I have little appetite for writing that picks over the private lives of elderly men after they are gone. Not because the past should be shielded from scrutiny, but because authors who wade into old quarrels rarely keep a steady hand on fairness or fact. A recent piece by Ouyang Jian, Who Is This Negative Figure in Feng Qiyong's Oral Autobiography?, left me with a strong sense of bias.
The quarrel between Feng Qiyong and Wu Wenzhi appears only in one man's telling. Were the reported denunciations and slander the result of a misunderstanding caused by someone with bad intentions, a rash mistake made in youth, or a meaner side of human nature? Without solid evidence, we cannot know.
We often say that one fault should not obscure great virtue. But we should also be careful not to let great virtue obscure one fault. However respected an artist may be, he or she can still have made ordinary human mistakes in youth, or shown traits no better than anyone else's—contempt for peers, prejudice, reckless conjecture. In recollection, people do not always state things candidly. Openness and ease of mind are not gifts everyone possesses; most of us wear masks all the way to the final darkness.
People are contradictory and complicated. Character and human nature sometimes look like an electrocardiogram. When we use the mood of the present to guess at the words and deeds of another time, are we separating truth from falsehood or sliding toward the opposite of truth? It is hard to know.
Those involved are gone. Does it still matter who was right? It once mattered, because honor and disgrace are personal. The old story of a letter sent a thousand miles to argue over a wall is much the same: 'what harm is there in yielding three feet?' is easy to say and very hard to do. If you cannot get past the hurdle, and he cannot either, then tenderness is not always consideration.
What is past is past. Dredging history can sometimes bring up nothing but mud.