The Poetics of Sovereignty
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The Writing of Imperial Poetry in Medieval China
Song of Huzi 瓠子歌10
At Huzi the river burst through—now what
瓠子決兮將奈何？
can we do?
With waters surging and vast, I worry all will
浩浩洋洋慮殫為河，
become
river.
If all becomes river—the land will not find
殫為河兮地不得寧，
peace,
No time to complete the work—Mt. Yu was
功無已時兮吾山平。11
leveled.
Mt. Yu was leveled—Juye Marsh overflowed.
吾山平兮鉅野溢，12
The fish were teeming—as the days pressed
魚弗鬱兮柏冬日。13
towards
winter.
The proper way slackened—the river left its
正道弛兮離常流，
normal
course,
Flood dragons sped unchecked—they took
蛟龍騁兮放遠游。
license to swim afar.
—————
10. There are actually two songs that bear this title, both composed on the occasion of the disaster; the relationship between them is ambiguous. The Shi ji and Han shu both introduce the second song with the phrase, yi yue 一曰, suggesting that the second song is actually an alternate version. However, Yuefu shiji prefaces the two poems with a “quotation”
from the Shi ji (this is actually a rewriting of the Shi ji account) that states Wudi composed both songs on the same occasion. For texts, see Shi ji, 29.1413; Han shu, 29.1682–83; see Li Daoyuan 酈道元 (d. 527), Shuijing zhushu, 24.2029–30; Guo Maoqian 郭茂倩 (fl.
12th century), comp., Yuefu shiji, 84.1187–88; and Xian Qin Han Wei Jin Nanbeichao shi, pp. 93–94. Yiwen leiju (43.772–73) preserves the first six lines of the first song. The poem is discussed and partially translated in Knechtges, “Emperor and Literature,” pp. 66–67; and discussed in Long Wenling, Han Wudi yu Xi Han wenxue, pp. 265–67.
11. Mt. Yu 吾山 is also written as Mt. Yu 魚山, and is located in modern Dong’a County
in Shandong Province.
12. “Juye Marsh” is another name for the “Great Wilds Marsh” 大野澤, in Juye County,
Shandong Province. As recorded in the “Tribute of Yu” 禹貢, the sage-king Yu defined its boundaries as part of his great acts of water control. See Shang shu zhengyi, 6.316a–16b, in Shisanjing zhushu, p. 148.
13. There has been some debate over the interpretation of the phrase feiyu 弗鬱. Yan Shigu cites the Han commentator Meng Kang 孟康 (fl. 2nd century bc), who interprets feiyu as meaning “numerous.” However, Yan disagrees, arguing that the phrase should be understood as “sad and unhappy” 憂不樂. See Han shu, 29.1682. Wang Niansun 王念孫
(1744–1832) in turn rejects Yan’s interpretation, restoring Meng Kang’s gloss, and arguing that feiyu is interchangeable with feiwei 沸渭, meaning “numerous.” I follow Wang’s reading in his Dushu zazhi, 5.7.22. In the same line, I follow Yan Shigu, who pronounces the character bo 柏 as po 迫.
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The Writing of Imperial Poetry in Medieval China
167
Return to your former streams—with all
歸舊川兮神哉沛，14
divine speed,
If not for the Feng and Shan—how could I
不封禪兮安知外？15
have known outside conditions?
I, the emperor, will ask the River Duke—
皇謂河公兮何不仁，16
“Why are you without compassion?
The floods do not cease—they bring grief to
泛濫不止兮愁吾人！
my
people!
The city Niesang is afloat—the rivers Huai
齧桑浮兮淮、泗滿，17
and Si brim full,
For too long you have not turned back —the
久不反兮水維緩。18
norms of water will weaken.”
The occasion of the poem was a disastrous break in the Yellow River dike
at Huzi (located in modern Puyang County, Henan Province), which had
taken place twenty years earlier and was since then still unrepaired.19 This
matter was brought to the emperor’s attention as he was returning from a
cultic sacrifice ( ci 祠) to Mount Tai 泰山 in the summer of 109 bc.20 Pri-
or to that, Wudi had spent a year of imperial touring and sacrificial activi-
ties, which included the performance of the Feng and Shan rites (men-
tioned in the poem) in early 110 bc. Unfortunately, attempts to repair the
flooding were complicated by a drought in the spring of the same year,
making it difficult to gather sufficient wood to repair the embankment.
—————
14. For a discussion of this odd locution, see in Knechtges, “Emperor and Literature,” p. 67.
15. The Feng and Shan rites were among the most sacred of the imperial sacrifices, offered in the region of Mount Tai (located in present-day Shandong) as announcements of universal peace to Heaven and Earth. I will discuss the Feng and Shan in greater detail in Chapter 7.
16. “River Duke” refers to the god of the Yellow River, also commonly called “River Earl”
河伯.
17. Niesang 齧桑 is a city located southwest of modern Pei County in Jiangsu Province.
The rivers Huai and Si, which flow into the Yellow River, are also mentioned in the
“Tribute of Yu.”
18. Following Yan Shigu, I read shui wei 水維 as meaning shui zhi gangwei 水之綱維
(“the normative rules of water”). See Han shu, 29.1682.
19. See Han shu, 6.193, 29.1682; and Zizhi tongjian, 21.682–83.
20. On mountain sacrifices, which have both a long imperial and popular religious history, see Kleeman, “Mountain Deities in China,” pp. 226–38; and Lewis, Construction of Space in Early China, pp. 233–34.
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The Writing of Imperial Poetry in Medieval China
Saddened that the work could not be completed, Han Wudi viewed the
flooding and composed the “Song of Huzi” to lament the disaster.21
The rhyme scheme of the song is unusual, consisting of seven rhymed
couplets (AA / BB / CC / DD / EE / FF / GG). The first eight lines of
Wudi’s poem describe the hardships and chaos unleashed by the flooding,
from the transformed landscape to the unchecked license of the flood-
dragons. In the ninth line, Wudi commands the river to return to its for-
mer (proper) state, an apostrophic statement that anticipates his longer
address to the god of the Yellow River in the last four lines. However, in-
stead of directly connecting this to the address to the river god, he first
comments that it was the ritual sacrifices at Mount Tai that allowed him
to discover the conditions outside the capital. When he does turn to ad-
dress the river, Wudi emphasizes the fact that he is speaking as emperor
(“I, the emperor, will ask the River Duke”). He calls upon the river god to
account for its indifference to human plight, describing the damage it has
wrought on the cities and tributaries. The poem abruptly ends with
Wudi’s warning that the river cannot continue behavin
g in this way, as
the very “norms of water will weaken.”
It is important to note that Wudi turns to the mode of rhetorical per-
formance precisely because he is powerless in actuality to stem the river. If
he cannot repair the dike, he will address the river itself, substituting
speech for physical action. Yet, in order to do so, he must first translate
the river from a thing that merely needs to be engineered into a sentient
being that can comprehend language and perhaps even be persuaded to
cleave to the path of compassion and moderation. In this way, Wudi dis-
places the responsibility of the flood onto the river, since he is attributing
to it both agency and moral consciousness. One might even argue that
Wudi is setting up the Yellow River as a divine counter-sovereign to him-
self, though one whose neglect and laxity has resulted in utter disaster.
Still, there can only be one sovereign, a single Son of Heaven, upon whom
responsibility for the empire rests. Wudi begins his address with the su-
preme pronoun huang 皇, a term that refers to both his own sovereign
status and also that of Heaven, the sovereign par exemplum. He bestows
upon the Yellow River the honorific rank of “duke” ( gong 公), which is
—————
21. Note that the second “Song of Huzi” proclaims in its closing couplet the triumphant success in repairing the dike.
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The Writing of Imperial Poetry in Medieval China
169
exactly one rank beneath the “king” or “prince” ( wang 王). The political
hierarchy is here conflated with a divine hierarchy; Wudi asserts his struc-
tural correlation to Heaven while subordinating the river god by means of
a lesser aristocratic rank. Simultaneously, the poem becomes something
more than mere literature: as the representative of Heaven’s sovereignty,
the poetic address to the Yellow River becomes sacred speech, a rhetorical
performance that carries within it the force of divine authority.
The problem of responsibility, then, returns to Wudi, and with it, an
unspoken sense of anxiety that he has neglected his duties. This is mani-
fested in two ways. First, the “Song of Huzi” cannot escape references to
the hydraulic labors of the sage-king Yu, who tamed the Yellow River and
made it possible for the people to survive within the natural environment.
In particular, Wudi mentions Juye Marsh, which Yu had successfully con-
tained. In fact, the site of the Huzi flood overlaps with the sites where Yu
performed his feats of hydraulic engineering, perhaps making the unfa-
vorable comparison inevitable. Second, Wudi’s performance of the Feng
and Shan sacrifices was not uncontroversial. Technically, an emperor
should only make the announcement to Heaven when he had achieved
lasting peace throughout the land—this was perhaps the reason that there
were so few performances of this ritual throughout imperial history.
Wudi attempts to justify the latter complication with the line, “If not
for the Feng and Shan [ xi] how could I have known outside conditions?”
Here, we enter into the thickets of ancient ritual procedures and motiva-
tions. Wudi wants to contrast his devotion to imperial affairs with a sov-
ereign like Qin Shihuang, who spent his time in obsessive circuits of the
empire, searching for the secrets of immortality. Thus, it is because the
earlier performance of the Feng and Shan led Wudi out of the capital re-
gion that he was able to know about the disaster at Huzi—a metaleptic
argument that attempts to justify the present circumstances by means of a
remote cause. Yet, as with the ghost of Yu, the ghost of Qin Shihuang is
not a topic lightly broached. From the historical accounts, we see that
both Qin Shihuang and Han Wudi carried out the Feng and Shan sacri-
fices in order to attain immortality in the flesh, to become gods. Sima
Qian makes sure to note the appearance of inauspicious omens in both
cases—winds and rains on Mount Tai for the First Emperor and a violent
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170
The Writing of Imperial Poetry in Medieval China
sickness that strikes down a member of Han Wudi’s entourage who had
also ascended the mountain.22 Han Wudi’s mention of the Feng Shan
rites thus carries a trace of defensiveness, and the poem, instead of merely
being a lament for the conditions at Huzi, becomes a defense for the ritual
performance. The poem is the sovereign’s excuse for following the exam-
ple of the First Emperor of the Qin, though, unfortunately, it is not quite
successful—it is Wudi’s performance of the Feng and Shan rites that is
now remembered, rather than his “Song of Huzi.”
Cao Pi or Wei Wendi (r. 220 – 26 )
In terms of the actual writing of poetry, there is little question that Cao Pi
was far more successful than either Han Gaozu or Han Wudi. Yet, be-
cause most of Cao Pi’s poems are undated, it is difficult to say whether he
was emperor, crown prince, or simply a prince when a particular poem
was composed. Indeed, many of Cao Pi’s poems are likely to have been
composed prior to his accession in ad 220, during the period when the
Seven Masters of the Jian’an were all still alive and active. A second com-
plicating factor is the fact that Cao Pi wrote mainly within the yuefu shi
樂府詩 (“Music Bureau poetry”) tradition, which poses difficulties in
terms of authorship and textual stability. The poetic speaker of yuefu po-
etry was a typology, rather than a fully imagined self-representation, and
this has the effect of distancing the historical poet from the yuefu’s poetic persona. At the same time, I would argue that sovereign identity, like
yuefu poetry, is itself based on the combination and variation of familiar
topics, from which a more or less unified subjectivity (“poet”; “sovereign”)
emerges.
For a skillful poet like Cao Pi, the combination of yuefu commonplaces
becomes a way to introduce problems of sovereign representation, or at
least, problems that might be of concern to princes with imperial aspira-
tions. The following poem has been dated tentatively to the period fol-
lowing Cao Pi’s promotion to crown prince and possibly even to the pe-
riod immediately after his accession.23 The poem reads:
—————
22. See Shi ji, 28.1367, 1398.
23. See Hong Shunlong, Wei Wendi Cao Pi nianpu ji zuopin xinian, pp. 395–96.
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The Writing of Imperial Poetry in Medieval China
171
Snapping a Willow Branch 折楊柳行24
How high is West Mountain —
西山一何高，
High, so high, almost without end.
高高殊無極。25
On top there are two immortal youths,
上有兩仙童，
Who neither drink nor e
at.
不飲亦不食。26
They gave me a medicinal pill,
與我一丸藥，
In its glow there were the five colors.
光耀有五色。
I took the medicine, and after four or five days,
服藥四五日，
My body sprouted feathered wings.
身體生羽翼。
Lightly I arose, carried by floating clouds,
輕舉乘浮雲，
In an instant I had traveled a million miles.
倏忽行萬億。
Letting my eyes roam, I gazed at the Four Seas,
流覽觀四海，
So vast and vague, it was nothing I recognized.
茫茫非所識。
[rhyme:
職 tsyek]
Peng Zu, they say, lived to be seven hundred,
彭祖稱七百，
Distant and hazy, how could it be traced back?
悠悠安可原。27
Lao Dan went off to the western barbarians,
老聃適西戎，
Even at present, he still hasn’t returned.
于今竟未還。28
Qiao the Prince employed empty verbiage,
王喬假虛辭，
Red Pine passed down useless words.
赤松垂空言。29
Attained men discern the true and the false,
達人識真偽，
—————
24. Song shu, 21.616; Ouyang Xun 歐陽詢 (557–641), comp., Yiwen leiju, 78.1332 (this preserves only the first twelve lines); Yuefu shiji, 37.547; and Xian Qin Han Wei Jin Nanbeichao shi, pp. 393–94. I have consulted Huang Jie, Wei Wudi Wei Wendi shi zhu, pp.
46–47. Stephen Owen points out that since only the first part of this poem is quoted separately by the Yiwen leiju 藝文類聚 ( Assembled Categories of Arts and Letters), the current version of the poem may be two poems that have come to be stitched together in the
course of transmission. See Owen, Making of Early Chinese Classical Poetry, pp. 147–49.