Spring and Autumn Roles (1)—Rolling Rhythms

Click here to go to section one of "Spring and Autumn Roles."
Click below for the other "Spring and Autumn Roles" posts.
1         2         3         4        to be continued

During the autumn months I will be posting new segments of The Emperor's Teacher (the big business book that will rock the world). Chapter four is (provisionally) called "Spring and Autumn Roles" and forms (along with three more chapters that will follow) the "middle" of my management book—part two of three.

If you have read The Art of War, you have arrived at the doorstep. Still, no one ever managed anything in China having just read Sunzi (Sun-tzu), but don't despair. You are now ready for what comes next in leadership. Compiled nine-hundred years ago, it is the greatest management book ever written, and there are only two problems: (1) it is in "medieval" Chinese; (2) it is 10,000 pages long. No worries, though. That's what I am here for. I have been studying this stuff for thirty years, and I have been waiting for you. Welcome. 歡迎. Let's begin to study real Chinese management together.

[a] Spring RF

After reading chapter one, "Breaking the Vessel," you will have some acquaintance with Sima Guang and the Comprehensive Mirror (資治通鑒). If you have completed chapter two, "Living and Learning," you know a good deal about various "learning strategies" in ancient China, and some of the ways that they were employed in later times. Chapter three, "The Art of Warning" brings the story from the maxims of Sunzi (Sun-tzu), Confucius, and others to full-blown case studies. You are now ready to tackle the big themes at the heart of the greatest management text of all time. It is time to consider how managers managed in Chinese history, and how you might use these lessons to think more clearly about managing yourself, your family, and all under heaven. 

Don't worry too much about the order at this point (these are blog entries and not a book...yet).  If you want to start here and loop back to part one (Chapter One: Breaking the Vessel, Chapter Two: Living and Learning, and Chapter Three: The Art of Warning) in due time, that is fine.  This chapter should stand on its own as a way of thinking about the multiple roles that shape life and work at any time and in any place.

I
Rolling Rhythms

We live through our roles. Many people have heard these lines without really thinking through their many implications. Confucius (551-479 BCE), living in what came to be known as China's Spring and Autumn period, seems to have thought about roles a great deal, at least if we are to trust the statements made by disciples on his behalf in The Analects (論語). To put it in the language of my grandparents (I remember its rhythms distinctly), Confucius thought that society was going to hell in a handbasket, and he was not amused. We have covered some of this territory in the "Living and Learning" chapter, but nothing (to my mind) sums up Confucius's feelings as elegantly as a simple response to a simple question.

When a disciple asked him about the foundations of social harmony in his chaotic society, Confucius was said to have answered with words represented by only four sounds and eight Chinese characters. Even if you don’t read Chinese, you should be able to see that something interesting is going on. Take a look:

           君君臣臣父父子子

A very literal translation would be: “ruler ruler minister minister father father son son.”  Confucius meant, of course, something like “let the ruler be the ruler, and the official be the official; let the father be the father and the son be the son.”  In the sixth century before our era, Confucius was not thinking of mothers and daughters, but there is no reason why we can’t extend the meaning to “let the parent be the parent and the child be the child.”  Does this remind anyone of issues in twenty-first century parenting (or teaching)?  Does it remind anyone of issues in the twenty-first century workplace? Yup. I thought so.

[b] Streaks RF

Confucius sought to keep things clear, but the glass began to streak almost as soon as his words were out. Life is complicated, and even an elegant and alliterative saying cannot sum it up. Like a leaky faucet, drips started streaming from the nozzle. Pithy maxims are like that, and it is the reason why almost very memorable little book of aphorisms requires deep thought and, to be thorough, case studies. It is the reason why moving from Pascal's Pensées or The Art of War to the muddy channels of running stuff is so difficult. It is the reason why we have case studies. It is the reason Sima Guang wrote the Comprehensive Mirror.

You see, even an idea as basic as this (act your role!) becomes complicated almost as soon as we start thinking about it. To begin, are you ever “just” the parent or teacher or daughter or boss? Nope. Almost everyone has the experience of occupying different roles in the same relationship structure at the same time—many women are daughters and mothers, bosses and employees. Even if we don’t experience the roles at the same time (child of aging parents, parents of growing children, boss to a division of workers, and employee in the larger company), we always experience many competing roles over the course of a year, a decade, and a lifetime.

And then there is the sticky little problem of change. Roles are not static, usually even from day-to-day. They change over the weeks, the months, and the years. Students become graduates, children become parents, bosses become former bosses, employees become bosses...and the world just keeps on spinning. This is another reason why we have case studies.

[c] Roll RF

Perhaps Confucius tried a little too hard to simplify things, but he surely understood at least one important matter—we cannot ignore roles. They are thrust upon us every bit as much as we embrace them, and trying to avoid the implications of roles is always a losing proposition. There are tough decisions that might displease people, and you may stay awake at night trying to figure out just how to resolve present and former roles, not to mention ever-changing expectations within them. Think of a recently promoted foreman who wants to get along with her buddies at the plant in just the same way she did six months before. Think of the teacher who wants all of his students to like his class. Think of, well, just about everything—new jobs, promotions, demotions, little bundles of joy, being captain of your team, puppies, kittens, and shiny new tractors. Every one of them has something to do with changing roles and expectations.

Not all are pleasant. Far from it. Roles quite often come with assumptions that we might despise, and we might wish to rail against them. Sometimes the railing and fury might even work, and our frustrations with other people’s expectations might become part of a broad wave of social (and “role”) change, as can be seen in several instances with gender roles, as well as in teaching and parenting, during the last century. Sometimes they change...

[d] Change RF

...and sometimes they don't. It is not unusual to find ourselves almost “structurally” locked in, when no amount of scratching or clawing against the walls of society’s expectations will change the situation. I am thinking, for example, of a teacher who doesn’t want to give grades, and feels that they demean education. Many people might agree that this is so, and that grades do as much harm as good. In terms of changing the grading "roles" of teachers—good luck with that, at least in the foreseeable future.

And now that we've heard from Confucius and thought a little bit about these little social nuggets called roles, let's take the matter a few steps further toward our managerial mirror.

Click below for the other "Spring and Autumn Roles" posts.

1         2         3         4        to be continued
NEXT
Japanese Character(s)
We will take a brief trip into modern Japan to look at a few more aspects of roles and how they are interpreted in East Asia. If you have ever heard about Japanese organizations—from clubs to committees—you know that little is left to chance when it comes to the roles people will play.

Seinfeld Ethnography (28)—Broccoli

Click here for an introduction to the Round and Square series Argonauts of the Seinfeldian Specific.
Click below for all "Seinfeld Ethnography" posts: 

George Eats Trash     No Soup for You     Elaine Exclaims    The Puffy Shirt    Poppie's Pizza     Mr. Bookman

Marine Biologist         The Doorman          Opposite George   Newman's Mail   The Bootleg         Marriage
Just Dessert               Sleep Desk             Late Coffee            High Stakes        Motor Oil              Downtown 
Code Cracking           Nonfat Yogurt          Bad Boy                 It's Not You         I Can't Be...          Exploding Wallet
Elaine Flies Coach    The Close Talker     The Alliance           Broccoli               Coated Culture    Dinner Party

[a] B-coli RF

Click here for the reference to the "Argonauts" title, below.

Argonauts of the Seinfeldian Specific

Vegetables. Can't live with 'em; can't live without 'em. Well, Newman could live without broccoli. From allergies and phobias to religious restrictions and, well, plain ol' distaste, we all know about matters of food, culture, and power. In this week's brief Seinfeld Ethnography clip, Newman assumes more willpower than he has in his vegetable-loathing tank.

Broccoli...Vile Weed 0:42

[b] Pastaccoli RF

"I lo...love broccoli...it's go..good for you." Clearly, Newman's favorite frozen yogurt didn't come with broccoli flavor. The classic sequence of reactions in this clip move from "vile weed" to a honey-mustard chaser and (as the YouTube comments note) straightening his jacket in an effort to regain some measure of dignity. Food likes and dislikes can be profoundly personal, cultural, and everything in between. Very few people who did not grow up with it can stand the taste (or smell) of lutefisk, and a taste for head cheese had better be acquired early on. Tastes for wine, beer, and countless other beverages are "learned," as is just about any condiment more daring than ketchup or mayonnaise.

But broccoli holds a special distinction of being held up for contempt by a President of the United States and people with certain taste receptor genes. For them, as for our daring hero who thinks he can elude the phenylthiocarbamide (PTC) curse, broccoli will have the last, lingering, bitter laugh.

***  ***

The only issue with our readings for this week is where to begin. Food, culture, and theory? Check, check, check. Our intellectual cupboards are all stocked up, and there will be no Old Mother Hubbard-style tales of scholarly dearth in this pantry. We will start with the opening volume of Claude Lévi-Strauss's four-volume study of Mythology before moving on to Marshall Sahlins's description of Western bourgeois culinary traditions. We'll wrap up with one of the finest works in medieval studies in the last quarter century, Carolyn Walker Bynum's Holy Feast and Holy Fast. Through it all, we'll be thinking of the choke-hold that the broccoli floret has on one Seinfeldian postal worker named Newman.

Claude Lévi-Strauss

[c] Wood

The Raw and the Cooked (1964)

The comparison between the Apinaye and the Caraja versions [of the myth], which tell the story of how men lost immortality, provide an additional interest, in that is establishes a clear link between this theme and that of the origin of cooking. In order to light the fire, dead wood had to be collected, so a positive virtue has to be attributed to it, although it represents the absence of life. in this sense, to cook is to "hear the call of rotten wood."

But the matter is more complicated than that: civilized existence requires not only fire but also cultivated plants that can be cooked on the fire. Now the natives of central Brazil practice the "slash and burn" technique of clearing the ground. When they cannot fell the forest trees with their stone axes, they have recourse to fire, which they keep burning for several days at the base of the trunks until the living wood is slowly burned away and yields to their primitive tools. This preculinary "cooking" of the living tree poses a logical and philosophical problem, as is shown by the permanent taboo against felling "living" trees for firewood. In the beginning, so the Mundurucu tell us, there was no wood that could be used for fires, neither dry wood nor rotten wood: there was only living wood. "So far as is known, the Yurok never cut growing timber for fuel, not did any California Indians, nor probably any axless native Americans. Firewood came from dead trees, standing or fallen." Therefore only dead wood was legitimate fuel. To violate this regulation was tantamount to an act of cannibalism against the vegetable kingdom."[1]

[d] Innards

Marshall Sahlins
Inner and Outer (1976)

Edibility is inversely related to humanity. The same holds in the preferences and common designations applied to edible portions of the animal. Americans frame a categorical distinction between the "inner" and "outer" parts which represents to them the same principle of relation to humanity, metaphorically extended. The organic nature of flesh (muscle and fat) is at once disguised and its preferability indicated by the general term "meat," and again by particular conventions such as "roast," "steak," "chops," or "chuck"; whereas the internal organs are frankly known as such (or as "innards"), and more specifically as "heart," "tongue," "kidney," and so on—except as they are euphemistically transformed by the process of preparation into such products as "sweetbreads." The internal and external parts, in other words, are respectively assimilated to and distinguished from parts of the human body—on the same model as we conceive our "innermost selves" as our "true selves"—and the two categories are accordingly ranked as more or less fit for human consumption. The distinction between "inner" and "outer" thus duplicates within the animal the differentiation drawn between edible and tabu species, the whole making up a single logic on two planes with the consistent implication of a prohibition on cannibalism.[2]

[e] Fast

Carolyn Walker Bynum
Holy Feast, Holy Fast (1985)

Throughout the Middle Ages, Lenten fasts and weekly fast days, especially Fridays, remained basic marks of the Christian. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries a Christian was, as a minimal definition, someone who received yearly communion, fasted on Fridays and in Lent, paid tithes, and had his or her children baptized. In the following story from a twelfth-century chronicle, we can see the way in which food practices defined the Christian. One of the bastard sons of Arnold the Elder, founder of the line of Ardres, became a "Saracen" in the East. He was, however, accepted back into his father's house when he returned. It was only when he insisted on eating meat on Friday that the full impact of his apostasy was brought home, and the family kicked him out. To violate the Friday fast was the clearest, most visible way of rejecting the faith.

Medieval cookbooks suggest that the aristocracy observed fasting strictly, if legalistically. Meat-day and fish-day recipes were not separated in medieval recipe collections, as they were in later, better-organized cookbooks. But the most basic dishes were given in fast-day as well as ordinary-day versions. For example, a thin split-pea purée, sometimes enriched with fish stock or almond milk (produced by simmering ground almonds in water), replaced meat broth on fast days; and almond milk was a general (and expensive) substitute for cow's milk.[3]

[1] Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked [Translated by John and Doreen Weightman] (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1975), 151.
[2] Marshall Sahlins, Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 175-176.
[3] Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 40-41.

Bibliography
Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Raw and the Cooked [Translated by John and Doreen Weightman]. New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1975.

Sahlins, Marshall. Culture and Practical Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976.

NEXT
Wednesday, October 12th
Coated Culture

Next week, we have two clips from different episodes. Both deal with coats, individuality, and culture.

Styling Culture (11)—Paragraph Breaks

Click here to read the introduction to the Round and Square series "Styling Culture." 
In the next few weeks I will be posting the text for a "volume" that I have been distributing for the last fifteen years. Back in 1997, I handed out a two-page set of instructions that I called "Rob's Style Sheet." I quickly learned that it could be a useful teaching tool, allowing me to describe the practicalities and esoterica surrounding grammar and style in the higher education classroom (and beyond). It also became apparent that it could be a useful tool for writing comments on student papers. Instead of trying to explain in the margins of a paper that s/he was using "number" in problematic ways (we'll get to that), I could write "#19," and have her know exactly what I mean. The most impressive students learned the material very well, and some of them have already gone on to be successful writers—in and beyond academia and the corporate world.

[a] Strata RF

I will be posting the manuscript that I have provisionally entitled Styling Culture on Round and Square during the autumn and into the winter. As you will quickly see, it is meant to be a grammar book for the anthropologist of American English. It has its prescriptive elements, to be sure (this is all explained in the introduction to the series), but it is meant far more powerfully to be a genuinely useful guide to the culture wars surrounding grammar and usage. In particular, I have great venom for both the annoying critics who always seem to be correcting people and (this is important) for the "good guys" who tell you that it doesn't matter.

They're both wrong, and they will hurt you if you listen to them. I'm here to help you, so read on.

11. Paragraph Breaks 

Be sure to keep your paragraphs under control. Run-on paragraphs that continue for many lines, or even pages, are rarely effective.

          a. Have three well-defined paragraphs for every double-spaced page of text. 

              Strange as this might seem when defined as a "rule," it makes a great deal of 

              sense. You do not need three complete paragraphs on a page (that would be

              distracting). You need, rather, the end of a paragraph from a preceding page, 

              a full paragraph, and the beginning of another. Get used to this. It will change 

              your life (and your reader's). Check for this before you hand in your paper.
          b. Indent the beginnings of paragraphs. Five spaces will do the trick, but your
              software can do an even better job (please see #3, "Styles").
          c. Do not leave extra spaces between paragraphs. If you indent (see above), 
              this will create just the right "pause" for the reader. Extra spaces detract from 
              the look of your paper and distract readers. See 7k.

 ***  *** 

Well, that certainly was picky, wasn't it? 

This was precisely what I thought to myself one day in the early 1980s when one of my college professors stated his strong preference for item "a" (above). My thoughts continued in this manner: "You don't get out much, and you probably spend your time sipping coffee and thinking about neat, crisp little paragraphs on sunny afternoons."

[b] The breaks RF

Hmmm. A quarter century on, and here I am sitting on a bright, sunny afternoon, sipping coffee and thinking about paragraph placement and form. Although I am intending to go for a long mountain bike ride in thirty minutes or so, it does remind me of a few lines from Mark Twain, which I choose to paraphrase for my purposes here. "When I was young, my [college professor] really was an idiot; now that I am older, it is amazing how much the old guy has learned."

Or something like that. You see, when I was young, I only read nicely printed books and articles (with beautifully polished and elegant paragraph spacing) and my own papers. I didn't really think very much about any of them when it came to the "look" of the page. I admired the one and ignored the other, without bringing either to the level of conscious thought. 

A few days after my professor said this, I went back to one of my own papers. Yup, sure enough, there on pages 5-7 was a paragraph. I wasn't called on it, since the other professor for whom I had written it chose not to punish me. It was just about that time that I was reading a book on writing—one of the first in what became a long line of grammar, style, and method books that I sometimes suspect were as much about procrastinating from doing my own writing as learning more about it. This style guide is my penance.

In any case, this remarkable little book (careful readers might guess the one to which I refer), made me think for what seems like the first time that we write for readers. My word, I wish I had said to myself. My word...shared with others. I am writing for others. People, or at least "person" will be reading...what I have to say.

That changed everything for a fairly polite young'un raised in and around church basements (with plenty of coffee and lemonade to wash down the lutefisk) in the Red River Valley between North Dakota and Minnesota. I needed to be polite, and think of those unfortunate people who had to read what I wrote. I needed to work harder, and to make my pages, at the very least, clean and crisp. At least I could do that much, even if I might struggle with grammar, style, and even spelling. I needed to show some manners and care about my "audience."

And then the thought that led to this item in my style guide hit me. It is rude to present a sloppy text to your reader. You don't pick your teeth with the pages of your paper before turning it in (at least I sincerely hope not), and you don't put sloppy, run-on paragraphs in your papers. Not any more, at least.

Caring about our readers (even in the singular) is the least we can do as writers. And now I am off to the mountain bike trails...to think about the next entry in Styling Culture. 

[c] Breaks RF

NEXT
Ineffective Sentence Starters 
If you have been frustrated by the little stuff the last few days, get ready for a series of meaty sections. There is nowhere better to begin...than the beginning. Poor sentence starters fit the bill perfectly. Hopefully, we'll learn something along the way. Ironically, we often use ineffective words to begin our written thoughts. Happily, we will get a handle on these matters!

Styling Culture (10)—Page Numbers

Click here to read the introduction to the Round and Square series "Styling Culture." 
In the next few weeks I will be posting the text for a "volume" that I have been distributing for the last fifteen years. Back in 1997, I handed out a two-page set of instructions that I called "Rob's Style Sheet." I quickly learned that it could be a useful teaching tool, allowing me to describe the practicalities and esoterica surrounding grammar and style in the higher education classroom (and beyond). It also became apparent that it could be a useful tool for writing comments on student papers. Instead of trying to explain in the margins of a paper that s/he was using "number" in problematic ways (we'll get to that), I could write "#19," and have her know exactly what I mean. The most impressive students learned the material very well, and some of them have already gone on to be successful writers—in and beyond academia and the corporate world.

[a] Numerology RF

I will be posting the manuscript that I have provisionally entitled Styling Culture on Round and Square during the autumn and into the winter. As you will quickly see, it is meant to be a grammar book for the anthropologist of American English. It has its prescriptive elements, to be sure (this is all explained in the introduction to the series), but it is meant far more powerfully to be a genuinely useful guide to the culture wars surrounding grammar and usage. In particular, I have great venom for both the annoying critics who always seem to be correcting people and (this is important) for the "good guys" who tell you that it doesn't matter.

They're both wrong, and they will hurt you if you listen to them. I'm here to help you, so read on.

10. Page Numbers

          a. Number all pages other than the first page.

          b. Do not turn in a paper without page numbers.

          c. If you do not know how to create page numbers, or how to get rid 
             of “page one” numbers, ask me (or a classmate who knows the procedure) 
             to show you.

          d. Yes, suppress page one, even on a two-page paper. 

          e. Yes, include page numbers (after the first page), even on a two-page paper.

          e. Put ‘em anywhere you want ‘em (as long as they are not distracting).

*** ***

Page numbers? Huh? But who cares?, I hear you cry. Well, I do. But why would page numbers deserve an entry all their own in a style guide that deals with the big mazumbos of American English grammar—weighty matters ranging from split infinitives to confusions of tense?

Have you ever had to read and comment on hundreds—nay, thousands—of pages of writing that lacks even the basic decency of page numbers? Some of you surely have (I shall call you "teacher"), and it is very likely that you are not questioning my intransigence. Those of you who have not had that experience (repeated week-after-week and semester-after-semester), might not realize how important those little numbers can be.

[b] Loose RF

Let's start with the obvious. You have printed your paper at the library, and rush over to my office to put it in the slot outside my door before the 5:00 p.m. bell sounds on a lovely autumn (Friday) afternoon. You begin to slip the papers in the door-folder when you realize that there are a bunch of other papers already in there. It is just then that you realize that you forgot to staple your pages together. No one has a stapler, and you don't intend to retrace your steps to the library. You pound on neighboring office doors. Nope. You look to the heavens, and are given a solution. In an act worthy of the term bricolage, you fold and twist the corners of the pages into a little knot that looks a bit like a spitball adhering to the corner of your assignment. You shrug, stuff the package in the door, and get on with your weekend.

A while later, I swing by my office, pick up the papers, and put them in my special "weekly assignment" folder for grading. Later that evening, I notice that pages are missing (and that there is a peculiar looking "spitball" twist on the corners. Well, this is easily remedied. All I have to do is gather the loose sheets, put them in order, and use my trusty stapler to get things back on-track.

Except there are no page numbers.

This is maddening, and it is not only moi who feels this way. Ask literary agents or publishers what kinds of things annoy them, and this is near the top of the list (right up there with pushy and insecure authors). And don't for a moment think that the happy trend toward electronic submissions (for classes or publication) changes the need for page numbers. If anything, it makes them even more important.

But there is one last thing, and I sense that you are about to ask it. What about the Kindle®, the Nook®, and other electronic readers? They don't have page numbers, do they? They have little percentage markers. Well, I don't know what the future holds, but—much as I love my Kindle®—the lack of page numbers drives me crazy. We'll see if I adjust to that, but until you submit papers via "Whispernet" to my Kindle®, just put in page numbers.

And don't forget the stapler.

NEXT
Paragraph Breaks
We'll take a look at another seemingly minor issue in essay and thesis writing. Those little respites between thoughts? They matter, as I'll explain.

Hurtin', Leavin' and Longin' (22)—Untangling My Mind

Click here to read the introduction to the Round and Square series "Hurtin', Leavin', and Longin'..."

[a] Leaving RF

This is one of the most miserable songs I have heard in the last twenty years. Please don't get the wrong impression. As readers of these Sunday Hurtin' posts surely know by now, it is high praise. I have already mentioned several times in this series that Clint Black has a peculiar knack for portraying loss, vacancy, and cognitive dissonance. For this song, he teamed up with Merle Haggard—whose own lyrics include "Mama Tried" and "Nobody Knows I'm Hurtin'"—to bring even more breadth and depth to the lyrical pain each is able to inflict on his own. Call it tag-team heartache, but it works.

The very title of the song points to the intersection of psychological despair and social cleavage. There is a bit of "story" in these lines, but the journey takes us more deeply into the narrator's mind than down the path and away from home. There are, indeed, so many great lines that I hesitate to pick just one or two. This is great songwriting at its peak, and I find even the sentence ending prepositions absolutely exquisite. Listen for yourself, and soak in the lyrics. Let me add, as I occasionally do in these posts, that the video is quite good, and well worth a view. First, however, make sure that you watch the lyrics. These posts are about the relationship between imagination and representation, and while the latter surely includes video images, I hope that you concentrate first on the way human anguish is carried in words.

Untangling My Mind  3:25

For advice on how best to "engage" the lyrics, click here.

      Untangling My Mind
          Artist: Clint Black
          Songwriters: Clint Black and Merle Haggard
          Well I guess you're glad to see I'm finally leaving
          I know things for you will change now for the good
          But it's all that I can do to pack my suitcase
          And walk away from you the way I should

          And I can't seem to find the voice of reason
          Everything seems upside down and right side wrong
          While part of me is here and won't like leaving
          The rest of me, the best of me is gone

          Chorus

          And I'm sure no one will wonder where I've gone to
          But if anyone should ask from time to time
          Tell 'em that you finally drove me crazy
          And I'm somewhere untangling my mind
          Well tell 'em I won't be riding I'll be walking
          'Cause I don't think a crazy man should drive
          Anyway the car belongs to you now
          Along with any part of me that's still alive

          But there's really not much left you could hold on to
          And if you did it wouldn't last here anyway
          It'd head to where the rest of me rolled on to
           So even if I wanted to I couldn't stay

          Repeat Chorus
          I'm somewhere untanglin' my mind

[b] Lush longing RF

It certainly is not difficult to find parallels to these sentiments in East Asian poetry. No, they are not usually about the exact set of alluded-to circumstances in the song (although some are close). I have chosen today, however, to write of exilic anguish. Regular readers of Round and Square will likely have noticed that more and more posts have a kind of thematic cross-referencing these days. Life is like that—complicated and interconnected.

Such a realization led me to one of the best "teamings" in all of Chinese poetry. Exiled to Hainan Island in the late-eleventh century, Su Shi (1038-1101) reflected upon the exilic lyrics of an earlier poet, the venerable Tao Yuanming (365-427). He set out to write matching lyrics to very single one of Tao's works (numbering well over a hundred). In Su Shi's own eleventh century, matching poems were part of the give and take of intellectual life. No one had thought, however, to span the centuries and match the poems of an earlier writer, and it was Su's genius to realize the possibilities.

Below, we have one example, taken from Ronald Egan's magnificent study of the great Northern Song dynasty poet. Although the following poems are not meant to be "matches," they both reflect the contrapuntal engagement between Tao Qian's six century-old lyrics and the Su Shi's contemplation of island exile. In both, we see themes of longing, vacancy, despair...and a little bit of hope.

      Tao Qian (Early-Fifth Century CE)

          Sharp and chill the year draws to a close;

          On the porch I clutch my coat and sun myself.

          The southern garden holds no sprig of green

          Withered branches fill the northern orchard.

          I tilt the bottle and no drop comes out

          I glance at the stove but see no smoke.

          The classic books lie piled beside my seat

          The sun declines, and leaves no time for study.

          Without a job is not a "crisis in Chen,"

          But with me too are those who show resentment.

          What consolation is there left for me?

          All those gentlemen since ancient times.[1]

       Su Shi (Late-Eleventh Century CE)

          The desperate gibbon has hid in the forest,

          The weary horse has been relieved of its halter.

          My mind vacant, I am sated on new acquisitions;

          The land familiar, I give my thoughts to dreams.

          River gulls flock tamely beside me,

          Dan boatmen sail back and forth.

          Green coins grow on the southern pond,

          Purple bamboo shoots are tall on the north peak.

          How could the raise-a-gourd know how to drink?

          Yet his welcome call eases my heart.

          The river in spring inspires fine poetic lines

          As I drink, I slip into the vast emptiness.[2]

[c] Re-presented RF

[1] Ronald Egan, Word, Image, and Deed in the Life of Su Shi (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 235.

[2] Egan, Su Shi, 234.

Bibliography

Egan, Ronald. Word, Image, and Deed in the Life of Su Shi. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994.

NEXT

Sunday, October 9th

Here in the Real World

Next week, Alan Jackson tells us about the real tears that fall...here in the real world.

 

Exilic Response (2)—Burning Diploma

Click here for the introduction to Round and Square's series of posts on "Exilic Response."

[a] Response RF

So the athletic director fires you after ten solid seasons, a conference coach of the year award (2010), and an overall 74-50 record. The university is convinced that it needs a different coach to take the "next steps" to success in the competitive world of NCAA Division I college football. You hold your emotions in check through a difficult news conference and then lead your team to a 51-20 victory in its bowl game—your last game. You are now a former coach at your alma mater, and must process a range of emotions from connection to your institution to, well, exile. How do you think about that, and what do you do now?

You burn your diploma.

That's right, you set fire to the most tangible connection you have to the institution that brought you into the coaching world. It is your alma mater in miniature, with echoes of thumping pigskin and perused textbooks imprinted as ready-for-framing memorabilia.

Now it is torched sheepskin. Gone.

Diploma burning/ESPN article

[b] Inflamed memory RF

That, at least, is what Coach Ralph Friedgen did, and it has everything to do with the pattern that I call exilic response. He was exiled and he responded.

The patterns play out in countless ways, as I note in the introduction to this series. Revenge can take on many shades and layers of meaning, and some are quite personal. I am especially intrigued by the role that burning plays in many exilic responses. This is not mere chance, as many writers have already noted.

There is something about the burning of an object that separates it from mere "tossing aside," as one might do by taking it off the wall and putting it in a drawer. On the other hand, it is not as extreme (and this seems to be entirely the point) as more involved and even ridiculous "punishments" that might be given to objects representing a severed connection. I am thinking of, for example, a hunting knife holding the diploma on the wall rather than, say, a tack. It would be a bit more dramatic (with attendant worrisome signals) than the exilic responder probably wants.

It is almost as though burning the diploma says it all, with a dash of ashen ritual residue for good measure.

So, the particular "contingency" is that the fired football coach burned his diploma. The "theoretical" intrigue goes much further, though. What is the role of destruction (particularly burning) in things that remind people of lost opportunity. Why destroy stuff in order to sever ties? Keep thinking about it (and about "enemy" matter in its place—in this case rival Georgia Tech's flag), and we'll have more exilic response posts soon.