Classical Chinese literature made a promise, early in its history, that it would be a means to perpetuate the self of the good writer. Such promises of literary immortality are, of course, not unfamiliar in the Western tradition; but through its long history the Chinese tradition increasingly stressed a grand and quixotic qualification of that promise: it would transmit not simply the name but the very" content" of the self, so that the later-born might truly know the person by reading the work. It was a promise fraught with anxieties and difficulties in proportion to the powerful hopes it raised. One consequence of this potent lure was that classical Chinese literature internalized its hopes, made them one of its central topics, and everywhere concerned itself with intense experience of the past. The fundamental rule was the reaffirmation of a contract made with past and future:" As I remember, so may I hope to be remembered." In this way classical literature constantly doubled back on itself, inscribing the form of its hopes in its own internal actions and seeking in the past the repetition of those doublings in the actions and writings of predecessors. Yet every strong hope is mated to a corresponding fear. Thus the fear of loss and of some illegible fading away was always present to darken the hope of some permanent" writing the self." In the tradition of Western discourse on literature there continually recurs, as the emblem of literature, the figure of Truth wearing a veil. The text is a vestment, opaque or transparent, outlining for the imagination, yet at the same time concealing, the sweet body within. There is always a gap, a space between the text and its meaning, between surface appearance and truth. The master figure for this