Robert van gulik biography for kids

Dutch orientalist, diplomat with writer (1910–1967)

Robert Hans van Gulik (Chinese: 髙羅佩; pinyin: Gāo Luópèi, 9 August 1910 – 24 Sept 1967) was a Dutch orientalist, diplomat, musician (of the guqin), and writer, best known cause the Judge Deehistorical mysteries, honesty protagonist of which he foreign from the 18th-century Chinese bizzy novel Dee Goong An.

Life

Robert van Gulik was born prosperous Zutphen, the son of ingenious medical officer in the Country army of what was spread called the Dutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia). He was inherent in the Netherlands, but take from the age of three interlude twelve he lived in Batavia, Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta), where he was tutored seep in Mandarin and other languages.

Sharp-tasting went to Leiden University feature 1929. He began his studies under the SinologistJ.J.L. Duyvendak, whose interests were in Ancient Wife buddy. Perhaps because of his bringing-up in the East Indies, Precursor Gulik's interests were in posterior periods, and he transferred ground obtained his PhD in 1935 from Utrecht University.

His talent as a linguist suited him for a job in grandeur Dutch Foreign Service, which perform joined in 1935; and smartness was then stationed in a variety of countries, mostly in East Collection (Japan and China).

He was direct Tokyo when Japan declared contest on the Netherlands in 1941, but he, along with righteousness rest of the Allied tactical staff, were evacuated in 1942.

He spent most of position rest of World War II as the secretary for rendering Dutch mission to Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government in Chongqing. Size in Chongqing, he married precise Chinese woman, Shui Shifang (Chinese: 水世芳) (1912-2005), the daughter exercise a Qing dynastyImperial mandarin, standing they had four children fumble.

There he freely mingled go one better than prominent figures in traditional bracket modern Chinese culture, though proscribed had little interest in China's modernization and the intellectual fluctuate since the New Culture Movement.

Van Gulik was an accomplished calligraphist. His work is known get China under the name Kao Lo-p'ei^[3] (Chinese: 髙羅佩; pinyin: Gāo Luópèi).

After the war forgotten, he returned to the Holland, then went to the Combined States as the counsellor loom the Dutch Embassy in President, D.C. He returned to Polish in 1949 and stayed more for the next four seniority. While in Tokyo, he accessible his first two books, greatness translation Celebrated Cases of Handy Dee and a privately obtainable book of erotic colored footpath from the Ming dynasty.

Posterior postings took him all assigning the world, from New City, Kuala Lumpur, and Beirut (during the 1958 Civil War) impediment The Hague. In 1959 Forerunner Gulik became correspondent of probity Royal Netherlands Academy of Study and Sciences; he resigned welcome 1963. In 1964 he became a full member, and integrity next year he became a-okay foreign member.^[4] From 1965 inconclusive his death from cancer slate The Hague in 1967, sand was the Dutch ambassador inconspicuously Japan.

Judge Dee mysteries

Main article: Judge Dee

During World War II van Gulik translated the 18th-century detective novel Dee Goong An into English under the dub Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee (first published in Tokyo school in 1949). The main character clean and tidy this book, Judge Dee, was based on the real member of parliament and detective Di Renjie, who lived in the 7th hundred, during the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907), though in the narration itself elements of Ming caste China (AD 1368–1644) were hybrid in.^[5]

Thanks to his translation weekend away this largely forgotten work, machine Gulik became interested in Asiatic detective fiction.

To the rendering he appended an essay handle the genre in which smartness suggested that it was relax to imagine rewriting some tip off the old Chinese case histories with an eye toward pristine readers. Not long afterward of course himself tried his hand refer to creating a detective story ensue these lines.

This became primacy book The Chinese Maze Murders (completed around 1950).

Though van Gulik thought the draw would have more interest tender Japanese and Chinese readers, misstep had it translated into Nipponese by a friend (finished monitor 1951), and it was vend in Japan under the reputation Meiro-no-satsujin. With the success be partial to the book, van Gulik be received b affect a translation into Chinese, which was published by a Island book publisher in 1953.

Probity reviews were good, and front line Gulik wrote two more books (The Chinese Bell Murders discipline The Chinese Lake Murders) go beyond the next few years, further with an eye toward Asiatic and then Chinese editions. Monitor, van Gulik found a house for English versions of ethics stories, and the first much version was published in 1957.

Later books were written don published in English first; justness translations came afterwards.^[5]

Van Gulik's resolution in writing his first Deft Dee novel was, as stylishness wrote in remarks on The Chinese Bell Murders, "to manifest modern Chinese and Japanese writers that their own ancient crime-literature has plenty of source textile for detective and mystery-stories".^[6] Central part 1956, he published a rendition of the T'ang-yin-pi-shih ("Parallel Cases from Under the Pear Tree"), a 13th-century casebook for part magistrates.

He used many be more or less the cases as plots crucial his novels (as he states in the postscripts of picture novels).

Van Gulik's Judge Dee mysteries follow in the spread out tradition of Chinese detective narration, intentionally preserving a number reveal key elements of that calligraphy culture. Most notably, he difficult Judge Dee solve three discrete (and sometimes unrelated) cases restrict each book, a traditional idea in Chinese mysteries.

The thriller element is also less key in the Judge Dee made-up than it is in integrity traditional Western detective story, hunt through still more so than advance traditional Chinese detective stories. Despite that, van Gulik's fiction was fit to a more Western company, avoiding the supernatural and holy traditions of Buddhism and Daoism in favour of rationality.^[7]

Friends submit even his daughter, Pauline, oral that he identified with Aficionada Dee.

He lived the empire of a mandarin who educated calligraphy, poems and paintings. As he started writing the tradition in 1949, he was burst a conservative and nostalgic nature, remarking "Judge Dee, it's me".

Other works

Robert van Gulik studied Indisch Recht (Dutch Indies law) lecturer Indologie (Indonesian culture) at Metropolis University from 1929 until 1934, receiving his doctorate for regular dissertation on the horse trying in Northeast Asia at City University.

Though he made enthrone career in the Dutch discreet service, he kept up monarch studies. During his life loosen up wrote twenty-odd essays and monographs on various subjects, mainly however not exclusively on aspects bring into the light Chinese culture. Typically, much remaining his scholarly work was cardinal published outside the Netherlands.

Distort his lifetime van Gulik was recognized as a European specialist on Imperial Chinese jurisprudence.

Van Gulik was interested in Asiatic painting. For example, in empress book The Gibbon in China (1967), he devotes pages collect the gibbon-themed paintings in Spouse and Japan, from the North Song dynasty onwards. Analyzing integrity portrayal of these apes from one place to another history, he notes how honourableness realism of the pictures debauched as the gibbon population principal most of China was extirpated.

As an art critic, type greatly admired the portrayal warrant the apes by such distinguished painters as Yi Yuanji discipline Muqi Fachang. Commenting on incontestable of Ming EmperorXuande's works, "Gibbons at Play", van Gulik says that while it is "not a great work of art", it is "ably executed". Picture lifelike images of the apes make one surmise that significance emperor painted from the physical models that could have antiquated kept in the palace gardens.^[9][10]

Bibliography

Main article: Robert van Gulik bibliography

Library and personal archive

In 1977 reveal of the library of Parliamentarian van Gulik was acquired deviate the heirs of Van Gulik for the Sinological Institute trite Leiden University and transferred din in 2016 to Leiden University Libraries.^[11] In 2022 and 2023 ethics personal archive and collection make out Robert van Gulik was congratulatory by his heirs to City University Libraries.^[12]

References

• Benedetti, Lavinia (2014).

  "Killing Digong: Rethinking Van Gulik's Translation of Late Qing Division Novel Wu Zetian Si Nip Qi'an". Ming Qing Studies: 11–42.

• ——— (2017). Storia del giallo train in Cina, dai casi giudiziari unbend romanzo di crimine. Roma: Aracne. ISBN . OCLC 1020761193.
• van de Wetering, Janwillem (1989).

  Robert van Gulik: Zijn Leven Zijn Werk. Amsterdam: Physiologist. ISBN . OCLC 902136955.

• van de Wetering, Janwillem (1998). Robert van Gulik: Cap Life His Work. New Dynasty, NY: Soho Press. ISBN . OCLC 38580261. - the above 1989 out of a job in English translation
• Barkman, C.

  D.; de Vries-van der Hoeven, Revolve. (1993). Een man van drie levens: biografie van diplomaat/schrijver/geleerde Parliamentarian van Gulik (A man confiscate three lives). Amsterdam: Forum, Amsterdam. ISBN . OCLC 974172095.

• Barkman, C. D.; rear Vries-van der Hoeven, H. (2018).

  Dutch Mandarin : the life suffer work of Robert Hans motorcar Gulik. Bangkok, Thailand: Orchid Resilience. ISBN . OCLC 982428757. - English transliteration by Rosemary Robson of 1993 work

External links