The Poetics of Sovereignty
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家，必有餘殃. See Zhou yi zhengyi, 1.7a, in Shisanjing zhushu, p. 19.
143. “With robes hanging slack” is an allusion to the wuwei ideal, as articulated in the
“Commentary on Appended Phrases”: “The Yellow Thearch, Yao, and Shun let their
robes hang slack, and their empires were ordered” 黃帝、堯、舜垂衣裳而天下治. See
Zhou yi zhengyi, 8.75a, in Shisanjing zhushu, p. 87.
144. The description of the ruler upright with hands folded evokes his ritual rectitude.
Compare this with the Analects passage in which Confucius says, “If his [the sovereign’s]
person is rectified, he need not give orders but they will be carried out; if his person is not rectified, although he gives orders, they will not be carried out” 其身正，不令而行；其
身不正，雖令不行. See Lunyu 13.6 / Lunyu jishi, 26.901. The standardization of the vehicle axle-lengths and writing script was one of the first acts of Qin Shihuang after the establishment of empire. See Shi ji, 6.239.
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The Writing of Imperial Poetry in Medieval China
At Boshui, I tour bygone traces,
白水巡前跡，145
At Danling, I visit old palaces.
丹陵幸舊宮。146
On rows of mats I celebrate the elders,
列筵歡故老，
For the high feast, I assemble all at Xinfeng.
高宴聚新豐。147
At station stops, I console farming folk,
駐蹕撫田畯，148
Turning the carriage, I call on shepherd youths.
回輿訪牧童。
Auspicious effluvia encircle the scarlet gate towers,
瑞氣縈丹闕，
Favorable vapors scatter across the azure void.
祥煙散碧空。
The lone islet is enveloped by the white of frost,
孤嶼含霜白，
The far mountains are girded by the red of the sun.
遙山帶日紅。
In the midst of this, I joyfully strike the zither,
於焉歡擊筑，
And for the moment, sing “South Wind.”
聊以詠南風。149
The second poem begins with Taizong employing poetic commonplaces
that evoke displacement and homesickness. Again, he is consciously echo-
ing Han Gaozu, who, after having become emperor, returned to Pei with
longing for the home where he could no longer live. The second couplet
presents Taizong once again as the end point of sovereign history, the heir
to all previous rulers, but then gestures to his former life in Wugong. The
next two couplets celebrate his sovereign virtue, first announcing his store
of merit, and then comparing himself to the wuwei ideal of the sage-kings.
There is a somewhat discordant note in the eighth line, in which Taizong
begins with the Confucian pole-star analogy but concludes with the unifi-
cation of axle lengths and writing script. Though this may echo the unifi-
cation of pitch pipes and measuring standards by Shun, the more obvious
—————
145. “Boshui” here refers to the old home of Han Guangwudi.
146. According to Huangfu Mi, “Danling” is the place where Yao was supposedly born.
See Diwang shiji jicun, 1.33.
147. Again, following Zhou Mingdi’s poem, Xinfeng refers to the area of the Han capital in which Gaozu recreated his father’s village.
148. The tianjun 田畯 originally referred to a “field overseer” in Zhou texts, but later came to mean “farmers” or “field-workers” in a general sense. For a Zhou example, see the poem
“Seventh Month” 七月 (Poem 154), in Mao Shi zhengyi, 8.1.120c–25a, in Shisanjing zhushu, pp. 388–93.
149. “South Wind” refers to a song supposedly composed by Shun; for the anecdote, see in Li ji xunzuan, 19.573; and Shi ji, 24.1197. The earliest text of the poem is the Kongzi jiayu 孔子家語 ( The School Sayings of Confucius), a collection of pre-Qin and later sayings attributed to Confucius and his followers. See Wang Su 王肅 (195–256), comp., Kongzi jiayu shuzheng, 8.205.
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The Writing of Imperial Poetry in Medieval China
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reference is to the standardization of values that took place under the Qin
foundation of empire.150 The allusion to the first empire, with its ruth-
lessly technological approach to sovereignty, troubles the rhetoric of the
sage-kings and serves as a reminder that the idealism of the legendary past
cannot be so easily restored.
At this point, Taizong turns to the historical topography of rulership.
He mentions Boshui and Danling, the respective birthplaces of Han
Guangwudi and Yao, before turning to the crux of the poem—the staging
of a feast at Xinfeng. However, the feast is oddly delayed, first by a scene in
which Taizong demonstrates his care for the common folk, and second by
the description of auspicious signs that accompany a just and prosperous
reign. These two couplets suggest a causality: Taizong plays the role of the
sage-king, inquiring after the actual conditions of his subjects and seeking
worthies to serve in his court, and he is thus rewarded by lucky effluvia
and signs—the cosmological response to the sovereign’s personal virtue.
It is only in the last couplet that Taizong returns to the feast scene,
representing himself once more in the act of performing a song that is a
reperformance of an earlier scene of sovereignty. Similar to Han Gaozu,
Taizong is playing an instrument (here, the zheng 箏 or “zither”), yet
there is a rhetorical swerve from the expected paradigm. Instead of re-
invoking the singing of “Great Wind” (as he had in his previous visit to
Wugong), Taizong goes one better by singing Shun’s “South Wind,” the
song the legendary king composed after inventing the five-stringed zith-
er.151 The poem attributed to Shun reads:
South Wind 南風152
The fragrance of the south wind
南風之薰兮，
Can relieve the hardships of my people.
可以解吾民之慍兮。
The season of the south wind
南風之時兮，
Can enrich the wealth of my people.
可以阜吾民之財兮。
—————
150. For Shun’s unification of measures, see Shang shu zhengyi, 3.15, in Shisanjing zhushu, 127b; and Shi ji, 1.24.
151. This is mentioned in the “Record of Music.” See Li ji xunzuan, 19.573. The text of the poem is, however, not given.
152. Besides the Kongzi jiayu (see note 150 above), also see Yiwen leiju, 43.772; and Yuefu shiji, 57.825. For an overview of the textual problems regarding “South Wind,” see Kramers, trans., Kung Tzu Chia Yü, pp. 88–89.
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The Writing of Imperial Poetry in Medieval China
Whereas Han Gaozu’s song speaks of nostalgia and the imperial burden,
Shun’s song describes the all-embracing concern of the sovereign for his
people. As the Han commentator Zheng Xuan comments, “The south
wind is the wind of nurturing care; it is a means of speaking of the par-
; ents’ nurturing care towards oneself” 南風，長養之風也，以言父母
之長養己.153 “South Wind” is concerned with the all-embracing model
of political family and not with the restricted model of kinship; the sover-
eign here is the universal parent. In this way, Shun’s poem provides a re-
joinder to Gaozu’s “Great Wind,” proclaiming the univocal embrace of
the imperial role that Han Gaozu had troubled in his earlier, equivocal
performance. Moreover, it is a poem whose composition is located in the
hallowed antique time of the sage-kings, rather than in the problematic
historical past. By reperforming Shun’s performance, Taizong speaks in
the utterly public and timeless voice of the sage-king, leaving behind the
morally flawed reality of his historical person.
Although Taizong’s shift from historical allusion to mythic exemplar-
ity may be self-serving, it also participates in an older debate on the theory
of sovereignty. As Michael Puett has argued, within early Chinese political
thought, feelings of ambivalence over the technical innovations of empire
were never fully resolved.154 Empire was, after all, founded by the Qin to
realize the centralization of power in the body of a single entity without
regard to ritual or morality. Taizong, who saw himself as the true founder
of the Tang (or at least desired to be seen in this way), recognized the
problematic nature of his authority, and sought a cultural strategy that
could justify the inherent violence of imperial power. For him, what lit-
erature offered was an alterior space, one in which poetic imagery and
rhetoric could displace the hard truth of factuality; violent conquests
could be translated into virtuous reigns of peace without stumbling into
logical contradiction. To be sure, this would not resolve the troubled
foundations of imperial sovereignty, but it would make its problems more
palatable. The history of imperial poetry becomes a history of tropological
strategy, of rhetorical efforts to reimagine and represent the emperor as
something other than that which he was. Taizong’s poetry existed in rela-
tion to earlier imperial poetic compositions, whether as conscious aware-
—————
153. Li ji xunzuan, 19.573–74.
154. See Puett, Ambivalence of Creation, pp. 177–212.
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The Writing of Imperial Poetry in Medieval China
209
ness of the literary past or as unconscious inheritance of shared poetic
language. Of course, as any reader of his verse will quickly notice, Taizong
often overreached in his literary ambitions, producing minor pieces,
flawed works, and erudite but awkward compositions. Nevertheless, what
he accomplished was to rewrite the history of sovereignty in poetic form.
In the following chapters, I will turn to address a wider range of poetic
practices at the imperial court, showing how Taizong composed in rela-
tion to the post-Han tradition of court poets, both from the Southern
Dynasties and his contemporary period.
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F I V E
The Significance of Court Poetry
There has been a longstanding misrepresentation of early Tang literary
style as simply a continuation of the Southern Dynasties. For example, the
beginning of the encomium ( zan 贊) following the Xin Tang Shu biog-
raphy of Du Fu 杜甫 (712–70) reads: “When the Tang arose, poets inher-
ited the stylistic influences of the Chen and Sui dynasties, competing with
one another over shallow extravagance” 唐興，詩人承陳、隋風流，
浮靡相矜.1 The “stylistic influences” of the Chen and Sui dynasties is a
reference to the palace-style poetry that began in the Liang and provided
the standard for elegant poetic composition in the Chen and Sui. Because
officials and literary men from these two earlier periods served in the
court of the early Tang, the assumption was that the influence of palace-
style poetry was also carried over into the new dynasty’s literary culture.
For the most part, modern critics have followed traditional literary his-
tory in judging the poetry of the early Tang as a forgettable appendix to
the poetic fashions of the Southern Dynasties.2 Prominent figures such as
Wen Yiduo 聞一多 simply accepted the notion that the palace style was
—————
1. Xin Tang shu, 201.5738. Compare this with the more complex statement in Du Fu’s biography in the Jiu Tang shu, 190B.5056. The Xin Tang shu also attributes the turn towards literary “health” to the early Tang poet Chen Zi’ang 陳子昂 (661-702), in Xin Tang shu, 107.3824.
2. The other position in this debate—that the Zhenguan poets marked a break from the southern poetic style, or, at least, a return to “Confucian” values—is equally reductive. For an example of this argument, see Zhu Minglun, “Zhenguan shifeng kaishi jianbian.”
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The Significance of Court Poetry
211
the dominant style of the early Tang. Thus, in providing a definition for
the palace style, Wen writes:
Palace-style poems are courtly poems of sensuous allure or such poems which are
centered on the court. It is a historical term, and therefore, strictly speaking, palace-style poetry also should refer to the court-centered poems of sensuous allure
of the Eastern Palace of Liang Jianwendi when he was Crown Prince, and that of
Chen Houzhu, Sui Yangdi, Tang Taizong, etc.
宮體詩就是宮庭的，或以宮庭為中心的艷情詩，它是個有歷史性的名
辭，所以嚴格的講，宮體詩又當指以梁簡文帝為太子時的東宮及陳後
主、隋煬帝、唐太宗等幾個宮庭為中心的艷情詩。3
There are problems with Wen Yiduo’s definition, not least of which is that
not all palace-style poems were love poems. As Xiaofei Tian has shown, the
palace style is not best understood in terms of its thematic concerns, which
were varied, but rather by a fascination with perception and representa-
tion.4 Of more immediate concern, however, is the problematic identifica-
tion of Tang Taizong as a palace-style poet. While Xiao Gang, Chen
Houzhu, and Sui Yangdi are known for their love lyrics, Taizong’s literary
corpus is noticeably lacking in “poems of sensuous allure.”
On this point, Nie Yonghua 聶永華 points to two interrelated issues
underlying the confusion in the reception of early Tang poetry. First, Nie
argues that the term “palace style” has been vaguely applied, and following
traditional didactic criticism, was often used in a pejorative fashion. Sec-
ond, he notes that the term gongti shi has long been erroneously equated
with gongting shi 宮廷詩, court poetry.5 Nie’s argument resonates with
one put forth by Stephen Owen more than a quarter-century earlier: “Al-
though poetry was written in the Chinese courts both before and after
this period, it was during the la
te fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries that
the court was the real center of poetic activity in China.”6 Owen also
notes that “The development of the court poetry of the Southern Dynas-
—————
3. Wen Yiduo, “Gongti shi de zishu,” in Tangshi zalun, p. 9. For a more recent, though similar, assessment of the early Tang as dominated by gongti shi, see Yu Shucheng, Tangshi fengmao, pp. 51–59. Wen Yiduo’s position is countered in Zheng Boqin, “Guanyu Tang Taizong,” pp. 67–69.
4. See Tian, “Illusion and Illumination.”
5. Nie Yonghua, Chu Tang gongting shifeng liubian kaolun, p. 11.
6. Owen, Poetry of the Early T’ang, p. xi.
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The Significance of Court Poetry
ties into that of the Early T’ang is a gradual process involving no major or
abrupt changes.”7 Though major poetic innovations were introduced
through court poetry, there was also a rather conservative aspect to its
rhetorical codes and judgments of taste. The grammar of courtly poetic
gesture—what one could say and do in the poems—was highly restricted,
owing in no small part to the rules of decorum that determined all behav-
ior in the court. One has to be competent in courtly poetic composition,
and while one may excel in this competence, one should not stand out.8
Yet, despite the continuities of courtly style in the medieval period, the
status of poetry nevertheless underwent significant changes in the early
Tang, particularly in the hands of Taizong. Whereas poetry had been di-
vorced from the realm of public concern in the southern courts, Taizong’s
poems evince an abiding interest in the public aspect of poetry and a res-
toration of Han Confucian literary ideology. It is this tension between
the stylistic inheritance of the Southern Dynasties and the classicist resto-
ration of the Han poetic ideology that emerges as the central problem of
poetic writing in Taizong’s court. Taizong was apparently quite interested