Did Chinese President Xi Jinping refer to "sword of Damocles" in speech?
September 20, 2015 3:54 AM Subscribe
In the translation I've found of Xi Jinping's speech at the recent military parade, he says: "War is the sword of Damocles that still hangs over mankind." Does he refer to the Damocles myth in the original Chinese or is an equivalent Chinese reference transposed into Western culture? If he does refer to the actual sword of Damocles, is it a common reference in China? And if so, did it enter common Chinese parlance through the writings of Marx?
Response by poster: Thanks for a very thorough answer, pravit!
I speculated about Marx because he uses it in his Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, though I imagine that's hardly the most pertinent of his works for Chinese readers. Here's the paragraph, incidentally:
posted by Kattullus at 6:54 AM on September 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
I speculated about Marx because he uses it in his Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, though I imagine that's hardly the most pertinent of his works for Chinese readers. Here's the paragraph, incidentally:
Thus by now stigmatizing as "socialistic" what it had previously extolled as "liberal," the bourgeoisie confesses that its own interests dictate that it should be delivered from the danger of its own rule; that to restore tranquillity in the country its bourgeois parliament must, first of all, be given its quietus; that to preserve its social power intact its political power must be broken; that the individual bourgeois can continue to exploit the other classes and to enjoy undisturbed property, family, religion, and order only on condition that their class be condemned along with the other classes to like political nullity; that in order to save its purse it must forfeit the crown, and the sword that is to safeguard it must at the same time be hung over its own head as a sword of Damocles.
posted by Kattullus at 6:54 AM on September 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
Had a check and I see Marx does use the phrase in his 1871 work The Civil War in France; apparently this was one of the earlier of his texts to be translated into Chinese and was influential in shaping Communist thought there (e.g.) so there's a decent chance that is where Xi picked it up (this Google search in Chinese brings up several links suggesting it's still published, read and studied in China including officially), though I agree with pravit that it may just as well be via some other Western classic.
posted by Abiezer at 10:49 AM on September 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by Abiezer at 10:49 AM on September 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
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战争是一面镜子，能够让人更好认识和平的珍贵。今天，和平与发展已经成为时代主题，但世界仍很不太平，战争的达摩克利斯之剑依然悬在人类头上。我们要以史为鉴，坚定维护和平的决心。
I don't know how common of a reference it is or how it entered the lexicon. My guess is most Chinese people would understand its meaning from context, but only educated people would know where the reference actually comes from. Doing a Google search, it seems to be used occasionally in news articles. It's certainly not what I would call "common parlance", any more so than it is in English - you wouldn't use it in casual speech, obviously. It's a reference used in writing or formal speeches.
In general, written Chinese is heavy in idiomatic expressions, most of which are indigenous in origin (chengyu). These often refer to fables or historical or mythical events. In this case, referring to "the sword of Damocles" serves the same purpose even though the reference comes from foreign culture.
I don't think it necessarily comes from Marxism either - educated Chinese people are actually fairly familiar with "classical" Western cultural references. In Chinese bookstores there is usually a huge section of foreign literature which tends to be heavily skewed towards 19th and early 20th century authors - for example, O. Henry is super popular for some reason. Modern Chinese writers will sometimes make allusions to Olympus and Greek or Roman mythology.
In my opinion (as a non-native speaker of Chinese), when people do this, it comes off as rather erudite and cultured, or at least as an attempt to sound like that. The Chinese language is so vast there is almost certainly an equivalent Chinese cultural reference for basically any situation, so if you deliberately pick a foreign cultural reference, you're "showing off" in a sense. In this case, Xi Jinping probably used it due to the international nature of the event and the foreign media coverage (after all, here we are discussing it weeks later on an English-language website).
posted by pravit at 6:05 AM on September 20, 2015 [31 favorites]