web, as industrious little legs were crawling again around the shredded rigging of the old, slightly higher one. Surely this was the old spider returning to assess the damage to its web.
How horrified it must be! A fellow member of its species had turned up, no doubt ready to net the entire supply of flies in this corner with a new web. The second spider moved straight to the centre of its web, awaiting in irritation the approaches of the first.
When the first spider likewise reached the centre of its web, still intact, it was thus confronted by another, only a few body lengths away, which had already spun its own web. The spiders no longer seemed to be waiting for flies, only for the next move their rival was going to make. But neither stirred. Merely the faintest of quivers ran down their thin legs onto the threads.
Bada looked away and excitedly prepared to paint. He placed a small, square leaf of paper from his album on the table and rubbed some ink. He wet the brush and smoothed it on the peach stone to make the tip as fine as possible.
One finger length above the centre of the page and a little to the left, he very carefully drew the fine outline of a spider, about the size of his thumbnail, two minute dots as eyes and, radiating from the centre of the body, four pairs of legs that mirrored each other. The tips of these eight legs together described an exact circle. The insect’s body pointed to the lower right-hand corner of the paper.
Below this spider and a touch to the right he now drew a second spider whose body was oriented so that the line of its axis crossed that of the first spider in the centre of the paper. All that distinguished the second spider from the first was that its back right leg was at an angle rather than stretched out, hinting that it would be likely to make the next move.
Bada had drawn no webs, only spiders’ bodies with outspread legs the width of a hair, yet a fine network of silver threads appeared to span the picture.
But neither the first nor the second spider sat in the centre of this web, for it was the centre of the paper. An invisible spider sat there, mesmerizing the eye and spinning a web of meaning across the whole picture.
Neither of the two spiders could compete with the third. They did not see it. All they noticed was that the centres of their webs were too close to each another. They would never reach the spot where their paths intersected.
And so they were frozen in perpetual anticipation.
Two spiders
39 Bada Shanren received a letter from someone who signed his name as Shitao. The man wrote that he had been born in the province of Guangxi. When he was three years old his father, the Prince of Jingjiang, had died in an internal power struggle between the last Mings. His father was a descendant of the eldest brother of the founder of the Ming dynasty. He and Bada were thus distant relatives.
After his father’s death he had lived in anonymity for many years, Shitao wrote. He had called himself The Survivor of Jingjiang. Eventually he had entered a Buddhist monastery, where he gave himself the name Monk with the Gourd. In the monastery he had started painting with ink. Many years later he had abruptly left. For a time now he had been living as a vagabond in the southerly provinces.
I have many existences, but in painting I am always myself , he wrote.
Then Shitao addressed Bada: In Yangzhou, the artistic and economic centre of our age, I had the opportunity to discover your work. This induced me to write and make contact with you.
Bada read on: Master Shanren, your paintings and calligraphy are the greatest and most accomplished I know. Your pictures exist for eternity. Under many different names they are in circulation or in the possession of fools, but I am one of the few who know they were all painted by the same hand which now holds this piece of paper. It was a monk who confided in me, a monk who had been under the tutelage of Abbot Hongmin and who
How horrified it must be! A fellow member of its species had turned up, no doubt ready to net the entire supply of flies in this corner with a new web. The second spider moved straight to the centre of its web, awaiting in irritation the approaches of the first.
When the first spider likewise reached the centre of its web, still intact, it was thus confronted by another, only a few body lengths away, which had already spun its own web. The spiders no longer seemed to be waiting for flies, only for the next move their rival was going to make. But neither stirred. Merely the faintest of quivers ran down their thin legs onto the threads.
Bada looked away and excitedly prepared to paint. He placed a small, square leaf of paper from his album on the table and rubbed some ink. He wet the brush and smoothed it on the peach stone to make the tip as fine as possible.
One finger length above the centre of the page and a little to the left, he very carefully drew the fine outline of a spider, about the size of his thumbnail, two minute dots as eyes and, radiating from the centre of the body, four pairs of legs that mirrored each other. The tips of these eight legs together described an exact circle. The insect’s body pointed to the lower right-hand corner of the paper.
Below this spider and a touch to the right he now drew a second spider whose body was oriented so that the line of its axis crossed that of the first spider in the centre of the paper. All that distinguished the second spider from the first was that its back right leg was at an angle rather than stretched out, hinting that it would be likely to make the next move.
Bada had drawn no webs, only spiders’ bodies with outspread legs the width of a hair, yet a fine network of silver threads appeared to span the picture.
But neither the first nor the second spider sat in the centre of this web, for it was the centre of the paper. An invisible spider sat there, mesmerizing the eye and spinning a web of meaning across the whole picture.
Neither of the two spiders could compete with the third. They did not see it. All they noticed was that the centres of their webs were too close to each another. They would never reach the spot where their paths intersected.
And so they were frozen in perpetual anticipation.
Two spiders
39 Bada Shanren received a letter from someone who signed his name as Shitao. The man wrote that he had been born in the province of Guangxi. When he was three years old his father, the Prince of Jingjiang, had died in an internal power struggle between the last Mings. His father was a descendant of the eldest brother of the founder of the Ming dynasty. He and Bada were thus distant relatives.
After his father’s death he had lived in anonymity for many years, Shitao wrote. He had called himself The Survivor of Jingjiang. Eventually he had entered a Buddhist monastery, where he gave himself the name Monk with the Gourd. In the monastery he had started painting with ink. Many years later he had abruptly left. For a time now he had been living as a vagabond in the southerly provinces.
I have many existences, but in painting I am always myself , he wrote.
Then Shitao addressed Bada: In Yangzhou, the artistic and economic centre of our age, I had the opportunity to discover your work. This induced me to write and make contact with you.
Bada read on: Master Shanren, your paintings and calligraphy are the greatest and most accomplished I know. Your pictures exist for eternity. Under many different names they are in circulation or in the possession of fools, but I am one of the few who know they were all painted by the same hand which now holds this piece of paper. It was a monk who confided in me, a monk who had been under the tutelage of Abbot Hongmin and who
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