Empson and the Gifts of China

William Empson cherished ‘our strong and critical curiosity about alien modes of feeling, our need for the flying buttress of sympathy with systems other than our own’ (EG 32). It was a belief that fuelled a sustained attempt to foster deeper understanding between the cultural traditions of Europe and Asia. However, after seven years as a university professor in China, Empson did not underestimate the difficulties of a rapprochement between two civilizations separated by what he conceived of as a profound difference of theology. John Haffenden’s narrative of the extraordinary years Empson spent in China during the turbulent upheaval of the Sino-Japanese War (1937 – 9) and throughout the Civil War and the Communist takeover (1947 – 52) has transformed the context in which scholars and critics approach the worldliness of the later poetry and criticism, peppered with anecdote and offhand personal testimony. And yet, a decade of ‘attending’ to Asian cultures had taught Empson a tough CP 55, 101.