by Chen Jack W
悠揚詎堪把。
I ask you, my lord, “Of whom are you thinking?”
問君何所思，
“The person of bygone days who shared my heart.”
昔日同心者。
So just wait for now, till the wind and snow clear,
坐須風雪霽，
We’ll set a date to meet beneath the walls of Luoyang.
相期洛城下。41
Between the two halves of the poem, Wu Jun’s poem moves from the de-
scriptive mode of the yongwu poem to the dialogic mode of the yuefu
poem. Beginning with the arrival of a spring snow, the poet notes how the
winter-like weather has crossed and accumulated upon the wilds of Wu
Mountain. Wu Jun notices that despite the chaotic appearance of the
snow, there is something ke’ai, “lovable,” about it. The poet has trans-
—————
38. See Cao Daoheng and Shen Yucheng, Nanbeichao wenxue shi, p. 207.
39. Xian Qin Han Wei Jin Nanbeichao shi, pp. 1748–49.
40. Wu Mountain 巫山, often translated as “Shamanka Mountain,” rises over the Yangtze
Gorges. Here Chu King Huai encountered the goddess of the mountain as described by
Song Yu in “Rhapsody on Gaotang” 高唐賦. See Wen xuan, 19.875–86. Also see Song Yu’s “Rhapsody on the Goddess,” in Wen xuan, 19.886–92. For the Southern Dynasties, the legend of Mount Wu was inherited through adaptations of one of the old Han dynasty “Nao Bell Songs” 鐃歌, “How High Is Mount Wu” 巫山高. This topic was popular during the Qi and Liang dynasties. For the Han yuefu, see Song shu, 22.641; Yuefu shiji, 16.228; and Xian Qin Han Wei Jin Nanbeichao shi, p. 158. For Qi and Liang poems on this topic, see Wenyuan yinghua, 201.994a–95b; and Yuefu shiji, 17.238–39.
41. The phrase Luo cheng xia 洛城下 literally refers to the old capital of Luoyang, but here designates the Liang capital of Jiankang.
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The Significance of Court Poetry
225
ferred to the snowfall the older poetic association of clouds and rain with
the goddess of Wu Mountain, who once made love to the king of Chu.
However, the problem with snow (and with all weather) is that it can-
not be caught or grasped; it lacks the corporeal presence of a warm body. At
this moment, the poet turns from the poetic scene and directly addresses a
“you” who has evidently also been viewing the snow, asking what it is that
the other person is thinking about. The answer is: “The person of bygone
days who shared my heart.” This breaking of the scene to include a second-
person perspective belongs to the conventions of yuefu rhetoric, in which
the singer often turned from the frame of the poetic narrative to address
the person listening to the song. What is interesting here is how, after the
addressee responds, the voice of the poetic speaker also changes. When the
poet advises the “you” to wait for the clearing of the weather so that a date
can be set, it is no longer clear whether the poet is speaking in his original
voice, or now in the voice of the one with whom the “you” seeks to meet.
A more sober poem on snow by another Liang literary figure, the con-
servative Pei Ziye, provides a different combination of poetic subgenres, in
this case between the yongwu poem and the subgenre of frontier poem
( biansai shi 邊塞詩):
On Snow 詠雪詩42
Soaring and whirling—a thousand li of snow,
飄颻千里雪，
Flitting by in an instant, it crosses the Dragon Sands.
忽度龍沙。43
Following clouds, at times together, at times dispersed,
從雲合且散，
Relying on the wind, it billows up and again flies aslant.
因風卷復斜。
Brushing the grasses, just like a string of butterflies,
拂草如連蝶，
Falling from trees, resembling flowers in flight.
落樹似飛花。
If you want to send this to one who lives apart,
若贈離居者，
Break this off in place of the jasper flower.
折以代瑤華。44
—————
42. For texts, see Yiwen leiju, 2.24; Chuxue ji, 2.30; Wenyuan yinghua, 154.722a; and Xian Qin Han Wei Jin Nanbeichao shi, p. 1790.
43. “Dragon Sands” 龍沙, also known as “White Dragon Dunes” 白龍堆, is a desert lo-
cated south of the Heavenly Mountains (Tianshan) in modern-day Xinjiang Province.
During Pei Ziye’s time, the desert would have been located in the Xirong 西戎 regions.
44. These two lines rewrite the following lines from “Greater Master of Fate” 大司命 in the Chu ci: “I break off from the divine hemp xi its jasper flowers, / In order to send it xi This content downloaded from 129.174.21.5 on Sat, 20 Jul 2019 13:01:49 UTC
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226
The Significance of Court Poetry
Of this selection of poems on snow, Pei Ziye’s composition is the most
conventional. In the first couplet, Pei describes how a thousand li of snow
crosses the Dragon Sands, which was located in the Xirong region of the
Northern Wei dynasty. Snow, which was rare in the south, is a signifier of
the Northern Dynasties and of the frontier spaces contested by Han Chi-
nese and non-Han nations. Its appearance in the south, however, becomes
an aesthetic experience, dancing along with the wind, and in the third cou-
plet, transforming into butterflies and flowers against the grasses and trees.
His closing couplet speaks to the otherworldly nature of snow: in place of
the jasper flower that the Chu shaman would have offered to the faraway
god, he offers the snow that is itself a heterotopic symbol of the north.
Of course, the leading poet of the Liang dynasty was none other than
the talented prince Xiao Gang, who would reign as the ill-fated Liang
Jianwendi. Xiao Gang argues against Pei Ziye’s conservative literary values
in a famous letter to his brother, Xiao Yi 蕭繹, specifically naming Xie
Tiao and Shen Yue as “the crown of literature and the models for ‘trans-
mitting’ and ‘creating’” 文章之冠冕，述作之楷模.45 This was a radical
statement, as it displaced the standard of the classical tradition—evoked
through the specific allusion to the Analects on “transmitting” and “creat-
ing”—for the new poetics of the Southern Qi, as exemplified by Xie Tiao
and Shen Yue. Xiao Gang’s championing of the current style over the
style of the canonical past helped shape his later portrayal as a decadent
figure interested only in aesthetic pleasure, and thereby responsible for
the downfall of the Liang. It perhaps did not help that many of his poems
show the kind of dense craftsmanship that make it impossible to think of
the composition as spontaneous expression of self. The following quatrain
on snow is a case in point:
On Snow 詠雪詩46
Salt flies, becoming confused with the butterflies’ dance,
鹽飛亂蝶舞，
The flowers fall, floating into the powder case.
花落飄粉匳。
—————
to one who lives apart” 折疏麻兮瑤華，將以遺兮離居. See Hong Xingzu 洪興祖
(1090–1155), ed. and annot.,
Chu ci buzhu, 2.70.
45. From “Letter to the Prince of Xiangdong” 與湘東王書, in Liang shu, 49.691; and Guang Hongming ji, 35.10a.
46. Xian Qin Han Wei Jin Nanbeichao shi, p. 1976.
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The Significance of Court Poetry
227
The case’s powder floats up, becoming falling flowers,
匳粉飄落花，
The dancing butterflies are confused with the flying salt.
舞蝶亂飛鹽。
This is no mere quatrain; it is also a palindrome, one that even mimics the
effect of palindromic reading. The four disparate scenes (snowfall, butter-
flies in flight, falling flowers, and the lady in the boudoir) are connected by
the common element of snow, though figured as four different images (salt,
butterflies, flowers, and powder). First, the poet describes the salt-like snow,
flying downwards and becoming butterflies that dance along the ground.
Then, he sees the snow as falling flower petals, mixing into the lady’s dress-
ing case where she keeps her powder. The dressing case spills, causing the
powder-like snow to fly up and join the fluttering petals, and the butter-
flies’ dancing flight causes the falling salt to whirl and eddy.
One might think of the palindromic tradition in poetry as the point at
which the poem becomes most like a thing. After all, palindromes are not
spontaneous expressions, but objects of craft, with each word carefully se-
lected and measured out so that the line will read intelligibly backwards
and forwards. The delight of the palindrome resides in its visual presenta-
tion, the characters of the text serving not only the purpose of linguistic
communication, but also pointing to the very materiality of language, the
“thingness” of the poetic word.
Xiao Gang, who would become crown prince and emperor of the Liang,
rejected the claim that literary significance could only derive from emula-
tion of, or allusion to, the set of texts that constituted classical learning.
With the reunification of empire under the Sui and its consolidation under
the Tang dynasty, Xiao Gang became a convenient target for historians and
critics seeking to connect literary style to political fortune. Already in the
Liang, we find dissenters such as Pei Ziye, whose own poem on snow uneas-
ily grafted the rhetoric of the frontier tradition with the descriptive com-
parisons of the courtly tradition. Pei Ziye—and Li E in the Sui—would
blame literary insignificance and the decline of virtue upon a poetics lodged
in things and not persons. Though the pleasures of rhetorical ornament
may seem harmless, the conservative poetics argued that the intense focus
on craft would mean that the poem was nothing more than a thing, an ob-
ject divorced from the ethical concerns of the human realm. However, the
courtly poetics of the Southern Dynasties could not be easily dismissed,
lasting well into the Tang, and indeed, serving as the very ground for the
flourishing of literature in the High Tang.
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228
The Significance of Court Poetry
Taizong and Yongwu Poetry
Tang Taizong, who was faced with the immediate problem of having in-
herited both the poetic histories of the Northern and the Southern Dy-
nasties, further complicated the issue by composing enthusiastically in the
courtly style of the south while vocally championing the values of the
north. Taizong’s case raises the question of what it means for an insignifi-
cant poetry (or a poetry that consciously makes no claim to significance)
to be composed by the sovereign, whose every act is supposed to be im-
bued with significance. Before turning to his poem on snow, I would like
to provide a template for understanding Taizong’s yongwu poetry, so that
we may see how he negotiates the contradictory roles of emperor and
court poet. I begin with a poem that Taizong wrote about a bow, a fitting
topic for someone whose military achievements helped secure his histori-
cal reputation as dynastic cofounder:
On the Bow 詠弓47
Nocking the string: half of the bright moon,
上弦明月半，48
The speeding arrow: faraway, a meteor.
激箭流星遠。
The felled goose carrying a letter is stunned,
落雁帶書驚，49
A howling gibbon half-hidden in branches turns away.
啼猿映枝轉。50
The first line of the quatrain plays on the resemblance of the first quarter
moon to a strung bow. It is difficult to translate the term shangxian 上弦,
—————
47. Chuxue ji, 22.533; Quan Tang shi, 1.18–19; and Tang Taizong quanji jiaozhu, p. 91. This poem is also ascribed to Dong Sigong 董思恭 (fl. 650–80), a poet famed for his yongwu poetry, in Tang shi jishi, 3.33. Accordingly, the Quan Tang shi includes the poem under both poets; also see Quan Tang shi, 63.744.
48. The term shangxian 上弦 (“nocking the string of the bow”) refers to the moon in its first quarter, in which it resembles a strung bow.
49. This refers to an episode in the biography of the paradigmatically loyal official Su Wu.
The Xiongnu, after capturing Su Wu, lied to the Han court, saying that Su Wu was dead.
However, one day in the Imperial Park, the emperor happened to shoot down a goose that had a letter written by Su Wu attached to its foot. See Han shu, 54.2466.
50. Taizong alludes to a story in the Soushen ji 搜神記 ( Record of Seeking after Spirits) in which the King of Chu had commanded his archers to shoot a white gibbon. The gibbon
mocked the would-be hunters, deflecting the arrows with ease. Then, the archer Yang
Youji 養由基 brushed his bow and the gibbon clutched the tree, howling in terror. See
Gan Bao 干寶 (fl. 320), comp., Soushen ji, 11.127.
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The Significance of Court Poetry
229
which can refer either to the act of securing the string to the bow nocks,
which causes the unflexed bow to bend backwards and form a half-moon
shape, or to the moon in the first quarter, which appears to have the shape
of a strung bow. The ambiguity of reference is certainly intentional, un-
settling the boundary between the natural and artificial objects as per-
ceived by the poet. The celestial imagery is carried over to the arrow in
flight, which becomes a far-flung meteor. The second couplet follows the
path of the arrow, shocking the goose that bears Su Wu’s letter and terri-
fying the gibbon in the King of Chu’s hunting preserves.
What is missing from Taizong’s poem on the bow is the martial aspect
of the weapon. The first couplet deals only with the appearance of bow
and arrow, while the second alludes to hunting anecdotes from ancient
history. Even in Su Wu’s biography, which addresses the fraught relation-
ship between the Han empire and the Xiongnu, the act of shooting takes
place within the Imperial Park, with a goose as the tar
get. By restricting
the poem to hunting rather than addressing themes of warfare, Taizong
makes the bow into an object of leisurely enjoyment—an object, in fact,
of courtly poetics.
Things of the natural world also could become topics of yongwu poetry.
In fact, most of Taizong’s yongwu poems treat natural phenomena rather
than the usual artificial objects thematized by poets of the southern courts.
It is within these poems on things of nature that we see a tension between
the aesthetic conventions of the southern courts and the representational
demands of the sovereign role. I turn now to two poems, both titled “On
Rain.”51 The first reads:
On Rain 詠雨52
A weave of clouds drifts over distant peaks,
罩雲飄遠岫，
Sputtering rain skims across the long river.
噴雨泛長河。
Bruming low, it darkens the mountain bellies,
低飛昏嶺腹，
—————
51. The editors of the Tang Taizong quanji jiaozhu identify a third poem on rain by Taizong, citing the Tang Taizong huangdi ji, which dates to the Ming dynasty. However, the Wenyuan yinghua identifies the poem as written by Xu Jingzong. I also believe the poem to be Xu Jingzong’s, rather than Taizong’s, as the style is closer to surviving poems by Xu than it is to those of Taizong.
52. Wenyuan yinghua, 173.839b; Quan Tang shi, 1.11; and Tang Taizong quanji jiaozhu, p. 62.
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230
The Significance of Court Poetry
Treading sideways, it sprinkles the crag’s ridge.
斜足灑巖阿。
Drenched thickets: pearls clustered on the leaves,
泫叢珠締葉，
Rising rivulets: mirrors sketched on the waves.
起溜鏡圖波。
Mist on the willows gives density to the silk-fronds,
濛柳添絲密，
Holding in the gusts to spin a net in the empty air.
