Week 6

Sima Qian finds the “seeds of rebellion” in the “trivial game of chess,” but if the game fomented revolt, how can we consider it trivial (421b)? How can we understand the revolt through the chess game (404b)? We have two sets of fathers and sons, Emperor Wen and his son, heir apparent, soon-to-be Emperor Jing, and Liu Pi and his son, prince of Wu. The incident takes places under the reign of the father, Emperor Wen, but the revolt transpires under the son, Emperor Jing. The victim is the son, the prince of Wu, while the avenger is the father, Liu Pi. We have generational interactions which may speak to why Liu Pi spends “the past thirty years” single-mindedly fixated on his revenge (412t). As someone said in class, Emperor Wen was not at fault, the son was, which may explain Liu Pi’s patience. While the prince of Wu was invited “to pay his respects to the emperor” he finds himself “drinking and playing chess” with to-be Emperor Jing (404b). They were playing a game intoxicated. Games have peculiar rules, like the rituals of an empire. Intoxication distorts judgment, like the skilled tongue of rhetoricians like Kuai Tong (202m). But it was not just the activity (a game) or the particular mental state (drunkenness), but Liu Pi’s son was of questionable character. He was taught by unsavory “men of Chu” and “was by nature inclined to be overbearing” (404b). This is like what Gaozu says to Liu Pi: “Your face bears the marks of one who will revolt!” (404t). Even though the incident had not yet happened, there was something in Liu Pi’s constitution and appearance that Gaozu identified. We see something similar in Sima Qian’s evaluation of the prince of Wu, he was disposed to act this way. Thus, playing the game he “forgot his manners and began to argue” about “the proper way to play chess” (404b). This is like Liu Pi’s grievance over how Han is “unrightfully seiz[ing] the lands of the feudal lords” (410mb). Just as Liu Pi’s son was arguing over the game of chess, Liu Pi was arguing over governance. But in the end the blunt instrument of force – the military and the chessboard itself – ended the lives of both Liu Pi and his son.

What does Sima Qian’s explanation about prison and punishment (233b-234t) illuminate about his own situation? First, Sima Qian sets up the difference between a liberated “fierce tiger” and one in a “trap or cage” (233b). The demeaner of the tiger shifts from awesome and terrifying to docile and servile as it “has been gradually overawed and broken” (234t). Nature can be subdued, and its spirit shattered. This is also true of man. Sima Qian contends that one could “draw a circle on the ground and call it a prison” and some men would “not be made to enter it” (234t). This is an extraordinary claim. Unlike the tiger, whose demeaner shifts facing the material constraints of iron bars, man can be confined by ideas (a circle drawn there), names (the label “prison”), and by society (the ones who drew the circle and designated it a prison). For Sima Qian, it is not that man has this creative power to make almost anything potentially a prison, but that another can resist, perhaps giving up his life, to reject that idea, name, or socially determined fact. This is equally as true for the “wooden image” that is “judge” (234t). But there are circumstantial factors that contribute to the man’s strength to resist; Sima Qian cites Sunzi’s Bing fa, “The Art of War,” noting that “‘bravery and cowardice are only a matter of circumstance; strength and weakness are only a matter of the conditions’” (234b). When the “circumstances” and “conditions” are different, that is when a man has been tortured and humiliated and has “been gradually overawed and broken by force,” then man will submit (234tm). Whereas the tiger submits to the bars necessarily because there is no escape, man does not have to. Each “man has only one death” and it must be used wisely (233m). Unlike the tiger,  man has an orthogonal option to what seems to be the inevitability of subjugation, suicide. And when that option is not taken shame remains. Sima Qian considers “[a] man must be thick-skinned indeed if he comes to this and yet says, “I am not ashamed!” (234m). Nevertheless, Sima Qian chose life, shame, and his work. We read him now because he suffered and endured.