Ellipsis of Battle.pdf - University of Washington

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Indeed, Heaven protects and orders the Chou; When he proceeds to quake, All are shaken: Likewise are the spirits appeased And the rivers and soaring mountains. Indeed the king is monarch I Bright and glorious is the Chou Now orderly on the throne: Then putting away the shields and axes, Then wrapping the bows and casing the arrows. We have acquired good virtue To bestow upon China all over. Indeed the king will protect it! (Shih Ching 273) The poem read together with other liturgical hymns in Shih Ching manifests a strong attempt to suppress martial spirit once the conquest is done. The great virtues to be spread over China are those in the form of rites, music, and above all, agriculture. In the traditional canon of Shih Ching, poem 273 is preceded by one in celebration of the meekness of King Wen that finally becomes triumphant, and is followed by others which clear- ly promote agriculture and husbandry, with one dedicated specifically to Lord Millet (275). Fur- ther, poem 294 sings of the fact that the conquest actually causes repeated rich years. Commenting on the poem, Chu Hsi notes that the King Wu conquest does not entail bad harvest as Laotzu says all military actions do (Tao Te Ching XXX). The poet eulogizes the king's attentiveness to cultural elegance and admonishes the ministers not to neglect it. The most glorious conquest in Chinese history, therefore, did not give rise to a poetic convention like that defined through the heroic action in the Trojan War. The poet of China, deferent to the sage king, sings of the positive cultural values of the conquest, but not of arms. The "heroism" is confirmed, nonetheless, but it is not the heroism that sustains itself in the extoling of arms. It is the heroism that exhibits the courage of ap- proaching the cause with valor and appreciating the effect with wisdom. Commenting on Blake's moral objection to some heroic poetry, Northrop Frye observes that the battle of Agincourt and the retreat from Moscow are not really heroic, "because they are . . . part of the purposeless warfare of the state of nature and are not progres- sing towards a better kind of humanity."29 But 29 "Blake's Treatment of the Archetype," Discussions of William Blake, ed. John E. Grant (Boston, 1961), p. 13. WANG: Towards Defining a Chinese Heroism Blake must believe that the French and American revolutions, with their apocalyptic importance, certainly are. In this light we also see the Weniad hyper-heroic. The heroism of the Chou is com- prised of a courage of regretting, too, admitting that the weapon is an evil thing, "which the sages use only when they must." The Chou hero is a true hero. "The true hero is," Frye says, "the man who, whether as thinker, fighter, artist, martyr, or ordinary worker, helps in achieving the apocalyptic vision of art."30 3. ELLIPSIS OF BATTLE The opposition to arms in life seems to extend to the conscious avoidance of the mention of arms in early Chinese poetry about war. The poet sings of the war, in panegyric verse and more often in complaints and laments; but the battle, the actual clash of arms, is almost always left unsaid. This is called the "ellipsis of battle." It is a significant feature in the Chinese literary convention that keeps poetry about the heroic action from developing into detailed narrative of the battle. Most of the war poems in Shih Ching are techni- cally anti-war poems in which the heroic quality of combat is reduced to the minimum. Instead, it is combat fatigue that is described. This is es- pecially true with the poems composed by the trooper singing of his own military experience. The voice of the officer is normally restrained; he would either let his groom translate his feelings, as in Shih Ching 168, or assume an austere attitude toward the mission, as in poem 232. In the latter, for instance, the poet, presumably leading a march to the east, calmly depicts the soaring mountain rocks to pass and the endless fields to venture into. He then catches sight of a herd of swine with white trotters just crossing a river, when the moon is moving near a certain star-signs that a deluge of rain is at hand. It is implied that the rain will add hardship to the troops. The complaints of the private soldier, however, are less metaphorical. In poem 206, for example, the soldier-poet urges everyone not to escort the big chariot rambling to the war, for "it can only make you dusty." He tries to incite others to take a negative stand toward the war. Be indifferent, he cries out, or "you will only make yourself miserable I" This is, however, the only poem of its type that tends to be outspoken in the expres- 30 Ibid. 29
30 Journal of the American Oriental Society 95.1 (1975) sion of feelings against the war. Other singers in the Shih Ching tradition reveal their grievance in a subtle way. Confucius finds that a standard Shih Ching poem "expresses grief without doing injury." (Analects III 20). To express grief with restraint but effectively, the poet turns to the use of contrast and juxta- position. He contrasts the past and the present to suggest the mutability of life; and he juxtaposes the place there and here specifically to underline a soldier's migratory life. In so doing, the grief is delineated, but the actual battle is avoided. There is no poem in the corpus of Shih Ching that permits the reader to witness the clash of arms. As most of the complaints are uttered by the trooper in first person, the singer always seems to have a strong consciousness to conceal the brutality of the battle, keeping it to himself.31 The soldier of poem 167, for example, puts stress on the passage of time to show his desire to leave the frontier for home. The passage of time is indicated with reference to nature. In the first three stanzas, he observes the development of the fern, sprouting, tender, and finally growing hard-time passes swiftly in the poem. The cry "Return, return I" is desperate and resounding in the three incre- mental stanzas. As a private soldier, he nearly resorts to cursing when he realizes that the officer's horse constantly threatens him on the march.32 The experience is then summarized in the con- cluding stanza: Long ago when I was taking off, The willows were dangling in green: Now as I am coming back It is wet, the snowflakes flying. Dragging along the endless road, I am thirsty and hungry. My heart is painful and anguished, But no one knows how I have suffered. The contrast of the past and the present is evident here. Again, the emotive words in the last lines 31 In this case the T'ang poet Ts'en Shen departs from the classical tradition in the treatment of war. The bloody scenes in his poetry seem meant to horrify his readers back in Ch' ang-an. One of the reasons may likely be that Ts'en is not a combat officer, but a judicial clerk in the army. Writing from imagination is certainly dif- ferent in focus from singing out of experience. 32 Cf. the similar situation in Xenophon, Anabasis III. 4: Soteridas, a man from Sicyon said, "We are not on a level, Xenophon. You are riding on horseback, while I am wearing myself out with a shield to carry." are prepared by the description of nature's change, all the way to the winter of increasing misery. The emotion is conjured up, but the battle remains elided. This technique is also found in poem 168, where the formulaic pattern "Long ago when I was taking off . . . Now as I am coming back" is utilized to denote the similar emotion by contrast. It is, furthermore, the basic pattern that is repeated to open each of the four stanzas throughout poem 156. I went to the east mountains - Long it was that I did not return. Now that I am coming back from the east, It drizzles all over. I longed to return when I was in the east, But now my heart is sad for the west. She once made me many clothes, and thought That I would never be gone with the troops. When the worms started to writhe Teeming in the mulberry field, Alone, I slept through the nights Once and again under the cart on the field. I went to the east mountains - Long it was that I did not return. Now that I am coming back from the east, It drizzles all over. The fruit of the bryony has spread, Hanging down from the eaves of my house. Sowbugs live in the room: Spiders' webs blocked the door. My paddock has turned into a deerfield, And the glow-worms move in dark. These are things to be afraid of, Indeed, and things to love. I went to the east mountains - Long it was that I did not return. Now that I am coming back from the east, It drizzles all over. A stork cried on the ant-hill; The wife sighed in her room. She sprinkled and swept the empty house, For I was coming back from the war. The bitter melons have piled up, Many of them, on top of the firewood I cut. Since I last saw them Till now, it is three years I I went to the east mountains - Long it was that I did not return. Now that I am coming back from the east, It drizzles all over.
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