by Chen Jack W
melancholy at how the snow has separated him from his beloved. Zou
Yan’s response counters the melancholic conclusion of the rhapsodic sec-
tion by giving two sensuously lyrical accounts of how the snow prolongs
the amorous encounter by preventing the leave-taking. What Mei Sheng
does, in his coda, is to reject the claims of the previous speakers, arguing
the philosophical point that snow is an unfettered essence, taking its form
and appearance from the environment, but not allowing the environment
to affect its true nature. Mei Sheng’s implicit argument is that the prince
should be like the snow, detached from worldly concerns, a point that is
meant to recall the historical Mei Sheng’s “Seven Stimuli” 七發.25
—————
23. For Xie Huilian’s biography, see Song shu, 53.1524–25. The text of the rhapsody may be found in Wen xuan, 13.591–98.
24. For English translations, see Watson, trans., Chinese Rhyme-Prose, pp. 86–91; Owen,
“Hsieh Hui-lien’s ‘Snow Fu’”; and Knechtges, trans., Wen xuan, or Selections of Refined Literature, vol. 3, pp. 20–31.
25. See Owen, “Hsieh Hui-lien’s ‘Snow Fu,’” pp. 16–21.
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The Significance of Court Poetry
219
Within
shi poetry, however, a somewhat different set of concerns takes
shape. I will begin with the Liu-Song poet Bao Zhao, whose lack of politi-
cal and social success is often cited as informing his literary composi-
tions.26 His poem on snow reads:
On the White Snow 詠白雪詩27
The white baton is indeed naturally white,
白珪誠自白，
But it cannot compare to snow’s shining allure,
不如雪光妍。
Or its skill in conforming to things in motion and rest.
工隨物動忥，28
So it can imitate propensities of square and round.
能逐勢方圓。29
Snow does not injure the beauty of jade’s visage,
無妨玉顏媚，
Nor arrogate the brightness of pure silk.
不奪素繒鮮。
It commits itself to screening the bitter season,
投心障苦節，30
Then hides its traces to avoid the flowering of the year.
隱跡避榮年。31
The thoroughwort is burnt, the stones already broken,
蘭焚石既斷，
What use is it to rely on fragrance or hardness?
何用恃芳堅。
—————
26. Yongwu poems make up a very small part of Bao’s surviving poems; for most readers of medieval verse, he is perhaps best-known for his poems in imitation of yuefu poetry. This is due in no small part to the literary tastes of the Liu-Song rulers who presided over the mid-fifth century. As Su Jui-lung has pointed out, Bao Zhao, as a low-ranking official, likely followed the lead of his superiors; see his “Patrons’ Influence on Bao Zhao’s Poetry,” in Kroll and Knechtges, eds., Studies in Early Medieval Chinese Literature, pp. 317–18.
27. Bao Canjun jizhu, ed. and annot. Qian Zhonglian, 6.397–98; and Xian Qin Han Wei Jin Nanbeichao shi, p. 1306. The poem is also translated in Robert Shanmu Chen, “A Study of Bao Zhao,” p. 379.
28. I follow Qian Zhonglian in emending qi 氣 to xi 忥.
29. These two lines rewrite the following Liezi 列子 passage: “Farmers comply with the season; merchants chase after profit; craftsmen pursue techniques; and scholar-officials seek position” 農赴時，商趣利，工追術，仕逐勢. See Liezi jishi, 6.215.
30. The phrase kujie actually refers to the judgment of the hexagram “Jie” 節, which reads:
“Under harsh regulations, virtuous conduct cannot be kept” 苦節不可貞. Zhou yi zheng-
yi, 6.58b, in Shisanjing zhushu, p. 70. Bao Zhao plays off of the temporal sense of jie, which is parallel to nian 年 in the next line. Hence, I have translated the phrase as referring to the coldness of winter, which retains the earlier sense of harshness.
31. According to the Hanyu dacidian 漢語大辭典 ( Grand Dictionary of the Chinese Language), which cites this line as its sole example, the term rongnian 榮年 refers to the season when the hundred flowers compete in beauty.
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220
The Significance of Court Poetry
The poem uses a white-jade baton as its point of departure and foil.
Though the ritual implement, carved from white jade, does possess a
natural whiteness, it is no match for the pure, unblemished whiteness of
snow. Furthermore, the baton is a crafted thing, a work of artifice that
gains its shape only through violence inflicted upon the natural form of
jade. By contrast, snow neither brings harm to white jade nor steals the
brilliance of undyed silk. Bao Zhao keeps separate the realms of nature
and artifice in his poem, unlike southern court poets in periods following
the Liu Song who will increasingly confuse the two.
At the same time, the strict distinction drawn between nature and arti-
fice does not preclude the projection of human interests onto the snowy
scene. For Bao, snow covers over the barrenness of winter, as if warding off
the hardships of “the bitter season,” and then, by the time of spring’s re-
birth, the snow is all melted away. Yet the use of the phrase kujie, borrowed from the Classic of Changes, suggests that the scene of nature’s barrenness
resonates also with the hardship of a dynastic age in its own winter. Bao
Zhao takes comfort in how the snow “commits itself” ( tou xin 投心, or lit-
erally, “throws its mind”) into softening a harsh landscape, as if covering
the dangers and conflicts of the human realm as well. It then “hides its trac-
es” once the human world allows once more for the blossoming-forth of
floral splendor. Bao Zhao’s conception of snow is close to the position held
by Mei Sheng in Xie Huilian’s rhapsody. Snow is pure in a “bitter season,”
the one thing that can take on the forms of the things around it yet not lose
its essential whiteness. Finally, as Bao points out, snow may have neither
the fragrance of thoroughwort nor the hardness of jade, but it also does not
suffer the calamities visited upon such objects of value. The conclusion
represents the poet as rejecting worldly success with all of its perils and in-
stead embracing natural purity as exemplified by the snow.
It is difficult to say when Bao composed his poem on snow, but his
rhetoric of purity and reclusion suggests that it was likely composed either
during a period of unrest in the Liu Song dynasty’s turbulent history or
after Bao’s career stalled, during the reign of Emperor Xiaowu 孝武
(r. 454–64). That the yongwu poem lends itself to autobiographical
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The Significance of Court Poetry
221
speculation once again speaks to the Hegelian operation that sublates
things into persons. At the same time, there is a critical difference be-
tween the representation of the thing in Bao’s poem (or in Xie Huilian’s
rhapsody) and in Xie Tiao’s poem a generation or so later. Both
Bao Zhao
and Xie Huilian figure the object of snow as an ethical model for human
beings to emulate, whereas the mat of Xie Tiao’s poem speaks not to a
moral point, but to the courteous praise and self-deprecation expected in
salon culture. This is not so much a difference in social circumstances of
composition, as Bao Zhao was himself active in the literary salons of the
Liu Song, but rather a change in the writing of poetry from the middle of
the fifth century to the late fifth and early sixth century.
By the late fifth century, the Liu Song had been replaced by the South-
ern Qi dynasty. When the historians of the early Tang would narrate the
literary history of the Southern Dynasties, they would identify a major
change in literary style beginning with the Yongming 永明 reign (483–93)
of the Qi dynasty and ending with the Tianjian 天監 reign (502–19) of
the Liang. Recall how the Sui shu commented on the period: “Resplen-
dent colors were gathered from rosy clouds; untrammeled sounds were
produced from bells and chimes. Flowers blossomed in magnificence, and
waves sent flooding swells; their pens had energy to spare, and their words
did not exhaust the source.”32 This is partly the hyperbole of a later age,
but one might certainly say that the Qi-Liang style (as it would later be
known) was much more conscious of the idea of literary elegance than
earlier periods. This interest in elegance was expressed most prominently
through the codification of poetic faults ( bing 病), a view of literary writ-
ing that returns us to the issue of craft and poiēsis. It is perhaps not coincidental that the growing Qi-Liang interest in the poem as an object of
craft is parallel to the increasing acceptance of yongwu poems that avoid
the explicit allegorization of Liu Song poetry.
I have already discussed the Qi poet Xie Tiao, who belonged to the lit-
erary coterie known as the “Eight Friends of Jingling.” Another member
of the coterie, the prominent historian and literary arbiter Shen Yue, also
composed a yongwu poem on snow:
—————
32. Sui shu, 76.1729–30. See the discussion in Chapter 3.
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222
The Significance of Court Poetry
On Snow: To Princely Command 詠雪應令詩33
Longing birds flock together among the cold reeds,
思鳥聚寒蘆，
Clouds in the sky gather in the dusk colors.
蒼雲軫暮色。
Evening snow—at times together, at times apart,
夜雪合且離，
Morning wind—suddenly moving, again at rest.
曉風驚復息。
Beauty of moonlight enters the window tracery,
嬋娟入綺窗，
Irresolute, my racing emotions reach their limit.
徘徊騖情極。34
Hanging pliantly—trees cannot support branches,
弱挂不勝枝，35
Flying lightly—birds repeatedly lower their wings.
輕飛屢低翼。
The Jade Mountain just now can be viewed,
玉山聊可望，
And the Jasper Pool—how can it be hard to reach?
瑤池豈難即。36
Richard Mather has commented that Shen Yue “could not think about
snow in purely aesthetic terms, nature lover and good Buddhist that he
was.” Instead what preoccupies him is “the thought of wild creatures shiv-
ering amid the cheerless shelter of reeds at night.”37 However, Shen Yue’s
worry over the living things caught in the snowfall is complicated by the
way he develops the poem, and in particular, by the alternating themes of
ethical concern and aesthetic interest.
The first couplet describes the “downcast birds” huddling together for
warmth among the cold reeds, anticipating the snowstorm that is rolling
towards them. By the second couplet, however, Shen Yue introduces an
ambiguity into the scene: it is not clear whether it is the morning snow
that falls together in drifts or separately as flakes, or the birds that wing
through the falling snow, in groups and separately; nor is it clear whether
—————
33. Chuxue ji, 2.29–30; Xian Qin Han Wei Jin Nanbeichao shi, pp. 1645–46. For my translation, I have consulted Mather, Age of Eternal Brilliance, 1.139. This poem was translated by Mather in a different manner and discussed in The Poet Shen Yüeh, pp. 77–78. For an insightful discussion of the poem (and Mather’s earlier translation), see Kuo-ying Wang, Review of The Poet Shen Yüeh, pp. 144–45.
34. The character wu 鶩 (“wild duck”) is taken as a loan for wu 騖 (“to race, rush”).
35. Lu Qinli notes that Feng Weine’s Gushi ji has gui 桂 instead of gua 挂. Mather follows Feng and translates the line as “The weak osmanthus is unable [to support its snowy]
branches.”
36. The Jade Mountain and the Jasper Pool are both mythical sites associated with the Queen Mother of the West and recounted in Mu Tianzi zhuan at the climax of the narrative. For a translation of this encounter, see Mathieu, Le Mu tianzi zhuan, pp. 44–54. Also see Loewe, Ways to Paradise, pp. 86–88; and Cahill, Transcendence and Divine Passion.
37. See Mather, The Poet Shen Yüeh, p. 70.
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The Significance of Court Poetry
223
the morning wind suddenly whips up as if startled and then calms, or the
birds that, startled by the wind, fly up and then come to rest. However
empathetic the poet may have been in the first couplet, his obscuring of
the difference between the birds and the weather in the second couplet
suggests an aesthetic, not ethical, interest in the scene.
This veering away from ethical concern continues into the third cou-
plet, where Shen notices the beauty of the moonlight. This is not only an
inconsistent moment in a poem about the falling snow (the sky would
presumably not be clear), but also in a poem that is supposed to focus on
the speaker’s concern for living things. Just as strange is how Shen
matches the line on the moonlight that floods his window tracery with his
own hesitation before the coming storm. The fourth couplet returns the
poet to his ethical theme: he notes how the frail branches cannot support
the covering snow and how the birds, weighed down by snow, fly with
drooping wings. The reference to the snow is not ambiguous here, but it is
never mentioned directly; we know the presence of the snow through its
oppressive effects. The last couplet, in which the poet catches a glimpse of
the legendary Jade Mountain and expresses his confidence in reaching
Jasper Pool, points back to the fact that the poem was composed “to
command.” The language of courtly praise transforms the princely com-
pounds into utopian sites where no harm will come to living things.
Though there is no escape from the snow in the dusty world, if one might
reach the transcendental court of the prince, then those things that suffer
the harsh season would find relief.
Neither Bao Zhao’s nor Shen Yue’s yongwu poems on snow rest com-
fortably within the aesth
etic interest of the subgenre, but instead use the
form to comment about the social world. The difference in the way that
the two poets do so, however, is what separates the world of the Liu Song
poet from that of the Qi poet. For Shen Yue, the snow is actually snow; it
is not an allegory for the purity of nature, or for the recluse’s pure mind,
but a thing that has a direct effect upon the world. Other creatures will
suffer because of the snow, or perhaps even die, frozen by the cold tem-
peratures bearing down upon them.
The Qi dynasty would be overthrown by one of the “Eight Compan-
ions,” who would himself ascend the throne to become the founding em-
peror of the Liang dynasty. This was, of course, Xiao Yan, who would be
known to history as Liang Wudi. It is a commonplace that the poetic style
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The Significance of Court Poetry
of the Liang dynasty carried the decorous ornament of earlier periods to
an innovative but dangerous extreme, that it was sensuous to the point of
moral harm. This is historically inaccurate, as it reads the flourishing of
the palace style in the 530s as the general state of Liang verse. Early Liang
court poetry often looked back to earlier models of poetry, as we see in the
case of the prominent Liang poet Wu Jun 吳均 (469–520), whose style
harkened back to the poetry of Cao Zhi and Bao Zhao.38 Here, Wu Jun
takes up the poetic topos of snow:
On Snow 詠雪詩39
The snow arrives, chasing after the spring winds,
雪逐春風來，
Crossing and piling over the Wu Mountain wilds.
過集巫山野。40
Chaotic, in disarray, yet something appealing,
瀾漫雖可愛，
Fluttering, soaring—how could one hold it fast?