Final 2

 

 

 

Sima Qian compelled me to reflect a great deal on what history means and how it is made. His oscillations between expounding series of impersonal, unembellished dry facts and weaving compelling character-based narratives, urged me to continuously shift my position as a reader. He has a way of detailing the same story so differently that it asks for a double take in order to fully realize that it is indeed the same said story. For Sima, history seems to be an amalgam of different views on a single given situation reminiscent of that experience of gazing out the window on a moving train and switching back and forth between considering the train as mover or the ground as mover. For me, reading Sima often felt like this—over and over I changed my mind concerning who served as the prime catalyst of a given story, who was its apex, due to Sima’s shifting perspectives. For Sima, history consists of a practice: he lays out manifold options and asks us readers to connect the dots ourselves, and by doing so challenges us to take on the task of historians. Sima is also a deeply vulnerable writer, which was made especially clear in his letter to Ren An. I was touched by his take on how struggle can further catalyze one to commit to the task of humble expression. Xibo expanded the Book of Changes while imprisoned, Qu Yuan composed his poem while banished, Sun Wu created the Art of War after the amputation of his feet (235b)*—Sima saw himself in these struggles (236mt). His idea that struggle can ignite and inform powerful works compels me to reread his writings so as to better understand his own story. This is perhaps one of the most fascinating aspects for me about Sima’s approach; by examining the lives of others, he revealed something of his own.

As per the lows of reading Sima, I can only find ones that amount to faults of my own: at times I got tangled up in his chronologies, confused by the shifting names for a single character, and frustrated by how lost I felt with where I was in a given story. But these lows are a worthwhile struggle and one intentionally set forth by Sima: he makes reading history an active task so that when meaning is found, it has actually been searched for.

 

*From Sima Qian’s Letter to Ren An.