by Chen Jack W
134. Xiling 西陵 was the city that Bu Chan had surrendered to the Jin. Heqiao was the site where the army led by Lu Ji was defeated by Sima Yi 司馬乂 (d. 303). As a result of this defeat, Lu Ji was executed. See Jin shu, 54.1480.
135. See Jin shu, 54.1487–88; and Tang Taizong quanji jiaozhu, pp. 178–82.
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The Reception of Literature in Tang Taizong’s Court
159
With the essay’s conclusion, we return to the question of why Taizong
would have decided to compose this piece on Lu Ji. The answer, however
tentative, resides in the way that Taizong has framed his discussion. By
praising Lu Ji, Taizong also distinguishes himself, allowing the sovereign
to assume the role of literary arbiter—a role that he plays nowhere else in
his extant writings. In this way, Taizong’s venture into literary criticism
recalls that of Cao Pi in “Discourse on Literature,” a resemblance that is
reinforced by Taizong’s mention of Wang Can and Liu Zhen, two of the
Seven Masters. In both essays, the sovereign’s capacity to recognize talent
is analogous to the critic’s own ability to judge the essential qualities of
literary writing. Moreover, while Cao Pi moves from a consideration of
literary talent to a more general discussion of literature’s promise, Taizong
turns from the poet’s literary achievement to the writer’s life and career, a
shift in focus that also marks Taizong’s switch from the critic’s role back
to that of the sovereign.
In this respect, the fact that Taizong’s summation only touches on po-
ets of imperial courts or coteries (and Lu Ji himself was associated with
the court of one Jin prince or another throughout his career) is consistent
with the direction that the discourse takes. Lu Ji’s singular misfortune was
to have been born in an age when a literary writer’s flourishing talents
would lead both to political favor and great danger. The Jin dynasty might
know how to use talent, but would also act ruthlessly in disposing of it.
Taizong’s lament for Lu Ji is that he did not live in an age when such tal-
ents would be both recognized and preserved, when the peace of the em-
pire would ensure the longevity of its poets. Of course, the bloody warfare
of the Jin princes would have its analogue in Taizong’s own initial coup
d’état, but this act of violence would be confined to the first moments of
Taizong’s reign, and not be allowed to endanger the long-term stability of
the empire. By praising Lu Ji’s literary talent, then, Taizong is able to
praise his own political and cultural achievements, for he is a sovereign
who would have both recognized talent and allowed that talent to flour-
ish under his peaceful reign. The failure of the Western Jin would not be
repeated by the Tang, or at least, not by Taizong.
If this does not, in the end, seem to be a discussion of literature, or
even of a particular writer, the discourse nevertheless provides the clearest
evidence of how Taizong conceived of the place of literature in the Zhen-
guan court. This text is consistent, in fact, with his earliest statement on
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The Reception of Literature in Tang Taizong’s Court
literature: his zhao on the founding of the Academy of Literature, in
which he imagined the poets and writers roaming at ease through the gar-
rison, guiding him with canonical models and chanting ancient poems,
and, in this way, “lending elegance” to him. It is important to recognize
that literature is not represented as a secondary matter, a part of ideologi-
cal superstructure, or even simply subordinated to the needs of political
legitimation. Rather, as a central operation of the imperial court, litera-
ture is a part of the constitution of sovereign power, since it is the talent
that is recognized by the sovereign, and, as we shall see in the following
chapters, what also recognizes and brings into visibility the sovereign in
the first place.
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F O U R
The Writing of Imperial Poetry in
Medieval China
Throughout the long history of traditional China, many emperors, if not
most, composed some poetry. Perhaps because of the mediocre quality of
much of this verse, modern critics have tended to ignore such works or to
locate them at the margins of standard literary histories.1 Further, it is
hard to avoid the suspicion that emperors could not have composed
without significant assistance from their courtiers and literary entourage.
After all, for emperors such as the Qianlong emperor of the Qing dynasty,
the sheer amount of poetry (some 40,000 pieces) makes it obvious that
imperial authorship must be considered in only the most general sense of
the term, as designating a fictive center to which responsibility could be
assigned, and not referring literally to the Qianlong emperor’s own
brush.2 Nonetheless, it is this broader notion of authorship that is relevant
to discussions of imperial poetry, since the emperor was, in many ways, a
construction of the polity and of the political imagination. This is not to
deny personal agency or ambition to the individuals who performed the
—————
1. While relatively little attention has been paid to this subgenre, there is at least one modern anthology of imperial verse: Qian Zongwu and Sun Guanggui, Gudai diwang shici jiedu. There is also a more popular, “guided anthology”: Wu Yuan, Diwang shici mingzuo manhua.
2. See Lowe, “Five Poems by the Qianlong Emperor,” pp. 199–201.
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162
The Writing of Imperial Poetry in Medieval China
role of ruler, but rather to emphasize how the sovereign was both an indi-
vidual actor and a symbolic function of a complex sociopolitical system.
This bifurcation in the nature of sovereign identity is reflected in the
practice of imperial authorship. The imperial author was governed by a
particular set of rules and topoi, by a grammar of poetic discourse and
convention, and this normative code was inextricable from the institu-
tional identity and position within which the imperial author wrote. The
imperial poet did not freely choose his (or her, in the case of Wu Zetian)
poetic voice or subjectivity; the fact of his sovereignty determined what he
could say and how he said it. Of course, this is true, more broadly speaking,
of all poetic speakers, insofar as all poets are governed by discursive gram-
mars. What is specific to the case of the poet-emperor, however, is the way
in which he had to negotiate between poetic and political ideologies,
which is to say, between the norms of poetic taste and the needs of sover-
eign representation, or between the personal voice and the voice of the
&n
bsp; sovereign identity.
The present chapter is an attempt to reconstruct the writing of imperial
poetry (at least, in the genre of shi) as Tang Taizong might have understood it. While neither traditional nor modern literary histories acknowledge the
debt owed to Taizong, it is my contention that he played a crucial role in
the shift in poetic values in the period between the Southern Dynasties and
the High Tang. Yet to understand the significance of Taizong’s poetry for
literary historical change, one must first understand the poetic context in
which he wrote. Here I will provide, before turning to the subject proper
of Taizong’s own poetry, a genealogy of the poet-emperors whose compo-
sitions mapped out the range of literary possibilities that were inherited,
consciously or not, by Taizong in the seventh century.
Han Gaozu (r. 206 – 195 bc )
I begin with the first ancestor in Taizong’s poetic genealogy, which is to
say, with the earliest emperor to whom the composition of a poem is at-
tributed. This was Liu Bang 劉邦 (256/47–195 bc), the founder of the
Han dynasty and better known as Han Gaozu. Of the two surviving po-
ems bearing Gaozu’s name, I quote the following:
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The Writing of Imperial Poetry in Medieval China
163
The Great Wind 大風
A great wind arose—clouds soared on high
大風起兮雲飛揚，
My authority covers all the world—I return
威加海內兮歸故鄉，
to my former home
Where can I get valiant men—to guard the
安得猛士兮守四方？3
four
directions?
According to the Han shu 漢書 ( History of the Han Dynasty), shortly after the Han foundation, Gaozu had finished putting down a series of re-
volts when he passed the town of Pei 沛 on his way back to the capital. Pei
had been Gaozu’s birthplace and former powerbase, and so he held a feast
there for old friends, city elders, and children. At the height of the feast,
the emperor sang “The Great Wind” in Chu meter (indicated by the cae-
sural xi 兮 particle), accompanying himself on the vertical zither ( kong 箜). He then taught the children who were present at the feast to sing it,
and he danced and cried as they sang.
Despite the simplicity of the language, the poem raises interesting
questions about the nature of sovereign identity and self-representation.
The opening image of the great wind dispersing clouds is a xing 興 or “af-
fective image,” which the Tang commentator Li Shan 李善 (d. 689) has
interpreted as evoking the political tumult of the age.4 The next line in-
troduces Gaozu by means of his sovereign authority, announcing a return
to political stability. These two lines construct an opposing balance of
vertical and horizontal forces: the rising wind that scatters the clouds into
the sky is negated by Gaozu’s reunification, his “covering” ( jia 加) of the
world with the new imperial order.
The poem’s second line also signals a transition in the poetic speaker’s
identity. In proclaiming dominion over the world, Gaozu is speaking with
the imperial voice, as sovereign. However, in the line’s second hemistich,
he complicates this poetic identity, “returning” ( gui 歸) to his “former
home” ( guxiang 故鄉), by which he means the town of Pei. The choice of
—————
3. For “The Great Wind,” see Shi ji, 8.389; Han shu, 1.74; Wen xuan, 28.1338–39; and Lu Qinli, ed., Xian Qin Han Wei Jin Nanbeichao shi, p. 87. Also see the translation of this po-em in Kern, “Poetry of Han Historiography,” p. 41.
4. The classical trope of xing 興 conveys its meaning through an image whose relationship to the poem is inexplicit and must be decoded by the reader or auditor. See Pauline Yu, Reading of Imagery, pp. 57–65. For Li Shan’s comment, see Wen xuan, 38.1338.
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164
The Writing of Imperial Poetry in Medieval China
the word “gui” is significant because it often carries a normative force: “returning to a place proper to oneself.” To speak of Pei, then, in this way is
to speak as Liu Bang and not as Gaozu; it is to step out of the imperial role,
to imagine a moment in which the speaker is not emperor. In the closing
line, Gaozu returns to the imperial voice, speaking of the universality of
the sifang 四方, as opposed to the particularity of his guxiang. Yet, at the same time, there is a residue of nostalgia: he ends his song with praise for
the men of Pei, whose heroism and bravery are unequaled in the empire.
No doubt because this poem stands at the beginning of the history of
imperial poetry—and at the beginning of the legitimate imperial tradi-
tion—it has been quite favorably received. For example, the Song phi-
losopher Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) notes, “In the lyrics of rulers of the
past thousand years, there is still nothing as robustly beautiful and strik-
ingly great as this. Alas, how heroic!” 千載以來，人主之詞，亦未有
若是壯麗而奇偉者也。嗚呼，雄哉！5 Still, it is Gaozu’s auto-
commentary that has provided one of the most penetrating insights. Fol-
lowing his performance of the song, Gaozu is recorded as saying:
The traveler sorrows for his former home. Though I make my capital in the lands
between the pass, after ten thousand years my soul will still think longingly on
Pei. It was because We assumed the governorship of Pei to punish the violent re-
bels that We thereafter acquired the world; We intend to make Pei our bath-city,
sparing its people from taxation; for all generations nothing will be asked.6
游子悲故鄉。吾雖都關中，萬歲之後吾魂魄猶樂思沛。且朕自沛公以
誅暴逆，遂有天下，其以沛為朕湯沐邑，復其民，世世無有所與為。7
He begins by identifying the theme of the poem: “The traveler sorrows
for his old home.” This simple gloss might describe the topic of any num-
ber of “ancient poems” ( gushi 古詩), or later poems written in imitation.
Yet, in the next sentence, Gaozu personalizes the commonplace, noting
that while he presently resides at Chang’an, he still longs for his life in Pei.
What is surprising is that the emperor has chosen to use the analogy of
—————
5. Zhu Xi, Chu ci houyu 楚辭後語, in Chu ci jizhu, p. 222.
6. A “bath-city” refers to a city used for ritual purification by regional rulers before an audience with the Son of Heaven. Such cities would presumably lie within the Zhou state territory. See Li ji xunzuan, 5.211. Here, Gaozu is using the pretext of the bath-city to exempt Pei from tax and military exactions.
7. Shi ji, 8.389; Han shu, 1.74. There are slight variations in the Shi ji version.
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The Writing of Imperial Poetry in Medieval China
165
the traveler ( youzi 游子) to describe his nostalgia. Gaozu is, after all, the sovereign of the newly reunified lands a
nd not a temporary lodger who
will one day return to his proper home. Yet Gaozu reverses the expected
valuation by setting the worth of his emperorship below that of his for-
mer life. The emperorship is a mere instant in time, since after even ten
thousand years he will still remember his first home.
Further, to show his unchanging regard for the place in which he can
no longer live, he exempts it from taxes for all of eternity. Pei is, in this
way, also exempted from the claims of Han sovereignty, becoming a city
that stands outside of the economic and political structures of empire.
Though Gaozu does not renounce his sovereignty in the course of the
song, the nostalgia that Gaozu feels does trouble his sovereign identity.
Both the language of return and the analogy of the traveler reveal the dis-
junction between the imperial role and the speaking subject of the poem.
Gaozu does not pursue the problem—indeed, he does not even present it
as a problem—yet it is here that the possibility of a contradiction between
the discourses of sovereignty and poetry is first articulated.
Han Wudi (r. 141 – 87 bc )
A very different conception of the imperial voice and its possible repre-
sentation may be found in the poetry of Han Wudi, born Liu Che 劉徹
(156–87 bc). Wudi was the first Han emperor to have a sustained interest
in literature, and it was during his reign that the rhapsody reached the
height of its brilliance as the preeminent court genre.8 A handful of poems
have been attributed to Wudi, and it goes without saying that the distinc-
tion between historical authorship and the representation of authorship is
difficult to maintain. In the following example, also written in Chu meter,
we find a concatenated rhetorical scheme ( dingzhen ti 頂真體) that
marks an advance on the unadorned banquet song of Gaozu.9 Also, in
contrast to the earlier poem, Wudi (or the representation thereof ) articu-
lates a unified poetic voice for the emperor, one that speaks as Wudi, not
as Liu Che. The poem reads:
—————
8. See Knechtges, “Emperor and Literature,” pp. 51–76.
9. On the dingzhen form in yuefu poetry, see Frankel, “Yüeh-fu Poetry,” p. 78.
