The Heart Is a Mesh of Paired Threads, Tied in Countless Knots — Zhang Xian, “A Thousand Autumns”#

Daiyu’s inference has its reasons. If Baoyu really does not believe in a match between gold and jade, why does his face change whenever she mentions it? For Baoyu, however, his face changes precisely because she is the one saying it. When the person closest to him speaks in the same terms as everyone else, it is as though his feelings have never reached her.

Each account can explain the reaction before it. That is exactly the difficulty: whatever the other person does may furnish further evidence for my suspicion.

Baoyu thinks that he would willingly die for her. Daiyu thinks: why should you lose yourself for me? If you are lost, I am lost with you. He treats self-abandonment as the utmost closeness; she wants closeness and therefore cannot bear to see him abandon himself. Their two wishes for the other’s good are doing different things.³

The urgency also comes from their family circumstances. The Daoist Zhang has just raised a possible marriage with Grandmother Jia. She says Baoyu should not marry early, but still asks Zhang to keep an eye out for a suitable girl. Who can choose a spouse, and whose words can advance a marriage, lie beyond the lovers’ conversation. The gold-and-jade story hurts partly because family arrangements can give it force. Unable to decide their future by themselves, Baoyu and Daiyu first seek some certainty from each other.⁴

Sincerity cannot make that decision for them. Baoyu hurls his jade to the ground. When it does not break, he wants something to smash it with. Daiyu sees another injury: he will not consider whether she can bear what he is doing. Xiren reminds him that, if he really breaks it, how will his cousin live with it? Daiyu feels that even Xiren understands better than he does. Zijuan then urges Daiyu to take care of herself: otherwise, how will Baoyu bear it? Hearing this, Baoyu too feels that Daiyu understands less than her maid.⁵

Both hear their own sincerity in someone else’s words, then use those words to reproach the person they most want to be close to. Someone else’s momentary understanding becomes a reason why the beloved should understand still more.

“I trust you” might stop the quarrel for a while. But if trust must also appear in a form I have never explained, another test will follow. We need to distinguish the wish from the measure used to test it. Wanting to know whether one is loved arises in real circumstances. Making one particular reaction the sole evidence of love is something the two people themselves are doing. Their circumstances explain the urgency; they cannot make every test valid.

The jade’s tassel is cut apart too. Xiren means to persuade Baoyu to cherish something Daiyu has made with her own hands. Her reminder instead draws Daiyu’s labor into the trial of sincerity. When the matter reaches their elders, the two maids who tried to mediate receive the scolding. Love was supposed to concern two people. The work of proving it, and the consequences, are soon handed out to others.⁶

For Whom Should I Adorn Myself? — Book of Songs, “Bo Xi”#

Sometimes the proof succeeds remarkably well.

In No Longer Human, Yōzō’s father asks the children what presents they want before leaving for Tokyo, and records their answers in a notebook. As soon as Yōzō is asked, he wants nothing at all. His father grows displeased and suggests a toy lion head to wear in play. His brother suggests a book. Their father closes the notebook without recording even that answer.

Afraid he has offended his father, Yōzō gets up at night, finds the notebook and writes “シシマイ”—the lion dance. He does not want the lion at all; a book would be better. But he thinks his father wants to buy him the lion, so he writes that wish down.⁷

His father is delighted. Back home, he tells Yōzō’s mother how he opened the notebook in a Tokyo toy shop and discovered a few characters he had not written. Then he understood: the boy had wanted the present after all, but had not said so at the time; later he could not help secretly adding it. Listening from the children’s room, Yōzō feels his venture has been a great success.⁸

The two have confirmed something for each other. The father recognizes a slightly peculiar child who wants a lion. The child confirms that he has finally supplied the answer his father wanted. The gift now seems to have a complete and satisfactory history.

The father assigns the wish to the wrong person, but his pleasure is real. Yōzō obtains a moment of safety and becomes more practiced in obtaining it. If we divide them into a true interior and a false mask, we miss what their exchange produces: the father learns how to understand the child, and the child learns how to make himself understood.

Yōzō describes clowning as his last appeal for human love. He fears people but cannot relinquish them, so he makes them laugh. After writing a comic composition, he secretly follows his teacher to the staff room. Only when he sees the teacher laugh is he satisfied. The laughter is both a result of the performance and news that, for the moment, he may remain among other people.⁹

The “I” Yōzō speaks does more than label a self already complete. In explaining himself, he selects experiences and assigns them weight. Other people’s responses also enter his understanding of himself. Even if no account says everything about him, these acts of speech change how he understands himself and how he continues to approach others.

We might summarize his self-description as “I am someone who makes people laugh.” Such a description reports who he is and arranges how he will next appear. Yet the person seeking safety and describing himself is not exhausted by that image. A self-image offers coherence; speech and action can bring forth wishes it cannot contain. The difficulty is more than a shortage of information on other people’s part. While describing the self that smiles, Yōzō is also asking the reader of his notebooks to hear the fear the smile could not express. Speech seeking an answer cannot be reduced to the image it depicts.

Takeichi sees through Yōzō’s deliberate fall at the horizontal bar and quietly says he did it on purpose. Yōzō is terrified, as though every trick has been exposed and Takeichi will sooner or later tell everyone. He wants to keep Takeichi close, make him believe the performance again, preferably become his closest friend. Later, when Takeichi has an earache, Yōzō rests his head on his lap and carefully cleans his ears with cotton and alcohol. The notebooks also describe this tenderness as a scheme to win him over.¹⁰

Takeichi has recognized one action. Yōzō elevates him into someone who can dismantle his entire self. A limited gaze acquires the power of omniscience. Closeness now carries an urgent assignment: take back what you saw, and see me as I want to be seen.

“Find someone who understands you completely” is therefore no ready solution. Seeing something can begin an approach. If being seen means only that one has finally been convicted or finally been acquitted, the person who understands best comes to resemble the keeper of the final verdict.

Life’s Joy Lies in Hearts That Know One Another — Wang Anshi, “Song of Lady Ming,” II#

Yet “dependence on approval” cannot dispose of a lover’s importance. Praise is not all alike. A few words from some people can bring an entire past to life.

In South of the Border, West of the Sun, Hajime grows up an only child. In the world he remembers, that means spoiled, weak and selfish. He resents the prejudice and also feels that he possesses these faults. Shimamoto is an only child too, a transfer student whose left leg was affected by an illness in early childhood. Because they live near each other, their teacher asks Hajime to help her settle into school. Gradually they discover how much they can say to one another.¹¹

Their conversations have times, places and a particular way of getting there. She walks slowly. He does not feel delayed; he likes the extra time together on the road. At her house they listen repeatedly to a collection he estimates at about fifteen records. He watches her take them out, put them on and clean them with care. Music unknown to other people becomes a secret garden he can enter. He once differed from others because he lacked something. Now he can differ because he shares something.¹²

Shimamoto does not arrive later to testify to a finished Hajime. She participated in his formation. A shared history can give substance to a person’s irreplaceability. Someone else may appreciate the same tune, but has not walked that slow road home with him.

A lover’s singularity is not equivalent to the sum of her good qualities. If irreplaceability meant only having the most virtues, someone equally good or better should replace her without loss. Love’s insistence on “this person” often strains against that arithmetic. Hajime and Shimamoto’s history does not require an immediate appeal to a mysterious essence. She remembers gestures from their time together and what he was like before he became a father, husband or bar owner. These differences have concrete histories.

Years later, she comes to his bar and watches him from a nearby seat. Hajime does not recognize her. She explains afterward that she meant to leave silently if he never did; nostalgia finally made her approach him. In his neat suit he first seemed like another person. Looking closely, she found his gestures, glances, tapping toes and frown little changed. Through these small things she recognized the Hajime she had known.¹³

The recognition is precious and limited. Shimamoto recognizes habits, but has not shared his life for more than twenty years. She also refuses to explain where she lives, whether she is married or what happened during those years. Hajime wants photographs to fill the interval; she wants the same interval to become blank. Both value the past. What they want from it differs.¹⁴

When Shimamoto worries that she would have burdened a teenage boyfriend, Hajime insists that he could never have tired of her. There was something special between them; she ought to know it too. He first admits that he is no noble person, then makes “I am someone special to you” the ground for claiming he would never have tired of her. Shimamoto does not endorse this counterfactual. She says only that some things, once they move forward, cannot go back.¹⁵

A special relationship is being asked to guarantee a self that life has never tested. Later Hajime says more explicitly that family and work made him happy, yet left a lack only Shimamoto could fill. The curious thing is that he recognizes the extent of his former hunger retrospectively, after being with her again and feeling that part of himself satisfied.¹⁶

We can read this alongside a distinction in Žižek’s The Plague of Fantasies. The question of desire concerns more than “What do I want?” It also asks, “What does the other want of me? What am I for her?” Fantasy supplies an answer, allowing me to feel that I contain some treasure that makes me worthy of desire.¹⁷

“Only you know me” can therefore carry another demand: “Only you can prove that I really contain something worth loving.” Ordinary praise may fail to satisfy it. Praise identifies strengths that other people also possess; the demand concerns the irreplaceable self supposedly exceeding their sum.

The proof must come from her own heart, or it counts as mere compliance. I need her independent judgment, since only an affirmation I have not dictated deserves belief. But if her judgment changes, I feel she no longer understands me. Wanting an answer to be free while prescribing what it must say gives the repeated demand a reason that is hard to exhaust.

An important conversion has occurred. At first, she shared my life and knows things others do not. Later, she alone must guarantee that I have not lived wrongly. A concrete history gives her testimony weight; the demand for a guarantee tries to seal that history shut. If she changes her interpretation, she seems to do more than disagree with me. She seems to revoke who I once was.

Knowing the Tune, Hearing What Is True in It — Nineteen Old Poems, “A Fine Banquet Today”#

WHITE ALBUM 2’s duet through a wall offers a smaller and very precious recognition: someone takes up the sound you make.

Haruki initially does not know who is in the next room. The accompaniment sounds like teasing, instruction and a display of skill. None of these explanations has settled when the duet is already continuing. Kazusa’s digital novel later supplies what he did not know: she already knew who the guitarist was and regarded their playing after a classroom quarrel as a reconciliation made on her side alone. Haruki did not know he had already made peace with her in her mind.¹⁸

Their explanations have not converged, but the music has achieved something. Kazusa corrects his rhythm and pitch, pulling him back when he rushes and waiting when he slows. After a while, she hears that he has practiced the fundamentals. He says studying matters most; the notes disclose another effort. What can be heard here is the trace of an action.¹⁹

Kazusa also changes how she plays. In a duet after an examination, Haruki is so excited that he keeps accelerating, quite at odds with the piece’s original mood. This time she stops trying to correct him and follows his speed, force and happiness. By the original piece’s measure, the performance can be bad. Kazusa is happy nonetheless, and hears his happiness in it too.²⁰

She meant to teach him to play well. This time she is willing to play a little badly with him. She recognizes his effort in his improvement and lets his joy alter her own playing. Another person’s response can change how the thing before them should be done.

Koharu, in CC’s common section, shows Haruki another side of himself. Quarreling with him over her friend, she strikes him as earnest, stubborn and responsible: very like his own irritating self three years earlier. The resemblance does not spare him her later criticism.²¹

Koharu counts how often he looks at the clock and asks why he does not first attend to what is troubling him. He says it has nothing to do with this conversation. She presses him: why may he intervene in other people’s lives, but slam on the brakes when someone approaches his? If he will not let others know him, how can they feel safe listening to his advice? Then she says that she does care about him and is interested in him.²²

Koharu is doing more than holding up a mirror to his past. She brings a new demand that he cannot return to that past: if you enter my life, you too must appear as someone who can be questioned. Her concern lends weight to the questions. What requires an answer now is why he approaches and advises her while keeping her outside. That is more specific than a demand to surrender his whole interior life.

The limits of recognition do not diminish a lover’s importance. Hearing someone’s practice, being happy together and naming a particular retreat can all change a person. The difficulty comes when these things, which could continue to happen, are exchanged for a lifelong certificate: “This is who you are.”

My Heart Is Not a Mirror That Takes In All — Book of Songs, “The Cypress Boat”#

After Shimamoto leaves, a conversation between Hajime and Yukiko brings this difficulty home.

She asks whether they should separate. He says he loves her. She asks again, requiring a yes or a no. Only then does he say he does not want to separate, though he no longer knows whether he has the right to stay. Another account of himself follows: he has repeatedly tried to become a new person, changing places and ways of living, yet could not escape his lack. He therefore cannot promise never to hurt her again.²³

Such an account can be honest and can leave someone else no room to speak. As he explains why his fate is so hard to resist, his wife is pushed into deciding his eligibility. How she was hurt and what she has imagined for her own future have not yet become his questions.

Yukiko tells him how she lived through it. She was so lonely that she wanted to die. She also thought that, if he returned, she would eventually take him back, and that thought kept her alive. She does not excuse the injury. She is quite clear that he was selfish and that he hurt her. What she needs him to hear, however, is not another judgment of whether he qualifies.²⁴

She had dreams and fantasies before they met. She gave them up herself, and they still pursue her at night. Abandoned before she knew her husband, they did not entirely die. As she tells him, he is not the only one pursued. A woman placed inside a secure home to judge whether he may return suddenly has a history that does not begin with him.²⁵

After listening, Hajime announces that they will start again tomorrow. Once more he turns being moved directly into an arrangement. Yukiko reminds him a second time that he has still asked her nothing. Only when he changes the decision into a question—what does she think of starting again tomorrow?—does she say yes.²⁶

Two sentences can differ by only a few words while changing the position from which one speaks. “We will start tomorrow” places her inside a decision already made. “What do you think?” puts the decision before her. This yes is finally someone’s answer.

In the last session of Seminar XX, Lacan discusses how love expects duration from a contingent encounter. At the end he tests the question on his audience. They all believe he will return to teach the following year. But is someone who guesses his next move thereby someone who loves him? Knowing what a partner will do is no proof of love.²⁷

The distinction separates an encounter from knowledge about another person. We can know someone’s habits without acquiring a guarantee of love. Yukiko’s response should be understood in the same way. Hajime has not obtained a new law—“My wife will always take me back.” He has received the yes she gives this time, after hearing the question.

Their future remains unwritten. An answer can allow it to begin without guaranteeing every result in advance. How a promise will stand up to later scrutiny must acquire its substance in living.

A Foot Can Fall Short; an Inch Can Suffice — Songs of Chu, “Divining a Dwelling”#

In The Izu Dancer, the student hears the dancing girl and Chiyoko talking behind him, apparently about his uneven teeth. The girl says he could have them pulled and replaced with gold teeth. In another mood, overhearing such a conversation might provoke shame and anger. At this moment he feels so close to them that he does not mind, or even want to strain to hear.

A little later, they say he is a good person. The dancing girl keeps saying how nice good people are. Only then does the student feel that he too can be a good person quite naturally. He had scrutinized himself harshly, believed his character distorted by an “orphan disposition,” and traveled to Izu because he could not bear the suffocating melancholy. This ordinary judgment makes him lift his head and see the bright mountains.²⁸

The simple words “a good person” let him step away, for a while, from the judgment that his character is deformed. His earlier indifference to the talk about his teeth shows that closeness has already been growing through their company. The words help him recognize the change. The women do not think him good because they have failed to notice anything unattractive.

Signs at village entrances still forbid beggars and traveling performers. A woman in the party asks the student to drink spring water first, afraid he might find it dirty after women have drunk. At parting he puts on his school cap; he later attributes another boy’s approach aboard the boat to that cap. These differences remain present alongside kindness.²⁹

The dancing girl does not speak a full farewell in response to the student’s questions. She is silent and repeatedly nods before he finishes speaking. Only when the boat is farther away does she wave something white. Their sadness has not been fully explained. The boat leaves all the same.³⁰

An old woman is taking her grandchildren to Tokyo. A miner asks the student to look after her, and he agrees. In the cabin he sees people gathered around her offering comfort. He also accepts another boy’s food and warmth, crying as he says he has just parted from someone. Taking the old woman to the station in the morning and buying her a ticket to Mito already seems natural to him. These ordinary tasks, still to be carried out, are where the encounter can lead.³¹

One person’s recognition has not fastened him to her side. It has made him more able to receive kindness from others and accept some of their difficulties. The need for recognition is therefore not inherently an illness. What matters is how it subsequently works: whether it makes more life possible or forbids one person ever to give a new answer.

Lu Xun’s account of A Chang buying him the Classic of Mountains and Seas contains another turn. The child had assumed she was no scholar and telling her would be useless. Only when she asks does he explain. She cannot even pronounce the title correctly. Yet the four little volumes she brings back reveal an ability he had never imagined in her. What others would not or could not do, she has done.³²

The person understood must change too. His prior judgment of who understands and who does not proves unreliable. A crudely made book in his hands is enough to rearrange that order. The adult narrator still knows little of A Chang’s name and life. Respect and not knowing can coexist in an act of remembrance.

“Those who know me say my heart is sorrowful” is followed by “Those who do not know me ask what I seek.” The three stanzas of “Millet in Abundance” repeat the appeal to those who know, yet the traveler’s distress moves through agitation, drunken bewilderment and choking. It does not end.³³ Borrowed for love, the line need not hurry a lover into explaining all of me. She knows something no one else knows, agrees to do something with me, or points out how I am hurting her. Any of these can already make the person I am now different.

The next essay, “Sharing One Robe,” follows what happens when two people capable of answering say “we,” and that word begins to bind them in turn.