“A fine pen : the Chinese view of Katherine Mansfield” (Publication, 2001)

Shen, Yanbing. Yingguo wen tan jin kuang [ID D30049].
"While most English writers imply mockery in their humour, Mansfield includes in her humour a sense of pathos for the plight of the unfortunate. Take The daughers of the late Colonel from this collection for example. It describes the state of mind of two spinsters at the death of their tyrannical father. Their reaction is a mixture of pleasurable relief and incredulity. The story is extremely humorous, yet free of contempt for them."

Katherine Mansfield and China : general
Gong Shifen : Xu Zhimo's translations played a seminal role in introducing Katherine Mansfield to China, and he was also one of the first Chinese writers to explore her style and techniques in his own fiction. The second phase in translating Mansfield in China : When the official policy on art and literature swung ultra-left and political standards were given absolute priority in the evaluation of a work of art, hardly any of Mansfield's work was translated. As the political pressures of the times diminished and government cultural policy moved hesitantly toward a more neutral stance, she began to reappear on the Chinese literary scene, the amount of translation gathering momentum throughout the 1980s.

Miao Miao. The Chinese critics particularly recognize Mansfield as a true artist. However, it differs from the Western definition of an artist in that it does not only involve painting. The difference of the Chinese reference lies in the two-fold meaning of the term 'art'. Although it is implied or mentioned occasionally in Western criticism that Mansfield is an artist figure, the Chinese understanding of art carries the meaning of both painting and poetry. Understanding this different concept of art and artist is crucial to appreciating Mansfield in a novel nuance – to see her through the lens of Chinese art.

Xu, Zhimo. Manshufei'er [ID D29983]. [Katherine Mansfield].
… It was a wet evening last July. Braving the rain I walked alone through the streets of Hampstead, asking policemen and pedestrians the way to No. 10 Pond Street. On that evening I had my first, and, alas, my last encounter with Mansfield – my 'twenty immortal minutes'.
I already knew John Middleton Murry, who was the editor-in-chief of the Athenaeum, a poet and a well-known critic, and Mansfield's closest companion in the last ten years of her life.
They started living together in 1913, but she always used the 'pen name' Katherine Mansfield, which she adopted after settling in England. She was born in New Zealand. Her original name was Kathleen Beauchamp. She was one of the daughters of Sir Harold Beauchamp, chairman of the Bank of New Zealand. She had left her native land fifteen years before I met her. Together with her three sisters, she first went to England and studied at Queen's College, London University. Even as a child she was known for her good looks and intelligence. But she always had delicate health. She later lived in Germany, where she wrote her first stories, published in the collection In a German Pension. Then she spent some time in France during the war. In recent years she had spent a lot of time in Switzerland, Italy and the south of France. She had lived mostly abroad because of her poor health. She could not bear the wet foggy London weather. To be with her, Murry had to give up part of his work (this is why the Athenaeum merged with the London Nation). He followed his angel in her search for health. After the war, she had contracted tuberculosis and a doctor had given her no more than two or three years to live. So Murry's days with her were numbered. With every sunrise and every sunset, her beauty became more and more transfigured by the approach of death, and her last energies were consumed. Her fate recalls the famous words spoken by the Lady of the Camellias, as she passed the days of her critical illness in wine and pleasure: "You know I have not long to live. Therefore I will live fast!"
It is hard to conceive the helpless sorrow that the tender Murry must have felt as he watched this most beautiful of all sunsets gradually fade.
Mansfield's way of "living fast" was different from that of the Lady of the Camellias. She never indulged in wine and pleasure. Instead she devoted herself to her writing. Like the nightingale on summer nights in the elm-woods, she sang her songs of love with her heart's blood, until she could sing no more. Even then, she still considered it her duty to dedicate her remaining energy to the task of adding a little beauty to nature, of giving a little artistic consolation to this wretched world.
Her hard work produced two collections of stories: Bliss, and The Garden Party (published last year). She established herself in the British literary world with the stories in these two collections. While most fiction is mere fiction, hers is pure literature, true art. Mediocre writers crave popularity, the acclaim of the ephemeral public, but she wanted to bequeath to the world a few genuine crystals, whose glory would not be darkened by the 'dust of time'. She sought appreciation from that minority of readers who really understood her.
Because hers is pure literature, its brilliance is not shown, it is hidden deep within. It requires careful perusal to reach the essence. I had the honour of being granted by her in person the right to translate her works. Now that she is dead, I must treasure all the more this task entrusted to me, though I doubt if I can be worthy of it. My good friend Chen Tongbo, who must be better versed in European literature than anyone else in Peking, has lectured on Mansfield at Peking University, in his course on the short story. Lately he, too, has promised to do some translations of her work, and for this I will be deeply grateful to him. I hope that one day he will find time to say something further on her art as a short story writer.
Now let me tell you about the night I met Mansfield. A few days before, I had a discussion on English and French literature with Mum at the noisy ABC cafe behind Charing Cross. In passing I mentioned the Chinese literary renaissance of recent years. I told him that Chinese novelists had mosty been influenced by Russian writers. He almost jumped for joy on hearing that, since both he and his wife worshipped the Russians. He had made a study of Dostoievsky and written a book entided Dostoievsky: A Critical Study. As for Mansfield, her preference was for Chekhov. It was a source of constant regret to them that Russian literature had been so little noticed by the English. They believed that this neglect had enabled Victorian philistinism to exercise an influence over the content and form of fiction right up to the present day. Then I inquired how Mansfield was. He said that she was quite all right for the moment, and that he had been able to bring her back to London for two weeks. He gave me their address and asked me to meet her and their friends the next Thursday evening.
So I would see Mansfield. I was the luckiest of men. The following Wednesday I visited H. G. Wells at his country house in Easton Glebe and returned to London with his wife the next day. It was raining hard that day. I remember being soaked to the skin by the time I arrived home.
It was hard to find their house. (I always have great trouble finding my way in London. I really hate this labyrinthine city.) Finally I reached the place, a small two-storey house. Murry opened the door. I felt a bit awkward, standing there, holding an umbrella and several Chinese scrolls, paintings and examples of calligraphy that had just been returned to me by a friend of mine. I entered the house, took off my raincoat, and was led into a room on the right. Until then I had had a holy reverence for Mansfield as a famous young woman writer. I had never expected to find in her a creature of 'beauty and grace'. I had presumed her to be a literary woman in the style of Rose Macaulay, Virginia Woolf, Roma Wilson, Mrs Lucas and Vanessa Bell. Male writers and artists have always had a reputation for eccentricity…
Although I never expected Mansfield to be futuristic, I had certainly never imagined her as an ideal of femininity. So when I pushed the door open, I was almost expecting a middle-aged, kindly woman to stand up from the sofa in front of the fireplace, greet me with a smile, and shake me by the hand.
But as it turned out, the room —a long narrow one, with a fireplace opposite the door—contained not a single soul. A lamp cast a calm, pale yellow light. Paintings hung on the walls, and ornaments stood on the mantelpiece, in a variety of colours. A few easy chairs with patterned covers were placed before the fire. Murry told me to sit down in one of the chairs and started chatting with me. We talked about the similarities between the oriental Goddess of Mercy, Guan Yin, the Blessed Virgin Mary in Christianity, the Greek Virgin Diana, the Egyptian Isis and the Virgin in Persian Mithraism. The virginal saint seemed an indispensable symbol in every religion. We were in the midst of a heated discussion when there was a sound at the door. A young lady came in and stood smilingly in the entrance. 'Could this be Mansfield? She is so young . . . ' I said to myself. She had brown curly hair and a small rounded face, lively eyes and an expressive mouth. She was dressed in bright colours; patent leather shoes, green silk stockings, a rose-coloured silk blouse and a plum-coloured velvet skirt. She stood there gracefully, like a tulip nodding in the breeze. Murry stood up and introduced us. She was not Mansfield, but the landlady, a Miss Beir or Beek (I forget exactly). Murry was living there temporarily. She was an artist, and most of the paintings on the walls were her work. She sat down in the chair opposite me, taking something like a miniature motor from the mantelpiece and holding it in her hand. Then she put on a pair of earphones like the ones used by telephonists, and when she talked, she leaned over and tried to get very close to me. At first I thought what she had on was some sort of electronic toy. But later I realised that this pretty lady had trouble in hearing (as I had in seeing), and had to use some mechanical means to make good nature's deficiency. (At the time I thought what a good subject it would be for a poem 'The Deaf Beauty'. It would be impossible to 'whisper sweet nothings' to such a lady!).
She had just sat down when the door bell rang loudly; it seemed to me to be unusually loud. The man who came in was Sydney Waterlow, whom I had met at Mr Roger Fry's. He was a very humorous individual. Once, to amuse us, he took out from his huge pocket half a dozen pipes in different sizes and colours. As soon as he came in, he asked Murry how Katherine was that day. I was all ears to hear his answer: 'She is not coming downstairs tonight. It's been such terrible weather today. None of us can stand it'. Mr Waterlow asked him if he could go upstairs to see her, and Murry agreed. Then he politely excused himself to Miss B, and stood up. He was about to leave the room when Murry went over to him and said in a low voice: 'Sydney, don't talk too much!'
Light footsteps were heard from upstairs. W was already in Katherine's room. Presently two more guests came, a short one, a Mr M, who had just come back from a journey to Greece, and a tall handsome gentleman called Sullivan, who wrote the science column in the London Nation and Athenaeum. M told us about his trip to Greece, reciting all the names of ancient Greek sites such as Parnassus and Mycenae. S also inquired about Katherine. Murry told him she was not coming downstairs and that W was at that moment upstairs with her. Half an hour later, the heavy footsteps of W were heard coming down the stairs. S asked him if Katherine was tired. 'No', he replied, 'she doesn't seem to be. But I can't tell. I was afraid of wearing her out, so I left her.' After a while, S also received permission to go upstairs from Murry, who gave him the same warning not to tire her. Murry then asked me about Chinese painting and calligraphy. I used the scrolls I had brought to give him a brief introduction to Chinese calligraphy. That evening I had with me a painting by Zhao Zhiqian, called 'Plums in Cursive Script', a piece of cursive script by Wang Juesi, and a piece of running script by Liang Shanzou. I opened them and displayed them all. Miss B sat close to me with her hearing-aid in her hand, and seemed to be enjoying what I was saying.
But I was feeling profoundly disappointed. I had braved the rain to see the author of Bliss only to find her unable to come downstairs and receive her friends. The way W, S and Murry treated her made her seem all the more precious; it only increased my curiosity. I thought myself exceptionally unlucky. There she was, confined to her own room, into which it seemed that only old friends were allowed. I was a foreigner and a stranger, and it would be impossible for me to gain access. It was now half past ten, and with some reluctance I stood up and said my goodbyes. Murry saw me to the door. As he helped me on with my raincoat, I said how very sorry I was that Miss Mansfield had not been able to come downstairs, and how very pleased I would have been to see her. To my surprise, Murry responded by saying with great earnestness: 'If you wish to, you may go upstairs and see her'. I was overjoyed, took off my raincoat immediately and followed him step by step up the stairs.
Once upstairs, we knocked at the door, and went into the room. I was introduced, and S took his leave, going out of the room with Murry, and closing the door behind him. Mansfield told me to sit down, which I did, and then she sat down too. This long complicated procedure seemed to happen in an instant. In fact I was not even consciously aware of it taking place. I am just presuming now, in retrospect, that we must have gone through all these motions. Everything seemed so blurred to me at the time. And now when I recall it in my memory, it still seems blurred. Whenever we enter a brightly-lit house from a dark street, or when we leave a dim house and walk into the brilliant sunshine, we feel dizzy with the sudden brightness. We have to stand still for a while before we can see what is in front of us. Our senses are overwhelmed by excessive light. It is not only excessive light; strong colours too have the effect of 'overwhelming' our senses. That evening my senses may not have been overwhelmed by the brilliance of Mansfield's personality, but the lighting in her room and the strikingly bright colours of her jewellery and the clothes she was wearing confused my unprepared senses for an instant. It was perhaps understandable.
I do not have a particularly clear impression of her room. While she was talking to me, I was unable to detach myself and scrutinise my surroundings. All I remember is that the room was rather small. A large bed occupied most of it. Several oil-paintings hung on the papered walls, probably again the work of the landlady. She sat with me on the couch, against the wall to the left of the bed. Because she was sitting upright and I was reclining, she seemed to be much taller than I was (indeed, who would not seem small in her presence?). I suspect that the two lamp-shades were red. Otherwise why should I always associate her room with the image of 'red candles burning on high'? But the setting was in the end unimportant. What mattered was Mansfield herself and that 'purest aesthetic feeling' that she inspired in me. She enabled me to use the magic key to Paradise given me by God; she added new treasure to my soul. But even such high-flown language as this is inadequate to describe her as she was on that night! It is difficult enough to describe my own impressions of her that day, let alone to conjure up in words the very essence of her personality…
She was dressed in a similar fashion to her friend Miss B. She too had on a pair of shiny patent leather shoes and bright green stockings. She wore a burgundy velvet skirt and a pale yellow silk blouse, with elbow-length sleeves, and a string of fine pearls around her bare neck. She had black hair, cut short like Miss B's. But the way her hair was combed was something I had never before seen in Europe or America. I suspected that she was intentionally imitating the Chinese style, for her hair was pitch black and straight and cut in a neat fringe at the front. It was extraordinarily well combed. Though I could not hope to do it justice in words, I felt that hers was the most beautiful hair I had ever seen.
As for her features, I would never be able to describe a thousandth part of their crystalline beauty. Before her you felt yourself in the presence of one of nature's masterpieces: an alpine lake bathed in autumnal moonlight; a sunset swathed in roseate clouds; or a clear, star-studded night sky of the southern seas. Or she was like a masterpiece of art: one of Beethoven's symphonies, or Wagner's operas, or a sculpture by Michelangelo, or a painting by Whistler or Corot. There is something about such beauty that is complete, pure, perfect, irreducible, ineffable. It is as if you have been granted a direct insight into the creator’s will, a most intense experience, bringing with it a feeling of infinite joy. It cleanses the soul to be in the presence of a truly great personality. Mansfield's features seemed to me like the purest Indian jade, her gaze alive with spiritual revelation, her manner gentle as a spring breeze. She gave me a sense of what I can only call total beauty. She was like crystal. You could not but marvel at the flawless purity of her spirit. The brightly coloured clothes she was wearing might have aroused some trifling criticism had they been worn by someone else. But on her it looked so becoming, like green leaves, the peony's indispensable complement. H. M. Tomlinson, a good friend of hers, once compared her transcendent beauty to that of the pristine snow on the Alps. I think it a wonderful comparison.
He said : "She has been called a beautiful woman. That is hardly the word. Beauty, as we commonly understand it, is attractive. Katherine Mansfield's beauty was attractive, but it was also unearthly and a little chilling, like the remoteness of Alpine snow. The sun is on it, and it is lovely in a world of its own, but that world is not ours. Her pallor was of ivory and there was something of exquisite Chinese refinement in the delicacy of her features, her broad face, her dark eyes, the straight thick fringe, and her air of quiet solicitude. And her figure was so fragile that a man beside her felt his own sound breathing to be too evident and coarse for proximity to the still light of that wax taper, a pale star sacramental to what was unknown."
He went on to write of her penetrating gaze, the way her eyes pierced to the very depths of your soul and brought up into the light every secret hidden within it. There was something uncanny about her, something supernatural. When she looked at you, Tomlinson wrote, what she saw of you was not your outward appearance, but your innermost heart. But she did not wish to pry, she was not inquisitive, merely sympathetic. With her you felt no need for caution. She knew everything about you without having to be told. And when you told her your story she would not be surprised. She would offer neither blame nor praise, nor would she urge you on to any particular course of action. She would never-offer any practical advice. She would just listen, quietly, and then offer her thoughts, which contained a wisdom that transcended conventional morality.
These impressions of Tomlinson's were those of a man who had had the benefit of a long friendship with her. In my twenty minutes I could not reach such an understanding. But from the spiritual light that emanated from her eyes, I venture to say that the truth of his words is beyond doubt.
That night, as we sat together on the blue velvet couch, a soft light quietly enveloped her. As if in a hypnotic trance, I stared into her mystical eyes, letting her sword-like gaze penetrate my being, while the music of her voice washed over me and flooded into the depths of my soul. Whatever consciousness I had left resembled Keats's:
My heart aches, and a drowsy
numbness pains My sense, as
though of hemlock I had drunk . . .
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness...
Her voice was another miracle. Notes rippled from her fragile vocal cords one after the other, revealing to my common ears a world of wonders, bright stars appearing one by one in a sapphire sky. It was like listening to music which you known you have never heard before, and which yet seems familiar, perhaps from a dream, or from a previous life. Her voice was pleasing to the ear. It seemed to reach directly to the depths of your soul, soothing its hidden pain, kindling half-dead hopes, washing away stultifying worldly cares, and revitalising your spirits. It was as if she were murmuring into the ear of your soul, communicating some news from a fairy land that you had never dreamt of. When I recall it now, I still feel a tragic sense of grief. Tears almost come to my eyes. She is gone. Her voice and her smile have vanished like a mirage…

Mansfield : an elegy.
Last night in my dream I entered a dark vale
And heard cuckoos crying tears of blood amid lilies.
Last night I dreamed I ascended a mountain peak
And saw a gleaming tear falling from the sky.
In the suburbs of ancient Rome, there is a grave ;
In it lies a poet who died on a voyage.
A century later, the wheels of Hades' chariot
Rumbled in the grove of Fontainebleau.
If the universe is a machine,
Why do ideals shine before our eyes like lamps ?
If all things manifest truth, goodness, and beauty,
Why doesn't the rainbow stay in the sky ?
Although you and I met only once,
Those twenty minutes are immortal.
Who could believe your heavenly presence
Is forever gone from this dewy world ?
No ! Life is but a dream of substance ;
The fair soul is forever in the Lord's keeping.
A thirty-year sojourn is like a night-blooming cereus ;
Though tears I see you return to the Celestial Palace.
Do you remember our London pledge, Mansfield,
That this summer we'd meet by Lake Geneva ?
The lake always holds the reflection of snow-capped Mont Blanc –
When I look at the clouds, my tears fall.
That year, when I first came to understand the message of life,
I was struck, as if in a dream, by the solemnity of love.
Compassion is an unbreakable crystal ;
Love the only path to realizing life.
Death is a grand, mysterious crucible
That forges the spirits of us all.
How can my condolences fly like electric sparks
To touch your soul in the distant sky ?
I send you my tears with the wind –
When can I shatter the gate between life and death ?
March 11, 1923

Xu, Zhimo. Zai shuo yi shuo Manshufei'er [ID D30051].
"Mansfield is a psychological realist. Her writings not only reflect reality, they simply represent truth. Anyone who cares to make an effort to understand her works can see her talent beyond any doubt. She is one of the most important writers at least of the twentieth century. Every word of hers is alive with meaning. Whatever feelings her characters may have, whether subtle, or complex, or sometimes even cruel, are expressed with perfect aptitude. She did not just have words and expressions in her hand. She managed to get hold of real human thoughts and feelings… Her flawless, supreme art produced objects d'art characterized by a fusion of form and substance. All we have from reading her is the impression of truth and beauty. Reading her is like watching the reflection of plum blossoms in crystal clear water : refreshing, marvelous and beautiful."

Zhao, Jingshen. Manshufei'er ri ji [ID D30052].
"Mansfield was not taken much notice of at first. But her beautiful writing attracted fervent adulation for her later on. Now her brilliance is shining again in her journal. Those who have read her fiction should read it in order to understand her better. Although she did not write much, she wrote beautifully."

Ye, Gongchao. Manshufei'erde xin zha [ID D30053].
"… The two collections of her letters newly published have helped to make on us a deeper impression of Mansfield's personality. The most unusual thing is that her most profound and affectionate letters were all written after she had acknowledged her fatal disease. Reading some of her letters, we see that she is a person who emits rays of light or makes things shine. I believe that her stories are also like rays of sunshine falling upon those things in our garden that have never been noticed by other people."

Fan, Zhongyun. Zhe bian shi ren sheng [ID D30029].
"Katherine Mansfield's language is simple and easy, except for some colloquialisms rather difficult to translate. Her writing is rich in meaning always leaving a great deal for readers to savour, and her characterization always aims at a faithful representation of objective reality."

[Mansfield, Katherine]. Manshufei'er shi san shou. Xu Zhimo. [ID D30019].
Xu Zimo schreibt im Vorwort : "Mansfield, she is simply uniqug. Her poetry, like her prose, has its own flavor and rhythm. A simple and mysterious beauty vibrated forever on the tip of her pen. What she longed to reach and sought after all her life was a state of being crystalline, which she always aimed t in every respect – in her personality, ideas, and art of writing."

Yang, Jialuo. Manshufei'er [ID D30054].
"Although Katherine Mansfield never achieved any immediate triumphs, except perhaps for the impact of her exquisite description of female psychology, one can confidently assert that her work is of a superior order, that is possesses permanent value, and that her talent was genuinely innovative. Her short stories have varied styles, like a mixed bouquet of flowers, but they are not completely unconnected with each other. Like a collection of paintings in which each illuminates the other, their aesthetic form expresses an organic harmony. Many readers used to think her work very east and, as a result, misunderstood it, wronging a writer who approached her craft in such a careful and conscientious way."

[Mansfield, Katherine]. Yuan hui. Tang Yuncong yi [ID D30055].
Commentary by Tang Yuncong : "In creative writing Mansfield firmly believed in writing about life as it is. She was very strict with herself and never satisfied with her own work, always criticizing herself for failing to merge her whole self into her work. Her subject-matter is primarily limited to bourgeois family life. Lacking in experience, she never managed to engage in writing about the new social force – the industrial proletariat. She is nevertheless keenly observant of the human relationships in bourgeois societies, able to expose them deeply… Mansfield loved Russian literature deeply, and was influenced by Chekhov in particular. She has a style unique to herself, and her innovations to the short story have had a far-reaching influence. Her language is smooth, crystal clear and delightful. She is greatly skilled in subtle implications, seldom making herself explicit. Her work is often difficult to understand, but profound and rich with meaning…"

[Mansfield, Katherine]. Mansifei'erde duan pian xiao shuo ji [ID D30020].
Tang Baoxin schreibt im Vorwort : "… Katherine Mansfield's stories are much loved not because of any prominent figures in them, but because she is able to depict her ordinary characters and their setting with a sensitive brush. Her writing is like traditional Chinese realistic painting, neat and clear, but never dull and static like some sketches of still life. Characters under her pen are vivid and impressive, alive with human feelings and emotions. Her stories are all about minor occurrences in daily life, most of which are not noticed by other people. She notices them, however, and turns them into interesting stories, attracting, then gradually involving, the reader's attention. She is basically a realist in her approach towards writing, and in her simple writing she proves herself to be a compassionate writer of moral integrity who attacks evils in real life and expresses love and hatred accordingly. With remorseless irony she lays bare the hypocrisy and shallowness of the leisured class and their men of letters, giving a vividly detailed description of their absurd and meaningless lives and of the emptiness of their spiritual world… The main themes of Mansfield's stories are the life of the middle-class in New Zealand, human relationships, and, in particular, the psychology of women and children. Characters in her stories are completely different from each other in their ways of thinking and behaving, which, however good or bad, kind or cruel, are true to life… She is skilled at conveying her life experience and her thoughts and feelings through her characters… She exhibited her talent for creative expression in the course of representing the past. Some stories are written from the perspective of girls in their adolescence… Although her characters originate in real life, they are not identical with real persons. She cut and trimmed raw materials taken from actual life. Sometimes she exaggerated aspects of the original, and sometimes she constructed a single character out of two real persons… Mansfield spared no effort in perfecting her writing techniques. She believed that a genuine style came from attention to technique, and required total commitment if it was to be achieved. In her letters she spoke of the hard work that was involved in writing some of her stories… She has been praised for the beauty of her language. She not only paid attention to the length of her sentences, but also to the prosody of every word, so as to suit them to different places, occasions and characters… Some people say that Mansfield's greatest achievement is her invention of a new genre of story writing. She revealed a talent for sensitive characterization and accurate recording of dialogue, as well as for constructing plots which unfolded gradually…"

[Mansfield, Katherine]. Mansifei'erde duan pian xiao shuo xuan [ID D30023].
Fang Ping schreibt im Nachwort : "… Fiction that exposes social maladies and reveals the dark sides of capitalist society usually belongs to the critical realist traditions. Mansfield was a woman writer with a profoundly artistic temperament. Although she clearly demonstrates in her writing that she is not the sort of artist who shuts herself up in the chamber of pure art – in her stories unfortunate women and suffering children appear again and again, characterized with care and sympathy – to her, art ought to be art in the final analysis. She wrote in the way an artist paints, taking particular care with colours, lines and composition. .. She experiences and represented life in a way that was unique to herself. She avoided employing naturalistic techniques to give a direct transcript of shocking scenes in real life… If Mansfield devoted all her talent and native intelligence to achieve a refined, transcendent, almost impassive style in her writing, she was not other-worldly, nor detached from any human feelings. She loved and hated, and she loved humane people… "

Feng, Zongpu. Shuo jie zhi [ID D30057].
"… Katherine Mansfield's skill in economy is first demonstrated in her forging and pruning of the content of her stories. Her writing about class oppression is, in my view, better than the work of Virginia Woolf and Bowen. It might have been through her worries over her livelihood and her wandering way of life that she knew about human suffering and hardship, and became endowed with profound sympathy. She nevertheless wrote with restraint, never letting her pen wander into areas that she knew little of… Mansfield's art of economy is her selection of details. This is indeed a platitude, yet she is really outstanding at it. The most suitable and convincing details should be chosen in order that the many ideas intended to be conveyed in a limited space would be expressed in the best possible way. Mansfield wasted few words on the outward appearances of her characters, and, often, captured the essence with only a few notes on what her characters were wearing… Her art of economy is represented in her language, which is simple and clear-cut, reading like a gurgling stream, resonating with a feeling of transparency…"

Feng, Zongpu. Shi lun Mansifei'erde de xiao shuo yi shu [ID D30056].
"…Some critics hold the view that Katherine Mansfield effected a revolution in the short story comparable to that achieved by Joyce in the novel. Her revolution started with Prelude, and it never ceased developing. Her work is characterized by a unity of interior and exterior, a fusion of emotion and setting, an interdependence of suppression and expression. It succeeds in evoking an imaginary, poetic realm uniquely her own. In this realm she affects her readers with atmosphere and mood… Speaking of Katherine Mansfield, Middleton Murry claimed rightly that 'her affinities are rather with the English poets than with the English prose-writers. She was specially gifted at depicting a scene. It was more than a mere technique to her. She saw and felt in a scene what was not seen or felt by others… The blending of scenic description and expression of emotion gives Mansfield's work a special mood, and the reader derives from it the same pleasure as that obtained from reading poetry… There are two devices which reinforce the background in her writing. One is symbolism, an art of indicating something more than narration. The other is an art of exclusion and suggestion, a way of concealing meaning and leaving it to the reader to discover. The former is expression and the latter suppression… The exquisiteness of Mansfield's art of implication lies in withholding her artistic effect until the last moment. With the story unfolding gradually she would bring a sudden stop to her delineation of external events and turn inward… Although her heart responded turbulently to what she observed in her environment, Mansfield always managed to control herself, betraying few inner thoughts or emotions of her own in her work… Mansfield's suggestive style creates a spiritual ambience very similar to that of Chinese painting, where the croakings of frogs in a ten-acre field can be imagined from the simple drawing of a few tadpoles, or where a departing sail against the horizon, depicted on mere paper, can trigger off boundless wistfulness. It is a subtle aesthetic effect, and the key to Mansfield's 'secret' as well… Most of Mansfield's stories are events happening on a single day, such as a dinner party, a reunion, relating the events of a journey, or a visit to a doll's house…Her language is as purified and concise as the structure of her fiction, making her work crystal clear. Because she was ill, and because she lived in the shadow of death, the tragic events in some of her stories tended to be tinged with fatalism. In her eyes the tragedy of life was unavoidable."

Wen, Jieruo. Chun jing shang xi [ID D30058].
"… Katherine Mansfield's work does not win readers with its plot, but with an intention to catch the fleeting changes in her characters' feelings and moods. Good at grasping the characteristics of human psychology, she depicted the inner world of her characters by showing the different layers of their consciousness. Her language is implicit, refined and elegant, charged with poetic emotions ; and her writing echoes the melody of lyric prose, leaving boundless room for one to think and rethink after reading. She broke from the tradition of simple narrative fiction, opening up a new way of writing short stories…"

Wen, Jieruo. Tan tan Mansifei'erde "Yi bei cha" [ID D30059].
"…Mansfield devoted all her life to discovering how to move her readers with a language of feelings and emotions. Her last and best few stories were written in her heart's blood. She shortened her life for the sake of hear art, and like a silkworm spinning its last thread, she left behind a treasure to touch the hearts of coming generations."

Xiao, Qian. Mansifei'erde de san ge duan pian [ID D30060].
"…Most of Mansfield's works are limited in subject-matter to the family life of the middle class, which she knew very well. She spared no effort all her life experimenting with how to present the minute details of the inner world of her characters using the language of a poet… Mansfield can be regarded as the master of the short story in modern English literature. She has been dead for more than sixty years, and yet with the passing of time, her work is gaining more and more attention, having been translated into Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Russian, and many other languages, and generating a steady output of treatises and theses."

Chen, Jianing. Mansifei'er de san wen shi xiao shuo yi er tan [ID D30061].
"At the turn of the century quite a few masters of fiction in Western literature happened to turn away at the same time from the elaborately-plotted story in the writing of fiction. They were Chekhov, James Joyce, Sherwood Anderson, and Katherine Mansfield, who stood out most prominently as an exponent of plotless fiction. Although she [Mansfield] did not entirely exclude plots in her own writing, she succeeded in creating the genre of the plotless story. What she exposed was the darkness of society and the inequalities in human life ; and she satirized stupid men of letters and good-for-nothing artists. She praised the sincerity of young hearts and the purity of real love."
"… Reading Katherine Mansfield's poetic style of fiction, I have exclaimed on more than one occasion that hers are artistic works of photography. She could skillfully snatch from life pictures imbued with essential meaning and rich in artistic colours and then harmonize them into a soft limpid glow… She simply captured in actual life those illuminative moments, feelings, emotions, and impressions and presented them with her excellent writing techniques. Her work were pictures taken immediately from life, with a lustre of original light and beauty of life… She often employed various techniques of writing, and sometimes more than ten different means of artistic expression could be discerned in a very short work. In terms of the content of her work, there are exposure and satire as well as praise. What she exposed was the darkness of society and the inequalities in human life ; and she satirized stupid men of letters and good-for-nothing artists. She praised the sincerity of young hearts and the purity of real love… Mansfield manifested her talent wholly in her depiction of the internal world of her characters. She had an unerring grasp of the idiosyncrasy and psychology of her characters, making analyses using the details of life. She was good at describing human feeling, emotions, impressions and thoughts, which is demonstrated to the fullest extent in those of her stories with little or even no plot."

Xiao, Qian. Mansifei'erde he ta de "Yi ge yi hun nan zi de zi shu" [ID D30063]
"…The extraordinary from out of the irdinary is one of the most important features of Mansfield's work. With a highly artistic summarization and detailed, true to life descriptions, she has created a gallery of unforgettable portraits, and by delineating different layers of human psychology, she has revealed the inner world of her characters. Mansfield lived only until the age of thirty-four, her career spanning just over ten years. A married man's story was one of her masterpieces produced in the mid-years of her career, when her early years' humour and irony gradually gave way to a mood of sentiment and depression. This must have been related to the unfortunate episodes that she had undergone in her love and marriage. As her life experience grew, so the theme of her work deepened, and her artistic summary of the evils and injustice of bourgeois society, powerfully appealing, has left much food for thought."

[Mansfield, Katherine]. Mi yue. Wen Jieruo, Li Zi yi. [ID D30032].
Wen Jieruo : "My response to Mansfield in the past is likely to have been influenced by Xu Zimo's article, with its emphasis on her physical beauty and early death. Kirkpatrick gave me a copy of Katherine Mansfield : short stories selected and introduced by Claire Tomalin, and I have read it. Tomalin selected twenty-one stories. I also selected twenty-one stories, of which ten were the same as hers. It doesn't mean that I disliked her selection of the other eleven. I didn't choose them because they had already been translated. She detested wars, and resolutely opposed letting her work be used to stir up nationalistic hatreds. Although she was weriously ill and needed royalties to pay the large medical fees for the treatment she was receiving at that time, she never allowed this book (In a German pension) to be republished in her lifetime."
Wen Jieruo praised The baron and The sister of the baroness for their ruthlessly ironic exposure of the 'snobbishness of the Bavarians at the beginning of this century', as well as the 'romantic ending' of A suburban fairy tale, for its emphasis on 'the young son's sympathy for hungry children outside their house'.

Xu, Zhimo. Manshufei'er. In : Xiao shuo yue bao ; vol. 14, no 5 (1923).
蔓殊菲儿
[Enthält] :
Xu, Zhimo. Ai Manshufei'er = Elegy for Mansfield. In : Anthology of Modern Chinese Poetry. Ed. and trans. by Michelle Yeh. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). In : Gong, Shifen. A fine pen [ID D29989]. In : Turnbull Library record ; no 2 (1989).
Mansfield, Katherine. Yi ge li xiang de jia ting. Übersetzung von Mansfield, Katherine. An ideal family. In : Sphere ; vol. 86, no 1126 (20 Aug. 1921).

[Mansfield, Katherine]. Jin si que. Xu Zhimo yi. In : Chen bao fu kan ; 21 June (1923). Übersetzung von Mansfield, Katherine. The canary. In : The Nation and the Atheneum ; vol. 33, no 3 (21 April 1923).
金絲雀

[Mansfield, Katherine]. Tai yang yu yue liang. Xi Ying [Chen Xiying] yi. In : Xiao shuo yue bao; vol. 14, no 10 (1923). Übersetzung von Mansfield, Katherine. Sun and moon. In : Athenaeum ; no 4718 (1 Oct. 1920).
太陽與月亮

[Mansfield, Katherine]. Yuan hui. Xu Zhimo. In : Chen bao wu zhou nian ji nian zeng kan ; Dec. 1 (1923). Übersetzung von Mansfield, Katherine. The garden party. Pt. 1-3. In : Saturday Westminster gazette ; vol. 59, nos 8917, 8923 (4, 11 Febr. 1922) ; Weekly Westminster gazette ; vol.1, no 1 (18 Febr. 1922).
园会

Xiao shuo yue bao cong kan di san zhong : Manshufei'er. [Repr.] (Shanghai : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1924). (Xiao shuo yue bao cong kan). [Sondernummer über Katherine Mansfield].
曼殊斐兒
[Enthält] : Xu, Zhimo. Manshufei'er.
Yi ge li xian de jia ting = An ideal family. Xu Zhimo yi.
Tai yang yu yue liang = Sun and moon. Xi Ying [Chen Xiying] yi.
Shen, Yanbing [Mao, Dun]. Manshufei'er lüe zhuang. [A brief bibliography of Katherine Mansfield].

[Mansfield, Katherine]. Pake da niang de yi sheng. Zhang Yan yi. In : Xin yuan ; vol. 3, no 72 (1926). Übersetzung von Mansfield, Katherine. Life of Ma Parker. In : Nation and the Athenaeum ; vol. 28, no 22 (26 Febr. 1921).

[Mansfield, Katherine]. Manshufei'er xiao shuo ji. Xu Zhimo yi. (Shanghai : Bei xin shu ju, 1927). (Ou Mei ming jia xiao shuo cong kan ; 1). [Übersetzung ausgewählter Novellen von Mansfield].
曼殊斐爾小說集
[Enthält] :
Yuan hui = The garden party. Pt. 1-3. In : Saturday Westminster gazette ; vol. 59, nos 8917, 8923 (4, 11 Febr. 1922) ; Weekly Westminster gazette ; vol.1, no 1 (18 Febr. 1922).
Du yao = Poison. In : Collier's ; vol. 72, no 21 (24 Nov. 1923).
Bake ma ma de xing zhuang = Life of Ma Perker. In : The Nation and the Athenaeum ; vol. 28, no 22 (26 Febr. 1921).
Yi bei cha = A cup of tea. In : Story-teller ; May (1922). 杯茶
Ye shen shi = Late at night. In : New age ; vol. 21, no 1 (10 May 1917). 夜深时
Xing fu = Bliss. In : English review ; Aug. (1918).
Yi ge li xiang de jia ting = An ideal family. Sphere ; vol. 86, no 1126 (20 Aug. 1921).
Gua feng = The wind blows. In : Signature ; no 1 (4 Oct. 1915).

[Mansfield, Katherine]. Manshufei'er xiao shuo ji. Xu Zhimo yi. (Shanghai : Bei xin shu ju, 1927). (Ou Mei ming jia xiao shuo cong kan ; 1). [Übersetzung von Novellen von Mansfield].
曼殊斐爾小說集
[Enthält] :
The garden party. In : Mansfield, Katherine. The garden party, and other stories. (New York, N.Y. : A.A. Knopf, 1922).
Poison. In : Mansfield, Katherine. Something childish and other stories. (London : Constable, 1924).
Life of Ma Perker. In : The Nation and Athenaeum ; 25 Febr. (1921).
Yi bei cha = A cup of tea. In : Story-teller ; May (1922). 杯茶
Ye shen shi = Late at night. In : Something childish and other stories. (London : Constable, 1924). [Geschrieben 1917]. 夜深时
Bliss. In : English review ; Aug. (1918).
An ideal family. In : Mansfield, Katherine. The garden party, and other stories. (New York, N.Y. : A.A. Knopf, 1922).
The wind blows. In : Athenaeum ; 27 Aug. (1920).