Turandot has been performed on stages worldwide.

In the early 19th Century, Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, two giants of Classical German literature, developed a keen interest in China. Schiller finished his drama Turandot, Prinzessin von China (translated into English as Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx), notable for its feminist overtones, in 1801. Two and a half decades later, Goethe was so moved by the charisma of Chinese women portrayed in Pih-mei-she-yung that he translated four stories from its English rendering The Song of a Hundred Beautiful Women into German. What prompted the fascination of these two German masters with the image of Chinese women? To answer this question, we need to examine how these works fit into the broader literary constellation of Weimar Classicism. We also need to consider the sheer acts of writing and dissemination and their social import in the early 19th-century Weimar milieu—literature’s social function, in addition to being a unique form of societal participation on the part of the writer, is principled on the deep relation between its dissemination and acceptance.

Chinese princess: crusaders for women’s emancipation in Europe

Among other possible sources, the first that definitively peaked Schiller’s interest was the German rendering of Hau Kiou Choaan (The Pleasing History), a micro encyclopedia of the history, geography, customs, language and literature of 18th-century China. For the first time, Schiller became acquainted with the Chinese literary heroine Shuey-Ping-Sin (Shui Bingxin), a character of remarkable moral fortitude who was even more talented and courageous than men and who defended her freedom in marriage. Through the appendix to the translation, he also came to know about Qin Liangyu, a female Chinese general who led her army to defend Beijing against the invading Manchus at the end of the Ming Dynasty.

These narratives resonated deeply with Schiller, whose dramas Mary Stuart and The Maid of Orleans debuted in 1800 and 1801 respectively, clamoring for the emancipation of women from the shackles of marriage. Asserting that such a Chinese story as Hau Kiou Choaan needed “absolutely to be given new life”, he decided to adapt it, adding more literariness to it and making it more suitable to be published in a literary journal. Shortly after his adaptation began, Schiller became drawn to Turandot written by the Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi. Though it was originated from Persia rather than China, Schiller saw parallels between the Chinese princess Turandot and the heroine in Hau Kiou Choaan—both affirm their individual liberty in asserting the terms on which they will marry, and resist conforming to the pressures of patriarchal society. Greatly inspired by this, Schiller finished his Turandot, Prinzessin von China in the last two months of 1801, displaying tremendous originality in his arrangement of the dialogue, recreation of the characters and vivid depiction of character psychology.

More importantly, these works represent a progression in Schiller’s portrayal of women; his already acute awareness of women’s plight, in being brought to bear on and fleshed out through the Chinese heroines, coalesced into an intellectually much more robust image of the female. In his earlier works such as The Robbers, Intrigue and Love and Wallenstein, German women were all depicted as victims of fate; indeed, they are either killed or commit suicide. Under the pen of most of his contemporaries, females were fragile creatures and inevitable victims of their marriages—for instance, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Emilia Galotti, Goethe’s Egmont and Faust, and Heinrich von Kleist’s The Marquise of O. Jean Paul and Johann Ludwig Tieck even ascribed marital and family problems to women’s individual pursuit of happiness at the expense of familial and societal duties.

As the last of Schiller’s “three exotic beauties” (Mary, Queen of Scots, Joan of Arc and Turandot), Turandot’s outcry resounds as the most radical of its time: “In virgin freedom would I live and die…I hate proud man, and like to make him feel/He may not crush free woman 'neath his heel”. Though giving voice to this bold appeal through the external form of an “exotic” woman, Turandot should most definitely not be taken as an allegory for Asian women exclusively; in fact, hidden behind her single utterance is the uproar for European women’s emancipation.

Chinese poetesses: defenders of women’s genius

One can also detect a consciousness of gender equality and women’s liberation permeating Goethe’s adaptation of Pih-mei-she-yung. In his rendering, the once effete and melancholic Lady MEI-FE, an imperial concubine unable to cope with having lost the emperor’s favor, is transformed into a courageous woman unafraid of reproaching the emperor in show of her loyalty to love. A similar reinvention occurs in “Lady Fung-seang-lin”, in which lyrics formerly charged with a suggestion of women’s dependence on men—“favor”, “pity”—have been replaced with bold, enfranchising lines that propound women’s individual pursuit of happiness and freedom. Likewise, it is not despondency that the maid-in-waiting in “Kae-yuen” embodies, but rather a noble concern for the warriors of her state and the audacity to take finding love upon herself.

Nonetheless, these adaptations are minor embellishments compared with Goethe’s primary emphasis: encapsulating the poetic talent of his female subjects. For Goethe, Pih-mei-she-yung was foremost a collection of poetry written by a hundred beauties. In “Lady See-yaou-hing” and “Lady MEI-FE” he especially drew out women’s innate literary gifts; revisions to his manuscripts indicate that he deliberately emphasized the existence of “Chinese female poets” as a literary group.

It would be wrong to perceive Goethe’s sudden interest in these “Chinese female poets” as a transient spell of curiosity or an attempted literary adventure. To begin with, he had always held that there were strong parallels between Europe and China “in thought, action and emotion,” and “throughout life, love and the reciting (of poetry)”. His motivation in animating the image of the poetesses though, actually had deep political roots: among the early-19th-century German literati, there was a fierce debate over the “genius of women”, and women’s proper place in the world of literature—were they as capable with the pen as their male counterparts?

Few thought so. Jean Paul, known for his Bildungsromans, once wrote, “As women are incapable of conversing without defect…their disposition is unsuited to poetic or philosophical interpretation, and they cannot do this sort of work without supervision and guidance.” Goethe himself readily criticized what he saw as an feeble tradition of German-speaking female poets when he entered this debate in 1825.

Given this stance, one can imagine that he was quite astounded to discover “poetry by a hundred beauties” from China. As with Goethe’s encounter with Pih-mei-she-yung, the acquaintance of the German literati with the enduring tradition and success of female writers in China, a country with a time-honored culture and history, provoked their abrupt reconsideration of decades of chauvinism; knowledge of the Chinese poetesses instantly dispelled their doubts about women’s literary proclivities. For Goethe the implications were clear: he advised German writers to transcend the confines of their own language’s literary tradition and explore those of other languages and nations, reflecting especially on exchange and interaction between different traditions. After encountering Pih-mei-she-yung, Goethe suggested to his friends that they were on the brink of an age of “world literature”.

From this potent intertwining—the joint images of the Chinese poetesses and princess juxtaposed with the ongoing debate over women’s role in German literature and German households—it is evident that Goethe and Schiller’s employment of Chinese women was never simply the fanciful “unfurling of a romantic Eastern scroll”. Rather, through delving into and reinvigorating these literary images in their own language, they spoke to the universal themes of gender equality and women’s freedom also manifest in Weimar Classicism. The Chinese poetess/princess became an early poster child for the worldwide women’s emancipation movement; she was a beacon guiding the acceleration of social progress. When we consider her net impact in “world literature”, we realize that she is not just a jewel in the cultural wealth of classical China, but rather a significant archetype whose employment and renewal found fertile ground in the early 19th-century Weimar milieu and who is still applicable today.

In fact, these images do continue to have currency in both contemporary Germany and around the world. Having gone through several adaptations in various theatrical genres, Turandot, Prinzessin von China has been performed on stages worldwide. It has even “returned to China”, having been adapted into Sichuan Opera, Cantonese Opera and Henan Opera. In Germany, the writer Barbara Beuys recently re-explored this theme with her 2004 book Der Preis der Leidenschaft: Chinas grosse Zeit: das dramatische Leben der Li Qingzhao (The Price of Passion: The Life and Times of Li Qingzhao, China’s Greatest Poetess), depicting the life of the famous Song Dynasty poetess.

At the Congress of Natural Scientists in Berlin in 1828, Goethe expounded thusly on the essence of world literature: “…the living, striving men of letters should learn to know each other, and through their own inclination and similarity of tastes, find the motive for corporate action”. His and Schiller’s exploration, translation and introduction of Chinese heroines to German literature is just such an example of the literary cross-pollination he was advocating. These characters went well beyond providing the German-reading audience with a window into Chinese culture, simultaneously turning a critical mirror on their own culture and spurring the rise of the German Feminist movement and female literature. The female poets and the princess of China are a model and guide for mutual understanding between Eastern and Western literature—for theme and variation, and for hybridity and integration.

The author is from the School of Foreign Languages at Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

The Chinese version appeared in Chinese Social Sciences Today, No.448, May 10, 2013.

Chinese link: http://www.csstoday.net/Item/73482.aspx

　　Translated by Jiang Hong

　　Revised by Charles Horne