Almost any schoolboy or girl can tell you that the test of a classic work of art is its relevance through time to the experience of the ordinary person. To last, a work of art must speak to the human heart across the ages on matters that engaga us, regardless of time and place details. Thus, Homer Odyssey continues to touch modrn readers because, like Odysseus, we are involved in our own journeys, where the sirens of consumerism beckon, the crashing rocks of violence, disease, and poverty threaten, and disorder and infidelity undermine the security of homes and families. Over and over again, we return to such classics, hoping to find in them what we need to make sense of our own lives and times, and they rarely disappoint us.
　　Such is the case with the writing and life of Pearl S. Buck --artist, woman, mother, and activist-whose legacy to the generations that follow her continues to be substantial. The truth of this statement became particularly clear to me following the events of September 11,2001, when, reflecting on her writings, I was struck by their enduring wisdom. Her insights on war, peace, the unity of all people, and the plight of women and children in a war zone are as fresh today and as applicable to our current world situation as they were when she wrote them forty or fifty or even sixty years ago.
　　Often, Buck places her wisest insights into the mouths of the peasants and farmers of China, whom she knew, loved and respected. Such is the case with the following excerpt from Dragon Seed where the main character Ling Tan, reflecting on how ill suited the human person is to war, says:
　　‘he gods made us human beings of soft and easily wounded flesh, for they dreamed us good and not evil. Had they been able to see what men would do to each other, they would have given us shells such as turtles have, into which we could have drawn our heads and our soft parts. But we were not made so, and the gods made us and we cannot change ourselves. We can only bear what is come and live on if we can, and die if we must.'
　　This touching, deep, sad reflection demonstrates well how far human beings can fall from their true nature, which Ling Tan (and Buck) believes is essentially peaceful.
　　Later in Dragon Seed Ling Tan speaks again - bestowing an eloquent curse on all who wage war - a curse that is timeless in the accuracy with which it describes war' s destructiveness:
　　‘Curse all these men who come into the world to upset it with wars!' he shouted, ‘and curse them for spoiling our homes and fouling our women and making our Life a thing of fear and emptiness! Curse such childish men that cannot have done with fights and quarrels in childhood but must still be children when they are grown and by their fights and quarrels ruin the lives of decent people such as we are!'
　　Buck, speaking as herself, could be equally eloquent on how to achieve a peaceful world. In A Bridge for Passing, she writes:
　　Exclusion is always dangerous. Inclusion is the only safety if we are to have a peaceful world, inclusion in national commonwealth, inclusion into an international commonwealth of nations ……. It is only the simple that can be large enough to comprehend all confusions .
　　Although she is reflecting here on her beliefs concerning the situation at the United Nations in 1961, her words seem appropriate to the contemporary world situation in a variety of ways. And we need to ask ourselves how much the exclusion of some from the sources of economic and political power may have inspired terrorism and unrest all over the world.
　　For Buck, peace demanded that cultures understand each other. (How well she would have understood the struggle of the United States today to catch up on its knowledge of Islam. How quickly she would have acted to add to this knowledge.) Over her lifetime, she devoted several of her books to building bridges of understanding, making it her mission to bring the peoples of the East and West together. As a result, her novels not only paint detailed pictures of Chinese and other cultures. They also humanize and individualize “the other”, allowing readers to identify with the characters and to recognize in them their common humanity. For example, in the portrait of Ling Tan and Ling Sao in Dragon Seed, which appears below, Buck creates the archetypal older couple, whose mature and feisty love is easily recognizable as genuine and believable regardless of its national or geographic setting. She writes:
　　…… these two were so close after all the years that she could not bear a word from him if he thought her wrong. To hear anyone else curse her and curse her mother and call her father a turtle did not touch her anywhere. She would only laugh or grow angry and curse back the bigger mouthful. But let her husband say she should have done other than she did, and though she would try to muster up her anger to flout him with,
　　Still she never could, and his words, though only two or three, would sink into her heart like a dagger, and she would carry it in her for days. So Ling Tan had learned never to speak to her to say she was wrong unless he must and he let many a small thing pass, knowing how warm and impetuous this woman of his was and how eagerly she secretly wished to do what he liked, though she would have denied she was so, and would have said what she so loved to say, that she feared no man, and not him either.
　　‘You are the best mother in the province,'he said,‘and where is there one like you beyond the seas? I would not have you a cool thin soul. I like you hot and gusty and I like your quick tongue even when it is turned on me.' He laughed as he spoke, and she grew red with pleasure and began to comb her hair again and to hide her pleasure she tried to be surly while she smiled.
　　‘You old turnip,' she said, and searched for something she could do for him. ‘ Come here, old man, and let me see that spot on your cheek and see if you are to have a boil after all these years.' He came near to her and bent over her to humor her, knowing very well why she wanted to touch him and to do something for him.
　　‘Is only where a flea bit me,' he said.
　　‘Do not tell me what it is,' she said, ‘I can see for myself.' She felt it and saw that it was nothing and so she gave him a small blow on his bare shoulder because she loved him so well.
　　‘And can you not catch a flea any more, and must you be bitten like a child, you bone?' she said.
　　They both laughed then, and he thought to himself that if this woman died before he did. even then he would not marry another, for after her any would be like a carrot dried without salt.
　　Likewise Madame Wu of Pavilion of Women is any fortyish woman who desires personal freedom and autonomy after several confining years of marriage, and O-fan of The Good Earth demonstrates the bravery and resourcefulness of refugees and survivors of war throughout the world.
　　The recent focus on the oppression of women by the Taliban in Afghanistan brings to mind the numerous efforts in Buck' s writing to portray the power and potential of women in a variety of public and private roles. Capable, heroic women abound in her writing. Some, like O-lan of The Good Earth and Ling Sao of Dragon Seed, though of humble peasant stock, have the common sense and ingenuity that help bring prosperity to their households. Quite remarkable is Peony, the bondswoman in the novel of the same name, who becomes the unlikely instrument in restoring order to a troubled family in the Chinese Jewish community. Educated women like Jade and Mayli of Dragon Seed represent the new generation of Chinese women whose influence expands beyond the household and becomes political. Even prostitutes and bar girls take on a dignity and nobliity in Buck's hands. In the autobiographical A Bridge For Passing, for example, Buck records an experience in a Tokyo bar that reveals both comimssion and understanding:
　　The bar was small and crowded with business men and with pretty girls, of whom there were many. I was introduced to a siender handsome woman of young middle age, whom the production manager declared was best madame in Tokyo. She looked competent and modest and upon hearing my name fell into a state of emotion, declaring that she had read all my books --- She introduced her girls to me after we were seated, very crowded, into a circular bench against the bar itself; these girls sat by me, one by one, and through one of them who spoke English, I became somewhat acquainted with them. Most of them were married and had children. No, they did not erjoy bar work, they said, but their husbands had poor jobs, or no jobs and this was easy work. I detected or imagined a certain patient sadness in their eyes and Was reminded of a visit I made once in Paris, many years ago, to the Folies Bergere. I was humanly curious then as now, and after the show I left my escort and went backstage to get acquainted with the show girls. They too were not girls. They were women, most of them married, with home problems of deserting husbands, sick husbands,poverty,illness-and most of them were not young,
　　‘Why such work?' I had inquired.
　　‘At night the children are asleep and safe.' ‘It is better than leaving them all day,' and so forth, the same in Paris asin Tokyo
　　The insights offered by Buck in her writing arise from a life characterized by what I call great - heartedness, a quality that encompasses vision, compassion, energy, courage, and a rather unique understanding of what it means to be a member of the human community. It was this quality, this great-heartedness, that made Buck an individual with a tremendous and driving sense of personal responsibility that would not let her rest and that motivated her to work tirelessly on behalf of causes--often unpopular causes--and to press other people--often very prominent people--into working along with her.
　　She could look at the darker side of the human community - its prejudices, injustices, rejections, and things kept hidden and secret-when many would not. She yanked them into the light and urged all to embrace and heal them, showing by example how this might be accomplished. Her life showed how one person could make a difference. Thus Welcome House was established, and unadoptable, racially mixed children - the rejected and hidden - were brought into the mainstream of an American community in rural pennsylvania, inspiring a whole new attitude on the part of adoptive parents and the nation. Thus it became acceptable for parents to admit that there was a retarded child in their family. Thus cultures of the East becamc known to the West. Thus the Civil Rights and Women's Movements received attention.
　　Through her writing and her activism, Buck urged all to take a new view of the world - the view that her beloved astronauts had as they orbited the planet - that of a tiny and beautiful blue ball, to which, as Carl Sagan tells us in Pale Biue Dot, all who have ever lived, worked, and accomplished have clung. It is a view that questions the sanity of anything that would lead to division.
　　Remarkably, this legacy of insight and perspective was left by a real, flesh-and-blood woman -- no plaster saint. She was a woman who loved beautiful clothes, jewelry, travel in chauffeur-driven cars; a woman who loved hobnobbing with movie stars and world leaders, but also enjoyed mixing with peasants, villagers, and shopkeepers. She was a woman who could be vain about her age, once saying that she had gotten to a point where her age had become indefinite. And she could lose her temper, once dashing a valuable and treasured wooden plate to the floor in a moment of jealousy. She could take pleasure in simple things llke a hot bath at the end of a day's work. She could feel grief and insecurity, but she could Struggle through her grief, using the healing power of work, nature and friends. And she could be honest, very honest, about wanting to believe in an afterlife, but needing some evidence, some scientific proof, of its existence.
　　We can warm to a woman like this - whose accomplishments we might otherwise find daunting and we can see ourselves carrying forward, in whatever small ways we can, the great legacy she left behind. Doing so continues to be important work. Surely, her wisdom endures.

Writer       ：Carol Ann Breslin
Writefrom：collected papers in memory of pearl s·buck

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