By Wang Xiaobo
When I was thirteen, I often stole books from my father’s bookcase to read. At that time, the political atmosphere was tense, and he had locked away all the books that were unsuitable to be left out in the open. In that bookcase were Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Shakespeare’s plays translated by Zhu Shenghao, and even The Decameron. The case was locked, but my elder brother knew how to pick the lock. He also had a way of persuading me to take the risks: You’re young and slight. I don’t think Dad will have the heart to spank you. But in reality, when it came to spanking me, my father didn’t seem particularly gentlemanly, and my hands and feet weren’t agile enough, always giving him the opportunity. In short, we both read the stolen books, but I was the only one who got spanked. That’s how I got to read some books. Though it was unfair, I don’t regret it.
After reading Metamorphoses, I became fascinated with ancient Greece. My elder brother also told me: In ancient Greece, there were philosophers who walked around in loose robes. One day, a philosopher went to visit a friend and, finding him not at home, took a wax tablet and casually drew a curve on it, handing it to the friend’s family before returning home. When the friend came back and saw the tablet, he was so struck by the beauty of the curve that he immediately hid near the philosopher’s house. When the philosopher stepped out, the friend rushed in, took a wax tablet, and carefully drew a curve on it… Of course, the rest of the story is easy to guess: the philosopher returned home, saw the tablet left by his friend, took another wax tablet, and poured all his thoughts into a single curve, which he then gave to his friend to see, truly astounding him. Now, I think this story was made up by my elder brother. But back then, I pondered it seriously and finally said, rather naively: How wonderful. Looking back thirty years later, I feel no shame. A frog at the bottom of a well still has its own patch of sky, and a thirteen-year-old child can have his own spiritual home. Besides, it’s good to have an elder brother—though I have no objections to the country’s family planning policy.
It wasn’t until I grew up that I understood what kind of endeavors science and art truly are. My elder brother later became a disciple of the late master of logic, Shen Youding, while I studied the sciences. We even discussed the distinctions between truth and falsehood and shared our thoughts on thermodynamics—but that was when I was in my twenties. Later, when I traveled abroad and visited Cambridge, I saw the apple tree that inspired Newton’s theory of gravity and the “Byron’s Pool” where Byron limped in for a swim. But I always found myself reminiscing about my childhood, when I gazed at the starry sky of human wisdom. A towering edifice must have its cornerstone, and the first loves of our hearts are irreplaceable. All wise men and poets have likely experienced that moment when, as children, they were struck by the light of the stars. I’ve always felt that such passions are as essential to a person as love itself.
I often return to my childhood, thinking with a child’s mind, and many difficult problems become easier to solve. Of course, the purpose of life is to achieve something—something in the humanities. It’s like walking a path. If some pedantic old man forces you down it with a ruler and a whip, then it’s not walking a path but reciting a genealogy. I’ve heard that’s how children were taught in the former Soviet Union: they had to memorize all of Pushkin, half of Lermontov, and remember that Russia was the homeland of elephants (Shostakovich mentioned much of this in his memoirs). I won’t say how children are taught here, lest I offend my teachers. I doubt that memorizing genealogies counts as having a spiritual home, but I don’t want to argue with anyone. Andersen wrote The Thorny Road of Honor, saying that the humanities are like a path of burning thorns, upon which the wise and benevolent walk. Of course, he was considering all the clamor of the secular world, but I don’t think we need to dwell on that. Seen through the tranquil eyes of a child, this path is one between two bamboo fences, covered with purple morning glories, each blossom cradling a blue dragonfly. This might sound sentimental, but to convince Andersen, you’d have to use such language. On his deathbed, Wittgenstein said: Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life. To me, it feels as though he walked through a path of morning glories. Though I know nothing of his work, I feel he and I are kindred spirits.
I can’t quite grasp the profundity of the following argument: To rebuild our spiritual home and restore humanistic values, we must eliminate all vulgar people—starting with those currently in vogue. If the reasoning is that readers have limited money in their pockets, and if they buy others’ books, they won’t have money to buy mine, so we must eliminate the competition—that I can understand. But the earlier statement doesn’t seem so profound. And if it is, I still don’t agree—we should, like merchants, adhere to honesty and oppose unfair competition. The idea of making my thoughts and works the orthodox choice in this noisy world has never occurred to me, nor would I dare entertain it. Given that, I must explain my motivation for writing (including this piece). Frankly, I’m not entirely sure myself. All I can say is: If I were to die today, I probably couldn’t say, like Wittgenstein, I’ve had a wonderful life, or like Stendhal, I lived, I loved, I wrote. I’m terrified of ending up with nothing to say, so I’m working hard.
This article was originally published in the Beijing Youth Daily on November 30, 1995.