英文开学典礼演讲
英文开学典礼演讲
Nimen Hao! and Good morning!
I am delighted to be welcoming you to Duke Kunshan University on behalf of the faculty. "Delighted?" Perhaps not the right word. No, I feelsomething more akin to what the ancient Greeks would label deinos, a feeling associated with human regard for things too strange or divine or complex to comprehend, a word that connotes a great dealof respect, even reverence, and more than a little bit of awe or even fear. We see this word in the first half of dino-saur,literally a "deinos reptile." In American slang, the adjective that leaps to mind is awesome,and so perhaps I should best say that I am both delighted and awed to welcome you on behalf of the DKUfaculty. This is an awesome undertaking, and yes, not so unlike a dinosaur, large and impressive, something to respect, even reverence, hard to wrap your mind about as a being —and a bit scary too.
My name is William Johnson, and I am a Professor of Classical Studies at Duke. Classics or Classical Studies in the West means the study of ancient cultures around the Mediterranean, and the term "Classics" implies in particular study of the ancient Greeks andRomans from roughly 800 BCE through to about 300 CE. I am, in particular, a scholar of ancientGreece -- its language, literature, history, and culture.
The two most common questions about DKU that I get asked —and I assume the same is true for my faculty colleagues— are: (1) why is Duke interested in starting a campus in China? (2) why are you interested in it?
Why Duke in China? Answers of course will be many and multiform for such acomplex undertaking, but tend to center around issues like the importance of China on the world stage, China's burgeoning economy, its interest in further development in areas like management, science, health, together with Duke's strength in areas like business, science of all kinds, and global health. Inmore vague and general terms DKU can be described an extension of the global strategy that Duke now embraces. These are all important. But in my view, amore essential answer could well flow from what happened just now, in the simple act of me introducing myself. Think about what happened there. I could not assume, as I could in America or England or Italy or Germany, that even a highly educated audience would know what "Classics" or "Classical Studies" meant.
Moreover, I had to position this as what is classical in the West, since I am well aware of the factthat there is a very different classical in the East, with a very different notion ofthe ancient that one looks back to —and by implication the beginnings that one looks back to. Ancient philosophysuggests not Socrates and Plato, but Confucius; ancient empire brings to mind not the Persian and Athenian empires but the Qin and Han dynasties; ancient historiography begins not with Herodotus and Thucydides but Sima Qian; the birth of drama means not Greek tragedy but early Chinese opera. So, I have to specify what it means that I am called a Classicist, since I am not a student of what is classical or even ancient for many but a Western viewpoint.
Now that may seem a small thing, but it's a big thing, a very big thing, deinos as the Greeks would say. In the West, when we sketch out a rough developmental history of what we call the cosmopolitan perspective, that historyruns something like this: at first people identified with their family and kinshipgroup (a person might say, "I am one of the Alcmeonidae, a powerful Greek family"). As societies developed civic institutions, that identity could then embrace not just the family clanbut a tribe or a city ("I am an Athenian,one of the Alcmeonidae"). After the conquering of much of the Mediterranean and Near East by Alexander the Great, identity shifted to includeall those who spoke your language and had shared cultural traditions ("Iam a Greek, an Athenian, one of the descendants of the Alcmeonidae").
Then as nations developed, identity could center on the national impulse,which is essentially cultural but also territorial ("I am an American, a Greek American, who speaks Greek and English, and whose parents came from Athens and claim to be from aprominent family"). Note how in each developmental turn, the perspective becomes wider: one can now be American, even if Greek in heritage and in language, and ultimately from Athens, which, however, like the identification with a family of prominence, is at a remove. This is an increasingly cosmopolitan outlook, with all thatflows from that, but it is still very much rooted in the Western perspective.
Duke's global initiative in general, and DKU in particular is, by this analysis, another turn of the screw. In order even so much as to introducemyself, I have to step away from my comfortable Western assumptions about who Iam (a "Classicist") and come to grips with the fact that Classics should be a more embracing term, and thatonly from a blinkered or even half-blind vision can words like"classical" and "ancient" reasonably denote only ancient Greece and Rome. The possibilities for global collaboration at DKU will be rooted in particulars, like management and science and health and archaeology and humanistic inquiry, but underneath all this is a much larger issue: the potential for working out shared visions and mutual understandings that lead, on both sides, not only to engaged interactions but to the development of a more cosmopolitan viewpoint that, however,remains rooted in the particulars of who we are and where we come from (onemight say,"I am an educated person,a citizen of the world, though, yes, also an American, Greek by heritage whosefamily is said to have come from a once-powerful family in Athens"). TheDKU undertaking has potential, then, that is truly deinos, huge, dynamic, complex, something to respect, to nurture,to admire, an undertaking that in its sweeping possibilities truly inspires awe.
Now as to the second question, What is myinterest in DKU? that will be a more personal matter for each of the faculty.Part of my own answer I have already given: I am very excited by the possibilities of DKU, and I too want a share in this fresh cosmopolitan view.Moreover, like several of the faculty, I have close personal ties to China. Atcenter on the screen is what we used to call our "yoga baby," apicture of my daughter, Benita Xiaogu on the very evening of her adoption in August 2003, in Guangxi Province. (Benita is now twelve years of age, and you will see her around.) But we decided to adopt in China for good reasons, andhigh on the list was a deep interest in coming to know and be a part of this other ancient culture — that is, a culture of similar antiquity to the Greeks and Romans we had studied for our Yale doctorates (my wife Shirley Werner isalso a Classicist; you will see her around too).
That these two independently forming ancient civilizations — the Mediterranean peoples on the one hand, and "China" on the other — mayhave an interestingly larger story to tell than the individual histories theyoffer is easily seen. I hope that some of the details of that will come out inthe course I am teaching, but we can use a visual image to demonstrate quickly how interesting an exploration of parallel antiquities can be. On the screen atthe top left I show you an ancient Chinese pot that resides in a museum not farfrom us, in Shanghai, which comes from around 2000 BCE. I now show you anotherancient pot, this once from the Lerna in the Peloponnesus area of Greece, a pot imitating the so-called Minoan Culture, from roughly the same time. Below are two other neolithic pots, the left from China, the right from Greece.
There are differences one can point to, but the similarities are striking,to say the least. What interests me, as a cultural historian, is what narrativeor narratives one might create from this parallel. The story that this goesback to an unknown cultural exchange in the neolithic period has been proposed,but is widely rejected by scholars. More tenable, and considerably moreinteresting, might be to ask questions like, why is it that in ancientsocieties, advances in pottery techniques seem to go along in parallel withother advances like the development of civic institutions, such as villages andcities and legal systems, or even more sophisticated formations such as empire.And why does this development include not only formal advances such as theability to make larger or lighter pots, but also refinement of artistictechnique and aesthetic beauty, which seems to move along a path from geometricto figured representation? Even this small example exposes at once, then, why I as a scholar of the ancient Mediterranean find ancient China so very intriguing, and why I find interesting the opportunity to bring to a class in China the narratives of how the Greeks are said to be the "originators" of culture in the West.
As you will have noticed both from the course catalogue and my remarkshere, I have a deep interest in beginnings, and I wish in closing to focus onthat aspect of the DKU undertaking. I have recently been reading a fascinating account of how road systems and the metaphor of journey influenced ideology and thought in China's classical era. All journeys, real or metaphorical, have a beginning, of course, and in the classical era in China it was usual to startone's journey with elaborate ritual and prayers. As it happens we have one splendid example of prayers for the road from that era. It runs,
In a felicitous year and a good month, anauspicious day and a fortunate hour, may you be very happy when you set out inthe light of dawn.... May you mount the chariot and have the road open beforeyou. May the Wind Monarch and the Rain Legions wet down the road [to reduce the dust]. ... May the Green Dragon travel at your side. May the White Tiger helpyou advance. May the Vermillion bird [the sun] lead you. May Xuanwu [god ofnight and darkness] be your companion. ... May you have joy without end.
Now for a student of ancient Greece, when onereads of the traveler's chariot and the divine companions, what springs to mindis another poem, by the early philosopher-poet Parmenides, a poem which seems almost naturally to follow the Chinese prayer. That runs:
It is the mares that bear me, as far as my heart desires, as the divine maidens place me upon the auspicious path of the Goddess, a path that can carry a man with understanding as far as the stars. Thereon am I borne, as the wise mares strain to pull thechariot ... with the maidens, Daughters of the Sun, hurrying to escort me,having left behind the House of Night for the light, pushing the veils from their heads with their hands. Ahead are the gates of the paths of Night and Day ... and straight through them did the maidens drive the chariot and mares, along a large and open road. The Goddess received me kindly, took my right hand in hers, and spoke to me: "Youth, attended by immortal charioteers, you who come to our House by these mares that carry you, welcome.For it was no bad fortune that sent you forth to travel this road (lying farindeed from the beaten path of humans), but Right (themis) and Justice (dikê).And it is right that you should learn all things....
An auspicious day, an auspicious path indeed. On behalf of the faculty, then, it is with great pleasure that I say, "let it now begin."
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