The fruit of his efforts was a monumental work grandly titled T’ien Ming, or Heaven. A somewhat misleading title, as the subject of the treatise was neither astronomy, nor godly affairs, nor weather forecasts, but the nature of power, the king’s relationship to his subjects, aside from a number of rather chaotically intertwined lines of thought and many poems—quite beautiful as it happens—in praise of the morning mist, snowy mountain tops, butterflies and frogs. The confusion of material may be attributed to the desire of the author—bored by his mind’s celestial flight—to show his other, human face, a man’s face turned to the earth.
No one had thought the Tsi kingdom was home to so many philosophers; they set out to “thrash” Mr. Dsou-Gi’s work with a passion and with the cruelty particular to philosophers. That is to say they threshed his work of empty words, rhetorical flourishes, undefined concepts, and cardinal errors in reasoning, such as drawing risky conclusions from shaky premises. In the history of the kingdom this period is known as the “Period of the Hundred Schools,” with a hundred here signifying a vast number.
Why—the philosophers asked—did Mr. Dsou-Gi so stubbornly contradict the generally held view that beyond the king there were two powers, two fundamental authorities, namely Heaven and the Shades of Worthy Ancestors? That is what made it possible to judge a ruler and his rule in the absolute categories of good and evil, as well as in temporal, historical terms established by tradition. Why did the author categorically deny both Heaven and Ancestors and introduce in their place the extremely vague term “Relentless Pulse of History” and invest it with all the marks of existence and cosmic force by the primitive method of repeating the murky formula on almost every page? Mr. Dsou-Gi seriously maintains that he possesses absolute knowledge of the future, but he cannot clearly analyze the present. In other words, the philosophers of the Hundred Schools considered T’ien Ming the work of a demagogue. After a thorough clobbering nothing was left of the treatise but a handful of axioms, tautologies, aporias, and inner contradictions.
Mr. Dsou-Gi (who had long avoided facing mirrors) didn’t defend himself, for he knew that true greatness cannot find understanding among its contemporaries. He accepted his fate, certain that the Relentless Pulse of History would show him to be in the right. He only explained that his work had not been intended for intellectuals but for ordinary people who scorn subtle ideas but love the imperative mood, simple predicates, memorable formulas (he passed over in silence the fact that ordinary people at that time were not trained in the difficult art of reading). Philosophers—Mr. Dsou-Gi said—are like shadows of fishermen fishing for shadows of fish on a non-existent lake. It was not difficult to predict the further course of events, nor did it surprise anyone. Philosophers were condemned and banished. They hid in inaccessible mountain monasteries. This was how the period of the Hundred Schools—referred to officially as the period of the Wicked Spiders—came to an end.
Creators of utopias situate their perfect societies on an imaginary map, in inaccessible spots, isolated from an invasion of brutal reality, under the unruffled sky of reason. Unfortunately the Tsi kingdom was subject to the law of all earthly creations; it was heavier than thought, it was tangible, three-dimensional, determined by space and time, with physical boundries. Beyond those boundries there were other kingdoms, whose rulers did not like the weak King Wei, Mr. Dsou-Gi, or his unpredictable reformist tendencies, and least of all the kingdom’s inexplicably happy people. There are rebellions born in the very pit of desperate poverty. That has long been known. But there are others, perhaps more dangerous, that may explode at a moment when a people is given a brief moment of delusory freedom. The innate condition of subjects is a condition of moderate wretchedness.
The ambassadors of neighboring states showered King Wei with compliments. They praised his sagacity and courage, but these were false mirrors in which the gullible king gazed at himself with delight, woefully unconscious of his fate.
Without a declaration of war, in early spring, the army of the bordering Dschao kingdom crossed the Haangho river, overwhelmed the border guards and moved quickly into the heartland. And then King Wei announced the first general mobilization in history. Every man grabbed what arms he had at hand and rushed to the aid of the threatened fatherland. On a vast plain near the city of Lo-yong, flails, axes, and hammers scored a splendid victory over the invading forces.
What were the people of Wei’s kingdom fighting for so passionately and selflessly? Why did they give their lives without a word of complaint or revolt? Was their state not just as cruel and unfree as any other state at that time? Only Mr. Dsou-Gi, he alone, knew the answer. The subjects of Wei were fighting for freedom, or more precisely, fighting to preserve their beloved, invaluable freedom to grumble. It’s not much, you’ll say, but even so.
So the expanded version of the story of the mirror ends, like the first, optimistically—more than that, it ends with triumphant fanfares. The poetics of the fairy tale requires that we here take leave of the listener. However, there is an epilogue which may look like a different story, but only at first glance.
3
THE GOVERNMENT’S VERSION OF the war was inscribed on bronze tablets. Many poets and painters also extolled it. But centuries later their efforts appear to us oddly pale and unconvincing.
Art, and courtly art in particular (no other kind existed at that time) often does not tally with historical truth. For it is easier to win a battle than surmount old artistic conventions, that is to say depict new content. And the content was quite new.
This is why long and boring epics in praise of a ruler that say nothing about the heroic struggle of simple people arouse a certain impatience in us. Everything is reduced to the archaic topos, the battle of two Giants, of whom the victorious one, King Wei that is, did not take part in any military operations and had a negligible influence on the course of events.
Painters did a much better job with the subject. Their panoramic canvases teem with wrestlers. The general mobilization is represented as a great dry forest on the horizon or a vast avalanche of sand. For the first time the people were depicted in a collective portrait, albeit a little abstractly, generally, like one of the elements.
After the magnificent victory King Wei fell into a state of excitement, a feverish euphoria that understandably disquieted the court. His mind teemed with ideas for quite outlandish reforms. He wanted to grant land to all the defenders of the homeland and give the most valiant of them titles, raising them to the level of state dignitaries. He also wondered whether it wasn’t time for him to take over the helm himself and get rid of the hordes of bureaucrats, ministers, and courtiers at last.
Luckily the sober Mr. Dsou-Gi was in control of the situation. He patiently explained to the king that the era of great transformation belonged irrevocably to the past, for the subjects had reached such a degree of self-satisfaction and awareness that to cross that boundary could cause dangerous social unrest. “Both those who fell with your name on their lips and those who escaped intact,” said Dsou-Gi, “are happy, for they took the country’s fate on their shoulders for the first time in history. So you could say they governed along with you. And that is quite enough for them. A reward would be like a contemptuous alms-giving, or worse, could provoke them to rash acts.” For the same reason he advised the king to dissolve the Ministry of Laments, strictly ban grumbling, which was becoming a perilous burden, and gradually return to the old tried and true methods of wielding power.
Irony, or actually the hand of fate, decreed that the period of Joyous Grumbling, also known as the Period of the Spring Flood, was ended not by the decrees of the good king Wei but by a sudden invasion by neighbors. This time the armies of three states—Yen, Dschou, and Han—attacked the Tsi kingdom. The only border not under threat was the border with the impassive sea. Despite the heroic defense effort, the outcome of the war was predetermined.
In the general confusion no one noticed what happened to Mr. Dsou-Gi, who was chiefly respon
sible for these misfortunes. It was clear to everyone that the experiments carried out by the king and his adviser had prompted the neighbors’ military invasion. Mr. Dsou-Gi left the capital in a hurry, intending to head for the mountain monasteries where the philosophers of the Hundred Schools lived in ascetic devotion and contemplation. He hoped they would forgive him his mistakes and allow him to write a work in which he would disavow the Relentless Pulse of History and a few other heresies as well, in exchange for a modest board and the chance to survive the historical whirlwind. But on the way there he met a quick and almost painless death at someone’s strong hands.
In those times of destruction and chaos, a man with a dubious reputation, a usurer and astrologer by profession named Dschan-Guo-Tse, became the person closest to the king. There’s nothing odd about this. After all, not only rulers but ordinary people, at moments when all earthly calculations fail them, turn their eyes to the heavens, calling for the aid of supernatural forces. Dschan-Guo-Tse appeared at the palace every day, bringing horoscopes that corresponded almost exactly with fatal military communiques. Evil tongues held that the astrologer who so accurately foresaw the immediate future, possessed information of a very earthly kind, probably straight from army headquarters, over which the ultimate defeat hung suspended.
But who in those times would concern himself with the methodology of prediction. What mattered was that the astrologer—only he—knew how to escape from the hopeless situation. “King,” said Dschan-Guo-Tse, “we can no longer hope to save the country or your loyal subjects. We must rescue from the conflagration of our world the most precious thing—your head.
“Due east of Cape Shipwreck lies an uninhabited island. In fair weather one can sail there in three days. It is not a large island, but it is very fertile, the climate is mild, and it has the virtue of not existing on any map, like an undiscovered island that both exists and does not exist. It is forgotten by pirates, poets, and typhoons.”
Hope dawned in the king’s heart. He ordered a small fleet to be built, just a few ships, which were to bring to the new land only what was necessary—that is, a model of the future society—two peasant families, two artisan families, experts on silk cultivation, a doctor who was both a diviner and a rain man, some animals and essential tools.
Entirely excluded from that inventory were merchants, bankers, and artists (money and imagination are rightly considered the origin of many human misfortunes), as well as all ministers, bureaucrats, and courtiers. King Wei believed that finally he would be able to realize his beloved notion of direct government. He himself brought only his wife, one concubine, and of course the astrologer.
There is no certain knowledge of the expedition’s fate. The passage of time and the lack of archaeological traces offer scope for the worst speculations. In the face of catastrophe one shouldn’t look for possible suspects. It is, after all, a matter of complete indifference whether the fault lay in an astrologer’s little mistake, or the ocean.
1981
THE GORDIAN KNOT
THE LANDSCAPE: A rocky plateau, the ground covered with small ash-colored stones, as if packs of rats had poured out onto the surface and been frozen motionless there; scattered groves of poplars—funeral processions—under a low leaden sky sending neither solace nor hope, and a wind, a ubiquitous wind mingled with sand—the relentless rising tide of an arid ocean.
The city: once prosperous and populous, it had fallen into a state of decomposition. Ruined houses and palaces in disrepair, clogged wells and cisterns, deserted streets and bazaars, and also the remains of an acropolis—a melancholy memento of past greatness. Only the walls still rose, high and proud, the unnecessary safeguard of oblivion and destitution.
Alexander of Macedonia spent the end of the winter and almost the whole spring of the year 333 in Gordion1. He always boasted that he was entirely indifferent to nature and caprices of the weather, but at that time his mood corresponded perfectly to the hopelessness of his surroundings. The situation was uncertain: bad news arrived on the movements of the Persian fleet, the enemy’s intentions were hard to divine, and Alexander was waiting in vain for reinforcements from Greece without which he was condemned to slothful idleness.
Black thoughts came to him then. Premonitions, dreams, and suppressed voices told him that his liberation of the Greek cities in Asia, the great victory at the Granicus, everything he had thus far accomplished, was barely a prologue, and that the great epic would remain unfinished forever—and he who had set himself the modest task of conquering the world would shortly take his place in the dark vestibule of history crammed with the countless crazed daredevils whom human memory had denied the right to greatness and glory passed on from generation to generation.
With the end of May finally came the welcome reinforcements made up of Macedonians and Greek allies. Alexander, bored with the long wait, decided to leave Gordion at once.
Before he left, however—such was the advice offered him—the leader ought to do something extraordinary, something that would heighten his authority and infuse the army with the conviction that the war they were embarking upon was in accordance with the gods’ plans and therefore a holy war.
On all his expeditions Alexander was accompanied not only by doctors, courtesans, artists, and scholars but also by a full-time poet, an official historian and a soothsayer—an uncommonly important figure, who fulfilled two crucial functions: he was the ambassador of the gods, accredited by the conqueror’s movable royal palace, and simultaneously minister of propaganda.
His prophecies, drawn from the flight of birds, the constellations of the stars and the innards of animals, always contained a hidden command: you must cross this wild and barren country, you must conquer the city on the mountain, you must win the battle. Alexander’s task was to translate those metaphysical imperatives into the language of logistics and strategy. Both leader and seer were therefore intimately linked, like an idea and its realization, like a solid conclusion drawn from vague premises, like lightning and thunder.
At this momentous historical moment the soothsayer Aristander advised as follows: here in Gordion there’s a curious object held in universal reverence for centuries, namely, the war chariot of Midas, the legendary king of Thrace. To the chariot shaft a knot is attached which no one has yet been able to untie. You must do it, Alexander!
Alexander listened to all this without enthusiasm, unable to understand why he was being forced to play a role worthy of a stable boy. So Aristander explained, referring to remote and obscure genealogies, that Midas was a blood relation of the kings of Macedonia, in view of which untying the knot was in a certain sense a family obligation, and beyond that, a confirmation of blood ties! It should not be forgotten that Midas’ chariot was dedicated to Zeus—Alexander’s protoplast. “Operation Knot” might contribute to the strengthening of the ancient covenant between Greece and Asia. After all, this was not a matter of indifference to Alexander, who felt the role of liberator suited him better than that of invader and usurper.
It all sounded convoluted and unconvincing, so Aristander went to the heart of the matter and threw a decisive argument on the table. He announced proudly that he had devised the following prophecy:
HE
WHO UNTIES
THE GORDIAN KNOT
WILL BE
LORD OF GREECE
Of course—the seer went on—this was an imperfect version. The whole thing needed a thorough literary treatment. A prophecy should have the form of a distych combining a hexameter and a pentameter. The introduction of linguistic archaisms blunts the categorical nature of a sacred utterance and gives it the desired effect of ambiguity, in fitting with the semantics of the gods, who always express themselves aphoristically but not always clearly.
The troops should be told that prophecy is ancient, confirmed by the authority of many oracles. Ex post prophecies have been practiced by all peoples for centuries. A minor shift in time makes no difference to the gods, who do not concern themselv
es with any petty shopkeeper’s reckoning of years, for their dwelling is the splendid, unbounded present.
If, on the other hand, for reasons difficult to foresee at that moment, the undertaking came to nothing, they could pretend the whole thing never happened. In that case Aristander, the poet Choirilos, and the historian Callisthenes would pass it over in silence. So Alexander was going to face a mystery without running any risk of failure.
In the end Alexander remarked that the matter of the knot held an uncommon attraction for him. One cannot help being surprised that up to this point he had not found any practical application for the art of prophecy, interpretation of words or even the exegesis of difficult works of poetry.
The next morning Alexander, accompanied by a few generals and selected soldiers, set out for Midas’ palace.
So there was the legendary chariot—unimpressive, shorn of ornament, falling apart with age and pious pawing—a silly worn-out piece of military junk. He spotted the dark-brown knot easily. He took it in both hands and found it to be a tangle of bast, heavy and solid like the clenched fist of a dead man.
The wrestling match with that inflexible and mysterious object began. At first Alexander tried to find one clear cord leading like Ariadne’s thread to the center of the dark labyrinth. In vain. The knot mocked his efforts. Among those present one could hear a disenchanted murmur.
And then it happened. Alexander drew his sword and with one stroke cut the knot in two. A few cries—whether of admiration or disappointment is unclear. In fact no one realized the deeper meaning of that incident.
That night a tremendous snowstorm, unusual for that time of year, burst over the city. Lightning flashes lit up the darkness, heavy thunderbolts rolled across the sky. To Aristander it was a visible sign of the gods applauding Alexander’s victory over the knot and his feat being to their liking. Aristotle on the other hand didn’t like it at all.
The Collected Prose Page 79