In 1814, the Collège de France established a new "Lecture on Chinese Language and Tatar-Manchurian Language and Literature", marking the farewell of Western Sinology to the stage of missionary sinology and the official entry into the era of professional Sinology. As the first professor of the lecture, the French sinologist Jean Pierre Abel Rémusat (1788-1832) was a key figure in promoting the professionalization of French Sinology. During his time at the Institut de France, Remusa insisted on teaching and educating people and wrote many works on Sinology, including "Chinese Enlightenment", French translation "Zhenla Fengtu Ji", "Yujiao Pear", etc., which jointly opened up new fields of sinology research such as Chinese Chinese language, Sino-Western transportation history, and Chinese ** studies, and laid a solid foundation for the future development of Western professional Sinology. In addition, Remusa clearly opposes Western-centrism, looks at Chinese culture with appreciation and love, actively promotes academic and cultural exchanges between China and the West, and makes important contributions to the spread of Chinese culture to the West.
Remusa is commendable not only for his academic research, but also for his admiration and love for Chinese culture. The data map is the Chinese Culture Exhibition. Figure China News Service.
I learned Chinese and became acquainted with sinology research.
Born in 1788, Remusa had a troubled young age. His father died young, and Remusa himself lost sight in his left eye as a result of an accident. Hardships did not intimidate Remusa, but instead shaped his tenacious character. In order to shoulder the financial responsibility of the family, Remusa studied medicine hard, hoping to become a doctor who can help the world. In 1806, by chance, Remusa became acquainted with the French orientalist of the time, Dou de Sasi, who recommended him to visit the Oriental relics in the forest abbey. It was at the Forest Monastery that Remusa was fascinated by a Chinese book and longed to decode the beautiful and mysterious words on it, so he embarked on the road of learning Chinese.
In the turbulent France at that time, the conditions for learning Chinese were very poor, and there were no Chinese teachers or any reference books, so Remusa only relied on a few Chinese books such as "Orthography" and "Sancai Tuhui" at hand, and taught Chinese on his own with strong interest and perseverance. In 1811, he published his first work on the Chinese language, A Brief Brief Study of the Chinese Language, which was immediately acclaimed by the academic community, and soon Remusa became a rising star of Sinology as a professor of Chinese and Tatar-Manchurian language and literature at the Collège de France.
Since then, Remusa has been active in the field of Sinology and Oriental Studies in France, having founded the Asia Society in Paris, worked in the Oriental Manuscripts Department of the Royal Library of France, and served as a Fellow of the Académie des Les Arts and Letters, and a Corresponding Fellow of the Asia Society of London and the Asian Society of Calcutta. Remusa, who was active in Oriental studies, became an important leader in the study of sinology in Europe at that time with his profound knowledge and fruitful achievements, and his disciples gathered a number of well-known sinology scholars such as Julian and Bautier. However, just as Remusa was embarking on a grand plan to compile a dictionary of the Chinese language, misfortune struck. In 1832, Remusa, who was in the prime of life, was killed by cholera.
The translation and annotation of classics is the basic path of Sinology research.
Remusa has made fruitful academic achievements in his life, and has a total of 240 kinds of monographs, translations, and book reviews, covering a wide range of topics, including Chinese and Chinese languages, history, literature, geography, philosophy and other fields. So, in the face of the vast number of Chinese classics and the profound and extensive traditional culture, what method does Remusa like to use to carry out research? The answer is classic translation.
Remusa left a number of translations of classics for later generations, including the French translation of "The Mean", "The Legend of Zhenla Fengtu", "Jade Jiaoli", etc., which have had a great influence on the European academic and cultural circles. In Remusa's time, Europeans mainly adopted a philological approach to the study of Oriental civilization, that is, the study of Oriental languages and documents was the center, and the interpretation of ancient books was the key to unlocking the secrets of Oriental culture and civilization. Influenced by this, Remusa's research on China is also based on the translation and annotation of classics. In the specific translation, Remusa adheres to the literal translation strategy of being faithful to the original text, and adopts the word-for-word translation of the original text of the ancient book as much as possible, so that Western readers can take the initiative to get closer to Chinese text and culture, and enlighten readers to understand the spirit of Chinese culture through the original translation.
In addition, Remusa attaches great importance to the role of annotations, and when there are difficult words and allusions to famous objects in the original text, more annotations are added. Such annotations are often detailed and well-cited, and even surpass the translation itself in terms of the volume of the text. In order to introduce the original Chinese culture to Europeans, Remusa has developed a translation and annotation method for Chinese classics, which preserves the charm of Chinese culture with a literal translation close to the original text, and helps ordinary European readers understand the original text with detailed annotations, providing guidance for further research for professional readers. To a large extent, this method of translation has been inherited by Remusa** and the second transmission**, such as Rulian, Sha Wan and others, whose research paths and translation modes are all taken from Farremusa. In this sense, Remusa's translation of Chinese classics has created a tradition of French professional sinology attaching importance to the study of the translation of classics.
When it comes to Remusa's achievements in sinology, we have to mention two of his research priorities. The first is Chinese language studies. At the beginning of the 19th century, the vast majority of Westerners were quite unfamiliar with the Chinese language, and there was a lack of reliable Chinese grammar books. Remusa played a pioneering role in the study of the Chinese language. From the perspective of Remusa's research on Chinese grammar, he combined the grammatical analysis methods of Western science with the reality of Chinese, thus greatly promoting the progress of Chinese language research and promoting the scientific study of Chinese. His first work, A Brief Introduction to Chinese Characters, introduced Europeans to the construction of Chinese characters, the "Six Books", and the reverse cut in concise language. "On the Monosyllabic Language Characteristics of Chinese" points out that there are grammatical forms in Chinese that are equivalent to those commonly found in Western languages, such as articles, pronouns, and cases, and refutes the prejudices that "Chinese is a monosyllabic language" and "Chinese has no precise grammatical rules". The subsequent publication of "Chinese Enlightenment" summarized Chinese grammar from the perspectives of characters, sounds, words and sentences, and constituted a systematic Chinese grammar teaching system.
The second is the study of the history of transportation in China and abroad. An important tendency of Remusa's sinology is to look at China through its communication with frontier peoples and foreign countries, to understand Chinese history and culture from an Asian perspective, and to see the study of traditional China as part of the study of "world history". Such research representatives include the monograph "History of Khotan". Most of these articles are based on the translation and annotation of Chinese historical texts such as "Historical Records" and "Hanshu", combined with multilingual historical materials, to carry out research on relevant historical facts and famous objects.
Committed to Europe's in-depth understanding of China.
Remusa is commendable not only for his academic research, but also for his admiration and love for Chinese culture, and for his role in spreading pure Chinese culture and dispelling prejudice against China in the Western world.
When it comes to Chinese culture, Remusa has a pure attitude of appreciation and respect. For example, in a letter to his cousin Jean Daye, Remusa praised the beauty of Chinese characters, saying that he "doubted that he had ever seen such beautiful writing." In his inaugural speech at the Institut Française's lecture on Sinology, Remusa praised the classics of Chinese literature and history. On the one hand, he believes that Chinese literary works are rich in imagination and exquisite in language; On the other hand, he believes that Chinese history books are the richest and most credible, and they are a rich mine that needs to be tapped urgently.
One of the most important tasks of Remusa's life was to remove some Western prejudices against China by studying Sinology and promoting Chinese culture. Many of Remusa's works are clearly aimed at this purpose. For example, the article "Foreign Language Learning for Chinese" pointed out at the beginning that many Europeans think that Chinese are arrogant and therefore despise the study of foreign languages. In Remusa's view, this is clearly a prejudice. Through the research of historical data, Remusa confirmed that Chinese scholars attach great importance to the study of foreign ethnic languages, and have an in-depth grasp of many foreign ethnic languages.
In addition, Remusa also disseminated Chinese knowledge through in-depth participation in the teaching and research activities of the Asian Society in Paris, the Institut de France and other institutions, and cultivated the younger generations of Sinology such as Julian and Bautier through teaching and educating people, laying the foundation for the start and prosperity of professional Sinology research in France and the West, and making important contributions to the spread of Chinese culture and the in-depth understanding of China in Europe. (ENDS).
*: Study Times.