Coda: ‘All Things Fall and Are Built Again’

Yeats’s ‘Lapis Lazuli’ responds to a Chinese stone etched with a poem attributed to the Qianlong Emperor. Yeats describes the stone in Keatsian ekphrasis. He demonstrates the influence of Daoism, particularly Zhuangzi, as he interprets the stone philosophically. To Yeats the lapis offers consolation amidst upheaval. The object appears prophetic of the fall of the Qing Dynasty, and Yeats finds its optimism pertinent as the Second World War approaches. The stone’s portrayal of sages on mountains prompts Yeats to invoke Daoism to correct the pessimism of Matthew Arnold’s Empedocles on Etna. The lapis expresses a universal wisdom that Yeats finds alike in Lucretius and in his Nietzschean reading of tragedy. As in his enthusiasm for ‘half-Asiatic Greece’—exemplified by the sculptor Callimachus—Yeats urges a fusion of classical and Asian values.

Identities and Literary Culture in Qing China: Manchu Emperors as Chinese Poets, Readers, and Publishers

The Qianlong emperor bequeathed the largest number of Chinese poems of any emperor, and perhaps of any poet, in the history of imperial China. But how do we make sense of the fact that Qianlong had been adamant in maintaining and preserving what he considered the essence of Manchu culture: the Manchu language and hunting skills? This articles argues that, despite deliberate staging through various fashions of his image as the ruler of a multiethnic empire, Qianlong failed in sending his message to his diverse subjects because, truly enthralled by Chinese poetry, he could not restrain himself from writing poetry in Chinese. In light of the theory of multiple identities and acculturation of John Berry, it is reasonable to argue that Qianlong, despite his unambiguous identification with the Manchus as the conquering ethnic group, in tortuous ways had come to embrace the identity of a Chinese poet of the host society, in which the technologies of culture to a large degree overdetermine the form of identities and how they can be articulated, internalized, embodied, and staged.

An Art of Transformation

This article examines the phenomenon of yaobian 窯變, or kiln transformations, in late imperial and early modern China as material epistemology and material practice. By providing a genealogical analysis of documentations of yaobian in late imperial texts spanning the twelfth through the nineteenth centuries, the article relates their supernatural connotations to the production of Qing-period Jingdezhen Jun-style wares, variously known as flambé wares or kiln transmutation glazes. The article advances that the significance of such eighteenth-century yaobian porcelain wares lies in their very inexplicability of craftsmanship and ability to index both physical transformation as well as infinite formal transformation for the Qing empire, particularly during the reign of the Qianlong emperor (1736–1795).

The Qianlong Emperor

When the Qianlong emperor came to the throne, he abrogated his father’s compassionate and rational system for eunuch management. Qianlong saw his father’s innovations as a dangerous departure from the gold standard of eunuch management. Qianlong would lower eunuchs’ status, cut their salaries, eviscerate their system of ranks, and reduce their education levels. In so doing, he came to perpetuate a series of myths about his eunuchs meant to perpetuate the notion that he was strict on them. He asserted that they only performed menial tasks, never left the palace, had no wives or children, were few in number in his palaces, and were carefully watched over by him personally. In truth, he was quietly allowing them new opportunities to come and go as they pleased, and to develop business interests on the outside. He did this because he faced a growing shortage of eunuchs to staff his ever-burgeoning number of palaces, including Yuanming Yuan.