heart of us men of learning, a crystal ization of that fierce dedication that cannot but repel evil and cleave to the good, shrink from the warped and align itself with the straight, aid the weak and crush the stronga€”a crystal that wil shoot back the flashing arrows of the daylight world that would pierce it.
People wil laugh at someonea€™s behavior when they see it as theatrical. They are real y laughing at what is, from the point of view of human sentiment, the quite incomprehensible and meaningless sacrifice being made on the grounds of purity of aesthetic principle. They deride the fol y of parading onea€™s sensibility before the world rather than awaiting a moment that wil al ow innate beauty of character natural y to shine forth.
Those who have a true grasp of such matters may wel scoff, but the louts and riffraff who have no understanding of taste, and choose to scorn others by comparing them to their own base natures, are unforgivable. There was once a youth who leaped five hundred feet to his doom down a waterfal into the swirling rapids, leaving behind him a final poem on the rock above.2 To me, it seems that this young man sacrificed his life, that precious gift, for the sake of beauty pure and simple. Such a death is heroic, though the impulse that prompted it is difficult for us to comprehend.
But how can those who fail to grasp the heroism of that death dare to deride his action? Such people, who can never know the emotions of one who accomplishes such supreme heroism, must surely forfeit al right to scoff, for they are inferior to this young man in being unable, even in circumstances that justify such an action, to achieve his noble sacrifice.
Ia€™m a painter and, as such, a man whose professional y cultivated sensibility would automatical y put me above my more uncouth neighbors, if I were to descend to dwel ing in the common world of human emotions. As a member of society, my superior position al ows me to instruct others.
Furthermore, the artist is capable of a greater aesthetic behavior than those who have no sense of poetry or painting, no artistic skil . In the realm of human feelings, a beautiful action is one of truth, justice, and righteousness; and to express truth, justice, and righteousness through onea€™s behavior is to align oneself with the pattern of behavior deemed proper for civic life.
Now, I have removed myself for a while from that sphere of human feelings, and during this journey I feel no necessity to rejoin it. Were I to do so, the whole point of the journey would be lost. I must sieve from the rough sands of human emotions the pure gold that lies within and fix my eyes on that alone. For now, I choose not to play my part as a member of society but to identify myself purely and simply as a professional painter, to cut myself loose from the entangling strictures of gross self-interest, and to dedicate myself ful y to my relationship with the artista€™s canvasa€”and of course my disinterested stance applies also to mountains and to water, not to mention to other people. Under the circumstances, then, I must observe Namia€™s behavior in the same way, simply for what it is.
When I have climbed about a quarter of a mile, a single white-wal ed dwel ing looms up ahead. A house among the mandarin trees, I think. The road now divides in two, and I turn left, with the white-wal ed house off to one side. I glance back and discover a girl in a red skirt climbing the hil behind me. The skirt gives way to a pair of brown shins, below which is a pair of straw sandals, advancing steadily toward me. Petals from the mountain cherries tumble about her head. At her back she bears the shining sea.
She arrives at the top of the steep path and emerges onto the flat top of the knol . To the north tower fold upon fold of springa€™s green peaks, perhaps the view that I gazed up at from my balcony this morning. To the south is what seems like a burned area about fifty yards wide, and beyond it a crumbling cliff face; below lies the mandarin orchard I have just passed through, and beyond the distant vil age, al that meets the eye is that familiar expanse of blue sea.
The main path has become indistinguishable among the numerous tracks that meet and part and intersect. Al are a path of some sort, and none is the path itself. A further interesting confusion is the intriguing patches of dark red earth that are visible here and there in the grass, not clearly connected to this or that track.
I wander through the grass, looking for a place to settle myself down. The landscape that looked so suitable for painting when viewed from my balcony also seems suddenly to have lost its unity and coherence. Its color too is gradual y fading. As I plod stupidly hither and yon in this fashion, al desire to paint deserts me. With the need to paint gone, the selection of a place no longer mattersa€”wherever I choose to sit wil become my home. The warmth of the spring sunlight has penetrated to the roots of the grass, and as I plump myself down, I sense that I am inadvertently crushing beneath me an invisible shimmer of heat haze.
Down beyond my feet shines the sea. The utterly cloudless spring sky casts its sunlight over the entire sea surface, imparting a warmth that suggests the sunlight has penetrated deep within its waves. A swath of delicate Prussian blue spreads lengthwise across it, and here and there an intricate play of colors swims over a layering of fine white-gold scales. Between the vastness of the spring sunlight that shines upon the world, and the vastness of the water that brims beneath it, the only visible thing is a single white sail no bigger than a little fingernail. The sail is absolutely motionless. Those ships that plied these waters in days gone by, bearing tributes from afar, must have looked like this. Apart from the sail, heaven and earth consist entirely of the world of shining sunlight and the world of sunlit sea.
I throw myself back onto the grass. My hat slips from my forehead and haloes my head. The grass is studded with little clumps of wild japonica bush one or two feet tal , and my face has come to rest just in front of one. Japonica is an interesting plant. Its branches obstinately refuse to bend, yet neither are they straight: each smal straight twig col ides with another smal straight twig at an angle, so that the whole branch consists of a series of obliques, tranquil y ornamented with rather pointless scarlet or white flowers, and a casual scattering of soft leaves to top it off. You could characterize the japonica as belonging to the type of the enlightened fool. Some in this world doggedly retain an awkward and innocent honestya€”they wil be reborn as japonica. Ita€™s the flower that I myself would like to become.
When I was a child, I once cut myself some twigs of japonica, complete with flowers and leaves, and arranged them attractively to make a rack for holding my writing brush. In it I propped a cheap, soft-haired brush, and seeing the contraption there before me on my desk, the white brush head peeping out from among the flowers and leaves, gave me great pleasure. When I went to bed that night, the japonica brush rack fil ed my thoughts.
As soon as I awoke the next morning, I leaped from my bed and ran to the deska€”to discover the flowers drooping and the leaves dried. Only the brush head glowed there unaltered in their midst. That such a beautiful thing could wither and die in the space of a single night appal ed me. This earlier self seems to me now enviably unsul ied by the world.
The japonica that meets my eyes now, as soon as I lie back, is an old and intimate friend. As I gaze at it, my mind drifts pleasantly, and the impulse to poetry wel s up in me again.
Lying here, I ponder, and as each line of a Chinese poem comes to me, I jot it down in my sketchbook. After a little time, the poem seems complete. I reread it from the beginning.
Beset by thoughts I leave my gate.
