Kyle David Anderson and Dr. Steven P. Sondrup, Humanities, Classics and Comparative Literature
Western perspectives on Chinese literature and poetics have generally been overly mystified (or even nonexistent). This fledgling view of the knowledge and literary achievements of China is to be anticipated during the beginnings of a cultural exchange between the East and the West.
The colossal language barrier, a virtual alien to standard European grammars and scripts, has understandably kept most Westerners in the dark. Furthermore, the romanticization or mystification of Chinese literature and poetics is a natural, psychological response to an encounter with such a distinct other. In light of this, since the high Middle Ages most Western accounts of the East have understandably been polarized. Even now, in the twenty-first century, our more critically objective attempts still tend to be colored by our ignorance, fantasies and fears. Nevertheless, we continue working for a more truthful and faithful understanding of the East. Though it is difficult to bridle the impulse to infuse our hopes, imaginations and dreams and jettison our fears, worries and horrors onto the other, such restraint is required if a more authentic perception of China’s literary treasures is to be cultivated. “Liu Yuxi in the Paradox of the Sign” intends to emphasize the similarities of Eastern and Western poetry and thus enhance a more realistic dialogue which diminishes exaggerated différences between the two traditions.
Some prevailing notions on Chinese theories of literature describe a tradition that naively clings to a pre-Qin understanding of the transparency of written signs. Metaphysical, aestheticexpressive and didactic theories of Chinese literature all rely heavily on the efficacy and power of the written character to effortlessly transfer meaning from author to reader. Because meaning is supposedly self-evident, the classic, Western literary debates over authorial intent and the murky connections between world-author-text-reader, etc., are non-issues. In this view, reading a poem is uncomplicatedly reading its writer (not a text, or even self). The enormous corpus of Chinese critical works, however, glaringly belies this simplistic view of the reading process in the East. In fact, many Chinese philosophers, critics and artists openly acknowledge the crudeness of signs and the difficulty of graphic communication. Liu Yuxi is, of course, one of these poet-critics.
Liu Yuxi lived during the Middle T’ang (700-800 AD) and is considered one of the most prolific writers of his day. The iconoclastic presence of folk elements in his poetry, written within a strict, poetical genre, has typically drawn scholars to his works. This study, though, is less concerned with such rapports de fait. As its title indicates, this study delves into the broader, theoretical space of Liu’s poetry. “Looking at My Knife Hilt: A Song,” specifically engages the linguistic and aesthetic-expressive conundrum that has frustrated Western minds for millennia. Within a tradition often characterized as non-mimetic, Liu expresses a keenly mimetic, and therefore Western, aggravation with language. He writes:
(I have always regretted the shallowness of words compared with the depths of human hearts. Today the two of us look at one another silently, but with feelings a hundredfold.)
Liu begins by immediately marking the superficiality, or shallowness of words. This observation clashes with the classical attitude which associates poetical words with depth, intensity, and the spirituous ability to reach far beyond the text to move others. Nonetheless, Liu senses the fundamental inability of language to replicate or accurately transport the feelings and intentions of its sender. Liu believes the shçn, profundity, of intention suffers when conformed to signs. The third and fourth lines of the poem resolve the tension instigated by the former. Liu describes a silent scene in which two individuals (arguably writer and reader) stare into each others’ visages. By way of their gazes, they feel the weight of intended meaning and feeling. Shì (looking) succeeds where yán (words) fail. What is ironic is Liu’s usage of the script he laments to convey his particular message. He succinctly weaves a metatextual poem in which reader and author arrive at a profound agreement on the superiority of extra-linguistic communication, thus paradoxically reaffirming the communicative power of script by way of the written poem. This convoluted process of artistic communion with the reader squarely places Liu Yuxi within the paradox of the sign where intentions are conveyed despite the inadequacies of language. In this way, he comfortably joins ranks with the most celebrated writers of the West who share and express the same frustrations.
In conclusion, Liu Yuxi’s poem conveys a complex idea traditionally reserved only for the intensely philosophical and mimetic West. His thoughts on language and communication scramble the crude notion of a simplistic Eastern art and mind. Alongside numerous other Chinese and European poets, Liu expresses the complexity of language. His poem, “Looking at My Knife Hilt: A Song,” provides another point of commonality in the critical dialogue between Western and Eastern literatures, and therefore increases feeling and understanding between two seemingly opposite worlds.