UDK
COPYRIGHT ©: DINU LUCA
Re-figuring Liu Xie's Carpet: on the Rhetoric of the Wenxin diaolong
Dinu LUCA*
Abstract
This paper analyzes and provides an alternative reading of several essential terms (gangling, maomu, and shuniu) around which Liu Xie famously articulates his vision on the structure of his Wenxin diaolong. It first examines how these key expressions produce contradictory projections when read non-figuratively; next it revisits their occurrences in earlier texts and proposes, in the case of shuniu, a significantly different reading; finally it explores the intricate intersections and rearrangements the "re-figuring" of these terms leads to. It suggests that respecting a text's fundamental figurality should be seen as a prerequisite for accurate, nuanced and in-depth investigations.
Keywords: Liu Xie, Wenxin diaolong, figure, shuniu
Apart from the occasional text proposing yet another rearrangement of the chapters in Liu Xie's Iffi Wenxin diaolong ^fr^fl (WXDL), one does not commonly find, among the numerous hotly debated issues in contemporary "dragonology,"1 much discussion dedicated to the structure of Liu's work. In this regard, things seem strangely controversy-free: in his WXDL dictionary (1996), for example, Zhou Zhenfu fails to even list the division of the text among the "contentious issues" of current research, mentioning primarily the formal presentation of the WXDL - that of a text that has historically circulated as a ten-yuan ^ book, with each juan including five pian to a total of 50. Like most
* Dinu Luca, Assistant Professor, GIECT, National Taiwan Normal University. E-mail: dinu.luca@ntnu.edu.tw.
1 Several excellent state-of-the-field surveys are available, including Zhou 1996, Zhang and Wang 2001.
3
other critics interested in the matter, Zhou makes the mandatory reference to Liu Xie's own detailed description of the structure of his text in the book's closing chapter, the "Xuzhi" ^^ or "Ordering (my) intentions." Different as this account makes the WXDL look from its actual 50-chapter arrangement, on the one hand, and quite complex and contradictory as it appears upon closer examination, on the other, the view provided by this description seems to guide many contemporary approaches to the text. Exploring parts of the relevant paragraphs anew, suggesting the importance of a different (figural) reading of Liu's vision with regard to the structure of the WXDL - re-figuring it, as it were - and discussing the implications of its figurality are the goals of this paper.
Before we proceed, one further remark is in order: all readings built around auctorial statements fall of necessity, of course, in the debated realm of intentionalism. Countless theoretical matters raise their head here and pose serious challenges to anyone daring enough to ignore controversies that have polarized and divided scholars since at least the days of Wimsatt and Beardsley. In this context, I hasten to promise I will not suggest, on the basis of Liu Xie's words, a new reading of Liu Xie's text, but rather a new reading of Liu's vision of his own text. The degree the two correspond, if they do or, more significantly, if this correspondence can be made in the first place, are questions well beyond the scope of this article.
Liu's description of his book appears in one well-known extended paragraph in the "Xuzhi," the last chapter in the WXDL. It runs as follows:
M^tàfëtè, iii. m^m, m^m, ^tt&o ^niàxmm,	s^tt, mz&rnm, «
u^rn, ta^ii, ±iw±, ««Œ&o	mrnfan,
bm, rra®^,	ff«£n
MKffl, Tl^T,
[My] work on the heart of literature takes root in the "Dao," a master in the "Sage" and a body in the "Classics," it scoops from the "Apocrypha" and changes with the "Sorrow" - [these are] the shuniu of literature, that is [its] pole.
With regard to discoursing on the rhymed and treating of the unrhymed [texts], the domains have been differentiated and the areas separated: I have traced the beginnings in order to show the continuations, explicated the names in order to clarify the meanings, chosen the [representative] texts to establish the [norms for all] compositions, and expounded the structure in
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order to bring out the unifying thread - in the case of the upper chapters, the gangling is clear.
As for cutting out feelings and dissecting colours, I have surrounded and enclosed the [inner] orderly strings: I have expounded on the "Spirit" and "Nature," sketched the "Wind" and "Dynamics," integrated the "Union" and "Going Through," and investigated "Sounds" and "Graphs"; rise and fall [have been discussed] in "Time and Order"; praise and blame, in "Overview of Talent"; sadness and grief, in "The Knower of Sounds"; anger and annoyance,2 in "Showing the Vessel"; and those long harboured, in "Ordering [My] Intentions," meant to drive the herd of the [other] chapters -in the case of the lower chapters, the maomu is apparent. Establishing principles and setting up names are made manifest in the numbers of the great Change: out of these [fifty], only forty-nine chapters are used in relation to wen.3
My discussion will concentrate primarily on the passages in bold in the Chinese text above (the underlined sequence will also be addressed in passing). I first refer to the three shorter contexts - those featuring the expressions (better left untranslated for the moment) shuniu	gangling IM^M and maomu	a
more extended discussion will follow with reference to the longer context that closes Liu's paragraph.
None of the three terms mentioned above is seen as particularly problematic by researchers, classical, modern or contemporary alike. They are usually read, respectively, as "hub" or "crux" (shuniu), "guiding principle, guideline, program" (gangling) and "minute details" (maomu), with common paraphrases (or rather dis-figurations) like "general principles" (for shuniu) and "detailed catalogue" (for maomu) taking over in many contemporary texts. All of these terms seem to be primarily seen as long dead metaphors, whose figurality is acknowledged, albeit indirectly, only by the immediately accessible paraphrases offered in their stead in contemporary translations of Liu's text.
These operations of dis-figuration are commonplace at the level of the whole WXDL, maybe because dragonologists, while often caught in arguments with regard to the text's fundamental status, do seem to agree at least on one aspect, i.e. the WXDL's essential authority as a theoretical metatext. Given that position, most
2	Translation here is based on Yang Mingzhao (2001: 459).
3	For Chinese text, cf. Zhang 1995: 317-321. For renditions into contemporary Chinese, comments and discussions, cf. inter alia Xiang 1984, Zhan 1989, Long 1992, Zu 1993, Lu and Mou 1995, Wang and Zhou 1998, Zhang 1995 and Yang 2001. My understanding of these paragraphs has also been shaped by the work of Tu 1997, Huang 2000, Lu 2000, Wang and Kong 2001, and Ling 2006, as well as Shih 1959, Owen 1992, Wong et al 1999, and Yang 2003.
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hermeneutical endeavours make it their duty to pare the webbed toes and extra fingers (to paraphrase Liu Xie paraphrasing Zhuangzi) of the WXDL: they explain away all figures with a view to emphasizing clarity and, more than anything else, the systematic orderliness for which the text is so celebrated.
But figures are dangerous creatures. Treacherous, unstable, always slippery textual beings, they will not disappear because we will them into nothingness or because we forget that metatexts are also (and primarily) texts themselves. Moreover, figures are the perfect masters of disguise: they may seem dead, but in fact they just lurk in the dark, waiting for the right moment to come and take over long-established meanings, like unwelcome guests in the house of sense. These ultimate parasites (to echo J. Hillis Miller's The Critic as Host, 1977) are also the ultimate manipulators: it is from them that interpretation proceeds most often and so it is around them that many a hermeneutic battle has been fought. Therefore, it is often in their realm of presence and absence, to appeal to a celebrated Pascalian formula,4 that theories construct and deconstruct themselves; it is also in this insecure space, where beauty and meaning, aesthetics and logic, and grammar and rhetoric make and unmake texts and metatexts alike, that we now need to operate.
A good starting point could be provided by Yang Mingzhao's (2001: 459) annotation on maomu. Yang notices that gangling and maomu are frequently associated, and quotes four contexts - one from the Baopuzi ffl^^, two from the
Nan Qi shu ^^^ and one from the Hongmingji "jA^ft:
^^ 0 o	(Baopuzi, wai 5)
WM, «£^0 0 (Nan Qi shu 46)
(Nan Qi shu 54) (Hongmingji 10)
In all of Yang's examples, figurative derivation proceeds from the basic meanings of the terms, to wit "head-rope" (for gangling) and "tiny eyes" (maomu), in connection to a fishing net. Earlier uses of the image of the net in such metaphorical fashion with reference to politics or morals are numerous, and passages from texts as different as the Lushi chunqiu §	or Huan Tan's fe
4 "Figure porte absence et présence..." Pascal (2004), Pensées, fragment 265/296.
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15 Xinlun ^^ (where gang I and mu @ are also paired together) can easily come to mind:
fflRt^ti, S3IM,	t^si- nnwm. (Lashi
chunqiu 19.4)
mm^i- ^nwm-, umwm, ^AS^O ^^st^t^t.
(Xinlun 11)
However, my concern here is not the identification of the metaphorical fields where these passages could be inscribed. I am rather interested in pointing out the complementarity built by these figures in the passages above as well as Liu's "Xuzhi" context. Just like a net is made up of head-ropes and tiny eyes, so too, Liu would have us think, is the WXDL. In the passage under analysis here, therefore, the relevant contexts would read: "...in the case of the upper chapters, the head-ropes [of my net] are clear" and, respectively, ".in the case of the lower chapters, the tiny eyes [of my net] are apparent." Also, just like the head-ropes order the tiny eyes, controlling the opening of the net, so do, we are to understand, the upper chapters of Liu's text orient the lower sections of the WXDL.
I would like to leave for strong intentionalists the discussion with regard to the relative significance, in Liu's eyes, of the two halves of his book (and the consequences that accepting Liu's hierarchy would imply for all those who nowadays privilege so much the more "theoretical" second half of the WXDL), and rather further emphasize a different aspect. For most classical and modern scholars (Ye Lianfang, Cao Xuequan, or Fan Wenlan), (Li in Yang 1995: 87) as well as (with some differences in terms of stress and nuance) for many contemporary critics (Zhang Yan, Peng Qinghuan, Wang Jinling, etc.) (Zhuo 2004: 4-7), it seems clear from Liu's passage that we are dealing with a two-part text, made up of upper and lower chapters - and this, once again, in spite of the actual circulation of the WXDL as a ten-juan, five-pian-per-juan book. Most contemporary researchers such as Zhou Zhenfu (1996: 553-554), however, also insist, again on the basis of Liu's instructions in the "Xuzhi," that one further subdivision should be made, leading to an image of the WXDL as a four-part composition made of sections of unequal length. Thus, the first five chapters, often named by contemporary readers, in keeping with Liu's own formula, the "crux" (literally, the "pivot and the knot," shuniu ®M) of the WXDL, represent the first part. The next group of twenty chapters includes sections 6 to 25, which are dedicated to a wide
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variety of literary genres, often duly counted and listed. A third group is made up of chapters 26 to 49; this is sometimes further subdivided (leading, as discussed by scholars such as Li Miao (1995), or Zhuo Guojun (2004), to a five-, six-or even seven-part WXDL) or has its chapters rearranged according to what appear as more fitting criteria. Finally, one last part is made up of the "Xuzhi" chapter itself.
It is worth repeating that dragonologists are often busy debating other things, but not (or at least not too intensely) the divisions of the WXDL advanced by Liu. A second glance, however, reveals that things are not as clear as they seem. Let us first notice that the two-part division is problematic for a variety of reasons, the most obvious being the separate grouping of the first five chapters under the shuniu label: these are, in fact, discussed outside the group of the "upper chapters" and their outline ends with a concluding pronunciation that is quite similar5 to those commenting on the upper and lower chapters below. This has led researchers who notice the paragraph's symmetries to opt for a tripartite structure of the text -the shuniu, the upper and the lower chapters. It is important to note here that earlier ternary divisions (advanced by, inter alia, the compilers of the Sikuquanshu jianmingmulu	Luo Genze or Zhou Xunchu) (cf. Li in Yang
1995: 87) separated the text into the upper and the lower chapters, and the "Xuzhi."
The positioning of this last chapter is in fact more ambiguous: it is included among the "lower chapters" (it is the last to be mentioned in their group)6 and yet it is also separated from them (and the rest of the book). This separation seems to be achieved first through the chapter's figuration as a kind of "whip" or maybe "shepherd" driving the other chapters (H^^). Thus the "Xuzhi", as we will discuss below, could be seen as fulfilling a primarily intra-textual function; it is also, in fact, the only chapter in Liu's list said to have any function whatsoever. However, this unique status can be questioned, and for contemporary dragonologists such as Guo Jinxi, or Zhang Changqing and Zhang Huien, for instance, the figure of the "whip" applies to the last five chapters of the text (see underlined parts in the passage above): this of course leads to quite a different four-part division of the WXDL. (cf. Li in Yang 1995: 87) No matter what we decide about this matter, the strange ending of Liu's paragraph we are focusing on here does seem to imply, as we shall see below, that the "Xuzhi" is a kind of
5	as compared to IBM® £ and
6	Cf. above the underlined part in Liu's passage under analysis here.
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supplement whose presence, in good Derridean fashion, is necessary but which needs erasure for reading to proceed.
How are we to disentangle Liu's masterfully crafted net? And how many parts does Liu Xie in fact state the WXDL contains? Are the first five chapters to be included among the "upper chapters," or are they a separate category - an upper beyond the upper? What about the "Xuzhi"? These are all questions that will concern us below.
In this context a discussion of the shuniu as a figure may be useful. Let us first notice that commentators usually highlight the connotations of centrality that both shu ® ("axis," "pivot") and niu M ("knot") evoke, just like the binomial term resulting from their combination (shuniu as "hub," "central, essential factor," as dictionaries define it). Yet few if any readers notice the bizarre spatialization that this figure of centrality occupies when discussed against the upper-and-lower division: whatever we decide about the shuniu chapters (1-5), the question remains if the centre they refer to in this reading of the text should be placed in front of the upper. With the centre thus understood as somewhere else but the middle, Liu's text assumes a radical unbalance that fits poorly with the paeans of orderliness that it has often occasioned. Some contemporary readings manifestly assume this unbalance, focusing on the shuniu as a high priority textual area and then reading selectively the rest of the text (often only several lower chapters, those that are perceived as theoretically more challenging).
All of this follows naturally from the interpretation of the phrase shuniu, constantly read, as mentioned above, as a "crux" or "key" - the "crux" of the WXDL and the "key" to its understanding, the "hub" of the text. Such reading is validated historically, seems to be confirmed by the other use of the expression in the WXDL1 and is also in keeping with present-day usage.
This is nevertheless not very adequate, I believe. There seem to be no extant texts earlier than the WXDL in which shuniu is used in the manner commentators usually understand it today.8 In the very limited contexts it does appear, this binomial construction has an exclusively astronomical referent - the "Celestial Pivot" (tianshu ) or the "Knot Star" (niuxing MM), a small star (4339
7	In chapter 24, we find the following about the genre of yi ^ or "opinion":	,
ma, xttftft, mmm^n^.
8	The only other occurrence with the word used in this sense is in the Nan Qi shu 28, a text produced by one of Liu's contemporaries, Xiao Zixian Mi® (489-537).
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Camelopardi) in the Beiji jbfe or "Northern Pole" constellation which was also "the pole-star of the Han." (cf. Needham 1959: 261) It was often associated in various Han and later texts with the Yellow Emperor as corroborated by his alternate name of "Container of the Pivot and the Knot"	the Emperor is
otherwise known as the "Spiritual Dipper." ^^ (cf. Nienhauser 2002: 224-225)9 Reading in this direction - shuniu as "pole star," or "guiding star" - also makes better sense semantically in Liu's context	^^fe^); moreover, it
may indeed perhaps explain how there can be something that is "upper beyond the upper" in Liu's text.
In the alternative spatialization that I am imagining here, the first five chapters of the text, just like the "Xuzhi" itself, are not figured on the same plane as the rest: they are of the text, yet somehow above it, like the pole-star and, respectively, like a whip (in the case of the "Xuzhi"), guiding or driving all not from behind but rather from above. The reasons for this inclusion/exclusion - or rather, after abandoning all the spatial connotations of the shang/xia pair, vertical positioning versus linear continuum - are different in each case. The "Xuzhi," as we shall see in detail below, is both the WXDL's own metatext, where the text takes its distance to itself, and the paratextual supplement that the text does not need, but without which it cannot reach completion. On the other hand, the "constellation" (to use a figure of my own) of the shuniu chapters treats of the very "root" and "trunk" of wen - of wen as related to the Dao, the sages, and the Classics, of wen from a time and of a quality that set it apart from multiplicity and inexorable degeneration, as discussed by Liu in detail from chapter 6 on.10
9	For the associations mentioned here, most information comes from texts quoted in Shiji ¿.IE (see for instance the Suoyin and Zhengyi U ad Benji ^ffi 1, the Zhengyi ad Benji 12, etc.), Hanshu (Yan Shigu	ad juan 25 shang - the Jiaosizhi ^^E^) or Hou Han shu IMMt (ad Benji 2) commentaries, such as the Shangshu diming yan ^^^^^ or Liu Xiang's lost Wujing tongyi Sfefift. The Tianwenzhi ^^^ in the Jinshu also discusses the Yellow Emperor as a star sitting in the "Supreme Minuteness" AW polar area (S^^iA^t» ^ffiffl ¿tt^). The Weishu MM (liezhuan 79) quotes a "Rhapsody on Contemplating the Images" MMM, that develops the same image. Cf. also Knechtges (1996: 34) and Goodman (1998: 103).
10	That the same wen also includes the lush, exaggerated, "exotically" religious Southern Tradition of Qu Yuan (which Liu discusses in his chapter 5) and, more than anything else, the fake and despised "Apocrypha" (Liu's chapter 4) of Han times, dedicated to portents, omens, divination and speculation of all kinds, has made many a critic develop alternative theories, solutions or plain dismissals of Liu's arrangement. And yet, in each case for different reasons, it makes sense, I think, to include these two chapters as well in the shuniu; this however should be the subject of another paper.
10
The word "constellation" is not, in fact, an innocent figure (is there ever any?). I use it only speculatively here because, as is well-known, the pole-star according to the celebrated Confucian expression (Analects 2.1) centres the stars around it and polarizes the heavens. In doing so it carries all the associations of "core," "nucleus," or "focus" of shuniu; however, the ideas of distance and difference may not come out very exactly if we appropriate the usual translation for shuniu. "Constellation," while less accurate, fits nicely with a different aspect: with the (Celestial) Pivot or the Knot (Star) seen in the classical view of the skies as part of a five-star Northern Pole constellation (cf. Needham 1959: 261), it is quite tempting to speculate on the equivalence between the number of stars and the number of chapters in Liu Xie's grouping.
Even if we accept that the shuniu of Liu's text does not designate its key or nucleus - and thus we do not see it as a kind of coagulation point like a hub around it the rest of the chapters gather, but rather as something that dominates the text from above, guiding the development of the other chapters - we still have a problem. It is not difficult to see that the alternative spatialization mentioned above makes sense with regard to the upper part of the WXDL and to it alone - the shuniu chapters being dedicated to the qualitatively different (by proximity with the Dao and association with the Sage, the Classics, etc.) "root" and "trunk" of wen, and chapters 6 to 25 treating of the different "branches" of the tree of wen. However, the tree metaphor works manifestly only for the first half of Liu's text and does not seem to apply to the "lower chapters," the "tiny eyes" or maomu in a different metaphorical context.
In light of all this, and taking into account that the net metaphor does nicely connect the two upper and lower parts of the WXDL in a coherent mesh, can we possibly see it to co-exist with this tree metaphor that can be easily demonstrated to articulate the first half (chapters 1 to 25) of Liu's text? And since we are here, do all these figurations (the shuniu, the tree, the net) make any sense when seen from the numerological perspective (49 equally significant chapters dedicated to wen + 1) sketched in the final paragraph in Liu's passage discussed here (^S^
I think the answer to the first question clearly depends on our ability to accept the multiple planes that intersect in Liu's vision. First, chapters 1 to 5 are set apart as qualitatively different, the "pole star" of the "upper chapters"; then, they belong with the "upper chapters" to the reticular world of wen as a tree, separated as they
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are from them only in terms of quality and metaphysical proximity to the Dao and the Sage. Next, the upper chapters themselves make up, with the lower ones, which they guide as net-like "head-ropes," the textual mesh of the WXDL (in this sense, to the degree they are part of the upper chapters, the shuniu also govern the lower chapters and thus the whole book). Last but not least, the whole is set apart from the "Xuzhi" - a sort of foreign body which both, it would seem, belongs and does not belong to the text.
With so much overlapping in terms of the exact areas covered by the profusion of figures put forth by Liu, suggesting clear-cut divisions in the text does not seem a productive endeavour. Moreover, Liu's own final pronouncement on the matter, coming as it does almost like an after-thought in the passage I zoom-in on in this paper, makes such divisions even more problematic. After all, Liu does set there all of the first 49 chapters of the WXDL as a coherent and compact corpus against the "Xuzhi," making all oppositions and arrangements quite relative.
Moving on to the second question, I have already mentioned the strange regime of the "Xuzhi" in Liu's review. On the one hand, it is included among the lower chapters, and on the other it seems to be the subject of a special statement that comes almost like a postscript, after three somewhat symmetrical paragraphs that delineate the structure of the WXDL and with which it bears no formal resemblance. According to this statement, the "Xuzhi" seems to require exclusion from Liu's text.
Looking anew at Liu's first mentioning of the "Xuzhi" (^'R^^, WIX^M), it should be pointed out that the figure of "driving" the "herd" of the other chapters is rarely, if ever, acknowledged as such in contemporary scholarship. Denied a figural status, the context yields somewhat banal readings that highlight the obvious fact that the "Xuzhi" (sometimes, as we have seen, taken together with the four previous chapters) closes the WXDL, coming as it does at the end of the book. Conversely, a figural reading would lead to a different positioning for the "Xuzhi" which, seen as the driver of the other chapters, could be figured as their "shepherd" or maybe their "whip"11 - something that does not come behind the other sections, but rather above or beyond them. To put it differently, and in light of what comes next, as this text's impossibly co-present metatext.
11 The idea of a "textual whip" is particularly appealing when taking into account a line in Lu Ji's H « Wenfu	£ # S ffi M 5 , # - M Z *
12
But what are we to make in fact of the last passage? The paragraph alludes to a context in the Xici	(A9) discussing the practice of the yi M divination.
According to it, and in keeping with the "whip" figure already mentioned, the "Xuzhi"12 inscribes itself somewhere both inside and outside the WXDL proper. It both belongs to the text (which it rounds off) and yet somehow stays out of it (as the 50th yarrow stalk that must be cast aside at the beginning of the divinatory process), thus both being and not being of the text. This chapter's threshold status is best illustrated by the perfectly paradoxical fashion in which Wang Bi comments on the divination procedures alluded to above by Liu:
^»¿m,	kmh+W^, is-^fflfto
M^WfeM,	(Lou
1980: II, 547-548)
In expanding the numbers of Heaven and Earth, we rely on fifty. Of these, we use forty-nine, so one is not used - not used, yet used to transmit, not a number, yet counted to reach completion: this is the ultimate pole of change, and forty-nine is the pole of all numbers. Nonbeing cannot be brought to light through nonbeing, it must follow being; therefore, always [staying] at the pole of those that have being, we will certainly bring to light the ancestor whence they come.13
"Not used, yet used, not a number, yet counted [in]" - this is exactly how and what the "Xuzhi" seems to be in the economy of the WXDL: this is the non-space where Liu, instead of treating of wen, as the rest of the WXDL purports to do, can talk mostly, with-in/out the WXDL, about the WXDL - and of course, about the WXDL talking about wen. Text and metatext can thus meet in the insecure space of paratext (fundamentally, the "Xuzhi" is, in terms of name, position and generic echoes, a postface) and thus make up the supplement which rounds off and needs then to be discarded.
12	Wang Yuanhua (1979: 41-42) is, as far as I know, the only critic who would argue that the chapter that does not treat of wen in the WXDL is not the "Xuzhi", but rather the "Yuan Dao" the first section in the WXDL. His argument, not widely accepted, does make sense, however, in view of the actual parallelism between divination and the structure of the WXDL constructed here by Liu: the 50th yarrow stalk is the first, in fact, to be cast aside.
13	Somewhat surprisingly, Lynn does not discuss this paragraph (which he included in his 1994 rendition of the Yi with Wang's commentaries) in his article in Cai 2001. In Western studies, at least, Wang Bi's comment does not seem to be often juxtaposed to Liu Xie's passage; an exception is Fuehrer 2004: 72.
13
Space limitations prevent me from further exploring the implications of Liu's pronunciations on the "Xuzhi" and the ways in which fully acknowledging this chapter's paratextual status might lead to a significant reinterpretation of some of the text's often discussed perspectives. Suffice it to say here that I take this impossible duality connected to the status of the "Xuzhi" - the ultimate paradox (further enhanced, of course, by the fact that the "text" of the WXDL is, in turn, critical metatext) articulating this and many extended paratexts in the tradition - to be the essential condition necessary for Liu in order to conceive of his text as a "wholly other" critical metatext (other from the tradition - which he criticizes in a long paragraph in the same "Xuzhi" - and other from all generic categorization -what is, in fact, the genre of the WXDL?)14
All this, however, will not be developed here. In guise of conclusion for these lines, I prefer to make a plea not so much for the accuracy or relevance of the readings above, but rather for the basic assumption that motivates them: the WXDL is a work of wen, where figurality plays a major, structural part. One interpretation or another may be always accepted or rejected; but ignoring the figurative actuality of a text, and dis-figuring it in the name of metatextual clarity, seem to me to be hermeneutically untenable practices. In this sense, the contribution of this paper can best be seen as a re-figuration of Liu Xie's intricate texture or carpet -or rather as an invitation to reading.
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14
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