Sea of Ink

by Richard Weihe

  His short performance received a boisterous round of applause. Then Bada leapt to his feet and grabbed the brush from the actor. He lowered it deep into the tub, stirring the paint as if it were soup. The host, inwardly delighted, at once fetched one of the rolls of paper and, with the help of some other guests, now put four or five lengths of paper beside one another, carpeting the entire floor.

  A mixture of singing and shouting struck up when Bada moved to the middle of the room with the heavy, dripping brush. Now he started, slowly at first, then ever faster, turning around so that the ink flowing from the brush formed a fine compass circle. When the brush had finished dripping, Bada stepped out of the black ring and painted the area of the circle as if he were sweeping a small manège with a broom. In the light of the lanterns the wet ink glistened like varnish.

  He immediately painted a second round island next to the first, although as he turned around this time he let the brush tip glide over the paper before filling in the shape with black ink. He continued to paint nothing but circles, some large, some small, one after the other, all of them touching but never overlapping. Gradually the white areas of the paper looked like four-pronged shapes made of curved lines only.

  When he had covered all the paper with black balls he hung the brush back on the beam and proclaimed, ‘A sky full of stars.’

  But no sooner had he uttered these words than he unexpectedly seized the bucket, which was still half full, and poured the rest of the ink over the paper. It was not long before he had smeared and rubbed the remaining white patches black with his sandals, emitting horrible cries all the while. Some of the guests jumped up and grabbed him by the arm and chest, but Bada shook them off and his voice resounded through the throng of hands: ‘Look, look, the black stars in the black sky! The darkness is a universe!’

  45 He was astonished when one day he received a reply from his cousin Shitao, in which the latter expressed his gratitude for Bada’s words above the picture of the hermit. The letter was accompanied by a small roll of paper. The picture I have sent you is called A thousand wild dashes of ink, Shitao wrote. They are the traces of my brush, which I let dance over the paper in delight at your words. I really ought to have painted an orchid or bamboo or a heron, but that would have been like trying to hold a candle to the master. These modest dashes, however, are the genesis of all these things, the joy of the brush. Will we ever meet?

  Bada unrolled the picture and let it work on his soul. Dots of ink were connected by fine diagonal lines. The overall pattern looked like the traces of bark beetles on bare wood. In between were coral shapes with nodes or a pattern of just ovals. The only larger coherent mass of colour was at the left-hand margin, consisting of lumpy shapes with very fine branchwork.

  When Bada stuck the rolled-out picture to the wall and viewed it from the other side of the room, it had changed. It no longer looked just like a collection of apparently meaningless dots, lines and blobs, but like a section of a garden in bloom with boughs full of fruit, luxuriant round shrubs, wild orchids, a squat, withered tree trunk and branches spread out wide with fine petals.

  He could not help laughing.

  His cousin had almost put one over on him.

  46 Over time Bada was a less frequent visitor to drinking sessions, and after a few years he even kept his distance from them altogether.

  With each year that he got older, he found the present less important and flat. Memories of events that lay far back in the past popped up in his mind. He tried to recall how, as a young man, he had thought about the world. He remembered his father’s eyes and his lips, which moved without a word ever falling from them – the father who he always understood nonetheless.

  It was the first time he had gone weeks without painting. Instead he sat in a corner almost motionless for hours, buried in his thoughts.

  He suddenly remembered the balls of ink that Abbot Hongmin had given him. He had never touched them. He found them straight away in a casket. Now he rubbed, for the very first time, the ink of the great ink-maker, Pan Gu. Then he set out a small piece of paper and dipped his brush.

  In the centre of the paper he painted a fish from the side, with a shimmering violet back and a silver belly, the tail fins almost semicircular like the bristles of a dry paintbrush. The fish’s mouth was half open, as if it were about to say something. Its left eye peered up to the edge of the paper with an expression combining fear, suspicion, detachment and scorn.

  The eye was a small black dot stuck to the upper arc of the oval surrounding it.

  The fish swam from right to left across the paper.

  Bada painted this one fish and no other, then put his name to the paper.

  He had perished long ago, but he was still alive. All he feared now was the drought, when the ink no longer flowed and life had been worn down to nothing.

  That is how he saw himself.

  Fish

  47 As rubbing the ink was increasingly becoming a strain, Bada would sometimes just make movements with the dry brush.

  And yet he painted every day, even if no pictures were produced.

  He was not yet satisfied with his art; he wanted finally to do away with the chattiness of his earlier pictures.

  Now he used only Pan Gu’s ink, albeit very thriftily.

  How many more strokes could he manage before the last of the ink had been worn away? Innumerable?

  Truly, he thought, it is no mere empty saying that ink wears the man down and not the other way round.

  Deep night, the oil lamp was smoking.

  The sound of heavy rain, the wind rattling the window.

  He could not find sleep. He thought of the fine, polished jade clasps in his wife’s hair.

  Why did this memory never grow old?

  48 Or he would dip the brush into a bowl with clean water and paint invisible figures on the paper.

  He had set himself one final goal.

  He wanted to paint flowing water.

  For hours he practised with only the brush and no ink, until his arm hurt. He began in the upper right-hand corner, bringing the paintbrush downwards and describing a long curve to the left while reducing the pressure on the brush. Then he let the stroke peter out by slowly lifting the brush and drawing it towards his chest. At the point where the line turned to the left he started a second line which he took downwards, veering slightly to the right, then let it run parallel to, and below, the course of the first one, before joining the end of both strokes with a semicircle.

  When he had taught his hand these three movements, he put down his brush and for several days carried them out just using his fingers on the blank paper.

  He spread out many pieces of paper on his desk. At night, in the darkness, he dipped the tip of his middle finger into a bath of ink and let his finger execute the three curved strokes, without being able to see the traces of ink in the darkness.

  He continued like this all night long.

  When the first light of morning lit up the desk, a shoal of fish appeared which vanished into the depths of the room.

  A feeling of great calm flowed through Bada. Slower than ever, he rubbed the ink in the water until he had the right degree of blackness. He dipped the paintbrush and wiped the drops of ink on the peach stone. He closed his eyes and executed the strokes several times over in his mind before putting brush to paper.

  Finally, his eyes still half closed in deep concentration, from his wrist he let the brush paint a curve to the left, starting as a broad and watery line because of the pressure he applied, then becoming thinner as he lifted the brush. He went over this curve again, just a touch below, and at the end of the first brushstroke he inserted a dash in the form of a pointed sail and, where the second line ran out, a small crescent whose concave side arched to the left.

  From the lower point of the crescent he drew two parallel semicircles, one just below the other, reaching to the end of the higher first line. Finally he shaded the narrow white strip between the two semicircles and pla
nted two fat dots to the right and left of the inner edge of the curve.

  It had all happened in a few seconds.

  Then he put his brush aside, stuck the picture on the wall, and wandered out of the city, up a mountain.

  He recalled the master’s words.

  If the hand is supple and agile, the picture will be too, and it will move in various directions. The picture does not only show the movement of your hand, it is a reflection of its dance. If the hand moves with speed, the picture acquires vitality; if it moves slowly, the picture acquires weight and intensity. The brush guided by a hand of great talent creates things that the mind cannot follow, which transcend it. And if the wrist moves with the spirit, the hills and streams reveal their soul.

  When he returned that evening from his walk, the catfish on the wall looked at him with its tiny eyes.

  Bada saw the water and all of a sudden his hand seemed to be a fin.

  Catfish

  49 The following day he sat down and wrote a letter to his long-dead master: Today, Master, I, Bada Shanren, sit here trying to ask myself what lesson I still need to learn, a question I have shied away from answering. My answer is: the lesson of the first stroke. For is the whole drawing not contained in the first stroke? It must be considered long in advance, perhaps a whole life long, in order to bring it to the paper in one fluid movement at the right moment, without the need or ability to correct it. The first brushstroke is the foundation; it is the internal law of the external movement. All other strokes take care of themselves, so to speak. The interrupted flow of the black ink, the suspended movement, everything visible and palpable arises from this. Stones and pools, rivers, waterfalls and mountains, lotus flowers, roses, orchids, fuchsias, chrysanthemums and pines, bamboo, cedars, chicks, crows, eagles and fish. Substance, fragrance, vitality, softness, noise, weather, thought and feeling. All this is in the line. But the initial stroke is the most important thing of all. That is my answer. Do you accept it?

  50 Bada’s right hand had become so weak and tired that he could barely hold the paintbrush any more. Now he was ready to set off on his final journey, without any luggage. Without brush and without ink.

  When the last of his strength was relentlessly vanishing, he reached for his brush once more and opened the little pot containing ready-made ink.

  With a clammy hand he dipped the brush.

  The brush tip approached the paper.

  One final, delicate caress of the paper, so soft as if he were dabbing the wings of a butterfly with ink.

  His eyes closed. For a moment he could still see the darkness beneath his eyelids, then he lowered his head onto the pillow.

  The paintbrush slipped from his hand and fell onto his white shirt. It rolled slowly across his chest, leaving a black trail. The material soaked up the liquid and the stain spread rapidly.

  A tiny black star shone in the room in all directions of the compass.

  51

  ·

  Afterword

  Supposedly, the chronicles of the Monastery of the Green Cloud noted that its founder, Zhu Da, died in 1705 at the age of eighty. Apart from the years of his birth and death, little is known about the life of the Prince of Yiyang, who turned himself into the painter Bada Shanren. The few contemporary reports that exist speak of his madness; current research tends to take the view that he consciously manipulated his behaviour to avoid being co-opted by the hated regime. If Zhu Da was at the centre of one dynasty, he fell out of the frame of the succeeding one. Here I have told Zhu Da’s life story alongside the biographical information and anecdotes that have been handed down, but the narrative is my invention. Moreover, the account is not as broad as it might have been because I have neglected the work of Bada the poet. Today there are 179 dated pictures and albums with paintings and calligraphy by Bada Shanren. They show mountains, forests and rivers, many species of plants, birds and fish – and yet they always seem to be self-portraits. Sea of Ink is an attempt to get inside the paintings, to tease out their words, to let them talk. I should like to thank Tom Lawton, former director of the Freer and Sackler Galleries at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, for the tantalizing private view of scroll paintings and pages from albums in the museum’s basement. Thanks are also due to Alexandra von Przychowski at the Rietberg Museum in Zürich for her help; and also to my brother Hugo K. Weihe for the scroll painting he gave me years ago: a bird sitting contentedly on an apple. Or is it a pumpkin? And why is the bird sitting on it as if on an egg? Is it trying to hatch all possible meanings? The picture is by Bada Shanren and actually the bird is sitting on an enigma in the form of an identifiable object. It was this that aroused my curiosity.

  Richard Weihe

  Notes on Sources

  In several places I have made use of François Cheng’s monograph Chu Ta (1626–1705): Le génie du trait (Paris: Phébus, 1986) and his sensitive introduction to Bada’s visual imagery. In Chapter 21, for example, I have adopted the historically documented usage of metaphorical names for various brushstrokes. Cheng cites a short poem by Liu Yuxi (772–842), which I have worked into Chapter 25. In the description of the picture in Chapter 28 I use a quatrain by the poet Fei Sihuang from the eighteenth century, and in Chapter 36 some lines of verse from Wei Zhuang (836–910). A letter cited in full from Shitao to Bada Shanren served as the model for the letter in Chapter 43. For the description in Chapter 26 I have used Cheng’s interpretation of the thorns as ‘sentinelles armées et vigilantes de la beauté’. My description of the picture in Chapter 30 (Fish and rocks) also contains an idea from Cheng – ‘Mais rien ne les presse à vrai dire: leur amitié a toute l’éternité devant elle’ – while in Chapter 34 I have used his question in parentheses ‘Arbres et rochers, voilés par le rideau de la pluie (ou par celui des larmes?) sont

  comme un geste d’adieu’ as a starting point for my interpretation of the picture of the cut-off house. Chapter 42 contains a literal quotation from Cheng. ‘Savoir partir: toute la science du sage,’ he writes, and then asks, ‘D’où vient pourtant que ce monde amer à tel point sache se faire aimer, à tel point soit dur à quitter?’

  Wang Fangyu and Richard M. Barnhart’s catalogue of the exhibition Master of the Lotus Garden: The Life and Art of Bada Shanren 1626–1705 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Art Gallery, 1990) is the first comprehensive inventory of Bada Shanren’s work. In Chapter 25 I use some lines from one of Bada’s poems which Wang Fangyu cites in English. The translation of another original text, meanwhile, served as the basis for the letter in Chapter 35.

  In his essay ‘Zur Biographie des Pa-ta shan-jen’ in Asiatica: Festschrift Friedrich Weller zum 65. Geburtstag (Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1954), pp. 119–30, Herbert Franke has assembled historical documents in German translation relating to the life of Bada Shanren. In Chapter 32 I use excerpts from Shao Zhangheng’s recollections of a meeting with Bada. Chen Ting’s outline of Bada’s life has been an indispensable source, particularly his information about Bada’s madness and the various names he gave himself. Herbert Franke also provides translations of the most important passages from Chinese treatises on ink in his book Kulturgeschichtliches über die chinesische Tusche (Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1962). This source provided the background necessary for Chapter 16, as well as assisting other places in the text.

  I have allowed Bada Shanren himself or his teacher, Master Hongmin, to utter some of the theses from Shitao’s discourse on painting – ‘Shih-t’ao: Quotes on Painting’ in Aesthetics: The Classic Readings, edited by David E. Cooper (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), pp. 65–76. In Chapter 33, therefore, we have Shitao’s third thesis, which states that the best technique of painting is the ‘technique of no technique’. The fourth thesis, in which Shitao describes the painting process as a step-by-step transfer of the idea of the picture onto the paper via the wrist, the brush and the ink, has made its way into Chapter 15, in association with ideas on the function of ink, paintbrush and the subject of the p
ainting from thesis 18. The sublime significance of the function of water, taken from the same thesis, also crops up in Chapter 22.

  The father’s sentence from Chapter 4, ‘A path comes into existence by being walked on’, is a saying taken from the work of the fourth-century-BC philosopher Zhuang Zhou, more specifically from the following edition: Zhuangzi – Das klassische Buch daoistischer Weisheit, edited and with a commentary by Victor H. Maier, translated from the English by Stephan Schumacher (Frankfurt am Main: Krüger, 1998). The question which concludes Chapter 7 is also taken from this work. The idea developed in Chapter 15 of a unity of different things takes up one of Zhuangzi’s central theories: ‘This is also that, and that is also this.’ The dream meeting at the end of Chapter 24 cites a short extract from the anecdote about the goldfish, while the brief dialogue about the joy of fish is my amended version of a conversation between Master Zhuang and Master Hui.

  Picture credits

  Lotus flower

  Page from an album, between 1689–92.

  Ink on paper. Private collection, China. Photograph: all rights reserved.

  Calamus

  Page from an album with eleven leaves, around 1681.

  Ink on paper, 30.2 x 34 cm. Princeton University Art Museum. Gift of Mrs George Rowley in memory of Professor George Rowley. Photograph © Bruce M. White.

  Branch of blossom with thorns

  Page from an album.