Books: Water Margins Novel

ALL MEN ARE BROTHERS—Translated from the Chinese by Pearl S. Buck—John Day, 2 vol. ($6.50).

Authoress Buck’s magnum opus is not her own. She herself does not know who the author was, says it might have been Shih Nai-an but thinks it more likely that this massive (1,279-page) medieval novel, like the cathedrals of France, the epics of Homer, was the work of many forgotten hands. First written down some six centuries ago, it probably had wide if fragmentary currency 200 years before that. Says Translator Buck: “All Men Are Brothers is a great pageant of China. I think it is one of the most magnificent pageants ever made of any people. Before your eyes upon the pages of this book march the people of China—all the people; men, women and children; priests, scholars, robbers, courtesans, soldiers, emperors, captains, kings, princes, governors, gaolers, vendors, prisoners—the whole past passes by.”

Translator Buck gives good advice when she says: “When you read this book forget it as a book. … Do not try to remember the names of any of the people as they appear, or the names of the places they frequent. . . . When you have finished the book to its triumphant end. you will find that, without your knowing it, there will remain in your mind out of the hundreds of people who have passed before your eyes, certain unforgettable men and women, whose lives you have lived with them, across the seas and centuries.” Plot in the Western sense there is none. A continuous narrative, it contains dozens of separate stories, 36 main characters, 72 minor.

The untranslatable title of All Men Are Brothers is Shui Hu Chuan—three words which mean “water,” “margins,” “novel.” In the 13th Century, in the reign of Emperor Hung Chung, the Celestial Empire was disordered and seemed decayed. On a mountain set in a lake surrounded by marshes 108 men, fugitives from society, took refuge, set up a robbers’ lair. Like Robin Hood’s merry men they never ground down the faces of the poor but pillaged the rich and warred against unjust rulers. Readers will find this chronicle of their deeds and stratagems amazingly fresh, and once their ears are accustomed to the Chinese tone, reassuringly universal. There are surprisingly few Oriental locutions or ceremonial incantations; the narrative is written even more simply than the famed Tale of Genji (TIME, July 3). Shui Hu Chuan’s Chinese manners are polite: each of its 70 chapters begins, “It is said:” ends in some such manner as. “How then did Shih Chin and the three chieftains escape? Pray hear it told in the next chapter.”

Some of the tales that will strike a Western eye: the Bunyanesque vicissitudes of the stout-hearted Ling Ch’ung; the Decameronish deception of Wu the Elder by his wicked wife and the bawdy old woman; the Tattooed Priest, a kind of Friar Tuck of the outlaws; the robbers’ rescue of the youth about to be executed. Though some of the incidents would never have passed Queen Victoria (in the 18th Century Shui Hu Chuan was banned in China as “licentious”) they are narrated always with polite decency.

All Men Are Brothers ends with the stirring words of the outlaws’ pact: ” ‘One hundred and eight of us, each face differing from the other, yet each face noble in its way; one hundred and eight of us, each with his separate heart, yet each heart pure as a star; in joy we shall be one, in sorrow-one; our hour of birth was not one. but we will die together.’… On that day did they all mingle blood with wine and drink it and when they had drunk themselves to mighty drunkenness, they parted.”

The translation is a simpler and better job of writing than Authoress Buck’s other books. It is as literal, says she, as possible; tries to mirror faithfully the vernacular of the original; omits nothing. Readers will be glad to know, however, that Translator Buck has simplified proper names throughout. She carefully checked her translation word for original word with Chinese Scholar M. H. Lung; when it was finished went over it again with “another Chinese friend.”