The analysis of male effeminacy has shown the resurfacing of Chinese male-male
51 Wang, Du Liankui, 36.
52 Ibid., 96.
53 Ibid., 172.
desire as a replacement or substitute for Wildean gay expression. The diminishing femininity of Dorian in turn mirrors the dominant/submissive pattern in Du Liankui.
As Dorian’s age and social status and dominance (his fatal influence to young men signifies his later dominant mentor role) increase, he in the original novel could still act effeminate: Wilde sees no incongruity in this split between erotic role and gender behavior. In the translation, this disparity eventually creates unsustainable contradiction: although Du Liankui grows old, experienced and dominant in male-male relations, his unchanged effeminacy continues marking him as the submissive, passive role in Chinese male-male relations. Du Liankui’s femininity has to be curbed in order to solve this unacceptable “fault.” Behind the diminishing femininity of the protagonist is an emphasis on pattern of Wang’s depicting method.
Fundamentally, Wang’s reliance on Chinese male-male desire suggests the very existence of the original homosexual desire is preserved because it closely resembles what Wang bases on for homoerotic representation. In Wilde’s novel, Dorian is desired and admired by his two elder friends, Lord Henry and Basil. The scene where Basil is depicting Dorian’s physical body and Lord Henry is lecturing the lad on paradoxical philosophies—Basil is manipulating Dorian’s perception of his body, while Lord Henry is enslaving Dorian’s mind—epitomizes this male trio’s position in their erotic relations: Dorian, the younger, passive, submissive, dominated; Lord Henry and Basil, the older, active, dominant. Campbell, albeit younger than Dorian, expresses the motivation of his involvement with Dorian, “it was . . . that indefinable attraction that Dorian seemed to be able to exercise whenever he wished.” “To [Campbell], as to many others, Dorian Gray was the type of everything that is wonferdul and fascinating in life.”54 In this example, Campbell is shown to be a desiring subject, while Dorian is a desired object.55 Had not the original male-male relations looked similar to Chinese homoeroticism, it is hard to say whether it would be retained in the translation. The current fact undoubtedly reinforces Wang’s utilization of Chinese male-male desire, as all preserved male-male relations do not trespass outside of Wang’s preferred representational basis. Namely, with the unequal positions as premise and rationale, the erotic dynamics among the male trio are accepted and thus preserved by the translator.
It helps to observe Wang’s response when male-male desire directly conflicts with his representational method. If adherence to the conventional insistence on passive/active sexual roles dependent on the disparity of social status and age could
54 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 177.
55 The translation accentuates this point further: 何況杜連魁具有誘人的吸引力，能迷住所有和他交 往的人……他也認為杜連魁是男人中最美妙，最迷人的典型 (Besides Dorian possessed charming charisma and can attract everyone that befriended with him . . . [Campbell] also thought that Du Liankui was the most beautiful and charming type of man). Wang, Du Liankui, 166.
enable survival of male-male desire in the translation, deviations from such norms could also lead to denial and thus textual omission. The scene in the original novel where the framemaker and his young assistant help Dorian carry his heavily framed portrait of himself to the schoolroom reveals the framemaker’s chivalrous admiration for Dorian, and of course the young assistant’s covetously gazing at Dorian’s charismatic beauty. These two characters, one of lower social status, the other of both inferior social status and younger age, are not supposed to desire a socially superior or elder man in accordance with Chinese homosexual assumptions, because the older, socially superior man tends to be the desiring subject, instead of the desired. This scene of the two characters lusting after Dorian conflicts with Wang’s representational framework and is completely omitted and replaced by the version wherein Du Liankui simply carries his portrait upstairs alone.
An ultimate epitome of how Wilde’s homosexual subtexts is replaced by Wang’s Chinese homoeroticism is the transition from an exemplar homoerotic intertext of the Western culture to that rooted in the target culture: from Greek male-male love to Chinese novel Red Chamber Dream 紅樓夢. Greek male-male love has served as a potent cultural signifier for homosexuality in Wilde’s novel. In Chapter Two I have identified how this Greek rhetoric is utilized to openly hint at the secret homosexual desire. This Greek trope is largely removed from Wang’s translation, and new allusions to Red Chamber Dream can be observed.
The beginning of Du Liankui seems to transcribe Greek evocations faithfully. For example, Basil and Lord Henry’s deployment of Greek rhetoric is shown verbatim in the target text,「他卻已不知不覺地為我下了一個新的藝術定義。這定義包含了浪 漫主義的熱情和古希臘時代精神的完美」.56 (“He has unknowingly set up a new definition of art, which includes the passion of Romanticism and perfection of spirit in ancient Greek era). 「回到古 希 臘 時 代 肉 體 與 精 神 和 諧 的 理 想 生 活 中 」.57 (“Returning to ancient Greek ideal life of the union of body and mind). However, when direct Greek allusions are employed to describe characters or emotion metaphorically, they tend to be omitted. Lord Henry first inquires about the subject in Basil’s painting: “[This] young Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves. Why, my dear Basil, he is a Narcissus . . . .”58 Here good-looking youths from Greek mythology are omitted in Du Liankui.59 Also, when Lord Henry contemplates on Dorian, he evokes Greek worship of male beauty: “Grace was his, and the white purity of boyhood, and beauty such as old Greek marbles kept for us.”60
56 Wang, Du Liankui, 17 (emphasis mine).
57 Wang, Du Liankui, 27 (emphasis mine).
58 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 7.
59 Narcissus appears later in the translation, seemingly only because this allusion has a clear moral that Wang can utilize. I will address this later in Chapter Four.
60 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 41.
Again, this reference to “Greek marbles” is nowhere to be found in Du Liankui.
Dorian’s self-talk, “Like the gods of the Greeks, he would be strong, and fleet, and joyous” is likewise deleted.61 Wu Teng’s interior monologue is deprived of the overt allusion to Plato and this philosopher’s writing on male-male love in the translation,
“Was it not Plato, that artist in thought, who had first analysed it? . . . But in our country it was so strange. . . .”62 This leaving out direct Greek allusions reaches the pinnacle, when Bei Xi’s face-to-face confession to Du Liankui omits every keyword related Hellenic evocation: “I had drawn you as Paris in dainty armour, and Adonis with huntsman’s cloak and polished boar spear. . . . You had leant over the still pool of some Greek woodland . . . .”63 Wang erases “Paris,” “Adonis,” and “Greek woodland” completely.
The tangible concept and imagery of Greek male-male love, paiderastia, is either toned down or omitted. It is clear that Lord Henry’s pedagogical mindset is tamed in Du Liankui. The symbolic continuing of his influence, the yellow book, is also virtually effaced. Since Lord Henry’s pedagogy echoes the ancient Greek male homoeroticism, pederasty, this modification results in the attenuation of Greek rhetoric. As the term derives from the combination of pais (Greek for “boy”) with erastēs (Greek for “lover”),64 it directly denotes the erotic desire of adult men for adolescent boys’ beauty, although in Plato and Xenephone’s opinion, such love is chaste and sexless. Suggestive keywords concerning such worship of the beauty of a boy recur throughout The Picture of Dorian Gray, such as “boyhood,” and “boy,”
which are invariably neutralized as childhood, child, a young person or being young in the translation. See the following examples:
「連魁，你正是青春年華。」65
( “Liankui, you are in the prime of youth”)
“You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood”.66
他有幼童的純潔。67
(He had the purity of children.)
“the white purity of boyhood”68
61 Ibid., 114-5.
62 Ibid., 42.
63 Ibid., 123.
64 Wikipedia, s.v. “Pederasty in Ancient Greece,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty_in_ancient _Greece (accessed December 15, 2006).
65 Wang, Du Liankui, 27(my emphasis).
66 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 23 (italics mine).
67 Wang, Du Liankui, 47 (my emphasis).
68 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 41(my italics).
這個青年和以前在貝席畫室裏那個怕羞的孩子宛若兩人。69
(“How different he was now from the shy, frightened child he had met in Bei Xi’s studio!”)
“How different he was now from the shy, frightened boy he had met in Basil Hallward’s studio!”70
使自己永保青春。71
(“he might keep all the delicate youth.”)
“he might keep all the delicate loom and loveliness of his then just conscious boyhood.”72
他自己依舊會像今天一樣地年輕力壯73
(“he would keep the glamour of youth and vigor.”)
“he would keep the glamour of boyhood.”74
像個玩累後酣睡的孩子。75
(“He looked like a child who had been tired out with play.”)
“He looked like a boy who had been tired out with play, or study.”76
他多麼渴望自己童年時的純潔─百合花似的潔白77
(“He felt a wild longing for the unstained purity of his childhood, his lily-white childhood.”)
“He felt a wild longing for the unstained purity of his boyhood—his rose-white boyhood, as Lord Henry once called it.”78
And these are only a few examples in Du Liankui. Throughout The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde always uses “boyhood” and “boy” when narrating the character Dorian, who in effect forever maintains his boyish beautiful appearance.79 This obsession with boy love vanishes in the translation, where Du Liankui and other female
69 Wang, Du Liankui, 64 (emphasis mine).
70 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 60 (my emphasis).
71 Wang, Du Liankui, 101 (my emphasis).
72 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 98 (my emphasis).
73 Wang, Du Liankui, 116(my emphasis).
74 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 114 (italics mine).
75 Wang, Du Liankui, 163 (emphasis mine).
76 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 173 (my italics).
77 Wang, Du Liankui, 226(my emphasis).
78 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 234-5(italics mine).
79 In The Picture of Dorian Gray, words like ‘child’ and ‘childlike’ appear only in the description of Sybil. Such neutral terms are never applied to the character Dorian.
characters are invariably referred to as and compared to a child, and the Greek erotic potion that fuels the original novel’s homoeroticism is further rendered inaccessible in Du Liankui.
Red Chamber Dream, alluded to multiple times in the translation, undisputedly includes the dominant/submissive, masculine/feminine patterns of male-male desire which as shown above, Wang utilizes in his homoerotic representation. David Evseeff lists multiple examples in his study describing how traditional Chinese male-male desire is reenacted in this Chinese novel: for example, the character Xue Pan 薛蟠 adopts the dominant, older role that seeks younger boy, feminine actors for his male-male desire.80 Quoting Red Chamber Dream thus does echo and at the same time reinforce Wang’s deployment of Chinese male-male desire. But the aspect wherein quoting Red Chamber Dream powerfully attests Wang’s Sinicized male-male desire is the fundamental concept of male homosexuality in ancient Chinese culture, or as I briefly term it, male bisexuality. This aspect will be addressed later.
While studying the male-male desire in Red Chamber Dream, Evseeff identifies an idealized egalitarian male-male love that differentiates from the traditional male-male relations. The novel juxtaposes the new and old male-male desire in the story. In this new, subversive male-male desire, the prescribed boundaries such as social status, age and femininity are demolished. The result is a “subject-subject”
relation.81 Behind the proposal of no norms, no forms of this male-male love is elevation of “lust of the intent 意 淫 ,” an actual abandonment of traditional, exploitative male-male “lust of the flesh 濫淫.” The traditional forms that shape and define male-male desire signify an exploitative kind of relationship. The dominant/submissive, old/young, masculine/feminine patterns entail subject/object role allocation, wherein the more powerful man can dominant, control, and exploit the less powerful partner.82 The forms of Chinese male-male symbolize and at the same time perpetuate such selfish gratification of lust of the subject role.
So far Wang’s translation has demonstrated a meticulous emphasis on formal conformity to the traditional patterns of male-male desire. As mentioned above, such prescriptive forms are a collective signifier of “lust of the flesh,” so the translator’s obsessive focus on subject/object “forms” itself reveals his intention to accentuate the exploitative nature of male-male desire. Wang’s evocation of Red Chamber Dream, if anything, does not introduce any of the subversive, egalitarian male-male love in the novel. Rather, by bringing in the juxtaposition of traditional and unconventional male homoeroticism in the Chinese novel, the translator reconfirms his preferred
80 David Evseeff, “Studies in Classical Chinese Male Homoerotic Literature” (MA Thesis, National Taiwan University, 2006), 94, 112, 121.
81 Evseeff, “Chinese Male Homoerotic Literature,”118-9.
82 Kang, Aspects of Sexuality, 110-1.
representation of male-male desire, and more importantly enhances the particular implication of such choice. In other words, Wang ties his homoerotic representation to traditional norms, and to make clear the insinuation of the nature of such desire he quotes Red Chamber Dream, wherein the idealization of subversive male-male love all the more reveals the selfish, superficial, destructive nature of the traditional Chinese male homoeroticism.
Interesting enough, replacing Greek trope with Chinese male-male desire with the exploitative, destructive aspect enhanced, works with the plot virtually seamlessly.
In fact, Wang’s employment of Chinese male-male desire depicts the destructive male-male relations more truthfully than Wilde’s Greek paiderastia. Wilde’s use of Greek rhetoric is more of as his last resort, as he taps the history for available expressions that can simultaneously cloak homosexual desire in his time, and it might not completely do justice to the male-male relations he wants to depict. Chapter Two has pointed out that the relationship between Lord Henry and Dorian is fundamentally disparate from Greek love, with the former consistently inducing the latter to fall deeper into ruin, instead of educating the youth for the better according to the ennobling purpose of paiderasita. Wang’s depiction underscores the exploitative side of male-male desire—with the signifier of such exploitation, patterns of Chinese male homoeroticism, dominating his homoerotic representation—and straightforwardly parallels with Lord Henry’s selfish mindset.
In terms of male homoerotic depiction, Wang removed homosexual subtexts, and planted Chinese male-male desire in the translation. From the very beginning Wang exhibits a very different attitude: his overt verbalization of the fact of male-male desire indicates an alternative representational framework at work. Within male-male desire, patterns of men’s erotic relations and their behaviors are re-structured according to recontextualized homoerotic tradition. Male effeminacy is in particular tailored to fit traditional homoerotic assumptions. Transforming homoerotic intertext from Greek male-male love to Red Chamber Dream works to enhance Wang’s Sinicization of homoerotic lingo, and furthermore it pinpoints the exploitative nature of traditional male-male desire that Wang intends to highlight. This aspect of Chinese male-male desire fits in better with the general storyline than the original Greek paiderastia. Wang’s recontextualization not only tailors the text to the target culture, namely casting Chinese “roles” in the Western homoerotic script, but also by choosing to reinforce specific characteristics in Chinese male-male desire that echoes plot line, makes the translated text semantically and metaphorically more coherent. In other words, Wilde’s utilization of Chinese male homoeroticism on top of acculturization, has the value of contributing the meaning of the story. Such Chinese male homoerotic representation fits in the context of the story, presenting a (mis)conception that his
translation is a Chinese story, and Du Liankui and other men are reenacting the conventional male-male desire.