In early 1867, a book of poems stunned the French literary world. Chinese Songs in a French Key is about that remarkable little book, the first literary translation of classical Chinese poetry into a European language. Published in 1867 by a young French woman, The Book of Jade enjoyed a lively reception from the country’s literary establishment, was significantly expanded in 1902, and has been reissued in six subsequent editions, most recently in 2004. With a robust afterlife extended by retranslations into multiple other languages, it exerted an important creative effect on both writers and musicians throughout Europe. In this Q&A Pauline Yu offers an inside look at Judith Gautier’s story and how she became a cultural bridge between France and China.

Q: How did Judith Gautier learn Chinese?

Pauline Yu: As one might expect in the case of a young woman who embarked on this project at the age of eighteen, we must chercher le père. Judith Gautier’s father, Théophile, was a senior statesman of nineteenth-century French letters whose interest in things “oriental” was both well known and influential. In 1863 he enabled her “discovery of China” by offering to take in a Chinese emigré who had found himself in Paris without a means of support. When Gautier asked his daughter if she’d like to learn Chinese, she was so delighted that she turned a series of somersaults in front of her perplexed prospective tutor, with whom she pored over the volumes of Chinese poetry held by the national library for the next three years.

Q: Who was this Chinese “tutor”?

Yu: Ding Dunling, known to the French as Tin-Tun-Ling, had been brought to Paris from Macao in 1861 to work on an edition of a Chinese–French dictionary, but his collaborator died the next year. A chance encounter with a mutual friend led to his introduction to the Gautier household, in which Ding became a fixture. Once on his own, he became known throughout the city as a literary entrepreneur whose performances chanting Chinese poems and other exploits were widely reviewed. Even more newsworthy was his trial for bigamy, when the Frenchwoman who had pursued his hand learned that he had been married in Macao. Judith Gautier was instrumental in crafting arguments based on Chinese law leading to his acquittal. His death and funeral (which she paid for) a decade later made front-page news.

Q: So did Gautier, with Ding’s help, actually produce translations of Chinese poetry?

Yu: Good question. She described her first efforts, published barely six months after meeting Ding, as “variations” that were “based on” poems by different Chinese poets. Attributions and even the names of those poets are often uncertain, making sources difficult to identify. She changed the titles, rarely translated an entire poem, and replaced specific references to person and place with generic terms. We would call most of them adaptations, and some of the best known appear to be sheer inventions. But the closeness of some of her versions to a recognizable original suggests that fidelity may sometimes have been as much a matter of choice as of ability. This is especially true of poems in the 1902 edition, which she claimed to be translations that had been “rigorously corrected.” Even though almost every version from 1867 was carried over unchanged, many of her new additions do not stray far from their sources. 

Q: What made her work so distinctive?

Yu: Gautier’s poems look like neither Chinese nor French verse. They are all unrhymed and, though very short, are all printed to span at least two pages, creating the effect of encountering a brief vignette surrounded by vast white space. But her reliance on imagery and emotional economy reflects her recognition of these important features of Chinese poetry and link her with the innovative prose poem form that became popular at the turn of the century. Gautier conveys the spirit of Chinese poetry even as her literary choices, however “unfaithful,” make it more accessible to the French public. And in her 1902 volume she translates for the first time song lyrics by the most famous Chinese female poet.

Q: What else did she do?

Yu: The Book of Jade was only the first of more than fifty volumes of translations, poetry, fiction, drama, and essays that Gautier published over her lifetime. Her interests and expertise extended over a multitude of arts, and her appreciation for innovation, already evident in her Book of Jade, was especially astute. She was known for her early enthusiasm for Richard Wagner’s “music of the future,” which the French public was slow to embrace, and her reviews of John Singer Sargent’s portraits similarly countered the critical controversy they initially provoked. She hosted a weekly salon and sat at the heart of both fin-de-siècle Parisian culture and the growing population of Chinese and Japanese diplomats and visitors who passed through the city. Gautier was the first woman elected to the prestigious Académie Goncourt and was named a chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Some of the works in The Book of Jade provided texts for Gustav Mahler’s Song of the Earth.

Q: Why does it matter now?

Yu: In a world increasingly hostile to other cultures, and especially China, it is heartening to see what being open to such influences can inspire. Gautier hated travel but proved a remarkably effective ambassador and cultural mediator, and she conveyed the charms of Chinese poetry in a way that made them accessible as scholars never could and in ways that inspired both interest and further creativity. Knowledge, it seems, can find many routes.