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Enchantment and Disenchantment
Love and Illusion in Chinese Literature
By Wai-yee Li PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1993 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-05684-5
CHAPTER 1
The Genealogy of Disenchantment
In chapter 5 of the eighteenth-century masterpiece Hung-lou meng (The dream of the red chamber or The story of the stone [Shih-t'ou chi]), the goddess Disenchantment takes the protagonist Pao-yu by the hand and introduces him to the splendors and dangers of the Illusory Realm of Great Void (T'ai-hsü Huan-ching). The avowed purpose of this dream visit, which culminates in Pao-yu's sexual union with Disenchantment's sister Combining Beauties (Chien-mei), is "enlightenment through love" or "disenchantment through enchantment." To construct the genealogy of Disenchantment and to trace her prototype to the ambivalent divine woman in the Ch'u tz'u (Songs of Ch'u, ca. 6th–lst cent B.C.) and the fu (a genre of rhyme-prose, verse-essay, prose poem, or rhapsody) from Han and later periods is then more than an exercise in literary typology. Such an inquiry into the rhetorical strategies creating and manipulating illusions emphasizes the role of language and of the feminine element in the development of the idea of the provenance of illusion in, and its transcendence through, love and desire. The opposition and mutual implication of enchantment and disenchantment are realized in such paradoxical formulations as "detachment through attachment" or "transcendence of passion through passion" (i-ch'ing wu-tao or yin-ch'ing ju-tao). Their corollary is "apprehension of reality through illusion" (chi-huan wu-chen), which implies that the paradox in question is also the motive for fiction as well as its justification.
The genealogy of disenchantment begins at the moment of enchantment. Enchantment is the process of being drawn into another world that promises sensual and spiritual fulfillment. It is the illusion of power, of the capacity to transcend the human condition. Disenchantment is the awareness of enchantment as mere enchantment, a condition of limited duration subject to inevitable demolition. The importance of the paired terms enchantment and disenchantment in Chinese literature is analogous to the centrality of the histor-fictor axis based on reality and its representation in the Western literary tradition. The main concern in the Chinese context is not so much the ontological status of the represented world, but rather the function of illusion in literary expression and communication, that is, its relationship to the artist producing the aesthetic illusion and to the audience confronting it.
Enchantment is fascination and seduction, associations that arguably return us to the Ch'u tzu. The quasi-erotic tension and attraction between deity and human, the celebration of display and spectacle, and the seductive power of music in "The Nine Songs" (Chiu ko), the most explicitly religious and possibly the earliest stratum of the Ch'u tz'u corpus, promise an enchanted world. But even in "The Nine Songs," the mood is already elegiac. The deity favors the shaman with his or her gaze, but the gaze is made possible only by distance:
The child of God descends on the North Islet, With a faraway and soulful gaze she fills me with melancholy. (CT, c.2.27, "The Lady of the River Hsiang" [Hsiang Fu-jen])
In a hall filled with beautiful people, She suddenly singles me out for a pact sealed by mutual gaze. (CT, c.2.30, "The Lesser Goddess of Fate" [Shao Ssu-ming])
The gaze is an invitation to sensual pleasures, but union is ephemeral and separation inevitable:
Wordless she entered, she left without taking leave.
Riding whirling wind, striding cloud banners
No sorrow is greater than the sorrow of living separation,
No joy greater than the joy of newfound mutual understanding.
Dress of lotus, girdle of melilotus—
She comes in a trice and just as suddenly departs.
(CT, c.2.30, "The Lesser Goddess of Fate")
It is impossible for us to know exactly how "The Nine Songs" were performed, and we can only reinvent them for ourselves by supplying a context. In some examples, there are certain things that we are not likely to ever ascertain, such as the gender of the deity or the details of the rituals. However, certain motifs recur as if they are parts of a ritual formula. The deity, for instance, would promise the mortal removal from mundane reality: "I heard the Fair One calls me, / I am about to ascend and leave with her" (CT, c.2.27, "The Lady of the River Hsiang"). In a moment of ecstatic union with the deity, the shaman is lost in rapt self-forgetfulness—the refrain is "forget to return" (wang kuei). There is a mood of elation and expansiveness as the shaman adopts the perspective of the divine one:
I go up the K'un-lun Mountain and look in the four directions,
My heart sprouts wings and revels in the vision of roaring waves.
The sun is about to set, in my melancholy I forget to return,
And look with longing on the limits of the great river.
(CT, c.2 31–32, "River God" |Ho-po])
In this moment of union the shaman roams, perceives, and feels like the divine one. The escape from mortality seems all too possible. We have here the beginning of a long association between eroticism and the quest for immortality:
Old age is creeping up on me,
If I do not go near you we will be ever more estranged.
(CT, c.2.29, "The Greater God of Fate"
[Ta Ssu-ming])
Tarrying for the Divine One, oblivious, I forget to return,
The years are passing, who will make me fair?
(CT, c.2.33, "Mountain Spirit" [Shan-kuei])
The illusion of power seems palpable as the mortal partakes of the epiphany of the deity; the god or goddess is never one single entity, and there always is an impressive entourage and set of paraphernalia, so that the moment of union also means entering an enchanted world. The deities seem, however, to be always in a hurry. The shaman's encounter with the divine one, if it takes place at all, is invariably brief. The mortal lover-worshippers of the elusive deities deck themselves with fragrant plants, wait patiently, and express their melancholy and expectations in songs. For all that, the inevitable departure of the deity does not augur a moment of disenchantment. Ritual justifies, and is justified through, repetition. Though the moment of ecstatic union is transient, it may yet be enacted again: "A time like this will not easily come again, / If only we could roam and enjoy each other awhile" (CT, c.2.26, "The Goddess of the River Hsiang" [Hsiang-chün]).
These final lines (which are repeated, with slight variations, and in a similar context, at the end of "The Lady of the River Hsiang") come on the wake of plaints about the faithlessness of the deity, and show how wistful hopes for future union are not totally tarnished by present disappointment. Disenchantment can come into being only when enchantment is aware of itself as enchantment. In "The Nine Songs," unfulfillment is not yet disenchantment. Although we cannot be certain of the context of performance, these songs convey the impression of innocence and fluidity of boundaries. There is no absolute distance between the shaman-poet and the deity. Roles are assumed or reversed as the shaman impersonates the divine one. The divinities are seduced by human music and the spectacle of worship, as in the case of the Lord of the East:
Heaving a long sigh, I am about to ascend,
My heart is reluctant, I look back with longing
But the music and the spectacle are so enchanting,
That whoever looks on forgets to return.
(CT, c.2.30–31, "The Lord of the East"
[Tung-chün])
Entranced by the music and the rites of ritual, the Lord of the East overcomes his nostalgia for his original abode. In "The Nine Songs," something imagined or ritually represented is already immediate and real. The shaman impersonating the deity is already the deity, who thereby sometimes acquires eminently human traits: the sense of unfulfillment, the plaint, the susceptibility to seduction. Boundaries are effaced in the moment of "forgetting to return." The deity, the shaman-poet, and the audience are lost in a common fascination. Failure to meet the divine being, futile waiting, or melancholic return to this world do not seem to disabuse the shaman-poet or the audience of the possibility of ecstatic union; the mere act of singing of imagined pleasure and powers seems to make them palpable and attainable.
With Ch'ü Yüan (ca. 340–278 B.C.) the theme of the quest for the divine being gains a secular, political, and allegorical dimension. Through the allegorical mode of expression in "Encountering Sorrow" (Li-sao), the deity acquires an aura of high seriousness as the "symbolic other" in the dramatic quest for the fulfillment of political ideals. The faithless deity and the unsuccessful quest thus serve to accent the poet's fervent and uncompromising political idealism. "Encountering Sorrow" is difficult partly because it is almost impossible to draw the line between its magical-religious dimension and its political-allegorical significance. Suffice it to say that for the first time in the Chinese literary tradition enchantment becomes the self-conscious projection of an ideal realm, where the poet may escape from a sordid political reality. The inevitably unsuccessful quest and the necessity of return is now a self-conscious dramatization of disenchantment.
The moment of uncertainty and of turning round and looking back (fanku) in "Encountering Sorrow" represents not only nostalgia, moral-political duty, or the pressure of historical reality; it also unfolds the internal logic of self-conscious enchantment. The evocation of another realm is here bound up with the poet's profession of faith, his conviction of his own integrity in troubled times:
All of a sudden I turned back, my eyes roamed,
I resolved to go and see the four corners of the earth,
Decked in beautiful and luxuriant garlands,
Which waft a fragrance distinct and abundant.
People take pleasure in all manner of things,
I alone abide by purity, my constant joy
Even if I were dismembered, I would not waver,
For how could my heart be punished likewise?
(CT, c.1.7)
The poet's longing for far-off wandering (yüan-yu) is tantamount to a defiant assertion that his will would not be dismembered, even if his body were. The expansion of the realm of vision and imagination is then a deliberate act of will. An element of reflection and a kind of rhetorical structure foreign to "The Nine Songs" attend such willfulness in "Encountering Sorrow." The poet's declaration of his intention is followed by two extended speeches. Nü-hsü chides him for his refusal to compromise, and the poet goes south and states his case before Ch'ung-hua (the name of the sageKing Shun, and also the name of a star). After following through the argument and counterargument for compromise, the poet resolves to "undertake a quest in realms above and below" (shang-hsia ch'i ch'iu-so) to look for his ideal.
His quest takes him to the Gate of Heaven, where he is barred from entry. He waits, plies the orchids that symbolize his virtue, and moves to another vantage point:
In the morning I decided to cross the White River,
Climb the Lang-feng Mountain, and tie my horse.
Suddenly I looked back and wept bitter tears,
1 grieved that there was no fair lady on the high hill.
(CT, c.1.12)
The moment of "looking back" marks the access of doubt. The poet fears that the quest may prove ultimately futile, especially since elevation to another realm is accomplished through an act of sheer will. Denied access to the fair lady on high, the poet turns to goddesses below. Fu-fei (goddess of the River Lo), however, turns out to be fickle and faithless. The lovely daughter of the Lord of Sung (Chien-ti), mythic ancestress of the Shang kings, cannot be reached because of knavish intermediaries (the chattering magpies), while the two daughters of the Lord of Yu have prior claims on their affections. As David Hawkes points out, the unsuccessful quest for the goddess fits Ch'ü Yüan's allegorical purpose. The inconstancy of the deities in "The Nine Songs" is accepted as part of their divine nature and a frequent component of the ritual of worship. In "Encountering Sorrow," however, the quest is thwarted by malice and ill will, as the poet self-consciously dramatizes his disenchantment.
In the last part of the poem the poet appeals to the divinations of the shaman Ling-fen and the oracular pronouncement of Wu-hsien, a god who is sometimes identified as a shaman ancestor from the Shang period. Another aerial journey ensues, and ends with another moment of looking back:
I had ascended the splendors of heaven—
Suddenly from on high I caught sight of my old home.
My groom grieved, and my horses, filled with longing,
Arched their heads, looked back, and refused to go on.
(CT, c 1 18)
The moment of hesitation and reflection shows how the poet is stranded between two worlds, the world of calumny, slander, and sordid political intrigue, and the world where he may find fulfillment of his ideals. He is reluctant to leave the former, because it also represents responsibility and the possibility of action. The latter bears mulitiple interpretations. The quest for the goddess has been explained as exile and the search for possible employment in another kingdom; or, more generally, as the quest for a world in which the poet can preserve his integrity and exert his will; or simply as the desire to attain shamanistic power. Enchantment is fascination with surface, not quest for meaning; as such it cannot bear the weight of allegory, which implies discontinuous realms of experience, and which stipulates that such discontinuities be bridged on the basis of a constructed coherence of meaning. In "Encountering Sorrow," through the mode of allegorical expression, enchantment and disenchantment define the vagaries of lyrical consciousness, its sense of power and futility.
With Han dynasty fu, a genre of court poetry dominant in the following era, the dialectics of enchantment and disenchantment comes to be situated squarely in the circuit of literary communication. The court poet creates a literary illusion celebrating the power and grandeur of his royal patron, while at the same time claiming a deeper moral intention. In other words, he purports to disabuse his royal audience of the illusion that all his desires may be fulfilled. In "Encountering Sorrow," the self-consciousness of enchantment and disenchantment do not put lyrical expression in doubt. In Han fu, however, enchantment and disenchantment raise issues of masking, sincerity, truth-telling, troping. This explains why the most frequently employed conceptual schemes in the discussion of fu are the axes of lyricism versus rhetoric and moral persuasion versus ornamentation. In this new genre, rhetorical strategies are used to create and manipulate illusions and to play with the boundaries of enchantment and disenchantment. It is now a question of manipulating illusion for the pleasure and/or moral education of another. In addition, disenchantment is now specifically connected with the question of order. Fu emerged into prominence in the age of the correlative cosmology (yin-yang wu-hsing) of Han Confucianism, which represents the most relentless brand of order-building in Chinese cultural history. FM, too, invokes an orderly and systematic cosmos despite its passion for inclusiveness and penchant for the extraordinary.
Han fu tames the erotic and the sensual by including them as part of a general plenitude. The urge to have it all here and now and to bring everything within the compass of order and system is very much the ideology of empire. The elusive deity in the Ch'u tz'u who never has much time for humans becomes in the Han fu a more cooperative figure promising literal immortality to the ruler. In "Encountering Sorrow," the poet, in his quest for the goddess in realms "above and below," rides the phoenix and comes to the Gate of Heaven. But he is refused entry by heaven's porter. Two centuries later, in "Fu on the Great Man" (Ta-jen fu) by the great court poet Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju (179–117 B.C.), the Gate of Heaven is no longer an insurmountable obstacle: "I passed through the Gate of Heaven, entered the Palace of God, / Carried the Jade Maiden and returned with her."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Enchantment and Disenchantment by Wai-yee Li. Copyright © 1993 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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