CHUANG-TSU AND THE CRAB
We heard the story of Picasso and the Chicken. We closed that page with the proviso that we didn’t know if it was true or not.
So I wanted to record a similar version of the same story. Let’s call this version Chuang-Tsu and the Crab. Calvino, in his Six Memos for the Next Milleneum, relates the following story in his second memo.
Chuang-Tsu was a talented artist. And the king wanted him to draw a crab. So Chuang-Tsu then asks for a villa and twelve servants so that he may complete the drawing. The king then provides these things.
Five years goes by, and the king stops by to see how is drawing is progressing. Of course, Chuang-Tsu has not even started the drawing. And he then asks for five more years of villas and servants, which then king promptly provides.
At the end of the ten years, the king stops by the second time, and expresses great concern that nothing has happened. At which point:
“Chuang-tzu took his brush up, and, in an instant, with a single stroke, he drew a crab, the most perfect crab ever seen.” 1
Actually, I like the Picasso and the Chicken story better. In that one, we see the artist working for years to understand the chicken. In the Calvino story, the artist simply produces, in an instant, the most beautiful drawing ever seen.
Nevertheless, this tale does seem cross cultural. I guess there is this universal desire to draw the perfect drawing in one elegant burst of creativity.
- Calvino, Italo. Six Memos for the New Millenium. Vintage. (31August1993)
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