by Leys, Simon
PAINTING AND POETRY
One exemplary figure embodied the union of painting and poetry: Wang Wei (699–761). He was one of China’s greatest poets, and as a painter he has been credited with the invention of a new style that was eventually to constitute what is conventionally described today as “Chinese painting”—monochrome ink landscape executed with a calligraphic brush.
Su Dongpo (1036–1101), himself a very versatile literary and artistic genius of no lesser stature, commented on this subject: “In every poem by Wang Wei there is a painting, and in every one of his paintings there is a poem.” This observation was subsequently quoted so often that it became a cliché. We must attempt to rediscover its original meaning and restore its full impact.[5]
First, this famous statement can be taken as a factual description. Consider, for instance, the following verses:
River waves flow beyond the world
Mountain mass hangs in half-emptiness . . .
When we read these words, they immediately conjure a vision that countless paintings have made familiar to us: a river flows towards a destination that lies beyond the page, carrying away a lonely little boat or a couple of drifting ducks, whereas in the empty expanse of the silk, a few faint touches of ink hint that, somewhere above the invisible riverbank, a mountain must be hiding in the mist.
However pertinent such a visual association may appear, we should keep in mind that this type of pictorial parallel is based on an anachronism: what the Tang poem just suggested is in fact a Song painting, which came into existence only some 300 years later! As for Wang Wei’s own paintings, although no original survives, the kind of image that various indirect witnesses enable us to reconstruct seems oddly out of place with the type of vision suggested by his poems. In contrast with the fluid and subtle economy of the poems, most probably his pictorial style was still painstakingly detailed and not yet free from archaic linear stiffness.
Moreover, if it is not wrong to say that painting and poetry express two sides of the same inspiration, it should be observed that it was only in the Yuan period—six centuries after Wang Wei—that scholars began to inscribe poems on their paintings, or to trace paintings under their poems, with the same brush and under the same impulsion. Wang Wei, painter and poet, may provide a convenient symbol of the union of these two arts; yet, in fact, his historical activity has very little relevance for our topic. The real meaning of Su Dongpo’s statement lies elsewhere—and it could be summarised in a double axiom, which we shall try to analyse: The aesthetic principles and expressive techniques of poetry have a pictorial character. The aesthetic principles and expressive techniques of painting have a poetical character.
Whereas any poem, by its very nature, is normally expressed in the form of a sequence unfolding in time, Chinese poetry attempts, in a way, to fit words in space.[6] The spatial potential of the Chinese poem can be grasped first on a superficial level, if we simply consider the fact that the poem can, and should, be calligraphed; in this calligraphic form it can be exhibited and contemplated just like a painting. However, the spatial quality of the poem is not merely an outcome of Chinese writing; it has a much more essential origin, which is to be found in the very structure of the language. This could be well illustrated, for instance, by the use and technique of the “parallel verses,” which constitute a basic device of Chinese poetry.
Parallel couplets not only form the central core of all “regular poems” (lü shi), they are also constantly used in all other prosodic forms and can even be produced as independent units. Schematically they are comprised of two symmetrical verses; in each verse, every word possesses the same morphological status and performs the same grammatical function as its symmetric word in the other verse; whereas, in meaning, they are either similar or, better, antithetical—which fully achieves their mirror effect. Hence, a full enjoyment of a perfect couplet supposes a double reading—both vertical and horizontal. For instance, in a classic example from Du Fu (712–770),
Cicadas’ voices gather in the old monastery
Birds’ shadows fly over the cold pond
morphological and syntactical correspondences are rigorously observed between the two lines, so as to turn each verse into a perfect match for the other. Moreover, the interplay of the parallelisms enables us not only to read the lines vertically but also to read them across: in this way, the “cicadas’ voices” echo the “birds’ shadows,” “cold” prolongs “old,” and the “monastery” is reflected in the “pond.” From the first line to the second there is no logical sequence nor rational progression; what we observe here is not the linear unfolding of a discursive exposé but the circular coiling up of two contrasting images—non-successive, simultaneous, closely imbricated into one another. Unlike the discursive mode of expression that forges ahead and develops in time, the parallel mode suspends the time flow and winds upon itself. There is no anteriority or posteriority between the two images: they are both autonomous and tightly welded together, like the two sides of the same coin. In a formally perfect couplet, it should even be possible to read the second sentence before the first without affecting the meaning (this possibility is well illustrated by the habit, in Chinese interiors, of hanging parallel sentences on both sides of a painting or of any other central ornament). They do not develop a discourse—together they organise a space.
The use of parallel sentences is not the only means by which the Chinese poetic language is brought close to pictorial expression. In a more general and fundamental fashion, the entire poem can turn into a pure juxtaposition of images. It is precisely this aspect of the Chinese art of poetry which, at the beginning of the twentieth century, fascinated Western poets, Ezra Pound in particular, and was to exert a significant influence on modern English poetry.
Some sinologists who know much and understand little have laughed at Pound’s translations from classical Chinese. It is true that Pound knew very little Chinese and his translations are full of absurd mistakes. And yet, the fact that several excellent Chinese scholars have come to his defence should make us ponder: Pound’s transpositions may be philologically preposterous, but they often achieve a structure and rhythm that are much closer to the original Chinese than are most scholarly attempts.[7]
Pound had a mistaken idea of the Chinese language, but his mistake was remarkably stimulating and fecund, as it was based on one important and accurate intuition. Pound correctly observed that a Chinese poem is not articulated upon a continuous, discursive thread, but that it flashes a discontinuous series of images (not unlike the successive frames of a film). Where he went astray was in seeking to explain the imagist properties of the Chinese poetical language by the alleged pictographic nature of Chinese writing. Actually, as any beginner learns after a couple of lessons, most Chinese characters are not “tiny pictures”—stricto sensu pictographs represent barely 1 per cent of the Chinese lexicon—and yet the strange thing is that Pound never shed this mistaken notion; it inspired some of his most bizarre and unfortunate interpretations.
Actually, the real reasons that explain the imagist character of Chinese poetry, the factors that enable Chinese poets to deliver directly a series of perceptions without having to pass through the channels of grammatically organised discourse, pertain to two specific features of classical Chinese: morphological fluidity (the same word can be a noun or a verb or an adjective, according to the context) and, more importantly, syntactic flexibility (rules governing word order are reduced to a bare minimum; sentences can be without a verb; verbs can be without a subject; particles and grammatical trappings are practically non-existent).
Without venturing into the quicksands of linguistics, let us merely look at one or two examples. Wen Tingyun (818–872?) describes travellers departing before dawn in two famous verses that, translated word for word, read like this:
Roosters-sounds; thatch-inn; moon.
Man-footprint; plank-bridge; frost.
This collection of discontinuous and simultaneous percepti
ons, this series of scattered brushstrokes, can be reconstructed and interpreted in discursive language. We could say: “As one can still see the setting moon hanging over the thatched roof of the country inn, one hears roosters crowing everywhere. The travellers must have already left: their footprints are marked in the frost on the planks of the bridge.” The pictorial resources of classical Chinese free the poet from all such verbose detours and from the need to express logical connections; he does not explain, he does not narrate—he makes us see and feel directly. What he presents the reader with is not a statement but an actual experience.
The same phenomenon is also nicely illustrated by the much-admired beginning of a poem attributed to Ma Zhiyuan (end of the thirteenth century).
Dead ivy; old tree; dusk crows.
Little bridge; running creek; cottage.
Ancient path; west wind; lean horse . . .
(It should be observed, however, that the imagist approach is not the exclusive mode of Chinese poetry; discursive language also has a part to play. In fact, Chinese prosody is based upon a dialectical combination of these two modes, and this combination finds its most systematic and sophisticated expression in the form of the “regular poem” (lü shi). Nevertheless, it is true to say that the imagist language constitutes the major mode of Chinese poetry.[8])
We have just seen how Chinese poetry attempts to borrow channels that normally belong to pictorial expression. We shall now examine how painting adopts the status and methods of poetry.
* * *
At first contact, the physical outlook of a Chinese painting already betrays its literary nature. Western painting, crafted by artisans, has the heavy, stiff, massive and dumb presence of a piece of furniture: it hangs forever on its wall, gathering dust and fly droppings, awaiting a new coat of varnish every fifty years. Chinese painting, on the contrary, is mounted in the form of a scroll—which, historically, is related to the family of books. It genuinely belongs to the realm of the written word, as various expressions show: “to paint a painting” (hua hua) is a rather vulgar way of talking; the literate prefer to say: “to write a painting” (xie hua). The tools the writer needs—paper, ink and brush—are sufficient for a painter. The mounting of the painting—fragile, quivering at the faintest breeze—forbids permanent exhibition and only allows one to display the painting for the time of an active and conscious reading.
The highest type of pictorial style is called xie yi, which means the style that writes the meaning of things (instead of describing their appearances or shapes). The guiding principle for this form of painting is “to express the idea without the brush having to run its full course” (yi da bi bu dao). The ideal painting is achieved not on paper but in the mind of the spectator; for the painter, the whole skill consists in selecting those minimal visual clues that will allow the painting to reach its full and invisible blossoming in the viewer’s imagination. This point leads us into another theme: the active function of emptiness—the role played by “blanks” in painting, by silence in music, the poems that lie beyond words. We shall come back to this question later on.
Finally, in parallel with the observations made earlier on the spatial dimension of the poetical language, we should also note the time dimension that is expressed in a supremely sophisticated form of Chinese painting, the horizontal scroll (shoujuan or changjuan). The horizontal scroll has a physical structure that is identical to that of an archaic book; it cannot be hung, it can only be viewed on a table, through a progressive “reading” process—one hand unrolling one end of the scroll as the other hand rolls up the other end (in this way the viewer can himself select an infinite number of compositions, depending on which segments of the scroll he chooses to isolate as he pursues this scanning process). The eye is being led along the scroll, following an imaginary journey. Pictorial composition unfolds in time, like a poem or a piece of music; it starts with an overture, develops in a succession of movements, now slow, now quick, provides restful intervals, builds up tensions, reaches a climax, concludes with a finale.
COMMUNION WITH THE WORLD
Painters and poets are associated with the cosmic creation. Artistic creation participates in the dynamism of the universe. Through his artistic activity a gentleman becomes both imitator of, and collaborator with, the Creator.[9] Hence, the poet Li He (790–816) could say:
The poet’s brush completes the universal creation:
It is not Heaven’s achievement.
Painters and art theoreticians expressed a similar idea, using practically the same words. Zhang Yanyuan (810?–880?) wrote: “Painting brings the finishing touch to the work of the universal Creator.” It should be noted that in the West many artists reached similar conclusions. For them, however, these were empirical or intuitive observations; unlike their Chinese counterparts, they did not have the possibility to link such reflections to a cosmological system. To borrow an example close to home, I quote A.D. Hope’s definition of poetry:
I have very little faith, as a professional critic of literature, in most of the descriptions or definitions of poetry on which the various schools depend. “The imitation of Nature,” “the overflow of powerful emotions,” a “criticism of life”—well, yes and no: none of them seem to me a satisfactory basis of criticism.
As a poet, I find them exasperating. I know of no definition of the nature and function of poetry that satisfied me better than . . . the view of poetry as a celebration, the celebration of the world by the creation of something that adds to and completes the order of Nature.[10]
It would be extremely easy to translate this last sentence into Chinese; in China, poets, painters and aesthetes have never stopped making this same statement for the last 1,500 years!
In Chinese poetry, communion with the universe is expressed by various means. We should first mention the unique resources the Chinese language affords poets (we already have alluded to it): the blurry fluidity of syntax and morphology that allows a permanent confusion between subject and object and establishes a sort of porosity, or permeability, between the poet and the surrounding world. A classical example can be found in the first two verses of Meng Haoran’s (689–740) “Spring Morning”:
Spring-time sleep is not aware of dawn;
Singing birds are heard everywhere . . .
Who is the sleeper? His person is nowhere described or defined—is it I or he or she? The poem suggests a depth of slumber in which the conscious self drifts and dissolves amid confused perceptions of dawn; singing birds vaguely heard in this sleep become the objects of a perception without subject.
A similar effect can be found in one of Wang Wei’s most often quoted poems; here, moreover, the world is being personified—the natural surroundings become an active partner. These verses are often rendered in a way that, without being flatly wrong, considerably weakens the flavour of the poem:
In the empty mountains, no one is seen;
Yet, voices are being heard . . .
Actually, the poem literally says:
Empty mountain sees no one,
Only hears voices . . .
Quite naturally, it is with a poet such as Li Bai, deeply imbued with Daoist mysticism, that this personification of all things, this dialogue with the universe acquires full intensity and exuberance. As the poet identifies himself with the thing he contemplates, the subject eventually vanishes, totally absorbed into the object: perfect communion is achieved. We see this in the short poem “On Contemplating Mount Jingting”:
All birds have flown away high in the sky;
One lazy cloud drifts alone.
Without tiring, I look at Mount Jingting, Mount Jingting looks at me;
Finally, there remains only Mount Jingting.
(Li Bai is a poet who can associate with mountains and rivers; he converses with the sun and the stars, as you and I chat with our old friends; he drinks at the banquet of the planets, he rides on the tails of comets. For instance, if one night there is no one with whom to share his bottle of
wine, he improvises at once a little party with three guests—himself, the moon and his own shadow—and this lively drinking bout ends with an appointment for another gathering next spring, in the Milky Way . . .)
For the painters, the identification of the subject with the object assumes an even greater importance: nothing should come between the painter and the thing he observes. Su Dongpo expressed this most eloquently as he was praising the bamboos painted by his friend Wen Tong: if the latter could achieve natural perfection in his art, it was because he had no more need to look at bamboos when painting them, as he himself had become a bamboo.
In order better to appreciate all the implications of such an attitude, it might be useful, by contrast, to refer back for a moment to our own familiar world. In Sartre’s Nausea—a good example of Western consciousness pushed to its paroxysm—there are two objects whose sight provokes in Roquentin a feeling of existential absurdity so acute that it results in actual retching: a pebble polished by the sea, and an oddly twisted tree root. It is interesting to note that, for Chinese aesthetes, it was precisely such types of objects that could actually induce ecstasy—in fact, they were sought by connoisseurs and collectors even more avidly than the masterpieces of artists.
In order to dominate the natural world, Western man cut himself off from it. His aggressive, heroic and conquering attitude towards the environment can be seen, for instance, in the art of classical gardens (every civilisation always reveals its vision of the world in its gardens). Look at Versailles, where we see nature being distorted, bound, raped, cut and remoulded to conform to a purely human design; geometric plans are forced upon it, in complete disregard of its original essence. In such a rigorously anthropocentric perspective, any natural form, any spontaneous pattern that is not man-made and whose enigmatic complexity owes nothing to the human mind appears immediately threatening. Its irreducible and perplexing autonomy limits and challenges man’s empire.