‘The words of a nation worn down by cares’: classical wisdom and modern crisis in Lin Shu’s Aesop’s Fables

Abstract This article analyses the remarkable translation of Aesop’s Fables produced by the Chinese literatus-turned-cultural-impresario Lin Shu [林紓; 1852–1924] at the turn of the twentieth century. Collaborating with colleagues proficient in English, which he himself was not, Lin translated the Fables into elegant Classical Chinese. This article examines the preface to the translation, which uses Aesop’s status as an enduring classical figure in Western education to argue for the continuing relevance of Classical Chinese in newly constituted school curricula. More importantly though, this article probes at the voluminous epimythia Lin composed for most of the fables in the collection. Written immediately after the humiliating Boxer Protocol, these present a feisty critique of Western imperialism in China. They range in topic from China’s lack of cultural self-confidence to comparative reflection on the status of enslaved Africans in the antebellum USA. A confident and wilful reader of texts, in Lin’s hands the Fables become a foil for razor-edged polemic. His translation is surely one of the most culturally significant in the Fables’ long and murky textual history, and represents an overlooked monument of classical reception in an East Asia teetering on the violent edge of modernity.