This is a review of The Carnal Prayer Mat by the seventeenth-century Chinese author Li Yu, in the translation by Patrick Hanan. (In Chinese, family names are written first, so the author's surname is "Li.")

This book is a classic that is sexy, witty, fast-paced and fun to read even if you don't like "classics." It also has interesting philosophical aspects that raise it above the level of simply an entertaining read. Some of these philosophical points are raised in the "Critique" sections that come at the end of every chapter (probably written by a friend of Li Yu's). You should be warned that this IS an erotic novel. It is not any more graphic than lots of popular novels today, but if you are offended by explicit sexual discussions, you should not read it.

The novel's main character is Vesperus, an extremely talented scholar who has two ambitions in life: "to be the most brilliant poet in the world" and "to marry the most beautiful girl in the world" (p. 24). Vesperus is warned by the Buddhist monk Lone Peak that this second quest will lead him to numerous wicked acts. Because he wants only the most beautiful woman, he will never be satisfied with any woman he marries, and will even commit adultery with other married women if they seem more beautiful to him. And because of the law of karmic retribution, Vesperus will be punished, either in this life or the next, for his evil deeds. Vesperus scoffs at this admonition, so Lone Peak advises, "gain your enlightenment on the carnal prayer mat; then you'll discover the truth" (p. 30).

What makes this novel so philosophically interesting is that we're never sure quite what perspective the novel takes on all this. At a surface level, the novel is a straightforward moral tale. In an introductory chapter, Li Yu tells us that he wants to teach people that a moderate amount of sex within marriage is good, but that excessive sex or sex outside of marriage is dangerous. He claims that his explicit sexual descriptions "are all designed to lure people into reading on until they reach the denouement, at which point they will understand the meaning of retribution and take heed" (p. 11). And, indeed, the life of Vesperus does follow a path that suggests such a message.

However, there is much in the text that is potentially subversive. For example, Vesperus learns, to his surprise, that he is very poorly endowed compared to most men. Li Yu describes this as an opportunity for him to curb his inappropriate lust, comparing him to two Confucian sages noted for their sexual restraint: "Who knows, perhaps Lu Nanzi, who shut his door against an importunate widow, and Liuxia Hui, who kept his self-control with a girl on his knee, may have shared these very thoughts of his, thoughts that may have made them the leading paragons of all time" (pp. 105-106). Chinese thinkers were sophisticated enough to realize that virtue requires appropriate motivation, and that fear of sexual inadequacy is not a virtuous motivation for sexual restraint.

In addition, Li Yu advises us, "Clearly it is wrong to study the bedroom art, for once learned, it tends to corrupt our thinking" (p. 117). But this novel itself is, in part, a treatise on "the bedroom art." There are learned disquisitions on the proper use of pillows in positioning a woman's body (p. 151 ff.), on the advantages of plumper women over skinnier ones in bed (p. 253 ff.), and on the importance of women taking an active role during intercourse, as by "Lowering the Yin to Join the Yang" (i.e., female superior position; p. 280 ff.).

The novel also makes extensive plays on the Confucian classics in ways that sometimes suggest subversive irreverence. Many of these references are to the ancient Confucian Mengzi (also known as Mencius). In fact, Li Yu explicitly compares himself to Mencius (pp. 9-11), who avoided taking an overly puritanical tone with a ruler fond of sex, in order to more successfully direct him toward benevolent government. (See Philip J. Ivanhoe and Bryan W. Van Norden, eds. Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, reprint [Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2003], p. 120.) The learned translator, Patrick Hanan, catches many such references, but I suspect that he misses a few. For instance, Vesperus's wife reads some erotic novels, and notices that the men in the stories are described as being much better endowed than her husband. She is not sure what to make of this, since she has never been with another man. She concludes, "Better to have no books at all then to believe everything you read" (p. 207). Hanan puts this in quotation marks, so he recognizes that it is a quotation from something. In fact, it is probably from Mencius 7B3, in which he comments on the Book of History. Drawing this parallel hints that the Confucian classic, the Book of History, is on a level ethically and intellectually with popular erotica (such as The Carnal Prayer Mat itself).

But a simple subversive reading seems inadequate too. The eventual downfall of Vesperus and those whom he entangles in his web is artfully complex, but it does not seem contrived or implausible. In a truly great novel, the author does not try to force the characters to illustrate any particular moral. He creates them and lets them do what they must do, given who they are and the situations they are in. Great novels are ethically complex because life is ethically complex. The Carnal Prayer Mat achieves this kind of greatness, but for that reason it defies easy ethical summation.