Achilles Chih-t'ung Fang (; August 20, 1910November 22, 1995) was a Chinese scholar, translator, and educator, best known for his contributions to
Chinese literature and
comparative literature
Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across linguistic, national, geographic, and disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role similar to that of the study ...
. Fang was born in
Japanese-occupied Korea
Between 1910 and 1945, Korea was ruled as a part of the Empire of Japan. Joseon Korea had come into the Japanese sphere of influence with the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1876; a complex coalition of the Meiji government, military, and business offic ...
, but attended university in mainland China. After completing his undergraduate degree, Fang worked for ''
Monumenta Serica
''Monumenta Serica - Journal of Oriental Studies'' (Chin. 華裔學志, Huayi xuezhi) and for the web is an international academic journal of sinology. It is published by Monumenta Serica Institute in Sankt Augustin. The editor-in-chief was unt ...
'', a prominent scholarly journal of Chinese topics. He then moved to the United States, where he took up residency in
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...
, studying and teaching courses at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
.
Fang was widely learned, and specialized in comparative literature, particularly in the studies of Chinese and
German literature
German literature () comprises those literature, literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy a ...
. His correspondence with
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...
significantly influenced Pound's understanding of Chinese subjects, and his doctoral dissertation on Pound, an attempt to compile all the classical allusions in ''
The Cantos
''The Cantos'' by Ezra Pound is a long, incomplete poem in 120 sections, each of which is a ''canto''. Most of it was written between 1915 and 1962, although much of the early work was abandoned and the early cantos, as finally published, date ...
'', remains an important source for Pound scholars.
Life and career
Youth
Achilles Fang was born Fang Chih-t'ung (''Fang Zhitong'' ) into a Chinese family living in
Japanese-occupied Korea
Between 1910 and 1945, Korea was ruled as a part of the Empire of Japan. Joseon Korea had come into the Japanese sphere of influence with the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1876; a complex coalition of the Meiji government, military, and business offic ...
on August 20, 1910. He eventually left, with the help of a missionary, to attend high school at the American Baptist College in Shanghai.
[Hightower, "Achilles Fang: In memoriam."] He subsequently majored in philosophy and classical studies at
Tsinghua University
Tsinghua University (; abbreviation, abbr. THU) is a National university, national Public university, public research university in Beijing, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, Minis ...
,
[ where he was one of the few friends of ]Qian Zhongshu
Qian Zhongshu (November 21, 1910 – December 19, 1998), also transliterated as Ch'ien Chung-shu or Dzien Tsoong-su, was a renowned 20th century Chinese literary scholar and writer, known for his wit and erudition.
He is best known for his sati ...
(who would go on to write one of the best-known and most highly regarded works of modern Chinese literature, ''Fortress Besieged
''Fortress Besieged'' (Traditional Chinese: 圍城; Simplified Chinese: 围城; Pinyin: ''Wéichéng'') is a Chinese satirical novel written by Qian Zhongshu (Ch'ien Chung-shu), first published in 1947, and widely considered one of the masterpiec ...
'').[Kelly and Mao, "Afterword" to ''Fortress Besieged''.] After graduating in 1932, Fang spent two more years at Tsinghua as a graduate student, and then, within a period of four years spent in Nanjing
Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in the East China region. T ...
and Beijing, was married, had a child, and suffered the death of his wife.
''Monumenta Serica''
From 1940 to 1947, Fang worked for the East Asian studies journal ''Monumenta Serica
''Monumenta Serica - Journal of Oriental Studies'' (Chin. 華裔學志, Huayi xuezhi) and for the web is an international academic journal of sinology. It is published by Monumenta Serica Institute in Sankt Augustin. The editor-in-chief was unt ...
'' in Beijing, first as editorial secretary and then as associate editor (the latter position he maintained for two years after leaving Beijing in 1947).[ The main content of Fang's work was to proofread translations in submissions to the journal, and he corrected errors with a scholar's meticulous zeal.][ Fang's own contributions included a regular "Review of Reviews" feature, wherein he summarized important articles in European and Japanese sinological journals, providing Western Sinologists with news of developments in Japanese Sinology that those without a knowledge of Japanese would otherwise not have had.][ Fang also taught German during this period, both at Fu-Jen University and the Deutschland-Institut.][
]
Harvard
In 1947, Fang moved to Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
with his son to work on the Harvard-Yenching Institute Chinese-English dictionary project.[Hightower, James Robert (1997). "Achilles Fang: In Memoriam". Monumenta Serica. 45: 339–413.] He was dismissed for constant use of quotations from ''Finnegans Wake
''Finnegans Wake'' is a novel by Irish literature, Irish writer James Joyce. It is well known for its experimental style and reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the Western canon. It has been called "a work of fiction whi ...
'' in his entries,["Contributors' notes," ''The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry''.] and subsequently enrolled in Harvard's comparative literature PhD program, from which he graduated in 1958 (in Burton Pike Burton Pike (June 12, 1930 - December 22, 2022)''Contemporary Authors Online'' (accessed March 26, 2016). was a translator of Robert Musil, as well as a distinguished professor emeritus of comparative literature and Germanic languages and literatur ...
's graduating class) with a dissertation on Ezra Pound's ''The Cantos.'' That dissertation, the 865-page "Materials for the Study of Pound's ''Cantos'',"tracked down all the classical allusions in the ''Cantos'', a work admirably suited to his vast reading in many languages and acute detective instincts. One small example: In Canto 11 is the line, „der in Baluba das Gewitter gemacht hat,“ obviously a quotation, but from what source? Achilles found it in one of the seven volumes of Frobenius' ''Erlebte Erdteile'', where the author is referring to the activities of an African shaman. This dissertation has long been a major source for Pound scholars, as evidenced by the many names on the check-out cards in the copies in Harvard's Widener Library
The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library, housing some 3.5million books in its "vast and cavernous" stacks (library architecture), stacks, is the centerpiece of the Harvard College Libraries (the libraries of Harvard's Harvard Faculty of Arts an ...
.
Fang became friendly with Pound while writing his dissertation, and decided not to publish it for fear of embarrassing Pound over Pound's many errors in his use of sources. During Pound's years at St. Elizabeths, Fang was Pound's key correspondent on Chinese topics.
Fang stayed on at Harvard teaching courses in classical Chinese, Chinese literary theory, and art criticism until he retired in 1977, having spent thirty years there in one capacity or another. He died of cancer in 1995, and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery
Mount Auburn Cemetery is the first rural cemetery, rural, or garden, cemetery in the United States, located on the line between Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge and Watertown, Massachusetts, Watertown in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Middl ...
. In 1997, through a gift of "the students and friends of Achilles Fang," Harvard established a prize in his honor, "awarded occasionally to a doctoral dissertation on the traditional Chinese humanities or related cultural developments throughout East Asia that continues the tradition, which Achilles Fang exemplified, of rigorous textual research."
In 1947 Fang moved to America to teach at Harvard. In 1953 he was part of a symposium on Chinese Studies that gathered together Derk Bodde, Arnold Isenberg, Schuyler Camman, J.R. Levenson, W. Theodore de Barry, David Nivison, Achilles Fang, I.A. Richards and Arthur F. Wright. The papers of this symposium appeared under the title "Studies in Chinese Thought". Fang's contribution has the title "Some Reflections on the Difficulty of Translation" in which he, among other topics, discussed the poet Pan Ku (Ban Ku, AD 32–92).
Personality
Fang was known to have a forceful personality. In a scene in Frederick Seidel
Frederick Seidel (born February 19, 1936) is an American poet.
Biography
Seidel was born to a family of Russian Jewish descent in St. Louis, Missouri in 1936. His family owned Seidel Coal and Coke, which supplied coal to the brewing industry in St ...
's poem "Glory," a 1953 encounter is dramatized thus:
His zra Pound'spal Achilles Fang led me to the empty attic of the Yenching Institute,
In the vast gloom arranged two metal folding chairs
Under the one lightbulb hanging from the ceiling,
And hating me, knee to knee,
Unsmilingly asked, What do you know?[Seidel, "Glory."]
Indeed, Fang was not the type to hold back criticism nor to offer undeserved praise. Yet he loved teaching, and he was an extremely devoted teacher who won the affection and devotion of students, whom he sometimes invited to his home to drink beer. As far back as his days at ''Monumenta Serica'', he would work with American exchange students who came to him for advice and help, always refusing payment, and his generosity with his time continued until the end of his life: he met with students throughout his retirement and illness, and even spent an hour with one the day before he died.[
Fang was an avid, even obsessive book collector. His obituarist writes:
]Books were his lifelong passion. He found sympathetic souls in two Ch'ing dynasty bibliophiles and translated their charming essays on the subject of book collecting under the titles "Bookman's Decalogue" and "Bookman's Manual." After coming to the United States he began to acquire a library of Western books and soon was as well known to Boston antiquarian dealers as he had been in Peking's Liu-li ch'ang. His interests were catholic: Latin and Greek literature (two complete sets of the ''Loeb Classics
The Loeb Classical Library (LCL; named after James Loeb; , ) is a series of books originally published by Heinemann in London, but is currently published by Harvard University Press. The library contains important works of ancient Greek and ...
'', acquired one title at a time over the years, all used or damaged remainders), a complete Patrology
Patristics or patrology is the study of the early Christian writers who are designated Church Fathers. The names derive from the combined forms of Latin ''pater'' and Greek ''patḗr'' (father). The period is generally considered to run from ...
in Latin, works on philosophy and literature ancient and modern. He pursued congenial writers relentlessly: everything by George Saintsbury
George Edward Bateman Saintsbury, FBA (23 October 1845 – 28 January 1933), was an English critic, literary historian, editor, teacher, and wine connoisseur. He is regarded as a highly influential critic of the late 19th and early 20th centu ...
, all of Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Woolf was born i ...
in first editions, everything in print by or about Pound and Joyce. he set up rows of stacks in his office, as in most rooms of his house, which was threatened with collapse when he gave up his office on retirement and brought the books home, a shopping bagful at a time over the course of a year. Before his death he willed the collection to Peking University Library, after sending an initial shipment of some 5,000 volumes for which he could find no space.
Publications
It was said of Fang that "he knew everything, but published little."[ Indeed, his complete bibliography runs only four pages.][Fang, Ilse, "Bibliography of Achilles Fang."] Aside from his dissertation, his most significant publication may have been his heavily annotated translation of ten chapters from Sima Guang
Sima Guang (17 November 1019 – 11 October 1086), courtesy name Junshi, was a Chinese historian, politician, and writer. He was a high-ranking Song dynasty scholar-official who authored the monumental history book ''Zizhi Tongjian''. Sima was ...
's ''Zizhi Tongjian
''Zizhi Tongjian'' () is a pioneering reference work in Chinese historiography, published in 1084 AD during the Northern Song dynasty in the form of a chronicle recording Chinese history from 403 BC to 959 AD, covering 16 dynast ...
'', published as ''The Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms'' in ''Harvard-Yenching Institute Studies'' VI (1952). His translation and annotation of the '' Wen fu'' of Lu Ji is also widely cited.
References
Citations
Sources
* Fang, Ilse M. "Bibliography of Achilles Fang." ''Monumenta Serica'' 45 (1997): 399–403.
*
* Kelly, Jeanne and Nathan K. Mao. "Afterword." ''Fortress Besieged''. By Qian Zhongshu. New York: New Directions, 2004. riginal publication of ''Fortress Besieged'' in Chinese was in 1947.* Seidel, Frederick. "Glory." ''My Tokyo''. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993.
* Weinberger, Eliot. Note on Achilles Fang in "Contributors' Notes." Weinberger, Eliot, ed. ''The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry''. New York, NY: New Directions, 2004.
External links
* Achilles Fang Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fang, Achilles
Chinese sinologists
Tsinghua University alumni
Harvard University alumni
Harvard University faculty
1910 births
1995 deaths
Burials at Mount Auburn Cemetery
Chinese expatriates in Korea
Chinese expatriates in the United States