Love Is An Art

[Rinrada]

Interesting review.......makes a change from all that...........

BOOK REVIEW

Love is an art

The Art of Love by Hong Ying

286 pp, 2004 Black Swan

paperback.Available at Asia Books and leading bookstores, 350 baht

Erotica is generally associated with men _ Boccaccio, Henry Miller, D.H. Lawrence, Frank Harris, etc _ but it's a field in which women don't come in second. Sappho and Lady Muraseki, Anais Nin and Emmanuelle Argan have also had their books banned.

To be sure at this time few books are censored for sensual content, but if they were K: The Art of Love wouldn't have reached the shops. Born in China, the blurb doesn't mention whether she's still there or has emigrated. Nor whether the guardians of that country's morals, noted for their conservatism, gave it their yea or nay.

Hong Ying's theme is a love affair between two writers, he English and she Chinese, in the mid-1930s. According to the cover, it's based on a true story. Yet inside, it's presented as a work of fiction. The venue is China.

For a clear understanding of Julian Bell, it helps to understand the Bloomsbury Group in the UK which was presided over by sisters Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell and Clive Bell. Julian's the son of Vanessa and Clive, with Clive bedding Virginia as well. One of Vanessa's lovers fathered Julian's sister.

Personal morals aside it was a literary group, invitations an honour. Noted for the wit and intelligence of the get-togethers, bores weren't asked again. E.M. Forster and Christopher Fry are familiar figures in Julian's formative years. He is raised on a mixture of socialism progressivism. Arriving at Wuhan University in 1935 to teach English Literature, he has an idealistic view of revolution. At 30 he's long since lost his innocence, losing interest once his seniors had given in. Lin Cheng is something else again.

Five years his elder, a writer and intellectual, wed to the dean of his department, she fascinates Julian. Turning on his charm wins her, but he doesn't tire of her. No small part of her appeal is that she teaches him the Daoist Art of Love.

As the author describes it in page after page, everything goes _ lying down, sitting, standing. Only when her husband catches them in flagrante delicto does Julian, but not Lin, feel guilty. And after what he observes of the cruelty of revolution, he opts to leave.

Instead of returning to Britain, he heads for Spain to fight the good fight against fascism. Lin attempts suicide. From her hospital bed, she never speaks another word. How long can each live without the other? She writes pages of love poems at the end, which he'll never read.

Hong Ying has a book of short stories, another novel and an autobiography to her credit _ penned in Chinese, translated by Nicky Harman and Henry Zhao. Kipling's ''East is East, West is West and never the twain shall meet'' referred to India. Does it to China as well?

This reviewer likes her asides. ''He thought regretfully that no Chinese woman possessed the free spirit of Bloomsbury women. There were no Vanessa Bells, who made their husbands into friends and their friends into husbands.''

(with thanks from B.T.)

http://www.bangkokpost.com/en/190304_Realt...2004_real65.php

[Candyflip]

I was hestitase to buy this book last time I went to the bookstone. The title is just so simple but after reading this review , I wanna buy it Thank you for sharing.

May I add " Art cannot change the world, but it change the way we look at the world" ?