Pu Songling

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Pu Songling - Contemporary portrait

Pu Songling ( Chinese  蒲松齡  /  蒲松龄 , Pinyin Pú Sōnglíng , W.-G. P'u Sung-ling ; * June 5, 1640 Zichuan 淄川 , today: Zibo 淄博 , Shandong Province ; † February 25, 1715 ibid) was a Chinese writer.

Life

Pu Songling's ethnic origin has not been conclusively clarified. He may have been a descendant of a Jurchen family who immigrated to Shandong during the Jin Dynasty and assimilated there . Other theories suggest that Pu's ancestors may have been Mongols or Hui Chinese .

After a sickly and dreary childhood, Pú failed several imperial exams . He had to give up his dreams of a civil servant career early and worked as a school teacher. With a meager income and far from social recognition, apart from one further trip, he spent his entire life in his home province of Shandong. According to tradition, he opened a tea house there and invited his guests to tell stories, which he then wrote down and published. Only at the old age of 72, three years before his death, did he receive a small office. In the meantime he mainly worked as a private teacher, but also wrote countless works such as manuals, encyclopedias, poems and essays. In his postponed papers, Pú bears testimony to the loneliness and frustration of his last years: “I am just a bird that dreads the winter frost and finds no refuge in the branches; the autumn cricket that peaks at the moon and hugs the door for a little warmth. Where are those who know me? ”Until his death, he had neither high social status nor a political career; his real fame would only follow him after death, in the form of his life's work, the Liaozhai Zhiyi .

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Pús best-known work is the Liaozhai Zhiyi ( 聊齋誌異  /  聊斋志异  - "Strange stories from a scholar's room ") from 1679. The collection, which was only finally completed in 1707, comprises 431 stories and combines the early medieval ghost and love story with the novella art of the Tang Time.

In many of the stories, which often have supernatural or fantastic traits, the Taoist idea of ​​a "soulful nature" is expressed. The widespread fox spirits , female mythical creatures who plunge unsuspecting youths into perdition, should be mentioned. In The Crows the border between the human and bird world is abolished, changes between the two species are possible at any time. The stories Die Blumenfrauen or Die Chrysanthemengenien tell of peonies or chrysanthemums appearing in human form . But painted scenes can also mix with reality, as in The Mural .

Religious and mythological motifs appear, for example, in Der Richter , where a judge of hell who is invited to a joke to a meal not only installs a new, "smarter" heart for his host, but also puts a prettier head on his wife, or in Der Gott im Exil where he is Assume protagonists Yo the god of thunder and his late friend Xian .

In spite of all its poetic, ephemeral playfulness, Pú also deals with the real living conditions of his time, for example with the corruption of the civil service, the relentlessly strict examination system , the one-sided book scholarship of the academics. The misery of refugees, famines and the bandit mischief of the early Qing period are also discussed.

Impact history

Despite being written in the written language, the work soon became popular. However, it was initially only in circulation in manuscript form, as Pu could not afford to publish it financially. A printed edition did not appear until 1740 (according to another source: 1766) at the instigation of a grandson of the author. Significant partial translations into German come from Martin Buber (1911) and Richard Wilhelm (1914); the only complete translation (in 5 volumes) by Gottfried Rösel (1989–1992) so far . Another great admirer of the Liaozhai zhiyi was Franz Kafka , who expressed his appreciation for Buber's selected translation in a letter to Felice Bauer dated January 16, 1913.

Many of Pu's stories have also been filmed, for example in A Chinese Ghost Story ( 倩女幽魂 ), a work by Hong Kong director Tsui Hark ( 徐克 ), in Painted Skin by King Hu or an adaptation by Taiwanese Li Han-Hsiang .

Works

  • Pu Sung-ling: From the Liao-dschai-dschi-yi collection. German by Gottfried Rösel. Publishing house Die Waage, Zurich;
    • Volume 1: Handling Chrysanthemums. 81 stories from the first 4 books. 1987, ISBN 3-85966-053-5 ;
    • Volume 2: Two lives in a dream. 67 stories from volumes 5 to 8. 1989, ISBN 3-85966-054-3 ;
    • Volume 3: Visiting the Blessed. 86 stories from volumes nine to twelve. Verlag Die Waage, Zurich 1991, ISBN 3-85966-058-6 ;
    • Volume 4: Letting Butterflies Fly 158 stories in volumes thirteen to fifteen. 1992, ISBN 3-85966-059-4 ;
    • Volume 5: Contacts with the living. 109 stories from the last two books sixteen and seventeen. 1992, ISBN 3-85966-060-8 .
  • P'u Sung-ling: Guest Tiger. 14 stories. The Library of Babel , 21st Gutenberg Book Guild , Frankfurt 2007 ISBN 3763258213 . Appendix 2 excerpts from Tsao-Hsueh-Chin , The Dream of the Red Chamber

literature

  • Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer : History of Chinese literature. The 3000 year development of the poetic, narrative and philosophical-religious literature of China from the beginning to the present. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1990, ISBN 3-534-11417-5 (2nd edition. Beck, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-45337-6 ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Zhao Wentan: Guanyu Pu Songling xianshi de zushu wenti (On the question of the ethnicity of Pu Songling's ancestors). Minzu yanjiu 1/2006, March 7, 2016, accessed August 13, 2019 (Chinese).


personal data
SURNAME Pu Songling
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chinese poet
DATE OF BIRTH June 5, 1640
PLACE OF BIRTH Zibo
DATE OF DEATH February 25, 1715
Place of death Zibo