My first exposure to the works of Ernest Bramah Smith, under the
pen name Ernest Bramah,
was from Lin Carter’s Ballentine
Adult Fantasy Series, which introduced young readers (and not a few older
ones) to fantasy works both important and rare, many of which had been out of
print for years. This was especially
important in those days before the internet or for those without a major
metropolitan library available.
Although the series ran from 1969 to 1974, it placed important volumes
in the hands of readers who might never have previously encountered them.
The series had two Ernest Bramah books in its listings, Kai
Lung’s Golden Hours (number 45), which was reprinted in 1972 for the series
and Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat (number 64) in 1974. Actually I read the second one first and
turned up the former at a SF convention in the latter ‘70s. Eventually, I had nearly all the BAF books,
including the precursors and leftovers, carefully collected over many years at
used book shops, conventions and flea markets.
Alas, they went with The Storm, along
many hundred of their siblings, but such is the way of things. But now I have many of them in electronic
format.
Recently I turned up a book that made me suspect that
Bramah’s character Kai Lung
may be a humorous nod to a real historical figure in Chinese history: Li Kung-lin [a] , was a Sung philosopher and painter of the 11th
century who is considered to be an important scholar of Confucius. The transliteration of the name stuck me as
too much of a coincidence as Ernest Bramah Smith was supposedly quite well
read. I have a strong feeling that Li
Kung was indeed the inspiration for Bramah’s literary character Kai Lung,
although I have no proof. Now this
possibility might be known and documented some deep Ernest Bramah scholars, but
that is unknown to me. I’d certainly
like to see somebody take this up and either expose my ignorance or agree with
my hypothesis.
The book in question in this bit
of serendipity that set this post in motion was a volume called Li
Kung-lin’s Classic of Filial Piety[b] , which was published in
translation (1993) by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, authored
by Richard M. Barnhart, Gonglin Li, and Robert E. Harrist. The Met site had it available for free
download and you know me and free ebooks. Many thanks to the Met for their
e-generosity. The link to download both
this fine Met book and English translations of Li Kung’s original work for
those of you who are interested is available here. http://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/li_kung_lins_classic_of_filial_piety
Translations of the text here
https://archive.org/stream/LiKunglinsClassicofFilialPiety/LiKunglinsClassicofFilialPiety_djvu.txt and
https://archive.org/details/LiKunglinsClassicofFilialPiety
Bramah’s technique of poking fun at British institutions by
pretending they are actually translated from Chinese and written in a stilted
“English translation” style of formal language which is jokingly called
Mandarin English for its formal stiffness and yet subtlety of meaning. In addition to facetiously flowery language,
circumlocution, and obscure descriptions of common western ideas, he also used
joking proverbs and aphorisms, many of which are recognizable distortions of
English sayings. For examples of these
you can go to the Wikipedia page for Ernest Bramah page in the “writing career”
section https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Bramah
This site gives twenty five Kai Lung quotes to amuse the
reader http://www.azquotes.com/author/28464-Ernest_Bramah
as does Wikiquote https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernest_Bramah
. Here is a pretty good essay about
Ernest Bramah that also explains Mandarin English http://www.ernestbramah.com/gaspar.htm
.
An origin of this style of writing in English literature can
probably be referenced to Tobias Smollett’s
satirical work The
History and Adventure of an Atom, (1749) where Smollett makes fun of
England and English figures by pretending it’s actually Japan. Bramah’s Kai
Lung stories does pretty much the same, but more gently and with a good deal
more geniality. The History and
Adventure of an Atom is an amusing proto-science fiction work in itself, as
communication with an atom is not possible nor are they sapient, at least as
far as we know. The link for
downloading is in the link section.
Another possible source (and closer to the experience of the
average person) is Gilbert
and Sullivan’s comic opera The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu, which Bramah
was surely familiar since the opera has run on stages from its debut in 1885 to
the present day. Nobody watching or
reading the operetta could fail to notice that the characters of The Mikado
were actually based British civil servants.
Another source is Jonathan Swift’s satire
is probably better known to today’s readers with his famous Gulliver’s Travels. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) has
the Struldbrugs of Luggnagg near Japan, but this
is probably reaching a bit in connecting him to Brama. What can’t be discounted, however is that
Bramah was familiar with Swift’s satire.
To bring this discussion a bit more up to date, Brama’s
humorous Mandarin English style is not what is now is being called orientalization by any
means. In fact, he was poking fun at
Britain and its institutions, not at Chinese people or the their culture during
the imperial period. Nor was Bramah
doing so it in the sense of Edward
Said’s definition found in his book Orientalism (1978), which
is making the rounds again in fashionable salons who have just discovered the
book as it nears its fourth decade in print.
Lin Carter, the architect of
Ballentine Adult Fantasy Series said in his book Discoveries in Fantasy
(1974) “Ernest Bramah’s China, then,
is a fantastic bogus China of convention, not the real historical thing at
all. He wrote in a prose so perfectly
conceived that it become a miracle of style.
As Hilarie Belloc once observed, the sly humor and philosophy of
Bramah’s stories is a trick he achieved by pretending t adapt the flavor of
Chinese literary conventions into the English”. Kai Lung had several fans over the years along with Hillary
Belloc and surprisingly Jorg Luis Borges was also a fan.
There are two Kai Lung books have been printed, both
containing stories not previously available.
One is a rare volume in an edition of 250 published in 1974, that
escaped my attention for many years due to its rarity, which was called Kai
Lung Six, which is a group of stories originally published in Punch and
not seen the light of day since then.
Those stories and a number of never-published Kai Lung stories appear in
the much more accessible and more recent
book, Kai Lung Raises His Voice (2010) by Durrant Pub. I haven’t yet gotten a copy, but it’s on my
list.
At this point, I’d like to point out another work by Bramah
that showcases his style is, The Mirror of Kong Ho (1905). While not
part of the Kai Lung series, its in the mood of his style with a series of
short stories in the form of letters from a Chinese gentleman discussing the
eccentricities of the barbarians living in England. It really holds up a mirror to the west at a time where
westerners took themselves and their superiority for granted.
Personally, Ernest Bramah Smith very private man who gave no
details of his life during his time on this planet. The only recent biography of him is by Aubrey Wilson, The Search for Ernest Bramah
(Creighton and Read 2007). I didn’t use
this book as a source simply because I didn’t have a copy available. It’s possible the Kai Lung/Li Kung story is
explained there. The Wikipedia article
on him and the below essay in links is about all that’s easily accessible on
the web as far as his personal life.
But what’s important is not the man, but the works and what them mean to
us, both when they were originally written, beginning about a century ago and
what they mean to us today.
Hopefully, this bit of esoteric
diversion hasn’t bored you too much and has given you a few books to consider
reading this fall. I’m no scholar but
have been a reader and autodidact for half a century and not a few books have
both fallen into my grasp as well as escaped my attention. In any case, all but a few of the mentioned
books are free downloads, so it won’t cost you anything to enjoy them.
The text to this post is copyright William Murphy 2016 – ‘cause I created this. The images belong to their creators and quotes of others are attributed. If I missed anything, let me know. Feel free to link to this post or quote me.
Footnotes
[a] “The figure
painter Li Kung-lin, who lived in China from about 1041 to 1106, was the
leading exponent of the Northern Sung scholar-official aesthetic. One hundred
seven of his works were recorded in the great government catalogue of the
imperial collection of paintings a few years after his death. Sadly, today only
three of his works still exist. The hand scroll of the Hsiao-ching, or Classic of Filial Piety, a classic of
the orthodox canon of Confucianism, is one of those three. It is among the
preeminent monuments of Chinese cultural and art history”. Richard M. Barnhart, Prof History of Art at Yale
Additionally, for those of you who have a
thirst for knowledge, the role of filial piety within Confucian thought and
society is discussed in Fung Yu-lan’s, A History of Chinese
Philosophy, trans. Dirk Bodde, 2 vols. Also I found Li Kung-lins’s name in A Source Book in Chinese
Philosophy, pg 704.
Before Li's time, the art of painting had been a public
and imperial art, conveying the images, ideas, values, and propaganda of the
imperial court, the powerful hereditary families, and the great temples. In the
eleventh century, under the inspiration of Li Kung-lin and a few others,
painting was transformed into a formal mode of expression, which, like poetry,
could serve to convey the mind of the artist as well as the emblems of those
who controlled his life. For Li, art was a tool, a moral vehicle that allowed
him to set out his views of the institutions, ideas, and conflicts of his
time.” Richard M. Barnhart, Prof
History of Art at Yale
Links of Interest – in no
particular order, because I’m lazy
The Ernest Bramah site http://www.ernestbramah.com/
Wikipedia article on The Wallet of Kai Lung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wallet_of_Kai_Lung
Download a digital copy of some of Bramah’s
works
Kai Lung series
The Wallet of Ki Lung (1900) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1076
Kai Lung’s Golden Hours (1922) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1267
Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat (1928) http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1302251h.html
The Moon of Much Gladness (1932) Unavailable for free in digital format for
now
Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree
(1940) Unavailable for free in digital
format for now
Kai Lung Six
(1974) Unavailable for free in digital
format
Kai Lung Raises His Voice (2010) Unavailable for free
in digital format
The Mirror of Kong Ho (1905) While not part of the
Kai Lung series it sets the pace for his style with a series of short stories
in the form of letters from a Chinese gentleman discussing the eccentricities
of the barbarians living in England. It
really holds up an amusing mirror to the west.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1077
And some other works by Bramah that
were also popular in his time
Four Max Carrados Detective Stories https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12932
More stuff
An essay about Ernest Bramah http://www.ernestbramah.com/gaspar.htm
The most recent biographical
source is: Aubrey Wilson, The Search for Ernest Bramah (Creighton and
Read 2007), which I have not read and so consequently have not used in this
article.
Ernest Bramah site http://www.ernestbramah.com/
Download Smollett’s Adventure of an Atom (1749)
Download Johnathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels in
digitial formats
What started this article in the first place was the
discovery of this book (which you can download for free BTW) and of the
existence of Li Kung, at least for me http://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/li_kung_lins_classic_of_filial_piety
By
Richard M. Barnhart, Gonglin Li, Robert E. Harrist
This person’s ill-arranged comment is lamentably belated but he feels that such a scholarly and diligent piece on this undeservedly obscure writer deserves at least something in reply.
ReplyDeleteYour theory on the Li Kung-lin connection may well be correct. Kai Lung always struck me as more of an autobiographical figure (providing a means for Bramah to examine the idea of narrative in an almost postmodern way) than based on anything Chinese; but certainly there are other references to Chinese culture in the stories, more than many readers seem to think (Lin Carter, for instance, remarked that Bramah's China was completely fabricated). In ‘Wan and the Remarkable Shrub’ (Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat) the description of the ‘pious anchorite’ who cuts off his eyelids to prevent sleep from interrupting his time for prayer is based on a legend of Bodhidharma: ‘In one version of the story, he is said to have fallen asleep seven years into his nine years of wall-gazing. Becoming angry with himself, he cut off his eyelids to prevent it from happening again. According to the legend, as his eyelids hit the floor the first tea plants sprang up’ (Wikipedia). The main idea for ‘The Tale of Lin Ho and the Treasure of Fang-tso’ – in which Lin Ho is permitted to swap bodies with one recently dead, to his advantage – appears to be based on a subplot in Journey to the West in which a poor woman is allowed to do the same with the recently dead sister of the Emperor. Pigtail thefts (as in The Moon of Much Gladness) were surprisingly frequent occurrences in China as late as the 1920s, when they were reported in English newspapers which Bramah probably read . . . I could go on: I planned to write a short book analysing the Kai Lung stories at one point, but owing to personal difficulties that project will have to be delayed or maybe abandoned entirely. Still, thanks for writing this article and for pointing out the existence of Li Kung-lin, since I had never heard of him before. I hadn't heard of the Smollett either, though The Mirror of Kong Ho made me think of Oliver Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World (also eighteenth century) which uses the same plot device. Other predecessors of Bramah, not in the Chinese theme but in the ironic-satirical style and treatment, might include Samuel Johnson (Rasselas)and Thomas Love Peacock.
It should also be mentioned that M. J. Elliott in his introduction to The Haunter of the Ring (Wordsworth Editions) by Robert E. Howard, suggests that Howard’s character Li Kung (a villainous Sax Rohmeresque ‘Chinaman’) in Skull-Face may be a ‘spooneristic’ reference to the then-popular Kai Lung. That doesn’t seem any less improbable than the Li Kung-lin theory!
Lastly, Barry Hughart wrote three books in the eighties which are a sort of modern version of Bramah, set in a similar pseudo-Chinese world; the first, Bridge of Birds, won a World Fantasy Award, and if you don't know them I would recommend all three very highly indeed.