧年個展【肉身覺醒】於龍門畫廊 |
| 2001 | 個展於中山大學蔣公行館西灣藝廊 |
| 個展【肉身覺醒】於智邦藝術基金會 | |
| 蔣安、蔣勳聯展於時報藝術中心 |
出 版
| 論述 | 徐悲鴻研究、齊白石研究、美的沉思、 寫給大家的中國美術史、藝術概論 |
| 導覽 | 李可染導覽手冊、劉錦堂研究、閱讀畢卡索、 世紀風華-橘園美術館珍藏展 世紀領航-達文西特展、魔幻達利 |
| 詩集 | 少年中國、母親、蔣勳詩選、多情應笑我、祝福、 眼前即是如畫的江山、來日方長、 2000聯合文學新版: 祝福、眼前即是如畫的江山 |
散文 | 萍水相逢、大度 ·山 、今宵酒醒何處-路上書、人與地、島嶼獨白、 情不自禁、寫給Ly's M-1999 |
| 小說 | 傳說、因為孤獨的緣故、1999新傳說 |
| 札記 | 藝術手記、歡喜讚歎、1999新版歡喜讚歎 |
| 合集 | 希望我能有條船 |
| 畫冊 | 來日方長 (詩、畫)、肉身覺醒 |
| 畫卡 | 蔣安 ·蔣勳畫卡、蔣勳1996畫卡、新中產階級、肉身覺醒 |
| 筆記書 | 願、捨得、再生、櫻桃、1998筆記 |
| CD | 世紀風華導覽、世紀領航-達文西特展導覽、 「魔幻．達利」特展導覽、 「願」詩作朗誦、藝術概論有聲書 |
獲 獎
1964 全省小說比賽第一名 (洛洛的故事)
1982 中國時報新詩推薦獎 (母親)
1985 中國時報散文推薦獎、中興文藝獎 (萍水相逢)
1988 廣播節目金鐘獎 (文化廣場)
1997 吳魯芹文學獎 (島嶼獨白)
From the above, it is quite obvious that he has a most unusual blend of knowledge from different fields. He is a cross disciplinary person: himself a painter but also a cultural historian, writer of poetry, novels and literary and art criticism and a radio commentator of Chinese culture, the modern day equivalent of the Renaissance man . He also seems to be closely connected to another author in whom I am interested 席慕容 at the moment. Like him, 席 too is herself a painter, poet and novelist. So when the book was finally in my hands at home after much difficulties, I started to read eagerly. What follows is what I managed to glean from the first chapter of this, to me, unusual book on solitude.
In his introduction, Chiang says, contrary to popular notions about solitude, that he "longs for and treasures solitude" because it seems to him that it is only through solitude that life becomes "rich and splendid" and complete. To him, solitude is a "blessing"! He fully realizes that he is all alone and that when his passion takes posession of him, he thinks that it can only do so occasionally and despite "himself". He adds that he has tried to communicate with others through all kinds of language but finds in the end that at the limit of language, there is an even greater solitude! He has also tried to play the role of go-between or mediator between different people and different groups but again, despite being so actively involved in others, he finds that he is still irremediably alone. To him, even violence is powerless to break a man's solitude. As he says, "the sound of all guns are fired into the huge hole of solitude, itself being nothing but a solitary echo". He also hears the cries of the revolutionary, intent on upsetting the existing social class structure and social order. But but in the end, to him, even the revolutionary will find nothing but solitude. Finally, he finds that even esthetics may be based on solitude!
He says that for thousands of years, man has been using his limited thought to plumb the depths what may be an infinite solitude. He is destined to fail. Paradoxically, he says he does not even need listeners to his talk about solitude. All the company he needs is his own. To that extent, he regards his own book as a monologue! I think I know what he means. I don't know about the other aspects but as far as words are concerned, I can certainly agree with him. I use words all the time. I speak. I write. I make my living speaking and writing for others. Yet when we find that we wish to express our deepest thoughts or our deepest feelings, words are often totally inadequate. At most, words can act only as the precursor of action. Is that why we express our deepest love for another human being with touch, not with words? When we are most angry or frustrated, all we can do is yell, scream, cry out loud, howl, like an animal, with sound the meaning of which is the intensity of its vibration in the air, nothing more: the "oh"s, "ah"s, "aaah!"s, "uugh"s etc. Even poets employ them in their poetry. These are words without any denotative meaning. Their meaning is exhausted by their very sound!
In the first chapter of his book, Chiang discusses the solitude of the human body. To him, the Chinese race is a most undeveloped race as far as privacy is concerned. There is no place for privacy in Chinese society. Our culture is simply not designed with privacy in mind. Our thinkers think that we do not need any privacy and since there is no such need, privacy is trampled on at will and is always regarded with suspicion. Confucian values are based on the values of a small time village peasant economy where social cohesion is paramount. Everything which is inconsistent with the needs of such an economy is brushed aside as irrelevant or even considered harmful. Even though we are no longer a peasant economy, the values of Confucianism, based on the needs of such an economy and the corresponding social organisation built around the family are far from extinct. It is in our blood. We breathe it. We live it. It is so pervasive that we are not even aware that it exists because we are of it, under it and it is in it that we have our life and our very being. Perhaps for this reason, Chinese parents think nothing of reading our letters, our diaries, checking in on our emails, checking in on who we communicate with etc. They may even think that it is their " duty" to protect us from "harm" especially "moral" harm! He recalls how as a boy, he was frequently told that certain words cannot be said during Chinese New Year: words which connote death or bad luck. To obtain a measure of privacy, he had to resort to reading literature and talk with the relevant characters in a monologue and found a strange satisfaction in doing so. But everything would have to be done in secret. There is really very little personal space in Chinese society. It is as if all Chinese are condemned to live always in the public eye! But I think that it is now changing. I never ask my daughters anything about her boy friends which she does not volunteer. I have never checked her emails. I don't even deliberately read the messages she got from her friends on her facebook.
To Chiang, the attack and erosion on solitude is pervasive, even in the world of the internet. Even there, it is difficult to have privacy. According to him, our emails are flooded with junk mail. Before we can get on with our private correspondence, we have first to clear off all such junk mail. But he was probably talking about the internet at a stage when there were not effective "junk mail" filters. I now choose "moderate" junk mail filter which has worked pretty well so far. I don't think I have any junk mail now. But I suppose what he is trying to emphasize is that even on the internet, it may be diffcult to have privacy. That may well be true because to the expert, they can easily get access to what we think of as our "private" and the most intimate information though suitable hacking techniques. So to this extent, I agree with him.
Then he talks about how even in the radio and TV shows concerning personal life of its participants, it is difficult for a person to fully express himself because of the constraint of air time. This point is to me valid. I do agree that when everybody seeks to speak, none can finish what he is talking about.Progress in communication technology does nothing to alleviate the loneliness in our heart. It is the same in radio and TV talk shows. It's what has been called in the 1960s' film "The Graduate", the "sound of silence". Everybody talking without listening! We feel most lonely when we are with the most number of people. There is no real communication, only the form of communication! There is no real understanding because everyone is in a hurry. It takes time for the significance of words to sink in!
To him, unless we learn to face ourselves alone, it is difficult for us to communicate with others. This to me, seems valid. If we do not even know ourselves, something which takes time, how can we expect to really understand others. He says that paradoxically, our anxiety and our desire to escape from loneliness is one of the reasons why we "feel" so lonely. But to me, there, the anxiety is secondary, not primary cause of our loneliness.
He says that a different stages of our lives, the quality of our loneliness is different. As teenagers, we seek to express ourselves and our secret loves in our own diaries or even in poetry. We would read certain books, see certain movies, listen to certain music but have nothing to communicate with our parents about them. Similarly, when are in love, meaning puppy love, we seek to be noticed by the object our love and we pay special attention to how we look and do our best to improve our looks. But all these are done in private, in secret, in solitude. In doing that, we are trying to communicate with ourselves. We ourselves are our own first lovers! He relates the story of one of his students who often came to class in a drowsy state because she used four different names to communicate with four different people on the internet, each of the four internet names representing one aspect of her personality. She thought that she had control of her different personalities. But he wonders if she was really in control.
As far as the solitude of the body is concerend, the main subject of this chapter, the basic problem to the author, is that in Chinese civilization, there is no room for any individuality. In consequence, our parents never teaches us about sex, the most intimate part of our bodies. Our parents think that it is dangerous to leave us alone so that whenever we are alone, they think that we must be doing something no good. We live with our parents even after marriage so that when we make love, our parents will know about it. But I don't think that is the case in HK. But to him, what is important is that in the Confucian culture, there is simply no room for privacy, which makes little distinction between the public and the private spheres.There is always a need for Chinese people to declare that we are not alone in Chinese society, according to Chiang! We live in mortal fear that others are hiding something from us. This mentality applies even to our sexual lives. Is that so?
He cites the example of how people behave during the cultural revolution. No one wants to be the first one to express an opinion in public. Everyone tries to listen to what other people say first and then chime in with the views of the majority. The reason is that in Chinese society, the loner is always singled out for attack. We must all conform to what the majority of people think. We must all be slaves to public opinion because we think that individual opinion may be harmful. But does what he says about China during the cultural revolution applies to contemporary society in Hong Kong. I don't think so. Certainly there is great pressure to conform in terms of the way we dress, the kind of subject of conversations at dinner tables with friends etc. We are daily bombarded by advertisements and media coverage of the latest hot political, economic, financial, social gossips But we still got one powerful weapon in our hands. It's our right to deny to be influenced by the media. We can refuse to tune in to the relevant radio, TV channels and we can turn them off.
To him, the only counter value in Chinese civilization against Confucian public and social morality is the individualist value of Laotse and ChuangTsu. He is particularly appreciative of ChuangTsu's ideal of " communicating with the spirit of heaven and earth alone" (獨與天現精神住來). But to him, this is regarded as a "heresy" by the Confucian tradition and as a result , the thoughts of these two Chinese thinkers can never become orthodox thinking in China and such thoughts are adopted only by failed bureaucrats, often only when they were passed over as officials in political promotions or when they met with other political upsets. It was almost a kind of enforced or imposed psychological remedy for "failure" within the official tradition. It is something more like making a virtue out of necessity than something whole-hearted embraced on its own account. But here again, I can't totally agree with him. There may indeed be some who matched his description but certainly not all. At all ages, there are always certain strong indviduals who can resist what the majority of the others think, even now.
He describes how during his teenage, all his friends read pornographic novels and looked at "dirty photogaphs" but how he himself was influenced by his sister and read the "Dream of the Red Chamber" and "Jane Eyre" and other more literary works. However, to him the transformation or sublimation of the sexual drive is basically the same. Some of the others seek sublimation through reading marital arts novels or even the actual practice of martial arts themselves. To him, they are merely looking for an "outlet for life". He also talked about how in his age, there was a novel "Outside the Window" (窗外) about the tragic love between a girl student and her teacher. To him, this is also an example of how teenage girls' sexual drive got sublimated at what he calls at the first level (初步層次).
In Chinese official culture, sex is often ignored or lightly passed over. Whilst it is true that we got a passage in the Books of Poetry (詩經) we got passages like "關關睢鳩, 在河之洲, 窈窕淑女, 君子好逑 " but that is quickly bounded by the exegetes' comments that that is "后妃之德" and not sexual desire as such. What hypocrisy! It seems that sex cannot be accepted upon its own terms. That to him, is a source of Chinese sexual solitude. In the novel Dream of the Red Chamber, there was a passage about "nocturnal emission" by a 13-year-old boy and episodes about 賈寶玉 and 林黛玉 secretly reading "壯丹亭" and "西廂記" and when they got into a quarrel, the latter threatened to tell the former's uncle about it. In Chinese society, sex is not simply something that you can talk about in public. But certainly times have changed! He talked about the length of mini skirts and length of hair and how they are subject of social control. But again, times have changed.
What I like about Chiang and agree with him is his emphasis on the value of inviduality which to him is indissolubly associated with solitude. When he asks us to live our solitude, what he is really asking us is to live our own uniqueness, our individuality. He talks about the story of 嵇康 who died in front of 3000 of his students and ended his life with a song 廣陵散 after which, he said that from then on, that would be the last that his students could hear it! What a way to go!. He lived his solitude! He did not leave a copy of the song behind. Many criticized him for it. But Chiang defended him. He said that not every one deserves to hear the song and that if we cannot be independent and live our own way, art and beauty will be meaningless too but shall be reduced to just following the fashion. In this, I agree.
Another form of our alienation from our solitude he talked about is our attitude concerning death. In Chinese culture, death is unmentionable. We replace the word with all kinds of euphemisms like 去世, 過世, 西歸, 仙遊, 升天. etc. But to him, death is solitary, insuperable. He quotes with approbation, Sartre, to whom from the moment we are born, we are already walking towards death. Sartre wrote a novel Le Mur (牆) about how man faces death and describes how everything is self-sufficient in itself, stubbornly defying us with its own independence from us. ChuangTsu also talks about a story of a person who gazed at a skull and fell asleep and then woke up and the skull started to talk to him about his previous life. ChuangTsu could stare death in the face, but not Confucius. When asked about it, he merely told his students off. He said: "未知生, 焉知死 ." but we are taught to 殺身成仁,捨身取義 . This to Chiang is a weakness of Confucianism. If we are going to die for someone, the motive should be sympathy and empathy not the abstract virtue of benevolence or justice. To him the social and ethical values of those at the lower strata of society and what they say and do are still heavily imbued with Confucianist ideas. This is quite unlike Socrates who chose to die because he believe that it was the decison of a democratically elected tribunal. To Chiang, the basis of morality must be individual values. .
Chiang says that the Confucian tradition and values are so strong in even modern Chinese society that even he himself could do little about it. He says that he may discuss about individualism and personal space all he liked, but in front of his 84 year old mother, his privacy and individuality seem totally unimportant. His mother will simply continue to talk at the front door with neighbors about how when he was a child, he wet his bed and howshe would ask him "What's wrong with it?" when she discovered his displeasure. To him, all parents hold a weapon, a pair of scissors. The scissors are called "love" and "care". To him, that pair of scissors became the first obstacle he had overcome on his path towards his own search for solitude, for indviduality. In our culture, everything done in the name of love, care, or filial piety is simply unequestionably, absolutely right! There is no room for any doubt! But to him, a people who cannot ask question will have no chance to become better.
To Chiang, many people talk about the meaning of life, as if it were something externally given. He doesn't agree. He quotes the example of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot who never arrives, Kafka's Metamorphosis in which the hero died longing for love, 陳凱歌's 黄土地 in which people just wanted to survive, Albet Camus questions about whether a child will enter heave or hell if immediately after birth, he is given a mortal injection. In Camus's Outsider, the hero Mersault shot the Arab on a white sandy beach with the surface of the water shimmering with sunlight by his eyes were dazzled by the piercing reflected glint flickering from the tip of the the blade in the advancing Arab's hands and he fired 6 times and he was put on trial, subject to first to interrogation by the police, then the inquisitorial magistrate and finally a priest but he stubbornly refused to say anything which they, representing respectively the criminal law, the judiciary and the religious authorities and their respective official values, wanted to hear so that they would have an excuse to reprieve him. He died, as he lived, honestly and snatched such joys from the sights and sounds of the sun, the sea, the sand and such sex as he could get before he died but refused to confess to a guilt which he did not honestly deserved. He chose death rather than betrayal of his honest beliefs. He thereby defined the meaning of his own life and his own death or the lack of meaning of human life. Whilst to the Confucians, life has an externally given meaning, to the existentialists, existence is a condition and essence comes afterwards, such thought being encapsulated into the epigram "existence precedes essence.": ie. that first we exist, we think, we feel, we act and it is how we think, how we feel and how we act which defines what and who we are. Society cannot define it for us, not political, not judicial, not religious "authority".
He asked, how long we can exist without telephone, fax, television, radio, computer, internet without feeling uneasy. When he revisited France, he was surprised how little the French used the mobile and how few of them have got TV. But it may have changed too. In any event, he thinks that speed kills. The faster we run, the faster solitude pursues us, until eventually, we die of exhaustion. We want to simpllfy everything, but certain things cannot be simplified. We need time and space to talk to ourselves and it takes time for ideas to settle down, to take shape. This applies even to the serious matter of looking for our ideal mate. If we take time, we will find that every person can be "our other half" because every one has something unique to offer to us. Only then will we cease to be lonely!
To him, the erotism of 金瓶梅 is sexual pleasure pushed to its threshold when pleasure becomes inextricably bound to pain. If so, sexual desire becomes an instrument of torture, a torture which delivers physical pleasure. But in the many abridged version of the novel, only those extracts describing explicit sexual activities are printed. This literary novel is thus reduced to the mechanical description of the body as merely an instrument for stimulating our eyes and our ears. But to him, the people who thus use themselves will never feel happy perhaps because he thinks that that kind of pleasure is partial, not total. But he did not say so.
Finally, he concludes that solitude is not the same as loneliness. Whilst loneliness leads to panic, solitude leads to plenitude, the kind of fullness of satisfaction that ChuangTzu talks about when man communicates with the entire universe and attains a kind of perfection just like Li Bai in his poem, 花間一壺酒，獨酌無相親，舉杯向明月，對影成三人. He is complete in himself. He does not need others. To Chiang, a state of perfection. One is never as lonely as when he stands in the midst of a milling crowd!
We may not agree with everything he says. Some of the things he says may seem a little exaggerated or outdated. But many of the things he says are certainly worth our further reflections. But for me, one of the questions I posed myself before I started looking for his books has been resolved. He is a man of his period and of my period too. No wonder I found his writing so congenial after reading one of his books for just about two minutes when there and then, I decided to buy all his books I could lay my hands on. He has definitely been influenced by existential thoughts! We think more or less the same thoughts. We are both children of the same age!
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