What is classic? To answer this question, I do not believe we need agreement at the start on how to define a “classic.” In fact, it is important not to theorize about this until we have taken into account what representatives of the major world traditions have considered classic, whatever the terms or genres of expression they propose. From this base of reference arrived at inductively, not deductively from our own premises, we might also ask to what extent have certain classics, sprung from one tradition, come to be recognized by others, as many Chinese classics came to be accepted by other East Asian traditions, insofar as, for example, the classic literature of Korea and Japan incorporated Chinese classics into their own canon. Since, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Western classics in philosophy, religion, and literature (as well as in music and the arts) often became widely recognized in East Asia as “classic” (e.g., Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Mozart, and Beethoven), this convergence of classics in modern curricula should also be taken into account.
In recognizing works of other traditions as “classic,” however, those who did so accepted them in two ways: they responded to something important in them that spoke to their own sensibilities, something “human” in their moral and rational makeup and cultural susceptibilities, but they also saw something in the original that expressed these sentiments in a special way and to a preeminent degree. It was not a case of simply seeing them as either the same as or other than oneself or one’s own but as both common (universal) and diverse (particular) at once.
In this process, we shall be taking as “classic” what has survived into modern times, and this survival itself has an important claim on our consideration. These are works that have lasted, and their enduring character is what compels our attention: they are artifacts of human civilization, “hard facts” of historical survival that cannot be ignored. What else cannot be ignored, however, is that they are the products of that history. They take the form history has given them, and as “received” later, many can no longer be taken simply as representing the original text that generated the classic tradition.
The most obvious example of this is the so-called Four Books of the Confucian tradition, consisting of the Analects, Mencius, Great Learning, and the Mean. When educated East Asians referred to the Confucian “classics” in the seventeenth through twentieth centuries, they almost always spoke of the Four Books, which were the texts as processed by the great Neo-Confucian scholar Zhu Xi (1130–1200), texts that became standard in the curriculum promoted by Neo-Confucians in a broad educational movement that extended into the immediate “premodern” period. Thus they were “traditional classics” as received in later times.
It did not take long, however, for textual critics even in the Neo-Confucian schools to point out differences between these supposedly “traditional classics” and the versions that had prevailed before the Neo-Confucians put their own stamp on them. This led inevitably to efforts by modern textual critics to “discover” or reconstruct what might be considered the Original Analects, etc. If we want to incorporate any of these texts into our own core curricula, however, which version are we to include? It is unrealistic to think that any curriculum today that tries to provide a humanistic component for an undergraduate program can get into all the difficulties that this historical complexification entails. If we read what some modern scholar reconstructs as the “original Analects,” it may not be what later tradition would have recognized; it is not what would have entered into the intellectual and moral formation of generations of East Asians. It would simply be an academic discovery.
There is no perfect solution to this educational dilemma, but if we are willing to think not of final or definitive solutions but rather of working ones, then we can try to provide a repertoire of approaches that at least may be drawn upon by those trying to adapt these resources to their own educational situation and system.
For this purpose, I propose making a distinction among (1) “generic” classics, (2) traditional classics, and (3) modern “classics.” A selective combination of these might enable the student to gain a perspective on those classics inspiring enough to become the seedbed of tradition; others that are given such brilliant articulation later as to become dominant in the subsequent received tradition; and “modern classics,” which reaffirm traditional concerns in a modern setting but, because of their relatively short life, cannot yet be considered to have endured the test of time. If one chooses among these possibilities, one can put together a combination selected so as to represent both the age-old “generic” classics; the “traditional” classics, which confirm the centrality of the generic ones but articulate these in much broader historical and cultural terms; and finally “modern” classics, which again confirm the relevance of the generic and traditional classics in a way that students today can recognize as pertinent to their own lives and present situations.
For the time being, however, we approach the matter not as one of definition but as one of actual practice, i.e., what is being done today. From the brief survey given in Classics for an Emerging World,1 one may easily see that courses featuring the reading of classics cover a wide spectrum of course types and purposes, from programs based solely on the classics and taking four to five years (though with some taking a lesser number of works and years), to others of shorter duration adapted to other methodologies or disciplinary purposes. Something of this range was an inherent possibility from the beginning, owing to the presumed universality of the classics themselves as embodiments of key human concerns and values, susceptible of being extended to relevant contexts or, conversely, being looked at from different angles toward a multifaceted center.
The same was true of the intended audience. John Erskine’s “Classics of the Western World” was first given as an honors course to a selected few, but it also aimed at a larger human audience—to become a required course for all undergraduates and also the basis for a program of adult education (even union workers). It sought to provide a basic literacy in the classics—“what every educated person should have read,” it was said of them—works of depth and importance that merited being read and reread.
Given this large purpose, it is not surprising that the reading of the classics might become adapted to many different educational situations. The question would inevitably arise, however, in this process of adaptation: if there were no limits to its extensions or diffusion, might not the unlimited possibilities for disciplinary expansion draw the process out beyond the practical possibilities for an education meant for the sharing of common knowledge and values? The original idea of “general education” had been addressed to a general audience who would share a common cultural literacy. But once classics came to be read mainly as relevant to different cultures and academic methodologies, the danger arose that the whole process could become unhinged from the center and pursue instead the dynamic inherent in scholarly and scientific specialization. How to keep things in balance became the problem, one that called for a sustaining of the core curriculum parallel to any process of specialization. In other words, it would not just be a base point at the start but a continuing center of gravity on all levels of education.
For all this, one still needs a place to start from, and as a practical matter one is limited to the availability of adequate translations. This was indeed a question from the beginning of our effort to incorporate other major traditions in any course dealing with works variously referred to as “Classics,” “Important Books,” “Great Books,” and now “Major Texts.” Under whatever rubric they were offered, these books, it was said, were ones any educated person ought to have read—as if what it meant to be “educated” could be taken for granted in those days, even though education itself was undergoing rapid change.
In this case, the relevant change in the early twentieth century was the dropping of classical languages—Greek, Latin, and Hebrew—from the college requirements and the need felt then to preserve the reading of the “classics,” long thought to be essential for educated “gentlemen,” in translation. When this change occurred, defenders of the classical languages argued against it on the ground that, if the classics were not read in the original, something would inevitably be lost in translation. That there would indeed be some loss in respect to certain values inherent in the original languages and literary forms could hardly be doubted, but John Erskine, the early proponent of reading the classics in translation, discounted that loss. “How many people read the Bible in the original?” he asked, implying that the most important values in any such works could still be appreciated, as the Bible was, in translation.
Indeed, Mark Van Doren, who subsequently became a leading exponent of the “Humanities” or “Great Books” program, insisted that one test of a real classic was that it could survive translation. He meant, of course, that such a work dealt importantly with issues, concerns, and values so pertinent to and so perennial in human life that any work addressing them in a challenging way would not become obsolete.
If this is obviously so of the place of Latin and Greek classics in the English, French, or German heritages, it is no less true of the quick ascent and commanding position established by Shakespeare in European literatures and cultural idioms other than the English. Nor is this true only of the West. Confirmation of it has come likewise from Asia—from “classics” of the several Asian traditions that have survived translation from one language to another—Chinese classics translated into Korean and Japanese that have become no less accepted as “classics” in their adoptive land as were the Greek and Latin works in the “classic” traditions of Western Europe. The same has been true of Indian works translated into the languages of South and East Asia and now of Western works esteemed as classics in modern Asia.
To say this, however, is not to dismiss the question of translation as a minor issue. The standing of classical works in their own tradition may be enough to compel our attention, but the availability and quality of translations has clearly been a factor in the successful mounting of any “Humanities” or “great books” course. To a degree greater than most people today would likely be aware, enough translation had been done from Asian languages so that major works were already well-known in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe and America and had long since stood as a challenging presence to leading Western writers and thinkers.
Nevertheless, the work of translation from Asian traditions was far from complete or satisfactorily done for the purposes of a core curriculum when the courses in “Asian Humanities and Civilizations” were inaugurated at Columbia in the late 1940s. Enough translations of a reasonable quality were available to launch a worthwhile program, as has been testified to by Professor John D. Rosenberg, a survivor of the pilot course. There were, however, many gaps, and there was also a major problem facing the extension of the program beyond a select few in an honors colloquium—the problem of translations suited to the general reader and accessible in forms not heavily burdened with scholarly annotation, that is, translations of the kind translators address primarily to specialists in their particular field of research.
Fortunately, competent help was soon forthcoming, in the persons of young scholars whose translations were to establish a new standard not only for scholarly excellence but for accessibility to students in general education. First of these was Donald Keene, whose Anthology of Japanese Literature (1955) made Japanese classic writings available in a convenient form at low cost—albeit at some cost also in the abridgement of works that would be better read as integral wholes. Keene proceeded to make up for this limitation of his Anthology by translating whole works only partly extracted in the earlier compilation. Most notable has been his translation of Kenkō’s Tsurezuregusa, published under the title Essays in Idleness in the series Translations from the Oriental Classics launched specifically to meet the needs of general education in what is now called the Asian humanities. Next came Keene’s Major Plays of Chikamatsu and subsequently his translation of the drama Chūshingura. With the follow-up work done by Keene’s students Royall Tyler and Karen Brazell, Keene’s translations of Nō plays in his Anthology have been substantially supplemented by competent translations in inexpensive paperback editions. In the meantime, another major work of classical Japanese literature, the Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon, only excerpted in Keene’s Anthology, was translated in whole by Ivan Morris, before his untimely death an active participant in the teaching of the Asian humanities at Columbia. All of these classic works have thus become available in translations that in themselves have become standard works and virtual classics of the translator’s art.
On the Chinese side, although many of the Chinese classics had been translated earlier, most notably by James Legge and Arthur Waley, and had been indispensable to the early offering of the course, many other Chinese works considered classic not only by the Chinese but by all East Asians remained untranslated or else were unavailable in a form suitable for student use. A major advance in this respect was the undertaking by Burton Watson of translations from the Chinese of other classic works that convey the diversity and range of the Chinese—and what subsequently became the East Asian—tradition. Watson’s early versions of alternative “classics” in Chinese antiquity—Mozi (Mo Tzu), Xunzi (Hsun Tzu), Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu), and Han Feizi—quickly made available by Columbia University Press in inexpensive paperbacks, became standard items on our Humanities course reading lists and indeed set a new standard in the field for providing translations, both readable and reliable, for the general reader. Watson’s wide range, versatility, and virtuosity as a translator has also been shown in renderings of the Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian (Ssu-ma Ch’ien); the Vimalakīrti and Lotus sutras; and his anthology of classic Chinese poetry, the Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, all of which qualify for inclusion in our Asian Humanities course reading list.
Our biggest challenge with regard to readable translations has come with the major texts of the Neo-Confucian tradition, which responded to the challenge of Buddhism and Daoism. The key texts are mostly in the form of the commentaries of Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi) on the Confucian classics, and commentaries make for more difficult reading than most of the original works themselves. For this reason, many instructors prefer to avoid the Neo-Confucian texts in favor of more literary works (of which there is an almost unlimited supply). But these Neo-Confucian texts were the operative “classics” that shaped the later intellectual and ethical traditions of China, Japan, and Korea from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries, and avoiding them is like ignoring everything in the West from Dante on. We have a similar problem with the medieval texts of the Islamic and Indian traditions, and it is not an easy dilemma to resolve, considering, as just one case in point, the lack of a suitable edition of a major work like Sankara-charya’s commentaries on the Brahma Sutras. To some extent, this deficiency can be made up for by using translated excerpts, for Sankara in the Sources of Indian Tradition, and for Zhu Xi, the new translations included in the second edition of the Sources of Chinese Tradition. Still, this is a compromise—better than nothing but less than satisfactory.
Further, on the Indian side our program has itself produced a major contributor to the translation of Indian thought and literature. Barbara Miller got her start as a Barnard undergraduate taking the Oriental Humanities course, went on into graduate studies in Sanskrit, and eventually produced translations, in a form ideally suited for the general reader, of important texts including the Bhagavad Gita, the Shakuntala of Kalidasa, The Love Song of the Dark Lord (Gita Govinda), and the lyric poetry of Bhartrihari. Before her premature demise, Barbara had established herself not only as a prime contributor to the Asian Humanities program but as a leading figure in the field of Indian and Sanskrit studies worldwide.
Thus it may be seen that while an Asian Humanities program can rely on the inherent greatness of works that have established themselves over time—and through tough scrutiny and debate—as world classics, still their ability to “survive translation” (in Van Doren’s terms) depends on having translators able to convey their contents in terms meaningful enough to new audiences in changing times and different cultures.
Teachers and students alike will continue to face the need to make choices among available translations for their own annual engagement with the Asian humanities. There will never come a time when all the work of translation is done and finished for all the eligible texts, since there will never be a complete, definitive, and final rendering of the “original” meaning of such texts. Dealing as they do with pivotal issues, subject to different interpretations, and expressing themselves in highly suggestive, expandable ways, these works may always be brought to life in new renderings. For readers who wonder how much of a gap may exist between the original text and the translation at hand, the simplest solution is to look at alternative translations and get a sense of what common ground may lie between them—or where the lines of difference lie. Recourse too may sometimes be had to such scholarly expertise as is available within easy reach. But since specialists differ among themselves as much as translations do, this is not a perfect solution either.
It remains true, however, that, though any translator is welcome to take up the challenge and offer his own interpretation, not all translations meet the need equally well, and we can count ourselves fortunate in having had an especially able group of translators, a group whose great translations almost match the great works themselves.