История публикации китайского поэтического сборника «Ланьдунь шиюн» (Десять напевов о Лондоне) в контексте англо-китайских межкультурных контактов первой половины XIX века

Вестник Московского университета. Серия 13: Востоковедение. 2021. № 2. С. 87–98.

Volchkova E.

The article is devoted to the history of publication of the collection of poems “Landun shiyong” (London in Ten Stanzas), written by an anonymous Chinese author, who visited England in the beginning of the XIX century. The collection comprises ten five-character eight-line regulated verses and is the first known Chinese language poetic description of London. Its poetic form sets it apart from other three Chinese travelogues written before the second half of the XIX century, and it predates the similar texts that appeared aplenty after the opening of the borders of the Qing empire by at least five decades.

               The “Landun shiyong” collection became known due to the publication of the original text and its English translation in 1829 by J.F. Davis – sinologist and at the time the employee of the British East India Company; it was perceived by the English reading public as a panegyric to the center of world civilization, written by a traveler from the distant exotic lands. In 1834, its original text was reprinted in a Chinese-language periodical by missionary K.F.A. Gutzlaff, who made a lot of efforts to create a positive image of Great Britain among the educated Chinese. The history of the publication of “Landun shiyong” by foreigners, unusual for Chinese travelogues, on the one hand, made it part of the unsuccessful attempts of Europeans to establish a dialogue between China and the West in the years preceding the Opium War of 1839-1842, and on the other hand, paradoxically, led to the fact that it was forgotten for many years and only recently became the subject of research.

Keywords: империя Цин, Chinese poetry, Landun shiyong, Qing China, K.F.A. Gutzlaff, J.F. Davis, Ланьдунь шиюн, Дж.Ф. Дэвис, К.Ф.А. Гюцлаф