Rémi Mathieu

 

The year 2014 marks the 50th an­niversary of the establishment of China–France relations as well as 200 years of French Sinology. Over the past two centuries, how has the field evolved and what are some landmark achievements? CSST inter­viewed Prof. Mathieu on this topic.

 

CSST: How has French Sinology changed over the two centuries?

 

Mathieu: Before the 20th century, the majority of French Sinologists were missionaries or Jesuits who translated a large quantity of ancient Chinese classics, did much field research and introduced Chinese cul­ture to France. However, their main aim was to preach and their work therefore was more or less ideologi­cal. In order to find evidence of belief in God in ancient China from the Chi­nese classics, they deconstructed and reconstructed the Chinese texts when doing translation. As such, when the renderings went overseas, they al­ready carried a lot of Christian ideas.

 

It was not until the end of the Qing Dynasty and early Republican era that real Sinologists began to ap­pear in France. Sinologists such as Émmanuel-Édouard Chavannes and Paul Eugène Pelliot did China studies not to transform China into a West­ern colony or to spread Christianity, but to conduct objective research on China for academic purposes.

 

As time changed, theory within the discipline evolved, and new literature on bamboo slips and silk emerged, giving Sinologists new ideas. Given the social change both in Europe and China, contemporary French Sinol­ogy is quite different from what it was before the Second World War, taking a broader purview in Chinese history and culture and witnessing new research directions. Some ear­lier theories are no longer adequate to satisfy the needs of contemporary Sinological research. For example, structuralism was quite popular in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, while deconstructionism and post-modern theory are emerging now. Sinological research needs to apply new theory at this time so that it is more accept­able to scholars and readers.

 

CSST: Please elaborate on the characteristics of French Sinology.

 

Mathieu: Compared with its coun­terparts in other Western countries, French Sinology has at least three distinctive features. First of all, it is the earliest among its kind. It began to exist as early as the Napoleonic era. Starting when Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat gave lectures on the Chi­nese, Tartar and Manchu languages at the Collège de France in 1814, French Sinology has existed for 200 years. At the same time, France is also the center of traditional Sinology.

 

Second, French Sinology is noted for its numerous research achieve­ments. While France is a relatively small country with a small popula­tion, its Sinologists have published quite a lot, achieving much in terms of their research on some regions, ethnic groups, language, history and religion of China. French Sinology has been able to develop thanks to the efforts of generations of Sinolo­gists, including Émmanuel-Édouard Chavannes, with his Les Mémoires historiques de Se-ma Ts’ien traduits et annotés (The Historical Mem­oirs of Sima Qian, Translated and Annotated); Paul Eugène Pelliot, Marcel Granet and Stanislas Aignan Julien, who were renowned for their research on the Dunhuang manu­scripts, and Henri Maspero, the au­thor of the Ancient Chinese History.

 

Third, French Sinology is noted for its tradition of detailed analysis of the text and annotation, especially its commitment to high-quality research of first-hand material in ancient Chinese philological study. Modern and contemporary Sinolo­gists in other countries seldom read first-hand material, while French Sinologists not only master research methods of various disciplines but also understand Chinese literature.

 

Focusing on ancient Chinese philo­logical research, French Sinologists usually read Chinese classics and the writing on bamboo slips and silk, character by character and piece by piece. In the early 20th century, French Sinology, together with Brit­ish and Japanese Sinology, became one of the most important Sinologi­cal research fields precisely because of its emphasis on literature rather than people’s daily lives. For instance, Émmanuel-Édouard Chavannes’ Les Mémoires historiques de Se-ma Ts’ien traduits et annotés is still the only French edition today, making it an essential text for us to learn ancient Chinese history and thought before the Han Dynasty. Sinologists in other Western countries, such as many American Sinologists, will choose to do research using new post-war literature or publications by Chinese scholars.

 

CSST: How do you view the narra­tive style in classical Chinese literature?

 

Mathieu: Greek philosophy makes a strict distinction between mythol­ogy and logic, while its Chinese coun­terpart does not, as we have learned from classical Chinese literature, where there is no definite bound­ary between philosophical thought and a story. Mythology is a kind of language, a means of communica­tion between men or between man and god in a written or verbal form. Mythology presents a story mainly through images and plot, and argu­mentation is no longer important in such a narrative style. In addition, such narrative style is related to be­lief in truth, which does not require evidence. It is self-evident, i.e. its credibility is derived from its speech, which is different from reason. Reason must be supported, and in philosophy, this is exactly the case.

 

Perhaps ancient Chinese think­ers believed that philosophical thought should be based on stories rather than logical reasoning. Only “Sophists” could show logic clearly, but they were usually deemed by other thinkers as someone who confused thought or words. It is not that Chinese philosophy does not understand logic (in fact, Xunzi and Mozi are very good examples of us­ing logical reasoning). It was just that argumentation needed to be based on the authority of masters (“the master says” were required to be added) and the chain of reasoning (taking Syllogism in form).

 

Before Mozi adopted it, this theory had already been demonstrated in the works by Confucius, Han Fei and Gongsun Long. Thinkers delivered their message through mythological language. Of course, this is not the case with all thinkers. It is just that thinkers closely related to Taoism use this more often, as we can observe in works by Zhuangzi and Liezi.

 

CSST: Please share with us what you have learned after so many years of commitment to ancient Chinese studies.

 

Mathieu: After studying ancient Chinese, we begin to reexamine the features of our own language. Before we can do translation for readers, we must know what can or cannot be expressed freely by French and also the unique characteristics of the French language.

In pursuit of high-quality Sino­logical research, one needs to make good use of first-hand material and strengthen their proficiency of an­cient Chinese, which is a basic skill. This is a tradition much highlighted in French Sinology. My teacher Jacques Gernet was called a master exactly because his research on an­cient Chinese was among the top in Western Sinology. Sinologists are not the only scholars who study mythol­ogy and religion, but their unique value lies in their first-hand research.

 

Sinologists need to read the first-hand material repeatedly before they can truly understand and digest the authors’ thoughts. In addition, researchers must read annotations of the same text, sentence or character in various editions from ancient to modern times, form their own judg­ment, screen out appropriate annota­tion and annotate where they do not understand. When I have learned that eminent ancient Chinese masters like Zhu Xi and Wang Fuzhi did just that, I felt free to be more bold in interpret­ing ancient Chinese texts according to my own understanding. Of course we must also refer to annotations done by modern and contemporary research­ers, since some of those questions are not clarified until modern and con­temporary times. This means that we need to refer to numerous books even if we are trying to translate or study a very thin book. For example, it took me eight years to do research on Shanhai Jing before I finished my two-volume Étude sur la mythologie et l’ethnologie de la Chine ancienne: Le Shanhai jing. Chu Ci is a rather thin text but it still took me two years. It takes me so much time because many annotations are contradictory and therefore require meticulous screening.

 

Zhang Qingli is a reporter from Chinese Social Sciences Today.

 

The Chinese version appeared in Chinese Social Sciences Today, NO. 611, June 23, 2014

                                                  Translated by Jiang Hong

The Chinese link:

http://sscp.cssn.cn/xkpd/dh/201406/t20140623_1222029.html