by Chen Jack W
in court poetry; the major portion of his corpus consists of such poems.
Therefore the question is, what was the significance of court poetry for
Taizong? And what does it mean for an emperor such as Taizong to write
in the courtly mode?
This chapter will take up the relationship between the court and liter-
ary production. Though court poetry may have primarily been a medieval
phenomenon, the court has long played an important role in the early
conception of poetry in China. One need look no further than the fa-
mous Zuo zhuan episode in which poetry ( shi), is first defined in terms of
“aims” ( zhi). The chronicle records that a feast was held by the Earl of
Zheng for the Jin official Zhao Wu 趙武, at which the seven ministers of
Zheng attended. At this feast, Zhao Wu states, “That the seven peers at-
tend upon the lord is a mark of favor to me, Wu. I request that all present
recite poems in order to conclude the lord’s grace, and in this way, I will
also be able to observe your aims” 七子從君，以寵武也。請皆賦以卒
君貺，武亦以觀七子之志. Each of the ministers then recites poems
—————
7. Owen, Poetry of the Early T’ang, p. 7.
8. I thank Prof. Steven Carter of Stanford University for suggesting this line of discussion.
On the notion of poetic competence, see Graham Sanders, Words Well Put.
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The Significance of Court Poetry
213
from the Classic of Poetry, but while six of the ministers choose poems of
praise, the minister Bo You 伯有 chooses a poem of bitter complaint.
Zhao Wu understands from Bo You’s poem that the minister harbors re-
bellious intentions, and afterwards he notes, “Poetry is used to speak one’s
aims. In his aims, he slanders his superior and publicly expresses resent-
ment towards him; he should have honored the earl’s guests—how can he
last long in this place? He will be lucky to flee into exile” 詩以言志，志
誣其上而公怨之，以為賓榮，其能久乎？幸而後亡.9 Even though
the words of the poem were not authored by Bo You, the choice of the
cited lines was his to make. Bo You adheres to the required social form of
the occasion, but he violates the occasion’s spirit by revealing his rebel-
lious aims ( zhi 志).
The courtly setting of this Zuo zhuan episode has received scant atten-
tion, though it is the very reason why the recitation of poetry is significant
in this episode. The ministers recite poems from the Classic of Poetry only
because Zhao Wu, the honored guest, requests that a performance of lit-
erary ornament bring to a close the Earl of Zheng’s gracious celebration.
Insofar as the poems belong to the celebratory moment, they are part of
the ritual of praise, and as with all ritual, the performance is only mean-
ingful under the proper conditions.10 That is, the recited poems are
speech acts intended to celebrate the state occasion, and though Bo You
knows what is being requested of him, he fails to speak lines appropriate
to the occasion. It is precisely this ritual infelicity that catches Zhao Wu’s
ear and reveals the minister’s secret thoughts, thus setting the stage for his
inevitable political downfall. As for the other ministers, Zhao Wu is also
able to see their aims and thus predict their happier political fortunes.
Poetry becomes a revelatory language for the one who understands how
to listen. The “aims” that underlie the poem do not simply reveal the inten-
tions of the speaker, but rather encompass the entire orientation of the
speaker towards the polity of which he is a subject, gesturing towards the
very political constitution of the speaker’s personhood. To put it another
way, the poem is not fictional, a “made thing” as one finds in the Greek no-
tion of poiēma; it is the metonymic extension of the person himself, and as
such, is inseparable from the speaker and his sociopolitical context.
—————
9. See Zuo zhuan, Duke Xiang, 27th year / Chunqiu Zuo zhuan zhu, p. 1135.
10. Here, I draw on Austin, How to Do Things with Words.
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214
The Significance of Court Poetry
Yongwu Poetry, or “Poems on Things”
Yet it is precisely the language of zhi, of personhood, that is displaced from the development of court poetry in the medieval period. If there is one central reason why courtly poetics has suffered the disdain of Confucian mor-
alists and historians, it is because court poetry has consistently sought to
elide the role of the self from its rhetoric of praise. Without the anchoring
self, the courtly poem does not point back to any political or moral signifi-
cance, but becomes mere literary ornamentation. This is of particular im-
portance in the case of imperial poetry as defined in the preceding chapter,
where the sovereign’s person (or persona) becomes the subject and theme
of his poetry. The court poem, by contrast, is simply a thing, lacking the
authentic significance of personhood. This is the problem underlying one
of the most recognizable courtly subgenres, that of yongwu shi 詠物詩, or
“poems on things.”11 Almost all of Taizong’s court poems belong to the
category of yongwu shi, which makes the seeming contradiction between
his classicist ideology and his literary practices all the more striking.
Wen Yiduo’s confusion over the early Tang thus is somewhat under-
standable. After all, yongwu poetry first became popular during the Liu
Song and Qi dynasties, the very period that literary historians have identi-
fied as leading to the development of the palace style. The term yongwu
seems to have originated with the Shi pin of the critic Zhong Rong, who,
in commenting on the Southern Qi poet Xu Yaozhi 許瑤之, wrote:
“Xu’s strength was in short verses and in singing about things” 許長於短
句詠物.12 The practice of writing such poems, however, predated Zhong
Rong. In fact, one might identify the generic origins of the yongwu shi in
rhapsodies that focused on a particular object (as opposed to the epideic-
tic rhapsodies that celebrated imperial power). If traditional attributions
are correct, the earliest examples of what might be called yongwu fu con-
sist of “Rhapsody on Wind” 風賦 and “Rhapsody on the Goddess” 神女
賦, both by the semi-legendary figure Song Yu 宋玉 (fl. third century
bc).13 The other common origin given for yongwu poetry is the riddle-
—————
11. On the yongwu subgenre’s rules and formal aspects, see Bridge, “Poems on Things,” pp.
71–133.
12. Shi pin jizhu, 3.440.
13. See Wen xuan, 13.581–85; and 19.886–92.
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The Significance of Court Poetry
215
poem as found in the Xunzi. These odd pieces, al
so called fu by their author, each begin with a variation on the phrase “There is a thing here” 有
物於此, and then go on to describe the thing. The author, feigning igno-
rance, then asks the imagined auditor to solve the riddle for him.14
The influence of the riddle form informs many of the yongwu poems
composed for drinking games at banquets and other social gatherings.
One of the hallmarks of such poems was that the actual subject of the
poem not be named in the course of reciting the poem, allowing the lis-
teners to guess at the poem’s meaning. Let me turn here to one such ex-
ample, a poem by the poet Xie Tiao 謝朓 (464–99):
Together Composing Poems on Things Espied from Our Seats
同詠坐上所見一物15
Originally I was born by the Pool of Dawn and Dusk,
本生朝夕池，16
The setting sun illuminated my irregular growth.
落景照參差。
On a little island, I was covered by scented pollia,
汀洲蔽杜若，
On the hidden islet, my place was stolen by lovage.
幽渚奪江蘺。17
Upon meeting you, I was gathered up at the right time.
遇君時採擷，18
Set at the jade seat where you are offered gold goblets.
玉座奉金卮。19
I only desire to be brushed by your gauze clothes,
但願羅衣扶，
So as not to allow the pure dust to cover everything.
無使素塵彌。
The answer to the poetic riddle—what is espied from the banquet seat—
is, of course, a mat. The first two couplets of the poem imagine the ori-
gins of the mat among the grasses and plants of the sea-marshes and islets.
—————
14. Xunzi jijie, 26.472–84.
15. Xian Qin Han Wei Jin Nanbeichao shi, p. 1454. Also see Xie Xuancheng ji jiaozhu, ed.
and annot. Cao Rongnan, 5.400. This poem is also translated in Chennault, “Odes on Objects,” p. 340; and Mather, Age of Eternal Brilliance, 2.29.
16. “The Pool of Dawn and Dusk” refers to the ocean.
17. Both pollia and lovage are plants mentioned in the Chu ci. In “Lady of the Xiang” 湘君
(one of the “Nine Songs” 九歌), the speaker plucks pollia to give to the goddess of the Xiang River. In “Li sao,” the speaker garbs himself in lovage. On the plants, see Wang Shishun, gen. ed., Chu ci cidian, pp. 46, 98.
18. In this context, the “you, my lord” would refer to Xiao Ziliang, the host of the gathering and a prince of the Southern Qi.
19. The “jade seat” refers to the seat of the hosting lord or king at a banquet, and by extension, to the lord or king himself; the one who occupies the jade seat here would be Xiao Ziliang.
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216
The Significance of Court Poetry
The third couplet plays upon the old trope of recognition and employ-
ment by a lord of men: the phrase, “upon meeting you” ( yu jun 遇君)
evokes the idea of “meeting with the right moment in time” ( yu shi 遇時).
Here, the mat that has met its proper moment is now whisked to the
grand banquet, where it enjoys the position of the “jade seat” and receives
offerings of wine in gold vessels. The only desire of the mat is that it not
grow dusty, that it be brushed by the prince’s gauze clothes as he sits upon
it. This is also a graceful way of handling the fact that Xie Tiao is talking
about the object beneath the princely posterior.
The closing lines once again evoke the rhetoric of lords and servants, as
the mat wants to be of service, to be usefully employed. And it is in the
polite rhetoric of service that we see one of the main purposes of this kind
of poetry. Xie Tiao was one of the “Eight Companions of the Prince of
Jingling,” the prestigious literary salon of Xiao Ziliang. Just as the mat re-
cognizes his master, Xie Tiao recognizes his place within the prince’s
court: he may be a companion to the prince, but he is also a literary orna-
ment, someone raised up (“gathered”) by the prince for his poetic talent.
Just as the mat does not want to be neglected, so Xie Tiao expresses the
polite worry that perhaps one day the prince will tire of him.
Xie Tiao’s poem is about a thing, and it speaks from the point of view
of the thing. The short eight-line poem constructs a narrative of the mat’s
life, from its original place in nature to its new function as a seat for the
prince. The “thingly” nature of the poem indicates that this is a work of
literary insignificance, a minor composition whose main purpose is to en-
tertain partygoers as part of a drinking game. However, despite the
poem’s displacement of the human person, one can nonetheless read the
poet’s person back into the poem. The poetic discourse on things, as it
turns out, can never be truly separate from the discourse on persons and
minds, but is permeated by the consciousness of the courtier’s role and
the poetic imagination of the court.
This has been noted in other ways in traditional criticism. For example,
in the “Elucidating Poetry” 明詩 chapter of the Wenxin diaolong, Liu Xie
劉勰 (ca . 465–522) writes, “The feeling must thoroughly encompass the
appearance in order to depict the thing” 情必極貌以寫物.20 While the
feeling ( qing 情) refers primarily to the mood of the poetic scene, it also
—————
20. See Liu Xie, Wenxin diaolong yizheng, 6.208.
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The Significance of Court Poetry
217
points to the human mind that observes the scene and the thing within
the scene. That is, there is human agency in the description of the thing,
and therefore the description of the thing can lead back to the human
mind that observes it. The Qing critic Li Zhonghua 李重華 (1682–1755)
makes the relationship between poet and thing much more explicit, writ-
ing, “There are two models for ‘poems on things’: the first is taking the
self and lodging it within the thing; the second is setting the self to stand
by the side of the thing” 詠物詩有兩法：一是將自 身放頓在裡面，
一是將自身站在旁邊.21 To stand next to the thing is merely to observe
and describe; to lodge oneself within the thing is to allegorize through ob-
servation and description.
However, is it ever possible for the poet simply to stand by the thing
and observe it without projecting his own consciousness onto it? Even for
a master such as Xie Tiao, in a poem that exemplifies both the skill and
the wit of the yongwu subgenre, one can still see traces of an autobio-
graphical impulse underlying the text. The problem is that the lyric tradi-
tion in China exerts its own gravitational force, sublating the thing of the
poem into the language of personhood. To put it in more traditional
terms, the yongwu poem has a way of reverting back to the yonghuai
(“singing of my thoughts”) form, albeit in an allegorical manner.22 At the
same time, the development of a particular yongwu poem is dependent
upo
n its topic, and here the choice of the mat is hardly insignificant. The
mat is a work of artifice, and as such, it is itself an index of human agency
and desire. If the role of personhood cannot truly be excised from Xie
Tiao’s poem, it is because the poetic thing is already permeated by human
consciousness. Therefore, let me come at this question of thing and per-
son from a slightly different direction, from a set of yongwu poems that
takes not a “made thing,” but a thing of nature—in this case, snow.
—————
21. See Li Zhonghua, Zhenyizhai shihua, in Wang Fuzhi 王夫之 (1619–92), comp., Qing shihua, p. 930.
22. For a study that discusses many of these problems in depth, see Lin Shuzhen, Zhongguo yongwu shi.
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218
The Significance of Court Poetry
A Poetic Genealogy of Snow
The poetic history of snow may be said to be encapsulated in the “Rhap-
sody on Snow” 雪賦 by Xie Huilian 謝惠連 (407–33), a member of the
celebrated Xie clan and a younger cousin of the famous poet Xie Ling-
yun.23 As Xie Huilian’s rhapsody has been translated several times, I will
simply summarize its narrative here.24 Xie uses a pseudo-historical narra-
tive frame in which the King of Liang 梁王 (r. 168–144 bc) has invited
the poets Sima Xiangru, Zou Yang 鄒陽 (ca. 206–129 bc), and Mei Sheng
to join him in drinking. A heavy snow begins to fall, and in response, the
king sings “North Wind” and “South Mountain” from the Classic of Po-
etry, both of which contain snow imagery. The king then asks Sima
Xiangru to compose a rhapsody on the snow; Zou Yan follows with two
short poetic songs entitled “Song of Drifting Snow” and “Song of White
Snow”; finally, Mei Sheng is asked to compose a coda ( luan 亂) to the pre-
ceding performances. Stephen Owen has discussed the structural com-
plexity of Xie Huilian’s rhapsody in detail, noting how the three voices
complement and counter one another. Owen shows how the long rhap-
sodic section of Sima Xiangru attempts to describe exhaustively and ob-
jectively the phenomenon of snow, but ends with the speaker’s personal