Literary openness: A bridge across the divide between Chinese and western literary thought

Comparative Literature, Spring 2003 by Gu, Ming Dong

The movement of our thought reaches remote distances, and literary feeling develops from deeply buried sources. A source which is profound permits growth in many directions, and vigorous roots foster conspicuous branches. In the case of the beauty of a literary composition, there are both visible and hidden beauties. The hidden beauties are the multivalent [or important] ideas beyond the text, and the visible the excellent features that stand out in the text. The artistry of the hidden beauty lies in its polysemy, and that of the visible in its unsurpassed preeminence. These are the exquisite qualities of the ancient literature, and form the happy conjunction of talent and feeling. The hidden beauty, as form, focuses on ideas which are beyond the text, and are comprehended indirectly through secret overtones, which unobtrusively reveal hidden brilliance. The generation of new significance may be compared to the practice of forming a new hexagram using the technique of internal trigrams, or to the appearance of square or round ripples on the surface of rivers due to submerged pearls and jade. The changes of a hexagram through internal trigrams and line changes give birth to the "four images," and the pearls and jade in the depth of the water cause the formation of square and round waves. A reader of this kind of literature begins with a normal response but ends with a recognition of its unusual beauty. Its internal brilliance and external mellowness are such that common readers will have unlimited responses, and connoisseurs will never grow tired of it. (Liu 482, Shih 304)1

This is perhaps the most concentrated discussion of concealed implications in traditional Chinese literary thought. It makes a number of points that coincide with the modern conception of literary openness. Indeed, some terms like chongzhi (literally "double intentions") and fuyi (literally "multiple meanings") are equivalent to "multivalence" and "polysemy," respectively. First, Liu Xie defines "yin" (concealed beauty) in literature as wenwai zhi chongzhi (rich implications beyond the text), echoing a similar idea in another chapter: "wenwai quzhi (subtle connotations beyond the text)" (Wenxin diaolong 365). Fan Wenlan, a renowned scholar of Liu Xie's Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, annotates "chongzhi" as "ciyue er yifeng, hanwei wuqiong (the use of diction is simple but the meanings are abundant; the implications are unlimited)" (633). Second, Liu Xie considers multivalence as the prerequisite for "yin (concealed beauty)": "yin yi fuyi wei gong (the artistry of the hidden lies in its polysemy)." Indeed, he argues, "The hidden, as form, focuses on ideas which are beyond the text, and are comprehended indirectly through secret overtones, which unobtrusively reveal hidden brilliance. In Liu Xie's view such a text is a semiotically self-generating entity like a hexagram image in the Book of Changes: "The generation of new significance may be compared to the practice of forming a new hexagram using the technique of internal trigrams, or to the appearance of square or round ripples on the surface of rivers due to submerged pearls and jade." Just as a hexagram image can mutate into different hexagrams through various techniques, so a literary text can generate different meanings. Thus, although Liu Xie never used the term "literary openness," his theoretical inquiry covers a gamut of its meanings.