“Establishing Xiang to Fully Express the Idea” and Chinese Aesthetic Culture

Whenever the relation among words (yan), image (xiang), and idea (yi) is discussed, people tend to cite a passage from the “Great Treatise” (Xici) of the Book of Changes: “The Master said: ‘Writing does not fully convey speech, and speech does not fully convey the idea.’ Are we then to say that the ideas of the sages cannot be seen? The Master said: ‘The sages established images to fully express their ideas, set up the hexagrams to fully express the true and the false, appended phrases to fully express their words, varied and interconnected them to fully express their benefit, and drummed and danced them to fully express their spirit.’” (Zhou Zhenfu 264). The “Great Treatise” is an interpretation of the Changes; to grasp its meaning truly one must restore it to its original context.

I. Words Do Not Fully Convey the Idea

“Idea” (yi), in the Explaining and Analyzing Characters (Shuowen jiezi), is glossed as “intent (zhi). It is composed of ‘heart’ and ‘sound’; it is to know the idea by examining the words.” Duan Yucai comments: “Zhi is shi (to recognize), what the heart recognizes. The gloss of yi is ‘to measure’ and ‘to record’” (Duan Yucai 506-507). In the Shuowen, “idea” and “intent” are mutually glossing, that is, “recognition,” and can be interpreted as “measuring” and “remembering.” In either sense, the idea can be “known by examining the words”; it is not the case that “words do not fully convey the idea.” Plainly, then, “idea” in the “Great Treatise” does not denote ordinary idea but specifically the “idea of the sages”; and only when the sage's idea derives from an apprehension of the will of Heaven is it the kind of idea that words cannot fully convey, for the will of Heaven embodies the Dao of nature, and it is precisely the Dao that language is unable to speak or interpret. Hence Pang Pu says: “The Dao is undoubtedly a kind of idea, a very great idea. Some ideas can be expressed in language, but the Dao that the idea follows cannot be explained in language…What is meant by ‘words do not fully convey the idea’ is that one cannot express all ideas” (Pang Pu 69). That is to say, the relation of words and idea in “words do not fully convey the idea” is in essence the relation of words and the Dao.

On the relation between words and the Dao, the ancient sages of China thought with extraordinary depth. They realized that language is not omnipotent, and that with respect to the Dao—elusive and evanescent—language often shows itself powerless. Laozi and Zhuangzi repeatedly stress the limitations of language. Confucius, though he valued language highly, nonetheless held reservations about the relation of words and the Dao and seldom spoke of the Dao directly. The Analects (“Gongye Chang”) records Zigong's observation: “The Master's cultural accomplishments may be heard; but his discourses on human nature and the Way of Heaven cannot be heard.” Zheng Xuan glosses: “The Way of Heaven, the way of origination, of daily renewal, is profound and subtle, and therefore cannot be heard” (Zheng Xuan and Liu Baonan 98). The Analects (“Yang Huo”) also records a dialogue: “The Master said: ‘I would prefer not to speak.’ Zigong said: ‘If you did not speak, what should we, your disciples, have to transmit?’ The Master said: ‘Does Heaven speak? The four seasons run their course, the hundred things are born—does Heaven speak?’” (Zheng Xuan and Liu Baonan 379). For Zigong, language is the sole avenue for transmitting thought and experience; for Confucius it is otherwise. He stresses raising the root so as to govern the branches, holding that establishing doctrines and bequeathing teachings, lodging the import in words, may all obscure the Dao; he sets greater store by the process of events themselves, holding that it is precisely in the running of the four seasons, the flourishing and withering of the hundred things, and the direct connection between human being and nature that the Way of Heaven is embodied—and so he advocates cultivating the root and dispensing with words. The Dao can only be experienced and apprehended in the process of the human being's meeting and merging with nature, in the state of the union of Heaven and humanity, in a non-objective relation of intimacy. Yet language not only differentiates the myriad things but also, by means of concepts, forcibly dismembers a nature originally interconnected and integral, distorting the true face of nature and the myriad things; more seriously, it turns nature into the human being's object and manufactures a fissure between human being and nature. Therefore language not only cannot speak the Dao—one may even say that it is precisely language that blocks the path of embodying and apprehending the Dao.

In the Outline of Laozi's Pointers (Laozi zhilue), Wang Bi expounds Laozi's view of words and the Dao in depth: “A name must have something it differentiates; a designation must have something it derives from. To differentiate is to fail to comprehend the whole; to derive is to fail to be exhaustive. Failing to comprehend the whole, it greatly diverges from the truth; failing to be exhaustive, it cannot serve as a name…Thus ‘Dao’ takes up that from which the myriad things derive…It is all-pervading and without limit, and cannot be named with anything fine; subtle and formless, it cannot be named with anything great. Hence the text says: ‘I style it the Dao,’ ‘I call it the Mystery,’ and yet do not name it” (Wang Bi, Annotation of Wang Bi's Works 196). Wang Bi grasps the subtle import of the Laozi profoundly. In his view, language always artificially posits concepts to dissect nature and subjectively to account for the various relations; therefore, in whatever manner one speaks of the “Dao,” one cannot express it exactly and without omission—not even the word “Dao” itself. Conceptualized language is powerless to grasp the Dao that is undifferentiated chaos and that runs its course unceasingly. So Laozi cannot but reluctantly hint at it and describe it obliquely by “styling” and “calling,” attempting to approach it without giving it a fixed conceptual name or a verbal interpretation. Language dismembers the harmonious relation among the myriad things, simplifies or misconstrues the complex causality of mutual generation and mutual conquest, distorts the primordial state of nature, blocks the natural communion between human being and nature, and thereby obscures the Dao. As soon as it is spoken, the Dao is no longer the “constant Dao”; once conceptual language is used, one departs from the real. Since language cannot speak the Dao, it likewise cannot use words to exhaust the will of Heaven, cannot fully express the sage's apprehension of the will of Heaven.

Dewey advances a similar view concerning the relation of language and existence. He says: “The immediacy of existence is ineffable. But there is nothing mysterious about this ineffability; it merely expresses the fact that of immediate existence it is futile to say anything to one's self and impossible to say anything to another…Immediate things may be pointed to by words, but cannot be described or defined…Nature has finality as well as relationships” (Dewey 56-57). Dewey holds that human experience is formed in the activity of living, within nature and in intimate relation with nature; experiential activity and experiential object are unified, undivided. This continuous, ineffable primordial experience is in fact our apprehension of the Dao. The function of words is merely to point to this apprehension, to intimate that the human being should experience it in person; it cannot speak it directly.

II. Establishing the Image to Fully Express the Idea

If words cannot fully convey the idea, can “image” (xiang) after all fully express it? In fact, so long as we regard “image” as “sensuous object” or “figure,” we have manufactured a split and a barrier between human being and image, and we are likewise unable thereby to embody the Dao and fully express the idea. The Dao is originally formless; we cannot grasp the formless Dao by observing a form-bearing image. The Dao cannot be grasped by means of objective activities such as perceiving, observing, analyzing, and cognizing; any objective activity only sequesters the human being outside the Dao. Laozi says: “The Dao as a thing is elusive, evanescent. Evanescent and elusive, within it there is image; elusive and evanescent, within it there is thing. Dim and dark, within it there is essence; this essence is most real, and within it there is truth” (Zhu Qianzhi 88-89). What sort of image, then, is the “image” in “within the evanescent there is image”? Laozi also explains: “This is called the shape of the shapeless, the image of no-thing; this is called the evanescent” (Zhu Qianzhi 54). That is to say, although the Dao is related to image, this image capable of embodying the Dao is the “image of no-thing”: elusive and evanescent, formless and shapeless, undifferentiated chaos, yet present everywhere and circulating without cease. This is not a sensuous object that the senses can perceive, but the “great image” of “the great image has no form”—it can only be the image of “non-objectivity.” When human being and nature are in harmony and fusion, attaining the realm of the union of thing and self, of no-thing and no-self, then nature is no longer the human being's sense-object or object of consciousness but becomes a great image without thing, form, or figure, becomes non-object, non-subject. This non-objective great image mingles into one with the human being; all distance and barrier between them are eliminated. The human being cannot grasp it by way of perception, observation, analysis, or cognition, nor need he so grasp it; rather he steeps and immerses himself in it, apprehending the Dao directly through experience and intuition. The Dao is suffused throughout nature; only when the human being is identified with nature and conforms to the Dao of nature can he apprehend the Dao of nature. Therefore the so-called “great image (xiangwang)” is nothing mysterious but denotes a state of non-objectivity. In this state of the union of thing and self, of no-thing and no-self, not only does the boundary between thing and self dissolve, but any boundary whatever ceases to exist, and “image” is thereby transformed into the boundless “great image (xiangwang).” The so-called Dao as “non-being” (wu) likewise does not mean nothing at all; it means that the Dao does not exist as the human being's sense-object or object of consciousness—the Dao is a non-objective existence and can be grasped only by means of a non-objective relation, that is, the great image. For the human being's sense-object and object of consciousness, the Dao is non-being, is chaos. Once the human being speaks the Dao in language, it can only degenerate into a spoken object; or, perceived by the human senses, it becomes a perceived object—inevitably set apart from the Dao. What is spoken and perceived can only be object, can only be “being” (including the actual and the fictional), not “non-being”; it is no longer that formless, shapeless, limitless, non-objective Dao.

The problem is this: the image of which the “Great Treatise” speaks denotes a form-bearing, shape-bearing image. “What is seen is called image” (Zhou Zhenfu 261). “Heaven hangs down images, manifesting fortune and misfortune, and the sages imaged them” (Zhou Zhenfu 263). “Thus the image: the sages had the means to see the obscurities of the world and to liken them in their forms and appearances, imaging the propriety of things—this is why it is called image” (Zhou Zhenfu 265). All of the above refer either to sensuous objects the senses can perceive, or to the simulation of sensuous objects, or to figures formed by such simulation; but every one of them belongs to, or is bound up with, the objective image. How, then, can such an image embody the Dao and fully express the idea?

“Image” (xiang), in the Shuowen jiezi, is glossed as: “The great beast of the southern Yue, with a long trunk and tusks, giving birth once in three years. The graph depicts the ears, tusks, four legs, and tail of the elephant” (Duan Yucai 464). Ancient music and dance included the “Three Elephants” (Sanxiang), or simply the “Elephant” (Xiang). Lü's Spring and Autumn Chronicles (“Ancient Music”) records: “When King Cheng was enthroned, the Yin people rebelled, and the king commanded the Duke of Zhou to subjugate them. The Shang people had tamed elephants and were wreaking havoc upon the Eastern Yi. The Duke of Zhou therefore led an army to drive them off, as far as the south of the Yangzi. He thereupon made the ‘Three Elephants’ to extol his virtue” (Gao You and Bi Yuan 107-108). The “Three Elephants” was a music-dance made by the Duke of Zhou after his victorious campaign south of the Yangzi, by which to glorify his merit; and this music-dance cannot have been without precedent—it should have been a reworking, on the basis of a music-dance already current in the Jiangnan region, possessing the character of a magical-shamanic ritual, only later transformed into the ritual music of the Zhou house and so transmitted. The Book of Rites records the “Elephant” on several occasions, as in “Inner Rules”: “At thirteen one learns music, recites the Odes, and dances the Shao; when a youth, one dances the Elephant and learns archery and charioteering” (Chen Shuguo 209).

Guo Lingyuan holds: “The ‘Three Elephants’ dance may have been a dance used by the southern people themselves, not composed by the Duke of Zhou. It was only introduced after the Duke of Zhou subjugated the Shang people…Ancient conquerors, after subjugating their enemies, often not only plundered the other side's property but also seized along with it the other side's cultural and spiritual wealth” (Guo Lingyuan 73). The elephant, as a great beast, was venerated by the southern people for its enormous bulk and strength and became an object of imitation in primitive ritual. In the very ritual of the “Elephant” dance, the simulators not only costumed themselves as, simulated, imitated, and imagined the great beast elephant; at the climax of singing and dancing, the simulator seemed in imagination to become the elephant directly, fusing into one with the elephant, and thereby gaining a magical power. In the “Elephant” dance, “elephant” is at once endowed with three layers of meaning: first, it refers to the great beast elephant or the figure of the elephant, and may also refer broadly to other concrete, perceptible figures; second, it refers to costuming oneself as, simulating, imitating, and imagining the form and motions of the great beast elephant; third, it refers to the simulator's seeming, in the process of imitation and imagination, to become the elephant directly. This last layer of meaning denotes entry into an intoxicated peak experience, an experience in which the simulator and the imagined elephant are transformed together and fused into one—a state of ecstasy and intuition, and the phenomenon of “participation” (Lévy-Bruhl) in primitive thought. When human being and elephant are fused into one, the elephant is no longer the human being's object of beholding or imitation but becomes the human being himself. From the standpoint of the intentional relation, this elephant mingled with the human being is no longer the object of the senses and of consciousness but degenerates into a non-objective image one with the human being, becomes the great image of “the great image has no form,” becomes the formless, shapeless, figureless “non-being,” and therefore harbors the “Dao” of nature. In this process, the simulator's imagining himself to become the elephant is an extremely important key. It is precisely in the singular space and singular atmosphere of the ritual that the human being's unconscious experience is stimulated and released, thereby generating imagination; the simulator at last unites in imagination with the object of simulation, accomplishing the conversion of the intentional relation, and the image is no longer an object external to the human being—the image becomes the human being himself, and the human being thereby gains the power of the image.

The ancients used the hexagram-lines (yao) to divine the will of Heaven; this originally belonged to magical-shamanic ritual and was inseparable from primitive thought—a non-objective “thinking” of thing-and-self “participation.” Whether or not divination and the “Elephant” dance (likewise a primitive ritual) were ever attached to each other, by virtue of the similarity of their psychological process the three layers of meaning of the image were quite naturally analogized to divinatory activity: using the hexagram-lines to simulate the celestial images and natural objects is just like simulating the elephant-dance, and can guide the simulator to fuse into one with nature; and once fused with nature, the human being apprehends the will of Heaven, apprehends the Dao. This is the only road by which the ancient sages embodied and apprehended the Dao. Hence the reason the lines and hexagrams are also called “line-images” and “hexagram-images” is that they are simulations of the celestial images and natural objects, and that, through simulation and imagination, they attain accord with nature and fuse into an integral whole, thereby apprehending the will of Heaven and grasping the Dao of nature. In the concrete context of the “Great Treatise,” the “image” in “establishing images to fully express the idea” can only refer to the line-images and hexagram-images that simultaneously contain the several meanings above—and, of course, it is also extended to other images capable of arousing non-objective activity.

Pang Pu says: “Simply put, from the epistemological angle, image is imagination without shape. What has shape is form; the metaphysical thing without shape is the Dao; and between form and Dao we may posit image” (Pang Pu 73). Pang Pu observes with great acuity that the image of imagination occupies the mediating position between form and Dao, and notes its crucial role. But “from the epistemological angle” alone, “image” cannot be correctly interpreted: the human being enters the state of no-thing and no-self through imagination and thereby grasps the Dao intuitively—this precisely exceeds the pale of epistemology. Nor can one simply equate “image” with “imagination without shape”; image has multiple meanings and undergoes a process of transformation from the objective image, the form-bearing image, into—through simulation and imagination—the non-objective great image, the formless great image. It is precisely with imagination as mediation that the human being fuses with the object, and that the objective image is converted into the non-objective great image. Within this lies the intentional conversion from an objective relation (the standing-apart of thing and self) to a non-objective relation (the union of thing and self), and imagination plays the indispensable role of bridge; this conversion occurs in step with the unfolding and deepening of imagination. Wang Bi expounds this incisively: “Form must have what it differentiates; sound must have what it belongs to. Therefore an image that has form is not the great image; a tone that has sound is not the great tone…When the four images take no form, the great image is unimpeded; when the five tones make no sound, the great tone is attained” (Wang Bi, Annotation of Wang Bi's Works 195). The human being cannot apprehend the Dao out of thin air; it is precisely by means of the enticement, inspiration, and inducement of the image (form, sound), which has differentiation, belonging, and limit, that the human being's unconscious experience is stirred, imagination is unfolded, and overbearing subjectivity is dissolved, so that he merges into the undifferentiated, unbelonging, limitless realm of the great image and great tone, places himself within a non-objective relation, and exists directly within the Dao so as to apprehend it.

Heidegger was deeply influenced by the ancient Chinese thought of Laozi and Zhuangzi. He felt keenly that, ever since the genesis of human “subjectivity,” the relation between human being and nature has been estranged; thereafter nature became the human being's “object” and was no longer intimate with the human being. For this very reason the world is obscured, and the human being misses the encounter with truth. In response to this condition, Heidegger replaced the ontological core problem of “beings” with “Being,” and sought, by means of the integral relation of “being-in-the-world” (Dasein), to alter the estranged condition of human being and world: through the human being's “dwelling-near” the world he would experience the world, let the earth open, let truth appear, let the human being apprehend the world directly. (1) In fact, the reason “being-in-the-world” can apprehend truth (the Dao) is that in this process a conversion of the intentional relation occurs: the relation between human being and world reverts from an objective relation to a non-objective relation, the world turns from an objective image into a non-objective great image, and the human being is thereby furnished an opportunity to embody and apprehend the Dao.

III. Grasping the Idea and Forgetting the Image

In the “Clarifying the Images” (Mingxiang) of his commentary on the Changes, Wang Bi says: “The image is that which brings out the idea; words are that which clarify the image. For fully expressing the idea, nothing equals the image; for fully expressing the image, nothing equals words. Words are born of the image, and so one may seek the words in order to observe the image; the image is born of the idea, and so one may seek the image in order to observe the idea. The idea is fully expressed by the image, and the image is made manifest by words. Therefore words are that by which one clarifies the image: once the image is grasped, the words are forgotten. The image is that by which one preserves the idea: once the idea is grasped, the image is forgotten” (Wang Bi, Annotation of The Book of Changes 284-85). The line-images and hexagram-images, though simulations of the celestial and natural images, are highly abstracted images: their import is protean and indeterminate and requires words to interpret and fill it out. Words, with their relatively determinate meaning, clarify and enrich the image; the image, however, in its dynamic manner, receives this welter of intertwined imports and at the same time, in the ritual atmosphere, kindles boundless imagination and enters the realm of the great image to embody the Dao and grasp the idea. The so-called “forgetting the image” means leaping from image into great image, from being into non-being, from the objective relation of the split of thing and self into the non-objective relation of the union of thing and self. In Wang Bi's view, the image is concrete and finite, while words are still more caged within concepts; though both furnish an opportunity for entering the realm of the great image, they restrict and confine the human being. Therefore one must transcend conceptualized words and the concrete, finite image: by “forgetting the words” one slips into the concrete, vivid image; by “forgetting the image” one slips into the realm of the great image. Only thus can one embody the Dao and grasp the idea—so, like Zhuangzi, he stresses that “the idea is grasped in forgetting the image, the image is grasped in forgetting the words” (Wang Bi 285).

For a philosophical reflection that takes “attaining the Dao” as its aim and intends to grasp the “Dao,” the objective image is always a barrier to the Dao, a rampart that must be surmounted. To fix upon or linger over the form-bearing, shape-bearing, finite objective image is bound to set one at variance with the Dao, so that one cannot truly apprehend or attain it. To this end Zhuangzi advocates a state of “fasting of the mind” (xinzhai) and “sitting in forgetfulness” (zuowang) suited to the ritual situation. The Zhuangzi (“The Great and Venerable Teacher”) contains a tale in which Nü Yu discourses to Nanbo Ziku on how to “hear the Dao”: “I held him and told it to him: after three days he could put the world outside himself; having put the world outside, I held on and after seven days he could put things outside himself; having put things outside, after nine days he could put life outside himself; having put life outside, he could achieve the brightness of dawn; achieving the brightness of dawn, he could see the One; seeing the One, he could abolish past and present; abolishing past and present, he could enter where there is no death and no birth…Its name is ‘tranquility-in-turmoil.’ Tranquility-in-turmoil means that it is brought to completion only after turmoil” (Wang Xianqian and Liu Wu 61-62). “Putting the world outside,” “putting things outside,” “putting life outside” means halting one's own sense activity and mental activity, excluding from consciousness society and the myriad things of nature, and even the existence of one's own individual life. In essence, this is to suspend all objective activity, for not only is the perception of external things an objective activity, but even the consciousness of one's own life still treats one's own life as an object—and so it too must be suspended. Only by excluding all objective relations can one open the non-objective relation of the union of thing and self, and, through forgetting the self, attain the limpid realm of transformation-together-with-things and integral fusion: penetrating the obscure and seeing the One, with neither past nor present, neither death nor birth, following nature freely, holding fast the tranquility of the mind amid the welter of change. This is the one and only gateway to embodying and apprehending the Dao. Once the non-objective relation of no-thing and no-self is established, the objective image no longer appears: it sinks into the formless, limitless chaos (non-being) and is transformed into the “great image” or “xiangwang,” and the Dao then descends of itself within the non-objective relation. Conversely, whoever fixes upon the various objective images is bound to be parted, sundered, and estranged from the Dao. The image, through its own extinction, completes the mission of embodying and apprehending the Dao.

The stress on, and the embodied recognition of, the Dao is not only a feature of the Chinese nation's philosophical thought; it permeates nearly the whole ancient cultural tradition, and especially aesthetic culture. But, unlike the “forgetting the image” state of grasping the idea and embodying the Dao described above, aesthetic activity remains always in the mutual exchange, interaction, mutual generation, and mutual interpretation of image and great image, in a stage of reciprocal movement and mutual construction: the image gives the human being a stirring, an arousal, rousing him to advance through imagination into the realm of the great image, while the great image in turn reflexively endows the image with infinite implication and inexhaustible savor. Aesthetic activity cannot discard the sensuous figure. An embodiment of the Dao won at the price of relinquishing the image can only tend toward the “end of art.” Therefore aesthetic activity must move to and fro between image and great image; it can only be a liminal space and a transitional process, lodged in the tension constituted jointly by image and great image, in the liminal state of the unceasing transformation of image into great image, each generating the other—at once granting the human being vivid figures, full of life and mutually illuminating, yet not stopping at the intuitive figure, but at the same time receiving the soul's revelation, savoring the inexhaustible flavor behind the figure, and apprehending the ceaselessly generative Dao that the figure harbors.

In the intimate relation of image and great image, Chinese aesthetic culture also possesses its own distinctiveness: it does not relinquish the form-bearing image, yet it sets still greater store by, and stresses, the formless great image. In the Six Methods of Painting, Zhang Yanyuan says: “Seek the painting through spirit-resonance, and formal likeness will reside therein…If spirit-resonance is not complete, then formal likeness is set forth in vain”—and he even regards “transmission by copying and tracing” as a “trivial matter for the painter” (Yu Jianhua 32-33). “Qi,” though glossed as “cloud-vapor,” is connected with the “Dao”; as in “the Dao divides into yin and yang,” “one yin and one yang are called qi.” One might say that qi is the direct manifestation of the Dao: relative to the Dao, qi is indeed of a metaphysical-and-physical (xing-er-xia) nature, yet it resembles and is closely bound up with the metaphysical (xing-er-shang) Dao, being likewise ever-changing, elusive, now formless now form-bearing. From this angle, qi is the mediating state of the mutual generation of image and great image—at once the image tending toward the Dao and the great image harboring the Dao. The reason a painting can achieve “spirit-resonance and life-motion” (qiyun shengdong) is that it is rooted in the unceasingly circulating Dao, rooted in the mutual generation of image and great image. That painting theory places spirit-resonance foremost and treats formal likeness as a “trivial matter” is likewise because it takes the embodiment of the Dao as the foundation of painting.

Zhang Yanyuan therefore holds: “The idea is present before the brush; the painting is finished and the idea remains—this is how the spirit and qi are wholly preserved,” and goes on to point out: “To guard one's spirit and concentrate one's oneness is true painting. Dead paintings cover the wall—how are they better than mud-plaster? A single stroke of true painting reveals its life-breath. To ply one's thought and wield the brush, fancying oneself to be painting, is all the more to lose painting; to ply one's thought and wield the brush with the idea not on painting, is to attain painting. Not detained in the hand, not congealed in the mind—not knowing why it is so, yet it is so” (Yu Jianhua 35-36). Painting is just like Nü Yu's “hearing the Dao”: one must “guard one's spirit and concentrate one's oneness,” not cling to the external appearance of the object but lay weight on the inner spirit-resonance, on embodying and apprehending the Dao, achieving “the idea present before the brush,” and only then ply one's thought and wield the brush—thus can one paint the “true painting” suffused with spirit-resonance, in which “the painting is finished and the idea remains.” The embodied recognition of the Dao is not some cognitive activity; it is a state experienced in the heart and inscribed on the body within a situation of mingling with nature—a state that cannot be spoken, that is so without one's knowing why. Or, as Guo Ruoxu says, it is “tacit accord and spiritual meeting,” “obtained from the celestial spring, issuing from the numinous treasury” (Guo Ruoxu, in Yu Jianhua 59). And the “single stroke of true painting” is just like the first cleaving of primordial chaos, the inaugural creation of “image,” standing precisely at the transitional stage of the world's turning from chaos toward limpidity, bursting with the impulse to create, brimming with life-breath and numinosity.

For Chinese painting, though the sensuous figure is indispensable, it is only an opportunity for slipping into the great image and thereby embodying the Dao, a hint; it must never, on account of the image, obstruct the path of advancing to the great image and embodying the Dao. Hence it should be pared down as far as possible: only when one can “make the brush sparing and the idea sufficient” does one attain the highest grade. One may even “depart from form and obtain likeness,” “paint the idea and not the form,” and go so far as to “treat the blank as black.” This, too, is why Chinese painting prizes “spiritual meeting” and “dark searching” rather than foregrounding “observation,” for observation is always an objective activity, whereas spiritual meeting and dark searching are communion and tacit accord between human being and nature.

In The Great Image Has No Form, François Jullien expounds in depth the “non-objective” character of Chinese painting. He observes with great acuity that the distinctiveness of Chinese painting lies precisely in its not foregrounding determinacy, nor letting the viewer enter deeply into its presence, but rather tending to draw the viewer out of “being” and into “non-being,” so as to lead the viewer back upstream of his actualization to embody and apprehend the Dao. For all actualization and concretization is at the same time individuation, which strips away other forms, impoverishingly cocooning the self, sealing off other perspectives and other possibilities. The image of Chinese painting tends to be the least prescribed, the least restricted, the least obstructive; it is a channel toward the vast, toward the infinite, toward the source. Therefore, in Chinese painting, haze and mist, fog and dew, smoke and cloud often become a means of dissolving determinacy, a transitional space of alternating actual and void, a mediation by which the form-bearing image slips into the formless great image. “They do not offer an object of representation but propel a configurational—energetic-spiritual (énergético-spirituel)—deployment. In my view, the Chinese literati landscape comprises just this. The Chinese literatus does not depict concrete things (the various concretizing processes within the naturel-matériel); what he depicts is a vehicle of vitality, not a visual object” (Jullien 368-69). Chinese painting possesses a “non-objective” character. Jullien acutely seizes the distinctiveness of Chinese painting, yet his exposition cannot avoid a certain one-sidedness. Chinese painting, though it prizes non-objectivity and non-objectness, must still take its stand upon the objective, the object-image; it cannot leap over the image to grasp the great image directly. It therefore remains a transitional space leading from image to great image, a process in which the non-object is derived from the object of painting, in which image and great image generate each other—only with greater weight laid on the embodiment of the Dao.

Not only painting but poetry as well. The Book of Documents (“Canon of Shun”) says: “Poetry expresses intent; song prolongs the words; the notes accord with the prolongation; the pitch-pipes harmonize the notes. When the eight timbres can be in concord and do not usurp one another's order, gods and human beings are brought into harmony” (Chen Jing 31). The highest realm of poetry is precisely to realize, through sensuous figures, “the harmony of gods and human beings,” to realize the communion and concord of human being and nature, their fusion into one, and thereby to advance to the realm of embodying the Dao and grasping the idea. Su Shi compared poetry and painting: “To judge a painting by formal likeness is to see as a child sees; to insist that a poem be just this poem is surely to be no poet” (Su Shi, in Yu Jianhua 51). In A Distinct Selection of Tang Poetry, Shen Deqian sets out the gateway for reading and construing poems: “Let the reader be tranquil and at ease, steeping and immersing himself, and the flavor will emerge of itself; he should not set up his own preconceived opinions and force a forced accord.” In commenting on Tao Yuanming he says: “Tao's poems are vast in their breast, naturally untrammeled and beyond the vulgar; one should seek them beyond the words and the image” (Shen Deqian 1-2). Ancient Chinese poetry must not only create scene-and-feeling-fused, vivid and moving figures, but also pursue the meaning beyond the words, the image beyond the image, the scene beyond the scene, the resonance beyond the rhyme, the import beyond the flavor; it must lead the appreciator to relinquish subjectivity, to convert the objective relation, and to enter the realm of the great image—steepable, immersible, experienceable, boundless.

IV. Reinterpreting “Yixiang” (Image)

Having analyzed the relation among words, image, and idea, we have reason to reinterpret such categories as “yixiang (image),” “yijing (ideo-mood-imagery),” and “jingjie (state or realm).” People commonly interpret “yixiang” as a “sensuous figure” fusing subjective feeling-and-intent with objective object-image. On the surface this interpretation is not wrong; but in essence this subject-object-fused yixiang is still treated as the “object” of appreciation and analysis, still based on the influence of a subject-object dualist conception, and so is bound to lead into error. Likewise, one cannot regard yixiang as a figure of conceptual form arising in the mind—neither representation, mental image, nor verbal image—for the so-called yixiang in these senses is in essence still an objective image, only one existing as an object of consciousness in the mind.

Fundamentally, the reason yixiang is yixiang lies in its simultaneously possessing both the form-bearing image and the formless great image capable of fully expressing the idea and embodying the Dao—that is, it possesses at once the objective image and the non-objective great image. It is precisely in the process of imagination's unfolding that image and great image convert into each other, mutually issue forth, and mutually generate; therefore we may call this liminal, transitional state “image–great-image.” It is in this liminal, transitional space that the human being fuses with the image, subjective feeling-and-intent fuses with objective object-image, and image and great image convert into each other and act in concert, thereby generating the “image–great-image”—that is, yixiang—which at once harbors inexhaustible idea and the metaphysical Dao, and is exquisitely translucent, teeming with life, its lingering savor enfolded. Yixiang is in essence “image–great-image”; it harbors multiple meanings at once and thereby becomes an image of continual generation possessing “productivity.” In the process of the mutual generation of image and great image, the work too breeds inexhaustible idea and endless resonance, and the Dao thereby installs itself in, and is gestated within, the work. This is precisely the foundation and the essence of traditional Chinese aesthetic culture, of classical aesthetics, and of ancient literary theory. When we regard yixiang merely as an appreciable, analyzable sensuous object—even a subject-object-fused sensuous figure—or as a figure of conceptual form in the mind, it has in essence already degenerated into an objective image; we have thereby strayed from the original sense of yixiang, lost the possibility of fully expressing the idea and embodying the Dao, and obscured the most distinctive national-cultural character that the category of yixiang harbors.

In The Evolution of the Category of Yixiang, Hu Xuegang traces in detail the history of the category's gestation, formation, development, and maturation. He holds that Wang Chong was the first to propose the concept of “yixiang,” and also endowed it with a new connotation, giving the concept the sense in which the subjective “yi” and the objective “xiang” act upon each other and combine into one (Hu Xuegang 54). Chen Liangyun, earlier still, pointed out a rather interesting phenomenon. He explains the formation and connotation of the concept “yixiang” in contrast with “xingxiang (figure),” holding that the “xingxiang” spoken of in the plastic arts is an image of formal likeness in the exact sense, whereas “yixiang” is often a sign, having “image” but not “form.” Hence the term “xingxiang” actually appeared earlier than “yixiang,” until “yixiang” and “xingxiang” appeared in mutual comparison in Wang Chong's Lunheng (“Luanlong”) of the Eastern Han. Wang Chong's “Luanlong” says: “The Son of Heaven shoots at the bear, the feudal lords at the elk, the ministers and grandees at the tiger and leopard, the gentlemen at the deer and boar—showing the subduing of the fierce. The cloth named ‘target’ shows the shooting of the unprincipled feudal lords. To paint on cloth the image of bear and elk, and name the cloth ‘target,’—the rites prize the yixiang, displaying the import and taking the name” (Wang Chong, via Chen Liangyun).

Chen Liangyun explains this. He holds that painting beasts of differing ferocity on the target, to be shot in practice by persons of differing rank—the higher the rank, the fiercer the beast shot—“shows the subduing of the fierce” by rank and position. “Very clearly, the image of bear and elk is neither the figure of the rank-holder; as an emblematic intent, it also transcends its own meaning, and so becomes an ‘image’ with symbolic meaning. The ritual of ruler and minister, high and low, is lodged within the beast-image, and so the ‘image’ is prized through ‘idea’—prized as symbolizing rank and ritual. ‘Displaying the import and taking the name’—in other words, ‘the naming is small, but the categorizing is great’: the author establishes the image to fully express the idea, and the beholder discerns the image to apprehend the idea” (Chen Liangyun 175). In fact, what Wang Chong says contains a still richer import; this passage constitutes a multiple semantic mapping. Beyond the meaning Chen Liangyun expounds, the bear, elk, tiger, leopard, deer, and boar are at once the bull's-eye painted on the cloth and also signify real wild beasts; while “naming the cloth ‘target'” treats the bull's-eye painted with beast-images as “unprincipled feudal lords,” so that to shoot the bull's-eye is to shoot the unprincipled lords, to subdue them. Thus, when the king practices archery, he not only possesses multiple symbolic import but actually experiences the process of subduing the fierce beast and subduing the unprincipled lords, experiences his own authority and power. This is the fusion of real action with the symbolic and imaginative process: the archer immerses himself body and soul in a realm at once real and illusory, bringing the present image and the absent great image into seamless union, and thereby gaining the true experience of victor and authority. Yixiang both inherits the multiple imports the image originally bore and the more strongly foregrounds the flavor of the harmonizing of image and great image. The yixiang of which Wang Chong speaks furnished an important foundation for the later category of yixiang in aesthetic and literary-artistic activity.

It was Liu Xie who applied “yixiang” directly to literary activity. In the “Spirit-Thought” (Shensi) of The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, Liu Xie says: “In literary thought, the spirit ranges far. Thus, in silent concentration, thought reaches across a thousand years; with a slight stir of the countenance, the gaze penetrates ten thousand leagues…Therefore, in tempering literary thought, the prize lies in emptiness and stillness, cleansing the five viscera and purifying the spirit…Then the mind of profound understanding, attending to the laws of sound, settles the ink; the craftsman of unique insight, peering at the yixiang, wields the axe. This is the foremost art of governing literary composition, the great principle of planning the piece” (Liu Xie 245). Liu Xie describes most vividly the process of imagination's unfolding in literary activity, and goes on to maintain that writing must cleanse the five viscera, purify the spirit, empty and still the breast, and enter a natural, pure state of “profound understanding.” This is precisely what creates the conditions for intuition and inspiration, realizing the realm in which “the spirit roams together with things.” At such a moment, yixiang (image–great-image) is ready to emerge. Speaking of “spirit-thought,” Zhang Jing says: “‘Emptiness and stillness’ is an aesthetic breast, a necessary premise for the ‘spirit-thought’ of artistic creation. It is precisely because the creative subject, through the discipline of emptiness and stillness, forgets the troubles and interests of reality and attains an unobstructed ‘profound mirroring,’ ‘fasting of the mind,’ limpid and still, that he can converse with nature and merge mysteriously with the great Dao; and the strange and marvelous trains of thought in artistic creation—coming as if in a trance, arriving without being thought—are born of this” (Zhang Jing 229). Liu Xie likens yixiang to Zhuangzi's allusion of “wielding the axe to raise a wind,” precisely in order to stress the bond between yixiang and emptiness-and-stillness, between yixiang and intuition: yixiang is an image harboring profound and far-reaching idea; it is not only a perceptible image but an intuitable great image capable of embodying the Dao, the mutual generation of the objective image and the non-objective great image—and it too takes as its premise the “empty and still” breast that embodies and apprehends the Dao.

As ritual activity gradually shed its original sacred coloring in daily life, primitive ritual declined and was replaced by the aesthetic space of literature and art; the multiple meanings that “image” had formed in ritual space were gradually lost. Therefore, when “yixiang” replaced “image” to become an aesthetic and poetic category, it freshly foregrounded the multiple meanings of the imaginative figure and the idea-fully-expressing, Dao-harboring great image, thereby stressing its distinction from “image” and reinforcing the coexistence and co-generation of the latter two layers. Indeed, in the long course of historical transmission, even the layer of meaning in yixiang denoting the non-objective, Dao-embodying great image grew ever fainter, so that today it is once more often misconstrued as the sensuous figure fusing subjective feeling-and-intent with objective object-image.

V. A New Reading of “Yijing”

The currency of “yijing” and “jingjie” (2) as poetic categories is inseparable from the spread of Buddhist thought in China. In the process of translating the Buddhist classics, the Chinese nation's own understanding was inevitably blended in, which made the Buddhist classics easier for Chinese culture to assimilate. The translation and dissemination of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra in particular had the greater influence on the Chinese nation's aesthetic consciousness, and “jing” and “jingjie” thereby gained currency. Qian Zhixi points out: “The most important etymological evolution that turned ‘jing’ from a concrete geographical spatial term into an abstract, virtual space—especially designating objects of a mental, conscious, spiritual nature—was occasioned by the currency of the Buddhist theories of the situation and the realm. Jing and jingjie are an important category in Buddhism…Their basic connotation is twofold: first, an object produced by mind-consciousness; second, the various stages of cultivating the dharma and apprehending the Dao” (Qian Zhixi 19). Chen Wangheng directly expounds the influence of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, holding: “The jingjie is not only the unity of void and actual—actual yet void—but the exceedingly rich totality within it is also ordered…The conflict of spontaneity and order, of freedom and necessity, vanishes in the jingjie: spontaneity is order, freedom is necessity. What the Avataṃsaka Sūtra teaches, while of course Buddhist, also opens toward the aesthetic. For this very reason, the Buddhist view of jingjie became an important source of the Chinese aesthetic view of jingjie” (Chen Wangheng 38). This character of jing and jingjie—at once an object produced by mind-consciousness and a stage of cultivating the dharma and apprehending the Dao, and a unity of void and actual, of spontaneity and order, of freedom and necessity—made it accord with the ancient Chinese aesthetic outlook. By comparison, the “image” in yixiang, though it can denote “scene” or “scene-image,” is often confined to a single sensuous figure and can hardly avoid being fettered by the object-image; whereas “jing” denotes a relatively vast and far-reaching living space, dwellable and roamable. Under the influence of Buddhist thought it foregrounds all the more its mental character, even a phantasmal space, and by its immense charm draws the human being to cast himself into it and become intoxicated within it. One might even say that jing is the boundless world continually issuing from the interaction of human being and image, image and image; “the jing is born beyond the image”—that is, by going from the actual into the void, combining void and actual, with feeling and jing in concord, idea and jing in concord, the limitless, meaning-suffused jing is generated from the finite image, and one thereby enters the realm of the great image, the realm of embodying and apprehending the Dao. From this angle, compared with the category “yixiang,” “yijing” and “jingjie” seem better able to disclose the very root of aesthetic activity, and of poetry and lyric in particular. So Wang Guowei says: “In the lyric, jingjie is supreme. With jingjie it forms its own lofty grade and has famous lines of its own” (Wang Guowei 191). And again: “What Canglang calls ‘inspired interest' and what Ruanting calls ‘spirit-resonance' still only describe its outer aspect; they are not so good as the two words ‘jingjie' that I have singled out, which probe to its root” (Wang Guowei 194).

Whether yijing or jingjie, in Chinese aesthetics and poetics it denotes not merely the “aesthetic object” combining subjective feeling with objective scene-image, but a ground in which body and mind find lodging. It summons the human being to enter deep within it and roam at ease therein, realizing the embrace and fusion of human being and jing, whereby jing turns into the very activity of living and of the mind, becomes a “non-objective” jing. Therefore yijing and jingjie are themselves a transitional dynamic space in which void and actual generate each other, being and non-being generate each other, and the objective relation and the non-objective relation reciprocally convert. Wang Changling has the doctrine of “object-jing,” “feeling-jing,” and “idea-jing”: the object-jing means placing oneself within the jing, mirroring the jing in the mind, and clearly apprehending the jing-image so as to obtain its formal likeness; the feeling-jing means stretching it in the intent and taking it in the body, then letting thought gallop so as deeply to obtain its feeling; and the idea-jing means stretching it in the intent and thinking it in the mind, so as to obtain its truth (Wang Changling 316-17). The “three-jing doctrine” expounds three different levels of poetic realm: formal likeness, depth of feeling, and truth. Truth is the most subtle realm of attaining the Dao—a process of continual issuing-forth and deepening in which the mind roams together with things, advancing from object-jing into feeling-jing and then into idea-jing, and apprehending the Dao in the state of the fusion of thing and self. In this process, jing is transformed from the external object-jing into the inner mind-jing and feeling-jing, and finally, with thing and self fused, becomes a non-objective, non-objectal jing of apprehending the Dao. Therefore yijing is a field jointly generated by the objective jing and the non-objective jing, charged with a relation of tension.

Yan Yu rated the High Tang poets very highly: “The High Tang poets cared only for inspired interest. Like the antelope that hangs by its horns, they leave no trace to be found. Hence their marvel is limpid and translucent, not to be pinned down—like sound in the air, color in a face, the moon in water, an image in a mirror: the words have an end but the idea is inexhaustible” (Guo Shaoyu 170). This realm, like sound in the air, color in a face, the moon in water, is not merely object-jing, mind-jing, feeling-jing, or void-jing; it likewise contains the non-objective jing, which we can grasp only through intuition and apprehension and can never set before our eyes. Whatever can be set before the eyes is objective jing; even mind-jing, feeling-jing, and void-jing are still objects of consciousness, whereas the non-objective jing of poetry requires that we immerse ourselves in it, chew and savor it, experience it in person, and pursue a direct, unmediated intuition and apprehension. So Yan Yu says: “Only apprehension is the true vocation, the authentic coloring” (Guo Shaoyu 170). For painting, what Zong Bing says—“the sage harbors the Dao and mirrors things; the worthy purifies his breast and savors the image” (Yu Jianhua 583)—likewise discloses the complex bond between Dao and image.

In An Outline of the History of Chinese Aesthetics, Ye Lang points out that the category “image” appeared in the pre-Qin era; by the Tang, “yixiang,” as a category marking the ontology of art, was already in fairly general use among literati. The high artistic achievement and rich artistic experience of Tang poetry impelled Tang literati to reflect theoretically and further on the aesthetic phenomena of poetry, proposing the new aesthetic category “jing,” which first appeared in Wang Changling's Standards of Poetry. “The proposing of ‘jing' as an aesthetic category marks the birth of the doctrine of yijing” (Ye Lang 265). Addressing Sikong Tu's Twenty-Four Modes of Poetry, Ye Lang incisively expounds the core connotation of “yijing”: the yijing of poetry must embody the ontology and life of the cosmos. “‘Jing' is just ‘xiangwang,' that is, what Sikong Tu calls the ‘image beyond the image,' the ‘scene beyond the scene.' Hence the yijing of poetry cannot be confined to the isolated, finite ‘image' but must go beyond ‘image'” (Ye Lang 274). “‘Yijing' does not express the isolated object-image but expresses the void-actual-combined ‘jing'—that is, the spirit-resonant, life-motion picture of creating nature, expressing the Dao (qi) as the ontology and life of the cosmos. This is the aesthetic essence of ‘yijing'” (Ye Lang 276). “Jing” is the “xiangwang” that embodies the cosmic ontology and life, that embodies the Dao—that is, the “great image” of which Laozi speaks; it is transformed from the form-bearing, finite objective image into the formless, limitless non-objective xiangwang or great image, harbors the Dao of nature, and possesses a metaphysical nature, yet at the same time does not forsake the concrete, vivid, ceaselessly generative image. In the relation of tension constituted by “image–great-image (xiangwang),” it generates without cease, breeding the image beyond the image, the resonance beyond the idea, the import beyond the rhyme, the flavor beyond the savor—on and on to infinity.

Zhu Guangqian, too, gives an excellent exposition of yijing. He holds that the “seeing” of poetry must be “intuition,” a direct sensuous apprehension of the figure, and that the poetic realm sees the eternal in the instant, displays the great cosmos in a mote of dust, lodges the infinite in the finite. “Every poem forms a realm of its own. Whether for author or reader, in the moment of intimately grasping a fine poem there must be a picture-realm or a scene-realm that surges up fresh and vivid before the eye, seizing the soul, now startled now delighted, so that for an instant one has no leisure to attend to anything else, as though within this little world there were an independent, self-sufficient joy, while all the vast cosmos beyond, and every love and hate, sorrow and joy of one's personal life, seem in that instant to vanish like smoke. The mind-state of pure poetry is a rapt, fixed gaze; the realm beheld in the pure poetic mind is isolated and cut off, and mind and the realm it beholds are like fish at play in water, blending without seam” (Zhu Guangqian 185-86). Poetry is a concrete, perceptible, vivid picture-realm and scene-realm; it captivates the soul, makes one forget oneself, and in an instant one turns from facing the picture-realm and scene-realm to casting oneself within it, like a fish in water, steeping oneself therein, experiencing the eternal. That is to say, only when mind and jing “blend without seam,” only when the non-objective relation of the union of thing and self is established, does our intuition grasp the Dao—and so we see the eternal in the instant, display the great cosmos in a mote of dust, lodge the infinite in the finite. In truth, both intuition and apprehension are regarded as a non-rational activity of the mind; they are, like the great image and xiangwang, the state of constructing a non-objective relation through the mutual fusion of human being with image and jing. It is precisely in this non-objective relation of thing-and-self fusion that the human being experiences the jing of nature and intuits and suddenly apprehends the Dao.

Ye Jiaying once explained Chinese lyric studies from the angles of phenomenology and hermeneutics, and gave a phenomenological reading of “jingjie.” She holds: “The so-called ‘jingjie' is in fact concerned chiefly with the felt experience within the activity of consciousness. Therefore, when any object among phenomena has not been re-presented through our felt experience, it cannot be called a ‘jingjie'” (Ye Jiaying 60-61). Although Western phenomenology advocates eliminating the opposition of subject and object, it was precisely under phenomenology's influence that Ye Jiaying, too, brought “jingjie” within the “activity of consciousness” as a kind of felt experience. Yet as a scholar adept in the practice of traditional literary appreciation, she also realized the problem in such an explanation, and pointed out that “though the term ‘jingjie' contains the general sense of broadly designating the function of stirring and moving in poetry, it cannot be directly identified with the feeling-and-intent of the author's self-will in the manifest consciousness; rather it is a world within the work itself, presented by the work, that is rich in the function of stirring and moving” (Ye Jiaying 64-65)—the author “unwittingly revealed a quality of the mind within the latent consciousness” (Ye Jiaying 64). According to the phenomenological conception, human consciousness is always consciousness of an object; once felt experience is regarded, from the phenomenological angle, as an activity of consciousness, it inevitably falls into an objective relation—for although phenomenology opposes the view of subject and object as mutually opposed and split, it can never erase the fissure between them. In fact, in the activity of appreciating poetry and lyric, the state that most stirs the soul is one that immerses us deeply within it, touching the depths of the soul yet incapable of being spoken—a non-objective relation of transformation-together-with-things, of no-thing and no-self. In this relation, the felt experience we gain is precisely “a quality of the mind within the latent consciousness,” an apprehension of the Dao (non-being). This latent mental quality is generated in the non-objective relation of thing-and-self mutual forgetting, gained by way of the great image and xiangwang; it is the essence of life and the true face of nature. The human being's unconscious state toward nature—the very state of no-thing and no-self fusion—is the state of the full harmony of human being and nature, in which the human being roams freely within nature, and the Dao is already clear within his breast. From this, Ye Jiaying realized the very point of why Wang Guowei proposed that “in the lyric, jingjie is supreme” and took it as the standard for judging lyric.

Plainly, Ye Jiaying is exceedingly acute. Although in theory she did not break out of the cage of Western phenomenology, in the practice of appreciation she grasped exactly the innermost and most nationally characteristic condition of poetic-lyric activity: the realm of advancing from the objective image of thing-self split to the non-objective great image of thing-self union, and so embodying and apprehending the Dao. The reason Wang Guowei's “doctrine of jingjie” stands above other theorists and critics of the lyric, the reason it is a creative invention upon Chinese traditional culture, is that he seized this root. In Remarks on the Lyric in the Human World, Wang Guowei proposes two kinds of jingjie: “the jingjie with a self” and “the jingjie without a self.” He says: “In the jingjie with a self, I behold things, and so all things are colored by me. In the jingjie without a self, things behold things, and so one does not know which is self and which is thing” (Wang Guowei 191). To put it in other terms, the jingjie with a self seems close to “intersubjectivity” in Western phenomenology, while the jingjie without a self is equivalent to the “no-thing and no-self” realm spoken of in traditional Chinese poetics. Although both kinds of jingjie are conversions from the objective relation toward the non-objective relation, phenomenology, and other Western scholars such as Schopenhauer, still cling to the angle of subject and consciousness in pondering the problem and have not thoroughly bridged the fissure between subject and object. So long as the gaze is fixed on subject and consciousness, even if the object or object-of-consciousness is regarded as an equal, co-existing subject, the fissure between them still cannot be eliminated. Only in the situation of no-thing and no-self is every barrier between thing and self entirely dismantled. Wang Guowei did indeed draw nourishment from Schopenhauer and other Western thought, broadening his theoretical horizon; his distinction of the two kinds of jingjie owes something to the inspiration of Western theory. Yet it is with the wisdom and mode of thought of the Chinese nation that he firmly grasps the key problem and root character of traditional literature, and his theory still implies a profound understanding of the relation among “image,” “great image,” and “Dao”—especially his doctrine of the kinds of jingjie, through which the lifeblood of Chinese aesthetic culture flows. When Wang Guowei says that literary activity is both “to get outside it” and “to enter inside it,” this is precisely the reciprocal conversion we have indicated between the objective relation and the non-objective relation, which turns on the field of tension constituted by “image–great-image.” However many ideas Wang Guowei drew from the West, so long as he grasped the key problem and root character of Chinese aesthetic culture, his theory had already flowed into the Chinese cultural tradition.

One may say that “image–great-image” is the most central “cell” of traditional Chinese aesthetic culture, the necessary path to fully expressing the idea and embodying the Dao; whether yixiang, yijing, or jingjie, each contains at once these two aspects. It not only generates the national character of Chinese aesthetic culture and the distinctiveness of art and literature, but also profoundly discloses the most central problem of aesthetics and literature, and prescribes the distinctive form of classical Chinese aesthetics and ancient literary theory. It is precisely this cultural cell, “image–great-image,” that determines the mode of thought and mode of expression of ancient Chinese aesthetics and literary theory, that determines that the categories of aesthetics and literary theory must possess inclusiveness and elasticity, and that destines it to relinquish rational analysis and logical system and attend instead to experience, savoring, apprehension, and poetic utterance.

It must be noted that the “Dao” spoken of in this essay refers to the original sense of the Dao, that is, the Dao of which Laozi and Zhuangzi speak. When the Dao is transformed into the “idea of the sages,” the crisis of being ossified already lies latent. Although the sage may embody and apprehend the Dao, once the sage's idea is equated with the Dao (true idea), one is bound to relinquish the unremitting quest for the Dao itself and turn instead to ceaseless conjecture and interpretation of the sage's idea—“transmitting rather than creating”—reworking the infinite, ceaselessly generative Dao into a finite, ossified idea, thereby smothering creative thought and forging an inertia in the national psyche. It should be said that “literature conveys the Dao (true idea)” is in itself not impermissible, and may even be said to embody the highest realm pursued by traditional Chinese culture; its malady lies only in distorting the Dao into the doctrines of the sages.