William Vollmann - Kissing the Mask - Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater, with Some Thoughts on Muses (Especially Helga Testorf), Transgender Women, ... Geishas, Valkyries and Venus Figurines

A drawing instructor of my acquaintance, who has employed nude models for many years now, said that in his opinion womanly grace is the result of someone’s being at ease in her body, attractive to the gaze, and willing to offer her beauty to the eyes of others. (The American fashion magazines agree; they often say that grace equals confidence.) One of his models was now ageing and had become self-conscious about posing with younger women; all the same, he saw no reason why she might not retain her grace in old age if she continued to exercise it.

Mystery (which surely includes understatement), concentration, gender harmony, self-awareness and distance from self, consciousness of transience — this very short list of qualities appears to be a trifle mechanical, like a template for a mask as opposed to the animated mask itself, with the actor inside it. In part this animation achieves its success by giving off the shock of reality itself, of a person whose power of attraction over us is so great precisely because we could never have imagined her; she is alive, unique, unforeseeable. But much of the effect does come about mechanistically; a honeybee leads her hive-sisters to the richest flowers by means of a dance, and the graceful woman carries herself in obedience to (or in some rare cases in reaction to, but even then in reference to) her time’s rules of carriage, beauty and the like. “Movement metaphors distinguish male from female,” writes a feminist scholar of dance, who has compiled a very interesting table of “stereotypical nonverbal gender behavior”: For instance, in comparison to men women make smaller gestures (in part because shorter limbs, more constricting clothes and custom constrain them), but they smile more; their movements are more “emotional, expressive” and horizontal, their gazes more submissive and averted.

But then, the experience and interpretation of loveliness is always, as an aesthetician has said, a work in progress, “completed only when beauty has nothing more to offer”; which is why our list could not be complete without killing several of its own quantities, such as mystery — not to mention grace itself. And so I return to Zeami, hoping for help in seeking to uncover with words what lies beyond words.

Once again I remember his prescription from “Kakyo”: Forget the details of a play in order to perceive it whole. Then forget the play itself, focusing on the actor. Next, forget the actor and study his spirit. Finally, forget his spirit; and what remains will be Noh itself.

Accordingly, I propose to forget face, body and clothes in order to take in the entire impression that the woman makes. Next, forget her impression and consider its maker: her . Now forget her, and perhaps you may find a way to see her soul. At the last, forget even that, and then you will know her grace.

The Loveliness of Lady Yang

Once upon a time in China, near the center of the eighth century, the Tang Dynasty Emperor Xuan-zon became enthralled by a certain Lady Yang Yu-han, also known as Yang Kuei-fei, who was at that time his son’s wife; no matter; Lady Yang rapidly became the Prized Consort. “Tresses like a cloud, face like a flower” is how the poet Bo Ju-yi describes her in his “Song of Lasting Pain.” In the twelfth century, another Chinese author invokes the ideal singing girl: “As lovely as jade, with rosy lips, white teeth, and a complexion like ice.” Perhaps that is how Lady Yang was. When she craved dragon’s-eye fruits, the Emperor established a chain of post horses in order to rush them to her fresh. Soon her relatives had become noble and rich; how could that have gone otherwise? It is equally, since consequently, no surprise that after her uncle’s rebellion-guilt had been rightly or wrongly established, angry officers and courtiers demanded Lady Yang’s execution. “His Majesty knew that it could not be avoided,” writes the ninth-century author Chen Hong, “and yet he could not bear to see her die, so he turned his sleeve to cover his face as the envoys dragged her off.” What kind of love was this? Why could he not have abdicated, or died with her? Perhaps he thought it his duty to remain above ground, or possibly he did not adore her as much as the legends say; but very likely the choice did not occur to him. And so Lady Yang was strangled.

This story, which in many versions concludes with a sadly supernatural reunion by proxy between the two lovers, took place not far from the city of Xian, whose narrow high-walled streets remind me of Peshawar’s with their old stone and brick and signlessness. The many-notched old wall bears many arches; the old streets are quieter and dirtier than those of many other Chinese cities. Elderly people sit in chairs on the sidewalk; men stand sweaty and stripped to the waist; it is late afternoon in an air-conditioned restaurant into which man are carrying cases of beer. The waitresses are laughing, lazing and flirting. One sleeps, with her dark head tucked down on the table between her crimson-clad shoulders; and in this extremely modern-looking place of new tables and polished granite tiles, everybody engages in what a Westerner would call “doing nothing,” because Xian dreams and dreams, her pillow being the dust of the past. Whomever I asked about Lady Yang knew her and presented an opinion without surprise or excitement. The long past of China felt far more present here than the most recent previous war ever had in my own country. After all, Lady Yang’s story was taught in primary school.

A quarter-hour away by car from the long white trenches where the famous Terra Cotta Warriors stand, some of them headless, many attended by horses of the same colorlessness as they (for centuries have licked away the vivid glaze), the Royal Baths still remain, and here, in the twelve-sided Crabapple Pool, Lady Yang used to bathe while the Emperor watched. Far down within the lacquered red railings lies that dry cavity where, according to the mural one sees at her tomb, her pale and chubby nakedness drowsed within a gold-rimmed border; now there is no gold, and a tour guide gripping a yellow flag speaks into her microphone, causing tourists to gaze dully down into the emptiness. Once upon a time there was a Lady Yang; she was a pawn, a corrupting influence or both; now she is a flock of poems.

By taxi, at least by a certain taxi with a red and silver talisman hanging from the mirror and a Chairman Mao song on the cassette player, it takes an hour to reach the town of Ma Mei Zhen, where anyone can direct the traveller to Ma We Po; and here Lady Yang is buried. The flickering of a flashlight discovers the pale white figurines of representative grave-goods, but none of them come from the tomb itself, which is a beehive-shaped mound now covered with bricks because people kept coming here to steal the earth which enclosed her, on account of its beauty-working properties. By the tomb stands the name-marker, a black tongue engraved with gold. A marble statue depicts her as uncharacteristically slender, with mushroom-gill hair and her trademark tree-peony in it. The smell of stone in the rain, then the mound, then the town far away, blue-green with fields, noisy with engines and horns whose sounds rise up like incense, all this comprises another of China’s multitudinous islands of tranquil ancientness.

The taxi waited. Soon we returned, passing white-clad minions in the greenery beneath the wall, where people exercised like armies every morning; then came the train station with its two giant characters for Xian, and a flag in between. The driver said: “Anyhow, Lady Yang had body odor. The history says this. But the Emperor liked it.”

What other enticements had she possessed? Bo Ju-yi writes that her “helplessness so charming” when attendants escorted her out of the bath allured the Emperor to her for the first time. (Bando Tamasaburo again: “When they are slightly uncomfortable, women are more erotic.”)