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1 A Celebration of the Life of Professor Yu-Kung Kao, Reminiscences 1

2 Tributes are generally posted in the order they were received. This memorial booklet is also posted on the Princeton East Asian Studies Department s website: Poem by Ying-shih Yu in his own hand as a gift to Yu-kung Kao. Presented to Yu-kung Kao on his last day of teaching, December 18,

3 Obituary Yu-kung Kao, scholar of Chinese literature at Princeton and mentor to generations of students, dies at 87 By Tsu-Lin Mei and Andrew Plaks This obituary was written by Tsu-Lin Mei, professor of Asian studies, emeritus, at Cornell University, and Andrew Plaks, professor of East Asian studies and comparative literature, emeritus, at Princeton University. As a Ph.D. student at Princeton, Plaks took courses from Kao. Mei and Kao were graduate students together at Harvard University and coauthors of several articles. Princeton University Professor Emeritus of East Asian Studies Kao Yu-kung, a leading scholar of Chinese literature, died Saturday, Oct. 29, in Brooklyn, New York. He was 87 years old. Kao's academic career was solidly anchored at Princeton University, where he arrived after a brief stint at Stanford University from 1960 to 1962, and taught in the Department of East Asian Studies (formerly Oriental Studies) until his retirement in Over the course of nearly four decades, he was a pivotal presence sometimes intimidating, always engaging in the burgeoning world of Chinese studies at Princeton, mentoring students who went on to hold major positions at a range of universities. "In the past few days, I have been recollecting the help Professor Kao gave me these many years," said Kang-i Chang, the Malcolm G. Chace '56 Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale University. "He was a true 'master,' knowing how to teach students; at the same time, the way he taught a student always aligned with that individual's life, making him very memorable. Now that he is suddenly gone, I treasure even more the enlightenment and lessons he gave me." Kao Yu-kung (alternate spelling Gao Yougong) was born in 1929 in Shenyang (Mukden), Manchuria, where his father, Gao Xibing, was dean of engineering at Northeast University and an important public figure. After attending Nankai Middle School in Chongqing (Chungking) during the war years and then in Beiping, Kao entered the Law School of Peking University in 1947, where he studied under philologist Zhou Zumo in a seminal course on Chinese literature. After Kao's family moved to Taiwan in 1948, he continued his studies in the following year at National Taiwan University, majoring in Chinese literature under the tutelage of a host of distinguished scholars including Tung T'ung-ho, Wang Shu-min and Zheng Qian. Upon receiving his B.A. in 1954, Kao pursued his advanced studies at Harvard University, in the same class as a number of brilliant young emigré-intellectuals including Yu Ying-shih, Chang Kwang-chih, Tsu-Lin Mei and others, who were to become leading figures in the flowering of transplanted Sinological learning in the United States. Kao also forged close ties with other preeminent scholars of Chinese history, linguistics and literature, among them Yang Lien-sheng, Y.R. Chao and Iris Pian. Kao earned his doctoral degree in 1962 in pre-modern Chinese history, with a dissertation, under the direction of Yang Lien-sheng, on "The Rebellion of Fang La," a crucial topic for both the political and the literary history of the Song Dynasty. At the same time, he continued to deepen his lifelong immersion in the study of Chinese literature taking courses under such outstanding teachers as James Hightower, and applying himself to the study of several European languages and Japanese, while also pursuing his broad interest in parallel civilizations, with a minor in Roman history. But for all his accomplishments in the study of history, Kao's true passion at Harvard was in literature and the arts. At Taiwan University, his undergraduate training focused on traditional methodologies in Chinese literature and linguistics. But when he came to Harvard, he realized early on the inadequacy, for his own scholarly aspirations, of being a Sinologist in a narrow generalist sense. Kao began studying literary theory and literary criticism, and was deeply influenced by the writings of Northrop Frye, whose lectures he attended at Harvard. During the '60s and '70s, Kao wrote a series of influential articles in collaboration with his lifelong friend and colleague Tsu-Lin Mei: "Tu Fu's 'Autumn Meditations'"; "Syntax, Diction and Imagery in T'ang Poetry"; and "Meaning, Metaphor and Allusion in T'ang Poetry," which put the Chinese lyric tradition in new conceptual light. When these articles were translated into Chinese and published in the leading literary journal of Taiwan, they became widely popular, heralding a new trend in structuralist criticism there. But Kao himself preferred the formulation of these ideas contained in his own article "The Aesthetics of Regulated Verse," and he went on to extend his conception of the Chinese "lyric vision" from T'ang Regulated 3

4 Verse to Chinese narrative literature, in his 1977 article Lyric Vision in the Chinese Narrative Tradition: A reading of Hong-lou Meng and Ju-Lin Wai-shih. Through all these years, Kao nurtured the second love of his intellectual and spiritual life: classical ballet and modern dance. From training as a dancer in his own right, he proceeded to acquire a profound knowledge and appreciation of the aesthetics of dance in all its forms, and he became a familiar figure in the New York circles of dancers and dance critics. In 1978 he received an invitation to come back to National Taiwan University for the academic year to teach Literary Theory. The Chinese articles that grew out of his lectures that year were eventually collected in a major book published in Taiwan in 2004 under the title "Essays on the Chinese Literary Canon and the Study of Literature" (republished in Mainland China in 2008). The invaluable contributions of Professor Kao to the academic training of a generation of scholars of Chinese literature in the United States and abroad is matched only by the profound and lasting impact he had, on a personal level, on so many lives. In some ways, he was an enigmatic individual quiet and reserved, a very private person whose inner thoughts remained a mystery even to his closest friends, reluctant to display his vast erudition and penetrating insight. Yet in his own way, with his inscrutable smile and self-deprecating manner, he was always reaching out to touch the minds and hearts of all the students and colleagues who read his seminal writings with utter absorption, or sat around his seminar table, intent on absorbing even a small measure of the spiritual and intellectual depths of the Chinese "lyric vision." He was a rare living embodiment of that vision, in both the aesthetic forms of expression and the deepest layers of human wisdom contained within the incomparably rich Chinese literary tradition. Kao is survived by his elder sister, Chun Juan Kao Wang, his nieces Effie Wang Petersdorf and Vivian Wang, and by his nephew Andrew Wang. (Published in the Princeton University Homepage and later in Princeton Weekly Bulletin) Raffaello (Ray) Orlando, EAS *1981 Tributes Professor Kao Yu-kung was an extraordinary man. When I arrived at Princeton in 1968 to study Chinese language and culture as a Critical Language student, he greeted our group in Firestone Library with a great, warm smile that instantly made me feel that I had come to the right place. During that year, I had several occasions to visit him at his home on Western Way; he was always charming and affable, and happy to discourse informally about any subject. Later, when I returned as a graduate student, I studied Chinese literature with him; I was awestruck by his great erudition and refinement. The brilliant essay he wrote together with Professor Mei Tsu-Lin on bifurcated syntax in Chinese poetry, and the discussions held in his classes on this theme, helped me greatly to understand the nature of Chinese language and culture. I do regret that at the time I was not intellectually mature enough to fully appreciate the depth and breadth of his teachings. With some amusement, I remember when Prof. Kao came to visit us in Rome. I recall sitting with him and another friend, Mary McGrory, a journalist from the Washington Post, in a horse-drawn carriage, bumping along on the cobbled roads of our ancient city. Prof. Kao was a bit nervous, and Ms. McGrory did her best to comfort him and tell him there was really nothing to worry about. Oh, I hate to travel! was his comment. Prof. Kao s love of music and the arts really resonated with me. I accompanied him to a ballet performance by Rudolf Nureyev in New York; I remember Prof. Kao an expert in dance noting that on that occasion Nureyev was out of time with the rhythm of the music. On another occasion, he said that each time he heard the Arietta from Beethoven s last piano sonata, Opus 111, tears would come to his eyes. Years later, I came to understand just what he meant. 4

5 鄭清茂 謝謝你告訴我友工的消息 我們一直常在念著他 但也知道只能想念 有甚麼 事 我們根本幫不了忙 他是我臺大的學長 我入學時他已經畢業了 並不認識 在 Princeton 是我的老 師輩 但並無實際師生關係 他也不嫌棄我這個學弟 經常關心我的生活 我 剛到 Princeton 那年的 1962 十月就下了一場大雪 他馬上把他哈佛時代穿 的 down jacket 送給我 它變成了我在美國穿的最常最久的衣物 直到 1989 年離 開美國時 因為台灣不需要那麼厚的夾克 才處理掉 令人懷念 Li-ping Wang (王利平) & Xu-dong Hu (胡旭東) We would like to share our sorrow with you by a few lines from Bob Dylan's lyrics of Isis that seem to fit to the rhyme of his life: She said, where ya been? I said, no place special She said, you look different, I said, well, I guess She said, you been gone, I said, that's only natural She said, you gonna stay? I said, yeah, I might do Thank you for having introduced him to us. We have tremendous respect to him for his intelligence, courage and authenticity to life. We have lost a dear friend. Yao-Chung Li (李耀宗) 高先生是我最敬佩的学者 能和他结识是我的福气 他的风采和见识将永存我心中 收到来信时 我正在读英译普希金的诗 引一首与你分享 I thought you had forgotten, heart, Your ability to suffer pain. That easy gift would come, I thought, No more again! No more again! Gone were the raptures and the griefs And the dreams you half-believed... But now I know, while beauty lives So long will live my power to grieve. --Pushkin Yu-shih Chen (陳幼石) Kao Yu-kung finally left us. This must be the way he had wanted and we can only hope to meet him where he is now in the near future. What lives are the memory of those good old days when Birger and Yu-kung were both with us, and we went all over New York to eat to our heart's content. PS to Yu-kung: Four desserts each for you and me at the Caravelle. Looking forward to doing that with you again soon, and to a good tongue fight. 5

6 Wei-ming Tu ( I am deeply saddened to learn that, an eminent scholar, an admirable colleague, and a generous friend just passed away. His literary sensitivity and aesthetic taste as manifested in his academic monographs will continue as a source of inspiration for us all. Arnold and Mo Chen 80 Mo and I have fond memories of Kao Yu-Kung. Of course he was a brilliant colleague of my father s, T. T. Chen, and a wonderful professor of Chinese literature to my wife, Mo, who was an undergraduate at Princeton. But most importantly, he was a dear and generous friend to my family. I remember our family having dinner with him at his apartment when I was growing up. His apartment was well decorated in the modern style of the 60 s and he had an excellent collection of rock music. I remember him always smiling and joking. I would be able to recognize him at a distance by his distinctive laugh. When Mo and I got married, he photographed our wedding at the request of my mother, Yung-Chi. His excellent photography augmented the professional photographer we had hired. He was able to capture the personalities of the guests and the wedding party. He was a good friend. When my father suffered a heart attack and we rushed in from Denver to see him at the hospital in Philadelphia, we ran out of diapers for our daughter. Prof. Kao kindly brought some to us. That was so nice of him. He also picked out the most beautiful red velvet dress for our daughter when she was about 5. We still have it to remember how thoughtful he was. In all, we remember him as a kind, gentle, and generous friend. November 5, 2016 Andrew Lo The time spent in Professor Kao s stimulating classes and in his presence were some of the happiest moments of my life. He is a wonderful human being, and I feel so lucky to have met him. David Der-wei Wang ( 王德威 ) I came to know Professor Kao in 1990 when I first arrived at Columbia in New York. He invited me to dinner at Chinatown and we had a wonderful chat. I still remembered the dishes he ordered; he was a gourmet. Needless to say, I was deeply moved by his knowledge and unassuming personality. During the 1990s we ran into each other at Chinese opera performances in New York from time to time; he had a very high standard for kunqu and jingju, and his criticism was always insightful and sharp. I have never seen Professor Kao again after his retirement in Ironically, it was at that time I became more and more interested in his theory of lyricism. I benefitted enormously from his scholarship on the lyrical paradigm of Chinese culture, and consulted with his work a lot in writing The Lyrical in Epic Time. I treated him and Professor Li Zehou as the two most important voices of critical lyricism after Professor Chen Shih-hsiang who initiated the discourse of lyrical tradition. Professor Kao is a first-rate scholar, a respected qianbei, and a connoisseur of the art of life. 6

7 台灣中文學會敬悼 風起風歇 敬悼高友工先生 半個世紀以來, 臺灣 中文學 的現代化與世界化, 恆於辯證迴旋 對話轉移中積累 摶造 在歷史的偶然機緣中, 高友工先生猶如一股灝氣, 曾溥暢而至, 又逍遙以遠 通達中西文學美典者, 大抵都能理解 相對於西方的敘事傳統, 中國另存一個鮮明的 抒情傳統 這個迄今仍在美國 香港 新加坡漢學界飄揚的學術大纛, 當遠溯半世紀前的臺灣, 以 1958 年陳世驤先生在臺大的四場演講為濫觴 ; 至於其學術意義得以更趨深化的契機, 則不能不繫於 1978 年高友工先生返臺講學 講學期間, 陸續發表於 中外文學 的 文學研究的理論基礎 試論 知 與 言 文學研究的美學問題 ( 上 )( 下 ) 諸作, 引發學界廣大迴響而有 高友工震盪 之說 文學美典與抒情傳統的精采論述逐步開展, 而 2002 年 中國文化史中的抒情傳統 則為集大成之作 抒情傳統 作為一 假設的理想架構, 除提供 系統事實 外, 更引發 許多反想 諸多學長各自發聲, 或開展其蘊而未發之義, 或鈎沉抒情理論的本土前緣, 或挑戰其論述的覆蓋性, 一時眾聲喧嘩 多音交響, 亦屬相反相成 互抱互倚 世間本無終朝之風, 但有抵花振葉 墜素飜紅, 猶自訴說著絕非徒然的故事 高友工先生曾以其在場, 串連若干還無法輕易了結的學術話題 ; 更以其不再在場, 撩觸同樣難以輕易了結的哀傷與懷念 時維歲暮, 風吹花落, 景光或許蕭索淒清, 但落花已化為春泥, 我們期許在前賢共同澆灌的知識沃土裡, 成長出新的智慧之花 苏炜 (Wei Su) 高友工老师未曾亲自教过我, 但早在我 1990 初年在普林斯顿大学认识他以前, 我就曾受教于他的富有创造性的古典文论, 并从中获益非浅 从 1986 年冬到 1989 年夏, 我曾任职于北京中国社科院文学研究所, 并担任 新学科理论研究室 的负责工作 当时我的职位要求, 是要把西方最新的文学理论引进到中国文学研究领域 我很快就注意到普林斯顿大学高友工教授关于 抒情美典 的相关理论, 对于国内文学研究所富有的启迪作用 当时, 中国学界西潮滚滚, 各种西方新式名词术语 大轰炸, 中国学人似乎离开了西方术语的套用, 就要处于失语状态 但身在洋风洋水中的高友工先生 ( 还有另一位, 是陈世骧先生 ) 的中国古典文论, 却反而从根本上摆脱了 食洋不化 的陋习, 完全是建基于中国古典文论的文本基础上, 以中国式的概念建构出自己的批评言说系统 比如他的 抒情美典 论述, 从中国文化中的 心 性 情 气 志 意 才 理 之间的复杂有机关系, 去建构出一个独特地属于高友工的 抒情美典 理论架构 其体系完整, 理论自洽, 当时就给予我们文学研究所内的年青学人几乎是震聋发聩的震撼和启迪 学习高友工 陈世骧, 用中国语言 中国概念去建构属于中国文学自身的批评话语系统, 成为我个人当时在各种 新学科理论 研讨会上一再呼吁 反复强调的论说命题, 当时也引起过一定的反响 只是可惜, 随后的政治风潮打断了中国学界这种建构中国本土批评话语系统的理论自觉 我在 1990 年代初在普林斯顿大学认识高友工教授后, 自己在文学批评方面的相关研究却未能继续下去, 不能更具体地受教于高友工老师, 真是此生之憾也 记得, 我曾当面向高老师陈述过他的 抒情美典 理论, 在 1980 年代的北京文学理论界引起过的广泛反响, 高老师还对此感到欣悦异常 高友工老师的逝世令人哀痛 但我同时希望, 对于高友工老师的纪念, 或可以焕发出一种新的学术动力, 让更多的中国年青学人认识到高先生为建构中国文学批评理论系统所作出的非凡贡献 也许经过几代人的努力, 真正建构出一个属于中国文学自身的 自 文心雕龙 以来被一再中断的中国古典文学和现代文学的批评理论系统, 以告慰高友工先生 陈世骧先生这样的中国古典文论系统的拓荒者 7

8 張永濤 (Yongtao Zhang) 今獲悉高先生離世, 萬分悲痛, 晚輩雖然沒見過高先生, 但讀過他的文章, 深受啓迪, 獲益良多, 特別想寫幾句話紀念先生 : 詩 有之 : 高山仰止, 景行行止 久聞高先生大名, 只是晚輩生得太晚, 到普林斯頓大學時, 高先生早已榮退, 無福相見 如今先生走了, 只能空嗟嘆罷了 但先生為中國古典文學研究所作的貢獻是不可不珍視的, 他的一生於漢學正可謂 導夫先路, 其生也榮 ; 濡澤後學, 其死也哀 刘帆 (Fan Liu) 我 2004 年有幸到普林斯顿大学教中文, 虽无缘亲受高先生教诲, 但作为一个热爱中国古文学的青年人, 每次读先生的 唐诗三论, 都觉得是无上的享受 先生去了, 但他如绝句般唯美的人生与著作, 都将永远印在我们心里 Richard Davis, 80 As a friend, one of my favorite recollections involves time spent together in New York City in the early eighties, when I often rented his apartment in Princeton, while he lived in the city with his friend Chiang Ching, the former Hong Kong actress turned modern dancer. Chiang Ching often spent the summers with her family in Sweden, although the three of us did occasionally hang out when she flew in for special events. Yu-kung was an aficionado of classical ballet as well. Yu-kung s appreciation of performance seems more Western than Chinese, but it reflects a growing part of Yu-kung s life as a man who lived the bi-cultural middle. He prided himself as being neither Chinese nor Western, so he did not give gifts at Christmas nor did he give red envelopes at the Lunar New Year. In reality, he was Chinese and Western in equal measure. Richard E. Strassberg Thoughts on Prof. Kao Prof. Kao was a genuine individualist who created a special atmosphere in his seminars on Chinese literature at Princeton during the early 1970s. At a time when the most fashionable literary theories promoted the systematic and impersonal aspects of texts, he reminded us of the essential role of the self in their construction and reception. This approach continued to be refined by him into his influential concept of lyric vision. Patient, tolerant, good-natured, and seemingly untrammeled, Prof. Kao was the perfect teacher for a student seeking to find his or her own way. Some of us became professors ourselves and continued to find his insights enlightening. While Prof. Kao may have appreciated most the beauty of the moment, he also leaves behind fond memories in the minds of those who were fortunate to have known him. Wai-yee Li ( 李惠儀 ) I was Professor Kao s student and later, for a couple of years before his retirement in the late 1990s, his colleague. He was always smiling and full of interesting ideas, but our conversations were always brief. Despite the sense of distance, which might have been rooted in my own awkwardness and shyness back then, I could appreciate his refined sensibility and breadth of knowledge. He had the kind of intuitive understanding and unerring connoisseurship that came of a lifetime s immersion in the Chinese and European aesthetic traditions. I remember one moment fondly. When I entered the Princeton graduate program, I did not speak a word of Mandarin and my listening comprehension was also very limited. Taking Professor Kao s Tang poetry seminar in my first semester was a challenge, because I could not fully understand what was going on when the discussion switched to Mandarin. After our second class, I told Professor Kao that I should not continue in the seminar, since I had no formal training in classical Chinese literature and could not decipher tonal patterns in regulated verse. Professor Kao took me to the Gest Library and showed me a slim volume that explained how to figure out 8

9 tones and tonal patterns in Cantonese. He assured me it would take only a few hours to sort it all out, and indeed it was quite simple. Henceforth he also allowed me to quote lines in Cantonese in class. Soon enough the seminar became thoroughly enjoyable, and even Mandarin did not seem that opaque after a while. The line between what is possible and what seems impossible is sometimes so very thin, and Professor Kao had the generous spirit to help us cross that line. Douglas Dunn 64 It was Thanksgiving vacation. I had stayed on campus to work on my junior paper. Procrastinating, I wandered around in the late fall air with Jim Freeman, a student of Chinese. He was about to leave for extended study in Taiwan. He asked if I would accompany him to visit one of his professors, who was in the hospital suffering from an undiagnosed, possibly terminal illness. In order to support my friend I reluctantly agreed. I stood near the entrance while Jim sat close to him and talked. After a few minutes the man spoke loudly across the room to me. Have you ever taken a ballet class? Not only had I not done so, I had never attended a dance concert of any sort. No, I responded. If I get out of here, he continued, will you promise to go to class with me? How could I refuse? Yes, shyly I answered. Jim went off to Taiwan. I returned for spring term unhappy, wondering if I might drop out. One day there is a knock on my door. Standing there is the professor from the hospital. He introduces himself as Gene Kao. He has with him two pairs of black tights and another student, John Thorpe. In keeping with my promise, we walk to the Princeton Ballet Society, located, despite having nothing to do with the university, right next to the Dinky station. There are at least a dozen young girls wearing white outfits in the class, all of them familiar with Gene, as he has been taking class there for a while. John is not intrigued and does not return. Entranced, I become a regular, and now have a reason to continue my Princeton education. Little do I know that this moment, thanks to Professor Kao, is the beginning of my lifelong career as a dancer. Freda Murck Remembering Prof. Yu-kung Kao Prof. Kao must be remembered first for his depth of knowledge of Chinese literature that went far beyond the written word. Profoundly interested in philosophy of the mind, he thought deeply about the creative process. One example is an essay he wrote for the symposium volume Words and Images in which he laid out in lucid detail his analysis of the complex topic of lyric aesthetics (that aim to present mental and emotional states) versus narrative aesthetics (in which the artist strives to describe the external world). 1 After his inspiring grasp of Chinese thought and creativity, which of Kao Yu-kung s characteristics are most memorable? His love of dance? His sparkling wit and low gurgling laugh? Or was it his gusto for fine food and wine? These enthusiasms combined to make Prof. Kao a great dissertation adviser. I was living in Taiwan when writing my PhD. thesis on Song dynasty landscape paintings that were set in the State of Chu and the Xiao Xiang region. Every time I passed through New York, I would call on Prof. Kao wherever he was living (Ching Chiang s apartment in a former piano factory in Hell s Kitchen, or in the West Village), or we would meet at a good restaurant to go over poems and paintings. For my topic, he advised that I ignore landscape poetry anthologies and simply read through all of Du Fu s late poems. It proved to be valuable advice because it gradually became clear that Song dynasty painters were enthralled by Du Fu s poetry. In the mid-90s Prof. Kao visited Taiwan to give a series of lectures at National Tsing Hua University in Hsin-chu. Scholars and students from all over Taiwan attended. He talked about aesthetics, creativity, and the qualities that made some poems great. When citing an example, he didn t so much recite a poem as perform it with sweeping gestures and dramatic intonation. He was a scholar cum rock star. Prof. Kao was reflective and funny, self-effacing and generous. I count myself lucky to have known him and learned from him. 1 Yu-kung Kao, Chinese Lyric Aesthetics in Alfreda Murck and Wen C. Fong ed., Words and Images: Chinese Poetry, Calligraphy, and Painting (The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Princeton University Press, 1991), pp The symposium was in honor of John M. Crawford, Jr. s gift of Chinese painting and calligraphy to the Metropolitan Museum. The book with Prof. Kao s essay is available digitally at the Museum s website under MetPublications. 9

10 Pauline Yu I did not have the privilege of spending much time with Professor Kao as a student or colleague, and the memories are sadly few, though I'll never forget the Chaozhou meal he treated me to in Chinatown when I was about to leave Columbia. He was a genial and generous soul, and his insights into the nature of the lyric were both passionate and penetrating. I remain deeply grateful for his example. W. South Coblin In the spring of 1964 I was accepted into the Chinese section of the Princeton Critical Language Program. By mail Professor Kao advised me to begin first-year Chinese that summer at Harvard, since Princeton used the Harvard instructional system in those days. During that summer, Professor Kao came regularly to Cambridge to advise the CL students there, and it was then that I first met him in person. In the fall I went on to Princeton and enrolled in the second-year Chinese course at the University. The main class was taught by Professor Ch en Ta-tuan, but Professor Kao was the preceptor for my individual section. I remember him as a particularly entertaining, engaging, and helpful teacher, and I soon grew quite fond of him. I also noticed that his accent in Mandarin differed from the one we were learning in class, and that the differences were systematic rather than arbitrary. But, of course, I did not yet understand what the linguistic implications of that were. CL students were by definition juniors and were therefore required to enter the regular junior seminar in their second Princeton semester. We attended weekly sessions and were required to submit a paper at the end of the term. Each of us had an advisor or mentor, and, happily, Professor Kao filled that role for me. At our first individual meeting we needed to decide on my paper topic, so he asked me what I was interested in there. Naturally thinking he was referring to the Chinese and Asian Studies courses I was taking, I said everything interested me, for it was all totally new to me. He then asked if I had a favorite course that semester. I responded that my favorite class was Historical Linguistics, which was taught by Professor Albert Marckwardt of the English Department, and that within that broader field historical phonology interested me most of all. Professor Kao then responded, Well, we have that in Chinese too, so you can do your paper on Chinese historical phonology. And he then gave me Dǒng Tónghé s Zhōngguó yǔyīnshǐ as a reading assignment. Now, as you may know, this work was used as a standard textbook in the Chinese Department at Táidà back then. But it was in fact a highly sophisticated linguistic study, not just an introductory college text. It literally bristled with both modern linguistic and traditional shēngyùnxué terminology (for neither of which there were any dictionaries or glossaries available back in 1965) and included long quotes from primary sources in literary and classical Chinese. I was, it will be recalled, only in secondyear Chinese at that time, and I quite frankly found the book impenetrable. So I went back to Prof. Kao and, with amused apologies, he changed my reading assignment to Karlgren s Compendium of Phonetics in Ancient and Archaic Chinese hardly easy reading but at least comprehensible to me. So, in the end, working in consultation with Professors Kao and Marckwardt, I wrote my seminar paper on Chinese Historical Phonology. In the summer of 1965 I took beginning classical Chinese at Stanford and then went on to the Stanford Center in Taipei. And, as soon as I was allowed to do independent reading there, I at last came fully to grips with the formidable Zhōngguó yǔyīnshǐ, and later went on to read a number of other similar and related works. The result of all that was that I became thoroughly hooked on Chinese historical phonology; and, after I finished my year in Taiwan, I went on to Seattle to study with Professor Li Fang-kuei. The rest is history. But what is significant about all this is that it was Prof. Kao who first set me on the course I have subsequently followed throughout my career. Had he not been my mentor in , my life would probably have followed quite different paths. That ultimately remains my greatest debt to him. Once, in the 1980 s, I again encountered Professor Kao at Academia Sinica, and I took that occasion to thank him for his guidance and for the formative influence he had exercised on my life back in the 60 s. I shall always be grateful that I was afforded that opportunity to express my gratitude to him, for I never saw him again. 10

11 Michael Mao I was shocked to hear about Professor Kao s demise. Somehow I always think that, when I retire I would go back to Princeton and visit the Motes, Ch en Ta-Tuan and Kao Yu-Kung, Mrs Kuhn, J. J. Conroy at Dillon and perhaps even find Scott MacGarghie, who interviewed me for admission to Princeton. I somehow had not known about Prof. Mote s passing and have continue to work hard in an all consuming field. When I was contacted by Kang-I, and eventually Chiang Ching, I thought it was time for me to catch up with time, and Princeton. I met Kao Yu-Kung at Princeton through a Chinese Poetry course he gave sometime in my Junior or Sophomore Spring, the course having been recommended by the late Professor Fritz Mote, whom I greatly admired. I think that year Professor Mei Tzu-lin might have also been in residence at Princeton, and I remember visually the two of them speaking on Tu Fu s imagery, now almost half a century ago. Before Princeton I had already enrolled at the Martha Graham School, and before that, a fencing school on weekends in Yorkville. At Princeton I was on the Freshman Fencing team and competed in Epée. I took ballet classes at the Princeton Ballet School, where I found out that Professor Kao had been an ardent admirer of Ballet. That might have been the first time I heard of Professor Kao before meeting Professor Mote at a Wilson College supper. Professor Kao might have been active in supporting the Princeton Modern Dance Club, which held Cunningham technique classes taught by Jeff Slayton. My senior year at Princeton I became president of the Modern Dance Club, which had 3 students and $500 in its purse. $500 in those days was about one-fourth of our yearly tuition, so was a sizable pot, which had been anonymously donated. Looking back it would have to have been donated by Professor Kao, or John Black 68, who had been the previous president. With the funds I was able to buy mirrors from Woolworth s, a record player, and dance music records, and order several portable ballet barres, and hire dance teachers. A music graduate student, Gerald Warfield, who was one of the 3 students, brought in an old piano and played for class. I then got Athletics Director J.J. Conroy at the Dillon to allow dance to be credited for Freshman sports requirement, and Mrs. Kuhn, who ran Creative Arts at 185 Nassau, to give us a sunny, bright studio on the second floor for dance classes. The initial classes at Dodge-Murray had 80 students out of 800 Frosh to show up. A former Saddlers-Wells ballerina, and another modern dance teacher, lost at least 30 students. So I decided to teach the class myself, alternating ballet with modern, but mostly getting the boys to jump, hop, leap, turn and fall, and kept them in the air as long as possible. All I had to do was give J.J. Conroy a list of the students names every quarter. Professor Kao did refer students to me. We did not discuss dance so much, since he was interested in Cunningham and ballet and my background at that time was Graham, though years later I was to be in a dance choreographed by Cunningham s dance partner, Carolyn Brown, where the technique was indeed Cunningham s. After leaving Princeton I was busily getting settled into graduate work at Cambridge, Massachusetts. Later on I found out that Ze eva Cohen, whom I had heard much of from the late Hudson Dance Theater s first artistic director, James Waring, had been hired to teach dance at Princeton. In the 90s my manager at that time made contact with Ms. Cohen, who brought my company of dancers to perform at 185 Nassau Street, in the original studio which had been transformed into a performing space. At the 250th Anniversary of Princeton Ze eva organized and curated eight Princeton Alumni who were active in dance to perform The Best of Princeton at the McCarter Theater. At the reception afterwards Professor Kao was there and we spoke. He looked very well at that time and mentioned to me that he had moved to live in Jersey City. Here I just want to point out how Prof Kao quietly advocated and supported an effort to put dance on some sort of map. I doubt that without seeing any sign of dance on campus I might have done what I did, and without those initial funds it would have been difficult to initiate those public and well attended classes. At that time there were angry letters from Alumni in the Alumni Weekly decrying the decline of Princeton s moral standard in allowing Princetonians in pantyhose. Ms. Cohen would speak to Professor Kao s contribution to dance after I departed. Another occasion I had contact with Professor Kao was when he asked me to introduce Ms. Chiang Ching to Anna Kisselgoff at the New York Times, whom I had met on Jacob s Pillow as Assistant to the PR Director Sally Jeter, and House Manager under Ted Shawn before Shawn passed away. As we all know, Professor Kao had a warm heart and did many 11

12 things for many different people from different walks of life. I met several Princetonians who were in other departments who came to take my classes, recommended by Professor Kao. I look forward to catching up with people I have known as well as those who have been part of Professor Kao s life in scholarship, quietly in dance, and in life, on March 11 as we all gather to mourn his passing and to celebrate his colorful life through the decades of varying fields and diasporas. I can be reached at Michael@MICHAELMAODANCE.ORG. Dore J. Levy On Kao Yu-kung Oh, that smile! Wide as a river song and fathoms deep, it was both the warmest possible greeting, and a warning that you could never know what he was really thinking. When I was the first graduate student studying Chinese in the Department of Comparative Literature at Princeton, Kao Yu-kung was the person on whom I depended to help me find a way into the field without compromising sinology. The wholesale deployment of what passes for literary theory in western traditions was laughable to him he knew better. And for some reason, he chose to teach me. He did not discourage my interest in narrative poetry, and pushed me toward the study of fu. Resistance was futile, and when he summoned me for an independent study in my third year, I knew I was in for the high jump. Professor Kao s instincts for literary aesthetics were never wrong. When I got muley, or went astray, he would gently but inexorably chivvy me back into the right path, without my realizing it. As a professional academic, he gave me another lesson that has been perhaps the most valuable of my career: nurture the generations to come; do not take yourself too seriously; the future is the only way of ensuring the preservation and illumination of the past. Adhere to no school or you compromise your judgment. And when you leave, let them go. If I have ever been a good mentor to younger scholars, this has come from his example. Thank you, Professor Kao, for your eternal lively spirit. Dore J. Levy November 16, 2016 Wan Liu ( 劉婉 ) Remembrance of Things Past With Professor Kao Professor Kao was a visionary and pragmatic teacher. On the one hand, he was eager to share with his students his exciting intellectual discoveries or what he found exciting in other scholars works--paradigmatic, grand views of the fundamentals or principles of Chinese literature and works of art in various media. On the other hand, he focused on the specifics of the work of art, be it poetic, operatic, visual, musical, calligraphic, to make his point come across in seminars, and he often examined well-known works from unexpected or unusual angles. By analyzing the particulars of a concrete example that usually escape attention of the uninitiated, he made elusive, complex, esoteric concepts and ideas instantly immediate and accessible. Once in a graduate seminar, he played a videotape of a short excerpt of a Peking opera performance featuring a male singer in a stoutly masculine role of Guan Yu, the legendary warrior (in dan dao hui 單刀會 ). Professor Kao would sometimes gently tap his finger rhythmically on the desk to mark the beat of the music when listening to the singing of an aria. But there were other details to pay close attention to before and after the opera singer burst into singing. Professor Kao commented on the heroic-tragic manner in which the male singer delivered a hyperbolic soliloquy that merged into the aria: What s flowing in this river is not water: it is the blood of countless brave men that has been flowing for the past twenty years! The romantically heroic-tragic utterance was in tune with other theatrical details and features on the 12

13 scene, such as the swaggering gait of the character, his deliberate posture, and the bare stage setting and few stage props. All the features were highly stylized and the main purpose of stylization was to reveal the inner experience rather than mimic the realistic world. As Professor Kao had explained, informed audiences did not go to a multi-act opera to find out what happened next in terms of the narrative events of a plot. The point he implicitly made here with this excerpt was about Chinese lyrical theater, to which stylization was quintessential, an original idea that he expounded in his writings. In another seminar, Professor Kao played an audiotape of a kunqu opera. The aria sampled that day was that of a female character, a young woman who was delicately voicing her sentiment. In this excerpt, the singer enunciated the words of the lyric in typical kunqu style: she inflected the pronunciation of words and modulated her voice from phrase to phrase if not syllable by syllable. Toward the end of this short excerpt she pronounced a key imagistic word, which was shui, water, in an unusually soft way that made the sound dissolve into the accompanying flute music. As soon as the last note of the aria ended, Professor Kao, who had been very quiet and seemed to be entranced by the singing, commented without missing a beat that her way of singing the word liquefied the sound. The property of the sound was softened to accommodate, as it were, the contour of the female character s nuanced feeling. Professor Kao s connoisseur-like attention to detail in this instance, as in many others, served to spotlight a source of not only aesthetic pleasure but also insights. One remarkable aspect of Professor Kao s teaching style that made his classes very memorable was the fact he was so engrossed in the subject himself that his enthusiasm for the subject was palpable. Interrelated to his engrossment was the breadth of his intellectual interest. He could bring a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspective to bear upon a familiar topic of Chinese poetry, or examine an aspect of poetic art from an unusual vantage point because of his vast command of knowledge in other fields or disciplines than literature. He once compared unexpectedly Du Fu s Autumn Meditations, a famous eight-poem cycle of which he had co-authored with Professor Tsu-Lin Mei a detailed linguistic study, to Proust s Remembrance of Things Past (aka In Search of the Time Lost in another version of English translation). Versed in ballet and modern dance, he could refer to a feature of a pas de trois in a poetry seminar or explain the symbolizing function of poetic language in a taut, controlled form of Chinese poetry in terms of modern dance. In a session of a directed reading course I took with him, he mentioned contraction and release of modern dance when citing Li Yu s 李煜 yu mei ren 虞美人 as an example to discuss the function of poetic language structured on the grid of a pre-established ci tune pattern. As he began to recite this famous ci poem, he moved his two arms spontaneously as if to activate the patterned kinetic energy embedded in an otherwise static verbal form. With the palms of his two hands facing one another, he opened his arms farther apart and then brought them back closer to each other while reciting continuously the poem strophe by strophe or line by line at a measured pace. In tandem with his intoning of the ci lines of uneven lengths, with some lines in particular asking rhetorical questions or giving an exclamatory answer, the space between Professor Kao s arms decreased and increased alternatively in a rhythmic pattern to suggest the alternation between contraction and release of the embedded energy. As he intoned with a crescendo of voice the last line, the longest continuous syntactical construction in the poem and also the climax of the lyrical speaker s desperate feeling, Professor Kao opened his two arms farthest apart from one another with greater momentum and then poised in the air for a moment, delineating, as it were, a more pronounced expansion of space to allow for the finale of releasing accumulatively compressed energy. Together with the rich tonality of his intoning voice and his simultaneous arm movement back and forth, his discussion that day not only made clear an esoteric concept, but also etched on the mind of his one-member audience an awe-inspiring image of a master-mentor utterly committed to transmitting knowledge and dedicated to his high calling. Another memorable session of the same directed reading course stood out because of another unexpected, eyeopening view I got of him, this time through the thought-provoking comments he made on the greatness of Confucius: Confucius was great not because of [his idea of] benevolence, but because he could see and recognize the merits of other people that were superior to his, like those of Yan Hui, and because of his two principles: no assigning blame onto others, no repeating the same mistakes 不遷怒, 不二過. The quotation was translated from a letter I wrote to my parents in October, 1988 that referred to a session of the directed reading course with Professor Kao the day before. The topic of that day s discussion was the Commentaries on the Classic of Change and Zhuangzi in relation to literature. During our meeting in his office in Jones Hall, Professor Kao talked about the I-Ching Commentaries and patiently answered all my questions on Xu Fuguan s work on Zhuangzi and Chinese art, including my incredulous query on Xu s concept of aesthetic contemplation. Professor Kao s comments on the greatness of Confucius seemed unrelated to the topic of that class, but for Professor Kao, the transition was natural, organic, because art and life were integral to each other, as I came to 13

14 conclude later. Although he almost never talked directly about himself to me, I got the impression that he had an intense life of the mind and an abiding passion for art. He was visibly exultant when he talked about Charles Taylor s Sources of the Self at the time the book was just published. Some of Taylor s views were similar to his own even though he and Taylor were focusing on different frameworks of cultural values. Sure enough, a peculiar idea from Sources of the Self found its way into Professor Kao s lecture outline, printed on a one-page handout for his undergraduate class on Chinese literature, for which I served as the preceptor one semester. Another indication of his intense life of mind was that he dotted his personal copies of some of the books he had read, including Sources of the Self, with handwritten notes, filling the margins with questions and comments, sometimes copiously, as if he were carrying on a lively discussion or an intense debate with each author. His passion for art was reflected in his deep interest in twelfth-century Chinese music, for example. Once he played in class an excerpt of an audio tape of seventeen song lyrics of Jiang Kui, who not only composed the song lyrics but also created melodies, or the original ci patterns, for fourteen of these lyrics himself. The music tape, with each of the seventeen lyrics sung with accompaniment of instrument music, was produced in mainland China in 1986, based on a musicologist s 1956 translation into the modern notation from Jiang Kui s notations of the seventeen music patterns. Professor Kao explained that the only aspect of the original music that remained unknown to the modern musicologist was the pace. Apparently, the elegant modern rendering in the tape allowed as close an access to the authentic version as a modern lover of the twelfth-century poetic and musical art could get. Weeks after he played an excerpt of the tape in class I heard Professor Kao say that he had been listening to this tape every day. From his teaching and writings, and from his answers to my questions on Xu Fuguan, moreover, I gathered that Professor Kao s passion for art or his aesthetic interest in art was not that of an aesthete. Art to him was not for art s sake, but was rather for a Confucian pragmatic purpose: art for life s sake 為人生而藝術. Or, from a philosophical Daoist point of view, especially that of Zhuangzi, art was the mode of life 以人生為藝術. All in all, Professor Kao prioritized Confucius s principles of self-conduct mainly to underscore the importance of self-cultivation and self-discipline as a set of prerequisites to those who intend to implement or practice the Confucian benevolence. In his undergraduate course, he vividly highlighted benevolence ren as a fundamental Confucian concept by analyzing the two radicals of the character 仁 ren that ideogrammatically represents inter-personal relationship with which the Confucian virtue was concerned. In practical matters, Professor Kao s generosity and kindness toward his students, me included, exemplified the Confucian benevolence at a very personal level. In retrospect, the fact that he remained a profoundly modest person, consistently unassuming and self-effacing, can be traced to his keen appreciation of these Confucian principles on open-mindedness and self-humility, the principles that define the greatness of Confucius from his point of view. 虞美人 悼高友工師尊 師恩似海何當報雲淡碧空浩山青物外豁達觀賢則准身虛谷向流川 瓊樓紅葉猶相望面命書窗敞循循詩教幾多存仰止高山默啟後來人 二零一六年十一月劉婉敬賦於舊金山 14

15 彭萬墀 江青 : 獲知友工兄走了, 全家都非常難過 友工兄在三十多年前曾來巴黎旅居了一段時間, 我們得緣在文穎家結識, 相處融洽, 就成爲好友, 後來由他介紹認識了繼儉兄與大峻兄, 由此每逢暑假他們常來家裏聚合, 種種往事都留給我們深刻美麗的回憶 友工兄溫文儒雅, 學養淵博, 一向虛懷待人, 和藹可親 表面雖無狂狷行徑, 實爲天馬行空之奇人 每當聚會, 他有在座, 必定盡歡 他不是一般的善言者, 聽他談話是享受, 任何事物他都能講得深入精闢, 而又輕鬆幽默, 常常令我們聽得津津有味如坐春風 他曾和我談起很珍視你和他的情誼, 人生能有這樣的知己, 比什麼都珍貴 我們一家都痛惜他的離去, 連孩子們都難過 他的風範永遠留在我們的記憶中 鍾漢清 (Hanching Chung) 我在下周三 [11 月 23 日 ] 有一場 " 以讀者立場出發 ", 介紹高先生的錄影 我喜歡那位 : 在雅典為其學長翻譯 理想國 做序的高先生 (1979); 早上在燕京圖書準備博士論文, 下午可以追求自己的文藝節目的高先生 ; 江青 故人故事 書中的紐約 瑞典過客的高先生! 我喜歡那位指導學生 ballet 多次到巴黎訪朱德群的高先生 ; 我喜歡他退休演講末兩段, 雖然這故事的典故, 可能出自 " 筆記小說 "... Hoyt Tillman I would profoundly appreciate receiving the memorial booklet and learning more from other people's remembrances. Prof. Kao taught me first-year Chinese in the summer of 68 at Stanford. Right after our wedding in 1970, my wife Tina accompanied me to Taipei where I was a student for the academic year at the Stanford Center (IUP). I have very fond memories of the occasion during the academic year when Prof. Kao invited me and my wife to his family's home in Taipei for dinner and conversation. He was really a gracious person as well as a world-class scholar. Paula Varsano I do have some very vivid memories--many of them off campus, in fact: the train ride to New York, when he told me that it's important to take the time to live life if you really want to read literature; a day of wandering around Beaubourg in Paris (where we both just happened to be at the same time), and witnessing one moment when he was, indeed, living life. In the classroom, two moments have come, over the years, to capture the essence of Professor Kao, to my mind. One was the time he stood in front of our Tang poetry seminar and explained parallel couplets by executing a perfect plié. The other--and I tell this to my own students whenever I have the chance-- was the time when he walked into our Songci seminar and spontaneously recited Xin Qiji's "Chou Nu er": 少年不识愁滋味, 爱上层楼 爱上层楼, 为赋新词强说愁 而今识尽愁滋味, 欲说还休 欲说还休, 却道天凉好个秋 * As he recited it, he had that familiar smile, but it was softened, wistful. And as he reached the last line, he just looked upward, ever so slightly. And then he was silent, and so were we. *Editor s note: Here is a translation of Xin Qiji s song lyric, Chou Nuer 醜奴兒 : As a young man I knew not the taste of sorrow, But loved to climb the storied tower; 15

16 And to climb again, To compose a new song, I urged myself to speak of sorrow. Now that I have fully known the taste of sorrow, I would like to talk about it, and yet refrain; And again refrain, And could only say: What a chilly and fine autumn!' (Translated by Hedy Ting Bok) Maggie Bickford Maggie Bickford remembers KAO Intelligent and playful (read mischievous) in equal measure. Of course, one was never sure if one was Kao s accomplice or his target. I did my minor field with Kao in Song poetry. Faithfully, he met with me every week during that academic year. Sometimes he assigned scholarly books. I d work them up and show up ready to discuss them. He might say Not interesting or Your book will be better, then turn to other subjects. Sometimes, he would assign shi or ci. I d arrive at his office with my annotations and my list of translation questions. Once, with an elegant sweep of his hand, he dismissed my tedious quandaries and told me that with poetry, Sometimes you get it; sometimes you don t. Sometimes he would sing to me, not the words of the assigned texts, but their patterns: zepingzeze zezepingzeze.... And so I learned to read. He loved shiny things and glittery things, and scintillating things. In those days I wore an old, gold Thai ring that was inlaid with facetted, rough-cut diamonds. Kao would follow their refractions along the walls and table top as we talked about the lesson of the day. I would gesture with my right hand to make these points of light dance for him. Now and then I d tease him by aimlessly (apparently) moving my arm behind my back and disappearing the glitter. Then, I d return my hand to view, and so we continued. Had Kao not already won my heart he would have had me at my contentious dissertation defense. He was a member of my Committee. One of my examiners erupted, spewing angry questions at me, letting off hot, noxious steam. His questions were not hard ones; rather it was his self-righteousness, his intensity, and the dripping venom of his attacks. The more he fumed, the more relaxed became Kao who sat by his side. From time to time Kao would respond to one or another belligerent question by politely cocking his great head toward my interrogator, raising his eyebrows, his best beatific smile playing across his lips, as, with friendly curiosity, he said: I was wondering about that too. He was a great guy. Mary Scott Professor Kao s passing has prompted me to think again about how I got to this point in my life. He changed the course of things with a letter he sent to me in 1976, in which he urged me to think seriously about coming to Princeton. I had been planning to stay where I was, but his letter and my subsequent visit to Princeton made me realize that my plans were the product of habit rather than serious imaginative thinking. I realized as I studied with him and others at Princeton that studying Chinese literature and history was a way of engaging the entire world, and an opportunity to re-think everything I d thought up to that point. When I was thinking about a dissertation topic, it was Professor Kao who urged me to choose a beautiful and rewarding topic rather than the one I d originally had in mind, which was built rather dutifully around texts that no one would ever read for either fun or inspiration. His advice was not just pedagogically sound but quite practical: if you write on something you love, he said, you ll probably get a job. One day he introduced me to Carl Schorske s Fin de Siecle Vienna as a possible model for a book, just because he happened to be reading it at the time. I still hope to write a book like that some day. Professor Kao always made me feel that there was a world outside the classroom that informed the work we did there, and that he was a citizen of that world in ways that I aspired and still aspire-- to be. I wish now that I had been less shy and had taken more opportunities to talk with him. 16

17 Yung Sai-shing ( 容世誠 ) Hi, Kang-i, I am Yung Sai-shing, a student of Professor Kao. I graduated from Princeton in 1992 and am currently teaching at the National University of Singapore. I am sending over to you a few pictures of Professor Kao, taken on his very last day of teaching in December That year I was on sabbatical leave and was visiting EAS Department as a Visiting Fellow. I got a chance to sit in Professor Kao s last seminar. There were four students in the class, and two of them (including me) were auditing. I will never forget our last class. To me, that was such an important and memorable day. I had promised to buy a chocolate cake to celebrate after the class. Hue stopped me in good will because our mentor had diabetes. At the end of the class Professor Yu Yingshih came with a brocade of flowers, and more importantly, he presented a poem to Professor Kao on that occasion. After some photos were taken, Professor Kao and I went out together from Jones Hall. Outside was drizzling, cold, and dark. I accompanied Professor Kao all the way to Nassau Street where he took a bus back to New York. I felt really sad ( 百感交集 ) at that moment. Hope my memory of Prof. Kao is not overly sentimental. I know our mentor never liked "sentimentalism". 張鳳 驟聞高友工教授羽化, 非常悲痛震驚! 從 90 年代他普大退休前後, 長久不見回到哈佛開會敘舊的老師輩高教授, 但總感覺高友工教授他們從來沒有離開哈佛園 因為總能親炙聆聽他漾著微笑地談論中國的抒情美典和文學批評等一切美感經驗, 或論戲曲莊子惠子哲學等, 一如他的心境與理論, 煢煢獨立而繼續存在 在不同的年代, 對兩岸學界曾有廣泛啟發的 高友工震盪, 因其大作 美典 : 中國文學硏究論集 由臺大和生活 讀書 新知三聯書店分頭出版後, 他的美學經驗更加圓滿告慰他和研究夥伴們, 他們是中國古典文論系統的拓荒者 他對我刻劃他的思想寫入 哈佛心影錄 哈佛問學錄 等, 曾說 我的文章根本很少人看 給妳一寫, 倒有些看頭了 深知 : 這是不大言語, 謙抑的老前輩, 給我的莫大鼓勵 問起 您一路順利, 有沒有過挫折? 他笑答我 : 這個你問錯人了! 因為我實在是很幸運! 也許別人認為對我是挫折, 我自己都還不知道 是通達吧 我自己覺得 都沒有放在心上, 就自然解脫了, 你大概不相信我, 真的確如此 他風光霽月, 難能可貴圓成唯美歡樂的人生! 他就喜歡簡單, 簡單最難 : 尤其最後 體現了生命的智慧 這正是我們難測又難學得的高妙! 張鳳鞠躬 Niann Ing Lao Professor Yu-kung Kao was a dear friend and colleague of ours. Yan-shuan and Yu-kung spent many years together as students at the National Taiwan University, followed by many shared experiences during Harvard graduate school days in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilization. I first met Yu-kung in Palo Alto in 1961, when he was kind enough to offer Yan-shuan and me his apartment while Yan-shuan taught during the Stanford summer session. My first impression of Yu-kung was that he was a handsome young professor with a loud voice, warm smile, and great sense of 17

18 humor. We overlapped in our time in Palo Alto for a few weeks before he headed east to secure a teaching position at Princeton University. In June of 1966, we spent our first summer teaching the inaugural year of the immersive Chinese language program at Middlebury College in Vermont. Yu-kung was also teaching there, so we were able to reconnect and deepen our friendship. Yu-kung was a gourmand, not only enjoying fine dining but also preparing his own gourmet meals. Obviously the meals provided by the college were not to his liking at all. Since Yan-shuan and I were the only instructors with children that summer, we rented a house and a car. More often than not, we would find Yu-kung waiting at our car at the end of the day, and we would take him back to our house for dinner. Together we cooked elaborate Chinese meals much more suitable to his palate. One day, I made some homemade bao.tze, smaller and more uniform in size than my normal batches. When I served them the following night, along with other side dishes, Yu-kung was impressed and appreciative. To show his approval, he cleaned his plate! Half way through the meal, he excused himself for a bathroom break, since he had eaten so much. We talked and laughed till midnight. He was indeed a real 美食專家. The last time we saw Yu-kung was around We were in New York to embark on a cruise. We went to visit Yu-kung in his neighborhood in Brooklyn. Since we had not seen him in many years, we were saddened to see he was walking unsteadily with a cane. Despite this, Yu-kung treated us to a big meal at a restaurant and we had a lovely reunion, reminiscing about old times and old friends. As we left the restaurant and climbed into a cab to return to Manhattan, Yu- Kung told us not to look back; I think he wanted us to remember him as his youthful self, before any infirmity. Yu-kung was always a happy-go-lucky, optimistic, joyful, sensitive, and humorous soul. We treasured his friendship of so many years. When I had to give him the sad news of Yan-shuan s passing, he couldn t stop weeping. I will miss him deeply. Perry Link ( 林培瑞 ) 友工先生, in tandem with Professor Lao Yan-shuan 勞延煊 of Ohio State University, taught me third-year Chinese at the Middlebury Chinese School in the summer of Teacher Kao was thirty-seven years old then, and I was twentyone. It was the first year of existence of Middlebury s Chinese School and a sense of newness was in the air. There were fewer than thirty students all together, and we were spread through five levels of instruction. I had a scholarship from the National Defense Foreign Languages program that the U.S. government had recently established. It gave me $600 for ten weeks, but Middlebury s fees tuition, room, board, everything were $450. Embarrassed only briefly, I took the money and headed for the school, unwittingly destined for profit that no dollar figure could measure. During the first few days, the teaching staff were busy giving Chinese names to things buildings, streets, lawns, and students. My Chinese name, 林培瑞, was the personal invention of Teacher Kao, who was delighted by his own choice. He came to me bearing pencil and paper, excitedly explaining how both the sound and the meaning were just right. I accepted his gift immediately, not because I understood everything he was telling me about it but because of the ebullience with which he offered it. He was grinning. Everyone who ever knew and loved him knew that signature grin--wide enough to crack granite and warm enough to melt it and that was all I needed. One of the toughest of the naming problems was what to say in Chinese for the college and the town: Middlebury. This was a year before Professor Fritz Mote came up with the elegant 明德, which everyone liked. In 1966 that solution had not yet arrived. Somebody suggested 中堡, and Teacher Kao had endless fun with the notion. 中堡? Sounds like 中饱? Hah! 中饱大学! Embezzleton College? Graftbury? Hee, hee, hee! His glee was contagious. We students were enchanted even before we fully understood the pun. We students also thought the food was fairly good, but 高老師 had higher standards, indeed gourmet standards, and he gracefully let us know that ours were too low. We dined in a building called D.U. House. I didn t know (or, if I did, have now forgotten) what D.U. stood for. 高老師 knew, though. He told us the place was 地獄樓 and then flashed us his signature grin which, in this context, simultaneously meant I am joking and I am not joking. 18

19 A teacher like this makes students want to please him or her just for the joy of doing the pleasing, and that was how I felt about Teacher Kao. We third-year students wrote weekly essays for him, and I was inordinately covetous of any sign of his approval. Near the end of the summer I wrote an essay that was longer than most and on which I had worked especially hard. His summary comment at the bottom of the last page was: 寫的也明白有趣. I puzzled over those seven characters for a long time. Did 明白 modify 有趣 clearly interesting or were the two terms parallel, clear and interesting? Was 寫的 what Y.R. Chao called the predicate construction, so that it meant the writing was done in a clear and interesting way? Or was 寫的 a noun phrase with an implied noun, so that something was clear and interesting? If so, what thing? The writing? The writer? Most puzzling of all was the 也. Also? Also in addition to what? To earlier essays? The writer in addition to the writing? I could, of course, have gone to ask Teacher Kao what his phrase meant, but I didn t dare. Whatever it meant, it seemed to be some kind of affirmation, and it felt wrong to be asking a teacher to explain words of praise of oneself. It was years later that I finally realized what the 也 meant. It was the 也 that can stand for 也算. My paper 也算 interesting not as interesting, perhaps, as it might have been, or as some of my earlier ones perhaps were. It was Teacher Kao s gentle way of saying A-minus. If all that were not enough, when Teacher Kao retired from Princeton he gave me a hand-knotted green rug from his office floor. It rests still today on my office floor here in California. 柯慶明 (Ko Ching-ming) 仙人有待乘黃鶴, 海客無心隨白鷗 懷念高友工先生 高友工先生, 每當與友朋言及, 我總會自然而然的想起 : 他笑容滿面, 提高了聲調說 : 好極了! 的神情 高先生是很會稱許人 鼓勵人的一位長者 初次見面時, 一談到美學著作, 他即已向我們推崇徐復觀先生的 中國藝術精神 一書 後來他擲地作金石聲的典範之作 文學研究的理論基礎 與 文學研究的美學問題, 在 中外文學 發表時, 他卻在文後加上了一條按語, 指出他 : 談中國文化是師承徐復觀先生的看法, 講西洋文學批評大體上遵循傅瑞 (Northrop Frye) 耶考布森 (Roman Jakobson) 的理論, 至於西洋分析哲學不外用摩爾 (G. E. Moore) 維根西坦 (Wittgenstein) 奧斯汀 (Austin) 諸家 云云 但接著是出人意表的提到了 : 近人討論美學問題已不乏佳著, 姚一葦先生的巨著, 柯慶明先生的作近 ( 載 中外文學 六卷一二期及七卷一 二期 ), 自然不敢掠美, 我之所以仍然大膽提出我的讀書雜感, 不過是希望從不同角度來看一些舊問題而已 前面提到他 談中國文化 講西洋文學批評 用西洋分析哲學 所述及的諸家, 皆未見於其內文中的徵引, 我以為這其實是他委婉的在提示我們 : 一 必須要有 : 中國文化 西洋文學批評, 與分析哲學的知識背景, 列舉諸家, 更是, 二 具體進修閱讀的門徑 我自然努力依此自修, 後來亦利用到哈佛研究之便, 努力去聽了一些相關的分析哲學課程, 深覺經此向上一路的提點, 真是受益良多, 雖然我個人的具體表現仍然乏善可陳 姚一葦先生因此按語的稱許, 信心大增 當時仍在台灣銀行就職的他, 其實他的美學著述皆來自自修, 因而終於敢以他的美學著作, 提送教育部審查, 獲得正教授的資格, 而在國立藝術學院成立時, 出任戲劇系主任, 因而開啟了他晚年風起雲湧的諸多表現 同時, 他亦因此敢於向高友工先生開口, 請求他加入姚先生拉我一起創辦的 文學評論 雜誌, 擔任編輯委員, 成為繼侯健 葉慶炳 葉維廉 楊牧之後加入的第六名編輯委員 高先生不但欣然答應, 還和其他的委員們一起去照相館照了相, 作紀念 在我早先的印象裡, 高友工先生比較是 在心為志, 發言為詩 即已神完意足的 詩 人 ; 而比較不是 集札為文, 執筆作記 以求流行廣遠的 文 人或 史 家 因為他往往呈現的是 思理為妙, 神與物遊, 海闊 19

20 天空, 御風無礙, 一片神行的精神意態, 自然不樂於 筆耕 的必須積跬步乃能致千里, 因為在裁成字字句句的斷裂中, 不免遲滯顛躓 他的策略, 誠如偶然提及的, 就是和友人合著 妙悟者以意會 ; 善書者以文合 : 誠然是兩全其美之策 但是在台大客座之際, 一方面激起所謂 : 高友工旋風, 人們爭相請益 ; 一方面感覺語言飄忽, 識見不足者, 終難立即得其心意之真諦, 為便學者熟誦深識, 終於決定揮其如椽健筆, 以中文揮灑, 為我們這些關令尹們, 留下道德五千言, 開始了前述兩題三篇的寫作 或許在接下幾次返台演講的過程, 發覺台灣學界仍然理解視野不足, 因而直到 2002 年, 他繼續寫下了十篇中文 四篇英文的後續論述, 對抒情傳統與中國美典, 作了極為精闢的闡揚, 後來遂有 中國美典與文學研究論集 的出版 高友工先生在台大的客座教學, 雖然只有一學年, 但班上受業的研究生 年青學教員卻深受啟發, 因而遂有張淑香, 呂正惠 蔡英俊 等人, 對於 抒情傳統 的理念與現象作了繼起的探討, 並且各自出書 終於使得海外關懷相同議題的蕭馳教授, 相信 : 台灣有個 抒情傳統 的學術脈絡, 而興起了編輯一本理論架構與發展源流兼具的選本, 因而遂有 中國抒情傳統再發現 上下兩巨冊選集的出版, 曹溪一點水 的源頭, 其實正是高友工先生, 但高超瀟灑, 如藐姑射山的神人般的高先生, 未必對其偶然留下的指爪, 會有計東西之念 ; 更不用談所謂 開宗立派 之想了 因為他始終婉拒我們為他的著作編輯出版之議 直到 2004 年, 正好我到哥倫比亞大學研究, 我們聯合了王德威 廖炳惠和我三人之力, 反覆糾纏終於得到先生應允, 以編輯校對一概不問, 全由我獨力承擔為條件而同意 目前出版的狀態是, 迄今已經改版印刷三次, 並被選為台大出版中心廿週年紀念叢書之一, 緊列在臺靜農老師的 中國文學史 之後, 因而今後之研讀者正方興未艾 我因授課時間與高先生在台大的課程衝堂, 痛失於班上聆聽請益的良機, 所幸高先生亦答應了我請他到我們一批年青教員與研究生組成的 文學討論會 上演講, 結果講了三次, 對我們自是大開眼界, 醍醐灌頂 後來我去紐約, 高先生除了指點我去參觀一些可能忽略的小而精美的私立美術館之外, 特地親自帶我去販賣中文書的書店, 讓我注意中國大陸在近年來中國美學研究上的發展, 我因此在教學與研讀上, 就由詩論 文論而擴充到樂論 畫論與書論, 並稍涉園林與建築美學 可惜學力不足, 僅只草成了一篇論謝赫六法的粗淺文字, 有負高先生的鼓勵 今年三月我出版了費時十年, 以十八種傳統實用文類 從 作為文學類型之美感特質 角度加以探討, 而以 古典中國實用美學 作為書名的新書 出版之際, 因正身陷病榻, 掙扎完稿, 勉強付梓, 不免精神恍惚 出版之後, 才豁然醒悟自己頗為辭費的所謂 文學類型之美感特質 云云, 其實不過是高先生所謂的 美典 之一種, 竟然忘了在謝詞, 向高先生致意 : 謝謝您開啟了這些美學思維! 只是晚了一步, 昔人已乘黃鶴去, 此地空餘黃鶴樓, 我極目仰望, 徒見碧空無盡, 天雲舒卷, 遂想 風簷展書讀, 或許彷彿亦可略見 典型在宿昔, 我, 我們懷念高友工先生 C. C. Chang ( 張欽次 ) Fond Memories of Prof. Yu-kung Kao I first heard about Prof. Kao when I came to Princeton in 1966 to pursue my doctorate in Civil and Geological Engineering. In those days, there were very few students from Taiwan and none from Mainland China. (Kang-i was still in Taiwan then; she did not join me until the summer of 1968). One of my hobbies then was going to the Gest Library to borrow Chinese books. It was in the reading room of Gest Library that I got to know some East Asian Studies professors and students. Many times I ran into Prof. Kao; later I heard he was not only a distinguished professor in his field but also an expert in many forms of art, including dance. After I graduated from Princeton in 1970, I took a teaching job in South Dakota, where Kang-i was working on a Master s Degree in American Literature. It did not take Kang-i long to make up her mind to go back to Princeton to study 20

21 under Prof. Kao. Both Kang-i and I knew that was the right way to go, even though it would be tough for us to live so far apart. (By then I had already relocated to St. Louis.) That was the year To this day, I still remember the phone conversation I had with Prof. Kao, on the night before I drove Kang-i all the way from St. Louis to Princeton. On the phone, Professor Kao was extremely kind and considerate, saying that he would do everything he could to help Kang-i. The next day we arrived in Princeton, and a few hours later we were already in Prof. Kao s office asking his advice on all sorts of things. I had to rush back to St. Louis the following day. But from that point on, we had become close friends with Prof. Kao. Studying with Prof. Kao was one of the most important things in Kang-i s life. And throughout the years I have witnessed how Prof. Kao s teaching has touched a life forever. After we had moved to Connecticut in 1982, we continued to visit Prof. Kao in New York City. Whenever we met, either in Starbucks or a restaurant, he was always cheerful and inspiring. He often gave us books after he finished reading them. Once we became greedy and got all the copies from his Shakespearean collection. He then became worried that we wouldn t be able to carry the books all the way to New Haven, so he accompanied us to the local post office to have the books shipped to our home. In recent years, we noticed his physical condition became weaker and weaker, but he was always sharp and alert. I still cannot believe that Prof. Kao has left us. I will miss him forever and will think of him as living in the hearts of those he touched. 孫康宜 (Kang-i Sun Chang) 懷念恩師高友工 四天前高友工教授靜靜地走了, 他走得那麼突然 我想他是為了避免和親友們告別, 所以才在大家不注意的時刻, 獨自離開了這個世界 其實我們無法確定他去世的具體時間 據朋友江青告訴我, 友工師過去時大約是 10 月 28 日晚到 10 月 29 日清晨 ( 美國東岸時間 ) 之間, 是在安睡中去世的, 那正是三更半夜的清靜時刻 ( 其實, 在那以前的幾個鐘頭, 他還和朋友吃了晚飯, 完全沒有異樣 ) 連他去世的方式也充滿了詩意 我想起了他經常朗誦的一首唐詩 : 人閑桂花落, 夜靜春山空 月出驚山鳥, 時鳴春澗中 ( 王維 ) 詩中描寫一個十分幽靜的境界, 因為 夜靜, 所以連明月都能驚動山鳥 我想 10 月 29 日清晨友工師大概是在這樣一個幽靜的夜晚離開了 雖然他一直住在紐約市中心, 但我知道他的心靈深處總是閑靜的 尤其是, 他最喜欢陶渊明的 問君何能爾, 心遠地自偏 等詩句 因為他心遠, 所以凡事都顯得灑脫 最近一兩年來, 友工師的身體開始變得十分虛弱, 甚至無法下床, 令人非常擔憂 但每回在電話上和他聊天, 他總是談笑風生, 與從前沒有兩樣 去年聖誕前夕, 我在電話中表示擔心他的生活起居, 因怕他一人獨處會出事 但他卻引用 莊子 的章節來安慰我, 表示萬物的變化從來沒有停過, 生死也屬於這種變化之中, 接著他說 : 像我這把年紀, 其實生與死都沒什麼關係了 當時我除了表示尊敬以外, 還能說什麼呢? 後來掛了電話, 再重複溫習他所說的話, 更加對於他的人生意境與智慧感到默契於心, 心領神會 其實我從普大畢業已經快四十年了, 但對我來說, 友工師一直是我的終身導師, 他那種處事不驚的態度, 總令我萬分敬佩 幾天來, 我一直在回憶友工師這許多年來給我的幫助 他是一位名符其實的 師父, 懂得如何因材施教, 同時他施教的方式總是和個人生命合在一起, 所以令人難以忘懷 現在他突然不在了, 更讓我珍惜他一直以來給我的啟發和教訓 記得 1973 那年我剛進普大念東亞系博士班時, 他曾對我說 : 最美的人生有如絕句 據他解釋, 那是因為, 絕句雖短, 卻有 意在言外 ( 尤其是尾聯 ) 的作用 人的生命也是如此, 再長的生命終究是 短暫 的 一個人必須懂得珍惜那個短暫, 人生才能顯得美麗而富有詩意 直到今天, 我已經進入了古稀之年, 但友工師這句話還是讓我受益不盡 還記得有一年秋天, 我被許多事情弄得煩惱不堪, 他就向我教訓道 : 你應當把你的工作比成跳舞 比方說, 你自己在家練習跳舞繞圈時, 必須繞個一百二十圈 但你真正上台表演時, 最好只繞十二圈, 這樣你就會 21

22 有舉重若輕的自信 他的話使我恍然大悟, 立刻意識到自己個性上那種太過執著的缺陷 因為人生總有許多不如意的情況, 而且前面的路程茫茫不測, 我們就很容易經常被外物所累, 所以應當培養 舉重若輕 的藝術境界, 才能自由自在地翱翔於世 當時我立刻聯想到友工師在課堂上經常引用的 莊子 逍遙遊 : 北冥有魚, 其名為鯤 鯤之大, 不知其幾千里也 化而為鳥, 其名為鵬 心想, 我應當努力修養自己, 希望能在魚中作鯤, 這樣才能化為大鵬而逍遙遨遊 在唐詩的課堂上, 友工師最喜歡引用王維的詩句 特別是他給 行到水窮處, 坐看雲起時 ( 王維, 終南別業 ) 那兩句詩的解釋, 令我終身難忘 他說 : 如果有一天你走到窮途末路時 (dead-end), 千萬不要喪氣, 你要從容地坐看雲起, 這樣就會絕處逢生 而且他要我們注意王維詩中接下來的最後兩句 : 偶然值林叟, 谈笑無還期 意思是說 : 在山窮水盡之時, 我們偶然也會遇到某個有趣的老人, 也能談得十分愉快, 甚至樂而忘返 其實這就是友工師心目中最看重的友誼, 尤其是 知己 的概念 他所謂的 知己 是基於 莊子 那種 相忘以生, 無所終窮 的君子之交, 不是甜如蜜的小人之交 所以他經常向我們解說 莊子 大宗師 裡有關子桑戶 孟子反 子琴張三人為友的那一段 : 三人相視而笑, 莫逆於心, 遂相為友 大意是說, 三個陌生人突然碰在一起, 他們只要相視而笑, 心心相印, 就自然結為好友 據友工師的解讀, 那種 莫逆於心 的境界可以引申到詩人與跨時代知心讀者的永恆交誼, 即杜甫所謂 蕭條異代不同時 的意境 ( 詠懷古跡 其二 ) 晚年的友工師生活極其簡樸, 因此經常使我聯想到劉禹錫的 陋室銘 : 山不在高, 有仙則名 ; 水不在深, 有龍則靈 斯是陋室, 惟吾德馨 與劉禹錫相同, 友工師雖住在簡陋的房子, 他的德行卻永遠馨香遠播 多年來他所交往的朋友和苦心栽培的學生們無可計數, 那種知識和情感交流一直在 莫逆於心 的談笑中進行 他的生活是如此的簡單樸素, 但他的精神生活卻無限地富有 我何幸而成為友工師的門徒, 我能藉著這篇短文來紀念我的恩師, 也算是我對他無限感激的一種表示 ( 載於 明報月刊, 2016 年 12 月號 ) The English version: Kang-i Sun Chang 門人孫康宜寫于 2016 年 11 月 2 日 In Memory of Beloved Professor Yu-kung Kao Four days ago, Professor Yu-kung Kao left this world very suddenly. I believe that, in order to avoid saying goodbye to friends and family, he departed at a time when no one noticed and left this world alone. We do not actually know his time of death. According to what his friend Chiang Ching told me, Master Yu-kung passed away in his sleep in the peaceful early hours between 10/28 and 10/29 (Eastern time). (A few hours before then, he even went out with friends to eat at a French restaurant and had acted very normally.) Even the way in which he passed was filled with poetry. I think of a poem by the Tang poet Wang Wei (699 or ) that he often recited: In our idleness, cinnamon blossoms fall/ In night quiet, spring mountains stand empty/ Moon startles mountain birds/ here and there, cries in a spring gorge. (translated by David Hinton). The poem describes a fairly peaceful environment; because the night is quiet, even the bright moon can startle the mountain birds. I imagine that in the early hours of October 29, Master Yu-Kung left on such a still night. Though he always lived in the heart of New York City, I know that the depths of his heart were always still. He especially liked such verses as Tao Yuanming s (365?-427) couplet from a Drinking Wine poem: You wonder how this could ever be possible/whenever the mind is distant the place would be remote. Because Professor Kao s heart was distant, everything was free and at ease. In the last year or two, Master Yu-Kung had grown weaker, sometimes unable to leave his bed, worrying people a great deal. But every time I called him to chat, he was always as cheerful and witty as always. Last year on Christmas Eve, I expressed concerns over his everyday life, fearing that something would happen to him as he lived alone. But he comforted me with 22

23 quotes from the Daoist Zhuangzi and then said: At my age life and death do not matter anymore. This is because, as he explained, change in all created things cannot be stopped. On the phone, apart from expressing my respect, what could I say? After I hung up, while reviewing his words again, I took his life philosophy and wisdom even more to heart, understanding it more thoroughly. It had been nearly forty years since I had graduated from Princeton University, but to me, Master Yu- Kung was a lifelong mentor: the unruffled attitude with which he treated everything always inspired my respect. In the past few days, I have been recollecting the help Professor Kao gave me these many years. He was truly a master at his craft of knowing how to teach students; at the same time, the way he taught a student always aligned with that individual s life, making him very memorable. Now that he is suddenly gone, I treasure even more the enlightenment and lessons he gave me. I remember when I first entered the Ph.D. class at Princeton University s East Asian Studies Department in 1973, he once said to me, The most beautiful life is like the jueju (quatrain). Per his explanation, this is because, though the jueju poetic form is short, it connotes the effect of a meaning outside the text (especially in the latter couplet.) Life is the same; even the longest life is still brief. A person must learn to treasure that brief period, so that life will be beautiful and full of poetic meaning. To this day, I have entered my seventies, but I still benefit endlessly from these words of Master Yu-Kung. I also remember one year in autumn, I was worried over several issues, and he told me, You ought to compare your work to dance. For example, while practicing dance at home, you must dance a hundred and twenty circles. But when you truly perform on stage, it s best if you only dance twenty circles; it is thus that you will have the confidence to make difficult moves seem easy. His words enlightened me, and instantly I saw the flaw of excessive dedication in my character,. Because life will always have undesirable circumstances, and the road ahead of us is unknown, we are often burdened with outside concerns; thus we ought to adopt an artistic boundary of making difficult moves seem easy, and only then can we freely soar over the world. At the time I instantly thought of the Xiao yao you ( Free and Easy Wandering ) chapter from Zhuangzi that Professor Kao often invoked in class: In the northern darkness there is a fish and his name is Kun. The Kun is so huge I don t know how many thousand li he measures. He changes and becomes a bird whose name is Peng... (translation by Burton Watson). I thought I ought to diligently improve myself and be a legendary Kun among fish, and only then could I become a great Peng bird of legend and soar high above. In our class on Tang poetry, Master Yu-kung liked to use Wang Wei s poetry. I can never forget his explanation of these two famous lines of Wang Wei s poetry, I walk to the place where the water ends/and sit and watch the time when clouds rise. ( Zhongnan Retreat, translated by Pauline Yu). He said, If someday you reach a dead-end, do not despair; you must unhurriedly sit and gaze upon the clouds, and that is how you will find your way out of a difficult situation. He also wanted us to pay special attention to the last two lines in Wang Wei s poem: Meeting by chance an old man of the forest/i chat and laugh without a date to return. This means that, in times when we have reached the end of the line with nowhere to go, we may randomly meet some interesting old person and can still chat happily, perhaps even forget to return. This was the sort of friendship that Professor Kao valued most, especially the concept of the one who knows me (zhiji 知己 ). What he meant by the one who knows me came from Zhuangzi s kind of pure friendship between gentlemen; not the honey-sweet relationships of lesser people. So, he often explained to us the passage in Zhuang Zi about the three friends Master Sanghu, Mengzi Fan, and Master Qinzhang: The three men looked at each other and smiled. There was intimacy in their hearts and so they became friends. It meant, three strangers suddenly meet, all they need to do is look amongst themselves and smile, their hearts beating together, then they naturally become good friends. Per Professor Kao s reading, that kind of intimacy of the heart can extend to the eternal friendship between poets and their readers spanning different generations. In his later years, Professor Kao s life grew extremely simplified, often making me think of Liu Yuxi s ( ) essay, Lou shi ming ( An Inscription on a Humble Dwelling ): A mountain need not be high; it becomes renowned when immortal beings live in it. A body of water need not be deep; as long as there are dragons hidden in it, it will become sacred. This hut of mine is rather shabby, but my virtue will carry its fragrance afar. Like Liu Yuxi, though Professor Kao lived in a plain house, his character was forever excellent. The friends he made and students he painstakingly taught over many years are innumerable; the exchange of that kind of knowledge and emotion always advanced in talks of intimacy of the heart. His life was simple, but his spirit was boundlessly rich. I was fortunate to study under Professor Kao, and to commemorate my beloved teacher in this short tribute is one expression of my boundless gratitude. 23

24 Kang-i Sun Chang November 2, 2016 (I wish to give thanks to Victoria Sancilio, for her help in translation.) Yuqian Cai 蔡雨钱 As perhaps the youngest to write a tribute to Professor Yu-kung Kao, I hope I do not have the least to say. This is because being born six decades apart might not be a barrier to understanding, but rather a sign for the perseverance of a tradition that Professor Kao carried on and embodied. That tradition is immense and multifarious, but what s particularly pertinent to me here is the Chinese lyrical tradition. I remember the afternoon when Professor Kang-i Sun Chang told her class that her mentor passed away. Having just checked out Shuqing zhi xiandaixing (The Modernity of Lyricism) from the library before class and noticed Professor Kao s article in the multi-authored collection of essays, I quietly drew out the book from my bag and held it in my hand under the table as if holding an inherited talisman. It might be a coincidence that the beginning of my study on lyricism witnessed the passing of a pioneering scholar in the field, but it is no accident that Professor Kao s work on lyric aesthetics would continue to inspire lyric visions for the generations to come. Whereas words preserve memories, at least for me, reading him has become a lyrical moment that transgresses losses and reconnects the human with nature, the forgotten with the remembered, and the living with the dead. 葉維漢 (Yap Weihan) 好 我自 明月 十二月份讀了 寫的 懷念恩師高友工 一文 觸動了我的思緒 隨函寄上數幅我的塗 鴉 作為對高友工教授的永久的紀念 * *Editor s note: Ye Wei Han is a famous calligrapher in Jakarta, Indonesia. He did several calligraphy works as a commemoration of Prof. Kao, after reading Kang-i Sun Chang s 孫康宜 published article, In Memory of Beloved Prof. Yu-kung Kao (懷念恩師高友工) in Ming-Pao Monthly (December, 2016). One of these pieces quoted Prof Kao's words:" The most beautiful life is like a Jueju (quatrain)." 最美的人生有如絕句. The rest of the pieces are lines quoted from Wang Wei s 王维 poems, which Prof Kao loved to recite. Chu Hung-lam 朱鴻林 A treasured teaching of Professor Yu-kung Kao I was sad and somewhat surprised when I heard about the passing of Professor Kao Yu-kung. His smile and humor has suggested to me a life that will never end. I attended his Tang poetry seminar in the late 1970s and took the field of Chinese Literature under him in my general examinations in the spring of One question I can recall is this: are Du Fu s Qiuxing/秋興 poems conceived as a suite? I cannot remember how I answered it to his satisfaction or the lack of it. In the oral examination he made the comment that few, if any, lyrical poems (ci) begin with 5-character lines. Inexplicable even to myself, I blurted out that Su Dongpo s Shuidiaoge tou 水調歌頭 did and it ended so as well. He appeared amazed. I passed his part of the general examinations in between the parts examined by Professor Peterson and Professor Mote. I did not go on to learn more of Chinese literature from him as I was immersed in the study of Ming history and late imperial Chinese intellectual history. But this teacher of profound wisdom, a modern intellectual well versed in Chinese and Western poetic and philosophic traditions, gave me a teaching that I take to heart to this day. In one of our conversations, he reminded me not to cite or apply theories in vogue unless you were versed in the secondary literature of them. And, falling reputation awaits you when you unwittingly behave like a master some people said you were. These remarks sound 24

25 Daoist, but they are truly insightful and helpful, and the older I grow the more I think so. They still cast an influence on me, and I am grateful to Kao Laoshi for conveying them to me. 張淑香 (Cheung Suk-Hong) 一生 游於藝 的奇人懷念高友工教授 雖然知道高先生近年來身體不大好, 一旦聽聞他遠逝的消息, 還是不免驚愕難過. 從此在我們所熟悉的學術小世界, 又失去了一位敬愛的長者了. 初識高先生是 1978 他到臺大來客座的那年. 當時我正處在育嬰與教學的雙重壓力之下, 本來無力及於其他. 但高先生的課怎能錯過, 還是每次拖著睡眠不足的倦軀去聽課. 從此我和當時在修課的同學如蔡英俊, 呂正惠等人深受莫大的啟發, 全都被高先生的講學與著作所掀起的那陣學術新風捲走. 那年之後, 高先生又數度受邀回台灣演講, 當時乃有所謂 高友工旋風 高友工震盪 的美談, 委實是學界轟動一時的盛事. 就我所知, 從來沒有一位學者對台灣的學術界, 尤其在文學研究方面, 具有如此鉅大而又深遠的影響力. 高先生那些年所播下的 抒情 種子, 真如旋風與地震, 廣延四方. 直到如今, 對於 抒情傳統 的研究論述, 仍在兩岸三地與海外綿延不斷. 高先生在臺大的那年, 他的研究室與我的和柯慶明的都同在文學院新大樓. 有時相遇, 就有機會與高先生聊天. 我們不但有文學的共同話題, 也會繞着舞蹈的話題旋轉. 我在香港長大, 從小迷戀芭蕾舞, 想不到高先生竟是 舞道 高人. 我們也談到當時活躍於台北的雲門舞集, 高先生對舞蹈的熱愛與博知讓我又上了一門課外課. 當時覺得中文系的老師多半是一些老教授, 難得竟有高先生這樣一位奇特的另類師長可以和我這個小輩暢談分享對芭蕾的狂熱, 真是一件新鮮又驚奇的事情 年, 我參與崑劇青春版 牡丹亭 的製作, 此後與高先生見面, 我們的話題又多了崑曲此一同好. 人生的遇合難料, 自 70 年代受教之後, 從 80 年代開始, 我與柯慶明竟有幸數度與高先生在紐約相聚, 讓我對高先生有更多的體會認識. 對於我們這些後輩學子來說, 高先生當真是高山仰止的大學者, 但他對年青人也恆是那麼平易親切, 笑口常開 ; 說話幽默又直率. 我個人的體會總覺得高先生是個絕頂聰明的高人, 他自有清奇狂狷通透的一面, 但與人相處, 則周到又温暖, 就如大家所常稱說的, 使人煦煦然如沐春風. 每次我們到紐約, 高先生總要相約見面請吃飯. 有一次我們到中國城一家名為 四五六 的餐館, 高先生是有名的美食家, 我特別偏愛他點的其中兩道菜. 一道是紅燒烏參, 另一道是黃魚腐皮卷. 回到台北後, 我意猶未盡, 連做夢都夢到這兩道菜. 但幾年後再到中國城, 發現這家餐館竟消失不見了. 如今高先生也走了. 我這才意識到, 我對那兩道菜的眷念, 其實是與高先生的盛情美意分不開的. 有機會能與高先生一起談詩論文, 共話芭蕾崑曲, 共享美饌佳餚的美好經驗, 實在太令我難忘了. 有一次我在哥大訪問半年, 自此更知道高先生對各種藝術的狂熱與高深的造詣, 他經常流連於各種表演藝術與劇場之間, 也曾受邀在大都會博物館演講. 我感覺高先生在紐約這個大都會中悠遊於各種藝術, 真是如魚得水. 他一生游於藝, 對藝術的熱愛造釀他在多種領域高超的妙悟, 而他更將其妙悟的藝術精神境界注入教學與著作, 啟迪無數學子. 從我看來, 造成學界的 旋風 與 震盪 的, 正是源自高先生 游於藝 深厚的精神內蘊. 而在時間的無垠中, 我輩此世竟得遇見受教於高先生這樣一位良師奇人, 開展我們對 抒情傳統 無限風光異采的想像, 實屬至幸. 我與柯慶明最後一次見到高先生距今大概也有十年了. 那時候高先生走路已不太好, 但他還是堅持要到哥大附近來和我們餐叙, 在座的還有商偉與彭昕. 席間他談到有好些食物醫生已經禁止他吃了. 我想高先生一向是個美食家, 這對他肯定是很難受無奈的事. 結果那次他其實沒吃多少, 應是為了和我們大家見面而來. 高先生身為長輩, 如此厚待我們這些後生小輩, 也是非常難得少見的. 分手的時候, 目送他行步蹣跚遠去的背影, 我心裏實在是難過得不得了. 更想不到當時眼中的那個背影, 竟成了高先生與我們最後的離別. 一生游於藝, 高先生不虛此生, 活得真豐美又精彩, 誠得人間的至福. 聞說高先生是在夜裏悄然離世的. 我不禁想像, 高先生在夜深人靜後, 揚塵飄然飛升而逝的清影, 必也依然輕妙, 依然瀟灑. 而先生留給我們的, 則是深遠的思念, 無盡的感懷. 25

26 Ze eva Cohen* In memory of Professor Yu-Kung Kao It is with deep gratitude that I think of Professor Kao and his great contribution to the development of the Dance Program at Princeton University. It was in Fall 1969, the first year women undergraduate students were admitted to Princeton, that I first met him. There is no doubt in my mind that it was his unfailing guidance and mentorship that helped me--a young professional dancer with no experience in navigating the academic world--set the firm foundation for what eventually would become a highly successful and independent dance program. Professor Kao had a deep love and appreciation of dance as a theatrical art form. He was an avid dance viewer, and his knowledge of dance history and aesthetic was informed by his practical studies of classical ballet and modern dance. His full support for the method I chose in teaching beginning adult students of dance to create their own dances through play and improvisation was reassuring. Kao s deep belief in dance, especially its creative vitality and power of expression in shaping the physical and mental development of students, was fundamental in guiding members of the Creative Arts Committee and the higher administration in the early 1970 s. Kao s assistance was also essential in encouraging students progress and their demands in obtaining credit and further curricular development for their dance studies. I fully credit Kao s contribution to the fact that 50 of the 60 students registered to the first co-ed modern dance class in 1969 were male. This was partly due to the fact that men at that time were challenging the traditional male role and image, and also the fact that the number of women undergraduates was small. Mostly, however, it was Kao s great impact in introducing dance classes as an alternative to the mandatory physical education, prior to co-education, that led to its inclusion in the Creative Arts Program when Princeton opened its gates to undergraduate women. To me, Kao s enthusiasm for the unconventional ways I chose in teaching the beginning dance students was most inspiring. Unlike traditional methods that taught particular movement vocabulary, aiming at technical perfection prior to giving students creative license, I was emphasizing discovery through play and spontaneity. Teasing the unknown was more important than knowing the technical specifics, and students were thriving and developing in leaps and bounds (rapidly) under my direction. How a man, whose life s pursuit was the appreciation and love of the written word, could so passionately advocate the importance of dance and its creative and communicative power continues to be a marvel to me. We--the dancers, as well as former students who became professional dance artists and those who became lovers of dance--are deeply indebted and grateful to Professor Kao for that. Ze eva Cohen Editor s note: Ze eva Cohen is Professor Emerita, Founder and Head of Dance , Dance Program, Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University. Peter Rupert Lighte Prof. Kao Yu-kung On a sultry summer day in 1969, I arrived at Princeton on my very first visit wearing a wool suit. I had been dispatched here with great purpose, passed from Prof. Franz Michael to Prof. Fritz Mote, colleagues from their days at the University of Washington. While not knowing what to expect that day, the lack of occasion was hardly in keeping with my own delight at simply being here. I haplessly wandered about the campus, finally directed by a sympathetic proctor to a warren of offices in East Pyne. I started knocking on doors, getting no response; and then one finally swung open, placing 26

27 me more in the beam of a searchlight than a grin. It was Prof. Kao Yu-kung who not only welcomed me to Princeton that day, but squired me about, forever giving me the gift of a first impression that went on to be embroidered by many others, but never surpassed for warmth. When the term began that autumn, I found myself in a Chinese language class taught by a stunning duo that defined Princeton s very quality: Prof. Kao and the finest teacher imaginable, the legendary Mrs. T ang Nai-ying. While struggling to keep my head above water during those early sessions, I had the pleasure of taking a stroll across campus with Prof. Kao one morning when he let slip his interest in dance. Both needy and intimidated, I feared appearing foolish, either in silence or in voice. City Center suddenly came to mind. My mother had long worked there and always insisted upon dragging me to all programs while I was growing up. When I had once taken umbrage at attending a dance recital, she told me that I was not entitled to an opinion born of ignorance. After attending the performance, she assured me, I would have the right to decline in the future. During an inviting pause on our walk, I mentioned Judith Jamison, Alvin Ailey s lead dancer, and how I had come to know her. Since the thrill of first seeing Revelations under the cosh of my mother when the company was coming of age at City Center, I became a fan; and much to my delight, Prof. Kao just about took flight himself as he went on to share his insights into the world of ballet. Clearly, his was a winged life. As the year unfolded and I tentatively found my stride, I was well stuck into my Chinese homework one day in the old Gest Library upstairs in Firestone. Suddenly, I was aware of someone hovering above me. It was Prof. Kao whose sudden appearance was startling. Clearly, he was on a mission, but one unrelated to our reading of Mao s essay on Bai Qiu en. He asked me to step out for a quick word. As I anxiously stood before him, he seemed more the shuffling schoolboy, finally wondering aloud if he could approach my mother for tickets to a very specific ballet performance at Lincoln Center, having exhausted all of his usual contacts. I immediately put him at ease, offering a level of assurance far beyond my knowledge of her capabilities. After we parted company, I made a mad dash for a payphone to call my mother. Sensing that my over promising to Prof. Kao was stressful enough, she graciously offered to help. In his lights, she had done the impossible; and we were both shortly invited to supper at a Chinese restaurant on lower Fifth Avenue, opposite the Flatiron Building, where he was clearly very much at home. The evening was a delight and I was excused from subsequent occasions during which my mother and my professor established their very own friendship. At the end of the year, I was bound for Taichung, the home not only of Tunghai University, where I was to study Chinese, but of Prof. Kao s father, a retired engineer, educator and gentleman of public distinction who had brought his family to Taiwan late in the year Not long after I had taken up residence in the dorm on the side of Ta-tu Mountain, which was mowed by goats, I received a message from Mr. Kao that I would be picked up for lunch on Sunday by his driver. At the appointed time, an enormous black car with running boards crept down my country lane and I went off to spend the day with Mr. Kao and other family members. There would be many such delightful occasions over the course of my sojourn in Taiwan; and upon my return to Princeton, when I sought out Prof. Kao to express my gratitude, I was asked to sit down in his office. He could not hear enough about his family in rural Taiwan; and at subsequent times, he would often encourage me to revisit my experiences, taking pleasure in further details of my visits back in Taichung. I came to feel that I had been given a gift, enabling me not only to find my way into a splendid family, but also to provide long distance good offices between my professor and his father. I had knocked on the right door. CHARLES EGAN We all have our Kao stories. Here s mine. I once wrote a seminar paper for him that I thought was pretty good, and asked him if it was publishable. He replied, I ve seen lots of things worse than this published. Haha! I loved that. Everything I ve done professionally in the academic world, whether in print or in the classroom, has been built on the foundation Prof. Kao gave me. I will be forever grateful. I will miss him. Best wishes to all Princeton teachers, classmates, and friends. If I could be there with you today, I would wear a pair of purple corduroy pants and an old sweatshirt in Prof. Kao s honor. Keep the tradition going! 27

28 Tonglin Lu Professor Kao Yu-kung s Unforgettable Smile As the first literature student from Mainland China at Princeton, I always remember my semester in fall 1983, in which Professor Kao taught Song ci. Almost everything he said appeared so insightful and so exciting in class that I couldn t help wanting to participate; but I had formal language training only in French not in English. At that time, because of my heavy French and Chinese accent, a shop owner could not even understand my simplest expression in English; how could I dare to engage in sophisticated literary discussions in an advanced graduate seminar? Nevertheless, whenever I wanted to participate but felt intimated, Professor Kao almost always noticed it and asked me often with his unforgettable smile: Tonglin, would you like to say something? a repeated question that challenged and encouraged me to express my opinion freely in graduate seminars regardless of my language deficiency. (I am sure I also made my other Princeton professors suffer for that). In 1985, I handed in the draft of my first dissertation chapter to my professors. Professor Kao gave me five pages of critique in Chinese pointing to my problems in every aspect with incredible clarity and sharpness. After having read his comments several times, I dispiritedly sat in front of the university gate on Nassau Street for hours, while increasingly feeling obligated to work much harder to meet his expectations a promise that unfortunately I have not yet been able to keep as time goes by. Now Professor Kao has left us, but his unforgettable smile always remains in my mind like a veil that mystified and at the same time revealed his personality so well intelligent, ironic, and at the same time kind and generous. 陳國球 懷念高友工先生 在我的感覺中, 高友工先生和我很親近, 但我們卻素未謀面 我敬重的朋友 前輩如孫康宜教授 柯慶明教授 蔡英俊教授 呂正惠教授等, 都曾親炙於高先生 ; 我常從他們口中聽得高先生的音容笑貌 我最好奇的是, 高先生文章以 深奧 難懂 馳名, 他平時的言談會不會是同樣的高邁幽玄? 從我多年遍訪所得悉, 高先生雖是瀟灑絕倫, 但親和可近, 別具魅力 以此印證我讀高先生文章三十年的經驗, 原來是相通的 當年, 在香港要考大學預科的公開試, 中文科範文就有杜甫 秋興八首 記得我第一次在圖書館捧讀 中外文學 的 分析杜甫的 秋興 : 試從語言結構入手作文學批評 ( 由高友工 梅祖麟合著 ) 時, 心弦為之震動, 難以言說 從進入香港大學中文系開始, 高先生的文章是我問學歷程的重要導航 William Empson Northrop Frye Charles Taylor, 一一來到案前 ; 順着波湧卻勝景不絕的航道, 我也從專注文本多義, 轉進人文精神的思考 2002 年我在美國一家大學圖書館讀到 中國文化史中的抒情傳統, 對高先生的敬仰之情, 更是浹髓淪肌 孟子說 : 予未得為孔子之徒也, 予私淑諸人也 大概十年前, 北京三聯書店編輯曾誠兄知我在研究所開課講高友工與中國詩學, 就和我商量高先生 美典 : 中國文學研究論集 一書的編輯體例 ; 我很高興在高先生著述面向相對陌生的一個華文讀者群時, 我有機會出一分力 去年臺灣大學出版 中國美典與文學研究論集 紀念專輯版, 約請我寫 導讀, 我馬上答允, 黽勉經營出一篇讀書心得 在高先生學問大道前, 我之所為是微末塵輕 然而一點一滴, 都加我以力, 繼續走在以文字文化為信仰的人生旅程 高友工先生飄然遠去, 但光被四表, 照亮我們的生命 2017 年 1 月 15 日於溫州街客舍 28

29 Leo Ou-fan Lee ( 李歐梵 ) In Memory of Kao Yu-kung I have lost touch with Yu-kung for quite some time. The last time I heard from him was through a printed book a new edition of his penultimate work, Meidian 美典, which itself has become a classic. It arrived in the mail with a brief note: with compliments from the author. I was touched, for Yu-kung had not forgotten me, this young (I was then just over thirty) and naïve novice, a newcomer to Princeton, who was utterly unprepared for the super-sophisticated and intellectually super-powered community of scholars of Chinese studies. Yu-kung took care of me instantly perhaps precisely because of my intellectual naiveté. I was hired to teach modern Chinese history in the History Department, while also offering a course on modern Chinese literature. As a refined classicist, Yu-kung, like most of his colleagues in Jones Hall, disdained modern Chinese writers as a matter of course --with the possible exception of Lao She, whose idiomatic Peking Mandarin (a true aristocratic representative) style was somehow to his liking. However, this did not detract him from his own concern for me as a friend. And I am eternally grateful. Especially when four years later my own tenure case hung in the air, as suddenly I found myself either evaded or ignored, Yu-kung was one of the very few senior colleagues who gave me sound advice and moral encouragement. I still remember what he told me (though I am sure he has forgotten), using a typical phrase from folk literature: junzi baochou shinian weiwan 君子報仇十年未晚 or something like that. More than half a century has passed, and I too have become old, this heroic phrase now sounds like a joke. Still, at that time, on the eve of my departure, I was almost moved to tears. His words were the only warm note that stayed in my heart. In a way, Yu-kung had, in the nick of moment, decided my academic fate by advising me to pursue a career that focused on what I truly was interested in modern Chinese literature, not history. Thus I took his advice, went to Indiana, and started my revenge by helping to establish modern Chinese literature as a legitimate field in the US universities. Now that I am retired from that field, I can afford to laugh, though I remain deeply grateful to him. I used to say to mutual friends that if Yu-kung, with his graceful manners and broad smile, not to mention his profound scholarship and utterly original and scintillating ideas, cut a unique aristocratic figure in Princeton and elsewhere, I was then merely a pedestrian, at best a vulgar bourgeois who could admire him only from afar. Still, he befriended me, and occasionally went with me and our mutual good friend Chiang Qing 江青 (a famous dancer in her own right) to operatic and dance performances in New York City. Indeed that experience had become my own education in the arts. As we all know, Yu-kung s artistic taste was impeccable. In classical music my favorite art form he preferred only the 18 th century and earlier; he listened only to chamber music and pure singing, while I still became absorbed in the big 19 th century romantic orchestral repertoire. He and Chiang Ching taught me how to appreciate modern ballet and other forms of modern dance. His commentaries on dance, as was well known, even won the admiration of the NY Times dance critic. Only recently in Hong Kong, when I was asked to teach a general education course on Chinese classical literary texts, guess what scholarly reading I recommended to students? Meidian, of course. Whether or not my undergraduates can get the meaning of its contents, I don t really care, for this book has become my single entry to the rich wisdom of Chinese poetic aesthetics and to the aesthetic mind of Kao Yu-kung himself. Yu-kung, may you rest in peace and enjoy the blissful celestial arts forever! Ewig, ewig, ewig 唐海濤 追憶友工學長 1962 年春, 美國史丹福大學要在台大籌設中文研習所, 有消息說將由一位高先生來主持教務 那時友工正在史丹福任教, 所以台大中文系盛傳 : 就是這位 1954 年畢業的校友要衣錦榮歸了, 文學院大樓裏洋溢著歡樂 期待的氣氛 事後證明這一猜想錯了, 來的是長友工三歲 出身北平輔仁大學英語系的高恭億 雖未得識荊, 我卻由此知道了友工的大名 29

30 1966 年應東方學系之聘, 乃瑛和我來到普大 那時原來在史丹福任教的高友工和劉子健兩位先生都已轉到普大, 成了同事 那年輪到友工休假, 所以 67 年秋, 原來在他名下的 莊子選讀, 便臨時由我來代教了 那班學生只有四人, 即研究生林順夫 浦安迪 (Andrew Plaks) 和 Rick Johnston 以及大四的蘇德愷 (Kidder Smith) 可以說我跟友工尚未會面, 便已結緣了 1968 年秋我離職就學, 原來的職務由乃瑛接替 到 74 年才重回東亞系任教, 因此 69 年東亞系正式成立時, 我不在場, 儘管人在普大校園 那時除了選修有關語言學的課程外, 也旁聽友工的 中國文學概論 及牟先生的 老子研究 友工每次上課時, 必分發一頁講義, 常常只有幾行, 引述一位西方知名文學研究者具代表性的名言, 在課堂上即把這段話聯繫到中國文學上來 方法新穎而條理井然, 極受學生歡迎 復禮先生則是把 老子 三十多種英譯本攤開比較, 進而討論各版本間的異同 得失, 及所以出現這些分歧的原由 兩位先生別開生面的教學法, 使我深受啟發, 獲益無窮 作為東亞系創系元老之一, 友工在最初幾年擔任研究生導師時立下了 非華裔研究生必須修習兩年文言文 的嚴格規定 因此普大東亞系及藝術史系畢業的研究生一般在閱讀古漢語的能力上都有較高的水平 友工以其貫通中西的博雅 馳騁藝苑的才華 以及對學生的熱心 細心 與關心, 得到學生普遍的愛戴 他不但循循善誘, 因人而教, 還積極為學生妥善安排畢業後的工作 友工對東亞系的另一貢獻, 是為系務出謀劃策 系會中許多重要的決定, 經他分析研判, 提出建議, 多被採納 例如每年決定研究生錄取名額時, 他會根據申請人的素質 才性 本科的學業成績, 在排定錄取名次及分配獎學金時做最適當的調配, 結果都如願招收到最優秀的研究生 七十年代中期, 友工與外校許多朋友組成了東海岸中國詩會, 每學期聚會一次, 討論中國詩的種種問題 詩會輪流在耶魯大學 哈佛大學 哥倫比亞大學 普林斯頓大學 及賓州大學舉辦 十餘年中, 除了哈佛較遠不能當天趕回, 因而不去參加外, 別的會我都參加了, 甚至有一次例外地在康州學院舉行, 由易徹理 (Charles Egan, PhD from Princeton) 作東道主, 我也去了 友工在會上發言不多, 但言必有物, 而且精彩, 很受人尊重 七十年代普大東亞系召開過一次國際中國文學研討會, 葉嘉瑩先生從加拿大趕來參加 友工因我與葉為台大舊識, 囑我開車到紐約 LaGuardia 機場去迎接 我欣然受命, 並順利完成了任務 外校文學界同仁到普大訪問講學, 多由友工推薦 邀請, 如早期喬治華盛頓大學的時鍾雯 西雅圖華盛頓大學的王靖獻 後來上海復旦大學的王文生 浙江大學的徐朔方 紅學專家周汝昌等 他也邀請大陸演藝界著名演員來校講解及示範表演 : 如程派傳人趙榮琛 京劇小生葉少蘭 及蘇州評彈名家 ( 惜忘其姓名 ) 等, 為東亞系的課外活動增添異彩 1978 年友工應好友侯健 ( 時為台大文學院院長 ) 之邀, 回到台大中文系去講學一年, 在台灣引起了一陣 高友工旋風 他的文學論集 美典 一書, 就是那次講學的文字結晶 友工終身未婚, 但對人間纏綿的戀情卻有極為深刻細膩的體察 看他特別欣賞漢武帝的 落葉哀蟬曲 及李商隱的 銀河吹笙 可以窺見一斑 他贊成在律體詩中用典, 或許跟李義山的詩風不無關係 不坐飛機 不吸菸 不喝酒 甚至連咖啡也不喝, 是友工的生活戒律, 大有 君子不立於嚴牆之下 的審慎 儘管為人謙和, 事關重大時他也會堅持己見 據說在東亞系討論新聘同仁的會議中, 只有日文組的詹森和友工曾各說過一次堅決反對的話 : Over my dead body! 觀察力超強也是友工的特點之一 : 有一次我們同車到紐約, 從 3 號公路進入林肯隧道前, 沿途蜿蜒而行, 他雖不開車, 卻知道從某一小道穿行可以節省很多路程, 令人驚訝 友工極重情義 八一年春陳大端先生第一次心臟病發, 雖然病很快就好了, 能繼續擔任明德暑校校長, 但友工不放心, 號召舊友去為大端作精神上的支援 那年不但他自己到明德去任教, 還動員了陳淑平 李卉同去, 合稱 明德三老 1999 年友工滿七十歲, 決定退休 他的高足浦安迪在教員俱樂部為他舉辦了一場氣氛極度溫馨的歡送晚宴 30

31 2001 年東亞系講座教授余英時先生退休, 系中為他舉辦盛大的學術研討會及歡送宴 友工特地從紐約趕來參加 那是最後一次見到他, 此後就是每年春節時通電話賀新年了 從 1962 到 1999, 友工在普大東方系 東亞系執教 37 年之久, 培植出近百位研究中國古典文學的才俊, 如今分別在全美各大學擔任中國古典文學的教席 薪火西傳, 火種將繼續綿延, 對中西文化的交融起著歷久不絕的作用 友工貢獻之宏大 影響之深遠, 真非筆墨所能道盡的了 能與這樣一位學界奇才相交 50 年, 是人生莫大的幸事, 我會永遠欽佩 懷念他 謹以嵌名輓聯一幅結束此文 : 友直友諒友多聞交遊皆有道工詩工劇工舞蹈才調更無倫 袁乃瑛 印象中的高友工先生 與高先生同在東亞系工作, 相處長達三十年, 可記述的事太多了, 但印象最深的有如下數端 : 1969 年東亞系正式成立,70 年春由 East Pyne Hall 遷入 Jones Hall 那年我除了擔任三年級白話與二年級文言課外, 還與高先生合教二年級白話 - 他主教, 我擔任小組討論 高先生選用張天翼創作的童話故事 大林與小林 作教材, 內容生動有趣, 學生學得興味盎然 在教學方法上我得到高先生的指導, 對日後教學大有裨益 擔任研究生指導老師的高先生, 要求非華裔的研究生必須讀兩年文言, 奠定堅實的古漢語基礎, 以利日後閱讀古籍, 作進一步的專業研究 因此每學年開學第一週, 高先生都會親自帶著幾位新入學的研究生到我辦公室來一一介紹, 足見高先生任事之認真負責 記不清是 72 還是 73 年了, 高先生休假半年, 讓我代教一班 500 號的研究生古典文學選讀課 教學外私人的交往, 也有些印象深刻的事 列述如下 : 70 年代初, 一次到牟復禮教授家去參加他宴請系中同仁的晚宴 飽享牟夫人陳效蘭女士親手烹調的盛饌後, 高先生興致勃勃, 談起他在哈佛求學時師友間的軼事, 真是妙趣橫生, 令人解頤忘我 例如他描述當年中央研究院史語所某位考古學家到哈佛訪問, 寄住在哈佛大學語言學教授家中 某知名教授夫婦專誠到語言學教授家中拜訪考古學家, 進門沒先跟主人夫婦打招呼就直奔考古學家而去 女主人大為惱怒, 厲聲斥其無禮 她說的是中文, 語言學家在旁慢條斯理 一字不漏地翻譯給那位來訪的夫人聽, 以致她難為情得哭起來 高先生繪聲繪影 使聽者如臨其境, 如聞其聲, 如見其色 這種活靈活現的描述工夫, 恐怕張岱筆下著名說書人柳敬亭也要自嘆弗如, 甘拜下風吧? 1976 年中文組主任陳大端先生及夫人趙榮琪宴請中文組內的同仁, 那時家父袁作震剛隻身從台灣來普城看我們, 陳氏夫婦很客氣地邀請他加入餐會 在座的高先生抗戰期間曾在重慶讀過南開中學, 聽說家父是天津南開中學 1930 年的畢業生, 就談起創辦南開的張伯苓校長 兩位年齡相差十八歲的校友間的距離, 頃刻就消散於無形而相談甚歡 校友之誼有如此神奇的力量, 令我極感訝異 1983 年家父在台去世,84 年我迎請家母到普城來換換環境 高先生聽說了, 竟出人意外地來探望素未謀面的家母, 親切致意, 勸家母努力加餐 攝取足夠的養分 保養身體, 結論是 有胃就有命 高先生這次出人意外的造訪, 給家母以莫大的慰藉 由此也可看出他對長者關切的仁者懷抱, 令人敬佩 感念 31

32 高先生對西方文學 藝術 舞蹈的深切體會 高度癡迷, 是人所共知的 其實他對中國的傳統戲曲 元雜劇 崑曲 京戲同樣有濃厚的興趣 我自幼受戲迷家庭的薰陶, 也喜聽崑曲 京戲, 彼此有時就談談有關這方面的見聞 例如有一次提到張恨水寫的 斯人記 一本影射梅蘭芳 福芝芳結合經過的小說, 高先生說他也看過, 並給予相當高的評價 高先生退休後, 把他教學時用的錄影帶, 如 單刀會 貞娥刺虎, 磁碟如 遊園驚夢 朱買臣休妻 長生殿 等送給了我, 我則以計鎮華的 自選集 磁碟回報 高先生不開車, 他 90 年中期遷往紐約以前, 多年來每週都由我開車邀他同去美國超市買菜 最初是到 571 公路上的 Acme, 有一次順路開到 West Windsor 的一家中國菜園去買蔬菜 菜園主人對遠道而來卻只買少量蔬菜的顧客冷顏相向, 極不友善, 對較稀罕的蔬菜更是堅拒零售 回程中高先生戲稱他為 冰霜園主 幽默兼冷雋, 給人恰如其分 妙到顛毫之感 後來改到 27 號公路上的 Shop Rite, 及其對面的魚市場 Plentiful Acre, 有鰣魚時, 他常常買去了刺的鰣魚片, 說可以用來做營養 美味的魚片湯 高先生好美食, 善廚藝, 尤精麵食 曾見他蒸出的饅頭, 白白胖胖 又圓又大 又曾蒙他傳授做花捲 貼鍋貼 和做撥魚的秘訣, 如法炮製, 無一次不成功 此外, 高先生還有一項鮮為人知的技藝 : 縫紉 現代女性會做針線活兒的已很罕見了, 而高先生卻會自己修改西裝長褲, 肥了縮緊, 瘦了放大, 無不得心應手 他還曾不憚煩地細心講解修改程序, 我靜心聆聽 牢記 回家還作了筆記, 但始終沒有膽量去實踐 真乃劣徒, 愧對先生 丰神俊朗, 意態灑然, 從無高聲慍色, 總是從容自若, 舉重若輕, 而很多重要的事便在若無其事中妥善完成 身處擾攘塵世, 精神上卻逍遙自適, 最後在靜夜中悄悄離去, 揮一揮衣袖, 不帶走一片雲彩 這就是我印象中的高先生 所謂 魏晉風度, 大概就是如此吧? 這樣一位世所罕見的人物, 誰能不永遠景仰 懷念呢? Froilan Suarez, Rico All in One GOD sent me a friend, a grandpa and an angel, All in one HE whispered through my inner voice, He will show you classiness and humbleness All in one HE said, Enjoy his company and his friendship from beginning to end. All in one He will be your hero and a villain All in one GOD showed me that he was an individual who possessed the spirit of seriousness and jokiness All in one He surprised me with his capacity to care and show love All in one He was the epitome of simplicity and complexity All in one GOD supplied him with a beautiful spirit and soulful soul All in one Now as I stand here, GOD is presenting me with joy and sorrow All in one For as I remember him, I feel so much joy yet I feel so much pain Because life and death is written on the same line All in one Gene you will be remembered from the past to the future because that was what GOD wanted for me all in one I will cherish you from here to eternity, dear friend. All in one 32

33 You will live here and there always in our hearts All in one From Rico, family and friend All in one Frances LaFleur REMEMBERING PROFESSOR KAO Sometimes I would read a line of Chinese poetry and find it unremarkable. Then Professor Kao would speak it aloud and summon the ancient poet into the room with us. I never could explain the magic, but even after nearly 40 years I can close my eyes and hear Kao's voice. Those lines he read have not lost their beauty and power. Fran LaFleur January 2017 Thomas Bartlett In Grateful Memory of Professor Kao Yu-kung In late spring 1965 I visited Princeton s beautiful campus for a scheduled meeting with Gregory Vlastos. I hoped to study Aristotle, to extend my undergraduate reading in Greek literature. Vlastos quickly declared that I would need to spend a full year learning modern philosophical analysis before I could do that. This news was not welcome to me, so our interview ended earlier than I had hoped. But, with free time before my train left, I wandered from East Pyne Hall over to Firestone Library, home of Princeton s then Oriental Studies Department, to inquire about learning Chinese. A few prior contacts with an informal tutor had stirred my interest, without leaving any residue of acquired ability. Looking back now, I m prone to think some benevolent spirit wafted out of an upper window of Firestone, and fatefully guided my steps on that vernal afternoon. A few months later, Professor Kao Yu-kung became my first proper teacher of Chinese language. Since then, he has held a special and much valued place in my memories of the Princeton years; he was the early guide who received me as I entered the gateway 入門 to the mansion of sinology, the teacher who awakened me from ignorance 啟蒙老師. Professors Mote and Ch en were both on leave in fall 1965, so Kao Lao-shih took charge of the first year modern language course for the autumn semester. And this taking charge was accomplished through his distinctively methodless method, a kind of unforced spontaneity with optimum result 無為而無不為, as the Daoists say. He spurned the vulgar precept 33

34 followed by some dull pedagogues if the teaching is not strict, it s because the teacher is lazy 教不嚴, 師之惰, as I had seen practiced elsewhere. Rather, Professor Kao subtly and humanely nurtured and guided students own yearnings and efforts to learn; he never got in your way. In those years, Kao s Way flourished at Princeton with richly deserved acclaim. In conversation one day, I was excited to learn from him that, at Harvard in autumn 1959, we both attended Cedric Whitman s wonderful Greek reading course in Homer s Iliad. That news reminded me of the fully occupied classroom in Sever Hall, where I habitually occupied a rear seat and occasionally noticed a Chinese man in front, whom I never met then. I further learned that he usually sat with James Pusey, who then followed his own father s interest in Classics. Professor Kao drew evident pleasure from Jamie s decision to start Chinese a year or so later. Knowing of our past shared interests and experience gave me even greater confidence in him. In my first year at Princeton, one evening several friends dined at the local home of a Chinese graduate student who cooked well enough that Kao Lao-shih agreed to join us for the occasion. After feasting sumptuously, as we rose and stepped away from the table, I remarked how delicious it was. Kao Lao-shih immediately urged me to sit down again and continue eating. I hesitated ever so briefly, before sensing that his words, framed by too broad a smile, implied something more than I fully understood. Then I realized that, by doing as he suggested, I would be alone at the table, which did not seem right; somehow, I mustered the presence of mind to decline. Recalled now, that moment seems like an impromptu, pragmatic exercise generated from Kao s all-weather language pedagogy. His specious words expanded on the elegant courtesies we learned in Chao s Mandarin Primer, by excessive encouragement to a guest s self-indulgence. As so often, the implied question 言外之意 then was: do you grasp the implications of these words in present context? A salutary lesson it was, and one that I d have done well to heed more attentively over the years since. Later, when I returned from five years in Taiwan, Oriental Studies had become East Asian Studies, and the major direction of my own work had turned to history. My minor field in literature comprised early poetry and Ming-Qing fiction. From Professor Kao s seminars, I gained initial acquaintance with the alluring language and aesthetic in Classic of Odes 詩經 and with new trends in Six Dynasties lyric verse, although the naïve voice in Nineteen Old Style Poems of Han spoke most directly to my unsophisticated taste. In his lectures on Dream of the Red Chamber (aka Story of the Stone) I profoundly sensed that I was hearing the subject described by someone who had lived through much of it. His own distinctive outlook seemed strongly present in his memorable comment about Jia Baoyu, that the novel s central figure resolved to prepare and pass the civil examinations, simply to show that he could do it, even though he viewed such learning as the soul s prison and a waste of the spirit. In one way, the overall trajectory of my Princeton graduate career shared a common trait with Professor Kao s at Harvard: our undergraduate studies led us both to enter the post-graduate phase with a primary interest in literature; then, we each finally wrote a dissertation on a historical subject kindly suggested by a learned and solicitous mentor. In that sense, Professor Kao personally modelled for me a guiding precept of Princeton s Chinese studies in those years: the dynamic integration of history and literature in traditional Chinese humanities, 文史不分家. Exposure to that coherent vision confers versatility and resilience that sustain one through the vicissitudes of life and work. One day, during a particularly slow, late phase of my thesis writing on Gu Yanwu s classical thought, Professor Kao benignly suggested that I pragmatically adopt a theoretical approach, saying it was less susceptible to easily contradicted errors of fact. But, by then, for better or worse, the project was committed to a highly empirical method, which I think suited the character of Gu s own writings and intellectual outlook, as I was able to grasp them then. Gu is famous for his philology, which may seem a tediously plodding enterprise, but his life is also celebrated for a heroic-tragic quality that I think Professor Kao would recognize within his lyric vision. I remember him once referring favorably to Gu s poetry, which has been compared to Du Fu s in its Confucian concern for common people. In due course, the dissertation s oral defense did, as feared, turn up some cringeworthy mistakes; but, still, it passed. Not long after, Professor Kao kindly commented that Andy Plaks had seen my thesis and spoken well of it. I was deeply comforted by his approving smile that day. May Kao Lao-shih 高老師 rest in peace, as he does in my thoughts, A grateful student, 白慕堂敬悼 34

35 Kathryn Lowry Symmetry in art and life, a tribute to Yu-kung Kao In the summer of 1981, Professor Kao taught Classical Chinese at Middlebury Chinese School, and he surreptitiously helped us first-year students to rewrite our script for a skit to celebrate end of term. We struck a pose to make character forms, supplying a model sentence for each of them. For Human (ren), (thanks to Professor Kao): 他是一個前前後後 上上下下 從頭到尾的好人. This was my first acquaintance with him and his unique sense of symmetry. Three years later, I asked if he would advise my undergraduate thesis. Kao Yu-kung demurred, saying he knew nothing about oral composition, my subject. Andy Plaks encouraged me: You need to ask three times. He turned me down the first two times, too. Professor Kao prompted me to read theories of the lyric and music, and reminded me at every meeting that the songs from popular religious festivals were not lyric poetry. I am grateful for his insights and wit, and cherish the memory of his inscrutable smile. Here was someone dedicated to comparative studies and definition of the categories that underlie them. His teaching continues to shape the way I think about literature and art. 蔡宗齊 (Zong-qi Cai) 緬懷恩師高友工教授 恩師 是學生表達感激之詞, 對我而言, 如果沒有恩師 高友工先生, 就沒有自己學術的長進, 這不是客套話, 而是肺腑之言, 老師於我恩重如山 我是文革後的第一批大學生,1977 年考入中山大學外文系英文專業,1979 年接著考入該系首屆研究生, 攻讀英美文學和比較文學 由於當時比較文學界流行的比附式作品比較在我看來並非正道, 所以撰寫碩士論文時選擇了從詩學理論切入, 比較英國浪漫派詩歌和中國古典山水詩中情感交融的理論和手法 在這篇論文中我嘗試總結中英詩歌的相似之處並從雙方的哲學基礎闡釋原因 西方選擇了德意志形而上學中有關主客觀關係的理論, 中國則選擇了老莊心物關係 天人合一等理論 1981 年碩士畢業, 我開始在廣州外國語大學教書, 在 1983 年間極左勢力發起清除精神污染的運動, 對理論界和文藝界進行大規模的整治, 我感到心灰意冷, 產生了報讀美國大學的想法, 於是將申請材料連同碩士論文寄到幾間學校, 隨後收到了 University of Massachusetts at Amherst( 麻省大學阿默斯特分校 ) 錄取通知及兩年的全額獎學金, 開啟了留學生涯 1987 年, 我考入普林斯頓大學東亞系, 師從高友工教授, 改修中國古典文學, 從而開始了治學的一個新階段 這次改變專業, 無疑是個人學術成長過程中一個重要的轉折點, 但卻非經過長期深思熟慮而作出的決定, 而是無心插柳柳成蔭之事, 完全由偶然緣分所致 在麻省大學的三年, 西學的基礎打牢了, 並且在讀書和研究方面慢慢摸到了門路 87 年間我通過了麻省大學的博士資格考試, 同時又被普林斯頓 斯坦佛大學 哥倫比亞大學錄取, 而且都給了全額獎學金 我當時對西學興趣甚濃, 期待在英美文學 西方文學理論的領域中繼續深造, 完全沒有考慮專修中國文學 最終拜入高先生門下應該說是一種註定的緣分, 記得 1987 年四月裡一日黃昏, 我從學校回到住處, 突然接到了高先生的電話, 先生給了我推心置腹的建議 : 雖然你申請的是普林斯頓的比較文學系, 但若希望留在美國, 不如去東亞系 美國現在正在興起中國文學研究, 你是大陸培養出來的, 有一定的中國古典文學的素養, 又在麻省 35

36 大學得到了很好的西方文字理論薰陶和訓練, 非常適合在漢學界發展 當時國內研究狀況並不如意, 我沒有回國發展的打算, 於是當即接受高先生的建議, 決定到普林斯頓大學東亞系深造 之後方才知道高先生其實並不會輕易邀請學生拜入門下, 我很可能是少有的一個例外 而這一切源於鄭清茂教授的大力推薦 鄭教授是高先生的好友, 也是我在麻省大學的老師 鄭教授事後告訴我, 我請他寫的那幾封推薦信, 除了給普林斯頓大學的那一封之外, 全部沒有寄出, 但在台灣與高先生見了面並叮囑道 : 這個學生你一定要收 進入普林斯頓之後, 高先生對我特別關照 記得一日課堂內容為古詩十九首, 課前我同老師談了談自己的想法 以文本細讀的方法歸納古詩十九首的抒情結構, 並與 詩經 的比興結構相聯繫, 先生很感興趣, 立刻讓我在課堂上發言, 之後又將這篇論文推薦到 中外文學, 這是我第一篇以中文發表的文章 從此高先生對我的學術指導就特別頻繁, 每次上課前後我們都會有近一個小時的交流, 而這些交流令我終身受益 : 首先, 它推動我完成了由英美比較文學至中國古典詩學的研究轉向 老師一直強調若想真正在漢學方面有所成就, 必須對中國古典文化有深入的理解, 而不能用中國材料生搬硬套西方理論, 於是攻讀博士期間我對中國傳統詩歌 佛教 經學等內容進行了惡補, 完成了學術的轉向 其次, 高先生提出學術問題與觀點, 總是獨樹一幟, 非常強調原創性, 耳濡目染之中我的研究理念進一步鞏固 : 學術的靈魂就是原創, 一個人如果不能提出新鮮的觀點, 對學術沒有獨創性的推進, 不如不寫文章 雖然在老師門下只有三年, 但離開學校後我始終堅守這樣的初心且一直未變 最後, 通過修讀高先生的課, 我的視野被徹底打開, 此後寫論文能夠打破文本細讀的局限, 從更為寬廣的理論層面探討問題 我的博士只讀了三年, 其實離校時論文只完成了一章, 但因為先前發表過英美文學方面的論文, 三個學校都給出了聘書, 而當時我持的是 J-1 簽證, 為了解決留美的身份問題就提前離校了 畢業後我去了紐約州立大學石溪校區比較文學系任教, 並於第一年寫完了博士論文 出於工作需要, 在石溪分校我寫了一些比較文學類的文章, 經過普林斯頓三年的訓練, 這時的比較研究不再限於相同之處, 而能擴展到對不同性及其傳統的闡釋 後來這些文章結集出版, 又由劉青海教授翻譯成中文, 在大陸產生了一些積極的影響 1993 年, 我再次回到東亞系研究中國傳統文學, 其實也源於高先生的幫助 當時我太太在普林斯頓藝術系擔任幻燈組的負責人, 一次在火車上遇到高先生, 先生說 伊利諾伊有一份工作, 不知道宗齊有沒有興趣, 於是在老師的推薦下我遞交申請, 通過競爭成為首選 得到了這份工作, 由此回到了中國詩學研究的領域 老師對學生的影響是一種潛移默化的力量, 在其門下的短暫時光裡你未必能夠察覺, 離開以後它像空氣一樣孕育著你的成長, 直至某日的某一瞬間, 這種力量突然爆發在你眼前, 點亮你的火花, 成就你的光芒, 我想這就是大師的魅力 博士期間所寫的 漢魏晉五言詩的演變 是以文本細讀的方法重構詩歌演變的內在脈絡, 探討詩人如何運用愈發複雜的形式來表現自我 這本書運用了一些現代西方文學批評的理論, 受了高先生的影響, 但嚴格來說不是特別明顯 真正繼承發展老師理論的研究, 應當始於 2004 年我在伊利諾伊組織一個學術會議所編寫的 如何讀中國詩歌, 這本教材末篇需要一個理論總結來陳述中國詩歌藝術的精髓, 在醞釀思路時突然回憶起高先生曾指出題評句與主謂句是中國詩歌的抒情基礎, 於是我通讀了各種詩體的代表性作品, 發現從語言角度能夠解決其他方法無法詮釋的問題, 能夠揭示出各種詩體境界的語言基礎, 由此豁然開朗 相比 漢魏晉五言詩的演變, 我正在完成 語法與詩境 一書更接近高先生的思想, 它試圖以高先生的理論為基石建構中國詩歌藝術的系統 網上有些學者認為高先生的研究設想很大而論述不夠, 甚至稱之為戲論, 我認為他們可能並未理解高先生的理論精髓, 亦未認識到先生提出大問題的意義 我深深體會到, 雖然老師的指點看似籠統, 但若沒有這種指點, 我難以找到後來的研究路子, 所以我對老師心懷無限感激 36

37 我想對老師最大的恭敬也許是爭取進一步發展和完善老師的理論, 於是我向著這一目標, 沿著同時性與歷時性研究的兩條軸線上作出了努力 在同時性方面, 我將詩歌的研究從句法擴展到節奏和結構 我撰寫了一系列的論文, 對詩經 五言詩 近體詩 小令 慢詞各自特有的節奏做了系統的描述, 並考慮這幾種節奏如何影響句法 高老師主要講主謂句, 而我將題評句 (topic+comment sentences) 與主謂句並列, 句法與章法並置, 探索句法如何影響章法, 再將這種語言分析與傳統直觀式的批評方法作對照, 嘗試與古人溝通 在歷時性方面, 老師對詩歌形式的分析集中於唐詩和早期五言詩, 我試圖擴展到所有主要的詩體, 梳理出中國詩歌節奏 句法 結構 詩境發展的總體脈絡 雖然 91 年就離開普林斯頓, 但之後若有任何學術成果我都會向老師報告, 一直視老師如父親 先生總是教導 作為一個學者不光學問要好, 為人也得有道德, 沒有道德底線的人生是沒有意義的, 亦時常強調謙卑的重要 : 杜甫這麼偉大的人人生都這麼坎坷, 我們凡人有有什麼可抱怨呢? 雖然成為老師那樣超脫世俗的奇人非常難, 但我們這些學生對於權力之慾都十分之淡, 一切涉及權利的行政工作能推必推, 專心於學術研究 我的父親臨終時留下這樣的遺訓 : 名利如浮雲, 不要孜孜以求 我不希望你們一鳴驚人, 只希望你們清清白白做人, 踏踏實實做事, 不求出名, 只求扎扎實實生活 對於這一致的父訓與師訓, 我一直默默堅守著 人生之中能夠遇見高先生這樣的恩師, 是我莫大的幸運 先生離去, 惆悵之情難於言表, 同時也倍感人生短暫, 唯繼續勤勤耕耘於自己熱愛的學術事業, 做出更大的貢獻, 方以回報師恩! Carol Mei Professor Yu-kung Kao was known as Kao Bo-Bo in our family. He was the godfather of my brother, Eugene Mei, and, in fact, we sometimes called Kao Bo-Bo "Big Eugene" as my brother was named after him. I remember Kao Bo-Bo in his black turtleneck (long before Steve Jobs) and huge smile. He was always a lively guest, but one particular dinner party stands out in my memory. Wearing an abstract orange print apron, he rolled out and deftly created Hua-juan to go with my mother's Wuhuarou. Bet that is a skill that not everyone knew he possessed! 王洞 (Della Wang Hsia) 懷念友工 去年十月二十三日, 星期天, 在紐約大學看陝西京劇團演出的 三寸金蓮, 散戲後, 好友鄧玉瓊請江青和我在附近一家日本餐館吃飯, 談起這幾年看戲, 都見不到高友工了 玉瓊的專業是地球物理, 但雅好芭蕾, 京戲, 昆曲, 與友工同好 沒想到不到一個星期就聽到友工仙逝的噩耗, 電話傳來江青的硬咽, 使我不禁落淚, 我與友工相識, 也有五十年了 話說 1963 年夏天我在斯坦福大學東亞系做助教, 時 ( 姓時名鍾雯 ) 教授常談起高友工, 說他年輕有為, 一表人材, 可惜去了普林斯頓 同年秋天, 我去耶魯大學攻讀語言學, 選了周法高老師的 詩經, 班上只有陳幼石和我兩個學生 周老師跟我們閒聊, 說 : 高友工, 學問好, 人又帥, 為什麼不結婚? 幼石接嘴說 : 他不會結婚的 我印象中的高友工, 就是人長的漂亮 這位高教授, 剛拿到學位, 除了論文, 還沒有什麼著作, 令人羨慕的是他哈佛的學位, 普林斯頓的教職與他英俊的相貌, 是女子心儀的年輕教授, 夏志清竟建議哥大的女生去普林斯頓 追 高友工 1967 年, 我初來紐約, 有一天帶志清帶我去逛格林威治村, 迎面一位高大的中國人走近與他打招呼, 志清說這是高友工 當時志清覺得很窘, 因他已有家室, 同一個年輕女子 拍拖, 被人撞見, 實在難為情 我倒很高興看到這位 久聞大名的高教授, 確實名不虛傳, 身材高䠷, 濃眉大眼, 鼻樑挺拔, 可謂 美男子 37

38 友工 1962 年到普林斯頓任教, 志清也是 1962 年才來哥大的, 他們可說是同年 出道 志清因年長, 且已出版了 中國現代小說史, 友工一直把志清當前輩看待, 志清也很欣賞友工的學問 1970 年春, 志清休假, 請友工代課 志清回來後, 友工便常來看我們並請吃飯, 餐館如不供酒, 他就會帶一瓶 Rosé. 我每次喝 Rosé, 就想到友工 他也請時鍾雯和我們到布魯克林看過一次芭蕾, 可惜志清和我都不懂舞, 看了一些什麼? 也不記得了 陳幼石好客, 搬來紐約後, 常做飯請客, 她大請客時, 友工, 江青都來助陣, 友工的絕活是蔥油花卷, 他們三人各顯身手, 端出一桌色香味俱佳上乘酒席, 幼石的紅燒蹄膀夾在友工的花卷裡, 真是鬆軟, 齒頰生香, 至今想着, 仍回味無窮 友工退休後, 搬來紐約, 反倒不常來往 ; 他住東城, 我們在西城, 往返費時, 年紀大了, 跑不動了 只有看京戲, 昆曲時, 才能見到友工 近年友工為糖尿病所苦, 不良於行, 但是他仍勉力參加陳幼石的八十大壽, 去年一月江青 70 大壽, 他也來了, 是由張文藝及他的醫生梅大夫攙着下樓梯的, 看見他走路那麼吃力, 好難過, 也為他寧肯傷身體, 也不能讓朋友掃興而深深感動 如今他靜悄悄地走了, 對他未嘗不是一種解脫 前年我出版了志清與濟安的通信, 寄了一本給友工, 他一個晚上就看完了, 還寫了一封短信謝我 他一直稱志清為夏先生, 叫我王洞的, 以我為幼石的同學看待 在這便箋裡, 卻稱我夏夫人 : 友工在這短短的幾行字裡, 道出了他與濟安和志清的交往, 對年老衰弱的無奈 在病痛中, 他還寫信給我, 足見他是一位多禮重情的人 他的音容笑貌與蔥油花卷永遠活在我的記憶中 王洞寫於 2017 年 1 月 15 日紐約家中 38

39 Nancy Norton Tomasko It Was Quite a Ride In the fall of 1977 three or four of us entered the East Asian Studies Department as literature students Mary Scott, Keith McMahon, and I, and maybe one other guy. Perhaps all of us took Professor Kao s poetry seminar that semester it must have been Han dynasty poetry with the Nineteen Old Poems somewhere at the head of the syllabus. Lots about opulence, pleasure, disappointment, longing, travel, roads, vehicles, separation, loss, sadness, transience. No amount of work seemed sufficient preparation for what Professor Kao shared with us his lyric vision, his life vision filling the chalkboard each week in the Jones Hall seminar room. The semester drew to a close with a considerable measure of uncertainty about just what we had understood of all Professor Kao had shared with us. And then surely undeserved came his remarkably kind invitation to us the whole seminar to a party in Soho at the loft of his friend, the dancer Chiang Ch ing, someone whose artistry Professor Kao clearly revered. That he was sharing this world of friends and dance with us felt quite out of the ordinary, and yet even at that early stage in our Princeton experience, we had had sufficient hint that with Professor Kao nothing would ever be counted as ordinary. Chiang Ch ing s party was easy, low-key, fun, dance-filled. The only thing wild about the evening was the ride to and from New York City. Tom Bartlett was our driver, and somehow his VW beetle found room for Chris Connery, Mary, Keith, Andrew Lo, and me one way and all of us plus Professor Kao going back to Princeton, with Andrew tucked into the space behind the back seat. This was but the beginning of what proved to be quite a wonderful ride with Professor Kao over the next years through the landscape of Chinese poetry. Nancy Norton Tomasko New York 15 January 2016 周质平 (Chih-p ing Chou) 无争是以无敌 怀念高友工先生 我是 1979 年 9 月到普大东亚系的 那时我刚结束印第安纳大学的研究生课程 在普大边教书 边写论文 友工先 生在系里给研究生开唐诗 宋词的课 我有幸旁听过几次 我的题目是晚明公安袁氏兄弟的诗文理论 三袁主张 明白晓畅 不模拟 不用典 周作人指为 中国新文学的源流 有次课下和高先生讨教诗词优劣究竟何在的问 题 我提出自元白到三袁以至于胡适的白话传统 而归结为胡适所主张的一首好诗必须先是一首通的诗 高先生 不疾不徐 含笑回答说 这个通 得看是谁的通 他对胡适和三袁的褒贬尽在不言中了 他对古今人物 月 旦品评 大多类此 单刀直入 一针见血 从我入系 到 1999 年高先生 退 前后整 20 年 和他共同列席的系会当在百次以上 在我的记忆中 他从未与 任何同事 有过任何冲突 而他的主张却又从未受到过任何杯葛 这让我想起老子 夫唯不争 故天下莫能与之争 的智慧 友工先生的为人处世正是这一智慧的体现和实践 39

40 康正果 書緣和人緣 1990 年春, 我買到一本剛出版的論詩專著, 書名 唐詩的魅力 ( 高友工 梅祖麟合著, 上海古籍出版社, 1989), 作者之一正是任教普林斯頓大學的高友工教授 該書嘗試用西方語言學分析的方法細讀唐詩, 化常見的印象式評點為辨析句構 節奏和詩文肌理的客觀解讀 書中所羅列的句型統計和交叉對比, 初讀起來, 是有點艱澀, 我耐心地讀過十來頁, 才漸漸讀出了味道 我發覺我通常讀過的名篇佳句, 對不少字句, 都有些囫圇吞棗的模糊, 現經高教授書中指點解析, 很多只知其然而不知其所以然的朦朧彌漫感都被說明得一清二楚 讀完全書, 大有耳目一新之感 那年夏天, 我收到一封陌生的來信, 是耶魯大學東亞語文系孫康宜教授寫給我的, 信中提及她剛讀過我一本論詩的專著, 同時告訴我她準備拿此書給選修她明清婦女詩詞討論課的學生做參考教材的事宜 高教授的書和孫教授的信一前一後落到我手中, 兩件有關書緣的事情並不相干, 對這兩位遠處美國的教授, 我自然也沒去想他們有什麽關係 1994 年我應聘到耶魯教書, 與康宜做了同事, 始得知高教授乃康宜當年攻讀博士的導師 後來讀了康宜談唐宋詞論六朝詩的兩部專著, 又進一步看出, 她對她導師開創的語言學分析細讀方法有繼承且有發展, 在探討古典詩詞的抒情性特徵上更有她新的開拓 古人有讀其書想見其爲人之說, 觀高 孫二人之作, 你更會有讀其書想見其師徒間師承脈絡的感觸 我來到耶魯的次年, 在紐約的一次聚會上與高教授初次相會 經康宜介紹, 杯酒間就談起詩詞鑑賞和歌舞戲曲等我們都感興趣的話題 我記得我特別提及, 高書中有關杜甫 江漢 一詩的分析給我的印象特深 高教授則對我和康宜暢談他住在紐約出入劇場的方便, 觀賞歌舞戲曲的樂趣, 還講到他探討中國戲曲美典及其抒情性的思考 談起京劇和昆曲, 高教授如數家珍, 我順便提到不久前熱映一時的中國電影 霸王別姬, 但高教授的反應並不熱心, 似有些不屑一顧的神氣 他告訴我們, 對當前中國大陸那些轟動一時的演出或書籍, 他一般多持置疑而遠之的態度 那邊越熱的東西, 他眼中反看得越冷 短促的攀談中可以感覺出, 高教授別有他個人的情趣和鑑賞標準, 似乎並無意介入群起爭論和熱議的問題, 尤其是對中國大陸語境中紛紜的是非優劣之辨, 他顯得特別淡定 第二次與高教授會面已在約摸十來年之後 那一年夏天, 我與康宜夫婦同赴紐約的一次聚會, 期間順便約見了已從普大榮休的高教授 歲月不饒人, 出現在我們面前的高教授迥異往昔, 人已整個地衰老, 且步履艱難, 想起初次見面時他與我們侃侃而談的情景, 我大有 曾日月之幾何, 而江山不復識矣 的感觸 但高教授的頭腦還算清晰, 言談間他首先向我們提到他處理自己那些藏書的事情 高教授性喜歌舞戲曲, 他平日不只做看客, 有時更厠身其間, 興起時還會加入串演 校園内授課後, 他總是揚長而去, 常出沒在紐約的百老匯街區 隱身鬧市的日子裏, 他出則劇場觀戲聼曲, 歸則與書同舞, 幾十年單身獨處下來, 曾被他視爲長物的滿屋藏書如今卻落得繼承無主, 老教授惟恐這些東西在他身後成爲一堆廢物 因此他眼下正忙於尋找有意收藏且有水平閲讀他那些英文書的人選, 好把他這筆遺產託孤般分批地安排出去 那天他也問到我要不要那些書籍的問題, 我當下滿口應承, 他隨即列舉出一連串書名供我挑選 我給他留下我的郵址, 不久即收到他所寄的一批書籍 人過中年, 邁進老年, 總覺得時間越過越快, 常會有時不我待的恍惚和匆迫 古人之所以有 中年以來, 傷於哀樂 之感, 大概就是這種心境吧 大前年我的左鄰張充和女史仙逝, 前年我的右舍趙復三病故, 兩個多月前, 康宜告訴我高教授在安睡中去世 環顧周圍,20 一代的熟人至今已凋零殆盡, 死亡的陰影正在向 一代人投射過來 那一次從紐約回來, 康宜好像是從她老師那裏受到啓發, 她迅速給她滿屋的藏書找了個更理想的去處, 一待與對方約定, 她與丈夫欽次立即乾淨利落地全部打包, 一次性捐贈給北京大學收藏 與高教授和孫康宜不同, 我至今還在貪財好色般買書和接受朋友的贈書, 書房和臥室中的書架上放不下了, 便將不常用的舊書一批批轉入地下室貯存, 連過期的刊物雜誌都捨不得丟掉而積壓在那裏 因爲我一直在圍繞著自己的寫作計劃而讀書, 閲讀對於我, 不只是一般的求知和消遣, 而更多的是工作的需要 儘管自己的視覺在日益模糊, 腦筋也沒有以前好使, 閲讀和書寫的衝動開始衰退, 但我依然做我 乾坤一腐儒 的事情, 硬是鼓起 落日心猶壯 的情懷讀書兼寫書 我別無所好, 又無所事事, 只好就這樣與書廝守下去, 直到讀不動也寫不了的時候 40

41 2017 年元月 20 日 Jue Chen ( 陳玨 ) Professor Yu-kung Kao: A True Humanitarian During my Princeton graduate years between 1992 and 1996, I took a number of Chinese poetry and drama seminars taught by Professor Kao. (If my memory is correct, perhaps every seminar he taught during that period.) I did this for two reasons. One was academic. Professor Kao was, and he will always be, an invaluable source of inspiration and knowledge for me and generations of other Princeton graduate students in the field of Chinese poetry and drama. My main field is Chinese fiction, but I always have a keen interest in poetry and drama. Sitting in Professor Kao s seminars was like taking a journey back in time with him. It was as if we were in the heyday of Tang dynasty and were discussing poetry with the contemporary poets at that time. His attitude towards research also left a deep impression on me. One course he taught was on mid-tang guwen prose, and he used a systematic linguistic analysis to explore its structure. He had used this method, together with Professor Tzulin Mei, in the study on Tang poetry before, and the result was a series of groundbreaking articles published in the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. When I looked at the course syllabus I found it very much like a detailed outline of a new book. As this method of analysis had never been applied to Tang guwen studies before, I asked him whether he was going to write the book. He replied that he still had several theoretical issues he wanted to resolve and the book would have to wait. Unfortunately, he never wrote the book. It is typical of Professor Kao not to rush into publication until he believed that he had thoroughly grasped a subject, its content, and the raw data. This kind of academic perfectionism permeated the intellectual environment of all his seminars that I attended. Another reason for me to continuously take Professor Kao s seminars was more personal. In his seminars, one could always experience an unusual feeling of warmth due to his enormous care for his students. He treated his thesis students as family members. As we all know, Professor Kao produced a large number of successful students, and many of them have become influential figures in the field of Chinese literature in both the US and other parts of the world. The success of these people is inseparable from the tremendous care and support he provided to them at virtually every stage of their academic careers. He took great pride in his students achievements, and one of his favorite topics during the break of his seminar was the recent career development of his graduated students. He was always so excited whenever he learned any good news about his students that he could not help sharing it with the rest of us. I still vividly remember one afternoon during a seminar break when he returned to the classroom from the mailroom with a letter in hand, waving it excitedly and announcing proudly, Good news, Tonglin has just got her tenure at the University of Iowa. I will never forget his body language at that moment: he had such a wide grin as if what he had just learned was not some news about a former student, but the news that he had won a huge lottery! Professor Kao will always be remembered for his exceptional knowledge, significant contribution to the field, and deep caring for his students. He was a true humanitarian. 王璦玲 (Ayling Wang) 懷念高友工先生 聽到高友工先生辭世的消息, 除了震驚與難過, 首先在腦海中浮現的, 是 1997 年初識高先生的情景 那是我第一次見到高先生, 也是唯一的一次, 卻讓我對高先生留下深刻的記憶 1997 年我與同事在中央研究院文哲所主辦了一場 明清戲曲國際學術研討會, 這是台海兩岸的第一個關於明清戲曲的大型會議, 除了高先生, 我們還邀請了當時海外的幾位重量級漢學家如 Wilt L. Idema Stephen West 岡晴夫 大木康 吳秀卿等教授, 以及兩岸知名戲曲學者如曾永義 葉長海 孫崇濤 陸萼庭 黃天驥 周育德 洪惟助 齊森華 吳新雷 吳書蔭 趙山林等教授, 可謂名家匯集, 盛況空前 高先生是國際知名的漢學家, 也是我在耶魯大學的恩師孫康宜老師的指導教授, 常聽孫老師提起高先生對她多年來的指點與影響, 我私心裡早已仰慕許久 承蒙孫老師引介, 高先生慨允來台出席此會議, 我真是感動又興 41

42 奮 開會前一天我到機場去接他 飛機於清晨抵台 高先生一如我想像中的溫文儒雅 淡定瀟灑 對晚輩也十分 親切 我們到中研院活動中心時 正好是用早餐時間 於是我陪他在餐廳吃了頓台式清粥小菜 雖然是初相識 因著高先生的和藹可親 我們毫不拘束地聊了一些我的學習歷程與此次會議的相關內容 我記得他總是微笑著輕 聲地說話 讓我原先的緊張與陌生感消失殆盡 因此雖然是初次交談 感覺上卻彷彿與他已相識許久 高先生是以中國 抒情美典 理論著稱之名家 為了中研院這場明清戲曲國際會議 他特別撰寫了 中國之 戲曲美典 一文 以他的美學素養與理論思維 從中國戲曲的多重藝術因素考量 提出與 抒情美典 對應的 外投美典 概念 來闡釋中國戲曲美典之源流的形成 透過此項以再現 representation 與想像 imagination 為基石的 外投美典 概念 高先生說明從 內向 internalization 到 外投 externalization 的諸項中國 藝術形式 如何在 抒情 與 戲曲 的文類特性間逐漸發展 論文闡明 外投美典 的外投對象 觀眾 為戲 曲成長的關鍵 以及中國戲曲如何由禮儀傳統 遊戲 而滋生的百戲 講唱與戲弄等戲曲雛形融合而成 此文 對於中國戲曲歷史源流與美感形構的理論觀照 為中國戲曲美典的形成與發展 揭示了清晰而豐富的圖像 國際 會議之後 我們又特別邀請高先生在中研院作了一場專題演講 講題為 從 絮閣 驚變 彈詞 談起 藝術評價問題之探討 這場演講展現了高先生對於崑曲表演藝術的深厚素養與造詣 高先生在美任教 長年旅 居海外 每次來台灣都屬難得 這次與會的絕大多數學者與我一樣 是第一次有機會認識高先生 並聆聽其專題 演講 高先生學貫中西 所提示的觀點視野宏闊 精闢深透 與會聽眾均表示獲益匪淺 深受啟發 配合國際會 議 我們特別安排了一場由中國大陸崑曲名家張繼青 計鎮華 梁谷音 姚繼琨擔綱演出的 崑劇折子戲專場 高先生對這次演出十分讚賞 也直說此行有幸觀賞到如此高水準的崑曲表演 真是不虛此行 高先生在中研院幾天的訪問一轉眼就過了 開會期間我因係會議主辦人 其實沒有太多時間再坐下來與高先 生單獨細談 頗感遺憾 沒想到送他去機場的路上 他緩緩從提袋中拿出了我在會議中發表的論文 說他仔細讀 了拙作 並提起他雖喜歡戲曲 但對於明清傳奇的劇本 除了幾部名作 總不耐煩細讀 現代人肯對明清傳奇文 本如此下功夫的不多 我對於明清傳奇劇本的嫻熟 加上理論思維的訓練 未來的研究大有可為 高先生上飛機 後 我翻開他讀過的拙作 只見他寫了許多鼓勵的話語 也給了一些寶貴的建議 看著高先生批閱拙文的筆跡 一筆一畫如此深細 一如他心思的縝密與意見之精闢 我真是感動至極 更對高先生提攜後輩的用心與深意 留 下極為深刻的印象 哲人已遠 但光風霽月 典型猶存 僅以此文表達對高先生無盡的思念與敬意 胡曉真 (Siao-chen Hu) 高友工先生並未頻繁往來美國與臺灣 而他在臺講學期間發表的文學理論文章 卻能對中文學界產生如此深 遠的影響 實在是臺灣學術史上最美麗的傳奇與佳話 我於二十世紀的八〇年代才進入臺大外文系就讀 並未趕 上高先生在臺大講學的時代 但當時外文系與中文系的交流相當多 外文系的學生必修中國文學史 因此高先生 在 中外文學 發表的諸篇文章 也是所有以文學批評自任的同學必讀的 其實高先生的文章對大學生來說不易 了解 但抒情傳統 文學美典等詞彙倒是琅琅上口 相信此後很長一段時間 許多文學學生都曾經過類似的啟蒙 吧 文學的種子一旦灑下 自有源源不絕的生命力 既能生根 又能遠颺 高先生對臺灣學界的影響便是如此 直到 1998 年 我才第一次有機會聽到高先生現身說法 暢談藝術問題 當時我在中研院中國文哲研究所工 作不久 還是個不折不扣的青年學者 知道文哲所邀請了高先生專題演講 真有一種未去朝聖 而聖山自己走到 面前的感覺 高先生在文哲所的演講以戲曲美典為中心 酣暢地論述他心目中崑曲藝術的極致 亦即 長生殿 中的 絮閣 驚變 彈詞 三折 雖是將近二十年前的事 但我眼中還可以重現高先生演講時 近乎手 舞足蹈地流露對崑曲藝術的情感 我想當時在場聆聽演講的文哲所同仁以及來賓 都記得那情感的強度與感染力 以折子作為戲曲藝術的美典 這對高先生來說是一種信仰 不一定是戲曲專家的共識 然而如此的藝術熱情與執 著 亦正是高先生在學術著作之外 對後學小輩所做的一場人生示範 高先生在文哲所的專題演講題為 從 絮閣 驚變 彈詞 說起 藝術評價問題之探討 後發 表於 中國文哲研究通訊 8 卷 2 期 這是高先生留給文哲所最有意義的紀念 高先生一生奉獻於文學 42

43 研究中的美學問題 他雖離去 但後輩學生將繼續探討高先生留給我們的文學研究問題 那是一個永恆的禮物 我謹代表中央研究院中國文哲研究所 以此小文紀念高先生與文哲所短暫交錯的緣分與恆遠的學術傳承 Shuen-fu Lin 林順夫 A Few of My Fond Memories of Professor Yu-kung Kao The first time I heard of Yu-kung Kao was in the fall of I was working as a teaching assistant in the English Department at Tunghai University in Taichung, Taiwan where the late Jack Langlois ( ), a good friend to many of us, was an English instructor. Freda Murck was also an instructor in the department at the time. I was thinking of applying to graduate schools in the United States to continue my studies in Chinese and English literatures. Since I knew Jack had received his BA from Princeton and had just completed his MA in Chinese history at Harvard, I consulted him. He told me, In my opinion, if you plan to do graduate work that includes Chinese literature as an area, the best place for you is Princeton University. The person who teaches Chinese literature there is Yu-kung Kao. He is a brilliant scholar, an aficionado of classical music and ballet, a great cook, and an interesting and amiable man. I knew it would be a long shot for me to get admitted to Princeton Graduate School. But the opportunity to study under the guidance of someone like Yukung Kao as described by Jack was so irresistible that I made an application to Princeton that fall. A few months later, to my surprise, I was accepted to the graduate program in Chinese studies in the Department of Oriental Studies (which was split into the Department of East Asian Studies and the Department of Near Eastern Studies in 1969). One afternoon soon after I arrived in Princeton in late September 1967, I met Professor Kao for the first time in his office in the basement of East Pyne Building. I remember well to this day the enthusiastic welcome and helpful academic advising I received from him during that first meeting. Two other things also left indelible imprints on my memory: his cheerful manner symbolized by his big smile and the incredibly huge number of books that filled his office. I had never seen so many books in anybody s office before, and I noticed that many of the books were in English on a variety of subjects in the humanities. I remember that I could not suppress my curiosity and asked a naïve (perhaps ultimately cheeky) question: Professor Kao, have you read all these books? He gave a hearty laugh and said, Not even close (還早呢). But I know what most of these books are about. With books, it s important to know them and to keep them for possible future use (備而不用). On numerous occasions thereafter when I came to his office to ask questions or seek advice, he would pull the appropriate books to illustrate his points. In the summer of 1968, I took Second-year Japanese in the Summer Language School at Stanford University. Professor Kao asked me to go to see him before leaving town. He met me in his office for about a half hour one day in May. He gave me a reading list of some 20 books he had prepared for me to take along. It was a list of select works by master modern Western thinkers, theorists and critics, such as Ernst Cassirer s An Essay on Man, Susanne Langer s Philosophy In A New Key and Feeling and Form, John Austin s How To Do Things With Words, Sigmund Freud s Civilization and Its Discontents, Erich Auerbach s Mimesis, and Northrop Frye s Anatomy of Criticism. Most of these books were new to me, except Frye s Anatomy, which had been briefly introduced to me in Professor Walton Litz s ( ) course, History of Literary Criticism, in the winter term of Professor Kao briefly commented on the books he had selected, and quoted the phrase 轉益多師 (turning to gain the benefits in learning from many teachers ) from a poem by Du Fu 杜甫 to emphasize the importance for me to broaden my horizons. It took me more than just one summer to get through these 20 books. But the reward of having actually read these influential texts was tremendous. In the summer of 1969, I met in Cambridge, Massachusetts an admirer of Professor Kao, the late Professor Chang Heng 張 亨 ( ) from the Department of Chinese Literature at Taiwan University, who was a visiting scholar at HarvardYenching Institute at the time. After learning that I was Professor Kao s student, Professor Chang told me the following stories about my teacher. Late in 1948, Professor Kao left China for Taiwan with his parents and early in the winter of 1949, he initially enrolled in the Department of Law at National Taiwan University. But one day after having sat in one of Professor Tung T ung-ho s 董同龢 ( ) classes, Professor Kao decided to change his major from law to Chinese literature. I couldn t help but ask Chang Heng, How could a smart person like Professor Kao decide to switch his academic major from law to Chinese literature after having just sat in one class on phonology given by a linguist? Professor Chang replied, Professor Kao must have been very impressed with Professor Tung T ung-ho s research methodology, evident from that class. While pursuing my MA in Chinese literature at Taiwan University, I myself also took 43

44 courses with Professor Tung. What I admired most in Professor Tung was not that he possessed erudite learning but his new, original and rigorous research methods. According to Professor Chang, Professor Kao was Tung T ung-ho s most favorite student, but Tung knew that Kao had such diverse interests and talents that he would not be able to keep this brilliant student within the field of linguistics. Apart from studying with Tung T ung-ho, Professor Kao also took courses with virtually all of the best scholars in the Chinese humanities on the faculty of Taiwan University at the time: Wang Shu-min 王叔岷 (textual collation and criticism), T ai Ching-nong 臺靜農 (history of Chinese literature), Tai Chun-jen 戴君仁 and Cheng Ch ien 鄭騫 (Chinese poetry), Fang Hao 方豪 (Sung Dynasty history), and Fang Tung-mei or Thomé Fang 方東美 (aesthetics and philosophy of life). Professor Chang told me that he knew no other undergraduate student who had taken courses with as many great professors as Professor Kao had at Taiwan University. In relating these stories about Professor Kao, I would like to say that, for us students of Chinese literature, Tung T ung-ho s loss (of the opportunity to train a brilliant student in linguistics) is our gain (in having a scholar of Kao Yu-kung s erudition and brilliance as a mentor). Further, I would like to note that Tung T ung-ho left a profound influence on Kao Yu-kung, an influence that may be called a linguistic turn" in the latter s career in humanistic scholarship. It seems safe to say that language has always occupied a central place in Professor Kao s scholarly writings. I defended my dissertation A Structural Study of the Tz u Poetry of Chiang K uei (ca ) in the fall of After the defense, I chatted with Professor Kao in his office for a while. He said that he thought I had done a decent job on my dissertation and my oral defense. Then he asked, Have you read Roger Shattuck s The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France 1885 to World War I? I replied, No, I haven t. He said, You should read it to see if you can learn from it. It is an interesting study of four seemingly minor figures in modern French painting, music and literature whose careers together present a picture of the age they lived in better than the single career of any major contemporary figure. Since Chiang K uei is not one of the major figures in Sung history, I took Professor Kao s suggestion to heart and bought a copy of The Banquet Years soon after the defense. I remember that as soon as I began reading the book that fall, I could hardly put it down. I was impressed by the book not so much by its content as by Shattuck s broad perspective and by the fascinating way in which he presents his material and insights. In a significant way, The Banquet Years contributed to my breaking away from the rigid and narrow approach of formal analysis. I also recognized from reading Shattuck s book that good scholarly writing need not always be cut and dried. I hope the above few brief accounts are sufficient to indicate how privileged I was to have been Professor Kao s student. How would I characterize Professor Kao as a teacher? From my experience, I would say that Professor Kao fully lived up to Northrop Frye s notion of an ideal teacher as summarized by Graham Nicol Forst from the great critic s writings: Frye s ideal teacher... is homo ludens* in a classroom, offering students the capacity to play with the conventions within which they may become free to say what they want to say, and to do what they want to do. As the above several occasions in which I learned from Professor Kao illustrate, teaching does not have to take place only in a classroom. Thus the phrase in a classroom in Forst s statement may be modified as in a classroom or other situations. According to Forst, in his writings on culture, education, religion, and literary criticism, Frye argues that there is a need for humans to emerge from homo sapiens into homo ludens from man as knower into man the player[.] Frye derived the idea of homo ludens from Johan Huizinga s 1938 book Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. By play, both Huizinga and Frye signify a free activity standing quite consciously outside ordinary life as being not serious, an activity that is connected with no material interest, and (from which) no profit can be gained, and an activity that proceeds within its own boundaries of time and space, according to fixed rules. * Professor Kao recommended Huizinga s Homo Ludens to me while I was still a graduate student, although I cannot recall exactly when and in what context he did this. However, I did not appreciate Huizinga s play theory until much later when I started working more seriously on the ancient Chinese text Zhuangzi 莊子, a text that seems to set forth in a powerful way the philosophy of all is play. (The importance of the notion of play in the Zhuangzi has been observed by Wang Fuzhi 王夫之 [ ] in his Commentary on the Zhuangzi [Zhuangzijie 莊子解 ]: For us humans, with physical forms lodged here between heaven and earth, there is only this wandering, this play, and nothing besides. ** [ 寓形於兩間, 遊而已矣.]) Professor Kao was nicknamed the Modern Zhuangzi ( 現代莊子 ) by some of his closest friends. In my opinion, that nickname goes a long way to support the suggestion that, as a teacher, Professor Kao was an exemplar of homo ludens. In closing I would like to relate a playful moment I encountered while talking with Professor Kao on the phone a few years ago. In recent years, I had been in the habit of telephoning Professor Kao for a chat from time to time, usually around the New Year, either solar or lunar. Although Professor Kao had not been in very good health in recent years, he always appeared to be in great spirits, as jolly and humorous as ever, whenever I telephoned him. In that particular telephone conversation a few years ago, we chatted about a number of topics for a while. Then I asked him if reading was 44

45 still a good pastime for him. He replied, Of course, it still is. I inquired further, What sort of things do you read now? He replied, I never read scholarly writings any more. I read light and not serious materials such as magazines or novels. My memory has gotten so bad these days that I could read the same things over and over again without realizing it. We both burst out laughing. Indeed, as they say, old age does have its advantages! Professor Yu-kung Kao passed away in his sleep between the night of October 28 and the morning of October 29, In The Great Source as Teacher ( 大宗師 ) chapter of the Zhuangzi, there is this passage: The Great Clump (i.e., the Earth or Nature) burdens me with a physical form, labors me with life, eases me with old age, and rests me with death. Hence it is precisely because I regard my life as good that I regard my death as good. ( 夫大塊載我以形, 勞我以生, 佚我以老, 息我以死 故善吾生者, 乃所以善吾死也 ) I believe the Modern Zhuangzi, our beloved teacher, would probably find this passage congenial to his own outlook on life. * The quoted remarks on homo ludens in this paragraph are taken from Graham Nicol Forst, Frye Spiel : Northrop Frye and homo ludens, Mosaic: a Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature; Sep 2003; 36, 3; Research Library, pp **Wang Fuzhi s comment presented here is a slight modification of the translation by Brook Ziporyn in his Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings with Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2009, p The quotation from The Great Source as Teacher can be found in Brook Ziporyn, pp. 43 and 46. Shuen-fu Lin December 8, 2016 Hsiao-lan Chen Mote Professor Kao was known as an accomplished scholar, beloved teacher and talented artist; he was not only well versed in Chinese culture but also had deep understanding in every aspect of Western culture -- music, dance, literature, art, history and more -- qualities that are already well documented in many tributes in this volume. My own recollections are mainly on non-scholarly subjects. I first met Yu-Kung in 1962, when he came to Princeton for the job interview; I felt that I had always known him. He was warm with his special typical Kao smile, hearty laughs, and a very good and generous nature that drew people to him. One has to guess that Yu-kung never missed a moment in learning from all types of people and their ideas. He had impeccable taste and was a connoisseur of food -- both Chinese and Western -- and he was himself a fine cook. Here are a few vignettes in my memory. Once, probably in 1963 (I can't remember the reason) I was waiting for Fritz and Yu-kung outside our home at Edward's Place. They just came from a meeting; Yu-kung was jubilant and clapping his hands and whirling around a couple of times--he was so glad to be finished with the meeting. Like a happy kid, he ran toward me and grabbed my hand and then jumped, skipped -- laughing all the time -- and we ran toward Fritz who was waiting for us to go to another function. Yu-kung's laughing and joy were very contagious. On another occasion Fritz and I went with YK to a midnight folksong concert after a late night snack of onion cake, congee ( 稀饭葱油大饼 ) and other tasty dishes prepared by Yu-kung in his apartment on University Place. We totally enjoyed the concert and he was especially amused by the intoxicated undergrads who were drinking champagne. The day that Fritz was first diagnosed with cancer in Colorado, Professor Marion Levy, who was then Chairman of East Asian Studies Program, called to report that YK wept copiously at the news. 45

46 One time while at dinner at our house in McCosh Circle, a guest was admiring Yu-kung s tie, and Yu-kung immediately took it off and presented it to the person right there on the spot. I vividly remember a time when Yu-kung went with us to an opera in New York. He had on a dashing black velvet suit; the pants needed some shortening, but he had just hastily scotch taped the hem. It turned out that the scotch tape didn't hold. Fortunately I had a sewing packet in my purse and quickly stitched up the hem in the parking garage, while he rested his foot up on the car seat. We all had a good laugh. Yu-kung was a very thoughtful and observant ( 细心 ) person. His keen observations gave him great insight into his friends' needs, to which he always responded generously. It is hard to accept that I will never have conversations with him again, but his voice and smiles are forever there. Tibor Baranski, Jr. 80 Dear Kang-i, Things have been moving at a hectic pace here in Beijing with my usual trips to Tokyo regarding client matters and my family obligations requiring ongoing attention since my daughters are in elementary school. I was hoping that things would quiet down somewhat during the Lunar New Year holiday but it was far from being as quiet as I had hoped for. The days and weeks went by since you graciously sent the s concerning Professor Kao s passing away this past autumn. Late this evening, after I finished helping my wife with preparations for guests coming to our home in Shunyi for lunch tomorrow and the children were long in bed, I was going through s, opened your and downloaded the attachment of the memories everyone shared about Professor Kao. I read through many of them and my memories of Professor Kao came back vividly, starting from when I matriculated as a freshman in September 1975 and subsequent years at Princeton as an undergraduate, almost as though it was a something that happened recently. A few weeks before matriculating at Princeton, I had just returned to the US from my second year in Taiwan, studying at NTU in the History Department ( 国立台湾大学歴史系 ) during academic year I spent that time taking classes on May 4 th Movement history and literature, while living with Professor K.H. Ting ( 丁関海教授 ), father of Nobel laureate, Samuel C.C. Ting ( 丁肇中教授 ), who are close family friends. I was and remain to this day astounded by the warm welcome and kindness I received at EAS, including from Professor Kao. During freshman week, Professor Marion Levy had me to his home several times to get to know and help take care of his Hungarian Komondor dogs. Professors Fritz Mote (my thesis advisor together with Professor Martin Collcutt) and Professor T.T. Chen (who interviewed me at Princeton in September 1974 when I was applying for admission to Princeton) had met with me several times to make sure that I was getting on the right track. Ms. T ang Nai-ying taught me the 301/302 classical Chinese course in my freshman year. Although I did not take courses with Professor Kao at Princeton, during my undergraduate years he often engaged with me in conversation, sometimes in the halls of Jones Hall or at Gest Library, sharing with me his thoughts on the study of classical Chinese and Chinese history. Since my work-study during freshman year was assisting Professor Andy Plaks, I had many opportunities to engage with Professor Kao. His smile, his kindness, caring and good humor that I always sensed remains with me to this day. I had many conversations with Professor Kao over the course of my studies at Princeton. Most were brief, just for a few minutes, some were longer. I am unable to remember most of them because they are too numerous to recall. But having lived with and received a classical Chinese education with Professor Ting in Taipei, I had a reasonably good idea of the Chinese scholar gentleman. Professor Kao for me always was and will remain in my heart as the distinguished Chinese scholar gentleman. Tibor February 5,

47 Roderick Whitfield Dear Kang-i, I am at once sad and glad that you have sent me the news of Professor Kao Yu-kung's death. Glad to read so many tributes, among them especially that of Hsiao-Lan Mote, one of my earliest memories at Princeton being Hsiao-lan and Fritz's warm hospitality at their home in Edward s Place in September 1960, an evening which only ended after my Cambridge tutor, Denis Twitchett, had missed the midnight bus back to New York, and Fritz asked me if I would like to drive there with him to take Denis to his hotel. This was another part of my sudden introduction to things American, just after the conference on Confucian Personalities at the Motel on the Mountain, where I had been impressed not just by Apathy in Government and Fervor in Art but by the registration plate WU (with no number) on Nelson s car. And glad too to read the tributes by Freda Murck, Andrew Lo (he of that wilder ride to NY and back, well before his coming to SOAS, where he displayed the traits of warmth, humour and wide erudition that so many of the tributes describe in his teacher) and Cheng P'ei-k'ai, who more than once extended a warm welcome to me at City University of Hong Kong. Although sadly I took no classes with Professor Kao, his arrival coincided with the time when I began work on my dissertation, and thanks to Professor Mote's introduction, early in 1965 it was Kao Yu-kung who very kindly read it through in draft, making invaluable suggestions and corrections. He might have been amused to know that my daughter born that year would eventually teach dance for some years at Princeton Ballet School, then for three years be Ballet Education Manager at Covent Garden, bringing dance to forty-six south London schools, and that she now lives not far from 明德, in Charlotte, Vermont. Youngsook joins me in sending our greetings. Thank you very much for writing; with kindest regards to you and to Hsiao-lan. Roderick 6 February 2017 John Hay Dear Kang-i, I've just heard the very sad news of Yu-kung's death, via you and Roderick Whitfield. Thank you for letting us know -- even though it is news we would far rather not have. It is particularly sad because he was such a fount of goodcheer. Even though the many benefits I garnered from him were all informal, the combination of his profoundly serious expertise and the ne plus ultra of his smile & laugh always made a uniquely unforgettable impact. What a loss. Warmest wishes to yourself, John February 7, 2017 Richard M. Barnhart In Memoriam: Professor Kao Yu-kung I have just learned of the death of Professor Kao Yu-kung. Professor Kao was my first teacher of classical Chinese, during the academic year at Stanford. I had been a student of Mei Tsu-Lin at the University of Pittsburgh, and Professor Mei urged me to transfer to Stanford to study with Kao Yu-kung and Liu Chun-jo. It was all arranged so well that all I had to do was fill in some forms and drive with my wife, daughter, and cat from Pittsburgh to Stanford. There I became a student of Chinese language and literature with professors Kao and Liu. Professor Kao s guidance leading our readings from the Guwenguanzhi and, later, selections of classical poetry from the Shijing through the Tang masters was my earliest encounter with a great teacher. That I have never lived up to his expectations is my regret, but I carry still his love of the classical language and his extraordinary ability to convey its nuances and richness. 47

48 Moreover, I first discovered Chinese art when Professor Kao took our class to see the great exhibition of treasures from the National Palace Museum, Chinese Art Treasures, then on exhibit at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco. When, after returning to Palo Alto, I asked his advice on where to study Chinese art history, his informed assessment of the field and its leading practitioners left me in no doubt that studying with Professor Wen Fong at Princeton would be the preferred choice. And so, following Professor Kao to Princeton, I began the study of art history. There, too, Professor Kao became my teacher, examiner on a field of my doctoral exam, interpreter of the poetry of Huang Tingjian, advisor on the many challenging texts my dissertation required, including the Classic of Filial Piety, and, much later, my guide through the intricacies of Yuan poetry. Still later, I was the angry examiner Maggie Bickford remembers so vividly, and it was indeed Kao Yu-kung, along with Fritz Mote, who managed to moderate my inexcusable anger on that regrettable occasion. Kao Yu-kung, in his quiet, unassertive, elegant way, seems always to have been a beneficent influence on my life. I owe to him not only my love of the classical Chinese language, but my even deeper affection for Chinese art. I wish I had come closer to the ideals he himself embodied. Dick February 6, 2017 Richard Stanley-Baker FOR GAO YOUGONG Off to the empyrean blue are you, immortal one, While wail we here below, our tender master lost to view; But yet we hail thee blue and true as truth itself, Never slurried, muddy or devious; You we hail, known to us as the true and Kindest teacher, the gentlest man of all, The junzi we began to aspire towards, To know, and share with others of our feather. If only briefly in Princeton, first year Chinese no less, And later after spells in Japan and Taipei too, we knew you As a very true friend indeed, whose rare integrity and free spirit I cherished as one of the great gifts of this life; Your truth to Dao and all else so deeply memorable, Your gentle teasing smile and laughter, dear laoshi, An inspiration to all of us, whom too I here salute as Most fortunate to have been instructed even a little by you, True Teacher. 登巫山過雲谷際天清清似處處空中天永袁君笑眼乘雲雷豹跑黃車 懷高友工 48

49 雨莫莫人形無觀 猿啾啾而木萧萧 思君而不忍絲弦 弦斷知音淚漣漣 飛高山而子不還 念君舞而思笑容 熱淚凝掛涌臉面 無死無形何為觀 過無門關真人少 濁涇清渭終混淆 禪門大悟開懷笑 唱歌跳舞道聲表 得自在界滿親人 入門正道方好漢 須開聖賢智慧眼 無君如何辨正門 思君念君自然笑 否極泰來心情好 君正伴我不捨去 隨君笑跳多奇妙 司徒恪 aka Richard Stanley-Baker; Princeton First Yr. Chinese 1965; MFA 1971; Ph.D. Art & Archaelology, Thanks due to Ms. Rosie Zhou, of UIC, Zhuhai, for helpful advice and tweaks replacing contemporary phrasing in favor of classical manner where desired. Other errors and infelicities my own entirely. March 28, 2017 江青 (Chiang Ching) 貼 心 朋友高友工 一九七二年 我去普林斯頓大學 Princeton 舉行獨舞 會演出 認識了高教授友工 當年我在加州柏克萊大學 Berkeley 教舞 在東亞系任教的鄭清茂教授得悉我要去普大演出 就興奮地對我說 保證 這次會遇到一位 知音 高友工 他還向我描繪這位英俊才子 平日裡如何瀟灑 幽默 授課之餘酷愛表演藝術 尤其是精通芭 49

50 . 0 Stuart Hodes Anna Kisselgoff Eugene( Eugene George Balanchine Jerome Robbins Dance at a gathering Goldberg Variation Watermill Watermill Edward Villella Douglas Dunn Douglas Douglas 躺 Douglas Eugene Ching Ze eva Cohen 九六九年被普 錄, 在藝術系創作組 (Creative Arts) 任舞蹈教員, 也與 友 別具慧眼有關 Ze eva 由以 列到紐約茱利亞表演藝術學院勤 儉學, 現代舞本科畢業 去普 試教職時, 她談的舞蹈教育不是由技術出發, 著重於對學 美的培育及提 創造及想像能 她告訴我 : 教授在 試現場表, 教詩歌, 但舞蹈就是 體的詩歌 他提了很多極有智慧, 本質 內 的問題, 我就知道他欣賞我 得到教席後, 我英 不夠好, 對學校的規矩和繁 縟節 竅不通, 都是 Eugene Eugene Ze eva Jos e Mateo 這位出 在古巴的學, 在普 學藝術史同時進修喜愛的舞蹈, 受了 教授 論的啟發 : 舞台可以是畫布, 舞步可以是顏, 舞蹈本 可以是詩歌, 毅然 向了舞蹈專業 在 友 推薦下他曾在 江 舞蹈團 呆過短暫時期, 後來搬去波 頓, 先在哈佛 學 Fogg Art Museum Cambridge José Mateo Ballet Theatre Dance for World Community 50

51 José Eugene Eugene Bolshoi Moments from Chinese past 拋 Frederick W. Mote John Nathan Mayumi John John Mayumi Nathan John Kenzaburo Oe Eugene John Eugene 懒畫眉 作開場曲 Birger Syracuse Birger Eugene 51

52 Birger Birger Bouillabaisse Birger Birger Safferen Safferen Safferen Birger Birger 00 Variations on a poetess lament Guggenheim Museum Works & Process Commentator 灭 颠 近 我去林肯中 表演藝術圖書館, 查找 友 史功底深厚, 喜歡看為 看似樸實, 實則蘊藏著豐富學識和無窮藝術魅 的著作 我每次去, 他都會把已經看完的好書推薦給我, 並要我帶 最後那次去, 我帶 了楊絳讀書筆記 隱 的串 兒, 鄧雲鄉 雲鄉話 借看友 看過的書最 的好處是他在書中勾划圈點, 容易讓我將注意 集中在關鍵詞上, 有時還有似眉批的隻字 樂 最使 52

53 他感動的是 多芬的 second movement of Beethoven Sonata Op. 111, Requiem Vienna Boys' Choir 理查德 Richard Georg Strauss Die Frau ohne Schatten 婴 Princeton Princeton 1962 down jacket 1989 Eugene Mei godfather, Eugene big Eugene. (Cambridge Companion) 系列的書, 本是 九 六年版的古英语 學, 另 本是 00 年版的中世纪法国 學 可 他對 學獵涉之深廣與對其研究最新發展的持續關注, 在漢學家中, 幾乎是絕無僅有 Raffaello Orlando Syracuse Oakwood Cemeteries 0 0 East Pyne 53

54 Eugene Princeton 0 Jones Hall 0 A Message from the Family of Kao Yu-kung We wish to thank the many friends, former associates, and students of Kao Yu- kung for being so kind in expressing their condolences and generous in sharing their memories of him. ******** From Chun-Juan Kao Wang Yu-kung was my younger brother. Growing up during a turbulent time in China, our family lived in Zhangjiakou, Tianjin, Nanking, Shanghai, Kunming, and Chongqing. In 1937, the Japanese army invaded near Beiping (Beijing) on July 7, and the war reached Shanghai by August 13. In 1939, we fled from the safety of the French Concession in Shanghai with our mother, cousin, and our cook. Over the next few months, we made the harrowing and circuitous journey to Chongqing, the wartime capital, via Hong Kong, Hanoi, and Kunming. After an unexpected delay of three months in Kunming, where Yukung and I temporarily attended school, we finally reunited with our father in Chongqing in With all the various moves over the years, we both attended five or six grammar schools by the time we arrived in Chongqing. In contrast to the frequent uprooting to a new city, we finally boarded at Nankai Middle School in 1941, and for the next six years, we were fortunate to enjoy a relatively stable and nurturing environment despite the ongoing war. Reflecting upon his lifelong passion for Chinese literature, I believe it was only then when we saw Yu-kung develop his fondness for reading and writing. Due to the war, there were few outside diversions. Yu-kung was not athletically inclined nor was he interested in joining the choir -- two of the few pastimes available to us. Instead, when classes ended at 3pm, and on the weekends, he immersed himself in reading voracious, prolific reading. While I was reading Jane Eyre and Gone with the Wind to pass the time, Yu-kung would read mostly Chinese classics, literature, and history. I vividly remember learning poetry with our Chinese literature teacher, who presented selected best works by a few great poets of the Tang and Song dynasties. While all the students would learn and memorize the poems assigned to us, Yu- kung, in his free time, read far beyond the assignments and learned most of the works of each poet in great depth. This was far more than the teacher had expected a student to do and marked the beginning of a passion that would last his lifetime reading, scholarly study, and teaching. He is a true scholar. 54

55 ******** From Effie Wang Petersdorf, Vivian Wang, and Andrew Wang Our mother s story about growing up with Kao Yu-kung in China is a world apart from the uncle we knew, and yet is so familiar to us. We remember him as our beloved uncle whose visits to our family home in Syracuse, where his mother (our grandmother) lived with us, are among our fondest memories of our childhood. He exposed us to all the arts by introducing us to the worlds of Jerome Robbins, Jacqueline du Pre, and Bob Dylan and insisted that Effie and Vivian take ballet lessons, as well as piano, cello, and violin! As an avid photographer, he enjoyed taking portraits that brought out people s humanity. We enjoyed his stories of life in the big city. He brought us souvenirs from his travels in Europe and Asia, and, of course, treats from Chinatown. His visits filled us with excitement and instilled in us a longing to grow up to see the world. We could count on him to know what was the latest in thing; he gave Andrew a first generation Sony Walkman, which at the time, few people possessed, let alone a teenager in upstate New York. Through his interests and experiences, he brought a level of worldly sophistication to our family. He could be generous and critical in equal measure as well as fiercely independent and enigmatic; we thought our uncle was so cool! But perhaps the most enduring image we have of him is that he was never far from his books. If he was not reading the New Yorker or the New York Times, he was sequestered in our study, reading one of the many Chinese books that filled his suitcase. This was the same Kao Yu-kung our mother knew in Chongqing. When we were older, we could see that he was inspired by his students to be a good teacher and to engage them fully and without restraint, in learning. 55

56 Pei-kai Cheng s memorial couplet for Yu-kung Kao 56

57 Ying-shih and Monica Yu s elegiac couplet for Yu-kung Kao (11 th lunar month, 2016) 57