terpretation of the poem, nor is he motivated by a need to com-
municate a certain “message” to another party. Just as the impulse to
sing a poem was generated by aesthetic appreciation, his choice of
poem is guided by an aesthetic appreciation of an apt image found in
one of its lines. “Summoning the Recluse” is quoted by Liu Jun in
his annotations and opens as follows:
Leaning on my staff, I summon the recluse,
The overgrown path cuts across past and present.
In the mountain caves nothing is constructed,
In the hills there is the sound of a singing zither.
White snow lingers on the shady ridge,
Scarlet blossoms shine in the sunny grove.
杖策招隱士
荒塗橫古今
巖穴無結構
丘中有鳴琴
白雪停陰岡
丹葩曜陽林
The only mention of snow in the poem is found in the first line of
the third couplet, which, with its mention of “shady ridge” and
“sunny grove,” does not apply very well to Wang’s nocturnal sur-
roundings. And this seems to be the point. There is no anxiety on
Wang’s part (nor should there be on the part of the reader) about
making his performance suit the occasion. There is no need to
bridge the gap between the conditions of the poem’s origination and
its current application. It is simply enough that snow lies on the
ground outside and that snow is mentioned in the poem—a happy
coincidence that requires no further justification. Yet out of this
happy coincidence another impulse is generated that moves Wang
to action. As the speaker of the poem, he decides to emulate the
speaker in the poem by going to “summon the recluse”: his friend
Dai Kui. The narrative underscores the spontaneity of this impulse
by stating that Wang’s friend “suddenly came to mind” and that “he
—————
them is not enough then, unconsciously, the hands dance them and the feet tap them.”
This content downloaded from 130.111.46.54 on Sat, 03 Aug 2019 08:35:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
154
Playing the Game
set out at once” on a small boat to visit him. Wang spends the entire
night acting on this poetically inspired impulse, but just prior to
achieving its end he turns back and goes home. The reader would be
left to his or her own devices for interpreting Wang’s enigmatic ac-
tions were it not for the intervention of a commentator, who hap-
pens to be Wang himself.
The anecdote could have simply ended with Wang turning
back, completing a self-contained episode reported by an unknown
narrator who came by his knowledge through undisclosed means.
However, it is an enduring feature of Chinese narratives to identify
their own provenance. There is usually some indication of how the
narrative became public knowledge. When the story involves fig-
ures at the center of power on the political stage (as in the Zuo
Tradition, the Han History, and some of the anecdotes already cited from Topical Tales), it is assumed that an account of events will become part of the public record. When the action involves more
marginal characters, the narrator will often identify his source, a
practice that first gained currency with Sima Qian and the Historical Records and that is a ubiquitous feature of Tang dynasty tales. In this anecdote, the line “When someone asked his reason for doing this,
Wang said . . .” suggests that it is Wang Huizhi himself who is re-
sponsible for initially transmitting this narrative. He has left an
unanswered question at the center of his narrative about himself:
why would he turn back after traveling all night? The only possible
reason for denying a satisfying sense of closure at the end of a
narrative is because one knows there will be an audience demand-
ing that closure. One can imagine Wang telling this story to his
friends, then sitting back with an enigmatic smile on his face, wait-
ing to see who will be the first to yield to his curiosity and ask him
why he turned back.
When this narrative was first transmitted in oral form, the ques-
tion asked of Wang and his answer in reply were not part of the
narrative itself but part of the social context of its transmission and
reception. It is only when the narrative is transcribed onto the
written page that the miniature metanarrative must be appended.
For we—the readers of the narrative at the present moment—fill the
role of that “someone” asking about his reason; and Wang’s answer
This content downloaded from 130.111.46.54 on Sat, 03 Aug 2019 08:35:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Playing the Game
155
to our inevitable question must be duly inscribed for he is long since
dead, survived only by the narratives about him. The appended
metanarrative effectively converts the anecdote that supports it into
a secondary narrative. The primary narrative tells a frame story, one
about the telling of the anecdote and its explication. 50 The intersection of these two narratives allows Wang to control every role
involved in storytelling: he is a character in the story, the narrator and transmitter of the story, and commentator on the story. This whole process has then been transcribed and preserved on the pages
of Topical Tales. Whence this desire to control every variable, and the concomitant desire to depict every variable being controlled?
Wang plays a fascinating but ultimately self-defeating game: he
demonstrates his cultural competence by framing an example of his
indifference toward cultural competence. What the audience is be-
ing asked to judge here is Wang’s apparent lack of concern for the
judgment of an audience, which is why the project is ultimately
self-defeating as long as it is Wang who is doing the telling.
Something of significance does emerge from this “defeat,” how-
ever. The portrayal of this unobserved performance in a private
home is a portrayal of the liberation of poetic discourse from the
pressures of public performance on the political stage. The very
poem that provides the text for Wang’s performance, Zuo Si’s
“Summoning the Recluse,” is traditionally read as an exhortation
made to a talented man who has chosen reclusion over service to an
unworthy government. Wang chooses the poem for its aesthetic
dimension, pointedly ignoring its “original” meaning and applica-
tion. Both Wang and Dai are already in service; they adopt the label
“recluse” provisionally, with a knowing wink, to describe their
leisure time spent in natural surroundings. The impulse to chant the
poem, the choice of poem, and the resulting impulse to visit a friend:
all are marked by a sense of play. In the end, none of it really matters except as a means of defining a place where poetry does not have to
—————
50. The first half of the frame—describing the gathering of friends at which Wang tells his anecdote—is missing, but is certainly implied by the second half. It may have been considered superfluous since the anecdote was surely circulated at such social gatherings even after its transc
ription.
This content downloaded from 130.111.46.54 on Sat, 03 Aug 2019 08:35:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
156
Playing the Game
matter. It is a place of individual freedom, where the minutest
variables of poetic performance can be controlled, and where the
individual can own the resulting performance. Ownership makes
display possible. Wang Huizhi’s true cultural competence in this
narrative is not manifested in his poetic competence, but in his
ability to frame, own, and display an example of his poetic compe-
tence to others.
In the end, this is what most of the interactions through poetic
discourse depicted in Topical Tales seem to be about: ownership and display as a means of establishing one’s reputation for poetic and
cultural competence. Topical Tales can be read as a sort of handbook of examples of competence in the production and reception of utterances, poetic and otherwise. In recording these examples, it carves
out and gives shape to the space in which these activities take place.
Any place where the members of the educated elite meet, individuals
seek distinction by demonstrating their competence in producing
and appreciating language marked by wit, beauty, and polish.
This content downloaded from 130.111.46.54 on Sat, 03 Aug 2019 08:35:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Z four Y
Gleaning the Heart
I
The Southern Dynasties allowed poetic performance to be owned
by the individual in a space that constituted itself as separate from,
and often in opposition to, the political stage. The nearly three
centuries of the Tang dynasty (618–906) saw the gradual integration
of this individualized space of poetry within the larger political
sphere. The consolidation of the imperial examination system as the
primary route to employment as a government official and the de-
cision to test the ability to compose poetry on the most prestigious
examinations produced an explosion in the number of people who
wished to learn how to compose, perform, and evaluate poetry with
an acceptable level of competence. Poetry continued to be a means
of improving one’s standing in social circles, but it also became a
means of literally winning and advancing one’s career in officialdom.
The spectrum of poetic competence was broadened to include goals
as petty as winning a friendly game over drinks and as lofty as at-
taining a post in high officialdom or even evaluating the cultural
worthiness of the emperor himself.
The records of poetic performance from the Tang—which in-
clude official and unofficial histories, biographical materials, poetry
This content downloaded from 130.111.46.54 on Sat, 03 Aug 2019 08:35:44 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
158
Gleaning the Heart
anthologies, prefaces, anecdotes, and letters—show that poetic com-
petence mattered in almost every facet of life for the newly ex-
panded educated elite of the Tang. One particularly rich source of
narratives depicting poetic production and reception during this era
is Vast Gleanings of the Taiping Era 太平廣記, which contains over
360 poem-bearing anecdotes drawn from 108 Tang collections. By
far the highest concentration of these anecdotes is drawn from a
collection called Storied Poems 本事詩, which continued to circulate independently with its own preface even after it was incorporated
into Vast Gleanings.
Storied
Poems (literally, “poems based in events” 本事詩) is an
ideal source for examining accounts of poetic practice that are less
beholden to upholding the canonical principles of poetry articulated
in the “Great Preface,” the “Lesser Prefaces,” and the attendant
commentaries on the Mao Poems. As the ensuing analysis of the
provenance and prefaces of Storied Poems and related collections shows, their accounts of Tang poetic practice seem more proper to
the anecdote-swapping raconteur than to the orthodox exegete. It is
through these depictions that one can gain a sense of the freely ex-
pressed wishes that accompanied poetry: that its production, per-
formance, and reception might effect real change in the lives of
those who would practice it.
II
An annotated bibliography called A Record of Books Read in the
Prefect Studio 郡齋讀書志 by the great Southern Song bibliophile
Chao Gongwu 晁公武 (d. 1171) records the existence of a book called
Storied Poems 本事詩 in one juan, attributes it to Meng Qi 孟棨
(fl. 841–886) of the Late Tang, and describes it as follows: “It gathers together lyrical poems of poets through the ages who were moved
by events around them and narrates the stories behind them. It in-
cludes a total of seven categories” 纂歷代詞人緣情感事之詩。敘其
本事。凡七類也. 1
—————
1. Chao, Junzhai dushu zhi, juan 20, p. 4a.
This content downloaded from 130.111.46.54 on Sat, 03 Aug 2019 08:35:44 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Gleaning the Heart
159
This accurate description of the contents of the Storied Poems is extant in a variety of texts today and provides the earliest independent corroboration that it was divided into seven categories. 2
The settings of the anecdotes contained in Storied Poems range from the fifth century, in the Liu Song dynasty, to as late as the ninth
century, in the Late Tang. As with any anthology, Storied Poems
reflects the biases of its compiler, the limitations of its sources, and the myriad subtractions, additions, and corruptions that are the
consequence of centuries of transmission. It cannot be taken as
representative of the entire Tang age—no single work can—but the
collection is a valuable repository of narratives from a broad cross
section of hundreds of years of Tang elite society. Despite its brevi-
ty, Storied Poems was an influential collection, spawning such imi-tators as the famous Song collection Recording the Events of Tang
Poems 唐詩紀事, and is credited as the progenitor of the entire
“Remarks on Poetry” ( shihua 詩話) genre that was so popular dur-
ing the Song dynasty. 3 Its relatively few pages contain a great variety of manifestations of poetic competence, indicating an increasing
sophistication during the Tang in imagining of what a poem is
and does.
Over the centuries of its transmission, Storied Poems has received numerous classifications, which indicate the different emphases of
those who have classified its contents. To the compilers of the New
Tang History 新唐書 working under Ouyang Xiu 歐陽修 (1007–
1o72), it was the poetry; 4 to Hu Yinglin 胡應麟 (1551–1602), it was
—————
2. It is also listed as a work in one juan in a later Southern Song private bibliography called An Annotated Register of the Books of Upright Studio 直齋書錄解題
by Chen Zhensun 陳振孫 (fl. 1236). Chen, in his short note on the book, mentions that Meng Qi held the post of Director of the Bureau of Merit Titles 司勳郎中
during the Tang. Since the only place that this information can
now be found is in Meng Qi’s own preface to certain extant editions of Storied Poems, this is a good indication that the preface was still circulating with the work in the Southern Song (1127–1279).
3. The Annotated Full List of the Complete Library of Four Branches of Books 四庫
全書總目提要 identifies Storied Poems as the exemplar of no fewer than six other works ( Ji, juan 195).
4. See “Bibliographic Treatise” 藝文志 in juan 60 of the New Tang History, where it is classified as a “general collection” 總集 of poetry.
This content downloaded from 130.111.46.54 on Sat, 03 Aug 2019 08:35:44 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
160
Gleaning the Heart
the anecdotes; 5 to Ji Yun 紀昀 (1724–1805) and his team of compilers, it was how the anecdotes could be used to illuminate the poetry. 6
Whether it is called an anthology of poems, a collection of xiaoshuo materials, or a work of literary criticism, the work itself remains,
stubbornly refusing a consistent classification; the different classi-
fications in which it has been placed say less about Storied Poems
than about the interests of those who would classify it. This is a
result of the heterogeneous nature of its contents. It is not a single,
coherent piece written from beginning to end by one author. It is
cobbled together from different types of sources and is, ultimately,
placed in a bibliographical classification that does not house any one
of those sources: a testament to its innovation in drawing on the
familiar to make something new. 7 Storied Poems is best characterized as a specific impulse to collect, projected onto a variety of dif-
ferent materials. The bibliographer is at a loss to classify impulses;
he must choose one aspect of the material that he feels is paramount
and place the work accordingly. These classifications, however, all
result from a retrospective gaze.
There are extant documents that indicate how Meng Qi and his
contemporaries viewed their own compilation activities. In his
preface to Storied Poems, Meng Qi claims, “In the passages drawn from strange tales and bizarre records I have omitted anything of
doubtful veracity,” a statement that raises more doubts than it as-
Words Well Put Page 24
