Words Well Put
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suages regarding his source material. Do the anecdotes of a collec-
tion such as Storied Poems have any basis in fact? How did the compilers view their materials? There are at least eleven anecdotal
—————
5. See Collected Notes from the ‘Humble Abode’ Mountain Retreat 少室山房筆叢, where Hu Yinglin claims that Storied Poems does not really belong to the classification of “remarks on poetry” 詩話 or of “literary criticism” 文評, but to xiaoshuo 小說—a term with a long and complicated history that may be rendered as “trivial stories,” and which had a distinct connotation of “fictional stories” by Hu’s time.
For a translation and analysis of the relevant passages, see Laura Hua Wu’s “From Xiaoshuo to Fiction,” pp. 339–71.
6. See preface to juan 195 on “criticism of poetry and prose” 詩文評 of the Annotated Full List of the Complete Library of Four Branches of Books, which states that Storied Poems “ranges widely to collect background details” 旁採故實.
7. See Figure 2 in the Appendix for a diagram reconstructing the compilation and transmission of Storied Poems.
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Gleaning the Heart
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collections that Storied Poems has demonstrably drawn upon for
its anecdotes (see Table 1 in the Appendix). By using this data in
conjunction with a critical reading of extant prefaces to these col-
lections, it is possible to shed some light on the narrative practice
behind the production of anecdotal collections in the Tang.
From the data in Table 1 we can see that compilers of these an-
ecdotal collections spanned the range of official posts, from the
powerful military commissioner 節度使 and prefect 刺史 to the
lowly retainer 從事官, and that Fan Shu 范攄 remained outside of
officialdom altogether as a “recluse” 處士. Both Liu Su 劉肅 and Li
Kang 李伉 compiled their collections after withdrawing from offi-
cial duties, as was the case with Meng Qi. There is no discernible
pattern in location either, with postings both in the capital and in
outlying regions, and frequent transfers between the two—hardly
surprising given the mobility of officials during this time. There
does seem to be a preponderance of officials who managed docu-
ments of one kind or another, whether as editors in the palace li-
brary 校書郎, right rectifiers of omissions 右補闕 involved in
compiling history (修國史/史館), or scholars of the Hanlin Acad-
emy 翰林學士.
There are many interesting links between the collections them-
selves. At least four (and probably more) quote other collections on
the list, with Liu Su’s 劉餗 Amusing Stories of the Sui and Tang 隋唐
嘉話 being a favorite source. Many of these works also quote col-
lections that do not appear on this list (and we should keep in mind
that all of these works were used as sources for Storied Poems). As with Storied Poems, at least five collections were used as sources for orthodox histories such as the Old and New Tang History and Sima Guang’s 司馬光 (1019–1086) Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government 資治通鑒.
The men who compiled the collections have interesting connec-
tions as well. Liu Su was the son of the famed historiographer Liu
Zhiji (and, incidentally, was highly commended in his duties by
Han Huang 韓滉, who appears in entry 1.7 of Storied Poems). The
administration of Li Deyu 李德裕 (787–849), a principal in the
notorious Niu-Li factional struggles, once included Duan Chengshi
段成式 and Wei Xuan 韋絢, who compiled Miscellaneous Offerings
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Gleaning the Heart
from Youyang 酉陽雜俎 and A Record of Fine Conversations with
Adviser to the Heir Apparent Liu 劉賓客嘉話錄, respectively. Li was
also a friend and mentor of Lu Zhao 盧肇, compiler of Remnants
of History 逸史. Li Deyu seems to be associated with much story-
telling; even his nemesis, Niu Sengru 牛僧孺 (779–847), is credited
with a collection of classical tales called Record of the Mysterious and Weird 玄怪錄. Finally, we might note that Li Jun 李濬, compiler of
Miscellaneous Records of Pine View Studio 松窗雜錄, was the son of
Li Shen 李紳, who appears in entries 1.9a and 1.10 of Storied Poems.
All of these intertextual and interpersonal links between various
anecdotal collections and their respective compilers (who were
particularly active in the ninth century, judging from this list), attest to a loose but energetic network of officials often associated with
historiography and other forms of document production who en-
joyed collecting and swapping stories with one another, either by
word of mouth or through textual citation.
Certainly gossip and casual storytelling among groups of people
are constants across cultures. But why did members of the Tang
official class compile these sorts of anecdotes so assiduously? Robert
Campany provides a model of the motivations behind these collec-
tions, summing up the nature of Six Dynasties and Tang “anomaly
accounts” ( zhiguai 志怪) as “a casting of familiar nets of historical, geographical, and biographical writing over an ever more demarcated, isolated, and articulated domain of objects that shared the
fundamental taxonomic marker of being anomalous.” 8 In the collections I am discussing here, the “fundamental taxonomic marker”
seems to be, in the words of Li Jun, the “particularly extraordinary”
特異 things that happen to or are done by members of the official
class or the royalty they serve.
The casual context in which these anecdotes were told, heard,
retold, written down, and read frees them somewhat from the
burden carried by more orthodox forms of writing, which are ex-
pected to convey messages of moral significance. Often it appears
that simply being a “good story” is enough to warrant preservation
—————
8. Campany, “Chinese Accounts of the Strange,” vol. 1, p. 158.
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Gleaning the Heart
163
in an anecdotal collection. At the end of entry 1.8 in Storied Poems, Meng Qi tells us how he came to hear the story he has related:
I had just finished my assignment in Wuzhou, where there was an “old
general” from Daliang named Zhao Wei who was serving as a prefect in
Lingwai. He was almost ninety years old, but his hearing and eyesight were still good. When he was passing through Wuzhou, he talked [with me]
about past events in Daliang and recounted them in an engaging manner.
He said that he had witnessed the entire story with his own eyes, and so I have recorded it here.
余罷梧州。有大梁夙將趙唯。為嶺外刺史。年將九十矣。耳目不衰。過
梧州。言大梁往事。述之可聽。云此皆目擊之故。因錄於此也。
Meng relates the story to us simply because he finds it “engaging”
可聽. There is no high-minded appeal to patterns of morality in-
; herent in human behavior, such as we find in official historiography
(and as is so evident in Sima Qian’s closing judgments). What does
remain is historiography’s concern for the truth: Meng is careful to
tell us that Zhao Wei’s sensory faculties are reliable and that he was
an eyewitness to the events in the account.
Insistence on the “truth” 實 is echoed in the prefaces of many
anecdotal collections in the Tang. We have already seen that Meng
Qi claims to have omitted anything of “doubtful veracity” 疑非
是實 in his anecdotes. Li Jun claims to be giving us accounts that
“must be true” 必實. Li Deyu, in a wonderful example of blatant
hypocrisy, quotes the following assertion about one of his sources:
“He witnessed it all firsthand, and it is not derived from hearsay; it is credible and proven by evidence, and so it may constitute a veritable
record” 彼皆目睹。非出傳聞。信而有徵。可為實錄. 9 This is the
same man who, for the bulk of his collection, claims to have drawn
upon hearsay—passed through no fewer than three intermediaries—
about Xuanzong’s reign. The dissonance between Li’s two state-
ments may provide us with a clue about attitudes toward the ve-
racity of these accounts.
—————
9. See the preface to Collecting Mr. Liu’s Stories of the Past, in Huang, Zhongguo lidai xiaoshuo, p. 115.
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Gleaning the Heart
When Li Deyu, Meng Qi, Li Jun, and others make claims for
veracity in their collections, they do so in their prefaces: the very
arena in which one draws upon canonical precepts in order to bol-
ster the “acceptability” of one’s work. They must say that their narratives are true accounts of the world—to do otherwise would
disqualify their texts from being considered worthy of preservation
or transmission, and would brand the compilers as frivolous men
for attempting to transmit them. Whether anyone really believes
these stories to be true is irrelevant; they are to be taken as true.
The pleasure of reading (or hearing) stories about other people
like oneself lies in believing that they are entirely true despite
knowing that the account is likely a mixture of truth, half truth, and outright fiction. It is precisely this quality of verisimilitude that
makes the story “engaging.” In this way, the anecdotes of a collec-
tion such as Storied Poems are very much like gossip and urban myth.
The line between truth and fiction is never easily drawn in these
cases (for that would destroy the pleasure of the story). This might
explain why five of these collections appear as “unclassified biog-
raphies and history” 雜傳記/雜史 in the New Tang History, while
the other six find their way into the xiaoshuo category reserved for accounts of questionable veracity. The anecdotal collection resides
in a liminal zone of belief, bleeding over the border between fact and
fiction.
Thus the narratives of Storied Poems cannot serve as reliable accounts of poetic praxis in the Tang. Yet, we should proceed in
reading these stories, for they can tell us about something more than
historical fact. Just as gossip expresses a desire to erode the status of the person being maligned, just as urban myth expresses an anxiety
about wilderness invading civilization, so too do these stories have
something to teach about the desires and anxieties surrounding po-
etry in Tang China. Conceptions of poetic competence in the Tang
are more complex and varied than those found in the texts of pre-
ceding ages—a broad cross section of those conceptions is played out
in the anecdotes of Storied Poems. Meng Qi’s preface to the collection, completed in 886, is a fascinating discursive attempt to orga-
nize these anecdotes and to find them a proper place in the tradition
from which they emerge.
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Gleaning the Heart
165
III
The preface to Storied Poems is important not only as a statement of Meng Qi’s motives and methods in compiling his collection, but
also as a form of literary criticism that influenced the compilation of
later collections. In reading it, one can gain a sense of how he re-
garded the interaction between poetic utterance, the written text
that records it, and the world inhabited by both. By means of his
preface, Meng Qi positions his collection in a discursive field de-
fined by canonical statements on poetry and narrative as well as by
received poems and narratives themselves, including those found in
the Zuo Tradition, official histories, and Topical Tales. In what follows, I quote a short passage from the preface and then compare it
with the critical tradition upon which it draws and with other
prefaces from anecdotal collections in the Tang, in an attempt to
delineate the position Meng Qi seeks for his collection.
________________________
詩者。情動於中而形於言
A poem results when feelings are stirred within and
they take on outward form in spoken words.
________________________
In quoting the “Great Preface” to open his preface, Meng Qi im-
plicitly aligns his work with the most orthodox of statements re-
garding classical shi poetry and seeks protection from accusations of frivolity by donning the mantle of the Confucian canon. The practice of appealing to canonical sources is de rigueur in prefaces. In his preface to Topical Tales: A New Edition for the Great Tang Dynasty
大唐世說新語, 10 Liu Su 劉肅 (fl. 820) refers to the invention of writing itself by the legendary founder of Chinese civilization, Bao
Xi 庖犧 (also known as Fu Xi 伏羲), as well as to the canonical
works the Classic of Documents 書經 and the Spring and Autumn Annals 春秋 (Huang, p. 105). Fan Shu 范攄 (fl. 870), in his colophon
—————
10. This book is also known by its shorter title, Novel Discussions of the Great Tang Dynasty 大唐新語.
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Gleaning the Heart
to Friendly Debates at Misty Brook 雲溪友議, invokes the canon by
saying that “Confucius collected the airs and ditties of the myriad
states [in the Poems] in order to complete his Spring and Autumn Annals” 孔子聚萬國風謠。以成其春秋也. He follows this with a
citation from the “Call to Learning” 勸學 chapter of Xunzi to justify his inclusion of noncanonical materials: “The rivers and oceans do
not turn back the tiny rivulets and so are able to grow great
by them” 江海不卻細流。故能為之大. 11 Duan Chengshi 段成式
(d. 863) tries to deflect criticism of his unorthodox Miscellaneous Offerings from Yuyang 酉陽雜俎 by claiming that the Classic of
Changes 易經 “approaches matters of the strange” 近於怪也, and
that the use of the “affective image of the Southern Sieve constella-
tion by the poets [of the Poems to suggest slander] approach
es jesting” 詩人南箕之興。近乎戲也, so that the strange matters and
jesting in his humble collection should prove “no threat to the
Tradition.” 12 Some compilers justify the frivolousness of their collections by citing a statement attributed to Confucius’s disciple
Zixia: “Even in lesser pursuits, there is always something worthy of
regard” 雖小道。必有可觀者焉. 13 Ban Gu quotes this passage (erroneously attributing it to Confucius) in the “Bibliographic Trea-
tise” of the Han History to justify his inclusion of a xiaoshuo category; so it is only natural that it should continue to appear in
connection with unorthodox narratives.
Meng Qi does not adopt the apologetic tone of the compilers
mentioned above, who attempt to justify their swerve away from
tradition by quoting the tradition itself. He is collecting instances of classical poetry ( shi 詩), which, unlike the casual narratives collected
—————
11. Huang, Zhongguo lidai xiaoshuo, p. 141.
12. Huang, Zhongguo lidai xiaoshuo, p. 121. The Southern Sieve constellation (which contains four stars in Sagittarius) has a narrow “heel” and a wide “mouth,”
making it an appropriate figure for slander.
13. This passage ( Analects 19.4) is paraphrased by Liu Su, both in his preface mentioned above and in the anonymous preface to Hearsay Noted from the Great Tang Dynasty 大唐傳載 (Huang, Zhongguo lidai xiaoshuo, p. 132). They both omit the conclusion to the passage: “but one risks getting bogged down if they are carried too far; so the superior man does not engage in them” 致遠恐泥。是以君
子不為也 .
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Gleaning the Heart
167
by the other compilers, belong squarely in the orthodox tradition of
literary expression. The very title of Meng’s collection, Storied
Poems 本事詩, with the word “poem” placed after the modifiers,
indicates that he is compiling poems that have stories attached to
them rather than stories that happen to have poems in them. 14 Thus, Meng is able to open his preface by simply quoting from the “Great