Classes 11 and 12

 

Class 11: Sima reports that both Chao Cuo and Yuan Ang are “outspoken.” (462mb and 465mb respectively): does this characteristic have a particular goodness or badness to it?

To start, how Chao both “very severe” and “outspoken?” (462mb) Often, severity is quiet and concentrated, the opposite of outspokenness, which is loud and often not taken as seriously. There is a time for people to speak out (465mt), but to be called “outspoken” is not a compliment. Yuan, however, Sima reports, is “outspoken in his loyalty”—italics my own (465b). Yuan will speak out when it regards his fealty to his ruler, not, as we read about Chao, outspoken in general. The latter’s outspoken behavior gets him the nickname of “Wisdom Bag,” (463t), perhaps because the prince’s household was sick of spouting, but there’s more. Coupled with his severe nature (462mb), we know he speaks often, with opinion, and is not kidding around (further evidence his nickname is ironic). Whatever he says, he says seriously, enough to drive the other high officials to dislike him (463mt). But there’s more: he is so good at his job as to get the “private” (463m) attention of the emperor. The officials who don’t like him see him pulling their shared boss aside to tell secrets and then he succeeds beyond them, “institut[ing] a great many changes and innovations.” (466t) It’s enough to push one of them to try and catch him in a trap (463m)—but he is saved by a “private” (463mb) emperor’s ear.

It’s when he starts to meddle with those who control armies that he gets his comeuppance. The feudal lords “hated Chao” (464mt), ask for and get his head for peace (464mb), which Yuan helps provide (465b) before it’s revealed it was only “an excuse for taking action.” (465t) They just wanted him dead. These two outspoken men share a chapter—and Sima shows us that it is not a good trait. Yuan was “boastful” and his “reputation suffered” (465b) for it, while Chao was “cut in two” (464m)—ironically, as his downfall was partially because “all men speak against [him]” (464mt). One should speak out, but one should not be outspoken.

Class 12: Why did Sima write this lament?

It is important to note that he wrote this about himself: he says, “I am hemmed in and never given scope.” (11) His culture, hemming in and taking scope, is a prison to him, a place where he must toil up to his death (7), where the greatness he sees in himself (22, 23) is “unnoticed / While capable” (8-10). This is a poem of a man who is trapped in a time that does not appreciate him for the people have no good compass with which to judge. Their guidance is “misled by poverty or success” and so they struggle to distinguish “beauty and ugliness” (10).

He needs a way out so that he might “honor his parents.” (Postface, 49m/5t) His fear is that he won’t be able to as the conditions around him are not conducive to it. However, Heaven has blessed him with an opportunity. He takes up his father’s mantle as grand historian (postface 50mt), to try to satisfy the wish of his father, that his “name may go down through the ages for the glory of your father and mother. This is the most important part of filial piety.” (Postface, 49m/5t) To do so, he makes a daring bet: as the world around him does not appreciate him, he writes for posterity, saying (Q236mb): “if it may be handed down…what regret would I have?”

But what a hard life that must have been to live. His labor does not pay off on the day to day, during which he is “merely tolerated at court” (Q230t). His boss does not take his advice and instead castrates him (Q233t). Though he is creating exactly what he hoped he would, a piece of work to keep his parents’ name alive, to avoid the “ancient’s shame” of “dy[ing] nameless” (23), he suffers through his life. His world ruled by “overthrow and rape” (16). He acts not for happiness (27), but trusts the “spontaneous” (30) so that in the future, not in his present, “everything will revert to the One.” (31) This poem is about his heartache at the thought that he might fail his family. To try to phrase it as he might, should we not pity him, that despite the great success of his work after his life, that he lived so?