The Spoils of Poynton: reading Henry James in the light of William James and Seng Zhao (Zhao Lun).

Chen, Shudong

James's late novels, especially The Spoils of Poynton, are like an opaque mirror that reflects not only an ambiguous image of reality but also an equally impenetrable mind. But, first and foremost, it reflects itself as much the way it reflects reality as Wittgenstein would so suggest. The reality is, in other words, partially the making of the mirror that reflects it. So what are our overall impressions of James' late texts as reflected in The Spoils of Poynton? They are loaded with actions, which, however, oft en appear quite actively actionless or immobile. Noh Theater, with action or motion so restrained or controlled as if only to suggest an intense drama of stillness. However famed as a careful writer, James' narrative, as in The Spoils of Poynton, also strikes readers being wordy, repetitive, or sometimes overly decorative. Also characteristic of The Spoils of Poynton, the novel is so simultaneously realistic and surrealistic, philosophical and psychological. It is, for instance, so packed with dramatic or melodramatic actions and dialogues, such as the spoils being shift ed in haste and the intense verbal barrages constantly exchanged, but these otherwise quite realistically depicted actions oft en yield only "weird" impressions as if they do not take place in normal circumstances but only in nightmares or in narratives with special cinematographic effects. The actions in the novel oft en seem so spellbound. Peoples are running but, as if all on treadmills, can hardly move a step beyond where they are. Characters are related to one another in such a way that they oft en appear being so transfixed and alienated from one anther however much they are so intensely involved with one another in confrontation, counteraction, or interaction. They are so close by but at the same time so far away from one another with distance in between as if only inches away but infinitely apart. In such fictional world, the flying arrow does oft en seem to stand still and a fast running rabbit can never catch up with a slow-pacing tortoise only an inch ahead. The novel also reminds me of the resourceful Monkey King in The Pilgrimage to the West, who can never get beyond the magic palm of the Rulai Buddha, no matter how fast or far away he can jump, nor can he move a step beyond the very spot where his master wants him to stay. These real and surreal scenes and the actions in the novel are oft en so skillfully hinted at with vivid descriptions, such as this one that compares Fleda's status of being so agitated to "the revolutions of a spinning top," which is "as swift and fine" as it is so spellbound and motionless, since Fleda "couldn't even feel herself move" moving so fast around (James 1984, 415).

To understand the situation, we need adequate tools and I find them in William James and Seng Zhao. (2) William James's radical empiricism could help us better understand overall "scheme of things" not just in terms of the remarkable but the barely unnoticeable as well, such as the grammatical particles. (3) For William James, to acquire "immediate feeling" or our direct experience with life, we should take these little things, such as "the conjunctions," as seriously "as primordial elements of 'fact' as ... the distinctions and disjunctions." He explains how and why we should pay attention to things which may appear as trivial or insignificant as these "prepositions, copulas, and conjunctions, 'is,' 'isn't,' 'then,' 'before,' 'in,' 'on,' 'beside,' 'between,' 'next,' 'like,' 'unlike,' 'as,' 'but.'" It is because they not only "compenetrate harmoniously" to make it possible for us to see the world as it is but also "flow out of the stream of pure experience, the stream of concretes or the sensational stream, as naturally as nouns and adjectives do, and they melt into it again as fluidly when we apply them to a new portion of the stream" (W. James 95, emphasis added). With things so related through the indispensable mediation of these "hinges," these otherwise barely noticeable "links" have thus acquired a certain irreplaceable relations-defining and things-making power as oft en so vividly reflected in James' texts. These "links," such as its, thats, whiches, etc., which are, as Seymour Chatman points out, "not merely being referred to; they are being converted--by the very grammar--into things, entities, as substantial as any character" with a consequence as "almost 'a sort of personification'"(56).

Indeed, it is this emphasized critical attention to the trivial that makes William James' "empiricism" to be so "radical." But it is also exactly the "pleasant small things" as Henry James would call them, which not only mediate but also make up the very scheme of everything as "felt life" or "conventional reality." (4) With our attention re-oriented to these trivial matters, we may then have another look at our problems in reading James or simply decide whether there are problems in the first place, such as James' oft en cited ones with minor characters as so reflected in The Spoils of Poynton. We need to decide, for instance, whether characters, such as Mrs. Gereth, Owen, and even Mona, are really so minor in the scheme of intricate network of relations so depicted in the novel or even such conventional, if not oft en convenient, literary distinctions regarding "major" and "minor" characters make any sense in terms of the Jamesian context. Are these characters really so minor after all? They are actually not so minor but instead oft en given such major roles to play like involuntary bodhisattvas in ways that Peter Hershock describes of bodhisattvas, which are not identifiable as persons but as potentially unlimited power of "pure conduct" (142, emphasis added). It is because in the closely knitted narrative work typical of James's late novels, such pre-stocked minor characters, such as Mrs. Gereth and Owen and Mona, acquire so much "unlimited power of agency and boundless interrelatedness" (Hershock 142) to be so functional within the entire "scheme of things" not just as minor characters, some kind of humble "portee," "ficelle," "an agent, pre-engaged at a high salary [who] awaits in the draughty wing with her shawl and her smelling-salts" (Edel 1318) or literary "ghosts in the vague limbo ... looking for a situation, awaiting a niche and a function" (Edel 1098) as James so teasingly oft en call them. Is not the destiny of everyone in The Spoils of Poynton, for instance, ultimately in the hand of such minor characters as Mona who decides how or which way the narrative goes? Like all his late novels, The Spoils of Poynton is full of otherwise seemingly minor "things" that make everything so related grammatically and rhetorically to enliven a simultaneously close-knit and yet open-ended narrative structure. With everything so mediated and motivated through these indispensable trivialities, the text of The Spoils of Poynton is unmistakably set in motion of congruity, coherence, and continuation. William James can be thus particularly helpful for us to understand everything in terms of specific context and situation that occasion confluent and fluid relationships, within which every single element matters regardless how "minor" and "major" as it may otherwise appear. His radical empiricism emphasizes liquid relations of interdependence and interactions via these seemingly trivial mediations. Is not the "triviality of relationship that defines personhood" in James as Richard Hocks may also ask here? (5)

Relations, oft en so characteristically embodied by these grammatical conjunctions in ways that capture William James' critical attention, are also what really interest Seng Zhao. But unlike William James, who sees in relations substantial "felt life" in becoming and in mutation, Seng Zhao sees quite the opposite, the ultimate immobility as suggested in the same motion and relation that characterize William James' philosophical observation. While emphasizing interdependence of things as does William James, Seng Zhao also suggests a possible way out of this continuous or seemingly endless loop of relations that make things appear comprehensible or "real" in the conventional sense within a paradigmatic scheme of antimony and dichotomy. If William James depicts how things are as mediated with these "hinges," Seng Zhao is interested in how life might be without them. It is one of Seng Zhao's fundamental idea that things can be bared to be substantial or emptied to be full once devoid of the relations that make them things or "conventionally real," especially with regard to our perceived and assumed cause and effect ones.

Relations, that is to say, while substantial in making things things, also becomes, at the same time, the very cause of their own denial to betray certain "crude joints" that may yield a new vision or understanding of substantial emptiness, a kind of Dasein, things that truly exist but beyond the conventional labels as either "you" (existence) or "wu" (non-existence). It is because "existence," as Seng Zhao argues, "if true, would imply self-sufficiency and permanence; it would not depend upon causation for its existence. Just so, nonexistence, if true, would imply self-sufficiency and permanence; it would not depend upon causation for its non-existence" (Liebenthal 60). Seng Zhao's great contribution, particularly with regard to our understanding of The Spoils of Poynton, should also be understood in terms of what Feng You-lan says of him in The History of Chinese Philosophy regarding how Seng Zhao makes us see "being and non-being do not involve an antithesis" and how "the true aspect of things is that they neither exist nor non-exist, or, one may also say, they both exist and do not exist" (Bode 265). Seng Zhao's idea, according to Feng, clearly goes against "the popular view of 'non-being'," which means simply "that there is nothing there, and of 'being,' that there is really and truly something there" (263) and thus suggests the possibility of seeing things not just in between but also beyond the very betweenness.

But what is immediately relevant with regard to our need to read James afresh and understand what best underlie Seng Zhao's above ideas is an adequate analogy inherent in both William James' and Seng Zhao's arguments. It is an analogy of a river. (6) For it is Seng Zhao's belief that things, such a turbulent river, seen in a sagely bird's view or utmost perspective, are not as mobile or variable in mutation, no mater how active and mobile as they are so observed or admired close by. The way Seng Zhao sees immobility particularly in comparative or comparable parallel with that of William James' perception of infinitely continuous and streamed relations can be probably "simplified," "localized," or "contextualized" for better illumination in analogy with the Yangtze River, which is so peacefully shallow, calm and still, upstream, at its very source, but so turbulent and life-threatening, downstream. Related as they are as source and the main course of the great flow, can we then say that the turbulent downstream is caused by the calmness of the upstream? We may probably rather say or see it Seng Zhao's way that the upstream and downstream simply con-exist, since the so-called source cannot empty itself to be the downstream nor could the turbulent downstream flow back to its source. But since they are indeed so related in such a way, it does make so much sense for people to say that the downstream is the result of the upstream. The downstream, then, becomes only the most ironical parody of the peacefully shallowness, calmness and stillness of upstream. If so, it would also be possible to argue that the upstream and downstream are simply immobile as they are--being so self-sufficiently locked up in the mode of co-existence, given each has to be where it is as upstream and downstream, as "cause" and "effect." (7) They are related to each other but cannot replace each other nor exchange position between each other. With William James, as with many great ancient Chinese sages, such as Laozi, Zhuangzi, Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi, etc., we certainly know how to appreciate water for its inexhaustible fluidity and flexibility as the touchiest and softest substance in the world, as it is so vividly described in Huinanzi. (8) With its tributary tenacity, flexibility, and purpose, great water ultimately overflows, outflows, or wears out whatever obstacles temporally or permanently house or detain it--the ways so profoundly appreciated by the sages. With Seng Zhao, however, what we should ultimately appreciate is probably not just such versatile substance itself but what it flows down, under, between, behind, beneath, against, through, upward, and/or forward--the very immobile, the geographical context and space that position or condition fluid substance's every single motion and movement. All motion occurs, the ways Seng Zhao sees it, as if only to show or to emphasize the very contextual stability and immobility that define how things ultimately are. It is like to say that the very nature or "innate" power of turbulent water is simultaneously defined by and defines the profound immobility of the deep valleys that enable the water to run through with such thundering noises and great motion.

Whether or not we agree with Seng Zhao the way he sees the world or whether we agree with one another the way we explain or explore him for whatever problems of our immediate concern, Seng Zhao is always helpful for us to read James afresh with whatever fresh light available from him. It will help us discuss the problems of reading Henry James, along with William James, by re-constructing a mind based on observable textual evidence. With William James, we may notice how important to appreciate the characters simultaneously within and beyond the conventional and convenient distinction of major and minor characters--to understand them afresh with particular attention to "pleasant small things" or "crude joints" that make the relation fluid and live. But with Seng Zhao, we may come to understand and appreciate otherwise incomprehensible phenomena so manifested in James, such as active actionlessness or live immobility. For all the characters in James's late novels, particularly The Spoils of the Poynton, oft en appear so self-sufficient or immobile as they are so clearly defined in terms of where they are or how they are precisely related to one another in terms of each given position, assigned spot, or designated function in the composition. They are "put" in such way to define, and to be defined by, exactly everything around them, above them, between them, behind them, beneath them, and before them. They are, in other words, so live this way to become so immobile--live only where they are with each occupied position, space, and function. With everything so characteristic of her, such as her unique sense of decency and vanity, pride and prig, Fleda, for instance, is very much like a kind of deep water fish that dies instantly once out of its natural habitat. She is so live where she is, but not even an inch beyond. It may explain why Fleda tries so hard to push Owen but fails in her attempt, no matter how what she desires for seems so close by--within her convenient reach. In the same light, we may also see why Mrs. Gereth does not succeed, either, no matter how well she calculates and manipulates. Being so fit or live where they are, both Fleda and Mrs. Gereth seem so spellbound or locked up to be so immobile.

With Seng Zhao's philosophy so analogized along with William James' radical empiricism, the rhetorical pattern and effects so characteristic of James' late novels, especially the Spoils of Poynton thus make more sense regarding our attempted understanding of James' work and mind. All characteristic "contradictions," such as active actionlessness, mobile immobility, or still fluidity, in other words, could now be understood in terms of James' peculiar narrative style or structure so depicted in Seymour Chatman's Later Style of Henry James. It is both so tightly close-knit and infinitely open-ended to make it not only economical but also possible for James to narrate his stories with an intensely simple and adaptable structure for infinite nominalization, itemization, cataloguing, or grouping with whatever detail or characters in a very action packed and compact way. Nominalization prevails in James' late texts because "actions are not there for their own sake but as interpreted ... since nouns are more easily itemized and catalogued than verbs" for immediate inspection as topics (Chatman 52). It is also, in other words, "simpler, more direct, more economical to communicate with [given character] in the expository rather than the narrative mode" (52) James's tendency for "grouping" in his late novels is in line with his observed intensive use of non-transitive verbs, such as copulas, passives, and intransitives, which are all convenient for listing and juxtaposition. This preferred narrative style indicates that what James relies on is not single clear-cut action but a series of nominally "juxtaposed" and "etherized" actions that nonetheless suggest strong sense of motion, movement, and mood. What action may possibly illustrate or infer is clearly more important for James than the action itself. This is the narrative structure that provides indispensable framework for James to use abstractions, such as intangible nouns, whole clauses and sentences, even vague references, which are so characteristic of his late texts. The same network of intricately interwoven relations also enables James to use deictic pronouns extensively to replace the abstractions with an impact of "profound confirmation of their existence" (56).

Thus the use of "these floods of its, thats, these, those, and hiches, and a variety of deictic nouns like' thing', 'one', and 'matter'" in The Spoils of Poynton, as in his other late novels, such as The Wings of the Dove, are not, as William James would also agree, "the products of inadvertent clumsiness, marks of the kind of ineptness that undermines the writing of college freshmen" but "infinite evidence of James' artistry" (62) to make things happen or be through compatible and convertible power of word relations. With his narrative so packed and compact with nominally "etherized" verbal actions, his text as in The Spoils of Poynton appears oft en so dramatic but without a drama. Indeed, every action so narrated or nominalized oft en seems to "move away from, not toward, drama." It is as usual a quite expected result when all "acts become nominalized, and their predicate is copular, the verb form for exposition, for a listing of peculiars and propositions." That is to say, "instead of actors performing on a stage, there are increasing numbers of statements of the existence of things" with action that "tends to be durative, not momentaneous" and "one state of affairs [prevails] until replaced by another" (80). But, at the same time, the tendency away from drama also dramatizes so much in James. It is because, abstract words, such as "equinity" instead of "horse" or "running" instead of "run," so favored by James, "tend to overdramatize and inflate perfectly ordinary actions to which they are applied, hence they carry strong hyperbolic overtones"--comparable to super active animals awakened from being tranquilized. (9) Inevitably, "one result of the abstract language is a kind of portentousness," which quite ironically, constantly risk [James] the accusation that he is merely dressing up the trivialities of his society in fancy terminology" or verbally dramatizing his narrative with "the intangible words [that] lose much of their ordinary intellectual substance" however much "portentous words are oft en as much a source of vigour as are James' metaphors" with "the whole scale of mental action ... moved to a higher pitch" (Chatman 104-106). With textual evidence so reevaluated in the light of Seng Zhao and William James, what emerges is an opportunity for us to have another look of a creative mind that could be so adeptly packed and compact with actions, so actively actionless, to see everything in a bird's view or "worldly transcendental" vision. As a novelist especially in his late career, what James really cares about is not how to achieve plenitude through "assemblages of concrete particulars" but rather through "his high order abstractions" because "intangibility is deeply implicated in the whole Jamesian effect." James does not care so much "an intense picture of physical reality" as does Hemingway. How things really sound, smell, feel, in other words, is at least not his primary concern, nor is "the physical environment," which oft en appears "evoked only grudgingly by James, as if out of a sense of duty, to flesh out the moral and psychological problems that for the real substance" (Chatman 78-82). What really concerns him is, first and foremost, his donnee, a kind of "matured seed" of his utmost idea, ideal, or "reality," of which not only environment but also everything else becomes illustrative. (10) It is this karma like donnee that enriches and enlivens James' late novels. James is so concerned about his "donnee" as if it is karma of himself. As indicated by so many such accounts in his notebook and Prefaces, instead of caring for how things really sound, smell, and feel, James is concerned about how his donnee may plausibly sound, smell, and feel in ways like karma being reincarnated. It is, indeed, with such a "germ," his karma-like donnee that The Spoils of Poynton germinates as a novel, as James himself so confesses in the Preface to The Spoils of Poynton, for instance.

Similarly, neither is James initially ever concerned about such crucial details as to whether or how his new-born, Strether, should be reincarnated as an American, Englishman, widower, journalist, lawyer, novelist, clergyman, or whether he should live in London or elsewhere when he starts on The Ambassadors. For James, whose mind tends to grasp things in utmost perspective, in quiescence, in contemplative tranquility, such "details are secondary, chosen on grounds of plausibility of expedition: merely secondary" (Chatman 79). They are "all illustrative" as James is not "seized by a man, but by an abstract situation, and he is looking for a man to fit it, to make it likely." He even calls this way of thinking, not without humor, as his natural habit of "putting the cart before the horse" (Edel 1073). For James, his next task is then "to find the flesh--and not too much of it, but enough--to adorn the situational skeleton." He is indeed so "as preoccupied by 'plenitude' as by 'congruence'" (Chatman 79). What James seem to see in his donnee and for his donnee is an opportunity or "the possibility of some little illustrative action." To understand how his donnee come into life, "'illustrative' is indeed the keyword," especially with regard to James' closely knitted and infinitely open-ended narrative structure. For the reincarnation of his donnee, he may have finally found temporary or permanent jobs for his various ready-made pre-stocked minor characters, particularly his female ones, which for James, are indeed so indispensable as "immitigable womankind " (Gard 331) for his narrative as the abstractions, intangibles, and deictic pronouns that he so much relies on. These pre-stocked minor characters are indeed his "immitigable womankind " no matter how James likes to tease them as his humble "portee," "ficelle," "an agent, pre-engaged at a high salary [who] awaits in the draughty wing with her shawl and her smelling-salts," or his various literary "ghosts in the vague limbo ... looking for a situation, awaiting a niche and a function." Similar to his involuntary tendency towards over-dramatization explainable at least partially in terms of his intensive use of abstract words, which "tend to over-dramatize and inflate perfectly ordinary actions to which they are applied," the success of his narrative regarding The Spoils of Poynton depends, as with his other late novels, very much depends on how exactly James' pre-stocked minor characters do their jobs--neither being over/underpaid nor being over performed/underperformed.

Indeed, what would be the narrative impact of such narrative structure so reflective of the creative mind that sees the world in this way? As if in perfect montage, the overall impact of such narrative structure and action is that of pro-longed and clear-cut immobility and silence that, however, has so much to speak in and for a drama of stillness as it is so clearly there in the last fire scene. The impact is also like that of Katsukushika Hokusa's "Great Waves," in which everything is so surrealistically realistic and dramatically or even melodramatically violent, calm, peaceful and motionless--with everything so irreconcilable so expressively reconciled. What oft en appears as James' narrative drawbacks regarding his late novels, such as his excessive tendency for melodrama, verbosity, and absence of realistic detail could also be now well understood as an inevitable strategic decision or choice to express the inexpressible or to reconcile the irreconcilable by means of high drama of abstraction and illustration that seeds plenitude through action packed and compact stillness or immobility. Undoubtedly reflective of James's creative mind that seeks its representation in high drama of nominalization and plenitude through a "high order abstractions." James' exploration of such narrative structure may also indicate that he tends to see or seize the world in a sagely bird's view or in utmost perspective, which means, as Seng Zhao would suggest, a mode of quiescence rather than motion. (11)

With The Spoils of Poynton as the first of his late novels, it may also signal the deathof James' youthful dream and the end of his ultimate faith in language to communicate his dream. The Spoils of Poynton, as Raymond Carney puts it, marks that "a youthful dream had died in James" (Carney xxi-ii). It is because James "had abandoned his dream of the free expression of the self in the forms of society" (xxi-ii) and begins his "authorial style," which is so "distinguishable from social styles of expression and behavior by characters in the novels" (Carney xxi-ii). Clearly, it is an inevitable strategic choice for James to make in order to "express intensities of desire and richness of consciousness that have become novelisticlly unspeakable in the forms of dialogue, plot, and social interaction." Logically, "the expressive gap" and the "novelisticlly unspeakable" lead James to find ways to vary his prose style "to fill that fundamental expressive gap in order that anything can be expressed in the novel at all." He has no choice but resort to "the whole paraphernalia of the late manner--the melodramatic heightenings, the adjectival and adverbial insistencies, and the elaborated cadences of the late work." As the first of each of James' great, late novels, The Spoils of Poynton indeed ends up by "bringing a reader and the principal characters to the same tragic recognition that is forced on Fleda in this final scene: a recognition of the fundamental untranslatability of our imaginings and desires into the languages of social expression and worldly experience" (xxi-ii). The novel's tragic ending, however, is only the most dramatic of the quiet desperation that characterizes the impossible relationship in the novel. So alienated while so closely related from one another, everyone in the novel seems to live in the same world but of different planet at different karmic stages. What Fleda feels at the end of the novel is also true to other sentient beings in the novel, such as Mrs. Gereth, but only in a more dramatic and self-conscious level. Is not Mrs. Gereth, like Felda, from time to time, also "left with only freighted consciousness to show for all felt and experienced? There are no words either can speak, and no one who would understand to speak them to, to express [her] consciousness in the world" (Carney xxi-ii).

Thus, what we may have ultimately learned in the light of William James and Seng Zhao regarding Henry James' late novels is to treat the texts as what they are instead of assuming any direct causal relations in haste as to miss any hidden sagely view or whatever becomes of a "Buddhistic contemplation" (James 352) in the text. It means, in other words, seeking opportunities to read James afresh beyond our usual reading habit for "conventional reality" or, in Seng Zhao's term, "conventional truth" (laukika satya) between and beyond any describable relations or "languages of social expression and worldly experience." While William James and Seng Zhao both emphasize the importance of such trivial or "pleasant small things" that make relations fluid and live, Seng Zhao suggests additional ways for us to understand them. He wants us to see everything as what it is not only in accordance with relations but also in spite of them the way that shows in James' late fictional world. In this world, everything does not just come out of interdependence but of independence as well. It is because the relations that seem to bind everything together can often be quite congruous or in good parallel but not necessarily "hierarchical," "casual," or "logical." James' late novels, particularly The Spoils of Poynton, can certainly be understood in this regard along with art exhibition in a museum. While each character in the novel can indeed be and should be fully grasped as one of the group, each can also be appreciated as a one completely of itself and by itself, however each is so painstakingly positioned along with others in a group under a particular theme for a special occasion, such as a seasonal art exhibition. We may make each selected piece of artwork for the occasion fit the group the best we can in terms of a perceived new relation and theme, but we cannot redo the piece itself for whatever new group it is in. So perfect in her position and with such a pose as who she is, Fleda, for instance, is so much like a perfect still life painting that any slight alternation for improvement or change in accordance with everything new around her for exhibition could only result in its total destruction.

Similarly, characters in The Spoils of Poynton, including such pre-stocked minor characters as Mrs. Gereth, are thus also very much like pieces of artworks grouped for exhibition at Nelson Art Gallery with their very relatedness to one another so occasioned for the reincarnation of a given theme through exhibition. Like artworks in exhibition, they often stand out so sharply by themselves amid or against one another obviously not only because of but also in spite of how they are related or positioned as a group. Being so completely or uniquely relational the way they are, they each can be so fully appreciated individually even without the network of relations that seem to enliven and enrich their existence. After visiting the exhibition, some of the artworks can still be live in audience's memory while others or the very group context from which these pieces originally emerge could completely fade away. Characters in James, whether "major" or "minor," in other words, can thus equally be appreciated as who they are, because they each can be so alive with and without one another as indicated by the same relation. Mrs. Gereth, for example, could never be so live or memorable if she can only be remembered as a "fool" or "foil" of Fleda, nor can so many other memorable minor characters in James' other late novels, such as Maria Gostrey in The Ambassadors. In James' late novels, which are so much about the common bond of everything involved in a tightly knitted group of characters, each component, individual character, or event, such as the unforgettable fire scene at the end of The Spoils of Poynton, is, at the same time, so above the relation. It is because everything, like each character, is so complete of itself and by itself--exactly because of the very relation, which, in this case, does not seem to blur but only to illuminate each component's some kind of karma-like, pre-relational independence. Such intricate relations inherent in James' late novels and revealed in the light Seng Zhao could be further understood in terms of jazz performance, for which, as in the case of Miles Davis, each musician in the group must be live being who he really is in order to be live in the group. The very relation of interdependence constructed for the performance, in other words, does not deprive each musician of his "self " but instead illustrate and enliven it. Similarly, the grouped relations in The Spoils of Poynton as in his other late novels thus indicate that each character or event should have its own life before and after the particular occasion however much each may appear to be live only as the off spring of this relation. Whether we may feel comfortable with such phenomena so typical of James' late novels, which are only involuntarily or indirectly acknowledged in terms of James' often criticized tendency towards dramatic or melodramatic effects in scenery and character depiction, we now need to address them afresh in the helpful light of Seng Zhao.

With such a close-knitted and open-ended narrative structure that allows infinitely multipliable detail for decoration, illustration, scenic effects, or drama to enliven and enrich his theme, what James's late novels, now re-read in the light of Seng Zhao along with that of William James, often appears so motionlessly mobile or actively actionless. It is like a kind of indescribable state or action--as substantial and authentic as simultaneously between and beyond, you (existence) and wu (non-existence), action and stillness, cause and effect, or whatever describable in a vocabulary of antimony and dichotomy. What Seng Zhao suggests, though hard to understand in the first place, could now also be grasped in analogy with John Donne's innovative image of compass in his famous "metaphysical" poem, "Valediction, A Forbidden Mourning." The stillness or firmness of one foot makes it possible for the other of the compass to move all around, although the stillness of the one is not the cause of the other's motion however related or interdependent as they are. Reading James' late novels, especially The Spoils of Poynton, is also like seeing a forest which is so perfectly immobile but, at the same time, so mobile or full of actions with all the mist, light, air around it, about it, in it to create so much mysterious touch of motion, movement, and mood. With his close-knit and open-ended, action packed and compact narrative structure, what James does with his late novels is not counting or investigating individual trees but mapping the vivid life of stillness, the eternal power of a forest with all that around, in between, behind, beneath, and beyond. The beauty of his late narratives could be further appreciated in parallel with that of Taj Mahal, so perfectly still and immobile, but simultaneously so mobile and full of life, under the sky, the heavenly curtain, which is so full of actions with its infinite celestial motion, movement, and mood. As a result, the very immobility of Taj Mahal makes itself a perfect "mirror" that reveals or reflects all the subtle heavenly motion of the sky that changes within every single second day and night. It absorbs, dissipates, and dissolves the heavenly beauty of immobile mobility. Is this what James also captures in his own "Buddhistic contemplation," a world so perfectly still in infinite motion, as The Spoils of Poynton so embodies?

References

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Chatman, Seymour. 1972. The Later Style of Henry James. Oxford, Basil Blackwell.

Dippmann, Jeffrey. 2006, "Seng Zhao." The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2007.

Edel, Leon. 1984. Henry James: Literary Criticism. 2 vol. New York: The Library of America

Gard, Roger A. 1987. Henry James the Critical Muse: Selected Literary Criticism. London: Penguin.

Garfield, Jay L.. 2003. Empty Words: Buddhist Philosophy and Cross-Cultural Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hershock, Peter D. 1996. Liberating Intimacy: Enlightenment and Social Virtuosity in Ch'an Buddhism. Albany: SUNY.

Hocks, Richard A. 1974. Henry James and Pragmatistic Thought: Study in the Relationship Between the Philosophy of William James and the Literary Art of Henry James. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

Human, David. 1988. An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court.

James, William.1996. Essays in Radical Empiricism. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

James, Henry. 1984. What Maisie Knew and The Spoils of Poynton. New York: New American Library.

Lao An, Trans. 1999. Liji, The Book of Rites: Selections. A Chinese-English Bilingual Edition. Ed. Xu Chao. Jinan, Shandong: Shandong Friendship Press.

Liebenthal, Walter. Trans. 1968. Chao Lun: The Treaties of Seng-chao. 2nd ed. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Pears, D. F. & B. F. McGuinness. Trans. 1961. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Ludwig Wittgenstein. Introd. Bertrand Russell. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Watson, Burton. Trans. 1964. Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings. New York: Columbia University Press.

(1) A short-lived, gift ed Chinese Buddho-Daoist monk of early 5th century (384-414), Seng Zhao, with his single most important essay "Zhao Lun," is reputed as the spiritual father of Chinese Chan tradition. "Considered to have been a brilliant young monk who was the principal person responsible for the transmission of Madhyamika teaching in China," Seng Zhao, as Jeffery Dippmann puts it, "has received a great deal of attention from scholars interested in resolving the question of the extent to which the Chinese fully understood the Indian religio-philosophical system and its relationship to the indigenous Daoist and Confucian traditions" (1, emphasis added). For further convenient, comprehensive and, particularly, reliable internet source on Seng Zhao by Dippmann, see The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2007.

(2) Reading James is a challenge. To deal with the challenge, we need adequate tools. But what tools to choose is a challenge itself. To avoid bungling the text, any tool that we choose to use must be a perfect fit. But to deal with James, such a "total artist" and "complete novelist," no one single tool that will be a "perfect" fit, ideally. If we need a perfect fit, it means that we need a perfect combination of tools that deal with multiple aspects of the novels one way or another. For the purpose, a cross cultural and interdisciplinary approach should be tried in the reexamination of this forever mind-boggling and thought-enticing "total artist" and "complete novelist." To understand James and his peculiar fictional world, we should, in other words, particularly heed what Wittgenstein might have insisted on the matter. For as we know in Tactatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein, using mechanics as an example, suggests, first and foremost, how we should be responsibly responsive to the world that demands different models to measure it, not just one. It is because, as he so argues, any given model that we use for the depiction of reality, however perfect as it may seem, is oft en merely a matter of choice or "option" for the sake of simplicity--not out of consideration for accuracy. Furthermore, he makes it quite clear that any given model can only indirectly describes the world because it functions very much like a bronze-mirror that catches the image of a flower or the flowing water that captures the moon. That is to say, it reflects as much itself as it reflects the objects. "The possibility of describing the world by means of Newtonian mechanics," as Wittgenstein emphasizes, for instance, "tells us nothing about the world; but what does tell us something about it is the precise way in which it is possible to describe it by these means. We are also told something about the worlds by the fact that it can described more simply with one system of mechanics than with another." He also emphasizes, "Mechanics is an attempt to construct according to a single plan all the true propositions that we need for the description of the world." Nonetheless, "the laws of physics, with all their logical apparatus, still speak, however indirectly, about the objects of the world" (Pears 137-9). Thus, it is exactly because the inevitable limits inherent in any given model as in the case of reading James, we need to borrow deferent lights here to venture for the best possible understanding of James this way.

(3) For Richard Hocks, Henry James' creative mind is "unconsciously pragmatized," For him, "William James' pragmatic thought is literally actualized as the literary art and idiom of his brother Henry James, especially so in the later works." As a result, he argues that, "whereas William is the pragmatist, Henry is, so to speak, the pragmatism; that is, he possesses the very mode of thinking that William characteristically expounds" (4). For further reference, see Richard A. Hocks (4-6).

(4) It is with Sextus, Hume, and Wittgenstein in mind, Jay Garfield oft en uses the term, "conventional reality," to suggest possible connection between West and Eastern tradition of skepticism. "Conventional truth" (laukika satya) in contrast with "final truth (paramartha satya)" is the term that Seng Zhao uses to emphasize the differences between ordinary knowledge and that of sage's. See Jay L. Garfield.

(5) In the Jamesian world, such "triviality of relationship" indeed significantly "defines personhood" as Hocks also points out with reference to The Ambassadors. Is not "poor Waymarch also poor Strether"? Is not "Strether's 'whole world,' then, in all its elements is constantly defined and rendered by each new facet of the present, no matter how deceptively trivial?" See Hocks (158).

(6) "The possibility of describing a picture ... with ... a given form," according to Wittgenstein, "tell us nothing about the picture" but rather the fact "what does characterize the picture is that it can described completely by a particular [module or form]" which is chosen over other alternatives because we want to describe the world more simply with one system ... than with another" (Pears, 139 emphasis added).

(7) What David Hume says in his Enquiry of concerning of Human Understanding to emphasize the importance of observation and experience may still sound like a quite interesting coincidence here. "Every effect is a distinct event from its cause. It could not, therefore, be discovered in the cause, and the first invention or conception of it, a priori, must be entirely arbitrary. And even after it is suggested, the conjunction of it with the cause must appear equally arbitrary; since there are always many other effects, which, to reason, must seem fully as consistent and natural. In vain, therefore, should we pretend to determine any single event, or infer any cause or effect, without the assistance of observation and experiences?" (75).

(8) See D. C. Lau and Roger Ames's translation in Yuan Dao: Tracing Dao to Its Source (104-5).

(9) Here Chatman offers a good account regarding how abstraction through nominalization in James maintains "action" in an "actionless" way, motion of immobility, or descriptiveness without describing. "Strictly speaking, abstraction is an act, not an entity, the act of classification, not the ensuing product, the general or superordinate class itself. The feature abstracted, since it is a property of an object, is an adjective, for example 'equine' or 'horsey'. But we can entitize the property or aspect by a simple grammatical conversion, nominalization the adjective; thus, it is common usage to extend 'abstraction' to refer to that property or aspect as a thing in itself: 'equinity' or 'horsiness'. The adjectives from which these nouns derive are conceived as representing qualities still in the object-nouns they modify: in 'equine animal', 'equine' is not yet an abstract word (in the strict sense) since it has not yet been removed from the object to which it is attributed. Hence, not adjectives, but their nominalizations are the only really 'abstract' words. The same can be said of verbs, since these are also attributed to (predicates of) nouns; thus 'runs' in John runs' is not abstract in the sense that 'running' is" (Chatman 4).

(10) Donnee is a term used in literary work to designate a theme or subject that becomes an assumption (or "fact") on which something else develops.

(11) Seng Zhao's argument seems to echo both Hindu and Chinese traditions that oft en tend to prefer quiescence to motion. "Therefore, when [sage] has in mind the final truth (paramartha satya)," as Seng Zhao thus puts it, "he says that (things) do not move; when he teaches conventional truth (laukika satya), he says that everything flows" (Liebenthal 50). Similarly, in the first chapter of the eponymous book, however much Zhuangzi may seem to admire the mythological fishbird Kun-Peng for its great freedom in motion and movement, which nonetheless ultimately appears as nothing more than mere illusion in contrast with shengren or sage's supreme stillness (jingji ??). For shengren as such, even the legendary kings Yao and Shun, as Confucius says in The Analects, are no match, since "they would fail short of bringing peace and harmony to people through [perfect] self-cultivation"--through utmost actionless action (8:18 emphasis added, my translation). See also 8:19. It is because, as Zhuangzi would speak through Confucius in Zhuangzi, "Men do not mirror themselves in running water--they mirror themselves in still water. Only what is still can still the stillness of other things" (Watson 65) In Liji (38), it also says that "Man is born in stillness, for stillness is his nature given by [Tian]. In response to external things, he becomes active, for activity is the expression of his desires motivated by his nature" (Lao An 170).