King Lear and Confucianism
Please watch Belle's Youtube video of her Chinese King Lear, a graphic novel-in-progress
If hell is LAX's terminal 3, then I managed to make the hours-long wait for the connecting flight home quite bearable. I took on my trip my tattered copy of "King Lear," in my possession since I was 15. The scribbles in a childish hand like palimpsest beneath later annotations of the adult take me on a long, layered journey with William Shakespeare.
I was brought up a Confucian, even though the term was never used in the house. I was taught to revere the aged. In the Confucian world order, all under heaven turns to chaos--(Ran in Japanese, and, yes, the same word that Akira Kurozawa aptly used to title his "King Lear" or Luan in Chinese)--when the young do not uphold the contract.
Jessica Barksdale Inclan said that love and nurture should flow predominantly in the direction of the child--yes, when the child is a child. In most societies, outside of America and wealthy Western nations with vast resources, children are expected to nurture their parents when they come of age. This has always been the norm of society as long as there have been parents and children.* (In America, you have a helluva lot of lonely old people, rich and poor; but that's a rant I'll spare you for now.)
In China, filial piety was the primary judge of a man's character. It still is. He could be dismissed from a high-ranking position in court or pulled off the throne for disrespect to his parents.
Now, Matthew Biberman asked me an important question last week: Who is Edmund in your graphic novel-in-progress, "Forget Sorrow"? For me, Edmund is not so much a character but a dark force. The question clarified a great deal for me as I went the process of a good think.
Communism, was my reply.
While in Terminal 3, the following very un-Confucian passage leaped forth. Gloucester is reading out loud the fake letter made by Edmund in Edgar's handwriting about overthrowing their aged father:
The policy and reverence of age makes the world bitter to the best of our times; keeps our fortunes from us till our oldness cannot relish them. I begin to find an idle and fond bondage in the oppression of aged tyranny, who sways, not as it hath power, but as it is suffered.
Edmund is that dark force in human society--some may call it a revolutionary force--its sole purpose is to upend the traditional and "natural" order. Communism is a form of Edgar-ism. Chinese children, during the reign of Mao Zedong, were rewarded by Communists cadres when they turned against parents, humiliating them in public and taking pride in that very debasement. This is what the traditional Chinese and even the current regime fear: Ran, Luan or Chaos-Under-Heaven. "King Lear" presents the vision here:
Act I, Sc. II lines 102-113
Gloucester: Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide. In cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked ‘twixt son and father. . . . there's son against father: the King falls from bias of nature; there's father against child. . . . Machinations, hollowness, treachery and all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves.
And here:
ACT 1. SC. II line 142-145 (echos
Edmund: I promise you, the effects he writes of succeed unhappily: as of unnaturalness, between the child and the parent; death, dearth, dissolutions of ancient amities, division in state, menaces and maledictions against king and nobles, needless diffidences, banishment of friends, dissipation of cohorts, nuptial breaches, and I know not what.
* Harold Bloom said it perfectly: All old men are King Lear. I don't think "King Lear" was always irrational or selfish. He grew to be insecure in old age and therefore, irrationally needy.
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I won't enter the debate over the authorship of the plays. Yawn, yawn, yawn. Shakespeare wrote them. There are far more interesting issues to discuss--like the content and ideas in the plays themselves. I will say this. In 1598, a preacher named Francis Meres wrote that, "as Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the Latins, so Shakespeare among the English the most excellent in both kinds for the stage." Meres refers to a dozen of Shakespeare's plays that made the bard's name famous.
About Belle
Belle Yang, subject of the PBS documentary, “My Name is Belle,” is often asked whether she is primarily a writer or a painter. Answer: "When I'm writing, I'm a writer; when I'm painting, I'm a painter." Is she a children's author or writers of adult...
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Just thinking of LAX gives
Just thinking of LAX gives me the chills.
Glad you survived.
I do know that we of this Western model have different ideas about parent/child relationships. But what I was thinking about mostly was that feeling of lov and nurture. The acts, too, but mostly the flow of love from the heart. I think it's a different flow that toward children. The up flow is different.
This doesn't mean you leave grandma alone all day in the nursing home! But many do, and I blame the 20C and the advent of hospital practices that took birth and death out of the home. There are other factors to blame, but we wanted only life and living to go on at home, not the process of getting there or the process of getting out. Edging toward death also started to make us nervous, and voila! nursing homes.
Okay, glad you are back! I missed you yesterday in the conversation.
J
Jessica Barksdale Inclan www.jessicabarksdaleinclan.com
If you like LAX, you'd love Bangkok
Imagine LAX on steroids. The old terminal was something right out of a Rudyard Kipling novel. I've slept on the floor of the main terminal several times....along with countless fellow travelers and their chickens.
Actually, Bangkok just built a new terminal a couple of years ago....and for something that MONSTROUS, it's pretty easy to get around. Not so much livestock any more, either.
Eric
Edmund in Forget Sorrow
Belle, your thoughts on connection and filial responsibility are moving. I wonder how you are going to draw this dark force you speak of in your work. I think of how Spiegelman uses the cats and mice and the cat figure for Hitler. I think James' musing about Mao runs in that direction. I will be very curious to see...
Of course...
Confucianism isn't the only world view that reveres age. It was firmly embedded in ancient Jewish culture as well. And still highly regarded in most Asian cultures today, whether by Shintos, Buddhists or animists. (Hinduism seems to be an aberration in this regard, as the concept of reincarnation makes them more open to "recycling" their old make room for the new.)
However, Industrialization has really been the universal bane of the aged. Even Japan, which has traditionally revered their elders is now taking the dubious lead from us and warehousing their elderly.
In any case, throughout history, aged men have had pretty good reasons for paranoia. The story of Isaac being deceived and bestowing his blessing on Jacob instead of Esau being just one case in point. (I plan on giving away my vast estate while I'm still coherent).
But all is not lost. Despite current thinking to the contrary, living to a ripe old age is still something to aspire too. Although, Belle's analogy to ripening like a pear wouldn't be my preference. Pears are...well....PEAR shaped. I prefer to ripen like a jalapeno. :)
eric
Old = experience yet still unrefined
Alexander the Great was known to despise his father, Philip II, King of Macedonia, himself a skilled military leader. Alexander smartly learned strategy and leadership from his father but refused to follow his conservative approach to conquest. He broke all the old, established rules of war and ended up with one of the largest empires ever recorded in world history.
Just because someone from earlier times claimed something was true doesn't automatically mean it's true. New thinking must follow new information. See the Nine Changes from Sun Tzu. When I first studied The Art of War, I took nothing at face value. Sun Tzu's logic has to stand on its own, not because of its antiquity or past opinions from scholars.
By going through this process, I now appreciate Sun Tzu so much that I think it's the greatest book ever written. Conversely, to lend credibility to someone despite nagging doubts means you don't believe he or she can stand on his or her own and instead you allow reputation and position to take the place of substance.
In our Sonshi forum, I welcome all challenges, especially critical ones because I know in the end the truth will prevail. (In fact, we recently had a challenge.) We do have some members who dismiss critics outright but I always correct them so that debates can be settled in a rational manner, not a subjective or emotional one. That, to me, is exciting.