On Spiders: An Eight-Legged Essay
Will Buckingham’s essay, On Spiders: An Eight-Legged Essay, takes up the theme of how literature is woven.
A woven work itself, this piece threads together Chinese theories of literature, Greek myth, and contemporary science to explore Liu’s claim that pattern, or wen 文, is fundamental to the universe.
The “eight-legged essay” (八股文 bāgǔwén) was a form of essay invented by the poet Wang Anshi (1021–1086), and used in imperial exams in the Chinese Ming and Qing dynasties. Other than having eight legs, this piece doesn’t reflect the traditional form established by Wang…
The original text was in English, with translation into Chinese by Sipei Lu.
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On Spiders: An Eight-Legged Essay
1. Spider
Liu Xie’s fifth century masterpiece on the art of writing, the Wenxin diaolong, or The Heart of Literature and the Carving of Dragons, makes no mention of spiders. But late one spring, I go to the park close to where I live — by the exercise machines nobody uses, within earshot of a busy road — to think about Liu Xie. And as I lie beside the long grasses the municipal authorities have left untended to encourage wildlife, I see something move: a spider tending its web.
She is a garden spider, Araneus diadematus, her brown back mottled yellow and white. The web stretches between a wide blade of grass, and the buttress of a nearby bush. The web has been torn by an insect that has broken free, and the tiny spider is meticulously drawing threads across the gaps, liquid meeting air to become silk.
I watch her go about her work, and think of the opening line of Liu’s text:
Pattern is a very great power indeed — Is it not born alongside heaven and earth?
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2. Hyphology
How is the world knitted together? What does it mean to weave a text? What does it mean to weave a life? Liu draws together the threads of his treatise on the warp and weft of questions such as these.
“Emotion,” Liu writes, “is the warp of literature, and words are the weft: if the warp is correct then the weft will follow, if the inner logic is clear, the words will flow: this is how one establishes the source of literature.”
Barthes calls it hyphology, from the Greek hyphos ὕφος. “The text is made, is worked out in a perpetual interweaving,” Barthes writes. “Lost in this tissue — this texture — the subject unmakes himself, like a spider dissolving in the constructive secretions of its web.”
Liu Xi builds his web meticulously. He has read everything. An obsessive hyphologist, he knits together his learning to ask how patterned language can reflect the patterned brocade of the world.
Liu is a spider in the archive.
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3. Arachne
The weaver Arachne angered Athene. As punishment for her offence — and it is not hard to offend a goddess — she was turned into a spider.
What changes, in the transformation from Arachne the weaver to Arachne the spider? Everything except the weaving.
Arachne the weaver was accustomed to standing back, contemplating the pattern of her work from the outside, and proclaiming it good. Arachne the spider was immersed in the patterns she made and remade. She inhabited them. They became the horizons of her world.
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4. Horizons
For Arachne transformed, the web is everything. It is a trembling extension of the body. It is the mind. It is the world. Threads of connection extending outwards. Concentric rings hung with dew, furred with frost.
This is a problem for those of us who write. Immersed in the work, who can truly stand back to see the unfolding patterns for what they are? We are spiders in the centre of the webs we weave. The work too close, too intimate to see it clear. What else can we do, but go on spinning?
This is also a problem for those of us who live, whether we write or not. What is this pattern that is taking shape? What meanings could life possibly have?
Questions such as these run up against the limits of what we can know. They blur at the edges to an uncertain horizon. But even if we cannot see beyond the limits of our world, sometimes in the web of things we can sense a certain trembling.
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5. Body
The web blurs the boundaries of the body. Where does the spider end? At the threshold of the carapace, the abdomen and cephalothorax, the legs and pedipalps? Or somewhere beyond — at the fuzzy horizons of experience, where web meets leaf, where leaf meets branch, where the branch plunges down to the tangled roots of the waste-ground?
Some call it extended cognition: the spider in its web being an exemplary case. The web is what the spider thinks with, part of the organism. A gust of wind, the struggle of a fly, the vibration of a thread — the shuddering of the world is felt in the body, in the entrails.
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6. Patterns
We are saturated by the life of the senses. The world is a luxuriant, patterned thing, and we are vessels equipped with feeling, thought, and language. So how could we not spin patterns of our own?
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7. Ease
The art is of writing, Liu tells us, is the art of nourishing our vitality.
Or not even this. It is the art of allowing our vitality to be nourished by the abundance of the world. Our emotions unimpeded, in harmony with the grain of things — writing is not suffering.
I wonder if the spider suffers, if it labours, as it makes its web. Or does it just follow the threads that shimmer in the afternoon light — the many forking paths.
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8. Spontaneity
In the fourth century, the writer Zhang Wang wandered through the tangled reeds far from the city. And there, he became enchanted by a spider’s web. He marvelled at the spider’s ingenuity, its apparent ease, its self-sufficiency, the spontaneity with which it spun threads, the way it entrusted its wispy nature to heaven and earth. The spider, Zhang wrote, “is all at once without hindrance and without thought.”
Liu Xie makes no mention of spiders. But that afternoon in the park, as I watch my spider Araneus diadematus, I think about Liu Xie, and I think about how pattern is a very great power indeed, born together with heaven and earth.
The spider puts the finishing touches to her web, letting things unfold in accordance with the tides and currents of the world.
Then she just hangs there, mid-air, waiting.
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一篇关于蜘蛛的八股文
译者：陆思培
一、蜘蛛
刘勰在他公元五世纪的文论杰作《文心雕龙》中并没有提到过蜘蛛。在一个春末时节，我来到离家不远的一座公园，在没人使用的健身器材旁边——在这儿还能听到不远处马路上嘈杂的声音——思索刘勰的著作。市政当局为了让野生动物有处栖居，故意让这里荒草丛生。我躺在草地里，看到一个东西在动：一只蜘蛛在修补她的网。
这是一只十字园蛛，学名是Araneus diadematus。她的背部是褐色的，带着黄色和白色的斑点。蛛网横跨在一片宽叶草和附近树丛的板根之间。看上去，一只昆虫曾被蛛网捕获，但最终挣脱了，因而破坏了蛛网。这只小小的蜘蛛正细心地在撕裂处织网，她吐出液体，与空气交融成丝。
我一边看着她工作，一边思索着刘勰著作的开篇之句：
文之为德也大矣，与天地并生者。
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二、织物论
世界是如何编织在一起的？编织一个文本意味着什么？生命又是如何被编织呢？这些问题纵横交错，构成了刘勰著作的经纬。
“情者文之经，辞者理之纬；经正而后纬成，理定而后辞畅：此立文之本源也。”刘勰这样写道。
巴特将其称为织物论，取自希腊语“hyphos ὕφος”。巴特写道：“在不停的编织中，文被制就出来；主体隐没于这织物、这纹理内，自我消融了，一如蜘蛛叠化于蛛网这极富创造性的分泌物内。”
刘勰精心地编织属于他的网络。他是一个孜孜不倦的学习者，他阅览群书，然后把学到的内容编织成文本，并发问“文”如何能展现这世界的纹理和图案。
刘勰是一只活在档案中的蜘蛛。
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三、阿拉克涅
纺织女阿拉克涅激怒了女神雅典娜（女神们总是很容易就被激怒）。作为惩罚，她被变成了一只蜘蛛。
纺织女阿拉克涅变成了蜘蛛阿拉克涅。一切都变了，但只有编织这件事没有变。
纺织女阿拉克涅习惯于退后一步，从外部思索作品图案的构成。“真是一件好作品啊，”她会这样说。而蜘蛛阿拉克涅则完全沉浸在她不断创造的图案之中。她与她的创作融为一体，这些图案成为她世界的视界。
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四、视界
对于蜘蛛阿拉克涅，网就是一切。它颤动着，它是蜘蛛身体的延伸，是她的意识，她的世界。丝线相互连结，向外延伸。蛛网的同心环挂着露水，承受风霜。
我们这些写作者也面临同样的问题。我们沉浸于作品中，谁能真正退后一步，看清自己正在编织和展现的图案？我们是自己所编之网中的蜘蛛——作品与我们太近、太密切了，我们难以将它看得清楚。除了继续编织，我们还能做什么？ 无论是否写作，我们作为人，都面临这样的问题。我们的生活正在构建着怎样的图案？生命究竟能有何种意义？
我们有限的智识不足以回答这些问题。它们边界模糊，触及不确定的视界。但即便我们无法跳脱自身的限制去看世界，身处事物网络中的我们有时也能感知到某种颤动。
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五、身体
蛛网模糊了身体的边界。而蜘蛛这个概念的边界在哪里？是蜘蛛的甲壳、腹部、头胸、腿和触肢构成的身体吗？还是要延伸到“体验”的模糊层面，例如蛛网与树叶交汇之处、树叶与树枝相连之处亦或深植于废土、错综复杂的根系之中？ 有人将蜘蛛和她的网称为扩展认知的一个典型例子。蜘蛛用网来思考，网是有机体的一部分。一阵风，一只苍蝇的挣扎，一根蛛丝的振动——世界的颤动被蜘蛛的身体感受到，在她的脏腑之间。
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六、图案，或“文”
我们的生活被感官所充盈。世界是一个华美的、有着丰富图案的事物，而我们是被赋予感觉、思维和语言的容器。因此，我们怎能不去编织我们自己的图案呢？
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七、从容
刘勰告诉我们，写作就是滋养我们的生命力。 甚至不止如此。写作是让我们的生命力在这个世界的纷杂和丰沛中得到滋养的艺术。写作让我们的情感与万物融洽——写作不是痛苦。 我不知道蜘蛛是否受苦，是否在织网时感到辛劳。或者它所做的只是跟随着午后光线中闪烁的蛛丝，沿着那众多岔开的路径前进。
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八、发乎自然
公元四世纪时，东晋作家张望漫步在远离城市的蒿草丛中。在那里，他被一只蜘蛛的网所吸引。他对蜘蛛的天才、自得和发乎自然的纺丝动作感到惊叹。它虽然身体纤弱，却毫不怀疑地将自己寄托于天地。张望写道：“伊蜘蛛之为虫，纵微性乎天壤，禀妙造于化灵，忽有碍而无相。”
刘勰并未提及蜘蛛。然而，那天下午，当我在公园里注视着那只十字园蛛时，我想起刘勰的著作，以及他所言的“文之为德也大矣，与天地并生者”。
蜘蛛为她的蛛网作了最后的修整，任由一切随着世界的潮汐和涌动展开。
然后，它就在半空中悬停，等待。