Mirror of Enigma and Mirror of Magic: Textual Evidence for Setting the Ground of East-West Comparative Literature*

ZHANG Longxi City University of Hong Kong

张隆溪 香港城市大学

Abstract: Given the huge linguistic,cultural,historical,and social differences between the East and the West,what constitutes the ground for comparison poses a serious challenge to any comparative work.For Chinese-Western comparative studies,it is very important not just to make theoretical claims,but to establish the validity of comparison through a display of concrete examples as textual evidence to reveal the comparability of different literary traditions.Without textual evidence,comparisons may sound empty and unconvincing,and jumping from abstract concepts to jargon-laden obscurantism only reduces the value of comparative literature and damage its respectability.Through discussion of the comparability of a concrete image—that of the mirror—this essay will show the importance of textual evidence as methodologically meaningful for East-West comparative studies.

Keywords: Chinese-Western comparative literature;textual evidence;concrete images;mirror;methodology

For Chinese-Western comparative studies,it is very important not just to have theoretical arguments,but also to establish comparability through a display of concrete examples as textual evidence to reveal the affinities of different literary traditions.In this regard,Qian Zhongshu’s works have set up an excellent model for us to emulate.For example,his essay“Our Sweetest Songs”points out a general phenomenon in literary creation as well as a critical concept with universal applicability,namely,that“pain generates poetry better than happiness,and that fine poetry is mainly the expression and outburst of displeasure,anxieties,and misfortunes.” 钱鍾书：《诗可以怨》，见《七缀集》，上海：上海古籍出版社，1985年，第102页。［QIAN Zhongshu,“Shi keyi yuan”(Our Sweetest Songs),in (Patchwork: Seven Essays),Shanghai: Shanghai Classic Publishing House,1985,102.］From the great historian Sima Qian’s (ca.145-ca.85 BCE)

Letter to Ren An

and Zhong Rong’s (ca.465-518) Preface to his

Ranking of Poetry

,Mr.Qian cites a wealth of Chinese works as textual evidence to support this claim,of which perhaps the most impressive is a phrase by Liu Xie (ca.465-522) when he commented on the Han dynasty writer Feng Yan in the chapter on“Talents”in the

Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons

,where Liu Xie says:“Jingtong (i.e.,Feng Yan) had a refined taste in literary expressions,but he met with many obstacles and frustrations at a time of general prosperity;his

Articulating Intent

and

Author

’

s Preface

are just like pearls congealed in a sick oyster.” 范文澜：《文心雕龙注》第2卷，北京：人民文学出版社，1958年，第699页。［FAN Wenlan, (The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons with Annotations),vol.2,Beijing: People’s Literature Publishing House,1958,699.］The“Talents”

chapter provides evaluations on numerous writers since antiquity and cannot discuss them in any detail,so the comment on Feng Yan is just a single sentence;and yet the phrase,“like pearls congealed in a sick oyster,”is worthy of much deeper exploration.The phrase has its origin in an earlier book,

Huainanzi

,in which we read:“The pearl as bright as the moon is the result of a disease of the oyster,though to us it is precious;the claw of a tiger and the tusk of an elephant are precious for the animals,though to us they are dangerous.” （东汉）高诱：《淮南子注》，上海：上海古籍出版社，1986年，第300页。［GAO You,Huainanzi(with Annotations),Shanghai: Shanghai Classic Publishing House,1986,300.］This is meant to destabilize our usual positions so that we may realize the relativity of things from different perspectives.In the original text of the

Huainanzi

,the pearl is mentioned in tandem with the tiger’s claw and the elephant’s tusk and therefore does not stand out,and in the

Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons

,it is put in one sentence and does not seem to have drawn much attention in literary criticism.As Qian Zhongshu points out,however,Liu Xie singled out the image of the pearl and used it in his commentary on Feng Yan,stating that this writer had created outstanding works of literature because of his“many obstacles and frustrations at a time of general prosperity,”in a way“just like pearls congealed in a sick oyster.”In so doing,Liu Xie metaphorically used the pearl produced by a sick oyster in analogy to a poet producing fine literary works because of his pain and suffering,all in the same spirit of the idea that“poetry can give vent to grievances.”Once the analogy is made clear,we would have to pay special attention to Liu Xie’s words.Not only did Liu Xie have this wonderful phrase,“like pearls congealed in a sick oyster,”but another writer,Liu Zhou (514-565) from the Northern dynasty,also says in the“Agitations”chapter of the

Book of Master Liu

that“trees under stress produce burls as beautifully patterned as brocades,oysters in illness contain pearls as bright as the moon,birds startled can fly as high as the blue clouds,and arrows thwarted can shoot over snow-capped mountains—all these turn to be precious because of their disease,and move high and energetic owing to prevention.”Similarly,the great poet Su Shi (1037-1101) also says in his

Letter to Li Duanshu

:“Trees produce burls,stones show cloudy veins,rhinoceros horns may have a thread of white running through,all these become pleasing to humans,but are all the result of their diseases.”Qian Zhongshu remarks that though Su Shi did not use the metaphor of“oysters in illness containing pearls,”his phrase“trees produce burls”means exactly the same as“trees under stress produce burls.”Then Mr.Qian continues to cite textual examples of a similar nature drawn from Western literary traditions:When Western writers talk about literature,their use of metaphors is remarkably coincidental with that of the Chinese.Franz Grillparzer remarks that poetry is like a pearl,the product of a sick and silent shell-fish (

die Perle,das Erzeugnis des kranken stillen Muscheltieres

);Flaubert observes that a pearl is formed in the illness of the oyster (

la perle est une maladie de l

’

huître

),while the style of a writer flows out of a deeper sorrow (

l

’

écoulement d

’

une douleur plus profonde

). These two examples are cited in Walter Muschg,3rd ed.(Bern: Francke,1957),415.［QIAN’s note］.Heine wonders whether poetry is to man what the pearl is to the poor oyster,the stuff of illness that makes it suffer (

wie die Perle,die Krankheitsstoff,woran das arme Austertier leidet

). Heinrich Heine,,book II,section iv,in ,vol.5 (East Berlin,1961),98.［QIAN’s note］.A.E.Housman maintains that poetry is a sort of“secretion;whether a natural secretion,like the turpentine in the fir,or a morbid secretion,like the pearl in the oyster.” A.E.Housman,“The Name and Nature of Poetry,”in ,ed.J.Carter,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1961,194.Housman goes on to add that his poems are mostly written when he is not in good health;what he calls“natural”equals“healthy,not morbid.”Giosuè Carducci severely reprimanded the romantics for calling poetry a“”of emotions (as cited by N.Busetto, ［1958］,492);what he calls“natural”means coming naturally,without artistic embellishment.Therefore Housman’s unnatural,“morbid secretion”may well be a“natural (unadorned) secretion”in Carducci’s understanding.［Qian’s note］.Apparently such a metaphor is found everywhere and used by all writers independently of one another,because it expresses precisely the idea that“poetry gives vent to grievances,”and that it is composed“to release their resentment.”

By showing numerous concrete examples as textual evidence from literatures East and West,ancient and modern,Qian Zhongshu leads us to the realization that the image of“pearls congealed in a sick oyster”appears not only in Chinese commentaries on poetry,but can also be found in very different traditions of English,French,and German poetry,thus guiding us to take a fresh look at Liu Xie’s words with deeper understanding,while giving a most persuasive exposition of the idea that“poetry can give vent to one’s grievances.”In comparative literary studies,texts lay the grounds for comparison and give the best support to theoretical arguments,which would otherwise seem abstract and empty,and it is citation of concrete examples that makes arguments most persuasive and effective.

In the rest of this essay,I shall discuss the image of the mirror and its meanings in Eastern and Western literatures and cultures with concrete examples drawn from various texts.In his famous book,

The Mirror and the Lamp

,M.H.Abrams made the argument that Western literary criticism took a significant turn in the age of romanticism in the nineteenth century,i.e.,a turn from the idea of art as imitation of nature to that of art as the original creation of the artist’s mind.He quoted the words of W.B.Yeats on the title page of his book:“It must go further still: that soul must become /its own betrayer,its own deliverer,the one /activity,the mirror turn lamp.” W.B.Yeats,Introduction to (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1936),xxxiii.Here the mirror and the lamp are symbols of the soul or the mind,of which the mirror with reflections of all things is understood as a metaphor of the activity of the mind as imitation,or the concept of

mimesis

from Plato to the eighteenth century,while the lamp is a metaphor of the mind as the source of light that sends out rays to shine upon all things,thus representing the expressive theory of romanticism.Mirror turning to lamp can thus indicate the shift from mimesis to expression in Western literary criticism.The Chinese had long used such metaphors of the mirror and the lamp.The Song dynasty critic Fan Wen used such metaphors to speak of poetry:“These are descriptive words the ancients used,as the mirror takes in shapes and the lamp produces shadows.” Quoted in 周振甫：《诗词例话》，北京：中国青年出版社，1962年，第253页。［ZHOU Zhenfu, (Examples in Poetry Criticism),Beijing: China Youth Press,1962,253.］The“mirror taking in shapes”means to draw up images of things according to their figures,i.e.,in imitation of nature;and“the lamp producing shadows”means to let out one’s intent in response to the stimulation of the world and express one’s feelings.Thus the mirror and the lamp serve as metaphors of imitation and expression.In the story about Huineng,the sixth patriarch of Chan Buddhism,as told in the

Platform Sutra

,the mirror image plays a crucial role in putting emphasis on the inner mind rather than external things.In this well-known story,Shenxiu,the head monk who was supposed to become the next patriarch,held a candle in the middle of the night and wrote a

gatha

on the temple wall,which read:The body is a

bodhi

tree,

The mind a propped-up mirror,

Which should always be wiped

And kept dustless and clear.

On a higher level of enlightened understanding,however,Huineng composed another

gatha

that articulates the idea that it is the heart or the mind itself that realizes the nature of Buddha without relying on anything external.Huineng’s

gatha

reads:The

bodhi

itself has no tree,

The mirror is no propper.

There’s nothing to begin with,

How can dust ever come near?冯国超：《中国传统文化读本·坛经》，长春：吉林人民出版社，2006年，第38,41—42页。［FENG Guochao,ed.,· (The Platform Sutra),Changchun: Jilin People’s Publishing House,2006,38,41-42.］

Huineng makes clear that Buddha nature is pure nothingness and emptiness,and it does not need to be wiped clean like a mirror.Though the lamp is not mentioned here,the transmission of Buddhist teachings is called transmission of the lamp,for teaching disciples is expressed metaphorically as the lighting of lamps.For example,the

Vimalakīrti

Nirdeśa

Sūtra

compares teaching to“neverending lamps,like one lamp lighting hundreds and thousands of other lamps to enlighten all those in the dark without ever coming to an end through time.” 冯国超：《中国传统文化读本·维摩诘经》，长春：吉林人民出版社2006年，第94页。［FENG Guochao ed.,·(Vimalakīrti-Nirdeśa-Sītra),Changchun: Jilin People’s Publishing House,2006,94.］The metaphorical use here of the mirror and the lamp represents precisely the turning away from external things to contemplation focused on the inner mind,which may give us some sense of how great an impact Chan Buddhism has had on traditional art and literature in China.The mirror,however,never passively imitates nature,but may have different functions.The mirror—the flat surface of glass or a metal object we look at and in which we see ourselves—has always fascinated human beings and stimulated human imagination.For Jorge Luis Borges,a writer with an unusual sensibility and unpredictable flight of imagination,mirrors are excellent symbols for the problems of seeing and understanding,both physical and psychological,corporeal and intellectual——i.e.,problems that point to the enigma of our very being.Human actions,says Borges,“represent a secret drama determined and premeditated by God,”and human life down to its most tenuous details“has an incalculable,symbolical value.”The mirror serves as a means through which to see things clearly and to understand God’s“secret drama,”but it is not a perfect tool as it may distort as much as it reveals.Thus St.Paul’s words,“

Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate: tunc autem facie ad faciem

”(“For now we see through a glass,darkly;but then face to face.”I Corinthians,13:12),provides an authoritative dictum that human understanding is always limited,at least in this life. Jorge Luis Borges,“The Mirror of Enigmas,”trans.James E.Irby,in ,eds.Donald A.Yates and James E.Irby (New York: Modern Library,1964),209.The French writer Léon Bloy was inspired by these words to reflect on the various problems in the human world,and he came to the conclusion that“No man knows who he is,”which Borges considers to be a most effective articulation of man’s“intimate ignorance.”In a poem he wrote in his later years,Borges used mirrors to reiterate the idea of man’s insignificance and humility:

God has created nighttime,which he arms

With dreams,and mirrors,to make clear

To man he is a reflection and a mere

Vanity.Therefore these alarms. Jorge Luis Borges,“Mirrors,”in trans.Mildred Boyer and Harold Morland (Austin: University of Texas Press,1964),61.

And yet,Borges often describes human dignity and worthiness precisely through their perpetual heroic——if ultimately futile——effort to probe God’s secret,and in so doing,the mirror and the library with its classification systems are his favorite metaphors to symbolize the human will to impose order onto the multidimensional world,whose complexities and intricacies seem to lie beyond human control and human understanding.The connection between the mirror and the library or books has a long tradition reaching back to the popular medieval metaphor of the“book of nature,”which Ernst Robert Curtius discussed by citing many examples,the first of which is from Alan of Lille (PL,CCX,579 A):“

Omnis mundi creatura

/

Quasi liber et pictura

/

Nobis est et speculum

”(“All creation in the world /Like a book and a picture /Is to us and a mirror”). Quoted in: Ernst Robert Curtius,,trans.Willard R.Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1953),319.Here the connection of

liber

and

speculum

forms a textual background for Borges’s imagination of the complex structure of“The Library of Babel,”which begins with this statement:“The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries.”Having described the impressive architecture of the library with all the rows of books as depositories of human knowledge,the familiar image appears again:“In the hallway there is a mirror which faithfully duplicates all appearances,”says Borges.“Men usually infer from this mirror that the Library is not infinite (if it really were,why this illusory duplication?);I prefer to dream that its polished surfaces represent and promise the infinite.” Jorge Luis Borges,“The Library of Babel,”trans.James E.Irby,in 51.The infinite possibilities and complexities of knowledge and the classification of books in good order in the numerous galleries of the library form a tension and even an opposition,in which human intelligence perpetually tries to systematize the universe with only limited success,always falling short of the goal of complete understanding.Notice that the library here is not your average library,not even the legendary library of ancient Alexandria,but the Library of Babel,the notorious biblical symbol of confusion and failure of ambitious human effort.The library certainly puts all available knowledge in good order,and if the universe as library is complicated or confusing like a labyrinth (which happens to be yet another of Borges’s favorite metaphors),“it is a labyrinth devised by men,a labyrinth destined to be deciphered by men.”The mirror facing the infinite galleries in the library takes in all that is stored in the numerous books,and turns all into images in a reverse order.Mirrors duplicate what they reflect,but the duplication is not the real thing.This is what Plato held against painters or poets,seeing them as simple imitators.“If you should choose to take a mirror and carry it about everywhere,”says Plato,you will produce images of all the things in the world,but images that are only“the appearances of them,but not the reality and the truth.” Plato, X,596e,trans.Paul Shorey,in ,eds.Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1961),821.Here in his quarrel with poetry and the prestige of Homer,Plato the philosopher was obviously biased to deny the symbolic function of mirrors or representations;but poets are quite different,for they have no qualms about holding,“as ’twere,the mirror up to nature;to show virtue her own feature,scorn her own image,and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure”(

Hamlet

,III.ii,20-24).Shakespeare’s mirror is anything but a mechanical copier;it is rather a magic mirror with the power to show the truth and essence of things.When Macbeth goes to seek prophecy of the future,the three witches conjure up for him the vision of eight kings,“And the eighth appears,who bears a glass,/Which shows me many more”(

Macbeth

,IV.i,119-20).This is the crucial moment of peripeteia as well as anagnorisis in the tragic play,the climactic moment of recognition when the magic mirror shows the future of the Scottish royal lineage,from which Macbeth is completely cut off.The rest of the play shows how Macbeth tries all he can to resist what the mirror has revealed to him,only to drag himself down towards the inevitable and deplorable end.In literary works,mirrors are mostly used in a symbolic sense,and such usage can be found in the earliest of literatures.In a poem in the Chinese

Classic of Poetry

,or

Shijing

,of which some poems date back to the eleventh or the tenth century BCE,the speaker’s troubled mind is compared to a mirror,declaring that“My heart is not a mirror /And cannot contain everything.” （唐）孔颖达：《毛诗注疏·〈柏舟〉》，见（清）阮元校刻：《十三经注疏》上册，北京：中华书局，1980年，第296页。［KONG Yingda,·“Bo zhou”(The Mao Text of the Classic of Poetry with Annotations·Cypress Boat),in (Thirteen Classics with Annotations),vol.1,ed.RUAN Yuan,Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company,1980,296.］Another poem directly uses a mirror in the sense of an exemplum from which one may draw a lesson:“The mirror of Yin is not far to seek,/For it was right in the time of Xia.”This refers to the dynastic change that in the late Xia dynasty (c.1600 BCE),when the ruler became so tyrannical that he was overthrown,and Xia was replaced by the dynasty of Shang,also known as Yin (1600-1046 BCE).Now several hundred years had passed,and the ruler of Yin was getting to be just as bad as the last ruler of Xia;so in this poem a loyal advisor was asking the king to look at what had happened to the last ruler of Xia as the“mirror of Yin.”The poem thus served as a warning for the ruler to learn from the fall of previous dynasties and draw a historical lesson;such a symbolic image of the mirror became rather common in the Chinese cultural tradition.Sima Guang (1019-1086) of the eleventh century compiled a huge multivolume book of history,which Emperor Shenzong of the Song dynasty gave the title

Zizhi tongjian

,or

Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance

.Instead of a mirror facing books as described in Borges’s“The Library of Babel,”a book of historiography now became a mirror containing important historical precedents and counsels.The title and the purpose of this Chinese work anticipated a sixteenth-century English book,

The Mirror for Magistrates

,a compilation of many poems that tell the tragic stories of the fall of many princes,which in turn had its medieval predecessors such as the

Speculum naturale,historiale,doctrinale

of Vincent of Beauvais (c.1250),which Curtius calls“the most voluminous of medieval encyclopedias.” Curtius,,336,n.56.The mirror becomes a symbol of knowledge,particularly esoteric knowledge that shows what may be hidden and secret,just like the mirror in

Macbeth

,which was a magic mirror shrouded in mystery and endowed with prophetic power.Such mirrors become precious treasures worthy of a king or an emperor.In a fourth-century Chinese book of legends and strange stories,it is recorded that some curiosities were brought to King Ling of Zhou (reigned 571-544 BCE),including“a stone mirror.This stone has the color as white as a moon,and it reflects light on a face like snow.So it is called a ‘moon mirror’.” （东晋）王嘉 (?—390)：《拾遗记》，北京：中华书局，1981年，第74页。［WANG Jia,(Records of Gleanings from the Past),Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company,1981,74.］The record is very brief and does not specify what this“moon mirror”could do other than being bright like a moon,obviously a rare piece worthy of a king’s collection.Another Chinese book by Ge Hong of the third to the fourth century describes Emperor Xuan of the Han dynasty (reigned 73-49 BCE) always wearing“a magic mirror from India.It is of the size of a big coin.According to some old legends,this mirror could detect demons and monsters,and the one wearing it would be blessed by heavenly deities,so Emperor Xuan could always survive dangerous situations.”However,the mirror was forever lost and thus became even more mysterious.“When the Emperor died,no one knew where the mirror was.” （东晋）葛洪 (283—343?) 辑抄：《西京杂记》，北京：中华书局，1985年，第4页。［GE Hong,(Miscellaneous Records of the West Capital),Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company,1985,4.］In this case,the mirror has the magic power to“detect demons and monsters,”and the Indian provenance may suggest a Buddhist influence.In the famous Chinese novel

Xi you ji

,or

Journey to the West

,it is Li Jing the Heavenly King who used a“demon-detecting mirror”to see where the great rebel Monkey King was so that the Monkey could be detained by the gods and eventually turned into a loyal and capable disciple to protect the Tang monk Tripitaka on his journey to India to fetch Buddhist sutras. （明）吴承恩 (c.1500—c.1582)：《西游记》第6章，北京：人民文学出版社，1980年，第74页。［WU Cheng’en,(Journey to the West),chap.6,Beijing: People’s Literature Publishing House,1980),74.］So the magic mirror is not something one looks into and sees only one’s own image,a poor and unreal reflection as Plato had charged,but it becomes a source of light that shines upon whoever or whatever is in front of it and reveals its true nature.In Geoffrey Chaucer’s

Canterbury Tales

,such a precious mirror with discerning power appears in

The Squire

’s

Tale

,in which a gallant knight comes to greet the great Tartar king Cambyuskan,probably Kublai Khan,the Mongol ruler of China made well-known in Europe by Marco Polo’s travels in the thirteenth century,and the knight presents this mirror as a gift to the great Khan’s daughter.He describes this wonderful mirror as possessing the magic power to forewarn its owner of any looming threat and to distinguish for him a friend from a foe;and for a lady in love with a man,the mirror can detect any shady or disloyal conduct of her lover,so nothing can hide from her:

This mirour eek,that I have in myn hond,Hath swich a myght that men may in it see Whan ther shal fallen any adversitee Unto youre regne or to youreself also,And openly who is youre freend or foo.

And over al this,if any lady bright Hath set hire herte on any maner wight,If he be fals,she shal his tresoun see,His newe love,and al his subtiltee,So openly that ther shal no thyng hyde. Geoffrey Chaucer,“The Squire’s Tale,”in ,2nd ed.,ed.F.N.Robinson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1957),129.

In such literary usage,the mirror never simply reflects,but has the power to tell the truth despite appearances or even disguise.It becomes a more interesting and challenging question,then,whether the one who looks into the mirror is willing or able to face the truth that the mirror invariably reveals.Perhaps the most well-known literary example in this regard is the magic mirror in the fairy tale

Snow White

,in which the evil queen always asks,in the version of the Grimm brothers,“

Spieglein,Spieglein an der Wand,

/

Wer ist die Schönste im ganzen Land?

”(“Mirror,mirror on the wall,/Who in the world is the fairest of all?”).The magic mirror tells the truth about Snow White being far more beautiful:“

Frau Königin,Ihr seid die Schönste hier,

/

Aber Schneewittchen ist tausendmal schöner als Ihr

”(“My queen,you are the fairest here,it’s true,/But Snow White is a thousand times fairer than you”). Brüder Grimm,--Kapitel 150.Available online at Project Gutenberg,http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/-6248/150,［May 3,2018］.The truth is painful in the ears of the jealous evil queen and hurts her right at her heart.She tries to poison Snow White three times to no avail and dies a horrible death herself in the end.The magic mirror is truthful in what it shows and tells,but those who find truth unpalatable will ignore it at their own peril.Macbeth and the evil queen in

Snow White

offer prominent examples of the magic mirror from Western literature,and a comparable story also appears in the great eighteenth-century classic Chinese novel

Hong lou meng

or

Dream of the Red Chamber

.In the eleventh and twelfth chapters of that novel,Jia Rui,a relatively poor member of the Jia family clan,was infatuated with the beauty of Wang Xifeng and one of the major figures and powerful women in the novel,famous not only for her beauty,but more significantly for her abilities to control and manage things,her cunning manipulation and cruelty.Jia Rui was hopelessly overreaching himself,was despised by Wang Xifeng and derided by one of her servants as“a lowly toad wanting to eat the flesh of a swan.” （清）曹雪芹：《红楼梦》第11回，北京：人民文学出版社，1982年，第165页。［CAO Xueqin, (Dream of the Red Chamber),chap.11,Beijing: People’s Literature Publishing House,1982,165.］Tricked,played with,and humiliated by Wang Xifeng and tormented by his unrequited love,Jia Rui fell seriously ill,and no medicine could do him any good.One day a mysterious Taoist with a limping foot came,who claimed to be able to cure diseases of sin and bad karma,and he took out from his satchel a double-sided mirror,with its name inscribed as“Precious Mirror for the Erotically Charged.”Handing the mirror to Jia Rui,the Taoist gave an interesting account of its mythic origin:“This thing comes from the Hall of Emptiness in the Land of Grand Illusions,made by Fairy Disenchantment for the specific purpose to cure impure thoughts and lecherous impulses,and it has the virtue of aiding the world and preserving lives,”said the Taoist.“Never,never look at the front,only at the back of the mirror.This is very,very important!”Obviously,the place and personal names in this passage are highly allegorical,which clearly indicate that the magic mirror has the function of revealing truth by destroying empty illusions and infatuations.When Jia Rui looked at the back of the mirror,however,he was horrified to see a skeleton standing in it,and ignoring the Taoist’s warning,he looked at the front and found an alluring Wang Xifeng beckoning him to enter.An ecstatic Jia Rui felt himself going into the mirror and making love to Xifeng several times before giving out his last breath,lying dead in cold sweat and a pool of semen he had ejaculated in bed.Now the enthralling beauty and the frightening skeleton may be seen as a hackneyed expression of an entrenched patriarchal prejudice that related a seductive femme fatale with death,but considering the novel’s general theme and persistent concerns about dreams,illusion,falsehood,and truth,the magic mirror in this episode is emphatically about truth and fictitiousness,reality and self-delusion.That is indeed the mirror’s own defense when Jia Rui’s grandparents found him dead in bed and wanted to throw the mirror into fire.At that moment a voice cried out from inside the mirror,saying:“Who told you to look at the front? It’s you who took the unreal for the real,why should you burn me?”Suddenly the Taoist came to the rescue;he“went directly to the central chamber,snatched it away,and was gone in a flash.”This mirror has two sides that show the true and the false,and Jia Rui died because he was incapable of setting himself free from the self-deluding erotic fantasies generated by his own febrile brain.The alluring image of Wang Xifeng at the front of the mirror is not real,but his own fabrication or hallucination,and the skeleton at the back,a

memento mori

figure,is supposed to shock him out of sexual hallucinations and enable him to face the truth of mortality.As the author told the reader at the beginning of this novel,he had concealed all the real events and disguised them in the language of fiction;therefore,“words such as ‘dream’ and ‘illusion’ are all there to call the reader’s attention,and point to the original intention of this book.”After all,the novel is called

Dream of the Red Chamber,

and the mirror with its play of images may well provide a necessary tool to navigate between the world of dreams or fantasies and the world of real lived experiences.In a poem by Paul Celan,there seems to be a hauntingly similar expression that relates mirrors,dreams,and truth together:“

Im Spiegel ist Sonntag,

/

im Traum wird geschlafen,

/

der Mund redet wahr

”(“In the mirror is Sunday,/in dream people sleep,/the mouth speaks the true”). Paul Celan,“Corona,”in ,ed.Patrick Bridgwater (Baltimore: Penguin,1963),266.It is difficult to pin down the precise meaning of these lines,but the very ambiguous juxtaposition of these words,

Spiegel

,

Traum

,and

wahr

,is suggestive of the ideas we have discussed above,and it may not be totally senseless to say that such a juxtaposition resonates well with the“Precious Mirror for the Erotically Charged”in the

Dream of the Red Chamber

.Of course,mirrors appear in a variety of literary contexts with different meanings;it can be a tool for reflection.In“

L

’

Homme et la Mer

”(“Man and the Sea”),for example,Charles Baudelaire compares the sea to a mirror:“

La mer est ton miroir:

tu contemples ton âme

/

Dans le déroulement infini de sa lame

”(“The sea is your mirror: you contemplate your soul /In the infinite undulations of its waves”). Charles Baudelaire,“L’Homme et la Mer,”in (Manchester: Carcanet Press,2006),42.This book has Baudelaire’s French original texts with English translation by Walter Martin,but I have translated all the French myself to stay closer to the original wording than Martin’s freer translations.Baudelaire often uses mirrors in his poetry with different meanings: he calls music“

grand miroir

/

De mon désespoir

”(“the grand mirror /Of my despair”);the poet becomes“

le sinistre miroir

/

Où la mégère se regarde

”(“the sinister mirror /In which the shrew looks at herself”).In another Baudelaire poem,we see the connection of mirror and truth again:

Tête-à-tête sombre et limpide

Qu

’

un coeur devenu son miroir!

Puits de Vérité,clair et noir,

Où tremble une étoile livide.

Head to head somber and lucid,

When a heart became its mirror!

Fount of truth,clear and black,

Where a pale star trembles.

The symbolic meaning of the mirror comes close to that of the magic mirror we have talked about before,and in another poem by Baudelaire,poets spend whole days in front of the goddess of beauty to study her“

grandes attitudes

”(“grand poses”) because she has“

De purs miroirs qui font toutes choses plus belles:

/

Mes yeux,mes larges yeux aux clartés éternelles!

”(“Pure mirrors that make all things more beautiful: /My eyes,my large eyes with eternal clarity!”).Here,the eyes of the goddess of beauty are compared to“pure mirrors”that not just reflect all things,but make them“more beautiful”than they are;and that is what art does.Poets spend so much time studying beauty so that they may also make the world more beautiful.The mirror,which produces images in reflection,invites poets to reflect on images produced in the poetic language,and in French poetry,Baudelaire,as Guy Michaud argues,is“the first of those magicians of words who have undertaken deliberately to reflect on the poetic language and reflect in the language as it is in the world around us.”It is thus not surprising,Michaud goes on to say,that“the mirror is a password for the

Fleurs du mal

.” Guy Michaud,“Le thème du miroir dans le symbolisme français,” 11 (1959): 199-200.As a symbol that produces images of the world and even improves the world,or carries with it a prophetic power,the mirror becomes a favorite metaphor for the French symbolists,who always tend to see universal connections between man and the world as microcosm and macrocosm.Nature itself,as Baudelaire puts it in his famous poem“

Correspondances

,”consists of“

forêts de symboles

”(“forests of symbols”),which man travels through and tries to comprehend by deciphering all the interconnections. Baudelaire,“Correspondances,”,18.Quoting many examples not only from Baudelaire,but also from his contemporaries and later poets and critics,such as Henri de Régnier,Albert Samain,Émile Verhaeren,Georges Rodenbach,and of course Stéphane Mallarmé,Michaud makes a strong case that the mirror is at“the center of symbolist doctrine.”The French symbolists may indeed have a predilection for mirrors and their rich potentials,but let us turn to yet another use of the mirror as a crucial symbol in the paradoxical or dialectic relationship between outside appearance and inner truth,what is on the surface and what is at the core of one’s moral character.Oscar Wilde’s only novel,

The Picture of Dorian Gray

(1890,1891),has a literary background in the play of double identities or doppelgängers in Robert Louis Stevenson’s sensationally successful novella,

The Strange Case

of

Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde

(1886).In Wilde’s work,however,good and bad are not represented by two persons with opposite moral characters,but by a young man and his mirror image in an exquisitely executed portrait.Both are beautiful at the start,but as the young man goes down the path of degradation into more and more horrible crimes,the man’s face remains ever so pure and beautiful,while the portrait steadily grows older and more hideous-looking.At first,it is just something Dorian began to notice:“The quivering,ardent sunlight showed the lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing.” Oscar Wilde,,chap.VII,Oxford: Oxford University Press,1998,93.Here the portrait is referred to as a mirror,and at a later time,he would“stand,with a mirror,in front of the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted of him,looking now at the evil and aging face on the canvas,and now at the fair young face that laughed back at him from the polished glass.”At the time,Dorian was not horrified yet by what he had done,but“would place his white hands beside the coarse,bloated hands of the picture,and smile.He mocked the misshapen body and the failing limbs.”As the deplorable things he did worsened to become even more heinous crimes,and as he finally committed murder and was tormented by his sense of guilt,the true self he was looking into in the portrait became a mirror;but in his contradictory sentiments,he still wanted to deny it and refused to acknowledge the truth.Thus,it seemed to him“an unjust mirror,this mirror of his soul that he was looking at.”The reader realizes that the portrait that has been growing increasingly hideous and ugly is the magic mirror that reflects the truth about him,that“had been like conscience to him.Yes,it had been conscience.He would destroy it.”Eventually,however,Dorian destroyed himself,while the magic mirror remained intact.When the servants came up to the room in the novel’s dramatic end,“they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him,in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty.Lying on the floor was a dead man,in evening dress,with a knife in his heart.He was withered,wrinkled,and loathsome of visage.”Again,the play of the real and the unreal,with ugliness a true reflection and a beautiful face a deception,reminds us of the magic mirror in the

Dream of the Red Chamber

and the tragic end of those who ignore the truth the magic mirror shows or tells.I began the essay with a discussion of Qian Zhongshu’s work as a model for East-West comparative studies,continued by commenting on Borges the great Argentinian writer,and then went back to Plato,ancient Chinese poetry,and the biblical use of the mirror image.I followed by investigating the medieval convention of

speculum

and the“book of nature,”then discussed Shakespeare,Baudelaire,and more modern articulations.To examine the symbolic value of mirror as a metaphor or image in a broadly cross-cultural context by going outside the French literary tradition to other literatures,and back in history to ancient and medieval literature,we may realize that many basic conceptual metaphors and images are far more pervasive than we may have recognized from the perspective of one particular literary tradition.Perhaps we may say,to borrow Baudelaire’s original phrase,the“

forêts de symboles

”are far greater than many poets and critics may have realized.What a comparative and cross-cultural horizon allows us to see is the wonderful confluence of human imagination beyond the differences of language,culture,and literary convention,while always retaining the specificities of each of the world’s languages and literatures in our deep appreciation.Every literary creation is particular and unique in its own way,but isn’t it always a great joy to detect and appreciate the inner connections of the human mind and human imagination beyond the endless varieties of literary creation?

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