Words Well Put

by Graham Sanders

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  Playing the Game

  for the game.” 40 People negotiate their way through life with practices that have been inculcated in them by virtue of growing up and

  participating in a particular habitus. These practices happen in time

  and it is a “practical sense” or “practical logic” that allows one to

  improvise with them in order to be socially competent. In the

  rarefied world of Topical Tales, having a “feel” for poetic quotation and composition is necessary to successfully navigate the often

  unpredictable waters of elite society.

  III

  The ability to utter poetry—either as citation or as production—is

  only one half of poetic competence. The other half consists of the

  ability to judge and appreciate the poetry and poetic performance of

  others. This skill is so important that it is explicitly taught to chil-

  dren at a young age. Once again, it is Xie An who is depicted in-

  culcating literary appreciation in the younger generation:

  When all the younger members of his family were gathered together,

  Master Xie An asked them what they thought were the most exquisite lines in the Mao version of the Poems. Xie Xuan put forward,

  Long ago, when we marched,

  the willows were luxuriant;

  now when we come back,

  the falling snow is thick. 41

  Master Xie said,

  With great schemes he stabilizes his heavenly appointment,

  with far-reaching plans he makes timely announcements. 42

  He declared that these lines especially capture the profound expression of the cultured man. (4.52)

  —————

  40. Discussed by Bourdieu in Outline of a Theory of Practice (p. 8) and Other Words (p. 61).

  41. Quoted from “Gather the Wei” 采薇 (Mao #167). Karlgren, Book of Odes, p. 112.

  42. Quoted from “Dignified” 抑 (Mao #256). Karlgren, Book of Odes, p. 217.

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  141

  謝公因子弟集聚。問毛詩何句最佳。遏稱曰。

  昔我往矣

  楊柳依依

  今我來思

  雨雪霏霏

  公曰。

  訏謨定命

  遠猷辰告

  謂此句偏有雅人深致。

  When Xie poses his question to the “younger members” of his

  family, he already assumes that they have the entire corpus of the

  Poems memorized. Intimate knowledge of canonical texts is a nec-

  essary condition for poetic competence, but insufficient in and of

  itself. What one does with such knowledge is the means of constituting competence. Xie’s question presupposes that the children are

  not passive receptacles of the Poems, but have thought about them long enough to exercise their judgment in choosing what they feel

  to be the “exquisite lines.” The term “exquisite” ( jia 佳), as in “exquisite couplet” ( jiaju 佳句), usually connotes the brilliance or splendor of a finely wrought image, a judgment made on purely

  aesthetic grounds. Xie An’s nephew Xuan seems to make his choice

  accordingly, picking out a pair of couplets that use the transition

  from an image of luxuriant willows to thickly falling snow in order

  to indicate the passage of time spent by troops guarding the frontiers

  against barbarian threats in the time of King Wen. The imagery is

  arresting, with its contrast between the inherent qualities of green

  leaves and white snow, captured by binomes peculiar to the Poems.

  These naturally occurring phenomena take on a human poignancy

  when they are juxtaposed in the context of soldiers marking the

  time spent away from home.

  However, such a finely wrought image, even with its sentimental

  overtones, is apparently not what Xie An was looking for when

  he posed his question to the youngsters. He vetoes his nephew’s

  choice, replacing it with his own: “With great schemes he stabilizes

  his heavenly appointment, / with far-reaching plans he makes

  timely announcements.” This is a very different type of passage; not

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  an image at all, it is a declaration couched in high-flown rhetoric

  regarding the qualities demanded of a great ruler. According to the

  Mao preface, it is part of a speech made by Duke Wu of Wei to the

  wayward King Li of Zhou, entreating him to see the error of his

  ways and to live up to the ideal of a good king. Xie An declares that

  these lines “especially capture the profound thoughts of the cultured

  man,” his superlatives leaving no room for dispute as to the quality

  of the passage.

  It is obvious that Xie An and his nephew are employing different

  criteria in determining what they feel to be the “finest” passage from

  the Poems. The nephew has chosen his passage on the grounds of its aesthetic (and perhaps sentimental) appeal, while the uncle has made

  his choice on what may be called moral rather than aesthetic

  grounds. For Xie An, the who, where, when, and why of the

  passage—that is, the social context of its putative point of origin—

  matter just as much as what the passage says or how it says it. His

  nephew’s choice may be aesthetically appealing, but, as it articulates

  the words of soldiers on a campaign, it is morally incompatible with

  the “profound thoughts of the cultured man.” The “cultured man”

  will recognize and appreciate the poetry of other cultivated men; the

  lofty words of a morally upright duke qualify as “exquisite” in Xie

  An’s book, while the plaint of a lowly soldier—however gracefully

  put—does not. 43

  It does matter who is right in this difference of opinion between

  uncle and nephew—we are surely meant to agree with Xie An’s

  trumping of his nephew’s naïve choice with a morally superior se-

  lection. What matters even more, however, is that there is room for

  such a debate at all, which indicates an increasing flexibility in the

  notion of poetic competence during the period of disunion fol-

  lowing the Han. This flexibility emerges from a recognition that a

  poem may be appreciated for the beauty and power of its language

  —————

  43. There is a pun in Xie An’s declaration: the phrase “cultured man” ( yaren 雅人) contains the same word used to designate the section of the Poems from which Xie’s selection is drawn—the “Greater Odes,” sometimes translated as the

  “Greater Elegantiae” (Daya 大雅).

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  143

  without constant recourse to moral didacticism. 44 It may be significant here that a younger member of Xie’s family is able to admit

  this more readily than Xie An himself, who occupies the position of

  “master” interpreter.

  There are numerous other examples of such aesthetic apprecia-

  tion to be found in Topical Tales. In one anecdote, a guest at X
ie An’s house—always a popular spot for literary appreciation, it

  seems—volunteers his favorite lines from the Lyrics of Chu:

  Wang Huzhi was seated among Master Xie An’s guests, when he chanted

  the following:

  Without a word he came in to me without a word he left me:

  He rode off on the whirlwind with cloud-banners flying. 45

  He said to everyone else, “At that point I feel as though I am seated all alone with no one else around.” (13.12)

  王司州在謝公坐。詠。

  入不言兮出不辭

  乘回風兮載雲旗

  語人云。當爾時。覺一坐無人。

  The focus of this narrative—found in Chapter 22, “Virile Vigor”

  豪爽—is on the emotional reaction Wang Huzhi has to a particular

  passage in the Lyrics of Chu. He does not discuss any religious, philosophical, or political content to be found in “The Lesser

  Master of Fate.” The only reason Wang brings up the passage at all is

  to tell others how its language makes him feel, not what it makes him think. His statement that it makes him “feel as though I am

  seated all alone with no one else around” suggests that the Lyrics of Chu is a text normally chanted in the company of others—for collective appreciation of both the text itself and the quality with

  —————

  44. Later traditional readers side with the nephew, Xie Xuan, over Xie An. The most famous is Wang Shizhen 王士禛 (1634–1711) who, in his Random Notes by an Antiquated Man in his Pavilion 古夫于亭雜錄 ( juan. 2), says, “I think that what Xie Xuan and Yan Zhitui said is right. As for Grand Mentor Xie An’s ‘profound thoughts of the cultured man,’ I just do not understand what he means by that in the end.” (Cited by Yu Jiaxi in his comments on this entry.)

  45. From “Lesser Master of Fate” 少司命, one of the “Nine Songs” 九歌 of the

  Lyrics of Chu. See Hawkes, Songs of the South, p. 111.

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  which it is chanted. Wang’s assertion that the affective quality of the

  text makes him forget that he is performing it for others evokes a

  moment of transcendent ecstasy. His appreciation—felt physically

  rather than explained verbally—comes closer to recuperating the

  text’s putative origins in shamanistic trance ritual than any discur-

  sive commentary. Of course, while Wang may feel alone in his

  moment of appreciation, he immediately emerges from it and re-

  marks on it “to everyone else.” At some level, Wang must remain

  conscious of the members of his audience if he is to tell them that he

  has forgotten about them. In effect, what he is performing for the

  judgment of others is not a poem so much as the act of appreciating

  a poem, of becoming lost in a poem.

  Acts of appreciating cultural competence in others are deemed

  just as valuable by the Topical Tales as are demonstrations of such competence. The fourth chapter alone, “Letters and Scholarship,”

  records no fewer than twenty acts of appreciation of the different

  skills that constitute cultural competence. Kang Sengyuan, the

  monk who used a poem to rebut insults regarding his facial features,

  is praised for his facility in the recondite form of “pure conversa-

  tion” 清談 (4.47). A religious debate is admired for the verbal py-

  rotechnics displayed by its participants; the audience “without ex-

  ception clapped and danced” in appreciation and “each and every

  one sighed over the eloquence of the two men’s arguments, not even

  discerning whether there was any logic to them” 眾不莫不抃舞。 但

  嗟詠二家之美。不辯其理之所在 (4.40). Men of culture are often

  classified as competent in either oral or written discourse, scoring

  victories in the arena that suits their skill the best (4.70, 73). In one anecdote an impressive display of impromptu composition is held

  up as having some compensatory value for a defeat in the arena of

  politics because it “won a verbal advantage” (literally, “won advan-

  tage through the teeth and tongue” 齒舌間得利) (4.96). The judg-

  ment of a man with an established literary reputation is deemed

  worthy of preservation in itself: Sun Chuo’s opinions on the writ-

  ings of Pan Yue, Lu Ji, and Cao Pi are carefully noted (4.84, 93), just

  as his own works are held up for praise (4.78). Topical Tales even addresses how a literary reputation can be manufactured by asking

  the right person to publicly appreciate your work (4.68, 79).

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  145

  The role of collections such as Topical Tales in illustrating cultural competence for an extended audience is mirrored in a discussion of a

  popular collection of the day, Forest of Conversations 語林, which

  “spread far and near to such a great extent that every single young

  person current with such things had made his own copy and passed

  it along” 大為遠近所傳。時流年少。無不傳寫。各有一通 (4.90).

  There are repeated examples of praise for a person’s ability to rap-

  idly produce or emend a literary work “off the cuff” (4.92, 95, 103). A

  poem can be appreciated under a variety of circumstances: Wang Ji

  is so moved by a mourning poem by a recently widowed friend that

  he says, “I cannot tell whether the text is born of the emotions or

  the emotions of the text, but when I read it over it leaves me in

  sorrow as it enhances the gravity of the marriage bond” 未知文生於

  情。情生於文。覽之悽然。 增伉儷之重 (4.72); Huan Yin shows his

  admiration for Yang Fu’s “Ode to Snow” 雪贊 by inscribing it on

  his fan (4.100); Wang Gong picks his favorite line from the “Nine-

  teen Old Poems” 古詩十九首 while under the influence of drugs

  (4.101). There is even an acknowledgment that one can appreciate

  the literary work of a man one might find distasteful in other ways.

  Ruan Fu praises a poem by Guo Pu, saying, “It has a deep majesty

  and chilly desolation that I truly cannot put it into words. Every

  time I read these words I always feel my spirit soaring and my body

  transcendent” 泓崢蕭瑟。 實不可言。 每讀此文。輒覺神超形越

  (4.76). In Liu Jun’s commentary on this entry, he quotes An Inde-

  pendent Account of Guo Pu 郭璞別傳, which states that Guo Pu

  had a speech impediment and rushed his intonation so that ordinary people thought nothing special of him. Moreover, he did not hold to the rules of etiquette, his frame was wracked; he was wanton, insulting, and shiftless.

  From time to time he would lapse into bouts of drunkenness and gluttony.

  (4.76n)

  訥於言。造次詠語。常人無異。又不持儀檢。形質穨索。縱情嫚惰。時

  有醉飽之失。

  This is an important acknowledgment that the link between the

  quality of the work and the quality of the man may be more com-

  plicated than is suggested in pre-Qin and Han thought, that it may

  require a refined sensibility to distinguish fine work from what, on

  the face of it, appears to be a questionable source.
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  In some cases the literary work or performance that is being

  appreciated is not even quoted or depicted—the anecdote exists

  solely to record the appreciation. In the many anecdotes that narrate

  both a performance of cultural competence and an appreciation

  of it, however, it becomes difficult to determine whether it is

  the performance or its appreciation that is the raison d’être for the

  narrative. The answer is that both are essential. Appreciation is the

  flip side of performance. People perform for the appreciation of

  others; the judgment encoded in an appreciation is what measures

  and thereby establishes the competence of the performer. But the

  judge must be competent too, if his or her appreciation is to carry

  any weight. There is room for a difference of opinion, but some

  people’s opinions matter more than others. The note regarding Guo

  Pu quoted above indicates that “ordinary people thought nothing

  special of him,” implying that only those with an extraordinary

  sagacity could appreciate his work. The anecdote regarding the re-

  ception of Poetic Expositions on the Three Capitals 三都賦 by Zuo Si 左思 (ca. 253–ca. 307) states that when Zuo first completed them

  (after a reputed ten years of gestation), “his contemporaries all

  mocked and criticized them together” 時人互有譏訾, but that

  Zhang Hua recognized their true value and suggested that Zuo

  “should put them under the auspices of a gentleman with a lofty

  reputation” 宜以經高名之士. Zuo Si enlisted the aid of Huangfu

  Mi, who wrote a preface for them, after which “every single one of

  those people who had denigrated them previously all drew their la-

  pels together to salute them and passed them along” 於是先相

  非貳者。漠不斂衽讚述焉 (4.68). Both Zhang Hua 張華 (232–

  300), author of the encyclopedic Records of Extensive Matters 博物志, and Huangfu Mi 皇甫彌 (215–82), author of several collections of