The Cloudy Mirror, Tension and Conflict in the Writings of Sima Qian by Stephen W.

Durrant; Sima Qian

Review by: William H. Nienhauser, Jr.
Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR), Vol. 18 (Dec., 1996), pp. 212-217
Published by: Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR)
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212 Chinese Literature:
Essays,
Articles,
Reviews 18
(1996)
evocation.
Oldfich
Kril
Charles
University
of
Prague
The
Cloudy
Mirror,
Tension and
Conflict
in the
Writings of
Sima
Qian, by Stephen
W. Durrant.
Albany:
State
University
of New York
Press,
1995.
Pp.
xxi + 226. $49.50.
This is a book both
greater
than its title
professes
and less than what it
might promise
to some. Greater in the sense that it traces a number of
larger questions-the
canonization of
the Classics and their
gradual
association with Confucius
(chapter 2),
for
example-which
emerge
from
Stephen
Durrant's
strong background
in
Han, Qin
and
pre-Qin
texts. Less
because as Durrant himself admits the book "is not a
comprehensive study
of the
huge
and
extremely complex
Records
of
the Historian ...
[nor an] attempt
to
present
. .. a
biography
of
Sima
Qian" (Introduction, p. xviii).
Indeed,
the titles of the six
chapters
focus on Sima
Qian
i~ and his
relationship
to
various historical
figures: Chapter
1. The Frustration of the Second Confucius
[Qu
Yuan
Jtf
];
2. Sima
Qian's
Confucius
[Confucius
L*-7i];
3. Sima
Qian,
the Six
Arts,
and
Spring
and
Autumn Annals
[Dong Zhongshu
kfrj1"];
4.
Dying
Fathers and
Living
Memories
[Wu
Zixu
fi-T-W];
5.
(Wo)men with(out)
Names
[Nie
Zheng/Rong
AWj
/ /,
Lu
Zhonglian
J
-r
j ,
and
the Lord of
Xinling
{-ig
];
6.
Ideologue
versus Narrator
[Xiang
Yu
*j1];
Epilogue. They
constitute a collection of related
essays
on the means of
meaning
in the
Shiji, revealing tropes
which
dispel
centuries of
exegetical
"clouds" and enhance our
appreciation
of Sima
Qian's
literary
talents. But like
any
mirror,
this collection will reflect some of what each of us
brings
to
it.
For
me,
I welcome a
literary study
of this
great
historical
work,
in
part
because we
have so few.1
Moreover,
since it is so difficult to
reproduce
the Grand Historian's much lauded
style
in
translation,
these
analyses
are an excellent
way
to allow the Western reader
insight
into
a book which in China has
long
become one of the most
important literary
and historical
models.
The
underlying
theme of the book is the
relationship
between the author's own life
and his
portrayal
of
history-thus
the mirror
image
of the title. The tensions and conflicts Sima
Qian
feels with his
subjects
and with his
undertaking,
however,
becloud a clear or consistent
historiographical approach.
Such are Durrant's
presumptions
based on at least a decade of
reading
the
Shiji closely.2
1
In addition to Joseph Roe Allen's "An
Introductory Study
of the Narrative Structure in the Shi
ji,"
CLEAR, 3
(1981), 31-66, which Durrant
discusses,
I can think of
only
two other
English Language literary
studies-both
dissertations--on
Shiji:
Vivian-Lee
Nyitray's
"Mirrors of Virtue: Four
'Shih chi'
Biographies" (Stanford, 1990)
and Xiaobin
Jian's "Spatialization
in the
Shiji" (Ohio State, 1992); Jean
Levi's historical
novel, Les Fils du Ciel et son annaliste
(Paris:
Gallimard, 1992) might
also be considered as a
"literary study"
of sorts.
2Although
his first
published study
of
Shiji,
"Self as the Intersection of Traditions: The
Autobiographical
Writings
of Ssu-ma
Ch'ien,"
appeared
in
JAOS,
106
(1986),
Durrant authored the
"Shih-chi" entry
for the Indiana
Companion
to Traditional Chinese Literature
(Bloomington:
Indiana
University Press, 1985), pp.
689-94,
and was thus
obviously working
on the text much earlier..
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Book Reviews 213
To set the
stage
for his
literary analysis,
Durrant indeed
begins
as if he were
writing a
biography3
in his "Introduction"
(pp. xi-xxi), citing
the famous
passage
from the "Taishi
Gong
zixu"
;,f~-gn
:
"I, Qian,
was born in
Dragon
Gate,
where I herded on the southern
slopes
of the mountains
along
the Yellow River. At the
age
of ten I could recite ancient
texts"
t?Z i J (Durrant, p.
xi,
Shiji, X:130:3293
[Beijing:
Zhonghua, 1959]).
Several
questions emerge
from this
passage.
First,
we know that Sima
Tan
P-%A
took
up
the
position
of Taishi
Ling
,
,-
(Prefect
of the Grand
Historians)
early
in
Emperor
Wu's
reign (141-87 B.C.)-Durrant
believes it was in 140 B.C.
(see p. 149).
When Sima
Qian
writes that he "herded on the southern
slopes
of the mountains
along
the Yellow
River,"
does he mean as a
young boy?
If
so,
how was he able to mix his
agricultural
duties with
study
so that
by age
ten he "could recite ancient texts"? With whom did he
study?
His father was
presumably
in
Chang'an.
Some scholars have
attempted
to
interpret gengmu Tf, literally
"plowed
and
herded,"
as a reference to the
diligence
with which he studied as a
youth.
Durrant's
analysis
of the
passage,
an
analysis
which leads him to one of his
major
theses in the
book,
seems more solid to me:
These
autobiographical
comments reflect a fundamental tension in Sima
Qian's
life and work. In
the first
sentence,
Sima
Qian
draws a
pastoral picture:
a
boy
tends animals on the warm
slope
of
a mountain
along
northern China's
greatest
river.
Dragon Gate,
which he identifies as his
birthplace,
is a
spot
rich in folklore
.... In the second sentence ... Sima
Qian
turns from the
romance of
herding
livestock near
Longmen
to
scholarship:
"At the
age
of ten I could recite
ancient texts."
Precisely
what Sima
Qian
meant
by
"ancient texts" is a
subject
of
disagreement ..
. It is
quite
certain, however,
that when he
began
his formal
education,
Sima
Qian
was no
longer herding
livestock on the
sunny
hills near
Dragon
Gate but was with his father in the
Western Han
capital
of
Chang'an
.... These two
places, Longmen
and
Ch'ang'an-"Dragon
Gate" and
"Everlasting
Peace"-are
geographical symbols
we
might
choose to
designate
a
polarity
that sometimes strains and even tears the fabric of Sima
Qian's
writings. Dragon
Gate is
a bucolic site of
imagination
and
myth
...
Chang'an
... is a site of
study
and
order...
(pp.
xi-
xiii).
Durrant sees
Dragon
Gate as more of a state of mind than an actual
place
or
experience.
It is
part
of "the tension and
opposition"
he finds in the
Shiji.
He continues this line of
thinking
on
the
following page:
Confucius
(551-479 B.C.E.)
...
provides
the terms I use to summarize the tension
apparent
in
Sima
Qian's
writings.
Three
places
in Analects (Lun
yu),
the Master
places
the word wen
'
"literary
culture" in contrast to
Ii ;M
"ritual behavior" . . . . Sima
Qian's
passion
for
wen,
understood as the texts and
styles
of the
past,
induced him to create
simultaneously
a universal
history
and a cultural
encyclopedia.
Such
comprehensiveness
would seem to make order and
coherence
impossible,
but Sima
Qian strove,
as he said
himself,
"to create the words of a
single
school." His
goal
was to follow the
path
of Confucius and
present
a new
order,
a new
expression congruent
with the demands of Ii.
Thus,
the tension I
posit
here with the Confucian
terms wen and
Ii
can
be construed
in
a variety of different ways: it is the tension between
comprehensiveness and
coherence, between the
storyteller and the
philosopher-historian,
between the romantic world of
Dragon Gate and the ordered world of
Chang'an (pp. xiv-xvii).
3And there is more
implicit biography,
in a Chinese sense, in the
appended "Chronology
of Sima Qian's Life,"
pp. 149-50. It should be noted that some of the events in Durrant's list are dated
variously.
Han
Zhaoqi
J-K
recently
argued that Sima Qian became a Gentleman of the Palace
(&] r4) five
years later than Durrant has it, in 119 B.C. and that his
appointment to Prefect Palace
Secretary
F,
-) came a
year earlier than Durrant believes (in 97 B.C.; see Han, Shiji boyi
?t-$j$
[Taibei: Wenjin, 1995], pp.
32 and 37
respectively).
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214 Chinese Literature:
Essays,
Articles,
Reviews 18
(1996)
But the thrust of
Durrant's
arguments
is
literary-he
identifies motifs which he believes Sima
Qian
has used to
shape
historical events to his own
purposes,
to
attempt
to resolve conflicts
and tensions. Even as he
works, however,
Sima
Qian
recreates
tensions,
such as that between
the classical demand to transmit rather than create
(Ai
ff
Tij
f'
),
a tenet Sima
Qian
claims
(Shiji,
X:130:3300)
rather
unconvincingly
that he wants to adhere
to,
and the
urge
to reflect his own
ideas in his narrative.
The first
chapter
is filled with
interesting
discussions of motivations and models for
the Grand Historian.
Perhaps
the most
daring
claim is that the voice of the
dying
Sima Tan
admonishing
his son to
complete
the
history
he has
begun4
"is
at least
partially
Sima
Qian's
own
voice,"
a
justification
for his
living
on after the shame and humiliation of castration
(p. 10).
In Durrant's
comparison
of Sima
Qian
and
Qu Yuan,
he
might
have added that both men came
to
grief
as a result of
something they
were
writing--Qu
Yuan was slandered because he
refused to share credit for a set of new laws he had drafted and Sima
Qian
dishonored
by
castration rather than death because he wanted to
complete
the
Shiji.
Chapters
2 and 3 deal with
Confucius,
Dong Zhongshu
and the establishment of the
relationship
between the
Sage
and the Classics
during
the second
century
B.C.
The
following chapter,
however,
is one the most
interesting
from a
literary point
of
view. In it Durrant discusses what he calls "The
Traditions5
of Wu Zixu"
(1f-T-W5
qJ
%)
and
Sima
Qian's
use of related sources.6
Durrant identifies "two issues of
profound
and
personal
interest to the Han historian"
(p. 83)
in this
story-complex: (1)
how the failed and
rejected
find comfort at the moment of
death; (2)
what the
responsibility
of a son to his father is and how that
responsibility
must be
balanced
against
cultural demands for moderation and control. On the second issue Durrant
contrasts accounts of the murder of Wu She
fCe,
Wu Zixu's
father,
by King Ping
5f
of Chu
(r.
528-516
B.C.)
in Zuozhuan
_f
with that in the
"Hereditary
Household of Chu"
Vt.!~
in
Shiji.
Durrant
argues
that the
speech
of the
father
[Wu She],
which Sima
Qian
gives
in two
versions,
has no
analogue
in
Zuo,
where Wu She remains silent. Words
spoken by
a father
facing
death,
as we have
already
seen,
hold a
special
interest for Sima
Qian.
And in this
case,
the father
gives
a
highly perceptive appraisal
of his
son--he accurately
assesses their
personalities
and
predicts
how each will react to a summons.
Wu
Shang
said to his
younger
brother: "To hear father will be
pardoned
and neither of us
hasten there is unfilial. For father to be slain and neither of us to
gain revenge
is to be without
schemes. To measure abilities and assume tasks is wise. You should act! I should return and
die!"
(pp. 87-88)
Durrant sees this reaction as "a
compromise
between two
opposing
desires
fulfill[ing]
the
prediction
of their father. The
hinge
of the decision is
not,
like in
Zuo,
so much
4The question
of Sima Tan's actual contributions to the
Shiji remains unresolved (Durrant touches on the
problem
on
p. 8). There are indications in some of the historian's comments at the end of each
chapter that Tan
may have
written them. Indeed, the title Taishi
Gong
tA?L-
(His Honor the Grand Historian) is an honorific which Sima Qian could
not have
applied
to himself.
5The
meaning
of liezhuan, which I have discussed in the "Introduction" to v. 7 of The Grand Scribe's Records
(Bloomington:
Indiana
University Press, 1994), pp. vi-viii, continues to rankle. Whatever
English term one settles on,
however, I do not believe that lie IJ has the sense of "arrayed" as Durrant argues (p. xx). It seems
analogous
to lie in
lieguo
1!J
and is therefore a
plural marker. This
actually
fits Durrant's use in
translating
actual titles of
chapter ("The Traditions
of Wu Zixu" on p. 66, for example, not "The Arrayed Traditions").
6Durrant cites some of the important Western studies of this
chapter, but omits David Johnson's excellent
"Epic and
History
in
Early China: The Matter of Wu
Tzu-hsii," JAS, 40.2(February 1981), 255-271.
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Book Reviews 215
each brother's
respective
virtues
...
as it is an
attempt
to resolve a dilemma: a filial son
obeys
his
father,
he must answer the summons and
die;
but a filial son
avenges
his father, he
must
reject
the summons and live on to act! The sons can be filial and
meet
both
requirements, but
only
as a team and not as individuals."
The
implication
is Sima
Qian,
as an
individual, has no
way
to fulfill both roles.
Thus
his choice to live
on-dishonorably
in the
opinion
of
many-was
made because he had
no
brother with whom to coordinate his actions.
Durrant continues
(p. 88):
Wu
Zixu,
a
temporary refugee
from
death,
must
justify
his existence
by projecting
into the
future. His
plot
must have the
right
outcome or he can
enjoy
no comfort. At this
point
Sima
Qian's
personal
involvement in his narrative becomes even more
apparent.
He, too,
is a
refugee
of death who must defer honor into the
future,
but his
vindication,
as a man of the written
word,
will be
gained
in a less dramatic and less violent fashion.
Here we have an excellent
example
of Sima
Qian's
struggle
with his
sources,
attempting
to
merely
transmit a
story,
but
needing
to
shape
it so that a
relationship
between father and son
would
emerge
that could salve his own wounds.
"(Wo)men with(out) Names,"
Chapter
5,
reiterates the idea that Sima
Qian
"swerves
from his sources in order to confront his own
personal
interests." It does so
convincingly
in
another
comparison,
this of the
story
of Nie
Zheng
and his sister Nie
Rong
in the
Zhanguo
ce
MMM
(Intrigues
of the
Warring States)
with the
parallel
account in the
Shiji.
In the
Intrigues'
account Nie
Zheng,
who once worked as a
dog
butcher,
assassinated a man for a
patron
and
then "skins his own
face,
gouges
out his
eyes
and disembowels himself"
(p.
106)
so that his
identity
will remain unknown and his
family
members
escape
involvement. His
only
surviving
relative,
a sister named
Rong,
finds his
corpse, speaks
a few words to onlookers so
that her brother's valor will be
known,
and then takes her own life.
Sima
Qian, however,
gives
Nie
Rong
a much
larger part
to
play.
After
finding
her
brother's
body,
she wails in sorrow and
says:
"This is the one known as Nie
Zheng
of
Shenjing Village
in Zhi."
Those
walking
about in the market and all the multitudes
said,
"This man killed the
grand
minister of our
state,
and the
king
has
displayed
a reward of one thousand
pieces
of
gold
for his
name. Has the
lady
not heard this? How dare
you
come to
identify
him?"
In
response, Rong
said, "I
have heard this.
Still,
the reason
Zheng accepted indignity
and
cast himself
among
the
peddlers
in the market was that his
aged
mother,
fortunately,
had no
illness,
and I had not
yet
married.
My parent,
in accord with her
heaven-appointed years,
has
left the
earth,
and I have
already
married.
Now,
Yan
Zhongzi sought
out and raised
up my
younger
brother from the midst of affliction and insult and treated him with favor and kindness!
What could he do? A
gentleman surely
will die for one who knows him.
Now,
because I am still
alive,
he mutilated himself to cut off
pursuit.
How could I fear the
punishment
of death and
eternally
obliterate a virtuous brother's name?"
This
greatly
startled the
people
of the Han market. Then she cried out to
heaven,
sighed
in
deep sorrow, and died at the side of
Zheng's body.
When the
people
of Jin, Chu, Qi, and Wei
heard of this, they all said, "Not
only was
Zheng capable, but his older sister was a noble
woman."
(p. 107)
Durrant believes this version
"puts the
bravery of Nie
Zheng's sister much more at the center
of the narrative . . .
causing her to become the dominant character in the narrative"
(p. 108).
Rong's speech
is
actually
a
commentary by
Sima Qian intended "to make as explicit as
possible"
that Nie
Zheng
"had underestimated his sister."
Zheng
was not as
perceptive as his
patron,
Yan
Zhongxi,
in
"knowing (wo)men." Nie
Zheng
is "the
enticing but unchosen
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216 Chinese Literature:
Essays,
Articles,
Reviews 18
(1996)
alternative" for Sima
Qian,
since
Zheng
was
willing
to
"accept
annihilation from both the
present
life and the
pages
of the
past
in one
glorious
moment of firm resolve"
(p. 110). But,
Durrant
argues,
it is Nie
Rong
with whom Sima
Qian
identifies as one who "becomes
morally
superior
to those who rush too
quickly
into death and
anonymity."7
The counterbalance between wen and
Ii,
between
transmitting
a
past
and
creating
a
future,
is carried
through
the final
chapter.
It examines Sima
Qian's
portrayals
of
Xiang
Yu
and Liu
Bang.
Durrant
points
first to similarities between the two "basic annals"-both
begin
with their
protagonist reacting
to their first view of the
mighty
First
Emperor
of
Qin,
both end
with
songs composed by
themselves. Next he
argues
that the "Basic Annals of
Xiang
Yu" has
been
"deservedly
acclaimed as a
literary masterpiece"
while the "Basic Annals of Kao-tsu
[Liu
Bang]"
is "an
insipid
narrative"
(pp.
130-1).
His
analysis
of several
passages
in these
respective
annals reveals
a fundamental difference in the two central characters that will reverberate
throughout
the
narratives-Xiang
Yu is
essentially
a character of
movement,
a man of action-he believes that
he can 'take'
(qu)
and
'replace' (dai)
the
powerful emperor;
his behavior here and
throughout
the
narrative
corresponds
to the transitive verb. Liu
Bang, by way
of
contrast,
is a character of stasis
who is
primarily typified
not
by
transitive actions but
by
states of
being,
in this
case,
the state of
being
the
emperor.
But the
young Xiang
Yu notices the
possibility
of
action, the
young
Liu
Bang
the
glory
of a situation!
Whereas the narrative of
Xiang
Yu is driven forward
by
a
powerful
central
actor,
the
narrative of Liu
Bang
is,
in a
sense,
complete
from the
beginning.
He is the
emperor,
a fact that is
obvious from the first words of his " Basic Annals."
(pp. 132-3)
Durrant's claim that Sima
Qian
depicted
an active
Xiang
Yu
through
a
dynamic
narrative,
then
juxtaposed
a
chapter-the
"Basic Annals of Liu
Bang"-intending
to underline the stasis of its
subject by emasculating
the force of its
literary
craft,
is an innovative and
provocative reading.
I would
only suggest
that Durrant consider
replacing
the term "static" with
"passive"
as his
epithet
for Liu
Bang.
Durrant himself
suggests
this in his contrast of
Xiang
Yu's famous death
scene with Liu
Bang's acceptance
of his mortal
injury "passively" (p. 139).
Aside from its value as an
impressive
collection of
literary readings
of the
Shiji,
Durrant has
skillfully
included discussions of some of the
major
sources of the
text--Zuozhuan
and
Guoyu
in
chapter
4,
Zhanguo
ce in
chapter
5,8
and Chu Han
chunqiu Vj%*
,
in
chapter
6,
discussions that
augment
and
support
ideas offered
by
Burton Watson in his classic
study
of
Sima
Qian.
I have noted some minor
points
of
disagreement
in footnotes-located there because
they
are
relatively unimportant questions
about what is an
important, largely
successful,
book.
Successful not
only
in
argument
and
method,
but in
style.
Indeed,
the
strong English style
of
the book should be noted
(although strangely-and
I throw this out conscious that I am
living
in a house built almost
entirely
of
glass-some
of the translations are less
elegant).
It is this
strength,
and the resonances of Sima Qian's historiography itself, which allow the book to end
on such a
precise, yet pregnant
note: "When all is said and done, Sima Qian is not a
philosopher
of
history,
and he
certainly
is not a moralist. He is, instead, a
literary genius
who
7Another interpretation
which
might be
applied to Nie
Rong's long speech
is that Sima Qian seems to have
allowed female character's on the point of death to expound moral principles (cf. the message Wang Ling's
I1F
mother
sent him
[Shiji, VI:56:2059-60]), thereby adumbrating
the
lienii
IJj;
tradition.
8Some
consideration of Yumiko Fukushima Blanford's two-volume "Studies of the
Zhanguo zhonghengjia
shu
Silk
Manuscript" (Unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, University of
Washington, 1989) may have been of use in Durrant's
discussion of Su Qin in this
chapter.
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Book Reviews 217
writes his
story
as much as
history."
Is "his
story"
the manner in which he chooses to retell his
sources,
is it his
autobiography,
or some combination of both?
Durrant is not sure himself. That is one of the most admirable
aspects
of this book.
When Durrant is uncertain about
something,
he tells us. But more often the
intelligent way
Durrant handles Sima
Qian
and his
history
is
convincing.
More
convincing, perhaps,
because
Durrant has been able to
provide
a broad context for the
book,
drawing
on as
many
sources
perhaps
as did Sima
Qian.
He has also been able to
shape
Sima
Qian's
texts into
essays
which
reveal the
literary
skills of the Grand Historian. In
short,
this is a book which
responds
effectively
to the command
by
Confucius which Durrant cites in the
epigram
on the first
page
of his Introduction: "Broaden me with
literary
culture."
William H.
Nienhauser, Jr.
University
of Wisconsin-Madison
Strange
Tales
from Strange
Lands: Stories
by Zheng Wanlong,
edited and with an introduction
by
Kam Louie. Ithaca: Cornell
University
East Asia
Series,
1993.
Pp.
vii + 133.
$18.00 (HC);
$12.00
(pb).
In the
writings
of
Zheng Wanlong,
the
Oroqen landscape emerges
as one of bleakness
and
savagery,
with whole mountains sealed off
by
snow or
engulfed
in sulfuric smoke.
Zheng
creates a frontier of
danger
and a
mystical grandeur,
where
temperamental gods
and
mighty
beasts roam and the
Oroqen
men
fight valiantly against
them. Whether successful or
not,
the
struggle against
the ruthless land has an air of
desperate
heroism. The
rigor
of
life,
or
death,
and the furious
passion
in
Zheng's descriptions give
these men a
mystic vigor,
so much
so,
that
Kam Louie describes the stories as
"eulogies
to machismo"
(5).
Zheng's
celebration of male
vigor, especially among
China's non-Han
peoples,
is not a
new theme. His
predecessors
include
especially
the writers from Northeast China Duanmu
Hongliang,
Xiao
Hong,
and Xiao
Jun,
as well as Shen
Congwen.
The
May
Fourth
generation's
valorization of brawn arose from a self-conscious sense of
physical inferiority
because of
China's
political
and
military
weakness in the nineteenth and
early
twentieth centuries. The
ensuing emphasis
on the
proletariat
and
guileless peasants
as heroes of the Chinese
Communist revolution further enforced this ideal.
Writing
in the
1980s,
during
China's
recovery
from the Great Cultural
Revolution,
Zheng's re-using
of such an old
trope
has a different connotation. It is
significant
to note that
when Xiao
Hong
or Shen
Congwen
describe
peasants
or
hunters,
it is often with a
genuine
empathy
and
familiarity.
However,
Zheng's landscape
is
uninhabited,
inhospitable,
and
alienating.
His characters are
equally inscrutable, hostile,
and faceless. In these
stories,
time
and
space
seem to
spin
on a different
sagittal
from his conscious one. The
Oroqen
world is so
divorced from the
contemporary
that these tales seem to be more about a
mythological
tribe
than real
people. Zheng's
choice of the title to his
work,
using "strangeness"
as an
enframing
elemental condition also
heightens
this
unfamiliarity. Being
referred to as a
xungen ("Seeking
for
Roots") writer,
Zheng's
work about
strangeness
evokes a
complex
notion of
origin
and
home.
Louie
points
out that
Zheng
was born in
Heilongjiang.
However,
he has been
living
in
Beijing
since
eight
when he went there for
schooling.
Louie believes that this accounts for
the rather
vague
and miasmic
landscape
in
Zheng's writing
in
comparison
to other
xungen
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