Mokpo, Haeanno (Fish Market)
Scene 15
More fascinating than the ray fish spectacle was the symmetrical order in which the innumerable types of fish were laid out to dry in the sun. There must have certainly been a practical reason for this precision, but it also appeared to be an aesthetic statement – almost as if it were an attempt to turn the essential but crude work of butchery into a sophisticated, cultural act through the symmetrical arrangement of the produce.
«Were the mat not straight, he would not sit so»*, as it was declared in one of the Analects of Kong Tse. Since his first breath on Korean soil Maille had sensed the presence of the Master, whose teachings were even more rigidly interpreted in this country than they were in China. No wonder that even the fish here had been Confucianised. A merciful net had released them from the curse to swim chaotically in the sea. Liberated from their aimlessness, they now lay in rows beside one another, as family in a way, as part of a larger whole, a concept.
* Confucius: «Analects», X, 9.