Cortically Magnified

In Chapter 64 of Thomas Pynchon’s novel Mason & Dixon, there is a humorous telling of a story about ancient Chinese astronomy. In this story, two imperial astronomers, Hsi and Ho, embarrassed the Emperor by failing to predict a solar eclipse. For this neglience, they almost got themselves executed.

A quick Google search found several western references to this story. The Pynchon wiki, for example, cites a French source. So Pynchon didn’t make it up. But I was still not satisfied. Where can I find this pair of unfortunate astronomers in a Chinese document?

I am not sufficiently knowledgeable about Chinese history to figure it out, but a friend quickly pointed me to《尚書》(also known as Book of Documents in English). Interestingly, this book of ancient Chinese history is sometimes claimed to be one of the earliest written records of solar eclipses in human history (specifically, the eclipse in the year 2134 BC, during the reign of Emperor Chung K’ang). However, parts of the book have been found to be fabricated in the 3rd century AD, so that claim might be questionable. I personally don’t trust any history about the semi-mystical Xia Dynasty.

But anyway, let’s return to Hsi and Ho. In a chapter in《尚書》called 《胤征》, we have

羲和湎淫，廢時亂日，胤往征之，作《胤征》。

惟仲康肇位四海，胤侯命掌六師。羲和廢厥職，酒荒於厥邑，胤後承王命徂征。告於眾曰：「嗟予有眾，聖有謨訓，明徵定保，先王克謹天戒，臣人克有常憲，百官修輔，厥後惟明明，每歲孟春，遒人以木鐸徇於路，官師相規，工執藝事以諫，其或不恭，邦有常刑。」「惟時羲和顛覆厥德，沈亂於酒，畔官離次，俶擾天紀，遐棄厥司，乃季秋月朔，辰弗集於房，瞽奏鼓，嗇夫馳，庶人走，羲和屍厥官罔聞知，昏迷於天象，以乾先王之誅，《政典》曰：『先時者殺無赦，不及時者殺無赦。』今予以爾有眾，奉將天罰。爾眾士同力王室，尚弼予欽承天子威命。火炎崑岡，玉石俱焚。天吏逸德，烈於猛火。殲厥渠魁，脅從罔治，舊染污俗，鹹與維新。嗚呼！威克厥愛，允濟；愛克厥威，允罔功。其爾眾士懋戒哉！」

So, indeed, a man named 胤 led a troop to kill 羲和 (Hsi-Ho), because this 羲和 was too drunk to pay any attention to the skies. What’s strange about this passage is that 羲和 seems to be the name of one person. I don’t see any references to two astronomers!

Further googling (for example, I found this article) suggested that the idenity of this Hsi-Ho is quite complicated. It appears that in a different chapter in《尚書》, 羲和 is said to be two brothers who were commanded to be in charge of astronomy by the mythical king 堯. These two gentlemen are said to be stationed at different locations, so they couldn’t really goof around together in the capital city as described in the novel. But in other Chinese sources, 羲和 is one person - the Chinese version of Apollo. 羲和 can also refer to a goddess - the mother of the Sun. In some Chinese dynasties, it can also refer to one or two two government positions.

This is all pretty obscure. I certainly had never heard of it before reading Mason & Dixon. I don’t know how this story found its way to the west. Thomas Pynchon is obviously the master of all things obscure, but I still find it pretty surprising that he managed to weave 尚書 into an epic about American history.

It took me a while to figure out why I like Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues music video. It’s because I like watching the words falling down one by one.

This is an illustration of the “Brain Sea”. I found it near the end of a comic book by the Taiwanese artist Push. What is the Brain Sea? In Mandarin Chinese, “Brain Sea” (腦海) is a common expression that refers to the mind. This is the end scene of the “Nine Lives Man” saga, where the protagonist (who has been reincarnated into countless life forms in the 3-volume Sci-Fi series) asks the ultimate question: What is the point of all this? The answer is that it’s all in the brain sea of Push, the comic book author. The next page shows the author finishing the final panel, and he thinks to himself: “What a crappy ending! Who will buy this very serious but also very silly book?”

During the lockdown, I finally found the time to read the first volume of G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories. In general, I can’t say I like them as detective stories, because what I am looking for in this genre is brilliant deduction, and Father Brown doesn’t do that kind of thing. However, I was very impressed by a story titled The Sign of the Broken Sword. It’s a very unusual detective story, in which Father Brown analyzed the accepted narrative of a (fictional) historical event, and concluded that the overlooked inconsistencies could only mean one thing: the narrative was manufactured to cover up a deeper, tragic truth.

Since I started to read Jorge Luis Borges' Ficciones, I realized how much Borges was influenced by Chesterton. In fact, his short story Theme of the Traitor and Hero seems to be modeled on the Father Brown story. In the first paragraph, Borges even acknowledged that this story was inspired by Chesterton and Leibniz. Again, the main character uncovered the hidden truth behind a historical account, except that Borges took the idea to a weirder place. In his story, a historical event involving thousands of people was staged like a large-scale play, to advance the agenda of certain forces.

(SPOILERS) We watched a video of Cirque du Soleil’s O. I actually watched the show live in Las Vegas with my wife many years ago, but I had completely forgotten how it begins. Before the curtain opened, a clown invited a man in the audience to participate in a little sketch. The man was reluctant first, but eventually agreed to play along. As he approached the curtain, he was suddenly sucked in to the fantasy world of O in a very spectacular way. The next scene revealed that the man was actually part of cast, who was planted in the audience.

This is a clever trick that breaks the fourth wall, giving the illusion that any one of us in the audience could have entered this magical land. Zoe (almost 5yo now) had never seen anything so postmodern before. She kept asking where the man was on the stage. I asked why she cared so much about him. Given all the crazy stunts on stage, I hardly paid any attention to this guy, who played a minor role in the plot. Zoe answered that she wanted to make sure that the man returned to his seat.

Thomas Pynchon likes to talk about Godzilla in his novels. In Inherent Vice, there is a funny scene where the main character Doc told his girlfriend Penny that the 1964 Japanese movie Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster was a remake of the 1953 romantic comedy Roman Holiday. Later that night, Doc caught Penny sobbing at the TV, because she watched the Japanese monster movie as a romance. Pynchon is good at writing this type of plot that is ridiculous but oddly touching. I watched the Ghidora movie after reading Inherent Vice. It is obviously nowhere near a remake of Roman Holiday (we are talking about a movie that is mostly about actors in rubber suits fighting other actors in rubber suits), but the writers must have lifted some plot elements from Roman Holiday.

I recently watched a Godzilla spin-off movie Rebirth of Mothra with my 4.5yo daughter, and I had a Pynchon moment. It’s a tragic scene where a comically giant moth caterpillar watched her mother, a giant moth, died and sunk into the ocean. It’s an unbelievably ridiculous scene featuring hilariously looking monsters. But it was genuinely touching. The filmmakers managed to tug a heart string with a giant moth and a caterpillar.

In the 70’s, it was fashionable for intellectuals to abuse the term “grammar” to refer to any underlying principles. In one of his essays, Italo Calvino used the term “the grammar of tree” to refer to…. essentially developmental plant biology. I thought that was pretentious. But heh, in R programming, people are talking about the grammar of graphics and grammar of data manipulation again. It’s fashionable to call functions “verbs” again. Hello, structuralism! (PS: A philosopher friend informed me that this abuse of the word grammar started with Wittgenstein)

One music album that I used to play a lot of was called Night of Short Lives. It was published in the 90’s under the artist name Frame Cut Frame. It’s very hard to describe what kind of music it was. The publisher called it “unclassical music”, because the music had the classical texture, but not the classical form.

The CD was just one of those random things that I had. I don’t remember why I had it. I had no idea who made it or why it was made. It was published by an independent Belgian label called SubRosa so I had assumed that it’s European. But I just discovered it’s Australian! The music is by Brett Dean, with sampled sounds by Simon Hunt. Brett Dean turns out to be not just a random Aussie who made this obscure album. Wikipedia shows that he is one of the most celebrated Australian musicians!

I found this in a box in the garage that hadn’t been opened in many years. I made it when I was a PhD student at UC San Diego. It’s a set of visual stimuli that I designed for a brain mapping experiment.

I have been reading Italo Calvino’s If on a winters night a traveller. One chapter is particularly interesting because it draws heavily on the imagery of optics (one of Calvino’s obsessions). It makes a reference to the 19th century British scientist David Brewster for his invention of the kaleidoscope. I hadn’t read about Brewster before so I had to look him up. He was so much more than the inventor of kaleidoscope. He was a major figure in 19th century optics, and made important discoveries about the polarisation of light.

This part of If on a winter’s night a traveller reminded me of Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day, which also uses optics as a central metaphor. Interestingly, Against the Day makes references to Augustin Fresnel and Étienne-Louis Malus, but apparently not to Brewster.