Y. R. CHAO (赵元任)

It was Aldous Huxley who said of his great friend D. H. Lawrence that he could do almost everything well. He could sing, dance, talk, cook and make fire better than anyone else; but above all, he could keep silent in company without giving the impression of being sulky. Mr. Chao is like D. H. Lawrence in this respect. The thing which would strike one on meeting him for the first time is that he is unusually uncommunicative and retiring. He is not the sort of person who is always clamouring for public attention. He is quite content to let you do all the talking, while listening to you in a flattering manner as if you were really uttering some very profound truths.

But somehow or other, even when he does or says nothing, one simply feels that here is a man who cannot be overlooked. And so he is indeed! For truth to tell, Mr. Chao is one of the most versatile scholars in China of today. Born in 1892 at Tientsin, Mr. Chao received his early education in Changchow and Nanking. In 1910, he passed the examination for Tsing Hua scholarship to America. He entered Cornell and majored in physics and mathematics, and picked up for himself music, psychology and philosophy. After graduation, he went to Harvard for advanced study of philosophy. From that institution, he got his Ph.D. degree, his thesis being on Continuity, "proving that it was impossible to prove anything and concluding that no universal proposition was true." He went back to Cornell to teach physics in 1919 and after having stayed there a year, he came home and joined the faculty of Tsing Hua College. He was invited to be interpreter for Bertrand Russell during the latter's visit of China on a lecture tour, on account of, to quote himself, "my knowing a score of Chinese dialects" and "knowing some of the queer things that he knows."In 1921, he went to America again to teach Chinese and philosophy at Harvard University. He returned to China in 1925, and since 1929, he has been a research fellow in the Department of Language and History of the National Research Institute (Academia Sinica).

Mr. Chao is much interested in the study of the Chinese language. He has devised a system of alphabetic writing of the Chinese language adequate for scientific, literary and everyday purposes. He has made a set of phonographic records of the National Language, and has compiled a book of Chinese rhymes.

Aside from the above achievements, Mr. Chao has also translated Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass into Chinese. The translations are admirably done, considering how difficult it is to render those masterpieces of English humour into a foreign language.

Mr. Chao's hobby is music. He has in fact composed tunes for many of the poems by Hsu Tse-mo, Hu Shih and others. He has a lot of original ideas about the theory of music and he hopes someday to invent a big fundamental idea (comparable in convenience and simplicity to the two dimensional graphic representation of functions of two variables) by which one can represent time, pitch and a third dimension for different instruments. To quote himself: "The usual notation for a score uses the vertical dimension for two different things in an intolerable mixture. To use solid models of one group of instruments behind another, or different colours for different timbers of instruments would be quite impracticable. I dare say if people could swim freely in three dimensions and draw freely and quickly solid pictures, as do the what-do-you-call-that-fish-which-emits-ink, our thought and expression would be as superior to what it is as this is superior to the ancient literature of knots tied in a one-dimensional string."

Besides his passion for music, Mr. Chao also loves to collect books "and let them lie about me instead of me about them." He is fond of collecting proverbs too, "not for keep sake, but to see what I can do with them." The following are examples of what he has "undone."

1. A friend in debt is a friend you bet.

2. Where there is a swell, there is a sway.

3. Loaf, and the world loafs with you;

　Sweep, and you sweep alone.

4. No smoke without fire.

5. Fine leather makes fine boots.

Another of his weaknesses is the collection of seventeen's. This began at a time when he was studying mathematics with a teacher who always used to say: "Take any number, one, two, three, or no matter even if you take seventeen." Since then, he has discovered that quite a number of people take seventeen for their favourite "any number." Once he lifted up the telephone receiver in a hotel in New York and heard the girl announcing herself, "Operator Seventeen!", and he all but answered "Much obliged!"

But above everything else, Mr. Chao likes to collect or rather to concoct nonsensical verse. Here is one done by himself:

I start with once upon a time,

But cannot find a word to rhyme.

And this is just as near the truth,

As Yu is π2.

The last line, he authoritatively states, is pronounced: "As why to the youth is pie to the tooth."

Mr. Chao is in the habit of sending a printed letter to all of his friends about once a year. He calls them "Green Letters," and the average length of each is about 15 closely printed pages. It is from these letters that most of the material in this article is gathered.

[No. 5; Feb. 1, 1934]

赵元任¹

奥尔德斯·赫胥黎在谈到他的朋友劳伦斯²时曾经说，他几乎做什么都能做得很好。他唱歌、跳舞、谈话、烹饪、生火，比任何人都做得更好。尤为突出的是，他能和朋友们在一起时默不作声，却并不给人以沉闷的印象。在这方面，赵先生很像劳伦斯。和他初次见面就会给人留下深刻印象的，是他的沉默寡言和腼腆孤僻。他不属于总是设法引起公众注意的那类人。他会让你一个人把所有的话全都说尽，自己则讨人欢喜地从旁认真谛听，就仿佛你确实是在谈论某些高深的道理。

但是不知为什么，即使他什么也不说、什么也不做，人们也会感觉到，这里有一个不能忽视其存在的人。确实如此！说实话，赵先生是今日中国最多才多艺的学者之一。赵先生1892年出生于天津，在常州和南京接受了早期教育。1910年，他考取清华的留美公费，进入康奈尔大学，主修物理和数学，选修音乐、心理学和哲学。毕业后，又入哈佛进修哲学，并在那里获得他的博士学位。他的学位论文论述了“连续性”，“证明了，什么也证明不了；结论是，没有一种全称命题为真”。1919年，他回康奈尔大学讲授物理学，一年后回国，任教于清华学校。罗素³访华作巡回演讲时，他应邀担任翻译，用他自己的话来说，是由于“我懂得20种方言，还懂得他所懂的一些古怪的东西”。1921年，他再度赴美，在哈佛大学讲授汉语和哲学。他1925年回国，自1929年起任中央研究院历史语言研究所的研究员。

赵先生对研究中国语言很有兴趣。他设计出了一种书写汉语的拼音系统，既适用于科学、文学，也适用于日常生活。他已经灌制了一套国语唱片，还编写了一部汉语韵书。

除了上述成就，赵先生还把刘易斯·卡罗尔⁴的《阿丽思漫游奇境记》和《镜中世界》译成了中文，翻译得非常出色，要知道，把一部英语的幽默杰作译成外国文字该有多难。

赵先生酷爱音乐。事实上，他给徐志摩、胡适等人的好些诗作都配过曲。在音乐理论方面，他也有不少独到的见解，希望有一天能够发明一种极有价值的基本方法（就像使用二维图形表示二元函数一样方便和简单），可用以标记节拍、表示音高和代表不同乐器这三个维度。用他自己的话来说，“标记总谱时，通常的方法是使用垂直的维度来标记过分复杂的混音中两个不同的音。使用一组乐器在前、另一组在后的立体模型，或是使用不同的颜色来标记不同乐器的不同音色，都是很不现实的。我敢说，要是人能够像喷吐墨汁的乌贼那样在三度空间里自由地游泳，自由而快捷地绘制立体图画，我们的想法和表达方式就会比现在这样的优越，就像现在的想法和表达方式要比远古单一维度的结绳记事性文献优越一样”。

除了对音乐的偏爱，赵先生还喜欢藏书，“让书围着我，别让我围着书”。他还喜欢收集格言和箴言，“并不是为了收藏，而是想要看看我能对它们做些什么”。以下几条就是被他“解决”了的：

1．欠债的朋友是你下注信得过的朋友。

2．有隆起必有凹陷。

3．分食，举世皆愿与你分食；

独吞，只能孤家寡人独吞。

4．无火不冒烟。

5．好皮子，做出好靴子。

他的另一个癖好是收集“17”。这种癖好是从他上一位老师的数学课时开始的。这位老师常说：“取任意一个数，不论是1、2、3，甚或是17。”从那个时候起，他发现不少人都喜欢把17当作他们喜欢的“任意数”。有一次在纽约一家旅馆，他拿起电话听筒，听到一个姑娘的声音只是自报了一声“17号接线员！”，他几乎就要说“非常感谢！”

而超过其他一切的，是他喜好收集和编写打油诗。以下这首打油诗是他自己的大作：

I start with once upon a time,

But cannot find a word to rhyme.

And this is just as near the truth,

As Yu is π2.⁵

其中最后一行，根据他的权威性说明，应该这样读：“As why to the youth is pie to the tooth.”

赵先生习惯于每年给所有的朋友寄一封打印好的信件，他称那些信件为“绿色信件”。每封信的长短平均为排印得很密的15页信纸。这篇短文里的极大部分材料，便来源于那些信件。

［第5期，1934年2月1日］