In the 18th century there was published in China a detective story whose acting person was ´magistrate´ Dee, investigating and solving three different criminal cases. Actually this writing had already been in print since hundreds of years - its author unknown yet as it was common in old China especially in regard to trivial literature.
But the person of ´Dee Goong An´ infact was historical, although little is known about him and his life:
His name was Ti Jen-chieh
(Di Renjie), living during
the time of the T´ang-Dynasty: Born in 630, he died in 700 a. Chr..
He started his splendid career as a district court´s judge, finally
quitting the imperial service as a minister of state. He left two sons (Ti
Kuang-se and Ti Ching-hui), also running honorable careers as imperial mandarins,
but lacking the outstanding personality and the great abilities of their father.
This was to show up again with his grandson Ti Chien-mo, who died as a governor
in the emperor´s capital of Ch´ang An (Xi´an).
It was the dutch diplomatist Robert van Gulik (1910-1967), a very rare species of a western ´Mandarin´ - speaking a good dozen of languages and (hand-)writing books in chinese, japanese etc. -, who ran into the chinese criminal story, translating and publishing it 1949 in a small english edition, covered with his own colored woodcut.
Later on (1950), Robert van
Gulik - his honorable chinese pen name was Kao Lo-p´ei -
published the first of his ´Judge Dee´ detective stories with
the (later) title of "The Maze Murder" (german title : "Mord
im Labyrint"), written by himself and - in japanese language! There were
still 15 other booklets to follow, each one illustrated with many appealing
woodcut graphics all designed by van Gulik himself in Ming-style. (I regret,
for copyright reasons, not being able to show you at least some of them.)
Wenn ich sterbe |
Wenn
ich sterbe
Wer wird dann um mich trauern? Nur die schwarzen Krähen aus den Bergen Werden um mich trauern. Aber die Krähen, die aus den Bergen kommen Trauern auch nicht um mich: Sie trauern um das unerreichte Opfergebäck Auf meinem Totenaltar. (tr. fr. Japanese by R.v.G) |
|
When
I die
(tr. by A.W.T.)
|
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