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Dennis:
<p>You have expressed a very Daoist perspective.
<p>Baudelaire's Les Fleur du Mal, first published 1857 when B. was 36,
enlarged in 1861 and 1869, 2 year after B's death, was the only volume
of his poems published in his lifetime. It was publicly condemned
as obscene and six of the poems were supressed.
<br>One English translation entitled: The Flowers of Evil, always struck
me as being distortively problematic in conveying the inner despair of
B. Several meanings in English are offered for the French word <i>mal</i>
in the dictionary: evil; ill; harm; pain; ache; sickness, hardship; misfortune;
trouble; repugnance. As you can see, any of the other words beside evil
would give a very different spin to the title.
<br>Critics have identify the main theme of B's work as the inseparable
nature of beauty and corruption. Believing criticism to be a function
of the poet , B. wrote perceptive appraisals of his contemporaries. That
view has parallels in Chinese poetry. B.'s life was marked by debts,
misunderstanding and excess. His erratic life was influenced by his strong
attachment to his mother, not a very Chinese sentiment.
<p>I would like to hear more about your comaprison of 1859 France and 1998
China.
<p>1859 would place France 11 years after the February Revolution of 1848
and the publication of The Communist Manifesto which marked the birth of
Marxism, and 7 years after the establishemnt of the Second Empire, by overwhelming
publicite, with Napoleon III as Emperor. Under imperial dictatorship,
France made rapid material and institutional progress and imperialistic
conquest during this decade. Finance capitalism flourished, and new
capitalists were created, (more speculators than true capitalists actually)
in a period of bourgeois political revisionism, of vulgar extravagance
in social manners, of greed and scandal and of merveilleuses (women known
for their underdressed overdressing in public), an extreme excess in the
tradition of the Thermidorian Reaction.
<br>Railroad and cannel building, slum clearance were carried out and the
French investment bank was established.
<br>1859 was the eve of the "liberal empire" phase of the reign of Napoleon
III.
<br>The French-British joint expedition against China took place from 1857-60.
<br>1859 was the year war broke out in Italy between France and Austria
for the glory of France and the unification of Italy.
<br>The Paris Commune took place in 1871, 12 years after.
<p>I would like to hear your impression of 1998 China that strikes you
as having familarities to 1859 France.
<br>To me China today is still highly equalitarian, and while there is
wide-spread corruption of a Confucian nature, robber barons/speculators
types have yet to be popular role models.
<p>Henry C.K. Liu
<p>Dennis R Redmond wrote:
<blockquote TYPE=CITE>On Sat, 21 Nov 1998, Henry C.K. Liu wrote:
<p>> It would not be an exaggeration to hypothesize that the introduction
of
<br>> linguistic sex equality would demolish the fundamental structure
of
<br>> Chinese language, rendering it incapable of expressing abstract thought,
<br>> particularly those dealing with concepts of evil.
<p>So much the worse for the concept of evil, that essential scapegoat
<br>without which no repressive ideology could possibly exist. Baudelaire's
<br>Les Fleurs du Mal (and France's social structure circa 1859 has quite
a
<br>few similarities with China 1998) put it best: in the poison lies the
<br>salvation.
<p>-- Dennis</blockquote>
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