The Citizen of the World, Vol. 2: Or Letters From a Chinese Philosopher, Residing in London, to His Friends in the East (Classic Reprint), by Oliver Goldsmith
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The Citizen of the World, Vol. 2: Or Letters From a Chinese Philosopher, Residing in London, to His Friends in the East (Classic Reprint), by Oliver Goldsmith
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Excerpt from The Citizen of the World, Vol. 2: Or Letters From a Chinese Philosopher, Residing in London, to His Friends in the EastIn every letter I expect accounts of some new revolutions in China, seme strange occurrence in state, or disaster among my private acquaintance. I open every pacquet with tremulous expectations, and am agreeably disappointed, when I find my friends and my country continuing in felicity. I wander, but they are at rest; they surfer few changes but what pass in my own restless imagination; it is only the rapidity of my own motion gives an imaginary swiftness to objects which are in some measure immovable.Yet, believe me, my friend, that even China itself is imperceptibly degenerating from her ancient greatness; her laws are now more venal, and her merchants are more deceitful than formerly; the very arts and sciences have run to decay.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
The Citizen of the World, Vol. 2: Or Letters From a Chinese Philosopher, Residing in London, to His Friends in the East (Classic Reprint), by Oliver Goldsmith- Published on: 2015-09-27
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.02" h x .46" w x 5.98" l, .65 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 216 pages
About the Author 1730?-1774
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Biting Satire Under the Guise of Rationality By Martin Asiner Lien Chi Altangi is a Chinese visitor to England who tours the country and passes witty judgments on Englishmen and their mores which he sends back to Peking in the form of letters. Tonight, he and a companion, identified only as the Man in Black, attend a live theater performance. Letter XXI contains his impressions of that performance. He begins by noting that though both the English and Chinese dearly love their theater, their respective cultural attitudes toward dramaturgy point out some vast ideological differences. English theater is performed indoors, at night, and is of short duration. Chinese theater is acted outdoors, in the daylight, and is of very long duration. The Man in Black is a regular in several of Altangi's letters, and he is often used as a mouthpiece to counterbalance what Altangi sees as invariable laws of nature in China, but elsewhere as in England these laws are quite variable. What catches Altangi's eye is the seating of the spectators. The cheapest seats occupy the highest level, a fact that astonishes him in that the reverse is true in China. Those who sit in such seats act loudly, often speaking both to one another and to the performers. The middle seats, more expensive than the former but cheaper than the highest price lodgings, hold those who seem to enjoy eating oranges as least as much as watching the show. Then there are the most expensive seats, filled by the affluent who sit in the lowest rows. Such wealthy theater-goers act more nobly if not haughtily: "They seemed to consider themselves as judges of the merit of the poet and the performers." Their collective attitudes reveal their inherent belief that the clods who sit above them are cretins, and that only true patrons of the arts, like themselves, may harbor elevated theatrical discernment. Altangi's exalted opinion of the affluent's grasp of histrionics is tempered by the Man in Black's snide comment that "not one in an hundred of them knew even the first principles of criticism" Such self-appointed critics of the arts hold that position only by default since "there was none to contradict their pretensions." Altangi's view of everyone in the audience ranged from incredulity to disgust. Those misguided souls who wished to interact with the performers were in his opinion "acting parts in dumb show, not a curtsey, or nod, that was not the result of art; not a look nor a smile that was not designed for murder." He is clearly upset with their amatory habits of public displays of affection: "Gentlemen and ladies ogled each other through spectacles." When the play begins (possibly a reference to John Home's Douglas (1757)), the actors enter, and Altangi shows surprise at the applause shown, a custom which seems absurd to him. The first actor on the stage is the queen who receives much loud applause. It seems incongruous to Altangi that the queen is receiving what he deems undeserved plaudits from the audience. She weeps and laments over issues that he considers trifles. The king enters and shows physical affection, which she quickly rejects. Altangi wonders why the king lacks a certain amatory discretion. For no reason at all, a third actor enters the stage, balancing a straw upon his nose. Altangi hears the crowd applaud noisily and cannot comprehend the logic behind this. The Man in Black unhelpfully replies: "This is one of the most important characters of the whole play." Altangi still sees no reason for the straw on the nose. At the beginning of the third act, a self-professed villain struts on stage, loudly proclaiming his villainy. Altangi notes that in Chinese drama, all villains are far more circumspect about their evil intentions. Following the entrance and exit of the villain, a child of six years strolled on stage and inexplicably began to dance, an act "which gave the ladies and mandarins infinite satisfaction." Puzzled yet once again, Altangi can conclude only that "Dancing being, I presume, as contemptible here as it is in China." The Man in Black counters that "Dancing is a very reputable and genteel employment." The higher that a dancer can kick, the greater will be his salary, he sagely advises. In the fourth act, the queen produces her son and promptly tells the audience that her son would be a better king than her husband. When her husband learns her intentions, he orders the immediate execution of the son. The queen faints as the curtain drops. In the concluding fifth act, there is no further mention made of any of these plot complications, so Altangi has no knowledge of their collective lamentable fates. As Altangi walks out of the theater, he tries to make some sense of the performance. The entire cast seemed afflicted with an endless series of ill-conceived woes. He asserts that English tragedies are overly focused on divergent passions. Chinese dramatists more properly assign subordinate and logical passions at precisely the right moment. After reaching this conclusion, Altangi bids his companion good night and heads home. In the many letters that comprise The Citizen of the World, Oliver Goldsmith, using the persona of a Chinese traveler to England, examines English society and customs in a way that permits him to stick satirical barbs into a myriad of inviting targets. Goldsmith was well aware of the reputation for logic and reason that the Chinese were reputed to possess. Thus, however outrageous were the comments of Altangi, Goldsmith assumed that his readers would not be so quick to dismiss their veracity and applicability. In Letter XXI, Goldsmith examines what he saw as some eccentricities of the English stage. In Altangi's view, Goldsmith forces his readers to examine their beloved stage productions as they might have appeared to those thoroughly disposed to reason and logic. Goldsmith spares no aspect of the English stage. From the length of the typical English tragedy to the structure of the theater and finally to the spectators observing a weird blend of drama and melodramatic nonsense, Goldsmith exposes the unbalanced underside of a theater of which even cultured Englishmen may have been blissfully unaware. Many of Altangi's comments smack of biting satire, especially since these comments seem so naturally articulated that they are voiced in the persona of one who is in logical command of his thoughts. The Man in Black is the counterweight to Altangi, with the former representing the attitudes of orthodox English society. Goldsmith limits the comments of the Man in Black to unsuccessful retorts to the infinitely more reasonable views of Altangi. Goldsmith also cannot resist taking several cheap shots at his most reviled of targets--literary critics. As he comments on the loud diatribes of the supposedly educated elite who hurl unwanted and unintelligible vitriol from their expensive seats at the stage actors, Goldsmith clearly has in mind those critics who do likewise from the comparable safety of their assorted theater reviews. In this letter, as in nearly any of his other writings, Goldsmith shows a shocking lack of self-awareness in that he was the identical sort of critic that he savaged routinely in those same writings. What readers take away from the totality of letters from his The Citizen of the World is the view of a man who wished to reveal the illogical and often disagreeable underside of a society that he saw as his own but needed to be frequently exposed to the cleansing light of the sun, a process that could be achieved only through his pen.
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