Xu, Zhimo

Xu Zhimo übersetzt die Balkonszene aus Romeo and Juliet von William Shakespeare in freie Verse.
"Ah soft ! what light shines bright from yonder windows ?
That is the east, Julieh is the eastern sun.
Arise, beautiful sun, and outshine quickly
That envious moon. Since you, being her maid,
Are far more beautiful than she, she is already completely pale with grief."
Shakespeare :
"But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief
That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she."

Letter from Xu Zhimo to Bertrand Russell. 18.10.1921.
Xu Zhimo obtained the London address of Russell from his Cambridge friend C[harles] K[ay] Ogden. He wrote : "Indeed I have been longing for an occasion to be with you since I came to England." Through this self-introduction, Xu became a friend of the Russells and commuted frequently between Cambridge and London in order to attend the lecture meetings given by Russell.

Letter from Xu Zhimo to Bertrand Russell. 7.11.1921.
C[harles] K[ay] Ogden planed to publish a World philosophy series, in which Hu Shi's Zhongguo zhe xue shi da gang 中國哲學史大綱 [Outlines of the history of Chinese philosophy] was to be included upon Russell's proposal. The project of Ogden did not materialize.
Xu did not agree with Russell :
"The author [Hu Shi] is too much concerned with combatting his predecessors on points which are not likely to interest the Western readers not well-informed in this field ; in the second place, it is too bulky, the first volume alone amounting to four hundred pages.
It occurs to me [that] the best man for our purpose is Mr. Liang Qichao (the man who gave you that piece of painting) who, as you probably know, is one of the very most learned scholars and probably the most powerful and lucid writer China has ever produced. His continual effort of emancipating Chinese thought and introducing and popularizing Western ideas is worthy of our great admiration. His power of assimilating and discriminating learning has never been equaled. So it would be simply ideal if we could get him to do the job, and that I think more than possible. If you would just kindly write to him, urging him to produce a standard book on Chinese thought and indicating the general character of the Series, it would be, I have no doubt, a tremendous spur to his amazing creative energy and he would be more than pleased to comply with the request. There could be no better arrangement than this."

Xu Zhimo kehrt nach China zurück. Er unterrichtet an der Beijing-Universität, der Qinghua-Universität und der Pingmin-Universität.
Er hält eine Vorlesung über Percy Bysshe Shelley an der Beijing-Universität : "[Upon reading his poetry] I came to feel the ordinary people's clumsiness and the poet's superiority. With him, each word seems to have a soul dancing therein ; when many words are combined, we get a big concertin which music is played in great harmony. Such an aesthetic feeling and a musical sense can only be experienced by oneself in an instant and can never be imparted to any other people".

Letter from Xu Zhimo to Bertrand Russell. 2.3.1922.
Xu Zhimo decided to divorce his first wife and to marry Lin Huiyin. He must have been desirous of seeking advice from the Russells before he contacted his wife in Berlin.
"I wonder if I may have the happiness and privilege to book you to lunch or tea with mea t the above address [55 Victoria Road, Cambridge] when you come to town this weedend [sic]. I do hope it will not be inconvenient for you to arrange. I can hardly express the anxiety with which I have been looking forward to meeting you again : I do miss you heartily.
I think I can get Mr. [G. Lowes] Dickinson to be with us if you like. But I must confess my desire to monopolize your attention even for a rare short occasion and on that account should not regret omitting Mr. Dickinson's company, charming as it is. Selfishness, perhaps. But you will smile and forgive. I am confident."
Xu did not manage to see Russell again before 1925.

Xu, Zhimo. Luosu yü Zhongguo [ID D28381]. [Bertrand Russell and China].
Gaylord Kai Loh Leung : Referring to Russell's book The problem of China Xu Zhimo declared in his essay that 'Russell had sincere feelings for, deep understanding of and absolute sympathy for us', and 'This book by Russell marks a milestone in the course of cultural exchange between East and West. Russell is a man who truly understands and values Chinese culture ; what he says are correct views originating from sympathy '. Xu admired Russell's condemnation of Japan and other western powers whose encroachment on China, driven by rapacity and stupidity, might have disastrous effects on one of the world's best cultures. But Xu had some mild criticism of Russell but he was generous in his praise of Russell. It is just natural that Xu Zhimo, a starry-eyed idealist, should feel inspired when reveling in the realm of Bertrand Russell's social and political ideals. The English philosopher's attack on hypocricy ; on capitalism and commercialism ; his promotion of an international government for the maintenance of world peace ; his defence of creative impulse ; his love for mankind and for civilization ; and his integrity, bravery and candour, would have appealed powerfully to Xu who was by nature inclined to emotionalism, freedom and justice. The imprisonment [1918] of Russell by the British government would only have excited his admiration for the dauntless fighter of independent thought.
Bertrand Russell sent Xu Zhimo his publication The problem of China and asked him to propagate in China the ideas expounded in the book.
Xu Zhimo :
"Russell, however, does not fully understand the evolution of the Chinese culture and life to its present form. In the first place, he fails to gauge the influence of Confucius. He frankly admits in his book that he is not well-disposed towards Confucius who insisted on excessive formalities. In the second place, he presumes that the strength of China has much to do with Lao Tzu and Chuang tzu.
Russell is the highest crystallization of reason in modern age. His logic and mathematics apart, there is a burning passion in him. Coupled with his bravery in his fearless fight against convention, he is truly a great personality to be emulated, a unique figure of all times."

Xu, Zhimo. [Review of Bertrand Russell's "The problem of China"]. [ID D28402].
This book by Russell has really established a milestone in the course of Chinese-Western cultural exchange and convergence. He is a man who truly understands and loves Chinese culture… Some people here may say that [Russell] is reacting to European civilization and his admiration of China is emotional, exaggerating everything beyond facts ; that he cannot understand China since he stayed here for such a short period of time. Yes, he is reacting ; but what he is disgusted with is not all things European, which would be captious, but the evils produced by industrial civilization and the capitalist system. His admiration of China is not due to China's being the opposite of Europe, but is a real faith resulting from a combination of penetrating reason, sincere feelings, and awareness and recognition of the life itself behind all civilizations and cultures. I dare to say this because I myself have been there. I too used to wonder whether he was reacting emotionally, using the East to let out his own frustration [with the West]. But in contrast to the life of the Indians and the Chinese that I have seen during and after my return journey this time, I see the hypocrisy, the indecency, and the precariousness of life in Europe and America, and I cannot but believe the sincerity of Russell's feelings. We must never think we naturally have the correct view of China simply because we were born and are living in China.
Xu Zhimo remarked that Russell's concern about China's possible tendency towards militarism was unfounded and that Russell did not fully grasp Chinese culture and Chinese life, for he mistakenly attributed China's virtues to Daoism, while the peaceful, easy-going temperament of the Chinese actually came from Confucianism. In spite of himself, therefor, Xu was showing that after all he knew China better than Russell did.

Xu, Zhimo. [Prose foreword to poem "Dusk in the West Suburb of Cambridge"]. In : Shi shi xin bao, Shanghai, July 6 (1923). [Geschrieben 1922].
"And there is an Irishman called James Joyce. His name in international literary circles is probably similar to Lenin's in international politics, because he is both worshipped and attracked like him. Five or six years ago he published a book entitled The portrait of an artist as [a] young man, which has a unique style, starting a new epoch in prose – probably an immortal contribution already. Now he has written another book called Ulysses. Nobody in Britain or America was willing or daring enough to publish it, and finally he published it himself in Paris. Now I believe this book is not only a unique work for this year, but will be so for a whole historical period. The last 100 pages of his book (which has more than 700 pages in all) are written in a prose which is absolutely pure – smooth as cream, and clear as the stone front in a church. It is not only free from capital letters, but is totally unburdened with all those tiresome marks like, … ? : - ; - ! ( ) " ". There is neither the division of paragraphs, sentences, chapters or sections. Just a flow of limpid, beautiful, torrential text pouring forward, like a huge bundle of white poplin let loose, a large waterfall coming down without any break. What great masterly art !"

Gründung der Xin yue she (Crescent Moon Society) durch Xu Zhimo. Mitglieder sind Liang Shiqiu, Wen Yiduo, Shen Congwen, Hu Shi, Xu Zhimo u.a. Die Mitglieder, die Aufenthalte im Ausland, vor allem in England und Amerika machten, sind Gegner der revolutionären Literatur.

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. Luosu you lai shuo hua le [Artikel über Leisure and mechanism von Bertrand Russell]. [ID D28403].
Bertrand Russell himself also said that his ideas were not novelties. But however commonplace a principle may be, if the society as a whole could recognize its importance and seriously put it into practice, then astonishing effect could be achieved.
In the final analysis, the current industrialism, mechanism, system of competition and the mentality associated with superstition engendered by those phenomena are enemy of our ideal society and obstacles to a national life. Now as far as China is concerned, the only hope is an early awakening by her leaders who could, by virtue of their positions, set example to resist the temptations from without and reverse the suicidal trend. Otherwise, the future will be bleak and full of traps.
Every time I read Russell's writings or recollect his voice and facial expressions, I think of New York City, especially the fifty-eight-storied Woolworth Building. Russell's thought and views resemble the summer evening on the sea – there are flashes of lightning like golden snakes, sharply and coldly streaking amidst the dark purple clouds. They appear and disappear before your eyes and above your head.
Isn't a skyscraper dangerous ? Just half a thunderbolt is enough to pulverize the entire building ; it could shake and terrify the woods and lawns along the Hudson river ! But no ! Despite the flash of lightning, the thunderbolt never comes. The building still towers high in the clouds. The golden lightning only illuminates its loftiness and adds to its lustre.

Xu, Zhimo [Bailun]. [ID D26491].
The first essay is by Xu Zhimo. It is a poet's personal admiration for and appreciation of the English hero expressed in lyrical prose, an eulogy of Byron's physical beauty and romantic sentiments with passages from Byron's poetry incorporated into it with or without the author's translations.
Xu Zhimo schreibt : "Byron stands on the beach of Missolonghi. The sea undulates in the setting sun. Before him is a bleak evening scene : no human traces, only a stretch of sand, several shabby huts, ruins of ancient temples, two or three grey pillars, a few broad-winged sea-gulls hovering in the sky. He stands on the beach, recalling the glories of ancient Greece : literature of Athens, valour of the Spartans ; the colour of the evening hue has not faded over the past two thousand years, but the souls of freedom have not left a trace. He stands there alone, thinking of his own life."

Manshufei'er. Xiao shuo yue bao she bian ji [ID D30058]
Xu Zhimo : "I had the honor 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… My good friend Chen Tongbo [Xiying], 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."

Xu, Zhimo. Xin yue de tai du. In : Xin yue ; vol. 1, no 1 (1928). [The attitude of the Crescent Moon].
新月的態度
It lamented the anarchic state of thought then obtaining as exhibited in the current crop of 1. Sentimentalists, 2. Decadents, 3. Esthetes, 4. Utilitarians, 5. Didacticists, 6. Polemicists, 7. Radicals, 8. Preciocists, 9. Pornographers, 10. Enthusiasts, 11. Peddlers, 12. Sloganists, 13. Ismists.
Out of the thirteen, at leas more than half could be identified with the leftists. On the otherhand, it espoused the ideals of 'sanity and dignity' as antidotes to those deleterious trends and advised that 'we must view life as a whole'. The ideals conformed to Irving Babbitt's idea of the function of literature as a formative agent, and the advice smacked of Matthew Arnold.

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."

Xiao Qian mentioned in an interview, that Katherine Mansfield was the first foreign author that he read. Working as an apprentice in a publishing house, he was asked to go to the Beijing University Beijing University library to copy a translation of Mansfield's story The young girl by Xu Zhimo printed in Xiao shuo yue bao. He said in the interview, "I think the story I translated was The little girl and it's about a girl who was maltreated by her own father and she watched the family next door, the father playing joyfully with his children so she fell into tears. And that brought my own lonely and painful childhood. So as I copied I ran tears".

Xu, Zhimo. Wu suo zhi dao de kang qiao. [My impressions of Cambridge]. [ID D28287].
I went to England with a view to studying under Bertrand Russell. I paid my steamer ticket to cross the Atlantic, setting my mind on doing some serious study under 'the Voltaire of the 20th-century'. To my surprise, things had changed upon my arrival : he had been dismissed from Cambridge partly because of his pacifism during the War and partly because of his divorce. He was originally a fellow of Trinity College, but then this fellowship was also stripped. After his return to England from China, he and his wife settled down in London, earning their living by wirting. As a result, my original intention of studying under him fell through.

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]. 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

[La Motte Fouqué, Friedrich. Wo ti hai. Xu Zhimo yi. (Shanghai : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1924). (Wen xue cong shu). Übersetzung von La Motte Fouqué, Friedrich ; Gosse, Edmund. Undine : eine Erzählung. In : Die Jahreszeiten : eine Vierteljahrsschrift für romantische Dichtungen ; Frühlingsheft (Berlin 1811). [Diese Übersetzung soll schon 1913 erschienen sein].
渦堤孩

[Whitman, Walt]. Wo zi ji di ge. Xu Zhimo yi. In : Xiao shuo yue bao ; vol. 15, no 3 (1924). Übersetzung von Whitman, Walt. Song of myself. In : Whitman, Walt. Leaves of grass. (Brooklyn, New York : Walt Whitman, Printed by Andrew and James Rome, 1855).

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].

[Stephens, James]. Mali Mali. Zhanmushi Sidifenshi zhu ; Xu Zhimo, Shen Xingren fan yi. (Shanghai : Xin yue shu dian, 1927). Übersetzung von Stephens, James. A charwoman's daughter. (London : Macmillan, 1912).
瑪麗瑪麗