Ellipsis of Battle.pdf - University of Washington

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The oriole was in flight; Its wings were glistening. The girl was going to be married; Her horse was bay and white: Her mother had tied the strings of girdle for her; And many other things were done properly for her. She was perfectly beautiful when she was my bride, But I wonder what she looks like after these years I The singer recalls his battlefield experience in the first stanza, juxtaposing it witht he thought of the common life back home when the worms writhed on the field during spring. He observes the land near home in the second stanza and imagines how his house has turned desolate. In the third stanza, some ordinary objects by the house finally remind him of the pain that he has been gone for three years. He then switches in the last stanza to the recollection of the joyful wedding scene in another spring when the oriole was in flight, and wondering what has become of his bride after these years. The ellipsis of battle allows him to concentrate on the succint presentation of a man approaching home. It enables him to complete the chain of thoughts in a tight relation, without polluting the joyful song of homecoming with the memories of the gory battle in the east. In other words, the singer knowing the weapon as an ominous subject to mention chooses to let the war experience stay merely as a notion elusively contrasting his present undertaking that suggests pathos.33 Poem 156 represents almost exactly a private soldier's version of the grand style in which King Wu ritualizes the completion of his military expedition. The weapon is concealed, so to speak, in the first stanza, where a war experience is introduced. For the use of arms is not to be celebrated, in life or in poetry. The poem moves on slowly to have agriculture and husbandry visualized as the bliss of heaven. The bitter melons in a pile upon the firewood he cut are an emotional indication of the joy of peaceful life without senti- mental exaggeration. The museful mind of a veteran having suffered and had others slain is detectable in the words. There is even some touch 33 Arthur Waley interprets the poem as "a typical 'elliptical ballad', suggesting that during the soldier's absence his wife has assumed his death and married again." The interpretation is unprecedented and rather questionable. See The Book of Songs (New York, 1960), p. 117. WANG: Towards Defining a Chinese Heroism 31 of regret, for the waste of life which is always out of his control. As a celebration of the end of war, the poem maintains itself faithfully in the moral tradition, the tradition which supports the great King Wu conquest described above. According to the traditional commentary, the poem is sung by a soldier (perhaps to the tune of a military song) returning from an expedition that has punished some rebelling feudal princes against the newly- founded Chou court. It is a campaign led by the Duke of Chout, brother of King Wu, to pacify the revolt of Kuan-shuU, Ts' ai-shuv (other brothers of King Wu enfeoffed in the east), Wu-kengw (a prince of the conquered Shang) and some barbarian tribes near the sea. The majority of soldiers who participate are from the west, the old land of the Chou.34 This explains the formulaic expression repeated in the beginning passage of each stanza. As a punitive action, the expedition is justified. It is a continuation of the grand conquest earlier executed by King Wu. Upon completion, the Duke of Chou issued seven edicts about morality and institutions that stabilize the empire for several centuries to come.35 As a song of a private soldier, poem 156 observes the victory with deference to the former king's piety. While the Duke of Chou has expressed the ethos of the military action in the seven edicts in prose, the singer of poem 156 tells of the pathos in verse. The weapon and the battle are elided in the song, merely hinted at to set up a frame of lyrical structure. Victorious, the soldier's heart is sad over the war which has caused death and separation. The martial spirit is indeed kept minimal throughout the poem. Instead, it is the longing for a life of simplicity and quietude that underscores the theme of the poem-a desire to return to the farming land. The singer also concludes poem 156 with a reference to the rite that eventually prevails to delete the immediate memo- 34 See K'ung Ying-ta, Mao Shih cheng-i (reps. Taipei, 1968), 8-b. 3b-4a. The campaign is said to last for three years; see Shih chi, 4. 132 (Chavannes, I. 245). 35 "Ta kao," "Wei-tzu chih ming," "Kuei ho," "Chia ho," "K'ang kao," "Chiu kao," and "Tzu-ts'ai." See Shih chi, 4. 132 (Chavannes, I. 245). The authenticity of some of these pieces is uncertain. K'ung Ying-ta (Shang Shu cheng-i), for example, does not include "Kuei ho" and "Chia ho." Bernhard Karlgren only accepts as authentic the four chapters, "Ta kao," "K'ang kao," "Chiu kao," and "Tzu-ts'ai"; see The Book of Documents (Stockholm, 1950).
32 Journal of the American Oriental Society 95.1 (1975) ries of the battle. Whereas the sacrifice to heaven, mountains, rivers, and ancestors ritualistically completes the formal conquest, a happy wedding in remembrance marks the end of this poem about a commoner's war experience. Poem 156 likewise ends with a personal emphasis on the rite. The specific ritual program, the wedding, is com- patible with the circumstances under which the singer expresses his love and piety. As the merits of the Duke of Chou signify the d6nouement of the Weniad, poem 156, a part of the national epic, reiterates all the more forcefully the distinctive meaning of heroism in the founding and protection of the empire. The plentitude of an epic seems to congeal at a point where the rite occurs to settle the hero's adventures. The Iliad concludes with the burial of Hector, the famous breaker of horses, the Beowulf ends with the funeral of the aged hero, son of Ecgtheow and lord of the Geats, so does the Weniad have the apocalypse revealed in a certain ceremony that gives rise to and per- petuates music, rite, and agriculture. 4. DEGENERATION OF A BIRD The ellipsis of battle as a poetic device in early Chinese literature seems to be a positive response to the urge that arms be concealed. The poet contrasts his emotions going to and coming back from the war, intensified by the change of seasons and natural objects, to heighten the dramatic tension of the passage of time. The war itself is omitted from the verse. By the contrast and juxtaposition of a concatenation of events, a chain of actions and reactions, the poet elicits an understanding of the horror of war from the imag- ination and collective experience of his audience. The interplay of the described moments before and after the war produces a highly developed event that becomes conceivably vivid with the audience. The convention prevailing in the style of the oral-formulaic poetry of Shih Ching continues to characterize Chinese poetry in the subsequent periods.36 Within a small scope of composition, it 36 The poetry of Shih Ching is presumably oral and demonstrably formulaic. For a study of this aspect of ancient Chinese poetry, see C. H. Wang, The Bell and the Drum: Shih Ching as Formulaic Poetry in an Oral Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974); for a definition of the formula in terms of oral poetry, see Chapter Two. always presents a certain symmetrical structure that defines the unsaid. The unsaid, moreover, is flanked by the two contrasting, concatenate elements which seem to comprise a couplet, perhaps the origin of the antithetical parallel structure of Chinese poetry. An example follows: a-1. hsi wo wang yi (long) ago [when] I left yi (particle) a-2. yang liu yi yi poplars [and] willows [were] dangling [and] dangling b-1. chin wo lai ssu now [as] I return ssu (particle) b-2. yii hsiieh fei feix rain [and] snow [are] flying [and] flying The adventure is defined only suggestively between a (1-2) and b(1-2). In an oral tradition the formula a(b)-1 is powerful enough to achieve a certain totality of association which the poet aims at for his audience. The ellipsis is also evident in other contexts. The elegies from Ch'u Tz'u, for example, abound in the uses of the contrast of morning and evening in two successive lines.37 Many other poems from the Han era conform to this convention; of them the most salient one is the yiieh-fu "Fighting South of the Walls." Here the poet again uses the contrast of places (south vs. north) and of moments (morning vs. evening) to convey the horror of the war in a perfect antithetical structure. The contrast of places opens the poem, while the contrast of moments closes it. The lines in the middle are devoted to the cor- relative objects and to some eulogistic observations the poet has.38 The similar technique is used in the "Ballad of Mu-lan" ("Mu-lan tz'u"),Y usually dated in the third or fourth century. Of the in- stances in this song, the following couplets show the most distinctive development of the ellipsis of battle in a single composition. Mu-lan decided to dress as a man to go to the war on behalf of her old father. At dawn she parted from her parents: At dusk she encamped by the Yellow River. 37 See "Li sao" and "Hsiang fu-jen" (for translations see David Hawkes, Ch'u Tz'u: The Songs of the South [Boston, 1959], pp. 21-34, 38-39). 38 For a translation and interpretation of this poem, see Hans H. Frankel, "The Abduction, the War, and the Desperate Husband: Three Early Chinese Ballads," Ven- tures, 5. 1 (1965), 9-12.
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