Lafcadio Hearn - Some Chinese Ghosts
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Lafcadio Hearn >> Some Chinese Ghosts
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"_Completely and eternally awake are the disciples of Gotama!_
Unceasingly, by day and night, their thoughts are fixed upon the Law.
"_Completely and eternally awake are the disciples of Gotama!_
Unceasingly, by day and night, their thoughts are fixed upon the
Community.
"_Completely and eternally awake are the disciples of Gotama!_
Unceasingly, by day and night, their thoughts are fixed upon the Body.
"_Completely and eternally awake are the disciples of Gotama!_
Unceasingly, by day and night, their minds know the sweetness of perfect
peace.
"_Completely and eternally awake are the disciples of Gotama!_
Unceasingly, by day and night, their minds enjoy the deep peace of
meditation."
There came a murmur to his ears; a murmuring of many voices, smothering
the utterances of his own, like a tumult of waters. The stars went out
before his sight; the heavens darkened their infinities: all things
became viewless, became blackness; and the great murmur deepened, like
the murmur of a rising tide; and the earth seemed to sink from beneath
him. His feet no longer touched the ground; a sense of supernatural
buoyancy pervaded every fibre of his body: he felt himself floating in
obscurity; then sinking softly, slowly, like a feather dropped from the
pinnacle of a temple. Was this death? Nay, for all suddenly, as
transported by the Sixth Supernatural Power, he stood again in
light,--a perfumed, sleepy light, vapory, beautiful,--that bathed the
marvellous streets of some Indian city. Now the nature of the murmur
became manifest to him; for he moved with a mighty throng, a people of
pilgrims, a nation of worshippers. But these were not of his faith; they
bore upon their foreheads the smeared symbols of obscene gods! Still, he
could not escape from their midst; the mile-broad human torrent bore him
irresistibly with it, as a leaf is swept by the waters of the Ganges.
Rajahs were there with their trains, and princes riding upon elephants,
and Brahmins robed in their vestments, and swarms of voluptuous
dancing-girls, moving to chant of _kabit_ and _damari_. But whither,
whither? Out of the city into the sun they passed, between avenues of
banyan, down colonnades of palm. But whither, whither?
Blue-distant, a mountain of carven stone appeared before them,--the
Temple, lifting to heaven its wilderness of chiselled pinnacles,
flinging to the sky the golden spray of its decoration. Higher it grew
with approach, the blue tones changed to gray, the outlines sharpened in
the light. Then each detail became visible: the elephants of the
pedestals standing upon tortoises of rock; the great grim faces of the
capitals; the serpents and monsters writhing among the friezes; the
many-headed gods of basalt in their galleries of fretted niches, tier
above tier; the pictured foulnesses, the painted lusts, the divinities
of abomination. And, yawning in the sloping precipice of sculpture,
beneath a frenzied swarming of gods and Gopia,--a beetling pyramid of
limbs and bodies interlocked,--the Gate, cavernous and shadowy as the
mouth of Siva, devoured the living multitude.
The eddy of the throng whirled him with it to the vastness of the
interior. None seemed to note his yellow robe, none even to observe his
presence. Giant aisles intercrossed their heights above him; myriads of
mighty pillars, fantastically carven, filed away to invisibility behind
the yellow illumination of torch-fires. Strange images, weirdly
sensuous, loomed up through haze of incense. Colossal figures, that at a
distance assumed the form of elephants or garuda-birds, changed aspect
when approached, and revealed as the secret of their design an
interplaiting of the bodies of women; while one divinity rode all the
monstrous allegories,--one divinity or demon, eternally the same in the
repetition of the sculptor, universally visible as though
self-multiplied. The huge pillars themselves were symbols, figures,
carnalities; the orgiastic spirit of that worship lived and writhed in
the contorted bronze of the lamps, the twisted gold of the cups, the
chiselled marble of the tanks....
How far had he proceeded? He knew not; the journey among those countless
columns, past those armies of petrified gods, down lanes of flickering
lights, seemed longer than the voyage of a caravan, longer than his
pilgrimage to China! But suddenly, inexplicably, there came a silence as
of cemeteries; the living ocean seemed to have ebbed away from about
him, to have been engulfed within abysses of subterranean architecture!
He found himself alone in some strange crypt before a basin,
shell-shaped and shallow, bearing in its centre a rounded column of less
than human height, whose smooth and spherical summit was wreathed with
flowers. Lamps similarly formed, and fed with oil of palm, hung above
it. There was no other graven image, no visible divinity. Flowers of
countless varieties lay heaped upon the pavement; they covered its
surface like a carpet, thick, soft; they exhaled their ghosts beneath
his feet. The perfume seemed to penetrate his brain,--a perfume
sensuous, intoxicating, unholy; an unconquerable languor mastered his
will, and he sank to rest upon the floral offerings.
The sound of a tread, light as a whisper, approached through the heavy
stillness, with a drowsy tinkling of _pagals_, a tintinnabulation of
anklets. All suddenly he felt glide about his neck the tepid
smoothness of a woman's arm. _She, she!_ his Illusion, his
Temptation; but how transformed, transfigured!--preternatural in her
loveliness, incomprehensible in her charm! Delicate as a jasmine-petal
the cheek that touched his own; deep as night, sweet as summer, the
eyes that watched him. "_Heart's-thief,_" her flower-lips
whispered,--"_heart's-thief, how have I sought for thee! How have I
found thee! Sweets I bring thee, my beloved; lips and bosom; fruit and
blossom. Hast thirst? Drink from the well of mine eyes! Wouldst
sacrifice? I am thine altar! Wouldst pray? I am thy God!_"
Their lips touched; her kiss seemed to change the cells of his blood to
flame. For a moment Illusion triumphed; Mara prevailed!... With a shock
of resolve the dreamer awoke in the night,--under the stars of the
Chinese sky.
Only a mockery of sleep! But the vow had been violated, the sacred
purpose unfulfilled! Humiliated, penitent, but resolved, the ascetic
drew from his girdle a keen knife, and with unfaltering hands severed
his eyelids from his eyes, and flung them from him. "O Thou Perfectly
Awakened!" he prayed, "thy disciple hath not been overcome save through
the feebleness of the body; and his vow hath been renewed. Here shall he
linger, without food or drink, until the moment of its fulfilment." And
having assumed the hieratic posture,--seated himself with his lower
limbs folded beneath him, and the palms of his hands upward, the right
upon the left, the left resting upon the sole of his upturned foot,--he
resumed his meditation.
* * * * *
Dawn blushed; day brightened. The sun shortened all the shadows of the
land, and lengthened them again, and sank at last upon his funeral pyre
of crimson-burning cloud. Night came and glittered and passed. But Mara
had tempted in vain. This time the vow had been fulfilled, the holy
purpose accomplished.
And again the sun arose to fill the World with laughter of light;
flowers opened their hearts to him; birds sang their morning hymn of
fire worship; the deep forest trembled with delight; and far upon the
plain, the eaves of many-storied temples and the peaked caps of the
city-towers caught aureate glory. Strong in the holiness of his
accomplished vow, the Indian pilgrim arose in the morning glow. He
started for amazement as he lifted his hands to his eyes. What! was
everything a dream? Impossible! Yet now his eyes felt no pain; neither
were they lidless; not even so much as one of their lashes was lacking.
What marvel had been wrought? In vain he looked for the severed lids
that he had flung upon the ground; they had mysteriously vanished. But
lo! there where he had cast them two wondrous shrubs were growing, with
dainty leaflets eyelid-shaped, and snowy buds just opening to the East.
Then, by virtue of the supernatural power acquired in that mighty
meditation, it was given the holy missionary to know the secret of that
newly created plant,--the subtle virtue of its leaves. And he named it,
in the language of the nation to whom he brought the Lotos of the Good
Law, "_TE_"; and he spake to it, saying:--
"Blessed be thou, sweet plant, beneficent, life-giving, formed by the
spirit of virtuous resolve! Lo! the fame of thee shall yet spread unto
the ends of the earth; and the perfume of thy life be borne unto the
uttermost parts by all the winds of heaven! Verily, for all time to come
men who drink of thy sap shall find such refreshment that weariness may
not overcome them nor languor seize upon them;--neither shall they know
the confusion of drowsiness, nor any desire for slumber in the hour of
duty or of prayer. Blessed be thou!"
* * * * *
And still, as a mist of incense, as a smoke of universal sacrifice,
perpetually ascends to heaven from all the lands of earth the pleasant
vapor of TE, created for the refreshment of mankind by the power of a
holy vow, the virtue of a pious atonement.
[Illustration: Chinese calligraphy]
The Tale of the Porcelain-God
_It is written in the _FONG-HO-CHIN-TCH'OUEN_, that whenever the
artist Thsang-Kong was in doubt, he would look into the fire of the
great oven in which his vases were baking, and question the
Guardian-Spirit dwelling in the flame. And the Spirit of the
Oven-fires so aided him with his counsels, that the porcelains made
by Thsang-Kong were indeed finer and lovelier to look upon than all
other porcelains. And they were baked in the years of
Khang-hi,--sacredly called Jin Houang-ti._
THE TALE OF THE PORCELAIN-GOD
Who first of men discovered the secret of the _Kao-ling_, of the
_Pe-tun-tse_,--the bones and the flesh, the skeleton and the skin, of
the beauteous Vase? Who first discovered the virtue of the curd-white
clay? Who first prepared the ice-pure bricks of _tun_: the
gathered-hoariness of mountains that have died for age; blanched dust of
the rocky bones and the stony flesh of sun-seeking Giants that have
ceased to be? Unto whom was it first given to discover the divine art of
porcelain?
Unto Pu, once a man, now a god, before whose snowy statues bow the
myriad populations enrolled in the guilds of the potteries. But the
place of his birth we know not; perhaps the tradition of it may have
been effaced from remembrance by that awful war which in our own day
consumed the lives of twenty millions of the Black-haired Race, and
obliterated from the face of the world even the wonderful City of
Porcelain itself,--the City of King-te-chin, that of old shone like a
jewel of fire in the blue mountain-girdle of Feou-liang.
Before his time indeed the Spirit of the Furnace had being; had issued
from the Infinite Vitality; had become manifest as an emanation of the
Supreme Tao. For Hoang-ti, nearly five thousand years ago, taught men to
make good vessels of baked clay; and in his time all potters had learned
to know the God of Oven-fires, and turned their wheels to the murmuring
of prayer. But Hoang-ti had been gathered unto his fathers for thrice
ten hundred years before that man was born destined by the Master of
Heaven to become the Porcelain-God.
And his divine ghost, ever hovering above the smoking and the toiling of
the potteries, still gives power to the thought of the shaper, grace to
the genius of the designer, luminosity to the touch of the enamellist.
For by his heaven-taught wisdom was the art of porcelain created; by his
inspiration were accomplished all the miracles of Thao-yu, maker of the
_Kia-yu-ki_, and all the marvels made by those who followed after him;--
All the azure porcelains called _You-kouo-thien-tsing_; brilliant as a
mirror, thin as paper of rice, sonorous as the melodious stone _Khing_,
and colored, in obedience to the mandate of the Emperor Chi-tsong, "blue
as the sky is after rain, when viewed through the rifts of the clouds."
These were, indeed, the first of all porcelains, likewise called
_Tchai-yao_, which no man, howsoever wicked, could find courage to
break, for they charmed the eye like jewels of price;--
And the _Jou-yao_, second in rank among all porcelains, sometimes
mocking the aspect and the sonority of bronze, sometimes blue as summer
waters, and deluding the sight with mucid appearance of thickly floating
spawn of fish;--
And the _Kouan-yao_, which are the Porcelains of Magistrates, and third
in rank of merit among all wondrous porcelains, colored with colors of
the morning,--skyey blueness, with the rose of a great dawn blushing and
bursting through it, and long-limbed marsh-birds flying against the
glow;
Also the _Ko-yao_,--fourth in rank among perfect porcelains,--of fair,
faint, changing colors, like the body of a living fish, or made in the
likeness of opal substance, milk mixed with fire; the work of Sing-I,
elder of the immortal brothers Tchang;
Also the _Ting-yao_,--fifth in rank among all perfect porcelains,--white
as the mourning garments of a spouse bereaved, and beautiful with a
trickling as of tears,--the porcelains sung of by the poet Son-tong-po;
Also the porcelains called _Pi-se-yao_, whose colors are called
"hidden," being alternately invisible and visible, like the tints of
ice beneath the sun,--the porcelains celebrated by the far-famed singer
Sin-in;
Also the wondrous _Chu-yao_,--the pallid porcelains that utter a
mournful cry when smitten,--the porcelains chanted of by the mighty
chanter, Thou-chao-ling;
Also the porcelains called _Thsin-yao_, white or blue, surface-wrinkled
as the face of water by the fluttering of many fins.... And ye can see
the fish!
Also the vases called _Tsi-hong-khi_, red as sunset after a rain; and
the _T'o-t'ai-khi_, fragile as the wings of the silkworm-moth, lighter
than the shell of an egg;
Also the _Kia-tsing_,--fair cups pearl-white when empty, yet, by some
incomprehensible witchcraft of construction, seeming to swarm with
purple fish the moment they are filled with water;
Also the porcelains called _Yao-pien_, whose tints are transmuted by the
alchemy of fire; for they enter blood-crimson into the heat, and change
there to lizard-green, and at last come forth azure as the cheek of the
sky;
Also the _Ki-tcheou-yao_, which are all violet as a summer's night; and
the _Hing-yao_ that sparkle with the sparklings of mingled silver and
snow;
Also the _Sieouen-yao_,--some ruddy as iron in the furnace, some
diaphanous and ruby-red, some granulated and yellow as the rind of an
orange, some softly flushed as the skin of a peach;
Also the _Tsoui-khi-yao_, crackled and green as ancient ice is; and the
_Tchou-fou-yao_, which are the Porcelains of Emperors, with dragons
wriggling and snarling in gold; and those _yao_ that are pink-ribbed
and have their angles serrated as the claws of crabs are;
Also the _Ou-ni-yao_, black as the pupil of the eye, and as lustrous;
and the _Hou-tien-yao_, darkly yellow as the faces of men of India; and
the _Ou-kong-yao_, whose color is the dead-gold of autumn-leaves;
Also the _Long-kang-yao_, green as the seedling of a pea, but bearing
also paintings of sun-silvered cloud, and of the Dragons of Heaven;
Also the _Tching-hoa-yao_,--pictured with the amber bloom of grapes and
the verdure of vine-leaves and the blossoming of poppies, or decorated
in relief with figures of fighting crickets;
Also the _Khang-hi-nien-ts'ang-yao_, celestial azure sown with star-dust
of gold; and the _Khien-long-nien-thang-yao_, splendid in sable and
silver as a fervid night that is flashed with lightnings.
Not indeed the _Long-Ouang-yao_,--painted with the lascivious _Pi-hi_,
with the obscene _Nan-niu-sse-sie_, with the shameful _Tchun-hoa_, or
"Pictures of Spring"; abominations created by command of the wicked
Emperor Moutsong, though the Spirit of the Furnace hid his face and fled
away;
But all other vases of startling form and substance, magically
articulated, and ornamented with figures in relief, in cameo, in
transparency,--the vases with orifices belled like the cups of flowers,
or cleft like the bills of birds, or fanged like the jaws of serpents,
or pink-lipped as the mouth of a girl; the vases flesh-colored and
purple-veined and dimpled, with ears and with earrings; the vases in
likeness of mushrooms, of lotos-flowers, of lizards, of horse-footed
dragons woman-faced; the vases strangely translucid, that simulate the
white glimmering of grains of prepared rice, that counterfeit the vapory
lace-work of frost, that imitate the efflorescences of coral;--
Also the statues in porcelain of divinities: the Genius of the Hearth;
the Long-pinn who are the Twelve Deities of Ink; the blessed Lao-tseu,
born with silver hair; Kong-fu-tse, grasping the scroll of written
wisdom; Kouan-in, sweetest Goddess of Mercy, standing snowy-footed upon
the heart of her golden lily; Chi-nong, the god who taught men how to
cook; Fo, with long eyes closed in meditation, and lips smiling the
mysterious smile of Supreme Beatitude; Cheou-lao, god of Longevity,
bestriding his aerial steed, the white-winged stork; Pou-t'ai, Lord of
Contentment and of Wealth, obese and dreamy; and that fairest Goddess of
Talent, from whose beneficent hands eternally streams the iridescent
rain of pearls.
* * * * *
And though many a secret of that matchless art that Pu bequeathed unto
men may indeed have been forgotten and lost forever, the story of the
Porcelain-God is remembered; and I doubt not that any of the aged
_Jeou-yen-liao-kong_, any one of the old blind men of the great
potteries, who sit all day grinding colors in the sun, could tell you Pu
was once a humble Chinese workman, who grew to be a great artist by dint
of tireless study and patience and by the inspiration of Heaven. So
famed he became that some deemed him an alchemist, who possessed the
secret called _White-and-Yellow_, by which stones might be turned into
gold; and others thought him a magician, having the ghastly power of
murdering men with horror of nightmare, by hiding charmed effigies of
them under the tiles of their own roofs; and others, again, averred that
he was an astrologer who had discovered the mystery of those Five Hing
which influence all things,--those Powers that move even in the currents
of the star-drift, in the milky _Tien-ho_, or River of the Sky. Thus, at
least, the ignorant spoke of him; but even those who stood about the Son
of Heaven, those whose hearts had been strengthened by the acquisition
of wisdom, wildly praised the marvels of his handicraft, and asked each
other if there might be any imaginable form of beauty which Pu could not
evoke from that beauteous substance so docile to the touch of his
cunning hand.
And one day it came to pass that Pu sent a priceless gift to the
Celestial and August: a vase imitating the substance of ore-rock, all
aflame with pyritic scintillation,--a shape of glittering splendor with
chameleons sprawling over it; chameleons of porcelain that shifted color
as often as the beholder changed his position. And the Emperor,
wondering exceedingly at the splendor of the work, questioned the
princes and the mandarins concerning him that made it. And the princes
and the mandarins answered that he was a workman named Pu, and that he
was without equal among potters, knowing secrets that seemed to have
been inspired either by gods or by demons. Whereupon the Son of Heaven
sent his officers to Pu with a noble gift, and summoned him unto his
presence.
So the humble artisan entered before the Emperor, and having performed
the supreme prostration,--thrice kneeling, and thrice nine times
touching the ground with his forehead,--awaited the command of the
August.
And the Emperor spake to him, saying: "Son, thy gracious gift hath found
high favor in our sight; and for the charm of that offering we have
bestowed upon thee a reward of five thousand silver _liang_. But thrice
that sum shall be awarded thee so soon as thou shalt have fulfilled our
behest. Hearken, therefore, O matchless artificer! it is now our will
that thou make for us a vase having the tint and the aspect of living
flesh, but--mark well our desire!--_of flesh made to creep by the
utterance of such words as poets utter,--flesh moved by an Idea, flesh
horripilated by a Thought!_ Obey, and answer not! We have spoken."
* * * * *
Now Pu was the most cunning of all the _P'ei-se-kong_,--the men who
marry colors together; of all the _Hoa-yang-kong_, who draw the shapes
of vase-decoration; of all the _Hoei-sse-kong_, who paint in enamel; of
all the _T'ien-thsai-kong_, who brighten color; of all the
_Chao-lou-kong_, who watch the furnace-fires and the porcelain-ovens.
But he went away sorrowing from the Palace of the Son of Heaven,
notwithstanding the gift of five thousand silver _liang_ which had been
given to him. For he thought to himself: "Surely the mystery of the
comeliness of flesh, and the mystery of that by which it is moved, are
the secrets of the Supreme Tao. How shall man lend the aspect of
sentient life to dead clay? Who save the Infinite can give soul?"
Now Pu had discovered those witchcrafts of color, those surprises of
grace, that make the art of the ceramist. He had found the secret of the
_feng-hong_, the wizard flush of the Rose; of the _hoa-hong_, the
delicious incarnadine; of the mountain-green called _chan-lou_; of the
pale soft yellow termed _hiao-hoang-yeou_; and of the _hoang-kin_, which
is the blazing beauty of gold. He had found those eel-tints, those
serpent-greens, those pansy-violets, those furnace-crimsons, those
carminates and lilacs, subtle as spirit-flame, which our enamellists of
the Occident long sought without success to reproduce. But he trembled
at the task assigned him, as he returned to the toil of his studio,
saying: "How shall any miserable man render in clay the quivering of
flesh to an Idea,--the inexplicable horripilation of a Thought? Shall a
man venture to mock the magic of that Eternal Moulder by whose infinite
power a million suns are shapen more readily than one small jar might be
rounded upon my wheel?"
* * * * *
Yet the command of the Celestial and August might never be disobeyed;
and the patient workman strove with all his power to fulfil the Son of
Heaven's desire. But vainly for days, for weeks, for months, for season
after season, did he strive; vainly also he prayed unto the gods to aid
him; vainly he besought the Spirit of the Furnace, crying: "O thou
Spirit of Fire, hear me, heed me, help me! how shall I,--a miserable
man, unable to breathe into clay a living soul,--how shall I render in
this inanimate substance the aspect of flesh made to creep by the
utterance of a Word, sentient to the horripilation of a Thought?"
For the Spirit of the Furnace made strange answer to him with whispering
of fire: "_Vast thy faith, weird thy prayer! Has Thought feet, that man
may perceive the trace of its passing? Canst thou measure me the blast
of the Wind?_"
* * * * *
Nevertheless, with purpose unmoved, nine-and-forty times did Pu seek to
fulfil the Emperor's command; nine-and-forty times he strove to obey the
behest of the Son of Heaven. Vainly, alas! did he consume his substance;
vainly did he expend his strength; vainly did he exhaust his knowledge:
success smiled not upon him; and Evil visited his home, and Poverty sat
in his dwelling, and Misery shivered at his hearth.
Sometimes, when the hour of trial came, it was found that the colors had
become strangely transmuted in the firing, or had faded into ashen
pallor, or had darkened into the fuliginous hue of forest-mould. And Pu,
beholding these misfortunes, made wail to the Spirit of the Furnace,
praying: "O thou Spirit of Fire, how shall I render the likeness of
lustrous flesh, the warm glow of living color, unless thou aid me?"
And the Spirit of the Furnace mysteriously answered him with murmuring
of fire: "_Canst thou learn the art of that Infinite Enameller who hath
made beautiful the Arch of Heaven,--whose brush is Light; whose paints
are the Colors of the Evening?_"
Sometimes, again, even when the tints had not changed, after the pricked
and labored surface had seemed about to quicken in the heat, to assume
the vibratility of living skin,--even at the last hour all the labor of
the workers proved to have been wasted; for the fickle substance
rebelled against their efforts, producing only crinklings grotesque as
those upon the rind of a withered fruit, or granulations like those
upon the skin of a dead bird from which the feathers have been rudely
plucked. And Pu wept, and cried out unto the Spirit of the Furnace: "O
thou Spirit of Flame, how shall I be able to imitate the thrill of flesh
touched by a Thought, unless thou wilt vouchsafe to lend me thine aid?"
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