Words Well Put
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521). 2 The catholicity of its source materials makes classifying Topical Tales difficult; many have argued that it is a sui generis work with character appraisal as its unifying theme. 3 It certainly cannot be accepted as a reliable historical source. The depictions of poetic
performance and reception in its pages range from the patently
apocryphal to the possible to the probable. These are visions of
poetic competence rather than faithful records. In its attempts to
appraise its subjects, Topical Tales includes demonstrations of poetic competence that should have happened, that are in character for those people as they were perceived by their peers: other members
of the émigré aristocracy that made up the ruling class of the era. If
the Zuo Tradition casts individuals as agents of the state and the Han History casts them as members of imperial clans, then Topical Tales casts them as representatives of their class and lineage. In their
struggle for distinction and power, members of the elite of this era
eschew the coarse tool of physical violence in favor of the subtler
instrument of symbolic violence. 4 At least, this is how they are depicted in the pages of Topical Tales, which says something about those who compiled these anecdotes and those who enjoyed them.
The pages of Topical Tales still contain many depictions of vio-
lence, but the relationship between violence and poetic utterance
has changed from that depicted in the Zuo Tradition and the Han History. A familiar case in point is the following famous, and surely apocryphal, anecdote about an encounter between the talented Cao
Zhi 曹植 (192–232), Prince of Dong’e, and his jealous older brother,
Cao Pi 曹丕 (187–226), Emperor Wen of Wei (r. 200–226):
—————
2. The term shi 世 has both a temporal denotation (“era”) and a spatial one (“world”), which is why I choose to translate it as “topical,” a word that spans spatial and temporal denotations in English. The book was first known simply as Shishuo ( Topical Tales), then as Shishuo xinshu 世說新書 ( Topical Tales: A New Edition) to differentiate it from an earlier work of the same name by Liu Xiang 劉向
(ca. 77–6 b.c.e.). This then became Shishuo xinyu, where xinyu 新語 might be translated along the lines of “fresh topics for conversation” 新的話題. It is likely in this case that xinyu continues to denote a “new edition.”
3. See chapters 1 and 3 of Qian’s Spirit and Self in Medieval China.
4. Pierre Bourdieu, in Language & Symbolic Power, provides an extended analysis of the use of language as a means of accruing and wielding power.
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Emperor Wen once commanded the Prince of Dong’e to compose a poem
within the time it takes to walk seven steps, or face the ultimate punishment should it not be completed in time. The prince immediately shot
back with the following poem:
Boil beans to make some soup,
Strain them to get the broth.
The stalks are burning ’neath the pot,
The beans are weeping up on top:
“We are from the same root born,
So why the hurry to cook me up?”
The emperor’s face flushed deeply with shame. (4.66)5
文帝嘗令東阿王七步中作詩。不成者行大法。應聲便為詩曰。
煮豆持作羹
漉菽以為汁
萁在釜下然
豆在釜中泣
本自同根生
相煎何太急
帝深有慚色。
The contrast drawn here between the two brothers is a stark one.
Cao Pi, as the emperor of Wei, has a monopoly on sanctioned
physical violence, the full weight of which he brings to bear in
threatening his talented younger brother with the “ultimate pun-
ishment” of death. Cao Pi’s ruthlessness does not mean that he lacks
culture or an understanding of literature. He was a poet in his own
right and is the author of an early work of literary theory known as
the Authoritative Discourses 典論. 6 In a chapter of that work entitled
“Discourse on Literature” 論文, Cao Pi calls literary works “the
supreme achievement in the business of state” 經國之大業, di-
vulging his fervent hope that it would be in the production of lit-
erature, not in the force of arms, that his most enduring legacy
—————
5. My translations are based on Liu Yiqing’s Shishuo xinyu and Todo’s Sesetsu shingo. I have also consulted Mather’s eminent translation, A New Account of Tales of the World and Qian’s Spirit and Self in Medieval China.
6. Over forty poems are attributed to him in Lu Qinli, Xian Qin Han Wei Jin Nanbei chao shi, vol. 1, pp. 389–406.
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would survive. 7 How galling it must have been for him that his younger brother, Cao Zhi, was universally acclaimed as a “literary
genius” 才子 and was consequently favored by their father. The
anecdote about the “Seven Steps Poem” can be read simply as a piece of pro–Cao Zhi propaganda, casting Cao Pi as a jealous, paranoid
older brother foiled in his attempt to humiliate and destroy his up-
start younger brother. It is certainly apocryphal and was fashioned
and transmitted purely as a means to embellish Cao Zhi’s reputation
as a literary genius. 8 But it is about more than that; it is about an encounter between two men who have very different attitudes toward literary production. Furthermore, it is an encounter that takes
place in time—a sense of which gives one man an advantage over the
other.
In essence, the “Seven Steps Poem” is a command performance
with very high stakes. As emperor, Cao Pi has the power to sum-
mon Cao Zhi and to set the parameters for his poetic performance,
which establish death as the substitute for the more genteel penalty
of having to drink a flagon of wine to pay for poetic failure. Cao Pi
also demarcates the time limit in spatial terms as being “within seven
steps” 七步中. These parameters put Cao Zhi in a highly charged
position, contrived to strain to the utmost his lauded talent for
improvisation. The whole scenario has a dramatic quality to it; one
can almost feel those in attendance holding their breath as they
watch Cao Zhi take each step and hear him chant each line.
Cao Pi is playing a risky game in attacking Cao Zhi on the very
grounds he finds most comfortable: improvised literary production.
He obviously hopes that his brother’s talents will fail him and that
he will either produce a piece of doggerel (thus damaging his repu-
tation as a literary genius) or produce nothing at all (thus damaging
his reputation and person). Should Cao Zhi fail, Cao Pi would be in
—————
7. Translated in Owen, Readings, pp. 57–72.
8. As emperor, Cao Pi would surely have had more direct means at his disposal of dealing with his brother than this showy trap. The hero must survive for the narrative to continue, of course, but the familiar scenario is also an
opportunity for the hero to demonstrate his ingenuity and to gain the moral imperative to destroy the man who would destroy him.
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a position to augment his own reputation by magnanimous-
ly commuting the death penalty. This would avoid turning his
younger brother into a martyr, and instead let him live on under a
cloud of literary failure, indebted to Cao Pi for his life.
Cao Zhi does not fail, of course, or the tale would not be worth
the telling. Instead, he deftly turns the tables against his brother,
rebounding the full force of his attack. His poem not only satisfies
his older brother’s stringent criteria, it also acts as a vehicle of
criticism, taking Cao Pi to task for being so cruel. There is a deli-
cious recursion at work, in that the poem constitutes an improvised
complaint about having to perform such a poem in the first place. It
is an occasional poem about the injustice of the occasion. The in-
genious central figure of the poem—beans being boiled on a fire
stoked with beanstalks—is so pointed and the performance so per-
fectly pitched that Cao Pi is given no room to maneuver in his re-
sponse to it. He is left speechless, the only indication of his interior state being the unmistakable color of shame rising in his face, surely
witnessed by all those in attendance. At the beginning of the an-
ecdote, Cao Pi set out to harm the person of his younger brother by
pushing his literary faculties to the breaking point. By the end of the
anecdote, it is Cao Pi’s own dignity that suffers harm, as he realizes
that he has sorely underestimated his brother’s talent, and has made
himself appear malicious and petty in the eyes of his people.
There is an exquisite alchemy at work in this anecdote, which
transforms the threat of physical violence at the hands of the em-
peror into symbolic violence at the hands of the prince. Yet the
emperor’s ability to threaten physical violence in the first place is
contingent upon a symbolic mode of expressing imperial power,
which sanctions the use of violence by the emperor in dealing with
his inferiors. Cao Pi occupies the position of emperor, with all of
the material trappings and symbolic connotations that manifest and
maintain the permanence of that position. He perceives Cao Zhi as
rising above the position of prince on the strength of symbolic
power derived not from the external trappings of the position
(which Cao Zhi actively eschewed), but from innate literary talent.
This was an anxiety planted in Cao Pi’s heart when the brothers
were still boys, according to a source cited in Topical Tales:
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Cao Zhi was the younger full-brother of Emperor Wen [Cao Pi]. When he
was still a teenager, he was able to recite from memory countless poems, essays, and pieces of rhyming prose, and was highly skilled at writing. His father [Cao Cao], upon reading one of his son’s works, once said to him,
“Someone else wrote this for you!”
Cao Zhi fell to his knees and said, “My words come forth as essays, my
brushstrokes turn into chapters. Test me yourself and see whether I need anyone else to write for me!”
At that time the Bronze Sparrow Terrace at Ye had just been finished,
so Cao Cao gathered all of his sons and took them up to it. He had each
one of them compose a piece of rhyming prose. Cao Zhi took up his brush
and finished immediately with impressive results.
He had an easygoing manner and did not affect a regal air; nor did he
care for ostentatious trappings in chariots and clothing. Whenever faced with a difficult question, he could always respond without hesitation. Cao Cao doted on him and almost made him the Crown Prince on several
occasions. (4.66n)9
陳思王植字子建。文帝同母弟也。年十餘歲誦詩論及辭賦數萬言。善屬
文。太祖嘗視其文曰。汝倩人邪。植跪曰。出言為論。下筆成章。顧當
面試。柰何倩人。時鄴銅雀臺新成。太祖悉將諸子登之。使各為賦。植
援筆立成。可觀。性簡易。不治威儀。輿馬服飾。不尚華麗。每見難問。
應聲而答。太祖寵愛之。幾為太子者數矣。
In the end, however, it was the older son, Cao Pi, who ascended the
throne according to the rules of primogeniture. Perhaps the father,
Cao Cao, who himself came to power through the astute use of
violence, realized that the world was not yet ready for a man to
ascend the throne on the basis of literary talent alone.
When the two brothers encounter one another as grown men in
the anecdote of the “Seven Steps Poem,” Cao Pi is willing to risk
that Cao Zhi may succeed at his impossible task because it is the
only way to deflate the source of symbolic power that he enjoys as a
literary genius. If Cao Zhi’s literary reputation is compromised,
Cao Pi could retreat from physical violence and return to the means
of symbolic violence at his disposal for containing Cao Zhi’s ambi-
tions, mainly transferring him from fiefdom to fiefdom and re-
—————
9. Liu Jun cites the “Account of Wei” 魏志 section (of Account of the Three Kingdoms 三國志 by Chen Shou 陳壽) for this anecdote.
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quiring frequent expensive trips to the capital. Ironically, it is poetic complaints against this form of mistreatment that help build Cao
Zhi’s literary reputation, the source of his competing symbolic
power. 10
For Cao Pi, Cao Zhi represents a symptom of the way imperial
power seeks to assert and perpetuate itself. 11 The emperor, once in power, is concerned with maintaining the longevity and continuity
of that power. He is forced to look to a more distant horizon,
constantly seeking to manifest the stability and permanence of his
position. 12 The outside challenger does not have access to the emperor’s superior symbolic capital. He is forced to live in the present
moment, constantly improvising ways to subvert the power that
marginalizes him. 13 Cao Pi’s outrageous demands are an attempt to break Cao Zhi’s ability to improvise, to flatten out the forms of his
brother’s talent, and thus to deprive him of his destabilizing effect
on Cao Pi’s grand vision of empire. Cao Pi pits the power of his
position against the talent of a single man. When the single man
—————
10. “Given to Prince Biao of Baima” 贈白馬王彪 and “Brown Sparrow” 黃雀
are the most famous examples.
11. By the term “symptom” I am referring to Slavoj Žižek’s definition of it as
“a particular element which subverts its own universal foundation” ( Sublime Object, p. 22).
12. This anxiety over stability and longevity is expressed in Cao Pi’s own poetry.
In the second stanza of his feast poem, “Grand,
” he writes,
All is hushed in the high halls,
and cool winds enter my chamber.
Hold it at fullness, without spilling over,
one with virtue can bring things to happy ends;
yet a good man’s heart is full of worries,
his cares are not just one alone;
he comes decently down from his plain rooms,
bolting his food so as to miss naught.
The guests are full now and go home,
yet the host’s cares never are done. (Owen,
Anthology, pp. 281–82)
13. These are the contours of the main conflict between Xiang Yu and Liu Bang, as seen in their song performances in the Han History: between a man of action who refuses to be subsumed into a new imperial order and a man of vision who sets the stage for that new order and is anxious to stabilize it.
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Playing the Game
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wins, it becomes painfully clear that the power of the emperor’s
position is also contingent—at least in part—upon the talent and
judgment of the man who occupies it. When Cao Pi’s face colors
with the hot blood of shame, it is a vivid reminder of the limits of
corporeality in the man who would be emperor forever.
What does Cao Zhi’s victory mean, beyond his escape with
person intact and reputation enhanced? It signals a shift in attitude
during the aftermath of the Han dynasty’s collapse toward literary
production or utterance instead of political violence. In the Zuo
Tradition, poetic competence in deploying selections from the
Poems was a tool for framing, interpreting, and navigating treacherous political struggles. The narratives of the Han History concerning outburst songs show poetic production not as means of
avoiding or negotiating violent confrontations, but as a result of
them. The emphasis in depiction shifts away from calculated quo-
tation to spontaneous production, with the result that the notion of
competence shifts away from the one who utters the poem (a sup-