Words Well Put
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cesses and failures so that they might examine and rectify themselves.
古有采詩之官。王者所以觀風俗。知得失。自考正也。38
The mechanics of this are explained in the “Economic Treatise”
食貨志 of the same history:
During the first month of spring, when the common folk were about to
disperse [to work the fields], runners would circulate throughout the
roadways, sounding wooden clappers to gather poems. They would then
submit them to the Music Masters who would regularize the keys and have
them played for the emperor. Thus the saying, “The king does not even
peek out his doors or windows, yet he is aware of everything in the world.”
孟春之月。群居者將散。行人振木鐸徇於路。以采詩。獻之大師。比其
音律。以聞於天子。故曰。王者。不窺牖戶而知天下。39
—————
38. Ban, Han shu, juan 30, p. 1708.
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Gleaning the Heart
181
The doctrine of “gathering poems” 采詩 from the people in order to
inform the emperor of the quality of his rule had a profound
influence on concepts of poetry in the Chinese tradition. It is fas-
cinating to see how this doctrine plays out against Meng Qi’s meth-
ods. Instead of runners circulating throughout the streets in search
of oral compositions by the common people, Meng has traveled
the pages of books in search of written texts by and about the offi-
cial class of which he was a member. Instead of Music Masters
regularizing the compositions and having them performed for the
emperor, Meng has edited and categorized the texts for our reading
pleasure. Thus, we are able to observe the “customs” of the literate
class to which he belonged.
The ancient practice of culling texts is found in other prefaces of
the Tang period. Fan Shu, in his colophon to Friendly Debates at
Misty Brook, states that “the Sages selected from among the sayings of village elders; and Confucius collected the airs and ditties of the
myriad states” 野老之言。聖人采擇。孔子聚萬國風謠, saying of
his sources that “I have a great many old books, and, if we go by
their accounts, surely they can shine with an aura of grandeur even
if they may not approach the level of ancient classics” 攄昔籍眾多。
因所聞記。雖未近於丘墳。豈可昭於雅量. 40 In his colophon to
Miscellaneous Records of Cloud-Dwelling Immortals 雲仙雜記, Feng
Zhi 馮贄 claims to have drawn upon his vast library of over two
hundred thousand juan in order to “fashion a separate book from
their essence [literally, ‘fat and marrow’]” 其膏髓別為一書. 41
Though the practice of compiling a collection of excerpts from
other books was not new to the Tang, it does seem to have become a
popular pastime for the literate class of the period.
For Tang collectors, the orally transmitted anecdote attracted
more attention than the written anecdote, as can be seen from the
following quotations from prefaces:
—————
39. Ban, Han shu, juan 24a, p. 1123. Yan Shigu 顏師古 (581–645) glosses the term
“gathering poems” as “to gather poems of resentful criticism” 采取怨刺之詩也,
another indication of the strong association between dissatisfaction and poetry.
40. Huang, Zhongguo lidai xiaoshuo, p. 141.
41. Huang, Zhongguo lidai xiaoshuo, p. 142.
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Gleaning the Heart
Since I was a young child, I have heard many stories about the past. They are not strictly canonical works; so I append them to the end of the
xiaoshuo classification.
余自髫丱之年。便多聞往說。不足備之大典。故系之小說末。42
Now, I have drawn in great detail upon the conversations I had both night and day during that time and recorded them all in no particular order,
entitling the collection A Record of Fine Conversations with His Honor Liu.
I pass it on to fellow enthusiasts as an aid in conversation.
今悉依當時日夕所話而錄之。不復編次。號曰劉公嘉話錄。傳之好事以
為談柄也。43
In his free time he would drift in his boat, passing along things he had heard and writing them down. And thus the collection is called Hearsay Noted.
暇日瀧舟傳其所聞而載之。故曰傳載。44
I remember when I was a young boy repeatedly hearing the high officials
tell stories of our dynasty amongst themselves. Then they would all talk at length about the particularly extraordinary parts. I have taken the vestiges of these stories that must be true and compiled them into a small scroll in my free time, entitling it Miscellaneous Records of Pine View Studio.
浚憶童兒時。即歷聞公卿間敘國朝故事。次兼多語其事特異者。取其必
實之跡。暇日輟成一小軸。題曰松窗雜錄。45
In his preface to Collecting Mr. Liu’s Stories of the Past 次柳氏舊聞, Li Deyu gives a fascinating glimpse into the oral transmission of
these sorts of stories. 46 He states that the stories regarding the reign of Xuanzong in his collection were told to him by his father, Li Jifu
李吉甫, who heard them from his friend, Liu Mien 柳冕, who heard
them from his father, Liu Fang 柳芳, who got them firsthand from
—————
42. Liu Su 劉餗 (fl. 728), preface to Amusing Stories of the Sui and Tang 隋唐嘉話, in Huang, Zhongguo lidai xiaoshuo, p. 93.
43. Wei Xuan 韋絢 (fl. 840), preface to A Record of Fine Conversations with Adviser to the Heir Apparent Liu 劉賓客嘉話錄, in Huang, Zhongguo lidai xiaoshuo, p. 129.
44. Preface to Hearsay Noted from the Great Tang Dynasty 大唐傳載, in Huang, Zhongguo lidai xiaoshuo, p. 132.
45. Li Jun 李濬, preface to Miscellaneous Records of Pine View Studio 松窗雜錄, in Huang, Zhongguo lidai xiaoshuo, p. 139.
46. Huang, Zhongguo lidai xiaoshuo, p. 115.
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Gleaning the Heart
183
the eunuch favorite of Xuanzong himself, Gao Lishi 高力士—
truly a case of hearing something from “a friend of a friend of a
friend.”
These prefaces consistently depict members of the official class
telling stories to each other as a form of amusement in their free
time, constituting an oral literature that has received scant scholarly
attention due to its ephemeral nature. Coupled with this is the
practice of writing these stories down at one’s leisure as a form of
amusement in itself. Wei Xuan’s preface makes explicit the expec-
tation that the conversations he records will become fodder for
further conversation: “I pass it on to fellow enthusiasts as an aid in
conversation.” It soon becomes clear that it is a misguided task to
attempt to draw a clear distinction between the orally transmitted
anecdote and the textually transmitted anecdote, since any given
story likely existed in both forms at so
me point in time.
What does this mean for Meng Qi and Storied Poems? There is
only one entry (1.8) in which Meng explicitly states that he is re-
cording an eyewitness account that was told to him. There are many entries that seem to be derived from textual sources; there are others
for which provenance remains unclear. The background for all of
these entries, however, is a rich complex of casual storytelling and recording. When Meng Qi came to compile his collection, he surely
drew on his memory of stories both read and heard. The complexity
of his sources is mirrored within the text of the anecdotes them-
selves, which contain poems written and sung, read and heard.
Meng Qi names his collection Benshi shi 本事詩. The term benshi 本事 literally means “based in events” in its verbal form and “originative events” in its nominal form. Thus the collection might
be called Poems Born of Events, connoting that each poem included in the collection has some sort of background story, a series of
events that led up to a particular instance of poetic production/
performance and its subsequent reception/appreciation. These
events are related in the form of a story, and because many of the
poems in the collection are quite well known, it seemed appropriate
to render the title as Storied Poems in English. There is an early usage of the term benshi in a discussion of the Zuo Tradition in the
“Bibliographic Treatise” of the Han History:
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Gleaning the Heart
The disciples [of Confucius] each withdrew and spoke [of their Master’s
words] differently. [Zuo] Qiuming feared that they would become com-
placent in their own understanding and lose sight of the truth. So he examined the originative events [behind the Master’s words] and composed
the Tradition in order to show clearly that the Master did not use groundless words in uttering the Classic [of Springs and Autumns].
弟子退而異言。丘明恐弟子各安其意。以失其真。故論本事而作傳。明
夫子不以空言說經也。47
This passage is a reference to the belief that Zuo Qiuming (or Zuo-
qiu Ming) wrote the Zuo Tradition as a supplement to the Springs and Autumns by Confucius, providing background stories in narrative form to fill out the laconic words of the chronicle. In addition
to its emphasis on the truth, this early usage is also important be-
cause it identifies the term benshi with historical narrative, the form underlying the anecdotes of Storied Poems. It also sets up the relationship between a core text (a classic or a poem) and a supple-
mentary text (a historical narrative or an anecdote) that may be used
to elucidate and stabilize the interpretation of the core text, which is in danger of being misunderstood or misrepresented. In essence, the
benshi or “originative events” convey the material context of an utterance to provide a privileged mode of interpreting and fixing the
meaning of that utterance.
Meng Qi then goes on to explain the division of his collection
into “seven headings akin to the Four Beginnings,” returning to his
metatext, the “Great Preface,” which closes by defining the four
sections of the Classic of Poetry (“Airs” 風, “Greater Odes” 大雅,
“Lesser Odes” 小雅, “Hymns” 頌) and terms them “the Four Be-
ginnings; they are the apex of the Poems” 是謂四始。詩之至也. 48
This concept of the Four Beginnings has absolutely nothing to do
with Meng Qi’s “seven headings,” which describe the circumstances
that prompted poetic production, the deportment of the poet, the
emotional quality of the poem, the conditions under which the
poem was produced or received, the poem’s function, and so on.
Furthermore, his headings are devoid of the overarching moral or
—————
47. Ban, Han shu, juan 30, p. 1715.
48. Ruan Yuan, Shisan jing, vol. 1, p. 272c.
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Gleaning the Heart
185
political connotations attributed to the Four Beginnings. Meng Qi is
simply trying to pull the mantle of tradition over his work by
forging another link (albeit a tenuous one) with the canonical
“Great Preface.” One must look elsewhere to discern the prove-
nance of his headings.
Storied
Poems belongs to a lineage, stretching back to the Western
Han, of works that may be called “anecdotal collections” 故事集,
and which often have categorized contents. The exemplars of such
collections are New Narratives 新序 and Garden of Stories 說苑, both compiled by the great classical scholar and bibliographer Liu Xiang
劉向 (ca. 77–6 b.c.e.). The first of these works corrals notable his-
torical anecdotes from the pre-Qin and Han periods under the
headings “Miscellaneous Incidents” 雜事, “Criticisms of Extrava-
gance” 刺奢, “Men of Integrity” 節士, and “Excellent Strategies”
善謀. The second work collects similar material, and employs a
more ambitious classificatory scheme:
Kingly Way 君道
Excellent Persuasions 善說
Courtier’s Skill 臣術
Executing Orders 奉使
Laying Foundations 建本
Stratagems 權謀
Establishing Integrity 立節
Perfect Fairness 至公
Cherishing Virtue 貴德
Martial Guidance 指武
Repaying Kindness 復恩
Erudition 談叢
Principles of Rule 政理
Miscellany 雜言
Esteeming Worthies 尊賢
Analysis of Things 辨物
Remonstrance of Rule 政諫
Refining Statutes 修文
Respectful and Prudent 敬慎
Returning to Substance 反質
Judging from the headings and contents of these collections, Liu
Xiang intended them to be repositories of exemplary behavior (of
both the ruler and the ruled) to be used for the moral edification
of the reader. His most famous work of this type is Biographies of
Virtuous Women 列女傳, which contains the stories of exemplary
women in history, divided into seven categories pertaining to
womanly virtue, such as “Maternal Conduct” 母儀 and “Chastity”
貞順. Such textbooks of proper conduct satisfied the ruler’s need for
criteria to “evaluate the personality” 人物品評 of his subjects.
The disintegration of the Han dynasty and mass migrations to the
“uncivilized” southlands in the early fourth century loosened the
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Gleaning the Heart
hold that Confucian mores had on elite society and wrought great
changes in Chinese culture, which was not without implications for
the tradition of the anecdotal collection. Liu Xiang’s examples of
staid behavior based on Confucian precepts of morality were joined
by relatively outlandish examples of strange and spontaneous con-
duct among reclusive
members of the elite who devoted themselves
to the “natural” 自然 and engaged in abstruse causerie known as
“pure talk” 清談. The anecdotal collection that incorporates exam-
ples of this “new” type of behavior is Liu Yiqing’s Topical Tales: A New Edition (discussed in the previous chapter). Not only is the content of this collection less orthodox, but its purpose is as well. As Richard Mather, who has translated the work in its entirety, says, “It
was partly an aid to conversation, and certainly one of its aims was
to provide enjoyable reading.” 49 Many aspects of Topical Tales help explain how a collection such as Storied Poems took shape, so I will digress here to examine its organization in more detail.
In similar fashion to Liu Xiang’s anecdotal collections of centu-
ries earlier, Topical Tales is divided into 36 categories, which have been translated by Mather as follows:
Virtuous Conduct 德行
Worthy Beauties 賢媛
Speech and Conversation 言語
Technical Understanding 術解
Affairs of State 政事
Skill and Art 巧藝
Letters and Scholarship 文學
Favors and Gifts 寵禮
The Square and the Proper 方正
The Free and Unrestrained 任誕
Cultivated Tolerance 雅量
Rudeness and Contempt 簡傲
Insight and Judgment 識鑒
Taunting and Teasing 排調
Appreciation and Praise 賞譽
Contempt and Insults 輕詆
Classification Acc. to Excellence
Guile and Chicanery 假譎
品藻
Admonitions and Warnings 規箴
Dismissal from Office 黜免
Quick Perception 捷悟
Stinginess and Meanness 儉嗇
Precocious Intelligence 夙惠
Extravagance and Ostentation
汰侈
Virile Vigor 豪爽
Anger and Irascibility 忿狷
Appearance and Behavior 容止
Slander and Treachery 讒險
—————
49. Mather, Tales of the World, p. xiv.
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Gleaning the Heart
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Self-renewal 自新
Blameworthiness and Remorse