The First Swedish Translation from the Lunyu.

• Author: Nordvall, Christian

INTRODUCTION

The first translation from the Confucian classics into Swedish is an extract from the Lunyu [phrase omitted]. It appeared as an appendix to the book Wishetenes rad (1707), a translation of the French Jesuit Michel Boutauld's (1625-1688) Les conseils de la sagesse (1677). (1) The latter work is a three hundred-page anthology of quotations from, and commentaries on, the four biblical books Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Wisdom, and Sirach, the first three traditionally attributed to the prophet-king Solomon of Israel (r. ca. 970-931 BCE), roughly the Western equivalent (and near-contemporary) of the Duke of Zhou [phrase omitted]. The work is also available in English as The Counsels of Wisdom (1683), translated by one T. Dare. (2)

The first Swedish edition of Wishetenes rad (1696) limited itself to only translating Boutauld's text. However, the second edition (1707) is "amplified with the morality teachings of Confucius, the Chinese philosopher" (med Confucii, den Chinesiske Philosophi, Sede-laror formerad), translated from the French La morale de Confucius, philosophe de la Chine (1688), which is a re-translation of the Latin Confucius Sinarum philosophus (1687) by Prospero Intorcetta et al. (3) In other words, the Swedish version is a third-generation translation.

The Sinarum philosophus is a thick tome of nearly six hundred pages, containing complete translations of the Daxue [phrase omitted], Zhongyong [phrase omitted], and Lunyu [phrase omitted] (but not Mengzi [phrase omitted]), with translated commentaries by Zhang Juzheng [phrase omitted] (1525-1582), as well as a one hundred-page preface and a long chronological table mapping the key events of Chinese history to the timeline given by the Bible and Greek and Roman historians. The preface, Daxue, and Lunyu have been translated into modern English by Thierry Meynard. (4)

La morale de Confucius condenses the text to less than two hundred pages, removing all the explanatory notes and chronological appendixes. The text of the Lunyu is here presented in two parts--first, a seventeen-page paraphrase that proceeds in the same order as the original text, and then a twenty-seven-page set of eighty translated maximes that are presented out of order. The Swedish version is a translation of these eighty maximes, spanning twenty pages. Since the Lunyu has around five hundred paragraphs (zhang M), depending on recension, this represents about sixteen percent of the text, which is comparable to the selection included by Bernhard Karlgren in his anthology Fran Kinas tankevarld (1929). (5)

The preface in the second edition of Wishetenes rad does not explain the reason for including an extract from Confucius, but one can surmise that the translator found the style of the Lunyu to be similar to that of the biblical books, and therefore included Confucius to allow for comparison and contrast between the two. Given that the Swedish word Jormerad (amplified) has a positive connotation and that there are no negative notes or comments appended to the text of the "heathen" philosopher, I will speculate that the translator wanted the reader to draw the conclusion that the teachings of Confucius are fundamentally the same as the teachings of Solomon, and that there is no contradiction between Confucianism and Christianity. This was, at least, the view espoused by the Jesuits, and later the mainstream, in Europe during the Enlightenment.

THE TRANSLATOR J. A. BELLMAN

All editions of the book are anonymous, but the translator has been identified by Nelson as none other than Johan Arendt Bellman (1664-1709), vice-chancellor of Uppsala University and grandfather of Sweden's national poet, Carl Michael Bellman (1740-1795). (6)

J. A. Bellman was born and raised in Stockholm, the son of a German immigrant. He is described as a talented singer and musical virtuoso, who also wrote poetry in both Swedish and Latin. As a schoolboy he was for a time employed in the royal choir of King Charles XI (r. 1660-1697). From 1678 to 1691 he studied at Uppsala University, Sweden's oldest university (est. 1477), where he earned the degree of Master of Arts, which at the time was the highest degree offered on Swedish soil. (7) In 1699, he was appointed professor of Roman rhetoric and poetry at the same university--at this time a doctorate was not required for a professorship. In 1704 he held the then-rotating position of vice-chancellor of the university. (8) His surviving publications are mainly his Latin-language dissertations at Uppsala University. (9) Theodor Westrin laments that none of Bellman's Swedish-language poems are extant, and, indeed, they would have made for interesting comparison with those of his illustrious grandson. In fact, apart from one funeral oration script, the translation of Wishetenes rad appears to be J. A. Bellman's only extant Swedish-language publication.

It is unlikely that Bellman knew any Chinese, as the first known Swedish visitor to China, Nils Matson Kioping, had only set foot in the Middle Kingdom some fifty years earlier (1655). As a Protestant country, Sweden had no representatives in the Catholic Jesuit mission in Macau, and the Swedish East India Company was not established until 1731. There were a few Swedes, such as Kioping, who traveled to China on the ships of their fellow Protestants in the Dutch East India Company, but probably none of them learned Chinese beyond, at best, a few vernacular Cantonese or Hokkien words needed for daily necessities like buying food. (10) Therefore, Bellman is forgiven for resorting to translating from a European language.

It is less clear why Bellman, professor of Roman rhetoric, should make his translation from the French second-generation version rather than directly from the Latin. Perhaps no copy of it was available to him--the English Lunyu translator Joshua Marshman (1768-1837) wrote in 1809 that he had completely missed the existence of the Sinarum philosophus for the entirety of his translation project, only becoming aware of it when his own work had already been typeset, (11) which suggests that the book may not have been widely available in all parts of Europe, even a century after Bellman.

It can be noted that about a decade prior to Bellman's translation, there had been two other works on China written at Uppsala University: the dissertations Murus Sinensis (The [Great] Wall of China) and De magno Sinarum imperio (On the Great Empire of China). (12) This might suggest that even before the establishment of the Swedish East India Company in 1731, there was already some academic interest in the Middle Kingdom, perhaps related to the Sinological boom in the Netherlands, as described by Thijs Weststeijn. (13) We have already mentioned how the shared Protestant religion (and, probably, Germanic language) caused the Swedes to make common cause with the Dutch in dealing with East Asia.

In addition to the 1696 first edition (without Confucius) and the 1707 second edition, Bellman's Wishetenes radreceived two posthumous reprints, in 1723 (with Confucius) and 1866 (without Confucius?). (14) It would therefore appear to have sold reasonably well and been in print during the era of the Swedish East India Company (1731-1813). Unfortunately, the Royal Library of Sweden catalogue lists only the 1696 first edition and 1723 third edition as extant as of 2023. The extant copies are mainly listed as located in various diocesan libraries...