Parable of the Palace

On that day, the Yellow Emperor showed off his palace to the poet. Behind them, in a long descent, they had just left the first western terraces, which - like the tiers of an almost unimaginable amphitheatre - slope down to a paradise, or garden, whose metal mirrors and interwoven juniper hedges gave a hint of the labyrinth. Lightheartedly, the two men lost themselves in it - at first as if they were entering into a game but later with a touch of unease, for the straight avenues of the maze suffered a slight but continous curve and secretly were circles. At about midnight, observation of the planets and the timely sacrifice of a tortoise allowed them to extricate themselves from that whole sector, which seemed enchanted, but not from the feeling of being lost, which stayed with them to the end. After that, they passed through antechambers and courtyards and libraries and a hexagonal hall with a water clock, and one morning they saw from a tower a stone man that was later lost to them for ever. In sandalwood boats, they crossed a number of glinting rivers or a single river many times over. As the imperial retinue went by, people prostrated themselves, but one day the procession reached an island where someone failed to bow down, since he had never before laid eyes on the Son of Heaven, and the executioner was obliged to behead him. Indifferently, their eyes passed over black tresses and black dances and bizarre golden masks; reality merged with dream or, rather, reality became one of the forms of dream. It seemed impossible that the earth could be anything but gardens, watercourses, architectural structures, and resplendent shapes. Every hundred paces a tower soared into the air; to the eye, each was the same colour, but so long was the series and so subtle were the hues that the first of them was yellow and the last scarlet.

At the foot of the second last tower the poet, who seemed detached from all these spectacles - marvels to everyone else - recited the short work that today we link inseparably with his name and that, according to the most elegant historians, bestowed immortality and death on him. The text is lost. Some believe that it consisted of a single line of verse; others, of a single word. What is certain, what is incredible, is that in the poem was the whole enormous palace down to the last detail, with each illustrious porcelain piece and each drawing on each piece and the shadows and lights of every dawn and dusk and each moment, whether happy or unhappy, of the glorious dynasties of mortals, gods, and dragons that had dwelt in the place from time immemorial. Everyone fell silent, but the Emperor cried, 'You have taken my palace from me!', and the executioner's iron sword cut short the poet's life.

Others tell the story in a different way. In this world there cannot be two identical things; it was enough, we are told, for the poet merely to utter the poem for the palace to disappear, as if struck and razed to the ground by the last syllable. Clearly, such legends are no more than literary fiction. The poet was the emperor's slave and died as such; his composition fell into oblivion because it deserved oblivion, and his descendents are still searching for - but will never find - the word for the universe.

[1956]