Wu Taotsz, the Celestial Painter

In his fortress-palace at Nankin sat the Emperor Shun-yuen. It was a torrid day of the year 750, and the Emperor was fretful. Surfeit of power, he was reflecting, did not spell content. On the contrary, like lesser surfeits, it discomposed. It was a natural paradox, perhaps, that his seeming so full should make life appear so empty. He could not, for all his omnipotence, both eat his cake and have it.

The Emperor drew his imperial yellow silk surtout querulously about him, and “wah’d” snappishly. What was wrong with everything? As the third or fourth of his dynasty—the Tang, now long matured in a peaceful despotism—he possessed the lordship of all the good that existed. And yet the good was not good enough—it was failing somehow to satisfy. And why? He wished, by the celestial dragon, that he could tell!

Shun-yuen, as the product and successor of warriors, of their kin but not of their kind, was really, had he known it, in the throes of a new birth. There was represented in him at the moment the line of demarcation between the forces of the blood and of the intellect. He stood far enough away from the spirit which had enthroned his dynasty to have developed wholly in the ameliorating atmosphere of the peace which that spirit had won for itself; and yet there survived in him a virility which vaguely aspired to new fields of conquest. Surely there was something yet to be gained from the world beside territory and power; surely to be constituted Emperor of the Sun was not to be condemned to eternal stagnation in its glare? The germ of unrecognised thoughts and aspirations moved in him like a wriggling indigestion.

Suddenly in some near corridor of the Palace there rose a sound of repressed but excited voices, awaking a sympathetic response in his own restlessness. He attributed the disturbance to the general agitation evoked by his condition, since any imperial distress was automatically reflected in the imperial household, which was constituted very much on the lines of a hive; and it was with a thrill of interest, therefore, that he observed the entrance and reverential approach of his Chamberlain Chung-chi, an official of the second rank of the opaque red button and the three peacock feathers in an agate tube.

“Speak,” said the Emperor, ready to chastise for a disappointment, but longing for something novel.

Chung-chi, prostrating himself at the imperial feet, and bowing his forehead nine times to the floor, raised his fat face and obeyed:

“Light of the day, and supreme effulgence, under One, of the entire universe, on whom once to gaze in thy quintessential splendour is to be condemned to perpetual blindness, know that there has been seized in the town a stranger capable of the impossible heresy of asserting that there is on the earth a power greater than the Emperor himself.”

Shun-yuen sat erect, a sudden excitement tingling in his veins.

“Bring this slave before us,” he said, “that we may face and wither him in his blasphemy.”

Chung-chi rose, backed from the presence, disappeared, and returned in a moment, ushering in a man under guard. The stranger, offering no obeisance, stood up calm and fearless before the Emperor.

He was a small man, and old; yet the age in him, certified by a thousand minute wrinkles, seemed somehow discounted by the glow of a couple of brown eyes, as glossy and visionary as a child’s. His feet and ankles were bare; his short trousers and waistless blouse were of the ignoble butchers’ blue; his hair was clipped close to his scalp—for in those days the Tartar imposition of the pigtail was not, nor had women yet adopted the decadent fashion of hoofs. Over the stranger’s shoulder hung an open wallet, stuffed with brushes and pigments.

“Thy name?” demanded the Emperor.

“I am called Wu Taotsz, the celestial painter,” answered the stranger in a voice like a clear echo.

The Emperor’s lip curled slightly. This was one of the despised crafts, as yet held in contempt. Even at that date, to shine in letters or learning was the surest road to distinction, which is worth recording of a people warlike enough in the eighth century, however their reputation for arms may have suffered since. A uniform did not with them excuse and glorify a multitude of inanities; the fighting man got his due and no more. But still, however the intellectual arts were respected, the art of painting had not come into its own.

“Thou bearest thy head high,” said the Emperor. “Wilt thou remain celestial if we dock thee of it?”

He alluded to the common belief that to be deprived of one’s head, the seat of understanding, was to be disgraced beyond acceptance in paradise.

“Aye, even then,” answered the stranger.

The Emperor stared.

“By what authority?” he cried.

“By the power of Imagination,” said Wu Taotsz, “which is greater under God than all.”

“Greater than I am?”

“Greater than thou, O Emperor!”

Shun-yuen gave a little gasp.

“Thou hast said it,” he spake. “Who or what, then, is this Imagination?”

“It is that which penetrates and possesses even me, Wu Taotsz.”

“Thee? Then it is thou who art greater than I?”

“It is I, by virtue of that power.”

“What, then, can this Imagination do that I cannot do?”

“There is nothing which it cannot do, Shun-yuen. At its summons the world crawls prostrate at its feet; the Emperors bow their necks; wealth, beauty, power throng to worship it; nay, it can reach down the starry bodies from the skies and weld them into a single sphere, as potters knead clay, incomparably stupendous. Ask me what it can do!”

The Emperor glanced about him. His eyes had suddenly assumed a perplexed and troubled look; he shook his head slightly. The vague emotions and aspirations which had lately dejected him returned with redoubled force, and he thought, What is to seek here that this Imagination could perchance supply?

Suddenly his face brightened, and when all thought he was about to condemn the presumptuous madman to most exquisite tortures, he smiled upon Wu Taotsz, and spoke:

“Is it conceivable that in all these years we have not learned to honour lovely Peace with other than a fortress for her habitation? Mine eyes are dim with dreams of things I cannot shape—gold walls, and tumbling waters, and shining birds, and the misty loom of turrets clouding a vast space. Can Imagination build me such a shrine for Peace?”

“Aye, and more than thou dreamest,” answered the painter.

Shun-yuen rose. He bade the attendants honour Wu Taotsz, and minister to him, and give him all that he needed.

“Only the bare wall of a quiet room, and much rice-water, and my paints and brushes,” said the stranger, his eyes gleaming.

And he was allotted such a room as he desired; and, by his wish, none, not even the Emperor, came near him while he wrought. But every day Shun-yuen looked from his Palace windows upon the surrounding emptiness, and wondered when he was to see arise there the first evidences of the glorious fabric which Wu Taotsz was to build for him of his Imagination. And still every morning his soul was unsatisfied and the waste glared desolate.

Now in the meantime speculation was rife as to the stranger and his genesis. Some believed him to be a wizard embryo hatched from the sands of the great river; others that he was the spirit of the kilns where they baked the earth Kaolin into the porcelain which, in its hues and forms of increasing beauty, was coming to express more and more day by day the creative genius of the age. But of all these surmises Wu Taotsz was unconscious, as he worked on alone in his empty room.

And at last one morning he sent for the Emperor.

Eagerly Shun-yuen, dispensing, for the first time in his life, with forms and punctilio, hurried to obey the summons, and entered the room alone. And instantly he uttered a cry of rapture, and stood like one half stupefied. For there before him stood realised the pleasance of his dreams, only a thousand times transfigured.

He was gazing upon the clustered minarets of a palace such as his soul had never conceived, a fabric all builded of cloud and amber and foam, and yet as solid as the sward from which it sprang. There, in the midst of heavenly gardens which receded down terrace on terrace of loveliness to low hills and a blue horizon, the pearly structure sprang into a sky of lazulite; and to the golden gates of the main pavilion a flight of marble steps ascended.

Rousing himself as if from a trance of ecstasy, the Emperor spake:

“Who builded this, Wu Taotsz?”

“Imagination,” was the answer.

“Bid, then, Imagination to make the winds blow, the river sing, the birds warble.”

“They are vocal to my ears, Shun-yuen, and beautiful are the forms within the house.”

At that moment a droning fly settled with a flop upon the golden gate. The emperor started violently, and cried out, “A fly, and so far yet so plain!”

He hurried forward, peered closely, put out his hand and turned, with a scream of fury.

“Wretch! This is no more than a painted picture.”

“To Imagination it is real,” said Wu Taotsz.

The Emperor, his face orange with rage, leapt and drew his sword.

“Impostor,” he shrieked, “let Imagination, so it can, preserve thee from my wrath.”

He flew at the artist, who sped before him, across and round the room, until, reaching the foot of the painted steps, up the flight sprang Wu Taotsz, and, with a laugh, disappeared within the golden gates.

Following blindly in his anger, the Emperor rushed at the steps, staggered, recovered himself, gave a mortal gasp, and fell back. Before his eyes was just the blank wall of the room. The Palace and Wu Taotsz had vanished together.