Expressions of Self in Chinese Literature 9780231882002

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Contributors
Introduction
An Exploration of the Chinese Literary Self
Part I. Self in Poetry and Criticism
The Dusty Mirror: Courtly Portraits of Woman in Southern Dynasties Love Poetry
Structuring a Second Creation: Evolution of the Self in Imaginary Landscapes
The Expression of Self in the Kung-an School: Non-Romantic Individualism
Part II. Self in Drama and Fiction
The Self in Conflict: Paradigms of Change in a T’ang Legend
The Fiction of Moral Duty: The Vernacular Story in the 1640s
Beyond Beauty and Talent: The Moral and Chivalric Self In The Fortunate Union
Maids and Servants in Dream of the Red Chamber: Individuality and the Social Order
The Solitary Traveler: Images of the Self in Modern Chinese Literature
Perceptions of Self and Values in Recent Chinese Literature
The Search for Identity in Fiction from Taiwan
An Overview
Duty, Reputation, and Selfhood in Traditional Chinese Narratives
Notes
Glossary
Index

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Expressions of Self in Chinese Literature Studies in Oriental Culture,

Number

19

Columbia University

Expressions of Self in Chinese Literature

Edited by

ROBERT

AND R I C H A R D C .

E.

HEGEL

HESSNEY

Columbia University

Press

New York

1985

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Pacific Cultural Foundation in the publication of this book. Columbia University Press New York Guildford, Surrey Copyright © 1985 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: Expressions of self in Chinese literature. (Studies in Oriental culture; no. 19) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Chinese literature—History and criticism— Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Self in literature— Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Hegel, Robert E. II. Hessney, Richard C. III. Series. PL2275.S44E96 1985 895.1'09'353 84-29270 ISBN 0-231-05828-4 (alk. paper) ISBN 0-231-05829-2 (pbk.) Clothbound editions of Columbia University Press Books are Smyth-sewn and printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper.

To C T. HSIA Scholar, Mentor, and Friend These Essays are Affectionately Dedicated

Studies in Oriental Culture Edited at Columbia University Board of Editors: Pierre Cachia, Professor of Arabic Language and Literature Wm. Theodore de Bary, John Mitchell Mason Professor of the University Ainslie T. Embree, Professor of History Donald Keene, Professor of Japanese Barbara Stoler Miller, Professor of Oriental Studies

Contents

Preface Contributors

ix xiii

Introduction An Exploration of the Chinese Literary Self ROBERT E. HEGEL

3

Part I. Self in Poetry and Criticism The Dusty Mirror: Courtly Portraits of Woman in Southern Dynasties Love Poetry ANNE M . B I R R E L L

33

Structuring a Second Creation: Evolution of the Self in Imaginary Landscapes FRANCES LAFLEUR MOCHIDA

70

The Expression of Self in the Kung-an School: Non-Romantic Individualism JONATHAN CHAVES

123

Part II. Self in Drama and Fiction The Self in Conflict: Paradigms of Change in a T'ang Legend C A T H E R I N E SWATEK

153

The Fiction of Moral Duty: The Vernacular Story in the 1640s PATRICK H A N A N

189

Beyond Beauty and Talent: The Moral and Chivalric Self in The Fortunate Union R I C H A R D C. HESSNEY

214

Contents

Vlll Maids and Servants in Dream of the Red Chamber: and the Social Order

Individuality

M A R S H A L. WAGNER

251

The Solitary Traveler: Images of the Self in Modern Chinese Literature LEO OU-FAN LEE

282

Perceptions of Self and Values in Recent Chinese Literature E D W A R D M . GUNN, J R .

308

The Search for Identity in Fiction from Taiwan R O B E R T E. HEGEL

342

An Overview Duty, Reputation, and Selfhood in Traditional Chinese Narratives J O S E P H S. M . LAU

363

Notes

385

Glossary

433

Index

449

Preface

O

ne of the more interesting panels at the twenty-ninth annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, held in New York that year, was entitled "Expression of Selfhood in Chinese Literature." It was chaired by Joseph S. M. Lau of the University of Wisconsin; its other contributors were Anthony C. Yu of the University of Chicago, Leo O. Lee, then teaching at Indiana University, and Frances LaFleur, a Princeton graduate student. The panel's discussant was C. T. Hsia, Professor of Chinese at Columbia University. Professor Hsia was the best possible choice for this function. His contribution to the study of Chinese literature in the West is unexcelled. His A History of Modern Chinese Fiction, 1917-1957 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961; rev. ed. 1971) was the first critical survey of this exciting field to be written in English; his The Classic Chinese Novel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968) quickly became the standard introduction to the great novels of China's past. He has also written numerous essays in Chinese and English on literary works and figures. But among these essays, none has attracted more attention than his own first English-language essay, " 'To What Fyn Lyve I Thus?'—Society and Self in the Chinese Short Story" (Kenyon Review [1962], vol. 24, no. 3; revised as an appendix to The Classic Chinese Novel). This seminal essay had opened a new window on Chinese fiction, and the

Preface

X

conference panel furthered its illumination by investigating selfhood as expressed in poetry and travel diaries. The year was 1977. While this panel was still in its planning stages, Joseph Lau and Anthony Yu discussed a book of essays on this theme with Robert E. Hegel of Washington University, Hsia's first Ph.D. student who had specialized in precisely the same fields as his mentor. The panel papers could form a core of material, they suggested, and the book could be dedicated to Professor Hsia for his contributions in this area. Hegel canvassed other interested scholars and before long many had promised papers on this theme. Another of Hsia's former graduate students, Richard C. Hessney, then teaching comparative literature at Brooklyn College, offered to share the work of editing. The collection evolved over a number of years as drafts were revised, some potential contributors withdrew, and others substantially rewrote their papers in response to a number of critical readings. And so the present collection came to be. These essays are yet another beginning; they constitute the first volume of work devoted to this crucial area of Chinese literature. They do not exhaust any one form, period, or genre. Instead they are meant to reveal the richness that exists in this field and to dispel misconceptions about the Chinese literary self. To that end, these essays do not presuppose a knowledge of Chinese language: for the specialist there is a glossary of names and terms in Chinese ideographs and an appendix with the texts of certain poerru, but the essays themselves should be stimulating for comparatists and other readers interested in the self in literature. The number of persons who have helped with this project extends far beyond the list of contributors. Many provided valuable advice and support during the volume's extended incubation period. Among them are Cyril Birch, Stephen Cheng, Kenneth DeWoskin, Shuen-fu Lin, Liu Ts'un-yan, Irving Lo, Conrad Lung, Y. W. Ma, and Anthony Yu. Special thanks should go to William F. Bernhardt, Associate Executive Editor at Columbia University Press, for his unflagging pa-

xi

PREFACE

tience and assistance, to Karen Mitchell at the Press for her thoughtful editing, and to Marc Wilson, Director of the Nelson-Adkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, for permission to publish the dust jacket illustration. The entire project languished for a time due to financial uncertainty. Then the Pacific Cultural Foundation in Taipei came to our rescue with a generous grant that made publication possible. We are particularly grateful to the foundation and to its president, Dr. Jeanne Tchong-Koei Li, for their support. The Department of Chinese and Japanese at Washington University in St. Louis also contributed significantly to the success of this project, especially the time, energy, and good will of Margery Bystrom and Debra Jones. At last, with the humility and self-awareness akin to that learned by Su Shih at the Red Cliff, we present these essays to C. T. Hsia with gratitude for his inspiration, insight, and enthusiasm. ROBERT E. H E G E L AND RICHARD C .

HESSNEY

March 2, 1985, the eleventh day of the first lunar month

Contributors

M. B I R R E L L , B.A. in Russian and French (thesis on Pushkin), M.A. University of Michigan, 1970 (thesis on the prose-poems of Ts'ao Chih), M. Phil, and Ph.D. Columbia University, 1978 (dissertation on the love imagery of the Yii-t'ai hsin-yung). Now teaching at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, the University of Cambridge, England. Her translation of the Yu-t'ai hsin-yung was published as New Songs from a Jade Terrace (Allen and Unwin, 1982). Her interpretative study of early medieval Chinese love poetry will also appear soon. Dr. Birrell is completing a book on early anonymous Chinese folk-songs for publication this year.

ANNE

teaches Chinese language and literature at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He has published three books on Chinese poetry: Heaven My Blanket, Earth My Pillow: Poems from Sung Dynasty China by Yang Wan-li (Weatherhill, 1975); Mei Yao-ch'en and the Development of Early Sung Poetry (Columbia University Press, 1976); and Pilgrim of the Clouds: Poems and Essays from Ming Dynasty China by Yuan Hung-tao and his Brothers (Weatherhill, 1978). The most recent of these was nominated for the National Book Award in Translation in 1979. Dr. Chaves has also written articles on Chinese poetry and literary criticism and on the relationship of poetry to painting and calligraphy in China. He has participated in workshops on literary translation and on the influence of Chinese poetry on American poetry.

JONATHAN CHAVES

received his doctorate from Columbia University in 1978 and is now associate professor of Chinese literature at Cornell University. He has published Unwelcome Muse: Chinese Litera-

EDWARD GUNN

Contributors

xiv

ture in Shanghai and Peking, 1937-1945 (Columbia University Press, 1980) and Twentieth-Century Chinese Drama: An Anthology (Indiana University Press, 1983). is Professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard University. His writings include two books published by Harvard University Press, The Chinese Short Story: Studies in Dating, Authorship, and Composition (Harvard University Press, 1973) and The Chinese Vernacular Story (Harvard University Press, 1981). In addition, his essays on traditional and modern vernacular fiction have appeared in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Asia Major, and elsewhere.

PATRICK HANAN

E. H E G E L completed his doctorate at Columbia University in 1973 with a dissertation on Sui Tang yen-i. His publications include The Novel in Seventeenth-Century China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981) and several essays in English and Chinese on traditional and modern vernacular fiction. He is presently completing a translation of Forgotten Tales of the Sui (Sui shih i-wen, 1633), a novel by the dramatist Yüan Yü-ling. He teaches Chinese literature and thought and chairs the Department of Chinese and Japanese at Washington University in St. Louis.

ROBERT

C. H E S S N E Y received his Ph.D. in Chinese literature from Columbia University in 1979. From 1977 to 1980, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Comparative Literature, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. His research has focused on seventeenth-century romances. He is currently an editor at Reader's Digest.

RICHARD

S. M . LAU, born in Hong Kong, received the B . A . degree in English from National Taiwan University (1960) and the Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Indiana University (1966). He has taught comparative literature at the University of Wisconsin and English at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of Singapore. Currently he is Professor of Chinese at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is editor of Chinese Stories from Taiwan, 1960-1970 (1976) as well as coeditor of Traditional Chinese Stories: Themes and Variations (1978) and Modern Chinese Stories and Novellas, 1919-1949 (1981), all of which were published by Columbia University Press. His latest contribution to the study of recent

JOSEPH

CONTRIBUTORS

XV

literature is The Unbroken Chain: An Anthology of Taiwan Fiction Since 1926 (Indiana University Press, 1983) of which he is the editor. is Professor of Chinese Literature at the University of Chicago. A graduate of National Taiwan University, he completed the Ph.D. at Harvard University and has taught at Dartmouth College, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Princeton, and Indiana University. His publications include The Romantic Generation of Modern Chinese Writers (Harvard University Press, 1973) and essays in both Chinese and English on modern Chinese literature and history. His monograph on Lu Hsün, entitled Voices from the Iron House, will be published by Indiana University Press.

LEO OU-FAN LEE

was born in Cape May Point, New Jersey. After studying at Oberlin College and Fu-jen University (Taiwan), she transferred to Princeton University, where she received a B.A. in 1973. She is presently a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton in Chinese literature, has been a full-time lecturer at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, and is now teaching at Suzhou University, Jiangsu, China.

FRANCES LAFLEUR MOCHIDA

is a doctoral candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. She is writing a dissertation on the drama of Feng Meng-lung.

CATHERINE SWATEK

L. W A G N E R attended Bryn Mawr College, and received her B.A. in Oriental Languages from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1969. After a year of study at the Inter-University Program at National Taiwan University in Taipei, she returned to Berkeley and there completed her Ph.D. in comparative literature in 1975, specializing in Chinese, English, and French literature. She is currently Adjunct Assistant Professor of Chinese Literature at Columbia University and Vice President for Programs at China Institute in America. Her critical study of Wang Wei was published by Twayne in 1981, and The Lotus Boat: The Origins of Chinese Tz'u Poetry in T'ang Popular Culture was published by Columbia University Press Ln 1984.

MARSHA

Expressions of Self in Chinese Literature

Introduction

An Exploration of the Chinese Literary Self Robert E. Hegel

S

elf as expressed in literature is an elusive entity; the self in literature is necessarily at some remove from living reality. Mao Tse-tung was apparently laboring under the misconception that writers could capture social phenomena in objective terms when he advised them to create fictional characters "more typical, nearer the ideal" than ordinary mortals. While no product of the human imagination can be other than "human material" (in the words of Welleck and Warren), no literary self is completely like any one person who ever lived.1 After all, self in literature is a function of the mind reflected in a product of the mind. Literary art is thus a distorting mirror if naked reality is all that one hopes to perceive there. But the study of self in literature can reveal in extreme detail two variants on that primary entity, created selves and revealed selves. The first are those fabricated individuals who people narratives and other literary forms; they embody what their creators considered essential to particular selves. Their study readily reveals, through common features, what writers understood about the self as it should appear in writing. Revealed selves are those features of individual writers'

Robert E. Hegel

4

psyches unwittingly or deliberately manifested as self-expression in their work. The essays that constitute this volume address the question of self from a wide variety of individual works of all major literary forms from the earliest to the present. None of the articles is an exhaustive survey of literary manifestations of Chinese personal identity. Generalizations of that sort are premature; they must of necessity be based on a much greater number of narrow investigations than could be assembled in a single book. These essays, then, are a contribution toward a better understanding of the self in Chinese literature, the first such collection on this topic. This introduction will explore the question from nonliterary perspectives as well, to provide a background against which to understand the other studies. Readers interested in more detailed historical, philosophical, or sociological elucidations of the Chinese self may wish to consult works cited below. Some six decades ago modern China's best-known writer, Lu Hsiin (Chou Shu-jen, 1881-1936), began his serialized biography of an Everyman for his age by commenting: And yet no sooner had I taken up my pen that I became conscious of the huge difficulties in writing this far-fromimmortal work. The first was the question of what to call it. Confucius said, "If the name is not correct, the words will not ring true"; and this axiom should be most scrupulously observed. There are many types of biographies . . . but unfortunately none of these suited my purpose. . . . The second difficulty confronting me was that a biography of this type should start off something like this: "So-and-so, whose other name was so-and-so, was a native of such-and-such a place"; but I don't really know what Ah Q's surname was. . . . The third difficulty I encountered in writing this work was that I don't know how Ah Q's personal name should be written either. . . . My fourth difficulty was with Ah Q's place of origin. 2

Lu Hsiin's purpose here was caricature, a parody of age-old conventions of historical writing in China—a branch of literature in many respects—that identified the relationship of au-

THE C H I N E S E LITERARY S E L F

5

thor to subject, format of the work, its intended purpose, and the like through choice of conventional nomenclature in its title, such as lieh-chuan (official biography), izu-chuati (autobiography), or wai-chuan (unofficial biography). But even within the various formats in which biography could properly be written in China, past or present, there was little latitude in the types of information expected, particularly the subject7s various names and native place, as Lu Hsiin observes. What he does not specify is normally the very first element by which a person is identified, the name of the dynasty under which he lived. That Lu Hsiin omitted it is no surprise. Clearly he was referring to his own time, when no dynasty reigned; the Manchus had fallen and China did not have a unified government. Nor could he particularize native place, formal name, or even surname and still universalize his protagonist: both writer and intended reader would have shared the traditional wisdom that the Chinese self, one's personal identity, is inextricably bound up in just such facts of family and geographic origins. 3 It was not only through a few details of birth that a Chinese historically was identified, however; biographical accounts in Western society demand this same information. The traditional Chinese accounts also provide data to clarify the individual's social and cultural context: his male relatives for several generations in both directions, his status as indicated by amount of formally recognized education attained and official positions held, his legacy as identified by his writings and his disciples, his affiliations demonstrated by his literary ties and personal friendships, his personal strengths evinced by anecdotes concerning his youth, and his moral stature exemplified by his success in functioning as a son, as a subject, and as a friend. (I use the masculine pronoun deliberately. Women were infrequently the subject of biographical writing in old China; even then they are most commonly referred to only by surname and by the names of their spouses.) In the People's Republic today, individuals are still identified by reference to social function—by type of occupation, workplace, and political experience—in addition to the bare-bones data of personal

Robert E. Hegel

6

appellation, home province, and time of birth. It is no exaggeration to say that to a considerably greater extent than in the modern West, the real Chinese individual has been, and still is, identified by reference to the greater human context of his time. While to a Western perspective human society seems to consist of an infinite number of identifiably different individuals, all peoples agree that many attributes, values, and aspirations are shared by everyone. To the Chinese it has been the common features and not the uniqueness of an individual that draws attention. The period of time during which a person lived reveals something about him; regionally distinguished habits, propensities, and even tastes further clarify the image. In China there have always been a relatively small number of surnames. The family name and the economic, political, and social relationships it entails in a given locality and time can tell a great deal about an individual. Furthermore, historians wrote (and people thought) in terms of widely known, fixed reference points in order to identify individuals, specifically the traditional behavioral models. That is, a person may not have been merely a minister, a father, a son, but instead an upright minister, an exemplary father, a filial son—or their converse. Histories were intended as manuals of precedents for Confucian administrators; this explains the tendency to group subjects in terms of their moral function in a particular social role, both roles and functions described in terms congruent with Confucian conceptions of social order intended to facilitate governing. 4 Given the holistic cosmological views of traditional China, and their modern analogue in the universalism ascribed to Chinese Marxism, it is only logical to concentrate on roles in society and the proper functioning of the individual therein as a means of identifying the self. Since the cosmic balance, or at least social harmony, depends on the smooth interaction of individuals, social data about a person logically define him, both descriptively and prescriptively, for the reader. In the same way that the cosmos (human society, to the Marxists) is in a state of constant flux, an individual too is hardly a

THE C H I N E S E LITERARY SELF

7

static entity: he changes, must change, as the changes inherent in aging thrust him into one social role after another, whether the roles are in sequence or simultaneous. Complexity in an individual naturally results from playing several roles simultaneously or from shifting from role to role. Deprived of social function, the individual becomes an unknown, perhaps even meaningless, entity. In this regard, China's present demonstrates a high degree of continuity with China's past. 5 In a fascinating study Tu Wei-ming contrasts the Western notion of adulthood as completion of growth with the Chinese concept ch'eng-jen, literally "becoming a person." China has viewed the self as imbued with virtually unlimited potential for development; maturation is a lifelong process, the product of the continuous effort needed if genuine humanity is to be attained. To Confucians and Taoists alike, the Tao— whether conceived -as the overarching moral structure of the universe or as Ultimate Reality itself—is not separate from one who pursues it. Consequently, there is no absolute but only relative attainment of all that humanity can be; 6 self-perfection is the development of that which is both universal and inherent in all individuals. Definitions of the learning process differ among China's philosophical schools, but they agree on one central point: self-cultivation involves the development of selflessness, and therein lies the perfection of the self. A superficial example is Confucius' statement, "A man of humanity [i.e., highest virtue], wishing to establish his own character, also establishes the character of others, and wishing to be prominent himself, also helps others to be prominent." 7 However, this same principle informs the Confucian emphasis on conventionally regulated behavior, ritual, decorum, and the like. To return to the observance of the rites through overcoming the self constitutes benevolence [e.g., jen, humanity's highest moral quality] . . . the practice of benevolence depends on oneself alone, and not on others. 8

Ritual behavior serves several purposes for the Confucian: it regulates the expression of human feelings, it integrates the

Robert E. Hegel

8

individual into the social context, and it provides a continuous link between the present and the past, from which all "proper" ritual was thought to have been transmitted. In each of these functions, ritual served to make human behavior predictable and uniform, more expressive of common social role than of the temperament and values of any one individual. Ultimately its observance creates in human society a structure parallel to the hierarchical order of the cosmos. As we have seen, studying the histories of old China involves constant rehearsal of normative behavioral categories; Tu Wei-ming has aptly remarked that for the Confucian, the study of history thereby presents an "uninterrupted affirmation of the authentic possibility of humanness in the w o r l d . " 9 Especially to later Confucians, study and moral self-cultivation could lead to the ultimate degree of self-realization, self-transcendence to a realm of sympathetic identification with the processes of nature itself. 10 Early Taoist writings are even more straightforward in identifying the universality of what is fundamental to the self. In the Tao-te chitig egotism is repeatedly condemned as "having desires." The Taoist must exert conscious effort to rid himself of these impediments to attune to the ultimate Tao, that which is tzu-jan, " o f itself s o . " Because the Tao underlies both nature and man, human society too can be "natural"; the Tao-te ching offers a Utopian vision of simple human life in selfcontained agricultural communities having neither individual nor collective goals beyond calm subsistence. 11 The Taoist classic Chuang Tzu rejects political activity, confounds logic and normal mental processes, and makes heroes of those who become self-contained in the Tao of their own minds. And yet the primacy of basic human relationships is never questioned. In a brief narrative that has relevance on several levels to this discussion of self, Chuang Tzu's wife dies, and Chuang bangs on a pot and sings. A friend, the logician Hui Shih, questions his apparent lack of feeling for this person with whom he had shared his life and had raised children. The character Chuang Tzu replies: " W h e n she first died, do you think that I didn't grieve like anyone e l s e ? " 1 2 Even in a Taoist

THE CHINESE LITERARY SELF

9

parable, the protagonist's first response is to identify himself with conventional behavior relevant to an established social role. However, his rationale only begins here. He continues with an antidote for bereavement that clarifies the Taoist notion of individual identity: he traces his wife's existence backward through time. In the midst of the jumble of wonder and mystery a change took place and she had a spirit. Another change and she had a body. Another change and she was born. Now there's been another change and she's dead. It's just like the progression of the four seasons, spring, summer, fall, winter. 1 3

To the Taoist perspective, an individual is a transient creature whose nature it is to change, to develop from the Ultimate Source and to return thereto at death. Chuang Tzu's irreverent singing reflects his acceptance of the inevitable, of what transcends man and is "of itself so." Buddhism brought to China a yet more highly refined conception of the conditional existence of the individual. According to the wisdom scriptures (the Prajna-paramita sutras) of the Mahayana tradition, the self, like all other conditional entities, is comprised of a transitory aggregate of elements. These elements, the five skandhas (form and matter, sensations, perceptions, emotional states, and consciousness), are in a constant state of flux; hence the individual is not to be considered a permanent entity in any regard. A person should face this reality by extinguishing all sense of self to become one with the Unconditioned, the ultimate reality that is Void of all particular characteristics. This sublime selflessness puts one on the path to becoming a bodhisattva, the embodiment of wisdom whose function is to bring all other living creatures to this realization. However, to the enlightened person or even to one who grasps this truth in purely rational terms, the uncompromising ontological nondualism in the more intellectual sects of Mahayana Buddhism offers a poignant paradox. That is, the Unconditioned is ultimately no different from conditioned existence; enlightenment is indistinguishable from immersion in the delusions of the real world. The self is no different from

Robert E. Hegel

10

what the individual perceives it to be from moment to moment. Buddhist-influenced writers could celebrate their momentary hopes, fears, and insights in the bittersweet knowledge that such is the only existence that self can possibly have. Other, less philosophical Mahayana sects saw some reality in material existence which might even lead to salvation, rebirth in the Western Paradise. The negation of Confucian social ties as a basis for self-conception here echoed the more intellectual Buddhist conception of self as conditional and transient. 1 4 Time has been of central concern in all three of these philosophical approaches to the self. James J. Y. Liu has identified several typical attitudes toward time in Chinese verse. Poets "confront" time as they face events streaming toward them from the past; they "concur" with time when they face the same direction as the flow of events, into the future. Liu also comments, perceptively if parenthetically, "I assume that in the case of circular time one would be at the circumference; if one were at the center, one would no longer be in time." 1 5 To the extent that self is based on the past in the Confucian view, Confucian poets must "confront" time to establish a self. Taoists who would follow Chuang Tzu's example would focus on the forward flow of time; they would "concur" with it. Both indigenous schools of thought posit cyclical time; only philosophical Buddhism does not. Instead, the emancipated self is beyond, or " n o longer in" time. Here Liu has touched upon another facet of the self: its necessary separability from temporal process, often visualized as a stream of water. (Not surprisingly, a conventional metonymy for the poet during the T'ang period was ku-chou, or "solitary boat," a symbol of "man's aloneness in an enlarging world.") 16 The historiographical demand for designation of dynasty during which a person lived, the dating of poems, even the arrangement of items in an anthology by chronological order presupposes a cosmic, continuing process of change to which the separate (whether real or perceived) self must respond for validation. One might face the past or face the future, in Liu's terms, but the Chinese self was allowed no freedom to ignore time while asserting its individuality. On the

T H E C H I N E S E LITERARY SELF

21

one hand, this view could—and did, in Six Dynasties poets— produce both a morbid fear of death and spiritual and alchemical attempts to transcend or to slow time's movement. 17 On the other, even a poet having the individual personality and Taoist leanings of T'ao Ch'ien (365-427) expressed his deeply felt concern for the destructive effects of time in his famous "Hsing, ying, shen" (Substance, Shadow, and Spirit): Earth and heaven endure forever, Streams and mountains never change. Plants observe a constant rhythm Withered by frost, by dew restored. But man, most sentient being of all, In this is not their equal. He is present here in the world today, Then leaves abruptly, to return no more. The body goes; that fame should also end Is a thought that makes me burn inside. Give yourself to the waves of the Great Change Neither happy nor yet afraid And when it is time to go, then simply go Without any unnecessary fuss. 18

The loss of self the poet here laments is clearly an individual self, defined in part as the object of time's destructive effects. T'ao Ch'ien's reaction to mortality, like that of Chuang Tzu immediately after his wife died, sees the self as an animate physical being, pathetically helpless to forestall time's depredations. A similar view must have inspired certain Taoists of the Six Dynasties period to foil time with only successful means at their disposal: they committed suicide to achieve immortality, freedom from time's control. 19 One remedy proposed by a T'ao Ch'ien persona in the poem cited above is to achieve a measure of immortality through one's writings. This was a pressing concern for writers in all ages of China's history; writers' hopes were generally vindicated by the tremendous bulk of literature preserved in China. Yet some of China's best-known poems refer to no

12

Robert E. Hegel

explicit self; there is no " I , " nor even an individualized persona, to be found. Wang Wei (701-761) has often been cited as an extreme example of this sort of literary selflessness, a product of his Buddhist inclinations. Empty hills, no one in sight, only the sound of someone talking; late sunlight enters the deep wood, shining over the green moss again. 2 0

In this brief poem, the poet's mind is like a mirror— to use the Buddhist image—reflecting reality without comment or other intellectual interference. Wang Wei's literary self stands at the center of time, unchanging with it and unchanged by it. The poet here becomes, in Yip Wai-lim's apt phrase, "Nature [Phenomenon] as it is: no trace of conceptualization." 2 1 The influence of Buddhism on Wang Wei's conception of self is clear. But its manifestation is two-sided. First, the poet becomes one with the scene, denying separate existence. But on the other hand, the conception of the five skandhas of conditional existence seems to be invoked here. That is, these fleeting perceptions constitute the totality of the poet's existence, his self at one moment. (After all, the poem only reflects physical reality; regardless of the poet's mental state at the time of composition, the poem, a literary artifact, exists separate from other elements of external—-and internal—reality.) Other poems in this sequence by himself and his friend P'ei Ti refer to time and place explicitly. 22 By creating a seemingly eternal moment, the poem overcomes time. Wang Wei's immortality is doubly ensured thereby: no self to lose to time, and a poem celebrating this no-self that has been preserved for more than a millennium. Self-denial plays a significant role in the ideology of the modern age as reflected in contemporary Chinese literature. However, the purpose is quite different: instead of losing the self in the Eternal, the writer denies the individual self for the specific—and transitory—needs of the mass. China's Marxist leaders in recent decades have often repeated the slogan, " T h e masses are the makers of history." Yet instead of

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the collective resilience this approach would imply, recent creative writing and events reveal instead a faith in the ability of man to change with events. Mao Tse-tung interpreted the social function of literature narrowly, seeing it as a necessary means of meeting political needs. As he so clearly revealed in the phrase "more typical, nearer the ideal," Mao saw literature as didactic by definition. Writing has the power to mold the values of those who read it; writers must therefore embue their work with only the correct values. The malleability attributed to the individual is to be found at all social levels: China's working masses should become literate in order that they may be reached collectively by new values, while intellectuals should live and work together with peasants and laborers in order to develop the values of that class and be able to write specifically to meet their needs. These ideas, the motive force behind social movements of totally unprecedented scope (including the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" that began in 1966 and lasted, in important respects, until the death of Mao a decade later), hinge on the premises that a person consists essentially of a set of values and that personal values, hence one's identity, can change through time. That one's identity is ostensibly related to socioeconomic class does not negate this conception. 2 3 A Marxist writer must take part in the process of revolutionary social change Bodhisattva-fashion by bringing all others to a higher stage of political consciousness, and hence, in certain regards, to a higher level of being. At this higher level values are less egotistical and more collectivist in orientation. The conscientious writer, then, has two choices: either to present himself as an exemplary character in his writing (one that is "close to the ideal") or to erase any trace of individuality from his writings, replacing his particular consciousness with the desired ideology of the community, expecially during periods of progressive change. 24 The goal of self-development in Chinese Marxism is self-transcendence no less than it was in Confucianism. This remarkable parallel reveals a fundamental continuity in the Chinese notion of the self as a fluid entity of not merely material proportions.

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China's social history confirms the continuity of this conception of the self through time. The ancestral cults of the Shang kings 3,500 years ago and the religious practices of Taiwan's modern-day peasants share with billions of Chinese throughout the millennia one essential premise. That is, the unseen world is at most an extension of the visible; the two realms of existence are fundamentally interconnected. The deities of Chinese religions have never originated from some transcendent or otherworldly source; for the most part they are simply deceased human beings. Thus Chinese deities past and present have been conceived as needing concern and sustenance from their descendants or followers. In turn, their divine powers can be invoked to meet the needs of the living— which the gods know so well from having experienced mortal existence themselves. Myths are therefore rare in China by Western standards; instead, biographies of gods exist to parallel—or to extend—those of normal human beings. 2 5 While explanations vary with time and social stratum, traditional Chinese religion consistently presents a view of the self as constituted of matter and energy. The former is subject to the depredations of time; the latter is further separable into positive or benevolent elements and others that are negative or malevolent. In its purest form, the first of these spiritual essences is the stuff of divinity; concentrated malevolence forms the ghosts or demons that occasion popular fears and folk rituals.26 To a degree, then, these beliefs and the practices they require parallel the Buddhist idea that the self lacks integrity; the constituent elements differ, to be sure, but religion as practiced for thousands of years in China presupposes the conception of a self that is voluntarily (in the case of spirit mediums) or involuntarily divisible, may have partial continued existence after death, and is certainly spiritual rather than material at base. This belief accords well with the Chuangtzian account of the plight of the dead woman—she returned to the realm of spiritual energy whence she c a m e — and with the flight of the disembodied mind through meditative trance in certain Taoist schools. It also serves to explain

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certain peculiarly Chinese treatments of the individual in literature. First, the divisible nature of the self allows mind and body to separate in narratives of late imperial China. The theater utilizes this idea to allow young female characters apparently to accompany their lovers while their own real bodies lie cold in death or in coma. 27 Second, it allows for characters to function on two planes of existence simultaneously, most prominently in the greatest of all Chinese novels, Hung-lou meng (A Dream of Red Mansions, more commonly referred to as Dream of the Red Chamber), also known as Shih-t'ou chi (The Story of the Stone). The protagonists Pao-yii and Tai-yii are both material and spiritual beings, fated in their attraction for each other and yet free to work out the details of their lives. One is never really certain which level of existence is meant to be more valid in the work; clearly they cannot be separated. 28 Finally, the spiritual nature of the self permits the exploration of dreams in Chinese literature to have an extended range of significance. On the one hand, dream exploits constitute transparent allegories for the reader; they are no less real for the character than are his waking adventures. On the other, dreams in fiction allow the enactment of fantasies that would be impossible in daylight reality—and yet they have as much physical effect on characters as do everyday events. 29 The perspective of Chinese religion and some of its literary manifestations reveal a conception of the self varying only in degree from those visions presented in its major philosophical schools. Here again the self is a transient entity, conditional rather than absolute in its existence (although the nature of this conditional existence is not explored fully in Chinese religion), fluid in its composition, and changeable— in addition to being primarily spiritual in nature. Clearly, the Chinese self is a self-conscious conception, a product of mind with all the characteristics that definition implies. Thus far I have discussed a few elements of literary identity in the perennial Chinese scheme primarily as presented from nonliterary perspectives. Literature itself differs

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from history, philosophy, and religion because no matter how a work may generalize on the human self—as do these other disciplines—it also reveals the self as expressed by an individual self, whether consciously or inadvertently. The studies that follow examine a variety of Chinese literary works, poetry, fiction, and drama, from a 2,400-year span of time. These writings express—and elicit—differing views of self and differing degrees of individual particularity balanced by social custom and literary convention. Implicit in most of the works here discussed is a pragmatic theory of literature, an approach that stresses the social effect of writing (which effect, as Edward Gunn discovers, may actually be minimal). To this end, many of these works present behavioral models explicitly, as type characters in narrative, 30 or implicitly, through conventional modes of expression in verse. The aspect of self that appears most frequently in these essays is the recognition of the necessary role of duty and its fulfillment in building an individual identity. As society presents many role models to maturing individuals, so too do duties multiply and, in the more interesting Chinese narratives, bring conflicting obligations. Duty to the state is perhaps most obvious, but duty to one's class, one's locality, one's family, and one's beloved all appear as strong motivation for Chinese heroes and heroines. Likewise, the duty to oneself as separable from the other causes—largely a function of selfpreservation, usually in a quite literal sense—makes its demands and must be answered. Patrick Hanan's topic is a body of stories compiled during one of China's most chaotic periods, the Manchu conquest of the 1640s. These stories were written in a version of the vernacular even though designed for the authors' own class of educated and privileged males; they address directly the duties incumbent upon this class. To such readers, the individual is fully capable of moral choice; the self is to be not only evaluated but defined on the basis of these choices. Moral order being fundamentally indistinguishable from political and social order in the Confucian world view, patriotism presents the challenge to devote oneself heroically and selflessly to the

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needs of society. Thus the writers Hanan investigates dismiss the possibility of Taoist eremitism, so appealing in other eras, to endorse self-fulfillment through Confucian puritanism and public service. 31 To them, writing is a weak second choice as a means of establishing oneself. Moral conservatism in the Confucian vein and the establishment of self were interlocked issues among mid-seventeenth-century novelists as well. Chin Sheng-t'an (?16101661), for example, was a nonconformist who did not sit for the higher-level civil service examinations, preferring instead to read voraciously in a wide variety of areas. He was convinced that he was intellectually superior to his contemporaries and arrogantly flaunted his knowledge at every opportunity. Yet he is best known for his work in editing and writing critical commentary for the novel Shui-hu chuan (Water Margin), a military romance that reached the final stage of its textual evolution in his hands. 32 To Chin, the successes of its bandit-turned-rebel heroes might promote civil disorder and warfare. As a consequence he truncated the novel at the rebels' triumphant banquet celebrating a final victory over imperial forces—to substitute an ending in which all of them are executed through direct divine intervention. To clarify further his own views on political loyalty, Chin also modified the text to cast doubt on the intentions of the leader of the gang; thus Sung Chiang ostensibly maintains his loyalty to the emperor while rebelling only against his evil ministers. Clearly Chin Sheng-t'an used this novel to establish himself through his moral stance. This was not enough, however; Chin later was a leader of a widespread demonstration in Soochow against a rapacious tax collector. He himself was executed for seeking a higher degree of self-fulfillment: he physically demonstrated his moral standards and his courage to criticize others for not meeting those same traditional behavioral norms. 33 Chin, like Hanan's authors, perceived self-worth as hinging on fulfillment of his responsibility to the body politic. Joseph Lau discusses several versions of selfhood, all of which are related to self-justification or even self-esteem by virtue of adherence to duty. Orphan Chao may collapse

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w h e n finally told the truth about the gruesome fate of his clan and the role of his "adopted father" in their demise, but his chagrin is only momentary. At once he resolves to destroy the man w h o raised him in order to avenge the deaths of his relatives by birth. His collapse serves in the play to mark his shift of allegiances and of social roles, from obedient adopted son to his clan's avenger. The widow in "Shih-wu-kuan hsi-yen ch'eng ch'iao-huo" (The Jest That Leads to Disaster) w h o has been, unwittingly, the faithful wife of her first h u s b a n d ' s murderer, also shifts her loyalties—even without obvious physical trauma. The protagonist of the first tale acts for the most straightforward reasons, Lau argues; the O r p h a n can comprehend no moral complexity in his situation. However, the widow is a different case. She may well be moved to betray her "husband"-captor in part by a guilty conscience; after all, she had insisted on the execution of two innocent people wrongly accused of murdering her first h u s b a n d . Lau's example of the young w o m a n w h o sacrifices all marital happiness for the sake of reputation is extreme but still within the same category of character as these two. She and others in traditional literature, such as Chu Kuei-erh in the novel Sui Yang-ti yen-shih (The Merry A d v e n t u r e s of Emperor Yang, anon., 1631), embody the paradoxical situation that total self-denial can in fact be an extremely effective m e a n s of self-assertion. These characters function quite simply as martyrs for their chosen cause, self-appointed victims on the secular pyre of Confucian morality, confident that their bold actions will be recorded and told to generation after generation of less intrepid souls. Like Christian martyrs in medieval Europe, they ensure themselves everlasting fame by apotheosis to the sublime level of behavioral model for all posterity. Many stories and plays resort to divine intervention to rescue such characters, as in the story discussed by Joseph Lau. Other more realistic narratives simply leave them their fame, a cold reward but one sought by various real-life heroes of Chinese tradition. 34 However, as Lau observes, there is an unmistakable element of egotism involved in such choices. Chinese tra-

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dition with its "golden mean" tends to see all acts as falling on continua between polar opposites of behavior, for example, that of self-denial. Extremes are to be avoided, according to popular Confucian teachings. Such perverse rejection of this principle not only earns reputation; it is a selfish blow against social convention. A figure who puts this aspect of self in clear perspective is the hilariously ornery protagonist of the early vernacular story "K'uai-tsui Li Ts'ui-lien chi" (Loquacious Li Ts'ui-lien, or "The Shrew" in H. C. Chang's wonderful translation). Ts'ui-lien balks at every suggestion made by her parents: their efforts to marry her off meet with a torrent of abuse from the young lady, whose interests apparently are confined to joining a Buddhist convent. Philosophically her insistence might be rationalized as motivated by her realization of the illusory nature of this world and the need to retreat to the other. But in the context of the story, she refuses to cooperate with others because that is what they want her to do. She simply will do what she wants to do; the prospect of a reputation for chastity pales before her obstinacy. 35 The selfish side of an apparently selfless self can be seen even in the romantic exemplars discussed by Richard C. Hessney. He observes their struggles to satisfy both love and morality, but for most this dilemma causes none of the emotional turmoil visited upon such Western heroines as Clarissa Harlowe. They are secure in their resolve: the "beauty" in Haoch'iu chuati (The Fortunate Union) handily tricks her vile uncle with never a palpitation for herself; the "genius" T'ieh Chungyü may raise his voice in self-righteous anger but he does not spend nights sleepless with longing. Sentimental platitudes serve to calm the blaze that we expect to rage in his chest. But in fact his passion does not blaze. In this T'ieh differs profoundly from the feckless Chang Sheng in "Ying-ying chuan" (The Story of Ying-ying) as revealed by Joseph Lau. One might argue that the "comic rise" from disharmony to harmony in these "genius-beauty romances" takes place on the moral foundation of these youths. Appropriately they are gratified by this process, for example when Ping-hsin is vindicated by proof of her virginity in The Fortunate Union and when her in-

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dividualistic disregard for the rules binding normal society brings the proper results. Hessney is surely justified in describing their ability to discern talent in others as a sign of their self-assurance. (Appropriately Ping-hsin, like her predecessor Ying-ying, urges her lover-to-be to cultivate his moral self, i.e., self-control, even though T'ieh remains so much cooler than Chang.) Joseph Lau has demonstrated the quickness and apparent ease with which Orphan Chao shifts roles; to Lau the widow of "The Jest That Leads to Disaster" changes position less smoothly, and she reveals a certain self-interest in the process. Often Western readers find characters of the latter propensity in Chinese literature more engaging. They appear to us as more complex in their motivations, hence more realistic. These complexities of motivation, of morality, and of interest, are accomplished in several major ways. Hessney comments that the interplay of types in old vernacular fiction parallels a similar phenomenon in Chinese theater. The shift from role to role can occasion a noteworthy shift in identity. See, for example, the curious humanity Catherine Swatek discovers attributed to Yang Su in the play Hung-fu chi (Red Whisk). At first he is the self-satisfied minister, aloof from the concerns of his underlings; then he becomes the indulgent and paternalistic patron who reunites a serving maid with her husband. The play demonstrates its characters' capacity for selftransformation, often through inner crisis. Curly Beard in "Ch'iu-jan-k'o chuan" (The Man with the Curly Beard) must shift from being a contender for the throne to patron of those who would help his erstwhile rival Li Shih-min. In the T'ang period ch'uan-ch'i tale this transformation occurs without stress; in the play written centuries later, and with an eye toward revealing inner feelings, the change occasions great tension for him. The self may be presented as dynamic, but substantial role change takes its toll. Aspects of self defined by social function can be crucial to the ego in a Chinese narrative. Marsha Wagner focuses specifically on social relations as they define the self. Even minor characters, maids and

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servants, in the immortal Dream of the Red Chamber have inner feelings and complex motivations, in marked contrast to the conventional use of stereotypes for minor roles. 36 Each is individualized, often revealed in the need for self-justification by gaining or recovering face. Li Ma-ma, the wet nurse, follows a pattern similar to that of the maid Ssu-ch'i; the latter hallucinates a reason for her suicide, thus absolving herself of responsibility for moral stain. But it is change in social position that generates intense anxiety in Dream. Self-esteem is never at a more precarious ebb than when a servant is demoted, for example. Mere fear of change may be a factor as well in the young mistresses' apprehension about marriage away from the Chia household. Indeed, Wagner explains, a character bereft of a supportive social context suffers; self here is in part a psychic state that needs the security of a stable hierarchical structure to survive intact. And as a social entity, each individual self is involved in the stability of all. When social order declines in the Chia household, when individuals step out of their proper roles—whether to carry on illicit amours, to accomplish private business dealings, or to snatch a tidbit fit for a master—the entire edifice is threatened through inevitable chains of causation. Given the general Chinese preoccupation with social nexus as a means of establishing the self, it is not surprising that this Dream element has a substantial history in Chinese literature. Vernacular narratives in particular put their protagonists on the road, away from ties of family and village, when trouble strikes. This event often occasions a crisis in identity. In the late Ming short story "Wu Pao-an ch'i-chia tu-yu" (Wu Pao-an Ransoms His Friend), the faithful Wu devotes all his energies to saving the money needed to ransom a man he has never met who is a captive of border tribal peoples. His reason is that he vowed to aid him in a military campaign; having so vowed, his self-concept as well as his reputation seem to hinge on fulfilling his commitment. For years he lives apart from his family, depriving himself of all comforts in his self-appointed quest; when finally he dies in obscurity, his son re-

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ceives high honors in his stead and a shrine is established in his honor. 3 7 His self-worth is established in relation to another person, but it does not hinge on any familiar social setting. Of the earliest preserved vernacular stories, two bring ego-destructive calamity on heroes who are out of their context. In "Yang Wen Lan-lu-hu chuan" (Yang Wen and the White Tiger Star) 3 8 Yang, scion of a line of generals, finds himself shamed by being caught off guard, having his wife abducted, and being deprived of his weapons while away from home. In the more famous story version of the White Snake legend, the hapless young man falls under the spell of the serpent while enjoying the scenery on the Ch'ing-ming festival. Appropriately, he is an orphan; he has only weak relationships with a brother-in-law and his employer. Consequently, he has no resources with which to meet the unprecedented challenge of the lady's advances. The legal trouble into which he falls requires him to move away from even these ties. Indeed, the monk who saves him constitutes the hero's only other personal tie. 39 Two seventeenth-century novels present this problem in its ultimate form. Sui shih i-wen (Forgotten Tales of the Sui, 1633) leaves its hero, a would-be knight errant, far away from home, friendless, penniless, and with nothing to do. Deprived of all social supports, Ch'in Shu-pao gives up the weapons handed down from his grandfather, symbolizing his family, and even takes on an assumed name. His concept of self has flown away with his social (and financial) resources, leaving only confusion, despair, and emotional depression. 4 0 In Hsi-yu pu (Tower of Myriad Mirrors, 1641), on the other hand, the magical Monkey is still able, sporadically, to see and hear his erstwhile companions. But he is alone, unable to touch them. They have become mere figments of his imagination. He too hides his identity in an effort to recover his original relationships, although when events lose all predictability, Monkey loses his self-control, to become a mindless embodiment of frustration and rage. 41 Indeed, in fiction loss of a familiar social matrix, even temporarily, puts the self in a precarious position.

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The Buddhist notion of self also appears in Dream of the Red Chamber: the fundamentally empty product of mind from which each person must be liberated. Several characters do achieve release from their worldly attachments in the novel; to most, loss of ego is a traumatic transition, if it is genuine. However, once this ultimate freedom is achieved, identity becomes a function of self-denial. The Buddhist arhat as a literary device then differs only superficially from the Confucian moral paragon. Again paradoxically, no-self becomes license for self-indulgence for the eccentric Buddhist (and Taoist) characters that appear in much of China's fiction and drama. The snobbish Buddhist "nun" (actually still a laywoman) Miaoyu in Dream is a case in point. Compare also the sublime selfconfidence of the Confucian "genius" T'ieh Chung-yii with more serious portraits, Ni Heng and various Taoist hermits. Ni is an ostensibly Confucian eccentric in the classic historical romance, San-kuo chih yen-i (Romance of the Three Kingdoms, c. 1400, attributed to Lo Kuan-chung). Unwilling to compromise his integrity, he berates the would-be usurper Ts'ao Ts'ao for his worldly aims while revealing no fear for himself. Later he removes his clothing in Ts'ao Ts'ao's court, declaring, "To hoodwink and deceive the emperor, that's insolence! I expose the body my parents gave me—that's showing my purity." 4 2 The idea of nakedness as symbolizing purity also appears in the following well-known anecdote about the drunken Taoist poet Liu Ling (fl. 250): On many occasions Liu Ling, under the influence of wine, would be completely free and uninhibited, sometimes taking off his clothes and sitting naked in his room. Once when some persons saw him and chided him for it, Ling retorted, "I take heaven and earth for my pillars and roof, and the rooms of my house for my pants and coat. What are you gentlemen doing in my pants?" 4 3

Perhaps the legendary Buddhist poet Han-shan (fl. 800) is a clearer example. Unconventional in every way, the unkempt layman would work occasionally in a temple kitchen only to flee with peals of laughter when approached by any-

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one in a position of authority. He even refused such mundane items as food and shelter. When a suit of clothing was finally brought to him as he wandered in the mountains, he cursed the bearer for being a thief and then disappeared into a cave. 44 While this account may not be an accurate account of a particular hermit, it does reveal the truth of this image: the most selfless character has a good deal of ego invested in proving how different he is from the common herd. In fact, part of the initial irony in the heroic Monkey Sun Wu-k'ung in the allegorical novel Hsi-yu chi (Journey to the West, ca. 1580, attributed to Wu Ch'eng-en) lies in his repeated attempts to establish longevity, a kingdom, and proper status for himself after he has achieved Buddhist emancipation. 45 Jonathan Chaves discerns just this sort of "individualism" ultimately based in philosophical mysticism in the Kung-an school of poetry criticism. A poet, he rightly observes, may be utterly free to express self in a Chinese context that sees total identity between the essential self and the Ultimate Reality of the universe. From this perspective, no "self" differs in the slightest from any other, or even from nature in its totality. In marked contrast to the romantic notion of the individual self in Western literature, which stressed the sentimentality and authenticity of personal feelings, Neo-Confucian poets often saw ego as properly transparent and its perceptions of nature uncolored by any shred of individuality. Chaves demonstrates that the Kung-an school claimed for the poet the freedom to roam (the Taoist metaphor) between social and literary roles. While philosophical selflessness does dominate the poetry of these and earlier poets, such as Wang Wei, the literary counterpart is a self defined, in a self-congratulatory way, by its selflessness. Type characters and the high individuality of poetic personas are thereby congruent manifestations of complementary visions of the self. Specifically Buddhist or Taoist poets were not the only writers of old China to abandon ego and assume the function of mirror for the universe. As Leo O. Lee remarks, the great travel diarists recorded much more of landscape than of self. His characterization of the late Ch'ing novel Lao Ts'an

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yu-chi (The Travels of Lao Ts'an, by Liu E) as a "spiritual" journey to self-discovery and self-revelation identifies one phase of the accommodation of Chinese literature to Western influences. The romantic traveler created by Yii Ta-fu (1896-1945) contrasts deliberately and sharply with Lao Ts'an; Yii's self seeks to assert the individual personality against chaotic external reality. Liu E had sought to bolster the Confucian world view against Western intellectual incursions; by 1920 Confucianism clearly had been defeated. Yii's May Fourth generation was left with an unprecedented degree of iconoclasm, perhaps in selfdefence. It was only appropriate that at the age of forty the patriotic Yii Ta-fu turned to writing traditional travel diaries as a source of cultural security. On the other hand, one of Liu E's contemporaries, Tseng P'u (1872-1935) progressed less dramatically, but more consistently, from defender of traditional values to a writer in the mode of French Romanticism. 46 The solitary self was a phenomenon of Westernoriented May Fourth writers, Lee observes. The rise of the Communist Party and the Japanese invasion were two factors in the burgeoning nationalism that tempered their iconoclasm significantly. Later travelers, much like their Confucian forebears, again see themselves as part of a social context, an ordered context with hope for stability in which both individual and group are secure. The formal declaration of a "new" China in 1949 typified what was to become the dominant tendency in literary self-expression, a self fulfilled through duty. Edward Gunn developed a questionnaire designed to test the effectiveness of literature in modifying the self-concept of its readers. His literary selections present normative characters in situations that embody dominant values of socialist China. In this there are fundamental continuities with the past. But the ability to discern which values are being presented seems to be a function of experience: readers could identify the relevant values more easily if they had been in the same situation as the protagonist. This observation may suggest a number of conclusions about didacticism in contemporary revolutionary literature; it may suggest too a reason for typical and stereotyped characters in traditional narratives. Like Lu Hstin's Ah

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Q, who has been deprived of identifying data, by appealing to a few basic values shared by all traditional character types are more readily comprehensible to their readers. Limited as it often has been to worker, peasant, and soldier heroes, contemporary Chinese fiction has had to embody constant shifts of political line; it may well have lost the empathy and selfprojection of many of its readers in the process. 4 7 The continuity of roles and values that identify personal security with the harmonious organization and functioning of the group may have made traditional narratives, particularly drama and other mass forms, popular through time—their audience could readily identify with the messages inherent in these works. The nationalism that grew in China over the last century has been in part a reaction to alternative ideologies from abroad. The iconoclasm of the May Fourth era was accompanied, in the field of literary scholarship, by an investigation of China's vernacular fiction and drama that was totally unprecedented in scope. Ostensibly this research was to serve the needs of China's modern writers, as a clear basis upon which to build a new literature comparable to that of advanced Western cultures. The Chineseness of their material served to bolster the collective ego of this generation of intellectuals against the apparent onslaught of Western threats to identity. Significantly, the Japanese-trained Lu Hsun turned to writing Western-style short stories only after a period of intense study of Buddhist texts and old Chinese fiction; Yii Ta-fu, Leo Lee observes, ultimately retreated to traditional literary forms. Some of the best known reaffirmations of Chinese culture among writers occurred during the war years, when Japan occupied most of China's major cities. Lu Hsiin's brother Chou Tso-jen (1885-1968?) found a new literary self through study of late Ming writers and thinkers; Eileen Chang (Chang Ai-ling, b. 1921) began her writing career after careful study of Dream of the Red Chamber.48 Selfhood for these figures was based firmly on their identity as Chinese despite antitraditionalist elements in their public statements. A concern for China as a whole is thus an obvious characteristic of the Chinese writer's self-definition in twentieth-century writing. The narrowly defined social responsibil-

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ity dictated by Marxist theoreticians had its roots in the patriotism of the May Fourth era, which in turn reflected the Confucian sense of social responsibility. However, even nonand strongly anti-Communist writers who live or publish in Taiwan reveal similar sentiments. Taiwan's writers regularly address the needs of society through the needs of the self; in fact, the self is as much a social entity in the best of Taiwan fiction as it was in the best Confucian fiction of the past. A function of place and of time as well, the most rootless of Taiwan's fictional selves characteristically seek to establish an identity through traditional social relationships and through affirmation of elements of Chinese culture. This is despite a nominal romance with Western literature and values that began at the end of the nineteenth century and, unlike on the mainland, has only grown in intensity in Taiwan over recent decades. Thus far I have addressed only those articles that deal with created visions of self, fictional or fictionalized characters. In poetry, however, the self is projected, or reflected, more directly in the persona of the poet. Frances LaFleur Mochida traces the development of the poet's presentation of self in nature poetry, from the selfless communality of religious ritual through the subjective landscape of Li Ho in the ninth century. Ch'ii Yuan, often called China's first poet, was certainly innovative in presenting a unique and well-developed persona in his poem; his journey is a deliberately personal pilgrimage having exoneration and glorification of self (albeit in terms of his dedication to his lord) as its dual goal. In this, his "Li sao" (Encountering Sorrow) contrasts sharply with the religious quest for a kind of self-transcendence in the poetry that inspired him. The Ts'aos of the third century, father and son, Mochida observes, put their personal stamp on their verse within the confines of received tradition. The great poets of the middle T'ang created personal worlds in verse by confounding tradition. The dimensions of their worlds aside, this trend clearly demonstrates the conventional use of poetry for self-expression, including the expression of unique experience, insights, and sentiments. But poetry, like prose narratives, can readily pre-

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sent a fictional self. Anne Birrell explores the amazing complexity of the conventionalized view of woman in the courtly poetry of the southern courts of the Six Dynasties period. These women nominally differ in status, ranging from entertainers to officials' wives and palace ladies, but all are alike in romantic sensibilities and passionate longing for an absent lover. In the poems of this genre woman is a victim with whom, presumably, the reader is to sympathize. But can a reader be moved by well-worn sentiments made fashionable? The self-indulgence in sentiment gave vigor to the trend, Birrell argues; most likely this character type may serve as a model for understanding the parameters of self as viewed in Chinese literature. That is, one need not hypothesize that this image of woman was necessarily an accurate description of woman's position in society, nor even that it fulfills men's wish that woman should be helpless, languid, and passionate. It may constitute no more than a convenient means, conventionalized in its dimensions, of representing an emotion commonly felt by the male poets. Thus the fashion may have used rather incongruous personas (of the opposite sex, etc.), but the expression of frustration through it may be a perfect parallel for the earlier fashion of expressing a morbid fear of death in verse, in the "coffin-puller's songs," for example. 49 If verse was a vehicle for self-expression in Chinese literature, then narrative provided ample opportunity for identification on the part of the reader with various characters. Gunn shows how experience shaped moral comprehension of fiction in his q u e s t i o n n a i r e . Traditionally literary stereotypes were defined largely by social role, but role shifts do appear, with corresponding moral complexity, in characters from old Chinese narratives. Consider, however, the function of multiple and divisible identities in this material. Some years ago, C. T. Hsia perceptively identified pairs of relatively simple characters in several of the classic Chinese novels that constitute a single personality. That is, each "half character" has attributes lacking in the other; neither is complete alone. Li K'uei and Sung Chiang from Water Margin constitute one such pair: Sung Chiang is the nominal idealist mouthing platitudes about

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loyalty to the throne, while Li K'uei is a pure sensualist who delights in the act of killing, often while stark naked. Nor will the latter countenance capitulation until Sung forces him to do so on threat of execution—which Sung Chiang cannot bear to carry out. 50 The various sides of an individual self represented by the pilgrims of Journey to the West have been widely observed; the oaths of brotherhood that bind the trio of heroes in Romance of the Three Kingdoms likewise denote a composite personality. The complementary way in which such characters work together can be seen in the interaction between Chu-ko Liang and the brothers of Three Kingdoms: Liu Pei goes three times to enlist the aid of the strategist Chu-ko; while the trio has a full complement of bravery, military skill, and charisma, none has the insight needed to plan a campaign either on the battlefield or at court. Chu-ko Liang fulfills them to make a single, fully rounded entity, composite in nature. One might argue that these characters merely represent different types, but the novelist gives a different impression when he has his characters switch functions. Late in the novel, Liu Pei's sworn brothers Kuan Yii and Chang Fei are killed. Lacking the strategic vision of Chu-ko Liang, the first dies needlessly in battle and the second is killed by his own men. Liu Pei is consumed with a desire for revenge and disregards all words of caution, even though it costs him his state. Yet when blinded by passion this man can still discern the weakness in his adviser. Thus he tempts Chu-ko Liang with his throne. He also foresees Chu-ko's only (and fatal) error of judgment in a total reversal of the characters' usual roles.51 Catherine Swatek demonstrates the shared identity of Li Shihmin and Curly Beard in the T'ang tale and in its later dramatic version; Leo Lee notes the complementary function of Lao Ts'an and Yellow Dragon in The Travels of Lao Ts'an. The "genius" and the "beauty" fit together perfectly; they even look alike, as Richard Hessney observes. Elsewhere Andrew Plaks has explored the significance of the haunting identification of the two major heroines Tai-yii and Pao-ch'ai in Dream of the Red Chamber; he comments on the relative rarity with which a single character dominates a Chinese narrative work.52 In the short

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novel Tower of Myriad Mirrors, Tung Yueh divides the personality of Monkey Sun Wu-k'ung into its component parts for an astonishingly detailed view of his psyche. 53 The convention of dividing a single identity into constituent elements has its origins in Chinese philosophy and religion. The primeval yin-yang dualism later appears as two "souls," the hurt and the po, that divide at death; it even finds expression as male and female aspects of a personality. 54 But the appearance of characters that exemplify these theories has a significance that transcends expression of conventional perspectives in literature. They represent a deeper level of understanding about the nature of the self, that it is visible in, even created by, one's social function, that it is no-self and yet everything, that it is in constant flux, and that it encompasses mutually contrastive or even contradictory elements. The Chinese self may be expressed in less direct ways than in the West; the mirror of literature does, after all, distort. But the self expressed in Chinese literature is no simple entity. It has been of central importance in writing past and present; students of Chinese literature have heretofore only begun to explore its depth and complexity.

Part I

Self in Poetry and Criticism

The Dusty Mirror: Courtly Portraits of Woman in Southern Dynasties Love Poetry Anne M.

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Birrell

n the middle of the sixth century a remarkable, pioneering anthology of poetry appeared entitled Yti-t'ai hsin-yung, New Songs from a Jade Terrace. It was compiled by Hsu Ling (507-583) at the request of Hsiao Kang (503-551), then the crown prince of the Liang Dynasty, known to history as Emperor Chien-wen. 1 The innovative aspect of this literary venture lay partly in the fact that it was the first anthology in the Chinese poetic tradition devoted exclusively to poems on the theme of love. Its novelty also lay partly in the fact that the majority of the poets represented lived during the Southern Dynasties era of the fifth and sixth centuries. 2 Although the point of the anthology was to compile poems with a similar theme from a long period stretching back several centuries, it was particularly in the Southern Dynasties that a distinct, well-developed pattern of presenting a love poem emerged and crystallized.3 During this period poets focused on woman in their love poetry in a highly original way. Their mode of presentation, while containing certain elements

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borrowed from the earlier poetic tradition, was sufficiently infused with new components to be characterized as "Southern Dynasties" in content, attitude, and style. From the Southern Dynasties love poems in this anthology it is possible to infer a typical picture of a woman in love because the poets were generally working within a welldefined system of poetic convention. By "convention" I mean an implicit agreement between poet and audience to impose certain restrictions upon, and to take certain liberties with, the poet's treatment of both theme and style. 4 There are a number of reasons why love poetry acquired a markedly conventional character at this particular point in the history of Chinese literature. The first is royal patronage. The Hsiao family of the Liang royal house were poets, literary critics, and patrons of the arts. 5 When Hsiao Kang commissioned Hsu Ling to compile New Songs from a Jade Terrace, he did so in his capacity as crown prince and as royal head of his own literary salon. 6 Hsu Ling, a poet in his own right, and most of the poets in the Southern Dynasties era, held official positions at court. The second involves the occasions for the poems. The Hsiao princes of Liang would commission poems from courtier-poets who were their social inferiors, albeit artistic peers. Thus the phrases, ying-ling, "at His Majesty's request," and ying-chiao, "commissioned by His Majesty," proliferate in the titles of poems in the Southern Dynasties sections of the anthology. Moreover, at such formal functions as court banquets, topics for poetic composition were assigned to court poets by their royal patrons. Thus the phrase fu-te, "assigned suchand-such a topic for poetic composition," is also frequently to be found in the anthology's titles. Finally, poets formally imitated each other's poems, and assiduously imitated those of their royal patrons in terms of theme, structure, and style. A great many court poems have in their titles the phrase feng-ho, "respectfully submitted to His Majesty, matching the rhymes of his poem," or the word ni, meaning "to imitate the style" of someone's poem. 7 Since topic, theme, structure, and style were matters either officially decided by royal patrons or heavily influ-

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enced by them, especially in the Liang era of the Southern Dynasties, literary taste became pronouncedly more courtly and more conventional. Thus love poems essentially adhere to a regular set of rules of presentation. Generally the rules are as follows. When a Southern Dynasties court poet composed a love poem, he would usually select a woman as his subject, rather than a man. She would conform to a noble ideal of femininity: she would appear to be well born and living in luxurious surroundings, preferably palatial. Her pampered existence would be conveyed in her physical appearance: slender, graceful, elegantly dressed, and heavily made up. The poet would be obliged to depict her as pining for her absent lover; a profound sense of melancholy should pervade his poem. She should seem depressed but submissive in her acceptance of her amorous fate. And because of this resigned frustration, the woman he portrays would strike a pose of appealing physical weakness and emotional vulnerability. Her time must be spent in the palatial ambience of her boudoir. She must be seen to be waiting there interminably for her absent lover. The poet must describe certain items in her boudoir with sensuous detail. Her portrait should be framed in a setting where nature is not too far off; for nature is to be used to contrast with her beauty and her situation, to pinpoint the passage of time, and to underscore poetic statements on the meaning of love and, by extension, of life. The general tenor of this portrait of a woman in love should be one of touchingly pretty pathos. In sum, the typical features of this new poetic style are: the courtly love poem has as its theme frustrated love; its subject is a palace lady, or a wealthy woman; its ambience is palatial and luxurious; its setting is a woman's solitary boudoir; its mood is one of pessimism arising from the male lover's absence; and its style is expressive and decoratively descriptive, at once evoking the pathos of a woman unhappily in love and the opulence of a fashionable woman's boudoir decor. This then was the new style of love poem upon which Hsiao Kang, as royal patron of the arts, had set his seal of approval. In his day it was dubbed kung-t'i shih, or "Palace-

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style poetry." 8 In modern parlance it is better termed courtly love poetry of the late Southern Dynasties era. As the degree of conventionality in presentation suggests, women are depicted in the love poetry of this period as a type, a highly idealized and stylized type, rather than as realistically observed individuals. Concepts of feminine attractiveness, of women's romantic attitudes, of the situations in which women find themselves, of women's response to emotional dilemmas all conform to a set repertoire of poetic idiom. In other words, the image of woman here is conventional. The poet does not so much seek to probe psychological depths as to display technical virtuosity in his handling of a set literary theme. What we have here is not a portrait of a female self, nor of woman as an individual, nor of a feminine identity. For terms such as "self" presuppose the poet's willingness to inject into the fictionalized image of a woman in love some semblance of his own personal experience. Those terms also imply a sense of uniqueness about a person, which is the opposite of a conventional type. In short, the imaginative system of Southern Dynasties love poetry is geared to depicting a stereotype. What I propose to do first of all, therefore, is to define the typical features of the woman in love as she is portrayed by court poets in the Southern Dynasties. In order to arrive at an understanding of the basic concept of this courtly stereotype, I will begin by delineating four main conventional aspects of woman as image, through (1) physical and personal attributes, (2) social standing, (3) environment, and (4) her attitude to her male lover. Second, since these poems also suggest tensions inherent in this literary portrait of woman, I will enumerate the sources of conflict pertaining to such a presentation of women in love. Third, I will seek to demonstrate how the very conventional nature of these court poems prohibits such poetic female types from reconciling their conflicts, or adapting their behavior according to experience, or transforming themselves from victims to active participants in love and in life. Finally, I will attempt to evaluate the literary significance of such elements as sentiment, convention, and decoration in this stylized concept.

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As a corpus of literature, New Songs from a Jade Ter-

race covers a wide spectrum of time—seven and a half centuries from the late third century B.C. to the middle of the sixth century A.D. It constitutes a large body of poetry, 656 poems in all, mostly pentasyllabic shih of varying lengths. 9 For the purposes of this essay I have studied the 502 love poems in the anthology which belong to the Southern Dynasties period, 76.5 percent of the total. My generalizations are based on these, and I quote 28 representative poems, either in full or in part, by 18 different poets. The translations are my own. 10

Four Conventional Aspects of a Woman in Love Aspects of the female portrayed in courtly love poems of the Southern Dynasties are explicitly or implicitly conveyed either through the female persona's statements about her condition or through the poets' evocative descriptions. In this section I will examine various facets that make up the idea of woman, both as she sees herself and as the poet sees her.

PERSONAL

APPEARANCE

One way of defining the female type as it is presented in these love poems is through descriptions of personal appearance. I will consider the general image of woman as she is idealized by the poets, leaving aside for the moment the question of how this image alters under the pressure of emotional conflict. New Songs from a Jade Terrace contains numerous vi-

gnettes describing women, and nearly every poem contains some reference to their personal appearance. These descriptive passages evoke images of a woman's physique, her personality, her dress, and her ornaments. My survey of all the poems in the anthology indicates that the poets tend to draw on a common repertoire of epithets to convey a woman's

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physical features and personality traits. The same vocabulary occurs repeatedly in descriptive passages. Much of the ideal of femininity derives from earlier poems which celebrate a goddess. The most influential of these was "Prose-poem on a Goddess" attributed to Sung Yii (third century B.C.), and closer to the time of Hsu Ling's anthology, Ts'ao Chih's third-century "Prose-poem on the Goddess of Lo River." 1 1 The divine qualities with which the two poets imbued their goddesses are directly transposed to a more mundane woman, mostly a palace lady, in the Southern Dynasties. A typical example of this conventionally idealized presentation of feminine beauty occurs in a third-century ballad by Lu Chi, which, although somewhat earlier than the Southern Dynasties, nevertheless conveniently brings together the various elements that the later poets used variously in their evocations of womankind. His poem, which appears in New Songs from a Jade Terrace, is entitled "Love Song." It describes a group of palace ladies leaving their rooms to go on an excursion to Lo River: The dawning sun rises from Fu-sang To shine on this side of the high terrace. On the high terrace are many enchanting beauties, Their bright faces peeping from hidden rooms. Lovely faces glisten in the white sun. So tender of heart, so pure and modest. Brilliant eyes suffused with lustrous jade, Moth eyebrows like kingfisher wings, Smooth skin with a bloom so fresh, A complexion you could nibble. Meek and mild in every way, Flirting the charm of their laughing words. 1 2

This is not a precise portrayal; various conventional epithets, such as "enchanting," "pure and modest," and "brilliant," suggest rather an idealized concept of the female. Moreover, nearly every woman in the anthology has "moth eyebrows" or brows like "kingfisher wings." The stereotype is reinforced by the very fact that Lu Chi's passage describes not one person but a group of women. Apart from this image derived from earlier evoca-

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tions of goddesses, Southern Dynasties poets sought to convey impressions of a woman's nobility and fragility. A woman's skin has a pallor which suggests her pampered, high-born, leisurely existence indoors. Her hands are slender and graceful, indicating soft cultural activities rather than hard labor in the fields or kitchen. Her body is light and slim, scarcely able to bear the weight of her clothes, which connotes feminine weakness and vulnerability. A couplet by the sixth-century poet Ho Sun, illustrates this physical frailty: A singer's kohl contracts as if in pain; A dancer's waist threatens to snap.13 These lines express the extreme passion of two female performers, as imagined by the male poet: the power of their emotions overwhelms their weak, feminine bodies and seems almost to destroy them. The destructive force of love's passion is a recurring theme, usually elaborated in the context of a woman's physical delicacy. Again at the idealized and generalized level, Southern Dynasties poets tend to include personality features together with physical characteristics. Turning back to Lu Chi's description, it is noticeable that the epithets he uses to denote personality, such as "tender" or "modest," define femininity in its submissive, subordinate aspect. These traditional epithets recur in hundreds of love poems in the anthology. The motive of the poets appears to be not so much a quest for psychological veracity as a conscious conformity to established standards for depicting the ideal. Another important element is the ideal woman's attractiveness as a creature of luxury. Adorned with jewels, costly silks, and elaborate cosmetics, she reveals her beauty and worth in a highly material way through the sheer opulence of her personal decoration. So closely and persistently is a woman's rich attire associated with her personal allure that it seems that her desirability depends to a great extent on the financial and social worth of her costume. What this amounts to is a convention that woman is adored when adorned. This is nicely illustrated in a poem by Shen Yiieh, entitled "Poem for a Young

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Man Newly Wed," in which the images progress from a woman's physical charms to the details of her rich clothing and brilliant cosmetics. Note the close similarity between the epithets Shen Yiieh uses and those used by Lu Chi in the passage cited earlier: The daughter of the Shan-yin Liu family— Don't say she's from the country! Lovely and pretty her face and figure, Courteous and clever is the way she talks. Her waist and limbs are graceful, Her clothes so sweet and fresh. Her round red cape reflects the early dawn chill; Her painted fan welcomes the first spell of heat. On brocaded slippers is a pattern of identical flowers, On embroidered sash a design of twin lettuce hearts. Large gold leaf brooches fasten her bodice edge; Decorative flower pins hold up her cloudy hair. My feelings now sadly tangled, How will I express my confusion? I offer my love to kohl on her eyebrows, Whisper my passion to lipstick on her mouth. 1 4

Of the 16 lines quoted here from the total of 34 in Shen Yiieh's poem, only one line refers to the bride's behavior and two lines to her physique, while 9 lines are devoted to her dress and cosmetics. Of the remaining 18 lines which I have not quoted here, 6 more refer conventionally to the young girl's physical attractiveness. No further mention is made of her as an individual person. The disproportionate amount of space given to material rather than personal qualities is typical. The effect of such an emphasis is that human values are less important than material values. Woman is featured as deluxe object. The female figure is redolent with sensuous luxury and with an erotic but impersonal ornamentation. This tendency on the part of the poets toward depersonalization of the female in the context of the love poem is a crucial factor in understanding some of the ramifications of the female type, expecially when woman is presented in situations of romantic conflict.

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SOCIAL GROUPING

Another means of defining the image of woman in these love poems is by social grouping. It is difficult to determine from the poems themselves any information about a woman's actual position in the household, her family ties, her kinship roles, her religion, her political persuasion, or any details of her daily life beyond the sphere of love and romance. This limited poetic perspective is due in part to a woman's historical exclusion from the public realm of life in traditional China, and in part to poetic convention. The poems do tell us a good deal, however, about a woman's social status from her clothes, her milieu, and her level of culture. Although the poems describe either a historical or a fictional figure, they do in fact portray a fairly recognizable social stereotype. On the surface, a survey of women's social status in Southern Dynasties love poems would seem to indicate a wide variation in background: there are palace ladies, royal consorts, entertainers, divorced or deserted women, wives of circuit officials, country girls, and the wives of soldiers. Yet, despite this apparent variation, the poets' presentation of women is stylized in this respect. For example, the palace ladies described in the next poem, by Hsiao Yen, Hsiao Kang's father (known to history as Emperor Wu of the Liang), are lavishly dressed in the clothes of the well-born, despite the fact that they are performing the manual task of fulling cloth. This type of wardrobe is repeated throughout Southern Dynasties portraits of women: Night pounder blows sound uneven, Autumn fulling-block thuds ring forlorn. Light silk billows round jade arms, Wispy hair-plumes curve across rosy cheeks. A scarlet flush rises to pink faces, Sidelong glances sparkle even brighter, As we pound the cloth with all our "not a stone," Its pattern of two lovebirds. 15

Regardless of their actual social status, the women described in Southern Dynasties love poetry belong, at least in terms of

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appearance, to the socioeconomic class of the wealthy and the noble. The interest of the poet is always to make woman desirable by investing her with appurtenances of wealth, even at the risk of a certain lack of verisimilitude. It is also clear from these court poems that the concept of the ideal woman includes talent in the performing arts. Nearly every poem from this era contains some reference to a woman either playing a musical instrument or dancing, or doing both. 16 She does not merely interpret the classical and popular repertoire; she also composes her own music and creates her own choreography as the mood inspires her. Her high level of culture, linked to the leisure she enjoys, reflects the opulent ambience and the courtly background of Hsiao Kang's salon. The following poem by Hsiao Kang himself, entitled "Playing My Zither," describes a woman in love playing her instrument to express her passion. As she plays, she breaks a string, symbolic of her broken heart: I play my zither by the north window, Echoes of night charged with clear, sad tones. I raise the key, a string soon snaps, My heart mourns the melody lost.17 Another social grouping by which a woman may be defined in these poems is her age group. The Southern Dynasties poets prefer to portray girls in love who are either very young (between 10 and 16 years old), or reaching that indefinable age of fading physical charms (perhaps as early as 25 or 30 years old). In other words, the women are of an age to experience love and marriage, with all their accompanying joys and sorrows. Indeed, love, beauty, and aging interact with one another in a perpetual pattern of the poetic themes of change and decay. ENVIRONMENT In order to approach the feminine environment, it will be useful at the outset to examine briefly what Hsu Ling has to say about the context of his anthology in his own pref-

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ace. There he clearly establishes a woman's boudoir in a palace harem as the typical setting of the contemporary love poem. His preface opens with a fanciful list of women in history who have graced the palace seraglio, and later these historical figures are linked with contemporary palace ladies: On King Mu of Chou's jade-disc terrace, In Emperor Wu of Han's golden house, Are jade trees with coral boughs, Pearl blinds on tortoise-shell frames, Where beautiful women live. These beauties Are aristocrats of Wu-ling, Chosen for the imperial harem From the best families of the Four Clans— Celebrities of the seraglio.18 As an environment the harem boudoir is a closed erotic world. The women Southern Dynasties poets depict are hardly ever placed in other settings, such as a kitchen, a lounge, a library, or an office, though they do move into a garden which is directly attached to their boudoir. No differentiation of a woman's role is possible in such a narrow setting. The focus on the boudoir as a court lady's typical domain in these love poems has important implications. For in composing a love poem, the Southern Dynasties poet concentrated his attention on the private world of a woman's feelings for her lover, while pruning away such normal elements of her daily life as her servants, children, friends, family, and, most important, her husband or lover. Indeed, a primary convention of the Southern Dynasties love poem is that the husband or lover must be absent. A woman's longing and frustration in palatial solitude function as the emotional underpinning of the love poem qua love poem. In the full flower of love poetry in this era woman becomes confined to symbolic isolation in her boudoir. This desolate, claustrophobic environment is an essential aspect of the courtly concept of a woman in love. The lover's absence and the lady's vigil are expressed poetically in two standard metaphors: he is traveling

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along a road into the distance; she is pining in her secluded boudoir. This pair of metaphors crystalizes their mutually antagonistic, yet complementary, sex roles in traditional society, of which Southern Dynasties love poetry is to some degree a literary reflection. The following poem by Wang Yiin illustrates the disparate roles of a man and a woman in the love relationship. Its title is "Autumn Night." Florets of dew get thicker, thicker, Cassia boughs go rustling, rustling. The spirit of death falls from serried eaves, Pale shadows flood my room's four sides. Estranged favor makes long nights longer, Distant campaigns sadden my solitary sleep. Despair wreathes my kingfisher-plume eyebrows, Tears flood my slanting-wave eyes. At Ch'ang-men Palace an end to visits. Burning desire. Shuttle and spindle lie useless.19 The setting here is a boudoir in which a woman idles away the time in the absence of her lover (or husband) who is on campaign. The season is autumn, when in nature life visibly ebbs. The reference to Ch'ang-men Palace toward the end of the poem is pointed: it was here that Empress Ch'en lived in retirement when she lost favor with Emperor Wu of the Han (r. 141-87 B . C . ) . The inference the reader is left to draw is that the woman in this poem is not likely to see her man again. Thus the environment in which women usually find themselves, namely, the boudoir, and the area where their men are vaguely said to be, namely, the road or the battlefield, have symbolic meaning in these poems. For the male lover is seen to be free to follow his own destiny, floating down the highways and byways of life, while a woman, in diametrical opposition, remains confined and unfree in her home. Poets use this symbiotic imagery of the road (or campaign) and the boudoir as a metonymy for the discordant relationship between a man and a woman as they perceive it. Thus, by convention a woman's boudoir is the center of her existence. This interior setting is full of the intimate

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objects with which a woman of the noble class would surround herself: her ivory bed, her silken curtains, her bronze lamps, her jade mirror stand and bronze mirror, and her exotic cosmetics and perfumes. The poets invest their boudoir images, such as the bed, with agreeable pictorial detail which affects the senses and gives aesthetic in addition to erotic pleasure. Yet the artifacts they describe are rarely purely functional, in the sense of useful objects which also happen to give aesthetic pleasure. A particular object in the boudoir is selected to make it convey in metaphorical terms some aspect of love. Thus a finely carved ivory bed is pleasing to the eye of the reader; but at the same time, when it is shown lying empty and covered with dust under rays of moonlight, it also serves to denote the idea of frustrated love. Also, it suggests sensuality—were it to be occupied. It is an emotive image charged with aesthetic nuance. Similarly, an elaborately decorated censer is attractive to look at with its glowing ash, coiling smoke, and metallic sheen; but it is also made to serve as an analogy for the wanton destructiveness of passion's consuming fire and for the volatile nature of love. In other words, the poets furnish the boudoir of a woman in love with concrete particulars which create in pictorial and sensuous terms the emotional impressions of the state of love. Immured as she is in this sensuous environment, the typical woman in this love poetry responds to the stimuli of the luxurious objects and erotic emblems surrounding her with amorous yearnings for her departed lover. The following poem by Hsiao Kang, entitled "A Singer's Frustrated Passion," shows the extent to which the boudoir as an erotic environment serves to reinforce a woman's role in emotional relationships. That is, she is seen to respond to her absent lover with touching displays of fidelity and devotion, reenacting the ritual of past love: She slips on her softly rustling red shawl, Dabs fresh, chic yellow on her brow. Shading the lamp, she enters brocade curtains; Faint smoke comes from the jade bed. The six corners of their twin tortoise-shell pillows,

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Their wide quilt adorned with two lovebirds— These things still since they parted Comfort love's grief, mementoes of him. In tears she passes tedious days So soon transformed from hot to cold.20 The persona here is a singer whose lover is away on military duty. In her frustrated longing for him she looks around at the erotic objects in her boudoir and weeps for his return. Her boudoir and its objects, being of an erotic nature, restrict her to the role of a lonely, forsaken mistress, from which she cannot escape. This sense of being caged in, of being imprisoned within brocade curtains, is characteristic of the way Southern Dynasties poets present a woman in love. The reinforcement of a woman's amorous role by her boudoir environment is also apparent in the activities with which she occupies herself there. What she does is specifically related to her lover—singing love songs, playing romantic tunes, writing love letters, or applying cosmetics to make herself beautiful for him. Indeed, when performing more routine tasks, such as lighting a candle, drawing curtains, or having some wine, the woman typically is stimulated to thoughts of love. The most typical boudoir activity is the personal one of dressing and putting on cosmetics. Most of the love poems of this era contain portraits of women seated before their polished bronze mirrors, applying makeup and appraising their beauty. Confined as they are for long periods waiting for a lover who is far away, yet might return in the night, the women divide their time between such matters as personal adornment and vain musings, both occupations oriented toward their male lover. This poem by Fei Ch'ang, for example, entirely devoted to a woman's self-appraisal, is entitled " O n Her Reflection in a Mirror." The dawn sun shines on apricot rafters, A Chao Fei-yen beauty rises to put on morning makeup. Carefully she spreads a wide line of kohl, Deft fingers dot her brow with a yellow bud. She fixes her hairpin, studies her reflection,

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Pats her face with powder, admires its scent. Then she takes a dislike to her worn kingfisher plume, Starts grumbling at her lackluster jewels. In the city they all wear half-forehead eyebrows, Not like mine, which just aren't long enough! 2 1

In this portrait, as in many other Southern Dynasties love poems, there is more than a hint of vanity. The woman's preoccupation with such trivia as the length of her eyebrows and the state of her jewelry reveals the extent of her superficiality. But the portrait is not simply an exercise in self-gratification and self-pity on the part of the female persona. It serves to highlight that essential feminine weakness—vanity, emptiness—which manifests itself in recurring images in Southern Dynasties love poetry. A natural consequence of a woman's seclusion in her boudoir for long periods is that the boudoir generates an atmosphere of silence, desolation, and boredom. In his preface Hsu Ling anticipates these preoccupations. He writes of sequestered palace ladies in this vein: And so, Through labyrinthine spirals of pepper palaces, Up mysterious elevations of mulberry tree halls, Scarlet Crane keys impose privacy at dawn, Bronze Clam knockers fall silent at noon. Before the Three Stars' twilight hour The ladies are not summoned to bring their quilt. Even five days seem too long. For whom will they comb their untidy hair? Languidly idle, with few distractions, In quiet tranquillity, with hours of leisure, They loathe Ch'ang-lo Palace's delayed bell, Are weary of Central Hall's slow arrow of time. 22

Hsu Ling's lines emphasize the ennui of a leisured class of women whose sole, undifferentiated role is to provide sexual pleasure for a man at his whim: man proposes, man disposes. This tedium is a key convention. It is given its fullest expression in poems featuring the water-clock in a boudoir as a sym-

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bol of time passing. The following poem by Hsiao Kang, entitled "The Sighs of the Lady of Ch'u," provides a fine example: In her still room the water-clock endlessly drips, Time's infinity, silence of night. Grass insects flit through the door of night. Spinning spiders entwine autumn walls. She faintly smiles, but not a happy smile. She softly sighs, a sigh that turns to sorrow. Her golden hairpins droop in her hair. Jade chopsticks trickle onto her dress. 23

Nothing interrupts this world of watching, waiting, pining for a lover. The boudoir depicted here is an environment which should function as an enchanted amorous locale, but becomes a scene of romantic disenchantment. In most of Southern Dynasties' love poetry the atmosphere in the boudoir is claustrophobic. The woman immured inside is not permitted to break out of this setting, to interrupt the mood of inevitable despair. The poets only allow their female personas to act out a subordinate, submissive role which is entirely oriented toward the male lover. Isolated from all other human contact, the typical woman described in the poems is stimulated only by sensory perception of the erotic objects furnishing her boudoir, which in turn stir up fancies and memories of a past love there. Her recurring experience is one of being the center of an enclosed world, her world, one which is designed for love's fulfillment, but one which is ironically shown to be a travesty of amorous happiness.

ATTITUDE TOWARD THE MALE LOVER

Now I would like to turn to the presentation of a typical woman in love in relation to her male lover. One of the basic tenets is that she must play a subordinate role. The literary concept of woman's inferior role derives from a traditional attitude toward the sexual relationship which finds its socioethical expression in such early Confucian texts as the Li chi (Record of Ritual), and Pan Chao's Nil chieh (Precepts for Women) of the Later Han era (A.D. 25-220). 2 4

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This social and sexual inferiority embedded in the traditional mores of ancient Chinese society is given a new dimension in Southern Dynasties love poetry. In its application to love relationships, the attitude is interpreted to mean that man is elevated in a woman's eyes: she perceives that he confers the gift of love upon her, or withholds it, according to his opinion of her worth. Since her own self-esteem stems in large part from her lover's opinion of her, his conferral or withdrawal of favors has a profound effect on her. This is an aspect to be examined later. Court love poetry in this period is replete with imagery which reinforces the relationship of the inferior female to the superior male. Woman is likened to duckweed clinging to water; the latter is an image for the male. Or she is compared to shadow following form; again the latter is a masculine image. She may also be likened to a plant leaning toward the (male) sunlight. The following poem by Wen-jen Ch'ien, entitled "Spring Sun," uses various images drawn from nature to suggest the elemental energy of sunny spring. In particular, the image of "green mallows," which "twist toward the sun," anticipates the longing of the woman in the poem for her husband from whom she is separated: Spring colors stir on the high terrace, Clear pools reflect sunlit splendor. Green mallows twist toward the sun, Kingfisher willows sway in the wind. In the woods a bird excites my heart, In the garden massed flowers captivate my eye. Like me, all nature knows the season, Sighs that you alone are away from home. Wanderer, you will not return today— Why do I trouble to pick vain love-flax? 25

Wen-jen Ch'ien's imagery, drawn as it is from nature, implies that a woman's emotional dependence on a man is biological, as well as psychological: she is seen to crave the warmth of a man's love as if her very life depended upon it, in the same way as a plant reaches out for the sun. Again, a woman in love is compared to an insect

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smitten by autumnal frost, trying to move indoors to the warmth. This image appears in a poem by Hsiao Kang, entitled "Night Longings in an Autumn Bedroom": The distant moon peeps through my window, Humming insects pine around the steps. Early frosts dislodge frail leaves, Autumn winds drive confused fireflies. Stale makeup stays on for several days, A new dress, unpleated, is still to be finished. Do you know why I don't sleep well? It's the sound of fulling beyond the city wall.26

Or, as in Chi Shao-yii's poem also entitled "Spring Sun," a woman is compared to spring blossoms torn from a tree by the wind: A sad woman timidly leans from her window, Spring beauty still for eternity. Fitful, the sun draws near the netting, Trembling, the wind creeps under the blind. Fallen blossoms whirl back to their trees, Gently flutter away to vanish in the skies, Making a vain trace of chopstick tears Hang double in her bright mirror.27

Such images convey the idea of a weak, dependent, pathetic, and lovely woman hurt or even destroyed by the power of the love she feels for her absent man. What emerges from these poems is the notion that a man's love is a life-giving force, and that if a woman is denied this love, her will to live weakens. This morbid strain recurs throughout Southern Dynasties love poetry. Linked to a woman's emotional dependency is the obsessiveness of her attachment to her lover. This aspect of love is particularly underscored by her immobility. In her boudoir, ironic memories of past love reign supreme. Love's demands are absolute. Woman is consumed with passion, decorous though its poetic expression may be. This obsession is expressed through a variety of metaphors, the most successful of which are those having to do with burning. The following

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poem by Wang Yung, entitled "Imitation of Hsu Kan's Poem," illustrates the force of obsessive desire with the metaphors of a censer and a candle: Ever since you went away, My gold censer has not burned with perfume. I love you like the candle bright Consumed in idle flames by midnight. 28

Two combustible items are contrasted here. First, the incense is not burned, the implication being that the woman sees no reason to perfume herself in her lover's absence. Second, the candle burns while the woman in the poem waits up for the man who will not be coming to visit her. Both metaphors reinforce the negative tone of the poem, and, interacting, emphasize the destructiveness and futility of love. Psychologically akin to this idea of the power of desire is the concept expressed in these love poems that lovers should become identified with each other, one and the same person, twins in a love relationship. This attitude toward love is expressed through the female persona, and through numerous images. Lovers are likened to twin flower-hearts, to two mandarin ducks, or to boughs intertwined to become one. A clear example is the following poem by Hsiao Yen entitled "You Must Believe unto Death My Promise": You must believe unto death my promise at the bridge. Don't listen to whirlwind rumor! Look in the mirror—two heads of hair. Clearly I am not of two hearts! 29

The first line refers to the romantic legend of Wei Sheng, who waited in vain by a bridge for his mistress to keep her tryst. Though the river's tide rose higher, he refused to desert their trysting-place, and was eventually drowned. The wit of this small poem lies in the repetition of the word "two" in the last couplet: "two heads of hair" is an affirmative image—her lover is with her, so that the boudoir mirror does reflect two lovers' heads; "not of two hearts" is an ironically negative image— the lover insists that he is single-hearted, his love for his mis-

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tress is undivided; at the same time, he does literally have only one heart! Another aspect of a woman's attitude to her lover is that she expects absolute standards of constancy, affection, and attentiveness from him. Her own account of herself as it is typically expressed in Southern Dynasties love poetry is idealistic: she imposes upon herself a rigid code of sexual morality. Her ideal of chastity is conveyed in many poems through the metaphor of severe frost, and her ideal of fidelity through conventional metaphors like the fixed pole star, the evergreen pine, or the unchangingly green cypress. A poem by Ho Sun entitled "Boudoir Regrets" exemplifies this idealism through a woman's protestation of unswerving love during her lover's absence: At dawn the River of Heaven fades on tall roofbeams, A slanting moon half lights the deserted garden. Fallen leaves cross the windowsill, Beyond the blind fireflies are shut out. Full of longing, I let down kingfisher curtains, Hide my tears behind a gilt screen. My former love today has not returned. Spring grass, though chill, is green again. In my love for you I cannot change— Am I different from the pole star? 3 0

The setting is a boudoir at daybreak where a woman has waited in vain for her lover to return one spring night. The movement of the poem proceeds from outdoor images of night which "fades" on the roof, to her "deserted garden"; then it shifts to a closeup of "fallen leaves" by her window, and finally moves to indoor images of her boudoir's elegant furnishings to the desolate woman herself. The cumulative impact of this series of melancholy images drawn from nature and from the human world, charged as they are with loss and decay, anticipates the woman's despair and colors the next series of more intimate boudoir images expressing emotional withdrawal: the woman conceals herself behind her blind, her curtains, and her screen. Only in the last quatrain does the lady reveal why she is so sad. In her explanation that her husband has failed to

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return in spring, the conventional season of love, she also reveals the wistfulness of her patient longing. With nature's return to color and renewed growth come the rekindled stirrings of the lady's passion. Thus "green again" denotes the season of spring, the time of nature's renewal, and the rebirth of human hopes. The lady's undying hope and love are reinforced by the poem's last image: the immovable, changeless pole star, with which the lady so proudly and idealistically identifies. Yet the seeming finality of this last image is called into question by the ambiguous expression of faint hope in the phrase, "green again." For the more forceful images of death and decay in the first quatrain impose themselves and ironically negate the lady's small, weak response to life beyond the boudoir. She insists on her constancy in an atmosphere heavy with pessimism. Given the conventions of the Southern Dynasties love poem, a woman so portrayed is not free to seek any emotional alternative. By the same set of conventions a man is free to choose an alternative to absolute fidelity. Indeed, to judge from the torrent of female accusations in these love poems, he actually does exploit his greater sexual freedom. And in this connection the image of lovers as identical twins becomes an impossible female ideal held in the face of a more plural male reality. Two recurring themes appear: first, a woman views her lover as a philanderer who has broken his sacred vow of constant love; second, she views herself as an "old" love when she is deserted, compared with her lover's " n e w " sweetheart. A fine example of the way in which a woman takes on a censorious moral attitude toward a wayward husband occurs in a poem by Wang Yung. Here the woman typifies the tendency to go to extremes in romantic expectation of a man's perpetual, unflagging attention: Birds of the air know dusk is the hour of return. Only the wanderer fails to come home. In my loneliness I waste flowers' fragrant breath, Futilely pass time gazing at the moon's splendor. A frowning face appears in my morning mirror, Lovesick tears stain my spring dress.

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On Mount W u sunrise mists are fading, Along River Ch'i green boughs grow bare. I waited for you. You didn't come. A u t u m n geese fly double, double. 3 1

Creatures of nature, "birds of the air" and "autumn geese," establish the pattern of normal behavior, which, it is implied, humans should also follow. When the lover, referred to as "the wanderer," fails to return to his lonely wife, he is, the poem suggests, offending against some unwritten code of morality. In many poems of the period this sort of moral wrong is explicitly expressed through the word meaning "to violate," or "to wrong" (wei). The crucial factor in the depiction of women's attitude toward love is that they refuse to evaluate reality objectively, preferring to conclude subjectively that they suffer some cruel moral injustice when their lover deserts them. This sense of injustice stems in most cases directly from their attitude toward their own virtue and correct moral behavior, contrasting with their attitude toward their lover's wrong behavior. It is not so much their view of themselves or their lover that is so important here, as the very intensity of the rigid attitude they hold toward the love relationship. In the second case, " n e w " love versus " o l d " love, there occurs in these poems the repeated refrain that once a man has enjoyed a woman, he loses interest in her and seeks a new love. By itself, this is not an entirely novel concept of sexual relationships at any time or place. What makes it significant in the Southern Dynasties projection of a woman in love is that the man's behavior in rejecting an old love and taking on a new woman is promulgated as a natural law of human relationships, an inexorable fact of life. Nowhere is this refrain more forcefully stated in these poems than in the following poem by Hsiao Kang: Spiders spin silk full within the curtains. Spring grass forms blades choking the path. Pink cheeks, flushed, flushed, weep her life away. Orioles now and then flutter, flutter by in flight. Old love, though old, once was new. New love, though new, must grow old too. 3 2

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The last couplet is a witty paradox: the wronged woman turns the tables on her rival by anticipating her inevitable downfall. What Hsiao Kang suggests here is that the male lover goes through a cyclical enactment of courting, loving, and rejecting women throughout his life, and nothing the women can do will be able to halt this predetermined pattern. Hsiao Kang perceives the injustice of this feminine dilemma. All these attitudes of a woman toward the man are stated from the detached, male observer-poet's point of view. What they reveal is that in terms of roles, values, interests, behavior patterns, and so forth, female perceptions of the world, as stated in the poems, are basically incompatible with male perceptions of it. Women's assumptions about life and the part they play in it are radically different from men's. There is no common ground between the two. In some respects, such as chastity and intensity of passion, the women tend to express a moral superiority over the concupiscent male. In other respects, such as a man's freedom, the women tend to express the idea that feminine vitality is diminished and jeopardized because the male fails to respond to women's romantic needs. It is this type of basic conflict in the romantic expectations of the female that I will now summarize.

Sources of Conflict There are five main sources of conflict in the way Southern Dynasties poets typically present a woman in love. First, there is a dissonance between what a woman ideally expects from love and what she in fact experiences. Usually, the happiness she seeks is a renewal of a past love. Her love, however, is only fulfilled briefly, before the time of the poem. Happy love is referred to as a past experience that can never be recaptured. This generates a tone of nostalgia throughout these poems. By the same token, love that is hoped for in the future is tinged with a sense of inevitable failure. Thus the

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sexual aspirations of the women portrayed here are expressed in terms of despair. Arising from this kind of doomed romantic aspiration is the women's predilection for voicing moral complaints about their lover's conduct. When a woman's lover does not conform to her ideal concept of behavior, she feels that he has wronged her, that her situation is unjust, and that she is the victim of inequity. She does not ask herself if her ideals are too absolute, or if her romantic attitudes are too extreme. She demands, on the contrary, that reality dovetail with her idealism. The typical woman presented in these poems is ill-prepared to accept real experience. She prefers to modify reality to meet some abstract code. A third source of conflict in this portrayal of woman is the obsessiveness of her love. Her physical appearance, her environment, her activities are all romantically directed toward her lover. Hers is a one-dimensional world, symbolized by her boudoir, from which she has no escape. Another source of tension lies in woman's dependence on man for emotional reassurance. Her sense of her own worth stems from his good or bad opinion of her. If he confers his love on her, she thrives. If he withholds it, she declines both physically and psychologically. Linked to this sense of emotional dependency is the theme of the aging process. The women in the poems are profoundly disturbed by thoughts of losing their beauty. Their troubled state of mind ensues from a logical train of ideas: since a woman conceives of herself as someone whose role is to please a man, if physical allure is her chief means of doing so, it follows that once her beauty fades, she will no longer be able to please her lover. She changes from an object of desire to an object of rejection. These five areas of conflict spring directly from the conventions of Southern Dynasties love poetry. The mandatory absence of the male, the obligatory mood of pessimism, and the stereotyped image of woman as a decoratively vulnerable love object all contribute to the major conflicts as I have summarized them. I will now turn to these questions: how do

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the women portrayed in these poems respond to such conflicts? Are they capable of resolving them?

Response to Conflict The discussion thus far suggests that women do not manage to rise above their problems in life. Rather they succumb, either willing or reluctant victims to life's vicissitudes. In fact, of the 500 or so Southern Dynasties poems in New Songs from a jade Terrace scarcely 1 percent expresses a constructive response to difficulties. Many early poems do manifest a greater resilience to stress and crisis than is evident in the love poetry of the Southern Dynasties. For example, in the first poem of the "Nineteen Old Poems" cycle, dating from the Later Han, there is a readiness to resume life's daily round with dignified resignation, despite the sorrow occasioned by a long separation of two friends or lovers ("On, On, Ever Journeying On"): Longing for you makes one grow older. Years and months suddenly slip by. I'm cast off—but no more talk of that! Just try to eat and stay alive. 33

The persona in this earlier poem implicitly senses that incessant wailing at the loss of a dearly beloved companion is counterproductive to the business of living, nor does it solve any problems. There is a sturdy stoicism here which fails to find an echo in the Southern Dynasties love poem. One or two poems of the Southern Dynasties era do, however, voice a woman's defiance in the face of romantic misfortune. The following poem by Wang Seng-ju is a good example. It is entitled "For a Singer Who Feels Hurt." I know deep in my heart I hate you, Yet I'm ashamed to look in my mirror. I used to feel sad when our love went wrong, But now I've changed, feel nothing for you.

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Take back the earrings you gave me! Give back the fox-fur I sent you! A lute-string snaps—it can be mended. Once love departs, it will not be detained. 34

This female persona does not prevaricate. She knows her love affair is over, and implies it was not her fault. She accepts reality with self-confidence, and responds with spirit, even if somewhat sulkily. Another small group of poems from this era indicates a degree of self-awareness on the part of the female persona. Some of the most interesting among them use the image of a mirror to contrast with a woman's reflection and her own sense of self. This surface comparison between reality and appearance is further developed by certain poets into what we would term psychological investigation of the nature of cognitive and perceived truth. In the following poem Hsiao Kang explores the relation between a woman's awareness of what has happened to her and other people's mistaken appraisal of her state of mind. Its title is "In Her Sad Boudoir She Looks in Her Mirror": Long since you left I've looked haggard. Other people are amazed at my appearance. Except there's my mirror in its case— I pick it up, recognize myself there. 35

The female persona has so changed in appearance because of her lover's absence that she seems unreal to those who know her. In fact, as she admits, she recognizes in her ravaged face the true mark of her wounded psyche. When this woman says "recognize myself" in the last line (tzu hsiang shih), she means her inner self, not simply her outer appearance. She knows how her romantic experience has affected her, and she achieves some measure of self-understanding. These instances of a positive response to an emotional crisis are, however, the exceptions in Southern Dynasties love poetry; the rule is that women fall victim to their romantic upsets. It is generally true that the poets of this era depict women as weak, restricted beings: weak because they

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have no self-mastery, restricted because they tend to relate to life through a man, and because they perceive the boudoir as the focus of the larger world. Condemned to living in the closed world of their boudoir, where milieu and imagination reinforce their view of themselves and of reality, they are constantly shown to be indulging in memories which confirm the happy emotions of the past. The following poem by Hsieh T'iao illustrates this tendency toward self-gratification through romantic nostalgia. Its title is " A Former Palace Lady Singer of Han-tan Marries a Supplies Sergeant." Long had this lady lived in galleried halls, Constantly attending at cinnabar court. In opened wardrobes her sheer dresses outshone all; Her face in the mirror rivaled all moth eyebrows. When first she went away, her feelings lay suppressed. Years later her sorrow deepened with each day. Unrecognizably gaunt and pale, Still a trace of flirting beauty remained. Faint images of the past flickered in her dreams Murmuring yet, At royal feasts I won high favor!36 This poem tells of a palace entertainer, a high-born lady, who suffers the ignominy of a déclassé marriage. In her shame she prefers to reject the present, clinging to visions of her glorious days in the palace. Her withdrawal from present reality is reflected in the fact that her life is slowly ebbing away. Such remembrance gives the dreamer biased views of reality, obscuring the path to emotional awareness. This withdrawal of the female into a world of memories, into a passive, interior emotional life, is a major theme in Southern Dynasties love poetry. Unable to move beyond the mental concept of the boudoir and their role within it, women are shown trying to alleviate their anxieties by repressing them. The characteristics of activity, independence, self-confidence, and so forth, cannot but surface in the crisis of conflict, only to be interiorized and suppressed. The poetic expression of this may be termed "the neglect syndrome." When a woman's lover neglects her, she invariably reacts by

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neglecting her own environment and person in turn. Her boudoir, garden, material possessions, and appearance are described through images redolent with sensuous dereliction: dust palls her bed, weeds tangle her garden, grime and verdigris tarnish her precious objects, and stale makeup mixed with tears ruins her beautiful face. Similar elements of this "neglect" imagery are used to such an extent that it develops into a stylized presentation of frustrated love by the Southern Dynasties poets.

SECLUSION

The first instinct of a woman featured in a love poem of this era is to withdraw deep into seclusion inside her boudoir when confronted with a crisis in love. Many poems accentuate the voluntary nature of this seclusion—bearing in mind that boudoir life is restricted anyway—by fixing the time of withdrawal at noon, usually the busiest social hour. The following poem by Wang Yun illustrates this emphasis on a woman's negative response: The cockleburr's heart has not yet opened, Herbal leaves are ready to unfurl. Spring silkworms start spinning threads, First swallows carry mud in busy beaks. Pheasants of the fields call softly to their hens, Garden birds protect their nesting young. After you left for Liang, I shut myself in my spring boudoir at noon. The road to you is blocked by hill and river, Scented flowers bloom in idle luxury. 37

The theme of happy mating is reiterated from the third to the sixth lines. From the female persona's point of view, it is as if the busy signs of spring, when nature's creatures instinctively court, mate, and breed, overwhelm her as she suffers in her lover's absence. She seeks refuge in the total eclipse of life behind the shut door of her boudoir, not wishing to confront the painful contrast between nature's happy fulfillment and her own loneliness.

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INACTIVITY

A second typical reaction to emotional conflict as it is explored in these love poems is the woman's suspension of all activity. Even communication ceases, as this poem by Liu Hsiao-wei indicates. Its title is "Submitted to Hsiao I, Prince of Hsiang-tung, Harmonizing with his 'Winter Dawn' Poem." From my home near Loyang city I can often hear bells toll at dawn. Tolling bells had not ended When a Chinese envoy announced your campaign. The sky grew colder, water in my inkwell froze. So sad was my heart, your letter lay unwritten. 38

The auditory image of the bells in the second and third lines at once evokes court ceremony, civilian or religious authority, perhaps even national crisis. It also conveys the idea of time. These two themes of national crisis and the passage of time foreshadow the news in line four that the lover or husband has gone to war. Perhaps, it might be inferred, he may never come back. It is also suggested that he was already absent, for she was writing to him when the envoy came. The auditory image of bells is augmented by the tactile image of coldness in line five, which metaphorically conveys the sense of love's demise. The action at the end of the poem freezes into an eternal attitude of despair.

WEEPING

Another important aspect of woman's response to crisis is her propensity for shedding tears. Of the 656 poems in the anthology, 114 contain direct reference to frowns and tears, while in many more poems they are implicitly present. Tears are shed by all in Southern Dynasties love poems, by humans and nonhumans alike. Smiles, when they do appear, turn to frowns, frowns turn to tears. When tears are wiped away, they fall again. In short, the love poems of this era are awash with the fruits of sorrow. It is even suggested in some poems that women in the Southern Dynasties applied cosmet-

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ics to suggest a tear-stained look, to make themselves attractive to men. For example, a line by the sixth-century poet Wang Shu describes a woman applying such a cosmetic: "Her 'Chao Fei-yen in tears' makeup is finished."39 Tears were in vogue. Lachrymose sentiment is clearly a convention. It is the stock emotional response of women when struck by events beyond their control. As the following poem indicates, the female persona dons a dismal mask when she parts with her lover; she will only remove it on his return. The poem is by Wang T'aich'ing. Its title is "Saying Goodbye to a Beauty on South Bank." My frowning face says goodbye to you, Once in frowns, it won't relax again. All I can do is wait to see y o u — And then will a smile melt my frowns away. 4 0

This poem reveals that obsessiveness of a woman's emotions which I discussed earlier. Rarely is there any middle ground between smiles and frowns, laughter and tears. Neither scorn, nor humor, nor anger is allowed to obtrude as an alternative feeling which might mitigate some of the lovers' conflict and vary the emotional monotony. A woman fluctuates between extremes of feeling under the pen of the Southern Dynasties poet. Many poets in this era even take a morbid interest in developing tears imagery to denote the despair of the female. For example, the next poem by Wu Chun presents a grotesque picture of feminine desolation with the visual image of pearl tears turning to "drops of blood": Spring grass gathered can be bound, But my heart is utterly broken. From grief my green-glinting hair turns white, Pink cheeks from tears have paled. My tears not only form beads of pearl, But I watch pearls change to drops of blood. 41

The "blood" image is ambiguous. Either this really does mean blood—tears have been exhausted, making the eyes drip blood; or the tears may be colored red by the woman's rouge—a conceit. The latter interpretation is supported by line four, which

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suggests that rouged cheeks have been washed pale by constant tears. As this elaborate example shows, tears are a major image in these love poems.

FUTILITY

A further element in the "neglect syndrome" is the notion of impossibility which reverberates throughout the poems. Words such as "vain," "futile," "can't," "can't bear to," and the like punctuate the poems with great frequency. For the woman depicted in them life becomes meaningless once her lover has departed: when love ends, with it fades the desire to live. A poem by Liu Shuo entitled "Imitation of 'On, On, Ever Journeying On,' " is a typical example of this stylized way of depicting a woman suffering pangs of love amid a scene of dereliction. Liu Shuo presents his poem from the point of view of the woman's husband, who is fondly imagining her sense of loss without him as he leaves her in the capital city: Far, far I struggle down the long road. On, on, journeying further into the distance. I turn my back on the capital city, Wave my hand, say goodbye to all that. In the hall drifting dust will spread. In my garden green weeds will grow rank. A cold bird flies up from the river bend, Autumn hares hug the foothills. Spring is a lovely season, and yet My sweet lady knows not the hour of my return. Toward evening, when cool winds stir, She'll stare into her drink, lost in thought, Sing songs of the south, give way to sorrow, Chant "Your collar is blue," yield to despair. Going up to bed she sees her bright lamp dimming. Sitting up, she notices her sheer gown looks dingy. Her tear-stained face will be without fresh makeup, Her dull mirror she cannot bear to polish. "Oh! may he cast pale twilight flickers To brighten my 'Mulberry-Elm' hour!" 4 2

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It is instructive to compare this poem with the original, the last lines of which I discussed earlier. Whereas the Han poem voiced stoicism in the face of adversity, this typical Southern Dynasties poem gives in to deep pessimism and resolute melancholy. The woman's futility is seen as "Her dull mirror she cannot bear to polish." This somber note is one of the most mandatory conventions of Southern Dynasties love poetry.

PHYSICAL DETERIORATION

It is as inconceivable for the typical woman portrayed in Southern Dynasties love poetry to stop the cycle of material neglect by constructive action, such as dusting or polishing, as it is for her to break the deadlock of her obsessive despair. A poem by Liu Chun, known to history as Emperor Hsiao-wu of the Liu-Sung Dynasty, illustrates the emotional decline of the female through prolonged, monotonous pining. It is entitled "Imitation of Hsu Kan's Poem." Ever since you went away, Gold tarnished, kingfisher faded, lost their sheen. My thoughts of you, like sun and moon, Go round and round, as day grows into night. 43

As the last couplet shows, obsession with loss of love increases in proportion to the time the persona spends pining. Some poets explore the changes in sensory perception arising from a woman's depressed state. One representative poem of this type expresses a woman's optical illusion. It is by Wang Seng-ju, and is entitled "Despair in the Night." Dew on the eaves hardens into pearls, Ice on the pool freezes to smooth jade. Dawn tears flow in ten thousand streams, Grief at a thousand-league parting deepens by night. Forsaken curtains hang drawn, never to open. Cold perfumed tallow lamps gutter, flare once more. How can I tell my heart and eyes are confused? I see scarlet suddenly change to green! 4 4

Familiar features are present in Wang Seng-ju's poem: tactile images (frozen dew and ice) denote absence of passion; a vi-

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sual image (curtains drawn closed) suggests withdrawal from life; and an olfactory image (scented lamp gutters) conveys the idea of love's waning ardor. The final image of one color blurring with another acts as a metaphor for emotional confusion: the boundary between reality and imagination is no longer clear. The physical decline that ensues from psychological malaise is described in a great number of the poems of this period. Many portray the female elaborately beautifying her face with cosmetics, only to depict her at the poem's end ruining her mask of beauty with tears of frustration. The title of the following poem (its first line) typifies the way a woman surrenders her will to romantic torpor. It is by Chiang Hung and is the first of a set of two poems entitled "Green Water Melody." My grimy face I cannot bear to beautify. I lean over a pool, dream of my wanderer's return. Who can take green water in her hand To wash silk robes in a tedium of ennui? 4 5

Neglected by her lover, she in turn neglects her physical appearance. Stated more abstractly, when a woman experiences neglect in love, she will direct her negative feelings of anxiety and aggression inward, reverting to infantile levels of behavior and becoming absorbed in masochistic actions. The next poem shows how wraithlike a woman in Southern Dynasties love poetry often becomes when she takes self-neglect to extremes. It is by Liu Huan, and is entitled "Cold Boudoir." After we parted, the spring pool looked different: Lotus died, ice seemed to form. In my sewing-box the shears felt cold, My face-cream froze on the mirror-stand. Grown frail, my slender waist Can hardly bear the coldness of my clothes. 46

There is an obsession with tactile images here (cold, congealing, freezing), all denoting change from love's warmth. Psychological distress causes changes in sensory perception: for the woman in this poem the world "looks different," and things feel to her touch as chill as the coldness of her lover's heart.

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Conclusion To summarize then, this survey of a woman's response to emotional conflict indicates that the female portrayed in Southern Dynasties love poetry fails to react positively and creatively to life's adversities. The women presented here are usually unable to adapt to reality. In their subjective view of life they tend to personalize experience, blurring the boundary line between what they feel and what is actually happening. Instead of trying to solve conflict arising from their situation, they direct negative feelings inward against themselves. They regress into a state of infantilism and become preoccupied with moribund phenomena. The different stages of this mental and physical decline are voluntary seclusion, suspension of activity, nostalgic pining, obsessive despair, neglect of the boudoir, self-neglect and physical deterioration, and morbidity of life-view. These stages are presented in the poems by means of a common repertoire of neglect imagery, filtered through poetic conventions of theme, subject, setting, and mood. As such, a woman in love presented by the Southern Dynasties poet is a symbol of disintegration caused by the incompleteness of her relationship with her male lover. Love is expressed through the female persona as a malaise, a disease. Southern Dynasties poets are concerned to show in their love lyrics the debilitating effects of love on a woman. They present a gallery of pathetic portraits: hundreds of women are described as lost, abandoned, neglected, suffering, wounded, and so forth. To the predominantly male poets the image of woman is one of weakness. She is ungoverned by reason or discipline or moderation. She is subjugated by her desire for her lover, lacking any destiny or purpose in life outside love. She is idle, vain, and self-absorbed. By contrast the image of the male that emerges from these poems is positive and successful in the sphere of love. Although literary attention in these love poems focuses on women, men are present, even if as mere shadowy figures on the distant horizon. There are very few concrete descriptions of men. They exist rather

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as a potent figment of the female imagination in the poets' portrayal of her. This projection of the male through the eyes of the female is as follows: he is master of his own destiny; he is the superior partner in love relations; he is free; he is a man of the world; he is strong-willed, desirable, capricious, fickle; he is the controller of a woman's life, the active force in love's progress. He is, in other words, woman's reverse image: he is what she is not; she is what he is not. He is a success. She is a failure. The reason why male poets chose the female persona to explore the nature and meaning of love are many and complex. The major reason may perhaps be discerned in the clear dichotomy they projected between masculinity and femininity. While fascinated by the concept of vulnerability in human love with its attendant aspects of weakness and failure, male poets avoided directly identifying themselves with failure. Instead, they preferred to project their own weakness in the experience of love through a more distant feminine persona, anticipating Shakespeare's, "Frailty, thy name is woman." This conscious choice of a female persona thus allowed male poets covertly to probe, under the guise of objectivity and distance, their own human foibles. It also permitted them overtly to suggest the idea of male dominance and power in the sphere of love, as in other spheres of human activity. Another reason lies in the exoticism of the palace lady herself. By choosing such a persona, male poets titillated themselves, their male readers, and also, through the workings of vanity, their female readers. In society, people enjoy seeing themselves mirrored, however negative the portrait might prove to be, in fashionable literature, and especially enjoy savoring the thrill of recognition. A third reason is the erotic allure of the palace lady. The Southern Dynasties poets' interest in her appearance often borders on fetishism, risqué sexuality, and voyeurism. Male poets provided a peephole into the closed world of the boudoir, especially when their setting was a palace harem. The lyric is by definition expressive of strong emotion. The love lyric is even more so. Southern Dynasties poets equate love with suffering, destruction, and obsessive pas-

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sion. They present love as a passion which claims woman as its victim. Women as innocent victims of love's wound make appealing poetic subjects. The poets of this period intend that the reader will overlook or forgive these innocent female victims, condone their weakness and folly as they struggle unsuccessfully against the problems of love. Women do not deserve the pain they endure in love's name, the poets seek to persuade. They weep, and the reader is prompted to sympathize. This is the poetry of sentiment, of inured emotion. The reader is asked to wallow for a while in the misfortune presented to him in the persona of a woman, to endorse her selfpity. There is nothing inherently wrong with such sentiment, whether it is in literary vogue or not, except in the matter of degree. One cause of this cult of lachrymose sentiment is the conventional nature of the Southern Dynasties love poem. Woman suffering in solitude from her lover's neglect is a stereotyped character in the poems. Despair in a deserted, neglected boudoir is a stock situation. The subject of the love poem responds with a single-minded passion to her absent lover, another major poetic convention. The assumption the modern reader has to make is that Southern Dynasties poets sympathized with the concept of woman as a victim of circumstance and her own nature. Self-indulgence in an excess of sentiment appealed to their poetic sensibility. Yet if the Southern Dynasties love lyric evinces limitations in emotional response and a lack of verisimilitude, both characteristics stemming from the cult of sentiment and the observance of convention, they are markedly freer in providing decorative background. It is as if in writing a love lyric the Southern Dynasties poet obediently followed the conventions of the form in terms of subject, situation, and mood, while devoting all his originality and ingenuity to the descriptive setting of the poem. What he lost in emotional spontaneity he gained in descriptive élan. The poems often have a pictorial quality which creates striking effects of light and shade, of color, and of movement. In this decorative aspect one notices the realism with which details of concrete objects are described. The

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contemporary reader would have instantly recognized the scenes evoked with such loving care by the painterly poets with their objets d'art and objets de luxe. At a more superficial level the luxurious settings portrayed in the poems are posh trimmings designed to captivate the reader's eye, affecting his sense of beauty. This is essentially a courtly setting, described by those best equipped artistically to do so—the court poets. Thus the pathos of a woman in love and the beauty of her person and belongings combine to create in these love poems of the Southern Dynasties a cult of sensibility, awakening in the reader sensations of erotic familiarity and an appreciation of beautiful decor.

Structuring a Second Creation: Evolution of tne Self in Imaginary Landscapes Frances LaFleur

Z

Mochida

n the middle of the eighteenth century, the Swiss critics Johann Bodmer (1701-1776) and Johann Breitinger (1698-1783) defended poetry of the supernatural by asserting that it represented not a reflection of this world, but a second creation, subject to its own laws and its own reason for being. 1 Arguing against the narrowly rationalist view of poetry held by many at the time, they proposed that a critic should seek internal coherence and congruence, on the p o e m ' s own terms, rather than judge it on its correspondence to reality. 2 Today we would find it unnecessary to defend fantastic imagery against Hobbes' dictum that a poet "should not go beyond the conceived possibility of nature," 3 since we tend to view all poetic statements as hypothetical utterances rather than reflections of philosophical truth. But still the idea expressed by these early advocates of imagination is suggestive for its characterization of supernatural poetry as a " s e c o n d creation"; it implies that in order for a poet to lend coherence

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to a fantastic work he must articulate the structure of his world fully enough to allow us to see its own internal laws and purpose. 4 Although notable exceptions do exist, it might be fair to say that practitioners and apologists for fantastic poetry in China have been fewer than in the West, and that in China the techniques of fantastic creation have been less often held up to critical scrutiny. Generally, classical Chinese poetry has preferred realism to fancy, and suggestion to exposition, tendencies initiated in the venerable Book of Songs (Shih ching), where images from the natural world are juxtaposed with the poet's unadorned emotions. Lyrics formed this way tend to portray the poet as an experiencing individual responding to something in the environment with his personal sentiment, or chih. This poetic technique, termed hsing by traditional critics, produced many short stanzas of discrete, timeless lyric moments bound to momentary sense impressions. 5 The poet writing in this mode apparently felt no need for an elaborate expository structure. The reality of his perceptions of the world and his place in it were simply assumed. But less matter-of-fact worlds did exist in China. The world of the anthology of ancient songs from Ch'u, Songs of the South (Ch'u tz'u) was not one which the senses could immediately perceive; its inspiration arose from myths connected with rites of shamanistic worship. 6 As we would expect, following our Swiss critics' line of thought, this poetry of a "second creation" required more expository framework than did the short verses in the Book of Songs. In this southern tradition we find a poet incorporating elements of nature into his subjective and imaginative system of belief; he is a conceptualizer rather than a perceiver. Traditional critics recognized his elaborated poetic structure as predominantly fu or extended description, discourse, or narrative. This technique is not absent from the Book of Songs, but its use is not so pervasive or so central to the poet's artistic purpose. The Songs of the South collection is the inexhaustible source for imaginary landscapes in Chinese poetry. Although later embellished with mystic parables of Chuang Tzu and Lieh

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Tzu and Taoist anecdotes of immortals, adepts, and alchemists, the imagery from this hallowed source never lost its special magic. 7 The Songs also furnished two recurrent themes for supernatural poetry: the quest of the goddess and the spiritual journey. 8 Although diverse in conception, mood and detail, all the poems we will examine—the "Nine Songs" ("Chiu ko"), Ch'ii Yiian's "Encountering Sorrow" ("Li sao"), the wandering immortal poems (yu-hsien shih), and the "ghostly" poems of Li Ho (A.D. 791-817)—share these two essential themes. And these themes, as we will see, may illuminate key aspects of the dilemma of the human condition at critical stages in the realization of the self in Chinese poetry. In the "Nine Songs" we glimpse a primitive world where man has the power to integrate himself with nature through an act of ritual. With Ch'ii Yuan we hear the first alarms of an individual's alienation from society and imprisonment in time. By the time of the "Wandering Immortals," when poets are seeking a spiritual solution to their terror of eternal repose under pine and cypress, the old religion offers no comfort. It is left for Li Ho to work out aesthetically the mortal dilemma which the "immortals" left unsolved. Subjective and imaginative projections such as these lead us to vistas rarely encountered in the mainstream of the lyric tradition. They provide a tantalizing further dimension to our understanding of the evolving poetic self, for in the intricate webs of fantasy the poets weave, they end by revealing themselves.

The "Nine Songs": Within the Mythic Embrace Within the collection Songs of the South we discover a variety of genres, all of which draw heavily on the rites of the shamanistic religion of the Yangtze Basin area. While we cannot fit these pieces neatly into Western categories, it does seem that the "Nine Songs" are related to actual ritual perfor-

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mances, with their sequences of mythic narrative, descriptions of the performance itself, and emotional responses to the pageant. Other works in the collection, such as the "Summons of the Soul" ("Chao hun") are probably derivatives of magical incantations recited by individual shamans. "Encountering Sorrow," though obviously concerned more with poetic intent than with adherence to ritual, has still borrowed liberally from the themes and images of the "Nine Songs" and probably also from the more extended forms of religious recitation. All the extant pieces are greatly conditioned by the mythic orientation of their distinctive religious practice, and the lyric narrative form to which they gave birth had a lasting impact on later secular literature. Many would concur with David Hawkes that the "Nine Songs" are very close in spirit to genuinely religious verses. 9 Nor is this a peculiarly modern view. Wang I, the earliest compiler and annotator of the Ch'u songs, made the first recorded statement to that effect, claiming that these were songs of worship refined by the poet Ch'u Yuan during his exile among the people of the south. 10 A number of modern scholars have sought to reconstruct the dramatic setting of the "Nine Songs" on the basis of textual clues and ethnological parallels. Although they differ on details, most envision one shaman impersonating the god, another impersonating the human being desiring union with the god, and perhaps a third acting as a narrator, with a background complement of musicians and participants in the ceremony.11 The shamans' actions on stage are clearly conditioned by the actions and attributes of the gods contained in the myth, and it is this mythic basis which gives the "Nine Songs" their distinctive emotive power. We are understanding myth in this context as "a story or a complex of story elements taken as expressing, and therefore implicitly symbolizing, certain deep-lying aspects of natural, human, and transhuman existence." 12 It is important to differentiate between the "mythic" basis of these songs and the "mythical" basis of much of the later literature. 13 In the "Nine Songs" no

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consciousness of myth per se is evident; the world is simply articulated in anthropomorphic terms. In the extraordinary attributes and actions of the gods, the forces of nature are made manifest. The poems are utterly lacking in a concern for the true or false, the figurative or literal. Perhaps partly for this reason many lines in the poems fail to distinguish clearly between description and address, adjective and noun. The god behaves as he is. To a modern reader the ambiguity is also apparent on another level: the shaman, by impersonating a god, gives the god an element of human subjectivity, and conversely, the questing shaman, by participating in the rite, is infused with the divine. In the terse language of the poems, these religious phenomena, along with the absence of stage directions, often contribute to a confusion about the speaker's identity. Is the man responding to the god, or is the god moved by the man's performance?14 The difficulty is more acute in some poems than in others. The opening and closing hymns, "The Great One, Lord of the Eastern World" ("Tung-huang T'ai-i") and "The Ritual Cycle" ("Li hun"), are simple objective descriptions of the performance of the rite. The second and third songs, 15 "The Lord of the East" ("Tung chun") and "The Lord Within the Gouds" ("Yiin-chung chun"), are essentially the expression of the man's feelings about the gods as they descend. "The Spirits of the Fallen" ("Kuo shang"), the penultimate song, is a straight narrative account of the "deification" of dead warriors. It is in the middle of the cycle, where the gods are most humanly portrayed, and most often disappointing to their mortal lovers, that we sense the participants acting out parts of the myths themselves. Here the lyric persona is most difficult to determine. 16 Although we may puzzle over the speaker at times, we can detect shifts in the focus of the action by means of the changes in rhymes and changes in verbal patterns. The subtle shifting of rhythms and the marking off of segments with rhyme are only two examples of the songs' linguistic artistry. Another interesting feature, noted by Hawkes and by A. C. Graham, is the use of the particle hsi in the middle of each line. 17

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This caesura allows for a very flexible verbal structure with numerous relational possibilities between line segments. Because the language and structure of the "Nine Songs" form the prototypes for later poetry of fantasy, we will look closely at several examples in the cycle to see how poetic effects are achieved. The techniques are employed similarly in all the poems, so I will simplify by choosing examples in which the lyrical persona is less often controversial. "The Great One, Lord of the Eastern World," addressed to the most exalted deity in the hierarchy, describes the preparation for and initiation of the rite itself. The god does not play an active role in the dramatic presentation, unlike the gods in the remainder of the poems. As the highest divinity, he functions rather as the overlord and beneficiary of the entire song cycle. Lacking concrete form or specific attributes, his august power is revealed obliquely through the structure and imagery of the poem: Auspicious the day the timing fine, Reverently let us please our lord divine. Clasp the long sword with jaded hilt. Jingle-jangle the sounds our girdle stones chime. Fragrant reed mats with weights of jade, Now let us take up the perfumes refined. Basil-steamed meats with orchid wrappings, Offer up cinnamon drink peppered wine. Brandish the drumsticks [Line

strike the drums,

missing]

Set the slow rhythm calmly chant, Add pipes and zithers passionately sing. The shaman flitter-flutters his filmy robes, Incense puffs-puffs to fill the shrine. The five tones blend in rich harmony, Our Lord very merry in joy sublime. 18

The song has only one rhyme and is apparently sung by one voice or a chorus. The rhyme scheme, a a x a x a etc., is typical of the "Nine Songs." The first two lines form a single rhyming couplet, which establishes a religious identity be-

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tween time and purpose, and sets those two lines off from the x a x a rhythm of the rest of the poem. The adverbial expression chiang, "let u s " or "about t o , " is a frequent one in the poems and poises us for the onset of action. In lines 3 - 5 the ritual objects are presented—the long sword with jade hilt, the tinkling stone girdle gems, the mats weighted with pieces of jade. The minerals are cold, hard, and translucent. The reed mats signal the next series of images, the fragrant offerings, and the rest of the stanza is essentially an enumeration of items presented by the worshipers. Since these lines are neither linked by verbal parallelism nor lengthened by enjambment, the result is a stanza of mosaic texture; many brightly colored elements of similar size and weight gradually accumulate to form a symbolic and ritual complex. The qualities of these two groups of images become metaphors—not the rhetorical metaphors of sophisticated poetry, where names are transferred from the things they properly denote to other things, but primary mythic metaphors. Certain raw materials of experience—embodying a shared sensuous quality, a divine efficacy, and a relationship to the entire religious complex—are fused into a symbolic unity. Therefore, these symbolic offerings, unlike articles embellished with rhetorical metaphors, have an inexplicit richness and mystery which hark back to almost subconscious archetypes. The mineral group suggests immortality and timelessness, incorruptibility. Stone and metal objects can be used time and again in the celebrations, thereby storing up a potent magic. The aromatic group, on the other hand, exhales onto its surroundings an intoxicating scent which can pervade an entire space, envelop the whole stage in a cloak of the sacred. Yet the fragility of the flowers and the volatility of the wines also attune us to their impermanence. Throughout the "Nine Songs" we sense an implicit juxtaposition of divine purity and permanence, worldly sensuality and transience. The slow, dignified pace of the poem is altered abruptly in the first line of the second stanza. Here we encounter a verbal pattern which is interspersed throughout the collection and seems adapted to presenting actions involved

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with the mechanics of the production of the pageant rather than with the divine mystery being acted out on center stage. The simplicity of such lines as "Brandish the drumsticks, strike the drums," which contain no qualifying adjectives to particularize the actors or the objects acted upon, are like cues or stage directions, which, once initiated, seem to continue for the duration and serve as a backdrop to the pageant. The action is open-ended; the drums continue to beat while we shift focus to other things. The next two extant lines are almost perfectly parallel and sequential. 19 Each line's two segments are causally related: the slow, measured rhythm induces solemn chanting, then the pipes and zithers join in and the singing becomes passionate. This type of sequence is also frequent. Whereas the free-standing lines of the first stanza gave us the static impression of a mozaic of glittering fragments, these tightly related lines seem to build up volume and energy. The climax is reached in the passionate singing, and the action remains at a feverish pitch throughout the last four lines. The dramatic fervor is reinforced by the descriptive binomes lacing this section—"flitter-flutter" (yen-chien), "puffpuff" (fei-fei), "very merry" (hsin-hsin)—all of which embody movement, agitation, inner momentum, an almost animate energy. 2 0 The shaman with clothes fluttering, the incense with fragrance wafting, and the god with pleasure stirred by the spectacle, when taken together recapitulate the important elements of the celebration and show how each has reached a point of intoxication, an ideal active state. Although no god is described arriving or departing, the glory of the deity is effectively rendered; when in the last line we read " O u r Lord very merry, in joy sublime," we suddenly realize that the ecstatic buildup in the last stanza was "divinely inspired." The god's ineffable greatness has infused the elements of the human realm. Viewing the poem as a whole, we see that it is clearly structured to achieve the explicit goal: to welcome and delight the Great One, the highest god. First, the slow actions of the ritual help us to focus on the symbolic essence of divin-

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ity, and then the bombardment with intense sensual stimuli lifts us from the mundane to the sacred. Unlike the majority of the odes in the Book of Songs, this poem does not remain grounded in the natural world. Rather than reacting to some stimulus external to him in nature, the poet is manipulating a series of objects, grouping them according to their significant abstract qualities, and presenting them as symbols of religious efficacy. While describing the preparation and placement of ritual properties on the stage, he is actually creating an imaginary world wherein he can realize a union with the divine through his actions. Therefore these objects and events take on a sacred meaning only through the staging power of his carefully structured expression. The skillful manipulation of images in meaningful sequence evokes in the reader the dual sensations of the poet having been lifted into the spiritual realm by the power of the god, and of the divine having been conjured up through his own act. The shaman-poet's ability to achieve this imaginative identity of sacred and mundane through language is a key part of the magic which has always entranced readers of the "Nine Songs." In the second poem, "Lord of the East," the sun god takes an active role, and his arrival is enhanced through the artful use of language: A glow's just appearing in the eastern sky, It shines on my balcony o'er Fu-sang's height. I pat my horse slowly ride, The night how it glistens now is bright.

In the first four lines, the rays shining on the balcony rouse the worshiper, and he rides out to greet the god. 21 Without his being described or referred to in his anthropomorphized form, his approach is conveyed through his ever stronger radiance. In the first line "glow" (t'un) is a noun which represents a luminosity still potential; it sets the sequence in motion. In line 2 the action of the god is depicted in the verb "shines o n " (chao)—a progressively more active and therefore stronger manifestation. Most interesting is the descriptive bi-

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nome (chiao-chiao), which I have translated "glistens" to try to bring out its dynamic element. Here again, we have an example of the use of binomes in passages conveying emotional intensity in people, gods, or objects transformed into an animated state. These are moments when the god's power and presence are displayed. The poet conjures up his brilliant qualities before confronting him. A change of rhyme and an upgrading of the imagery to the marvelous shift the focus away from the human worshiper to the descending god: He drives his dragon chariot on thunder it sails, His cloudy banner winding trails. With a long great sigh he starts to climb, His heart hesitates his desire prevails.22

Again we find two descriptive binomes relating to his godly movements, "winding trails" (wei-tui) and "hesitates" (ti-hnai). In the next section the scene again shifts to the spectacle enacted on the ground, with shamans using images of birds and flight to parallel the god's celestial attributes and activities. Within the confines of the stage and within the verbal structure of the poem, mortals are invested with spiritual power. After the shaman's ecstatic dances are performed, with descriptions of music and dance like those in the last part of the first hymn, the poem concludes with the god's resumption of his divine journey toward the west. The clock of natural time, which the god controls with his ride across the sky, begins to tick again. The last segment shifts to a new rhythm, with three beats before and after the caesura. This meter is effective for narrating godly actions because it produces a solemn monotony in tune with the unchanging nature of the god's daily ritual. The tendency toward parallelism in the syntax of the lines enhances this effect: In blue cloud coat white rainbow gown, He holds his bow soars high around. He raises a long arrow shoots the Heavenly Wolf, Draws forth the Dipper and pours cinnamon wine.

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He gathers his reins toward the abyss he plunges, Into darkness distant he eastward journeys down.23 In lines like these we feel closer to the narration of the underlying myth itself than to the human dramatic presentation on the stage. The references to the two stellar constellations, the Wolf and the Dipper, call to mind a number of similar myths. 24 Progressing through the cycle, the gods seem more and more human and the stage settings richer in detail. This reflects the nature of the gods being worshiped. The first three gods, the Great One, the sun god, and the god of the clouds, rule impersonally over all things. The Greater and Lesser Masters of Fate (Ta ssu-ming, Hsiao ssu-ming), while still celestial deities, are more intimately connected with specifically human existence, controlling as they do the length of man's life and the birth of his progeny, respectively.25 Even closer are the gods in the latter part of the cycle who actually inhabit the earthly domain, e.g., the Hsiang River deities (Hsiang-chiin, Hsiang fu-jen) the Yellow River god (Ho-po), and the mountain spirit (Shan-kuei). They have real personalities, reflecting the sometimes calm, sometimes stormy, active, and capricious elements of the natural features they inhabit and which the celebrants know well from direct experience. The more human the god, the more intensely emotional the interaction with the shaman. In the "Princess of the Hsiang" and "The Lady of the Hsiang" the entire poems are within the context of the dramatic search, with no asides pertaining to the rite itself.26 But even here, our attempt to visualize a natural scene is foiled. As Hawkes has pointed out, many of the lines in these poems are in fact dramatic clues and conventional references: "Now I halt my pace at such-and-such," or "Now I bend my course to so-and-so." 27 Impossible distances are covered and time is greatly compressed. These scenes are not enacted in mundane landscapes but molded through religious imagination. Perhaps the lyrical culmination of the song cycle is

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the hymn the "Mountain Goddess" or, as others have rendered it, the "Mountain Spirit." 28 Unlike most of the hymns, this poem is sung entirely in a three-beat, pause, three-beat meter, like the final section of the "Lord of the East." While it contains formulaic lines describing the symbolic gathering of certain flowers similar to those in other poems, it seems to present a more unified scene and mood than the poems preceding it. Kuo Mo-jo may be correct in suggesting that this mountain spirit is the same one who appears in the legend of the noble daughter who died on Wu Mountain and entertained the King of Ch'u. 29 Certainly the dense, forested hills with howling apes, the divinely induced clouds and rain, and the eroticism coupled with intense loneliness are strikingly similar: There seems to be someone in the mountain fold, Draped in fig leaves tied with mistletoe. Since you coyly glance easily smiling, You desire me artfully inviting. Riding a red leopard a striped lynx leading, With magnolia chariot cassia banner flying. My place is a remote grove and has never seen the sky, The road is hard and dangerous alone I'm last in coming. The thunder deeply rumbles gloomy is the rain, Monkeys are chattering apes at evening cry. The wind is whistling the trees whine and sigh, I long for you but my sorrow is vain.

The "Mountain Spirit" movingly conveys the underlying theme of all the foregoing poems—the desire for union between god and man. Through divine sexual encounter, the physical and spiritual regeneration of the human community can be ensured, and man can feel more at one with awesome natural forces. The shaman-poet can bridge the two worlds by conjuring up the divine Other through a structured succession of images. In each of these dramatic narratives there is an ini-

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tial equilibrium where man and nature are separated; it is the imaginative incarnation of the god, the intervention of the supernatural, which allows the poet to carry out his quest and the narrative to progress to a rapid modification, producing another equilibrium where a harmony, albeit fragile, is restored. But the poet does not always reach the god. Of the seven pieces that mention love trysts, consummation is achieved in only three or four. 30 These early gods have personalities much like their counterparts in later Chinese popular religion— granting and withholding favors, acting generously and selfishly, just like the men who create them. Perhaps because of their fickle natures, the attempt at union by the shaman, indicating as it does his acknowledgment of and regard for the god, is sufficient to confer benefit on the participants of the ceremony. But on a deeper level, these uncertain courtships with the gods reveal a fundamental attitude held by the shaman-poet. At best, the union he seeks will be a brief one. While there is a desire to contact the god, there also must be a fear of being obliged to become his pliant instrument. 31 The shaman is not simply a man possessed, but a man who exercises a measure of control over the gods through his ability to reach them and communicate with them. 3 2 But at the same time, realization of his power does not let him forget who he is. Even in this early stage in the poetic expression of the self, before the poet reveals even his name to us, his occasional failures remind us of his attachment to the earthly realm and proclaim his allegiance to humanity. 3 3 The alienation of the self from nature cannot be completely surmounted even by the power of his imagination, as long as he remains a man.

Ch'ii Yuan: "Encountering Sorrow" Turning to the most famous poem in Songs of the South, "Encountering Sorrow," we no longer hear the voice of an anonymous celebrant representing the community, but an

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individual whose uniqueness is felt from the first lines. He begins with a genealogy and a description of himself, confirming a consciousness of his place in a historical continuity and an existence extending through time. Whatever the origins of the genre to which this poem belongs, "Encountering Sorrow" seems at least one step removed from a religious purpose. 34 If we accept the traditional view that at least some of the intent is allegorical, we should characterize Ch'ii Yiian's work as mythical rather than mythic, since he consciously selects, regroups, and rewrites bits of the old stories or patterns to conform to his own design. But one feels that the poem still embodies some degree of belief, and this allows him to integrate the elements without too much apparent artifice. Many formulaic phrases reminiscent of the "Nine Songs" seem prompted by ritual rather than logical requirements. 35 Hawkes describes the poet not as "an ordinary neurotic" but a magician who can "summon gods and immortal spirits to do his bidding, and can roam at will to the uttermost ends of the universe." 3 6 The remaining element of belief in myth is what gives power to the poem's poetic vision. The "magical" effects are produced in much the same ways they were in the "Nine Songs," that is, through ingenious narrative structuring and through the use of special effects of language. The ritualistic presentation of objects, particularly flowers, in the first stanzas of the poem cause us to sense the sacred dimensions of the poef s actions. As in the "Nine Songs," the flowers accrue meaning through repetition in the narrative, until they come collectively to embody abstract qualities. The plants are never presented as if observed in their natural state. Always, the poet is manipulating them within his intentional framework: Ah, since I had this inner beauty, I further added a cultivated mien. I dressed in selinea and shady angelica, I twined autumn orchids as a belt. I then nourished nine fields of orchids, Also planted a hundred rods of melilotus.

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I raised sweet lichen and cart-halt flower, And mixed in asarum and angelica. I hoped for the branches' and leaves' flourishing, I wanted at the proper time to harvest them. 3 7

Many commentators, attempting to pinpoint political allegory in the poem, have tried to match historical figures to the various flowers and herbs. Occasionally, in such phrases as "the pepper who specialized in flattery" (chiao chuati tiing i man-Kan) we may suppose a specific referent was intended, but for the most part, the flowers seem to be invoked for their ritual appropriateness to the poet's character and actions, rather than for their correspondence on a one-to-one basis with abstract behavioral qualities or human beings. Taken as a totality, they seem to indicate instances where sacredness and purity are either present or absent. As in "The Great One, Lord of the Eastern World," where the human celebrants made the divine manifest by creating a sacred atmosphere, in this poem we have a similar transformation from the mundane to the extraordinary through ritual actions. In the first eight lines, Ch'ii Yuan identifies himself and proclaims his purity. This opening is followed by a long section (lines 9-120) 3 8 declaring his inability to lead the ruler along the correct path, and describing the many ritual actions he has performed in vain. Finally, a quarter of the way through the poem, he decides on his course of action: Suddenly I turn to look and my eyes rove, I am about to go and see the four quarters. My girdle is a confusion of numerous ornaments, Their fragrance wafts far and wide. Each man's life has its pleasure, I only love beauty as a constant. Though I be dismembered I would not change, How could my heart be punished?

The narrative is interrupted here while his handmaidens try to dissuade him, but his resolve is firm, and he travels to the site of Emperor Shun's grave to make his plaint. Having done this, he is infused with the power to make his journey:

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I knelt on spread robes to state my plaint, Dazzled I then obtained this inner truth. I yoked jade dragons to a phoenix chariot, On a dusty wind I suddenly soared up.

It is only at this point that the poem moves to the supernatural realm. Despite many innovations, the "Nine Songs" structure can still be delineated. Once again, the supernatural signals a rapid transition from one equilibrium to another. Much of the imagery of the celestial journey is apparently from the same source as the god descriptions in the "Nine Songs." Again, the striking use of descriptive binomes infuses this portion of the narrative with divine overtones. In the terrestrial part of the poem (up to line 185), such binomes are rare, and those that do occur depict objects in the natural state, for example, grass and trees withering and dying (ts'ao mu chih litig-lo) or ivy trailing (hu-sheng chih hsi-hsi). These usages are no different from those in the Book of Songs, except that they function more explicitly in the narrative as symbolic of his mental state. But in the "inspired" part of the poem, the descriptive binomes are multiplied. Most of them suggest forceful, rhythmic movement, such as in the phrases "high soar the phoenixes, wings beating" (kao-ao chih i-i) or "I gallop my eight dragons, writhing" (chia pa lung chih wan-wan). Here, the elements of the poet's universe are in an excited state like that in the climactic portions of the "Nine Songs." Compare the following two couplets. The first occurs near the beginning of the poem, and the second near the end: Days and months are rapid and don't wait, Spring and autumn alternate. The sun rushes on about to set, I command the Sun Goddess to slow her pace.

The poet in the first lines was a helpless mortal observing an abstract natural phenomenon, whereas in the second lines he was one with the gods, and animated nature responded to him. During the poet's celestial journey, except for the brief interludes where he quests for enchanting women and seeks a divination, the narrative covers great distances at high

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speed. Ch'ii Yuan seems to be traveling ever westward, as if trying to catch the sun before it sets. It is the imaginative power which the poet is able to generate in these lines which makes the ending so abrupt and poignant: Ascending to Heaven's splendid vastness, Suddenly I catch a glimpse of my old home. My groom is grieved and my horses are yearning, Arching their backs they will not go on. Ultimately his magic is not sufficient for him to sustain his fabulous journey. Like the "Nine Songs" poet he ultimately does not really wish to abandon the earthly realm to become one with the gods, despite his attraction to their celestial abode and their power over time and decay. But because of his greatly heightened self-consciousness, the realization is more dramatic and more painful. He cannot sever himself emotionally from his earthly identity, his human ties, and all else that his old home represents. We are brought home to the earthly dilemma which prompted him to set out in the first place. Ostensibly, his anguish was caused by his ruler's losing faith in him. And according to the allegorical interpretation, the goal of his quest is reconciliation with his prince. This theme seems to be a natural extension of the religious preoccupation of the "Nine S o n g s . " From the earlier desire of man for a sexual union with a god, the theme has been modified to a desire to serve a powerful Other, a human ruler, who will bring back the world of harmony known under the sage kings of antiquity. But there is a dimension in this poem which goes beyond the intellectual and structural framework of the "Nine Songs." Throughout the poem, we have only one voice; the experiencing protagonist is a painfully self-aware individual. He expropriates the imagery, the grandeur, and the power of the gods, but his fixation on self distinguishes him from an anonymous celebrant of religious rite. It would be tempting to call "Encountering Sorrow" an epic poem, because then we could perhaps take the "Nine Songs" as ballads and the "Summons of the Soul" as

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an incantation, which eventually evolved into an epic narrative form in "Encountering Sorrow." This would tend to fit the hypothesized Western literary model, with narrative arising from forms pertaining to religious rite.39 The length of Ch'ii Yiian's poem, its longer lines (as compared with the "Nine Songs") which tend toward couplet formation suited more to chant than song, and its lively incidents linking men and gods, do lend it epic qualities. But the beginnings of lyricism, which we detected in passages where the shaman acted out his search for the gods, are carried much further in this poem. In fact, it is so completely egocentric that it cannot be considered an epic in the Western sense at all.40 In epic narrative we expect the materials of experience received by the poet to be arranged into plots conditioned by circumstances which proceed, generally somewhat chronologically, through cause-and-effect relations. In the present poem, however, the poet experiences a series of situations which have only a vague plot framework. If we try to rationalize his behavior, or even outline the time sequence within a given scene, we quickly realize that the progression is not causally determined at all, but formulaic and perhaps unconsciously based on religious rite.41 Ch'ii Yuan, as lyric protagonist, refashions the world through his own perceptions and renders it in a highly symbolic and distinctive imaginary form. Natural elements are reduced to their symbolic aspects. He describes his entourage at some length, with dragons pulling jade-hubbed chariots and phoenixes bearing pendants, but these picturesque images too are devices for expressing his divine power and ability to animate the universe. When we try to visualize the lands he passes over or the route he follows, the scenes evaporate. The place names are evocative—Flowing Sands, Red Waters—but aside from what the words conjure up in themselves or what we know from mythological sources, we have no details. 42 The I-dominated universe is enhanced by the verbal patterns of the sao-style poem. The flexibility of the "Nine Songs" structure, created by the caesura in the middle of each line which allowed manifold relations between line segments

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and adjacent lines, has been diminished by the substitution in "Encountering Sorrow" of a "key word" 4 3 for the mid-line caesura and the addition of an end-of-line caesura placed between two adjacent lines: "Nine Songs":

3 hsi 2, 3 hsi 2. 3 hsi 2, 3 hsi 2.

"Encountering Sorrow": 3 key word 2 hsi 3 key word 2, 3 key word 2 hsi 3 key word 2.

This produces a much stronger formal relation between the adjacent lines, and contributes to the tendency toward couplet formation with parallel syntax. 44 These extended lines, double the "Songs" lines in length, coupled with a great increase in emotive verbs like "fear" and "wish" and personal pronouns, produce extended transitive sequences (subject-verb-object). The result is a poetic monologue which sublimates all elements to a subjective purpose or vision. Ch'ii Yiian's reveries are haunted by memories of his own past and his country's glorious history. He agonizes that the times are out of joint and that his own lifespan is limited. He has stepped out of the integrated and unquestioning world of the "Nine Songs" to face alone the ultimate questions of human existence: I flow like a fast torrent, as if never to catch up, Afraid that the years will go without me. I think of the decay and fall of the trees and plants, And fear my beloved Beauty will fade in twilight. 45

Here is an individual separated from a community of shared values, a man at odds with the world. He desires, through liaisons with goddesses, to effect a union which will reintegrate him with this world, but each time his quest ends in failure. Finally, in disillusionment, he receives the oracle from Ling Fen, who advises him to seek beauty and forsake women; and after a long lament listing his travails he sets off on his final and most impressive journey, which spans seem-

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ingly limitless space. The ecstasy of the flight reaches its climax and his movement is briefly suspended while he hears the "Nine Songs" and Shao dances. Then he glimpses his old home below. In the "Nine Songs," the height of the poefs power and lyricism was elicited by his desire. In the beautiful songs to the Hsiang River goddesses and the mountain spirit, all nature seemed to exist in order to evoke the longings and promise of union with the Enchanting Other. Ch'ü Yüan also seeks the Other, but his quests are subsumed in a framework which is, from beginning to end, a process of personal exploration— through history, through his past, through his life in time. His personal alienation from the world precludes his finding solace in an intermediary. He confronts the totality of the world directly, and the metaphor for his attempt to conquer it is the journey. The height of his lyricism is reached in those passages where his soul soars above the earth. For a short time he can control the elements, marshal the gods to do his bidding. And as he rushes through space, keeping pace with the sun, he is metaphorically conquering time. Chen Shih-hsiang has written about the new awareness of the affective aspect of time in this poem. 46 Ch'ü Yüan makes numerous references to its interminable onward flow. But in the ecstatic moments of his final journey, he is temporarily released from its nagging pull, and from his limitations as a human being bound to a spot on earth and out of princely favor. Until, that is, he glimpses his old home and remembers who he is. Suggestive in illuminating the themes in the "Nine Songs" and "Encountering Sorrow" is Tzvetan Todorov's generic study of fantastic literature. Todorov distinguishes two thematic complexes which, although found in all types of literature, are especially articulated in works of fantasy, where the imagination is free to transcend physical or social limitations. He defines these themes as self in relation to other, and self in direct confrontation with the world. 47 In the former complex, the self is defined from its external projection; the center of interest is in the object of desire. The theme of "other"

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gives vent to the poet's wish to act upon and relate to an external one, and is expressed through sexual love. This is a dynamic mode, a "theme of discourse." Through the language of an imaginary encounter, a poet reveals his desire to structure his relations with other human beings. In supernatural literature this encounter is enacted beyond the physical and social boundaries of more realistic and conventional modes. The intensity of this desire is often revealed in a joining of the love theme to death or cruelty. Todorov was speaking of nineteenth-century fiction when he defined this genre, but even within the religious context of the "Nine Songs" the impulse to exercise human desires over the gods exhibits similar elements. Since the gods in the cycle were conceived to have human attributes, the relations between them and their worshipers are essentially analogous to those in the secular literature Todorov examined. In the imaginative quests of the "Nine S o n g s " we see a foreshadowing of the link between intense desire and death and cruelty. This is particularly noticeable in the "Mountain Spirit" poem, where the goddess is portrayed driving leopards and lynxes (fearsome predators—symbolic of her nature?) and dwelling in a place remote and dark (suggesting the peril of union with her, or of a union between a living shaman and a departed spirit?). The other complex, the self in direct confrontation with the world, is a "theme of vision." This theme is a passive one—the interest is in the self's perception of the world and its conquest of matter by the mind rather than in the self's interaction with an other. Literature with this orientation, therefore, does not focus on others; others are interesting only in their relation to the self as he perceives and fashions them. Rather, the self molds the world to fit his conceptual idea. He can transform his personality (as Ch'u Yuan did, from exiled courtier to rider of the skies), he can produce his own causes and effects (command the gods), and he can become a master over space and time (traveling to the ends of the universe). Of course, in both the "Nine S o n g s " and "Encountering Sorrow," as he structures a second creation based on

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imagination above and beyond sense perception, the poet has exercised a great deal of subjective power over his material in order to clarify his world's laws and its purpose. But we see Todorov's thematic complexes operating on the level of the goal of the artistic persona within the work rather than on the level of artist in relation to his literary creation. Ch'ii Yuan is not a sophisticated modern playing with the real and the imaginary for philosophical effects. In Todorov's fantastic literature, the manipulations of these themes are based on deliberate transgressions of natural laws. In the shamanistic literature, at least some of the impulse was genuine belief. At any rate, a careful discrimination between real and fantastic was not elaborated upon or exploited. And, as Todorov has pointed out, in intentional fantastic literary creations, the two thematic complexes do not overlap, whereas they do in folktales.48 If this is a valid principle, it may further corroborate my contention that "Encountering Sorrow" is partially conditioned by ritual requirements of the shamanistic tradition, since it contains elements of both themes. But certainly, individual inspiration is paramount, and the journey ultimately prevails over the quest. The quest and the journey proved to be enduring motifs in secular Chinese poetry. 49 Even prior to the Ch'u material we can find many poems in the Book of Songs which tend toward one or the other of the two thematic orientations—either the self confronting the world or the self seeking a lover. But there is little sense in these realistic poems of a self molding his own universe, seeking to escape his mortal limitations, or carrying desire to extreme limits. We have no deep, almost morbid longing, and no soul soaring to the ends of the earth. These themes could be amplified only by the elaborate aesthetic framework of the imagination which the poetry of the supernatural produced.

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From Magic to Alchemy: Ts'ao Ts'ao and Ts'ao Chih "Li sao" imitation was a completely exhausted genre well before the end of the Han. The new innovations in poetry during the period were largely inspired by the so-called Music Bureau songs (yiieh-fu), initially collected among the common people and later composed by literati. 50 The great literary experimenters of the Chien-an period, Ts'ao Ts'ao (A.D. 155-220) and his sons Ts'ao P i (187-226) and Ts'ao Chih (192232), were leading poetry in new directions arising out of this ballad tradition. Ts'ao Ts'ao was a pioneer in incorporating fantastic themes into the fashionable genre. Ts'ao Ts'ao was also perhaps the first poet in the ballad tradition to put a personal stamp on his creations. By the Chien-an period, literati were beginning to view poetic creation as a legitimate means of preserving their reputations for later ages, although poetic achievement still took a decidedly second place to active civil service. 51 As the rebel who delivered the coup de grace to the Han and established his own regime, Ts'ao Ts'ao is a fascinating figure in Chinese history. While still bound up in realizing his ambition of subduing the empire along traditional lines, he also reflects the growing philosophical tendency toward personal introspectiveness and self-cultivation which was to dominate intellectual discussion and behavior in the succeeding reigns of the Six Dynasties (A.D. 280-589). Both of Ts'ao Ts'ao's concerns are evident in the large percentage of his extant poetry with themes or images of immortality. He was the first to apply the imaginative matrixes of Ch'u poetry to the ballad genre. The following poem, the second to the "Song of Ch'iu Hu" ("Ch'iu Hu hsing"), is one of his most successful: I want to climb the great Hua Mountain, and with divine men distant roam, I want to climb the great Hua Mountain, and with divine men distant roam.

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Passing K'un-lun Mountain I arrive at P'eng-lai, Swirling to the eight extremes, I will with immortals fly, I wish to get divine herbs, ten thousand years to abide. I will sing of my resolve, I want to climb the great Hua Mountain. Heaven and earth how long endure, man's span is so brief, Heaven and earth how long endure, man's span is so brief, The world talks of Po-yang who truly never knew old age, Ch'ih Sung and Wang Ch'iao, say that they have found the way, That they did I've never heard, but they lived long lives anyway. I will sing of my resolve, Heaven and earth how long endure. Bright, bright the sun and moon's light, where is not their radiance displayed? Bright, bright the sun and moon's light, where is not their radiance displayed? Together blend the sacred forces, is not only man held dear? Leader of ten thousand nations, the king's power reaches everywhere, Kindness and virtue make his name, rites and music give him fame. I will sing of my resolve, Bright, bright the sun and moon's light. Four seasons in succession pass, days and nights make up a year, Four seasons in succession pass, days and nights make up a year. The Great Man goes ahead of Heaven and Heaven does not interfere. Don't begrudge the passing years, Instead lament the world's misrule, Life and death lie with fate, He who worries is a fool.

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I will sing of my resolve, Four seasons in succession pass, Sad, sad, why be brooding? Joy and mirth should be our will. Sad, sad, why be brooding? Joy and mirth should be our will. Prime of life and perfect wisdom truly never do return, Seize the moment to press forward, Who shall all the favor earn? Drifting, drifting with abandon, What can you perform? I will sing of my resolve, Sad, sad, why be brooding? 52

The balladic origins of this poem are very evident not only from the title, which designates the poem as having been written to the older melody, but also in the structure of the poem itself. Refrains at the end of each verse break the poem into five short and regular stanzas. The irregular number of words per line is also apparently conditioned by the tune; it is consistent throughout. The diction is simple, employing frequent repetition of complete phrases. It is quite evident that this poem was meant to be a song rather than a written piece only. The repeated use of the formulaic phrase " I will sing of my resolve" (ko i yen chih) at the end of each stanza also gives the poem a folksy ballad feeling. The ballad form imposes its will on the content of the song. Unlike "Encountering Sorrow" or even the "Nine Songs," we have here a structure based on recapitulation rather than progression. The long chains of couplets are lacking and the lines are subordinate to the stanza blocks in logical organization. The first stanza expresses the poet's desire to take a spiritual journey which transcends space and time. Each of the next four takes up one aspect of the initial vision—long life, the nobility of man's place in the universe, the futility of sorrowing over death, and the happiness in fulfilling one's ambition. Point by point he negates the Taoist ideal completely with his arguments in favor of seizing the moment rather than drifting in abandon.

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Ts'ao Ts'ao is a pragmatist. In many of his poems he begins with a wish to escape mortality, but even within the context of his poem he never leaves the ground. He begins with a verb of longing, yiian, and we realize that the whole opening sequence is a meditation rather than an imaginary journey. His vision and energies are directed outward, and the only solution to his dilemma is to return to empire building. If we look closely at the images he employs, we realize that very few are actually from the Songs of the South.53 Instead the names and phrases are culled from the Lao Tzu, the Records of the Grand Historian (Shih chi), the Book of Songs, and the Book of Changes (I ching). This should indicate to us that the poem has a social meaning as much as a personal one. The use of the last three above-named works in Chinese poetry generally goes hand-in-hand with "orthodox," or political and didactic, purposes. The simple, hypotactic phraseology, the repetition of ideas, and the didactic references to kindness and virtue all function as a persuasion to accept his activism and, in fact, his intent to rule. This is a far cry from the Han type of ballad which uses a stock dramatic situation to express a generalized statement on human life. Nor is it an attempt to explore an imaginary interior landscape. It is fantasy used as a metaphor for a worldly ambition that is distinctively Ts'ao Ts'ao's. Some of Ts'ao Ts'ao's yu-hsien, or wandering immortal poems, are slightly more subtle than "Song of Ch'iu Hu," but they are not personal, dramatic encounters with divine beings or extraordinary experiences. True to the ballad genre in which they are cast, they are composed for a social function and have a layer of public meaning. Although rather plain and mechanical in diction compared with the rich natural descriptions in some of his other works, for example, "Marching Out of Hsia-men," the metaphorical presentation of his buoyant spirit and daring ambition apparently awakened an interest in the wandering immortal theme in his sons and other Six Dynasties poets. Slightly later, Ts'ao Ts'ao's talented son Ts'ao Chih takes us closer to the realm of the immortals. While still classified as a ballad by its title and certain thematic elements bor-

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rowed from the original, 54 his "Roaming Far" ("Yuan yu") lacks the ballad formulas of "Song of Ch'iu H u , " and does succeed in creating a magical world before our eyes: Distantly I roam nearing the four seas, Look up and down regarding the vast waves. Great fish like humped mounds, Ride the breakers and pass me by. The divine tortoise supports the Blissful Isle, Its holy peak is dangerously steep. Immortals hover round its crags, Jade maidens play amid its slopes. The jasper buds can banish hunger, Raising my head I inhale the morning dew. The K'un-lun Mountains were once my lodging, The Central Land is not my home. I'll soon be off to visit the Eastern Father, Once aloft I'll leap the shifting sands. Beating my wings I'll dance in the seasonal wind, I'll whistle and sing a rousing melody. Gold and stone are so easily worn away, But I'll be radiant as the sun and moon. I'll match the heaven and earth in years, What more is there, even for an emperor? 5 5

The first four couplets offer us a skillfully constructed ideal landscape. We begin not in the sad human world but already high above the four seas, looking down on the waves. Descending, the giant fishes' forms take shape and the divine mountain appears in its awesome, rugged detail. The descriptive continuity of these lines, focusing more and more closely on the sea and mountain as the poet draws near, have a sophistication which surpasses the descriptions in the original poem "Roaming Far" from the Songs of the South. The use of syntactically parallel lines to freeze the actions of the inhabitants of the craggy peak is reminiscent of the action carved on Keats's Grecian urn. The poet entered this magical world unobtrusively, partaking of immortal buds and dew, but his assertion about his home being in the K'un-lun Mountains seems to jar him

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back to self-awareness—he uses personal pronouns in both phrases. This couplet marks the division between the two halves of the poem: the second half is logical discourse, the only suggested action being a hypothetical visit he is about to make. What we have is a truncated version of "Encountering Sorrow." Had the last action sequence not been enclosed by two propositional statements, it might have sustained the sensations of the initial journey. But the mention of the Central Land belies the poet's attachment to earth. In his vociferous denial, he in a sense asserts it. The references to metal and stone and the lot of an emperor poignantly underline the two compelling anxieties expressed over and over again in Ts'ao Chih's poems—his fear of death and inability to serve the empire. Metal and stone are constant symbols in Han poetry of incorruptibility as contrasted with human decay. In the negative rhetoric of this half of the poem, even they can be easily worn away. And the mention of the emperor reminds us of Ts'ao Chih's precarious existence as the ili-fated victim in the power struggle between the heirs to the Wei throne. This poem nearly transcends the ballad genre, especially in the masterful realization of the fairy landscape in the first half. But the imaginative setting once again is applied to a worldly dilemma which is finally worked out discursively, with his boastings of cosmological longevity, rather than through a purely supernatural framework. Ts'ao Chih did write several other poems which sustained a fantastic vision throughout. "Roaming the Five Directions" ("Wu yu") is structured much like its prototypes "Encountering Sorrow" and "Roaming Far" in Songs of the South: The Nine Provinces are not worth treading, I wish I could ascend the clouds and soar. Wandering far beyond the great expanses, My roving eyes pass over distant wilds. Draped in my red cloud cloak, Wearing my white rainbow skirt. My flower-topped carriage is perfumed and luxuriant, Its six dragons look to Heaven and prance. The dazzling divinity hasn't moved its brightness,

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Hastily I reach the bright azure sky. The vermilion doors of the Heavenly Gate are opened, Twin towers of dazzling crimson shine. I loiter at the palace of the Wen-chang Star, I ascend the hall of the T'ai-wei Star. The Lord on High rests in his western quarters, A group of harem ladies gathers in the eastern chamber. I wear my jasper girdle, I rinse with pure dew nectar. I linger to toy with the divine fungus, I dally to play with the fragrant flowers. Wang Tzu offers immortal herbs, Hsien Men presents a rare formula. I take and eat them to enjoy great age, And prolong my life, preserving the limitless. 56

Although much simplified, the poem presents the ritual act in all its stages. We learn of the poet's worldly discontent and desire to escape. We learn of the garments with which he adorns himself and the vehicle which will carry him. Briefly we experience the vast distance covered at great speed which brings him to the Heavenly City. One of the most outstanding features of this poem is the verbal structure. In the second half, commencing after he arrives at his marvelous destination, the couplets are all perfectly parallel. Unlike the rudimentary verb-object parallelisms in Ts'ao Ts'ao's Music Bureau songs, these lines derive much of their effect from the pairing of numerous adjectives— jasper girdle, pure dew nectar, divine fungus, etc. The careful crafting of these lines is rather more in the Nineteen Old Poems of the Han than the ballad tradition. 57 The active movement in the opening section gives way to a static one. The enjoyment of the poem derives not so much from a space- and time-defying journey through the universe as from a sustained immersion in sensual delights and elixirs. Some of Ts'ao Chih's poems may contain more actual flight passages than this one, but all share some tendency toward lyric stasis, unless they resort to propositional argument. Why do even the heavenly precincts seem so earth-

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bound? Ultimately it is not artistry but conviction that is lacking. The Chien-an period was one of political instability, treachery, and intrigue. Poets of that period like Ts'ao Ts'ao and Ts'ao Chih were not Taoist adepts but philosophical skeptics seeking an escape from an oppressive, stark reality. 58 In such an era, with politics so perilous, it is not surprising that intense introspection revived that old symbol of mind's conquest over matter—the aerial journey. Again it expressed the self's desire. But the sophistication of the era, and the resultant lack of faith in any religious panacea, meant that the sources of flight imagery were found in earlier literary texts rather than in personal vision. The ancient shaman-poet had been powerful because he could do in his song what mortals ordinarily could not: he could structure his songs so as to animate the forces operating in his world, and, by making them humanly understandable, he could exert power over them. For him, language and reality were one. His songs retain much of the undifferentiated wholeness with which Ernest Cassirer has characterized the primitive world view. 59 In the "Nine Songs" we witnessed the lack of distinction between the literal and figurative, and we saw metaphor used only in its radical sense, as a unity of reference fused from raw elements of experience and embodied in a symbol. By the time of the Chien-an poems, man had long since stepped back from the world to view it as an entity distinct from himself, which he could imitate or improve upon in his poetry but never rejoin completely. As the world came to be perceived as parts and causal relations, language too gradually became dissociated from Being and an entity in itself to be analyzed and manipulated. By Ts'ao Chih's time, the prevailing poetic devices were rhetorical metaphor and textual allusion. The poets gathered together pieces of the ancient system of belief but lacked the faith to reconstruct it. Though a humble genre taken on its own merit, this wandering immortal poetry marks an important shift in the use of myth in Chinese poetry, and reflects indirectly the chang-

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ing attitude of poets toward language and reality during the Three Kingdoms and Six Dynasties. In Gerald Bruns's terms, these later poets are alchemists, producing "fragments tossed up by the historical dismemberment of Orpheus," the shaman-poet. The alchemist is a preserver of magic and a transmitter, but he is not endowed with the power to call the original elements of the world into being. 60 Divine power is never really manifest in these poems. The supernatural element, to be artistically effective, must be able to break through the impasse of everyday constraints and a stagnant equilibrium to bring about a changed state. Alchemists like Ts'ao Chih lacked the power of faith and the imaginative structure necessary to effect such a change. The injection of the supernatural, as Todorov has shown, usually goes hand in hand with the narrative impulse, because narrative even in its crudest form must be "a movement between two equilibriums which are similar but not identical." 61 And the supernatural is often the most dramatic catalyst in that movement. It is no coincidence that the wandering immortal poems in the ballad genre tend toward lyric stasis. If the poems "progress" at all, it is generally through rhetorical argument rather than through a sequence of actions. Not surprisingly, therefore, the metaphor of the aerial journey came to be replaced by the mountain top before very long. Lacking a conviction in a God or gods, these postHan Chinese literati turned to nature for a transcendent structuring principle, and the inexhaustible manifestations of nature provided a poetic vocabulary at once immediately perceivable and infinitely varied. 62 And as the elements of landscape became more and more overlaid with emotional and symbolic meanings in the evolution of T'ang regulated verse, the practice of reading a poem on one level as a natural description and on another as a coded personal statement was just a further institutionalization of what was already implicit in the works of Ts'ao Ts'ao and his son.

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Li Ho: Conjuring Up a Reluctant Ghost The advent of landscape poetry did not mean a total eclipse of fantasy in verse. Throughout the Six Dynasties and the T'ang (618-907), devotees of the genre remained. 63 The neatly structured dualistic framework, however, remained intact even in the works of a genius as rich and original as Li Po's (699-762). In analyzing one of his superb fantasies, " M y Trip in a Dream to the Lady of Heaven Mountain, A Farewell to Several Gentlemen of Eastern Lu" ("Meng yu T'ien-lao shan pieh Tung-lu chu-kung"), Elling Eide writes: . . . Li Po, from whom we might expect and accept any fantasy is . . . careful to maintain a balance between the real and unreal. As if he were providing his reader with justifications for the suspension of disbelief, he often reconciles poetic license with rationality—as he does here by setting his fantasy within a dream. . . . M

For this reason, Eide speculates, Li Po was highly acclaimed by Tu Fu (712-770) and other "orthodox" poets of the T'ang, despite his extravagant subject matter. In Li Ho (791817), however, we find a poet who often confounded his contemporaries, dazzled though they were by his striking use of language. Tu Mu (803-852), author of the first preface to Li Ho's works, was moved to write that Li Ho composed in the tradition of "Encountering Sorrow," although his conception did not always come up to it, and his language often surpassed it. 65 He went on to remark that Li Ho went down pathways so strange that no one could really claim to understand them. 6 6 Ever since Li Ho was dubbed the "ghostly genius" in Sung times, there has been a continual debate over just what lends the demonic or ghostly quality to his poems. Certainly not all of his poems have it—he wrote many kinds of occasional poems, social and political satires, and even praises of beauties of the capital. But certain verses do stand apart, and critics like Wada Toshio have effectively argued that it is not

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simply diction which distinguishes these demonic poems but underlying theme as well. 67 If we look through the 300-odd poems which have been preserved, we find that his poems with fantastic themes divide into two groups. One takes place entirely within the ethereal realm of Heaven, and the other takes place on earth. It is this latter group for which Li Ho earned his reputation. One such poem, justly famous, is the "Grave of Little Su" ("Su Hsiao-hsiao mu"). It appears to be a meditation on a grave, a theme not uncommonly chosen by literati in T'ang times. The vogue for this type of poem is mentioned in a T'ang tale: Chen-niang was a famous beauty of Wu. She was compared to Little Su of Ch'ien-t'ang. When she died, she was buried beside the Wu palace. Passersby lamented her [lost] beauty. They competed in writing verse on the trees of the grave. [The verses] were as dense as teeth on a comb. 6 8

In fact, one of Li Ho's closest associates, Shen Ya-chih, wrote a poem on the beautiful courtesan Chen-niang. His poem is typical of the genre, couched in images of delicate beauty with an air of sentimental melancholy: Her golden hairpin is lost in Sword Ravine, This ground remains a flowered mound. Who will meet her lacquered carriage? The Ch'ien-t'ang [River] keeps her song's sad time. Her kingfisher [gown] leaves color on the willows, Her lingering scent beclouds the winter plum. Though they say she's gone with the clouds, I'll greet her wandering soul come in a dream. 69

Compare Li Ho's poem on the grave of the Six Dynasties courtesan Little Su: Dew on the hidden orchid, Like a weeping eye. There's nothing to join our hearts, Since mist flowers cannot bear cutting. Grass like a cushion, Pines like a parasol. The wind is her dress,

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The water her sash [tinkling.] A lacquered carriage, In the evening waits. Cold kingfisher tapers, Lend weary light. Beneath West Mound, Wind blows the rain. 7 0

While Shen's poem seems to be set in the mellow light of an early spring day, Li Ho's takes place on a cold, rainy night. Whereas the more conventional poems like Shen's stress life and sensual pleasure, Li Ho's broods on death and deprivation. Both poets imagine the dead ladies in the elements of the landscape, but Shen's wandering spirit appears only in a dream, while Li Ho's apparition may actually be part of a waking hallucination. The diction of "The Grave of Little Su" is deceptively simple: many of the nouns are unadorned by adjectives, and the phrases are short. Yet each image is laden with many overtones of meaning. The poem begins with a "hidden orchid" (actually a species of Eupatorium, or thoroughwort), an image with a long heritage in the poetic tradition. In "Encountering Sorrow" Ch'ii Yuan wrote: "The day was dark and drawing to its close; / Knotting orchids I waited in indecision." In Ts'ao Chih's "Rhapsody on the Lo River Goddess" ("Lo-shen fu") the orchid described the goddess's seductive beauty. 71 The orchid before Su's grave is covered with dew, as if weeping. This could be taken as pathetic fallacy if we feel that the grief is the poet's, but considering the traditional association of the orchid with the Lo goddess, probably the flower is a metaphor for the dead maiden. The next line, "There's nothing to join our hearts," is an almost word-for-word borrowing from the short folk song associated with Little Su in which she tells of pledging her heart to her lover under the trees on her grave: I ride a lacquered carriage, The gentleman a piebald horse.

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Where shall we join our hearts? Beneath pine and cypress on West Mound.72 The joining of the two hearts also resonates with the orchid in the first line, since Ch'ii Yuan was twining, or joining (chieh) orchids as the dark descended. Perhaps on seeing the orchid, the poet is reminded of her pledge. The next line is ambiguous, since it can mean either "I can't bear to cut the mist-covered flowers," or "The flowers of mist are too insubstantial to be cut." This dual possibility nicely rounds out the first section by explaining why there is nothing with which to pledge, and it also reminds us of an old story about unrequited love: Han Chung loved a maid named Purple Jade (Tzu Yii) but was unable to marry her. When he returned from a journey he found out that she had died, and so he visited her grave. She appeared and offered him a jade token of her love, but when he embraced her, she turned to mist. 73 Although the only images in the first part of the poem are the orchid and the mist, we already feel an eeriness in the scene—we sense the gloom of the setting, the sadness of the flowers, the suggestion of love yearning beyond the grave. Nothing is explicit, yet the following lines, "Grass like a cushion, pines like a parasol," do not come as a surprise. Already her presence is vaguely felt, and that the trees and grass should seem like her accoutrements does not require much stretch of the imagination. But the vision is becoming more distinct—"the wind is her dress, the rain is her s a s h . " Although the syntactical structure of the four phrases is parallel, we have dynamic movement toward the concrete as the verb changes from "is like" (ju) to " i s " (wei). Amidst the movement and sound of the wind and rain it becomes difficult to tell the real from the unreal. Is an apparition before us? In the next two lines, we continue to wonder. A lacquered carriage waits for someone in the darkness. This again harks back to the folksong. Is she waiting there, or is the carriage simply buried with her and remembered by the musing poet? Green flickering candles are burning. Are they only willo'-the-wisps or are they her candles burning low as she waits?

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The last two lines seem to leave us squarely in the natural scene again, where the wind blows the rain under the West Mound grave. But the mention of the wind and rain at her grave recalls the legend recounted by Li Shen that on windy, rainy nights some have heard the echo of a song. 74 We glance back at the penultimate line and wonder whether "under" (hsia) means "under the trees" as it did in her folk song, or "under the mound" where she may be singing a song for her lover. The poem is disturbing because we sense something beyond the ordinary and yet we cannot be sure. The poet offers us no dream or other rational mechanism with which to naturalize the images. The dark, wet, windy atmosphere reverberates through all the images, haunting us with sadness and the desire for a tangible image of the girl. "The Grave of Little S u " has been compared with the "Mountain Spirit" poem in the "Nine Songs." 7 5 The sequence of images is quite similar—a dark, secret place on a lonely mountain, wind and rain, a beauty adorned in flowers, and an aura of unfulfilled desire. But in the "Mountain Spirit" the poet saw her and could not reach her, or reached her and could not stay with her. Although an elusive and awesome spirit, she was less unsettling than this phantom of Little Su. Two of Li Ho's elaborate and mythological poems are even more clearly based on the "Nine Songs" tradition. They deal with the two wives of the legendary Emperor Shun who drowned themselves in the waters of the Hsiang River on learning of his death. These two ladies, who by T'ang times had become inextricably connected with the more ancient water goddesses of the Hsiang River and Wu Mountain, were a popular literary topic. 76 However, a brief reading of one of these, "The Hsiang Consort" 7 7 ("Hsiang fei"), will show that Li Ho did not limit himself to a conventional treatment of the theme: Spotted bamboos a thousand years old but yet alive, Long accompany Ch'in O shading the River Hsiang. A southern maiden sings and plays filling the winter sky, In the Nine Mountains' silent green, red flower tears. Parted simurgh and deserted phoenix in paulownia mist, Wu clouds and Shu rain far off meet.

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In secret sadness autumn air ascends the green maples, This cool night amid the waves, an ancient dragon moans. 7 8

The poem begins with a reference to the bamboos famous in the Hsiang River region. Their being aged but not dead reminds us that the legend is an old one but that it somehow lingers on. This bamboo has long been associated with the two wives, since their tears of mourning for Emperor Shun supposedly gave rise to reddish spots on its stalks. In the second line, we are introduced to the bamboos' age-old companion, Ch'in O. Why Li Ho uses Ch'in O (the Ch'in fairy) is puzzling. She is mentioned in another of his poems, "Ballad of Heaven" ("T'ien-shang yao"), where she rolls up her blinds at dawn in her palace on the moon. According to legend, she fell in love with a young man who played the flute. One day she and her husband mounted a dragon and a phoenix and ascended to heaven. 7 9 Probably Li chooses her because of her susceptibility to music. As we can see in an earlier poem by Lu Chi (261-303), she was often associated with sad songs: The Ch'i youth sings the Liang-fu dirge, Ch'in O performs the Chang-nu tune. The mournful music circles the rafters, The lingering notes enter the Milky Way. 8 0

There is also the song lyric attributed to Li Po, "Remembering Ch'in O " ("I Ch'in O " ) , which begins: The flute sound sobs, Ch'in O's dream is broken by the Ch'in tower moon, The Ch'in tower moon, Year after year the willow's hue, Parting in grief at Pa-ling. 81

But probably Li Ho is attempting a composite image with connotations of several figures. Since we know from Edward Schafer that the moon and river goddesses had become blended by Li Ho's time, 82 the name may also carry overtones of the goddess Ch'ang O who fled to the moon with the elixir of life. Furthermore, another epithet of the Hsiang consort was O Huang, or Fairy Empress. There seems little doubt that the

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figure in this line is the moon goddess, or more likely the goddess's abode, the moon. Into this silent landscape, the playing and singing of a southern maiden intrude. Already the moon above has been linked with lovers of music, so the music of the maiden may summon the goddess. We can take the southern maiden literally as an earthly inhabitant playing an instrument, or even, perhaps, as J. D. Frodsham suggests, as a personified description of the "music" of the wind in the bamboo. 83 Probably she is less a personality than a typical element of the exotic southern landscape. 84 The first half of the poem is rounded out with a reference to the green stillness of the Mountain of Nine Uncertainties, the area sacred to Shun (his burial site), where red tear-flowers are visible. 85 This might also be taken as referring to the red-spotted bamboo covering the mountainside. Despite the emptiness of the landscape, the allusive language seems to render all things sentient. And while the scene is still and sad, it is not static—the music fills the stillness and tear-flowers fall. The second half of the poem is more active, as if the landscape is now becoming aroused as the music travels on the air. The "parted simurgh and deserted phoenix" of the next line act not only as symbols of the eternally separated Emperor Shun and his consort, but also suggest the names of famous tunes for the lute, 86 and hark back to the music loved by the Ch'in king's daughter in the second line. It is as if the souls of lovers were rising in the mist, moved by the plaintive songs. The theme of love is strengthened by the mention of Wu clouds and Shu rain in the next line. Clouds and rain have been associated with the act of love ever since the spirit of Wu Mountain appeared to the King of Ch'u in his dream. 87 The ephemeral nature of the image makes it only suggestive, however. The mist could merely be that rising over the river and lake in the evening. The next line, combining "secret sadness" and "autumn air" would seem to hint at both meanings simultaneously. The sadness of the scene and the coolness of the atmosphere have tinged the maples red. This recalls the bamboos speckled with red tears.

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A dragon moans in the concluding line. Once again, we are left hesitating between a naturalistic and a fanciful interpretation. The Chinese believed that a moaning dragon signaled rain, and perhaps the build-up of clouds over the water has been the prelude to a storm. If so, there is no need to see the dragon as fanciful—the southern waters abounded with alligators whose bellowing the Chinese took for dragons' calls.88 On the other hand, the ancient dragon could be the Dragon King in his underwater palace. In many T'ang tales, water maidens with goddess-like attributes are found to be daughters or sisters of the king. One last possibility is that the moaning dragon also represents a lute song title. One famous lute player of the Northern Ch'i wrote ten songs entitled "Dragon's Moans"-("Lung yin") after being instructed to play them in a dream. 89 Many of the ambiguities caused by multiple references may well be intentional. We can see the basic outline of the poem, however. The Hsiang consort is sought for but does not appear. The landscape, far from impassive, is affected by the grief of Shun's longing for her, or the poet's longing for her. The agent which produces nature's response to human grief is music—either human, if a southern maiden is actually playing on a deserted riverbank, or natural, if the sound is the wind in the trees and rippling of the water before the coming of the storm. Though many of these points call to mind the "Nine Songs" poems on the same subject, 90 there are important differences. No concrete Other is present, nor is there any assurance that she can, or ever will, return. If the bamboos have been waiting for a thousand years and have grown old, what of the goddess? Is she eternal as the moon, or is she aged with grief and time? Such questions seem to have disturbed sensitive poets in the T'ang. A contemporary of Li Ho's, the poet Pao Jung, expressed such a sentiment outright in his poem entitled "Mournful Hsiang Spirit" ("Pei Hsiang ling"): How could her face after ten thousand years, Be again that of a seductive beauty? 9 1

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In a poem closely related in theme and treatment to "The Hsiang Consort" called "The Emperor's Child" ("Titzu ko"), presumably written about the younger of the two divine wives of Shun, 92 Li Ho hints at this idea further: From Tung-t'ing Lake the Emperor's Child [can roam] a thousand miles, In the cool wind a goose cries, the sky is on the water. Nine-jointed sweet flag dies on the rocks, While the Hsiang Spirit plays the lute inviting the Emperor's Child, On the hill's crest old cinnamons exhale their ancient fragrance, A female dragon plaintively moans, the cold water glows. On the sandy bank fish run with the Gentleman of White Rock, Who lazily takes a true pearl and casts it into the dragon's hall. 93

Here the younger goddess is anticipated by the Hsiang Spirit, probably her husband Shun. Though other creatures and gods appear, there is no concrete mention of the goddess herself—just an ancient fragrance wafting down from the mountains as the spirit plays his songs, which seems like the aging essence of the goddess. The second couplet contains a bizarre image, considering that sweet flag is an herb conferring longevity. It suggests an allusion to an old folksong in which an immortal begs the singer to eat sweet flag to keep himself beautiful to behold. 94 It also suggests the story in the Chronicle of Gods and Immortals (Shen-hsien chuan) where the Han emperor Wu-ti met an immortal on Sung Mountain who identified himself as the Man of the Mountain of Nine Uncertainties (Emperor Shun), and explained to Wu-ti that he sought the herb to gain immortal life.95 So the herb is associated with both long life and physical beauty. But in this poem, the sweet flag is dying. Has the goddess's beauty also died? Has she been metamorphasized into an ugly bellowing female dragon? These may seem strange sentiments to suggest in poems about goddesses, but it is characteristic of Li Ho to give ironic twists to cliched phrases. The importance of this technique of his will be discussed further below. In both "The Hsiang Consort" and "The Emperor's

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Child" we find images with multiple meanings drawn from eclectic sources, popular as well as classical. 96 If we could be sure we had tracked down all the possibilities for each one, it is conceivable that we could produce a tissue of allusions forming a coherent allegorical reading, but thus far only tentative suggestions have been offered by commentators, tying in "The Emperor's Child" with the death of Emperor Hsientsung's mother, the Empress Dowager, in 816, or else with Hsien-tsung's futile search for an elixir of eternal life. In recent years Michael Fish has pursued these and historical readings in other of Li Ho's poems with mythological themes, but has concluded that no discernible formula exists for a consistent reading on a second level. 97 Speculation will no doubt continue. The poetic images seem rich and inexplicit. This may be one reason why readers have always been reminded of the Songs of the South collection when reading Li Ho. In the "Nine Songs" and "Encountering Sorrow" we found primary mythic metaphors with multiple qualities and almost subconscious archetypes behind them. The similarity of the two poetic styles is reinforced on other levels. The unfolding of images in sequence in the two poems by Li Ho is quite reminiscent of the narrative progression in the ancient ones. This is especially obvious in "The Emperor's Child," which imitates almost exactly the "Lady of the Hsiang": the autumn wind whines, the waves of Tung-t'ing Lake lap the shores under the trees, the spirit arrives in a cloud of mist, and the shaman leaves a love token in the water. But is Li Ho really re-creating old myths, infusing them with new life? It is true, as Schafer remarks, that their very vividness makes them seem to be the product of genuine belief. 98 But if we look carefully at Li Ho's techniques of composition, we soon discover that rather than arising out of a body of transmitted myth, or even out of a body of religious imagery within a conventional framework of interpretation, Li Ho's poems are a pastiche of elements plundered from many contexts and recombined. He delights in shocking our expectations, as with the sweet flag dying on the rocks. The sweet

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flag, no longer representing simply longevity and beauty, becomes Li Ho's personal symbol for beauty ravaged by time. In the wandering immortal poems we find the same stock of images appearing time after time in poet after poet. But Li Ho's images derive their meaning only in a unique context. As he builds up lines from his images, sensuous qualities prevail over allusive sense. He strives to create a lyric mood which unifies disparate elements and gives new meanings to old metaphors. Far from being a product of myth, Li Ho's artistry is aesthetic and self-consciously based on a wealth of inherited texts. His sophistication is as far removed from the mythic consciousness as the Ch'ii Yiian of legend was from the barbarous southerners whose pagan rituals he supposedly polished into the "Nine Songs." If Li Ho was not holding a séance, what infuses his poems with an atmosphere seemingly as numinous as any in the "Nine Songs"? His scenes are unearthly even without any assurance, as in the shaman's songs, that the goddesses do inhabit the landscape. Somehow in Li Ho we sense the goddesses without really seeing them. Do they exist? We hesitate between the tangible and intangible. What we perceive could be the sound of the rain or the singing of a ghost. It could be the wind blowing in the cassia or the perfume of the goddess. It is not the presence of ghosts per se that disturbs us. Despite her wild beast entourage, the Mountain Spirit was more bewitching than terrifying. Nor is imagining of ghosts or goddesses in landscape unique to Li Ho. We've already seen another example of this T'ang conceit in Shen Ya-chih's poem. But the mood of Li Ho's poems, coupled with the lack of naturalizing techniques such as references to dreams or the use of obvious conventional metaphors, gives them an unfamiliar and unsettling quality. The night should be sad and deserted, but is it? Surely these poems are structured on the old quest narratives, but the Enchanting Other is no longer the central focus. What is Li Ho seeking, and to what purpose? We must look at his corpus as a whole to untangle the private symbols. Perhaps nowhere are his intentions clearer than in his paean

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to a harp player: "Song of Li Ping's Vertical Harp" ("Li P'ing k'ung-hou yin"). Since this poem has been brilliantly analyzed elsewhere by Chou Ch'eng-chen," we need not go into detail here, except to summarize the poem as a very clear statement on the tremendous power of art. Chou shows how, by violating the traditional modes of thought associated with mythological elements, Li Ho can highlight art's destructive and recreative potential: . . . The goddess Nii Kua smelts her stones To weld the sky. Stones split asunder, the sky startles, Autumn rains gush forth. He goes in dreams to the Magic Mountain To teach the Weird Crone. Old fishes leap above the waves, Gaunt dragons dance. Even Wu Kang, unsleeping still, Leans on his cassia tree, While wing-foot dew drifts wetly Over the shivering hare.100 Li Ping's music can reach Heaven, can cause the clouds to freeze in their tracks, and can cause rain to gush forth. Even Wu Kang, doomed like Sisyphus to toil forever, cutting the cassia tree on the moon, can pause for a moment from his labor. 101 Normally Heaven for Li Ho is a realm of infinite impassivity. Its power and its immortality derive from its invulnerability to the ravages of mortal passions. Probably the most famous line in Li Ho's entire collection is: "If Heaven had feelings, it too would grow old." 102 Throughout his poems, we find a dichotomy between the exquisite creatures of the celestial or eternal realm, almost frightening in their icy perfection, and the anguished inhabitants of the earth, who haunt us with their doomed emotions. But music, which throughout Li Ho's works represents the expressive power of art, can move Heaven. In the goddess poems it was music which stirred the

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fragrance in the cassias, causing the dragon to moan, bringing rain, and causing the bamboos to weep red tears. What the poet is questing for in his melancholy landscapes infused with mortal longings is power over Heaven through artistic imagination. The whole subjective world he creates is a metaphor for his passionate attachment to life, the same passion which makes even the goddesses old because they are moved by longing for a reunion with Emperor Shun. Only art can bridge the chasm between mortality and immortality, and only art is worthy of being Li Ho's divine intermediary, his Enchanting Other. Because if art can make Heaven weep, it can conversely make the artist powerful within his universe of words. Why does Li Ho choose to write "ghostly" poems which hesitate between the real and the unreal to express his desire? In the first part of this article we looked at narrative poems where the supernatural provided the impetus to change one equilibrium to another. The supernatural formed a believable part of the mythic structure as the shaman-poet created it and therefore was a viable artistic means of effecting change. In the wandering immortal poems, we saw supernatural themes used to set up an entirely separate and marvelous universe which was read via a conventional code as allegory. Since the supernatural could be in this way "naturalized" by the reader, the dual structure of the real and unreal was never threatened. Unlike the shamanistic poems, these tended more toward lyric stasis. The supernatural no longer provided a needed suspension of natural law, because it appeared within a fantasy where all was supernatural but at the same time naturalized. As a narrative catalyst its effect was minimal. The function of the supernatural in Li Ho's poetry stands poised between the other two. An equilibrium operating by natural forces is initially set up, but the remainder of the poem hesitates between the supernatural (which would effect a change to a second equilibrium) and the natural, where we would tend toward lyric stasis. Poised between the two, a "naturalized" reading is impossible. This may well be why Tu

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Mu and others accused Li Ho of lacking in conception: he was violating the tacit poetic code whereby verse could be read simultaneously on both the immediate sensory level and on an allegorical level. Todorov, in his study of the structure of the fantastic genre, claims that the fantastic cannot be attained in poetry, since poetry by its very nature is hypothetical; it should be read as a text rejecting all representation, considering each sentence as a purely semantic combination. 103 It is true that we now tend to read poetry this way, but the Chinese poetic convention was much more akin to the classical Western approach, as evidenced in Voltaire: " A metaphor, to be a good one, must always be an image; it must be such as a painter could make with brush." 1 0 4 Furthermore, for the Chinese writing conventional regulated verse, these painted images should not only embody elements of the natural universe but carry a moral significance as well, built up step by step from the encoded allusions. Within such a convention, could not Li Ho produce fantastic poetry? The fantastic, as Todorov defines it, is produced when an event in the natural world cannot be naturalized by the reader according to the laws of this same world as determined by the reading convention. The fantastic occupies the duration of the uncertainty which ensues while we vacillate between taking the event as an illusion (hence still within natural norms), or as a fact explained in a world operating on different laws. 105 This would seem to be precisely what Li Ho was trying to effect in his ghostly poems. But why did he choose this technique? The pleasure derived from the use of the fantastic is in breaking laws—all the better to make us aware of them. As Todorov has argued, the fantastic appears as the "bad conscience" in a positivist era when literature is taken as "real" and a mirror of the universe. 106 During Li Ho's era poets were beginning to experiment with and question the classical formula for poetry. Tu Fu's later poems some years before had pointed out the way toward an opposition between the aesthetic universe of the

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poem and the external natural universe. Internal relationships between images in his later poems evolved more complexity, while their correspondence to outside referents became less clear. 107 Departing from the classical regulated verse formula of masters like Wang Wei, who rounded off his poems with propositions integrating himself serenely into his poetic landscape, Tu Fu began jarring readers with endings of striking contrast to the natural scene he had created. By constructing poems with a fantastic framework Li Ho went one step further, artistically questioning the function of the real and the unreal in literature. Although the fantastic could not answer the dilemma of the relationship of language to reality (since it still had to assume certain elements depicted in literature as "real" representations in order to produce hesitation in the reader), 108 it did, in China as it would also do in Europe, open the door to a more "aesthetic" or "modern" approach to literature in which words could have a life of their own, apart from and even surpassing external reality. Li Ho's fantastic visions give us the sense that the focus was shifting back again from the poem itself, as a "real" embodiment of the universe, to the poet and his unique expressive power, which could mediate between the world of man's intellect and nature. By no means a hysterical shaman himself, he succeeded in doing on a formalized aesthetic basis what the wandering immortals had been unable to do: he built up a world through his expressive power. In doing so, Li Ho also had to rely on an elaborate framework for his "second creation." But instead of building a sequence of actions with ritual logic and efficacy, he built up a personal landscape of images divorced from the natural world and from the convention, clustered and regrouped to conform to his emotional requirements. It has ever been man's desire to escape from time and an imperfect world, but the artistic means that he chooses to free himself depend very much on the symbolic world at his disposal. In ancient Ch'u men sought to raise themselves up temporarily to the level of the gods, and in early medieval

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times they sought instead to create a separate world, better than earth, peopled with beings who remained forever young. But by Li Ho's sophisticated era man was beginning to see himself as the most important element in his consciousness despite his limitations. So instead of raising himself up to a higher level or renouncing the world in favor of paradise, he tried to bring the gods down, to make Heaven weep with him.

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The Search for Identity in Fiction from Taiwan Robert E. Hegel

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ore than a decade ago C. T. Hsia drew attention to a theme in modern Chinese writing that he identified as an "obsession with China." This patriotic tendency clearly appeared in May Fourth era fiction as an "obsessive concern with China as a nation afflicted with a spiritual disease and therefore unable to strengthen itself or change its set ways of inhumanity." 1 In a later essay Professor Hsia observed the same phenomenon in the works of certain writers who publish in Taiwan, particularly three whose memories of the mainland before the Communist takeover were strong. 2 The volume of critical studies of these "patriotic" writings, particularly those of the 1920s and 1930s, is enormous. The personal involvement of many of these writers in the political, social, and cultural revolutions of their time is well known; engagé writers of the twentieth century far outnumber those who, like many of their Japanese contemporaries, explored the inner life of the individual, it would seem. But despite the volume of studies of these writers, C. T. Hsia is one of the few students of this literature who addresses the nationalistic sentiments of its creators in psychological terms.

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It is my intention here to use Professor Hsia's "obsession" theory as a starting point in a search for the self whose identity relies so heavily on political questions for validation. My object is to identify the development of conceptions of self through modern Chinese literature, in particular a few of Taiwan's outstanding story writers. From this perspective, political and social concerns are at most a vehicle for self-expression; on this basis, "modernist" and "regionalist" (hsiang-t'u) writers may be compared despite differences in scope of commitment (to China as a political entity among the family of nations in "modernist" writings, or to the working people of Taiwan in "regionalist" literature). 3 First, let us review a few examples of literature that exemplifies the "obsessive" quality in its concern with China's needs. With his first story, "Ch'en-lun" (Sinking, 1921), Yii Ta-fu (1896-1945) established his reputation as an autobiographical writer concerned primarily with the self. "Sinking" addresses sex and patriotism through the vehicle of a Chinese student in Japan. Isolated from the comradely happiness of classmates by their ethnocentrism and his own feelings of inferiority, the story's protagonist falls into voyeurism which brings self-loathing, retreat from all human contact, and eventual suicidal tendencies. " O China, my China, you are the cause of my death!" he cries, at the conclusion of the story. 4 Yii Tafu's story represents clearly the perception, shared as well by intellectuals of an earlier decade, 5 that China was weak and powerless to resist either the economic and military pressures of the West or the influx of Western ideas that threatened to engulf all traditional values. The establishment of self-concept by such young intellectuals was closely tied to their assessment of the state of Chinese society, despite the concern with self presupposed by the autobiographical approach. To them, self-realization involved service to society through didactic writing no less than it did to Confucian literati of generations before them. To Yii Ta-fu and the May Fourth period writers, the disappearance of traditional values would have been nothing to lament. China's customs were cannibalistic, Lu Hsiin (1881-

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1936) asserted in his "K'uang-jen jih-chi" (The Diary of a Madman, 1918). Pa Chin (b. 1904) illustrated this contention in his novel Chia (Family, 1931) with the tragic deaths of many of his characters, particularly young women. Lao She (1899-1966) castigated the hedonism, laziness, and self-delusion of the Chinese people in his satirical novel Mao-ch'eng chi (Cat Country, 1933), the "most savage indictment of China ever penned by a Chinese," C. T. Hsia aptly terms it. 6 Self-doubts regularly parallel this patriotic theme in May Fourth writings. Even when the self is not identified with the state, the commitment of the self to serve the needs of society is regularly total. China's political and social needs thus provide the details for a paradigm of the ineffectual young intellectual whose idealistic visions are shattered by the ugliness of reality. Lu Hsiin records the bitter failure of enthusiastic young intellectuals to remake China overnight in his "Tsai chiu-lou shang" (In the Wine Shop, 1924) and other stories; Yeh Shao-chiin (b. 1894) does the same in his novel Ni Huan-chih (1929). 7 Here as in a host of other May Fourth writings, the protagonists' self-concept plummets when they face defeat in their numerous social or political crusades. Their "obsession" with the problems of China, despite its sincerity, is in many respects merely a modern version of Confucian social responsibility expressed in new literary media, the Westernized short story and novel, as a means of self-exploration. Patriotism was unmistakable in the writing published in Taiwan in the fifties. Winners of the Republican government's annual prizes for literature regularly express nostalgia for the mainland and frustration over the plight of its people under Communist rule. But in the hands of the more skilled writers, Taiwan literature came to have, in Hsia's words, "a poignant appreciation of the historical greatness of their mother country." 8 These developments came despite a new awareness of Western literature on the part of young intellectuals in Taiwan. Under the direction of Professor Hsia's elder brother, the late Tsi-an Hsia, students of literature at National Taiwan University began publishing literary periodicals filled with translations from James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka,

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D. H. Lawrence, and others. Their goal was to introduce Modernism from Europe and America. Some writers, such as Yu Kwang-chung (Yii Kuang-chung, b. 1928), experimented with Western-style symbolism in poetry intended for the sophisticated reader while insisting that modern Chinese literature must be built on its cultural heritage as well. A visit to he United States in 1964 inspired Yu's "obsession"; his "Ch'iaota yueh" (Music Percussive, 1966) ends with the poet identifying himself with China and its numerous social and political disasters of recent decades. China is me I am China. Her every disgrace leaves a box print on my face I am defaced. China O China you're a shameful disease that plagues me thirty-eight years. Are you my shame or are you my pride, I cannot tell.9

Despite the Western veneer, personal identity and the plight of the nation are inseparable in Yu's verse. His sense of social and political responsibility and his sensibilities are to this extent a continuation of earlier trends in modern Chinese literature, awakened, probably, by his need to face the reality of a divided nation from this new vantage point in the United States. One of the more imaginative writers of Yu Kwangchung's generation is Shui Ching (Robert Yi Yang, b. 1935). His "Hi Lili, Hi Li . . . " (1967), is an attempt "to allegorize the precarious condition of Chinese abroad," Joseph Lau remarks, a shift from earlier mainland social realism to a modernist psychological realism. Shui Ching here enters the world of his unnamed protagonist's dream—or perhaps his nightmare—of being totally alone in a world thrown awry by some unknown cause. The setting, presumably based on the author's sojourn in Borneo, is a south Pacific island with a warm climate where vegetation grows quickly. The protagonist awakes one day to find apparent traces of a political coup and the ominous aura of death and destruction everywhere. The story ends with a vision of the protagonist dancing madly in the sand with a foreign woman, his identity confused at best, perhaps even lost.10 If this is to be taken as an allegory of the plight of China,

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then the danse macabre in the arms of an American dream brings no real solution to the protagonist's search for the meaning of his own existence. Let us consider briefly the terms of this character's dilemma. " Y " awakes to find himself physically ill at ease; the astrological signs traditionally observed by Chinese have all been bad recently and an epidemic threatens. Data disturbing because of their unfamiliarity now assault his senses: a faucet drips, the water reeks, the radio receives no stations. Not a single person is visible. The radio station at which he normally works is deserted. Bloody handprints festoon a whitewashed wall. Y takes refuge from the imagined insurrection in a lavatory, although only temporarily: it is "hardly a place for a man to be captured in. He wants to preserve his dignity to the end." 1 1 The electricity fails, and then the telephone does likewise. He stumbles into a hospital, only to find a leaking corpse, presumably a victim of cholera. In his flight he eventually arrives at a beach, where he is distracted from a pine reminiscent of a traditional Chinese painting by the spectral dancing form of his erstwhile sweetheart. Not even she will answer his insistent questions ("What have we done to deserve a fate like this?"). 12 An approaching storm reminds him of lines by the classical poet Li Ho (791-817) but in the end he joins her dance to the refrain from an American movie theme song. Clearly Shui Ching's protagonist is searching for identity in a modernist world, a world gone awry to the point of absurdity. Shui Ching seemingly has replaced the old Confucian sense of social and cosmic order—and even the hope for a new order in May Fourth writings—with the modernist proposition that primal, irrational energies shape human behavior.13 However, while "Hi Lili, Hi Li . . ." is modernistic in narrating Y's stream of consciousness, there remains the question of whether it is Y's thoughts or his environment that have fallen into a chaotic state. Several clues suggest that the theme is, as C. T. Hsia presents it, "the ultimate relapse of civilization into barbarism" 14 and not the protagonist's irrationalism that creates the confusion.

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Y begins to search for rational explanations the moment he awakens. He notices strange phenomena, both internal and external, but he does not distrust the validity of his perceptions. It is his sense of security that falters; he searches his memory for corroborative evidence for his fears (ominous signs of a change in government, reports of an epidemic). He comments on his physical separation from China, both the "island bastion" and "the land of his ancestors," and chides himself for leaving. Many of the eerie data he notices as panic seizes him are not unprecedented; instead, it is the concatenation of events (tainted water and failure of electrical power suggest breakdown of civil authority) that further unnerves him. His sense of self-worth, his personal dignity, propels him out of his logically safe hiding place, the lavatory. It was an "antihero" who was captured there in some foreign story; he refuses to see himself in the same category.15 It is common sense that brings him to the hospital. What he finds there fills him with nausea, and he flees to the beach (to escape by sea, perhaps?). Each step he takes is directed by conscious choice: his mind retains its own sense of ordered rationality despite the world around him having become unpredictable. He is reminded of traditional landscape painting and poetry of the T'ang period, a reassertion of his Chinese heritage. His problem is isolation from others, for it is the social nexus that gives identity to this individual much as it did in traditional literature. His sense of personal dignity likewise derives from the anticipated reactions of other people; his references to traditional arts demonstrate Y's undiminished awareness of his own role in China's cultural continuity. At the story's conclusion, Y joins the woman's erratic dance, thereby establishing a tie with her to complete his identity in the present when all attempts to communicate in more conventional ways fail. Shui Ching's protagonist indeed finds himself in a modernist's world, but his implicit faith in the continuity and rationality of individual identity betrays the Chinese foundations for the writer's conception of self. All references to politics here are subservient to that conception. The experimentation with Western form and tech-

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nique visible in "Hi Lili, Hi Li . . . " can be found as well in a work of the later Regionalist (hsiang-t'u) movement. This is Wang Chen-ho's (b. 1940) masterful "Chia-chuang i-niu-ch'e" (Oxcart for Dowry, 1967). Although Regionalist writing has been characterized as nationalistic to the point of xenophobia, it is more generally considered a movement based on realism in contrast to the modernist generation represented by Shui Ching. 1 6 Its writers frequently pit their protagonists, poor working people from rural Taiwan, against the perils occasioned by the urbanization, industrialization, and modernization of the island in recent decades. While certain Chinese critics express alarm at the social and political tendentiousness of representative works, I believe far more of the artistry of Regionalist fiction can be seen in its exploration of the problems of identity faced by individuals caught in the midst of rapid social change. Some of these writers, Wang Chen-ho among them, differ far less in this regard from the modernist writers than their critics often admit. 1 7 "Oxcart for Dowry" narrates how its hero came to be cuckolded. This man, Wan-fa, is no young intellectual living abroad; instead he lives a life of alienation from his peers by virtue of his near total deafness. In fact, Wan-fa is nearly as isolated as Y, both of them left to their internal resources as a basis for their ongoing sense of self-worth and identity. But these two stories differ radically. Shui Ching's was a serious experiment in Westernized writing; while Wang Chen-ho was no less serious in his art, the tone of "Oxcart for Dowry" is comic. While Y refused to consider himself an antihero, Wanfa is clearly a fool, the butt of jokes from all sides. However, Wan-fa is not wholly pathetic in the mold of Lu Hsiin's K'ung I-chi; instead, he is a man who, like Y, can make choices rationally on the basis of available information. His foolishness consists of his deliberate use of deafness to limit his contact with the world outside his own mind—particularly his relationships with other people. In form "Oxcart" is reminiscent of "Diary of a Madman," consisting of an introductory scene for which the rest of the story provides explanatory background. Lu Hsiin

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meant the recovery of his madman to be read ironically; so too is the derision Wan-fa receives from the younger villagers in the restaurant precisely opposite to the attitude the reader is ultimately intended to form. But in place of Lu Hsiin's castigation of the shortcomings in traditional morality, Wang Chenho uses this parody of the poor but honest man to examine the economic and personal needs which ultimately inure Wanfa to the taunts of others. The cause of Wan-fa's deafness seems absurd, and yet it has a painful ring of plausibility. During the war years, when American armed forces were bombing Japanese-occupied Taiwan, Wan-fa contracted an ear infection from polluted water. The only doctor he was able to find (a self-styled gynecologist, although in this context he may well have been a quack) treated him improperly, with the result that Wan-fa permanently lost most of his hearing. This handicap caused Wan-fa to be ostracized by those who grew tired of shouting to him; finally he moved his family to a hovel near a graveyard where he hired himself out as a carter. One of the greatest Chinese novels is Lao She's Lot'o Hsiang-tzu (Camel Hsiang-tzu, 1936), in part an exploration of the hopelessness of trying to establish oneself solely by means of individual effort. Its hero, an upright country lad, works indefatigably to buy himself the new rickshaw that he hopes will give him financial security and prominence among the working masses of prewar Peking. Hsiang-tzu is tall and strong; initially he succeeds, only to have his dream fade along with his self-confidence as evil forces in society one after the other sap his financial, physical, and moral resources. 18 In certain respects Wan-fa is a parody of Hsiang-tzu. Wan-fa is short and ugly, and his hope is to own a plodding oxcart instead of the smooth-riding, sleek rickshaw of the earlier novel. Both men marry ugly women made even less attractive by advancing years; while Hsiang-tzu's wife is fat, Wan-fa's Ah-hao is so skinny that her chest looks like a washboard. Both women have considerable sexual appetites. Although Hsiang-tzu fears that his physical strength may be damaged if he indulges his wife Hu-niu, Wan-fa is already sexually impotent at the start of Wang

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Chen-ho's story, and it is his reputation that falls victim to his wife's needs. 1 9 Yet Wan-fa's self-concept remains intact. He has built it in a traditional Chinese manner on the basis of his relationships with others. For even though he seems not to hear the taunts of the drunken youths, Wan-fa rankles at his situation and relishes being able to disdain someone else in turn. The affair between his wife and the clothing merchant Chien (whose name the author would have translated as "Screw") leaves a bad taste in his mouth. Even though his conception of himself as husband and father is not altered by being cuckolded, it is by force of will alone that he suppresses his resistance to this indignity. His wife, Ah-hao, lacks all such moral integrity, however. Despite her name ("Goodness," or as the author originally translated it, "Nice"), she does not bring prosperity to her husband: she gambles until she has to sell their three daughters to pay off her debts, she is an inveterate gossip, and worse yet, she is unfaithful. By contrast, Wan-fa readily gives his clothing to his son as an appropriate sacrifice for his children's sake. 2 0 When a newcomer, Chien, moves into the area, out of concern for the other's feelings Wan-fa avoids any overt reference to the man's horrible body odor. Furthermore, he initially considers Ah-hao's illicit relationship with the man to be an insult to his own lost virility. That is, the challenge is to his sexual relationship with his wife, not to his own proprietary rights to her affections. Even when the interloper moves in with them, Wan-fa acquiesces as long as he is able to maintain his nominal role of head of household: by this arrangement he can support himself and his family while maintaining control of the family finances. Wan-fa suppresses his own objections by deluding himself, but when a neighbor openly jokes about the relationship to their son, Wan-fa's sense of personal pride forces him to throw Chien out of the house. 2 1 When his son falls ill, Wan-fa uses all of his savings to preserve the boy's life. Then a tragic accident in which a child is killed lands Wan-fa in jail for negligence. Yet Wanfa's foremost concern throughout this series of setbacks is for

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his wife and child, not for his personal loss of occupation and freedom or for any possible shame over being imprisoned. His immediate reaction when he learns that Chien is again living with his wife is relief over their security, not jealous outrage. His personal disgrace over being cuckolded quite simply pales when compared to the gratitude he feels for Chien's financial help. 22 While observing, with W. K. Wimsatt, that a reader can never know a writer's original intention in writing, Cyril Birch finds cause for a social and political interpretation of the story. Even without his doing so intentionally, Wang Chen-ho reflects in his fiction the realities of Taiwan at the time of writing. Thus Birch sees in these characters an unconscious reconstruction of China's plight: one contender can only acquiesce over his loss of face when compensated by economic prosperity; the other contender mutters some outlandish talk and throws traditional proprieties to the wind; both want the ugly, aging mother figure, symbolic of China, with her huge mouth ever open whether to talk or to eat.23 In effect, then, Birch sees in this story another "obsession with China." However, the story's primary conflict is not between Wan-fa and Chien, as I have endeavored to illustrate. Instead it is within Wan-fa's own mind. He must somehow reconcile the changes in his relationships occasioned by economic necessity with the conception of himself as father and husband inherited from China's past. He may delude himself to the extent that he avoids seeing (or hearing) what he knows will upset his calm façade, but his sense of security in his identity can only be assured by clutching tenaciously to received social role. He must provide for the needs of those dependent on him for support; he will do whatever he must to accomplish this end. Wan-fa is an unforgettably comic character; his world may smack of absurdity. However, in the final analysis his concern with identity does not hinge on a political interpretation of the story for its significance. Even though details of his poverty occasion his identity crisis, they are peripheral to it in the concern of the narrator. The realistic tendency in Regionalist writings is best

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exemplified by the early works of Hwang Chun-ming (Huang Ch'un-ming, b. 1939), a native of Taiwan. The characters of his 1960s stories are poor or working people who seemingly reflect the real lives of unimportant individuals native to the island. They are not the "makers of history" through collective action; they are the isolated byproducts, sometimes the victims, of social change. In many of these stories a central theme is the struggle for individual identity in the face of this upheaval. Some of Hwang's protagonists fail, losing personal dignity and sometimes even life itself in the process. One of Hwang's best-loved stories is "Erh-tzu te ta wan-ou" (His Son's Big Doll), the subject of several Western studies. Recently it was also made into a movie for screening in Taiwan. Its central figure is a poor man who effaces himself for the sake of the child he longs to have. Early in the story he takes the only job he can find to earn the money needed to afford a child; he becomes a "sandwich man," a disguised nonentity trapped between two advertising posters in a rapidly commercializing society. Despite his wife's fears for his health, he braves torrid summer heat, the taunts of children, even his uncle's outrage and his own humiliation over hiding his face behind a clown's makeup, to walk the streets of his town advertising movies. The story concludes with emotionally overpowering irony: the adman's baby son learns to recognize him only when his face is made up. Even though he lands a different job, his love for his baby son condemns him to maintain this false identity. 24 Poverty has forced the adman into his occupation, to be sure. But this story is not limited to a mere exposure of the sufferings of the poor. Feeding himself is not K'un-shu's primary concern, nor is providing for his wife. His desire for a son spurs him on in this demeaning occupation; his desire to make the child happy and to develop their relationship occasions his further self-debasement. The depth of the adman K'un-shu's commitment to progeny in this tale seemingly goes beyond any thought of companionship and support in old age; his identity is inextricably bound up in his profound need for the child. The reader sees his unexpressed love for his wife,

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his keen sense of responsibility for their relationship. But his willingness to sacrifice himself in the present for a future child exceeds love; it suggests the age-old Chinese hope for a type of immortality through one's children. His identity can only be assured by fathering a child. Perhaps in this light even hiding his face behind makeup is a small price to pay for this security, this new affirmation of his being, so achieved. Despite his concern with poor and simple people, Hwang Chun-ming has created stories in which self-transcendence imbues his characters with a kind of heroic stature that approaches divinity. In "Ni-ssu i-chih lao-mao" (The Drowning of an Old Cat, 1967) Uncle Ah-sheng becomes the leader of resistance to the development of a rural spring as a swimming resort for urban businessmen. Normally subdued in manner, the threat to the land and the customary relationship of the villagers to their land inspires the old man to oratory and ultimately to action. But the forces supporting economic development are much too formidable—they include not only governmental influence but also the desire of the villagers to share in the wealth of the city. The old man ultimately drowns himself, an act that goes virtually unnoticed amid the festivity surrounding the pool's opening. Despite his religious pretensions, the old man's heroic stature is transitory; his new identity is false, mere self-delusion. 25 The pessimistic tenor of this story might be best understood as the implied author's response to Ah-sheng's self-aggrandizement. Time has brought inevitable change. Instead of coping with it, Ah-sheng has attempted to hold back the clock and thereby elevate himself in the eyes of his peers. His "self-transcendence" stands condemned as mere self-indulgence. Quite the opposite mood prevails in one of Hwang's longer stories, also the subject of a movie, "K'an-hai te jih-tzu" (Sea-Watching Days, 1967), known in translation as "A Flower in the Rainy Night"). 26 Its protagonist, Pai-mei, is a prostitute, a country girl sold into the profession at the age of fourteen, who has come to feel self-contempt and anger because she is isolated from normal social contact. The story traces her selftransformation. While riding the train on a home leave, she

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encounters a former customer. His lewd comments appropriate to the whorehouse here fill her with disgust; she longs to be "an ordinary woman." Then she encounters an old friend, a somewhat younger former prostitute named Ying-ying who has married and had a baby. Ying-ying's husband is considerably older than she is; he is one of the thousands of men who fled or were brought from the mainland as the Communists advanced. He was a major in the Nationalist army, a man who smoked and drank heavily until he met Ying-ying. Together they had forged new identities for themselves and for each other. Their new son symbolized this momentous change of identity, bringing to both of them an unprecedented feeling of self-worth. This encounter was to change Pai-mei's life as well. Comparing herself with Ying-ying forces Pai-mei to reflect on the resentment she feels over being used. The money she has contributed to her foster family has made a college education possible for one of them; others have married well and have at least completed senior high school—accomplishments other rural families could hardly afford. Pai-mei hates them all except her stepmother, who has tried to arrange a marriage for her. But marriage is not an appealing alternative to prostitution. "I'm already twenty-eight; and being in this business, anybody who wanted me would either be a dullard or a bum," Pai-mei remarks. 27 However, she realizes that a child could change her life. "Only in the eyes of her own child would she be viewed without cold scorn." 28 To have a child becomes her only reason for living, her mission, her obsession. When Pai-mei returns to the brothel, she selects a strong and gentle young sailor and deliberately lets him impregnate her. These brief events appear amid a wealth of detail concerning the lives of fishermen and prostitutes, particularly of the boisterous few days each season when the two intersect. This setting allows a sensitive exploration of these two characters, Pai-mei and her mate. Initially each plays a conventional role in relation to the other, but then they step outside these roles for unprecedentedly intimate emotional contact. Their honesty, their warmth, and their embarrass-

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ment raise this scene to a level of beauty that catches the reader unprepared—the tenderness of the scene contrasts vividly with the vulgarity around them portrayed so realistically here. Their moment of innocence brings hope to Pai-mei; its unexpected emotional depth frightens the sailor. Pai-mei never takes another customer. She leaves the brothel and goes directly home to her natal family. There she again becomes what she has not been for many years, the daughter of Sung the capon-maker. The identity that had been taken from her by others she now seizes with determination; she takes the concerns of her family upon herself with totally selfless abandon. She reestablishes ties with family friends and neighbors; with her own money she secures the medical assistance that saves her brother's life. Her unflagging energy and her optimism win respect for her on all sides. After all, she rationalizes, having an illegitimate child is no worse than whoring; consequently she faces the villagers of her home town totally without shame. When her confinement draws near, the villagers happily carry her to the maternity clinic in town. The birth of Pai-mei's baby is narrated with as much detail as was the scene of her insemination. In both, Pai-mei's combination of strength and vulnerability is the focus of the narrator's attention. Despite her determination and her selflessness on behalf of others, when isolated from them by her pain she worries, she grows fatigued, she endures childbirth only with greatest difficulty. Her passion once concluded, Paimei is transfigured. The story closes with her return to the sea, to watch the sea with her newborn son as she had with Yingying's infant. She can articulate no rationale for this trip; it alone can satisfy her profound need: she is no longer a single woman while traveling on a train; people now make room for her and her child in the crowded seats. She is a mother; now she possesses in fullest measure the hope for personal betterment that she has inspired in her family and fellow villagers. Through her child she has "ordinary," healthy relationships with people wherever she goes. Pai-mei achieves dignity despite the odds against her; her faith in her ability to transcend her previous life makes

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it possible to redeem herself, to recover the innocence taken from her by the economic needs of first her natal family and then her foster family years before. 29 In C. T. Hsia's apt words, "it is surely heart-warming . . . to read a story where copulation for the purpose of procreation and the agony of childbirth are described in all their sanctity as indispensable means for a woman's redemption." 3 0 Pai-mei created new identity for herself through force of will; she has wrenched herself free from the shackles of habit and economic need to assert her feminine strength in its nurturing, child-bearing aspects. Appropriately, she lives a sexually chaste life after her new course is once set. But her previous life is not overtly described as one of moral degredation; the story refrains from condemning either those who sold her into prostitution or the men who enjoyed her service. Likewise, "Sea-Watching Days" does not demonstrate that other people helped her achieve this redemption. Thus the story presents a paradox: if Pai-mei's new identity is not only a function of others' response to her, is the child fundamentally necessary? Is not a change in self-evaluation sufficient? Has she in fact become a different person? The answers to all these questions must be negative. Pai-mei has been morally consistent throughout the story. In one of its first scenes she distracts a drunken and physically misshapen customer away from the terrified Ying-ying, then a novice to the trade. Her act is spontaneous and utterly selfless, typical of the "saintly" Pai-mei after she leaves the brothel. But before she leaves, Pai-mei is in her own eyes precisely what she is in the estimation of others: a whore with no control over herself, responsible for—perhaps capable of—only satisfying the more base of masculine needs. She must labor for her redemption; she must sacrifice—these are the obstacles she places before herself. In this regard the pain of childbirth is the final trial in a self-imposed struggle for a new identity. The child himself is perhaps not as essential as is the process of having a child, asserting her right to have a child and to have the new identity that a child entails—that of mother, to Pai-mei the most respectable of all social roles. Pai-mei's new identity is simultaneously as old as

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tradition itself and wholly new. Theoretically she might again happen to meet a former customer; like Wan-fa she would have to ignore his vulgar comments. Wan-fa retreated into the conventional roles of father and husband, at least to the extent of guaranteeing economic support, to preserve his own sense of dignity. The role of mother functions for Pai-mei in much the same way. Significantly, she prepares for that role in the village of her childhood, where other traditional family ties could be reasserted and strengthened. Yet she remains unabashed by her lack of a husband and the means by which the life of her son began. There is no traditional sanction for this attitude; it is a consequence of her individual will, her personal faith in the lightness of being a mother in and of itself. Thus she has achieved a kind of liberation to a realm of self-conception where conventions are irrelevant in the light of pure motivations. Her will to improve her social standing, her personal identity, has become in itself an obsession to reassert her rightful position in the order of things, an order that transcends mere morality. Her quest, like that of the adman K'unshu, brings a new hope through the possibility of a degree of self-transcendence, of immortality that accommodates itself to time. Symbols abound in "Sea-Watching Days"; they serve to indicate Pai-mei's uniqueness rather than the universality of her plight. She is offspring of the land, a rural villager; the land's eternality gives her the strength she needs for her selftransformation. Yet it is the endless motion of the sea that calls her to return, perhaps to see the biological father of her child, prompting her to sing again of fish (yu, traditionally a word play for the homophone meaning sexual desire). By the sea she had been a prostitute, always sexually active but never fertile; having conceived there she reverts to an association with infertility, becoming again the daughter of a man who sterilizes male chickens. (Appropriately the talk between Paimei and her chosen mate involves another human manipulation of animal sexuality, the collection of hog semen for artificial insemination.) In the countryside her brother loses a leg while continuing to sire children; her years of service in the

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brothel has left her only slightly bowlegged. Her transformation is developed through love, her love for her family, even though it originated in the loveless desire of an anonymous young fisherman. The list of such images and the often ironic contrasts between them could be continued considerably farther. What these few might serve to indicate is the concern for literary artistry on the part of Hwang Chun-ming. Like the modernist Shui Ching and like Wang Chen-ho, Hwang ensures that his stories admit no single, simple interpretation. This fact is itself most significant for understanding the search for identity in recent fiction from Taiwan. China is old; the weight of its traditions crush even the most strenuous conscious efforts to change her, in the view of many twentieth-century writers. To Lu Hsiin traditional values consumed all individual initiative; to Yii Ta-fu and others of his generation, the hope that Chinese society would change might be vain but it was the only hope one could have. For despite their avowed disdain for them, received traditions dictated the role for educated intellectuals in society: that of spokesmen for the highest level of morality, the catalyst for social harmony and political order. This conception required that all attempts to establish a new identity for the individual involve the creation of a new social and political identity for the state as a whole. This concern became the writer's obsession when there seemed to be no alternative for self-expression in literature that was not indefensibly self-indulgent by contrast. Thus the historical tendency to address political and social needs in literature continued in China long after Confucianism was replaced by a variety of new creeds and ideas from abroad. Yet China's tradition of reading literary works as political allegories remains strong still today. It prompts not only political figures to search creative writing for ideas that support or question official policy lines; even foreign scholars cannot resist reading political meaning into stories that make no ostensible references to political persons or events. The Re-

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gionalist stories of Hwang Chun-ming also allow such manipulation. Yti Ta-fu's apparently autobiographical hero suffered over China's plight, but his personal malaise was the product of his alienation from fellow students. In a sense this isolation paralleled that of China itself, externally abused by more powerful nations, weak and trembling within. Taiwan's situation is not without parallels. Despite official claims on China's cultural heritage, Taiwan was a frontier region, peripheral to the great events of China's past. The physical monuments of that past are elsewhere; its inhabitants are either the refugees from the mainland or the offspring of humble folk forced there through the centuries by economic necessity. Moreover, for fifty years Taiwan had been cut off from the mainland provinces by alien rule, a Japanese colony. When Hwang Chun-ming writes of poor people who do not embody the Great Tradition—or any tradition at all in any major degree—who are not part of any social movement, who have no prominence in society, who have no sense of historical mission, he may well be consciously or unconsciously allegorizing Taiwan's situation: waiting for a decades-long civil war to be resolved and for the country to be reunited, filling the time with response to economic needs and concern for reputation abroad. The stories considered here could be seen as examples in a search for identity. That is, Shui Ching's Y stands for Chineseness, a memory of past glories and a need for order in a world that has gone totally awry; Wang Chen-ho reveals the need for cultural conservativism and moral self-righteousness when reality forces concessions; Hwang Chun-ming's stories take the search for identity away from the past and into the future, which his tainted but saintly Pai-mei faces with confidence in the rightness of her stand and hope for better things to come— whatever they may be. This search for identity could be considered allegorically, but its validity does not hinge on this interpretation. Why offer it at all? The Chinese conception of self expressed in literature has seldom been apolitical or aloof from the social needs of its time. The perceptive explorations of personal identity in

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writing from Taiwan then should have traces of this tendency if it is to be Chinese. No one would deny that writing from Taiwan is Chinese; the existence of political significance in writing about the individual is hardly surprising, even if the condition of China as a whole is not its "obsession."

An Overview

Duty, Reputation, and Selfhood in Traditional Chinese Narratives Josqjh

S. M. Lau

j ^ n o w thyself," adjures the Delphic oracle; l \ Western writers have exemplified its spirit repeatedly, particularly in recent literature. But no comparable command appeared in ancient China; lacking this approach, traditional Chinese literature diverges markedly in its presentation of the self. To illustrate, let us examine briefly two Russian heroes. "What sort of man am I?" This startling question is raised by the diarist-hero Chulkaturin in Turgenev's The Diary of a Superfluous Man (1850). "The farther I penetrate into myself," he continues, "the more closely I examine my past life, the more I am convinced of the stern truth of that expression. Superfluous—precisely. To other people that word is not applicable. People are bad, good, intelligent, stupid, pleasant and unpleasant; but superfluous . . . no . . . But I—about me it is not possible to say anything else: I am superfluous, and that is all there is to it." 1

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The heart of the matter is this: Chulkaturin has mistaken a y o u n g girl's civility for affection since his first meeting with Yeliza vetta Kirillovana (Liza). H e thought his "life w a s irradiated with l o v e " (p. 355) until the arrival of Prince N. in the t o w n of 0 . Unable to bear w h a t h e considers to be a deliberate insult from the prince at a soirée, Chulkaturin vents his anger a n d jealously call his rival a " v a c u o u s Petersburg u p s t a r t " (p. 372). Challenged to a pistol duel, the diarist apparently forgets his sense of h o n o r and pulls the trigger ahead of time. Though w o u n d e d , the prince graciously spares his life by firing his shot into the air and calling off the duel. Later, true to Chulkaturin's presentiments, the prince leaves t o w n without breathing a w o r d of marriage to Liza's parents. But the departure of the prince offers little assistance to our diarist, for in the end Liza, w h o finds Chulkaturin " l o a t h s o m e " (p. 386), decides to give her hand to Bizmionkov, a petty t o w n official and, w o r s e yet, the prince's second at the duel. In despair, Chulkaturin asks: "Well, tell m e n o w , a m I not a superfluous m a n ? . . . The role played by the P r i n c e — t h e r e is n o n e e d to dilate on it. Bizmionkov's role also is comprehensible. . . . But I? W h y w a s I mixed u p in it all? W h a t a stupid fifth wheel to a c a r t ! " (p. 388). Painful as this experience m u s t have been for Chulkaturin, it is perhaps a trifle too personal to allow his reader to gain a m o r e objective view of the m e a n i n g of his suffering than w h a t he has given us to understand: that he is a frustrated lover and a victim of consumption. Thus, in spite of the fact T u r g e n e v ' s The Diary is replete with emotive apostrophes, one fails to detect in it that s y m p t o m a t i c note of anxiety peculiar to, say, C h e k h o v ' s Superfluous M a n on the brink of an identity crisis. Uncle Vania (1897) presents an example of this further development. (covers his face with his hands). I feel ashamed! If you only knew how ashamed I am! This feeling of shame is sharp, so much so it can't compare with physical pain. (In agony and despair.) I can't take it! (Leans on the table.) What can I do? What can I do? VOYNITSKY

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Nothing. Give me something, anything! Oh, dear God. . . . I'm forty-seven years old. Let's say I live to be sixty, that leaves me thirteen more years. That's a long time. How can I get through those thirteen years? What will I do, what can I fill them with? . . . Give me a hint, tell me how to begin . . . what to begin with. . . . 2 ASTROV

VOYNITSKY

Frederick Hoffman, in his study of Samuel Beckett, describes the Superfluous Man thus: "The very nature of his romantic despair, disillusion or melancholy, is shown to come from an 'unproductive' or 'unrealistic,' in any case an 'unprofitable' set of circumstances. He does no one any good and the scope of his emotional extravagances is judged as tedious and perhaps a bit ridiculous."3 Though no definition can be comprehensive enough to cover all the characteristics of a given normative term, Hoffman's observation is useful in identifying certain temperamental traits peculiar to such "unnecessary men" as Chulkaturin and Voynitsky. Besides their inability to translate honorable intention into action, their psyche is also plagued by a mania for self-knowledge, even though in the end such knowledge only fuels their propensities for self-pity and selfmortification.

Propriety as Moral Absolute In examining the physiognomy of the two Russians, I am reminded of a statement by a noted critic of Chinese fiction: "Because of their fascination with life, Chinese novelists are almost incapable of noticing the condition of ennui. . . . With all its rapacious and lecherous characters, Chinese fiction could not conceive of a monster like the Stranger of Camus, not to say the Underground Man of Dostoevsky, who have lost connection with all values." 4 One can certainly add that Chinese fiction until modern times was just as incapable of conceiving

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a Superfluous Man. 5 If the Chinese as a people are "inscrutable," the psychological makeup of individual characters in their literature is often as predictable as the operation of karma in many short stories from the seventeenth-century San-yen and Erh-p'o collections. Let's imagine Chang Sheng in "The Story of Yingying" ("Ying-ying chuan") in Chulkaturin's position. In the first place, it is unlikely that any Chinese suitor would go to the extent of fighting a duel for a lady, 6 much less this passive lover. In the second, Chang always has the lessons of the ancients to follow whenever driven to an impasse. By dismissing his passionate mistress, Ying-ying, as a mere yu-wu ("femme fatale"), the hero of this ninth-century tale has proven himself a resourceful master of self-defense. Chang presents his justification for deserting Ying-ying in these words: It is a general rule that those women endowed by Heaven with great beauty invariably either destroy themselves or destroy someone else. If this Ts'ui woman were to meet someone with wealth and position, she would use the favor her charms gain her to be cloud and rain or dragon or monster—I can't imagine what she might turn into. Of old, King Hsin of the Shang and King Yu of the C h o u were brought low by women, in spite of the size of their kingdoms and the extent of their power; their armies were scattered, their persons butchered, and down to the present day their names are objects of ridicule. I have no inner strength to withstand this evil influence. That is why I have resolutely suppressed my love. 7

In this masterpiece of casuistry, the heartless lover combines false Confucian modesty ("no inner strength") with self-righteous conceit (shih-yung jen-ch'ing, "resolutely suppressed my love"). But in Chang's case, even if it were the woman who rejected the man, the yu-wu ("femme fatale") or yao-nieh ("evil influence") theory would prove equally applicable. For, precisely because a beautiful woman is a cause of trouble, her rejection of a man can be interpreted as Heaven's intervention to rescue him from fated disaster. Either way, Chang invariably emerges as the winner. For this reason, one needs little imagination to visualize how conveniently Chang

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could have helped poor Chulkaturin resolve his identity crisis. All he would have to do is to place Liza on the same (low) plane with Ying-ying and behave according to conventional standards of behavior. In this way, Chulkaturin's defeat in the game of love would immediately be converted to a moral victory, and self would have been well protected without even any obvious self-assertion. Chang Sheng is a convenient example of how instrumental history can be in helping a Chinese hero to resolve his problems in a practical manner. Whenever he is in doubt, a Chinese is bound to look to the ancients for moral support or spiritual illumination. Indeed, it can be said categorically that so long as one is mindful of the teachings in any of the Three Schools, be it Confucianism, Taoism, or Buddhism, no Chinese should feel at a loss in any given situation as to what to do with one's life. One's strict adherence to a moral or religious cause he or she believes in is by itself a form of self-assertion. This is certainly the conviction of Liu Ta-chieh in his analysis of the dilemma of the fourth-century B.C. poet-statesmen C h ' I I Yuan. It is his view that if Ch'ii Yuan, the archetypal slandered minister, were spiritually endowed with "the wisdom of Taoist detachment, the rigor of Mohist asceticism, and the spirit of perseverance in face of adversity expounded in the teachings of Confucius and Mencius," 8 he could have avoided drowning himself in political frustration. Indeed, given the ethical imperatives invested in the Five Relationships and Four Virtues, 9 one wonders if it is at all possible—at least in a public medium—for a Chinese to express another form of selfhood than what is deemed proper to his position in the established hierarchy. Unquestioning adherence to the dictates of morality is easily noticeable in numberless traditional Chinese stories and drama. Take the question of self addressed in The Revenge of Orphan Chao (Chao-shih ku-erh ta-pao-ch'ou tsa-chii), for instance. 10 Written during the fourteenth century, Chi Chiin-hsiang's play concerns the rivalry of two ministerial families in the state of Tsin during the Spring and Autumn period two millennia earlier. In the prologue General T'u-an Ku, in his attempt to usurp the throne,

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harbors such art unmitigated hatred for Minister Chao Tun that he has the whole Chao clan, totaling three hundred members, eliminated. Chao Shuo, Chao Tun's son, is spared only because he is the Prince Consort. Later, however, T'u-an Ku issues a counterfeit decree demanding his suicide, with which Chao Shuo can only comply. In the meantime, the princess gives birth to a son whom T'u-an Ku is understandably determined to put to death at any cost. Having entrusted the orphan to a retainer, Ch'eng Ying, the princess hangs herself. Now it remains Ch'eng Ying's responsibility to smuggle the orphan out of the surrounded house. He hides the baby in a medicine box as he leaves the palace. Searched by Han Chueh, a general who set up the guard around the Chao premises at T'u-an Ku's order, Ch'eng Ying begs on his knees for mercy on the last member of the Chao family. Touched by Ch'eng's loyalty, and judging that T'u-an Ku is clearly the wrongdoer, General Han releases Ch'eng and the orphan. And, to assure Ch'eng that he would be the last one to divulge the secret, Han commits suicide to vouch for his sincerity. Getting word of the orphan's escape, T'u-an Ku threatens to kill all infants under six months old unless the Chao orphan is recovered quickly. At wits' end, Ch'eng Ying consults with Kung-sun Ch'u-chiu, a retired minister and a loyal friend of the Chaos. After a short debate, Ch'eng agrees that it would take more personal sacrifice and hardship to raise the orphan to manhood than to offer one's life to T'u-an Ku for the sake of the orphan. Consequently, Ch'eng Ying places his own infant son in Kung-sun's hands and then goes to inform T'u-an Ku that the retired minister is the keeper of the Chao orphan. T'u-an Ku stabs the imposter-orphan to death with his own sword, while Kung-sun, seeing that his mission is completed, dashes his head against a pillar to commit suicide. From that point on, T'u-an Ku has taken Ch'eng Ying as a confidante, and, since he has no son, adopts the orphan as his heir. When Orphan Chao reaches twenty, Ch'eng Ying decides that it is time for the whole truth to be known. Using a scroll on which the tragic history of the Chao family

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is represented, Ch'eng Ying manages to reveal to the orphan that his real name is neither Ch'eng nor T'u-an, but Chao. What Orphan Chao has to face immediately is a crisis of traumatic proportions. Until the scroll is unrolled in act 4, he is smugly confident of his role in life: I serve the sage ruler Duke Ling of Tsin, And assist the able minister T'u-an Ku. For I excel in the arts of peace and war and have the strength of ten thousand men. My father has invested much, much hope in me. As horses are strong, and the soldiers brave, The father is loving, and the son filial, Why should we have any cause for worry!11 But now that his adopted father T'u-an Ku, whom he has just referred to as a hsien-ch'en ("able minister"), turns out to be a man who butchered his whole family, what is he supposed to do? "If a man suffers a sudden and great shock or fright," comments James Olney, "then, whether or not he acts 'out of character,' . . . for that moment he is not his normal self. Extreme pain and extreme anger can also, in the same way, cause an apparent disjuncture of selfhood." 12 Theoretically, had there been a convention in Yuan drama by which the internal conflicts of the characters could be externalized through soliloquy, Orphan Chao's state of mind would have materialized into, as for Hamlet, " a question." True, T'u-an Ku is now proven to be the murderer of his father. But in all fairness it should be pointed out that for twenty years T'u-an Ku has lavished on his adopted son the kind of protection and affection worthy of a real father. T'u-an's own words serve as testimony: I adopted Ch'eng Ying's son and gave him the name T'u Ch'eng. I've taught him all eighteen branches of the martial arts. He masters whatever he touches. He even surpasses me in archery and horsemanship. With his help I can make plans to assassinate Duke Ling and take over the whole State of Tsin. I can then let the boy fill all my present positions. Only then can I be really content.13

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With such unequivocal assertion of fatherhood, one could not be far wrong to say that genuine affection must have existed between T'u-an Ku and Orphan Chao. Granted that no murderer of one's father should go unpunished, what should be of immediate interest to us is not the way the orphan goes about taking his revenge, but how in his conscience he would account for all the good wishes and favors he has received from T'u-an Ku, his adopted father—now known as murderer. This takes us back to act 4. As soon as Orphan Chao has learned all he wants to know about his true identity, he laments: "So I am the Orphan of Chao! Oh, blast my fate." 1 4 After that he faints and is at once revived by Ch'eng Ying. It becomes immediately obvious, however, that Orphan Chao's temporary loss of consciousness is not induced by any shock of recognition arising from the tragic irony of fate brought about by this sudden turn of events; it is caused by the opprobrium that for the past twenty years he has, as the Chinese saying goes, "mistaken a villain for a father" (jen-tsei tso-fu). Since he has no conflict of loyalties to reconcile (a point to be elaborated later), he has no difficulty in making up his mind the moment he awakens in Ch'eng Ying's arms: T'u-an Ku must be put to a lingering death and his entire clan eliminated. In an influential essay on the interrelationship between technique and subject matter, Mark Schorer notes: "When we speak of technique, then, we speak of nearly everything. For technique is the means by which the writer's experience, which is his subject matter, compels him to attend to it; technique is the only means he has of discovering, exploring, developing his subject, of conveying its meaning, and finally, of evaluating it." 1 5 The key terms relevant to our discussion are "discovering," "exploring," and "evaluating." If technique is a means for discovering, it follows that no new experience felt by the writer would be adequately "explored" and "evaluated" unless it was first "discovered" by a new technique sensitive enough to exhaust all its possibilities. For the student of Western literature exposed for the first time to a Chinese play such as The Revenge of Orphan Chao, what would strike him as most curious must be the total absence of any

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psychological revelation that would allow him to share some of the hero's private sentiments. Since in Western literature soliloquy and stream of consciousness have often been employed as an expression of the hero's uncertainty on the one hand, and as a subtle division between appearance and reality on the other, now if no comparable technique is evident in the Chinese play, does it mean that the orphan is free from any emotional uncertainties? Can it be that the appearance he puts up is in fact the true representation of his mental state? So long as Orphan Chao moves in the context of traditional Chinese society, that is precisely the case. His experience needs neither discovery nor evaluation, for his newly perceived role as son of a murdered father dictates that he serve as avenger. Appropriately, revenge under these circumstances will embrace three of the Four Virtues expected of a Chinese gentleman in his position. He owes it to his sovereign the Duke (hence loyalty), to his parents (hence filial piety), and to his father's loyal friends (hence righteousness) to see to it that justice be meted out to the usurper-murderer. In this situation, any misgivings on his part would amount to not only an open challenge to established moral codes but also a flouting of the will of Heaven which placed him in these circumstances. As the only surviving member of the Chao clan, his part in the play is at once realistic and providential: he is not only the avenger of human wrongs but actually a deus ex machina engaged in affirmation of the cosmic order. What sort of man is Orphan Chao indeed if he is not Chao Wu (the name given to him by ducal decree as the heir to Chao Shuo to inherit the Chao family title and property)? In sum, it can be said that Orphan Chao's life is clearly a Chinese exemplum in support of the Chinese saying i wu fan-ku, that is, "When doing what is righteous, there can be no turning back." Beyond this acknowledged role in society and the duties accruing to it, this character has no self at all.

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Self Defined as Duty Orphan Chao is a male, and he acts in the capacity of a son to right the wrongs suffered by his elders. The question of the self in Chinese womanhood is addressed in "The Jest That Leads to Disaster" ("Shih-wu-kuan hsi-yen ch'eng ch'iao-huo"), 16 a hua-pen story about the fearsome consequences of a jest. It begins with Liu Kuei, a luckless scholarturned-merchant, on his way with his wife, Wang-shih, to celebrate his father-in-law's birthday. Taking pity on Liu's insolvency, the old man offers to loan him fifteen strings of cash as capital for some new business venture. Since his wife is kept by the father to visit for a few days, Liu returns home alone with the money. He runs into an acquaintance on his way and drinks a cup too many with him before resuming his journey. Because Mrs. Liu is childless, Liu Kuei has taken a concubine named Erh-chieh (Second Sister). Erh-chieh has dozed off under the lamp by the time he finally manages to get home, well after midnight; Liu pounds on the door repeatedly before she wakes up to let him in. As she is helping him to relieve the load from his shoulder, she asks: "Where did you get this money from? What's it for?" 17 Partly under the influence of drink and partly irritated by her tardiness in answering the door, Liu decides to scare her by replying that he has mortgaged her to a merchant for fifteen strings of cash. What follows is a chain of tragic coincidences that gives the most terrifying testimony to the gravity of the theme: that life is not to be trifled with at any place or at any time.18 Taking Liu's words seriously, Erh-chieh feels that she should talk this matter over with her parents. She stacks up the money beside Liu, who is now fast asleep, and heads out the door. As fate seems to have dictated it, the same night Liu's house is visited by a burglar. Awakened, Liu fights with the trespasser and is killed. Erh-chieh spends the night with one of the neighbors, then leaves for her parents' place early in the morning. Midway on her journey she meets a young traveling sales-

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man; the latter is attracted by her charms. Feeling lonely, Erhchieh asks the young man if he would be so good as to keep her company for at least part of the way. But no sooner has the young man given his happy consent than they are stopped by two of Liu's neighbors. The neighbors inform her that her husband's house has been burglarized and that Liu Kuei has been killed. Since she was not at home when the crime took place, she should return with them to answer questions. And because the young man happens to be traveling with her, he too is treated as a suspect and is brought back by force to the local authorities, despite his protests. That young man is named Ts'ui Ning. To his undoing, the money he is carrying with him amounts to precisely fifteen strings of cash. On the basis of this circumstantial evidence he is judged to be the accomplice of Erh-chieh and the two are summarily sentenced to death. Mrs. Liu acts as the plaintiff during the prosecution; she remains convinced that Erh-chieh and Ts'ui Ning are guilty. After the two have been executed, she sets up Liu's spirit-tablet at home and passes her days as a dutiful widow in mourning. Later when her father broaches the subject of remarriage, she answers that she would not hear of it, at least not until the first year of mourning is over. When the mourning is about to end, Mrs. Liu's father sends an old servant over to fetch her home. But on the way they are overtaken by a sudden shower which forces them to take shelter in a nearby wood. There they are waylaid by a highwayman. The old servant shouts his defiance and instantaneously meets his death. Realizing the futility of resistance, Mrs. Liu cannot but make do with what the situation has to offer: she accepts the outlaw's proposition that she become his "Mistress of Ching Mountain." In less than a year after they are married, the bandit chief has become a rich man. The story further relates that Mrs. Liu, being a very sensible woman, never fails to remind her husband regularly that he should mend his ways before it is too late. Taking her advice, the chief opens a grocery and even visits the Buddhist temples occasionally. One day, pre-

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sumably overcome by a sense of guilt, he makes a full confession of his past wrong doings to her, including the murder he committed while robbing a man of fifteen strings of cash. Needless to say, he had never learned that his wife is the widow of his victim. Mrs. Liu's shock at this discovery is imaginably as great as that of Orphan Chao when his past was revealed to him. For good reasons, however, the storyteller does not allow her to faint. She is only allowed to lament bitterly to herself: " S o my husband, too, was killed by this brute! And Erhchieh and that young man were unjustly executed. I can see now that I should never have insisted on their paying with their lives. They will never forgive me in the court of hell." 1 9 Significantly enough, her recognition is more concerned with facts (the discovery of the real criminal) than with the terrible irony of fate. It does not occur to her that if it had not been for her influence, the bandit chief would not have mended his ways. In a sense, therefore, her reforming influence—her wifely concern for him—is the very cause of his ultimate undoing. Furthermore, there is no hint anywhere in the story that Mrs. Liu's agreeing to marry the chief is only a temporary measure of expediency, that all along she had planned to escape and inform on her outlaw husband in the name of justice, if not for the sake of avenging her old servant. On the contrary, the fact that she is concerned enough for his welfare to advise the chief to abjure his life of violence attests to her sense of new selfhood: she is as much the dutiful wife when an outlaw's spouse as she was while married to the hapless Liu Kuei. Lacking any textual evidence which could be used to determine how close she had been to her first husband, we cannot make any valid comparison in regard to the degree of affection Mrs. Liu feels for Liu Kuei and the bandit. But even if it could be proven that she is more fond of the outlaw than of her first husband, it would make no difference in the ending. For in her present situation, as with the case of Orphan Chao, the question of personal sentiment matters little once it is pitted against the balance of ta-i, or public morality. So long as the chief is guilty of Liu Kuei's murder and is responsible

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for the two innocent deaths, she has no moral election to make but to bring him to justice. Her knowledge in the Chinese context forces her inexorably into the role of vengeful informer. Her duty in this new role—as one who knows the murderer's identity—allows her no other course of action. In this respect, both Mrs. Liu and Orphan Chao can be regarded as characters affected by what Lionel Trilling has called the "morality of inertia": "It knows that duties are done for no other reason than that they are said to be duties; for no other reason, sometimes, than that the doer has not really been able to conceive any other course, has perhaps been afraid to think of any other course." 20 In the pages above we have seen two types of revenge stories, with Chao Wu avenging his father and Mrs. Liu her husband. Though both instances of revenge can be taken as a fulfillment of ethical obligations on a personal plane, and as a reparation of justice on a social level, Mrs. Liu's decision to betray her bandit husband to the courts is essentially selfserving compared to the decision of Orphan Chao. Her "thoughts to herself," quoted earlier, demonstrate that she is actually more afraid of the vengeful ghosts of Erh-chieh and Ts'ui Ning than she is concerned with social justice. For this reason, Mrs. Liu must be seen as a more complex character than the orphan if only because, unlike the latter, the appearance she puts up is not to be mistaken for her reality. While the method she uses to assert her selfhood is in general agreement with established social rules, the real motive behind her public action is but a selfish desire to exorcise private fears resulting from an uneasy, if not guilty, conscience.

A Good Name at Any Cost "When the individual presents himself before others," Erving Goffman informs us, "his performance will tend to incorporate and exemplify the officially accredited values of

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the society, more so, in fact, than does his behaviour as a whole." 2 1 What Orphan Chao and Mrs. Liu have opted to do can thus be seen more as a result of their eagerness to garner social approbation than as a disinterested concern for fair play. "It is fitting that we should hold the young in awe," Confucius said, for "how do we know that the generations to come will not be the equal of the present? Only when a man reaches the age of forty or fifty without distinguishing himself in any way can one say, I suppose, that he does not deserve to be held in awe." 2 2 While the Master is to be applauded for his indulgent attitude toward the young, his admonition that one must make a name for oneself before reaching forty or fifty constitutes formidable psychological pressure on an average person. This is especially true for women in traditional China. True, those who are as gifted as Ts'ai Yen (c. A.D. 200) and Li Ch'ing-chao (?1084-c. 1151) can distinguish themselves by their literary skills. Or, if one is as ardent and talented as Ch'iu Chin (1879-1907), one can expect to leave a name behind by being a revolutionary. But these are extraordinary women who claim their positions in the annals of history by virtue of their extraordinary accomplishments. For an ordinary female desiring fame the only path open to her would seem to be taking an extra step beyond the call of duty. One such woman is Shao-shih in "The Case of the Dead Infant" ("K'uang T'ai-shou tuan ssu-hai-erh") in Chingshih t'ung-yen. A lady known for her beauty as well as her virtue, Shao-shih becomes a widow at the age of twenty-three. Concerned about her future, her parents and her husband's uncle lose no time in urging her to remarry as soon as the threeyear mourning period is over. But Shao-shih resolves to remain chaste, vowing: "Now that my late husband rests below the Nine Springs, if I serve another family and take a second husband, I shall either perish under a knife or die by the rope." 2 3 It must be emphasized that Shao-shih's decision to live a life of widowhood is strictly of her own volition. Her elders plead with her to change her mind, and more significantly, the storyteller, apparently shaken by his ominiscient

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knowledge of the impending tragedy, also warns her parenthetically:24 " 'If you can swallow three gallons of vinegar at one sitting, you can live on as a lone widow.' Widowhood is not easily maintained. The best long-term course for Shao-shih would have been to take a husband openly. Although then she would not have rated in the top category of women, still she would not have missed being counted in the middle group. . . Z' 25 But Shao-shih aspires to count in the top category, to be in the company of illustrious women as recorded in Liu H s i a n g ' s ( 7 7 - 6 B.C.) Eminent

Women (Lieh-nii chuan).

She shuts

herself off from the outside world, keeping only a maid as her companion and a ten-year-old servant boy by the name of Tekuei as a doorkeeper. In her husband's presence, she is known as a dutiful and virtuous wife. In his absence, she wants to be remembered as a selfless and chaste widow. Perpetual mourning becomes her duty as much as it is her identity. By the time Te-kuei reaches seventeen, Chih Chu, a wastrel newly installed in the neighborhood, has received word about the fair reputation of Shao-shih as a great beauty. After taking a peep at the woman on the occasion of her husband's tenth anniversary memorial service, Chih Chu finds himself totally possessed by her charms. He befriends the servant boy by giving him food and wine, in hopes of getting his help to step into Shao-shih's inner apartment. But the boy rebukes him: "What are you saying! How can you be so wicked! My mistress is most proper and guards her place with vigilance. During the day no man is allowed to go through the middle door. At night, before she goes to bed, she and her maid carry a lamp and inspect everywhere to make sure that each door is locked. Even if I wanted to lead you in, where would you hide?" 2 6 Upon being informed that Shao-shih also checked Te-kuei's room, Chih Chu suddenly conceives a plan: he wants to ruin Shao-shih's reputation through the boy so that he can blackmail her into submitting to himself later. Accordingly, he tries his best to arouse the boy's sexual passion with wine and with salacious suggestions. Te-kuei finally becomes excited

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enough to ask for advice. Chih Chu responds by instructing him to lie naked on his back at night when Shao-shih is about to make her security check. That evening, Te-kuei displays himself in bed as is told. Though startled by her discovery, Shao-shih takes no action except voicing her opinion to the maid: "This dog of a slave! His door isn't even closed, and he sleeps there stark naked! What impudence!" 27 At this juncture, the storyteller makes another digression: "Had Shao-shih acted decisively, called Tekuei to her the next morning, told him of his lazy and outrageous behavior of the previous evening, and given him a sound scolding and beating, then Te-kuei would not have dared more." 28 This digression is noteworthy because it confirms our impression of the storyteller's skeptical view of Shao-shih as a woman of self-conceit whose choice of celibacy is prompted by vainglorious impulse rather than by moral conviction. Shao-shih goes to Te-kuei's room on the third evening, unaccompanied by the maid. The sight of "that thing as hard and firm as a spearhead" sets her heart "pounding wildly and her whole body afire with lust." 29 Not wanting to startle the boy, she noiselessly sits astride his body and guides his entry. Her loneliness, and especially her desperation resulting from a protracted period of sexual abstinence, are described in an interpolated poem: She had been long denied the pleasure of the bed; He is experimenting for the first time with the joys of love. She, reclaiming an old plaything, enjoys it with abandon; He, delighting in the new taste of sweets, craves for more. She, too hungry to choose her fare, doesn't mind the serving boy with all his uncouthness; He, pampered and assured of favor, fears not his mistress's authority. It's obvious he is but a noxious creeper; Yet it intertwines on the trellis with a prized flower. . . -30

Soon to take place in the story is not only Shaoshih's downfall, but most significantly, the revelation of the fanatic extreme to which she is about to go to protect her rep-

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utation. As soon as their game of love is over, Shao-shih confides to Te-kuei: "I have endured widowhood for ten years. That I should now lose myself to you must be repayment for some wrong I did you in a previous existence. You must keep your mouth shut and not let this out to anyone. You can expect special favors from me." 3 1 Regarding her illicit affair with the boy as a form of "repayment," she throws all caution to the wind and carries on with Te-kuei as if they were man and wife. The question of morality or propriety never enters her mind so long as her good name before the outside world is not in jeopardy. In order to seal the maid's mouth, she helps Te-kuei seduce her, setting the pattern for a mock ménage à trois. But events take a sudden turn when, after a few months, Shao-shih finds herself pregnant. She instructs Te-kuei to buy some medicine for abortion. Ignorant of what to get, the boy turns to Chih Chu, whom he regards as "benefactor," for help. The wastrel cheats him by giving him a wombstrengthening potion. In due course, Shao-shih delivers a male child which she immediately drowns, and asks Te-kuei to bury it in a secret place. Because Chih Chu has said earlier that he needs a dead infant to concoct some kind of drug, Te-kuei turns the drowned baby over to his "benefactor" instead of burying it. Now that he has solid evidence to incriminate Shaoshih, Chih Chu is emboldened to force his way into her apartment and to blackmail her. Unwilling to yield to the scoundrel, Shao-shih temporizes with him by promising to send for him in the evening. Only after Chih Chu is gone does it occur to her that she has been in the wrong all along, and that she has sinned against the memory of her husband. "In the beginning," she muses, "I was against remarrying because I have wanted to be a person of exemplary virtue. Now that the truth is about to be exposed, how could I have the face to look upon my relatives?"32 After some further thought, she decides that there is no way to show her regret to her late husband except taking her life. Just when she is about to hang herself with a sash, Te-kuei barges in. The sight of this guileless person fills her with anger and indignation, as she reasons that without

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his tricking her, she would not have lost her honor and chastity. Gripping the dagger with which she had originally intended to cut her own throat, she strikes a blow against his head with vengeance, splitting his skull in two. Then she places her head into the noose. Because the latter part of the narrative takes up the judicial handling of the infanf s murder by Lord K'uang Chung, who finally brings Chih Chu to justice, this story has often been categorized as a kung-an ("legal case") story. From our point of view, however, what is so engaging about "The Dead Infant" is not so much the investigative process through which the true culprit is tracked down as the relentless tension which the storyteller brings to bear on Shao-shih to test her humanity. Without any. sign of inward resistance, Shao-shih succumbs to the claims of Te-kuei's manhood. In drowning her flesh and blood to obliterate evidence of transgression, she has at once violated the sanctity of motherhood and the unmistakable quality of being human. In her self-reproach quoted above, her only worry is that she won't "have the face to look upon her relatives." No trace of remorse for having murdered her own son can be detected. 33 "The Dead Infant," then, is a cautionary tale in the proverbial sense of the term. For its unsentimental treatment of a subject so charged with hagiographic potential, it is a tour de force of a parabolical journey into the purgatory of megalomania in which we witness the frightening consequences of self-delusion and blown-up pretensions. Above everything else, "The Dead Infant" is a passionate plea for sanity and humility.

Eccentricity as Identity With the exception of W. L. Idema, most scholars and critics of Chinese fiction who chose to examine the traditional Chinese story from a Western perspective have invariably come away with the impression that the Chinese vision

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of the self is necessarily limited and predictable. 34 John L. Bishop, for instance, attributes "this limitation of psychological analysis" to the "absence of an aristocratic-feminine tradition in this branch of literature." 3 5 Robert Ruhlmann, on the other hand, blames the limitation on the Chinese concept of moral excellence, which "was thought to lie rather in the proper fulfillment of established social roles in family and community living than in individual accomplishments (as in Western civilization)." 36 Of the three examples used in this article, The Revenge of Orphan Chao seems to agree very well with Ruhlmann's evaluation of traditional Chinese heroes. But how applicable Ruhlmann's statement is to a character who is at once public and private, such as Mrs. Liu, is indeed questionable. Suffice it to say that while many of the heroes or heroines we find in Chinese fiction and drama truly are stereotypes, it is equally true that occasionally we encounter a number of characters whose identity we take for granted at our own risk. I have particularly in mind the egotist Ching K'o in "Prince Tan of Yen" ("Yen Tan-tzu"). This hero is a typical example of a self-obsessed man who is not so much interested in the plight of the prince, nor the issue of political justice, as he is in his personal worth. He measures the degree of the prince's friendship for him in terms of the number of gold nuggets he receives for throwing at frogs, the liver of the superior steeds served at his meals, and the hands of a beautiful lute-player presented him on a jade plate. Had he been more concerned with the cause of his entrusted mission, and less with his own ego, he would have delayed setting forth until his partner arrived to ensure success in assassinating the prince's enemy. But instead, when the prince loses patience after having waited for five months and inquires about his plans, Ching K'o angrily takes Wu Yang along as a substitute. True to Ching K'o's judgment, Wu Yang proves to be a "mere boy" (shu-tzu),37 who even has difficulty moving his feet in the presence of the King of Ch'in. The assassination fails, and Ching K'o forfeits his life, ostensibly for the sake of reciprocating the gestures of someone who appreciates him. Whether or not Chinese his-

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tory would have been rewritten had he gone with his partner as originally planned is a futile speculation. The relevant fact is that his pattern of behavior is indisputably "individualistic," in that he is more interested in indulging his personal whims and fancies than in fulfilling any social role or even personal trust. If Ching K'o had any role to play, it would be that of a knight errant who is driven by the desire for fame rather than motivated by impulses of altruism and who, as James J. Y. Liu has remarked, values personal freedom above family solidarity and social security. 38 Having examined the various forms of self-assertion in The Revenge of Orphan Chao, "The Jest That Leads to Disaster," "The Dead Infant," and "Prince Tan of Yen," we can draw the following conclusions regarding the question of selfhood in traditional Chinese literature. Granted that the self is very much subjugated to the dictates of established morality and propriety, and that it is true that Chinese dramatis personae are seldom found in the process of soul-searching, it does not follow that all the Chinese fictional characters are stereotypes. Admittedly, the moral choices for a "positive character" are few, unless he chooses to become a rebel like Chia Pao-yii in Dream of the Red Chamber, who decides to leave the "Red Dust" of this world just when the honor of his family is about to be restored; or an eccentric, like the third-century poet Hsi K'ang, who would "normally go half a month without washing [his] face." 3 9 Otherwise, a man in traditional China must remain loyal to his ruler, filial to his parents, and faithful to his friends. Observation of these virtues is a duty that defines a self. But then we have seen Ching K'o, who is a stranger to all moral assumptions, guiding his life by no other value than a rather narrow concept of pao (reciprocity).40 And, as has been exemplified by Shao-shih, there is even room for asserting one's individuality by going one step further than is deemed necessary in a conformist society. Subjecting herself willingly and willfully to a life of misery and sexual privation, she elects an absurd cause to celebrate her womanly self-denial. Similarly, it would seem that Orphan Chao's unreflecting switch of loyalty cannot be construed as anything else but an act of

D U T Y , R E P U T A T I O N , AND S E L F H O O D

383

blind faith in society's conventions. In his situation, avenging his father seems to be the only way to honor relevant moral obligations. Blind faith in received duties is at least better than the total lack of faith of the superfluous man. The orphan's self-concept would be thrown into question by any other course of action. In each case, it is through affirmation of a cause, be it altruistic, self-serving, or even absurd, that these characters in traditional narratives define and sustain their concept of self. "What sort of man am I?"—anticipating a unique answer—is a question foreign to the bulk of old China's heroes and heroines.

Notes

AN EXPLORATION OF THE CHINESE LITERARY SELF Robert E. Hegel

1. Mao Tsetung, 'Talks at the Yenan Forum on Art and Literature" (May 1942), Selected Works of Mao Tsetung (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1967), 3:82; Rene Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature (3d ed.; New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1956), p. 78. 2. Lu Hsiin, Na-han (1922; Peking: Jen-min wen-hsueh, 1973), pp. 76-79; trans. Selected Works of Lu Hsun (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1956), 1:76-80. Compare the translation from Lun-yu 13:3 in Arthur Waley, trans., The Analects of Confucius (New York: Random House, n.d.), p. 171. 3. Note Lu Hsiin's further explanations of his reasons for not identifying this character in the conventional way: "I thought at the time that if I wrote a story of exposure and described events happening in a specific place, the people of that district would hate me with a deadly hatred, while those of other districts would look on unconcerned at troubles elsewhere, neither group relating the story to themselves. . . . " Lu Hsiin, Ch'ieh-chieh-t'ing tsa-wen (1936; rpt. Peking: Jen-min wen-hsueh, 1973), p. 116; trans. Selected Works of Lu Hsiin, 4:138; emphasis mine. 4. See Denis Twitchett, "Problems of Chinese Biography," in Confucian Personalities, ed. Arthur F. Wright and Denis Twitchett (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), pp. 24-39, esp. p. 34. Andrew Plaks presents an illuminating discussion of individuality and type in his "Towards a Critical Theory of Chinese Narrative," in Chinese Narrative, ed. Plaks (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), esp. pp. 34244. By contrast, Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg, The Nature of Narrative (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 165, note the central role of Christianity in the development of the unique self as an element in modern literature. The inner life of the individual grew because of the focus on the private relationship of the individual to God. They further note (p. 192) that the autobiographical spirit of modern Western literature develops from such autobiographies as those of Montaigne and Cellini, themselves inspired by yet earlier Christian figures including St. Theresa and St. Augustine. Ian Watt in The Rise of the Novel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957) examines the relationship between Christianity, particularly in its Calvinist or Puritan form, individualism, capitalism, and the novel; see pp. 60 ff. for his discussion of Robinson Crusoe.

Hegel: The Chinese Literary Seif

386

5. For more extensive discussions of these questions, see Arthur F. Wright, "Values, Roles, and Personalities," in Confucian Personalities, ed. Wright and Twitchett, pp. 3 - 2 3 ; and Donald J. Munro, The Concept of Man in Early China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969), and Munro's " T h e Shape of Chinese Values in the Eye of an American Philosopher," in The China Difference, ed. Ross Terrill (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), pp. 3 9 - 5 6 . The search for appropriate social roles and attempts to deny personal responsibilities to fulfill the obligations of social roles were questions addressed by late Ming and early Ch'ing writers. See Robert E. Hegel, The Novel in Seventeenth-Century China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), esp. pp. 10539. 6. Wei-ming Tu, " T h e Confucian Perception of Adulthood," in Adulthood, ed. Erik H. Erikson (New York: Norton, 1976), pp. 113-14. See also A. S. Cua, "Confucian Vision and Experience of the World," Philosophy East and West (1975), 25(3):32728. 7. Lun-yii 6:28; trans. Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 31. Compare Confucius, The Analects, tTans. D. C. Lau (New York: Penguin, 1979), p. 85, here identified as Lun-yii 6.30. 8. Lun-yii 12:1; Lau, tTans., Analects, p. 112. 9. Tu, "Confucian Adulthood," p. 124. 10. See Tu Wei-ming's Centrality and Commonality: An Essay on Chung-yung (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1976), esp. chapter 4. 11. The famous description of a Utopian community is in Tao-te ching 80; see Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, trans. D. C. Lau (New York: Penguin, 1963), p. 142. For insightful discussions of Taoist teachings, see Max Kaltenmark, Lao Tzu and Taoism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969), esp. pp. 19-69; Holmes Welch, Taoism: The Parting of the Way (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), esp. pp. 18-87. 12. Chuang Tzu 18; trans. Burton Watson, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), p. 192. On perfect social order (in the past), see p. 112; logic is confounded on pp. 4 2 - 4 3 , rejection of political activity is the point of pp. 187-88. See also Kaltenmark, Lao Tzu, pp. 70-106. 13. Watson, trans., Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, p. 192. 14. Wisdom texts include the Diamond and Heart sutras. See Edward Conze, trans., Buddhist Wisdom Books (London: Allen and Unwin, 1958). Noteworthy surveys of Buddhism include Hans Wolfgang Schumann, Buddhism: An Outline of Its Teachings and Schools, trans. Georg Feuerstein (Wheaton, 111: Quest, 1974), and W. T. deBary, et al., The Buddhist Tradition in India, China, and Japan (New York: Modern Library, 1969); see also Chang Chung-yuan, tTans., Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism (New York: Vintage, 1971). A poem by Hui-neng codifies this approach to self; see Philip Yampolsky, trans., The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), p. 133, text p. 4. 15. James J. Y. Liu, "Time, Space, and Self in Chinese Poetry," CLEAR (1979), 1(2):138. 16. Eugene Eoyang, " T h e Solitary Boat: Images of Self in Chinese Nature Poetry," journal of Asian Studies (1973), 32(4):593-621; the felicitous descriptive phrase is from James I. Crump, "Eadem sed aliter: 'Pastoral Idyl' and Vanitas in Late Chinese Fiction and Verse," Tamkang Review (1977), 8(2):32, n. 12. 17. For a discussion of thanatophobia, see Burton Watson, Chinese Lyricism: Shih Poetry from the Second to the Twelfth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), pp. 4 9 - 5 1 . Kaltenmark, Lao Tzu, discusses alchemy on p. 66; on meditation and alchemy, see Michel Strickmann, " O n the Alchemy of T'ao Hung-ching,"

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387

in Facets of Taoism: Essays in Chinese Religion, ed. Holmes Welch and Anna Seidel (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), pp. 123-92, and Joseph Needham, ed., Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5, part 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), esp. pp. 220 ff. on alchemical theory. For a literary manifestation of meditation techniques, see "Yiian-yu" in Ch'u tz'u, trans, by David Hawkes, "The Far-Off Journey," in his Ch'u Tz'u: The Songs of the South (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962) pp. 81-87. 18. T a o Ch'ien, "Hsing, ying, shen," in Ting Fu-pao, ed., Ch'üan Han Sankuo Chin Nan-pei-ch'ao shih (1962; rpt. Taipei: I-wen, 1970), pp. 603-4, and Td Emmei, Ikkai Tomoyoshi (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1958), pp. 175-81, trans. James Robert Hightower, The Poetry of Too Ch'ien (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), pp. 42-44. 19. See Strickmann, " O n the Alchemy," pp. 159-92, esp. pp. 189-91, on the celebrated toxicity of certain Taoist elixirs and their effect on would-be "immortals" (hsien). 20. Fu Tung-hua, ed., Wang Wei shih (Taipei: Shang-wu, 1964), p. 71; tTans. Burton Watson, Chinese Lyricism, p. 173. Eugene Eoyang discusses this poem in "The Solitary Boat," pp. 601-4. 21. Wai-lim Yip, trans.. Hiding the Universe: Poems by Wang Wei (New York: Grossman, 1972), p. v. The interpolation is Yip's. The mirror as image for the enlightened mind can be seen in Yampolsky, Platform Sutra, p. 132. 22. Both sets of texts are included in Tsuru Hämo, Ö Mei (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1958), pp. 39-66, and in Wai-lim Yip, Hiding the Universe, pp. 92-131; these volumes also present Japanese and English translations, respectively. 23. At the core of these and other policies concerning literature in the Chinese Communist Party lie two divergent views of the relationship between the economic base of society, its physical reality, on the one hand, and society's superstructure on the other. The superstructure in Marxist terms is the values held by people, both individually and collectively, and the institutions that reflect those values. Marxist theoreticians have hypothesized either that values are shaped by social reality, a "deterministic" view, or that if the values of a people are reformed, they will change their society accordingly, a "voluntaristic" view. Mao Tse-tung most frequently subscribed to the latter view; hence his support for revolutionary activity that would bring about rapid social change—and his insistence on the political function of literature. See Donald J. Munro, The Concept of Man in Contemporary China (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1977); Munro, "The Malleability of Man in Chinese Marxism," China Quarterly (1971), 48:609-40; Maurice Meisner, "Marxism and Chinese Values," in The China Difference, ed. Terrill, pp. 99-116, and Meisner, "Harmony and Conflict in the Maoist Utopian Vision," Journal of Chinese Philosophy (1977), 4:247-59. 24. See discussions of semiautobiographical writing in Marxist war literature in Joe C. Huang, Heroes and Villains in Communist China: The Contemporary Chinese Novel as a Reflection of Life (London: Hurst, 1973), pp. 143 ff., and of the role of the writer in Yi-tsi Mei Feuerwerker, Ding Ling's Fiction (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), esp. chapter 3. 25. An intelligent discussion of religious continuities is Sarah Allen, "Shang Foundations of Modem Chinese Folk Religion," in Legend, Lore, and Religion in China, ed. Sarah Allen and Alvin P. Cohen (San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center, 1979), pp. 1-21. A lucid and penetrating exploration of popular beliefs is Laurence G. Thompson, Chinese Religion: An Introduction (3d ed.; Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1979). 26. See Thompson, Chinese Religion, pp. 9 - 1 2 , 26-33, passim.; David Jordan, Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972). 27. I refer to the fourteenth-century tsaTj

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Index

Accounts of a Southern Journey, see Ai Wu Ah Q , 2 5 - 2 6 Ai Wu: traveler in Yunnan and Burma, 2 9 8 - 9 9 ; "southern j o u r n e y " of compared with Shen Ts'ung-wen's, 2 9 9 300, 301-2; stiuggle for survival of, 2 9 9 300; defiant self of, 300, 302; nonromantic account of Burma journey, 3 0 0 1; becomes leftist, 301; as self-righteous commentator, 301; didactic perspective of, 302; self as picaro in fiction of, 302; celebrates revolutionary transformation, 303; works: Accounts of a Southern journey (Nan-hsing chi), 295, 299; " A Lesson in the Philosophy of Life," 2 9 9 - 3 0 2 ; " O n the Pine Hill," 300; Sequel to Southern Journey (Nan-hsing chi hsii-p'ien), 303 Alarum Bell on a Still Night: date, 190; author, 202; compared with The Sobering Stone, 202; description of stories in, 2 0 2 4 Albers, Joseph, 138 Allegory: in "Encountering Sorrow," 84; in wandering immortal poems, 113; tradition of reading works as political, 358; see also "Hi Lili, Hi Li . . . " Archetype of dual harmony, 225 Artist, and universe, 139; Romantic poet in role of, 149 " A u t u m n Night" (by Wang Yun), 44 Awakened from a Dream, 189, 409nl; see also Illusions

Ballad genre, see Yiieh-fu "Ballad of H e a v e n , " see Li Ho Biography: Chinese, 5; of eccentrics by Kung-an writers, 150 A Biography of the Old Drunkard, see Yuan Hung-tao A Biography of the Taoist of the Single Gourd, see Yuan Chung-tao Birch, Cyril, on "Oxcart for D o w r y , " 351 Bishop, John L., on "limitation of psychological analysis" in Chinese fiction, 381, 432n35 Blake, William, 136, 143 Bodmer, Johann, 70 Book of Changes, see I chtng Book of Songs, 71, 78, 85, 91, 95, 144; "Great Preface" to, 126 "Boudoir Regrets" (by Ho Sun), 5 2 - 5 3 Breitinger, Johann, 70 " T h e Bribe," see The Sobering Stone Brower, Robert, on Japanese poetry, 136 Brun, Gerald, on poet as alchemist, 100 The Brush That Serves as Judgment Goat, 190, 201 Buddhism, 9 - 1 0 , 125, 367; C h ' a n , 149; in Illusions, 192; see also Ego; Self Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 135, 136, 149 ' T h e Captain and the Concubine," see The Sobering Stone "Carefree m a n " (shih-shih), 150 " T h e Case of the Dead Infant," 3 7 6 - 8 0

450

Index Cassirer, Ernest, on primitive world view, 99

Revenge of Orphan Chao Chao Yen-i, 321, 322, 323 Chatterton, Thomas, 147 Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 364; see also

263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 275, 276, 277, 382 Chia She, 258, 259, 274, 275 Chia Yu-ts'un, 267, 270, 279 Chia Yun, 255, 256, 260, 280 Chiang Ch'ing, 316, 323 Chiang Hung, 65, 393n45 Chiang Ying-k'o: on poetry and emotions, 136-37; on personality and style, 137-38; works: " C h ' i u c h e n " (Seeking the Real), 141-42; Humorous Histories (Hsieh shih), 149 Chiao-hsing, 267 Chiao Ta, 267, 268, 279 "Ch'iao-ta y i i e h , " 345 Chien-an period, 92, 99 Chien-teng hsin-hua, 193-94 Ch'ien-nii li-hun, 387n27 Chih-yen chai, 256, 417n9 "Childlike m i n d , " 135 Chin-ch'uan-erh, 268, 276, 277 Chin P'mg Met, 203, 252; see also Ch'un-

Uncle Varna " C h e n - c h u n g c h i , " 388^29 Chen Lung-yu, Chou Chi's story on, 197 Chen-niang, 102

mei (Plum Blossom) Chin Sheng-t'an, 17 Ch'in K'o-ch'ing, see Ch'in-shih Ch in O, 106

Chen Shih-hsiang, on time in "Encountering S o r r o w , " 89 Chen Ying-lien, 269

Ch'in-shih, 256, 259, 268, 4 1 7 n l l Ch'in Shu-pao, 22

Cat Country (Mao-ch'eng chi), see Lao She Caves, as seats of nature's power, 133 Chang, Eileen (Chang Ai ling), 26 Chang Feng-i, 153, 155, 156; see also Hungfu chi Chang Hua, 279 C h a n g Liang, 166 Chang Sheng, 19, 366-67; see also "Yingying c h u a n " Chang T'ien-i, 414nl9 Ch'ang O, 106 " C h a o h u n , " see " S u m m o n s of the Soul" Chao Ma-ma, 267, 268 Chao, Orphan, 17-18, 20, 3 6 7 - 7 1 , 375, 376; see also The Rei'enge of Orphan Chao Chao-shih ku-erh ta-pao-ch'ou tsa