Literature and sport as ritual and fantasy

Papers on Language and Literature, Fall 2001 by Meyers, Ronald J

In a classical rendition of a compulsive gambler,Yudhishthira, the eldest son of the Pandavas, allows himself to be lured into a game of dice with a questionable opponent representing his cousins, the Kurus. At first he is baited into playing for low stakes, "pearls and jars of gold," and then after a few bad roles, he bets "all of the untold wealth" belonging to himself and his brothers. Losing that, he bets himself and then his brothers and finally his wife, Draupadi (who is shared by the five brothers); and now the Pandavas become enslaved to their cousins. Though Dhritarashtra, blind father to the Kurus and uncle to the Pandavas, offers to soften the blow, the rival cousins will not hear of it.

The Pandavas accept a twelve-year period of exile, to be followed by their return and the final war for mastery of India. The remaining part of the epic describes the preparation for that ultimate battle, and the most famous section of the epic, the Bhagavat Gita which takes place on the eve of the great battle, renders in poetry brother Arjuna's great questions about life and the point of it all. Is life worth all the struggle and the pain and the suffering?

Poetry is assigned the role of representing the lyrical side of war, the paean to the loser, and to the suffering, even as the Iliad is a lyrical panegyric to the vanquished Trojans no less than a celebration of the victorious Greeks. I refer to the theory that Homer might have been a prisoner of the Greeks who in his poem rendered the glory of Hector and the defeated Trojan civilization. In the Bible when David was being pursued by Saul, he turned his sights to poetry.

Poetry not only relishes victory but solaces defeat, in the phrase of Leonard Cohen, celebrating the beautiful losers no less than the heroic winners. Sport also finds celebration in the description and the record of the conflict. In fact an argument could almost be made that while the athletic contest (or war game) tends to celebrate the victory, poetry gives at least equal glory to the losing side. Where athletic contests in their most pristine form bear the analogy of war, poetry can be said to extend to the concomitant celebration of victory and defeat. But poetry sometimes gives recognition to the effort rather than the result; to place and to show are worthy, too. For example, the ChineseYian artist Wu Zhen (1280-1354) celebrates the failures of his life:

I would like to have composed another 'Homecoming' ode [like Tao Yuanming's] but am ashamed to have no lovely verse as `The three paths are almost obliterated'. I would have liked to have wandered around the Yangzi and Xiang rivers, but unfortunately hadn't the proper bearing to go about in a coat and hat of green leaves. I might have studied agriculture, but hadn't the strength for ploughing. I might have taken up vegetable gardening, but taxes are oppressive and the foreigners would only have confiscated my land. Advancing [in public life], I could not have fulfilled any useful function; retiring, I could not have concealed myself happily in idleness. So I have lived by the Changes practicing frugality and have done what I pleased. Through a harmonious life I have drifted into old age. What more could I have wanted? (qtd. in Tregear 139)