The Poetics of Sovereignty

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The Poetics of Sovereignty Page 54

by Chen Jack W


  was at stake was the emperor’s consideration of his subjects. This can be

  seen in the Mencius passage in which King Hui of Liang asks Mencius whether it is proper to enjoy his goose- and deer-filled park. Mencius responds to the king by telling him about King Wen of Zhou, whose people

  happily labored over the construction of his pleasure park because the

  king shared it with them.114 The lesson is clear for Taizong as well, who

  has inherited not the palatial ideology of King Wen, but of the First Em-

  peror.

  —————

  113. On the argument concerning technology and naturalness in early China, see Puett, Ambivalence of Creation, pp. 59–64.

  114. See Mengzi 1A.2 / Mengzi zhengyi, 2.44–50. On this topic, Michael Nylan has written,

  “The common people in perilous times could be controlled better and more easily if they perceived the ruler to be equitable in his dispersals and disbursements and judicious in expending his resources, including his bodily energies and the strength of his people.” See Nylan, “On the Politics of Pleasure,” p. 85.

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  306

  Palatial Form and the Rhapsodic Imagination

  The argument shifts topics in the third section, as Taizong turns from

  the problem of palace-building to another large-scale imperial construc-

  tion project: the Great Wall. While recent scholarship has questioned the

  reality of a single massive wall that had existed continuously since the Qin,

  the myth of the First Emperor’s Great Wall was very much part of the

  Chinese cultural imagination.115 What Taizong sees, however, is the unin-

  tended consequences of the wall, which allowed the northern frontier na-

  tions to safely amass their strength and ready themselves for incursions

  against the Chinese heartland without being transformed by the civilizing

  force of the Son of Heaven.

  The threat of war, however, allows Taizong to reclaim the central role

  in the poetic narrative; he depicts himself as the single figure who can pac-

  ify the nomadic hordes. He claims to do this through a careful study of

  “the measures taken by the hundred kings,” invoking the accumulated

  wisdom of past rulers as his guide (l. 54), but also, in the same gesture, an-

  nouncing his own inheritance of sovereignty: “It happened that this use-

  less body followed in their footsteps, / Ascending to the imperial design

  and governing the world” (ll. 55–56). Under his rule, the barbarian invad-

  ers are repulsed and society is once again restored to a condition of uto-

  pian trust, in which gates could be left open without inviting property

  theft. Yet Taizong’s image of social stability is one connected not so much

  with moral and ritual transformation, but with the state’s practical needs:

  “The commoners were allowed to pursue farming, / Script and axles made

  uniform for carts and writing” (ll. 67–68). Political standardization and

  the necessity of agriculture were, after all, central tenets in the theories of

  Shang Yang and Li Si, whose reconception of the state buttressed Qin

  ideology, making possible the foundation of empire. The presence of both

  Legalism and Confucianism in medieval political discourse could hardly

  be considered exceptional, as the imperial state combined the needs of po-

  litical centralization with the rhetoric of moral ideology.

  This equivocation between the traditions of the sage-kings and the in-

  novations of the imperial age does not seem to convince even Taizong

  himself, and so he echoes the argument made by Xiao He to Han Gaozu,

  that the construction of a palace would serve to establish the new dynasty:

  “By making use of the two toilings of earth and wood, / There is no need

  —————

  115. See Waldron, Great Wall of China.

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  Palatial Form and the Rhapsodic Imagination

  307

  for the two tasks of shield and spear” (ll. 73–74). Yet even this is not suffi-

  cient to quell Taizong’s worries. He recalls the example of the Han gen-

  eral Zhou Yafu, who would not relax the military regulations at Xiliu En-

  campment for the visiting Han Wendi, and realizes that Xiao He’s

  symbolic argument cannot compare to Zhou Yafu’s unyielding character.

  Taizong also sees through the justification of the massive imperial hunts,

  which were supposed to demonstrate the military power of the emperor

  and thereby awe border nations into peaceful submission. In both cases,

  the signified of true sovereignty—what Mencius would term the Kingly

  Way—cannot be truly communicated through the symbolic forms of the

  palace and the hunt, but must rather be exemplified and cultivated in the

  sovereign’s own person.

  The abortive attempt to justify his building of Daming Palace now

  leads Taizong to consider the frugality of Han Wendi, who famously de-

  clined to build an exposed terrace despite the trivial cost, as well as the

  greed of the Lord of Shu and Earl Zhi, who sought only to maximize their

  own profits and so lost their lives. Taizong realizes that he is no Wendi,

  but unlike the Lord of Shu and Earl Zhi, he acknowledges the populace’s

  murmuring at the excessively grand scale of Taizong’s new palace, confess-

  ing, “In seeking profit, I have embraced the trifling and neglected the im-

  portant, / In causing harm, I abandoned what was crucial and thought

  only of the trivial.”

  Having realized his folly, Taizong sets the stage for the scene of moral

  enlightenment that, by generic convention, provides the closure for many

  rhapsodies. Taizong raises his eyes from the palatial scene to consider the

  rains and clouds that selflessly nourish the entire world, realizing that he

  should analogously benefit all things without thought of requital or rec-

  ognition. This is the model of the gift, which, as Jacques Derrida has writ-

  ten, is dispensed freely and can have “no reciprocity, return, exchange,

  countergift, or debt” as the result of the giving.116 To give without desire

  for return would perhaps prove an impossible ideal, but it was the under-

  lying logic in Yu’s tireless labors to deliver his people from destructive

  floods. What Taizong hopes to institute (at least in the space of the poem)

  is a government based upon grace rather than desire.

  —————

  116. Derrida, Given Time, p. 12.

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  308

  Palatial Form and the Rhapsodic Imagination

  It is at this point that Taizong withdraws from the palatial scene—and,

  from another perspective, withdraws the scene of the palace—to enter in-

  to a contemplative space. This erasure of rhapsodic representation recalls

  a similar gesture performed at the end of Sima Xiangru’s “Rhapsody on

  the Imperial Park.” One might recall how, in that poem, once the em-

  peror had reached the height of pleasure during the grand banquet, he

  suddenly
realizes that he should end the celebration and return the Impe-

  rial Park to farmland. Similarly, Taizong shuts out the lofty view of the

  terrace, saying, “I dispel and purge my cares / And naturally is my heart

  made cheerful” (ll. 101–102). This is also an act of askēsis in an almost mo-nastic sense: Taizong has rejected the extravagance of palatial representa-

  tion to embrace inward contemplation. To be sure, he does not imagine

  tearing down the palace—a promise that he would probably not want to

  make good on—but the palace nevertheless is removed from the scene of

  the poem.

  Taizong realizes that the palace cannot be justified by appeals to the

  necessity of sovereign power or state prosperity, and that the “single act of

  virtue” transcends the scale of value for material wealth (ll. 103–104). Un-

  derlying the argument in this last section is an inversion of the exploita-

  tive economy of the tyrant, in which the entire populace served to gratify

  the One Man’s desires. Here, it is the sovereign who exists to serve the

  empire, disseminating grace without desire and prizing virtue above all

  gain. However, such a sovereign ideal cannot exist in the world created by

  the Qin foundation of empire. Taizong must therefore look to a founding

  moment that preceded the Qin, which he finds in the final couplet: “Both

  those of ‘same virtue’ and ‘same mind’ / Together flow in fragrance from

  the Kingly Way” (ll. 107–108). The allusion is to King Wu’s “Great Vow,”

  a speech in which the Zhou co-founder laid out the charge against the

  Shang tyrant Zhou:

  Shou [another name for the Shang tyrant Zhou] has thousands and millions of

  ordinary men, but they are divided in mind and in virtue. I have ten men, minis-

  ters capable of government, who are united in mind and in virtue. Though one’s

  men may all be close relatives, they would not be the equal of benevolent men.

  Heaven sees as my people see; Heaven hears as my people hear. If the common

  people have faults, they all belong to me, the One Man. Now I must go forth.

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  Palatial Form and the Rhapsodic Imagination

  309

  受有億兆夷人,離心離德。予有亂臣十人,同心同德。雖有周親,不

  如仁人。天視自我民視,天聽自我民聽,百姓有過,在予一人。今朕

  必往。117

  King Wu uses the language of unity throughout this passage: that is, his

  ministers are united in their hearts; Heaven sees and hears through the eyes

  and ears of Wu’s people; and Wu himself takes the responsibility of his

  people’s faults all upon himself. By appropriating the language of King Wu

  on the eve of the Zhou dynastic founding, Taizong sets up a counter-

  genealogy to the tyrants who had haunted the rhapsodic meditation on the

  past and whose desires for self-aggrandizement led to the construction of

  massive palace complexes. Like King Wu, Taizong was a dynastic co-

  founder and led the military conquest of the previous dynasty, which had

  lost Heaven’s favor. The closing image of the “Kingly Way,” then, refers

  not only to the normative tradition of moral sovereignty, but also to the so-

  vereign lineage that connects Taizong to the exemplary kings of former

  times.

  If the palace drops out of the rhapsody’s final accounting, it is because

  Taizong can find no justification for palaces that do not participate in the

  troubling rhetoric of empire. In this context, the allusion to King Wu

  serves a different purpose, one that contrasts with Han Gaozu rather than

  the First Emperor. Gaozu, in accepting Xiao He’s argument for the Wei-

  yang Palace, mistakes the representational form of the palace—its gran-

  deur and ornamentation—for its significance. What Taizong offers, by

  way of redress, is a dialectical account of the palace that considers the ear-

  lier palatial ideologies of the Qin and Han, but concludes with the nega-

  tion of all palatial representation. Taizong invokes King Wu’s unity of

  hearts and minds, which speaks to the intention of Xiao He’s argument

  but without recourse to the expense of representation—which is to say,

  without the palace itself. It is only when Taizong has voided the form of

  the palace that he can reveals the palace’s originary content, its signifi-

  cance as the unifying center of empire. This is what the palace was sup-

  posed to signify in its role as the axis mundi of the world, as the cosmo-

  logical and political center that defines and organizes all space around it.

  —————

  117. Shang shu zhengyi, 11.69c, in Shisanjing zhushu, p. 181.

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  310

  Palatial Form and the Rhapsodic Imagination

  And this is also what had been forgotten in the creation of empire, when

  the needs of the ruler and state took precedence over the needs of the

  ruler’s subjects.

  •

  Taizong’s pairing of rhapsodic form with the subject of the imperial pal-

  ace was a natural development from earlier rhapsodic treatments of capi-

  tal cities and hunting parks. The poetic representation of space was some-

  thing that the genre of rhapsody did well, conjuring a sense of panorama

  through its long rhetorical catalogues and lexical prolixity. This same set

  of formal characteristics underlay the architectonics of the rhapsody,

  which organized and divided couplets into the building blocks of poetic

  representation.

  However, Taizong’s interest in the palace lay in the palace’s negation, a

  tropological strategy that he has employed elsewhere as a means of repre-

  senting the elusive ideal of sovereign virtue. The negation of the palace

  occurs twice: once in the rhapsody as Taizong realizes the cost of con-

  structing a detached palace, and once in history when Taizong calls for an

  end to the actual construction of the Daming Palace. What the relation-

  ship between these two negations actually was is a question that cannot be

  resolved, since it is only the poem that survives to document Taizong’s

  decision to halt work on the palace. That is, one cannot know if the rhap-

  sody was composed in response to (that is, as a defense of ) the decision to

  stop construction, or if the rhapsody was itself the crystallization of Tai-

  zong’s meditation on sovereign wastefulness and the spur to his historical

  decision. This question of causality and poetic representation is also pre-

  sent in Taizong’s most famous poetic composition, “The Imperial Capital

  Poems,” which is the topic of the next, and final, chapter.

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  S E V E N

  On “The Imperial Capital Poems”:

  Ritual Sovereignty and Imperial Askēsis

  If palaces are the material symbols of sovereignty, locating the sovereign in

  space, then rituals are their temporal counterparts, marking both the suc-


  cessful completion of cycles and the beginnings of epochs. The hallowed

  Feng and Shan sacrifices, mentioned in passing in previous chapters, be-

  longed to the latter kind of ritual, as their performance was intended to

  announce the achievement of lasting peace throughout the empire. The

  founders of a new dynasty often employed such rhetoric, claiming to have

  swept away the chaos of the previous age. Nevertheless, Sima Qian begins

  his “Treatise on the Feng and Shan” 封禪書 by asking, “Since antiquity,

  why have there been sovereigns who have received the mandate but not

  performed the Feng and Shan sacrifices?” 自古受命帝王,曷嘗不封

  禪.1 This question might be asked of Tang Taizong, who would consis-

  tently represent himself as bringing about an age of peace, and yet decide,

  at three separate points in his reign, that it would not be right to perform

  the Feng and Shan sacrifices at Mount Tai.

  Taizong’s decisions concerning the Feng and Shan are preserved in a

  set of edicts and speeches that span the length of his reign and take up a

  broad set of issues concerning the idea of sovereignty. In these texts, Tai-

  zong not only examines his own record, but also looks backwards to the

  —————

  1. Shi ji, 28.1355.

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  312

  On “The Imperial Capital Poems”

  examples of earlier rulers and dynasties—most significantly to the failure

  of the Sui to hold the mandate. Edicts and imperial speeches are, of course,

  public documents, and though they are composed as if addressing the em-

  pire in general, they are also intended for particular audiences. Similarly,

  poetry may speak as if in the mode of universal address, even while there is

  a particular audience in mind. The complement to Taizong’s public dis-

  cussions of the Feng and Shan rites may be found in the ten-poem se-

  quence, “The Imperial Capital Poems: Ten Pieces, with Preface.”2 In

  these poems, we find Taizong ostensibly describing the activities of a day

  of imperial leisure, beginning at dawn and ending late at night. However,

  what emerges from this poem-cycle is a poetic discourse on the role of the

 

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