Tangents: Commentary on Tugendhaft

1.1

In the early Chinese tradition too, the “political” and the “poetical” (to use Aaron Tugendhaft’s categories) are intimately entwined, but whereas Tugendhaft persuasively and eloquently demonstrates the political background to, and implications of, the inconspicuous shift from “gods” to “brothers” in the Baal cycle, my brief comments on his article rather go in the opposite direction. First I try to demonstrate how two different “political” uses of the poem above indicate, and exploit, a fundamental tension in that poem, and that “the political”—at least in the Chinese case—is also a hermeneutical activity. Then I argue that in both traditions (the Hittite and the early Chinese) the notion of political usurpation corresponds to a notion of linguistic usurpation.

1.2

“I Lift My Skirt” (“Qian chang 褰裳”) is the eighty seventh piece in the Classic of Odes (a collection of 305 ancient poems elevated to the status of a Classic during the Western Han Dynasty).[2] A number of odes are set in a river landscape, and narrated by young men who describe their longing for attractive but elusive young women who are visible in the distance, but separated from their would-be suitors by the river. What is unusual with “I Lift My Skirt” is that its two, near-identical stanzas are narrated not by the lustful young men but by the object of desire herself.

On a cursory reading, the narratrix of “I Lift My Skirt” appears as an independent, self-assured and sexually emancipated woman who would not hesitate to reject her lover if he did not satisfy her. Conversely, she promises to cross the borderline constituted by the river if instead she finds the man on the other side to her liking. This, precisely, is the reading that Zi Chan presents, or activates, in his recital. Zheng may (like a woman) be physically weak but it knows its own value, and attractiveness.

Thus far Mr. Lü’s Annals, and my hasty reading of this poem. When the Odes are made an imperial Classic, the poems are augmented by two commentaries, to ensure that they are interpreted correctly, i.e., in keeping with conservative moral and social values. In these commentaries, the often sexually explicit Odes are given far-fetched interpretations not unlike Zi Chan’s playful adaptation of “I Lift My Skirt” above.[4] According to one of them, the so-called “Minor Preface,” this poem does not speak of young carnal love but of “a longing to be corrected. A foolish youth acted wantonly [and] the men of the state [of Zheng] desired to be rectified by a greater state 思見正也。狂童恣行。國人思大國之正己也.”[5]

This interpretation is superficially similar to the earlier one: the poem is read as a product of the state of Zheng, and as a plea directed to a mightier state. But a closer look reveals that it is predicated on wholly different assumptions than those held by Zi Chan (and shared by his adversary but comrade-in-interpretation Shu Xiang). Let us return briefly to the poem itself. My tentative interpretation of the narratrix as a “strong” woman, a pre-Confucian feminist who knows precisely what she wants, may be countered by a second reading that instead exposes her as a “hollow subject.” My lapse into psychoanalytical parlance is not unfounded here because the narratrix in fact promises that she can be had simply on the condition that her hypothetical partner does what he always has done, that is desire (si) her. In this reading, the girl at the borderline is endlessly narcissistic but lacks a true personality, or psychic kernel: she has no other demand than that the man whose desire she desires should desire her. She does not look to him for any positive characteristics, such as good manners, education, beauty, bravery, or noble ancestry. The man she approaches therefore appears to her, and to the reader, to be as hollow as herself.

Thus, if the first interpretation is seemingly anti-Confucian and construed the narratrix of “I Lift My Skirt” as a willful and full subject, the second reading is almost shocking in its ultra-Confucian, misogynic description of woman as hollow and devoid of positive characteristics.

Despite their differences, in the readings of this ode presented in Mr. Lü’s Annals and the “Minor Preface,” respectively, the ambiguity and ambivalence that characterize the poem itself are absent. In the “Minor Preface,” for the original man/woman dualism a strong state/weak state dualism has been substituted in which the young woman who in the poem itself so forcefully demands to be desired now allegorically refers to the Men of the State, and their rather more submissive request that they be “rectified” by a greater state which, in turn, corresponds to the man who “loves and protects” in the original.

This hermeneutic maneuver is both deft and illogical. It is remarkably economical, because in one sweep the “Preface” manages to transform all components of the original into an allegorical unity: the lovers become two states, the “crazed boy” a perverted and power-hungry aristocrat (identified by later commentators as a certain Tu 突), and sexual desire becomes the longing for political change. Yet the cracks in the allegorical facade are clearly visible. Most conspicuously, the claim that it is the Men of the State (who correspond to the young woman) who “desire” is blatantly inconsistent with the implicit analogy between the two lovers and the two states, since in the original it is the “foolish boy” who desires and pines for the girl. The “Preface” is here so keen to incorporate all components of the original poem into an allegorico-political whole that it ends up contradicting itself. The “political” use of the “poetic” here leads to a hermeneutic short-cut.

2.1

Let me go off on this tangent. It is precisely by usurping a sign that the self-destructive last king of the Western Zhou Dynasty, King You 幽王 (r. 795–771 B.C.) paves the way for the usurpation of the Western Zhou Dynasty. This is how the story is narrated in Mr. Lü’s Annals.

King You makes an ”agreement” (yue 約) with his vassals as to the meaning of the drum signal. The two parties agree that it shall mean ”attack” (or “intruder,” kou 寇), but when King You attempts to please Bao Si he breaks that agreements and so causes a fatal glitch in the communication, and the meaning of the drum signal mutates from ”Real Attack 真寇” to ”No Attack 無寇.” This tells us that signs can be misleading if they seem to mean one thing when they in fact mean another. But the story also demonstrates that a person can consciously alter or manipulate the (linguistic) sign so that it acquires a meaning which is un-conventional, and, as in this case, the very opposite of its ”agreed upon” meaning. King You consciously usurps the agreed-upon meaning of the drum signal, i.e., the sign “Attack.”[8]

Compared with Urhi-Tessub’s furious letter to the Assyrian king, the relation between political and linguistic usurpation is here straightforward and one of cause and effect: the former evolves directly out of the latter. And, unsurprisingly, King You’s usurpation of the sign’s meaning is unequivocally condemned. However, another chapter of Mr. Lü’s Annals contains an analysis of the word bao 寶 (“treasure”)—a key term in the political rhetoric of Warring States China—that displays an affinity not only with King You’s linguistic method but also with Urhi-Tessub’s paradox.

In the introduction to the chapter called “Other Treasures 異寶,” we are told that “It was not that the ancient sages lacked treasures: what they treasured was other [things] 古之人非無寶也，其所寶者異也.”[9] What follows are several narratives in which high-minded men loftily refuse the precious swords, the jade and the cash—the treasures, in other words—that they are offered. One of these men, a high official of the state of Song called Zi Han 子罕, is offered a piece of jade found in the earth by a peasant. When Zi Han refuses the gift, the man exclaims in astonishment that “this is a peasant’s treasure,” to which Zi Han replies “you, sir, consider jade a treasure, I consider not accepting [the jade] a treasure 子以玉為寶，我以不受為寶.” The Annals laconically comment, contextualizing and explaining the sentence with which the chapter began, that “it was not that Zi Han lacked treasures, what he treasured was other [things].”

The logic is the following. There are things more precious, or nobler, than precious things: an “other” treasure is nobler than a conventional treasure, consisting of jade, swords and cash. It is absolutely crucial that these “other” treasures (for instance: virtue, integrity, lack of greed) are not named but only exemplified, because the narrator argues that nowadays, in these degenerated times, one can only conceptualize virtue, integrity and selflessness in terms of vulgar, material riches. Or, differently put, we—as opposed to The Sagely Ancients—can only conceptualize and know them negatively, as non-treasures or “other-treasures.” Thus, the difference between treasure (jade, sword, cash) and “treasure” (virtue, integrity, lack of greed) is exactly what the author wants to bring attention to.

2.2

When Zi Han points to the precious piece of jade, saying “that is not a treasure,” he activate an “other,” secondary meaning of the word bao 寶. Urhi-Tessub’s distinction between brotherhood and “brotherhood” is by comparison more tangled, and goes in the opposite direction, in that he refuses to accept the “other,” secondary meaning of the word that the king of Assyria invokes. He thus exposes the political term “brotherhood” as an usurpation of the primary meaning of that word.

I would argue that the narratives about King You and Zi Han in Mr. Lü’s Annals illustrate a very similar paradox. King You and Zi Han both suspend, usurp or pervert the primary, agreed-upon meaning of a sign (the drum signal and the word bao, respectively). But whereas King You’s action is condemned, Zi Han is portrayed as expressing a profound and elevated truth. This contradiction, as I argue elsewhere, is a point of entry to a hitherto untrodden path in studies of early Chinese poetics.[10]

Is this Sino-Hittite tangent a coincidence, or may Urhi-Tessub’s paradox inform us further of the poetics of Hittite politics?