Han Dynasty

I was very much intrigued by Emperor Wu's poem quoted in Wood. I thought that it might be fun to repeat it here with annotations.

The Heavenly Horses are coming,
Coming from the Far West.
They crossed the Flowing Sands,
For the barbarians are conquered.

       Out somewhere in the 'barbaric' wilds, in the exotic west across the deserts there lies the home of the Heavenly Horses. Doesn't this sound like the opening to a Spaghetti Western? Cue the piccolo from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Continuing in the vein of my previous post, we see that the magical and the mysterious is imagined as exterior. Said describes an Orientalism, a construction of the East simultaneously in line with European rationality and European fantasy; interestingly, Imperial China shared a similar Occidentalism. What could it possibly mean that Empire creates magic outside of its borders so that it can appropriate this magic through conquest? I am reminded of Michael Taussig.

The Heavenly Horses are coming
That issued from the waters of a pool.
Two of them have tiger backs:
They can transform themselves like spirits.

       The Futurists of Italy might have identified with this passage. Imagine the visual experience of seeing an Arabian stallion at full gallop in a time where speed was hard to come by. Rapid travel is an everyday experience for us thanks to the invention of motorized transportation. To the Han Chinese, watching a horse fly about at high speeds would have been a novel, thrilling, perhaps even erotic experience. What imagery would they have used to describe the experience? The speed and power of a rushing river? The mercurial transformation of ghostly spirits? I bring up the Italian Futurists because one of the conventions they used in their painting was to depict high speed by condensing movement over time into a single image. This yeilded images similar to a photo taken with a low shutter speed: blurred images of trains, scurrying wheels instead of legs. This technique gives the images a liquid, or perhaps ghostly effect. An interesting connection.

The Heavenly Horses are coming;
Jupiter is in the Dragon.
Should they choose to soar aloft,
Who could keep pace with them?

        Jupiter? I lack a frame of reference to interpret this stanza. Perhaps Jupiter is the Heaven that Emperor Wu writes of, or perhaps it is an auspicious star ascendent in an auspicious astral house. What is certain, however, is that Jupiter does not refer to a "planet" as Han astrology did not have the telescopic technology to make that determination, nor does it carry the same semiotic value we might attribute to it out of the Classical tradition. As Jupiter was the king of the Olympian gods, so too do we imagine the massive Jupiter as the king of the solar system. How does this differ from Han notions? Where does that "wandering star" fit into the Han cosmic order? Sometimes I think I would enjoy studying ethnoastronomy.

The Heavenly Horses are coming;
Open the gates while there is time.
They will draw me up and carry me
To the Holy Mountain of K'un-lun.

       The Holy Mountain is a recurring image throughout many cultures, perhaps even in the contemporary Canadian experience. Both internally and abroad Canada is imagined as a land of vast forests and stunning mountains, high peaks that are exponentially removed from the lowlands of the everyday, work, "the profane". Durkheim might classify them as "sacred" in constrast. Is it so far a stretch to connect Alpine "holiday" with Alpine "holiness"? Further, what is the connection between relative elevation and dominance? Heaven, the seat of the Ruler of the Universe, is imagined as above us; this is an imagery of domination infinitely replicated throughout human experience. The flag above the conquered terrain, the raised throne over the courtroom dais, polite Japanese bows, dogs mounting each other with yelping and snarling. And it is to this position of dominance the Heavenly Horses will carry the Han Emperor. Is Wu really talking about a K'un-Lun mountain, or is he speaking of global supremacy?

The Heavenly Horses have come
And the Dragon will follow in their wake
I shall reach the Gates of Heaven
I shall see the Palace of God.

       Acquisition and transfiguration. Only one step removed from cosmetics commericals.

       Both in Wood and Waugh we get the sense that despite the temporal, spatial, and social difference seperating us from the Han, we share so much in common with them. Similar motives, similar aspirations. But it was repeatedly impressed upon me that there is an alienly semantics at work in the Han court. What can we make of ritual castration? What can we make of mutual hostage taking? The answer is perhaps not so obvious as we would assume.